2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 46 november`15, 1998 ngo-state relations: an argument in favor of the state and complementarity of efforts robert f. arnove with rachel christina indiana university in "too close for comfort?" michael edwards and david hulme (1996) note that in recent years the level of official funding for nongovernmental organizations (ngos) in development efforts has increased dramatically. this expanded funding forms an integral part of the neoliberal "new policy agenda" currently promoted by powerful donor agencies like the world bank, usaid, and the british overseas development administration (oda). this agenda has the primary aims of (1) strengthening civil society for the purposes of achieving political pluralism and democratic forms of governance; and (2) achieving greater efficiency by subjecting social programs to market forces. yet the obverse of strengthening the civil sector is the dismantling of the role of the state in providing basic education and health services. we argue that the state cannot be replaced, and that there are certain indispensable things that it must do. the issues facing marginalized and systematically discriminated-against populations in most societies (i.e., women, young children, ethnic minorities, the working class and peasantry) require a strategic response at the macro or societal level: changes in laws and in the workings of major institutions. these changes require the mobilization of resources, both financial and human, on a national level. within the united states, data accumulated by third sector policy institutes indicate that many ngos often have small staffs--frequently only one or two paid individuals--as well as very limited and precarious sources of funding. in short, most are fragile institutions. approximately five percent of third sector agencies command more than 80 percent of all the assets of agencies working between government and the business sector. these observations in the resource-rich united states obtain throughout most of the developing world and have serious implications for the viability of ngos. such uneven resources threaten the durability of ngos despite the fact that they have proliferated in absolute numbers by the hundreds, even thousands, in individual countries in recent years. it can be substantiated generally that ngos are able to perform with greater ease and flexibility than the state in responding to local needs. however, they also have very limited resources and are frequently unable to carry small projects to scale (see klees, this issue). furthermore, increased competition for resources on the open market (l) forces organizations to divert attention and time from programming to fund raising; and (2) may force out of existence smaller organizations or agencies whose political bases are not in line with those of dominant funders. our general argument, therefore, is that ngos and the state require complementarity of effort. we acknowledge edwards and hulme's concerns that such arrangements may lead to the co-optation of ngos, weakening their legitimacy as independent voices for grassroots groups and their members. clearly though, the beneficial or deleterious ngo-state relations: an argument in favor of the state and complementarity of efforts current issues in comparative education, vol.1(1) 47 consequences of such relationships depend on context (see ginsburg, this issue). in exploring these issues, we briefly cite three cases: literacy initiatives in nicaragua and papua new guinea and early childhood programming in the palestinian territories. nicaragua, in the post-sandinista period, has increasingly relied on ngos to provide basic adult literacy services. in a country where the illiteracy rate has climbed once again to over 50 percent of those aged ten and older--or more than one million individuals--the government has been spending insignificant amounts (for example, in 1994-95, less than $25,000) on basic literacy efforts. the government, instead, has been relying on ngos. although these organizations are innovative and sensitive to local concerns in their literacy and sustainable development efforts, they cannot have a significant impact (less than 10%) on the numbers of illiterate youth and adults. nor are they able to generate jobs and income for a society where the poverty and unemployment rates run well over 60 percent (arnove, 1994). but, of course, literacy and adult education--especially for those over 30 years of age--are no longer a priority for major international agencies, with the exception of unesco and unicef. nicaragua needs now the same level of commitment of state resources to address illiteracy as was available in the 1980 national literacy crusade and follow-up program of popular and adult basic education. basic literacy provision in papua new guinea offers another fascinating case of strengths and limitations of ngo involvement and of potential tensions within the ngo community. in png, a country of approximately four million people with over 860 different languages, ngo literacy efforts increasingly involve cooperation between the state and the ngo community. malone (1997) points out the complexity of examining state-ngo relations in designing, implementing, and evaluating maternal language literacy programs for children and adults. defining ngos is central to this examination. as edwards and hulme (1996) point out, it is crucial to differentiate ngos from community or grassroots organizations (gros) and clarify the roles they can play relative to one another as well as to the state. although ngos may be international, national, and also regional/local, they are frequently international agencies beholden to trustees, not to local members. in addition, they frequently compete with one another and have differing notions of literacy and how best to provide it, making the development of coherent national programming difficult. yet local ngos with strong ties to their communities can be instrumental in overcoming obstacles to national policymaking and in launching successful programs in the midst of language diversity. in assessing the potential for state-ngo complementarity, malone (1997) uses the metaphor of a group of png villagers coming together to construct a house and achieving in a relatively short time what no single person or family alone could accomplish. cooperative work among individuals with differing skills is common within the social structures of png, and she argues that it can be extended to the provision of literacy services. she proposes providing community-based literacy, connecting learner-identified needs with appropriate assistance, which is accepted and supported by the government agencies responsible for educational standards. her case study provides valuable insights into the way diverse ngos, with different resources and skills, can collaborate with the state to increase accomplishments in the critical area of maternal language literacy provision. robert f. arnove with rachel christina 48 november`15, 1998 in the palestinian case, the evolving relationships between ngos and the state are particularly potent. the long history of ngo responsibility for social service design and provision in the absence of an indigenous palestinian government, and the complicated arrangements for the funding of development initiatives in the newly autonomous areas of the west bank and gaza strip magnify tensions. negotiation for power, finances, and control over the nature and extent of programming, as well as the amount of regulation to be applied to ngo activities by the state, is contentious. however, a current dissertation case study of a prominent early childhood ngo (christina, 1998) assesses the potential for local agency and control as an outcome of greater cooperation between the governmental and non-governmental sectors. christina examines the interaction of the state, local and international actors in meeting local needs and responding to global influences, such as the internationalization of norms within the field of early childhood education and development. she posits that increased collaboration in the areas of teacher education, curriculum design, and community outreach, as well as greater integration of strong ngo voices into the policymaking process, can contribute significantly to the development of holistic, progressive and locally-relevant early care and education for palestinian children. the various types of government-ngo relations represents a rich research area for comparative education, and indeed responds to thiesen's (1997) call for building "bridges among donors, governments, and ourselves [in development work]" (p. 403). such research should take into account the different interactions between international donor and technical assistance agencies, the state and local actors. both theoretically and pragmatically the cases cited above illuminate some of the complexities involved in ngo activity. we, as comparative educators, can make a contribution to improved educational policy and practice by engaging in these issues. this requires that we maintain our critical judgement and play an advocacy/activist role on behalf of education programs that contribute to democratization and poverty alleviation as well as respond to community needs and promote sustainable development. references arnove, r. f. (1994). education as contested terrain: nicaragua, 1979-1993. boulder, co: westview. christina, r. (1998). state-ngo dynamics in palestinian early childhood education: local innovation in an internationalizing system. unpublished paper, school of education, indiana university-bloomington. edwards, m. & hulme, d. (1996). too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations. world development, 24(6), 961-73. malone, s. e. (1997). cooperation, conflict, and complementarity: a study of relationships among organizations involved in mother tongue literacy and pre-primary education in papua, new guinea. unpublished doctoral dissertation, school of education, indiana universitybloomington. theisen, g. (1997). presidential address: the new abcs of comparative and international education. comparative education review, 41, 397-413. hassoun, m. (2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 situating iraq in oxford: reflections on identity, place, and justice mariam hassoun university of oxford, united kingdom i write this essay on a gloomy day, seated in the corner of the cafe at blackwell’s bookshop in oxford, england. towering over me in this town are the infirm feet of cecil rhodes at oriel college and the ‘emperor heads’ of the sheldonian theatre. the city’s architecture is a constant reminder of this place’s colonial history, which was built to exploit people like me.” one hundred and one year ago, women could not pursue degrees from this university. even today, there are only three iraqis enrolled as students (university of oxford, 2021). i am one of the 1,258 graduate students from the united states of america. the greatest number of international graduate students at oxford come from the united states, making up approximately 10% of the graduate student population. what if my parents had not escaped saddam hussein’s iraq for yemen, later making their way to new zealand where i was born, and eventually raising my brother and me in the united states—would i be at oxford? would i be one of the three? as a master’s student and a woman of iraqi heritage, researching iraqi education at the university, i remind myself that there is great power and responsibility in occupying space in this site of sacred knowledge. in this essay, i explore eve tuck’s theorization of damage-centered research and scheper-hughes’ activist anthropology and reflect on its relevance to my research. i seek to blur the lines between researcher and researched, highlighting how education can be used as a powerful tool to amplify untold stories. for my dissertation, i conducted semi-structured interviews with a diverse group of internally displaced persons (idps) in the iraqi dialect of arabic; i sought to understand how they navigated educational access for their children. in pursuing this research, i interviewed farida,1 whose powerful call for her story to reach the world led me to think critically about how and to whom i need to share my research. in 2014, farida woke up to pounding on her door. outside her intergenerational family home in sinjar, daesh insurgents arrived to kidnap or murder her family; they ran to mount sinjar to escape the yazidi genocide. seven years later, she told me her story in a rented duhok apartment, not far from the idp camp she initially fled to, seeing no possibility of returning “home.” in “suspending damage: a letter to communities,” eve tuck (2009) discusses “damagecentered research,” which in essence aims to document people’s pain and suffering and identifies the long-term negative impacts of this type of research on our conceptualization of communities. our ideas and assumptions about a community carry real-world consequences. moreover, real human suffering is often “aestheticized” and “turned into theatre” on the journal’s stage (scheper-hughes, 1995). as someone with a family living 1 to protect the interviewee’s privacy, i use the name farida in this essay. © 2021, hassoun. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 188-191. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en situating iraq in oxford current issues in comparative education 189 in iraq, i understand these stories and challenges as tangible, not theoretical, and thus view the exploitation of human pain as personal. tuck’s letter calls on us to question our epistemological biases what types of stories do we share about displaced people? most often, we share and write about their stories of despair. farida defied much of these stereotypical framings. she spoke with radiance through the phone. she is living a meaningful life and working with the purpose of making life better for her displaced community, especially women. while living in the duhok camp, she began to work with ngos to support humanitarian aid provisions. she eventually started her own non-formal education program for women aged 15-45 years old to provide literacy and numeracy classes. most of the women had never entered a school building, but farida proposed educational spaces as a place in which these women could have the opportunity to heal through community, support, and skill-building. as a young girl growing up in sinjar, she had to stop schooling in middle school due to her family’s circumstances. while she could not achieve her childhood dream of becoming a doctor, she, as an adult, is determined to instill hope for a better future in the hearts of her community: “if i could say anything to the world, and i know there are people who have it worse than me, so maybe i am in a better position than so many. and the life i’ve seen goes so much further than just me. i have a duty to manage all of this. there are so many solutions to our problems. we have hope our lives will get better. i want my voice to reach the world. i think of it from the lens of being a woman. we were persecuted against greatly. i love everyone who can help us. we need someone to lift our voices up. we love peace. we don’t hurt people. we are all humans, there’s no difference between us. so many people have helped me from different places. yazidis, christians, muslims. i want people to know that there are good of all of us.” (farida, personal communication, february 20, 2021). as she was speaking on the phone, i could not help but think that farida and i, although obviously different with respect to our geographical luck, were the same in many ways. i, too, work to identify practical solutions and raise awareness by uplifting voices alongside a deep-rooted belief in our shared goodness and humanity. as i conversed with interviewees, i grappled with guilt as i collected and recorded hardship, including near starvation, chronic illness, poverty. these circumstances are both intimately close and far removed from my reality. i kept thinking: this could have been me and my family, so what can i do about it? iraqis are painted dominantly as a monolithic, victimized mass in need of western rescuing. maintaining this framing not only reinforces the dichotomy of the rescuer (via ngos and western governments) and rescued (idps) but can quickly cause problems for displaced persons and refugees in that they are then perceived and treated as societal burdens (parekh, 2020; ghorashi, 2005). at oxford, i was surprised to find that maybe i was framed as someone inherently traumatized and in desperate need of saving to achieve my research aims. when i sought vicarious trauma counseling through the university in order to cope with the emotions arising from the interviews, i was told that my unrealistic motivations to create positive change were rooted in a desire to explore family trauma passed down to me by my mother (and even those generations before her); it would be in my best interest to turn off my emotional faucet in order to be a better tool for research. how could my sensitivity to hassoun current issues in comparative education 190 human pain have been so misunderstood to be seen as so corruptive to my work, if not for misinformed, preconceived notions of what it means to be iraqi? in “the primacy of the ethical: propositions for a militant anthropology”, nancy scheper-hughes (1995) established the ‘militant’ approach to anthropology, which is politically and morally engaged, self-critical, and interventionist. decolonization and critical methodologies “are not a metaphor” but are rather radically directed towards seeking justice and repatriation for indigenous communities facing the violent realities of settler colonialism and imperialism (tuck & yang, 2012). to me, being iraqi means 1) raising my voice to tell a different story by “identif[ying] ills in spirit of solidarity” and 2) consciously using my privilege to collaboratively put social change in action (scheperhughes, 1995, p 419). in short, this lies within the following framework: think critically, speak publicly, and act with and for communities in need. scheper-hughes calls researchers to surrender to the reality that there is no such thing as objective or apolitical human behavior, nor can social science research regarding real-life problems be siloed in the realm of theoretical abstraction. as a first-generation immigrant to the united states, i have never known an apolitical life—my very existence in the post9/11 united states is inherently political, just as it is at the university of oxford. i am committed to building some sort of response to issues in educational navigation (such as the need for after-school support, lack of material resources, and vouchers to cover additional costs of education i.e., transportation) in collaboration with displaced iraqis. i have begun having conversations with people i met throughout the research process to get these projects started sustainably. in the short term, however, i believe my action lies in highlighting indigenous voices and advocating for education as a human right in the middle east, specifically iraq. i created semi-fictionalized accounts of the idp interviews i conducted in my research to publish on my personal twitter in plain english. i believe it is my duty as a researcher to make unheard stories heard. tuck and scheper-hughes’ papers influenced my approach to writing and researching in that they reminded me of 1) the care and nuance necessary in framing idp stories beyond victimization and 2) my duty to act in earnest. my commitment lies not only within myself, but also the people and topics i work with through research. a crucial part of my work as an academic and activist—but more importantly as a human being—is creating space for critical conversations. acknowledging the institutional barriers to academic activism embedded within the university, my research creatively subverts oppressive epistemological systems through decolonized methodologies and values. my research aims to center the voices of iraqi idps and emphasize their own agency to spark a conversation for displaced iraqis and academics alike leading to tangible action. i call for a people-centered ethos to research in which we all, researcher and researched, can nurture our humanity. mariam hassoun completed her msc in education (comparative and international education) at the university of oxford in september 2021. she is interested in how education can be used to reconstruct systems, countries, and persons impacted by conflict and education as a human right in emergencies, in the middle east generally but specifically in iraq. her dissertation project is titled: displaced iraqis’ navigational access to education. situating iraq in oxford current issues in comparative education 191 references ghorashi, h. (2005). agents of change or passive victims: the impact of welfare states (the case of the netherlands) on refugees. journal of refugee studies, 18(2), 181– 198. https://doi.org/10.1093/refuge/fei020 parekh, s. (2020). reframing the refugee crisis: from rescue to interconnection. ethics & global politics, 13(1), 21–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/16544951.2020.1735013 scheper-hughes, n. (1995). the primacy of the ethical: propositions for a militant anthropology. current anthropology, 36(3), 409–440. tuck, e. (2009). suspending damage: a letter to communities. harvard educational review, 79(3), 409–428. tuck, e. & yang, k. w. (2012). decolonization is not a metaphor. decolonization: indigeneity, education & society, 1(1), 1-40. university of oxford. (2021). student numbers. https://www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-andfigures/student-numbers fornaro, c. j., sterin, k., & struloeff, k. l. book review current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 1, winter 2021 book review qualitative data collection tools: design, development, and applications by felice d. billups sage publications, 2020, 240 pp. $30.00 (paper) isbn-10: 1544334826 christopher j. fornaro drexel university, school of education kimberly sterin drexel university, school of education katrina lynn struloeff drexel university, school of education where do we even begin? research is not easy. learning how to navigate qualitative research can be particularly murky. the three reviewers of billups (2020) book, qualitative data collection tools: design, development, and applications, used the text during an introduction to qualitative research methods and analysis class within their ph.d. program and strongly recommend it to other phd students and early scholars. after completing foundational courses and learning about some of the belief systems that drive educational research, such as epistemology and ontology, it was time to tackle a research project. so what now? the three reviewers, all first year phd students at the time, came to their qualitative course excited to work through pilot studies in their own focus areas. they had all spent time reading research studies, writing about potential research they would conduct, and discussing theoreticals, but this was the opportunity to design and conduct their own research. the reviewers found the following three sections particularly helpful when managing the logistics of their pilot studies to provide the “thick description” (geertz, 1973) that is vital to qualitative research: (1) researcher role, access, trustworthiness, and ethical concerns, (2) interview protocol, and (3) observation tools. while these sections are not novel to the billups text, the authors had read this type of guiding text in similar texts such as cohen et al. (2007) and creswell and guetterman (2018), billups’s writing is in digestible chunks that provide salient points to support getting out and conduct research. furthermore, each chapter contains various templates that suggest ways to collect data for a research study. these templates were pivotal in the reviewers’ development of their pilot studies and three salient examples are provided below. researcher role, access, trustworthiness, and ethical concerns (chapter 3) no matter which epistemological camp qualitative researchers situated themselves within, the vitally and conversation of their role as the researcher must be addressed. © 2021, fornaro. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(1), 109-112. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en fornaro, sterin & struloeff current issues in comparative education 110 methodologists often state that the researcher is the tool, but actual application of that phrase is one that novice researchers can struggle to embrace. billups addresses this struggle with a practical conversation of each facet and tools for implementation. first, through the discussion of bias and positionality, billups outlines how researchers need to provide transparency of who they are, what formed their experiences and beliefs, and how these components bring potential bias to their research practice. through this, billups suggests the inputs of building a quality transparent relationship through interviewing, transcribing, and addressing findings with participants. struloeff found these strategies to be extremely helpful during her communication, interviews, follow-up, and presentation of findings with participants. interviewing up, that is interviewing participants who hold a higher rank institutionally and socially than the researcher, struloeff was able to offer transparency and authenticity allowing participants to feel heard, offer additional insights, and ultimately critically engage in their own reflections. billups created a table that provides the commonalities of rigor between quantitative and qualitative research with a space for the bridge between the two forms of research and the essential questions. this simple representation assisted struloeff in understanding the terminology, approach, and parallels between the often dichotomous and contentious forms of research. perhaps more importantly, it provided a starting point, language for discussion, and tactics for how to ensure credibility, dependability, transferability, confirmability, and authenticity. as qualitative research continues to gain recognition and traction, researchers must continue to strive for excellence, especially in the areas addressed in this chapter. interview protocols (chapter 4) interviews are often the crux of qualitative data collection. billups first describes the strengths and limitations of an interview, the requisite characteristics needed for a skilled interviewer, and the various formats and types of interviews. what sets the billups text apart from other books on qualitative research is that she then provides eight interview protocol templates for the researcher to use as models for their particular research study. the first two templates are for unstructured and semi-structured interviews, respectively. sterin found that having a visual example of what the interview protocol could look like extremely helpful. billups includes placeholders for logistical information such as the date, time, and place at the top of the template as well as reminders about interview information and procedures to relate to the interviewee. when conducting multiple interviews over long periods of time this information may be helpful for accurate record keeping and consistency of depth of information given to the interviewee about the research study. next, billups includes an outline for the sequence of questions that includes bolded sections and a layout for the interview questions. as a novice researcher, sterin found this guidance to be particularly useful both when designing her interview protocol and when justifying the question sequence in her description of the research design. billups advises to begin with broad, introductory questions, then move to content questions with potential probing questions, and finally, to conclude with a summary question and an invitation to the interviewee to add anything else they would like to share qualitative data collection tools: design, development, and applications current issues in comparative education 111 on the topic. sterin’s application of this last open-ended question proved to be notably fruitful when conducting her interviews. the templates conclude with a note to thank the interviewee and reminders about any follow-ups the researcher may want to engage in. after using this template, sterin can attest to the value of including these final reminders within the interview protocol itself. during the course of an interview, it is easy for the researcher to become so engrossed with the content that they may benefit from having pre-written reminders for logistical next steps. the third template is a note-taking recording sheet designed to capture non-verbal cues and templates 4 through 8 are specific to certain research designs including phenomenological, ethnographic, and narrative. researchers looking to utilize these designs would benefit from these interview templates. observation tools (chapter 7) observations seem to be a straightforward process at first. document what was said, by who, and the group dynamic. however, billups sets the stage with the researcher needing to consider how they are coming to the observation. she uses gold’s (1958) categories of a complete participant, observer as quasi-participant, researcher as participant, and complete observer as a consideration for how the researcher is approaching their observation and their level of involvement. the concept of observing an established group as an outsider was challenging for fornaro to approach. additionally, due to covid-19, the observation would take place on a webbased video conferencing platform. this meant that the field of view was contained to what was visible in each participant's camera. fornaro leaned heavily on two of the three templates provided by billups that focused on creating a chart for the observation. billups suggestion to observe “not just what is happening but what is not happening” (billups, 2020, p. 133) is evident through her inclusion of “group interaction and behaviors, tone/mood” in template 7.2. by including a similar topic for observation in the pilot studies observational chart, fornaro was able to take note of how talking time and tone shifted between employees of an organization depending on their experience at the organization. as an outsider to an organization, having the templates from this text allowed fornaro to stay focused throughout the observation and look for key interactions between participants that may have otherwise been missed. adding to your qualitative toolbox the sections above are just three of the chapters that contained templates that the authors directly related to their own process. billups included templates and guidance for conducting discourse analysis, moderating focus groups, document analysis, reflecting on research, and synthesizing data sources in qualitative research. while each section is not exhaustive on these topics, they equip new or early qualitative scholars with the main ideas and tools to design, collect, and analyze quality data for their research projects which was what billups set out to do with this text. the templates should be utilized as a living document for early scholars to build from and adjusted to their own contexts. qualitative data collection tools: design, development, and applications is a text that should be fornaro, sterin & struloeff current issues in comparative education 112 included in early scholars’ libraries as they look to develop their first qualitative research projects. christopher fornaro is a ph.d. student in drexel’s school of education with a focus in stem education. his current research interests center on supporting instructors in out-of-school stem programming, the benefits for students of out-of-school stem programming, and ways to authentically blend together the individual disciplines of stem. kimberly sterin is a doctoral student pursuing a ph.d. in education policy and leadership from the school of education at drexel university. sterin has spent seven years as an english teacher in k-12 public schools in montgomery county, maryland. sterin earned a master's degree in secondary education from johns hopkins university. katrina struloeff is a ph.d. student in drexel’s school of education. she earned a master’s degree from carnegie mellon university heinz college in public policy. her research interests focus on leadership and representation for women and minoritized populations, policy design, and principles and practices of effective leaders in education. references billups, f. d. (2019). qualitative data collection tools: design, development, and applications (vol. 55). sage publications. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2007). research methods in education (6th ed.). routledge. creswell, j. w. & guetterman, t.c. (2018). educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (6th ed.). pearson. geertz, c. (1973). the interpretation of cultures: selected essays. basic books. gold, r. l. (1957). roles in sociological field observations. social forces, 36, 217-223 harris, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 1, winter 2022 book review becoming rwandan: education, reconciliation, and the making of a post-genocide citizen by s. garnett russell rutgers university press, 2020, 255 pp. $28.95 (paper) isbn-10: 1978802862 sheena m. harris university of minnesota in becoming rwandan: education, reconciliation, and the making of a post-genocide citizen, s. garnett russell (2020) draws on data collected from surveys, analyses of policy documents, curriculum and textbooks, observations in schools, and interviews with students, teachers, government officials, educational policymakers, and academics to present an insightful examination of how the rwandan government’s intended educational policies, designed to create peace and reconciliation in the post-genocide period, are implemented on the ground in local contexts. russell provides a convincing argument that while the rwandan government uses global discourses of human rights and peacebuilding in its educational policies and curricula, as local actors, both teachers and students interact with these discourses in ways that alter the aims of the government, leading to unintentional outcomes and compromising long-term peacebuilding efforts. she utilizes the concept of “decoupling” from sociological literature to describe what happens when national-level educational policies and local practices do not align. through her argument, she shows that the rwandan government carefully selects global models of human rights, peace, and justice to maintain legitimacy on the world stage, while silencing the controversial nature of certain topics, namely ethnicity and its link to the 1994 genocide. however, as russell’s book demonstrates through an interweaving of rich data from ethnographic observations, interviews, and survey results, teachers and students are active actors with agency, who through their engagement with these global discourses, challenge and interpret them in their own ways. her argument conveys the strengths and weaknesses in using education for peacebuilding and nation-building processes in post-conflict contexts. following an introduction to the study and the theoretical concept of “decoupling” (chapter 1) as well as a thorough discussion of the global increase in judicial and nonjudicial mechanisms in post-conflict societies and using examples from south africa, sierra leone, peru, and guatemala (chapter 2), russell presents a review of the mechanisms intended to bring peace, transitional justice, and reconciliation to rwanda, including within the education system. she then turns to her argument that despite the rwandan government’s attempts at peacebuilding via these educational mechanisms, national policy efforts rarely align with local realities. the remainder of the book (chapters 3-5) is dedicated to supporting her argument through an in-depth analysis of survey and ethnographic data collected in the capital city of kigali, a western province, and an eastern province in rwanda. she closes (chapter 6) with a reflection on the possibilities and limits of using education for peacebuilding in rwanda and beyond. © 2022, harris. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(1), 132-134. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en becoming rwandan current issues in comparative education 133 the combination of russell’s interdisciplinary approach and variety of methodologies used to conduct the research are essential to the merits of the book. in addition to analyzing national policy documents and curricular materials, russell spent eleven months in three regions of rwanda collecting data from a total of fifteen varied secondary schools in the form of surveys, observations, and an impressive number of interviews with individuals from multiple levels of rwanda’s education system. collecting data across these different regions and schools allows her to paint a rich picture of the diversity present in the perspectives of teachers and students towards human rights, citizenship, and peace and reconciliation in rwanda. the depth of russell’s findings presented in chapters 3 through 5 might easily overwhelm the reader; however, her skillful use of historical and theoretical literature alongside the analysis of her data throughout the book helps to guide the reader towards understanding her main points. the outcome is a smoothly written blend of rwandan history, peacebuilding and transitional justice literature, sociological theory, and the voices and experiences of her research participants. in chapter 3, russell describes how the rwandan post-genocide state utilizes the education system to create a new civic identity intended to generate peace and reconciliation. throughout this and the subsequent chapters, she peppers her analysis with data from interviews and surveys, even including bar graphs as helpful visualizations of key statistical results from her study. using data from surveys and interviews with students and teachers, coupled with her analysis of curriculum and policy documents, she shows that schools in rwanda are used by the state to shape this new identity: a nonethnic rwandan who is able to converse in english, is devoted to the new rwandan nation, and has an international outlook. however, her research demonstrates that despite the government’s success at creating a patriotic citizen with a global mindset, its attempts at de-ethnicizing identity through education have been limited as students continue to engage with ethnic identity through their distinct languages, family experiences with the genocide, and interactions with others. in chapter 4, russell discusses the rwandan state’s use of human rights discourses for peacebuilding and to maintain legitimacy in the international sphere. through her analysis of educational policy documents, russell demonstrates that the rwandan government carefully selects particular human rights discourses—especially those focused on gender equality and the rights of children—while silencing others, in an effort to foster peacebuilding and reconciliation, garner financial support from international agencies, and portray itself to the world community as dedicated to improving human rights. yet, as her robust data analysis shows, teachers and students take up the issue of human rights differently at the local school level, oftentimes avoiding sensitive topics and discussing human rights more conceptually. the ways that students and teachers interpret human rights is most clearly demonstrated in russell’s keen observations of class discussions wherein they are alluded to as being the important fundamental needs of all people yet there is no direct connection made to rwandan lives. russell concludes that the inability of teachers and students to fully engage with the human rights violations of the past not only limits students’ development of critical thinking and active learning skills, but also limits peacebuilding in post-conflict rwanda. in chapter 5, russell further explores how the rwandan state utilizes education to remember the genocide and promote peace. she argues that although the national curriculum in rwanda presents students with a single narrative which is structured to avoid discussion of ethnicity, the memories of individuals and their families, which contrast with this narrative, complicate efforts for peacebuilding. these complications are most evident in russell’s discussions with rwandan teachers who describe the need to harris current issues in comparative education 134 strictly follow the national curriculum for fear of imprisonment despite students’ questions and comments regarding sensitive topics they learned about at home. as russell shows, teaching about the genocide for reconciliation remains difficult because of the one-sided narrative which hinders critical thinking as well as the lack of training provided to teachers on how to approach the teaching of contentious issues. within the chapters in this book, russell provides a compelling illustration of how teachers and students, through their engagement with the discourses about human rights, citizenship, and reconciliation presented by the rwandan state, interpret them differently in their local contexts, leading to a distortion of the government’s intended aims and undercutting efforts at creating peace. russell’s book concludes with discussion of the prospects and constraints of using education for peace and reconciliation in rwanda and other post-conflict societies. her research not only builds upon that of other scholars who have conducted empirical studies on post-conflict history education in rwanda (e.g., bentrovato, 2016; king, 2014) by providing a deeper understanding of how rwandan teachers and students disrupt national educational goals for peace but enhances our knowledge of how peacebuilding and nation-building efforts are limited at the national level. more importantly, although russell’s work is situated within a particular region and time period, it extends the theoretical debate on global-local dynamics, demonstrating the ways in which global models shape the discourses found in national educational policy documents and curricula and how teachers and students take up these models at the local level. becoming rwandan: education, reconciliation, and the making of a post-genocide citizen will be of interest to scholars in the areas of peace education, post-conflict history education, citizenship and civic education, human rights education, education in emergencies, sociology, and african studies, as well as agencies and curriculum developers involved in designing educational programs and curriculum to foster peace and reconciliation. sheena m. harris is a ph.d. candidate in comparative and international development education at the university of minnesota. her research interests center on formal and informal history education and historical memory in post-conflict countries, specifically in timor-leste. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to the author at harr2204@umn.edu references bentrovato, d. (2016). narrating and teaching the nation: the politics of education in pre-and post-genocide rwanda. vandenhoeck & ruprecht. king, e. (2014). from classrooms to conflict in rwanda. cambridge university press. russell, s. g. (2020). becoming rwandan: education, reconciliation, and the making of a post genocide citizen. rutgers university press. nordmeyer & bettney, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 equity for multilingual learners: a global network response to the pandemic jon nordmeyer university of wisconsin-madison esther bettney university of wisconsin-madison introduction the covid-19 pandemic has been complex and challenging for educators, students and families worldwide. one could argue that education has changed as much in the past two years as it has in the past two centuries. by necessity, we have unbolted learning from the physical space of the classroom and accelerated the evolution of education: from horace mann’s factory schools of the industrial era to personalized and digitized ecosystems of the twenty-first century. on one hand, this shift has highlighted inequities for multilingual learners and their families. on the other hand, the pandemic has redefined schools as a valuable point of connection for the entire community. at the intersection of innovation and exhaustion, educators worldwide have faced an entirely new reality: how to continue serving diverse school communities while responding to the pandemic. teachers taught themselves not just new skills but entirely new digital learning platforms, literally overnight, to keep students engaged online. this article explains how, in an increasingly interdependent world, a global network of schools and scholars co-created a powerful community to both learn from and contribute to dialogue about equity for multilingual learners during the pandemic. probletunities in the coronaverse as an unexpected catalyst, covid-19 forced innovation by requiring a shift to hybrid/virtual teaching followed by continual transitions between in-person and online learning. in a prescient pre-pandemic view of technology and education, collins and halverson (2018) observed that in order to adapt to a rapidly changing world, schools should leverage learning opportunities offered by new technology. to develop 21st century skills and ensure students are future-ready, collins and halverson asserted that learning should be uncoupled from school, allowing a greater variety of input and increased engagement. over the past two years, the pandemic has both reflected and accelerated some of these trends as classroom experiences have been by necessity hybrid, with students learning in and out of school, community and home environments. school was no longer a place but a process, requiring teachers, students and families to collaborate in new ways. amid the collective necessity to pivot towards new technologies for teaching and learning during the pandemic, many educators expressed the need to ensure equity for multilingual learners. when online learning relies exclusively on english as the medium of instruction, students and families who navigate school in multiple languages can be excluded. we know that english proficiency “cannot be seen as a prerequisite to meaningful participation in school because this limits engagement” (nordmeyer et al, 2021, p. 60). instead, language must be viewed as something that is developed in the process of learning when students are supported and have access to the richest curriculum our © 2022, nordmeyer & bettney. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 119-122. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en nordmeyer & bettney current issues in comparative education 120 schools have to offer (nasem, 2018). during the pandemic, a focus on the intersection of multilingualism and equity catalyzed connections across the worldwide community of teachers. over the past two years, global networks such as the wida international school consortium, provided an opportunity for educators to connect with, share, and learn from each other as a community of practice. the wida international school consortium located at the university of wisconsin-madison, wida supports schools around the world in using wida standards and assessments by disseminating research, facilitating professional learning and developing instructional resources to serve multilingual learners. the wida international school consortium was created in 2013 and currently serves more than 500 prek-12 international schools across 100 countries committed to developing inclusive programs that build on the assets of multilingual learners. the wida asset-based approach entails a shift in teachers’ dispositions to focus on what students can do rather than what they cannot do. shifting from a deficit-based to an assetbased view of multilingualism is one of the core principles of the wida standards and assessments, and the term “multilingual learner” is used intentionally rather than “english language learner” to decenter english and focus on students’ entire linguistic repertoires. for many schools in the post-colonial era of globalization, english persists as the medium of instruction; however, the rapid growth of the wida international school consortium indicates a desire by many international schools to no longer view multilingual students as deficient and instead focus on what multilingual students can do. over time, the global wida network has evolved from a focus on english language standards and assessments to providing opportunities for reciprocal learning around language and equity, connecting educators and facilitating collaboration across schools worldwide (bettney & nordmeyer, 2021). this larger conversation has recognized that using english as the medium of instruction does not necessitate english as the medium of learning, fostering approaches such as translanguaging to build on student assets. a network response to the pandemic in response to the pandemic, educators and scholars in the wida international school consortium engaged in transnational collaboration by leveraging the existing learning network to connect, co-create and re-imagine school together. in the first half of 2020, the wida global network partnered with a variety of international educators to better understand how to support multilingual learners, their teachers and their schools in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic. educators committed to equity for multilingual learners were concerned that the rapidly changing educational landscape might not be serving some students and families. using flipgrid, an online video creation and sharing platform, wida encouraged educators around the world to share some of their challenges and questions about supporting multilingual learners online teaching. since then, the flipgrid video-share has received over 10,000 views and 185 hours of engagement. these virtual interactions served as the foundation for a reciprocal learning community comprised of international educators centered on the intersection of three subdomains: prek-12 teaching, education of multilingual learners and teaching online. the wida global community of practice as wida engaged with its online community, educators expressed the desire for a more extended professional learning experience for international educators which prompted equity for multilingual learners current issues in comparative education 121 the creation of a more formalized wida global community of practice. to begin, flipgrid video contributors, authors of wida newsletter articles, co-presenters from conferences, and other influencers and activists within the wida global network were invited to join this new community. in order to build on practical wisdom of experienced teachers and identify promising practices for online professional learning, international teacher leaders were involved in co-creating and co-facilitating this new space. this model was based on the concept of a community of practice, or a group of people “who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (wenger et al., 2002, p. 4). communities of practice also involve interplay between novices and experts and help to create a professional identity (lave & wenger, 1991). incorporating the experiences of wida facilitators, researchers and practitioners, the wida global community of practice was designed to provide innovative reciprocal professional learning by amplifying the voices of global educators and engaging schoolbased teams in a collaborative online year-long guided research and design experience. the wida global community of practice was launched in october 2021 to sustain collaboration during and beyond the pandemic in shared inquiry about how to create equitable systems to serve multilingual learners in today’s schools. as a shared community of practice where educators can co-construct or critique new ideas and approaches, the global wida network both catalyzes and disseminates innovation from individual educators and groups of practitioners at member schools. ideas flow, mutate and evolve as they are shared among independent school, a process described by sannino and nocon (2008): “sustainability of innovations does not refer only to local continuity, but also to diffusion and adaptations in other settings” (p. 326). this networked transmission of innovation builds on the spread and sustainability of new ideas while allowing for local control. external influence is offered in the form of a guided inquiry into a problem of practice, engagement with relevant curated research and facilitated dialogue about educational innovation. over the past six months, school-based teams have actively engaged with problems of practice focused on how to reduce opportunity gaps for multilingual learners and how to dismantle systems that perpetuate privilege based on language or nationality. while these difficult questions may not be fully resolved during this year-long professional learning experience, teams have engaged in a guided design cycle to develop prototypes to begin to address these questions within their specific context. the wida global community of practice culminated in a capstone celebration at the end of the 2021-2022 academic year, providing participating teams the opportunity to share what they have learned from their prototypes with the larger wida community. a new cohort of international educators will be inducted into this process later this year to sustain the work and identify and engage with new problems of practice. while the wida global community of practice provided a structured affinity space (gee, 2005) for the exchange of ideas, the wider global wida network can also be viewed through the lens of innovation, providing an opportunity to disseminate new practices and tools among member schools. this innovation migration relies on peer dialogue and the opportunity to share, iterate and adapt: “since educational innovations are local and specific, they tend to spread differently from educational reforms. rather than being adopted at once by a whole educational system, they spread and diffuse through interpersonal interactions” (sannino & nocon, 2008, p. 326). for educators in independent international schools who may feel isolated as they generally do not belong to a particular school district, this type of network is essential. nordmeyer & bettney current issues in comparative education 122 while the pandemic has indelibly altered the education landscape, it has also opened doors for important global dialogue about equity and inclusion. and over the past two years, educators have discovered they needed each other more than ever to reflect on and to make sense of the rapidly changing world. across the wida global community, teachers have begun to co-construct a new reality: creating more equitable schools and ensuring that multilingual learners have meaningful opportunities for learning. jon nordmeyer is a researcher and wida international program director in the wisconsin center for educational research at the university of wisconsin-madison. his research interests include teacher collaboration and global learning networks to serve multilingual learners. email: jon.nordmeyer@wisc.edu @nordmeyerj esther bettney, phd is a teacher educator and educational researcher. from 2019-2022, esther worked with the wida international program, including as co-creator and co-facilitator of the wida global community of practice. email: estherbettney@gmail.com @bettneyesther references bettney, e., & nordmeyer, j. (2021). glocal network shifts: exploring language policies and practices in international schools. global education review, 8(2-3), 116-137. collins, a. & halverson, r. (2018). rethinking education in the age of technology: the digital revolution and schooling in america. teachers college press. gee, j. p. (2005). semiotic social spaces and affinity spaces: from the age of mythology to today’s schools. in d. barton, and k. tusting (eds), beyond communities of practice language power and social context (pp. 214-232). cambridge university press. lave, j. & wenger, e. (1991). situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. cambridge university press. national academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine (nasem). (2018). english learners in stem subjects: transforming classrooms, schools, and lives. the national academies press. nordmeyer, j., boals, t., macdonald, r. & westerlund, r. (2021). what does equity really mean for multilingual learners? acsd newsletter. https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/what-does-equity-really-mean-formultilingual-learners. sannino, a., & nocon, h. (2008). special issue editors’ introduction: activity theory and school innovation. journal of educational change, 9(4), 325-328. wenger, e., mcdermott, r. a., & snyder, w. (2002). cultivating communities of practice: a guide to managing knowledge. harvard business press. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 62 november`15, 1998 ngos in a new paradigm of civil society nelly p. stromquist rossier school of education university of southern california since the 1970s the world has seen the emergence of institutions and groups organized outside the state yet making claims on the polity and for the polity. social movements such as those favoring women, the environment, and peace, or those opposing nuclear power and war become crystallized through the creation of organizations to implement their agendas. the existence of these ngos (non-governmental organizations) has been examined by scholars in the developing countries and in europe; interest on the part of us scholars is relatively recent and does not always grasp the core nature of ngos. some ngos started with religious philosophies and sought to create spaces for ethical reflection; others emerged to mitigate the experience of political authoritarianism; still others are helping shape alternative visions of society and thus fit better as the crystallization of new social movements. there is variation in the objectives and performance of ngos but the large majority of them are less concerned with their own self-interest than with collective gains. they also tend to produce flatter organizational structures and to foster steady participation in internal decision-making. in developing countries, they tend to be concerned with populations facing devalued or oppressed cultural expression and living under extremely poor conditions of living. and it is quite true, as ilon (this issue) remarks, that they must balance alternative visions while operating in environments that are increasingly driven by market dynamics and profit rationales. functions steiner-khamsi (this issue) observes that many ngos in eastern and central europe engage in corrupt practices. in the aftermath of a pervasive socialist regime, it is quite possible that ngos there are staffed by old government officials under new clothing. other instances of manipulation by government officials, in various sub-saharan and asian countries, have occurred when governments set up their own "branches," under the guise of ngos. these distortions and forms of co-optation are unavoidable, especially in countries where economic crises prevail. ginsburg (this issue) refers to different kinds of ngos with different levels of wealth and national scope. he contends that how we see them is a matter of perspective, and depends on whether one holds an equilibrium or conflict model of social action. while he is correct in saying that one's philosophical perspectives may shade one's view of the relative social benefit of a particular ngo, let me argue that there are several objective grounds for valuing the contribution of ngos. ngos fulfill at least three major functions: (1) service delivery (e.g., relief, welfare, basic skills); (2) educational provision (e.g., basic skills and often critical analysis of social environments; and (3) public policy advocacy (e.g., lobbying for international assistance for specific purposes and monitoring or promoting pertinent state policies). these functions are critical in the absence of stable political parties or organized low-income ngos in a new paradigm of civil society current issues in comparative education, vol.1(1) 63 constituencies to carry out such activities. ngos acting as implementing agencies is neither bad nor good in itself, but it depends on what they are helping to implement. ngos tend to enjoy greater access to communities, and to have staff that is more committed, experienced, and sensitive to local needs, thus allowing them to function as better intermediaries than government agencies. this does not occur by magic but is rather a by-product of their need to perform well to survive vis-a-vis both donors and the communities they serve. such groups, organizations and institutions, at times assuming the form of social movements, and favoring women, the environment, and peace, or those opposing nuclear power and war often become crystallized. these organizations are, of course, ngos. some people have accused ngos of having no formal representation and thus of having no legitimacy. the counterargument is that they often represent the disempowered who have no possibility of electing their own representatives. in the case of the environment, for instance, whales cannot elect their "representatives." here, it is not a question of representation but rather of expression that gives ngos the legitimacy to voice the needs of the oppressed and marginalized. the ngos in the feminist movement were not elected by women, for women are only now beginning to articulate their interests; and also, many of them have no other means to raise their voices in the public sphere. as offe (1990) explains, "sociopolitical movements as forms of collective action usually start in an institutional vacuum with no other institutional resources available to them than the usually partly contested legal and constitutional rights of citizens to assemble, communicate, protest, petition, and demonstrate" (p. 236). from the perspective of profound thinkers of our social world such as alain touraine and claus offe, these movements--and their organizations--push the limits of politics by disrupting the existing order when necessary. these groups are concerned with quality of life issues, with the definition and valorization of personal and collective identities, and with the production of new cultural models (touraine, 1988). plotke (1990) remarks that "these movements have a mainly negative character, not because they are destructive but because they oppose the manipulation and distortion imposed by largescale institutions and the compromises and routinization required in conventional forms of interest representation and mediation" (p. 85). role vis-a-vis the state in calling attention to the increased presence of ngos, klees (this issue) maintains that ngos help neoliberal forces by taking the burden of program development and implementation away from the state. he also states that some ngos thereby unwittingly weaken and delegitimize the state. regarding the first argument, i would say that the scope of ngos will never be of such magnitude as to allow them to release government from its responsibilities. second, many ngos work on the premise that governments should fulfill obligations and be held accountable for the actions they take or fail to take. ngos have taken a crucial role in monitoring government activities. in the case of latin america, they are acting through two main networks: one is the south american platform on human rights, democracy and development, which is developing nelly p. stromquist 64 november`15, 1998 economic, social and cultural rights (escr) indicators for individual countries and setting up new mechanisms to influence national and international decision-making. the other is social watch, which produces information on the efforts by governments throughout the world to achieve escr goals, and distributes information to the international community on progress made with respect to commitments assumed at international conferences, particularly the eradication of poverty and equal opportunities for women (kempf, 1998). the monitoring work that ngos conduct is not without risk. as women's clinics in the states are targets of anti-abortion extremists, so ngo leaders, particularly those in feminist and ethnic social movements, are vulnerable to reprisals. recently a woman lawyer member of the latin american and caribbean committee for the defense of women's rights (cladem), who had been investigating human rights violations through forced surgical sterilization in peru, had her home raided and evidence removed. the incident happened shortly after cladem presented a major report to the ministry of health and the people's ombudsman. it should be accepted that the emergence of delivery systems as alternatives to government is in some cases appropriate, especially when governments are corrupt or fail to act on crucial matters. ngos often do better than government in certain basic matters such as distribution of emergency aid. the most current example is the mobilization of ngos in the provision of food, medicines, and clothing in honduras today after the devastation of hurricane mitch. steiner-khamsi notes that ngos' agendas are being driven by donor agencies because the latter are the main source of support. the same argument could be extended to governments that depend to large extent on external sources. to receive external support certainly creates a risk for the development of nationalistic agendas; the successful negotiation of priorities will be a function of the integrity of the recipient party. support serving mostly low-income populations, it is obvious that ngos cannot generate sufficient revenues from such groups. over the past 15 years, ngos have gained greater support from external assistance. even so, by 1985, ngos captured only five percent of net financial flows to developing countries (van der heijden, 1987); the proportion reached about 8 percent by 1995. ngos today enjoy more diversified funding, as they receive not only bilateral assistance but also funding from multilateral agencies such as undp, unicef, and the commission of the european communities. in cases of extreme national poverty, there is high dependency by ngos on international ngo and bilateral agency support. some sub-saharan countries reportedly have dependency rates exceeding 90 percent (van der heijden, 1987, p. 111). if donor agencies are giving more money to ngos, it is not a consequence of mere predilection for ngos but of the ngos' ability to show results. many social movements and their concrete organizations emerge because of "learning incapacities" and structural lack of "responsiveness" by established institutions (offe, 1985, p. 848). at the same time, ngo reliance on external support forces them to oscillate between actions based on ngos in a new paradigm of civil society current issues in comparative education, vol.1(1) 65 ethical convictions and "a logic of efficacy, which leads them to submit to the influence of political actors" (touraine, 1988, p. 136). the international conferences on various social issues and the subsequent governmental declarations that follow them are a tenuous terrain. but they constitute the most public and concrete commitments to action to which people in the progressive movements can refer. today, ngos are accepted partners in international conferences. their participation, most coming from developing countries, has increased from the 700 that participated in the un environment and development conference (rio) to more than 5000 in the fourth world women's conference (beijing). in both the conference on social development in copenhagen and the conference on women in beijing many governments included ngo representatives in their official delegations, thus reflecting new forms of articulation between government and civil society. most ngos have participated in intergovernmental meetings by organizing parallel ngo conferences. their activities face criticism from two sides. government may critique their lack of clear "representation;" when they collaborate with government, they are critiqued by other ngos for becoming part of the "establishment." klees and arnove (this issue) argue that small ngos cannot bring out changes for societal problems that require structural transformation. this is true, but some change would never be launched were one to wait for optimal conditions to emerge. several observers, including edwards and hulme (1996) and steiner-khamsi, seem to assume that ngos that have grown significantly in membership and funding reflect internal corruption and co-optation by external funders. cited by both as a case in point is brac in bangladesh, unquestionably the largest ngo in the world. brac is supported by multiple donors and carries out tasks that go from nonformal education programs for girls to micro-enterprises with conscientization for adult women. according to external evaluations, brac has succeeded in creating a highly effective and disciplined organization, with tangible benefits for individuals and community members. its performance, far from threatening that of the government, is serving to demonstrate that large organizations are not incompatible with clarity of purpose and accountability. today the state is becoming smaller than in previous decades. it would be a mistake, however, to attribute this to the increasing presence of ngos. globalization forces and structural adjustment programs (including regulation and privatization) have been the main promoters of state minimalism, not ngos. in fact, often ngos argue for the provision of more services by the state, particularly for health and education access for poor people. conclusions undoubtedly, different historical and cultural contexts have played a role in ngo formation and affect their functioning. the term ngo--as other concepts that stand for good things such as democracy, empowerment, participation--stands a high probability of co-optation and misuse. in the worst of cases, ngos may be benefiting those who pretend to speak for the disadvantaged but in reality usurp funds given to those causes or act as unreflexive nelly p. stromquist 66 november`15, 1998 implementors of erroneous government policies. fortunately, these cases are a very small minority. in the best of cases, ngos represent a fundamental change of values and a critique of the unrealized dreams of modernization--without becoming postmodernist. there is a need for the existence of ngos. in some contexts, they can help build bridges between donors, governments, and communities. in many other instances, they are essential to act as the voice of the suppressed conscience in many countries and, especially, to help visualize societies and relations among individuals and groups that are based on more egalitarian and ethical rules and assumptions. as plotke (1990) observes, ngos "politicize previously uncontested relations or repoliticize previously settled relations" (p. 101). this does not guarantee that every ngo will successfully attain its goals, that internal struggle will not split its membership, that co-optation will not be tempting. but the presence of ngos does guarantee that new spaces for reflection and creative action permeate civil society and thus provides a promise for social mutation toward higher ends. notes first of all, my congratulations to the graduate students of columbia university for establishing this on-line journal and thus pioneering a means for intellectual exchange on comparative and international education that permits rapid dissemination and response. second, my thanks to them for asking me to respond to the preceding five articles on ngos. references edwards, m. & hulme, d. (1996). too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations. world development, 24(6), 961-973. kempf, i. (1998). civil society and economic, social, and cultural rights. social watch, 2, 59-64. offe, c. (1985). new social movements: challenging the boundaries of institutional politics. social research, 52(4), 817-868. offe, c. (1990). reflections on the institutional self-transformation of movement politics: a tentative stage model. in r. dalton & m. kuechler (eds.), challenging the political order: new social and political movements in western democracies. new york: oxford university press. plotke, d. (1990). what's so new about new social movements? socialist review, 20(1), 81102. touraine, a. (1988). return of the actor. social theory in post-industrial society. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. ngos in a new paradigm of civil society current issues in comparative education, vol.1(1) 67 van der heijden, h. (1987). the reconciliation of ngo autonomy, program integrity and operational effectiveness with accountability to donors. in a. drabek (ed.). development alternatives: the challenge for ngos, vol. 15. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 14 november 15, 1999 how can human rights education contribute to international peace-building? tania bernath1, center for the study of human rights columbia university, new york tracey holland2 center for the study of human rights columbia university, new york paul martin3 center for the study of human rights columbia university, new york introduction many governments, international agencies, and ngos today are faced with the daunting task of re-establishing peace and order in post-war societies. in so doing, they have, at least in the abstract, appeared to recognize not only that human rights are an essential component of just societies, but that human rights education is a necessary element in the process of re-establishing stable and just post-war societies. hence, human rights have become an important concept in both popular and diplomatic language. human rights education (hre) is based on the premise that human rights will reduce violence within society, if understood as generally accepted principles and rules of society expressed and adapted to a particular society and culture. in practice, however, hre is rarely a prescribed remedy. for example, in the 1998 report for the un research institute for social development, entitled rebuilding after war, hr or hre was entirely absent as an element in the process of the rebuilding societies4. in addition, where it has been used, hre has not been effectively examined or evaluated to assess its effectiveness. in this article, we discuss the role of hre in conflict and post-conflict (c/pc) societies and delineate findings from our own research, linking best practices in the field with a theoretical framework for human rights education5. we conclude by identifying the minimum requirements for an hre program to be successful. the international community has not been able to meet the challenge of re-establishing peace and order in communities ravaged by civil war, such as in angola, haiti, kosovo and somalia. the task of peacemaking is complex; it involves not only the well-known obstacles of development and political and economic culture, but also the trauma and chaos associated with the end of a war and the breakdown of social order. financial support, even in large sums, is not alone enough to ground a stable society. for example, the $1.5 billion investment in cambodia has hardly resulted in success. however, there is strong empirical evidence that hre reduces violence in situations of conflict. members of women's groups, for example, have expressed that learning about their human rights not only made them better social advocates, but also reduced the level of domestic violence in their personal lives. more importantly, we have found in our research6 that teachers and grassroots activists express a strong commitment to human rights, and see human rights as a positive force in moving from conflict toward peace and security. how can human rights education contribute to international peace-building? current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 15 the integration of human rights must go beyond advocacy, publicity and documentation but lead to a culture of human rights that is systematic and integrated. human rights are based on who has power in society, who uses it and to what level. the defining moment when a country has moved beyond the conflict stage into a post conflict period is first and foremost the time when fewer hr violations such as mutilations, torture, murder are taking place and an immediate demand to redress these rights is being planned (post conflict project, 1999). human rights the human rights principles incorporated into many international treaties were designed "to prevent recourse to violence and to be a foundation of freedom, peace and justice in the world" (universal declaration of human rights, 1994). the udhr was specifically formulated as a means to prevent "barbarous acts that have outraged the conscience of mankind." since 1948, the role of human rights in world affairs has grown, but the barbarous acts of violence continue. international human rights should function as "universal" reference points, common to, and relevant to the acts of both the local population and international peacekeepers (baekey & gabriel, 1991). generally, it is assumed that the more human rights are observed, the more just and peaceful the society (amnesty international, 1999). it is important, however, to note that those who perceive human rights to be a set of western values contest the concept of human rights that attack local traditions or defend the rights of criminals (post conflict project, 1999). thus, in addition to recognizing the role of international human rights instruments and institutions as an element of international peacekeeping efforts, local groups also emphasize the need to teach human rights in terms of local traditions. in evidence we have collected from the field, teachers and human rights activists note that, even in very difficult circumstances, human rights function as (a) needed, common, internationally recognized reference points for social justice; and (b) as reminders that each human being has rights and that the authorities are obliged to recognize and protect them. once a peace accord has been signed for which all the necessary lobbying has taken place to ensure human rights concerns are integrated into it, the most important function, local, national, and international civil society groups have, is to teach the citizenry about their rights, what they are, and build the capacity of the government to recognize and protect them. it is from these common reference points that a foundation can effectively build a society that reflects a true human rights culture (post conflict project, 1999). human rights education the general goal of all hre is to integrate international human rights standards and practices into peoples' daily lives. it is often linked conceptually and in practice with civic education, conflict resolution programs, democracy education and the like (vergara & estevez, 1994; post conflict project, 1999). human rights educators in c/pc contexts linked their hre programs to these broader programs in two cases. they were either reluctant to classify their programs solely as "human rights education," even though a major component was that a respect for human rights is an underlying tania bernath, tracey holland, and paul martin november 15, 1999 16 motivation of these programs. they felt by calling it something other than hre it is less likely to put the people involved at risk with local authorities who might feel threatened by this type of program. in another case, a knowledge of human rights is acquired in these programs only in the process of learning some other set of skills or knowledge. this means that human rights has been consciously incorporated into the stated goals or value-system, but never discussed orally. the core content or the material to be covered in hre is defined by the laws, institutions and practices that have grown out of the human rights instruments, the basic documents and institutions that have grown up around the 1948 universal declaration of human rights. a key element is the use of the adjective "human" as opposed to "civil" or "fundamental." this means that all human beings, not just citizens or those within national borders, enjoy these rights, whether or not they are prescribed in domestic law. human rights are not dependent on positive laws or conditions. the udhr does not "give" rights; it "recognizes" and "defines" them. the challenge of hre is to make these ideals meaningful in people's daily lives. hence, to be effective, we found that hre must address several factors relevant to people in c/pc situations: violence, social trauma, relationship of hre to other programs, the desired outcome. specifically, hre should: address violence, the immediate context of fear and personal danger, and sense of personal powerlessness; deal with social trauma, personal and group animosities, as well as patterns of discrimination and marginalization, through, for example, teaching how to respect other people's rights; be incorporated into other programs of conflict resolution, social rehabilitation, democracy building, rule of law etc.; and be a conscious choice among varied possible desired outcomes (i.e., is education to be oriented towards legal or social advocacy, or to democracy building, or to conflict-resolution, or to community building, or to empowerment etc.) rather than being vague or all-inclusive (andreopoulos & claude, 1997). the content of human rights education with this background, we will now define hre for conflict and post-conflict situations (c/pc). human rights are linked to internationally recognized standards. in c/pc situations where the population has experienced extreme violence, hre works well if the people to whom it is addressed see its value in their daily, violence-punctuated lives. teachers must therefore identify messages and learning content that speak to real problems. therefore, for hre to be effective in c/pc situations it requires learning in three fields: cognitive, attitudinal and behavioral. the first field, cognitive, defines the knowledge needed to promote human rights. this category may include several or all of the following: introducing learners to the idea of having rights; a sense that these rights are recognized worldwide; that while they "depend" on civil law or constitutions they are not "given" by them and that they have roots in their own cultural world; how having rights has helped other people in similar predicaments; the history of the events in world history that brought about the international movement, and how human rights violations are identified and examined; the role of national and regional laws and institutions (legislative, judicial and administrative, national and local); the relevancy of human rights problems at home and overseas; the role of human rights in peace accords and peace building; and the role and functions of non-governmental organizations (ngos) concerned with the protection of human rights. how can human rights education contribute to international peace-building? current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 17 the second field of learning is attitudinal, which focuses on encouraging attitudes to promote rights, notably a sense of self-esteem and empowerment based on the fact that the state and its institutions, as well as any international peacekeepers (if this is part of their mandate) are obliged to protect human rights. to this can be added: encouraging attitudes of self-help and trust of others; a positive attitude towards participation and advocacy; a commitment to fairness and equal treatment; non-discrimination; a willingness to support the social institutions necessary to protect human rights; and with regard to training for police officers and other public officials, to encourage on their part sensitivity and responsiveness to human rights issues. the last category addresses the development of behavioral and other basic skills necessary to ensure each of the various rights as well as conditions basic to all rights. these skills are as varied as mobilizing and organizing7, collecting and processing information, documenting human rights violations, promoting human rights through the media, improving collaboration, mutual respect, trust and communication, learning how to respond to violence and threats of violence, bringing individuals to justice, enlisting the services of government and international agencies in the region, etc. some of these goals are closely related to conflict management skills. all three categories of learning are necessary for the promotion of human rights. hre, in so far as it is designed to promote human rights, is considerably more than a transfer of information and knowledge. in practice, the content we saw varied from lectures to illiterate peasants on the french revolution to harangues to overthrow government. these extremes emphasize the need for the production of hre material that focuses on human rights and peace-building, but which allows flexibility for the local context. the researchers found that much of the hre manuals made available by agencies such as unicef were not geared toward a post conflict environment. others such as the international rescue committee's emergency education manual did not have human rights as a major focus, although the planning aspects did reflect a post conflict context. we found few internationally produced manuals that were geared towards hre in c/pc environments. needs assessment the choice of topics to be integrated into a given program depends on an assessment of the needs, interests, motivations, potential and social context of the learners (martin, 1996). to make content come alive, effective education strategies make use of the learners' own history and traditions and use problems and activities that are part of their daily lives or are seen in the media they see (post conflict project, 1999). linking human rights content, for example, with other post-conflict programs can benefit both. equally important are activities that encourage interaction among local institutions such courts, jails, and administrative offices, as well as those that help rebuild destroyed housing. these and other teaching methods will be addressed in greater detail below. planning in practice hre takes many different shapes and achieves different results8. on the basis of our empirical research we have identified some of the critical components, which are so essential that, without them, a given hre program is in serious jeopardy. the challenges start with the planning. given the inevitable degree of urgency in c/pc tania bernath, tracey holland, and paul martin november 15, 1999 18 situations, when hre suddenly becomes possible as a result of a political agreement, it is important to have some basic designs prepared, as well as human and material resources available. desiderata ready for the planning process must include several components. there should be a commitment on the part of the international agencies to incorporate hr and hre into the peace process and the final agreements. moreover, an analysis and delineation of the pedagogical implications unique to each situation are necessary. (this should take into account the groups, organizations, institutions, cultural and political histories etc., that will influence the attitudes and motivations of the would-be beneficiaries/learners towards hre and other educational or social change inputs.) this is especially important in situations where divisions among the learners reflect the dividing lines between former combatants. it is important that a design for the incorporation of the hre program be included into the activities of local institutions such as public schools, community groups and even religious and professional organizations, however embryonic or war-scarred they might be. this requires integrating into the initial planning the resources (personnel and financing) and provisions (legal and political agreements) necessary to enlist the support of local government, civil society and especially security or other armed forces. the project's structure should foresee and plan for stages and sequencing (in terms of content, method and personnel) that respond to changing social conditions as communities move from a state of war to a state of peace. plans should include followup hre activities, such as the institutionalization of core hre activities. unless these are incorporated into the basic plan with a provision of resources, other priorities will prevail and this important factor of educational success, namely follow-up, will be lost. our research in the field uncovered very few examples of hre being incorporated into long term planning. however, in countries like cambodia where international donors made substantial funding available, there was a great deal more planning to ensure sustainability of hre. teaching methods while teaching methods vary, most effective educators strongly recommend interactive9 educational methods and limit lectures and other instructor-focused pedagogical approaches. the most successful practitioners see interaction between teachers and learners as the critical factor of successful hre, as in other educational programs. one educator interviewed in the course of the research describes how she facilitates her workshops: no lecture? experiential? participatory? related to their issue... i have no pre-designed curriculum, i do an assessment of needs; i often change in the mid-stream and always allow myself the flexibility to do that. i assess group needs at the beginning, which take a critical skill in facilitation, and then i am assessing and reassessing which way to go. i focus on involvement with others. group work is key, especially when i give workshops in settings where there are many languages being spoken. i focus on group work because that is essentially what you are trying to teach people-how to work together. i do a ton of role-plays, because people love to do them, and i find that is what they remember (post conflict project, 1999). how can human rights education contribute to international peace-building? current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 19 the relationship between the learning situation and the real life of the learners and especially the latter's perception of the relationship must be reflected in the teaching methods chosen. interactivity in all its forms is especially necessary to promote the attitudes and skills necessary for a human-rights observant society. this dimension requires teachers to bring daily to the table issues being experienced by the participants outside the learning process and to assign tasks which require activities other than writing and research based on instructional materials. among the less traditional but low cost instructional delivery modes that can be effective in these situations are: • distance learning using radio, audio and videotapes etc. • games and group activities, especially those aimed at community building • community theatre and special events such as multi-cultural dance and art displays • design and implementation of advocacy campaigns • problem-solving workshops in local communities the training, experience, skills, and demeanor of teachers and local leaders, the support mechanisms and materials (printed, audio-visual etc.) available to them and the clarity and relevance of the goals are also key factors of successful programs. each program must have in place mechanisms to judge and then either to retrain, coach, or, in the worst circumstances, let go less effective teachers. in the absence, as yet, of source books of materials and methods prepared specially for these situations, teachers could benefit from a general purpose collection of documents and teaching materials, as well as audio and video tapes which might or might not be useful in the field. also useful are articles or reports that explain and illustrate the needs and benefits of hre in these situations. a basic "tool" kit might contain the major documents on human rights and humanitarian law, an anthology of other major readings on peacekeeping and hre, a laptop, a printer and software to produce learning materials, and a selection of video and audio tapes with instructional value and the necessary equipment to use them. evaluation given the very chaotic circumstances involved, the ongoing evaluation of these programs is difficult but all the more necessary. at the basic level, programs use informal feedback mechanisms based on questions asked in class, after class and through questionnaires on what was learned. similar questionnaires can be used at the end of a program or even a year later to examine consumer satisfaction. this process method does not tell us whether other training would have been more useful, or whether it took the form and provided the content that was most urgently needed at that time. most importantly, it does not assess whether the training helped them protect human rights in their communities. we recommend other measures such as evidence of the following: tania bernath, tracey holland, and paul martin november 15, 1999 20 • the creation or growth of "somewhat" self-sustaining human rights education or related activities in public and private schools, ngos, universities and teacher training institutions. • the growth of activities and organizations promoting human rights within a community. • increased popular interest/participation in the political process. • changes in local law enforcement procedures (police, prisons and courts). • improved responsiveness on the part of other government services to the economic needs and political and civil rights of citizens. • improved media coverage of human rights. • reports from local groups of other changes, e.g., patterns of domestic violence. • the role of the international community from the long-term point of view of sustainability, our research so far points to several roles that external, typically international, agents can play to be effective. they can bring to bear perspectives that go beyond the immediate problems, such as lobbying in the negotiation process to ensure the inclusion of provisions for hr and hre in peace agreements. they can provide sustained advising, training and cooperation in planning, importing technologies and resources, and they can draw on their experiences elsewhere. they are in a position to facilitate linkages between and among international and national institutions as well as local domestic groups and institutions. finally, they should take care to ensure among themselves high standards in terms of accountability and transparency. the essential components there is a wealth and diversity of experience in this field. sharing this experience and adapting it to different circumstances depends on sharing stories and especially program evaluations. too much still depends on individual memories, and on people moving from place to place, and then having the time to adapt their knowledge and experience to local circumstances. successful hre in c/pc circumstances depends on many links in a chain. weak or missing links have a major impact. among the various links identified above, at least the following eight are essential to an effective program: • a viable design oriented to outcomes closely linked to the community's or at least the learners' own perception of their interests, and including follow-up and growth planning, ideally integrated into the peace agreements, at least in principle. • adequate financing, physical spaces, equipment and curricular materials. • the integration of local institutions and events into planning and implementation. • competent personnel able to adjust to local circumstances and establish strong links with learners and their leaders • a relatively supportive social environment and the resources to improve it. • the perception (pre-existing or engendered) on the part of participants that the proposed hre can benefit them. • evaluation mechanisms based on both processes and outcomes. • a plan for the withdrawal of external agents, which allows for the growth of sustainable local institutions. • effective, even if inexpensive, follow-up procedures to reinforce the education. how can human rights education contribute to international peace-building? current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 21 there is plenty of evidence to show that well-planned and executed hre programs build trust and set out basic standards for a peaceable society. while we agree that it is not easy to integrate all the elements listed above, they are nonetheless necessary if hre is to bring lasting benefits in the form of the promotion of human rights in the recipient communities. ultimately we believe that without any one of these components, one can predict that a given hre program, no matter how long or how short, no matter what its methodology, will almost certainly not attain any lasting effect. the money could therefore have been better spent. notes 1. master of arts, teachers college, research field director 2. master of arts, teachers college, research field director 3. executive director, center for the study of human rights, project director 4. there is also no mention of hre as a remedy in ilene cohn's (1999) article. she advocates the truth-telling and prosecution approaches. 5. the authors with the support of the united states institute of peace and the columbia university center are currently completing a new study on hre for the study of human rights. country studies were carried out this year in guatemala, el salvador, mexico, liberia, and sierra leone. due to financial constraints, the field research is still more illustrative than definitive. additional field studies are needed to refine the framework. 6. the study grew out of experiences in the field where teachers found themselves working with materials and using methodologies that had very little relevance or attraction for those they were supposed to helping. the need for more research was further emphasized at a conference of specialists in rehabilitation of children and child soldiers where individual experts recounted interesting field experience but none were in a position to draw comparisons beyond a few cases known to each personally. clearly there were around the world interesting experiences that ought to inform future planning and teaching. someone needed to study them and make the findings available to others engaged in similar tasks elsewhere. the theoretical framework utilized an education model that identifies certain key elements as necessary for any hre program, modified to include those especially needed in post-conflict situations. 7. in a conflict or post-conflict situation communities need to find ways to mobilize their resources, to work together to establish and then attain common goals. only with a degree of social organization can a community articulate its needs to others in a position to assist. the difficulty is deciding who the legitimate representatives of the community are, especially when some are armed and others are not. tania bernath, tracey holland, and paul martin november 15, 1999 22 8. it is beyond the scope of this essay to provide the empirical details of the projects we visited. 9. interactivity is used in a broad, inclusive sense that emphasizes "activity" on the part of the learners, such as answering questions and participating in debates in the classroom or going out into the community to teach others. regarding methods of instruction, interactivity was valued highly. interaction, we were told, reinforces learning, avoids "pro forma" participation and provides immediate feedback. as in all hre, but especially in c/pc situations, interactivity appears to offer the context needed for learners to experience and learn the meaning of mutual respect, nondiscrimination, understanding the point of view of others etc., all of which are needed to creative a rights-supportive society. references amnesty international. (1999). in the firing line: war and children's rights, london. andreopoulos, g. & claude, r., eds., (1997). human rights education for the twentyfirst century. pennsylvania: university press of pennsylvania. baekey, c.a. & gabriel, a. (1991). human rights/amalungelo oluntu. durban, south africa: community law center. cohn, i., (1999). the protection of children in peacemaking and peacekeeping processes. harvard human rights journal, 12, 129-195. martin, p. (1996). handbook on self-help human rights education. new york: center for the study of human rights, columbia university. post conflict project. (1999). unpublished interviews, research findings and findings in field research. columbia university, center for the study of human rights. universal declaration of human rights. (1994). twenty-five human rights documents. new york: center for the study of human rights, columbia university. vergara a.c. & estevez, j.v. (1994). justice, impunity and the transition to democracy: a challenge for human rights education. journal of moral education, 23 (3): 273-284. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 73 education and market: how could it be different and what is new? kai-ming cheng [1] university of hong kong and harvard graduate school of education this discussant paper concentrates on two issues. the first pertains to the cultural characteristics of the education market in asia and in east asia in particular. it examines the notion of privatization in some asian countries and observes that the arguments for privatization are very different from those that prevail in the west. the second issue has more far reaching implications. it pertains to the changing role for schooling in a knowledge-based society. the paper explores the implications of such a change to the market in education. deregulation versus marketization there is a recent move of "privatizing" schools in east asian societies. it started with governments' deregulation efforts. the general tendency is to provide schools with the funding that public schools are given, but to deregulate the constraints on how such funds must be spent. this has been the nature of the move to establish independent schools in singapore in 1988, and the subsequent series of moves to deregulate public schools (tan, 1997). there is also the recent trend of privatization and deregulation in mainland china, where public schools are selected to become deregulated schools in one way or another, with various degrees of partnership between the governmental and non-governmental sponsors (cheng, cheung and yip, 1999). shanghai, for example, has just converted ten of the best public schools to a type of private school. such moves of deregulation are largely underpinned by concerns with efficiency, rather than with parental choice (or market in the western sense of the term). almost all such moves are argued for as ways of giving schools more freedom, which permits them to provide quality education. in a most recent visit to a "converted (zhuangzhi)" school near chengdu in the province of sichuan [2], a medium-developed province in china, i was able to confirm that the school receives almost the same amount of income as other public schools. the school used to be a public school. it is now a "publicly funded but privately assisted" school that charges fees. the only major regulatory advantage for this school is that it has the freedom to "fire and hire" teachers according to their qualifications and the needs of the school. typically in public schools teachers, who are on the public payroll, have virtually lifelong tenure and can only be re-deployed to other positions in the education sector. the fee-paying does change the family background of the parents of the schools, but that does not seem to have raised any concern. "parents are prepared to pay higher fees for quality education, anyway", the teachers in the school respond. they regard it as "fair" for parents to pay more for better education. of course, it is difficult to argue that deregulation is totally free of elements of marketization. the efficiency gain, as is anticipated by such deregulation, is achieved by allowing the selected schools (usually the best schools) to maximize the use of public funds, freeing them from the public system for allocating students and other kai-ming cheng 74 april 30, 1999 bureaucracy, and allowing them to charge fees to supplement public funding. there is therefore opportunity for some parental control, since they contribute to the resources. however, since such schools are few, are elite, and are selected by the government, they are not seen to be in competition with other schools. indeed, they are seen as schools that are selected to become more elite than they were in the public sector. this is to say that "market" does not figure as an argument for privatization of schools in these societies. one contextual factor to explain this has to do with the school-family interplay. in east asian societies, schools are given much more respect than their counterparts in the west. it is only recently that school doors are being opened to parents for visits during school hours, and this is still rare. parents seldom think of interfering with school affairs. they adore elite schools, but it is not a tradition for parents to think of having a say in school affairs. hence, the move toward deregulation, which is often loosely but inappropriately classified as "privatization", favors only the elite families. such families are privileged to start with because of their social status and financial capability. they are given more privileges when their children are admitted to such deregulated elite schools. however, in these societies, such a move to privilege the privileged does not seem to attract much opposition. there could be two explanations. the first, and perhaps the most essential, is that meritocracy prevails in such societies. students are admitted to the deregulated schools because of their academic merits, and there is a general trust in academic merits as a fair yardstick for selection. in such a culture of meritocracy, schools legitimately choose students, rather than parents choosing schools as a matter of rights. in china, for example, in most of the private schools i visited, both the parents and teachers seem to concur that since students are selected on the basis of merit, it is only fair for them to pay more in anticipation of education of higher quality. "the real unfairness," they argue, "is when students are admitted by connections through the back door, when such students do not have that kind of caliber and do not deserve that kind of education." such arguments might seem odd to an observer from the west, but the notion of "equity" that is fundamental to any allocation in a western society does not seem to be on the chinese parents' or teachers' agenda when it comes to education. the second explanation is that societies like singapore and china are basically planned societies. despite the move toward more liberal policies in recent years, a collective tradition still underlies the political ideology, and the public is used to the government making selections. hence, the governments have the legitimacy to assign deregulatory advantages to preferred schools. a similar scheme for deregulation, known as the direct subsidy scheme, was however vetoed by the legislature in hong kong in 1991. the argument against the scheme, put forward by the democrats, was that public money should not be used in a scheme that favors the elite. that is perhaps an indication that the political ideology in hong kong has already deviated from the east asian tradition. markets: the industrial version education and market: how could it be different and what is new? current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 75 the emergence of the private schools in mainland china also is a new phenomenon, particularly the spontaneous emergence of schools in totally non-governmental endeavors. as cheng and delany (this issue) have discussed, there are various definitions of private schools in china. such definitions reflect the reality that there is a huge gray area between private schools and public schools. the variations in "private" schools demonstrate the numerous possibilities where the "private" sector could participate in education, and the diversity of different viable partnerships. pertinent to the present discussion is that all these "private" schools survive under some societal needs, or market demand. this poses a very interesting question to observers of china's education. the general standard of public schools in china is very high. unlike elsewhere in the west, there is little complaint about public schools in terms of their standards of quality. then, why should private schools ever exist? when we confine the analysis to primary and secondary schools evidence seems to suggest at least two answers to this question. one, rich parents whose children failed in public schools backed private schools as a way to provide their children with alternative ways to social success. in such an attempt, there is the belief that additional resources could bring educational advantages. this accounted for the first batch of private primary and secondary schools that emerged in mid-1980s. as a consequence, many of these schools had a high concentration of students who had failed elsewhere. the private schools survived only when they could claim some success in transforming these students into academic achievers. however, such achievements are assessed in the same arena as those in good public schools, e.g. public examination results. hence, private primary and secondary schools in china do not seem to emerge because of parents' "choice" for an alternative type of education. the second reason for the existence of private schools is that parents who can afford fees want their children to be better prepared for their future. in a very conforming society, many such private schools are just duplicates of the most elitist schools in china, with heavy emphasis on examination results, but with also rich campus lives and rich extracurricular opportunities. parents contribute to private schools that guarantee not only comprehensive campus lives (there is no shortage of this in good public schools), but good future higher education, typically through attachment to overseas universities. in a way, all such private schools in china are just alternative ways of running schools in a tradition appropriate to the industrial society. in such a tradition, schools are legitimately seen as a means for screening, as a way to legitimately select the elite few who are to become intellectuals. in china, university graduates are still classified as "high intellectuals" and, with an enrolment of only 5-6 percent for higher education, they are indeed few. the majority of the population is sifted off by the education system to become laborers in cities or farmers in rural areas. indeed, higher education is still in china the only means for a person to legally change from rural to urban citizenship. all these echo the traditional observations of those who criticize the human capital theory of the 1970s. one may argue further that the schooling system per se is modeled after the industrial production process. the entire schooling process resembles a production line. there are kai-ming cheng 76 april 30, 1999 quality control mechanisms at different junctures. only those who pass the test are seen as legitimate products. others are either discarded or treated as second rate products. the process is to select the best at the end. it is also a one-off process. one can fail the test only once; there is no means for second trial. in asian systems, the trust in meritocracy legitimizes the screening function of formal schooling. there is a general assumption that those who do better in academic studies deserve education in better schools. this is an assumption that is not always shared by people in the west. in such societies of meritocracy, the concept of equity goes only as far as children of the poor are not deprived of opportunities for competition. hence, even with privatization, the fundamental motive is not so much about rights and choice, but ways of building more high quality schools. the changing scene the economy is changing rapidly from industrial to knowledge-based, as is evidenced by the rapid growth of the service sector. this poses a different set of conditions for the employment structure and hence for the needs of education. it is perhaps time to start exploring the nature of the "market", with special reference to education, in the knowledge era. discussions on market and education inevitably invite discussions about equity. the underlying philosophy of the market discussion is that parents (sometimes employers) act as consumers of education. the benefit of the marketization of education is in allowing consumers to have a say in the production process, hence hopefully enhancing the quality of the product. the disadvantage of marketization is then that the richer would be able to buy the better, which is likely to perpetuate social disparity. perhaps we should examine the notion of disparity. in an industrial society, there is a pyramidal structure in employment: massive raw labor at the bottom, and the few elite at the top. the population reduces as we move up the manpower hierarchy. such a pyramidal structure is reflected in the education system: massive "uneducated" or failures of the education system at the bottom, and the few elite intellectuals (presumably phd holders) at the top. again, when we move up the hierarchy, the number is reduced at each step. such a pyramid is also seen as relatively static. although there can be significant social mobility, a secondary school graduate is often seen as largely disadvantaged, when compared with a university graduate, in terms of lifelong career prospects. this is reflected in their post-qualification incomes, and indeed this is the basis of calculating the rate-of-return for education in the economics of education. academic qualifications are taken as proxy for knowledge, with lifelong significance. the picture changes in a knowledge-based society. a pyramid may still remain. that is, we do not expect a classless society. however, the pyramid is of a different shape. there is a higher mobility within the pyramid. the knowledge structure has changed,and the relationship between the pyramid and academic qualifications has also changed. first, the pyramid is different in shape because there is much smaller management span education and market: how could it be different and what is new? current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 77 in the workplace. a typical production line in a traditional mass production factory may have some 40 to 50 workers, with one supervisor. in a typical office in the service sector, usually there are fewer than ten rank-and-file workers under one supervisor. the management span is even smaller in a technology-smart workplace. second, mobility is much higher in a knowledge-based economy than in an industrial society. it is well known that in a society with large service sector, there is a high rate of job mobility. there is also high mobility across occupations. it has become increasingly rare for a person to pursue just one career in a lifetime. it is less noticed, though, that such mobility also involves vertical mobility. that is, it is much easier for a person to move up the career ladder today than in the past, but it is equally easy for a person to move down the career ladder. in other words, there are not only frequent horizontal shifts across careers, but also frequent vertical shifts along the career ladder. third, unlike the case with the industrial economy, there is little room for raw labor. with the expansion of the service sector comes the need for systemic knowledge at almost all levels of work. while intellectuals were meant to be the selected few in an industrial society, most workers have to be intellectual in one way or another in a knowledge-based economy. meanwhile, changes in the workplace have also prompted workers to undertake renewal of their knowledge. hence, not only do workers have to possess considerable knowledge, they also have to possess the capacity for lifelong learning. knowledge and learning under these circumstances the implications for learning, and hence for education can never be over-estimated. learning is lifelong, not as rhetoric, but as a real need for survival. changing environments, changing technologies, changing markets, and the consequent changes in knowledge, all require people to undertake lifelong learning. the implications for education are tremendous, but the following are the more obvious. first, the role of education as a means for transmission of information is being challenged. if information is anyway conveniently accessible by individuals through technology, what is then the role of the schools? one argument is that education now is for learning to learn and learning to be, that is learning how to lead a learning life in the future. if that is the case, then the entire notion of schooling has to be revisited. the change in medical education, where "problem-based learning" has prevailed over most medical schools, is a very illuminating example. instead of filling students with information and knowledge, students in pbl now learn how to acquire information and knowledge on their own (often through group work) and to apply them to solving problems that a medical doctor encounters in real life. second, the notion of "graduation" is being challenged. if what students learn in schools soon becomes obsolete, what is then the threshold for "graduation" and when should a student graduate? with that comes a reappraisal of the meaning of a credential. a degree or a diploma does not give a person a lifelong qualification of competency. no certification can immune a person from continuous learning. although this is almost common sense in many societies, in most places in the world certification is still meant to last a lifetime, and could sometimes be antithetical to the idea of lifelong learning. we kai-ming cheng 78 april 30, 1999 have to ask, what is now the half-life of an academic qualification? third, specialized programs in education are facing challenges. in many major cities in east asia, vocational education at the school level is in crisis. with the expansion of the service sector, employers and students are looking for generic skills such as communication, international languages, information technology and other factors such as attitudes and ethics, rather than for specific vocational skills. although universities are still largely structured according to academic disciplines, increasingly, learning programs are cross-disciplinary. although departments pretend that they produce graduate for specific professions, there is an increasing mismatch between what the graduates have learned and what they practice. even if they practice what they learn in their first careers, their future careers almost certainly require new learning. such situations are perhaps more obvious in north america, and now western europe, but are also emerging in many major cities in asia. fourth, with the development of information technology, the distinction between formal and nonformal learning programs has blurred. learning could now become individualized, popularized and equalized. many nonformal programs are now available on the web, and the difference between them and formal programs at distance learning institutions is collapsing. even formal non-distance learning institutions have to justify their existence by proving the worth of on-campus learning. the weakening of the distinction between formal and nonformal is not surprising, when we observe the general weakening of social barriers due to the development of information technology. a new look at market all these bring us to have a new look at the market in the realm of education. the basic economics of education may remain the same. that is, earnings will continue to be associated with learning, and perhaps even more so in a knowledge-based society. what is new, perhaps, is that educational credentials can no longer be a good indicator of lifelong earning, as was the case with rate-of-return analysis in an industrial world. two additional elements ought to be mentioned in this discussion of changing conceptions of the education market. one is that in the information era there is neither permanent success, nor permanent failure. nobody is guaranteed lifelong success, and the role of credentials tends to be rather short-lived. the other is that a change of career often implies fresh learning in a new area. credentials that lead to certain levels of earning in one career may be recognized very differently in a new career. this does not necessarily mean that one's income would fluctuate more in a knowledgebased society. it does mean that, however, that one's value to the society (that is, if we believe in incomes as fair recognition of one's contribution) is based on more generic dimensions, such as one's leadership traits or ability in facing challenges, rather than on tangible educational credentials. the emphasis will be more on the person, rather than on the knowledge that the person possesses at a particular time. academic credentials and educational assessments very weakly reflect such non-tangible elements in a person. two examples may help illustrate the point. example one: it is quite common for an employer to recruit, say, a graduate of anthropology to work in an investment bank and education and market: how could it be different and what is new? current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 79 remunerate her with a salary that has nothing to do directly with anthropology. example two: in many parts of the world, in the usa, bangalore and hong kong alike, it is increasingly common to see young people, who are not successful in formal education, being employed in the information technology business and demonstrating high performance. the social credibility of credentials is under threat, because they do not carry information that is now required by the society. the educational credential may still play an important social role, but then it should be able to reflect abilities that transcend career boundaries. nevertheless, most education systems are still providing educational credentials whose real association to career expectations is vague or unknown. such a mismatch is likely to continue for some time. in this context, the competition and market within the education system may not reflect the market at large beyond education. all in all, knowledge and learning, which have become essential to one's career development, have gone well beyond school campuses and schooling years. we now face the question: to what extent could we still count on schooling as a contributing factor to social equality or inequality? this observation does not repeat the objections to human capital theory. those objections tried to refute the direct relations between education and ability, and argued that the invisible hand behind the screening function of educational credentials was not economic, but social or political. such objections to the human capital theory, however, admitted that education did have a screening function. in a knowledge-based society, the screening function of formal educational credentials diminishes. instead of screening young people out of the education system, the education system is now expected to provide unfailing learning opportunities for everyone. instead of maintaining dead-ends in the system that ensure a majority will legitimately stay as uneducated laborers, education systems are now expected to make sure that everyone is equipped with knowledge of one kind or another. lifelong learning is now no longer only a desideratum for individuals, it is a necessity for economic and social development. it is in this context that the oecd declared in 1996 that lifelong learning should be used as the guiding framework for development. similar policy frameworks were recently established in norway (1997), the netherlands (1997), uk (1998), australia (1998) and some of provinces in canada. in some places a name change is being contemplated, such that the ministry of education would be replaced by a ministry of lifelong learning in asia, singapore launched in 1998 the campaign "thinking society, learning schools" as the comprehensive framework for education reform. taiwan recently published a policy paper titled "reform for lifelong learning". hong kong has just launched an overhauling education reform which uses lifelong learning as its framework and is titled "learning for life". the knowledge-based economy does not promise a more equitable society. there will still be disparity, and the disparity could be as remarkable as it is in an industrial society. it is quite likely that social discrimination will still be discrimination about knowledge. however, while it used to be the amount of knowledge that mattered, now those with the best capacity for grasping new knowledge and new ideas will win the kai-ming cheng 80 april 30, 1999 social competition. while the education system used to be the key-player in maintaining strata in manpower, that function is gradually lost because of the increasing reliance on in-service, second-route (or thirdor fourth-route), mid-career or between-career learning. if this argument is valid, then the notion of the market in education has to be re-visited. in a knowledge-based society, the market of knowledge and learning mainly exists beyond schools. schools will provide only initial opportunities for learning that ultimately plays a relatively minor part in one's success or failure. we might then face a paradoxical situation. if we are "optimistic" about the power of education we can expect it to be transformed to train individuals for lifelong learning capacities. however, if that is realized, then perhaps education will restore its role in social discrimination, whether we like it or not. notes [1] kai-ming cheng is chair professor of education and pro-vice-chancellor at the university of hong kong, currently also visiting professor of education at the harvard graduate school of education. [2] the "experimental school with english medium" which is a junior secondary school in the county of dujiangyan. the visit was held on october 21, 1999. references cheng, k.m., cheung, k.w. and yip, k.y. (1999). "private schools in a socialist market: progress and controversies". paper presented at the cies annual meeting, april 14-18, 1999, toronto. cheng, h. and delany, b. (1999). "quality education and social stratification: the paradox of private schooling in china". current issues in comparative education, 1(2). department for education and employment. (1998). the learning age: a renaissance for new britain. london. department of employment, education, training and youth affairs. (1998). learning for life: final report. review of higher education financing and policy. canberra. education commission. (1999). learning for life: framework for education reform. hong kong. kellogg commission. (1999). returning to our roots: a learning society. ministry of education, culture and science. (1997). lifelong learning: the dutch initiative. the hague. oecd. (1996). lifelong education for all. paris. education and market: how could it be different and what is new? current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 81 tan, j. (1997). "independent schools in singapore: implications for social and educational inequalities". in j. tan, s. gopinathan and w.k. ho (eds.) education in singapore: a book of readings. singapore: prentice-hall. 279-296. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 3 editorial introduction political violence1 and education from the balkans to central america, from jamaica to south africa, and in nearly every other region of the world, political violence has an undeniable impact on the content and process of education. schools may serve as sites for resistance or emancipation, or they may be actual targets of physical violence. dominant political forces may use education to legitimize state violence or to promote mass socialization toward particular nationalist agendas. in addition, armed conflict and civil unrest often close school buildings and alter dramatically the context in which education systems operate. in its form, role and impact, education is profoundly affected by these phenomena, yet the ramifications of political violence on education have received little research attention. for the fall 1999 issue, cice presents contributions that explore the ways violence establishes national, ethnic, racial and gender identities via education before, during and after conflict. the authors reflect on the intersection of violence and education from the disciplines of history, anthropology, sociology, politics and psychology. practitioners add a unique and important perspective, increasing the relevance of theory to practical activity. while some authors demonstrate how education can help to establish and maintain social stability and peace, others address the role education plays in maintaining inequitable conditions and hosting ideological battles. several authors point to gaps in current literature and practice, outlining agendas for future research in this area2. adila kreso writes from bosnia and herzegovina, "what could not be done in war is attempted in peace by nationalist differentiation of education." with a bold critique of nationalist political ideologies and their impact on education in bih, kreso expresses her concern for the future of education in the country, and, inextricably linked to education, the future of the nation. kreso describes the divisive role education and schools have played in bih, and calls for urgent attention to develop a form of multicultural education: culturally responsive pedagogy in education in bosnia and herzegovina: minority inclusion and majority rules. with human rights, conflict resolution and peace education receiving increased international attention as positive interventions for countries in transition from war to peace, paul martin, tania bernath and tracey holland delineate the necessary components of human rights education programs in conflict and post-conflict regions. in how can human rights education contribute to international peace-building? they argue that the universal declaration of human rights, in concert with increased global emphasis on "education for all" have created an atmosphere in which human rights education can be used to reduce violence and increase the movement "from conflict toward peace and security." joaquin flores presents the results of a detailed psychological study documenting the effects of violence upon children exposed to the civil war in el salvador in schooling, family, and individual factors mitigating psychological effects of war on children. flores editorial introduction november 15, 1999 4 discusses the "relevance and challenges of psychological research and intervention as vital components of advocacy for child victims of war," including the difficulty of advocating for treatment without empirical evidence of psychological trauma. according to flores, psychologists and social scientists can and should assist affected communities in responding to the psychological needs of their children, through education and community-based institutions. jane lowicki and barry chevannes call our attention to the plight of adolescents in missing out: adolescents affected by armed conflict face few education opportunities. lowicki identifies a gap in attention to refugee adolescents in emergency education programs and planning; she shows the importance of adolescent programming, given that they are "at risk for various forms of sexual and economic exploitation and abuse, criminality and indoctrination." chevannes discusses violence among male youths in jamaican culture from a socio-anthropological perspective, suggesting that "in a situation where an entire section of a population is deviant, our focus inevitably must be directed to processes that shape the foundations of behavior." he explains why this phenomenon must be addressed to establish even the hope for a future of peace. writing from south africa, isaac ntshoe expresses misgivings about multicultural education that are similar to the concerns expressed by kreso regarding education as a tool for political ideology. in what you sow is what you reap: violence and the construction of male identity in jamaica, he describes the way the south african apartheid government exploited ethnic differences among africans to "suppress particular communities" and consolidate its own power. yet he notes the dual role education played in the history of the struggles against apartheid, "(…) education simultaneously facilitated social change, political emancipation, and democracy." he concludes that a revised form of multicultural education can promote "unity in diversity." thomas clayton invites us to consider the notion of education as a site for ideological struggle and control in education under occupation: political violence, schooling, and response in cambodia. from a historical perspective, he examines the effect of vietnamese occupation of cambodia on higher education, describing the way "the vietnamese invasion brought cambodians salvation from the khmer rouge's policies of social destruction." at the same time as they filled the educational void left in the wake of the khmer rouge, the vietnamese also "erected a sophisticated hegemonic apparatus dedicated to the dissemination of ideas congruent with their vision for the country." after examining the root causes of violence in south africa, salim vally links the structural violence of apartheid with a culture of violence visible in south african schools today. in violence in south african schools, he describes the "complicated combination of past history and recent stresses (…) in a society marked by deep inequities and massive uncertainty" and the impact this has on operations. he ends with specific policy recommendations to address the problem of violence. belge brochmann and eldrid k. midttun, in human rights education and peace building, broaden the scope of human rights education slightly by presenting it as a preventive measure which can reduce the risk of conflict occurring or recurring, as well as set important standards for countries in transition from authoritarian rule to democratic political violence and education current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 5 societies. they also share some experiences in the implementation of hre projects particularly in southern caucasus. fay chung closes this cice issue with comments and questions from the field. in education: a key to power and a tool for change--a practitioners perspective, her observations point to striking features of political violence and provide suggestions for further study and debate. this topic and these issues are particularly close to the hearts and minds of many of the cice editorial board members. for our colleagues in education and their students around the world, we would like to make a special appeal to our readers to contemplate these dilemmas, broaden the debate and contribute insights to the analysis that will in turn support social change. notes 1. political violence is very generally defined as the exercise of physical or other forces interfere with personal freedom or the free development of choice of one group for the benefit (social, political, economic) of another group. for the purposes of this issue, we will define political violence as both the exercise of power (acts of war, civil strife) and the emotional and psychological conditions that serve to create and maintain unequal power relationships. 2. it is important to note that the articles in this issue of cice are not exhaustive in their discussion of the relationship between political violence and education, nor are all regions of the world covered. for example, a piece on violence in the united states and western europe and its impact on schools and education is absent. the issue reflects the submissions we received. quezada morales, 2022c current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 the provision of learning in mexico during the covid19 pandemic: defining the digital divide romina quezada morales teachers college, columbia university the pandemic in mexico: another burden to chronic socioeconomic inequalities geographically, the united mexican states are part of north america, along with the united states of america and canada; south, they border guatemala and belize; they border the gulf of mexico to the east, and the pacific ocean to the west (sistema de información de tendencias educativas en américa latina [siteal], 2020). mexico has 32 federate entities, which are home to approximately 129 million inhabitants, out of whom 78% live in urban areas, and 15% are indigenous (siteal, 2020). in 2018, andrés manuel lópez obrador was elected president of mexico for a period of six years, adopting an anti-neoliberal policy. the change of regime aimed at eradicating chronic socioeconomic gaps that had been affecting the largest sector of the mexican population –humanism for development, reduced violence, and no more forced migration are among the priorities of lópez obrador’s 2018-2024 national plan for development (plan nacional de desarrollo, gobierno de la república, 2019). the country’s gaps were indeed preoccupying: in 2018, 36.6% of the population in urban areas and 56.3% in rural areas lived in poverty, 25% of women lived without an individual outcome and, in 2015, 70% of the population did not trust the previous administration (economic commission for latin america and the caribbean [eclac], n.d.-a; n.d-b). violence-wise, homicides increased 84% between 2015 and 2020, and organized crime went up 40.5% since 2015 (institute for economics and peace, 2021). mexico faced the pandemic under this atmosphere. mexico’s education system, policies and rulers the national education system in mexico comprises basic education, upper-secondary education, and higher education, which can be taught in schools, remotely, and in a mixed modality (secretaría de educación pública [sep], 2015-a). basic education comprises preschool (3 years), primary school (6 years), and lower-secondary school (3 years); uppersecondary education typically takes 3 years; higher education offers short-term technical degrees, as well as undergraduate (4 to 5 years) and graduate degrees (siteal, 2019). as of 2019, all mexican states are obliged to provide free, public education at these levels (presidencia de la república, 2019-a; siteal, 2019). since 1921, the secretary of public education (sep, 2015-b) oversees most of mexico’s education system. sep regulates initial school (from 0 to 2 years of age), basic education, and certain modalities of upper-secondary education. universities are typically autonomous or private, although sep also manages teacher colleges and eventually certifies all higher education diplomas (sep, n.d.; 2015-c). the largest university is the national autonomous university of mexico (universidad nacional autónoma de méxico [unam]), which provided free education to 258, 128 students at all higher education © 2022, quezada morales. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 204-216. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en the provision of learning in mexico during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 205 levels during the 2020-2021 academic year (portal de estadística universitaria unam, 2020). in 2020, according to américa economía, mexico’s technological institute of higher education (instituto tecnológico de estudios superiores de méxico [itesm]) and the national polytechnic institute (instituto politécnico nacional [ipn]) appeared before and after unam in national quality rankings, respectively (allan, 2020). over the years, and in parallel with the 80-year rule of the revolutionary institutional party (partido revolucionario institucional [pri]) until 2000, the structure of the mexican education system remained somewhat constant and centralized, with the government empowering teacher unions to avoid labor demands, rather than improving education policy (ornelas, 2019). that relation, known as corporatism, conferred too much power to teacher unions over the years. some irregularities by teachers such as the bequeathing of teaching positions to family members surfaced in the 2000s, when the pri finally stepped down and the national action party (partido acción nacional [pan]) led the country, but they were paradoxically addressed when the pri went back to power in 2012. in 2013, the education program (programa sectorial de educación) aimed at increasing the quality of basic education, and enrollment rates and quality at other levels, as well as regaining control over the national education system. doing so, however, implied the close evaluation of teachers and their practices. therefore, the subsequent education reform, which should have been one of the drivers of the 2012-2018 pri administration, received great backlash from teacher unions and was eventually taken down by the current morena party administration, giving power back to teacher unions (lópez obrador, 2019). the lópez obrador administration replaced the education reform with the general law on education (ley general de educación) (presidencia de la república, 2019-b). the current law is based on a holistic view of education at all levels and for all individuals, emphasizing democracy, humanism, equity, interculturality, and excellence with a national orientation. those values were introduced to the classroom for the 2021-2022 school year under the proposal “new mexican school” (nueva escuela mexicana, art. 1114); other areas of importance are indigenous and inclusive education and the obligation of states to provide higher education. chapter xi of the law specifically tackles information communication technologies (icts) and digital learning, announcing the progressive issuing of an educational digital agenda (agenda digital educativa), which fosters the access and use of digital learning in students’ and teachers’ daily lives. according to the 2019-2023 educational digital agenda (sep, 2020), mexico’s efforts to include icts in education began in the 1980s with the production and delivery of computers to primary and lower-secondary school establishments, and have evolved through time. relevant to this document is the launching of red edusat (satellite education network) in the late 1990s, which allowed for the provision of education to remote areas and led to the telesecundaria system – lower-secondary learning through television –, which was being used by about one fifth of the country’s lower-secondary students in 2018. another outstanding moment was the launch of mexicox, the country’s platform for massive open online courses (mooc). nowadays, the production of digital learning material has been taking place within sep through the initiative @prende.mx. part of the 2016-2019 digital inclusion plan (plan de inclusión digital [pid]), @prende.mx works toward the improvement of digital skills and computational thinking, which comprises educational television projects (coordinación general @prende.mx, n.d.). the 2019-2023 educational digital agenda (sep, 2020) took note of previous programs and needs to come up with five working lines: teacher training and updating; digital literacy, inclusion, and citizenship; production, promotion, access and social use of digital learning resources; better connectivity and infrastructure of icts together with ltks (learning quezada morales current issues in comparative education 206 and knowledge technologies) and communication; and research, innovation and creativity in digital education. these axes are embedded in the national agreement on education (acuerdo educativo nacional) and its new mexican school; they respond to the general law on education (arts, 84, 85 and 86) and, as of 2019, to the country’s constitution (arts. 3, 6). mexico’s rapid response in education to the covid-19 pandemic sep decided to close schools on march 16, 2020, and its reaction to the pandemic in educational terms was swift (personal communication, february 13, 2021). a week later, on march 23, sep made national curricular contents available on television and radio through special programming up until upper-secondary education (badillo, 2020). at the same time, and as early as the very same march 16, sep announced the launch of aprende en casa (learn at home), an online platform designed to reinforce the national curriculum (notiemex, 2020). aprende en casa was implemented from april 20, 2020, until the end of the school year on july 6, 2020, with the goal of completing the school year and achieving the expected learning outcomes of students according to the national curriculum (notiemex, 2020). then secretary of education esteban moctezuma underlined, however, that mexico’s textbooks should still be used as basis for study (notiemex, 2020), but all three means of communication – television, radio, and internet – became part of aprende en casa. in that way, the mexican education system did not stop providing education at the beginning of the pandemic. since the 2020-2021 school year took place online, aprende en casa evolved into aprende en casa ii and aprende en casa iii. the particularity of aprende en casa ii – from august through december, 2020 – was that school teachers and directors became involved in the creation of content for tv and radio shows, while aprende en casa iii was designed to help students and teachers transition to in-person classes by using the platform as a point for discussion prior to class (personal communication, february 13, 2021). in other words, along with national textbooks,1 and in addition to other strategies implemented by each states,2 aprende en casa was the official support portal provided by sep to continue teaching. as of the end of 2021, aprende en casa continued to be available through sep’s portal at aprendeencasa.sep.gob.mx. the webpage clearly displays all aprende en casa activities by level, then by grade. as users scroll down, links to the national and state textbooks are provided. when clicking on a given grade, visitors are prompted to the weekly schedule of activities and subjects, with the possibility of visiting previous weeks and even school years, back to the beginning of aprende en casa. after choosing a date, visitors can choose a subject to access complete lesson plans; a link to youtube is also provided that connects the lesson on the platform to the corresponding show (see figure 1). the videos are also shown on television and their audio is broadcasted on the radio (personal communication, february 13, 2021). grades from preschool to lower-secondary education follow that structure. when clicking on upper-secondary education, visitors are prompted to jóvenes en casa (youth at home), a portal that provides educational links to television programming, as well as social and socioemotional support. appendix a provides a list of the links to these resources. the provision of learning in mexico during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 207 figure 1 official aprende en casa youtube channel (november 8, 2021) digital learning during the covid-19 emergency context: did aprende en casa work? to understand how aprende en casa contributed to the spread of digital learning and the implementation of the educational digital agenda, this report presents the analysis of an exploratory study that consisted of three semi-structured interviews. the interviewees for this inquiry were a leader of the aprende en casa strategy at sep, the director of a basic education public school in tijuana, northern mexico, and the director of a private preschool establishment in mexico city. the interviews were conducted from february to august 2021 and centered on each interviewee's perspectives according to their professional standpoint. this report presents the results according to three topics that complemented each other among the interviews: the duty of the state as the main provide of education, the progress and setbacks in the use of technologies for educational purposes, and the factors that define the digital divide in mexico. findings suggest that the digital divide in mexico cannot be merely understood as the access to devices and the internet that the us national telecommunications and information administration (ntia) defined in 1999, but as a holistic set of factors that intervene in the use of technologies: internet and mobile, social class, economic capital, emotions and perceptions, and public policy, results which are very much in line with robinson et al. (2015). these factors interact within an already unequal society whose educational backbone is its secretary of education, but whose implementation burden ultimately lies on the teaching staff. the research findings are discussed below. the state as education provider the fact that sep was conceived of and still acts as a paternalist institution that regulates national education allowed mexico to respond quickly to the emergency situation. in quezada morales current issues in comparative education 208 march, 2020, sep was able to set up aprende en casa in a timely manner based on two main axes: national curricula and textbooks. because sep delivers textbooks to all schools in mexico in elementary school, and because all teachers are familiarized with them and the national curricula for each subject, aprende en casa could function according to expected learning outcomes (personal communication, february 13, 2021). in its early stage, the strategy was organized by cycles – 1st and 2nd grades, 3rd and 4th grades, and 5th and 6th grades –, and national textbooks were also available online, so the whole curriculum was available from the beginning. as the 2019-2020 school year came to an end, aprende en casa 2 was divided into grades (personal communication, february 13, 2021). sep also made use of @prende.mx, which was already working on the digitalization of education, and which was synchronized with television and radio to reach out to marginalized or rural areas. according to the interviewee at sep (personal communication, february 13, 2021), the strategy was created based on a 95% of the country’s population having access to television. it follows that television played a key role at the aprende en casa 2 and 3 stages: lesson plans were being provided for all subjects in all grades, per week, following a normal school schedule, and with accompanying video shows made by curriculum developers and professional script writers to ensure content delivery, but also in an effective and fun way. in other words, the complete national curricula for pre-school, primary, and secondary school were filmed as shows that were transmitted by television, radio, and online via youtube. in those remote areas where children had no access to any of those means, sep made use of the existing booklets specially designed for tutoring in community areas produced by the national council for the promotion of education (consejo nacional de fomento educativo [conafe]). every week, 155 scripts for primary education and 70 scripts for secondary education were produced until july, 2021, when the filming of the learning objectives that comprise the national curriculum was completed (aprende.mx, 2021; personal communication, february 13, 2021). as mentioned earlier, the portal @aprende.mx includes links to live tv shows for lowerand upper-secondary education, many of which contain sign language translation, some of which are specific to digital culture, and all of which are available through open tv (see appendix b for a list of aprende.mx’s visual channels of promotion). as the interview from sep said, “this is a national strategy. it is not only the tv show, but all those elements so that the provision of education does not stop” (personal communication, february 13, 2021). sep, being a national institution, facilitated coordination at different levels of policymaking and implementation. first, sep presented the new contents of aprende en casa to state secretaries of education so that each state could know and be aware of what sep was offering, regardless of their own strategy. conaliteg.gob.mx is the government’s portal for the national free textbooks commission (comisión nacional de libros de texto gratuitos [conaliteg]) where both national and state textbooks are available in their digital versions. in addition, sep could invite teachers from all throughout the country to become curriculum developers and tv show hosts of the aprende en casa 2 and 3’s strategies (personal communications, february 13, 2021; february 16, 2021). further, the content of the video shows was revised by experts from other ministries, universities, and specialized institutions according to the subject tackled (e.g., the mexican academy of language reviewed content from the mother tongue subject shows, and input from the secretary of public health helped a create a new subject called healthy life). at the beginning, sep could even make deals with the private sector to use their own videos to complement aprende en casa, such as khan academy or slim foundation. the provision of learning in mexico during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 209 all these joint efforts were possible because sep could coordinate the strategy at the national level. technology use for educational purposes: progress and setbacks during the covid-19 pandemic, technology users realized that they were already communicating through icts, but that the emergency situation helped them start using them for education. as the director from the public school commented based on his interaction with teachers throughout the country and latin america (personal communication, february 16, 2021), the vast majority of the mexican population used facebook or whatsapp to talk to each other, but they never thought of using those tools to teach. when the pandemic came and teachers saw the need to stay in touch with their students, those communication channels became educational content transmitters. mobile internet providers played a big role in that shift since telcel and movistar, the country’s largest mobile telephone companies, made available 1usd dollar packages with unlimited access to facebook and whatsapp, facilitating in this way the use of aprende en casa and homework deliveries, while teachers posted aprende en casa’s youtube videos on facebook so students could access them from their phones (personal communication, february 16, 2021). further, teachers themselves began using resources beyond aprende en casa for class, to share among each other, and to create tutorials for other teachers to learn how to teach and communicate online. as the director of the public school said, “study plans and curricula, even before 2009, included the use of technologies…however, we hadn’t really gotten it, we’d never reflected on the importance of those technologies. from my point of view, teachers of basic education saw them from afar, as an ideal, as a requirement, but far”; later on, he added, “after the pandemic, we don’t see ourselves anymore without the digital skills that we’ve been using now” (personal communication, february 16, 2021). while teachers and educators were very resourceful during the pandemic and improved the digital skills of their students and their own, technology could not make up for thorough learning and communication. the directors of the public and private schools admitted to the lack of interaction within aprende en casa being an area for future work (personal communications, february 16, 2021; august 27, 2021). this drawback was more noticeable among younger students. in the private pre-school, for instance, the director strived to provide interaction to children to improve their motor, language, and socioemotional skills by teaching dance and sports on zoom when parents were at home, and by implementing a home school system inside children’s homes; conversely, the school noticed that newly admitted students to the 2021-2022 school year lagged behind in those skills because they had stayed at home and had not seen the need to speak, move, or interact (personal communication, august 27, 2021). even sep noticed that communication between teachers and their students had been uneven during the implementation of aprende en casa (see figure 2). the sep interviewee admitted, “how the child will learn is a different topic. there are many factors surrounding learning, but the secretary [sep] never has not stopped providing education” (personal communication, february 13, 2021). far from being interpreted as a sign of negligence, aprende en casa recognized its own pedagogical limits. therefore, although many connectivity and technology issues were addressed and improved in mexico, the national strategy could not – and was not designed to – replace in-person learning. quezada morales current issues in comparative education 210 figure 2 communication between basic education teachers and their students during the first period of aprende en casa3 defining the digital divide in mexican education because aprende en casa is a broad strategy that provides resources to all teachers and educators, many of them ventured inside the resources and are now using technologies, but it is not the case everywhere. this research hints at there being considerable gaps between the private and the public systems. in the two examples of schools for this report, teachers used whatsapp to communicate with parents and students; however, many private schools seem to have opted for zoom to keep some form of interaction (personal communications, february 16, 2021; august 27, 2021). further, the director from the private school mentioned using an online drive to share tutorials and resources with parents (personal communication, august 27, 2021) but, in other regions of mexico, teachers were not so inclined to use technologies, perhaps due to apathy (personal communication, february 16, 2021), or perhaps due to enduring issues with the national government. this was the case of teacher unions in the southwest of mexico, who demanded going back to in-person schooling (de todos modos…john te llamas, 2021). whatever the reasons for using technology to teach may be, the digital divide in mexican education was first defined by the will of teachers and educators to incorporate digital resources into their teaching. another element that defines the digital divide in mexico is, indeed, the economic factor. first, during the pandemic, some parents who were paying for private basic education for their children moved them to public schools because classes were not in person, and they 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 ag ua sc al ie nt es ba ja c al ifo rn ia ba ja c al ifo rn ia s ur ca m pe ch e co ah ui la co lim a ch ia pa s ch ih ua hu a du ra ng o gu an aj ua to gu er re ro hi da lg o ja lis co m ex ic o ci ty m ex ic o st at e m ic ho ac an m or el os na ya rit nu ev o le on o ax ac a pu eb la q ue re ta ro q ui nt an a ro o sa n lu is po to si si na lo a so no ra ta ba sc o ta m au lip as tl ax ca la ve ra cr uz yu ca ta n za ca te ca s pe rc en ta ge o f t ea ch er s i n th e su rv ey state communication between basic education teachers and their students during the first period of aprende en casa constant interrupted and low participation almost nonexistent the provision of learning in mexico during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 211 considered that their investment was not paying off (personal communication, february 16, 2021). in the case of the private school, the director admitted to having a hard time to keep the school in service because parents thought that it was not worth investing on preschool (personal communication, august 27, 2021). in other words, regardless of social status, many parents preferred not to spend money on education during the pandemic. second, the director of the public school mentioned that state and regional policies played a part in the use of technologies because not all states invested on their provision. in his state, which is located in northern mexico, policymakers decided to provide google classroom to teachers so these could google suite, but not all states invested in providing those resources (personal communication, february 16, 2021). states also had the choice to implement different platforms, such as mexico city and its platform aprendeencasa.mx, so not all states approached technology in the same way. third, as of february 13, 2021, at the time of the interview with sep, there was no consensus between different state actors on a national strategy to even improve connectivity. as a result, the degree to which technologies were applied to education varied across national contexts and were widely driven by economic factors. if the digital divide in mexican education was reduced, teachers and school directors played a big part in the process. it was thanks to teachers that video shows could be created (personal communication, february 13, 2021); some school directors who accompanied teachers throughout the digital adaptation and capacity building process saw their schools evolve into the digital era (personal communication february 16, 2021); some school directors who were preoccupied with providing high-quality education looked into practices abroad to make sure that their digital strategies were meeting international standards (personal communication, august 27, 2021). regardless of the type of institution, directors who saw the importance and usefulness of using digital resources to solve problems in class pushed their staff to a digital era in education; likewise, some teachers were able to implement icts and lkt not only to communicate, but to have their students become familiar with other uses of technology. in that sense, the digital divide in mexico is defined by the drive of its educational leaders. conclusions internationally and nationally, aprende en casa was a very successful strategy. mexico was one of the very few cases that did not stop providing education during the pandemic and who offered a comprehensive platform divided by level, grade, subject and weekly schedules for teaching, with lesson plans, additional resources, and files of experiences that gathered all the knowledge accumulated during the pandemic so teachers could track their students’ progress. it was a national effort that brought together several sectors and levels of experts, and which was praised and supported by unicef to meet international standards; countries throughout latin america, the caribbean, and even japan approached mexico to find out more about their system (personal communication, february 13, 2021). by early 2021, out of 250,000 teachers who randomly took a survey available on aprende en casa, 64% affirmed using the strategy (personal communication, february 13, 2021). even during the 2021-2022 school year, sep and @aprende.mx continued improving digital content in education (once noticias, 2021). in that sense, aprende en casa contributed to meeting most technological goals of the educational digital agenda and the new mexican school. despite aprende en casa’s coverage success, better connectivity and ict infrastructure, as well as the implementation of ltks do not define alone the digital divide. indeed, digital learning resources were produced, but access and social use developed unevenly throughout the country. the survey by sep mentioned above indicated that television is quezada morales current issues in comparative education 212 still more widely used that the internet (personal communication, february 13, 2021), and that traditional gaps such as urban and rural connectivity, or private and public access to resources, still played a part in the use of technologies and the learning process. with regard to the latter, policymakers and implementers realistically knew that students would lag behind because neither teachers nor in-person schooling can be replaced (personal communications february 13, 2021; february 16, 2021). however, it is not the gap between learning outcomes and the core curriculum that stands out, but the gap between those policymakers who invest on digital education and those who do not, and the gap between those teachers and directors who will push the country towards a digital era in education, and those who cannot because they lack the means or knowledge, or whose social context demands prioritizing other more immediate needs such as infrastructure, salary raises, or the reduction of violence. in mexico, the digital divide depends on will and drive. as some schools reopened on august 30, 2021, and returning to school was voluntary (ledezma, 2021), state and national governments, students, parents, teachers, and the country overall, will have the opportunity to continue reflecting upon how to make the best use of digital learning. notes [1] national and state textbooks are available in digital format at conaliteg.gob.edu.mx [2] for instance, mexico city implemented its own platform, laescuelaencasa.mx (retrieved november 3, 2021). [3] this graph was presented by sep at a general meeting with mexico’s secretaries of each state. the approximate number of teachers who took the survey is 18,387,00. data for baja california sur, chiapas, michoacán, nayarit, nuevo león, oaxaca, and querétaro were missing at the time of the data collection. acknowledgements the author would like to thank the school directors and the leader at sep, who kindly accepted to participate in this project, and for their additional feedback and material. thanks as well to those who enabled the author to contact the interviewees, and to those who provided input on the methodology of the reports. may this series of reports be useful to you. last, the author would like to thank cice, the authors and reviewers for their contributions to this special issue's report section, and marcella winter, co-principal investigator of the project. romina quezada morales is a doctoral candidate in international and comparative education, political science concentration, at teachers college, columbia university. her academic background is a combination of linguistics and international politics. her current research analyzes the participation of indigenous peoples in education, with a focus on latin america. romina has worked for several international institutions, organizations and diplomatic bodies, focusing on language, culture and education. since 2018, romina has been serving as coordinator of the k-12 outreach program and the americas dialogue on education policy initiative at the institute of latin american studies, columbia university. the provision of learning in mexico during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 213 references allan. 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(2019). perfil de país. méxico. retrieved august 25, 2021, mexico_25_09_19.pdf (unesco.org) sistema de información de tendencias educativas en américa latina. (2020). méxico. perfil de educación. retrieved august 24, 2021, from perfil del pais | siteal (unesco.org) image credits figure 1. sep. (2021, november 8). taken from aprende en casa’s youtube channel on november 8, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/c/aprendeencasa figure 2. sep. (2021). taken from personal communication, february 13, 2021. quezada morales current issues in comparative education 216 appendix a national plans and digital resources made available by sep and used during the covid19 pandemic (as of november, 2021) • aprende en casa. (november, 2021). https://www.aprendeencasa.sep.gob.mx • aprende en casa sep. (november, 2021). https://www.youtube.com/aprendeencasa • aprende mx. (november, 2021). https://www.gob.mx/aprendemx • national and state textbooks (comisión nacional de libros de texto gratuitos [conaliteg]). (november, 2021). http://www.conaliteg.sep.gob.mx appendix b aprende.mx channels of visual education promotion (as of november, 2021) level type of channel name of channel link or frequency various internet youtube: televisión educativa https://www.youtube.com/c/tveducativamx various internet facebook: televisión educativa @tveducativamx various internet twitter: @tveducativamx various internet instragram: televisión educativa @tveducativamx various television ingenio tv 14.2 open television; red edusat primary television aprende en casa, primary education 11.2 open television (canal once); red edusat teacher training television capacita tv* red edusat lowersecondary television aprende en casa, secondary education 24 (red edusat) lowersecondary television telesecundaria 11 (red edusat) lowersecondary television telesecundaria + red edusat uppersecondary television telebachillerato 17 (red edusat) *in november 2021, the government online portal for capacita tv was unavailable at https://aprende.gob.mx/canales/capacitatv sources: @prende.mx (2021); edusat (2021); expansión política (2021). wijetunga, m. (2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 who made the yardstick? an oppressed critique of the comparative and the international minoli wijetunga university of oxford, united kingdom university of colombo, sri lanka …the field of ‘post-colonial’ discourse has been defined in ways which can still leave out indigenous peoples, our ways of knowing and our current concerns. (smith, 2012) there are two main ways in which comparative research is done: the yardstick comparison and the venn comparison (sobe, 2018). attempting comparative research with a yardstick in hand raises the problem of who created the yardstick; answer being america or a select european country, by the virtue of resource distribution. with venn comparison, the researcher is often located outside the circles, thus holding a position of power. comparative learning, of course, is essential. however, in the methodological approach that is commonly seen in the field, “apples and oranges can be easily compared provided that we see them both as ‘fruit.’” (sobe, 2018, p. 333); yet, what about the tomatoes? *** in the pedagogy of the oppressed, freire (1972, p. 10) identifies two distinct stages of the humanist and libertarian pedagogy: one, where the oppressed “unveil the world of oppression” to commit themselves to its transformation; and the second, where the pedagogy of the oppressed “becomes a pedagogy of all people.” this essay is an attempt at the first stage, to unveil an aspect of the world of oppression that exists in comparative and international education (cie). it does so through two parallel arguments: one, through the exploration of definitions of cie, and two, through analyzing the speeches of two cie society presidents delivered over a decade apart. the surest way of critiquing a field is to compare its definition with its use; yet, with cie the one thing comparativists agree upon is that there is no singular definition. if language defines thought (wittgenstein, 1992), and definitions give shape to concepts, the lack of a singular definition leads one to assume that each practitioner would understand, and therefore, conceptualize comparative and international in education differently. thus, the only way for an outsider to understand what is meant by comparative and international in education is to look at the field in practice. however, when the field is an uneven playing field, and “the clamor” is “for the immediate comprehensibility by the ideological average” and “not for clarity” (spivak, 2003), the practice becomes one that gives voice to the hegemony and pretends to give voice to the subaltern that cannot speak. hegemonic, in the course of this paper, assumes a wider definition. while imperialism is one form of hegemonic exercise, the term also encompasses other forms of power © 2021, wijetunga. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 178-182. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en who made the yardstick? current issues in comparative education 179 imbalances including economic expansion, the subjugation of the ‘other’, and as a discursive field of knowledge. it follows the definitions put forth by smith (2012) in “decolonizing methodologies”. thus, this essay oscillates between colonial power as well as modes of neocolonialism. it approaches the world as one that is entrenched in an imbalance of power to argue that the current practices of cie aid in the perpetuation of this imbalance using ross (2002), and sobe (2018). the idea that cie is hegemonic, that it perpetuates power imbalances – be it imperialism, gender inequality or racial discrimination – is not a new idea. ross (2002) notes the need to “conceptualize the ways lives mesh, transmitting direction and power” while sobe (2018) stresses that “our comparativist present is also contoured and shadowed by spectres of past[...] all of which arguably continues in full force today”. ross’ (2002) presidential address is colored by the tragic events of 9/11, thus calling more loudly than ever to evoke an ethics of care in the research to create a level playing field. over a decade later, sobe finds the field’s work equally disturbing; these disturbances are furthered by the emergence of big data – yet another tool that can easily be co-opted to further silence the subaltern. for, sobe (2018) writes, “comparison is not just an academic technique, but a style of thought and action located in particular time-spaces” (p. 334). therefore, from explorative age to the post-explorative (sobe, 2018) these issues have remained. as sadler’s famous quotes says, cie approached the world as a garden of education systems, home-grown and cautioning against ad-hoc borrowing (cited in bereday, 1964). however, this also posited that comparative education fundamentally was about countries, systems, and comparing them (klerides, 2015). practitioners approaching education shaped by the words of sadler and the garden lend a hand in defining the term cie. unaware of the ways in which greenhouses have been created just to grow certain plants; willfully oblivious to the ways in which exotic imports and financially sound exports work in a globalized world, they operate within this narrow definition of cie, thus contributing to the hegemonic nature of its conceptualization. takayama et al. (2017) identified four major textbooks in the field: comparative education: the dialectic of the global and the local (arnove et al., 2013); comparative education: exploring issues in international context (kubow & fossum, 2007); cie: issues for teachers (bickmore et al., 2017); and cie: an introduction to theory, method and practice (phillips & schweisfurth, 2014). this is the introduction a novice to the field has, the overview they receive. these textbooks speak of a history that starts with travellers’ tales through to quantitative research. a common feature they all share, though, is the nature of the history: it is anglo-european, relegating the other parts of the world to either the subject of benevolent bestowing of knowledge or completely invisible. although bickmore et al. (2017) note the existence of chinese scholarship, it is not in the same vein as the other; on the other hand, with china being an emerging (or emergent, as some may argue) global superpower, it is evident of the expansion of the hegemony than the presence of the subaltern. phillips and schweisfurth (2014) note that in common usage comparative studies are “associated with the western industrialized world”, and international education “implies the study of education in all its forms in the developing world”, thus creating a binary. while they are firm in distancing themselves from these definitions by calling them “absurd” and “wrong”, an alternative definition has not been forthcoming. instead, these textbooks focus on the practice, the subject, and the methodology which are problematic in their own way. this is not to say that the founders of cie have been focused on the ideology of this independent system. kandel, for example, stresses the importance of context, advocating wijetunga current issues in comparative education 180 for an inclusive approach. this is a view furthered by later scholars in the field like bray and epstein (takayama et al., 2017). the field, indeed, attempts to be inclusive. the world council of comparative education societies (wcces), for example, has 41 comparative education societies registered on their website covering considerable global geography from india to kazakhstan to haiti to israel. yet, which societies are the most funded, the most celebrated, and more importantly, which societies are spoken of the most with scholars entering the field of cie? reflecting on her term with the wcces, hicklinghudson (2007) notes the lack of asian and african representation in the international fora. yet, the best-known comparative education society would be cies, its work, conferences, and members being prominent scholars in the field. if the disinterest noted by hicklinghudson (2007) is to be taken as an indication of their disengagement with an introspective attempt to be inclusive, it can be concluded that there is a clear imperial power in knowledge production of cie. therein lies the discrepancy, which supports the notion that cie as a field is hegemonic. the world is now approaching, or arguably in the middle of, what sobe (2018) calls the post-exploratory era, defined by big data. as a science, big data has not penetrated the field of cie to a significant extent; but it is only a matter of time. with the ease of comparing large amounts of data to provide “comprehensible” conclusions is the erasure of diversity, of plurality, and the contextual knowledge. as multiple scholars have pointed out, the place of origin in big data will further the discrimination and the power imbalance that exists in the world (boyd & crawford, 2012; crawford et al., 2014; nadege, 2018; baldo, 2019; thomas, 2020). production of data, and the data that is accepted as legitimate, are primarily western concepts. thus, certain countries and communities in the global south would not have what is considered ‘legitimate data’. therefore, it is imperative that the field of cie takes a revisionist approach to the comparative and the international, to attempt at balancing the scales. whichever the epistemology that is used to counter the power imbalance, if there is an attempt to approach comparison as a “coconstructing” (sobe, 2018), progress could be made. cie presents itself as one that is inclusive and diverse; it presents as a field of study that is equal. yet, a critical look at the practice of cie, specifically in terms of knowledge production, exposes its hegemonic nature. from the textbooks to societies, from theorizing to methodology, elements of hegemonic nature persist. the practitioners in the field are not oblivious to this, though, as elaborated by several cies presidential addresses spanning decades tackle this problem. this gives hope for a transformation of the field, to one that is not merely inclusive but is pluralistic. in encouraging this transformation, the field would move one step closer to contributing towards “the process of permanent liberation” (freire, 1972, p. 10) of all people. acknowledgements the author wishes to acknowledge chevening scholarships, the uk government’s global scholarship program, funded by the foreign, commonwealth and development office (fcdo) and partner organizations which funded the author’s studies at the university of oxford, during which this essay was produced. minoli wijetunga is a sri lankan scholar completing her msc education (comparative and international education) at the university of oxford. she is also a researcher affiliated to the digital humanities laboratory, university of colombo, sri lanka. her research interests focus on a global south approaches to education theorizing and practice. who made the yardstick? current issues in comparative education 181 references arnove, r., torres, c., & franz, s. (2013). comparative education: the dialectic of the global and the local (fourth ed.). lanham, maryland. baldo, b. (2019). visibility and secrecy: data protection, privacy and gender in pakistan. genderit.org. https://www.genderit.org/articles/visibility-and-secrecy-dataprotection-privacy-and-gender-pakistan bereday, g. (1964). sir michael sadler's study of foreign systems of education. comparative education review, 7(3), 307-314. bickmore, k., hayhoe, r., manion, c., mundy, k., & read, r. (2017). comparative and international education: issues for teachers (second ed.). toronto. boyd, d., & crawford, k. (2012). critical questions for big data: provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon. information, communication & society, 15(5), 662-679. crawford, k., gray, m. l., & miltner, k. (2014). big data, critiquing big data: politics, ethics, epistemology, special section introduction. international journal of communication, 8, 10. freire, p. (1972). pedagogy of the oppressed. herder and herder. hickling-hudson, a. (2007). improving transnational networking for social justice: 20012004. in massmann, v, bray, m, & manzon, m. (eds.), common interests, uncommon goals: histories of the world council of comparative education societies and its members. (pp. 69-82) springer. klerides, e. (2015). (de)constructing modalities of thinking about comparative education through video-use. research in comparative and international education, 10(3), 337-353. kubow, p., & fossum, p. (2007). comparative education: exploring issues in international context (second ed.). upper saddle river, nj. nadege. (2018). keywords of the internet: the fraying edges of algorithmic production. genderit.org. https://www.genderit.org/feminist-talk/keywords-internetfraying-edges-algorithmic-production phillips, d., & schweisfurth, m. (2014). comparative and international education: an introduction to theory, method, and practice (second ed.). london; new york. ross, h. (2002). the space between us: the relevance of relational theories to comparative and international education. comparative education review, 46(4), 407432. wijetunga current issues in comparative education 182 smith, l. t. (2012). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). london. sobe, n. w. (2018). problematizing comparison in a post-exploration age: big data, educational knowledge, and the art of criss-crossing. comparative education review, 62(3), 325-343. spivak, g. (2003). can the subaltern speak? die philosophin, 14(27), 42-58. takayama, k., sriprakash, a., & connell, r. (2017). toward a postcolonial comparative and international education. comparative education review, 61(s1), s1-s24. thomas, r. (2020). citizen data and freedom: the fears of people living with hiv in india. genderit.org. https://www.genderit.org/articles/citizen-data-and-freedom-fearspeople-living-hiv-india wittgenstein, l. (1922). tractus logico-philosophicus. (c. k. ogden, trans.) routledge & kegan paul ltd. world council of comparative education societies. (n.d.) current members. online. https://wcces-online.org/current-members.php © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 35 the consequences of neo-liberalism on the educational prospects of latin american youth dra. adriana puiggrós universidad de buenos aires, argentina the category generally termed "latin american youth" encompasses distinct multiple social and cultural sectors. in the 1960s, this category included a spectrum of young people--from those who received a university education comparable to that of their upper class european and north american counterparts, to those educated in indigenous communities, to those who dropped out of school at an early age. this spectrum reflected roughly the power hierarchy of the social groups to which these young people belonged, but public education was becoming more widespread and fewer teenagers were marginalized from society. steady economic growth grounded in development programs made it possible to predict a future in which young people would have access to education and full employment. the progressive programs of the 1960s and early 70s assumed that latin america was simply an underdeveloped region that required external stimuli in order to increase education efficiency, as well as overcome economic and social inequality. if that prognosis had been correct, today the majority of latin american youth would have a common basic education, and educational advancement or access to higher education would, in large part, not be determined by social class but rather by differences in taste, preferences, talents, and vocations (puiggros, february 1997). neo-liberal policies the present situation is different though due to the implementation of neo-liberal policies throughout the region. however, there are those who still believe the current economic model will help poor countries and they argue the following: the current development model has placed new demands on both citizens and the state. globally-integrated, open economies require an internationally competitive work force, strong in science and technology. with the return to democracy after military dictatorships, people have made new demands on public services at the same time that government needs its citizens to be more informed and responsible. the decentralization of public administration puts more emphasis on participation, autonomy and civic responsibility at the local level (puryear & brunner, 1994). latin american countries will be hard-pressed to meet these challenges, given the interest they must pay on the growing foreign debt, the policies cutting state services (not only those that originated in the welfare state, but those that were part of the late 19th-century liberal state), the region's inferior position in the global economy, and the great mass of latin americans who have been discarded by deindustrialization. more than half of all argentine workers, either unemployed or underemployed, eke out a living in the informal economy. traditional full-time work with stable contracts is increasingly rare. only one-third of the work force earns a fixed salary with social benefits (instituto nacional de estadística y censo, 1997, p. 116). [1] regional markets dra. adriana puiggrós 36 april 30, 1999 have been crushed and commercial circuits remain limited to a narrow sector of wealthy people. between october 1996 and may 1997, the richest 10 percent of the argentine population earned 37.1 percent of the national income, while the poorest 10 percent earned a paltry 1.6 percent. in other words, the richest earned 23 times more than the poorest. [2] furthermore, during 1998, an official inquiry situated the income of the poorest 10 percent at 1.5 percent. this implies that the situation of the poorest people suffered a new setback. it is important to consider that 55 percent of the argentine workforce earns less than $700 a month, an amount insufficient to cover the cost of "basic basket of goods and services" (instituto nacional de estadística y censo, 1998). while social demands have increased, public resources have not. in the case of education, big cutbacks in public funding, in combination with an increase in poverty have eliminated any possibility of either improving the competitiveness of the work force or encouraging scientific and technological developments. today, hundreds of thousands of young people are excluded from both the educational system and the labor market. secondary and post-secondary education has become more elitist as governments follow the directives of the world bank, which throughout the 1990s, advised the state to shift funding from higher education to primary schooling. as a result, the quality of public education at secondary and post-secondary levels has deteriorated significantly, while private institutions for the elite have mushroomed. differences in education equality and access among latin american youth have widened dramatically. there are profound quantitative and qualitative differences between the education young people received in the former educational system as compared to that received by youth today. because of such changes, we are confronted with several theoretical and practical problems. we need to create programs capable of getting young people excited about study, work and, above all, the possibilities for their own future. in addition, young people should be trained in order to both enter the workforce and also assume their responsibilities as democratic citizens. twenty years ago, most latin american youth worked and studied according to their social class and culture. many left home for urban centers in order to start independent lives, participate in sports (from soccer in the streets to tennis in exclusive clubs), attend traditional festivals, movies, and watch television. many were also politically active, the middle class predominantly in party politics and the organized working class in the labor movement. today, most of these activities are no longer open to young people. moreover, the unemployment rate is particularly high among youth. in buenos aires and its former industrial corridor, unemployment among people between the ages of 15 and 19 shot up from 15 percent in 1991 to 42.4 percent in may, 1997. among people between the ages of 20 and 34, the unemployment rate has climbed from 7.6 percent to 17.1 percent in the same time period (instituto nacional de estadística y censo, 1998, p. 176). the majority of these young people are unemployed, underemployed or trapped in socalled garbage contracts. discriminated against by employers, they do not have access to the consequences of neo-liberalism on the educational prospects of latin american youth current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 37 job training to improve their competitiveness in the workforce. those young people who do have jobs earn low wages. meanwhile, the unemployment rate among argentine women is climbing, from 6.5 percent in may 1991 to 21.1 percent in may 1997, while unemployment among men is also rising, from 5 percent to 14.4 percent over the same period (instituto nacional de estadística y censo, 1998, p. 176). hence young people are also taking menial jobs to supplement falling household incomes. neglecting youth many youth who leave school temporarily for work could be recovered by the school system. however, there are no mechanisms to make up for lost learning. moreover, college accreditation is based on standards of a typical fordist model (homogeneity of academic models, little access to long-distance learning, no legal changes in financial aid or accreditation for formal or informal learning or for schooling acquired in scattered periods), pushing the poorest into the informal system or tertiary activities where most end up frustrated. [3] furthermore, millions of young people are excluded not only from the income generating workforce, but more importantly, from the learning experience that results from work. authors such as john dewey and hanna arendt have discussed differences between exploitative child labor practices and work as a learning experience for children. this distinction continues to be valid today, although experts in pedagogy and educational planning have not taken it sufficiently into account. in work inspired by arendt regarding exploitative child labor practices in india, scholars proposed creative work as an alternative paradigm to the traditional dichotomy of exploited labor on the one hand and the rejection of child labor on the other. this semantic difference can be useful in the analysis of latin american youth in the present era. many of the region's young people have been denied creative work or the possibility of getting the education they need to do creative work. for this to change, there would have to be an equitable distribution of goods and services instead of the immense inequality that typically characterizes neo-liberal societies. most young people lacking in training or work are destined to wander in the streets of latin america's overpopulated cities, with little chance to organize politically and fight for radical change. although the situation for poor women is in many respects the most dramatic, they have benefited from cultural changes. in a study conducted by the antiguas caribbean family planning affiliation, the results of which are applicable to the entire region, researchers found that until recently, early pregnancies were an important factor in the school system's rejection of young women. today, however, young girls are less limited by early pregnancies and colleges are accepting them. it is important to emphasize that the most successful educational programs for youth have job-training components. in rosario, argentina, school officials found it difficult to motivate young people to complete their secondary education; yet after they added a job-training program, completion rates increased significantly. since the beginning of the 90s, the educational efficiency of secondary schooling has dra. adriana puiggrós 38 april 30, 1999 markedly worsened in certain regions. from 1994 to 1996, the number of students who repeated grades grew significantly in 18 provinces. in buenos aires, the number of students who had to repeat a grade rose from 6.3 percent to 8.84 percent. in the province of córdoba, the number rose from 7.6 percent to 9.27 percent. in the northeastern province of chaco, the number doubled from 6.9 percent to 12.85 percent. this dramatic increase of repetition rates in certain regions widens the gap in educational quality between the affluent and poor provinces. at the extremes, the province of san juan had a 7.71 percent repetition rate while neuquén had a 14.84 percent rate. furthermore, 57.8 percent of argentine adolescents between the ages of 14 and 17 from households below the poverty line do not attend school (either never attended or dropped out), compared to 26.3 percent of adolescents from households above the poverty line. likewise, only 14.7 percent of poor adolescents from this age group still attend primary school, compared to 26.3 percent of more affluent adolescents. twentyseven and a half percent of poor adolescents (14-17 years) attend secondary school, versus 69 percent of more affluent adolescents. this polarization of adolescents is also evident in the fact that poor teenagers are more likely to drop out for good. moreover, the increase in the drop-out rate is greater among poor teenagers than middle-class and rich teenagers. in argentina, carlos saúl menem's government reformed education laws in 1993 and 1995 in accordance with the world bank's directives, giving priority to basic education over secondary and post-secondary education. upper grades of secondary school were closed and the eighth and ninth grades were added to primary school. as a result, the age mix within the schools has changed: teenagers and young children are attending the same schools, with the same school organization and teaching methods. problems typical of adolescents, including drug use, have begun to show up in younger children. in some places, coursework has been hindered by teenagers coming to school hungry. for example, in schools in the province of córdoba, the ritual daily salute to the flag had to be postponed until after the teens were given breakfast because students were fainting. in schools in poor communities, as in many secondary schools, teachers are confronting the problems of an alienated teenage population, including drug-dealing and deep despair. undermining higher education as a result of these education policies, latin american countries are producing fewer professionals, scientists and technical experts, which in turn undermines the basic research and technology that are indispensable for economic and social development. in the 1990s, neo-liberal technocrats created a battery of organizational forms, salary structures and value tables to measure the performance of teachers, researchers and students. they tried to apply the same productivity criteria in all countries, especially to large universities. a cost-benefit evaluation of output became a way to control educational demand, the goal being the reduction of investment in public higher education. not all latin american countries are alike. governments' capacities to negotiate, as well as pressures from university students and faculty, were important factors in determining the level of cutbacks. in the case of mexico, professors have been required the consequences of neo-liberalism on the educational prospects of latin american youth current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 39 to assume heavier course loads yet their salaries have not kept up with cost-of-living increases (diaz barriga & pacheco mendez, 1997). however, that country's inclusion in the north american free trade agreement (nafta) allowed it to maintain its national universities. the inter-american development bank, and other banks, have financed university infrastructure, technology and programs to improve the quality of teaching (maldonaldo, 1997). mexico's integration was different than that of canada or the united states. first, its subordinate place in nafta reflected the powerful influence of foreign economic interests on the country's approach to education policy and scientific research. second, the mexican public university system has a long nationalist tradition. as a result, some of the government's reform efforts met with strong resistance from students and teachers. opportunities for higher education in mexico decreased due to poverty and government policy. compared with the rest of latin american however, mexican universities remain more intact. in brazil and uruguay private institutions of higher education have expanded while in the rest of south america, officials have over-estimated the capacity of the educational market to regulate the supply and demand of higher education. as a result, they have neglected to develop the sort of master planning that is indispensable if higher education systems are to grow and become more democratic. argentina has failed to make higher education more efficient in the neo-liberal sense or to create a high-quality, democratic university system. universities can be divided into three groups according to the size of their student population: between 100 and 10,000 students; between 10,000 and 30,000 students; and between 40,000 and 185,000 students. the university of buenos aires is the largest with more than 200,000 students. on the outskirts of buenos aires, national and local political groups have created new universities that are not intended to grow beyond 3,000 to 5,000 students. lack of planning has also affected the criteria for financial aid to students. public universities in the region have traditionally been free or publicly subsidized. due to the economic decline of the middle class, to which the great majority of students belong, universities cannot charge fees, except for some specific services. there is a lack of diverse funding sources such as private payment, funds or scholarships from outside sources, or subsidies based on income. furthermore, university work study programs frequently exploit the labor of students under the guise of apprenticeship or training (instituto programático de la alianza, 1998). the mercosur countries need to resolve the problem of higher education, not only in order to compete in the international arena, but also to maintain internal balance. relations between brazil, whose economy is the most developed, and the rest of the countries in the region depend in large part on the ability of these latter countries to educate their lower classes. the political and social stability of these countries is tied to the democratic modernization of their educational systems, including training for both labor skills and specific jobs. these educational reforms must take place within the wider context of a development program and a more equitable distribution of gdp. higher education should be linked to that development program and to scientific and dra. adriana puiggrós 40 april 30, 1999 technological research (international commission for education for the xxi century, 1996). conclusion at the threshold of a new century, the world bank's education policies have not produced the expected results. the whole system has been weakened without achieving a real improvement in the quality of basic education. decentralization has introduced disorder, not efficiency, in educational systems, creating serious problems for societies that are growing poorer and more indebted (senén gonzález & arango, 1996). the 1995 delors report, (a report on the jomtien conference on education for all), states that it is important to guarantee a secondary education that will adequately prepare students for university level education while diversifying the supply side of advanced education. the report also reaffirms the important role that institutes of advanced learning and universities play. although constrained, the report represents the progress of the corrections that international agencies are beginning to make as part of the recent relative retreat of orthodox neo-liberalism. the advance of labor and social-democratic movements in europe has its parallel in latin america, with victories in big cities such as montevideo (frente amplio), san pablo (workers party), mexico city (prd), and buenos aires and rosario (partido alianza). these new movements are discussing national and regional programs to confront the region's educational problems, including the crucial ones that shall have even greater impact in the not so distant future: youth, work and free time. notes [1] these precarious contracts remove stability, vacations, social security and other benefits. in 1996, 6.1 percent of workers were employed in this way, and in april 1997 this number tripled, reaching 18.4 percent. in 1997 85 percent of those newly employed received jobs with these sorts of contracts (instituto nacional de estadística y censo, 1997, p. 116). [2] in 1974 the richest people, with 28 percent of the income, were earning 13 times more than the poorest people. in october 1990, the difference jumped to close to 15 times. since neo-liberal programs have been applied by menem's government, this difference has increased to 23 times. this disparity is even bigger if we consider that the bottom 60 percent of the population controlled 33.7 percent of the wealth in 1972 and only 16.6 percent in 1997. the richest portion of the population gained wealth at the expense of all the other segments of the population (instituto nacional de estadística y censo, 1997, p. 113). [3] in argentina nowadays, 40 percent of the children live in extreme poverty. every day 50 children under one year old die from poverty, malnutrition or bad hygienic conditions. more than 26,000 children are in state institutions, prisons or psychiatric clinics (unicef report, 1993). more than 4 million children and teenagers encounter daily the difficulties that arise from the small incomes of their families, the absence of psychoaffective stimulation, an extremely high school drop-out rate, limited access to health services, and the utter lack of any kind of stimulation for growth and individual affirmation (unicef, 1993; suteba, 1997). the consequences of neo-liberalism on the educational prospects of latin american youth current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 41 references díaz barriga, a. & pacheco mendez, t. 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(february, 1997). the trade-union organizations facing the social responsibility for education. american education confederation international education summit, work notebook n° 7, mexico. puryear, j. m. & brunner, j. j. (1994). una agenda para la reforma educacional en américa latina y el caribe. washington d.c.: inter-american dialogue. senén gonzález, s. and arango, a. (1996). la descentralización en la reforma educativa argentina ¿política educativa o política fiscal? ponencia presentada al i congreso interamericano del clad sobre reforma del estado y de la administración pública. rio de janeiro. november 7-9. suteba [education trade union from the province of buenos aires] (1997). report fundaci on premia. internal report of grupo de trabajo de la sociedad. unicef (1993). situation report: argentina. buenos aires: united nations. le, h. m. language education and power in refugee camps current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 1, winter 2021 language, education, and power in refugee camps: a comparison of kakuma refugee camp (kenya) and thaimyanmar refugee camps hang m. le international education policy, university of maryland – college park while there is growing attention to language as a central issue in education for refugees, this policy area still appears to be dominated by an apolitical, technical, and instrumentalist perspective. through a comparison of language-in-education policies in two refugee camp contexts, kakuma refugee camp in kenya and the refugee camps along the thai-myanmar border, this paper demonstrates how language policies are always deeply political in nature. in refugee contexts in particular, language policies in education reflect and reproduce existing power dynamics that can exclude refugees from decisionmaking processes about their own future. in kakuma, language issues in education are decided by the international humanitarianism regime based on efficiency and costeffectiveness over the linguistic rights of the refugee community. even when refugees are in control in the thai-myanmar refugee camps, decisions over the language of instruction are still political choices that serve to exclude many people. introduction in the midst of a new global educational agenda that seeks to ‘leave no one behind’ in equal access to quality education, education for refugee children and youths has emerged as a key area of concern for international humanitarian and development actors (education cannot wait, 2017; education commission, 2016; global education monitoring [gem] report, 2018). recent policy discourse and practice in this area also signals a growing recognition that language is a central issue in refugee education, whether in pre-resettlement, post-resettlement, or repatriation settings (dryden-peterson et al., 2018; chopra & dryden-peterson, 2015). however, language policies in refugee education still appear to be predominantly treated as an apolitical, technical issue, where language competency and literacy is simply an instrumental tool to access more education and a better future. this paper is a comparative case study of language-in-education policies in two refugee camp contexts, kakuma refugee camp (kenya) and the various refugee camps along the thai-myanmar border, drawing on a review of the scholarly and grey literature on education in these contexts. with an explicit engagement with power dynamics in language planning in education, this paper highlights how language choices and policies in education are always deeply political in nature. in particular, in kakuma refugee camp, language issues in education are largely invisible with a de facto language policy that derives from the larger agenda of integration into the kenyan national education system. these decisions, made mainly by the international humanitarianism regime, point to an apolitical style of policy-making that privileges © 2021, le. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(1), 15-30. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en le current issues in comparative education 16 efficiency and cost-effectiveness over the linguistic rights of the refugee community. this in itself is also a political move as it reproduces an unequal power hierarchy with international aid agencies at the top and refugees at the bottom. however, even when refugees are in control of language-in-education policies such as in the thai-myanmar refugee camps, decisions over the language of instruction are still political choices that serve to exclude many people. though the nature of the power elite and their particular agendas differ between these refugee camp contexts, issues of language in education in these contexts are always tied to power, inclusion and exclusion, and contestation over what should be the future for refugees. given how language cuts across all dimensions of the human experience and the essential role that languages play in empowerment and development, it is important to elevate and prioritize language planning in refugee education and ensure that all community stakeholders are involved in decision-making. in the next section, i will provide a brief context of refugee education and review how language issues have been discussed in the refugee education literature. this is followed by the methodology section, which includes a description of the two camp contexts. the findings lay out the language issues in education in kakuma refugee camp and then in the thai-myanmar border camps. the article ends by discussing the importance of recognizing and prioritizing political deliberation over language-in-education policies in refugee education contexts. refugee education and language policies literature review context of refugee education distinct from development aid, the international humanitarianism regime is characterized by an emergency and medical approach that seeks to meet the basic physiological needs – food, water, sanitation, and shelter – of human beings caught in situations of active wars, conflicts, and displacement (malkki, 1995; pandolfi, 2003; rajaram & grundy-warr, 2004; ramadan, 2013). while education has always been in high demand among refugee populations, the provision of schooling has historically been neglected due to its awkward fit with this emergency medical humanitarianism approach favored by refugee assistance agencies (waters & leblanc, 2005). in a report commissioned by united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr) – the united nations (un) refugee agency and main international actor responsible for refugee protection – to chart future steps in policy and programming for refugee education, dryden-peterson (2011) observed, “[t]here is little evidence of tangible organizational commitment by unhcr to guarantee the right to quality education for refugee children and young people” (p. 9). for many years, unhcr did not have a single education officer. most humanitarian officers saw education as an area beyond the capacity of the institution, believing that education would invite a false sense of permanence in situations that should only be temporary. it was only at the beginning of the 21st century that education was recognized as a legitimate humanitarian need due to its link to psychosocial wellbeing, with schools becoming seen as healing spaces that can help refugee children return to the routines of daily life and recover from the trauma of displacement (waters & leblanc, 2005). language, education, and power in refugee camps current issues in comparative education 17 thus, for many years, refugee educational policies in countries of first asylum, where refugees await either repatriation or resettlement to other places such as the u.s. or australia, were quite ad hoc and dependent on the power dynamics in each setting. in many refugee camps, unhcr dictated that the education system would follow the curriculum of the refugees’ countries of origin, due to the belief that the refugee children would soon be repatriated when conflicts at home ended (waters & leblanc, 2005). however, the reality that displacement is always protracted eventually prompted a shift in unhcr’s educational policy towards promoting ‘national integration’ into the host countries’ education systems (unhcr, 2012). the rationale of ‘national integration’ is that the education systems in the host countries would already be established in terms of curriculum, teacher training, accreditation, and consequently would be able to provide a higher quality and more cost-effective education to refugee children. this, of course, ignores the fact that most refugees fleeing conflicts end up in neighboring countries that are also developing nation-states with their own educational issues. however, ‘national integration’ also appears to be the most favored approach by scholars and practitioners working in the field of education for refugees (dryden-peterson et al., 2018; gem, 2018). language in refugee education the impetus to support refugees’ quick integration into national education systems, many of them following languages other than the students’ home languages, has once again highlighted languages as a serious educational concern for refugee children and youth. language barriers and language acquisitions have always been prominent areas of educational research on refugee students in post-resettlement settings (kanno & varghese, 2010; loewen, 2003; watkins et al., 2012). in countries of first asylum, language has also been consistently identified as one of the main challenges to educational quality and student achievement (dryden-peterson, 2016; mendenhall et al., 2015). despite this recognition of language learning as a significant issue for refugee children and youth, on the whole, existing research and policies in refugee education have rarely addressed the need for explicit language planning and the formation of language-ineducation policies in refugee contexts. this planning would include decisions over which language(s) will be the language of instruction, how they will be taught, or how different languages will be promoted. the default position seems to be to promote learning the language(s) of the host countries, based on a simplistic instrumentalist view that this will have positive impact on refugees’ lives by enabling their integration into economies and societies (ameen & cinkara, 2018; mburu et al., 2004). for example, in the only place where ‘language’ appears on the unhcr’s global education strategy 2012-2016, it is to discuss ‘language training’ as one of the key activities to ensure that refugee children will learn better. more recently, the 2019 gem report with the theme of migration and displacement once again raises ‘limited language proficiency’ as one of the main obstacles that refugee students face in trying to integrate into a new education system. this conforms to a meta-framework in language policy-making that only conceives of language-as-problem, where the overarching concern is to solve the minority students’ lack of proficiency in the dominant language and promote their assimilation/integration into society (jong et al., 2016; ruíz, 1984). le current issues in comparative education 18 however, language acquisition is never neutral. it is not just a process of learning the standard grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and rules for usage as the functionalists would assume. rather, language acquisition is wrapped in a hierarchy of values attributed to its speakers, where the ‘right’ to speak and to be heard is rarely equally shared (bourdieu, 1991; norton & toohey, 2011). language choices are also deeply implicated in individuals’ sense of self, identities, and communities of belonging. in minority communities in particular, language practices can be a powerful reservoir for solidarity-building, enactment of agency, and contestation of power (valentine et al., 2008). as such, decisions over language-in-education policies are political choices that should be made after careful deliberation by all community stakeholders, rather than defaulting to a technical solution of teaching refugee’s language(s) to facilitate their integration into their new environments. while the political nature of languages and language maintenance in post-resettlement refugee communities has been highlighted in existing research (perry, 2008), such issues have rarely come up in work within preresettlement refugee camps. methodology this paper is a literature review of existing studies on education in two refugee encampment settings, kakuma and the thai-myanmar border. the two sites were chosen for this study because both are long-standing refugee camps in the world and have had enough research and knowledge produced about their education systems to enable a comparison of their language-in-education policies, despite the fact that these policies have rarely been the main focus of research in the field. kakuma refugee camp was established in 1992 in the poor and remote turkana region of kenya, where the semi-arid climate and bad soil conditions prevent any agricultural development attempts. originally established to serve sudanese refugees, the camp is now home to over 100,000 refugees of 21 different nationalities, the majority of whom are south sudanese and somali, though they can also be divided further along ethnolinguistic lines (lutheran world federation, 2015). the thai-myanmar border camps refer to a collection of nine refugee camps along the border between thailand and burma/myanmar.i by january 2021, an estimated number of 92,000 people still live in nine refugee camps (the border consortium, 2021). two of the camps in the north are predominantly karenni, while in the other seven camps, the karen are the majority – both are ethnic minorities in myanmar. nevertheless, just like in kakuma, each camp context is marked by considerable ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversities. those living in both kakuma and the thai-myanmar refugee contexts are subjected to severe limitation on their mobility and eligibility to work, and conditions of living in the camps are extremely dependent on international assistance. the sources reviewed include 70 peer-reviewed and grey publications, as well as policy documents, published in english from 1998-2020. i first conducted a database search on educational resource information center (eric) and education source with keywords related to the two refugee camps contexts and education and schooling. i also conducted a google search for the grey literature. additionally, i drew from the list of references to add to my literature review. these sources were examined for issues of language in language, education, and power in refugee camps current issues in comparative education 19 education for refugee children and youth (if discussed at all), and how decisions about languages are made or not made in each refugee camp context. as a literature review, this article is limited by its dependency on previous research, which can be dated. furthermore, it is also restricted by the limited space that other researchers had given to language planning, and my review was often an exercise of reading between and behind the lines. even so, through connecting various traces and arguments on language issues in previous publications, this literature review brings to the surface a lessdiscussed yet highly important policy area in refugee education. findings language-in-education planning in kakuma refugee camp although kakuma refugee camp has been running for over two decades, observers have commented that its education system is still barely functional. within the camp, there are now six preschools, ten primary schools, and one secondary school (wright & plasterer, 2012). this system is mainly managed by a network of international non-governmental organizations (i/ngos) and led by unhcr. as of 2014, refugee children are legally allowed to attend government-run schools outside of kakuma, but due to the costs, in reality only exceptional students are sponsored by ngos to do so. it has been estimated that nearly half of school-age refugee children and youths in kakuma remain out of school (bellino & dryden-peterson, 2018). for those still in school, the severe infrastructural limits mean that the average class size is 147, and in primary schools alone it is 156 (lutheran world federation, 2015). this is further compounded by other issues such as low educational achievement, high drop-out rate due to employment or marriage, and lack of training and support for teachers leading to high absenteeism. when schools were first established in kakuma refugee camp, most refugees and some administrators wanted to follow the sudanese curriculum (mareng, 2010). first, following the sudanese curriculum would prepare the children and adolescents to re-integrate into the education system once they return home to sudan. secondly, most of the teachers in the camp at the time had been trained in the arabic system and did not know either english or kiswahili to teach the kenyan curriculum. however, because any hope of finding gainful employment in kenya would require obtaining the kenyan certificate of primary education (kcpe) and the kenyan certificate of secondary education (kcse), schools in kakuma refugee camp decided to follow the kenyan curriculum, which also includes their language of instruction policy. mareng (2010) argued that this decision was highly influenced by unhcr’s preference. in addition to exacerbating the mismatch between students’ home languages and the languages of instruction in schools, this decision in effect stripped the already-qualified refugee teachers of the ability to teach, which was also one of the very few ways to earn an income in the camp. while the official kenyan language-in-education policy allows for the mother tongue as the language of instruction up to grade 3, in camp settings, refugee children must learn both kiswahili and english since grade 1. while refugee children originating from burundi and the democratic republic of congo have prior knowledge of kiswahili, they le current issues in comparative education 20 lack english proficiency and end up being placed in classes with younger children, thus falling behind in age-appropriate academic content (bellino & dryden-peterson, 2018; dryden-peterson, 2016). south sudanese and somali children tend to not meet the proficiency level required to do well in schools in both languages. this issue of proficiency is further exacerbated by whether their teachers are capable and/or willing to address the heterogeneous linguistic needs of their children. kenyan teachers in the camp have been shown to be resistant against shifting the curriculum to accommodate refugee students’ needs (bellino & dryden-peterson, 2018). refugee teachers can speak more languages but teach exclusively in english, no matter their actual level of english proficiency. moreover, given the lack of training and support that refugee teachers receive – most have had no more than five days of training – it is no surprise that refugee teachers have expressed difficulties with using their students’ home languages to support the acquisition of english and kiswahili (dryden-peterson et al., 2018; mendenhall et al., 2015). in this linguistically diverse environment, english has emerged as the lingua franca in education and social settings in general, which is not without the various problems associated with this dominance of a former colonial language (brock-utne, 2000). many ngo programs in kakuma share a common emphasis on english instruction to meet needs such as women empowerment, communication between community leaders and relevant authorities, professional development of refugee teachers, and out-of-school youths needing to re-enter the education system or obtain jobs (saucier, 2013; wright & plasterer, 2012). early childhood education programs also focus on providing early english instruction, which are typically identified by refugees as positive and valuable initiatives (mburu et al., 2004; perry, 2008). english is always discussed in a beneficial sense of a neutral language that serves to promote social integration within the camps and the educational achievement of refugee children. for example, an ngo staff noted the importance of english literacy in conflict resolution, “english helps leaders to come together and talk to understand each other, to appreciate one another, and therefore it becomes a tool of reconciliation – a tool of peace” (wright & plasterer, 2012, p. 47). however, anecdotes from refugees have shown how the hierarchy of languages in kakuma refugee camp, with english at the top, fuels rumors about unequal treatment of refugees based on language choices (perry, 2008). the lack of languages represented in the school system also means that many refugees lack print literacy in their home languages and instead have to rely on english for written communications, which poses quite a challenge for refugees’ attempts to protect not only their languages but a sense of normalcy, community, and belonging in what is already a reality of extreme loss and deprivation (arc centre of excellence for the dynamics of language, 2017; perry, 2008). language-in-education in the thai-myanmar border camps in contrast to the kakuma refugee camp, the thai-myanmar refugee camps have a relatively well-established education system that is almost entirely managed by the refugee communities themselves (maber, 2016; oh & van der stouwe, 2008).ii in the seven predominantly karen camps, 64 basic education schools, 22 438 students, 1 005 teachers (oh et al., 2019). additionally, in the two karenni camps in the north, there are also 11 schools. it is generally believed in the refugee community that access to education is equal language, education, and power in refugee camps current issues in comparative education 21 to everyone: everybody who wants to can attend school and receive an education (thawda et al., 2007). although the royal thai government officially has overall authority over the education in these camps, they have quite a laissez faire approach to education and leaves educational policy and provision for refugee children to the community education management system. the less salient presence of unhcr in the border zone between thailand and myanmar has also allowed the refugee communities themselves to fill the position of the pseudo-state often assumed by unhcr (mcconnachie, 2012; oh & van der stouwe, 2008).iii the karen and karenni in exile each have their own education department which provides standardized educational policymaking in the camps. this non-state, community-organized education system is so strong and well-coordinated that some young people have specifically sought to become refugees and residents in the camps precisely for the educational opportunities offered there (lee, 2014; maber, 2016). despite the community ownership over the education process in these refugee camps, language still serves as an exclusionary mechanism for many refugee children and youths living here. the education system in the seven predominantly karen refugee camps use skaw karen as the main language of instruction. however, oh and van der stouwe (2008) estimated that in three of the camps, only 40-56 percent of refugees are skaw karen speakers, 32-41 percent are pwo karen speakers, and 12-24 percent are burmese speakers. in the other four karen camps, while most residents (between 75 and 88 percent) are skaw karen, there is still a significant number of refugees who do not speak this as their mother tongue and are thus more disadvantaged in the school system. to deal with the language mismatch, in two camps, the burmese-speaking muslim community has organized specially designated muslim schools, which do not provide religious education but rather uses burmese as the language of instruction. in the other camps, though there are no specific muslim schools, the muslim groups there originated from parts in myanmar where they would have gained bilingual proficiency in both skaw karen and burmese, enough to follow the curriculum. however, the muslim schools only provide up to grade 7, and students would then have to transfer back into the skaw karen system. oh, and van der stouwe (2008) found this to be a significant cause of drop-out, as many students cannot transfer because their skaw karen is not good enough. while at the primary level, about 23 percent of all students are muslim, this percentage drops to only 4 percent at the high school level. some schools and teachers provide catch-up language classes, but these are only provided on an ad-hoc basis (oh & van der stouwe, 2008). the role of english in these border camps is also complex. in the early days, most textbooks used in the camps were in english because they were provided by the international donor community. the provision of these textbooks aligned with the emergency approach to humanitarianism, which tries to adopt quick fixes, like already published english-language textbooks, rather than invest resources in textbook development (oh, 2010). moreover, the presence of english-speaking international volunteers, as well as the refugee communities’ own desires to learn english for better chances in the resettlement process, also drove up the teaching of english in these camps. one of the influential foreign ngos in the thai-myanmar region, zoa refugee care, le current issues in comparative education 22 used to be quite active in advocating for more attention toward language-in-education issues as a fundamental dimension of educational inclusion and equity. in their 2007 position paper, zoa explicitly brought up the issue of language of instruction: “[s]tudents who do not fully understand the language of instruction are excluded from the learning that occurs in school” (thawda et al., 2007, p. 10). to that end, they were in the process of translating textbooks from english into skaw karen as well as assessing the language curriculum and training needs of teachers in bilingual education pedagogies. unfortunately, however, this ngo had stopped its operations in the myanmar-thailand region since 2012, due to a wider trend of international donors disassociating themselves from community organizations in this border zone and redirecting aid towards the myanmar government (décobert & wells, 2020; ma night awa, 2011). this recalibration of aid is an effect of the changing political landscapes in both myanmar and thailand in the past decade, with other significant impact on education and life in the refugee camps. while in myanmar, 2010-2020 marked a very gradual process of liberalization and political reforms towards democratization, thailand has undergone a reverse process with its military coup in 2014. subsequently, the thai military began to impose stricter monitoring and restrictions on the refugee camps. coupled with the reduction in international aid to the camps and the ethnic minority groups at the border, this has led to the gradual dismantling of schooling in the refugee camps, with the students beginning to look towards myanmar to continue their education (oh et al., 2019). at the same time, the myanmar government has indicated some willingness to work with ethnic minority groups to ensure that the children can receive quality education and accreditation. in particular, it has taken the initial steps to introduce mother tongue-based multilingual education, with a clause in the national education law in 2014 that encourages instruction in ethnic languages alongside burmese, “if there is a need, an ethnic language can be used alongside myanmar as a language of instruction at the basic education level” (chapter 7, clause 43). nevertheless, language is an ongoing source of conflict and distrust between the ethnic minorities and the central myanmar government. for example, in 2016, the minister for border and security affairs made official complaints about how schools run by the karen education and culture department still used karen as the language of instruction (oh et al., 2019). moreover, discussions between the karen and the government on the recognition of refugee students’ credentials and allowing them into government schools have stalled (shiohata, 2018). on the other side, recent studies with the karen education leadership in particular have revealed discontent with the government’s expansion of control, with the perception that this is “a deliberate attempt to undermine their community education systems, as well as their ethnic language and identity” (world education, 2016). from how political and educational negotiations with other ethnic minority groups have gone in myanmar, language and mother-tongue based education will continue to be a very contested debate with no clear consensus on the role of the ethnic language, the dominant burmese language, as well as a possibility of english as the lingua franca (south & lall, 2016). language, education, and power in refugee camps current issues in comparative education 23 discussion in kakuma refugee camp, language-in-education issues are still very much tied to the need to integrate and assimilate into the status quo that is the kenyan national education system. consequently, the education for refugee children in kakuma refugee camp ends up reproducing the same language issues that plague kenya’s education in general, including the disadvantages experienced by students whose mother tongue is neither kiswahili or english and the troubling ongoing dominance of english that is akin to “the recolonization of african mind,” brock-utne (2000). in this particular case, however, these language choices do not stem from typical dynamic of the dominant groups’ interest in reserving educational benefits only to a small elite (brock-utne, 2000). rather, they were made by unhcr in their function as a pseudo-state in the context of kakuma. in this paternalistic role, unhcr made language and curricular choices that were the opposite of what was originally desired by the refugee community, yet framed them in the neutral, apolitical rhetoric of the need to integrate into kenya’s education system for efficiency. in other words, in kakuma’s language-in-education policies, we can witness the depoliticization of refugee lives because their situation is supposedly only an ‘emergency’, an overarching but false logic in humanitarian aid that various scholars have critiqued (barnett, 2011; calhoun, 2008; fassin, 2007; pandolfi, 2003; versmesse et al., 2017). this logic of emergency and crisis provides international actors with the moral justification to parachute into conflict situations and engage in certain state-like activities, e.g., tracking and governing the population, delivering services, setting up rules and regulations (cardozo lopes & novelli, 2018; pandolfi, 2003). in addition to empowering this transnational regime of international donors, the logic of emergency also works to divest refugees of their right to participate in political discussion and decision-making that affect their own lives. under the assumption that refugees can only be the voiceless victims, international organizations have often been ambivalent toward attempts within refugee communities to self-organize and engage in their own development initiatives. in kenya, for example, unhcr staff had been active in breaking up traditional structures of power in dadaab refugee camp so that unhcr would remain the pre-eminent governing authority for dadaab (mcconnachie, 2012, p. 36). in determining that refugee communities in kakuma should have little voice in making curricular decisions, the international refugee regime operating in this camp context is effectively taking away language as a matter of community deliberation and solidaritybuilding. curricular choices, including language of instruction, are always intertwined with the inherently political project of determining the collective ‘we’ of the future (waters & leblanc, 2005). in other words, this in effect decides the future of refugees in kakuma for them, rather than with them, as one of integration into the kenyan society – despite the reality that the government of kenya has never indicated an opening to this integration. however, community control of educational policies is not necessarily better in terms of educational equality or a more equal distribution of power in the community, as the case of the thai-myanmar refugee camps demonstrate. the karen-dominated refugee camps follow a standardized karen curriculum which uses skaw karen as the main language of instruction to serve the ideological purpose of promoting karen and karenni ethnonationalism and secessionist movements. this has led to the exclusion of other ethnic le current issues in comparative education 24 minority groups such as the burman, the mon, or the karen who speaks other languages such as pwo karen or burmese (oh & van der stouwe, 2008). it shows how language-ineducation policies, as well as the education system as a whole, are often driven by a need to produce a new cohesive nation. however, as oh and van der stouwe (2008) commented, “the irony is that the ‘skawization’ of karen society in the borderlands and refugee camps resembles aspects of the burmanization carried out by the military government” (p. 611). this is because the leadership structure within the karendominated refugee camps is also highly authoritarian and dominated by a small group of christian skaw karen elites; likewise, the leadership in the karenni refugee camps are not so much representative of the communities but rather of the karenni government-in-exile (demusz, 1998). yet it is also important to remember that dynamics of power are constantly shifting, and that karen and karenni elites also have to manage an imbalance of power against international actors and national authorities. this has been most clearly demonstrated in the period from 2010-2020 with changing trends of support in the international aid community. prior to 2010, as part of the opposition to the military junta in power in myanmar, international donors were enthusiastic to support community-organized nonformal education. however, as the government began to pursue democratization reforms, international donors have been diverting resources and support for ethnic groups toward the central government (décobert & wells, 2020; s. a. oh et al., 2019; world education, 2016). ethnic educators and exiled activists on the thai side of the border have felt a sense of exclusion from the national education reform processes, expressing that their decades of work and expertise in education were being ignored by government and international actors (maber, 2016). the increasing influence that the myanmar state now plays in areas previously controlled by the ethnic minorities is raising new questions and contestation over the role of languages in conflict prevention, peace promotion, and education. furthermore, as the situation in myanmar deteriorates again with the military coup in 2021, refugees and other ethnic minorities living in the thaimyanmar borderland will continue to have to figure out new strategies to survive in constantly shifting states of precarity. conclusion the two cases examined in this article reveal problematic dynamics of power as manifested through policies on language in education. the case of kakuma show how language policies are often decided not by refugees but by international humanitarian actors, guided by an apolitical approach toward integration into the status quo that strips refugees of their linguistic rights and agency. on the other hand, the case of the thaimyanmar refugee camps reminds us that politicization of these issues in the normative way, through linking language with ideological purposes of building national unity, only reproduces problematic and authoritarian power hierarchies. an interesting avenue for future research would be to examine actual language use in refugee camps to examine how refugees from diverse settings come together and engage in hybridity and translanguaging practices. they can take an asset-based approach that recognizes the benefits of developing multilingual language capabilities and examines language, education, and power in refugee camps current issues in comparative education 25 how education settings can draw on the strengths of multilingualism to enhance learning for all in a linguistically diverse community. this asset-based approach should also inform more practical efforts and interventions at cooperative language planning in education within the refugee camps, with the goal of promoting multilingualism rather than just the transition of the speakers of the minority languages to the majority language (s) (jong et al., 2016). one way this can be done is inviting all community stakeholders to facilitated dialogues that are guided by professionals in language-in-education issues, informed by research and local expertise, to deliberate the role of different languages and how they should be fostered in the education system (unicef east asia & pacific, 2016). the first step is to resist the invisibility or temptation to turn language-in-education issues in refugee education, into another apolitical, technical problem to be solved. as refugee education research, policy, and practice continues to grow in the coming years, language should be centered as a major issue of concern. linguistic rights are human rights. m. le (lê minh hằng)iv is a phd candidate in the international education policy program at the university of maryland-college park. her research interests revolve around developmenthumanitarian aid to education, policy transfer and global education policies, and education in emergencies. references ameen, r. f., & cinkara, e. (2018). the impact of language learning on internally displaced and refugee resilience. european journal of educational research, 7(3), 529– 538. https://doi.org/10.12973/eu-jer.7.3.529 arc centre of excellence for the dynamics of language. (2017, june 26). community in kakuma refugee camp inspires linguists. dynamics of language. http://www.dynamicsoflanguage.edu.au/news-and-media/latestheadlines/article/?id=community-in-kakuma-refugee-camp-inspires-linguists barnett, m. (2011). empire of humanity: a history of humanitarianism. cornell university press. https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801460616 bellino, m. j., & dryden-peterson, s. (2018). inclusion and exclusion within a policy of national integration: refugee education in kenya’s kakuma refugee camp. british journal of sociology of education, 40(2), 222–238. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2018.1523707 bourdieu, p. (1991). the production and reproduction of legitimate language. in j. thompson (trans.), language and symbolic power (pp. 43–66). harvard university press. brock-utne, b. (2000). whose education for all? the recolonization of the african mind. routledge. le current issues in comparative education 26 bunyi, g. w. (2005). language classroom practices in kenya. in a. lin & p. w. martin (eds.), decolonisation, globalisation: language-in-education policy and practice (… ed., pp. 131–152). multilingual matters. calhoun, c. (2008). the imperative to reduce suffering: charity, progress, and emergencies in the field of humanitarian action. in m. barnett & t. g. weiss (eds.), humanitarianism in question: politics, power, ethics (pp. 73–97). cornell university press. cardozo lopes, m., & novelli, m. (2018). education in emergencies: tracing the emergence of a field. in a. verger, h. kosar-altinyelken, & m. novelli (eds.), global education policy and international development: new agendas, issues and policies (pp. 233–254). bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474296052 chopra, v., dryden-peterson, s. (2015). more than words: language in the move from refugee to returnee to citizen in burundi (harvard education publishing group case study). harvard education publishing group. décobert, a., & wells, t. (2020). interpretive complexity and crisis: the history of international aid to myanmar. the european journal of development research, 32(2), 294–315. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-019-00238-y demusz, k. (1998). from relief to development: negotiating the continuum on the thaiburmese border. journal of refugee studies, 11(3), 231–244. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/11.3.231 dryden-peterson, s. (2011). refugee education: a global review. unhcr, policy development and evaluation service. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x16683398 dryden-peterson, s. (2016). refugee education in countries of first asylum: breaking open the black box of pre-resettlement experiences. theory and research in education, 14(2), 131–148. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477878515622703 dryden-peterson, s., adalman, e., alvarado, s., anderson, k., bellino, m. j., brooks, r., bukhari, s. u. s., cao, e., chopra, v., faizi, z., gulla, b., maarouf, d., reddick, c., scherrer, b., smoake, e., & suzuki, e. (2018). inclusion of refugees in national education systems (background paper commissioned for the 2019 global education monitoring report, migration, displacement and education: building bridges, not walls). united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization. https://inee.org/system/files/resources/drydenpeterson_inclusion%20of%20refugees_2018_eng.pdf education cannot wait. (2017). why education cannot wait. http://www.educationcannotwait.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/05/why_ec w_one_pager_final.pdf language, education, and power in refugee camps current issues in comparative education 27 education commission. (2016). the learning generation: investing in education for a changing world. the international commission on financing global education opportunity. https://report.educationcommission.org/report/ fassin, d. (2007). humanitarianism as a politics of life. public culture, 19(3), 499–520. global education monitoring report. (2018). migration, displacement and education: building bridges, not walls. united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization. https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/report/2019/migration jong, e. j. de, li, z., zafar, a. m., & wu, c.-h. (vivian). (2016). language policy in multilingual contexts: revisiting ruiz’s “language-as-resource” orientation. bilingual research journal, 39(3–4), 200–212. https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2016.1224988 kanno, y., & varghese, m. m. (2010). immigrant and refugee esl students’ challenges to accessing four-year college education: from language policy to educational policy. journal of language, identity & education, 9(5), 310–328. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2010.517693 lee, s. k. (2014). migrant schools in the thailand-burma borderland: from the informal to the formal. asia pacific journal of education, 34(1), 125–138. https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2013.803458 loewen, s. (2003). second language concerns for refugee children. in educational interventions for refugee children (pp. 49–66). routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203687550-8 lutheran world federation. (2015). rapid assessment of barriers to education in kakuma refugee camp. lutheran world federation. https://kenyadjibouti.lutheranworld.org/sites/default/files/documents/barrie rs%20to%20education%20in%20kakuma%20refugee%20camp%20assessment_ 0.pdf ma night awa. (2011, july 27). refugee education hit hard by severe budget cuts. karen news. http://karennews.org/2011/07/part-2-the-elephant-and-the-sesame-seedrefugee-education-hit-hard-by-severe-budget-cuts/ maber, e. j. t. (2016). cross-border transitions: navigating conflict and political change through community education practices in myanmar and the thai border. globalisation, societies and education, 14(3), 374–389. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2016.1175923 malkki, l. h. (1995). refugees and exile: from “refugee studies” to the national order of things. annual review of anthropology, 24, 495–523. jstor. le current issues in comparative education 28 mareng, c. d. (2010). reflections on refugee students’ major perceptions of education in kakuma refugee camp, kenya. intercultural education, 21(5), 473–481. https://doi.org/10.1080/14675986.2010.521392 mburu, e., mohamed, m., & mwaniki, d. (2004). english language instruction in kakuma camp, kenya. refugee reports, 25(4). http://www.idahorefugees.org/uploads/3/8/8/9/38892103/refugee_reports_language_interpretation_in_the_delivery_of_health_care.pdf mcconnachie, k. (2012). rethinking the ‘refugee warrior’: the karen national union and refugee protection on the thai–burma border. journal of human rights practice, 4(1), 30–56. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhuman/hus005 mendenhall, m., dryden-peterson, s., bartlett, l., ndirangu, c., imonje, r., gakunga, d., guchuhi, l., nyagah, g., okoth, u., & tangelder, m. (2015). quality education for refugees in kenya: pedagogy in urban nairobi and kakuma refugee camp settings. journal on education in emergencies, 1(1), 92–130. https://doi.org/10.17609/n8d08k myanmar national education law. (2014). https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/electronic/100493/120566/f28507 983/mmr100493%20eng.pdf norton, b., & toohey, k. (2011). identity, language learning, and social change. language teaching, 44(4), 412–446. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444811000309 oh, s.-a. (2010). education in refugee camps in thailand: policy, practice and paucity (background paper prepared for the education for all global monitoring report 2011, the hidden crisis: armed conflict and education). unesco. https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/31018221/190709e.pdf?a wsaccesskeyid=akiaiwowyygz2y53ul3a&expires=1547746273&signature =syg4d5n1zqztw6ma0vomieq5%2bri%3d&response-contentdisposition=inline%3b%20filename%3deducation_in_refugee_camps_in_thaila nd_p.pdf pandolfi, m. (2003). contract of mutual (in)difference: governance and the humanitarian apparatus in contemporary albania and kosovo. indiana journal of global legal studies, 10(1), 369–381. perry, k. h. (2008). sharing stories, linking lives: literacy practices among sudanese refugees (working paper no. 8; cultural practices of literacy study). michigan state university. rajaram, p. k., & grundy-warr, c. (2004). the irregular migrant as homo sacer: migration and detention in australia, malaysia, and thailand. international migration, 42(1), 33–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0020-7985.2004.00273.x language, education, and power in refugee camps current issues in comparative education 29 ramadan, a. (2013). spatialising the refugee camp. transactions of the institute of british geographers, 38(1), 65–77. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2012.00509.x ruíz, r. (1984). orientations in language planning. nabe journal, 8(2), 15–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/08855072.1984.10668464 saucier, m. (2013, december 8). refugee education in kenya: language and encampment policies. anthropology at teachers college. https://anthropologytc.wordpress.com/2013/12/08/refugee-education-inkenya-language-and-encampment-policies/ shiohata, m. (2018). education for displaced populations in karen state, myanmar (paper commissioned for the 2019 global education monitoring report, migration, displacement and education: building bridges, not walls). global education monitoring report. https://www.jica.go.jp/jica-ri/publication/other/l75nbg000010mg5uatt/background_shiohata.pdf south, a., & lall, m. (2016). schooling and conflict: ethnic education and mother tongue-based teaching in myanmar. the asia foundation. http://2o2ypr1qd5zx1p10sn21fm2b-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp content/uploads/2016/09/karenstate_schoolcommittees_final.pdf thawda, l., van der stouwe, m., naw, s., & oh, s.-a. (2007). having their say: refugee camp residents and inclusive education (a zoa position paper). zoa refugee care thailand. http://s3.amazonaws.com/ineeassets/resources/doc_1_zoa_position_paper_ having_their_say.pdf the border consortium. (2021). camp population 2021. the border consortium. https://www.theborderconsortium.org/camp-populations/camp-population2021/ unhcr. (2012). unhcr education strategy 2012-2016. unhcr. https://www.unhcr.org/protection/operations/5149ba349/unhcr-educationstrategy-2012-2016.html unicef east asia & pacific. (2016). synthesis report: language education and social cohesion (lesc) initiative in malaysia, myanmar and thailand.pdf. unicef east asia and pacific regional office. https://www.unicef.org/eap/media/836/file/synthesis%20report:%20langua ge%20education%20and%20social%20cohesion%20(lesc)%20initiative%20in% 20malaysia,%20myanmar%20and%20thailand.pdf le current issues in comparative education 30 valentine, g., sporton, d., & bang nielsen, k. (2008). language use on the move: sites of encounter, identities and belonging. transactions of the institute of british geographers, 33(3), 376–387. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2008.00308.x versmesse, i., derluyn, i., masschelein, j., & de haene, l. (2017). after conflict comes education? reflections on the representations of emergencies in “education in emergencies.” comparative education, 53(4), 538–557. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050068.2017.1327570 wasike, a. (2018). student mother tongue usage, preference, and attitudes in bungoma county, kenya. africology: the journal of pan african studies, 11(7), 204–220. waters, t., & leblanc, k. (2005). refugees and education: mass public schooling without a nation state. comparative education review, 49(2), 129–147. https://doi.org/10.1086/428102 watkins, p. g., razee, h., & richters, j. (2012). “i’m telling you … the language barrier is the most, the biggest challenge”: barriers to education among karen refugee women in australia. australian journal of education, 56(2), 126–141. https://doi.org/10.1177/000494411205600203 world education. (2016). school committees and community engagement in education in karen state. world education. http://2o2ypr1qd5zx1p10sn21fm2b-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wpcontent/uploads/2016/09/karenstate_schoolcommittees_final.pdf wright, l.-a., & plasterer, r. (2012). beyond basic education: exploring opportunities for higher learning in kenyan refugee camps. refuge: canada’s journal on refugees, 27(2), 42–56. i while myanmar is now the official name for this country, many continue to use ‘burma’ because they consider myanmar an imposition by the military dictatorship. ii the schools within the thai-myanmar refugee camps are part of a larger cross-border and nonformal education network that also include schools in the karen-controlled territory in myanmar, migrant learning centers for migrant communities in thailand’s border regions, other informal vocational learning sites, and post-secondary community education programs run by grassroots organizations, women’s networks, and ngos. many of these educational sites serve de facto refugees from myanmar who would rather become ‘illegal’ migrants to the thai authorities than to be confined within the refugee camps. for more research on migrant education in this region, see lee (2014), maber (2016), world education (2016), shiohata (2018). iii this is also a consequence of the royal thai government’s policy to keep unhcr out of this conflict until the late 1990s, in part due to a desire to pretend that this was not a refugee situation. iv i would like to express my appreciation for the feedback provided by melanie baker robbins, brendan decoster, jeremy gombin-sperling, paul vernon, and two anonymous reviewers to help me prepare this paper. 8. walrond, h. integrating technology in english language arts teacher education a book review.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 1, winter 2023 integrating technology in english language arts teacher education: a book review honey walrond teachers college, columbia university integrating technology in english language arts teacher education: a book review the use of technology in teaching has many skeptics about its advantages and positive  impact  on  teaching.  in  integrating technology in english language arts teacher education (2020),  donna  l.  pasternak  speaks  to  the  skepticism by  examining  the  challenges  and  benefits  of  technology  integration  in  english/english  language arts  classrooms. the  study  of  teaching  ela  has  changed  from  an  area  that defined  itself  as  a  subject  that  teaches composition, literature, and rhetoric to one that teaches abilities needed to learn  content such as interpretation, writing, speaking, critical analysis, etc. (coiro et al., 2004;  national  council  of  teachers  of  english,  2018).  pasternak's  central  argument  is  that  technology integration and multimodal literacy are vital components of ela curriculum  development  and  provide  clear  and  practical  guidance  on  technology  integration  for  prospective teachers of english in u.s. teacher education programs. the  book  is  organized  into  five  chapters,  each  providing  a  framework  for  ela  instructors  and  teachers  in  other  content  areas  to  integrate  technology  and  improve  digital  literacy  skills.  chapter  one  discusses  national  learning  and  the  challenges  encountered  while  integrating  technology. chapter  two  covers  the  tension  in  the field  and  reflects  on  the  potential  for  technology  to  replace  traditional  teaching  methods.  chapter three explores technology integration into methods courses and examines how  teacher  educators guide  their  trainees  in  the use of technology. chapter four describes  the  technologies  pre-service  teachers  need  to  know  to  acquire  the  content  of  ela  methods.  furthermore, finally,  chapter five describes how  technology has transformed  ela students and the impact of technology in the classroom. one of the book's significant concerns is that despite technology's role in instruction, it is  still referred to as a "tool" (p. 77) in the narratives and assignment rubrics, replicating the  traditional pen-and-paper  approach. the book  speaks  to  these  concerns, which  is  also  one  of  its  strengths,  by  providing  straightforward  and  practical  case  studies  on  technology  integration  in  the ela classroom. pasternak provides  clear  and actionable  examples  from  the  case  studies  on  how  ela  teachers  integrate  technology  into  their  classrooms.  in  one  case  study,  a  teacher used digital storytelling tools to help students  create  their  own narratives using  a  combination of  text,  images,  and  sound  (p.  64). a  second case study highlighted how a teacher used online discussion forums to facilitate  deeper  analysis  and  reflection on  texts  (p.  85). the  teacher  in  the  case study provided  examples  of  strong discussion posts  and helped ela  students  learn how to engage in  meaningful online conversations. © 2023, walrond. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 25(1), 127-129. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en walrond another strength of the book is the focus on best practices for using technology in the ela classroom, such as emphasizing the importance of using technology in a purposeful way rather than just for the sake of using technology. this helps ensure that technology is being used effectively to support student learning. for example, pasternak discusses how some teachers fall into the trap of using technology for its own sake, such as having students create digital presentations just because they can (p. 30). instead, pasternak emphasizes examples that show the importance of choosing technology tools that support specific learning objectives and helps students achieve a deeper understanding of ela concepts (pp. 61-72), which promotes active learning and student engagement. finally, pasternak cites research showing that technology can be especially effective in fostering student collaboration and communication and encourages teachers to incorporate these strategies into their teaching (p. 46; p. 92). while integrating technology in the english language arts classroom is a valuable resource for ela teachers and teacher educators, one area where the book could be improved is its treatment of the latest discussions around artificial intelligence (ai) and its impact on teaching english. as ai continues to advance, it is becoming increasingly important for teachers and teacher educators to understand how it can be used to enhance their teaching practices and support student learning. for example, ai can analyze student writing and provide feedback on grammar, spelling, and sentence structure (dong et al., 2022) and develop students' ai literacy through the power of digital story writing (ng et al., 2022). unfortunately, pasternak does not provide much discussion or guidance on how to incorporate ai into the classroom. as ai continues to advance and become more prevalent in education, it is essential for ela teachers to be aware of its potential applications and to learn how to integrate it effectively into their teaching practices. therefore, the book could be updated to include more discussion and practical guidance on the use of ai in the ela classroom. overall, integrating technology in english language arts teacher education provides different levels of understanding about technology and how ela teachers can incorporate it into their classrooms. the book aims to show how tensions/ideas are presented in the english education field and provides clear and practical guidance on technology integration for prospective teachers of english. pasternak emphasizes the importance of using technology purposefully rather than just for the sake of using technology and provides actionable examples from case studies on how ela teachers can integrate technology into their classrooms. despite its limitations, this book is a valuable resource for ela teachers and teacher educators who seek to incorporate technology into their curriculum development. honey walrond is an instructor and doctoral ph.d. fellow in the english education program at teachers college, columbia university, with a second concentration in education policy. she teaches courses on culturally relevant literature and literacy practices and her research centers on literacy and literacy education policies. honey can be reached at honey.walrond@tc.columbia.edu. 128 current issues in comparative education integrating technology in english language arts teacher education: a book review references coiro, j., knobel, m., lankshear, c., & leu, d. j. (eds.). (2014). handbook of research on new literacies. routledge. dong, y., yu, x., alharbi, a., s. ahmad. ai-based production and application of english multimode online reading using multi-criteria decision support system, soft computing, 26(20), 10927–10937 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-022-07209-2 national council of teachers of english. (2018). beliefs about technology and preparation of english teachers. ncte. https://ncte.org/statement/beliefs-technology-preparation-english-teachers/ ng, t. k., chan, h., & chu, s. (2022). an examination on primary students’ development in ai literacy through digital story writing. computers and education: artificial intelligence. pasternak, d. l. (2020). integrating technology in english language arts teacher education. routledge. current issues in comparative education 129 https://ncte.org/statement/beliefs-technology-preparation-english-teachers/ peeples, e. (2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 people, policy, and praxis: freirean pedagogy and local-level policy implementation elena j. peeples teachers college, columbia university ambiguity in policy implementation guidance can result in discrimination and disenfranchisement. adult education programs grounded in freirean pedagogy can be responsive to these situations through an open dialectic that provides for an exchange between internal program relationships and external organizational relationships. this case comes from my experiences as an educator in a freirean, spanish-language, high school equivalency (hse) program in new jersey during significant national changes to hse credentialing in 2014. it describes policy implementation in the local context in relationships between governing institutions, service organizations, and the people policies are meant to govern. i construct a narrative for relevant policy environments and actions through the assemblage of primary sources, such as policy documents and internal organizational reports, as well as an analysis of 25 news reports and commentaries taken from 2013-2014. i argue that all policies, even those initiated at the national level, are ultimately enacted locally through the dialectic relationships between policy makers, administrators, program staff, and students at a variety of public and private organizations. i show how freirean approaches to program design and operation respond to political, policy, and programmatic complexities to address discrimination and disenfranchisement. in conclusion, i discuss implications for educators seeking to adopt a freirean framework into their own program design and implementation. these include reflection and action at the local level within an analysis of larger oppressive structures, thoughtful design and critical flexibility to work closely with students in program operation, and engagement in dialectic relationships with existing or potential collaborators. keywords: freire, adult education, high school equivalency, program design, policy implementation introduction before 2014, people in the county who sought to obtain a high school equivalency (hse) diploma sat for the ged exam at the pine street school.1 when i began at bridgeway, a local nonprofit organization, in 2011, i joined colleagues in adult education who shuttled between our office and the pine street school to complete registrations, coordinate with test proctors, drop off and pick up students on test day, and pick up test results. at registration, test-takers indicated in which language they wanted to complete the exam: 1 names of places and organizations have been changed to preserve anonymity. © 2021, peeples. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 80-94. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en people, policy, and praxis current issues in comparative education 81 english or spanish. on test day, they brought a money order for $50 and a number 2 pencil, presented an id, and were assigned a seat intermingled with other test-takers completing the test in the language of their choosing. if they obtained a high enough score on each of the five sections of the test, nj’s department of education (nj doe) mailed them a high school diploma within 6-8 weeks. however, our routines changed drastically in january 2014, as they did nationwide, when the ged exam publisher made substantial changes in content and delivery to the exam, requiring new hse policies in response. the same year these changes took place, bridgeway engaged in a partnership with other local nonprofit organizations to launch juntos en comunidad (juntos), a multi-organization initiative that provides englishand spanish-language social and educational services to the latin american immigrant community in the county and the surrounding area. my colleagues and i navigated the confluence of changing education, labor, and immigration policies as we envisioned, developed and operated the program.2 as the initiative’s hse program manager and as a freirean educator, i designed the program as mother tonguebased instruction (see benson, 2004) rooted in three freirean guiding principles (freire, 1992, 2000b, 2000a; horton & freire, 1992). these principles include the open dialectic embedded in praxis, the action-oriented hope of liberation, and the impossibility of political neutrality. together, they proved to be a useful framework from which to respond to both the curricular changes that the new ged prompted as well as to local action that effectively disenfranchised students who were not able to complete the spanish-language hse exam locally for fifteen months. the case presented below has two simultaneous goals. the first is to articulate the rationale for our pedagogical practices. the second is to convey the relational nature of the political, policy, and programmatic complexities involved in local hse policy implementation. i argue that all policies, even those initiated at the national level, are ultimately enacted locally through the dialectic relational exchange that happens between policy makers, administrators, program staff, and students at a variety of public and private organizations. because freirean pedagogy is grounded in relational exchanges that bring together disparate, often competing or conflicting—even oppressive—persons and ideas, juntos’s hse program was able to critically and flexibly engage with other agents. this study will highlight dialectic relationships, that is relationships in exchange, involved in hse credentialing in one county in nj by focusing on the interactions that occurred at the local level specifically around disenfranchisement and language ideologies. i also emphasize policy implementation as a relational process occurring between governing institutions, service organizations, and the people policies are meant to govern. this article contains four major parts: a theoretical description of freirean pedagogy, the construction of the case, two examples of praxis at juntos, and implications for educators. first, i describe the three guiding principles listed above. second, i summarize how the case has been constructed, outline the changes in and responses to hse testing, review exam changes as described in news reports and commentary, and consider local policy implementation. third, i present two examples of how the freirean guiding principles listed above manifested between juntos’s internal and external relationships with other agencies and organizations. these examples advance the argument that policies are ultimately enacted locally within the context of these dialectal relationships. finally, i conclude with a discussion of implications for other educators. 2 two other important policy changes occurred during this period that are not fully addressed in this paper: deferred action for childhood arrivals in 2012 and the workforce innovation and opportunity act of 2014. peeples current issues in comparative education 82 freirean pedagogy the central thesis of freirean pedagogy builds on the idea of an open dialectic, which freire develops in the context of oppressive social structures (freire, 2000b). the dialectic refers to mutually influencing relationships between people and their world. the openness of the dialectic process refers to differences or even conflicts between members; these may or may not resolve but nonetheless remain mutually engaged (freire, 1992). from here, he defines praxis as “reflection and action upon the world to transform it” (freire, 2000a, p. 51). praxis is a purposeful, iterative, political process. within this definition are several important assumptions: first, the world in its present condition is oppressive; second, the world can and should be transformed to end oppression; and third, transformation comes through purposeful and decisive action. for freire (2000a), praxis is the process of self-liberation, wherein “the oppressed must see themselves as women and men engaged in the ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human” (p. 56). as such, praxis creates a framework for dialectic relationships within the component parts of educational, social, and political processes. romão (2019) writes that praxis does “not result from the profound opposition of the opposites but from the possibility of dialogue that exists between them” (p. 508). freirean pedagogy emphasizes the mutually influencing relationships between people and their world; between the past, present, and future; between reflection and action; between educators, students, content, and methods; and even between oppressed and oppressors. praxis, then, accepts and engages in yet unresolved tensions towards a transformed world (freire, 1992, 2000a, 2000b). because praxis seeks to transform the world from its present oppressive condition to a liberated condition, it necessarily includes an action-oriented hope. freire (1992) writes, “i do not understand human existence, and the struggle needed to improve it, apart from hope and dream” (p. 2). like praxis, which requires both reflection and action, hope “demands an anchoring in practice” (p. 2) that simultaneously imagines a transformed future while working upon the present moment. indeed, freire warns that without action, hope “dissipates, loses its bearings, and turns into hopelessness” (p. 3). the future transformation (liberation) affirms the impossibility of political neutrality. freire continues, there is, nor has there ever been, an educational practice in zero-space time... to try to get people to believe that there is such a thing as this, is indisputably a political practice… it is as political as the other practice, which does not conceal— in fact, which proclaims—its own political character. (p. 67) all educational practices, whether explicitly or implicitly, originate from and participate in political perspectives. therefore, educators should strive to practice “the difficult exercise of the virtues of humility, of consistency, of tolerance” rather than towards an unattainable neutrality. although these principles are considered in sequence here, they are in reality mutually defining and reinforcing within the implementation of freirean pedagogy. therefore, they are further explored in the examples taken from juntos later in this article. methodology this case concerns local implementation of policies enacted by nj doe and involves a range of public and private agencies and organizations spanning national, state, and local jurisdictions. therefore, it examines a variety of documents to engage in “a process of people, policy, and praxis current issues in comparative education 83 reflection which is set in a thoroughly historical context” (freire, 2000b, p. 32). this process was conducted in two parts. the first involved collecting primary sources, alongside autoethnographic fieldnotes, to create a chronology of events, stretching back to early federal adult education legislation up to 2014. the second involved collecting news reports and commentary specifically on the 2014 hse testing changes. the assemblage of the primary sources listed here constructs a narrative for the relevant policy environments and actions described in greater detail in the sections that follow. while this article focuses on the events immediately before and after 2014, the review included historical documents, policy documents, governance, and compliance reports in the form of meeting minutes and internal organizational operation reports. i selected documents from public institutions based on relevance and availability that represent federal, state, and county government: federal adult basic and secondary education legislation from 1962-2014;3 new jersey department of labor and workforce development and department of education policies regarding hse test publishers, test preparation programs, and test centers4; and the local workforce investment board’s literacy committee meeting minutes from 2013-2015.5 documents from private organizations vary in topic and scope: statements on the development of the common core standards and the ged testing services’ rationale for adopting them; statements from cbt/mcgraw-hill and ets regarding their exams’ equivalency with the ged and validity for federal education programs; and 29 internal juntos reports, dated october 2014-december 2015, on operation of the hse program. i supplemented these with autoethnographic field notes from my time as adult education manager at bridgeway. additionally, i selected news reports and commentaries from national and local news outlets across the country, dating between january 2013-december 2014. using a key word search in google news in the year leading up to and a year after the ged testing services released the new college and career ready ged exam, i chose 25 pieces that describe events related to test publishers, state governments, local organizations, and students across the country preparing for and responding to the change in the ged exam. there was relatively little coverage of these events, and a significant number of pieces were simple announcement of test prep program hours or eligibility rather than news reports or commentary. initial coding identified actors involved in the change (i.e., state government, publishers, local organizations, students), actors’ goals (i.e., economic development, education, employment), and the challenges actors faced in providing or accessing hse credentialing (i.e., financial, logistical). focused coding further analyzed goals challenges related to economic impact, operational capacity, rigor, and technology. i used the frequency of individual references to specific topics to identify primary areas of concern in the reporting and commentary. 3 workforce opportunity and innovation act of 2014; workforce investment act of 1998; job training partnership act of 1982; comprehensive employment and training act of 1973; manpower development and training act of 1962. 4 nj dlwd adult education & literacy policies, nj doe request for qualifications for publishers of high school equivalency exams, and nj doe request for qualifications for high school equivalency test 5 the literacy committee was a subcommittee of the local workforce investment board (under the workforce investment act) that coordinated adult education activities, publicly and privately operated, in the region. the 2014 passage of the workforce innovation and opportunity act updated the role of the local boards. for more information of workforce development governance in new jersey, see https://www.nj.gov/njsetc/about/ peeples current issues in comparative education 84 overview of policy changes national and local adult education policy changes to content in the ged exam came on the heels of widespread adoption of the common core career and college readiness standards, first released in 2010 (“about the common core standards,” 2021). the standards, developed by the national governors association, the council of chief state school officers, and the nonprofit education reform group achieve, sought to establish new benchmarks for k12 education “to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live” (para. 2). the following year, the american council of education, the nonprofit publisher of the ged exam, announced a new partnership with pearson vue to establish the for-profit ged testing service, which would update the existing ged exam to align with college and career readiness standards (kim, 2013; sieben, 2011; trask, 2012). on december 31, 2013, the ged testing service retired the previous exam version and on january 1, 2014, launched its new, computerized college and career ready version. the new registration fee more than doubled the cost of the exam. in response, two other major publishers released their own high school equivalency exams: cbt/mcgraw-hill’s test assessing secondary completion (tasc)6 and the educational testing service’s high school equivalency test (hiset). these exams were updated more gradually over a two-year period from 2014 to 2016 to align with career and college readiness standards, were offered at lower costs compared to the ged, and could be completed either on paper or on the computer (adams, 2013; sieben, 2011). all three publishers created both english and spanish language versions of their exams. nj doe took a market approach to its adoption of hse credentialing pathways by approving all three test versions. that is, nj doe framed test-takers as consumers in an hse testing marketplace that spanned the entire state, where they could choose from among the vendors which provided them the greatest value. in theory, test-takers could choose which of the three exams to take, and therefore determine how to prepare for, how to complete, and how much to pay for credentialing. however, nj doe left it to test centers to decide, based on organizational capacity, which test publishers they would engage and, based on local demographics, which languages they would offer. additionally, all test centers needed to recertify with nj doe to ensure proper implementation of new procedure. this decision was announced in december 2013 (new jersey department of education, 2014). this arrangement, however, did not actually establish a market relationship between the test-taker and the test publisher. instead, recertification created ambiguity at the local level between the nj doe’s intention, test center’s self-perceived capacity, and students’ stated desires regarding access to educational opportunity. what nj doe meant as a bureaucratic affirmation of test centers’ capacity and compliance with new procedures became an opportunity for test centers to renegotiate previous norms regarding language access to educational opportunity and credentialing under the guise of organizational efficiency. policy ambiguities allowed centers to drop spanish-language testing that had previously been offered. this effectively disenfranchised students, barring their access to hse credentialing by reformulating the credential not as one based on the common core standards but rather on english proficiency. 6 tasc is now a publication of data recognition corporation. see https://www.mheducation.com/newsmedia/press-releases/data-recognition-corporation-drc-announces-agreement-acquire-key-assets-ctb.html people, policy, and praxis current issues in comparative education 85 high school equivalency in the news in news reports and commentaries about changes in hse testing, the increased rigor derived from the college and career readiness standards and state responses to changes were the central focus. across the 25 pieces, there were 130 individual references to the change in standards, the requisite curricular changes at test prep programs, and concern about test-takers ability to pass the exam at its new standards. this was followed closely behind with concerns about technology, with 101 individual references. these concerns included requisite skills for employment and post-secondary education, programs’ operational capacity to acquire equipment and incorporate computer training, and testtakers ability to manage the computer-based format of the test. concerns around rigor, technology, and cost were framed as problems of operational capacity for state education or workforce agencies, local test centers, and local test prep programs as often as they were described as personal challenges for students. writers took direct quotes, in order of frequency, from program operators, test publishers, students, and state policy makers. student quotes talked about personal goals, rigor, and technology. test publishers focused on workforce participation and economic impact. state officials and program operators focused on operational capacity, or rather limitations in capacity, to adapt programming and facilities to meet the requirements of the new exam. workforce participation, whether immediately after obtaining the hse or in the future after post-secondary training or higher education, was the primary rationale offered for increased rigor and the computerized format. the pieces framed educator and student comments about rigor, technology, and workforce participation around students’ time out of k12 schooling, experiences with low-wage work, and responsibilities as parenting. however, writers made no reference to demographic data, including race, ethnicity, language, or income level except in two instances: one writer discussed mean and median income, another discussed race. overall, student statistics focused on test completion and enrollment in post-secondary education. students are described in terms of their present employment (“low-income”) as linked to their lack of hse credential or potential employment if they acquire it. in terms of economic impact of an hse credentialing market and of successful hse candidates, 11 pieces discussed improved individual or familial economic conditions and 14 talked about a distributed economic benefit to society at large. most frequently, however, the pieces focused on workforce participation and improved employability. state officials’ and program operators’ concern with operational capacity, coupled with test publishers’ rationale about society-level economic benefits, confirms a bureaucratic view of hse credentialing within the larger workforce development system. together, the pieces describe the hse credential as a tool for maintaining individual and social economic stability. the increased rigor and computer-based format is seen as ensuring students maintain sufficient skills and knowledge to produce wealth both for themselves and for society at large. the emphasis on economic impact is consistent with american modernism wherein “poverty [has] become an organizing concept and the object of a new problematization” whose “solution was economic growth and development” (escobar, 2012, p. 24). poverty, reframed here as a lack of economic stability, is a social problem with a technocratic solution wherein local test centers and test prep programs are coordinated through state policy. the economic framing of the problem eclipses racioethnic and linguistic dimensions. these are overlooked because they cannot be readily incorporated into the “the ideological scheme” and subsequently “either go unnoticed or get explained away” (irvine & gal, 2000, p. 38). peeples current issues in comparative education 86 it is clear that the issue of linguistic disenfranchisement in hse credentialing is not a widely considered topic in national conversations. in the pieces analyzed here, there was no reference to englishor spanishlanguage testing. test publishers’ choice to develop a spanish-language exam and nj doe’s (or any other state agency) decision to accept the spanish-language exam as a pathway to credentialing do not come up in news reports or commentaries. there was no discussion about language at all. in fact, key word searches in google news that included “spanish” or “language” alongside “high school equivalency” yielded no relevant results, only announcements about local english as a second language programs. the news reports and commentaries reveal that operational capacity, and not language access, have been the primary concern for the majority of state officials and program operators. thomason (2001) writes that “language contact (which is itself a result of social history) has social consequences” where “the language of a minority culture is used by a dominant culture as a marker of cultural differentness: not only does it provide a means of identifying the people to be discriminated against, but it also offers a target for discrimination” (p. 7). omission of spanish-language testing in the media generally constitutes erasure from public discourse and justifies discrimination and disenfranchisement at the local level for a lack of conformity to the dominant culture’s norms. language-based disenfranchisement although we can trace policy actions related to hse from the federal level down, such as in the design, promotion, and adoption of the common core standards, policy implementation always occurs locally. borrowing from mariana valverde (2011), i argue that policy interventions are implemented through “embodied, experiential, and relational categories” (p. 280). the interaction between local organization and government agencies and the people the policies are meant to govern influences how policies actually operate day to day (valverde, 2011). others have described the policy implementation in terms of top-down and bottom-up (sabatier, 1986) and explored the way local “streetlevel” bureaucrats enact policies (lipsky, 2010). valverde (2011), however, is of particular relevance here because she describes these relationships as “dialectic in form, [and] openended rather than closed” (p. 280). for example, test publishers and nj doe’s actions to facilitate hse credentialing in both english and spanish indicate a certain intention at the national and state levels. however, at the local level, the option to discontinue spanishlanguage testing at the local level affirmed language ideologies that gave english primacy, minoritized spanish, and barred access to educational and credentialing opportunities for spanish-speaking students seeking to demonstrate their academic knowledge and skills in their native language. the ambiguity created by the recertification policy was exacerbated in the county by test center operations being passed between organizations. the local school district had operated the ged test center at the pine street school from time immemorial. however, in view of changing test center requirements, the school district declined to continue operating the testing center. the local community college (cc)’s adult education department agreed to operate a local test center, but availability of testing was delayed both by indecision about which test publishers to engage and language to offer as well as a backlog at nj doe of recertification requests from across the state. in this vacuum of local testing services, test-takers would need to (and in fact did) travel outside the county to testing sites 30 miles (for english-language testing) to 75 miles (for spanish-language testing) away. finally, cc began scheduling test-takers sit for the hiset exam in december 2014 but decided to continue only in english. they defended this decision as a people, policy, and praxis current issues in comparative education 87 problem of operational capacity, citing a lack of spanish-speaking personnel at the college generally and in the adult education department specifically as the major reason. chun and lo (2015) describe how language difference, used as a proxy for racioethnicity, allows for characterization of language users as competent and appropriate. however, language cannot be reduced to purely technical skill (language proficiency for test completion) or logistical limitation (organizational capacity). cc attempted to objectify englishand spanish-language hse testing using these frames. by focusing on operational capacity, rather than expressed local desires, cc failed to see test-takers as more than “an abstract category and [see] them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice” (freire, 2000b, p. 50). alim (2010) characterizes educational institutions “as designed to teach citizens about the current sociolinguistic order of things, without challenging that order, which is based largely on the ideology of the dominating group” (p. 28). cc failed to consider how excluding spanish-language testing reformulated english-language competency as a feature of hse credentialing. they “fail[ed] to acknowledge language minoritized students’ common racial positioning and the ways that such positioning suggest deficiency…normalizes these racial hierarchies and provides them legitimacy” (flores & rosa, 2015, p. 166). although hse test-takers were effectively disenfranchised, juntos and its students nonetheless engaged dialectically, internally between staff and students to respond curricular requirements, and externally to confront discriminatory language policies. in the end, the decision to restore spanish-language testing was brought about through juntos’ commitment to freirean pedagogy and the relational exchange between a variety of local and state entities, organizations, and individuals. praxis at juntos en comunidad juntos largely operated as a fully bilingual community center at first baptist church’s parish house-turned-office space. besides hse classes, juntos offered esl classes, parenting support groups, financial coaching, homeownership counseling, and more. each of these services was coordinated by organizations with complementary specialization. i represented bridgeway ’s workforce development division and oversaw the hse program. drawing from my own experiences as a latin american immigrant and long-time county resident, i sought to create a program firmly grounded on freirean pedagogy that would offer hope and solidarity for the spanish-speaking immigrant community in the region. i was convinced then, as i am now, that “[h]ope is an ontological need” (freire, 1992, p. 2) and that the practice of education is itself an act of hopefulness. freire (1992) writes, “one of the tasks of the progressive educator, through a serious, correct political analysis, is to unveil opportunities for hope, no matter what the obstacles may be” (p. 6). juntos, however, existed in “the tensions, contradictions, fears, doubts, hopes, and ‘deferred’ dreams that are part and parcel of living a borrowed and colonized cultural existence” (macedo, in freire, 2000, p. 11) funded exclusively through private foundation dollars, juntos operated within the constraints not only of larger neoliberal ideologies directing the operation of adult education programs towards labor market considerations, but also of the foundation’s beliefs about self-sufficiency.7 while we affirmed the 7 juntos en comunidad was funded beginning in 2014 by a private, family foundation with a 30-year charter sunsetting in 2022. the foundation engaged the walter rand institute for public affairs at rutgers university to validate its approach for economic self-sufficiency for low-income families. grantee organizations operate collaboratively to engage the families through shared case-management peeples current issues in comparative education 88 potential, individual economic benefit of the hse, we were “unimpressed with dogmatic methodologies” (gadotti, 2019, p. 40). freirean pedagogy was for us, “more oneiric than epistemic,” as rubem alves describes; our guiding principles were more like “prophetic maps” by which we could orient juntos’s hse program as we sought alternatives to “the circularity of education’s well-worn byways” (as cited in gadotti, p. 46). education-inpraxis, instead, engages and rearrange social relationships to develop and update visions for the future that liberate both the oppressed and the oppressor alike—and is therefore necessarily political (freire, 1992, 2000b). at juntos, we “never understood literacy education of adults as a thing in itself, as simply learning the mechanics of reading and writing, but, rather, as a political act” (freire, 2000a, p. 117) that maintained access to educational opportunity and credentialing for otherwise marginalized spanish-speakers. internal dialectic relationships a significant component of juntos’s programming generally, and the hse program specifically, was volunteerism oriented around reciprocity and solidarity, such as neighborhood park cleanups, a community garden, meal prep for the local code blue shelter, back to school party, christmas posada, and more. beyond the volunteerism coordinated by juntos, students maintained a larger network that facilitated spontaneous and organic social organizing. students coordinated mutual aid, including school pickups and at-home childcare to accommodate work and study, additional study sessions, making and dropping off meals, and rides to classes and to testing centers. these types of volunteerism rebel against the oppressive present (the lack of safe housing, safe places to gather, adequate food, and opportunities for celebrating shared values) while bringing about the desired future through an action-oriented hope. juntos “accept[ed] neither a ‘well-behaved’ present nor a predetermined future—root[ed] itself in the dynamic present and [became] revolutionary” (freire, 2000b, p. 84). gadotti (2019) elaborates the point, “the world that surrounds us is an unfinished world and this implies the denunciation of its unjust and oppressive reality and, therefore, of a transformative critique and announcement of another reality” (p. 39). we testify that this future transformed world “is not something given to be received by people, but rather something to be created by them” (freire, 1992, p. 39). students also demonstrated hope and solidarity in their volunteerism as studentinstructors who lead cohorts of their peers as they studied hse materials. freirean pedagogy denounces education as the mere transfer of knowledge and instead sees it as re-made in new instances with new people, iteratively and collaboratively (freire, 1992, 2000b). recognizing our authority as program staff, and acknowledging our students’ agency, we engaged in an open dialectic: “the people must find themselves in the emerging leaders, and the latter must find themselves in the people” (freire, 2000b, p. 163). student-instructors chose from the workbook what they wanted to teach and were assigned to a corresponding cohort. some student-instructors volunteered after completing the credentialing exam, others alternated attending a class as a student and leading a class as an instructor. in between six-week blocks of class, we met over pizza to debrief the last block and plan for the next one. alongside conversations about schedules and supplies, we also spoke often about critical consciousness, though we seldom used the phrase. we all agreed that teaching for the hse exam included “the awakening of critical consciousness [that] leads responsibilities. more specifically, the foundation’s approach is a social service delivery method that requires families to identify two adult leaders for the family unit to develop behavioral adjustment plans to complete accomplish goals to stabilize the family and prevent crisis (and the need for emergency economic support through public funds). people, policy, and praxis current issues in comparative education 89 the way to the expression of social discontents precisely because these discontents are real components of an oppressive situation” (weffert as cited in freire, 1992, p. 36). that is, beyond the content in the workbook, we agreed to also teach about the larger policy landscape that informed test design, test administration, and the value of the credential. by acknowledging the historic reality of the hse credential, we were able to have critical conversations about the credential’s utility. freire (2000b) writes that educators and their students engage “not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. as they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators” (p. 69). critical conversations were recreated again and again outside our meetings, moving into our respective classrooms, into individual coaching sessions, and into the car rides, and even mealtimes students organized with each other. external dialectic relationships for freire (1992), educational practices are necessarily political. education cannot be neutral; he writes, “actually, there is no such thing” (p. 67). he continues, “my concern is not to deny the political and directive nature of education…but to accept that this is its nature...” (p. 68). our decision at juntos to engage openly and actively in critical conversations about hse policy affirmed our political nature. our commitment to ensuring continued mother tongue-based instruction, and therefore spanish-language testing, similarly affirmed it. however, we understood our political nature within dialectic relationship between students, program staff, and the various organizations involved in hse credentialing. in most instances, this meant pursuing collaborative opportunities with nj doe test centers in the region and throughout the state who could facilitate spanish-language testing. in fact, through a temporary agreement between njdoe, bridgeway, and allies in health, an allied health training school in a nearby county, was able to offer the hiset exam at bridgeway’s office, while the local school district and cc finalized their transition.8 freire’s open dialectic, however, also extends to competing or conflicting relationships. he (1992) writes, “my ethical duty, as one of the subjects, one of the agents of a practice that can never be neutral—the educational—is to express my respect for differences in ideas and positions. i must respect even positions opposed to my own, positions that i combat earnestly and with passion” (1992, p. 69). in the case of oppressive relationships, the dialectic takes a different form: “this, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well” (freire, 2000b, p. 44). freire explains that the hegemonic power of oppressors cannot fuel liberation, rather “the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both” (p. 44). by framing their decision to discontinue spanish-language testing as one of operational capacity, cc objectified and effectually disenfranchised spanish-language test-takers. it would not be cc on its own, then, who would restore access (in freire’s language: “liberate”) for spanish-language test-takers. it would be necessary to engage in the open dialectic relationship that freire describes respectfully but not objectively or in opposition. freire warns, “one cannot conceive of objectivity without subjectivity. neither can exist without the other, nor can they be dichotomized” (p. 50). he continues, “only in this interdependence [between objectivity and subjectivity] is an authentic praxis possible, 8 nj doe approved bridgeway’s office as a satellite site for allies in health’s already certified test center operation located 65 miles to the north of juntos’s offices. however, this arrangement was made only temporarily for two reasons: (1) cc had not yet taken over the local school district’s test center operation, and (2) the hiset test had not yet been computerized and paper-and-pencil test booklets could be transported by allies in health personnel to the satellite site. peeples current issues in comparative education 90 without which it is impossible to resolve the oppressor-oppressed contradiction” (pp. 5152). as mentioned previously, cc cited a lack of qualified spanish-speaking personnel as the major reason for their decision not to offer spanish-language testing and further justified it by referring test-takers to alternate test centers in other parts of the state (more than 60 miles away). on these points, we agreed with freire: “what would be intolerable would be simply pronouncing the democratic, antidiscriminatory discourse and maintaining a colonial practice” (freire, 1992, p. 58). at juntos we sought to reinsert subjectivity: the distance was a hardship. whereas cc was only a fifteen-minute drive from juntos, it would take an hour and a half to drive to the nearest spanish-language test center. cc objectified personnel, reducing people to an operational component; we countered that more than a quarter of the county’s population was of latin-american origin and that nearly a fifth of households were bilingual (us census, 2014a, 2014b). meanwhile juntos students and other spanish-language test-takers repeatedly expressed their desire for local spanish-language testing in calls to cc’s adult education department, to ets, and to nj doe. in april 2015, after fifteen months of no local spanish-language testing, cc finally hired a spanish-speaking test proctor and nine juntos students sat for the test. immediately afterwards, all juntos’s students, not only those who had tested, wrote heartfelt thank you cards to cc’s adult education director in their native spanish. the cards expressed what being able to take the test in spanish meant to the students; they enumerated the ways in which the english-only decision had blocked them from accomplishing their goals. the thank you cards also worked to humanize students to a bureaucracy that would have otherwise continued to view them as operational objects for which they did not have the capacity to engage. after that initial test, cc began offering the hse exam regularly alongside english language testing. from april to december 2015, 22 students from juntos’s hse program sat for the exam; all eventually acquired their hse credential. implications for educators in justifying their promotion of the common core college and career readiness standards, its organizers asserted that the standards had been developed through “researchand evidence-based” methods (about the common core standards, 2021, para 6). however, “it is sometimes the case that policy has nothing to do with research. instead, policymakers, whether explicitly or not, are making an argument about what is valuable and what should occupy people’s attention” (bomer & maloch, 2011, p. 38). in the case of common core, the subsequent changes to hse testing, and reports and commentaries of these changes, the shallow standard of readiness for (near-term or eventual) workforce participation was once again asserted as education’s main purpose. freire offers a more complex, dialectal view of education: “in a certain moment it becomes true that one no longer studies in order to work nor does one work in order to study; one studies in the process of working. there comes about, thus, a true unity between practice and theory” (freire, 2000a, p. 124). in this section, i provide a brief discussion of implications for educators based on the case presented in this paper. i include myself in this discussion because i am foremost an educator, even as i work as an organizer and nonprofit professional. firstly, i have argued in this paper, borrowing from valverde (2011), that policies are ultimately implemented locally through dialectic relationships between actors. educators seeking to transform the world must acknowledge the dialectic between the local, the people, policy, and praxis current issues in comparative education 91 national, and even the global. it is not only possible but imperative that we simultaneously challenge the larger oppressive structures that form the basis of our present society and begin to address immediate circumstances through present, local action. speaking on work to address structural changes, freire (2000a) writes, “this should not, of course, be taken to mean that literacy activities cannot begin until after the radical transformation of the system inherited from the colonizers has taken place” (p. 120). rather, praxis developed in the local environment can “open perspectives for an analysis of national (and regional) problems” (freire as cited in freire, 1992, p. 78). in the case of juntos, in our critical conversations with our students and in our negotiations with other organizations and state agencies, we consistently engaged in multi-level analysis of policy and policy implementation even as we designed an operated our hse test prep program. secondly, “that in order for us to create something, we need to start creating” (horton & freire, 1992, p. 56). that is to say, program design and implementation do not occur as discrete processes with extended preparation and planning periods. rather, design and implementation occur concurrently, dialectically, and iteratively. freire (2000a) recounts that instead of pre-designing a program, his team from the world council of churches and the institute for cultural action waited to meet with the team at the commission on education in guinea-bissau. at juntos, despite the hse’s focus on test preparation, as staff we waited until students joined the program to elaborate our design: from the beginning, we rejected the hypothesis of a purely mechanistic literacy program and considered the problem of teaching adults how to read in relation to the awakening of their consciousness… we wanted…a program with men and women as its subjects rather than as patient recipients, a program which itself would be an act of creation, capable of releasing other creative acts. (p. 81) at juntos, without knowing what we would create over time, we started creating a program to engage the spanish-speaking community in the county. this does not mean we were unprepared. with freirean principles guiding our decision making, we had already assembled spanish-language materials related to test topics. however, we remained flexible about who would teach and how they would teach. when we engaged student-instructors, we found “it would be through knowing and reknowing together that we would begin to learn and to teach together also” (freire, 2000a, p. 139). that is, it was with, and not before, our students joined us that we understood what our program would become. educators should prepare thoughtfully and critically, but also remember that “no one walks without learning to walk—without learning to walk by walking” (freire, 1992, p. 145). finally, our engagement in dialectic relationships facilitates our ability to exist in ambiguity, to respond to changing circumstances, and to manage complex relationships with other players who may not share our goals. educators should consider their existing and potential dialectic relationships, rather than focusing on oppositional relationships. the changes to hse to align to college and career readiness required us to develop new teaching materials, but our dynamic relationships with students and student-instructors allowed the program to adapt flexibly to student needs. although the test center recertification process created ambiguity about the language of test completion, ongoing conversations with nj doe, ets, and allies in health, allowed us to install a temporary test center at bridgeway’s office. by engaging cc both before and after their certification, that is, both before and after decisions about test center operations were made, we were able to restore spanish-language testing in the county. subjectivity allows open dialectic relationships to form, whether we enter as educators, as students, as program managers, peeples current issues in comparative education 92 or as policy makers. objectification reduces these to mechanistic, immutable operators that prohibit transformation. educators should be wary of oppositional relationships and seek opportunities for redefining the nature of relationships. this is an iterative process: “education that supports reflection and action, then, is constantly remade in praxis. in order to be, it must become…[it] is revolutionary futurity. hence it is prophetic (and, as such, hopeful)” (freire, 2000a, p. 84). acknowledgments this manuscript benefitted from feedback from professors nicholas limerick and grey gundaker, supportive colleagues sarah vasquez-xu and vineeta kapahi, and two anonymous reviewers. i am grateful for their time, their effort, and their care. i am also grateful to my students at juntos who taught me how to parent with grace as we poured over quadratic equations together. disclosure statement the author has no conflicts of interests to disclose. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to elena j. peeples at ejp2161@tc.columbia.edu. elena peeples is a doctoral fellow at teachers college, columbia university in the phd in anthropology and education. her research interests include adult education, community organizing and collective political action, urbanism, and latin american immigration in the united states. she holds a master of science in education in adult education from indiana university and a bachelor of arts in applied linguistics from iowa state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0538-7377 people, policy, and praxis current issues in comparative education 93 references about the common core standards. 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(2011). seeing like a city: the dialectic of modern and premodern ways of seeing in urban governance: seeing like a city. law & society review, 45(2), 277– 312. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5893.2011.00441.x 7_brown_shah_stevick_labeling the world current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 22, issue 1, special issue 2020 © 2020, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 22(1), 104-120. labeling the world: the 3p framework for critiquing and reconstructing our categorization processes kara d. brown university of south carolina payal p. shah university of south carolina e. doyle stevick university of south carolina scholars and students of comparative education routinely, and often reflexively, categorize places with labels that have complex and problematic histories, connotations and associations. both comparative education classrooms and scholarship will benefit from reflecting on the dynamics of labeling places. we seek to provide a framework for analyzing the main issues and risks associated with labeling with a heuristic we call the 3p framework. it invites students and scholars to consider the ways in which power, perspective, and plurality are expressed through the terms we apply to places. through this framework, we identify common pitfalls in labeling. we provide a table with open access resources that critically examine many of the most important and common geographic labels in our field. to illustrate how these issues are manifested in particular contexts, we provide two vignettes, on south asia and estonia. the vignettes show how issues of power, perspective and plurality are manifested through the labels used and applied in specific places where we conduct research. finally, we examine how the labeling process is situated in specific contexts and how meaning is culturally rooted; in doing so, we explain how the exclusive use of english-language labels in this piece is necessarily incomplete. the piece concludes with recommendations for teaching with this framework and for producing comparative education scholarship that deploys labels with greater reflexivity and intentionality. keywords: labels, categories, states, regions. how do we label the world? by adulthood, we have absorbed a set of terms and categories for places, colloquial understandings that we carry into our roles as students and scholars of comparative education. while becoming socialized into shared professional discourses may partially reconstruct the meaning of these labels, the process by which we assign terms to places has not received much explicit attention. as former students and current researchers and professors in the field, we recognize that these terms play a fundamental role both in structuring our comparisons and in defining the contexts for our work: in other words, this is how we attribute meaning by creating associations with specific other places. given the centrality of labels and brown, shah & stevick current issues in comparative education 105 labeling in our field, it is important and illuminating to examine their use and history with care and depth. this article focuses on how we label the world — in writing, understanding, researching, and reading comparative work in education. the complexity of these taxonomies and the impact of their use are often left unremarked, yet have important theoretical and practical implications as well as significant promise for teaching comparative education as a subject. we begin with the dynamics of power, perspective, and plurality in the imposition and diffusion of labels. any label may shed light and cast shadows, and labels that persist are frequently dated while their shadows can perpetuate distortions. to illustrate these issues, we offer two resources: first, a table of common terms and popular resources (with links) that invite us-students and scholars alike--into a deeper consideration of their complexity and problematic aspects, and second, two vignettes from our research sites--south asia and estonia--that reveal the depth and situated nature of labels and how they are imposed, appropriated or contested. we advocate more intentional teaching of the labels we use to construct the world, and more reflection on their deployment in scholarship. our aim with the 3p framework is to help readers take into account, through a deliberate consideration of power, perspective, and plurality, the complexity of labeling.1 we advocate the application of the framework in both the reading scholarship in the field and in the crafting of one’s own research. the table we include for reference flags several of the most common labels used regularly in our field along with the potential perils to consider as one engages with this category. labeling is not a neutral, descriptive process, but a choice about how to read the world. berger and luckmann (1966/1981) noted that (as cited in lagerspetz, p. 52, 2003), “applying divisions and categorizations is a way of defining reality, of constructing ‘knowledge’.” these terms are used both by researchers and in society generally, often in different but interconnected ways, and are bound up with ongoing struggles over meaning and identity, as platt (2009) demonstrated in his discussion of the label “post post-soviet.” the phrase manages to allude to two temporal shifts, a political transformation, and a geographic region. labelling reflects broader cultural responses to both anticipated and experienced changes in society: “the common apprehension of a new epoch means simply that the typical post-soviet discursive mechanisms…have lost their dominance in the social construction of historical process and social identity, yielding their place to other visions of present situatedness” (p. 6). labeling is therefore a window into ongoing conceptual and epistemological conversations about the world and how it understands itself; the categories function as powerful units of analysis that invite scholars into broader theoretical conversations. for the purposes of this paper, we use labels and categories as related but distinct terms: labels include the proper names for places, such as harare, malawi, subsaharan africa, and the sahel, while categories include particular units of analysis or cross-cutting groupings or clusters, such as megalopolises, developing countries, third world or global south. rather than maintain a strict delineation, though, we hope to focus attention on the similar dynamics they reveal. these terms circulate both 1 the power and effectiveness of katarina tomasševski’s (2001) 4a framework with our undergraduate and graduate students inspired the developments of this heuristic. labeling the world current issues in comparative education 106 in general public discourse, where they deserve our attention, and among scholars. an example of the latter is the powerful turn to the label post-colonial, which, worked better [than other labels like non-western, emergent, minority, and third world]: it lacked the derogations of the former labels, it specified what unified its compass (a former subjugated relation to western powers), it embodied a historical dimension, and it opened analytic windows onto common features of peoples who had only recently, and to the extent possible, thrown off their european chains. (moore, 2001, p. 116). selecting labels, therefore, positions one’s research in relation to as well as within existing understandings of the world. our shared concern with the dynamics of labeling the world emerged from our experiences with everyday discourse and media coverage of the globe, from our engagement with scholarship in the field of comparative and international education, and from teaching courses in this field at both the undergraduate and graduate levels for students at the university of south carolina. as members of comparative & international education society, we operate within academic special interest groups (sigs) and terms that cluster societies in complex, cross-cutting ways. the authors’ experience has several shared elements, which surely helped us to identify patterns. we three grew up in northeastern cities in the united states, and completed our doctoral studies in comparative education at indiana university, which had strong language and area studies programs, before accepting positions at the university of south carolina. sharing a similar mix of students and the communities in which we lived provided the common ground. our research interests spanned topics across language policy, citizenship education, gender and development, and education about the holocaust, and our research sites included locations within the countries of estonia and india and across europe and south asia, more generally. the 3p’s of labelling: power, perspective & plurality labels in comparative education can be approached effectively by considering the 3 p’s. the 3p’s provide a heuristic for systematically thinking through some of the key issues raised by labeling, and it can be employed as a framework for--to name some examples--individual writing assignments or team presentations in comparative education courses, or by scholars and reviewers in considering why authors are making the choices they are making. the 3p’s address critical issues of authorship, dynamism and circulation, and raise important questions such as: who gets to name the world? whose categories circulate globally? how are labels contested? power is broadly concerned with the relationship between those assigning the labels and those who are labeled. it considers the imbalance in authority or resources between them, including the ability to have one’s own categorization embedded in policy concerning the other. the power “p” raises several questions: how are labels positioned in relation to one another? who has the power to name? perspective takes into account the cultural situatedness of the labels, the discourses in which they are tied up, the connotations they have and the assumptions that carry. it addresses how culturally rooted the terminology is, its dominant academic field, and its potential for distortion. perspective invites us to consider the socio-cultural and brown, shah & stevick current issues in comparative education 107 political orientation that helped to produce the label and, in many ways, is embedded in the label itself. plurality acknowledges that the term may be contested. a label may mean different things in different contexts, to different people, and it may be embraced, rejected or contested by those to whom it is applied. to ask what a label means is no simple matter: there is the intention of the user, the perception of the audience, and the perception/reception of those to whom it is applied. “meaning” too often presumes shared, intersubjective agreement, and it is abundantly clear that that is not the case, even within the same language and discourse communities. plurality also acknowledges that there are many labels and categorizations that can be applied, and that readers and writers should consider systematically the range of options available in order to better assess one’s choice. table 1. common labels & concerns label disciplinary orientation perils first-second-third fourth world geo-political clarity & consensus; datedness (graves, 2017; silver, 2015) developed developingleast developed economic datedness; distortions (fernholz, 2016; gbadamosi, 2020; khokhar, 2015; un, n.d.) post colonial/ soviet/communist/ socialist geo-political, cultural datedness (brians, 2006) high upper middle lower middle low income country economic datedness global north global south geo-political; economic clarity & consensus (clarke, 2018; eriksen, 2015) east-west; western-non western cultural clarity & consensus; distortion (capan, 2018) industrialized industrializingnewly industrializing economic, political science distortion labeling the world current issues in comparative education 108 majority-minority world geo-political/ demographic clarity & consensus (emmanuel, 2009) western, educated, industrialized, rich & democratic (weird) psychology clarity & consensus (robson, 2017) political & economic organization affiliation/ membership examples: oecd, eu, asean geopolitical datedness unofficial economic grouping examples: baltic/asian tigers economic datedness (o’neill, 2019) region examples: far east/near east, mena, nordic, sub-saharan africa, etc. geopolitical/ cultural clarity & consensus; distortion state/country name geopolitical datedness area of dominant language, religion, political orientation, etc. examples: lusophone, anglophone, francophone muslim, christian democratic, socialist, communist geopolitical/ cultural clarity & consensus; distortion (leite, n.d.) the problem of meaning in our experience teaching courses to undergraduates in our region, we find that a majority typically comes from a white/anglo monocultural/monolingual background, and operates within an implicit positivist paradigm and worldview. examining the process of labeling, in part by showing how labels and other concepts can be interpreted differently in different cultures and languages, creates opportunities to open up deeper conversations about interpretation and meaning and even epistemology. meanings are bound up with contexts, so taking context seriously as a matter of concern (sobe & kowalczyk, 2014) when reflecting on the terms we use to designate places requires that we address meaning too. intended and perceived meanings may vary, but the encounter between the two creates a meaning that is coconstituted, co-constructed, or inter-woven (sobe & kowalczyk). as sobe and kowalczyk point out, the contexts cannot be neatly compartmentalized into “political, brown, shah & stevick current issues in comparative education 109 social, economic” context, and so forth. by invoking cultural context here, we do not mean to suggest a tidy box that can be defined objectively from an omniscient perspective, but rather, to acknowledge that the act of labeling is part of a process of constructing and reconstructing meaning that takes place within historical relations of power and knowledge production. meaning also changes over time. some important labels can be traced back to a single originator, though the way they resonate, are taken up and evolve as they circulate shows the living pathways of new terms. bangladeshi photographer shahidul alam’s “majority world” (early 1990s; see alam, 2008), french demographer alfred sauvy’s “third world” (in 1952; see solarz, 2012), and czech writer milan kundera’s “central europe” (kundera, 1984) stand out as examples of coinages that took hold among scholars and the society at large. alam and kundera rejected powerful, globally circulating labels like “third world,” “developing world,” and the east-west divide, crafting new categories in response. in this way, many labels carry forward traces of the problematic terms they were responding against. crucially for grappling with meaning, our geo-political labels--which are themselves concepts--are culturally rooted. for that reason, it is important to explore how the categorization of places that are implied by our labels is implicitly comparative and culturally rooted. moreover, these concepts are particular to the english language, which itself is a language of power. as alatas (2003) observed, many concepts are, passed off as universal when in fact they derive their characteristics from a particular cultural tradition…. for example, while ‘religion’ is presented as a universal concept, the understanding of what makes up religion in phenomenological, historical, and sociological terms is often derived from christianity, resulting in what joachim matthes (2000:98), referring to islam, calls the ‘“hidden” cultural christianisation’ of the muslim world since it started to think of islam as a ‘religion.’ (p. 460). in this way, “the temple, mosque, and synagogue are all, sociologically speaking, “churches.” the term “church” is generalized without the concept’s being rendered universal or plural” (alatas, 2003, p. 460). applying this insight to the labels we use, we can see that labels objectify, containing the ‘other’ safely within an apparently objective and stable term, rather than seeing those thus represented as “potential sources of concepts rather than just data,” whose self-understandings in their own languages could productively unsettle the labels we use. vignettes south asia south asia illustrates the complexities and challenges around labeling within the comparative education world. the region is composed of former colonies of the european empire that gained their independence between the late 1940s and the mid 1960s; they experienced many varieties of colonialism under multiple powers. at the core of labeling practices are relationships of power, perspective, and plurality. examining how labels are applied, appropriated, and contested within individual south asian countries, as well as across the region, enables us to rethink and reconsider the appropriateness and function of these labels. labeling the world current issues in comparative education 110 most multilateral international organizations (e.g. unesco, world bank, undp) define the south asia region as being bounded topographically and comprising eight distinct countries; india, sri lanka, bangladesh, pakistan, nepal, maldives, bhutan, and afghanistan (world bank, 2020). topographically, the region comprises the subhimalayan countries, bounded by the himalaya, karakorum, and hindu kush mountains. the south asia region also comprises the indo gangetic plain and deccan plateau, constituting “peninsular india”, and sri lanka. economically and geopolitically, the region is organized by the south asian association of regional cooperation (saarc). saarc was established in 1985 as a regional intergovernmental organization and geopolitical union that is focused on economic and regional integration between these eight south asian nations (saarc, 2020). despite this relatively straightforward grouping of nation states, there are important historical, economic, and political factors that play into how the region is described. many informational descriptions of the region describe the region in similar ways. for example, trip saavy, a digital travel platform, states, “south asia can loosely be described as the eight nations around the indian subcontinent, including the island nations of sri lanka and the maldives that are situated south of india” (trip saavy, 2020). this description provides a clear example of how within the region, india is placed as the primary frame of reference, around which the other countries are literally and figuratively “mapped”. this placing of india as the primary frame, or core, with other countries within the region as peripheral factors into general understandings of the region. thus, we see that the core-periphery relationship (wallerstein, 1974) most commonly used to describe the economic network where colonized nations are placed in peripheral positions in relation to the empire, or “core”, also exists, to an extent, within a “peripheral” region. with this example, we can see how power and positioning factors prominently between countries comprising this region. aside from geographical descriptors, other labels often applied to the region also allude to the core-periphery relationship described in world systems theory (wallerstein, 1974). some of these labels include “developing/developed”, “postcolonial”, the “global south”, and “third world”. these labels have distinct epistemological origins as well as political implications, and have been applied, appropriated, and contested by scholars, practitioners, and activists on the ground they illustrate the plurality around how labels are appropriated, negotiated, and contested. below we explore how the frame of postcolonialism, and many of these other labels, apply to the south asian region. postcolonialism in south asia postcolonialism grew out of the fields of history, literature and cultural studies and provides critical analysis of european imperial power (said, 1978; fanon, 1961; gandhi, 1998; chakrabarty, 2000; bhabba, 1994). in orientalism, said (1978) introduced an interpretation where the world was divided into the “orient” and the “occident”, with western europe as the “occident” and the rest of the world as the “orient”. this framing is often considered the genesis of the cultural concepts of the ‘west” and the “east”, mutually constitutive constructs where the west represents the oriental world pejoratively as inferior, backwards, irrational, and exotic, juxtaposed against the brown, shah & stevick current issues in comparative education 111 rational, progressive, and modern west. the imposition of an east/west binary has led to the development of a subjugated colonial identity based on the dehumanization of colonized people of the east that continues on into the present day (said, 1978; fanon, 1961). postcolonial scholars also point out that this dichotomous classification of west/east, third world/first world, developed/developing, etc. serves to homogenize and suppress people from different regions across the “east”, i.e. the middle east, africa, indian subcontinent, from being able to represent themselves as distinct cultures. this homogenization, or essentialization, enables the “west” to maintain power and control over the homogenous “other” (said, 1978). as explained further below, this dichotomous domination continues to frame present day efforts of development, or assistance to countries with poverty – most of whom are peripheral nations and former colonies (world bank, 2020). we can see how this dichotomous classification provides necessary perspective into how power has been maintained and deployed. the emergence and legitimization of postcolonial theory has generated a sustained critical effort on processes and discourses of international or global development. from this critical perspective, development is defined broadly as “incorporating the whole complex of unequal material relationships and processes which structure engagement between the global south and the global north, as well as the primary discursive framework within which these relationships have been constructed for more than sixty years” (wilson, 2012, p. 4). this definition of development emphasizes the relationship between current flows of global capital and historical processes of imperialism, so as not to render the ever-present legacies of imperialism invisible. thus, the link between colonial processes and practices and current development practices and processes in the postcolonial time period is made explicit. postcolonial studies and postcolonial theory thus center the logics and legacies of colonial practices that remain active in current day society and that order our current economic system of capitalism. this perspective enables postcolonialism to have a simultaneous temporal and ongoing material dimension. as a means of challenging the essentialism of the “east”, postcolonial efforts include a reframing of the “east/west” into the global north and global south. “the use of the phrase “global south” marks a shift from a focus on development or cultural difference towards an emphasis on geopolitical power relations” (dados & connell, 2012, 12). this shift provided alternative language for concepts like globalization, which tend to homogenize societies and cultures (anderson-levitt, 2003). this usage of the global south is an illustration of what possibility and plurality with labeling can look like; that labeling practices can be harnessed as a tool to acknowledge and legitimate alternative cultural, historical, and political realities. for example, in south asia, postcolonial scholars built upon the north/south concept and formed a collective to study the oppressed classes within the region (guha, 1982). these scholars focus upon illuminating the intellectual and material conditions of specific peoples and cultures within the east, or the various “subaltern classes” (gramsci, 1978). the collective, known as the subaltern studies group, focuses on making visible the conditions of subalternity and historical instances of resistance to empire in the south asian context (gandhi, 1998; dados & connell 2012). spivak’s labeling the world current issues in comparative education 112 (1985) famous interrogation, “can the subaltern speak?”, revealed the complexities of authority and representation and necessity to problematize the relationship between the “knowing investigator and (un)knowing subject” (gandhi, 1998, p. 2). this has led subaltern scholars to develop a non-essentialized and nuanced investigation of the relationship between domination and subordination. in so doing, these theorists, (e.g. chakrabarty, spivak, mohanty, bhabba), provide critiques of development practices that serve to universalize notions such as “third world women”, “development” and “childhood” (unterhalter, 2005). postcolonial critiques of development practices also challenge the idea that people within the global south are considered the “objects” of development. one example of the objectification, and subsequent homogenization, of people within the global south is the production of the “third world woman” (mohanty, 1984). the category of “third world women” represents a singular or monolithic subject upon which “knowledge” about women is produced, by scholars in the west/global north. the third world woman is frequently applied to refer to women from “underdeveloped/over-exploited geopolitical entities” (johnson-odim 1991). illustrating the importance of plurality in labeling practices, mohanty (1984), among other scholars, has reclaimed the term “third world women” as a political strategy that relies upon the commonalities of women across “the third world”. she contends that the emergence of a third world women’s feminist politics grew out of colonialism and capitalism where “systemic socioeconomic and ideological processes position the peoples of africa, asia, latin america, middle east, and “minority” populations in the us and europe” in a disadvantaged relationship with the state (mohanty 2003, p. 44). this third world feminist politics seeks to “pivot the center” (i.e., europe and the united states) and illuminate the complex ground of the “intersecting lines of power and resistance” (mohanty 2003, p. 42) that constitute the world as all people occupy it. thus, this form of feminist politics explicitly challenges and reconceptualizes the interrelated histories of colonialism, capitalism, race, and gender (willemsen & shah forthcoming). with attempts to “pivot the center”, mohanty and other postcolonial scholars seek to address one of the critiques of postcolonialism – that centering colonialism as the primary frame of reference privileges a eurocentric position (chakrabarty, 2000). however, other critics of postcolonialism assert that postcolonial theory’s focus on history and culture, and critique of eurocentrism, may result in a flattening of postcolonial manifestations of capitalism and end up essentializing the postcolonial experience (chibber, 2013). this may have the very effect that postcolonial scholars seek to challenge a silencing of power hierarchies within and across nation states and the region. critics warn that scholars need to be cognizant that assuming a shared capitalist experience may ignore the nuances and power hierarchies within and across the region (chibber, 2013; robbins, 2014). such critiques underscore the necessity to look at all of the 3ps power, perspective, plurality as interrelated components of a holistic framework in order to more reflectively navigate our understandings of the world. estonia in redirecting our focus from a region to a state, we discover a similar basket of labeling perils along geo-political, cultural, and economic lines. estonia offers an example of brown, shah & stevick current issues in comparative education 113 the importance of reflecting on the sensitivities around current and future categorizing particularly when foregrounding power, perspective, and the possibility of plurality. the country experienced profound political and culture upheavals in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from gaining independence from the russian empire in 1918, experiencing two decades of independent statehood before dueling nazi (19411944) and soviet occupations (1940 & 1944-1991), regaining independence in 1991, and acceding to the european union and nato in 2004. how do efforts to label and categorize play out in such a context? linking estonia to a geographic region presents the first set of complications. locating the country within the broad “east” or “west,” labeling the country as “eastern” or “northern european” or imagining it as “nordic” goes beyond strict geographic designations: these groupings carry significant cultural and political values, meaning, and norms. regional labeling is shaped by perspective and in constant flux. the estonian poet, jaan kaplinski (1987) speaks to the vagaries of these regular swings in geographic imaginaries as well as recognizing the uncertainty to border-knowing: the east-west border is always wandering sometimes eastward, sometimes west, and we do not know exactly where it is just now. this fluctuating identity, in part reflected by the country’s one-time location on the westernmost flank of the russian empire and soviet union, but now (since 2004) serving as the easternmost border of the european union, leads political scientists working in estonia to consider it as “caught between east and west” (schulze, 2010, p. 361). while the enduring geographic grouping with other baltic states has had more regional staying power, even that label has, at times, expanded to include the baltic region, inclusive of the states bordering the baltic sea. as we turn to the cultural meanings carried by these regional labels, we find the “eastwest” binary working to inform powerful lines. feldman (2000), in his exploration of the major identities of estonia, points to the ways the country gets caught in the problem of the east-west divide and its subsequent link to the concept of “eastern europe”: "west" is defined as civil, rational, and supportive of individual rights and liberties, while the "east" denotes exclusive, ethnic-based societies clamouring for direction in the wake of the socialist collapse. this dichotomy sets up a paradigm for interpreting events in "east" europe (p. 408). other modified versions of “east,” including the country as part of the “new east,” are likewise roundly problematized by estonians. former estonian president, toomas hendrik ilves, for example, spoke to the connotations of the term in his twitter response to the guardian’s 2014 launch of the newspaper’s “new east network” to provide expanded coverage of the post-soviet region, including the baltic states: “we [estonia] are no more ‘new’ than finland, poland, austria, et al., all post wwi states. if those are relevant dimensions after 25 years, the rubric is just intellectually bankrupt” (16 june 2014, twitter). here we find the popular rejection of a label due to problematic temporal aspects intersecting with rejected geographic clustering. other geographic categories point to the importance of considering the fluidity of labels rejected, accepted, and sought. in short, a plurality of labels exist. the power to define one’s state and global affiliation works as a powerful undercurrent in these labeling the world current issues in comparative education 114 discussions. in the case of estonia, “nordic” is such a label particularly since it suggests a much more progressive set of values and a sharp distancing from the country’s soviet past. in an analysis of estonian press from 1997-2017, tammepuu et al. (2019) identified a regular theme of a label in progress—“estonia as striving to become a ‘nordic’ country” (p. 198). in this case, the nordics primarily represent the telos, the ultimate goal for estonia, particularly for their high living standards and wealth. underlying the particular motive is the idea of ‘catching up’ with the nordics, that is, reaching the high level of socio-economic development and prosperity generally associated with them. (italics original, ibid., p. 198). the nordic label likewise raises the issue of audience: categorization for whom? lagerspetz (2003) highlights the ways the estonian ministry of foreign affairs produced texts in the late 1990s directed toward international audiences that emphasized a nordic orientation despite estonia’s neoliberal economic policies. lagerspetz (2003) reflects on this development that “it could be inferred that the ‘nordic orientation’ of estonia chiefly serves the foreign policy needs of creating an image, a brand, that would serve the country by dissociating it from the troublesome image of a post-soviet country, thus paving the way towards western structures” (p. 56). these examples point to the ways one label carries multiple meanings (i.e., signaling new identities, projecting associations, etc.) across a range of audiences over time. the final set of geo-political labels—the “post-” categories--also present complicated issues of relevance and association speaking most directly to power and perspective. estonia, is considered, since the country’s restored independence in 1991, at times post-soviet, post-communist, post-totalitarian, post-colonial, and post-socialist along with a larger regional and global group of countries. one of the first problems concerns the applicability and analytical power of continuing to tether the county with the soviet experience almost three decades after the collapse of the u.s.s.r. some scholars, such as kevin platt (2009), speak back to the relevance of this label by asserting that we are now in the post, post-soviet era. a much less contentious “post-” label for estonia is post-socialist. the growing, especially since 2010, and robust, area of comparative education research focused post-socialism (see aydarova, millei, piattoeva & silova, 2016; silova, 2010) offers a dynamic use of the post-socialist label in part through identifying the particularity of the region and continued need for development. this scholarship recognizes, as iveta silova et al. highlight (2017) “the theoretical and analytical work that will allow for a more complicated, authentic, and accurate analysis of the post-socialist world” (p. 1). the other major post-label applied to estonia and the other baltic states -postcolonial--has fueled vibrant and ongoing debates within the humanities, particularly in the fields of comparative literature (kelertas, 2006; moore, 2001) and anthropology (annus, 2017). applying the post-colonial label to estonia taps into larger questions about the post-colonial concept as potentially “too narrow” (i.e., by not traditionally including the post-soviet area) and the field of post-soviet studies being “too parochial” to include post-colonial analyses (moore, 2001, p. 112). with these critiques in mind, considering estonia as post-colonial could help to expand our scholarly understanding that “...all of europe is postcolonial, but in different ways…” brown, shah & stevick current issues in comparative education 115 (pucherová & gaáfrik, 2015, p. 14; italics original). epp annus (2017) has contributed to these diversifying efforts through her development of the concept of soviet postcolonial. yet still, the question needs to be considered of the ways this post-colonial label resonates on the ground. violeta kelertas (2006) points to the baltic people’s resistance to being labeled as “colonized”; that balts reject the post-colonial label and “find being lumped together with the rest of colonized humanity unflattering, if not humiliating, and want to be with the ‘civilized’ part of the world” (p. 4). the complexity of the larger theoretical debates within academic fields and the popular disassociation with the term on the ground call for careful consideration in its application and a recognition of the ways power works to determine a label. next steps we must reflect on and reconsider labels and categorizations. relabeling the world requires thoughtful, careful, and critical work. the first step is to take stock, to reflect on the labels we and/or our discipline within comparative education tend to use to categorize and compare the world. given the perils reviewed above, do we continue to use them to read the world? think critically about the ways in which power, position, perspective, and privilege—both our own and our disciplines’—lead you towards particular labels and away from others. likewise, let us recognize which labels we can access given our linguistic and cultural worlds. the second step is to reconsider the labels we use and the ways we employ them. one way to diversify the labels is to read across – across history, disciplines, and languages. in practice, this means to understand the historical development of a label by investigating its origin and alternative possibilities. reconsidering also entails thinking across disciplines for alternatives and critiques. in writing this article, we incorporated insights from artists and scholars in anthropology, history, comparative literature, slavic studies, and political science among other fields. an interdisciplinary perspective can serve as a foundation for rethinking labels. reading across languages also works to open worlds of alternatives. though we chose to focus on englishlanguage labels for this article, we recognize the ways that categories generated in languages and spaces outside of these dominant-languages and powers offer meaningful insights into alternative and important visions of state, regional, and cultural belonging. area-studies specialization and local-language ability assists in these efforts. finally, one can reconsider the ways to use labels in one’s work and in the academy (and beyond). by avoiding a perspective of labels as context (as mentioned earlier in the essay) and addressing the conceptual and analytical value of the category (as well as any concerns), one can make headway in this area. additionally, looking to the ways labels overlap and layer, while also recognizing the way categories shift and continue over time, helps one to recognize and take complexity into account. labeling the world current issues in comparative education 116 kara d. brown is an educational anthropologist focused broadly on understanding schools as sites for, and of, language change. her research broadly examines both teachers and administrators' socio-cultural orientations toward language and the ways governments imagine schools to advance language planning. brown's fundamental concern with equitable access to plurilingual education informs her projects in estonia and the us southeast. email: brownk25@mailbox.sc.edu. payal p. shah (ph.d., indiana university-bloomington) is associate professor of educational studies at the university of south carolina. she conducts critical, feminist ethnographic research on gender, education, and development in india and has published across the fields of international and comparative education, qualitative inquiry, and women’s and gender studies. e. doyle stevick is an associate professor of educational leadership and policies at the university of south carolina, where he founded and directs the anne frank partnership between the university and the anne frank house. his research address education about the holocaust, democratic civic education, and the movement of international teachers. brown, shah & stevick current issues in comparative education 117 references alam, s. 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(forthcoming). feminism, gender, and development. in t. jules, r. shields, & m. thomas (eds.), handbook of theory in comparative and international education. bloomsbury. wilson, k (2012). race, racism, and development: interrogating history, discourse, and practice. zed books. world bank (2020, june). retrieved from: https://ida.worldbank.org/about/whatwe-do. 4. grillet 2023 cice.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 2, special issue 2023 telling the story of gender inequality during the early stages of the covid-19 crisis in education and introducing feminist alternatives to change the reality patricia grillet university of hawaii research from different fields demonstrate that the disruption caused by covid-19 exacerbated social problems. in education, literature reviews focus on issues related to technology, evaluations, or racial discrimination that were worsened as a consequence of remote teaching and learning. few scholarly works of this kind analyze the problematics in the education system in emergencies from a gendered perspective. this literature review brings to the discussion the transnational burdens, risks, and divides that increasingly affect women during crises in education. findings revealed that female actors—teachers, students, mothers—have received fewer opportunities and have been assigned more responsibilities in comparison to their male counterparts since the beginning of the pandemic. through a framework of feminist theories, this review analyzes studies that illustrate the disparities affecting women’s opportunities in education, as well as some of their responses. it makes the case to look for solutions that create better conditions for all and strengthen the educational structure itself. finally, this article brings forth feminist alternatives to equip the education system when facing disruptions, based on ideas from practitioners and scholars that intend to decolonize teaching and learning through survival actions that support situated knowledge, collaboration, and mind freedom. keywords: education in emergencies, narrative review, social reproduction, decolonial praxis, education policy introduction “…there is a macho society, where girls, no matter how young they are, have to do housework and are forced to do these things and put their education aside. they say: you already lost the school year, so it is better that you do things around the house, help out, and so they do not study anymore.” gaby, 17, ecuador (plan international, 2021, p. 5). as illustrated by the quote above, girls and women have been facing difficult times during the covid-19 pandemic to continue engaged in education. some girls might not ever be able to return to the classrooms—not because of the virus, but because gender oppressions become a barrier between them and education. during this emergency, in many cases, women were the only ones coping with caregiving responsibilities, at the time of learning their way through technology for education and remote work. in other cases, girls could not follow lessons from home as their presence in the house meant that they had to deal with house chores, among other circumstances that made women’s survival in the education system more difficult than it was for their male counterparts (wannamakok et al., 2020; plan international, 2020; un women & eclac, 2020). © 2023, grillet. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 25(2), 59-78. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en grillet however, gender oppression in education has not been sufficiently addressed in academic publications from the beginning of the crisis. additionally, even if after 2022 literature started being more prolific in terms of gender inequalities in education during the pandemic, during its first months only a few organizations and researchers focused their work on the experiences of female teachers, female students and mothers of school-age children. hence, aiming to address the gap in literature about women experiences in education in the first year and a half of the covid-19 crisis, i conducted this study with gender focus, from an insider perspective. from this section on, i use the pronouns “i”, “we,” “our,” and “us”, as i am a female researcher, instructor and student from latin america. with extensive territorial coverage, this study takes the form of a narrative literature review, gathering data from publications that focused on women’s experiences in education during the first year and a half of the covid-19 crisis, when the rest of the world had its eyes on different aspects of this emergency. even if during the first stages of the pandemic the literature did not offer much information about women’s situation in education, i was able to find ten publications to answer the following question: what were the issues that female teachers, students and mothers of school-age children faced during the first year and a half of the covid-19 education emergency? to find out if there were or transnational trends in the issues faced by women in education during this emergency, i used two strategies to analyze the publications. first, through a chronological concatenation of events and, second, by categorizing emerging themes. at a glance, it is perceived that gender disparities affect women’s opportunities transnationally, not only to continue their engagement in education, but even to survive, across cultures. it is thus paramount to start looking through the lens of gender at how education responds to emergencies, to propose alternatives that would turn the education system into a safer space for all. background the world experienced its most disruptive situation in modern times due to the covid-19 virus, which started spreading in december 2019. a pandemic was officially declared in march 2020 by the director of the world health organization (who, 2020) and from there, almost all face-to-face activities in the world had to stop, including education. despite severe measures to prevent the disease from spreading, according to the who (n. d.), by mid-2023, covid-19 had left approximately 768,237,788 confirmed cases, including 6,951,677 accumulative deaths worldwide . due to the unprecedented and contagious characteristics of covid-19, health measures taken during the years 2020 and 2021 included lockdowns that lasted long periods. in such disruption, school closures affected all countries to different degrees, and in some cases, lessons from home lasted more than 2 years. the emergency in education had different stages, including remote lessons, hybrid schemes, partial return to classrooms, and full return to schools (unesco et al., 2021). while education systems and the whole world were trying to cope with the crisis by implementing remote work alternatives, there was another hidden emergency affecting the physical integrity of mostly female members of our society. it was the increase in domestic violence that took place especially during the lockdowns (sediri et al,2020), mostly in areas of the world current issues in comparative education 60 telling the story of gender inequality during the early stages of the covid-19 crisis in education and introducing feminist alternatives to change the reality where patriarchy is still very strong. by the end of 2021, “1 in 2 women reported that they or a woman they know experienced a form of violence since the covid-19 pandemic” (unwomen, 2021, p. 5). additionally, socially assigned roles and responsibilities made coping with the worst consequences of this emergency in education rely mostly on the shoulders of female members of the family (thorsteinsen, et al, 2022), especially during the first year and a half, when the eyes of the world were focused on the health contingency, and women’s work inside their homes was taken for granted. what previous literature reviews found literature reviews covering education issues that emerged during the covid-19 crisis that preceded this study addressed topics such as racial issues or social indicators (moore, 2021; fallah-aliabadi et al., 2022), technology (salas-pilco et al 2022;) or assessment (chiang et al., 2022), all of which are pressing variables of education in emergencies. following this train of thought, moore’s (2021) literature review utilized a scoping strategy to select 16 articles about racial issues related to education during the covid-19 crisis in the united states. in the analysis, the author identified worrying realities related to health, the economy, and policies. one of the conclusions is that the latin american community’s morbidity and mortality increased during the lockdown due to loss of income, and instability in education and childcare services (moore, 2021). in the same line, fallah-aliabadi and colleagues (2022) published a literature review of 31 articles identifying indicators that increased the vulnerability of people in relation to domains such as household & community composition; race, minority status & language; socioeconomic status; health; education; and information. it is interesting to notice that none of the findings of both literature reviews points to issues exclusively affecting women. likewise, salas-pilco and colleagues (2022) reviewed 23 articles related to online learning in latin america during the covid-19 crisis. these authors answered research questions about the characteristics of students’ engagement in online learning. findings were presented across dimensions, such as behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement, and affective engagement. gender was not included in their dimensions. according to the results, latin america needs to transform its higher education through professional training and access to the internet to achieve quality as well as students’ well-being. with a different focus, chiang and colleagues’ research (2022) aims to better understand academic dishonesty (ad) in online learning environments during the covid-19 crisis in education. the authors were determined to find “influencing factors of ad in online learning environments and to classify effective interventions” (chiang et al., 2022, p. 911). they analyzed 59 articles, mostly published in the united states (us) and the united kingdom (uk). influencing factors of ad include: fear of failure, the use of new cheating tools by students, and automated feedback. among their conclusions, the authors state that “it is important to create a positive atmosphere and learning culture” to develop a kind of honor code (chiang et al., 2022, p. 925). 61 current issues in comparative education grillet but, what about women? we are black, doctors, wives, mothers, latinas, online teachers, students, and more. this review is concerned with what happened to us during the crisis when gender problems were exacerbated, and physical distancing made it harder for women to access education and other services that provide support and protection from domestic violence, child marriage, unwanted pregnancy, and other gendered abuses (wylie, 2021). the contribution of this article is to join voices with other researchers that aim to generate better understandings of education in emergencies, by adding gender to the focus of analysis. analytic framework to analyze the information gathered through this literature review, i drew from three branches of feminist theory. the first one, proposed by brenner (1998, 2000), helps understanding the social and economic origin of gender inequalities. the second branch is intersectionality, which helps explore the conjugation of obstacles —such as gender inequality, race discrimination, and social class— that affect women’s opportunities (carbado et al., 2013). the third branch proposes feminist strategies to decolonize education, through practices such as situated knowledge, collaboration and mind freedom that can help overcoming the consequences of gender oppressions in today’s education system (icaza & de jong, 2018). these branches of feminist theory meet in their analysis when it comes to exploring issues faced by women during emergencies in education. to start doing so, it is valuable to remember that women have historically been subjected to a gender ideology that assigns them household duties and excludes them from other aspects of social interaction (brenner, 2000). this ideology is “reproduced actively and directly by various exclusionary rules and radices (governing education, political participation, and the labor market) as well as marriage and property law and legalized male violence against women” (brenner, 2000, pp. 222–223). complementing this observation, intersectionality postulates that oppression comes from different sources, such as gender, race or social class, that pile up on the shoulders of individuals (carbado et al., 2013). understanding the nature of the oppression faced by women would not be enough to make justice if their efforts to navigate the difficult situations in education were not also recognized. to do so, i draw on brenner’s feminist and class theory (1998, 2000) which describes how women carry out projects and strategies to survive in market-oriented societies, and on feminist lessons to decolonize education found in icaza & de jong’ volume (2018), which joins the voices of different authors to propose decolonizing educational praxis, based on situated knowledge, collaboration, and mind freedom. more specifically, in this framework, survival projects and strategies refer to collective actions carried out to accomplish fundamental tasks, especially in contexts of adverse social and economic conditions (brenner, 2000). situated knowledge refers to the postmodernist interpretation of knowledge as “socially constructed and historically situated instead of a timeless representation of the world by separate individuals” (nicholson, 1989, p. 198). collaboration is understood as one of the 21st century skills by which “bigger and better things [can be done] when people work together instead of against one another, [with] best results . . . produced when many brains are working on a problem” (berliner, & glass, 2014, p. 63). furthermore, mind freedom calls for current issues in comparative education 62 telling the story of gender inequality during the early stages of the covid-19 crisis in education and introducing feminist alternatives to change the reality emancipation from mental slavery (garvey, 1937/2017), to overcome naturalized forms of oppression. methodology following bibliography searching methods, i combined keywords in online academic engines, databases, and libraries (boote & beile, 2005), such as web of science, ebsco or jstor. the terms i used in this search were “covid-19” [or] “pandemic” [or] “crisis” [and] “women” [or] “girls” [or] “gender issues” [and] “education” [or] “school” [or] “education policy”. to narrow down the initial results, i set the time frame to the first year and a half of the pandemic between march 2020 and september 2021, because this was the most difficult period of adaptation for the entire education system, when the disruption had to be overcome with remote strategies and education policies designed on the spot, without preparation, training, or resources to face all the consequences of teaching and learning from home. additionally, i conducted a title, abstract, and keywords screening to find all publications truly related to my interest. after filtering the results with time and conducting the screening, i finally i obtained twenty peer-reviewed articles and publications from international organizations written in english. this low number of entries revealed that most of the grey and academic literature published in english during the selected period focused on topics different from the issues faced by women and girls in education. after reading the twenty publications, ten were retained following these criteria: a) attention to education female actors’ experiences during the covid-19 crisis; b) clear research methodology, whether quantitative or qualitative; c) the location of the participants of each study, aiming to include in my review a variety of contexts, in order to contrast or find transnational trends. the selected articles and documents were published between july 2020 and september 2021, and include reports issued by international organizations, and academic peer-reviewed articles. the former will help set the scene at a wider scale. the latter provide an analysis into particular situations, allowing a transnational comparison of gender issues in education. for the analysis, i constructed a narrative chronology of the publications and a thematic analysis across the documents (ridley, 2008; rother, 2007). a limitation of this study is the reduced number of analyzed publications. this limitation derives from the limited availability of research related to the specific topic of women’s experiences in education, in the chosen time frame that corresponded only to the first year and a half of the crisis. nonetheless, this limitation does not preclude this paper to derive important insights and lessons from this crucial period, as shown in the next section. table 1 organizes the reviewed publications according to the date in which they were accepted or published. 63 current issues in comparative education grillet table 1. reviewed publications current issues in comparative education 64 title publication type author date focus on women in education policy brief: the impact of covid-19 on latin america and the caribbean. policy brief report united nations july, 2020 impact of the pandemic on women from lac, including consequences on their access to education. education in the time of covid-19. report eclac & unesco august, 2020 impact of the pandemic on female teachers from lac. care in latin america and the caribbean during the covid-19. towards comprehensive systems to strengthen response and recovery brief report unwomen & eclac august, 2020 impact of school closures on female members of the society. human rights and education for gambian young women during covid-19: recommendations for social policy and practice academic article wannamako k, w., sissokho, o., & gates, t. g. september, 2020 impact of distance education on girls from gambia. halting lives: the impact of covid-19 on girls and young women research report plan international september, 2020 concerns about the widening of the gender gap in lower income countries due to the implementation of technological means for education. halting lives 2 in their own voice: girls and young women on the impact of covid-19 research report plan international april, 2021 impact of distance learning on young women and their experiences with education during the pandemic. covid-19 and female learners in south sudan: the impact of school closures in juba, rumbek, kapoeta, torit and pibor briefing paper oxfam august, 2021 obstacles experienced by female students from sudan when trying to go back to schools. telling the story of gender inequality during the early stages of the covid-19 crisis in education and introducing feminist alternatives to change the reality results the low number of publications retrieved from the search indicates that gender issues in education were generally overlooked in research regarding education during the early stages of pandemic, which highlights the relevance of this study. the selected publications were made available between july 2020 and september 2021, comprising 59 countries, located in 5 continents. the results are divided in two sections: a chronological narrative and a thematic analysis. the chronological narrative follows the dates when the works were accepted or published and gives an account of how the pandemic unfolded in the chosen period. this section is divided into three moments: a) projections for women’s difficulties in education; (b) negative impacts of the lockdown on females’ opportunities; (c) surviving in the education system. chronological narrative this section narrates experiences and issues faced by females in education during the first year and a half of the covid-19 crisis, based on the information found on reports by international organizations and on peer-reviewed articles. the first publications to see the lights during the global emergency were issued by organizations that had the capacity to analyze preexisting massive data and to make predictions on the base of the expected consequences of the lockdown. drawing on social and economic indicators, they announced negative scenarios for vulnerable women and girls, who were susceptible to an increase in domestic violence and an overload of responsibilities, which would be obstacles for them to continue engaged in education. as the pandemic unfolded, early academic literature recorded experiences and testimonies of women and girls in relation to remote education, revealing similar difficulties in different areas of the world, such as lack time and space to follow lessons, or lack of support to continue their studies. 65 current issues in comparative education beyond covid-19: a feminist plan for sustainability and social justice report unwomen september, 2021 women’s responses to the crisis in education. the evolving impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on gender inequality in the us labor market: the covid motherhood penalty academic article couch, k. a., fairlie, r. w., & xu, h. october, 2021 disproportionate economic consequences of covid-19 on mothers of school-age children. digital divide framework: online learning in developing countries during the covid-19 lockdown academic article mathrani, a., sarvesh, t., & umer, r. september, 2021 impact of the use of technologies for education on female learners from asian developing countries. grillet projections for women’s difficulties in education predictions on what could happen in education started being published by july of 2020, once it was clear that the situation was already changing peoples’ opportunities. one of the first publications that appeared covering the topic of women during the covid-19 pandemic was a policy brief issued by the united nations (un), contextualized in latin america and the caribbean (lac) (un, 2020). according to this document, gender equality and the empowerment of women needed to be at the core of the response to the crisis, because we had been “disproportionately impacted by the pandemic” (un, 2020, p. 3). the predicted risks for women and children in this area of the world were not only in economic terms, but also in terms of domestic violence. in this sense, the un advised every effort to be made to guarantee “full-fledged rights of women, girls” and all vulnerable populations to “a life free of violence, exploitation and discrimination, the right to health and education, employment, wages and social protection, the promotion of economic autonomy and political participation” (un, 2020, p. 3). this means that women from lac counted as a vulnerable population who needed more protection, especially during this emergency. given women’s vulnerability, the un recommended that policies should promote “meaningful participation by women and youth, and address gender bias barriers in the most technologically advanced and emerging sectors, including technology, medical supplies and pharmaceuticals” (un, 2020, p. 12). in august 2020, eclac and unesco published a report entirely focused on education. in this report, the hardship experienced by female teachers was highlighted as we “were facing double working hours, which included not only classroom work but also non-classroom teaching duties such as administrative tasks and lesson planning and preparation, as well as unpaid domestic and care work” (eclac & unesco, 2020, p. 10). in lac, most school teachers are women, representing more than 70% of all teachers at the primary level and more than 60% in secondary education by 2020 (eclac & unesco, 2020; unesco et al., 2022). hence, the adaptations needed for education to continue in the virtual world and an increase in domestic responsibilities were predictively going cause “emotional exhaustion, feelings of being overwhelmed, and stress” (eclac & unesco, 2020, p. 11) on female teachers. according to this report, female teachers had to assume “multiple responsibilities simultaneously: remote work, caring for children and other family members, supervising their children’s learning, and unpaid domestic work” (eclac & unesco, 2020, p. 14). negative impacts of the lockdown on females’ opportunities in this challenging context, un women & eclac issued a brief on august 19, 2020, according to which women’s unpaid domestic-care work had exponentially increased in lac due to school closures, pressure on the health system, home activities diversification, and unequal distribution of responsibilities. an additional source of stress for female teachers came from working in a paid capacity, and dealing with students’ needs while taking on an increasing load of demands at home, which brought consequences to their productivity (un women & eclac, 2020). however, their position could still be somewhat privileged, as “over half of the 126 million women in the female labor force in latin america works in informal conditions, which often current issues in comparative education 66 telling the story of gender inequality during the early stages of the covid-19 crisis in education and introducing feminist alternatives to change the reality involve job instability, low pay, and a lack of protection and rights” (un women & eclac, 2020, p. 11). not only were female teachers’ situations affected by gender issues, but it was also the case of female students. in this regard, in september 2020, scholars published an article concerned with the impact of remote education on gambian girls (wannamakok et al., 2020). this article raises concerns about education through technological means. the authors explain that “as children stay home from school, issues of access to the newly introduced remote learning via radio and television are challenging for disadvantaged groups such as girls, whose household chores can discourage them from watching tv,” and the situation was harder in rural areas where access to electricity can place an additional barrier (wannamakok et al., 2020, p. 827). to alleviate the situation, particularly for girls, the authors propose that the education authorities invest in “education infrastructure, including learning technologies such as computers and sustainable energy that can support educational continuity”, and even “working with local leaders to educate the community about the value of education continuity for young women during covid-19” (wannamakok et al., 2020, p. 827). the last proposal meant talking to families about women’s possibilities to economically help the household income once they can educate themselves and build a career path. by the same token, on september 5, 2020, plan international, an organization focused on children’s rights and equality, published a report focused on 14 countries on all continents, with a sample size of 7,105 girls and young women in between the ages of 15 and 24. it is important to highlight the ability of this organization to conduct a massive closed-question survey followed by interviews. according to their findings, during the lockdown, most of the surveyed girls were negatively affected by “not being able to go to school or university (62%), not being able to socialise with friends (58%), and not being able to leave the house regularly (58%)” (plan international, 2020, p. 9). these findings position the inability to continue face-to-face education as the number one downside of covid-19 for female students. moreover, in the report it is explained that the use of technology has made the gender gap in education wider, particularly in low-income countries where there is a “digital divide,” meaning girls “find it hard to access the information they need for their education and their health” (plan international, 2020, p. 28). it seems as if patriarchy prioritized boys’ access to the internet and education. during the pandemic, the use of technology has in some cases been the only thread that connects female actors to the education system. hence, this digital divide may be the reason why 33% of the girls in international plan’s study perceived covid-19 would affect their future employment opportunities, 25% perceived covid-19 would affect their future income, and 19% “responded that they would have to put their education temporarily on hold” (plan international, 2020, p. 26). from this study, it is also noteworthy that, apart from the use of the internet to access “youtube videos, online classes and educational websites (both paid and unpaid options)”, 37% of the girls who answered the survey “practiced self-learning using books and other non-digital materials” (plan international, 2020, p. 13). given the digital divide previously mentioned, this could be considered a survival strategy that helped women navigate gender oppression during this crisis in education. 67 current issues in comparative education grillet on april 27, 2021, plan international published a second report on the covid-19 impact on girls and young women. interestingly, this report focuses on direct testimonies through short excerpts from 74 in-depth interviews with girls located in australia, brazil, ecuador, egypt, ethiopia, ghana, india, mozambique, nicaragua, spain, the united states, france, vietnam, and zambia. this document has the purpose to supplement the statistical report previously issued by the same organization. it includes details about girls’ and young women’s experiences with education during the covid-19 crisis. it is interesting to notice that, even coming from such a variety of countries, the number one complaint of girls kept on being education, referring to frequently discussed “issues with remote learning in terms of access to technology, lack of space to study at home and schools and colleges themselves struggling to adjust” (plan international, 2021, p. 3). during in-depth conversations, the organization found that “overall, the girls and young women felt that face-to-face learning was the optimal way to be taught” even if they had “adapted to alternative ways of learning, but continue[d] to find them problematic” (plan international, 2021, p. 14). surviving in the education system oxfam (2021), a confederation of charitable organizations, conducted a qualitative study with educational stakeholders and female learners from sudan. with a similar methodology to the one used by plan international —surveys and interviews—, its publication was made available in august 2021. by the time of the data collection, the issues related to covid-19 in education were starting to shift, as the pandemic evolved to a different stage, one in which students were expected to go back to the classrooms in some countries. yet, if virtual classes had posed a problem before, apparently returning to the classrooms was not going to be the solution, at least for some girls located in certain areas. this study found that part of the difficulties that female learners had when trying to go back to school was “an increased burden of domestic chores, along with pressure to support income-generating activities for their households, to the point that they felt exhausted and isolated” (oxfam, 2021, p. 3). in sudan, the pandemic followed years of other types of emergencies, such as armed conflicts, displacements and floodings (oxfam, 2021), which is a similar scenario to the one found in lac. furthermore, this study allowed me to compare the reality of sudan, in economic terms, to the situation in latin america, where for educators it was hard to keep being engaged in the education system during this crisis, as “teachers needed to be given more financial support through increased salaries or incentives, because [our] salaries tend to be extremely low, and [our] payments sometimes delayed for months” (oxfam, 2021, p. 14). the fact that in some contexts not everything depended on technological devices might have helped a few female education actors, which is the case of certain schools in sudan, where they developed “home-learning packages” with “assignments that students picked up from their school each week, and returned to their teachers for grading the following week” (oxfam, 2021, p. 22). however, learning from home increased the risks of gender violence and teenage pregnancy, as was highlighted by oxfam’s report, as well as mentioned by the reports on lac. current issues in comparative education 68 telling the story of gender inequality during the early stages of the covid-19 crisis in education and introducing feminist alternatives to change the reality in september 2021, un women published a “feminist plan” highlighting initiatives around the world thanks to which some women have been empowered, raising their chances of surviving in the education system during emergencies. namely, the campesino-a-campesino (cac) or farmer-to-farmer methodology, developed in lac since the 1970s, that uses “popular education to share knowledge and solutions for common problems with … peers, using their own farms as classrooms” (unwomen, 2021, p. 58). currently, the cac methodology allows women farmers from nicaragua, brazil, and cuba to support agricultural livelihoods and provide education, among other benefits (un women, 2021). another initiative was a chat group created in argentina called mujeres gobernando (women governing), thanks to which it was possible to “incorporate a gender perspective into public policies, to facilitate information sharing and strategize across institutions to influence the budget,” as part of the actions taken by women to “ensure that the 2021 national budget committed us$13.4 billion (3.4% of the country’s gdp) to address gender gaps in education, health care and other areas affected by the pandemic” (unwomen, 2021, p. 72). in october 2021, the economic inquiry journal accepted the publication of an article about women’s economic struggle in the united states (us). when analyzed through the lens of education, the article offers important facts and information about what mothers of school-age children faced during this crisis in the us. starting with an explanation about gender disparities in the labor market —that were conducive to a greater economic impact on women than on men— the authors go on to: compare trends in female and male labor market outcomes across child age groups and estimate difference-in-difference, triple-difference and event-study models to isolate impacts due to increased child caregiving demands in the first three quarters after the adoption of statewide closures of non-essential businesses in march of 2020 (couch et al., 2022, p. 486). according to couch et al. (2022) calculations, not only “disproportionate reductions in employment for women occurred among those with school-age children in comparison with men with school-age children” but also “women with school-age children experienced disproportionately large reductions in employment in comparison with women without children,” and there was an “increased home-based caregiving demand that disproportionately reduced women’s work activity” (pp. 486–487). this is to say that, in the us, and probably in other nations, women who had sons or daughters still attending school were the most financially affected workers during covid-19, as they were more likely to lose or decrease their professional activities when compared to men or women without children. this reveals a clear disadvantage for mothers as education actors, to survive in the system. in addition to the need of helping their children with remote learning —with or without preparation for it— and protecting them from contracting the virus, mothers also faced harsher economic challenges. focused on technology and gender issues in education, mathrani et al (2021) published a “digital divide framework” in september 2021, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from some asian contexts. the researchers employed a survey for “male and 69 current issues in comparative education grillet female students from five developing countries (india, pakistan, bangladesh, afghanistan and nepal) to understand digital divide issues that had impacted online learning during the lockdown” (mathrani et al., 2021, p. 2). they found that smaller percentages of girls reported having good internet speed or devices to follow the virtual classes. furthermore, the qualitative data gathered for this study revealed that “female students reported lack of confidence in being able to effectively engage in online classrooms, while male students reported that they enjoyed learning to use new digital tools” (mathrani et al., 2021, p. 14). at the same time, this study revealed that, in the researched countries, home contexts are more favorable for boys’ education, given that the ones included in the study reported “less familial opposition and . . . fewer household responsibilities” (mathrani et al., 2021, p. 13). female teachers, students and mothers of school-age children facing an unprecedented crisis in education: a thematic analysis a thematic analysis of the retained publications revealed that inequality, problems with remote education, and obstacles to return to school were the three broad categories of issues faced by all female actors of education during the covid-19 crisis. these categories were found across all articles, even if each publication had a different target population, which reveals that gender inequities affect us all, regardless of our age or role. table 2 synthetizes the themes found throughout the analyzed publications, distributed in those three categories. table 2. issues faced by women and girls during covid-19 crisis in education in 5 continents inequality remote education return to school economic hardship domestic violence lack of support job precarity house chores pressure to generate income caring responsibilities stress pregnancy motherhood digital divide domestic responsibilities (source: self-elaborated) inequality reviewed publications express that gender inequality in economic opportunities affected women in education. it was mothers of school-age children the first ones to lose their paid jobs and the last ones to be reintegrated into the job market. additionally, in some countries, women had to work much more than males performing household duties, which were incremented due to the requirements of education from home. this meant that women involved in education had to perform more hours of unpaid work, and had less opportunity to generate income, which led to more precarity (un, 2020; eclac & unesco, 2020; wannamakok et al., 2020; couch et al., 2022). current issues in comparative education 70 telling the story of gender inequality during the early stages of the covid-19 crisis in education and introducing feminist alternatives to change the reality the intersection of education from home and economic hardship that affected women during the early stages of the pandemic can be explained by the socially assigned caring responsibility that lies on our shoulders (brenner, 2000). the reviewed publications revealed that women are expected to take care of children’s education from home on their own, and that, despite researchers’ recommendations, education policies do not offer much support in this regard. to clarify, the united nations (2020) explained that in lac: “women spend thrice the time that men do on unpaid domestic and care work each day — between 22 and 42 hours per week before the crisis. in spite of women’s wider presence on the front lines of the crisis (they account for 72.8% of persons employed in the health-care sector), their income in this sector is 25% lower than that of their male counterparts. confinement, school closures and sick family members have placed additional pressures on women as primary caregivers. domestic violence, femicide and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence have increased.” (p. 15). what the quote above illustrates is that the inequalities derived from gender divisions not only affect women’s opportunities, but also their capacity to survive a global crisis, even if they obey the health measures that confine them to the walls of their houses, because even inside their homes they are at risk of violence. in addition, such gender inequalities and violence have negative consequences on females’ possibilities to engage in education, given that they spend more time in activities that are not related to their own or their children’s learning, which can limit economic opportunities in the future, and their hopes of breaking the cycle of domestic violence or scaping the consequences of patriarchy. remote education education from home was one of the measures taken to protect the health of all members of the society, however, women faced risks that were overlooked at the time of developing those measures. the reviewed publications explore the exacerbation of domestic violence as one of the problems experienced by women and girls as a side effect of the lockdown and remote education (un, 2020; oxfam, 2021). additionally, the possibility of developing virtual education with some children depended solely on mothers’ ability to assist them, or to provide the necessary devices, which in many cases added stress to the already difficult situation (unwomen & eclac, 2020). another consequence of the remote education was that the gendered digital divide was worsened, not only because boys tend to face easier circumstances when accessing technology in comparison to girls (mathrani et al., 2021), but also because in some countries girls at home had to take care of house chores instead of using their time to study (plan international, 2021). to illustrate how remote education affected the opportunities of girls, oxfam (2021) reports that in sudan there are “social norms that place the burden of domestic chores and childcare on female household members,” which is why during school closures girls “had been given more responsibilities for household chores and childcare” (p. 14). opposite to what boys from sudan experienced 71 current issues in comparative education grillet during school closures, when “male learners tended to not be negatively impacted by the trends in early and forced marriage, gender-based violence and teen pregnancy” (oxfam, 2021, p. 19). return to school the gender disparities that increased the vulnerability of girls inside their houses were identified before covid-19. in fact, in lac it was expected that risks associated to gender —rape, early pregnancy, abuse— would “prevent these girls from returning to the classroom once schools reopen” (eclac & unesco, 2020, p. 15). in other areas of the world, some girls could not return to the classrooms because there was not support for them to continue their academic journey, or because the family counted on their collaboration to generate income (wannamakok et al., 2020; oxfam, 2021). furthermore, two of the consequences of the lockdown were the exacerbation of domestic violence and of obstacles to accessing information and protection services. as a result, teenage pregnancy and its effects made it impossible for female students affected by that situation to go back to school (eclac & unesco, 2020). in other words, female students faced more obstacles than their male counterparts to continue studying, even when schools reopened. implications and discussion the moments and themes disclosed in the results section illustrate the disparities, burdens, risks, and divides that affected female teachers, female students and mothers of school-age children during the first year and a half of the covid-19 crisis. the selected publications portray a panorama with many obstacles faced solely by female actors. such obstacles are related to the gendered social and economic disadvantages that were theorized by brenner (2000) and carbado et al. (2013) before the pandemic. moreover, measures such as the lockdown and remote education left women more vulnerable inside their own homes. these measures and a lack of gender-focused policies contributed to increased housework, domestic violence, economic hardship, teenage pregnancy, pressure and other misfortunes related to education during the covid-19 emergency. the insights drawn from the chosen literature can be used to strengthen our response in the education system to face future emergencies, as the results here do not only reveal obstacles, but also offer a glimpse of decolonizing praxis, such as studying with non-digital materials (plan international, 2020), group communications to achieve political goals, and contextualized education projects (un women, 2021). these are examples of alternatives and survival strategies that speak to the feminist framework of decolonizing education in an emergency through situated knowledge, collaboration, and mind freedom. it is valuable to pay attention to these resisting praxis in education because they differ from the values of competition and division that colonialism and patriarchy have ingrained in teaching and learning (icaza & de jong, 2018). we can change the reality of the oppressed with strategies that encourage us to work together to face problems, including all actors of the education system, learning from how women have maneuvered this emergency, and drawing on their experiences to design more equitable gender-focused policies that foster ways to support each other while enabling solidarity among citizens, families, neighbors, and friends to build communities and networks (brenner, 1998). current issues in comparative education 72 telling the story of gender inequality during the early stages of the covid-19 crisis in education and introducing feminist alternatives to change the reality situated knowledge applied in the education system encourages us to learn from our everyday battles by reading each other’s experiences and writing about our own, to construct a vocabulary to question the oppression, to care for the most vulnerable, to learn from the marginalized populations, and to embody education (batallones femeninos, 2018; masamha, 2018; retos, 2018). in the context of a disruption of the education system, situated knowledge should allow education policies to better address women’s situations and needs. this would facilitate the continuation of everyone’s learning, rather than having girls performing house chores and generating income, which during the covid-19 crisis made it very hard for them to learn remotely or return to the classrooms, as it happened in sudan and gambia (oxfam, 2021; wannamakok et al., 2020). during the covid-19 emergency in education, the mental health of female teachers in lac was put at risk because the amount of work and pressure was overwhelming (eclac & unesco, 2020). to address this problem, the strategy of collaboration, reciprocity, and horizontal distribution of responsibilities, constantly questioning our positions in relation to others (auerbach, 2018; fernández & gill, 2018; varadharajan, 2018) can play a key role in education, especially during crises that require the best of us to continue existing. to this end, one alternative supported by feminism is to include materials that raise political consciousness in the curriculum of schools, to involve parents in the education of their children, and to stop relying entirely on digital technology as the fundamental source to obtain and share knowledge. in other words, to connect “with one’s world, one’s senses and one’s capacity to understand phenomena from one’s experiences” (vergès, 2018, p. 97). in this way, we can start putting aside the gender divisions evidenced during the pandemic through the inclusion of decolonial perspectives and practices in our teachings (naepi, 2018). the education system can benefit from the mind freedom feminist postulate that encourages us to use education as a space for reflection, where cultural differences are recognized and valued, and where we can leave aside harmful colonial imaginaries (motta, 2018; shilliam, 2018; xaba, 2018). in this sense, learning from each other’s experiences and using non-digital materials are not only strategies to survive in the education system during emergencies, but also feasible feminist alternatives in this digital era when the use of technology has created additional divisions between those who have it and those who do not. as the pandemic strengthened some dichotomies (digital-analog, men-women, rich-poor, etc.), paper books and materials were the only tools that some had to rebel (plan international, 2020; oxfam, 2021). the pandemic made more visible the urgency of looking for alternatives to protect all of us from the perpetuation of inequalities, at least in the education system. as expressed in some of the selected publications, the lockdown left a lot of girls at risk of not being educated, teachers at risk of mental breakdowns and mothers at economic risk (couch et al., 2022; eclac & unesco, 2020; oxfam, 2021; plan international, 2020; un, 2020; wannamakok, sissokho, & gates, 2020). this current visibility needs to be taken as an opportunity to call the attention of the whole education system to give greater importance to protection, reflection, and self-understanding, especially at moments when we all need a refuge. 73 current issues in comparative education grillet in this line, it is valuable to highlight the achievements of two survival projects or collective actions for which people joined efforts in order to survive in adverse conditions (brenner, 2000). namely the campesino a campesino (cac) methodology and the mujeres gobernando strategy (un women, 2021). the cac strategy allows education practitioners to have access to an education relevant in their context. the mujeres gobernando group made it possible to secure resources to address gender issues during the early stage of the pandemic. these are actions that break gender divisions and the logics of social reproduction in education (bourdieu & passeron, 1977), by which women achieve fairer conditions in education. conclusion in light of the results obtained, it seems important to recognize that one of the lessons that the covid-19 pandemic left us in the education system is that there is a need for gender-focused research and education policies that aim at protecting women and girls, from the early stages of emergencies. this is a very valuable lesson because this pandemic was just one of many emergencies that affect education worldwide. by gathering studies from various contexts in one piece, i demonstrated that some of the gender disparities that affected female teachers, female students and mothers of school-age children during the first year and a half of the covid-19 crisis in education are transnational, and that they create material negative consequences for us, such as lack of access to technological devices, lack of opportunities to study at home, family opposition to get an education, violence, and rejection from the job market as a consequence of motherhood. to contribute to filling this gap, in this study i outlined the need for more related scholarly work. subsequently, i built a framework that draws on feminist theories (brenner, 1998; brenner 2000; carbado et al., 2013; icaza & de jong, 2018) to understand the origins of gender oppressions, as well as the actions carried out by women to survive in the education system. likewise, this study has illustrated feminist praxis and alternatives for a more equitable teaching and learning. centering our efforts on developing decolonial strategies such situated knowledge, collaboration, and mind freedom (icaza & de jong, 2018) from the beginning of emergencies in education may help us save lives and prevent the perpetuation of economic inequities and gender oppressions (bourdieu and passeron, 1977). such alternatives have the potential of pivoting education in emergencies into a space that supports more humane practices, such as self and collective discovery (vergès, 2018), which in turn should enhance our readiness to respond to emergencies. patricia grillet has been involved in education as a researcher and instructor, working at various universities, such as universidad central de venezuela and universidad de antioquia, in colombia. she started a phd in 2022 at the university of hawaii. from a feminist perspective, her thesis concerns education in emergencies. references auerbach, j. 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taylor, 1999). it is also clear that in the case of the third world state, these movements can no longer be declared a consequence of the dependency of such states on powerful first world nations. indeed, the strong version of globalization attributes an overwhelming authority to such transnational forces on a defenseless third world state. but as linda weiss (1997) demonstrates in her outstanding empirical work, globalization is not ubiquitous and the state is not powerless. how then does one explain the following trends in education policy after apartheid? the new citizen and the new work order educational reforms since the end of legal apartheid in 1994 have been lodged clearly and consistently within powerful economistic rationales as the overriding motivation for "transforming" apartheid education. within this framework, changing education is globalization, curriculum and the third world state: in dialogue with michael apple current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 43 considered a pre-requisite for economic growth: "outcomes based education" is intended to develop citizens who can compete successfully in international markets; science and technology education is prioritized as the subject fields that will fuel the engine of economic development. the new citizen is to be technologically literate and able to function in a knowledge-driven economy (department of arts, culture, science and technology, 1996). this means being multi-skilled and adaptable in a modern economy linked to "the new work order" (james et al., 1996; mclaren, 1998). a flurry of green papers, white papers, discussion documents and "frameworks" reiterate the same rhetorical goals (see department of education, 1995; nche, 1996; department of education, 1997; samoff, 1997). the economic rationale in the white paper on higher education is typical of what appears in all national policy statements: this national agenda is being pursued within a distinctive [sic] set of pressures and demands characteristic of the late twentieth century, often typified as globalisation (…) linked to (…) the accelerating integration of the world economy and intense competition among nations for markets. these economic and technological changes will necessarily have an impact on the national agenda given the interlocking nature of global economic relations (...) in particular, the south african economy is confronted with the formidable challenge of integrating itself into the competitive arena of international production and finance which has witnessed rapid changes as a result of new communication and information technologies (department of education, 1997, p. 9). as an aside, it is against this background that the proliferation of private colleges and institutional choice in south african higher education must be read. this free-market citizen can now choose freely from a range of institutional types despite the fact that these private colleges and international "universities" escape, very often, the same harsh regulatory environment applying to public institutions. regulation and measurement despite having just recently emerged from the authoritarian and state-controlled system of apartheid education, the new state issued a compendium of regulatory arrangements within different policy and legislative statements. the national qualifications framework, adopted from new zealand, inaugurates a standardized system of credits and qualifications that would create the self-regulated, "well-tempered learner" (muller, 1998). a national office was instituted to develop key performance indicators (kpis) on the basis of which the entire education system could be regulated and controlled. each provincial department of education could, for example, irrespective of history and inequalities, be measured against the same kpis determined by the national department of education. the new higher education act empowers the minister to intervene directly in universities and technikons (polytechnics) through the trojan horse of "accountability". as this article is being written, five black universities are being investigated by demand of the minister of education on charges of financial irregularities. on the face of it, this issue appears to have much more to do with an inability on the part of such institutions to provide higher education to growing numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds who really believed that access to higher education would be easier after apartheid. and all higher education institutions are now required to subject themselves to "quality assurance" as another means to ensure efficiency, accountability, and performance. unsurprisingly, public measures of institutional worth are now commonplace. in 1998, for the first time in jonathan d. jansen 44 april 30, 1999 south africa, a set of organizations produced a controversial media spread on "the best in higher education," using a complicated set of numerical indices to measure educational institutions. the striking observation of this obsession with "performativity" is not only that it freezes history in making these public judgments, i.e. all 22 universities, irrespective of their racial histories and race-based funding under apartheid, are now subjected to the same standardized measuring devices. it is also that new instruments of measurement have been afforded a creeping legitimacy in the rating of public institutions. policy transfer the range of education policy frameworks, from schools to universities, is an amalgam of policy initiatives and rationales drawn mainly, if incoherently, from the west (jansen & christie, 1999). "outcomes based education" takes its cue from the early competency debates in australia (christie, 1996) and, more recently, from the work of william spady in the u.s.a.--dubbed locally "the father of outcomes based education." the national qualifications framework relies heavily on new zealand education policy and, to a lesser extent, on variants of this model from scotland and other parts of the u.k. the quality assurance system is strongly informed by developments in u.k. higher education, but also from variants in the netherlands and its transportation to chile and india. the comparison of institutions clearly finds its origins and inspiration in the socalled "league table" developments in england. international experts, visiting consultancy groups, overseas exchange visits, funded conferences and "linkage projects" have enabled and consolidated the transfer and adoption of first-world policy experiments within africa on a scale never before witnessed in post-colonial africa. in short, the south african state draws liberally and loosely from policies and policy ideologies in the west in founding its own post-apartheid education system. as a consequence, the south african state can present itself (and its educational system) as a worthy and credible competitor on the stage of a globalized economy. education and economic redress observing the convergence of educational ideologies with the west would end at this point were it not for a fundamental difference in the south african policy trajectory since the end of apartheid. that is, in south africa these overtly economistic tendencies, reductionist pedagogical strategies (like "outcomes based education") and regulated educational systems are lodged comfortably within a redistributional refrain. the very measures of control and accountability are presented as necessary to shift resources and advantage from those who are white and privileged, to those who are black and marginalized in education and the economy. advocates of the government's conservative macro-economic strategy, called gear (growth, employment and redistribution), describe its rationale as follows: "against the background of a weakening rand and deteriorating investor confidence, the strategy [focuses] strongly on the need to enhance the international competitiveness of the economy" (donaldson, 1997, p. 447). in the same breath, gear is linked to: "improvements in the quality of schooling available to the poor and greater equity in the flow of students through secondary and tertiary education--foundations for both long term economic growth and income redistribution" (p. 449). in higher education policy, the problem set is constructed in the same way: globalization, curriculum and the third world state: in dialogue with michael apple current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 45 (. . .) an inequitable distribution of access and opportunity for students and staff along race, gender, class and geography. there are gross discrepancies in the participation rates of students from different population groups, indefensible imbalances in the ratios of black and female staff compared to whites and males, and equally untenable disparities between historically black and historically white institutions in terms of facilities and capacities (department of education, 1997, p. 8). and again, the very first white paper on education (department of education, 1995), following the installation of the post-apartheid government, developed a strong set of prefaces about dealing with inequality, redress and disadvantage through new education policies for schools. indeed, early drafts of this white paper infuriated the reconciled opposition for its rhetorical militancy about race and redress (tikly, 1997). across the policy spectrum, the tying of the national economy to international competitiveness is associated with redistributional goals which favor (we are told) those most marginalized in post-apartheid south africa. but did this happen? in our research tracking the effects of education policy since the first democratic elections of 1994, and the implementation of gear in 1996, the record is clear: the distance between privileged schools (mainly though not exclusively white) and disadvantaged schools (mainly black) has in fact increased. two examples will suffice. the mass retrenchment of teachers, justified again on the basis of international research on class size and student achievement, has depleted many black schools of teachers. white schools, on the other hand, were able to recoup this loss by dramatically increasing the school fees of the largely white parent bodies in order to keep historical accounts of teachers and learners per classroom constant (jansen, 1998). the introduction of "outcomes based education" into grade 1 classrooms enabled white schools to meet the resource demands of this highly sophisticated curriculum package while black schools fell further behind given their low capacity for managing such complex innovations (jansen et al., 1999). from this discussion i wish to underline the conscious participation of the south african state within universalizing discourses about education and the economy. roger dale makes this point well: the key features of policy borrowing (…) are that it is carried out voluntarily and explicitly, and that its locus of control is national. it involves particular policies that one country seeks to imitate, emulate or copy, bilaterally, from one another. it is the product of conscious decision-making and it is initiated by the recipient (dale, 1999, pp. 9-10, my emphasis). i wish to further make the point that the educational logic of globalization within the third world state is also expressed as "rhetorical reforms" (apple's phrase). so, "elected officials and politicians are more likely to be interested in a borrowed policy's political symbolism than its details" and "the particularities of education policies are of less significance than their role in political discourse" (halpin & troyna, 1995, pp. 307-308). elsewhere i have described this tendency in post-apartheid policy as an over-investment in the symbolism of policy rather than a serious consideration of its effects in disadvantaged communities (jansen, 1997). these observations raise critical questions about the role of political discourses especially in the context of severe and sustained jonathan d. jansen 46 april 30, 1999 underdevelopment of the economies of third world states. conclusion this encounter with michael apple suggests very different orientations towards time in the contestation surrounding education policy in the united states and in south africa. apple is rightly concerned about the restorational professions of the right in education policy focused on a romantic view of the past. the south african state, on the other hand, promulgates a high-profile discourse about the redistributional qualities of educational policy focused on a romantic view of the future. yet, whether it is school choice under a restorational banner, or outcomes based education under a redistributional flag, the mechanisms of markets, regulation, and policy borrowing together produce the same policy effects in different parts of the world system. the subtitle to murray edelman's 1977 work, political language, comes to mind: words that succeed and policies that fail. these initial sketches of distinctions and commonalities between first and third world education policies within the context of globalization suggest the need for further explorations with this line of thinking in comparative education. it seems to me that current issues in comparative education (cice) is well placed to sustain such conversations. references apple, m. (1979). ideology and curriculum. new york: routledge & kegan paul. christie, p. (1996). globalisation and the curriculum: proposals for the integration of education and training in south africa. international journal of educational development, 16(4): 407-416. dale, r. (1999). specifying globalisation effects on national policy: a focus on mechanisms. journal of education policy, 14(1): 1-17. department of arts, culture, science and technology. (1996). white paper on science and technology: preparing for the 21st century. pretoria: dacst. department of education (1997). education white paper 3: a programme for the transformation of higher education. pretoria, government no. 18207. department of education (1996). green paper on higher education transformation. pretoria, department of education. department of education (1995). white paper on education and training. pretoria, government gazette, no. 196. donaldson, a. r. (1997). social development and macro-economic policy. development southern africa,14(3): 447-462. edelman, m. (1977). political language: words that succeed and policies that fail. globalization, curriculum and the third world state: in dialogue with michael apple current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 47 chicago: university of chicago press. halpin, d. & troyna, b. (1995). the politics of education policy borrowing. comparative education,31(3): 303-310. james, p. g., hull, g & lankshear, c. (1996). the new work order: behind the language of the new capitalism. st leonard's australia: allen & unwin. jansen, j. d. and christie, p. eds. (1999). changing curriculum: studies of outcomes based education in south africa. cape town: juta academic publishers. jansen, j. d., maqutu, t., dube, a., khumalo, l. and commei, s. (1999). a very noisy obe: studies of obe implementation in grade 1 classrooms. university of durban westville, centre for education research, evaluation and policy (cerep). jansen, j. d. (1998). how to make teachers disappear. international research and the education policies of developing countries. plenary address to the world congress on comparative education, cape town, july. jansen, j. d. (1997). why education policies fail. indicator south africa, 15(1): 56-58. jones, p. w. (1998). globalisation and internationalism: democratic prospects for world education. comparative education, 34(2): 143-156. mclaren, p. (1998). revolutionary pedagogy in post-revolutionary times: rethinking the political economy of critical education. educational theory, 48(4): 431-462. (symposium: the state of critical pedagogy today). muller, j. (1998). the well-tempered learner: self-regulation, pedagogical models and teacher education policy. comparative education, 34(2): 177-194. national commission on higher education (nche). (1996). pretoria, nche. samoff, j. (1997). 'frameworks!' a review of south african education and training policies since 1994. commissioned paper for the centre for education research, evaluation and policy (cerep), university of durban westville, south africa. taylor, s. (1999). globalization and education policy. journal of education policy (special issue), 14(1): january-february. tikly, l. (1997). changing south african schools? an analysis and critique of postelection government policy. journal of education policy, 12 (3): 177-188. weiss, l. (1997). globalisation and the myth of the powerless state. new left review, 225: 3-27. penalva, r., & machado, a. (2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 intersections between education and health reforms in brazil: when the "target population" is an active builder of the public policy renata penalva university of são paulo (usp) adriana marcondes machado university of são paulo (usp) this article is an argumentative literature review that discusses the history of the intersections between health and education in brazil, exploring its connections to segregation practices and, also, to movements towards democratic ideals. we focus on the importance of population participation for the reforms in the health sector, allowing for the construction of the brazilian public health system and health practices that aim to not collude with inequalities. we argue that an ethical posture in public policy consistent with the one proposed by paulo freire has incentivized population participation in a way that strengthens the commitment to democracy in public policy. such ethical posture 1) considers social determinants of the phenomena that happens to an individual, and 2) requires constant effort to not fall for the tempting silencing of one’s existence and full citizenship. we comprehend freire’s ethical posture as one that can help build intersectoral actions on public service, facilitating social participation to inform public policy and help improve citizen’s well-being. we propose that intersectoral participation spaces can be compelling devices to hear the population’s input as an alternative to separating people’s experiences in participation councils of each public sector area. introduction health disciplines have historically been used to justify social differences through “biologization” and individualization of the causes of socioeconomic inequalities (foucault, 2002). in brazil and other countries, psychology and psychiatry served to justify racism and school failure, instead of searching for methods to address the multicausality of school failure (patto, 1990). within this multicausality, social inequities are a central factor (patto, 1990, feinstein, 2003). pondering social inequities into healthcare policy debates in brazil contributed, during the democratization process, to opening the discussion on health system changes to the population, leading to structural reforms (paim, 2006). we understand that the lines of thought and practice that successfully carried a democratic way of reaching critical reforms towards democracy in brazil’s health policies are connected to paulo freire’s propositions of democratic participation. for freire, social participation in education was crucial not only for educational engagement purposes, but because participation itself was a sine qua non element to overcome the brazilian “democratic inexperience” (freire, 2003) and its high illiteracy rates. freire (2003) pointed out the social determinants of illiteracy and highlighted the democratic issues in the brazilian legislation republic, in which literacy was a criterion for being allowed to vote up until 1985. © 2021, penalva & marcondes machado. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 95-111. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en penalva & marcondes machado current issues in comparative education 96 for the authors from the brazilian collective health movement and other people connected to the health reforms in the 1980s, population participation was an essential element to drive policy towards equity and to boost movements of change into having reform and democratic dimensions (paim, 2006; ensp fiocruz, 2016). they also pointed out the social determinants in the health-disease process and considered there would be no democracy without health for all (paim, 2006). inspired by those movements, the brazilian constitution states that “health is a right for all and a state’s duty” (brasil, 1988). this argumentative literature review was composed to collaborate with the discussion of comparative education fields dedicated to understanding the role of education in social transformation (butts, 1968 apud wilson, 1994). the role of education in democracy has been an ongoing discussion since the end of the xviii century up until now (bueno, 1993; glaeser et al., 2006). we consider that exploring the historical intersectoral interactions might add layers of understanding to what works or not in guaranteeing democratic processes towards equity in education, as discussed by the comparative education field (wilson, 1994). this article focuses on presenting parts of the history of the brazilian health and education sectors, giving special attention to the elements that were necessary to convey change towards equity. methodology this argumentative literature review draws from previous research (penalva, 2020) that discussed intersectoral actions amongst mental health and education workers. this study was part of an iterative method of developing and informing actions to support the learning process of marginalized students at schools in a peripheric region of são paulo, brazil. the bibliographical review’s purpose was to provide historical data to these intervention questions: 1) “how can workers from mental health disciplines collaborate with educators for an inclusive education?” 2) “and how can they achieve that without silencing social processes?”. these questions arose from the observance of issues in the communication and not-socombined actions between health and education workers who assisted the same children and adolescents. the non-encounters between these professionals resulted in the loss of opportunities to create gathered strategies to diminish school failure (penalva, 2020). we then decided to research how intersections between education and health could collaborate with inclusion and mitigate educational inequities (penalva, 2020). this literature review was non-structured and based on the search for authors that 1) critically explained the historical role psychology and psychiatry have in justifying school failure (foucault, 2002) and/or 2) proposed changes that respected teachers and considered multi determination of school processes (angelucci, 2014; machado, 2016). the final bibliography comes from field specialist recommendations, research of core brazilian national literature on the fields of school psychology (patto, 1990), collective health (paim, 2006), mental health (tenório, 2002), education (freire, 1987) and special education (mendes, 2010; bueno, 1993, angelucci, 2014), and from non-structured literature review. intersections between education and health reforms in brazil current issues in comparative education 97 psychology and psychiatry historical background as contributors for educational segregation and oppression by the second half of the 19th century, the bourgeois model of society had not fulfilled its promise of equal opportunities for all. in this promise, the school was an important piece at play, considered as a solution to placate economic, social, and cultural differences (patto, 1990; machado, 1996; machado, 2016; patto, 2017). in 1857, morel published a thesis on degeneration, creating a biological justification for lower social classes and specific phenotypes to be considered inferior (foucault, 2002). morel proposed a biological and hereditary basis for the “immoral” behavior, strengthening the connection between psychiatry and the judiciary systems – in which psychiatry would tell the judiciary if there was something “monstrous” about the suspect for them to be convicted. through this perspective, differences created by historical exploitation were understood as having been caused by individual and biological features (navarro, 2010; foucault, 2002). later in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, psychiatry, mainly represented by the name of bourneville, and psychology with binet and simon, created the practice of classifying children. these classifications defined which types of children would be allowed to study in regular schools and which would be directed to asylums and special education schools (bueno, 1993). binet and simon created an intelligence scale and test, defining intelligence in a specific way and circumscribing the concept to the psychology field (nicolas et al., 2013). this test did not measure solely biological features, and the ones who created it also remarked the social aspects of intelligence. nonetheless, their remarks remained circumvented as a warning, and the intelligence test started to be used to determine who was to be considered abnormal or be in regular schools (machado, 1996; patto, 2017). in brazil, different medical and psychological services would define, throughout the 20th century, who was to be in special education and how special education would function. nonetheless, the method to classify who was abnormal could commonly be the “scholarempirical” method, in which the medical field used the school report to determine who would be their students or not. a 1904’s law determined that the “incapable of receiving education” would not be registered for formal education (januzzi, 2012). it was a circular model that legitimized and fostered segregation. throughout history, we see these intersections between mental health disciplines and education as varying amongst two different lines of thought/practice, but that do not necessarily oppose each other. the first line of thought categorizes potential students to better insert them in education, whereas the second one categorizes to segregate. both of them focus attention on the student, not on the educational system and its relation to society’s structures. the first line of thought/practice goes back to jean marie gaspar itard, who published l'éducation d’un homme sauvage (in english, “the education of a wild man”). this text was considered the first publication about the education of a person with intellectual disability, in which he describes the experience of educating the “the wild man from aveyron” – the “sauvage d’aveyron” – (januzzi, 2012). itard opposed himself to what we consider here as the second line of thought/practice: the one of esquirol and pinel1, who believed that “idiocy” was irreversible and that the “sauvage d’aveyron” was untreatable. categorization would serve to designate places where people could circulate – either regular schools, special education schools, or asylums. along the first line of thought, itard’s line, there are names like seguin or montessori, who believed good prognostics could come with specific methods (marfinati & abrão, 2014). the german 1 esquirol and pinel were the ones that argued that madness was not a crime, but treatable (bueno, 1993). they “released” the ones considered mad from prisons… but enclosed them in psychiatric asylums. penalva & marcondes machado current issues in comparative education 98 school of psychiatry was more aligned to pinel. both these lines of thought and practice had an important influence in brazil. the “trend” begun by morel on biological explanations for social differences set the origins of eugenics, proposed by francis galton as a “science” for the “improvement of the race” (navarro, 2010). such thinking only became officially considered a pseudoscience after the end of the second world war (verzolla, 2017). during hitler’s reich, eugenic laws allowing for “sterilization of the degenerate” people and “merciful death” for the “mentally ill” were installed from the beginning (navarro, 2010). not only in germany, but in other countries, attention was turned to how to prevent “degeneration”. thus, childhood started to be more debated in the psychiatric field. such eugenic thinking heavily influenced certain groups of psychiatrists and psychologists in brazil during the 1920s and the 1930s. specifically, the brazilian league of mental hygiene (liga brasileira de higiene mental -lbhm), funded in 1923. the lbhm started their work assisting the “mentally ill”. later, in the 1930s, they began to direct themselves towards practices and advocacy for “prevention” of “degeneration” in the name of “the nation’s future” (costa, 1980). for them, children from lower classes were naturally more prone to “delinquency” and needed special focus. prevention actions would entail, for instance, institutionalization, “crusades” against alcoholism, propositions of sterilization of the “degenerate”, and criticism on religion and philanthropy “that helped the physical, psychic degenerates and criminals to live and thrive”2 (kehl apud costa, 1980). they would also recommend european immigration and miscegenation among races in brazil to “whiten” the population (costa, 1980) and “improve” the nation. this type of theory constitutes a strong trait in the history of racism in brazil. on the other side, there were also mental hygiene services that focused on the social causes of what could be in the way of a child’s access to education. but the phenomenon of mental health ruling about ideal actions in other fields of knowledge was still similar. these other mental hygiene services were associated with the new school movement in brazil and advocated for school access to reach democratic ideals. as health professionals, they provided recommendations for parents and teachers. still, they focused their actions mainly on psychologically understanding the students to recommend educational actions for inclusion, rather than restructuring the educational system. these were the service of school mental hygiene (serviço de higiene mental escolar), created in 1938 in são paulo and directed by durval marcondes, and the service of ortofreny and mental hygiene (serviço de ortofrenia e higiene mental), created in 1934 and ran by artur ramos in rio de janeiro (garcia, 2014). durval marcondes’s service offered child evaluation and parents’ and teachers’ orientation. there were also written reports in which durval marcondes addressed schools, by recommending the importance of meal providence to kids in school or guiding special education services, for example. the interventions with the family had a hygienic conduct code imposition that was external to the people cared for in the service (mothers should be caring, fathers should be an authority). arthur ramos in rio de janeiro had more focus on children that were considered aggressive and recommended changes in the children’s immediate environment, such as telling the parents not to beat their children. ramos talked about the subjective consequences of racism and recommended teachers to incite kids to talk in school for their wellness, based on the psychoanalytic idea of talking cure (garcia, 2014, freitas 2009). 2 the translation was made by the authors of the present paper. intersections between education and health reforms in brazil current issues in comparative education 99 arthur ramos was invited to direct his service in rio de janeiro by anísio teixeira, the main name in brazil regarding the new school movement and john dewey’s ideas. anísio teixeira had an important position in the ‘education for all’ movement in brazil and advocated that education was the basis and most important public sector area to improve for a true democracy with equal opportunities to be built (teixeira, 1956). similar to anísio teixeira, helena antipoff, a russian psychologist from sorbonne, was an important name in brazil new school thinking. she believed in school as a social transformation factor and that it was vital to know the “nature” of every student to plan pedagogical activity for each of them. as a professor in a college for teachers in minas gerais, she advocated that all kids could go to school, in opposition to laws that disobliged to do so the ones who did not have such possibility. possibility meaning what was considered intelligence aptitude, but also living close to a school. as a solution, she introduced the practice of different classrooms with homogeneous students considering scholar aptitudes, measured by psychological tools (campos, 2009). this model was spread in brazil during the 1950s and became a tool that collaborated with segregation. artur ramos’s propositions also suffered a backlash. trying to dislocate the idea that children from lower social classes were “delinquent-children”, he coined the term “problem-children” (in portuguese, criança-problema) to denunciate the violence, injustices, and oppression they suffered. the term “problem-child” became almost a diagnostic itself, a label in schools to talk about children that would cause trouble to the school and probably fail (freitas, 2009), justifying the future school failure in a selffulfilling prophecy functioning. segregation through special education classrooms continued to exist in brazil until the 2000s. from the 1980s forward, groups of psychologists started to expose more intensely how multiple factors that acted upon the relation student-school were being ignored, and only students’ features were considered when justifying school failure (patto, 1990). especially, they uncovered how most of the students that were classified as having a mild intellectual disability and were referred to special education were prevalently from low socioeconomic status, questioning the way this diagnostic is built (machado, 1996; patto, 1990; machado, 2016; patto, 2017), and showed how difficult it was for special education classrooms to have any connection to what the regular education classrooms were (machado, 1996). special education classes had a curriculum that strongly consisted of manual activities to “prepare” for alphabetization (mendes, 2010), an alive heritage from dr. bourneville’s methods (muller, 2000), and served more to intensify social marginalization than to increase educational achievement options (bueno, 1993; mendes 2010). in 1985 when brazilian democracy was restituted, 25% of the brazilian population was not able to read. up until then, not reading meant not being allowed to vote (westin, 2016). educational marginalization was deeply connected to the lack of full citizenship. in 1964, when paulo freire was working with adult literacy, more than half of the population could not read or vote. the president at that time, joão goulart, wrote in march of 1964 to the congress about voters not representing the whole nation fairly (westin, 2016). on april 1st of 1964, a military coup overthrew joão goulart from the presidency, and with united states’ active support, a two-decade military dictatorship was installed in brazil. the first military president after the coup, castello branco, was present at the penalva & marcondes machado current issues in comparative education 100 celebration at the end of paulo freire’s 40 hours experience of angicos3 in june of 1963. so was joão goulart, who read the letters of the recently-literate graduates during the ceremony. one of them mentioned that the experience not only had taught them how to read the abc but also how to change it. on that day, castelo branco commented that paulo freire was “teaching a pedagogy with no hierarchy” (sesctv, 2020). paulo freire had to leave the country during the dictatorship. paulo freire, democratic education, and collective health: public policy de-alienation and participation access to education was literally connected to citizenship in brazil. freire’s proposition – to consider the underlying social determinants that are present in the act of education and base the lesson in a dialogue with the students instead of “categorizing” them – constitutes an ethical position that deeply influenced other sectors, such as the health sector. we will briefly explore some of these relations and later discuss the 1980s brazilian health movements, which led to the restructuring of mental health assistance and the creation of the only public health system of continental-size in the world. paulo freire talked about political rights and the importance of what the workers created in the world while he was teaching them how to read words. in his perspective, these elements were connected in the most visceral sense. paulo freire’s approach in angicos consisted of an objective method, built from years of education experience based on dialogue and working with adults. experiences, for instance, such as the cultural circles (“círculos de cultura”) at the movement of popular culture from recife, in which the adult education was based on discussions the students chose to have and where themes like “brazilian political evolution”, “right to vote and illiteracy”, “development” and “profit outflows” commonly appeared (freire, 2003). from these cultural circles, he started to try similar experiences with alphabetization. the result was a careful procedure that considered what made sense to people who would have worked all day before class. senseless words from an out-of-context and pre-done cart would not engage. contextless words also did not collaborate to overcome neither illiteracy in brazil nor the country’s “democratic inexperience” (freire, 2003). the method consisted briefly of4: 1) listing, through informal meetings, of the most used words by the students. this would also build the relationship between educators and students; 2) selection of the words based on phonemic richness, phonetic difficulties that match the language difficulties, and word usage level (to incite better engagement). the selected words became the “generator words”; 3) creation of problem-situations based on typical local experiences that provoke analysis of regional and national problems, to be discussed in the groups; 4) building scripts to support coordinators to spur the debate; 3 the experience of angicos: angicos was a city in the brazilian northeast with a high rate of people that could not read. in 1963, paulo freire and a team of 19 university students, with the great support of the university and the government, went on an excursion to the city to offer a 40-hour course. over 300 people participated. up until today, we can access testimonies of the people who learned how to read in that experience. 4 this is a very simplified scheme of the method. to understand it better, please read freire (2003). intersections between education and health reforms in brazil current issues in comparative education 101 5) making notes of the decomposition of the phonemic families that correspond to the generator words; 6)practical execution: a real-world problem is pictured on the board and presented for the students. they discuss it, the word connected to it is visualized, and its semantic link to the discussion is exposed. right after, the word is exposed in syllables, and the student recognizes the chunks. the same procedure is repeated, but now with phonemes, showing the phonemic family of each of the chunks, what leads to understanding the vowels (the example given by freire (2003) is about the word brick – ti-jo-lo: phonemic families are shown for each of the syllables (ta-te-ti-to-tu, ja-je-ji-jo-ju, la-le,li,lo,lu) and, from there, new words can be built and discovered by the student. freire gives the example of a man who wrote “tu já lê” from this exercise, which means “you already read”). there are two levels of participation to be looked at here in this example. one is a more micro level: student participation is needed for the objective of the teaching activity to be successful. participation is not just used because it is “correct”, it is the bulk of the work that does not fulfill its objective without participation. in addition, there is the second participation to be looked at: democracy would not be representative without more adult learning. learning to read words and learning about their actions in the world. to change the social structure that placed paulo freire in the social position he occupied in relation to the adults he taught, the dialogue was vital, their participation was needed. society would be more if they were more, as freire points out in the pedagogy of the oppressed (1987). but to guarantee true dialogue with them, freire reports that constant based-ondialogue-supervision of the coordinators was needed, as it is very tempting to enter an anti-dialogue posture (freire, 2003). it can be easy to silence the other and move on with the “teaching-task”. but if this happens, the aim of the task is lost along the way. we understand this posture is also present in the construction of the collective health field in brazil, which ultimately collaborated with the sanitary reform that helped build the brazilian public health system (sistema único de saúde – sus). collective health is an interdisciplinary field of knowledge (paim & almeira filho, 1998) that began in brazil in the 1970s. it makes an inflection in the public health field by denying the monopoly of knowledge in health to the biological disciplines (birman, 2005). the variation that comes with changing the name "public" for "collective" removes the hegemonic power of the state to regulate life, giving importance to social life (birman, 2005). historically, collective health is inspired by two fields coming from north america: preventive medicine and community medicine. the principles of preventive medicine, which had been more present in economically central countries, came to latin america through the seminars of viña del mar (1955) and tehuacan (1956) with the support of u.s. foundations and the pan american health organization (paim, 2006). in their arrival to latin america, community medicine and preventive medicine were merged, resulting in the opening of departments of medicina preventiva (preventive medicine) in the colleges of health, mainly during the 1960s. in the united states, community medicine was a movement dedicated to caring for the impoverished population who were not covered by private medicine (rivera, 1989). preventive medicine was the one that brought the notion of integrality and criticized the fragmentation of medical specialties. its theoretical basis is the natural history of diseases of leavell and clark (1965 apud arouca, 1975), which initiated a discussion on the penalva & marcondes machado current issues in comparative education 102 multicausality of diseases and different levels of health care for different moments of illness, in an attempt to rearrange medical care so that the state would be responsible for primary care. in this proposition, prevention and health promotion are considered primary care; treatment and prevention are secondary care, and intensive treatment is tertiary care. this movement propositioned to inculcate values of preventive and social order in the medical body through medical schools, understanding the doctor as an actor of change in society (paim, 2006). at the same time, this arrangement forged the idea of planning in medical schools with optimization of resources and reduction of costs. in brazil, it was from the courses of medicina preventiva (preventive medicine) that the field of collective health was created in the 1970s in an effort to de-alienate health, broadening its definition (paim, 2006). in 1978, the alma-ata conference reaffirmed that health should no longer be seen as the absence of disease but as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being". additionally, it states that inequality in health between developed and developing countries is unacceptable and reiterates the commitment of health for all in the 2000s (from 1977). finally, it emphasized primary care as an essential health strategy and the importance of action in other sectors. in alignment with the world trend, the conceptual mark of collective health is considered to be the "overcoming of the dominant biologism, of the naturalization of social life, of its submission to the clinic and its dependence on the hegemonic medical model" (paim & almeira filho, 1998, p. 310). collective health widens the health field by incorporating new disciplines and considering the social determinants in the health-disease process (paim, 2006). due to the importance that social determinants have in collective health, and considering that, by the 1980’s, inequalities were being broadened by a brazilian health system that only provided health care to formal workers, the discussion about health improvement was soon connected to the debate about democracy. influential authors that contributed to the construction of collective health as a field of knowledge would cite paulo freire or other education authors, like demerval saviani, an author that proposes an emancipatory education to overcome an education that maintains inequalities. one of these collective health “builders”, joaquim alves cardoso de mello (zancan & matilda, 2015), for instance, argued in 1986 that health education should not be focused on teaching the population not to get ill, as this position would entail that it is their individual responsibility for getting sick. such a position was not coherent in a country where an enormous part of the population did not have access to a sewage system, while 10% of brazilians possessed 50% of the country’s wealth (mello & valla, 1986). so, for cardoso de melo, health education would better fit brazil’s reality if it focused on issues such as agrochemicals, pollution, and human rights claims. this type of discussion was not the newest in the health sector. however, now, it was boosted with different understandings of what was needed to build democratic practices and had the names of freire and saviani consistently being cited. in health professionals' formation, paulo freire became an author with considerable importance (silva et al., 2020). sanitary reform and mental health reform: participation that drives change we have briefly gone through some brazilian propositions and movements in the education and health sectors during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. however, a more thorough depiction of how brazil was and how reforms happened calls for a succinct description of the military government’s performance in these areas. intersections between education and health reforms in brazil current issues in comparative education 103 in education, the government had forsaken its responsibility towards special education. the increase in the number of dropouts and school failure was being linked to theories of mild intellectual disability and reinforced the justifications for creating special classrooms (mendes, 2010). the discourse "for all" was not enough to guarantee that everyone would have an education. the major portion of special education classrooms and schools were administrated by private institutions or family associations, traversed by a strong speech of philanthropy instead of the one about rights and citizenship (mendes, 2010). in public health, the sanitary crisis contrasted with the alleged “economic miracle” declared by the military government. infant mortality rates were high, access to health care was difficult, labor accidents had increased, endemics were strengthening, and a meningitis epidemic had been set in place (paim, 2007). in mental health, psychiatric asylums were a revenue business for private institutions, in which the government paid such institutions to care for the patients. if the patients never got cured (stayed for as many days as possible), if their number was higher, and if these institutions could decrease the costs with technology and professionals, this meant more guarantee of profit. this scenario generated atrocious dehumanization situations, including torture, silencing, and abandonment (tenório, 2002). until the end of the 1970s, there was consistent criticism of the psychiatric asylum models, especially after the deflagration of frauds in the partnerships with private institutions. what became known as the brazilian mental health reform also heated up with the struggle for a democratic society: until 1978, the movements against the working mental health care in brazil were mostly composed of workers that criticized privatization, overcrowding, and mistreatment, but did not argue so strongly against the psychiatric asylum model itself (tenório, 2002). in 1979, there was an event in brazil with basaglia and castel5, which impacted workers' movements. they began to intensely criticize the asylum model itself and gathered with family members and users6 of the mental health system. combined, these three categories formed the anti-asylum struggle movement (movimento da luta antimanicomial – mla) by the very end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s (nader, 2017). "social inclusion" began to appear in the worker’s vocabulary (dunker & kyrillos, 2015). their main claim became the citizenship of the insane, of the ones who could not speak for themselves before. or better, could speak but would not be heard. as a result, community-based services started to pop up with experiences in which the services and the mental health care were constructed with its users. the proposition of the reform was that the ones who had intensive psychic suffering would not have their whole lives determined by one specific health condition and would be assisted close to their community (tenório, 2002; nader, 2017). the mental health reform restructured mental health assistance and participation in two levels: 1) at the relationship between mental health workers and users, and 2) at the whole mental health assistance’s organizational model. regarding the first level, the place that madness occupied in the relationship between therapist and patient was dislocated. treatments started to be reorganized to open space for the humanity of mental health service users. the vertical separation between workers and users was blurred. activities were conducted in ways that the mental health service 5 important international references in remodeling mental health assistance. 6 there was a dislocation in naming: from patients to health service users, because they were more than “ill people” being treated, but were citizens who helped build the health system. penalva & marcondes machado current issues in comparative education 104 workers and users could exchange knowledge amongst themselves. this included soccer or chess matches, movie discussions, book writing, museum excursions, freedom of circulation in general, therapeutic and non-therapeutic groups, town halls to review the service’s organization and deliberate on problems and solutions. this new paradigm on the original psychiatric institution was inspired by the experiences of tosquelles and jean oury in la borde (goldberg, 1996). the second level led to radical changes in the organization of mental health assistance in brazil. as a result of the strong advocacy of the anti-asylum struggle movement, a brazilian law known as the anti-asylum struggle law was approved in 2001. it instituted that mental health assistance had to be community-based. this “arm” of change in assistance and participation was inspired by the italian reform, represented mainly by franco basaglia (goldberg, 1996). soon, new laws contributed to organizing this change in assistance, from which the psychosocial community centers (centro de atenção psicossocial – caps) were instated as the secondary attention for mental health. the primary attention happens in the basic health units7, and the tertiary attention is based on general hospitals – rather than in the former psychiatric-only asylums. different parts of the health network also became responsible for supporting mental health users who had long lived in psychiatric asylums, aiding them with their citizenship needs, such as residency, work, leisure, and their rights as citizens. each caps counts with a multi-professional team that works together with each mental health service user in their singular therapeutic project, built in composition. no more the only saying in the treatment would come from the doctor or the therapists. psychosocial attention in the brazilian mental health assistance context does not mean adapting a psyche to the social (paiva, 2013). it is rather the opposite: considering the multiple determination between psychological and social determinations in the healthillness process (capistrano et al., 2021) and exploring actions in the social to better nurture the encounter between the subject(-not-anymore-object) and the social. this perspective goes in line with the ethical posture that we saw in freire and in these mobilizations we have approached so far. it is connected to the type of participation that freire proposed, and it furthers the effort of distancing mental health practices from the mental hygiene services presented at the beginning of this text. participation is not to improve rapport or to “help” the marginalized. the participation itself is a fundamental element for the whole society to be more. in the case of the mental health reform, a person being able to be a citizen meant every person not running the risk of having their citizenship denied. as the mental health reform, the sanitary reform gained boost and dislocations when the population joined the discussion. since the 1970s, two associations (cebes and abrasco) composed mainly of health workers and academics were at full mobilization to construct a critical position about the public health system and formulate new models of a health system. cebes (brazilian center for health studies) was committed to spreading 7 primary health unit in the brazilian health system is the most frequent type of health service in brazilian territory. they are divided along the neighborhoods so that each unit is responsible for the primary health care of approximately 12,000 people. primary health units are more “generalist” units, in which all residents in that specific territory location are seen by primary health care teams and can participate in prevention and health promotion actions. if there is a need for a more intensified and prolongued treatment, residents are referred to specific secondary units, such as the capss in the case of mental health. the tertiary attention in the health system is usually used when an existing health condition requires intensified treatment, with few actions dedicated to prevention. intersections between education and health reforms in brazil current issues in comparative education 105 the collective health discussions that emerged from academia to society. they fueled debates, meetings, books and magazines on the democratization of health (paim, 2007). cebes' magazine was called saúde em debate (health in debate), and their second issue, in 1977, contained an editorial arguing that health is a citizen's right, mentioning the need for a "sanitary reform". this is when the proposition of the sanitary reform was born (paim, 2007); a proposition that had its first actions aligned with its positions: not keeping the good ideas in academia, but spreading it. by the beginning of the 1980s, brazil started a democratic transition that culminated in a civil presidency by indirect elections in 1985. actors identified with democratic policy started to gain terrain in the government. amongst them, sérgio arouca became the president of fiocruz8. debates and discussions on a more equitable health system started to gain place in legislature debates. the financing of the public health system and how welfare would be administered were at the center of the debate (paim, 2007). the proposition of transferring the working health system of the time – which only assisted the employed population, using their wages contributions – to the ministry of health was denied. the justification from the central government was: “this decision belongs to the workers”. sérgio arouca, in response, decided that the 8th health conference would call workers from the whole country to participate (arouca, 2002 apud paim, 2007). workers were called in all possible types of communication (ensp fiocruz, 2016). registration for participation in the 8th health conference was open to every civil society association. the communication team from the 8th conference even announced the call for registration on a famous soap opera of the moment: the priest character of the soap opera dedicated some minutes in the show to publicize it (ensp fiocruz, 2016). the result was 4,000 people, 1,000 elected delegates, and 98 working groups. the delegates came from all regions and social classes, and the debates could last several hours. the three main subjects were “health as an inherent right of the citizen, reorganization of the national health system, health system finances” (paim, 2007, p. 92). the resulting reports from these working groups composed the 8th conference final report, which guided the discussions and the writing of the new brazilian democratic constitution, approved in 1988 (paim, 2007). the brazilian constitution states that health is a citizen’s right and, consequently, a state’s duty. the result was the brazilian sus (unified health system – sistema único de saúde), a system with universality, equity, and integrality as its three main principles. today, anyone who seeks health assistance in brazil has the right to it. no bill is received for any procedure by the users. ambulances, hiv treatment, sanitary vigilance, alternative practices, vaccination, health promotion actions, primary care, and high complexity procedures are free for the population. discussion: today’s open challenges after the mental health reform9 accomplishments in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, public mental health policies in brazil are mainly guided towards social inclusion and consider the multi-determination of mental health suffering. mental health services for infants and adolescents dedicate an essential part of services to intersectoral actions for better inclusion and well-being (taño & matsukura, 2019; penalva, 2020). in public health, brazil has considerably decreased infant mortality (leal et al., 2018) and mortality from 8 fiocruz is the main public health research institution in brazil. 9 that is still ongoing and struggling with backlashes in the last few years (vincentin & blikstein, 2019) penalva & marcondes machado current issues in comparative education 106 infectious and parasitic illnesses since the beginning of sus (paes & silva, 1999). even though sus has had many conquers and is an overcome itself, thanks to the popular participation and a posture of dialogue with the population in similar ways to what freire proposed, many improvements and revisions must be pursued. we list some of them below. first, mental health workers that had a formation marked by the mental health reform usually dedicate discussions and practices to not marginalize service users nor silence their existences with categorizations or diagnostics. nonetheless, the urge for practices that are more connected to a democratic relationship with mental health users doesn’t always reflect in the relationship with workers from other sectors. teachers in the public education sector can often refer students to the capss, asking for categorizations or justifications of why a student does not learn and, sometimes, there can be some dispute over the right way to proceed (penalva, 2020). regarding the steps freire used in the alphabetization of adults, freire argued for the constant supervision of one to guarantee this one would not become the oppressor or silence the other. nonetheless, this supervision has to be done with dialogue. the education sector itself in brazil did not go through the same process of reforms with the population participation as the health sector did. public health workers have justification for having some space on their agendas for social participation or multi-professional team meetings, while education workers do not have the same possibility (penalva, 2020). giving support to think of better inclusion strategies inside the classroom, and not just away, in the clinic, may bring interesting outcomes for children, as portugal’s experience indicates (rodrigues, 2001). there is a need to develop better intersectoral actions amongst the different sectors to guarantee qualified public sector actions towards equity. the ethical position that dialogues with the alterity and searches to understand multicausality in how things are has to be present in the relation with other workers as well. second. social participation is a sus’s working engine. every health unit has its management council, composed of 50% by their users, 25% by workers, and 25% by the unit's directory. the unit's councils are gathered in regional and municipal councils. regional and municipal councils are gathered and represented in the state council and, at last, a national health council. the national health council is still active and has helped the system to resist different attacks10. other sectors have similar functioning, inspired by sus (oliveira & kahhale, 2020). nonetheless, the institutionalization of these councils has voided some of the transformation potential in these places, with tasks occasionally becoming bureaucratic. also, experts (gershman, 1995; paim, 2007) point out that the health reform was partial because some propositions were lost along the way, as has popular participation for the major decisions. there are still inequities to be corrected, and the state is constantly proposing changes to sus that favor private corporation's interests. health users that have the time to participate in councils usually have specific profiles, considering that most of the population is constantly juggling between different jobs and family responsibilities 10 for instance, in 2017, the health councils prevented são paulo’s mayor, dória, from closing the pharmacies in the primary health units to offer medication assistance through a partnership with private pharmacies. the main problem in this proposition, amongst many, was that there are regions that lack private pharmacies and rely mainly in the primary health units’ pharmacies. private entities do not need to consider the population need and equal distribution of resources as the public sector does. intersections between education and health reforms in brazil current issues in comparative education 107 (penalva, 2020). in a country that is still deeply unequal (souza & medeiros, 2017), council participation is not enough anymore. this does not mean that councils do not fulfill an important role. solutions in a dynamic context will not be constant. there is the need for constant reviewing to not fall into other ways of silencing change. reinvent participation is urgent so that the public service – including education can be indeed for the public. it only makes sense for the education sector to create and invent new types of participation if other parts of the public system, such as health, guarantee possibilities of legitimate participation. on the other hand, creating institutionalized political participation spaces without constructing experiences of emancipatory political participation in education can collaborate with the maintenance of what makes an unequal system (saviani, 2012). besides the factors we previously highlighted from freirean ethical posture for participation-building11, freirean experiences and the history we brought so far can yet point to one more direction. for freire, education is done through the mediation of the world, through solving problems we live (shaull, 2006), not through static boxes of knowledge. boxes of knowledge (math, science, portuguese, etc.) help solve the world’s problems, not the opposite. nonetheless, our sectors separated as they are (health, education, etc.) are abstract separations of the world – during the first brazilian cases told in this bibliographic review, for example, education and health matters were in the same ministry –. today, the participation councils of each social sector have a crucial role in protecting citizen’s rights. nonetheless, intersectoral political participation spaces could be one alternative to reach the population that is now struggling with increasing unemployment, poverty, and hunger rates (neves et al., 2021). as an alternative to only separating the citizens’ political participation in each council, we propose that intersectoral participation spaces can be interesting devices to hear the population’s most urgent inputs. in this sense, it would be interesting to further investigate the strengthening of intersectoral action and participatory intersectoral actions to build the public sector as a result of citizen act and, hopefully, drive change towards diminishing inequalities in education and other social sectors. renata penalva is a psychologist with master’s in neuroscience and education (teachers college – columbia university) and in school psychology and human development (psychology institute – university of são paulo). currently works as a study coordinator at the need lab (teachers college) for the baby’s first years study and as a researcher at instituto veredas. email: re.penalva@gmail.com adriana marcondes machado is a professor of undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the psychology institute of the university of são paulo (ip-usp) and coordinator of the school psychology service at ip-usp. coordinator, since 2019, of the contemporary subjectivity working group of the national association for research and graduate studies in psychology in brazil. email: adrimarcon@uol.com.br 11 1)considers 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(2015). trajetórias de joaquim alberto cardoso de melo: quincas, um berro à vida. ciência & saúde coletiva, 20, 32753282.https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1413-812320152010.14622015. 3. hollis. education as an international export: marketing elite, english schools as franchises overseas.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 1, winter 2023 education as an international export: marketing elite, english schools as franchises overseas stefano hollis stanford university graduate school of education a growing portion of international schools are franchised branches of schools originally founded in other countries. the first of such schools opened in 1996 and there are now almost 100 globally. expansionist schools are primarily elite, english private schools, with concentrations of their franchises developing in the middle east, southeast asia, and east asia over the past quarter of a century—particularly in mainland china over the past decade. this study explores how such schools adapt the language and focus of their marketing and, in doing so, sustain their privilege across various contexts. a qualitative textual analysis is conducted of the websites of 11 schools run by dulwich college and harrow school, the first brands to expand overseas and with the most extensive networks of schools today. a lens of international schools as enclosures of privilege is used to demonstrate how schools adapt themselves and their framing. the study finds the promotional focus of the schools depends not just on whether they are the founding school or a franchise, but also on their relative ages, and on their varying locations within specific sociocultural contexts. an emergent hybrid model, catering to both local and international curricula, blends the local with the global and complicates the conventional notion of the international school. finally, the study suggests that further research is focused on the franchising of elite education, particularly as the focal point of expansion begins to shift away from the mainland chinese boom of the past decade. keywords: international education, international schools, school expansion, elite education, oversees franchise schools introduction in 1572, queen elizabeth i granted a royal charter opening harrow school in north london (tyerman, 2000). just some decades later in 1619 and on the other side of the city, dulwich college was founded (blanch, 1877). the schools’ long histories, notable alumni, and strong academic records—as well as some of the highest fees in england—have made them both prominent and illustrious names within a busy market for private secondary schools in the uk (peel, 2021). both were also the first anglophone schools, hundreds of years later, to expand transnationally in the form of overseas franchise schools. © 2023, hollis. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 51-72. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en hollis dulwich pioneered the trend by opening a franchise in phuket, thailand in 1996, with harrow opening in bangkok in 1998 (bunnell, 2008a). today, there are over 73 franchise schools opened by primarily english institutions (bunnell et al., 2020), but dulwich and harrow remain the two schools with the greatest overseas presence. whilst both schools have been well established in the uk for centuries, there has yet to be focused research into how they might translate their reputation and appeal to remain high-status options both across new cultural contexts and in spite of their expansion widening access to their brand names. with this emergent trend “operating within the periphery of the blurred field of ‘international schools’” (bunnell, 2008a, p. 384), so far there has been little scholarly attention paid to the overseas franchises of elite, anglophone schools. research looks more generally at international schooling (hayden & thompson, 1995; pearce, 2013), or at the further developed “parallel phenomenon” (bunnell, 2008a, p. 384) of transnational expansion in higher education (becker, 2010; farrugia & lane, 2013; healey, 2015; kosmützky & putty, 2016; lane, 2011; merola, 2016; wilkins & huisman, 2012, 2015). studies have mostly documented the extent of schools’ transnational expansion and, at times, the motivations behind it (bunnell, 2008a; bunnell et al., 2020). as such, there has yet to be any systematic comparison of the ways in which founding and franchise schools situate themselves within various contexts and appeal to diverse groups of elite consumers. the success of franchise schools is evidenced by their growth, though it remains to be seen how they portray themselves as places of privilege, and particularly how they do so in markets already saturated with local schools and competing, independent international schools. this paper uses textual content analysis to explore how harrow school and dulwich college frame themselves as places of privilege to parents in their various locations. this focused exploration of how elite names—with considerable heritage and strong reputations in the uk—portray themselves to new consumers contributes to an understanding of the ways in which privilege is managed and sustained across varied contexts in an increasingly global education market. the primary research question of this study is: how do dulwich college and harrow school frame themselves as places or “enclosures” of privilege by way of appealing to prospective parents and students? the study’s secondary questions are: (1) what are the similarities and differences in this framing between the original, founding schools, and the newer franchises overseas? and (2) what are the similarities and differences between franchises in various locations? background the origins of international schooling, according to the international school consultancy, date back at least to the 19th century: 10 of over 1,300 schools registered with the council of international schools were founded before 1900 (hayden & thompson, 1995; pearce, 2013. international schooling began on a small scale, offering education in home languages and systems for the children of diplomats and expatriates. in the past 50 years, this narrow consumer base has broadened, with the sector seeing its most pronounced growth in recent decades. in january 2007, there were 4,563 international schools globally. by october 2019, there were 11,320 such schools educating 52 current issues in comparative education education as an international export: marketing elite, english schools as franchises overseas 5.7 million students worldwide (bunnell, 2008b). growth has been particularly pronounced in asia, driven by rising incomes and demand for english language education. in 2000, hong kong had 92 international schools. by 2017, it had 176. over the same period, thailand went from 12 international schools to 121 (machin, 2017). other estimates suggest the number of international schools across asia grew by 334% between 2000 and 2007 (brummitt, 2007). alongside rapid growth, international schooling has seen a much-widened consumer base of both expatriate and local students seeking a globalised outlook and internationally recognised qualifications (hayden & thompson, 2008). international schools, and the qualifications they offer (such as the international baccalaureate program), are increasingly seen as a status symbol and a marker of distinction, as much for local students as for expatriates (gardner-mctaggart, 2018). there is an appeal especially for local elites who perceive domestic alternatives to be inferior (hayden & thompson, 2008) and for those aiming for overseas higher education (ng, 2012). international schools often differentiate between themselves and their local counterparts and maximise the perceived relative prestige of attending their institution by framing their students as cosmopolitan global citizens (berting, 2010; garton, 2003; reid & ibrahim, 2017). these schools can take several forms, such as “internationally british” or “internationally american” (wu & koh, 2022, p. 57), referring to elements of practice or curricula used by the school, as well as the makeup of its staff. a growing minority of these schools, however, are the franchised versions of anglophone schools usually established in england (bunnell et al., 2020). the most comprehensive review of such schools is offered by bunnell (2008a) and bunnell et al. (2020), who suggest expansion of franchised international schools has occurred in three distinct waves. the first wave was characterised by “opportunistic and ad hoc” expansion (bunnell, 2008a, p. 386), described as a form of hyper-capitalism. high-status schools expanded into low-risk markets, demonstrated by strong local demand for flourishing, independent international schools. dulwich and harrow’s first expansions in 1996 and 1998 were followed by two more elite english schools, bromsgrove and shrewsbury, also in thailand in 2002 and 2003. the second wave moved from opportunism to systematic growth. schools were pushed by financial pressures at home to look for new sources of revenue when the charities act of england and wales 2006 threatened the charity status of private schools: schools now needed to prove they were working in the interest of the public good if they were to continue receiving tax breaks of more than £100 million between them (bunnell, 2008a). this put pressure on schools to subsidise more places for low-income students in england. subsequently, the second wave saw further growth and the involvement of lesser-known brands in new places, such as repton school and oxford high school for girls in dubai, and haileybury schools in both almaty and astana, kazakhstan. a third wave, pushed by a growing global education industry, has been even more extensive, with a greater spread of ‘second tier’ cities and schools (verger et al., 2017). a handful of american, canadian, and scottish schools have opened franchises, although the majority remain english. openings in chinese cities such as qingdao, suzhou, and wuxi—as well as the opening of a dulwich college in yangon, myanmar in current issues in comparative education 53 hollis 2018—reflect the reach of expansion beyond major cities, such as beijing, hong kong, and singapore (bunnell et al., 2020). in 2019, the uk department for international trade knew of over 120 further overseas projects being considered by british schools (jack, 2019). concentrations of franchise schools found in the middle east, southeast asia, and east asia reflect regional variations in economic development, demand for english schooling, and the ease of establishing franchises (hayden & thompson, 2008). figure 1 shows the extent of the growth of franchise schools globally between 1995 and 2019. figure 1. growth in franchise schools globally from 1995 to 2020. source: bunnell et al. (2020) as the two pioneers of transnational school expansion, dulwich and harrow have had the weight of their histories and brand names behind them, with the cachet of their names allowing them to expand extensively. both schools are members of the headmasters’ and headmistresses’ conference (hmc), a group “comprising the oldest, richest and most prestigious schools” in the uk (peel, 2021, p. 11). harrow is also one of 18 members of the rugby group, as well as the even more prestigious clarendon commission of seven schools reformed by the public schools act of 1868 (bunnell et al., 54 current issues in comparative education education as an international export: marketing elite, english schools as franchises overseas 2020)1. as an indicator of the prestige and privilege of these schools, consider that “clarendon school alumni remain 94 times more likely to take up an elite position [as measured by wealth, occupation, and/or influence on public life] than individuals attending other schools” (reeves et al., 2017, p. 1160). the dulwich college international subsidiary currently manages nine schools in china, myanmar, singapore, and south korea, having withdrawn its name from the original phuket franchise in 2005 after management differences with its franchisee (curtis, 2005; dulwich college international, 2021). harrow operates 10 schools in mainland china, hong kong, and thailand, with new schools set to open in the ski resort of appi kogen, japan in 2022, and in jakarta, indonesia in 2023 (harrow school, 2021a). harrow’s strong presence in mainland china is in part the result of recent, rapid expansion, with the brand opening four new schools in 2021 alone, in chongqing, haikou, nanning, and zhuhai. rather than the broader “harrow international schools,” these schools operate under the “harrow innovation leadership academies” moniker, promoting an emergent, hybrid educational model that is bilingual and meets the requirements of both china’s national curriculum and england’s secondary qualifications (harrow schools, 2021). this further expands the reach of the harrow brand beyond wealthy foreigners and expatriates to better include a growing chinese middle class who might “aspire to a form of education perceived to be superior to the local alternative” (hayden & thompson, 2008, p. 47). the prestige of both dulwich and harrow has enabled them to expand extensively and to recruit both local and foreign students in various locations. figure 2 shows the territories in which they operate franchises and a timeline of schools’ opening years, demonstrating the extent, speed, and regional concentration of their expansion. with their networks of schools continuing to grow, both dulwich and harrow have clear success marketing their franchises. harrow’s original expansion into bangkok was described “as near an exact replica of harrow [london] as can be achieved under local conditions” (bunnell, 2008a, p. 385). architectural emulation seems to be one way schools continue to establish or translate their status. dulwich college singapore’s main building, for instance, appears almost identical to that of the founding dulwich college in london, despite being built many hundreds of years later. other franchise schools in mainland china adopt the style and even the uniform of their founding schools (kong et al., 2020). in promotional materials, franchises place a strong emphasis on the history, status, academic reputation, and notable alumni of the founding school (such as former british prime ministers and members of the royal family). images of traditional british architecture, british students in school uniform, and even the union jack are common (wu & koh, 2022). 1 the term “public school” in the uk refers to private, fee-paying schools and is generally used to describe the older, more prestigious of such institutions. by contrast, publicly funded schools are referred to as “state schools”. current issues in comparative education 55 hollis figure 2. countries/territories with franchise school locations of dulwich college and harrow school, with number of schools in brackets, and timeline of schools’ founding dates. source: data from dulwich college international (2021), harrow school (2021), aisl harrow schools (2021) 56 current issues in comparative education education as an international export: marketing elite, english schools as franchises overseas indeed, schools’ growing drive to market or present themselves in a particular way has not been limited to franchised expansion. recent decades have seen the strengthening of market forces even within domestic, public education systems, where state marketisation comes into sharper relief against the notion of education as a public good (adnett & davies, 2002; gorard & fitz, 1998; holmwood, 2012; noden, 2000). the significance of school marketing materials in both public (hesketh & knight, 1998) and private systems (gottschal et al., 2010; wardman et al., 2010) has grown, with schools now investing more time and money in the “glossification” (gewirtz et al., 1995, p. 127) of their image and some even employing marketing professionals to assist in this process (symes, 1998). researchers have noted a convergence of the images commonly presented by schools: most include the school ethos, key statistics, and images of school life (hesketh & knight, 1998). in their promotional materials, elite schools strike difficult balances, such as between a focus on tradition and innovation (symes, 1998), whilst international elite schools balance framing the student as a local community member and a global citizen (tamatea et al., 2008). overseas franchises appear keen to reference their founding schools, but english founding schools almost hide their international activity, writing of it only in hard-to-find corners of their websites. instead, they discuss community involvement exclusively in terms of the local (brooks & waters, 2015). international schools as enclosures of privilege: an analytical framework i explore the similarities and differences in the marketing of two elite english schools, dulwich and harrow, across various locations in england and asia. as an analytical lens, i employ ingersoll’s (2018) theory of international schools as elite educational enclosures which “protect and foster the mobility of elites who have the resources to gain access, or membership to the club” (p. 271), suggesting schools craft specific and deliberate boundaries between themselves and the societies in which they exist. the conceptualisation of the school as an ‘enclosure’ highlights the relationship between dulwich and harrow and both their home and host countries, and particularly how schools “symbolically position” (ingersoll, 2018, p. 271) themselves within local and/or global communities across various locations. the analysis facilitated by this lens allows for an exploration of the way in which dominant forms of cultural capital (bourdieu, 2018)—the ways of being and cultural knowledge so often crystallised and legitimised by educational credentials (lowe, 2000)—travel and are translated transnationally. local communities might include physical, local geographies and emphases on local culture, whilst global communities might represent connections within the brand’s transnational network of schools, or a perhaps less tangible, more imagined global network of cosmopolitan, geographically mobile elites (kenway, 2016). access is often connected to elite education (maxwell et al., 2017) and may be promoted in schools’ own marketing materials. prospective parents may look for a particular framing by way of distinguishing themselves from local alternatives (hayden & thompson, 2008) or with the goal of a pathway to international higher education (wu & koh, 2022). within the limits of the enclosure, a privileged few have access to educational advantages unavailable to others. ingersoll et al. (2019) use this lens to highlight the tension between the competitive, exclusive commodification of international education and the “international-mindedness as an aspirational disposition” (p. 31) being current issues in comparative education 57 hollis marketed within it. similarly, bunnell et al. (2020) describe a tension between the exclusivity and prestige of elite schools and their capitalist, transnational expansion widening access to them. this paper examines how schools balance these tensions in their promotional materials and how they use the concept of the elite enclosure to maintain an image of privilege despite their expansion widening access to the brand name. wu and koh (2021) describe the way in which british franchises “market the offshore…schools as no different from their parent schools in england, burnishing [them] with all things british with symbols and paraphernalia that suggest ‘distinction’” (p. 15). the study and methodology this study employed a qualitative case study design. harrow and dulwich were selected as the focus of this case study as two of england’s oldest and most prestigious schools, and the two most extensive exporters of english schooling. qualitative, textual analysis was used to understand how schools publicly frame, sell, and market themselves online. with this aim, schools’ own websites are particularly telling; they “provide the advantage of being in the language and words of the [schools], who [have] usually given thoughtful attention to them” (creswell, 2015, p. 222). a significant body of literature has explored the increasing pressure under which schools create and present curated images of themselves (hesketh & knight, 1998; knight, 1992; symes, 1998). further, content analysis has been described as “particularly applicable to qualitative case studies… producing rich descriptions of a single phenomenon, event, organisation, or program” (bowen, 2009, p. 29, emphasis added). analysing webpages produced by each school reveals how they aim to present themselves to prospective parents and students. eleven of the 23 schools managed by the two brands at the time of writing were selected for analysis as examples of both brand’s different models in various locations; this included a total of seven harrow schools and six dulwich schools (see appendix 1), accessed and saved across three months between february and april of 2022. it was not possible to analyse all 23 schools due to capacity constraints. schools were selected with the aim of creating a balanced sample, including franchises of various ages, as well as those both in ‘emerging’ economies, such as china and thailand, and those in ‘developed’ economies, such as japan and singapore. the websites of schools are understood to have assumed much of the marketing and image-producing role previously held by the school prospectus (gewirtz et al., 1995; oplatka & hemsley-brown, 2012). particularly as schools are both established in multiple places and advertised transnationally, the school website becomes a much more relevant resource than the spatially bound prospectus. collated text from each school site was printed and coded by hand, allowing the researcher to “be close to the data and have a hands on feel for it” (creswell, 2015, p. 239). codes— and analytic memos written after each pass of a website (peshkin, 2000)—were then collected and compared in a single spreadsheet. the process was reflexive and the codebook was amended through subsequent passes of the data (decuir-gunby et al., 2011). 58 current issues in comparative education education as an international export: marketing elite, english schools as franchises overseas the analysis combined a deductive and inductive approach; existing literature had an influence on the study’s initial codes, whilst the data were still allowed to speak for themselves, keeping the study open to unexpected or surprising results (miles et al., 2020). initial codes were based on the study’s theoretical lens, research questions, and existing literature exploring (franchised) international schools. examples include reference to the founding school, the framing of both students and the school as either globally or locally embedded, and a focus on the school’s offering of international qualifications and a pathway to international (anglophone) higher education. emergent codes were then identified during a “preliminary exploratory analysis” of each school (creswell, 2015, p. 242), with the study’s codebook amended through subsequent passes of the websites (miles et al., 2020). codes were also revised after inter-rater reliability testing, in which a workshop of peers coded samples of data and offered feedback. some emergent codes include the use of aggrandising language, emphasis on a holistic education, and the promotion of a hybrid model fusing local and international curricula and cultures. findings founding and franchise schools in various locations show both similarities and differences in their use of language and promotional emphases aimed at appealing to parents. these are seen, variously, across four key areas: the use of aggrandising language (or ‘world-class’ rhetoric); reference to the founding school’s history, traditions, and notable alumni; emphasis on the prestige of qualifications offered and a pathway to elite higher education; and the framing of both students and schools as locally or globally embedded, or both. differences reflect the franchise schools’ various ages and establishment, the location in which each franchise operates, and the varying engagement of different franchise schools with local and international curricula. the use of aggrandising language: hyperbole and exceptionalism through language coded as aggrandisements, the language of exceptionalism is seen throughout the websites of all schools studied. however, it is used slightly more frequently in franchise schools than it is in founding schools, perhaps as the latter are better-established within a centuries-old market for private schooling. across the six harrow franchise schools studied, an average of nine instances of aggrandising language were recorded per school, compared to the london founding school’s seven. dulwich franchises averaged eight uses of such language per school, also compared to the founding school’s seven uses. this sort of language is used to describe almost everything, from the brands themselves, to individual school facilities and locations, and the achievement and higher education destinations of students. qualifiers such as “the best” and “the most” are common, and their impact is further reinforced by aspects of the schools being frequently described as “state-of-the-art” (harrow zhuhai), “world-class” (dulwich seoul), “one of a kind” (harrow appi), “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” (dulwich shanghai pudong), and “among the best the world has to offer” (harrow london). in some yet stronger examples, one school’s “commitment rests in world-class staff, world-class facilities, a complete and consistent adherence to the highest possible standards” (harrow bangkok), a student theatre is described as “a crucible for producing fearless original work of the highest dramatic order” (dulwich london), and harrow’s oldest franchise school is “truly a magical place where your children will start on an educational journey that is hard to match” (harrow bangkok). current issues in comparative education 59 hollis the use of this form of linguistic exceptionalism is common and is engaged in by founding and franchise schools alike. however, topics it is used for vary slightly. younger newer chinese franchises are more likely to use more and stronger aggrandisements to reinforce the prestige of the international qualifications and prospective higher education offered. for example, three harrow schools in haikou and zhuhai suggest the english pre-university ‘advanced-level’ courses offered to students aged 16 to 18 are “regarded as the gold standard in the british education system and recognised worldwide” (harrow haikou, zhuhai). the same three schools describe the universities their students attend as “the most sought-after universities on the planet.” notably, older harrow franchises in bangkok and beijing—as well as the new school in appi, japan due to open in 2022—offer the same qualifications but only mention them by name. a linguistic device favoured by founding schools—and used up to four times more than newer franchise schools—is that of “archaic slang” (harrow london), used to emphasise the exclusivity of being a part of the school community and understanding its ways. franchise schools use this extremely rarely (and most not at all), almost always explaining it in parentheses immediately following its use. by contrast, harrow london describes the way in which “employing inspiring beaks is crucial,” and only in a much later page of the website explains this term to the reader: “around 20% of our beaks (teachers) have doctorates and many undertake their own writing and research” (harrow london). reference to the founding school’s heritage, traditions, and famous alumni the long histories of the founding schools in london are clearly strong selling points for both the founding and franchise schools, although they are mentioned more frequently and described using more aggrandising language by the latter. younger franchises particularly rely on the founding school history; older franchises have more of their own history to share. all schools are careful to refer to the connections between their initial establishment and the royal family of the uk. dulwich london tells the story of its founding: “dulwich college was founded by edward alleyn on june 21st, 1619, with letters patent from king james i. this magnificent document with the great seal of england still survives.” harrow london, “founded in 1572 under a royal charter granted by queen elizabeth i,” uses a similar approach. franchise schools, whilst also emphasising these royal links, go further to connect the age of the founding school to tradition and school culture. dulwich beijing describes this connection: as a member school of the dulwich college international family, we draw upon over 400 years of tradition and experience from our founding college in london…our traditions and values form our culture and are firmly embedded in all that we do. they also build the sense of community and connect the school to past, present and future. many of the franchise schools studied centre the englishness of such traditions: harrow bangkok is described as “a typical british day and boarding school education…providing a british style independent boarding school experience,” later 60 current issues in comparative education education as an international export: marketing elite, english schools as franchises overseas affirming that “in a sense being a boarder is the most authentic way to experience a harrow education; after all, harrow london has been offering a boarding-only education for over 450 years” (harrow bangkok). many focus on the prestige of those who have studied at the school: “dulwich has a long-standing reputation for producing fine actors, musicians, sportsmen and writers; many of our students now go on to engage in entrepreneurial, technological, cybernetic and innovative enterprises too” (dulwich london), whilst others specifically name some of those figures: “amongst the school’s alumni are some of the most influential figures in world history, including lord byron, winston churchill, jawaharlal nehru, king hussein, lord rayleigh and numerous influencers, inventors, artists and nobel laureates” (harrow appi). although there is a significant focus on the heritage of the founding school and the influence of this on the franchises, all the schools studied attempted to strike a balance between history and innovation. this is best exemplified by two slogans used as headings across the websites of all sampled schools: harrow schools use “our past, your children’s future,” whilst dulwich schools use “the future, founded in 1619.” harrow london further describes this tension: “while harrow is, ostensibly, a traditional place, at its heart is a hunger for innovation. as our pupils’ needs develop, so too does the organisation that surrounds them” (harrow london). all the dulwich franchises studied maintain that “the college has long been a pioneer in education,” again balancing the prestige of heritage and the appeal of innovative practice. qualification prestige and the higher education pathway a focus unique to the franchise schools studied is on the prestige of the english or international qualifications offered by the school and of the primarily anglophone universities attended by students after leaving. again, aggrandising language is used to further convince parents of the advantage conferred by these privileges. more of such linguistic work is generally done by younger franchises, perhaps in places where the brand is less established, and the target market may be less familiar with the qualifications on offer. harrow bangkok, the oldest franchise school studied, only mentions that international general certificate of secondary education (igcse) and advanced (‘a’) level) courses are followed and that students achieve highly in them. by contrast, these same qualifications are described by one harrow haikou school as “highly regarded,” “an excellent and academically meticulous preparation,” and “the pinnacle of british school-level education” (harrow haikou). elite higher education is a significant focus of all the schools studied, with founding schools focused on uk institutions and only a brief nod towards elite us or other international universities. all the schools studied list specific institutions their students have attended. for franchise schools, “elite” higher education is coded largely as anglophone, with lists detailing almost 20 universities attended in the uk and us and under 10 universities in the asia pacific region. almost all the schools in the sample take care to mention their offering of “bespoke” (harrow zhuhai) university counselling, which starts as early as age 16 to offer students support in writing personal statements, preparing for entrance tests, and practising for interviews. current issues in comparative education 61 hollis blending the local and global franchise schools are more likely to frame both themselves and their students as globally rather than locally embedded, further connecting students to international curricula and an international higher education pathway. however, some franchises make an effort to blend a framing of students as both local and global citizens. both brands have now opened numerous new schools in mainland china (“harrow innovation leadership academies” and “dulwich international high schools”), allowing students to complete the chinese national curriculum during early secondary schooling, followed by international or english qualifications. this is contrasted by the “international schools” offered by both brands, some also in mainland china, that offer only english or international curricula. the newer, mainland chinese schools make more of an effort to market their hybrid educational model, “where pupils are educated to become successful and distinguished members of chinese society, with a truly global outlook” and the school “creates a blend of east and west, where pupils can be proud of their heritage, but in touch with the world” (harrow zhuhai). the model is framed in terms of instilling an understanding and respect for both chinese and british cultures, and it is often implied that students will return to china following their encouraged progression to anglophone higher education. both harrow haikou schools use the following metaphor: at harrow haikou, we understand that good schools give their pupils roots and wings to be successful both academically and personally. roots to know where home is and wings to fly away and use what they have learnt. at harrow haikou, our pupils’ roots will be in the chinese and british cultures, history, traditions and language brought together in a way that is uniquely ‘harrow’. harrow zhuhai, similarly, is “passionately committed to developing students prepared to make a positive and purposeful contribution to society in china” (harrow zhuhai). dulwich schools, meanwhile, show considerable continuity between the websites of their various franchise schools—including between their “international schools” and the hybrid model “international high school” in zhuhai—to portray the connectedness both of its network and of its students. the schools appear more embedded within their own network, with more reference to other franchises and to inter-school events attended and hosted by different schools, such as the dulwich olympiad sporting competition. dulwich uses this network integration to frame students as geographically mobile global citizens, seemingly by way of assuaging parents’ concerns around the disruption of relocation. as is written on the website of each dulwich franchise: students from different dulwich college international schools may get to know each other one year through a group event, and find themselves classmates the next when one of them has moved from, say, dulwich college (singapore) to dulwich college shanghai pudong. students facing the challenges of an international move will make a much smoother transition when their new school is so familiar. similarly, hybrid model schools often explicitly referred to themselves as such, making more of an effort to balance the history of the founding school and the englishness of their qualifications with references to local culture. harrow haikou, for example, 62 current issues in comparative education education as an international export: marketing elite, english schools as franchises overseas describes the way in which its buildings are reminiscent of traditional haikou balconies. notably, this is almost the inverse of those schools that seek to emulate the architectural style of the english founding school (kong et al., 2020), as was also exemplified in this study by dulwich singapore’s main building and its striking resemblance to the centuries-old main building of dulwich london—as well as early descriptions of harrow’s first expansion into bangkok, said to be as similar to the london original as was possible (bunnell, 2008a). although hybrid model schools in mainland china were more likely to refer to the importance of local culture alongside english and founding school traditions, there was considerable differentiation even among the more conventional “international schools” offering only english or international qualifications. dulwich singapore, dulwich seoul, and harrow appi all take care to mention aspects of local culture of significance to the school, where other “international schools” (including some in mainland china) do not. dulwich singapore mentions celebrating both christmas and lunar new year, whilst harrow appi discusses the importance of respect for japanese traditions. dulwich seoul was, notably, the “international school” with the most prevalent discussion of local culture, with the school referring to participation in chuseok (the korean harvest festival), a celebration of hangeul day, and the practice of korean calligraphy. these local differences perhaps suggest dulwich and harrow believe local culture is of varying importance to consumers in different locations and adjust the balance of this framing against the prestige and history of the founding schools accordingly. discussion the focus of franchise schools on the prestige of the founding school and its history, as well as on the benefits of studying english or international qualifications and the selling of an anglophone higher education pathway, echoes the findings of previous studies on various forms of international schooling (hayden & thompson, 2008; wu & koh, 2022). the use of aggrandisements to varying degrees and on different topics demonstrates that founding and franchise schools are contextually situated. they adapt to convince prospective parents of the relative prestige of their educational offering and to frame an enclosure of privilege (ingersoll, 2018) from which their students will benefit. however, whilst franchised expansion occurs primarily through the more traditional “international school” model, it is now increasingly occurring through a hybrid model catering to both local and foreign curricula, further complicating the way in which schools communicate an image of privilege. aggrandising language and the image of privilege the ‘world-class’ rhetoric that was seen throughout the websites studied, across both founding and franchise schools, suggests schools continue to place considerable importance on processes of image-building in their promotional materials (hesketh & knight, 1998; symes, 1998). indeed, this is perhaps yet more important when convincing wealthy parents in new locations of the merits of the brand’s educational approach. those schools advertising a boarding option transnationally must also convince some parents to send their children to school far away from their homes. current issues in comparative education 63 hollis the linguistic exceptionalism used by all schools, and the “archaic slang” used by some, can be seen as examples of schools drawing boundaries between themselves and others, and managing consumers’ impression that the school is a place of relative privilege. newer schools perhaps feel a greater need to “symbolically position” themselves as places of privilege (ingersoll, 2018, p. 271) by way of establishing the prestigious image of the founding school in a new market. it is perhaps with this same aim that newer franchise schools refer more to the founding school and its long history (wu & koh, 2022). aggrandising language is a key tool through which both founding and franchise schools establish themselves as places of relative privilege. with widely varying founding dates, degrees of establishment, sociocultural contexts, and global embeddedness, it is understandable that schools engage with this linguistic exceptionalism to varying degrees. however, its prevalence across school types and locations suggests that the global rhetoric for understanding and selling such schools is, in some ways, rather similar. this is one area in which the global education industry perhaps aligns across transnational boundaries (bunnell et al., 2020; verger et al., 2017). qualification prestige and the anglophone higher education pathway previous research suggesting the reputation of international qualifications and a pathway to anglophone higher education are considered key selling points by many international schools has been reinforced by this study. however, it is not just international qualifications, but english qualifications, too—such as igcses and a-levels—that schools use particularly to sell the appeal of elite, english language schooling and higher education. in some franchise schools, especially those in china, the prestige of these qualifications was bolstered by explicit reference to english as the language of instruction. franchise schools are perhaps keen to highlight the englishness of both their qualifications and their instruction to differentiate themselves from local alternatives (hayden & thompson, 2008), and further draw a boundary between those inside and those outside of the school’s enclosure of privilege (ingersoll, 2018). that the founding schools do not engage in the same framing of either their qualifications or higher education pathway again reflects that the schools studied position themselves as places of privilege within specific contexts. founding schools cannot differentiate themselves through these qualifications or a pathway to english universities as both are largely the norm in the uk. however, they are sure to advertise the elite institutional destinations of their former students, such as oxford and cambridge universities (reeves et al., 2017). for overseas franchise schools (and indeed in world rankings), there is considerable overlap between elite and anglophone higher education, although there are instances in which one takes precedence over the other, or vice versa. whilst big, globally recognisable names are common, franchise schools also share the attendance of their students at lower-tier anglophone institutions, the names of which do not tend to appear on the websites of the english founding schools. both founding and franchise schools focus on a pathway to elite higher education and the qualifications required to get there, and the status of english language higher education sometimes precedes the importance of elite rankings for franchise schools. the status of anglophone higher education in general overseas is such that some franchise schools 64 current issues in comparative education education as an international export: marketing elite, english schools as franchises overseas will share attendance at lower-tier institutions that founding schools would not publicise in the same way. franchises sell both qualifications and a higher education pathway as an anglophone educational offering distinct to that available elsewhere and to that available to those outside of the school’s enclosure (ingersoll, 2018), for parents who might view them as superior to the local alternative (hayden & thompson, 2008) or to other international schools with less brand cachet (bunnell et al., 2020). the prioritising of anglophone higher education above options with a better academic reputation suggests the impression of english language higher education remains a positive one. blending the local with the global by way of widening appeal the development of the hybrid model further highlights the expansion of international schooling to include both local middle class and expatriate children (gardner-mctaggart, 2018). this model echoes the sino-canadian schools studied by wu and koh (2021) in their provision to students of a “dual-track” and a “backup plan” (pp. 12-13) should they eventually decide against studying abroad—which may be an increasing challenge to franchise schools given covid-related safety concerns and the deteriorating relationship between the us and china (wu & koh, 2021). indeed, students at harrow’s hybrid model school in haikou, but not those at the international school on the same site, have the option of taking the zhongkao local secondary exam in addition to the english igcse exams. the model also has important implications for the framing of the schools and their students. whilst previous research has suggested international schools look to distance themselves and their students from the local (berting, 2010; garton, 2003), or to balance framing their students as either global or local citizens (tamatea et al., 2008), the hybrid model further complicates this distinction. again, it might seem the enclosure of privilege (ingersoll, 2018) is being constructed in a new way by hybrid model schools, where schools advertise privilege not only as distinct from the home society, but also within it. beyond the implications of the new hybrid model school, variations in conventional “international schools” remain interesting. the focus in particular of dulwich seoul on korean culture is reminiscent of the way in which globalisation has developed in south korea not to the demise of nationalism, but to its continued importance; south korea perhaps presents a culturally unique context for the operation of a franchise school, in which the school is more required to be cognisant of “the curious mixture of two seemingly contradictory forces, nationalism and globalization” (shin, 2003, p. 6). brands can be seen engaging with local and foreign/global cultures to varying degrees in different places. it is perhaps the case that enclosures of privilege (ingersoll, 2018) are conceptualised differently in different cultures; some might place greater importance on an international outlook, whilst others might have a stronger drive to preserve local culture. franchise schools engage in a complex balancing act in determining the framing of themselves, their students, and the educational offering they provide. the comparison between founding schools and their various franchises provides insight into the complexities behind the maintenance of privilege across transnational boundaries. although they began as individual institutions within the uk, as these educational brands continue to grow, their idiosyncrasies will further suggest local differences in consumers’ perceptions of what it means to have an “elite” education. current issues in comparative education 65 hollis conclusion franchised exports of primarily english schools make up a growing portion of the international schools market, with almost 100 of such schools opening globally in the past quarter of a century. harrow school and dulwich college were the first schools to expand and today have the most extensive networks, concentrated thus far in southeast asia and east asia. this study seeks a novel comparison of the centuries-old founding schools and their much younger franchise counterparts, adding to an emergent body of literature analysing the ways in which heritage, status, and longstanding reputations are translated across various contexts (brooks & waters, 2015; bunnell et al., 2020). the conceptual framework of international schools as enclosures of privilege (ingersoll, 2018) demonstrates how expanding school brands adapt the framing of themselves depending on the age and establishment of a franchise. younger franchises are more likely to use ‘world-class’ rhetoric and to refer more often to the prestige and history of the founding school, demonstrating a need to establish themselves as places of privilege in new settings. both founding and franchise schools advertise a pathway to elite higher education, although the latter implicitly code this as almost exclusively anglophone and often give little attention to local alternatives. the sociocultural context of a franchise school is also of important influence. some contexts, such as japan, singapore, and south korea, require the school to devote more time and energy to local culture, whilst schools portray a more international or global version of themselves and their students in other contexts, such as thailand. the emergent hybrid model of international schooling, catering to the requirements of both local and international curricula, is being used by some—but not all—franchise schools in mainland china. this model of school again places a greater importance on local culture, whilst also framing itself and its students as both locally and globally embedded. this study presents a starting point for the focused exploration of expansionist schools and their franchises. whilst harrow and dulwich have the most extensive networks of schools, other concentrations of franchise schools warrant attention, particularly in the middle east. further, the data used in this paper provide only one perspective. the study of school promotional materials tells us only how schools intend to portray themselves to parents and students; it does not explore how this image is interpreted by consumers. future research might both include other brands of schools in other places and triangulate data sources (creswell & creswell, 2018) to understand not just how schools present themselves, but how they are perceived. further study will also depend on host country approaches and shifting focal points in expansion. the past decade has seen the rapid growth of franchise schools in mainland china, largely due to economic growth and rising demand. however, recent reports suggest a shift in authorities’ attitudes. in 2019, the chinese education bureau announced that any oversubscribed school would be required to run a lottery for places (turner, 2019), but this was not enforced. more recently, in april 2022, the bureau announced that education providers would no longer be allowed to carry the name of a foreign institution (langley et al., 2022). a letter sent to parents at harrow beijing said the school would refer to itself in future communication by the name “lide,” although it 66 current issues in comparative education education as an international export: marketing elite, english schools as franchises overseas remains to be seen how the policy might affect the brand’s international and online marketing of its chinese schools, which continue to be branded as harrow schools. a volatile policy landscape is now shifting the focus of expansionist school brands. westminster, another clarendon commission school, recently abandoned plans to open six chinese franchises (jack, 2021), whilst harrow recently announced four new schools in india and one in the us (harrow school, 2021b). with such varied economic and sociocultural contexts and changing policy landscapes, it will be interesting to see not just how harrow positions itself within these new locations, but how it—and other franchise schools in mainland china—will continue operation. as expansionist schools enter an increasingly diverse array of contexts, the continued maintenance and communication of their privilege will present fruitful grounds for future study. stefano hollis is a teacher and sociologist from london, uk. he has taught social sciences and english across a range of ages in london, hong kong, and mainland china. his research interests include the global marketisation of education, transnational franchised school expansion, and the social role of higher education. references adnett, n., & davies, p. 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(2015). factors affecting university image formation among prospective higher education students: the case of international branch campuses. studies in higher education, 40(7), 1256–1272. wu, w., & koh, a. (2022). being “international” differently: a comparative study of transnational approaches to international schooling in china. educational review, 74(1), 57–75. appendix table a1.websites for analysis. brand school location website (homepage) harrow london, uk https://harrowschool.org.uk appi kogen, japan https://harrowappi.jp bangkok, thailand https://harrowschool.ac.th beijing, china https://harrowbeijing.cn haikou (“harrow international school”), china https://harrowhaikou.cn/his/ haikou (“harrow innovation leadership academy”), china https://harrowhaikou.cn/hila/ zhuhai, china https://harrowzhuhai.cn dulwich london, uk https://dulwich.org.uk/ beijing, china https://beijing.dulwich.org seoul, south korea https://seoul.dulwich.org shanghai pudong, china https://shanghai-pudong.dulwich.org singapore https://singapore.dulwich.org zhuhai, china https://zhuhai-high-school.dulwich.org/ 72 current issues in comparative education https://harrowschool.org.uk https://harrowappi.jp https://harrowschool.ac.th https://harrowbeijing.cn https://harrowhaikou.cn/his/ https://harrowhaikou.cn/hila/ https://harrowzhuhai.cn https://dulwich.org.uk/ https://beijing.dulwich.org https://seoul.dulwich.org https://shanghai-pudong.dulwich.org https://singapore.dulwich.org https://zhuhai-high-school.dulwich.org/zh cataldo, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 culturally relevant pedagogy in the post-covid-19 era kevin cataldo montclair state university introduction in 1995, gloria ladson-billings introduced a landmark essay entitled “but that’s just good teaching! the case for culturally relevant pedagogy” to the world of educational research and teaching. it explained culturally relevant pedagogy (crp) and its three tenets—academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness. ladsonbillings’ main argument was that public schools in america were not serving their children and youth of color1 well. her argument is still discussed and well-documented in today's literature (see, for example, emdin 2016, 2021; gay, 2018; ladson-billings, 2021; muhammad, 2020; nieto, 2000, 2010). ladson-billings (1995a, 1995b, 2001) defines crp as a form of teaching where teachers use a student's culture to guide student learning. in this view, a culturally relevant teacher: (1) acknowledges that one's culture and identities are dynamic and fluid in society rather than static. in doing so, the teacher becomes responsive to the everchanging cultural, economic, and social contexts of the lives of their students (nieto, 2000, 2010); and (2) is consciously aware that public schools in america are social institutions that thrive on systemic racism and pedagogical practices of a bygone era (ladson-billings, 2001; lyiscott, 2019). with this in mind, in this essay, i will revisit and critically analyze the three tenets of crp. my unique positionality, specifically my identities as a novice latino urban educator and doctoral student of color informs the reflective questions i pose to educationalists throughout this essay. i define an educationalist as individuals who know various principles and pedagogical practices of teaching (e.g., classroom teachers, school leaders, literacy coaches, curriculum writers, and teacher educators). i will explore the three tenets of crp by situating ladson-billings’ theory in the post-covid-19 era. i will do so by asking: what does crp look like in a classroom post-covid-19? i define the “postcovid-19 era” as the period after the lockdown imposed on the united states by the pandemic (e.g., closure of businesses and public schools). by posing such a question, i invite educationalists to critically re-analyze crp and its need in schools today more than ever before (ladson-billings, 2021). tenet #1: academic success schools must make it their priority to provide students with many opportunities to experience academic success. ladson-billings (1995a, 1995b, 2001) argued that for students to become successful citizens in a democracy, in the united states, they must develop their academic skills (e.g., reading, writing, mathematical, technological, and intrapersonal and interpersonal social and political skills). students must develop such critical skills regardless of the social inequalities and inequities present in our society. while i agree with many aspects of ladson-billings’ argument, i disagree with her overall conclusion that regardless of the social inequalities and inequities (e.g., systemic racism, © 2022, cataldo. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 115-118. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en cataldo current issues in comparative education 116 poverty, persistent social and economic inequalities, and lack of appropriate school funding), students should be expected to develop their academic skills fully. in other words, how can students grow as critical thinkers and learners if they are not taught how to acknowledge and regulate their emotions–which are consistently influenced by the negative impacts of social, economic, and political inequalities and inequities present in society? not all children and youth learn to process these negative interactions and experiences; therefore, they cannot reach the level of critical thinking ladson-billings suggests because academic success is not independent of emotional security. furthermore, as we think about our american society and what it will look like postcovid-19, specifically the future of schooling in america educationalists need to ask themselves the following question: how do we define academic success post-covid-19 through the lens of social and emotional learning (sel)? cristóvão et al. (2017) define sel as the “capacity to recognize and manage emotions, solve problems effectively, and establish positive relationships with others” (p. 1). as we continue to battle covid-19, i define academic success as a learner’s ability to: (1) acquire and create new knowledge individually and collectively across the content and subject areas; (2) acknowledge that to grow as a learner, one must learn the importance of regulating one’s emotions, which are constantly impacted by the social, economic, and political inequalities and inequities around them; and (3) recognize that learning is a lifelong journey where one’s mind is constantly on a quest for new knowledge. schools cannot meet ladson-billings’ definition of academic success in the current climate, but if schools cultivate these three abilities in students, only then can society expect children and youth to develop their academic skills fully. tenet #2: cultural competence living in a pluralistic society requires its citizens to value different cultures and their role in society. ladson-billings (1995a, 1995b, 2001) argued that culturally relevant teachers provide their students with the opportunities to affirm and value their culture while acquiring knowledge and fluency in another culture. that is, a culturally competent teacher uses the culture of their students to guide their learning. nieto (2000) defines culture as “the ever-changing values, traditions, social and political relationships, and worldview created, shared, and transformed by a group of people bound together by a combination of factors that can include a common history, geographic location, language, social class, and religion” (p. 139). with this notion of culture in mind, i have realized that before teachers can successfully learn about the cultures of their students, they must first embrace their own cultural identities. educators must also challenge their biases, assumptions, and stereotypes about specific cultural, racial, and ethnic groups—both consciously and subconsciously. we live in a nation where classroom teachers often allow their own biases, assumptions, and stereotypes to lead to deficit perspectives of diverse students; i am guilty of this myself. thus, as we embark on a new era of education in the united states, the post-covid-19 era, educationalists should ask themselves the following question: through the lens of conscious and unconscious bias, how do i define cultural competence post-covid-19? i define cultural competence as: (1) a teacher’s ability to embrace their cultural identities and of their students and use them to drive classroom learning; and (2) an educator’s culturally relevant pedagogy current issues in comparative education 117 capacity to critically challenge their biases, assumptions, and stereotypes that they have for students, which negatively influences teaching and learning. tenet #3: critical consciousness in order for students to thrive in our american democratic society, schools must teach them how to develop their critical consciousness. ladson-billings (1995a, 1995b, 2001) defined critical consciousness as a student’s ability to critically analyze the world around them, explicitly the societal inequalities and inequities that affect their lives. ladsonbillings’ conceptualization of critical consciousness is relevant in today’s world. we are still amidst the covid-19 pandemic and continue to witness the exacerbation of social, racial, political, and economic inequalities and inequities. while i agree with ladsonbillings, schools must provide students with a chance to develop their critical consciousness; classroom teachers must also get the opportunity to engage in professional development to enhance their critical consciousness. they must explicitly learn more about how social, political, and economic inequalities and inequities negatively impact student learning. i currently teach in an urban school district that does not invest in meaningful professional development opportunities for its teachers and school leaders (e.g., antiracist teaching and leadership, how to teach a culturally responsive curriculum, how to address systemic racism in schools, and how to facilitate conversations about intersectionality and its role in teaching and learning). hence, as educationalists, we must ask ourselves the following questions: how do i define critical consciousness post-covid-19? i define critical consciousness as: a teacher and student’s ability to critically challenge (individually and collectively) the social, political, and economic inequities and inequalities, along with the racial and social injustices that affect our american society–our public schools. what’s next? — the future of crp research in the post-covid-19 era to conclude, in this essay, i situated ladson-billings' theory of crp within the context of post-covid-19 era. i did so by inviting educationalists along with educational researchers and scholars interested in crp and its use in schools to explore my critical analysis of crp and its three tenets in their research. in doing so, we can continue to build upon ladson-billings' seminal scholarship (ladson-billings, 1995a, 1995b, 2001). i plan to continue the conversation using my identities, that of a latino novice, culturally relevant teacher, doctoral student, and emerging teacher educator, researcher, and scholar. i will explore the reflective questions posed throughout this essay using my identities as my lenses and qualitative self-study teacher research which is situated in my personal and teaching experiences (samaras, 2011). through self-study teacher research, i will continue to reimagine public education in america. using my identities and teaching experiences during the post-covid-19 era, i will continue to establish my ideas and re-conceptualizations of crp and its three tenets within the context of my teaching experiences (both past and present) along with the schooling experiences of my students– all which are dynamic. by doing this, i will continue to build upon the scholarship of my predecessor, ladson-billings (1995a, 1995b, 2001, 2021) and continue to work towards creating learning environments that are equitable and inclusive for students of color. cataldo current issues in comparative education 118 note [1] “color” is capitalized intentionally as a means for empowering those who identify as people of color. acknowledgement i want to thank samantha harrienger, marian peters, and nicholas santiago for taking the time to read my work and for challenging my thinking throughout the writing process. kevin cataldo is a proud brazilian american and an urban educator in newark, new jersey. his research interests include qualitative research (self-study research), culturally relevant pedagogy in k-12 urban education and teacher education. he is currently pursuing a ph.d. in teacher education and teacher development at montclair state university. references cristóvão a.m, candeias a.a, & verdasca, j. (2017) social and emotional learning and academic achievement in portuguese schools: a bibliometric study. frontiers in psychology, (8), 1-12. emdin, c. (2016). for white folks who teach in the hood… and the rest of y'all too: reality pedagogy and urban education. beacon press. emdin, c. (2021). ratchetdemic: reimagining academic success. beacon press. gay, g. (2018). culturally responsive teaching: theory, research, and practice (3rd ed.). teachers college press. ladson-billings, g. (1995a). but that’s just good teaching! the case for culturally relevant pedagogy. theory into practice, 34(3), 159-165. ladson-billings, g. (1995b). toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. american educational research journal, 32(3), 465-491. ladson-billings, g. (2001). crossing over to canaan: the journey of new teachers in diverse classrooms. jossey-bass publishers. ladson-billings, g. (2021). i’m here for the hard re-set: post pandemic pedagogy to preserve our culture. equity & excellence in education, 54(1), 68–78. lyiscott, j. (2019). black appetite. white food: issues of race, voice, and justice within and beyond the classroom. routledge. muhammad, g. (2020). cultivating genius: an equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy. scholastic inc. nieto, s. (2000). affirming diversity: the sociopolitical context of multicultural education. (3rd.ed). longman. nieto, s. (2010). the light in their eyes. (10th anniversary edition). teachers college press. samaras, a. p. (2011). self-study teacher research: improving your practice through collaborative inquiry. sage. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 1(1) 49 ngos: progressive force or neo-liberal tool?[1] steven j. klees florida state university the increasing prominence of non-governmental organizations (ngos) has been seen by many as a potentially transformative force in promoting more equal, participative, and sustainable development. at the same time, ngos have also been seen as co-opted by neo-liberalism, functioning in ways that maintain systemic inequality. edwards and hulme's (1996) thoughtful article reviews many of these debates, and this short essay, like others in this issue, reacts to this article as well as draws upon my own experience and analysis of the threats and promise of the ngo phenomenon. ngos, of course, are very diverse. the ngo literature makes a variety of distinctions among ngos and aims to capture some significant differences in their functioning: e.g., national vs. international, northern vs. southern, community-based, religious-based, grassroots organizations, popular organizations, ngos associated with social movements, and even progressive vs. neo-liberal ngos (edward and hulme, 1996; macdonald, 1995). while these and other distinctions are very important in understanding the contributions and functioning of ngos, there are some lessons that can be learned from looking at the ngo phenomenon as a whole. mostly, i wish to comment on some of the ways in which the ngo sector has been an integral part of a system that reinforces unequal development. [2] nonetheless, i want to begin by underscoring the progressive promise of ngos. my own experience, over many years, and, most recently, working in very diverse contexts--with programs for street and working children in brazil, girl's and women's education in guatemala, and social and economic development in mozambique--is that ngos consistently run the most interesting, innovative social programs with a commitment to grassroots participation and social justice. [3] along with this, as one might expect, some of the most committed social activists i have worked with have been in ngos. this is not to say all or most ngos are progressive nor is it to slight the work of others within the government or elsewhere who have excellent programs and similar commitments. i simply wish to acknowledge that, in my view, some of the promise of ngos is clearly being fulfilled. at their best, ngos act as a progressive element in the dialectic of global and local, empowering individuals and communities to face, resist, and transform the unequal relations of neo-liberalism. [4] unfortunately, the ability of ngos to carry out this role effectively is seriously compromised for a number of reasons. ngos may have initially grown within the cracks and fissures left by the unmet needs of a capitalist, patriarchal, and racist world system. however, as edwards and hulme discuss, the incredibly rapid expansion of ngos has primarily been a consequence of two decades of a neo-liberal focus on privatization. with the advent of reagan/thatcher politics on a global scale, bilateral and multilateral agencies developed a rationale for avoiding aid to governments: imperfect markets are better than imperfect states. [5] as a compromise between funding social programs through governments and complete laissez-faire, ngos became an important vehicle for development funds with consequences that seriously undermined their progressive potential. [6] stephen j. klees 50 november`15, 1998 in many countries, cutthroat competition developed among ngos for funding. those that succeeded were too often those which took a more compromising, apolitical stance, if not openly right-wing, and those which met the development agenda of their funders, or, at least, did not directly challenge it. as edwards and hulme (1996, pp. 966-7) point out, the result of this achilles heel of external funding has led too often to a shift in the status of ngos from partners to contractors: instead of forging partnerships with funders and communities, ngos become contractors implementing the funder's agenda in the community. in some ways, they then become indistinguishable from the more private sector-oriented firms like, for example, the "beltway bandits" in washington, dc that grew up as contractors for government agencies in earlier eras when limits were placed on hiring staff internally. ngos thus become the new temporary workers of development, useful to national and international agencies for specific tasks, but easily discarded as circumstances change, and consequently limited in their ability to challenge development practice (edwards and hulme, 1996, p. 963; smith and lipsky, 1993). edwards and hulme (1996) discuss many of these criticisms, but frame them as limits to ngos' ability to further the post-cold war "new policy agenda" of efficient economic growth, democratic governance, and sustainable poverty alleviation (p. 961). but, from a critical perspective, these goals are camouflage for policies that benefit the few: growth for whom? what kind of democracy? [7] lately, it seems even the camouflage may not be necessary. during the 1990s, poverty alleviation as a goal has been disappearing, even at the rhetorical level. the world bank, which had poverty elimination as a founding mission, after decades of little "success," now argues that it does not have enough money to make a difference but can offer good advice to poorer nations, and perhaps, over the long run, that will make a difference (e.g., world bank, 1995). rather than contributing to sustainable poverty alleviation, ngos, despite their best efforts, have, at a systemic level contributed to sustaining poverty. maintaining poverty and inequality is an integral part of the new and old policy agenda of capitalism. the ngo phenomenon has supported this agenda most strongly by contributing to the delegitimation of the state. the emphasis on ngos helps ensure that no social programs "go to scale." [8] despite some limited examples (edwards and hulme, 1996, p. 964), few believe that ngos offer any hope for systematically providing necessary social services on a large scale. in brazil, for example, one estimate was that the hundreds of often excellent small-scale programs offered by ngos for street and working children served less than one percent of those in need (myers, 1991). the strength of ngos has been their ability to work closely with local communities and to develop innovative programs that fit with local needs and context. most ngo staff i know recognize that it is government that must bring such programs to large-scale. [9] many ngos have also recognized that governments, especially during the last two decades, have not been bringing such programs to scale. as a result, some ngos have begun a new activity: lobbying the state for large-scale social change, sometimes even abandoning their program development work to become full-time policy advocates and to help in the development of social movements that press the state for policy change. [10] ngos dedicated to progressive social change are in an incredibly difficult situation. the need for their services is enormous, resources are very scarce, and, when available, come with strings attached. most ngo staff i have worked with feel that they are putting their ngos: progressive force or neo-liberal tool? current issues in comparative education, vol. 1(1) 51 fingers in just a few of the many holes in the dike. i vividly remember a southeast asia regional adult education conference in 1996. there was an excellent presentation about an ngo's work that had begun by helping aids victims in thailand, but because social problems are so interlinked, over time they began to deal with related problems of sex education, prostitution, income generation, rural poverty, women's and children's rights, health, schooling, and others. the discussion at the end of this conference session became focused for a time on what it was that ngos were really doing with such excellent small-scale programs. one participant put forth that such efforts grew out of their desire to "heal" social ills, that is, to transform the conditions that yield exclusion and disadvantage. this web-like pattern is common to many successful ngos that begin with one social problem and extend themselves through all sorts of forward and backward linkages to related problems, from urban to rural, from adult to young child, from education to health, etc. those who work with ngos recognize the problems above make progressive action very difficult, but they try to make the best of a bad situation. despite the strings attached to funding, ngos often try to remain true to their own agenda by a variety of strategies: not taking funds from those agencies they disagree with; not depending too much on one funding agency; and not playing agencies off against each other. while this may seem rational and even progressive from the point of view of individual ngos, systemically the result is far from even coping with the deadly consequences of neoliberalism. unfortunately, today's market economics, especially with the minimal social welfare role assigned the state, makes full employment of human resources impossible, leads to cutbacks in already very inadequate social services, and has no room for the greater participation in governance that is essential to challenge the maintenance of inequalities. [11] under the aegis of neo-liberalism, the situation worsens each day as more people than ever join the ranks of the excluded and exploited. "healing" means transforming this world system. it does not mean eliminating markets but governing them and not treating them as sacred. it means guaranteeing the rights of people to a decent living and to meaningful and fair social participation. this is not at all a call for despair. the question is how to bring such changes about. if, as in the distinction used by macdonald (1995) and others, you work with a "progressive" ngo, what should you do? there is no roadmap or guide to successfully challenging, undermining, and transforming what is a very hegemonic world system. [12] there are an array of strategies progressive ngos are trying which aim at fundamental changes, such as: develop more extensive partnerships with government and civil society; lobby for national policy changes; align with and help develop progressive social movements; focus more on systemic causes of social problems like trade policy, structural adjustment, and human rights; and increase the capacity of people to represent their own interests. [13] has the ngo phenomenon been "overrated" by progressives? yes. is it a "progressive force" or is it a "neo-liberal" tool? as feminist writers have been reminding us, it is never "either/or;" it is "both/and." ngos are contested terrain in the struggle for social transformation. there are many reasons to believe that the ngo phenomenon is more business-as-usual: the agenda of ngos is determined within a hegemonic world system, even progressive ngos are co-opted, and even good strategies have a difficult time of stephen j. klees 52 november`15, 1998 success. nonetheless, on the whole, ngos still constitute one of the most widespread challenges to current development strategies, especially as they form linkages with other elements of civil society and foster the development of progressive social movements. the serious commitments many ngos have to social justice and grassroots activism continue to make them an important force in the struggle for a fair and sustainable development. notes [1] an earlier version of this essay was presented at the comparative and international education society annual meeting, buffalo, n.y., march 17-22, 1998. i would like to thank susanne clawson, tony dewees, peter easton, david palmer, george papagiannis, and angela siqueira for thoughtful comments on a draft of this essay. the responsibility for the views expressed is, of course, mine alone. [2] i, like others, find the term "development" to be so problematic that its use should be discontinued. yet having no facility at doing so succinctly in this short essay, it remains (for good discussions see fox, 1997 and escobar, 1995). [3] see dewees and klees (1995), stromquist, klees, and miske (1998); and klees, matangala, spronk, and visser (1997), respectively. [4] see arnove and torres (in press) for a broad discussion of these issues from a comparative education perspective. [5] the imperfect logic of this rationale is pithily summarized above by christopher colclough, as quoted in edwards and hulme (1996, p.961). [6] for an interesting and more positive assessment of this "third sector" of the economy (i.e., not public, not private), see the set of essays in oecd (1996). [7] more participatory forms of democracy are discouraged by current market-obsessive policies and even the liberal democratic state is threatened. cuts in state funds and authority make democratic demands on the state dangerous and destabilizing the consequent retreat from democracy can be seen throughout the world. nor is overall economic growth a goal of the world system. the goal of "efficient" economic growth (edwards and hulme, 1996, p. 961) is just used as camouflage for privatization. the real goal is to develop policy that increases wealth accumulation by the politically and economically powerful, even if faster, more diffused, more equal, and more sustainable growth could be achieved through expanded public sector investment. [8] framing this as a discussion of "going-to-scale" makes the question seem technical when it is about a fundamental transformation. the reasons social programs do not "goto-scale" reflects a political unwillingness to temper, let alone resolve, the inequalities that are inherent to world system operation. [9] there is sometimes hope expressed that successful ngo activities can "replicate themselves" or be "bought into" by other communities, thus accomplishing a more ngos: progressive force or neo-liberal tool? current issues in comparative education, vol. 1(1) 53 natural and bottom-up "grow-to-scale" instead of a more centrally-determined government-aided go-to-scale blueprint (easton et al., 1998, klees et al. 1997). still, to have such bottom-up replication happen on a wide scale would need considerable support from a much more participatory form of government than we now have. [10] this tension between developing model programs and policy advocacy is not limited to ngos; for example, it has long been a struggle within unicef. [11] while restructuring economies to better satisfy basic needs for those excluded and marginalized can create wealth, it will also require some redistribution through taxation. to those who argue there is no tax capacity to do so, i offer as one response the most obscene statistic i have come across. barnet and cavanagh (1994) report that in 1994 there were 358 known billionaires in the world whose total net worth summed to the equivalent of the total net worth of the poorest 45 percent of the world's population, about 2.5 billion people. in the vast and deep concentrations of wealth in the world, there is considerable room for increased taxation. [12] debates about what constitute successful "non-reformist" reform strategies have long been an important feature of all progressive policy discussions (gorz, 1973). [13] see macdonald (1995) for a good discussion. references arnove, r., & torres, c. (eds.). (in press). transforming comparative education: the dialectic of the global and the local. new york: rowman & littlefield. barnet, r. and cavanagh, j. (1994) global dreams: imperial corporations and the new world order. new york: simon and schuster. dewees, t., & klees, s. (1995). social movements and the transformation of national policy: street and working children in brazil. comparative education review, 39(1), 76-100. easton, p. et al. (1998). decentralization and local capacity-building in west-africa: results of the padlos education study. paris: oecd/club du sahel. edwards, m., & hulme, d. (1996). too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations. world development, 24(6), 961-973. escobar, a. (1995). encountering development: the making and unmaking of the third world. princeton, nj: princeton university press. fox, c. (1997). bridging communication gaps across cultures: a call for the death of the development metaphor. in t. scrase (ed.). social justice and third world education. new york: garland press. gorz, a. (1973). socialism and revolution. garden city, ny: anchor. stephen j. klees 54 november`15, 1998 klees, s., matangala, a., spronk, b. & visser, j. (1997). reaching unreached learners in mozambique. paris: unesco. macdonald, l. (1995). a mixed blessing: the ngo boom in latin america. nacla report on the americas, 28(5), 30-35. myers, w. (ed.). (1991). protecting working children. london: zed books/ unicef. oecd (1996). reconciling economy and society: towards a plural economy. paris: oecd. smith, s. & lipsky, m. (1993). non-profits for hire: the welfare state in the age of contracting. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. stromquist, n., klees, s. & miske, s. (1997). focus on girls: usaid programs and policies in education: guatemala case study. washington, dc: usaid. world bank (1995). priorities and strategies in education. washington, dc: world bank. lam, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 shifting from the hidden shadow to the bright sunshine under the covid-19 pandemic: implications for the education new normal from hong kong’s learning system man-ho adrian lam university of hong kong the sudden and unprecedented outbreak of the global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) has brought along a series of abrupt and sweeping disruptions to almost all learning systems around the world. the pandemic has simultaneously revealed many weaknesses and problems associated with the existing educational model, which serves as a timely and critical reminder that educators should start thinking and doing education in a very different manner. nonetheless, this does not simply mean restoring long-standing norms, or reorganizing and perpetuating existing practices as “back to normal,” but discarding and transforming many obsolete assumptions and conventional operations as a “new normal.” as one of the high-performing learning systems around the world throughout the decades, hong kong has successfully transitioned from disruptive schooling to a “new normal” throughout the pandemic. by collecting concrete examples emerging and evolving across different layers of hong kong’s learning system, this conceptual article aims to contribute to the field of comparative and international education by shedding light on ten key principles in terms of shaping a more responsive, resilient, and sustainable curriculum system for all students to thrive in the uncertain and unpredictable environment ahead of them. keywords: covid-19 pandemic; student learning; curriculum studies; future education; learning system; hong kong introduction since mid to late january 2020, the unprecedented global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) has brought along a series of unwanted disruptions to learning systems around the world (di pietro et al., 2020). hong kong was impacted by both the covid19 pandemic and the social unrest of 2019-2020 protests (whitehead, 2021). nonetheless, compared with many counterparts, hong kong demonstrates its flexibility and agility in prompt response to the crisis, especially in terms of supporting and optimizing student learning as well as enriching and diversifying student experience (al-sholi et al., 2021). as a high-performing education system, hong kong has consistently impressive student performance as reflected in many international large-scale assessments and reports, including programme for international student assessment (pisa), trends in international mathematics and science study (timss), and progress in international reading literacy study (pirls). meanwhile, these outstanding educational achievements are further attested to in some international reports, such as the mckinsey and the economist intelligence unit (marsh & lee, 2014; tan, 2018). while the lingering pandemic is highly damaging, it is simultaneously a window of opportunity in terms of motivating and catalysing changes in habits or structures which would otherwise take decades in © 2022, lam. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 88-110. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en shifting from the hidden shadow to the bright sunshine current issues in comparative education 89 merely a few months, given the fact that individuals can now refocus on their values and intentions as the underlying drivers of their behaviors (richter et al., 2021). under the principle of “suspending classes without spending learning” as insisted by the education bureau, the overarching authority responsible for formulating and implementing education policies in hong kong, many teachers started with strong reluctance and surface transference or duplications. teachers moved to gradual acceptance and progressive adjustments, and eventually led to constant experimentations and mushrooming innovations (cheng, 2020). throughout the five successive waves of the pandemic outbreak in the last few years, until the author’s current time of writing, there have been prolonged and periodic school closure and resumption, which led to ongoing adjustment in response to the situations or resurgence of the pandemic (chan, 2022). hong kong’s educational community can recall how frustrated schools and teachers were at the beginning of the pandemic, and gradually become more adapted to the new context as demonstrated by the series of collective endeavors, pleasant surprises, and unanticipated successes that emerged from all of them (cheng, 2020). crises like the pandemic are forcing the education sector to rethink, revamp, and design the entire learning system comprehensively and thoroughly (pokhrel & chhetri, 2021). while many of the responses are first primarily developed to address the immediate and urgent need for continuing schooling and teaching online in the short run, they should be seized by schools and teachers to rethink what makes the necessary and desirable education for the future generations in the long run (zhao & watterston, 2021). the reality is that the pandemic is merely a case in point, given the fact that there are far more world changes or even unprecedented crises that are currently taking place or will be emerging in the future (sneader & singhal, 2020). all these will not go away immediately, so the lingering discussion for educators around the world is to what extent is the contemporary younger generation prepared for the future of education (organisation for economic cooperation and development, 2020). hong kong has had an ambitious and forward-looking perspective since the early preparation of its educational reform in 1999, which aims to transform the administrativeled system into a highly learner-centered one. the then government recognized society had changed and that education had to change accordingly, especially since the ultimate aim of education is for students’ futures. the above logic underpinning the reform is indeed still maintained or even reinforced at the contemporary time of pandemic (whitehead, 2021). all of these reflect the importance of drawing upon the series of emerging and evolving experiences of hong kong, to demonstrate how it has been moving from disruptive schooling to the “new normal” successfully. drawing upon the author’s personal observations and professional experience as well as relevant academic literatures in the field, this conceptual article aims to highlight ten key principles shaping a more responsive, resilient, and sustainable future curriculum system for students to survive or even thrive in the uncertain and unpredictable environment ahead of them. while this paper is focusing hong kong as the specific location for a case study, it is important for the wider discussion of comparative and international education for several reasons. first, identifying some of the contemporary best practices around the world can help jurisdictions to better enhance, modify, or even transform their learning systems into a more effective, efficient, and equitable one (arnove, 2013). second, given the continuous and dynamic interactions between the global trends and local responses, the focus of a specific jurisdiction with an interpretative perspective can better reveal and understand how the learning system is responding to and interacting with the changing and lam current issues in comparative education 90 surrounding contexts (adamson & morris, 2007). third, the key principles themselves can invite further professional discussions around transformative changes by revealing a wide range of possibilities, which nonetheless require a deeper understanding of the present before moving towards the consideration of the future (broadfoot, 2000). all these illustrations are not aiming at privileging one system at the expense of others, but recognizing diversity and pluralism, especially the unique features and unconscious assumptions which are overlooked when one focuses primarily on his/her own system (clark, 1986). to make a better sense of hong kong’s learning system, this paper takes reference from marsh and lee (2014) who focused on looking into the detailed educational structures and infrastructures, policies and practices, as well as values and ideologies reflected by and incorporated into hong kong as a high-performing system in asia. the wide range of discussions in the edited volume reveals some of the common elements of a learning system, which mainly include policy formulation at the systematic level; quality governance at the organizational level; comprehensive planning at the curricular level; targeted support at the school level; professional development at the teacher level; as well as learning experiences at the student level. however, as a number of the principles put forward in this article are cutting across more than one of the above levels, this conceptual paper is hence structured based on the ten principles rather than these six levels. it is hoped that researchers can build on all these features for conducting further conceptual analyses and empirical studies to acquire more in-depth insights. principle 1: putting student learning as the overarching focus education is an institution of learning which bears contextual underpinnings of the time, meaning that its design could easily become obsolete. nonetheless, learning as a human instinct should serve as the core concern and business of education, regardless of the dynamics of the surrounding environment (cheng, 2017). the ambitious and encompassing notion of “learning” is also associated with wide scope and inestimable possibilities for individuals to make sense of education from the past to the present and eventually to the future. lamentably, while student learning is taken for granted as a priority, it is often neglected in everyday reality, especially when it is yet to be on the agenda of many government education policies. worse still, many learning systems around the world organized in the industrial era for mass production still contain components and structures which are incompatible with what the science of learning advocates as being the best for student learning (tucker, 2014). nonetheless, in hong kong, the discourse of learning has been the focal point of all educational decisions and policy-making processes (forestier & crossley, 2015). according to the education bureau (2021c), hong kong’s curriculum aims to offer a quality and diversified education to prepare students for life-long learning and foster their whole-person development through a broad and balanced curriculum and diversified by students’ needs, interests, and expectations. the notion of “learning-to-learn” is also the overarching rhetoric that the government employed throughout the entire bold and transformative, still ongoing, educational reform journey. the underlying implication is that students should be capable of setting their own goals, choosing their paths, and witnessing their success (cheng, 2010). the distinctive strength of employing such mutual discourse of learning hinges on unifying all individuals within the educational community to develop shared understanding, interpretations, communication, and practices. this has also become particularly prominent during this uncertain and complex time of the covid-19 pandemic (maguire & ball, 1994). the unknown pandemic to many shifting from the hidden shadow to the bright sunshine current issues in comparative education 91 individuals, especially at the very early period of the outbreak, brings along a series of knock-on effects on various parts of the learning system, not to mention there is no precedent to guide individuals in navigating and acting out their ways, regardless of the decisions, routines, or processes (kuhfeld et al., 2020). therefore, if such idealized discourse is not fully shared across stakeholders, successful implementation would be challenging as there are often gaps in discourses in the educational domain (lenhoff & ulmer, 2016). throughout all these considerations and discussions about student learning, there will inevitably be competing tensions and conflicting claims as they touch upon the interests and concerns of different stakeholders within the educational community. this phenomenon is once again more prevalent during the pandemic. for instance, in hong kong, there are ongoing and intense debates over the adjustment of the school annual calendar and weekly teaching schedule, time allocation for asynchronous or synchronous learning, logistics arrangement for class resumption, as well as contingency plans for the hong kong diploma of secondary education examination as the local high-stake university-entrance examination (chan, 2020b; low, 2021; lam et al., 2022). nonetheless, mutual discourse helps one to attain an optimal point through coordinating, reconciling, and balancing the polarized so that student learning is put at the center. this reflects a remarkable comment made that contemporary hong kong education policymaking can be largely characterized as driven by educational values and evidence but not ideologies and politics, as well as refusal to dichotomize choices but strive for dynamic balance (forestier & crossley, 2015). under the overarching rhetoric of enhancing student learning, all stakeholders within the educational community can come up with their contributions to realize this mutual goal, based on their unique expertise and experience (vegas & winthrop, 2020). this echoes the fact that as curriculum reform gets more mature, the hong kong government in recent years has claimed that the local curriculum has moved to a new phase of ongoing renewal, which involves focusing, deepening, and sustaining in response to the changing context (education bureau, 2021b). on the other hand, if the entire educational sector does not remain grounded in and committed to an explicit and clear rhetoric, the series of decisions and changes made would easily result in misalignment or even contradiction, not to mention the potential to undermine the recognition and positioning of the sector. this is particularly valid during the evolving and uncertain time of pandemic when many decisions and changes must be planned and executed within a short period or even at the same time. by keeping learning as the center, all stakeholders will continue to advance a learner-focused system in the best interest of all students as a coherent and continuous goal (cheng, 2020). principle 2: avoiding being slow and stagnant to adaptation currently, many learning systems around the world are still not forward-looking enough as the emphasis is still primarily focusing on teaching students to respond to immediate problems after they have emerged. a lot of them are advocating the addition of elements on top of what they are currently teaching, which are at most teaching old things in new ways. such a line of thinking is lagging far behind as students receiving such learning will remain relatively slow, unresponsive, or even resistant to the wide range of changes and crises which remain ever-changing and multifaceted (lui & lam, 2022). there is now an imperative need to enable and empower students, who are possessing different talents, experiences, and passions, to conceive and create a future themselves, and explore and follow pathways towards new directions that they currently cannot yet foresee. this can lam current issues in comparative education 92 also bring students to the center of the learning experience as their capacities and capabilities are recognized and realized, so as to allow them to take a series of actions for initiating all sorts of positive changes in their own life (ng et al., 2020). in the words of ponnudurai and ponniah (2020), this is focusing on “teaching for change” rather than “teaching change” as education is seen as the paradox of change. similarly, young and muller (2013) urge curriculum designers to depart from the perspective of “what students have to learn” to “what will enable students to learn”. according to schleicher (2018), the focus on the future of education should be placed on cultivating the fundamental and core human traits that will enable education to stay ahead of all changes as well as students to accommodate whatever novel changes and ill-defined problems come along. meanwhile, students need to foresee what may be needed in the future as well as how actions taken currently might bring along implications for the future. as the future remains unpredictable, the future-oriented curriculum should never remain rigid and prescriptive, but fluid and dynamic, equipping students with the capacities and capabilities to deal with the new and unfamiliar situations and environments (organization for economic cooperation and development, 2018). therefore, the curriculum should be better organized, resourced, and supported in the dimensions of knowing, doing, and being, such that students can make a better sense of the series of significant and future-oriented issues (bolstad et al., 2012). according to li et al., (2021), grounding the curriculum within an authentic context can better cultivate students’ key dispositions and competencies, and facilitate their flexible and active thinking in an engaging and motivated manner. the lingering implication is making more explicit and clear the adoption of long-term and continuous perspectives on learning (demirel, 2009). after all, the value and influence of learning and teaching are long-term, given that the inspirations, experiences, and reflections of students can be possibly remembered, retrieved, and utilized in the later parts of or even upon the completion of their studies (bressoux & bianco, 2004). with the description and illustration of progress or growth in learning over time, students can witness its continuous, progressive, and developmental nature, which allows them to better cope with the future ahead of them (millar, 2022). principle 3: delivering a holistic and competent learning experience in hong kong, given the fact that learning is framed as the focal point, the curriculum is subsequently broadly defined as the totality of learning experiences, which implies that all components should be integrated as a comprehensive and competent education for students (education bureau, 2019). under conventional learning, the dimensions of knowledge, skills, as well as attitudes and values are interacting with one another (curriculum development council, 2014). students need to connect and integrate academic knowledge, generic and specialized skills, as well as positive values and attitudes to think about and cope with various real-life problems, phenomena, and issues, especially when understanding and application are intertwined rather than isolated. the introduction of liberal studies, which is now revamped and renamed citizenship and social development, allows students to understand, explore, and investigate different topics from multiple perspectives, so as to construct more knowledge relevant to various themes, and build up a more solid and concrete knowledge base (curriculum development council & hong kong examinations and assessment authority, 2021). the covid-19 pandemic once again demonstrates that a single disciplinary perspective is far from sufficient when it comes to responding to complex challenges. therefore, there is a need for further equipping students with interdisciplinary readiness which allows them to analyze, conceptualize, synthesize, and integrate diverse forms of knowledge and inquiry (spelt et al., 2009). shifting from the hidden shadow to the bright sunshine current issues in comparative education 93 the pandemic with its emphasis on social distancing as an important strategy of disease containment has led to the rapid emergence of home-based learning. nonetheless, apart from academic learning, the non-academic dimensions which are normally taken within the school campus are equally important for ensuring a balanced and diverse learning experience. while there are concerns that some non-academic classes could not be conducted in an online setting due to limited equipment and space as well as insufficient supervision and support, the reality shows that home-based learning is not necessarily limited and constrained but can be far more versatile and resourceful (d'agostino et al., 2021). alsuwaida (2022) mentions that learning in the online setting can indeed foster creativity, strengthen relationships, and encourage collaboration among teachers and students. for instance, hong kong university graduate association college students continue to have their weekly non-academic classes in an interactive online setting. during physical education lessons, students would follow teachers’ instructions and comments to do exercises such as squats, lunges, stretching, and running in place, while during music lessons, students are taught about topics like music history and composers, and conduct singing and instrument practices (chan, 2020a). the non-formal learning that is deemed to be undermined during the pandemic should also be reinforced, especially when many events and activities with face-to-face or social elements are often deferred or cancelled. nonetheless, all these events and activities are crucial for students to build up confidence, friendships, and social networks in an informal setting, which contribute to their academic engagement and emotional health. therefore, many schools have been shifting all these to the online setting in the hope of allowing students to continue benefiting from these learning opportunities, despite the ongoing school closure (ng, 2021). some illustrative examples include how hong kong taoist association wun tsuen school and hong kong taoist association the yuen yuen institute no. 3 secondary school have successfully started and bridged the learning of their cross-culture and cross-border students through organizing a wide range of orientation, immersion, and exchange programs. the spatial and temporal constraints associated with the pandemic have now unleashed many innovative responses where students could continue with their implicit learning in an online environment (centre for advancement of chinese language education and research, 2022). as students have been isolated from society, the pandemic has reiterated the importance of life-wide learning, which focuses on letting students learn beyond their classrooms and schools, as well as to reach out to their immediate communities and the larger world. in hong kong, schools can utilize the life-wide learning grants offered by the education bureau to develop a wide range of partnerships for student learning with the business sector, non-governmental organizations, and other non-education bodies. some of the illustrative community partners include theme parks (e.g., hong kong disneyland and hong kong ocean park), museums and galleries (e.g., hong kong museum of history and hong kong science museum), as well as non-governmental organizations (e.g., worldwide fund, hong kong council of social service, and centre of national history education). as a result, many activities like excursions, field trips, visits, and student exchanges subsequently emerged (education bureau, 2022). most crucially, these experiential opportunities and hands-on experiences allow students to decrease social isolation, improve engagement, nurture key developmental relationships, and champion youth agencies (butler, 2022). similar to home-based and implicit learning, this type of learning is made even more accessible and diverse online by reducing the friction of time and space boundaries that has allowed only limited capacity in on-site settings. one can see how schools sustain and expand such learning more easily than before and adopt practices not anticipated before the outbreak of the pandemic. lam current issues in comparative education 94 in the past, learning occurred largely within the confines of classroom settings and relatively rigid school timetables, especially in terms of academic dimensions. nonetheless, this fails to realize the nature of learning as a broad, ongoing, and potentially life-long process (laal & salamati, 2012). after all, various levels and modes of learning can take place with anyone, at any time, and in anywhere. meanwhile, the long-standing practice of school-based development grants each individual school the autonomy and flexibility to come up with their own rigorous, rich, and meaningful learning experience across intellectual, social, emotional, physical, and ethical dimensions for students based on their distinctive contexts and cultures as well as strengths and resources (education bureau, 2021a). most importantly, this decentralized move has also allowed schools and teachers to come up with their own learning and teaching initiatives and strategies that cater to their own students’ unique backgrounds, abilities, and needs (yuen et al., 2018). according to ng et al. (2020), different hong kong schools have been coming up with diversified and innovative modes of learning and teaching to support student online learning according to their unique school-based situations and students’ needs. principle 4: highlighting mental and emotional adaptation the covid-19 pandemic crisis is associated with a series of negative emotional experiences which require one to recover from or even adapt to such stressful and anxious circumstances spontaneously and flexibly. many empirical studies around the world have shown that children and teenagers, when compared to adults and seniors, are far more vulnerable to the emotional impacts brought by unpredictable and traumatic events like the pandemic, which disrupt their everyday lives and structured routines (chai et al, 2021). for instance, many students struggle in terms of coping with and adapting to school closures, physical distancing, and quarantining time at home. meanwhile, some experienced gaps in their learning and teaching conditions, progress, and outcomes (schwartz et al., 2021). a lot of stakeholders have worked to ensure students feel safe and secure about their fast-changing future. this is manifested by advocating models and concepts like emotional intelligence, positive psychology, growth mindset, and psychological capital. for example, the bei shan tang foundation has initiated positive education hong kong (2018) for promoting positive education through training local education practitioners, offering accurate and evidence-based resources, as well as bringing together institutes and organizations for dialogues and actions. another instance is just feel (2022) which aims to cultivate a compassionate communication culture in schools and families to enhance the emotional well-being of children. furthermore, the hong kong jockey club charities trust supported the faculty of social sciences (n.d.) of the university of hong kong to launch the jockey club “peace and awareness” mindfulness culture in schools initiative, which targets promoting mindfulness and improving students’ mental well-being. nonetheless, the complexity of discomfort and frustration that emerged during the pandemic are equally valuable learning resources, which should not be immediately and easily dismissed for the sake of attaining control and harmony within the classroom and larger societal contexts. the homogenization, simplification, or even avoidance of these seemingly negative and destructive concepts might lead students to lull themselves into a false sense of security (jackson, 2020). students should be systematically and carefully guided by their teachers to confront and deal with their struggles, failures, and setbacks healthily and constructively, which can help them to attain fulfillment and contentment in the long run. this also remains crucial as many students unfortunately must cope with all these situations in their lifetime. after all, the future curriculum needs to further relate to the younger ones, and prioritize personal and social flourishing, such that they can shifting from the hidden shadow to the bright sunshine current issues in comparative education 95 better cope with the situation without undesirable consequences in their mental health (amorós et al., 2020). for instance, just feel offers a deck of 36 cards featuring various emotions like “scared,” “curious,” “ambivalent,” and “ashamed,” as well as 25 cards depicting different needs like “rest,” “learn,” and “trust.” as a learning and teaching tool, it aims to facilitate and prompt students to identify their subtle feelings and underlying needs by offering an accessible starting point for describing and thinking about what they are currently experiencing (chan, 2021a). principle 5: rejuvenating relationships and connections the collective nature of the covid-19 pandemic reminds individuals of their underlying humanistic side, which subsequently lead them to move away from self-sufficient and independent to interconnected and interdependent units within their differences and diversities (mazzocchi, 2021). throughout the years, individuals often devote too much time and effort to comparing with and competing against one another when meritocracy and elitism are driving the larger climate, which lamentably deviates from or even violates the original purpose of education (hughes, 2021). after all, genuine learning is all about having human interactions, dialogue, and exchange, especially when others are essential to facilitating and contributing to one’s learning. this implies that the social space of the school with various forms of collective living cannot be replaced by distance or remote learning at the individual level. at the same time, students can encounter many others from diverse backgrounds who are not like themselves, whom they learn from and learn with, and who expand their understanding of the wide range of ways of being human (united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization, 2020). at the classroom level, there should be a heavier emphasis on cultivating a community of inquiry with a productive knowledge-building environment, which helps enhance students’ learning motivation and performance (mok et al., 2021). according to li et al. (2021), knowledge is socially constructed, and specific ways of thinking are mutually reinforced, meaning that collaborative, interactive, and participatory elements should be embedded into the curriculum. learning is only meaningful when connections are made, especially when one acquires good personal thinking through thinking together with others. the most illustrative example would be student-driven knowledge building and creative inquiry across classroom communities that are gaining currency in recent years (chan & van aalst, 2018). many of the online software and platforms that are commonly utilized for learning and teaching nowadays afford the cultivation of online knowledgebuilding communities. some of the common examples used in hong kong classrooms include discussion threads in google classroom, collaborative writing through google document, spontaneous discussions in real-time zoom breakout rooms and chat boxes, as well as graphic visualizations in google jamboard and padlet (kumi-yeboah et al., 2020). at the school level, human connections and meaningful interactions should continue to remain an essential part of the learning experience, which can go beyond the academic level. students should be offered abundant opportunities to socialize with their peers to elicit continuous support and seek help when needed, especially during the turbulent period of the pandemic. throughout this process, students can build interpersonal cohesion and shared identity as well as emotional connection and intimate closeness (elmer et al., 2020). meanwhile, this can help them seek common ground within the differences, show tolerance and respect for diversity towards others’ ideas and beliefs, as well as cultivate cross-cultural understandings, especially in a hyper-connected world with blurred lines and boundaries (wang, 2020). many hong kong primary school lam current issues in comparative education 96 students express that they still met a few friends for a meal or even met on zoom during online learning. they also further show their strong desire for having school life and interaction with peers through in-person classes (chan, 2021b). at the family level, parents should devote more support to student learning. since students are now staying at home for most of the time throughout the pandemic, apart from offering guidance and coaching on schoolwork, parents become a reliable source of comfort in easing pain and anxiety in the emotional dimension. they can offer ongoing support and timely intervention for students at times of uncertainty. as the core people who accompany their children as they grow up, they also have unique knowledge of and affection for their own children (morelli et al., 2020). according to law et al. (2021), parent-child communication and relationships are reported to be the single most important supportive and protective factor in hong kong students’ well-being at home and in school. while there is a tendency for many parents to make schools or even the government fully accountable for student learning, the pandemic reminds educators and parents themselves of parents’ unique roles and responsibilities. principle 6: granting students sufficient time and space the mainstream rhetoric throughout the covid-19 pandemic invited teachers to come up with as many strategies as possible, such as distance learning, remedial curriculum, or shorter breaks, so as to mitigate and compensate for the learning loss due to school closures and remote learning (engzell et al., 2021). however, one seldom appreciates the beauty of offering sufficient time and flexible space for students as an important strategy of “letting go.” this involves reshuffling the curriculum by removing the extensive procedural practices, to retain the most fundamental principles and essential concepts. students can thereby make flexible and personalized choices in terms of learning, exploring, and questioning based on their desires, targets, and pace. it is also an important way to engage and recognize students as partners of change and owners of their learning. zhao (2021) points out that short-term, cognitive, and instructional outcomes do not necessarily translate directly into long-term, non-cognitive, and educational outcomes. learning is not only about delivering knowledge but also about how students grow throughout the process’ various dimensions. students will eventually make individual ongoing and lifelong progress towards the development of more sophisticated knowledge, deeper conceptual understanding, higher level of skills, or even more incisive and innovative thinking. therefore, a progressive continuum of development rather than a static checklist of sequenced instructional objectives should be reiterated throughout curriculum design and implementation. for example, fukien secondary school affiliated school comes up with a new educational model upon the resumption of face-to-face classes. on every school day, students can have all classes in the morning as the academic curriculum, and leaving the entire afternoon as the free time for personal development and growth. students can freely choose to take classes on topics that interest them (chan, 2021c). moreover, the reduction of a fully packed and highly intense curriculum allows students to own more comfortable spaces to undergo more nuanced and much deeper reflection and assimilation as they are responsible and accountable for their learning processes and outcomes. by making their mental models and sense-making active and conscious, students will become more aware of their positions, thoughts, feelings, and changes in their learning. as students will acquire very different learning experiences, they will develop their own worldviews. according to lam (2020), as the world is changing, each shifting from the hidden shadow to the bright sunshine current issues in comparative education 97 student’s understanding of why and how things are changing are also simultaneously different, which signifies the need for students to understand and remain open to learning to get prepared for the future. meanwhile, future education points to the fact that students will regularly encounter new and unique problem situations, and the process of coming up with novel solutions will offer a fertile ground for them to reflect on their actions. such pluralism and diversity should be embraced and celebrated with clear thinking and strong sensitivity. an illustrative example is wah yan college kowloon (2019), which encourages students to spend 10 minutes after lunch every day reflecting on their daily life. while this practice of examen of consciousness emerged because of jesuit schooling, it still serves as a good example of showing how students can touch upon various deep yet important conceptual and personal questions like what life is revealing to them, what they have learned from their choices made or not made, as well as how they can better approach their anticipated challenges and opportunities. principle 7: harnessing technology and digital innovations there are abundant discussions highlighting the importance and value of leveraging digital technologies in the learning system, so as to promote and advance student learning (uttam, 2020). meanwhile, many teachers claim themselves to be introducing various innovative learning and teaching initiatives. nonetheless, the key here is not ritualizing and replicating the latest tools, practices, and trends or even reproducing the status quo, but employing them to stimulate and extend thinking towards student learning. teachers should possess the ownership to enact, reflect, examine, and change their beliefs and practices when introducing all these innovations (brown, 1997). for instance, from students’ perspectives, heavy and continuous use of technology does not automatically lead to boosted engagement, direct translation to deeper learning and understanding, or better academic performance (manca & meluzzi, 2020). the rapid influx of many educational technologies and innovations can easily lead one to focus on the dimensions of what and how but forget the dimension of why that is supposed to be the driving question. this presents the danger of bearing a catch-up mindset, which neglects the unique context and nature of the technology introduced (means et al., 2014). while conformity may be perceived as easy, the subsequent trade-off is that one does not exhaustively utilize the underlying distinctive features and longstanding traditions to maximize learning outcomes. as a result, the introduction of a new educational initiative would simply be changing the surface artifacts passively and mechanically, which does not touch upon the more subtle and fundamental issues proactively and reflectively. worse still, conformity can easily breed a sense of deficit which makes one to feeling not good enough all the time or think many things go wrong which requires endless fixes and modifications (valverde-berrocoso et al., 2021). in hong kong, many devoted educators are thinking carefully and thoroughly about how to use technology to enable experiential, inquiry-based, and adaptive learning for students, to offer personalized and inclusive support to students through building character and strengthening life skills, and to analyze, track, and assess students’ learning progress (morning studio editors, 2020). while there is a debate about whether technology or pedagogy should come first, arguably neither should be prioritized, as both go hand in hand and support each other. therefore, an appropriate line of thinking is why technology benefits student learning, how it can serve these specific needs, and eventually what is needed to realize the outcomes (genna, 2020). technology and innovations should be deemed as dynamic catalysts for setting thoughts and associated practices to become free and diverse (groff, lam current issues in comparative education 98 2013). teachers should move along the lines of initiating principle-based pedagogical thoughts and proposing practically-oriented technological means with the central goal of improving both at the same time (law, 2014). most crucially, this signifies a strong sense of continuous and mutual improvement which motivate one to work together for attaining breakthroughs and new ventures. the best way of maximizing the potentials associated with technology and innovations for student learning is to build on the unique strengths, be sensitive to the distinctive contexts, and be aware of the potential limitations when it comes to the planning processes of design and implementation. in hong kong, one can observe how many professional teachers remain thoughtful and articulate when introducing technology and innovations into various aspects of education. for instance, ecitizen education 360 (2021) offers a series of school seminars, workshops, sharing sessions, and symposiums, which allow many devoted schools and teachers to disseminate and share their successful experiences and evidence-based practices with one another, especially in terms of utilizing educational technology to open new possibilities in digital learning. another example is the 11th annual learning and teaching expo (2021) which has a particular focus on gathering and showcasing a wide spectrum of educational terrains and education reforms driven by new and emerging technologies, which allow students to remain future-ready in the post-covid-19 pandemic era. principle 8: reconceptualizing teachers as designers and facilitators in disruptive times like the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, learning can take place without teaching (weimer, 2015). the democratization of knowledge under technology also allows students to get access to all sorts of knowledge from a wide range of channels and sources quickly and easily (arocena & sutz, 2014). it is also possible that some students are at times more knowledgeable about technology as compared to their teachers (murray, 2011). therefore, teachers should no longer merely act as an instructor who delivers and transmits knowledge, given the fact that this is merely shaping a teachercentered rather than student-centered classroom (keiler, 2018). instead, they should target creating diverse learning opportunities and conducive learning environments for students grounded on the principles of science of learning, such that all of them can unleash their unique potential and attain individual success (schleicher, 2011). with the involvement and companionship of teachers, the learning process can become more inspiring and less intimidating through guidance, scaffolding, and encouragement (zakaria et al, 2016). therefore, teachers should make the best and full use of their valuable expertise and unique experience to shape a conducive learning environment that is favorable to novice students, especially when it comes to filtering information, discerning errors, and devising reasonable decisions (krahenbuhl, 2016). an illustrative example is at tin shui wai heung to secondary school, where the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics teacher guides students to solve tiny daily problems they have met in school, such as long queues at canteen, tissue paper running out fast in washrooms, through design thinking. this involves prototyping and testing various solutions, which strengthen their confidence and empathy. another interesting instance is at tang shiu kin victoria government secondary school, where the visual arts teacher prepares some laser-cut chinese character components so that students can assemble them to create makeshift characters (institute of design knowledge, 2021). shifting from the hidden shadow to the bright sunshine current issues in comparative education 99 in hong kong, by capitalizing on the potential associated with digital and multimedia technologies, many teachers have become agents of change and innovative designers, who reconceptualize and transform many of the curricular, pedagogical, and assessment initiatives and strategies in terms of their planning, implementation, and evaluation (moorhouse & wong, 2021). it should be noted that the intervention of technology is by no means marginalizing or replacing, but advocating and driving teachers to accompany, guide, and inspire students along their learning trajectory. technology has seemingly become a mutual entry point for rethinking and redesigning their learning and teaching approaches and strategies (chan, 2020c). nonetheless, this exploration is extending beyond the technological dimension. for instance, throughout the pandemic, some of the prominent educational issues included the facilitation of self-directed and self-regulated learning, enhancement of student motivation and engagement, maintenance of mental health and well-being, and transformation of outmoded assessment practices (education university of hong kong, 2021; liang, 2022; ng, 2020). at the same time, educational changes are enhanced by the rapid emergence of professional learning communities within and across schools. teachers can subsequently learn from and work with one another in terms of developing school-based curricula, planning collaborative lessons, sharing resources and practices, discussing concerning issues, and conducting action research and evaluation studies (ng et al., 2020). principle 9: emphasizing student equity and inclusion the covid-19 pandemic is further exposing and exacerbating educational inequalities in terms of student engagement and educational attainment, which are at times subtle or silent in every society (frohn, 2021). the digital divide problem is evident when many students from poor and underprivileged backgrounds have no electronic devices and unstable internet connections for online classes (shek, 2021). in hong kong, well before the outbreak of the pandemic, the government, business companies, and nongovernmental organizations have been mobilizing and allocating more resources to subsidize the purchase of hardware for those in need, to ensure no one is left behind. at the same time, another equally vulnerable group is students with special educational needs who often struggle to catch up with school classes due to issues of self-regulation, anxiety, and communication. therefore, more support is offered by individual schools or even non-governmental organizations in terms of helping students to remain on task, understand instructions, and complete the work (kok et al., 2022). hong kong has shown substantial efforts in tracking the progress and satisfying the needs of various student groups to close gaps and ensure that all students have access to high-quality learning and teaching. the attainment of student equity is not simply about allocating more targeted resources, infrastructures, and services to the marginalized and vulnerable students, but recognizing the presence, participation, and achievement of every single student (blackman, 2021). an inclusive curriculum is recognizing that while students are at different learning points and may require different learning support, they are all capable of excellent progress and ultimately high achievement under the appropriate conditions. every student is unique and what matters most is how to find ways to facilitate their self-actualization. while there is still a common curriculum and standards in place for consistent and high-quality schooling, hong kong’s case has shown how teachers can make curriculum and standards less centralized and prescriptive by recognizing and responding to individual learners’ interests and aspirations, levels of attainment, rates of progress, and learning needs, as well as allowing students to see the meaning and relevance of their learning. meanwhile, learning is made less passive and reproductive as well as more relevant and meaningful lam current issues in comparative education 100 to individual learners, which requires granting students more agency and control over their learning (yin et al., 2020). principle 10: mobilizing and engaging the whole community with synergy the resilient spirit of hong kong citizens in employing collective effort throughout the covid-19 pandemic can be attributed to the long-standing lion rock spirit (wu, 2020). these aligned responsibilities and efforts are important for supporting learning at all levels of the learning system and co-inventing the “new normal” together. while the government and schools are often seemingly playing relatively dominant roles when it comes to student learning, both stakeholders have their inherent limitations which require other equally prominent stakeholders to complement them, especially when the provision of education is a shared endeavor (pang, 2004). across all learning systems around the world, there is a need to perceive education from a more holistic and integrative perspective, which involves shifting from less egocentric principles and practices to more collective ones for the sake of cultivating a more sustainable and just system for the common good (makrakis & kostoulas-makrakis, 2021). thanks to hong kong’s longstanding historical and social conditions, there is a very mature learning ecosystem cultivated within the educational community, which shows ambitious, coherent, and aligned aspirations, goals, and priorities regarding student learning (pang, 2004). in hong kong, there is a self-regulating interplay of public and non-public sectors in the provision of education as both are integrating and drawing on the resources and expertise of one another (chan et al., 2004). the public sector largely engages and consults the whole community and various stakeholders in conversations about specific needs and expectations, and the design and implementation of relevant means and strategies. meanwhile, the non-public sector, such as hong kong jockey club and microsoft hong kong limited, fills the gaps in policies and services, funds research and development, foresees emerging needs, and serves as think tanks. both the top-down and bottom-up dimensions are interacting dynamically and resonate strongly to support and strengthen student learning (education commission, 2011). the most intriguing part of hong kong’s experience is how these parties are taking up their respective roles and responsibilities actively and spontaneously, under the context that there are often no hard measures or policies, or monetary incentives introduced to advocate. meanwhile, the close and continuous communication and interaction allow them to have a clear division of labor as they have a better sense of each other’s positionings and contributions from time to time, such that all their devoted efforts will not be overlapping or even conflicting, and no dimensions will be left undermined and unattended. conclusion many of the challenges, whether perceived or real, can be turned into opportunities. the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic reminds all individuals that many institutions and practices they get accustomed to having already become largely obsolete (zhao & watterston, 2021). the pandemic as a once-in-a-century crisis forces the education sector to confront squarely and seriously the dysfunctional “old normal” and reimagine the “new normal” through shifting paradigms and transforming perspectives (mbhiza, 2021). mere modification of the time-honored rhythms and routines, as well as patterns and norms without any critical examination and questioning, can never allow the system to respond to the series of dynamic global and local changes at present and in the future. instead, there is a need to reimagine and recreate human institutions, especially orienting towards both the dimensions of purpose and meaning driven by students (zhao, 2020). shifting from the hidden shadow to the bright sunshine current issues in comparative education 101 hong kong’s experiences in coping with the pandemic as well as preparing for the future ahead demonstrates the viabilities and possibilities of various stakeholders coming together to initiate changes at all layers, sectors, and domains of the learning system. all learning systems around the world are exploring ways to constantly navigate, evolve, and adapt to the world. nonetheless, there are admittedly still many structural constraints and deep-seated problems remaining to be resolved or even exacerbated throughout the journey (bozkurt et al., 2020). the notion of “new normal” should by no means be merely limited to a facile or catchy slogan (pacheco, 2021). this conceptual article makes an important attempt in unfolding the notion by both identifying and explaining the change patterns that hong kong has been and is undergoing since the outbreak of the pandemic. as addressed by the author at the very beginning, while this conceptual discussion does not aim to be an exhaustive one that captures all the instances and examples in hong kong, it still hopes to make a tiny yet important contribution to the field of comparative and international education by serving as a springboard in terms of capturing some of the most pertinent observations regarding how such learning system has long been bolstering educational attainment in the time of pandemic as an illustrative example of future unanticipated crises. adrian lam man-ho is currently a course tutor at the department of politics and public administration, a guest lecturer in the faculty of education, and a research group member for the common core curriculum at the university of hong kong. email: u3519028@connect.hku.hk https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9778-3125 references adamson, b., & morris, 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(2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 reinventing freire in the 21st century: citizenship education, student voice and school participatory budgeting tara bartlett arizona state university daniel schugurensky arizona state university this year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of paulo freire, one of the most influential educational thinkers of the 20th century. in the 21st century, he continues to inspire many progressive educators around the world. this paper focuses on the connections between freire’s work and ideas (especially those related to citizenship education and school democracy) and school participatory budgeting, a process that has been growing significantly in the last decade and is presently being implemented in thousands of educational institutions around the world. the paper traces a line that connects freire’s work at the social service of industry (sesi) during his youth, his work as secretary of education of sao paulo upon his return to brazil from exile (particularly the escola cidadã project) and the current efforts around school participatory budgeting (school pb). the discussion on school pb is illustrated with two cases from arizona: an inclusive model piloted in three schools, and a district-wide school pb initiative on school safety that includes students, parents, and staff in 20 high schools. keywords: participatory budgeting, participatory governance, civic education, citizenship education, civic engagement, democratic schooling, paulo freire reinventing freire in the 21st century: citizenship education, student voice and school participatory budgeting “i don't want to be followed; i want to be reinvented,” paulo freire said on several occasions (vittoria, 2021). it is in this spirit that we approach this paper. inspired by freire’s ideas, and especially by his practice as an educator in brazil (both before his exile and after his return), we discuss the recent development and expansion of a process known as school participatory budgeting (school pb). we first outline how the school pb model emanated from freire’s project of escola cidadã (citizen school). the school pb process aligns well with freire’s ideas on dialogue, participation, collaboration, creativity, student agency, and change, and disrupts both traditional authoritarian models of school governance and rote practices of citizenship learning. we trace the expansion of both youth pb and school pb from their modest origins in brazil to where now this participatory democratic process has been taken up in many countries across the globe, including argentina, mexico, perú, colombia, spain, russia, france, italy, zambia, south korea, czech republic, portugal, united states and canada. we then highlight examples of the growing school pb movement, focusing on two cases from the experience of school pb in arizona. we chose arizona not only because that is where the first school pb process in the u.s. was designed and implemented, but also because it is a place for continuous experimentation and innovation. we next discuss methodological challenges and © 2021, bartlett & schugurensky. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 55-79. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en bartlett & schugurensky current issues in comparative education 56 limitations to studying school pb and conclude by returning full circle to freire with some comments about his legacy and his influence on school pb. in the beginning was sesi: from a ‘culture of silence’ to dialogue and self-governance in 1947, after a brief practice as a lawyer and several years of high school teaching, a 26year-old paulo freire started a 10-year period as director of education and culture of the social service of industry (sesi) in the state of pernambuco, one of the poorest regions of brazil. sesi had been created in 1946 as a non-profit organization to promote social welfare and cultural development of industrial workers, their families, and the communities. those formative years at sesi were crucial in the development of freire’s educational ideas that would be articulated two decades later in pedagogy of the oppressed (freire, 1970). most of freire’s reflections on knowledge, human development, dynamics of oppression and liberation, and the role of education in those dynamics that appear in that book originated from his experiences in northeast brazil. in letters to cristina, freire (1996) described his decade at sesi as the most important political-pedagogical practice of his life (p. 81). sesi was a pivotal moment in the life of young freire for several reasons, of which three are particularly relevant to this paper. firstly, the daily interactions with workers and peasants allowed freire to become more aware of their realities and perspectives, and to understand the impact of colonialism, exploitation, illiteracy, and banking education on what he eventually called a “culture of silence” (freire, 1970). secondly, sesi gave freire an opportunity to explore the possibilities of overcoming that culture of silence through a pedagogical approach that promoted critical reflection on reality, valued local knowledge and nurtured dialogue. indeed, at sesi freire learned that dialogue was not only an element of the educational process, but also the moment when people meet to discover reality and transform it together (freire, 1970). thirdly, as sesi’s director, freire established an open and horizontal style of administration and implemented a system that he called “parlamentarization” that consisted of a combination of study groups and action groups. through these initiatives he wanted to demonstrate that dialogue, democracy, and self-governance could be implemented in institutions, hence involve children and their families in discussions about educational and social issues, usually held in learning circles and workers’ clubs. indeed, the democratic, open, and flexible management system that freire implemented at sesi relied strongly on school-family relations. in the educational institutions managed by sesi, freire invited students and parents to participate in forums about education and society, to discuss issues that affected learning like child labor, malnutrition, and authoritarianism (jeria, 1984). he believed that those and other social and educational problems could only be solved with the participation of parents and the community. moreover, he hoped these forums would encourage parents to become more involved in the development of school policies, to participate in decisionmaking bodies in schools and eventually transfer those capacities to other civic and political spheres (flecha, 2004; gadotti, 1994, 1996; gadotti & torres, 2009; gerhardt, 1989; romao, 2001; rosas, 2001; schugurensky, 2014). at that time, the leadership of sesi was not interested in those reforms, and freire was asked to resign. freire and the transformative potential of schools several decades later, after a successful literacy campaign and 15 years of exile, freire would have another opportunity to try to democratize hierarchical educational institutions in brazil as secretary of education of the city of sao paulo, the largest urban metropolitan area of brazil and one of the largest in the world (schugurensky, 2014). one of the initiatives of this administration, the escola cidadã (citizen school), constituted an reinventing freire in the 21st century current issues in comparative education 57 important attempt to transform education. this project relates to two ideas that were part of freire’s conceptual framework. first, unlike his contemporary deschooling advocates like ivan illich, everett reimer, john holt and paul goodman, freire not only believed that schools were one of the few avenues still available for upward social mobility in unequal societies but also that they could contribute to social transformation by becoming more democratic institutions, equipping students with critical thinking and citizenship skills, equalizing opportunities and partnering with the community to address local problems (freire, 1970; jeria, 1984; schugurensky, 2014). second, his proposal to change school culture was rooted in his concept of “inédito viável,” which has been translated as “viable unheard off,” “untested feasibility,” or “doable solutions.” freire argued that traditional authoritarian cultures can change over time, but this demands consistent efforts and the continuity of alternative processes that are more participatory and democratic (freire, 1970). the collective construction of such a liminal democracy requires a paradigm shift. freire outlines leaving behind banking education, paternalism, elitism, and top-down decision-making and nurturing the emergence of a new ethos and innovative practices guided by a shared vision. freire’s ideas on institutional democratization, participation, dialogue and cooperative learning were also influenced by the progressive school movement, and particularly by the writings of the educational philosopher john dewey. these ideas were popularized in brazil by anísio teixeira, an intellectual leader who had taken courses with dewey at teachers’ college columbia university in the late 1920s and became director of education of rio de janeiro in the early 1930s (warde, 2005). inspired by those ideas and by his experiences at sesi and at several literacy campaigns in different parts of the world, freire argued that education for democracy cannot be separated from the practice of democracy and that democracy can be learned more effectively through direct and active participation in one’s communities. to those who criticized him with the argument that most people did not have the responsibility required to make decisions, he replied echoing dewey’s dictum that the cure to the problems of democracy is more democracy that the best way to learn social and political responsibility is experiencing such responsibility (schugurensky, 2014). this was an important pillar of escola cidadá, which was conceived as an antidote to the authoritarian model of school governance and to the traditional approaches to citizenship education. ails and allays of citizenship education traditional models of citizenship education have two common problems. the first is the emphasis on rote memorization of historical, geographical, and institutional content connected to a test (center on educational policy, 2007; dee & jacob, 2010; u.s. department of education, 2012; west, 2007). we acknowledge that many of these facts are important and certainly deserve a place in the curriculum. however, an overreliance on a memorization of facts is problematic not only because students would forget that information after the exam (the more irrelevant and distant the information to the lives of the students, the more likely to be forgotten), but also because it does not pay enough attention to the development of democratic competencies, dispositions, and mindsets. moreover, the overt attention on hegemonic historical knowledge often leaves out multiple perspectives of historical events and counternarratives of marginalized peoples and can perpetuate a nationalistic “glory story” instead of acknowledging and exploring the impacts of the “gory story” including those stories and experiences still present and affecting students today (allen, 2014; gibson, 2019; levinson, 2012; shaver, 2017; vasquez & altshuler, 2017; westheimer, 2015). bartlett & schugurensky current issues in comparative education 58 the second problem lies within the structure of opportunities for youth civic engagement. in many nonformal and formal educational institutions there is an overrepresentation of the “usual suspects,” that is, students who are already afforded leadership opportunities because they have more means and ability to participate and therefore continue to engage and reap the benefits of democratic participation. this civic engagement opportunity gap has increased over time and plays a key role in reinforcing the ‘matthew effect’ in civic participation and political representation (klein, 2021; levinson, 2007; mirra et al., 2013; pape & lim, 2019; pope, 2015, snellman et al., 2015; swartz et al., 2009). as sherry arnstein (1969) put it: the idea of citizen participation is a little like eating spinach: no one is against it in principle because it is good for you. participation of the governed in their government is, in theory, the cornerstone of democracy—a revered idea that is vigorously applauded by virtually everyone. the applause is reduced to polite handclaps, however, when this principle is advocated by the have-not blacks, mexican americans, puerto ricans, indians, eskimos, and whites. and when the have-nots define participation as redistribution of power, the american consensus on the fundamental principle explodes into many shades of outright racial, ethnic, ideological, and political opposition (p. 24). in many countries, low-income schools and minoritized student populations have had unequal access to civic learning opportunities for a long time. hence, the citizenship education opportunity gap is part and parcel of a citizenship education debt owed unto historically marginalized youth and families (bauman & brennan, 2017; hart & atkins, 2002; kahne, 2009; levine & kawashima-ginsberg, 2017; ladson-billings, 2007; levinson, 2009; lo, 2019; sherrod, et.al., 2002; wilkenfeld, 2009). these cleavages are wider along lines of race, class, and ability since affluent, white, able-bodied students are often afforded more civic-oriented government classes, service-learning opportunities, democratic simulations, exposure to and discussion of current events, and classroom environments open to teamwork and deliberative conversations (circle, 2013; kahne & middaugh, 2008; kawashima-ginsberg, 2013; levinson, 2012; terzi, 2007). conversely, students in poorer communities, nonwhite students, and students with disabilities have fewer opportunities to develop the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and practices necessary for full participation in democratic life (levine, 2009; levinson, 2007; pope, 2015). this situation has long-lasting implications, as uneven participation in schools can extend unto adult life with uneven political participation and power (kahne, 2009; levinson, 2009, 2010; westheimer, 2015). in this regard, several studies have shown correlations between socioeconomic status, ability, and race, on the one hand, and exposure to civic education and levels of adult political participation, on the other (circle, 2012; comber, 2003; flanagan & levine, 2010; hart et al., 2014; jamieson et al., 2011; levine & kawashimaginsberg, 2015; levinson, 2010; rebell, 2017). uneven access to citizenship learning opportunities erodes equal democratic representation and puts into question the notion of governing ‘of and by the people’. by the time youth leave school, the opportunities that they had to develop citizenship knowledge, attitudes, skills, and practices would largely influence their propensity of civic and electoral engagement as adults (jamieson et al., 2011; levine & kawashima-ginsberg, 2017). citizenship education, civic engagement and school democracy inspired by freire’s ideas and work, one way to address the ails of citizenship education is to develop an ecosystem that connects citizenship education, civic engagement, and school democracy. such an ecosystem would create a variety of democratic learning opportunities that provide students with authentic engagements in civic action and lay reinventing freire in the 21st century current issues in comparative education 59 the groundwork for a participatory readiness through project-based learning, experiential citizenship education, and active participation in self-governance (allen, 2014; gill et al., 2018; levinson, 2012; youniss, 2011). schools that provide students with opportunities to engage in deliberation and decision-making processes have been found to nurture a culture of democratic engagement (gutmann & thompson, 2009; hansen et al., 2003; ito et al., 2010). when youth are involved in democratic processes, whether in school or other spaces, they are more likely to increase civic and political interests, knowledge, and skills and social-emotional learning (albornoz-manyoma et al., 2020; augsberger, 2017; cammarota & fine, 2008; hess & torney, 1967; levine, 2007; westheimer, 2015). furthermore, students who engage in curricular and extracurricular citizenship education activities tend to participate more as adults considering measures like civic duty, community involvement, political attentiveness, and political efficacy (hahn, 1998; hess & mcavoy, 2015; jamieson et al., 2011; lerner, 2004; levine, 2007, 2013; levinson, 2012; niemi & junn, 1998). augsberger et al. (2017) also found that when provided opportunities for shaping civic knowledge and participation skills in schools, a young person's likelihood of voting increases as an adult. the development of an ecosystem of citizenship education, civic engagement, and school democracy makes sense because schools have many initiatives, programs, and courses in each area, but they usually operate in silos, with few connections among them. this ecosystem should promote student agency but at the same time should recognize the significance of adult allies who support youth empowerment and allow for autonomous decision-making as part of a power sharing relationship (finlay et al., 2010; mitra, 2005). while many schools around the world have experimented with these ideas since the early 20th century, occasionally these initiatives have been implemented at a larger scale, like a school district that covers an entire city. this was the case of the escola cidadã (citizen school project) that freire and his collaborators implemented when he was secretary of education of sao paulo in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was later adapted by other brazilian cities (most notably porto alegre) and inspired teachers and educational reformers around the world (schugurensky, 2014). while the escola cidadã project has many dimensions, in this paper we focus on one dimension (school democracy) and one specific process that is currently gaining traction in many countries: school participatory budgeting. escola cidadã (citizen school) escola cidadã, or the citizen school project, is a world-renowned example of an educational reform aimed at embracing counter-hegemonic policies and practices to create transformational social spaces for learning democratic processes and citizenship education (de azevedo & schugurensky 2005; fischman & gandin, 2009; gandin & apple, 2004; o’cadiz, wong & torres 1998). the citizen school project began in 1989 and its growth was spurred in tandem with brazil’s working party, formed by industrial workers and peasants as a movement under the popular administration (fischman & gandin, 2016). the project was guided by many of freire’s ideas, particularly the design of the organizational structure that enacts a transformation of the status quo of schooling and catalyzes “a new architecture of knowledge” (torres, 2017, p.15). at their core, these schools function as a citizenship learning center where rights and responsibilities are fostered and discourse within a diverse community is valued. as an allay to traditional models of citizenship education, the citizen school is grounded in the practice of democratization and operationalizes this concept in three ways: a) accessibility and pedagogical constructs, b) curriculum and participation, and c) governance and decision-making relationships among all school-related stakeholders (fischman & gandin, 2009, 2016). citizen schools were strategically placed in the most bartlett & schugurensky current issues in comparative education 60 disadvantaged areas of brazil and supportive structures, such as cycles instead of grade levels and the learning laboratory for students with specific needs, were put into place to ensure individual student success (gandin & apple, 2004). drawing on freire’s critique of the banking model of education, an overarching tenet of the escola cidadã is a reconstruction of the curriculum. escola cidadã embeds and contextualizes the curriculum within the community itself, replacing the historically whitewashed curriculum with community experiences and perspectives that have long been excluded and oppressed. in turn, the learning shapes a student’s own cultural and community manifesto in that students learn through the histories of their family, culture, and community. citizen schools value cooperation and solidarity in relationships among students, families, educators, and administrators. within this framework, all school community members play a role in the management of the school and the reorganization and construction of knowledge. school community members regularly come together to design and deliberate on administrative principles, resource allocation, project foci and curriculum mapping (fischman & gandin, 2016). although similar models of transformational learning spaces like escola cidadã exist in other school districts, very few have focused at the same time on democratizing access to knowledge and democratizing administrative decision-making within schools. the case of porto alegre is particularly relevant because the experiment lasted three continuous municipal administrations (from 1989 until 2000). further, it combined key elements of the citizen school pedagogical model proposed by freire with an instrument for civic engagement and municipal democratization, namely the participatory budgeting, which has sparked the international school participatory budgeting movement that is blossoming in the 21st century (cabannes, 2004). school participatory budgeting school participatory budgeting (school pb) is a tool for citizenship learning, civic engagement, and school democracy. in a typical school pb process, students and the school community facilitate, implement, and engage within a participatory process to decide how to spend a portion of the school’s budget. school pb stems from municipal participatory budgeting (pb), the democratic process of deliberation and decision-making over budget allocations that originated in porto alegre, brazil in 1989 and is now implemented in over 11,000 cities around the world. some countries like dominican republic, peru, panama, poland, south korea, angola, kenya, portugal, ukraine, indonesia, colombia, ecuador, and scotland have laws requiring some form of pb in municipal budget allocations (cabannes, 2004; dias, 2018; dias et al., 2019). research on this process has revealed that participatory budgeting has positive impacts on a variety of areas, including civic participation (from neighborhood associations to electoral turnout), governmental transparency, accountability and effectiveness, community wellbeing, gender equality and redistribution of resources within cities. moreover, participatory budgeting is also known as an informal school of citizenship, because participants increase their levels of political efficacy and civic capacities (cabannes, 2004, 2006; curtis, 2020; lerner & schugurensky, 2007; lerner & secondo, 2012; schugurensky, 2006; touchton & wampler, 2014). in brazil, school pb has been utilized alongside the escola cidadã project in the late 20th century and early 21st centuries, but those processes have not been continuous due to changes in the leadership of municipalities and school districts. at the same time, in some cities around the world, students have been involved in city-wide participatory budgeting reinventing freire in the 21st century current issues in comparative education 61 processes as participants but have not led a process themselves. a few cities have offered a youth-led participatory budgeting process alongside the wider municipal process. although not wholly conducted within an institutionalized school setting, youth pb exists as a participatory engagement opportunity for young people in partnership with municipalities and non-profit organizations. one of the earliest documented youth pb processes took place in 2004 in rosario, argentina with $80,000 allocated from the city’s budget (lerner, 2006). in 2014, cluj, romania, implemented a youth pb process with the goal to fund 250 youth-proposed and -led projects (brennan, 2016). the portuguese city of cascais allocated 150,000 euro to a youth pb project in 2017 through the mayor’s office and city council in partnership with fourteen local schools to engage youth with “the sphere of political decisions which concern them” (resende, 2018). in 2018, the newry, mourne and down community planning partnership of ireland expanded its participatory budgeting process to include the local youth in submitting ideas and voting on final projects (communities leading change, 2018). over the last three years, poland has seen multiple youth pb initiatives unfold across cities spanning from mrągowo to szczecin (projects, 2020). the uk has also administered youth pb processes across various cities for the past decade, including brighton and aberdeen (duarte, n.d.) and north ayrshire and glasgow in scotland (projects, 2020). in the u.s., the city of boston began a youth pb process in 2014, allocating $1 million dollars from the city’s capital budget for youth ages 12-25 to vote on 14 different projects (city of boston mayors office, 2017). research on this process reported an increase in confidence to enact community change and greater likelihood to contact public officials, vote, volunteer within the community, and work with others to solve community problems (augsberger et al., 2017; grillos, 2014; levine, 2014). the city of seattle allocated $700,000 of its 2016 budget to a youth pb process called youth voice, youth choice (habte & apone, 2016.) during fall 2018, in bloomington, indiana, the common council approved to allocate $15,000 of the municipal budget to a 2019 youth pb process (city of bloomington, n.d.). in 2020, vermont afterschool, a statewide nonprofit, provided each community youth council $5,000 to fund youth-led projects through a youth pb process (katrick, 2021). youth pb and school pb share some common features, including a shift from an adultcentric model of decision-making to one that transfers power to youth and a process in which young people work with adults in identifying and solving problems through democratic processes of deliberation and decision-making. the main difference is that school pb takes place within k-12 schools and pays particular attention to its pedagogical dimensions, whereas youth pb takes place in other community settings, includes older youth, and does not necessarily focus on the educational side of participatory democracy. the school pb process, like the municipal pb and the youth pb processes, is typically organized in five steps: 1) students propose ideas to improve the school community; 2) students transform these ideas into viable proposals; 3) students campaign for and present proposals to fellow students; 4) students vote for top proposals, and 5) winning projects are funded. at the outset of the school pb process, a “steering committee” of students is recruited to be shepherds of the process, charged with developing the framework of the process, communicating the process to the rest of the school community, and serving as leaders throughout the process (johnson, 2020). in many cases, at the conclusion of the school pb process, all school community stakeholders conduct an evaluation and make recommendations for improvements for the next cycle. all stages of the school pb process are led by the students themselves, with the support of their teachers and, at times, bartlett & schugurensky current issues in comparative education 62 community organizations. a full school pb process takes several months, but shorter processes have been implemented. school pb is a unique model of citizenship education and an effective learning tool for democratic processes due to its authenticity and inclusivity. the school pb process is not a simulation or tokenistic exercise absent of any realistic, tangible outcomes. instead, students participate in an electoral cycle centered on student-driven ideas that result in real public resources being spent on the winning project ideas. the school pb process is also inclusive in that all stakeholders of the school community are involved in the decision-making process and engage in both the deliberative democracy and electoral phases of the process. additionally, many school pb processes draw a representative sample of the school population to be on the steering committee as a “mini-public” to mindfully ensure that traditionally underrepresented students are included within the student steering committee. school pb’s objectives include increasing participant civic knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, and dispositions through centering participant voice to increase advocacy, efficacy, empowerment, and trust. the school pb process aims to empower participants to lead as community problem-solvers and acquire skills and attitudes needed for lifelong active civic engagement (brennan, 2016; cohen et al., 2015; schugurensky, 2002). school pb: a growing international movement in the last two decades, more and more schools adopted school pb. in this brief section we provide a general overview with some examples from different countries. in canada, as early as 2005, ridgeville elementary school in west vancouver, canada implemented school pb in collaboration with the parent advisory council’s budget allocations (participatory budgeting project, 2014). in 2015, a cross collaborative school pb model between three elementary schools and a community center in chelsea, a small municipality of quebec, canada, was successful in implementing school pb as a partnership between the school and greater communities. english-speaking and frenchspeaking students involved in this school pb process overcame linguistic barriers to communicate back and forth in english and french almost all the time through teacher support and the utilization of creative mediums -an important implication for the historical divide between anglophone and francophone populations within this region and many others worldwide (schugurensky, 2017). in europe, the case of france is particularly interesting because pb began at the school level in the poitou-charentes region and was later adopted in paris at the municipal level, then expanded throughout parisian schools (kovalenko et al., 2020). since 2005, over 90 public high schools in the french poitou-charentes region have implemented school pb using an allocation of 10% of the schools’ budget with students guiding the process design and decision-making, while parents, teachers, and school employees serve as a support structure (participatory budgeting project, 2014; röcke, 2014). by 2014, the city of paris adopted a pb process for parisians to decide how to spend 5% of the municipal budget, and in 2016 france expanded its already-existent municipal pb process into the school system to include 91% of parisian elementary and general schools (kovalenko et al., 2020). spain has employed a school pb process called agora infantil in six schools from within the andalusian provinces since 2014 (albornoz-manyoma et al., 2020). outcomes of a study on students engaged in agora infantil found an improvement in psychological empowerment among student participants as well as increased decision-making and deliberative skills (albornoz-manyoma et al., 2020). in addition, portugal launched school pb throughout all schools within the country in 2017, allocating one euro per student with a minimum of 500 euros per school to fund the winning projects (nelson, 2018). in italy, reinventing freire in the 21st century current issues in comparative education 63 school pb is implemented in milano through a project called “decide 4 your school” (stortone, 2017) and in several other cities and communes, including roma, ancona, pordenone, and trebisacce (stortone, n. d.). poland launched school pb in warsaw in 2017 and has since expanded to three other cities including over 50 schools (kovalenko et al., 2020). also in 2017, slovakia implemented a school pb process in one high school as a pilot after intermittent municipal pb processes throughout the country (gažúrová et al., n.d.). in 2019, lithuania piloted school pb in two vilnius district schools with a postprocess evaluation revealing increases among students’ understanding of budgets and desire to engage in the school community (duncikaite, 2019). ukraine has borrowed from its robust municipal and community level pb processes to establish school pb in 122 schools across two community regions since 2019 (kovalenko et al., 2020). in the uk, school pb has been implemented in elementary schools as well as in high schools (pb unit, 2010), and in scotland, the participatory budgeting charter and pb scotland hub have called for increased opportunities for young people to be able to contribute to school budgetary decisions (pb scotland, n. d.). in russia, as part of a country-wide adoption in 2017, school pb has been adopted utilizing regional budgets of municipalities in collaboration with schools (shulga et al., 2019). in south korea, school pb is implemented in several cities. the first school district in south korea to experiment with school pb was seoul, but the most notable case is the city of daegu (the 4th largest city in the country) because it implemented school pb in all its k-12 schools (no, 2018). zambia began its first school pb in 2017 called my school, my vote wherein 4000 students from two secondary schools participated and submitted 140 idea proposals (dennis, 2020). several cities in brazil (especially são paulo, porto alegre, and recife), have implemented school pb processes in over 200 schools (best et al., 2011). beyond brazil, school pb processes are taking place in other latin american countries like peru, ecuador, colombia, argentina, venezuela, mexico, and chile (cabannes, 2006; taft & ramirez, 2019). in the united states, the first school pb process took place in bioscience high school in phoenix, arizona in 2013. since then, the phoenix union high school district has incrementally adopted school pb into all twenty of its high schools. other arizona schools have followed suit in an incremental adoption of school pb in chandler, sunnyside (tucson), queen creek, mesa and tempe, with approximately 50 k-12 schools engaging approximately 50,000 students every year (bartlett et al., 2020). more schools and new districts are committed to implement school pb next year. probably one of the most significant moments of the school pb movement in arizona took place in 2020, when the phoenix union high school district, building on their successful experience with the process for several years, started a school pb process to reimagine school safety, reallocating $3.6 million from the budget hitherto devoted to school resource officers (school police). we will return to this in the next section (phoenix union high school district, 2020). in chicago, sullivan high school conducted a semester-long school pb pilot in 2015 with 575 students. after successful outcomes and community feedback, school pb expanded in 2017 to three chicago high schools (steinmetz college prep, hyde park academy, and al raby high school). by 2021, school pb is now implemented in 16 schools. it is pertinent to note here that chicago was the first city in the u.s. to implement municipal pb, with an experiment in the 49th ward in 2009. in a recent evaluation of the chicago school pb, 94% of students reported having a better understanding of how to apply skills learned during the process to the real world and 88% of student participants “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that collaborative problem solving is more effective than solving problems on bartlett & schugurensky current issues in comparative education 64 one’s own. additionally, teachers reported the school pb process as beneficial in supporting the existing school curriculum and desired learning outcomes (crum & faydash, 2018). in 2018, new york city launched the largest scale of school pb processes in over 400 of the city’s high schools (lerner, 2018). there have also been several individual schools that have implemented school pb within the us, including walker upper elementary school in virginia (johnson, 2020), overfelt high school in san jose, california, and met high school in sacramento, california (mathews, 2018). further, there have been newly emergent school pb processes like syracuse city school district in new york with seven of its schools participating during the 2020-2021 school year. school pb, citizenship education and empowerment: the case of arizona arizona has been at the forefront of the school pb movement in the us. this can be explained by three factors. first, as noted above, the phoenix union high school district (pxu) launched the first school pb process of the country in 2013 and the first districtwide process in 2016. second, there is a coalition of schools, nonprofits and a local university that has promoted constant experimentation, innovation, capacity building and a gradual, organic expansion of the process. third, a team of local researchers (especially graduate students at arizona state university) have conducted process evaluations and impact evaluations aimed at providing feedback and improving the process. these studies have shown increases in participant knowledge, attitudes, skills, and practices concerning citizenship education and empowerment, as well as an improvement in school climate, specifically with improved trust and communication between students, teachers and staff, and school and district leaders (bartlett et al., 2020; cohen et al., 2015; gibbs, et al., 2021; keidan, 2020; kinzle, 2019). given space constraints, it is impossible to discuss in detail the variety of school pb processes taking place in arizona since 2013. hence, in this section we will discuss two recent innovative cases: inclusive school participatory budgeting (ispb) and re-imagining school safety through school pb. inclusive school participatory budgeting (ispb) the ispb model was first implemented in one arizona middle school in 2019-20 as a pilot project in partnership with the center for the future of arizona, arizona state university’s participatory governance institute, and the arizona developmental disability council. in 2020-21 the school decided to continue the process, and two high schools from another arizona city also adopted the model (publication forthcoming). the ispb model is based on three pillars of inclusivity throughout the process. first, including and representing all students (especially students with disabilities) throughout the process and more specifically within the student steering committee. second, providing students and school community stakeholders with multiple opportunities to engage throughout the process (especially through a primary vote and deliberations in core social studies classes). third, engaging all the stakeholders of the school community (students, teachers, staff, and family members) in the process, including the vote on the final project proposals. putting these pillars of inclusivity into practice, the student steering committee was a representative sample of the overall student population, with an overrepresentation of students with disabilities. while social studies classes promoted student-led presentations and discussions, the student steering committee welcomed broader participation through open meetings, tabling and campaigning, and voting. taking into consideration limitations around survey-only data collection with minors and students with disabilities, the research team conducted one-on-one interviews with students while simultaneously administering a survey about changes in civic knowledge, reinventing freire in the 21st century current issues in comparative education 65 attitudes, skills, and practices (kasp) that included 40 indicators, and additional indicators on changes in school climate. during the interviews, students were asked to explain their perceived level of change for each kasp indicator. findings revealed significant mean changes for all students involved in the ispb process across the following indicators: • increased knowledge of participatory democracy • increased knowledge of how decisions are made within their school • increased knowledge of other students’ needs • increased feeling of ideas being heard • increased ability to campaign for proposals • increased desire to work on more projects to improve the school • increased propensity to help make decisions at school more specifically, students with disabilities had significant mean changes in the following indicators: • increased knowledge of how a budget works • increased feeling of confidence in making a difference in the school • increased ability to speak publicly • increased ability to make decisions in a group • increased practice of talking to teachers outside of class overall, students involved in the ispb process reported experiencing a greater sense of belonging and collaboration, an increase in psychological empowerment, and better relationships with their teachers and peers. within focus groups, the teachers and school community stakeholders reported observing increased confidence and leadership skills of the steering committee members, increased positive interactions among students with and without disabilities, and growth in deliberative skills and communication abilities (bartlett et al., 2020). survey findings also revealed a significant increase in the political efficacy of students, as indicated by a large effect size (gibbs et al. 2021). looking forward, the findings and outcomes from the ispb model have produced promising results for individuals with disabilities and civic engagement, especially considering people with disabilities have a lower sense of political efficacy (gastil, 2000), are less connected with and consulted by public officials (schur et al., 2003; silverstein 2010; parker harris et al., 2012), and have lower voter turnout rates (coley & sum, 2012; shields et al., 1998). school pb to re-imagine school safety in 2020, the phoenix union high school district (pxu), the birthplace of school pb within the u.s., recently expanded and added a focus to its annual school pb process: reimagining school safety. prompted by demands for an equity-based overhaul of school discipline trends, (anyon et al., 2014; gregory et al., 2020; losen & gillespie, 2012; skiba & rausch, 2006), pxu has opted to not renew its contract with the phoenix police department’s school resource officer program for 3 years (phoenix union high school district, 2020). instead, this budget of $1.2 million per year has been re-allocated to a school pb process over three years, for a total of $3.6 million. a steering committee from each of pxu’s high schools drives the pxu school pb process; each school’s steering committee is composed of students, staff, and parents. the pxu school pb process follows the calendar year, with the first cycle set to be completed in december 2021. due to covid-19, the process has taken place virtually thus far, with inperson programming slated to resume fall 2021. to date, the school community proposed project ideas have been submitted to the online platform, and committee members have bartlett & schugurensky current issues in comparative education 66 participated in monthly meetings to discuss the process and further develop idea proposals for the final vote. the district-wide final vote will take place in november 2021. the pxu research team will use a community-based participatory research (cbpr) approach in a convergent mixed methods case study design to evaluate the pxu school pb process. data will be derived from the steering committee members’ participation in a survey and focus groups and be used to evaluate the process implementation, participant experiences, and school community-level impact. this school pb process will be the first district-wide, community-driven deliberation and decision-making participatory process focused on school safety. implications include an improvement in school communitybased participatory processes and an increase of community-based strategies for school safety. methods, challenges, and limitations school pb is a relatively new and ever-expanding experiment of democratic participation in school communities. given its malleable nature, innate inclusivity, and capacity for innovation, school pb enables schools and communities to adopt and modify the process to fit their own context and initiatives. evaluations of school pb have typically involved a mixed methods approach, combining survey data with interviews and focus groups conducted with participants and observations recorded throughout the process. more recently, school pb evaluations have encompassed participatory methods like youth participatory action research (ypar) and community-based participatory research (cbpr) to center participant experiences and include participants in the evaluation itself. additionally, some school pb evaluations have used arts-based research methods such as photovoice, improvisation, and digital artifact curation (appleton, 2018; bartlett et al., 2020). these exciting opportunities in creative and extensive evaluative methods also pose methodological challenges when evaluating the effectiveness of school pb processes in fostering democratic knowledge, attitudes, skills, and practices. outside of issues in navigating research with minors (e.g., informed consent and assent, participation, confidentiality) involved in a school pb process, characteristics of the school community setting can play a role in the rigor of the evaluation, as well as the research design. as schools and districts adopt a variety of evaluation methods, comparative research approaches have also proven to be difficult. additionally, to date, there has been no longitudinal analysis of students’ participation in a school pb process. concluding remarks paraphrasing obama’s acceptance speech in 2008, many things can be achieved when educators put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more towards a more democratic and just society (obama, 2008). there are many ways to reinvent freire in the 21st century, and one of them is to continue -and deepenhis efforts to nurture a citizen school, one in which everyone can experience tensions of democracy and exercise the rights and obligations of citizenship (freire, 2003). for freire, democratic self-governance can contribute to transform authoritarian schools in creative spaces, in which student learning is connected to their experience, to collective actions for improving their own reality, to feelings of joy and hope, to genuine dialogue, to a sense of common purpose, and to the development of active citizenship (freire 1997; carvalho de souza & krupek 2021; barcelos and azzolin 2021). reinventing freire in the 21st century current issues in comparative education 67 in the last two decades, school pb has been taken up throughout cities and countries around the world (dias 2018; dias et al., 2019). the studies on the impact of participant experiences on learning and changes in knowledge, attitudes, skills, and practices, however, are still in their infancy. to begin to explore these effects, many process and impact evaluations on the school pb process have been conducted, as well as both small and large-scale rigorous research pilot and case studies. the findings from these evaluations have produced promising results to further support school pb as a highimpact pedagogical approach to connect civic engagement, citizenship education, and school democracy (see, for instance, albornoz-manyoma et al., 2020, 2021; falck & de la rosa, 2021). circling back to freire, school pb encompasses both the analysis of reality and the collective construction of solution-oriented actions, two phases of the educational process that the brazilian educator conceptualized as dialectically related. for him, the nurturing of citizenship requires transformative actions, connecting the subjective and objective dimensions of the development of consciousness. as he noted, education is praxis: action and reflection of men and women upon the world to transform it (freire, 1970). while he was writing this in the context of adult literacy circles in northeast brazil in mid-20th century, such a process of transformation can also take place today in schools and involve children and youth, as well as teachers, non-teaching staff, parents, and community members. through pb and related initiatives, students can transform not only their school environment but also transform themselves from objects to subjects and from mere recipients of content to active agents of learning. moreover, they can learn democracy by doing in inclusive environments (like the case of ispb) and acquire the habits of selfgovernance and cooperation by working together with the rest of the school community on relevant projects (like the case of phoenix union). tara bartlett is a doctoral student at arizona state university studying education policy and evaluation. her research focuses on youth action civics, participatory governance, and community development. tara has worked on civic projects locally, across the u.s., and internationally and has led the expansion of civic participation opportunities in arizona schools. email: tbartlet@asu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8954-0289 daniel schugurensky is a professor at arizona state university in the school of public affairs and the school of social transformation, coordinator of the graduate program in social and cultural pedagogy and of the graduate certificate in social transformation, and director of the participatory governance initiative. he has published articles, book chapters and technical reports on adult education, community development, participatory democracy, citizenship education, social economy, civic engagement, higher education, migration, and volunteer work. email: dschugur@asu.edu bartlett & schugurensky current issues in comparative education 68 references albornoz-manyoma, n. g., garcía-leiva, p., & palacios-gálvez, m. s. 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(2011). civic education: what schools can do to encourage civic identity and action. applied developmental science, 15(2), 98-103. acquah, a. higher education finance between ghana and the u.s. current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 1, winter 2021 higher education finance between ghana and the united states alfred acquah university of nevada, las vegas over the years, there has been a tremendous increase in enrollment in higher education as well as the cost of attendance. this article comparatively analyzes the higher education finance between the united states of america (u.s.a.) and ghana, taking into consideration the goals of higher education, enrollment and expenditure, and the various sources of finance available to students in both countries. the source of education finance between both countries is examined through the lens of neoliberalism, which prioritizes capitalism, free trade, and market in public institutions, specifically higher education. while there are disparities in the financing of higher education in both countries, there is a similarity in the limited access to higher education and funding by students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. introduction the escalating cost of higher education in recent years has been felt by many countries around the world and has attracted a lot of attention, with some studies attributing the high cost to inadequate public funding, growing pressure on public funding, and in some cases, economic recession (acheampong, 2010; klein, 2015; liu, 2018; tulip, 2007). according to the world bank, higher education refers to all post-secondary education, including private and public universities, colleges, technical and vocational institutions. also, higher education is seen as an instrument and key in providing solutions to intricate problems. it is also perceived as an economic engine that frees people from poverty by providing them with high-paying jobs (morton, 2018). higher education, which used to be a service for the elite, is now a service for the mass due to higher demand by all classes of people. in recent times, higher education has seen a massive expansion. for example, the worldwide gross tertiary enrollment ratio (gter) increased to 32 % in 2012 compared to 10% in 1972 (marginson, 2016). there are about 200 million students enrolled in higher education in the world compared to 89 million in 1998 (the world bank, 2017). as enrollment increases in higher education, the cost of attendance also increases. the increase in enrollment and high cost of higher education is seen as a result of the increased emphases on knowledge-based economy and neoliberal practices, the former measuring how knowledge or information contribute to the economy and the latter prioritizing competition, free market, and government budget cut (st. george, 2006; gyamera & burke, 2018;). knowledge-based economy has been described as one of the “three powerful economic narratives” in the past 30 to 40 years and has influenced educational reforms in public discourse. (sum, & bob, 2013, p. 24). it has become more influential lately because it is championed by three world superstructures: the organization for economic development and cooperation (oecd), the world bank, and the european © 2021, acquah. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(1), 90-108. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en higher education finance between ghana and the united states current issues in comparative education 91 union (sum, & bob, 2013). through knowledge-based economy, education is now considered an economic industry that is evaluated based on its contributions to the economy. thus, educational services are increasingly being privatized, open to global competition, and managed by non-academic personnel. although the emphasis on knowledge-based economy has contributed to increased enrollment in higher education, it has also positioned education in a neoliberal perspective accounting for the high cost of higher education. besides, the limited access to higher education, funding, and the complications that accompany the securing of student loans deny students from low socioeconomic backgrounds from enrolling in higher education (klein, 2015; okrah & adabor, 2010). the purpose of this paper is to examine the sources of higher education finance available in ghana and the u.s. and understanding how practices of neoliberalism have impacted them. the paper compares the higher education finance of ghana and the u.s. due to their historical connection in education. it analyzes the goals of education, higher education enrollment, and expenditure in both countries. this paper aims to contribute to the literature on comparative higher education between ghana (a “developing” country) and the u.s. (a developed country) who is more advanced in higher education and serves as a measure of a standard to other countries. background information according to the united nations, the u.s. is the third most populous nation in the world with a population of 329,064,917 in 2019, while ghana has a population of 28,833,629 and serves as the forty-eighth most populous nation in the world. in 2019, there were about 19.73 million and 496,148 students enrolled in u.s. and ghana higher education, respectively (duffin, 2020; sasu, 2020). according to a statistical report released by the national accreditation board, ghana, there are about 230 institutions of higher education in ghana. in comparison, the usa has about 4,360 (as of 2016/2017) degree-granting institutions of higher education (national center for education statistics [nces], 2017). enrollment into higher education in both countries is optional and not compulsory as compared to basic education. over the years, the cost of higher education in ghana and the u.s., and other countries have risen due to a reduction in federal government funding (acheampong, 2010; tulip, 2007). this reduction in funds, as a result, puts more higher education cost burden on students and parents, contributing to an increase in student loans. on average, 68% of students in the u.s. higher education graduate with about $30,000 in loans (morton, 2018). according to a report by the national center for education statistics (nces, 2019), the annual average cost of higher education in the u.s. was $24,300 for public four-year institutions and $50,300 for private four-year institutions for the 2017/2018 academic year. this applied to students who lived on campus. students who lived with the family spent $14,400 and $39,900 in public and private schools, respectively. those who lived offcampus without family spent $24,200 and $50,200 in public and private schools, respectively (nces, 2019). acquah current issues in comparative education 92 according to enterversity (2021), a free university search engine for students in africa, the average cost of higher education in ghana for public institutions is between gh¢1400 ($243.45) to gh¢2100 (365.17). the cost of higher education in private institutions is between gh¢5,000 ($869.46) to gh¢9,000 ($1,565.03) (enterversity, 2021). this amount is a little more expensive for the average ghanaian. in order for students to become aware of these increments and the cost of higher education, it is vital that students are as well exposed to the different sources of funding available to them. oseni et al. (2018) propose that one of the important aspects of education finance is the source of funding available to students. they argue that sources of funding should be explicitly stated in order to be able to synthesize with other sources of funding (oseni et al., 2018). although ghana was colonized by the british, the u.s. has a greater educational transfer role, a core ground for comparative education research, on ghana. for example, an american concept of education, the hampton-tuskegee model of industrial education, was first borrowed by the achimota college (now achimota school) situated in accra, ghana, before it spread to other british colonies in africa. (steiner-khamsi & quist, 2000). during the 1920s, phelps-stokes fund, a new york-based philanthropic agency, saw the spreading of the american education model (industrial education), which was mainly designed for african americans in the southern u.s., to the african continent. ghana, then gold coast, became the first country to adjust to the education model of the u.s. (steiner-khamsi & quist, 2000). this educational transfer was spearheaded by america’s booker t. washington and ghana’s james e. k. aggrey, a co-founder of achimota college (newkirk, 2012). the historical connection between ghana and the u.s. may have contributed to the increasing similarity in both countries' education systems. also, the u.s. has, over the years, become the number one study abroad destination for most international students from ghana. for example, the u.s. recorded 4,221 international students in the 2019/2020 academic year, indicating a 15.3 percent increase from the previous year (institute of international education, 2021). the adaptation of the american education model by ghana and the flow of international students shows the historical connection between the two countries. yet, there is a dearth of literature comparing certain key aspect such as higher education finance between these two countries. this paper aims to address this gap in the literature. hence the comparison. literature review this section reviews the literature on higher education funding, including performancebased funding, which has gained prominence in recent years. i summarize the findings of prior studies on the consequences of low public funding on students and families. public universities all over the world are affected by budget cuts from the increasingly inadequate government funding resulting in increased tuition and fees in countries where they exist and more so imposing them where until now did not exist (st. george 2006; klein, 2015; newman & duwiejua, 2015; salmi, 2003; schugurensky, 2013). for example, tuition and fees are now enforced in places like latin america and europe, previously tuition-free. as a result of the steep rise in the cost of higher education, loan plans have higher education finance between ghana and the united states current issues in comparative education 93 been introduced by several higher education institutions and countries over the years (salmi, 2003). examples of such loan schemes include the stafford loan and the student loan trust fund (sltf) of the u.s. and ghana, respectively (darvas et al., 2017; federal students aid, n.d.; library of congress, 2005). these loans are repaid by students after graduation (salmi, 2003). as government funding for higher education continues to shrink, many oecd countries, including ghana and the u.s., have implemented the performance-based type of funding. funding for higher education is being increasingly based on institutions’ performance, known as performance-based funding, which shifts higher education funding, normally based on factors such as enrollment and expenditure, to one based on results and outcomes. that is, state or public funds are linked directly to institution outcomes (doh & doh, 2013; dougherty et al., 2014; dougherty & natow, 2015). in a new proposal for higher education funding in ghana, performance-based funding was enacted as one strategy to distribute public funds to higher education institutions (newman & duwiejua, 2015). this means that one of the criteria for allocating public funds to any institution would be based on the output or contribution to the economy. the proposal referenced the performance-based funding used by the tennessee higher education council as a model (newman & duwiejua, 2015). the performance-based model, which began in the tennessee u.s. in 1979, was in the form of bonus money aside from the base funding from the state. in the u.s., about 38 states had enacted performance-based funding in 2014 (dougherty et al., 2014; dougherty & natow, 2015; dougherty & natow, 2019). in a study to explore performance-based funding’s impact on state appropriation, hagood (2019) found that performance-based funding was favorable to some schools over others. the results from the study indicated that this type of funding mostly benefits higher education institutions that are research-oriented, highly resourced, and highly selective but posed burdens to the low-resourced institution of higher education. the study found that performance-based funding may promote a-winner-loser situation among schools by rewarding highly resourced institutions and punishing those with fewer resources. the author advised that a more equitable distribution of public funds that takes an institution’s resources into consideration be implemented in higher education. also, in a study on performance funding in the u.s. states of ohio and pennsylvania, zumeta and li (2016) found that there were differences in institutional strength to respond to the demands of performance-based funding adequately. using purposeful sampling, the authors recruited and interviewed 42 administrators, faculty, and advisors. the authors found that performance-based funding has the likelihood of worsening the gap between the highly-resourced institutions and the least-resourced institutions (zumeta & li, 2016). the highly resourced institutions have all well-qualified faculty and staff and access to varied resources for meeting the requirements of performance-based funding. in contrast, institutions with fewer resources are cannot meet the requirement, creating winners and losers (zumeta & li, 2016). these studies suggest that performancebased funding is more favorable to higher education institutions that are well resourced, placing them in an advantageous position over those with fewer resources. this brings acquah current issues in comparative education 94 about competition among institutions and creates a winner-loser dichotomy among schools. other studies in higher education funding have shown the challenges students and families face relative to the inadequate public funding (asamoah, 2017; goode, 2017). the cost of higher education and the reduction in government subsidies has become a barrier to accessing higher education. in a study to explore how the components of the u.s. 2year community college model might be adapted by ghana to address the limited access, limited facilities, inadequate programs, and high cost in higher education, goode (2017) found that most participants attributed the barrier to higher education in ghana to the high tuition cost especially to low-income students. participants from the study noted that although loans and grants were available to students, the system of distribution was unfair to students from working-class and middle-class families. similarly, asamoah (2017) found that the high cost of tuition fees was a major challenge to students in ghana. the findings indicated that, low-income students who make up the majority of the undergraduate student population could not afford the cost of their education. participants also lamented the high cost in private institutions because they were excluded from receiving a share of the public fund. the findings from this body of research suggest that the rising cost of higher education is a key concern to students and families, especially those from low socioeconomic backgrounds. also, students from low-income backgrounds may not have the means to access available funding due to inequitable funding distribution mechanics. theoretical lens this paper utilizes the framework of neoliberalism in understanding higher education financing in ghana and the united states. neoliberalism refers to political and economic practices that minimize public interventions but prioritize free-market, free trade, and competition as the means through which institutions and people can achieve favorable and greater outcomes (harvey, 2007; stromquist & sanyal, 2013). neoliberalism emphasizes capitalism, privatization, and free market in public spaces (e.g., public institutions of higher education), increasing the influence of ones’ socioeconomic background in their educational trajectory (weis et al., 2020). this system results in meritocracy, competition, and decentralization in higher education. it even contributes to the reduction in government funds for schools forcing higher education institutions to modify their curriculum to meet the demands of the international economy (gyamera & burke, 2018). besides, guidelines of participation are now created through international organizations like the world bank and the international monetary fund (imf), which are now inevitable in almost every nation-state and "instantiates neoliberalism as a global set of rules" (harvey, 2007, p. 23). usually, countries affiliated with these superstructures are directed or mandated to adjust to the policies, such as reducing government funds to higher education institutions. this puts pressure on schools to increase tuition and fees, adjust their curriculum to reflect the international standards, and start to operate as a forprofit organization turning the university into a private good where students have to pay huge sums of money to purchase as any other good in the market. the pressure is mostly felt more by developing countries like ghana, which have limited resources and receive higher education finance between ghana and the united states current issues in comparative education 95 support from donors (altbach, 2015; harvey, 2007). in order to generate more income, institutions concentrate more on attracting international students into their programs, which raises their status on the international rankings of schools lee, 2010). for example, international students contributed 41 million to the u.s. economy in 2018/2019 (national association for foreign student affairs [nafsa], 2020). previously, ghana reserved five percent of admission slots to international students but is now proposed to increase to 15 percent, paying the full cost of their tuition (badoo, 2013; newman & duwiejua, 2015). also, the u.s. receives the highest number of international students, with about 1,075,496 international students. (becker & kolster, 2012; institute of international education, 2021). neoliberalism also has the aim of just providing the skills that are needed by students in securing jobs in the global economy. in the introduction of their article “neoliberalism and curriculum in higher education: a post-colonial analysis,” gyamera and burke (2018) talk about the adverse effect of neoliberalism to include the strong emphasis on the private sector as the foundation for a countries development. as such, public institutions are pushed to generate income independently, which means cutting down the flow of government funding to schools (gyamera & burke, 2018). they also emphasized how neoliberalism favors some groups (elite) over others (low-income families) relative to access to higher education (gyamera & burke, 2018). data and methods the research was conducted using previous studies and documents. i searched for peerreviewed articles on online libraries and journals as well as search engines like google scholar. i also obtained information on higher education finance from government institution websites for data on goals of higher education, college enrollment, sources of funding, and expenditure. in addition, i obtained information on higher education finance from books on comparative and international education. lastly, i retrieved information that is hard to find in the literature from funding from higher education institution websites. key-search terms used in this review included higher education finance in ghana, higher education finance in the u.s., sources of funding for higher education in ghana, sources of financial aid in the u.s., neoliberalism, knowledge-based economy, globalization of higher education, and historical connection between ghana and the u.s. these search terms helped in finding relevant information which informed this paper. goals of higher education in ghana and the u.s. in ghana, the national accreditation board (nab), which is under the ministry of education, is one of the agencies responsible for the regulation, supervision, and accreditation of tertiary education institutions. there is also the national council for tertiary education (ncte) and the national board for professional and technician examinations (nabptex). recently, the nab and the ncte have been merged to form the ghana tertiary education commission (gtec), which is mandated to regulate higher education. although the gtec had no specific mission or goal stated on its website at the time of this article, there were pieces of information in its strategic plan that focused on the creating a vigorous, world-class higher education capable of competing globally. besides, there was an emphasis on the need to standardize government programs in all disciplines and utilize technology in its operations (gtec, 2021). also, the ministry of acquah current issues in comparative education 96 education’s vision is to provide education relevant to students at all levels (ministry of education, ghana, n.d.). on the ges website, there is a mission statement that pertains to only the technical and vocational education division. the mission is “to create an enabling environment for the youth to acquire quality demand-driven technical and vocational education training (tvet) employable skills and general education to enable them fulfill the country's tvet human resource requirements” (ghana education service [ges], n.d., tvet section). the goal of higher education in the u.s. is to "promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence” (u.s. department of education, n.d.). higher education goals in the united states vary due to their regulation by different private institutions. according to a report released by the u.s. secretary of education on march 21, 2019, the then president's executive order on higher education was "improving free inquiry, transparency, and accountability at colleges and universities" (u.s. department of education, 2019). enrollment and expenditure on higher education in ghana and the u.s. in ghana, investment in education as a percentage of gdp was 6-8% between 2011 and 2015, representing 22-27% of the government's annual expenditure. in recent years, this has declined to 3.9% of the gdp in 2018 for education in general and 1.2% in tertiary education in 2013, as last recorded by the world bank (the world bank, 2021). also, 19.1% of the government budget for education is apportioned to higher education (newman & duwiejua, 2015). according to the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) institute of statistics, ghana had a total higher education enrollment of 15.7% in 2018, compared to 11.8% in 2011, with the former representing about 2,879,063 of the population aged 19 to 23. the total enrollment of female students increased from 8.9% in 2011 to 13.6% in 2018. on the other hand, enrollment for males increased from 14.5% in 2011 to 17.7% in 2018 (unesco institute of statistics, 2021). the total gross enrollment ratio in higher education in the u.s. was 88.3% in 2018, with 102.4% and 74.9% gross enrollment for females and males, respectively (unesco institute of statistics, 2021). in the u.s., the overall college enrollment rate for young adults (18 to 24 years old) increased from 35 percent in the year 2000 to 40 percent in 2017. enrollment for females increased from 38% in 2000 to 44% in 2018, while men's enrollment rose from 33% in 2000 to 38% in 2018 (nces, 2020). higher education outcomes vary from country to country depending on the investment made towards education. this can be measured in the number of students who complete higher education. also, there is a higher percentage of women who have completed at least some college, according to the 2015 census. 60% of women had some college or more education as compared to 58 % of men. also, 32 % of men and 33% of women had completed at least a bachelor's degree. there were 12% of both men and women who had completed an advanced degree (ryan & bauman, 2016). furthermore, the u.s. federal government invests about $149 billion in higher education, representing 3.6% of the federal government's expenditure. the amount increases to higher education finance between ghana and the united states current issues in comparative education 97 $1.068 trillion with funding from non-federal funding agencies (data lab, n.d.). in 2016, the total government and private expenditure on all institutions was 6% as a percentage of the gdp and 2.5% on higher education (nces 2019). the u.s. government expenditure was 4.1% and 0.9% on all institutions and higher education, respectively (nces, 2019). in other sectors like defense, health, and government pensions, the federal spend 5%, 8%, and 7% of the gdp, respectively (u.s. spending, 2020). sources of higher education funding in ghana and the u.s. higher education in ghana used to be free, just like basic education. however, in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the government could not increase and continue funds for supporting higher educational institutions due to low expenditure for higher education, and as a result, institutions of higher education had no choice but to charge high tuition fees (dadzie, 2009). this was influenced by donor-backed policies and the world bank’s initiative of supplementing public income with income by shifting higher education costs from the government to students, parents, and people who purchase higher education services. they also emphasized high spending for primary and high school education to create high demand for higher education (asamoah, 2017; britwum & martins, 2008; world bank, 1994). since then, the government’s aid for supporting higher education now comes in the form of government grants that are often shown in the national budget for developing higher education institutions (tertiary education). this fund is not the kind of aid that is disbursed to a student to complete or pay for tuition but is distributed to the various public institutions of higher education by the government through the ghana education trust fund (getfund) as opposed to the u.s. pell grant that contributes directly in paying students tuition fees. other sources of funds for higher education institutions emanate from local authorities, internally generated funds by the institutions, tuition, and international organizations such as the world bank (pius, 2014). the getfund is an initiative enacted by the ghanaian government to support all levels of education in the country. the fund was established by law in the year 2000 through the nation’s parliament (atuahene, 2006; emeka, 2020). from the getfund’s online homepage, the trust fund is mandated to providing “funding to supplement government effort for the provision of educational infrastructure and facilities within the public sector from the pre-tertiary to the tertiary level” (getfund, 2021., par. 1; atuahene, 2015; newman & duwiejua, 2015). this includes providing support to higher education institutions to acquire educational supplies and contribute to staff and research development. the trust provides aid in the form of scholarships and grants to needy but brilliant students. it also subsidizes academic facility user fees for higher education students. the getfund, also a source of student loans, allocates money from its funds to support the student loan scheme's running to offer loans to students in accredited higher education institutions (atuahene, 2015; getfund, 2021). according to atuahene (2015), the getfund, despite all difficulties, is "making significant contributions towards higher education development in ghana in infrastructure, student development, faculty research, and staff support" (p. 21). another source of government aid to students in higher educations in ghana is the students loan trust fund (sltf). the sltf is a source of government funding in the acquah current issues in comparative education 98 form of loans for students in an accredited institution of higher education in ghana. this trust fund was established in december 2005 under act 820 of ghana's parliament to support higher education institutions and students who are needy (atuahene, 2008; students loan trust fund, 2020. the main sources of funds for the trust include but are not limited to; money from the getfund, voluntary contributions and contributions from the private, and loans from the social security and national insurance trust (ssnit). to qualify for sltf, the applicant must first be a ghanaian citizen and in need who is admitted to a nationally accredited institution of higher education for an academic program that is accredited by the national accreditation board. besides, the student applicant must have a guarantor in order to be considered (atuahene, 2008; students loan trust fund, 2020). in addition to this, there are other forms of financial aids offered by the various higher education institutions in ghana. an example is the students financial aid offered by the university of ghana as a measure to combat the increasing financial needs of their student applicants. this fund is awarded to brilliant but needy students. the fund pays for their academic fees and other expenses but contingent on the availability of funds. this could be in the form of a full or partial scholarship, on-campus work-study for students (university of ghana, 2018). the united states in the u.s., federal student financial aid programs aim to assist students with or without low socioeconomic background. the federal student aid is categorized into three main types: (1) the federal aid, which consists of pell grant, stafford loans, and direct plus loan; (2) state aid (merit and need-based scholarships); and (3) institutional aid. firstly, the pell grant, which is categorized under federal aid, is a subsidy provided by the federal government to students in need to pay for college. this aid is given mostly to undergraduate students but also some graduate students in certain post-baccalaureate programs. students receive this aid by applying the free application for federal student aid (fafsa) and demonstrating need. unlike loans, students who receive pell grants do not have to repay. according to federal students aid, the maximum pell grant award for the 2020/2021 academic year is $6,345. in order for students to be eligible for this kind of aid, they need to be enrolled in a degree or certificate program at an accredited higher education institution to receive the aid. in addition to the aforementioned eligibility requirement, the students have to demonstrate financial need, maintain satisfactory academic progress (mostly a gpa of 3.0 or higher), and be registered with the selective service (federal students aid, n.d.). secondly, the stafford loans are low-interest rate loans that are awarded to undergraduate or graduate students. stafford loans can be subsidized or unsubsidized. subsidized stafford loans are awarded to students with financial needs with an interest rate of 4.53% that is usually paid by the federal government as they accrue. on the other hand, the unsubsidized stafford loans are available to both undergraduate and graduate students and professional students (financial need is not required) with an interest rate of 6.08%, with the exception of undergraduates who pay 4.53%. unlike the subsidized stafford loan, borrowers of the unsubsidized stafford loan are responsible for paying the accrued higher education finance between ghana and the united states current issues in comparative education 99 interest. stafford loan borrowers are required to repay with a grace period of six months after school. however, there are extended repayment plans (library of congress, 2005; federal students aid, n.d.). also, there is the parent loan for undergraduate students (plus), which is available to parents in order to pay for their ward's college expenses with an interest rate of 7.08%. the federal loans are awarded through the u.s. department of education (federal students aid, n.d.). aside from the federal aid discussed above, the united states also has state aid awarded to students. the state aid is in the form of grants or scholarships awarded to students as merit-based or need-based. merit-based state aid is awarded based on academic performance, and receivers are not required to repay. on the other hand, need-based state aid is awarded to students who demonstrate financial need through the application (college planning center of rhode island, 2020; federal students aid, n.d.). lastly, there is also institutional aid in the form of grants to help recruit students into various programs in institutions of higher education. according to the nces (2019), 85% of first-time students in a four-year institution of higher education received financial aid in the form of pell grants and loans in the 2016/2017 academic year. however, the percentage was 75 in the 2000/2001 academic year. these include all aids that went directly to the students but excluded loans paid directly to parents. these percentages include students in both public and private schools. this shows about a 10% increase in the number of students who depend on some form of financial aid to enroll in higher education. findings this section of the paper outlines and discusses the findings from the analysis of the goals, enrollment, expenditure, and sources of funding in ghana and the u.s. the first part analyzes the similarities between the two countries’ higher education relating to the limited access to education and the goals established for their higher education institutions. the second part analyzes the difference between the two countries. according to ghana's 1992 constitution, access to education at all levels in ghana is supposed to be free to all irrespective of financial background, but this is not the case due to inadequate government funds to support higher education. given that there is limited financial aid, especially for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds who may not have a personal guarantor to secure a loan from the sltf, they would have to pay from pocket or forget about enrolling in higher education. the limited access to higher education and the complications of securing a student loan gives students with high socioeconomic background more access to higher education than those with low socioeconomic background (okrah & adabor, 2010). also, the government is more committed to ensuring free secondary education for all and, as a result, allocates more funds to the secondary education sector. similarly, education in the u.s. is intended to be accessible to all. however, not all students can enroll or graduate due to increased tuition, a decrease in government funding for schools, and the continuing financial barriers that limit the low-income family's access to higher education compared to their high-income acquah current issues in comparative education 100 family counterparts (tulip, 2007). this idea suggests that higher education is still not accessible to all citizens, whether in a super-power nation-state or a developing country. the goals for higher education emphasize accountability and competition in both countries. a careful analysis of the established goals of higher education in ghana and the u.s. seem to be geared towards competing in the global education sphere. it also reveals the demand for standardization and accountability across all higher education institutions. as a developing country, ghana’s goal relative to education is focused on establishing a solid foundation for improving the quality of education, which seems like an indisputable vision for every developing country. however, there seem to be evidence of using neoliberal practices such as standardizing disciplines and creating competition among schools. also, the goal of achieving a demand-driven form of higher education reveals the influence of knowledge-based economy (sum & bob, 2013). as a developed country and a super-power, the u.s. obviously has achieved a greater foundation and now seeks excellence in higher education through accountability. that is, the higher education goals in both countries seem to be influenced by neoliberalism, which prioritizes competition and commodifies higher education institutions (harvey, 2010). performance-based funding, a product of neoliberalism, has been enacted to enforce standardization, accountability, and competition among schools in the u.s. and lately in ghana (dougherty & natow, 2019; hagood, 2019; zumeta & li (2016). the u.s. has more sources of funding than ghana. in the u.s., there are more sources of financial aid available to students to pay tuition. these aids, such as the pell grants and the stafford loans, go directly to individual student accounts to pay their fees. in ghana, there are limited financial aids to support students, especially those from underprivileged families. the government's subsidy distributed to the various universities helps subsidize the fees for all regular students. this suggests that all regular students pay the same fee, which is subsidized by the government (dadzie, 2009). this, however, does not apply to the fee-paying students who pay full fees without any subsidy from the government. also, international institutions like the world bank and the imf contributed to cutting down funding for higher education in ghana (britwum & martins, 2008; dadzie, 2009). ghana’s partnership with the world bank and the imf in the 1980s resulted in the structural adjustment program (sap) managed by these organizations. the world bank and the imf directed the government to reduce funding for higher education and rather increase expenditure for basic education (britwum & martins, 2008; dadzie, 2009). the adaptation of the sap ensured that demands of higher education did not divert the demands of the world bank and the imf (britwum & martins, 2008). female enrollment is less in ghanaian higher education. in terms of gender, there are more males who enroll in higher education in ghana than females. for example, ghana had a 13.6% gross enrollment ratio for females enrolled in 2018, against a 17.7% gross enrollment ratio for males in the same year (unesco institute of statistics, 2021). on the contrary, the u.s. has more female enrollment than males in higher education. for instance, there was 102.4% gross enrollment for females in 2017, while males had a gross enrollment of 74.9% (unesco institute of statistics, 2021). also, in 2018, ghana had a higher education finance between ghana and the united states current issues in comparative education 101 gross graduation ratio of 8.79% and 12.51% for females and males, respectively (unesco institute of statistics, 2021). on the other hand, the oecd (2021) reports that females' 2017 graduation rate in the u.s. was 66.9%, while males had 46.0%. this data shows the disparities in enrollment and graduation between genders in the two countries. it shows that the united states has more females enrolling in higher/tertiary education than males. however, this is not the case for ghana, where more males enroll and graduate from higher education institutions than their female counterparts. this suggests that women in ghana may not have attained equal access to higher education as men. studies have found that access to higher education in ghana favors males and those from high socioeconomic backgrounds than females and students from low-income families (atuahene & owusu-ansah, 2013). in a doctoral dissertation written by dadzie (2009), he commented on how families would rather send their boys to school other than girls due to the patriarchal nature of most ghanaian societies where men are seen as the dominant or heads of families. the author also indicated how the colonizers sent boys to europe to further their education, leaving behind girls (dadzie, 2009). the u.s. has a higher enrollment and graduation rate than ghana. from the data, there seems to be a low enrollment and graduation rate in general in the case of ghana compared to the u.s. this could be a result of the inability of the various institutions to increase their intake due to lack of infrastructural development and expansion of facilities. the limited facilities such as lecture halls, limited space libraries, and resources prevent institutions from admitting more students (asamoah, 2017). also, acheampong (2010) found that the loans available to the students in ghana are insufficient and that support from relatives was more reliable to the students who participated in the study. the available public funding for students is not enough to pay the high cost of higher education, especially the private sector, making enrollment and graduation favorable to students from high socioeconomic backgrounds (asamoah, 2017; atuahene & owusuansah, 2013; yusif, ishak, & zulkifly, 2013). this shows a major characteristic of neoliberalism: favoring the elite over those from low-income families regarding higher education access (gyamera & burke, 2018). conclusion this paper explored the higher education finance between ghana and the u.s. as countries with a historical connection in education which continues to some extent in today’s higher education. the goals of both countries were outlined and discussed. the paper also explored the enrollment trend in each country and the extent to which each of the countries invests in their institutions of higher education. as a world “super-power,” the u.s. invests much more in education than ghana, a developing country. this is manifested through the number of higher institutions established in the various countries and the sources of financial aid available to university students in both countries. also, the gross enrollment rate in higher education, especially for females in the u.s., is much higher than that of ghana. this could mean how well the united states is established in terms of gender policies to ensure equitable access to higher education by all genders. acquah current issues in comparative education 102 nonetheless, in all these disparities in higher education between the two countries, there is a common ground for them all, and that is the diminishing government support in terms of funding to the schools and the students as well as the limited access to students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. this is seen as an adverse effect of neoliberalism, which considers privatization as the basis for every nation-state's development. as a global rule, neoliberalism is enforced by superstructures such as the world bank and the imf, who see to it that countries make adjustments to their structures and policies, giving more power to free-market, private property rights, and capitalism. the pressure from these international organizations is usually felt by the developing countries more than the developed countries. to understand the impact of the sources of funding in both countries, there should be more future research on the percentage of cost covered by these aids. also, there should be future research on the awareness of these sources of financing available to students in both countries. alfred acquah is a doctoral student in curriculum and instruction with emphasis on cultural studies, international education, and multicultural education at the university of nevada, las vegas. references acheampong, a. b. 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(2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 applying critical discourse analysis in the classroom: a guide for educators jessica d. murray university of vermont monica c. desrochers university of vermont in this conceptual article, we provide a guide for educators to use critical discourse analysis (cda) to: (1) critically examine their teaching and behavioral support practices, (2) guide future interactions with students and families, and (3) teach students to empower themselves through critically analyzing texts, media, and society. to do this, we leverage the cda frameworks provided by rebecca rogers (2011), james paul gee (1999), and norman fairclough (1989). cda is a tool that can disrupt cycles of oppression and power in classroom settings and school communities. it makes oppressive systems of institutions visible in order to intentionally interrogate and dismantle them rather than unintentionally reproducing them in educational spaces. key words: critical discourse analysis, literacy instruction, media literacy instruction, k-12, higher education, critical studies applying critical discourse analysis in the classroom: a guide for educators educational spaces reproduce oppression, power, and inequality. this is illustrated in vast research confirming academic and discipline discrepancies between youth of color and white students, as well as the discrepancies for lgbtqia+ youth and students with disabilities (schiff, 2018; mallett, 2016; welsh & little, 2018; taylor et al, 2011). frameworks such as critical race theory and critical law theory point out that law is never neutral in an oppressive world (hiraldo, 2010), and authors such as zinn highlight that individuals’ actions cannot be neutral (zinn, 2002). therefore, educational policies and practices cannot be neutral: “people in society make up the education system, and thus education research and practice are also infiltrated with matters of race and racism” (milner, 2007, p. 391). within a national and global culture of racism, xenophobia, ableism, homophobia, and misogyny, if we as educators are not constantly analyzing how systems of oppression are perpetuated in classrooms, then we will naturally reproduce them. nothing teachers do in schools can be neutral; we either actively disrupt power differentials or passively reproduce them. while one teacher cannot account for all implications that come with education’s effectiveness of marginalizing certain groups of people, teachers do have additive effects, which have the potential to positively influence the culture of the students and their classrooms (roychowdhury, 2017). many teachers are currently working hard to disrupt systems of oppression in classrooms and make curriculum accessible to all learners. we can use the framework of cda to strengthen our efforts and hold ourselves accountable to continuously implement and improve anti-oppressive action in schools. © 2021, murray & desrochers. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 129-142. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en murray & desrochers current issues in comparative education 130 the power of critical discourse analysis for teachers: why use cda? cda provides teachers with a tool to analyze power imbalances, oppression, and inequalities in classrooms: “educational practices are considered communicative events; it therefore stands to reason that discourse analysis would be useful to analyze the ways in which the texts, talk, and other semiotic interactions that learning comprises” (rogers, 2011, p. 1). cda should be leveraged by teachers worldwide to disrupt systems of oppression in the classroom, and should be used in all educational spaces, from k-12 to higher education institutions. while research and implications surrounding cda are currently aimed towards higher education and social affairs, we intend for teachers globally to access this tool to build capacity for discussions that address power, privilege, and inequalities. across contexts, settings, and geographic locations, we internalize these oppressive discourses and power relationships to the extent that they are often deemed “natural” and go unquestioned (public broadcasting service, 2016). the power of cda is that it gives us a way to make these discourses and systems visible; through it, many practices that are taken as the “norm,” often consenting to the “white mythical norm,” are questioned and can be recognized as oppressive and discriminatory. fairclough (2013) reminds us that “changing the world for the better depends upon being able to explain how it has come to be the way it is” (p. 10). cda opens us to alternative, more equitable, ways of teaching that increase the accessibility of education to all students. it is a framework that can be used to analyze teaching and behavioral support practices, to guide interactions with students and families, and to teach students to critically examine the world around them. it gives both teachers and students a shared sense of ownership over how we, and our communities, can build better realities: “it is important to note that while critique is an important part of the ‘critical project’ it is not the end goal. the end goal is to hope, to dream, and to create alternative realities that are based in equity, love, peace, and solidarity” (rogers, 2011, p. 5). the remainder of this article is broken into four sections and answer the following guiding questions: ● what is cda? ● how can teachers use cda? ● how can students use cda? ● what resources exist on cda and power and oppression? critical discourse analysis: what is cda? the purpose of cda is to deconstruct power and its role in replicating, or disrupting, systems of oppression (rogers, 2011). van dijk (2007) argues the perpetuation of oppression in common discourse is the ability of those in power to control political and media messaging to the public. cda is an approach to interrogating such messages of power and inequality; it examines ways in which inequalities are constructed and perpetuated (wodak & meyer, 2009). it does so through making power relations, and how power relations reproduce through language, visible: “power is a central concept in critical discourse studies. it tends to be defined in terms of negative uses of power, articulated through and within discourses and resulting in domination and oppression” (rogers, 2011, p. 3). cda breaks down how language and discourse reinforce oppressive systems through positioning power. discourse within cda is defined as “social practices, processes, and products” that consist of everything “from language use, to statements that assign meanings to an institution, to social identities, relationships, practices, and categories” (rogers, 2011, p. 4). while cda can be a multi-faceted tool, “approaches to cda share a set of core assumptions. those assumptions include an interest in uncovering and transforming conditions of inequality; analyses that transcend the interpretation of language and, instead, aim to explain the work that language performs in society” (mullet, applying critical discourse analysis in the classroom current issues in comparative education 131 2018, p. 118). this expanded view of discourse illustrates “the ways in which social grammars and ‘language bits’ (to use gee’s term) interact and build identities, relationships, and narratives of a social world” (rogers, 2011, p. 6). in this way, teachers can leverage cda to highlight the ways power differentials are perpetuated in classrooms (åberg & olin-scheller, 2018; fairclough, 2010; rogers, 2011). furthermore, fairclough offers flexibility to how cda can be used: social theories, political campaigning, explicit textual analysis (fairclough, 2002). we assert that cda can also be used with students to help them uncover hidden messages of power and oppression within the classroom and in greater society. fairclough breaks the deconstruction of power into ‘the power to’, ‘power over’, and ‘power behind’ (fairclough, 1989). janks (2009) argues that readers need to be able to decode, make meaning from, and interrogate text, while gee separates the word choice and the explicit language use, or the little “d”, with the societal and historical beliefs, values, and contexts, or the big “d” (gee, 1999). we leverage the notion of big “d” and little “d” discourse as a tool that simultaneously infuses decoding with context. we apply these notions in our guide for educators in questions such as, ‘who holds the power?’, ‘who is being dominated?’, and ‘is power supporting one group over another?’. as scholars, educators, and lifelong learners, we assert that cda is a tool for all humans to use in their anti-oppressive, anti-racist journey. this article provides a guide for educators to use cda to analyze the ways in which our teaching, behavioral practices, and interactions with students contribute to the perpetuation of exclusionary ideology; through interrogating ourselves and our actions within school spaces, we learn how to do and be better. applying critical discourse analysis: how can teachers use cda? cda gives educators a structured way to uncover and transform conditions of inequality in order to intentionally create classrooms that interrupt the status quo (mullet, 2018). in helping teachers zero in on what language and actions in their classroom perpetuate the ‘isms’ in our society, it gives educators a sense of agency over those disrupting oppressive systems that often feel too big to disrupt. the power of cda is that it can be used anywhere that language and discourse lie. we encourage educators to use cda in analyzing their teaching and behavioral approaches (examples: lessons, assessments, class discussions, behavior logs, behavior referral forms, behavior plans, student support plans), their daily interactions with students and families (examples: transcriptions of family teacher conferences, teacher team meetings, interactions with students, phone calls with families), and as a teaching tool to help build students’ critical media literacy. while “there exist no comprehensive ‘guides’ for frameworks for conducting cda” (mullet, 2018, pg. 138), we build on gee’s (1999) idea of closely attending to language while simultaneously examining power ideologies to create a step-by-step guide for educators and students to use cda. the guiding questions of “how is it [power] being produced, reproduced, and consumed?” and “what is the social and historical context?” were central to the construction of our guide and its prompting questions (reyes, 2021). figure 1 is the step-by-step educator guide to cda. then, below the figure, we use the cda guide to deconstruct and analyze an education policy from vermont, united states as an example on how to use the guide. murray & desrochers current issues in comparative education 132 figure 1 step-by-step educator guide to cda step guiding questions step 1: choose the artifact -does this artifact have potential for us to uncover messages of power and inequity in this artifact? -who is the author? -who is the audience? step 2: leverage a critical framework -what is the context of my artifact? will that help me choose a framework (s) to leverage? (examples: critical disability studies, critical race theory, discrit, critical feminist theory) -what lens, or lenses, do i want and/or need to take to analyze? step 3: discourse analysis: little “d” -are words repeated throughout the text? which ones and how often? (word cloud) -is there a pattern among repeated words? -are there words that show possession, or ‘us’ v ‘them’? (our, their, mine) -are there words that show the opinion of the author? -is there use of subjective language? is there evidence of author separation? (they, them versus we, our) step 4: discourse analysis: big “d” -what is the societal and historical context of this artifact? -what historical events and eras connect to your theoretical framework and your artifact (example: for crt, civil rights, slavery, jim crow era)? -what current events connect to your theoretical framework and artifact (example, for crt, killing of george floyd and breonna taylor, black lives matter protests being seen as violent despite being mostly peaceful (kishi & jones, 2020), police brutality)? -is power supporting one group over another? -how does this lead to inequality? -is there evidence of constructed power? -who has the constructed power? -who holds the power and who is being dominated? -is the power being shared? -how is power being produced, reproduced, and consumed? applying critical discourse analysis in the classroom current issues in comparative education 133 step 5: implications for reconstruction and action -where is there space for anti-oppressive language? -where is there space to use language of inclusion rather than language of separation (our, we)? -how can i incorporate more inclusive language? -where is there space to intentionally share power? -how could i share power? -where is there space to eliminate evidence of hierarchy? how could that happen? what actions do you need to take? -where is their space to empower the group that has been historically dominated? what can i do to empower those groups? step 1: choose the artifact the first step is choosing the text or discourse that you are interested in deconstructing. this can be an excerpt, a literary piece, a transcription of speech, or any other form of language. for teachers, this may be a rubric, a lesson plan, an email, a transcription of conversation, lecture notes, or a piece of curriculum. for our example, we are using a model policy written by the vermont agency of education (2016). we choose this artifact specifically because of the content, “roles and responsibilities in vermont school systems.” this content has historical implications of power in governance, and we predict will have clear messages of inequities upon deconstruction. figure 2 vermont agency of education sample policy murray & desrochers current issues in comparative education 134 step 2: leverage a critical framework after choosing our artifact to examine, we then explore the frameworks that we have chosen to leverage. we encourage educators to use critical frameworks, in that the “critical” nature aligns with the interrogation of power messages that we aim to explore. for this step, we encourage educators to lean on the little “d” and big “d” concept (gee, 1999). these two focus on discourse, the little “d”, as in the explicit language use (grammar and words), and the big “d” as messages or cues of societal and historical beliefs and values (gee, 1999). critical disability studies, critical race theory, dis/ability critical race studies, and critical feminist theory, are critical frameworks that can support educators in making invisible walls visible, and in beginning to break down these barriers for students and society. note that multiple frameworks can be leveraged simultaneously while performing cda on a specific artifact. we begin the process by examining the context of the written policy to guide our lens. given that vermont is a predominantly white state with predominantly white schools, indicating hypersegregation, we utilize critical race theory (crt) when interrogating this policy. crt acknowledges how engrained racism is in the fabric of our society, so much so, that racist discourse is normalized (ladson-billings, 1998). the five tenets include the notions that: (1) racism is ever present and widespread, (2) racial progress is only allowed when it benefits whites, (3) race is a social construct created by people, (4) validating, believing, and honoring counter-narratives is crucial to disrupting oppression, and (5) whites have been benefited from law, including civil rights legislation (decuir & dixson, 2004). in our cda example, we leverage crt to give us a resolute picture of the big “d” context: the current and historical objectification of black and brown students in schools. (not sure why this part is in red?) therefore, as we begin to deconstruct the language of this policy, we will look for examples of counter-storytelling, the permanence of racism, whiteness as property and/or as desirable, the ‘mythical norm’, interest conversion, and the critique of liberalism. step 3: discourse analysis little “d” now we begin our analysis! we begin with analyzing the words and grammar, or the little “d” (gee, 1999). figure 3 represents a word cloud, a tool that aims to quantify the verbiage by using larger size font to represent words that were found more often in the artifact, and smaller font for words found less often. we encourage educators and students to use word clouds to visually quantify how certain words hold power through repetition. figure 2 (i think you mean figure 3, but not sure?) gives space to ‘teachers, goals, students(s), learning, within, across, levels, towards, schools, engage, invested, data, system, strong, towards, make’. many of these words, such as ‘strong, goals, towards, across’, historically symbolize strength in our society. we also note that words such as, ‘invested, data, goals, engage’ are often used as portrayals of success. the word ‘maintaining’ is used to assert dominance, or power, over the classroom, or students. in a school with a predominantly white teaching force, we connect this to “whiteness as property,” or predominately white teachers asserting their power over students. the phrase “knowing expectations” is another example of hierarchy represented in schools. this signifies that teachers need to respond to the expectations formed by someone in power, such as an administrator. this phrase also can imply that teachers are called upon to enforce expectations, rather than co-create expectations with students. additionally, the word ‘students’ (as opposed to adults) indicates a separation of students versus adults, which implies the students cannot be classified as adults, and therefore are inherently subordinate to adults. finally, ‘individual needs’ messages that there is a deficit or need of the individual students, rather than a deficit or need in the system. this leads applying critical discourse analysis in the classroom current issues in comparative education 135 us to the deconstruction of the big “d,” or localized and globalized messaging of power and inequality. figure 3 word cloud of sample policy step 4: discourse analysis big “d” next, we dive into the societal and historical context surrounding the artifact, or the big “d” (gee, 1999). first, the entire policy, “roles and responsibilities in vermont school systems,” encompasses school board, superintendent, principal, teacher, and advisory committee roles. we noticed the size of roles and the order of roles, with teachers and advisory committees at the bottom of the policy taking up the least amount of space, compared to the school board, and superintendent positions that are the first two roles listed in the policy, and take up the most amount of space. when thinking about the big “d” or the societal messaging, this serves as evidence as a hierarchy of importance, or significance of specific roles within the public school system. while racism is arguably the most oppressive construct that impacts education today, there is no mention of race or racism in the policy. this is evidence of interest convergence, where white people say they are committed to anti-racism yet show no evidence of that in their actions and discourse: “the most threatening racist movement is not the alt right's unlikely drive for a white ethnostate but the regular american's drive for a 'race-neutral' one. the construct of race neutrality actually feeds white nationalist victimhood by positing the notion that any policy protecting or advancing non-white americans toward equity is 'reverse discrimination” (kendi, 2019, p. 20). while the document does address the need for data informed teaching, there is no evidence of using data to close the opportunity gap, or to support students who have been and currently are disenfranchised in school. in continuation, the sentence “make decisions with consideration for system goals” shows us the prevalence and sustainment of a system that has been historically built on racist ideology, or the permeance of racism and murray & desrochers current issues in comparative education 136 white supremacy. this leads us to the possible implication of reconstruction of this role, with an actively anti-racist stance. step 5: implications for reconstruction and action finally, we move to our implications for reconstruction of the artifact (if possible) and action. we begin by looking for space to call for anti-oppressive action and language. as stated, this artifact has no mention of historically disenfranchised groups of students, which indicates a level of color-blindness. we advocate for a shift of the first bullet, from “maintaining a strong, safe, and supportive classroom climate that is conducive to learning” to “empowering a strong, physically and emotionally safe, and supportive classroom climate that is conducive to learning, especially for students who have been historically marginalized.” note, we take out “maintain” which is a word that indicates power of the beholder, to “empower” which indicates a share of power. we also use the tenets of crt to explicitly call attention to anti-racism and to name the system of oppression. for the second bullet, we suggest an alternative verb to “knowing” that indicates power, to “co-construction,” which indicates a share of power. we also offer an alternative for “move all students systematically towards ambitious goals.” we use counter-story telling as a tenant to frame our suggestion of “progress for all students, specifically those who have been historically failed by the education system towards a successful academic agency.” again, we acknowledge the systemic effect that racism has had on students, and ultimately, the systemic failure that students have had to face. below is a visual to display the shift after completing cda for each of the bullets in the artifact: figure 4 step-by-step guide to cda original artifact cda analysis reconstructed artifact (teachers are responsible for) maintaining a strong, safe, and supportive classroom climate that is conducive to learning evidence of whiteness as property (teachers are responsible for) empowering a strong, physically and emotionally safe, and supportive classroom climate that is conducive to learning, especially for students who have been historically marginalized. evidence of interest convergence possessive language evidence of power (teachers are responsible for) knowing expectations for student learning, and developing and implementing high-quality opportunities to learn that engage all learners and move all students systematically towards ambitious goals evidence of whiteness as property (teachers are responsible for) co-constructing expectations for learning and developing and implementing high-quality opportunities to learn that engages and progresses all students, specifically those who have been historically failed by the education evidence of interest convergence evidence of counter-story telling possessive language applying critical discourse analysis in the classroom current issues in comparative education 137 evidence of power system towards a successful academic agency. (teachers are responsible for) maintaining fidelity to supervisory union action plan, and make all decisions with consideration for system goals evidence of whiteness as property (teachers are responsible for) fidelity to supervisory union action plan, and collaborate in decision making that are inclusive, anti-oppressive, and goal oriented. evidence of interest convergence evidence of permanence of racism possessive language evidence of power (teachers are responsible for) using data to inform teaching and to make teaching responsive to individual needs (personalization), based upon what is best for students (as opposed to adults) evidence of whiteness as property (teachers are responsible for) engaging in datainformed cycles of inquiry that are collaborative, interdisciplinary, and holistic in order to reduce barriers for student success. possessive language evidence of power applying critical discourse analysis: how can students use cda? cda can be used as a media literacy instructional tool, as well as a literacy intervention; it can be explicitly taught to students to encourage them in making meaning of oppressive discourse, and to interrogate text and conversation as critical thinkers. critical scholars argue that there is a call for educators to offer spaces to students to critically examine texts, media, and the world around them in order to deconstruct roles of power and its role in oppression (moje & lewis, 2007). therefore, we encourage educators to use current events articles, history excerpts, close readings, songs, poetry, commercials, television shows and movies, and other literary work to guide students in exposing power structures. when we clearly see and articulate oppressive structures, we know that racism, xenophobia, ableism, homophobia, and misogyny, and their effects on our lives, are not about us as individuals. we are not the problem, the system is the problem; cda can offer students a structured way to explore that theme. specifically, cda enables students to see how the “mythical norm” is constructed, and therefore how to resist it. the “mythical norm” is “defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure” (lorde, 1984, p. 13). deconstructing and confronting the notion that this dominant identity is the ‘ideal,’ ‘normal,’ and ‘successful,’ as well as making its role in recreating power and oppression visible, helps prevent students from internalizing the thought that they are broken if their identities do not align with it. it clarifies that power and exclusion are at fault, not them, and empowers them to question and resist the perpetuation of violent oppressive systems. below is a step-by-step guide for students to learn and leverage cda in the classroom. it mirrors the one above in that the steps remain the same, but the language has been slightly altered to make it more accessible for a wider range of individuals. while we changed some language, we believe continuing to use words such as “power,”, “oppression,” and “inequity” directly with students is crucial to helping them build a critical lens. we murray & desrochers current issues in comparative education 138 encourage educators to use this as a resource or use this as a baseline to adjust for your specific context and students: figure 5 step-by-step student guide to cda step guiding questions step 1: choose the artifact -are there messages of power and inequity in this artifact? step 2: pick a context -how are some peoples’ rights being excluded? -how are some peoples’ rights being included? *consider bipoc, people with disabilities, people living in poverty, lgbtqia+ communities step 3: hunt for words -try a word cloud! -what patterns do you notice? -are there words that show the opinion of the author? step 4: think about deeper meaning -what current events are connected to our artifact? -is power supporting one group over another? applying critical discourse analysis in the classroom current issues in comparative education 139 step 5: decide on next steps -where is there space to eliminate evidence of hierarchy? how could that happen? what actions do you need to take? -where is their space to empower the group that has been historically dominated? what can i do to empower those groups? through the step-by-step guide for students, we can use cda to teach students how to critically engage in texts, media, and society to become co-conspirators in positive change. through the guide for educators, we can leverage cda to critically deconstruct our own teaching practices, decisions, and interactions to intentionally disrupt the perpetuation of power imbalances, oppression, and inequality. additional resources: what resources exist on cda, power, and oppression? as life-long researchers and our commitment to such, we never aim to deem ourselves experts of anything. we believe that to develop and strengthen critical thinking skills, one must have multiple modes of information. in addition to the example we provide in this article, we provide two examples of using cda in “leveraging the braided approach: an anti-oppressive framework for pbis'.” below are four resources that have helped us develop our capacity to use cda to deconstruct and interrogate oppressive systems: åberg, m., & olin-scheller, c. (2018). wolf cries: on power, emotions and critical literacy in first-language teaching in sweden. gender and education, 30(7), 882-898. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2017.1376041 flores, n. & rosa, j. (2015). undoing appropriateness: raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity education. harvard educational review, 85(2), 149-171. https://doi.org/10.17763/0017-8055.85.2.149 janks, h. (2013) critical literacy in teaching and research. education inquiry, 4(2), 225-242, https://doi.org10.3402/edui.v4i2.22071 rogers, r. (2011). an introduction to critical discourse analysis in education (2nd ed). lawrence erlbaum associates publishers. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203836149 authors’ positionality the power of cda pushes us to continuously reflect on our own bias and gives us a framework to confront them and better ourselves and our writing. as authors, we aim to be transparent within our learning and our identities. through studying cda and performing cda analysis on our own discourse (written, verbal, gestured), we have learned to do better. a symbolic example is the phrase “our students.” we often used this phrase in writing to show that we believe in a culture of inclusion. however, through murray & desrochers current issues in comparative education 140 learning cda, we uncovered the power that is portrayed within “our students,” showing possession of students. this is an example of how little “d,” “our” or possession and hierarchy, feeds into the big “d,” how students have been historically positioned under the authority of educators and scholars. do we have the right to claim possession over another human being? absolutely not. therefore, we shifted our discourse to refer to students as “the students” giving students ownership of themselves. we have been perpetrators of using possessive phrases such as “my class,” “my students,” “my math lesson,” “my expectation.” through cda, we have learned to shift language that reproduces inequalities and authoritative power. below are brief descriptions of how we come to the table of education and writing. monica: i identify as white latina; therefore, i have experience with the dynamic of intersection of identity and ethnicity in white america. i am a heterosexual cisgender woman which translates to freedom around my gender and sexual orientation that others have historically not had. i have also had the privilege of a higher education journey and that adds to the limitations of my understanding of poverty and educational oppression. being the daughter of an immigrant, i show up to this work with a lens of social justice, a passion for empowering underrepresented populations of students, and a fire within me to bring difficult conversations to the table. jessica: i am white; my race is a deficit to understanding racial oppression. i am a cisgender woman; while i have experience with gender oppression, i have privilege of being able to fit into gender norms. i identify as queer and have experienced oppression due to my sexual orientation. i was born with a cleft lip and palate and received title i services as a child. i grew up in a working-class family and i am a first-generation college student and have experienced economic and educational oppression. my hope is that, over time, i can support myself and others to see through a lens of social justice, recognize how oppression self-replicates, and understand how we can see, and treat, all as fully human. author note we have no known conflict of interest to disclose. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to jessica d. murray and monica c. desrochers dept. of education at jessica.murray@uvm.edu and monica.wood@uvm.edu jessica d. murray and monica c. wood are public school educators and doctoral students at the university of vermont, studying educational leadership and policies. jessica, currently a high school special educator specializing in section 504, works to provide education access to students with disabilities. monica, currently a coordinator of equity and inclusion, works to increase access for all students through reimagining school systems. as co-authors, we commit ourselves to researching, analyzing, and dismantling systems of exclusion within public education. grounded in anti-oppression, we leverage our experience in public schools to ensure our work is impactful and useful for all educators. applying critical discourse analysis in the classroom current issues in comparative education 141 references åberg, m., & olin-scheller, c. 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(1999). an introduction to discourse analysis: theory and method. routledge. hiraldo, p. (2010). the role of critical race theory in higher education. the vermont connection, 31, 53-59. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article= 1092&context=tvc janks, h. (2009). literacy and power. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203869956 kendi, i. x. (2019). how to be an antiracist. one world. kishi, r. & jones, s. (2020). demonstrations & political violence in america: new data for summer 2020. the armed conflict location & event data project. https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demonstrations-political-violence-inamerica-new-data-for-summer-2020/ ladson-billings, g. (1998). just what is critical race theory and what's it doing in a nice field like education?. international journal of qualitative studies in education, 11(1), 7-24, http://doig.org/10.1080/095183998236863. lorde, a. (1984). sister outsider: essays and speeches. crossing press. mallett, c.a. (2016). the school-to-prison pipeline: from school punishment to rehabilitative inclusion. preventing school failure, 60(4), 296-304. https://doi.org/10.1080/1045988x. 2016.1144554 milner, h. r. (2007). race, culture, and researcher positionality: working through dangers seen, unseen, and unforeseen. educational researcher, 36, 388-400. murray & desrochers current issues in comparative education 142 moje, e. & lewis, c. (2007). examining opportunities to learn literacy: the role of critical sociocultural literacy research. in c. lewis, p. enciso, & e. moje (eds.) reframing sociocultural research on literacy: identity, agency, and power (pp. 15-48). routledge. mullet, d. r. (2018). a general critical discourse analysis framework for educational research. journal of advanced academics, 29(2), 116–142. https://doi.org/10.1177/1932202x18758260 murray, j.d., & wood, m.c. (2021). leveraging the braided approach: an anti-oppressive framework for pbis [manuscript submitted for publication]. department of education, university of vermont. https://tinyurl.com/52thnh46 public broadcasting service. (2016, december 12). implicit bias: peanut butter, jelly and racism [video]. pbs. https://www.pbs.org/video/pov-implicit-bias -peanutbutter-jelly-and-racism/ taylor, c., & peter, t., mcminn, t. l., elliott, t., beldom, s., ferry, a., gross, z., paquin, s., & schachter, k. (2011). every class in every school: the first national climate survey on homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in canadian schools. egale canada human rights trust. https://egale.ca/awareness/every-class/ reyes, c. (2021, march 31). power and language [powerpoint slides]. university of vermont language policy, race, and schools blackboard: https://bb.uvm.edu/ rogers, r. 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(2002). you can’t be neutral on a moving train: a personal history of our times. beacon press. saini, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 1, winter 2022 using “positioning” theory to analyze a female school teacher’s experiences with care work during covid-19 in india: towards decolonizing feminist research ruchi saini university of maryland, college park the past few decades have been marked by growing awareness about the need to move beyond anglocentric/eurocentric epistemes, to instead engage in intellectual projects that effectively (re)present the voices and consciousness of marginalized populations (manion & shah, 2019). the term decolonizing research methodologies has thus come to acquire a central place within feminist research in the field of comparative and international education (cie), with rallying calls to foreground the complexities and uniqueness of the lived realities of women through non-hierarchical and non-dichotomous modes of meaning-making (lugones, 2010). however, methodological literature on decolonizing feminist research is largely linked to the data collection phase, with limited engagement with how to effectively analyze data once it is collected. this study demonstrates the use of positioning theory, a form of discourse analysis, as a decolonial analytical framework to investigate the micro details of a female school teacher’s experiences with care work during covid-19 in india. the analysis revealed the shifting, often contextual nature of the identities that the participant claimed for herself throughout the narrative, such as a pampered daughter, critical observer, adjusting daughter-in-law, guilty mother, and strategic choice maker. the study ends by making a case for the potential use of positioning theory towards decolonizing feminist research because of its ability to draw attention to the multiple and/or contradictory identities that participants claim for themselves throughout the discursive interaction. keywords: covid-19, care work, positioning theory, discourse analysis, decolonizing feminist research even before covid-19, women across the globe were performing a majority of the care work at home, with indian women spending maximum hours globally, next only to mexican women (oecd, 2018). the pandemic pushed billions of students out of school, intensified the care work needs of old members, and placed an inordinate burden on health services; exacerbating the already high burden of care work on women across the globe (policy brief: the impact of covid-19, 2020; power, 2020). this intensification of care work had an impact on the nature of women’s participation within the formal economy, with many dropping out of the workforce (jorge, 2019), and for those who continue to work from home during the pandemic, the responsibilities of juggling work and family simultaneously is an arduous task (alon et al., 2020). while the pandemic exacerbated women’s care work responsibilities, the sudden transition to online teaching with limited professional development had a huge impact on © 2022, saini. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(1), 41-60. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en saini current issues in comparative education 42 the millions of school teachers working across the globe. studies from across the globe reported burnout, exhaustion, increased frustration, lack of support from the organizations, and internet issues, such as lack of access and/or limited connection, as some of the challenges that school teachers faced (arora & srinivasan, 2020; joshi et al., 2020; niemi & kousa, 2020; onyema et al, 2020; pellerone, 2021; pressley, 2021; van der spoel et al., 2020). female school teachers were subsequently pushed into a space where they had to navigate the increased care work burden inside their homes with the sudden transition to online teaching. this study reports the findings based on a “positioning” analysis of the narrative of a female school teacher’s experiences with care work during the pandemic in india. the aim of this study is twofold. firstly, it seeks to go beyond a dichotomized understanding of the identities of women from the so-called “global south”1 as victims and/or rebels (mohanty, 1988) to instead explore the dynamic and contextual nature of their identities, with specific reference to a female school teacher’s experiences with care work during covid-19 in india. the study is subsequently guided by the theoretical framework of decolonizing feminist research, which goes beyond categorical, hierarchical, and dichotomous modes of knowledge-making (lugones, 2010) pervasive within anglocentric/eurocentric episteme to instead explore the complexity and uniqueness of a female school teacher’s experiences during covid-19. secondly, the study seeks to demonstrate how positioning theory, a form of discourse analysis, can be used as a viable methodology towards the aim of decolonizing feminist research within the field of comparative and international education (cie) because of its emphasis on the multiplicity of ongoing, fleeting positionings during the discursive interaction (deppermann, 2013, p. 4). narratives within positioning theory are seen as imaginative spaces where participants exercise agency in drawing up their own position vis-à-vis the master narratives (pre-existing socio-cultural forms of interpretation) that seem to position them (bamberg & andrews, 2004b). positioning theory thus provides a useful analytical lens to investigate the “micro details” of the participant’s identity as it is shaped from moment to moment within her narrative (bucholtz & hall, 2005, p. 591). the specific research questions that the study seeks to answer are as follows: 1. how does a female school teacher from india position herself and others when narrating episodes linked to care work during covid-19? 2. how is the participant’s identity as a caregiver expressed in the narrative she tells about the pandemic? an understanding of how the teacher positions herself, as well as those around her, will not only contribute to limited existing knowledge about the impact of the pandemic on care work responsibilities of female teachers but also draw attention to the micro-details of the identities that the participant claims throughout the narratives (bucholtz & hall, 2005), instead of a singular, monolithic understanding of it. going forward, the paper has a specific structure. i start with highlighting the key theoretical and methodological aspects linked to scholarship centered around care work and women in the so called “global south,” followed by an elaboration of the salient features of “positioning” theory and “decolonizing” feminist research. after that, i discuss the method used for data collection and analysis, followed by a positioning analysis of 1 the term “global south” includes the regions of latin america, asia, africa, and oceania. it is usually used to denote regions outside europe and north america that are politically and culturally marginalized (dados & connell, 2012, p.12) towards decolonizing feminist research current issues in comparative education 43 five extracts from the interview. the study ends by arguing for the potential of positioning theory as an analytical tool towards decolonizing feminist research in the field of cie. women and care work within feminist scholarship: an essentializing account care work refers to the non-market, unpaid activities carried out by individuals inside the households, and includes both direct care, such as feeding a baby, and indirect care work, such as cooking, cleaning, or fetching water (jorge, 2019). according to a 2018 report by the international labor organization (ilo), globally women spend more time in unpaid care work than men, with the difference being the highest in asia and the arab states (addati et al., 2018, p.58). this unpaid care work is closely linked to the sustainment of the formal, paid economy, as well as the household economy. another 2019 report by ilo (charmes, 2019) draws attention to how the provision of unpaid care work by women plays a key role in determining whether they can access employment, their progress within the job-market, as well as the quality of jobs they perform. the gendered nature of care work and its impact on women’s professional work has been a topic of interest to feminist scholars as early as the 1980s. however, the bulk of empirical literature on the intersection between care work and professional work in the 1980s focused on women’s experiences within the global north (bundlender, 2007), with research on the global south conducted mostly at the theoretical and/or conceptual level. for instance, moser’s (1993) seminal book gender planning and development: theory, practice, and training, which draws attention to the “triple burden” (p.27) of performing the productive, reproductive, and community roles faced by women in most low-income households within the global south, is based on secondary literature and the author’s personal experiences from working in the field of international development and does not include the voices of women that it claims to speak for. while the global north continues to be the center of production, as well as the subject of a majority of the empirical literature on the gendered nature of care work, there have been several studies on care work in the past two decades that focus on countries within the global south such as india, indonesia, nepal, and tanzania. most of these studies are quantitative in nature, where authors synthesize data from existing national level timeuse surveys to quantify the gendered nature of care work performed by women and provide recommendations based on the findings (hirway & jose, 2011; floro and komatsu, 2011; fontana & natalie, 2008). while providing valuable data about the division of labor between genders in terms of the relative hours spent on activities, these studies are limited in their ability to provide insight into the lived experiences of the female participants. even in the case of qualitative and/or mixed-methods studies, researchers tend to present an essentializing picture of women as oppressed victims of patriarchy who lack agency, instead of a localized and in-depth engagement with how they understand, experience, and negotiate with the essentially gendered phenomenon of care work. for instance, chopra and zambelli (2017) make use of quantitative surveys and semi-structured interviews along with a visual participatory toolkit with participants across sixteen research sites in four countries (india, nepal, rwanda, and tanzania) to conclude that the “drudgery” of care work leads to the “depletion” of women’s time and energy across all the four research sites (p. 42). along similar lines, marphatia & mousie (2013) employ results from time-use diaries by men (n=48) & women (n=106) in nepal along with discussions to draw attention to how societal norms push women into the “marginalized” saini current issues in comparative education 44 (p. 589) position of caregivers and nurturers, which in turn has a negative impact on their professional and personal lives. the point being made is not that care work is not oppressive, but rather that the methodologies typically used to study women’s experiences with care work provide limited engagement with how the participants experience and navigate the phenomenon. instead, they tend to colonize—defined as the discursive tendency within anglocentric/eurocentric feminist research to present women from the global south as a “singular, monolithic subject” (mohanty, 1988, p. 66)—the complexities and conflicts that characterize the lives of these women. in the specific context of female school teachers, studies in the past have drawn attention to the negative impact of care work responsibilities at home on teachers’ professional lives (erdamar & demirel, 2014; noor & zainuddin, 2011). of equal significance is the phenomenon of the extension of their care work responsibilities from the familial to the professional spaces due to the gendered expectation to perform proxy roles of “mothers” inside the classroom (cortina and san, 2006). the pandemic not only revealed the extent to which the daily functioning of families, communities, and the formal economy is dependent on women’s invisible work (policy brief: the impact of covid-19, 2020, p. 6), but also the central role played by female school teachers in providing a quality learning atmosphere to students (falk et al., 2019). while there has been renewed interest in exploring the intersections between women’s unpaid care work responsibilities at home and professional lives during covid-19, the majority of the existing empirical literature is based on real-time surveys conducted during the pandemic in the global north (andrew et al., 2020; sevilla & smith, 2020; xue & munn, 2021). additionally, limited research exists about female school teachers’ experiences with care work at home and online teaching. this study seeks to fill these two research gaps by generating new knowledge about the lived experiences of a female school teacher with increased care work responsibilities during covid-19 in india. through the demonstration of the use of positioning theory, the study also provides a methodological roadmap for feminist researchers seeking to explore the dynamic, contextual, and multifaceted nature of the identities of their participants. positioning theory as a tool for decolonizing feminist research in her seminal article under western eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourses (1988), mohanty highlights the problematic nature of using the term “women” as a stable category of analysis within feminist analysis, and the subsequent tendency to conflate the category of “women” with subordination without paying attention to the socio-economic context within which they are located. with specific reference to care work, she draws attention to how concepts like sexual division of labor, family, marriage, etc. are used within feminist discourse without considering the local, cultural, and historical contexts in which they take place. spivak (1988) echoes similar sentiments when she draws attention to how, when it came to the prevalent discourses surrounding the hindu indian practice of sati2at the time, one never got to encounter the real-life testimonies of women’s voiced consciousness. their voices were either appropriated by the british colonizers to justify colonization, something that spivak (1988) refers to as an instance of “white men 2 sati or suttee was a historical hindu practice followed in india where the widow sacrificed herself by sitting on top of her deceased husband’s funeral pyre. it was banned by the british colonial administration in 1829. towards decolonizing feminist research current issues in comparative education 45 saving brown women from brown men” (p. 269), or by indian nativists who essentially claim that “the woman actually wanted to die” (p. 297). decolonizing feminist research refers to a process whereby the researcher contextualizes, problematizes, and negotiates with the prevalent colonial discourses (master narratives) that position third-world women via the use of essentializing analytical categories, such as victims, dependents, and rebel. it involves going beyond analytical binaries that continue to predominate western feminist thought, to instead account for the “uncertainties, ambiguities, and contradictions” (manning, 2021, p. 2) that define the existence of women from the global south. and such a pursuit calls for new and nuanced research methodologies that enable the feminist researcher to accurately (re)present the voices of the female participants in the study without imposing subjective forms of consciousness on them. positioning theory’s focus on conceptualizing identity as discursively constructed (norton & toohey, 2011) and an emphasis on how individuals engage in the social positioning of self (reflexive positioning) and one another (interactional positioning) within interactions, can be seen as providing a useful tool towards the purpose of decolonizing feminist research. davies and harré (1990) define positioning as the “discursive process whereby selves are located in conversations as observable and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced storylines” (p. 48). positioning can be seen as a metaphor through which a researcher can “compendiously collect” (van langenhove & harré, 1999, p. 17) key information about a person’s moral and personal attributes. instead of essentializing accounts of identities as a zero-sum game via the use of macro-categories, positioning theory focuses on the “emergent” and “dynamic” nature of identities which are relationally constructed within an interaction. it rejects the notion of identity as a set of static and immutable traits inherent within the individual self (nikolaou & sclafani, 2018), and instead investigates the “micro details” of the participants’ identity as it is shaped from moment to moment within interaction (bucholtz & hall, 2005, p. 591). subsequently, self and identity within positioning theory are under constant revision and interactively renegotiated throughout the discursive interaction (bamberg, 2004a) positioning theory can thus be seen as providing a de-colonial lens to understand a female school teacher’s experience with care work during covid-19 via a focus on how she positions herself, and those around her, linguistically throughout her narratives. in other words, the focus is on understanding the subject positions that she claims for herself throughout the discursive interaction, instead of the subject positions bestowed on her by the researcher and/or the society. as burr (1995, p. 141) points out: discourses provide us with conceptual repertoires with which we can represent ourselves and others. they provide us with ways of describing a person… each discourse provides a limited number of slots for people… these are the subject positions that are available for people to occupy when they draw on this discourse. a subject position is created when people use language to negotiate positions for themselves (davies & harré, 1990), either from the available conceptual repertoires or invent new ones. subsequently, participants can be seen as both positioned by existing discourses, as well as creators of new discourses throughout the interaction. this positioning occurs in reference to relevant ideological and cultural factors in addition to social and power hierarchies (beeching et al., 2018). positioning theory thus provides the feminist researcher with an analytical toolkit to make sense of how individuals (especially saini current issues in comparative education 46 from marginalized communities) position themselves in reference to the master narratives that define them through macro-categories such as victims, rebels, oppressed, passive, etc. data and analysis data collection a specific form of narrative inquiry called episodic narrative interviews, which includes features from narrative inquiry, semi-structured interview, and episodic interviews (mueller, 2019), was used to elicit “bounded stories” (p. 2) from a female school teacher about her experience with care work during covid-19 in india. unlike the typical question response mode within other types of qualitative interviews, narratives prioritize the storyteller’s perspective instead of the interviewers (anderson & kirkpatrick, 2016, p. 632). they are thus particularly suited for an explorative research study (fraser, 2004) such as this one, which seeks to analyze a relatively under-explored research area to produce new ideas and hypotheses (swedberg, 2020, p. 18). the episodic narrative interview lasted for an hour and a half via zoom, and the audio recording was saved with the participants’ permission. within episodic interviews, the researcher requests that the informants share small stories that are targeted and focused in nature, which helps mitigate the “anything goes” (mueller, 2019, p. 2) approach standard within narrative research (for the interview protocol, see appendix-i on p. 34). the participant was recruited via purposive sampling, with the delimiting criteria being that she be a) female b) school teacher c) married with children, and d) her school transitioned to online teaching during the pandemic. the literature review revealed that once children are born, the amount of care work done by women increases substantially, leading to what addati et al. (2018) refer to as the “motherhood employment penalty” (p. 38). due to the limited scope of the study and the desire to focus on an information-rich case, a married female school teacher whose baby was born during the pandemic was selected for the study. while the interview was conducted in english, there were some instances of code-switching between english and hindi by the participant. the teacher’s responses could be categorized into three broad categories of data types: 1. big stories: “a coherent temporal progression of events… a plotline that encompasses a beginning, a middle, and an end, conveys a particular perspective and is designed for a particular audience who apprehend and shape its meaning” (ochs and caps, 2001). 2. small stories: “an umbrella-term that captures a gamut of under-represented narrative activities, such as tellings of ongoing events, future or hypothetical events, shared (known) events, but also allusions to (previous) tellings, deferrals of tellings, and refusals to tell” (bamberg, 2004a). 3. participant’s reflections on aspects such as what being a mother and/or professional means for her. data analysis the data analysis was divided into three stages: translation and transcription of interviews. firstly, those parts where the participant made use of code-switching in hindi were translated into english, following which the interview was transcribed by the author. since the aim of the study was to understand and analyze how the participants position themselves and those around them via linguistic means, “edited” or “clean verbatim” transcription was used. clean verbatim transcription does not capture towards decolonizing feminist research current issues in comparative education 47 paralinguistic features of talk such as symbols and gestures, which were not needed for a positioning analysis of this narrative. selecting relevant data. as discussed in the previous section, the data received could be divided into three types: big stories, small stories, and participant reflections and musings on concepts such as caregiving, motherhood, being a female professional, etc. while all three types of data were analyzed, any data that did not deal with participants’ experiences with caregiving (before or during the pandemic) was not included for positioning analysis. analysis of selected data using bamberg’s (2004a) “three-level positioning” framework. bamberg’s (2004a) three-level positioning was employed to analyze the participants’ narrative. positioning level 1 within the framework addresses the question who are the characters and how are they positioned in the story? the focus in this stage was on a fine-grained linguistic analysis of the means used by the speaker to establish the characters in their story. positioning level 2 addresses the question how does the speaker/narrator position himself/herself vis-à-vis his interlocutors? and focused on the interactive work accomplished between the participants (myself and the teacher) during the interview. it seeks to answer the question of why a story is told at a particular time (blix et al., 2015, p. 171). finally, positioning level 3 focuses on how the informants position themselves vis-à-vis the normative discourses around them (bamberg, 2004a) and addresses how the episodes and short stories are “situated in relation to the social and cultural processes beyond the immediate telling situation” (blix et al., 2015, p. 171). this can be seen as the final stage, where the researcher seeks to understand how participants answer the who am i? question throughout the interview (blix et al., 2015). participant: disha sahni (pseudonym) disha sahni is a thirty-three-year-old female school teacher who gave birth to a baby boy three months after the indian government imposed a nationwide lockdown on 25 march 2020. at the time of the interview (june 2021), she had been married for three years and lived in a one-bedroom apartment in west delhi with her husband, who is also a school teacher. she responded to a call i posted on social media soliciting participants for a larger study analyzing female school teachers’ experiences with care work, covid-19, and online teaching in india. she teaches biology to grade-x students at a government-aided school in new delhi, which transitioned to online teaching as soon as the lockdown was announced. the approximate annual income of her family is inr 1,000,00, which can be classified as middle-income as per the pew research centre (kochhar, 2015). 3 her school charges an average monthly fee of inr 3500 and caters to students from middle-income families. disha was on paid maternity leave and resumed teaching online classes in september 2020, three months after her baby was born. prior to the pandemic, she had a house-help who came to her home twice a day to wash the utensils, clean the home, and do the laundry. however, the lockdown in india led to the mass exodus of migrants working in cities, such as disha’s house-help, to their native villages (slater & masih, 2020). in the 3 according to the pew research centre, the annual income for a middle-income family of four falls in the range of $14,600 $29, 200 (inr 1,022,000-inr 2,044,000) and the annual income of a low-income family of four falls in the range of $ 1,920$ 14,600, (inr 1,34,00inr 1,022,000) (kochhar, 2015). saini current issues in comparative education 48 absence of her house help, disha had to perform all the domestic chores, while also looking after her newborn and teaching online classes. a three-level positioning analysis given below is an extract from a big story that disha shared, along with its positioning analysis. this extract has been chosen because of the light it sheds on how she positions her husband, immediate family (mother), as well as, extended family (mother-in-law), and friends across her narratives about care work and online teaching. four additional extracts (extract-ii, iii are short stories, iv is a big story & v is a participant reflection) are also referred to when carrying out the positioning analysis of extract-i to provide additional corroborating evidence. i=interviewer // //overlapping talk d= disha * *translation in english …= long pause (more than 3 seconds) extract-i this question was asked in response to disha’s earlier comments that she found it surprising that her husband regularly helped her with household chores, despite being married for three years. ican you think of any incident when you were surprised (during the pandemic) that your husband did that, you know like just in terms of household responsibilities, can you think of any incident? d 1. maybe not during the pandemic but like it has been more than three years now…and 2. since the beginning he has a habit of doing household chores, and he is very good at 3. managing the responsibilities at home…like he is a perfect family man, you can 4. say and like before marriage, people used to like tell me… “बेटा अभी तो करते हैं सब 5. बोलते हैं, बाद मैं नहीं करते!” *child, before marriage, all men say that they will help the 6. woman but do not do it later*. i never used to say anything because, i also… 7. was…like in doubt will he be doing it or not because i saw men usually don’t do 8. before marriage they say, but then at the back of my mind somewhere i felt he had a 9. habit because… he had been staying alone like since childhood, he had a habit of 10. doing it like cooking, managing, and everything… he had a habit of doing it, so yes, 11. after marriage, it was a surprise for me that he is still doing it, in fact, he does it 12. better than me. i//laughs// d 13. i was like, i was the youngest child at home, ok. i have an elder brother, so i was the 14. pampered one and my mother… she never forced me to do all this, so…in 15. fact i feel that people should have this habit because later on it was difficult for 16. me, ok...to manage all the household responsibilities…ok, but i am doing (smiles)... i 17. am happy doing it…i love doing it (slight laugh)…i love to keep my home clean and 18. everything is in place so i love doing that i-//hmmm// towards decolonizing feminist research current issues in comparative education 49 positioning level i: who are the characters and how are they positioned in the story? her husband is the central character in the first part of extract-i (line1-12), as well as, throughout the interview. in this excerpt, all the other characters can be seen as either evaluating him (people who caution her, disha herself), or are positioned in opposition to him (other men-line 7). through the use of positive qualifiers such as very good (line-2) and perfect family man (line-3), and the admission that she was surprised (line-11) that he continued to do household chores even after marriage, disha positions him as an unusual/atypical man. while men usually don’t do (line-7) housework, he had a habit (line-10) of doing it since a young age and continued to help her throughout the pandemic. in fact, she says, he does it better than her (line-12). the second prominent character in the story is herself. through the use of the term pampered (line-14), as well as the claim that unlike all the other men her husband is better at household chores, she positions herself as somewhat different than other girls when young, and also from other women when she gets married. the term pampered is also culturally loaded, and to disha, the fact that her mother never forced her to do household chores is seen as being pampered. and in saying this, she positions her mother as loving and caring. the third character in the story, who are referred to throughout the interview, are the people (line-4) who caution her about men’s lackadaisical attitude towards care work after marriage. the fact that disha characterizes them as people instead of giving them specific names, leads us to believe that there were several such individuals who come to occupy the abstract, faceless, and plural category of people. this faceless collective of people resurface throughout her narratives, imparting nuggets of wisdom and unsolicited advice, whether it is about men’s attitude towards care work after marriage or how best to perform her role as a mother with perfection. at another point in the interview, when sharing her experiences with taking care of a new born baby during the pandemic, disha commented: extract-ii 19. people will say, that don’t give bottle, it will spoil him, or they will be people (who 20. will say) give bottle! it will spoil him. there are both kinds of people…like you give 21. him bottle he will not be able to go to school and he will stick to you, this and that. 22. like there were pressures from both sides throughout the interview, the abstract category of people are positioned as having more wisdom than disha and playing the role of advisors. by not saying anything and having doubts about her husband (extract-i, line 6), disha aligns her positionality before marriage with those of the people. like them, she also did not believe her husband when he said he will help her with domestic chores after marriage. she believed in what she saw (extract-iline 7), instead of what men say (extract-i line 8) before marriage and in doing so, she positions herself as a critical observer rather than a passive recipient of the advice given by those around her. however, in extract-ii, these people are seen as a source of stress who put pressure on her from both the sides (which refers to her and her husband’s extended family) and offer unsolicited advice on how best to raise a child. positioning level ii: how does the speaker/narrator position himself vis-à-vis their interlocutors? because an episodic narrative interview involves minimal to no interruption by the interviewer, except for providing prompts to help the participants share narratives or posing follow-up questions based on the narratives (jovchelovitch et al., 2000), the bulk of the discursive interaction involved short and big stories shared by disha. nonetheless, saini current issues in comparative education 50 there were two instances where she positioned herself in reference to me. it is important to point out here that like her; i am also a married woman of color from india and have taught across schools in new delhi for six years before moving to the us to pursue a graduate degree. in both instances, she emphasizes the similarity of our experiences as daughter in-laws, mothers (or potential mothers), and/or wives within the indian society. given below is an excerpt where she talks about the challenges she faced in terms of division of household labor with her husband when her mother-in-law came to visit during the pandemic: extract-iii d 23. also, my mother in-law was there in between and then uhh…obviously i cannot ask 24. my husband to do everything, although he was doing, but then you know how mother 25. in-laws are? i//laughs// 26. yes, i know d-//laughs// 27. so there was an increased pressure on me, although my husband said i am not 28. pressurizing you for anything, but then … also there is a guilt. you know… 29. the guilt is very much there. when, like, if my husband is taking care of the baby all 30. alone, then it makes me feel guilty. i have to be there with him. the extract draws attention to how the shift in kinship structures for women after marriage in india have a negative impact on them because of existing power differentials between the mother and daughter in-law (gupta & negi, 2021). however, instead of discussing the specific challenges she faced with her mother-in-law, disha relies on what she feels is our common experience as daughter in-laws within the indian society. by stating, “you know how mother in-laws are?” (extract-iii, line 25), she universalizes her challenging experiences with her mother in-law, as well as extenuating her from any potential blame for the challenges she caused. to disha, her mother in-law is like every other mother in-law in india, including my own. elsewhere, as she talked about her desire to look after her newborn son with minimal interference from the extended family, she added “you may also experience later on, you are planning no.., to deal with your baby your way.” here, she places emphasis on the similarities of our identity as mothers (or a prospective mother in my case). it is interesting to note that, unlike the previous section where she positions herself and her husband as atypical, in this extract she places emphasis on the universality of her experiences as a daughter in-law and a mother when positioning herself in reference to me. positioning level iii: how does the speaker/narrator position themselves vis-à-vis the normative discourses around them? disha’s narrative must be analyzed against the backdrop of the patriarchal and patrilocal society of india where marriage shifts a woman from her natal family to being a part of her husband’s household (gupta & negi, 2021), and where women continue to shoulder the major burden of household chores (oecd, 2018). it should also be understood against the often essentializing image within western feminist discourse of women from the towards decolonizing feminist research current issues in comparative education 51 global south as victims of patriarchy in need of saving (mohanty, 1988; spivak, 1988). disha’s positioning of the self as pampered because she was not forced to engage in domestic duties as a child, her husband’s positioning as unusual since he helps with household chores, and her mother in-law’s positioning as a typical indian mother in-law occurs in the specific context of the socio-cultural milieu that she inhabits as a daughter, wife, mother, and a daughter in-law. the normative discourse around disha, as gleaned from what people tell her (extract-i, line-4) and official statistics, is that women perform household chores and men do not. and while disha placed emphasis on her husband’s help with domestic chores both before and during the pandemic throughout the interview, she also shared that at the end of the day, she was the one primarily responsible for taking care of the baby. extract-iv 31. of course, my husband was a big support (during online teaching)… like he would 32. feed the baby, get up in the middle of his classes, you know. but still, when you are at 33. home your attention is divided, no matter how supportive your husband is…like 34. there was incident when we had a mock exam and i made a slight mistake. i never did 35. that before because i cross-check everything. but then while i was conducting the 36. exam my baby was in front of me and i had to see him… so, i made a slight 37. mistake. i was crying because i never expected it. so yes, because of my household 38. responsibilities and with a small baby who has just started walking, crawling, it has 39. been difficult (to teach). but what can you do?... ruchi, see, there are so many types 40. of work you do, you can, you know replace them with someone else, there is a 41. substitution. but here (looking after an infant), there is no substitution, ultimately it 42. will come to you and you have to take care. in this extract, disha sets up a contrast between her past professional self before the pandemic, who never made mistakes and “cross-checks everything” (line-35), and the present professional self whose “attention is divided” (line-33) due to her baby. however, as opposed to her professional role as a teacher, where “there is a substitution” (line-40), disha positions her role as a mother as being irreplaceable. she views herself as the primary caregiver for the baby, a role that only she can perform in the world. disha’s rhetorical question “what can you do?” (line-39), when talking about the blurring of her personal and professional responsibilities during the pandemic, serves two purposes. firstly, it conceptualizes the challenges faced by professional mothers during the pandemic as inevitable because of the “irreplaceable” nature of their roles as mothers. and secondly, it betrays an almost fatalistic acceptance of the phenomenon of increased childcare responsibilities on professional mothers because of a child’s increased dependence on them. disha presents this increased dependence of children on mothers, as compared to fathers, as a universal truth not up for debate. subsequently, she can be seen positioning herself as somewhat accepting of the normative assumptions surrounding the gendered division of labor among spouses, especially when it comes to childcare. at the end of the interview, i asked disha the possible reason for the guilt she faces when her husband takes care of the baby in front of her mother-in-law, to which she replied extract-v d 43. there could be two reasons, like why i feel guilty if my husband is doing all alone 44. and i am not there with him, i think it is more of it is…natural human tendency…it is saini current issues in comparative education 52 45. not based on gender…and second thing, uhh, like my mother in law, she…in fact my 46. mother also, although i may not look at her with that perspective, but they have, like 47. they are from a different generation and you may not be able to make them 48. understand all those thing ok, which you from the current generation uhh…are aware 49. of and understand…right? i 50. yaa d 51. so it is better, what to say…to compromise maybe. to compromise and not going 52. into that…changing the mindset thing…especially if your husband is supportive! similar to the previous extracts, where disha characterized the challenging experiences with her mother-in-law (extract-iii) and the increased child care responsibilities during the pandemic (extract-iv) as a universal phenomenon, she conceptualizes the guilt she faces when her husband looks after their child as a natural human tendency and universal instead of being linked to her gender socialization as a woman. further, when talking about her mother and mother in-law, she positions them as belonging to a different generation who lack the capacity to understand the perspective of those from the new generation like her. she makes a strategic choice to “compromise” (line-39) with them instead of trying to change their mindset (line-40), because of her belief that she will “not be able to make them understand” (line-48), as well as her husband’s support (line-52). she can thus be seen as “strategically” positioning herself as accepting of the normative discourses surrounding care-work and professional work to avoid conflict, even if she might not agree with them. discussion the paper set out to understand how a female school teacher from india positioned herself in her narratives about care work during the pandemic, as well as how her identity as a caregiver was expressed within the narratives. bamberg draws attention to how, through the choice of discursive devices from existing repertoires, speaking subjects face an agency dilemma (2011a), which refers to “the apparent contradiction between the speaker as positioning him-/herself as agent and the societal, socio-cultural constraints seemingly ‘always & already’ at work positioning the subject” (p. 10) . at one end of the continuum of this dilemma then, speakers choose discursive markers that tend to position themselves as less influential, powerful, responsible, and blame worthy, and at the other end of the continuum, they position themselves as agentive self-constructors through discursive markers that position themselves as strong, in control, and self-determined (bamberg, 2011b). when it comes to disha’s self-positioning within the narratives, the distinction between the two ends of the continuum is constantly obfuscated. when she chooses not to speak up against the people who cautioned her about men’s lack of involvement with care work after marriage (extract-i), or feels stressed out because of their unsolicited advice on how to raise a child (extract-ii), or accepts the gendered differential in child care responsibilities (extract-iii), or talks about not wishing to change her mother-in-law’s mindset (extract-iv), she can be seen as choosing discursive markers (not saying anything, feeling pressured, compromising) that position herself as less influential and powerful. towards decolonizing feminist research current issues in comparative education 53 however, she also positions herself as a critical individual who makes strategic choices that she views as benefitting her, instead of a powerless, less influential figure throughout the narrative. in extract-i, she chooses not to speak out because as a critical observer she agrees with the assessment of those people, in extract-iv she chooses to give importance to her role as a mother over that of a professional since she views the former as irreplaceable, and in extract-v she chooses to compromise with her mother-in-law because of her husband’s support, as well as what she sees as the futility of the endeavor. in all the cases, she can be seen as exercising agency, albeit of a somewhat different kind. mahmood (2011) draws attention to how the meaning and sense of agency cannot be fixed in advance but instead must be understood and interpreted in reference to the culture and society in which it is exercised. according to her, agentival capacity is exhibited “not only in those acts that resist norms, but also in multiple ways in which one inhabits norms” (mahmood, 2011, p. 15). she also cautions social science researchers against using discursive markers as a gloss for universally shared assumptions but instead focus on how they are “constitutive of different forms of personhood, knowledge, and experience” (mahmood, 2011, p. 16). subsequently, it can be said that despite the use of discursive markers typically associated with being less influential and powerful, disha positions herself somewhat as an “agentival self-constructor” who is in control of the choices she makes, even when these choices entail an acceptance of the normative discourses around her rather than challenging them. and when it comes to the expression of her identity as a caregiver within the narrative, two contrary pulls are evident throughout. on the one hand, she talks about her relative inexperience in performing household chores and her partner’s proficiency in the same (in fact he does it better than me, extract-i), and on the other hand, she talks about the feeling of guilt when her husband takes care of the baby alone, as well as, the feeling that she has to (always) be there with him (baby) (extract-iii, line 30). it would not be incorrect then to distinguish between two microdetails of her identity as a caregiver, i.e, her care work responsibilities as a wife and her caregiving responsibilities as a mother. in the case of the former, she positions herself as inexperienced and reliant on her husband’s support, whereas she sees the latter as her prime responsibility. even though her husband does not pressurize her for anything (extract-iii), she views herself as the one in charge of the baby’s responsibility (extract-iv). further, she believes this feeling is universal for mothers across the globe, instead of being linked to her gender and/or socialization (extract-iv & v). it can thus be said that while disha’s identity as a caregiver, as expressed by her, is seen as being of central importance when it comes to raising her child during the pandemic, it is not as central to her role as a wife. in the case of the former, it is the locus of her identity while in the latter, she assigns an equal status to her partner as a caregiver and care worker inside the home. limitations of the study since the findings of the study are based on the analysis of one female school teacher’s experiences with care work during covid-19, it is not possible to draw generalizations based on the findings. the participant’s positioning of the self, and those around her, is linked to her specific circumstance and will be different from the experiences of other female school teachers from india and/or the globe. however, the aim of the study is not generalizability, but instead to demonstrate how positioning theory can be used as an analytical tool for decolonizing feminist research within the field of cie. saini current issues in comparative education 54 conclusion by rejecting the notion of identity as a set of static and immutable traits inherent within the individual self (nikolaou & sclafani, 2018) and placing emphasis on the temporary roles and orientations that participants assign to themselves and others throughout the interaction, the study demonstrates how positioning theory presents a useful analytical lens for feminist researchers within the field of cie, as well as outside it, to understand the experiences of women with local and culturally contextual phenomena such as care work. the analysis revealed the shifting, often contextual nature of the identities that the participant claimed for herself throughout the narrative such as a pampered daughter, critical observer, adjusting daughter-in-law, guilty mother, strategic choice maker, and so on. positioning theory thus helped problematize the tendency to essentialize women’s experiences and identities by drawing attention to the multiple, sometimes contradictory identities that the participant claimed for herself (and those around her) in her life, a complexity that is often neglected within feminist research because of its messiness and lack of amenability to generalization. at present, when there is a renewed interest in understanding the gendered impact of covid-19 on women across the globe, as well as in the context of the continued hegemony of the western scholarly establishment in the production and dissemination of articles on this topic, it becomes important that researchers employ research methodologies that effectively re(present) the voices of their participants. abu-lughod, one of the leading feminist scholars in the middle east, asks in an essay that how might feminist scholars effectively understand and represent women’s experiences from other cultures without “misattributing to them forms of consciousness or politics that are not a part of their experience-something like feminist consciousness or feminist politics” (1990, p. 47). one of the ways to achieve this would be through a careful, locally-focused analysis of the discursive markers used by the participants throughout the narrative, along with how these markers express their identities across different contexts. the study demonstrated how such an analysis might look like for one female school teacher via positioning theory, and in doing so, contributes to the continued search for decolonizing research methodologies within feminist research. it has also contributed to positioning theory by drawing attention to its effectiveness as a methodology in (re)presenting voices of women from outside the global north in a non-essentializing and nuanced manner. acknowledgements the author has no conflicts of interest to disclose. correspondence concerning the article should be addressed to rsaini3@terpmail.umd.edu ruchi saini is a ph.d. candidate in international education policy at the university of maryland, college park. her research interests lie in the area of gender-based violence (gbv) in south asia, qualitative research methodologies, and decolonizing feminist research. references abu-lughod, l. 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(2021). gender differences in unpaid care work and psychological distress in the uk covid-19 lockdown. plos one, 16(3), e0247959. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247959 appendix-i saini current issues in comparative education 60 interview protocol phase i: introducing the interview principle my study deals with how you experienced care work responsibilities at home during the pandemic. during our interview, i will repeatedly ask you to recount situations in which you had to manage care work with online teaching during the pandemic, and how you went about it. as someone who also juggled family and work as a school teachers in india for six years, i am curious about how the pandemic impacted female school teachers in india and hence decided to conduct the study. i am interested in any stories, situations, and/or events that stood out for you. phase ii: the interviewee’s concept of the issue, and his/her biography in relation to it ii.i – high level overview of the topic 1. what does being a wife, mother, and/or daughter-in-law mean to you? 2. what do you associate with these terms? 3. what does being a school teacher mean to you? ii.ii – prompts that help them recall specific episodes in connection with the topic 1. when you look back and remember life before covid-19, how did you navigate your personal responsibilities at home and professional obligations throughout your life? 2. can you recall a specific episode in your life when reconciling care work at home with professional obligations became a matter of concern? phase iii: the meaning of the issue for the interviewee’s everyday life 1. could you please recount your day yesterday in terms of managing care-work at home? phase iv: focusing the central parts of the issue under study 1. take me back to the day when you first heard about the transition to online teaching and ensuing lockdown. what were your thoughts? 2. if you look back to the pandemic, what has your experience been like with managing care work at home? 3. could you please recount a situation during the pandemic when you were faced with the task of managing house-hold work along with professional work simultaneously? 4. were there any instances when you faced challenges when reconciling care work with professional responsibilities during the pandemic? can you think of a specific episode? 5. what strategies did you make use of during the pandemic to reconcile care work with professional responsibilities when faced with challenges? 6. could you please recount a situation when you made use of these strategies? phase v: more general, relevant topics 1. in your opinion, what impact has the pandemic had on care work and professional responsibilities of female school teachers? phase vi: evaluation and small talk 1. thank you very much for your time. was there anything that you think i should have focussed on and missed? 2. are there any other specific episodes during the pandemic while managing your personal and professional responsibilities that you might want to share? harrienger, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 innovation in times of crisis: using the covid-19 pandemic to reevaluate curricula samantha harrienger empowerment academy charter school introduction on march 13, 2020, i sat amongst my colleagues, awaiting the fate of the school year. as the dismissal bell rang, teachers were informed that classes would move online for the foreseeable future. as the covid-19 pandemic progressed, districts and administrators worked to set teachers and students up with online platforms so that learning could persist. the more tumultuous the world seemed; the more teachers were instructed to push forward with lessons under the pretense that this was a constant students were craving. the movement forward did not provide the comfort that it promised. it was an additional source of frustration for many families as they had to navigate unfamiliar technology, curriculum, assessments, and their personal lives. dissatisfaction was not unique to families; urban educators committed to combating inequities saw how adapting curriculum and assessments online perpetuated educational disparities. in other words, the attempt to keep instruction consistent as the world was collapsing around teachers and students did not accomplish its goal; instead, it shed light on the ever-growing inequalities impacting american schools. understanding the issues that plague education (e.g., achievement gaps, lack of learning materials, and access to learning) and the pandemic’s role in exacerbating them, it is important to seize the opportunity to correct the inequities that have long afflicted educational institutions. analyzing my experience teaching throughout the pandemic and research on standards-based curriculum, i will argue that schools must adapt curriculum and allow space for culturally relevant pedagogy (ladson-billings, 1995) so that students and teachers can interact with materials reflective of their classroom and society. curriculum american schools serve linguistically, culturally, and racially varied student bodies (gay, 2018; kohli, 2021; national center for education statistics, 2021). in my classroom alone, i educate students from seven countries, speaking three different languages and bringing unique cultural norms to our space. however, my school’s curricula in new jersey does not reflect the level of diversity that we experience within our school community. textbooks and lessons are often focused on the dominant culture. there is a heavy emphasis on white, eurocentric culture, which ignores other cultures and ideals (leonardo & grubb, 2019). eurocentric culture refers to the focus on westernized belief systems and societal patterns with a disregard for outside cultural norms and principles. leonardo and grubb (2019) explained the issue with a single framed curriculum noting that “...students who do not see themselves in the curriculum will not have an organic connection with schooling” (p. 19). this means that the materials are more difficult to access and comprehend as they are written in a way that can only be easily understood © 2022, harrienger. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 111-114. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en harrienger current issues in comparative education 112 by one group of students: white, middle/upper-class children. furthermore, it can cause a disconnect between groups of students and education. students who do not come from eurocentric backgrounds may feel detached from the curriculum, peers, and school altogether. coupling the myriad of curricular restraints with the pandemic, education became more difficult to access, literally and figuratively. students faced different hardships and had varying responsibilities during the pandemic, which impacted their access to learning materials (darling-hammond et al., 2020). additionally, some schools began virtual instruction immediately, while others, like my own, used paper packets to enhance student learning (darling-hammond et al., 2020). as schools adapted their curricula to an online format, there was minimal thought about how maintaining an already whitefocused curriculum online would add a layer of difficulty for linguistically and culturally diverse students. instead of taking advantage of unprecedented times and altering lessons to be responsive to students’ cultures and needs, at my school, teachers had to continue with the same standards-based lessons. doing this advanced the narrative of curriculum creation being dominated by white people (brown & au, 2014). further, teachers were required to test students’ knowledge and understanding from these lessons. forcing assessments upon students and teachers who were struggling to adapt caused unnecessary stress. students need a curriculum that they can access and understand to develop positive connections with school and learning. we know the problem, what comes next? the pandemic allowed for something that had rarely been done before. it gave families insight into the information and conversations children take part in daily. it allowed parents1 to participate in their child’s education actively. before march 2020, few schools included parents in learning spaces (alexander, 2016). even schools with “open-door policies,” like my own, seldom advertised this option. instead, the school system has seemed very “us” versus “them”school versus families. families have already been privy to what occurs during their child’s school day because of virtual learning. this affords us a unique opportunity, albeit the circumstances are not ideal. schools, which generally rely on teachers’ knowledge base, who have been trained in the execution of dominant curricula (elemore, 1996), can expand their educational understandings. instead of continuing the current cycle of knowledge production, we can use the new formats for learning and adapt the curriculum. rather than turning away parents’ commentary and ideas, we now have a platform to listen and innovate. the need for collaborative changes families and schools must work together to critique and adjust current curriculum practices. however, school personnel must make the first approach for a community’s cultures to be input into school curricula. keeping in mind parents’ busy schedules, we should attempt to meet them on their terms and in time frames that might be outside a school’s hours of operation. further, instead of meeting within the confines of a building, we can utilize online tools to video conference. over the past two years, most people have become accustomed to personal interactions through video chatting and electronic formats, so we can continue online contact instead of rushing back into “normal” communication patterns. innovation in times of crisis current issues in comparative education 113 there are numerous benefits to using online platforms. first, families who cannot attend traditional meetings because of work and life duties can now be part of the conversation. likewise, teachers and administrators who would like to be involved in the process can attend from their own homes. this takes away the stress of staying late at work and allows educators to see to their personal needs before and after the meeting. lastly, using video tools allows everyone to have a “home-field advantage.” often, when parents come to school, they may feel ostracized or defensive as they are in a space that is not comfortable to them. allowing families, and school personnel, to speak freely from their homes provides a certain sense of relief that school buildings cannot. through this, more families can express their genuine feelings and critiques of curricula to create a better one. once the initial meeting time is set, it is essential to have parameters and clear goals. parents will be made aware of what subject or learning material is being critiqued and adjusted, while teachers must enter the meeting with an amenable and reflective mindset. this is not to silence anyone but to get the group focused on what is at hand-developing a meaningful, culturally responsive curriculum. as educators, we generally take feedback critically rather than constructively. we give maximum effort in everything we do, so it can be challenging to listen to criticism; however, teachers must come with open minds to appropriately alter lessons to meet the cultures within their community. lastly, meetings should allow administrators to present data about student learning2 in an accessible way so that teachers and families can objectively assess the curriculum. after hosting sessions with parents, the district heads of curriculum should enlist the help of teachers to improve the scope and sequences for each subject and grade level. by processing recommendations from parents, teams of teachers and the department leaders should adapt the materials and information presented where feasible and find spaces where culturally relevant pedagogy (crp) fits in ladson-billings (1995). crp is an approach to teaching that empowers students to critically analyze, and review materials presented to them; it allows students to understand the lens in which materials were developed and which voices were systematically excluded. therefore, crp can be used as a tool while adjusting the curricula, teams should be finding areas where students can question the assumptions of the curriculum and think critically about the beliefs presented so that additional perspectives can be introduced into the curricula. moreover, the scopes should allow teachers time for powerful conversations about information taught to make further adjustments and develop critical thinking skills. conclusion the pandemic has provided opportunities for change and growth. using curriculums that focus on the dominant culture have a long history of under-serving culturally, linguistically, and racially diverse student bodies. instead of holding on to the past, it is vital that communities and schools collaborate to adjust the curriculum promptly. covid-19 has allowed educators to alter their approach to teaching, so we must cease the chance to make meaningful changes to the curriculum. through open, honest, and productive dialogue, curricula can begin to reflect the student bodies we interact with daily and allow genuine learning and critical thinking to occur. harrienger current issues in comparative education 114 notes [1] understanding children are raised in varying family structures (parents, grandparents, aunts/uncles, etc.) the term “parents” is used to denote anyone raising a child. [2] learning refers to knowledge gained throughout the year independent of standards. samantha harrienger is a fifth year, urban educator in jersey city, nj. she received her m.a. in sociology and education from teachers college, columbia university. her research interests include curriculum development and implementation, along with their impacts on diverse student bodies. references alexander, k. l. (2016). "is it family or school? getting the question right." russell sage foundation journal of the social sciences 2(5): 18-33. brown, a. l. & au, w. (2014). race, memory, and master narratives: a critical essay on u.s. curriculum history. curriculum inquiry, 44(3), 358-389. https:doi.org/10.1111/curi.12049 darling-hammond, l., schachner, a., & edgerton, a. k. (with badrinarayan, a., cardichon, j., cookson, p. w., jr., griffith, m., klevan, s., maier, a., martinez, m., melnick, h., truong, n., wojcikiewicz, s.). (2020). restarting and reinventing school: learning in the time of covid and beyond. palo alto, ca: learning policy institute. elemore (1996). getting to scale with good educational practices. harvard educational review, 66(1), 1-26. gay, g. (2018). culturally responsive teaching: theory, research, and practice (3rd ed.). teachers college press. kohli, r. (2021). teachers of color: resisting racism and reclaiming education. harvard education press. ladson-billings, g. (1995). toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. american educational research journal, 32(3), 465-491 leonardo, z. & grubb, w. n. (2019). education and racism: a primer on issues and dilemmas. routledge. national center for education statistics. (2021). characteristics of children & families. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/2021/cce_508c.pdfhttp://nces.ed.gov. hu, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 1, winter 2022 opportunities and challenges: an examination of educational landscape for people with visual impairment in china luanjiao hu johns hopkins university globally, increasing attention has been paid to disability inclusion in the education sector, from international development to national policymaking. discussions on inclusive education appear in various conferences, events, policy briefs, academic articles, and global reports. the 2020 global education monitoring report centralizes inclusion in education, advocates the message of “all means all”, and highlights inclusive education as its core recommendation (united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization, 2020). in the context of increasing global discourse around disability inclusion in education, how does education for people with disabilities fare at local and national levels? building on the author’s prior research experience and connection to disability rights movement in china, this study sets out to explore the educational landscape for a specific population – chinese people with visual impairments, and identifies various challenges and opportunities facing education inclusion in greater details. introduction cai lost his sight at age 10 and attended mainstream primary and middle schools in china, with the help of family members and friends who read the school learning materials to him. when cai applied for accommodation to take the national college entrance exam (cee), his request was denied and cai was not able to take the exam (china news net, 2017). hence, cai did not go to a mainstream higher education institution in china as a cee score is a prerequisite to be admitted. the chinese government issued several policies to guarantee the provision of reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities (pwd) during the national cee in the last decade. this means people with visual impairment (pwvi) like cai should be provided with reasonable accommodation if they take the cee. the breakthrough took place in 2014 as a result of years of disability advocacy (ma & ni, 2020). yet, after the policy change, data show that very few chinese students with visual impairment (especially those with blindness) are accessing mainstream higher education (see table 1 below). © 2022, hu. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(1), 96-113. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en opportunities and challenges current issues in comparative education 97 table 1 no. of overall students taking cee vs no. of students with visual impairment applied for braille paper in cee year no. of overall students taking cee no. of students with visual impairment applied for braille paper in cee 2014 9.39 million 1 2015 9.42 million 8 2016 9.4 million 5 2017 9.4 million 7 2018 9.75 million 2 2019 10.31 million 10 2020 10.71 million 5 2021 10.78 million 11 source: cai, 2017; chen, 2021 as shown in table 1, the number of students with visual impairment who have applied for braille exam paper in cee since the first implementation of reasonable accommodation in 2014 is very minimal, compared to the total number of students taking the cee in the same year. the fact that virtually no students with visual impairment are taking the cee begs the question of the reasons for such gaps. are students with visual impairment (swvi) or people with visual impairment (pwvi) not interested in advancing in educational ladder like the millions of other students do? what educational opportunities are available for pwvi in china? what is the educational attainment of pwvi relative to individuals with other disabilities and those without disabilities? what are the barriers for pwvi to access education? globally, there has been increasing attention on disability studies especially in more industrialized countries. there has also been sizable research on disability and pwd in china. significant amount of research on disability in china tends to focus on rehabilitation, education, employment, and psychological characteristics of pwd. one study showed that over one-third of all pwvi registered with china disabled persons’ federation (cdpf) in central china have clinically significant depressive symptoms (li, et al, 2013). among the studies that look at education for pwd, the majority tend to emphasize on education of pwd in separate and often a limited number of special schools, rather than in mainstream schools. pwvi in china accounted for about 18% to 20% of the world population with visual impairment (han, 2017). their illiteracy rate (78.87%) is not only much higher than that of people without disabilities (4.08%), but also higher than that of people with other types of disabilities (illiteracy rates for people with hearing and speech disability: 69.65%; people with psychiatric disability: 46.28%; people with intellectual disability: 56.25%) (first national survey of pwd, 1987)1. 1 the survey on pwd conducted in 2006 has not provided disaggregated data by disability type therefore an update on illiteracy rate of pwvi in recent years is not currently available. hu current issues in comparative education 98 triggered by the recent policies and the questions around pwvi, this study examines closely the educational opportunities for people with visual impairment (pwvi) in china, in the hope of providing an overview of the challenges and opportunities pwvi face in their educational pathway. to do so, this paper begins by laying out the guiding conceptual framework. afterwards, definition and cultural background around disability, methodology of the research, along with historical overview on the education for pwvi in china are provided to better contextualize the study. following section examines the relevant legislations and policies affecting the education of pwvi. in light of the statistics above that indicate virtually no pwvi apply for college entrance in china, the paper assesses the reasons that could be occurring, noting gaps and barriers to education. considering significant barriers, the paper concludes with opportunities for improvement. conceptual framework: models of disability disability is a controversial, evolving, and complex concept. it is socially constructed and interpreted differently by different entities. in the china context, three models of disability are commonly used: the individual model, the medical model, and the charity model of disability. these three models remain dominant in china. they not only largely reflect non-disabled people’s understanding of disability, but also affect deeply many pwd’s perceptions of themselves. while in some disability advocacy communities, the social model is accepted and promoted. the individual model sees disability as a personal tragedy (oliver, 1983, 1995). the model also includes the psychological and medical aspects of disability. the individual model locates the “problem” of disability within the individual, and sees the causes of this problem as stemming from the functional limitation or psychological losses which are assumed to arise from disability. similarly in the medical model, it is assumed that people’s disabilities are caused by their own mental or physical impairments. the focus is on the impairment aspect and doctors should be trained to cure such impairments or to alleviate their impacts. pwd are viewed as victims of a disease, a problem, and a permanent impairment. as a result, they are in need of treatment to be changed or improved so as to be “normal” (rieser & mason, 1990). the individual and medical model of disability put more emphasis and responsibility on pwd instead of being concerned with whether the state and society is being inclusive to its diverse population. lastly, the social model of disability sees disability as a social construct and lays emphasis on the social environment. compared to the functional impairment within the individual caused by physical, mental, or sensory impairment, the social model emphasizes the loss or limited opportunities of pwd to participate in the daily life of the community equally with others due to physical, social or environmental barriers (yeo & moore, 2003). to address disability, social action aimed at integrating people with disabilities into society and modifying the environment to support their full participation in all aspects of social life is required (emmett & alant, 2006; who, 2001). definition and cultural background of disability the article 2 of law of the people’s republic of china on protection of disabled persons (ldpd, 1990) defines disabled person/person with disability (dp/pwd, will be used interchangeably in this paper) as “one who suffers from loss or abnormality of a certain organ or function, psychologically or physiologically, or in anatomical structure and who has lost wholly or in part the ability to perform an activity in a normal way” (ldpd, 1990). opportunities and challenges current issues in comparative education 99 six categories of disability are recognized legally in ldpd: visual, hearing, speech, physical or intellectual disabilities, mental retardation, multiple disabilities or other disabilities. further, visual impairment (vi)2 is defined as: the impairment of both eyes or the loss of field vision in both eyes due to various reasons. the impairment cannot be fully recovered or corrected through medication, surgery or other treatments. as a consequence, the person with vi is limited in conducting work, study or other activities (china disabled persons’ federation, 2006). the legal definition of disability shows a strong influence from the medical model (zhang, 2006) and has been used for over three decades. according to the definition, about 82.96 million people in china had a disability, accounting for 6.34% of the total population (1.3 billion). among the 82.96 million pwd, about 14.86% of them reported to have vi, which was about 12.63 million. among pwvi, 89.7% are of low vision (11.33 million) and 11.8% are with blindness (1.5 million). the number of children with vi of compulsory education age (6-14) was estimated to be 130,000, accounting for 2% of the 2.4 million school age children (second national survey of pwd, 2006). disability is defined differently in different country contexts. definitions and percentages of pwd have a significant impact on national policies and supporting programs or services around disability (mitra, 2006). consequently, it is not surprising that different countries exhibit different statistics on the number of pwd and disability rates (see table 2). currently, developed countries exhibit an overall higher rate of disability prevalence compared to that of developing countries. for example, the united states has a broader definition for pwd and include more categories of disability. the americans with disabilities act (ada, 1990) defines pwd as someone who has “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; has a record of such an impairment; or is regarded as having such an impairment” (ada, 1990, sec. 12102). data from the census bureau indicated that 56.7 million people in the us had a disability in 2010, accounting for 19 % of the total population. while a recent study indicated an even higher disability rate 26.8% of noninstitutionalized us adults aged 18 years or older reported to have one or more disabilities (varadaraj et al., 2021). both rates (19% or 26.8%) are higher than the percentage of pwd in china. the individuals with disabilities education act (idea) in the u.s. listed 13 categories of disabilities (2004). notably, the inclusion of specific learning disabilities (sld) in the us likely explains the higher percentage of students with disabilities compared with that of in china where sld is not legally recognized. about 2.4 million students in american public schools are identified with sld, accounting for 42% of all students with disabilities (cortiella & horowitz, 2014; kritzer, 2012). the higher percentage along with a broader definition and more categories of disability in the us, may help contribute to a greater acceptance and awareness on pwd compared with that of china, where stigma and stereotype around disability affect pwd negatively (deng & guo, 2007). when pwd are enrolled in schools, they are not challenged or supported with the adequate resources for them to succeed (deng & guo, 2007). in regards to pwvi, the lack of awareness also prevents some parents from sending their children with vi (low vision) to special education schools for the fear of being labeled as having a disability (xu & ji, 2010). the majority of the pwd in china, about 75%, are concentrated in rural areas, according to the 2006 national survey on pwd. 2 vi includes both blindness and low vision in china. hu current issues in comparative education 100 pwd in china traditionally are referred to as “残废”(can fei), a derogatory term which translates to “disabled and useless.” today, the more commonly-used characters for disability are “残疾” (can ji). these two characters are hieroglyphics and reveal interesting etymological stories. for the first character “残” (can), the left part of the character means “death,” and the right part means “two spears or daggers.” this reveals the original meaning of “残” (can), which depicts a picture of people fighting with weapons to kill each other. today “残” (can) usually means injured, incomplete, and evil in different phrases. the second character “疾” (ji) originally depicted a picture of a person getting hit by an arrow, therefore became injured and fell ill. today, “疾” (ji) usually means illness. as a result, disabled person (dp) or persons with disabilities (pwd) in chinese are written as “残疾人” (can ji ren), meaning injured, incomplete, and ill people. on the contrary, non-disabled people in chinese are referred to as “健全人” (jian quan ren), literally translating to “healthy and wholesome people.” the chinese languages for disability and non-disability reflect a strong influence from the medical and individual model. table 2 differences between the definitions of pwd and pwvi in the us and china china (2006) united states (2010) definition of pwd one who suffers from loss or abnormality of a certain organ or function, psychologically or physiologically, or in anatomical structure and who has lost wholly or in part the ability to perform an activity in a normal way someone who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; has a record of such an impairment; or is regarded as having such an impairment. no. of pwd 82.96 million 56.7 million percentage of pwd 6.34% 19% no. of pwvi 12.63 million (89% low vision & 11% blindness) 8.1 million (census, 2010; 24.6% blindness) 7.6 million (acs, 2016; national federation of the blind) percentage of pwvi among pwd 14.86% 14% percentage of pwvi among total population 0.94% 2% total population 1.3 billion 309 million illiteracy rate among pwd 43.29% (age 15 or above) n/a methodology this study is built on the author’s prior research on disability and education in china, as well as the author’s connection and involvement in the country’s disability rights opportunities and challenges current issues in comparative education 101 movement. using key words including “visual impairment,” “education,” “special education in china,” and “blind education” to search relevant sources, the study reviews secondary data and grey literature on education for people with disabilities, and more specifically, education for people with visual impairments in china. the majority of the reviewed studies are from the recent four decades, during which access to education of all levels started to expand for individuals with disabilities in china. the study draws from existing data and research in either chinese or english language, with the majority of the sources documented in chinese. news, reports, surveys, and basic statistics on people with disabilities from different sources (e.g. china disabled person’s federation, ministry of education) are also reviewed for this research. lastly, the study also reviews documents from a long-established disabled person’s organization (dpo) named one plus one group on disability in china as well as an informal report produced by a male disability activist with blindness. these documents are shared by the dpo and by the activist himself respectively. historical context on education for pwvi this section lays out the development of educational opportunities for pwvi, including provisions at different educational levels. the idea to support and help pwd could be traced back as early as 2000 years ago in ancient china. however, public education service for pwvi or pwd was virtually non-existent until recent decades (deng & manset, 2000). there were not much expectations placed on the education of pwd in general. the history of educating pwvi started from a few initial special schools established by foreign missionaries in the late 19th century to the emergences of special schools built by chinese people in the early 20th century (deng et al., 2001; ni, 2014). the first school for the blind in china was established in beijing in 1874 by william hill murray, a missionary from the united kingdom. for a very long time between the late 19th century and mid 20th century, the only chance for pwvi to get an education was through limited number of separate special schools for the blind (wan, 2015). before the establishment of the new regime under the communist party in 1949, there were only 42 special schools nationwide with some 2000 students with various disabilities enrolled. these schools were mostly charity-based while education for pwd was far from being accepted as either commonplace or crucial (mazurek, 1994). the following three decades after 1949 did not witness any significant improvement in educating pwvi or other pwd, due to political instability and economic adversity. in 1953, there were only about 1,300 swvi enrolled in 13 special schools for the blind and 9 special schools for the blind and deaf. in 1990, these numbers increased to 2,600 swvi enrolled in 25 total special schools for the blind and 77 special schools for the blind and deaf. it was estimated that about 90% of the children with disabilities (about 130,000 children with vi of school age) did not attend school in the early 1990s (deng & manset, 2000; liu, 1997; guo et al., 1993). though the adoption of opening-up reform policies in the late 1970s and the implementation of the compulsory education law in the mid-1980s provided some impetus for the development of education for pwd including pwvi (deng & manset, 2000). the key educational development for pwvi occurred in the late 1980s when learning in regular classroom (lrc) movement started (zhao, 1993). the lrc movement greatly enhanced the enrollment of school-aged pwvi in schools, as it allowed students with disabilities (swd) to enroll in mainstream schools as their peers without disabilities. one specific project within the lrc movement was the “gold-key education plan for students with visual impairments,” (xia, 2011) which played a significant role in improving the hu current issues in comparative education 102 education access for pwvi and raising awareness for mainstream education for pwd. it was estimated that about 7,535 swvi (almost triple the number since 1990) were enrolled in various schools in 1996. about half of these students were in mainstream schools. in terms of education levels, about 80% of the enrolled swvi were concentrated in the primary school level and 20% in the junior high school level. there was a lack of senior high school for the blind prior to the 1990s. in fact, the first senior high school for blind students was not established until 1993 in qingdao, shandong province (wan, 2015). starting in 1987, a special higher education institution was established, recruiting swvi along with other students with disabilities specifically. mainstream higher education institutions only occasionally offer admissions to swd and swvi. since the mid-1980s, three options in the basic education level are available for pwvi: special education schools for the blind; special classes attached to primary schools and junior high schools; and learning in mainstream primary schools and junior high schools as followers3. in other words, educational provisions for pwvi are categorized into two tracks: special education school/classes and learning in regular classrooms as followers. similarly, pwvi have the option of going to mainstream higher education institutions or special higher education institutions (hei) at the postsecondary education level. in addition, pwvi have the option of getting higher education via online open universities (lai & lin, 2018), although there is a lack of data on the number of pwvi enrolled in this type of higher education. legislation outlining education for pwvi four main legislations guide the education of pwd and pwvi in china: the constitution (1949); compulsory education law of the people’s republic of china (1986); the law on the protection of disabled persons (1990); and regulations on the education for people with disabilities (1994, 2011, 2017). pwd and pwvi have the legal rights to access education in china. china also signed and ratified the united nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (crpd) in 2007 and 2008 respectively. crpd specifies that pwd should be guaranteed the right to inclusive education at all levels. the constitution states that the state and society should plan for the work, livelihood and education of the blind, deaf-mutes and other handicapped citizens, laying the legal foundation to guarantee pwd to access education. the compulsory education law (1986) mandates that all children are entitled to nine years of free public education, including six years of primary school education and three years of secondary school education. the compulsory education law stipulates that all schools need to accept both students with or without disabilities. however, this law does not mention education for swd in any specific details and does not mandate that schools provide accommodations to swd either (zhang, 2011). for example, swvi are usually not provided with braille and/or magnified printed learning materials in mainstream schools. the lack of accommodations in schools is supported by research conducted by human rights watch in 2013. another legislation, the law on the protection of disabled persons (lpdp) reinforces the foundation that pwd enjoy equal educational rights along with other citizens. article 21 of the lpdp states “the state guarantees the right of disabled persons to equally receive education.” it explicitly states the guiding principle for special education in article 22: 3 learning in regular classroom as followers implies that the final examination grades of the students will not be accounted for in the performance evaluation of the teacher or school. opportunities and challenges current issues in comparative education 103 the principle of combining popularization with upgrading of quality shall be implemented in the education of disabled persons, with emphasis on the former. compulsory education shall be guaranteed, priority shall be given to developing vocational education, while efforts shall be made to carry out preschool education and gradually develop education at or above the senior high school level. again, the lpdp does not mention accommodations for swd. rather, swd must adapt themselves to study in mainstream schools if they choose to enroll in such schools (zhang, 2011). in addition, there is an apparent emphasis on the compulsory and vocational education in the above-mentioned guiding principle rather than postsecondary education level for pwd in china. swvi have limited access to mainstream heis since there was a lack of policy mandating the provision of accommodations (e.g. braille paper) in the college entrance exam, which was not changed until 2014. as a result, there has been a lack of data on the number of swd in higher education from the annual statistics released by the moe prior to 2014. a final important legal piece is the regulations on the education for pwd (1994, 2011, 2017). in recent decades, there has been a growing development of awareness and acceptance in the education of pwd (deng & manset, 2000; han, 2017; cai, 2017). the amendments and updates made to the regulations partly reflect this increasing awareness and acceptance. the regulations still adopt the educational guideline from ldpd, with the emphasis on basic education and vocational education for pwd. the regulations also spell out that local government agencies along with schools should coordinate and accommodate swd in compulsory education based on local resource availability. however, the regulations do not specify details on the how and what of providing accommodations. moreover, the regulations add that state-administered certification or qualifying exams should provide accommodations to eligible applicants and exam-takers. for swvi, the first state policy that has helped them gain access to mainstream schools is the learning in regular classrooms (lrc), as briefly mentioned in the historical context. some researchers have argued that lrc equates with mainstreaming swd in education, while others have pointed distinct differences between the two. as deng (1991, 2000) argued, lrc “provides only the option of general class placement as opposed to a continuum of services. in this way, the approach more closely reflects full inclusion than mainstreaming.” another summary stated that: (lrc) does not necessarily reflect allegiance to the concept of mainstreaming, rather it more accurately reflects a shortage of personnel, limited fiscal resources, and facilities in addition to geographical considerations. in fact, the idea of mainstreaming is viewed, at least by one chinese expert, as presently not workable but instead, a desirous goal for the future (xu et al., 1995, p. 11). testimonials collected from swvi who were enrolled in mainstream schools showed that they were not held accountable for how much they learned in class: the principal (of the mainstream school) says i can study in the class as a follower. he meant that i just sit in the classroom and study, but my final grades will not be counted in the class performance evaluation. it is up to me whether i learn or not. it does not matter whether i take the exams or not…. some students complained that why i do not need to do homework while they have to… (unpublished testimonial of a student with visual impairment, one plus one disability group). hu current issues in comparative education 104 policies on college entrance and higher education of pwvi as mentioned above, the chinese government issued several policy documents in the years 2014, 2015, and 2017. the first document was issued in 2014 about heis’ admissions. this document specified that pwvi will be provided with braille and/or electronic papers to participate in the college entrance exam (moe, 2014)4. the second policy “regulation on pwd’s participation in the college entrance exam (cee)” was issued in 2015 to further delineate the specific categories of accommodations (13 categories; e.g., extended exam time for swvi and students with other disabling conditions) (tian & wei, 2015). the 2015 regulation was modified in 2017 with more specifications on supporting pwd to take cee. as a result of the 2014 policy, braille exam papers were provided in the cee for the first time in china’s history. prior to 2014, the participation of pwvi in cee was restricted to a limited few who may be fortunate enough to secure accommodations at the mercy of exam administrators from individual provinces. jin xi, the first lawyer with blindness in china, acquired an accommodation (having someone read the exam papers to him in the exam) from his province when he took the cee in 2007 (one plus one disability group)5. pwvi are also able to access a small number of special higher education institutions (heis) in china where they would be streamlined to receive training in a limited number of programs that were traditionally deemed appropriate for them. in cai’s case (the blind person mentioned at the beginning of this article), he could not take the cee due to a lack of accommodations. cai ended up taking a different exam and was admitted to a special hei where he studied in a five-year program on massage. after the legal provision of cee accommodations, 557 students with vi (low vision) applied for magnified exam papers in cee of 2017 (cai, 2017). the cee accommodations are regarded as a milestone in the provision of higher education for pwd for two reasons. first, a cee score has been a prerequisite for one to gain admission into mainstream heis for several decades. the higher the score in cee, the higher the chance to secure a spot in postsecondary education. pwd have been largely underrepresented in higher education due to a myriad of reasons, lack of accommodations in cee being a critical one (hu & lin, 2017). second, gaining access to mainstream heis means that pwd including pwvi have a wider variety of programs to choose from, compared to the limited number of programs set up in special heis (li & ma, 2017; han, 2017). despite the progress, the chinese ministry of education has also set an advisory guideline consisting of three major parts that serve to limit pwvi from accessing mainstream higher education since the 1980s. the guideline went through some revisions in 1993. the majority of the restrictions remained unchanged for pwd to access various programs in higher education (han, 2017). according to part three of the guideline, pwvi are legally advised to not apply for a wide range of programs on the basis of their visual impairments. the range of programs includes the fields of law, psychology, agriculture, engineering, biology, among many others. admission officers from mainstream heis could also reject pwvi to a range of academic programs based on the first two parts of the advisory guideline (moe, 2009). the guideline restricting pwvi’s access to higher education programs sends an unwelcoming and non-inclusive message to pwvi in general. this policy also contributes to pwvi’s limited participation in the annual cee as pwvi perceive taking the route of mainstream hei as restrictive and risky, 4 this was primarily the result of advocacy efforts from people with visual impairments in china (han, 2017). 5 several years later, jin xi’s request for reasonable accommodation to take graduate school exam in mainland china was denied. he is currently enrolled in graduate school studies in taiwan. opportunities and challenges current issues in comparative education 105 while they may have a higher chance of being admitted to special heis where traditional programs (e.g., massage) await them. pwvi in schools given the legislations and policies outlining the educational provisions and support, this section examines the education enrollment and attainment of pwvi in a closer light. by the end of 1987 and early 1988, there were 21 specials schools for the blind while the number of school-age children with vi was about 126,200 nationwide (stratford & ng, 2000; first national survey, 1987). the school enrollment rate for school-age children with blindness was only about 3.75%, meaning that about 2929 out of an estimate of 78,100 children with blindness were enrolled in schools. other enrolled swvi (with low vision) were mostly concentrated in mainstream schools. the enrollment rate for swvi (with low vision) was about 42.85% in 1987 (first national survey of pwd). an estimate of 2.46 million school-age children had one or more disabilities based on the second national survey of pwd in 2006. approximately 63.19% of these children were enrolled in either mainstream or special education schools, lower than the enrollment rate for their peers without disabilities, which was about 99%. 5% (about 130,000 in number) of the school-age children with disabilities reported to have a vi, with 35 special education schools for the blind set up in place nationwide. the total number of enrolled school-age children with vi was reported to be 41,520 including the ones who enrolled in mainstream primary schools (22,207), swvi who went to special education schools for the blind (8,177), the ones in special classes attached to primary schools (129), and the ones in junior high schools (11,007) (moe, 2006). this gave us an estimated enrollment rate of 31.9% for swvi in compulsory education in 2006, which was still significantly lower than that of children without disabilities. again, the enrollment rate of all school-age children at the primary education and junior secondary education levels were reported to be 99.27% and 97% respectively (moe, 2015). due to the lack of disaggregated data on age groups, it was hard to estimate the enrollment rates at primary and secondary education levels for swvi. despite a growing economy and an increasing investment on education, the enrolled number of swvi did not increase much. rather, the number peaked in 2011 and later dropped again. given the estimated number of school-age children with vi being 130,000 in china in 2006, one could reasonably infer that majority of children with vi are excluded from the compulsory education system (primary and junior high schools), let alone to proceed further to postsecondary education levels. not surprisingly, among pwvi age 6 and above, only 0.2% held postsecondary education degrees, 0.94% had senior high school education, 3.94% had junior high education, and 16.05% had elementary school education (cdpf, 2008; first national survey of pwd, 1987). apart from the picture of lower enrollment rates of swvi, there has been a lack of studies examining the experiences of swvi in special education schools and mainstream schools. as mentioned, majority of the swvi enrolled in mainstream schools are students with low vision. more often, news about swvi tell the repeated stories that they have been experiencing rejections and exclusions to take part in entrance exams for mainstream heis, for graduate schools, and certifying exams (bbc, 2011; china news net, 2017; cheng & lu, 2022). while attending mainstream schools, swvi have been faced with various barriers such as negative social attitudes and low expectations from people around them, as shown in some swvi’s first-person narratives (one plus one disability group). hu current issues in comparative education 106 school and teacher resources for pwvi from 1998 to 2015, the number of special education schools for the blind had not been increasing despite the overall economic development in china (see chart 1 below). nationwide, there were 30 special education schools for the blind in 2015 while there were about 130,000 school-age children with vi in 2006. for these special education schools, the capacity of a large one could accommodate about 200 swvi in total. even hypothesizing that all 30 schools were at full capacity, there would be only 6,000 swvi in schools, accounting for about 4.6% of all school-age children with vi. another estimate indicated that the current special education schools for the blind in china could only accommodate about 15% of the educational needs of school-age children with vi, meaning that the majority of children with vi would either seek education from the mainstream schools or simply do not get formal education in schools (xu & ji, 2010). li jinsheng, a renowned disability advocate with blindness, shared with disability community members an unpublished report he had drafted in 2020, in which he alerted a severe shortage of schools for the blind in his home province. additionally, majority of the existing special education schools for the blind tend to provide education till the junior high school level. among them, only eight special education schools for the blind have the capacity to provide senior high school education (cai, 2017). chart 1 no. of special education schools for pwvi note. this chart was compiled and created based on the data from ministry of education of the people’s republic of china (1998-2015) the majority (89.7%) of pwvi are of low vision and they are more likely to enroll in mainstream schools. from chart 2 below, it is estimated that about 80.1% of all enrolled students (41,520 in number) were enrolled in mainstream schools at the compulsory 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 no. of special education schools for pwvi (1998-2015) opportunities and challenges current issues in comparative education 107 education level. this percentage is similar to the percentage of pwvi who have low vision. the ones who were enrolled in special classes attached to regular schools were minimal in number. also, almost all the enrolled pwvi were in classes of primary education level rather than junior high or vocation education. further research could be done to examine why there is little or zero number of swvi in the special classes attached to junior high or vocation schools. chart 2 distribution of enrolled students with visual impairment in schools/classes (moe) note. the chart was compiled and created based on the data from ministry of education of the people’s republic of china. like many other countries, china has been in great demand for trained teaching personnel for pwd. it was once estimated that by 2000, 388,000 special education teachers were needed (deng & manset, 2000). yet, even by 2003, the moe shows there were only 30,349 special education teachers. in other words, there has been a significant shortage of special education teachers since 2000. in average, the number of full-time teachers educating pwd at all educational levels is about 38,827 every year, with 21,661 of them being special education trained teachers (moe). this means that only about 55% of all full-time teachers for pwd are trained in special education. moreover, special education training is also recommended for teachers in the mainstream education system, as many swvi and swd would enroll there. without proper training among teachers in mainstream schools, many children with vi or other disabilities enrolled in mainstream schools encounter poor 19.6% 0.2% 47.2%0.0% 32.9% distribution of enrolled students with visual impairment in schools/classes special education school for the blind classes attached to primary schools followers in primary schools special classes attached to junior high (vocational) schools followers in junior high (vocational) schools hu current issues in comparative education 108 quality teaching and end up having mental health issues to different extents (xu & ji, 2010). considering 2.46 million school-age children with disability are in need of quality education, there is a huge demand for special education teacher resources and teacher training in china. findings and conclusions some preliminary findings emerged from this study. to start, there has been some progress in the education for pwvi. historical examination shows that education for pwvi in china has an early start but slow development. for pwvi, the places to go for formal education are either limited in the small number of special schools for the blind, or the mainstream schools where they may not be systematically supported. in the past four decades, more pwvi have been enrolled in the basic education level due to policies and initiatives such as learning in regular classroom and “gold-key education plan for swvi” (xia, 2011). and the provision of reasonable accommodations in cee being a milestone incentivized more pwvi to take up the route for mainstream higher education where more opportunities exist. yet, the progress is limited given the size and immensity of the issue in educating pwvi in china. first, pwvi learning in regular classrooms as followers in primary and junior secondary schools could be better supported and held accountable in their academic performances. with little or no support at the early stages of their formal education, it is unlikely that a greater number of pwvi would be eligible applicants of accommodations in the cee. accommodations provided to students who persevered to senior secondary education level is only addressing the top of the crust, instead of dealing with the issue from its root. awareness, accommodations, and support are all needed to better recruit and retain school-age children with various disabilities starting from lower education levels. they are just as important if not more than introducing the policies to allow more pwvi (which we do not see many in recent years) to sit in the annual cee. second, related to the lack of accommodations and support in mainstream schools, pwvi overall have a lower enrollment rate in compulsory education compared to their peers without disabilities. in addition, there is a limited number of special education schools for the blind, low educational levels provided in the existing special education schools for the blind, and a lack of teaching personnel resources, especially for those who are professionally trained. as a result of lack of educational provision in both quantity and quality, pwvi in china not only exhibit a much higher illiteracy rate than people without disabilities, but also a higher illiteracy rate than people with other types of disability (except for multiple disabilities). and only a small number of pwvi have the opportunity to access mainstream higher education. lacking the opportunity to participate in education limits pwvi’s participation, interaction, and integration into the mainstream society at the very beginning. equally important, the negative social attitudes and stigma towards pwvi in china also need to be addressed. a perspective from the social model of disability needs to be further promoted to understand disability, rather than seeing disability from individual, medical, and charity models. lastly, it is important to note a few limitations in this study. to start, there is a lack of detailed data around pwvi. for example, there is a lack of annual data in terms of the number of students with low vision taking part in the cee. students with low vision make up majority of swvi (students with visual impairment) in china. some data indicates that a larger number of students with low vision, compared with the number of students with blindness, are taking part in the annual cee, however, the author was not able to locate opportunities and challenges current issues in comparative education 109 reliable and complete annual numbers on students with low vision. neither is there any gender-disaggregated data among students with visual impairment (both students with blindness and students with low vision). second, aside from the issues facing pwvi at the basic and secondary education levels as shown in this article, the study does not examine adequately the transition of pwvi to post-secondary education, which is worthy of further research. multiple factors are responsible for the lack of educational opportunities and lack of presence for pwvi in the chinese education system. this is a complex challenge that requires collective efforts from multiple entities. by identifying some of the most significant barriers through research, it is the author’s hope that different stakeholders could work persistently and collectively to push toward a more inclusive society for pwvi starting in the realm of education. education should be at the forefront in pushing for social inclusion rather than a site to reproduce or perpetuate the exclusion and marginalization for an already disadvantaged population. for future research, some directions could be considered based on the findings of this study. future research could be: 1) qualitative studies researching on experiences of pwvi in different schools (special education and mainstream schools); 2) studies on specific and reasonable accommodations for pwvi at all education levels, including the processes and operations to provide accommodations to pwvi in qualifying exams; 3) studies on the education of girls and women with vi; 4) issues pwvi face in their transition to postsecondary education. these future studies have the potential to better inform and assist multiple stakeholders to include and support pwvi in the chinese education system. dr. luanjiao hu currently works as a postdoctoral research fellow at the disability health research center, johns hopkins university. she completed her ph.d. in the international education policy program at the university of maryland, college park. her research focuses on disability inclusion, gender, and education. references americans with disabilities act. 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(2016). the educational rights of students with visual impairments: an ecological system perspective. disability rights study quarterly. 3(1). 109-123. 2. dalrymple, k. critically examining.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 2, special issue 2023 critically examining social emotional learning with refugees in east africa: tensions, challenges, and complex dynamics kelsey a. dalrymple university of wisconsin-madison, u.s. social emotional learning (sel) has become a popular trend in the field of education in emergencies (eie). many sel programs targeting refugee learners aim to help individuals develop skills that are necessary for learning and development, as well as mitigate the adverse impacts of crisis and displacement. while nearly half a billion usd has been invested in sel initiatives for refugee and crisis contexts world-wide, little evidence exists about the impacts of sel interventions with refugee communities. as 20% of all refugees globally reside in east africa, and it is estimated that over 152 million african children live in active conflict zones, this study set out to qualitatively examine understandings, implementation, and implications of sel interventions across actors engaging refugee communities in the region. the results expose tensions, challenges, and complex dynamics related to culture, power, and the complicated reality of implementing refugee education initiatives in east africa. while further research into this area of inquiry is needed and proposed, these study findings provide a stronger understanding of the refugee education landscape in east africa and its current insufficiencies through the example of sel, and serve to inform other topical eie interventions and the broader uptake of sel by education systems globally. keywords: socio emotional learning, east africa, education in emergencies, crisis context, refugee. introduction humanitarian crises significantly impact the educational opportunities and experiences of learners globally. currently, an estimated 224 million crisis-affected school-age children require education support (ecw, 2023). at the end of 2019, one fifth of the world’s crisis-affected children lived in africa, and it was estimated that 152 million african children lived in active conflict zones (acpf & amc, 2019). studies have found that many refugee children and families affected by conflict and crisis suffer extreme trauma, live in inhumane conditions, and often become trapped in a cycle of displacement and poverty for years, and sometimes generations (brown et al., 2017; ferris, 2018). many of the world’s refugees living in protracted displacement come from central and east africa, with numerous individuals living in displacement for over 20 years (devictor, 2019; hyndman & giles, 2019). social emotional learning (sel) is currently positioned by education in emergency (eie) practitioners as a key component of refugee education, as it is believed to help improve academic achievement and support psychosocial wellbeing, trauma-recovery, and resiliency for refugee teachers, students, and communities (inee, 2018; unesco, © 2023, dalrymple. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 25(2), 8-35. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en critically examining social emotional learning with refugees in east africa: tensions, challenges, and complex dynamics 2019). sel is commonly understood, from a western1 perspective, to be an educational approach that claims to help children develop the thinking, behavioral, and self-regulatory skills needed for learning (jones & doolittle, 2017). since 2018, nearly half a billion usd has been invested in sel initiatives for refugee and crisis-affected communities globally, with more pledged for the years to come (ecw, 2018; renau, 2022). however, little evidence exists about the understandings, implementation approaches, and implications of sel across actors engaging refugee communities (sullivan & simonson, 2016; usaid, 2022). as 20% of all refugees globally reside in east africa (unhcr, 2022b), this article comes from a qualitative study that utilized in-depth structured interviews and document review to answer two research questions: 1) how do eie actors working with refugee communities in east africa understand and implement sel interventions? and 2) what are the implications of these interventions? the study was conducted by myself—the author of this article and the primary principal investigator (pi), and dr. kassa michael weldeyesus2, who served as the co-pi. we engaged 20 eie practitioners across 16 national and international non-governmental organizations (ngos) and one donor government across east africa. this included individuals from: ethiopia, kenya, rwanda, sudan, south sudan, tanzania, and uganda. additionally, while all individuals interviewed identified as eie practitioners, their positions and sel interventions sometimes fell within the child protection in emergencies (cpie) sector due to funding and/or programming structure. we examined a broad set of sel interventions targeting mostly refugee children and youth, though many interview respondents also reported engaging adult stakeholders (i.e. teachers, parents, administrators), supporting host-community children, and working with national governments on integrating sel into national education systems. while the study intended to serve as a simple landscape review, the results expose much more complex dynamics connected to culture, power, and the complicated reality of implementing refugee education initiatives in east africa. findings reveal tensions and challenges related to inconsistencies of understandings about what sel is and how it should be delivered, siloed implementation approaches leading to uncoordinated and inadequate programming, the use of western sel materials with limited contextualization processes, and an absence of refugee involvement in the design and delivery of sel interventions. finally, this study illustrates sel as an example of the lack of follow-through on the part of national governments in east africa to integrate refugee children into national education systems, despite numerous regional commitments to do so. however, this article only begins to address the lacuna of qualitative research in the fields of comparative and international education (cie) and eie on the complex dynamics of implementing interventions like sel within the refugee education landscape and proposes further research to better inform these scholarly fields. as sel is 2 associate professor at the addis ababa university-college of education and behavioral sciences. 1 in this article, ‘western’ is conceptualized as largely north american and euro-centric contexts, cultures, practices, and beliefs. 9 current issues in comparative education dalrymple one of a number of topical eie interventions (e.g. gender, protection, inclusion), these study findings serve as an example of the need to critically interrogate these initiatives to better inform eie work and link to larger issues (i.e. westernization, cultural imperialism, subaltern epistemicide) within the refugee education landscape. additionally, as sel is currently a popular trend being taken up by education systems globally, in both refugee and non-refugee contexts, these study findings may serve to inform cie scholars exploring sel and similar global trends. refugee education in east africa due to colonial rule, shifting state borders, inter-communal conflict, and post-colonial power dynamics, east africa has been a region of significant forced migration for decades and a site of consistent humanitarian intervention (milner, 2019; williams, 2020). as a result, refugee education activities have a long history in east africa, influenced by various global education initiatives, policies, and actors over time (dryden-peterson, 2011). as the number of refugees in east africa has tripled over the last decade (un news, 2022), with nearly 60% being children (unicef, 2019), refugee education efforts have also intensified. over the last five years, the refugee education sector in east africa has been a significant target and test site for various global humanitarian initiatives3, as well as regional efforts to strengthen refugee education policy and practice; in particular the inclusion of refugee learners into host-country education systems4. while these commitments and initiatives have been ratified by national government actors, they have created a vast policyscape (carney, 2008) comprised of: private, bilateral, and multilateral donors; un agencies; international and local ngos; inter-agency working groups and coordination mechanisms; and refugee individuals and communities. the study that informs this article specifically engaged eie practitioners working with ngos responsible for implementing sel programming; many of these individuals also engaged in and/or led inter-agency working groups and coordination mechanisms. national and international ngos are largely responsible for the direct implementation of refugee education activities in the region. however, they often liaise and comply with various donors and local/national government, as well as education clusters and working groups responsible for the coordination of ngo activities. the presence of these myriad actors and mechanisms has increased education programming for refugee learners and brought significant resources to the region. however, millions of refugee children in east africa remain out of school (unhcr, 2022c), educational achievement and psychosocial wellbeing among refugee children remains low (karas, 2019; piper et al., 2020), and a lack of consistency, coordination, and continuity across this policyscape has contributed to the repetition of siloed and inadequate refugee education practices (the perspective, 2023; unhcr, 2016, 2021). 4 for example, the agenda 2063 on education and the djibouti declaration. 3 for example, the comprehensive refugee response framework, the newways of working framework, and the education cannot wait fund. current issues in comparative education 10 critically examining social emotional learning with refugees in east africa: tensions, challenges, and complex dynamics sel in the refugee education landscape in an effort to improve education for refugee children in east africa and globally, eie actors have identified sel as a promising practice that has the potential to improve academic achievement and support psychosocial wellbeing, trauma-recovery, and resiliency (inee, 2018; unesco, 2019). the western understanding of sel as an educational approach that claims to help children develop the thinking, behavioral, and self-regulatory skills needed for learning and later life (jones & doolittle, 2017) has been widely taken up by the eie sector, as well as the cpie sector, and exported globally to refugee contexts. however, experts acknowledge that sel is not a modern, western phenomenon; the basic tenets of contemporary sel have existed across history and cultures for centuries (chiu & huaman, 2020). additionally, within the refugee education landscape, various actors have included elements of contemporary sel under other umbrella terms for decades, such as: life skills, transferrable skills, soft skills, 21st century skills, and mental health and psychosocial support (mhpss)5. the inter-agency network for education in emergencies (inee) and the alliance for child protection in humanitarian action (acpha) subscribe to the western conceptualization of sel and consider it to be one of many interventions falling under the mhpss umbrella (inee & acpha, 2020). however, some scholars like brush et al., (2022) argue that sel and life skills in particular differ in that sel is rooted in theories of learning and developmental psychology and generally targets younger children. alternatively, life skills has traditionally been a multi-disciplinary approach that mostly targets adolescents and young adults and incorporates elements of healthy decision-making related to drug and alcohol use, sexual and reproductive health, vocational training, and women and girls’ empowerment. however, as elements of contemporary sel can be found across all of these terms and approaches, significant confusion exists across eie and cpie practitioners about what exactly sel is and under which sector or umbrella it belongs. indeed sel is often conflated or used interchangeably with all of these terms and approaches in the refugee education landscape, resulting in poor coordination, inconsistency, and limited sel program effectiveness (gallagher, 2018; soye & tauson, 2018). problematizing western sel regardless of which sectoral or terminological umbrella sel is associated with, experts have demonstrated that the way sel skills and competencies are conceptualized, prioritize, and displayed are highly tied to culture and societal behavioral standards that shape the way people understand, interpret, and make meaning of their experiences (brush et al., 2022; gay, 2018). as a result, scholars have more recently begun to explore non-western understandings and practices of sel across various cultures and contexts. their work has found that concepts and terms used in western sel frameworks do not always align with the values and interests of different contexts and cultures, and sometimes do not translate easily or even exist in other languages (jeong, 2019; jones et al., 2019; jukes et al., 2018). however, the western concept and approach to sel continues to remain dominant in the eie and cpie sectors globally and an assumption 5 mhpss is defined in the humanitarian sector as any type of local or outside support that aims to protect or promote psychosocial well-being and/or prevent or treat mental disorder (iasc, 2021). 11 current issues in comparative education dalrymple that sel competencies found in western frameworks are universally applicable to all children is pervasive among eie and cpie practitioners (inee, 2016). as such, sel is one of a long list of western educational interventions that have been rolled out across african societies, both displaced and non-displaced, over the last three decades to address perceived deficits within education systems and child development practices. there is an abundance of literature documenting the spread, challenges, potentials, and failures of approaches such as: learner-centered pedagogies (lcp) (sakata et al., 2021; vavrus et al., 2011; vavrus & bartlett, 2012), early childhood development (ecd) programming (ng’asike, 2014; pence & marfo, 2008; serpell, 2019), school discipline practices (ndofirepi et al., 2012; rampa, 2014; sibanda & mpofu, 2017), child rights policies (bourdillon & musvosvi, 2014; maudeni, 2010), and play-based learning (pbl) (chick, 2010; lancy, 1996) across african societies and education systems. those working specifically in refugee contexts have demonstrated that western assumptions and post-colonial logics about the purpose of education for refugees and the corresponding practices and approaches (i.e. lcp, literacy learning, language of instruction, digital education, higher education, life-long learning) are highly problematic and ineffective. these scholars demonstrate that many of these practices and approaches don’t adequately take into account culture or context—and how these are impacted by conflict and displacement, or the realistic futures and needs of refugee learners (dryden-peterson et al., 2019; morrice, 2021; o’keef & lovey, 2022; piper et al., 2020; reddick & dryden-peterson, 2021; sharif, 2020). numerous education and child development scholars who critically examine these trends, as they relate to culture and context, highlight the fact that most of them are, or have been, informed by western constructions of childhood, standards of learning, and perceptions of what “optimal” child development is, despite the fact that the majority of the world’s children to not reside in western contexts (mucherah & mbogori, 2019; nsamenang, 1995; viruru, 2001). some african scholars argue that these initiatives perpetuate the domination of western perceptions and practices and enact a kind of cultural imperialism, denigrating africa’s rich cultural heritage (nsamenang, 2011; rwantabagu, 2010). similarly, scholars like tabulawa (2003, 2013) highlight how trends like lcp function as a way of spreading socio-political-economic ideologies throughout the world, engaging in a neocolonial process of westernization and subaltern epistemicide. evidence on the impact of sel initiatives with refugee communities is significantly lacking (usaid, 2022) and it remains unclear if and how sel functions as a tool of cultural imperialism, westernization, or otherwise. as a result, some scholars have attempted to explore the effects of sel with refugee and crisis-affected communities (diazgranados ferráns et al., 2019; d’sa & krupar, 2021; torrente et al., 2019; tubbs dolan & weiss-yagoda, 2019). however, much of this work is largely quantitative and preoccupied with the measurement of western sel skills and academic achievement, rather than the interrogation of the western assumptions and post-colonial logics that underly many sel initiatives in refugee and crisis contexts. the qualitative data collected in this study has produced significant findings related to the tensions, challenges, and complicated dynamics of refugee education initiatives like sel in east africa that begin to address this gap in the scholarship. current issues in comparative education 12 critically examining social emotional learning with refugees in east africa: tensions, challenges, and complex dynamics methodology this article draws on a qualitative study conducted from february 2022 to april 2022 that aimed to explore how eie actors working with refugee communities in east africa understand and implement sel interventions, and what the implications of those interventions are. to gather in-depth qualitative data on experiences and conceptual understandings, the primary method used for the study was in-depth structured interviews with 20 eie practitioners6 across 16 international and national ngos and one donor government7 in ethiopia, kenya, rwanda, sudan, south sudan, tanzania, and uganda8. this study employed a purposive sampling strategy to ensure the inclusion of actors who are currently delivering sel activities with refugee communities in east africa, which could not have been obtained through the use of randomized strategies (maxwell, 2013). table 1 study participant breakdown participant demographics countries type of participants ethiopia kenya rwanda sudan south sudan tanzania uganda multi-c ountry total interviews 5 2 1 1 1 2 3 2 17 individual participants 5 2 2 1 3 2 3 2 20 national ngos 3 1 1 5 international ngos 2 2 1 1 1 3 1 11 donor governments 1 1 directors 1 1 1 1 4 managers 2 1 1 1 1 6 advisors 1 1 1 3 specialists 1 1 1 3 coordinators 2 1 3 officers 1 1 note. in some cases, multiple individuals participated in a single interview. 8 individuals working in burundi, djibouti, and somalia were also contacted, though, interviews were not conducted with them as we were either unable to find a suitable time for interview or were unable to identify organizations working specifically on sel. 7 while we contacted individuals working for un agencies and national and local governmental departments for interview, they either did not respond to our interview requests, or declined and redirected us to ngos as they felt ngos were better placed to speak about sel work in their respective countries. 6 this number was reached due to the responses from e-mail requests for interviews, as well as our time and availability to conduct data collection. while additional individuals were contacted, we did not pursue interviews with individuals if no response was received after sending an initial e-mail and two follow-up e-mails. 13 current issues in comparative education dalrymple myself and the co-pi identified organizations through both personal acquaintances, as well as contacting education cluster and working group co-chairs in each country. co-chairs were identified by contacting the global education cluster helpdesk and inee emergencies helpdesk to acquire individual contact information. once co-chairs were contacted, they were able to identify and connect us with eie actors delivering sel interventions. additionally, we identified two study participants working on sel programming in multiple countries across east africa. next, we contacted these eie actors and scheduled virtual interviews with relevant expert individuals. we conducted interviews in english and all interview participants provided either verbal or written consent to participate. interviews lasted between thirty minutes to one hour and took place on a variety of virtual platforms. the interview protocol used for each interview asked about: program details (location, timeline, funding, partners, populations served, goals, objectives, activities, and targets); specific sel frameworks, components, and competencies; challenges with implementation; and availability of programmatic evidence. additionally, we focused on sel interventions that were actively running at the time of interview, as well as interventions that had recently concluded or were planned for implementation in the near future. an interview notes template was used to ensure consistency. we also conducted document review to triangulate the interview data. we identified and reviewed approximately 30 items including: policy briefs, project descriptions, program guides, and training curricula. these documents were obtained directly from interview participants, from personal files, and through general search engines (i.e. google and google scholar) and databases (i.e. save the children resource centre and inee resources). we used qda miner lite and nvivo software to review and analyze all interview notes and documents. prior to data collection, we created a general list of categories that stemmed from a review of the literature, as well as our professional experiences working in this field. these categories informed the interview protocol, as outlined above, and also supported initial deductive coding. though, inductive analysis, understood as “discovering patterns, themes, and categories in one’s data” (marshall & rossman, 2006, p. 159), guided the overall analysis process. we highlighted excerpts and phrases from interview responses that related to the interview protocol topics and grouped them accordingly to identify variations and consistencies across study participants and their agencies. upon completion of coding, we compared our findings as a validity check and generated the results described in the following sections. positionality as the author of this paper, i identify as a white, north american woman, as well as an eie practitioner and critical scholar of cie. having worked for nearly 15 years in the fields of education and humanitarian response, my experience—as well as my personal and professional social networks—aided in navigating eie coordination and communication systems to recruit study participants. while i interviewed a variety of individuals with varying self-identifiers (i.e. male, female, european, african) and occupying diverse positions within their agencies (i.e. advisor, director, coordinator, manager, officer, specialist), i believe my perceived position as a white researcher at a u.s.-based university initially attracted individuals to participate in interviews. i also current issues in comparative education 14 critically examining social emotional learning with refugees in east africa: tensions, challenges, and complex dynamics believe that my experience as an eie practitioner, having worked with and for many of the agencies that study participants did, in addition to my personal connection to some individuals as friends and colleagues, allowed study participants to feel comfortable to openly share details about their programming. though, i recognize that my position as a critical scholar may have influenced how i interpreted the data in this study, as i have been academically trained to situate data within larger social and political structures and to identify and challenge structural weaknesses with the goals of improvement, equity, and social justice. i also recognize that my positionality, power, and worldview as a white, north american scholar influences the way i interpret data and frame key findings. thus, working with the co-pi who identifies as a black, east african man was an intentional effort to limit my personal influence and bias over the study findings. limitations this study included a range of limitations. first, myself and the co-pi recognize that the small sample size (20 individuals across 17 agencies) does not allow for a full understanding of the experience and perceptions of all actors delivering sel programming to refugee communities in east africa, but rather a small slice of the most globally visible actors working in this area. we also recognize that by only involving eie practitioners as study participants, the perceptions and experiences of refugee-community members are not represented in the data. therefore, we do not fully understand how sel interventions are received and experienced at the refugee-community level and further research into this area of inquiry is needed and encouraged to supplement the study findings. additionally, interviews were only conducted in english and through virtual platforms. therefore, it is possible that interviewees were not able to fully express themselves the way they may have if they were able to participate face-to-face and in the language of their choice. it is also possible that this study included an element of social desirability bias and we do not know the extent to which respondents were willing to promote their sel interventions in order to sustain them. though, despite these limitations, the study findings help to understand how sel is conceptualized and implemented among actors working with refugee communities in east africa and exemplify the numerous tensions and challenges associated with implementing sel, and other western education approaches, in non-western crisis contexts. findings the findings presented here reflect discussions with eie practitioners about how they understand and implement sel interventions with refugee communities in east africa. responses from practitioners were diverse and produced key findings related to: consistencies across programming related to the use of western sel frameworks, implementation challenges, and evidence generation; and variations in understandings and interpretations of sel and implementation approaches. when referring to numbers of study participants in the sections below, the following terms can be considered as such: majority/most = 15-20; many = 10-14; some = 5-9; few = 4 or less. finally, all names used in the sections below are pseudonyms to ensure the anonymity and privacy of study participants. 15 current issues in comparative education dalrymple consistencies western materials and cloudy contextualization the majority of interviewees reported that they are currently using either their own organizational sel framework and/or programming materials that were developed at the “global” level—meaning headquarter offices based in western countries—or pre-existing general frameworks like the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning (casel) framework. for example, avery, who works across the region, shared that they: “[…]hired a specialist from the u.s. to develop the sel component of our teacher training, and i believe [they] based the content mostly on the casel framework” (interview, march 1, 2022). additionally, casey, who also works on a multi-country project, confirmed that: “we are using the [organizational] framework developed a few years ago at headquarters” (interview, april 4, 2022). as indicated by these participants, global or western sel materials are often used across countries and regions with diverse target communities. participants from ethiopia, rwanda, sudan, tanzania, and uganda, working for the same international ngo in their respective countries, confirmed that their country-specific programs each use internal materials that were developed at their organization’s global level. when asked if they contextualized the materials for their countries, these participants were not able to recall any such process. when asked the same question, participants working for other ngos in the region referred to vague contextualization processes, though were not able to detail the extent and quality of these activities. for example, casey reported that “we say we did ‘contextualization’, but honestly it was more a of a tick-box exercise” (interview, april 4, 2022). while a few respondents reported working to develop local sel frameworks, the processes they described were largely driven by western advisors and included limited refugee participation or input. for example, tadele reported developing an sel framework for use with refugee communities in ethiopia, though with technical guidance and oversight from their u.s.-based donor. additionally, rene who works in uganda reported that they are currently developing a local sel framework for use with both refugee and host-country children, but with technical guidance from the harvard easel lab. no interviewees mentioned working explicitly with refugee communities to develop sel programming or to build on their existing/local forms of sel. tadele did report conducting consultations and an assessment with refugee communities to help inform the contextualization of their sel content, but did not mention the refugee community’s direct involvement in the contextualization process. these examples do not mean that the other organizations have not, or do not, consult with refugee communities regarding sel programming. however, many study participants felt that their sel interventions were largely driven by donor priorities, global best practices, and coordination with education partners, rather than by refugee community requests or expressed need for such programming. this is illustrated by jonah from tanzania: “the program materials that were given to us by [the organization], were already developed in line with global standards, so we did not see the need to change them much” (interview, march 7, 2022). additionally, casey shared that when working on a multi-country project: current issues in comparative education 16 critically examining social emotional learning with refugees in east africa: tensions, challenges, and complex dynamics “…it is super clear that sel is something the donor wants baked into the project. i feel like every eie project you see now-a-days has sel included in it somehow because it’s considered a ‘best practice’…every proposal has to mention sel now just for the sake of it, donors are expecting to see it there. i’m sure refugee parents want their kids to learn these skills in their own way, but i doubt this concept of sel is a community priority compared to just having enough school rooms, or books, or meeting other basic needs” (interview, april 4, 2022). as shown, eie actors working with refugee communities in east africa commonly use global and/or western sel materials, yet do not engage in meaningful contextualization and adaptation processes. a strong case to contextualize sel programming in refugee and crisis contexts, and to involve community stakeholders in that process, has been made by various scholars and practitioners (berg et al., 2017; inee, 2022; usaid, 2021). however, the inability to detail contextualization processes and the lack of involvement of refugee communities demonstrates a clear tension and disconnect between what is recommended in theory and what is happening in reality. even those developing local sel frameworks are doing so with oversight and guidance from western technical specialists and there is extremely limited awareness or acknowledgement among eie practitioners of existing sel concepts and practices within refugee communities. this directly contradicts the scholarship presented previously and the recognition that sel concepts and practices are highly based on culture and societal behaviors (brush et al., 2022). this ignorance within the refugee education landscape in east africa is likely to render sel programming ineffective and potentially culturally pernicious. lack of follow through: exclusion of refugee learners from national sel plans while the focus of this study was on refugee communities, several interviewees mentioned working with national ministries of education to design sel frameworks for integration into their national education systems. though, again, this work is informed by significant guidance from western institutions and technical experts. for example, nico, who works for a european-based ngo in kenya, confirmed: “the government wants to integrate sel elements of our program into the national curriculum, especially since covid”(interview, march 18, 2022), while avery shared that while working across the region they have been: “[…]interacting with ministries of education and there have been discussions around integrating sel into the national teacher training programs” (interview, march 1, 2022). though, when engaging with ministries of education to develop national sel frameworks, no respondents mentioned the integration of refugee children into national education systems of their host countries. despite the existence of numerous regional commitments and policies to integrate refugee children into national education systems (cole, 2017; crawford & o’callaghan, 2019; igad member states, 2017), government enthusiasm for sel appears to apply mostly to national students and not the refugee students they are hosting. this has larger implications related to the intentions of host-governments to actually integrate refugee communities into national systems. while sel is just one example, it exposes the tension that these commitments exist mostly in theory and have yet to be realistically executed. implementation challenges: donor priorities, repatriation, and attendance a major challenge raised by all respondents is the lack of consistent and sustainable funding for sel programming, and eie programming in general. all participants 17 current issues in comparative education dalrymple reported being tied to strict funding timelines set by donors with no guarantee of continued funding after their project end dates. some individuals also highlighted that when a project or grant comes to an end, the associated activities also come to an end, as exemplified by muhammad from sudan: “facilitators don’t want to play with children and support development; people only do these activities during the program. but once the program ends, the activities stop because the community doesn’t value them. teachers don’t want to teach life skills, it’s not in their job description” (interview, march 16, 2022). additionally, when a new grant or project begins, it often incorporates new activities that may not take into consideration or build upon the activities and approaches that preceded it. this was highlighted by eli from tanzania: “we have been doing pss [psychosocial support] activities here for years, but this new [sel] program is not really taking that into account. the incentive [refugee] workers have been doing similar activities for a long time, but now they are being told to do something that seems new and confusing, but is really very similar to what they were doing before” (interview, february 23, 2022). this demonstrates the challenge of donors having their own priorities and not necessarily being interested in funding the continuation of activities and approaches previously funded by other donors. in particular, many interviewees reported that there is a trend of perceiving sel as something new and innovative that donors are eager to fund, which often generates the development of new materials, waves of trainings, advocacy initiatives, and the hiring of new staff. however, many of these sel projects do not acknowledge or build upon the existing systems, structures, and previous trainings that refugee communities have already received, as exemplified by casey: “we trained all of the refugee teachers in sel in 2018 and 2019, though we just didn’t explicitly call it sel at the time. and now this new project is coming in with all of these new staff members and technical experts who don’t have the organizational history and it’s like that original training never happened. they are re-training [the refugee teachers] and not acknowledging or building on the fact that they have had a ton of pss and sel-based training over the years” (interview, april 4, 2022). another challenge mentioned is the issue of repatriation of refugees. while it is the right of refugees to return to their country of origin, it can have numerous ramifications for sel programming. for example, when a project invests in training a group of teachers or community members to deliver sel and subsequently some of them repatriate, the project must recruit, onboard, and train new individuals, which they may not necessarily have budgeted or planned for. this is illustrated by jonah in tanzania: “every time we lose a teacher, we lose someone who we have invested time and resources into, knowing that the person who replaces them won’t have the level of quality we achieved with the last teacher” (interview, march 7, 2022). additionally, when projects aim to reach a certain number of individuals with their programming and there is a steady rate of repatriation over the course of the project, this can cause problems for donor reporting, current issues in comparative education 18 critically examining social emotional learning with refugees in east africa: tensions, challenges, and complex dynamics and has financial, human resources, and other implications if the target population is decreasing. often donors will either require projects to scale down, pivot to targeting additional communities and stakeholders, or engage in additional or alternative activities. similarly, study participants working in ethiopia, sudan, and south sudan mentioned challenges of delivering sel to pastoral and nomadic refugee and displaced communities, and specifically communities with repeated student absences. as sel is commonly defined as an ongoing process, rather than a single-time intervention (casel, 2023), these respondents reported that helping children to develop and practice certain social and emotional competencies is difficult when teachers have few contact hours with them in a week or even a month. this is exemplified by hakim from ethiopia: “since the community is largely pastoralist, absence during the afternoon sessions is a challenge” (interview, march 24, 2022). sustainable funding for refugee education and the eie sector generally has been a persistent challenge for decades. though, these findings demonstrate that, in addition to a general lack of funds, donors who fund sel activities within the eie sector do not acknowledge or take advantage of existing and/or former activities and programs. not taking these into account is a costly oversight that clearly affects the continuity, capacity, resources, and quality of eie teams and programming. if donors were committed to sustaining and/or building upon the work of previous projects, grants, and donors, then perhaps eie teams would have more capacity to address key issues like student absence. additionally, the challenge of working with pastoral and nomadic refugee and displaced communities is another example of the lack of contextualization and cultural-responsiveness of sel as described previously; the problem does not lie with the communities and their practices, but rather the western assumptions and post-colonial logics about what kind of education refugee children need and the resulting program design and implementation. operating in the dark: the continued lack of evidence in line with the global dearth of evidence on the impacts of sel in refugee and crisis contexts discussed previously, no study participant was able to provide explicit data or evidence related to the results of their sel programming. some respondents were able to provide data related to their overall eie activities (e.g. number of students reached, number of teachers trained, attendance rates, etc.), though without any explicit link to the sel component of their programming. some participants did mention that they have conducted qualitative interviews, generated case studies, held focus-group discussions, and have had informal conversations with refugee-community members about the overall impact of their sel programming, which have shown perceived positive results. however, much of this data was only corroborated by interviewees themselves reporting their own observations of positive improvements in refugee communities. this is exemplified by nico in kenya: “the kids said they really liked the approach and want to continue with the sessions. they mentioned that the coaches are different from regular teachers, that they care for them and have fun with them”(interview, march 18, 2022). additionally, while working across the region, avery shared: “i have attended a lot of the teacher trainings and i can tell you the teachers really love the pss and sel module. 19 current issues in comparative education dalrymple they get really into the mindfulness activities and are really energized to support their students” (interview, march 1, 2022). all study participants confirmed that their organizations have not yet completed any formal assessment or evaluation that could illuminate the specific impacts that their sel programming has had on refugee communities in the region. though, a few participants reported that their organizations have plans for future research and assessments to help understand the effects and outcomes of their sel activities. for example, rene in uganda mentioned that they are working with national universities on a robust research agenda, which includes studies looking at sel; though none have been completed yet. additionally, casey reported that their multi-country project includes a sophisticated research agenda and monitoring and evaluation framework, specifically intended to generate evidence related to sel; though this evidence has yet to be produced. this general lack of evidence on the impacts of sel in refugee contexts in the region serves to reinforce this gap in the cie and eie scholarship described earlier. further, it perpetuates the cycle of eie practitioners, and donors who invest in sel for refugee and crisis-contexts, operating on assumptions and post-colonial logics rather than evidence. variations understandings and objectives of sel: the influence of sectors and delivery mechanisms findings illustrate that perceptions about what sel is and its larger objectives are tied to the sectors and mechanisms through which it is delivered. sel for refugee communities in east africa is delivered through three main mechanisms: 1) integrated into formal schooling under the eie sector; 2) mhpss programming, delivered through both formal schooling and out-of-school activities, mainly under the cpie sector; and 3) life skills programming, again delivered through both formal schooling and out-of-school activities, under both the eie and cpie sectors9. most respondents described the goals and objectives of their sel programming as aligned with global rhetoric on the potential benefits of sel for refugee learners based on perceived or assumed deficits. these include improved academic achievement and psychosocial wellbeing, though programming priorities differ significantly by sector. for example, participants working in formal schools through the eie sector first prioritized an improvement in academic achievement, followed by school-readiness, support for whole child development, psychosocial wellbeing, and skills for later life. this is exemplified by amara from ethiopia who reported that: “our main goal is to improve children’s learning; we just want them to get through school” (interview, april 11, 2022), 9 education in emergencies (eie) and child protection in emergencies (cpie) are two types of programming sectors within humanitarian response. eie programming is concerned with ensuring all individuals have access to safe and quality learning opportunities during humanitarian emergencies and can included: formal education, non-formal education, accelerated learning, recreational activities, etc. cpie programming is concerned with preventing and responding to violence, abuse, exploitation, and neglect of children in humanitarian emergencies and can include: setting up and managing referral systems, case management, providing counseling and psychosocial support, positive parenting training, etc. while programming in these two sectors usually have separate funding sources and programming approaches, there is often overlap and coordination across eie and cpie activities and child protection is usually mainstreamed through eie activities. current issues in comparative education 20 critically examining social emotional learning with refugees in east africa: tensions, challenges, and complex dynamics while peter from rwanda shared that they: “[…]have integrated sel into a pre-existing ecd school-readiness program targeting teachers and school leaders” (interview, march 9, 2022). additionally, practitioners who integrate sel into formal schooling perceive sel according to the casel definition, a process by which young people and adults learn and apply certain knowledge and skills related to social and emotional domains (casel, 2023). these interviewees reported using an sel framework to guide their programming. in particular, most individuals reported using materials that draw directly on the casel framework, which aims to support learners to build competencies in the domains of: self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. some participants also reported that their organizations have developed, or draw from, similar frameworks that include alternative or additional domains, including: physical development, cognitive development, creativity, character-building, values, personality, and self-efficacy. similarly, practitioners delivering sel through life skills programming also reported using frameworks that include competencies reflective of those used in formal schools. for example, muhammad in sudan reported using the casel framework, whereas frameworks mentioned by other interviewees focus heavily on skills like: teamwork, communication, collaboration, conflict-resolution, critical thinking, problem-solving, self-confidence, goal-setting, and assertiveness. when asked what the larger goals and objectives of their life skills/sel programming are, participant answers varied from: supporting children to gain skills that will prepare them for adulthood, helping children learn to cope with stress, and supporting children’s learning and development outside of formal school spaces. for example, nico in kenya shared that they: “[…]deliver social sports sessions made up of games that are designed to teach about specific skills and social topics. for example, how to prevent certain diseases, what are my rights, different forms of violence. the core of our curriculum is resilience” (interview march 18, 2022). in contrast, sel delivered through mhpss programming, largely supported by the cpie sector, is often not guided by specific sel frameworks. rather, sel is perceived as a byproduct of the mhpss activities, as shared by jessie from kenya: “our flagship program is a pss intervention, so we are supporting children’s social and emotional health naturally through that program” (interview, march 16, 2022). reported mhpss activities include art, music, and dance to help focus children’s attention and support motor-skill development, as well as a large focus on stress-reduction and coping strategies to support learners and educators to work through and recover from traumatic experiences. these activities aim to support learners to develop competencies and characteristics including: resilience, self-expression, self-regulation, communication, collaboration, cooperation, teamwork, conflict-resolution, creativity, problem-solving, and self-confidence. additionally, practitioners delivering sel through mhpss programming unsurprisingly perceive the main goal to be the psychosocial wellbeing of learners, educators, and their larger communities, as muhammad from sudan confirmed: “sel is part of our child-friendly space services. it helps to mitigate the 21 current issues in comparative education dalrymple impacts of conflict on children, making them calm, providing psychological first aid right after families come to the camp” (interview, march 16, 2022). these findings demonstrate that there is both overlap and divergence of sel intervention objectives, as well as the competencies and behaviors that these interventions aim to help learners develop (see figure 1). though, it is clear that the delivery mechanism and associated programming sector highly influence how practitioners think about, design, and implement their sel interventions. this is illustrated further in the sections below. figure 1 sel delivery mechanism comparison current issues in comparative education 22 critically examining social emotional learning with refugees in east africa: tensions, challenges, and complex dynamics “it’s not new, just different”: refugee community perceptions of sel sel was generally reported as a new term for refugee communities, but not necessarily a new concept. while a few study participants mentioned that refugee communities were aware of the term sel due to previous programming, many participants reported that refugee communities were familiar with the general tenants of sel, but did not refer to this kind of learning and development specifically as sel. this is exemplified by eddie from uganda: “when we explain it to them [the refugees] they say ‘ah, it’s just a different way of doing what we do’. but they are not explicitly aware of sel as a term” (interview, march 24, 2022). some participants mentioned that traditionally, helping children develop social and emotional competencies is often done in community settings through mechanisms like religious education and by community and religious leaders; sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally, as jonah from tanzania shared: “[the term] sel is not well known here. there are some people doing it, but they don’t call it sel activities. many activities may touch on some [sel] skills, but they are traditionally learned in the community or at home, not school” (interview, march 7, 2022). many interviewees felt that current sel programming is not new, but is organized and structured in a more intentional way that brings explicit awareness to the process of learning and development, especially by embedding it in institutions like formal schooling. for example, yafet from ethiopia reported that: “the [refugee] community had some awareness of the components of sel in an unstructured manner when we started the program, but what we do is put what the community has in a structured manner. so the program is not completely new, but reorganized in a meaningful way that impacts the awareness and overall practice” (interview, march 23, 2022). additionally, participants using the life skills delivery mechanism voiced that refugee communities were more familiar with the concept of life skills, which is why sel is often conflated with such programming and terminology, as shared by nico from kenya: “when discussing our work with [refugee] parents and community members we generally use the term life skills, not pss or sel, because life skills has been around forever compared to pss and sel” (interview, march 18, 2022). alternatively, participants using the mhpss delivery mechanism generally perceive sel and pss as being one in the same, and regularly interchange the terms, as ibrahim from south sudan demonstrated: “our program is focused mainly on pss and mental health, so we often use sel and pss as the same when talking with refugee communities” (interview, april 21, 2022). while many respondents conceptualize sel as an educational approach that can be integrated into formal schooling, others conflate it with life skills or mhpss. additionally, while some refugee communities may already be familiar with the underlying tenants of sel, most are not aware of the specific term sel and its more structured and formalized approach. while i do not argue that a consistent definition and approach for sel should be developed and adopted by all practitioners and 23 current issues in comparative education dalrymple agencies worldwide, this data highlights clear inconsistencies among practitioners currently working in the east africa region. further, these findings again highlight: 1) the lack of understanding about existing refugee concepts and practices related to sel; 2) the limited recognition that the term sel does not exist or even translate in many communities; and 3) no clear intentions to try and address these tensions. integration vs. stand-alone: sectoral influence on implementation approaches a curriculum and training-based methodology was the most commonly cited way of delivering sel interventions. this includes developing new and/or utilizing pre-existing training materials to train teachers, parents, coaches, and facilitators to deliver sel content directly to children, whether through formal schooling, community settings, or recreational activities. this also includes providing curricula, often with sequenced lesson plans and activities, as well as general guidance materials to these adult stakeholders. some sel interventions also use a multi-media approach by incorporating radio broadcasts, interactive voice response calling, and tablet-based activities. though many of these activities either recently emerged as a necessity due to the covid-19 pandemic, or are still in development and have yet to be officially tested and/or implemented. despite these common activities, interviewees reported significant variation regarding perceptions of sel as a stand-alone intervention versus using an integrated approach. for example, most sel programs delivered through formal schooling are integrated into daily teaching practices and instructional routine, as exemplified by avery in their work across the region: “we have tried to train teachers to think of sel as something that facilitates learning and should always be present in the classroom, not something extra” (interview, march 1, 2022). alternatively, many life skills and mhpss programs that include sel are delivered as stand-alone interventions, as demonstrated by eli from tanzania: “this is a specific program delivered in cfss [child friendly spaces] that targets sel and pss skills and doesn’t really relate to other programming” (interview, february 23, 2022). whether sel is integrated into other programming or delivered as a stand-alone intervention is again influenced by which sector sel programming falls under: eie or cpie. for sel programming falling within the eie sector, it is often perceived as something that should be integrated into teacher pedagogy, daily practice, and embraced through a whole community approach. sel through formal schooling is also often connected with other humanitarian activities, social institutions, and supports within a community. however, sel falling under the cpie sector usually results in mhpss or life skills programming that is somewhat self-contained, having a very specific and sequenced implementation approach, tied to a finite timeline with clear curricular modules, and with specific indicators for measurement of impact. indeed, study participants from kenya, rwanda, sudan, and tanzania shared curricula materials and facilitator guides that outline specific modules designed to be delivered by classroom teachers, sports coaches, and mhpss counselors within specific timeframes and tied to particular domains and objectives. while curriculum and training-based strategies are the leading approach, with multi-media interventions gaining popularity, perceptions of whether sel should be an current issues in comparative education 24 critically examining social emotional learning with refugees in east africa: tensions, challenges, and complex dynamics integrated versus stand-alone intervention are clearly divided among those working in eie vs. cpie. as shown previously, these sectors also influence attitudes about the main objectives of sel programming. the eie sector is rooted in philosophies of teaching and learning and child development, whereas cpie and mhpss programming is largely rooted in the field of clinical psychology. despite global guidance encouraging the eie and cpie sectors to collaborate through integrated and coordinated approaches in an effort to galvanize multi-sectoral resources, maximize programmatic impact, and better support whole child development (inee & acpha, 2020), sel implementation with refugees in east africa continues to be siloed and limited by humanitarian sector norms, philosophies, and the theoretical fields that inform them. not just for younger children: target groups of sel target groups of sel programming also varied significantly by sector. most formal-school programming targets refugee children either at the primary-school-age level (ages 6-12) or children in the early childhood age range (3-5), or in rare cases both. sel programming at the secondary-school level was only reported by two respondents, as illustrated by avery in their work across the region: “we don’t see sel for secondary school students, so that is why our program is targeting that age range; they need it too. it’s not just for younger children” (interview, march 1, 2022). sel activities delivered through mhpss and life skills programming reportedly target refugee children as young as three and as old as eighteen, though often breaking children up into appropriate age groupings (i.e. 3-6; 7-10; 11-14; 15-18). a number of programs also target host-community learners, over-age learners (i.e. those in accelerated learning programs), out-of-school children (i.e. orphans and street children), and children in non-school settings, for example through sports and recreational activities, as nico from kenya confirmed: “we target mostly primary school-age children, but some of them are a bit older because they’ve missed some schooling. we also work with older siblings of these children, so youth i guess” (interview, march 18, 2022). many interviewees also mentioned including educators, parents/caregivers, and community members as participants in trainings that aim to prepare adults to deliver sel activities directly to children and, in-so-doing, helping to build sel competencies, and particularly stress-reduction skills, for these adult stakeholders. mustafa from south sudan shared that: “[refugee] communities were skeptical of sel at first because they didn’t want to share the difficulties they were going through, but they are embracing it now; [the training] has really improved psychosocial wellbeing for them, especially the parents” (interview, april 21, 2022). while sel delivered through mhpss and life skills programming targets stakeholders of a wider age range, many sel activities delivered through formal schooling target mostly children at the early childhood or primary school levels, despite global rhetoric that sel is a life-long process and should target individuals of all ages. this could indicate: 1) limited funds and/or capacity to reach a wider age range; 2) that donors and/or implementors feel sel is mostly beneficial for younger ages; or 3) that donors and/or implementors perceive sel as a one-time intervention, rather than an ongoing life-long process. while probing into these conjectures was beyond the scope of this study, this highlights a gap of knowledge and practice within the eie field and further research into this area of inquiry is encouraged. 25 current issues in comparative education dalrymple discussion while this study set out to explore how eie actors understand and implement sel interventions with refugee communities in east africa, and the implications of those interventions, the findings reveal significant tensions related to issues of culture, power, and the complicated reality of implementing refugee education initiatives in the region. one such finding is that understandings and perceptions of what sel is and how it should be delivered vary significantly within and between ngos and practitioners. actors continue to interchange the terms sel, pss, and life skills and use them inconsistently. as outlined by in the scholarship discussed earlier (gallagher, 2018; soye & tauson, 2018), this inconsistency causes significant confusion across eie and cpie practitioners about what exactly sel is, how it should be delivered, and what its main objectives are. this confusion perpetuates poor coordination and siloed approaches between the eie and cpie sectors, resulting in the limited effectiveness of sel interventions. additionally, definitions and approaches to sel are heavily influenced by what sector and type of programming sel is delivered through, as well as the theoretical foundations of these sectors and approaches. those working through the eie sector understand sel as an educational approach, rooted in child development theories, that should be integrated into daily teaching practices and other routine education activities. however, those working through the cpie sector perceive sel as a targeted stand-alone approach that contributes to larger mhpss objectives, rooted in clinical psychology. as mentioned above, existing scholarship has demonstrated the confusion, inconsistency, and limited program effectiveness that these differing sectoral perceptions and approaches have caused for some time. as a result, global guidance has been developed by eie and cpie actors, which emphasizes the need to integrate sel across eie and cpie activities in a coordinated and cohesive manner. however, study findings demonstrate that sel implementation with refugees in east africa remains siloed. these siloed approaches appear to be common practice as they can be found in numerous past and present refugee sel initiatives globally (save the children, 2023; shah, 2017; torrente et al., 2019). yet, this practice serves to perpetuate disjointed, repetitive, and inadequate programming, rather than collaborative and maximized efforts that could potentially reach more refugee children and improve the perceived and assumed academic and psychosocial deficits among refugee learners. despite these differences of understanding and implementation, it is clear that sel delivered through both sectors is heavily influenced by western frameworks, materials, and standards developed at the global level. whether using open-source frameworks like casel, organization-specific materials, or developing local sel frameworks, the foundational content, domains, and competencies that all sel interventions (examined in this study) utilize are rooted in and guided by the western conceptualization of sel. in line with the scholarship presented earlier (brush et al., 2022; gay, 2018; jeong, 2019; jones et al., 2019; jukes et al., 2018), study findings demonstrate that this more structured and explicit approach to sel does not align with how some refugee communities and cultures understand, teach, and learn social and emotional competencies. this contributes to discourse that problematizes the imposition of western sel interventions in refugee contexts, as well as other western educational interventions (e.g. lcp, ecd, pbl, literacy, life-long learning, etc.), and the fact that they may be limited or current issues in comparative education 26 critically examining social emotional learning with refugees in east africa: tensions, challenges, and complex dynamics unsuccessful due to a lack of refugee community understanding and buy-in. additionally, without understanding and building upon existing refugee conceptualizations and practices of sel, western approaches could potentially enact forms of cultural imperialism and subaltern epistemicide, as argued by nsamenang (2011) and tabulawa (2013), that undermine or erase existing practices and conceptualizations of sel in non-western refugee contexts. these consequences could negatively impact continued investment—by donors, ngos, and other actors—in sel for refugees in the east africa region, and globally, if it proves to be ineffective or culturally pernicious. in order to avoid these potential consequences, global guidance has been issued on the crucial need to contextualize and adapt western and “global” sel materials for refugee and crisis contexts, and involve community stakeholders in that process (berg et al., 2017; inee, 2022; usaid, 2021). however, most interviewees either did not engage in a contextualization process or were unable to recall the extent, depth, and quality of the process. actors also reported little or no engagement with refugee communities when designing and delivering their sel interventions. those who detailed some form of contextualization and/or community engagement made clear that it was a performative and “tick-box” action, rather than genuine or meaningful engagement. this not only demonstrates a clear tension and disconnect between what is recommended in theory and what is happening in reality, but also illustrates the unequal power dynamics between implementing actors and refugee communities. ngos appear to hold much of the decision-making power related to educational programming like sel for refugee communities in east africa, thus replicating the common and historical practice of stripping refugee communities of their agency and self-determination (agier, 2011; harrell-bond, 1986; krause, 2021; malkki, 1996). these unequal power dynamics are also fortified by the fact that sel programming in east africa is largely driven by donor priorities, global best practices, and coordination mechanisms, not by refugee communities. as demonstrated above, scholars and practitioners recognize that sel is not new, but rather a particularly structured way of supporting individuals to learn certain skills and competencies. however, donors continue to insist that ngos utilize western sel approaches, based on “global best practice”, rather than building on existing or previous sel, or sel-adjacent, practices and programming in refugee contexts. this not only reinforces the inequity of power between donors, ngos, and refugee communities, but also results in repetitive and ineffective programming. as sel is considered to be an on-going, life-long process, and the potential benefits of sel take time to manifest (casel, 2023), this lack of continuity in programming will especially perpetuate the limited success and impact of sel—and similar eie interventions, with refugee communities in the region. a final key tension identified through this study relates to the integration of refugee children into national education systems. when engaging with ministries of education in east africa to develop national sel frameworks, no study participants mentioned the integration of refugee and displaced children into national education systems of their host countries. despite the existence of numerous regional commitments towards this goal, sel appears to function as an indicator that these commitments exist mostly in theory and have yet to be realistically executed. if national governments, donors, and 27 current issues in comparative education dalrymple relevant agencies continue to delay meaningful processes of refugee integration, they will only perpetuate the protracted nature of many refugee communities in the region, thus subjecting refugee learners to the repetitive, inadequate, and ineffective education programming that has plagued them for decades. conclusion the tensions, challenges, and complex dynamics related to culture and power identified through this examination of sel with refugees in east africa are not unique to sel or refugee education for that matter. rather, the findings speak to broader western educational trends and topical eie interventions globally (e.g. gender, protection, inclusion) and the fact that many of these interventions are: 1) rooted in western concepts, philosophies, and approaches; 2) ngo and donor-driven; and 3) repetitive and inadequate. i acknowledge the hard work and positive intentions of the study participants and do not discourage eie actors from continuing to uphold the right to education for refugees and endeavoring to improve eie programming globally. however, the eie field must first acknowledge the existing challenges and tensions in the field, like those presented in this article, in order to meaningfully address them and uphold the humanitarian principle of do no harm. this article begins to address the qualitative and critical gap in cie and eie scholarship on sel in refugee contexts, however more research is needed to fully understand how refugee communities in east africa—and globally, receive and experience sel interventions and what the deeper impacts of these interventions are. additionally, research on why sel interventions delivered through formal schooling target mostly younger refugee children, and not older refugee learners, could help to inform eie practices and donor policies to align with the concept of sel as a life-long process and ensure older refugee students also reap the perceived benefits of sel. finally, examination of sel contextualization processes—and the development of local sel frameworks, as well as to what extent refugees retain and travel with learned sel knowledge, and the cultural and behavior-change implications of this, could also help cie and eie practitioners and scholars understand if and how sel functions as a tool of westernization, cultural imperialism, and subaltern epistemicide. adding these areas of inquiry to the cie and eie research agendas will not only serve to inform other current topical eie interventions, but also the broader uptake of sel by education systems globally. acknowledgements i wish to acknowledge dr. kassa michael weldeyesus (associate professor at the addis ababa university, college of education and behavioral sciences) as the co-principal investigator of this study. dr. weldeyesus played an integral role in interviewing study participants, analyzing data, and reviewing key study findings. additionally, this study would not have been possible without the participants; thank you for sharing your experiences with us. kelsey a. dalrymple has nearly 15 years of experience in the fields of education and humanitarian response, focusing mostly on refugee education. she is currently a ph.d. candidate at the university of wisconsin-madison where she is critically examining the use of social emotional learning in refugee and crisis contexts. current issues in comparative education 28 critically examining social emotional learning with refugees in 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(2020). african refugee history. african studies review, 63(3), 560–567. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2020.76 35 current issues in comparative education https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2020.76 2. wawire et al., primary school learning in sub-saharan africa during covi-19.docx_03_05.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 1, winter 2023 primary school learning in sub-saharan africa during covid-19: a scoping review of responses and recovery initiatives induced dr. brenda wawire african population and health research center dr. adrienne barnes-story florida state university dr. elisheba kiru african population and health research center sungkyum kim florida state university globally, the covid-19 pandemic caused unprecedented disruptions in education. school closures quickly followed the onset of the pandemic to contain the spread of the virus, forcing millions of students out of their regular academic calendars. countries put in place interventions aimed to reduce the deleterious effects of school closures and disruptions in learning. for instance, many countries used various mediums to provide students with distance learning. this scoping review examines the interventions that education systems in lowand middle-income sub-saharan african (ssa) countries (lmic) implemented to mitigate learning loss in reading and writing skills among early grade learners (i.e., children attending primary schools) and discusses the reach of those programs. this review highlights the proportion of students reached by the targeted mitigation measures, revealing that lmic countries in ssa provided students with remote learning opportunities through radio and television programming, provided teachers with professional development on the use of novel tools, and provided parents and families with support to help learners at home. however, these disruptions affected the traditional assessment methods. various assessment methods were implemented to measure student progress, but there is a need for appropriate progress monitoring tools and accurate data to measure the effectiveness of the interventions. many lmic implemented return-to-school policy frameworks, processes, and principles that ensured safe learning continuity. keywords: learning loss, covid-19, interventions, responses, literacy, early grades © 2023, wawire et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 25-50. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en wawire et al., primary school learning in sub-saharan africa during covid-19: a scoping review of responses and recovery initiatives induced during school closures the early years of education represent a critical period during which children acquire a range of core competencies correlated with reading comprehension, literacy achievements, and academic outcomes (shanahan & lonigan, 2010). providing all early grade learners with a strong literacy foundation is vital for reaching sustainable development goal 4, which focuses on ensuring inclusive and equitable high-quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities (united nations, 2015). in the early phases of reading development, children acquire code-focused skills such as letter knowledge, phonics, and word recognition all of which are instrumental in developing text reading fluency and comprehension skills (foorman et al., 2020; petscher et al., 2020). foundational literacy is a building block for education attainment and civic engagement in the 21st century. some skills that contribute to literacy acquisition, specifically those that are not code-focused (oral language and vocabulary knowledge), begin to develop before children enter school. code-focused skills are efficiently acquired through explicit, systematic instruction (archer & hughes, 2011). code-focused intervention is critical for both monolingual and bilingual children from lowand middle-income country (lmic) contexts such as many sub-saharan african (ssa) countries (august & shanahan, 2006; kim et al., 2020). in these contexts, foundational literacy skills learning has been predominantly limited to school settings where students and teachers interact as a whole class, or where learners work in small groups. mass school closures caused by the covid-19 pandemic disrupted the education of more than 1.6 billion children globally (world bank, 2020), with particularly large impacts on education systems and ministries of general education [moge] in developing country contexts. in ssa, more than 127 million vulnerable school-going children were forced out of classrooms (unesco, 2021a). the present study focuses on sub-saharan african lmics, based on the world bank classifications. we included data available at the time of publication for all countries on the african continent excluding south africa, egypt, and morocco. school shutdowns exacerbated the dismal pre-pandemic learning poverty levels in the region, wherein the percent of students who were unable to read and understand simple texts by age ten already stood at 87% and is currently at 89% (world bank, 2021). prior to the pandemic, ssa faced persistent challenges in the education sector related to large class sizes, deficiencies in teachers’ content and pedagogical content knowledge, poor pedagogical approaches, lack of home literacy support, inadequate teacher training and professional development (pd), inadequate supplies of teaching and learning materials, learning in unfamiliar instructional languages, and high rates of teacher and student absenteeism (uwezo, 2016). an in-depth examination of interventions that might mitigate learning loss for students living in low-resource contexts of ssa is crucial, given the learning lag that existed before the pandemic. considering the current and long-term impact of learning loss on literacy development, this scoping review analyzes evidence on the instructional and policy interventions implemented in ssa lmics to mitigate learning loss among early grade readers (joanna briggs institute, 2015). the findings provide examples from which low-resource countries around the globe can draw lessons as they build back resilient education systems and recover from the detrimental effects of covid-19. 26 current issues in comparative education primary school learning in sub-saharan africa during covid-19: a scoping review of responses and recovery initiatives induced the present study this paper provides a review of the available evidence on policy responses and interventions that ssa lmic countries implemented during and after covid-19 school closures to reduce and compensate for the loss of literacy skills for early grade learners (i.e., children attending primary school). in order to ensure future pandemic preparedness and to make ssa education systems resilient and better prepared to ensure learning continuity and access to education for the vulnerable populations, it is critical to review the available literature that sheds light on mitigation measures, their reach, response, and recovery mechanisms. the present study addresses the following research questions: (1) what interventions were taken by governments and various education stakeholders across sub-saharan africa lmics to support primary literacy skill development during and after covid-19 school shutdowns? (2) what was the reach of these interventions? rationale for the study given the risk of children being left behind in education, it is critical to document the intervention and mitigation measures implemented in various ssa lmic countries to ensure learning continuity among vulnerable early grade children who are at risk of being left further behind. the evidence generated from the current review can inform policy frameworks that can be tested, validated, adapted for institutionalization by governments and ministries of general education as part of efforts to ensure future pandemic preparedness and promote access to education and learning continuity. in addition, the lessons of effective and ineffective intervention implementation can be adapted to strengthen education systems, curbing the loss of foundational literacy skills. global mitigation of learning loss learning loss is the deterioration of learned skills and missed learning opportunities that students would have benefitted from without interruptions to schooling (angrist et al., 2021; slade et al., 2017). the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd) and harvard graduate school of education’s (2020) survey of 98 countries reveals salient education challenges in mitigating learning loss during covid-19 converge to, among others: (1) ensuring the continuity of academic learning; (2) supporting students who lack skills for independent or online study; (3) ensuring continuity and integrity of the learning assessments; and (4) defining new priorities. against this backdrop, various forms of remote learning solutions have been implemented worldwide –for both instruction and assessment. in brazil, daily educational video broadcasting on state television was initiated following the national council of education’s recommendation to make families the direct audience or early childhood education content (piedra & reimers, 2020). this augmented the current issues in comparative education 27 wawire et al., distribution of free digital children’s books targeted for low-educational-level families. distance learning solutions were implemented globally across nations during the school closures in response to the covid-19 pandemic to limit disruption in learning and access to basic education (barron rodriguez et al., 2021). the global reliance upon remote learning interventions calls for immediate and long-term assessment of their effectiveness and efficacy. the development of more inclusive forms of remote learning through diverse delivery channels, as well as strengthening communication between teachers, families, and learners, should be synchronized with national educational contexts that consider available resources, policy stakeholders, and the needs of learners, families, and teachers (conto et al., 2020). ssamitigation of learning loss in ssa contexts, other irregular school closures caused by teachers’ strikes, natural disasters, conflicts, and other viruses such as ebola, have regularly amplified learning loss. however, the pandemic introduced additional challenges such as loss of income, food insecurity, adverse health impacts, grief, sexual and gender-based violence, socioemotional and well-being challenges, and lack of psychosocial and mental health support (buonsenso et al., 2020; mudiriza & de lannoy, 2020). school closures also have negative effects on vulnerable learners living in poverty, particularly in lower-middle-income countries, as they may not have learning resources and literacy support at home to augment their skills instruction (moscoviz & evans, 2022). additionally, the amalgam of complications in the ssa region may cause students to be left even further behind due to curriculum challenges wherein the instruction, curriculum content, and textbooks are often not aligned with the students’ learning levels and needs (abdazi, 2006; glewwe et al., 2009; unicef, 2019). it is difficult to measure learning loss induced by covid-19 due to (1) different periods of school closures; (2) varying units of analysis utilized across studies; (3) general lack of post-pandemic data; and (4) challenges related to the administration of assessments to monitor learning progress during remote learning (adea1, au/cieffa2 & aphrc3, 2022; angrist et al. 2021; ardington et al., 2021; azevedo et al., 2020; kaffenberger, 2021; soudien et al., 2021). measuring learning loss in ssa. education stakeholders have attempted to project and estimate learning loss across several lmics. for instance, by using pre-pandemic data from pakistan, classified as a lower-middle-income country, kaffenberger (2021) projects that a school closure of up to 3 african population and health research center 2 african union’s international centre for girls' and women's education in africa 1association for development of education in africa 28 current issues in comparative education primary school learning in sub-saharan africa during covid-19: a scoping review of responses and recovery initiatives induced one-third of the school year might incur learning loss of one learning-adjusted-school-year (lasy) of grade 3 students by the time they reach grade 10. similarly, a study using pre-pandemic ssa data from five african countries – kenya, ethiopia, liberia, tanzania, and uganda – suggests that short-term learning loss of half to one year can incur up to 2.8 years of learning loss to grade 3 students by the time they reach grade 10 (angrist et al. 2021; sabates et al., 2021). globally, projections show a 10% increase in learning poverty due to covid-19-induced school closures, which may lead to significant long-term effects (azevedo et al., 2020). while it may be too early to compare the actual long-term learning loss to projections, emerging data reveal snapshots from several ssa contexts. from a voluntary survey in south africa a middle income country, it was reported that learners in grades one to five lost approximately 60% of their schooling days in 2020, resulting in an estimated reading 76% loss in the rate of their literacy development in the home language and 48% in english for grade four learners (shepherd et al., 2021). in another study, conto and colleagues (2021) examined the extent to which disrupted schooling and instances of dropout impact the acquisition of foundational literacy and numeracy skills, and the extent to which remote learning policies mitigated the learning crisis across seven ssa countries (central african republic, chad, congo democratic republic [d.r.c.], ghana, guinea bissau, lesotho, madagascar, and zimbabwe). the same study reports that children who were out of school tended to score from four to 51 percentage points lower in foundational literacy skills compared to their peers whose instruction was continuous. these findings suggest the school closures due to covid-19 negatively influenced the ability of young children to continue their numeracy and literacy skills development. synthesis of evidence on learning loss also indicates that prolonged school closures and alternative schooling methods have contributed to a widening of the learning gap both within and across countries, furthering domestic and cross-national learning inequalities (moscoviz & evans, 2022; wolf et al., 2021). in ghana, the transition to distance learning has shown a disparaging effect on lower socio-economic status (ses) kindergarten students who have more difficulty engaging in remote learning. these young learners performed significantly worse in literacy and mathematics than their peers in higher ses contexts by 0.2–0.3 standard deviations (wolf et al., 2021). evidently, the degree of learning loss is context-dependent. lmics with socioeconomic inequalities are more vulnerable to lasting educational impacts should interventions not take place (soudien et al., 2021). challenges reported in the ssa context the pandemic presented several challenges in the education systems of many ssa countries. the significant challenges include lack of adequate resources to support continuity of learning and preparations for school reopening, government over-reliance on external financial resources, budget reallocations prioritizing public health, competition for national priorities, and pre-existing challenges that impeded financing education (adea, au/cieffa, & aphrc, 2021). as a result, unequal access to education widened learning inequalities and threatened to leave the most vulnerable student populations even further behind. as of september 2022, learning in many regions had not resumed to the pre-pandemic pace and level. throughout this time, current issues in comparative education 29 wawire et al., many parents were not able to adequately support at-home learning due to a lack of teaching and learning resources, their own lack of expertise to teach literacy, illiteracy challenges, limited or lack of internet connectivity, multiple children in a household needing support, limited devices in the family for connecting to the internet, parental unavailability, and lack of assessments to monitor the learning progress associated with radio and tv programs (akinrinmade et al., 2021). moreover, ssa countries have faced numerous challenges in assessment, including (1) poor preparation for assessment beyond classroom settings; (2) limited technology, unclear policies, and guidelines for assessing learning in the early grades; (3) limited capacities of teachers and students to manage distance learning and adopt technology in learning and assessment; and (4) the absence of baseline data from which to gauge learning loss (adea, au/cieffa & aphrc, 2022). methods we conducted a scoping review to report the types of interventions and responses to covid-19 across ssa lmic countries during and after school closures. a scoping review was appropriate for identifying available literature and providing a broad overview of findings and existing evidence from the field. this scoping review follows the joanna briggs institute [jbi] guidelines based on the population concept context (pcc) framework (arksey & o’malley, 2005; joanna briggs institute, 2015). a jbi scoping review typically begins with the development of a priori protocol that details the inclusion and exclusion criteria that relates to the objective and review target questions, as well as relevant data extraction methods. the inclusion criteria are based on pcc framework where population refers to details of age, gender, race, and other qualifying criteria of the population. the concept is the main idea being examined by the scoping review and is articulated in the scope and breath of the inquiry. lastly, context includes cultural factor's geographic location, and/or specific gender-based interests. this methodological approach is suitable and aligns with the objective of the study, which is to map available evidence and provide a broad overview of covid-19 responses to strengthen early literacy skills in the ssa lmic context. our analysis methodology followed the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses extension for scoping reviews sequencing (prisma-scr) (tricco et al., 2018). the prisma-scr was developed to improve the methodological and reporting guidance of scoping reviews. prisma-scr is a checklist of 20 essential items plus two optional items and includes the rationale for including each in the checklist. our scoping review includes all the essential elements of the checklist. data sources and search strategy we utilized an open search strategy to locate relevant peer-reviewed published research as well as literature published by organizations outside academic journals (e.g., reports, working papers, white papers, etc.), often called grey literature. four researchers searched on databases and organizational websites for relevant literature. the databases and publishers searched were africa bibliography, africa education research database, african journals online, eric, evidence hub, international literacy association, open knowledge repository, open science, psycinfo, science direct, reading and writing, and web of science. we also searched websites of funding agencies and development organizations, including american institutes for research; creative associates; deutsche 30 current issues in comparative education primary school learning in sub-saharan africa during covid-19: a scoping review of responses and recovery initiatives induced gesellschaft für internationale zusammenarbeit; foreign, commonwealth and development office; fhi 360; global reading network; research triangle institute international; room to read; save the children; unesco; unicef; united states agency for international development; and world bank. we also reviewed the reference lists of relevant peer-reviewed articles and grey literature to locate additional relevant studies. lastly, we requested manuscripts under review from academics in the field. the following sets of keywords were used: 1) emergent literacy, intervention, and covid-19; 2) reading, learning loss, and covid-19; 3) reading and writing and covid-19; 4) recovery in learning and covid-19; and 5) early grade literacy and covid-19. we conducted manual searches for studies and gray literature on the listed topics. the initial search included the title and abstracts only and a second search used keywords and index terms within the full document texts. inclusion criteria the criteria established for the selection of the articles required that resources: 1) were published in english; 2) were peer-reviewed articles or grey literature; 3) examined the impact of covid-19 responses/interventions for reading/writing; 4) were conducted in low income or middle income countries (lmics) in ssa; 5) were conducted with preprimary and/or primary grade learners; and 6) were published between march 2020 and september 2022. we focused on the early grades because these learners are most vulnerable to losing foundational literacy skills during extensive school closures. we excluded findings on learners in upper primary, secondary schools, and higher education institutions. charting the data our database search resulted in the identification of 1,028 records (see figure 1). an additional 18 records were identified through reference searching, bringing the total number of records to 1,046. records were screened for duplicates and 122 records were removed, leaving 924 records for possible inclusion. we applied the inclusion criteria described above and excluded 897 documents. a total of 27 records: three peer-reviewed articles and 25 reports and grey literature were included in this scoping review. current issues in comparative education 31 wawire et al., figure 1. flowchart of record identification and screening summarizing and reporting results we utilized a thematic content analysis with a narrative description of the extracted data. the team of researchers reviewed each resource and entered the following information into a shared excel spreadsheet for analysis: sample/population, intervention/practice/policy recommendations, research methods, and findings. inductive analysis consisted of identifying common themes from the data, reviewing data for patterns of themes, and identifying key themes related to critical aspects of responses, practices, and interventions used to mitigate early grade learning loss. strengths and limitations the present scoping review provides an ssa lmic-focused comprehensive review of responses and interventions to mitigate learning losses and enhance the literacy skills of early grade students. one notable strength of the review is that it is informed by evidence from qualitative and quantitative studies as well as grey literature providing multiple dimensions and perspectives of strategies implemented to mitigate learning loss. the focus of this scoping review is to provide a map of available evidence; however, we did not perform a quality appraisal of the evidence (munn et al., 2018). despite using rigorous search strategies, this review may have omitted studies that were 32 current issues in comparative education primary school learning in sub-saharan africa during covid-19: a scoping review of responses and recovery initiatives induced not captured in the databases and websites that were searched, or studies published in languages other than english. the review only highlights resources that were published from march 2020 to september 2022. therefore, more evidence may be published after september 2022 that could critically inform this review. the evidence that highlights the mitigation measures for early grade reading and writing is drawn from select countries in ssa, although other reports and syntheses indicate that remote learning solutions were administered in 41 gpe countries in ssa (adea et al., 2021). it is not clear how all countries in ssa supported early grade reading during school closures since in many countries remote learning solutions prioritized examination classes (grades or classes eight through 12). it is important for future research to review extensively the mitigation measures implemented in the countries not highlighted in this study. these findings provide in-depth evidence that can inform policy guidelines on how to build back stronger and more resilient education programs across sub-saharan africa. results the aim of the present scoping review is to examine types of policy responses and interventions implemented (and their reach) in ssa lmics and aimed to mitigate negative impacts of learning loss on reading and writing skills among early grade learners due to covid-19 school shutdowns. the conceptual categories for our studies are (a) resource type, (b) population, and (c) interventions. for the resource type, we included peer-reviewed articles and grey literature. for the population category, we focused on lower primary school children. interventions focused on early grade literacy. notably, nigeria was overrepresented in 25% of the sources. the results are presented in table 1. current issues in comparative education 33 wawire et al., table 1. charting table of results source country population responses to improve early literacy adea, au/cieffa, & aphrc, 2021 select gpe partner countries in ssa – ghana south sudan, kenya, zambia, burkina faso, cabo verde, eritrea, central african republic, sierra leonne, mozambique, malawi, senegal, and republic of congo all ages distance learning solutions – radio, tv, tablets, digital library services/platforms, ict educational programs, capacity development for teachers, development of teaching materials, audiovisual assistive devices for families, provision of student textbooks, posters, stickers pamphlets of education, radio-based learning kits, adea, au/cieffa & aphrc, 2022 select gpe partner countries in ssa all ages distance learning solutions such as khan academy, seesaw, edo-best, zoom and google meet, homework, quizzes, take home assignment packages, phone based assessments, live or pre-recorded lessons on radio and tv, social media (whatsapp) barron rodriguez et al. (2021) nigeria, malawi, rwanda, kenya, zambia all ages teacher training, radio instruction, tv, printed materials, diagnostic assessments, targeted remedial instruction, sms, and social media conto et al. (2021) central african republic, chad, congo d.r., ghana, guinea bissau, lesotho, madagascar, and zimbabwe. early and middle-grade students remote learning strategies: provision of online platforms to some learners; supply of a combination of online and other modalities (paper-based take-home materials, tv, radio instruction) dang et al. (2021) burkina faso, mali, nigeria, ethiopia, uganda, malawi all ages teacher assignments, radio instruction, television programs fhi 360 (n.d. a) democratic republic of congo, nigeria, ghana grades 1 – 4 interactive radio instruction fhi 360 (n.d. b) ghana early grades delivery of high-quality training and instructional materials in 11 ghanaian languages and english, radio instruction fhi 360. (2021a) ghana, senegal grade 3-4 remediation programs, after-school community-driven remediation programs, scripted reading, writing, math, and socio-emotional learning activities for trainers fhi 360. (2021b) djibouti, drc, ghana, madagascar, nigeria, and senegal early grades large-scale early learning interventions; early grade reading, writing, and mathematics assessments; highly structured classroom observation tools 34 current issues in comparative education primary school learning in sub-saharan africa during covid-19: a scoping review of responses and recovery initiatives induced fhi 360. (2021c) nigeria grades 4, 5 and 6 hausa-language teacher training, early literacy material development, community mobilization, and government partnerships, hausa literacy and math instruction in integrated qur’anic schools. fhi 360. (2021d) nigeria early grades teacher professional development, on-site teacher coaching, and local language materials development fhi 360. (2022) sub-saharan africa adolescent girls developing instructional materials for literacy, enhancing teacher pedagogy, creating safe learning spaces, and strengthening accountability systems and education policies heaner, et al., (2021) nigeria, zambia government officials/don ors/teachers/ stakeholders; learners/don ors/teachers/ stakeholders from zambia nigeria: mobile app classrooms, khan academy, radio & tv, whatsapp for outreach; policy guidelines on digitalization of learning, remedial/catch-up/accelerated learning, and extension of school terms; zambia: distance learning, radio instruction, tv programming, homework packets, catch up lessons, rotational school schedules, condensed curriculum kiendrebeogo et al. (2021) sierra leone all ages radio instruction save the children (2020a) rwanda, malawi early grades literacy boost approach, empowering children with disabilities to practice reading, home-directed interactive radio instruction save the children (2020b) rwanda, malawi not specified broadcast of radio drama series unesco, unicef, world bank. (2021) djibouti, morocco, libya, sudan, and tunisia all ages radio instruction, tv, paper-based take-home packages, parental support, acceleration programs, teacher training unesco, unicef, the world bank, and oecd (2021) burkina faso, guinea, kenya, liberia, madagascar, sierra leone, zambia, zimbabwe all ages paper-based take-home materials, tv and radio, interactive mobile-based modalities using sms or phone calls. unicef (2021) uganda refugee hosting districts/earl y grade learners accelerated education programmes (aep); teaching at the right level in mother tongue (foundational literacy and numeracy skills) current issues in comparative education 35 wawire et al., the world bank, unesco, and unicef (2021) botswana, nigeria, kenya, rwanda, zimbabwe  all ages texts and phone calls, re-enrolment campaigns, teacher training, provision of culturally and linguistically appropriate books, dialogic reading training for caregivers unicef (2020) multiple 149 ministries of education policies on distance learning strategies, boost access to online learning, provide support for teachers, parents, and caregivers unesco (2021) a congo, mauritius, gabon ministries of education recommended considerations for remediating learning loss 1. assessing learning needs: diagnostic assessment to determine which skills and content need to be (re)taught 2. adjusting pedagogy: (a) adaptive teaching; (b) condensed curriculum 3. prioritizing, training, and supporting teachers 4. emphasizing socio-emotional learning (sel): (a) whole-school approach; (b) should target specific, clearly defined competencies; (c) incorporation of 4 elements 5. ensuring gender equality unesco (2021) b egypt, djibouti, libya, tunisia, morocco, algeria, sudan all ages face-to-face learning for early grade learners, hybrid learning, and full remote learning for all grades. television and radio, providing caregivers with materials to support home-based learning, regular follow-up phone calls unocha (2020) zambia literacy lessons aired on community radios, reading camps, teaching and learning materials (student packets), emergent literacy and math at home, digital library educational resources, zizi afrique foundation (2020) kenya grades 1 – 3 radio instruction, reading packet, teaching assistants training world bank. (2020) ghana, kenya, nigeria, tanzania all ages radio instruction, tv, smartphones, youtube channels, electronic books, accelerated learning programs world bank. (2021) rwanda all ages radio instruction, tv, youtube channel, and e-learning portals. 36 current issues in comparative education primary school learning in sub-saharan africa during covid-19: a scoping review of responses and recovery initiatives induced our findings indicate that education stakeholders in various ssa countries (including moge, governments, and development partners), instituted a range of policy and practice responses during and after covid-19 school closures (see table 1). according to the world bank, the predetermined policy categorizations include coping, managing and continuity, and improving and accelerating learning (world bank, 2020). education funding priorities for global partnership for education (gpe) partner countries focused on distance learning solutions including radio instruction and television (tv) programming; teacher training on the use of distance learning solutions; effective practical approaches for using distance learning and assessing student skills; remedial teaching; and provision of water, sanitation, and hygiene (wash) materials; personal protective equipment; resources to support school reopening; and support to vulnerable children (adea, et al., 2021). the policy responses and interventions were financed through within-government budget reallocations, adjustments to development partner programming (i.e., gpe, the world bank, unicef, usaid, family health international 360 [fhi], education cannot wait, the private sector, civil organizations), and support from individual households (adea et al., 2021). a majority of ssa countries conducted needs assessments and rapid mapping of available educational content in relevant languages of instruction (adea et al., 2021). in alignment with countries globally, most ssa countries emphasized multimodal distance learning solutions, as there were generally limited teacher-student interactions during lengthy school closures to curb the spread of the covid-19 virus (dang et al., 2021). evidence indicates that during school closures, an essential education response was the use of technology and remote learning disseminated through modalities such as radio instruction, television programs, smartphones (using short messaging services and phone calls), electronic textbooks, mobile apps, e-learning portals, social media, khan academy, national open university, and unesco’s school meets learner approach (adea et al., 2021; conto et al., 2021; heaner et al., 2021; kiendrebeogo et. al., 2021; unesco, 2020; world bank, 2020, 2021). unfortunately, remote learning solutions were inaccessible to the majority of learners from marginalized, rural, and urban informal settlements due to lack of resources. scarce resources included: internet connectivity, electronic devices (tv, smartphone, tablet, computer, and radio), digital content in the appropriate language of instruction, electricity coverage, funds for airtime or data, digital skills, quiet spaces for learning at home, and in-home books and learning materials (adea et al., 2021; adea et al., 2022; heaner et al., 2021; unesco et al., 2021; unocha, 2020). the ses and residential location were critical determinants of accessibility to remote learning opportunities. pre-primary, lower primary, and marginalized learners (refugees, learners with disabilities, migrants, and girls) were at the highest risk of not receiving opportunities for continued exposure to learning (adea et al., 2021; adea et al., 2022). reports indicate that more than 70% of pre-primary children could not be reached in ssa lmics, and that this region of the world had the highest percentage of primary school children who could not access remote learning solutions that require technology: 49% in east/southern africa and 48% in west/central africa (avanesian et al., 2021; dang et al., 2021; unesco et al., 2021). only 29% of primary school students from east/southern africa and 26% from west/central africa had access to a tv, current issues in comparative education 37 wawire et al., approximately 6% to 8% had access to the internet, and 35% to 46% had access to a working radio (unicef, 2020b). radio, television, and digital programming for literacy during the pandemic, thousands of learners benefited from accelerated learning programs in conjunction with low-cost technologies and radio-based learning. programs using radio instruction appeared to have reached the highest number of learners across the ssa lmic context, particularly when pre-existing radio programs were adapted and radios were provided to learners with limited access to technology (gondwe, 2020; global partnership for education 2020; zizi afrique foundation, 2020). findings indicate that learners across multiple countries (burkina faso, kenya, malawi, nigeria, rwanda, tanzania, and zambia) experienced government-sponsored radio and television program broadcasting that focused on all grades and parent/caregiver education (kenya: zizi afrique foundation, 2020; tanzania: save the children, 2020b), existing primary school curricula (malawi: gondwe, 2020; global partnership for education 2020; nigeria: fugate, n.d.a; rwanda: save the children, 2020b; zambia: moge, 2020a; unesco, 2020a), or on primary grades literacy and numeracy skills (burkina faso: unicef, 2020). radio and television instruction was particularly powerful for zambian children from rural areas, where moge partnered with unesco to launch a national e-learning portal for pre-primary and lower primary learners and in kenya where the kenya institute of curriculum development provided learners with access to content using the kenya education cloud such as interactive digital content, e-books, and the edu-tv channel (moge, 2020a; unesco, 2020a). in malawi, radio-based instruction supported early learning for more than 2 million children aged 5 years who received home-directed interactive radio instruction on early literacy and mathematics concepts (save the children, 2020b). radio and home-based instruction have been more effective in developing reading skills in young children than children who did not receive intervention using either radio or home-based instruction in northern nigeria and ghana (fhi 360, 2021c). community centers community learning centers were established to reach marginalized students and families without radios in many rural contexts, and these became critical for continued instruction during school shutdowns. in northern nigeria, learners gathered at the community centers to listen to the radio lessons and receive additional support from trained teachers and facilitators (heaner et al., 2021). similarly, ethiopia established reading camps with volunteers (community literacy leaders) who provided students with opportunities to practice their reading skills using books and hands-on supplementary reading materials (ali, 2021). a local rwandan organization, youth volunteers with disabilities, ran workshops in several villages where children with disabilities were empowered to practice reading and engage in different activities with their parents (save the children, 2021). community-based programs and radio/tv-based programming also provided a platform for parental training and support, essentially creating home literacy structures. these programs exposed parents and caregivers to methods for supporting their children’s reading development and home learning, life skills education, local library services where students were able to check out books for use at home with adults and 38 current issues in comparative education primary school learning in sub-saharan africa during covid-19: a scoping review of responses and recovery initiatives induced caregivers, feeding programs, teacher support, and home visits for the earliest learners (dang et al., 2021; moge, 2020b; room to read, 2021; save the children, 2020b; world bank, 2021; zizi afrique foundation, 2021). by connecting parents with needed resources, community centers were able to continue providing education to school-aged children and meet the needs of the whole family (room to read, 2021; save the children, 2020b). teachers’ professional development during the pandemic shutdown, teachers needed to receive professional development training to be able to cope with the changing landscape of the classroom. teacher professional development as provided to pre-service and in-service teachers through cascade (train the trainers) and coaching models to help teachers learn how to teach using various online modalities and how to repackage learning materials for student access through different platforms (adea, au/cieffa, & aphrc, 2021). however, evidence indicates that only a limited number of teachers were able to benefit from the planned professional development trainings; the majority were not reached due to financial and/or logistical constraints (unesco, unicef, & world bank, 2021). remote professional development through cascade and coaching models as implemented in various regions to equipped teachers with knowledge and skillsets for remote learning and remedial teaching. pd focused on the use of digital technologies (nigeria: wafi, 2021) and on early grade reading, writing, and mathematics content, pedagogies, and assessment (congo, d.r.c., djibouti, ghana, madagascar, nigeria, and senegal: fhi 360, 2021a). assessment methods monitoring student progress is critical to ensuring that learners receive a high-quality education, as assessment should inform instruction. the school closures that disrupted teaching and learning during the pandemic disrupted traditional assessment procedures as well. according to adea et al. (2022), the policy and response practices of assessment in gpe partner countries in ssa focused on take-home quizzes and homework, social media and web-based assessment platforms, high-stakes examinations, and evaluation of learning loss. upper grades and examination classes were prioritized in most countries because they were either an examination class or were approaching the national assessments and needed support to prepare these high-stakes exit examinations. assessments for the distance learning modalities were built into the lessons in the form of quizzes and tasks assigned at the end of the radio or tv lesson (adea et al., 2022). existing assessment tools were adapted and used in some countries during the covid-19 pandemic. the early grade reading and mathematics assessment was administered on a multiple-choice assessment on a virtual platform and formative assessments were delivered through a text message sent to learners or parents to measure mastery of the learning objectives for each lesson (nigeria: unicef, 2021). teachers also measured student skills through questionnaires and simple phone-based assessments in literacy and numeracy (botswana (angrist et al., 2020b, unesco, & unicef, 202; the world bank, 2021). teachers in malawi, namibia, ghana, ethiopia, and the congo, d.r.c. utilized homework that contained quizzes and printed take-home packets (unicef, 2020b). in rwanda, a national diagnostic assessment was current issues in comparative education 39 wawire et al., administered to children in primary schools to identify students from low ses backgrounds who should receive remedial learning once schools reopened. in zambia, assessments were conducted nationally to identify learning gaps and inform remedial learning programming to enable all children to catch up at the grade level (matwafali & masaiti, under review). in mauritania, teachers administered assessments in the form of take-home packets with quizzes to complement the radio and tv lessons with a focus on students from marginalized and rural areas (dreesen et al., 2020). monitoring and evaluation (m&e) frameworks were designed to assess learning continuity and catch-up learning. findings reveal that radio and home-based instruction have been more effective in developing reading skills in young children than no intervention. those lacking access to interventions consequently exhibited a greater magnitude of learning loss and were at-risk of lagging further behind their peers. furthermore, the cluster randomized control trial (crct) reveals evidence of the positive impacts of math-themed read-aloud stories and syllabic instruction for hausa language reading (fhi 360, 2021c). interventions after schools reopened the african union (2020) encouraged its member states to agree on return-to-school frameworks, processes, and principles that ensured safe learning continuity. the plan included adjusting academic calendars and instituting catch-up or remedial programs (unesco, 2021a, b). school reopening interventions included rotational school schedules (e.g., heaner et al., 2021), accelerated learning programs and teaching at the right level (tarl approaches [moge, 2021b; unicef, 2021b; world bank, 2020]), and after-school community-driven remediation programs. to make up for lost time, some governments delayed school holidays (e.g., moge, 2021b). the nigerian states of borno, adamawa, and sokoto changed school operations by extending the number of days children attended school (heaner et al., 2021). countries like zambia designed m&e strategies to assess implementation fidelity for remote learning or accelerated learning when schools reopened (moge, 2020b). discussion our present scoping review presents a summary of interventions, responses, and measures implemented across several ssa lmic countries aimed to mitigate learning loss and address the pervasive learning crisis. as a result of school closures due to the pandemic, researchers project a high magnitude of learning loss, particularly for early grade learners (angrist et al., 2021). learning challenges in ssa such as lack of teaching and learning resources, ineffective pedagogical approaches, overcrowded classrooms, and lack of home literacy support (dubeck et al., 2012; kim et al., 2016) have been exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic. our findings indicate that local and international education stakeholders in many ssa lmic countries collaborated with ministries of general education and attempted to use technological interventions as well as paper-based distance learning methods and exerted measures in the form of institutionalized policies to mitigate learning loss during and after school closures (unesco, 2020, 2021). global trends show reduced teacher-student contact during school closures and consequently, reduced literacy instruction (dang et al., 2021). the 40 current issues in comparative education primary school learning in sub-saharan africa during covid-19: a scoping review of responses and recovery initiatives induced policy responses and interventions discussed herein aimed to ensure access to education and enhanced equity by targeting vulnerable and marginalized learners, including those with special needs, girls, out-of-school children, refugees, and students from lower ses backgrounds. during school closures, many countries adapted multimodal distance learning solutions to ensure continuity of learning for all the learners (adea et al., 2022; conto et al., 2021; kiendrebeogo et al., 2021; unesco, 2020; world bank, 2020). children in the early grades received instruction through mainly radio and tv programing. technical experts from local moges and development partners created content in relevant languages of instruction that was broadcasted through national and community radio stations. despite huge efforts to disseminate content through distance learning modalities, many children in multiple countries received no instruction and were not reached due to major challenges such as access to technology, devices, poor/no internet penetration, and poor or no electricity coverage (adea et al., 2021; adea et al., 2022; heaner et al., 2021; unesco et al., 2021; unocha, 2020). the evidence from ssa lmic corroborates with response mechanism in other contexts (middle and high-income settings) where the immediate response to ensure learning continuity and access to basic education was distance learning solutions (barron rodriguez et al., 2021). the take-up of remote learning solutions was high in middle and high-income countries with high levels of scale and scope of remote learning measures (muñoz-najar et al., 2021). while the remote learning solutions programs focused on developing component skills of literacy in a variety of languages of instruction, limited evidence exists on dimensions such as engagement during learning, frequency of use, uptake, check for learning measures, and learning progress (barron rodriguez et al., 2021). foundational literacy instruction should be systematic and explicit particularly for code-focused skills, oral language and vocabulary skills that are building blocks for text reading fluency and reading comprehension (foorman et al., 2020; petcher et al., 2020). teaching the code-focused skills needs in many lmics has been limited to classroom studies. hence, in order to teach effectively, the teacher needs to possess competence in pedagogical content knowledge and the capability to adjust their teaching practices to engage students effectively in the learning process. many studies reviewed do not highlight the frequency and regular access of the radio and tv lessons. learning via tv and radio modalities does not allow teacher-student interaction, which is critical for learners in early grades. thus, it is difficult to check for learning, implement classroom management practices (i.e., monitoring time on task), evaluate whether students understand the content and have achieved the learning objectives, provide feedback, or determine whether learners have necessary supports and materials (unesco, 2020). distance-learning modalities complicate attempts to differentiate instruction and cater to the individual needs of students. crosson and silverman (2022) reported key barriers to remote instruction such as a lack of opportunities for small group discussion (reduced support for language and vocabulary skills) and technological challenges due to learning to use new software. there were notable challenges in best approaches to teach the component skills of reading comprehension. for instance, teaching phonological awareness through video current issues in comparative education 41 wawire et al., instruction where the teacher shares their screen is considerably different from in-person contexts where teachers use visual aids and children can observe the teacher’s lips. furthermore, students need to practice models of the phonological aspects presented by the teacher in the lessons such as articulating phonemes, segmenting and blending phonemes. this is particularly impactful when teaching foundational literacy skills such as phonemic awareness and phonics, as the teacher models how to enunciate the sound. in the other component skills, the teacher needs to guide children to read the stories multiple times to help them improve their accuracy rate. engaging learners in vocabulary and reading comprehension strategies such as introducing new vocabulary and practicing the use of new vocabulary, prediction of the story and activation of prior knowledge, engaging students in comprehension activities such as retell, sequencing, summarizing, and answer factual and inferential questions require in-depth student-teacher interactions which are limited in a one-way model of dissemination. in alignment with other low-income settings, writing instruction and practice in ssa lmics was very limited due to a lack of technology to support writing practice, poor organizational structure, inaccessibility of writing materials, and lack of opportunities to model writing (akinrinmade et al., 2021; crosson & silverman, 2022). assessment is critical for monitoring students' learning progress and measuring reading effectiveness. there is limited evidence on policies and guidelines on learning assessment during school closures. thus, in many regions it was difficult to measure learning loss or gains that those children made as a result of remote learning (adea et al., 2022). this brings into question the reach and reliability of these interventions. if children are not able to be assessed using one of the most basic and far-reaching forms of distance learning technology (radio), then education stakeholders must seriously reconsider the infrastructure of education in contexts absent of community learning centers. it is also critical for countries to track students’ learning progress through standardized assessments at all grade levels stored in secured national or regional databases. available data can be used to make comparisons of learning gains/loss over time and is critical to informing classroom instruction. countries might also establish curriculum-based remote assessments for all grade levels with accommodations for learners with special needs, should these be required in the future. key lessons for reflection by ssa countries as they continue to mitigate literacy-learning loss evidence indicates that ssa countries continue to enact policies and interventions aimed to mitigate the learning crisis. these findings highlight several key lessons that ssa countries can draw from in order to build back stronger and more resilient education systems, and ultimately improve foundational literacy skills among early grade learners. unesco (2021) proposed several recommendations for remediating learning loss in congo, d.r.c., mauritius, and gabon. the key lessons include administering a needs or diagnostic assessment to establish which skills need to be retaught, using an adaptive teaching methodology with a condensed curriculum, prioritizing teacher training, emphasizing socioemotional learning, targeting instruction for specific competencies, and focusing on gender equality. it is crucial for policymakers and educational stakeholders to emphasize pre-primary education, as this population was hardly reached during school closures (avenasian et.al, 2021). angrist and colleagues (2021) suggest interventions to improve learning outcomes of foundational literacy skills include providing instruction targeted to a child's level and using structured pedagogy 42 current issues in comparative education primary school learning in sub-saharan africa during covid-19: a scoping review of responses and recovery initiatives induced programs. programs that include structured lesson plans, teacher and student books, teacher training and pd, and teacher instructional support while allocating an hour each school day to a tarl approach may help children catch up on skills they missed during school closures. ssa countries might also use the covid-19 pandemic as a springboard to initiate curriculum reforms that include tarl and structured pedagogy, with an emphasis on community learning centers for supplemental learning opportunities outside the classroom. regarding learning assessment, adea, au/cieffa, and aphrc (2022) recommend that gpe partner countries reimagine and adopt edtech in learning and assessment processes by expanding the use of technology beyond formative assessments (e.g., the creation of early grade reading self-evaluation tools that automatically score and provide solutions to problems). education systems that build the teachers’ and administrators’ capacity to use digital technology for assessments and create awareness/build parental capacity for supporting home learning while also allocating more domestic resources to education will ultimately be able to react in a timely and effective manner during emergency responses. there is a need to prioritize ssa country investments into education technology and distance learning infrastructure, particularly in remote areas where learners may have little or no access to onsite learning during emergencies (adea et al., 2021). conclusion the education sector in ssa was severely weakened by the covid-19 pandemic and was unprepared to tackle the challenges presented. the efforts to respond to and mitigate the learning loss crisis were not all-inclusive, as the most vulnerable populations were not reached and continue to be at-risk of falling further behind their peers. these findings exemplify the widened achievement and inequality gap in education that affect learners from low-income contexts. there is an urgent need to support vulnerable populations of students, particularly preschool and early grade children, to acquire foundational literacy and numeracy skills. governments may consider prioritizing tarl pedagogical approaches, financing, technology, digital learning, different modalities of assessment, parental support and engagement, and continued teacher training in order to meet these children’s needs. further empirical evidence on the extent of learning loss is needed to inform the continued responses and interventions. dr. brenda wawire is an associate research scientist at the african population and health research centre. she has research experience in literacy acquisition across languages, second language acquisition, and pre-service and in-service reading teacher training. dr. wawire currently supports education stakeholders in multilingual contexts to implement structured interventions to support early grade students with reading difficulties. dr. adrienne barnes-story is a literacy, pedagogy, and research specialist with learning systems institute at florida state university. she has over 20 years of experience in education research and international education and development. dr. barnes-story currently 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charles glenn boston university most middle-class americans, if they have children, and intellectuals almost without exception, make decisions about which schools their children will attend. choice is massively present in american education, and those who exercise it (most parents including those with children in public schools--and most public school teachers who are parents) would not willingly give it up. a report by the national center for education statistics found that, in 1993, of families with incomes over $50,000, 72 percent sent their children to private schools, public schools of choice (such as magnet schools), and schools which they had selected through residence decisions (choy, 1997). but, like many of the goods which we value, school choice is unevenly distributed, reflecting income, influence, and sophistication of various groups in society. for that reason, it should be no surprise that support for school choice, as reflected in many surveys, is strongest among those who have the least opportunity to exercise it, and for whom the stakes are highest. urban and minority respondents with school-aged children provide the strongest support for parent choice of schools, including private schools with a religious identity. it should come as no surprise that the leadership of teacher unions are opposed to public policies that would allow low-income parents to make decisions about the education of their children. the monopoly system which prevails at present in american public education simplifies greatly their work and extends their influence as well as their revenues. but why are most intellectuals and education theorists so hostile to allowing ordinary parents to choose which school their children will attend? this is not a new question. a dozen years ago, puzzled by the distaste on the part of intellectuals toward the urban school choice programs for which i was responsible as the massachusetts state official charged with desegregation and urban education, i wrote an historical account of what i called the "common school agenda" in france, the netherlands, and the united states during the nineteenth century. my book, the myth of the common school (glenn, 1998), shows that the emerging state role in schooling was not the result of concerns about literacy or numeracy, much less (contrary to neo-marxist claims) to serve the interests of industry, but rather resulted from the intention to shape the political loyalties of the rising generation. parents and churches--competing sources of meaning and loyalties-were seen as the primary barrier to achieving this goal. catholic schooling, in particular, was considered profoundly anti-democratic, retrograde and (in the united states) unamerican. examining the choice of religious schools it seems that we can see something like the same phenomenon at work today in the deep aversion of many intellectuals to the idea that parents can be trusted to choose schools for their children that will not unfit those children for life in a free country. this charles glenn 66 april 30, 1999 belief has seldom been expressed so clearly, at least at book-length, as in james g. dwyer's recent book religious schools v. children's rights (1998). dwyer makes two arguments, which converge in a series of recommendations. the first argument is that most, if not all, religious schools are harmful to children. the second is that parents have no fundamental right to make decisions for their children. religious liberty, dwyer (1998) insists, does not include the right of parents to have their children educated in a way consistent with their own convictions, but the right of children not to have such an education. the freedom of children is violated when, for example, their teachers impose upon them "moral exhortations" which "effectively prevent many children from freely expressing themselves physically, exploring their sexuality, or even giving affection to others" (p.159). even if the children themselves express a preference for a religious school, dwyer argues, the state would be justified in concluding that their long-range religious liberty would be better served by a temporary violation of their short-term religious liberty to attend such a school. among the dangers from which the state should protect children is that of growing up as fundamentalists. "knowing that these children will incur the scorn of mainstream america if they grow up to be like their parents, why do we not act to prevent that, for their sake, rather than expect mainstream america to develop a respect for people who argue dogmatically for reactionary policies based upon religious premises we do not share!" (dwyer, 1998, p. 173). yet lest this seem harsh, dwyer calls for affirmative action programs for "graduates of conservative religious schools who seek to rise above…the disabilities their schooling inflicted on them" (p. 174)! now, of course, this line of argument is profoundly anti-liberal and indeed (dare we say it?) un-american. the state is not to set up any sort of orthodoxy, even a secular one, and to seek to impose it through mandatory schooling. dwyer's argument that the state or the courts should intervene in the higher interest of young people who mistakenly harbor religious convictions is strikingly parallel to the rationalizations employed by the anti-religion educators under communist regimes, described in my book educational freedom in eastern europe (glenn, 1995). the us supreme court has rejected such compulsory socialization again and again. dwyer's (1998) argument would thus be refutable even if he were right about the effects of religious schooling. in fact, he is wrong. there is plenty of research on the effects of catholic schools, and a growing literature on the effects of evangelical and fundamentalist schools. these studies do not support his contention that students are harmed academically, socially, and psychologically. to the contrary, graduates of catholic and evangelical schools are, if anything, more tolerant and academically ahead of graduates of comparable public schools. the most careful study of a fundamentalist school, by jewish sociologist alan peshkin (1986), found that its students were "significantly less alienated" than those at the local public high school. bethany bible academy, as peshkin called the school, "socializes its participants to deviate from many of society's norms, while remaining, by some lights, exemplary americans" (p. 189). peshkin found that 93 percent of the bethany students compared with 80 percent of the public high school students responded that they would why are progressives so hostile to school choice policies? current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 67 approve of a black family moving next door; 93 percent of the bethany and 95 percent of the public school students agreed that "people who don't believe in god should have the same right to freedom of speech as anyone else" (p. 274). eighty-three and 84 percent respectively disagreed with the statement that "only people who believe in god can be good americans" (peshkin 1986, pp. 332-34). it is not that professor dwyer is unaware of such studies; indeed, he cites peshkin's book repeatedly. but the evidence of positive outcomes at religious schools does not fit into his argument that these schools harm children in all sorts of ways, producing not only intolerance but also "diminished self-esteem, extreme anxiety, and pronounced and sometimes life-long anger and resentment" (dwyer, 1998, p. 15). girls who attend catholic school "find themselves unable as adults to act on desires, to take control of their sexual/reproductive lives, or to leave abusive marriages" (p. 23). [dwyer does not pause to ask why, if this is true, the use of contraceptives and support for abortion are as high among catholics as among the general population.] in discussing religious schools and what they teach, dwyer is on ground which he has not mastered. he is more sure-footed in making his case that the prevailing legal doctrine giving parents (except in cases of manifest abuse or neglect) the right to make a variety of decisions about the best interests of their children is wrong. space does not permit following his argument--and why it is wrong--in detail, but its bottom line is that, for the interests of children to prevail, the selfish motivations of parents must not be allowed to prevail. children are better served, dwyer argues, if professionals, acting in the name of society, make those decisions. protecting the religious freedom of children, he concludes, requires setting aside that of their parents, to the extent that their exercise of freedom affects or influences their children. religious schools may be permitted as an alternative, but only if they conform themselves to public schools through abandoning such "harmful practices" as "compelling religious expression and practice, teaching secular subjects from a religious perspective…and making children's sense of security and self-worth depend on being "saved" or meeting unreasonable, divinely ordained standards of conduct" (p. 179). so much for educational freedom, and religious freedom. the secular worldview stands in judgment upon, and condemns, religious minority beliefs, and forbids parents from having these beliefs taught to their children. so much for a free society. liberal paternalism as economist thomas sowell wrote in a conflict of visions (1998), this determination to make decisions for other people in their presumed best interest has long been a characteristic of policy theorists, who assume "a vast chasm between the existing intellectual and moral capabilities of the common man and those of the intellectual elite" (p.136). conservative policy advocate abigail thernstrom, criticizing the choice-based desegregation that i directed in massachusetts, charged that poor parents were too ignorant, drugged-out, or indifferent to be trusted to make such decisions. critics of choice on the left would not state it so bluntly, but their warnings that parents will be misled into choosing witchcraft or nazi schools reveal a similar disrespect for the common sense and caring of parents. charles glenn 68 april 30, 1999 those who oppose public policies that would allow poor parents to choose which schools their children will attend, claim these policies would undermine the common public school and thus divide american society. they do not apply their argument consistently. after all, if the unity of our society requires that children from different backgrounds attend school together, why should we allow the affluent to enroll their children in private schools or escape to the suburbs? why not forbid private schools and mandate metropolitan school desegregation? we have not heard such proposals from the defenders of the public school monopoly, nor are we likely to. after all, big-city public school teachers are twice as likely as the general public to put their own children in private schools, and have resisted residency laws requiring them to live within the school districts which employ them. few--perhaps none--of their allies in congress and the white house send their own children to the district of columbia public schools. there are significant negative effects from the present non-system of parent choice of schools. individual choices tend to increase racial and class segregation, and the funding and taxation inequities between cities and suburbs. the question for progressives, then, is not whether to have choice, but how to ensure that choice has equitable and sociallybeneficial effects? i have devoted most of my attention to this question in recent years; it is a rather lonely position to defend because most of those i would expect to be my allies are committed to maintaining the government monopoly on public education at all costs. the progressive case for choice to remedy these inequities in the effects of partial choice, progressives should support educational vouchers. two convincing reasons support school vouchers; they go by the names of "freedom" and "justice". progressives should be involved closely with determining the way in which voucher programs are designed and implemented for another compelling reason. we are rightly not convinced that it is appropriate to simply "let the market rip" with no regard for the consequences, nor that government should wash its hands of its responsibility to ensure that justice be done, in education, for those most vulnerable to unfair treatment, most likely to lack advocates in their interest, most in need of extra support. public funding for schools not operated by government is emerging in the united states, as it appeared decades ago in other western democracies: in canada, australia and britain, in france, the low countries, germany, spain and denmark, and as it has emerged over the past decade in sweden and in the countries of the former soviet bloc. indeed, public funding for schools not operated by government--we call them "charter schools"--is the hottest education reform of the nineties, supported by democrats and republicans alike. the single omission in the us, apparently, is schools which reflect the religious convictions and choices of parents. now parents in cleveland and in milwaukee receive public funds to send their children to such schools as well. can anyone doubt that more cities and states will follow? the question for progressives, i suggest, is whether they will join in the discussions through which these programs are shaped, or persist in a state of denial while others make all the running. they might pause to reflect that none of the countries in western why are progressives so hostile to school choice policies? current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 69 europe, where the left are in political control, has proposed to abolish the present arrangements for parent choice of religious schools; it is reported in the new york times of october 20, 1998 that the first ex-communist premier of italy is expected to be more generous to catholic schools than have been any of his christian-democrat predecessors. church and state but isn't this a question of "church and state"? no, that is a fundamental misconception originating in the fifties. the historical record is clear: opposition to public funding for religious schools--and even to their existence, as with the ku klux klan's campaigns for the "little red schoolhouse" in the1920s--was based on anti-immigrant sentiment. the protestant majority felt profoundly threatened by millions of catholic and jewish immigrants. the desire to prevent children from following their parents' un-american ways motivated legislation in the 1850s to block public funding to non-government schools. these debates--which never mentioned the first amendment--echoed political struggles in europe, especially france, where for some decades schools controlled by the catholic church, were used as pawns in the fight against the liberal government. however, in the united states, it is not the catholic church that is creating the demand for religious schools (the catholic "market share" dropped dramatically in recent decades) but millions of parents, many of whom are evangelical protestants, africanamerican protestants, muslims, or jews. thousands of new schools have been established since the 1970s, and the great majority of these have a religious character. isn't it "unconstitutional" to provide public funds for the education of children in religious schools? curiously, while the first amendment privileges the free exercise of religion as especially worthy of protection, the effect of supreme court decisions over the past forty years has been to treat religion as the only forbidden motivation for school choice. parents may choose among publicly-funded schools because of ambition for their children, or pedagogical theory, or fear of minority children, but they have not been able to choose because of religious conviction. this reverses the legal situation in other western democracies, which privilege and support school choice based upon religious convictions over other motivations. such policies recognize that religion encapsulates for many parents, a range of hopes, moral convictions, and loyalties that they consider essential to transmit to their children. signs of flexibility from the courts are more positive now than they have been in many years. the rosenberger case (rosenberger v. rector & visitors of the university of virginia, 1995), requiring that government act on the basis of "content neutrality" between religious and non-religious activities, the agostini case (agostini v. felton,1997), finding that secular educational goals can be met within religious schools, and other recent decisions create strong prospects that the door will continue to open. public funds are already going to religious day-care programs and adolescent programs, as well as to colleges, without first amendment barriers, and the charitable choice provision of the federal welfare law has created a whole new ball-game. right of choice there are two principled reasons why progressives should support and work for a welldesigned and equitable voucher system. the first, i said, is freedom. parents have a charles glenn 70 april 30, 1999 fundamental right, in a free society, to decide which values their children will be taught in school. a string of international covenants have recognized this right beginning with the u. n. declaration on human rights (1948), which states that "parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children" (article 26, 3). similarly, the 1966 international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights guarantees "the liberty of parents…to choose for their children schools, other than those established by public authorities, which conform to such minimum educational standards as may be laid down or approved by the state and to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions" (article 13, 3). it is on the basis of this fundamental human right, and not of any theory about "markets," that virtually all the other western democracies provide public funding to non-government schools that meet public standards and that are selected freely by parents. nor is this anchored only in the abstractions of human rights, but also in a series of supreme court decisions, notably in pierce v. society of sisters (1925), where the court famously declared that "the fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only." but, as progressives have argued vigorously in the case of abortion, a right which you cannot afford to exercise is no right at all! choosing justice as noted above, there are significant negative effects from the present non-system of parent choice of schools, under which individual choices tend to increase racial and class divisions, and inequities between cities and suburbs. if freedom demands that we allow parent choice, then justice demands that we support and promote it, especially for lowincome families and those otherwise condemned to send their children--under mandatory attendance laws--to schools which they are convinced are doing or will do them harm. the learning gap in the us based upon social class and race is larger than the gap in comparable societies. that is, the achievement gap between high-scoring and low-scoring schools in the united states is substantially larger than that in australia, the netherlands, france or other countries with a large immigrant student population in their schools. this is not the place to rehearse the evidence, available from a number of countries, that schools based upon a religious viewpoint tend to be especially effective serving at-risk pupils. james coleman (1987) and, more recently, anthony bryk (1993) of the university of chicago found that the achievement growth benefits of catholic school attendance are especially strong for students who are in one way or another disadvantaged: lower socioeconomic status, black, or hispanic. the dropout rates from catholic schools are strikingly lower than those from public schools or other private schools. this reduced dropout rate holds both for those without signs of problems as sophomores and for those at risk of dropping out as sophomores. contrary to the conventional wisdom that catholic schools simply do not admit or quickly expel potential trouble-makers, the studies have found that they rely much more heavily upon socialization to maintain order and motivation. bryk and his colleagues found that "the achievement of students in catholic high schools was less dependent on family background and personal why are progressives so hostile to school choice policies? current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 71 circumstances than was true in the public sector" and "the achievement advantage of white over minority students…increases in public high schools during the last two years of schooling, whereas the minority gap actually decreases in catholic schools" (p. 247). in a society driven by educational credentials, events during the years of formal schooling have a dramatic life-long impact. if religious schools can offer an education that might make all the difference to a poor child or youth, it is unjust to deny their families the opportunity to choose such schools, because we--who are able to do so much for our own children (including deciding where we will live)--see these schools not as benevolent but as a threat to democracy. they are, instead, a threat to an undemocratic monopoly system of vested interests. nothing could be more futile than to debate--as so many do--about whether an abstraction called "school choice" is a good or a bad thing. the question for progressives, then, is not whether to have choice, but how to ensure that choice has equitable and socially-beneficial effects? conclusion i will not go into details here about making choice function equitably--that is the primary task before us, and one about which we already have ample clues from the successes and failures of programs around the country. nothing that i have said suggests that we should abandon public education in the slightest respect. in the first place, public education does not have to be provided in schools owned and operated by local government, as the charter school movement amply demonstrates. public education is education which is available to all without cost and which is publicly accountable for fairness and for quality, whether provided by government or not. i wish, indeed, that all of our government-operated public schools met that standard of accountability! in the second place, the existing public schools should be set free to function with greater autonomy and focus, freed from the smothering bureaucracy which crushes the education out of them. i was in charge of urban education and civil rights for massachusetts for 21 years, through all three dukakis terms, and finally grew convinced that lasting improvements could be achieved only through fundamental structural changes. that's why i became an early supporter of charter schools, and eventually of vouchers. all public schools should be as autonomous as charter schools and should be eligible for vouchers. to the extent that they are as good as their advocates claim, they will suffer neither enrollment nor financial losses. when we abolished individual school attendance zones in boston and a dozen other massachusetts cities, public schools were suddenly forced to demonstrate to parents that they could serve their children effectively. some closed, many improved. but the improvements were more limited than they should have been, because the schools were still tangled in the compulsion of any bureaucratic system to require that all of its parts behave precisely the same. abraham lincoln pointed out that a nation could not survive half slave and half free. the truth applies to a nation's educational system as well. i am not for vouchers as a way for some lucky children to escape from a bankrupt public education system, but as a way to transform that system, to abolish its choking monopolies and reshape it in charles glenn 72 april 30, 1999 ways consistent with a free society. references agostini v. felton, 96 u.s. 552 (1997). bryk, a. s., lee, v. & holland, p. b. (1993). catholic schools and the common good. cambridge: harvard university press. choy, s. p. (1997). public and private schools: how do they differ? washington, dc: national center for education statistics (nsec 97-983), 5-6. coleman, j. & hoffer, t. (1987). public and private high schools: the impact of communities. new york: basic books. dwyer, j. g. (1998). religious schools v. children's rights. ithaca: cornell university press. glenn, c. l. (1995). educational freedom in eastern europe. washington, dc: cato institute. glenn, c. l. (1988). the myth of the common school. amherst: university of massachusetts press. peshkin, a. (1986). god's choice: the total world of a fundamentalist christian school. chicago: university of chicago press. pierce v. society of sisters, 268 u.s. 510 (1925). rosenberger v. rector & visitors of the university of virginia, 515 u.s. 819 (1995). sowell, t. (1988). a conflict of visions. new york: william morrow. united nations (1948). un universal declaration of human rights. geneva: united nations. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 120 april 30, 2002 neo-liberalism and educational reform in latin america lidia henales fundacion de estudios e investigaciones de productividad empresarial beatrice edwards international financial institutions project at the second summit of the americas in santiago de chile, held in april 1998, the heads of state declared that economic integration and education were the two most important areas of state responsibility at the turn of the century. the prominence of trade and economic integration came as no surprise. it was also expected that education was presented primarily as a social investment necessary to make countries competitive in the global market. these recent policies and statements suggest that the dark days of the dictatorships are gone from the region and that democratic governments, free trade, and high quality education are all integral pieces of a new era of prosperity and justice. we argue that the opposite is true. elites in latin america, with their strong ties to transnational capital, like elites in the central economies, have long sought control over social and economic policy with a view to increasing their share of income and wealth1. just as the dictatorships of the 70s and 80s were necessary to implant and sustain the first crude forms of economic liberalization, representative democracies and increasingly stratified educational systems are now necessary to protect and maintain neo-liberal policy. reform of public education in this context neatly serves three important functions: 1) its poor quality justifies the undeniable spread of poverty in the region as economies have opened to imports. 2) it shields neo-liberals from responsibility for the negative effects of their own trade policies. 3) it constitutes a large and lucrative new market for information and communications technologies that was previously closed. the question of neo-liberalism generally, critics of neo-liberalism describe it as economic and social strategies that together constitute the renovation of the old liberal mercantilist ideal. however, those who currently design and implement these policies reject the term neo-liberal and instead use terms such as privatization, decentralization, deregulation, and tax reform to convey the same meaning. in this way, they successfully disown the long ideological continuum from which they have evolved, while simultaneously promoting neomercantilist processes as new and diverse. in this article we will operate within a historical framework in an attempt to relate neo-liberalism to its real antecedents. neo-liberalism is a paradigm that changes in form but is consistent in content. to a large extent its resilience resides in the inadequate accusations and descriptions used by its detractors, on the one hand, and the flexible practices employed by its subscribers, on the other. the paradigm has passed through various stages, including fundamental, neo-liberalism and educational reform in latin america current issues in comparative education vol.2(2) 121 institutional, and global. the first, or fundamental, stage gave rise to a kind of original orthodoxy in a reaction to the welfare state after the end of the second world war. briefly, and without great theoretical pretension, we define the welfare state as a form of state born after the second world war, which sought to regulate markets and significantly expand social rights. the welfare state lasted over three decades in the central countries, but the oil crisis of the late 1970s, among other things, brought it to an end. during this period in certain peripheral countries such as argentina, uruguay, and chile, governments emerged that responded to the demand for social rights, although this process was halted and then reversed by military dictatorships by the 70s. neo-liberalism, as a vehement political and theoretical reaction to the welfare state, made a forceful debut in 1944 in the road to serfdom, in which friedrich hayek developed a systematic, coherent, and elaborate doctrine. this book outlined the original neo-liberal orthodoxy that corresponded to the fundamental stage (hayek, 1944) the basic doctrine is built on the belief that the market is the best instrument for assigning resources and meeting human needs. according to this thesis, the market would implicitly constitute a self-regulating mechanism. in this way, neo-liberal theory impugned the state as an agent for the redistribution of resources in favor of a specific social sector unable to meet the demands of market efficiency. early adherents to neoliberalism then undertook to develop a series of policies designed to promote sustained economic growth and technological progress. based on growth and technology, the explicit utopia to which they aspired would ultimately distribute its benefits by fairly rewarding the most ambitious and the most efficient individual economic actors. for approximately 20 years, the theory did not prosper in western democracies, as capitalism experienced a long wave of growth and neo-liberal attacks on the welfare state enjoyed little credibility. instead, neo-liberal policies took root in latin america due to the weakness of both the economies and the democratic political systems in place. during the 1960s and 1970s, broad neo-liberal experiments took place throughout the region, accompanied by enormous popular response in the form of general strikes, popular uprisings, and the formation of guerrilla bands. in 1970, for example, a socialist was popularly elected to the presidency in chile, which led to the first of numerous military coups in the region that were linked to neo-liberal economic ideology. for many years after the coup in his country, general pinochet was unable to produce rapid economic growth in chile and had to maintain power through repression. by the time his government demonstrated macroeconomic growth, the central countries were already deep into the era of margaret thatcher and ronald reagan, both of whom are considered symbols of neo-liberalism in its institutional stage. during the 1970s, the dramatic increase in energy costs, resulting inflation, and economic crisis brought an end to the golden age of the welfare state in the central countries, thus opening a door for a crisis of social consensus in the united states and england. with the advent of the 1980s and the thatcher and reagan administrations, an ideological tidal wave developed, finally washing over much of western europe and the rest of latin america, except for cuba. in 1982, the crisis of the external debt exploded in mexico and quickly affected the rest of the region. by that time, a club of creditors had emerged headed by the bretton woods institutions: the world bank and the international monetary fund. these international lidia henales and beatrice edwards 122 april 30, 2002 financial institutions (ifis) then designed and implemented the programs of structural adjustment, which could be easily characterized by a series of common features. inspired by a relatively uniform and global program of political economy, these policies represented what we know today as the neo-liberal paradigm. the central purpose of these adjustments was the revival of sustainable high economic growth and profit rates, the axis of the agenda developed by the fathers of neo-liberalism thirty years before. the global stage of neo-liberalism developed at the end of the 1980s with the worldwide expansion of the democratic electoral processes associated with capitalism. the alternative project supposedly represented by the soviet union imploded for reasons of its own, and "soviet-style socialism" came to be recognized as nothing more than a long painful road to capitalism. there then followed a crusade in u.s. foreign policy promoting the virtues not only of free market reforms but also of neo-liberal democratic political systems. this crusade for global democratization arose from concern about security because latin american dictatorships had become long-term liabilities for the united states. their obvious repressive structures made them vulnerable to progressive movements that easily identified them with north american capital and military support. the struggle for democracy was fundamental to the struggle against these dictatorships, and it was necessary to remove this battle standard from groups hostile to the united states. the latin american dictatorships, which were often maintained by armies developed to consolidate north american interests during the cold war and trained in special schools for this purpose, were transformed into ideological boomerangs against the united states. the repressive actions of these governments made the enemies of the neo-liberal ideal into victims and martyrs, thus heightening their appeal. lacking formidable external support, these dictatorships experienced defeat by democratic forces in virtually all countries in the region, through processes not yet ended. with the collapse of the soviet union and the establishment of democratic governments in much of south america, the neo-liberals needed to manufacture the certainty that democracy would only be sustainable within the framework of their market-oriented policies. this goal was relatively easy to achieve in heavily indebted countries weakened by inflation and with fragile political and social institutions. neo-liberal democratic capitalism expanded dramatically during the 1990s and came to be adopted even by social democratic and socialist movements and parties that had previously proposed reforms based on the continued centrality of state functions. this expansion finally engulfed socialist and social democratic governments in europe such as those in spain, portugal, greece, france, and italy. in latin america, neo-liberal orthodoxy overwhelmed even those political currents with large mass appeal that historically represented independent national development such as the institutionalized revolutionary party (pri) in mexico and peronism (justicialismo) in argentina. even pope john paul ii became an ally of neo-liberalism through his encyclical centesimus annus. inequality and poverty in latin america during the last two stages of neo-liberalism, we have witnessed a significant upward transfer of income and wealth in latin america (the world bank, 1993; berry, 1997; neo-liberalism and educational reform in latin america current issues in comparative education vol.2(2) 123 pánuco-laguette & szélkely, 1996; lodoño & székely, 1997). in addition, we have seen a rapid concentration of both power and wealth in the capitalist north, together with concentrations of transnational capital that have never existed before (beck, 1998; bello, 1994; castenada, 1993). this development is not the result of an inexorable historical tendency. it is instead a political construction, built out of a confluence of circumstances, the demands of political realities, and the immunity to political pressure enjoyed by the ifis within the context of neo-liberalism. in a historical context, it is not surprising to find that socioeconomic inequality in the region has increased during the past two decades. violent repression of movements which defended constitutional regimes in latin america but eschewed the confinements of the cold war, as well as of militants who opposed the prevailing injustice, explains much of the skewing of the income distribution in the 1980s and 1990s. thousands who died, disappeared or fled into exile in the 1970s testify to the consequences of pursuing greater economic independence, social justice, and political sovereignty. during those years, trade unions, agricultural cooperatives, and any other attempt at popular organization were relentlessly persecuted. progressive intellectuals and educators suffered similar treatment. the resulting weakness of trade union organizations following this ferociously repressive period was an important factor in the shift upward of income and wealth. after repression had debilitated unions, privatization began to reduce employment in public services. private sector employment, however, never achieved the expected productivity increases necessary to absorb labor expelled from civil service as a consequence of the sale of state enterprises. on the one hand, oppressive measures tended to act as disincentives for workers, while on the other, tax exemptions and credits were not widely used to invest in production2. while the public debt grew dramatically, much publicly borrowed capital left the region in transfers of private wealth to banks in switzerland, miami, and the caribbean, where it remains to this day. as a consequence of uncontrolled imports, national industries in many countries declined. poverty deepened and spread because the austerity measures proposed by the ifis and agreed to by national elites did not tend to affect the elites but instead fell heavily upon the poor and the middle class. public expenditures on health, housing, and education, which benefited these latter social groups, were drastically curtailed. the deterioration of education, art, scientific investigation, and civic culture, not to mention incomes, led the 1980s to be called universally the "lost decade." although the 1980s opened with the revival of democratic processes in many countries, constitutional institutions continued to be very weak and easily subjected to the conditions imposed upon them either by previous dictatorships (as in chile) or by foreign capital (as in argentina). by the end of the last century and the beginning of the new one, the consequences of this situation included regional poverty rates ranging from 41 to 61 percent, depending on the source of the statistics. educational reform latin american governments and the ifis are now looking to education as a remedy for social ills such as poverty, growing inequality, violence, and the erosion of basic moral lidia henales and beatrice edwards 124 april 30, 2002 principles (declaration and plan of action from the second summit of the americas, 1998). the newer curricula tend to feature numerous explicit social expectations and orientations, and technical cooperation projects proliferate in such areas as education for democracy, education for peace, health ("wellness") education, sex education, environmental education, and moral education. by the end of the 1980s, latin american governments had been bombarded with irresistible remedies for addressing social problems, and education was identified as one of the most effective prescriptions. although neo-liberal economic policies had been thoroughly discredited as a means of improving living standards and income, these same market-oriented policies were now to be extended to educational reform, which emerged as the most promising tool of the neo-liberals for maintaining their claim to social responsibility. however, we argue that education, even if reformed in the most effective and generous manner possible, cannot generate employment, eliminate or even mitigate unequal income distribution, oblige private and public capital to make responsible long-term investments, repair the social fabric, or reduce violence. democracy and educational reform the structural adjustment programs imposed by the imf, the world bank, and the interamerican development bank (idb) required specific policies in the countries affected. in particular, education, health, and other social service policies were systematically and uniformly designed, administered, and evaluated by these same institutions. in this way, political power was transferred from the indebted states to the multilateral institutions. this subordination of national political systems created, de facto, a problem of democratic governability and now constitutes a real limitation on the capacity of the elected representatives of latin american democracies to resolve national issues autonomously. further, democratic institutions and processes are not only weakened by the dictatorships of the recent past, but they are debilitated by the deep socioeconomic inequality within the societies that sustain them. such democracies do not require and probably cannot tolerate a high level of popular participation because of such dramatic differences in wealth. the parties and organizations that actually make political decisions are, in virtually all cases, directed by elites who have strong socioeconomic ties to foreign capital and who function to effectively legitimize the economic and cultural models of the larger capitalist economies. educational reform, in the style proposed and now imposed by the ifis, serves a dual role in this process. one, its inherited ineffectiveness justifies existing inequalities. two, the remedies for this backwardness, designed abroad and implemented by national elites, create extensive and highly profitable markets for the rapidly developing information and communications technology, also designed abroad. according to the report on social and economic progress in latin america (interamerican development bank, 1996), a review of the education reform policies promoted by the ifis in the region reveals a clear congruence with the explicit objectives and policies of the neo-liberal program. regional analyses consistently identify the following problems in latin american educational systems: disproportionate allocation of resources to higher education, highly centralized bureaucratic administration, wellorganized teachers' unions that resist reform, isolation from actual labor markets, lack of autonomy in local schools, deficient administrative capability, lack of school choice on neo-liberalism and educational reform in latin america current issues in comparative education vol.2(2) 125 the part of parents, a lower than necessary ratio of teachers to students, and the deplorable state of the teaching profession (inter-american development bank, 1996; puryear, 1997). there are, of course, large elements of truth in this diagnosis of the ills affecting education in the region. the problems listed are real. however, the solution to these problems, which has been formulated, partially financed, executed, and evaluated by the ifis, is embedded in the general conceptualization of society and the state as taken, chapter and verse, from orthodox neo-liberal doctrine. the inter-american development bank (1996) points out the lack of responsibility enjoyed by teachers and administrators in relation to student performance, as well as the absence of evaluation mechanisms and adequate academic standards: lack of information on the performance of educational systems is a byproduct of the problems of organization. the lack of tests and measurements of costeffectiveness in some sense is convenient for both administrators of the system and teachers. they thereby remain protected from pressures to be accountable for the performance of the system. proper management of the educational sector thereby becomes less likely (p. 288). according to the report (inter-american development bank, 1996), which was and continues to be of great importance politically, governments need to increase their role in educational financing through a more efficient distribution of resources because the existing allocation does not link the income of "producers" (teachers) to the quality of service. to address the missing link, the idb (1996) prescribes vouchers. in a voucher system, schools compete for students' enrollment by providing a better quality education. therefore, in the context of neo-liberal orthodoxy, the most effective school prospers in a market economy, just as any efficient enterprise would. budget resources are thus assigned to "consumers" (students/parents) rather than to schools, and the students and their parents choose the schools they prefer. without entering the polemic about the ideological implications of this scheme or the possible accounting problems incurred in poorly regulated societies (corruption, misrepresentation through advertising, clientelism, etc.), we will simply summarize the well-known arguments against the use of vouchers in education: 1) educational systems are structurally inconsistent with market principles because good education is heavily subsidized, and no evidence exists to suggest that it can become a profitable enterprise. 2) the market for basic education in latin america is already distorted for populations in poverty. poor families lack resources to investigate the relative advantages of different educational options. 3) ethical and attitudinal considerations intervene. according to market principles, for example, money should be invested where the return is highest. if we measure "return" in lifetime wages, then educational expenditures for women, indigenous peoples, or any social group that suffers discrimination and therefore lower wages would be "inefficient." lidia henales and beatrice edwards 126 april 30, 2002 4) public schools are impoverished by the diversion of resources as well as the best teachers and students to subsidized private schools. nevertheless, the determination of the idb and the world bank to implement these policies in indebted countries and/or countries with a recent history of repression is continuing and consistent. where the prescriptions of the idb and the world bank have been comprehensively adopted, such as in chile, the increasing stratification of educational services is now clearly visible. the functioning of the voucher system in chile is highly instructive, and the transformation of the school system based on principles of competition over the course of twenty years demonstrates how neo-liberal reforms in education have contributed to increased inequality in education. the chilean system now includes three types of schools: municipal public schools, private voucher schools that are funded publicly but managed privately, and private schools that are both funded and managed privately. according to a study by christian aedo (1998), test scores in language and mathematics showed that students in municipal schools did significantly worse than students in voucher schools, who in turn performed less well than private school students. aedo (1998) argues that these differences still obtain when the effects of socioeconomic status are controlled. however, his controls for socioeconomic status are not rigorous, and the true picture is a complex tangle of cause and effect. the only clear conclusions to be drawn include the following: 1) schools classified as low-income, based on the socioeconomic status of students, show much lower test scores than high-income schools. 2) municipal public schools have much lower test scores than either voucher schools or private schools. 3) municipal schools and low-income schools tend to be the same schools. additionally, we know that municipal schools cannot select their students because these schools are a last resort. aedo (1998) also explains that the voucher provided by the government is inadequate, and the parents who can manage have paid the difference since 1993. and so the question remains, are the better results of voucher schools in comparison to municipal schools due to more efficient private education or are they simply another sign that students from higher-income families in well-equipped schools do better on standardized tests? we actually know the answer to this. the effects of poverty are intergenerational. a student who comes to school hungry, tired, and perhaps ill, does not test well, unlike the student who arrives well-fed, cared for, and motivated. in chile, the poorer student will tend to remain in the municipal school, which cannot expel her. private schools have admission standards and tuition requirements that de facto exclude her. final reflections it is interesting to note that the politics of educational reform adopted by latin american governments are depressingly similar from country to country and among consecutive governments. this consistency is the result of a common denominator: international financial institutions. governments, negotiating the payment or restructuring of their debts, face heavy pressure from the neo-liberals at home and neo-liberalism and educational reform in latin america current issues in comparative education vol.2(2) 127 abroad to open their economies and privatize public services. although the ifis are dominated by the influence of the u.s. government, the educational policies imposed by these institutions have not been successfully adopted in the united states itself. for example, voters in popular elections have repeatedly rejected voucher initiatives, and one city-wide voucher program in florida was recently declared unconstitutional (pressley & cooper, 2000). the stark difference between educational reforms in north and south america brings us back to the issue of neo-liberalism and democratic institutions. policies that are called reforms, but which are so obviously harmful to so many, could not possibly be implemented in countries with strong democratic institutions and effective labor organization. the unilateral methods adopted by the ifis as they install the social and economic structures in latin america required by their constituencies, demonstrate the peculiar consensus of national and international elites and the lack of popular access to real decision-making that characterizes the capitalist democracies of latin america. neo-liberalism, then, has been a long time in the making: beginning just after the second world war, developing theoretically through the 1960s, profiting from the dictatorships of the 1970s and gathering the ideological momentum of the 80s and 90s. now, in the new century, it presents itself without alternatives. although it has failed to bring about the improvements in living standards that it universally promised, it is virtually without ideological challenge. this objective failure coupled with complete ideological triumph, is one of its most interesting features and one that could only be accomplished to the extent that meaningful democratic channels of communication and policy-making are blocked. so the future for educational reform in latin america is a classic good news/bad news problem. the good news is that there will be increased spending on education. the bad news is that much of it will be borrowed from the ifis and paid out to private profit-taking transnational corporations. the truly discouraging news is that once again, the poor and the working class will have to pay it back. notes 1. based on dependency theory and world systems theory, we use the term "central" to describe states or economies that industrialized in the 18th and 19th centuries. most of the central states were colonizers and were never colonized with the exception of the united states. their development was therefore sustained by the import of cheap raw materials and access to cheap labor in the territories they dominated. the peripheral or colonized countries cannot duplicate this process simply because it is an international rather than a national process in which they have already been integrated in a dependent position (wallerstein, 1989; frank, 1975). 2. chile represents perhaps the only exception. during the pinochet dictatorship, the government did strictly apply an adjustment plan that finally resolved macroeconomic imbalances at the cost of a protracted period of unemployment and poverty, which the government managed through disenfranchisement, expulsion and repression of the poor and middle class. lidia henales and beatrice edwards 128 april 30, 2002 references aedo, c. 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(1996). economic and social progress in latin america report. washington, dc. lodoño, j. l., & székely, m. (1997, october). persistent poverty and excess inequality: latin america, 1970 1995. washington, dc: inter-american development bank.' pressley, s. & cooper, k. (2000, march 15). school voucher plan struck down: florida to appeal judge's ruling. the washington post, a01. pánuco-laguette, h. & szélkely, m. (1996). income distribution and poverty in mexico. in v. bulmer-thomas (ed.), the new economic model in latin america and its impact on income distribution and poverty. london, uk: university of london institute of latin american studies. puryear, j. (1997, may). education in latin america: problems and challenges. in program to promoted educational reform in latin america and the caribbean. preal and occasional paper series (7). wallerstein, i. (1989). the modern world-system iii: the second era of great expansion of the capitalist world-economy, 1730-1840's. new york: academic press. neo-liberalism and educational reform in latin america current issues in comparative education vol.2(2) 129 the world bank (1993). poverty and income distribution in latin america: the story of the 1980s. washington, dc. fu et al., 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 1, winter 2022 international doctoral students negotiating support from interpersonal relationships and institutional resources during covid-19 yiwei fu new york university, usa die hu tsinghua university, beijing, china xitao liu claremont graduate university, usa the covid-19 pandemic has greatly affected international students around the world. chinese international students are challenged in their daily life and study due to the travel restrictions, disruption of research, closure of labs, and the rise of anti-asian racism. this study investigates the challenges, especially psychological ones, faced by international doctoral students from china studying in the united states. and explores how their social networks and support systems help them navigate their life and study during the pandemic. in light of social networks and support theory, we interviewed 20 chinese international doctoral students studying in the u.s. and found that falling in between intimate relationships and student-institution relationships, academic departments and advisors are able to provide all types of support, namely, instrumental, informational, and emotional. their ability to provide emotional support was heavily overlooked, especially during a global crisis. concerted efforts must urgently be put together to deal with the mental health of international doctoral students on campus and rebuild a supportive and hospitable u.s. higher education system. this study can contribute to the scholarship of international higher education by capturing international doctoral student experiences and perceptions in this crucial time and assessing higher education institutions’ capability to support international students. keywords: social support, international doctoral students, covid-19, institutional response and support, american higher education institutions introduction since the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, the higher education system has been hit particularly hard and chinese international students are among a few student groups that have been greatly affected. a nationwide travel ban took effect in january 2020, in which non-u.s. citizens who have been to china in the past 14 days were not allowed to enter the country (griffiths, 2020). the geopolitical tensions between the u.s. and china have also been intensified. in may 2020, a proclamation restricting the entry of chinese graduate students and researchers connected to china’s “military-civil fusion (mcf) strategy” was issued (institute of international education, 2020). since june 1st, 2020, more than 1,000 visas from students and researchers have been revoked (griffiths, 2020). many chinese students, especially those in stem majors, reported that they may not be able to return home for many years due to practical concerns such as the inconvenience © 2022, fu et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(1), 26-40. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en international doctoral students negotiating support current issues in comparative education 27 of traveling and the high risk of having their visa revoked and thus their student status canceled. chinese international doctoral students are also challenged in their daily life and study. research of doctoral students, especially those involving in-person fieldwork, is found in urgent need to be redesigned and rescheduled due to the shutdown of labs and public places. in levine et al.’s (2020) focused group discussion, they found that doctoral students expressed their appeal for more funds, more senior-level guidance, and clearer expectations from the institutions. also, past researchers have documented whether and how students’ physical and psychological health are challenged. more than half of the students investigated in inci and danielle’s (2021) survey on graduate students’ wellbeing expressed feeling lonely, anxious, and fearful in march 2020. villani et al. (2021) found in a cross-sectional survey that 35% of college students during traumatic events were classified as anxious and 72% were depressed. they related this occurrence of anxiety to the impossibility of physically seeing friends and partners and being distant from colleagues. moreover, the pernicious, yet hidden, xenophobic acts have been magnified since the outbreak: due to the rise of anti-asian racism as the virus began to spread across countries, asian people are becoming a feared, blamed, and harassed group (gover, harper, and langton 2020). president trump’s insensitive reference to covid-19 as “wuhan virus” and “kong flu” may have aggravated sinophobia, an intersection of fear and hatred of china, as well (guardian news, 2020). these statements shaped not only the global understanding of this pandemic but also public memories of such disease as part of cultural genes, eventually being embodied in the negative stereotype of and the indiscriminate attacks against all members of asian communities. the recent institute of international education (iie) reports evaluated the effects of covid-19 on higher education institutions (heis) and international students and documented that only “a small subset of” overall chinese international students are affected and all heis have taken actions to support international students (iie, 2020). iie’s conclusion, leaving individual student's voice unheeded and misunderstood, drastically underestimated the negative impact on every individual’s life. additionally, doctoral students were uniformly left out in past studies and the role of higher educational institutions in hosting international students was seldom mentioned. many researchers (zhang & xu, 2007; gebhard, 2010; meriella, 2012) falsely attribute the difficulties that chinese students experience to their incapability to adapt to a new culture, which is problematic because they not only reinforced negative stereotypes but also ignored the institutions’ responsibility of recognizing student hardships and of creating a diverse and hospitable enough campus climate. thus, this study aims to understand international doctoral students’ experience and how they use their social support system during the pandemic. institutional level response and support is a focus of the study analyzing students’ social support system. research questions that guide this study are 1) what is the impact of covid-19 on international students’ psychological well-being? 2) how does the social support that international students receive or seek might affect their experience during covid-19? considering the intractable combination of covid-19, covid-related national policy, and neo-racism and the fact that the literature has shown the fragmented nature of chinese doctoral students’ perspective, it can be argued that investigating and understanding their experiences, especially the negative ones, are greatly needed to fu, hu & liu current issues in comparative education 28 ensure their satisfaction and give institutions much-needed insights to help them adjust their policies by the next global crisis. in this study, social support theory is used to guide our conceptualization. we highlight student agency in seeking and receiving help and in navigating social support resources. in this process, higher educational institutions’ role is critically assessed. this study has potential implications for higher educational institutions in recognizing and better catering to student needs and interests. conceptual framework borgatti & halgin (2011) describe a network as “a set of actors or nodes along with a set of ties of a specified type…that link them.” unlike groups, networks do not have natural boundaries or internal connections, holding a fluid and ever-changing quality. students seek or receive social support from their social networks. social support social support is “the comfort, assistance, and/or information one receives through contacts from one’s social network” (wallston, alagna, devellis, & devillis, 1984). members of an individual’s primary group, such as family members, friends, and significant others, are frequently considered immediate sources of support. people may also draw support from their secondary groups, in which relationships are more regulated or hierarchical. relationships within schools and organizations are examples. social support requires the existence of social relationships, with their structure, strength, and type determining the type of social support available. the behavioral categories of social support, according to house (1981), are instrumental, informational, and emotional. instrumental support refers to the provision of materials or assistance with practical tasks or problems. informational support includes giving advice or providing information that may help a person solve a problem. emotional support involves the expression of sympathy, caring, esteem, value, or encouragement. from a structural perspective (feeney & collins, 2015), the size of the network may impact psychological well-being through the resources and opportunities that supporters provide. individuals with larger support networks may have more opportunities to engage in beneficial social activities that are also conducive to healthy mental states. on the contrary, social isolation and lack of social support have been found to have an adverse effect on mental health and maybe that on physical health, insofar as mental is important for the physical. kuo and tsai (1986) demonstrated that levels of social support could be negatively correlated with stress and depressive symptoms, increasing the risk for suicidal behavior. it has also been demonstrated by wang and miller (2021) that social support can mediate the association between optimism and stress in individuals who have experienced a traumatic event. in addition, empirical research has established that it is not the direct support that buffers the effects of stressors but its perceived availability. zimet al. (1988) stated that perceived support from family, friends, and significant others was negatively and significantly correlated with the level of depression. this underscores the relevance of investigating how the perceived abundance or lack of social support may work during the covid-19 pandemic, especially when the evolution of this global crisis is uncertain and may have long-term effects on students’ physical and mental health. thus, this study analyzes international doctoral students’ social networks and how they make making their networks and navigate in their networks to deal with the covid-19 pandemic. international doctoral students negotiating support current issues in comparative education 29 interpersonal relationship a good interpersonal network within a certain period determines to a large extent the level of international students’ life satisfaction and study efficiency (li, 2013). a large body of research (rienties et al., 2013; montgomery & mcdowell, 2009; hendrickson et al., 2011) found an inclination of international students to form social networks with people originating from the same national background. they come to a consensus that relationships with students from the same country form friendships more easily and cultural similarities, along with shared experiences of being in a foreign culture, bring them together. also, as the interpersonal network, as well as the contact between relatives and friends, is inevitably affected by objective factors such as distance and time difference; it is not uncommon to find the fade of the original interpersonal network of international students and the expansion of their new friendship circles, which is usually achieved through participation in club activities and smooth communication with locals and various departments of the school (zhong et. al, 2020). unfortunately, however, these ways of improvement were greatly impeded by the covid-caused social distancing and lockdown, posing enormous challenges for international students. mentor-mentee relationship mentoring is founded on the relationship between the mentor, as a more experienced professional, and the mentee as one who is learning about the profession. mentors, going beyond supervising, play a crucial role in both the personal and professional growth of their mentees. whether or not the mentor-mentee relationship is productive is underpinned by a variety of factors, ranging from the mentor’s and mentee’s personal and professional qualities (rippon & martin, 2006) to the environment or context in which mentoring operates (rothman, 2007). in turn, gormley (2008) found that obstacles to successful mentoring relationships mainly involve a mentor’s lack of skills and knowledge, poor interpersonal skills, and insufficient two-way communication. bradbury and koballa (2008) identified the power dynamic between the mentor and the mentee as the main source of tension in mentoring relationships, where the mentee “may be unwilling to question the practices of the school or mentor teacher for fear of fracturing the relationship or affecting the mentors’ evaluation of their progress” (p. 2135). student-institution relationship (sir) in higher education literature, the term student–institution relationship refers to the interaction between the college environment and the students. it is also often considered as a legal term regulating “the limits and nature of a college’s legal responsibility for and jurisdiction over the student body” (boyd, 2010). williams (1986) proposed the concept of fit – “the congruence in values, style, and preferred characteristics between the student and the institution” (p.1). he argued that the effect of fit drastically shaped a students’ attitudes towards as well as academic performance within the institution. further, interventions made by the institutions to be responsive to student needs and interests, as claimed by williams, could improve a students’ sense of fit and satisfaction. this study is conceptualized by the theoretical perspectives of social support and social relationships. the social networks that students seek or receive social support from can be thought of as gradated rather than binary, resembling ripples emanating from the individual or a concentric circle with the individual self in the center. each ring, radiating outward, represents a reducing level of social connection or support and an increasingly stronger level of trust, mutual understanding, and care. fu, hu & liu current issues in comparative education 30 methods this study adopts the in-depth phenomenological approach that focuses on “the experiences of participants and the meaning they make of that experience” (seidman, 2012, p.16). we seek to understand our participants’ subjective reconstruction of their lived experience, while we acknowledge the positionality of researchers. this study was designed to be inclusive of chinese doctoral students currently studying in the us. we sent out 300 interview invitations to several chinese international student social media groups and eventually conducted 20 interviews in june of 2021. to keep participants anonymous, table 1 presents some basic statistics of participant information. all the interviews were conducted for about 90 minutes in mandarin. we asked participants to share their experience amid covid-19 in important aspects of their international study, life, and career trajectory in the u.s. questions also include how interviewees’ institutions respond to anti-asian movements and what kind of support they provide their students with. interviews were then transcribed, coded, categorized, and analyzed. both organizational categories and theoretical categories were made and analyzed (maxwell, 2013). table 1 a breakdown of participants’ information into gender, year of ph.d. study, broad fields, and institutions gender n female 10 male 10 year of ph.d. study (2019-2020) n first-year 2 second-year 3 third-year 5 fourth-year 5 fifth-year 4 sixth year 1 broad fields 2 humanities 5 social sciences 2 life sciences 3 physical sciences 8 engineering institution state n ucs (ucb, ucla, ucsd, ucsf) ca 4 claremont graduate university ca 2 caltech ca 1 international doctoral students negotiating support current issues in comparative education 31 findings this section will draw upon the main themes and present the findings arising out of the interview process and subsequent data analysis that was carried out. but before we present the themes, we consider it important to acknowledge the interviewees’ emotions during the covid-19 pandemic, as the themes are all somehow interconnected with and lean heavily towards an emotional nature. personal psychological well-being not all people were capable of responding to the rapid changes during the covid-19 pandemic with ease and positivity. international students, to be specific, are amongst the most vulnerable groups of all kinds (yilmazli trout & alsandor, 2021). emotions that they experienced are complex and slight occurrences frequently disturbed the balance of their minds. words such as “anxious,” “stressed,” “frustrated,” “fearful,” “worried,” and “depressed” were used by almost all interviewees. some also used “angry,” “disappointed,” and “discouraged”. take, for example, this field note passage of a 4thyear ph.d. student majoring in computer science describing his feeling of helplessness and loss of control when talking about future possibilities of legally staying in the u.s.: before, i felt that there was a choice, but now i feel that there is no choice or that the choice is in the hands of others. for students who were in their last year of ph.d. study, it is not uncommon to observe extraordinary academic stress. for example, a fifth-year doctoral student attributed this to his failure to create separation between work and home. the epidemic [pandemic] leaves you nowhere to go or get a state of rest. scientific research, in my opinion, is supposed to be constructive. it may last for a while and then you rest for another period of time. during that time, i used to go out and refresh myself to regenerate my enthusiasm for research. but now you are working almost every day. it is a kind of chronic and long-term pressure, unreleased. some others revealed severe damage to their psychological well-being. as a 3rd-year ph.d. student studying engineering put it: before the epidemic [pandemic], there are many activities to choose from and many people to contact, many things can be resolved in time, and pressure can be released in time. but quarantine piles up annoyance and pressure, leaving them unresolved. princeton university nj 1 mit ma 2 harvard university ma 2 new york university ny 2 boston university ma 1 university of north carolina at chapel hill nc 1 university of pittsburgh pa 1 university of maryland md 1 columbia university ny 1 university of texas at dallas tx 1 fu, hu & liu current issues in comparative education 32 i was unable to contain my own destructive feelings. it was also difficult to discipline myself. i felt depressed. while many of them were and are still trying to navigate their path forward and it might not be salient to notice an apparent breakdown in their lives, these words are representative of the hidden, but pernicious, hardships that international students encountered. the findings from the thematic analyses will provide more insight into the various reasons for these feelings. relationships with family, partners, and friends as a consequence of the tight lockdown in early 2020, a large part of the participants’ interview was located around isolation and the corresponding loneliness that came with it. they related this increased isolation to social distancing requirements, fear of being infected by the covid-19 virus, and large amounts of online communication. while some reflected on “relying on the video calls with friends to live,” others felt increasingly disconnected from the real world. many were also experiencing a hard time having normal social activities. as is clear in the following excerpts: april 2020 was the loneliest. everyone worked from home. seminars were canceled. and many of my friends returned to china. so i didn’t see anyone for weeks. this is quite unhealthy, nor is it how ph.d. is supposed to go. what worries me, even more, is the difficulty to build up trust. for example, i am careful not to be infected by the virus, but i cannot guarantee that other people do so. for some participants, parents were a source of concern and emotional labor, as they tried to arrange care from a distance or simply were worried about the health and safety of family far away. four of the participants dealt with a strong feeling of homesickness, “spending thoughts on missing family members” and “dreaming about returning home.” one participant, in particular, was going through a tremendous family crisis amid the covid-19 as his family members were trapped in wuhan and one is a doctor. on the contrary, some reflected on experiencing continuity in the quality of their existing interpersonal relationships or even increased relationship closeness during the pandemic. for some, this involved having family and friends being on the same page and supporting each other as they go along: my relationship with my friends has become closer. we’ve been chatting and complaining about various challenges we faced. now we are the support network for each other. it’s nice to have someone to talk to. interestingly, not all participants longed for intimacy, especially during the pandemic when social distancing is deemed necessary. some were fearful of being affected by their roommates, others had an increasing number of dormitory conflicts since they were forced to stay together all the time. connections with lab mates, cohort, and advisors the possible adverse impact that covid-19 left on research and academic progress was another key concern that many of our participants held. as strict regulations regarding school entrance were imposed shortly after the pandemic outbreak, students were forbidden to return and forced to shift to the work-from-home model. staying motivated and productive was tough, but whether working from home is the key or impediment to their efficiency remains unclear. participants reported that the pandemic had affected international doctoral students negotiating support current issues in comparative education 33 their connection to other students and advisors, speaking about the difficulties and inconvenience in creating smooth academic communication and the excessive cost of time and energy while doing it. a fifth-year ph.d. student in life sciences elaborated: the small talks after in-person seminars have been an important opportunity for me to learn and develop ideas. now as they go online, not only did many people stop turning on the camera at all, they also ghost out immediately. it is also difficult to concentrate all the time when zooming, and sometimes it is difficult to hear. several participants, especially those who rely on in-person fieldwork or wet experiments in laboratories, experienced rapid change in their research design and severe delay in their research progress. one participant described a special circumstance in march 2020 where laboratories were shut down and all experimental animals like rats were deemed to be killed. another participant observed the idleness of his classmates, who had nothing to do but “spend 10 hours a day playing switch games.” similar points were made by other participants as well: my research should have been done last summer. i was about to return to china in july but couldn’t. in that case, it was neither impossible to design nor to carry out an experiment online. so, i changed it into a hybrid format. in this case, lab and department seem to be the immediate superior that the students could reach out to. but people’s satisfaction level with corresponding sub-organization support varies. in relation to instructional support, such as graduation postponement, some participants stated that their supervisors were supportive and showed understanding towards that. in some cases, the examination system was also made flexible in various ways, which was a relief to those who were about to take the exams: because of my own reasons, my work efficiency has dropped a lot and i also have a little depression. i discussed with my supervisor about half a year off from school, he expressed understanding and said that i should take care of my health. however, many other advisors did not seem to beware of the emotional fluctuations that their students were going through, resulting in a strained student-mentor relationship: my boss said to me, he encountered the 9/11 incident when he was a student. he thought at that time, everyone thought everything was over, but now it's pretty good. i think the two things are not the same, but i didn't argue with him directly. another participant reported feeling ashamed and uneasy rejecting her supervisor’s research request due to personal problems: at that time, i felt that i was really unable to work, but my boss wanted to talk to me about academics or ask me how well my paper was written. he didn’t do anything wrong, but i had no mental space to do that. i feel quite uncomfortable and that it is inappropriate for me to do this. i should have been ready for research anytime, anywhere. one participant drew on receiving rather sufficient personal support from staff but inadequate systematic ones: fu, hu & liu current issues in comparative education 34 my mentor takes the initiative to ask me if there is anything i need help with. the program officer also cares about my difficulties. as specific people, they are willing to offer support. but they somehow cannot fully represent the department. consequently, this delay or overall pivot in research projects and not being fully supported by the department might become an impediment to graduation, which helped increase these participants’ level of anxiety. “perhaps my biggest anxiety comes from not being able to graduate on time,” a student remarked. perceived support from departments or universities in turn, participants emphasized their need for institutional resources in their professional contexts to support them in planning for changes to their research due to the impact of the pandemic. they also highlighted that the speed and efficacy of institutional response to major events play a pivotal role in assisting them both in life and in academia. this interest in institutional support ranged from providing more funds, psychological service, timely notification of events and policies, to increased flexibility in research and graduation. there are a group of participants who did not show particular care about school policies, one of which indicated that it was because of his close connection with his supervisor. there is a consensus that the informational support that the schools provided was roughly adequate. many shared that their schools did their best in staying with international students and protecting their interests by sending multiple statements via email. for one participant, in particular, he recounted that his school “reported issues of equal rights and the epidemic in a very timely manner, attaching great importance to the timeliness and correctness of information communication.” instrumental support was also regarded as basically satisfactory. some participants recalled being offered an opportunity to have their invoices reimbursed. others acknowledged that a pandemic relief fund was issued at the beginning of the epidemic, which was no more than a few hundred dollars, but still “better than nothing.” a fifthyear ph.d. student in life sciences added: i personally feel that my school is doing a pretty good job. when the epidemic first started, we had an opportunity to apply for five hundred dollars if we find that covid has brought a burden to our life. if you’re working from home and need a printer, or you want to go home, but the air ticket has increased a lot, you can also apply for some funding. similarly, a third-year student studying economics from a large public university felt supported seeing his school’s response to visa-related policies: i remember that there was an incident that if you can't enroll in an in-person class, your f-1 visa will become invalid. that time i felt that the school was pretty awesome. they sent some news updates and participated in some lawsuits. but because the matter was over quickly, there was no follow-up. however, it is important to note that, while some were relatively satisfied with the resources that their universities provided, others indicated an absence of emotional support, as a student revealed, “public schools are usually financially tight so they can only do some basic things such as notifications, but there was nothing more.” others also expressed their disappointment towards the inadequacy and inaccuracy of the international doctoral students negotiating support current issues in comparative education 35 institutional responses provided by their universities, especially compared to their previous undergraduate and graduate universities: the so-called free consulting service set up by our school for graduate students is actually not free. and if you go to school more often, he will tell you that if you have specific needs, for example, if you have a history of this kind of mental illness or something, we suggest you go to a doctor outside the school because our resources were reserved to undergraduates. i felt very sad when i heard that. the anti-asian wave that came together with covid-19 also heightened our participants’ fear of being physically hurt and trailing emotional stress of not having their rights upheld. many of our participants recorded being treated unfairly and an avoidance of responsibility of their schools: for the anti-asian acts and crimes, my university’s response is much slower. we wrote to the international center, but they did not reply and shirked their responsibility to other departments. when they finally did it, the resources were not displayed on the homepage. you have to click on several indistinguishable links. it hurt everyone's feelings. the data analysis above revealed the sophistication and complexity of the experiences of international doctoral students. this further indicates significance in recognizing individual differences, creating channels of communication, and providing valid institutional support. that said, the extent to which covid-19 and the international situation will impact institutions’ ability to offer support and the nature of studying and working abroad (change the choice of students who planned to stay in the u.s. in the past) is yet to be fully explored. discussion and conclusion in this section, we discuss three major aspects of the findings: international students’ reliance on past interpersonal connections, lack of essential support from institutions, and the role of advisors and departments in providing all types of support. first, the findings of this study have proved that international doctoral students from china are much more likely to be reliant on close relationships, rather than secondary groups or society. past studies on the friendship network of international students found international students socialize the most with peers from the same home country (rienties et al., 2013; montgomery & mcdowell, 2009; hendrickson et al., 2011). the findings acknowledged this point and found that lab mates are also a significant part of chinese doctoral students’ interpersonal networks during covid-19. however, the previous interpersonal connections were also seriously fragmented during the pandemic. covid19 and social distancing policy have made maintaining or building interpersonal relationships incredibly difficult for the students. that is part of the reason why most of them relied heavily on their past networks, which is manifested by the fact that several participants were seeking comfort from their family members and old friends back home. lack of regular social activities and consistent channels to communicate left the students with a greater sense of loneliness. in addition, the lack of mutual understanding between students in the us and families in china, affected by the different stages in covid-19, conflicting media discourses, and the sociopolitical pressures between the us and china around the pandemic, has contributed to students’ loneliness in the us and triggered more worry about their parents at home. fu, hu & liu current issues in comparative education 36 second, the support provided by family members, close friends, and significant others was found to be only emotional, sometimes informational, as is in alliance with the social support theory, whereas the resources provided by higher educational institutions, theoretically informational and instrumental, were very limited. investigating into what institutions did to confront critical issues created by covid-19, it is not uncommon to find that many types of resources were in scarcity. some of those mentioned by our participants include legal aid, financial aid, psychological counseling, and potential change in qualification modality. also, not only was information such as chances to get relocation fees hidden in “countless web links”, institutions also seldom proactively reach out to the students, leaving them uninformed. but this does not mean that the efforts that have been made were effective. the biggest issue was that the support provided was symbolic rather than practical. without going beyond updating covid-related information, institutions fall short in solving real-life problems as well as protecting the emotions of international students of color in the wave of asian hate. in particular, a common feeling of being left out was expressed by many of our participants, who would want their universities to be responsible for raising people’s awareness of emotional needs and nurturing an atmosphere of mutual support. when looking into the reason why students were somehow reluctant to be dependent on institutions, we found a lack of understanding and trust between them and the students, without which social support networks might be hard to form and manage and students’ attitudes towards the institution might be negatively affected. figure 1 the role of the academic department and advisors in providing all types of support for international students third, what falls between intimate relationships and institutions is academic departments and their faculty. it is interesting to find that, in many cases, students seek emotional support rather than informational or instrumental support from their advisors and departments. the department is at the intersection between the larger discipline and the local hei. departments are basic organizing subunits within an hei and administrative extensions of the institution. however, the varied organizational structures and cultures across departments such as policies and values also reflect the influences of the larger discipline and society (clark, 1987; lee, 2004). academic departments and advisors, intersecting at students and institutions, could in fact provide all types of social support, namely, instrumental, informational, and emotional (figure 1). individuals, academic advisors and tutors could cater to the needs of students on a personal level. as members international doctoral students negotiating support current issues in comparative education 37 of the subordinate body of the university, they hold a variety of resources at hand and could therefore act quickly to emergencies, providing instrumental and informational support when needed. as acknowledged in previous research (gormley, 2008), a successful mentor-mentee relationship requires the mentors to go beyond the professional, or academic as in this case. one of our participants revealed that both her mentor and the program officer were willing to offer help and ready to talk her through any challenges she might be facing. unfortunately, however, those that could be identified in this study are more at the individual level than at the institutional level. this further indicates a lack of systematic support in many higher education institutions and an unprecedented opportunity to redress this issue. as such, departmental support should be systemized, as it plays an irreplaceable role in creating a safe, supportive, and protective educational setting and in bridging the students and the institutions. this study has several implications. first, it contributes to the scholarship of international higher education by researching and capturing international doctoral student experiences and perceptions in this crucial time. second, unlike the past studies that place the burden on international students to overcome the challenges during their overseas study, this study focuses on examining whether heis have the capacity to provide a safe and supportive environment for international students in a global crisis. it gives voice to international students and provides heis with students’ evaluations of institutional response and support. a chronic lack of trust and organizational support, which includes culturally and ethnically diverse training to school counselors, are exposed and exaggerated, resulting in their insufficiency in toolset and mindset to deal with the hardships that both themselves and their students experience. concerted efforts must also urgently be put together to deal with the mental health of international doctoral students and rebuild a supportive and hospitable u.s. higher education system. third, this study reveals some emerging patterns in international student mobility, especially doctoral student mobility from china. for the post-pandemic situation, one point that deserves mentioning is that the geopolitical tensions between the u.s. and china may change the decision-making of prospective international students from china. yiwei fu is a postgraduate student at new york university majoring in tesol and foreign language education. she gained her bachelor’s degree in english language at southeast university in china. her past work centered around post-colonialism and the identity crisis of chinese americans, racial bias in the tesol industry, and classroom discourse in preschools. currently, she is investigating international student experience in american higher educational institutions during the covid-19 pandemic. die hu is a postdoctoral researcher at the institute of education at tsinghua university. dr. hu’s research examines faculty international collaboration networks, internationalization of higher education, and international student mobility and experiences in the u.s. and china. she holds a ph.d. in education from the university of california, los angeles. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to die hu at hudie@tsinghua.edu.cn xitao liu is a ph.d. student in applied social psychology at claremont graduate university. her research interests focus on improving social support among people with depression. her current studies utilize moral elevation to increase helping behaviors toward people's loved ones with depression and cultural differences in moral judgement. fu, hu & liu current issues in comparative education 38 references borgatti, s & halgin, d. 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(2020). a study on interpersonal relationship and psychological adaptation among the influencing factors of international students’ cross-cultural adaptation. psychology, 11(11), 1757–1768. https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2020.1111111 © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 42 november`15, 1998 can ngos provide alternative development in a market-based system of global economics? lynn ilon state university of new york at buffalo the recent focus on ngos as alternative forms of service delivery in education raises a fundamental question: can ngos deliver a higher quality or different type of service than that of market-based donors (multilateral and bilateral development agencies) who focus on stabilizing and growing markets? the potential appears good for more locally relevant and more targeted service delivery given a wide range of ngo structures and possibilities. but can ngos withstand the pressures of a profit-driven global economic system? two primary problems present themselves. first, community-based funding is frequently weak and unreliable relative to funding driven by profits. second, when multilateral or bilateral organizations become primary funders of ngos, the goals of such organizations (largely market-focused) can be adopted easily by the local ngo. such is the power of money to dominate agendas. clearly, the ngo sector is quite diverse. the basic economic argument advanced here would apply to most forms and sizes of service-delivery ngos. [1] the concerns addressed here are most likely to involve global ngos that have substantial funding from market-based donors. defining a unique place for ngos ngos rarely begin with a profit motive. but, once an ngo becomes a major influence in people's lives (either through their employment or their empowerment), the economics of the outside world begins to impinge on the operations of the ngo. no ngo can turn its back on the employment and quality of life issues of its members and its leaders. in order to secure a sustainable ngo, the organization often looks to enlarge its influence. as with corporations, market share and visibility become important areas of foci for ngos. potentially, ngos can speak to needs that lie outside a market-based economy. generally, market-based entities do not fulfill people's needs to pursue opportunities or validate their cultures and unique histories. both market-based and non-market-based sectors of global society require that these needs be addressed. these desires require a non-market-based system of organizations. many ngos can and do speak to these local needs. as long as an ngo can remain centrally driven by these needs, it secures itself a viable and sustainable future. succumbing to market forces is it realistic to assume that ngos can resist market-based forces? market-based development donors, after all, provide the money and, thus, often much of the power. ngos can and do represent an alternative to development by serving needs that are not addressed by profit-based economics. ngo sustainability is often at risk in a marketbased economy. the need for market share and visibility may leave ngos vulnerable to outside influences. an ngo that can ngos provide alternative development in a market-based system of global economics? current issues in comparative education, vol.1(1) 43 begins with, say, empowering local women through literacy classes, may unwittingly turn its energies toward maximizing external donor support. the ngo may also change its initial foci and methods rather than fall into the disfavor of major funders. using the example of literacy, the ngo might have focused its initial energy on empowering local women literacy being a primary means of empowerment. an outside funder such as the world bank, however, is focused on stabilizing and creating markets (their founding goal). literacy is one means of stabilizing the very poor and moving people from subsistence economies to market-based economies. literacy has a place in both the ngo agenda and the agenda of the funder. in this context, it is easy for an ngo to take on the agenda of the funder by making seemingly small compromises in service delivery or process. therefore, while they share a means (i.e., female literacy), their goals differ, and often the ngo's goals are subordinated. merging ngo interests with those of funders is appealing for an ngo because it harnesses the strength and influence of a global economic system. many an ngo has made this leap often unwittingly and unknowingly. dependence on such funds puts ngos in a dilemma, for the ngo becomes little more than a particularly efficient and legitimizing means of delivering market-focused goals (hearn, 1998). one oxfam worker (as quoted in butler, 1996) puts it this way, "if you don't play by the official rules, you won't get the cash." the pressure to succumb is increasing. donor and lending agencies are increasingly leaning on ngos to carry out their economic programs. the end of the cold war turned much state development assistance away from the goal to influence political ideology and toward the goal of creating global markets (stewart, 1997). accordingly, the importance of working with state powers is diminished when the focus is on the global economy rather than on global politics. the state is now seen as economically inefficient. ngos, on the other hand, are seen as vehicles that funnel money directly into the pockets of people who participate in markets. thus, moneys that were previously directed through the state to garner influence are redirected toward local organizations (gary, 1996). managing the global economic link the linkages with the global economy are real and powerful. the temptation is palatable. as stated by butler (1996), "…ngos find themselves accepting official donations with firm conditions attached to their use. these strings can be a major handicap, hampering managers' ability to prioritize tasks. " (p.28). an ngo must strategize its link with global economic forces in order to retain its service-oriented goal. a viable, independent ngo must define growth as increased service delivery rather than increased market-share and funds. to avoid this fate, the ngo must: • have a goal that is non-market-based and maintain this goal; • build power, influence and size (market share) on knowledge 9about the goal and with an eye towards empowerment) rather than market value (financial size); • reinvest in human resources rather than in marketing strategies; • recognize that its empowerment strategies may overlap with those of market-based donors (e.g., world bank) but the long-term goals differ. the ngo must keep its non-market objective in the long run in order to survive. when lynn ilon 44 november`15, 1998 an ngo becomes a vehicle for market-based goals of development, it enters into competition with market-driven corporations and market-based service deliverers. such organizations have very different principles that put an ngo structure at a competitive disadvantage. on the other hand, retaining its central focus of service (or advocacy) can strengthen an ngo even given donor/lender pressure. donors may form a symbiotic relationship with the ngo that can retain its focus. [2] donors, after all, have a compelling need to work with ngos. working with ngos provides advantages to working directly with government they allow access to grassroots initiatives and to the small communities that incubate markets (nelson, 1997). as well, markets require a base level of stability that is closely tied to social justice, democracy and participation. thus, the agendas of advocacy and service ngos fill both social needs for local communities and economic needs for donor/lending agencies (handley, 1991). maintaining ngos' social service agendas does not equal maintaining independence from a seductive market. in fact, ngos may be drawn into the market fray and focus their energies on "profit" nearly as much as a stockholder-owned competitor. such ngo "profits" can increase market share, salaries or influence. an ngo that takes on marketbased goals does not provide an alternative development service and may not provide a higher quality service. unwillingness to examine the market-ngo link represents a fatal threat to the viability of ngos as development alternatives. as professionals in the field of education and development, it is our responsibility to look closely at emerging ngos and help define the standards by which their work can be judged. ngos must be judged for the efficacy of service delivery and for the process by which that service is delivered. non-profit status hardly guarantees that ngo goals are processed-oriented and service-focused. ngos will always risk taking on the goals of market-based forces. development that is human-based will depend, in part, on our willingness to recognize that some ngos may well represent market-based interests even when their credo and history would point to a service focus. fortunately, retention of their non-market-based goals provides the countervailing force that leads the way to alternative development strategies. notes [1] classification of ngos is still in flux (see vakil, 1997). [2] this relationship is hardly unproblematic or non-controversial. the japanese government and environmental groups are waging a very public battle over influence, agendas and turf which is centered around the debate of whether government and ngo agendas can be complimentary or are inherently conflictive (see murakami, 1992). references butler, d. (1996). support with strings attached. accountancy, 118(1237), 26-31. can ngos provide alternative development in a market-based system of global economics? current issues in comparative education, vol.1(1) 45 gary, i. (1996). confrontation, co-operation or co-optation: ngos and the ghanaian state during structural adjustment. review of african political economy, 23(68), 149-68. handley, p. (1991). pressure points: world bank pays greater heed to social activists. far eastern economic review, 154(47), 66-67. hearn, j. (1998). the 'ngo-isation' of kenyan society: usaid and the restructuring of health care. review of african political economy, 25(75), 89-100. murakami, a. (1992). sellouts feared if firms fund environmental groups. japan times weekly international edition, 32(22), 8. nelson, p. (1997). deliberation, leverage or coercion? the world bank, ngos, and global environmental politics. journal of peace research, 34(4), 467-72. stewart, s. (1997). happy ever after in the marketplace: non-government organizations and uncivil society. review of african political economy, 24(71), 11-34. vakil, a. (1997). confronting the classification problem: toward a taxonomy of ngos. world development, 25(12), 2057-70. view publication stats https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237134498 brooks decosta et al., 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 reimagining education: restore, rebuild, curate, uplift, and celebrate dawn brooks decosta thurgood marshall academy lower school danica goyens ward thurgood marshall academy lower school michael cornell thurgood marshall academy lower school in this paper, a principal and two lead teachers describe the ways their school community has reimagined the learning environment at their nyc urban, public, k-5 elementary school throughout the covid-19 pandemic. in march 2020 they were forced to immediately switch to fully remote learning, a platform they had never previously experienced. since then, they have engaged in hybrid and now fully in person learning through a worldwide pandemic. the school community, whose focus before the pandemic was on social emotional learning and culturally responsive pedagogy, utilized those practices and the strong relationships between staff, students, and families to persevere. the pandemic disproportionately impacted communities of color, like the one this school community is located in. other inequalities such as food insecurity, job loss, sickness, financial strain, and death impacted the community. racial trauma and political unrest that was exacerbated during the pandemic also placed a toll on the school community. the staff, families and children of the community joined together with a mission to support one another, strengthen relationships, practice self-care, address trauma and crisis, tackle unfinished learning, and focus on celebrating the community wherever possible to find joy, survive and thrive. introduction in this essay we examine, as leaders and educators of a small urban, harlem, nyc elementary school, our collective approach to reimagining the learning experience we provide for our school family. operating currently in year 3 of pandemic schooling that started with fully remote learning year 1, hybrid remote and in person instruction year 2 and fully in person learning this school year, our approach is in a constant state of evolution. the covid-19 pandemic shed a harsh light on the disparities that exist for many students across the nation, specifically in the community we serve. in harlem, as in other similar communities across the nations, the long-term effects of sickness, loss of income, anxiety, trauma, stress, death rates, grief, depression, and racial unrest, have impacted communities of color in disproportionate ways (mcphearson, grabowski, herreros-cantis, mustafa, ortiz, kennedy, tomateo, lopez, olivotto & vantu, 2020). city and state education leaders increasingly encourage and promote trauma-informed practices that support the social-emotional development of students and families. during this 3rd year of pandemic schooling, while educators are experiencing the effects of their own burnout and fatigue, we are experiencing the need to not only address the unfinished © 2022, decosta et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 71-87. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en brooks decosta et al. current issues in comparative education 72 learning our students have experienced but also the need for social, emotional, mental health and wellbeing supports, not only for the students but for the adults who care for them inside and outside of school. through a collective and collaborative process that included surveys, virtual town hall discussions, pta meetings, faculty meetings and student discussions, we created an approach to learning that curated our best practices and those we researched to provide a reimagined learning experience that centers the student, and resulted in an uplifting their cultural identities, allowing for joy and celebration and fostering relationship building while we addressed unfinished learning and a wide variety of individual academic needs. the idea the following sections highlight what we put in place that contributed to our students’ social emotional well-being and learning. there are 3 tenets we uncovered while working as a team on the ways we would support our students. we have summarized them in the following paragraphs. social emotional learning: our inspiration in more recent years, there has been a movement towards ensuring that social emotional learning is grounded in a culturally responsive approach so as not to cause additional harm to students through the use of sel as a method for behavior control. sel is actually a way to encourage, not suppress effective expressions of emotions. social emotional learning that centers culturally responsive practices allows for a deeper connection with students that connects to their identities and socio-political contexts in order to teach them sel competencies with cultural sensitivity (mccallops, barnes, berte, fenniman, jones, navon & nelson, 2019). our school leader decided, in collaboration with a lead teacher, to begin addressing the well-being concerns of our students, staff and families 10 years ago through the piloting and implementation of the ruler approach from yale institute for emotional intelligence as a schoolwide practice and expectation. over the years we have supplemented the sel practices with mindful practice, yoga and an integration of sel with our culturally responsive instructional focus and school culture. a trailblazer in social emotional learning (sel), physician, psychiatrist, founder, and chairman of the school development program (sdp) at yale university, current maurice falk professor of child psychiatry at yale, james comer began his work in sel in 1968 at yale university. around that time, he developed the “comer approach” which placed the collaboration of students, families, teachers, and administrators at the center in advancing the outcomes for students. the approach was born out of his knowledge of child development and with the community and family at the center, his approach focused on the holistic support of the students as a basis for their learning experience. the approach, which is the foundation of much of the current sel movement, created relationships between educators, their students, and their families in the social and emotional support of the students. under these conditions, a sense of connection and belonging is fostered. this being the ideal environment for students to thrive academically within (roach, 2013). goleman (1995), defines emotional intelligence as the ability to recognize and identify emotions, recognize, and regulate emotions where necessary, ultimately resulting in an ability to express them effectively which impacts their relationships and experiences with others. camangian & cariaga (2021) ask us, “are we teaching individual students to manage their emotions and behaviors simply for the sake of upward mobility or are we teaching students to recognize and re-claim their emotions and relationships as fuel for political inquiry, radical healing, and social transformation (p. 16)?” in response to this question, we believe we are delivering to our students a life skill and an ownership over their reimagining education current issues in comparative education 73 emotions and relationships that will allow them access to joy and success. we are providing our students a path to healing, strategies to manage life’s daily stresses, and the ability to experience positive relationships and connections with one another through self awareness, empathy and belonging. cultural responsiveness: our muses we employ a culturally responsive approach to learning at our school that lives within all fibers of our school culture and the learning experience we provide. over the years we have utilized the work and wisdom of the scholars and research-based practices to help build our knowledge as educators on best practices in crse. our school was opened in 2005 through the vision of dr. calvin o. butts iii. dr. butts’ vision was that students should experience models of excellence in leaders, artists and characters that looked like them to provide them an increased positive self-concept that would combat the negative imagery they were exposed to and instead access to success and achievement. the founding principal of our school dr. sean davenport executed this vision through leaders and artists of the month of color, crse curriculum, poetry, and the arts. as when the school began, students still participate in daily culturally responsive rituals and routines, such as reciting langston hughes and maya angelou, reciting their school creed and sharing positive affirmations. current principal dr. dawn brooks decosta, has continued the vision and legacy through arts partnerships, professional development for staff in culturally responsive pedagogy, continued curriculum enhancements, culturally responsive texts, and the integration of social emotional learning. she also engages a variety of community based partnerships that maximize and enhance the learning experiences for the students such as urban farming and plant based cooking with harlem grown, culturally responsive stem lessons with yvonne thevenot’s nyc stem kids, an expanded school day through their community based partner sobro and arts education through the studio museum in harlem and the museum of modern art. dr. decosta also regularly opens the doors of the school to share practices with school leaders across the globe who wish to learn about crse and sel in action. she is currently supporting a cohort of schools through her culturally responsive social emotional leadership (crsel) framework in collaboration with harlem community school district 5 and the harlem renaissance education pipeline and has led a nationwide webinar series on the same topic with one of the school’s beloved partners in mindful practices and brain breaks, pure edge inc. currently, staff are regularly engaged in article and text studies around crse to build their repertoire. staff and students have engaged in critical selfreflection around race and identity. parents have also participated in culturally relevant family projects and a book study, as did the staff, of dr. gholdy muhammad’s cultivating genius. dr. muhammad’s historical literacy framework is what is used in literacy lesson planning. the staff are currently utilizing research to construct a culturally responsive social emotional math curriculum through a grant from the doe office of new school design led by a co-author of this article michael cornell, the school’s math and technology lead and 5th grade teacher. all classes participate in monthly culturally responsive schoolwide writing tasks, and all utilize culturally responsive texts in their classroom libraries. one of the authors of this article danica goyens ward who was mentored for 2 years by dr. gholdy muhammad, serves at the school’s peer collaborative and culturally responsive lead teacher and mentor, supporting school staff in the implementation of crse through a lab classroom. gloria ladson-billings, coined culturally relevant pedagogy based on her research study a work of teachers in the early 1990’s. using culturally relevant texts and culturally competent lesson planning approaches, ladson-billings explained that teachers used the brooks decosta et al. current issues in comparative education 74 culture of the students as “a vehicle for learning” where parents and family members engaged to share their “cultural knowledge” (1995, p. 161). in her own evolution of the concept she coined, ladson-billings encourages us now while we exist in this pandemic, to, “pursue a new vision of what it means to educate all students” (1995, p. 170). in her culturally relevant remix 2.0, ladson billings (2021) charges us to move beyond instruction that is culturally relevant but culturally sustaining and ever evolving. this remix reimagines how we can amplify student voice and encourage that they actively question the perspectives, policies and practices that directly impact their lives. ladsonbillings (2021) encourages us to continue to “remix” the approach to effectively meet the continued evolution of student needs and experiences. geneva gay’s (2018) definition of culturally responsive pedagogy is “using cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant and effective for them” (p. 29). this attends to the intellectual needs of the students while also attending to the need for an identity-centered focus. hammond (2014) went further to identify “affirmation and validation” as part of her framework for culturally responsive teaching. she noted in the framework the need for building a “sense of self-efficacy, positive mindset, reducing social emotional stress, providing care and a push, building a socially and intellectually safe environment and using a restorative justice frame” (p. 17). the work of these scholars is even more relevant today as we work during a time of crisis. we strive to stay focused on what students need most, even more so while anxiety, stress and uncertainty have become a part of the daily experience. combating racial trauma: a motivation to empower recent incidents of racial unrest as well as the pandemic, heightened the levels and our awareness of racial trauma in our students. the murders of breonna taylor, ahmaud arbery and george floyd, the riots on january 6th and the repeated images that were regularly played through media during a time where staff, students and parents were home for remote learning, resulted in trauma and pain. students were in search of answers to what they were seeing and hearing. one 5th grade student asked after a racially biased incident he experienced in a local restaurant, “why do they hate us?” as educators and parents, we were also traumatized by the events, compounded by years of similar incidents without a sense of justice. we needed tools and strategies to discuss race in developmentally appropriate ways for our children, ways to discuss discrimination, racial violence and oppression and an outlet for our school community to process and express the emotions they were feeling and their hopes for change. we utilized resources from pbs kids, learning for justice, the morningside center for social responsibility and platforms for community expression and sharing such as flipgrid. we provided our students with the truth, with compassion and empathy while we allowed them to share their pain, their confusion and hopes as we shared ours, and this provided us with an optimism that we could be agents of change. prior to these incidents, through our curriculum, rituals, and routines, we were already grounding our students in their identity, finding joy and connection in their heritage and knowledge of diverse cultures which provided them the positive self-concept that would shield them from some of the harm of racial trauma. this is in direct correlation with what ladson-billings (2021) advocates which is for educators to provide opportunities for students to question and resist the policies and practices that marginalize them. this is healing for our students, staff, and families. liu & modir (2020) assert that one “significant protective factor against racial trauma is cultural identity, or a positive sense of oneself as existing within and belonging to a certain culture” (p. 440). this research correlates with the students’ positive self-concept that we foster at our school and how this focus on cultural identity and sense reimagining education current issues in comparative education 75 of belonging provides some level of protection for our students against racial trauma. each year, all classes participate in schoolwide writing tasks, where they learn the developmentally needed writing skills for their grade levels through studying and writing about topics that infuse social justice. two of the schoolwide 4-6 week units include one called the future of black liberation where they learn about movements from african americans and others toward the efforts to fight against injustice through activism, scholarship and the arts. another unit is children as revolutionaries: youth activism, which engages the students in the awareness of young people utilizing their voices in social justice issues such as racism and climate change. french, lewis, mosley, adames, chavez-dueñas, chen & neville (2020) discuss “radical healing” as rooted in “identifying the ways people thrive and become whole” through “liberation psychology” which “centers the struggle of oppressed individuals in society”. the encouraging news that informs our practice in focusing on social justice learning is that the healing process also requires “active resistance” (p. 20). how our students learn as we press forward through pandemic schooling, continued uncertainty, working within a system where extreme creativity is required to build connection and relationships through face masks, desks in rows and social distancing, combined what we are learning about how students learn best through a multifaceted approach. understanding how to address unfinished learning, stress, anxiety, social emotional disconnections, racial and personal trauma while attempting to create an environment where students, staff and families can still experience joy is no easy feat. linda darling hammond (2021) outlined in a forbes article on accelerating learning, the key components needed to address unfinished learning which included: relationship building, allowing students to construct their own knowledge in their social emotional, socio political and cultural contexts, physical activity, joy and self-expression. darling hammond (2021) also emphasized the need to care for students’ self-perception of their own abilities during this delicate time where they are working to catch up and needing to feel self-esteem in that process. the need for schoolwide healing daily can be found in moments of joy and celebration. we utilize this learning from dr. darling hammond by engaging our students and staff in daily guided meditation, mood check ins, affirmations, and yoga. we celebrate publicly, lessons that build connection through crse and sel, staff and student achievements, artistic and innovative practices and moments of student, staff and parent agency with our school and wider community. practices that fill voids, that are healing centered and connected to real world experiences are a key part of our approach. through a partnership with systemic transformation of inquiry learning environments (stile) and teachers’ college columbia university, classes are engaging in real world project-based learning where they are practicing being active changemakers in their community. students need daily learning experiences that are culturally affirming, opportunities to amplify their voices, and creative in building relationships and belonging through celebrations of identity. as a school community we center the voices of our students through identity reflection and student leadership as self-awareness leaders and student council, our teachers and support staff through leadership roles and collaborative decision-making opportunities, our administrators through professional development and collaborative systems and structures and our families through support groups, self-care tools and an open line of communication. we share our individual and collective needs, hopes, fears and dreams for the culture of care we want for our students. we created a process and approach to learning that is ever evolving and adapting to the needs of the community. brooks decosta et al. current issues in comparative education 76 we operate as a family, working through challenges to meet everyone’s needs with love and a culture of care. the subsequent sections outline our approach as we faced schooling during a worldwide pandemic. we took the 3 tenets mentioned above, social emotional learning, cultural responsiveness and combating racial trauma through empowerment and created a series of approaches, structures, and systems at our school to meet the needs of all stakeholders in our school family while learning through a pandemic during remote, hybrid and in person learning. we have developed 3 “solutions” that we will continue to utilize post pandemic that allowed us to continue striving towards our aspired vision of excellence, care and belonging for all members of our school community. the solutions include the following: solution 1-reimagine the learning experience through the curation of new school wide policies and instructional practices, solution 2-reimagine ways to thrive by engaging in joyful, culturally affirming, culturally responsive, anti-racist learning experiences, and solution 3reimagine supports through relationship building, self-care, mindful practice, trauma informed health and wellbeing. solution 1 reimagining learning experience: curating new school wide policies & instructional practices the instructional practices at our school sit at the intersection of best practices in instruction and culturally responsive teaching and learning. we use a guided release model that includes the following components in sequence: “i do” this occurs at the beginning of the lesson when teachers explicitly model a new concept, skill or strategy; “we do” where student discourse and teacher facilitation around that new concept, skill, or strategy take place; and “you do” where students work independently with the new concept, skill, or strategy as teachers informally assess, asks probing questions, and check for understanding (hunter, n.d.; schmoker, 2018). the impact of these research-based practices in instruction is amplified when couched in culturally responsive contexts that reflect students' identities, histories, and experiences. therefore, our school integrates dr. gholdy muhammad’s (2000) hill model into which includes the 4 pillars of histories, identities, literacies, and liberation. in integrating this model within daily instruction, our teachers consider the following pursuits: identity, students’ knowledge and affirmation of self and others; skills, students’ content area skills and proficiencies; intellect, students’ knowledge put into action; criticality, students’ understanding of oppression, equity, and anti-racism; and joy, students’ connection to joy within themselves or others. for example, in a fourth-grade literacy unit that studied living legends, students engaged in textual analysis and learned to cite evidence using a text that centered on supreme court justice sonia sotomayor. integrated with our gradual release model, the lesson rooted in the hill framework expected the following outcomes of students consistent with the five pursuits mentioned above: identity, “i can name sonia sotomayor as the first puerto rican supreme court justice;” skills, “i can cite text evidence that proves this fact from the book national geographic readers: sonia sotomayor;” intellect, “i can learn about challenges and life in the city;” criticality, “i can recognize that poverty can be connected to crime in neighborhoods;” and joy, “i can learn how working hard towards a goal can give me joy.” while this model is rooted in research-based best practices and reflects students' identities, histories, and experiences, additional supports beyond whole-group instruction are necessary to provide the highest quality education accessible to all students. reimagining education current issues in comparative education 77 therefore, within our blocks of instruction, we follow our gradual release model with small groups and time for reflection and sharing out. during small groups, teachers provide additional instruction and differentiation that may look like providing students multiple entering points into the same grade level texts or word problems, using various evidence-based scaffolds such as graphic organizers or process charts, and reteaching by breaking down the new concept, skill, or strategy into manageable chunks. our small groups can be organized around various skills and strategies, or they can be based on mastery of standards. at the end of the instructional block, students have the opportunity to reflect on what they have learned and shared out. this helps students synthesize their understanding and create a culture of continuous learning from each other. to be strategic with our groupings, we diligently monitor progress over time using various informal and benchmark assessments. (william, 2011). this can take the form of informal checks for understanding based on anecdotal observations and student discourse, exit tickets, performance tasks, and other forms of student work. our benchmark assessments that are conducted three to four times a year in ela and math provide comprehensive diagnostic data on student mastery of grade-level standards. based on analysis of this data using an adapted data-driven protocol (school reform initiative, 2002), faculty determine how to best plan instruction and organize their small groups to meet the needs of all their students. in addition, our school engages in a cycle of six-eight weeks, where teachers focus on a standard that data indicates needs to be mastered by the whole class or grade. these efforts run alongside our daily instruction and provide additional supports to students to master essential standards that are foundational to their respective grade. faculty on grade-level teams analyze student work and collaborate on a bi-weekly basis throughout the cycle to identify student strengths and successes, errors and conceptual misunderstandings, the learning opportunity to advance student thinking, and an action plan rooted in research-based strategies to move student learning forward. supplementing these layers of support, our faculty collaborate with student teachers and other professionals to provide tutoring and extended learning time (elt) at the end of the typical school day. the student data informs this work and provides us with a strategic approach to support unfinished learning. it should also be mentioned that supporting students' learning is a partnership between the school and families, where each stakeholder has unique perspectives and strengths that are maximized when working together (friend & cook, 2010; gestwicki, 2010). therefore, the school leadership and faculty communicate what students are learning and how they are performing on a regular basis. this is predominantly done through a schoolwide digital communication platform; however, we also communicate with families via phone calls, text, email, and video conferencing, in addition to sending home monthly progress reports. yet, student data, learning, and progress is not only discussed by the school and families, but also with the students as well. it is important for students to understand their current status and progress with their achievement so they can set goals and take responsibility for their learning. faculty regularly discuss students’ data with them based on a variety of measures, including benchmark assessments, performance tasks, and focus standard work. students maintain a data folder that is reviewed frequently throughout the school year. students continuously analyze and reflect on the data, set goals, and monitor their progress. at brooks decosta et al. current issues in comparative education 78 times, students also determine the steps needed to improve and advance their own learning. this further establishes a classroom culture of continuous learning, which is also evidence in our approach to project-based learning and creating opportunities for real-world connections. our classroom culture is also rooted in relationships and social-emotional learning. when students are valued and their experiences are validated, they are better able to learn and form healthy relationships with each other. at times, when interactions become difficult, we prioritize reflection and restorative practices to help students develop their social-emotional competencies and maintain harmonious relationships. with covid, we have had to be flexible and creative with how we implement the essential aspects of our instruction and learning experiences. our school has made shifts to determine priority learning based on foundational grade-level expectations, incorporate technology to create digital learning environments and enhance communication and collaboration, and ensure social-emotional and culturally responsive learning drive our efforts. solution 2 reimagining ways to thrive: engaging in joyful, culturally affirming, culturally responsive, anti-racist learning experiences race may be a social construct. however, this idea does not make the effects and implications of a racist society any less real or harmful for indigenous, black, and brown people. how can we live and thrive in an environment that is not consistently inclusive of our culture and identities? to do so, educators must reimagine ways that both students and teachers can thrive within learning and teaching settings. first, as school leaders we must consider our own racial autobiographies and narratives before we can begin to understand the diverse narratives of our students. we must begin to shovel deeper into our own past before we advise our students to start shoveling. as educators, we question the ways we might connect to what students may surface. how will we help young people reason or understand what they may find on this cultural excavation? dr. mark a. gooden at teachers’ college has stated that writing a racial autobiography helps principals surface unexamined meanings of race personally and its impact on school leadership and america by increasing awareness of race, building community within and beyond the school, and taking anti-racist action to change structures (gooden, 2021). culturally responsive and sustaining education is a cultural view of learning and human development in which multiple forms of diversity (e.g., race, social class, gender, language, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, ability) are recognized, understood, and regarded as indispensable resources of knowledge for rigorous training and learning (peoples, bolisetty, 2022). after reading the previous statement, one may conclude that the curriculum was not previously responsive or sustaining which may imply that education has been harmful to the students of new york state in the past. for these reasons, crse practices are a step towards acknowledging and addressing the systemic inequities that continue to impact indigenous, black, and brown peoples of the world. empirical studies find that teachers who center students’ culture in the classroom by promoting high expectations, cultural competence, and critical consciousness improve student academic achievement, capacity for critical thinking, empowered racial/ethnic identity, civic activism, and overall school experience (arsonson & laughter, 2016; martell, 2013; aldana et al, 2012; thomas, davidson, & mcadoo, 2008; byrd, 2016). culturally relevant teachers raise students’ critical consciousness by addressing issues of social justice and racial inequality in the classroom. through a culturally responsive reimagining education current issues in comparative education 79 approach, teachers may encourage students to identify problems in their communities and discuss ways to address them. teachers acknowledge societal oppression and encourage students to notice how those dynamics are evident in their everyday lives. teachers trained in culturally responsive and sustaining education may empower students in the classroom and give students opportunities to participate in decision making that is relevant to their lives and experiences (byrd, 2016). there are research-based frameworks which support culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy. one of these frameworks is gholdy muhammad’s historically responsive literacy framework referenced earlier. muhammad’s framework uses skills and proficiencies interchangeably to denote competence, ability, and expertise based on what educators deem to be important for student learning in each content area. skills and intellectualism are separate facets when modeling this approach in the classroom. knowledge and intellect, the third layer of this approach includes what we want students to become smarter about, not decoding and fluency which are reading skills. another way to differentiate is that skills are typically found in curriculum and learning standards, and intellectual goals are derived from the content of the text. the fourth layer of this crse approach is criticality. this layer focuses on the ability to read print and non-print text with a lens of understanding how power, oppression, and privilege are present. a push for criticality in learning standards is helping young people, including those from backgrounds that may be historically marginalized, to investigate perspectives from marginalized standpoints (muhammad, 2016). classroom teachers must integrate the identities, intellectualism, and criticality of their students while supporting students in achieving proficiency of literacy skills in all content areas of instruction. in this climate of high stakes testing and accountability, both visual arts and social studies often are marginalized in the elementary school curriculum (samuels, 2019). teaching and learning in these areas typically are not provided adequate instructional time in the elementary classroom and because social studies is not included in the testing agenda in district and state standardized tests, elementary teachers are choosing to spend time teaching other skills that will boost test scores (burstein, curtis, & hutton, 2006.) in summary, it is imperative to model interdisciplinary instruction that includes a culturally responsive approach to provide adequate instructional time in elementary classrooms. students who are already in marginalized positions do not deserve marginalized content or instruction. thematic units of study and project-based learning can support teachers in meeting this instructional challenge. teaching thematically inspires greater intellectual curiosity, promotes deeper engagement with the past, and empowers students to find their own answers to the problems of society. thematic teaching is about students actively constructing their own knowledge, drawing on real-life experiences and incorporating issues of social justice that they face in their everyday lives (samuels, 2019). solution 3 reimagining supports: relationship building, self-care, mindful practice, trauma informed, health and wellbeing social and emotional learning (sel) programs in our school focuses on developing a wide range of students’ interpersonal, self-regulatory, and emotional competencies. we utilize mindfulness-based sel programs that aim to develop these competencies through the cultivation of children’s ability to pay attention to the present moment with curiosity and nonjudgment (bakosh et al., 2016; kabat-zinn, 2003). mindfulness-based sel programs are increasingly being used with children and adolescents to support a range of health, academic, and social outcomes. this is an approach that is widely modeled at our school. classroom teachers often begin with sel goal setting. this is one pathway to students brooks decosta et al. current issues in comparative education 80 developing a growth mindset. it is important for teachers to support students in expressing emotions and solving conflict in ways that are appropriate to themselves and others around them. taking a brain break is another strategy that can support students in maintaining an emotional balance in the classroom. brain breaks are planned learning activity shifts that mobilize different networks of the brain. these shifts allow those regions that are blocked by stress or high-intensity work to revitalize. brain breaks, by switching activity to different brain networks, allow the resting pathways to restore their calm focus and foster optimal mood, attention, and memory (willis, 2016). in our school community, brain breaks are practiced during our 90-minute literacy and mathematics blocks to maintain student focus and engagement. these brain breaks teach children how to regulate their breathing and offer insight into additional mindful practices at our school community which is meditation and yoga. these practices are modeled in our day school and extended after school program as well. during the day, meditation is used before we begin classroom instruction. each class has selected student meditation and selfawareness leaders who lead their peers through daily affirmations in the morning and in the afternoon once the lunch period has ended. in our afterschool program, all students in grades kindergarten through five can learn about the practice of yoga from a trained and certified instructor. meditation and yoga provide students time to reengage with themselves and connect to their learnings. establishing a partnership with harlem grown has enabled our school community to become more mindful about how we feel and what we eat. our school community is learning that healthy food grows healthy minds. harlem grown empowers community members through sustainable gardens and directly impacts youth (www.harlemgrown.org). children spend more time in school than in any other formal institutional structure. as such, schools play a key part in children’s development, from peer relationships and social interactions to academic attainment and cognitive progress, emotional control and behavioral expectations, and physical and moral development. all these areas are reciprocally affected by mental health (fazel, hoagwood, stephan, ford, 2015). at our school, there are interventions in place to support the mental health of all students and adults. a guidance counselor and a social worker are on site daily for students and faculty. the services offered by the school crisis team also extend outside of the school building to the family members of students as well. in addition, the school guidance counselor, social worker, and school administrators provide in person and virtual support via parent workshops and self-care sessions. these self-care sessions include meditation and yoga workshops, informational sessions on the middle school application process, and preventative strategies for handling conflict and stress in daily life. the special education team, school nurse, school crisis team, social worker, guidance counselor, yoga and meditation are practices that serve as an umbrella of support. family engagement as a motivator for student achievement is an important practice which has seen impressive results. kraft (2017) discussed the effects of creating better communication systems to bridge the gap between homes and schools. this research demonstrates that when parents were engaged through phone calls more regularly, student achievement in completing homework increased. for these reasons, supporting families in the academic success of their child is essential to the thriving of the school community. families in the school community receive academic support in multiple ways. class dojo is a digital application which assists teachers in communicating with parents. teachers and co-teachers can share student work with families via digital portfolios on class dojo. this digital platform has become most valuable during the covid-19 pandemic. class dojo enables classroom teachers, cluster teachers, school administrators, and extended families to remain engaged and knowledgeable about their reimagining education current issues in comparative education 81 school community. parents are also able to spend time in community with one another talking through their successes and challenges under the guidance and support of our school social worker at a weekly evening support group. school systems have traditionally used a prescriptive and, oftentimes, punitive framework to address misbehavior. otherwise known as zero tolerance policies, these frameworks include exclusionary practices (i.e., office referral, suspension, expulsion) that involve the removal of the offender from the context of the incident and isolating the student from others involved and their school community. zero tolerance policies, introduced in the 1990s, intensified these exclusionary practices to maintain order within schools (welch & payne, 2012). some methods of restorative practices used are the check in and check out, affective statements, peer mediation, and restorative circles. the first method, checking in and checking out, is a process that is done at the beginning and ending of each school day. this restorative practice provides opportunities for students to express themselves and consider the thoughts and emotions of their peers. students use yale institute for emotional intelligence’s ruler mood meter tool to describe their energy and pleasantness to their peers. the second method, affective statements, are sentences that contain a feeling, which is used in response to negative or positive events in the classroom or school. students use affirmative statements during small group discussions and conflict resolution sessions with their peers. the third method is called peer mediation. during peer mediation sessions, two trained student mediators assist fellow students, who are in conflict, to resolve their problems. the peer mediators work in pairs and the discussion usually takes place in a calming corner on the upper floors of our school building. teachers and the mental health team, which includes the guidance counselor and social worker, are aware of these scheduled meetings that take place in a private space and are nearby for additional support and assistance. the fourth method used at our school is called restorative circles. this method is used when three or more students have caused harm to others or have been harmed themselves. students usually sit in a circle and address who has been harmed and what needs to be done to make things right. sometimes students use a tool called the blueprint which is part of the ruler program at yale university. the blueprint serves as a reflection tool for self-improvement and future conflicts. lastly, these restorative circles are usually performed at the end of the week in our classrooms as needed. reimagining partnerships: engaging stakeholders as design partners our school has many partnerships that support student learning and development. some of them support academic achievement directly, such as southern bronx overall economic development (sobro), our afterschool provider that provides additional instruction and tutoring to support unfinished learning. other partners support us in other ways, such as juilliard, who provide music instruction and learning, studio museum in harlem, who provide art instruction and learning, and the meeting house, who support us with families. additional partners such as the yale center for emotional intelligence support us with the implementation of ruler, a systematic approach to social-emotional learning that helps students to recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate their emotions and feelings (ruler, 2021). one daily practice that we employ is the use of a tool called the “mood meter.” each morning in each class, student selfawareness leaders facilitate a mood meter check-in where students reflect and share how they are feeling in the moment by using words that characterize the level of pleasantness and energy they are experiencing. students also explain the reasons why they are feeling the way they do. this has led to greater selfand social-awareness, better selfmanagement, and relationship skills, as well as improved decision-making. this is brooks decosta et al. current issues in comparative education 82 evidenced by a reduction in dysregulation and challenging relationships between peers as well as an increase in constructive responses to conflict. wewehave also partnered with local universities such as barnard college and teachers college, columbia university, who provide our students with opportunities for project-based learning and open-ended tasks to develop inquiry and critical thinking around authentic problems. currently, the center for technology and school change (ctsc) at teachers college has launched a four-year implementation research initiative called systemic transformation for inquiry learning environments for stem (stile). faculty in kindergarten, second grade, fifth grade, and stem are working with their researchers to design inquiry-based units of study around authentic problems relevant to students and their school community. the units are rooted in design thinking (wiggins & mctighe, 2005) and encourage students to apply a line of questioning to fully understand challenges in their communities and potential ways to address them. presently, the faculty participating in the initiative are collaboratively designing a unit that addresses the interdependence of living organisms as they explore the challenges posed by feral cats residing in their school yard. early results from launching the unit have demonstrated an increase in student engagement, autonomy, problem-solving, critical thinking, and joy. also out of teachers college is the black education research collective (berc). berc focuses on educational research at the intersections of black history, culture, politics, and leadership. currently, they are piloting a k-12 interdisciplinary black studies curriculum for new york city schools. the program introduces students to topics “exploring early african civilizations, the continuum of the black experience in america, the contributions and accomplishments of peoples of the african diaspora as well as the impact of systemic and institutional racism on all members of society” (teachers college, columbia university, 2021). at our school, the pilot is being implemented in kindergarten and fourth grade with great success. recently, students learned about adinkra symbols; symbols from ghana that represent concepts or aphorisms that are used extensively in fabrics, logos, and pottery. the students’ study has enabled them to learn how symbols express culture and facilitate understanding of beliefs or experiences. as the content is relevant to our student’s lives and reflective of their histories and identities, we have seen an increased in student engagement and voice. furthermore, this year, we partnered with the imagine schools office of school design and received a grant to develop a school-wide culturally responsive mathematics curriculum infused with social-emotional learning. this initiative was launched to address unfinished learning in math, the subject where performance was hit hardest for us during covid. a team of one faculty member of each grade was assembled to discuss the data and conduct research on how to make our mathematics curriculum more culturally responsive. a key aspect of this process was working together with families, students, and other faculty to survey their beliefs, perceptions, and feelings about math and our practices and how they could be improved. as a result, our revised unit plan and instructional templates now center on students’ cultural experiences, identities, histories, and social-emotional learning. we are in the process of presenting our work to a broader stakeholder team that supports our school including the parent-teacher association, community-based organizations that support equity work, and the imagine schools office of school design. based on their feedback, we will further revise our units towards implementing a pilot in spring 2022. during this time of covid and even pre-pandemic, partnerships have played an important role in supporting student learning. they have allowed us to effectively leverage community resources to provide the highest quality educational experience to reimagining education current issues in comparative education 83 our students that meets their academic, social, and emotional needs and validates their identities, experiences, and histories. together, partnerships have enabled us to improve curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices and create a culture of continuous learning where each stakeholder makes unique contributions and student growth is at the forefront. conclusion and recommendations: the way forward the pandemic has forced many schools to re-evaluate the type of learning environment that is needed to address the new and varied supports required for our students and their families. additionally, we must address, the ways in which we support and uplift our educators and support staff to ensure their mental, emotional and physical well-being during a time where our capacities have been forced to widen. we have found that at the core of all that we have and will continue to experience is rooted in relationships. the quality of the relationships we have as a staff, the authentic relationships we have with our students and their families and our ability to co-create and collaborate as a school community is key. we must continue to refocus our attention not on “learning loss” but a strengths-based approach to addressing “unfinished learning” that we know will take more than a year to rectify. social emotional learning for students and the adults who care for them will be needed. the climate of strain on everyone’s mental health continues to be an area we cannot avoid. the effects of trauma are ever present. horsford 2021, reminds us that “repeated traumatic events over the last year have shined a bright light on the collective pain, loss, and suffering of the african american community. and it will continue to endure in ways we cannot yet apprehend”. providing our students, staff, and families a voice and avenue to express their emotions and engaging them in a curriculum that includes social justice can provide them a way to combat racial trauma. our students, staff and families must be able to envision a light at the end of the tunnel if they are to continue pushing forward with purpose and optimism. we need to center our humanity and exercise compassion for ourselves and for others. we want to continue to reimagine the ways we can deepen and enhance a purposeful, targeted learning experience for our children through a sense of optimism and unlimited creative possibilities. this approach must be holistic, centering the social, emotional, cultural health and well-being for our full school community. and we must do this together. acknowledgement all authors contributed equally. dawn brooks decosta, edd & med educational leadership, teachers college, columbia university, m.s. fine art education, queens college; b.s. in education, st. john’s university. dawn began her service of teaching 27 years and has served as principal of thurgood marshall academy lower school (tmals) for the past 11 years. email: db2463@tc.columbia.edu michael cornell, m.ed. in value-creating education for global citizenship, depaul university; m.a. in elementary education, teachers college, columbia university; b.s. in childhood and special education, suny geneseo. michael has been a teacher for 9 years, 3 of which have been at thurgood marshall academy lower school (tmals). danica goyens-ward, doctoral student in innovation, curriculum, & instruction, fordham university, ms in education & ms in school building leadership, mercy college, ba in social sciences, dominican college. danica has been an elementary classroom teacher since 2001. danica has served thurgood marshall academy lower school for the past 16 years. brooks decosta et al. current issues in comparative education 84 references bolisetty, s., peoples, l. 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'modulitis' and ngos’ role in transferring prepackaged reform gita steiner-khamsi teachers college, columbia university in "too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations," michael edwards and david hulme (1996) poignantly elaborate on the pitfalls of a success story. nongovernmental organizations (ngos) and grassroots organizations (gros) start constituting themselves in the 1970s. they struggle through a period of scarce resources, political exclusion, and skepticism from state bureaucrats. they survive. then, their destiny takes a sudden turn in the 1980s. whatever ngos and gros stood and struggled for over the last two decades-efficiency, cost-effectiveness, closer-to-the-people-is high in demand. they gain momentum. the "new policy agenda" (edwards & hulme, 1996) awards them further prominence and paves the way for increased government funding. they increase in number and size. today, brac in bangladesh, for example, has more than 10,000 staff, covers 15,000 villages, and plans to serve three million people and children in over 100,000 schools (edwards & hulme, 1996). the success story is based on a trend to use ngos increasingly as channels for bilateral aid or "official aid." they become institutionalized, mainstreamed, and dependent on external funding. in bangladesh, for example, there was a fivefold increase of external funding within five years (hashemi, 1996). in 1988-89, only 162 ngos were internationally funded, whereas in 1991-92 the number of ngos in bangladesh receiving external funds rose to 986. the impact of ngos' upward accountability to external donors deserves attention. ngo activities have become skewed toward donor-driven agendas for development rather than indigenous priorities. in sum, the apotheosis of ngos and gros as disguised state functionaries and administrators of official aid has created the following result: the very foundation on which ngos and gros have been built-smallness, community orientation, efficiency, political activism-is in danger of crumbling. ngos have not only gained momentum, increased in number and size, become institutionalized, mainstreamed, and dependent, but also, as critics point out, have become co-opted and corrupted by their external funders. critique of quangos and beyond edwards and hulme's analysis urges us to reflect on the crisis of legitimacy among ngos and gros. yet not all ngos and gros have become multinational non-profit enterprises that merely function as prolonged arms of governments. as nelly stromquist (1998) correctly pointed out, we can easily identify ngos and especially gros that have successfully resisted being co-opted and corrupted by governmental functions and funds. in addition, edwards and hulme's argument should be refined to fit various political contexts. in post-socialist countries of eastern europe and central asia, for example, non-governmental and non-profit organizations did not exist prior to the 1990s since the gita steiner-khamsi 36 november`15, 1988 economy was state-run and was supposed to be not-for-profit (seibel, 1998). all nonprofit organizations, such as the numerous and large voluntary organizations (e.g., sport clubs, pioneers, youth clubs, gardening clubs) were state promoted. for this reason it would be inaccurate to adopt edwards and hulme's argument concerning the ngo transformation process from state-independent to state-dependent entities to the situation in post-socialist countries. they simply did not exist as state-independent entities in the socialist era. instead, we need to acknowledge that national and local ngos were only established in the 1990s with external financial support. in addition, unlike national and local ngos in western europe or north america, ngos in postsocialist countries do not receive funding from their own governments, but rather are directly financially tied and accountable to international governmental organizations or international ngos. apart from lending agencies (world bank, asian development bank) and governmental agencies for bilateral aid that have interacted directly with governments in post-socialist countries, international ngos and donor agencies have more often than not bypassed governments in the process of resource allocation. as a consequence, ministerial staff in countries facing economic crises and political instability often seek funding from international organizations and national ngos to implement top-down reforms. despite the peculiarities in post-socialist countries, the core of edwards and hulme's argument remains valid: national and local ngos act as implementation agencies for external funders. in some countries the state constitutes the external funder, while in other countries international ngos and intergovernmental agencies provide the funds for national and local ngos. therefore, instead of analyzing the conditions under which ngos have survived, flourished and avoided the trap of external dependency, albeit another much needed study, it is necessary to turn to studies that have explored the changing relations between the state and non-governmental organizations. a provocative angle to the study of state and ngo interaction has been provided by scholars in third sector research (e.g., hood, 1986; anheier & seibel, 1998; seibel, 1998). in particular, the emerging body of literature on quasi-non-governmentalorganizations (quangos) deals with the hidden public sector, a sector consisting of organizations that are purposefully initiated and established by the state and that function very much like governmental split-offs. statistics on the growing number of national ngos that are allocated state funds, bilateral funds or intergovernmental funds in order to implement specific projects that were formerly seen as prototypical state tasks (e.g., education, public health) lead us to suggest that most national ngos have de facto been transformed into quangos. the line is blurred between "artificial" nongovernmental organizations acting as prolonged arm of external institutions (government, international ngo, international lending agencies) and "real", autonomous, self-determined, non-governmental institutions. thus, critical analyses of quangos as powerful agencies of the emerging hidden public sector or the "shadow public sector" (a notion put forward by third sector researchers) is relevant for studying ngos. in "too far from home? 'modulitis' and ngos' role in transferring prepackaged reform," i will draw attention to educational export administered by national and local ngos and funded by international lending agencies (world bank, adb, etc.), too far from home? 'modulitis' and ngos’ role in transferring prepackaged reform current issues in comparative education, vol.1(1) 37 intergovernmental organizations (undp, unesco, etc.), philanthropic foundations (ford foundation, open society institute, etc.) and governmental aid agencies (usaid, cida, danida, etc.). "to far from home?" reflects on an ngo legitimacy crisis: the loss of ngo advocacy for community needs or local needs. it is a matter of great concern that many ngos are engaging in the international trade of educational models instead of confronting these imported reform packages with local realities. before immersing ourselves in a critique of ngos, however, the conceptual framework of "too close for comfort?" (edwards & hulme, 1996) should be broadened to accommodate the focus on agency and interdependency proposed in "too far from home?" identifying agency and interdependency i propose to take edwards and hulme's line of argument one step further (edwards & hulme, 1996). there are two additional perspectives that help to further substantiate their argument. first, edwards and hulme explain the changing relations between the state and ngos exclusively in terms of macro-sociological changes, thus, neglecting changes on the micro-level and on the intermediate level ("meso-level"). changes at the microand mesolevels should be regarded as equally important driving forces for the fusion of ngo functions with governmental functions. a meso-level analysis focusing on the two institutions, the state and ngos, allows us to acknowledge and identify active agency. the aforementioned institutional perspective is much needed as in edwards and hulme's analysis, it is not clear who is doing what to whom. ngos are seen as passive recipients of official aid, and states, in turn, are framed as victims of public and political pressure to decentralize and to share power with non-governmental entities such as ngos and "civil society." second, "too close for comfort" tends to focus on the state's increasing dependency on ngos, not on the interdependency between state and ngos. a more dynamic approach examining the interaction between the two institutions allows us to recognize the inverse: ngos' increasing dependency on the state. the same argument applies for the growing dependency of ngos on intergovernmental organizations. there are plenty of policy documents from united nations organizations that reflect an increasing collaboration with ngos. in june 1994, the united nations high commissioner for refugees, for example, signed the oslo declaration that includes the partnership in action plan (parinac) leading to a close working partnership between unhcr and ngos. by 1997, unhcr had project agreements with 322 national ngos in over 130 countries. more important to note is the fact that seven out of ten contracted ngos are national ngos who implement two-thirds of all the projects funded by unhcr (unhcr, 1998). allocation of intergovernmental funds to national ngos is also common practice for other un organizations (baehr & gordenker, 1994; kempf, 1998). again, a focus on the changing relations between the state and non-governmental organizations calls first for an analysis at the "meso" or institutional level; and second, for an analysis that sheds light on the interdependency between the two institutions. gros are excluded from this analysis to make the argument more concise. instead of gita steiner-khamsi 38 november`15, 1988 unfolding the story of the fallen angels (non-governmental organizations collaborating with the state), it is more instructive to elevate the analysis to an institutional level neglecting the existence of individual states or individual ngos that do not engage in cooperation. this level of analysis also notes nelly stromquist's (1998) observation that there are indeed ngos and states that do not fit the generalizations made by edwards and hulme (1996), and stromquist's critiques are restated here. first, the proposed analysis is based on methods of inquiry that target meso-level explanations as opposed to theories that relate only to microor macrolevels of analysis. it acknowledges that institutions are active agencies and that they learn, that is, adapt to changes experienced by individuals (micro-level) or that they respond to societal changes (macro-level). more precisely, these institutions react to and generate political, economical, ecological and other social changes. the time period edwards and hulme (1996) refer to--the 1970s through the 1990s--is an era during which the role, scope, and size of both institutions, the state and the nongovernmental organizations, have undergone major changes. the government has become smaller and weaker, and the non-governmental organizations have become bigger and stronger, only to mention one undisputed, yet significant development (see hall, 1996; barber, 1998; hyden, 1998). given this global move towards smaller and weaker governments, ngos, private in their form but public in their purpose, fill the resulting void of public space. they perform an important role as public agencies that carry out public tasks paid for by public funds (gordenker & weiss, 1995; see also weiss & gordenker, 1996). i do not need to reiterate the political and economic contexts that have accounted for these developments since edwards and hulme (1996) list a few of these contextual factors: the shift of decision-making authority from the centralized state level to decentralized forms of governance, or the emergence of the "civil society" discourse framed as counterweight to state power. in addition to macro-level explanations listed in edwards and hulme, there are also micro-level theories that explain the expansion and external funding pattern of ngos in the 1990s. when we move to a micro-level analysis, the intersection between local contexts and individual career patterns becomes an important space to explore. for example, carine bachmann cheterian traces the career background of senior staff in armenian ngos dealing with ecological issues (1998). she found that in 1995, many of these national ngos were created and staffed by senior policy makers of the ministry of environment. a senior staff member at the ministry had chosen a dual career path, ngo director and state functionary, in order to secure a complementary source of income. this choice is understandable given the fact that in the last few years the cost of living rose while the income of state employees either has remained the same or fallen. there were political reasons that became apparent at the micro-level as well as economic reasons for the close cooperation between ngos and the state. a common pattern was, for example, the instrumentalization of local ngos by the former intelligentsia. this pattern applied particularly to the former intelligentsia who had lost their political posts, their social status, and their jobs as a result of political changes. they established local or national ngos and submitted project proposals that were then funded not by their own government, but by international ngos. in times of scarce resources, or to state it more bluntly, in times of bankrupt states in "democracies of transition", international money too far from home? 'modulitis' and ngos’ role in transferring prepackaged reform current issues in comparative education, vol.1(1) 39 channeled through national and local ngos had become the only available means for the former intelligentsia to regain what they had lost as a result of political changes: income, social status, political recognition for their innovative work with "westerners". it is important to bear in mind that collaboration goes both ways. the new government, in turn, facing uncertainty about future political alliances also pursued a double strategy. the government expelled the former intelligentsia from the administration to publicly signal a move toward transition and democracy, on one hand, while continuing to collaborate with the former intelligentsia in the newly created hidden public sector (ngos), on the other hand. a micro-level analysis helps us to explain why individuals in ngos rely on external funding from international ngos but, at the same time, establish alliances with national government officials. in addition, a micro-level analytical approach enables us to challenge the assumption of a unidirectional "corruption" process of ngos by external funds. as the armenian case study illustrates, governments, more precisely senior government staff, have clearly benefited from international ngo funding. the dictum of structural-functionalism also prevents us from including microand meso-level theories for explaining the interdependence between ngos and the state. very often, macro-sociological explanations unnecessarily rely on structuralfunctionalist oriented social theories that tend to be very reductionist and have little interest in identifying agency. structural-functionalist theories that contend themselves with identifying an anonymous entity (society) as a source for all good and evil that individuals and institutions are supposedly experiencing in similar ways does not help us to uncover the multitude of subject positions, interests and stakes that various groups and individuals of a society are holding. returning to the need for a meso-level analysis, i would like to emphasize the point that institutions learn and act. there are particular reasons, for example, that a specific funding mode (official aid money for ngos) has resonated with ngos only in the 1980s and 1990s, and not in the 1970s. second, edwards and hulme's (1996) analysis is very convincing when it comes to documenting ngo dependence on the state and understanding the impact of this dependence on ngo work and legitimacy. their analysis is reminiscent of jürgen habermas' colonization theory (1984). according to this theory, the state has succeeded in intruding, controlling and instrumentalizing the public sphere. edwards and hulme (1996) do not refer to this theory, but their approach to view ngos as instruments and puppets of the state provokes associations with habermas' colonization theory. edwards and hulme state little on the process of interdependence between state and ngo, and even less on the state's dependence on ngos. it would be misleading to interpret the dependence of states on ngos as a victory for ngos, or as a sign of democracy and civil-society building, for that matter. in other words, there is little evidence to believe an inverse colonization theory that would explain how the public (ngos) has intruded, controlled and instrumentalized the political (state). my interpretation of the state's dependence on ngos rather suggests that international ngos are important allies for those nation-states that have a political and economic interest to act globally. they are misused as local and national partners for implementing pre-packaged reform developed elsewhere. gita steiner-khamsi 40 november`15, 1988 exporting modules and packages for democracy there are few studies that examine the impact of the existing labor division between external funders and national or local ngos on educational programs. very often ngos are reduced to the role of local and national partners that implement pre-packaged educational projects. these projects are designed and developed abroad, and then, upon local completion, are evaluated by foreign consultants. ngos' reduction to project implementers, local and national networkers, disseminators, and budget administrators explains, in part, a phenomenon in international education that is epidemically spreading in all parts of the world-"modulitis". the concept "modulitis" attempts to explain the international convergence process of educational programs. this paper does not intend to explain why educational programs in different parts of the world are converging, that is, are increasingly becoming similar, but how educational programs are transferred from one cultural context to another. in comparative and international education, there is a long history of research on educational transfer. we also look back on a strong tradition of skepticism toward "borrowing" and educational transfer (steiner-khamsi, 1999). most research on educational transfer, however, has focused on borrowing by governmental officials and policy analysts, and little has been said about the role of national and local ngos in importing educational programs. i observed the rapid spread of modulitis over the last six years during my consultancies for international ngos in the post-socialist countries of central and eastern europe and central asia in the areas of civic literacy and what sometimes is naively referred to as "education for democracy." at this preliminary stage of research, i can merely support my key argument with anecdotal evidence: within a few years, national and local ngos that were established in earlyand mid-1990s lost touch with local communities. these ngos now act as transcultural entities that import and administer prepackaged educational reform models from the united states and western europe. wherever i have been contracted as a consultant, i have been presented with modules and manuals that other north american or european consultants had left behind. these modules and manuals cover a broad spectrum of topics, starting from program management for local ngo staff including, for example, manuals for program evaluation, manuals for human resource management, or budget planning, to modules that are used for local workshop trainers such as modules on civic education, change management, or student-centered learning. unlike the manuals for ngo staff, the modules for local workshop trainers had been translated into the local language and minimally culturally adapted, that is, indigenized. for example, the reference to the constitution of the united states had been replaced with a reference to the constitution of the respective country; or, the names and illustrations in the imported manuals had been indigenized. it would be too narrow conceptually to restrict modulitis to the global dissemination of modules and manuals developed in the first world. educational transfer by ngos applies also to models of school reform (e.g., school-based reform), models of governance and participation (e.g., school-based management, community-based education), models of vocational training and "education-for-programs" (e.g., too far from home? 'modulitis' and ngos’ role in transferring prepackaged reform current issues in comparative education, vol.1(1) 41 "education-for-democracy", "education-for-reconciliation"). it would greatly enhance our understanding of educational transfer if studies would examine more in-depth how bilateral aid agencies, international ngos and lending agencies acquire the authority to speak and disseminate their particular model of education in different parts of the world. an in-depth study of ngos' role for educational transfer would enable us to explore the impact of official aid on globalization and on the convergence processes in education. references anheier, h. k. & seibel, w. (1998). the non-profit sector and the transformation of societies: a comparative analysis. in w.b. powell & e. clements (eds.) public goods and private action (pp. 177-189). new haven/london: yale university press. bachmann, c. c. (1998). dissertation proposal on armenian ngos (no title). fribourg, switzerland: université de fribourg, institut de journalism et de la communication sociale. baehr, p. r. & gordenker, l. (1994). the united nations in the 1990s. houndsmills: macmillans press. barber, b. (1998). a place for us: how to make society civil and democracy strong. new york: hill and wang. edwards, m. & hulme, d. (1996). too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations. world development, 24(6), 961-973. gordenker, l. & weiss, t. g. (1995). pluralizing governance: analytical approaches and dimensions. third world quarterly, 16(3), 357-387. habermas, j. (1984). the theory of communication action. boston: beacon. j.a. hall (ed.) (1996). civil society. theory, history, comparison. cambridge, u.k.: polity press. hashemi, s. m. (1996). ngo accountability in bangladesh: beneficiaries, donors, and the state. in m. edwards & d. hulme (eds.), beyond the magic bullet. ngo performance and accountability in the post-cold war world (pp. 123-141). west hartford, connecticut: kumarian press. hood, c. (1986). the hidden public sector. the "quangocratization" of the world? in f. kaufmann, g. majone & v. ostrom (eds.), guidance, control, and evaluation in the public sector (pp. 183-207). berlin and new york: de gruyter. collins, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 1, winter 2022 book review shadow education in africa: private supplementary tutoring and its policy implications by mark bray, comparative education research centre, the university of hong kong, 2021, 91 pp., us$16 (paper) or free download isbn 978-988-14241-9-8 madison collins teachers college, columbia university mark bray’s book (2021), shadow education in africa: private supplementary tutoring and its policy implications, is the first of its kind providing a comprehensive look at tutoring in africa, which is most commonly researched in asia (bray, 2021, p. viii). on a continent where educational development has taken many forms, bray draws attention to the educational opportunities privileged students in africa have access to through for-profit tutoring. his analysis draws on the same aspects of african education that pose challenges to educational development in general, such as an unqualified teaching force, unsatisfactory compensation for teachers, international and region assessments, and the rural/urban divide among student achievement. bray’s book provides a warning to the field of international educational development of what could become of african education with increased shadow education or increased supplementary tutoring and provides a guide on how to combat it with policy recommendations that expand the best practices found already in place in some countries. researchers and practitioners can gain a foundational awareness from this book regarding the implications of global education development standards and the progression of shadow education in practice in africa. the author’s vast scope of all 54 countries in africa is bold but unrealized as only a few countries are found to have significant data to quantify shadow education in the region. however, this scope does provide comparison through what data was found. by comparing the quantity and quality of data for egypt to that of burkina faso or ethiopia, it is clear that some regions on the continent are ahead of others regarding considerations of shadow education. to this point, without any uniform procedure for data collection across the continent focused on private tutoring and its effects, the data is scattered. this scattered data used as evidence to support the presence of shadow education in africa describes various cases with different populations making it difficult to compare. this lack of uniform data is a finding in itself as it highlights a gap and establishes a first step toward addressing shadow education in africa. although the data is not strong, bray has made it clear it is not too early to consider shadow education and its effects on the continent of africa. he has found quantitative and qualitative evidence to show it is present in the region and widening the gap between public and private education. © 2022, collins. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(1), 135-139. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en collins current issues in comparative education 136 supply and demand: teachers the development of african countries has often been compared to that of asian countries, with asia as an example of a success while african development is viewed as a failure with continued poverty and underdevelopment found throughout the continent (noman & stiglitz, 2012). universal standards for educational development such as the fourth sustainable development goal (sdg) presented by the united nations and the predecessor, education for all (efa) initiatives, create an uneven playing field for the various contexts around the world to achieve simultaneously. bray argues that these goals have led to an acceleration of shadow education as the result of an increased push for universal access to quality education. shadow education, through the private sector, can bridge some of the financial gaps and elevate the overbearing responsibilities put on teachers that are created by these global goals. many factors, such as the current stage of african educational development, the challenges across the region, and influence from international actors, combine and contribute to a supply and demand situation in favor of shadow education as a commercial good to increase the competitiveness of schooling on the continent. bray highlights the commodity of education as a “positional good” (bray, 2021, p.67). children’s education is an indication of a families’ ability and willingness to afford additional resources like tutoring positioning them above other families who cannot afford this. the economic impact of shadow education becomes clear through the incentives of teachers and families to contribute to this supply and demand. teachers feel they are unable to teach the entirety of the curriculum during official school hours, and at the same time are underpaid; while parents want their children to get the best quality education they can. evidence compiled by bray illuminates this dynamic, leading to an increase in tutoring by teachers after class time, exclusively for students able to pay extra money (bray, 2021, p.11). parents are willing to endure these costs to provide proper preparation for the national assessments that determine students’ success in education (bray, 2021, p.7). the burden of global educational standards and families’ need for educated children is left to the teachers by completing the curriculum, providing quality teaching, and supporting individual students’ educational needs. these challenges are often witnessed by those working in african educational development contexts, but bray’s book identifies these challenges in a unique way as contributing to private tutoring. this renewed view of these well-known challenges facing education in africa puts increased pressure on organizations and governments to address the challenges at the source. the data through the use of tables, the data is contextualized with details such as the source, year, population, etc. this presentation of data is necessary given the vast differences in data collection and analysis sourced for this study. unfortunately, this also makes it overwhelming for the reader, difficult to compare, and hard to understand the meaning of the data as evidence for the continent-wide analysis. of the 54 countries included in this study, only 25 countries are presented in table 1, which highlights “selected crossnational indicators of shadow education” (bray, 2021, p. 13). of these 25 countries, the shadow education in africa current issues in comparative education 137 author digs deeper to identify differences within groups of countries such as arabicspeaking north africa and sub-saharan africa as well as by francophone, anglophone, and lusophone (bray, 2021, p.11). bray identifies challenges in gathering data from every country in africa, such as restricted access or the lack of existence of data on this topic for some countries. with less than half of the countries on the continent represented, making generalizations about the entire continent would be unfair and inaccurate. therefore, the author’s approach to presenting each country individually with the data available through tables helps to contextualize the similarities and differences across the region, but this is left to the reader. bray expands his analysis into various areas, such as the business sector, as some tutoring is done through private for-profit businesses, which contribute to the business sector of development for a country. by examining various elements of shadow education such as in rural versus urban settings, the business climate in various african countries, and perceptions of tutoring, bray is truly “mapping the landscape” as he has titled the chapter in which much of this data is held (2021, p. 13). this comprehensive overview of the data -what little is availableestablishes the foundation for continued research of the shadow education situation in the african region. therefore, after presenting the landscape of african shadow education, bray provides policy recommendations to prevent the recurrence of many of the harmful effects of private tutoring seen in other parts of the world. bray’s recommendations from the data presented in the book, it is clear that there is shadow education happening on the continent and that only some students and teachers benefit from these practices, while most are impacted negatively. bray outlines what steps governments can take now to prevent a total loss of control of education to the private sector through increased shadow education. the recommendations are categorized into four areas: securing data and monitoring trends, reforming assessment selection and curriculum, devising and implementing regulations, and developing partnerships (bray, 2021, pp. 50-63). the first section identifies the critiques made in this review that the author assembled a “jigsaw puzzle” of data, but with many missing pieces (see also bray, 2010, p.3). he notes this as a commonality with shadow education research in general (bray, 2021, p. 50). bray addresses the need for a common yardstick to allow for comparison across countries when analyzing the case of africa in regard to shadow education. meeting this need should be viewed as furthering the research started through this book and bray’s other works (1999; 2003; 2009; 2010; 2017) and closing the gap made obvious through bray’s findings in this book. the remaining recommendations are accurate and needed, but they are impractical for the scope of this book. with the scope of this analysis as the entire continent, it is assumed by the reader these are policy recommendations for the entire continent as well. how can assessment and curriculum reform be enacted across the african continent while maintaining individuality among countries? similarly, how can the same regulations be collins current issues in comparative education 138 implemented across the continent while still allowing for economic competition in the region? bray assumes all the countries in africa will eventually succumb to shadow education, so therefore, these recommendations should be employed across the continent to address and prevent its expansion or presence. the author should have spelled out specific recommendations for the various levels of shadow education present in some countries, similarly to how he presented data that was available through tables. bray does, however, describe practices already used on the continent by some countries to combat the negative effects of shadow education (2021, p. 59). by highlighting current best practices developed by those on the continent, a foundation for further recommendations is built. finally, the recommendation of partnerships draws the attention of partners already established on the continent to prioritize private tutoring and develop more effective responses. conclusion the book shadow education in africa: private supplementary tutoring and its policy implications by mark bray examines a new concern for educational development in the african region. his recommendations for expanded data collection specific to shadow education and consistent across the continent is well warranted and address the critiques described in this review. the “scattered” nature of data on shadow education in africa calls on future researchers of this topic to streamline approaches to collecting data across the continent. this data collection can be done through the partnerships presented in bray’s recommendations working with organizations already collecting data on other topics throughout the region; for example, national household surveys could include questions regarding shadow education. while his other recommendations are useful, they should be contextualized to each country on the continent regarding the current level of private tutoring taking place and the level of development the country’s education system is in. this book begins the conversations surrounding shadow education in the african region and provides a foundational resource for others to expand through its accessibility to the public via open access online download. i recommend this book as an introduction to the current state of supplementary education practices as they unfold on the continent of africa as well as a warning to inform practitioners and researchers of the implications of global educational development standards in the region. this book is also a helpful database resource for statistics regarding shadow education in different forms, in different contexts with various populations of students. madison collins is a recent graduate of the international educational development master’s program at teachers college, columbia university. during her time at teachers college madison led the center for african education by developing events focused on human rights education, developing resources for students and expanding the center’s network with stakeholders on the continent. shadow education in africa current issues in comparative education 139 references bray, m. (1999). the shadow education system: private tutoring and its implications for planners. fundamentals of educational planning 61. unesco international institute for educational planning (iiep). http://www.iiep.unesco.org/en/publication/shadow-education-systemprivate-tutoring-and-its-implications-planners bray, m. (2003). adverse effects of supplementary private tutoring: dimensions, implications, and government responses. series: ‘ethics and corruption in education’. unesco international institute for educational planning (iiep). https://etico.iiep.unesco.org/en/adverse-effects-private-supplementarytutoring-dimensions-implications-and-government-responses bray, m. (2009). confronting the shadow education system: what government policies for what private tutoring? unesco international institute for educational planning (iiep). http://www.iiep.unesco.org/en/confronting-shadow-education-system-whatgovernment-policies-what-private-tutoring-12159 bray, m. (2010). researching shadow education: methodological challenges and directions. asia pacific education review, 11(1), 3-13. bray, m. (2017). schooling and its supplements: changing global patterns and implications for comparative education. comparative education review, 62(3), 469491. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/692709 bray, m. (2021). shadow education in africa: private supplementary tutoring and its policy implications. comparative education research centre, univ of hong kong. https://cerc.edu.hku.hk/books/shadow-education-in-africa-privatesupplementary-tutoring-and-its-policy-implications/ noman, a., & stiglitz, j. e. (2012). strategies for african development. good growth and governance in africa: rethinking development strategies (pp. 3-50). oxford university press. thevenot, y. (2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 © 2021, thevenot. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 112-128. innovation as a construct of social justice and decolonization within culturally responsive teaching and learning yvonne thevenot teachers college, columbia university synonyms for innovation: “change, alteration, revolution, upheaval, transformation, metamorphosis, reorganization, restructuring, rearrangement, recasting, remodeling” dictionary.com “black people have always developed alternative ways of existing outside of [their] oppressions” (womack, 2013, p. 37). prior to the social protests of the 1950s and 1960s, and prior to brown v. board of education (1954), black people resisted and utilized their imaginations and intelligence to innovate ideologies, legal and social processes, and movements to cause upheaval to the societal status quo that denied them education, economic, and political opportunities. “improvisation, adaptability, and imagination [were] the core components of this resistance” (womack, 2013, p. 37) and enabled them to use innovation as a socially just construct to decolonize oppressive systems and to create forward momentum for their educational advancement. for centuries, the use and intention of innovation has been used as a construct to alter the present realities, within a particular time and space, and is usually connected with the technological, scientific, and engineering processes intended to modify or improve products and services and is rarely associated with black people’s efforts to change, alter and disrupt the systemic and societal processes that denied them educational opportunities were also innovative in thought, in the form of a long-term vision, and in action with the intended result of furthering the educational aspirations of themselves and for themselves. moreover, i argue for the importance of (re)positioning their efforts to change, alter, and initiate the upheaval of systems that were established to oppress them as ones that are innovative and that such efforts be regarded as those that are aligned with social justice decolonization. finally, this article will describe a contemporary context where innovative teaching and learning practices occur. it will also analyze how such practices serve as a link to social justice and a visible effort to decolonize learning spaces while creating forward academic momentum for students of color. keywords: culturally responsive pedagogy, social justice, innovation in education, decolonization https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en innovation as a construct of social justice and decolonization current issues in comparative education 113 “a jim crow society breeds and needs a jim crow historiography. the dominant historiography in the united states either omits the negro people or presents them as a people without a past, as a people who have been docile, passive, parasitic, imitative. this picture is a lie. the negro people, the most oppressed of all people in the united states, have been militant, active, creative, productive.” herbert aptheker introduction before the end of the civil war, educating black slaves in the u.s. was against the law. in the northern united states, efforts emerged in free black communities to organize schools, yet few black students received any education. the 19th century, however, was an important milestone for the education of black people in the u.s., as many public schools were established to allow for the education of black students (the history engine, n.d.). during this period black people who were newly freed from slavery, and those who were free during slavery faced the collective reality of disenfranchisement, racial discrimination in public places, and economic threats to their freedom and land. to counter this reality, black people “established their own institutions, formed activist networks, and participated in reform movements from temperance and abolition to education” (baumgartner, 2019, p. 5). further, politically organized and well-educated black people made the quest for education a central framework for their push for racial equality after the civil war. (mitchell, 2008, p. 190). the 20th century and early part of the 21st century saw the emergence of court cases designed to make education equitable for children who were minoritized by socioeconomic factors or oppressive education policies. the following cases brown v. board of education (1954), lau v. nichols (1974), plyler v. doe (1982), and williams v. california (2001) have been argued for or against from a basis of whether the federal or state laws have an obligation to uphold the decisions made in court. nevertheless, “over the past sixty years, the courts have established that education is a critically important right in u.s. society” (oakes, 2018, p. 121). however, despite education being upheld as an important right presumably for all in our society, it does not appear to be granted in an equitable fashion to all. prior to the 20th century, a series of court cases, social movements, and organized political and social appeals were launched by black people that voiced concern and emphatically objected to the oppressive methods used by those driven by racism to quell and often prohibit the education and societal advancement of black people. today, public schooling has been placed in a position of reacting to education policies decided upon or originated within the courts and state legislated laws. “this reactive role has strengthened the conservative nature […] by interpreting policy coming into the schools through established dominant traditions and discourses” (gitlin, 2009). as a result of the influence of the dominant culture in the shaping of public schooling, minoritized students from lower economic means are often stripped of power and lack social justice leaders with the power to challenge and transform the effects of the dominant culture. to be sure, public schooling, its students, and society as a whole can no longer wait for the widely used social justice instruments of action, activism, and written scholarly pronouncements to succeed at overtaking dominant discourses within public schooling spaces. rather, what is needed is a re-imagined view of social justice that not only generates a new, innovative way of producing knowledge within our students but also disavows all remnants of the dominant, conservative discourse that has crippled the thevenot current issues in comparative education 114 spirits of so many and denied opportunities for advancement to students who have become further minoritized by the socio-economic and education policies within the united states. the timeline i chose to center this argument is pre-brown vs. board of education, as i maintain that the efforts made by black people to advance their cause for education in the pre-brown vs. board of education era helped to generate forward progress toward the systematic dismantling and decolonization of overt segregationist efforts in education spaces. social justice and social justice design social justice is “the capacity to organize with others to accomplish ends that benefit the whole community” (novak, 2009). building off this, social justice education embodies the acknowledgment of difference and empowers those within a learning space to work towards the reversal of oppressive elements that result in [the] marginalization of students (applebaum, 2009). to accomplish the reversal of oppressive elements with the education system, a set of tools, mobilized enactments, and actions were developed and implemented by black people to educate and empower, and that enabled them to not only acknowledge the oppressive systems that marginalized them but to also work to eliminate such obstacles to their education. before the civil war, “african american girls and women in the north from working and middle-class families engaged in conscious, vigorous, and sustained acts of defiance and protest in their quest for an education” (baumgartner, 2019, p. 2). within the public school system, there existed an absence of organization to accomplish ends that benefited all. rather, what was evidenced were a series of policies that were created to impose rules and laws with which to force academic achievement. yet, those for whom the policies were intended to benefit were not thriving academically nor economically, and were, in some instances, relegated to far worse positions than before the enactment of the policies. for example, ron unz, a man of economic privilege, “founded, funded, and led the anti-bilingual organization english for the children” (oakes, 2018). as a result of his successful campaigning and influence with the california state government, california passed a law requiring instruction to be conducted only in english, which cast many bilingual students into low academic levels in schools. if one were in support of unz’s stance, one would argue that he acted in defense of maintaining america’s english-speaking, “love it or leave it” values. would his stance not attempt to ensure that the entire american community benefits? to counter the exclusionary approaches made by individuals like unz, i maintain that the linguistically diverse students who were harmed by unz’s racist ideologies also needed to utilize a set of design tools that were centered in resistance, socially just innovative educative practices, like the groups of black people prior to brown vs. board of education, in order to innovate a new path that moved forward their education agendas and aspirations. innovation as a social justice design consideration human-computer interaction scholars dombrowski, hartman, and fox (2016) suggest that “social justice might best be understood not as a single concept, but as a constantly evolving mechanism for thinking through how power, privilege, and access affect social structure” (p. 2). within this article, i focus upon social justice design that centers on specific dimensions of justice that were created by political philosopher, hennie lötter. he developed six social justice design strategies as a way for human beings to design systems in more socially just ways: transformation, recognition, reciprocity, enablement, distribution, and accountability (2011). i am centering the points within this article using innovation as a construct of social justice and decolonization current issues in comparative education 115 lötter’s social justice design strategies to explore how the educational advancement efforts of black people, serve as considerations for innovation as a social justice design construct in practice, for the purposes of disrupting societal systems that have traditionally oppressed, silenced, and marginalized black people. further, i pose two questions that serve as guides in this exploration: 1. how might innovation and social justice design strategies make an impact on societal systems during pre-brown vs board of education times that serve to advance equitable education opportunities for the marginalized? 2. how might innovation and social justice design strategies during prebrown vs board of education times make an impact on societal systems that did not provide equitable education opportunities for the marginalized? the 19th century efforts of black people to advance their educational opportunities are not typically heralded as innovative, for, traditionally, the word, innovative, is usually reserved for the technological and scientific spaces. however, i maintain that during the time where the majority of black people were realizing freedom for the first time, and there was, in the antebellum period, only an estimated population of 319,594 free black people, as compared to a total slave population of 2,009,048 (statista, n.d.) the majority of black people were subjugated to non-citizen status in all of society. however, the efforts made by black people to assemble as a collective, to develop documents that were presented to legislative bodies to appeal for education rights, and to publish treatises of protest and resistance in local papers that denounced inequitable education policies, were in fact efforts centered in innovation. such efforts reveal evidence of intentions to disrupt the status quo found in a society that disenfranchised black people and treated them as non-citizens. based upon what many of us have been taught or conditioned to be regard certain discoveries, inventions, or technologies as innovative and the historical implications framed in dominant culture that tend to fail to acknowledge black imagination and genius in mainstream society, i posit that my argument to regard black people’s 19th century actions to advance their education opportunities as innovative may require some introspection beyond the case made in this article. for each of the design strategies presented within this article, i will make correlations with examples of 19th century work and efforts by black people, as well as contemporary educators, in order to make a case for the work that is representative of social justice design constructs as consideration for innovation. innovative design to achieve transformation in 1794, prince hall founded one of the oldest black organizations designed for social change and transformation the prince hall freemasons, whose initial mission was to “transform black men into symbolic artisans, and thus citizens of the masculine body politic, which reveals a dialectic of african-american male “social self-creation through labour” (wallace, 2002, p. 407). in 1787, prince hall, the founder of the negro masonic order, an organization created to advance the social order of black people, drafted a petition to the boston state legislature to appeal for equal educational rights of black students (aptheker, 1951). hall’s individual action is one that represents social justice design for transformation, which i maintain may be one of the first social justice design strategies designed and evidenced to support the educational advancement for black people in the united states. though individual action rarely brings about the transformation of inequalities on a large societal scale, the consideration is for such action to be taken up on a more collective scale, in order to bring thevenot current issues in comparative education 116 about innovation to disrupt the existing social order, thereby resulting in the possibility of transformation writ large if more individuals take up the strategy. innovative design to achieve recognition the next dimension of the social justice strategy involves that of recognition. “recognition focuses on identifying unjust practices, policies, laws, and other phenomena, as well as identifying those people who are most negatively impacted by such phenomenon” (dombrowski, 2016, p. 6). in 1818, the pennsylvania augustine society, an organization founded by free black people to serve the social, educational, and welfare of the black community (aptheker, 1951), created a constitution of the society with a preamble that addressed the need for equitable resources and education opportunities so that those within the black community could learn a trade and make a fair wage. the actions demonstrated by the pennsylvania society clearly represent a strategy evoked to address the need to shed light on unjust practices thrust upon the black community in philadelphia. the appeal within the preamble was written, we the subscribers, persons of colour of the city of philadelphia, [ ] sensibly impressed with the high importance of education, towards the improvement of our species, in an individual as well as social capacity [are] convinced that it is an unquestionable duty which we owe to ourselves, to our posterity, and to our god, who has endowed us with intellectual powers, [ ] to procure for our children a more extensive and useful education than we have heretofore had in our power to effect. (aptheker, 1951, p. 73) within the text, however, no evidence exists that this appeal was transformed into a legal document or petition filed within the court, therefore i surmise that the preamble served as a motivation for those who read it or had it read to them, in order to instill within them a sense of innovative ways to acquire education, to aspire to an education that would supplant them a place as citizens within the united states, and to remain steadfast in achieving forward momentum in social advancement and positioning in society. innovative design to achieve reciprocity “reciprocity describes the relationship between those who are owed justice and what needs to occur for the obligations of justice to be fulfilled” (dombrowski, 2016, p. 7). in 1827, the freedom’s journal, the first black-owned newspaper founded by samuel cornish and john russworm, emerged in new york city as a counter-narrative to discrimination and slavery. in its first publication, the emphasis on education and training was highlighted: “education being an object of the highest importance to the welfare of society, we shall endeavor to present just and adequate views of it, and urge upon our brethren the necessity and expediency of training their children, while young, to habits of industry, and thus forming them for becoming useful members of society” (aptheker, 1951, p. 83). during the 19th century, american education in public schools operated as “an americanizing agent, an institution whose central purpose was to fuse children from all religions and ethnicities into a single american citizenry” (baumgartner, 2019, p. 2). also, during this same period, black people endeavored to use education as a way to “lift up their race” (baumgartner, 2019; butchart, 2013) out of poverty and second-class citizenry, and sought to use education as a way to share with dominant culture society that black people who were educated were deserving of being treated as productive citizens trained to contribute their skills to various industries. butchart (2013) cites, ‘‘the very feeling of inferiority which slavery forced upon them fathered an intense desire to rise out of their condition by means of education’’ (p. 2). cornish and russworm, endeavoring to appeal to the power structure on the need for black people to be educated and to be granted innovation as a construct of social justice and decolonization current issues in comparative education 117 educational access to train their children to learn the various ways of industry and how to be productive citizens, in order to contribute to the well-being of society overall. this appeal to the dominant culture to grant access to educational opportunities, or to reciprocate to them what is granted to all white citizens, is an innovative design effort to achieve reciprocity. innovative design to achieve enablement “oppression occurs when people are unduly constrained by “institutions, laws, policies, and human behavior or unable to engage in their own development” (dombrowski, 2016, p. 8). the purpose of this strategy, therefore, is to serve as a counteraction to oppression and provide the means, tactics, and strategies by which people can thrive within the society through alignment with institutions, laws, policies, and human behavior deemed acceptable. innovative design to achieve distribution the design strategy of distribution involves how society assets and deficits are distributed evenly. in 1849, a group of free black people wrote a petition to the state convention of ohio (aptheker, 1951, p. 256a), thereby demanding, the vicious character of uneducated communities is seen the world over, and to prove it, we need not cite you to all past history. therefore, even if the colored educational privileges to them all; but here we are, born on your soil, and unless your own professed principles be a lie, entitled to all the rights and privileges of all others. consequently, you are doubly bound to act for us as for yourselves. with respect to their desire to achieve distribution, the free black people in ohio were merely appealing to be granted equal rights to education that all people were granted under the ohio constitution. in the 1840s ohio, as long as a black person came to the state with at least two freehold surety bonds, plus payment of five hundred dollars to the common pleas court, then they were granted the freedoms and rights that were represented within the state constitution (aptheker, 1951). i maintain that despite their following the rules of the state, and the process for appealing for rights that are normally granted and utilized by white people, it was the societal biases and social injustice practiced by white people that denied the black people of ohio the right to achieve equal distribution of education rights granted to them by the state constitution. innovative design to achieve accountability this design strategy involves holding accountable those who benefit from the systemic oppression and marginalization of people. this strategy allows for the development of coalitions of power that hold others in power accountable for their actions that benefit from or enforce systems of power. in 1855, at the first california negro convention, which was held in sacramento, delegates gathered and drew up petitions that denounced the inequitable treatment of black children, as it related to their being denied education. the delegates appealed, we again call upon you to regard our condition in the state of california. we point with pride to the general character we maintain in your midst, for integrity, industry, and thrift. you have been wont to multiply our vices, port government, at the same time you deny us the protection you extend citizens while seeking to degrade us. you ask us why we are not more intelligent? you receive our money to educate your children and then refuse to admit our children into common schools. (aptheker, 1951, p. 327) thevenot current issues in comparative education 118 to be sure, the black people in california were well versed in their knowledge of the rights under the law of california, and utilized the processes for appeal and petition, to denounce the unfair treatment of denying their children access to schools. the delegates’ appeal implies that the black citizens of california paid their fair share of taxes yet were denied the rights granted to tax-paying citizens. their actions sought to disrupt the current systems of oppression and hold lawmakers accountable for upholding the laws to include them. consequently, the actions of black people during pre-brown vs board of education though were innovative and sought to disrupt the societal forces that denied much access to an equitable education, if any education at all, did not yield change but were the harbingers of the societal and educational rights that would come later. i argue that because of these innovative ways that were inserted into the legal fabric of our society, black people during pre-brown vs. board of education paved the way for new ways of incorporating teaching and learning practices that were instrumental in transforming the education spaces for the oppressed, particularly those considered black or from the african diaspora. “institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. as members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. but we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. as a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion.” audre lorde a social justice education policy centered on innovation: culturally responsive education ladson-billings (1994) defined culturally responsive pedagogy as one “that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural references to impart knowledge, skills, attitudes” (pp. 16-17). in order for critical thinking and discourse to occur in classrooms, as well as for sociopolitical consciousness to emerge within our students, the curriculum and teaching strategies utilized by culturally responsive teachers are implemented to support students in developing critical stances towards inequities, their communities, and within their own classrooms. the next part of this paper will highlight two contemporary teaching and learning practices or programs that are innovative and have transformed teaching and learning for black students. in using culturally responsive education as a pedagogical and curricular framework, the foundation work of two researchers is noted: geneva gay and gloria ladson-billings. gay (2010), whose work focuses on culturally responsive teaching, defines teaching “as using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them” (p. 31). in order for a more equitable climate to exist for the ethnically and linguistically diverse students in the classroom, the curriculum and instructional practices must be examined, and the pedagogy of the teacher must be questioned by herself. innovation as a construct of social justice and decolonization current issues in comparative education 119 innovation is required to successfully alter the trajectory of failed schools, failed grades, and failed people within our society. innovation itself as a social justice design construct is to be considered. rather than use affirmative action to force change that initiates the position, advancement, and academic achievement of students, public schooling requires innovative action that uses a multi-faceted approach to social justice. further, public school requires innovative action to affirm the varied cultures of students and the communities and countries from which they are informed and to forge those cultures into the curriculum, school culture, and pedagogical strategies of teachers, leaders, safety workers, and food handling staff who operate in the public schooling systems. a social justice education policy that will enable a transformed way of educating students and thereby results in innovative approaches to knowledge acquisition addresses more than the need to redistribute assets, create education equity, and eliminate the oppressive systemic barriers to access and opportunity. rather, “the unprecedented crisis we are in requires thinking and action that [ ] foster citizens that see equity between groups as in everyone's interests (i.e., it is in everyone's interest to work across differences such that difference is the engine for learning and growth, not violence and the destruction of the "other") and are able to act based on thinking that does not simply repeat the failed proposals/policies of the past” (gitlin, 2009). an education policy centered on innovation that is directed towards designing and sustaining social justice is one that goes beyond the traditional teaching and learning strategies found in public schools. it is one that puts cultural responsiveness at the core of its pedagogical and curricular framework and uses innovation and problem-based methods to direct the work of students, teachers, the community, and policymakers. further, such a policy operates on a continuum, resulting in that policy continuously evolving to fit the needs of the entire ecosystem made up of students, teachers, the community, policymakers, and conditions within the school, the community, student achievement levels, and societal changes. culturally responsive education generates an improvement in education for students whose cultures have been marginalized or silenced in education spaces (neito, 2018). “your story is what you have, what you will always have. it is something to own.” michelle obama using innovation and culturally responsive education to teach for social justice: an integrated critical analysis this next section examines the proposed policy of education innovation within which research into teaching, learning, curriculum, and assessment practices are conducted. the analysis is illustrated through work that exemplifies the principal characteristics of each practice. i maintain that current social justice ideologies are centered upon tenets that result in equity and that enable students to achieve full agency in their classrooms, which leads to an increase in academic achievement (gutiérrez & rogoff, 2003; nasir, 2011) what occurs as lacking in and around public schooling places, as it relates to minoritized students: equality, resources, conditions, power, learning. further, this reimagined policy of innovation is centered in a culture of equality (carothers, 2018), which supports the varied modes of student learning and multiple intelligences and calls for teachers to extend their pedagogical strategies and curricular tools to support student knowledge acquisition according to their intellectual abilities. at the time of this article, there does not exist a national education policy to support utilizing a curriculum centered in a culture of equality.nnonetheless, the following paragraphs cite contemporary practices that support a framework behind innovative education policy that is steeped in a social justice framework: the teaching practices found within a new york city-based nonprofit thevenot current issues in comparative education 120 organization called stem kids nyc, which i established, and those found within a program called science genius. methodology in order to generate my analysis of stem kids nyc, i employed the standard of authenticity, whereby i captured, through recordings of classroom activities, interviews with teachers, and review of student work product, the original context of the setting and the perspectives of the participants. a theory i used to inform my analysis was a qualitative research methodology known as portraiture. originated by sara lawrencelightfoot (1997), it is a methodology that is in connection with illuminating the good that is occurring within communities that are socio-economically marginalized, as well as illuminating the accomplishments of those who live in those communities. critical analysis the mission of stem kids nyc is to bridge the gap between a current school curriculum and the immediate need for schools to prepare students for stem skills and for jobs that do not yet exist. science genius “is an initiative focused on utilizing the power of hip-hop music and culture to introduce youth to the wonder and beauty of science” (hiphoped, 2021). a practice that can be designed and implemented to support the generation of social change and transformation is the teaching practice of using cultural responsiveness in the classroom. sleeter (2017) posits that “curriculum development requires considering not only how students learn to consume knowledge, but also how they learn to evaluate and produce it” (p. 29). culturally responsive teachers who choose to connect social issues with the curriculum and that exist within the communities in which their students reside can use inquiry-based strategies to present content from a multicultural perspective, as well as present problems, issues, or challenges that affect or benefit students’ multicultural communities, in order to create student-student discourse to examine and reflect upon the main ideas of the content presented. it is from this discourse that students can collaboratively work together with the teacher serving as a guide, to devise solutions to address the social issues or challenges. within stem kids nyc, which was founded in 2015, culturally responsive teaching practices are enacted, and culturally responsive curriculum and lesson plans are implemented for students in various new york city, brooklyn, and queens schools and community-based centers. within stem kids nyc locations, learning spaces are ones where cognition is purposely situated around the student’s prior knowledge and their multimodal learning style. further, the stem teachers develop what eglash et al. (2013) cite bransford (2000), eglash, bennett, o’donnell, jennings, cintorino (2006), and villegas & lucas (2002) and emphasize that culturally responsive teachers use materials and modes of inquiry that are culturally relevant, modifying instruction to accommodate students prior knowledge, encouraging cooperative learning environments, using model-based approaches, and facilitating staff reflections on students’ progress. (p. 632) further still, within stem kids nyc, there exist teachers of various groupsafrican, african american, korean, white, indian, and mixed race and all are members of one or more stem professions or majors: science, computer science, engineering, creative innovation as a construct of social justice and decolonization current issues in comparative education 121 technologies. some are undergraduate or graduate students and some already have their phds. what they have most in common is a set of culturally responsive stem teaching tools that are integrated within a culturally responsive stem curriculum i designed and enacted professional development sessions to train the stem teachers: to address the absence that is evident in k-12 curriculum regarding the contributions of people of diverse cultures in the stem fields, stem teachers integrated stem icons of color in their lesson plan activities, and presented these icons to their students. the common practice used is that whatever stem domain reflected in the lesson plan, the teacher introduced a stem icon that had a mastery in that particular stem field. the intention is so that the icons, who look like the students, would resonate with the students and they would develop a belief that they also belonged in stem because others who looked like them were successfully contributing to advance the field. this presentation of historical culture, a term defined by eglash et al. (2013), addresses the “myths of genetic determinism: showing students that there is a history of black mathematicians in contemporary academia” (p. 633). this introduction further diminishes any preconceived negative notions that students may have about their race or another peer’s race. the actions demonstrated by the stem teachers are reflective of the innovative design tool of transformation, in that the use of stem icons is intended to transform the mindset of students of marginalized groups, who may not see the contributions of people who look like them in k-12 textbooks. this design tool is used to disrupt the hidden curriculum that exists in public school education, whereby the contributions of diverse populations are nearly absent in history, science, mathematics, and engineering textbooks. another tool the stem teachers use is centered on design-based thinking and participatory action research that make up social justice design processes. students are presented with problems in society or asked to brainstorm issues with design or within society, and then are taught various ways to solve those problems using a stem solution. eglash (2013) cites the work of terry (2011) and gutstein (2003) for using statistical analysis to “illuminate injustice in society and affirm cultural accomplishments and social justice triumphs” (p. 634). through various lessons in science, computer science or engineering, and design, stem kids nyc students learn to interrogate various problems within society and, with the teacher serving as a guide, create prototypes or models of solutions that address those problems. for middle and high school students, they are introduced to ways to engage with government leaders, to present their models and prototypes for consideration to effect change and transformation in their communities. the activities that occur within stem kids nyc classrooms that guide students in interrogating systems that are deemed unjust in society are representative of the innovative design tool of accountability, whereby the students become empowered to hold accountable those who enforce the systems and practices that oppress and subjugate groups who do not hold power in society. the third teaching tool stem teachers use is an inquiry-based style of teaching, and is representative of the innovation design tool of enablement, whereby students are empowered by their teachers to engage with them to in the development and production of their knowledge constructs. teachers who utilize the enablement design tool are seen engaging in constructionist activities to support students in developing their ways of knowing and allowing them to derive their individual knowledge constructs that are centered around the lesson and the content. the term, constructionism, is an epistemological framework that was originated by mathematician, computer scientist, and educator seymour papert, who spent the majority of his career teaching and conducting research at mit. as a founding member of the mit media lab, papert thevenot current issues in comparative education 122 centered constructionism in the activities of learning by doing, and extended the social scientist term of constructivism, to include “building knowledge structures'' irrespective of the circumstances of the learning” (papert & harel, 1991, p. 2). this form of teaching for discovery is the opposite of most traditional classroom settings, particularly in stem learning spaces. traditional stem classroom settings tend to facilitate a more structured approach to teaching, with an aim of deriving a scripted answer, rather than what stem kids nyc teachers use, which is the utilization of a student’s use of their own language and tacit knowledge they’ve constructed through their experiences with stem phenomenon. in summary, students who are enrolled in stem kids nyc programs demonstrate a high self-efficacy around science, computer science, engineering, and robotics, and can articulate knowledge of particular concepts within the stem disciplines, as well as have a more informed identity of themselves as scientists, computer scientists, engineers, and scholars. the teaching tools, curricular framework, and ways of being of the instructors within stem kids nyc are excellent representations of innovative ways of educating black students who otherwise may not have been exposed to a stem learning space that supported and elevated their quest for learning, and are also great examples of ways teachers instill within their students the belief that they can also be members of a group of scholars and professionals who are in stem fields. compared to a traditional academic setting, where many students of color do not feel welcome in stem learning spaces, i maintain that stem kids nyc’s work is centered on innovative social justice design. the next contemporary organization that demonstrates a culture of equality and social justice innovative design is a program called science genius, which was founded by dr. christopher emdin, associate professor of science education at columbia teachers college. science genius is an initiative focused on utilizing the power of hip-hop music and culture to introduce youth to the wonder and beauty of science. the core message of the initiative is to meet urban youth who are traditionally disengaged in science classrooms on their cultural turf, and provide them with the opportunity to express the same passion they have for hip-hop culture for science. (hip hop ed website, 2021) methodology the primary data source for this analysis included field notes from attending hip hop ed conferences in june 2019, whereby i took field notes of student performances that demonstrated their use of scientific knowledge infused with a rap that resulted in authentic work product, as well as reviewing secondary sources of video vignettes of classroom activities in science learning spaces. a theory i used to inform my analysis was a decolonizing theoretical framework developed by smith (2021). the framework suggests that ways of knowing traditionally created by western traditions that historically colonized nondominant cultures have privileged dominant cultural narratives and influenced the construction of knowledge in schools. smith’s framework is centered on presenting counternarratives to knowledge construction by non-dominant groups and acknowledges that these alternative ways of knowing are on an equal plane as western ways of knowing. i also used a feminist poststructuralist framework to analyze and critique the way in which power relations are produced and enacted in non-dominant communities and learning spaces. innovation as a construct of social justice and decolonization current issues in comparative education 123 critical analysis science genius utilizes hip hop pedagogy, a framework that incorporates the hip hop elements of rap, b-boying, beatboxing, djing, mcing, and rap battles into a style of teaching and learning science. this approach is shown to give students in urban science classrooms access to a connection to the science content (adjapong, 2019). the science genius teachers use a culturally responsive teaching framework of instructing students on how to create “bars” or lyrical lines of rap that center on specific science content. further, the science content is integrated with a rap that represents poetic rhythm synced with the scientific vernacular. students are, in theory, creating their study notes for science quizzes and regents tests. in addition, the teachers within science genius are k-12 science teachers, science graduate students, and science professors who often resemble the ethnic makeup of their students and often come from the same neighborhood as their students. like the teachers within stem kids nyc, the science genius teachers facilitate from a framework of what eglash (2013) terms heritage culture, but also from vernacular culture (eglash 2013), which is representative of urban youth cultural and linguistic practices, or some other form of culture that is centered on local social networks. the pedagogical style of the teachers within science genius enables students, like the stem kids nyc teachers, to generate deductions from presenting the content, yet also give their students creative license and freedom of self-expression to present their science knowledge constructs in multiple modes through rap, music, beatboxing, and digital presentation. i attended the hip hop ed conference in 2019 and witnessed the genius and confidence of students reciting science facts integrated with a hip-hop beat that is cleverly interwoven with both the beat and other lyrics they used. what i observed were students combining culturally relevant phenomena and lived experiences they relate to in their life, which were likened to witnessing a miracle occur within an urban learning space that would otherwise depict disengaged urban youth as being disengaged in science classes. thevenot (2021) emphasizes that researchers have uncovered many reasons as to why black and latinx students do not persist in stem. the lack of success in stem and the perceived declining persistence in stem for black and latinx students is attributed to the social barriers they face within their academic environments, or the lack of preparation they received prior to entering the stem program. (p. 60) my observations gave me pause to reflect upon the innovative design tool of reciprocity and the remembrances of what cornish and russworm accomplished in the 1800s with their paper, the freedom’s journal. cornish and russworm, like those at science genius, sought to illuminate the academic brilliance of those in the black race, in order to show the dominant culture that their brilliance is just as deserving to be given opportunities to contribute to the field of science. in the case of the science genius students, their demonstration of knowing scientific knowledge and their facility to creatively engage with science content using rap is proof that the students are truly scientists and are positioned for success in science as scientists. themes were derived from my review of video vignettes that served as archival data retrieved from the hip hop ed website. what i observed were students who shared their personal narratives of initially not being comfortable with science vernacular found in science textbooks or worksheets. after their experiences with the science genius teachers, thevenot current issues in comparative education 124 students became empowered through the use of rap and hip-hop pedagogy and created authentic raps centered in science. the use of rap allowed students to not only express themselves through the historical references of their culture and also demonstrate their ways of knowing centered in science knowledge constructs. i maintain that science genius uses innovative ways of teaching, centered on social justice, in order to engage black students in acquiring knowledge in science and thriving in the science learning space. what science genius has accomplished is also representative of innovative social justice design. the test for innovative practices “scholars today have demonstrated quite convincingly that people develop intelligence as they interact with others and as they use the tools and symbols of their culture to make sense of the world and their experiences in it” (oakes, 2018, p. 200). thus, in innovative learning spaces that are centered in stem, like at stem kids nyc and science genius, individual student knowledge as a meaningful context is brought into those learning spaces and utilized to create a rich curriculum and activities that benefit all of the students. both stem kids nyc and science genius utilize innovative design tools of transformation, enablement, reciprocity, and accountability at the core of their practice. for curriculum practices to support the framework of being innovative with socially just design tools, they must include the students in the center of such practice and cannot treat the students as subjects on which to shed light to administer focused teaching. both organizations place students at the center of their practice. further, for innovation to be evidenced, students have roles as collaborators in curating their education and learning spaces that may include fluid dialogue between them and teachers, the community, and policymakers, and includes a framework of multiculturalism and discourse that brings to light oppressive constructs that marginalize and silence their voices. within stem kids nyc, the [curricular strategies used by the teachers] provide for the promotion and encouragement of active student participation in stem learning spaces and empowers students to utilize both their cultural voice and evolving stem proficiency to contribute as full participants in stem environments who demonstrate a sense of belonging. (thevenot, 2021, p. 65). within science genius, students are empowered to utilize the innovative design tool, innovative design to achieve enablement, to extend their learning beyond the traditional borders created by k-12 curriculum, and engage in creating a dialogue with teachers about their education. adjapong (2019) maintains that science genius programs enable students to advocate for their learning and initiate discourse with their teachers: genesys had the agency to ask her chemistry teacher to alter her project to allow her to submit a rap as opposed to a timeline or a monologue. after participating in the science genius program, genesys similar to other students realized that using hip-hop to write content-themed raps was an effective method of learning for her. genesys asked her teacher to allow her to submit a science-themed rap for her project because she felt that it was it was an effective alternative that will help her gain a deep understanding of the content in an engaging manner as opposed to the other options presented. (p. 22) i maintain that both stem kids nyc and science genius utilize a culture of equality that allows students to collaborate with their teachers, as well as to lead in the facilitation of their education. innovation as a construct of social justice and decolonization current issues in comparative education 125 on the whole, using innovation as a social justice construct and as a practice for generating learning presents social and academic empowerment contexts for students, in that innovation, brings about the freedom to express, the placement of new ideas, the empowerment to take risks, and an education structure in which to use findings of oppression, racism, and systemic forces that silence the voice to replace immediately those forms of oppression with new ideas, knowledge constructs, and a framework of innovation that results in the initiation of change or elimination of oppressive influences. within stem kids nyc, students are given choices of what they wish to show and teach they choose a lesson or unit of study they learned and enjoyed, then they produce a science fair-like demonstration, in order to teach their peers and other invited guests, such as teachers and parents. then, students participate in showcases throughout the school year, at the conclusion of a unit of study that is usually 8-10 weeks long. within science genius, students demonstrate what they know in the form of producing rap and lyrics centered around particular science content and then present this in a concert-like setting called a rap battle. similar to a science fair, judges give each student or student group points based upon style, creativity in the use of science content, and overall presentation. in the context of social justice-oriented programs or ones that use a socially just curriculum, the teaching practices of the organizations referenced in this article reveal that: students’ cultures are integrated into the curriculum, the multiple intelligences of students are included in the curriculum, the curriculum support students’ varied ways of knowing and multiple ways to acquire knowledge and provides a learning space that acknowledges students’ varied levels of proficiencies. these practices are exemplars of innovative social justice education. “to teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin…” bell hooks implications in order to be effective in their teaching practice, teachers must be willing to expose their vulnerabilities and biases and engage with the cultural positioning of their students through rigorous self-examination. further, effective teachers who learn the practice of critical self-reflection will be successful at bringing to the forefront the often painful truths and struggles that are deep-seated within the heart and recesses of their minds, where the drive to succeed is often associated with a carefully crafted narrative that addresses negative stimuli. what shall one do with such stimuli? one suggestion would be to practice care, and the giving and receiving of love to all they encounter in their classrooms, and make their lesson plans rigorous and culturally responsive through the use of innovative design tools that support their pedagogical practices and enable all students to acquire knowledge and develop their facility for initiating social justice enactments that benefit themselves and their communities. innovation, framed as a culturally responsive, social justice construct, is a model by which both preservice and in-service teachers who instruct in public, private, and charter school learning spaces can build connections and close the widening gap between their students’ understanding of content and knowledge acquisition. through the effective use of knowledge constructs owned by students or developed within the learning space and the teacher, both the student and the teacher can generate a community of inclusion that thevenot current issues in comparative education 126 supports a reimagined learning community that includes all students in participatory learning and accomplishes the creation of academic identities for all. this paper brings to the forefront the direct and creative actions devised by black people to move their race toward education advancement a needed process to bring about innovative change and transformation to the downtrodden, minimized, and lowly economic, social, and political positions that plague our society. this action, i maintain, is representative of the truest distinction of what it means to be innovative and the clearest distinction of socially just work that disrupts the systemic status quo of marginalizing non-dominant groups. yvonne thevenot is a ph.d. student in the mathematics, science, & technology department of teachers college at columbia university and the executive director of stem kids nyc, a non-profit organization founded in 2015. her research and practice focus on how culturally responsive and culturally sustaining pedagogies used in stem learning spaces can support students in generating a stem identity and increase their proficiency in stem disciplines. she can be reached via email at: yt2567@tc.columbia.edu. innovation as a construct of social justice and decolonization current issues in comparative education 127 references adjapong, e. (2019). towards a practice of emancipation in urban schools: a look at student experiences through the science genius battles program. journal of ethnic and cultural studies, 6(1), 15-27. applebaum, b. (2009). is teaching for social justice a “liberal bias”?, teachers college record. 111(2), 376-408. aptheker, h. (1951). a documentary history of the negro people in the united states (vol. 3). h. aptheker (ed.). new york: citadel press. dictionary.com. retrieved from https://www.dictionary.com/ baumgartner, k. in pursuit of knowledge: black women and educational activism in antebellum america, new york university press, 2019. proquest ebook central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/teacherscollegeebooks/detail.action?docid=5973638. black and slave population of the united states from 1790 to 1880. (n.d.). https://www.statista.com/statistics/1010169/black-and-slave-population-us1790-1880/ butchart, r. (2013). schooling the freed people: teaching, learning, and the struggle for black freedom, 1861-1876. university of north carolina press. proquest ebook central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/teacherscollegeebooks/detail.action?docid=60590 carothers, d. (2018). a culture of equality?. journal of culture and values in education, 1(2), 42-57. dombrowski, l., harmon, e., & fox, s. (2016). social justice-oriented interaction design: outlining key design strategies and commitments. in proceedings of the 2016 acm conference on designing interactive systems (pp. 656-671). acm. eglash, r., gilbert, j. e., taylor, v., & geier, s. r. (2013). culturally responsive computing in urban, after-school contexts: two approaches. urban education, 48(5), 629-656. gay, g. (2010). culturally responsive teaching: theory, research, and practice. teachers college press. gitlin, a. (2009). education, policy and social justice: searching the borderlands between subjective science and experimental art. forum on public policy: a journal of the oxford round table. retrieved from http://link.galegroup.com.tc.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/a216682618/aone?u=ne w30429&sid=aone&xid=4e814383 gutiérrez, k. d., & rogoff, b. (2003). cultural ways of learning: individual traits or repertoires of practice. educational researcher, 32(5), 19-25. hooks, b. (2014). teaching to transgress. routledge. hiphoped. (2021). retrieved from https://hiphoped.com/science-genius/ thevenot current issues in comparative education 128 ladson-billings, g. (2009). the dreamkeepers: successful teachers of african american children. john wiley & sons. lawrence-lightfoot, s., & davis, j. h. (1997). the art and science of portraiture. jossey-bass. lorde, a. (2012). sister outsider: essays and speeches. crossing press. lötter, h.p.p. (2011). poverty, ethics and justice. university of wales press. mitchell, m. raising freedom's child: black children and visions of the future after slavery, new york university press, 2008. proquest ebook central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/teacherscollegeebooks/detail.action?docid=865765. nasir, n. i. (2011). racialized identities: race and achievement among african american youth. stanford university press. nieto, s. (2018). language, culture, and teaching: critical perspectives (3rd ed.). new york: routledge. novak, m. (december 29, 2009). social justice: not what you think it is. the heritage foundation retrieved from: https://www.heritage.org/poverty-andinequality/report/social-justice-not-what-you-think-it oakes, j., lipton, m., anderson, l., & stillman, j. (2015). teaching to change the world. routledge. obama, m. (2018). becoming. crown publishing. papert, s., & harel, i. (1991). situating constructionism. constructionism, 36(2), 1-11. smith, l. t. (2021). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. zed books ltd. statista (n.d.). black and slave population of the united states from 1790 to 1880. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1010169/black-and-slave-population-us1790-1880/ the history engine. (n.d.). african american schools. https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/4892 wallace, m. o. (2002). constructing the black masculine: identity and ideality in african american men’s literature and culture, 1775–1995. duke university press. womack, y. l. (2013). afrofuturism: the world of black sci-fi and fantasy culture. chicago review press. schuelka & sherab, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 1, winter 2022 educational values in complex systems: an introduction to the educational values evaluation and design framework and a case study of inclusivity in bhutan matthew j. schuelka college of education and human development, university of minnesota kezang sherab paro college of education, royal university of bhutan education systems are complex social systems. this article argues that it in order to analyze educational values, attributes, and outcomes within a complex system, greater attention must be paid towards understanding the utility of education and the contexts, discourses, and narratives surrounding the purpose of schooling in society. an educational values evaluation and design (eved) framework is put forward as a means to effectively understand the alignment – or misalignment – of educational values within a complex system. this is particularly relevant for inclusion and diversity in education, in that various elements must be in place beyond legal frameworks promoting access for inclusion to be meaningful and effective. this article presents the case study of bhutan to support the eved framework that was a result of two years of qualitative field research. the results of the research demonstrate that there are multiple and various actors and elements operating with a variety of intentional and unintentional goals within a complex system. through an exploration of the value of inclusivity in bhutanese education, we show that an application of the eved framework can expose the alignments and misalignments that contribute towards the realization of educational values in schools and in society. keywords: inclusion, education, bhutan, complex systems, values, utility introduction throughout the history of comparative education, there has been an attempt to compare various elements of education systems – e.g., curriculum, pedagogy, policies, national character – often in reference to normative global north models of education (see steinerkhamsi, 2004). the march towards the scientization and quantification of education through comparison has attempted to analyze education systems according to a disaggregation and regression of various widgets, inputs, and outputs (sobe, 2018). however, we argue that education systems should be viewed as complex systems where all elements of a system affect, and are relational to, each other. using complexity theory as our theoretical framework, we also put forward an analysis and proactive design tool – the educational values evaluation and design (eved) framework – that compares elements within a specific complex education system, rather than across countries. that being said, global discourses are a factor in education systems today and they need to be understood across multiple axes (bartlett & vavrus, 2017). what we argue is that any comparative study of educational values should look first towards an education system’s © 2022, schuelka & sherab. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(1), 114-131. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en educational values in complex systems current issues in comparative education 115 own goals and objectives – which may certainly be informed through global discourse, borrowing, coercion, and transfer – and analyze these goals within the complex relationality of elements that align or misalign towards reaching these goals. in this article, we will explore educational values in bhutan as both expressed in policy as well as how these values are interpreted and realized by teachers and students. specifically, we will focus on ‘inclusion and diversity’ as an educational value. the idea of inclusion in education is often viewed, or advocated, within a human rights framework centered around the idea of the right to equally access an education (gordon, 2013). however, what this equal access proposition often means in practice is the perpetuation of ‘special’ and segregated educational provision under new names, and with similar outcomes as before (schuelka & carrington, 2022). rather than a radical reimagining of how education can be transformed to be designed and have purpose for everyone, inclusion and diversity in education has become a case of trying to fit heterogenous individuals into an existing system that was never meant to be heterogenous (varenne & mcdermott, 1998). educational systems continue to hold all students to the same standard, particularly in rigid and centralized national curriculums, which creates a zero-sum outcome of those that ‘can’ and those that ‘cannot’ (labaree, 2010). by ‘inclusion and diversity’ in education, we mean the value that all children – no matter their abilities, attributes, identities, or characteristics – have a right to an education, as well as a right to a quality education that leads to quality outcomes in society. in other words, inclusion and diversity in education is simply a quality education for all (schuelka et al., 2019). the manifestation of values such as inclusion and diversity in an education system are formed by complex systems with frequent misalignments of actors, priorities, incentives, resources, governance, and other societal elements. governments, researchers, development agencies, and non-governmental organizations focused on inclusion and diversity in education have put most of their attention on the barriers to these values and have done well to identify them but have not completely overcome them (schuelka & carrington, 2022; unesco, 2020). for an educational system to be fully inclusive, there needs to be alignment of the values of inclusion and diversity throughout its multiple elements. in particular, the societal purpose – or utility – of formal education needs to inform all other aspects of the educational system in regard to the types of values that the education systems wish to inculcate. the reasons for why we go to school and for what purpose – for all students – has profound implications for the efficacy of inclusion and diversity in education. the argument of this article will be supported by recent research on educational values in the country of bhutan, as well as recent theoretical work on complex education systems and the socio-construction of ‘difference’ in modern schooling (schuelka, 2018; schuelka & engsig, 2020). featured in this article is a two-year qualitative and empirical study on educational values in bhutan. this project sought the voices of students and teachers in bhutan in describing their schooling experiences and the purposes of attending formal school in bhutanese society. one outcome of this project was the creation of the educational values evaluation and design (eved) framework, based upon an analysis of the data, which will be featured and expanded upon in this article. we view bhutan as an illustrative case study – one that demonstrates the difficulties in designing and aligning educational values in a complex system – that has much to do with all educational systems around the world. in the next section, we will explore an understanding of education systems as complex systems, and then provide an explanation of the eved framework. following this, we will then describe the methodology of the study that informs this article, and then move towards the results of the study and an exploration of bhutan as a schuelka & kezang sherab current issues in comparative education 116 case. lastly, we apply the eved framework to the bhutan case study to illustrate how the framework can be used to demonstrate educational values alignments and misalignments. complex education systems and educational values approaching the question of the purpose of inclusion and diversity in education helps to begin a larger exploration of the complexity of education systems. for biesta (2015), there are three purposes, or utilities, of an education system: qualification (the symbolic manifestation of knowledge gained), socialization (the teaching of children to be a part of a society), and subjectification (the teaching of children to better understand their independent selves). these domains do not exactly co-exist equally in any education system, and there is often a tension between them – particularly when it comes to political ideology and orientation (jones, 2013). education systems often swing like a pendulum – or, if you like, ricochet like a pinball – between emphases on ‘core’ learning of knowledge, and emphases on promoting more ‘holistic’ learning. as biesta (2015) would aver, we are certainly in a political period that is very much focused on qualification and ‘learnification’ above all else. schuelka and engsig (2020) used the work of biesta and others to build a theoretical model to recognize and understand complex education systems: ‘complex education systems analysis’ (cesa), represented in the form of a cube (cesa3). the cesa3 represents a three-dimensional approach towards understanding education as a complex system, which is defined as an “open system in which elements are interacting with themselves and their environment in emergent, adaptive, and self-reflexive ways” (schuelka & engsig, 2020, p. 6). education can be understood as a complex system by examining and analyzing the three dimensions – across different levels of a system from micro to macro; across different community groupings and depths; and across the three attributes of access, quality, and utility. the attribute of access is perhaps the best understood idea as advocacy for education as a human right, and there has been greater attention paid towards increasing quality as a result of increasing access. however, we believe that utility deserves far greater attention and that it influences other attributes and dimensions. what we argue is that utility means more than just the end result of inputs and processes. educational utility is a teleological question – the overall purpose and conceptualization of education in society, and for whom it was designed, rather than analyzing how outcomes were arrived. the visual representation of the cesa3 can be seen in figure 1. educational values in complex systems current issues in comparative education 117 figure 1 the complex educational systems analysis cube (cesa3) source: schuelka & engsig, 2020, p. 6 if the cesa3 serves as a larger theoretical model for understanding complex education systems, an analytic tool developed to explore the alignment of educational values within a complex system can further ground the cesa3 in practical application. as a result of our educational values project in bhutan, an educational values evaluation and design (eved) framework was created during the data analysis stage. this framework further breaks down various elements of a complex educational system and in how they inculcate – or fail to promote – educational and societal values across levels, communities, and attributes. the eved framework is visualized in figure 2 below. schuelka & kezang sherab current issues in comparative education 118 figure 2 the educational values evaluation and design framework the eved framework uses an ishikawa design format to highlight various elements of a complex education system that inform how an educational and societal value is expressed. using this framework can uncover where alignments and misalignments occur within an education system that expresses the desire to achieve certain values within itself. in figure 2 above, some examples of educational values are presented, although this is certainly not an exhaustive list. values such as inclusivity, sustainability, and happiness are assumed to be positive and desirable for inculcation within an educational system. other values such as what and whose knowledge and skills are learned, morals and ethics are preferenced and meritocratically advanced through the system can be contested and assigned positive or negative connotations. nine element inputs are identified that inform the production of any educational value but, again, this is not necessarily exhaustive. these element inputs include children, teachers, materials, curriculum, pedagogy, policy and governance, the economy, sociocultural factors, family, and community. each one of these elements can further be broken down. for example, ‘teachers’ is a broader element that encompasses aspects such as preservice training, in-service training, and incentivization; as well as de-/motivating factors such as stress, burden and scope of work, wages and compensation, autonomy, agency, efficacy, social pressure, and many more. each element is interconnected and consistent with the theoretical underpinnings of the cesa3 and other ecological and complex systems theories (anderson et al., 2014; walton et al., 2020). in other words, elements educational values inclusivity sustainability happiness knowledge skills subjectification morals & ethics pedagogycurriculummaterialsteachers policy & governanceeconomysocio-cultural factors family & community children meritocracy etc. educational values in complex systems current issues in comparative education 119 should not be thought of as isolated inputs but as reflexive elements in a complex system that can only ever fully support educational values when they are collectively aligned. if any element of the education system is misaligned with the values being purported by other elements, particularly as dictated by official policy, then the educational value will have difficulty in being effectively produced. this misalignment will be made clear in presenting the case of bhutan in subsequent sections. however, we believe that these misalignments have been observed in education research for quite some time, usually in the guise of ‘barriers’ or work on the policy-practice gap. inclusive education research and advocacy is well-aware of the gaps between policy and practice in the form of resource allocation, teacher training and incentivization, inflexible national curriculums, ableist pedagogies, and especially the socio-cultural ethos of the school environment. what the eved framework offers is a proactive approach towards more effectively analyzing system mis-/alignments and designing positive educational values such as inclusivity by understanding that it is never a single lever alone that must be pushed to make a system more inclusive. the eved framework invites educational reformists and advocates to actively use it to construct and enact a theory of change. the eved framework emerged from our project examining educational values in the bhutanese educational system. this project will be further explained and discussed for the remainder of this article, furthering the argument that inclusion as an educational and societal value needs to be aligned across an entire complex system to be effective. methodology the research that informs this article was carried out for two years from 2018–2019. we were interested in the balance of values and aims in education centered around a ‘4h’ framework of head, heart, hands, and – newly introduced by us – happiness. a more in-depth exploration of the 4h framework and the place of ‘happiness’ in educational values has been published elsewhere (kezang sherab & schuelka, 2021; forthcoming). the research design was a qualitative study consisting of focus groups and observations. in total, we conducted 24 focus groups of approximately 240 participants ranging from class 4 students to university students; and teachers at all levels (12 out of the 24 focus groups were teachers, conducted separately from the student focus groups). we also conducted day-long observations at 12 schools. the students involved in this research were not predetermined or selected by the researchers, and we encountered a diverse mix of genders, socio-economic backgrounds, and abilities within every focus group conducted. the participants were selected by teachers and school leadership, which we acknowledge could be a limitation to representation in the study. nonetheless, we observed a diverse mix of participants ourselves when the participants came into the classrooms where we conducted focus groups. many of the school sites where we did our data collection were central schools, which in bhutan means a boarding school that draws their students from both the local community and from across the country – children are essentially assigned a school to attend by the royal government, which could be on the other side of the country from their home. the data from the focus groups were recorded and transcribed, and both the focus group transcriptions and structured observation notes were analyzed using a grounded theory approach (corbin & strauss, 2008), employing thematic and inductive coding (saldaña, 2009), and triangulated via three concurrent independent researchers and a constant validity check (bernard, 2013). our study schools were located throughout the central, south, and west of bhutan, representing 10 out of 20 dzongkhags [districts] and a significant schuelka & kezang sherab current issues in comparative education 120 range of demographic (urban-rural) and geographic (high altitude-low jungle) settings. a map of our study dzongkhags can be seen highlighted in red in figure 3, which also displays population density to indicate the diversity of settings. this study does not purpose to be statistically representative of the whole of bhutan but, given the homogeneity of the bhutanese education system across all settings, certain central themes and commonalities may be observed. in the end, each participant’s voice can only be representative of their own experience and worldview. figure 3 a map of bhutan indicating dzongkhags researched and population density a brief introduction to bhutan given the limited space, we will not attempt to explain the entirety of the bhutanese sociocultural-historical context. a more comprehensive look at the historical and contemporary context of education in bhutan can be further explored by works from karma phuntsho (2013), schuelka and maxwell (2016), and robles (2016). however, we will provide a brief introduction below to help understand the next section. bhutan is located entirely in the eastern himalaya surrounded by india to the south and china (tibet) to the north. it was never colonized and remained relatively isolated – except for regional interactions primarily with tibet, assam, and sikkim – until the 20th century. in the mid-20th century, a modernization and development strategy was put in place that continues forward today in terms of focus on establishing and improving infrastructure, education, and healthcare (karma phuntsho, 2013). in the 1970s, his majesty the fourth druk gyalpo [dragon king] of bhutan, famously called for a development focus of ‘gross national happiness’ rather than gross national income. this alternative focus on societal harmony and well-being has become a major source of educational values in complex systems current issues in comparative education 121 pride for the bhutanese, and an inspiration for progressive development professionals and economists ever since (karma ura & karma galay, 2004). government-provided secular education began officially in 1959, although it did not gain much traction until the 1970s and 1980s with the formalization of a written form of the dzongkha language and the localization of the curriculum (singye namgyel & phup rinchhen, 2016). the language of instruction in bhutanese schools today is primarily english, with dzongkha taught as its own subject. across all levels of education, from early childhood to adult, there are more than 195,000 students in a form of schooling (moe, 2019). this is approximately one-quarter of the entire population of bhutan. schooling is free and universal from pre-primary until grade 10, with an upper-secondary and tertiary education provided free for students with high passing marks. in the early days of the formal secular education system, there was almost no precedent and nearly everything – including books and teachers themselves – was borrowed from india, and presented in hindi (jagar dorji, 2016). schooling was directly and explicitly linked with human capital development, and colleges were located within their corresponding ministries. for example, the teacher training institutes were within the ministry of education. formal education was viewed as a sieve to select and promote astute pupils and recruit them into the civil service. all other students failed out – or dropped out – of school and went back to farming and other manual labor work. however, this dynamic has not changed significantly today even though much in society has changed dramatically. bhutanese schools are more inclusive, and many more students succeed, but youth unemployment is high (nsb, 2018). those that received an education but are not accepted into a civil service office job and do not desire to enter a life of hard manual labor, are faced with an anemic private sector that has struggled to promote entrepreneurship and further technical training (lham dorji & sonam kinga, 2005). bhutanese students express strong national pride and a buddhist ethos and value-set, but also find that the knowledge, values, and skills that they learn in school do not align with greater society or their adult goals. this will be further elaborated upon in the next section. findings: “i don’t think it’s helping us to be a better person” in order to understand what kinds of educational and societal values are being fostered in bhutanese schools, we asked our focus groups fairly simple questions that elicited deep and complex answers. we asked questions such as: ‘why do children go to school in bhutan?’, ‘what do children learn in bhutanese schools?’, ‘how does going to school make you feel?’, and ‘what is an ‘educated person’?’ what we wanted to locate within these broad questions were different elements in the education system that perpetuated certain values. in comparing these resulting values with the explicit value aims of official educational policy and curriculum, we can better target misalignments within the system. the value of inclusion is wrapped within larger questions of the purpose and perception of school in bhutanese society. results will be organized and presented within the three domains of the cesa theoretical framework of access, quality, and utility. because access to schooling has been fairly established in bhutan through policy and practice and all children in bhutan have the right to equitable access (rgob, 2019), we only include quality and utility as findings sections because this was the focus of our study. as argued by schuelka and engsig (2020), the theory of complex systems is that there are not rigid barriers between domains and elements, and thus the reader will note that findings in quality and utility will not be so cleanly divided. schuelka & kezang sherab current issues in comparative education 122 quality: what is learned inside and outside of school one aspect of quality in education systems is curriculum and what is learned (or not learned) that supports the utility of education in a particular society. there is an inherent paradox in bhutanese culture when it comes to formal schooling, in terms of what is valued and preferenced culturally. when our participants were asked about bhutanese culture, this was most often romanticized as being something located in egalitarian rural village settings, centered around agricultural rhythms, anchored in a local buddhist worldview, and inculcated through driglam namzha [formal and informal bhutanese rules for social etiquette]. however, almost none of these ideas existed in the formal school setting, further supporting long-extant theories of ‘modern’ schooling as representing a significant break from ‘traditional’ societies (fuller, 1991; spindler, 2000). to the majority of participants, going to school was equated with social advancement to more urban settings and jobs that required a formal education. reaffirming previous work on noncognitive skills in bhutanese schools (schuelka et al., 2019), students from this wider sample set located the actual teaching of socio-cultural values as something that occurred outside of the classroom, specifically in extracurricular activities. this has also been a challenge in trying to implement educational reforms in bhutan centered around gross national happiness, in that teachers and school leaders viewed these as ‘extra’ rather than integrated in their everyday lessons (kezang sherab et al., 2014). inclusion and diversity in education was also viewed as ‘extra’ and not within the core values of the educational institution. the bhutanese school system serves to self-perpetuate its own raison d'être by preferencing and promoting only the kinds of recognized learning that advanced students towards a qualification. this might have better served the bhutanese educational system in the past, when its purpose was to find a narrow band of apt candidates to enter the civil service ranks while all others continued a life of agricultural subsistence. however, the changes in bhutanese society have now rendered this kind of educational system design to be ineffective at best, and self-destructive at worse. nearly all children in bhutan attend school, including those labelled with ‘disabilities’ – and, significantly, a vast proportion of students with learning difficulties that struggle academically and drop-out thinking that they were the problem and not the school (schuelka, 2018). the bhutanese civil service cannot accept a majority of those that apply today and simply having passing marks and a qualification of learning is not enough. the young adults that simply pass out of lower secondary (class 10), upper secondary (class 12), university (class 15), or are not selected based on their mark on the bhutan civil service examination (bcse), are essential now stuck “betwixt and between” (turner, 1967). youth do not have the knowledge, skills, or the desire for a life of farming, nor do they have many options to use the academic knowledge and skills they acquired in school. again, this has implications for inclusion and diversity in education in that it reinforces that schooling is only effective for some and begins to call into question the purpose of schooling if it only serves as a promotion for a few. the most glaring example of the mis-matched values of quality schooling and society comes in the form of examinations. students must take examinations at the end of every year to determine whether or not they will advance to the next class. at the time of our field research this was for every class beginning in pre-primary, although at the time of writing this is in the process of being changed for examinations to now only begin in class 4. there are also new policies being phased in for alternative assessments and accommodation requirements for students labelled as having a ‘disability’ (rgob, 2019). there are major examination events at class 10 and class 12 that essentially determine a students’ future advancement – and their overall future in many ways. examinations and educational values in complex systems current issues in comparative education 123 examination culture are a source of immense stress and worry for students, and all of our participants – both teachers and students – expressed this. students in bhutan are publicly ranked, with students that passed and students that failed announced for all to know. there are clear linkages here to the indian education system that was brought into bhutan – with a reliance on textbooks and intense, rigid, examinations that distil the entirety of learning into one summative examination. this indian education system, of course, was in many ways learned from their british colonizers (gupta, 2006). regardless of its origins, the most significant misalignment of educational values is centered on examination culture and its effect on the educational system as a whole, producing failure, ‘difference,’ and ‘disability’ throughout the system (schuelka, 2018). failing examinations equates to failing to advance towards the narrow future pathways that schooling has created. both students and teachers in our focus groups questioned the purpose of examinations, particularly in their efficacy to assess learning. one teacher said, “students are taught to take exams, but they don’t learn anything.” a student in a focus group expressed the following: i guess from my point of view, examination is not like, they’re not checking what we have learned. they’re just checking what we have memorized from the textbook [agreement amongst respondents]. examinations in bhutan, like i don’t think it’s helping us to be a better person in the future. they are just checking what we have memorized. the teachers were frustrated with the role examinations played in narrowing the curriculum and, in particular, how they spent their time in the classroom pedagogically. a discourse of ‘21st century schools’ and ‘21st century pedagogy’ has proliferated in the bhutanese educational system, with much pressure being placed on teachers to teach differently but with the same scripted curriculum and the same materials. in a focus group, one exasperated teacher stated, “how can we teach 21st century pedagogy with 20th century curriculum?!” this sentiment further confirms previous research that we have conducted in bhutan, whereas teachers felt that the national curriculum was extremely over-subscribed, and they did not view their role beyond being deliverers of academic content that would be formally examined (schuelka et al., 2019). this lessened every-day inclusive opportunities in the classroom, as teachers focused on getting through curricular learning content rather than ensuring student participation and individual learning trajectories (schuelka, 2018). school knowledge – i.e., what was on the examination – was viewed by our participants as something entirely separate from the practical skills and cultural knowledge needed for adult living in bhutanese society. this sentiment is represented in the student focus group excerpt below: interviewer: why are you going to school? for what purpose are you going to school? respondent 1: to study. interviewer: why is studying important? respondent 2: because if don’t study we will not get job in the future. respondent 1: we come to school because to study. because if we study, we can be a successful person and we don’t have to depend on anyone. this is an elucidary exchange in many ways, but not least because of the extraordinary statement at the end stating, “we don’t have to depend on anyone.” a sentiment such as this goes very much against the grain of bhutanese cultural discourse that is informed by a buddhist worldview. the dominant message in bhutanese culture is one of interdependence and inter-connectedness. however, this is not the culture that is being schuelka & kezang sherab current issues in comparative education 124 inculcated in bhutan’s schools. this finding further speaks to theories on educational utility and the enactment of ‘modern’ schooling and a ‘modern’ economy on alreadyestablished socio-cultural-economic systems (demerath, 1999; fuller, 1991; grindal, 1972; katz, 2004; schuelka, 2013; spindler, 2000). utility: why what is learned in school matters for society one aspect of the utility of education is the notion of how schooling contributes to the societal notion of ‘success.’ to the students of bhutan, schooling was very much viewed as a means towards learning knowledge to eventually earn a qualification that leads to a work as an adult. being a ‘successful person’ was explicitly linked to work and economic societal value. in other words, schools are inculcating children to be “preoccupied with the future” (sherman, 1997, p. 123) and to directly equate success in school as preparation for success in adult society. however, even though the discourses and culture of schooling in bhutan promote the notion of an “educated person” (levinson et al., 1996) as one of academic achievement and promotion, there is still a reverence for rural agricultural life and a perceived dignity in hard farm labor and egalitarian rural village culture. indeed, most students in bhutanese schools come from rural agricultural settings and a vast majority of the students surveyed in our focus groups had parents/family members that were illiterate farmers. this is also reflected in the overall census statistics for the country, which finds that nearly 80% of the country are employed in the agricultural, construction, and natural resource sectors (nsb, 2018). most bhutanese adults and families are subsistence farmers, with a small amount of cash-cropping and goods exchange. tellingly, there is a significant correlation between educational attainment level and unemployment, but in reverse of the mythology of human capital development – the more education one receives, the more likely they are to be unemployed (nsb, 2018). the narrative linkage between school success and societal success – even if it does not reflect current socio-economic reality – has profound implications for inclusion and diversity in education as an educational and societal value. if children and adults believe fully in a meritocratic system of social advancement, then those that do not excel or otherwise struggle in formal schooling lose value within the system. this is what schuelka (2018) found in previous ethnographic fieldwork, when students labelled as having a ‘disability’ in bhutan were most often associated with ‘being lazy’ and not working hard enough to do well. this also builds upon the work of ray mcdermott and others (1998) in articulating how schooling – and the purpose of schooling – produces ‘disabilities’ through the narratives of success and achievement. beyond expressing the socio-economic utility of schooling in bhutan and the idea of a ‘successful person,’ there was also a strong sentiment of going to school for the benefit of bhutan beyond just their own self-interest. one student expressed this sentiment: but what we have to do is being an educated person, we have to convey the message to our own parents. we have to convey them and we have to help them. we are not supposed to go and fight with them. we have to take our culture with us because our culture is identity of our country. and it’s in our hands to save it. and we have to go with the modern technologies because we have to compete with the other modern world. so it’s all in our hand…it’s somewhat like understanding and belief that we need to create and we must give a very strong support to our own creation. educational values in complex systems current issues in comparative education 125 this expression of education for the benefit of the nation-state is an old sentiment, and one of the primary catalysts for mass education expansion in 19th century europe that then spread worldwide (ramirez & boli, 1987), although not always naturally or with benevolent purpose. in bhutan, nationalism is strongly inculcated in the educational system and embodied in the production of tsa-wa-sum, which is originally the buddhist belief of the ‘three roots’ but contemporaneously has also come to mean the nationalist notion of ‘king, country, people.’ this should not be considered as indoctrination, but more an emphasis on thinking beyond the self and towards contribution to the whole, which certainly sits squarely in the buddhist worldview. this is why the sentiment expressed earlier by one student – “we don’t have to depend on anyone” – is so extraordinary. if we were to simply analyze the language of bhutanese educational policy, a far different picture of bhutan would emerge. education policy in bhutan is very much constructed with progressive aims, featuring an emphasis on gross national happiness and a holistic approach to learning (schuelka, 2017). for example, bhutanese national education policy has two aims, to create an education system that: • inculcates the principles and values underpinning gross national happiness, and upholds the nation’s unique cultural and spiritual heritage and values; and • prepares citizens to become knowledgeable, skilful [bhutanese spelling], creative, innovative, enterprising, and capable of responding to the national needs and emerging global trends (rgob, 2019, p. 2). however, looking at a complex educational system from policy alone presents a very myopic and misunderstood picture of the whole. what is especially missing in most analyzes of education systems is a focus on what going to school actually does for a student – not only in outcomes related to learning, but also in how schooling adds value to a student’s wellbeing, socialization, self-identity, and subjectification. when thinking specifically about inclusive education, there must be more attention paid towards how an educational system is cultivating all students’ sense of belonging, self-worth, resilience, and creativity. students must share the opinion that school is offering them utility in terms of a successful future that goes beyond economics and social status. in the next and final section of this article, we will use the eved framework to provide an example of the misalignment of elements in the bhutanese education system as it relates to the values of inclusion and diversity in education. this will bring forward the discussion from this section on educational utility and values as expressed by participants in bhutanese schools. we will then conclude the article with a suggestion as to how to apply the eved framework to other cases and contexts to evaluate and design better inclusive education systems. educational values, utility, and implications for inclusion in this section we will present an example of how the eved framework can be applied to locate where the educational value of inclusivity is misaligned in the bhutanese educational system. we could not go through all of our findings from this project in the section above, so there will be some findings in figure 4 below that have not been discussed here. nevertheless, we will mention them briefly in a summary of our evaluation. schuelka & kezang sherab current issues in comparative education 126 figure 4 eved framework application on inclusivity in the bhutanese education system in analyzing the bhutanese educational system via the eved framework, the element of policy & governance is the most proactive in supporting inclusivity as a value in the system. there are policies in place that support educational access and inclusion for children, a holistic vision of the child centered around gross national happiness (gnh), and generally a discourse on a human right to education (rgob, 2019). the national education policy draft is filled with assertions such as “schools shall foster best practices and promote innovative methods to engage students and develop their full potential and life-skills,” “teachers in public schools shall be provided with appropriate and required teaching materials and stationery,” and “all schools shall promote core values and facilitate productive and critical engagement in society as active and informed citizens … schools shall teach the country’s spiritual and cultural heritage throughout schooling and develop civic, financial, entrepreneurial, environmental, media literacy, and provide life skills education programmes” (rgob, 2019, pp. 4-5). however, the practices and cultures within schools work against a progressive vision of gnh education through elements such as rigid, inadaptable, and irrelevant curriculum that has not caught up to the policy; a pedagogical style that disables many children included in the classroom (see schuelka, 2018); a lack of hands-on and adaptable materials for learning, particularly in science and mathematics; teachers that are over-burdened, not given enough agency and ownership, and are incentivized only to ‘get through the syllabus’ through contradicting policy directions and incentives. outside of in-school practices and cultures, there are also socio-cultural factors that exert different pressures on the educational system and its values. the bhutanese school system was designed to feed able and successful students directly into the civil service, but that is no longer the socio-economic reality in bhutan. the educational system remains an educational values inclusivity pedagogycurriculummaterialsteachers policy & governanceeconomysocio-cultural factors family & community children teacher-centered didactic generally passive (some attempts at learnercentered and active learning) centralized standardized little room for adaptation and accommodation script-orientated board/chalk student workbooks chairs/tables lack of stem materials over-burdened lack of training lack of support from school leadership desire to do more and be more creative ed free national disability policy moe policies sen division royal ed council ngo support not enough jobs in civil service/ private sector struggling tvet, but renewed focus now no transferrable skills from schooling no school-work link schools are meant to be challenging and competitive schools are not embedded in local community and culture mistrust school knowledge, but strong belief in school as social advancement schools should be responsible for children –  even more than parents students with disabilities should be cared for at home, not burdened with responsibility and independence low-expectations surrounding context educational utility, as related to inclusivity: schooling = learning content / knowledge schooling = work = successful person schooling = being told values that make good human beings schooling = examination meaning of gnh: keeping the country green, maintaining peace in the country, solving problems in the poor villages, learning about driglam namzha [social etiquette] student ambition: medical doctors, engineers, police/army officers, pilots/airline industry, teachers educational values in complex systems current issues in comparative education 127 examination-centered qualification generator but needs to adapt to the current scenario and produce better students that can enter the private economic sector, gain skilled technical jobs, create new areas of economic opportunity, and contribute to greater bhutanese society by inhabiting positive bhutanese socio-cultural values. the bhutanese place a great deal of weight on the importance of schooling in terms of social advancement and better economic opportunity, but in many ways the educational system no longer perpetuates this narrative for most of its students. in terms of the surrounding context of educational utility, most of our focus group discussions focused on school as meaning future work, examinations, and content memorization. however, there were instances where our participants expressed the possibility of school meaning more in terms of producing gross national happiness and better citizens and contributing to the common good of the nation. nearly all the children we interviewed expressed a desire to support their parents in some way and to contribute to their home village. this should not be understated or overlooked. however, children were nonetheless well-aware of the expectations of doing well at school and that socioeconomic success was a vehicle for them to support their parents in tangible and material ways. the desire to do good – for their parents, for the nation – shaped our participants’ understanding of success as measured through academic achievement and ability. the understanding of educational utility in bhutan as one of achievement and advancement towards work and ‘success’ has a major impact on the value of inclusivity in the educational system. because schooling is conceptualized and designed primarily upon the ability to advance academically – to prove oneself within a narrow set of examination and book learning skills – a child that struggles with these specific skills, or progresses differently than their peers, is now ‘on the outside looking in.’ the utility of the educational system is one of producing a specific type of success, and many children will be marginalized and excluded as a result. the uncomfortable question here is “why would an educational system include children for which it was never designed to produce in the first place?” this is exactly why the current challenges and tensions exist within the inclusive education field. the eved framework is one tool that can be used to help locate and evaluate interconnected elements within a complex educational system that can begin to be nudged in the right direction. if an educational system was only designed and narratively sustained with a purpose of academic achievement, ability, and success – with the only measurable outcomes being graduation and transition to higher education and work – then it will never be inclusive for all children. however, we believe that using tools like the eved framework and others can support innovation and design-solutions towards more inclusive educational systems by understanding these systems as dynamic and complex. with a complex education system, we must be fully cognizant that it is never just a single nudge within a single element that will make the difference. in this project on bhutan, it was found that the ministry of education initiative encouraging teachers to use more active learning and learning-centered pedagogy only exacerbated problems as the curriculum did not adjust to different modes of learning, nor were lessons and the school day structured differently to allow for more flexibility. teachers did not feel that they had agency and ownership of their classrooms. promoting learner-centered activities just became yet another thing that the teacher had to fit in as ‘extra.’ while they liked these activities and found that the students were more engaged, it was also something that they believed they could only do once they reached the end of the syllabus and if there was schuelka & kezang sherab current issues in comparative education 128 any extra time. in other words, adding pedagogical innovation was useless when there were not changes that also happened to the curriculum, to the examinations, to the materials, to the culture of the school, to the support and incentives for teachers, and so forth. in closing, it is important to note that the eved framework is meant to be situationally and contextually sensitive and specific. we are not advocating for the eved framework to be used as a comparison of values across nations (lee & manzon, 2014). this is not to ignore the fact that education is a complex globalized discourse of borrowing, learning, exchange, convergence, and coercion. in our project in bhutan, we are careful not to project novel exogenous values and notions onto the existing educational system. as we argue in this article and others, it is the bhutanese educational system itself that seeks to promote values of inclusion, happiness, sustainability, and so on. these are explicit in national policies and macro-level discourses, but not enacted and produced at the mesa and micro-levels. in other words, the system has a values misalignment amongst its elements. using the eved framework is simply a tool to support any education system in understanding how and where educational values are formed and produced within it, and to evaluate where to make better design choices to further the kinds of values that the education system desires. acknowledgement this article is based upon research funded by the toyota foundation. the project was titled “educational values for a sustainable society: head, heart, hands, and happiness in bhutan and beyond” (d17-r-0362) and the investigators were matthew j. schuelka, kezang sherab, and akiko ueda. we thank the toyota foundation for their generous support and guidance. matthew j. schuelka is a lecturer and researcher in the college of education and human development at the university of minnesota. he is also the founder and ceo of fora education, a non-profit education and development consultancy firm focused on inclusion and sustainability. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1567-158x kezang sherab is the dean research and industrial linkages/assistant professor at paro college of education, royal university of bhutan. he teaches health and physical education and research methodology courses both at undergraduate and graduate programs. kezang has published on a variety of educational topics and has led many consultancies. he does guest lectures on research, blended learning, reflective teaching, and gross national happiness education. email: kezangsherab.pce@rub.edu.bt https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2002-6868 references1 anderson, j., boyle, c. & depeler, j. 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(2020). compounded exclusion: education for disabled refugees in sub-saharan africa. frontiers in education, 5(47). https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.0004 © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 62 the impact of political violence on education in south africa: past, present and future isaac m. ntshoe vista university, soweto campus republic of south africa introduction the impact of violence on society due to political and ethnic rivalry is a well-known phenomenon. on the african continent, political and ethnic tensions have led to armed conflicts; many of these conflicts have made their way into schools and classrooms. in south africa in particular, political and ethnic strife, originally fuelled by the apartheid regime, still smolders despite democratic governance and a new social order. last year's truth and reconciliation report documented the devastating impact of the political and ethnic violence of the apartheid years on south african society. amidst the extensive literature about violence under apartheid, the role of the education sector in reinforcing and incorporating state sanctioned political violence is often denied attention. on the other hand, while political violence was at the heart of the apartheid agenda, violence was also used as a tool to challenge the dominant power structure and government of south africa. in south africa, and in the kwazulu/natal province of south africa in particular, political violence in education has a unique legacy. it is the outcome of a powerful and vocal student movement which resulted in schools becoming important sites of anti-apartheid struggle. the numerous student protests in the 1970s and 1980s were followed by an alternative education system called "people's education for people's power" which generated debate and challenged the apartheid regime. interestingly, the escalation of political violence that targeted the education community during the apartheid era helped to raise international awareness. this in turn initiated important changes that improved schooling and challenged discriminatory policies against the black majority and other groups that were grossly disadvantaged by the apartheid system. this article first explores the impact of political violence in south africa on education during the period leading to the first democratic election in 1994 and the parallel effect of schools socializing students into cultural violence. second, this article examines the notion of unity and diversity in multicultural programs in south africa. the article discusses ways in which education and schooling may be used to re-socialize children and thereby promote national identity, as well as cultural, ethnic, and linguistic tolerance. it suggests ways in which teachers as transformative intellectuals may assume the role of promoting change in the transformation process. lastly, the article presents an alternative critical pedagogy that should inform teachers' practice. race, ethnicity and identity formation political turmoil and armed conflict have negatively affected schooling in various parts of the world. this is especially true in transitional developing countries that have recently gained independence and are in the process of discarding the legacies of colonialism and imperialism. many african colonial states used education to the impact of political violence on education in south africa: past, present and future current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 63 indoctrinate and subordinate the african "natives" servants of the colonial system. issues regarding language of instruction and underlying cultural values (including religion) were often sources of conflict and violent protest. even today, the content of curriculum, in addition to international standardized tests, are sources of conflict, debate and political turmoil. in many african countries the resurging nationalism that arose out of the independence movements of the 1960s reinforced earlier colonial classifications of people according to territorial distinctions. paralleling the development of nationalist movements was the development of "tribal classification" or ethnic divisions (wallerstein 1991, p. 189). wallerstein sensitizes us to the influence of labels, stating: "people shoot each other every day over the question of labels" (1991, p. 71). labels and identities have profound effects on political violence and schooling. it is also worth noting that labels and categories in apartheid south africa were important ways to divide and control the various groups that lived in the country. in south africa, apartheid created a taxonomy of racial classifications to aid in the pursuit of apartheid policies. the education system, perhaps more than any other sector, helped to reproduce categories of the "african," "coloured," "indian," and "white," and served as a primary means of constructing and reproducing racial and ethnic identities. these classifications determined which schools certain students could or could not attend. the following portion of this article will explore how history and "pastness" were used in education to encourage political protest that often resulted in political violence in south africa. history: political violence and education in 1948 the south african national party formulated what subsequently came to be known as the christian national education (cne) policy, which was designed to justify apartheid and separate development ideology. a major political consequence of the cne policy was the design of a segregated educational system with separate schools for different cultural, ethnic, tribal, and linguistic groups, ultimately culminating in the infamous bantu education policy act of 1953 (eislen, 1953). the justification for separate schools was contained in ten principles, each dealing with specific aspects of society (for example--these principles justified separate schools and curricula, separate living areas, and restrictions on employment for blacks.) this was embedded in cne policy and penetrated education in south africa for over forty years. one of the principles advocated the creation of separate schools for the different races, specifically because each race had a distinct culture, ethnicity, language, history and religion. in justifying separate residential areas, bantustans' policy and the homelands system, articles 6 (5) of the institute of christian national education, argued that: "we believe that every nation is rooted in its own soil which is allocated to it by the creator" (1948). this cne policy was exclusivist and chauvinist in that the form of christianity it invoked implied that white afrikaners were the chosen race. accordingly, "the christian infers to the views as expressed in the creeds of the three afrikaans churches, that religious teaching in schools was to accord with the theology of the three afrikaans churches" (rose and tunmer, 1975, p. 119). following calvinistic principles, nationalism isaac m. ntshoe november 15, 1999 64 implied the afrikaner nation and excluded all other groups in the country. the apartheid hegemony reinforced beliefs that god had allocated separate places to people of different races (institute of christian national education, 1948); thus, people of african origin in south africa were grouped together in particular geographical regions which later became bantustans, self-governing states and independent homelands. the result of these groupings was a resurgence of ethnic-nationalism and identity (cross, 1992, p. 142). however, the [un]banning of political prisoners and the release of nelson mandela in 1992 resulted in the amalgamation of all the former homelands into a unitary south africa. this move led to the inevitable political conflicts that spilled over into education and schooling. although education and schooling in south africa was successfully employed to suppress particular communities, education simultaneously facilitated social change, political emancipation, and democracy. the creation of strong resistance movements that challenged the ruling party was one of the unplanned effects of bantu education. hence, in south africa, schools also played a major role in transforming the country from an apartheid to a democratic state. during the 1970s and 80s education became the center of political struggle in south africa when fierce and often violent anti-apartheid protests were held in schools throughout south africa. "liberation before education" was the protest mantra that became the battle call for the liberation movement. the international media coverage of white south african police taunting and abusing children helped to focus intense pressure on the apartheid regime. while the student uprisings were pivotal in challenging and tearing away at apartheid, there were also several consequences. the culture of violence that arose in schools as part of the resistance movement carried over into the learning climate and the way schooling was viewed. criticism of the curriculum extended to criticism of teachers and eventually to schools as part of the establishment. as a result, many schools failed to function as centers of learning and many were eventually shut down. the inability of the education sector to educate nearly a generation of students reflects the negative impact of violence and political conflict on education. political violence in the kwazulu province during the period under review in this article is more complex and unique because of the historical conflicts that existed in ethnic, tribal and cultural areas for many decades. kwazulu natal is the south african province that is dominated by the zulus. historically the zulus were members of the inkatha freedom party, the most significant rival to the african national congress (anc), which consisted of a variety of ethnic and racial groups across south africa. hence, political strife in kwazulu must be understood against the background of the political rivalry between anc and ifp supporters and also against the background of ethnic differences between xhosas and zulus. these differences were undoubtedly encouraged by the white nationalist party in the implementation of its divide and rule policy. perhaps the most frequently recorded incidents of the aftermath of political violence during this period were those between the african national congress (anc) and the inkatha freedom party (ifp). the south african institute of race relations (1996/7, p. 601) records thousands of victims of violence from both the anc and ifp sides. clearly, the fruit of the divide and rule tactic embedded and encapsulated the separate development policy of the cne. tensions between the ifp and the anc were fed by the the impact of political violence on education in south africa: past, present and future current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 65 former apartheid regime, which used the ifp to destabilize the anc liberation movement. thousands died in political and ethnic clashes staged between the ifp and other political rivalries in south africa. in the run up to the first democratic elections in 1994, when political affiliations and group allegiances became more pronounced, ethnic violence escalated in kwazulu natal, culminating in what was perhaps the most devastating social and political upheaval since the bhambatha rebellion of 1906 in which thousands of africans were killed (nzimande and thusi, 1998, p.3). defining educational borders today, a large degree of political tension in south africa continues to revolve around questions of labels, identity, and political categorization. in these countries political affiliations are often related to cultural, linguistic, racial and ethnic divisions which predate colonialism, and, to a large extent, still dictate national politics and civil society. identity/ethnicity in political groupings were also significant in traditional african society. today, in many transitional african societies, inter-group and power issues across groups have re-emerged since the colonial structures that suppressed them have now disappeared. such divisions are often expressed through open confrontation and violence. the extent of the problem of violence in education is captured in the following: in my class, there is a desk that has been empty for the past months or so, despite the fact that we share desks in our class because of overcrowding…. his desk use to seat my classmate who was hacked to death by inkatha just outside the school yard (nzimande and thusi 1991, p. 7, sic). political violence serves to delineate and define particular borders--parameters in education. although the uniting force among the oppressed has been a fight against white domination, ethnic nationalism became prominent in the school curriculum during the period leading to the democratic election in south africa in 1994. this was understandable because the apartheid policy deliberately encouraged people to develop pride exclusively in their own culture, ethnicity, language and history. this policy created fertile ground for further political violence (christie, 1990). nzimande and thusi (1991) argue that, in line with ethnic nationalisms supported by apartheid ideology, the ifp syllabi was made compulsory as a non-examination subject in all kwazulu/natal schools. they further contend that the two aims of the syllabi were to create unified ideas that blended in with the goals of ifp policy and to facilitate the creation of the ifp youth brigade branches in all schools to implement these objectives. moreover, in the 1990s, just as there were "no-go areas" because of political differences or affiliations, children could no longer attend schools in areas dominated by rival political parties. for example, mbali township in the pietermaritzburg region was clearly divided between the anc and ifp supporters--children from either side encountered difficulties if attending school in the area controlled by rival parties (ntshoe, 1999). an src member also had this to say about ways in which politics defined the parameters of education in the kwazulu/natal province: isaac m. ntshoe november 15, 1999 66 "he died in my own hands before i could get him transport to hospital…since then, i have had to arrive at school either very early or late…. sometimes i leave school together with other students but make sure that i travel inside a bigger group. that is how i have afforded to be still attending school up to now" (nzimande and thusi 1991, p. 8). research conducted by ntshoe (1999) in the implementation of innovation and change by the science education project in 1999 in the mbali township, supports the evidence provided by nzimande and thusi. students attending schools in this township in 1995 related sad tales about the effects of political strife in the area. some schools were standing empty not because there were no children to use them, but because children were scared to go to school while other schools were closed completely. furthermore, the closure of schools outside the normal school term or the extension of school holidays because of political instability was a common phenomenon in the area. furthermore, violence external to school is complemented by internal violence. the south african institute of race relations (1995/96) observed that violent crime, such as assault with the intention of committing grievous bodily harm and rape, increased substantially in 1995, particularly affecting women and girls. weapons that were used or intended to be used against political opponents, are often seen in schools, especially in the urban areas. multiculturalism i postulated earlier in this article that education and schooling are necessarily political and that they have been systematically used to support the apartheid ideology. i also argued that the christian national education policy formed the cornerstone of the education policy during the apartheid era and promoted racial, ethnic, tribal and cultural diversities at the expense of unity. one of the key strategies used to achieve the intended separatist outcomes was the introduction of multicultural educational discourse. according to christian national education (cne) policy, multiculturalism exclusively emphasized racial, cultural, and ethnicity/tribal differences. consequently, multicultural education within the cne discourse promoted fragmentation by emphasizing the importance of ethnic differences and stressing the need for autonomy (garcia, 1991). policies enforcing ethnic autonomy were pursued regardless of the danger of promoting a particular type of nationalism that clearly had the potential of undermining the notion of nationhood (graham-brown, 1991). in this article, i attempted to demonstrate that education and schools have the propensity for re-defining and maintaining social change. it is clear that schools need to re-socialize children into new roles so that they can play a part in the changed conditions. in the south african context, education and schooling should be employed to inculcate values that are consistent with building democracy. this includes tolerance, respect of individual cultures, languages, religion and traditions. school teachers need to promote democratic principles including equity of genders so that it highlights the problems of women abuse and rape that is so common in south africa. schools should encourage "minority groups to vigorously counteract the influences of whatever group or individuals seek to deny those rights such as those relating to gender discrimination and violence against women and other minority groups" (lynch, 1989, p. 49). the impact of political violence on education in south africa: past, present and future current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 67 the thrust of my argument in this article is that if multiculturalism takes the form of "unity in diversity," it will be an effective strategy in promoting the cultural, ethnic, political, and linguistic diversity of a democracy. in this article, i argue that multicultural education has the potential to promote the notion of unity in diversity, provided that multicultural education policies consider the socioeconomic contexts in which models are designed. however, when not adequately interrogated, multiculturalism is open to misuse. bombote (1993) reveals the problem surrounding multiculturalism and the way in which it helped to justify racial segregation in south africa. he observed that: "culturally diverse societies that pursued monist policies (whether in the form of singleparty government or denial of cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversities) have paid a high price in the form of civil war and internal strife" (bombote, 1993, p.9). skepticism and misgivings about multiculturalism are understandable because it often means the incorporation of minority cultures into the mainstream dominant culture (thompson, 1981). furthermore, traditionally, multiculturalism "emphasises differences rather than similarities, categories rather than de-categorization and this inevitably contributes to stereotype thinking, increased inter-ethnic anxiety and accentuates outopen rejection" (lynch, 1989, p.43). banks (1992) argues that multicultural education in the us failed because multiculturalism involved the injection of multicultural components into existing discourses, rather than the creation of components developed from an alternative discourse. in addition, banks asserts that this program failed in part because of the textbook-driven nature of the us curricula. the argument is that because of financial constraints, textbook publishers are not often willing to create textbooks that fundamentally challenge the existing canons, paradigms and interpretations within the popular culture (banks, 1992). in contrast to the failed multicultural model described above, successful multicultural models must be informed by an alternative multicultural discourse and global perspective. globalized multicultural education promotes commonness and similarity of the human species and encourages the personalization of decisions and judgements. the latter implies treatment of individual rather than group merits. such a model of education seeks equity by celebrating legitimate differences, as well as simultaneously promoting a common knowledge and insight about things that human societies share (lynch, 1989). the two dimensions of multiculturalism that should be incorporated in a curriculum are content integration and the notion of knowledge creation. content integration means conscious use of examples and content from a variety of cultures and groups in order to illustrate key concepts, principles, and general themes throughout various disciplines. knowledge construction, another dimension of multiculturalism, implies a pedagogy that will enable teachers and educators to help and encourage students to understand, investigate and determine how implicit cultural assumptions, frames of reference, principles and biases within a discipline influence the ways in which knowledge is constructed (banks, 1992). isaac m. ntshoe november 15, 1999 68 in creating an acceptable multicultural curriculum, teachers must develop forms of knowledge and classroom practices that validate experiences and rediscover the strengths and weaknesses of students from designated groups (aronowitz and giroux, 1986). this implies that teachers' practice should be informed by a critical pedagogy that recognizes the experiences that children from subordinated social categories bring to the school environment (aronowitz and giroux, 1986). conclusion in this article, i have explored the impact of political violence on education in countries with diverse cultural, ethnic, tribal and racial groups, and i have used south africa as an example. the thrust of the argument is that, intolerance and subsequent violence toward those of different political affiliations and designated groups are products of identities and labels people use against each other. history reveals the origin of political violence in education in south africa from 1948 to the present, with christian national education policy, one of the primary methods for influencing the education process and content. the kwazulu/natal province serves as an example of how political violence has regulated the parameters of education and schooling. in analyzing the interconnections between politics, nation building, and education, i attempted to show the relationship between politics and education, while noting some reservations against multicultural programs as specified in cne policy. if multicultural programs are to gain legitimacy, they must be carefully analyzed and conceptualized within the south african context in order to promote unity in diversity, as well as nationhood. references aronowitz, s. & giroux, h. (1986). education under siege: the conservative, liberal and radical debate over schooling. london: routledge and kegan paul. banks, j. (1992). multicultural education: approaches, developments and dimensions. in j. lynch, c. modgil & s. modgil (eds.), cultural diversity and the schools (vol.1, pp. 83-94). london: the falmer press. bombote, d. (1991). democracy in africa: which form will it take? development and cooperation, 2, 8-9. berlin: german foundation for international development. christie, p. (1991). the right to learn: the struggle for education in south africa (2nd ed.) johannesburg: raven press. cross, m. (1992). resistance and transformation: education culture and reconstruction in south africa. johannesburg: skotaville. eiselen, w.w.m. (1951). report of commission on native education 1945-51. pretoria: government press. garcia, r.l. (1991). teaching in a pluralistic society. new york: harper. the impact of political violence on education in south africa: past, present and future current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 69 graham-brown, s. (1991). education in developing countries. new york: longmans. institute of christian national education (1948). federal of afrikaans cultural organization. johannesburg: institute of christian national education. lynch, t. (1989). multicultural education in a global society. london: the falmer press. ntshoe, i.m. (1999). implementation and institutionalization of innovation and change: the case of sep in the four regions. phd research submitted at the university of the witwatersrand. johannesburg. nzimande, b. & thusi, s. (1998). 'children of war': the impact of political violence in schooling in natal. in democratic governance of public schooling in south africa (pp. 3-20). durban: education policy unit (natal). rose, b. & tunmer, r. (1975). documents of south african education. johannesburg; ad donkers. south african institute of race relations (1995/97). conflict between the african national congress and the inkatha freedom party in kwazulu-natal (pp.601-606). south african institute of race relations: braamfontein. thompson, a. r. (1981). education and development in africa. london: macmillan. wallerstein, i. (1991). social conflict in post-independent black africa: the concept of race and status-group reconsidered. in e. balibar & i. wallerstein (eds.), race nation, class: ambiguous identities (pp.187-203). london: verso. wallerstein, i. (1991). the construction of peoplehood: racism, nationalism, ethnicity. in e. balibar & wallerstein (eds.), race, nation, class: ambiguous identities (pp.71-85). london: verso. aung, t. a., & straubhaar, r. a policy shift from state to non-state in education aid current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 1, winter 2021 a policy shift from state to non-state in education aid: a critical discourse analysis of the uk’s development policies thu ya aung texas state university rolf straubhaar texas state university due to the historically outsized influence of the united kingdom’s development assistance office on international aid, a better understanding of the underlying ideologies and political priorities guiding this agency would help the larger aid community more clearly understand the power dynamics and structural context of the development industry. however, these ideologies and dynamics are often left implicit and are not always easily understood. the purpose of this article is to use critical discourse analysis to unpack the ideologies, political priorities and power dynamics present in dfid’s official education policy documents. in so doing, we make the implicit explicit, and begin to unpack the implicit meanings and assumptions that are present in these written texts, particularly regarding the deprioritized role of the state in providing a high-quality education. we argue that this analysis reveals an underlying perception within dfid that the private sector is more effective at providing public education in developing countries than the public sector. the department for international development (dfid)i was a department under the united kingdom (uk) government responsible for administering uk official development assistance (oda). the uk stood in third place after the united states and germany among the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) development assistance committee list of donor countries, contributing 12.7% of total global oda in 2019ii (fcdo, 2020). the uk contributes its oda as both bilateral aid (i.e. aid earmarked for particular aid-receiving countries) and multilateral aid (i.e. as a part of an unearmarked pooled global fund). in 2019, the uk’s bilateral development aid accounted for 67.5% of its total oda, and it saw an overall upward trend from 63.2% in 2015 (fcdo, 2020). bilateral oda allows the donor country (in this case, the uk) to choose the priority areas they will support in aid-receiving countries, reflecting more directly the priorities of their citizens and taxpayers, while multilateral oda is generally considered politically neutral (kilmister, 2016). in 2019, africa received the largest share (50.6 %) of the uk’s bilateral oda, followed by asia (41.8%), americas (4.1%), europe (3.2%), and the pacific (0.3%). pakistan, ethiopia, and afghanistan were the top 3 countries receiving the uk’s country-specific bilateral oda (fcdo, 2020). since dfid is among the largest donors listed by the oecd’s development assistance committee, its underlying ideologies and political priorities have the potential to exert © 2021, aung & straubhaar. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(1), 61-76. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en aung & straubhaar current issues in comparative education 62 enormous influence on education policy in aid-receiving developing countries. however, while understanding these underlying ideologies and priorities would help aid-receiving countries, scholars and lay observers to better understand the larger aid policy environment, they are typically not stated explicitly so as to be easily understood. in response, the purpose of this article is to unpack these ideologies and priorities using dfid official policy documents, with the goal of making the implicit explicit. to do this, we use critical discourse analysis (fairclough, 1995) to analyze dfid’s four primary education policy documents issued between 2010 and 2018, with the purpose of examining and unpacking the implicit meanings and assumptions that are present in these written texts. to reach this aim, we will first ground this work in the established literature, reviewing the growing role the private sector has played in educational provision in developing countries, as well as the use of critical discourse analysis to examine the relationships between developing countries’ education policies and international aid organizations. we will then describe our methodology based in critical discourse analysis, before delving into our findings. as we will argue here, dfid’s educational policy documents contain powerful rhetoric on the role of the state in providing education, implying a strong ideological stance regarding the relative efficacy of state versus non-state actors in providing a high-quality education. more specifically, we argue that the rhetoric used in these dfid documents demonstrates the perception that public education in developing countries has failed, while the private sector provides a degree of quality and outreach the public sector lacks. private sector in education of developing countries private schools for the wealthy have not been unusual in developing countries. however, starting in the 1990s, a large number of low-cost private schools have emerged in the poorest parts of the developing world, particularly in slums and rural areas (heyneman & stern, 2014; lewin, 2007; tooley, 2004; tooley et al., 2011). there is a wide spectrum of relative government support and regulation regarding those low-cost private schools, from non-existent to official government sponsorship through voucher programs, which buy seats in private schools for needy students, or contract out private firms to run public schools (heyneman & stern, 2014). in their research in six african and south asian countries, tooley et al. (2011) categorized low-cost private schools into three categories: government-aided, governmentrecognized, and government-unrecognized. the government-recognized status allows a school to organize state examinations and to issue official graduation paperwork, meaning students who attend these schools can continue to a higher level of schooling and have better employment opportunities (tooley et al., 2011). parents’ motivation to send their children to low-cost private schools often relates to the perceived better quality of those private schools or the inability of public education systems to reach the poorest areas, especially the fastest growing city slums (heyneman & stern, 2014; tooley et. al, 2011). the proliferation of low-cost private schools in developing countries related to the pressure of the education for all policy agenda on those countries whose public education systems could not respond to a dramatic increase of enrollment in basic education within the educational for all timeframe (lewin, 2007; rose, 2005). a policy shift from state to non-state in education aid current issues in comparative education 63 the impact of low-cost private schools there has been a debate around whether or not low-cost private schools have a positive impact on the education systems of developing countries (heyneman & stern, 2014; lewin, 2007; tooley, 2004; tooley et. al, 2011). professor james tooley from the united kingdom is an ardent advocate of low-cost private schools, and he advocates for governments to relinquish their role as education providers (wilby, 2013). tooley (2004) boldly asserted that “government schools cannot provide quality education for all,” referring to the probe team's 1999 public report on education in india and the 2000 oxfam education report by watkins as examples of how low-cost private schools are better than their public counterparts (p. 4). tooley (2004) has claimed that public schools in many developing countries lack accountability, have chronic teacher absenteeism, and little time on task for students. watkins (2004), who wrote the oxfam education report that tooley draws upon, argued in response that tooley “selectively interprets and then misinterprets” the findings from the oxfam report and the probe team report to advocate for low-cost private schools (p. 8). watkins has argued that state education systems in developing countries can deliver quality education if there are "participative and accountable structures" in politics, whereas "wholesale privatization" of the basic education delivery will deepen inequality (watkins, 2004, p.11). on a similar note, lewin (2007) has concluded that low-cost private schools have only "a limited impact" in achieving universal access to education in south-saharan africa (p.18). while recognizing that private schools have expanded access to education, lewin pointed out that they do not reach children from the poorest 20% at the primary level and more children at the secondary level (lewin, 2007). based on their multi-country case studies of low-cost non-government schools in jamaica, kenya, tanzania, ghana, indonesia, and pakistan, heyneman and stern (2014) have recommended that non-government schools must be regulated and included in governmental education management systems. as can be seen in this review of the literature there is still debate on whether the expansion of low-cost private schools in developing countries ameliorates educational inequality or exacerbates it. another crucial question is whether low-cost private schools do better than public schools in promoting student academic achievement. several studies have demonstrated evidence that low-cost private schools do promote higher student achievement, at least as measured by standardized tests. tooley et al. (2011) randomly selected low-cost private schools and public schools in lagos, nigeria, and in delhi and hyderabad, india to compare the performance of students from unrecognized private schools, staterecognized schools, and zero-tuition, state-run schools. their results show that students from both government-recognized and government-unrecognized private schools outperformed their counterparts from state-run schools (tooley et al., 2011). in a similar study of low-cost private schools in brazil, students from two brazilian high schools with a co-management model based in public-private partnerships outperformed their publicschool counterparts in state examinations (chattopadhay & nogueira, 2014). however, while these two studies (chattopadhay & nogueira, 2014; tooley et al., 2011) found private schools to outperform their public counterparts in student achievement, aung & straubhaar current issues in comparative education 64 heyneman and stern’s (2014) found only mixed results in comparing low-cost private schools and public schools in jamaica, kenya, tanzania, ghana, indonesia, and pakistan. another rigorous review of 59 studies by ashley et al. (2014) showed that private school students outperformed compared with their public-school counterparts, but “there is ambiguity about the size of the true private school effect,” and “many children may not be achieving basic competencies even in private schools” (p. 1). since findings pointed to some critical gaps in evidence, ashley et al. (2014) concluded: “what is clear… is the need for more targeted research to fill the gaps in our understanding of the role and impact of private schools in developing countries” (p. 3). while this study does not provide the type of quantitative evidence for or against low-cost private schools outlined in this literature review, it does document how, despite the lack of consensus in the academic literature regarding the impact of low-cost private schools, staffers and report writers at institutions like dfid already hold opinions and beliefs regarding the relative strength of public and private schools in developing countries, and those opinions are revealed through their rhetoric and word choice. before examining that rhetoric and word choice with our own critical discourse analysis, we will now explore the literature on previous studies that have engaged in similar forms of critical discourse analysis on governmental policy documents. policy relationships between developing countries and international organizations: insights from critical discourse analysis international organizations have exerted influence on the education policy development process across the developing world. most aid-receiving countries receive technical or financial assistance from “development partners” or donors, like dfid (baxter, 2010; birbirso, 2013; king, 2007; mccormick, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016; nuzdor, 2013; rappleye, 2011; shajahan, 2012). in the existing literature, scholars have conducted critical discourse analysis of education policies and public policy documents from developing countries like the lao people’s democratic republic, cambodia, and ghana, revealing that influence from international organizations has led to the emergence of hybrid discourses of ‘global’ education ideologies in developing world contexts (see mccormick, 2012; nuzdor, 2013). nuzdor (2013) analyzed selected documents on ghana’s free compulsory universal basic education (fcube) policy and revealed that in these documents there was a discursive shift from rights-based social democratic ideals to a neoliberal discourse focused on economic concerns. specifically, nuzdor (2013) found a link between this neoliberal discursive shift and when ghana began to implement world bank-supported policy strategies. in the lao people’s democratic republic (lao pdr) and cambodia, mccormick (2012) found similar neoliberal, individual-centric globalization discourses from international organizations, though in those cases that outside rhetoric mixed more strongly with existing centralized bureaucratic discourses within the existing policy structures of these two countries. mccormick (2012) noticed that in both lao pdr and cambodia, there were intertextual links between both countries’ national constitutions and education for all (efa) documents that, when analyzed, revealed a power struggle for dominance in the policy discourse between local governments and international organizations. for a policy shift from state to non-state in education aid current issues in comparative education 65 instance, the laotian constitution carried traces of both socialist ideas of nation-building alongside neoliberal tenets of privatization with regard to education. mccormick’s analysis of education policy documents in lao pdr and cambodia led him to conclude that “access to formal, primary education is promoted in the service of growth, and private provision to the benefit of the few, at the expense of improving quality in education for the marginalized or even the poor majority” (mccormick, p. 39). while these documents contained competing discourses of socialism and neoliberalism, in the end the neoliberal trend won out and held the greater way over policy (for similar results in papua new guinea and vanuatu, see mccormick, 2011, 2014, 2016). at times, the literature has shown instances when imported “modern” ideas result in unintended negative consequences when implemented. through a critical discourse analysis of the ethiopian education reform policy for broadcasting secondary school lessons from the capital city addis ababa to outlying rural areas, birbirso (2013) found the policy had come about due to external pressures from funding agencies, resulting in what he referred to as a form of technological determinism, in which local teachers only need to serve as the “gatekeepers of the screen teacher” (p. 196). according to birbirso’s (2013) argument, this remote education policy represented the type of failure that comes from (over)technologizing education, replacing local classroom teachers’ expertise with pre-recorded broadcasted lessons that need only be “facilitated” on the ground locally. another portion of the literature that utilizes critical discourse analysis to examine the relationship between international aid organizations and policy in developing countries is focused on higher education policy, and comes to similar conclusions to the studies cited above. in terms of more theoretical contributions, shajahan (2012) studied the role of four international organizations (unesco, the world bank, the oecd, and the european union) in globalizing higher education policy, arguing that these international organizations serve as “discursive forces” (p. 380) which shape the way policymakers think about learning, education policy, and education in general. shajahan (2012) contended that these organizations have such force due to developing countries’ dependence on their technical and/or financial support. a number of scholars made similar arguments with country-specific studies. for example, baxter’s (2010) comparative textual analysis of the world bank’s 2002 higher education policy and the 2008 higher education policy of the rwandan ministry of education reveal that discourses based in human capital theory and a general market-oriented view towards the education sector which are prevalent in the world bank documents are also interestingly replicated and reflected in rwanda’s educational policies. baxter also found that such discourses were present in the vision and mission statement of public institutions of higher education in rwanda. similarly, julia preece (2013) analyzed policies related to lifelong learning in lesotho and tanzania, arguing that international aid organizations’ neoliberal influence on both countries had been negative, marginalizing the discourses of indigenous african worldviews. koch and weingart (2016) argued that the silencing of alternative discourses perpetuated long-standing inequalities, with government policy agendas being “hijacked” (p. 179) by foreign experts from international organizations when aid dependency in developing countries is high. koch aung & straubhaar current issues in comparative education 66 and weingart (2016) concluded that “the prevailing sentiment of being at the mercy of donors has paralysed leadership and administration which fails to set or refrains from articulating an agenda of its own” (p. 208). critique of international organizations' development policies has also come from feminist perspectives (see roberts, 2015). notably, monkman and hoffman (2013) used feminist critical discourse analysis to analyze three hundred policy documents published by 14 organizations between 1995 and 2008. they found that across these documents, education policy was effectively narrowed in three different ways: first, the logic of the arguments is left unexplained; second, policies are not grounded by theories; and third, superficial accountability notions are used (such as comparative headcounts of male and female students). notably, many documents they analyzed revealed the policy agenda of girls' education focused on improving their "performance in traditional female roles" (p. 79), a move that paradoxically perpetuates the very gender disparities that international organizations claim to challenge. overall, the existing literature has shown that policy documents created by international funding organizations, such as (in our case) dfid, are a rich data source to be mined using critical discourse analysis, as the language used in such documents reveals a great deal about the motivating ideologies and political priorities of the people in these organizations. furthermore, this review of the literature has shown why this type of analysis is urgently needed, as these prior studies have revealed the extent to which these policy documents have influenced national policies in aid-receiving countries. in the following sections, we will build upon this literature with our study of the implicit ideologies and political priorities revealed in dfid’s policy literature. methods our primary means of data analysis in this study is critical discourse analysis (fairclough, 1995, 2001). the primary use of critical discourse analysis is to unpack the implicit meanings and assumptions inherent in texts, and by so doing reveal the larger ideologies and social structures that inform those texts (fairclough, 1995, 2001). more specifically, we operationalize critical discourse analysis as the act of taking a piece of writing or a speech act (in other words, a form of discourse) and trying to understand not only the explicit, surface-level meaning of what is being written or said, but also trying to identify and understand any underlying messages that are being communicated to the listening or reading audience. in this article, the pieces of writing in question are the four primary policy position documents created within dfid from the period between 2010 and 2018. we have included these documents because they represent the clearest distillation of dfid’s position on the current global state of education, as each of the four documents were prepared as position documents which represented the uk governmental position on international education policy at the time of preparation (namely, in 2010, 2013, 2015, and 2018). the first document chronologically (2010) was produced through the uk national audit office by dfid officers, and the following three (2013, 2015 and 2018) were produced internally within dfid. a policy shift from state to non-state in education aid current issues in comparative education 67 in this article, we are particularly interested in the implicit meanings communicated within dfid’s educational policy documents regarding the role of the state in providing education, and the efficacy of state versus non-state actors in providing an education of high quality. in the following section, we explore our findings from that analysis in greater depth. findings in our analysis of the dfid policy documents identified above, we found that all four documents followed a common narrative: namely, they began by creating a sense of urgency around the need for global educational reform, followed by arguments that such reform was urgently needed due to the incompetence of current public educational systems, ending with a focus on how educational policy should focus more on the intended recipients of reformed systems (namely, the poor and the marginalized) rather than the means of delivery of those systems (i.e. private versus public). each of these narrative steps will be explored in turn. as the reader will see, this rhetoric becomes more and more explicit as these documents progress chronologically, with the 2018 document containing the most explicit examples. as a result, the reader will also see more examples cited from the 2018 document than from its predecessors. creating a sense of urgency dfid’s education policy documents assert that there is a learning crisis in developing countries. this assertion is supported by using shocking figures: for example, “over 90 percent of primary-age children in low-income countries and 75 percent of children in lower-middle income countries—more than 330 million children—are not expected to read or do basic maths by the end of primary school” (dfid, 2018, p. 3). in the 2018 dfid policy statement, it is argued then that developing countries’ curricular priority should be basic literacy and numeracy. for example: education systems in many developing and conflict-affected countries do not incentivise progress on basic literacy and numeracy….dfid’s response will focus on tackling the learning crisis at its root by supporting children to learn the basics of literacy and numeracy (dfid, 2018, p. 3). dfid’s mandate to end extreme poverty means that our main objective will be ensuring children learn the basics of literacy and numeracy…tackling the learning crisis at its root. (dfid, 2018, p. 9) although it is true that basic literacy and numeracy are important foundational skills for education, and the statistics that precede these policy statements do display there is a lot of work to reach these goals, it is notable that urgency is given to these positions when they have effectively been the subject of global, multilateral efforts for decades, first through the millennium development goals (james, 2006) and later the sustainable development goals (nazar et al., 2018). this reflects a long-standing trend in developed country policy in both domestic and international affairs (see, for example, the way the reagan administration utilized the report a nation at risk), in which rhetoric implying urgency is used to promote the government’s policy agenda (mcintush, 2000). aung & straubhaar current issues in comparative education 68 framing public education systems as incompetent across all four dfid policy documents we analyzed, public education systems in developing countries are portrayed across the board as being incompetent. more specifically, they are often described as not providing marginalized children and girls with access to education. these comments are common enough across all four documents that we organized them in table 1 below. as can be seen, this rhetoric grows in degree chronologically across the four reports, with the 2018 report containing the largest and most explicit number of examples. table 1. framings of public systems as incompetent. source document pertinent quotes bilateral support to public education (2010) data on costs and progress in countries is generally weak and incomplete (p. 5). [enrollment] is not a sufficient measure of access to education because pupil dropout in developing countries is high, and the amount of education delivered and received is low (p. 6). pupil attainment has been poorly measured…. high enrollment increases the proportion of children from uneducated families, increasing the difficulty of improved attainment (p. 6). on teacher performance, we found growing awareness of problems but as yet little success in securing improvement (p. 7). school inspection arrangements exist in each country we visited, but are not fully functional or resourced (p. 7). … available evidence indicates that aided education systems remain inefficient, consuming scarce existing financial and human resources (p. 9). student completion and attainment, however, remain low (p. 18). gender parity remains a major challenge in countries where culture and religion influence girls’ enrollment and retention (p. 18). countries find it difficult to enrol the last 5 to 10 per cent of children, comprising 2.6 the most excluded and poorest, often found in rural areas (p. 19). course completion is off-track to achieve the millennium goal, reflecting high numbers of children who enrol but subsequently drop out of school (p. 19). …available data show low standards and little or no progress (p. 21). dfid education teams acknowledge that low attainment may also indicate poor quality education and teaching in large classes (p. 23). a policy shift from state to non-state in education aid current issues in comparative education 69 teachers are not delivering the volumes of teaching required (p. 27). improving learning, expanding opportunities (2013) …clearly more needs to be done, and done differently, to ensure all girls and boys can access a quality education and learn (p. 3). rural girls from the poorest families are locked out of education in 10 countries, and at least half of poor, rural girls have never been to school (p. 6). dfid’s bilateral programme is well aligned to fragile states and countries furthest from meeting the education mdgs (p. 7). in some fragile and conflict-affected states, where it may be more difficult to work through government… (p. 11). dfid works with the private sector in situations where the public sector is not sufficiently present (the slums of nairobi for example) or where state provision is so weak that the private sector has stepped in to fill the gap (p. 13). government policy: education in developing countries (2015) more than 57 million children around the world do not go to primary school. at least 250 million children cannot read or count, even if they have spent four years in school (p. 3). every child should have the chance to go to school. but it’s not just about getting them into the classroom. it’s also about making sure they are well taught and that what they learn actually improves their opportunities in life (p. 3). [by 2015, we will] spend half of our direct education aid on unstable or war-torn countries where more than two-fifths of the world’s out-of-school children are found, and where a lack of education can directly contribute to conflict (p. 3). …large proportions of children in sub-saharan africa and south asia [are] still not making it into the classroom (p. 3). … evidence shows girls are disproportionately excluded from education and that educating girls helps lift whole communities out of poverty (p. 4). the girls’ education challenge (gec) will help up to a million of the world’s poorest girls have an opportunity to improve their lives through education (p. 4). get children learning (2018) business as usual will not achieve the transformative change that is needed (p. 1). yet many teachers lack the knowledge and skills to do their jobs well. too often, they are absent from the classroom, meaning that precious resources go to waste and the potential of their students is unfulfilled (p. 1). we will support national leaders ready to take a fresh look at how their workforces are recruited, trained and motivated, so that they can make the bold changes that are needed (p. 1). aung & straubhaar current issues in comparative education 70 we will support ambitious reform to make education systems— across public and non-state sectors—more accountable, effective and inclusive of poor and marginalised children (p. 1). i know that many of the challenges which hold back progress on learning are highly entrenched in education systems and that achieving change will be difficult (p. 2) education systems in developing countries have expanded schooling at an impressive rate in recent decades, but there is now an urgent need to drive up quality and learning (p. 3). this is a tragic waste of human potential, holds back development and poses risks to stability. it is also an enormous waste of public resources… (p. 3). education systems in many developing and conflict-affected countries do not incentivise progress on basic literacy and numeracy (p. 3). we call on all countries facing a shortfall here to take urgent action, ensuring that poor and marginalised children—who face the greatest challenges—are not left behind (p. 3). yet education systems in developing and conflict-affected countries are not consistently delivering quality education, leading to a learning crisis (p. 5). learning levels are low (p. 5). there are huge inequalities in learning….there is often little support once children fall behind (p. 5). barrier to access persist (p. 5). vulnerable education systems will come under enormous strain to boost quality while accommodating growing numbers of students (p. 7). waste is high….unproductive spending…can lead to further waste higher up the system (p. 7). we call on all countries where children are not learning these foundation and transferable skills to take urgent action (p. 9). teachers lack the basic knowledge they need to do their jobs (p. 14). teachers also lack good teaching skills (p. 14). there are too few teachers (p. 14). teachers are not present where they are needed most (p. 14). teachers are themselves products of a failing system (p. 14). teacher training is critical to ensuring teachers teach well, particularly in countries with weak education systems where many candidates start with a deficit in foundation skills. however, much teacher training in developing and conflictaffected countries remains ineffective (p. 16). a policy shift from state to non-state in education aid current issues in comparative education 71 many education systems remain focused on getting more children into school, rather than improving quality and learning (p. 19). system incentives to ensure poor and marginalized children are learning the basics are weak (p. 19). many education systems lack coherence (p. 19). we will help national decision-makers to establish a clear picture of how their education system is working through good diagnosis….we will also support more effective spending, through cutting waste (p. 20). in most developing countries, overall levels of learning are low, but poor and marginalised children usually learn the least (p. 23). in most developing and conflict-affected countries, there is an enormous gap between policy and delivery on supporting children with disabilities and little evidence on successful interventions which can be delivered affordably at scale (p. 26). the reader may note that in these quotes, nearly all areas of the public education sector are seen as lacking—student enrollment, student attainment, student content mastery, teaching students with disabilities, gender parity, education in fragile contexts, teacher training, and teacher retention. some quotes, particularly from the 2018 document, implicate entire public school systems, stating that they “lack coherence” (dfid, 2018, p. 19), are “not consistently delivering quality education” (dfid, 2018, p. 5) and are not sufficiently “accountable, effective and inclusive” (dfid, 2018, p. 1) for their “unproductive spending” (dfid, 2018, p. 7). across the board, unlike previous dfid documents, dfid (2018) used particularly strong language to describe developing country education systems: “precious resources go to waste” (p. 1) “tragic waste…risks to stability…enormous waste” (p. 3) “vulnerable education system” (p. 3) “stagnant public sector” (p. 4) “learning crisis” (p. 5) “waste is high…unproductive spending” (p. 7) “fundamental challenge” (p. 13) “products of a failing system…caught in a vicious cycle” (p. 14) “outdated models of teacher training” (p. 16) this change to the use of very negative language seems to reflect a shift in dfid’s organizational orientation towards public education systems in developing countries, moving from labeling them as from being “weak” (dfid, 2010, p. 5) to being emblems of government “waste” (dfid, 2018, p. 1, 3, 7). in the following section, we will explore rhetoric that may help to explain this shift, as we argue that dfid’s policy language (as aung & straubhaar current issues in comparative education 72 well as their material forms of policy support) overall has shifted over time to prioritize non-state over state actors. justifying the policy shift particularly in their 2018 document, dfid’s language choices in how they describe the work of state and non-state educational institutions make their policy preferences very clear. for example, compare how state public educational institutions are described in the following quote: system incentives to ensure poor and marginalised children are learning the basics are weak…. to deliver on quality and learning, these incentives will need to change (dfid, 2018, p. 19). this language corresponds with the descriptions we have explored above. in this section, we want to extend that argument by comparing this consistent negative description of state public educational institutions with the following descriptions of non-state or private schools and public-private partnerships (dfid, 2018): … public-private partnerships which improve access to education for poor and marginalised children (p. 21). through a voucher scheme, new schools programme and subsidies to existing low fee private schools, over 2.5 million students are accessing free of charge primary and secondary schools (p. 21). non-state providers, including low-cost private schools, play an important—and growing—role in delivering education in lowand middle-income countries…. many pupils attending private schools come from low-income families (p. 22). it is essential that where dfid supports non-state providers and public private partnerships, they work for poor and marginalised children (p. 22). …private sector partnerships to support more children with disabilities in special and mainstream schools (p. 26). compare these positive descriptions of private initiatives to the previous descriptions of public state ones—private education is described as improving access for the poor and vulnerable, while state initiatives are labeled as forms of waste and failure. such descriptions have clear implications: not only is private education implied to be more effective, but the more socially just option over public education. a contrast is subtly made between the public education systems as being pro-rich (as the rich benefit from “government waste”) and private education (which is ironically structured for-profit) as being pro-poor. it is implied that public education systems do not reach marginalized and poor children, and low-cost private schools fill this gap. the way these documents frame this contrast is used to justify dfid’s policy shift from primarily supporting public education systems to diverting supports to private entities and public-private partnerships, a trend which corresponds to the same time period represented by these documents (2010-2018). a policy shift from state to non-state in education aid current issues in comparative education 73 discussion and conclusion in its funding, dfid is increasingly diverting more development aid from public education systems in developing countries to non-state entities. as we have shown in our findings here, we argue that to justify this aid policy shift, dfid documents use negative language which portrays public education systems in developing countries in its policy documents as inefficient, failing manifestations of government waste. in so doing, the authors of these reports create a sense of urgency for reform, and then portray non-state education actors (including low-cost private schools) as the solution to this crisis. private initiatives and public-private partnerships are described as serving the disadvantaged groups left unattended by current public systems. through this kind of writing, the authors of these reports provide ideological justification for dfid’s increasing support of non-state education aid. as we have noted previously, this kind of rhetoric becomes more explicit and common in these reports as the reports progress chronologically, with the 2018 report containing the largest number of examples. over this same time frame, dfid’s investment in non-state education providers has increased. we do not see this correlation as occurring by coincidence. interestingly, dfid has funded reviews of research on private education (ashley et al., 2014) whose findings do not support their unambiguously pro-private policy stance. specifically, ashley et al. (2014) found that the evidence on the relative effectiveness of private dfid-funded educational initiatives is inconclusive and varied, as we explored at length earlier in the literature review. dfid has already faced criticism for its pro-private education policy stance in developing countries. an alternative report presented to the un’s committee of economic, social and cultural rights (cescr) submitted by 18 non-government organizations argued that policies prioritizing private education have a negative impact on the right to education in developing countries and may create social stratification in those countries, as not all children have access to non-state institutions (right to education, 2015). referring to the convention on the rights of the child, the report asserts that the uk “could be violating its extra-territorial obligations” in the policy stances taken by dfid (right to education, 2015, p. 3). through the arguments we make in this article, we agree with the right to education (2015) coalition that the unquestioned pro-private policy stance represented by dfid’s policy documents merits further questioning, particularly in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary (ahsley et al., 2014). acknowledgments the authors have no known conflict of interest to disclose. the authors would like to thank dr. jim koschoreck and the school improvement doctoral program at texas state university for their support of the research that formed the basis of this work. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to rolf straubhaar, texas state university, 601 university drive, san marcos, tx 78666. email: straubhaar@txstate.edu aung & straubhaar current issues in comparative education 74 thu ya aung is a doctoral student in school improvement at texas state university. prior to his doctoral studies, he was an education officer with unicef and english teacher in his home country of myanmar. rolf straubhaar is an assistant professor of educational leadership and school improvement at texas state university. prior to transitioning to academia, he was an elementary school teacher and adult educator in the us, brazil and mozambique. references ashley, d.l. et. al. (2014). the role and impact of private schools in developing countries: a rigorous review of the evidence (final report, education rigorous literature review). dfid. baxter, a. (2012). higher education mission and vision in rwanda: a comparative and critical discourse analysis. reconsidering development, 2,1-26. birbirso, d. t. (2013). technology for empowering or subjugating teachers: analysis of ethiopi a’s education reform discourse practice. journal of critical education policy studies, 11, 179-201. chattopadhay, t., & nogueira, o. (2014). public-private partnership in education: a promising model from brazil. journal of international development, 26, 875–886. dfid (2013). education position paper: improving learning, expanding opportunities. dfid. dfid (2015). 2010 to 2015 government policy: education in developing countries. dfid. dfid (2017). statistics on international development 2017. london, uk: dfid. dfid (2018). dfid education policy: get children learning. london, uk: dfid. donor tracker. (n.d.). united kingdom. https://donortracker.org/country/unitedkingdom fairclough, n. (1995). critical discourse analysis: the critical study of language. pearson. fairclough, n. (2001). critical discourse analysis as a method in social scientific research. in r. wodak and m. meyer (eds.), methods for critical discourse analysis (p. 121–138). sage. fcdo. (2020). statistics on international development: final uk aid spend 2019. uk: fcdo. full fact. (2018, february 15). uk spending on foreign aid. https://fullfact.org/economy/ukspending-foreign-aid/ global partnership for education. (2019). united kingdom. https://www.globalpartnership.org/about-us/donor/united-kingdom a policy shift from state to non-state in education aid current issues in comparative education 75 heyneman, s. p., & stern, j. m. b. (2014). low-cost private schools for the poor: what public policy is appropriate? international journal of educational development, 35, 3– 15. king, k. (2007). balancing basic and post-basic education in kenya: national versus international policy agendas. international journal of educational development, 27, 358–370. koch, s., & weingart, p. (2016). the delusion of knowledge transfer: the impact of foreign aid experts on policy-making in south africa and tanzania. london, uk: african minds. lewin, k. m. (2007). the limits to the growth of non-government private schooling in sub saharan africa. create, center for international education, university of sussex. mccormick, a. (2011). some partners are more equal than others: efa and civil society in papua new guinea and vanuatu education policy processes. international education journal: comparative perspectives, 10, 54-70. mccormick, a. (2012). whose education policies in aid-receiving countries: a critical discourse analysis of quality and normative transfer through cambodia and laos. comparative education review, 56, 18-47. mccormick, a. (2014). who are the custodians of pacific ‘post-2015’ education futures? policy discourses, education for all and the millennium development goals. international journal of education development, 39, 173-182. mccormick, a. (2016). vanuatu education policy post-2015: ‘alternative’ decolonising processes for ‘development’. the international journal: comparative perspectives, 15, 16-29. mcintush, h. g. (2000). defining education: the rhetorical enactment of ideology in a nation at risk. rhetoric & public affairs, 3(3), 419-443. monkman, k., & hoffman, l. (2013). girls’ education: the power of policy discourse. theory and research in education, 11, 63-84. national audit office. (2010). bilateral support to primary education. national audit office. nudzor, h. p. (2013). unearthing the discursive shift in the ‘fcube’ policy implementation in ghana: using critical discourse analysis. international journal of research & method in education, 36, 179-201. preece, j. (2013). africa and international policy making for lifelong learning: textual revelations. international journal of educational development, 33, 98-105. aung & straubhaar current issues in comparative education 76 right to education. (2015). the uk’s support of the growth of private education through its development aid: questioning its responsibilities as regards its human rights extraterritorial obligations. http://www.right-to-education.org/resource/alternative-report-cescr-uk-ssupport-growth-private-education-through-its-development-aid roberts, a. (2015). gender, financial deepening and the production of embodied finance: towards a critical feminist analysis. global society, 29, 107-127. rappleye, j. (2011). catalysing educational development or institutionalising external influence? donors, civil society and educational policy formation in nepal. globalisation, societies and education, 9, 27-49. rose, p., 2005. privatisation and decentralisation of schooling in malawi: default or design? compare, 35, 153–165. shahjahan, r. a. (2012). the roles of international organizations (ios) in globalizing higher education policy. in j. c. smart, m. b. paulsen (eds.), higher education: handbook of theory and research, higher education: handbook of theory and research 27. springer. tooley, j. (2004). private education and ‘education for all.’ institute of economic affairs, 24, 4–7. tooley, j., bao, y., dixon, p., & merrifield, j. (2011). school choice and academic performance: some evidence from developing countries. journal of school choice, 5, 1–39. watkins, k. (2004). private education and ‘education for all’ – or how not to construct an evidence-based argument: a reply to tooley. institute of economic affairs, 24, 8–11. wilby, p. (2013, november 12). professor james tooley: a champion of low-cost schools or a dangerous man? the guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/nov/12/professor-jamestooley-low-cost-schools i in july 2020, dfid was merged with the foreign and commonwealth office to become the foreign, commonwealth, and development office (fcdo). ii the uk’s oda saw an overall upward trend from 1999—when it was about us$ 4.05 billion—to 13.4 billion in 2016 if inflation is adjusted at the 2016 price (dfid, 2017; full fact, 2018). in terms of oda as a proportion of gross national income (gni), the uk met the united nation’s target set in 1970 for all developed countries (0.7% of gni) by 2013 and has maintained it at 0.7%, a significant increase from 0.36% in 1970 (dfid, 2017; donor tracker, n.d.; full fact, 2018). the uk stood in fifth place after luxembourg, norway, sweden, and denmark among the dca countries in terms of the oda to gni ratio in 2019 (fcdo, 2020). winter, m. (2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 editorial introduction when the oppressed rise: education as a tool for decolonization marcella winter teachers college, columbia university “apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” —paulo freire paulo reglus neves freire was born in recife, brazil, on september 19, 1921. he was the son of a middle-class family that, for some time, faced financial uncertainties, experienced poverty and hunger. despite those material hardships, paulo freire thrived as a student, becoming a bachelor's in law. his passion, however, was teaching. after getting his undergraduate degree, the young freire decided to follow a different path and became a portuguese primary school teacher. soon, he also became interested in policy planning and started working within public institutions to develop new strategies to educate those historically marginalized in educational policies. he probably did not know that this change in his life would bring him at the same time more professional satisfaction and lead him through a dangerous road since his home country would face a nondemocratic future. as history shows us, nondemocratic leaders despise critical thinking, divergent ideas, and, consequently, teachers and education. when a coup d’état established a civilmilitary dictatorship in brazil in 1964, freire was about to spearhead one of the most ambitious national literacy programs for adults. the project would revolutionize learning and teaching since freire had developed a method to teach illiterate adults how to read, write, and critically assess their social context in only forty days. when the dictators ousted president joão goulart, the new regime also started persecuting his allies and the intellectuals connected to his government and ideals. freire was one of them. shortly after goulart left power, he was imprisoned for seventy days and exiled for his "subversive" activities. freire and his family had to leave brazil. again, a detour would have unintended effects on his life. while exiled, freire started a peregrination and had the chance to teach his innovative pedagogy in latin america, the united states, and europe and formulate educational policies in african nations. in a recent documentary about his life and work, one of his daughters ponders that her father would not have become "the" paulo freire if not for the dictatorship. the dictatorial regime wanted to impose a gag on freire; however, inadvertently, they helped him spread his ideas and transformative pedagogy to the four corners of the world and become one of the most relevant educators of all time. in the year that marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of paulo freire, this special issue of current issues in comparative education pays homage to his legacy. freire is one of the most quoted scholars across all fields of knowledge; his work is translated into more than 40 languages. freire's seminal book, pedagogy of the oppressed, continues to shape policy and practice in education worldwide more than five decades after its publication. based on the lessons learned through his life and work, this issue also recognizes the © 2021, winter. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 4-7. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en editorial introduction current issues in comparative education 5 efforts of many oppressed individuals and communities around the globe that are using education to overcome different forms of oppression and promote the decolonization of knowledge and educational practices. accepting that all individuals are entitled to be treated with dignity, have the same opportunities, and be more fully human contradicts many current conservative and authoritarian ideas gaining popularity worldwide. yet, the articles in this issue reinforce the notion that both freire's ideas and alternative ways of seeing education can change the world for the better. this special issue is organized into three major sections. in the first one, we present the articles related to paulo freire's pedagogy and ideas, highlighting how his theory and practice influence discussions in comparative and international education, power issues within the classroom, movements of liberation based on education, citizenship education, and policy implementation. offering a theoretical contribution to decolonial thinking, regina cortina and marcella winter highlight the significance of freire's pedagogy, connecting it to enrique dussel's philosophy of education. the discussion proposed by the authors emphasizes how two concepts found in freire's work, conscientização and praxis, are crucial to understanding that the collaboration between teachers and learners can empower them in transforming an unjust world. rosaria indah centers her autoethnography on another essential concept in the freirean perspective: dialogue. drawing on experiences of providing feedback for medical students using freire's ideas, the author explores how offering dialogical feedback in the context of disaster-affected people can improve the quality of the interaction between teachers and students. tara bartlett and daniel schugurensky analyze the connections between freire's conceptualization on citizenship education and school democracy and the current discussions on school participatory budgeting. they trace a line relating freire's work at the social service of industry (sesi), his work as secretary of education of sao paulo, and the contemporary school participatory budgeting (school pb) efforts in two cases from schools in arizona. in their article, krystal strong and rhoda nanre nafziger show how freire's ideas have influenced pan-africanist social movements since the period following african nations' independence. the discussion also explores the continued importance of freirean educational praxis in contemporary pan-africanist initiatives, focusing on the panafrican activist sunday school and solidarity collective. inspired by her experiences as an educator in a freirean, spanish-language, high school equivalency (hse) program in new jersey, elena j. peeples offers a narrative for relevant policy environments and actions through the assemblage of primary sources. her discussion suggests that while ambiguity in policy implementation guidance can result in discrimination and disenfranchisement, adult education programs grounded in freirean pedagogy can respond to these situations through an open dialectic that provides for exchange between internal program relationships and external organizational relationships. through an argumentative literature review, renata penalva and adriana marcondes machado explore the connections between health and education in brazil. their piece winter current issues in comparative education 6 evinces that paulo freire's idea that an ethical posture in public policy consists of bringing people to participate in policy formulation was present in constructing the brazilian public health system. the process brought together health and education professionals inspired by the idea that the people's involvement would advance democratic ideals and change towards equity. this special issues' second section sheds light on how historically marginalized groups and individuals are using education as a tool to overcome oppression, promote more inclusive ways of teaching and learning, and the decolonization of educational practices. yvonne thevenot contradicts the notion that black people have not used innovation intentionally as a construct to alter unjust social realities. in her article, she reveals that their efforts to change, modify, and disrupt the systemic and societal processes that historically denied them educational opportunities happen as a visible effort to decolonize learning spaces while creating meaningful academic impulses for students of color. in a conceptual article, jessica d. murray and monica c. desrochers offer a guide for educators to use critical discourse analysis (cda). their discussion's main objective is to help educators critically examine their teaching and behavioral support practices, have better interactions with students and families and empower pupils through critical thinking. katia diaz explores the dominican republic's educational system response to the challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic. she highlights that, although the government has attempted to promote the digital inclusion of teachers and students through existing initiatives, its provision of education to low-income and special needs students. through in-depth policy analysis and interviews, her study addresses the impact of digital learning on vulnerable communities. ana luísa melo ferreira emphasizes that brazilian higher education and scientific production were, historically, spaces destined to a privileged white elite. however, a new decolonial indigenous intellectual current emerges to reveal other valid ways of knowing. she analyses the role of indigenous participation in academic scientific production and how recent initiatives such as the bibliography of indigenous publications of brazil contribute to rescuing their self-esteem and culture valorization. essays and an article response compose the last section of this special issue. in a compelling piece, kevin cataldo reflects on how identifying the oppressor within helped him create new forms to decolonize his pedagogy, using his experiences as a historically marginalized individual of color. minoli wijetunga explores the hegemonic nature of comparative and international education knowledge production, offering a critical analysis of definitions within the field and the speeches of former cie society presidents delivered over a decade apart. two freirean concepts-critical consciousness and critical thinking-become central in the discussion presented by elizabeth robinson and curt rhodes on the non-formal education program designed for youth in jordan. considering personal experiences as an iraqi at oxford university, mariam hassoum draws on her identity and what it represents for her educational trajectory in a place where, not long ago, students like her did not belong. anisa bora, grace choi, thomonique moore, rongwei tang, and claire yiming zheng discuss digital technology as a channel of art activism to address issues pertinent to students and their communities. they propose the art of inequality, a curriculum that combines social justice and art activism. lastly, peter editorial introduction current issues in comparative education 7 simpson offers a response to will foley's article published in cice's 2021 winter issue, suggesting that more can be achieved if decolonial critiques and critical pedagogy are applied to the field of human rights education. this special issue calls attention to the diversity in the field of comparative and international education and the multiple ways in which education and knowledge production comprise realities produced within power dynamics and various social, political, cultural, and economic contexts. the collection of articles contributes to our understanding of distinct layers of complexity in education matters. at the same time, it opens a window of opportunities for us to identify possibilities in educational theory and practice. we on the editorial team hope that these debates represent one of the precious lessons freire taught us: liberating knowledge emerges from the hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other. marcella winter is a doctoral fellow in the international and comparative education program at teachers college, columbia university, and the editor-in-chief of current issues in comparative education (cice). email: md3809@tc.columbia.edu. for cice-related matters, please contact cice@tc.columbia.edu. © 2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 43 political violence and education missing out adolescents affected by armed conflict face few education opportunities and increased protection risks jane lowicki children and adolescents program women's commission for refugee women and children, new york introduction beginning in the fall of 1998, the women's commission for refugee women and children conducted a study on patterns and practices regarding the health, education, livelihood, protection and psychological and social needs of adolescents affected by armed conflict. the work focused on the policies and programs of international entities, including western donor governments, intergovernmental organizations, nongovernmental organizations and academic institutions. it identified many of their endeavors, as well as gaps and barriers in their approaches to war-affected adolescents. excerpts from the study's chapter on education are included in this article. the study is scheduled for release in november 1999. war-affected adolescents are left behind in education programming in 1989, the convention on the rights of the child (crc), article 28, established education for children as a right and not just a need. according to the crc, states parties shall ensure that primary education is free and compulsory and encourage and make accessible different forms of secondary education. in this case, primary education, which is mostly associated with younger children, is seen as a fundamental right. however, secondary schools and vocational training, which are usually associated with adolescents, are not mandatory, but rather considered to be progressive rights. in part, this acts as a policy barrier that may help to explain the absence of adolescents on the donor and international community education agendas1. although only a minority of refugee adolescents may be ready for secondary education, its availability often serves as an incentive for adolescent participation in basic education opportunities. similarly, while the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr) recommends the provision of some secondary education opportunities, such as adolescent literacy (in addition to adult literacy), it continues to focus mainly on primary education. adolescent literacy programs are the equivalent of primary education for children developed for adolescents who have not previously attended school or who have become illiterate a kind of "basic education for adolescents." such a program merely provides for first-level instruction for illiterate adolescents in the 12 to 18 years of age group. the neglect of comprehensive educational opportunities for adolescents produces grave consequences, not only for these individuals, but also for the larger society. political violence has a very direct and devastating impact on the education of adolescents2. as the provision of education in emergency settings is increasingly recognized as synonymous with the protection of war-affected populations, particularly children, the lack of education for adolescents in emergency situations should be seen as a stark shortfall in protection efforts made on their behalf. this paper challenges readers to jane lowicki november 15, 1999 44 consider the following questions: what are the gaps in and barriers to education for adolescents affected by armed conflict, why are they there, and what are the consequences? what are appropriate and effective adolescent-specific educational interventions? policy barriers and other factors as noted above, secondary education is not an international educational priority, which seriously limits educational opportunities for adolescents. in addition, other policy barriers and factors exacerbate this problem. it is central to note that few humanitarian assistance entities even prioritize education. instead, other critical needs are emphasized and addressed, such as food, water, shelter and medical care, as education is seen more as a long-term development concern. donors are reluctant to prioritize education in the initial emergency phase, for fear of long-term commitments (hammock, 1998). likewise, in some instances, host governments will not allow its provision. there may be political and resource-based barriers such as fear of creating a refugee pull factor, lack of consensus over curricula and the priorities of food and shelter. also, the importance of education may not be recognized, particularly in the areas of health, psychosocial wellbeing and protection. as a result, with some exceptions, funding for and attention to education early on in emergencies for adolescents and others is limited. documenting the education gap for adolescents the omnibus study, impact of armed conflict on children, presented by graça machel to the united nations in 1996, as well as the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr) 1997 evaluation of its education programming for refugees in its care, help to document both the lack of educational involvement and opportunity for war-affected adolescents. the machel study, which was conducted in the wake of the widespread adoption of the 1989 convention on the rights of the child, brings together current knowledge on the plight of war-affected children. machel expressed that she was "particularly concerned to discover the lack of meaningful educational activity for adolescents, particularly at the secondary school level," and that "for older children especially, effective education will require strong components of training in life skills and vocational opportunity," and lists recommendations for the protection, care and overall security of adolescent rights. in addition, she also argues that educational opportunities provided at the outset of an emergency provide structure, stability and a sense of normalcy to the lives of children, adolescents and adults immediately following violent upheaval. similarly, the education evaluation conducted by the unhcr, the organization principally charged with providing protection and care to the world's refugees, cited "nearly non-existent educational initiatives for adolescents". furthermore, it calls education for refugee adolescents "the area which needs the most development by unhcr" and notes that "…one of the most serious issues faced by unhcr is the problem of adolescents without constructive activities." the evaluation reports that primary school drop-out rates are high and that most adolescent refugees are in need of basic literacy skills, although fewer numbers are in need of secondary and tertiary education opportunities. adolescent girls, cited as being worse off than boys, range from 10 to 40 percent of total students in secondary and vocational studies and only 25 percent at the tertiary level (inspection and evaluation service, 1997)3. internally political violence and education: missing out adolescents affected by armed conflict face few education opportunities and increased protection risks current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 45 displaced adolescents, who may have little to no access to humanitarian assistance or protection and may be at higher risk of continued exposure to violence, are even worse off than refugee adolescents. although these studies provide limited information documenting the education gap for adolescents, overall, the lack of information on the state of education for refugee adolescents is a formidable problem. with some exceptions, comprehensive reports and statistics on the attendance of refugee adolescents in primary, vocational, adult literacy or other courses are nearly non-existent. quantitative and qualitative information on adolescent attendance and curricula is sorely needed. moreover, there are other factors that contribute to low school attendance for refugee adolescents. the following are some additional barriers war-affected adolescents face in attending school: • legal barriers: national law in some countries may bar adolescents from accessing primary education. • social pressures: for example, a 14-year-old may be laughed at and feel humiliated attending school with 8-year-olds or to perform more poorly than his or her younger counterparts4. • economic factors: adolescent boys are usually pressed to produce economically. adolescent girls are often expected to perform the majority of domestic tasks, leaving little time to attend school or to study out of school. • cultural factors: war-affected communities themselves may not expect or value education for adolescent boys and girls. for some it may only appear valuable if it leads to gainful employment or an improvement in livelihood. boys' education is also frequently valued over girls' education, and in some areas, there is pressure for girls to marry quite young. • other obstacles: lack of sanitary supplies and fear of embarrassment or humiliation may deter girls from attending school as does a lack of privacy should lavatories have to be shared with boys. long or insecure distances to travel to school may deter attendance, as may school hours that are incompatible with adolescents' other responsibilities. curricula and teaching methods are often out of touch with the realities and priorities of adolescents' lives. consequences although the international community has articulated all children's and adolescents' right to primary education and has made commitments to fulfilling this right, its attempt to provide education beyond primary school5 has largely failed in situations of armed conflict (unicef, 1990). this failure is not due to the lack of ideas or knowledge within the field of education about how best to provide education to "youth" in a variety of contexts. in fact, there are a number of important ideas about what might best meet waraffected adolescents' educational needs and rights; however, relatively few educational initiatives have been undertaken for these adolescents. of those initiatives that have been implemented, very few have been replicated. this serious lack of attention to the provision of educational opportunities to war-affected adolescents has present and future consequences for these particular adolescent individuals, as well as for society as a whole. this neglect represents the failure to invest in adolescents' strengths and jane lowicki november 15, 1999 46 capacities and build on adolescents' qualities as active survivors creating solutions for themselves, in addition to society as a whole. lack of education increases risks for adolescents in armed conflict whether or not adolescents expect to go to high school and eventually college, to be taught to farm by members of their family, to learn a trade as an apprentice, or to learn in another manner, traditional educational opportunities that prepare them for adulthood often disappear or are interrupted by the need to flee their homes due to armed conflict and the dissolution of their communities. in many cases, young people end up idle, and are consequently at risk for various forms of sexual and economic exploitation and abuse, criminality and indoctrination. indeed, among refugee and displaced children, adolescents are at the highest risk of military recruitment, sexual violence, prostitution, contracting sexually transmitted diseases, losing opportunities for livelihood and many other ills. adolescents may also be forced to take on adult obligations before they are ready, such as becoming the head of the household, and be left responsible for their own survival and the survival of others. in all cases, without access to meaningful education, these adolescents are at risk for entering adulthood illiterate, poorly trained or both. their potential for personal growth, economic sustenance, and contribution to their communities is thereby diminished. even more, education is a primary means to psychological healing, skills-building, training for livelihood, peacemaking, social reintegration, good health practices and protection. education is an essential stabilizing force in all phases of emergencies, reestablishing a sense of normalcy and structure after destruction and chaos. education also provides an opportunity to build self-confidence and to regain a sense of hope about the future; without it, adolescents may see few opportunities and, faced with few options for escaping future poverty, may be driven to become a destabilizing and destructive force, continuing cycles of violence and vulnerability. without certain forms of education, such as reproductive health education, adolescents are at increased risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, including hiv/aids, and in the case of girls, sustaining unwanted and potentially dangerous pregnancies. as children make up the majority of refugee populations, with adolescents a significant proportion among them, ignoring the plight of adolescents not only risks continued rights violations committed against them, but also instability for the future of their societies. raising the profile of the need for education in emergencies several international conferences have raised the issue of the need to provide education for all throughout the different stages of responses to humanitarian emergencies, including education for adolescents. in november 1998, the norwegian refugee council, redd barna (norwegian save the children) and unhcr sponsored a conference on children and adolescents in armed conflict. working groups focused on the prevention of military recruitment, gender-based violence and sexual abuse, protecting separated children, and protecting adolescents. all the groups highlighted education as an important preventive tool, and the participation of children and adolescents in the development and implementation of protective and preventive measures was a recurring theme. among the conference recommendations was that education be made the fourth component of emergency assistance (in addition to food and water, shelter and health care)6 and that a position for an adolescent representative political violence and education: missing out adolescents affected by armed conflict face few education opportunities and increased protection risks current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 47 be established in the office of the special representative for children and armed conflict (nrc, redd barna, unhcr). as a follow-up to this meeting, a workshop entitled "basic education in emergencies and transition situations: a first sharing of program lessons" was held in washington, d.c. in march, 1999 and brought together 120 representatives of un agencies, ngos and donors. co-sponsored by nrc, interworks, the women's commission and the congressional hunger center and hosted by the world bank, the conference found that education in emergencies, including education for adolescents, is essential and achievable. a human capacity development conference, also sponsored by usaid and a consortium of education organizations in august 1999, again focused attention on education in crisis situations. what are effective "adolescent-specific" education interventions? although there is little evaluative literature regarding education programming geared specifically toward war-affected adolescents, available sources and experience in the field suggest an eclectic group of characteristics that best suit effective education programming for adolescents affected by armed conflict. such education should be: nonformal, flexible, participatory, situation-based, equitably available for boys and girls, useful, age-specific, gender-specific, linked to realistic employment opportunities, rapid, related to peace-building initiatives and reconciliation efforts, geared towards psychological and social healing and more. it needs to realistically reflect adolescents' needs and circumstances, including their cultural context, whether they be demobilizing soldiers or heads of households. demobilizing adolescent soldiers, for example, may need vocational alternatives to help prevent re-recruitment and to help facilitate their reintegration. although some organizations such as unhcr, unicef, the norwegian refugee council, the international rescue committee and save the children have begun to actively address education programming for adolescents, much work is needed. until recently, attention to adolescents' education needs has relied heavily on enlightenment by field staff and war-affected communities themselves. the following two examples highlight a number of and policy discussions and educational interventions made on behalf of war-affected adolescents. preparation for resettlement when large numbers of refugees are accepted for resettlement to another country, some receiving countries, such as the united states, provide adolescents with training to prepare them for life in their adoptive country. one such example was the consortium program run in the phanat nikhom refugee camp in thailand from 1980 to 1990 for u.s.-bound refugees. the programs included english language courses, cultural orientation and work orientation components and also had a special module for adolescents called pass (preparation for american secondary school). pass familiarized refugee students, aged 12 to 19, with the learning process in american secondary schools through education in basic skills and subject areas, such as language, reading, writing, math, cultural information, interpersonal skills and coping strategies. it also had a specific curriculum component for 17to 19-year-olds, which included a work orientation component, introducing them to behavioral and skills requirements of the american workplace (chongcharueyskul, 1990). jane lowicki november 15, 1999 48 liberian children's initiative in 1998 to address the rights and needs of approximately 90,000 returnee and internally displaced children and adolescents. assisting with their reintegration, lci supports educational facilities, child tracing, income-generation activities and child rights awareness. implemented by the international rescue committee and adventist development and relief association (adra), lci's education programs focus on assisting schools in liberia's five border counties with a high number of returnees, including teacher training; the provision of education materials, including sports equipment; and school-focused income-generation support. programs targeting girls and environmental education complement the formal education program, and the tracing and integration assistance for unaccompanied children is also supported country-wide. local persons are also being assisted (unhcr, 1998). as adolescents actively survive war situations, seek to create a future for themselves and find meaning in their lives, their need and right to participate in decisions made on their behalf is particularly important. programs designed for adolescents that involve them in program implementation and evaluation are also important and warrant particular emphasis in further research and practice that takes on the challenge of providing muchneeded education opportunities for adolescents. given the critical connection of education to protection, health, psychosocial well-being, and livelihood, this work should not be done in isolation from that taking place in other programming sectors. conclusion as the least likely among war-affected children to find opportunities to continue their education, adolescents are at increased risk of rights violations, which undermines the future stability of the larger community. while there is growing recognition of education as a key tool for promoting adolescents' livelihood, psychological and social well-being, health and protection, education in emergencies is not prioritized by donors or humanitarian assistance organizations. some education programs have addressed waraffected adolescents, but information about these experiences is not readily available or widely shared, and successful adolescent-specific programs have largely not been replicated. educational programming for adolescents is urgently needed. increased efforts on the part of practitioners are also needed both to document, qualitatively and quantitatively, the lessons learned in the provision of education to war-affected adolescents, as well as to share information, identifying what successful "adolescentspecific" educational programming entails. a variety of sources and field experiences reveal adolescents' need for education programs that respond concretely to the realities of their lives. this may mean non-formal educational opportunities, flexible school hours, participatory approaches and more. in particular, identifying effective ways to involve adolescents as active participants in the programming design, implementation and evaluation process is particularly important. addressing adolescents' education needs and rights should not and need not come at the expense of interventions for other war-affected populations, but rather should be a new, essential and regular emphasis of humanitarian assistance efforts. political violence and education: missing out adolescents affected by armed conflict face few education opportunities and increased protection risks current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 49 notes similarly, the 1951 convention on the status of refugees states that refugees are entitled to elementary education. since elementary education can be interpreted as basic education or specifically as primary school, again, mostly younger children will be targeted while adolescents will be left out. as a group, adolescents can be defined chronologically, pertaining to a period of life between certain ages; functionally, involving a process of transition from childhood to adulthood, marked by certain rituals or physical changes; and culturally, in a societal context. organizations identify adolescents differently, as do different societies and cultures. the world health organization, for example, defines adolescents as between the ages of 10 and 19. article 1 of the convention on the rights of the child identifies a "child" as "every human being below the age of 18 years, unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier." girls may attend school in fewer numbers than boys for a number of reasons, including: boys' education is valued more than girls', or girls' education may not be valued at all by the refugee group; girls may have too much domestic work to attend to; they may be forced into early marriages; they may get pregnant and be barred from attending school; and they may suffer sexual and other harassment in school. unhcr's education evaluation also states that instead of the common way of educating refugee adolescents, by putting them in lower primary school classes with younger children, they should "learn with other adolescents or adults and use learning materials, which relate to their own life experiences." "education for all" became a rallying cry after the 1990 world conference on education for all held in jomtien, thailand. the expanded vision of education that emerged from jomtien included emphasis on basic education, early childhood care and development and learning through adolescence and adulthood. it also made girls' education a priority. a review of progress in 1996 revealed that the drive to enroll 6to 11-year-olds in primary school by the year 2000 overshadowed the conference's integrated vision of basic education. adolescents and others had been left behind. the norwegian government is advocating that schooling be given priority in humanitarian assistance on a par with food, medicine and shelter and be delivered just as swiftly. norway's minister of international development and human rights has explained that norway's focus on education is due to education's ability to give children and adolescents a sense of continuity and security, an opportunity to develop and address psychosocial trauma, a chance to live a more meaningful life, prevent them from becoming soldiers and help them in the reintegration process both during and after the combat. jane lowicki november 15, 1999 50 references chongcharueyskul, c. (ed.). (1990). consortium '88-90. phanat nikhom, thailand: the consortium. hammock, j. c. (1998). children and adolescents in violent societal change. unhcr and tufts university workshop. boston: feinstein international famine center, tufts university. inspection and evaluation service (1997, june). review of unhcr's education activities. new york: inspection and evaluation service. lowicki, j. (1999). setting an agenda for adolescents affected by armed conflict: a review of programs and policies. new york: women's commission for refugee women and children. machel, g. (1996). impact of armed conflict on children. report of the expert to the secretarygeneral. new york: united nations. norwegian refugee council, redd barna, unhcr (1999). protection of children and adolescents in complex emergencies. conference report. nrc, redd barna, unhcr. unhcr (1998). preliminary survey of technical advice and assistance in the framework of the convention on the rights of the child: detailed information on children activities implemented by unhcr. new york: unhcr. unicef (1990). the state of the world's children 1999. new york: unicef. oecd (1990). shaping the 21st century: the contribution of development cooperation. (as cited in unicef, 1990). cortina, r., & winter, m. (2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 paulo freire’s pedagogy of liberation regina cortina teachers college, columbia university marcella winter teachers college, columbia university to highlight the significance of freire’s pedagogy, this article draws from the work of decolonial thinkers in latin american and enrique dussel’s philosophy to understand freire’s pedagogy of liberation. two concepts in freire’s work, conscientização and praxis, are key to understanding how awakening the consciousness of teachers and learners can empower them in transforming an unjust world. for freire, the collaboration between teachers and learners is essential to the self-transformation of learners for their own liberation. this innovative and transformative pedagogy inspired literacy campaigns and social justice movements around the globe and constitutes freire's legacy. introduction “(…) liberation is thus the ‘place’ and the ‘purpose’ of this pedagogy.” dussel (2013) the depth of paulo freire’s thinking and practice led to advances in the theory of liberation and to the foundation of a pedagogy of liberation. our aim in this article is to examine freire’s work towards a pedagogy of liberation. we write in honor of paulo freire at the 100th anniversary of his birth in 1921 in recife, pernambuco, brazil. the theory of liberation emerges from a collaboration among latin american academics aiming to develop a philosophy of latin america and to question the epistemologies behind western social sciences. they pursue these aims to create an expansion of perspectives that reflects a latin american reality autonomous from eurocentric domination (escobar, 2010). this article is based on our understanding of the writing of latin american philosopher enrique dussel, who developed what he calls “a latin american philosophy of education” (dussel, 2019). in his book, the ethics of liberation (2013), dussel presents an extensive analysis of freire to highlight the significance of his theoretical contributions and his critical perspective. dussel concludes that the essence of freire’s contribution is that “education is not possible without the self-education of the learner in the process of his or her own liberation” (p. 311). as dussel sees it, freire’s pedagogy goes beyond focusing on cognitive and social development. the emphasis is on the growth of an ethical-critical consciousness in the learner that emerges through a pedagogy that respects the other (dussel, 2013). the ethical-critical consciousness proposed by freire originates in learners, who are perceived as the privileged historical subjects of their own liberation. it is ethical because it grows © 2021, cortina & winter. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 8-19. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en paulo freire’s pedagogy of liberation current issues in comparative education 9 out of the learner's perspective; it is critical because it recognizes their aspirations and dignity (dussel, 2013). the pedagogy proposed by freire challenges traditional forms of teaching and learning, which try to domesticate the student, imposing the other upon the self, and neglecting their voice. both freire and dussel understand teaching and learning as a process centered on the notion that liberation is the aim of pedagogy. what they mean is that "the ethics of liberation is an ethics of everyday life" (dussel, 2013, p. 211). based on dialogue and respect for the learner's perspective, the pedagogy of liberation becomes a powerful tool in raising critical consciousness and transforming the logics of domination in latin american teaching and learning practices. to establish freire's legacy and influence in decolonial thinking and practice in latin america, we build upon the work of dussel, the most prominent latin american decolonial philosopher who interpreted freire's work. we build upon dussel's interpretation to advance freire's pedagogy of liberation. to accomplish this goal and to provide a contextualized and detailed analysis of freire's pedagogical influence, this article starts by reviewing the brazilian educator's unique contribution. we use the central tenets of latin america's decolonial theory and explain how freirean concepts align with current scholarship on decolonial thinking to illuminate the foundations of freire's pedagogy of liberation. freire and dussel were contemporaries. in this article we review dussel's analysis of freire as a seminal thinker to show how he builds on the freirean pedagogy to develop his thinking. we discuss dussel's reasoning to understand his analysis of freire, and we demonstrate why dussel is central to understanding freire's contributions. we build on these two thinkers and their arguments to show the importance of teachers in latin american pedagogy and freire's overall legacy. freire’s pedagogy: conscientização and praxis one of the most influential education thinkers of the twentieth century, paulo reglus neves freire (1921-1997) was born in recife, pernambuco, in the northeast of brazil. although he was raised in an underserved and impoverished region and experienced a family background marked by financial hardships, the young freire discovered education as a central element in his life. the lessons learned in his childhood helped him develop ideas about schooling that would shape the educator and the philosopher he would later become. freire had strong support from his parents to learn how to read and write and became interested in learning from a young age. reminiscing about memories from paulo freire's childhood, his wife ana maria describes in a book dedicated to his life and work how freire's mother and father used words and phrases that were relevant to his experience as a child in brazil to spark his learning (araújo freire, 1996). his parents instilled in him an awareness that would become central in his work as an educator and philosopher: knowledge must be linked to one's daily reality. while in elementary school, his first portuguese teacher, eunice, guided the young freire in developing his writing. she commonly asked him to write all the words he knew, and then both of them discussed their different meanings. she did not aim to make the student memorize grammar rules, but rather to develop a love for the mother tongue and its beauty (araújo freire, 1996). years later, when freire became a teacher of portuguese, he put into practice what he discovered with his first mentor; the process of teaching and learning is a collective endeavor in which teachers and students are partners in creating knowledge. after earning a law degree, freire decided to change careers and work as a schoolteacher. as his career developed, he concentrated his efforts on education by targeting a particular group: illiterate workers (araújo freire, 1996). freire initiated a critical approach to literacy, focusing on adult education and promoting the notion that "reading the world cortina & winter current issues in comparative education 10 precedes reading the word" (freire & slover, 1983, p. 5). in the book literacy: reading the word and the world, written with his long-time collaborator donaldo macedo, freire explains that the organization of literacy programs should be based on what he calls the "word universe" of learners (freire & macedo, 1987, p. 35). by reading the students' world and identifying the most meaningful words in their existential experiences, educators come to recognize how they express their actual language, anxieties, fears, demands, and dreams (freire & macedo, 1987). the learning process happens through "codifications," i.e., pictures representing situations related to learners' daily lives (freire, 1976; freire & macedo, 1987). reading, or "decoding," the images of concrete situations enables learners to reflect on their former interpretation of the world before going on to read words (freire & macedo, 1987). more than becoming literate, they learn to read situations of injustice to become agents of change; they insert themselves in the world as capable of subverting a reality that is not favorable to them. according to these notions, freire developed a method based on critical literacy. the first large-scale implementation of this method took place with 380 sugarcane workers between february and march of 1963 in angicos,1 a small town in rio grande do norte, another impoverished state in northeast brazil. by helping those marginalized brazilians to learn how to read and write, freire was not only educating them but making them aware of their transformative power in their own lives, their communities, and societies. the brazilian constitution of 1946 stated that the non-educated were not citizens and could not participate in elections. freire's efforts went beyond educating for people to become literate citizens. he aimed at empowering those individuals to become voters and influential actors in local and national politics. during the government of president joão goulart (1961-1964), public officials invited freire to participate in different initiatives related to public education because of his expertise. he played various roles at the local and state levels and was appointed to spearhead the national adult literacy plan (1964) and reproduce the successful angicos experience on a much larger scale (araújo freire, 1996; kohan, 2021). however, in 1964, a civil-military coup overthrew goulart. the new government identified freire as subversive and forced him into sixteen years of exile. the civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985) frustrated the plans for making brazil a more literate and equal country. still, this chapter in the country's history was central in the emergence of freire as prominent educator. while in exile, he wrote the book recognized as his masterpiece, pedagogy of the oppressed, and had the opportunity to promote a pedagogy that aimed to encourage the liberation of individuals not only in his home country but around the world. among the many concepts developed within his pedagogy, freire firmly based his philosophy and practice on two main ideas: conscientização and praxis. in the book conscientização, freire (1979) clarifies that he was not the one who invented the term. it was coined by scholars at the advanced institute of brazilian studies (instituto superior de estudos brasileiros, iseb), a center devoted to the study of brazil's development problems. upon hearing the word for the first time and realizing the depth of its meaning, freire understood that it should be central to his ideas about education. conscientização, usually translated into english as conscientization, is an act of knowledge, a critical approach to reality that favors education as a practice of freedom (freire, 1979). he differentiates "consciousness" from "conscientização." becoming conscious about an issue or apprehending the reality is not enough to develop a critical stance in which individuals 1 the documentary paulo freire, um homem do mundo (paulo freire, a man of the world), directed by cristiano burlan (2020), narrates freire’s experiences in angicos, recounting the stories told by the main characters in the endeavor, teachers and students who participated in the experiment. paulo freire’s pedagogy of liberation current issues in comparative education 11 see themselves as capable of transforming their reality. freire also suggests that, because conscientização happens in a specific space and time, it must be a reiterative process. the process of conscientização brings together human consciousness and the world, perceived as an object for critical reflection and change. it is, above all, the recognition that individuals can take possession of their reality and become engaged in the task of transforming it permanently (freire, 1979). freire proposes that critical education promotes conscientização, through which learners become aware of the objective reality that produces oppression. still, teaching and learning must be closely linked to a liberating praxis based on action and reflection. in his most recognized work, pedagogy of the oppressed, freire proposes that only through individuals' reflection and action upon the world to transform it, that is, the authentic praxis, will the oppressor-oppressed contradiction be resolved (freire, 2000). through a humanist and liberationist perspective, the pedagogy of the oppressed happens in two stages. in the first, individuals unveil the world of oppression to which they have been historically subjected, and they commit, through praxis, to its transformation (freire, 2000). after the reality of the oppression has already been transformed, in the second stage, this pedagogy is no longer exclusively related to the oppressed: it becomes a tool for all people towards their permanent liberation (freire, 2000). through conscientização and praxis, individuals dismantle the conditions that lead to oppression and construct a more just and equal reality for all people. as suggested by freire in education, as a practice of freedom, a pedagogy based on conscientização and praxis favors learning and teaching that translate into forces of change and liberation (freire, 1976). a critical education leads to more conscientização and, through praxis, individuals insert themselves into history not as viewers but as actors and authors of their destinies (freire, 1976). this search for liberation and fostering individuals' capacity to dismantle situations of oppression reflects freire’s intellectual kinship with the thinking of latin american authors who confront conditions of injustice present in the region. in the book education, the practice of freedom, freire (1976) reflects on his experience as a teacher in brazil to propose a pedagogy of liberation capable of awakening the consciousness of teachers and learners to activate empowered human beings who can identify their role in transforming an unjust world. context is central in his work since "there is no education outside human society and there is no man in a void" (freire, 1967, p. 35). when considering that traditional forms of education have contributed to colonization, reinforcing practices that encourage students to become passive and acritical, freire’s pedagogy is applicable in other contexts beyond brazil and primarily allied with the global south. for all of these countries, he believes, transforming education emerges as an urgent matter. the traditional forms of education brought by the colonizer need to be transformed in order to create practices that favor change and liberation. adopting new approaches connected to the reality of each society will undergird the replacement of education for domestication and alienation with education practices for freedom. the only option for a society that aspires to decolonization is to transform its people into subjects in their own history, to promote education for the person-subject rather than the person-object (freire, 1976). in the following section, we discuss the place of liberation in decolonial thought. decolonial theories in search of liberation decolonial theory questions the narrow conceptions of knowledge produced by academics and research institutions concerned with education. decolonial theorists have diverse disciplinary backgrounds. they come from and they study different regions in the cortina & winter current issues in comparative education 12 world. all of them, though, are united in critiquing an exclusive reliance on eurocentric epistemologies. the term decolonial is useful to distinguish those whose practices and studies encourage thinking and knowledge production not only with but from the global south: worldviews, cultural ways of knowing of historically colonized, racialized or subaltern communities. decolonial thinking, in our view, is deeply informed by the concept of “coloniality of power” coined by peruvian sociologist aníbal quijano (2000). by this he means continuing subjugation in various ways to the racial and gender hierarchies established during colonial times. those hierarchies started with the arrival of the spaniards to the americas in 1492 and continued with the enduring presence of those hierarchies in contemporary societies. the writings of quijano help to recognize “coloniality” as the darker side of modernity, ever-present in social and political structures today, and to uncover how it operates. this is what walter mignolo refers as modernity/coloniality. he offers this blend of two key words to identify the “colonial matrix of power” that supports present-day modernity (mignolo, 2012). for education scholars, decolonial theories open up new perspectives for considering all kinds of knowledge and world views, not only those produced from eurocentric and colonial perspectives. from the perspective of latin america, the focus shifts to many students and educators across the world whose knowledge, languages, and cultures have been left out of schools and universities (cortina & earl, 2019). enrique dussel’s emphasis in his philosophical work is to understand decoloniality, a term that emerged in latin america, and to focus on understanding the power structures that support modernity/coloniality to build a decolonial society for local and regional communities based on alternative epistemologies. dussel (2019) indicates that education in latin america needs to move away from conceptions that are not supported by the region’s cultural and historical heritage. this proposition is at the heart of dussel's thinking on how critical thinking and practices of liberation can promote alternative ways of teaching and learning. dussel’s philosophy emerges from understanding the influence that colonization had on the consolidation of national education systems in latin america and the subjugation of indigenous peoples and enslaved africans. dussel argues that the colonizers employed diverse processes to modernize and civilize, and pedagogical practice is a crucial tool for understanding how colonized peoples lived and reproduced their lives. concepts such as modernization, rationality, and emancipation inspired europeans in their overseas endeavors. while traditional notions of modernity promoted emancipation within european civilizations, the modern project became an obstacle to latin america's liberation. since the first european conquerors set foot in the so-called "new world," the social, economic, and political structures of latin america were changed, and still reflect colonization by remaining in many ways dependent and peripheral. to subvert the colonial logic of domination, dussel (1995a) proposes to transcend modern reason, which translates into not negating rationality itself but rejecting a "violent, eurocentric, developmentalist, hegemonic reason" (p. 138). dussel, then, suggests, through this process the alterity, the other, receives recognition as an equal. dismantling the hierarchies formerly established by colonization is at the center of the project to transcend eurocentrism on behalf of the historically erased alterity. emancipation and the pedagogy of liberation arises as a central element in this long-term process toward the liberation of those oppressed by racial, culture, gender, ethnicity, or language practices, all of which are hierarchies that support coloniality in the advance of modernity. paulo freire’s pedagogy of liberation current issues in comparative education 13 towards a pedagogy of liberation a new latin american philosophy of education is based on a pedagogics of liberation. dussel introduces the word “pedagogics,” a term that emerges from his philosophy of liberation as distinctive from european philosophy and a limited negation of that tradition (marquínez argote, 1995). in “a brief note on pedagogics,” the author suggests that the concept concerns how education needs to move away from conventional pedagogical systems that favor domination in latin america since colonial times (dussel, 2018). similarly, as he has argued some decades before in método para una filosofía de la liberación, dussel (1974) affirms that to acknowledge the illiterate as subjects in the process of teaching and learning is essential to create an original and respectful pedagogy in latin america. pedagogics is based, above all, on comprehension and justice (dussel, 2018). contrary to a pedagogy of domination, it is a world of culture and teaching that admits the possibility of different forms of interpreting reality (dussel, 2018). because pedagogy is a cultural, social, and familial problem (dussel, 1995b), the pedagogy of liberation nurtures communities to support the new generation and manage the conflicts that may emerge from the relationship between tradition and innovation. through the praxis of liberation, it aims to prevent the pedagogical death of the other, or what dussel calls "filicide." every family or any political system that, in the name of tradition or the status quo, prevents the emergence of the new commits filicide (dussel, 1995b). pedagogics gives the other more than a chance to exist, but also the space to speak and to question the culture and ideology of the current system (dussel, 2018). within the pedagogics of liberation, in dussel’s view, the new generation joins the pedagogical process as a critical agent rather than a passive participant. frequently conceived as empty vessels, students are, on the contrary, subjects in a world of meanings, memory, and resistance (dussel, 2013). following an approach to education centered on pupils, teachers become the disciple of the disciples (dussel, 2018). professional educators must listen to the perspectives of young people and learn how to be critical of dominant and dehumanizing practices. the concept of pedagogics refers to how education aims to nurture communities to support the new generation. a critical component is that teachers must listen to the perspectives of young people, the new generation, and to learn with them how to be critical of dominant and dehumanizing perspectives. to recognize pupils both as the historical continuity of their community and the risk of that tradition’s alteration is to put the system of domination in question so that a new system can be organized (dussel, 2018). within the pedagogics of liberation, children are understood according to their temporality and locality—their voices must be heard and the novelty they bring must be considered (dussel, 2019). following this approach to education, students and teachers construct knowledge through a partnership; teachers speak, but above all, they listen–if dialogue is not present, liberatory learning is impossible (dussel, 2019). thus, educational practices must be linked to an ethics of liberation, which emerges from “the victims,” the excluded other, the oppressed (dussel, 2013, pp. 294-295). to recognize pupils both as the historical continuity of their community and the risk of that tradition's alteration is to put the system of domination in question so that a nonhierarchical system can be organized (dussel, 2018). in doing so, we must give strength to the new generation, for them to dismantle a fetishized system based on oppression and to pass to a new one, in which they can liberate themselves and discover how to build the new order through education (dussel, 2019). cortina & winter current issues in comparative education 14 after dussel's detailed inquiry into the sources of latin american pedagogical systems conducive to domination, one question remains: how would pedagogics materialize? instead of proposing an alternative method, the philosopher highlights paulo freire as an example of an educator who aims to make ethical-critical consciousness emerge through his pedagogy (dussel, 2013). drawing on freire's seminal work, pedagogy of the oppressed and the concept of "critical consciousness” or “conscientização,” dussel (1974, 2019) asserts that the problem-based pedagogy proposed by the brazilian educator meets the requirements for a respectful pedagogy for latin america and offers what is essential for "education as the practice of freedom." discussing how a pedagogy of liberation should look in the age of globalization, dussel (2013) emphasizes freire’s definition of education as a transforming and critical activity by which the emergence of ethical-critical reason becomes an integral part of the education process. he describes freire not only an educator, in the strict sense of the term: “he is something more–an educator of the "ethicalcritical consciousness" (dussel, 2013, p. 304). in freire’s pedagogy, the aim of education is not to foster theoretical or moral intelligence, but to educate in a historical, communitarian process connected to learners' daily lives. through a pedagogy of liberation and its teaching and learning practices, individuals can identify themselves as oppressed, acknowledging the possibility of transforming social reality and becoming empowered, “through which they abandon their condition as victims” (dussel, 2013, p. 312). to analyze the causes of oppression means to increase awareness of the objective reality that produces oppression and how it connects to individual’s experiences. freire is not interested in creating hypothetical examples to help learners identify what a context of oppression would signify. on the contrary, he highlights the situations of subjugation experienced by students as the foundation of the pedagogical practice (dussel, 2013). the education process creates an awareness of the objective reality that produces oppression; however, it must be closely linked to a liberating praxis that connects subjects in a community that dismantles the conditions for oppression (dussel, 2013). by articulating the process of teaching and learning through the concrete reality lived by the oppressed, education emerges as the place where students see themselves as the origin of the transformation of reality. the critical consciousness proposed by freire originates in the students, conceived as the privileged historical subjects of their own liberation. upon understanding their reality, students through their praxis and actions gain critical consciousness, and this is an illuminating moment for their life and the practice of freedom in their community (dussel, 2019). dussel describes freire as an original thinker who situates the learner in a community engaged in the process of conscientização. from this perspective, the brazilian educator opposes mainstream traditional and acritical education. since freire is concerned with social transformation, his pedagogy translates into a radically original position compared to other educators who neglect that education is not possible without the self-education of the learner in the process of their own liberation. in this sense, liberation is thus “the place” and the “purpose” of freirean pedagogy (dussel, 2013, p. 320). freire’s legacy freire's work has had lasting influence in brazil and many other countries of the world. his pedagogy and philosophy have inspired social movements and literacy campaigns to construct more just societies. paulo freire participated both directly and indirectly in many of these endeavors. paulo freire’s pedagogy of liberation current issues in comparative education 15 after being imprisoned in brazil for seventy days under the charge of being "subversive" and "a traitor," freire began a peregrination. following a brief stay in bolivia, he lived in chile for five years, where he worked with the christian democratic agrarian reform movement and found a conducive environment to develop his ideas. in the book pedagogy of hope (2014), freire recalls that the intensity of the chilean social atmosphere made him rethink his brazilian experience and inspired him to write pedagogy of the oppressed between 1967 and 1968. later, he spent some time working as a professor at harvard and moved to geneva to serve at the office of education in the world council of churches (wcg). during his time in wcg, freire worked as an advisor for recently independent nations in africa. in the 1970s, he collaborated with the establishment of postcolonial education systems in countries such as zambia, tanzania, mozambique, and guineabissau (gadotti, 2019). freire recalls some of his experiences in africa in the book pedagogy in process: the letters to guinea-bissau (2016). he argues that the education systems established by european colonizers contributed to colonized peoples' dehumanization and low self-esteem. the objective in restructuring or "rehabilitating" those nations' schools would then be closely linked to the decolonization of peoples' minds. according to moacir gadotti (2019), freire's work in africa was decisive for his trajectory and made him undertake new perspectives in the field of adult literacy. even when in exile, freirean pedagogy significantly influenced how social movements progressed in brazil under the dictatorship. discussing how the landless workers' movement (movimento dos trabalhadores rurais sem-terra, mst) developed its pedagogical approach, rebecca tarlau (2019) clarifies that the mst defined education as one of its main concerns based on the ideas offered by freire in pedagogy of the oppressed. local landless leaders came to know the popular and liberatory education he proposed through catholic church's study groups (cebs) in the 1970s. religious leaders drew on freire's writings on literacy to teach rural workers to read the world and the word, starting with their daily experiences and then progressing to discussions on inequality, economy, and politics (tarlau, 2019). the strategies used by educators, included drawing on the language of the community, creating pedagogical activities based on students' realities, and promoting learning through dialogue (tarlau, 2019). confirming the notion that education is simultaneously an act of knowing and a political act (freire, 1985), those ideas also influenced mst's struggle for rural workers' rights and political agenda recognition. sharing her fieldwork notes, tarlau (2019) quotes one of mst's national leaders, who explained how freire influenced their quest for social justice: "paulo freire taught us that we are the subjects of the process of social change, not objects. he believes in peasant workers. (...). paulo freire taught us that (...) everyone has to be an agent in their own liberation" (p. 51). freire continues to be a source of inspiration for mst and the movement's pedagogical practices (vieira & côco, 2018; tarlau, 2019). freire contributed to reconstructing democracy in his home country upon returning to brazil in 1980, after sixteen years of exile. when the civil-military dictatorship started to show signs of weakness, leading the way to a gradual return to democracy, the educator became a crucial voice in building a new country. given his experience with grassroots initiatives and his worldwide fame, freire was invited by members of the constituent assembly to participate in the discussions that would lead to brazil's new democratic constitution. addressing the education and literacy subcommission, freire (1987) focused on adult literacy and the need to extend public education, qualitatively and quantitatively, to all brazilians. he added that literacy alone would not create social change; however, a major transformation in society would not be feasible without it (freire, 1987, p. 488). the subcommission's president, hermes zaneti (1987), emphasized that although this was freire's first visit to the constituent assembly, "he had always been cortina & winter current issues in comparative education 16 present in the subcommission's work, through his thought and work" (p. 483). this quote might explain some of the innovations related to literacy brought by the new constitution. superseding the constitution from 1946 that restricted voting to literate individuals, the 1988 constitution from its inception gave voting rights to brazilians without literacy skills (aleixo & kramer, 2010). upon his return to brazil, freire also participated in the founding of the workers' party (partido dos trabalhadores, pt) and served as the secretary of education for the city of são paulo in luiza erundina's administration (1989-1992). during the years he assumed political leadership as the secretary of education, freire confirmed the central imperative in his philosophy: public education must play a decisive role in the continuing reformation of a democratic society. in pedagogy of the city (1993), freire reflects on how he tried to translate his ideas into policy and to create a democratic school system "where one practices a pedagogy of the question, where one teaches and learns with seriousness, but where seriousness never becomes dullness. (...) where, in teaching necessarily the content, one also teaches how to think critically" (p. 19). he resigned from the position in 1991 and dedicated his life to teaching at universities based in são paulo until his death on may 2, 1997 (rohan, 2021). from freire’s perspective, a pedagogy of liberation will not happen without the cooperation of the teacher, since the teacher needs to be respectful of the selftransformation of the learner that will take place through their own conscientização and educational praxis. freire (2000) interprets teachers as the "revolution leaders," who translate into relevant actors for changing the status quo. teachers as learners teachers play a decisive role in dussel's and freire's conception of the pedagogy of liberation. although freire recognizes that the students gain consciousness from "within," he acknowledges that the same "consciousness" is unfolded by the teacher through a dialogical process of teaching and learning (dussel, 2013). in traditional european pedagogy, teachers are the educators par excellence, the ones who will promote not only children's instruction but also their civilization and europeanization (dussel, 2019). the pedagogy proposed by freire opposes traditional forms of teaching and learning that aim at domesticating the student, subsuming the other into the self, and neglecting the voice of the oppressed. through dialogue, educators abandon the "banking model of education" in which the student is seen as an empty recipient that must be filled with teachers' knowledge and worldviews (freire, 2000, p. 72). adopting a critical epistemology and a "problem-posing" method, the pedagogy of the oppressed helps the oppressed understand their place in the process of oppression and construct diverse forms of knowledge alongside teachers (freire, 2000, p. 69). according to the freirean framework, education becomes the tool through which teachers and students learn and teach simultaneously, without submission or knowledge hierarchies. dussel (2019) adds that popular culture can function as an alternative context for the processes of teaching and learning, and in its context the war against domination starts and decolonization might flourish. in the author's conception, critical teachers are central in the project for liberation, building a new system of schooling that privileges the local community cultures (dussel, 2019). being at the service of the people's culture, the pedagogical praxis allows the teacher-disciple relation to grow mutually and convert from a hierarchical relationship to a relation founded in a fraternal politics (dussel, 2019). to disassemble the hierarchical forms of teaching might ease the cross-generational paulo freire’s pedagogy of liberation current issues in comparative education 17 encounter and clarify that teachers are not only the only educators in a community. both freire and dussel understand teaching and learning as a process centered on the notion that the pedagogy of liberation becomes a powerful tool in raising the individuals' critical consciousness and, therefore, eliminating the logics of domination present in latin american traditional teaching and learning practices. education emerges as the place where students become the origin of the transformation of reality. the critical consciousness proposed by freire originates in the students, conceived as the privileged historical subjects of their own liberation. upon comprehending their reality, students structure their praxis and act, understanding that gaining critical consciousness is an illuminating moment for their life and the practice of freedom of their communities. in this essay on paulo freire's pedagogy of liberation, we have shown how freire's pedagogical practice has led to the foundation of innovative, transformative pedagogy. the article also provides an opportunity to reaffirm that freire's legacy is not limited to an education theory or method. decades after his death, freire continues to inspire education initiatives around the globe. in brazil, his ideas have been under attack since the election of the country's right-wing president, who attributes the failures of public education to the freirean pedagogy, even though it was never adopted as an education policy nationwide. all over the world there is a need for a critical education that makes individuals develop conscientização and, through praxis, subvert unjust social orders that maintain coloniality. freire's teaching is alive, and his ideas exemplify hope for those interested in promoting social change through dialogue, critical thinking, and a pedagogy of liberation. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and ana cecilia galindo diego for their careful reading of our manuscript, insightful comments, and suggestions. regina cortina is professor of education at teachers college, columbia university. her presidential address, “the passion for what is possible in comparative and international education,” was published in the comparative education review in november 2019. professor cortina’s teaching and publications are advancing the field by focusing on decolonial theories in comparative education. most recently, two of her articles were published in 2019 and 2020 in compare: a journal of comparative and international education. marcella winter is a ph.d. student in the international and comparative education program at teachers college, columbia university. her research interests include decolonial theories, women's and girls' education, race and inequality in brazilian schools, and topics related to brazilian and south american educational policies. cortina & winter current issues in comparative education 18 references aleixo, j. c. b., & kramer, p. (2010). os analfabetos e o voto: da conquista da alistabilidade ao desafio da elegibilidade. senatus, 8(2), 68-79. araújo freire, a. n. (1996). a voz da esposa: a trajetória de paulo freire. in m. gadotti (ed.), paulo freire: uma biobibliografia (pp. 27-68). cortez editora. burlan, c. (director). (2020). paulo freire: um homem do mundo [documentary]. brazil: sesct tv. cortina, r., & earl, a. (2019). teaching decolonial theories in comparative education. in peters, m. (ed.). encyclopedia of teacher education (pp. 1-5). springer. dussel, e. (1974). método para una filosofía de la liberación: superación analéctica de la dialéctica hegeliana. salamanca: ediciones sígueme. dussel, e. (1995a). the invention of the americas: eclipse of “the other” and the myth of modernity. continuum. dussel, e. (1995b). introducción a la filosofia de la liberación. (5a ed.). editorial nueva américa. dussel, e. (2013). ethics of liberation: in the age of globalization and exclusion. duke university press. dussel, e. (2018). a brief note on pedagogics. lápiz (3) 94–103. dussel, e. (2019). the pedagogics of liberation: latin america philosophy of education (d. i. becker & c. diego, trans.). punctum books. escobar, a. (2010). worlds and knowledges otherwise: the latin american modernity/coloniality research program. in w. mignolo, & a. escobar (eds.). globalization and the decolonial option (pp. 33-64). routledge. freire, p. (1967). educação como prática da liberdade. editora paz e terra. freire, p. (1976). education, the practice of freedom. writers and readers publishing cooperative. freire, p. (1979). conscientização: teoria e prática da libertação. uma introdução ao pensamento de paulo freire. cortez & moraes. freire, p. (1985). reading the world and reading the word: an interview with paulo freire. language arts, 62(1), 15-21. freire, p. (1987). assembléia nacional constituinte (atas de comissões): subcomissão da educação, cultura e esportes. http://www.senado.leg.br/publicacoes/anais/constituinte/8a_sub._educacao, _cultura_e_esporte.pdf freire, p. (1993). pedagogy of the city. continuum. freire, p. (2000). pedagogy of the oppressed: 50th anniversary edition. bloomsbury academic. paulo freire’s pedagogy of liberation current issues in comparative education 19 freire, p. (2014). pedagogy of hope: reliving pedagogy of the oppressed. bloomsbury. freire, p. (2016). pedagogy in process: the letters to guinea-bissau. bloomsbury. freire, p., & macedo, d. (1987). literacy: reading the word and the world. bergin & garvey. freire, p., & slover, l. (1983). the importance of the act of reading. the journal of education, 165(1), 5-11. gadotti, m. (2019). freire’s intellectual and political journey. in c. a. torres (ed.), the wiley handbook of paulo freire (pp. 33-50). wiley-blackwell. quijano, a. (2000). coloniality of power and eurocentrism in latin america. international sociology, 15(2), 215–232. kohan, w. o. (2021). paulo freire: a philosophical bibliography. bloomsbury. marquinez argote, g. (1995). enrique dussel: filósofo de la liberación latinoamericana (1934-1975). in e. dussel, introducción a la filosofia de la liberación. (5a ed.), (pp. 1154). editorial nueva américa. mignolo, w. d. (2012). local histories/global designs: coloniality, subaltern knowledges, and border thinking. princeton university press. tarlau, r. (2019). occupying schools, occupying land: how the landless workers' movement transformed brazilian education. oxford university press. vieira, m. a. f. o., & côco, v. (2018). o pensamento de paulo freire no contexto da formação de educadores do mst. rev. educ. perspec., 9(1), 159-173. zaneti, h. (1987). assembléia nacional constituinte (atas de comissões): subcomissão da educação, cultura e esportes. http://www.senado.leg.br/publicacoes/anais/constituinte/8a_sub._educacao, _cultura_e_esporte.pdf 7. pai, g. beyond demographic identifiers and classification. a search for alternative approaches to quantitatively evaluating equity (1).docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 1, winter 2023 beyond demographic identifiers and classification: a search for alternative approaches to quantitatively evaluating educational equity grace pai, ph.d. queens college, city university of new york (cuny) in april 2022, united states agency for international development (usaid) released its first ever equity action plan to advance equity across their policies, programs, and partner base. this action plan entails five priority areas, the fifth of which is to: “…incorporate racial and ethnic equity and diversity into policy, planning, and learning” (usaid, 2022, para. 3). this essay addresses the question of how usaid, along with other international development agencies and practitioners, can institutionalize equity, particularly in its evaluation and data collection processes. i argue that as interest in addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion (dei)1 increases in the u.s. and parts of europe, western conceptualizations of equity need careful examination regarding their cultural appropriateness, lest we impose these values on other regions of the world. furthermore, we need to be wary of pushing “conventional” methods and metrics used for evaluations of the outcomes. in the global north, equity is typically assessed on a large-scale through collecting data and disaggregating results to look for significant differences between demographic groups like race and gender. underlying this approach is the notion that there should be fair distribution or parity in outcomes between groups. however, the key methodological assumption is that we have individual identifiers enabling us to create demographic groups. such categorization makes this practice and approach inappropriate to many communities who may be under duress and/or who for the sake of personal protection, need to maintain privacy through non-disclosure. for example, i have worked with international partners who expressed their inability to include questions about ethnicities in a survey. even if the surveys were anonymized and questions were made optional, the respondents could still bear the risk of political persecution by answering such identifying questions. one finding from focus groups in the usaid 200-day equity assessment corroborates this concern: “efforts to understand our partners and beneficiaries must be done responsibly in a manner that will not cause unintended consequences/harm for marginalized individuals; for instance, answering a question on gender identity could put respondents at risk in certain country contexts” (usaid, 2021, p. 11). 1 other acronyms for dei include edi, idea (inclusion, diversity, equity and access), or aide. © 2023, pai. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 25(1), 121-126. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en pai however, this is followed by a recommendation to “include targeting more granular forms of data collection in programming and planning that account for marginalization within a country context...these include, but are not limited to, data collection on disability and on the full spectrum of gender identities and ethnicity” (usaid, 2021, p. 11). although the recommendation continues to suggest that “efforts could include appropriate data protection and privacy protocols within the technology solution design” (ibid), i argue that relying on technology-driven protocols for privacy does not resolve the root problem of the potential cultural inappropriateness of collecting identifying data on marginalized populations. instead, i review other ways to conceive of equity, along with a culturally responsive methodology that does not require the western-centric criteria to quantify equity.2 concepts of equity at its etymological root, equity means fair and even. embedded in the principles of equality and justice, equity is premised upon the assumption of a natural human hierarchy (lewis et al., 2021). it was not until the 18th century that moral equality was introduced in the west, establishing that all human beings are created equal. since then, many theories on the philosophical nature of moral equality have been advanced. one of the most cited is john rawls’ justice as fairness. he adopted a prioritarianist view of equity consisting of equal access to opportunities and a difference-based consideration of the most disadvantaged (rawls, 2001). in the past two decades, capabilities approach advanced by amartya sen (1999) and martha nussbaum (2000) have opened up new ways of answering the questions regarding equity. namely, sen (1999) addressed the equity of individual freedom to social, economic, and political participation; nussbaum (2000) enlisted the core elements in basic human capabilities and rights. their work has garnered a paradigm shift to the improvement of individual capabilities, or what an individual can do or can be, rather than what they have done or have become (robeyns, 2005). these dominant conceptions of equity, however, have overshadowed non-western equity frameworks. although eliding women, confucius in the 5-6th century bc proposed “有教无类” (education without distinction). this notion calls for the development of citizens, ethnic minorities, and slaves who were excluded from aristocratic education into well-rounded individuals (mu et al., 2013). in islam, there is not a separate theory of justice since the qur’an itself assures justice as a natural outcome so long as the rulers and people comply with divine rules (mirakhor & askari, 2019). bedouin concepts of equity are grounded in preserving honor, pride, and peace (wolf, 2000). on the other hand, amazonian conceptions of equality flout the absolute equivalence among people; instead, they emphasize on respect, individual differences, and partiality over equality, fairness, and justice (walker, 2020). within the field of education, the production of the term equity has exponentially increased since 2005 (jurado de los santos, 2020). as it gains in popularity, the concept itself has gotten muddled in debates over whether equity should be applied horizontally (i.e. equal treatment of equals) or vertically (i.e. unequal treatment of unequals) to areas 2 i purposefully constrain this essay to only discuss quantitative and not qualitative evaluations of equity. 122 current issues in comparative education beyond demographic identifiers and classification: a search for alternative approaches to quantitatively evaluating educational equity like school funding (toutkoushian & michael, 2007), and whether the goal is to strive for equality in opportunity and treatment versus equality in outcomes (mccowan, 2016). levinson et al.’s (2022) recent essay dissected the competing and often contradictory ways in which educational equity is framed: “equality of educational resources across comparison sets, equal distribution of educational outcomes across populations, equal outcomes for every learner, equal educational experiences for each child, or equal levels of growth or development for each learner” (p. 2). the myriad applications of equity serve as a reminder that the multi-faceted concept of equity needs clarification before even broaching the question of how to operationalize and instrumentalize an evaluation of equity. alternative approaches to quantitatively evaluating equity in practice in practice, quantitative evaluations of equity often measure proportional equality through testing. conventional norms in the u.s. assume and apply social categories such as race and gender – which are perceived sources of disparities across a wide array of societal outcomes in the u.s. – to identify the least-advantaged groups. individuals are then ascribed to these groups largely through self-reported identification. however, i contend that there may be, and must be, alternative evaluations of equity for instances where responses to demographic questions can place an individual at risk of personal persecution. i provide three examples below. collaboratively search for culturally relevant and acceptable forms of identification first, i argue that a researcher entering and evaluating equity in another culture could begin by collaborating with partner organizations to assess context-specific metrics relevant to local structural inequalities. these questions are appropriate to ask about the particular culture. for example, in certain parts of the middle east where ethnically minoritized individuals (compounded by the intersectionality with other minoritized identities) can face persecution for what they report, what are the alternative forms of equity that a partner organization care more about? the principle of equity is known to be valued and prevalent throughout islam; rahim and mohammed (2018) pointed out that justice and equity, which respectively align with the islamic concepts of adl and qist, appear 174 times in the qur’an. moreover, many of these references relate to distributive justice between the rich and poor – a value that undergirds islamic economics (choudhury, 1983; hashmi, 2010). to this end, perhaps questions about financial capabilities to meet basic necessities may not only be of relevance and interest, but also more culturally respectful to the host countries and partners. changing the focus from group identification to individual capability when demographic identification of any kind is not possible, another option might be to deviate from the dominant difference-based approach to the alternative capability approach to examine relationships between relevant variables and individual capabilities. capability theory approaches justice through the question of what is an individual potentially capable of, and how can they reach that goal? according to robeyns (2005), “what is ultimately important is that people have the freedoms or valuable opportunities (capabilities) to lead the kind of lives they want to lead, to do what they want to do and be the person they want to be” (p. 95). the theory, however, has been critiqued for being too individualistic and insufficient in addressing groups or social contexts and structures (robeyns, 2005). for example, some have argued that the current issues in comparative education 123 pai utilitarian individualism underlying capability theory elides the “structures of living together” (stewart & deneulin, 2002, p. 66) and is inappropriate for examining societal well-being (gore, 1997). an alternative approach to evaluating equity in ambiguous contexts is to reconcile the debate and mediate social context or groups via individual capabilities. then, we can proceed to analyze the association between individual capabilities and equity in the domain of interest. for example, a study of educational equity drawing on survey data could include a set of questions about human capabilities such as health, nourishment, community participation, and access to resources. an analysis could then entail the assessment of significant differences in educational outcomes based on average capabilities. in theory, there should be no correlation between the two if systemic equity exists in that context. finding proxies of the constructs underlying systemic inequalities similarly, another consideration might be to measure the constructs underlying structural inequities as a proxy of demographic identifiers. inherent to the u.s. practice of racially disaggregating data is the knowledge of systemic injustices that stems from the classifications such as race, gender, sexuality, disability status, and parental education. we know, for example, that people of color, women, lgbtq+, those who have a disability, and first-generation students, are groups that experience more negative outcomes in the u.s. but underlying these systemic inequalities are feelings of unbelonging or experiences of marginalization and discrimination. rather than asking for demographic identification, for instance, researchers can include a set of validated survey items measuring social belonging and assess equity based on differences in the levels of societal belonging and inclusion.3 this comes with its own limitations, such as bias from self-reporting and relying on subjective perceptions, as opposed to “objective” demographic categories. however, if demographic categories like race are social constructs anyway, how objective are they really? in conclusion, this essay reminds researchers that a concept like equity, along with the ways it is assessed, is not universal. as levinson et al. (2022) reminded us, it is imperative to first clarify what we are valuing and seeking when we aim for educational equity. and as these western-centric dei values are exported, we must go further to reflect on the cross-cultural appropriateness of these practices and push ourselves to consider other ways of evaluating the goal of equity at scale. grace pai, ph.d. is an assistant professor in the elementary and early childhood education department at queens college in the city university of new york (cuny). her research focuses on educational equity across a range of disciplines from mathematics education to international education. 3 cordier et al. (2017) conducted a systematic review of literature on measures of social inclusion and found that the social and community opportunities profile-short best captured the construct of social inclusion. 124 current issues in comparative education beyond demographic identifiers and classification: a search for alternative approaches to quantitatively evaluating educational equity references choudhury, m. a. (1983). principles of islamic economics. middle eastern studies, 19(1), 93-103. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4282924 cordier, r., milbourn, b., martin, r., buchanan, a., chung, d., & speyer, r. (2017). a systematic review evaluating the psychometric properties of measures of social inclusion. plos one, 12(6), e0179109. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179109 gore, c. 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(2000). indigenous approaches to water conflict negotiations and implications for international waters. international negotiation, 5(2), 357-373. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718060020848802 126 current issues in comparative education https://journals.iium.edu.my/enmjournal/index.php/enmj/article/view/431 https://doi.org/10.1080/146498805200034266 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02686262 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40704304 https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/08.09_final_200_day_equity_progress_report_.pdf https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/08.09_final_200_day_equity_progress_report_.pdf https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/apr-14-2022-release-usaid-equity-action-plan https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/apr-14-2022-release-usaid-equity-action-plan https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13183 https://doi.org/10.1163/15718060020848802 öz, y. geographies of participation in learning abroad mobility among european youth_corrections_yakupedit-11-24-21 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 1, winter 2021 geographies of participation in learning abroad mobility among european youth: a comparison of student and non-student groups in the eu member states yakup öz karamanoğlu mehmetbey university in recent decades, learning abroad mobility has become a popular movement and has often been considered among students in higher education. however, in the european union (eu) context, opportunities to learn abroad are also provided for non-student groups of youth. accordingly, this study aims to examine the role of certain socio-economic factors concerning participation in learning abroad mobility and to compare their contribution between students and non-student groups of youth in six country groups in the eu. in so doing, a quantitative method was followed by using the data of flash eurobarometer 478. findings of the multinomial logistic regression analyses show that although there is no significant difference between the eu15 and nms (new member states) regarding young people’s participation in learning abroad mobility, such difference occurs within the nms. students are more likely than non-students to participate in general. the age of students, being female and living in rural areas among non-students can also hinder participation. introduction the mobility of young people is often regarded as an essential instrument for european integration, and of sustainable and inclusive growth of the european union (eu) (european commission [ec], 2010). consequently, cross-border mobility throughout europe emerges as an important way to increase young people's commitment to eu citizenship (mazzoni, et al., 2017). in this regard, starting by focusing on student mobility, different mechanisms have been established to improve young people’s mobility across europe with different exchange programs abroad. the erasmus program (european region action scheme for the mobility of university students) is a well-known example of these programs among others such as the european solidarity corps, european voluntary service, or other youth in action projects. beginning with eleven european countries in 1987, the erasmus program is now implemented in thirty-four program countries including non-eu member countries. in addition, after the implementation of erasmus+ in 2014, the program also started to cover various activities for youth, such as volunteer activities, apprenticeships and internship programs, professional training and youth worker programs, as well as academic/study-related opportunities, once only provided for students. numerous researchers focus on participation in learning abroad mobility activities among students in a european context. they research the role of various macro-level, institutional-level, and individual-level factors of participating in international student mobility or study abroad programs. a number of these factors cover eu space, including all member countries, and others focus on single country contexts (beech, 2015; dabasi-halász et al., 2019; finn and darmody, 2017; souto-otero et al., 2013; van mol and timmerman, 2014). however, studies examining non-student © 2021, öz. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(1), 48-60. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en geographies of participation in learning abroad mobility among european youth current issues in comparative education 49 groups' participation in learning abroad mobility are often scarce. most of the studies focused on non-student youth mobility take this topic as part of migratory research, not primarily focused on educational experiences abroad (cairns, 2018; hemming et al., 2019; king, 2018; krzaklewska, 2019; mazzoni et al., 2017; van geel and mazzucato, 2018). focusing on the role of certain socio-demographic factors of participating in learning abroad mobility, this study aims to compare how the contribution of these factors change between student and non-student groups in different eu member countries. by doing this, the current study uses cross-sectional data gathered by flash eurobarometer 478 survey implemented across eu member countries. the comparison between student and non-student groups is also made within six geographies (northern old, western old, southern old, northern new, southern new, and eastern new member countries) by following a quantitative approach and making multinomial logistic regression analyses. the very reason of making such a comparison between geographical zones is to investigate the role of contextual differences between eu member countries. because such differences could also be effective on young people’s participation in learning abroad mobility. despite the eu representing a regional, political and economic integrity, it is an organization that has grown between 1973 and 2013. such a gradual enlargement also automatically caused the late integration of some member states and resultingly new members have lately gained more opportunities than previous ones. within this context, eu member countries could be grouped as eu15 and the nms (new member states). the eu15 states were members of the eu before 1996, and the nms became members of the eu after 2003. most of the nms is composed of the former warsaw pact or ussr-aligned countries (excluding cyprus and malta). so, as favell (2009) stated, although the western europeans have a "free movement" by right for four decades, “the socially and spatially dynamic mobile populations of new eastern and central europe” only lately grabbed this opportunity, after enlargements in 2004, 2007 and 2013. such a late coming of the free movement opportunity for the people of nms is also reflected in the participation of youth in learning abroad mobility in the nms (dabasi-halász, et al., 2019). in the context of erasmus exchanges, nms started to join the program later than the eu15 countries, some of them even eleven years later. various studies show that eu15 countries are at the center of the students' mobility while the nms is at the periphery, and generally speaking, student exchanges are denser among/within eu15 countries (dabasi-halász et al., 2019; gonzález, mesanza and mariel, 2011; shields, 2016). although the above-mentioned studies represent a rich source of information regarding participation in intra-european student mobility, they neglect two points in general. one is the mobility of non-student youth for learning abroad activities, and the other one is the impact of contextual (geographical) differences in the participation in abroad learning mobility. focusing on this gap in the literature, the current study tries to answer the below questions: 1. how does the contribution of socio-demographic factors to participation in learning abroad mobility differ within the geographies? 2. and how does such a contribution differ by student and non-student groups of youth in different geographies? literature review learning abroad mobility learning abroad mobility is similar to students' international mobility, but it also covers non-formal and informal learning activities rather than focusing only on öz current issues in comparative education 50 formal learning, academic or study-related activities (berg, milmeister & weis, 2013; devlin et al., 2017). so, it includes both students and non-student groups such as staff, trainees, apprentices, youth workers, and young people (learning mobility of individuals, n.d.). covering all such types of mobility, it is commonly used in the context of eu member countries and is often elaborated on in the eu policy documents (berg, milmeister & weis, 2013; ec, 2010; kettunen, 2017; learning mobility of individuals, n.d.). however, for non-student groups, the duration of mobility is relatively shorter than in the students' mobility, often ranging from two weeks to two months, except for some of the voluntary youth activities (devlin et al., 2017; learning mobility of individuals, n.d.). factors leading to participation in learning abroad mobility considering that learning abroad mobility is a more inclusive term covering both student and non-student groups, it is possible to argue that participation in learning abroad mobility could also be regarded as a change of behavior affected by various push/pull factors. participation in both long-term (often regarded as acquiring a b.a., m.a or ph.d. degree) and short-term learning abroad mobility activities (nondegree, credit, study-related, or event mobility) is shaped by the various factors and their effects could be diverse in different contexts. in this part of the paper, however, i only dealt with some certain factors. because such factors are also investigated in the literature and some of them are represented in the flash eurobarometer 478 too. these variables are often used in the studies related to students' participation in learning abroad mobility, but since the current study also focuses on the mobility of non-students, they were also used for the analyses of the non-student groups. these factors are grouped as demographic, economic, academic, cultural and social, geographic factors and characteristics of learning abroad mobility programs. they are explained in detail in the coming paragraphs. starting with the demographic factors, age, gender, type of community, and occupation (work status) constitute the demographic factors of the current study (finn and darmody, 2017; van mol & timmerman, 2014; chen, 2007). younger people (hercog & van de laar, 2013), living in large towns or cities, are often considered to be mobile, and female students (finn & darmody, 2017; whatley, 2018) and those working (full-time or part-time) (goldstein & kim, 2006) are generally more likely to participate in learning abroad mobility. considering the economic factors, a lack of financial resources or the cost of studying are often found to be constraints to studying abroad (dabasi-halász et al., 2019; souto-otero et al., 2013). also, most students who participate in study abroad programs often belong to higher social strata in society (van mol & timmerman, 2014). academic factors could vary according to study type (b.a, m.a., or ph.d.), major to seniority, recognition of credits taken abroad, or interruption of studies in the home country institution. furthermore, concerns related to the quality of the program or institution abroad could prevent people from participating (berghoff, obdulia, & brandenburg, 2014; böhm et al., 2013; gonzález, mesanza & mariel, 2011; tran, 2016;). most of the time, senior or post-graduate students are more likely to participate in learning abroad mobility (hercog & van de laar, 2013). cultural and social factors also vary, and they can play both an enabling or a hindering role for learning abroad mobility. most of the time, family or personal reasons and work-related or study-related issues could challenge participation in mobility (tran, 2016; berghoff, obdulia, & brandenburg, 2014; böhm et al., 2013; gonzález, mesanza & mariel, 2011). besides, living in a different country may not be comfortable for geographies of participation in learning abroad mobility among european youth current issues in comparative education 51 some people or some may simply not be interested in learning or studying abroad (chen, 2007; mazzarol & soutar 2002). however, social networks (significant others) in the host country or institution could be a pull factor for participation in mobility (beech, 2015; chen, 2007). lastly, foreign language knowledge may enhance participation (dessoff, 2006; goldstein and kim, 2006; souto-otero et al. 2013). the characteristics of learning abroad mobility programs may hinder participation. for example, a lack of program information or a long/short program duration may prevent participation (berghoff, obdulia, & brandenburg, 2014; böhm et al., 2013). geographic factors are often related to the proximity of the home country to the host country (chen, 2007; mazzarol & soutar 2002). the mobility of people across countries could be easier for those who have short distances to travel or shared borders. additionally, the cost of mobility or staying abroad could be cheaper than staying in a distant host country. however, in the current study, geographic differences are utilized to see the role of contextual differences in the participation of youth in learning abroad mobility. because different characteristics of the eu member countries, especially the contextual differences between eu15 and the nms, this may cause the rise of different learning abroad mobility patterns within these country groups (dabasi-halász et al., 2019; gonzález, mesanza & mariel, 2011; shields, 2016). method data source & sample the study uses data gathered by the flash eurobarometer 478 (ec, 2019), which was administered in twenty-eight eu member countries among the population aged between 15-30, at the request of the ec directorate-general for education, youth, sport and culture. the survey covers the population of the respective nationalities, residents in each member state. accordingly, 10,786 respondents were selected as samples, using a multi-stage random sampling design. they are interviewed by telephone through the kantar e-call center (cati system). in the analyses, the data of 10,669 respondents was used because of the missing cases in the ‘mobility’ variable (dependent variable). variables dependent variable (participation in learning abroad mobility). this variable was derived by merging two questions; d7 (‘excluding travel for tourism or living with one's family abroad, have you ever stayed abroad for at least two weeks? for example, for study purposes, training, work, exchanges or volunteering’), and q2 (‘you said earlier that you had never stayed abroad for the purpose of study, work, exchanges, and so on. have you considered taking part in any learning experience abroad?’). the merged item was represented in the dataset by a composite variable (q2b). accordingly, there are three groups of youth when mobility is questioned. those who ‘had participated’, ‘had considered, but couldn't participate’, and ‘had never considered participating’. as a result, respondents who had ‘never considered’ participating were selected as the reference category. independent variables. independent variables are composed of gender, age, occupation, type of community, and geographical zones. regarding this, gender was simply composed of female and male, with the male selected as the reference category. age ranged between 15 and 30. it was taken as a categorical variable, consisting of three categories; 15-19 years, 20-24 years, and 25-30 years. the age range of 25-30 years was selected as the reference category. occupation is derived from the answers to questions d5a, d5b, d5c, d5d, and d5e. in the dataset, there is a composite variable (d5r) merging and representing all twenty-two occupation types, ranging from self-employed to manual workers, from managers to öz current issues in comparative education 52 civil servants, from retired to full-time students, and refusals. accordingly, d5r was re-coded into ‘full-time students’ and ‘others (respondents having a partor fulltime job)’. the category of ‘others’ was selected as the reference category. type of community was derived from question d13: ‘would you say you live in a…?’; the possible answers being ‘rural area or village,’ ‘small or mid-sized town,’ ‘large town/city’ and ‘dk’. accordingly, ‘rural area or village’ was selected as the reference category and the dk is recoded as missing. lastly, geographical zones (country groups) are identified based on the unsd-m49 standard, and the countries' dates of joining the eu. considering the date of joining the eu, member countries may be grouped into two: the eu15 and nms. in this regard, twenty-eight member countries are grouped as follows: ‘northern old-no’ (ireland, the uk, denmark, finland, and sweden); ‘western old-wo’ (france, belgium, germany, netherlands, luxembourg, austria); ‘southern old-so’ (italy, greece, spain, portugal); ‘northern new-nn’ (estonia, latvia, lithuania); ‘southern new-sn’ (cyprus, malta, slovenia, croatia); and ‘eastern new-en’ (czechia, hungary, slovakia, poland, bulgaria, romania). analytical strategy multinomial logistic regression analyses are chosen because of the categorical nature of the dependent variable. participation in learning abroad mobility is categorized into three: those who participated; those who did not participate but considered it; and lastly, those who never considered it. these three types are taken as 'participated,' 'considered,' and 'neither' to express them in short. considering the analyses, there is no multicollinearity problem due to the vif values being no higher than 1.467, and tolerance values being not close to 0.00, with the lowest being 0.682. according to hair et al. (2014) vif value lies between 1.00-10.00 and it should be closer to 1.00, and the tolerance value lies between 0.10-1.00 and it should be closer to 1.00. findings before moving to the findings of multinomial logistic regression analyses, crosstabulations were made to provide information on the general association of sociodemographic factors and participation in learning abroad mobility. as shown in table 1, ꭓ2 statistics show significant differences for all of the independent variables. table 1. cross-tabulations between mobility types and independent variables independent variables n mobility type participated considered neither % % % gender** 10753 female 4875 34.1 36.1 29.8 male 5878 36.8 33.1 30.1 age*** 10753 15-19 years 1596 19.2 51.3 29.6 20-24 years 3311 33.8 39.2 26.9 25-30 years 5846 41.0 27.2 31.8 type of community*** 10708 large town 4254 40.7 34.7 24.6 small or mid-size town 3752 33.6 35.8 30.6 rural area or village 2702 30.5 32.3 37.2 occupation*** 10708 full-time students 3166 30.8 47.6 21.5 others (working full or part-time) 7542 37.6 28.9 33.5 country groups*** 10753 no 1992 34.6 34.6 30.7 wo 2250 33.9 35.8 30.3 so 1604 32.0 42.1 25.9 nn 1193 44.7 25.9 29.4 geographies of participation in learning abroad mobility among european youth current issues in comparative education 53 sn 1314 29.5 39.8 30.7 en 2400 39.1 20.3 31.6 *p≤0.05; **p≤0.01; ***p≤0.001 multinomial logistic regression analyses multinomial logistic regression analyses were made to examine the contributions of geography (contextual differences) and other socio-economic factors to the odds of participation in international mobility, by using all-data, within-country group data. as shown in table 2, findings are also similar to the significant differences in the cross-tabulations. considering the all-data analysis (model 1), respondents who are older, living in middle and large towns are more likely to participate in learning abroad mobility than younger respondents, and living in rural areas, respectively. being a student increases the likelihood of participation 1.85 times higher than being non-student (part-time and full-time working respondents). additionally, respondents from nn countries are 1.19 times more likely to participate than the respondents from the en countries. these differences remain the same for considering participation, but the contribution of being a student is higher this time, and subsequently, respondents from the wo, so and sn countries are more likely to consider participation than respondents from the en countries. table 2. multinomial logistic regression analyses for mobility types by geographies independent variables model 1 all-data (n=10669) model 2 no (n=1975 ) model 3 wo (n=2221 ) model 4 so (n=1592 ) model 5 nn (n=1192 ) model 6 sn (n=1302) model 7 en (n=2387 ) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) participated vs. neither gender (male) female 0.93 1.37** 1.09 0.86 0.74* 0.90 0.73** age (25-30 years) 15-19 years 0.37*** 0.36*** 0.33*** 0.40*** 0.46* 0.31*** 0.47*** 20-24 years 0.83*** 0.87 0.96 0.81 0.87 0.65* 0.80 type of community (rural area or village) large town 1.86*** 2.13*** 2.16*** 1.94*** 1.47* 1.81*** 1.63*** small or mid-size town 1.30** 1.31 1.56** 1.69** 0.94 1.29 1.09 occupation (nonstudents) students 1.85*** 1.76*** 2.14*** 2.21*** 1.49 1.72** 1.55** country groups (en) no 0.92 wo 1.00 so 1.02 nn 1.19* sn 0.86 considered vs. neither gender (male) female 1.05 1.24 1.09 1.05 0.97 1.05 0.52 age (25-30 years) 15-19 years 1.26** 1.42* 1.15 1.11 1.42 1.23 1.37 öz current issues in comparative education 54 20-24 years 1.30*** 1.48** 1.67*** 1.28 1.04 1.08 1.06 type of community (rural area or village) large town 1.77*** 1.68*** 2.10*** 1.39* 1.48 1.66** 1.98*** small or mid-size town 1.37*** 1.31 1.67*** 1.05 1.27 1.54** 1.30 occupation students 2.18*** 1.77*** 2.04*** 2.23*** 2.98*** 2.99*** 2.20*** country groups (en) no 1.06 wo 1.20* so 1.56*** nn 0.92 sn 1.34** negalkarke r2 0.086 0.084 0.087 0.064 0.083 0.119 0.061 model c2 (df) 844.71 (22)*** 153.43 (12)*** 178.11 (12)*** 92.24 (12)*** 90.62 (12)*** 144.94 (12)*** 132.46 (12)*** *p≤0.05; **p≤0.01; ***p≤0.001 when the analyses were made within country groups, it is possible to detect more differences regarding participation in learning abroad mobility. gender becomes a significant contributor to participation, but it loses its significant role in consideration. in the no countries, females are 37% more likely to participate, whereas, in the nn and en country groups, they are 26% and 27% less likely to participate in learning abroad mobility, respectively. younger respondents (15-19 years) from all of the nation groups are less likely to participate in learning abroad mobility than those older (25-30 years), but for consideration, they are more likely to consider participation than those older only in the no and wo countries. living in large towns makes significantly more of a contribution to participation in all of the country groups than living in rural areas, and this is almost the same for consideration, except in the nn countries. students are significantly more likely to participate in all of the country groups except the so countries, and they are more likely to consider participation than others in all of the country groups. furthermore, it is possible to reach detailed findings regarding the role of gender, age, and type of community when the analyses are made by students and nonstudents within country groups. in table 3, it can be seen that gender differences are mainly valid for non-student respondents. there is no significant difference by gender among students regarding participation, except for students in the wo countries. among students, females are 1.77 times more likely to participate in learning abroad mobility in the wo countries. females are also advantaged in the no countries among non-student respondents. however, they are also less likely to participate in the nn and en countries. these differences in the role of gender do not remain the same for consideration, except for non-students in the no countries. on the other hand, age differences are mainly valid for student respondents. younger students (15-19 years) from all of the country groups are less likely to participate in learning abroad mobility than the older respondents (25-30 years). younger students are most disadvantaged in the sn countries. however, age differences do not remain the same for consideration in most of the countries, except for the no and wo countries. in these two country groups, younger non-student respondents are more eager to participate. similar to the gender differences, differences in the type of community are mainly valid among non-students for both participation and consideration. students in the nn and no countries are an exception to this matter. in the nn countries, students living in mid-size towns are 3.61 times more likely to participate in learning abroad geographies of participation in learning abroad mobility among european youth current issues in comparative education 55 mobility than students living in rural areas, and students living in large and mid-size towns are also more likely to consider participating than students living in rural areas. in the wo and so countries, non-student respondents living in large and midsize towns are the most advantaged for participation. öz current issues in comparative education 56 table 3. multinomial logistic regression analyses for mobility types by students and others within geographies independent variables no wo so nn sn en model 1 student s (n=667) model 2 non-students (n=1308) model 3 students (n=783) model 4 nonstudents (n=1438) model 5 students (n=561) model 6 nonstudents (n=1031) model 7 students (n=226) model 8 nonstudents (n=966) model 9 students (n=430) model 10 nonstudents (n=872) model 11 students (n=488) model 12 nonstudents (n=1889) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) exp(b) participated vs. neither gender (male) female 1.12 1.48** 1.77** 0.87 0.95 0.82 1.07 0.70* 1.51 0.78 1.25 0.66*** age (25-30 years) 15-19 years 0.23*** 0.48** 0.23*** 0.49* 0.35** 0.57 0.28* 0.53 0.13*** 0.52 0.41* 0.63 20-24 years 0.64 0.91 0.86 0.88 0.84 0.81 0.50 0.92 0.43 0.67* 0.85 0.77 type of community (rural area or village) large town 2.33* 2.04*** 1.51 2.46*** 1.08 2.26*** 2.33 1.37 0.88 2.22*** 1.46 1.69*** small or mid-size town 1.33 1.31 1.49 1.44* 0.83 2.09*** 3.61* 0.79 1.41 1.21 1.16 1.09 considered vs. neither gender (male) female 0.85 1.52** 1.33 1.03 1.19 0.97 0.70 1.14 1.47 0.92 1.53 0.83 age (25-30 years) 15-19 years 0.77 2.15*** 0.59 1.64 1.27 0.96 1.06 1.59 1.30 1.61 1.05 1.67 20-24 years 0.91 1.66*** 0.99 1.78*** 1.60 1.22 0.70 1.06 1.70 0.87 0.93 1.07 type of community (rural area or village) large town 1.42 1.86*** 1.24 2.69*** 0.73 1.76** 2.87* 1.21 1.13 1.83** 1.74 2.08*** small or mid-size town 1.50 1.18 1.39 1.89*** 0.58 1.25 3.89* 1.02 1.35 1.66* 1.59 1.24 negalkarke r2 0.097 0.064 0.085 0.064 0.061 0.032 0.111 0.028 0.094 0.052 0.054 0.033 model c2 (df) 59.74 (10)*** 76.44 (10)*** 61.21 (10)*** 83.63 (10)*** 30.35 (10)*** 29.52 (10)*** 23.08 (10)** 24.41 (10)** 35.99 (10)*** 41.48 (10)*** 23.68 (10)** 55.75 (10)*** *p≤0.05; **p≤0.01; ***p≤0.001 geographies of participation in learning abroad mobility among european youth current issues in comparative education 57 discussion youth have experienced learning abroad mobility for a long time across europe. however, a proportion of youth who are from recent member countries of the eu has lately been exposed to this opportunity than the youth from older member countries. therefore, participation in learning abroad mobility is naturally expected to be different between the eu15 and nms. however, the findings of the current study show that such a difference is only significant between the nn and en country groups. this means that participation differences between old and new member states converge or maybe no longer exist, but such difference continues within the nms. yet, it is also possible to argue that such a difference continues in the consideration of participation in mobility since the participants from wo, so, sn countries are more willing to participate than their counterparts in en. moreover, whole-dataset analyses within country groups reveal that students are more likely to participate than non-students in all of the country groups. considering that students have been benefitting from the learning abroad experience for a long time, such a finding is quite reasonable for the mobility of youth in an eu context. however, dividing the old (eu15) and the new (nms) member states of the eu by geography led to several differences in the role of socio-demographic factors. the first issue is related to gender equality in participation. among students, there is no significant difference between males and females in almost all of the country groups, and females are significantly more advantaged in the wo countries. several other studies also indicate that females are more mobile than males among students (finn & darmody, 2017; whatley 2018). however, among non-students, females are significantly disadvantaged in the nn and en country groups, whereas they are more likely to participate in the no countries. therefore, it is possible to say that gender equality may not constitute a problem in the eu15 countries among students, but it could still be a problem among non-students, especially in the nms. dissimilarly, age does not play a hindering role in the nms or among non-students in most of the country groups. however, among students, the young (15-19 years) are significantly disadvantaged than older people (25-30 years) in all of the country groups. such a hindering role of age among younger students is quite reasonable since most of the learning abroad opportunities are concentrated at the higher education level. even among university students, there is evidence that seniors, and graduate students are more likely to participate than freshman and undergraduate students (hercog & van de laar, 2013). differences among students and non-students are evident for participation in whether they live in large towns or rural areas. but the type of community is an underestimated factor in studies focusing on learning abroad mobility (di pietro, 2020). according to findings of the current study, type of community does not make a significant contribution among students in general, except the nn and no countries; whereas, among non-students, respondents living in large towns are more likely to participate in learning abroad mobility than those living in rural areas. limitations the findings of the current study are limited because of the question representing the dependent variable (participation in learning abroad mobility) in the questionnaire. this question was asked generally, not separating respondents whether they participated in learning abroad mobility when they were students or after they graduated. student (full-time students) and non-student groups (respondents having a partor full-time job) were separated by the researcher based on the occupation item (d5r). so, there could be some non-student respondents participating in learning abroad mobility when they are students. at the same time, they could also participate in learning abroad mobility after they graduated once more. but there öz current issues in comparative education 58 isn’t any item for the identification of such responses in the survey. however, the findings showed that the older the respondent, the more participation in mobility. accordingly, the actual number of non-student respondents who participated in learning abroad mobility could be less. so, the contribution of the socio-demographic factors to participation in abroad learning mobility of non-students may have been underestimated. concluding remarks factors contributing to students' participation in learning abroad mobility have long been studied by various scholars. the current study explores the role of certain sociodemographic factors (gender, age, type of community) in participation, not only among students but also among non-students within six different eu member country groups. although some current findings were consistent with the findings of other studies, they also show interesting clues regarding the role of contextual differences (geographies). accordingly, despite the late integration of nms into the eu, participation in learning abroad mobility gap between eu15 and the nms has minimized recently, despite the ongoing differences in consideration (willingness to participate). besides, participation differences are continuing within the nms. so, policies and financial resources allocated for youth mobility should be organized by focusing on the conditions of youth in the nms in the next seven years (2021-27 term), especially those residing in the en countries. a similar focus should be concentrated on non-students because non-students are less likely to participate in learning abroad mobility than students. implementing erasmus+ to cover these groups was a good start to cover non-formal learning abroad activities more systematically. however, there is still a lack of studies broadly focusing on the challenges/conditions of participation among non-student groups of youth in the eu context. further research should also examine non-students abroad learning mobility. some specific eu-wide surveys such as some of the flash eurobarometers could also be conducted by ec officials to investigate the learning mobility of the non-student group of youth, rather than making population-based surveys. among non-students within nation group analyses showed that individuals living in rural areas in almost all country groups and females in some nms countries are disadvantaged in participation. therefore, specific policies encouraging or supporting these groups in the 2021-27 fiscal term could be a priority for the ec officials and the national agencies of these countries. yakup öz, ph.d. is a research assistant in the department of educational sciences at karamanoglu mehmetbey university. his research interests lie in the area of internationalization of higher education, public diplomacy, student engagement in higher education, and comparative and international education. references beech, s. e. 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(2018). cross-border mobility, european identity and participation among european adolescents and young adults. the european journal of developmental psychology, 15(3), 324–339. gonzález, r. c., mesanza, b. r., & mariel, p. (2011). the determinants of international student mobility flows: an empirical study on the erasmus programme. higher education, 62(4), 413–430. souto-otero, m., huisman, j., beerkens, m., de wit, h., & vujić, s. (2013). barriers to international student mobility. educational researcher, 42(2), 70-77. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x12466696 standard country or area codes for statistical use. (n.d.). m49 standard. https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/ shields, r. (2016). reconsidering regionalisation in global higher education: student mobility spaces of the european higher education area. compare: a journal of comparative and international education, 46(1), 5-23. tran, l. t. (2015). mobility as ‘becoming’: a bourdieuian analysis of the factors shaping international student mobility. british journal of sociology of education, 37(8), 1268-1289. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2015.1044070 geographies of participation in learning abroad mobility among european youth current issues in comparative education 61 van geel, j., & mazzucato, v. (2018). conceptualising youth mobility trajectories: thinking beyond conventional categories. journal of ethnic and migration studies, 44(13), 2144–2162. van mol, c., & timmerman, c. (2014). should i stay or should i go? an analysis of the determinants of intra-european student mobility. population, space and place, 20(5), 465–479. whatley, m. (2018). toward an understanding of peer influence on undergraduate study abroad participation. frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of study abroad, 30(3), 51-71. https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v30i3.421 5_kang_should unified korea choose fiscal decentralization for education current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 22, issue 1, special issue 2020 © 2020, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 22(1), 58-82. should unified korea choose fiscal decentralization for education? testing the decentralization theory on education finance with cross-country analysis for korean unification seulgi kang teachers college, columbia university the unification of south korea and north korea is a plausible idea yet it requires a comprehensive preparation in advance. as a method to achieve fiscal efficiency in public services, decentralization theory1is consistently applied. however, the current literature and political reality argue that decentralization does not always hold its efficiency. therefore, this paper focuses on finding an ideal education finance model for post-unification korea by studying how one country’s academic/economic status is related to their education finance model. this paper conducts the ols linear regression analysis with 40 oecd and its partner countries’ information on gdp per capita, gini index, pisa mathematics score, and the form of education finance system. the main findings of this research are that the political and fiscal decentralization are different ideas, and fiscal decentralization does not always hold its efficiency as the decentralization theory states. among the types of decentralization, the optimal education finance model for academic and economic improvement is deconcentration – which is a combination of fiscal centralization and political, or administrative, decentralization to empower regional autonomy. keywords: decentralization theory, fiscal decentralization, education finance, korean unification, economics of education, cross-country analysis introduction during more than 70 years of korean peninsula’s division, korea transformed into two radically different communities – south korea and north korea. in 2019, the gross domestic product (gdp) of south korea was 88 times more than of north korea (un statistics division, 2020a). north korea ranked the lowest in the democracy index among 167 countries, while south korea was listed as 22nd, which was a higher rank than japan and france (economist intelligence unit, 2016). following a ‘failing state’ of north korea, a survey to north korean refugees even showed a dramatic result that 99.2 percent of north koreans they knew in north korea wanted unification (park et al., 2011). moreover, considering current international conflicts that north korea faces with world’s leading countries, such as the united states, japan, and china, as well as with south korea, unification of korea is only a matter of time that no one knows when it will happen (shin, 2013). therefore, it is necessary to plan ahead and prepare how essential public services such as education should efficiently function to close not only the achievement gap but also the socioeconomic gap in the era of post-unification with limited resources. 1 decentralization theory: a political theory that believes smaller governments are more efficient in providing public services and therefore encourages local autonomy in public services. kang current issues in comparative education 59 as one of the approaches to fiscal efficiency in public services, fiscal decentralization receives significant attention from many nations. fiscal decentralization is a theory that believes it is always efficient for local governments to provide public services (oates, 2008) and thus should provide more budget autonomy as well as taxing power to local governments (welsh and mcginn, 1999). this idea received attention with the movement of political democratization in the 1980s (welsh and mcginn, 1999) and has also been applied in education. in fact, many european countries and the united states are pursuing the fiscal decentralization of education, and they believe in its efficiency by allowing a chance for choice nearer to people (deboer, 2012). however, existing literature also reports that several countries are recently coming back to centralization from decentralization in administering their public service budget. while the global trend of decentralization exists, recentralization also implies some uncertainty of the effectiveness of fiscal decentralization (gershberg, 1995; hanushek et al., 2011). this paper therefore aims to identify whether fiscal decentralization of education is effective in closing achievement and/or socioeconomic gap between two different socio-economic communities, with the concrete example of a future scenario for postunification of south korea and north korea. with a clear example of two different communities in terms of education, politics, economics, and culture, this research would initiate further research on the school finance model of unified korea, but it may also activate more definite conversations and help devise a new approach to education policies around social desegregation beyond korean peninsula. first, this paper will provide the background of two koreas’ education systems and how north and south koreans perceive the concept of unification. the literature review on the validity of (de)centralization in school finance and the kinds of fiscal (de)centralized models will then follow. for the data analysis, this paper will provide: a) the descriptive analysis and b) the ordinary least squared (ols) regression on 40 different countries’ education and economic data. this data analysis will identify the ideal school finance model from the cross-country analysis of 40 oecd countries and suggesting policy recommendations of unified korea based on the analysis. background how education systems function in two koreas education has played a significant role in both koreas although its goal was completely different in two countries. borrowing from labaree’s (1997) interpretations of the educational goals to explain this difference, there are three goals of education – democratic equality, social efficiency, and social mobility. democratic equality of education is when education is used for preparing students as effective and responsible citizens. this includes teaching students what their rights as citizens, as well as providing them a uniform learning experience as a citizen of one nation. another educational goal is social efficiency, stating that education is primarily for training workers that meet the needs of the society. lastly, social mobility argues that education is to help students climb the social ladder and achieve social or economic ambition (labaree, 1997). north korea has used education for a radical version of democratic equality. under the name of patriotism and loyalty to the nation, north korean dictators used schooling primarily for “brainwashing” the citizens (bennett, 2013). on the other hand, south should unified korea choose fiscal decentralization for education? current issues in comparative education 60 korean society implicitly and explicitly promised social mobility via education, and this enables an impressive expansion of the number of educational institutions and high enrollment rate in every educational level evenly within a few decades (shin & koh, 2005; seth, 2002). interestingly, in order to achieve the two very different educational goals, both north and south korea chose a centralized education system. north korea’s dictatorship and its use of education clearly explain why north korea chose a highly centralized education system; in fact, federalism does not exist in north korea, which leaves no option for decentralization. on the other hand, it is helpful to analyze why south korea persisted with their centralized education system over 70 years. according to seth (2002), this centralized system reflects two intentions of south korean government during the educational development: (a) to achieve internal efficiency to establish an educational system quickly after the consecutive historical incidents that broke the entire nation, and (b) to make schooling equally available to all students with an equal standard and content. accordingly, the education system in south korea is highly centralized, and the central government is spending almost 15 percent of its annual budget to education (national assembly budget office, 2019); this is a similar amount of investment that the u.s. federal government makes to their defense (15.2 percentage) in the same year (congressional budget office, 2020). although the education budget from the central government flows as a grant and is executed at the regional governments, the educational grant from the central government makes more than 70 percent of the entire regional education finance (national assembly budget office, 2019). when compared to the education finance of the united states, where the state and local governments usually provide approximately 70 percent of the education budget (spellings, 2005), south korea shows a significant dependence on the central government for education. two different attitudes on korean unification korean unification is no longer a vain idea. although there can be a lot of political perspectives to consider to make such a bold statement, this paper supports the idea of unification based on two non-political reasons. first, there is currently no rightful heir to kim jung-un, who is showing bad health since 2014 (groll, 2014; berlinger, 2020; bowden, 2020). second, with the trend of globalization and the strong cultural wave (in korean, hallyu) directly from south korea, including k-pop and k-drama, is also affecting north koreans, and it is no longer possible to “brainwash” most of north koreans to think their country is better than south korea (jung, 2016; park et al., 2011). however, it is more important to notice that these combined external influences now make north koreans think korean unification attractive and beneficial. according to park and colleagues (2011), north korean refugees in south korea reported that 99.2 percent of north koreans they knew wanted unification. despite the fact that north koreans have become more open to korean unification, the reverse has happened in the south. according to the survey conducted by park and his colleagues (2011), majority of south koreans (over 75 percent) disagreed with the idea that korean unification will benefit individuals in south korea. the main reason for such a negative reaction was the cost of unification. south koreans’ perspectives and predictions about the unification cost is based on the lessons from german unification. in fact, west germany originally expected to spend kang current issues in comparative education 61 approximately 30 to 40 billion deutsche mark (dm) (176 242 billion usd; 16 22 trillion krw) annually for german reunification; however, west germany had to spend five times more of what they had expected for 10 years. in total, it is assumed that germany spent approximately one trillion euro (1 trillion usd) by 2019 for reunification (shin et al., 2008). what is worse is that the current economic gap between north korea and south korea is significantly larger than that of two germanies at their unification period. in general, researchers agree that the unification cost for koreas would be between 1-2 trillion usd (1100-2200 trillion krw) (bennett, 2013). since 1991, germany has put an extra tax called “solidarity tax” (in germany, commonly known as the soli), which is a specialized tax covering the costs of reunification. this tax comes from 5.5 percent of income tax and corporation tax. germany finally announced the plan to end the solidarity tax in 2021 for most taxpayers progressively, almost 30 years after the reunification (deutsche welle, 2019). most south koreans who have heard or learned about germany’s significant effort to meet the unification cost showed a negative attitude toward unification (park et al. 2011). in another survey on korean unification in south korea, 40.5 percent did not want unification, and another 44.2 percent support unification only with a condition of no huge financial burden (lee, 2020). this pessimistic attitude is more prevalent among younger generations of south korea, who relatively share less the impact of korean war and an ethical bondage to north koreans but have to be responsible for the costs when the unification actually happens as an active labor force (bennett, 2013; shin et al., 2008). thus, the first and foremost task that unified korea must focus on is allocating governmental finance efficiently, so that unification would reach potential pareto improvement. potential pareto improvement is an economic term from cost-benefit analysis that the benefit must be bigger than the cost (igi global, 2020). applying this concept into korean unification, it means that the cost that south koreans would pay has to be less than what north koreans would gain as benefit. therefore, it is very predictable that the fiscal decentralization would rise as a new political agenda of unified korea when the government has to focus on reaching efficiency in finance, as germany exactly experienced during the earlier period of german unification (ziblatt, 2002). literature review the most basic yet important decision in determining the education finance model is that who is in charge of the budget. in other world, whether education finance will be controlled by the central government or local governments is the big question, and this leads us to questioning the decentralization theory. oates (1972) and rondinelli (1981) introduced the concept of decentralization theory in public services. in his seminal work, fiscal federalism, oates (1972) argues that the decentralization in decisionmaking power is more beneficial to the local communities by allowing heterogeneous responses to the demands. based on oates’ decentralization theory, rondinelli stated that there are three forms of decentralization based on the degree of decentralization: deconcentration, delegation, and devolution. although these two papers’ main focuses were not limited to education, they were still seminal works for establishing fiscal decentralization within education. later, scholars such as welsh and mcginn (1999) brought this typology of decentralization into the context of education. they should unified korea choose fiscal decentralization for education? current issues in comparative education 62 first brought a decentralization movement with the administration autonomy within education and argued that lower governments or even parents should decide the curriculum, school structure, teacher hiring/training process, and monitoring method. this decentralization movement was later conceptualized within the education finance system by werner and shah (2006). they specifically brought the three types of decentralization – deconcentration, devolution, and delegation – in education finance and classified ten european countries’ education finance systems into three. this typology of decentralization is now widely used in the education finance study. deconcentration is a form of decentralization that shows similar characteristics with that of centralization; the main difference, however, is that the administration is divided into several lower levels of branches and operates in the regional or local offices. clearly, the central government, the “headquarter”, still remains as an important decision maker. devolution, on the other hand, transfers most of the responsibility and authority to the state or local governments. each regional government operates independently, and the involvement of the federal government is minimal. lastly, delegation is the most progressive form of decentralization where a school is the primary decision maker and holds most of responsibility while the governments keep de jure responsibility for education. it is the most progressive form because the size of the unit for making critical decisions in education is smaller than the other two (rondinelli, 1981; werner & shah, 2006; ferrari & zanardi, 2014). such distinctions within the general term ‘decentralization’ highlight the need to consider several possible forms of decentralization in education, and the literature suggests that these differences must be considered in conversation about decentralization. fiscal decentralization of public services, including education, was traditionally supported by anglo-american countries such as england and the united states. the advocates of educational decentralization stated that decentralization increases allocative efficiency because smaller governments hold the authority for tax allocation and spending power for their own communities; therefore. there is more autonomy in matching preferences and needs of people (oates, 2008; barankay & lockwood, 2007). decentralization was also preferred as it fosters accountability of local officials in terms of budget constraint and competition among other regions; decentralization enables each region to choose the most “efficient” way to help their students in their local context rather than following the orders from central government that sometimes do not reflect the different needs of different local communities (welsh & shah, 2006). therefore, this could lead to innovative and creative approaches, as well as a positive competition among neighboring regions to improve student performances (grauwe et al., 2015; barankay & lockwood, 2007). unlike such arguments, however, the real-world practices of fiscal decentralization often show mixed results on its impact. barankay and lockwood (2007) found evidence from swiss cantons that fiscal decentralization increased education attainment; similarly, galiani et al. (2002) and eskeland and filmer (2002) also found out school decentralization in argentina, which provided more autonomy in the budget as well, increased students’ test scores. however, the studies by galiani et al. (2008) and gershberg and winkler (2004) in west africa stated that the correlation between fiscal decentralization and student outcome improvement is close to zero, and the most of positive improvement by decentralization is actually due to more parental kang current issues in comparative education 63 involvement rather than increased school autonomy in the budget. ahmad and his colleagues (2008) also stated that there is a lack of consensus on the relationship between decentralization and higher student outcome as compared to a centralized system. hence, many countries—both in the global south and north – show very diverse routes in their education finance system in the recent years. while the united states is historically well known for their belief and practices in decentralization, they are currently taking a smooth swing to a more centralized system in school finance through title i, a us federal education funding for the disadvantaged population, under the name of adequate education (deboer, 2012). in the cases of mexico and mongolia, the two countries with traditionally centralized governments, they adopted decentralization once and recently returned to centralization due to cultural conflicts and municipal corruption under the decentralized system (steiner-khamsi & stolpe, 2004; gershberg, 1995). meanwhile, in italy, fiscal decentralization in education has been rising as a necessary educational reform to prevent the constant flow of unfair distribution of resources to southern regions of the nation (ferrari & zanardi, 2014). this inconsistent trend in the education finance system implies there is no absolute answer, and therefore every country must analyze different factors, conduct empirical studies, and implement an efficient system for each country. however, most of existing literature on fiscal decentralization of education is limited to descriptive studies and there is a paucity of empirical studies that analyze its impact on students’ educational outcomes. this paper aims to contribute to fill this gap by directly questioning and conducting quantitative research on the correlation between the fiscal decentralization policy and economic/academic outcomes. to bring the context of korean unification into the existing literature on fiscal decentralization, the case of germany is an important reference to koreas. though there is limited resource on fiscal decentralization specifically in education during german unification period, ziblatt (2002) well explained how fiscal decentralization worked in post-unification germany. according to ziblatt (2002), germany too proceeded the fiscal decentralization in the late 1990s, mainly led by leaders of rich states (länder) to end “financial punishment on economically strong states” due to the financial crisis caused by unification. also, with the global trend of decentralization in academics since the 1980s, many influential german think tanks also published reports supporting the german “fiscal federalism”, which argues for taxing and spending autonomy within the state. however, as a final result, germany did not pursue the fiscal decentralization of their public services because it was too radical considering the political reality of germany’s political structure as a nation-state and the fact that they just unified the nation (ziblatt, 2002). the poorer states strongly disagreed, so did the social democratic party, one of the major political parties in germany. even some politicians from christian democratic union, the political party that led this proposal, disagreed. though economists and scholars agree that fiscal decentralization would bring economic benefits, the majority of german politicians refuted and said the political cost of implementing such a proposal outweighs the economic benefit (ziblatt, 2002). the literature on german unification and fiscal decentralization during post-unification signifies that fiscal decentralization and unification are huge political should unified korea choose fiscal decentralization for education? current issues in comparative education 64 matters, and fiscal decentralization with unification must be considered not only economic/academic benefits but also the political benefits. unfortunately, there is not much research focused on fiscal decentralization in education during post-unification period in germany, and there are several different opinions on which education finance model germany has used. ferrari and zanardi (2014) and werner and shah (2006) described german education finance system as deconcentration, which is the mix of fiscal centralization and political decentralization. perhaps it was plausible to think that germany has chosen deconcentration since it was often recognized as it maximizes the advantages of both decentralization and centralization systems. however, oecd’s (2019) data on initial funding suggests that germany is choosing devolution. although there is no consensus in determining the education finance system of germany, it is still noticeable that german chose deconcentration or devolution for post-unification period. methodology this empirical analysis is to examine whether there is any correlation among the economic status, student outcomes, and the education finance system of one country. while this paper focuses on testing the decentralization theory in education finance for korean unification, the main analysis is broader by including 40 countries. there are three reasons in making a broader analysis; first, there are a significantly small number of countries that experienced unification to limit the sample of this analysis. second, this paper also hopes to make a further impact on determining the education finance model of the communities where academic achievement and socioeconomic gap are wide as south korea and north korea. last but more importantly, many scholars studying north korea believe that there is no reliable data from north korea in order to make an ideal data set for unified korea (park et al, 2011; shin, 2013). this is why even the scholars of south korea do a few empirical studies on the future scenario of korean unification. for example, the united nations is the only reliable international organization that receives (or sometimes estimates) the statistics of the nation, but the un statistics division (2020a, 2020b) itself did not have the concurrent data for gdp per capita from 2010 to 2019. also, north korea has never shared their gini index and also has never participated in the programme for international student assessment (pisa). thus, the only certain assumption for unified korea is that it will have a lower gdp per capita, a higher gini index, and lower pisa scores from current south korea’s statistics. thus, by conducting a broader study of 40 countries, this paper would like to identify the countries with the estimated statistics of unified korea and see how they manage the education finance system for economic and academic improvement. therefore, this section will now provide a cross-country analysis using 40 countries’ (a) gdp per capita, (b) gini index, (c) a mathematics score from 2018 pisa, and (d) the form of current education finance system. data source gdp per capita, gini index, pisa math score to make a comparison on different variables, data for each variable are gathered from different sources. for gdp per capita, this paper used the un statistics division’s kang current issues in comparative education 65 (2020b) per capita gdp at current prices – us dollars in 2018. for the gini index (a percentage form of gini-coefficient that shows income inequality in a range of 0-100 [0=perfectly equal, 100=perfectly unequal]), i used world bank’s (2020) gini index estimates 2 . pisa, an international standardized test offered by organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd), provides a national score of reading literacy, mathematics, and science test scores from oecd members and partner countries, and i decided to use the most recent pisa mathematics scores from 2018 as a variable representing student performances. also, data on the education finance model is brought from the oecd education at a glance 2019 indicators, showing the initial sources of public funds for education by governmental levels. the education finance form for the last variable about the education finance model, it is very important to understand how classification is made. this paper is primarily interested in knowing the difference between the education expenditures that stay within the state/local borders and the education expenditures aggregated at the higher level and distributed according to the needs. therefore, rather than the final funding power that could be diluted from the initial funding sources by either horizontal or vertical transfers between the governments, i decided to categorize the funding model according to the scale of initial funding. for example, approximately 70 percent of education finance of south korea initially comes from the central government, but nearly all of them are transferred to the regional level to be executed (national assembly budget office, 2019). in such cases, although the central government provides 70 percent of initial funds, the final funds describe that the budget is from the regional office. indeed, the distribution of final funds narrates who has the most autonomy and takes responsibility in running education efficiently. however, it does not report whether the educational expenditures are aggregated solely within the border or outside of the border and are given from the central government, which is a critical implication to the future scenario of unified korea. therefore, i labeled the system based on the size of initial education funds from each level of governments. for the labels, i used centralization and the definitions from the existing literature categorizing decentralization into three different levels – deconcentration, devolution, and delegation. centralization is used when more than 50 percent of initial education expenditures is from the central government and is not distributed enough to the sub-central governments via transfers. deconcentration is when more than 50 percent of initial education expenditures is from the central government and is distributed enough to the sub-central governments by transfers so that more than 50 percent of final funds are at the lower governmental level. devolution has been used when more than 50 percent of initial education funding is from subcentral (regional and local) level. delegation is the most progressive form of decentralization that a school has the most critical decision power than the governments. in terms of funding allocation, this 2 note that the gini index in this dataset includes the latest version of the estimate and therefore is not from the same year; it is mostly from 2017 but includes years from a range of 2010-2018 as well. this follows the data collecting method of previous research that used gini coefficient or gini index in crosscountry analysis (li & zou, 2002; de gregorio & lee, 2002); because gini coefficient is limited data mostly available by national level, it depends on each country’ government to report, so it is hard to collect a single year’s gini index if research uses cross-country analysis. should unified korea choose fiscal decentralization for education? current issues in comparative education 66 would be the case where either a school collects the initial funds directly from the families, or the school receives the funds directly from the central governments. although welsh and shah (2006) named denmark’s form of decentralization as delegation due to the strong school autonomy in decision making, in this analysis, the case of denmark is considered as devolution because the funds are still collected by the local size, not school size in denmark. thus, in this dataset, i assume that delegation is nonexistent, when the standard of naming (de)centralization is an aggregated level of initial educational expenditures. empirical strategy this paper focuses on a hypothesis based on oates’ (1972) decentralization theory, which states that the decentralization of public service increases efficiency by offering heterogeneous responses that are tailoring to the smaller group of people. to apply this theory in fiscal decentralization in education, this paper hypothesizes that the higher gdp countries or lower gini index countries (meaning less economic inequality), which are the countries with better economic outcomes and perhaps implying higher efficiency, will be concentrated on forming a decentralized finance system and therefore results in higher student outcome, vice versa. plus, this paper will continue whether this theory can be also applied in unified korea, where it would show lower gdp and higher gini index yet aim to achieve efficiency – means higher gdp, gini index, and higher pisa score. for the empirical analysis, this study will perform a) the descriptive analysis and b) the ols regression analysis. the descriptive analysis will divide 40 countries into two categories and two subcategories – the former higher/lower gdp per capita and the latter higher/lower gini index. then, the countries will be ranked by pisa math scores. i wanted to see if there is any concentration of one education finance system by academic/economic status. the ols linear regression analysis will target to find the most “efficient” education finance model to achieve a higher pisa test score and lower gini index. the dependent variable here will be gdp per capita, and independent variables are pisa scores and gini index of each country. for the regression and creating graphs, i will be using stata 16 with the sample size of 40 (countries). this study includes 40 countries, and most countries are the members of oecd and/or participants of the pisa test (see appendix a). there are a number of countries whose students may have taken the pisa test yet are not included in this cross-country analysis because the data for initial and final funds for education was unavailable3. results descriptive analysis to understand how education finance models are differentiated by the academic/economic status (gdp per capita and gini index), the table is first divided countries into high gdp per capita (table 1) and low gdp per capita (table 2); then, 3 since this analysis is based on strict criteria that a country has to participate in pisa and provide oecd advanced information on its education expenditures, it leaves out most countries from africa, southeast asia, and south america and some countries in east europe. this suggests that there could be a selection bias on the findings and does not fully guarantee external validity of the findings, especially for the country that shares similar characteristics of opted-out countries. however, to mitigate the selection bias as much as possible, this paper categorized the nations by their levels of gdp per capita, as well as the level of gini index. kang current issues in comparative education 67 the tables have subcategories – low gini index and high gini index, respectively. therefore, one table has two columns, and the countries are ranked again by pisa mathematics test scores. this is to see whether there is any concentration of education finance model by academic/economic status. table 1 and 2 are the main descriptive analysis of this paper. table 3 and 4 are the altered version table 1 and 2 in order to apply this empirical analysis specifically to the context of korean unification. while table 1 and 2 are divided by median countries (japan and italy) and equal in the number of countries (20 countries in table 1 and 2 each), table 3 and 4 are centered by south korea4. table 3 and 4 are available in appendix b. the ols regression analysis to test the hypothesis in a broader sense, figure 1 and 2 include all of the countries by its gdp per capita (figure 1) and gini index (figure 2) with pisa mathematics scores. the education finance models are categorized by the colors; red represents countries with a centralization system, green represents countries with a deconcentration system, and lastly, blue represents countries with a devolution system. each figure also contains the fitted ols regression lines for three different systems, so that education finance models can be compared and test a decentralization hypothesis – whether fiscal decentralization leads to higher academic outcomes, higher gdp per capita, and less inequality 5 . i acquired the idea and developed the model from deboer’s (2012) figure ‘fiscal educational decentralization and income, population, and diversity’ (figure 1 of deboer (2012)). the significance tests of figure 1 and 2 have done and can find in appendix c. to summarize, the education finance model of deconcentration in figure 1 shows statistical significance, but other education finance models don’t seem statistically significant in determining pisa math scores, holding gdp and/or gini index constant. however, further study has to follow in order to make a more precise conclusion since this statistical insignificance may be due to smaller sample size (n=40), rather than the education finance models’ effectiveness. with this caveat, however, this paper still considers the outcomes of figure 1 and 2 important in recognizing the difference of education finance models on producing academic achievement, holding economic status constant. 4 china is not included in the table 1 and 2 because it does not provide national pisa test scores but only four regional scores (beijing, shanghai, jiangsu, and guangdong) (oecd,2016). however, since table 3 and 4 are divided by economic status of south korea and thus exclude south korea from the table, i decide to include one more country (china) for adding more context. 5 note that data for gdp per capita in figure 1 has been “top-coded” to a range of 10,000 – 80,000 usd; in other words, gdp per capita less than 10,000 were replaced to a value of 10,000, and similarly, gdp per capita higher than 80,000 were replaced with a value of 80,000. the countries that were replaced with the minimum value (10,000) are colombia, mexico, turkey, and brazil, and the countries that were replaced with the maximum value (80,000) are luxemburg, norway, and switzerland. this has been done in order to visualize the data more effectively, and this change was minor and did not hamper the findings we made according to the results visualized in figure 1 and 2. current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 22, issue 1, special issue 2020 current issues in comparative education 68 table 1. cross-country analysis of high gdp per capita (divided by median) gdp status high gdp per capita gini coefficient low gini (more equal income distribution) high gini (less equal income distribution) pisa (2018) gdp per capita (usd) gini (year) education finance model source of initial fund pisa (2018) gdp per capita (usd) gini (year) education finance model source of initial fund country country netherlands 519 53,583 28.5 (2017) centralization central japan 527 39,082 32.9 (2013) devolution regional & local denmark 509 61,834 28.7 (2017) devolution local switzerland 515 82,709 32.7 (2017) devolution regional & local belgium 508 47,293 27.4 (2017) devolution regional canada 512 46,192 33.8 (2013) devolution regional finland 507 50,136 27.4 (2017) devolution local united kingdom 502 42,526 34.8 (2016) deconcentration central sweden 502 55,767 28.8 (2017) devolution local ireland 500 79,415 32.8 (2016) centralization central norway 501 81,336 27 (2017) devolution local new zealand 494 43,836 33.3 (2017) centralization central germany 500 47,514 31.9 (2016) devolution regional australia 491 58,393 34.4 (2014) deconcentration central austria 499 51,230 29.7 (2017) deconcentration central luxembourg 483 117,370 34.9 (2017) centralization central france 495 41,358 31.6 (2017) centralization central united states 478 62,918 41.4 (2016) devolution regional & local iceland 495 76867 26.8 (2015) devolution local israel 463 44,215 39 (2016) centralization central source: un statistics division (2020b), world bank (2020), and author’s calculation based on oecd (2019) education at a glance 2019, figure c4.3., and welsh & shah (2006). kang current issues in comparative education 69 table 2. cross-country analysis of low gdp per capita countries (divided by median) gdp status low gdp per capita gini coefficient low gini (more equal income distribution) high gini (less equal income distribution) pisa (2018) gdp per capita (usd) gini (year) education finance model source of initial fund pisa (2018) gdp per capita (usd) gini (year) education finance model source of initial fund country country south korea 526 33,622 31.6 (2012) deconcentration central poland 516 15,444 29.7 (2017) deconcentration central estonia 523 23,242 30.4 (2017) deconcentration central latvia 496 17,852 35.6 (2017) deconcentration central slovenia 509 26,005 24.2 (2017) centralization central russia 488 11,394 37.5 (2018) devolution regional czech republic 499 23,079 24.9 (2017) devolution local hungary 481 16,264 30.6 (2017) centralization central portugal 492 23,478 33.8 (2017) centralization central turkey 454 9,368 41.9 (2018) centralization central italy 487 34,389 35.9 (2017) centralization central chile 417 15,923 44.4 (2017) centralization central slovak republic 486 19,431 25.2 (2016) deconcentration central mexico 409 9,695 45.4 (2018) deconcentration central spain 481 30,406 34.7 (2017) devolution regional colombia 391 6,650 50.4 (2018) centralization central lithuania 481 19,083 37.3 (2017) deconcentration central brazil 384 8,921 53.9 (2017) devolution regional & local greece 451 20,731 34.4 (2017) centralization central argentina 379 11,688 41.4 (2018) devolution regional source: un statistics division (2020b), world bank (2020), and author’s calculation based on oecd (2019) education at a glance 2019, figure c4.3. should unified korea choose fiscal decentralization for education? current issues in comparative education 70 figure 1. cross-country analysis on education finance model by pisa scores and gdp per capita note: gdp per capita in figure 1 were top-coded with a range of (10,000-80,000) usd, and the value of seven countries were adopted accordingly. country codes are available in appendix a. source: un statistics division (2020b), world bank (2020), and author’s calculation based on oecd (2019) education at a glance 2019, figure c4.3., welsh & shah (2006). figure 2. cross-country analysis on education finance model by pisa scores and gini index note: following the characteristics of gini index and a more intuitive data visualization approach, the x axis is reversed and has a minimum (more equal) value at the right side and a maximum (less equal) value at the left side. country codes are available in appendix a. source: un statistics division (2020b), world bank (2020), and author’s calculation based on oecd (2019) education at a glance 2019, figure c4.3., welsh & shah (2006). kang current issues in comparative education 71 discussion and conclusion findings this paper extends the idea of fiscal decentralization and the decentralization theory with the following several findings. first, separating and recognizing the difference of the sources of initial funds from final funds where the school finance is actually executed, this study argues that the definition of the centralization or decentralization of education must be more accurate. when applying the definition of deconcentration, devolution, and delegation into the education finance model, there is actually a significant number of countries where the initial funds are collected in national level yet the executive power is divided into smaller branches, such as regional governments, local governments, or municipalities, in a form of deconcentration. this implies that considering the initial sources of budget and where it comes from, there are more “centralized” countries in education finance than the existing literature often argue (deboer, 2012), and therefore needs a more accurate distinction of fiscal decentralization and political decentralization of education. following the first finding, this paper also recognizes that, as current literature has suggested, there is no one “absolute” education finance model prevailing in achieving better economic and academic outcomes. tables 1-4 explicitly show that there is no concentration on one education finance model in achieving higher gdp per capita, lower gini index, or higher pisa mathematics scores. this aligns with the conclusions of deboer (2012), steiner-khamsi and stolpe (2004), ahmad et al. (2008), and welsh and mcginn (1999) that the form of education finance of one country must be determined in consideration of its politics, culture, feasibility, and administrative motives, and it should not be based on neither international trend nor a simple belief that choice near people would bring efficiency. a further study on fiscal decentralization may devise how quantitative research can include political factors and expand the decentralization theory further. third, besides the distinction of fiscal decentralization, the ols regression cross-country analysis shows that political decentralization, or the distribution of administrative power to lower governments, tends to lead to higher economic and academic outcomes. among three education finance systems, deconcentration and devolution are the system with political decentralization. the outcomes from tables 1 – 2, and figures 1 – 2 describe countries with either deconcentration or devolution as the education finance model ranked higher in gdp per capita and pisa mathematics scores, as well as lower gini index. in fact, 70 percent of countries with higher gdp/lower gini index per capita were using either deconcentration or devolution (table 1 and 2). this implies that the decentralization hypothesis is valid when it is specific to political or administrative context. lastly, the results from ols regression analysis in figure 1 and 2 suggest that the optimal education finance model for better economic (higher gdp per capita and lower gini index) and academic (higher pisa scores) outcomes is deconcentration. one caveat that must be addressed, however, is that there is not enough data supporting the external should unified korea choose fiscal decentralization for education? current issues in comparative education 72 validity of this finding at the highest range of gdp per capita (60,000-80,000 usd) since there is no country having a form of deconcentration within that range (figure 1). however, in figure 2, the effectiveness of deconcentration as an education finance model is reconfirmed with external validity at this time. these results are aligned with the previous findings as well; deconcentration is a mixed form of fiscal centralization and administrative decentralization, and this is the education finance model that could maximize the advantages of centralization and decentralization of the education system. policy implications for unified korea reflecting the results of the cross-country analysis, deconcentration is the educational finance model that will achieve higher economic and academic outcomes with less inequality between regions. thus, according to the cross-country analysis, this paper suggests that deconcentrated education finance model would also work in imagined unified korea. in fact, centralization of the educational expenditures at the national level would be also preferred in political and administrative motives at the earlier stage of unification. south korea and north korea have been very different in terms of politics, and the political difference eventually results in a huge verge at the economic and academic status of two koreas. hence, education would rise as a critical administrative tool that could mend this verge by providing the same curriculum and pedagogy (kim et al., 2014). welsh and mcginn (1999) also argues that educational decentralization must be considered only when political support is promised. in such special political cases where two countries have to integrate under one regime, the centralization of curriculum development and teacher training are needed. therefore, this paper recommends to maintain centralization in education finance, as well as the centralization of curriculum development and teacher training for unified korea. however, maintaining centralization in every aspect of education is not as efficient as deconcentration, and therefore, regional autonomy must also be prioritized after the essentially centralized systems. for example, ryu (2017) pointed out that current south korea’s educational grants are usually block grants, which are the funds delivered to the sub-national governments with specific categories. rather than black grants, lump sum transferring mechanism promises a greater administrative freedom in planning educational budgets according to the needs of a smaller population (burns & köster, 2016), and this strategy may be beneficial in the case of unified korea, where every region would greatly vary in economy, culture, and demography. likewise, while prioritizing the essential centralization for efficiency of the unification, the central government should continuously strive to empower the regional autonomy as well. limitations there are three limitations in this paper’s cross-country analysis and following findings. the first caveat that ought to be addressed with the results is that the analysis is based on the sample size of 40, which is a very small number of observations to confirm a statistical significance of the ols regression. in order to make a more statistically significant estimate, it is necessary to include more countries with diversity in location, economic status, and academic performance because the current dataset is limited to 40 countries in oecd or its partner countries, which are mostly from the “global north” (odeh, 2010). kang current issues in comparative education 73 another caveat regarding this study is that the typology for the education finance model in table 1-4 is based on one dataset and one author’s interpretation of it. although the classification was done with calculation based on the amount of initial funds from each level of governments and the amount of transfers done via educational grants, there is a chance that the dataset provided in the oecd report may not reflect the actual proportion of how one country is distributing the educational expenditures. since this paper is based on secondary resources, not information directly collected from each government, this paper could have misinterpreted the education finance model of one country. this, however, also implies that the comparative research about school funding should be continued and expanded to accumulate more precise data on each country’s source of initial funding and the management of educational grants by sub-national governments. last, this paper has a clear limitation on making a claim of “the optimal education finance model of unified korea” because of the lack of north korea’s statistics. due to the communist political regime that censors even the basic information such as a gdp per capita and population growth rate, it is impossible to calculate how different it will be when education is financed by the central government or local governments. thus, this paper could only assume unified korea’s academic and economic status based on the current south korea’s statistics. in order to test whether the deconcentration of education finance in unified korea would truly produce academic and economic efficiency like the 40 oecd countries’ cross-country analysis finding, the data from north korea is necessary. this implies that one of the early processes of korean unification must include a thorough and up-to-date data collecting for the better unification strategy construction. conclusion the study of korean unification and the policy recommendations for unified korea are not limited to north korea and south korea. rather, this paper also aims to reflect the plausible education policies in the community with high inequality in economy and politics. a clearer distinction between fiscal and political decentralization in education must be drawn, and it is often more efficient to pursue a mixture of fiscal centralization and administrative decentralization as an optimal form of the education finance model, including the future case of unified korea. seulgi kang also known as seulgi "abby" kangis a m.a. graduate of economics and education program from teachers college, columbia university. prior to her master's degree, she studied economics and educational policy studies in university of wisconsin madison. she is interested in how to apply economic theories in education policies. her research interest covers education finance, data-driven decision making in building an education policy, and the role of education for korean unification. she is currently working for the korean educational development institute (kedi) in south korea. email: sk4652@tc.columbia.edu. should unified korea choose fiscal decentralization for education? current issues in comparative education 74 references ahmad, m. e., brosio, m. g., & tanzi, m. v. 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(2002). recasting german federalism? the politics of fiscal decentralization in post-unification germany. politische vierteljahresschrift, 43(4), 624–652. kang current issues in comparative education 79 appendix a the descriptive table of 40 countries on gdp per capita, pisa mathematics scores, gini index and year, the education finance form, and the major resource of initial education fund (by alphabetical order) country country code gdp per capita (usd) pisa math score (2018) gini index (year) education finance model major resource of initial education fund argentina ar $11,688 379 41.4 2018 devolution regional australia au $58,393 491 34.4 2014 deconcentration central austria at $51,230 499 29.7 2017 deconcentration central belgium be $47,293 508 27.4 2017 devolution regional brazil br $10,000 384 53.9 2017 devolution regional & local canada ca $46,192 512 33.8 2013 devolution regional chile cl $15,923 417 44.4 2017 centralization central colombia co $10,000 391 50.4 2018 centralization central czech republic cz $23,079 499 24.9 2017 devolution local denmark dk $61,834 509 28.7 2017 devolution local estonia ee $23,242 523 30.4 2017 deconcentration central finland fi $50,136 507 27.4 2017 devolution local france fr $41,358 495 31.6 2017 centralization central germany de $47,514 500 31.9 2016 devolution regional greece gr $20,731 451 34.4 2017 centralization central hungary hu $16,264 481 30.6 2017 centralization central iceland is $76,867 495 26.8 2015 devolution local ireland ie $79,415 500 32.8 2016 centralization central israel il $44,215 463 39 2016 centralization central italy it $34,389 487 35.9 2017 centralization central japan jp $39,082 527 32.9 2013 devolution regional & local latvia lv $17,852 496 35.6 2017 deconcentration central lithuania lt $19,083 481 37.3 2017 deconcentration central luxembourg lu $80,000 483 34.9 2017 centralization central mexico mx $10,000 409 45.4 2018 deconcentration central netherlands nl $53,583 519 28.5 2017 centralization central new zealand nz $43,836 494 33.3 2017 centralization central norway no $80,000 501 27 2017 devolution local poland pl $15,444 516 29.7 2017 deconcentration central portugal pt $23,478 492 33.8 2017 centralization central russia ru $11,394 488 37.5 2018 devolution regional slovak republic sk $19,431 486 25.2 2016 deconcentration central slovenia si $26,005 509 24.2 2017 centralization central south korea kr $33,622 526 31.6 2012 deconcentration central spain es $30,406 481 34.7 2017 devolution regional sweden se $55,767 502 28.8 2017 devolution local switzerland ch $80,000 515 32.7 2017 devolution regional & local turkey tr $10,000 454 41.9 2018 centralization central united kingdom uk $42,526 502 34.8 2016 deconcentration central united states us $62,918 478 41.4 2016 devolution regional & local source: un statistics division (2020b), world bank (2020), and author’s calculation based on oecd (2019) education at a glance 2019, figure c4.3., and welsh & shah (2006). should unified korea choose fiscal decentralization for education? current issues in comparative education 80 appendix b table 3. cross-country analysis for high gdp per capita countries (divided by south korea*) *: south korea: gdp (33,622 usd); gini index (31.6) source: un statistics division (2020b), world bank (2020), and author’s calculation based on oecd (2019) education at a glance 2019, figure c4.3., and welsh & shah (2006). gdp status high gdp per capita gini index low gini (more equal income distribution) high gini (less equal income distribution) pisa (2018) gdp per capita (usd) gini (year) education finance model source of initial fund pisa (2018) gdp per capita (usd) gini (year) education finance model source of initial fund country country netherlands 519 53,583 28.5 (2017) centralization central japan 527 39,082 32.9 (2013) devolution regional & local denmark 509 61,834 28.7 (2017) devolution local switzerland 515 82,709 32.7 (2017) devolution regional & local belgium 508 47,293 27.4 (2017) devolution regional canada 512 46,192 33.8 (2013) devolution regional finland 507 50,136 27.4 (2017) devolution local united kingdom 502 42,526 34.8 (2016) deconcentration central sweden 502 55,767 28.8 (2017) devolution local germany 500 47,514 31.9 (2016) devolution regional norway 501 81,336 27 (2017) devolution local ireland 500 79,415 32.8 (2016) centralization central austria 499 51,230 29.7 (2017) deconcentration central new zealand 494 43,836 33.3 (2017) centralization central france 495 41,358 31.6 (2017) centralization central australia 491 58,393 34.4 (2014) deconcentration central iceland 495 76,867 26.8 (2015) devolution local italy 487 34,389 35.9 (2017) centralization central luxembourg 483 117,370 34.9 (2017) centralization central united states 478 62,918 41.4 (2016) devolution regional & local israel 463 44,215 39 (2016) centralization central kang current issues in comparative education 81 table 4. cross-country analysis of low gdp per capita countries (divided by south korea*) gdp status low gdp per capita gini index low gini (more equal income distribution) high gini (less equal income distribution) pisa (2018) gdp per capita (usd) gini (year) education finance model source of initial fund pisa (2018) gdp per capita (usd) gini (year) education finance model source of initial fund country country estonia 523 23,242 30.4 (2017) deconcentration central b-s-j-z (china)** 591 9,532 38.5 (2016) centralization central poland 516 15,444 29.7 (2017) deconcentration central latvia 496 17,852 35.6 (2017) deconcentration central slovenia 509 26,005 24.2 (2017) centralization central portugal 492 23,478 33.8 (2017) deconcentration central czech republic 499 23,079 24.9 (2017) devolution local russia 488 11,394 37.5 (2018) devolution regional slovak republic 486 19,431 25.2 (2016) deconcentration central spain 481 30,406 34.7 (2017) devolution regional lithuania 481 19,083 37.3 (2017) deconcentration central turkey 454 9,368 41.9 (2018) centralization central greece 451 20,731 34.4 (2017) centralization central chile 417 15,923 44.4 (2017) centralization central mexico 409 9,695 45.4 (2018) deconcentration central colombia 391 6,650 50.4 (2018) centralization central brazil 384 8,921 53.9 (2017) devolution regional & local argentina 379 11,688 41.4 (2018) devolution regional *: south korea: gdp (33,622 usd); gini index (31.6) **: beijing, shanghai, jiangsu, and guangdong only source: un statistics division (2020b), world bank (2020), and author’s calculation based on oecd (2019) education at a glance 2019, figure c4.3., and ministry of education china (2019) should unified korea choose fiscal decentralization for education? current issues in comparative education 82 appendix c significance tests of figure 1 and 2 on pisa mathematics scores independent figure figure combined variables 1 2 gdp per capita 0.0009*** 0.0004** (0.003) (0.0001) gini index* -4.6168*** -4.0732*** (0.577) (0.476) centralization (base line) deconcentration 25.0444* 9.6796 13.3103* (12.968) (7.918) (7.437) devolution 3.0031 2.3726 -0.3872 (13.311) (8.410) (8.175) constant 440.6765*** 637.4667*** 604.4181*** (14.271) (20.914) (19.085) observations 40 40 40 r-squared 0.317 0.685 0.724 robust standard errors in parentheses *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1 simon, s. territorial education through urban agriculture current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 1, winter 2021 territorial education through urban agriculture: contributing to building sustainable cities in times of a pandemic sandrine simon universidade lusófona de humanidades e tecnologias de lisboa the multi-dimensional damages caused by the covid-19 pandemic have highlighted the fragility of our economic systems and their lack of resilience. people are starting to question globalisation, and debates on alternative modes of development are back and alive. if economic paradigms need reforming, we also need educational systems that will equip people to build more sustainable societies. with this in mind, this article focuses on two crucial components in ‘current issues in comparative education’. one relates to the emergence of a so-far under-explored area of research in education, that of territorial education (te), and places it in the context of both the 1990s educational reforms, intended to create a standardised ‘world class education’, and of ‘education for sustainability’. the second one focuses on the experiential nature that skill-orientated territorial education can provide, in contrast to other types of ‘education for sustainability’ approaches that are more conceptual. using urban agriculture initiatives in lisbon as illustrative examples, the article shows that such practical approaches might help to make cities sustainable and resilient in the future. introduction the covid-19 pandemic we are experiencing has encouraged people to question globalisation not only from an economic perspective but also with regards to how it has affected our education systems. authors such as teodoro (2020), santos (2006), and sahlberg (1996) have explained the mechanisms by which the calls for a standardised ‘world class education’ global reform in the 1990s were mainly targeted at adapting educational institutions to new configuration systems in world organisations. the oecd assumed a central role in this global reform, directly motivated by achievements in the economic sphere, and encouraged competition and standardisation mechanisms. this ‘educational reform’ was very different from the humanistic approach to ‘global citizenship education’ put forward by unesco (2014) which “referred to a sense of belonging to a common humanity, and emphasised socio-political, economic and cultural inter-dependency, and interconnectedness between the local, the national and the global” (unesco, 2014: 14). the 1990s educational reforms also contrasted with efforts to develop educational approaches that would help communities to ‘put sustainability into practice’. this paper focuses on the types of knowledge and learning processes needed to understand what urban sustainable communities would look like if cities were to reduce their dependency on food produced outside, in a less globalised world. the article focuses on the so-far little explored area of research in territorial education (te). © 2021, simon. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(1), 31-47. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en simon current issues in comparative education 32 part one presents the emergence of te, first as a reaction against the 1990s educational reforms and then in the context of research on education for sustainability. part two uses urban agriculture (ua) and project-based educational approaches related to ua in lisbon as a practical illustration of how te could be used to make the city more sustainable. it first explores the contribution of ua to the sustainability of a city and its links to food security and food systems. by showing the evolution of policies focused on the greening of lisbon, part two also highlights the development of participatory processes in urban planning that contribute to making te usable at different levels and with various stakeholders, extending education for sustainability not only to more practical urgent topics (such as feeding a city) but also beyond the educational institution. the emergence of territorial education as champollion explained, “while the different contexts having influence on education—spatial, political, institutional contexts for instance—have been analysed for a long time, territoriality has only really been tackled for fifteen years” (boix et al., 2015, p. 12). other authors focused on related issues such as learning with local communities (gargiulo labrida, 2016), territorial governance (jahnke, 2019), sustainable development and territories (barthes & champollion, 2012), territorial development (courlet & pecqueur, 2013), educational territories (leite & carvalho, 2016) – but ‘territorial education’ per se is relatively unexplored and ill-defined. explaining the context in which it developed and the needs it meets will help to grasp better what it means. te and the global educational reforms of the 1990s: why does the local territory matters? the main characteristic of te is its focus on the local level in the context of a global pandemic that has triggered concerns and critical reflexions on globalisation. some of the most obvious of these have explored how the reduction of transportation costs derived from globalisation has brought infectious diseases everywhere. harrold james (2020), international historian, reflected on whether the coronavirus pandemic could bring about the waning of globalisation. fujita and hamaguchi (2020) discussed possible impacts of the covid-19 pandemic through “a first scenario in which the fear of acute supply shocks of essential goods motivates rich countries to hoard domestically produced goods – a setback for globalisation – and a second scenario, in which the global economy adjusts to living with the coronavirus, creating opportunities to innovatively ‘re-orientating globalisation’ through cooperation”. in parallel, as vidal points out, “a number of researchers today think that it is actually humanity’s destruction of biodiversity that creates the conditions for new viruses and diseases like covid-19 to arise—with health and economic impacts in rich and poor countries alike”. as david quammen explained, “we cut trees; we kill animals or cage them and send them to markets. we disrupt ecosystems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. when that happens, they need a new host. often, we are it” (2020). one way or another, the current pandemic has encouraged us to question economic globalisation. it has also highlighted the unsustainability in our ways of living. this realisation reveals a failure not only with policy-making processes but also with the way in which citizens behave. education has an important role to play in equipping territorial education through urban agriculture current issues in comparative education 33 people to make the world more sustainable, but it seems to have had difficulties in doing so. as we will see in the next section, the various reforms focused on generating approaches to education for sustainability have recently led to approaches that are more territory centred. however, before exploring this evolution, it is worth explaining how, during the 1990s, educational reforms also focused on globalised dimensions and how this affected people’s attitudes. the major global educational reforms undertaken in the 1990s aimed to create a ‘world class education’ everywhere through the global education reform movement (germ), which generated a process of comparison between educational systems’ performances and was reinforced by the programme for international student assessment (pisa), carried out periodically by the oecd. with such objectives in mind, these reforms did not leave room for the broader aims of schooling, except insofar as they can be of economic benefit. for example, “issues of citizenship and socialization are not considered as concerned with how humans interact, but immiserated, as merely providing stable, economic conditions favourable to economic growth” (gillies as cited in colucci-gray & gray, 2014, p. 80). as teodoro deplores, “the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s-90s produced a fundamental change (…): the traditional professional university culture, based on the freedom of enquiry and open debate, has been progressively replaced by the rationale of performance and has created a paradigm of ‘entrepreneur education’ “(2020:84). the germ has been mainly criticised (teodoro, 2020; cowen &kazamias, 2009) for the technical fragility related to making international comparisons but also for generalising societal values based on western economic principles, enhancing competition in the learning environment, and homogenising pedagogical approaches to entirely different communities. besides, an underlying belief in the neo-classical approach to economic issues was translated into the ways in which development and environmental problems were being tackled, which resulted in a detachment of our communities from nature. the socio-economy-environment interactions advocated by ecological economists (martinez-alier, 1987) as being core to the notion of development were never integrated in educational reforms,which consequently did not help to modify attitudes, beliefs systems and all that had contributed to creating environmental crises in the first place. the relatively new focus on the territory accompanies what courlet and pecqueur (2013) described as a crisis in the notion of ‘nation state’, in a somehow ‘post-normal paradigm’ within which liberalism, globalisation and growth models are being questioned (p.7). focusing on the notion of ‘territorial economy’, these researchers describe it as a ‘new grammar of economics’ which seeks to contest the dogma of the ‘homogeneous space’ and encourage the emergence of ‘local and territorial development’ within which the territory, as a complex system, is aligned with the deepest challenges of current societies. the original interest in ‘the territory’ was closely linked to the ‘theories of localisation’, which suggest that the diminution of transportation costs amplifies the polarisation of activities (courlet & pecqueur, 2013). all challenges of recycling, energy saving, and reclaim encourage territorial innovation and ‘new proximities.’ simon current issues in comparative education 34 the territory we are focusing on is the lisbon metropolitan area (lma), which hosts a third of the population of portugal. the lma has grown dependent on the rural areas and on food imports, despite its dense network of agricultural activities the second most expressed land-use pattern (oliveira and morgado, 2014). with efforts focused on making lisbon the green capital of europe in 2020, combined with concerns about food security raised by the current pandemic, this paper explores how the sustainability of this territory could be enhanced through educational programmes focused on the various benefits brought by ua. te in the context of sustainability-focused educational approaches with the rise of environmentalism in the 1970s, efforts to raise environmental awareness grew, partly through the creation of ngos such as the world wildlife fund, but also through education. the term ‘environmental education’ (ee) was first mentioned at the 1972 united nations conference on the human environment, during which the establishment of the international environmental education programme (ieep) was recommended. initial ee focused on helping students to understand better the natural environment from a scientific perspective. although the socio-economic and political dimensions of ‘un-sustainable’ practices had been discussed, “the multi-disciplinary approach to ee was left to small bands of enthusiasts in each country” (fien, 2020, p. 4). this situation remained throughout the 1970s and 1980s and it is only at the end of the 1980s that a broader understanding of the issues at stake helped reform ee. formerly known as the world commission on environment and development (wced), the brundtland commission helped in formulating the concept of ‘sustainable development’ in 1987, providing the definition for it that is now most referred to: “a type of development that meets the needs of the present generation without putting at risk the capacity of generations to come in meeting their own requirements” (wced, 1987, p. 43). for unesco, education for sustainable development (esd) involved integrating key sustainable development issues into teaching and learning. the un decade of esd (desd: 2005-2014) mobilized the educational resources of the world to help create a more sustainable future. various ways to do so were described in agenda 21, the official document of the 1992 earth summit. unesco coordinated desd initiatives and published their findings (buckler & creech, 2014). were these initiatives successful? as fien (2020, p. 1), who explored the history of ee over the past 30 years, showed: “student levels of awareness of key concepts for sustainability are low, with few able to correctly define essential concepts–e.g. precautionary principle and sustainable development”. with this disappointing conclusion in mind, researchers explored further the shortcomings of the ‘greening’ of the educational system. much energy was put into reflecting on the type of effective changes that were needed. some focus was put on the overall content of the teaching. thus, for instance, in coriddi (2008), ros wade introduced the notion of education for sustainability (efs) into the debate, preferring the term efs to esd and discussed how efs aims to overcome the separation of development and environmental education that is frequent in the global north. besides, a plethora of individual initiatives, project-centred educational programmes were put in place around the territorial education through urban agriculture current issues in comparative education 35 world. some networks of initiatives also helped to identify common features, characteristics of education for sustainability, and skills for ‘sustainability learners’. thus, for instance, howard et al. (2019) presented the living school concept. as they explain, “in keeping with the ethos of ecological thinking and the interdependence of communities, the values of local relevance, and cultural appropriateness, an approach to scalable educational change through sustainable community economic development (ced) is offered” (p. 2). the main message of living schools is that the learning outcomes of education for sustainability have to be meaningful in practice for communities, who therefore need to get a sense of ownership of the concept through acquiring the skills and the ethos that will lead to its operationalisation. “the curriculum of the living school is founded on understanding the vitality of one’s place within the larger landscape as being inextricable from human wellbeing”, (o’brien & howard, 2016, p. 123). living schools have built on reflections of skills and competencies that are needed to prepare young generations for the 21st century. with sustainability at the core of preoccupations and new technologies and contexts specific to the 21st century, these competencies include critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creative problem solving, character education, and citizenship but also innovation, creativity, computer-enhanced learning and entrepreneurial mindsets (fullan & langworthy, 2013). the focus on well-being ensures that living schools support outdoor learning (williams & brown, 2012), positive education, as well as social-emotional learning (casel, 2019) and health (morrison & peterson, 2013). these competencies together with the principles of community economic development (ced), call for holistic and interdependent approaches to creating sustainable communities. ced, defined as “action by people at the local level to create sustainable economic opportunities and to improve social conditions contributing to well-being for all’ (http://www.cfsn.ca/community_economic_development/definition.php) occurs when people in a community take action and, as a result, local leadership and initiative are then seen as the resources for change (schaffer et al. 2006). work on living schools and ced helped re-localise and contextualise work on sustainability. although, historically, economic development and community development were viewed as separate concepts, researchers were encouraged to progressively integrate them, highlighting the benefits of partnership-building within communities (beauregard, 1993; reese & fastenfest, 1996). identifying what needs to be learnt to transform our societies into sustainable ones still needs improving. as ison, et al. (2007) suggested, ‘sustainability science’ needs to create new understanding by a coupling of multiple knowledge systems into ‘learning systems’ based on social networks. research has demonstrated that sustainability-oriented programmes could not be successful unless concerned parties were also involved in their design and running (healy, et al. 2013). this implies an appropriate size of activities, at a manageable scale, but also a move away from a teacher-student model and more active participation. as we will see in the next part, food production in a city constitutes a relevant case study and platform for the application of te, since ua both facilitates a practical understanding of what greening a city, contributing to food security and linking food simon current issues in comparative education 36 production to other activities in a '‘circular – zero waste economy’ mean. the evolution of policy responses by the municipality of lisbon and local stakeholders demonstrate that learning platforms are also developing outside the educational system, extending to its subject of study itself: the city as a sustainable territory. ua as a practical example of te in lisbon there are numerous definitions of ua, all of which converge into describing ua as the growing of plants and the raising of animals for food and other uses within and around cities (van veenhuizen, 2006). ua also includes concepts such as aquaponics, indoor agriculture, vertical farming, rooftops production, edible walls, edible landscapes, school and community gardens, and many other forms of integrated agriculture (skar et al, 2020). the wish to concentrate our research on ua initiatives in lisbon stem from the realisation that: (a) according to the world food programme, the covid-19 pandemic could force more than a quarter of a billion people into acute hunger by the end of the year unless swift action is taken to ensure that food supply chains keep running; and (b) while cities cover 3% of all land areas on the planet, they consume 75% of the world’s energy, generate 80% of co2 emissions, use large quantities of water, and create an enormous amount of waste and pollution (un, 2018). ua could both contribute to improving a city’s food security as well as making them greener and healthier environments. in this part, we will first link ua to food security, food systems, and environmental protection; we will present how lisbon’s local institutions recently addressed them. then, a second section will explore how the policy achievements and new governance approaches, together with insights from practical skills for sustainability developed through project-based ua initiatives, could contribute to putting into place a model of te to create efs that leads to tangible results. ua as a core ingredient to making cities more sustainable the dimensions of sustainability that we are most interested in here focus on food security and sustainable food systems as key ingredients to transforming the city into a resilient, no-waste and environmentally friendly environment. the fao (2002) defined food insecurity as a socioeconomic situation that leads to limited or uncertain access to the nutritious food necessary to maintain a healthy life. various studies have focused on food security in portugal (alvares & amaral, 2014; gregorio et al., 2018; maia, et al., 2019), which concluded that the prevalence of food insecurity was 17% on average (2014-2019). we are now experiencing a world pandemic during which many households are losing their means of living, and food supply and circulation is changing. in portugal, at the end of april 2020, articles in the correio da manha indicated that calls for help in the form of charitable food donations had increased by 50% since the 1st of march. in total, 600 000 people had then been reported as not being able anymore to meet their own needs and earn a living because of the covid crisis. learning how to feed the city and strengthen food autonomy is both useful in the short term and in designing strategies for the post-covid uncertain transition. portugal, which turned its back on agriculture after its entry in the eu, now needs to import food to meet its own needs (fao, 2017). related to food security, a food system includes various stages in the food chain. a sustainable food system is “one in which the food production chain (production, processing, distribution, trade to final consumption, and waste management) ensures territorial education through urban agriculture current issues in comparative education 37 food and nutrition security in terms of quantity and quality, accessing food for all, while promoting a healthy environment, economic dynamism, social cohesion and public health” (oliveira & morgado, 2014, p. 5). during the last 20 years, much research has been carried out to demonstrate that ua could contribute to improving both food security and cities’ environmental improvement. it has shown that ua can contribute to minimising the effects of climate change and to improving the quality of life in urban areas, addressing the un habitat’s concerns (2012). mcdougall, et al. (2019) showed that small-scale ua results in high yields. altieri and nicholis (2018) focused on the potential to increase ua yields through agro-ecology and suggested ways to re-design ua to explore whether ua, which can currently provide 15% to 20% of global food, could help cities reach food self-sufficiency. saavedra, et al. (2017) showed that 20% to 30% of total anthropogenic environmental pressures derived from private consumption are caused by the global food system and investigated potential food system transformation and changes of diet. most studies demonstrate that ua can contribute to sustain a regular supply of food for low-income urbanites ignored by long food chains (sonnino, 2009). in terms of territory, the city could grow as a more autonomous entity, part of a group of interconnected local production units, with ua at the core of the overall food system. for this to happen, the ‘territory’ on which food systems are being considered needs changing. as oliveira and morgado (2014) explain, “strategies for food security in cities have highlighted the need to re-localize productionconsumption systems and to find innovative approaches in urban planning” (p. 1). the fact that, in the lma, 37% of the land is used for agricultural purposes, which justifies in itself the need to adopt a strategic vision for the lma’s food system planning. as delgado (2017) stressed, “so far, ua in lisbon is not approached from a city food system perspective that connects producers, distributors, processors, retailers, formal and informal markets, restaurants, institutional food service and waste management” (p.141). however, examples of ‘connected’ food systems exist. thus, the cooperatives fruta feia and adrepes collect fruits and vegetables that are rejected by the corporate sector and distribute them through a large network of producers (fruta feia crl, 2017). other programmes, such as programa prove, have established short distribution chains between small-scale producers and consumers. in the context of ‘social economy and entrepreneurship’ (still relatively new in portugal with its first ‘social economy law’ appearing in 2013 -law n. 30/2013), they can help us to understand how improved food systems could contribute to making economic activities of the city more circular. various studies have documented today’s revival of ua in lisbon. mougeot (2015) focused on hortas urbanas and short food chains. branco (2016) explored the 2011 ‘parques horticolas municipais’ programme. delgado (2017) mapped 29 ua initiatives in portugal and highlighted their focus on food production for selfconsumption among formal or informal frameworks. besides, the portuguese national report to habitat iii (2013) listed allotment gardens initiatives, covering 27 hectares. the european programmes cost urban allotments gardens in european simon current issues in comparative education 38 cities (2012-2016) and cost urban agriculture europe (2012-2016) strengthened the connections between portugal and europe. these programmes generated networks of researchers from more than 29 countries who investigated how ua can provide solutions in europe and contribute to innovative cities” (sanye-mengual, 2015). in addition, portugal and 136 other countries joined the milan urban food policy act, aimed at engaging cities around the world in the development of sustainable urban food systems (mufpp, 2015). integrating the food system into urban planning implies that some urban land must be devoted to food production, taking advantage of all the eco-services that this component of the system could provide (oliveira & morgado, 2014, p. 4). although the complexity of an urban food system brings to bare a substantial pressure on existing planning public policy tools (for instance, an urban food system does not geographically comply with administrative boundaries), debates on how to design adequate spatial planning and governance instruments are needed. in 2009, castro henriques carried out a piece of research focused on the planning of ua. at the time, “the existing legal framework did not provide any protection to those practicing ua and much of the land farmed (legally or illegally) belong[ed] to the municipality” (p.49). a major change occurred when lisbon municipal assembly ruled that its plano director municipal had to incorporate a green plan designed portuguese landscape architect gonçalo ribeiro telles (plano verde de lisboa, 2012). this decision opened up new possibilities for the development of ua in the city. the idea was to form “green corridors” linking various land uses, such as hortas urbanas urban parks, gardens, bicycle lanes and footpaths. subsequent work included the development of an ua strategy by the commission for ua, which “stressed the utility of ua sites, namely because of the city’s dependence on imported fresh vegetables, the rising prices in the international food markets, the added income ua provides for families and the importance of ua in dealing with food shortages” (castro henriques, 2009, p. 50). since then, work has been done in the area of land use planning which, in portugal, is divided between the regional level (where the regional coordination and development committee for lisbon and tagus valley, ccdr-lvt, is responsible for creating the regional land use plan for the metropolitan area of lisbon (protaml) and the city level (where lisbon municipality develops the master development plan (pdm), which establishes territorial development strategies) (santos, et al., 2015). the lisbon municipality established the lisbon strategy (20102024), whose objectives focus on city regeneration, climate change adaptation, and connectivity of green spaces. the municipality also put great efforts into developing participatory governance by providing information platforms and developing participatory instruments (such as lisbon participatory budget (op-l) [i]. together with the biodiversity 2020 strategy, lisbon’s master development plan (2014) and the green plan (2008) promoted ua, stressing that it can enhance sustainable urbanisation, restore (i.e., repair) ecosystems, contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and improve risk management. recently, a research report came out highlighting that lisbon still needs a comprehensive strategy to integrate the food system into urban planning and spatial management. the european project conducted semi-structured interviews with 31 territorial education through urban agriculture current issues in comparative education 39 types of stakeholders strategically identified [ii] to select preferences for food strategy priorities (serra, 2021). these priorities were ranked out of 21; those with the highest scores were short food supply chain, food security, food waste, and food literacy. from this, four main clusters (boosting agricultural production, stimulating sustainable food distribution, developing food education and valuing waste) emerged. participants explained how they understood a food strategy could improve elements belonging to these clusters. thus, a global food strategy could stimulate sustainable food distribution by improving transport logistics to create short supply chains. it could also put into place food education programs, farmers training on sustainability and innovation, and help to incentivise people to separate bio-waste from other waste. about half of the people being interviewed identified a ‘food platform’ as a preferred governance platform for the development of a food strategy and the majority of respondents favoured autonomy through a food strategy that would develop its own initiatives (serra, 2021, pp. 21-22). this research highlighted the importance of the governance process that helps linking urban planning with food production, contributing to advances in social urbanism and te. te learning approaches through ua research carried out on efs in portugal has highlighted a general lack of integration of national strategies in heis with regards to the goals of the un desd 2005-2014 (farinha, 2018), as well as a lack of long-term objectives (teixeira and koryakina, 2016), and of an underpinning framework (dlouhá et al., 2016) in what seems to mainly be top-down efforts. one important conclusion is that, in order to grasp the practical dimensions of what makes a territory sustainable, one has to embrace practical projects and acquire skills. as kolb explained (1984), learners need experiential components to really understand concepts. many researchers have also highlighted the importance of adopting a systems perspective like bawden (1991) to appreciate the multiple dimensions (economic, social, political, environmental) of a ‘sustainable city’. in the examples of te applied to ua projects, systemic learning is fundamental because agriculture is a human-natural system. in the transdisciplinary agro-ecology educational projects presented by francis et al. (2011), work on sustainable farming and food systems created an effective learning landscapes “for students to deal with complexity, uncertainty and a range of biological and social dimensions, life-cycle analysis and long-term impacts” (francis et al., 2011, p. 226). in those, students develop new governance and management systems in order to better manage interconnections between agriculture and overarching resource systems of food, energy, water and land-use, using a whole set of skills such as negotiating, openmindedness, and appreciation of different perspectives. in landscape architecture, keeler (2011), for instance, documented the benefits derived from the ‘urban farm educational program’ (university of oregon). he concluded that “place-based education implies a process of re-storying, whereby students are asked to becoming part of the community, rather than a passive observer of it” (laurie lane-zucker, in keeler, 2011: p.11). in lisbon, about a third of the ua projects (including the lipor programme, lisbon allotments parks, and cascais allotments) focus on mandatory training, education or capacity building programmes (abreu, 2012). as cancela (2009) showed, some ua initiatives created small-scale pedagogic kitchen-gardens in schools, or “pedagogical simon current issues in comparative education 40 allotments”, where the public can visit and learn farming techniques, or even farm their own plot. “olivais pedagogical farm” is one of the first examples, with the “alta de lisboa” where, thanks to the organization of local residents, an “urban agricultural park” of three hectares was born in a bottom-up approach (cancela, 2009, p. 7). practically all the ua initiatives (22/29 selected by delgado in 2017) include educational activities in parallel with food production. the way in which the learning is enhanced is both conceptual and skill orientated. te based on ua projects could also include debates on health and immunity – debates that are much needed during the covid-19 pandemic. focusing on this could constitute one of the motivations for learning about sustainability. for citizens, institutions, small businesses, and urban planners, working together at linking activities that could make the city greener could help them to appreciate what a sustainable city might be. away from top-down approaches to education and training, te through ua “focuses on the collective influence and responsibility in creating inclusive and responsive public spaces” (smaniotto et al., 2017, p. 53). through this, the territory both becomes an educational agent and content (villarcaballo, 2001). such an approach to te could build on the participatory platforms that have recently been put into place in the context the lisbon’s food strategy. conclusion the current pandemic is motivating us not only to think about how to make our societies more sustainable but also how to ensure that educational activities can contribute to doing so. here we have explored the potential contribution of ‘territorial education’ through the example of urban agricultural initiatives in lisbon. nominated as the green capital of europe in 2020, lisbon hosted a number of ua initiatives throughout time, especially in times of crisis. after exploring the historical context from which te emerged (in reaction against the 1990s germ and in continuity with efforts to improve education for sustainability), this article explored the various characteristics of this type of educational approach ‘in the making’. from integrating initiatives focused on ua into it, we can conclude that te deals with local, practical problems in view of developing skills to address them and also develops solutions to the problem in view of improving the sustainability of the place. this approach enhances the formulation of solutions through long-term communication and collaboration amongst a variety of stakeholders whilst respecting the needs, perspectives and skills of various stakeholders through a dialogical iterative social learning process that enables the ‘co-creation of spaces’ (estrela and smaniotto, 2019). te encourages networking and exchanges of ideas and know-how locally and globally, in order to improve learning about sustainability in line with global citizenship principles. it also integrates activities such as ua within the broader creation of the city’s resilience and circularity and therefore, puts action at the core of learning. building on the recent participatory processes carried out in the lma to initiate the formulation of a comprehensive food strategy will help in understanding the centrality of food within the overall urban sustainability and constructing learning platforms and networks that will facilitate the collaboration of various stakeholders to build a circular, no-waste and resilient city. territorial education through urban agriculture current issues in comparative education 41 acknowledgements we have no known conflict of interest to disclose correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to sandrine simon. ceied, universidade lusófona de humanidades e tecnologias. campo grande 376, 1749-024 lisboa portugal. e-mail: sandrine.simon.dina@gmail.com sandrine simon works at the universidade lusófona de lisboa in social urbanism and urban agriculture. with a background in ecological economics, she has worked on environmental issues from an interdisciplinary perspective, focusing on decision-making tools and participatory governance, water management, a systems approach to complex issues, and the circular economy. references abreu, a. 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(2012). learning gardens and sustainability education: bringing life to schools and schools to life. routledge. territorial education through urban agriculture current issues in comparative education 47 world commission on environment and development (1987). our common future. oxford university press. ithe op-l had a budget of 2.5 million euros in 2015 and, in 2012, more than 200 projects were improved, voted upon by almost 30 000 citizens. 30% of these projects involved green space enhancement (santos et al. 2015, p.7; also see allegretti and antunes, 2014). ii6 producers, 6 distributors, 7 institutions, 6 local administrations, 4 organisations and 2 universities. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 130 april 30, 2002 common trends of standardisation, accountability, devolution and choice in the educational policies of england, u.k., california, u.s.a., and ontario, canada grazia scoppio oise, ontario institute for studies in education the university of toronto introduction before the 80s, education reforms in the united kingdom, the united states, and canada dealt mainly with issues related to equity: greater access to secondary and postsecondary education, minority language, religious rights, and multiculturalism. in the late 80s and throughout the 90s, the focus of reforms shifted. on the one hand, reforms have been centralizing, through policies of curricula standardization, testing, school effectiveness, and accountability. on the other hand, reforms have been decentralizing, through policies of self-management and school choice. these trends are reaching global proportions and anglophone democracies are borrowing reform models from each other (davies and guppy, 1997). through a comparative analysis of educational reforms and trends in england, uk, california, usa, and ontario, canada striking similarities among the three systems emerge. the question arising from this comparison is: which students are ultimately advantaged by these reforms and which ones are not? education reform and globalization forces one of the main forces behind recent education policies in england, california, and ontario is economic globalization. in a global economy, nations are pressured to improve their chances to compete on world markets, and this leads to a standardization of knowledge. as knowledge is distributed through formal education, school systems are converging across many developed nations (davies and guppy, 1997). recent trends shared by policy-makers in england, california, and ontario, as well as other states and provinces, include the following: 1) educational innovations are sought to help find a competitive edge and restore the economy. 2) policies are aimed at centralization of power such as standardized curriculum, testing, and central funding authority based on performance of institutions, and decentralization of responsibility from central administration to individual schools. 3) knowledge is considered the key resource of the next century, and more emphasis is placed on distributing knowledge through education. 4) efficient and skilled human capital is needed as increasingly specialized occupations are replacing low-skilled jobs. one of the theories behind educational policies in england, california, and ontario is economic rationalism, which holds that all public decisions, including those affecting education, are determined in relation to the issue of national economic growth (berman, 1999). economies are increasingly global and it is important for states to be more competitive through cutbacks in social expenditure, deregulation, and privatization (schugurensky, 1999). as a result, these policies are renewing a trend to return to a time common trends of standardisation, accountability, devolution and choice in the educational policies of england, u.k., california, u.s.a., and ontario, canada current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 131 when social welfare services, health care, and education were not accessible to all citizens. politicians in england, california, and ontario have been urging for greater autonomy and accountability of schools, diversification of offer, and more parental choice. these approaches reflect the neoliberal theory, which opposes direct state intervention and supports free markets. to be coherent with this rationale, current policies lead to the "marketization" of public education systems. however, in the quest to achieve this marketization, "policies often have to be framed in ways which are both heavily interventionist and strongly centralist in nature" (ball, 1993, p.154). the issue of inequality it is very difficult to achieve high standards in education, and at the same time to accommodate the ever-growing diversity of the population. but public education is asked to do exactly that. politicians want education to play two conflicting roles: to achieve excellence and efficiency, while ensuring social, gender, and racial egalitarianism (paquette, 1992). neo-marxist opponents of standardization and centralization of education criticize these policies because they further vocationalize public schooling and heighten educational inequalities. they argue that the outcome will be overeducated workers in low-skilled jobs (fuller & rubinson, 1992). for example, proponents of equality theories have traditionally disputed the issues of streaming (ontario) and tracking (england) which characterize centralization trends in education. goodlad (1984) writes that tracking according to ability levels or streaming in academic or vocational courses causes inequities, as students do not have access to the same knowledge and information. he argues that teachers instructing slow learners and students in vocational tracks separately from their peers emphasize lower levels of thinking. goodlad recommends heterogeneous grouping of students, so that students may feel equitably treated and attain higher cognitive-domain goals. devolution and choice may also lead to inequalities. research shows that parents are making choices on the basis of perceived social ideals, or based on factors of convenience and racism, rather than educational ideals or school achievement (howe, 1997). also, if schools are allowed to determine criteria for enrollment they are potentially perpetuating oligarchies. although these policies of standardization, centralization, effectiveness, accountability, devolution, and choice may seem to be "great equalizers," the proponents of such policies are more concerned with global economic competitiveness than with educational equality and equity issues, as the case studies of england, california, and ontario illustrate. educational reforms in england in the 80s and 90s the 1988 education reform act (era) of the thatcher government introduced policies that were centralizing on the one hand, and decentralizing on the other. centralization occurred with the introduction of a national examination system and of a compulsory national curriculum (nc) for state schools. decentralization occurred through the creation of a new open enrollment system, the local management of schools (lms) policy, and grant-maintained (gm) schools that were allowed to 'opt-out' of local education authorities (leas). grazia scoppio 132 april 30, 2002 the national curriculum and standard assessment tests part of the 1988 era was the implementation of a national curriculum for students aged five to sixteen. the national curriculum aimed to: (1) raise standards, making sure all children have a broad and balanced education up to the age of 16; (2) ensure that schools in all parts of the country are following the same courses; (3) specify what students must study and what they are expected to know at different ages. the national curriculum was designed with detailed targets to be achieved. each of the ten foundation subjects was broken down into three categories of knowledge, skills, and understanding. each category had ten levels of attainment (silvernail, 1996). a 'baseline assessment' for students aged four and five, and standard assessment tests (sats) at ages seven, 11 and 16, were introduced to check whether students were meeting these standards. some subjects, like math, are tiered according to different abilities. new testing is being introduced as part of the 'package of a-level reforms.' the latest, proposed by the education minister baroness blackstone, is the introduction of a 'world-class' test for the brightest sixth-formers. two more tests in all major 'academic' a-level subjects might be introduced for nine and thirteen years old students as well (cassidy, 1999). national standards have been established, but not every student is given the opportunity to meet them. one of the strongest criticisms is that the nature of the national curriculum has forced teachers, especially at the primary level, to narrow down their teaching content. by giving a priority to the subjects tested with sats (campbell & neill, 1992), "the assessed curriculum" becomes "the taught curriculum" (silvernail, 1996, p. 51). for example, the english curriculum has been described as restrictive and prescriptive, leaving teachers little, if any, freedom to adapt what is being taught for specific groups of students. regarding the history curriculum, teachers in urban schools with a higher percentage of ethnic minority children, face difficulties in adapting the predominantly british curriculum to the needs of a diverse student body. by making changes to the curriculum and approaching certain topics from a more multicultural viewpoint, teachers risk excluding some material covered by the tests. the new policy has also been criticized for the many perceived inequalities created in the areas of streaming and standardized testing. the reintroduction of streaming, i.e. dividing students by ability, does not allow all students to receive the same level of education. due to the ten levels of attainment, and the fact that sats have different levels of questions, many schools have differentiated teaching according to difficulty level and student ability. furthermore, opponents of the several forms of secondary examinations criticize their social bias in favour of white upper and middle class students, and the exclusion of working-class and racial minority students (lindsay, 1990). despite the large influx of immigrant children, not enough emphasis is put on the language needs of these children. for example, all testing is done in english. while asian students tend to make better progress than do white students, ethnic minority students leave school with lower average attainments in examinations (gillborn & gipps, 1996). this, in turn, leads to further discrimination, as test results are also used to common trends of standardisation, accountability, devolution and choice in the educational policies of england, u.k., california, u.s.a., and ontario, canada current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 133 measure school accountability. in order to keep school's standards high, students who under-perform are either expelled from the school or exempted from taking the national assessments. although in principle the nc and sats were designed to ensure educational equity for all children, this has not occurred due to the reintroduction of streaming and the shift in the purpose of the tests. education reforms aimed at separating the more able students from the less able ones and introducing tests as assessment tools for teachers' and schools' performance do not constitute equitable treatments. grant maintained schools and open enrollment decentralization policies were implemented through the creation of a new open enrollment system, the local management of schools (lms) policy, and grant-maintained (gm) schools. initially, gm schools were existing public schools that opted out of their leas after a parental ballot. currently, an independent governing body runs gm schools and funds are received directly from the central government. gm schools have gained increased power in relation to admissions, finance, and staffing. only about two percent of primary schools have achieved grant-maintained status, versus 16 percent of secondary schools. some argue that these are mostly academically selective and singlesex schools and as a result often carry "a considerable social and educational cachet" (whitty et al., 1998, p.19). other maintained schools were given more autonomy through the local management of schools (lms) policy. this policy has considerably affected the funding formula for schools, which changed to the following; at least 85 percent of leas' budget is handed down to schools and 80 percent of each school's budget is determined on a per-student basis. some are critical of this funding formula as it gives leas little room to provide for disadvantaged schools and students (whitty et al., 1998). open enrollment allows parents to choose and allows schools to attract as many pupils as possible, up to their capacity. as funding is per--pupil, open enrollment has created a 'quasi-market' where schools compete to attract students if they want to keep operating. the most sought-after students are the academically able ones as they stay in the system longer and thus bring in more funding, whereas the least sought after are those with special education needs and lower ses (socio-economic status) students. this 'creamskimming' "poses the biggest threat to equity" (whitty et al., 1998, p. 116). education reforms in california, usa in the 80s and 90s in 1994, the improving america's schools act was passed by the clinton administration and congress, and thus began the transformation of the role of the federal government in education. two further acts have followed: the goals 2000 educate america act, and the educational excellence for all children act of 1999 (u.s. department of education, 1999). the reasoning behind this legislation is that the quality decline of american education is due to the low expectations and low standards set by the us education systems. the federal government's new role is to help states establish a standard system of curricula and assessments so that all children can reach high academic standards. schools are held accountable for the improvement of all students. for example, school districts need to publicly identify the lowest-performing schools and help these schools to improve. if there is no satisfactory improvement in student performance within three grazia scoppio 134 april 30, 2002 years of the initial identification, the district has to take one of the following corrective actions: (1) reconstitute the school with new staff, or (2) close the school and re-open it with new staff or as a charter school (u.s. department of education, 1999). after the america's school act, more and more emphasis has been placed on standards, achievement, and assessment as clearly stated in the california state board of education mission and goals statement (california department of education, 1998). in 1998, the star (standardized testing and reporting) program began, and every spring, california's students in grades two through eleven take the sat-9 (stanford achievement test, version 9), a norm-referenced, commercially produced, multiplechoice test. in addition, a high school exit examination in language arts and mathematics has been developed in accordance with the statewide academically rigorous content standards adopted by the state board of education (california department of education, 1999b). students who are learning english and who have been in california for up to 12 months can take a test in their original language. however, the only approved test is for spanish-speaking students. despite this provision, many students do not perform well because of their limited ability in english. california is one of the states with the highest number of limited-english-proficient population, together with new york, texas, and florida. nearly 25 percent of california's students do not know english well, compared to 1.8 percent of the national average. furthermore, approximately 2.7 million (47%) of the state's 5.7 million students come from low-income backgrounds. 35 percent of these disadvantaged students are tested yearly, and they consistently score below their more advantaged classmates (california department of education, 1999a). poverty is an indicator of potential academic risk, although this does not mean that poverty causes low academic achievement. what it means is that often students with low ses, usually attend schools where the quality of education is lower, due to lower academic standards, lower expectations and less qualified teachers (california department of education, 1999c). grouping and tracking the majority of california's high schools rely on systems of grouping students by ability or tracking in different streams, such as academic and vocational. however, there is evidence demonstrating how these practices can create within-school segregation that discriminates against black and hispanic students. a case study of two school systems, in california and in illinois, shows that "racially imbalanced tracked classes have borne little resemblance to homogeneous ability groups, even though they have been labelled and treated as such by schools" (oakes, 1995, p. 685). the study demonstrates how these grouping practices can result in a cycle of restricted opportunities and diminished outcomes for such students. thus, these practices can lead to inequality. funding in california, like in most american states, funding is decentralized and a system of per pupil funding is strongly influenced by property values. differences in per-pupil funding between wealthy suburban districts and low-income inner-city districts can be several thousand dollars per year. this difference translates into fewer resources and less services, such as special education. although california's per-capita income is fairly common trends of standardisation, accountability, devolution and choice in the educational policies of england, u.k., california, u.s.a., and ontario, canada current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 135 high (only 11 states are higher), in the 1996-'97 school year, the per-pupil expenditure in this state was $5,327, well below the u.s. average of $6,335. in fact, california ranked 41st at the national level, and ranked last among the other nine most industrialised states. the situation worsens if we look at public school expenditures against personal income to compare school finance effort with academic capacity. in 1994-'95, california ranked 48th, spending $33 for k-12 schools for every $1,000 in personal income, versus a national average of $40, while alaska ranked first with $73 (educational data partnership, 1998). despite this trend in low public school expenditures, california spends $7.85 for each test administered, while millions of dollars have been allocated to improve students' achievement on tests. evidently, testing is regarded as a priority by the government, but the disparities caused by the decentralization of funding are not. this highly decentralized system causes inequalities to remain, or even widen, since property taxes are what really makes a difference in the quality and quantity of education. charter schools charter schools are public schools created by a group of teachers, parents and community leaders or a community-based organisation, and are usually sponsored by a public school board or county board of education. charter schools are generally exempt from most laws governing school districts. california was the second state in the u.s. to start this experiment in 1992, and in 1997 there were already more than 130 charter schools. the law requires that a public charter school be non-sectarian and participate in the star program (california department of education, 1999d). there is a striking resemblance between american charter schools and british grant-maintained schools. in fact, charter schools have the authority to decide on such matters as budget, staff, and curriculum but at the same time they are accountable to meet standards of performance (whitty et al., 1998). as previously argued, this promotion of choice, marketization of education, and competition based on test results only increases the gap between schools with high numbers of 'advantaged' and high performing students and schools with high numbers of socially disadvantaged and low performing students. educational reforms in ontario, canada in the 80s and 90s a shift in the distribution of authority is occurring in ontario, similarly to england and california. recently, the boards' control in ontario has been decreased through centralization of decision-making at the provincial level, especially in the areas of curriculum development and finance (wilson, 1999). responsibilities of the ontario ministry of education now include developing curriculum policy, determining provincial standards for student achievement, setting diploma requirements, evaluating and approving learning materials for use in schools, and distributing funds allocated by the provincial legislature to assist school boards with the operation of schools and school boards, as well as the duties of teachers and school board officials (ontario ministry of education, 1999). grazia scoppio 136 april 30, 2002 in 1995, ontario's new democratic party (ndp) government released the common curriculum for grades one to nine and reinstituted standardized testing (ontario ministry of education and training, 1995). however, the election of the progressive conservative government in the same year resulted in the rejection of the ndp curriculum revision because it was judged to be too vague. the common curriculum set specific outcomes only for grades three, six and nine, and curriculum development was still decentralized to ontario's 166 local school boards (wilson, 1999). in 1996, with the approval of the education improvement act, bill 160, the ontario ministry of education was charged with instituting several reforms, including: (1) implementing standardized testing and establishing an education quality accountability office, (2) financial cuts to kindergarten, summer school, upgrading, special education, adult education, continuing education, school councils and school boards, and (3) changing the funding formula. standardized testing and streaming the initial reforms concerned elementary and junior level schools, including the introduction of a new provincial curriculum, province-wide testing in grades three and six, and standardized report cards. in 1999, a new high school program was started which implemented such changes as re-introduction of streaming, new graduation requirements, number of compulsory courses, introduction of a grade 10 literacy test, and a decrease from five years of schooling to four. the education quality and accountability office testing (eqao) was first administered in the academic year 1996-'97 for grades 3 and 6. the grade 10 literacy test will be administered for the first time in the spring of 2000. for the grades 3 and 6 testing, teachers did not know the content of the tests until one month before, when practice tests were administered. during that month, teachers were pressured by principals to cover test material to ensure that students knew it. the practice of teaching to the test has been an inevitable consequence. tests that were supposed to assess students' performance are being used to assess school's performance. it will most likely be the inner city schools that will achieve the lowest scores as many of their students are at a disadvantage--linguistically, socially, and economically. although previous policies had been aimed at "de-streaming," streaming has been reintroduced in high schools with two streams of courses, namely academic and applied. the re-introduction of streaming shows that equality issues are not a priority on the ministry's agenda. problems such as the relationship between the social and ethnocultural background and streaming, as well as dropping out, have not been resolved. previous policies of de-streaming were supported by research showing that choices of vocational streaming-or dropping out-are related to students' ses and ethnic background (churchill & kaprielian-churchill, 1991). funding elementary and secondary school financing is done at the municipal level, mainly through local property taxes, and at the provincial level through provincial grants. each year, the province establishes a dollar amount, which is intended to provide a base level of education to a student. the amount of the provincial grant varies to ensure equality of common trends of standardisation, accountability, devolution and choice in the educational policies of england, u.k., california, u.s.a., and ontario, canada current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 137 resources, thus boards that raise less property taxes due to lower property values, receive bigger grants (ontario ministry of education and training, 1997). the ministry of education has now assumed direct financial control over school boards. local property taxes are set and collected centrally by the ministry, rather than locally by school boards. opponents of bill 160 argue that the per-pupil funding mechanism does not take into consideration the needs of some urban schools, which may be greater than those of some suburban or rural schools. inner-city schools that count a high population of newly immigrated students, students with lower ses and ethnic minority students, have a greater need for esl and special education classes. others argue that bill 160 will lead eventually to a privatized education system, and that it deals with quality and improvement but "has no grounded discussion on equity questions" (dei & karumanchery, 1999, p.116). provincial funding has been progressively decreasing. in 1997, the ontario secondary school teachers' federation asserted that spending cuts by the ministry totaled "well over one billion dollars over three years," and feared that additional reductions "will be writing off a generation of ontario students and jeopardizing our province's future" (small & girard, 1997). although the initial aim of the changes was to 'raise standards' and achieve 'excellence' in education, these cuts have instead resulted in a decrease in quality at all levels of education, as reflected by the annual oise/ut (ontario institute for studies in education at the university of toronto) survey on education (livingstone, hart, & davie, 1998). consequently, those parents who can afford it send their children to private schools, as seen by the increase in enrollment in private schools from 80,340 in 1995, to 92,070 in 1997 (ontario ministry of education and training, 1995-1998). as reported by the media, the most recent government proposal includes funding of independent schools and further cuts to public schools (walkom, 1999). this proposal is clearly another step towards devolution and choice, however, the issues of quality and equality have not been considered. if this reform is implemented, the quality of education offered by public schools will suffer further. consequently, this will widen the gap between students attending public schools and students attending high-quality private schools. common issues through this analysis, it clearly appears that there are some similarities between educational reforms and policies in england, ontario, and california. there are common trends of standardization, streaming, testing, public funding cuts, performance-based funding, devolution, and choice. these policies have a dual aim. the first aim is to increase government control. economic under-performance is being blamed on poorly skilled and educated workers and modest scoring achieved on international tests are often used as proof that education systems are not performing well. governments feel that greater central control is needed to achieve excellence in education, so they make schools and teachers accountable for their work through centralized curricula and testing. however, the calls for excellence seem to contrast with recent funding cuts in public education. the second grazia scoppio 138 april 30, 2002 aim is to decrease boards/leas' control through devolution of authority to the schools and through the quest for parental choice. several issues can be raised after analyzing these policies. the first is related to standardized testing. which students are disadvantaged by this emphasis on testing and what are these tests really measuring? the students who are disadvantaged by these reforms are the ethnic minority students with a lower ability in english. the tests measure only isolated skills, and there is hardly, if any, critical thinking involved. placing too much emphasis on standardized assessment tests encourages the practices of rote learning and teaching to the test. curricula become test-driven. as one principal of an american high school put it, "we are preparing a generation of robots" (house, 1998, p.34). the second issue is the accountability of schools based on test scores. is the system only testing the students, or is it ultimately testing the individual performance of each teacher and the overall performance of each school? the pressure is on everyone--on the students to perform academically, on the teachers to perform in their work, and on the school principals to perform as managers. however, not everyone is given the same chance to succeed in these test-driven systems. inner-city schools with bigger populations of esl and low ses students can hardly perform as well as suburban schools with populations of mainly mono-cultural, mono-racial, middle-class students. furthermore, per-pupil funding does not leave much room for special programs usually needed for disadvantaged students. the third point is related to choice. in england and california, and probably soon in ontario (charter schools already exist in the province of alberta), parents are encouraged to compare performance tables of schools and choose accordingly. however, the issue of choice brings up two questions. how do we know if parents actually use performance tables as criteria of choice? if some parents do base their choice on academic performance of schools, what does that mean in practice for lowperforming schools? parents mostly choose according to classand race-based criteria, although some might choose according to academic excellence criteria. this means that teachers in low-performing schools might be perceived as not doing their job effectively, without acknowledging the correlation of other factors, such as the proportion of esl students, as previously mentioned. thus, choice based on test scores and social/racial bias can only "reinforce the existing hierarchy of schools" (whitty et al., 1998, p. 117). ultimately, the students who will gain from these reforms appear to be the high achieving students and also the standard-level students with middle-class parents who can choose the 'right' school after educated research. those who are most likely disadvantaged by these reforms are students with limited proficiency in english, lower ses students, and students from ethnic minorities. advocates of these policies cross-nationally do not seem concerned with issues of equality, but rather with 'high standards' in education and with 'market-driven' education. their goal is to create the efficient and skilled human capital needed to achieve higher economic performance in global markets. however, in their effort to common trends of standardisation, accountability, devolution and choice in the educational policies 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(1999). the utilization of research and information in educational decisionmaking: a case study of ontario, canada. in wanda rokicka (ed.), educational documentation, research and decision-making. france: unesco international bureau of education. 5. bukola, o. teachers' perceptions of parents in rural african communities bo.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 1, winter 2023 teachers’ perspectives of parents in rural african communities bukola oyinloye university of york teachers’ perspectives of their pupils’ parents are a critical element of the relationship between schools, families, and communities. however, in various rural african communities, teachers’ views of parents’ perspectives and practices around schooling are primarily ones of deficit rather than strength. this paper deepens this literature by offering insight into teachers’ perspectives in two rural communities in nigeria. using an ethnographic approach and applying concepts from the capability approach, this paper explores teachers’ perceptions of parents’ values in relation to their children’s schooling (parental functionings) and their views of the extent to which parents are able to pursue these functionings. the findings resonate with the existing deficit perspectives in the literature. in addition, the findings expand the literature by revealing an empathetic dimension to these deficit perspectives, suggesting that current evidence around teachers’ uniformly deficit perspectives of parents offers only a partial view. illuminating the empathy that underpins teachers’ perspectives offers the possibility of finding common ground between schools and families which may widen opportunities for forging or deepening positive parent-teacher relationships which support children’s social, emotional, and academic development. keywords: rural africa, home-school partnerships, parental agency introduction the relationship between homes and schools is believed to be one of the most important factors for children’s academic, social, and emotional development (epstein et al., 2002). underpinning this relationship are the perspectives that school teachers have of families (e.g., parents) and the perspectives that parents hold of schools, with the former contributing to the ways in which schools seek to engage with parents. within the vast global literature on parental involvement in schooling, the majority from industrialized contexts, there is evidence of contentious bidirectional views (oyinloye, 2021a). however, the literature highlights the prevalence of normative, dominant, white, middle-class assumptions about schooling which the perspectives and practices of certain non-dominant groups such as minorities, immigrants, and parents from low socio-economic backgrounds are measured against (oyinloye, 2021a). these © 2023, oyinloye. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 25(1), 91-111. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en oyinloye assumptions persist even in light of the evidence of school-level barriers faced by such groups (kim, 2009). in africa, the limited literature available suggests that similar assumptions persist (e.g., hartell et al., 2016; tusiime et al., 2016). in relation to non-dominant groups such as rural africans or those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, these assumptions manifest in teachers’ deficit views about what parents think of formal schooling, and how they engage with it. this paper contributes to this growing literature by further exploring the perspectives that teachers hold of parents in the rural communities in which they teach. specifically, it examines: (1) what teachers perceive as parents’ value on behalf of their children; and (2) why they hold such values, (3) the extent to which teachers believe parents are able to act on these values, and (4) the various influences that shape teachers’ perspectives on parents. this paper is structured as follows. the first section begins with a synthesis of key literature from anglophone africa which sheds light on how teachers perceive parents, and an introduction of the ‘capabilitarian’ concepts upon which this paper draws. the second section presents the broader context of the study. the third part explains the study’s methods, including ethics and analysis. the fourth section presents the findings while the fifth and final section discusses the findings and their implications. literature review various studies, particularly from rural or lower-income urban communities in sub-saharan africa with the majority from south africa, suggest that teachers’ views of parents’ perspectives and practices around the schooling of their children in africa are primarily one of parental deficit (e.g., hartell et al., 2016; makgopa & mokhele, 2013; mbokodi & singh, 2011; mukwambo, 2019). in south africa, parents’ articulation of constraints around their participation in school governing bodies (sgbs) – a legal requirement of south african schools composed of parents, school heads, educators, non-teaching staff, and students – were represented as complaints. on school involvement, including through sgbs, teachers, school heads, and learners were critical of parents in rural and lower-income communities who did not understand their roles, responsibilities, and expectations (hartell et al., 2016; makgopa & mokhele, 2013; mncube, 2007); were non-literate or minimally formally educated (hartell et al., 2016; mbokodi & singh, 2011; mncube, 2007; singh et al., 2004); lived (lemmer & van wyk, 2004) or worked (triegaardt & van diermen, 2021) far from school; or lacked time (bojuwoye, 2009; lemmer & van wyk, 2004; triegaardt & van diermen, 2021), school linguistic competence (michael et al., 2012; mncube, 2007; singh et al., 2004), and participation skills (lemmer & van wyk, 2004; mbokodi & singh, 2011). many of these factors are perceived by teachers as underpinned by social issues such as parents’ low socio-economic status (e.g., singh et al., 2004; 92 current issues in comparative education teachers’ perspectives of parents in rural african communities triegaardt & van diermen, 2021) and family structure and dynamics (triegaardt & van diermen, 2021). studies from outside south africa demonstrate similar deficit views. in zimbabwe, teachers reported that parents’ lack of interest in schooling limited teachers’ own educational efforts for children (mukwambo, 2019). in kenya and ghana, some teachers believed non-literate, rural parents were ‘ignorant’ of the value of schooling (see serpell’s (1993) on ignorant conservatism), with some suggesting that children’s uncleanliness reflected parents’ lack of enforcement of hygiene at home (buckler, 2012). in another study from kenya, teachers did not consider parents sufficiently competent to contribute to classroom learning activities (e.g., telling stories, teaching a skill, etc.) or to the organization of extra-curricular sports and cultural events (kimu & steyn, 2013). in a rural rwandan study of home literacy environments, a father’s perception of his role in schooling, i.e., to buy children books, was interpreted by the researcher as a lack of concern for learning (tusiime et al., 2016). while in rural tanzania, parents’ preference for ‘family education’ due to their frustrations around children’s repeated failures in school, despite significant time spent in school and on exam preparations, was uncritically interpreted as a lack of valuing of education (haule, 2021, p. 10). deficit depictions of parents in relation to their perspectives and practices around schooling have also been linked to those about broader parenting (e.g., tusiime et al., 2016). for instance, kenyan teachers reported that children who had behavioral and academic challenges had parents who were poor and generally uninvolved (kimu & steyn, 2013). in contrast, a south african study of parents in a peri-urban community concluded that “many parents did not seem to understand their role as parents” [even as it acknowledged that] eighty percent of parents […]constantly spoke about their different domestic problems” (singh et al., 2004, p. 303). alluding to the influence of culture, ghanaian school administrators admonished parents whom they thought preferred to spend money on parties, weddings, and funerals while neglecting food, school fees, and supplies (donkor, 2010). in northern nigeria, teachers, local officials, and other community members of school management committees felt parents – particularly those with children out-of-school or with fledgling attendance in rural areas and who had little or no literacy or numeracy abilities themselves – had no value for schooling and were, thus, ignorant and unenlightened (cameron et al., 2018; dunne et al., 2013; little & lewis, 2012; pinnock, 2012). in a seminal study from rural zambia, officials believed parents who involved children in economic activities, e.g., fishing and farming, rather than schooling sabotaged their children’s future (serpell, 1993). although deficit views in the literature are usually perpetuated by non-parents, they are sometimes perpetuated by researchers, as the studies from south africa, rwanda, and tanzania demonstrate (haule, 2021; singh et al., 2004; tusiime et al., 2016). current issues in comparative education 93 oyinloye despite some acknowledgment of the influence of prevailing socio-economic, social, and cultural factors, the existing literature suggests that teachers believe parents should be able to overlook or overcome these factors by remaining uncritically positive in their evaluation of schooling. moreover, it suggests that teachers believe parents should persist against all odds to become involved in the way that schools prescribe. thus, little is known about what teachers perceive parents actually value and why, and what parents are perceived to be able to do. moreover, there is a limited understanding of what influences these perceptions. this paper, therefore, contributes to the literature by offering some new insights into teachers’ perceptions of what parents value in relation to the schooling of their children and how teachers make sense of these values and actions. conceptual framework this paper draws on key concepts within the capability approach. the approach was developed by economist philosopher amartya sen in the late 1980s to broaden human capital views of human development. for him, these ideas focused too narrowly on increasing gross domestic product (gdp), personal wealth, industrialization, or technological advancement. rather, sen argued development should “expand the real freedoms that people enjoy” (sen, 1999, p. 3) where such freedom facilitates (as a means) and is the outcome (the end) of development processes. among the core concepts are capability, functioning, and agency. capability is the freedom to pursue or achieve what one values being or doing, where those valued beings and doings, or functionings, constitute one’s wellbeing (alkire, 2005; sen, 1985). capabilities refer to the combinations of functionings that constitute a person’s current state of being and doing. valued functionings are typically distinguished from realized ones, where the former is what people can be or do and the latter is what people are being or doing (or what they have managed to achieve). embedded within the concept of capability are two concepts: freedoms (the opportunities or options one values); and agency (the ability to pursue or achieve the opportunities one chooses) (alkire, 2005). some choices include trade-offs, where some options are pursued because one’s current circumstances prevents the pursuit of the options one truly values (khader, 2013). agents, may pursue valued goals that contribute primarily to others’ wellbeing even if the goals also contribute to theirs. a parent may, for example, choose and pursue parental goals, which are goals on behalf of their child[ren], to achieve the functioning of the child being educated, a functioning which primarily contributes to the child’s wellbeing in terms of the child’s future educational outcomes and secondarily to parents’ wellbeing through the pride associated with being the parent of an ‘educated child’. agents have agency freedom (the ability to choose which goal(s) to pursue) and agency achievement, the extent to which they succeed in the pursuit of their chosen goals (sen, 2009). 94 current issues in comparative education teachers’ perspectives of parents in rural african communities parental agency is thus conceived here as a parents’ actions to bring about parental goals and the concept may be further specified depending on the domain in which the goals lie, e.g., schooling. accordingly, parental capabilities are parents’ freedom to pursue or achieve valued beings and doings on behalf of their children (i.e., parental functionings). parental capabilities and functionings, therefore, contribute directly to child wellbeing, and less directly to parent wellbeing. moreover, parental functionings are distinguished from parents’ functionings, i.e., what a parent themself values being or doing to primarily constitute their own wellbeing. in this paper, the concept of parental functionings is employed to conceptualize what teachers believe parents value being or doing to constitute their children’s wellbeing in relation to schooling. moreover, the concepts of parental capabilities and parental agency are used to highlight the freedom and agency parents have to pursue their parental functionings. study context this paper draws from a broader qualitative ethnographic study exploring the perspectives and practices of parents on schooling. the study was carried out in two rural, muslim yorùbá communities in the north central geographical zone of nigeria and the community-level information seen in this section has been provided by or observed in communities. the community level data cited in this section has been drawn from the fieldwork. the nigerian pre-tertiary formal schooling system comprises of universal basic education (one year of early childhood, six years of primary, and three years of junior secondary education) and three years of senior secondary schooling, a 1-6-3-3 structure. universal basic education (ube) is free by federal policy, but states charge a variety of fees including entrance, term, and end of term fees along with significant secondary terminal examination costs. unsurprisingly, ube implementation is fraught with challenges such as gross underestimation of enrolment, shortages of certified teachers, and significant underfunding (bolaji et al. 2016). the broader study from which this paper is drawn lies within this prevailing schooling context and sought to explore the perspectives and practices of parents on the formal basic schooling of their children, as well as the views of teachers. this paper draws from the findings around this latter aim. the two communities (henceforth comm a and comm b) and schools of the broader study were selected with the help of two gatekeepers (referred to as key contacts), one a former colleague. the communities were selected because they were small (less than 1,000 inhabitants) and contained a public primary school (school a and school b), rendering them information rich and well-positioned to help fulfill the broader research aims. both communities are geographically but also ethnically, religiously, and, for comm a, familiarly affiliated (bray, 2003); however, although comm a is located within one boundary, comm b is a constellation of villages grouped together as comm b. comm b is also more rural current issues in comparative education 95 oyinloye than comm a, with the latter somewhat peri-urban. in comm a, men’s occupation is primarily in transportation (local and commercial taxi and large vehicle drivers) though more recent economic challenges have led some older fathers to supplement their livelihoods with farming. the women are primarily engaged in small-scale off-farm micro-enterprises or the farming and sale of vegetables, locust beans, yams, plantains, soya beans, cashew nuts, and cassava grains. in comm b, men are predominantly farmers though a few combined this with other work. comm b operates a market day every five days to sell commodities to buyers from near and from afar. both children and women participate in the market day. additionally, comm b women engage in farming and, like comm a, sell condiments and ingredients like cooked food, snacks, and food provisions. the comm a primary school (school a) was established during the expansion of primary schooling in the mid-1970s when universal primary education (upe) was introduced to southwest nigeria. the school is located within a large compound which also consists of a junior and senior secondary school (j/sss), established in 2003, whose principal was of the other key contact who introduced the author to both schools. this other key contact also participated in the interviews. at the time of the study, school a was experiencing a number of challenges. the fieldwork for the study occurred over two phases: an extended five-month phase in late 2018-2019, and a month-long follow-up in late 2019, some eight months thereafter. during the main fieldwork period from 2018-2019, the school’s population appeared to be diminishing. no official enrolment data was obtainable for the academic year. although enrolment was verbally estimated to be above 100, attendance during the two weeks of observation in the early part of 2019 averaged about 60 per day. moreover, the school a headteacher retired at the end of 2018 and his replacement – who arrived in january 2019 – departed early in the summer of 2019. by the time of the follow-up, the situation appeared to have changed. a new headteacher had begun, the population was growing – one day, i counted 96 learners – and there were more teachers in the school, including trainee/student teachers, most of whom were from comm a. comm b has one public primary school (school b) and one public j/sss across the road. like school a, school b was founded during the introduction of upe while the j/sss was founded more recently in 2013. both the primary and j/sss serve the various villages of comm b. while school b’s enrolment for the 2018-2019 academic year was reportedly nearly 200 (according to the headteacher), average attendance for a few weeks in early 2019 revealed just over half of enrolled students actually attended. the lowest attendance observed, 78, occurred on a friday, the muslim weekly day of prayer. according to school b’s headteacher, children’s market day absenteeism had markedly improved as she had firmly told parents that the school would not accept it. 96 current issues in comparative education teachers’ perspectives of parents in rural african communities it was difficult to know the teacher population of each school due to the fluctuating patterns of teacher attendance, particularly during the main fieldwork period. from the field notes, apart from the headteacher transitions at school a, the school had all teachers except for primary one. school b had no teachers for primary one, two, and five. except for one teacher in each school, all other teachers were muslim, most were women, all were yorùbá, and apart from a few local teachers in school b who were married to comm b men, most lived outside of the community in a big town from which they commuted. both schools were located at different ends of the big town though school b was a longer commute from the big town and, due to the paucity of transportation available sometimes, a more challenging one. without seeking to reduce the above ethnographic detail, the following table summarizes some of the main features of each of the two communities: table 1 key characteristics of studied communities comm a comm b population (estimated) <1000 <1000 religion islam; handful of christians islam; some traditional religion geography single ‘bounded’ community; peri-urban set of villages; rural men’s primary occupation transportation farming women’s primary occupation off-farm micro-enterprises off-farm micro-enterprises schools primary; junior secondary and senior secondary (combined) primary; junior secondary and senior secondary (combined) primary school enrolment 2018/2019 (estimate) >100 >200 primary school attendance 2018/2019 (average from obs) ~60 ~109 source: self-elaborated. methodology qualitative researchers study social phenomena in their natural settings and seek to “make sense of or interpret” (denzin & lincoln, 2017, p. 10). such phenomena according to the meanings’ participants ascribe to them. philosophically, this is consistent with a constructivist paradigm that views reality as diverse, multiple mental constructions based on the experiences and social interactions in specific local settings (lincoln et al., 2017). underpinned by this philosophical position, the study adopted a qualitative approach to explore and understand the meanings teachers make of their knowledge of the schooling perspectives and practices of their pupils’ parents (creswell, 2014). this study used current issues in comparative education 97 oyinloye semi-structured interviews as the primary qualitative method. interviews are defined by rubin & rubin (2012) as (gently) guided discussions with a conversational partner, one respected and trusted as a reliable source of information on the topic of interest. interviews range on a continuum from no structure to completely structured where the greater the structure, the more predetermined the interview questions (qu & dumay, 2011). however, even the most structured interviews may allow for flexibility, or the modification of subsequent questions in the direction of the conversation (see rubin & rubin’s (2012) responsive interviewing). the study also drew from ethnography – a deliberate, systematic way to learn about participants’ social and cultural lives (lecompte & schensul, 2010) – and employed ethnographic interviews as well as participant observations (atkinson & hammersley, 2007). ethnographic interviews are qualitative interviews embedded within an ethnographic approach. as such, as munz (2017) suggests, ethnographic interviews often occur as part of participant observations, within participants’ naturalistic settings, in spontaneous ways, and between researchers and participants who typically already have some form of relationship. ethnographic interviews may also occur with groups spontaneously, may be planned in advance (with an existing group), or may be more focused (i.e., with a group whose members may or may not be familiar with each other) (o’reilly, 2012). in this study, ethnographic interviews and informal or situational conversations (munz, 2017) occurred with teachers and school administrators in transit as well as within the school settings in each community. in this paper, i use the term ‘interaction’ (see de fina & perrino’s (2011) interactional encounter) to refer to the qualitative and ethnographic interview processes between teachers and me, which fall within the ‘structure’ continuum, the spatial continuum (e.g., from the open, dynamic and often transitory public spaces on the roads to the more private, usually static, confidential offices of the headteachers (neale, 2017)). participant observation is the process of learning about people’s worlds by exposure to or involvement in their routine activities within the research setting (schensul & lecompte, 2013). it includes being present and interacting with participants during an activity or event (schensul & lecompte, 2013) and standing back, taking notice, and making notes (o’reilly, 2012). with teachers, i observed and participated while we sat under the gathering tree in their school compounds; while waiting for the staff or other transport at designated locations in the main town; while hitchhiking or hopping on and off cars; during school assemblies; and while substituting, when requested, for an absent teacher. the criticality of notetaking combined with the often-transitory nature of such participant observations resulted in notetaking in transit on my mobile phone (this way of notetaking had been pre-empted and had thus been ethically approved). 98 current issues in comparative education teachers’ perspectives of parents in rural african communities given the ethnographic approach, these diverse forms of interactions, participations, and observations occurred with participants multiple times over the two phases of fieldwork, with subsequent interactions building on previous ones. though the slightly more structured interactions were never scheduled in advance given the exigencies of the school day, they were confirmed with teachers on the day they would occur, and typically held during the morning or lunch break. one pivotal yet spontaneous group interaction occurred during the main fieldwork, and i observed that the group setting encouraged teachers to speak freely and feed off each other. therefore, all interactions with teachers during the follow-up fieldwork occurred in groups. although all teachers spoke and understood english to varying degrees, our interactions were conducted entirely in the local language to increase understanding, enrich the breadth of responses, and deepen overall trust. given teachers were operating in an official space, i obtained their informed consent on signed forms, providing each with a photocopy of their signed form. in all, 23 different teachers (9 male, 14 female) participated in the individual and group interactions from both schools during the extended (17 teachers) and follow-up (10 teachers, 4 from extended) periods of fieldwork. the other key contact (the school a j/sss principal) was amongst those interviewed given he previously led school b and could offer a comparative view of both schools and communities. as previously noted, the other key contact introduced the author to both schools, and the heads of these schools authorized the author to approach their teachers for interviews. all but one teacher approached agreed to be interviewed due to fears of being recorded. ethical approval for the study was obtained from the author’s institution. the table below specifies the number of teachers and staff across all interactions (school a’s custodian has also been included). at each phase, more female than male teachers were interviewed, a reflection of the school’s teacher demographic. except for the custodian, all teachers held the required nigeria certificate in education (nce) qualification. the longest serving teacher across both schools, the school b primary, two teachers had been serving at the school for 17 years and lived in a town some minutes from the school. during fieldwork, four school a teachers lived locally, either within comm a or in a nearby town a few minutes away. at school b, two teachers lived in a nearby town, including the headteacher. the rest of the teachers lived in the main town. except for one female teacher in each of school a and school b, all teachers were muslim, and the majority lived in polygynous households. current issues in comparative education 99 oyinloye table 2 number of teachers in individual / group interactions   school a school b     teachers other staff* other teachers** teachers total   m f m f m f m f   fieldwork 3 4 1 4 1 1 4 18 follow-up 5 1 4 10 total 3 9 1 0 4 1 2 8 28 *custodian; **second key contact and colleagues (2m, 1f), plus another j as part of its decolonizing methodological approach, the study obtained ethical approval from the author’s institution in the united kingdom as well as the nigerian federal ministry of health, and embedded participants’ epistemologies within the overall ethics framework (oyinloye, 2021b). transcription was conducted after each period of fieldwork. a thematic analytical approach was used to identify themes that “represent some level of patterned response or meaning within the data set” (braun & clarke, 2006, p. 82). a theme, moreover, consists of one or more group(s) of codes: terms or phrases which capture the essence of parts of the data (braun & clarke 2013). the next section presents the findings according to the three purposes of this paper: teachers’ views on parents’ values in relation to their children’s schooling; teachers’ perceptions of parents’ ability to pursue these values, particularly schooling; and the influences that shape teachers’ perceptions. the findings are primarily from data generated during the main fieldwork phase. findings parental and parents’ functionings teachers across both schools elicited varied but nuanced perspectives around what they believed the parents in their school-communities value. though the fervency with which functionings were evoked differed, some similar themes were identified in both schools. teachers in both schools were vociferous about parents they believed were uninterested in their children’s schooling. 11 of the 17 teachers in both schools emphasized this view during fieldwork. however, teachers often balanced their views about parents’ lack of interest in schooling with views about what they thought parents were, instead, interested in and valued. farming, handiwork and celebrations at school b, the greatest among other values was farming and every school b teacher mentioned this during our interaction. regarding the extent to which she tries to engage with parents at school b, the primary 3 teacher surmised: 100 current issues in comparative education teachers’ perspectives of parents in rural african communities …one will do it more than that of the town. being that because those rural people now, you know that they have, they have, their own work is that of the farm. ehnn? ehnnn! and the majority of parents are these, they want that, they prefer that their children be at the farm, to be doing farm work more than they should be coming to school. at school a, parents’ valuing (and prioritizing) farming was mentioned within the context of the cashew rush – the intense period of cashew harvest in february and march when families went to farms to pick cashews to dry and sell its nuts up the value chain. the following was part of an exchange during a morning assembly at the height of the cashew season at school a: assistant head: [to the children] be washing your clothes, it’s not good like this! you’re too dirty! look at how you are?! teacher 1: the parents of some, they don’t have time. assistant head: ah ha! you’re now saying their mother has gone to the cashew nut farm, their father has gone to the cashew nut farm, will they not find someone at home there? please, the children will now, will now be looking like thing, and you’ll be bringing them! when they wake up, they’ll carry the sticks used for cashew nut farming! teacher 2: they can’t do anything for the children, what is happening?! parents’ highly valuing cashew nut farming was reiterated by school a teachers during casual conversations under the school gathering tree. this occurred particularly when mothers walked through the school compound with long sticks (used to tip cashews off their branches), either coming or going from the cashew nut farm, sometimes with a school-aged child in tow. although observations revealed that comm b simultaneously experienced a cashew rush, perhaps because of the high-intensity farming experienced throughout the year, school b teachers did not single it out as a parental functioning in the way that school a teachers did. while less frequently mentioned than farming, teachers also believed parents’ interest in schooling was subverted by their interest in informal apprenticeships, or what was commonly called handiwork. three school b teachers mentioned this, including the headteacher. at school a, handiwork was mentioned by only two of eight individual teacher interactions during fieldwork but with a salience that betrayed the frequency of its mention. emphasizing the extent of the practice in comm a, the primary 5 teacher noted, “that thing is very common in this environment!” current issues in comparative education 101 oyinloye alongside farming and handiwork, school b teachers perceived that parents valued expending resources on cultural and communal events or celebrations. while no school a teacher mentioned such celebrations explicitly during our individual interactions, during a morning assembly, teachers severely reproached and punished nearly the entire primary six class who had skipped school the previous friday to attend a celebration, bemoaning parents’ leniency and general lacklustre attitudes toward schooling as the reason for children’s temerity for such an act. polygyny, early marriages and mothers’ struggles in addition to farming, handiwork, and attending/spending on celebrations, teachers across both schools mentioned two additional functionings of parents deemed uninterested in schooling: polygyny (for themselves) and early marriages (for children). early marriage was evoked by multiple school b teachers as a general disposition in comm b for boys and girls as early as upper primary school. at school a, it was evoked by the primary 2 teacher as a practice for girls and as a result of poverty where highly economically disadvantaged mothers, particularly those in polygynous households, thought it better for their teenage girl child to be married to someone who could better materially provide. interlinked with this view was the perception that fathers were uninterested in schooling yet prided their ability to assemble wives (and, as a result, children) for whom they provided little. this view was espoused multiple times – by four of eight teachers – and with a fervency akin to that with which school b teachers asserted parents’ valuing and prioritizing farming over education. given polygyny is a norm within the muslim yorùbá communities (as both a cultural and legal religious practice), teachers presented the assemblage of wives as problematic not because of their disapproval of it, but because they felt some men abused the practice and married more wives than they could provide for, which rendered husbands unable and usually uninterested in bearing the responsibilities of the household. as such, these teachers felt mothers disproportionately bore the weight of the responsibility for their children within the household, and their struggles were exacerbated by their meagre livelihoods. the school a primary 2 teacher was vocal about the constraints’ mothers faced. for her, although comm a mothers were generally interested in schooling, their life contexts severely constrained their capability to pursue the schooling that they valued for their children: you know all those times that, the person who had one wife, who had two wives, who had one child, who had two children, the power was carrying it [i.e., they could provide for their family]. now, that the children are many, that the wives are many… the woman just faces the responsibilities of her children…the woman with the responsibilities of her children is it! 102 current issues in comparative education teachers’ perspectives of parents in rural african communities and how many jobs can we women do that we can take care of children?! the power is not carrying it, it’s that the power is not carrying it… as the quote alludes, teachers perceived comm a mothers to be particularly disadvantaged given the greater degree of polygyny in their community. attempts to quantify the number of wives comm a men resulted in estimates ranging from two to five to many. such was the perceived extent of a father’s abdication of their household responsibilities that one female teacher from school a j/sss remarked, “there are no husbands….there are only children!” during the same interaction a male teacher from the same secondary school retorted, “women are the men in this community, men are the women!” similar sentiments about mothers’ struggles occurred at school b, with the primary 6 teacher noting: on the farm [i.e., in the rural areas] sometimes, it’s the women who struggle that their children become ‘educated’. it’s the women who… the women… [are] trying. those women, they want their children to go to school but there is usually no power [i.e., means] there. there is no power.” during the follow-up fieldwork, some eight months after the initial fieldwork, the school b headteacher noted that on the farm “what men value is that they gather together four or five wives. there’s nothing concerning them about [schooling]. it’s for them to be feeling proud that i also have five of your type [i.e., women or wives] at home.”. however, unlike school a, fewer school b teachers mentioned the extent of polygyny suggesting that the extent of polygyny in comm b is less than that of comm a. this possibility is supported by the demographic data of parent participants in the broader study which found 23 wives in 10 comm a households (an average of 2.3) and 14 wives in eight comm b households (an average of 1.75). in addition to polygyny, as a functioning for fathers in the communities, polygyny is amongst the sources of fathers’ reported lack of interest in schooling. two male teachers (one at school a and another at school a j/sss) attributed comm a fathers’ apparent lack of interest in children’s schooling relative to mothers to the fathers’ livelihoods as transporters resulting in their physical absence from home for significant periods of time. despite teachers’ general characterization of fathers as lacking interest in schooling, during fieldwork, the school b headteacher noted some exceptions in comm b saying, “the rural people are [generally] not interested in schooling, [but] there are a few who are good among them [who] want to learn.” no such exceptions were mentioned by school a teachers, although the principal of the comm a j/sss distinguished between the “serious” and collectively minded comm b fathers and the more individualistic comm a fathers. in his view, the deeper poverty experienced in comm b is evidenced by the continual erection of current issues in comparative education 103 oyinloye new homes in comm a, and he highlighted the irony of the serious but poor comm b fathers and the unserious but less poor comm a fathers. the highlighting of such exceptions across both communities demonstrates that teachers also believe schooling is a significant parental functioning for some parents although achieving this functioning is subject to the influence of the wider social and cultural environment, socio-economic status, and gender. across both schools, analysis of teachers' perspectives identified other parental functionings like sending children to elementary islamic schooling to learn how to recite the quran before or after school and sending children to hawk goods to support the household economy. figure 1 illustrates the various parental (pf) and parents’ functionings (f) across both communities. the middle of the venn diagram highlights the values perceived by teachers to be held across both comm a and comm b, while the right and left sections of the diagram highlight those only mentioned by teachers in either school. figure 1 teachers' views on parental and parents' functionings source: self-elaborated. 104 current issues in comparative education teachers’ perspectives of parents in rural african communities parental agency evident within these perceptions is a sense of the extent to which teachers perceive parents are able to exercise agency in the pursuit of their functionings. parents were perceived to be better able to choose to pursue and meaningfully achieve their diverse non-schooling functionings. in contrast, parental agency was perceived to be limited around schooling, particularly in relation to teachers’ specific schooling expectations such as school-based activities (e.g., participation in school governance bodies, attendance at parent-teacher association meetings, provision of children’s fees and school supplies) and home activities (e.g., involvement in homework and reviewing children’s books). for homework, although teachers recognized that the majority of their parent population had never attended school, they believed parents could still exercise parental agency by asking older children to help check children’s homework or by setting aside time and instructing the children to review work after school. for such learning-specific activities, though parents had not gone to school themselves, teachers believed parents could still exercise parental agency indirectly by not only providing a conducive learning environment, but also by soliciting intermediaries who had the capabilities to directly exercise the required action. the findings suggest that teachers believe parental functionings overall (both schooling and non-schooling) are determined by the intersection of parents’ dispositions as rural people who live on the farm, while their parental agency (particularly in relation to schooling) is determined by the resources available to them within a broader context of broader economic, social and political structures. moreover, further interactions with teachers highlighted their perceptions that economic constraints compelled parents who do value schooling to adapt their parental functionings based on a realistic assessment of what parents believed their children are likely to achieve. for teachers, this was the primary reason that drove parents’ enrolment of children in handiwork across both communities, and while some parents were believed to pursue this for their children instead of further schooling after the completion of primary school, others were believed to pursue it in addition to schooling with the hope that either pathway may eventually lead to success for their child. teachers, thus, perceived three reasons for parents’ perspectives and practices: constrained parental agency (the partial pursuit and, thus, achievement of chosen, valued [schooling] options); forced trade-offs (the pursuit of other, often lesser valued [non-schooling] options due to parents’ socio-economic circumstances); and a lack of interest or faith in schooling (complete disbelief in the promises of schooling). discussion and conclusion current issues in comparative education 105 oyinloye this paper has examined teachers’ varied perspectives on what parents value and do in relation to formal schooling in two rural nigerian communities. it revealed that teachers in the two schools largely believe parents do not value schooling because of their dispositions towards other functionings such as farming, handiwork, occasions, and early marriage among other values. the plethora of perceived non-schooling values reported in these communities echo the deficit tropes in the literature of rural people’s limited knowledge or understanding of schooling discussed at the beginning of this paper. the findings also revealed that teachers acknowledged some parents do value schooling but were constrained in their ability to choose and pursue relevant practices to achieve it on behalf of their children. this view uncovered teachers’ gendered perspectives in two ways. first, fathers across both communities (though to a greater extent, in comm a) were perceived to highly value polygyny which constrains mothers’ capabilities to secure children’s schooling by heightening mothers’ poverty due to the reduction in the share of household resources. second, female teachers who themselves were in polygynous households particularly excoriated polygynous fathers whom they believed abdicated their household responsibilities, thereby leaving their wives to solely cater for their children’s educational and other needs. except the single female christian teacher in each school, all other female teachers in schools a and b were muslim and lived in polygynous households. as such, their lived experiences underpinned their strongly held perceptions of the connection between polygyny and mothers’ constrained agency. this second gendered dimension of teachers' perspectives moreover highlights the empathetic aspect of teachers’ perspectives and challenges the existing dominant deficit views in the literature. as seen earlier in the literature, other studies have connected teachers’ views of parents’ constrained choices with parents’ difficult life contexts such as poverty and household dynamics (e.g., kimu & steyn, 2013; singh et al., 2004; triegaardt & van diermen, 2021). however, only a few scholars have demonstrated teachers’ identification of these linkages (e.g., buckler, 2012; donkor, 2010; kimu & steyn, 2013) or connected parents’ constraints with polygyny (donkor, 2010). where such intersections are identified, as with donkor (2010), there is little attempt to further interrogate them or link teachers’ perceptions with teachers’ own lives. such nuances are absent in the extant literature which appears to largely assume that teachers, particularly rural ones, have little in common with parents in rural school-communities, even if they live near or around such communities. an exception is buckler (2012) who suggests that teachers’ own rural backgrounds facilitate empathy with rural lives and that teachers who hold close personal relationships with school-communities have functionings that align with those school-communities. however, the findings of this paper suggest that this empathy is deepened when teachers’ personal life experiences 106 current issues in comparative education teachers’ perspectives of parents in rural african communities resonate with those of parents in their school-communities (and where teachers are aware of these) whether or not teachers have similar rural backgrounds or close personal relationships with the communities. in this way, even where teachers may perpetuate deficit views of parents, these views are simultaneously underpinned by empathy which arises from teachers’ ability to metaphorically walk a mile in parents’ shoes. such empathy, or the capacity to find some common ground, is critical for the forging or deepening of positive parent-teacher relationships which support children’s social, emotional, and academic development. the paper’s ethnographic data, analysed using the capability approach, demonstrates the varied and nuanced perceptions teachers in rural african schools hold of the parents of their pupils. these perceptions are, in turn, strongly influenced by teachers’ perceptions of rurality, personal life experiences, accumulated knowledge of school-communities, and the prevailing macroeconomic condition whose effects are felt not only by parents but also by teachers. parents’ elucidation of constraints relative to schooling in the literature and in this paper suggest a greater need to interrogate how normative schooling expectations interact with rural parents’ lives in context, and how these everyday lives influence parents’ perspectives as well as actions around schooling. bukola oyinloye is a research associate at the university of york. her research spans equity and diversity in he; family-school partnerships; education and adolescence in africa; global education systems and governance; global childhoods and youth; informal apprenticeships; ethics; indigenous epistemologies; and school leadership and management.  references alkire, s. 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(2016). the literacy ecology of four rwandan children. in e. friedlander & c. goldenberg (eds.), literacy boost in rwanda: impact evaluation of a 2-year randomized control trial (pp. 122-164). stanford university. current issues in comparative education 111 https://doi.org/10.24297/jssr.v17i.8796 © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 57 privatization and educational equity: can markets create a just school system? peter w. cookson, jr. teachers college, columbia university the market argument for a decade or more, americans have been exposed to an argument about educational change and improvement that has as its core concept the deregulation of public education. essentially, market advocates claim that educational bureaucrats, intent on preserving their monopoly, have blocked educational reform by refusing to place schools in competition with each other for students and hence resources. in effect, the government is engaging in restraint of trade by supporting the existing public school system and not supporting families directly through vouchers or other direct payment schemes. the potential of this demand-side educational experiment and innovation is thus diminished, causing student achievement to remain suppressed. market advocates argue vociferously that poor students, in particular, are unjustly punished by the present state system, which due to residential segregation, discrimination and unequal resources make the concept of equal educational opportunity, an empty, if not hypocritical, political promise. market advocates seldom call for complete deregulation, rather they advance a theory of quasi-markets which blends state regulation with entrepreneurship. this theory of social and educational change, however, has at its core the enduring belief that the preferences shown by rational choosers results in greater and better opportunities than state mandated and managed change. the cumulative effect of thousands of individual choices amounts to a collective decision that holds providers accountable and therefore more responsible and responsive. for the market advocates, schools and education are governed by the same economic laws of supply and demand as the commodities market. good products drive out bad and the public will not tolerate waste if it holds the purse strings directly. i have been skeptical of the market argument for some time. i perceive wholesale educational privatization as a threat to community responsibility and democratic accountability. i believe that public education is a political, cultural and educational space that, if properly cultivated, will become an oasis for the development of civil society and democracy. yet, i must confess i have not tackled directly the main thrust of the market argument, which maintains that markets and social justice are inexorably intertwined because freedom of choice is the defining freedom of democracy. no choice, no freedom. moreover, markets cannot help but produce greater equity because the desire for social and personal gain motivates all to acquire more skill and status. the very competitiveness of markets produces a democracy of strivers, if you will. the spoiler is politics, which distorts market operations by injecting into the choice process state power, personal ambition and graft. there is much of interest in these arguments. do social markets operate in similar ways to commodities markets? are families and children rational choosers? who will actually peter w. cookson jr. 58 april 30, 1999 start and maintain the new demand-side schools? how will they be held accountable? do we need a unifying educational institution in a democracy? what are the real costs of deregulation? in this essay, however, i confine myself to one question--what evidence is there that markets distribute goods and services in an equitable manner? obviously, if markets create unjust distribution systems then we should be very skeptical about applying market strategies to school improvement. if markets do spread wealth equitably by merit and/or need then we should acknowledge that privatizing public education might result in better schools for more children. after all, market advocates argue "give us a chance," some might say to them "show us where you have succeeded in creating greater social opportunities?" market advocates believe that human capital improves with investment and we--human capitalists--will rationally choose educational opportunities that are market sensitive and that reward us with increased income. several questions come to mind: are educational skills related to income? to what degree do educational skills and credentials level the economic and social playing fields? have markets provided more skilled workers or fewer? how many top income positions are there anyway? is the economy endlessly expandable? what evidence is there that markets distribute wealth according to merit and/or need? in short, do markets work the way their advocates claim, or are markets really engines for producing goods without reference to the commonweal or even the common need? the monopoly structure of markets the american economist john kenneth galbraith (1998) in his most recent work on economic history and social policy has written that: half or more of american households accumulate nothing; the lower middle class and below live month to month. for the majority of the remainder, accumulation takes the form of a house and a mandatory retirement plan, nether of which they control. the bottom 80 percent of american households controlled just 6 percent of total financial wealth in 1989; the top 20 percent controlled 94 percent, and the top 1 percent controlled nearly half (p. 187). advocates of educational privatization promote a theory of laissez-faire capitalism based on competition, choice and individual accountability. in a somewhat unsophisticated reading of adam smith and his more fundamentalist epigoni, privatizers argue that consumers make judgments about goods and services, which, because choices are rational and utilitarian, have the effect of separating winners from losers. this simple belief in choice assumes a neutral, competitive market that is absent politics, power and privilege. even in its more moderate form (i.e., the state has some role to play in the economy), the theory of rational choice presupposes a social world free of cultural constraint, ideological distortion, and organized self-interest. the first thing to note about this theory of choice and markets is that it is oddly theoretical and abstract. it is in many ways an intellectual castle in the sky, floating above the grit and struggle of real people who walk the earth in a ceaseless struggle to survive. as such, it is more akin to a faith, than a testable hypothesis. like the flat earth theory, simple primitive market theory assumes a world that can appear in theory to be correct, but may crumble when confronted by fact. the flat earth theory was disproved by sailing over the horizon; the power of markets to create a just distribution of real and privatization and educational equity: can markets create a just school system? current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 59 symbolic resources is also testable. so let's sail over the horizon! as galbraith's above quotation demonstrates, the distribution of income in the united states is highly--even extraordinarily--uneven. most of this income and wealth inequality is accounted for by families' locations in the economy. those families in the bottom rung of the service sector have little hope of sharing in the expanding market because the threat of unemployment keeps them disorganized and desperate. families in the stable skilled sector of society are often protected by unions or job tenure because their skills are in demand. these skills cannot be easily found outside certain employment cachement areas. but these skilled workers have little access to income outside their wages and wages are not necessarily pegged to profits. as we will see, profits are contingent on wage suppression. finally, the managerial class, which includes many entrepreneurs and high level "symbolic analysts," is able to create and manage wealth. the upper level of the management class is able to create markets and use wage transfers in the form of tax relief opportunities to create equity through early investment, growth and the public sales of businesses. these investment strategies provide dramatic opportunities to create wealth, with little relationship to need or labor. this three-tiered economy is supported not by competition, but by monopoly. one of the ironies of school reform is that opponents of public education refer repeatedly to public education as a "monopoly." this accusation is empirically false (i.e., high decentralization and support for private education) but also naive and perhaps disingenuous. capital markets inherently produce firms, which, in an effort to maximize profits, attempt to destroy, swallow or join competing firms. market share is the key to profitability, witness microsoft's corporate style. historically, large companies could defeat competing companies by colluding to fix prices and generally to exclude outside competition through such restrain of trade tactics as giveaways and threats to retailers; witness microsoft's economic war on internet competitors. control, not competition, is the key to profits. the government attempts, from time to time, to enter into the market equation a degree of competition through anti-trust litigation, but the structure of interlocking monopolies remains intact. there are four major consequences to this monopoly structure: (1) concentration of wealth; (2) speculation in public offerings often bordering on "wild capitalism"; (3) unstable economic performance; and, (4) the suppression of wages. we have already seen the evidence of the concentration of wealth. let's examine briefly the remaining three consequences. wild capitalism the recent surges in the stock market have led some analysts to claim that we are entering a new era of general affluence. moreover, with the collapse of soviet style socialism and the explosion of computer technology in the marketplace, an argument is made that worldwide capitalism is creating a new world order based on mass consumption. whether a stable world economy can be based on speculation remains to be seen. but given what we know about the distribution of opportunities in the core capitalist countries it seems speculative at best to predict a general elevation of income on a global basis. in fact, there is now an exploitative element to this new global economy whereby poverty-stricken children in "underdeveloped" countries produce cheap goods for sale in "developed" countries, producing for the manufacturers considerable profit, which in turn stimulates stock market speculation. peter w. cookson jr. 60 april 30, 1999 unstable economic performance from roughly 1960-1970, there were no economic depressions or recessions; from 1970 to the present day there have been five. the consequences of these downturns have been concentrated unemployment in certain urban and rural areas and chronic unemployment for males with a high school education or less, particularly africanamerican males. moreover, debt has been a major source for financing the american lifestyle, particularly for those in the middle income range (galbraith, 1998). this debt increase, of course, fuels the economy in the short run by providing large amounts of capital to those who finance credit cards, home mortgages and loans. industrial performance from 1958-1992 has not been smooth. of course, the computer business has grown enormously, as has aircraft, communication systems and medical services and supplies. traditional goods such as steel and heavy equipment, oil, homes, food, clothing and other low-tech consumer goods have not experienced the exponential growth of the computer industry. the current growth cycle of the market is fueled almost exclusively by the new technology. in short, the current enthusiasm for the power of markets to wash away history and deprivation masks a very uneven and even fragile economy that would essentially show a flat growth rate if it were not for the expansion of the computer industry. the suppression of wages some have suggested that a rising tide lifts all boats. in its very simplicity this analogy reveals the common belief that increased prosperity is shared by all. it is a comfortable belief because: (a) it associates economic laws with natural laws; (b) it suggests that yachts and dinghies share the same harbor; and, (c) what's good for the yacht is good for the dinghy. none of these assumptions is true. economics is not governed by the laws of the universe, but by social relations that are subject to negotiation and change. yachts and dinghies may share the same water, but it is the yachts that draw deeper and take pride of place and last, a rising tide may lift the dinghy a little, but only to ride the surface; the yacht's hull displaces more water and can stabilize even in bad weather. we have already seen that the wealth of the country is concentrated in a few hands. hacker (1997) provides the following data in terms of the twenty-year percentage increases in the average income for each of the quartiles and also for the top five percent: richest 5 percent +54.1 percent top 20 percent +35.4 percent second 20 percent +13.0 percent middle 20 percent +6.7 percent fourth 20 percent +4.4 percent bottom 20 percent +1.5 percent table 1 it is manifestly false that all americans share equally or proportionally in increased national wealth. galbraith (1998) argues persuasively that the inequality in family incomes has risen dramatically since 1970. and this inequality continues to grow. in fact, the gap between the rich and the poor in the united states is the widest of any oecd privatization and educational equity: can markets create a just school system? current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 61 country. moreover, job creation, a much touted accomplishment of current and past administrations, has remained lackluster throughout the 1990s, just over two percent a year, galbraith (1998). progress in unemployment has been moderate at best, and, of course, employment for many millions means a minimum wage with no or little hope of advancement. this is not to mention the many men, women, and children who work in the twilight economy of migrant labor, off-the-books servitude, and organized crime. real wages, the average wage adjusted for inflation, has risen far more slowly than the level of production. real wages have stagnated requiring families to have two wage earners to keep up with the rate of inflation. the suppression of wages is compounded by the fact that much of the united states' productive capacity has been relocated to poor countries, whose wage suppression borders on the criminal. in the end, it is clear that in terms of creating greater economic equality, the market has not succeeded. this brings us full circle to our original question--do markets distribute goods and services equitably? clearly not. but let's press the argument further in reference to educational improvement. supposing our hypothetical market advocate counters as follows: the purpose of privatizing education is not to spread education more equally, but to provide greater opportunities for skill development. that is, the democratic function of schooling is to provide a rich array of educational opportunities so that anybody, through discipline and application, can succeed. the present state-controlled education monopoly limits opportunities by regulation and collusion with the professional unions. this argument rests on two conjectures: (1) there is room at the top; and (2) skills are the royal road to the top. these two conjectures are at the heart of the human capital argument. the way to advance the economy and therefore, the society, is to invest in children (and adults) so that they can participate in the global information society. this argument has broad appeal. conservatives endorse it because it thrusts the responsibility for inequality back to the individual, freeing the broader society from the obligations involved in creating a more just society. liberals are attracted to human capital theory because it offers a way out of the class structure bind without revolution. mobility through skills and the appeal of a mild form of social engineering is, for liberals, the royal road to a more just society. certainly, almost the entire school improvement movement is built on this assumption. better education (higher standards?) leads to a better economy, which in turn makes democracy possible, or at least plausible. questions of genuine democracy versus cosmic democracy remain for further discussion. before beginning this analysis, it may be useful to pause and reflect on two research traditions that have all but been forgotten in the school improvement literature. almost thirty years ago, randall collins conducted an experiment in which he asked employers why they preferred to hire college graduates over non-college graduates (1972). he discovered that nearly all the employers saw the college credential as a proxy for certain social/political skills needed on the job. what the applicant knew was of little or no importance. in other words, in the credential game, it is not the quality of education that is sought after by important gatekeepers but a pedigree that testifies to an applicant's social capabilities. peter w. cookson jr. 62 april 30, 1999 these findings are not isolated or idiosyncratic; they are consistent. so much so that sociologists such as john meyer (1970) have argued that schools possess a social charter that signals to the world, and to significant gatekeepers, the entitlements the graduates of a particular school can expect--graduates of west point are expected to become military officers; harvard graduates expect to be interviewed for important jobs. of course, this line of thinking is completely in keeping with our everyday experience. the social selectivity of a school or college has everything to do with who is admitted and the educational and social options open to the schools' graduates. the second line of research that ought to give human capital theorists pause is the most plausible explanation for the historic expansion of state sponsored education. was it demand for skilled workers or was it some other cause? while the growth of any institution as complex as public education cannot be reasonably expected to have its origins in a single cause, one "expansion" hypothesis is that nation-states invested in public education largely as a matter of state building. there is little evidence that "skill building" was considered worth the expense and effort required to construct such a complex system. states require soldiers, workers and citizens. loyalty to the state was, and remains, the sine qua non of successful nationhood in an era of competing nations. the history of the twentieth century could be read as the enduring and fierce competition among states for economic resources and economic markets. human capitalists take a rather non-historical and microeconomic view of the origins and purposes of public education. the methodological individualism, at the root of human capital theory treats the individual as a solitary unit of analysis, measurable in quantitative terms. the sum total of what we need to know about an individual is the amount of variance explained by such factors as iq, race, schooling and, for the very bold, family background. but as we have seen, we are not a society of individuals, we are a society of groups, groups whose very definition is determined by their relationship to the production side of the economy. a worker is a worker is worker as long as he or she has little or no control of the means of production and is paid a fixed wage. no amount of skill enhancement can change that status, although more skills might entitle an individual to marginally more monthly income. returning to the original argument we ought to ask how much room is there at the top anyway? as we have seen, job creation is rather sluggish, which means that new positions are rather scarce, especially at the top. galbraith (1998) expresses this with some useful imagery. first, he argues that the wage structure is about relations between and within economic groups. this means that these relationships are fairly stable and only subject to change according to significant social, political and economic forces. he likens the wage structure to a skyscraper: a few people--chief executive officers of large corporations and banks, top professionals, athletic and film superstars--occupy penthouses on the top floor. middle management, ordinary professionals, and the best of the small businessmen fill up the floors below them. next come the workers, each taking a position in line with their relative pay. and in the basement (fitting for this metaphor) we find the underclass--the unemployed, the disabled, the chronically ill, and the unfit (p. 55). privatization and educational equity: can markets create a just school system? current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 63 the key to this metaphor is that while race, class and gender discrimination play a role in determining who is on each of these floors, discrimination does not determine the height of the building or the number of places on each floor. expansion might be marginally possible--real life is not totally a sum-zero game--but also according to real life, there is little room at the top. the supply of educated individuals does not create more spaces on the top floors. as education increases, credentials get more specialized so that it gets even harder to break into the top floors. years ago, i took a job as a copyboy at a large new york newspaper. at that time, the newspapers used an apprentice system of promotion; college graduation was desirable, but not essential for promotion to reporter. in fact, even though i was 18 i was sent out to do some reporting. i was put in charge of the daily weather report, on the assumption that i would learn journalism from the ground up. today, such a career is not possible. novices in the news business arrive with journalism school credentials. whether or not the quality of reporting has improved is another question. the point is that, ironically, increased education for everyone results in its declining worth or premium on many educational credentials. as galbraith (1998) writes, "there is no reason to think that an expanded supply of educated talent will reduce the gap between those most highly paid and the middle ranks" (p. 56). even if every american third grader could read at or above grade level, the number of potential high paying jobs would not expand. we have confused cause and effect. first, the economy expands, than educational competency counts. and as we have seen even this relationship is suspect. finally, are skills the royal road to the top? if the entire population were computer "literate" would unemployment evaporate; would a whole new set of high salaried jobs emerge; would wage suppression end? let's look at the basic historical facts. for roughly two hundred years technology has been driving economic change--the computer is only the latest manifestation of this trend. but with each technological breakthrough there was both a skilling and deskilling effect. this is evident in architecture when we visit "old" buildings and marvel at the "craftsmanship" compared to today's frame and plasterboard constructions. automation does not require more skilled workers; it requires less skilled operatives. a skill is related to its degree of difficulty in its acquisition and maintenance. today, checkout clerks in supermarkets do not have to make change in their heads, the computer does it for them. are they more skilled than previous checkout clerks? are they paid more? the answer is no on both counts. computers are useful, but they do not require high level skills to operate, in fact, these labor saving devices hardly require any skill to operate. the argument that a world class work force is necessary to compete in the global economy rests on the assumption that the economy will need . . . what? legions of clerks sitting at computer terminals? the automation of "white" collar work is not resulting in a demand for new complex skills, but a demand for patient clerks. who knows . . . in several years, even these clerks may not be necessary. in short, the human capital argument looks good on the chalkboard, but shaky in the real world. and these are the folks most anxious to privatize public education. peter w. cookson jr. 64 april 30, 1999 who benefits? most murder mysteries are solved by clever detectives who discover the hidden, but true, beneficiary of the crime. when we speak of privatizing education, it is entirely fair to ask, "who benefits?" is it the children? the teachers? the parents? given the analysis in this article, there is little chance that privatization will lead to greater equal educational opportunity. as we have seen, markets do not create opportunity for all. rather, they create profits, unevenly shared. since markets are not built on competition, but on monopolistic striving, we are far more likely to have a system of franchised privately operated schools than thousands of mom and pop schools. markets favor scale and monopoly. so who benefits? the answer is obvious, the companies that start school franchises. today, scores of educational management organizations are publicly traded. education, wall street assures us, is big business. very big. and vulnerable to takeover. when this takeover succeeds, can we look forward to greater equity? no, we will have lost the last remaining citadel of the public good, and for that we will have no one to blame but ourselves. references collins, r. and makowsky, m. (1972). the discovery of society. new york: random house. galbraith, j. k. (1998). the socially concerned today. toronto: university of toronto press. hacker, a. (1997). money : who has how much and why. new york: scribner. meyer, j. w. (1970). the charter: conditions of diffuse socialization in schools. stanford: stanford university press. 3. ruchi saini.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 2, special issue 2023 “it is as if they are taking advantage of a bad situation”: female school teachers’ narratives about care work and online teaching during covid-19 in india ruchi saini university of maryland this exploratory study analyzes six female school teachers’ narratives of navigating increased care work at home with online teaching during covid-19 in india. a theoretical framework of decolonizing feminist research, with an emphasis on moving beyond anglo/eurocentric forms of feminist knowledge-making, frames the study. based on the interviews, the study reveals that the home emerged as a site for resistance to the gendered division of care work in marriages via the use of the tactical strategy of relying on family members other than the husband. within the limited scope of the study, the schools emerged as sites of institutional betrayal manifested in administrative actions and inactions such as removing contractual teachers, scheduling meetings outside work hours, increasing surveillance, and not providing digital support. these administrative decisions were perceived by the participants as motivated by profit-making, displaying complete disregard for the teachers’ well-being. the findings advance our understanding of how emergencies such as covid-19 exacerbate the exploitation of female members of the labor force who are already marginalized through contractual undervalued work or the inordinate burden of caregiving. it also offers important suggestions for policymakers concerned with creating safe and inclusive working spaces for female teachers in the global south. keywords: covid-19 pandemic, care work, teachers, india, decolonial theory introduction the covid-19 pandemic had an overwhelmingly negative impact on marginalized communities across the globe such as people of color, working mothers, people with disabilities, poor people, and informal workers. female school teachers with children were particularly affected because they had to simultaneously cope with exacerbated gendered inequities linked to care work at home (borah and das, 2021; chauhan, 2020), and challenges linked with online teaching from the home such as digital divide, limited professional training, less attendance, and salary cuts (kumawat, 2020). despite the fact that teacher well-being is a prerequisite for providing students with a safe and quality learning atmosphere, especially in the context of humanitarian crises and emergencies such as covid-19 (falk et al., 2019), limited empirical research exists on the lived experiences of female school teachers in the global south. this qualitative exploratory study addresses the research gap by presenting a narrative inquiry of six female school teachers’ experiences of negotiating care work at home with online teaching during covid-19 in india. india represents a critical site for investigation because of the abysmally low rates of female labor force participation even before the pandemic (kumar, 2021), the inordinate burden of caregiving on women that includes looking after children and the extended © 2023, saini. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 25(2), 36-58. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en “it is as if they are taking advantage of a bad situation”: female school teachers’ narratives about care work and online teaching during covid-19 in india family (oecd, 2018), and the nationwide digital divide (modi & postario, 2020). the specific research questions that the study seeks to answer are: a. how did female school teachers in delhi (india) navigate care work at home with online teaching during the pandemic?  b. to what extent did they feel supported by family members and school personnel in seeking to address these responsibilities? the research is guided by a decolonial feminist framework that places emphasis on moving beyond anglocentric/eurocentric epistemologies via collaboration between the researcher and the researched. participant narratives, verified by them before publication, thus occupy center stage in this article. a narrative approach to inquiry was deemed suitable because it privileges the voice of the participant, recognizes the importance of personal stories as generative tools for social transformation, and involves the co-construction of knowledge between the researcher and the researched (anderson & kirkpatrick, 2016; ballantine, 2022). a specific method of narrative inquiry called episodic narrative interviews (mueller, 2019) was employed to elicit bounded stories from six female school teachers about their experiences with care work and online teaching during covid-19. i begin the article by providing a brief overview of covid-19 in india, along with a review of the empirical literature on gender disparities at home and schools during covid-19. this is followed by an explication of the theoretical framework and the research methodology.  participant narratives, which have been verified by them before publication, are then placed at the center of the study. these narratives can be seen as possessing both intrinsic and instrumental value (ballantine, 2022). their intrinsic value lies in participants’ opportunity to own and control their stories (ballantine, 2022), and their instrumental value in deconstructing decontextualized and static understanding of female school teachers’ experiences during the pandemic. the first-person accounts will prove valuable for scholars and policymakers interested in developing situated socio-structural theories, policies, and interventions around the issue of teacher well-being and gender equity in emergency contexts.  two heuristic notions of ‘tactical strategies’ (lugones, 2003) and ‘institutional betrayal’ (freyd and smith, 2014) have been used to frame the findings and analysis, where the former refers to seemingly small acts of micro resistance enacted by marginalized groups that can prove subversive in the long run (moya, 2006), and the latter refers to institutional actions or inactions that bring harm to those dependent on them for safety and well-being (freyd & smith, 2014). i interpret teachers’ reliance on family members other than their husbands to cope with increased care work as a tactical strategy of resistance (lugones, 2003), and the school administrations’ actions/inactions, such as lack of teacher professional development and removal of contractual teachers during covid-19, as a form of institutional betrayal (freyd & smith, 2014). the article ends by drawing attention to the implications of these findings for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners in india and globally. covid-19 in india: an overview on march 24, 2020, at 8:00 pm, indian prime minister narendra modi announced to a population of 1.2 billion people that the country would shut down in exactly four hours, current issues in comparative education 37 saini leading to one of the strictest lockdowns globally. educational institutions swiftly closed and moved to online teaching, with approximately 320 million school students affected by school closures (tandon, 2021). the digital divide in india, coupled with limited prior experience with technology, raised serious concerns about the feasibility of online teaching nationally (modi & postario, 2020). even private school students from urban areas faced a host of technological issues, with parents reporting low speed of internet data or not having any technological device at home at all (vyas, 2020). and while india experienced what some call a “relatively mild first wave” of covid-19 (chandra, 2021), the second wave of covid-19 caught the nation completely unprepared, unleashing a tragedy of horrifying magnitude. india accounted for more than half of the global covid-19 cases during the second wave that lasted from march 2021-june 2021, and the nation set a global record at 40,000 deaths a day (what to know about india’s coronavirus crisis, 2021; zirpe et al., 2021). emerging research demonstrates the looming impact of covid-19 in the indian subcontinent in the form of learning loss for children, drastic plummeting of female employment, as well as increased levels of poverty, starvation, and income divide (covid-19’s lasting impact on education, 2022; gururaja & ranjitha, 2022). gender disparities in care work at home during covid-19 care work refers to the unpaid labor carried out by individuals inside households and includes direct care of people, as well as indirect care, such as cooking, cleaning, or fetching water (moreira da silva, 2019). this work, done by millions of women across the globe, helps sustain the formal economy and has an impact on women’s ability to undertake paid employment (addati et al., 2018). scholars have referred to the additional burden of care work for professional women as the “double burden” (hochshild, 1989, p.4) or the “motherhood employment penalty” (addati et al., 2018, p. xxxiii). poverty, war, and/or emergencies like covid-19 have the indirect effect of altering the already skewed power relations between men and women, typically leading to an increase in women’s workloads and further negatively impacting their participation within the labor force (moreira da silva, 2019; mclaren et al., 2020).  compared to earlier epidemics and pandemics, the public health measures implemented to curb covid-19, specifically the stay-at-home orders and closure of schools, had a more severe impact on women’s care work responsibilities than men’s, irrespective of their work status (sevilla & smith, 2020). subsequently, many women were either pushed out of the workforce or had to reduce their work hours, thereby exacerbating the existing gender gap in the labor market (alon et al., 2020; sevilla & smith, 2020; sugawara & nakamura, 2021).  despite increased contributions by men globally, the gender division of household labor continued to remain unequal during the pandemic (carlson et al., 2020; farré et al., 2020; fodor et al., 2021; jessen et al., 2021). in the us, women with young children reduced their work hours four to five times more than fathers (collins et al., 2020), and in the uk, the pandemic led to an approximate increase of forty hours of additional childcare responsibilities for families, most of which was borne by women (sevilla & smith, 2020). married professional women working from home in india also experienced more stress than their male counterparts due to increased domestic responsibilities (beri, 2021; borah & das’, 2021; sharma & vaish, 2020).  38 current issues in comparative education “it is as if they are taking advantage of a bad situation”: female school teachers’ narratives about care work and online teaching during covid-19 in india chauhan’s (2022) study with thirty dual-earning couples in india revealed that while time spent on unpaid care work increased for all participants during the pandemic, for men this unpaid care work was in addition to recreational activities, whereas for women the increased care work replaced the recreational activities, leading to exhaustion and stress. while emerging research highlights the possible positive impact of flexible work arrangements for working mothers owing to increased contributions of male partners at home (alon et al., 2020), this can only occur when organizations and societies change the work cultures and gender norms in the post-pandemic era (chung et al., 2021).  gender disparities at school during covid-19 beames et al. (2021) refer to school teachers as “the forgotten frontline (workers) of covid-19” (p. 1); they had to take up new roles and adapt to online teaching with little notice and limited professional training. during the pandemic, school teachers internationally reported an increased feeling of burnout, a sense of frustration and inadequacy, reduced communication and non-authentic interactions with parents, a lack of institutional support, and a lack of spontaneity when teaching online (niemi & kousa, 2020; onyema et al., 2020, pellerone, 2021; pressley, 2021). female school teachers with children and elderly dependents could be seen as doubly disadvantaged, since they also had increased care work responsibilities at home.   studies have illuminated work-family conflicts faced by female school teachers internationally even before the pandemic (erdamar & demirel, 2014; noor & zainuddin, 2011). while teachers were somewhat able to separate the demands of professional paid care work and unpaid care work before the pandemic, the blurring of the personal and professional lines during covid-19 made this separation extremely challenging. several studies within the global north draw attention to the differential impact of covid-19 on male and female school teachers in terms of increased stress, anxiety, and depression in the workplace (oducado et al., 2020; lizana et al., 2021; santamaría et al., 2020). within the specific context of india, female school teachers in joint families reported facing an added layer of responsibility, since they had to look after the elders as well as children (dogra and kaushal, 2022). santamaría and colleagues’ (2021) study in spain revealed that not only did female school teachers manifest significantly more symptoms of stress and anxiety than their male counterparts, but those who had children displayed more depressive symptoms than those who did not. similar findings come from a survey of 200 academics from universities in europe and the us (yildrim and ziya, 2020). female academics also reported experiencing additional pressures linked to providing students with emotional and psychological support (górska et al., 2021; winnington et al., 2021) and increased feelings of frustration at home and work (parlak et al., 2021). despite the significant additional burden placed on female teachers during the pandemic across the globe, the bulk of empirical literature about the gendered impact of covid-19 on teachers focuses on schools and higher education institutions within the global north. the study seeks to address the research gap by foregrounding the lived experiences of six female school teachers in india. current issues in comparative education 39 saini theoretical framework: decolonizing feminist research there exists a widespread tendency within feminist research to view the category of “women” and their experiences as homogenous across the globe. in her seminal work, mohanty (1984) highlighted the production of the third-world woman as a “singular monolithic subject” (p. 333) within certain western feminist scholarly articles that “discursively colonize the material and historical heterogeneities of lives of women in the third world” (p. 334). her definition of colonization is a discursive one, where feminist researchers make use of specific analytic categories (third-world women as victims of male violence, universal dependents, victims of the colonial process, and victims of kinship structures) instead of careful and focused local analysis. lugones (2010) similarly notes how categorical, hierarchical, and dichotomous logic in modern and colonial ways of thinking about gender, race, and/or sexuality tends to eschew the complexity and diversity of female voices and experiences in favor of generalizations. decolonizing feminist research goes beyond the analytically binary models of subordination and subversion, victimhood and rebellion, passivity and agency, and repression and freedom that predominates western feminist thought to account for the multiple identities that women from the so-called third world, and globally negotiate with (saini, 2022). to quote manning (2021): many global south women live in an in between world, a world full of uncertainties, ambiguities, and contradictions…using a decolonial feminist framework to understand the everyday ness of these in between worlds identifies the complexities of the women’s lived experiences. (p. 1204) a decolonial feminist framework enables the researcher to engage with this “everydayness” of the participants’ lived experiences by moving beyond anglocentric/eurocentric epistemes to produce new forms of knowledge-making. it foregrounds the voices of the participants, involves collaborative and reflexive research via positioning of participants, not as subjects/objects but as equal participants, and demands from the researcher constant questioning of her/his assumptions (agboka, 2014).  within the specific context of covid-19, this framework has been employed to explore a diverse range of topics such as the gendering of violence against women (segalo & fine, 2020), pakistani migrant women’s lived experiences in the netherlands (salim, 2022), and the experiences of female faculty in academia (abhaya, 2022). however, this is one of the first studies that employs a decolonial feminist framework to analyze the interactions between gender, care work, and school teaching during the pandemic; and it is hoped that the findings will contribute to a situated and non-essentialized understanding of female professionals’ experiences in schools in india. research methodology narrative inquiry in narrative inquiry (ni), researchers collect stories from their participants about a significant event in their life and/or social context (jovchelovitch et al., 2000) and use them to understand the informants’ experiences. ni prioritizes the storyteller’s perspective instead of imposing a more specific agenda (anderson & kirkpatrick, 2016, 40 current issues in comparative education “it is as if they are taking advantage of a bad situation”: female school teachers’ narratives about care work and online teaching during covid-19 in india p. 632) and involves the co-construction of knowledge between the researcher and the researched, thus serving as a useful methodology for scholars working within the decolonial feminist framework. a specific method of ni called ‘episodic narrative interviews’ (mueller, 2019) was used to elicit bounded stories from six female school teachers about their experiences with care work and online teaching during covid-19. within episodic interviews, the researcher requests the informants to share small stories that are targeted and focused in nature, which helps mitigate the “anything goes” approach standard within narrative research (davis & dwyer, as cited in mueller, 2019, p.2). the first round of semi-structured interviews, conducted via zoom, lasted between 60-75 minutes, and the video recordings were saved with the participants’ permission. a follow-up interview lasting approximately 30-35 minutes was conducted virtually again after 2-3 weeks to clarify details about specific aspects of episodes shared in the first session. identification and selection of participants the participant selection criteria devised for this study required that prospective participants be a) female, b) school teachers at private schools, c) married with children, and d) their school transitioned to online teaching during the pandemic. i shared a recruitment call at six different private schools in delhi, india. i had worked as a schoolteacher in delhi for eight years before pursuing a ph.d., and the six schools were selected because i knew at least one employee at the school who agreed to share the recruitment material (flyer, text message, email). initially, four participants from four different schools agreed to participate, and snowball sampling was used for the recruitment of two additional participants. the reluctance of teachers to participate despite guaranteeing confidentiality was a major obstacle in recruiting participants, and contributed to my decision to frame the research as an exploratory study with a small sample set of six participants (see table 1 for detailed backgrounds of each participant). strict confidentiality and anonymity measures were followed to safeguard participants’ well-being and minimize the possibility of harm. pseudonyms selected by the participants have been used throughout the study and at the time of being interviewed, all the participants were working remotely at home and teaching online classes. it is important to note that due to the small sample set, the findings cannot be generalized to india, let alone globally. the insights of the participants are linked to their specific circumstances, which may be different from those faced by teachers from different socio-economic backgrounds, castes, states, and types of schools. however, the exploratory nature of the study presents a useful foundation for developing more elaborate and extensive research on the topic of care work and online teaching during covid-19 involving a larger and more diverse sample of participants. additionally, a thick description of the “time, place, context, and culture” (mertens, 2010, p. 259) has been provided to assist the readers to determine the extent of transferability – the qualitative parallel concept of generalizability – of the findings to other contexts (guba and lincoln, 1989). current issues in comparative education 41 saini table 1 overview of the six research participants in the study private school participant no. name (pseudonyms) grades nature of job, work experience age approximate annual income & classification children extended family living together type of school no. 1 1. manasvi xi & xii contractual, 22 years 43 years inr 1,000,000 low-income family two sons (15 &18 years) none private, recognized & unaided 2. geeta xxii permanent, 10 years 35 years inr 2,000,000 middle-income family one daughter (12 years) mother-inlaw no. 2 3. akanksha xi & xii permanent, 14 years 38 years inr 3,250,000 middle-income family a son (14 years) and daughter (17 years) father & mother-inlaw private, recognized & aided 4. niyati vi-x permanent 23 years 45 years inr 2,650, 000 middle-income family a son (21 years) none no. 3 5. disha ix & x permanent, 9 years 32 years inr 1,000,00 middle-income family one-year old baby boy born in june, 2020. none private, recognized & unaided no. 4 6. yami i-v contractual, 5 years 29 years inr 2,000,00 middle-income family 1.3 months baby boy born in march, 2020. father & mother-inlaw private, recognized & unaided 42 current issues in comparative education “it is as if they are taking advantage of a bad situation”: female school teachers’ narratives about care work and online teaching during covid-19 in india narrative analysis of transcripts once the interviews were transcribed, i conducted a narrative analysis involving the reduction, synthesis, and reconfiguration of the interview data (kelly & howie, 2011) to produce six separate stories. a specific process called emplotment, which requires the researcher to identify key subplots (significant events) in each interview and organize them chronologically in the form of a story, was followed (emden, 1998; polkinghorne, 1995). the first step in the process involved the identification and isolation of all events that dealt with the participants’ experiences with care work and online teaching during the pandemic. in the second step, the events were arranged chronologically to create a coherent story with a beginning, middle, and end. the final stories were returned to all the respondents via email, who were asked the following two questions: “does it ring true?” and “do you wish to correct/develop/delete any part?” (emden, 1998, p. 35). while four teachers replied to the email saying they were satisfied, manasvi requested me to remove references to the subjects taught by her for fear of being recognized, and yami requested that i acknowledge her mother-in-law’s help in the story. in the final stage, i made changes to the stories based on the feedback from the participants and analyzed them via a six-step inductive approach to thematic analysis as outlined by braun & clarke (2006). post-analysis, i conducted member checks with four participants (manasvi, yami, disha, and akanksha) to ensure the credibility of my findings (birt et al., 2016), all of whom seemed satisfied with the analysis. teachers’ voices from india this section contains condensed versions of the final emplotted stories of four out of the six participants. while i had hoped to foreground the stories of all six participants, niyati and geeta were not comfortable with the verbatim publication of their narratives for fear of being identified. i honor their decision by keeping their stories private and referring to excerpts from their interviews in the discussion section. the published stories have been verified by the participants and make exclusive use of their words.  manasvi manasvi is a 43-year-old mother of two school-going children. she was employed on a contract at a private school in west delhi that charged an average monthly fee of inr 8000 (usd 100) and catered to students from high-income families. “during the first phase of the pandemic, we were asked to start online teaching from the very next day, irrespective of whether a teacher knows how to do it or not… the day the lockdown was announced, we had a meeting at 9 at night. sometimes, we would have meetings at 10:00 pm… so, it was very chaotic in the beginning; schools provided little support. the new study of techniques and teaching from home in a small house like ours was also a challenge. i have a one-bedroom apartment, so ultimately all we had was two rooms and a kitchen. and we had strict instructions that when you teach, there should be nobody else in the room. how is that possible?  technology was also a big challenge for me… i was always lagging in technology even before the pandemic… the schools did not do much in helping us. but i thank my husband who taught me, and a colleague’s husband...i  don’t think of technology as a burden now.  current issues in comparative education 43 saini then without a maid, everything was a big challenge for me. the entire family [was] at home… and when everybody is in the house, then the number of meals also increase from 3 to 4… and the tendency that since mother is at home, we can eat hot and fresh food. every other household work was earlier done by others, i had a cook, i had a maid… now i had to do everything… and then homeschooling the younger one. it was a mess!... but my kids really helped me… they learnt how to use the mop… they washed utensils also, they did everything, like drying clothes… those women whose family members helped them, life must have been relatively easy for them during covid. i received a lot of help too, as much as i could get, i received from my children.  all the contractual teachers were removed because they were not needed. whether a teacher teaches one student, or sixty, that hardly matters, they just wiped them off and combined classes… i was always scared initially… that time when we did not have a proper connection, i felt every day that i would definitely lose my job because the principal used to enter the class anytime to check on me… and then the second wave struck, that was the worst time… the passion to cook, try new things at home, that was totally killed. it was all about survival at the time. it is not good, the school is getting fees every month right? still, they are saving on ac, they are saving on security, on transportation. they are saving on so many things! and they are removing teachers, so i think they are not doing good. it is almost as if they are taking advantage of a bad situation; this is what i feel.” yami  yami is a 29-year-old mother of a baby boy born during the pandemic who was on a contract at a school in west delhi. the school charged average monthly fees of inr 9000 (usd 110) and catered to students from high-income families. “when the pandemic happened, i was on [unpaid] maternity leave and when i went back in july, 2020, they did not hire me back as i was on contract. i felt bad when they asked me to leave. i was devastated. i got to know later that my principal kept two teachers in my salary, she was getting more manpower, not quality, and quality hardly makes a difference in the online classes. [so] i was out of job for a year. luckily, i was offered the [contractual] job again in march [2021], and i really wanted to prove myself…when i rejoined, i was very new to online teaching. the very first day of my online class, i was not given any demo about teaching online, any strategies… just a team of students was made, i was told this is my class, and i was expected to teach them without any guidance… and the principal could enter any time to check my teaching. it was scary… school did not play any kind of role in teaching us, neither will your colleagues help you here because everybody feels that it is a competition. but i told the school just give me half an hour, let me sit in front of the laptop, i will learn everything on my own. i wanted to prove myself. i was very nervous… i remember telling myself ‘yami, you are done with your profession. yami, you cannot go for it.’ i took each day as it came, and as more and more days passed, i learned new strategies on my own. and it was challenging to learn everything on my own with a child. 44 current issues in comparative education “it is as if they are taking advantage of a bad situation”: female school teachers’ narratives about care work and online teaching during covid-19 in india but my mother-in-law helped me a lot. she used to take care of everything… like cleaning the house, washing clothes, feeding my baby. when i teach now, i am sitting in a closed room and my mother-in-law is the one who takes care of him, so (my) child is not an issue for me presently. i go to him in between my breaks, quickly feed him and come back… if i were not staying with my in-laws, i would have had to quit my job after the baby during the pandemic.” akanksha  akanksha is a 38-year-old mother of two school-going children who was employed as a permanent teacher at a government-aided private school in east delhi. information shared in the interview revealed that the school caters to students from middleand/or low-income families “when i go back, at that time i was very tense because it was all new to me. i didn’t think i will be able to survive actually… such a massive lockdown… firstly, no domestic help! i couldn’t imagine life without them. when i had to clean the home during the pandemic, it was like endless cleaning going on. it is like i am working throughout the day; we have two floors, not much support from the family or in-laws… it just did not end, everything… and i have a son, so obviously, the quality of online teaching was not that great at his school. so, the majority came on to me… my husband helped me and did what he could, like i asked him to clean the first floor, but you know how it is? he works at an mnc [multinational corporation] and is so busy… [so] without maids, it was actually torturous. also, a single teacher could now teach 100 students and schools wanted to save money… so, our school merged classes and removed all contractual teachers… so, the burden of many [permanent] teachers increased. and then we would have meetings any time; nobody is bothered in the school that these are not work time, they might be cooking [time], so do not keep a meeting now… it was confusing for me, whether i should take care of my home or my work. at times, honestly, i had to make an excuse that there was no network, because i simply couldn’t manage… i would give students some work that you do this and left a message to principal that network was not coming. i mean probably it is not right, but i had no option.  it was also very difficult to teach online because i am not that technologically good… i felt so exhausted. i was going through a lot, every day was a learning experience…my daughter actually taught me to change the settings, identify the problem makers, and stuff like that. now it is all good, now i don’t need any help and support… but initially it was a challenge.” disha  disha is a 32-year-old mother of a baby boy during the pandemic who was employed as a permanent teacher at a private school in north delhi. the school charged average monthly fees of inr 3500 (usd 43) and catered to students from middle-income families. “my baby boy was born three months after the lockdown happened. and when i joined the school after my maternity leave, one could fit together 200 students in one class. so, that is the policy school followed… while i was not worried about removal because i am current issues in comparative education 45 saini permanent, i have friends in other private schools, and they tell me that they have sacked people who have worked for them for five years, which is heartbreaking. i did not have any paid help [at home] due to lockdown and needed all that time to take care of household chores. however, as time passed, it became increasingly challenging to manage the non-teaching work online, such as making lesson plans, keeping records, etc… and classes also increased. while i learnt how to teach online on my own, correcting papers online was a very big challenge for me… it was very stressful, like there were days when i used to sleep for only 2-3 hours at the night…with a baby who just started crawling and walking, it was even more challenging… there are senior teachers, some 4 or 5 teachers, very good teachers, efficient teachers, they have resigned due to technology. it was heard that they were not able to overcome the pressure. my husband was supportive [during online teaching]. like he would feed the baby, get up in the middle of his work, you know. but still, when you are at home, your attention is divided, no matter how supportive your husband is… like there was incident when we had a mock exam and i made a mistake. i never did that before because i cross-check everything. but then while i was conducting the exam, my baby was in front of me and i had to see him… so, i made a mistake. i was crying because i never expected it. so yes, because of my household responsibilities and with a small baby, who has just started crawling, it has been difficult. but what can you do?... as a mother, you do not have a substitute, but as a teacher, you do, right?” discussion analysis of the six stories generated seven codes (exacerbation of care work, varying degree of support by family, technological challenges, financial precarity/unstable jobs, the covid second-wave as a quest for survival, increased surveillance, and blurring of the personal and professional boundaries), that were collated into two overarching themes of ‘tactical strategies and limited help by husbands’ and ‘institutional betrayal’. i discuss these themes in detail below. tactical strategies and limited help by husbands the narratives revealed that all the participants had female domestic help before the pandemic, who would come to chop vegetables, clean the house, and even run errands for them. all these responsibilities were transferred to the participants during covid-19 due to lockdown restrictions. in india, the patriarchal logic of “care work” as a woman’s domain is often passed on to the household help in economically advantaged families, who become the “labor substitutes of their female employers” (basnet & sandhya, 2020, p. 283). since domestic help alleviates women’s double burden of handling professional work and care work, all participants reported a substantial increase in care work responsibilities during covid-19. moreover, those who had school-going children also faced additional responsibilities of home-schooling.  all the participants relied on the assistance of their family members (children, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and husband) to cope with the increased household burden. manasvi’s sons learned to use the mop and helped with the laundry, and niyati joked that thanks to the pandemic, her 21-year-old son could now cook the choicest of indian dishes with perfection. both yami and geeta shared that if it were not for the support of 46 current issues in comparative education “it is as if they are taking advantage of a bad situation”: female school teachers’ narratives about care work and online teaching during covid-19 in india their mother/sister-in-law, they would have had to quit their job to look after their children. to quote geeta: so, she (sister-in-law) was actually very supportive with my daughter… she stays in a flat close by and is a housewife, so i would leave my daughter with her… she would feed her, also help with activities in class…  i would often joke and ask her to keep my daughter on weekends too.  i interpret participants’ sharing of care work responsibilities mainly with children and mothers/sister-in-law instead of their husbands during covid-19 as encompassing ‘tactical strategies’ of resistance (lugones, 2003) to overcome the unequal gendered division of care work within heterosexual marriages. lugones (2003) introduced the notion of a ‘tactical strategist’ to highlight how forms of resistance enacted by marginalized communities in the short run may pose a potent challenge to unequal structures in the long run. such acts may include a person from a lower caste calling attention to themselves when they are expected to be invisible, a person labeled as mentally ill refusing to be cured (moya, 2006, p. 199), or like in the study, a mother engaging her sons with care work responsibilities in a deeply gendered society. while such small and subversive practices of everyday micro-resistance are often not understood as ‘political’ within the dominant anglocentric/eurocentric world of sense, lugones views them as political “insofar as they involve intentional interfering with, refusal of, or resistance to the unitary logic of the hegemonic common sense” (moya, 2006, p. 199).  the hegemonic gendered common sense in india dictates that the mothers or daughters-in-law should shoulder all the care work responsibilities at home. manasvi and niyati undercut this patriarchal expectation by asking their sons to help, an act that poses resistance to the patriarchal expectation that men be socialized from a young age to perform their role as providers and not caregivers (berrich & romich, 2011). yami and geeta resist the gendered division of care work in marriage by relying on the other female members, which draws attention to the strategic coalition women create to overcome inequality. however, it also demonstrates how care-work responsibilities within families are often transferred from one woman to another, thus perpetuating the gendered division of care-work.  the remaining two participants (akanksha and disha) had no option but to rely on their husbands to cope with increased care work, since disha was the only woman in her family, and akanksha did not receive any help from her mother-in-law. neither of them felt adequately supported, adding to existing empirical evidence about the inequitable distribution of care work between married professional couples in india despite increased contribution by the male partner (beri, 2021; borah & das’, 2021; chauhan, 2022; sharma & vaish, 2020). since the help from their husbands was minimal, they experienced a blurring of their personal and professional lives, which further burdened them with guilt (power, 2020).  it could be argued that while the teachers in the study resisted the gendered inequities linked to care work via the use of tactical strategies, the scope of the enactment of the strategies was limited to family members other than their husbands, thereby current issues in comparative education 47 saini highlighting the persistence of traditional gender roles within heterosexual marriages (power, 2020). these findings contribute to growing evidence about the tenacious nature of social norms and familial expectations from women in india concerning care work at home (nikore, 2022), and the subsequent need to inculcate gender-equitable attitudes related to domestic responsibilities amongst indian men from a young age. schools as sites of institutional betrayal  institutional betrayal occurs when institutions act or fail to act in ways that bring harm to those dependent on them for safety and well-being (smith and freyd, 2014).  emergencies such as covid-19 create a situation of greater reliance on powerful organizations such as schools, churches, and the government because of their unprecedented nature. while scholars have identified several manifestations of institutional betrayal during covid-19 by the healthcare system and government leaders (adams & freyd, 2021), less research exists on teachers’ experiences with institutional betrayal, especially within the global south. the narratives revealed that the schools in the study failed to perform even their most basic duties towards their female employees during the pandemic, such as safeguarding the teachers’ livelihood in precarious times and providing them with the training to teach remotely. the schools fired contractual teachers, increased the class size, imposed unrealistic expectations (e.g., that no family members should be in the room when teaching), scheduled meetings at erratic work hours, and increased teacher surveillance; actions that had a particularly detrimental impact on female teachers, who were burdened with inordinate care work at home. these decisions not only fostered workplace inequities but also created panic and fear in the lives of teachers who were already grappling with the devastation of death and loss during the pandemic. for these reasons, they could be seen as sites of institutional betrayal. the flexibility of the online platforms meant that schools could now have one teacher teaching 80-100 students at the same time. the schools in the study saw this as an opportunity in adversity, which was associated with the removal of contractual teachers even as they continued to charge fees from all students. manasvi and yami, who worked on a contract, shared harrowing accounts of the anxiety and stress that they endured over the constant fear of losing their jobs. yami, who had a baby during the pandemic, did not get re-employed until a year after she was to return from maternity leave. because she wanted to safeguard her job by ‘proving’ herself, she had to learn how to teach online without any support from the school, which was a constant source of stress for her.  the precarity of yami’s employment combined with the motherhood penalty (budig & england, 2001) – where employers discriminate against mothers by removing them once a child is born– increased her exploitation by the school administration/owners. manasvi also talked at length about the anxiety of being removed and the constant psychological toll it took on her. due to the threat of removal and the devastating second wave of the pandemic, she no longer found enjoyment in things that previously gave her happiness, such as cooking and looking after her home, as “it was all about survival” then.  48 current issues in comparative education “it is as if they are taking advantage of a bad situation”: female school teachers’ narratives about care work and online teaching during covid-19 in india the fragile mediation between indispensability at home and expendability at the workplace experienced by contractual teachers such as yami and manasvi placed them at a disadvantage when compared to their male and female peers with permanent jobs. the removal of contractual teachers also increased the number of students in each class, amplifying the workload of continuing teachers and impacting the quality of learning. niyati, a permanent teacher and the head of the math department shared:  “it was so sad, that they fired teachers… some had been teaching for many years you know, and those who were safe also felt guilty… and then i had to create new timetables… it was very confusing… i had to teach extra classes too [in school], but what could i do… at least we have our job right? so honestly…that is what we felt mostly.” the sole beneficiary of the decision to remove teachers seemed to be the owners of the schools, who now had to pay fewer teachers while charging the same tuition to all the students. as manasvi said, “it was as if the schools took advantage of a bad situation” to reap financial gains. the indiscriminate firing of teachers also created a sense of fear and insecurity among permanent teachers such as niyati, who were scared to speak up about the challenging work conditions. the absence of any teacher’s union, a consciousness of their labor rights, or government intervention meant that schools could make a windfall profit at the cost of their worker’s physical and mental health with impunity, raising critical questions about issues of organizational responsibility and ethics required to govern during emergencies such as covid-19 (özkazanc-pan, 2020). conclusion and implications  the study set out to explore six female school teachers’ experiences with care work and online teaching during the covid-19 pandemic in india. the use of a decolonizing feminist research framework helped foreground the complexities of each participant’s personal and professional experiences during the pandemic. for the teachers in the study, their care work responsibilities increased at home during the pandemic, and those who relied on family members other than their husbands felt adequately supported. i interpret this reliance as a tactical strategy (lugones, 2003) of resistance as it involves intentional interfering with the hegemonic gendered common sense. however, the limited help by the male partners demonstrates that care work continues to be viewed as a woman’s domain in india, a reality that school administrators/owners in the study did not give any consideration to. this disregard manifested in several ways, such as scheduling meetings outside school hours, providing little professional development, and increasing the class sizes of all teaching staff. i interpret these institutional actions and inactions during the pandemic as manifestations of institutional betrayal (smith & freyd, 2014), that served to further disadvantage those female teachers who were already marginalized in the system due to the burden of inordinate care work at home or the precarious nature of employment at school. the gendered inequities in the households of the teacher-participants, the institutional betrayal by the schools in the study, and the tactical strategies of resistance employed by the participants should not be viewed as developments peculiar to the pandemic. even before covid-19, indian women were spending maximum hours globally on unpaid care work (oecd, 2018), private schools were being run with minimum checks and current issues in comparative education 49 saini balances (ali, 2015; carr-hill & sauerhaft, 2019), and women were practicing strategies of negotiation within the patriarchal settings of their families (kohli, 2016). what the pandemic did was exacerbate and expose the fissures and inequities already present within the private school system and the heterosexual family system. the experiences of the teachers in the study demonstrate how emergencies such as covid-19 can provide an opportunity for the exploitation and disempowerment of those women in the system who are already marginalized. to mitigate the negative impact of such emergencies in the future, i argue that workplaces should operate from an ethic of care that involves an intentional focus on empathic concern for the physical and emotional well-being of employees (weare, 2010, p. 13). such an ethic should involve, inter alia, “structurally contextualized wellbeing provisions” (culshaw & kurian, 2021, p. 1) that recognize teachers’ preexisting pressures, and encompass family-friendly policies that encourage the reduction and redistribution of care work responsibilities (nikore, 2022). a few examples of such provisions include fostering democratic decision-making, providing stronger collective bargaining rights to teachers, organizing gender-sensitization workshops for the administration, and access to free mental health counseling for school teachers (chudgar & sakamoto, 2021; weare, 2010). even as the pandemic draws to an end and schools reopen across the globe, those who suffered from it will continue to carry the wounds of loss and devastation with them. the narratives revealed that this loss involved not only the havoc wrought on the lives and livelihood of teachers, but also the loss of faith in powerful institutions that are expected to protect the most vulnerable. the narratives also illuminate how men’s tokenistic contribution to care work at home did little to alleviate the stress of those working women who had to rely solely on them. despite the limited scope of the study, the findings provide emerging evidence of how several schools in india may have been complicit in exacerbating the gendered impact of covid-19 on their female employees. the voices of these teachers tend to remain peripheral in global academic discourses and policy-making due to their censorship at the local level, their hesitation to come forward for the fear of being reprised at the national level, and the focus on teachers in the global north at the international level.  it is hoped that the findings will provide the foundation for more extensive and elaborate work on the topic in the future, work that will also incorporate the voices of the spouses of the female teachers, as well as, the male teachers, and the school administration. ruchi saini is a ph.d. candidate in the international education policy program at the university of maryland, college park. her research interests include care work, the intersections of gender-based violence with formal education, and decolonizing research methodologies. she is a 2022 ann g. wylie dissertation fellow and a 2023 naed/spencer dissertation fellow. references abhaya, n. b. 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[i] will never forget, and please, don't you forget. everyone prayed, but only the vietnamese came."1 beyond physical rescue, the vietnamese invasion brought cambodians salvation from the khmer rouge's policies of social destruction. following their assumption of power in 1975, the khmer rouge had closed social institutions such as markets, temples, and schools and, in many cases, demolished their physical and human infrastructures. between 1975 and 1979, for instance, it is estimated that 90 percent of all school buildings were destroyed and that 75 percent of all teachers, professors, and educational administrators were killed (hirschhorn, haviland, & salvo, 1991; ministry of education, 1990). into this void, the vietnamese sent literally thousands of development personnel, a significant number of whom worked in education. one cambodian educator explained with a striking metaphor the gratitude and relief with which he and many others--overwhelmed by the prospect of reestablishing the system of education with most senior colleagues dead--welcomed the vietnamese advisors. "at that time," he told me, "we were as if submerged under water. [the vietnamese] came to us and held out a stick. [we] knew that we needed to grasp the stick or we would die." education under occupation: political violence, schooling, and response in cambodia, 1979-1989 current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 71 while releasing cambodians from the khmer rouge and rebuilding social institutions such as education, the vietnamese also introduced structures to the country directed at least as much toward their own, as to cambodian, interests. to use the distinction suggested by gramsci (1971) and althusser (1971), these structures comprised both coercive or repressive state apparatuses and hegemonic or ideological state apparatuses. the occupying army, reaching a strength of 220,000 at its peak, served a coercive function by its mere presence. less obvious structures included the border region security project. in an effort to contain the khmer rouge, the vietnamese initiated a forced-labor program to clear the jungle on the thai border and expose incursions; thousands of cambodians died while thus conscripted (chandler, 1993; luciolli, 1988; mcbeth, 1985). many cambodians who opposed this or other vietnamese policies were imprisoned (martin, 1986), including one of my informants who served a two-year prison sentence for voicing views he termed more "liberal" than those endorsed by the vietnamese, and pen sovan, the first prime minister of the post-khmer rouge government, who was removed from office in 1981 and incarcerated in vietnam until 1989 (kiernan, 1982; vickery, 1986). to complement coercion, the vietnamese erected a sophisticated hegemonic apparatus dedicated to the dissemination of ideas congruent with their vision for the country. that vision, which the vietnamese had been pursuing intermittently since ho chi minh established the indochinese communist party under orders from the soviet comintern in 1930, was to draw cambodia into the international socialist revolution and to create a like-minded communist ally in indochina (engelbert & goscha, 1995; kiernan, 1985). education served as the primary mechanism of this hegemonic mission civilisatrice. as several informants commented in nearly identical language, in the 1980s "all education, from primary school to higher education, conveyed marxist-leninist philosophy." in the following section, i discuss educational development in occupied cambodia; for the purpose of brevity, i limit my discussion to the tertiary level, where the socialist orientation of schooling emerged perhaps most transparently. schooling international educational assistance to cambodia after the defeat of the khmer rouge provides a study in the politics of development. the united states, its western allies, the people's republic of china, and the association of southeast asian nations, opposed the vietnamese occupation and the extension of soviet influence in indochina and, as a result, erected an embargo on aid that might be used to strengthen the new cambodian government. u.s. influence emerged clearly among united nations agencies, with those holding emergency mandates (unicef, for instance) operating in cambodia, and those with development mandates (united nations development programme, for example) failing to initiate programs (mysliwiec, 1988). conversely, vietnam and its allies in the eastern bloc, intending the establishment of a friendly communist regime, provided significant amounts of assistance under the terms of the treaty of peace, friendship, and cooperation and other bilateral agreements (haas, 1991; world bank, 1992). in education, assistance took the form of advisors to the ministry of education, university professors, physical plant repair, books, equipment, and curricular materials, and scholarships by the thousands for advanced study at universities in eastern-bloc countries. thomas clayton november 15, 1999 72 the first higher education institute established after the vietnamese invasion, the faculty of medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy, opened in december 1979. from 1980 to 1983, between 10 and 20 doctors from the vietnamese ministry of health assisted the few surviving cambodian doctors in completing the medical training of students who had been enrolled before the khmer rouge regime; when new students began medical studies in the mid-1980s, the faculty established a six-year program. by 1983, enough cambodian doctors had been trained to staff the institute fully, and the agreement with the vietnamese ministry of health lapsed. for the first few years after the establishment of the teachers' training college in july 1980, approximately 40 professors from the vietnamese ministry of general education offered instruction to cambodian students who had begun their tertiary education before 1975. graduates of the three-year program (expanded to four years in 1988) assumed positions as teachers in cambodia's high schools. in 1981, 16 graduates of the teachers' training college went to vietnam for graduate studies. when they returned in 1983 and joined as faculty those domestic graduates who had begun assuming teaching positions in 1981, the relative number of vietnamese professors declined; all vietnamese faculty had been replaced by 1987. in all, 2,650 cambodians completed degree programs between 1983 and 1989 in the soviet union, east germany, vietnam, bulgaria, czechoslovakia, hungary, and cuba. the school of languages, opened in phnom penh in february 1981, supported these international ventures by providing language instruction to those slated for international education. fifteen soviets, two east germans, fifteen vietnamese, and one cuban staffed the school's one-year intensive russian, german, vietnamese, and spanish language programs throughout the occupation. the khmer-soviet friendship higher technical institute opened in september 1981. the soviet union supplied the institute with professors, books, materials, equipment, and physical plant repairs. approximately 56 soviet professors taught the institute's fiveyear courses in civil engineering, electronic and electrical engineering, industrial chemistry, agro-hydrology, and mines, mining, and geology throughout the 1980s. though cambodians were sent to the soviet union for advanced training, they had not returned to faculty positions at the institute when the occupation ended in 1989. vietnam provided all professors, texts, and curricula to the economics institute, opened in september 1984. approximately 35-40 vietnamese professors from the university of economic sciences in hanoi staffed the institute, offering five-year courses in agricultural economy, industrial economy, commerce, finance, and economic planning; these professors had themselves studied in the soviet union, east germany, or hungary. in the mid-1980s, several graduates from the economics institute traveled to the soviet union for advanced academic training. when they returned in 1986, they began teaching the institute's introductory classes. the proportion of vietnamese professors further declined in 1989, when the institute retained as faculty the 20 top members of the first graduating class. education under occupation: political violence, schooling, and response in cambodia, 1979-1989 current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 73 the agricultural institute opened in january 1985. consultants from the ukrainian agricultural academy prepared the curriculum and provided textbooks, and approximately 56 professors from this and other soviet agricultural institutes taught the four-and-a-half year courses in agronomy, forestry, fisheries, veterinary medicine, and agricultural mechanics. some students from the agricultural institute traveled to the soviet union for advanced training in the mid-1980s. as at the technical institute, however, these cambodians had not yet returned by 1989, and the faculty thus remained entirely soviet throughout the occupation. by 1990, cambodia's institutes of higher education had graduated 977 doctors, dentists, or pharmacists, 2,196 senior secondary teachers, 1,481 foreign language specialists, 474 technical engineers, 400 economists, and 184 agricultural engineers. it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of vietnamese and eastern-bloc assistance in producing this first generation of tertiary graduates. when i asked one cambodian educator, for instance, if cambodians themselves could have rebuilt the system of higher education, he replied with an unequivocal no, "because [we] didn't have trained staff yet after the genocide of the khmer rouge regime." another cambodian responded similarly. "it was as if we had to wait for someone to come and help us," he told me, "because, at that time, we had no intellectuals." vietnam's important humanitarian contribution cannot, however, be disconnected from that country's hegemonic mission civilisatrice in occupied cambodia. in fact, according to an educational policy statement written by vietnamese advisors for the cambodian ministry of education, "technical training" in medicine, economics, agriculture, and other fields assumed only secondary importance to "political" education: the main objective of higher and technical education is to provide good political training and good technical training. political training for all the staff should promote an ideology concerned with [the] objectives of socialism. [we] need to recognize that the most important thing pertains to political training and ideology of students. (problems of higher and technical education, 1983; my emphasis)2. to ensure mastery of the "objectives of socialism," tertiary students were required to complete five courses, taught for the most part by cambodians trained in vietnam. "marxist-leninist theories" intended "to endow in students the concept of the evolution of mankind toward socialism" (citations in this paragraph are from the document, ideological and political training in higher and technical education, 1984). in "world revolutionary history and the history of the cambodian revolution," students were taught about the soviet "october revolution and the revolution of the three countries of indochina to illustrate the history of the cambodian revolution." "the situation and the role of the revolution and the policy of the party" attempted to "build in [students] the right political consciousness." in "moral education and the revolutionary way of life," students were to acquire "the spirit of being the master of the collective, the spirit of job responsibility, and the nationalist and internationalist spirit to support the interests of the people and the nation." finally, "attitude to the common people" aimed to "improve the attitude of the intellectual revolutionary toward the common people" (for a detailed discussion of political education during the occupation, see clayton, forthcoming b). thomas clayton november 15, 1999 74 according to one informant, through political training the vietnamese sought to "change [cambodian's] brains to the new ways of thinking associated with socialism." another informant presented this transformation in less pejorative terms. political education, he concluded, would "form the new man" who "would be willing to fight against imperialism and capitalism." in other words, the vietnamese intended to persuade cambodians of the efficacy of their vision for the country through the mechanism of education. early in the occupation, vietnam promised to withdraw from cambodia as soon as the new government gained enough strength to stand on its own (haas, 1991). when their primary coercive force--the occupying army--had gone home, however, there would continue to exist in the country a hegemonic apparatus dedicated to vietnamese interests. response a considerable literature in comparative education links educational assistance, hegemony, and the international movement of real and symbolic capital (see, for example, arnove, 1980; ginsburg, 1991; mundy, 1998). little attention in this literature, however, has been given to the responses of subordinate actors. as i have argued elsewhere, most comparative education studies operate under the assumption that the recipients of educational assistance are "mystified" by dominant ideologies and internalize them, often to their detriment, without mediation or struggle (clayton, 1998a). much like the malaysian peasants studied by scott (1985) or the appalachian miners studied by gaventa (1980), however, the cambodians with whom i talked about the occupation betrayed little mystification about the hegemony they faced daily. at least some cambodians accepted the invitation of political education and "changed their brains" during the occupation. two former political education teachers in particular struck me as having consciously evaluated the promises of the new ideological order and found them genuinely attractive. speaking for his students but also himself, one teacher told me that "students learned the material well, and i think they believed it." in response to my question, the other teacher answered, "yes, they believed," and he continued: "they loved justice, and they hated the exploitation of capitalist regimes. they did not prefer capitalism and corruption. they didn't like poverty. finally, they wanted to work with the party against the khmer rouge." these two teachers worked willingly to promote socialist principles in cambodia and, even as they themselves converted to this new way of thinking, interpreted a genuine impact on students. other cambodians resisted socialist ideology, though their forms of resistance held little potential for transformation of occupation relations. when i asked one informant if political education had been effective, for example, he replied that it had not been. in fact, he continued, students avoided socialist ideology by "frequently sleeping during the classes." this same informant told me a story of his own participation in political education during advanced training in vietnam and of another form of resistance practiced by cambodian students: in 1988 i was in vietnam, and we were watching the world cup match between the soviet union and west germany on television. some of us wanted the capitalist team to win. the true believers wanted the russian team to win. when education under occupation: political violence, schooling, and response in cambodia, 1979-1989 current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 75 russia lost, one who had supported that team became physically ill. the rest of us were afraid to root for the capitalist team. we were worried about supporting the capitalist team. we were happy when the team won, but we could not show our happiness. while some cambodians converted to socialism during the occupation, and others demonstrated "everyday" forms of resistance to socialist ideology, yet other cambodians merely gave the impression of having adopted new ways of thinking. as one informant put it, these cambodians "changed their faces," not their brains. several high-ranking members of the government, for instance, actively advanced socialist principles as political education teachers during the occupation. for many of my informants, this participation amounted to the exchange of ideological loyalty for positions of power in the communist regime. as one informant explained, "in communism, he who supports socialist ideology gets the high positions in the government, gets fancy cars, gets nice villas." another concluded that "men who wanted to become powerful" professed the most fervent belief in socialism in the 1980s. the majority of cambodians who "changed their faces," however, did not collaborate for personal gain, but pragmatically accepted socialist ideology because they saw themselves as having little choice to do otherwise. as one informant commented, "we didn't have any choice: we had to become socialist." another cambodian explained in more detail. "we had to accept [socialist] ideas," he told me. "the students had to accept these ideas. [they] were exposed to these ideas throughout their school careers. they had to accept them. there were no other philosophies to adopt. there was only the one: marxism-leninism." several cambodians who had been tertiary students during the occupation hinted toward the constraints that informed their pragmatic acceptance of socialist ideology. recognizing that graduates were expected to be socialists first and doctors, teachers, and other professionals second, these cambodians attended political education classes diligently and studied hard. as one informant explained, "if they did not learn [socialist ideology] and pretend to believe it, they would not be able to pass the exams, and they would have no future." another informant commented similarly that students "did not believe the socialist principles we learned in the curriculum [but] answered according to these principles as outlined in the lectures or else they would have received a zero mark on exams." for these students, acceptance of socialist ideology stood, simply, as a precondition to participation in education and success after graduation. cambodians' pragmatic response to hegemony emerged most clearly in a conversation with a former ministry of education official who had worked closely with the vietnamese in the 1980s in opening the institutes of higher education. during the occupation, this man told me, "we were interested in rebuilding the country, not in serving a foreign ideology." when i then asked why, if cambodians were not interested in socialism, so many at the ministry of education had cooperated with the vietnamese by participating in political education themselves and by supporting the heavy emphasis on political education in schools, this informant looked at me as if i were a simpleton. we cooperated, he told me, "because we were unable to connect with countries of the west at that time due to the embargo [on development aid and because, thomas clayton november 15, 1999 76 as a result, there] simply was no other possibility of assistance for us with which to rebuild the country." in other words, this and other cambodians, dedicated to finding a way to provide education for cambodian youth but severely constrained by the embargo that foreclosed the possibility of assistance from the west, pragmatically accepted socialist ideology as a necessary condition to the receipt of educational resources from vietnam and other eastern-bloc countries. monument to a defunct ideology in 1989, as a result both of pressure from the west and of diminishing support from the soviet union, vietnam withdrew from cambodia, leaving a fragile but functioning government. recognizing in soviet perestroika and the similar dôi mu'o'i in vietnam the failure of the international socialist revolution, the newly independent cambodian government moved toward a multiparty political system and a free-market economy. following the united nations-sponsored elections in 1993, the united states and other western countries established diplomatic and development aid relations with cambodia (see heder & ledgerwood, 1996). the period between the vietnamese withdrawal and the election proved very difficult for cambodian education, particularly at the tertiary level. along with troops, most vietnamese educational advisors and professors departed in 1989; soviet professors withdrew shortly after, when the soviet union collapsed. in some cases, higher education institutes filled teaching vacancies with recently graduated cambodians. in other cases, however, students sent overseas for advanced study had not yet finished their courses, and institutes faced overwhelming constraints. the agricultural institute closed briefly in 1990, and the technical institute might have closed had the united nations not brought 28 soviet teachers back in 1991. even while engaged in these struggles to maintain viability, the ministry of education initiated reforms congruent with post-occupation ways of thinking. most significantly, between 1989 and 1991, cambodians eliminated the system of political education in place during the occupation and canceled courses in marxism-leninism. as one cambodian explained in 1994, after the vietnamese withdrawal and the turn away from eastern-bloc systems and practices, "we did not want to continue with communist dogma [that] was not important for our students." one symbol of cambodia's ideological history stands on pochentong road in phnom penh. as a parting gift in 1989, the vietnamese built on this spot a magnificent political training college dedicated to the continuing promotion of socialist ideology in cambodia. with its polished wood and terrazzo, its sweeping facade, and its spacious commons, the college is by far the most impressive educational facility in the country. when i visited in 1994, i was surprised to find the college empty and suffering for lack of maintenance. with the cessation of political education in 1989, my companion told me, the facility had never been used. when i marveled at the building and expressed amazement at the effort expended by vietnam in the service of a now-defunct ideological system, my companion just shrugged. "it's all gone now," he concluded. education under occupation: political violence, schooling, and response in cambodia, 1979-1989 current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 77 notes 1. i collected data for this article in 1991, 1992, and 1994. during a 13 months' residence in phnom penh, i interviewed more than 50 cambodians, most of whom had worked in education in the 1980s. my informants included current or former teachers, professors, and administrators in general and higher education, bureaucrats in the phnom penh municipal department of education and the national ministry of education, educators attached to other ministries, and cambodians with relevant knowledge in other government posts. all direct quotes from cambodians, as well as most information about the system of education in the 1980s, come from these interviews. 2. for the text pf this document, as well as the document "ideological and political training in higher and technical education" (referred to below and also written by the vietnamese for the cambodian ministry of education), see clayton (forthcoming a). references althusser, l. (1971). ideology and the ideological state apparatuses. in lenin and philosophy and other essays (b. brewster, trans.) (pp. 121-173). london: new left books. arnove, r.f. (1980). comparative education and world-systems analysis. comparative education review, 24, 48-62. chandler, d.p. (1993). a history of cambodia (2nd ed.). boulder, co: westview press. clayton, t. (1998a). beyond mystification: reconnecting world-system theory for comparative education. comparative education review, 42, 479-496. clayton, t. (1998b). building the new cambodia: educational destruction and construction under the khmer rouge, 1975-1979. history of education quarterly, 38, 1-16. clayton, t. (forthcoming a). education and the politics of language: hegemony and pragmatism in cambodia, 1979-1989. hong kong: comparative education research center, university of hong kong. clayton, t. (forthcoming b). the shape of hegemony: vietnam in cambodia, 1979-1989. education and society. engelbert, t., & goscha, c.e. (1995). falling out of touch: a study on vietnamese communist policy towards an emerging cambodian communist movement, 1930-1975. clayton, australia: monash university centre of southeast asian studies. gaventa, j. (1980). power and powerlessness: quiescence and rebellion in an appalachian valley. urbana: university of illinois press. thomas clayton november 15, 1999 78 ginsburg, m.b. (ed.). (1991). understanding educational reform in global context: economy, ideology, and the state. new york: garland. gramsci, a. (1971). selections from the prison notebooks (q. hoare & g.n. smith, eds. & trans.). london: lawrence and wisehart. haas, m. (1991). genocide by proxy: cambodian pawn on a superpower chessboard. new york: praeger. heder, s.p., & ledgerwood, j. (eds.). (1996). propaganda, politics, and violence in cambodia: democratic transition under united nations peace-keeping. armonk, ny: m.e. sharpe. hirschhorn, n., haviland, l., & salvo, j. (1991). critical needs assessment in cambodia: the humanitarian issues. washington, d.c.: united states agency for international development. kiernan, b. (1982). kampuchea 1979-1981: national rehabilitation in the eye of an international storm. in k.k. huynh (ed.), southeast asian affairs, 1982 (pp. 167-195). singapore: heinemann educational books (asia). kiernan, b. (1985). how pol pot came to power: a history of communism in kampuchea, 19301975. london: verso. kiljunen, k. (ed.). (1984). kampuchea: decade of the genocide. london: zed books. luciolli, e. (1988). le mur de bambou. paris: médecins sans frontières. martin, m.a. (1986). vietnamised cambodia: a silent ethnocide. indochina report, 7, 1-31. mundy, k. (1998). multilateralism and world (dis)order. comparative education review, 42, 448-478. mcbeth, j. (1985, august.22). forced human bondage. far eastern economic review, pp. 38-39. ministry of education. (1990). education: state of cambodia. phnom penh; ministry of education. mysliwiec, e. (1988). punishing the poor: the international isolation of kampuchea. oxford: oxfam. pin yathay. (1987). stay alive, my son (j. man, trans.). new york: free press. porter, g. (1981). vietnamese policy and the indochina crisis. in d.w.p. elliott (ed.), the third indochina conflict (pp. 69-137). boulder, co: westview press. scott, j.c. (1985). weapons of the weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance. new haven, ct: yale university press. education under occupation: political violence, schooling, and response in cambodia, 1979-1989 current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 79 vickery, m. (1986). kampuchea: politics, economics and society. london: pinter publishers. world bank. (1992). cambodia: agenda for rehabilitation and reconstruction. washington, dc: author. cataldo, k. (2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 © 2021, cataldo. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 175-177. i was once an oppressor, but i found the strength within to free myself kevin cataldo montclair state university introduction imagine attending public schools your entire life and not once having the opportunity to talk about race and racism in america or the world. years later, you find yourself completing a teacher education program and feeling ready to influence the hearts and minds of culturally, racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse students. however, shortly after your first year of teaching in an urban school district, you realize that your teacher education program failed you. you are uncomfortable and inadequately prepared to facilitate critical conversations about race and racism and what it means to be a historically marginalized individual of color1 in your classroom in the united states. this happened to me. during my first year of teaching, i, an educated gay latino urban educator, had to accept the fact that, rather than being an educator, i was just another oppressor. i chose to uphold the dominant belief that the purpose of schooling in urban america was to teach a eurocentric curriculum and not to engage in critical conversations about the impact of politics, religion, culture, race, and racism on our lives. in this short reflective essay, i share how i underwent a metamorphosis during the covid-19 pandemic. for the first time in my life, i chose to use my education and my life experiences as a historically marginalized individual of color to decolonize my pedagogy. thanks to the scholarship of ladson-billings (1995) and freire (1996), i was able to transform my pedagogy into one where the cultural and racial identities and lived experiences of my students are acknowledged and validated in our classroom, one where my students—even just for a short period—can experience what it feels like to not be bound by the shackles of society’s oppressors. my first year teaching in urban america: i am an oppressor! during my first year of teaching, i found myself staunchly upholding the following belief: as a historically marginalized individual of color, i cannot be an oppressor. but i was wrong; in my very own classroom, i was an oppressor. for instance, during the first two weeks of school, i did not take the time to get to know my students—their interests, cultures, identities, and lived experiences. thus, instead of being their teacher, i was another oppressor in their lives. while preparing my lesson plans, i approached my curriculum from a eurocentric and colorblind perspective because i believed that my job as a first year nontenured teacher was to show my school and district leaders that i was a dataand standards-driven professional. the reality is that being an educator in urban america, especially as an individual of color, means allowing those with power (the oppressors) to recruit and mold you into a compliant puppet—another oppressor. 1 “color” is intentionally capitalized to reject the standard grammatical norm. capitalization is used as a means to empower this marginalized group of students. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en cataldo current issues in comparative education 176 in urban america, oppressors see students and their cultures, identities, and lived experiences as test scores and opportunities for federal funding rather than as human beings. while my students never verbally identified me as an oppressor, i vividly recall not genuinely acknowledging their cultures and lived experiences in the classroom. today, as i reflect on my first year in the classroom, i recognize that to my students' eyes, i was simply another oppressor towering over them. as such, i was responsible for shutting down their minds and making them compliant and fearful of freedom. in the words of freire (1996), “the oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom" (p. 21). in other words, in urban america today, historically marginalized students of color cannot find the strength to fight back against an oppressive society and education system, and this allows oppression to continue to thrive in all areas of our society. moreover, for those unfamiliar with freire (1921-1997), he was one of the most influential educational theorists of the 20th century. throughout his life, freire fought to provide people with access to a meaningful education that would empower them to grow as learners in an oppressed world. freire’s writings are centered on social, political, and economic inequalities, along with race and social justice. today, freire’s most notable and seminal text, pedagogy of the oppressed (1996), invites us to recognize that we live in an oppressed world where the purpose of education revolves around obedience and transmission of information from teacher to student. the teacher is viewed as the only individual with knowledge, and the role of a student is to be obedient and simply take in the knowledge presented. however, in his book, freire argues that the purpose of education should be to liberate one’s mind. liberation through education allows students to critically examine power structures and inequalities, which empowers students to become active thinkers and citizens in disrupting the status quo. when students are challenged as learners and empowered to rebel against systemic oppression, they get the opportunity to enhance their critical consciousness. students and their minds are no longer confined nor required to remain obedient and accept the status quo. in the next section of this essay, i describe how the covid-19 pandemic gave me the strength to remove the "internalized image of an oppressor" (freire, 1996, p. 21) from my mind and the minds of my students. in doing so, i was able to obtain freedom, not only for myself but also for my students. the covid-19 pandemic—liberation at last! covid-19 has ended the lives of millions of people. however, over the years, i have learned that there is a blessing in disguise in every tragedy, or at least one profound lesson that prods us to evolve and become better versions of ourselves. being a novice educator during the pandemic took a toll on both my physical and mental health. yet, it also provided me with the chance to view teaching from a different perspective—transform my classroom from an oppressed society to a culturally responsive learning environment. i learned that i could not allow standardized testing and a eurocentric curriculum to negatively impact my pedagogy. in fact, ladson-billings’ (1995) seminal article “but that’s good teaching! the case for culturally relevant pedagogy” provided me with the pedagogical knowledge and strength i required to become the teacher that my students needed. using the three tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy (which include academic success, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness), i built positive and meaningful relationships with my students for the first time in my teaching career. this was a significant turning point in my career, as i was becoming a culturally responsive i was once an oppressor current issues in comparative education 177 teacher. for instance, during our unit of study on christopher columbus and the columbian exchange, through class discussions, my students and i challenged each other’s beliefs, and most importantly, concluded that christopher columbus impacted our world in both positive and negative ways. during the unit, my students freely shared their thoughts about race and racism in america. at the end of the unit, i was proud of my ability to apply theory into practice. i felt free at last! using the theory of culturally relevant pedagogy, i decolonized my pedagogy and facilitated meaningful and genuine conversations about the social, political, and economic injustices that plague our world. through class discussions, i enabled my students to realize that their voices and lived experiences matter. deep within me, for the first time in my classroom, i no longer felt like an oppressor; i felt like an imperfect human being, a lifelong learner, and an educator. thanks to that experience, today i see myself as a teacher who inspires his students to chase after their dreams. today i make it my primary duty to constantly remind my students that they have the inner strength to make their voices heard, regardless of how uncomfortable they make society, particularly its oppressors feel. post-covid-19—a hopeful future the covid-19 pandemic confined students and educators to the four walls of their homes. while i was physically confined, mentally, and emotionally, i was able to envision my classroom as a space where feelings of oppression are nonexistent and where dreams become realities for myself and my students. an important lesson that i learned during the pandemic is that the world needs teachers who seek to free themselves and their students from all types of oppression. as i prepare to begin my third year of teaching, i remind myself of the following important facts: i was once a historically marginalized student of color in my home city, but today, i am a threat to my oppressors. i am a proud, historically marginalized, gay latino urban educator of color. my voice is loud, and my commitment to social justice is just getting started. our war is far from over. kevin cataldo is a proud brazilian-american and an urban educator in newark, new jersey. he is currently pursuing a ph.d. in teacher education and teacher development at montclair state university. his research interests are qualitative research (self-study research), culturally relevant pedagogy in k-12 urban education, and teacher education. references freire, p. (1996). pedagogy of the oppressed. penguin. ladson-billings, g. (1995). but that’s just good teaching! the case for culturally relevant pedagogy. theory into practice, 34(3), 159–165. winter, m. (2022a) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 editorial introduction teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic: challenges and opportunities amidst educational inequalities marcella winter teachers college, columbia university on march 11, 2020, the world health organization (who) declared covid-19 a pandemic. different countries adopted measures to stop the virus's spread and support the various sectors impacted by the emergency, including public and private schooling. whereas the pandemic presented a significant disruption to teaching and learning, the government's strategies directly affected school system structures, highlighting various inequalities in education provision across the globe. the pandemic has also impacted students, teachers, and families differently. from experiencing the virus or the illness of a loved one and feeling anxiety or fear, to abrupt school shutdowns and food insecurity, school communities felt dire consequences in the new context marked by covid-19. moreover, the emergency introduced further educational challenges, such as the abrupt movement of school practices to virtual platforms and unequal access to information and communications technologies (icts) for learning purposes. unexpected times called for creative problem-solving: educators, caregivers, and policymakers started developing solutions to tackle the inequalities faced by students, schools, teachers, and families and alleviate the hurdles associated with the pandemic. considering a world of disruption and possibilities, current issues in comparative education welcomed submissions on the challenges and opportunities faced by the school community during the covid-19 and amidst educational inequalities. the 2022 special issue assesses how the pandemic has affected schooling and how different individuals, governments, and organizations have responded to the crisis since 2020. the special issue is organized into three major sections. in the first one, authors present articles that discuss various perspectives on how the pandemic has affected learning and working from home, graduate students’ mental health, and distance and inclusive learning. the discussions also highlight that the disruption resulting from covid-19 evinced weaknesses already existing in schooling systems and, at the same time, signified an opportunity to reimagine teaching and learning practices. offering an analysis based on quantitative and qualitative approaches, frank o. ely, fallon r. mitchell, katherine e. hirsch, michael diana, krista j. munroe-chandler, paula m. van wyk and cheri l. mcgowan discuss how the covid-19 pandemic has impacted graduate students’ mental health. their findings suggest that graduate students in canada have experienced mental health challenges and dissatisfaction with how online learning was conducted. the authors offer some insightful recommendations to inform university administrators on how to deal with the issues faced by graduate students during the pandemic. junjian gao, brittany kenyon, yanghwan choi, isaely echavarria, ling qiu, and hope jensen leichter analyze how the social disruptions resulting from the covid-19 pandemic have resulted in changes within the family and home, impacting learning and © 2022, winter. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 24(2), 4-7. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en editorial introduction current issues in comparative education 5 working. through semi-structured interviews with families around the globe, the authors suggest that there were fundamental shifts in the way individuals balance their personal and professional lives. working and learning in the home during the pandemic has blurred the boundaries that in the past delimited time, space, and human relationships within each family’s household. sandrine simon and lucimar santos highlight the lessons learned at the interdisciplinary center for research on education and development (ceied). the researchers attended the meeting in lisbon to delve into an emerging area of research called citizen science and how it will impact learning on digital platforms. in the article, the authors question how citizen science will influence education in a world marked by the challenges presented by the covid-19 pandemic. inspired by their experiences as leaders and educators of a small urban elementary school in harlem (nyc), dawn brooks decosta, danica goyens ward, and michael cornell describe how the staff, families, and children in the community came together to face the multiple posed by the pandemic. their account suggests a collective approach to reimagine the learning experience and emphasizes the importance of a united school community to ensure students’ education and mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. man-ho adrian lam writes the last article in this issue. analyzing the teaching and learning practices adopted by hong kong during the covid-19 pandemic, the author shows how the education system swiftly transitioned to a “new normal.” lam concludes that the crisis was an opportunity to shift education paradigms and transform teaching and learning perspectives. three essays compose the special issues' second section and present the covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity to correct the inequities that have long challenged educational institutions. using her experience teaching throughout the pandemic, samantha harrienger argues that schools must reform the curriculum, allowing space for culturally relevant pedagogy so that students and teachers can interact with materials connected to their classroom and society. also considering culturally relevant pedagogy, kevin cataldo revisits and critically analyzes the three tenets of crp, suggesting that such an assessment is needed in schools today more than ever before. lastly, jon nordmeyer and esther bettney explain how a global network of schools and scholars created a robust community to learn from and contribute to a dialogue about equity for multilingual learners during the pandemic. reports on latin american education systems’ challenges during the covid-19 pandemic compose the special issues’ last section. under the guidance of romina quezada morales as the principal investigator and marcella winter as co-principal investigator, a group of teachers college students analyzed how digital education strategies adopted by national and local governments have impacted teaching and learning, the quality of education, and the already existing socioeconomic gaps in the region. the exploratory studies were based on semi-structured interviews with teachers, policymakers, and other actors involved in the digital strategies implemented by latin american countries in 2020 and 2021. marcella winter analyzes how the digital strategies adopted by brazil’s three largest schooling districts impacted education and the lives of students, teachers, and families. in three different reports, romina quezada morales presents her analyses on chile, mexico, and uruguay. the author looks at how the digital strategies adopted relate to each country’s education system’s issues and how the policies winter current issues in comparative education 6 impacted private and public school leaderships. considering the dominican republic, katia diaz argues that although the country’s education reforms have underpinned technology and online learning to improve quality education, the covid-19 pandemic has shown that the strategies achieved little success. hannah stinson discusses how the pandemic highlighted a significant digital divide in ecuador, particularly between rural and urban areas and families with high and low incomes. lastly, judith pineda munguia examines accessibility and quality of education for students of various socioeconomic statuses during the pandemic and possible concerns for a society emerging from limited access to quality education in honduras. all the reports were reviewed by a team of guest editors interested in the topics related to digital divides and education in latin america. cice thanks gabriela chacon ugarte, kevin henderson, and romina quezada morales for their careful reading and insightful comments. *** this editorial introduction is also an opportunity to celebrate cice’s team’s remarkable work for the last two years. when i was appointed as the journal’s editor-in-chief for 20202021, it was clear that this would be a fantastic experience, given the publication’s prestige and standing in the international and comparative education academic community. however, i could not imagine that all the work would be done in the middle of a pandemic. aside from the disruption in the team’s personal and professional lives, as it happened with everyone else in the world, we had to create the bonds and the trust necessary to make cice go forward by distance. it was a daunting task, but we did it. despite a challenging context, we also dared to make different changes that have made our journal an even better publication. one of the main inspirations for my term as cice’s editor-in-chief was emphasizing diversity and the “international” in international and comparative education. therefore, we invited scholars from diverse academic backgrounds, experiences, and geographical locations to compose our international advisory board. they helped us foster cuttingedge debates in iced, promoted the publication to their networks, and offered different perspectives on the work we have been doing since the journal was established in 1998. cice also expanded the languages in which it accepts submissions to make the process more inclusive to portuguese and spanish speakers around the globe. in the 2021 special issue, we had the pleasure of publishing our first article in portuguese. i hope the journal can receive manuscripts in even more languages in the future and make scholarly work more accessible for those who do not speak english or have it as their first language. also inspired by diversity, we welcomed more masters and doctoral students at teachers college to compose cice’s editorial board, expanding the number of editors and adding copy editors to our team. it was a pleasure to see how this remarkable group helped improve the quality of the journal’s work, offering thoughtful insights and considering that our job is to present the finest publication, respecting authors’ different ways of seeing education and doing research. the 2020-22 cohort left its mark in cice, and i am grateful for all the lessons we learned together in the last two years. all these transformations would not be possible without the guidance of our faculty advisor, professor regina cortina, to whom we are very grateful. on the more practical side, we also spearheaded relevant changes. in partnership with columbia libraries, we launched cice’s automatic submissions system to make it easier for authors and reviewers to move along the publication process. our journal’s logo and visual communication also changed, preserving its colors and the quality we want to convey to readers, scholars, and practitioners in every published issue. team editorial introduction current issues in comparative education 7 development meetings also became more frequent to encourage collegiality and hear different voices in decision-making. many of the crucial decisions taken, such as the new logo and the topic for our special issues, were defined collectively by the team. we also had the opportunity to collaborate with our friends at tc who founded “cice: the podcast” and are doing a great job fostering debates in our field and beyond. for all the great work in the past two years, i thank the cice team, professor cortina, the international advisory board, the external reviewers, the authors, and everyone who contributed to our journal’s growth and expansion. with limited resources and much will to make it work, we could promote significant transformations that, hopefully, will have a long-lasting impact on cice and the iced community. marcella winter is a doctoral fellow in the international and comparative education program at teachers college, columbia university, and the editor-in-chief of current issues in comparative education (cice) (2020-2022). email: md3809@tc.columbia.edu for cice-related matters, please contact cice@tc.columbia.edu 8. hough final.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 2, special issue 2023 book review: school leadership for refugees’ education: social justice leadership for immigrant, migrants and refugees whitney hough teachers college, columbia university in school leadership for refugees’ education: social justice leadership for immigrant, migrants and refugees, dr. khalid arar imparts a human-oriented and agency-driven lens to a dialogue that often revolves only around statistics. arar’s book provides educational leaders, policymakers, ngos, and researchers with a clear resource for understanding the cultural and socio-political context regarding the movement and resettlement of refugees. the author incorporates both theory and data from empirical research he conducted in the middle east, europe, and north america, to illuminate the challenges and opportunities facing migrant populations. he speaks simultaneously to the responsibilities and prospects for educators and school systems in varying school contexts that absorb migrant populations. arar presents a culturally relevant leadership (crl) model that aims to shape a holistic approach for welcoming migrant and refugee students into schools and societies. to write this book, arar draws on his experiences as a high school principal, along with his insight from two decades of researching k-12 and higher education policies through the lens of equity and diversity and studying refugees in diverse settings. as an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at texas state university and an associate editor of the international journal of leadership in education, dr. khalid arar is well positioned to propose a model for how educational leaders can use crl to welcome refugees into their school communities. arar’s academic research primarily examines how educational leaders consider equity and social justice while shaping policies and practices to meet newcomer students’ educational needs. his research also emphasizes the essentiality of contextualizing practices through inclusive pedagogy and the involvement of school leaders in practice and policy formation. arar incorporates this research into the book by emphasizing educators’ roles in shaping the social perception about refugees, thereby speaking to the broader influence arar believes that school leaders have in the dynamic nature of global refugee movements. throughout its eight chapters, the book offers a global analysis of policy guidelines, obstacles, and coping strategies concerning refugee education, comprehensively framing a synthesized model for crl. chapters 1-2 define key terminology related to migrant populations, before turning to an examination of the policies that host states employ in response to the waves of incoming refugees. arar notes the tension between nationalism and globalism as competing forces in policy approaches. he expressively highlights how government policies affect the social integration of refugees as well as educational institutions’ abilities to welcome newcomer students. arar also emphasizes the challenges countries face in developing educational policies due to the global lack of reliable, consistent, and accessible data on refugee students. he proposes the creation of © 2023, hough. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 25(2), 114-117. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en book review: school leadership for refugees’ education: social justice leadership for immigrant, migrants and refugees an electronic information bank to better inform policy decisions related to the resources needed to achieve educational goals. chapters 3-4 provide an in-depth account of political, financial, cultural, pedagogical, social, and psychological challenges that affect refugee students and school leaders, along with diverse coping strategies that educators use to address these issues. arar draws from ten years (2009-2019) of scholastic literature to outline three themes that he argues could serve as theoretical pillars for refugee education praxis. these themes include a) the implementation of international and national policies for the absorption, resettlement and integration of children in host country schools; b) school-based psychological and social support; and c) practices for academic leadership and instruction that directly address the needs of refugee students. in doing so, arar highlights that even in cases where no formal barriers to educational access exist, the degree of actual inclusion varies greatly. chapters 5-6 critically examine how crl and leadership for social justice (sj) approaches, which have previously been implemented in racially and culturally diverse settings, are relevant for refugee contexts. sj seeks to change systems, structures, and processes to abolish unequal starting points for marginalized students. crl, which derives from culturally relevant pedagogy and culturally responsive teaching, allows students to achieve academic excellence without abandoning cultural integrity. arar advocates for a synthesized model of crl based on sj and three established crl frameworks: an ethnographic account of crl (khalifa, 2018); and a framework of crl by horsford et. al (2011) consisting of political context, pedagogic approaches, personal journeys, and professional commitment. arar’s holistic crl model highlights four dimensions that apply to refugee education across these frameworks: personal awareness, inclusive pedagogy, policy mediation, and leader professionalism. the main premise of the model centers on school leaders’ self-awareness, as well as their critical reflexivity on themselves and their school contexts. arar aptly underscores a need for educators to adopt a crl model even when government policies toward immigrants may be ineffective or hostile. he also stresses educators’ roles in extending their pursuit of social justice into the wider community. this point feeds into the final two chapters, chapters 7-8, which reemphasize the importance of a whole-school model when developing schools that operate as socially just environments. this holistic approach incorporates six interrelated areas that create a common vision for effective refugee education: building welcoming policies; strategies that ensure access to educational resources; hiring, development, and training of managers; collective responsibility of the school and community; teaching according to a curriculum; and teachers’ professional development. the book leaves us with a vision for what could be while also broadening our contemplation of what should be, particularly how educational leaders can positively influence the wider societies within which they operate. this speaks to a consistent strength throughout the book, which is its poignant emphasis on the importance of contextualization, achieved through the authentic engagement of refugee communities in shaping school policy. arar draws attention to this goal by infusing authentic narratives throughout that illuminate refugees’ experiences, as well as by continually 115 current issues in comparative education hough emphasizing the need for educators to better understand the context facing migrant youth. another significant strength is the way in which the author guides readers toward understanding the necessity of a whole-school approach to creating an inclusive atmosphere, with holistic responses ranging from teacher training and the crafting of inclusive curricula to school and community partnerships. he does so while acknowledging that what is right for one situation might not be suitable for another, as the intricate dynamics of refugee movements create complex layers that make a single solution impossible. the author’s argument would have been bolstered with further discussions about the wider effects on educational leaders of undertaking an advocacy-oriented approach. while school leaders are indeed well positioned to influence societal conversations, doing so may put educators and schools at greater risk, particularly in hostile environments, as they may come to be seen as politicized. discussions of the potential risks involved with using social justice approaches would be beneficial, including strategies of how education leaders can mitigate harm to themselves and others when using such approaches in politically charged contexts. adding examples of crl implementation in a wider array of host-country contexts would also strengthen arar’s analysis. the book draws largely on the author’s first-hand research in north america and europe, with some concrete examples also drawn from his research conducted in the middle east. arar notes repeatedly, however, that a vast majority of refugee populations live in economically poor countries, whereas just 9% of the global refugee population live in the world’s six richest countries (arar, 2020). though a guide for refugee education is still relevant for countries that host this 9%, additional research would be valuable to better understand how the proposed framework may apply in fragile environments. presenting further cases of crl implementation in conflict contexts and countries that have the largest influxes of refugees would complement the author’s argument. arar could also more concretely analyze differentiation in school leadership approaches between countries of first asylum and resettlement countries, as the goals and experiences of refugees in those varied contexts differ. finally, as an extension to the concepts presented in this book, educational leaders would also benefit from information about the refugee teachers entering their school communities. refugee teachers encounter their own challenges related to political, social, economic, and psychological barriers in education systems. although they are certified to teach in their home countries and may be well positioned to contribute to a crl vision, refugee teachers often encounter challenges, such as recognition of teaching certifications. though the book speaks extensively about migrant students, it does not touch on the lived experiences and barriers to entry for migrant teachers, or their potential to be drawn into a crl model. including approaches for understanding and engaging teachers within migrant populations would make the book an even stronger resource for equipping educational leaders to holistically engage and support migrant populations in their school communities. in conclusion, arar’s work serves as a timely guide for understanding the dynamic challenges and opportunities connected to global migration flows in the context of current issues in comparative education 116 book review: school leadership for refugees’ education: social justice leadership for immigrant, migrants and refugees school communities and provides concrete examples of research-informed practices that school leaders can implement to create inclusive environments. as arar notes from the beginning, there are no “lightning solutions” to the challenges facing refugees or the educational leaders who support them, but this book is certainly a start. whitney hough is a doctoral student (phd) in the international and comparative education program at teachers college, columbia university. her research examines access to high-quality education in emergencies and teacher agency in conflict-affected contexts. whitney is also a deputy project director at irex, where she manages fulbright k-12 teacher professional development programs. references arar, k. (2020). school leadership for refugees’ education: social justice leadership for immigrant, migrants, and refugees. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429021770 horsford, s.d., grosland, t., & gunn, k. m. (2011). pedagogy of the personal and professional: toward a framework for culturally relevant leadership. journal of school leadership, 21(4), 582-606. https://doi.org/10.1177/105268461102100404 khalifa, m. (2018). culturally responsive school leadership. race and education series. cambridge, ma: harvard education press. lopez, a.e. (2016). culturally responsive and socially just leadership in diverse contexts: from theory to action. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. 117 current issues in comparative education https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429021770 https://doi.org/10.1177/105268461102100404 gao et al., 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 blurred boundaries: an examination of learning and working in the home during the covid-19 pandemic junjian gao hubei normal university brittany kenyon teachers college, columbia university yanghwan choi depaul university isaely echavarria teachers college, columbia university ling qiu teachers college, columbia university hope jensen leichter teachers college, columbia university the unprecedented social disruptions resulting from the covid-19 pandemic have resulted in rapid change within the family and home. this paper uses semi-structured interviews with parents around the globe to examine the following research questions: 1. how have the spatial and temporal organizations of learning and working in the home been altered throughout the covid-19 pandemic? 2. what are the alterations in the educational processes and the role of the family in response to the changes caused by the covid-19 pandemic? we found that typical boundaries, those between the roles of family members, between work or school and home, and between leisure time and work time have been fundamentally blurred. while some of these boundaries are more porous than others, families report fundamental shifts, temporary and permanent in the way they organize their home and family, spatially and temporally, and the roles they take on within the family. introduction since the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, society has experienced tremendous social, economic, and cultural deviation. the societal changes that emerged as a result of the pandemic have demanded profound alteration in the overall social system that humanity has built over the past 100 years. with the rise of remote work and schooling came the need for a radical change with regard to the ways in which we use our living spaces, and for families with school aged children, this meant rearranging space and parental responsibilities in order to facilitate children learning at home and becoming more flexible in the way we use our time. this reconfiguration, supported by technology, has created massive changes in the organization of learning and living within the home and for this reason, observations regarding the needs of families with school age children throughout © 2022, gao et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 31-49. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en gao et al. current issues in comparative education 32 the pandemic have provided an opportunity to focus on new possibilities for education. education, which has experienced relatively slow transformation in the pre-pandemic era, has undergone major changes in terms of the shifts in the perception of educational stakeholders and the heightened awareness of the structural vulnerability of the traditional education apparatus. the effects of the virus on education and family life are being felt differently in different locations based on public health and policy realities. in the u.s., there is public sentiment and government support attached to the notion that humanity must ‘learn to live with’ endemic viruses. this means families and schools can experience unexpected shifts to remote schooling when the number of infected cases rises as a response to the various ebbs and flows of the virus. this too is resulting in the need to shift back and forth between remote work and schooling. correspondingly, as society contemplates covid-19’s potential evolution from pandemic to endemic, families and households have assumed roles beyond the typical functions of a traditional homestead (kong, et al., 2021). in this period of time when social distancing — the public health practice of physically distancing oneself in social contexts to prevent the transmission of contagious diseases — has led to the mandated, at times erratic, closure of institutions such as schools, libraries, and workplaces, the dependence on information communications technology and hybrid models for adaptive solutions to the pandemic have transplanted these traditionally external roles into the home. with this in mind, this study captures a snapshot of the blurring of spatial and temporal boundaries and familial roles and relationships experienced by families living and working together during the public health crises. hence, in evaluating educational responsibilities, we are focusing on academic education that has shifted to the home, as well as the socialization and enculturation that takes place in the home where children and families live, work and learn together. this research study has been organized around the following research questions: 1. how have the spatial and temporal organizations of learning and working in the home been altered throughout the covid-19 pandemic? 2. what are the alterations in the educational processes and the role of the family in response to the changes caused by the covid-19 pandemic? boundaries lifestyle changes attributed to the pandemic have blurred boundaries of relationships, space and time, necessitating a discussion of the concept of boundaries. the academic recognition of boundaries as margins or demarcations across differing spheres has been developed by an array of scholars in diverse fields who have discussed themes related to perceived interruptions or violations of them, their degrees of permeability, and their spatial and temporal influences on roles (cho, 2020; kossek et al., 2021; hunter et al., 2017; ashforth et al., 2000). for instance, löwy (1992) argues that boundaries can be discovered through the analysis of cognitive and social mechanisms for correlations in adjacent academic fields via an emphasis on collaboration and ideological exchange within and between groups. star and griesemer (1989) discuss boundaries in terms of "boundary objects", or objects which may take on a different identity within the paradigm of multiple social worlds, yet manage to facilitate contact between them as their areas of convergence are negotiated between social contexts and communities of practice. at times, boundaries have even been designated as the specific borderline or branch of a single concept or precompleted structure (bunge, 1992). blurred boundaries current issues in comparative education 33 however, as set forth by ashforth and his colleagues’ (2000) boundary theory, boundaries and the blurring of roles across psycho-social domains, as a result of the micro and macro transitions undergone in daily life — such as those experienced on the commute from one’s home to the workplace, a promotion at a job, or retirement — serve to illustrate the fragile and dynamic nature of boundaries as social constructs and their interface with their carefully maintained schemas in their various iterations and forms. these boundaries are then characterized by the delimitations of cognitive roles inextricably linked to space-time and their relation to their at times institutionalized, other times idiosyncratically, manufactured environmental partitions. boundaries are identified by the level of their perceived permeability, or susceptibility to intrusion, and their degree of flexibility, or the level of restriction that dictates when and where a role is free to be enacted upon at any given time and in any given setting (hunter et al., 2017; ashforth, 2000). the permeability, or degree of porosity between boundaries, whether intentional or unintentional, exhibits perceived allowances for interference, disruption, and role violation between domains (cheon & su, 2018; nippert-eng, 1996). literature review this section will examine some of the existing literature around the ways education has happened in the home typically, factors that affect the spatial and temporal organization in the home, typical roles that family members take on. it will also examine previous relationships between families and schools. family roles within the home there is no single way to define “family.” the meaning of this word varies from person to person, making it somewhat amorphous to study. for the sake of this discussion, we will focus on two conceptual framings of family. cohen (2017) describes families as being defined by boundaries and the presence of an “out group”. in order to know who is in the family, it must be clear who is outside the family. this flexible, inclusive definition of family is beneficial for this discussion as we seek to honor all family constellations. cohabitation is one metric that can be used to describe family (becker, 1991). when considering the lockdown phase of the pandemic, all social, educational and professional activity shifted to within the home, defining family by cohabitation is particularly useful. this allows our discussion of role boundaries to include all members of a cohabiting family unit, which may include extended family members or exclude members of the nuclear family who are living away from the home. in any given household there is a typical division of labor for various jobs maintaining the household and caring for children. gender plays a role in this to some extent, as do other factors such as level of education, relative income, and whether or not there are children in the household (fuwa, 2004). this varies from household to household and also, importantly, according to cultural trends predictable by country. regardless of family constellation, once established this division of household labor and carework is fairly static (moore, 2008). members of a household take on their specific tasks and continue to perform roughly the same tasks over time (yavorsky et al., 2015). there is also a traditional separation of functions between the school and family (getzels, 1975). although they have typically both taken on the roles of socialization and education, the way they address these goals can form a disconnect in behaviors and expectations between the home and school (getzels, 1975). with schooling taking place in the home, gao et al. current issues in comparative education 34 the boundary between these two spheres has effectively disappeared. as an unmitigated side-effect of the public health crises, the blurring of roles and boundaries at the onset of the pandemic across contexts is the result of the disruption of work-family and schooling arrangements (desrochers et al., 2005; kossek et al., 2021). this blurring of perceived roles seems to have emerged out of the need to redefine the function of institutions — traditionally characterized by getzels & guba (1957) as purposive, peopled, structured, normative, and sanction-bearing — and the reconfiguration of roles and expectations attached to the family’s mediation of educational experiences and their relationship to the school (leichter, 1979). parents and families have traditionally been expected to undertake the responsibilities attached to child-rearing, which include the maintenance of physical health, socio-emotional and cognitive development, and enculturation, alongside a slew of other duties that vary contextually (ceka & murati, 2016). spatial and temporal organization of the home the pandemic has led to an acceleration in the transformation of the existing traditional social structure with regard to work and school, which is best considered in terms of the heightened pressure to extend further the use of communications technology for teleworking and distance learning purposes within infrastructures unprepared for such large-scale digitization (kerimova, 2020; yeremenko et al., 2020). the result was a radical dependence on video conferencing platforms such as zoom, and gotomeeting, among others, which not only complicated the temporal and regulatory dimensions of learning and telework but changed the spatial organization of activities that once took place outside the home and placed them in close proximity to others in the household (cho, 2020; riedl, 2021; mcneilly & reece, 2020). this movement of all activities into the home has perpetuated a shift in the way time is allocated and perceived, resulting in the creation of rituals as temporal markers in timeless days. therefore, the implications of these shifts in time and space on boundaries remain to be understood and are the foundational concern of this research design. increased use of technology for both work and entertainment has led to a shift in the way we understand physical and spatial boundaries. michael bull's (2005) concept surrounding the conscious separation of physical and conscious space illustrates how features of boundaries in the digital dimension function, which has ramifications for online work and school. from the ensuing disruption of school, work and non-workrelated boundaries emerged a perceived lack of physical space experienced by families during the pandemic which reflects a pattern similar to the individual separation of meanings for space created by members of urban structures in the pre-pandemic era and associated with contemporary mandates for social distancing (bull, 2005; hall, 1963; holt et al., 2021; nia, 2021). social distancing requirements have impacted perceptions of personal space so that they are now more closely attached to perceived rather than actual risk of infection due to a hyper-awareness of privacy and space attributed to new standards for pandemic proximity which have in turn, resulted in a conspicuous enlargement of both the boundaries of personal space in the metaphysical realm and in virtual environments (holt et al., 2021; mehta, 2020; mcneilly & reece, 2020; welsch et al., 2021). therefore, these shifts in the spatial and temporal organization of the home point to a reconfiguration of family roles that have further blurred the boundaries between technology and the work-family context (schieman & badawy, 2020; leichter, 1979). this can also be interpreted as bull's solitary movement (2005, p. 343) and simmel's (1997) sense of privacy, defined as a metaphysical divergence of physical space where divergence occurs around the shared space. in this process, the physical structure is deviated to form a space in which they co-exist simultaneously. blurred boundaries current issues in comparative education 35 as indicated by previous scholars who have studied the effect of technology on the lived experiences of families and drawn attention to the spatial and temporal dimensions of said impacts, this convergence of virtual work and nonwork roles attributed to the voluntary and nonvoluntary transition to schooling at home, when considered contextually, attests to the supposition that the organization of space throughout the course of the pandemic is tied to perceived notions of personal spatial sovereignty (gubina & kirillova, 2020; kossek et al., 2021; leichter et al., 1985; mcneilly & reece, 2020; schieman & badawy, 2020). methodology the purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of this issue by reviewing, assessing, and exploring how learning and social interaction has changed within families as “a setting in which education invariably takes place” (leichter, 1975) during the covid-19 pandemic and focuses on the additional educational responsibilities that are now based in the home by focusing on the spatial organization of the home and the use of technology to create learning spaces for children and families. to address this purpose, this study employs qualitative research methods, namely, individual ethnographic interviews, which were conducted between february and september 2021. morse (1991) posits that one characteristic of qualitative research is “...a need exists to explore and describe the phenomenon” (p. 120). individual interviews were used to explore and focus on the covid-19 phenomenon, collect individual experiences, and narrate perceptions towards the covid-19 home-work situation. the semistructured interview offered an instrument to collect data and contents. the semistructured interview has been suggested as the “best method to explore perceptions” (barriball and while, 1994, p. 334). participants the study draws from parents, caretakers, and guardians 18 years and over in order to focus on the adaptive response of the adults’ educational responsibilities for children having been or currently engaged in distance learning during the pandemic. participants were recruited through a combination of random samplings and convenient samplings. recruitment advertisements were distributed at numerous social media platforms, including facebook, instagram, and wechat. there was no financial compensation provided to participants. there were 14 interviews with parents or caregivers of (at least) one child under the age 18, who attended school outside the home before the pandemic. ten mothers and four fathers were interviewed. parents were informed of the purpose of the study and their potential contribution. all the participants received higher education at different levels, and nine (9) out of them received advanced degrees, masters, or doctoral degrees. most of the participants are working professionals, and their education level and employment status benefit for the understanding of the research focus. the interview lengths ranged from 30 minutes to 60 minutes, during which time themes related to the focus of the study (additional educational and work home-based responsibilities as a result of the public health emergency) were examined. the following table showcases the list of participants, each given pseudonyms. gao et al. current issues in comparative education 36 table 1 list of participants participant pseudonym location of participant gender education level number of children employment status employment in or out of the home yeonghwan usa, korea m doctorate 2 yes working from home joseph usa m masters 4 yes working from home since last spring, now working outside the home jeremy usa, canada m doctorate 2 yes stay at home parent natalia usa f associates 1 yes working outside of home dangyang china f masters 1 yes worked from home last year, now working outside the home weijia china f bachelors 1 yes worked from home last year, now working outside the home eric usa m masters 2 yes working from home jessica usa f masters (ind) 3 yes working from home laura usa f bachelors 3 yes & no (lost job during the pandemic) stay at home parent chikako japan f bachelors 2 no stay at home parent qifeng china f masters 2 yes working from home xinyuan china f masters 2 yes working from home nuo china f bachelors 3 no stay at home parent yao china f bachelors 1 no stay at home parent data collection at this stage, semi-structured interview protocols (robson, 1995; mckernan, 1996) were researched, designed, and developed from a review of literature on the family as educator and family education (leichter, 1975, 1979). we also formulated our protocols based on preliminary data we had collected through digital ethnography before the interview, blurred boundaries current issues in comparative education 37 which relied on the analysis of publicly available posts on social media platforms that brought the insight of the societal impact and temporal change due to covid-19 within each family. these social media posts allow researchers to view aspects of the tiniest details of people’s lives (hine, 2011) or at least those details they choose to share. the researchers took advantage of this unobtrusive method (lee, 2000) to gather initial found data from social media websites including, but not limited to, twitter, instagram, tiktok, and weibo. interview questions were open-ended to generate a dynamic exchange and enhance participant’s confidence and engagement to reduce the potential for bias and increase accuracy in the data. interviews were conducted in either chinese or english at the request of the interviewee. the semi-structured audio interviews were conducted internationally and remotely on video conferencing platforms, such as zoom, due to the requirement of the irb during pandemic. questions related to how responsibilities and execution of children’s and family members’ academic education shifted from the traditional school environment to home, the changing nature of social interactions in the home due to covid-19, and the shifting perception and reaction towards the change of family education experiences. as creswell (2003), rossman and rallis (2016), and veltri (2019) all emphasized, qualitative research is “emergent” rather than “tightly prefigured.” in tandem with the interview, participants during the research phase were asked to photograph their family’s work and living spaces. adult family members showed us their photographs during their interview and were asked to elaborate upon the instructional space, where learning and working took place in the home, and any challenges presented. these images were used to add context when analyzing interview data. our analysis phase revolved around coding collected and transcribed data using inductive and deductive codes that had emerged during the data collection phase (bogden & biklen, 2007). the following conceptual frameworks were generated during group discussion: 1) concept of boundary in general; 2) physical boundaries; 3) relationship boundaries; 4) boundary out of the home and in the home. emerging themes include changes in home life spatial organization, technological accessibility and adaptation challenges, and parental assumption of the primary responsibility for childhood education. further concerns as to the socialization of children with other children, inability to access outside spaces, misuse of technology, disruptive changes in children’s behavior over extended time, behavior management, and subsequent transition to a post-pandemic ‘new normal’ were raised. findings and discussion family boundaries have seen significant functional alterations during the covid-19 outbreak. as a period of unprecedented social change, the existing integrated social structure has converged, and therefore, peripheral family functions have seen an overlap with those of the family. the heavy reliance on new media platforms and information communications technology has changed boundary management practices and converted nonwork spheres into multidimensional physical spaces where the porosity between boundaries has become normative. this ‘new normal’, a result of the public health crises and the increased permeability between roles and boundaries, has directly influenced how families have experienced transitions between roles and adapted to interruptions. the ambiguity of the boundary between family and society brought about by the pandemic, the online/offline boundary where the asymmetry of time is reinforced, and the overlapping of social roles between individuals has shown degrees of permeability across social roles. restrictions attached to the composition of physical space and gao et al. current issues in comparative education 38 communicative practices had to be reassessed and viable solutions for said challenges had to be found to ameliorate concerns associated with the perceived effectiveness of distance protocols and their real-time effects on the functions of the family dynamic. in this context, as the basic unit of society, the family has been expected to not only maintain its traditional dynamics, such as those functions attached to emotional socialization but to support the integration of remote learning in the home. therefore, this discussion will focus on the following three ways in which boundaries within the family have blurred: interpersonal boundaries (structured by social relationships), spatial boundaries (structured by space), and temporal boundaries (structured by time). interpersonal boundaries one effect of the increased togetherness that came from everyone working and learning in the home was the need to negotiate and renegotiate roles. additional responsibilities in the home, such as education and the need for care-work were increased due to the unprecedented degree of augmented proximity within the household. we found that some boundaries between family members were highly porous, resulting in shared or shifting responsibilities, while others remained more rigid and, therefore, less permeable. families as educators in the existing social structure, the value of education, arguably one of the most distinguishable indicators of social capital, has been concentrated within schools. however, before the pandemic, the family played only an ancillary role in the educational function as a socialization process. these changes heightened the educational function of the family. during the pandemic, when children’s primary space for the carrying out of daily routines in traditional schools was transferred to the household, the main responsibility of academic education shifted from teachers to parents. acute pressure was placed on parents to differentiate and merge their work roles and caregiver responsibilities on account of the reconfiguration of space during periods of quarantine and mandated shutdowns. the role of parents as educators expanded and became broader during the pandemic as it included, but was not limited to, the aforementioned addition of academic responsibility caused by the disruption of in-person schooling. the need to act as a teacher, it technician, or mediator for distance learning led to an expressed increase in family engagement or involvement in academic affairs that was brought up in each of the interviews. whether families chose to supplement remote learning through the use of external resources or by increasing communication with school actors, it was evident that in order to help ameliorate the educational needs of their children, due to the shift in the locus of responsibility away from professional educators, families were tasked with developing alternatives for engaging in pre-pandemic leisure activities and pedagogical functions. some families divided the labor of at-home education between the two primary caregivers, while in others, one parent remained solely responsible. for instance, yeong-hwan and his wife present an example of a jointdivision of labor between two primary caregivers when he says, "if i focused on social studies, my wife [becomes] a math teacher. especially after the first child [has] done his homework, our main job [is] to check before submitting it online". essentially, the distribution of educational activities between yeong-hwan and his wife are divided according to their relative strengths. on the other hand, jeremy, a stay-at-home parent, remained primarily in charge of his children’s education while his wife worked from home. he viewed his role as an educator as one more aligned with that of a secretary’s or blurred boundaries current issues in comparative education 39 teaching assistant’s based on an article he had read advising parents on how to help their children through the pandemic. [i] try to help them keep organized with all the technology that's been thrown at them all of a sudden, right? they're going to get lost, they’re gonna have assignments left and right. if [i] can keep track of it for them, just tell them “hey, you know what — have you looked at english?” furthermore, in an effort to facilitate the adoption of learning management systems and digital platforms used for emergency remote and hybrid schooling, many other parents also expressed the need to familiarize themselves with educational technologies that at times required high levels of parental support. chikako, a stay-at-home mother who also considered herself the primary caregiver responsible for accommodating her children’s at-home learning experience, goes on to express how even though the school was in charge of managing platform subscriptions and the creation of digital accounts for educative purposes, she still had to learn “how you can get logged in and see all your work and how you should respond to the activities you are given, too” in order to better supervise and help support her children’s learning. meaning that not only did she have to familiarize herself with the technology, but, in doing so, she also had to learn how to troubleshoot it due to the emergence of technical difficulties. like jeremy, chikako’s work as a stay-at-home caregiver also required her to transition between what used to be “clean[ing] the house and then pick[ing] up the kids at 2:45 pm” and her role as a facilitator of online learning. this perceived shift in roles attributed to the increased permeability between macro and micro boundaries illustrates the abrupt reconfiguration of the school-home interface and, as exhibited by yao, the inter-role conflicts attached to them. like chikako, before covid-19 yao mostly took care of her son’s daily schedule and aspects of his daily life, such as taking him to school, cooking meals, and completing other household chores. however, at the onset of the covid-19 outbreak, alongside the sudden repositioning of all in-person classes to remote models, her role as a primary caretaker had to append an academic function to that of her pre-pandemic parenting role. the subsequent technological issues during the online learning process only served to further complicate this shift. nevertheless, in spite of the complications, yao goes on to describe how she developed study goals alongside her son to help him meet his school’s curricular benchmarks and, upon settling on a strategy and compiling their extracurricular resources, they actually surprised themselves by accomplishing in two weeks the goals they planned to accomplish in one month. yao relates how “through the combination of teaching and guidance, his learning self-discipline and listening skills have both been improved and developed, while his study habits have also been established.” yao’s description encapsulates how, though not a professionally trained academic educator, increased parental involvement in children’s educational activities has yielded a more critical evaluation of compulsory schooling programs on behalf of the parents. parents also had to try a number of measures to better prepare themselves for such a sudden role change. for example, yao read self-help books regarding how to ‘handle’ her son and help him develop good habits. at the same time, she sought help from other parents who could share with her their own real-life experiences when it came to child-rearing. the subsequent need to reevaluate schoolwork and learning outcomes was also disclosed by many other parents in the study, such as natalia, who chose to use external digital platforms and learning applications to help “reinforce” her daughter’s learning. gao et al. current issues in comparative education 40 furthermore, parents were also charged with accommodating classes that were, ultimately, difficult to replicate online, such as physical education. they did this in a variety of ways. joseph’s strategy was to get the kids outdoors, to the beach if possible. yeong-hwan, on the other hand employed the use of video games to help support his children's physical education during the pandemic. yao mentioned that the pandemic allowed her to notice that her son “has many shortcomings in sports” and was “reluctant to do physical exercises”. she used positive reinforcement strategies, among them a fiscal allowance, to encourage the habit of regular exercise. as parents took on the role of educator during periods of remote learning, many expressed some of the perceived benefits attached to having their children learn from home. for example, natalia, with regards to her daughter, goes on to express how it is “easier” for her daughter to learn with her “than it actually is with the teacher at school” because she can give her daughter “that one-on-one attention.” xinyuan relates how she was surprised by her daughter’s progress while teaching her english through reading books, “she felt online learning was very boring, so she always stayed next to me. i can’t help with her homework but read books with her… she read it with me in those two months, and her english improved a lot”. all in all, though the accelerated reconfiguration of the pre-existing structure of society brought with it many challenges, the role of the family as educator is one whose influence has changed the dialogue on the implementation of family engagement and involvement strategies. building new habits together character-building, the breaking and creating of habits, and behavioral changes among parents and children alike could be seen during and after the pandemic. in light of this, the role of parents in the strengthening and development of character through modeling, moral education, and guidance, upon being cut off from outsourced childcare, led to alterations in behavioral patterns that stemmed from efforts to adapt to the ‘new normal’. for instance, chikako and her family invested in a gaming console in order to dedicate time as a family to strengthen their communication skills and familial bonds by playing together. other parents, such as dangyang and her husband, also disclosed how they needed to take of the role of friend due to the closure of schools. their son, an only child, had no other children in the home to socialize and play with. though online gatherings may have temporarily abated the issue, technology could not fully solve the problem. owing to this, dangyang and her husband became worried about their son’s mental health and the development of his social skills due to his inability to interact with his school friends in person for a couple of months. through play, they took it upon themselves to see if they could fulfill the roles attached to those typically realized by his friends. another example of social education by parents can also be found in nuo’s interview. her son was diagnosed with mild autism and goes on to recount how the pandemic gave her a chance to support his social skills. because he used to get along with other children on his own, and we were not with him. this time i have the opportunity to be with him. when he is getting along with other children, if there are conflicts or other situations, i can provide him with some assistance and support him. blurred boundaries current issues in comparative education 41 negotiating care work while some families, such as yeong-hwan’s, who had a fairly equitable division of care and housework, did not much alter their care-work habits, others were altered due to an increase in the presence of adults in the house. jessica points to this modification of parental roles when her male spouse is present in the household when she says, “we can do the night routine together for kids and all those things are really helpful in that i loved him being at home, even though he's — he wants to travel”. jeremy indicated a reduced care-work load. before the pandemic, he was primarily responsible for the cooking, cleaning, and household chores in his household. however, when he and his family moved in with parents, his mother maintained total control of the kitchen, and thus cooking because “she likes her kitchen her way”. moreover, because his kids were spending much more time at home, they became involved in vacuuming and laundry in an effort to learn the responsibility of cleaning. he even had his children help with shoveling snow in the driveway: a novel and unpopular task for new york city natives who happened to spend a portion of their time in canada during the pandemic. in weijia’s case, her parents and sister stayed with her family of three during the quarantine. due to the increase in the number of family members, while the educational responsibilities still mainly fell upon her husband, other household chores were altered, such as cleaning and cooking, on account of the presence of others willing to reduce weijia and her husband’s traditional care-work duties. spatial boundaries the changes brought on by the pandemic resulted in an increased number of activities, from working to exercising, being moved inside the home. this necessitated the reimagining of the use of household spaces, a theme that emerged in several of our interviews. spatial boundaries that used to distinguish the dining room from the bedroom suddenly became less clear. although the spatial boundary of each room played an atypical role before the pandemic, the convergent and divergent transformation of said boundaries and the expansion of digital technologies provided new functions for prepandemic spaces. during the pandemic, many of the households interviewed used their living room or kitchen spaces as a place for school classroom activities. this seems to have changed how the shared space is internalized by excluding the bedroom, the most personal space for relaxation. for example, in joseph's home, family members required modifications to their spatial rearrangement. joseph said, it was tough first. so i would work in the bedroom mostly. the older boys did their schooling in their own bedrooms. the twins did their schooling at our dining table with [my wife] there. and then, if [my wife] needed to have a meeting, usually she would go to the bedroom. the division of space and drastic readjustment of personal proximities not only overlapped standard functions of physical space but repurposed the use of digital spheres for the sake of transforming the space writ large. in light of this, problems attached to architectural spatial restrictions were also identified. in yeong-hwan’s case, his complaints revolved around the overall lack of perceived personal space he had while living in a condominium, a typical city-dwelling type. gao et al. current issues in comparative education 42 everyone had to be quiet when the first child was teaching online. in particular, there were many times when i told my second child, who is not going to school, to be quiet. one time, i covered the door gap with a towel because it was too noisy. qifeng further expounds upon this phenomenon throughout her description of her need for an extra study room. qifeng goes on to say, the second issue of [boundaries] is the space — because my current apartment does not have a study room … when i have a meeting, for example, if i have a meeting at 8 am, and — due to the time difference with new york — and the family [haven’t] gotten up yet, i would work in the living room. when my children [get] up, then i [run] to their room for meetings… then we said, afterwards, that we must bring a study room. for this reason, qifeng presents a case of entering an entirely new space and using the existing spatial arrangement. the spontaneous change of personal space into multipurposed space illustrates this reliance on the permeability of the spatial boundaries in the home. alternatively, in her home, jessica’s spatial modification was developed to accommodate the spatial composition of the house and reflect the needs of family members. for example, jessica goes on to say, my second daughter, we put her in the bedroom [on the second floor], but then she did not want to be so far away from everybody, and then she wanted easy access to the kitchen. so, we moved her down to the first floor and then we put her desk in the master bedroom. in this case, even if their second child decides to continue her online school in the master bedroom, the interviewee could accept it. this deliberate micro-management of space accounts for the subtler shifts in family dynamics. these reimaginings of family space were not always welcome, as described by laura, whose family transformed their living room into a universal non-family activity center. laura described her pandemic rearrangement experience as "a crazy idea". specifically, laura makes a point to express that the living room (the second living room in this case) should be her private space and, therefore, makes a conscious effort to regulate access to it in order to avoid any potential disruptions or boundary violations. on account of this, a piano was used to partition the living room and the connecting to the kitchen. laura then goes on to detail how her two kids say that "nobody plays the piano” and how, as a result, her younger son wants to “put his desk against the piano” and responds by “getting rid of one old chair”. this mitigation of space to uphold laura’s perceived boundary satisfaction touches upon the compartmentalization of physical space for the maintenance of boundaries. the need to address boundary violations, whether aggravated by perceived disruptions of privacy or auditory interferences, within family members' recognized personal space parameters also attested to the cross-domain effects of boundary violations. for example, natalia, a working mom, and a student, describes how the spatial organization of her home during the standard monday through friday school-work week highlights some of the more permeable boundaries. when discussing the transition between roles and her work-home interface, natalia says, so we bought [my daughter] a desk that we have on one side of the living room and she will do her schoolwork there if it's something that she can do by herself…. and then — i have blurred boundaries current issues in comparative education 43 a computer. i tend not to listen to any of the videos because i have to put a headset on. so, it's a little bit harder for me to study if the professor gives any videos to watch because i can't focus on the video and her at the same time. but, my desk is on the opposite side of the living room, but we're [natalia and her daughter] kind of like 10 feet away from each other. on the one hand, the reconfiguration of space allows her to more closely supervise her daughter’s education activities. on the other, it decreases productivity due to an increase in spatial boundary permeability and porosity between her role as a parent and her role as an educator. though natalia’s case presents an example of how the blurring of spatial boundaries may have led to a perceived decrease in productivity and, therefore, disadvantage, jeremy sheds light on how the convergence of spatial boundaries also had the potential to be advantageous depending on the context. while his wife worked upstairs in one of the bedrooms, he had his preteen son and daughter working on the dining room table. he uses the limited separate spaces to check the behavior of his children and help them stay on task. “i purposely kept them together so, in a sense, they could kind of keep an eye on each other. [laughs] someone's always willing to rat out the other person.” to minimize social and environmental disturbances tethered to their close levels of proximity to one another, while one of the children must wear headphones so that the competing sounds of the child not wearing them during class time does not disrupt the other’s learning. in jeremey’s words, “whoever is not paying attention at that time, i usually try to hear their lesson so at least i can tell why they're not listening.” in this way, he uses his access to his children’s learning space as an academic orientation tool. temporal boundaries another effect of the pandemic has been the blurring of the temporal organization of activities within the home. the need to transition school and workspaces to the home facilitated the blurring of temporal boundaries. for instance, jeremy describes the way his son’s school and leisure time have integrated. my son has fully integrated between the two and leisure is somehow intertwined now with school time.… i look over and i don't see him in science class, i see him on youtube i think. …they were doing class presentations and… he's not paying attention to the other people's presentations. …you know, so he takes advantage of the time to do what he wants to do. that's his leisure time, in a sense. since children were spending more screen time on online classes, some parents controlled their children’s leisure screen time to make it shorter because they were worried about their eyesight being affected and did not want them to stare at the screen for too long. for example, in weijia explains, actually, i let her watch tv a little less than the other kids. the original is basically about 1~2 times per week to watch tv, and we do not watch tv at home either. during the pandemic, first of all, she took online classes, so she had to look at the tv. at first i didn’t do the screen sharing, she was looking at the laptop… and the time of watching cartoons at noon was controlled at about 15 minutes. a few of the families we interviewed were negotiating schedules on multiple continents. at the time of the interview, yeong-hwan was located in korea while his son was attending virtual school in new jersey. this involved adjusting their sleep schedules so his son could attend school from 10 pm-3 am local time in korea. this meant adjusting gao et al. current issues in comparative education 44 his whole sleeping and eating schedule to allow his son to attend school while juggling local korean time as well. meanwhile, qifeng also raised an issue regarding the working parents rather than her kids that she encountered during the pandemic as she says: then another problem is that when everyone is at home, the boundary is very unclear, one is the time, for example, when you go to work and then work is work, and when you finish work, then it is the end of the work of the day, thus it was clear that when is work and when is off work. but if you’re all at home, sometimes you don’t have a clear boundary. you might be checking your email or doing something at night, and then you might do other things during the day, and it’s all mixed……i do not think that i was that efficient while working at home. conclusion the lockdowns and other mitigation efforts associated with covid-19 pandemic have created changes in all aspects of our lives. this paper has examined how the shift to working and learning in the home has blurred the lines that once organized time, space and human relationships. the pandemic has caused both temporary and lasting changes on the way people work, learn and use space in their home. it has also shifted relationships within the family and in the home/school relationship. these interviews provide a snapshot into the homes of families during the pandemic, but they are only one moment in an ever-evolving phenomena. the resultant impact of covid-19 upon families was the enhanced blurring of boundaries within the family dynamic, particularly, muddled interpersonal, spatial, and temporal boundaries. the covid-19 public health emergency and its aftermath enhanced the traditional importance, function, and recognition of the family and the household as the center of the learning activities. during interviews, common themes were generated and aligned with the accepted academic literature. the studies’ findings echo leichter’s earlier observation that “the family is always a setting in which important educational encounters occur” (1975, p. 2). almost universally, educational activities occurred within the home space, especially in china, which implemented more rigorous governmental restrictions and protocols for testing, quarantine, and restrictions of personal mobility. the impact of government health policy and resultant restrictions necessarily increased the responsibilities of domestic caregivers. the intensified family dynamic and limitations of movement required families, parents and grandparents to establish a learning schedule for children, set forth specific educational activities, and become better versed with applicable educational technologies. the pragmatic impact of these new educational demands upon the family had consequences in unanticipated ways: participants claimed extra space was required for family educational activities, families needed to redesign home living space, and previously designated family space was converted for fulfilling varying educational multi-purposes. this is a preliminary analysis of the data we have collected thus far. because this research focused on a small group of parents and caregivers predominately from china and the united states, if we intend to conduct a global study, we will need to consider recruitment and interviews of people in other countries. secondly, the data we presented is limited in the scope of time. blurred boundaries current issues in comparative education 45 as we pass the two-year anniversary of the pandemic and witness waves of the virus circulating the globe, it leads us to questions which will shape our future inquiries. which changes documented here are permanent as a part of the ‘new normal’? what will return to the way it was in the pre-pandemic era? which boundaries are dissolved, and which ones remain? we plan to continue researching this topic to gain a better understanding of the longitudinal changes that have occurred societally. future research should move aggressively beyond these limitations. researchers should examine parents from additional countries allowing for more diverse cohorts of subjects. an additional area of further research may be to recruit a broader range of interviewees (not only the parents) as the uniqueness and relative strength varies from person to person and their relationship to the children. increased diversity of interviewees may increase the richness of the dataset. finally, as the who has started preparing for the post covid, the family study should reflect on a new social order. rather than focusing on the elements that can define the family's character at the standard or structural level, this study shows a tendency to pursue authenticity and qualitative value as a family. it is an important reason not only in the social environment in which the traditional family does not form the majority but also in the emergence of a new type of family. acknowledgements this study was initiated as a research project at the elbenwood center for the study of the family as educator. we would like to thank the center director prof. hope jensen leichter for her superior guidance and assistance with this study. thank you also to the contributing members of the home work for all team, especially michelle guo and jose vasquez for their help in data collection. of course, this study would not be possible without the participating families. thank you for sharing your experiences with us. junjian gao received his ed.d from the teachers college, columbia university. he is a lecturer at hubei normal university. he has previously worked at higher education institutions as an administrator in both china and the united states. he is particularly interested in the united states higher education satellite campuses in china. brittany kenyon received her phd from teachers college, columbia university. her research focuses on the impact of schools and other community-based institutions on the integration process of immigrant families. she is currently a professor at teachers college, columbia university. corresponding author. email: bjk2156@tc.columbia.edu yanghwan, choi, earned an edd from teachers college, columbia university; recently established internet-based media nyandnj.com as co-founder (executive editor), certified korean language teacher as a second language; currently employed at depaul university global asian study as adjunct faculty and college of dupage as korean language instructor. isaely echavarria is the vice-president of pact of faith inc., a non-profit organization focused on community development for sustainable futures through lifelong learning and intercultural exchange. she received her master’s degree in international education development with a specialization in family & community education from teachers college, columbia university. gao et al. current issues in comparative education 46 ling qiu received her master’s degree in international educational development with a specialization in family and community education from teachers college, columbia university. she is currently working in the field of the education and care for children aged 0-3 in china. hope leichter is an elbenwood professor of education and the director of the elbenwood center for the study of the family as educator at teachers college, columbia university. among her publications are: kinship and casework: family networks and social intervention; families and communities as educators and family contexts of television. references ashforth, b. e., kreiner, 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and the world seems to be in a similar interregnum in which political classes and parties have lost legitimacy, but where the path forward is unclear. globally, over the last few decades, we have seen the growth of a particularly predatory form of capitalism that exhibits many “morbid symptoms”. these symptoms, some relatively new and others resurgent, include, among others, authoritarian politics, ethnic and racial nationalisms, polarization and hyper-partisanship; resurgent patriarchy, religious fundamentalism, growing inequality, the financialization of capital, algorithmic control, the privatization of the public sector, climate denial, and growing social surveillance and disinformation. and all of these have been exacerbated by the spread of the coronavirus and the economic and social disruptions it has caused and continues to cause. but this current interregnum is not only characterized by the morbid symptoms we have elaborated here. it is also filled with the potential to usher in a new post-capitalist world (mason, 2016; moreno, 2021; gibson-graham, 2011), which does not necessarily require the projection of a utopia that has yet to be imagined. spaces that prefigure a post-capitalist world are all around us if we know where to look. in this book, creating third spaces of learning for post-capitalism: lessons from educators, artists andactivists we seek to explore counter-hegemonic social spaces, or what some call third spaces (anzaldua, 1987/2021; bhabha, 1994/2002; soja, 1996) that have been created largely by social, community and artistic activists to prefigure a post-capitalist, multi-racial democracy. these spaces tend to be democratic, grounded in communities, and challenge the hegemony of current forms of economic, political, cultural, and educational domination. sousa santos (2018), referring to such spaces as epistemologies of the south, argues that these spaces are emerging both within formal institutions and outside of them. building on these theorists, we understand third space to be a contingent, in-between location (figuratively and otherwise) that challenges binary and hegemonic forms of thinking. if first space represents our cultural identities and everyday lives (which are not static) and second space represents the hegemony of the dominant (or colonial) forces that attempt to define us, then the third space is a hybrid space in which to explore issues of domination, power, and emancipation. since these are processes that are never fixed, but rather always in process, fluid, and inflected by history, third space is both a concept and a methodology that is committed to social justice and coalition politics as an alternative © 2023, spreen. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 25(2), 108-113. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en creating third spaces of learning for post-capitalism: lessons from educators, artists and activists space of enunciation and intervention. as a generative locus, it allows us to imagine radical new ways of working together and relating to each other and in the process, new ways of learning and being. our different relationships and disciplines (as scholar-activists working with participatory action research, arts-activism, human rights/the right to education, and years of community-based research) have led us to intersectional connections with various groups and organizations and new proposals for moving forward into a new political imaginary. working in the field of education we were connected (in various ways) with a range of radical social movements, artist collectives, autogestiones, racial justice movements, student and youth groups, teacher organizations, and education activists. we felt that many of these spaces offered important lessons and new forms of knowledge, pedagogy, and practices that could also inform the ways we think about education and maybe even reform our formal education system to make it more relevant to the existential crises we currently face. within these spaces, many people are organizing against and resisting extreme market fundamentalism, authoritarianism, racism, patriarchy, and environmental devastation, among other challenges. while some of these spaces may be in or part of “schools”, many are not often thought of as “education spaces,” they are nonetheless sites for a different kind of learning and reimagining. they are what some call “public pedagogies” (sandlin, schultz & burdick, 2009), such as street art that takes over public spaces, a memory park dedicated to the horrors of american slavery and lynching, a torture center in buenos aires dedicated to 30,00 disappeared citizens under a brutal dictatorship, or a taken over or “recuperated” factory run as a worker cooperative. these third spaces are counter-hegemonic in that they exist surrounded by the constant drumbeat of second space public pedagogies, such as advertisements, corporate logos, corporate media, and social media sites. if we add to these second space public pedagogies, public and private schools that act as what althusser called ideological state apparatuses, then we can better understand the need for counter-hegemonic spaces for learning in its broadest sense, both within and outside institutions. in contrast to a great deal of the research and emphasis in comparative education studies, we are not referring to learning in its individualistic, neoliberal meaning, what biesta (2021) calls learnification. as biesta points out, without some idea of what learning is about and what it is for, it becomes part of the current human capital discourse that ties lifelong learning to one’s utility to the economy. as learnification becomes increasingly directed by international development organizations and league indicators (aided by silicon valley and digital forms of learning), it also becomes part of a “chain of strategies of education reform, to edu-business profit-making and to private equity investing” (ball & grimaldi, 2021, p.1). in other words, it becomes commodified and depoliticized and a veil is drawn over its real purposes within neoliberal capitalism. this is why we will refer to the creation of third spaces as a political project that aims at re-politicizing education so that it meets the needs of and is directed by marginalized communities. for instance, worker cooperatives are spaces of learning about participatory governance and social solidarity (heras & vieta, 2020). street art collectives are learning new social relations as collectives and also occupying public spaces with narratives of political 109 current issues in comparative education spreen memory where the public can learn about past and current struggles (grupo de arte callejero, 2009). participation in social movements is another third space of learning (torres carrillo, 2020), particularly for youth as they struggle with what it means to be an engaged, democratic citizen (gluz, 2013; kriger & said, 2017). such spaces are pervasive and visible globally if we scratch the surface, though some prefer to fly under the radar so as not to be shut down or commodified. in our book we provide two distinct socio-cultural contexts, to explore what we are calling third spaces within two urban contexts: new york city, located in the global north, and buenos aires, located in the global south. by looking across a number of third spaces within the different historical, political and socio-cultural contexts we intend to provide a sense of the diversity of third spaces of learning that exist, the wide range of challenges that they face, and how they might inform not only social policies and practices, but also current critical theories of education and social change. as we considered the selection of sites for our study, we initially cast a wide net, which over the course of the study, we kept refining based on our analysis of data. in the end, the following characteristics seemed to be those that most third spaces had in common: ● third spaces are intersectional spaces in which individual and collective identities are continually negotiated.  ● third spaces are not the result of top-down reform efforts, but emerge from or are embedded within political activism, community organizing and/or social movements. ● third spaces seek to foster critical consciousness through a counter-hegemonic pedagogy of dialogue, co-learning and resistance. ● third spaces seek to democratize society through democratizing social relations and institutions.  ● third spaces move beyond critique and resistance to foster radical imagination that prefigures a new social imaginary.  ● third spaces are both cognitive and embodied multi-sensual spaces that involve emotions, desires, memory, artistic expression, ritual, social solidarity and performativity.   ● third spaces are also physical, geographical spaces that illuminate and expose spacial injustices.  ● third spaces embrace the notion of praxis, and are always evolving and filled with imperfections, contradictions and tensions that are acknowledged and are the focus of ongoing collective reflection and dialogue. while those who worked in the third spaces that we studied developed a close relationship with their communities, they also developed a community amongst themselves.  in our work with various sites in buenos aires, it became apparent that activist professionals have formed networks that share what they have learned with each other. education third spaces are not only grounded in local communities but also in social movements that seek greater social and racial equity and quality of life for marginalized communities. in fact, these social movements are themselves often third spaces of learning. this is why they so often find themselves under attack by those who benefit from the status quo. current issues in comparative education 110 creating third spaces of learning for post-capitalism: lessons from educators, artists and activists third spaces are ideally sensitive to the ways that various forms of oppression are intersectional. this means that if they prefigure a post-capitalist society, then they must also strive to be post-patriarchal, post-racist, post-homophobic and transphobic, as well as raising awareness about the global environmental crisis. while many groups foregrounded issues of race, ethnicity and class, they also integrated programs to raise awareness around gender, disability, and sexual orientation. this is in part because they have diverse interests and their willingness to take up issues as they manifest means they will respond to any form of oppression or stigmatization that they themselves raise. learning in post-capitalist third spaces summarizes what can be learned with and from the groups with whom we have worked, over time. while there are some books on “third space” and others on post-capitalism, few focus on third spaces that educate and that prefigure a post-capitalist society. our approach is a cross-disciplinary look at the links between the creation of third spaces of learning to reimagining social relations in our society that prefigure what a post-capitalist world might look like; and, as educators, we are interested in rethinking counter-hegemonic learning across various sites in civil society, such as socially engaged art practices and collectives, social movements, workers cooperatives, public schools, non-government organizations, memory museums and parks. in some cases, and for some of the groups, our collaborations started much earlier than this project and will continue well beyond this book. for these reasons, we hope to share the ideas and lessons learned as a contribution to prefiguring possibilities in education beyond our current realities, and encourage continued participation in activities, activism, and colaboración to build solidarity networks. finally, we position ourselves as a team of educators and lifelong learners that keep on reflecting on these themes, and therefore, will not frame these lessons as written in stone, but rather as a fluid process, that may also start transforming itself at the very moment we put it in writing.   carol anne spreen is a professor of international education at new york university and a visiting professor at the university of johannesburg in south africa. for the last 20 years she has been a scholar/advocate working on issues of poverty, inequality and human rights in education. broadly, her research addresses three areas: (1) global influences on educators lives and work, (i.e. how international policies and organizations shape teachers and classroom practice); (2) the global impact of corporate privatization on educational equity and the right to education and, (3) exploring radical imagination/counter-hegemonic innovations in education social movements. references anyon, j. 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(2013). las luchas populares por el derecho a la educación: experiencias educativas de movimientos sociales. buenos aires: clacso. gramsci, a. (1971). selections from the prison notebooks. new york: international publishers. grupo de arte callejero (2009). gac: pensamientos, prácticas, acciones. buenos aires: tinta limón ediciones. harvey, d. (2005). a brief history of neoliberalism. oxford, uk: oxford university press. heras, a. i., & vieta, m. (2020). self-managed enterprise: worker-recuperated cooperatives in argentina and latin america. in j.k. gibson-graham & k. dombroski (eds.) the handbook of diverse economies. (pp. 48-55) northampton, ma: edward elgar publishing. illich, i. (1971). deschooling society. new york: harper & row. kriger, m. & said, s. (2017). hacer política desde la escuela: narrativas biográficas de jóvenes en argentina. revista latinoamericana de ciencias sociales, niñez y juventud, 15(2), 1085-1096. lopez fittipaldi, m. (2020). “hacer escuela, hacer colectivo”. movimientos sociales, jóvenes y experiencias educativas desde una perspectiva antropológica. campos, 21(2), 50-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.5380/cra.v21i2.73368 lynch, k., baker, j. & lyons, m. (2015). igualdad afectiva: amor, cuidados e injusticia. madrid: morata. mason, p. (2016) poscapitalismo: hacía un nuevo future. buenos aires: paidós. moreno, m. e. z. (2021). para pensar el poscapitalismo.méxico, d.f.: unam. sandlin, j., schultz, b. & burdick, j. (2009). handbook of public pedagogy: education and learning beyond schooling. new york: routledge. current issues in comparative education 112 http://dx.doi.org/10.5380/cra.v21i2.73368 creating third spaces of learning for post-capitalism: lessons from educators, artists and activists sennett, r. (1998). la corrosión del carácter: las consecuencias personales del trabajo en el nuevo capitalismo. barcelona: anagrama. sousa santos, b. (2018). el fin del imperio cognitive: la afirmación de las epistemologías del sur.madrid: trotta. torres carillo, a. (2020). educación popular y movimientos sociales en américa latina. buenos aires: editorial biblos. verger, t., mochetti, m. & fontdevila, c. (2017). la privatización educativa en américa latina: una cartografía de políticas, tendencias y trayectorias. bruselas: educación internacional. zuboff, s. (2019). the age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for a human future at the frontier of power. new york: public affairs. 113 current issues in comparative education © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 6 november 15, 1999 education in bosnia and herzegovina: minority inclusion and majority rules the system of education in bih as a paradigm of political violence on education adila pasalic-kreso department of education, faculty of philosophy, sarajevo introduction the educational system in bosnia-herzegovina (bih) is at one of its most important turning points. like most post-socialist countries, bih is going through a transition process. in addition, the country was exposed to extreme war-time destruction: genocide, urbicide, ethnic cleansing, mass casualties, migrations, and starvation for a period of three and one-half years. education, one of the most susceptible subsystems in every society, suffered not only from physical destruction, but also from political, ideological, and nationalist pressure compounded by the war. the political agendas of the three nationalist parties (sda, sds, and hdz) leading bih since 1992-93 seem to create a wider gap between the three constitutive peoples: bosniak (muslim religion), serb (orthodox christian religion), and croat (catholic religion). what could not be done in war continues to be attempted in peace by nationalist differentiation of education. providing each group with its "own" education system promotes certain political and ideological goals (undp, 1998). in this article i analyze some of the weaknesses of the contemporary educational system in bih. the problem according to the dayton peace agreement, bih is constituted of two entities. one entity is the federation of bih (herein referred to as fbih) with a majority bosniak and croat population, and the other entity, republika srpska (herein referred to as the rs) composed almost entirely of a serb population. fbih, in an administrative-judiciary sense, is divided into 10 cantons, and the rs into seven regions. according to the constitution of fbih (1995), "cantons are solely responsible for developing educational policies, including declarations for education, ensuring education, as well as developing and implementing cultural policies." currently, the education administration in fbih is conducted on several levels, including federation, canton, municipality, and school levels, while the rs has kept central control of education. since the author of this article works and lives in the territory of fbih and therefore does not have access to all the information about the state of education in rs, this article shall only be concerned with problems in education in the territory of fed bih. although education is regulated by law, fbih often runs into many dilemmas and obstacles in implementing its education policies. one dilemma concerns the question of whether to organize the public education system into special national schools with separate curricula. many pages have been written on this topic in newspapers and journals in bih, many discussions led, and many roundtables organized, yet still no solutions have been offered that would be acceptable to all sides. furthermore, this presents political abuse of education at the national level that skillfully avoids each attempt toward sincere democratization and respect for cultural differences in the education system. education in bosnia and herzegovina: minority inclusion and majority rules the system of education in bih as a paradigm of political violence on education current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 7 there is much manipulation of education for political and ideological purposes in bih today. education is often misused by providing students with different interpretations of the same facts. for example, curricula and textbooks may present the start of the war as aggression and occupation, or a fight for liberation and national emancipation. was it genocide and ethnic cleansing of some parts of the territory, or it was it self-defense? often schools separate students based on their ethnicity, language, and religion. at the start of each school year (this is the fourth school year since the peace treaty) there is turmoil spurred by discussions of divided and undivided schools, divided and undivided classrooms, divided and undivided curricula. also, each nationality that was involved in the recent conflict argues over the quality and acceptability of textbooks. problems arise especially when returnees start returning to their small towns and municipalities that were ethnically cleansed during the war. in these communities, education policies primarily reflect the domination of the majority group over minorities. minority children are allowed access only to education organized to serve the needs of the majority students. some of the majority community are hostile toward returnees and lock the doors of the schools. this type of behavior towards minorities demonstrates an unwillingness to accept life in a multiethnic community. although this exclusion is not legislated, some nationalist leaders are politically powerful. these problems occur infrequently in big cities such as sarajevo, tuzla, bihac and zenica, which kept some multiethnic structure even during the war. in areas where the majority population is croat, some croat municipality heads lock the school doors in front of children and teachers of the bosniak minority. in municipalities where the bosniak population is the majority, school leaders exclude attributes of the croat nation and croat culture from the school curriculum. some croat teachers and students refuse to attend schools with the bosniak majority, and would rather conduct class under tents, using curricula from neighboring croatia. there are many examples of lack of cooperation in the past three years. although at the beginning of every school year solemn promises are made to solve all problems by the next school year, no real changes are made that prevent exclusion and separatist activity. it seems that we contemplate our education and school systems without theory, without studying the experiences of others, and in general without either an academic or professional approach to this important and sensitive field. this disorganization suits the political context very well, making the education system open to manipulation by those in power for the intentional indoctrination of students. education leaders in some bih cantons forget that the responses to these dilemmas must be based on lasting and universal humanistic values in order to guarantee a democratic right to education. solutions should not be found by relying on trial and error, or by experiments after which students emerge burned and scorched much like after a violent chemical explosion due to a carelessly and clumsily prepared reaction. because political and nationalist ideology dominates education, there are more educational experiments than universal solutions to the problems. when a problem is addressed partially, or approached one-sidedly, or led by daily-political interests and adila pasalic-kreso november 15, 1999 8 not approached from a universal-humanistic or an academic and professional starting point, the effect becomes cyclical. thus we go in circles around dilemmas such as: will schools, by accepting the rights of an individual to a free choice of nationalist content in curricula, inescapably cause segregation and further ethnic separatism? is it necessary for a school to give up national culture in school curricula completely to avoid national intolerance? the following dilemmas and questions appear to be the burning topics: 1) what type of education system is appropriate to a country in transition, such as bih? 2) what values should dominate such education systems? according to what curricula should teaching be carried out? 3) what kinds of teachers are needed in these conditions? 4) what textbooks are needed? 5) should three separate and nationalist systems be formed for the three constitutive groups or not? 6) whose experiences should we take into consideration? it is important to remember that these problems have already been encountered in many countries, nations, and cultures, and various more or less successful solutions have been formed. we must examine these experiences in order to be reminded of previous mistakes and to find solutions applicable to the educational reality in bih. there have been many discussions that contribute to developing an understanding of the role of education in a multicultural society--for example, the council of europe and unesco alone have published dozens of books on this topic in the recent few years (e.g., perotti, 1994). the experiences of others most european countries, as well as many other countries in the world, are multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual. they have developed their education systems to respond to their own needs and reality. post-war education in bosnia and herzegovina is facing issues that are similar to those experienced by immigrant students in western europe in the1960s and 1970s. the principle dilemma in western europe at that time and in bih today, is whether to organize separate schools and curricula for immigrants or to integrate all children based on the majority culture. thus, today returnees in bosnia bear a similarity to immigrants in western europe twenty to thirty years ago. at that time in europe, unwieldy solutions engendered negative results in education leading from total assimilation and loss of ethnocultural and language identity on one hand, to a complete separation of foreign children from local children on the other. the inability to design ways to provide quality education that is equally accessible to every child harmed many immigrant children in the growing multicultural societies of europe. these children were often denied access to language, intellectual, social, emotional and other branches of education (cresas, 1978a; cox & dayson, 1970; gfen 1976,1977; salvat, 1976). assimilationist ideology boils down to the melting or disappearance of a weaker culture when mixed with a stronger one, when ethnocultural specifics such as language and values are not adequately addressed in school. assimilationists do not negate ethnic differences; rather, they see them as temporary, believing that they will disappear in a clash with the modernization of societies. education and human development are education in bosnia and herzegovina: minority inclusion and majority rules the system of education in bih as a paradigm of political violence on education current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 9 considered primarily processes of unification and globalization, opposite from those of ethnic affirmation and identification. accepting this concept was spurred by the recognition of potential dangers from over-accentuating cultural, religious, and ethnic specifics of foreigners and minorities. however, an unwanted social polarization was created by including these children in public schools, without paying special attention to their language, culture, and family background. (see more in rogers & freiberg, 1994; husen, 1975; jensen, 1973; little & smith, 1971; banks, 1994). cultural separatist ideology was developed almost in parallel to the assimilationist ideology. it emphasizes the importance of ethnic identity and the need to develop a feeling of belonging to one's own ethnic group. according to this concept, members of the minority group are bound by duty to use all of their energy and abilities to fight for national emancipation and affirmation. this becomes a moral duty of each member of the minority ethnicity. adherents to this ideology insist on curricula based on cultural uniqueness, and schools that help students to fully explore and accept their own culture, values, and aspirations (mialaret, 1979; segre, 1976). these ideologies wreaked drastic consequences on the development of children. the assimilative approach "forced" children to fit into the majority culture as quickly as possible, and if they did not succeed they were left at the side and at blind intersections of the education system. the cultural separatist approach did not provide an opportunity for the youth to "exit" outside of their ethnoculture, and consequently take up highly valued positions in a society (boudon,1973; bourdieu & passeron,1970; cresas, 1978b; gfen, 1976, 1977). from 1970 until the present, research studies on these ideologies and their consequences have enriched pedagogical, psychological, social, and other sciences with a multitude of new discoveries and solutions. many academics have steered away from the above mentioned educational problems by developing multicultural and multilingual education, education for democracy and education for tolerance, unity, and mutual respect. education theoreticians and practitioners accept that a school cannot stay neutral and ignore ethnic, cultural, as well as social, gender, health, and other student differences, which reflect the diversity of a society itself. this constitutes the core of a new educational "philosophy", strongly advocated for in europe as well as in other multicultural societies in the past few decades (perotti, 1994; cushner, mcclelland & safford, 1996). multiethnic and multicultural education could be a very important first step in including all children in common classes in bih. yet school environments based on positive attitudes toward differences is still a dream in some parts of bih. conceptual doubt mass destruction, killing, ethnic cleansing, and other misfortunes of wartime brought about much national and social shifting. one major effect of war was the existence of three regions, each one dominated by one of the constitutive peoples of bih. in every region, canton, or municipality one of the nations forms the majority and the other two form the minority. as a result, the education system in bih is currently swaying between two extreme concepts that other european countries have left far behind. in each region the majority adila pasalic-kreso november 15, 1999 10 nation pushes the assimilative concept for the minorities, while the minority nation fights for full educational and schooling autonomy. traditionally, bih has been characterized by multiethnicity, multiculturalism, unity, and common life, and therefore the appearance of extreme segregation in the education system is like the introduction of a foreign plant into an indigenous garden. if this situation continues, bih society will educate individuals who will be culturally and ethnically encapsulated, unable to recognize and view not only a foreign culture, but their own as well. they will come of age in cultural and ethnic blindness. the educational reality in bih is strongly affected by nationalist forces threatening to implement unacceptable pedagogical solutions. the presence of nationalistic and ideological interests is registered on an everyday basis in the bih educational system as they use education for political purposes. time after time, in certain regions, the representatives of these forces insist on separating children into special national schools to follow different curricula and to be taught by teachers of the same nationality. any attempt to create a common legislature, as well as attitudes and principles toward common education, schools, classes, textbooks and curricula cause, as a rule, an increase in nationalist tension, passions, and intolerance. avoiding working with children of a different nationality in a public school is akin to a doctor refusing care to a bleeding patient. there is no language problem in bih such as in the case of the arabs in france, the turks in germany or the mexicans in the u.s. there is no problem of understanding each other linguistically among the nations of bih, and although there is an attempt to increase multilinguism, it is difficult to accept any arguments advocating for separate schools or classrooms. the issue concerns primarily the cultural differences among bosniaks, croats, and serbs originating in different religious views. pursuing certain ideologies, nationalist and religious leaders are striving to "import" curricula from neighboring croatia or serbia in order to "enable appropriate nationalist education" for the children of croat or serb nationality, to aggravate differences and separate people that have lived together for centuries. for example, currently there are many debates surrounding the development of textbooks based on a group of national subjects such as language, literature, history, national music and folklore. these debates include discussions of textbook revisions that will omit content insulting others. some educators have proposed developing standards for joint curricula that precisely determine the content of education, part of which will reflect national differences and specifics. however, it is hard to believe that this will solve all of the educational problems in bih. a joint curriculum is important but it can unfortunately also be insufficient. it is well recognized that in educational practice there are two kinds of curricula--one formal and the other informal or "hidden" (apple, 1993, 1996). the latter includes material influenced or dictated by the climate of the school itself, a school's culture and tradition, the environment of the region, the quality of teachers' work and also cooperation with parents and with a community. although there may be significant gains from developing a quality formal curriculum, the hidden curriculum can undermine even the most progressive pedagogical solution. it therefore demands more attention and action. education in bosnia and herzegovina: minority inclusion and majority rules the system of education in bih as a paradigm of political violence on education current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 11 in fact, poor political and judicial solutions, swaying morale, and disturbed values are among the many troubles that have already arisen in bih as a result of this hidden curriculum. changing the hidden curriculum therefore requires pedagogical, as well as political, judicial and moral resources. the education system in bih must draw conclusions from mistakes made by other countries two or three decades ago and take into consideration the newest academic and practical solutions. inclusive education sociocultural inclusion can be used as a basic driving force, a vehicle for further overall and meaningful educational reform. this is its greatest significance. it is important to view inclusive education as a process, an overall reform movement, an educational "philosophy" that should result in a "new type" of education, giving the youth new dimensions to their personalities, new horizons, and not only facts, but also knowledge and skills. to build a personal identity, a person must undergo multiple levels of identification--from global to national, social and sexual to individual (banks, 1994). this can only be achieved through indirect educational work. this relatively new pedagogical concept, known as culturally responsive pedagogy, has helped to achieve many positive results in school practice. culturally responsive pedagogy carries greater sensitivity toward students than traditional pedagogy. it not only acknowledges students' background, language, tradition, and culture, but also their specific learning styles (lasley & matczynski, 1997). throughout its reform, the educational system in bih must pay attention to creating a culturally responsive pedagogy to satisfy the educational needs of every individual, including each minority member in every community. minority groups in any community are always more vulnerable and sensitive than others. therefore, everyone involved in education, including every teacher, must recognize his/her duty regarding minority education and always stay aware of issues facing minority students. this should be a motto for every teacher in bih as we enter the third millennium. such an approach will encourage the development of liberal, creative, and multicultural students who are critical consumers and creators of knowledge. without this determination to create an inclusive educational environment for all, current and future pledges to democracy and multiculturalism will remain superficial, like labels on food items that do not specify the ingredients. education reform in bih today must be a process of creating classrooms and schools with the integration of various cultures, languages, religions, abilities, and experiences, which are practically expressed through common schools, common classrooms, common curricula, and textbooks. creating a common learning environment for all students is a necessary step towards sociocultural inclusion. experienced educators know that students differ in learning styles, in emotional and social characteristics, intellectual potential and physical appearance. all of these individual differences are bigger than any group differences, be they gender, race, nation or religion. experienced educators also know that a democratic atmosphere that includes tolerance and respect for others must be gradually and professionally created. adila pasalic-kreso november 15, 1999 12 indoctrination, manipulation, or abuse of education for a variety of purposes will not reap benefits for anyone in the long run. conclusion the education system in bih today resembles a broken glass that nationalist divisive politics is attempting to break into even smaller pieces. this does not lead to stabilizing bih as a unified country. taking into consideration the experiences of other multicultural societies, the education system in bih must promote a vision of an open democratic society in which every individual, regardless of ethnic, cultural, religious, class, gender or other identities, has an equal chance to participate and succeed. such an education system will provide an opportunity for individuals to nurture her/his ethnic identity and at the same time participate in a common culture or intersection of other cultures. one can nurture national norms and values if they are not in conflict with the overall values of justice, equality, and human dignity in a society. these universal values can unify all cultures in a society and promote social cohesion. bih should be exceptionally interested in such an approach to education. multiculturalism should not be a difficulty or an obstacle around which politicians cannot find their way--it is part of the richness of this country that should be nurtured and developed. by over-emphasizing someone's ethnic, linguistic or religious preferences, one often forgets other characteristics of an individual, such as gender, social, generational, professional, intellectual, and many others. educational practice fenced in by a nationalistic-political frame can not only cripple all other dimensions of a personality but also its developmental potential. these aspects of education are still not openly discussed in bih and the acceptance of global purposes of education is only slowly developing (delors, 1996). in the bih educational system there must be a complete reorganization of educational structure and practice, so that a school can become a place for open discussion and debate of all current differences. perhaps this can be one of the paradigms to guide not only our education but also the future of bih society. references apple, m.w. 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(2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 education for black liberation: freire and past/present pan-africanist experiments krystal strong university of pennsylvania rhoda nanre nafziger mcgill university popular education has played a central role in pan-african liberation struggles historically and in the present moment. in the period following african independence, social movements that emerged around and through education in africa were informed by and in dialogue with related decolonial movements of the global south. however, the specific contributions of pan-africanist revolutionaries to the broader philosophy and praxis of education for liberation is often under-appreciated. this paper explores this impact through paulo freire’s political and intellectual engagement with pan-africanist popular education movements, radical intellectuals, and broader revolutionary struggles. in considering freire’s work in dialogue and practice with african revolutionary thinkers, this paper shows that, while freire shaped elements of liberation education in africa, he was also deeply shaped and influenced by the historical conditions of the time and key african revolutionaries who were struggling towards similar objectives. additionally, we explore the continued salience of freirean educational praxis in contemporary pan-africanist social movements, through the example of a present day online pedagogical experiment, the pan-african activist sunday school and solidarity collective. introduction popular education has long been part of struggles for liberation in africa and the cultivation of pan-africanist philosophies, consciousness, and solidarities that have historically made these struggles possible. with roots in global decolonization movements as well as the rich traditions of african indigenous education, popular education has politically shaped revolutionary cadres, organizers, activists, and broader processes of social transformation across the continent in the form of national and universal education, radical print media and radio, political education, and literacy campaigns (choudry & vally, 2017). though radical social movements that emerged around and through education in africa were informed by and in dialogue with related decolonial movements of the global south, the specific contributions of pan-africanist revolutionaries to the broader philosophy and praxis of education for liberation is often under-appreciated. this paper explores this impact through paulo freire’s political and intellectual engagement with pan-africanist popular education movements, radical intellectuals, and broader revolutionary struggles. with his role as a chief architect of popular education, freire has a mixed legacy in africa that is only beginning to be explored (assié-lumumba et al., 2019; freire, 2006; freire & macedo, 1995; kirkwall, 2004). on the one hand, his exchanges with african revolutionary leaders, including amilcar cabral and julius nyerere, situated his work at a critical stage of decolonizing efforts for education in the 1960s and 1970s following the independence of many african nations. on the other hand, the educational projects implemented directly under his supervision often fell short of expectations (thomas, 1996). the role of paulo freire—and his educational philosophies—in africa during this immediate post© 2021, strong & nanre nafziger. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 39-54. https:// strong & nanre nafziger. cc by 4.0. strong & nanre nafziger current issues in comparative education 40 independence period highlights the challenges of decolonization in enduring imperial systems like education, as well as the possibilities of radical movement building through popular education across cultural, linguistic and class divides. in considering freire’s work in dialogue and practice with african revolutionary thinkers, this paper shows that while freire shaped elements of liberation education in africa, he was also deeply shaped and influenced by the historical conditions of the time and key african revolutionaries who were struggling towards similar objectives. additionally, we explore the continued salience of freirean educational praxis in contemporary panafricanist social movements, through the example of a present day online pedagogical experiment, the pan-african activist sunday school and solidarity collective. we argue that contradictions of culture and language, which were once the chief preoccupation of freire and his contemporaries in the liberation movements and nation-building projects of post-independence africa, have been subsumed within considerations of technological access and inequality, especially with the global surge in online learning and digital organizing during the covid-19 pandemic. the pivot to participatory and online modes— of education and struggle—signal new directions and possibilities for revolutionary movement building through popular education, and we conclude with recommendations for the contemporary praxis of education for liberation in freirean and pan-africanist traditions. freire and african praxes of education for liberation prior to the need for education for the purpose of liberation from colonialism in africa, education in indigenous african societies had multiple social purposes including socialization, specialization into a trade or skill, civic orientation, and training to become a full member of society (abidogun & falola, 2020; fafunwa, 2018). however, the advent of imperial forms of western and islamic education in africa shifted the purpose, content, structure, and relations embedded within learning and teaching, disrupting indigenous ways of life including the role of african languages, customs, and traditions within formalized schooling (rodney, 1972; nafziger, 2020). missionary schools and early colonial schools, for instance, were designed in service of empire, destabilizing both the organic social evolution of young people into active members of their communities, and creating deep divides between the school, teacher, and student on the one hand, and the family and community on the other (ekechi, 1972; wa thiong'o, 1992). as independence movements swept across the continent, the newly independent nations of the 1960s and 1970s saw great potential in popular education as a springboard for accelerated development as well as the spread of revolutionary ideas to the broader masses (turner, 1971). while there has not been extensive documentation of education for liberation within african social movements more broadly (tijani, 2012; vally & treat, 2013), the documented role of education within student movements in africa provides a rich archive of the role of popular education in radical change (choudry & valley, 2017; federici et. al, 2000; nafziger & strong, 2020). in the struggle to build emancipatory education in early african independence movements, african leaders were in critical dialogue with educators from the global south, including paulo freire (assié-lumumba et al, 2019). freire worked as a consultant in the establishment of popular education projects in former portuguese colonies, like his home country, brazil. his early work in tanzania later expanded into the newly liberated lusophone states of guinea-bissau, cabo verde, and sao tome in principe. these experiences were molded by the revolutionary contexts freire met on ground, which in turn informed his approach to a broad range of educational issues, including culture, article’s title current issues in comparative education 41 language, and the politics of education within revolutionary struggle. freire’s collaborations with revolutionary leaders such as amilcar cabral of guinea-bissau and julius nyerere of tanzania occurred at a time when african theories of education for liberation were already challenging colonial education across the continent. examples of these emancipatory paradigms include nkrumahism, developed by kwame nkrumah of ghana to advance african liberation through socialism (nkrumah, 1963), and zikism, put forth by nnamdi azikiwe of nigeria, which concerned methods of mental emancipation (azikiwe, 1961). freire’s lifetime of work brought together different global theories and praxes into a coherent articulation of radical and critical education, and african praxes of popular education impacted freire's philosophy. though much of the literature on freire in africa focuses on his impact on africa (godonoo, 1998; assié-lumumba et al., 2019), we argue that a closer examination of freire’s influence on african popular education reveals that he often borrowed heavily from african revolutionary leaders, whose rich ideas were often unacknowledged or only narrowly theorized in his writings. we explore the reciprocal influence between freire and african revolutionary thought through an examination of his educational work in two african countries, tanzania, and guineabissau, and then turn to his intellectual engagements with revolutionary african thinkers around the role of culture and critical consciousness before discussing a present-day experiment with pan-africanist popular political education, which builds on these legacies. freire’s sojourns in africa began as a guest professor at the university of dar es salam, tanzania, in 1971, while serving as a special consultant in the department of education in the world council of churches during his exile from brazil (abraham, 2013; sing, 2004). in tanzania, freire encountered president julius nyerere, whom he had admired from afar and expressed his appreciation for nyerere’s ‘practicalization’ of the connections between education, national liberation, and community life (hall, 1998). nyerere is also reported to have read pedagogy of the oppressed and had conversations with freire about his work (hall, 1998). nyerere, who is affectionately known as mwalimu (‘teacher’ in swahili), had implemented a large-scale educational experiment in tanzania, integrating popular education into the nation building project with a focus on human liberation and social change, guided by the african indigenous philosophy, ujamaa (familyhood in swahili). when nyerere became president of a newly independent tanzania in 1962, over 80% of the population was illiterate. nyerere believed that each person needed to be valued for their worth in society (nyerere, 1961; nyerere, 1968). although nyerere’s philosophies were not named ‘humanism’, there is a clear linkage between his ideas of innate value and contributions that is reflected in freire’s writings. but while freire often did not articulate how his ideas could be implemented at national or international scale, nyerere’s philosophy of the state’s responsibility in ensuring equal rights was fully implemented through policies such as the nationalization of all the major means of production in tanzania in 1967 (mulenga, 2001 p. 450). kirkendall (2010) and hall (2013) describe freire’s admiration of nyerere’s approach to development and the concept of ‘ujamaa’ as a democratic model where popular participation was ‘indispensable’ (kirkendall, 2010, p. 105). unlike most other african countries, which officially maintained colonial languages, the indigenous african language, kiswahili, was adopted as tanzania’s official and national language, to unify the over 126 ethnic groups which make up tanzania. today, tanzania remains one of the only african countries to return fully to an indigenous language after colonialism, though south africa did follow suit after the end of apartheid. freire’s ideas of ‘cultural action’ strong & nanre nafziger current issues in comparative education 42 were no doubt influenced by the time he spent in tanzania where he urged president nyerere to set up an international institute for popular education, which would be based on their shared ideas (hall, 1998). freire’s second stay in africa was upon an invitation to guinea-bissau in 1975 by commissioner of education mário cabral to lead revolutionary revisions to the education system. freire was invited by the government to oversee the efforts for universal education and freire led the literacy campaign for the african party of the independence of guinea and cape verde (paigc) from 1976 to 1979. freire’s book, pedagogy in process (1989) describes his sojourn in the country and their efforts to construct a national literacy campaign after a prolonged liberation struggle and the assassination of revolutionary leader amilcar cabral. as in his tanzanian visit, freire came in his capacity as a consultant to the world council of churches and, after five years of work in guinea bissau, had mixed results (chicana & ceccon, 2017). these efforts faced several challenges, including the problem of teaching in portuguese while most of the population spoke creole, bureaucratic red tape from the government, and other issues such as a lack of trained teachers and educational resources (kirkendall, 2010; moran, 2014). thomas describes some of these challenges: these experiments were by no means successful; as freire has himself admitted, centralised bureaucracies, programmes de-linked from the production process and communicated in the language of the coloniser, portuguese, in this case, blunted the radical potential of the method and the objective of literacy as a means to coming by a new consciousness, and stymied the capacity of people to ‘...read not only the word but also read the world’ (1996, p. 24-25). the many challenges of the literacy campaign cannot be attributed to freire alone. freire acknowledges some of these in his epistolary memoir of the campaign (freire, 1978). even if freire held overly romanticized views of the revolutionary leader amilcar cabral and his philosophies of re-africanization as a method of decolonization, difficulties in the implementation of education for liberation in post-independence african societies were widespread. dreams of african independence were compromised as disruptions caused by counterrevolutionary forces, civil wars, and the continued imperialist tactics of europe and the united states destabilized young nations and stymied their efforts towards national development. unlike tanzania where nyerere held a stronghold and was able to implement his ideas, cabral was assassinated in 1973, leaving behind the partido africano da independência da guiné-bissau e cabo verde to continue as a central ideological force in the global pan-africanist political struggle to transform class structures in africa and reclaim culture for liberation. cabral’s vision of a unified sovereign nation was never fully realized, as the nation descended into conflicts, never fully realizing cabral’s vision of an educated and liberated guinea-bissau (forrest, 1987, p. 116). freire was part of an important moment in the history of education for liberation in africa. his ideas were borrowed from and applied to the struggles in tanzania and guineabissau. however, it is important to emphasize that education as a force of revolutionary struggle was already in place when freire arrived in these nations, and his role in these movements should not be over emphasized, nor should the role of african leaders such as cabral and nyerere be diminished. culture and liberation beyond the implementation of national experiments with popular education for liberation, freire’s ideas on the role of culture and language in the struggle for liberation article’s title current issues in comparative education 43 were themselves in conversation with african revolutionary scholars, who were all struggling around the role of colonialism in undermining african cultures and identified the destruction of culture as a primary means of oppression. in his writings, freire conceptualizes the role of colonialism in the destruction of native cultures and the imposition of a foreign culture. the destruction of culture is also articulated by cabral, who offers a more expansive theorization of power and domination. in freire’s formulation, cultural inferiority and superiority work to inculcate the values of oppressors and alienate the oppressed from their own cultural values: for cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority. since everything has its opposite, if those who are invaded consider themselves inferior, they must necessarily recognize the superiority of the invaders. the values of the latter thereby become the pattern for the former. the more invasion is accentuated and those invaded are alienated from the spirit of their own culture and from themselves, the more the latter want to be like the invaders; to walk like them, dress like them, talk like them.” (freire, 1970, p. 153). freire’s language of cultural destruction and invasion reflects a more militarized description of the influence of colonialism on indigenous cultures, in a way, removing some of the agency of the oppressed. in contrast, cabral uses the term cultural ‘domination’ in describing the influence of colonizers on indigenous cultures. in cabral’s view, liberation requires a return to culture as an active form of resistance: “national liberation is necessarily an act of culture [that] every liberation movement should be capable of making in relation to the imperative of the struggle” (1974, p. 43-44). nyerere was also a strong proponent of culture as resistance, and he advocated for reafricanization, or a return to african cultural values and norms, as foundational to the struggle for freedom. the idea of culture as resistance resonates across the writings of cabral, nyerere, and freire and speaks to the multifaceted nature of the struggle against colonialism to transform not just the material conditions of the people, but psychological conditions as well. the strategy to pursue cultural liberation, and the timing of it, was an enduring question as articulated by cabral: a reconversion of minds of the mental set is thus indispensable to the true integration of people into the liberation movement. such reconversion—reafricanization, in our case—may take place before the struggle, but it is completed only during the course of the struggle, through daily contact with the popular masses in the communion of sacrifice required by the struggle (1973, p. 45). at this time, newly independent african nations were still struggling against the realities of colonialism and the threat of cold war neo-colonial and counterrevolutionary forces. cabral and nyerere, alongside other revolutionary leaders, were actively fighting to shed the yoke of colonialism, while preparing the people they fought alongside for mental as well as physical battles. dialogue and conscientization beyond their articulation of education’s role in combating the cultural domination of colonialism and restoring the cultural sovereignty of the oppressed, the critical role of education in cultivating political consciousness through dialogue cuts across the ideas of freire and his african contemporaries. dialogue was part of the praxis of revolutionary ideas; it is a demonstration of the acknowledgement of the humanity of the oppressed, strong & nanre nafziger current issues in comparative education 44 and the need to engage them fully in the struggle for their own liberation. freire argues that dialogue must be carried out at every stage of the revolution and cannot be compromised to ensure that the oppressed masses are liberated and fully empowered in the process: critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action, must be carried on with the oppressed at whatever the stage of their struggle for liberation. the content of that dialogue can and should vary in accordance with historical conditions and the level at which the oppressed perceive reality…but to substitute monologue, slogans and communiques for dialogue is to attempt to liberate the oppressed with the instruments of domestication. attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects which must be saved from a burning building; it is to lead them into the populist pitfall and transform them into masses that can be manipulated (freire, 1970 p. 65). freire emphasizes the need for reflection and action to transform the world as well as the need for revolutionary leaders to work with the oppressed and not for them. african leaders understood that dramatically changing the colonial system of education to a liberatory form of education would not only build up the consciousness of the people but their capacity to act as well. in fact, one aspect of cabral’s leadership that freire admitted a deep admiration for was how cabral worked with the people towards the revolution in guinea bissau. in his description of cabral’s practice of teaching seminars in the bush during the revolutionary struggle, freire described how cabral used the story of an amulet to explain revolutionary struggle, highlighting cabral’s respect for african cultures (horton & freire, 1990, p. 134). nyerere also saw the need for africans to challenge colonial repression by regaining critical consciousness. however, the methods through which african people would return to this consciousness would necessitate refocusing on african traditional values, communalism, and cooperation. for both nyerere and cabral, the process of being at one with the oppressed could not be separated from the process of regaining african culture. the importance of culture in raising critical consciousness, as theorized by african revolutionaries, is reflected in friere’s discussions of ‘cultural action’ (freire, 1970), which also leans heavily on the work of another scholar who wrote earlier on the role of culture in african liberation struggles, frantz fanon (1961; 1963). the efforts of cultural reinvigoration and re-africanization could not take place without consciousness raising. however, the practical steps that this would take differed widely by country, as did the results that emerged from the process of cultural action and conscientization. the pan-african activist sunday school and solidarity collective despite the centrality of popular education to struggles for african liberation and nationbuilding, radical pan-africanist movements in theory and praxis suffered a stark decline in the last decades of the twentieth century, due to the assassination and exile of a generation of revolutionary african leaders, the infiltration and co-optation of african states, and the larger effects of neo-colonialism, militarism, and neoliberal capitalist entrenchment (ackah, 2016; adi, 2018; mazrui, 2005). however, in recent years, popular forms of political education and pan-africanist solidarity are witnessing a resurgence with the growing frequency of political movements throughout the pan-african world aided by the mobilizing power of social media platforms and digital tools. the convergence of political struggles and digital mobilization tools has been the subject of article’s title current issues in comparative education 45 considerable research on contemporary global protests (castells, 2015; earl & kimport, 2011; gerbaudo, 2012; mason, 2013) and african diasporic social movements more specifically, which have struggled to overcome digital divides and parochial solidarities (royston & strong, 2019; strong, 2018; taylor, 2016). in this section, we examine one ongoing experiment in popular education for liberation, of which we are conveners and participants, the pan-african activist sunday school and solidarity network, which formed in response to the #endsars movement in nigeria and speaks to the continued necessity and ongoing challenges in implementation of popular education for liberation in pan-african struggles. in october 2020, #endsars protests formed after the murder of a young man by the special anti-robbery squad (sars), a rogue unit of the nigerian police force, went viral. after nearly three weeks of the largest mass mobilizations in a generation led by the country’s youth, on october 20th, nigerian soldiers massacred dozens of youths protesting the country’s rampant police violence. as the rise and violent state suppression of the #endsars movement sparked global attention and outrage (strong, 2020), we collaborated to convene an intergenerational, genderand class-diverse group of panafricanist organizers connected to anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and police abolitionist movements throughout africa, north america, and europe collaborated with grassroots nigerian organizers to share political strategy and build solidarity for the #endsars movement during a moment when the struggle was facing intense suppression and violence from the government led by former military dictator general muhammadu buhari. out of this solidarity work—which expanded to include support and amplification of other radical movements attempting to sustain struggles against state violence—emerged the pan-african solidarity collective, composed of organizations that explicitly center pan-africanist political ideologies and goals, and which are situated in four continents including black lives matter (usa), pan-african community in action (usa), afrosocialists and socialist of color caucus (usa), black alliance for peace (usa, haiti, colombia), coalition for revolution (nigeria), socialist workers league (nigeria), end museveni dictatorship mutual aid (uganda), red pearl movement (uganda), and ubuntu reading group (uganda). the most public-facing manifestation of this collaborative solidarity work across movements is the pan-african activist sunday school (pass), an intergenerational, popular education series that uses virtual live streams to foster critical dialogue between black activists and organizers from around the world and political consciousness around pan-african strategy and movement building through social media. before forming into a popular education series, the seeds for pass began with a more narrow purpose: to bring together grassroots organizers based in nigeria, who were urgently seeking support to sustain their movement after the massacre of youth protesters and the announcement of a protest ban by the nigerian government, with grassroots organizers outside of nigeria who had experience with sustaining movements against state violence and could amplify the struggle in nigeria under conditions of escalating repression of media, financial resources, and political action. prior to the 2020 #endsars protests, we previously collaborated on research on the revolutionary legacy of the nigerian students’ movement (nafziger & strong, 2020) and, in our different institutional settings in pennsylvania, philadelphia and state college, we separately joined grassroots efforts around police violence and social justice issues impacting these communities. krystal joined the leadership of the philadelphia chapter of black lives matter. nanre organized around police murders and for black lives through the 320 coalition, and around racial and economic justice through the afrosocialist strong & nanre nafziger current issues in comparative education 46 caucus. during the historic 2020 uprisings in the u.s. after the murder of george floyd, our respective organizing efforts shifted to waging local campaigns and direct actions around police abolition and racial justice, which were met with state suppression and opposition. as two u.s. based scholar-organizers of african-descent (nigerian american and african american), who are connected to organizers and youth activists in nigeria through research and activism and also had recent experiences in sustaining struggles around police violence, we saw the emergence of #endsars protests as a critical opportunity to create space for solidarity and dialogue among pan-african organizers around immediate political strategy during a vulnerable moment in the #endsars movement. in recent years, social media has become critical to the amplification of social movements, particularly in contexts where state suppression of movements is an impediment to grassroots mobilization, and as a tool for connecting organizers and supporters of movements and social justice to direct lines of communication with activists on the ground. previous social movements in nigeria were activated and strengthened through social media and grassroots mobilizations such as #occupynigeria, #bringbackourgirls, and #revolutionnow, as have global pan-african movements like #weareremovingadictator in uganda, #rhodesmustfall in south africa, and #blacklivesmatter in the united states. our solidarity efforts began through convenings on the zoom and whatsapp platforms, which gained global utility in the period of the covid-19 pandemic as both a method for virtual communication and a means for sharing publicly accessible educational resources. we reached out to activists in nigeria, who were at the forefront of the struggle, many of whom we had prior relationships with through movements such as #bringbackourgirls and student organizing, or through our prior research in the country. after a few initial dialogues among activists with participants from nigeria, the nigerian diaspora in europe, and black organizers in the u.s., the first pan-african activist sunday school session was ideated as a way to directly lend support to the #endsars movement by raising awareness about the conditions of the movement and its root causes, given the growing international interest in understanding and supporting the movement, which trended internationally with 48 million tweets in just 10 days (nendo, 2020). after deliberation on how to most effectively design a popular education format for the purpose of (1) reaching the largest global audience to put international pressure on the nigerian government, (2) cultivating space for fostering critical dialogue, and (3) creating an effective channel for sharing accurate information directly from organizers on the ground on how to interpret the political moment and support protesters, the global group of organizers (at that time, approximately 20 people) decided to move away from the zoom platform being used for internal conversations among organizers, to a virtual livestream format that would allow the broadcast to be simultaneously streamed on multiple social media accounts across platforms for maximum impact. the technical form and pedagogical approach of the sunday school, which we began to internally define as a popular education series by and for activists, explicitly borrows from historical examples of popular political education in pan-african organization traditions such as those pioneered by cabral, nyerere, and nkrumah, as well as the conventions of contemporary digital organizing that have been made possible by the growth of social media infrastructures. with the shift of academic and political organizing work online in the context of the pandemic, closed virtual platforms (i.e., zoom) and livestream and multi-stream services (which are capable of simultaneous broadcasts to platforms like youtube, twitter, and facebook) have emerged as the primary options for popular online (political) education. with consideration of zoom’s closed platform and limitations for number of live participants, we settled on a multi-stream service that would allow viewers article’s title current issues in comparative education 47 to join the stream from multiple social media platforms and accounts, to comment on the live stream feed through text messages which are visible to all participants and could be highlighted on the livestream, and to view an archived version of the session at any point. streamyard, our platform of choice, had other limitations around the number of participants who could appear on the broadcast: no more than 10 simultaneously in the virtual broadcast studio. in some ways, the livestream approximates the experience of the mass rally or lecture, but without the intimacy and dialogic nature of the political study circle. this was a trade-off we weighed but decided to air on the side of maximum viewership and circulation given the goals of this aspect of our collective organizing work to amplify the needs of organizers on the ground as widely and effectively as possible. given the limitations of the live stream form, which only permits dialogue with viewers in the form of text-based comments on the various streams, our first session designed to amplify and build solidarity for #endsars protesters, titled, “from protest to movement: intro to #endsars and the history of activism in nigeria,” was organized as a series of short talks of fifteen minutes or less from an intergenerational group that included #endsars protesters as well as movement elders who represented decades of experience in student, labor, and feminist organizing in nigeria (see figure 1). the informal presentations were followed by moderated questions to these organizers that focused specifically on the connections panelists saw between the #endsars movement and past historic struggles in nigeria, struggles against police brutality and government in africa and other parts of the world, and strategies and tactics from moving from a protest to a sustainable movement that can withstand efforts at government suppression. this was then followed by questions from the audience that were offered during the broadcast by viewers, which included requests for additional educational resources, how to connect with the organizers featured on the broadcast, class privilege in the struggle, and what the #endsars movement should learn from other movements. the first session, an experiment for all the organizers who were accustomed to boots-on-the-ground mobilization and more intimate forms of political education (i.e., study circles, organizational meeting), was received with great enthusiasm. figure 1 pan-african activist sunday school promotional graphic note. graphic design by krystal strong strong & nanre nafziger current issues in comparative education 48 the livestream garnered over 8,000 views across facebook, twitter, and youtube accounts. in the comments on the livestream broadcast, viewers offered the following assessment of the impact of the sunday school (emphasis added): greetings africans! thank you all for this important conversation in pan african unity and struggle! especially today, as we observe the 22nd anniversary of our dear brother and comrade, kwame ture, joining the ancestors . . . . our victory is certain! i'd love to see more cross-cultural exchanges like this that is student centered. i think it would go a long way in bridging the gaps that too often exist among black students from various different cultural backgrounds. this is very important information to know. it highlights the need to understand and know the background of how these things came to be. the panafrican (sic) mindset has definitely decreased in the us movements since the 90’s and then further with the election of obama, however i hope it will encourage people that there is an upturn, and a new wave of solidarity is building. i believe that we are seeing a resurgence of panafricanism (sic) in the movements in the us, and things like this great discussion will move it further, broader, deeper and more quickly than ever before! these responses draw historic connections to revolutionary movements and pioneers of popular education for african liberation like kwame ture, formerly known as stokely carmichael, leader of the student nonviolent coordinating committee and the allafrican people’s revolutionary party. they affirm the political importance of revitalizing “a new wave of solidarity” given the decrease “since the 90s”; the usefulness of “crosscultural exchange” and historical and political “background” in “bridging the gaps'' in political consciousness; developing political analysis to understand present conditions and struggles; and strengthening global movements for liberation. seeing the unexpected reach of this livestream format, which permitted us as grassroots organizers to engage with other organizers, allies, and interested parties beyond our local organizing contexts, we continued with further sessions to amplify active movements in need of support and solidarity. over the next six months, we hosted four additional sessions on the following topics: the movement to defund the police in the united states, resistance movements in south africa, the struggle to end the museveni dictatorship in uganda, and a session providing updates from the frontlines of movements in uganda, ghana, nigeria, colombia, haiti, and palestine. in each of these sessions, we emphasized historical analysis of imperialism, militarism, and capitalism as the context for the contemporary struggles, specific political tactics and strategies organizers were employing and the limitations of them, and direct ways that viewers and other organizers could support these efforts (i.e., by donating to organizations on the ground, following their social media platforms, and amplifying their message). across these sessions, nearly 20,000 viewers tuned in. along the way, we made shifts in the design and pedagogical approach after recognizing the limitations for dialogue with the livestream format. for example, pass organizers created presentation slides to make the speaking segments more accessible and engaging; we tried to limit the length of presentations, which proved difficult to manage for facilitators; and we tried to increase the overall time for questions and answers from the audience. as scholar-organizers whose scholarship and political work often reaches limited audiences due to the paywalls of academic publishing and the article’s title current issues in comparative education 49 ebbs and flows of public support for social justice organizing, our experimentation with the sunday school pedagogical model in comradeship with pan-african organizers has generated new methods and possibilities for challenging the boundaries that often exist between the academy and political movements: collaborative virtual instruction; multimodal discourse; mass remote learning; digital archiving; and community-centered political pedagogy. the sunday schools also revealed two major obstacles in pan-african solidarity through popular education. the first is the challenge of technological access for organizers and viewers in the global south, where bandwidth is often limited and internet access costly. during several sessions, organizers based in africa who were scheduled to appear on the livestream struggled with slow internet speed or were not able to participate at all due to challenges with bandwidth or restrictions around electricity or internet access. the second was the way these technological challenges limited the ability of organizers in africa to fully participate in other aspects of organizing the pass sessions, planning content and to a lesser extent shaping the ideological direction of the collective, in ways that were not a barrier for organizers located in the global north. these specific challenges of access and accessibility would become much more pronounced as our collective organizing effort transitioned from supporting #endsars with solidarity, to cultivating the pan-african activist sunday school popular education platform, to expanding the scope of the organizing effort to the “pan-african activist solidarity collective,” which reflected shared goals of building power across political movements through popular education, collaboration, direct solidarity work, and movement building. this expansion has created opportunities for the development of collective solidarity campaigns around the end museveni dictatorship (emd) campaign, international advocacy for members who were being threatened with political imprisonment for protest, and political strategization around the planning of protests under the threat of government repression. still, as with the example of literacy campaigns and state popular education efforts in africa in the 1970s, the implementation of these efforts was compromised by structural conditions: in our case, the ability to build strong solidarity campaigns has been limited by barriers to participation and a deep digital divide for activists on the ground in africa, where movements that need the most material support and amplification were located. strengthening practices of education for liberation today today, liberation is a continuing process. it signifies not only the consolidation of victory but also makes concrete a model of society already, in a certain sense, designed during the stage of struggle… (freire, 2016, p. 68). despite ongoing forces of neo-colonialism and militarism, african organizers and social movements continue the quest for decolonization set out by earlier generations of african revolutionaries, whose experiments with popular education continue to resonate today. from our analysis of the recent experiment with popular education for liberation in the spirit of freirean and pan-african traditions for which we are co-conveners and participants, the pan-african activist sunday school, several important themes emerge related to the continued relevance of popular education in radical movements and the critical role of leadership and solidarity during times of political upheaval in sustaining the conditions for revolutionary action. these themes offer valuable lessons that we can learn in applying freirean concepts to contemporary pan-african movements. this paper strong & nanre nafziger current issues in comparative education 50 thereby makes the following recommendations for the theory and practice of education for liberation as a historical legacy and an ontological reality: 1. education for black liberation revolution and education are irrevocably, though not inevitably, intertwined. the theory and praxis of revolution in africa and the global south during the decades of decolonization, as characterized in the intellectual and political leadership of amilcar cabral and julius nyerere, powerfully demonstrate the role of popular education in creating the conditions for oppressed people to understand and struggle for liberation, beginning with the liberation of the self. we find ourselves in a historic moment of global black rebellions across the african continent and throughout the diaspora that is not unlike the revolutionary period of the 1960s and 1970s. as with past pan-african experiments with education for liberation, the pan-africanist activist sunday school as one contemporary example brings back into focus the necessity of equipping grassroots activists who are in the streets fighting for freedom—and radical educators who are in the classroom raising consciousness—with the tools of liberatory education as a pathway to strengthening and sustaining this new phase of struggle under the banner of black liberation. learning transversely across our struggles illuminates commonalities in the conditions of anti-black oppression and state violence, which imperil the lives of black people in nigeria, uganda, south africa, the united states, and around the world that might otherwise be lost. as black liberation has emerged as a grammar for the present, popular education for black liberation is a critical tool in envisioning and building the world that we want. 2. action as antidote to disillusionment at a time when there is massive democratic recidivism in africa and politicians continue to manipulate political and economic systems to suppress the will of the people, there is a need for popular education to create and sustain radical movements which advocate for inclusion and participation, particularly among the most marginalized populations. godonoo predicts that the freirean legacy of education for liberation could empower "disillusioned” africans across the continent: freire’s work has resonated with millions of africans who have become disillusioned with failed regimes across the continent. thus, many africans who have read and listened to freire have become willing risk-takers for the sake of social justice, building social movements and organizations that seek to challenge the various regimes (1998, p. 26). the teachings of nyerere and cabral, among other african revolutionaries, similarly articulate the important role of culture and consciousness as sites of struggle and a necessary element of education for liberation. thus, deepening the capacity for oppressed people to articulate—through critical consciousness—and then struggle to create the world that we want—through action—is a necessary condition for collective liberation. while many pan-african social movements have emerged over the past decade to fight for social change across the continent and throughout the diaspora, severe repression and human rights violations have become the normative state response to grassroots struggle, as we witnessed with #endsars. it is therefore also critically important for popular movements to build stronger structures at the grassroots level, which can combat disillusionment and building the critical consciousness needed to sustain movements. cultural and political study circles and digital forms of engagement and mobilization are useful starting points for attracting, retaining, and empowering people within our article’s title current issues in comparative education 51 movements, as we experienced with the reception of the pan-african activist sunday school. 3. learning across cultural and geographic divides this article examined the flow of ideas and practices between revolutionaries and scholars, who were at the forefront of decolonization movements in the global south. they understood culture and consciousness as key terrains of liberation struggles, and popular education as an indispensable weapon. the nascent work of the pan-african activist sunday school offers an example of how transnational solidarities are reemerging in a new phase of the fight for black liberation, in which the structures of white supremacy, imperialism, capitalism, and militarism are alive and well. the efforts from this group of activists on the frontlines of contemporary radical movements to create mechanisms for popular education in a moment of global upheaval and state repression reveals the constant need for movements to reinvent themselves and for modes of movement learning to be passed down not only from generation to generation but also transversely across geographic contexts. with access to digital tools that facilitate mass remote learning and rapid mobilization, radical movements from below can broaden our pedagogical approaches to popular education for liberation in the current moment and, ultimately, transforming the ways in which a new generation of activists understand the political stakes and global implication of our collective struggles. krystal strong is an assistant professor at the university of pennsylvania graduate school of education where her research focuses on student and community activism, youth, and the role of schools as sites of political struggle in africa and the diaspora. she is a core organizer with black lives matter philly. rhoda nanre nafziger is an assistant professor of black/african studies in education at mcgill university. her research focuses on historical consciousness, decolonizing education, and the role of political education in student and youth activism in africa and the diaspora. she is a dedicated pan-africanist socialist organizer. strong & nanre nafziger current issues in 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(1992). decolonising the mind: the politics of language in african literature. east african publishers. 2_jules_la mission civilisatrice, le bourguibism, and la sécuritocratie current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 22, issue 1, special issue 2020 © 2020, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 22(1), 5-22. la mission civilisatrice, le bourguibism, and la sécuritocratie: deciphering transitological educational codings in post-spaces – the case of tunisia tavis d. jules loyola university chicago this article builds upon robert cowen’s (1996) work on educational coding in transitological settings and post-spaces by deciphering the efficacy of political and economic compressions in tunisia from the french protectorate period to the 2011 post-jasmine revolution. first, i diachronically decrypt and elucidate the specific experiences and trajectories of tunisia’s transitologies, while paying attention to the emergence of specific synchronically educational moments. it is suggested that educational codes during transitory periods are framed by political compressions and preconceived philosophies of modernity. it is postulated that four educational codings can be derived in tunisia’s post-spaces: (a) the protectorate code defined by la mission civilisatrice (the civilizing mission); (b) the post-protectorate code defined by le bourguibisme (bourguibism); (c) the post-bourguibisme code defined by la sécuritocratie (securitocracy) in the form of the national reconciliation; and (d) the post-sécuritocratie period defined by the national constituent assembly (nca) – as economic and political power is compressed into educational forms. i situate educational patterns within the tunisian context to illustrate how educational codings shape post-spaces across these four transitory periods. keywords: tunisia, la mission civilisatrice, la bourguibisme, la securitocracy, transitology and educational codings. introduction this paper employs robert cowen’s (2000) concept of “educational coding, that is, the compression of political and economic power into educational forms” (p. 10) within the context of transitologies (the study of transition) to reading the motor nuclei (a sequence of signposts that transcend discourse)1 of educational development across post-spaces. this is done by explaining the efficacy of transitologies in preand postauthoritarian contexts, settings, and spaces by using tunisia as a case study to chart the trajectory of a particular national context using pre-modern, modern, and late modern ideologies (cowen, 1996) and transitologies. cowen (2000) notes that transitologies refer to the “simultaneous collapse and reconstruction” of institutional systems such as “state apparatuses; social and economic stratification systems; and political visions of the future” during which “education is given a major symbolic and reconstructionist role in these social processes” (p. 338). 1 acosta and perez centeno (2011) use motor nuclei to explain “a series of milestones or episodes which have become transdiscursive as the discipline has evolved” (p. 1) as such, this article modifies their original idea of motor nuclei to focus on the transdiscursive evolutional dynamics of changes in educational ‘post-spaces’ within the discipline of comparative and international education. la mission civilisatrice, le bourguibism, and la sécuritocratie current issues in comparative education 6 for cowen (2000), educational patterns or ideal-type modules become visible as ideological, social, political, economic, and cultural complexities of societies are exposed during the redefinition period in the aftermath of a transition (be it peaceful, dramatic, or turbulent). as societies’ complexities are exposed during the transition, educational sites display an array of educational forms (political compressions) and educational patterns that reveal new educational codes “that captures the intersections of the forces of history, social structures and the pedagogic identities of individuals” (cowen, 2000, p. 336). education is observed as habitually comprising a methodical segment of the transitological process since it connotes the ‘shape’ and ‘vision’ of the state apparatuses, the socio-economic orthodoxy of the stratified system, and the political dreams of modernization. in what follows, this article will diachronically decrypt and elucidate the specific experiences and trajectories of tunisia’s transitologies, while at the same time considering the emergence of specific synchronically educational moments. this is done with the aid of “concepts, abstractions, [and] theories, … [to] provide lenses or frameworks to compare, explain and interpret historical phenomena” (kazamias, 2001, p. 446). given the complex nature of the educational project in ‘post-spaces’ (used here as a generic term to capture the transitory undercurrents of several paradigms – post-socialism, post-revolutionary, post-authoritarian, and postsovietology), attention is given to the metamorphosis of “immunologies and permeologies of social and educational patterns” (cowen, 1996, p. 85; see also jules & barton, 2014) as countries readjust their ‘filters’ to consider: why are some reforms filtered in and others filtered out preceding and subsequently after a transitology has occurred? in using educational codes to decipher this question, this article suggests that the creation of “policyscapes” (carney, 2009) or policy discourses that are grounded in a distinctive nationalist transitological language are implicit. the theoretical insight for this article stems from that transitology literature, and the core concept worked with is ‘postspaces,’ which “provides the lenses or the medium to select, organize and interpret the historical material” (kazamias, 2001, p. 446). this paper is divided into three parts. in the first part, the existing literature on transitologies in comparative and international education is reviewed and updated. it is suggested that educational codings facilitate a holistic depiction of studying the historical trajectory of a national educational system since it focuses on the efficacy of endogenous time and space compressed within national educational systems. in focusing on the motor nuclei of education coding, this study is “…situat[ed within the context of] local action and interpretation within broader cultural, historical, and political investigation … [to grasp] … which historical trends, social structures, and national and international forces shape local processes” (vavrus & bartlett, 2006, p. 96). the study is grounded in a “historical-comparative or comparative-historical approach” (acosta & perez centeno, 2011; cowen, 2000; larsen, 2010; schriewer, 2002), as the “method of inquiry and as a frame of analysis” (novoa & yariv-mashal, 2003, p. 424). as a vertical site or “vertical case study” (vavrus & bartlett, 2006), the aim is to illuminate the evolutionary dynamics that undergird educational reforms during times of transition. jules current issues in comparative education 7 in the second half of the paper, it is indicated that educational codes during transitory periods are framed by political compressions and preconceived philosophies of modernity. apropos to my argument, educational codings in tunisia’s educational transitologies exist across different educational patterns. based on the findings, it is advanced that four educational codings can be derived: (i) the protectorate code defined by la mission civilisatrice (the civilizing mission); (ii) the post-protectorate code defined by le bourguibisme (bourguibism); (iii) the post-bourguibisme code defined by la sécuritocratie (securitocracy) in the form of the national reconciliation (particularly the concepts of le changement – the change – and le pacte national – the national pact; and (iv) the post-sécuritocratie period defined by the ascendancy of the national constituent assembly (nca). in seeking to understand the evolutionary dynamics of agenda-setting attitudes after transitions have occurred, attention should be paid to the ‘transitological moments’ that come to define and dominate the educational architecture as new futures are envisioned, and the past gives way to historical revisionism. such an approach focuses on “‘transversal’ and ‘horizontal’ comparisons, and what connections and colorations one can see as a result, or what has been called “‘situatedness’” or “embeddedness” (robertson, 2012, p. 39) to highlight the “politics of knowledge production” (vavrus & bartlett, 2006, p. 98). as economic and political power is compressed into educational forms, this article aims to illustrate how the context of the educational patterns generated educational codings that were shaped across these four transitory periods. in exploring the postsécuritocratie period, the paper concludes by framing the efficacy of tunisia’s transitions upon the arabic spring. educational coding: an approach to deciphering transitologies the transitology framework accommodates “the historical contingency of particular forms of educational systems,” along with their “cultural variations” and their “transitions from one major historical paradigm to the next” (rappleye, 2012, p. 52). while cowen (2000) asserts that transitologies transpire within the first ten years after a changeover and “they occur at remarkable speed and often with stunning suddenness” (p. 339), i concur with bray and borevskaya (2001) that a linear timeline imperils not all transitologies. tunisia’s complex history lends itself to a theory that illuminates multiple dimensions of its educational past, while simultaneously offering insight into possible trajectories of its educational future. the argument presented here implies that in addition to transitology not being linear in scale, there can also exist a ‘transitology of transitology’ in the form of an ideational. the transitology scholarship emerged as a way to study the economic, social, and cultural problems of southern europe, latin america, and central and eastern europe (cowen, 1996; 1999; 2000; lowenhardt, 1995; petsinis, 2010; griffiths & millei, 2013). in comparative education, several studies have drawn on cowen’s (1996) typology to examine educational transitologies by replacing the sovietology research with this typology as a way to examine ideological differences (cowen, 2000; gans-morse, 2004; millei, 2013); focusing on how post-soviet countries have transitioned towards democratic educational systems (silova, 2009); using the typology as a comparative framework for interpreting developments in countries of transition, as in the case of mongolia (steiner-khamsi & stolpe, 2004); operationalizing it by way of cases that may give rise to one or more forms of comparative education (carney, 2009); and exploring the financing of education during transitory periods (bray & borovskaya, 2001). however, la mission civilisatrice, le bourguibism, and la sécuritocratie current issues in comparative education 8 using cowen’s conceptualization, i expand on earlier literature to explain transitions within tunisia – a post-authoritative state without prospects for effective integration. despite the apparent linearity through which cowen’s three educational paradigms are often viewed, cowen (1996) contends that “evolution is not linear – it is not possible to assume that shifts from pre-modern to modern to late-modern educational patternings are routinely predictable – embedded within an automatic historical sequence” (p. 162). thus, the purpose of using a transitological framework in the tunisian setting is to gauge educational occurrences by examining these transitions, or ‘turbulences’ – through the uncovering “acts of rupture, conflict, tension, and resistance” (carney, 2009, p. 69) and creating a “mini-narrative” (cowen, 1996). thus, “transitologies become our compass, helping us get our bearings in relation to time (history) and space (geography)” (rappleye, 2010, p. 15). it is important to note, however, that transitology research is not an end in itself and does not aim to explain causality, but instead offers a clear agenda with profound insight (rappleye, 2012). what truly sets transitologies apart from other analytical research tools in comparative and international education is its acuity to “tell us of the spirit of the battles still to come” (cowen, 2000, p. 339). it challenges researchers to travel beyond the present, which is essential in making grounded policy decisions. further, transitologies give academics “new and meaningful insights into the interconnectivity of politics, history, and culture across localities at a time when these three elements are often dismissed as outmoded…” (carney, 2009, p. 69). taking into consideration this concoction of elements brings new meaning and trajectories for education research, “including the redefinitions of the past and the visions of the future” (cowen, 2000, p. 2). to best study transitologies, cowen (1996) forces researchers to think both historically and holistically, offering three educational patterns – pre-modern, modern, and latemodern – to analyze against the central leitmotifs of political, economic, and cultural development. by focusing on the evolutions of these educational periods, scholars can better understand the intricacies in educational processes and development. further, shifts and educational experiences within pre-modern, modern, and late-modern systems are often experienced globally (with exceptions); therefore, opening doors for future comparative analysis across vertical and horizontal levels. it is in times of disarray that “the educational patterns that are ordinarily, in ordinary daylight as it were, difficult to see” (cowen, 2000, p. 339) are revealed. these patterns are dependent on local conditions and assume a unique historical identity—adapting and diverging from perceived educational models (rappleye, 2010). in this way, “educational reform itself helps to construct not sequential equilibrium conditions but more transitologies…” (cowen, 2000, p. 339). therefore, by historically analyzing the changes within tunisia’s education system, educational codings may be revealed that are “the compression of political and economic power into educational forms” (cowen, 2000, p. 339). an example of such compression is an education provision in tunisia that was sanctioned by the ben ali regime, which provided all families with a computer, which, in turn, created a cadre of educated tunisians that turned against their government (covatorta & haugbølle, 2012). jules current issues in comparative education 9 just as transitologies compress power, they can lead to expansion. cowen (2000) asserts that educational codes are made most visible in transitologies, which often occur “when there is a collapse (and rapid redefinition) of international political boundary, of political regime and of political vision” (p. 341). reading transitologies and transitological moments in the post-arabic awakening period is thus a step towards “reading the global,” which “edges us toward reading the forces of history and the interplay of the domestic and the international in the construction of educational patterns,” specifically “educational codings” (cowen, 2000, p. 339). attempting to understand educational codes is not a unidirectional process, but instead, a deep historical practice that focuses on political, economic, and cultural relations. therefore, education is not divorced from other social, political, and economic occurrences; each domain is but a number needed in conjunction with other numbers to provide the entire code, which often appears in times of chaos. it is this exact process that “captures collective and socio-specific time” and “allows for national context specificity, and allows etic and emic perspectives to coexist” (rappleye, 2010, p. 15). further, by attempting to uncover and analyze educational codes, research has the potential not only to be comprehensive, but more comparable. the complexity of transitologies leads one to question whether such research can ever be successful. rappleye (2012) asserts that the very act of deciphering educational codes would indeed be difficult or “nearly impossible … or at least a single, definitive decryption of them” (p. 409). however, rappleye (2012) posits that perhaps cowen uses a plural ‘codings’ to suggest not only “different countries and different transitions, but different codes for different actors/groups within the same transition or transfer moment” (pp. 409-410). what is suggested here is that educational codings were never meant to result in a single script or model, but, instead, transitology research often yields “parallel codes or multiple views of a single transition…” (rappleye, 2012, p. 410). again, this produces a line of research inquiry that focuses on the totality of the transitional process, a path that creates various insights and codes within single monumental events. while this approach transcends the existing analysis that calls for attention to a historicization of recent educational transformation against the milieu of political, economic, and social change, the location of transitological disruptions and divergences within shifts; or ‘transitologies of transitologies’ that can occur simultaneously as progression transpires between educational paradigms, can be located. the rest of the paper applies the concept of educational coding to four periods of transitions that have experienced political and economic compressions in tunisia. methodologically framing educational codings methodologically, this paper employed a “historical-comparative or comparativehistorical approach” (cowen, 2000; kazamias, 2001; larsen, 2010; nóvoa & yarivmashal, 2003; schriewer, 2002), “centered on historically contextualized causal relationships within a comparative framework” (ritter, 2014, p. 98). following kazamias (2001), this historical-comparative study within the context of transitologies in tunisia represents an “understanding an educational system or aspects of it, not for purposes of changing or improving it” (p. 446). discourse is an institutional way of thinking, and, therefore, the aim is to study transitologies within and across different scales to decipher how educational codes are governed. such an approach attempts to re-conceptualize “…the relations between space and time in historical and la mission civilisatrice, le bourguibism, and la sécuritocratie current issues in comparative education 10 comparative research” (nóvoa & yariv-mashal, 2003, p. 429) by grounding this study in the contexts and history of tunisia. in returning to kazamias’s (2001) idea that historical research involves the use of core concepts, the concepts (development, modernization, authoritarianism, unemployment, and stability) were selected by the author to frame this paper while recognizing that several other concepts warrant coding. the starting point was that educational codes are discursive trace patterns that exist across and within multiple discourses (cultural, political, social, and economic), and therefore, these codes are transdiscursive. thus, new spatial arrangements embedded within transitologies are trans-historical and transdiscursive and can be studied to understand better the architectonic components that emerge as multiple discourses compress. these codes were developed and employed to contextualize the tunisian milieu since comparative-historical analysis “assumes that the relevant causal factors … identified are somehow rooted in, and influenced by, historical trajectories” (ritter, 2014, p. 99). the aim was “to develop, test, and refine causal, explanatory hypotheses about events or structures integral to macro-units such as nation-states” (skocpol, 1979, p. 36). following mahoney and rueschemeyer (2003), the comparative-historical analysis used has three features: (i) the explanation of causal configurations; (ii) the focus on explaining processes over time; and (iii) the description sequels within delimited historical contexts (jules & barton, 2018). the aim was to focus on the macrodescriptions of the historical educational policy narratives that existed across the different transitory periods tunisia has undergone. in other words, the focus was on unearthing casual relationships, and not correlational variables, by paying attention to the long-term policy processes from tunisia’s two dictatorial regimes. the techniques of process tracing (outlining the trajectory of a phenomenon over time by linking a causal factor) and path dependence (locating sequential changes that influence institutional patterns and outcomes) were employed to “uncover the link between cause and effect … through the ‘reconstruction of the origin of a certain event’” (ritter, 2014, p. 99). in developing educational codes, the analysis focused on the discursive level of policymaking, and different national plans, policies, and papers that were active during the education reforms across these periods were analyzed. convenience sampling was used, and over fifty documents were analyzed. the codes were developed by identifying “steps in a causal process leading to the outcome of a given dependent variable of a particular case in a particular historical context” (george & bennett, 2005, p. 176). this was done by “establish[ing] and evaluat[ing] the link (or the absence of a link) between different factors” to determine “whether the causal process of the theory that [is being used] can be observed in the sequence and values of the intervening variables” (vennesson, 2008, p. 231). as such, in developing codes, the focus on was on what mechanisms contributed to a given outcome in education by paying attention to how structural and institutional environments shape educational patterns. again, earlier policy decision in education has a direct impact on contemporary reform agendas. the arguments here are derived from the scanning and coding of several textual sources for themes, patterns, and keywords. in using such an approach, the focus was on exposing the “intangible, impalpable, spiritual forces” (kandel, 1933, p. xix) or jules current issues in comparative education 11 “forces and factors” (kazamias, 2001) that shape the different types of educational patterns to understand the major educational codes embedded in the political, economic, and cultural configuration. thus, the historical analysis relied on what white (1996) describes as a “signpost,” since codings can take place across several sources, including official policy documents, government-funded studies, and administrative reports from the colonies, educational policies, white papers – all to examine what the different administrations (pre-and post-colonial) say about the policies that were being implemented. therefore, the educational codings across different educational patterns “places historical analysis of local histories and local trajectories front and center” (rappleye, 2012, p. 52). in grounding the analysis in the “genealogy of problems” of educational systems, where history is used to “understands facts to be objects of knowledge brought into view and highlighted in a conceptual system in which specific processes are seen as a problem” (nóvoa & yarivmashal, 2003, p. 431), the aim was to take up cowen’s (2000) infant conceptualization of educational codings by considering the context of tunisia’s educational system. while space does not permit a detailed overview of tunisia’s entire educational system, for the remainder of this article, the educational codes (la mission civilisatrice, le bourguibism, la sécuritocratie, and post-sécuritocracy) emerging from the historical-comparative perspective are used to illustrate cowen’s typology (pre-modern, modern, and late-modern) as they occurred during different transitions in tunisia’s history. in using these codings, it is suggested that as economic and political compressions occur to create macro transitological processes, we can simultaneously have micro or meso transitologies happening across vertical sites. following cowen’s (1996) framing of educational patterns, his three ideal-type models of transitologies can be viewed within the context of tunisia and how these patterns are central to the development of what i call transitologies of transitologies. moreover, during the transition from one period to another, we see the transitologies of transitologies develop as the old system fragments, and, in the new system, we see vestiges of that old transitology. pre-modern educational codings: la haute mission civilisatrice de la colonisation for cowen (1996), pre-modern educational patterns held political rather than economic purposes in high regard within the state. tunisia’s pre-protectorate educational coding not only corroborates cowen’s (1996) postulations, but they were significantly influenced by france’s cultural policy, which arrived in the middle east around the 1860s. in 1878, the alliance israélite universelle (aiu), viewed as modern and perceived as second only in importance to quai d’orsay’s (the foreign ministry), set up its first school in tunis. its policies ultimately yielded the long-term consequence of creating the “francophone factor” – where “tunisian are arabs, and the educated ones seem to be more at ease in france than in the arabic countries” (borowiec, 1998, p. 9). at the beginning of the french protectorate period, tunisia had one of the most advanced muslim educational systems in the maghreb region. following the bey of the husainid dynasty, tunisia’s pre-modern education codings are deeply entrenched in and defined by france’s “la mission civilisatrice” (the civilizing mission), which gave france significant control over tunisia under the 1881 treaty of bardo and total rheostat under the 1883 treaty of la marsa. this occurrence not only cemented tunisia’s status as a french protectorate but also led to the beginning of the tunisian transitology from one exogenous ruler (the bey of ottoman la mission civilisatrice, le bourguibism, and la sécuritocratie current issues in comparative education 12 eyalet tunis) to another (the french). when the french formally took control of tunisia, they found an educational system consisting of kuttabs, zitouna, and sadiki college. under the beys, the kuttabs – islamic primary schools – used arabic as its method of instructions for basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills to educate a small selected group of tunisians. students who showed an aptitude for learning were sent to pursue supplementary religious studies in the mosques, such as the grand zitouna mosque-university, located in tunis (degorge, 2002; sizer, 1971). upon finishing the zitouna, a small number of graduates found positions as islamic teachers, judges in sharia courts, or became members of the ulama ranks (an exclusive group of religious leaders) (green, 1978; micaud, 1964). in returning to the concept of transitologies of transitologies, in keeping the pre-french system intact during the transition to french protectorate and building a new system upon the old, we see how political and economic compressions shape new educational patterns. the movement toward colonial rule, as well as ensuring political and economic compressions of this transitology, saw tunisia steadfastly hold onto its schools, guilds, and limited judicial jurisprudence. however, in reality, the french had ultimate power in tunisia under the system of le control, grounded in the office of the french resident-general (alexander, 2010; ikeda, 2006). over time, power and ensuring “governance activities – funding, ownership, provision and regulation” – (dale, 2005) of education became centralized in the office of the resident-general, and the french language replaced arabic in the public sphere (jules & barton, 2014). the french found that the education at the kuttabs, zitouna, and sadiki college did not meet their administrative needs, and, in 1883, the tunisian system came under the control of la direction de l’enseignement public with louis machuel becoming the director of education (green, 1978). the educational system was thus reformed to mirror the french school system. by the time educational reforms were completed, the kuttabs had remained untouched. however, the franco-arab school system was established to instruct tunisians in french. in 1881, the european-style french secondary school, lycée carnot, was established and modeled after the french lycées in france and staffed entirely with french nationals. a distinctive feature of francophone educational patterns of the pre-modern era focused on preparing the political and administrative elites to function in the colonial bureaucracy (cowen, 1996; ikeda, 2006; rappleye, 2012; white, 1996). the evolution of tunisia as a protectorate was accompanied by the influx of french civil servants and administrators, creating “a colony of servants” who command a salary known as “le tiers colonial” (a colonial third). as france expanded its economic interests in the middle east, its educational interest developed. as the french solidified their control over tunisian society, it “retained, strengthened, and extended the bureaucratic administration of the local state” (anderson, 1986, p. 9), while at the same time laying the foundation for what ultimately became a powerful centralized educational bureaucracy that still exists. france’s intervention in tunisia was purely economic, and the french never wanted to create a “settler colony” (alexander, 2010) as it did in algeria. thus, this pattern – governance from afar by france – is one that depicts the educational code of ‘la haute mission civilisatrice de la colonization,’ since pre-modern tunisian education aimed at doing the absolute minimum in the colony while reaping the maximum benefits by ensuring that the bureaucratic machinery had the necessary human capital requirements. jules current issues in comparative education 13 modern educational codings: from la mission civilisatrice to bourguibisme the modern educational paradigm has three dimensions: “the role and moral messages of the central state, educational content and structures and the inter-national relations of the education system” (cowen, 1996, p. 168). independence from france signaled the movement from the pre-modern educational patterns categorized as la mission civilisatrice to modern educational codings classified by what is term bourguibisme. in defining the post-independence period as an era of modern education and the coding of this period as bourguibisme is twofold in that it has to do with the education reforms that occurred after abolishing the beys and the creation of the republic of tunisia by habib bourguiba in 1956. it is throughout this phase that a shift in educational ideology becomes clear: a focus on the perceived benefits to the nation. the transition from pre-modern to modern created a policyscape for the incubation of bourguibisme that ultimately rose as economic and political compressions occurred through the transformation of the tunisian landscape. throughout the struggle for independence, the emergence of modern educational codings during the tunisian transition can be seen. in tunisia, the post-independence period was characterized by the consolidation of its independence, sovereignty, and the abolishment of the monarchy under the proclamation of a republic with habib bourguiba as president, ‘father of the nation,’ ‘le guerrier suprême’ (the supreme warrior), ‘le combattant suprême (the combatant supreme), and later ‘presidential monarch’ as he assumed the role of both chief of state and chief of government. the economic and political compressions under the leadership of le guerrier suprême is defined by his focus on constructing the modern tunisian state by ‘tunisifying’ the bureaucratic structures and institutions (particularly the unification of the judiciary and education) through governing and redefining the society and the individual (jourchi, 2013). le guerrier suprême viewed modernity as a drastic break from the historical orthodoxy of arabic-islam, which was persuasive in the region at the time and focused on developing western-type systems. the educational codings prevalent under bourguibism are intricately linked to bourguiba’s ruling party parti socialiste destourien ([psd], the destour socialist party), and the educational policies in which they advanced. the most significant reform in the immediate aftermath of the transition to self-determination occurred in 1957 when the 1956 code du statut personnel (code of personal status) – proscribing polygamy, yielding female and male equivalent rights, ascertaining a minimum age for marriage, authorizing women to initiate divorce, and requiring the right to education for women – went into effect. the second tenant of bourguibisme was the 1958 ten-year educational plan that concentrated on “training expeditiously the cadre that the ongoing state-building urgently needs” (moet, 2002, pp. 9-10) and expanding access to schooling from first grade through university. at the heart of the expansion of mass education was the emphasis on technical and vocational education to ensure that the french bureaucratic structures were able to function. the third attribute that led to the categorizing of the modern educational codings, as being defined by bourguibisme, has to do with bourguiba personal philosophy that education held great power in transforming the nation to ensure that the “…legitimate right to fundamental needs such as sufficient food, decent housing, education, culture, health and a job” (teca, 1992, p. 21). additionally, he viewed education as the “training consonant with demands and needs of a society that aspires to progress and is resolutely open onto modernity” la mission civilisatrice, le bourguibism, and la sécuritocratie current issues in comparative education 14 (moet, 2003, p. 9). at the core of bourguibisme was the educational policy of tunisification or arabization – “(i) evoking history; (ii) enhancing culture and religion; and (iii) promoting gender equity” – (fryer & jules, 2013, pp. 409-410) that aimed to unify the country. during this period, bourguiba used “education to create citizensubjects … in which westernization and tunisian islamic culture would be ‘synthesized’” (champagne, 2007, p. 204), and by 1967, 90% of school-aged boys and 50% of girls were receiving a primary education (sizer, 1971). under bourguibism, the quest for modernity created several junctures within the ensuing policyscape. the political decision and revision of the tunisian constitution in 1959 that made bourguiba president for life, coupled with economic decisions and socialism, illuminated another case of the transitology of transitology. bourguibisme fell under pressure during the first five years, and the economy moved away from a centrally planned system to a form of state capitalism in the hope of creating jobs and encouraging development. while the plan for mass schooling continued, in 1961, bourguiba appointed ahemed ben salah, author of the 1955-56 socialist plan, as the head of the ministry of national plan and economy with the mandate of developing the tunisian economy at any cost. ben salah, like many other leaders, turned to import-substituting industrialization (isi) – substituting foreign imports with domestic products – to rejuvenate the tunisian economy. however, tunisian socialism – void of class conflict, marxist communism, and revolution – lasted for one decade and concentrated on developing cooperation as a way to reduce the disparities between the governorates. tunisian socialism, grounded in aspects of islam, was about planning and efficiently using resources; therefore, it did not signal a significant break or transitology from the forgoing era. instead, it was a well-crafted plan to safeguard the “implicit contract” (alexander, 2010). by 1970 socialism had failed, unemployment was high, elites were disenfranchised, and a growing educated population was becoming discontent. as a way to tackle these issues, the infitah (opening) reforms were implemented and led to the promotion of fiscal austerity in education while promoting privatization in other sectors. however, it was the 1984 bread riots and the treatment of rising islamic fundamentalism that led to the unraveling of bourguibism and the rise of ben ali and his securitocracy state. late-modern educational codings: from bourguibisme to securitocracy cowen’s last educational paradigm, late-modern, is a system concerned with creating “new patterns of labour force formation: the economic dimension of education becomes more influential than the civic” (cowen, 1996, p. 161). education takes on a neoliberal structure; whereas, choice becomes a prerogative for state and consumer. this is in sharp contrast to the modern paradigm given that states seek an “offloading” of educational responsibilities “while official and political discourse recasts citizens as consumers of education” (rappleye, 2010, p. 11). the business approach to education shifts away from the modern educational paradigm’s commitment to “equality of educational opportunity” and replaced “by conceptions of the internal efficiency of educational institutions and their external effectiveness” (cowen, 1996, p. 161). competition becomes the driving force within late-modern education systems – locally, nationally, and internationally. the historical trajectory of tunisia’s transitology to the late modern educational patterns commenced on november 7, 1987, in the bloodless coup d ‘état constitutionnel jules current issues in comparative education 15 or “medical coup d’état” (jebnoun, 2014) or “tranquil revolution” (alexander, 1997) by zine el abidine ben ali that removed bourguiba from power, citing his senility and incompetence in handling state affairs. the educational patterns under ben ali’s rise to power are framed by the securitocracy of the state apparatus. securitocracy – a strong security apparatus or “mukhabarat [intelligence-based] police state [based on a] ‘strong neo-corporatist state’ or the ‘force of obedience’ or an ‘authoritarian syndrome’” (as cited in schraeder & redissi, 2011, pp. 5-6) with securitocrats and the backing of ben ali’s party, the rassemblement constitutionnel démocratique (the democratic constitutional rally or rcd) – emerged as the counter narrative to bourguibisme. unlike the rest of the arabic world, tunisia’s military is a “meritocratic national institution” (el-shimy, 2011) structured around military defense. it is a composite of several sectors of the society and thus out of the control of the president. ben ali’s new national program, steeped in the neoliberal discourse of “national reconciliation,” quickly became the dominant rhetoric of the transitology. the national reconciliation had two key components, le changement (the change) and le pacte national (the national pact), both of which focused on economic and political change based on an “ahd jadîd” – new era or new covenant – (alexander 2010; erdle 2004). le changement became the official policy speak from the replacement of le parti socialiste destourien (the socialist destour party [psd], renamed in 1964 from neo destour party/nouveau parti libéral constitutionne) to le rassemblement constitutionnel démocratique (the constitutional democratic rally). the first reason for the party’s name change was to disassociate it with the failed socialist experiments of the 1960s that did not yield the intended economic result of incubating militant islam. the second reason was that it signaled to the west that tunisia was embarking upon new modes of economic governance and tackling its economic problems and high unemployment through neoliberalist policies. in this vein, the national reconciliation focused on ensuring political pluralism by bringing legal recognized political forces and the social and political organization into le pacte national. among other things, le pacte national called for recognizing the multiplicity of opinions, restoration of arabic and islamic influences, development of tunisian values, and commitment to the political system and goals for development. subsequently, reforms took place that focused on – “vaccinat[ing] against fundamental islam” (alexander, 2010, p. 50) by specifically claiming that islam is the national identity of tunisia; allowing the theology school of university of tunis to use its old islamic name, zitouna; abolishing the state security court that dealt only with cases involving fundamentalists; and prohibiting political participation base on “religion, language, race or region” (alexander, 2010, p. 45) – amending the penal codes for arrest and custody. le pacte national restructured the political landscape of tunisia by consolidating power into the “president democracy” – whereby all decisions were made by him – to guarantee political stability and security. the rhetoric of these reforms signaled the demise of bourguibism and the beginning of securitocracy, defined by the “rise of a security ‘technician’” (as cited in jebnoun, 2014, p. 108) under the aegis of “democratic apprenticeship” (alexander, 2010). in theory, ben ali’s policies contained the reforms that bourguiba had begun, but instead, the national reconciliation fixated on ridding the country of bourguibisme, in all but name, and moving away from socialism by concentrating on reforming living standards (alexander, 2010). in essence, securitocracy did not change the state’s la mission civilisatrice, le bourguibism, and la sécuritocratie current issues in comparative education 16 relationship with education as much it changed how ben ali talked about the virtues of tunisian education. whereas bourguibisme used a “single hegemonic party and state bureaucracy as tools to accomplish his ambitious political goals, ben ali mainly mobilized his power by closely surveying the population in both public and private space” (jebnoun, 2014, p. 102), and, therefore, its educational patterns stressed a new form of modernity. ben ali’s party became more dominant while educational partnerships were expanded with europe, and economic restructuring focused on nurturing tunisians for the european markets. conclusion: from la sécuritocratie to post-securitocracy (the national constituent assembly) and new educational transitologies to conclude, the contextualization of the second part of tunisia’s late-modern period of transitologies can be defined as the post-securitocracy era. as tunisia’s population is mostly devoid of prehistoric cleavages, tribalism, and sectarian issues, it is easier to chart this transitology in a general sense. noting the post-jasmine revolution era, with the imposition of a state of emergency and the suspension of the 1959 constitution, on october 23, 2011, tunisians elected the 271 members of the national constituent assembly (nca) with a mandate of drafting a new constitution (completed in january 2014). the post-securitocracy era is defined by three periods: (i) the rise of the troika (the alliance of the three large parties in tunisia – enahda [the renaissance party], the congress for the republic [cpr], and ettakatol [the democratic forum for labour and liberties]), (ii) the interim period of prime minister mehdi jomaa (january 29, 2014, to february 6, 2015); and (iii) the democratic transition under beji caid essebsi, elected president as of december 2014 to july 2019. the nca is, therefore, the commencement of transition from la sécuritocratie under ben ali’s regime to the post-securitocracy era system of governance. in this context, post-securitocracy is seen as a break from the political repression of the past and movement toward consolidated democracy. however, the transitology from the postsecuritocracy has only maintained the existing structures, and pre-revolutionary reforms are still being implemented. under prime minister mehdi jomaa (january 2014 to february 2015) no significant educational reforms were undertaken, but arabic became the de facto language of instruction in primary and secondary schools. under president beji caid essebsi’s, tunisia’s first post-revolutionary democratic president, the existing state security system was overhauled, and the remaining vestiges of authoritarianism were stripped. in fact, no major educational reforms were undertaken, and simple tweaks to the educational system were proposed under the planned strategies for the education sector 2016-2020, which called for private sector partnerships, curricula upgrades, teacher training, and quality in standards. what this shows is that during transitions, politicians were hesitant to make broad-based changes to the educational system and focused on band-aid solutions in the hope that they will trickle down – what i call a transitologies of transitologies. this meant that unemployment among youths remains high as the educational system is not catering to improve labor market performance. in placing this study within the broader literature in comparative and international education, it has been advanced that transitologies are not linear but multiscalar and embedded in several governance activities. in what follows, the idea is advanced that “educational codings” (cowen, 2000, p. 339) permit us to view educational disruptions jules current issues in comparative education 17 within transitologies that can give rise to the ‘transitologies of transitologies’ as educational reforms emerge under the compression of societal turbulence. in other words, as the transition occurs during any period of educational change (pre-modern, modern, and late-modern) as the efficacy of political and economic compression, the subsequent educational codes that emerge after the transition gives rise to new transitologies within education. this transitologies of transitologies create a splinter in the new system where vestiges of that old transitology remain within the current education system, and new transitological patterns emerge. the ensuing educational codes materialize during this period of educational change, thus creating a mega transitological event. therefore, transitologies of transitologies can exist within a specific educational transition, even if there is no significant social turbulence occurring within the society. it has been argued that education in transitory contexts is prized to undergo a different evolutionary dynamic. in other words, we can have different transitologies occurring at the same time and transitological moments within transitologies. therefore, a historical coding of tunisia’s educational patterns suggests that transitologies are a complex web of interstellar relations that crisscross different scales, include different actors, and exist outside of the compressions of political and social actions. as the world becomes more connected, innovation becomes key to establishing a knowledgeable economy. it can be suggested that as new players enter the educational landscape, national ideologies no longer drive transitologies, but rather, they are being driven by regional aspirations, international commitments, bilateral and multinational actors and agencies, transnational cooperation, and global transdiscursive practices. moreover, in the current error that legitimates megatrends (disruptive technology, demographic changes, climate security, and data mining), transitologies are no longer a national undertaking by a multiscalar activity that, in several instances, is also out of the hands of the state apparatus. it is suggested that while tunisians were firmly in control of the uprising that brought down the ben ali regime, the revolution was not the sole “coordinator in chief” (dale, 2005) of tunisia’s transitological trajectory. however, it certainly played a crucial role in strategically directing key transitological moments. such a distinction is essential in the current transitological period since transitologies are no longer solely shaped by political and economic compressions but are heavily included by ideological pivots in an era of uncertainty. thus, educational coding, as discussed above, is brought to fruition at the whims and fancies of personalities, donors, agendas-setting attitudes, and a host of other uncontrollable factors. while political and economic compressions create the perfect transitological storm, this trickledown effect of this storm into sectors such as education may have unintended and unmitigable consequences, thus giving rise to transitologies within transitologies. moreover, this study suggests that it is possible to do comparative research within one country by focusing on the transdiscursive architectonic components, particularly within the new cosmos that are coming to define economic capitalism (see vavrus & bartlett, 2006). the common thread that runs through all of the tunisian transitologies is that educational codings across different educational patterns begin and end with an over educated and unemployed youth population. it was the educated elite that rejected the mission civilisatrice and rose against the french. it was the post-independence educated elite that silently sanctioned the transition from bourguiba to ben ali in 1987. and again, it was the la mission civilisatrice, le bourguibism, and la sécuritocratie current issues in comparative education 18 educated masses that toppled ben ali in the jasmine revolution, causing the arab awakening. acknowledgments: i am grateful to teresa barton and devin moss for their research and feedback on this manuscript. tavis d. jules is an associate professor of cultural and educational policy studies at loyola university chicago, specifically focusing on comparative and international education and international higher education. his vast professional and academic experiences have led to research and publications across the caribbean and north africa. he is president of the caribbean studies association, book and media review editor for the comparative education review and an international institute of islamic thought fellow. his most recent books include: the educational intelligent economy: big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and the internet of things in education (with florin d. salajan, emerald 2019); educational transitions in post-revolutionary spaces: islam, security and social movements in tunisia (with teresa barton, bloomsbury 2018); re-reading education policy and practice in small states: issues of size and scale in the emerging intelligent society and economy (with patrick ressler, peter lang 2017); and the new global educational policy environment in the fourth industrial revolution: gated, regulated and governed (emerald 2016). email: tjules@luc.edu. jules current issues in comparative education 19 references acosta, f. c. & perez centeno g. 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(1996). talk about school: education and the colonial project in french and british africa (1860-1960). comparative education. 32 (1): 9-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050069628902 pineda munguia, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 digital learning measures in honduras during the covid-19 pandemic judith pineda munguia teachers college, columbia university demographics and actions at the start of the covid-19 pandemic honduras is located in central america bordering guatemala, nicaragua, el salvador, the pacific ocean, and the caribbean sea. it has over 9 million inhabitants (instituto nacional de estadística de honduras, 2019). the country has two major cities, tegucigalpa and san pedro sula. the population living in urban areas is approximately 54%, while those living in rural areas is 46% (red latinoamericana por la educación [reduca], 2018). the amalgamation of poverty, violence, and education opportunities has often resulted in families and children being displaced or forced to flee the country (fore, 2019). honduras has the second highest poverty rate in latin america and the caribbean: in 2019, prior to the covid-19 pandemic, 14.8% of the population lived on less than us$1.90 per day, and approximately 50% of the population lived on less than us$5.50 per day (world bank, 2021). persistent poverty affects 67% of the population, and about 60% of the rural population lives in extreme poverty (un human rights council, 2019). before the pandemic, there was limited and unequal access to public utilities, healthcare, and education (world bank, 2015). finally, violence and homicide rates are considered extremely high (un human rights council, 2019). the abovementioned factors play a role in the digital learning opportunities during school closures due to covid-19. the first covid-19 case was registered on march 10, 2020 (secretaría de salud, 2020). lockdown was enforced as early as mid-march allowing individuals to leave their homes only on predetermined dates according to the last digit in their id cards (la prensa, 2020a). overall, the number of cases continued to rise along with the death toll of health care practitioners (new york times, 2020; colegio médico, 2020). the honduran government declared a state of sanitary emergency in february 2020 to prevent and surveille covid-19 cases (economic commission for latin america and the caribbean, 2020). the education system in honduras the secretariat of education is responsible for authorizing and supervising informal and formal education (ley fundamental de educación, 2011). formal education is organized in (a) pre-basic education prior to grade 1 for 3–5-year-old students, (b) basic education from grades 1-9 for 6–14-year-old students, (c) middle education from grades 10-12 for 15-17 year-old students, and (d) higher education at the university level (república de honduras, 2019). there is one national basic curriculum for formal education in the country which is flexible in its implementation (reduca, 2018), and several education documents that complement it. see appendix a for a table listing recent and active education documents crafted by the state prior to the covid-19 pandemic. the fundamental law of education (2011) makes a distinction between public and private schools, recognizing the validity of private schools, subject to the supervision and norms © 2022, pineda munguia. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 173-188. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en pineda munguia current issues in comparative education 174 established by the government but not funded by the state (unesco-ibe, 2006). the secretariat of education, through the unidad de infotecnología (infotechnology unit, 2020) listed 34,951 schools in the country excluding universities, amongst which 2,486 private centers. within the private schools, 785 are bilingual (english/spanish). most private schools are in urban areas. as explored below, access to schooling during the covid-19 pandemic differed significantly between private and public schools. the fundamental law of education (2011) further states that mandatory education in honduras should last 13 years, but the existing average years of schooling is about half of that. this average was 6.2 years in 2014, and 7.7 years in 2017 (pisa, 2016; república de honduras, 2019). the recorded illiteracy rate was 14.5% in 2013, and 11.8% in 2017, indicating that over 600,000 adults are unable to read and write (pisa, 2016; república de honduras, 2019). in general, enrollment rates decrease as years of schooling increase (república de honduras, 2019). for example, the enrollment rate in basic education was 89.5% in 2017, while the enrollment rates for middle and higher education were 28% and 16.5%, respectively (república de honduras, 2019). these figures indicate that students are less likely to remain in school as they grow up. as considered below, dropout rates might increase as the socio-educational gap increases and access to digital schooling proves more difficult during the pandemic. digital learning strategies at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic in honduras, access to mobile phones reached almost 90% of the population prior to the covid-19 pandemic (poder ejecutivo & secretaría técnica y cooperación externa, 2013). data from 2017 indicated that 31.7% of the overall population had internet access, with a significant gap between the percentage of people in rural areas (6%) and urban areas (31%) (poder ejecutivo & secretaría técnica y cooperación externa, 2013; international telecommunication union [itu], 2019). in 2017, the overall percentage of households with computers was 17.1% (itu, 2019). according to data from the national statistics institute, there was a 23.7 percentage point gap between urban households in the country who owned a computer (28.6%) and rural households (4.9%) (poder ejecutivo & secretaría técnica y cooperación externa, 2013). this played a role in access to digital learning during school closures due to the covid-19 pandemic. in the 2014-2018 digital agenda for the country (poder ejecutivo & secretaría técnica y cooperación externa, 2013), the honduran government recognized the need to develop human capital related to ict by mentioning the need to incorporate ict within formal and informal education. the document lists 7 preliminary lines of action related to ict, including enriching formal education through ict, implementing non-formal training centers, and collaborating with universities, among others. on march 13, 2020, the government of honduras announced the closure of education centers as part of prevention mechanisms in response to the spread of covid-19 (despacho de comunicaciones y estrategia presidencial, 2020). on march 24, 2020, the secretariat of education announced plans for lessons to become available on television (secretaría de educación, 2020a; 2020b). meanwhile, private schools started offering synchronous and asynchronous classes through a variety of means according to each school (la tribuna, 2020a). at the higher level, although experts recognized limitations in internet access, universities shifted to online classes (dirección ejecutiva de gestión de tecnología, 2020). digital learning measures in honduras current issues in comparative education 175 unaware of the length of schools’ closure and with little preparation for nationwide distance learning, the state tried various strategies for learning from home (alas-solis, et al., 2020). on may 8, 2020, the government announced the strategy te queremos estudiando en casa (we want you studying at home), aimed at guaranteeing learning from home for public schools in the core subjects by working in collaboration with the national commission of telecommunications [conatel] (presidencia de la república, 2020c). the strategy included broadcasting lessons via television, radio, and the internet, and it also included printing educational material for students without access to telecommunications (presidencia de la república, 2020c). at first, the state prohibited teachers to demand work from students since there was a perception that classes might resume shortly. with the shift to virtual platforms and distance learning, the secretariat of education made available online teacher-training workshops for usage of virtual platforms, for norms of biosecurity in the workplace, and cybercrime (secretaría de educación, 2020k; 2020l; 2020m). in early july 2020, the secretariat of education announced that plans were underway to strengthen connectivity, implement sanitary conditions for safe return to classes, and improve infrastructure for schools (secretaría de educación. 2020c). at this time, the state started urging students and teachers to maintain learning active, stating that students would not be automatically promoted to their next grades (secretaría de educación. 2020c). over 120 tv and radio channels began broadcasting lessons free of charge (la tribuna, 2020b). additionally, in july 2020, the application open data kit (odk) was launched to track teachers from both private and public schools in their daily work (secretaría de educación, 2020d). on july 10, 2020, the government announced the evaluation guidelines for the school year for promotion to next grade level and the varying requirements for public and private education centers (secretaría de educación, 2020f). the president of conatel pointed out that the best solution to ensure that children received education required a comprehensive approach which include a variety of mediums for accessibility (la tribuna, 2020a). thus, the secretariat of education employed the digital learning platforms and social media channels listed in table 1 free of charge. many of the platforms point to the same resources. for example, the lessons in seduc-emergencia are linked to the videos in the youtube channel. see appendix b for user facts and figures on these learning platforms at the beginning of the pandemic. table 1 digital learning platforms and social media employed at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic in honduras name description seducemergencia. this is an app. resources such as lessons and workbooks are provided in an organized way. it provides announcements and updates. youtube: repositorio vídeos seduc. recorded lessons are uploaded here. these are arranged in playlists according to grade level. portal educativo de honduras: educatracho. the portal contains interactive lessons. videos, and workbooks are available here. pineda munguia current issues in comparative education 176 facebook page of portal educativo. it contains student and teacher resources, announcements, pictures, and posts. centro educativo virtual. courses are available for every grade, from preschool to grade 12. open data kit (odk). this app is used for reporting and tracking attendance. each school has a unique code for login and teachers as well as administrators use it. internet connection is required to access all the platforms listed in table 1. in honduras internet connection carries a cost. households of higher income are more likely to be able to afford internet connection. in addition, since many households do not have the type of internet access required to utilize the learning platforms, other resources that complement or substitute digital strategies were employed, such as tv, radio, and printed materials. experts in telecommunications in the country explained that more homes have access to cable tv than to the internet (la tribuna, 2020a). therefore, efforts were made to include lessons in regular tv and radio throughout the country. on july 22, 2020, the secretariat of education stated that there were over 230 communication media outlets including cable tv, direct tv, and radio programs (secretaría de educación, 2020j). additionally, the secretariat of education announced distribution of printed materials in rural areas with limited radio, tv, and internet connection (secretaría de educación, 2020g). finally, the secretariat of education specified that teachers were required to stay in touch with homes and follow up on learning (secretaría de educación, 2020h). thus, private and public schools were reporting to the secretariat of education using the application odk and providing evidence of students’ work on a weekly basis (secretaría de educación, 2020d). in sum, during the first phase of the covid-19 pandemic, the education system was forced to move from face-to-face schooling to distance education nationwide. in response, the secretariat of education of honduras promoted various strategies for learning from home, tracking results, and encouraging communication between teachers and students. the effectiveness of those valuable efforts made by the state is examined in the following sections of this report through the lived experiences of education experts during the time of confinement while considering the pre-existing education and socioeconomic conditions of the country. how effective was the implementation of digital learning strategies during the covid-19 pandemic in honduras? this exploratory study aims to understand how learning policies and digital learning measures implemented in honduras during the covid-19 pandemic impacted access to education, quality of education, and socio-economic gaps. the study involved semistructured interviews with a teacher working in a public school, a teacher working in a private school, and a policy analyst and education expert working for a university’s observatory which processes and disseminates information about the education system nationwide. although the small sample does not speak for larger trends within honduras, it provides a valuable window into the perspectives of individuals across the different educational strata in the country. interviews were conducted from november, 2020 to digital learning measures in honduras current issues in comparative education 177 january, 2021, and considered the professional viewpoints and lived experiences of the interviewees. findings indicate that the socio-economic gap is fueling inequalities in access and quality to education opportunities more than in the past with potential negative effects in society at large. this discussion explores accessibility to education opportunities during the pandemic, quality of education opportunities for students of various socio-economic status, and possible concerns for society emerging from a limited access to quality education. access: what factors influence access to education in honduras during the covid-19 pandemic? the gap in access to quality education was exacerbated during the covid-19 pandemic. the education expert interviewed explained that inequalities in learning opportunities have been aggravated during covid-19 due to social inequalities existing at home as learning moved from the school space –with common learning tools such as a teacher and a blackboard –to home. now home resources have a bigger impact on education. prior to the pandemic, studies showed that accessibility to education in honduras was impacted by socioeconomic and geographic status, where rural areas had less access than cities, and where private schools had more access than public schools (bos, et al., 2018; duarte, jaureguiberry & racimo, 2017). distribution of resources for education was unequal as the poorest quartile of the population had very poor school infrastructure. internet access is a prerequisite for all the digital platforms implemented by the government and for consistent communication between teachers and students, but economic restrictions imposed considerable limitations in internet access. for example, the public-school teacher explains: in our students’ homes, often, there is only one phone per family. the family has 3, 4 or 5 children and they can only purchase a whatsapp package on their cell phone... [but they] must have a standard or high data package... there may be the coolest videos and we can have the most beautiful platforms but, if our receiver lacks the resources to choose to engage as a result of inequalities and the extreme poverty in which we live, what are we going to do? on the contrary, private schools often used other platforms such as google classroom, zoom, and materials made available by the spanish publishing house santillana for virtual synchronous and asynchronous lessons (personal communication, december 21, 2020). all interviewees mentioned the government’s failed promise to provide free internet access for educational purposes. the legislative decree 60-2020, published in mid-2020, ordered free internet access for educational purposes (estrada, 2020). however, all interviewees expressed frustration at its non-existent implementation, especially since the validity period of the decree ended after the 2020 school year was finalized. the seriousness of the matter was explained by an interviewee citing a survey in which about 40% of parents stated that they are uncertain whether their children will finish the school year because they are unable to pay the internet costs necessary to connect with school and send homework (alas-solis, et al., 2020). the discrepancy between access to education opportunities for students from differing socio-economic backgrounds was heightened during the covid-19 pandemic as was also articulated by the policy analyst interviewed: pineda munguia current issues in comparative education 178 the difference is clear within elite private schools, where they have all the conditions for a virtual connection, and the educational activity has been developing quite complete. at the other extreme, in the public centers, students cannot connect, or there is no internet, or no cable tv signal, etcetera. all this is aggravated if we consider that there is no textbook and didactic guides or workbooks. if the student had these materials at home, then it would be easier for the teacher to be guiding the activity, but, if the child has absolutely nothing but an old notebook that he used last year and does not have books at home..., and [has] parents with low education... [then], the poorest children have lost almost a year of schooling even if they are passed to the next grade. the third regional comparative and exploratory study (terce, 2013) revealed that only 14% of the sampled students attended schools with sufficient overall infrastructure (duarte, jaureguiberry & racimo, 2017). other limitations in accessibility emerge from the country's overall infrastructure and ict impacting public and private schools. an example of limited infrastructure connected to ict is the frequent rationing of electricity. for instance, the private school teacher stated, “there are a lot of power outages here [in the country]. it not only affects them, [students] but also us, teachers. there were days when i started ‘good morning, how are you?’, and puff! electricity was disconnected. i didn't hear from them again until the power came on.” finally, geographically, there was a shortage of schools in rural areas and students in the lowest income sectors had lower education coverage rates (república de honduras, 2019). findings showed that location plays a role in accessibility to learning avenues during the pandemic. many students who live in rural areas have extremely limited connectivity to the internet and tv as well as less access to learning tools or an adequate learning environment at home. although the government took steps to reach students in rural areas, the actions were insufficient. the policy analyst stated, “one must recognize the secretariat [of education] had initiatives [as] they distributed books in rural areas...but, if they distributed 40-50 thousand books and enrollment is a million and a half, the effort is good, but more is needed”. nonetheless, due to the active role of teachers in these rural areas, many students continued to have some access to school related work. the policy analyst further commented, “there are a large number of teachers in rural areas who...made the effort, and have done it all year, to walk from house to house, [or] put the homework in the village grocery store for the parent to come and copy it”. quality: how well are students in honduras learning during the covid-19 pandemic? prior to the pandemic, educational achievement indicators placed honduras below average in international and regional evaluations. in 2013, honduras participated in terce carried out by the regional office for latin america of unesco evaluating 3rd and 6th grade in language, math, and science (flotts et al., 2015). moreover, in 2017, over 4,773 honduran students participated in pisa-d, which evaluates reading, math, and science (bos, et al., 2018). honduras’s results in terce and pisa-d were below the regional median in all areas at all evaluated grade levels, with differences of more than a school year in some tested areas (flotts et al., 2015; bos, et al., 2018). in this study, interviewees reported increased unease around students’ learning during the covid-19 pandemic due to the implementation of digital learning strategies from home. although the secretariat of education declared that schools kept 85% enrollment rates during the pandemic (secretaría de educación, 2020i), interviewees expressed concern around the learning achievement of these students. as mentioned above, the government used the odk application to track enrollment and attendance from both private and public schools weekly (secretaría de educación, 2020d). however, interviewees explained that the digital learning measures in honduras current issues in comparative education 179 application only tracked if the students were responding to the teacher's assignments, with little regard to the accuracy of the responses or students’ understanding. the interviewed public-school teacher stated that, “[completing tasks] gives the indicator that the student is working, but it does not give us the indicator that the student is learning”. interviewees reported the perception that the government “wants to fill in a figure, not to improve educational quality”. as a result, teachers expressed fear towards students passing to the next grade level without attaining the expected learning competencies and skills, impacting the overall quality of education in the country over the long-term. historically, the lack of quality public education has influenced privatization, impacting unequal access to education opportunities and widening the socio-educational gap (verger, moschetti & fontdevila, 2017; edwards et al., 2019). the 2017 pisa-d evaluation reveals that honduras displays the widest performance gap in the region between private and public schools. low performance is heightened on students from underprivileged backgrounds, with 96% obtaining low results in pisa-d compared to 78% from students with a privileged economic status (bos, et al., 2018). when comparing public and private schools during the pandemic, there were varying approaches around structuring school from home which had a direct impact on the perceived quality of education received. interviewees in this study explained that, during the pandemic, while public schools halted or slowed activities waiting for the government's stipulations for education measures, parents within private schools were able to impose higher demands on the type and quality of education provided through their private institutions. for example, while waiting for official government guidelines, classes as well as communication with students’ homes continued in private schools shortly after inperson schooling closed. the private school teacher explained that, after a few weeks, the school had developed schedules to accommodate synchronous virtual classes through platforms like zoom, provided digital training to their staff, created individual email accounts for students using virtual learning spaces like google classroom, and started employing other paid learning platforms connected to textbooks like santillana. the private school teacher expressed that “in private institutions, a parent demands a lot because he is paying… [they] demanded class time and the complete use of the books. we had to adapt”. in contrast, public schools, while dealing with the connectivity issues previously mentioned, received conflicting instructions from the secretariat of education. the secretariat of education seemed to lack a consistent methodology when addressing the situation emerging in school due to covid-19 pandemic. the public-school teacher explained that “the secretariat [of education] woke up a long time later, when they were almost in the fourth quarter”. first, under the perception that classes could resume soon, the secretariat of education prohibited teachers from demanding students to deliver homework. next, they promised and failed to deliver free internet access. finally, the secretariat of education shared another official communication stating that students who did not provide proof of work would not be promoted to the next school year. the policy analyst and education expert concluded that “the public system has functioned in a very limited way...therefore, the levels of learning, as expressed by teachers, parents and students...are very little or nothing.” the relevance of meaningful student-teacher interactions was highlighted by all interviewees when addressing learning achievement and perceived quality education. the private school teacher alluded to the importance of interacting with students to promote learning while stating that, “when we were just assigning homework for students, it was much more difficult [for students] to do it completely alone. once they connected with us pineda munguia current issues in comparative education 180 [through virtual classes and video conference platforms] and we [teachers] explained, then, they could have guidelines on how to do things...or understand them”. unfortunately, for the public and rural school sectors with more connectivity issues, student-teacher interaction and feedback was not commonplace. the public-school teacher stated that, when she tried to interact with her students, few were able to connect, and many had low band levels, being unable to hear or communicate virtually. throughout the school year, this public-school teacher made attempts to connect with students while considering their economic limitations, changing meeting times when digital devices were available at homes, yet less than half of the students were able to connect. additionally, parents’ schooling played a role in meaningful interactions conducive to learning. the public-school teacher explained that: the parents of children in private schools generally have opted for higher levels of academic training and can become tutors of their children...on the other hand, the parents of the children in our schools ... are of low educational levels so [it affects] ... the levels of reading comprehension and reasoning ... they may have the material, but if there is no guidance directly from the teacher [learning] is also very lacking. similarly, the policy analyst explained, “we know that...learning normally takes place in that [student-teacher] interaction but, for the vast majority of students in the public sector, connecting with teachers on a normal schedule did not happen because...[it] implies having an internet service that has an economic cost”. finally, all interviewees stated that learning achievement for students with special needs was considerably impacted. in addition to limitations imposed by economic conditions, possible adaptations to support students with special needs were affected. in a private school where students with special needs are more readily identified with plans to support their learning, the teacher, when referring to students with special learning needs conceded that: it has been difficult to adapt the little virtual time that we have… i believe we need to… see the possible ways of working with them… there are strategies [designed] for in-person…[but] this group has escaped us; we really have not been able to meet their needs. society: what are the potential consequences of learning inequality in honduras during the covid-19 pandemic? socioeconomic status and access to quality learning opportunities work in a feedback loop that continues to widen the socio-educational gap. historically in honduras, violence and organized crime have been a barrier to access education, especially in areas of low socioeconomic income (alas-solis & hernandez, 2020). in 2019, more than half a million of school-aged children and youth were out of school, and in gang-controlled areas (fore, 2019). dropping out of school, followed by internal displacement and immigration, has been a way to escape violence threats and/or forced gang recruitment (alas-solis & hernandez, 2020; fore, 2019; park, 2014). all interviewees observed that potential adverse effects in society are now heightened as unequal education opportunities during the pandemic became more prominent, leading to lower levels of education, higher school dropout rates, and further widening of the preexisting socioeconomic gap. these factors could contribute to higher emigration and violence rates in the country. digital learning measures in honduras current issues in comparative education 181 a common fear expressed by interviewees are the diminishing levels of education as students were promoted to the next grade level without the necessary skills and knowledge. as indicated by international evaluation studies, terce in 2013 and pisa-d in 2017, honduran students were not achieving the basic levels of competencies, yet grade repetition rates were among the lowest in the region, with 28% of boys and 20% of girls reporting repeating a grade at least once in their education (bos, et al., 2018; flotts et al., 2015). all interviewees reported perceiving an accelerated rate in lower educational achievement due to changes in education during the pandemic. to counteract this phenomenon, public and private universities in the country collaborated to create and present to the secretariat of education the proposal for the prioritization of the educational sector strategic plan (lagos, 2021; universidad nacional autónoma et al., 2021). however, the policy analyst interviewed explained that no measures have been officially announced by the government for the 2021 school year to counteract learning inequalities emerging from the socioeconomic gap. lack of action may contribute to two consecutive years of precarious learning conditions with serious learning gaps. consequently, there is less confidence in the relevance of education. this lack of confidence from students and parents may contribute to higher school dropout rates and its associated negative aftereffects such as migration and violence. for example, the policy analyst stated that “youth think that in their country there are no opportunities, that they have to emigrate, that the educational system does not support them. they do not see the functionality”. similarly, a study on eighth and ninth grade students confirmed that most participants were already thinking about emigrating as they believed it was useless to continue studying if they were not going to find work (alas-solis & hernandez, 2020). furthermore, the policy analyst explains that they have calculated that, without appropriate measures, enrollment rates can drop to fifty percent. he stated: having half of the underage population out of the system is putting those hundreds of thousands of young people at risk in a society where there is no work, where they cannot study...it is a place of high-risk because they look for opportunities to have some income through criminal means ... it is a time bomb to have these minors out of the educational system. in sum, the country faces potential alarming consequences from a widening socioeducational gap due to unequal access to schooling during digital learning in times of the covid-19 pandemic. conclusion prior to the covid-19 pandemic, there was a significant gap in access to quality learning opportunities due to socioeconomic gaps. in line with safety measures during the first phase of the covid-19 pandemic, in-person classes moved to distance education from home. the government aimed to implement various interventions to enable students' continued engagement with education opportunities, including digital platforms, social media usage, distribution of printed resources, and usage of tv and radio to broadcast lessons. however, many of those efforts proved insufficient as students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and rural areas were unable to access many of these resources due to connectivity issues while private schools, with students with higher socioeconomic status, opted to use other paid platforms. there is a concern around lower learning achievement, especially for students from lower income households as there is limited room for student-teacher interactions, feedback and proper formal learning assessments. thus, the interruption on learning seems to have a higher impact on underprivileged students, contributing to furthering the socio-educational gap with potential negative pineda munguia current issues in comparative education 182 outcomes in society, including higher school dropout, violence, and emigration rates. further research on the impact of digital learning strategies in honduras during the covid-19 could investigate themes related to changes implemented during the second year of schooling from home, dropout rates after one year of schooling, internal displacement and immigration rates of families with economic restrictions, the impact of digital learning on indigenous communities, and the impact on education strategies for students with special learning needs. judith pineda munguia holds a ma in international education development from teachers college, columbia university. she is an education 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(2021). honduras overview. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/honduras/overview digital learning measures in honduras current issues in comparative education 187 appendix a recent and active planning instruments by the state of honduras prior to the covid-19 pandemic relevant to quality education current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 © 2022, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 173-188. appendix b user facts on national learning platforms employed for digital learning in honduras at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic platform seducemergencia youtube channel: repositorio vídeos seduc portal educativo de honduras: educatracho facebook page of portal educativo educatracho centro educativo virtual (virtual educational center) open data kit (odk) mobile data use needed needed needed needed needed needed type of platform open to all types of learning lessons through videos open to all types of learning open to all types of learning open to all types of learning open to teachers & administrators focus core subjects in basic national curriculum plan (cnb) from preschoolgr.12 . core subjects in cnb from preschoolgr12. . video lessons . core subjects in cnb from preschoolgr12 . relevant resources for teachers, students, and parents . links to online workshops for teachers, statistics, and other relevant information . workbooks available in pdf for download . announcements and posts applicable to all grade levels resources for all grade levels in the education system and all subjects tracking attendance and capturing evidence of student learning type of software app available at the google play store for phones and tablets. made with glide youtube videos website/portal created by the secretariat of education facebook a portal available through the secretariat of education’s website information not available 8_tarc_education post-‘covid-19’re-visioning the face-to-face classroom current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 22, issue 1, special issue 2020 © 2020, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 22(1), 121-124. education post-‘covid-19’: re-visioning the face-to-face classroom paul tarc university of western ontario for better and worse, the covid-19 crisis will necessarily advance a number of instrumental responses for online education under the global shutdown of face-to-face classrooms. unfortunately, it will also be employed as ‘shock doctrine’ (klein, 2007) to advance a much more aggressive move to online education that would be hardly possible in more normal times, but that is a different story. covid-19 has accelerated but did not begin the move to online education. artificial intelligence (ai) will take us even further as new technologies not only deliver text, audio and visuals but interactively engage with student learning processes and do so across longer periods of the learner’s development. how ai will or might transform education, also, is another paper. this essay asks its readers to consider the online environment and the shutdown of face-to-face (f2f) classrooms as a condition that represents a new vantage for thinking, and particularly so for re-imagining and perhaps re-visioning f2f pedagogies. beyond coping and learning anew under these changes, might we consider the dramatic crisis as a new vantage from which to better understand educational ideals, those we hold to and those we have yet to fully develop? as the eminent political philosopher hannah arendt (2006/1954, p. 171) reminds us, in times of crisis or dramatic transformation we must not forget that “the answers” we normally rely on, were originally answers to questions. as actors working inside institutions, we will no doubt spend considerable energy tweaking ‘old answers’ to adapt them to the changing conditions brought about by the move to online education. however, as arendt warns us, most important in a crisis is to return to the questions themselves. in education, this approach would press us to rethink educational ideals in light of changing technologies and changing human literacies. our movements out of f2f teaching, thus, represent a ‘vantage’ from which to view and re-assess what education (and the human) is or might be. with an immersive experience in a foreign country we (may) learn about the geography, language and culture of the new country. however, the most profound learning, the transformative shift, is constituted in the de-naturalizing of internalized assumptions produced in our own culture and norms (tarc, 2013). similarly, ‘seeing’ from the online vantage can lessen our grip on ‘the answers’ and “forces us back to the questions themselves” (arendt, 2006/1954, p. 171), in this case, on the purposes or essence of education under contemporary conditions. rather than (only) lamenting upon how our methods are constrained in new teaching environments, we might discover altered and more generative purposes for education in our current worldly conditions, which guide us to transformed pedagogies in the formerly taken-for-granted ‘bubble’ of the f2f classroom. rethinking educational aims and pedagogies in light of changing conditions is a demanding endeavor, both challenge and opportunity. and it is also important to keep in mind that the current limits and possibilities of online education are inflected education post-‘covid-19’ current issues in comparative education 122 by already existing f2f environments, learning, relationships and identities. online enthusiasts leverage this condition to suggest that the advanced technologies are not the problem, but the slow-to-change mindsets of educators beholden to f2f settings. but the converse is also true here and much less acknowledged. we must also understand that current successes, so to speak, of online teaching may be supported by or founded on prior f2f interactions. just as private companies sometimes parasitically and inconspicuously rely on public resources to generate their efficiencies, so too most online education achievements are still reliant on relationships and identities forged within f2f settings. as we return to face-to-face teaching next term or next year, how might we take our insights developed from our current vantage of online teaching to prioritize and optimize what f2f pedagogies afford in relation to our updated understanding of educational ideals, methods and our values as educators? beyond the practical solutions to make physical classrooms work (face masks, hand sanitizers in every classroom, temperature probes), how will we re-structure our face-to-face pedagogies? and, what will we, perhaps, continue to leave to the online environment so that we can best use the in-class face-to-face time? what does our (not so) new environment of online education teach us about the importance of face-to-face classrooms and productive pedagogies for this setting? these are the questions posed to the reader, as the main intervention of this paper. in the remaining paragraphs, i tentatively respond to these questions from my perspective as an educationalist with f2f classroom teaching experience in k-12 schools and in f2f and online teaching experience in canadian higher education. for me, as an educator in higher education with considerable autonomy of my curricular materials and teaching approaches, the greatest lack in the virtual classroom are the greatly diminished multi-sensory communication feedback loops. these feedback loops are crucial to the relational, and emotionally-laden, labour of educating. the capability to quickly read the body language, facial expressions, class dynamic and circulation of ideas and affects is greatly minimized in the virtual classroom; in turn, so is a spontaneity and capacity to engage and expand the intersections of teacher (identity, experience and knowledge), students (identities, experiences and knowledge) and curriculum. in online contexts, the building of these relations—teacher-student, student-student, student-curricular knowledge—seems much reduced. educating is often reduced to the act of knowledge dissemination and reception, but educators know that this notion is very skeletal. yes, learning, is ubiquitous, life-long and life-wide, and especially so in the digital era. but, education is about building these social, affective and epistemic relations and channeling students’ desires for knowing and being with others in the world (mishra tarc, 2015). my greatest anxiety in synchronous online teaching a class of students is this feeling of being disconnected and not literally, but again socially, emotionally, epistemologically. i am facing my two-dimensional screen, telling myself that all is good and to stick to my plan—delivering content, directing activities, facilitating turns to ‘speak’—all the while wondering… are you there? can you ‘see’ me? are you with me? are you okay? where are you? are we okay? tarc current issues in comparative education 123 despite my inadequacies in teaching and in online technologies, this anxiety is pointing to the emergent aspects of pedagogy that bring life and significance to a collective engagement and learning in the classroom. the social/peer dynamic and working and broadening the intersections of teacher, students and curriculum as a ‘border’ pedagogy would seem to require physical presence and multi-sensory communication, as suggested above. relationality’s constitutive role in education is particularly salient in the earliest years of education. admittedly, adult learners may have the experience and developed capacities to build relations and make attachments to knowledge under the thinner features of the online classroom. for this reason, that virtual education must currently take place in elementary (and secondary) levels is much more problematic than in higher education. still, in teaching graduate education, it is readily apparent that similar teacher-student and group dynamics of building relationships and emotional ‘hand-holding’ is vital with adult learners as well. thus the altered and ‘thinned out’ qualities of online pedagogy, begs the question i have posed above, how might insights developed in the new vantage of online learning reframe my vision and practices as a f2f teacher? in re-visioning my f2f teaching after ‘covid-19,’ my sense is that i will be much more committed to using our class time to work on the building of relationships, to engage in those intersections/borders of teacher, student and curriculum to cultivate students’ social, emotional and epistemic attachments. concretely, i think this means slowing down, worrying less about getting through the curriculum. while articulating one’s pedagogical theories or inclinations is one level, one’s teaching practice is another level. one’s own schooling and internalizations of being professional and responsible also shape one’s classroom teaching practices, and sometimes unconsciously. thus, a relation-building ‘border’ pedagogy can be challenging in practice, because one can feel the pressure to ‘give the knowledge’ and the ‘correct’ readings. despite my own rhetoric, i may still be focused on ‘covering curriculum’ rather than fully taking the time to draw out the student’s thinking and really invest in the student’s articulation rather than to ‘race back’ to the (authority of the) text or my own reading. although attached to progressive modalities i have become somewhat dissatisfied with the ‘student discussion mode’ in my class where we sometimes get caught in discussions that run peripheral to the prescribed course reading. i have been compelled to more frequently lecture students with my own interpretations of the reading that i understand as potentially useful to their prospective research studies. a shifting emphasis between more or less teacher-directed pedagogies i think is common across one’s teaching career. the point i want to make here is that i see that this dissatisfaction has been pressing me toward lecturing, which is not an optimal use of f2f teaching. rather, this exercise of re-visioning has produced the insight that a better response is not to turn to more teacher delivery (nor to student talk/discussion for its own sake), but to slow down and really listen to students’ dialogue and take the time with other students to relate it to our common curricular object and wider course goals. my ‘teacher learning’ needs to refocus on the tendencies and patterns (and effects) of students’ diverse interpretations, resistances and refusals of the readings as vital in working in the ‘borders’ of students’ thinking and feelings, the curriculum and my own interpretations. it is this relation building that is the best use of my time in the class with students, and not re-focusing on (improving) my delivery of my knowledge/interpretation. the text is already in students’ hands; my interpretation, education post-‘covid-19’ current issues in comparative education 124 as well, exists in publications and these are readily available. availability is not the problem but the desire to seek out what these texts offer. what the f2f classroom affords are rich opportunities for individual and collective dialogue, careful listening, re-reading, unpacking and questioning in the ‘borders,’ which can truly inform critical understandings and uses of curriculum as well as (the channelling of desire to) stronger attachments to knowledge and knowledge seeking. thus, it is researching and deepening the student-teacher-curriculum intersections and not improved content delivery that the f2f classroom can afford me. this is my transformed perspective. paul tarc is associate professor in the faculty of education at western university in london, ontario, canada. he is coordinator of the online master of professional education in ‘international education’ and of the ‘international education’ cohort specialization in the teacher education program. his research centers on progressive and critical modalities of education in global times. email: ptarc2@uwo.ca. references arendt, h. (2006/1954). the crisis in education. in h. arendt, between past and future (pp. 170-193). new york: penguin books. klein, n. (2007). the shock doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism. new york: allen lane. mishra tarc, a. (2015). literacy of the other: renarrating humanity. new york: suny press. tarc, p. (2013). international education in global times: engaging the pedagogic. new york: peter lang. fornaro, c. j., sterin, k., & struloeff, k. l. book review current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 1, winter 2021 book review qualitative data collection tools: design, development, and applications by felice d. billups sage publications, 2020, 240 pp. $30.00 (paper) isbn-10: 1544334826 christopher j. fornaro drexel university, school of education kimberly sterin drexel university, school of education katrina lynn struloeff drexel university, school of education where do we even begin? research is not easy. learning how to navigate qualitative research can be particularly murky. the three reviewers of billups (2020) book, qualitative data collection tools: design, development, and applications, used the text during an introduction to qualitative research methods and analysis class within their ph.d. program and strongly recommend it to other phd students and early scholars. after completing foundational courses and learning about some of the belief systems that drive educational research, such as epistemology and ontology, it was time to tackle a research project. so what now? the three reviewers, all first year phd students at the time, came to their qualitative course excited to work through pilot studies in their own focus areas. they had all spent time reading research studies, writing about potential research they would conduct, and discussing theoreticals, but this was the opportunity to design and conduct their own research. the reviewers found the following three sections particularly helpful when managing the logistics of their pilot studies to provide the “thick description” (geertz, 1973) that is vital to qualitative research: (1) researcher role, access, trustworthiness, and ethical concerns, (2) interview protocol, and (3) observation tools. while these sections are not novel to the billups text, the authors had read this type of guiding text in similar texts such as cohen et al. (2007) and creswell and guetterman (2018), billups’s writing is in digestible chunks that provide salient points to support getting out and conduct research. furthermore, each chapter contains various templates that suggest ways to collect data for a research study. these templates were pivotal in the reviewers’ development of their pilot studies and three salient examples are provided below. researcher role, access, trustworthiness, and ethical concerns (chapter 3) no matter which epistemological camp qualitative researchers situated themselves within, the vitally and conversation of their role as the researcher must be addressed. © 2021, fornaro. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(1), 109-112. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en fornaro, sterin & struloeff current issues in comparative education 110 methodologists often state that the researcher is the tool, but actual application of that phrase is one that novice researchers can struggle to embrace. billups addresses this struggle with a practical conversation of each facet and tools for implementation. first, through the discussion of bias and positionality, billups outlines how researchers need to provide transparency of who they are, what formed their experiences and beliefs, and how these components bring potential bias to their research practice. through this, billups suggests the inputs of building a quality transparent relationship through interviewing, transcribing, and addressing findings with participants. struloeff found these strategies to be extremely helpful during her communication, interviews, follow-up, and presentation of findings with participants. interviewing up, that is interviewing participants who hold a higher rank institutionally and socially than the researcher, struloeff was able to offer transparency and authenticity allowing participants to feel heard, offer additional insights, and ultimately critically engage in their own reflections. billups created a table that provides the commonalities of rigor between quantitative and qualitative research with a space for the bridge between the two forms of research and the essential questions. this simple representation assisted struloeff in understanding the terminology, approach, and parallels between the often dichotomous and contentious forms of research. perhaps more importantly, it provided a starting point, language for discussion, and tactics for how to ensure credibility, dependability, transferability, confirmability, and authenticity. as qualitative research continues to gain recognition and traction, researchers must continue to strive for excellence, especially in the areas addressed in this chapter. interview protocols (chapter 4) interviews are often the crux of qualitative data collection. billups first describes the strengths and limitations of an interview, the requisite characteristics needed for a skilled interviewer, and the various formats and types of interviews. what sets the billups text apart from other books on qualitative research is that she then provides eight interview protocol templates for the researcher to use as models for their particular research study. the first two templates are for unstructured and semi-structured interviews, respectively. sterin found that having a visual example of what the interview protocol could look like extremely helpful. billups includes placeholders for logistical information such as the date, time, and place at the top of the template as well as reminders about interview information and procedures to relate to the interviewee. when conducting multiple interviews over long periods of time this information may be helpful for accurate record keeping and consistency of depth of information given to the interviewee about the research study. next, billups includes an outline for the sequence of questions that includes bolded sections and a layout for the interview questions. as a novice researcher, sterin found this guidance to be particularly useful both when designing her interview protocol and when justifying the question sequence in her description of the research design. billups advises to begin with broad, introductory questions, then move to content questions with potential probing questions, and finally, to conclude with a summary question and an invitation to the interviewee to add anything else they would like to share qualitative data collection tools: design, development, and applications current issues in comparative education 111 on the topic. sterin’s application of this last open-ended question proved to be notably fruitful when conducting her interviews. the templates conclude with a note to thank the interviewee and reminders about any follow-ups the researcher may want to engage in. after using this template, sterin can attest to the value of including these final reminders within the interview protocol itself. during the course of an interview, it is easy for the researcher to become so engrossed with the content that they may benefit from having pre-written reminders for logistical next steps. the third template is a note-taking recording sheet designed to capture non-verbal cues and templates 4 through 8 are specific to certain research designs including phenomenological, ethnographic, and narrative. researchers looking to utilize these designs would benefit from these interview templates. observation tools (chapter 7) observations seem to be a straightforward process at first. document what was said, by who, and the group dynamic. however, billups sets the stage with the researcher needing to consider how they are coming to the observation. she uses gold’s (1958) categories of a complete participant, observer as quasi-participant, researcher as participant, and complete observer as a consideration for how the researcher is approaching their observation and their level of involvement. the concept of observing an established group as an outsider was challenging for fornaro to approach. additionally, due to covid-19, the observation would take place on a webbased video conferencing platform. this meant that the field of view was contained to what was visible in each participant's camera. fornaro leaned heavily on two of the three templates provided by billups that focused on creating a chart for the observation. billups suggestion to observe “not just what is happening but what is not happening” (billups, 2020, p. 133) is evident through her inclusion of “group interaction and behaviors, tone/mood” in template 7.2. by including a similar topic for observation in the pilot studies observational chart, fornaro was able to take note of how talking time and tone shifted between employees of an organization depending on their experience at the organization. as an outsider to an organization, having the templates from this text allowed fornaro to stay focused throughout the observation and look for key interactions between participants that may have otherwise been missed. adding to your qualitative toolbox the sections above are just three of the chapters that contained templates that the authors directly related to their own process. billups included templates and guidance for conducting discourse analysis, moderating focus groups, document analysis, reflecting on research, and synthesizing data sources in qualitative research. while each section is not exhaustive on these topics, they equip new or early qualitative scholars with the main ideas and tools to design, collect, and analyze quality data for their research projects which was what billups set out to do with this text. the templates should be utilized as a living document for early scholars to build from and adjusted to their own contexts. qualitative data collection tools: design, development, and applications is a text that should be fornaro, sterin & struloeff current issues in comparative education 112 included in early scholars’ libraries as they look to develop their first qualitative research projects. christopher fornaro is a ph.d. student in drexel’s school of education with a focus in stem education. his current research interests center on supporting instructors in out-of-school stem programming, the benefits for students of out-of-school stem programming, and ways to authentically blend together the individual disciplines of stem. kimberly sterin is a doctoral student pursuing a ph.d. in education policy and leadership from the school of education at drexel university. sterin has spent seven years as an english teacher in k-12 public schools in montgomery county, maryland. sterin earned a master's degree in secondary education from johns hopkins university. katrina struloeff is a ph.d. student in drexel’s school of education. she earned a master’s degree from carnegie mellon university heinz college in public policy. her research interests focus on leadership and representation for women and minoritized populations, policy design, and principles and practices of effective leaders in education. references billups, f. d. (2019). qualitative data collection tools: design, development, and applications (vol. 55). sage publications. cohen, l., manion, l., & morrison, k. (2007). research methods in education (6th ed.). routledge. creswell, j. w. & guetterman, t.c. (2018). educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (6th ed.). pearson. geertz, c. (1973). the interpretation of cultures: selected essays. basic books. gold, r. l. (1957). roles in sociological field observations. social forces, 36, 217-223 6. schindel et al copyedited.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 2, special issue 2023 racializing climate justice in/for education alexandra schindel university at buffalo (suny) monica l. miles university at buffalo (suny) kate haq university at buffalo (suny) keywords: climate justice, climate justice education, racial justice, sustainability introduction in this essay, we argue for racializing approaches to teaching climate change to better understand and address climate injustices. the climate emergency and racial injustice have received a lot of attention in the past few years which highlights the intensification and merging of crises. indeed, there has never been a greater concern in the twenty-first century for the state of the environment and for racial injustices. we give credit to the black lives matter movement for being the megaphone for issues related to black people. however, even the most passionate activists often view climate and racial injustices as distinct battles. this juxtaposition has left the climate justice movement disproportionately white and without a strong racial analysis that examines the ways people of color and poor people are impacted by climate change (miles et al., 2021). consider the historic blizzard of 2022 in buffalo, new york, where nearly 40 people died over a span of three days. climate scientists have linked the intensity and frequency of storms to climate change (pignotti et al., 2021), including extreme winter storms. in a city already fractured over racial and class segregation, over-policing of poor neighborhoods, and a city government that has a sordid history of ignoring racial injustices, buffalo’s blizzard has only added fuel to the fire (haq & schindel, 2018; miles et al., 2021). although black people make up only 14 percent of the population of erie county and 33 percent of buffalo’s population, they were overrepresented and accounted for 51 percent of the blizzard deaths in the county (sacks, 2022). it should be abundantly clear that we need to improve how we educate, prepare for, and advocate for climate justice. the disproportionate number of deaths in the black community from buffalo’s blizzard highlights the ways in which climate catastrophes and racial injustices are inextricably linked. why did the buffalo blizzard claim the lives of a disproportionate number of members of our black community? community leaders contend that structural issues—such as food deserts, inadequate housing, poverty, limited public transit options, and government disinvestment—heightened the vulnerability of low-income black and brown communities during the storm (sacks, 2022). environmental and climate injustices have cultivated a disproportionate impact on low-income communities and communities of color, who pay the cost with their health and lives both locally and globally (bullard, 1991; schindel et al., 2022; schlosberg and collins, 2014). responses to storms can reveal the community’s resilience and preparedness, issues which are increasingly necessary due to the increase in climate-related severe weather events. © 2023, schindel et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 25(2), 100-107. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en racializing climate justice in/for education however, resilience and preparedness are also associated with historic legacies of housing segregation and neighborhood redlining (cusick, 2020). for example, industries that release toxic air pollution have been intentionally situated in communities of color over decades (bullard, 1991). in addition, historically redlined neighborhoods are associated with the prevalence of cancer, asthma and other poor health indicators (nardone et al., 2020) and are hotter than those that were not redlined in nearly every city. as a result, extreme heat (shandas et. al., 2019) and air pollution are leading causes of death in communities of color. thus, viewing the disproportionately high death toll of the black community in buffalo’s blizzard through a racialized lens of community disinvestment sheds light on the need to racialize the conversations and, as we argue in our essay, curricula, about climate change. for too long we have discussed climate justice with race-neutral dialogue and the term climate change has been used to diminish the nature-human connection and our social interactions with the environment. as educators, we focus our attention on the racialization of climate change curricula to argue for climate justice education. we draw upon the growing body of climate justice education research (e.g. damico et al., 2020; eaton & day, 2020; nxumalo & montes, 2021) and we argue for action-oriented climate change education (mochizuki, 2016) to explicate what transformative and racialized climate justice learning might look like. we contend that teaching about climate change without teaching climate justice is at best inaccurate and at worst irresponsible. in what follows, we outline a critique and a way forward that aims to heal communities through building relationships and climate resilience. defining climate justice climate justice involves recognizing that climate change has disproportionately impacted other living beings, communities of color, and those with low incomes all over the world—the people and places least responsible for the climate change crisis (aygeman & doran, 2021; harlan, et. al., 2015). climate justice is the enactment of justice-centered transitions and solutions that address the underlying causes of climate change and multi-faceted justice concerns, including racial justice (mohai, et. al., 2009). the climate crisis has been caused by historical and ongoing human activities that favor the development of capital and consumer-based lifestyles across the globe. the pursuit of capital and these lifestyle choices occurs only through the dual exploitation of humans and the natural world. current teaching models on the climate crisis paint a woefully incomplete picture of the problem and ignore, hide, and whitewash the complexities that lie at the root cause of the crisis: namely, capitalism and imperialism (eaton & day, 2020). notably, racial capital and capital accumulation are mutually constituted, and as pulido (2017) articulates, the devaluation of nonwhite bodies that occurs and gets produced within capital production extends to devaluation through pollution. that is, both capital production and its byproduct pollutants are written onto the bodies and into the graves of nonwhite communities across the globe. a stark example of this is seen in the environmental racism of cancer alley wherein black residents in southeastern louisiana have been subjected to dangerous carcinogens from plastic refineries and other factories (dykstra, 2022). given the context of sidestepping the exploitative nature of capital production in climate education, we suggest a new approach to educating about the 101 current issues in comparative education schindel et al., climate crisis must highlight the interconnections across racism, capitalism, and our own cultures and realities and provide powerful and sustainable justice-centered solutions. climate justice education: framing the problem in order to help students comprehend the scope of the crisis, the underlying causes, and the ways in which they can address both climate and racial injustices, we propose a conceptualization of climate justice education as a place-based teaching pedagogy that incorporates an interdisciplinary approach focused on collective responsibility rather than individual accountability. we also support comprehensive state legislation that robustly funds and supports the development and implementation of climate justice education in all contexts and disciplines. the current practice in the united states has too often been approached by teaching the climate crisis in general terms, such as: 1) teaching climate science through demonstrating the abundance of evidence that confirms climate change; and 2) encouraging children to care about the environment, which often occurs at a surface level through learning about distant adorable animals being harmed by humans’ actions—usually polar bears or penguins. ultimately, such teaching methods are driven by a similar goal: to convince individuals to engage in environmentally friendly habits such as recycling, buying energy efficient products, and taking shorter showers. notably, teaching methods which primarily locate climate solutions on individuals’ actions can also contribute to young people’s climate anxiety, which is a growing mental health concern (clayton, 2020; wu et al., 2020). further, recommending individualistic environmental actions to youth is reprehensible as they generally do not have purchasing power for their homes, nor do youth across socioeconomic status have equitable impacts on their environments (i.e. food diets, transportation, household size, and other carbon footprint indicators often lie outside of their control). in addition, many approaches to decreasing personal consumption and reducing carbon footprints are unattainable for most children and families, such as access to locally grown organic foods, energy efficient appliances, climate-resilient housing, reusable products, etc. climate crises, such as the buffalo blizzard, demonstrate the pitfalls of positioning environmental issues, including climate resilience, as individualistic problems. in the city of buffalo, for instance, the transportation authority pre-emptively suspended public transportation (besecker, 2022), stranding those with transportation vulnerabilities to independently navigate a way home from work in hurricane strength winds and high intensity snowfall. we believe a shift is needed in our schools and this shift involves teaching not just climate science but climate justice. climate justice paints a more accurate picture of the climate crisis because: 1) it focuses on how the climate crisis is set to harm the most vulnerable populations on the planet (both humans and other living beings who have contributed the least to climate change); and, 2) it advocates for just responses and just transitions in communities’ and countries’ green economy responses to ensure the restoration and preservation of land, people, labor, and culture. in short, climate justice highlights how racism is impacting climate change and our children. climate justice education: moving forward current issues in comparative education 102 racializing climate justice in/for education how should we approach teaching climate justice in ways that are not harmful, yet impactful? many educators do not incorporate climate justice issues within their classes because they are unclear about the concept and what it can look like within their geographic context. therefore, our approach to teaching climate justice involves: 1) learning what climate justice issues can be found within one’s own community, explicitly extrapolating these understandings to global contexts, and exploring the ways climate issues are interrelated; 2) integrating local climate issues into school curricula; and 3) engaging in collective, transformative climate actions through classroom, schoolwide, and community climate justice activism. as educators, we utilize our local environments as the primary texts and resources for our students’ learning in various ways, including online and in-person mapping tools and experiences (see e.g. ejscreen.com; kuonen & miles, accepted) and within community-situated learning and action (e.g. community and land (re)storying; schindel et al., 2023). as an example, to learn about local climate issues, we introduce learners to the u.s. climate resilience toolkit (toolkit.climate.gov), a web-based user-friendly tool that provides information about local potential natural disasters—and examine how local concerns can be woven into curricula. while the toolkit was initially designed for state and local decision-makers to bolster capacity for resilience to climate-related hazards (gardiner, et al., 2019), it is a helpful tool for educators and their students to learn about and potentially address local climate issues. as another example, we engage with young people in ecological restoration and action that acts as a crucial component in climate change restoration and response (harris et al., 2006) and can also position students as contributors and originators in constructing local transformations. when youth utilize their scientific understandings to restore local landscapes, they learn to recognize the interdependence of humans and other living beings (bang et al., 2014) and get firsthand experience with the environmental, relational, and economic impacts of ecological restoration within their communities (schindel dimick, 2016). while it is important to understand global impacts, we suggest that climate understanding and action should begin in local communities. when children and youth engage in climate justice issues, they learn they can impact and influence their communities and they come to understand how local concerns take on a significant part of meaningful global change. this interdisciplinary, civic-minded approach outdoes the current practices illustrated above. perhaps most importantly, the lessons young people learn when engaged in understanding and impacting the climate concerns for their own communities can cultivate relationships to place and instill hope for a brighter future. taking the buffalo blizzard as an example, learning about the causes of the blizzard and its differential impact on vulnerable communities demonstrates for young people how their local extreme weather events are interconnected with extreme draughts, flooding, and wildfires globally and how these, in turn, impact global human migration, particularly for those whose occupations depend upon the weather. ultimately, vulnerability gets disproportionately distributed to black and brown communities locally and globally—issues which are representative of the lingering histories of colonialism and imperialism. conclusion there are significant barriers to achieving the vision of climate justice education we have outlined. barriers can begin to be overcome through educator preparation, professional 103 current issues in comparative education schindel et al., development, and the creation of curricular resources that not only address climate change but also center climate justice. the current context of climate change education across the united states shows growing interest in climate change education but rarely addresses climate justice (for timely information on state policies and implementation, see naaee, n.d.h). to date, new york state does not have explicit climate change education standards, nor is climate change integrated across school curricula for science or other disciplines. however, youth activists, grassroots organizers, and other organizations are taking the lead—and often learning from youth climate activism—to advance climate education. as one example in new york, the climate and resilience education task force (cretf) is working to build a coalition of stakeholders to create and implement a robust climate education platform through state policy change (see cretf, n.d.). the burden for educating and implementing climate justice must not be borne by individual educators but instead be driven by systemic change that works towards just transformations (see e.g. movement generation, 2020) and that centers the voices of diverse and climate-vulnerable communities. climate justice is racial justice. the work of ecological restoration is interdependent with building racially just and climate-resilient communities (movement generation, 2020). racializing approaches to teaching climate change will support communities to better understand and address climate injustices. just transitions and just responses to climate crises are particularly critical during this crucial time in which communities are increasingly recognizing and planning for extreme weather events. climate justice education provides youth with the knowledge and tools to envision futures in which the catastrophes and climate casualties of the buffalo blizzard do not get repeated. as educators, we must hold ourselves accountable for understanding how climate change impacts us locally and join in climate justice movements. there are no sustainable goals without justice (clark & miles, 2021). educators at all levels should ensure they are teaching climate and racial justice in their classes, regardless of the content area, and are working to share actionable responses to local climate issues using antiracist pedagogy. alexandra schindel is an associate professor of science education at the university at buffalo, suny. her research centers on justice and equity in science teaching and learning. alexa’s scholarship and teaching explores the transformative and empowering potential of science, particularly when centered on environmental and climate concerns. monica l. miles is a visiting assistant professor of stem education in the mathematics, science, and technology department at teachers college, columbia university. monica is a critical stem education trajectory scholar who seeks transformative solutions to cultivate liberated and environmentally just environments for black people, and other minoritized individuals. kate haq is an independent scholar, volunteer faculty at the university of buffalo, suny, and co-founder of mother earth literacies, llc, where she creates interdisciplinary equity-focused, place-based curriculum using an environmental justice lens for k-12 teachers and learners. references agyeman, j., & doran, a. 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(2022). stories of impact: scientific narratives and climate justice. refereed poster paper presented at the international society of the learning sciences annual meeting. schindel, a., rish, r., ramdath, k., mawer, d., christiano, m., & higgins, c. (2023). sustaining relationships through critical place inquiry. journal of school & society, 8(2), 37-44. schlosberg, d., & collins, l. b. (2014). from environmental to climate justice: climate change and the discourse of environmental justice. wires climate change, 5(3), 359–374. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.275 wu, j., snell, g., & samji, h. (2020). climate anxiety in young people: a call to action. the lancet planetary health, 4(10), e435-e436. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2542-5196(20)30223-0 107 current issues in comparative education diaz, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 uncovering educational inequalities: covid-19 digital learning strategies in the dominican republic katia diaz columbia university the dominican republic’s shifting socio-political and economic environment the dominican republic (república dominicana) is a nation with a mountainous area of 48,000 square kilometers, or roughly 18,532 square miles, occupying “two-thirds of the island of hispaniola,” making it the “second largest territory of the great antilles archipelago” (ministerio de asuntos exteriores, unión europea y cooperación de españa, 2020, p. 1). the government is organized into 31 provinces and 158 municipalities with one national district (international institute for educational planning [iiep] and united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization [unesco], 2019). currently, 10,847,904 million people live in the country (world bank, 2020 a), with 49.9 % identifying as men (5,259,642 residents) and 50.07% identifying as women (5,275,893 residents) (oficina nacional de estadísticas, 2021). as for the country’s make up, 70% are of mixed african and european descent, mainly spanish, 16% of residents identify as black, and 14% identify as white (minority rights group international, 2018). at the beginning of the covid-19 crisis, the country went through economic, political, and social changes. on july 5th, 2020, the center-left dominican liberation party (dlp) lost the presidential election to the modern revolutionary party (mrp), represented by luis rodolfo abinader, an outcome which ended the dlp’s 16-year political influence (the new york times, 2020). with this political change came several economic impacts: the country’s gross domestic product (gdp) increased by 5.04% annually from around us$33.416 billion in 2000 to us$68.989 billion in 2015 (international monetary fund [imf] in ministerio de economía, planificación, y desarrollo et al., 2017), and tourism attracted foreign investments, opening up employment in its related subsectors such as recreation, housing, or food and drinks (world tourism organization [wto] & pro dominicana, 2021). however, the country’s gdp took a hit by about 6% when the private sector closed because of the pandemic (sans & madrid, 2021). social issues grew, with misinformation becoming rampant among media outlets and digital platforms – people had a continued mistrust of the government, which impacted its attempt to provide accurate health information when the covid-19 pandemic started (tapia, 2020). education in the dominican republic before covid-19 education in the dominican republic is structured within four levels: pre-primary, primary, secondary, and tertiary (unesco & world monitoring report, 2020). from ages 3-17, attending school is compulsory in response to a recent extension by the government to require more schooling (unesco & world monitoring report, 2020; the international institute of educational planning [iiep] & unesco, 2019). the primary level provides education for children 6-14 years old (organization for economic development [oecd], 2008). secondary education provides schooling for children ages 14-18, with four years of additional schooling to strengthen alternative skillsets outside academics, including © 2022, diaz. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 151-162. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en diaz current issues in comparative education 152 general education in the first cycle, and vocational, continuing general courses, and art options in the second cycle (iiep & unesco, 2019). the education system is hybrid, that is, decentralized-centralized, with the government overseeing both public and private schools (oecd, 2008), and three agencies overseeing the system. first, the ministry of education (secretaría de estado de educación [see] or minerd) focuses on primary and secondary schooling; second, the ministry of higher education, science and technology (secretaría de estado de educación superior, ciencia y tecnología [mescyt]), oversees colleges and universities; and third, the national institute of professional and technical training (instituto nacional de formación técnico profesional) provides vocational courses on automobile mechanics and civil engineering; other studies are offered such as art design, culinary arts, and cosmetology (national institute of professional and technical training, 2017). further, the ministry of education’s special education directorate (dirección de educación especial) offers schooling to special needs children. through the dominican association of rehabilitation (asociación dominicana de rehabilitación), children and adolescents with disabilities from ages 0-18 receive education and physical therapy services (asociación dominicana de rehabilitación., n.d.). as of 2018, there were 2.7 million students enrolled in the whole education system (oficina nacional de estadística de minerd, 2019). in terms of digital learning, in 2016 officials implemented the initiative digital republic (república digital), which aimed to provide technology access for all citizens while ensuring gender equity and social inclusion, and “enabling economic and social development” (muñoz et al., 2020, p. 81-83). its goal was to bridge the digital divide among vulnerable populations who did not have access to technology – low-income families, those from rural areas, and families with limited education – which included reinforcing the technological infrastructure, providing access to the internet, and bringing in devices into schools (dominican republic government, 2017). as presented by mescyt’s (n.d.) deputy minister for science and technology plácido f. gómez ramírez, digital republic is structured upon seven concepts: “human capital, education, productivity and employment, digital government, infrastructure, connectivity, and access” (p. 3), with five additional goals: “legal and regulatory framework, sustainable development goals, national development strategy, social inclusion, and cybersecurity” (p. 3). based on the above goals, the initiative implemented projects such as amplifying wifi access and revamping infrastructure for better access (dominican republic government, n.d. a). the dominican republic government (n.d. b) implemented other initiatives to encourage the use of technology. among them are the digital public service (servidor público digital), which is a capacity-building program to train civil servants in technology and women in ict (mujeres en tic), focused on offering technological training programs to women and girls. the government also implemented the digital native (nativo digital) learning programs for vulnerable communities to use technological tools and t-include (t-incluye), a project that encourages seniors, young adults, and individuals with disabilities to use technology. in schools, the government launched the initiative one computer for higher education students and professors (una computadora para estudiantes y maestros de educación superior), which provides university professors and students with a computer or tablet and access to technological workshops. alongside these programs and initiatives, the government implemented a digital id initiative for students and increased the number of computers at educational centers. uncovering educational inequalities current issues in comparative education 153 although the programs above were initially welcomed, the media called into question whether these strategies were actually reaching students across the country. for example, the dominican republic government reported in 2017 that “almost 90% of the population ha[d] access to mobile telecommunications, 54% ha[d] internet access, although only 27% ha[d] their own access through computers or tablets” (p. 10). however, local newspapers such as diario libre (2020) pointed to these projects only reaching 5% of the student population. digital learning strategies during the covid-19 pandemic regardless of the scrutiny, the programs above were put to the test at the beginning of the pandemic. officials closed all schools for the 2019-2020 academic year starting in march, 2020, (instituto dominicano de evaluación e investigación de la calidad educativa, [ideice], 2020; united nations children’s fund [unicef], 2022). when schooling transitioned online in early march 2020, minerd unveiled the educational support plan (plan de apoyo educativo), which outlined three goals to continue providing education: “1) to contribute to access of non-in-person educational activities to the student population, 2) to reinforce learning and avoid the loss of study habits, and 3) to provide orientation to the educational community about covid-19” (ideice, 2020, p. 10). the government further expanded wifi access to facilitate distance learning. the dominican government defines distance learning as “a form of teaching in which students do not need to attend physically at an educational center or place of study” (ideice 2020 p. 11). distance learning is also implemented through information technology and communications (ict) (ideice, 2020). in other words, the work previously done on digital learning was readapted to respond to the emergency situation. with a plan and definitions in place, minerd, mescyt, the community technological centers (centros tecnológicos comunitarios [ctc]), and the national institute of public administration (instituto nacional de administración pública [inap]) established separate online resource hubs in addition to the policies already implemented, comprising of resource websites and platforms for children (world bank, 2020 b). these resources provided online skill courses and communication apps for students and teachers (cobo et al., 2020; ramírez, 2020). for those who did not have access to the internet or online resources, the government invested around rd $1,575,043,073 (us $28,558,681)1 to implement television educational broadcasting programs (acento, 2021). in terms of online platforms, several initiatives were implemented, including eduplan, a teaching resource website to help teachers plan lessons and maintain a schedule, and educando (educating), which is an online resource hub that provides learning and curriculum resources. additionally, the government implemented intelligencia quisqueya (quisqueya intelligence), a virtual program to ensure that students are prepared for national tests, and informática prepara (informatics prepares), a portal to access videos about computer basics (presidencia de la república dominicana, n.d.). the programs to continue learning online were promising in early 2020. according to unicef (2020), at least 75% of the dominican republic’s residents managed to use the internet for distance learning, while 59% used social media, and 80% used mobile devices. by may 2020, “over one million booklets were distributed to centers across 18 educational regions” as part of the educational support plan (peña in ideice & observatory of educational policies in the dominican republic [operd] 2020, p. 2). in june 2020, the government moved on to provide “33,000 electronic tools to teachers and students” (ideice & operd 2020, p. 2) as a plan measure, especially to those with little access to diaz current issues in comparative education 154 technology. in total, the government reported that thousands of households benefited from television programs because: among the 175,908 households with third-grade students, 51.1% had radios and 91.1 % had televisions; out of the 159,824 households with sixth-grade students, 40% had radios and 80% had televisions, and among the 134,689 households with third-year students in secondary school, 45.4% had radios and 81.4% had televisions. (ideice, 2021, p. 3) revealing educational inequalities in digital learning the following exploratory study addresses the country’s digital learning efforts by reviewing the effectiveness of remote learning during the covid-19 pandemic. this includes challenges and implications that arose during the implementation process. semistructured interviews were conducted with the following individuals: a public-school english teacher in santo domingo, an administrative coordinator at a private school in santiago, and a policy coordinator (técnico) overseeing teachers in eastern provinces of the country. the interviewees were selected based on their different levels in the education system. in this way, perspectives were acquired from the classroom level to the policy making level. the interviews were conducted in 2021 on january 29, february 5, and february 6, respectively. the interviews focused on participants’ perspectives about the country’s education system and their experiences implementing digital learning strategies. the analysis of the interviews identified issues such as lack of priority in teaching and infrastructural problems. as a result, low-income and rural students had little access to digital tools. the findings below suggest that remote learning placed a strain on the government’s abilities to provide quality education for all students. digital learning reinforced pre-existing issues in education at the time of the interviews, school officials and teachers were facing difficulties in acquiring the necessary skills to teach virtually, which affected education quality in the country. one of the issues was the negligence to train teachers that could provide quality education. in 2017, the government’s evaluation of educator’s performance test (evaluación de desempeño docente) revealed that only 3% of teachers were able to perform above the acceptable levels set by the government (vice presidency of the dominican republic et al., 2019). confirming this issue, the policy coordinator interviewed said that “i know we have bad schools and badly trained teachers – educators who are neglectful, teachers who work based on what they work for, which we call vocational educators” (personal communication, february 6, 2021). those capacity issues led to learning problems. the interview with the private school coordinator highlighted how the content for current school curricula is basic and with little depth: “i don’t see the new planning for educational curriculum as well structured nor does it meet the benchmark for which individuals will be prepared for university” (personal communication, february 5, 2021). many more teachers probably struggled to use digital learning tools due to poor investments in infrastructure. at the conference on access to information, latin america and the caribbean (cai: lac), non-profit political observatory coordinator vladimir rozón (in lebrón, 2021) remarked how the dominican republic has not been able to invest adequately into the country’s educational infrastructure. as a result, there have been infrastructural issues, in which “a range of 700 or 600 institutions [did] not have electricity” (malagon in garrido, 2021, para. 22). therefore, many institutions could not grant access to the internet. looking back at his students’ struggles, the public-school uncovering educational inequalities current issues in comparative education 155 teacher saw “how gaining access was not easy for everyone” (personal communication, january 29, 2021). as for his own difficulties, he said: at that time, teachers – including myself – did not have resources available and the institution did not provide these tools. especially, since the institution is run by the government which manages a small budget. (personal communication, january 29, 2021) the private school coordinator also recognized that “while the government tries to provide laptops to cover this gap, if individuals don’t have wifi, they can’t do anything” (personal communication, february 5, 2021). looking into this issue and other technical difficulties, minerd incorporated the social networking platform whatsapp to “support teachers and parents” and relay “helpful content” (cobo et al., 2020, para. 9) and mescyt, along with other partners provided low-cost internet access for “600,000 students and 30,000 professors/teachers” (mescyt, 2020). however, among the approximately 91% of students who took some form of online class through the messaging app whatsapp, 41% were only able to take classes online for two hours or less (diario libre, 2020, as cited in garrido, 2021). given the difficulties above, several students fell behind and lost over one year of instruction (vegas, 2021), with around 4% (roughly 140,000 students) “not learning at all,” and 20,000 students dropping out altogether (castellanos, 2021, para. 11). digital learning confirmed that wealth determines access to education the class divide between wealthier families and those with resource constraints continues to impact the country’s education system, now more than ever with remote learning. on average, the monthly household income for those who are considered poor is rd $17,636 (us $321.363), while the income of middle class individuals ranges between rd $44,089 and rd $220,444 (us $803.39 and us $4,016.93); individuals below the poverty line earn between rd $4,809 and rd $11,022 monthly (us $87.62 and $200.843) (ministry of economy, planning, and development, 2018).2 in line with these figures, the public school teacher commented that gaining access to technological resources is a “class privilege” (personal communication, january 29, 2021). the private school coordinator reaffirmed the impression by saying that “there were people who could participate and others whose parents could not continue working and therefore were unable to pay” (personal communication, february 5, 2021). as large amounts of money fund private institutions, their students learned more indepth and structured content throughout the school day and for more hours (personal communication, february 5, 2021). the private school coordinator explained that, prior to the covid-19 pandemic, public schools usually ended the school day at around noon, while private schools continued providing lessons until 2:00 p.m. teachers went further into developing their students’ understanding of materials, especially in mathematics, reading comprehension, writing, spelling, and oratory lessons. classes were supplemented with tutoring and office hours to help reinforce understanding of materials. during the pandemic, the private school coordinator highlighted, private school students continued their schooling with as little interruption as possible: “in the first two weeks of the pandemic, we decided to work through the mail with guides for each material” (personal communication, february 5, 2021) classes at the time were not virtual but, after april, institutions decided to continue teaching online. “the schools provided e-mails to each student with the institution’s domain on google suite and then we opened our classrooms to work on this platform via google meet,” she said, “…as the diaz current issues in comparative education 156 days and months went by, students were becoming skillful and able to connect virtually” (personal communication, february 5, 2021) as time went on, private schools started the 2020-2021 new academic year with virtual learning in september, 2020, but public schools began the year officially two months later, in november of the same year (personal communication, february 5, 2021) and, even then, access to education could not be guaranteed. the policy coordinator noted that “not every child has access to the internet nor the electronic tools to connect or use them” (personal communication, february 6, 2021). this account was confirmed by morales (2020), who explained that “around 400,000” technological tools “reached less than 12% of the student and teacher population” (p. 81). additionally, 76,236 teachers need technology and “2.8 million tools and resources [are] needed to integrate students into the classroom” (el dinero, 2020, para. 6). even with television programs aimed at bridging this gap, the public school teacher emphasized that there were families who did not have a television in their homes: “in the community where my cousins live, my family was the only household in a long distance with a television,” he said, “…the children in the community met at their house to watch the television program together” (personal communication, january 29, 2021). he also noted discrepancies in the content: “sometimes the curriculum presented in the television was not being taught at schools.” ultimately, only 26.5% of students “used the booklets” for the television programs (diario libre, 2020, in in garrido, 2021, para. 3). in the dominican republic, socioeconomic gaps greatly affected access to digital learning and impacted the quality of the education offered. digital learning revealed great regional disparities in access to quality education just like wealth determined access to schooling during the covid-19 crisis, living in specific regions of the dominican republic impacted access to education. with more individuals living in urban areas compared to rural ones, urban cities tend to have more resources; compared to their wealthier city counterparts, rural communities are plagued by poverty because more investments and policies are being funneled to urban cities (minerd national office of statistics, 2019, p. 89; vicepresidencia de la república dominicana, 2018). as a result, there are “insufficient economic resources to cover basic necessities like education” (vicepresidencia de la república dominicana et al., 2019, p. 8). several rural towns have only public schools with poor facilities, are either under-enrolled or overcrowded, have multigrade classes, and teachers are unwilling to instruct in those areas (peréz, 2020). given the distance it takes to arrive there, the policy coordinator said, digital access is also scarce (personal communication, february 6, 2022). according to the international organization for migration [iom] et al. (2020), border territories had difficulties acquiring the technology during the pandemic. the report highlighted that 16% of “school-age individuals who attended an educational center in february 2020 and were in quarantine, were not able to continue their education through the internet, phone, television, and/or radio” (p. 1). among this percentage, 40% lived in border territories (iom et al., 2020). these statistics were not surprising. according to the private school coordinator, southeastern areas near the border tend to lack resources (personal communication, february 5, 2021). even traditional media is scarce in the southwestern province of barahona where 62% of residents “do not have a radio” and “35% do not have a television” (ideice, 2021, p. 12). households in the bahoruco province also struggle, where 60% of residents are without radio and 38% without television (ideice, 2021). therefore, the border territories seem to have been amongst the most affected by the covid-19 pandemic in educational terms. uncovering educational inequalities current issues in comparative education 157 students from remote areas of the dominican republic seemed to have suffered from a lack of access to quality education because they depend on the public education system, and this one did not respond effectively enough to their needs. the policy coordinator ( explained how remote communities in the regions she oversees suffered from limited access to technological resources: “during this time, quality education depends greatly on digital strategies,” but “the education quality through these tools did not have a great impact because access is limited for children in our remote communities,” she recognized that most children with resources go to private schools in urban areas, where they have “their own systems” in place with digital platforms (personal communication, february 6, 2021 this situation is different from that of students who live in the “zona” (countryside), where “digital access does not reach [students] (personal communication, february 6, 2021).” the public-school teacher corroborated those remarks. his family, who lives in the countryside detailed how, at the beginning of the pandemic, students had “no classes at all” (personal communication, january 29, 2021). these testimonials hint at the link between regions and access to tools that impact learning – even more so despite the government’s efforts to address these gaps. in doing so, the government once again placed rural students at a disadvantage throughout their remote learning. conclusions in recent years, the dominican republic has seen a new wave in education reforms – where technology and online learning aim at improving education quality for students – but it was put to the test during the covid-19 pandemic and achieved little success. the dominican republic deployed a national digital learning strategy to help students continue their education, including online resource hubs, educational platforms, laptops/computers, and television programming. however, initiatives were not practical or accessible to all students because of years of infrastructural issues caused by poor investment in education, lack of priority in teacher training, and the unequal distribution of educational spending within regions. efforts were made to rectify them with tv and radio programs that accommodated students’ needs. however, these measures became unrealistic for rural public schools and low-income students, while only urban private schools and wealthier students benefited from them. as a result, less wealthy, vulnerable, and rural students were very much left behind by their peers in private schools. aware of the lessons above, the dominican republic is aiming to integrate online tools within classrooms by replacing the digital republic initiative with a comprehensive plan to address those gaps (personal communication, february 6, 2021). nevertheless, the report is limited in addressing the issues because of small-scale interviews with few perspectives, policy analyses focusing on one initiative over another, and more media reports than academic literature reviews. to build on this research with new perspectives, interviews must be conducted across all levels in the education system (i.e., national, provincial, and city officials) and types of institutions (i.e. at least two perspectives per public, private, rural, and urban schools). having interviews from other academic institutions could offer different experiences and issues not yet explored in this study. interviews with families, students, and journalists could also provide on-the-ground direct testimonials. by doing so, the dominican republic may be able to break the barriers in place mentioned in this report while ensuring access to a quality education for every student in the country. diaz current issues in comparative education 158 notes [1] calculated on exchangerates.org on march 27, 2022. [2] calculated on exchangerates.org on march 27, 2022. katia diaz is a graduate of columbia university’s graduate school of arts & sciences. she has over five years working at non-profits and government agencies. katia also received a fulbright u.s. student grant to teach english in the dominican republic. currently, she works as a researcher at a national organization. references acento. (2021, january 9). inversión en clases por televisión y radio alcanza los rd$5 mil millones. https://acento.com.do/actualidad/costo-clases-por-televisionaumento-de-3-a-5-mil-millones-de-pesos-por-nuevas-adjudicaciones8900141.html asociación dominicana de rehabilitación. (n.d.). educación especial. https://www.adr.org.do/index.php/programas-especiales/educacion-especial castellanos, l. 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(2022). guía de inversión turística república dominicana. https://webunwto.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fspublic/2022-01/guias-de-inversion-republica-dominicana.pdf © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 19 privatization and neo-liberalism: ideology and evidence in rhetorical reforms [1] steven j. klees florida state university i have read and admired michael apple's work for almost three decades. his article, "rhetorical reforms: markets, standards, and inequality" (this issue) is once again a strong critique of the right-wing ideology and practice that has dominated education over the last two decades. while i agree with much of its substance, there are several areas where i believe apple's analysis is problematic, as i explain below. before continuing, it is important to emphasize that for too long critics have sniped at each other to the detriment of a progressive agenda. nonetheless, we must criticize our work in constructive ways if we are to move ahead and it is in this spirit that these comments are offered. let me begin by supporting much of apple's overall argument: that underlying all educational debates are "competing visions of legitimate knowledge," (p. 16) supported by very unequal power; that the current emphasis on the free market and privatization is based on an "eloquent fiction" (p. 2) that has been assembled in new ways by an alliance of neo-liberal and neo-conservative forces; and that the upshot has been narrow and ideologically-based analyses of efficiency in education over broader views of what education does and what its role should be in achieving social justice. my overall problem with apple's analysis is how it is framed, particularly with respect to two broad issues: its characterization of privatization and the underlying neo-liberal paradigm; and the privileged position it gives to an essentially positivist belief in "convincing" research evidence. what's wrong with privatization? an immediate question is: how can we focus a discussion on an important current issue in comparative education through a paper so centered on a u.k./u.s. view of markets and privatization? while the fallout from the reagan/thatcher era has marketed the privatization of education (and other government services) around the world, globally this has taken different forms within very different structures. we cannot understand privatization internationally if we ignore, for example, the global hegemony of world bank and international monetary fund research and policy prescriptions forcing economic and educational reform; the global marketing of chile's approach to vouchers; or the user-fees-for-public-schools version of privatization. it is not that apple's paper should have tackled all these issues, but their neglect would be more understandable if their absence had been recognized instead of characterizing the "english experience" as the "most advanced" (p. 4) or as representative of reform in other nations (p. 9, 12). nonetheless, we can and do, of course, learn from the english experience, and particularly from apple's connecting it to neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideology. however, i do not understand why apple is repeatedly cautious in framing his discussion of privatization and other reforms. how can he say (emphases below added) privatization "may be a false hope" for giving opportunities to disadvantaged students stephen j. klees 20 april 30, 1999 (p. 4); how could he approvingly quote whitty (1997, p. 58) that "atomized decisionmaking in a highly stratified society may appear to give everyone equal opportunities" (p. 4); or that "in practice neo-liberal policies involving market 'solutions' may actually serve to reproduce--not subvert--traditional hierarchies of class and race" (p. 4)? who is meant to be surprised at the latter statement or surprised that privatization has not "radically altered the relations of inequality that characterize schooling" (p. 5)? how can he quote gipps and murphy (1994, p. 209) regarding the speed of test development and implementation as having left "little time to carry out detailed analyses and trialing to ensure that the tests are as fair as possible to all groups" (p. 12)? who is apple talking to here? the world bank? critics? who from a critical perspective thinks that the push toward testing can be fair or that privatization has anything to do with providing more equal opportunities? it seems that it is a mistake to frame a critical analysis in these terms, as if the world bank and other proponents have a reasonable argument about, of all things, the equity of privatization. it is also a mistake to frame this as an empirical question which apple's research summary can cast doubt upon (to be discussed further below). from a critical standpoint, two decades of privatization policies are mechanisms to retain the advantages of national and global capital by further stratification, with hardly a meritocratic pretense to serve as a cover to legitimate greater inequality. in practice, there is hardly even the cover of efficiency rhetoric. for example, the voucher "experiment" in milwaukee, and the one pending in florida, both avoid testing the students using vouchers for private schools, thus not even pretending to justify privatization by showing higher student achievement. privatization of schools is part of a privatization free-for-all that capital and its allies have had the circumstances to exploit. i was surprised to learn recently that the new government of the state of florida, under complete republican control for the first time since the post-civil war era, is quietly scrapping ten years of school accountability legislation that has been held up as a model for the u.s. and exported around the world. why would the neo-conservatives forfeit such control? the answer is that accountability legislation in florida had representation by teachers and citizens--the republicans want only their brand of accountability, where they alone determine the rules for the state department of education. this free-for-all climate has led to large-scale efforts by provoucher business lobbies in the u.s. who see the potential to make lots of money from private schools--just like the multimillionaires who have profited from the chilean system by providing a minimal cost education and pocketing the difference on every student they barely serve. [2] even in cases like the milwaukee experiment, where the initial focus was to give vouchers only to the poor, the entire effort was a trojan horse. it now gives substantial subsidies to middle and upper class parents who have always sent their children to private schools, as designed by republican politicians every bit as astute in their development of northern forms of diffuse clientelism as their counterparts in the south. neo-liberal rhetoric and reality to understand educational reform it is important to understand the rhetoric and reality of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism in which it is embedded. apple's contribution to this understanding has been substantial (e.g., apple, 1996). in this paper, however, i privatization and neo-liberalism: ideology and evidence in rhetorical reforms current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 21 think it a mistake to frame his analysis repeatedly as trying to reconcile the "seemingly contradictory discourse of competition, markets, and choice on the one hand, and accountability, performance objectives, standards, national testing, and national curricula on the other" (apple, this issue, p. 2); or, more broadly, between deregulation and enhanced regulation. although apple's point seems to be that there is "no necessary contradiction" (p. 11), his repeated framing of the "oddness" (p. 6, 8, 13) in the simultaneous push for markets and for greater controls impedes understanding both as integral features of neo-liberalism. from adam smith and mercantilism, to keynes and the new deal, to neo-liberalism and structural adjustment by the imf, economic theory and practice have always been tied to the twin anchors of market and state. "laissez-faire," even at the rhetorical level, was always based on strong state control of many dimensions of economic life. historical discussion of liberalism, libertarianism, liberty, and freedom have, in practice, served to legitimate an array of different types of state intervention. the key feature of neo-liberalism is not its "commitment to a regulatory state" (p. 9) but how it has engineered and legitimated a departure from decades of a regulatory welfare state that had been fought for and developed to curb the worst excesses of capitalism's inherent need for inequality. [3] neo-liberalism is the product and architect of a retrenchment and backlash that has not discredited all state intervention--just that based on a notion of our collective social responsibility to control class-, gender-, and race-based inequality through policies like the new deal, the war on poverty, or affirmative action. [4] neo-liberalism to me does not, as apple suggests, represent a shift from "homo economicus" to "manipulable [hu]man" (this issue, p. 6)--capitalism and the state have always seen people as manipulable. while philosophers may have been serious, concepts of liberty and freedom in practice were always used to manipulate the types of controls placed on individuals (olssen, 1996). the idea that the neo-liberal state "seeks to create an individual who is an enterprising and competitive entrepreneur" (olssen, 1996, p. 340 quoted by apple in this issue, p. 6) is not interesting because of some new state interest in manipulation, [5] but because it is an integral part of neo-liberalism's attempt to delegitimate government and disengage government and society from any collective responsibility for social welfare. when it became apparent in the 1980s that the global economy was not going to be more successful at creating decent employment and living conditions than nationally-based economies had been, the world bank and others discovered the "informal sector." here, supposedly, people miraculously develop their own opportunities, relieving the pressure on the formal capitalist economy to address employment, poverty, and inequality. this was enshrined in endless discussions of policies for educating and training "entrepreneurs" to generate their own jobs. most recently, this view has been enshrined again--this time in paeans of praise to micro-credit schemes that will turn everyone, especially rural women in the newest gender twist, into capitalists. give people a little enhanced human capital through basic education and training, add a few dollars of micro-credit, and presto--they too can succeed in the jugular marketplace of the global economy. if, however they do not succeed, what is to blame but their own insufficient foresight to plant the right crops, use the right technology, or invest in the right pension scheme. [6] what nonsense--more blame-the-victim legitimization. stephen j. klees 22 april 30, 1999 who's got the proof? i am sure that apple would agree with the bulk of these arguments. yet framing privatization and neo-liberalism as a debate about freedom and regulation usurps attention from much more centrally contested terrains. similarly, i think it is a mistake to frame the two decades of neo-liberal policies toward privatization in education as a debate about evidence. apple tries hard to convince us that while "quite flawed research" has "served as a rhetoric of justification for preconceived beliefs" (this issue, p. 3) to support privatization, the evidence he presents against privatization is very good. he argues that whitty (1997) has done "perhaps the most comprehensive review of all of the evidence on marketization" (apple, this issue, p. 4) and that the research of the other opponents of privatization he cites are based on "extensive analyses" (p. 5) or "extremely thorough review" (p. 12), concluding that this research "has enabled the rearticulation of claims to social justice on the basis of solid evidence" (p. 13). apple, of course, is far from alone in trying to refute empirically the army of nonsense research served up by dominant interests. but it seems increasingly evident to me that this type of exhortation convinces neither critics nor advocates of anything and we must take a different tack. i do understand that we must continue to contest the awful, supposedly "empirical" research on which neo-liberal ideology is promulgated. i have done that for a living. i remember how happy gail kelly was to meet me in the early 1980s after i had critiqued, in excruciating detail, the conceptual and methodological flaws in an article submitted to comparative education review (cer) by a world bank staff person. the editors of cer were (and still are) inundated by quantitative causal-model-based research that is bankrupt in its own terms. yet there are few reviewers who can offer such critiques. [7] each year the students in my regression analysis course make disappear the supposedly significant advantage in student achievement that james coleman found for private schools over public. they do it by using a better model in coleman's own terms and with his own data set. even apparent logical and consistent findings of this research genre are untrustworthy. for a presentation at the comparative and international education society meetings, i once reviewed the research on the cost-effectiveness of textbook provision, conducted by established researchers. this research was so flawed and contradictory in its own terms that it should never have been accepted for publication, let alone serve as the basis for two decades of exhortations by the world bank and others that textbooks are the miracle input for schools. as i have said elsewhere, the fault does not rest with these authors in particular--it is the regression analysis-based, scientific-positivist approach to empiricism that allows any researcher to find any results that please him or her (klees 1994; easton and klees, 1990). we critics, of course, have a responsibility to deconstruct flawed research. but we must change the terms of the discussion--progressives are not gaining ground by demonstrating the failures of "their" regressions and pointing out the success of "ours" (or even of our ethnographies). they can "out-regress" us at every turn--especially the juggernaut of world bank research-which, taken alone, probably has staff, access to data, and time greater that the combined research possibilities of all the critics around the globe. for apple or others to challenge the evidence on privatization or other reforms is a sisyphean task that only convinces the convinced. and while i do not want to go too far with postmodernism, our evidence is not much, if any, better than theirs. privatization and neo-liberalism: ideology and evidence in rhetorical reforms current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 23 moreover, their evidence is irrelevant to their beliefs anyway. martin carnoy tells the story of returning to the university of chicago after completing his ph.d. there and having a short, no-agenda visit with milton friedman. friedman, who was on carnoy's committee and knew of carnoy's radical leanings, started a monologue on how the "seven sister" oil companies' behavior mirrored that of a competitive market and therefore was efficient. carnoy was so startled by the topic and the logic that he just sat there in amazement. he realized afterward that to point out the absurdities in this argument, he would have had to stop friedman after the first few sentences. once friedman's assumptions were set, he was off and running. similarly, the work of friedman's mentor frederich hayek begins by assuming a very narrow view of the meaning of freedom and liberty and ends up supporting an extremist version of laissezfaire. keynes commenting on hayek's work reached the same conclusion as carnoy on friedman: "it is an extraordinary example of how starting with a mistake a remorseless logician can end up in bedlam" (quoted in olssen, 1996, p. 345). this is a key problem in our debates about social policy. the positions of friedman, hayek, the world bank and the imf have no relation to evidence. theirs is a remorseless logic in the service of an ideology. assuredly they would say the same of my views, those of apple, carnoy, and other critics, and perhaps the sense in postmodern debates should allow us to acknowledge this too. [8] while again i do not wish to carry this argument too far, it seems clear that we will not make much progress contesting each piece of dominant paradigm evidence. we must lay to rest the logic of such proof and move on to public policy debates that incorporate a very different logic, one that recognizes the limits of expertise and one that reflects that different views of "evidence" can only be applied within democratic participative processes that give voice and power to those currently treated so inequitably. markets and our future the idea that the market can solve our social problems is ludicrous--to survive on this planet with billions of people in the twenty-first century requires a level of global sensitivity and coordination rarely even discussed (rosell, 1999). to survive well and equitably requires assuming collective responsibility for our future, not leaving it to some quasi-religious pursuit of "free markets." of course, individuals must act in all sorts of markets, but these markets need to be explicitly circumscribed by social interests. greater cooperation among and between every level from local to global does not mean the absence of competition. even in education, markets can be useful. in fact, although apple is correct to say that, in general, reliance on the market in education "did not encourage diversity in curriculum, pedagogy, organization, clientele, or even image" (p. 9), there have been some positive examples in which market mechanisms designed to foster choice within public schooling did encourage all these things. in the alum rock school district voucher experiment in california in the early 1970s, and in the east harlem experiment in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the conscious structuring of minischools within schools, each organized by teachers and principals with their own philosophy, led to a blossoming of alternatives and engagement by all involved (nathan, 1989). rather than leaving social welfare to the presumed magic of an impersonal atomistic stephen j. klees 24 april 30, 1999 market, these educational efforts were successful because the institutions were redesigned through collective (i.e., governmental) will and action that helped develop real choices within which regulated competition and cooperation could occur. [9] given the new global hegemonic discourse and practice of the right, we sometimes forget the many examples of and potential for transformation that are around us. as michael apple's work has reminded us for decades, we must contest that hegemony and nurture these alternative possibilities. endnotes [back] [1] this is a slightly revised version of the paper from the one originally put online for april 30, 1999 issue of cice. due to some editing problems, this revised version was substituted on-line for the original one on june 1, 1999. if you downloaded or printed a copy of this paper before that date, please replace it with this version. the author would like to thank susanne clawson, vandra masemann, david palmer, and angela c. de siqueira for their comments on a draft of this paper. [back] [2] for interesting reviews of the chilean experience see carnoy (1997) and collins and lear (1995). [back] [3] i am more hopeful about the progressive nature of welfare state reforms which i see, at least in part, as resulting from genuine gains by oppressed classes than my more reproductionist-oriented colleagues who see capital as always winning whether promoting affirmative action or structural adjustment. [back] [4] see boron's (1991) excellent analysis of how what appears to be neoliberalism's "virulent anti-statist offensive" (p. 139) is in reality an attack on the demands made by a democratic state. instead, neo-liberalism is supportive of a highly regulatory authoritarian state that imposes the types of "accountability" controls apple discusses for education-but not because such accountability data is needed by consumers "to make markets work" (apple, this issue, p. 10), but because it is useful to legitimate further stratification in the interests of capital. [back] [5] indeed, the creation of entrepreneurs is simply the newest version of an educational paradigm based on modernization, human capital, and development. [back] [6] woolcock (1999) offers some interesting cases of the failure of microcredit schemes. privatization and neo-liberalism: ideology and evidence in rhetorical reforms current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 25 [back] [7] for an interesting discussion of "what's a journal editor to do?" when faced with our world of conflicting paradigms, see donmoyer (1996). [back] [8] patti lather (1991, 1986) has, for many years, pursued in interesting ways this question of what it means to be open to data in research that is "openly ideological." [back] [9] see seddon (1997) for an interesting discussion of education, economics, and the progressive potential of institutional redesign. references apple, m. (1999). rhetorical reforms: markets, standards, and inequality. current issues in comparative education, 1(2). apple, m. (1996). cultural politics and education. new york: teachers college press. boron, a. (1991). estado, capitalismo, y democracía en américa latina. buenos aires: ed. image mundi. carnoy, m. (1998). national voucher plans in chile and sweden: did privatization reforms make for better education? comparative education review, 42(3): 309-337. collins, j. & lear, j. (1995). chile's free-market miracle: a second look. oakland, ca: institute for food & development policy. donmoyer, r. (1996, march). educational research in an era of paradigm proliferation; what's a journal editor to do? educational researcher, 25(2): 19-25. easton, p. & klees, s. (1990). education and the economy: considering alternative perspectives. prospects, 20(4): 413-428. nathan, j. (ed.) (1989). public schools by choice: expanding opportunities for parents, students and teachers. bloomington: meyer-stone. gipps, c. & murphy, p. (1994). a fair test? philadelphia, pa: open university press. klees, s. (1994). the economics of educational planning. in t. husen & t.n. postlewaithe (eds.), the international encyclopedia of education (2nd ed.) (pp. 1810-1821). oxford: pergamon press. lather, p. (1991). getting smart: feminist research and pedagogy with/in the postmodern. new york: routledge. lather, p. (1986). issues of validity in openly ideological research: between a rock and a soft place, interchange, 17(4): 63-84. stephen j. klees 26 april 30, 1999 nathan, j. (1989). before adopting school choice, review what works and what fails. american school board journal, 176(7): 28-30. olssen, m. (1996). in defence of the welfare state and publicly provided education. journal of education policy, 11: 337-362. rosell, s. (1999). renewing governance: governing by learning in the information age. new york: oxford press. seddon, t. (1997). markets and the english: rethinking educational restructuring as institutional redesign. british journal of sociology of education, 18: 165-185. whitty, g. (1997). creating quasi-markets in education. in m. apple (ed.), review of research in education, vol. 22. washington, dc: american educational research association. woolcock, m. (1999). learning from failures in micro-finance: what unsuccessful cases tell us about how group-based programs work. american journal of economics and sociology, 58(1): 17-40. jules et al., 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 1, winter 2022 re/dis/assembling “educational imaginaries” through regionalism – the construction of the caribbean education policy space tavis d. jules loyola university chicago richard arnold loyola university chicago caitlin donnelley-power loyola university chicago holly jacobs loyola university chicago madeline rainey loyola university chicago this paper uses a cultural political economy (cpe) framework to apply cpe’s concept of the “economic imaginary” to the educational policy landscape. we consider the caribbean community’s (caricom) regional education policy space and the focus on human resource development to examine how what we call “educational imaginaries” develop and evolve as a product of intersecting interests, power hierarchies, discourses, and material realities. this paper draws from education policy documents developed by formal regional governance bodies within caricom between 1993 and 2021. using cpe’s four selectivities (discursive, structural, agential, and technological) to examine the construction of the caricom educational imaginary, this paper ultimately demonstrates how caricom responds to global hierarchies as a regional entity. cultural political economy (cpe) has emerged in the last decade as a means of pinpointing the economic systems and factors that are a result of specific interactions of what jessop and sum (2013) refer to as the “cultural turn”1 to traditional political economy. cpe combines semiosis (senseand meaning-making), which involves “the social production of inter-subjective meaning” with political economy, and it does not view “culture (i.e., semiosis) as a distinct sphere of society separate from economics and politics” (jessop & sum, 2010, p. 445). as such, cpe engages with the “cultural turn” in its critique of dominant cultural and social institutions by looking to cultural space’s historical, economic, and societal developments to identify how social systems are created 1 the cultural turn is less about adding culture to rationalist political economy – which holds modernists believe in singular and universal ‘truths’ – and more about challenging positivist epistemologies of social science research. thus, the cultural turn “disrupted entrenched ways of thinking about familiar objects of social research by emphasizing the causal and socially constitutive role of cultural process and system of signification” (steinmetz, 1999, p. 2). in this way, it is a movement away from the materiality of political economy and about an orientation towards cultural variables such as gender, identity, and discourse. © 2022, jules et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(1), 4-25. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en re/dis/assembling “educational imaginaries” through regionalism current issues in comparative education 5 at the intersection of these strands. in other words, in a “new period of certain economic (re)organization,” it aims to “decipher the workings of specific economic configurations” (biebuyck & meltzer, 2010, p. 1), which are a set of multiplicities or a “series of relations of relation instituted over time through different organizations of time – space” (thrift, 2005, p. 1). these developments aim to capture discursive and material practices as they are interpreted through the construction of meaning by looking at the cultural practices that intersect with economic factors to create a unique temporal space. this space is termed an “economic imaginary” by jessop (2004), who states that “an imaginary2 is a semiotic3 ensemble (without tightly defined boundaries) that frames individual subjects’ lived experience of an inordinately complex world and/or guides collective calculation about that world” (p. 163). imaginaries are constructed socially and can thus also exist as social imaginaries that have material impacts. as jessop and sum (2010) reminds us, economic imaginaries “exist at many sites and scales, can be articulated in many different social fields, and can be linked to many other types of imaginary and social practice” (p. 449). this paper seeks to move beyond the economic imaginaries proposed by jessop (2004) and consider what we term ‘educational imaginaries,’ created from the material and discursive ensembles that construct ‘educational policy spaces,’ such as funding and placement initiatives. using the evolution of the caribbean community’s (caricom)4 educational policy space as an example, this paper outlines our conception of an ‘educational imaginary’ as a complex ensemble of historical developments, global and regional economic factors, and targeted initiatives that construct a definitive educational space. in this conception, we argue that educational imaginaries are discursively constituted by a set of educational elements and practices that define and delineate a stable educational space, give it structure, and shape the educational experiences and social relations within that space. we suggest that educational imaginaries emerge as economic, political, and cultural forces seek to (re)define specific subsets of educational activities as themes, sites, and governance stakes. we also consider how educational imaginaries may be used as tools of regionalization (an economic process) through the approaches, schemes, and visions that are oriented to these imagined educational systems. the main forces involved with such efforts are trans-regional regimes, such as caricom, who seek to establish new instrumentalities of structural and organizational forms by manipulating the boundaries, geometries, and temporalities of the nation state transforming them into objects of observation, calculation, and governance. this paper uses jessop and sum’s (2013) conceptions of the four selectivities – structural selectivity, agential selectivity, discursive selectivity, and technological selectivity – of social relations, which create and constitute educational imaginaries as a scaffolding to examine the political project of regionalism and the ensuing economic process of regionalization in the caribbean and their impact upon education. it will then delve into the historical developments of the caribbean institutions that led to its creation and the current educational apparatuses supporting and extending it. in what follows, it discusses cpe as an approach to studying regionalization. next, it examines educational imaginaries and their ascension in the caribbean. methodologically we use summative 2 for jessop (2004) an imaginary is represented by its ability to constitute and reproduce discursive and material practices. 3 yet jessop (2004) always distinguishes the semiotic from the structural and their relationship is always dialectical. 4 caricom’s current members are antigua and barbuda, barbados, belize, dominica, grenada, guyana, haiti, jamaica, montserrat, saint kitts and nevis, saint lucia, saint vincent and the grenadines, suriname, and trinidad and tobago. jules et al. current issues in comparative education 6 content analysis to demonstrate how the four modes of selectivity create and perpetuate the “caribbean educational policy space (ceps)” (jules, 2015a). the paper concludes by examining how these modes of selectivity may effect changes to that space in the future. cpe as an approach to the study of regionalization first and foremost, caricom is grounded upon advancing economic integration amongst its members. education is central to the caribbean single market and economy (csme)5 – of which the caribbean single market (csm) came into force in 2006 – and it is premised upon the movement of goods, labor, capital, services, and the right to establishment.6 caricom’s human resource development (hrd) 2030 strategy (caricom, 2017) promotes mobility among caricom member states. therefore, exploring how caricom selects and promotes particular discourses is essential to understanding how education strategies manifest in regional economic projects. by examining the caribbean educational imaginary using a cpe approach to domination and hegemony, this paper grapples with large-scale regional projects such as the csme and considers how those projects embrace, resist, and indigenize neoliberal forces. the four selectivity mechanisms (discussed below) also allow us to situate caricom and the caribbean educational imaginary in its regional and global context. this contextualization facilitates a reading of how neoliberal forces impact regional education imaginaries. cpe draws upon the works of karl marx, antonio gramsci, and michel foucault to consider why and how particular social solutions are selected to maintain the dominance of a hegemonic order. a cpe approach, which combines structural and discursive analysis, begins with the argument that social actors cannot grasp the world fully; only some of many possible ensembles of discourses and practices can be interpreted. to make sense of and function in the world, actors engage in the process of “complexity reduction” and “senseand meaning-making” that shape and are shaped by existing and emerging material and discursive circumstances (jessop & sum, 2013). these ensembles, networks, or semiotic orders are composed of “genres,7 discourses,8 and styles9 and as such, constitutes the semiotic movement of a network of social practices in a given social field, institutional order, or wider social formation” (jessop, 2004, p. 166) and are referred to in cpe as ‘imaginaries.’ imaginaries are “discursively constituted and materially reproduced on many sites and scales” (jessop & sum, 2013, p. 174). in a cpe approach, the material (sometimes referred to in cpe as “extra-semiotic”) can be understood as the structural aspects such as funding, resources, and organizational practices. in contrast, the discursive (or “semiotic”) refers to cultural elements such as language, text, and even visual imagery. in the context of this paper, we discuss caricom in terms of its function as an educational imaginary with particular practices, orders, and institutions. examining the caricom educational imaginary in the context of the csm allows us to consider how social, political, and economic circumstances shape education. to understand caricom as an educational imaginary, a cpe approach explores how particular ensembles of practices, institutions, and meanings evolve and their response to crisis. as sum (2013) notes, “discursive-material interactions become more visible during crisis conjunctures when sedimented social relations are re-politicized” (pp. 545-546). within a cpe framework, complexity reduction and meaning-making shape and are 5 however, the bahamas and haiti are not members of the caribbean single market and economy. 6 the ability of any caribbean national to set up a business in any caribbean single market country. 7 ways of acting and interacting. 8 social practices from the material work from particular positions. 9 ways of being and semiotic identities. re/dis/assembling “educational imaginaries” through regionalism current issues in comparative education 7 shaped by material and discursive features understood through three evolutionary imaginary mechanisms – variation, selection, and retention – and/or institutional and spatio-temporal fixes (jessop, 2009; jessop & sum, 2013). variation refers to the idea that actors can understand and interpret realities differently in an “inordinately complex world” (jessop & sum, 2013). variation ensures that orders, ensembles, or imaginaries are incompletely realized, meaning that they are never able to correspond directly to external or inevitable reality. because imaginaries are incompletely realized, they include contradictions and opportunities for crisis that leave them vulnerable to resistance (jessop, 2009; jessop & sum, 2013). variation among discourse and practice emerges as actors respond to challenges and paradoxes (jessop, 2009; jessop & sum, 2013). selection occurs as particular narratives or discourses are privileged above others (jessop, 2009; jessop & sum, 2013). this evolutionary mechanism explores how discursive and material forces inform the varied discourses and practices that shape imaginaries and sensemaking processes. notably, selection in cpe is not a natural process; instead, it is the result of dominant cultural and structural mechanisms. retention describes the process by which certain selected discourses or practices become embedded, habitualized, or routinized (jessop, 2009; jessop & sum, 2013). orders retained across a wide range of sites increase the likelihood of “effective institutionalization and integration into patterns of structured coherence” (jessop, 2009, p. 9). in focusing on these three evolutionary mechanisms, our multidimensional analysis of the case below relies on “documentary analysis of changing imaginaries, governmental technologies, and the difference that specific agents can make” (jessop & sum, 2017, p. 9). this paper focuses on selection to understand how the ceps functions to privilege specific narratives that promote a neoliberal conception of citizenship; in this example, caricom’s hrd 2030 strategy (caricom, 2017) calls for the development of ideal caribbean citizens (caricom, 1997). the vision of the ideal caribbean citizen aims for a citizenry that: is regionally-minded who respects human life as the foundation on which all of the other desired values must rest; is psychologically secure; values differences based on gender, ethnicity, religion and other forms of diversity as sources of strength and richness; is environmentally astute; is responsible and accountable to family and community; has a strong work ethic; is ingenious and entrepreneurial; has a conversant respect for cultural heritage; exhibits multiple literacies by displaying independent and critical thinking to the application of science and technology; and embraces differences and similarities between females and males. based on this, we use the four types of selection found in cpe, corresponding to the cultural and structural mechanisms by which certain discourses are privileged: discursive, structural, agential, and technological (jessop & sum, 2013). first, discursive selectivity explores the narratives and language that inform imaginaries’ construction, rules, and actors (jessop & sum, 2013). in other words, discursive selectivity explores “what can be enunciated, who is authorized to enunciate, and how enunciations enter intertextual, interdiscursive, and contextual fields” (jessop & sum, 2013, p. 215). that is, in the face of complexity, discourse becomes rooted in senseand meaning-making. as such, the focus is on how actors frame imaginaries (with the aid of genres, styles, and discourses), and in the case of caricom, this is done through its hrd 2030 strategy. important to consider alongside discursive selectivity is structural selectivity that centers around the “structurally inscribed” materiality of meaning-making processes (jessop & sum, 2013, 204). jessop and sum (2013) describe structural selectivity as “the asymmetrical configuration of constraints and opportunities on social forces as they pursue particular projects” (p. 214). in other words, structural selectivity is engaged with the ways that existing material systems, institutions, orders, and organizations have mechanisms that jules et al. current issues in comparative education 8 both limit or enable certain discourses or practices. therefore, this is grounded in social forms and favors specific agents, interests, identities, temporal-spatial horizons, approaches, and strategies. agential selectivity (where agency can be collective or individual) grapples with the ability of social actors to observe structural forces strategically, develop identities, and act (or not act) accordingly, “ultimately, agential selectivity depends on the difference that specific actors (or social forces) make in particular conjunctures and/or in transforming conjunctures” (jessop & sum, 2013, p. 204). an analysis engaged with agential selectivity considers how identity, material interests, and capacity for action intersect for different social actors. this selectivity also considers agents’ abilities in exploiting discursive, structural, and technological selectivities. technological selectivity is rooted in foucault’s analysis (focused on power relations in society) of disciplinary mechanisms and governance, whereby power dynamics and social relations are organized in an effort to maintain and reproduce the existing social order (jessop & sum, 2013). “technologies” in cpe can include governance mechanisms such as rules, oversight, regulation, and standards that seek to align the actions and understandings of social agents and bodies. analyzing technological selectivity is crucial because differences in who can use technologies such as rules and standards, and the material impacts of these technologies play a role in constructing dominant social orders. in other words, technologies deployed by dominant social orders limit opportunities for choice, alternatives, and the possibility for different formations, resulting in the tendency to reform existing orders rather than transforming them (jessop & sum, 2013). together, these four selectivities of social relations are necessary to understand how cpe engages with ideas of domination and hegemonic orders in that “these modes of selectivity condense particular dispositives and strategic logics that help to secure hegemonies and dominations” (jessop & sum, 2013, p. 230). in other words, understanding how certain discourses or practices are privileged by selection mechanisms offers insights into how educational imaginaries, which are multi-spatial and multi-temporal, function. within this framework, hegemonic systems are shaped by actors engaging with discourse and material structures that shape social orders. importantly, these selectivities serve to privilege incompletely realized narratives, leaving them open to critique and resistance. examining how these four selectivities inform imaginaries reveals how resistance, struggle, and domination play out in existing social orders. historical development of educational imaginaries within the caribbean cpe engages with the institutional turn to observe how a hegemonic order within the ceps emerges. institutionalism is central to the application of cpe as institutions involve complexes of social practices that are: (1) regularly repeated; (2) linked to defined roles and social relations; (3) associated with particular forms of discourse, symbolic media or modes of communication; (4) sanctioned and maintained by social norms; and (5) have major significance for social order. (jessop & sum, 2013, p. 34) to look at the process of retention, selection, and variation is to look at the institutions that facilitate these processes, including their historical development. the approach taken here is a thematic one, which jessop and sum (2013) argue “takes institutions seriously by re/dis/assembling “educational imaginaries” through regionalism current issues in comparative education 9 problematizing their existence – but then argues that they can be fully explained within the neoclassical paradigm. this is the strategy of endogenization” (p. 40). the ideal caribbean citizen initiative that has emerged within caricom’s educational space is the product of the sedimentation of discourse within caricom, beginning with the normalization of ideological pluralism. ideological pluralism occurred in the 1980s when jamacia, guyana, and grenada undertook various forms of socialism in contradiction to the rest of the region that had capitalist economies. educational imaginaries arise when otherwise disparate entities find a nexus event; when other states create economic or military alliances, that can be referred to as ideological pluralism. ideological pluralism refers to fragmented states with differing economies that are held together by a uniting ideology. essentially, ideologies that would otherwise be incongruent and incompatible find a sort of ‘middle ground,’ or what can be referred to as loose coupling, in one particular area that can unite them. this need not be a formal alliance, such as the union of soviet socialist republics (ussr), but refers instead to “the sharing of ideas between contemporaneous ideologies” such as how “there are no great differences in ideologies of the right, centre and left, for instance, in respect of the emergence of industrial society, the ways in which it operates and its structural characteristics” (seliger, 1977, p. 167). in the caribbean, many of the otherwise incompatible states found a uniting force in socialism during the 1970s due to decolonization (jules, 2013). the organization of american states (oas) recognized, in 1979, the caribbean as a “zone of peace” in order to support the “principles of ideological pluralism and peaceful coexistence, which are essential to the peace, stability, and development of that region” (grant, 1984, p. 174). with much of the infrastructure and education services at a subpar level, a move towards socialism provided common ground to the member states of caricom; while socialism itself did not stay, the stage was set for a unified regional approach to education. the ideal caribbean citizen initiative is a conflagration of multiple state interests, at the nexus point of wanting to enter the global economy as a regional force, despite cultural differences within the states of caricom themselves. using this lens as an entry point to observing the ideal caribbean citizen allows us to avoid broad assumptions, as “pluralism can be justified deontically [sic] and/or pragmatically in many ways, but it is grounded ontologically in the complexity of the world, which entails that it cannot be fully understood and explained from any one entrypoint” (jessop & sum, 2013, p. 7). seeing initiatives in a region such as this should be viewed as one factor within a region and not a defining factor of the educational space itself, as “ideological pluralism signif[ies] the varying developmental ideologies of member states” (jules, 2013, p. 258). another idea integral to an educational imaginary is the emergence of metagovernance. jessop (1997) describes governance as “the complex art of steering multiple agencies, institutions and systems that are both operationally autonomous from one another and structurally coupled through various forms of reciprocal interdependence” (p.111). essentially, while we refer to systems of direct control as governance, a system that functions to direct these other systems without being in control is ‘metagovernance.’ an example of metagovernance would be the un’s 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs), which provide benchmarks for countries to reach without directly dictating how those goals are met. the un cannot compel member states to meet the targets of the sdgs, but it can use soft power methods to influence member states to meet the goals. in an educational imaginary, we look at commonalities of the states who have a vested interest in that space and at commonalities of external forces that could be influencing those actors. not only is metagovernance a core tenet of cpe, but “metagovernance is jules et al. current issues in comparative education 10 particularly applicable to caricom since it respects the principles of sovereignty (which speaks to its intergovernmentalist nature) and ‘collibration’ (which includes modes of cooperation and is a feature of its neofunctionalism character)” (jules, 2016, p. 4). the educational imaginary examined for this article, the ceps, currently utilizes a particular instrument – the ideal caribbean citizen – to avoid ideological pluralism. the ideal caribbean citizen, which emerged in the post-ideological pluralist period, is a set of benchmarks created by caricom that emphasizes neoliberal ideals within member countries. while not a precise list of standards and benchmarks akin to a curricular model, the benchmarks of the ideal caribbean citizen emphasize skills tailored to a global economy as inspired by the un’s 2030 sustainable development agenda. it essentially balances global needs with regional ideals in that the “ideal caribbean citizen[s] are seen as those who are globally minded but focus on contributing economically to the region’s interests first and foremost” (jules & arnold, 2021, p. 6). this helps establish a hegemonic order wherein cpe is created. history of caricom’s educational imaginaries institutionalism in the caribbean involves looking at the nexus of several different educational and economic structures within the region, beginning with caricom. the dating of the ceps educational imaginary can be traced back to caricom’s csme, which was established at the 1989 grande anse conference in grenada, which sought to replace the preexisting caribbean community and common market (cccm). the resultant grande anse declaration “create[ed] the necessary institutions to facilitate the pillars of regionalization” (jules, 2015a, p. 310). in other words, ideological pluralism drove the movement towards a wider form of economic integration – one not just based on economic cooperation but cultural, political, and societal levels – to create a common educational policy space at the regional level, which is akin to jessop’s idea of ‘imaginaries.’ we use ‘educational imaginaries’ to refer to the shared educational policy space created by caricom, the caribbean educational policy space (ceps). within this space, caricom “facilitates the exchange of policy ideas and acts as a multi-level governance institution by addressing issues that have come from the inability of national governments to control global, regional, and transnational policy processes” (jules, 2015a, p. 310) to engender the ideal caribbean citizen. one of the biggest concerns of the entities within this space is addressing educational stratification among socioeconomic classes. even to this day, within caricom countries, there is an “educational hierarchy between private and public educational spaces, mainly due to the status of the missionary and private schooling in the colonies…this created a stratified system left over from the dominant white hegemonic structures that colonised the region” (jules & arnold, 2021, p. 3). this space uses measuring tools to address this through the free movement of skilled persons act (fmspa) aimed at achieving the goals of the csme. the fmspa ensures that graduates meet the basic requirements set out by the act to move and work between member countries without additional visa requirements. the fmspa categorizes “skilled caricom nationals” into categories such as artisans, nurses, teachers, university graduates, sportspersons, musicians, managers, technical and supervisory staff, and media workers and their dependents and theoretically levels the competitive playing field of the job market across the region. the fmspa is an outgrowth of the caribbean examination council (cxc). under the treaty of chaguaramas of 1973, cxc is designated as an institution of caricom aimed to establish a uniform examination and certification authority across member states. it monitors the technical and vocational education and training (tvet) and caribbean vocational qualification re/dis/assembling “educational imaginaries” through regionalism current issues in comparative education 11 (cvq) certificates and is responsible for integrating sdg 4 (education) into caricom’s education system. these certificates allow the fmpsa to operate; skilled workers qualify under one of the categories after tracking a career path dictated by the cxc. the caribbean vocational qualification (cvq) is a certificate earned by students and recognized throughout the region. it places qualified students into one of five categories, or “levels” (nta, 2021): level 1 directly supervised/entry –level worker level 2 supervised skilled worker level 3 independent or autonomous skilled worker level 4 specialized or supervisory worker level 5 managerial and/or professional worker the cvq is a recognized and portable qualification in caricom and “has parallel standing with academic qualifications at same level” and ensures “the development of the ideal caribbean worker” (nta, 2021, n.d.). candidates are assessed at the secondary level for competence in the cxc’s selected skill area. the cvq represents “the coordination of technical and vocational education and training qualifications across the region” and is how “caricom as a regime has sought to use principles, norms, rules, and decisionmaking procedures to streamline its functional educational projects” (jules, 2019, p. 7). workers with a cvq are recognized as skilled in their area in all caricom countries. thus, they are now participating in a larger caricom educational imaginary, a ‘regime’ wherein caricom has control over the labor market of member countries. this is exercised through the more extensive tvet apparatus adopted in 1990 to promote vocational training as the caribbean region entered a single-market economy. national tvet institutions administer the cvq in their specialized areas, with students qualifying to attend such institutes before reaching secondary school. in the caribbean, “tvet is becoming an important component of the regional development project” (p. 5) and has created a larger educational space where the “focus [is] on creating efficient operations of common services and activities for the benefit of the people; accelerating the promotion of greater understanding among the people; advancing social, cultural, and technological development” (jules, 2015b, p. 5). in the language of semiotics, tvet is part of the construction that creates the educational space that caricom operates within. part of ceps’s educational imaginary is also created from the international level through initiatives such as the sdgs and the previous world bank’s education for all (efa) fund. as previously mentioned, the efa is an international initiative to improve literacy and access to education in poorer countries and incorporate international goals into the regional framework established by caricom. along with the un’s sdgs-specifically sdg 4, which focuses on education-efa, transfers international policies to the regional imaginary: with the opening up of new policy venues such as the sustainable development goals (sdgs), educational transfer in the caribbean, be it voluntary or imposed, is not only about the transferal of global best practices but also represents the transnational movement of policies and social learning (jules & arnold, 2021, p. 2). methodological terrain this study conducted a summative content analysis (saldana, 2016) across nine policy documents concerning human resource development in caricom. these policy jules et al. current issues in comparative education 12 documents were selected to understand better how educational imaginaries are constructed and function in the caricom regional space. this approach draws from ball (1990), who argues that texts can be understood as both constructed by and constructive of discourse. additionally, this paper seeks to understand how caricom educational imaginaries develop over time. six texts used in this study date from before hrd education was formally introduced into caricom’s strategic plan, and three texts date from the introduction of hrd education and subsequent years (table 1). table 1 policy documents used in this study, year of publication, and publishing body document title publication year publishing body caricom human resource development 2030 strategy 2017 caricom creative and productive citizens for the 21st century (cpc) 1997 caricom education and training policy and strategy 2017 caribbean development bank eye on the future: investing in youth now 2010 caricom future of education in the caribbean 1993 caricom strategic plan for caribbean community (spcc) 2014 caricom strategic plan for the caribbean community 2015-2019: repositioning caricom 2016 caricom youth agenda, sustainable development 2003 united nations youth development action plan 2012 caricom given that caricom’s csme was established in 1989, we included official policy documents regarding education and hrd after this date. we examined a corpus of documents from between 1993-2021, when hrd was formally introduced. we then gathered documents from various sources beginning from the formal introduction of hrd in 1993 through 2021. documents were collected from caricom’s virtual archive on its website as well as through policy mentions in the existing literature on caricom’s educational strategies. the texts ultimately included in this study represent policy strategies for hrd from key policy actors and governance bodies identified across existing literature about the region and by caricom itself. the four themes used in this study, structural selectivity, discursive selectivity, agential selectivity, and technological selectivity, were pre-selected from cpe as a valuable method of understanding how educational imaginaries function at various scales. by preselecting themes from our theoretical framework, researchers could track the mechanisms by which educational imaginaries take shape closely. the first theme, structural re/dis/assembling “educational imaginaries” through regionalism current issues in comparative education 13 selectivity, was applied to this case by researchers to mean the social, political, and economic contexts that these policy documents responded to. discursive selectivity was understood to mean how documents positioned the roles, responsibilities, and functions of governing bodies, people, and strategies. in other words, discursive selectivity explores how these documents select and present narratives about caricom. agential selectivity was applied across these codes to track nodal actors identified in the documents and discussions of their roles or capacities. these codes referred to the influence and positioning of governance bodies, agencies, and key stakeholders. the final theme, technological selectivity, indicated the mechanisms, tools, and strategies by which selected discourse around education were implemented and reinforced. this theme refers to specific practices, routines, and tools that are recommended or used in policy documents to shape educational practice. the nine texts were coded by three of the authors of this study using a set of codes developed collaboratively. one researcher coded documents that preceded hrd policy, and two researchers coded policies that came after. we began our analysis by open coding all documents and generating an initial set of codes that represented vital themes, concepts, actors, and implementation strategies found in the documents and corresponded to our four pre-selected themes. we then collectively examined the prevalence of concepts generated by open coding across the documents to search for patterns, gaps, and outlying codes. next, we developed a set of codes that we agreed corresponded to the central ideas in each document and organized them into our four thematic categories depending on how each concept functioned in the document. table 2 provides a breakdown of how codes were organized under each theme. all three researchers agreed upon definitions for the codes, and codes were developed based on language gathered directly from the texts and through researcher interpretation. documents were then re-coded using the refined set of codes. table 2 theme and code organization theme code code definition structural global economy 1 effects of globalization create a need to strengthen integration efforts, need to address the economy within the region to compete with the global economy discursive global economy 2 references to the need for csme and caricom to produce skilled and competitive workers to compete in the global economy, it is the responsibility of education to produce such workers regional economy addressing the “grave social and economic jules et al. current issues in comparative education 14 problem throughout the region” (cpc, p. 27) labor market direct or indirect references to labor markets, workforce preparation, labor demand, 21st century skills culture culture as facilitating regional integration and cohesion, promoting “caribbeanness” and a sense of regional identity ideal caribbean citizen references to citizenship, any of the icc traits, good caribbean citizen or person agential caricom interventions, influence, policies, or bodies facilitated by caricom/caricom branches; references to caricom capacity and governance csme references to strengthening the caribbean’s capacity to respond to challenges in the global economy, commitment to caribbean identity – a commitment to csme/regional economy world bank references to studies/statistics produced by world bank, citing world bank studies as proof of caribbean’s past education/economic failures regional development banks interventions, influence, policies, or bodies facilitated by regional banks; references to bank capacity and governance youth as future leaders the ideal caribbean youth (like icc), discussion of the vital role of youth in the integration of the region, references to youth participation being essential and “catalyzing” development potential re/dis/assembling “educational imaginaries” through regionalism current issues in comparative education 15 western capitalism warnings of cultural influence from north american and other “more developed” societies, as a threat to the development of caribbean cultural identity, need for citizens to evaluate outside sources critically technological monitoring & evaluation drawn from the specific language used in hrd doc, references to systems or interventions that support monitoring or evaluation such as oversight bodies, testing, and feedback media references to the dissemination of policy, policy goals, programs designed to make the region aware of the relationship between culture and development standards & accountability references to world bank studies and the need to improve scores, references to regional studies/statistics, the desire to be seen as globally competitive in education, teacher training curriculum reform students concerned about outdated curriculum, the need to increase youth awareness of their role in the regional system, need to create curriculum that will produce competitive workers extra-national governance bodies world bank, unesco, ngos, private investment/donors overseeing, funding, or used as a benchmark for policy implementation caricom comprises many different national contexts that may interpret and implement regional strategies in varied ways. because our study is limited to examining official, regional policy documents, it fails to capture the actual implementation of these strategies at a national and local level. further research is necessary to gather data on how the jules et al. current issues in comparative education 16 caricom educational imaginary functions in practice. additionally, exploring how these policies are received and experienced by individual educators, students, and school administrators is crucial in understanding local interpretations, understandings, and resistance in shaping imaginaries. however, these questions are beyond the scope of this paper, which seeks to explore how caricom governance bodies construct, position, and mechanize educational imaginaries. findings and discussion this discussion will apply a cpe approach to selected caricom policy documents from 1993 to the present. the first section addresses 1993-2014, and the second discusses 2014present. using the four modes of selectivity, this section illustrates how the educational imaginary is formed and reconstituted over time in ceps. while for the purposes of this paper, the modes can be thought of as progressing linearly, moving from structural to discursive, then to agential and technological, it is essential to note that imaginaries and the ideas that constitute them develop relatively freely within this framework, deconstructing and reconstructing bits and pieces of themselves as they move. 1993-2014 structural across the documents analyzed, structural selectivity can be seen in numerous references to the global or knowledge-based economy. citing the nature of globalization and the global economy as a significant driving force, many documents take an early first step towards creating the educational imaginary. phrases referencing global pressure permeate the documents, starting with the future of education policy (fec). for example, the policy artifacts use phrases like “if caribbean culture is to hold its own in a world that will become increasingly competitive…” (caricom, 1993, p. 21) and “if the caribbean community wishes to avoid global marginalization…” (caricom, 1993, p. 44). this language situates caricom within a broader global hierarchy shaped by economic competition and positions education systems as critical to driving regional economic development. structural selection of the global economy continues into the creative and productive citizens for the 21st century ([cpc], caricom, 1997), which established the idea of the ideal caribbean citizen. one of the foundational ideas expressed is the need to build “a capacity to respond to fundamental global changes,” requiring the region to develop methods of dealing with “this complex set of challenges” (caricom, 1997, p. 7). this theme remains in several youth policy documents as well. for example, caricom (2003) notes that “changes in world trade and economics… increased pressure to compete in all productive sectors” and the “unprecedented challenges of globalisation” pressed the region to “achieve sustainable development” in order to remain active on the global stage (p. 2). additionally, eye on the future (caricom, 2010) discusses “challenges posed by globalization and trade liberation” and thus immediately establishes the underlying force necessitating the corresponding policy discussion and proposed changes. the strategic plan for the caribbean community ([spcc] caricom, 2014) follows suit only a few years later, discussing in its introduction the global and regional context of the region at the time, and elaborating that because it existed in a “highly volatile and uncertain global environment” (pp. 4-5), the repositioning of the caricom economies (and educational imaginary) faced significant challenges. every document analyzed between 1993-2014 was founded on the notion that the global knowledge-based economy necessitated policy change in the caribbean. moreover, the notion of the ‘ideal type’ of caribbean citizen that is needed to function in a knowledge-based economy is the backbone of the imaginary. re/dis/assembling “educational imaginaries” through regionalism current issues in comparative education 17 this notion can be seen as the primary structural selection constituting the educational imaginary. as the next section explains, this underlies the imaginary progression in every document by serving as the basis for the three other modes of selectivity, starting with discursive. discursive the global economy pervades the discursive mode of selectivity as well, coming up in many places as references to caricom’s ability to produce skilled workers and citizens capable of competing on the global stage. it is at this point in the four modes of selectivity that education is first explicitly named, with eye on the future (caricom, 2010) claiming that developing a morally stable and productive workforce is “the responsibility of the education and other social systems in the region” (p. 33). in cpc (caricom, 1997), the need is stated more explicitly “education is the major mechanism to bring about the necessary transformation in caribbean society” (p. 21). the regional economy is also discursively selected in multiple documents, which stress the need to strengthen csme through education and refer to the “grave social and economic problem throughout the region” (caricom, 1997, p. 27). another example can be found in the youth agenda (caricom, 2003), expressing the need for “active participation of the region’s population and the diaspora in regional integration efforts” (p. 2). the labor market emerges as another theme in discursive selectivity. closely linked with the global and regional economy, the labor market is discussed at length in every document, emphasizing preparing a skilled workforce and developing 21st-century citizens. for example, the fec (caricom, 1993) explains a “need for the development of an entrepreneurial culture as an important strategy for both job creation and economic advancement” (p. 49). another salient example is found in the later eye on the future (caricom, 2010), which states that a successful single market economy in the caribbean “requires a highly skilled, knowledge-based workforce that is morally stable, healthy, productive, creative and competitive” (p. 33). the final discursively selected theme is culture, specifically the pressing need for a cohesive and unifying culture that brings the region’s people together. culture was immediately flagged as essential to the caribbean policy space in the fec document (caricom, 1993), which declared that education should be able to provide citizens with “a healthy concept of self and cultural rootedness which engenders a commitment to the region” (p. 16). the eye on the future report (caricom, 2010) displayed the continuation of culture as a critical discursive theme. this document more explicitly stated the relevance of culture to the constitution of the educational imaginary, noting that “culture is also the foundation and an effective tool in regional integration, as it is central to the promotion of a sense of regional identity” and urging young people to continue identifying with caribbean religion, art, and music (caricom, 2010, p. 79). it continues that “if culture shapes many of the practices now deemed to be dysfunctional, it holds the promise of being the source of generating solutions” (caricom, 2010, 88). agential numerous agents are operating within ceps, all of which play a role in constituting the educational imaginary. these include caricom, the csme, the world bank, the regional development banks, youth, and western capitalism. all are mentioned in various capacities in each of the policy documents analyzed, but this section will discuss only youth and western capitalism, as they are unique from later documents. the caribbean youth were recognized early as important agents operating within the policy space. in its section concerning primary education, the fec (caricom, 1993) states that jules et al. current issues in comparative education 18 “shaping the minds of our youth” (p. 12) lays the foundation for development. later in the document, educating the youth on caribbean culture is “seen as a critical component of the curriculum with the potential to enable our young people to carve a niche in the world economic and cultural scene,” with the additional goal that “[s]chool should also enable students recognise the possibilities of exploiting our culture for economic development” (caricom, 1993, pp. 27-28). the youth agenda (caricom, 2003) recognizes that “youth involvement in the process of seeking solutions is increasingly considered vital” and that youth are “catalysts of the development potential of the caribbean” (p. 3). eye on the future (caricom, 2010) makes a clear point that many well-known artists and intellectuals from the region “were in fact youth when they peaked in terms of their contribution” (p. 80). later, the document speaks of the extraordinary spirit of the region and that “we forget to our peril that it is our youth primarily that embody this spirit” (caricom, 2010, p. 88). western capitalism is also seen as an agent in ceps; however, it is often discussed cautiously and with a warning. media studies during secondary education are emphasized as important to the culture of the region so it can “sustain itself and resist uncritical absorption of electronically transmitted material from other cultures” (caricom, 1993, p. 15), and to enable people “to evaluate the messages critically from the foreign media” (caricom, 1993, p. 17). the document later recognizes that previously, technology had been seen as a “deliberate attempt … to subvert the region’s culture by submerging it in and overwhelming it with hollywood images” but that now (in 1993) “what was being perceived as a regional phenomenon was in fact a nascent global phenomenon” (caricom, 1993, p. 44). eye on the future (caricom, 2010) then recognizes that many leaders warn of the “threat to caribbean cultural identity posed by cultural influences from north america and other more developed societies” and the fear that morals and values of caribbean heritage are “being eroded by cultural homogenisation” (p. 82). western ideals are seen as detracting from caribbean culture because youth struggle to “withstand the materialism and individualism embedded in the culture beamed in, especially from the north” (caricom, 2010, p. 82). however, the document then goes on to explain that since the “threat from external cultural forces” will not go away “as long as the united states remains the world power that it is,” the region must remain open to these influences and use them to develop new cultural forms that make the caribbean unique (caricom, 2010, p. 82). such broad statements reflect the region’s expectations to borrow western educational reforms. technological the final mode of selectivity found within the policy documents is technological. through this mode, the mechanical aspects of governance come to fruition and can be thought of as a controlling output of the process of constituting the educational imaginary. the themes that have been technically selected include media, standards and accountability, and curriculum reform. because this paper focuses explicitly on policy documents, the implementation of these themes is not discussed. however, by examining case studies, further research could concretely demonstrate how various actors use technological themes to constitute the educational imaginary in ceps. beginning with the future of education document (caricom, 1993), media is invoked as the essential method to “disseminate programmes designed to sensitise the community” (p. 29) about the importance of culture in developing a cohesive region. the document later discusses educating parents about children with special needs and states that “the media can be used effectively to change the attitudes of parents and the society in general towards the handicapped” (caricom, 1993, 31). jumping forward to 2014, media continues to pervade policy documents as an essential mechanism to the educational imaginary. spcc re/dis/assembling “educational imaginaries” through regionalism current issues in comparative education 19 (caricom, 2014) advocates for “undertaking a comprehensive public education, public information, public relations, and advocacy programme” (p. 31) to strengthen the caricom identity and spirit of the community. standards and accountability emerge as a measuring stick for the educational imaginary’s success in the global economy. world bank statistics are often cited in earlier documents, and teacher training is explicitly mentioned as an essential mechanism to ensure educational and economic success. fec (caricom, 1993) cites the need to “develop regional programmes for the training of teachers” (p. 10) in order to develop children who are independent thinkers and to strengthen all levels of education. cpc (caricom, 1997) continues this theme of technical selectivity, stating, “perhaps the most crucial challenge facing the education and training system is the inability to attract and retain appropriately qualified staff” (p. 31). in a similar vein, the curriculum is perhaps the most salient example of a technically selected theme serving to constitute the educational imaginary. through curriculum reform, the region expresses in nearly every policy document the potential to more appropriately and effectively educate its citizens to compete and participate in both the regional and global economy. for example, fec (caricom, 1993) right away recognizes that “teachers need the guidance of a curriculum which is integrated and centered around the experiences of the children [and] relevant to their culture” (p. 9) in order to do their jobs as educators effectively. the document also contains an entire section devoted to such curriculum reform, which names several sections in particular need of reform, including culture, language learning, and technology (caricom, 1993). cpc (caricom, 1997) emphasizes, in particular, the need for “teaching how to learn” in order to “shift from education seen as schooling to one of life-long learning” (p. 30). spcc (caricom, 2014) demonstrates a continuation of this technical selectivity, stating that specific focus should be placed on certain areas within the curriculum, such as “innovation and creativity,” “teacher preparation,” and “greater emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics” (p. 5) in order to meet skills requirements of the labor market. 2014-present structural in analyzing structural selectivity in policy documents from 2014-present, the emphasis is most clearly focused on the global knowledge-based economy and the integration and involvement of the region into the broader context. the caricom human resource development 2030 strategy (caricom, 2017) is crucial. this document references the global economy and the goal of regional economic integration. a goal of hrd is to “ensure that our community can fully respond to the united nations sustainable development goals (sdgs)” (caricom, 2017, xiv). in striving to meet the global goals set by unesco, the global economy is given priority. further, hrd explicitly aims to “take on the challenges of globalization” (caricom, 2017, xii). in the education and training policy and strategy document produced by the caribbean development bank (cdb), emphasis on the global economy is presented alongside broader development goals at the international level. “apart from the caribbean-specific mdgs, other regional and global developments were considered” (cdb, 2017, p. v). through these documents from 2014-present, the global economy constitutes the core defining feature of structural selectivity shaping the educational imaginary. this influences and sets the stage for the other selectivities to emerge. jules et al. current issues in comparative education 20 discursive in the discursive mode of selectivity, the global economy emerged as another key theme throughout the documents. the documents look to education to create workers for the global economy. hrd calls to “embrace global competitiveness” (caricom, 2017, xvii). a key trend throughout the cdb document encompasses the “effectiveness of education and training to create systems that are responsible to national, regional and global labour markets” (cdb, 2017, p. viii). a second discursively selected theme is the regional economy. this theme focuses on the economic and social issues present. “the caribbean has been underperforming even when measured against other parts of the developing world, including other small island developing states (sids)” (caricom, 2017, p. 14). the goal to avoid repeating past mistakes was reiterated throughout the documents. additionally, a desire to “increase efficiency and cost-effectiveness in the delivery of similar or common services across the region” (cdb, 2017, p. 2) shows the hope to create more efficient educational systems. the labor market emerged as another discursive selectivity. the hrd discusses the “twelve 21st century competencies and skills for the caribbean citizen” along with the “top ten skills needed by 2020” (caricom, 2017, pp. 23-24). further, the push for education to prepare people for the labor markets was present, “enhanced efficiency, relevance and effectiveness of education and training to create systems which are responsive to national, regional and global labour markets” (cdb, 2017, viii). another discursive selectivity is culture, which is defined here as promoting a regional identity. the “seamless” integration of the hrd into people’s lives and the broader “ecosystem” (caricom, 2017, pp. 7-9) articulates the desire for the hrd strategy to encompass multiple levels and aspects of individuals’ lives towards reaching regional goals. finally, the ideal caribbean citizen is the last discursive selectivity analyzed. this references good caribbean citizenship according to the vision of the ideal caribbean citizen. part of the definition of the document’s goals is for better citizenship. further, the hrd seeks to prepare people for active citizenship, developing regional identity, and preparing for governance participation (caricom, 2017). the goals of the cdb are aimed at contributing to the ideal caribbean citizen. agential the agents that function within the caribbean policy space include caricom, csme, commonwealth secretariat, the eu, the imf, un agencies, the world bank, and regional development banks.10 while there are additional agents at play in the policy space, the scope of this paper analyzes only major policy actors formally engaged in governance. caricom creates the hrd; thus, it clearly outlines its ability for governance and its presence in the policy landscape. cdb (2017) analyzes past policy documents and critical events that contribute to the current educational imaginary, citing influential strategies, initiatives, and interventions. csme references strengthening the caribbean’s capacity to respond to challenges in the global economy and commitment to the regional economy. the revised treaty of chaguaramas (caricom, 2001) is critical in developing skilled workers and their movement throughout the region. as such, “cdb positioned itself to respond more efficiently and effectively to the development challenges faced by bmcs” (cdb, 2017,10) throughout the documents, references to studies and information produced by the world bank are incorporated. further citing world bank studies as proof of the caribbean’s past educational and economic failures plays a role in evidence-based practices and future implements. the hrd reports on spending in education produced 10this is not an extensive list of actors, because of the scope of this paper concerns major policy actors and therefore grassroots organizations and middle level civil society actors are not included. re/dis/assembling “educational imaginaries” through regionalism current issues in comparative education 21 by the world bank and is identified as a partner in development (caricom, 2017). cdb notes the world bank’s role in co-financing the oecs tvet project (cdb, 2017). technological the themes within technological selectivities are monitoring and evaluation, media, standards and accountability, and curriculum reform. monitoring and evaluation are seen through the systems and interventions that support monitoring or evaluation, such as oversight bodies, testing, feedback. for example, unesco uses technological selectivities such as online data collection tools and online resource banks to assist schools in achieving sdg 4. there are a series of protocols for monitoring and evaluating within the hrd document. project, strategy, and performance evaluations will occur in 2024 and 2029 (caricom, 2017). a goal of the cdb strategy is to support the assessment, access, equity, and participation of education (cdb, 2017, p. vi). further, strategies for intervention and a review process are embedded in this document (cdb, 2017). media serves as another theme of technological selectivity and refers to disseminating policy, policy goals, and programs. in the hrd, there are five modules for implementation and schedules for progressing towards goals where communication and interaction are identified as a principle to success (caricom, 2017). standards and accountability track the progress of the educational imaginary in the global economy. hrd articulates “standardized skills certification and accreditation” (caricom, 2017, p. 26), which are necessary for the movement of skilled workers throughout the region. cdb works to create a culture of accountability in policy governance (cdb, 2017, p. 20). another technological selectivity is curriculum reform, which seeks to promote the methods of instruction and content that prepare students for life beyond school. hrd describes the need for “learner centered design of curricula” (caricom, 2017, p. 3) “effective teaching” (caricom, 2017, p. 8), “multiple pathways for students to be exposed to and help prepare students for different career paths” (caricom, 2017, p. 42). in this way, the curriculum provides routes for student success. cdb (2017) articulates the need for “high standards which are clearly understood and agreed by all stakeholders, including students and parents; a culture of accountability and transparency; and reliable data on the performance of the education system” (p. 20). lastly, extra-national governance bodies contribute to the make-up of technological selectivities. these include organizations such as the world bank, unesco, ngos, and other private investment/donors overseeing, funding, or used as a benchmark for policy implementation. the hrd considers policies from a variety of global education players and partnerships such as commonwealth secretariat, commonwealth of learning (col), the eu, global affairs canada (gac– formerly dfatd/ cida), unicef, unesco, usaid (caricom, 2017). the key themes that emerged within each of the four selectivities work in various ways to constitute and reinforce the educational imaginary of the caricom educational policy space. conclusion the cpe approach presented above examined ‘how’ and when educational imaginaries are constructed and investigated, ‘who’ is involved in their development, and ‘what’ issues emerge. the existing small (and micro) states literature focuses on how transregional bodies (like caricom) are seeking to navigate the particular economic vulnerabilities typically associated with small states that arise out of colonial histories/continued western hegemony (e.g., reliance on a single export or tourism and are increasingly precarious with climate change etc.). as such, our findings reveal that jules et al. current issues in comparative education 22 caricom’s educational imaginary is informed and shaped by neoliberal processes and logics emphasizing economic competition and increasing input from supra-national bodies such as unesco and the world bank. at the same time, our findings indicate the increasing presence of regional entities in ceps as time goes on and a recognition of the tensions that arise at the intersection of global pressures and local contexts. ceps is structurally responsive to the global economy and deploys capacity for economic competition as a benchmark of success. caricom discursively aligns its educational goals with its economic ones by focusing on labor market needs and positions education as the ideal caribbean citizen’s arena. ceps educational policy is shaped by a mix of supra-national and regional agents that are increasingly involved in education governance. caricom uses neoliberal technological mechanisms such as standards, accountability, and evaluation to institutionalize its regional agenda. this analysis reveals that caricom selects one particular interpretation of regional needs that shapes and is shaped by an interplay of global and local considerations. educational imaginaries are being continuously deconstructed and reconstituted through variation, selection, and retention. by analyzing selection, and the four modes of selectivity (structural, discursive, agential, and technological), one can trace the formation and perpetuation of an educational imaginary within a specific policy space. caricom provides a salient example of such a process; the development of the ideal caribbean citizen and human resource development initiatives since 1993 demonstrates the various ways in which ideas are prioritized, selected, and promoted by powerful actors in order to create an educational imaginary. through the lens of cpe, caricom demonstrates how regional governing bodies position education as central to economic goals in light of a competitive and global knowledge-based economy, made up of often vulnerable state and regional entities. because this paper exclusively examined policy documents, its findings remain chiefly theoretical. however, we suggest that by analyzing the educational imaginary in concrete, real-world terms such as case studies of student learning outcomes, further research could better illuminate the nuances of cpe and educational imaginaries. land acknowledgment statement the loyola university chicago community acknowledges its location on the ancestral homelands of the council of the three fires (the ojibwa, ottawa, and potawatomi tribes) and a place of trade with other tribes, including the ho-chunk, miami, menominee, sauk, and meskwaki. we recognize that descendants of these and other north american tribes continue to live and work on this land with us. we recognize the tragic legacy of colonization, genocide, and oppression that still impacts native american lives today. as a jesuit university, we affirm our commitment to issues of social responsibility and justice. we further recognize our responsibility to understand, teach, and respect the past and present realities of local native americans and their continued connection to this land. tavis d. jules is an associate professor of cultural and educational policy studies at loyola university chicago; his focus and expertise lie in comparative and international education, specifically on race, terrorism, regionalism, and dictatorial transition. he is the immediate pastpresident of the caribbean studies association, book and media reviews editor for comparative education review, an international institute of islamic thought fellow, and a senior fellow at norrag. author’s note: i have begun to lowercase my name as a way to decolonize myself and my importance as an actant. i want to draw attention to my work and not to my name. i realized this is an oxymoron in that lowercasing the name draws attention to it, but i did not get to choose my re/dis/assembling “educational imaginaries” through regionalism current issues in comparative education 23 name, especially my surname, and it comes with colonial trapping and baggage, which i must shed as i have to use this name. i view my name as being embedded with power and the exercise of european dominance, which attacks, defiles, and alters my ancestors' names to suppress and erase their identity. therefore, i see naming rituals as a violent process of identity and colonialism that are embedded in my slavery ancestry. richard arnold is a ph.d. candidate at loyola university chicago who focuses on global citizenship. previously he was a schoolteacher in the dc and chicago areas and more recently conducted product research for google for education. he has published works on neo-gramsci theory and regionalism. caitlin donnelley-power is a master’s candidate at loyola university chicago. their research focuses on student organizing and resistance. currently, they conduct education and child development research for a non-profit policy research organization. they also do decarceration work with incarcerated survivors of gender-based violence. holly jacobs is a j.d./m.a. candidate at loyola university chicago. her research interests are international and comparative education, education law, and indigenous rights. this fall, her article comparing government reparation efforts for indigenous residential schools in canada and the us will be published in the loyola international law review. madeline rainey is a master’s candidate at loyola university chicago, and her research centers on citizenship construction and environmental education. she is a middle and high school social studies teacher in minnesota, where she teaches civics, geography, history, and economics. references ball, s. j. 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(2005). knowing capitalism. sage. tahir, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 1, winter 2022 decolonizing madrassa reform in pakistan izza tahir university of toronto pakistan has been engaged in the project of madrassa reform since the early days of its nationhood. since gaining independence from britain in 1947, successive pakistani governments have introduced a series of reforms aimed at regulating and reforming the madrassa sector, but the repeated failure of these efforts suggests the presence of some systemic barrier to reform. this article looks at the history of the madrassa in south asia under british rule, and raises the question of how this colonial experience has shaped madrassa reform in post-colonial pakistan. it highlights three key policy interventions of the british in the education sector, namely the 1835 minute of lord macaulay, the 1854 educational despatch of the court of directors of the east india company, and the formal institutionalization of higher education, to show that the cumulative effect of these policies was the creation of an ideological binary which bifurcated the education system. it argues that by institutionalizing a singular conception of education, this colonial legacy has impacted key madrassa reform efforts undertaken by pakistan in 1962, 1979, and 2001/02. the article concludes with a discussion of the necessity of decolonizing future reform efforts such as the national curriculum reform—the introduction of the single national curriculum—that pakistan is currently embarking upon. introduction depending on whom one asks, a madrassa is either a traditional islamic educational institution with a venerable history dating all the way back to the dawn of islam—or a hotbed of terrorist activity. perhaps it is precisely this polarized conceptualization that has led today to madrassas being firmly embedded within the socio-religious fabric of pakistani society while having become, at the same time, a politically-contentious entity. to be more precise, it is the issue of madrassa reform that forms the point of contention. pakistan has been engaged in the project of madrassa reform since the early days of its nationhood. since gaining independence from britain in 1947, successive pakistani governments have introduced a series of reforms aimed at regulating and reforming the madrassa sector, but the repeated failure of these efforts suggests the presence of some systemic barrier to reform. this article looks at the history of the madrassa in south asia during british rule and raises the question of how this colonial experience has shaped madrassa reform efforts in postcolonial pakistan. it focuses on three key policy interventions of the british in the education sector, namely the 1835 minute of lord macaulay, the 1854 educational despatch of the court of directors of the east india company, and the formal institutionalization of higher education, to show that the cumulative effect of these policies was the creation of an ideological binary which bifurcated the education system. it argues that by institutionalizing a singular conception of education, this colonial legacy has impacted key madrassa reform efforts undertaken by pakistan in 1962, 1979, and 2001/02. the article concludes with a discussion of the necessity of decolonizing future reform efforts, such as the national curriculum reform—the introduction of a single national curriculum—that pakistan is currently embarking upon. © 2022, tahir. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(1), 61-77. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en tahir current issues in comparative education 62 background: the madrassa sector in pakistan the madrassa sector in pakistan provides religious education and operates alongside the secular public and private sectors. the repeated failure of government-led reforms to register and regulate madrassas has resulted in the sector existing as a loosely-organized and under-documented network of institutions. since 1983/84, madrassas have been required to affiliate themselves with one of five governing boards (wafaq), which are responsible for designing institutional curricula, conducting examinations, awarding sanads (diplomas), and representing the political interests of their madrassas. these boards fall under the purview of the higher education commission (hec) of pakistan and are organized along strict denominational lines (riaz, 2008). the exact number of madrassas in pakistan is unknown, in part because many madrassas remain unregistered and operate in an informal capacity. at the time of independence, there were reportedly less than 200 madrassas in the indian subcontinent. the 2017-2018 pakistan education statistics survey reported a total of 31,115 madrassas operating in the country, with a total enrolment of 4.099 million and employing 0.179 million teachers (nemis et al., 2021, p. 41). the growth of the sector can be attributed to factors such as the limitations of the public school system and especially the lack of schools in rural areas, and the influx of afghan and other refugees into the country who are often excluded from the formal schooling system (hunter, 2020). another significant factor is the fact that these institutions provide free education, including boarding and lodging, because of which they have come to be perceived as “essentially schools for the poor” (nemis et al., 2021, p. 41). although research on madrassa enrolment remains scant, recent survey data suggest that apart from a preference for religious education, the primary reason parents enrol their children in madrassas is economic hardship (salahuddin, 2018, p. 43). the majority of pakistani madrassas offer either an eightor sixteen-year course of study, usually divided into six stages, with some specialized institutions also offering a seventh post-graduate level of study. the medium of instruction in pakistani madrassas is usually urdu, with many also using provincial languages such as sindhi and pashto, and a special emphasis is placed on arabic and persian. the madrassas usually follow a variant of the dars-i-nizami, an 18th-century curriculum featuring predominantly medieval and classic islamic texts. the dars-i-nizami offers approximately twenty subjects that fall into two broad categories: the manqulat (the transmitted/revealed sciences) or the maqulat (the rational sciences). some madrassas also offer ‘secular’ subjects alongside islamic education. appendix 1. outlines the specific stages and curriculum of madrassa education. madrassa teachers tend to have the alim (higher secondary) or faazil (bachelor of arts) madrassa qualifications but do not have any specialized pedagogical training. a brief history of the key british interventions in the education sector and the madrassa response this article will focus on the historical development of the madrassa during the two periods of british rule, from 1767 to 1857 under the dominion of the east india company, and subsequently under the rule of the british crown until the partition of the subcontinent into india and pakistan in 1947. prior to the interventions of the british in the indian education sector, higher education was organized informally, segregated by religious community and language, and in many cases, attached to local religious institutions. examples of these include madrassas and other traditional south asian schools such as pathshalas. decolonizing madrassa reform in pakistan current issues in comparative education 63 the british east india company assumed political power in 1765 but did not directly intervene in the education sector until 1813 with the charter act. this lack of involvement was an explicit policy decision intended to reassure the indians against interference or any conversionist ambitions on the part of the british. as such, the company “maintained a distance from missionary activism [as well], opposed proselytizing, and restricted missionary activities within company-controlled territory” (riaz, 2010, p. 77). the 1813 charter of the company, however, marked a reversal of this policy as it not only included the responsibility for the education of its indian subjects in its stipulations but also introduced the requirement for english to be taught in the indian system alongside indigenous languages. the “expectation was that english would coexist with oriental studies as a means by which moral law could be reinforced” (riaz, 2010, p. 78). this was the beginning of the civilizing mission of the company, the impetus for which had come from a 1792 report by charles grant, a british politician, which included recommendations for a policy of ‘downward filtration’: through the use of english and the provision of education to local elites, the civilizing message would gradually reach the masses. the charles grant report also formed the basis for the first key education policy of the british east india company, the 1835 education minute of thomas macaulay. the approval of the minute by governor-general bentinck took place against the backdrop of a broader ongoing debate in britain about the value of the western system of education and the use of the english language compared to that of indigenous education systems and languages. the minute effectively decided the debate in favour of the western system and english, and its adoption resulted in the immediate discontinuation of government support in british south asia to madrassas and other traditional institutions and for the publication of books in sanskrit and arabic (macaulay, 1835). instead, funding was now channeled towards western academic subjects with english as the medium of instruction. the minute of 1835 became “a watershed in the history of education in india” (riaz, 2010, p.78), paving the way for policies such as the replacement, in 1835, of persian by english as the official language. the second key piece of legislation was the 1854 educational despatch, which was the result of an inquiry into the state of education in india conducted by the british parliament in 1853 as part of the renewal of the charter of the east india company. the despatch found the policy of downward filtration to have achieved only limited success and instead proposed a new scheme for organizing education from the primary all the way to the postsecondary level. it recommended that “the government take responsibility for education at all levels, and proposed a transformation of the indigenous schools into western-style institutions through grants-in-aid to private schools” (riaz, 2008, p. 70). in effect, it formalized and westernized education in india as english-language instruction proliferated, and the structure and organization of institutions changed permanently. government-sponsored education became secular, with the inclusion of christian moral texts. the despatch was described as a “complete scheme of general education for all india” and “the climax in the history of education [in india]” (qadir, 2013, p. 130). the despatch had a particularly significant and marginalizing effect on traditional institutions such as madrassas. it did not, interestingly, recommend the abolishment of traditional institutions as the macaulay minute had done. rather, it established complementary modern and secular institutions and left it up to the market to determine their prospects (qadir, 2013). because the grants-in-aid were provided to institutions that met eligibility requirements such as the adoption of a curriculum focused on mathematics, science, and language, the removal of all reference to ‘religion’ other than as part of a tahir current issues in comparative education 64 discrete ‘religion’ class, and formal teacher training and certification of educators, it altered the structure of grant-accepting madrassas. teaching, for instance, shifted from being done by respected community figures to formally trained educators. the despatch thus institutionalized a ‘modern’ system of education, which proliferated further after india came under the direct rule of the british crown three years later in the aftermath of the failed rebellion of 1857. in so doing, it paved the way for the third key intervention: the establishment of western-style institutions of higher education. in the early nineteenth century, the university of london was founded in england amid a debate about secularism in higher education. in india, the colonial government established three universities at calcutta, bombay, and madras in 1857, based closely on the utilitarian model of the university of london (qadir, 2013). this intervention, in effect, formalized a secular model of higher education in india, even though these first universities were merely examining bodies and provided very little actual teaching. they “did little to promote analytic capacity or independent thinking and produced…graduates with a half-baked knowledge of english, but sufficiently westernized to be alienated from their own culture” (maddison, 1971, p. 40). these three interventions cumulatively helped shape the nature, scope, and changing role of the madrassas in south asia as they struggled to survive in the changing socio-political climate and navigate the rise of identity politics within the indian muslim community (riaz, 2010). until the 1870s, muslim engagement had remained weak and confined mainly to the three universities at calcutta, bombay, and madras. this soon began to change, however, as muslims began to establish their own institutions of higher education. in 1866, a group of religious scholars established a madrassa at deoband, partly as a reaction to the growing interest of muslims in european education and partly “as a centre of islamic revival in india in opposition to british imperialism” (qadir, 2013, p. 132). it rejected western education and pedagogy and advocated a return to traditional islamic higher education. at the other end of the spectrum, the muslim-anglo oriental college, inspired by european-style education, was established in 1875 by sayyid ahmad khan with the support of the british government as a means of encouraging muslim participation in, and integration into, the colonial project. the dar’ ul uloom nadwa, established in 1893 by allama shibli nu’mani, rejected both these extreme views regarding muslim education and attempted to take a more balanced view. these three influential madrassas, with their respective philosophies of muslim education, became closely aligned with the spectrum of political positions the muslim community came to adopt in an increasingly politically-charged colonial environment. the colonial legacy: bifurcation of the education system the establishment of these and other madrassas in response to colonial policy interventions and their active involvement in the contemporary political discourse is an example of a tangible result of, and reaction to, imperialism. there are, however, many other less tangible results of colonialism as well. colonialism is more than just “physical violence…inflicted on colonized peoples” or their “natural wealth…extracted and their colonies locked into a relationship of dependency” (mccowan, 2015, p. 41). the colonized learning “to see themselves through the eyes of the colonizer and speak with the colonizer’s voice” with “imposed language and frames of thought” is also colonial violence (mccowan, 2015, p. 41). the british also left behind a colonial legacy in the form of an imposed frame of thought. as scholars such as qadir (2013) and riaz (2008; 2010) also argue, perhaps the most significant effect of the british interventions in the indian decolonizing madrassa reform in pakistan current issues in comparative education 65 education sector was the creation of an ideological binary that bifurcated the education system. the macaulay minute, the 1854 despatch, and the establishment of secular universities had the cumulative effect of casting education either as modern/western/secular/true/useful on the one hand, or backward/indian/religious/false/useless on the other. as the british policies established and funded a system of education that satisfied the conditions of the modern/western/secular/true/useful half of the binary, religious and traditional education became increasingly marginalized. the public sector of education became secular, and religious and traditional institutions were pushed into the private sphere. the madrassa, specifically, was increasingly “consigned to provid[ing] religious education as opposed to general education” (riaz, 2008, p. 71), and many ulema, or islamic scholars, responded by coming to perceive, and fully embrace, their role to protect the religious sphere from western intrusion and to transmit and preserve their traditions. this shift in perception was accompanied by a shift towards the ‘revealed sciences’ in the curriculum, away from the ‘rational sciences.’ the most lasting effect of this binary, perhaps, was how the ‘usefulness’ of education came to be understood. the british conception of ‘a useful’ education, which they promoted and financed, was one based on the secular sciences, and which provided an individual with the requisite skills to participate meaningfully in public life and the formal economy. under this conception, schools were agents of development and modernization, education systems were centralized, secular, and homogenized, and together they were able to achieve the vision of a secular nationhood (riaz, 2008). all other education systems which did not subscribe to or promote, this singular, hegemonic conception of the ‘use’ of education were perceived as ‘useless.’ madrassa reform in post-colonial pakistan this bifurcation of the education system and the binary dividing secular public and private education on the one hand, from religious, madrassa education on the other, is the colonial legacy inherited by pakistan. the education system of the nascent pakistani state bore the signs of this duality that had emerged during colonial rule. the public sector was modeled on the western, secular model of education, while the “exclusion of madrassas from formal economy and society, a process that started under british rule, continued in the independence period” (bano, 2012, p. 43). moreover, “[i]nspired by the economic progress of colonial rulers, the leaders of the newly independent [pakistan] sought rapid economic prosperity and industrial growth” and to that end, “any platform averse to modern scientific inquiry was considered suspect” (bano, 2012, p. 45). thus began the process of madrassa reform, with the government introducing key reforms in 1962, 1979, and 2001. to date, however, this process remains incomplete. these three reform efforts were complex and multifaceted, with local political factors playing a significant role in shaping their goals and trajectories. for one, these three organized efforts at reforming the madrassa sector were initiated by military leaders, who had a vested political interest in legitimizing their rule. second, because pakistan’s raison d’etre as an independent nation-state is intimately tied to the interpretation of islam and ‘muslimness,’ the issue of islamic education is a deeply political one. these reforms were also contentious because they were not always planned, initiated, and implemented by the government with the involvement and support of the ulema. a comprehensive analysis of these reforms and their effects is beyond the scope of this article. it will thus focus instead on a key theme that is common to all three: curriculum reform. tahir current issues in comparative education 66 in 1959, a year after assuming power in a coup d’état, general ayub khan instigated the process of madrassa reform against a backdrop of intense debate on the role of islam in politics and governance. the reform had two key goals: (1) bringing madrassas under government control by restricting their sources of funding, and (2) curriculum reform. the first goal was achieved through the nationalization of awaqaf or islamic endowments in 1960 and was a success. it had the immediate effect of weakening madrassas, “forc[ing] a change to the ulama’s cognitive environment, and pos[ing] a threat to their political vitality,” thus creating an enabling environment to enact the second part of the reform, changing their curricula (riaz, 2008, p. 194). in 1961, a committee was established to examine the existing curricula used by madrassas and “make recommendations as to how the students of the madrassas could be prepared to meet the demands of employers” (riaz, 2008, p. 194). it included eleven members, of whom three were affiliated with madrassas, six were from universities, and two were from the government. it included in its purview approximately seven hundred madrassas teaching the dars-i-nizami curriculum and was financed by the asia foundation, an american non-profit organization (ali of swabi, 2012). in 1962, the report of the committee made a series of recommendations, including the introduction of new subjects such as mathematics, social sciences, and sports, as well as the substitution of unnecessary non-religious subjects with subjects based on undisputed sources of knowledge. it should be noted that the recommendations for reform were limited to the ‘non-religious subjects,’ although this term itself was a point of contention between the reformers and the clergy. the specific recommendations of the report included the extension of the curriculum to fifteen years, including five years of primary education determined by the ministry of education and compulsory for all students; the division of the new system into five stages; the use of arabic and/or english as the medium of instruction at the secondary level and urdu at the primary level; the introduction of mathematics; the introduction of examinations at the highest level in hadith, astronomy, and euclidean mathematics; and the removal of logic and philosophy by virtue of being inessential to the study of religion. additionally, a directorate of religious education was to be established with the mandate to supervise madrassas and in particular, the performance of teachers and students. the report also called for special six-month training courses for the teachers in the new subjects (ali of swabi, 2012). general ayub khan’s reform agenda was perceived as “an attempt at the ‘colonization of islam’” and unsurprisingly, “the ulema reacted to it” (rahman, 1999, p. 75). these proposals for curriculum reform were not successful and were rejected by the majority of notable ulema. the second key set of reforms was initiated by general zia-ul-haq, who, like ayub khan, came to power in a coup d’état, initiated reforms to gain legitimacy, and was responsible for a far-reaching islamization of pakistan. in 1978, zia ordered the ministry of religious affairs to prepare a report on the madrassas in the sargodha district. this sargodha report was a pilot project which paved the way for the halepota report and the reforms of 1979 that the latter instigated. the halepota report was, in fact, near identical to the report of 1962 and was produced under the leadership of dr. a.w.j. halepota, who was largely responsible for the report of 1962 as well. both reforms had the same essential goal: “integrating them [madrassas] with the overall educational system in the country” as “madrassa education was failing to prepare students for the requirements of the modern age and for careers, particularly in the public sector” (riaz, 2008, p. 199). it found little uniformity in curricula or the system of examination and recommended the integration of the madrassa sector into the mainstream system of education. unlike the report of 1962, however, it reportedly did engage the ulema in extensive consultation decolonizing madrassa reform in pakistan current issues in comparative education 67 prior to making the final recommendations, although there was no ulema representation in the committee leadership. it also offered the madrassas unconditional financial support from the government for operational purposes as well as infrastructural upgrades. as well, the government promised to improve the employment prospects of madrassa graduates, especially in the public sector. these recommendations included the introduction of new subjects to the dars-i-nizami syllabus, such as urdu, arithmetic, and general science at the primary level; english, general mathematics, and pakistan studies at the secondary level; political science, political economy, and english as optional subjects at the baccalaureate and master’s level; and comparative religious sciences as a mandatory subject at the master’s level. one-third of the curriculum was to be composed of ‘modern’ subjects. a national institute of madrassas was proposed to supervise madrassas, revise and compile the new curriculum, administer standardized exit examinations up to the master’s level to allow madrassa students to compete with other students, award diplomas, and promote the interests of the madrassas, their teachers and students. the composition of this institute was to ensure equal representation of all subsects from within the madrassa sector as well as representation of the government. furthermore, the equivalence of madrassa certifications against the formal education system was proposed from the primary to the master’s level (ali of swabi, 2012). this second wave of curriculum reforms also failed to achieve its ends, despite the apparent concessions to madrassas. although it found initial support, it was soon boycotted by almost all schools of thought within the madrassa sector as an attack on their autonomy (ali of swabi, 2012). some madrassa organizations did adopt certain recommendations in later years to access the promised funding, but observers argue that this was largely a result of a quid pro quo between the sector and the government (riaz, 2008, p. 200). as pakistan became a frontline state in the war against the soviet union in afghanistan in the late 1980s, in which the madrassas were actively supported by pakistani as well as allied governments, the reform impetus was forgotten for almost a decade. the third key set of reforms came under general pervez musharraf, yet another military ruler. these were enacted in three stages, and the circumstances which gave them impetus are strongly suggestive of neocolonialist forces at play. musharraf came into power in 1999, and in 2001, promulgated the pakistan madrassah education (pme) board ordinance. the ordinance was aimed at integrating madrassas into mainstream education and proposed the establishment of a board to supervise madrassas. as well, it outlined a model curriculum including secular subjects for madrassas to follow and established three ‘model’ hybrid institutions, which were hoped to set an example of how religious and secular education may be combined in a single institution. these model madrassas offered english, mathematics, computer science, economics, political science, law, and pakistan studies in addition to islamic education. however, before this ordinance could be fully implemented, the events of 9/11 took place. in their aftermath, pakistan was under extreme international pressure from the united states and the european union to curb militancy associated by some reports with its madrassas. in response, musharraf introduced the madrassah registration ordinance 2002, with immediate effect. this ordinance was focused more on madrassa regulation than curriculum reform, requiring all madrassas to register with the pakistan madrassah education board and provincial boards at the risk of being fined or forcibly shut down. it also restricted funding from foreign sources as well as the admission of foreign students. tahir current issues in comparative education 68 as far as curriculum reform was concerned, it promised funding to madrassas offering science, mathematics, english, and urdu in these subjects. this ordinance was much more restrictive and rigid in its proposals than the pme ordinance 2001, and this was due, in part, to the pressure from the west, and especially the united states, which led to a change in the government’s stance on the reforms (international crisis group, 2002). the intent of the 2001 reforms was—at least ostensibly—to establish the model madrassas and not impinge on the freedom and autonomy of the sector, with general musharaf emphatically clarifying that ‘we do not aim to bring madaris under the control of the state’” (muhammad et al., 2011, p.316). the ordinance of 2002 attempted to precisely do this. both “the united states and the military government of pervez musharraf concurred that madrassahs in pakistan were the first and foremost source of terrorism and militancy in pakistan and beyond, and that these had to be tamed, reformed, or simply uprooted and banned if need be” (naseem, 2009, p.221). the state of pakistan’s education system, and specifically of the madrassa sector, was identified as “relevant to both immediate and longer-term u.s. interests in south asia,” and the united states agency for international development (usaid) implemented a five-year, $100 million bilateral agreement in 2002 to increase access to quality education in pakistan (kronstandt, 2004, p. 1-2). the western media kept the issue of madrassa regulation very much in the public consciousness. under continued pressure from the u.s., the “bulk of u.s. aid for educational reform [was] diverted to fighting/reforming/controlling the madrassahs” (naseem, 2009, p.220). in mid-2002, the musharraf regime introduced a third stage of reforms, which turned the focus back on curriculum. the five-year plan (2002/3-2007/8) aimed to support 8,000 willing madrassas in the adoption of curriculum changes in the form of the introduction of secular subjects such as english, mathematics, pakistan studies/social studies and general science at the primary to secondary levels, and english, economics, pakistan studies and computer science at the intermediate level. these curriculum changes were intended to integrate the madrassa sector with the formal education system, with the ministry of education providing the textual and instructional material and support. to facilitate this, the government offered to provide teacher training, incentives in the form of the cost of equipment such as computers and other infrastructure, and a one-time grant to equip libraries and buildings. furthermore, it was willing to open the lines of communication with the ulema to facilitate this modernization scheme (riaz, 2008). like its predecessors, these reforms faced a significant backlash. as early as the initiation of the first stage of reform, the ulema formed an association called the ittehad-e-tanzimatul madaris-e-deenia (iitd) to resist any attacks on their autonomy in either the administration of the madrassas or in the determination of the curriculum. furthermore, international pressure, and especially that from the united states, simply served to add fuel to the fire. the ulema, as well as some sectors of civil society, perceived this as a hegemonic project of the west. in her analysis of the pakistani madrassa sector, c. christine fair (2009) reports the sentiments of various madrassa leaders at the time: “no one has the right to interfere in our institutions,” “it is pressure from the u.s. government,” “the pakistani government is not sincere” and that there is “no need to introduce worldly subjects [into the curriculum]” (p. 88). by the end of 2002, only 1,200 madrassas had registered themselves. the majority chose not to accept the curriculum reform or reveal their sources of funding. the nature and scope of the reforms remained divisive, and there was very little progress in the madrassa sector (riaz, 2008). decolonizing madrassa reform in pakistan current issues in comparative education 69 discussion: why did these reforms fail? these reforms failed for many reasons. they failed because of poor implementation. they failed because of the complex political, economic, and cultural forces at play. most importantly, they failed because of immense pushback and deep suspicion by the madrassas and the ulema. this reaction of the madrassas, and the roots of their resistance to reform, can arguably be traced back to the colonial interventions aimed at reforming the predecessors of these pakistani madrassas. the bifurcation of the education system that the colonial interventions left behind, and the binary that their policies helped create and which shapes the conception of education to this day in post-colonial pakistan is one contributing factor to the failure of these madrassa reforms. the binary of painting modern western secular values as true and useful versus the depiction of islamic values deemed as backward or false can be distilled down to the basic, underlying question of what is the purpose, and hence ‘use,’ of education? the british understood the ‘use’ of education as the preparation of the student to participate and perform well in the public and economic spheres of the colonial regime. in the contemporary era, those who subscribe to this view of the ‘use’ of education perceive a ‘useful’ education as one that equips a student for functioning in the modern capitalist economic system, and the subjects that are the most ‘useful’ are the secular, ‘rational’ ones such as science and mathematics, and those that teach english, the global lingua franca. as the proponents of neocolonialism and world culture theory are likely to argue, this conception of education, reflecting the values of western liberal capitalism, has, in fact, become the dominant view of education around the world. in post-colonial states such as pakistan, this binary has in effect institutionalized a singular, hegemonic ideology of education which has been internalized by the colonized state and its peoples. this ideology frames how they think of education and is reflected in the education priorities of the government and the public system of education. from the outset, the pakistani state has held madrassa education in disdain and perceived it as inferior; in the country’s first election, it designated madrassa graduates as ‘illiterate,’ thereby barring them from the electoral register (bano, 2012). in introducing the madrassa reforms of 1962, 1979, and 2001, the pakistani government thus espoused this view of the ‘usefulness’ of education, with the result that all three reforms were integrationist in nature, aiming to integrate madrassa education into the mainstream, formal system with the intent to make the former more ‘useful’ for the needs of the twenty-first century. the problem, however, was that the madrassas did not espouse this view of the ‘usefulness’ of education. the pushback and the resistance resulted from a clash of visions about what makes education ‘useful.’ madrassas have a very different conception of the use of the education they provide. they perceive their role to be the preservation and transmission of the faith, imparting religious education with the purpose of making their students ‘good muslims’. as such, they argue, their curriculum should be judged according to how well it succeeds in achieving this. they have very little interest in preparing their students for the knowledge economy. in this capacity, they reserve for themselves the right to determine what makes a ‘good muslim’ and design their curricula accordingly, resisting any impingement on their autonomy. all three reform efforts can be seen to have this underlying clash of visions. in all three cases, the “goal of these changes…[was] to create equivalence between general education and that offered by the madrassas [and] to introduce non-religious, occasionally described as ‘useful’ subjects…, thereby rendering the madrassa students more employable in jobs” (riaz, 2008, p. 191). the reforms of 1962 and 1979 sought to force madrassas to include tahir current issues in comparative education 70 secular subjects in their curricula. the reforms of 2001/02 attempted to incentivize the madrassas, but with the same underlying goal. the madrassas of pakistan reacted to these reforms by clinging to their traditions just as the madrassa at deoband had reacted to the colonial attempts at reform by espousing religious revival. they believed that integration into mainstream education would prevent them from imparting religious education and that the primary goal of the government has always been to curtail their autonomy and independence (hadid & sattar, 2019). considering the musharraf-era reforms, moreover, they argue that “[w]hatever was happening in the beginning of twentieth century at local level under british colonial rule is happening on a global scale under american colonial rule [sic.]” (riaz, 2008, p. 208). the result of this has been the development of deep mutual distrust between the madrassa leadership and the government of pakistan, with each party wary of the other’s intentions and convinced that they will fail to honour their obligations (johnson et al., 2006). this trust deficit will need to be overcome for reconciliation and any meaningful reform of the sector to take place. the way forward: decolonizing madrassa reform in 2019, the government of pakistan’s federal education ministry announced plans for the development of a single national curriculum (snc), which would be implemented across all provinces and territories and in public and private schools, as well as in the madrassas. the impetus behind this curriculum reform was ostensibly the need to “address the inequities in the education system, improve the quality of education, and provide equality of opportunity for all children” (bari, 2021, p.139). with regard to madrassas, the government’s goal is reportedly to bring “madrassas…within the ambit of formal schooling” so as to “help hundreds of thousands of seminary students get the same education as other students in the country and allow them to appear in board exams” (hashmi, 2020). the first phase of this curriculum reform was implemented in august 2021, in which the curriculum and textbooks were developed for grades pre-1 to 5 in all subjects. the second and third phases are expected to be implemented in march 2022 and march 2023, respectively. the snc was reportedly developed through extensive consultation with, and the involvement of, a wide range of stakeholders, including representatives from the madrassa sector. in 2020, it was reported in the media that an agreement had been reached between the ministry of education and the federation of religious seminaries that will see some 35,000 madrassas adopt the snc, register, and have their bank accounts opened (hashmi, 2020). in 2021, emerging reports suggest that the madrassas are backing out of this agreement and that the government is now giving them five to six years to adopt the snc (the current, 2021). it remains to be seen whether the madrassas will concede and adopt the snc. however, unless pakistan looks back at its history of madrassa reforms, and indeed, the development of madrassas in the context of its colonial history, and derives lessons from these, these reforms are likely to take the same path as their predecessors. pakistan needs to decolonize madrassa reform, which will require, first and foremost, a conscious shift in thinking. it will entail becoming aware of how its colonial history has imposed certain hegemonic frames of thought upon its collective psyche, which determine how it perceives education and its ‘usefulness.’ it will have to examine the ideological binary which has bifurcated its education system and historically marginalized its madrassas. by becoming conscious of how the binary continues to shape its framing of questions of decolonizing madrassa reform in pakistan current issues in comparative education 71 education and its ‘usefulness,’ it will be able to approach reform with a broader focus and a deeper understanding. the framing of the snc reforms reflects this binary at play. prime minister imran khan has called on madrassas to produce “better qualified students”— “engineers and doctors”—and to adopt a core curriculum with subjects like math, english, and science (hadid & sattar, 2019). madrassa leaders, on the other hand, oppose the snc reforms and continue to hold a different perception of what the goal of education should be (hadid & sattar, 2019). in response to criticism that the students at his seminary are learning little besides memorizing the quran and learning islamic law, one madrassa principal argued that his students “need little else”: “[t]he seminaries deal with man’s spiritual issues…they bless the communities around them” (hadid & sattar, 2019). if there is thus no agreement on what students need and will find ‘useful,’ there can be little agreement on reform. the shift in thinking is thus necessary for the decolonization of future reform efforts. it is necessary to dispel the perception of madrassas as institutions providing inadequate education or as hotbeds of extremist ideology in dire need of government regulation and reform—a consequence of the ideological binary. this shift will require an understanding of the history of madrassas, and especially how they have evolved in response to external pressures and attacks on their autonomy. the indigenous models of the madrassa and its traditional socio-political role and function will need to be revisited. for instance, madrassas have always functioned as centers of religious learning, advising individuals on how to be good muslims and the state on how to develop administrations based on islamic principles. moreover, madrassas have traditionally operated in informal settings, where there was “no attendance register, no degree awarding system, and no fixed curriculum” and knowledge was transmitted through the deep and informal bonds of a teacher-student relationship (bano, 2012, p. 25); this changed only after the establishment of the deoband madrassa. historically, there was a fine balance in the curriculum between ‘rational’ knowledge and ‘revealed’ knowledge, as evidenced in the 17th century farangi mahal madrassa. it was mainly in response to the colonial reforms that madrassas began to phase out the former and began to focus almost exclusively on religious education. this history and traditional model of the madrassa will need to be kept in mind. any attempt at reform of the sector also needs to understand that the institution of the madrassa has always had internally inspired reformist movements, and these should be explored to understand how the sector and its representatives themselves understand reform. indeed, there have been a number of islamic scholars who have realized the necessity of modernizing the madrassa curriculum. however, how they understand ‘modernization’ is arguably likely to be different from the western conception of modernization, and it will be worthwhile to examine what entails the former. similarly, islamic theology and the writings of classical islamic philosophers such as al-farabi, alghazzali, and ibn-e-sina, who all emphasized “the intimate relationship between knowledge, theoretical and practical wisdom, logical reasoning, ethics and the aesthetics of learning, loving and caring, and spirituality” (riaz, 2008, p. 221) may suggest a way of modernizing the religious curriculum which is amenable to islamic principles. armed with this understanding of the history and development of the south asian madrassa, the concrete steps that a reform-oriented government can take towards decolonization and reconciliation include, first and foremost, engaging with the madrassa leaders—constructively, extensively, and in good faith (johnson et al., 2006). the goal of the engagement should be consensus building—to understand the perspectives and tahir current issues in comparative education 72 priorities of the sector and find common ground. the government should make a genuine effort to understand how the madrassa leadership perceives reform and modernization, for indeed, it is by no means oblivious to the need to do so and is very well aware that the survival of the institution in the twenty-first century depends upon it. confidencebuilding measures should be adopted to overcome the immense trust deficit that has developed between the pakistani government and the madrassa sector over the decades. madrassa leaders should be full partners in the reform effort and be involved in every step of reform design and implementation. in the case of a reform such as the single national curriculum, the core aim of which is to introduce standards of learning at every grade level, these standards—at least as they will apply to madrassa students—should be developed in full partnership with madrassa leadership. if it is not possible to develop a single set of learning standards that will apply equally well to the public, private, as well as madrassa education sectors, then a set of unique learning standards should be developed for the sector based on best practices from other muslim countries and education systems (johnson et al., 2006). similarly, the textbooks for the sector should be developed in consultation with the madrassa leaders and de-center western canons of knowledge and the assumptions and narratives of western modernity. they should aim, instead, to give space to multiple, and especially islamic, canons of knowledge. conclusion the experience of colonialism has left an indelible mark on the conception of education in post-colonial pakistan. it has led to the rise of a single, hegemonic ideology—inherited as a colonial legacy—that understands the primary purpose of education to be the imparting of the skills necessary for meaningful participation in public life and the formal economy. a ‘useful’ education is thus that which, in british colonial times, prepared individuals to participate in the colonial machinery as civil servants, and today, to participate in the global knowledge economy. under the hegemony of this ideology, all other ‘uses’ of education have been discredited and overlooked, and nowhere is this more visible than in the case of the madrassa sector and the issue of madrassa reform. the madrassa, holding steadfast to its own purpose of providing religious instruction and spiritual guidance, has always clashed with this dominant ideology. in colonial india, it was considered an opponent to enlightenment, rationalism, and scientism; in postcolonial pakistan, it is considered an obstacle to progress and development, nationbuilding, democracy, and since 2001, a ‘security concern’ (masud, 2021). the pakistani government has been unsuccessfully attempting to incorporate it into mainstream education for decades through a series of failed reforms. these reforms have failed because of a clash of underlying ideology—a clash of competing understandings of the purpose education should fulfill. future reforms, including the implementation of the single national curriculum that pakistan is currently embarking on, are also likely to fail unless steps are taken towards the decolonization of policy and reform agendas, and sincere efforts are made towards reconciliation in order to overcome the deep mistrust that currently exists between the state and the sector. these will require a shift in thinking—an understanding of the ideological binary bifurcating the education system, how it has affected the evolution of the madrassa sector, and how it continues to shape policy and reform agendas. these will also require concrete steps 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(2010). religious education and the rhetoric of reform. in m. marsden (ed.), islam and society in pakistan: anthropological perspectives. oxford university press. tahir current issues in comparative education 76 appendix 1 table 1 stages of madrassa education in pakistan and equivalency with general education level in madrassa system duration sanad (diploma) general education grade/certificate notes ibtidayee (nazara) 4-5 years sahahdatul tahfeez-ulquran primary 5th grade may be offered by a ‘maktab’, not a madrassa offering higher stages of education recitation of quran; memorization of important verses mutawawassat (hifz) 3 years shahadatul mutawassat middle 8th grade memorization of entire quran some institutions offer secular subjects such as history and geography; most do not have capacity to teach science sanawiya amma (tazvid, qeerat) 2 years shahadatul sanawiya ulamma matric – 10th grade modes of quranic recitation qeerat: comprised of 7 standardized modes of recitation. completion makes one a qari, a prestigious career option sanawiya khasa (tahtini) 2 years shahadatul sanawiya khasa intermediate fa aliya, mohafequl (khasa wa sada) 2 years shahadatul aliya bachelor’s ba alamiya, daurae-hadith 2 years shahadatul alamiya master’s (sabia wa saniya) takmeel 1 year varies with specialization post-m.a. decolonizing madrassa reform in pakistan current issues in comparative education 77 table 2 typical curriculum of a pakistani madrassa year content 1 biography of the prophet; conjugation-grammar, syntax, arabic literature, chirography, chant illation 2 conjugation-grammar; syntax; arabic literature; jurisprudence; logic; chirography, chant illation 3 quranic exegesis; jurisprudence; syntax; arabic literature; hadith; logic; islamic brotherhood; chant illation; external study e.g. indian islamic movements 4 quranic exegesis; jurisprudence; principles of jurisprudence; rhetoric; hadith; logic; history; chant illation; modern sciences (sciences of cities of arabia, geography of arabian peninsula and other islamic countries) 5 quranic exegesis; jurisprudence; principles of jurisprudence; rhetoric, beliefs, logic; arabic literature, chant illation, external study (history of indian kings) 6 interpretation of the quran; jurisprudence; principles of interpretation and jurisprudence; arabic literature; philosophy; chant illation; study of prophet’s traditions 7 sayings of the prophet; jurisprudence; belief, responsibility, chant illation; external study (urdu texts) 8 ten books by various authors on the sayings of the prophet © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 3 editorial introduction education in the market: free markets, flea markets and supermarkets (…) public education, which has been the repository of egalitarian aspirations and opportunities, has become more and more a force for social division and inequality. education and the market have become increasingly entwined. (…) if these trends are to be reversed, popular movements and democratic decision making will have to assert themselves on behalf of schooling for all. -ira katznelson & margaret weir, schooling for all in the spring 1999 issue, cice presents comparative international perspectives on the effects of market forces on education systems, administration and pedagogy. to frame the debate, we consider various concepts of the market. do school choice and voucher programs function like free markets, with an invisible hand ensuring a socially just regulatory system? are curricula and pedagogy just so many goods on a supermarket shelf? or, could the enterprise of schooling resemble a global flea market where autonomous individuals interact unencumbered by institutional structures? without implying that the marketization of schooling is a fait accompli, cice submits that a profound discursive shift in educational debates has made the metaphor of the market a significant conceptual lens for viewing education. with this issue, it is our hope to shed light on these shifts and bring an international and comparative perspective to the debate. according to its proponents, broadly speaking, privatization of public schooling provides greater choice for parents in selecting a school to meet their children's needs, improves academic satisfaction among parents, teachers and students, cuts costs and streamlines education bureaucracies. opponents hold concerns for social equity (i.e. that providing parents choice will leave some students behind if their parents do not have access to information, or if not all parents hold the same interest in their children's education), consumerism, and removing decision-making from the public sphere. it is important note that these issues are generally debated on two different levels. the first is at the level of practical outcomes and solutions, and the second is theoretical and political. the articles published here speak to these issues. the launch article to foster debate is a paper given by michael apple delivered at a cice-sponsored lecture. in the paper, apple argues that the neo-liberal policies involving markets, values and choice in education, coupled with neo-conservative mechanisms of cultural control, such as national testing and national curricula, increasingly result in "traditional" education and inequality. he contends that the shift from defining education as a public concern to a private good advantages privileged groups with economic, social and cultural capital rather than leading to more responsive and diverse options. steve klees largely supports apple's argument in privatization and neoliberalism: ideology and evidence in rhetorical reforms. he adds, however, that neo-liberal policies in fact "delegitimate government and disengage government and society from any collective responsibility for social welfare". he also believes that apple elevates the editorial introduction 4 april 30, 1999 significance of the empirical evidence presented by proponents of privatization unnecessarily through debating its claims rather than exposing the weaknesses of those claims. peter mclaren carries apple's arguments into the context of expanding the work of critical theorists in contesting capital: critical pedagogy and globalism a response to michael apple. he believes that critical pedagogy must move toward revolutionary pedagogy in order to form a "counter-hegemonic alliance" (quoting apple) opposing neo-liberal regimes. he exhorts educators to examine the mechanisms that ensure the reproduction of capitalist social and economic relations, as well as to "unravel the complex ways in which schools participate in the asymmetrical distribution of technical knowledge and skills". adriana puiggrós writes from argentina. in the consequences of neoliberalism on the educational prospects of latin american youth, she analyzes the trends in privatization from the perspective of a country that has implemented packaged reforms and observes that these policies have weakened the entire education system without achieving improvement in the quality of basic education. according to puiggrós, "decentralization has introduced disorder, not efficiency, in educational systems, creating serious problems for societies that are growing poorer and more indebted". world bank and international monetary fund development policies have exacerbated disparities in argentina. in post-apartheid south africa, "changing education is considered a pre-requisite for economic growth" and "outcomes based education" is seen as the means to achieve that growth, according to jonathan jansen. it is intended to develop citizens who are "technologically literate and able to function in a knowledge-driven economy". in globalization, curriculum and the third world state: in dialogue with michael apple, he points out, however, that the new "reductionist pedagogical strategies (like 'outcomes based education')" is justified through language of redistribution. yet words do not translate intended impacts into reality. according to jansen's empirical work, the disparity between traditionally white schools and traditionally black schools has only increased since implementing these strategies. more and more public schools in china are becoming privatized to meet the "differentiated demand" of parents unsatisfied with their current options, according to haojing cheng and brian delany. in quality education and social stratification: the paradox of private schooling in china, they explore the complicated groupings and break down the various definitions of private schools in china. with the advent of privatization, cheng and delany question the assumption that "private schools only strive toward quality education for a public good". they point out the unintended impact private schooling may have on social stratification in china and expresses concern that these assumptions be examined. like cheng and delany, peter cookson, in privatization and educational equity: can markets create a just school system?, examines the assumptions inherent in privatization of public schooling, focusing particularly on voucher programs in the u.s. he analyzes the "theory of quasi-markets which blends state regulation with entrepreneurship" education in the market: free markets, flea markets and supermarkets current issues in comparative education, vol. 1(2) 5 promoted by market advocates. through pointing out inconsistencies in market theory, cookson seeks to show that when applied to public schooling, the same theory cannot govern education in a socially just way. charles glenn believes in a strongly regulated market, with effective constraints in the interest of social justice (more effective than the present system of residential allocation of schooling opportunities in the u.s.), not in "letting the market rip". he supports choice in public schooling in the u.s. and abroad in the form of vouchers, charter and religious schools. he argues that progressives do themselves a disservice by discounting positive benefits of certain aspects of the privatization of public schooling, and notes the progressive claim that privatization "undermines the common public school and thus divide american society" is applied inconsistently. if it were consistent, private schools should not exist at all. striving toward greater accountability within public schools and focusing on insuring that choice function equitably, glenn lauds the efforts of the choice movement in public schools and encourages furthering these programs in why are progressives so hostile to school choice policies? acknowledgements for their support in producing this issue, we would like to thank our international advisory board: michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, ingrid gogolin, sue grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, and gita steiner-khamsi. thanks go to our colleagues at the harvard educational review who spent hours with us discussing journal editing. we would also like to thank the authors who contributed to this issue. and we send a special thanks to eric lepisto for sharing his web expertise. towards a radical transformation: promoting gender equality when children start school maryfaith mount-cors edintersect, llc jill gay edintersect, llc; what works association rokhaya diop chemonics international; université gaston berger, st. louis du sénégal two of the current united nations sustainable development goals (sdgs) aim for quality education and gender equality, which are inextricably linked. education efforts in lowand middle-income countries (lmics) have rarely addressed issues of gender equality as children start school, except to expand access for girls. the authors explore how gender equality can be addressed within schools and communities in lmics at the start of primary school. the authors offer promising strategies to make early grade education efforts more gender transformative and thus more effective. keywords: gender, gender equality, reading, early grade education, early primary, literacy two of the current united nations sustainable development goals (sdgs) aim for quality education and gender equality. these goals are inextricably linked. other than efforts at expanding access for girls, education efforts in lowand middle-income countries (lmics) have rarely addressed issues of gender equality as children start primary school. interest in gender equality in education often begins with female adolescents, who may drop out due to child marriage and/or pregnancy (united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization – unesco, 2017). however, gender inequality, is manifested in all aspects of the lives of children, their families, and their schools. for example, textbooks may only show women in sex-stereotyped roles as caretakers. teachers may seat boys at the front of the class. the authors explore how gender equality can be addressed within schools and communities in lmics starting in early primary levels. the authors point to promising strategies and opportunities to make early grade education efforts gender transformative and thus more effective. current issues in comparative education 2 by way of background on international goals, the dakar framework in 2000 adopted education for all (efa) and the goal of achieving equality in education by 2015 (unesco, 2000). the sdgs in 2015 then set out seventeen goals, to include sdg4: ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunity for all and sdg5: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls (united nations, 2015). movements to address school quality and the lack of student learning, dubbed the global learning crisis, proposed to address not only increasing access to education, but ensuring the learning of basic skills, such as literacy. amidst these global movements to improve access and quality of education, donors and their implementing partners have also addressed the need for education to be gender transformative so as to actively promote gender equality (save the children, 2014). as this issue of the current issues in comparative education points out, “education for” movements, efforts, and frameworks such as those mentioned above contain an aspirational element that looks toward a future in which change will have occurred and a gender-transformative, universally literate society will be in place in which girls and boys will have equal opportunities and equal reading abilities so as to lead equally prosperous lives in societies that benefit from their improved equality of status and learning. gender equality and individual, familial, and systems/structural change are needed to achieve education for all, reading for all, and gender-transformative approaches within those movements. barriers to gender equality must be addressed in the present, and are critical for the future vision to be achieved. with international efforts outlined above as background and the call delineated above for a radical transformation to meet the goals laid out, the authors of this article aim to review why gender considerations are important in early primary education programs in lmics. attention to promoting gender equality is critical for building an effective early elementary program, focused especially on students in grades 1 and 2, generally aged 6 to 8. while, ideally, gender-transformative education should begin even prior to age six, efforts at universal access to primary schools allows countries to assure that children can be exposed to a gender-transformative education. in recent years, donor efforts have focused on school quality in early primary through early grade reading programs in national languages. teaching children to read in a language they speak and understand – a national language or sometimes alternately referred to as a local language, home language, first language or a mother tongue – is also a way to encourage family members to engage and support young children in learning to read. when gender differences in early reading outcomes are not statistically significant, programs may believe there is no further work needed in gender-transformative efforts. in fact, girls outperforming boys in early grade reading outcomes is common across countries (mcgraw-hill, 2020; price-mohr & price, 2016; oecd, 2015; brown center on education policy, 2015) and does not eliminate or mitigate the gender issues embedded in the society and systems. gender issues must be addressed, understood, and transformed. while not attempting to be complete, this article will elaborate on some of the genderrelated issues within early primary reading programs. some of the issues addressed include: women in teaching, women in leadership in school systems, household chores, norms, differential amount of time for play, school-related gender-based violence, and parent and community support to learn to read. this article draws from literature on this topic as well as the authors’ experience in integrating gender approaches within an early grade reading program in senegal, the usaid-funded all children reading (acr) program or, in french, the lecture pour tous program. in this article, the authors discuss why this topic is important, the methods used to gather data, and then move to the findings and conclusions that point to steps toward the radical transformation of actualizing gender equality individually, familially, and structurally in early grade reading education. we hope that this article leads to more implementation efforts to integrate gender equality into early primary reading programs. additionally, we hope that there will continue to be more documentation of these efforts and, finally, a scale-up of evidence-informed gender-transformative education at the start of children’s primary education. gender-transformative early primary education: why is this important? efa goals were not met in 2015 with over 260 million children still not in school and more than 480 million women 15 years or over lacking basic literacy skills. fewer than half of countries had reached gender parity in primary and secondary education in 2015, with no country in sub-saharan africa projected to achieve it at both levels. around 66% of countries achieved parity in primary education, only 50% in lower secondary, only 29% in upper secondary, and only 4% in higher education. girls, and particularly girls from the lowest-income families, faced the largest challenge in gaining access to primary education. secondary education gender disparities had improved, but persisted, especially in sub-saharan africa and arab states. half of adult women in south and west asia and in sub-saharan africa were not able to read or write (unesco, 2015). it is important to note that, often, global emphasis on gender and education starts after a girl reaches puberty, but, in fact, gender differences are marked at the earliest current issues in comparative education 4 ages, even before school starts, with boys allowed more mobility and freedom of movement and girls tasked with domestic chores (unesco, 2016). discrimination between boys and girls – how they are socialized into different gender roles from birth – can also have negative effects on both boys’ and girls’ development even at a very young age (who, 2018). a study of young adolescents in africa, asia, latin america, europe, and north america found that in all areas of the world, unequal gender norms are entrenched by age 10 (moreau, et al., 2019). it makes sense therefore to start promoting gender equality at the earliest ages across all subject areas, including early primary reading. nevertheless, “despite a considerable literature documenting genderrelated barriers, gaps in knowledge exist regarding the degree to which interventions to reduce gender-related barriers to schooling in lmics are effective in improving education outcomes for girls” (chuang, mensch, psaki, haberland, & kozak, 2019), which is particularly true for early grade reading. it is more cost effective to address the causes for the divergence in learning outcomes in early primary grades when these differences are small than in later years as students drop out, repeat, or fail their school exams. girls in particular drop out in larger numbers during this period between primary and secondary school, often due to obligations societies and families place on girls to do more domestic work as well as fewer economic opportunities for young women (dfid, 2015). as the academic focus area of the early elementary programs of interest in this article is reading, the prevailing thinking on reading and literacy should be considered next. literacy can be defined along a continuum – from a set of skills or cognitive processes that form the ability to read, to write, and to calculate on to literacy as applied within a context, within a family, within a set of cultural or social practices, and on to a set of capabilities, and then finally to a tool for critical thinking (unesco institute for lifelong learning, 2013; mount-cors, 2016). literacy, or the cognitive abilities that allow a person to read and understand a text, has been the focus of early grade reading programs in which children learn to read ideally in a language they speak and understand. by gaining this opportunity, the rationale is that the children will be able to transfer those reading skills to other languages, such as to the official language of schooling in that context, and continue learning. often, the differential experiences of girls and boys from birth and certainly from the beginning of their schooling, may be ignored or considered nonexistent. the deeper connections between reading skills in the early grades of elementary education and girls’ education may not have received adequate attention, but girls’ education has nonetheless been the focus of many multilateral and bilateral actors since 2000. there are numerous global actors in the space: including multilateral actors such as un girls’ education initiative (ungei) and unesco, and bilateral actors such as the united states agency for international development (usaid) and the united kingdom department for international development (dfid), who have contributed to this field. ungei advocates for girls’ education globally and is a learning hub (ungei, 2020). unesco conducts ongoing monitoring of gender equality. usaid requires gender assessments and plans across all of its sectors (usaid, 2017), including education. gender assessments and plans as a usaid donor requirement for all projects (usaid ads chapter 205) tend to focus on attendance, retention, and quality to identify any gender-related barriers that early primary students may face (chemonics, 2016) or to develop and implement a gender plan that “reaches all aspects of the project and instill gender equality throughout each level to achieve lasting and sustainable impacts” (diop, gay, & mount-cors, 2017. p.5). gender plans often include whether gender is part of the education sector strategic plan, if teachers facilitate equal access for boys and girls inside the classroom, or if assessment data are analyzed for boys and girls. if grade repetition is high, then overage girls in primary levels may pose a specific area of concern. the support of a local gender and social inclusion expert within the project structure is critical to provide ongoing areas of training and embedding of critical gender components into teacher preparation, teacher and student materials, and parental, family and community literacy efforts. girls’ access to education is responsive to changes in cost and distance as well as improvements to pedagogy and teacher practices. in addition, “programs can be mindful of gender issues without being specifically targeted to girls” (evans & yuan, 2019, p.4). research sites and methods the three authors collaborated on gender planning in a national language reading program in early primary grades in senegal, the usaid-funded all children reading (acr) program, which serves 3,572 schools and 59 daara (koranic schools) in six regions of senegal. in this paper, the authors discuss barriers to gender-transformative early primary approaches and present a goal-based conceptual framework for early grade reading programs, based on literature review, consultations, and classroom and school-based observations. the paper draws on the authors’ collaborative work on the acr program, as well as the expertise of the three authors in education, gender, early grade reading and literacy. a mixed methodological approach allowed the authors to collect and examine the quantitative and qualitative data available at central and decentralized levels. the authors conducted a thorough literature review, which included grey literature from bilaterals, especially usaid, and multilaterals such as unicef; government of senegal policies and reports; donor-funded projects’ training modules and publications authored by implementing partners; and peer-reviewed literature. the authors held consultations at the sub-regional level in the intervention areas at the start of the program in 2017 to develop a plan to promote gender equality and to allow current issues in comparative education 6 the plan to be updated and progress to be tracked. these consultations included over 50 stakeholders, such as parents, teachers, school directors, school management committees, parents’ associations, mothers’ associations, women teachers’ networks, ministry of education authorities and acr program staff to collect information and/or recommendations for the development of the acr gender plan. sampling was based on the research area and the objectives of the project. in addition to individual interviews with representatives as described above, the team conducted interviews and classroom observations with school directors and teachers from the ten public elementary schools and daara, in the regions of louga, kaolack, kaffrine, and dakar. in each of these schools, classroom dynamics, teacher interactions with students, number of girls and boys in the classroom, teacher behavior toward girls and boys (for example, if girls were called on more often than boys) and teacher attitudes toward gender roles were assessed. focus groups also included representatives from the ministry of education, local parent associations, the network of women teachers, mothers’ associations, school management committee representatives, community liaisons and community supervisors tasked with the parent/community engagement objective of the acr program. discussion between 2005 and 2011 in senegal, primary school enrollment rates soared from 79% to 93%, with a higher number of girls enrolling than boys (usaid, 2014; unicef senegal, 2016). however, only 13% of students had sufficient reading skills (jàngandoo, 2017). on a national level, there are sometimes concerns that the focus on promoting girls’ access to education resulted in boys falling behind: in 2004, girls were 79.6% and boys were 81.2% of primary school students, but by 2015, girls constituted 92.2% and boys 81% (pasec, 2016). yet, girls’ and boys’ rates of access, performance, and dropout differ by region; of those who repeat first grade in diourbel, a region of senegal, 16.5% are boys and 19.2% are girls (ia, 2015). intersecting areas of girls’ lives in addition to geographic location, such as socioeconomic status and disability, can also compound the disadvantage of girls in school access and performance. world inequality database in education (wide), indicates that in senegal, guinea, pakistan, mali, afghanistan, ethiopia, benin, chad, and nigeria, the poorest girls spend less than two years in school on average, which includes senegal at 1.87 mean years of education for girls with the lowest socioeconomic status. in addition, in senegal, 55% of the poorest girls are out of school at the primary school level, 58% at lower secondary, and 83% at upper secondary (global education monitoring report, 2020). in senegal, both girls and boys have shown they are making progress in early grade reading skills in national languages on the senegal early grade reading assessment (egra) midline study (mount-cors, rousseau & de galbert, 2020) with no appreciable gender differences demonstrated at midline. thus, rather than showing that there are no gender disparities, hence no gender-transformative programming needed within a given intervention, it is of note that girls are not outperforming boys as this does not follow patterns that have been established across many different countries (mcgrawhill, 2020; price-mohr & price, 2016; oecd, 2015; brown center on education policy, 2015). the gender plan for the senegal program was organized according to the project outcome structure and this same structure is used to organize the discussion sections below. the key components, or inputs, of the program’s intervention connected to each area below are as follows: • improve early grade reading instruction in schools, including providing evidence-based teaching and learning materials to students in public schools and daaras and supporting comprehensive, professional development for teachers through pre-service and in-service training, coaching, and supervision • improve policies and systems to scale up and sustain quality reading instruction, materials, and community engagement • strengthen the support students receive from family and other community members as they learn to read (mount-cors, rousseau & de galbert, 2020) the sections below illustrate some of the goals toward gender equality in early primary reading, and examples of evidence-informed interventions to reduce gender-related barriers to early grade reading efforts in each of the key component outcome areas in early grade reading. improve early grade reading instruction in schools acr implemented interventions as an early grade reading pilot in a total of approximately 54 daaras (rousseau et al, 2020). one key observation in senegal is that the number of girls versus boys in daara classrooms tends to skew heavily to boys, with girls making up just 30 to 35% of the classroom population, which can lead to inequities when desks or materials are in short supply. the picture here from a daara that was part of the pilot described above shows how girls have been placed on the floor while boys are seated in desks. current issues in comparative education 8 figure 1: daara {koranic school} early primary classroom, senegal. (diop, 2019) improve textbooks to eliminate or reduce women, men, boys and girls being depicted in sex-stereotyped ways. findings of a 2015 unesco study indicate that gender bias in textbooks is a serious issue: “textbooks and curricula matter not only for learning new information but also for what perceptions they create about women and their roles” with “study after study showing significant gender bias in textbooks, with women greatly underrepresented and both women and men depicted in gender-stereotyped ways” (sperling and winthrop, 2016, p. 254). studies from developing and developed countries find that females tend to be greatly underrepresented, and both males and females are depicted in gender-stereotyped ways. a recent textbook in senegal included a text that perpetuated harmful gender norms, suggesting that boys should help their fathers in the fields and girls should help their mothers at home. some examples from senegal show both gender-harmful and gender-transformative messages (diop, gay, & mount-cors, (2017). the first image below can be considered on a scale between gender harmful and gender neutral as it shows a woman with a baby sleeping on her back while another young child is stirring a pot nearby. while this may be a traditional set of responsibilities for a mother, the depiction does not point to a broader role or set of capabilities possible for the woman. figure 2. mother cooking with children. (editions edicef, 2015) at the same time, the next depiction, from an acr reading book in wolof for children to take home for practicing reading, is gender transformative, with a girl and boy shown washing dishes together. this illustration shows how gender roles can be transformed so that chores at home are shared. when this sharing happens, the time of girls is not disproportionately placed into domestic tasks; then, they can both practice reading and take part in free play, which boys traditionally have more time to do. sharing the domestic chores can transform the gender structure, which has ripples into each aspect of a child’s day and life cycle. figure 3. boy and girl washing dishes together. (ministry of education of senegal, 2018) address unequal gender norms that affect teacher-student interactions through socialemotional learning approaches as part of any early grade learning program. positive interactions have physical and mental benefits for child development. early social interactions help children develop strong language skills, and other important lifecourse assets, such as the social-emotional skills of communication, confidence, current issues in comparative education 10 creativity and empathy. nevertheless, teachers may be unaware that they are creating gender disparities among their students by what they expect from girls as compared to boys, in addition to prioritizing whether girls or boys can speak, whether girls or boys must listen, and whether girls or boys can ask questions: “overwhelming evidence now emanates from different parts of the globe to suggest that schools and teachers tend to reinforce gender-loaded perceptions regarding the abilities of boys and girls” (jha & pouezevara, 2016). mccracken, unterhalter, marquez, & chelstowska (2015) also suggest the importance of putting attention on this issue of gender stereotypes that are perpetuated by teachers. girls often do not recognize their right to education and girls are less likely to be forthcoming in class (aikman & rao, 2012). related to the section below on increasing the number of women in teaching early grades, part of this work is to not only improve gender equality in the workforce within the school systems, but to also ensure that teachers treat girls and boys equally in the classroom, using praise and other behavioral approaches rather than relying on corporal punishment (reichert & hawley, 2014). in our observations in schools in senegal, thanks to gender equality training, teachers now are more likely to call equally on boys and girls. address the early foundations of school-related gender-based violence. like all statistics on gender-based violence, school related gender-based violence (srgbv) is underreported. however, together for girls has found that 32% of girls in malawi, 44% in nigeria, and 45% in uganda who ever attended school experienced schoolrelated sexual and/or physical violence perpetrated by teachers and other classmates (together for girls, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c). lack of latrines and privacy for girls are also associated with school-related gender–based violence (unesco and un women, 2016). in mali, girls who missed school did so because they did not feel safe, and the most-often cited reason for not enrolling in school both among girls and parents was financial constraints, indicating that girls’ education was not prioritized when money was short (edintersect, 2019). separate latrines for girls and boys, and for female and male teachers, that afford privacy and can lock, need to be provided (sahoo et al., 2015; iasc, 2015). referral systems need to be created for schools to effectively address sexual abuse, both among children and teachers, with linkages to counseling, health services, and if desired, legal systems. girls are more likely to report srgbv if schools have established mechanisms to report incidents (sperling and winthrop, 2016). improve policies and systems to scale up and sustain quality reading instruction, materials, and community engagement the gender plan in senegal ensured attention to gender equality was incorporated into all forms of education communications, such as posters. those responsible for communications at the regional and district levels received training on how to create communication materials that promote gender equality (diop, gay, & mount-cors, 2020). the project ensured incorporation of gender and inclusion considerations into the sustainability and scale-up plan. the self-analysis and consideration of the belief systems and practices around gender norms of education staff both within the project and in ministry units would be an important activity and metric as well. ensure a strong policy environment both in the country and with implementing partners. it is also essential to work with the ministry of education concerning why attention to gender is important and practical steps to take. it is also useful to measure change, such as the percentage of women in school leadership and management positions, and gender parity in teacher pay by sector and level (unesco, 2016). it is important that girls and boys have equal amount of time outside school to practice reading. our observations in senegal indicate that this is a work in progress. address the lack of female teachers as role models. it is necessary to help women educators be part of gender transformation, rather than internalize oppression. it is critical for girls – and boys to see women teachers as role models. in a number of lmics, women are a small number of the teachers. due to gender norms, women are less likely to be literate, less likely to graduate from higher education, and have less rights to mobility to be posted in rural areas of a country. in ethiopia, a project pilot for quality education included a telling recommendation: increase the number of female teachers who are role models. often the lack of female teachers keeps girls from attending and persisting in school, especially as they reach secondary school (save the children, 2014). the gap in senegal is especially marked across all language groups (wolof, pulaar, and seereer, the three languages of the acr program) in the national language reading program in rural schools, with up to 70% in rural areas of first and second grade teachers being men (mount-cors, rousseau & de galbert, 2020). in addition, teacher assignment and transfer patterns in the ministry of education tend to be biased against women and need to be addressed also for reading programs in national languages for language match (rti, 2014; chemonics & cambridge education, 2017; diop, gay, & mount-cors, 2017.). as a point of comparison, the ministry of health in senegal has put in place a plan to institutionalize gender by integrating gender equality in human resources management in the health sector (newman, 2018). the ministry of education must be encouraged to hire, train, and promote women teachers, particularly in rural areas. address the lack of women in positions of educational leadership. women face obstacles to becoming a teacher and then rising within the educational bureaucracy. “gender-equitable leadership is a major concern in education. women continue to be underrepresented in senior management positions, on school boards and in education current issues in comparative education 12 ministries in rich and poor countries alike” (unesco, 2016, p. 43). in senegal, in the six regions where the early grade reading project is active, over 95% of the school directors are men (mount-cors, rousseau & de galbert, 2020. women who do achieve a level of senior leadership in a school or at a local or national ministry level may not be able to affect gender structures inherent in the educational institutions. often, women even in leadership positions lack voice and agency. as with the example of the health sector planning highlighted above in senegal, potential gender-transformative actions could include positive discrimination to promote women to positions of leadership, leadership training for women, and support groups for women who work in the educational system. strengthen the support students receive from family and other community members as they learn to read a family approach can build early reading skills both at home and at school. this means that mothers, fathers, older sisters, older brothers and others in the household can be mobilized to help the young child with letter-sound correspondences, orientation to print, and listening comprehension skills developed by reading stories to the child. a kind of intergenerational learning can be employed in which the family is working together through family literacy efforts on building basic literacy in the national language that the family speaks and learns together (mount-cors, 2016). this family literacy approach is recommended to strengthen the effect of early grade reading programs in national languages (sarr et al, 2020). in the senegal acr program, community members, such as parent associations, have been trained on gender in the 20% of communities where the parent and community component of the project is active. promotion of gender equality has been part of all community fora, debates, and other community events. address unequal gender norms that affect free time, mobility and chores, taking away from learning. as mentioned above, gender-harmful norms often prevail, such as that boys belong outside playing soccer and girls belong around the home with domestic tasks, with more limited mobility. “girls and women disproportionately bear the burden of household chores, including time-consuming tasks such as collecting water and firewood, even while in school” (unesco, 2016, p. 37). expectations are often quite different for girls compared to boys: “in most countries, girls are more than twice as likely to be involved in child domestic work than boys” (unesco, 2019, p. 3). children’s work, even in limited amounts, adversely impacts a child’s learning (jha and pouezevara, 2016). consultations in senegal revealed examples such as: when a boy helps with household tasks, he is teased for his lack of masculinity. with the covid-19 pandemic, these unequal gender norms may be exacerbated. as mentioned above, girls are more likely to be tasked with domestic chores, which have increased due to the pandemic. one way to reduce transmission of covid-19 is through frequent handwashing, which calls for more water. as girls are often tasked with carrying water, this increase in water needed for personal hygiene most affects girls’ time and stress. in addition, gender-based violence has increased during the pandemic (un women, 2020). it is notable that girls are more likely to suffer from gender-based violence yet may have nowhere to seek shelter or report the abuse. community dialogues have been effective in changing gender norms. effective programs have used participatory methodologies such as that of tostan (fernald & weber, 2015) and save the children (2014). it is important to hold community dialogues on the benefits of girls’ education, while not neglecting boys. in fact, engaging boys in “girls’ education” is one of the best ways to transform gender relations and norms from a young age. save the children’s choices curriculum consisted of eight developmentally appropriate activities, supporting children aged 10 to 14 to explore alternative views of masculinities and femininities. research in nepal showed an increase in gender-equitable attitudes and behavior changes among both boys and girls relating to discrimination, social image, control and dominance, violence, attitudes to girls’ education, and acceptance of traditional gender norms, after participating in choices (lundgren et al, 2013). it is also critical that boys and girls be involved in sports clubs and reading clubs, both in single sex and co-ed groups, to learn the equal rights and capabilities of both girls and boys to achieve their human potential no matter what gender norms have been inculcated. single sex and co-ed clubs such as those sponsored by care in various countries, can also be used as models for this type of gender-transformative activity. conclusions gender-transformative approaches to early primary education are critical to the successful lives of the world’s children. girls getting an education leads to a society’s increased wealth, better health for her and her future children and many other positive impacts (levine et al, 2009), but is also a basic human right. it is critical to act on the whole: at the individual level, the family level, and the structural level, and to recognize that, at the child’s level, social-emotional learning incorporating gender-transformative reflection and content alongside reading education would enhance the positive effects for girls and boys and the families and societies in which they live. actualizing gendertransformative approaches will also make early primary programs more effective and sustainable over the long term as they can also make an impact on familial, community, and structural levels. the goals outlined in this article require acknowledging and addressing the gender-related barriers with an evidence-informed, solution-based current issues in comparative education 14 approach that includes documentation, monitoring, and evaluation to ensure effectiveness. promoting gender equality when children start school will lead to a radical transformation, with progress toward the sdgs for all children. acknowledgments: the authors gratefully acknowledge the support and efforts of usaid and the senegalese government staff, teachers, and students, without whom this research would not be possible. the authors are solely responsible for the choice and presentation of the facts contained in this article and for the opinions expressed therein. corresponding author contact information: maryfaith mount-cors, edintersect, 103 w. weaver st, suite a, carrboro, north carolina 27510, usa. email: maryfaith@edintersect.com maryfaith mount-cors is president of edintersect, llc. she is technical lead for the edintersect team on gender and inclusion, technology strategy, and early grade reading assessment and local education monitoring on the senegal acr program. she has a ph.d. in education from the university of north carolina at chapel hill. jill gay is senior gender advisor for edintersect, llc and chief technical officer for what works association. she has worked at the national academy of sciences, and has provided gender expertise globally for the un, usaid, foundations, and other organizations. she is the lead author of www.whatworksforwomen.org. rokhaya diop is gender equality and social inclusion specialist for the senegal acr program on the chemonics team. an alumna of the fulbright teaching excellence and achievement program, she has a b.a. in english, m.a. in sociology, and is pursuing graduate work at the université gaston berger, st. louis, senegal. references aikman, s & rao, n. 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[1] mark b. ginsburg institute for international studies in education school of education, university of pittsburgh in recent years nongovernmental organizations or ngos have become increasingly visible and active in various sectors of social life, including education. as edwards and hulme (1996) report, there has been a "[r]apid growth in ngo numbers (…) accompanied in some countries (…) by a trend toward expansion in the size of individual ngos and ngo programs" (p. 962). at the same time, ngos have received greater attention in government and international organization reports and policy documents, as well as in scholarly literature. in this burgeoning literature, ngos are characterized and evaluated in quite different ways. sometimes the acronym, "ngo," seems to serve as shorthand for "new great organization" and other times it appears to refer to "never good organization." [2] one might summarize the case for and against ngos by way of a parody of shakespeare's statement about roses: an ngo by any other name would smell as sweet or as rancid. different cases? part of the reason for the contradictory representations of ngos is that they constitute a heterogeneous set of institutions, and not just because of the different sectors in which they work or the gender, racial/ethnic, and social class characteristics of participants (e.g., see stromquist, 1996).[3] they include: (1) grassroots operations intricately linked to social movements aimed at challenging and transforming unequal social structures; (2) nonprofit businesses run by "professionals" that provide work and income opportunities for the disadvantaged in an effort to incorporate them in extant political economic arrangements and (3) some ngos are locally-based institutions that operate on a shoe-string budget derived from the resources of those involved, while others are international entities with sizable budgets built from grants and contracts from international organizations (e.g., development banks, un agencies, and foundations) as well as national governments (foreign as well as domestic to the locale of any particular project being undertaken). [4] different paradigms ngos are also characterized differently in the literature because authors bring different perspectives to their analytical task. thus, even when scholars are examining the same ngo or similar types of ngos, they may emphasize different elements of their operations and they may conclude with contrasting appraisals. for instance, carroll (1992) describes how ngos in latin america contribute invaluable, practical assistance to local grassroots groups involved in economic development activities, while petras (1997) portrays similar ngos in latin america as "competing with socio-political movements for the allegiance of local leaders and activist communities" (p. 10) and linking "foreign funders with local labor ([via] self-help micro-enterprises) to facilitate the continuation of the neo-liberal regime" (p. 25). the difference in perspectives is to some extent captured by typologies or mappings of social theory paradigms (e.g., epstein, 1986; ginsburg, 1991; paulston, 1977 and 1996; mark b. ginsburg 30 november`15, 1998 stromquist, 1995; morrow & torres, 1995). for example, analysts employing equilibrium perspectives (e.g., functionalism) tend to paint a different portrait of ngos than those using the lens of conflict theory (whether feminist, marxist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist). [5] privatized versus public democracy however, analysts--even those who are grounded in similar paradigms--may depict and evaluate ngos differently because of differences in their conceptions of space available for "democratic" participation within the state versus within civil society. [6] for some authors, ngos are lauded because they constitute "an integral component of civil society and an essential counterweight to state power" (edwards & hulme, 1996, p. 962). for example, petras (1997) notes that ngos "during their earlier history in the 1970s … were active in providing humanitarian support to the victims of the military dictatorship[s] and denouncing human rights violations" (pp. 10-11). such enthusiasm for ngos' efforts to carve out more space for civil society may, in general, make sense in the context of authoritarian regimes. [7] but in the context of (at least potentially) democratic political systems, one would applaud the increasing role of ngos only to the extent that one viewed the state or the public sector as unresponsive or inefficient. in the writings of some conflict theorists the state is portrayed as meeting the needs of national or global capitalists or other dominant groups, and thus not responsive to the needs of workers, women, and minority racial/ethnic groups (e.g., althusser, 1971), while in neo-liberal versions of equilibrium theory the state is characterized as inefficient because government bureaucracies are not subject to market forces and profit motives (see edwards and hulme, 1996, p. 961). [8] in contrast, one might be more inclined to criticize the role of (certain) ngos to the extent that one perceived the state and the public sector as a desirable or the most likely terrain on which democracy can be achieved. [9] edwards & hulme (1996, p. 966), for instance, report that ngos' increasing dependence of funding from "foreign" donors (e.g., other governments, un agencies, corporate and other private foundations) and pose the questions of whether this represents a "strengthening of civil society or (…) merely an attempt to shape civil society in ways that external actors believe [are] desirable." [10] in this sense, ngos are likely to be less accountable to the people in local, state/provincial, and national communities than governments that at least to some extent can be characterized as democratic--in procedural and/or substantive terms. [11] as petras (1997) explains, some "ngos depoliticize sectors of the population (…) [and] undermine democracy by taking social programs out of the hands of the local people and their elected officials to create dependence on non-elected, overseas (…) [or] locally anointed officials" (p. 13). while those subscribing to each of these perspectives may want to claim that only their viewpoint operates with democracy as a core value, it seems more appropriate to say that each side bases its arguments on a different conception of democracy and citizenship--privatized versus public. these conceptions, at least within european cultural traditions, can be traced to the writings of john locke and jean-jacques rousseau. according to sehr (1997), "privatized democracy minimizes the role of ngos: what’s in an acronym? current issues in comparative education, vol.1(1) 31 ordinary citizens as political actors who can shape their collective destiny through [direct] participation with other in public life" (p. 4). this privatized notion of democracy is based on: (1) "fears about the people's ability to govern itself" (p. 32) in a manner that would "effect the 'mutual preservation of lives, liberties, and estates"(p. 32) and (2) a belief in egotistic individualism, and a glorification of materialism and consumerism as keys to personal happiness and fulfillment" (p. 4). [12] in contrast, "public democracy … sees people's participation in public life as the essential ingredient in democratic government. public participation arises out of an ethic of care and responsibility, not only for oneself as an isolated individual, but for one's fellow citizens as co-builders and co-beneficiaries of the public good" (p. 4). conclusion in this essay i have answered the question--what's in an acronym (specifically ngos)?-by saying that it depends (1) on which case one examines, (2) on which paradigm (e.g., equilibrium or conflict) one brings to the examination, and (3) on which model of democracy (privatized or public) one values. while perhaps in a post-modern era such a conclusion (viz., "it depends") might merely be accepted as the "reality," i want to encourage us to go beyond merely recognizing multiple "realities" and develop ways for struggling "politically" (ginsburg, kamat, raghu, & weaver, 1995) around these issues. [13] this is because the way we (and others) come to understand and act on these issues in relation to our work with, in, and on ngos is likely to have real consequences for the quality of life, making life on this planet sweeter and/or more rancid. notes [1] this paper is an elaboration of a presentation made at part of a symposium, "are ngos overrated? critical reflections on the expansion and institutionalization of ngos," at the comparative and international education society annual meeting, buffalo, new york, 18-22 march 1998. [2] it is curious that in english the acronym for nongovernmental organizations is not "no" rather than ngo, though perhaps this would carry too negative of a connotation. of course, the acronym, ngo, is not really translatable into other languages, even those using the same alphabet. for example, in spanish the acronym would be (ong or on) for organzaciones nogovernmentales. [3] kamat (1998) observes in her study of activists involved in rural india that some groups actually create two parallel organizations--one for social change efforts involving political protest, lobbying, and electoral work and one that seeks grants from government and other sources to support economic enterprise initiatives. [4] thus, "[i]n reality non-governmental organizations are not non-governmental (…) [in that they] receive funds from overseas governments or work as private contractors" (petras, 1997, p. 13). interestingly, some ngos self-consciously eschew funding from "foreign" sources, because of fear of their corruptive influence, but at the same time secure funding from provincial and national governments or foundations without a parallel concern for being corrupted by such funding sources (zachariah & sooryamoorthy, 1994). mark b. ginsburg 32 november`15, 1998 [5] we should be cautious about adopting too overly-deterministic a perspective. as with the case of studying imperialism and colonialism, when investigating ngos, there is a need to pay attention to how individual and collective actors may engage in transactions, even within unequal power relations, that yield other consequences than might be expected if one assumed that social structures completely determine human thought and action (see ginsburg & clayton, 1998). [6] i would distinguish my focus here from that discussed in edwards & hulme (1996, p. 965) concerning whether ngos in fact promote involvement in "democratic" political systems or whether ngos function internally in a democratic manner. [7] i say "may make sense" if such action within civil society involved struggle to democratize local, national, and global states (and economies) rather than initiatives to create havens from the heartless world of the state apparatus, which would remain controlled by political economic elites. [8] it may also be that those espousing neo-liberal or conservative equilibrium views prefer using the ngo route because, at least from the perspective of some elites, "too much" space has been opened up in the political system for workers and other oppressed groups to make demands for and shape the character of public services. and as petras (1997, p. 11) observes: "there is a direct relationship between the growth of social movements challenging the neo-liberal model and the effort to subvert them by creating alternative forms of social action through the ngos." [9] moreover, foreign government and international organization support for ngos must be seen in relation to structural adjustment programs, privatization projects, and other moves to delegitimate the state and destroy public sector employment (and the relatively better, unionized jobs associated with it). and domestic government funding for ngos--representing a form of contracting out of public service work can be seen as in line with a similar philosophy regarding the state and the economy. according to petras (1997, p. 13): "in practice, 'non-governmental' translates into anti-public-spending activities, freeing the bulk of funds for neo-liberals to subsidize export capitalists while small sums trickle from the government to ngos." [10] of course, the external funding sources do not comprise a homogeneous set with respect to the power they wield or the interests they might be seen to serve. [11] here i follow highland (1995, p. 67) in conceiving of a power structure as democratic to the extent that all person "have equal effective rights in the determination of decisions to which they are subject." furthermore, highland (1995, p. 2) notes, this necessitates "both procedural entitlements to participate in a decision-making process and adequate access to a wide range of [material and symbolic] resources that would enable a person to utilize her or his procedural entitlements." [12] note that for locke human life and liberties are included along with estates as forms of "property." [13] there is perhaps some irony that the only "reality" acknowledged by many postngos: what’s in an acronym? current issues in comparative education 33 modernists is that there are multiple realities. references althusser, l. (1971). lenin and philosophy, and other essays (brewster, b. [trans.]). new york: monthly review press. carroll, t. (1992). intermediary ngos: the supporting link in grassroots development. new york: kumarian press. edwards, m. & hulme, d. (1996). too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations. world development 24(6), 961-73. epstein, e. (1986). currents left and right: ideology in comparative education. in p. altbach, & g. kelly (eds.), new approaches to comparative education (pp.233-59). chicago: university of chicago press. ginsburg, m. (1991). educational reform: social struggle, the state, and the world economic system. in m. ginsburg (ed.), understanding educational reform in global context: economy, ideology and the state (pp.3-48). new york: garland publishing. ginsburg, m. & clayton, t. (1998). imperialism and colonialism. in d. levinson, a. sadovnik, & p. cookson (eds.), education and sociology: an encyclopedia. new york: garland publishing. ginsburg, m., kamat, s., raghu, r., & weaver, j. (1995). educators and politics: interpretations, involvement, and implications. in m. ginsburg (ed.), the politics of educators' work and lives (pp.3-54). new york: garland publishing. highland, j. (1995). democratic theory: the philosophical foundations. manchester: manchester university press. kamat, s. (1998). development hegemony: an analysis of grassroots formations and the state in maharashtra, india. unpublished ph.d. dissertation, university of pittsburgh. morrow, r. & torres, c. (1995). social theory and education. albany, ny: state university of new york press. paulston, r. (1977). social and educational change. comparative education review, 21 (2/3), 370-95. paulston, r. (1996). mapping visual culture in comparative education discourse. compare, 27(2), 117-152. petras, j. (1997). imperialism and ngos in latin america. monthly review, 49(7), 10-33. sehr, d. (1997). education for public democracy. albany, ny: state university of new york press. mark b. ginsburg 34 november`15, 1998 stromquist, n. (1995). gender and power in education. comparative education review, 39(4), 423-54. stromquist, n. (1996). mapping gendered spaces in third world educational interventions. in r. paulston (ed.), social cartography: mapping ways of seeing social and educational change (pp.223-47). new york: garland. zachariah, m. & sooryamoorthy, r. (1994). social science for social revolution? achievement and dilemmas of a development movement: the kerala sastra sahitya parishad. new delhi: vistaar publications. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.1(1) 55 are ngos overrated? why and how to say "no." michael edwards the world bank, washington dc [1] introduction "are ngos overrated"? there is only one possible answer to a question like that: "it all depends." it depends on the ngos concerned, the contexts they work in, the type of work they do, and the standards we use to judge them. in a world of discredited governments and unaccountable corporations it might seem especially harsh to single ngos out for criticism. other contributions to this issue of cice are right to point out the dangers of over-generalizing in the ngo debate. mark ginsburg (this issue) contrasts the very different qualities of grassroots movements and non-profit businesses; lynn ilon (this issue) separates market from non-market values and the transformative potential they offer; steven klees (this issue) maintains--correctly--that "some of the promise of ngos is clearly being fulfilled"; and robert arnove, and gita steiner-khamsi (this issue) identify numerous examples of individual organizations that have not been co-opted by the agendas of states or donors. these qualifications are important, but they do not do away with the need to seek some common patterns in what is happening in the world--after all, we cannot make policy in any other way; nor do they disguise the fact that development ngos are being influenced by some common trends at both macroand micro(or meso-) levels. some of these forces are described in my recent article with david hulme: "too close for comfort" (1996). at the macro level they include state retrenchment and privatization; at the micro level--the level of ngos themselves--they include the institutional imperatives of growth, bureaucracy and market share. the net result, we argue in that article, is to draw ngos further into the "new policy agenda" and reduce their potential for radical action. although this argument is clearly partial and incomplete, the article seems to have been widely-circulated, even in the donor community itself, where questions are certainly being raised about the need to re-consider the use of ngos as contractors in deliberate substitution for the state. importantly, the article is only part of a much larger body of material produced by the two of us over a ten-year period, all of which looks at ngos in a constructively-critical way. [2] taken together, these materials represent our attempt to understand what is happening in the ngo world and use that knowledge to "modernize" these organizations in the best sense of that word--improving their ability to fulfill their stated mission for poverty-eradication and social transformation. i will come back to the importance of this initiative--one academic and one "reflective practitioner" working collectively and strategically over time--at the end of the paper. if the answer to the question is "it all depends", then there must be room-to-maneuver. agencies can use this room to make more of the opportunities provided by context and relationships, while dealing with threats. for ngos, this translates into a very concrete question: what do they need to do in order to pursue their mission without co-optation, given the realities of need in the world, fund-raising imperatives and donor relations? michael edwards 56 november`15, 1998 put another way, what needs to happen to enable us to say "no" to the question posed in the title of this issue of cice--"are ngos overrated?" and what is the role of research-and the academy more broadly--in helping ngos to get to this destination successfully? ngos in the twenty-first century i think there are at least three questions which all development ngos need to answer if they are to pursue their goals effectively against the background of the "new policy agenda": what is our role in the twenty-first century? are we concerned with development as "delivery" or development as "leverage"? and how do we claim the legitimacy that underpins our mission? let me deal briefly with each of these questions in turn. what is our role? it may seem obvious that ngos are more likely to succeed when they are clear about their mission, and how best to fulfill it in different contexts. yet few have a strategic or sufficiently-analytical view of the answers to this question. therefore, they tend to drift into and out of different roles and relationships according to development fashions, the availability of resources, or donor demands--adult literacy one year and micro-finance the next. at a more fundamental level, ngos have always been confused about their identity--part market-based actors providing a service at a competitive price; part social actors pushing for more radical changes in systems and structures. although these two identities can sometimes be combined (of which more below), they have very different implications for ngo roles and relationships. at some point all ngos will have to make a clearer choice. at present, few seem prepared to do this. either it is too difficult or dangerous, or it appears unnecessary when the flow of money from public or official donors is still fairly reliable. most ngos "end up trying to manage a muddle in the middle" as i put it elsewhere (edwards, 1999), making incremental changes in current practice in the hope that this will be enough. examples include codes-of-conduct to improve accountability, attempts to strengthen "partnerships" between ngos in north and south, and more investment in organizational learning. unfortunately, these changes are unlikely to be sufficient to enable ngos to adapt to a rapidly-changing context, rising competition for development resources as foreign aid declines, and the relative imbalance of power between ngos and other actors in the private and public sectors. the more strategic ngos have, therefore, embarked on a more radical process of re-visioning and reengineering. this is why there is so much talk these days of new mission statements and organizational structures. among these ngos, two distinct pathways to the future are already discernible. the first is an aggressive marketing of the ngo "brand", in which agencies adopt a more openly market-oriented stance in a clearly-identified niche (i.e., some aspect of serviceprovision such as humanitarian aid, micro-finance or project design and delivery). the second is the reverse of this model. here, ngos decide to forgo some funding opportunities or functions, sink roots deeper into their own society and extend their links with other civic groups, and adopt a more radical stance as social actors that can push openly for social and political change. in the first model, impact comes from aggregation, that is, the size of programs and the number of deliverables; in the second it are ngos overrated? how and why to say “no.” current issues in comparative education, vol. 1(1) 57 comes from articulation, namely, the multiplier effect of working together to lever change in larger structures. market actors aim to build their own positions as institutions; social actors are more interested in strengthening the capacity of others for independent action. the market offers the prospect of organizational growth with little impact on world poverty, but only while the supply of foreign aid continues and ngos remain competitive against alternative suppliers; social movements promise more impact but little growth, since the focus is on the message--or the goal--not the individual agency. for ngo staff and trustees, the attractions of the market are obvious, but few are comfortable with the implications of this choice. my sense is, therefore, that we will see a new generation of ngos who make a more successful marriage between market principles and social values, in much the same way that "third-way" thinking is evolving at the macro level. in that sense, ngos will be the "social entrepreneurs" of the twentyfirst century, though this will require a clarity of direction that few possess at present. development as delivery or leverage? the second pre-requisite for avoiding co-optation is the ability to recognize when you are slipping out of "service innovation" designed to lever change on a broader level and into "service substitution" or large-scale service delivery where the stress is on replacement of public functions and the consequent erosion of the duty of states to provide and care for all their citizens. robert arnove and rachel christina make this point in their paper for this issue of cice, arguing for "complementarity" between states and ngos and the need for strong (and accountable) government, even if some aspects of education and other service-provision are franchised out to ngos and the private sector. as they show in the case of educational development in palestine, it is possible for ngos to play a creative and radical role in social policy without being co-opted or stifled by bureaucracy. gita steiner-kamsi makes a similar point in her paper, contrasting the dangers of "modulitis" with the advantages of adopting a flexible response appropriate to the local context. although donor pressures and internal ngo imperatives may push for standardization, this is not inevitable. in these situations, the key is the ability to identify the difference between innovation and substitution, development-as-delivery and development-as-leverage, and respond accordingly. ngos that can do this focus as much on learning, practice-to-policy work (or technical advocacy) and capacity-building as on the actual delivery of projects and services. the service grounds these other efforts in concrete practice, but the ngo moves on to innovate elsewhere once the wider goal has been set in motion. in this way, more impact is achieved at less cost to the political economy to which ngos contribute a small but not insignificant influence. as geoff wood (1997) points out for bangladesh, the nature of the "social contract" between citizens and states differs fundamentally from that between consumers and private service-providers (whether commercial or nonprofit). in the former case people have a right to a service; in the latter they only have an entitlement, dependent on whether they live in an area served by an ngo, whether that ngo provides the service effectively, and whether they can hold the ngo accountable for its actions. in many poor countries, the answer to all three questions is negative, so privatization results in a patchwork-quilt of unsatisfactory health and education which is difficult to influence through public pressure. michael edwards 58 november`15, 1998 to avoid this scenario, ngos must have a clear bottom line in mind and indicators to tell them when they reach it. for example, they should have a minimum amount of money set aside for capacity-building and clear indicators to show whether sustainable institutions, skills and confidence are being developed. that in turn requires a range of capacities and characteristics that most ngos lack, high levels of transparency and accountability, and a clear view of how organizational legitimacy is claimed and maintained. how do we claim legitimacy? there are two ways in which ngos can claim legitimacy--their right to do what they do and say what they say. the first is legitimacy through representation, as in most membership organizations; the second is legitimacy through results, and accountability for delivering the terms of contracts. most ngos choose the latter route, since they are usually closer to market-based actors than social movements, though all would probably claim legitimacy through a mixture of both. this is a vital question for the future, because it is the legitimacy of ngos that is now being threatened or questioned, especially among ngos that are based in and governed from the north. one of the best ways to address the dangers of co-optation and poor performance is to focus more energy on demonstrating legitimacy in either or both of these ways. if an ngo chooses the social actor route, then clearly its claims to legitimacy have to be substantiated through its connections with members or constituents. this entails building a supporter base that is well-informed about development and the changing roles ngos must play to remain effective. it also involves a concentration on strengthening demand for development and not the supply of foreign aid and aidfunded projects, as well as securing the financial independence that will protect the organization from undue donor influence. the record of most ngos in these areas is poor. they have built a list of occasional givers, but not an active constituency for change; and they have largely ignored the need to build the financial self-sustainability of the grassroots institutions and communities they work with. on the other hand, if the ngo is a market-based actor, then its claims to legitimacy will come through its success in delivering what it says it delivers at a level which meets the standards required in the marketplace. ngos dependent for their income on government and other official donor agencies will know exactly what this means and how difficult it is to retain flexibility and innovation against the background of shortterm quantitative targets and other cost pressures. one of the key problems here is that few ngos invest enough in learning and evaluation to generate accountability through results. they have little idea what their results are, or what to attribute to their own interventions. yet without clear accountability procedures it is much easier to cross the line between transparent compromise and blind co-optation. a focus on learning is one of the most important priorities for any ngo that wishes to remain effective. this may appear an obvious statement, but ngos may now be receiving more criticism than they are due precisely because learning, transparency and accountability in the ngo sector have been relatively weak. hence, our expectations of ngos achievements have simply been too high. after all, ngos have grown used to occupying the moral are ngos overrated? how and why to say “no.” current issues in comparative education, vol. 1(1) 59 high ground. until recently, they benefited from a series of untested assumptions about ngo cost-effectiveness, closeness to the poor, flexibility and so on; and from a loyal but uninformed supporter base. over the last few years this has changed. a growing body of research has questioned these assumptions and criticisms have begun to leak into the public domain. this has left ngos feeling distinctly uncomfortable--proving the old adage that the "higher you are, the further you have to fall." criticisms about accountability and transparency are commonplace in the public and business sectors. they are no less important for ngos, but ngos are much less used to facing them. my argument is that, in the long term, this process of public questioning is not only healthy but essential to the survival of a vibrant and innovative civil society in which ngos have a small but important part to play. in an age when institutional accountability is the price for a seat at any negotiating table, ngos must become much more sophisticated about the definition and measurement of results, and more broadly, how they substantiate their claims to legitimacy. nothing less will do. reflective practice and hermeneutic theory in this final section of my paper, i examine the role academics and practitioners can play in helping each-other to address unanswered questions. i have argued that a large part of the answer to the question "are ngos overrated" lies in improving our understanding of the conditions that underpin impact and guard against co-optation. how is this to be done? ngos are unlikely to be able to find all the answers for themselves. for one thing, they have too many institutional interests that reduce their ability and willingness to "speak truth to power" in aaron wildavsky's famous phrase. for another, they lack the research and analytical skills to do so as well as the large-scale investments required in learning and knowledge infrastructure. universities and the wider research community have a crucial role to play in supplying these skills and capacities, along with a more objective view of ngo successes and failures. however, this must be a reflexive and reciprocal process: "we cannot change the world unless we understand how it works, but neither can we understand the way it works unless we are involved in some way with the processes that change it" (edwards, 1989). ngos do not want to be studied like animals in the zoo; they want to join hands with the research community in a common search for answers. as i have argued over many years, the future for both communities lies through co-working in which each party offers the other something they do not have. [3] the result is better theory, applied and refined in practice; and better practice, informed and tested against theory. in the process, ngos and researchers can be co-creators of environments for learning that nurture both reflective practitioners and engaged academics. as robert arnove puts it in his paper, "this requires that we maintain our critical judgment" when we play this role--collaboration adds value to what each already has; it does not take away. but it does require more openness to working across boundaries, and different institutional structures and incentives. neither ngos nor universities have grasped this fundamental point. if they have grasped it intellectually they lack the courage and imagination to put it into practice. it seems to me that this on-line journal, current issues in comparative education, is a good example of exactly what we need. other ideas include long-term "framework michael edwards 60 november`15, 1998 partnerships" in which particular researchers work with particular ngos over time. this allows trust and confidence to develop slowly, without which no partnership will work. this is very different to the cut and thrust of the contract culture, rushed consultancy visits, and the occasional non-academic article. if we can be "critical friends" to each other, as the brazilians would say, then we can create the foundations for moving forward in both our worlds. combining action with understanding in this way is the key to achieving both the ngo mission of poverty-eradication and social transformation. it is also the instrument for the training of a new generation of reflective practitioners who will carry those transformations into the future. that requires hard work, self-sacrifice and imagination. cice has already made a good start. i wish you well. notes [1] michael edwards is senior civil society specialist in the world bank's ngo unit and can be reached by email at medwards2@worldbank.org or 106076.2125@compuserve.com. his new book future positive: international cooperation in the 21st century will be published in 1999 by earthscan in london and kumarian press in west hartford. [2] see, for example, edwards and hulme (1992, 1995, 1997) and the references therein. [3]see edwards 1989, 1994, 1996. references edwards, m. (1989). the irrelevance of development studies. third world quarterly (january). edwards, m. (1994). rethinking social development: the search for relevance. in d. booth (ed.), rethinking social development: theory, research and practice. london: longman. edwards, m. (1996). the getting of wisdom: educating the reflective practitioner. in n. hamdi (ed.), education for real: the training of professionals for development work. london: it publications. edwards, m. (1999). future positive: international co-operation in the 21st century. london: earthscan and west hartford: kumarian press. edwards, m. & hulme, d. (eds.) (1992). making a difference: ngos and development in a changing world. london: earthscan and new jersey: island press. edwards, m. & hulme, d. (1995). beyond the magic bullet: ngo performance and accountability in the post-cold war world. london: earthscan and west hartford: kumarian press. edwards, m. & hulme, d. (1997) too close for comfort? ngos, states and donors. london: macmillan and new york: st martins press. are ngos overrated? how and why to say “no.” current issues in comparative education, vol. 1(1) 61 wood, g. (1997). states without citizens: the problems of the franchise state in bangladesh. in m. edwards & d. hulme, (eds.). too close for comfort? ngos, states and donors. london: macmillan and new york: st martins press. © 2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 23 schooling, family, and individual factors mitigating psychological effects of war on children joaquín e. flores teachers college, columbia university old men declare war. but it is the youth that must fight and die. -herbert hoover introduction studies on the effects of war on children, from world war ii to the present, have presented different paradigms and have yielded mixed results. some researchers reported non-significant differences between children exposed to different degrees of violence, suggesting "adaptation" or "habituation" (e.g. bodman, 1941; jensen & shaw, 1993; nashef, 1992; ziv & israeli, 1973), that is, the strength of children's anxiety and other psychological responses decreased with repeated exposure to war stimuli. others focused on the parent-child relationship, pointing to the detrimental absence of a caring parent to act as a buffer against trauma (e.g. despert, 1942; freud & burlingham, 1943; lowenfeld's work in urwin & hood-williams, 1988). yet other researchers suggested that developmental tasks are interrupted by war, which negatively affects how children view themselves, others, and society (e.g. gonzález-cantón, 1989; martín-baró, 1990; and tortorici-picado, 1988; as well as arroyo & eth, 1985, in their study of salvadoran refugees in the united states). as gary ladd and ed cairns stated in their 1996 review for a special section on children and political violence in child development, "unfortunately, the research literature on... political violence is at a very early stage, and much remains to be learned about how this type of violence affects children and their development" (p. 15). addressing the needs of civilians affected by war deserves far more attention than national and international organizations are capable of giving (ressler, tortorici, & marcelino, 1993; ronstrom, 1989), especially in low income countries (desjarlais, eisenberg, good, & kleinman, 1995). part of the problem of providing assistance, however, is the lack of research regarding the effects of war on civilians (e.g. jensen & shaw, 1993). empirical evidence is needed on the types and frequency of psychological problems of civilians exposed to war, and on the gender, age, family, and community variables that may moderate the strength and nature of wartime effects (jensen & shaw, 1993). as we increase our knowledge of those factors, interventions may become more effective and less expensive. the purpose of my study is to provide quantitative information on the psychological effects of war on the children of el salvador, and the factors that mitigate those effects. in an effort to increase our understanding of the impact of political violence as a public health concern, and as an advocacy effort to aid organizations in the planning of intervention programs for children affected by armed conflicts, the study focused on group rather than individual differences in psychopathology. el salvador was at civil war for over 12 years, from the late 1970's to 19921. as rural communities were among the most affected by the war (e.g. brockman, 1989; gómez & joaquín e. flores 24 november 15, 1999 cameron, 1981; weiss-fagen & eldridge, 1991), campesino children were studied for advocacy reasons. campesino families and their children have historically lacked characteristics associated with resilience in children at risk, including a lack of socioeconomic advantage and lack of effective schools (e.g. romero in brockman, 1989). services addressing effects of war on campesino children are more likely to occur if research documenting the need has been conducted. method maria elena sat huddled in a corner of a small room that looked out her backyard. she heard bullets raining down on the roof and she couldn't look outside because the windows were boarded up. ...maria elena was often scared to go to sleep at night -she wondered if she would wake up the next morning. and she kept hoping that her father, who was in the army, was okay. (my niece, interviewed at age 12, by pellot (1992, p.8) shortly after the civil war in el salvador ended) figure 1. map of el salvador = santa marta, cabañas (direct war exposure group). = tabloncitos, santa ana (no direct war exposure group). schooling, family, and individual factors: mitigating psychological effects of war on children current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 25 research design participants were male and female children (eight to 12 years of age) from conflict and no-conflict zones in rural, low socioeconomic status (ses) areas. children were independently selected from each community by random sampling2. the dependent variables were: post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd), anxiety, depression, behavior problems, and psychosocial competence. the study also explored disruptions in families and schooling as a result of the war, and the relationship between children's discrete war experiences and psychological outcomes3. the data were collected between august and november of 1992, shortly after the civil war ended. the original sample consisted of 200 participants and significant efforts were made to obtain equal numbers of children selected by stratified random sampling (stratified by gender and age) for each group. unfortunately, some of the data were lost in transit from el salvador to the united states. thus, the final sample consisted of 132 children, 93 in the community that was exposed to the war directly and 39 in the community that was not. figure 2. photograph of united nations base in santa marta participating communities4 two rural cantón communities from the departments of cabañas and santa ana participated in this study (see figure 1)5. the santa marta community (in the department of cabañas) was in a high conflict zone (see figure 2)6. the other cantón, tabloncitos (in the department of santa ana) did not experience direct conflict. the two participating communities were typical of the rural communities of el salvador. the primary difference between the two groups was degree of exposure to war. the children that participated in this study were born during the war years; thus they spent their entire life under conditions of political conflict (see figures 3-8, interspersed below). since all of el salvador was affected by the civil war, it is fit to regard children as varying in their degree of exposure to political violence. thus the labels of "direct war exposure" and "no direct war exposure" for the samples from the two participating communities, rather than "exposed" and "not exposed" (or "control") groups. joaquín e. flores 26 november 15, 1999 figure 3. photograph of boys playing on a tree figure 4. photograph of mother and her children in their home background of the study given the complexity of the subject of the effects of war on children, and the social context in which such applied research takes place, some argue that to engage in such research is inevitably a political act (lambert, 1986). ressler et al. (1993) have provided a note of caution concerning the possible detrimental outcomes of research and programs conducted by investigators with a poor understanding of the conditions faced by children in armed conflict. this becomes a painful reality when investigators are, "motivated by curiosity or the desire for interesting and publishable study material" (ressler et al., 1993, p. 206), or by using children for political advantage or as means of raising funds. given the ethical concerns that come into play regarding a study such as the present one, it becomes important to describe my more personal reasons for conducting this study. i was born and raised in el salvador, and experienced and witnessed the many problems that children face due to the socio-economic and political conditions of the country. my childhood memories of the early stages of the civil war in the 1970's include finding some classes at school canceled due to one of our teachers having "disappeared"7. rumors among classmates were that his disappearance was due to his teaching us concepts of conciencia social, social consciousness, tucked in between subject matter. several days later, i saw my teacher's picture in the newspapers over the heading "mr. ___ found dead in..." this marked the seriousness of events to follow, notably, an assassination attempt against my father, which left him with a destroyed leg by g-3 caliber machine-gun-shots. the reasons for the attempt included his advocacy for peasant's rights, and his lobbying to free the salvadoran military officer corps of corruption. this was followed by the murder of my uncle, father manuel antonio reyes mónico, who as a priest and high school teacher was an advocate for the poor and liberation theology. he was seized from his home by armed men on october 6, 1980 joaquín e. flores 24 november 15, 1999 (americas watch committee & the american civil liberties union, 1982). his dead body was found the next day with indications of torture. a childhood friend was killed by a gunshot to his head while piloting a helicopter. a spiritual brother was ambushed and killed in the countryside. the list kept growing. by the 1980's my sister, my two little nieces and my little nephew had painful signs of psychological distress due to exposure to the salvadoran civil war. these and over 75,000 other reasons provided the background for my initial interest in children and war8. furthermore, my experiences on how adults as representatives of institutions were responding to the needs of children in el salvador pointed out to me the need for advocacy and a sense of personal responsibility. such disconcerting experiences included a meeting with an officer of health programs for the united states agency for international development (usaid) in el salvador. as a chief of projects for usaid he explained that he had consulted with psychiatrists from the salvadoran association of psychiatrists and had been informed that salvadoran children did not suffer psychological problems as a result of the civil war. he had thus concluded that the cases of children in need of psychological services were few and sporadic, and that their problems were not systematically related to the civil war. as a result, they did not warrant the use of usaid resources. further, although a health officer from unicef acknowledged that the psychological status of salvadoran children was indeed a serious problem, he explained that unicef was at the time investing its resources in prosthesis projects since it was easy to document the need for prosthesis by taking pictures of children with no limbs and receive funding for that. on the other hand, he added that it was difficult for his agency to establish psychological services since there was a lack of research documenting the need to address psychological issues. he stated that unicef had neither the funding nor the trained personnel to do a needs-assessment study to document children's needs for psychological services. he concluded that with a needs-assessment study done by another organization, unicef could try to develop services. figure 5. photograph of children playing on the main road in santa marta schooling, family, and individual factors: mitigating psychological effects of war on children current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 25 sadly, the civil war had polarized many adults. it had created a climate in which it was difficult to act on the superordinate need of children, beyond their community's political affiliation. the conceptualization of all children as an important resource for the country as a whole was difficult to realize. this was illustrated by my conversations with some north american researchers while i was preparing for this study, who stated a bias favoring, "children from the fmln [farabundo martí national liberation front]." by contrast, some salvadoran mental health professionals stated a bias favoring, "children that were not from the fmln." i have been volunteering mental health services in el salvador for many years, which led, in part, to the development and implementation of the present study. the preparatory stages of this study began with establishing trusting relationships with the salvadorans that were to participate in this study since 1987, and concluded with the data collection in 1992. the study's process emphasized child advocacy as a superordinate need, which attracted the participation of humanitarian persons from diverse governmental and non-governmental organizations from el salvador and the united states9. i felt the need to maintain the study as an independent project given the tense atmosphere in the country at the time data were collected as organizations were perceived as acting with political agendas and with prejudice (e.g. as advocating only for children "from the fmln" or "not from the fmln"). the independent approach increased trust and access to participating communities, and facilitated an increased sense of safety and credibility for the author and for those collaborating with him. this approach also allowed me greater intellectual freedom in the design of the study. significant threats to both personal safety and to the design of the study seemed imminent if carried out under an institutional affiliation, given the sad and dangerous political polarization affecting the country at the time of data collection. figure 6. photograph of two friends in santa marta joaquín e. flores 26 november 15, 1999 figure 7. folk art made by salvadoran children while in refugee camps in nicaragua protection of participants protection of all participants, especially children and their family members, was of the foremost importance in this investigation. the process to earn the trust and to obtain consent from the participating communities has been as important as the study itself. in lieu of a human subjects committee, approval was required from elected representatives of the participating communities. furthermore, representatives were invited to be involved in the planning and implementation of this study. this included holding many meetings over a period of several months. their input was implemented, which included using community-sensitive procedures to select interviewers for data collection as described below. town meetings were held in the two participating communities to present and to discuss the project. along with community representatives, i explained the purpose and requirements of the study to prospective participants (see figure 8). cultural sensitivity, careful listening, feedback to parent's concerns and flexibility were important to address if the study was to succeed in protecting participants10. as bruno lima and colleagues noted in their research with peasants exposed to natural disasters in south america, flexibility and cultural sensitivity are important components in planning applied research in rural areas in latin america (lima, penk, gerardi, & keane, 1989). all community members from the two communities agreed to participate. salvadoran-panel review11 community representatives and their advocates were invited to be involved in the review of the items from all of the measures used. it was important to dispel any suspicions about the content of the information gathered in the study; and the study did not proceed until panel members agreed that all the items were deemed acceptable as questions to be asked to children and parents. schooling, family, and individual factors: mitigating psychological effects of war on children current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 27 figure 8. town meeting in santa marta to request approval to do the study (the author is seated wearing a blue shirt) selection of interviewers for reasons of their degree of exposure to the civil war, santa marta, as a community in a conflict zone, requested that all the interviewers be from their own community. they required maintenance of strong internal communication links, and they did not want to share their perceived intelligence information with outsiders12. on the other hand, the tabloncitos community, in a no-conflict zone, requested that the parents or guardians be interviewed by people from outside the community, since the adults would not feel comfortable being interviewed by workers they knew, for reasons of privacy, although their children could be interviewed by workers from their own community. i provided intensive training to the interviewers until they reached proficiency in the administration of the measures. careful procedures were followed to protect the confidentiality of participating children. all the interviewers were paid volunteer salvadorans (see figures 9-10). figure 9. training session with interviewers in santa marta (author is seated, 2nd from right) joaquín e. flores 28 november 15, 1999 figure 10. interviewing a study participant results … when figures reach millions [of child victims of war], it is too easy to forget that these statistics represent individual children …[who need] the protection and care that all children deserve. (united nations, 1996a) results from the data analyses (for statistical analyses see flores, 199913) indicated that the direct war exposure group experienced a significantly higher incidence of war related events, disruption of schooling, and disruption of families, than the no direct war exposure group. the two groups had comparable ses and demographic characteristics14. children in the direct war exposure group showed a significantly higher incidence of ptsd15. in addition, these children showed a significantly higher incidence of behavior problems and problems with psychosocial competence, but significantly lower levels of depression. there were no significant differences between groups in anxiety. neither age nor gender was related to any of the outcomes. results also indicated risk or protective variables associated with ptsd, anxiety, behavior problems, and competence. children who had friends wounded or killed in the war, and those who experienced parental separation due to the war, showed a higher incidence of ptsd. children having had friends wounded or killed in the war, and reports by the parent or guardian of children experiencing psychological distress, were significant predictors of high anxiety levels. children who had friends wounded or killed in the war, and those who attended a lower grade in school, showed a higher incidence of behavior problems. school attendance was an important determinant of higher levels of psychosocial competence. higher frequencies of having been in danger of personal injury or death, and lower levels of parental education (mother's and father's), were important determinants of lower levels of competence. discussion historically, those concerned with the situation of children during armed conflict have focused primarily on their physical vulnerability. but the loss, grief and fear schooling, family, and individual factors: mitigating psychological effects of war on children current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 29 a child has experienced must also be taken into account. all phases of emergency and reconstruction assistance programmes should take psychosocial considerations into account… (united nations, 1996b) the discussion of the study's results is divided into several sections: (1) psychological outcomes and the risk or protective factors associated with those outcomes; (2) theoretical implications of the findings; and (3) the influence of age and gender. psychological outcomes the results of this study on the effects of war on the psychological functioning of children contrast to some degree with research conducted during and after world war ii on samples from western europe, the united states, and the middle east (e.g. despert, 1942; greenbaum, erlich, & toubiana, 1993; nashef, 1992; ziv, kruglanski, & shulman, 1974). those studies found no significant differences between groups of children who were exposed or not exposed to war. again, some researchers suggest that such findings may be due to adaptation or habituation to war stimuli (e.g. ziv & israeli, 1973). one possible reason for these differences is that political violence in low-income countries such as el salvador, as compared to conventional war between high-income countries, has different characteristics (desjarlais et al., 1995). political violence in lowincome countries is characterized by three "low-intensity" features that might contribute to the development of long-lasting anxiety and trauma: (a) the subjection of daily life to pervasive tension and fear; (b) the ubiquitous use of deadly weapons including land mines; and (c) the targeting of violence against civilians and combatants in a hateful brutal manner (arroyo & eth, 1984; desjarlais et al., 1995; straker, moosa, becker, & nkwale, 1992). such conditions lasted for over 12 years in el salvador. children were personally involved or targeted; the distinctions between enemies and non-enemies were poorly defined; and many children were forced to participate in a "normal abnormalcy" where violence was perceived as part of everyday life (martín-baró, 1990). this was accompanied by the need to engage in a "clandestine identity" where persons pretended to be part of a group as a means of survival, and "polarization" in which ambiguity could not be tolerated and any disagreement with the opponent justified the use of violence (martín-baró). in addition, the state of repression and fear exposed civilians to a "culture of silence" in which parents, either for security reasons or in efforts to protect their children from potential danger, tended to exclude children from discussions about war related events. thus, children were not able to talk freely about the war trauma they were experiencing (ronstrom, 1989) and because the threat to self continued to be imminent for prolonged periods of time, children generalized the need to be constantly hypervigilant to the possibility of violence (swenson & klingman, 1993). additional stressors that may have contributed to the increase in psychopathology noted above included deprivation of basic physical and emotional needs due to problems of resources as a result of militarism (e.g. montes, 1984), hunger and undernourishment, lack of medical and social assistance, and living in cramped and poorly built houses. campesino families and their children, such as the participants in this study, were among the most affected as they lacked characteristics associated with resilience in children at risk, including lack of socioeconomic advantages and effective schools (e.g. romero in brockman, 1989). joaquín e. flores 30 november 15, 1999 conditions of "normal abnormalcy" martín-baró (1990) suggested that the circumstances of the salvadoran civil war exposed children in a unique way to the development of trauma. martín-baró delineated several conditions leading to the development of "a normal abnormalcy" in salvadoran children (pp. 233-249). first, salvadoran children faced the prospect of becoming combatants, victims, or both. given the forced recruitment of minors by the army as well as by the fmln, the prospects of becoming involuntary combatants and/or victims were a very real part of children's daily lives. second, many children were forced to develop a "clandestine identity" that is, pretending to be part of a group as a means of survival. a third and closely related child-dilemma was "polarization." the polarized child thinks in simplistic terms of friend and foe where ambiguity can not be tolerated, and any disagreement from the opponent justifies the use of violence. the aforementioned concepts can be understood best in the context of the daily events of the civil war. the government and the fmln both made conscious efforts to earn the sympathy of the civilian population in an effort to gain their support. also, in zones of armed conflict, families had to endure the presence of the army and the fmln on alternate days. in order to survive children and their families had to show complete allegiance and support to the group present at the time. this created high levels of stress in children and family members; if the armed group present became suspicious of their allegiance, torture and/or death to a family member or to the whole family was imminent. martín-baró indicated that this social state of "normal abnormalcy" was etiologic in the development of not just psychological trauma (i.e., ptsd) but psychosocial trauma as well. for martín-baró, psychosocial trauma goes beyond the individual child and includes dehumanizing relationships between social groups and systems. similar dilemmas of moral exclusion as a result of living in a culture of violence have also been presented by straker et al., (1992), in their study on the psychological effects of violence on township youth in south africa, where violence was also perceived as part of everyday life. post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) results indicated a significantly higher incidence of ptsd in the direct war exposure group in comparison to the no direct war exposure group. this supports the notion that exposure to highly stressful war events can produce distressful psychological symptoms in children as conceptualized by the diagnostic and statistical manual (dsm) (american psychiatric association, 1987) ptsd diagnosis (i.e., (a) the child has experienced an event that is outside the range of usual human experience and that would be markedly distressing to almost anyone; (b) the traumatic memory of the event is persistently reexperienced by the child, such as through play or dreams; (c) persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma or numbing of general responsiveness; (d) persistent symptoms of increased arousal; and (e) duration of the disturbance (symptoms in b, c, and d) of at least one month). schooling, family, and individual factors: mitigating psychological effects of war on children current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 31 these findings are in concordance with other research that used both the dsm criteria for ptsd as well as measures of the degree of exposure to war. for instance, macksoud and aber (1996), and mcintyre and ventura (1995) found that increased exposure to war experiences had significant effects on the development of ptsd in their studies of lebanese and angolan children respectively. by contrast, the present findings differed from research that did not use the dsm criteria for ptsd or measures of the degree of discrete exposure to war in their samples. for example, nashef's (1992) study of palestinian children suggested that prolonged exposure to political violence decreased "traumatic" symptoms, as defined by the content of drawings and the re-telling of dreams. further, gonzález-cantón (1989, first experiment) found no psychopathological effects of war in salvadoran children (no significant differences between groups), as defined by the content of spontaneous stories and drawings. the above comparisons between studies suggest that methodological improvements including dsm criteria for ptsd and measures of exposure to war experiences affect results when studying the "traumatic" effects of war on children. risk or protective factors associated with ptsd family, schooling, and war exposure characteristics may be viewed within the context of resilience, or qualities of the child's environment that are associated with better psychological functioning during or following adverse experiences (masten & coatsworth, 1998; rutter, 1983; sameroff, seifer, baldwin, & baldwin, 1993). findings from this study suggest that basic protective systems that characterize resilience were severely hindered or damaged by the war in el salvador. lacking protective factors, children became more vulnerable to the risks of war. the most significant risk factor was the death or injury of a friend. more than other types of war experiences, this was the most salient risk factor, and was associated with higher incidences of anxiety and behavior problems. children who had friends wounded or killed in the war were 5.2 times more likely to develop ptsd than children who did not. this suggests that knowledge about a direct threat to the life or well being of friends affects an increase in psychopathological symptoms. as eth and pynoos (1985) have proposed, knowledge of another person's death puts children at risk of psychopathology since they may need all of their psychological energies to cope with the anxiety and trauma surrounding the other person's death. another risk factor was parental separation. children whose parents separated due to the war were 4.9 times more likely to develop ptsd than children whose parents stayed together. this concurs with resilience research indicating that one of the most widely found predictors of resilience has been the presence of parental figures (masten & coatsworth, 1998). as other researchers have suggested (rutter, 1983; sameroff et al., 1993; werner, 1990), parental availability may provide a significant buffer for the child's experience of wartrauma exposure, and parental separation may lead to a higher incidence of traumatic experiences that cause ptsd. the order of frequency of types of traumatization incurred by children diagnosed as having ptsd was (a) seeing someone else experience trauma (vicarious -e.g. witnessing joaquín e. flores 32 november 15, 1999 killing or seeing the mutilated remains of others), (b) personal experience (experiential) of war (e.g. the child was in the line of fire), or with an event related to the war (e.g. the child falling from a tree when trying to find protection from armed conflict), and (c) being told about a traumatic event (verbal mediation -e.g. being told about a friend or family member that was harmed, disappeared, or killed). these findings support saigh's (1991) recommendation that theories of the development of ptsd must take direct experience, observation, and verbal mediation into account. behavior problems and psychosocial competence results indicating significantly higher incidences of behavior and competence problems in the direct exposure group in comparison to the no direct exposure group support cohn and goodwill-gill (1994), garbarino, kostelny and dubrow (1991), and masten and coatsworth (1998) who suggested that behavioral skills and developmental tasks reflecting competence become negatively affected by direct and prolonged exposure to political violence. these data also support martín-baró's (1990) suggestion that the circumstances of "normal abnormalcy" that characterized the civil war in el salvador hindered children's behavior and competence skills. hence, effective adaptation for survival to the war-environment required behaviors that are not perceived as socially desirable. the finding that war has a negative impact on behavior seems to depend somewhat on who the informant is. this study as well as other studies on the impact of war on children that used adults as informants to obtain data on the behavior or competence status of children (garbarino & kostelny, 1996; saigh, 1989) obtained similar results. by contrast, the studies that used the child as informant (e.g. macksoud & aber, 1996) found that the number of war experiences had no effect on children's self-report of competence (planful and prosocial behaviors) and behavior problems (aggression). further research might explore the prevalence of discrepancies among different sources of information and identify variables that may contribute to them. risk or protective factors associated with behavior problems and psychosocial competence there were several risk/protective factors associated with increased instances of behavior and competence problems including: (a) the frequency a child was in danger of personal injury or death due to war; (b) having had friends wounded or killed in the war; (c) lower levels of parental education; (d) not attending school; and (e) attending a lower grade in school. the literature on resilience has found that the dangerous conditions of war may be highly adverse to the development of competence (masten & coatsworth, 1998). in addition, amount of education is a good indicator of caregiver competence (phillips & howes, 1987). the assumption is that the level of a caregiver's education contributes significantly to quality in child care, which in turn facilitates children's psychosocial development (phillips & howes, 1987). also, the extrafamilial context of effective schooling has been a characteristic of resilience for children under highly stressful conditions (masten & coatsworth, 1998). schooling, family, and individual factors: mitigating psychological effects of war on children current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 33 models for the development of ptsd and problems of behavior and psychosocial competence children may develop coping strategies expressed as behavioral efforts to manage or regulate the negative emotions associated with the stressful episodes and with the danger inherent in exposure to war (compas & epping, 1993; garbarino & kostelny, 1993). the behavior problems and low competence responses reported for salvadoran children exposed to war may be efforts to cope with environmental and internal demands, to avoid the source of stress, ignore a threat, or deny outcomes. indeed, the child's behavioral goal may be to try to maintain a sense of normalcy, control, and safety (athey & ahearn, 1991). behavior modeling may have contributed to increased behavior and competence problems in salvadoran children since a state of war facilitates: (a) children's exposure to aggressive behavior by adults in their surrounding environment, and (b) a permissive attitude by significant adults--including parents and teachers--when children copy those behaviors (macksoud, 1993). further, giardino, everly jr. and dusek (1997) suggest that a traumatic event shatters the cognitive assumption that life is "fair," or that the world is "just" or "good" (p. 167). this violation or challenge to an individual's assumption about life and the world around him/her effects a "hypersensitivity to perceptions of threat, demoralization, and panic" (giardino et al., 1997, p. 167). furthermore, the less predictable and controllable the traumatic event, the greater the intensity of ptsd symptoms as a result of associating the environment and the world at large as less predictable and less controllable (foa, steketee, & rothbaum, 1989; foy, osato, houskamp, & neumann, 1992). this suggests that war experiences may debilitate children's view of the world, with the resultant ptsd symptoms. findings from the present study for ptsd, behavior and competence support the theoretical implications for adjustment presented by garbarino and kostelny (1993), martín-baró (1990), and tortorici-picado (1988), that important childhood psychosocial developmental tasks of trust vs. mistrust, and industry vs. inferiority (erikson, 1968) may be interrupted by the salvadoran civil war experience. a prolonged state of "normal abnormalcy" may affect how children view themselves and others, their trust in other people may be eroded, and they may be hindered in their attempts to view their parents as protectors and rescuers of physical and psychological stressors. this in turn may be expressed in problems of behavior, competence and ptsd such as fearfulness, aggression, and school problems. anxiety the result of no significant differences in anxiety between war exposure groups is compatible with other studies on effects of exposure to war (e.g. greenbaum et al., 1993; macksoud & aber, 1996; ziv & israeli, 1973). one interpretation of this finding is the adaptation or habituation hypothesis (catania, 1984; ziv & israeli, 1973). this suggests that the strength of children's anxiety responses decreased with repeated exposure to war stimuli. another possible interpretation of the present findings however, is that the total salvadoran sample had high levels of anxiety. when converted to standard (scaled) scores, the total sample was significantly beyond the average range on the anxiety measure: boys were at the 91st percentile, and girls at the 80th percentile. joaquín e. flores 34 november 15, 1999 in contrast to the adaptation or habituation hypothesis for anxiety symptoms (ziv & israeli, 1973), the finding of high levels of anxiety in the total sample suggests that conditions of civil war may have been sufficient to effect anxiety symptoms in all salvadoran children. under war conditions, anxiety or a mental state of expecting "the danger" (i.e., anxiety state; freud, 1920/1989) may increase in all children, whether they live in zones of conflict or not, and whether they are directly exposed to armed conflict or not. outcomes from the present study support the observation made by sigmund freud (1920/1989) that a dangerous environment characteristic of a country in war increases anxiety, defined as a psychological state of expecting danger. however, a state of anxiety by itself can not produce traumatic symptoms (i.e., ptsd) (freud, 1920/1989). in this regard, freud hypothesized that anxiety would act as a protection against the development of trauma in the person. this "protective shield" would serve as protection against stimuli perceived as a threat to the life or to the well being of the person. a state of "preparedness for anxiety" was hypothesized by freud to stimulate the individual to develop mechanisms to defend itself against impending threatening stimuli. however, the strength of a traumatic experience, one that is etiological for the development of ptsd, is one that exceeds the limit where anxiety as preparedness ceases to carry protection. for children living in a country at war, then, non-direct exposure to political violence may cause levels of anxiety similar to direct exposure to political violence. depression results indicating that children from the no direct war exposure group reported more symptoms of depression than children from the direct war exposure group differ from other studies on the effects of war on children, even though some used comparable methodologies, including standardized self-report measures of depression and measurements of discrete exposure to war experiences. for instance, macksoud and aber (1996) found that neither region of residence nor number of war experiences had significant effects on the development of depression symptoms. yet, saigh (1989) found that children who were directly exposed to war, and had ptsd, exhibited higher levels of depression than controls. the differences in findings for levels of depression between studies suggest that different patterns of psychopathology may result from different political violence contexts (cairns & dawes, 1996). alternative interpretations of the findings for depression symptoms are discussed below. high levels of depression when converted to standard (scaled) scores, the total sample from the present study was significantly beyond the average range on the depression measure: the no direct war exposure group was at the 91st percentile, and the direct war exposure group was at the 83rd percentile. this suggests that the long-term pervasive state of instability and "normal abnormalcy" in el salvador (martín-baró, 1990) created the conditions for the development of depression symptoms such as negative self-esteem (when the feedback from society was that human life was not esteemed in general) and negative mood (when the country as a whole was somber) in all children whether they lived in zones of conflict or not. schooling, family, and individual factors: mitigating psychological effects of war on children current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 35 mortality the difference in levels of depression between war exposure groups may be due to mortality, or differential loss of children from the exposure groups (campbell & stanley, 1963). perhaps children who suffered high levels of depression could not survive in a community directly exposed to war. survival in a high conflict zone in el salvador required stamina, mental concentration, and the will to survive in order to save one's life (for instance, the colloquial term guinda was especially adapted during the war to mean "running for your life"). doing something wrong, or doing nothing, could cost a child his or her life. children who suffered high levels of depression -including a diminished ability to think or concentrate, fatigue or loss of energy, ineffectiveness (a sense of doing things wrong), and suicidal thinking -might have had a diminished probability of survival in zones of conflict. indeed, dilling and rogers (1984) documented eyewitness accounts of how hundreds of children died following the lempa river crossing from santa marta (the community from which the direct war exposure group was obtained for this study). thus, given that many children from santa marta died during the war, the direct war exposure group may have represented a special case of survivors. interaction effects of trauma and grief the psychodynamic notion of an interaction between trauma and grief (eth & pynoos, 1985) also seems germane to the paradoxical findings of lower depression symptoms in the direct war exposure group in comparison to the no direct war exposure group, especially since the incidence of ptsd was higher in the direct war exposure group than in the no direct war exposure group. eth and pynoos suggest that the same event can precipitate both a "trauma syndrome," including intrusive memories, startle reactions, nightmares, and avoidant behavior (i.e., ptsd), and a "grief syndrome", including sadness, guilt, and loneliness (i.e., depression symptoms). but, it is possible that trauma may impair grief reactions, delaying the development of depression symptoms. for instance, the traumatic anxiety caused by the event of losing a friend may become a primary concern for the child's ego. this may render the child unable to attend to other concerns including "the fantasies of the lost object that are integral to the grief process" (p. 175) that characterize depression symptoms. for eth and pynoos (1985), the psychodynamic interaction of trauma and grief becomes more salient when children need all of their psychological energies to cope with ptsd symptoms and their anxiety surrounding the other person's death. the need to survive in the midst of war may fail to support the emotions associated with mourning, adding to the child's inability to engage in a process of grief. eth and pynoos suggest that the ego's unavailability to engage in grief may result in an aborted or delayed response in the expression of grief. they cite the case of a child that developed ptsd after the murder of her sister, but who did not develop the symptoms of grief until 6 years later. trauma and grief interaction effects suggest long-term sequelae for salvadoran children. as ptsd and anxiety symptoms may diminish in the future, grief and its accompanying depression symptoms may intensify in children suffering from war trauma. joaquín e. flores 36 november 15, 1999 the role of parental reactions to war exposure while the presence of parents may serve as a protective shield against the development of psychopathology in children exposed to war, the view that parents may prevent contagion of psychological disturbances in children if they remain calm in highly stressful war situations (e.g. freud & burlingham, 1943) seems simplistic in the case of the salvadoran civil war. a more plausible interpretation of the present findings is that exposure to multiple war experiences -including bombings, witnessing killing, injury or death to friends, danger of personal injury or death, refugee status, the process of repatriation -bring about psychopathological symptoms which may occur independent of parental reactions (arroyo & eth, 1984; benedeck, 1985). age and gender there were no gender or age differences in war experiences in the present study, even though traditional social attitudes in el salvador would have predicted such differences. for example, unicef (1994) reported that the traditional social attitude, especially in rural communities in el salvador and central america, is that girls require more protection, care, and control than boys; and the tradition has been to keep the younger child girl at home more often than the older boy. the maintenance of these traditions would have been expected to decrease girls' probability of exposure to political violence more than boys', especially for younger girls in comparison to older boys. it should be pointed out that many females changed their traditional gender roles in el salvador as a result of the intensity and duration of the civil war. for instance, some studies reported that up to 30 percent of fmln combatants and 20% of its military leadership were women during the 1980's (montgomery, 1995). also, an fmln commander told the present author about females becoming combatants during the civil war as a response to the intensity of the conflict (c. amaya, personal communication, june 14, 1992). in santa marta (the community from which the direct war exposure group was obtained), many late adolescent and adult women joined men in community tasks, and females became health promoters, military personnel, or community representatives. this suggested that the pervasiveness of the war may have created the conditions for girls to engage in equal activities as boys. thus gender and age were not significant moderating factors of exposure to war in the sample. the present findings of no age or gender effects for psychological outcomes are in concordance with other studies that used psychological measures with documented reliability or validity, as well as measurements of exposure to war. for instance, the studies by macksoud and aber (1996) and mcintyre and ventura (1995; t. m. mcintyre, personal communication, august 12, 1995) found no age or gender differences in the incidence of ptsd in their samples of 10 to 16 year-old, and 13 to 16 year-old lebanese and angolan children, respectively. the consistent findings among studies suggest that age or gender may not moderate development of ptsd following traumatic war experiences in children. however, the effect of other age ranges not addressed in the available literature remains uncertain. it is important to note that most studies that have found age or gender differences in psychopathology due to exposure to war have been plagued by problems of research design, making a clear interpretation of their data impossible (e.g. greenbaum et al., 1993). schooling, family, and individual factors: mitigating psychological effects of war on children current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 37 applied implications of the study it is important to plan interventions based on the stage of emergency. as evans (1996) suggests, intervention activities during rehabilitation or post-war reconstruction should be school-based. in addition to school involvement, activities that involve parents and communities can play an important role in holding together and rebuilding the affected families and communities. for instance, using the superordinate needs of children was a key approach for the successful collaboration of participating families and communities in the present study. this suggests that a promising way to provide services within the community is to develop initiatives that begin with children and are based on the needs of the children (evans, 1996). as unicef (1996) suggests, psychologists and social scientists should use their professional resources to train local professionals, especially teachers, health promoters and other paraprofessionals from the participating communities. the approach should be to assist promoters, teachers, or parents/guardians in developing their own community-based approaches (e.g. united nations, 1996b; unicef, 1996). for instance, local professionals may be trained to screen children and to identify symptoms of psychopathology; and parents, teachers, promoters, and other paraprofessionals may be trained to know about the effects of war on children. this should include recognition of the psychological outcomes and the risk or protective factors identified in this and other studies. researchers and international organizations (e.g. evans, 1996; giardino et al., 1997; macksoud, 1993; unicef, 1996) agree that addressing the child's psychological interpretation of the traumatic event should be a key point for intervention. they recommend that interventions that address the psychological outcomes identified in the present study foster strategies that help children (a) reinterpret their traumatic war events; (b) reinterpret the roles they played in those events; and (c) engage in behaviors oriented toward increasing their sense of control over the reconstructed community, including home and school. psychological interventions have shown positive outcomes in reducing distress symptoms in children affected by political violence. for example, saigh (1987) documented the usefulness of cognitive-behavioral techniques in treating lebanese children suffering from ptsd. however, given the high cost and heavy demands on time of psychology's traditional focus on individual and small-group processes, and the shortage of trained psychologists in resource poor countries such as el salvador, there is a growing concern that traditional approaches are insufficient to attend large numbers of children affected by wars (mays, bullock, rosenzweig, & wessells, 1998; zutt, 1994). in addition, there is the need to consider cultural factors when developing psychological interventions for children affected by armed conflicts. for example, evans (1996) suggested that western psychological models focusing on the individual may obviate the cultural need of eastern african children to address their traumatic war events in the context of families, communities, and tribal society, and not only as individuals. while researchers are just beginning to compare the effectiveness of different therapeutic approaches to healing war trauma, evans (1996) and macksoud (1993) suggest that in addition to verbal approaches, other local means of expression such as joaquín e. flores 38 november 15, 1999 singing, dancing, drama, drawing, painting, reading, or writing be explored as ways of enhancing coping strategies. in others words, as unicef (1996) states, "time does not heal [war] trauma. a child must be helped to express suffering and to confront bad memories, with the support and guidance of an empathetic and informed adult" (p.24). in addition, unicef states that for children affected by war trauma, "the very act of talking or writing about, or even acting out, traumatic events is a way for a child to begin healing and start on the road to recovery" (p.24). general recommendations the obstacles and concerns in effectively addressing the psychosocial impact of political violence on children have motivated the international community to develop recommendations for interventions. these include the united nations study of the impact of armed conflict on children prepared by ms. graça machel (united nations, 1996). this effort and others (e.g. desjarlais et al., 1995; evans, 1996; mays et al., 1998) have searched for a consensus on program recommendations to promote children's psychosocial well-being. the recommendations from the international community that seem germane to research and programs in el salvador are: (a) interventions and studies will work best if they are locally controlled, community based, and if they acknowledge cultural and gender diversity; and (b) programs must have a long-term perspective and should be based and built on local institutions, traditions and values to ensure their sustainability. conclusion: the role and importance of psychology in el salvador's post-war reconstruction process the present study attempted to increase our understanding of the effects of war on children, and aid agencies in the planning of much needed services in el salvador. even though there is no longer political violence due to civil war, the country continues to experience high degrees of societal violence. youths are increasingly forming or joining violent gangs, and many youths state that one of their reasons for engaging in violent behaviors is to cope with their war-trauma experiences (guggenheim, 1998). alarmingly, more people are dying of violent crimes now (7,000 violent deaths reported for 1997) than during the civil war (with a yearly average of 6,000 violent deaths) (malone, 1998); and youth gangs have been blamed for most of this violence (guggenheim, 1998). however, the recognition of the economic, sociological, cultural, and historical layers that contextualize war experiences suffered by the children in this study make the task of helping children affected by war a humbling experience. this formidable challenge suggests that applied psychologists need to develop new approaches that include advocacy, lobbying, information resources, or other competencies related to psychological and humanitarian work (comas-díaz, lykes, & alarcón, 1998). murphy-berman and weisz (1996) echoed the need for new approaches when discussing the challenges presented by the united nations convention on the rights of the child (united nations, 1989). they suggested that psychologists and other social scientists working toward the reconstruction of countries affected by armed conflicts will need to address the policy challenges of the convention not only from a schooling, family, and individual factors: mitigating psychological effects of war on children current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 39 psychological framework, but also from philosophical, legal, political, constitutional, methodological, and cross-cultural perspectives. article 39 of the convention obliges states parties to promote the psychological recovery of children affected by political violence. it urges them to "take all appropriate measures to promote physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of a child victim of… armed conflicts" (united nations, 1989). thus, alongside health and education, psychosocial well being should be a main element of all humanitarian interventions (united nations, 1996). while el salvador has ratified the convention, it is still facing the complex challenge of how to accomplish the convention's goal of psychological recovery of children affected by the civil war. it is imperative to face this challenge. not doing so will prolong children's suffering, despair, and societal conflict. it is urgent for national and international agencies in el salvador to earnestly invest in and to apply psychological research. research on the psychological effects of war on children and research-based applications must move from the margin to the center of education, health, social policy, and interventions in el salvador. notes joaquín e. flores 40 november 15, 1999 references schooling, family, and individual factors: mitigating psychological effects of war on children current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 41 joaquín e. flores 42 november 15, 1999 © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 27 contesting capital: critical pedagogy and globalism a response to michael apple peter mclaren university of california, los angeles several paragraphs from this essay have been taken from “critical pedagogy, postmodernism, and the retreat from class: towards a contraband pedagogy” by peter mclaren and ramin farahmandpur, in press, theoria. michael apple (this issue) offers a perceptive diagnosis of the newpower bloc committed to neo-liberal marketized solutions to educationalproblems. the power bloc is an alliance among authoritarian populistreligious fundamentalists, neo-conservative intellectuals, the professionallyoriented new middle class, and neo-liberal policy makers. education has responded by creating objectives that reveal a new set of ideological commitments--or discursive regimes--linked to the imperatives of the hayekian cult of the free market. these are bolstered by often flawed researchthat serves as a "rhetoric of justification for preconceived beliefs about the supposed efficacy of markets or regimes of tight accountability". the state experiences a crisis in legitimacy after dominant economic groups shift the blame for their decision onto its shoulders, and it, in turn,attempts to "export the crisis outside of itself". apple argues that the conservative alliance that has effectively produced this "reconstruction of common sense" and through its restorational policies and projects, the increase in power of the dominant educational models (i.e., national standards, national curricula and national testing with a programmatic emphasis on efficiency, speed, and cost-control as distinct from substantive social and ethical issues related to social justice), has not been adequately grasped by many progressive educators, "including many writers on critical pedagogy". i could not agree with apple more that writers in critical pedagogy, in focusing mainly on school organization and classroom techniques(i.e., surveillance and social control), have ignored the most crucial aspects of the problem: the "exogenous, socioeconomic features" of educational restructuring under global capitalism and its twin, neoliberalism. infact, it is a point that i have been trying to make for some time now (see mclaren,1995, 1997, 1998, mclaren et al., 1998) and in the brief remarks here i want to follow and emphasize this theme in the interest of creating what apple calls a "counterhegemonic alliance". undermining social agency having confuted the socialism and marxian optic of the eastern bloc nations with a triumphalist "end of history" mockery, capitalism has found its most exalted place in the pantheon of quintessential bourgeois virtues celebrated by the apostolate of that great factory of dreams known as "america". the 1944 bretton woods conference at the nowfamous mt. washington hotel in bretton woods, new hampshire, that created theworld bank, the international monetary fund, and shortly after, the generalagreement of tariffs and trade, established the framework and political architecture necessary for the united states to acquire free access to the markets and raw materials of the western hemisphere, the far east,and the british empire (korten, 1996). peter mclaren 28 april 30, 1999 the vision that emerged from this historic meeting laid the groundwork for the lurid transmogrification of the world economy into a global financial system overrun by speculators and "arbitrageurs" who act not in the interests of world peace and prosperity and the needs of real people, but for the cause of profit at any cost (korten, 1996). as the world's "mentor capitalist nation" the united states has not only become detached from the struggles of its wide-ranging communities, but betrays an aggressive disregard for them. of course, capitalism has not brought about the "end of history" as the triumphalist discourse of neo-liberalism has announced. historically, capitalism has not carried humankind closer to "the end of ideology" or "end of history." rather, as samir amin (1996, 1997,1998a,1998b) comments, in spite of the hymns to the glory of capital, the violence of the system's real contradictions was driving history not to its end as announced in triumphalist belle époque proclamations, but to worldwars, socialist revolutions, and the revolt of the colonized peoples. re-established in post-first world war europe, triumphant liberalism aggravated the chaos and paved the way for the illusionary, criminal response that fascism was to provide. as social agents within a neo-liberal capitalist regime, one whose link between international competitive forces and neo-liberal state policy tightens as market forces gain strength (moody, 1997), we lack substance. capitalism's history appears to have written us out of the story, displacing human agency into the cabinet of lost memories. the world shrinks while difference swells into a forbidding colossus, bringing us faceto-face with all that is other to ourselves. global capitalism has exfoliated the branches of history, laying bare its riot of tangled possibilities, and hacking away at those roots that nourish a socialist latency. as capital reconstitutes itself á discrétion, as traditionally secure factory work is replaced by the feckless insecurity of mcjobs, as the disadvantaged are cast about in the icy wind of world commodity price fluctuations, as the comprador elite expands its powerbase in the financial precincts of the postmodern necropolis, and as thewhite house redecorates itself in the form-fits-function architecture of neo-liberalism, capitalist hegemony digs its bony talons into the structure of subjectivity itself. communications networks--the electronic servo-mechanisms of the state--with their propulsions and fluxes of information that have grown apace with capitalism, make this hegemony not only a tenebrous possibility but alsoan inevitability as they ideologically secure forms of exploitation so furious that every vulnerability of the masses is seized and made over into a crisis. neo-liberalism is not simply an abstract term withouta literal referent. the current corporate downsizing, outsourcing, deregulation, and the poverty it has left in its wake is neo-liberalism in flagrante delicto. look at the faces of the men and women who line up for food stamps in south central and east los angeles, the slumped shouldersof the workers lining up at the gates of the malquiladores in juarez, mexico, and the wounded smiles of children juggling tennis balls, breathing fire, and washing car windows in the midst of a traffic jam in mexico city, and you will have come face-to-face with the destructive power of neo-liberalism. colonizing workers the intensification of international competition among multinational corporations under the flagship of neo-liberal economic policies has the threatening tendency of colonizing contesting capital: critical pedagogy and globalism a response to michael apple current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 29 everyday life. it has created conditions in which declining living standards and increasing wage inequalities between the poor and the wealthy have become the norm. the new global economy is regulated by the growing service and retail industry, which relies significantly on the exploitation of unskilled immigrant labor in the western industrial nations and workers in third world countries. as a means of decreasing production costs, manufacturing jobs are exported abroad to third world developing countries where a combination of cheap labor markets and weak labor unions create a ripe mixture for a massive accumulation of capital in a frictionless, deregulated industrial milieu. the "k-marting of the labor force" has yielded unprecedented record profitibilityfor transnational corporations, especially in third world countries wherea combination of cheap labor markets and weak unions has created extremely ripe conditions for economic exploitation of the working-class (zukin,1991). kim moody (1997) reminds us that today's transnational corporations "are clearly predators waging class war to expand their world-wide empires and restore the legendary profit-ratesof decades ago" (p. 287). the replacement of the united states manufacturing industry by low wage employment in the service and retail industry has contributed in no insignificant way to the increasing social and economic inequalities. much of the recent evisceration of social programs and the vicious assaults against trade unions by the neo-liberal comprador elite can be traced to the 1980s, when the capitalist class was given a dose of corporate viagra through massive deregulation policies. according to robert brenner (1998): capitalists and the wealthy accumulated wealth with such success during the 1980s largely because the state intervened directly to place money in their hands--enabling them to profit from their own business failure through lucrative bailouts, offering them massive tax breaks which played no small part in the recovery of corporate balance sheets, and providing them with an unprecedented array of other politically constituted opportunities to get richer faster through fiscal, monetary, and deregulation policies--all at the expense of the great mass of the population (p. 207). of course, after the initial surge, the economy went flaccid, which put lie to the myth of deregulation. brenner (1998) remarks: if, after more than two decades of wage-cutting, tax-cutting, reductionsin the growth of social expenditure, deregulation and 'sound finance,' the ever less fettered 'free market' economy is unable to perform halfas well as in the 1960s, there might be some reason to question the dogma that the freer the market, the better the economic performance (p. 238). moody (1997) reports that at a global level we are witnessing the production of a transnational working-class. he warns that "the division of labor in the production of the word's wealth is more truly international than at any time" (p. 308). in tandem with these economic shifts has been the unceasing virulence of neo-liberal attacks against social programs, educational opportunities, and the civil rightsof working class women and minorities. the globalization of national economies--something that is not really new, but as old as capitalism itself (see marx , 1977)--through deregulation, free marketization, and privatization has become an open door policy to the unrestricted peter mclaren 30 april 30, 1999 movement of finance capital from national to international markets, creating flexible arrangements suitable for capitalist exploitation. as globalization has dramatically intensified over the last several decades, its lack of an ethical foundation or warrant has never been so apparent. michael parenti(1998) writes: capitalism is a system without a soul, without humanity. it tries to reduce every human activity to market profitability. it has no loyalty to democracy, family values, culture, judeo-christian ethics, ordinary folks, or any of the other shibboleths mouthed by its public relations representatives on special occasions. it has no loyalty to any nation; its only loyalty is to its own system of capital accumulation. it is not dedicated to "serving the community"; it serves only itself, extracting all it can from the many so that it might give all it can to the few (pp.84-85). marxism or eclecticism? over the last several decades the social, economic, and political metamorphoses in western industrial nations and developing third world countries haveculminated in an increasing interest in marxist social theory withinvarious critical traditions of educational scholarship. among educational scholars there has been a growing interest in melding various strands of postmodern social theory with elements of marxist theory, a project that would be too otiose to summarize here. however, many theorists who straddle the postmodernist-marxist divide have failed to formulate a sustained and convincing critique of the prevailing social and economic inequalities within advanced western industrial capitalist nations. while some critical educators are rediscovering marxism, recognizing its rich historical and theoretical contribution to social theory and acknowledging its invaluable insights into the role of schooling in the unequal distribution of skills, knowledge, and power in society, others are riding the fashionable currents of the postmodern soi-disant quartier latin (see mclaren,1995, 1997). as a result, too often such attempts have witnessed social relations of production becoming buried in the synergistic swirl of theoretical eclecticism. i believe that it is an urgent task to locate educational theory more securely within a marxist problematic than we have done in the past. we must explain in more convincing fashion, the dynamic mechanisms that ensure the production and reproduction of capitalist social and economic relations, as well as unravel the complex ways in which schools participate in the asymmetrical distribution of technical knowledge and skills. this is not an argument against eclecticism per se, but a cautionary reminder that much conceptual ground already covered gets lost in the laboratory of theory when trying to meld models into some grand synthesis in an attempt to reveal what has been hidden. why should educators bother to engage the legacies of marx, especially now that the "end of history" has been declared? especially, too, when broadside condemnations of marxism abound uncontested? and why now, at a time when the marketplace has transformed itself into a deus ex machina ordained to rescue humankind from economic disaster and when voguish theories imported from france and germany can abundantly supply north american radicals with veritable plantations of no-risk, no-fault, fashionable apostasy? one reason is that capitalism's faustian urge to dominate the globe has generated a global ecological crisis. another obvious but no less important reason is that the economic comfort enjoyed by north americans is directly linked to the contesting capital: critical pedagogy and globalism a response to michael apple current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 31 poverty of our south american brothers and sisters. as elvia alvarado proclaims in don't be afraid gringo (1987),"it's hard to think of change taking place in central america without there first being changes in the united states. as we say in honduras, 'sin elperro, no hay rabia' -without the dog, there wouldn't be rabies" (p. 144). yet another reason is that che guevara and paulo freire have given us a pedagogical course of action (not to be confused with a blueprint) fortaking bold steps to redress locally and globally current asymmetrical relations of power and privilege (mclaren, in press). but no one can deny that the climate for such an undertaking is not favorable. the advance of critical pedagogy within the current historical juncture appears to have reached an unresolvable impasse, at least within the united states. stanley aronowitz (1998) captures the ethos ofthe current "dark times" in the following passage: these are dark times for education innovation and its protagonists.in schools and universities "reactionaries" (as paulo freire calls them) have all but overwhelmed the "progressives." their agenda to construe the very concept of education as training dominates schooling in public universities and is steadily gaining ground in private institutions as well. during the last decade, schools that insisted on their difference committed an unholy violation of the new common sense that the highest mission and overriding purpose of schooling was to prepare students, at different levels, to take their places in the corporate order. the banking or transmission theory of school knowledge, which freire identified more than thirty years ago as the culprit standing in the way of critical consciousness, has returned with a vengeance (p. 4). the issue of whether a culturalist or an economist perspective prevails today in critical pedagogy is a nagging one, but essentially presents us with a false dichotomy. individuals and groups live class relations through difference (i.e., as raced and gendered experiences), and live difference through class relations. identity, difference and class are mutually informing relations. class relations embody all kinds of differences that have been historically organized and structurally determined by imperialist and colonialist economies of privilege. the question is: how are differences mediated through the social contradictions of class formations and vice versa? this suggests that we examine the institutional and structural aspects of difference as they have been produced historically out of the contradictions of capitalist social practices. we can do this only if we examine how the production of gendered and racialized identities are shaped by the totality of social relations of production. that is, how can we read off in a dialectical manner particular formations and expressionsof difference against the overarching and complex organization, networks, and mutually informing relationships that at different levels and in different modalities constitute global capitalist relations? this is one of the questions that currently faces the educational left. revolutionary pedagogy part of the task before us is exegetical; it means recognizing and researching the distinctions among teaching, pedagogy, critical pedagogy, and revolutionary pedagogy. part of the task is ethical: to make liberation and the abolition of human suffering the goal of the educative enterprise itself. part of the task is political: to create a democratic socialist society in which democracy will be called upon daily to live up to its promise. now is the time to brush hard against the grain of teaching until the full range of revolutionary pedagogical options are made available in the public schools of the nation, peter mclaren 32 april 30, 1999 realizing that none of these options is a panacea, and all of them will require sustained theoretical and political engagement. a revolutionary pedagogy resists those immaculate discourses and representations of united states history, culture, and politics that too often make their way into the classroom of the nation. such representations fail to accommodate the opaque and contradictory social forces and relations that inform united states culture and society and in so doing ignore the heterogeneity of insurgent struggles that have challenged-and continue to challenge-its imperial worldview and practices. a revolutionary pedagogy names and gives voice to those non-participants in the colonial encounter who refuse to work as adjuncts for global capitalism's consumerist ideology. further, revolutionary educators refuse the role that global capitalism has assigned for them: to become the supplicants of corporate america and work at the behest of the corporate bottom line. revolutionary educators contest the growing assaults on protections for the poor, for women, and for people of color, such as the attacks on affirmative action, immigration, and language rights that we have witnessed in california over recent years. these attacks have become well-nigh irresistible for politicians and education officials only too willing to genuflect at the corporate altar sanctified by reactionary conservative ideology. a revolutionary pedagogy challenges the assumptions that underlay the ideological strata upon which both conservative and progressive schooling has been built and attempts to refashion a politics in which market reality yields to the larger universal values of social democracy that both che and freire so forcefully advocated. while business leaders continue to serve as functionaries and cheerleaders for privatization, and as capitalism continues to crash all around us, collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, the ideas and ideals of che and freire constitute bold and heretical strokes in the ongoing struggle of fashioning human freedom out of the debris of collapsed dreams (mclaren,in press). the short-sightedness, mendacity, and bloodlessness of corporate-backed policies for educational reform in this current age of cynical reason cannot be overestimated. it is important that revolutionary educators resist those pundits who would police the poles of debate on education and disabuse educators of the notion that real educational reform requires social transformation, not merely reformation. the kind of pedagogy necessary to challenge the type of marketization of education of which apple speaks will require what i have provisionally called the development of a "revolutionary pedagogy"(mclaren, 1998). such a pedagogy is distinct from what criticalists have referred to as critical pedagogy. teaching is a process of organizing and integrating knowledge for thepurpose of communicating this knowledge or awareness to students throughan 'exchange' of understanding in pre-specified contexts and teacher/learnerenvironments. pedagogy is distinct from teaching in that it situatesthe teacher/learner encounter in a wider context of historical and socio-politicalforces in which the "act of knowing" recognizes and takes into accountthe differentiated politics of "reception" surrounding the object of knowledgeby the students. critical pedagogy constitutes a dialectical anddialogical process that instantiates a reciprocal exchange between teachersand students which engages in the task of re-framing, re-functioning, andre-posing the question of understanding itself, bringing into dialecticalrelief the structural and relational contesting capital: critical pedagogy and globalism a response to michael apple current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 33 dimensions of knowledge and its hydra-headedpower/knowledge dimensions. revolutionary pedagogy goes further still. it puts power/knowledge relations on a collision course with its own internalcontradictions. such a powerful and often unbearable collision givesbirth not to an epistemological resolution at a higher level, but rathera provisional glimpse of a new society freed from the bondage of the past,a vision in which the past reverberates in the present, standing at onceoutside the world and beside the world, in which the subject recognizesshe is in a world and subject to it, yet moving through it with the powerto name it extopically so that hidden meanings can be revealed in the accidentalcontingencies of the everyday. revolutionary pedagogy createsa narrative space set against the naturalized flow of the everyday, againstthe daily poetics of agency, encounter, and conflict, in which subjectivityis constantly dissolved and reconstructed, that is, in which subjectivityturns-back-on-itself, giving rise both to an affirmation of the world throughnaming it, and an opposition to the world through unmasking and undoingthe practices of concealment that are latent in the process of naming itself. in their best moments, the pedagogy of paulo freire and che guevaraexemplifies the characteristics of revolutionary pedagogy. the pointd'appui of revolutionary pedagogy for both these men was the developmentof a dialectical grasp of history and the contradictions of human laborunder capitalism--and for those of us working in education this means recognizingand transforming those contradictions that create asymmetries of powerin the manufacturing of relations of race, gender, class, and sexuality. both these revolutionaries did not equate political liberation with theexposure of dominative social practices as a trompe-l'oeil, nordid they consider it sufficient to bewail the trials and tribulations ofthe dispossessed; they were both dedicated to transforming those socialpractices that lay at the root of human exploitation and misery (mclaren,in press). any pedagogy that is interested in making progress against the marketization of education of which michael apple speaks needs to move beyond bourgeois liberal reformism and towards a revolutionary transformation of existing social relations of exploitation. today's social order is too dysfunctional, too poisoned by possessive individualism and a possessive investment inracial superiority, too ravaged by capitalism, too overwhelmed by the "metabolicinteraction" of human technological relations, too burdened by dreams of consumer utopias, for educators to do anything less than work towards a socialist society free from what marx called the "mephitic and pestilentialbreath of civilization" (p. 16). references alvarado, e. (1987). don't be afraid gringo: a honduran woman speaks from the heart. translated andedited by medea benjamin. new york: harper and row. amin, s. (1998a). spectres of capitalism. monthly review, 50(1), 36-39. amin, s. (1998b). spectres of capitalism: a critique of current intellectual fashions. new york: monthly review press. peter mclaren 34 april 30, 1999 amin, s. (1997). capitalism in the age of globalization. london: zed books, ltd. amin, s. (1996). imperialism and culturalism compliment each other. monthly review, 48(2), 1-11. brenner, r. (1998). the economics of global turbulence. new left review, 229, 1-264. foster, j. b. (1998). revisiting the communist manifesto. against the current, 12(6), 15-16. korten, d. c. (1996). the mystic victory of market capitalism. in j. mander & e. goldsmith (eds.), the case against the global economy and a turn toward the local (pp. 183191). san francisco: sierra club books. marx, k. (1977). capital. (vol. 1). newyork: vintage books. mclaren, p. (in press). che guevara and paulo freire: an introduction to the pedagogy of revolution. boulder, colorado: rowman & littlefield. mclaren, p. (1998). revolutionary pedagogy in post-revolutionary times: rethinking the political economy of critical education. educational theory, 48(4), 431-462. mclaren, p. (1997). revolutionary multiculturalism: pedagogies of dissent for the new millennium. boulder, co: westview press. mclaren, p. (1995). critical pedagogy and predatory culture: oppositional politics in a postmodern era. london and new york: routledge. mclaren, p., fischman, g., serra, s., and antelo, e. (1998). the specters of gramsci: revolutionary praxis and the committed intellectual. journal of thought, 33(3): 9-41. moody, k. (1997). workers in a lean world: unionism in the international economy. london: versobooks. parenti, m. (1998). america besieged. san francisco: city lights books. zukin, s. (1991). landscapes of power: from detroit to disneyland. berkeley, ca: university of california press. 6. rind postcolonial critiques on globalization and privatization of education in pakistan.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 1, winter 2023 postcolonial critiques on globalization and privatization of education in pakistan gul muhammad rind department of education, sukkur iba university, pakistan introduction and background of the study globalization of education is widely contested in the current academic discussion due to its polarizing effects on the economy, society, and culture. spring (2008) defined globalization as “worldwide networks, processes, and institutions affecting local educational practices and policies” (p. 1). the international trade and free market policies have on the one hand, strengthened the role and importance of multinational corporations (mncs) and international organizations (ios); on the other, these enterprises have weakened state power and marginalized the indigenous culture in the formerly colonized regions of the global south (rizvi, 2007). further, globalization is glorified for knowledge production and dissemination, and it is generally viewed narrowly and depicts its non-political impact on education and society. according to spring (2008), globalization of education includes a global curriculum, discourse of knowledge economy and technology, multiculturalism, standardized methods of instruction and testing, gender equality, and english as a global language. globalization and colonization have several commonalities because the origin of globalization can be traced to the colonial era. colonialism has resulted in the hegemony of transnational agreements and global corporations. through the heavy investment of capital into local communities, these institutions have diluted states' power and mandate in many economic, cultural, and educational activities (enslin, 2017). the privatization of education has also emerged with globalization. it operates through a neoliberal framework of competition, public choice, and market efficiency (verger et al., 2016). neoliberalism is a politico-economic model "which proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by the privatization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, free markets, and free trade" (harvey, 2005, p. 145). the education for all agenda (later revised as 2030 sustainable development goals) is a global initiative that also pressures countries to usher in private investment in education, as well as multilateral and bilateral aid (draxler, 2020). alarmingly, globalization deploys aid of soft or hard conditions and standardized practices (e.g., privatization of education) to impose the cultural objectives of the global north onto the global south (johnson, 2006; verger et al., 2016). in general, globalization and privatization of education in the global south have created power asymmetry in policymaking, western hegemony, marginalization, and subjugation of local culture (rizvi & lingard, 2009; steiner-khamsi, 2016). applying a post-colonial critique and analysis, this paper will discuss how globalization is a colonial legacy that transforms western educational policies in developing countries like pakistan and how it creates westernization, supremacy, and marginalization of teachers and students (spring, 2008). © 2023, rind. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 25(1), 112-120. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en postcolonial critiques on globalization and privatization of education in pakistan post-colonial critique of globalization in education postcolonialism and its meanings are not limited to the time period after colonialism and imperialism, but rather a dialectical concept of historical decolonization, sovereignty-building, and confronting the existing economic, political, and cultural imperialism (young, 2016). the emergence of post-colonial theories can be traced through the period of the 1970s in cultural studies and in the writings of literature (andreotti, 2011). by the same token, the perspective of postcolonial studies developed in other fields such as politics, history, and education. education becomes the key theme to challenging colonialism and its legacy of marginalization by developing indigenous resistance and decolonial thoughts (enslin, 2017). post-colonial theories are mainly related to anti-imperialist arguments contributed by non-western scholars such as frantz fanon, edward said, homi bhabha, and gayatri spivak (gandhi, 1998). it also challenges the western epistemic power and paradigm in education disseminated through world bank, organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd), and other contemporary ios (rizvi & lingard, 2009: spring 2009). young (2016) sums up the scope of postcolonial critiques to all kinds of oppressions inherited from colonization. in this era of globalization, the colonial legacy operates its power and hegemony in formerly colonized countries through ios such as the world bank, international monetary fund (imf), oecd, and other development agencies (spring, 2009). said (2003) informed that every single empire justified imperialism with a special situation. the justification of today’s imperialist ios is the mandatory enlightenment and civilization of local people. besides, ios contend that the use of force is the last resort. along with the development funds and loans, these ios also perpetrate their neoliberal and capitalist policies and practices that promote privatized and standardized education. globalization and colonialism have several similarities by sharing the same conceptual ground (rizvi, 2007). during (2000) stated that “from this post-colonialist perspective, colonialism in effect becomes an episode in the longer sweep of globalization, and all events that once fell under the rubric of colonialism are ripe to fall under the rubric of globalization” (p. 392). it is criticized by post-colonial theorists and scholars that western academic enterprises are not based on true knowledge and evidence, but rather on a rational approach to western supremacy (andreotti, 2011). specifically, in the field of education, post-colonial theory offers an analysis of power structure within the education system, ethnocentric and eurocentric hegemony, and cultural supremacy discourse in curriculum and instruction. further, this theory helps explore how the western approach creates more fragmentation and hierarchy in the education system. privatization of education the privatization project of ios (such as the world bank) is hailed in post-colonial states through loans and aid. through neoliberal policies, governments rely on market forces to obtain educational services, which creates an elite system and marginalization among disadvantaged communities (apple, 2006). in the context of low-income countries and the postcolonial world such as pakistan, the world bank, imf, and other organizations current issues in comparative education 113 rind shape the colonial legacy of education through their various policy tools. as it has been analyzed by critical scholars (johnson, 2006; spring, 2009; steiner-khamsi & waldow, 2012) that in this neoliberal and globalized world, educational policies are developed in the western countries and transferred to the recipient countries through demands and coercion in low-income countries without their consent. other scholars (shahjahan, 2012; spring, 2009) believe ios initiative in the education of client countries is a form of neocolonial domination that reproduces western epistemic knowledge and neoliberal ideology. looba (2015) explained that globalization apparently reduces economic and social boundaries. the free flow of capital due to globalization integrates recipient nations into the world system and the development discourse. globalization creates disintegration, suppressing local industries and extracting money from third-world countries through debt services. in this setup, educational policies emanate from ios that transfer global north policies to the global south. examples of this phenomenon are the spread of policies fostering the private management of public schools, and vouchers or subsidy schemes, advocated by the world bank (klees et al., 2012; moschetti & verger, 2019; steiner-khamsi & waldow, 2012). due to the unequal power relations in the global world, these neoliberal education policies are mostly based on efficiencies and measurable outcomes that override equity and social justice (rizvi & lingard, 2009). to some extent, the modernization and globalization of mass education that entails western cultural values have improved the material standard of living; however, what is constantly ignored is the impact on developing nations’ social cohesion and mobility (samoff, 2003). socio-political and educational context of pakistan pakistan was formerly the colonized region of united india under great britain’s empire. it gained independence in 1947 after the atrocious partition of india. the colonial legacy and western dominance persisted because of the fragile economy which led to its heavy reliance on external (predominantly western) aid and debts from imf, world bank, and other financial institutions (durrani & halai, 2020). soon after pakistan’s founding, a national education conference took place in 1947. along with government schools, there were additional policies for other schools based on the european or covenant models (bengali, 1999; rahman, 2004). these schools catered to elites, like children of bureaucrats, armed forces, and politicians. english as the medium of instruction generated a perception of better education quality. however, the rest of the government schools taught in local languages like urdu, sindhi, and the like (rahman, 2004). this was the pure replication of the colonization model because the graduates of the government school system ended up getting low-cadre and clerical jobs. it has also been acknowledged in the national education policy (government of pakistan, 2009) that such parallel education systems violate the uniformity of the national education system (fancy & razaq, 2017). further, it has been reported this uneven education system buttresses the marginalization and inequity in human development; ultimately it hampers inclusive and sustainable development of the country (government of pakistan, 2009). 114 current issues in comparative education postcolonial critiques on globalization and privatization of education in pakistan globalization and privatization of education in pakistan globalization in education policies are rapidly changing the current educational landscape in several countries including pakistan. according to rizvi and lingard (2009), previously public school policies were developed exclusively at the nation-state level, where the role of government was prioritized. in the current era, these policies are manipulated by the international system operated by world bank, oecd, and other development agencies. it has redirected education from social democrats to the neoliberal market system. the role and purpose of education have also diminished within the discourse of human capital development and knowledge economy to meet international labor market needs (lauder et al., 2012; rizvi & lingard, 2009; spring, 2009). this approach in education continues the colonial legacy in countries like pakistan, where approaches to social justice and equity fizzle out. the emergence of globalization in tandem with the expansion of privatization has impacted every level of the education system including k-12 and higher education in pakistan (rind & knight abowitz, 2022). the western epistemology and knowledge production dominate pakistan’s education system. generally, people falsely associate the european model or english-teaching schools are superior in quality (datoo, 2014). yet, the majority of the country’s population does not fit the western culture and values because islam is the religion of more than 90% of the population. the emerging educational policies (e.g., national education policy 2009) show that pakistan responds to the pressure of globalization and embraces dominant discourse such as knowledge economy and human capital development to attract international aid which has increased after the 9/11 incident (lingard & ali, 2009). when the donor gets interested in education policy reform, curriculum reform is one of the critical aspects. as lingard and ali (2009) pointed out, pakistan shifted its curriculum more toward enlightenment in the musharraf regime after getting more funding from the usa and the united kingdom through united nations agency for international development (usaid) and uk department for international development (dfid). however, pakistan's social structure and culture are essentially rooted in islamic values. the role of dfid also resulted in defunding pakistani teachers for the sake of low-fee or low-cost private schools. similarly, usaid has also invested in education through public-private partnerships. in this setup, the private sector is considered efficient in school management (rind, 2022). the low-fee private schools mushroomed in pakistan over the past few decades; the world bank and dfid widely supported these schools and connected governments with private actors through public-private partnerships in education (rind, 2022). currently, more than 40% of pakistan’s educational institutes is offered through private mode with loose regulations (pakistan education statistics, government of pakistan, 2018). steiner-khamsi (2004) cautioned that the privatization, decentralization, and standardization of education always have global dimensions and influences. social scientists (e.g., ball, 2007; lauder et al., 2012; rizvi & lingard, 2009; spring, 2009) worry that a large scale of deregulation weakens the nation-state and creates structural inequality. for instance, the world bank third punjab education sector project in pakistan aimed to promote sustainable development and poverty reduction by improving access to schools for the poorest. the goal was achieved through providing current issues in comparative education 115 rind vouchers to parents, expanding ppps through increasing low-cost private schools, and providing incentives through stipends for secondary schools attendance this mechanism ultimately promotes privatization policies in the country. rind's (2022) study noted that some degree of efficiency and improved governance exists in low-fee private schools and ppp schools in sindh based on subsidies and private management of public schools. however, this schooling model fails to reduce inequality or ensure quality education. ironically, these schools resulted in more inequality among schools. they also marginalized and de-professionalized teachers through low-paid contractual jobs. besides school education, globalization has also influenced the higher education system. the government of pakistan also allowed private universities through charter to work during the 1980s (halai, 2013). this practice has widened the education divide between the elite and the common people. currently, these universities are reinforcing social stratification and dominating the job market. the elite universities are all private institutions charging huge tuition fees. according to the higher education commission pakistan statistics 2017-18 (hec, 2020), 76 out of 187 universities are private urban schools that target high-income families. elite graduates have the opportunity to obtain lucrative jobs, while graduates from ordinary public schools end up in low-paid clerical jobs or remain unemployed (mukhtar, 2012; rahman, 2004). pakistan’s current imf package also reduces the government’s education budget and other social services in lieu of adopting pro-privatization policies. cultural identity crisis currently, pakistan is facing a serious identity dilemma. islam remains the religion for most pakistani people. they adhere to the cultural values of family and social justice. therefore, pakistanis’ reality is incompatible with ios’ advocacy for imported modernity facilitated by the so-called enlightening curriculum and the best practices. in fact, modernization further marginalizes the pakistani people and deprives them of their local languages and culture (lingard & ali, 2009; rahman, 2004). due to inconsistent curricula and widening socioeconomic inequality, these ios-mandated pro-privatization policies will jeopardize pakistani democracy and further polarize the country (rind & knight abowitz, 2022). conclusion in the name of the best practices, ios’ dissemination of policies from the global north to the global south renders underdeveloped countries vulnerable to losing their cultural values and epistemic knowledge. the advancement of global forces enhanced standardization and privatization in the education system of pakistan which has increased educational inequity along with the loss of indigenous language and culture. the pakistani government has recommended policy action through public-private partnerships in education to reduce the government’s burden. simultaneously world bank and dfid have promoted low-fees (through low-cost) private schools in pakistan. this narrow commodification of education encourages the private sector to invest in education and thrive at the cost of social cohesion and equity (rind & knight abowitz, 2022). 116 current issues in comparative education postcolonial critiques on globalization and privatization of education in pakistan the post-colonial and indigenous scholarship in education will offer better frameworks of equitable access to quality education for all. there is also a need for regulations of schools in pakistan so that they are no longer aggravating the plight for the oppressed population based on their cultural identity, language, religion, gender, and other socioeconomic factors. gul muhammad rind is a phd. from miami university in fall 2022 in educational leadership, culture, and curriculum. dr. rind is currently working as a lecturer in the department of education, at sukkur iba university, pakistan. his research interests are comparative education, education policy, and leadership for equity and social justice. references andreotti, v. 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(2016). postcolonialism: an historical introduction (15th anniversary ed). wiley blackwell. 120 current issues in comparative education winter, 2022b current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 brazilian digital learning strategies during the covid19 pandemic and their impact on socio-educational gaps: an exploratory study on manaus, rio de janeiro, and são paulo marcella winter teachers college, columbia university brazil: brief demographic and political considerations the federative republic of brazil is located in south america and shares its borders with all nations in the region, except chile and ecuador. the country displays at the same time a highly diverse population–composed mainly of indigenous americans, the descendants of african enslaved people and european settlers–and remarkably unequal wealth distribution. the study national continuous household sample survey (pesquisa nacional por amostra de domicílios pnad), launched in 2019 by the brazilian institute of geography and statistics (instituto brasileiro de geografia e estatística-ibge), highlighted that the average monthly income of the wealthiest 1% of the brazilian population reached, in 2018, the correspondent of 33.8 times the income of the poorest 50% (canzian, 2019). according to the projections made by ibge, approximately 213,554,459 people live in brazil, 84.72% of whom reside in urban areas (ibge, 2021a). nearly 52 million people, or 24.2% of the population, are between 0 and 17 years old (ibge, 2021b). in the 2019 pnad, 42.7% of brazilians declared themselves white, 46.8% brown, 9.4% black, and 1.1% asian or indigenous (ibge, 2021c). the results of the 2018 presidential election showed that 55% of the electorate assumed that jair bolsonaro could lead the country towards new paths, especially regarding the lobbied reforms that would put brazil's economy on the right track again. usually in line with religious, conservative, and militaristic discourses, the politician had slight national presence and political representation (almeida, 2013, p. 580) until running for the position of president of the republic, under a small and equally unknown party, the right-wing social liberal party (psl). immediately after being sworn in as president, he declared that his government would aim to "unite the people, rescue the family, respect religions and our judeo-christian tradition, combat gender ideology, conserving our values" (phillips, 2019). the highlighted line of thought summarizes the essence of the conservative guidelines that have been adopted in different realms of the bolsonaro administration. the government has also embraced a neoliberal approach inspired by the economic reforms implemented in chile (amorim, 2019) and suggested the retrenchment of the welfare dimension of the state (mladenov, 2015). during the covid-19 pandemic, this approach would inspire the management of an already decentralized national education system in which states and municipalities lead the implementation of schooling policies. the brazilian education system: a decentralized structure and its main challenges brazil’s national education guidelines and framework law (lei de diretrizes e bases da educação [ldb]) defines two main levels of education: basic education (educação básica), subdivided in early childhood education (educação infantil), elementary education (ensino fundamental) and secondary education (ensino médio); and higher education (educação © 2022, winter. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 123-135. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en winter current issues in comparative education 124 superior) (ldb, 1996). children are officially required to attend an education cycle of 14 years (monroy, mcnally & trines, 2019). whereas basic education is compulsory and provided free of charge at public schools, private institutions can also offer schooling according to the guidelines established by the constitution and participate at all educational levels with government approval (oecd, 2015, p. 14). the ministry of education (mec), as a federal ministry, defines the guiding principles and coordinates national education policy for all education levels. in collaboration with states, municipalities, and other key stakeholders, such as the ministry of social development, non-governmental organizations, unions, and the private sector, the mec designs and implements national education policies under the ldb (lei de diretrizes e bases da educação no. 9.394, 1996). municipalities are the main ones responsible for the provision and the quality of early childhood education and share with states the responsibility to finance and manage primary and lower secondary education (brazil, 1988). states are also responsible for upper secondary education, being accountable for creating their education policy within the national framework set by the mec, providing schools' infrastructure, equipment, student meals and transportation, and teacher training, recruiting, and payment (oecd, 2015). tertiary education institutions, such as universities and higher education institutes, have institutional autonomy, although the federal government also delineates tertiary education guidelines. the brazilian constitution expresses that education, a right of all and the duty of the state and the family, must be promoted and encouraged with societal collaboration (brazil, 1988). according to this notion, fostering education must be a responsibility shared by governments– considering federal, state, and local levels–and society. within this logic, brazil's education system is largely decentralized to states and municipalities. the national common core curriculum (base nacional comum curricular bncc) sets the main content and education modalities that states and cities must respect. however, since the ldb allows some flexibility in curricula, educational guidelines may encompass content relevant to regional and local characteristics of student society, culture, and economics (ldb, 1996). schools must be in session for at least 200 days a year. the school year, which typically runs from february to december, can be adapted due to each state or municipality's weather or economic conditions (ldb, 1996). although the primary language of instruction in public schools is brazilian portuguese, indigenous communities are guaranteed use of their mother tongues and their learning methodologies (ldb, 1996). brazil is a country that faces diverse forms of inequality in different areas – education is no exception. in a highly decentralized system where most education responsibilities fall under states' and municipalities' jurisdictions, disparities are blatant regarding access, quality, and funding. one of the most cited reasons for those issues is the country's size: having the fifth largest population in the world, 48.5 million children were enrolled in basic education in 2018, 81% of whom attend public schools (costin & pontual, 2020). although student learning has shown improvement in the last decades, the country still lags far behind wealthier nations in large-scale assessments. moreover, most students in secondary education drop out before graduation, and teachers– drawn from among the lowest achievers– have few performance incentives (diop, 2012, p. x). many layers of complexity are added to this picture when other gaps, such as urban vs. rural and public vs. private, and marginalized groups such as indigenous communities and lower-income populations, are considered. differences in outcomes between girls and boys are also a challenge that spills over from education to the labor market, especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds (oecd, 2015). brazilian digital learning strategies during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 125 digital learning strategies in the three largest municipal networks the suspension of school activities amidst the covid-19 pandemic interrupted in-person classes in the middle of march and impacted 47.9 million students (inep, 2019). the ministry of education did not propose a unified strategy or digital platform to be adopted by schools and other institutions during the pandemic; this responsibility fell under the auspices of states and municipalities, reinforcing the decentralization of the brazilian system of schooling. the mec’s general guidelines posited that schools should remain closed until the situation could be considered stable and reopening was safe– which could be defined by each municipality or state (verdélio, 2020). different education networks across brazil had to hastily develop learning and teaching strategies to provide pedagogical content remotely. the study "education cannot wait" (a educação não pode esperar enpe) surveyed 232 municipal and 17 state education networks and revealed that public schools tried to establish forms of coordination, to share good practices and support each other (silveira, 2020, p. 5). among the initiatives, the report highlighted the distribution of food for students and families, remote teaching strategies and tools adopted, and preparation for the return of in-person classes (silveira, 2020, p. 5). the study also showed that the response time of education networks varied widely, according to their internal organization and ability to produce educational content. some of the networks claimed to have started providing online content right after the suspension of in-person classes; others began offering digital content throughout may 2020, and 18% of the surveyed networks had not yet adopted any distance learning strategies when the research was published, in august 2020 (silveira, 2020, p. 5). each network defined its guidelines regarding digital platforms according to the technological and material resources available in each state or municipality. this report considers the strategies adopted by the three largest municipal education networks in brazil–manaus, rio de janeiro, and são paulo. manaus the manaus department of education is responsible for more than 245,000 students, having 496 schools and more than 13,000 civil servants, including teachers, pedagogues, and administrative staff (marinho, 2020). the municipality anticipated the mid-year school recess for march amid the pandemic and the need for social distancing; classes resumed remotely on april 1st, after just 15 days of school recess. in partnership with the amazon state department of education (seduc-am), manaus created the project "class at home" (aula em casa), which provided daily activities through booklets and online classes to more than 450 thousand students served by the two departments. additionally, manaus' doe reorganized the curriculum to meet the needs of students at each level and started broadcasting classes on public television networks and the internet (marinho, 2020). the municipality developed multiple approaches to ensure that schools continued teaching, providing quality education, and preserving the entire school community (seduc-am, 2021). among the main strategies adopted by manaus, we can identify (aula em casa, 2020): • organization of content by grade and according to current curriculum proposals. • selection of video classes and other digital resources aligned with the school curriculum. • availability of digital resources online through digital platforms and messaging applications. • provision of offline digital resources through dvds, external hard drives, and flash drives. winter current issues in comparative education 126 • digital booklets for students and teachers containing various activities related to the curriculum. • informative material for students, families, and teachers. • teacher training events with didactic-pedagogical guidelines for curriculum organization and learning strategies during remote and/or hybrid teaching. the municipality of manaus also made a website available, to offer all the content in a simpler way, as seen in figure 1. figure 1 “aula em casa” platform. students can access booklets, apps, and the youtube channel where all classes are made available rio de janeiro the city of rio de janeiro has an educational network comprised of 1,542 schools and 641,141 students (sme rio, 2020). classes were suspended on march 13; however, since many children had school meals as their primary source of nutrition, school cafeterias remained open during lunchtime (pcrja, 2020). a week later, the city government declared that schooling would resume through "google for education." the system would offer accountability related to the time students and teachers spent online; pedagogical materials would also be available through the secretary of education's social media channels (pcrja, 2020). from that moment on, schools would be closed until further notice and the local government would deliver children's meals for families in need (pcrja, 2020). information and communication technologies needed to be expanded, aiming to reach teachers' and students' households that did not have the necessary tools to access the internet; booklets and other printed materials would also be made available to pupils in vulnerable settings (pcrja, 2020). later, the city government changed the strategy and decided to replace "google for education" with "microsoft teams" and added that other platforms would be used for specific purposes at the discretion of schools of educators. the information about rio’s digital strategies is summarized in the table below: brazilian digital learning strategies during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 127 table 1 rio de janeiro’s digital strategies during the covid-19 pandemic (2020-2021) platform provider description focus multirio the city of rio de janeiro's government official website and social media chanel (youtube, instagram, and facebook), composed by school's complementary didactic material and audiovisual content with several resources of pedagogical support. elementary school education; parents' orientation and teachers' training; socioemotional learning sme app the city of rio de janeiro's government this is an app that offers students media and audiovisual content which can be accessed through desktops and mobile devices. students, all levels of education. escola.rio the city of rio de janeiro's government the platform provides school activities by expanding pedagogical alternatives and increasing educational experiences. through the app, parents can access students' grades and attendance, the school calendar, and the lunch menu. teachers, parents, and students at all levels of education. matific external mathematics education platform. not specified. alfa e beto external digital games with a focus on literacy. pre to elementary school. microsoft teams external the secretary of education offers this platform to teachers, students, and school staff, in order to enable interaction and communication through virtual classrooms. teachers and students, all levels of education. sources: multirio, 2020; rioeduca, 2020a; rioeduca, 2020b; pcrj, 2020b; pcrj, 2020c. são paulo on march 23, the city of são paulo decided to close its school network, comprised of 3,391 schools and more than one million students (pcsp, 2020a). the annual july school recess happened ahead of schedule, and all school services were suspended by april 9 (pcsp, 2020b). starting on april 13, and while the suspension of in-person classes lasted, learning activities were carried out through printed materials delivered to students' homes (pcsp, 2020b). the booklets were designed so that children, adolescents, young people, and adults who studied in municipal schools in são paulo could carry out activities with autonomy and help from family members (pcsp, 2020c). these materials also contained guidelines for parents and tips on organizing a study routine (pcsp, 2020c). digital content based on the city curriculum was offered to complement the printed materials through a partnership with google for education; the virtual environment is managed by teachers (pcsp, 2020c). in addition, the city broadcasted classes through a television network, tv cultura, to increase vulnerable students' opportunities to access school content (pcsp, 2020c). teachers, managers, and technicians were trained in using google classroom tools through online courses and tutorials offered by the secretary of education (pcsp, 2020c). the return of students to in-person classes was dependent on the suspension of the emergency declared by the city of são paulo. it was expected that students could go back to school in september 2021. however, a serological survey winter current issues in comparative education 128 conducted by the city government showed that 64% of students tested in the municipal network were asymptomatic for covid-19 (pcsp, 2020d). students only returned to in person classes in october 2021 (pcsp, 2021). remote learning strategies in the three largest educational networks: actors and challenges to understand how the policies adopted in different parts of brazil affected learners and learning outcomes and have contributed to widening the digital divide in the country, the researcher conducted an exploratory study with different actors based on semi-structured interviews. the interviewees for this inquiry were a teacher from a public school in rio de janeiro, a policymaker working in the secretary of education of manaus, and a policy analyst working for a non-governmental organization focused on public education. the interviews were conducted in 2021 and centered on each interviewee's perspectives according to their professional standpoint. based on the questions presented to the interviewees, some themes emerged in the analysis. topics focused on how educational policies during the pandemic affected three specific groups: students, families, and teachers. the findings suggest that the lack of unifying guidelines from the ministry of education made states and municipalities develop strategies constricted by the scarcity of resources at their disposal. another conclusion is that, despite regional variations, similar issues arose in different parts of brazil. for instance, given the students' diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and schools' limited funding, digital platforms were hardly the best option for children and educators. still, they organized to make the learning experience possible amidst a scenario of uncertainties and a lack of coordination from the central government. a last relevant finding was that the digital divide could not be understood independently of other gaps, such as those related to socioeconomic status. the research findings are discussed below, according to the data offered by the interviews. students all the interviewees highlighted that one of the most affected groups was students. according to municipalities' and state governments' official discourse, keeping schools closed was essential to protect children. but these children did not stay at home; they were in the street working to help their families or simply loitering. one of the interviewees explained that all students had issues and losses. parents took small children out of schools and children in elementary schools forgot what they learned in their first years of education. older students in high school dropped out. interviewees also emphasized how the suspension of classes impacts children differently, depending on their socioeconomic status, age, and geographical location. concerning the digital divide, the educators' perceptions confirmed that the situation is even more challenging when students' connectivity is considered. their comments emphasize that not all students have access to devices, such as personal computers, tablets or smartphones, or internet connections in their homes. the situation worsens in the rural areas and the impoverished regions of different brazilian states, especially those in the north and northeast. in those regions, the percentage of public-school students who used the internet was 68.4% and 77.0%, respectively; in other parts of brazil, the number ranged from 88.6% to 91.3% (ibge, 2021d). one of the interviewees stressed that enhancing students' connectivity is a concern in national politics nowadays. however, the interviewee asks: "how will children access the internet in schools if they are closed? will this connectivity get to students' homes? even if the internet gets to them, families will have no means to offer the structure children need to learn." considering all the difficulties the government and families faced to access digital learning, interviewees brazilian digital learning strategies during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 129 emphasized that the digital divide added a layer of complexity to a series of already existing inequalities. the socioeconomic divide was also evident in the gap between private and public schools. one of the interviewees mentioned that a common scenario in the three municipalities considered in the report was that children in private institutions mostly had socioemotional issues. however, because these schools reopened during the pandemic, these pupils commonly had the chance to take care of their mental health and recover lost pedagogical content. students in public schools had the same issues but no support from the school or parents to treat their anxiety and other emotional disorders. these children, especially female students, had additional problems within their homes. girls became responsible for housework and were unable to balance their studies and the obligations at home. they also had to face different forms of abuse, including physical and sexual violence. regarding the students ready to access higher education, only 2,699,806 took the national examination tests to enter universities in 2020, a considerable difference from the two previous years, when almost four million students participated in the exams (lesme, 2021). for brazilian children, schools are not only a place for learning but also to exert their citizenship. the interviewees stressed that schools' closure impacted different children's rights, centrally, food security and nutrition. when the pandemic started, the first concern of state and local government was related to children's meals since most of them depend on schools for their nourishment. municipalities focused on offering meals to students and their families through vouchers, food parcels, and other meal distribution strategies. according to one of the interviewees, only after the municipalities' secretariats of education solved this issue, nearly a month after classes' suspension, did pedagogical concerns emerge as a priority. students’ food security remained an essential concern ever since. the challenge of school attendance is also relevant when the analysis emphasizes children's age. one of the interviewees highlighted that having children from 6 to 10 years old in schools was no longer a significant issue among all the educational challenges faced by the country. in the last 15 years, brazil adopted policies and programs that ensure these students' access to public institutions and have made slow progress in guaranteeing schools for all children. however, the pandemic reverted these advancements. a second interviewee works with young children in low-income families who have just learned how to read and write and argued that they could not keep constancy in their studies. since most of them needed their parents' cellphones to access the internet, they could not have synchronous classes and interact with their teachers and classmates. the interviewee predicted that the time these children spent out of the classroom would impact their education significantly. they will have to relearn the fundamental pedagogical content, which will be challenging in a scenario with scarce support from the government and their families. unicef's report "out-of-school children in brazil" (2021) confirms these opinions. according to the publication, while children aged 6 to 10 without access to education were an exception in the country, the change seen in 2020 could have a longlasting impact on an entire generation. students in the early years of elementary school face incomplete literacy cycles that can lead to school failure and dropout (unicef, 2021). teachers teachers and principals emerged as responsible for ensuring that education would not stop despite the suspension of in-person classes, and even without the support of federal or local governments. according to one of the interviewees, this interpretation was winter current issues in comparative education 130 common primarily because public officials believed that the situation would go back to normal in august 2020. the second semester would occur as usual, and the first term would be manageable with quick fixes. another interviewee recalls that the secretariat of education in her city did not offer any specific guidelines in the first week after school closure. teachers in her institution organized themselves and decided to use google drive to share materials with students. facebook would be the platform to connect with parents; they also chose to use whatsapp groups to be in touch with each other. teachers working with specific grades started reuniting with their peers to reorganize classes and make sure that they followed the same pedagogical content. their main concern was to guarantee that students were learning at a similar pace. public officials only issued state and municipality digital learning guidelines weeks after teachers had already designed their own approaches to remote schooling. when the secretaries of education started issuing digital strategies, teachers soon noticed that the suggested platforms would not suit students' needs. one of the interviewees argued that when the rio municipality began training them to use microsoft teams, educators in her school identified that "it would be too much for their students" (personal communication, january 11, 2021) from the beginning. the platform would be challenging for pupils for different reasons. younger students would not have the autonomy necessary to access the system; older students would not be disciplined enough to watch classes all day before a screen. and all the students would have something in common: the lack of equipment or good internet speed. since the prefecture invested a lot in instructional videos on microsoft teams, they thought the platform would be mandatory for students and voiced their concerns. after some weeks of training, the municipality stated that it would be optional: schools could use any platform they wanted. the teachers in the interviewee's school unanimously decided that they would not use teams for its unfeasibility. they opted for other strategies, such as using google drive and youtube to share pedagogical content with pupils, and whatsapp, to interact with children and clarify possible questions. however, the use of these alternative platforms would not happen without difficulties. one of them was the lack of contact with parents, who should supervise children's learning. the other was the idea that teachers were unwilling to use more complex platforms, not thinking of their students' well-being but refusing to engage with technology. two interviewees shared a common perspective: teachers in public schools are unprepared to work with technology and often refuse to learn new things. this situation is mainly due to two factors: the lack of training and the "intergenerational shock." the first relates to the fact that states and municipalities do not generally offer the structure or prepare teachers to engage in online teaching methods. one of the interviewees stated that teachers are commonly open to learning new strategies and engaging with technology. still, there is a wide gap between the secretariats' expectations and what teachers can do with their limited time and resources. the intergenerational shock refers to the idea that some experienced teachers show resistance to working differently from what they are used to. because they grew up in a different time, they do not see new technologies as a necessary tool to teach their students or perform their work. other teachers do not oppose technology but have no interest in engaging with alternative ways of teaching in the online environment. to overcome these obstacles, municipalities adopted different strategies to involve teachers in the definition of policies and make them feel part of the strategies adopted locally. some cities made computers and the internet available to teachers at public schools if they could not access the web at home. others asked teachers to develop alternative approaches considering their preferences and brazilian digital learning strategies during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 131 resources. the policymaker interviewed for this project explained (personal communication, february 2, 2021): the pandemic is not an individual problem; it is everyone's problem. and it is not possible to solve it individually. i must use all tools available to create an atmosphere for exchange. that is what we did. when i organize my remote classes, there are difficulties; there are teachers without internet connection. we go and try to help, see if we can support them in any way. nobody was compelled to do so, and that was important. that is why i am talking about engagement and participation. it was all thanks to participation... we offered alternatives to everyone. on top of all challenges related to the digital divide, the interviewees emphasized that 2020 was a year of many frustrations for professional educators. aside from being constantly concerned with students' learning, health, and safety, teachers were disturbed by going back to school without the necessary sanitary protocols. educators developed different pedagogical strategies, trying to offer alternatives to children, but they had an inadequate response from children and their families. they understand that the situation is difficult since students have neither their parents' guidance nor the equipment needed to access the online content. as one teacher puts it: "some children don't have what to eat; how can they possibly have access to online classes?" she concludes that these issues reflect families' lack of responsibility and, above all, the absence of support the government gives to families. families all the interviewees pointed out that families were another relevant actor in understanding how the covid-19 pandemic affected learning outcomes and widened brazil's digital divide. even before the pandemic, there was a significant deficit in the relationship with families. brazilian children in public schools are affected by different issues, such as violence, emotional neediness, and negligence. while teachers usually have had difficulties creating a relationship with families, their work became more challenging. aiming to understand the dynamics of students' homes and what issues influence pupils' learning, teachers developed strategies to bring families to schools. the teacher in a public school in rio argued, "what i see is that many of these families have no interest in following their children's life in school" (personal communication, january 11, 2021). according to her experience, parents usually do not get involved or explain why they do not attend school meetings or are involved in their children's learning process. she added that the children who need family support the most in school do not have this kind of attention from their parents or other family members. the interviewee felt that teachers were the only ones caring for their students' education since principals seemed to neglect parents’ lack of participation. teachers were responsible for creating a connection with students and working with them, despite what happens at home. the pandemic, however, made things worse between families and schools. connectivity is a real challenge in brazil, but the main problem is that households are usually headed by a mom whose cell phone is the primary source of internet connection for the whole family. these mothers do not have the means to pay for a better phone plan and have other priorities, such as providing food and housing to their families. one of the interviewees highlighted that some schools opted to send materials and additional information through whatsapp and similar apps. however, this kind of communication was not always welcome. she recalled hearing from a mom (personal communication, february 22, 2021): winter current issues in comparative education 132 i have three kids and a telephone with a bad storage and a slow internet connection; please stop sending me these things. i don't want to receive anything from you [the school] anymore! the relationship with families was also complex due to the lack of confidence in the guidelines and information provided by public officials. children in public schools' parents do not trust school managers and teachers. one of the interviewees declared that impoverished families see schools as a place to leave children so they can work and do not see education as central in their kids' lives. amidst all the challenges posed by the pandemic, parents started realizing that they were not precisely concerned with their children's education but with maintaining their work and afford to eat and survive. conclusion promoting student learning during the covid-19 pandemic reinforced brazil's perennial educational challenges and evinced the existing deficiencies in the country's schooling system. while there was a pressing need to alleviate a crisis scenario and attenuate the lack of coordination between states and municipalities, the ministry of education failed to establish recommendations to guide basic education schools and higher education institutions during these unprecedented times. the lack of clear guidelines resulted from the federal government's slow response to the pandemic: the mec never proposed a unified strategy or digital platform to be adopted by schools and other institutions during the pandemic. while other nations in latin america have quickly adopted preventive actions to reduce the spread of covid-19, the brazilian state refrained from supporting similar measures and offering local governments the tools to tackle the obstacles faced by municipalities and states. the responsibility fell under the activity of states and municipalities, strengthening the decentralization of the brazilian system of schooling and transferring the onus to policymakers and educators on the local level. due to the lack of unifying guidelines from mec, different actors involved in education had to improvise to make students get involved with classes and maintain the discipline they needed to succeed academically. evidence from the interviews shows that teachers and school administrators were commonly unprepared to offer alternatives based on distance learning; parents were equally ill-equipped to guide their children through homeschooling and the use of technology. considering the lack of access to the internet, computers, and other devices, families and teachers did what they could with scarce resources. still, children were the ones who suffered the most. considering the negligence shown by the mec and the difficulties faced by states and municipalities, we can understand that the pandemic exacerbated the structural problems faced by the brazilian system of public education. one of the main conclusions of this exploratory study was that the digital divide could not be understood without considering other forms of inequality existent in brazil. the interviews evinced that the lack of technological resources must be considered with other educational issues encountered by public schools, teachers, students, and their families. further research on the impact of digital learning strategies could investigate how different gaps, such as the urban vs. rural, those found in the same region, within the same state, and in other brazilian capitals, played a role in the design and implementation of distance learning strategies during the first years of the pandemic. brazilian digital learning strategies during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 133 acknowledgments the author would like to thank the interviewees for their time and the helpful insights they offered for the research, and romina quezada morales and gabriela chacon ugarte, for their suggestions and careful reading of this report. marcella 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(2020, july 2). mec define protocolo de segurança para volta às aulas. agência brasil. https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/educacao/noticia/2020-07/mec-defineprotocolo-de-seguranca-para-volta-aulas stinson, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 impacts of remote learning measures on educational access and quality in ecuador hannah stinson teachers college, columbia university background information on ecuador the republic of ecuador is situated on the northwest coast of south america, bordered by colombia and peru. its population was projected at about 17.9 million in early 2022 (instituto nacional de estadística y censos [inec], 2022). the majority of the population, approximately 11,200,000, lived in urban areas in 2020, while 6,300,000 lived in rural areas (inec, 2018). about 28% of ecuadorians are under the age of 15, and 65% fall within the age range of 15-65 (barros, 2019). women outnumbered men by about 200,000 in 2020 (inec, 2018). as socio-culturally diverse as it is biodiverse, ecuador has historically faced complex inequalities along regional, rural-urban, ethnic, and class lines (radcliffe, 2018). while national policies that aim at promoting and supporting indigenous ways of living, such as buen vivir, have undertaken to address these issues through their commitment to the sustainable development goals (radcliffe, 2018), the year leading up to the 2020 pandemic was politically turbulent. when president lenín moreno took measures to limit fuel subsidies in october, 2019, indigenous communities faced disproportionately negative effects on a major source of their income. soon, transport strikes, street-obstructing paros, and protests by students, teachers, and indigenous leaders put the nation on hold (españa, 2019). after two weeks, the government reached an agreement with the confederación de nacionalidades indígenas de ecuador (conaie) to return fuel subsidies, and protests died down (cabrera, 2019). these political tensions heightened national awareness about the economic plight of indigenous communities and increasing poverty and inequality in the nation, especially in the large informal sector. covid-19 would further expose these inequalities. ecuador’s education system the mission of ecuador’s national ministry of education (ministerio de educación [mineduc]) is to guarantee education between the ages of 3 and 17 to those living in the country (ministerio de telecomunicaciones [mintel], 2022). educational levels consist of initial or inicial (3-5), basic or educación general básica (6-11), and high school or bachillerato (12-17), all of which are compulsory. the school system and higher education system function separately (personal communication, august 25, 2021). ecuador's student population during the 2019-2020 school year was 4,407,030 (estadísticas educativas-datos abiertos, n.d ). the pre-primary enrollment rate prior to covid-19 was 62.45%, the primary was 90.94%, the secondary was 84.67%, and the enrollment of people ages 18-22 in tertiary education was 44.89% (unesco, 2017). furthermore, there is a slightly higher enrollment ratio for girls than boys at all levels. in 2017, the public sector educated 67.6% of ecuador’s students in 1st grade through high school, while the remaining 34.2% attended private, nonprofit, or parochial schools. by 2021, 78% of ecuador’s students were enrolled in public schools (personal communication, august 25, 2021). at the university level, 56.7% attend public institutions, and the rest attend private © 2022, stinson. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 163-172. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en stinson current issues in comparative education 164 universities. in ecuador, 28.4% of students following the intercultural bilingual education model (ibe) live in urban areas, while the remaining 71.6% are rural, making up over 143,000 bilingual students. of the 4,260,688 non-ibe students, 77.8% are urban and 22.2% are rural (educar ecuador, 2020). the socioeconomic level of families has a positive correlation with performance across language, math, and science subjects, in third and sixth grades according to the latin american educational quality evaluation (eceal) (sistema de información de tendencias educativas en américa latina [siteal], 2019). in 2014, 29.8% of the population was living under the poverty line, and 10.3%, under the line of indigence (siteal, 2019). this correlation indicates a socioeconomic inequity in educational quality and access. in recent years, policymakers have increasingly moved toward reducing inequality, implementing learning standards, expanding digital, environmental, arts, and intercultural education. in 2000, during the world education forum, ecuador committed to the six objectives of education for all, and saw improvements across multiple areas (siteal, 2019). first, between 2006 and 2014, the proportion of adolescents who completed high school increased by 16.9% (siteal, 2019). then, bilingual education, which was officially recognized in 1981 and had expanded in 1993 through a full policy and curriculum model (hornberger, 2000), saw the creation of the secretary of educación intercultural bilingüe (eib)1 in 2018 (ministerio de educación [mineduc], 2018). now, the national curriculum is available in 14 indigenous languages. recent education policy in technology and ict ecuador’s education policy has proactively addressed, though not completely achieved, digital literacy among the student population over the past two decades. mineduc’s ten-year plan in 2006 included improvement of technological resources and infrastructure (mineduc, 2007). in 2010, mineduc collaborated with mintel to implement a more comprehensive project for the development of digital skills and infrastructure through schools. the project, called the integrated system of technologies for school and community (sistema integrado de tecnologías para escuelas y comunidades, sitec), included the provision and integration of internet and devices, into schools (barros, 2019). sitec also included digital content development and docent training in the use of new tools and platforms. in 2015, mineduc created educar ecuador, an online school control management system to facilitate digital learning and communication (instituciones educativas, 2016). through the platform, students, teachers, administrators, and families have a shared space for classwork, grades, schedules, calendars, communication, and more. the platform educar ecuador had already been used nationwide for four years before the onset of the pandemic and its role in the covid-19 educational plan, although lack of access to information technology created a barrier for some schools, students, and teachers. access to information technology is on the rise in ecuador. according to inec (2019) in 2018, 24.5% of homes had desktop computers, 24.2% had portable computers, and 11.2% had both. nationally, 37.2% of homes had internet access (46.6% of the urban population, and 16.1% of the rural population had internet at home). about 50.1% of ecuadorians use computers, and 55.9% use the internet, though not necessarily in the home. in urban areas, 71% used the internet in the home, while the rest of urban users utilized it at work, in school, in centers of public access, at another person’s house, or another place by contrast, only 49.1% of rural internet users connected in the home. fifty percent of urban ecuadorians had a smartphone, compared to 23% in rural. women connected to the internet, and used computers, cell phones, and smartphones at slightly lower rates than men, nationwide (inec, 2019). these statistics have implications for educational access, impacts of remote learning measures current issues in comparative education 165 especially during the switch to remote learning brought on by the pandemic. those without internet access (especially when using the internet outside the home is not an option) have less access to the digital platforms distributed by the mineduc. remote learning measures taken during social distancing ecuador’s mineduc responded swiftly to the covid-19 pandemic. suspension of classes in the sierra and amazon was effective march 12, 2020 and was repeatedly extended during the following months. coastal schools, which were on break during the onset of the pandemic, eventually delayed classes until june 1 ("clases en el regimen costa-galápagos," 2020). school closures included initial education through high school, across public and private sectors. the national committee of emergency operations stated on march 15 that teachers would hold online classes, and some materials would be distributed via television channels (eclac, 2020). universities closed their doors, relocated students, and shifted to online instruction during the month of march as well. many private schools, which were facing overdue payments at the rate of 40-60% even before the pandemic, struggled to remain open as families navigated job losses (torres, 2020). the mineduc promised to absorb students at private schools that closed despite strained budgets and increasing class sizes. the educational plan for covid-19 from the mineduc is titled aprendemos juntos en casa (let’s learn together at home). the plan includes continued teacher professional support, a free online education portal for students, families, teachers, and administrators, radio and television channels to broadcast educational programming, and some printed and printable materials for those without internet access (recursos educativos digitales, 2022). over 840 resources for teaching and learning were made available on march 16, 2020, on the portal at recursos2.educacion.gob/ec. the website for aprendemos juntos en casa includes a resource guide for families, stressing the importance of pedagogical and emotional accompaniment for learning. alongside the fichas pedagógicas (pedagogical files containing lessons and curriculum for teacher and family use), the mineduc encouraged teachers to review and adapt materials to their context and needs. the fichas pedagógicas themselves were designed to encompass a wide range of educational levels. resources for the 2019-2020 school year were divided into initial/prep (grade 1), elementary (grades 24), middle (grades 5-7), upper, (grades 8-10,) high school (courses 1-3), and special education. accompanying weekly lessons for each age group were 10–15-minute audio clips posted online, whose views on youtube range from 60 to 11,000. a digital platform specific to high school students called ava was offered resourced virtual classrooms for math, biology, physics, chemistry, social studies, language, and literature (mineduc, 2020 a). teachers and students can connect through these classrooms for lessons, assignments, and grading. all resources from aprendemos juntos en casa and ava are free available to public as well as private schools via educar ecuador, the online educational community of the mineduc. education professionals were able to access the sistema de seguimiento de actividades de teletrabajo (teleworking activities monitoring system) through the mineduc website. here, teachers and personnel of educational institutions could register for remote teaching and learning activities (mineduc, 2020 b). teachers who facilitated digital instruction were encouraged to organize their digital classroom using the platform mi aula en línea (my classroom online), provided by the mineduc through microsoft teams. in order to help decrease site traffic and avoid crashes, students and families were asked to download pdfs of resources and digital textbooks from aprendemos juntos en casa, and use whatsapp to communicate with their teachers. stinson current issues in comparative education 166 ecuador offered additional resources to keep providing the whole student population with education. the ibe system in ecuador developed and distributed educational workbooks in 14 indigenous languages, which could be accessed online or in print. in may, the secretary of eib announced 1,500 vacancies for potential intercultural bilingual teachers and funding for professional development of 200 current teachers (mineduc, 2020 c). furthermore, included in the plan educativo: aprendemos juntos en casa, ecuador has added educational tv programming on 160 channels, as well as 24-hour online access to the videos at https://www.educa.ec/, available on 1,000 radio channels across the country divided by age group. for students in areas with limited internet access, the ministry made deliveries of printed guidebooks and workbooks in spanish, as well as other languages (mineduc, 2020 d). introduction to the analysis the following analysis explores the ways in which the digital measures taken by ecuador’s mineduc affected the access and quality of education in ecuador, as well as impacts of these changes on existing socioeconomic gaps in the country. the exploratory study was based on two separate semi-structured interviews which followed a set of interview questions based on the research questions and the literature review. one interview was with an educational practitioner and one with a policymaker. the first interviewee was the director and sole multi-grade teacher at a public ibe elementary school in a rural zone of ecuador. this interview took place in december 2020 over a zoom call and lasted about 40 minutes. it was recorded and later transcribed by the researcher with the help of the software, sonix. the second interviewee had served in a high rank position in the mineduc during the pandemic, and this interview was carried out in august 2021, using the same methods and duration as the first interview. the analysis of the data indicated that participants conceptualized academic quality as care for the holistic wellbeing of students as well as taking opportunities provided by remote learning for innovation in education. educational policy, curriculum, and practitioners emphasized these forms of quality education during the pandemic. another finding was the roles of technology and teachers as educational gatekeepers. educational access was mediated by access to technology, and/or teacher responsibility to deliver other forms of remote learning. teacher responsibility was especially high in rural areas where access to technology is scarcer. finally, digital divide is a term used in recent decades to describe the gap between those who are able to access and effectively use new technologies, and those who cannot (van dijk, 2012). social distancing highlighted the digital divide in ecuador, but the diversity of measures offered helped to mitigate adverse effects of the digital divide. even where technological access was limited, the wealth of digital resources developed in response to the pandemic provided professional support to teachers. findings are discussed below. quality as holistic wellbeing and innovation findings indicated that quality education during the pandemic meant more than effective remote lessons and high levels of academic performance. remote learning measures in ecuador impacted the quality of education by expanding its focus on holistic wellbeing and innovation. the educational strategy of the plan educativo emphasized holistic wellbeing by including policies and curriculum to preempt adverse effects of social distancing. the mineduc’s top priority was to guarantee educational retention especially for the vulnerable populations by protecting both physical and psycho-emotional health (personal communication, august 25, 2021). the government facilitated emergency food baskets, impacts of remote learning measures current issues in comparative education 167 domestic violence prevention measures, and sanitary health education during the pandemic (coronavirus ecuador, 2020). the plan educativo also invited students and families to work remotely with student counseling departments and developed curriculum that addressed mental health issues associated with isolation (personal communication, august 25, 2021). the mineduc viewed teachers as key players in the quality of policies geared toward holistic wellbeing and invested in trainings for socioemotional support in the remote teaching context. one recipient of these trainings was the school director, who commented positively about the quality of the online trainings as well as the digital curriculum, particularly that which focused on emotional health. the curriculum served as a professional resource to him and his colleagues in similar schools and districts (personal communication, december 22, 2020). for the school director, holistic wellbeing also included learning and loving values rooted in the student’s cultural identity: “the idea is that the children learn… good values; all the values that they should understand and love, always coming from their cultural identity… with a principle of development and a social principle of helping others,” (personal communication, december 22, 2020). even when rural or low-income students lacked digital access, the platforms helped equip teachers like this interviewee to continue providing quality education that holistically addressed their needs. with the nearly overnight transformation of ecuador’s education, the mineduc recognized an opportunity for innovation. during the months of remote learning, it invested in a variety of pedagogies such as stem, project-based learning, and experiencebased learning, which had not been widely used in ecuador before. the interviewee from the mineduc hopes to see these pedagogies continue to gain prominence in ecuador. since the start of the pandemic, the mineduc developed at least three quality-related areas for future development: digital learning, teacher professional development, and innovation, which could have lasting impact on the quality of ecuadorian education. the mineduc interviewee said, “i believe that this educational paradigm change has really advanced. [the young people] feel the innovation, the changes, the need for change” (personal communication, august 25, 2021). on the other hand, the school director expressed concern about helping his students keep up with the level of urban schools, which he perceived to have greater access to the digital platforms. he did not anticipate new horizons of pedagogical innovation after the pandemic so much as “teaching that prioritizes the basic subjects. the material [needs to be] basic so that the children can understand and reinforce the subjects that they haven’t totally arrived in, so that the kids can be at grade level and can understand better.” for him, quality education in the future would involve filling in the learning gaps left by the long days without in-person instruction. teachers and technology as educational gatekeepers during the covid-19 pandemic, nationwide social distancing policies massively threatened access to education. in response, the mineduc designed remote learning measures to meet a wide array of access-related student needs. especially in rural areas, access to any digital measure was largely mediated by teachers. the following reports on the kinds of interruptions to access, and the role played by teachers and technology. due to ecuador’s diversity and existing socio-economic gaps, the covid-19 pandemic created a hydra of interruptions to educational access. as mentioned above, ecuador had achieved high levels of nationwide access, so these issues were relatively novel (personal communication, august 25, 2021). while for some families social distancing meant a pivot to remote learning, for others, especially low-income and rural families, it posed incredible barriers. in september 2021, 78% of public school students nationwide had stinson current issues in comparative education 168 access to internet connectivity, but only 1 out of 8 had access to a device for personal use (personal communication, august 25, 2021). the mineduc interviewee stated that “at the beginning of the pandemic there was an access rate of 20% in rural areas and 70% in urban areas.” reasons for inability to connect remotely included lack of infrastructure such as cables, as well as broadband and device access. nineteen percent of families, most of whom were in rural areas, had no access to any device from which to access online platforms. of the 81% with devices, many families did not have enough devices for all school-aged children in the family to access the platforms simultaneously. the digital and remote learning measures were designed to meet a wide array of accessrelated student needs, but not all those needs could be addressed. with the help of international cooperation, technology companies, and universities, the mineduc was able to produce over 30 platforms, with educational resources in 14 languages (personal communication, august 25, 2021). curriculum resources were available in the form of online platforms, print, radio, and television. students without adequate home access to devices and broadband were not able to access the digital curriculum, though 93% of the country’s students had access to at least radio or television lessons (personal communication, august 25, 2021). in part because certain mobile service providers refused to collaborate to provide free minutes to families, the mineduc was not able to meet its goal of total retention. the responsibility to ensure access to education fell largely on teachers like the one interviewed in this study. during the pandemic, he felt responsible for keeping his rural students’ learning going at a rate comparable to that of urban students. he said, “so that the students don’t fall behind, they follow the same rhythm of study as… all urban [students]. we also have made it possible to bring [those materials] to our children that are studying in rural school so they can be at the same level” (personal communication, december 22, 2020). he personally took on a formidable list of responsibilities during the pandemic. these included printing pedagogical files, often paying for printing, preparing homework assignments to keep students occupied throughout the week, preparing activities that would keep students engaged and reduce depression, preparing physical activities to reduce stress keep students active at home, distributing personal protective equipment and educating families on covid-19 safety measures, and encouraging demotivated students to complete assignments. the interviewee from the mineduc recognized and commended such efforts, saying, “the teachers carried themselves very well and they had to, by any means, contact weekly the students in remote areas. the others had to do it online daily, and ask not only for learning problems, but also about health or other problems” (personal communication, august 25, 2021). because of the existing digital gap in ecuador, some rural students often received brief weekly visits from their dedicated teacher, while students with connectivity access were able to interact with their teacher online daily. even so, teachers were a highly valuable resource for educational access during the pandemic, and their dedication coupled with the diverse modalities of the digital measure ameliorated the drastic interruptions. the pandemic as a catalyst for narrowing the digital divide the pandemic highlighted a significant digital divide in the country, particularly between rural and urban areas, and families with high and low incomes. the ministry had already recognized a need to close the digital gap before the pandemic and had begun an initiative to digitize texts and upload them to computer labs in schools (personal communication, august 25, 2021). however, there was very little preparation in terms of at-home device and internet access for rural and low-income families. the mineduc and impacts of remote learning measures current issues in comparative education 169 educational practitioners immediately prioritized vulnerable populations and increasingly focused on addressing the digital divide. the education sector’s emphases on wellbeing and innovation impacted socioeconomic gaps in ecuador both during the pandemic and in planning for the future. the interviewee from the mineduc stated, “we have great challenges at the level of learning and digital gaps. nevertheless, our greatest preoccupation has been to confront this crisis in a humanitarian and inclusive way in order to guarantee education and protection, and from there, closing gaps” (personal communication, august 25, 2021). some of the vulnerable groups she listed were: rural, female, and afro-indigenous (these were most affected in terms of access to digital platforms), special needs and early childhood students, as well as the venezuelan migrant population. the mineduc interviewee conceded that it may not have appeared that learning gaps between socioeconomic groups have closed at all during this pandemic. but this does not indicate failure, since the ministry intentionally prioritized the holistic wellbeing of the most vulnerable, and is now capitalizing on the opportunity for innovation, teacher training, and paradigm change. the digital education agenda now being implemented includes five main work axes: 1) technological infrastructure, 2) digital learning 3) teacher development, 4) innovation, and 5) communication. considering these goals, the greatest socio-economic impacts of the mineduc’s response to the pandemic are yet to be seen. the pandemic highlighted the digital access gap in ecuador, which informed government policies, and important government initiatives to expand digital access originated in 2021. the school director explained that learning through zoom was not an option for his rural school, saying, “students here don’t have internet, they don’t have technological means, nothing” (personal communication, december 22, 2020). in december 2020, he had not heard of any plans from the government to expand internet access but, by september 2021, the government had announced the plan to install 5,000 subterranean cables in different parts of the country (personal communication, august 25, 2021). ecuadorians differ in opinion about the return to in-person learning. in the school director’s community, the resounding cry in 2020 was for a full return to in-person school. they say that nothing compares to live instruction. he also acknowledged other voices that say that virtual education has a place in ecuador’s future. either way, he hopes that education continues advancing and stabilizing for the wellbeing of students and their families. for the school director, the digital divide is not synonymous with educational barriers for his students. he said, “we are bringing [education] to them. and with this, we don’t put barriers on ourselves. for us, there are no limits when it comes to bringing education to the children” (personal communication, december 22, 2020). conclusions although ecuador’s government had begun to address the issue of digital access before the covid-19 pandemic, the low rate of home internet connectivity in 2018 (37.2%) foreshadowed the challenges of doing education from home (inec, 2018). the mineduc’s pandemic response strategy, aprendemos juntos en casa, accordingly, made vast efforts to provide educational resources that matched the diversity of the country. both policymakers and practitioners emphasized holistic wellbeing as part of quality instruction during the pandemic. facing a widening socioeconomic gap caused by ecuador’s digital divide, they also considered the pandemic an opportunity to meet diverse student needs through innovation. based on the findings, it did seem that the mineduc’s leadership was in tune with the diverse experiences of its population and, stinson current issues in comparative education 170 as a result, its pandemic response was swift, dynamic, and ongoing. ecuador’s teachers, however carried the weight of responsibility of making sure students were connected to the resources they needed. although the burden of responsibility falling largely on teachers proved the need for greater valorization of teachers and led to quality education that cared for the holistic wellbeing of students, teachers still needed greater support to fill the multitude of roles they took on. in case of a similar situation, ecuador would do well to alleviate the additional logistical burdens placed on rural teachers so they can focus on providing quality education. this study was not comprehensive, and more voices would be welcome to the conversation. note [1] in english, eib translates to intercultural bilingual education (ibe). hannah stinson is a student at teachers college, columbia university, working toward a master's degree in international educational development. her concentration is in languages, literacies and cultures, and she is particularly interested in literacy education in mother 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(2012). the evolution of the digital divide: the digital divide turns to inequality of skills and usage. digital enlightenment yearbook, 2012, 57-75. doi:10.3233/978-1-61499-057-4-57 © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 154 april 30, 2002 exclusion and inclusion in student-faculty informal interaction: a critical perspective laurie mook university of alberta, canada introduction the impact of student-faculty interaction on higher education students has been the object of countless studies and journal articles. study after study has confirmed the hypothesis that a close student-faculty relationship positively affects academic achievement, occupational decisions, educational aspirations, institutional persistence, intellectual and personal development, academic and non-academic satisfaction, and attitudes toward college (kwong, 1991; lamport, 1993; moore, lovell, mcgann, & wyrick, 1998; nagda, gregerman, jonides, von hippel, & lerner, 1998; pascarella, 1980; pascarella & terenzini, 1991; romanski, 1987)1. however, in spite of their important contributions to the field, most of these studies fail to sufficiently address studentfaculty interaction in the broader context of class, race and gender inequalities. at the same time, the critical literature on the role of educational institutions in reproducing and reinforcing social inequalities (e.g. anyon, 1980; bourdieu, 1986; bowles & gintis, 1976; contenta, 1993; hurn, 1985; oakes, 1985; rist, 1970; sadker & sadker, 1994) has paid little attention to student-faculty interaction outside of the classroom, particularly at the post-secondary level. building on these two bodies of scholarship, this article explores informal studentfaculty interaction with respect to participation rates of different undergraduate student groups. using u.s. national data collected by the cooperative institutional research program (cirp), the study shows that different groups of students interact with faculty at different rates and in different ways2. the study finds that, in a self-perpetuating cycle, students who are more likely to be successful in university (for example with those with high positive self-concepts), are also the students who have a high frequency of interactions with faculty, increasing their chances of academic success even further and strengthening their structural position of advantage. students with low self-concept and other groups who are more at risk, are more often nonor low-interactors. this paper begins by briefly examining the ideas that were used to guide the study, and then describes its methods and findings. it concludes with a discussion of the implications for institutions of higher education, faculty and students. theoretical framework critical theories of education, particularly those focusing on dynamics of reproduction, put forth the argument that educational institutions, through formal and informal policies and practices, tend to reinforce socio-economic structures of domination. these dynamics of reproduction include situations where teachers' expectations of students are based on criteria other than real ability; situations where certain groups are treated differently in terms of attention, teaching styles and counseling; and situations where some students benefit from a structural position of advantage because of socio-economic class, having more access to books, computers and cultural activities as well as a classbased system of beliefs that facilitates taking advantage of school opportunities. critical exclusion and inclusion in student-faculty informal interaction: a critical perspective current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 155 theory also examines why certain groups are more socially mobile than others, for example through looking at access to resources that are necessary to enhance one's knowledge, how a particular type of knowledge creates a particular type of status group, and how social collectivities try to maximize advantages by restricting access to resources and opportunities to a select few (parkin, 1979, in vieira, 1996). research on classroom interaction suggests a correlation between teachers' expectations of students' performance and students' actual performance. the classic study of this phenomenon, also known as 'self-fulfilling prophecy,' is that of rosenthal & jacobson (1968). in this study, teachers were told that certain elementary students were expected to "bloom" that year, although unknown to the teachers, the students were chosen at random. students were tested at the beginning and end of the year, and the "bloomers" performed significantly better than the unlabeled group. testing of students in higher education also resulted in equally significant gains when instructors had high expectations (eden, 1990). current studies argue that self-fulfilling prophecies are stronger for certain groups, especially african american students, students with low socio-economic status, low achievers, those with low self-concepts, students in a new environment (such as those entering elementary or middle school), new military trainees, or in situations where the teacher did not know the student well, such as at the beginning of the school year (madon, jussim, & eccles, 1997; smith, jussim, & eccles, 1999). in a formative study, rist (1970) observed kindergarten, first and second grade children in a poor, black, urban school, to determine how teachers decided their students' academic potential. he found that judgments made about the academic ability of the children (and the "tracks" in which they were placed) were based not on their real abilities, but rather on non-academic characteristics such as the child's physical appearance, interactive behavior, use of language, and known social status. indeed, the teacher placed students in three seating arrangements that corresponded to their expected performance. once students were labeled, a self-fulfilling prophecy began to operate, and performances met expectations; students who were placed in the fast group and expected to do well, performed at a high level, and students who were placed in the slow groups performed at the expected slow level. moreover, this was not a temporary situation. the placement arranged by the kindergarten teacher continued throughout elementary school. regardless of their ability, children who were placed in the lower group and labeled as 'slow learners' were likely to stay there for the rest of their educational careers. similarly, oakes (1985) found that the intelligent quotient (iq) scores of senior high school students decreased after they were put in lower streams. this is even more significant when the connection between track placements and student background characteristics is considered; poor and minority students were disproportionately placed in low-ability or non-college-bound tracks, and were underrepresented in programs for the gifted and talented (oakes, 1986). one explanation of why it is difficult for those placed in low tracks or labeled as slow learners to increase social mobility is provided by madon et al. (1997, p. 805): "research shows that, in comparison to lows, teachers interact more with highs, are friendlier to highs, prepare more for highs, and provide highs with greater opportunity to learn and display knowledge." laurie mook 156 april 30, 2002 teacher expectations were also studied by sadker & sadker (1994). in their research they found that teachers were more likely to call on boys than on girls, and to take more time responding to a question from a boy than from a girl. interestingly, girls were equal to boys in terms of academic achievement and psychological health in the early years of schooling. however, by the end of high school, girls were lower in both achievement and self-esteem. girls also performed lower on standardized college entrance examinations (for example the scholastic aptitude test [sat]), which then led to lower numbers of scholarships and career opportunities. sadker & sadker thus argued that girls do not receive the same educational opportunity as boys in the classroom. expectations are also related to an individual's self-concept. shavelson, hubner, and stanton (1976) report that self-concept develops early in life, is particularly influenced by environmental reinforcements and significant others (such as parents and teachers), and is altered very little over the course of time. although general self-concept has been found to be quite stable, self-concept in specific areas (such as in individual subject areas) has been found to vary. in these cases, studies have also found that if a change in self-perception does occur, it also tends to result in a change in performance (johnson, 1981; lecky, 1945). in a classic study analyzing spelling abilities, lecky (1945) noticed that some children made the same number of spelling errors per page regardless of the difficulty of the words they were asked to spell. he also found that by changing their self-perception, their spelling performance improved. thus, he surmised that students' level of achievement may be related to the perception of their abilities as learners. research on self-concepts has shown that the relationship between students' academic achievement and self-concept of ability, especially academic self-concept, is moderately strong (hamachek, 1995). although there has been some debate about which comes first, self-concept or achievement, the studies show that one mutually reinforces the other, and that their relationship is "dynamically interactive and reciprocal" (hamachek, 1995, p. 420). in a review of research, hamachek (1995) found that those with a positive selfconcept and who were doing well academically tended to feel more motivated, were more assertive, took more risks, set realistic reachable goals, were task-persistent, took school work seriously, were able to work independently, had a high degree of curiosity, preferred challenging school work, and were intrinsically motivated to do well in school. interestingly, research has also found that elementary and high school students with higher self-concepts tended to see their success as a factor of ability, and failure as due to bad luck, or lack of effort. conversely, students with a lower self-concept perceived the inverse: success was equated with good luck, and failure with lack of ability (hamachek, 1995). at the systemic level, studies analyzing the impact of social class and parental education on educational attainment have found that offspring of parents with higher class status and higher levels of education do better academically than those in lower classes or with lower education levels (arellano & padilla, 1996; bowles & gintis, 1976; egerton, 1997; nakhaie & curtis, 1998). one explanation for this advantage is that those in higher status groups have higher 'cultural capital.' three types of 'cultural capital' are distinguished by bourdieu (1986, p. 243): (1) embodied, which refers to "long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body;" (2) exclusion and inclusion in student-faculty informal interaction: a critical perspective current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 157 objectified, for example material goods such as books, computers, and art; and (3) institutionalized, as in the form of educational qualifications. cultural capital arises from a combination of economic capital and "the intervention of habitus, as a socially constituted cognitive capacity" (bourdieu, 1986, n.3, p. 255). economic capital enables the accumulation of cultural capital by facilitating the purchase of services or material goods, which allow for an "increased volume of useful time" (n. 20, p. 258), and the purchase of material goods such as "pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc." (bourdieu, 1986, p. 243). however, the mere 'purchase' of time or material goods does not by itself lead to increased cultural capital; it is also necessary to have the appropriate 'habitus,' or class-based "predispositions to perceive, appreciate, and act, which in turn govern the selection of problems, their solution, and the evaluation of solutions" (murphy, 1988, p. 19). additionally, cultural capital is institutionalized by formally recognizing certain types of academic qualifications and ensuring that they can be exchanged in the labor market. by recognizing certain personality traits, values, expectations, cognitive skills and attitudes in the educational curriculum of programs leading to high status credentials, those with the appropriate cultural capital continue to achieve greater social status than those without these competencies. these barriers result in the exclusion of certain status groups from the achievement of social mobility, and are precisely the focus of closure theory, as developed by weber and then elaborated upon by parkin and murphy and implicitly by bourdieu and collins (chua & poullaos, 1998). closure theory seeks to effect macro-level structural changes in order to alter micro-level attitudinal changes (murphy, 1981), and is a useful tool for analyzing relationships within and among scholarly disciplines, and between the scholarly community and the community-at-large (chua & poullaos, 1998; morrow & torres, 1995, 1998). whereas in the past, a person may have been excluded from education because of gender, class or ethnicity, today exclusion operates in more subtle ways: instead of directly excluding individuals of a subordinate group, educational institutions exclude a specific characteristic such as language (bourdieu, 1986; murphy, 1981). thus, the principle behind exclusion is that of imposing criteria which are applied equally to all, thereby legitimating inequalities, but which are more suited to the dominant group, and thereby reproducing inequalities (murphy, 1981). this illusion of equality assumes "that in a selective system the selected ones are those who are supposed to succeed and, conversely, that the rejected ones were going to fail sooner or later anyway" (schugurensky, 2000). although the expansion of higher education that took place during the 1960s and 1970s opened opportunities for many people, the structural organization of the system and the culture of individual institutions have often contributed to the perpetuation of the status quo and to the hindering of social and economic mobility. indeed, in higher education, class, gender, and ethnic inequalities are present in the form of 'second generation segregation' such as tracking and ability grouping, in institutional stratification (e.g. elite private universities, public universities and community colleges), enrollment patterns (e.g. under-representation of working class, ethnic minorities and women in programs leading to high-status, high-paid careers), and classroom interaction (e.g. paying more attention to male and white voices), etc. (astin, 1972; clark, 1960; margolis & romero, laurie mook 158 april 30, 2002 1998; oakes, 1985; sadker & sadker, 1994; spring, 1996; velez, 1985). it is the argument of this paper that informal student-faculty informal interaction may also contribute to perpetuating these inequalities. implications of student-faculty informal interaction on achievement with respect to this study, the concepts of teacher expectations and self-concept, cultural capital, and closure are useful to illuminate the impact of student-faculty informal interaction on achievement. for those with low achievement or low self-concept, much can be gained by encouraging positive interactions with faculty, such as taking a personal interest in their progress, or engaging them in a faculty research project (madon et al., 1997; nagda et al., 1998; page, 1997). the differential cultural capital that undergraduate students bring with them to the university must be considered. this can make a substantial difference in the way they take advantage of the opportunities offered by the college, including initiating contacts with faculty, and in the way they are labeled and treated by faculty members. with regard to student initiated interactions, those students who have been socialized to seek out such relations, or know how much they can gain by 'playing the game,' continue to gain advantage. those students who do not initiate such interactions, for whatever reasons, including low self-concept that results from low expectations or self-fulfilling prophecies, are not getting the same benefits as those who do. this dynamic could, for instance, reinforce or inhibit a decision to continue to graduate school. the concept of closure is also a useful tool to explain inequalities in the educational system. it can be applied to understand the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion of student-faculty interaction outside of the classroom, particularly in the case of facultyinitiated interactions. through informal interaction with students, faculty can often enhance their positions as gatekeepers, influencing who gets into graduate school and controlling the social and academic integration of graduate students by allocating assistantships and providing opportunities to work on research projects, attend professional meetings, and co-author manuscripts (clark & garza, 1994; margolis & romero, 1998). as a result of this dynamic, students who interact more are gradually able to enter the inner circles of academia, and those who do not interact are gradually left outside. critical studies show that in spite of the widespread belief that contemporary society is meritocratic and that schools provide equal opportunity to everyone, the educational system often serves as a mechanism of social reproduction. in this respect, academic achievement is not a natural phenomena that can be explained only by individual (e.g. genetic or attitudinal) variables; it is socially constructed, and in turn can play a crucial role in maintaining the situation of privilege of dominant groups (kuh and whitt, 1988; mcdermott, 1987; trueba, 1991). among the multiple dynamics through which educational institutions reinforce inequalities are faculty-student interactions, both inside and outside of the classroom. this does not imply necessary a malign intent on the part of faculty. in most cases, faculty members do not intentionally engage in different types of interaction with students according to factors like class, gender or race, and may not be aware of their differential impact on achievement. exclusion and inclusion in student-faculty informal interaction: a critical perspective current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 159 it must also be noted that a positive correlation between academic achievement and interaction does not clearly establish a relation of causality. in other words, it is difficult to assess to what extent interaction follows achievement, or vice-versa. in any case, regardless of the relative weight of each effect, it is most likely that the two variables feed each other. in this circular causation, high achievers interact more, and high interactors achieve more. low achievers, by being excluded (or self-excluded) from informal interaction, miss an excellent opportunity to reverse their situation, and hence the original gap between 'winners' and 'losers' is further increased. the study with these theoretical concepts in mind, patterns of informal interaction between students and faculty were analyzed using the database of a major longitudinal study of university and college students in the united states. quantitative data were collected as part a national longitudinal study conducted by the cooperative institutional research program (cirp) based at the university of california, los angeles (ucla). students were surveyed when they entered college in 1987 and then again four years later. nearly 290,000 first year students completed entering surveys. however, a sampling strategy to re-survey this cohort in 1991 was necessary because of fiscal constraints. follow-up questionnaires were mailed to the students' home addresses in the summer of 1991, and non-respondents received a second survey in the early fall. data was also requested from the registrars of each institution in order to correct for questionnaire non-response bias (heri, 1992). response rates to the follow-up questionnaire were 68 percent for registrars at institutions and 21 percent for students (see figure 1 below). a sophisticated weighting procedure developed by astin and molm (1972, cited in heri, 1992) was used to correct for potential non-response bias using the cirp survey of first year students, the stratification cell of the student's institution, and the registrar's data (heri, 1992). three stages were used in this weighting procedure. first, a series of multiple stepwise regression analyses were done to remove response bias in the cirp entering year student survey and the registrars' data. these regressions determined the characteristics of first year students which could predict whether or not a student would respond to the follow-up survey. figure 1. sample and respondent counts and rates (1991) number sampled follow-up # respondents registrar # respondents follow-up percent registrar percent total 27,111 5,615 18,382 20.7 67.8 female 16,474 2,922 10,997 25.3 69.4 male 10,637 2,693 7,385 17.7 66.8 all 4-yr institutions 22,942 4,977 16,297 21.7 71.0 all 2-yr institutions 4,169 638 2,085 15.3 50.0 source: the american college student, 1991: national norms for 1987 and 1989 college freshmen. laurie mook 160 april 30, 2002 second, a weighting factor for each student who responded to the survey was determined, and non-respondents were dropped. responding students who were determined to have a high probability of responding were given a small weight, and those who were determined to have a low probability of responding were given a large weight. finally, a second weight was used to match population counts by sex and stratification cell. the final weight was determined by the product of these two weighting factors (heri, 1992). limitations of the study before presenting the findings of this study, several limitations must be noted. first, the study is a secondary analysis performed with existing data not collected specifically for the purpose of analyzing student-faculty informal interaction in terms of the variables used in this study (identified below). thus, some changes could have been made in the wording of questions, or in the type of questions asked. for example, instead of asking for the amount of time (in general) spent talking to faculty outside of the classroom, more specific questions could have been asked such as the amount of time spent in specific types of informal interactions with faculty, or whether the interaction was initiated by the student or the faculty member. second, although a sophisticated weighting procedure was used to compensate for non-response bias, some irregularities could occur when comparing similar categories. third, the data used was for one cohort only, and results may vary for other groups. fourth, all data was collected by means of a self-reported questionnaire. self-assessment is the product of numerous motivational, cognitive and personality factors, including the desire to think well of oneself (kruger, 1999). thus questions may have been interpreted in multiple ways, and answers may not have necessarily reflected actual behavior. finally, student-faculty informal interaction is a complex variable, with many influencing factors. ideally, it should be studied as such, taking into consideration not only frequency, type and impact of interaction, but also other factors such as dynamics between actors, timing, academic program, atmosphere of interaction, goals of participants, place, components of interaction, use of new technologies, and institutional size and culture. thus, in addition to undertaking quantitative studies, it is important to conduct qualitative and ethnographic studies which employ observation and in-depth interviewing to more fully understand this dynamic. findings in order to find out if student-faculty interaction participation rates varied across different undergraduate student groups, five involvement variables and one frequency variable were explored: 1) since entering college have you worked on a professor's research project? 2) during the past year, were you a guest in a professor's home? 3) since entering college have you had faculty take personal interest in your progress 4) since entering college have you found any faculty member who provided tutorial assistance or help improving your study skills? 5) since entering college have you found any faculty member who provided advice and guidance about your educational program? 6) number of hours spent talking to faculty in a typical week during the previous year. these were analyzed in terms of three academic self-concepts and two social selfexclusion and inclusion in student-faculty informal interaction: a critical perspective current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 161 concepts: academic ability, intellectual self-confidence, writing ability; public speaking ability, and leadership ability. generally, it was found that the more positive the academic self-concept, i.e. selfmeasured academic ability, intellectual self-confidence and writing ability, the higher the rate of participation in research projects with a professor, having a faculty member take a personal interest in them (the exception being those who rated themselves as below average in academic ability), and being a guest in a professor's home (see figures 2, 3 and 4 below). for example, only 5.3 percent of those who had rated themselves as below average in academic ability had been a guest in a professor's home during the past year, as compared to 32.4 percent of those who rated themselves in the highest 10 percent (see figure 2 below). figure 2 self-perception of academic ability figure 3 self-perception of intellectual self-confidence laurie mook 162 april 30, 2002 figure 4 self-perception of writing ability compared to other groups, those who rated themselves in the highest 10 percent were less likely to have received remedial or tutorial assistance from faculty. conversely, those who had rated themselves as below average were less likely to have found faculty who provided them with program advice and guidance. additionally, the higher the academic self-concept, the higher the percentage of students that talked with faculty in any type of interaction outside the classroom in a typical week. exclusion and inclusion in student-faculty informal interaction: a critical perspective current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 163 the results for social self-concepts, public speaking and leadership also showed major differences. as with academic self-concepts, in terms of public-speaking ability, participation rates in faculty research projects increased as perceptions of ability increases, as they did in being a guest in a professor's home, in having a faculty member take a personal interest in their progress, and in receiving remedial or tutorials assistance (see figure 5 below). most noticeable was the difference in the percentage of students who had found a faculty member who had taken a personal interest in their progress: from 30.8 percent of those rating themselves as below average, to 70.9 percent of those rating themselves in the highest 10 percent. rates for receiving program advice were higher for those students with average and above self-concepts. for interaction with faculty outside the classroom in general, students with below average self-ratings participated much less than the other categories. figure 5 self-perception of public speaking ability in terms of leadership self-concept, for the most part the same trends as for public speaking were found: as perception of ability increased, so did participation rates (see figure 6 below). there were two exceptions: those who rated themselves in the highest 10 percent participated at a slightly lower rate than those who rated themselves as above average in a professor's research project, and in interaction in general. figure 6 self-perception of leadership ability laurie mook 164 april 30, 2002 in general, the study shows that as academic or social self-concept increases, so do participation rates in certain types of student-faculty interaction. the most noticeable differences occurred in interactions focusing on research, being a guest in a professor's home, or having a professor take a personal interest in a student's progress. interactions focusing on remedial activities, or on program advice, showed less of a difference between categories in participation rates. overall, when looking at interactions with faculty outside the classroom, a much larger percentage of those with perceptions of above average abilities participated than those with average or below average selfperceived abilities. conclusion this study examined student-faculty informal interaction in higher education, with a focus on equality of opportunity for under-represented groups. following the insights of critical educational theories, it questioned the assumption that students live in a meritocracy, which assumes that a fair distribution of success exists and that educational achievement can be exclusively attributed to individual factors such as effort, intelligence and diligence. on the contrary, it assumed that educational institutions are not neutral, and play a role in fostering differential achievement among students. this differential achievement is, at times, the result of planned intervention (e.g. tracking); at other times it is an unintended result of institutional and personal dynamics. whereas many studies on educational inequality have focused on intergenerational mobility and on classroom interactions, very few have examined informal teacher/student interactions. this study constitutes an attempt to contribute to this body of research. central to this approach is the examination of issues such as how different groups of students interact with faculty, why some groups are excluded (and/or selfexcluded) from these interactions, and what the implications are in terms of benefits and disadvantages. as shown in this study, different groups of students interact at different rates and in different ways with faculty. in general terms, those students who were less exclusion and inclusion in student-faculty informal interaction: a critical perspective current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 165 likely to interact with professors during their undergraduate years were those with below average self-ratings. on the other hand, those with high academic self-ratings were the most likely to have worked on a professor's research project, have faculty take personal interest in their progress, or be a guest in a professor's home. this indicates that students who are more likely to be successful in the university are also the students who are interacting more with faculty, increasing even further their chances of academic achievement. those groups who are more at risk are more often nonor low-interactors. in other words, different groups of undergraduate students benefit in different ways from student-faculty informal interaction, with the already advantaged groups having more opportunities to increase their structural position of advantage, and creating new and more subtle mechanisms of closure. in terms of future research agendas, several implications for institutional programs designed to promote student-faculty informal interaction arise from this study. there is a need for research which determines what kinds of interactions have the most impact on student success for different groups of students. more studies are needed which focus on under-represented groups in order to more fully understand the dynamics and impact of student-faculty informal interaction. this would also require an analysis of the rate of interactions most typical for each student population in their institution (i.e. by ethnicity, gender, social class, etc.), identifying high interactors, low interactors and noninteractors. efforts could be made to target low and non-interactors for participation in programs which have the most impact on their success. for those with low self-concept this includes finding ways "to help (students) feel better about themselves as learners" (hamachek, 1995, p. 422) in order to help them succeed in college. additionally, as this research study is based completely on student responses, a comparative exploration of faculty perspectives on similar interactions would add valuable insights to these processes. this being said however, the intensification of the academic workforce and a reward structure that favors publications over teaching may leave interactions outside of the classroom as a low priority for faculty members. perhaps as policy makers, university administrators, professors and students become more aware of the relevance and the potential impact of informal interaction between faculty and students, mechanisms to facilitate this type of interaction (particularly among undergraduate students) will be built into institutional structures, including criteria for facultypromotion decisions. many people's most memorable moments of their college years are the result of informal interactions with faculty. this dynamic is an important part of an undergraduate's university experience, and could have considerable impact on their professional and academic futures. furthermore, any research which attempts to more fully understand this process benefits not only the student, but also the faculty, the institution and the community at large. notes most literature on the topic tends to assume that student-faculty interactions have a positive impact. few studies mention the possible negative effects of student-faculty interaction. since any relationship between students and professors is shaped by power (zalk, 1990, p.145), there is always a possibility of abuse of power. as zalk points out, a professor can nurture or inhibit a student's ability to think critically, enhance or laurie mook 166 april 30, 2002 diminish student's self-esteem, and influence students to continue or give up. the possibility of abuse of power has implications for institutional programming, and raises the necessity of providing safeguards and clear definitions of unethical behavior for both faculty and students. the author thanks ucla higher education research institute (heri) for making these data available for analysis. references anyon, j. 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(2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 © 2021, robinson & rhodes. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 183-187. freire’s time: unlocking energy and options for out-of-school youth in jordan elizabeth robinson questscope curt rhodes questscope introduction: this is freire time one afternoon in march 2020, the jordanian ministry of education (moe) announced the immediate, indefinite closure of all schools in the country to prevent the spread of covid19. this affected 2.7 million children and youth (unesco, 2017), including 3,000 youth in a non-formal education (nfe) program jointly operated by the moe and questscope, a non-governmental organization (ngo) focused on youth on the periphery of society. within a month, 75% of these nfe youth (2,400 teenagers!) had contacted each other and their educational facilitators (teachers) through whatsapp and facebook to organize lessons and conversations with friends and family. among students in formal school nationwide, only 54% had access to (though even fewer likely attended) online classes (unhrc et al., 2020). this contrast between nfe and formal school learners made a lasting impression on educators, as it reflected youths’ desire to reconnect with their peers and facilitators. this eagerness—this drive to stay in a learning community—is a direct result of integrating the seminal approaches of brazilian educationalist paulo freire into jordan’s nfe program. nfe supports individuals’ right to make their own choices and learn how to make increasingly better-informed choices–to think critically. the teacher’s role as an educational facilitator, and their resulting mentoring relationship with students, lays a critical and hopeful foundation for out-of-school (oos) youth learners to negotiate the uncertainties of life—a challenge for which they would otherwise be unprepared and unsupported. in this way, the pedagogical approach of freire unlocks the energy of voluntary learning (learners are there because they want to be, not because they have to be) among oos youth to explore, examine and create. this is freire time. in the wake of the pandemic—which affected 1.6 billion children around the world—there has never been a more critical time to apply his pedagogy of hope. fostering a culture of learning with teachers as cultural workers, and making a path for them to walk alongside students, is a vital solution to the dysfunction of youth education and the social disconnection of these covid-influenced days. it is a solution that can cultivate hope for those at the margins, whom the pandemic pushed even farther towards the edge, as well as those who accompany them. freirean pedagogies enable two especially important outcomes to ready young people for the emerging world that cannot be “blueprinted” in advance: • critical thinking about responsibility for oneself and understanding how to succeed in the world in which one finds oneself, i.e., self-efficacy. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en robinson & rhodes current issues in comparative education 184 • critical consciousness, in which one is aware of what needs to be/can be changed in the system in which one must succeed in order to make things “better.” the following sections will explore how these approaches have been utilized as part of the nfe program in jordan. letting go of legacy education systems the questscope/moe nfe program is certified by the moe and enables 13-18 year-olds to complete the academic requirements for 10th grade within 24 months. nfe is tailored to oos youth, including drop-outs and refugees, who do not have or cannot access other forms of education, including formal education. the curriculum for nfe is designed based on the public school curriculum in jordan and is implemented through teaching pedagogies influenced by the ideas of freire and adapted to the jordan context. the approach of freire, practiced in nfe, offers remarkable opportunities for children and youth to learn and secure the benefits of education that open doors that lead up and out. the freirean model of nfe is unique because it provides certification for basic education, which, in jordan, is required for students to progress academically, vocationally/technically, or to secure regular employment. such certification was not an initial concern of freire, given his focus on adult education. however, his participatory learning approach has been very successful for young people in nfe who need certification but cannot get it from a formal system. nfe is organized around learners, to whom questscope and the moe are accountable, and who voluntarily enroll—and stay—in nfe. when a young person leaves formal education, they have a choice of what to pursue next, and they look for the best option available. ngos such as questscope must satisfy these youth, or else they—as volunteer learners—will leave the nfe program and find other opportunities, some of which will likely have negative outcomes. young people are satisfied—and will stay—if learning is safe, appealing, and has an “off-ramp” leading to someplace they want to go. if not, they will leave—and cannot be required to return. nfe is highly suitable for three types of learners. first, youth who dropped out of school after negative experiences in education because of bullying, intimidation, physical harm, or humiliation. second, refugee youth who found themselves suddenly cut off from their homes, lives, communities, and friends and faced unsafe and unsupportive educational and social environments. and third, young people disconnected by covid-imposed social isolation. educating oos children and youth is both a global issue and a local issue in jordan. in 2018, 258 million young people worldwide were not in school (unesco, 2020). in jordan, over 112,000 young people were oos (35% jordanian and 65% other nationalities), and an additional 40,000 were at an increased risk of dropping out (unicef, 2020). these figures have likely increased since covid-19. while the pandemic may be unprecedented in terms of the number of young people globally who have had their schooling disrupted, the phenomenon of losing months or years of education is not a new experience for vulnerable youth. young people in lowresource contexts constantly face competing priorities, opportunity costs, and decisions vis-à-vis how to best prepare themselves for the future they want. freire’s time current issues in comparative education 185 covid has added yet another disruptive factor to this ongoing negotiation and balancing act. in the absence of (formal) education, young people have found, and will continue to find, other alternatives that best serve their ever-shifting needs and aspirations. in this emerging post-covid era, it is a good time for educators to consider new questions about the ambitions of youth themselves. this is freire time. legacy—that is, established—education systems equate time spent in formal school (“schooling”) with learning, which is often not the case (pritchett, 2013). the learning adjusted years of schooling (lays) measure, developed by the world bank, indicates that the average jordanian spends 11 years in school but receives less than seven years of quality education during that time (filmer et al., 2018). four (almost 40%) of the years a young person spends in school are not productive for learning, and that “lost” time has a high opportunity cost. youth who live on the economic and social margins have complex strategies for survival that do not include spending 40% of their effort on unproductive activities that do not lead to any goal. a new educational theory of change nfe’s theory of change is based on three key elements: adult-youth partnerships, dialectic (not didactic) learning, and youth agency. first, learning occurs in the context of an authentic, nurturing partnership between the youth learner and the adult facilitator. the learner trusts the facilitator to accompany them through an immersive inquiry of their own experiences, and the facilitator allows the learner to determine the course and content of their own explorations. these adult-youth partnerships create an atmosphere of trust, care, and belonging in the classroom that is essential to learning. second, nfe learners engage in a critical reflection of their lived experiences through a classroom dialogue with their facilitator and peers. content learning is based on dialogue shaped around daily encounters and complexities that texture and inform the reality of all young people; the facilitator cultivates curiosity in these experiences. third, youth get opportunities to take initiative and exercise self-direction (agency) in what and how they learn. for example, the first assignment for every new nfe class is to create a “class constitution,” which sets rules for behavior within the class. learners in one nfe class decided that smoking was not allowed, so when an inspector came to the class and lit up, a student politely informed him that smoking was not permitted — a corrective action that would have been unheard of in a formal classroom context. the application of freirean principles in this theory of change has led to a new genre of educational facilitators who co-learn alongside students. the legacy system of education in jordan has a wealth of human resource potential in the form of teachers’ extensive content knowledge, which has greatly benefitted nfe. educational facilitators engage in an 80-100-hour ongoing program of formation (training) in questscope’s participatory learning methodology, which includes an initial session followed by refresher trainings every four months. self-directed professional development through communities of practice also provides facilitators with continuing education in freirean philosophy and practice. as part of the nfe program, learners also engage in extracurricular activities that range from trips to museums to stem activities. community outreach volunteers help to broaden the interest and support of the parents/community around youth, and alliances robinson & rhodes current issues in comparative education 186 are built with youths’ employers (for those who abide by international labor organization guidelines for safe work) to support education that is mutually beneficial for both the youth and the employer. in 2010, questscope and the moe partnered with the university of oxford to conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of nfe. the program was found to reduce conduct problems and violent behavior among youth within four months. youth had statistically significantly improved outcomes related to prosocial behavior, overall difficulties, and hyperactivity/attention. the study also revealed encouraging changes in social and emotional outcomes in youth who had higher levels of attendance and those in nfe centers that offered more initiatives to empower youth in their learning progress. significantly reducing violent behavior is critical for youth, as learning is almost impossible in an atmosphere where they fear for their personal safety (university of oxford, 2011). conclusion educational preparation for the future is no longer an exercise in linear projection within a known context, and formal systems of education are often faulted for not preparing young people for the world in which they must succeed. the nfe program in jordan has shown that the pedagogies of paulo freire can prepare learners for this unknowable future by cultivating the personal assets of critical thinking and critical consciousness. the educational facilitator – the adult partner – has a key role in generating the social and emotional connection and belonging that is critical to sustain freire’s approach. going forward, this practice of educational mentoring can be combined with technology to scale up both access to education and the quality of learning experiences. curt rhodes is the founder/international director of questscope, which has partnered with marginalized communities in the middle east since 1988 to strengthen communities. dr. rhodes holds an mph from the university of north carolina at chapel hill and ms and phd degrees from the university of wisconsin, madison. email: curt.rhodes@questscope.org elizabeth robinson is a researcher at questscope and an independent consultant specializing in promoting education in low-resource contexts. after working in the global south for six years, elizabeth is now pursuing a master’s degree in education and international development at university college london. she also holds a ba from tufts university. email: erobinson100@gmail.com freire’s time current issues in comparative education 187 references filmer, d. p., rogers, f. h., angrist, n., & sabarwal, s. (2018, september 27). learningadjusted years of schooling (lays): defining a new macro measure of education. world bank group. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/243261538075151093/learningadjusted-years-of-schooling-lays-defining-a-new-macro-measure-ofeducation pritchett, l. (2013). the rebirth of education: schooling ain’t learning. center for global development. unesco uis. (2017). jordan. http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/jo unesco uis. (2020). out-of-school children and youth. http://uis.unesco.org/en/topic/out-school-children-and-youth unhcr, unicef, wfp. (2020). multi-sectoral rapid needs assessment: covid19 jordan. https://www.unicef.org/jordan/media/2441/file/ran.pdf unicef. (2020). jordan country report on out-of-school children. https://www.unicef.org/jordan/media/5501/file/osc-report-en.pdf university of oxford, questscope, jordan ministry of education (2011). strengthening youth opportunities: a pilot impact and process study of empowerment-based non-formal education for out-of-school youth in amman, jordan. bora, a. et al. (2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 the art of inequality: a proposed youth social justice exhibition in augmented reality anisa bora teachers college, columbia university grace choi teachers college, columbia university thomonique moore teachers college, columbia university rongwei tang teachers college, columbia university claire yiming zheng teachers college, columbia university activist art is profoundly involved in politics and social reform (weibel, 2015). artistic practice can help increase people's awareness of critical social issues (adams, 2001), and motivate them to respond and alter their perspectives and perceptions of the environment (ryan, 2015). the development of digital technologies also provides new opportunities for digital arts. utilizing technologies as humanizing tools harnesses creation, expression, and interaction (blikstein, 2008). a core principle of the museum as a public educational institution in a democratic society is to achieve greater inclusion and represent the nation's diversity (moorhouse et al., 2019). however, museums as cultural institutions have long been silent on their origins (edwards et al., 2006) and complicity (ng et al., 2017) in establishing imperialist, colonialist, and oppressive principles. furthermore, a digital divide (bower et al., 2014) is exhibited in disparities in access to and proficiency in creative uses of digital technologies. thus, there is an existing racial and socioeconomic gap in (digital) art, activism education, and museum curation. while museums and heritage sites have adopted the use of augmented reality (ar) for educational and exhibitionary purposes by offering immersive learning opportunities for school children (moorhouse et al., 2019; srikanth, 2021), none of this previous work directly addresses honing criticality in student voices and creation in the white cube setting using digital technologies in an explicit manner. whose stories are told in museum collections, and whose are not? we believe that in fostering students’ digital creation process as well as their questioning of dominant narratives, youth can be equipped to externalize dissent and reclaim institutional spaces for their communities. as such, we raise the question: how can youth be empowered by digital technology as a channel of art activism to address issues pertinent to them and their communities that are not historically addressed in museum spaces? in response to this question, we introduce the art of inequality, a proposed 15-week long curriculum for high-school-aged youth from minoritized backgrounds that combines social justice and art-activism via the development of digital ar pieces. we drew inspiration from the teen education programs at the noguchi museum in new york city, © 2021, bora et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 192-200. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en the art of inequality current issues in comparative education 193 in which local high school students participate in workshops on digital platforms, collaborative creation, and community outreach. this particular museum’s efforts to make local student voices heard challenged us to think about ways to connect resources made available by cultural institutions throughout the united states to the youth in their surrounding communities. we draw heavily from paulo freire’s seminal work pedagogy of the oppressed in the development of our proposed curriculum to encourage and challenge students to view education as a practice of freedom and to actively participate in the world not as a static reality, but one that is constantly shifting alongside their sense of place and identity (freire, 2005; thanapornsangsuth & holbert, 2020). we specifically integrate ar as a storytelling instrument through which students are empowered to implement their transformation of self and surroundings by way of making (blikstein, 2008; papert, 1988; srikanth, 2021). we consider ar creation to align with papert’s theory of constructionism states that learners develop their understanding of the world by creating an artifact outside of themselves (papert, 1988). through ar construction, students are purposely positioned as critical designers (bower et al., 2014; holbert et al., 2020) who bring their own ideas, beliefs, and critiques of the world into reality through the use of technology. in line with freire’s notion of generative themes (freire, 2005), our proposed curriculum takes students through researching social justice issues based on their lived experiences and ultimately creating their ar interventions through construction and media-making as a means of critique. our proposed curriculum (see figure 1), broken down into four units, would effectively guide students through the aforementioned digital creation process while also supporting them as they simultaneously challenge oppressive narratives and reclaim institutional spaces, namely museums, for themselves and their communities. unit 1 aims to provide students with an introduction to and a foundational understanding of the role that art plays in activism. students learn to contextualize the impact and role that art can have on social justice movements that resonate or are personally relevant to them via a combination of activities, including lectures, digital media-making assignments, and a speaker series that invites local artists and activists to provide insights and additional mentorship to students. unit 2 invites students to think about the history and purpose of museums critically. in unit 3, students integrate their critical analysis of museum narratives and incorporate poignant generative themes (blikstein, 2008; freire, 2005) they have identified for themselves into a final digital ar piece. in unit 4, students showcase their work at a designated partner museum and exhibition site. throughout the curriculum, mentors guide students based in their communities as they establish their own understanding of the partnering museum’s existing works, how the space functions and for whom. upon completing the program, students can exit with the knowledge and skills to further engage in forms of digital art activism moving forward, thus enabling them to continue designing their own interventions and assert previously unseen narratives. bora et al. current issues in comparative education 194 figure 1 curriculum overview to illustrate the potential of the curriculum for empowering youth, we developed a prototype of a student project (see figures 3 and 4) that incorporates an artwork titled home, sweet home (1931) by american painter charles sheeler (see figure 2). this painting, along with others by the artist collectively known as the american interiors series, showcases a collection of what are considered american artifacts or americana inside the artist's home (wilson, 2011). a high school student living in detroit, michigan (where the painting is part of a museum collection) who identifies as a child of immigrants might incorporate this artwork into their final project as a way to critique what is/has been depicted as american by overlaying on top of the painting a video clip featuring the sights and sounds of fireworks as well as photos of objects from their own home connected to the art of inequality current issues in comparative education 195 their cultural background that might be perceived as ‘other’. when the painting is viewed using the ar tool, viewers would revisit the definition of americana through the lens of a first-generation american youth. in this example, this student would have the opportunity to present a non-dominant narrative in the form of critique of american life in a space traditionally preserved for dominant cultures, thereby reclaiming an institutional space. figure 2 home, sweet home (1931) by charles sheeler note. from file:charles sheeler home, sweet home 45.455 detroit institute of arts.jpg wikimedia commons, n.d. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:charles_sheeler__home,_sweet_home_-_45.455_-_detroit_institute_of_arts.jpg). in the public domain. bora et al. current issues in comparative education 196 figure 3 prototype of student project artwork with ar overlay #1 the art of inequality current issues in comparative education 197 figure 4 prototype of student project artwork with ar overlay #2 bora et al. current issues in comparative education 198 in this essay, we asserted that youth can be empowered to interrogate and critique their world through the use of digital technology and artifact construction and showcased the art of inequality curriculum as an illustrative example. specifically, the purpose of our curriculum is to bridge the racial and socioeconomic gap in digital art, activism education and museum curation. students would not only gain a deeper understanding of existing social justice issues, but they would also learn to address them in creative and meaningful ways. we recognize that our proposed curriculum is just one of many possible approaches to achieving these aims, and invite readers to consider how learning experiences that occur in other educational settings or incorporate digital technologies with different affordances for creative expression might support youth empowerment. through the creation and museum exhibition of personally relevant digital artifacts that address social justice issues, youth can utilize technology to question dominant narratives and experience using art as a vehicle for social change within their communities. acknowledgements the authors thank paulo blikstein, chelsea villareal, and fabio campos, as well as sejin park and multiple unnamed museum educators, public school art teachers, and high school students in new york city. author note correspondence concerning this article can be addressed to anisa bora. email: ayb2119@tc.columbia.edu anisa bora is a computing in education ma student in the communication, media, and learning technologies design program at teachers college, columbia university. she previously served as a curriculum designer and educator for informal stem education programs. her interests include project-based learning, curriculum design, inclusive teaching, and technology in education. grace j. choi is a master’s student in educational computing program within the communication, media, and learning technologies design program at teachers college, columbia university. her research interests include maker education, ypar, critical race literacy, and pedagogical methodologies in museums, historical societies and heritage sites, as well as adult education. thomonique moore is an instructional technology and media ma student in the communication, media, and learning technologies design program at teachers college, columbia university. she is interested in exploring how digital tools, media-making, and youth participatory action research (y-par) can be used to promote culturally relevant pedagogies and critical race literacy in classrooms. rongwei tang is a master’s student in anthropology and education at teachers college, columbia university. her research interests include media literacy education, youth’s digital practices, online activities and education technology. yiming zheng is an instructional technology and media ma student in the communication, media, and learning technologies design program at teachers college, columbia university. she is interested in researching how social organizations such as schools and corporations change under the impact of new media and technologies. the art of inequality current issues in comparative education 199 references adams, j. (2001). the makings of political art. qualitative sociology, 24(3), 311-348. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1010686807291 blikstein, p. (2008). travels in troy with freire: technology as an agent of emancipation. in p. noguera & c. a. torres (eds.), social justice education for teachers: paulo freire and the possible dream (pp. 205-244). rotterdam, netherlands: sense. bower, m., howe, c., mccredie, n., robinson, a., & grover, d. (2014). augmented reality in education – cases, places and potentials. educational media international, 51(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/09523987.2014.889400 edwards, e., gosden, c., & phillips, r. (eds.). (2006). sensible objects: colonialism, museums and material culture (1st. ed., vol. 5). berg. freire, p. (2005). pedagogy of the oppressed (mb ramos, trans.). continuum. (original work published 1970) holbert, n., dando, m., & correa, i. (2020). afrofuturism as critical constructionist design: building futures from the past and present. learning, media and technology, 45(4), 328-344. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1754237 moorhouse, n., & dieck, t. mc, & jung, t.(2019). an experiential view to children learning in museums with augmented reality. museum management and curatorship, 34(4), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2019.1578991 ng, w., ware, s. m., & greenberg, a. (2017). activating diversity and inclusion: a blueprint for museum educators as allies and change makers. journal of museum education, 42(2), 142-154. https://doi.org/10.1080/10598650.2017.1306664 papert, s. (1988). a critique of technocentrism in thinking about the school of the future. children in the information age (pp. 3-18). https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-08036464-3.50006-5 ryan, h. e. (2015). affect's effects: considering art-activism and the 2001 crisis in argentina. social movement studies, 14(1), 42-57. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2014.944893 sheeler, c. (1931). home, sweet home [painting]. detroit institute of arts, detroit, mi, united states. https://www.dia.org/art/collection/object/home-sweet-home61185.wikimedia.org. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:charles_sheeler__home,_sweet_home_-_45.455_-_detroit_institute_of_arts.jpg srikanth, a. (2021, february 4). how ar is bringing black history to life for middle schoolers across america. the hill. retrieved april 24, 2021, from https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/536562-how-vris-bringing-black-history-to-life-for-middle thanapornsangsuth, s., & holbert, n. (2020). culturally relevant constructionist design: exploring the role of community in identity development. information and learning sciences, 121(11-12), 847-867. https://doi.org/10.1108/ils-02-2020-0024 bora et al. current issues in comparative education 200 weibel, p. (ed.). (2015). global activism: art and conflict in the 21st century. zkmcenter for art and media. wilson, k. (2011). ambivalence, irony, and americana: charles sheeler’s “american interiors”. winterthur portfolio, 45(4), 249-276. https://doi.org/10.1086/663158 © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 142 april 30, 2002 exclusionary policies and practices in chinese minority education: the case of tibetan education bonnie johnson pennsylvania state university nalini chhetri pennsylvania state university introduction multicultural countries around the world have implemented mass education for schoolaged children. educational systems exist to reproduce the dominant society in which they are an integral part or to impose a new social order. "transmitting culture and socializing youth are basic goals of the public school" (gabjrcia, 1978, p.8). another goal of public education is to promote national unity and economic development. however, the development of mass education in multicultural societies has often been at the expense of minority culture and ethnic identity. schools are often the medium through which the state establishes the culture of the dominant language while at the same time depriving linguistic minority children of their right to use their mother tongue. minority education policy is fraught with political, educational, economic and social complexities. this paper examines how the government of the people's republic of china (hereafter referred to as china) modifies its educational policies to achieve separate and distinct regional objectives, which are linked to regional and ethnic differences. these policies often result in exclusionary practices. using the case of the chinese region of tibet, this paper illustrates the dichotomy of chinese educational policy: how to achieve universal education for all students and at the same time contain regional ethnic resistance against the communist government and maintain national unity. education in china china is a country of 56 "official nationalities." out of a population of 1.2 billion people, over 70 million are non-han chinese (insight guide, 1998). minority peoples in china mainly reside in areas along china's strategic and sometimes troubled international borders and often maintain close relationships with those of their group living on the other side of the border (lin, 1997). as a result of china's history of being invaded by neighboring countries, government policies often attempt to pacify the minorities living on the border by providing them with relevant social and cultural services (sharpes, 1993). education for minorities is therefore a part of china's overall defense strategy-focusing on the pacification of minorities within its borders (sharpes, 1993). in the 1950's five provinces with large minority populations were designated as autonomous minority nationality regions--xinjiang, inner-mongolia, tibet, ningxia and guangxi. for these regions "autonomous means primarily that there is increased local control over the administration of resources, taxes, birth planning, education, legal jurisdiction and religious expression" (gladney, 1994, p. 185 as cited in lin, 1997). however, since the mid-1980's, political instability caused by ethnic tension in minority provinces has resulted in governmental policies, including educational policies, that exclusionary policies and practices in chinese minority education: the case of tibetan education current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 143 focus on reestablishing national unity and a national identity (lin, 1997). these policies have resulted in many exclusionary practices that prevent minority students from fully participating in and gaining benefits from the educational system. the chinese educational system to understand china's exclusionary educational policies, it is important to first understand the structure and organization of the chinese educational system. universal primary education has been an important goal of the chinese government and is viewed as a means to improve the economy, the standard of living of its citizens, and as a way to ensure the continued existence of the communist state. to achieve these goals chinese educational policies intentionally (and inadvertently) exclude certain groups from full participation in the educational system. in china, education has been characterized by: 1) attempts to universalize elementary education, 2) achievement measured by examination, 3) a uniform curriculum laden with a nationalist message, 4) teaching styles that emphasize the authority of the teacher, and 5) demands for great amounts of memorization and recitation (postiglione, 1999). the characteristics, structure and organization of the educational system exemplify how the system excludes certain groups from school participation. (see figure 1 below). chinese law guarantees every child nine years of schooling. however, the government's ability to provide mass education is limited by both economic and societal influences. economically, the task of building over one million schools (the number required to implement this objective) is a strain on the limited resources of the government. even so, approximately 80 to 90 percent of children begin elementary school in china (postiglione, 1999). after the completion of elementary schooling, students are required to pass an examination to advance to junior high school/middle school. a portion of the examination tests students' knowledge of chinese (mandarin) because secondary education is taught in this language. this creates a barrier for linguistic minority students to advance to secondary education. for example, of the tibetan children who enroll in elementary school, less than 10 percent will go on to junior high school (sangay, 1998). there is a second examination after junior high school/ middle school to advance to high school, which is even more competitive than the first. likewise a third and final examination, called the "national examination" is required to gain admission to university. the examination system is designed to eliminate all but the most academically proficient students and is exclusionary by nature. it is particularly difficult for a linguistic minority student to advance through this system. although by law minority languages are granted equal status with mandarin, historically inequities in political and economic development illustrate that the languages are functionally unequal (postiglione, 1999). acknowledging this, the chinese government passed the law of regional minority that stipulates examinations should be given to minority students in their native languages. however, this rarely occurs in practice (sangay,1998). bonnie johnson and nalini chhetri 144 april 30, 2002 figure 1: the basic structure of the chinese educational system the more common practice is for minority students to receive "bonus points" when they take exams in chinese. however, the extra points do little to make up for the deficits of taking an examination in a foreign or second language. this preferential policy would seem to make higher education more accessible to minorities, however, minorities, especially tibetans, are still underrepresented at the university level. the "bonus points system" is a failure and continues to prevent minority students from fully participating in the chinese educational system (sangay, 1998. the exclusionary nature of the curriculum the examination system is based on a nationalized curriculum that is standardized for all subjects at all levels. therefore, "despite wide variation in geography, agriculture, climate, language and local customs, the same subjects are taught with the same materials almost all over the country" (postiglione, 1999, p.219). the underlying theme in the standardized curriculum projects the message that "china is a unified, glorious country with a great past, an uncertain but improving present and a bright future" (postiglione, 1999, p. 219). to promote a sense of this national unity the nationalized curriculum policy downplays the culture and identity of ethnic minorities. this educational policy meets with practical problems in areas occupied by ethnic minorities, who are linguistically and culturally different from the han (postiglione, 1999). one problem is "that minority nationality children become very self-abased when they find no reference to their own culture or history in school materials. when they find there is no content which can make them feel proud of being a person of their own nationality, they lose self-esteem and interest in schooling. this is reflected in the high dropout rates of minority children" (nima, as cited in postiglione, 1999, p. 134). the continued low literacy rates in these areas resulted in the modification of the standardized curriculum to accommodate the specific educational needs of minority children. under chinese law (the law of the people's republic on regional national autonomy [1984] and the constitution of the people's republic of china) minorities have a right to use and preserve their native languages (law of the people's republic of china on regional national autonomy 1984, article 36, 37 as cited in sangay, 1998). furthermore, the regional national autonomy law provides that the curricula of local schools should exclusionary policies and practices in chinese minority education: the case of tibetan education current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 145 reflect the interest of their constituencies and "ought to use textbooks in the relevant minority language and the minority language should be used as the medium of instruction" (sangay, 1998, p. 293). chinese law provides these rights to minorities, but the reality is often somewhat different. minority peoples have no real freedom to select or create a separate curriculum for their schools. in fact, the curriculum is the same for all of the schools in china because of the required examinations. students are required to be proficient in chinese to advance in school. as a result, many minority students do not receive the education that they are entitled to by law. the chinese standardized curriculum causes some minority students to drop out of school because they do not see the relevance of what they learn in school to their lives (postiglione, 1999). for example, historically the majority han culture has always been secular. the chinese educational system was based on confucianism, a philosophy of life, and not a religion. religion and education were not (and still are not) related. in contrast, in tibet religion was the main form of organized education outside the family (postiglione, 1999). the transition from religious education to mass secular education has been slow and difficult in tibet and other minority regions. minorities continue to claim that there is a need to include some religious information in the curriculum so that the children will be motivated to learn (johnson, 1999; postiglione, 1999). many minority parents believe that for their children, knowing about their language and religion is of greater importance than learning mathematics and science. this attitude often results in low school attendance rates. postiglione (1999) explains that "if members of a minority hold the view that they can use education to achieve success, they devise ways to surmount the obstacles posed by cultural divergence. if they hold, on the other hand, the view that the education system will merely strip them of their own culture and identity without giving them equal opportunity in the wider society, they will respond with resistance" (p. 214). bilingual education and national unity the fostering of a national identity is an important goal of the communist state and is necessary for its survival. since the mid-1980's political instability caused by ethnic tension in minority provinces has resulted in governmental policies, including educational policies, that focus on reestablishing national unity and a national identity (lin, 1997). these policies have resulted in many exclusionary practices. this fact has led to the creation of separate but distinct bilingual policies depending on the political objectives of the chinese government in that area. for example, in tibet, the teaching of the indigenous language (tibetan) is discouraged because of its association with the tibetan nationalistic movement. however, in hong kong, the government actively promotes the local dialect of cantonese to erase the prevalence of english language--a legacy of british colonialism. although the ultimate goal of both policies is to promote a national identity, one policy promotes the use of native languages and the other strongly discourages it. consequently, the political agenda often eclipses appropriate educational practices. historically, schools in minority regions oriented students toward assimilation and conformity to the centralized control of the chinese government. during the cultural revolution (1966-1976) minority customs were denounced as "backward" and minority schools were forced to use only chinese to teach the required standardized national bonnie johnson and nalini chhetri 146 april 30, 2002 curriculum (lin, 1997). however, since 1978, the government's policy toward minorities has changed. facing ethnic tensions and the possible disintegration of the country, the chinese government has adopted various measures to improve relationships with minorities (lin, 1997). minority families are permitted to have more than one child, and are sometimes exempted from paying taxes to the central government (johnson, 1999). other efforts include increasing educational opportunities for minority children by establishing boarding schools, conducting some instruction in local languages, increasing teacher salaries in minority regions, and lowering requirements and including affirmative action consideration for university admission. attempts to improve relationships between the central chinese government and minority groups have not improved the educational situation in minority regions. although the chinese government claims to have made "tremendous efforts to promote the culture and education of the minority nationalities," (state council 1992, p. 58, as cited in sangay, 1998, p. 291) in some areas two-thirds or less of minority students finish primary school (chen kai et al., 1996 as cited in lin, 1997). in tibet, of the students who enter primary school, 89.4 percent do not make it to secondary school (li, 1986 as cited in sangay, 1998). many of the minority students drop out because they fail to qualify in the chinese language examination (li, 1986 as cited in sangay, 1998). since the mid-1980's the chinese government has advocated bilingual education for the "preservation and promotion of minority culture" (lin, 1997, p.195).[1] these policies acknowledge that language carries important cultural knowledge and that native languages help minority cultures inherit and preserve their cultural values and beliefs (lin, 1997). but the chinese government's decision to allow bilingual education is not completely altruistic; it has a distinctly political purpose. in tibet the policy is designed to enhance political stability in an otherwise unstable area by making it appear that tibetans are truly "autonomous" in language and culture (lin, 1997). however, the appearance of autonomy was the only thing accomplished by this policy. the absence of minority language textbooks and bilingual teachers are evidence of the lack of commitment of the chinese government to honestly implement bilingual education policies in tibet. the problems with bilingual education in china "the number and diversity of languages used by the non-han peoples of china is a formidable barrier to the popularization of education in china's rural and remote frontier regions" (postiglione, 1999, p. 95). estimates of the number of mother tongues spoken in people's republic of china range from 80-100. how to deal with this diversity has been a challenge to the chinese government. since literacy is essential for achieving the goals of state schooling, scholars in china advocate bilingual education for minority students (lin, 1997). "they maintain that to teach in the language of minority students is essential for the development of their intellectual ability, particularly for those living in remote areas who have little contact with the han culture and who speak only their own native language" (lin, 1997, p. 195). scholars argue that bilingual education would build a bridge between home and school and could increase attendance rates and strengthen socialization into national ideologies (postiglione, 1999; lin, 1997; bass, 1998). however, they also admit that the socialization exclusionary policies and practices in chinese minority education: the case of tibetan education current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 147 process has not always resulted in obtaining the goal of national unity. although minorities have a right to use their own language, regional and local officials (who are mostly han chinese) make most of the decisions on language usage and language of instruction in the schools. this fact creates a wide variety in the goals and methods of bilingual education in china and makes it difficult to evaluate the overall effectiveness of bilingual education programs in minority areas. resistance to bilingual education many schools in minority areas do not utilize bilingual education because there is considerable resistance by some minority parents, government officials and educators to the idea of teaching both the minority language and chinese (postiglione, 1999). this is justified by claims that the han chinese language, is "international" and therefore should be the main education language and medium of instruction (postiglione, 1999). officials believe that the use of mandarin typifies the chinese nation as a whole and serves the role of presenting a unified face to the world (wang jun as cited in postiglione, 1999). there is also the lingering belief in many public officials that "to learn chinese mean(s) one (becomes) chinese" (postiglione, 1999, p. 61). finally, historically the concept of culture in china was linked to literacy in chinese. "the chinese term wen, translated as 'literature, writing, inscription,' is a central part of the idea of culture. to be "cultured" is to possess wen or 'literateness' and to be transformed by such knowledge of wen" (postiglione, 1999, p. 60). therefore, to many han chinese the only way to civilize or acculturate the minority nationalities is to have them become literate in mandarin. some resistance to bilingual education comes from minority parents who believe the minority language may "not help their children's future" (sangay, 1998, p. 294). minority parents are concerned about their children's ability to pass the qualifying examinations to move on to higher education. school administrators and teachers also have objections to bilingual education. some fear that the study of a native language will slow the learning of chinese. others object because of the lack of textbooks and teaching materials to facilitate the teaching of the minority language. even if minority textbooks are available, teachers fear that they will not contain the same curricula as the chinese language textbooks, needed for the national examinations. the biggest obstacle to bilingual education in china is the lack of qualified teachers. "in china, as elsewhere, scarcities of human resources (qualified minority language teachers) and material resources (texts and materials in minority languages) are obstacles to the implementation and effectiveness of bilingual education policies" (postiglione, 1999, p. 95). there is a severe shortage of qualified native language speaking minority teachers. over the last 20 years various measures have been designed to encourage graduates from teacher education colleges to work in minority regions (lin, 1997). teachers willing to work in minority areas are given improved working conditions, they receive higher wages, and they are permitted to have a second child (lin, 1997; johnson, 1999). unfortunately, the incentives have done little to improve the situation and the trend of minority teacher shortages is likely to continue for some time. gerard postiglione and other experts in chinese minority education believe that to reduce the exclusionary nature of the language policy, china needs to construct a strong bonnie johnson and nalini chhetri 148 april 30, 2002 bilingual education program. postiglione points out the dichotomy of china's position. on the one hand, "without mother tongue instruction, china cannot possibly enroll and keep monolingual linguistic minority children in school, but on the other hand, without providing minority children instruction in mandarin [chinese] the chinese government cannot socialize these children into the political, cultural and economic mainstream of chinese society. to be successful, the chinese educational system needs to produce people who are 'both ethnic and expert'" (postiglione,1999,p.124). a case study of education in tibet to most tibetans, prior to the chinese takeover in 1951, tibet was an independent nation. from the chinese perspective, however, tibet has always been a part of china. china traces its claims to tibet back to 1792 when the qing emperor sent chinese troops to drive back the invading nepalese. for the qing dynasty, tibet was an important buffer state (hessler, 1999). imperial administrators and armies were sent to the region to ensure peace, but the tibetans were left to maintain authority over most internal affairs (hessler, 1999). in the early 1900's the qing dynasty collapsed and western powers, specifically the british, invaded tibet and forced the dalai lama to establish open relations with them. as the result of nationalistic rhetoric, china viewed the loss of tibet as disgraceful; a humiliation inflicted on china by foreign powers. "by the time mao zedong founded the people's republic of china in 1949, tibet had figured into the nation's pre-eminent task: the reunification of the once-powerful motherland" (hessler, 1999, p. 59). when the chinese took over tibet the region was a feudal-theocracy. ninety-five percent of the population were hereditary serfs and/or slaves owned by monasteries and nobles (hessler, 1999). the ills of the feudal system were part of the rationale for why china needed to "liberate" tibet. mao's regime viewed the class differentiation in tibet as a threat to the communist ideology. tibetans were (and still are) viewed as "backward" and ignorant. they needed to be "civilized." the tibetan language was also ridiculed because it was associated with tibetan nationalism, but equally importantly it was denounced because of its use of "honorific" phrases that reinforce class distinctions. prior to 1951, tibet had its own traditional form of education--monastic education. tibetan tradition required that all families with more than two sons send one of them to a monastery to become a monk (lin, 1997). schools were housed in large monasteries of tibetan buddhism. the schools taught basic literacy in tibetan and the values and teachings of the religion. advanced academies for the in-depth study of tibetan buddhism and medicine also existed. monastic education was an early form of organized formal education in tibet. private schools also existed in pre-"liberated" tibet. in the eighteenth century it was a common practice for a monk or retired government official to establish a school in their home (sangay, 1998). the private school admission was open to both rich and poor children. school fees did not exist, but gifts were often given to the teacher during the tibetan new year (sangay, 1998). the belief was that the imparting of wisdom was good for the community. exclusionary policies and practices in chinese minority education: the case of tibetan education current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 149 with the advent of communism in tibet, from 1950's onward, the chinese opened schools to spread the communist ideology and power base (sangay, 1998). students were paid silver coins to join the communist party and attend school. the goal of the communist government was to assimilate the tibetans into the han chinese culture. chinese became the official language in all schools, and as a result, tibetans grew up illiterate in both chinese and tibetan (sangay, 1998). tibet remains one of the least literate regions in china. the chinese government asserts that the illiteracy rate in tibet is at 44.43 percent, a vast improvement over the estimated 90 percent illiteracy rate at "liberation" (sangay, 1998). however, some outside observers put the illiteracy rate in tibet as high as 74.31 percent (chinese education, 1989 as cited in sangay, 1998. one reason for the low literacy rate is the lack of school attendance. "china in general has a 98.4 percent enrollment rate of primary-school-age children, whereas tibet lags behind with only a 66.6 percent enrollment rate" (china statistical yearbook, 1995; tibet statistical yearbook, 1995 as cited in sangay, 1999, p. 292). another major problem for tibetan education is the lack of qualified teachers. "seventy percent of teachers …have no more than a high or middle school education. in rural areas, some teachers cannot teach above grade three because [they] have the knowledge standards of no more than a fifth year school student" (li, 1986 as cited in sangay, 1999, p. 293). the chinese government has created incentives for chinese teachers to relocate and teach in tibet. however, because of the generally held belief in china that living at high altitudes does damage to one's health, it is usually only those who cannot find jobs in their home province who move to tibet. constitutional rights and tibetan education although chinese law provides certain linguistic rights to minorities, the reality is that chinese, not tibetan, is used for all official and judicial purposes and is the "medium of instruction" in most tibetan schools. "the exception used to be the tibetan primary schools, where all the courses are taught in tibetan, but recently these have begun to teach [in] the chinese language" (sangay, 1999, p. 294). since 1997, from the first grade of primary school, chinese has become the language of instruction in almost every school. government officials claim that the shift back to chinese language instruction is the result of many minority parents believing "that the sole use of tibetan may not help their children's future" (sangay, 1999, p. 294). indeed, exclusionary political and economic policies play a role in the decision to use chinese as the language of instruction. each year top-ranking students from the elementary schools are sent to other "tibetan secondary schools" in china (postiglione, 1999). however, many minority parents in tibet resist and oppose this controversial policy which is viewed as a systematic way to forcibly assimilate tibetans into the chinese culture. students are sent to china when they are very young and return home "substantially assimilated into chinese culture and find it difficult to reintegrate into tibetan culture" (sangay, 1998 p. 296). this practice diminishes the constitutional right of minorities to maintain and preserve their culture and leads to children who feel excluded from both chinese and tibetan society. higher education for tibetans bonnie johnson and nalini chhetri 150 april 30, 2002 china has one of the oldest and largest programs of state-sponsored preferential policies for ethnic minorities. unfortunately, until recently the preferential policies were often misused by han chinese who reclassified themselves as tibetan (or another minority) to take advantage of these programs (postiglione, 1998). "reclassified" hans occupy slots in the university that would otherwise be filled by tibetans. another limitation to tibetan higher education is the lack of universities in the region. the small number of tibetans who do get a higher education usually attend teacher colleges. until 1985, the tibetan autonomous region teachers' college was the only institution of higher learning in the region. renamed the tibet university, today the school offers a wider range of degrees, but it still admits very few students and is considered a low quality school. the lack of institutions of higher learning effectively excludes tibetans from being integrated into the economic and societal mainstream. conclusions in china, public school enrollments will continue to be transformed by an increase in the number of students who bring linguistic and cultural diversity with them to school. the issue of how to implement universal education for all children and at the same time preserve the language and culture of minority students is a problem that china must face. china's educational success in tibet (and other minority regions) will depend on her ability to engage ethnic students in the universal primary school system. for universal education to be embraced it must be seen as a way to improve one's situation in life. minority students must believe that there is a possibility of making it through the selective secondary program and gaining a place at a university. however, if public education does little more than assimilate the tibetan students into han culture, minority students will continue to dropout of school and consequently be excluded from enjoying the privileges of education. bilingual education that focuses on the teaching of tibetan beyond the elementary level is one way that tibetan culture could be infused into the school system, and has the possibility to improve the overall quality of learning and enhance the self-confidence of minority students. if bilingual education is utilized in tibet to institutionalize the importance of the minority culture and language then attendance rates may increase and the goal of universal education may be reached. however, the probability of tibetan language instruction beyond the elementary level is unlikely because the chinese government recognizes that tibetan language is linked with tibetan nationalism and is therefore a threat to national unity. bilingual education can help to ensure equal access to education. a fully implemented bilingual education program using a student's native language (to varying degrees), designed and implemented at the local level, is a way to encourage minority participation in public schools, increase academic performance of minority students and create a truly multicultural society. however, in china the government fears that a multicultural society would threaten the communist state by creating distinct social groups that could develop into divisive social classes. exclusionary practices have been implemented to prevent this from occurring. exclusionary policies and practices in chinese minority education: the case of tibetan education current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 151 the debate over bilingual education is part of a larger political debate over two competing visions of the future--diverse societies made up of many cultures or one societal or global culture. while some praise diversity, others believe that their country will be divided by differences. china has embraced a multilingual approach. however, lack of policy enforcement and conflicting political forces within the nation could continue to make bilingual education a policy dilemma for many years to come. the debate over bilingual education is part of a larger political debate over two competing visions of the future--diverse societies made up of many cultures or one societal or global culture. while some praise diversity, others believe that their country will be divided by differences. china has embraced a multilingual approach. however, lack of policy enforcement and conflicting political forces within the nation could continue to make bilingual education a policy dilemma for many years to come. notes 1. bilingual education in china is directed at the language minority students, who are required to be proficient in their native language as well as chinese (mandarin). 2. important events in tibet and tibetan education since 1950: date event 1951 first conference on minority nationality education held in beijing. 1952 lhasa primary school opened. 1956 second conference on minority nationality education held in beijing. lhasa secondary school opened. 1959 lhasa uprising. 19601962 land reforms. aristocratic and monastic estates broken up. wide spread famine. 1965 vocational schools established. 19661976 cultural revolution no tibetan language instruction. minority nationality education abolished. expansion of primary and secondary education. university admission dependent on class origin. 1978 university entrance exams reintroduced. 1980, april first forum on work in the tar -guarantee of use of tibetan as the first language in school and society, state funding for education and the transfer of han chinese personnel out of the tar. "putting more tibetans in the saddle" was the slogan. 1980, may apology to tibetans by hu yaobang, the general secretary of the ccp central committee. mid 1980s han chinese entrepreneurs migrate to tibet in large numbers. large declines in school enrollment. 1984 law on regional autonomy passed. policy established to send tibetan students to secondary school in china. 1985 tibetan language primary schools established. school tuition established. han chinese governmental officials sent into the tar in large numbers. the bonnie johnson and nalini chhetri 152 april 30, 2002 mention of transferring out han chinese officials disappears from public discourse. tar teacher's college became tibet university, a comprehensive university. tar opened to tourism. policy on the "provisions on the study, use, and development of spoken and written tibetan" was established. chinese government attacked the dalai lama. public demonstrations followed. these protests effected tibetan education. 1987 monasteries viewed as a threat to china's security and therefore monastic education, including literacy education, in rural areas declined. the school curriculum narrowed. it focused on chinese culture and language at the expense of tibetan cultural information and language instruction. 1989 tibetan secondary school opened in beijing. experimental tibetan language schools operated (1989-1996). tibet was under martial law from 1989-1990. 1993 designated as the "year of education in the tar" which led to more money to education. by 1994 educational expenditures were double the 1990 level (1995 tar statistical yearbook). riots in lhasa. attacks focused on han chinese businesses. mid 1990's the large number of han chinese children in the tibetan school system results in chinese being the language of instruction in secondary schools. 1994 the policy of sending tibetan children to study in mainland china was extended to include han chinese students, further decreasing the number of tibetan in secondary and higher education. 1994-1997 = "anti-dalai lama" campaign by the chinese government. 1996 tibetan language instruction at the secondary level was abandoned. financial and political considerations played a role in this policy decision. chinese conduct the "propagation of atheism" campaign. 1997 introduction of chinese language instruction from the first grade. 1996 present de-emphasis of tibetan language and culture in schools. references bass, c. (1998). education in tibet. london: zed books. garcia, r.l. (1978). fostering a pluralistic society through multi-ethnic education. bloomington, in: phi delta kappa educational foundation. hessler, p. (1999, february). tibet through chinese eyes. the atlantic monthly, 283 (2), 56-66. insight guide to china. (1998). langensche publisher. johnson, b. (1999). interview with teachers at lhasa language school. lhasa, tibet, june 26, 1999. lin, j. (1997a, september-october). brief summary of the history of evolution of school education in the ganzi tibetan region. chinese education and society, 30 (5), 7-25. exclusionary policies and practices in chinese minority education: the case of tibetan education current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 153 lin, j. (1997b). policies and practices of bilingual education for the minorities in china. journal of multilingual and multicultural development, 18 (3), 193-205. postiglione, g. (1999). china's national minority education: culture, schooling and development. new york: falmer press. sangay, l. (1998). education rights for tibetans in tibet and india. in j.d. montgomery (ed.), human rights: positive policies in asia and the pacific rim (pp. 285-307). hollis, nh: hollis publishing company. sharpes, d.k. (1993, spring). perspectives on educating minority teachers in the people's republic of china. teacher education quarterly, 20 (2), 77-84. simpson, p. (2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 what can decolonial critiques & critical pedagogy teach the field of human rights education? peter simpson teachers college, columbia university foley jr., w.j. (2021). suggestions for critical awareness, accountability, and transformation in human rights education. current issues in comparative education, 23(1), 77-89. keywords: human rights education, transformation, participatory, democratic citizenship, community engagement introduction human rights education (hre) is a practice that endeavors to fully develop the human personality and strengthen respect for fundamental freedoms (the universal declaration of human rights, 1948). despite the prevalence of the universal declaration of human rights (udhr) however, william foley offers a critical reading of the human rights field and its underlying assumptions, motivated by participatory and transformative critiques. these critiques identify gaps and slippages that frequently undergird contemporary approaches to human rights education. in doing so, foley challenges students, scholars and practitioners to consider the mass dissemination of human rights in privileging western ideologies and practices. he argues for critical pedagogy to be more thoroughly embedded in the teaching of human rights education, allowing for the reimagination of the field as we currently know it. in this review, i offer an overview of decolonial critiques and critical pedagogy and apply them to the field of human rights education. engaging with these critiques provides an alternative understanding of mainstream approaches to human rights and its teaching. doing so also offers several possibilities for the reenactment of human rights that counter the dominance of the field’s predication on asymmetrical power relations and western epistemologies. given the underutilization of critical and decolonial critiques within the field of comparative and international education, foley’s piece is a welcomed edition. his work similarly builds on the work of additional scholars including keet (2014a, 2015, 2017), tibbitts (2015, 2017) and tibbitts and fernekes (2011), all of whom provide concrete examples of how critical human rights education (chre) can be implemented in a variety of educational contexts. foley also criticizes the universal application of human rights as espoused by the udhr, offering readers a starting point to make human rights education more participatory and present in informal and semi-formal schooling environments. his interventions are particularly relevant to the current issues in comparative education’s 2021 special issue because it allows a wider number of community members such as students and parents, to develop and enact a critical consciousness in favor of social change. © 2021, simpson. cc by 4.0 current issues in comparative education 23(2), 201-206. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en simpson current issues in comparative education 202 human rights discourses foley’s first section provides a useful overview of human rights and their relationship with the wider field of comparative and international education (cie). his critical evaluation of hre begins with an analysis of where it is taught, noting that despite their universal nature, human rights are not ubiquitously applied in practice (78). authors such as anderson-levitt (2012) and garnett russell (2016, 2017, 2018) concur with foley, noting that stakeholders often simultaneously interact with local and world cultures, adapting how universal discourses, including human rights, are applied in local contexts. foley goes on to highlight that critical pedagogy and practice are central to disrupting longstanding approaches, redressing asymmetrical power structures, and extending access to practitioners outside of formal academic contexts. i use tibbitts’ transformational model (2017) as a starting point, which allows for the questioning of the udhr as the fundamental source of knowledge (keet 2014a) and underscores the embedded cultural and historical frameworks the udhr takes for granted. although the second section of foley’s text focuses on tibbitts’ two additional models of human rights education, awareness and accountability respectively, the final model, transformation, is most closely aligned to freirean critical praxis. this alignment empowers learners to understand their unique role in helping or hindering human rights, and how this is directly related to larger systemic social change. more specifically, transformational human rights education interrogates the foundation of the field, challenging its universalized adoption, which mirrors conversations in the wider field of comparative and international education focused on world culture theory and loose coupling (carney, rappleye & silova 2012). thus, although world culture acknowledges the local enactment of world-level phenomena (such as hre), assumptions that similar values and understandings undergird human rights, often minimize the wide divergences within the field. foley’s myriad examples including the zinn education project (2019), the teaching tolerance (tt) project, and the organization, facing history (2019), offer the field salient instances of human rights that are embedded and localized to specific cultural and historical contexts, countering the tendency to globalize human rights education. collectively, these three organizations provide a space for competing epistemological views to develop through the promotion of community engagement practices and democratic citizenship. foley’s focus on el puente’s project-based learning approach to education is another example of participatory-based education, community engagement, and the deployment of global human rights discourse in a local context. in so doing, foley severely expands the possibilities of advancing critical human rights and the central tenets of democratic citizenship beyond the classroom setting alone. doing so similarly underscores the role community engagement plays in transforming power relations and the context and structure of schooling. in particular, el puente is aided by the active involvement of non-academic stakeholders such as community members and practitioners, who increase equity in the decision-making and implementation processes of curriculum and pedagogy. thus, participants understand the relevance of human rights in their own contexts. critical international education research in addition to foley’s focus on the field of human rights, my review has relevance for other education sectors and how professionals engage discourse around higher and international education research and practice. foley’s multiple examples use a critical and power-conscious lens to understand emergent actors, namely non-academic stakeholders, within the field of hre. criticality as a framework emphasizes the deconstruction and what can decolonial critiques & critical pedagogy teach current issues in comparative education 203 critique of social institutions and the transformation of institutions for the outcome of social justice (crotty 1998). critical research also promotes transforming the status quo, rectifying injustices, and inequalities, and understanding power relations to illuminate exploitation and marginalization (crotty 1998, giroux 2011). foley also builds on the work of critical scholars such as tikly and bond (2013) and stein and andreotti (2017), who assert that criticality is manifested through explicit references to colonialism and by an alignment with postcolonial and decolonial thought. his piece is thus, a steppingstone towards transforming and reorienting the field of human rights education. given the action-oriented nature of foley’s writing, he calls for social change, greater equity in educational systems, and more symmetrical power structures. this is a rarity in the wider field, where concrete action steps for engaging in recommended practices are often not thoroughly delineated. furthermore, given the critical, transformative, and purposeful contributions of foley’s work, i include specific and comprehensive starting points. for example, dache et al. (2021) argues that black and brown neighborhoods created a street pedagogy (calle) that relies on community spaces such as recreational facilities, bodegas, and churches, to employ activist strategies and identity formation beyond the campus walls (2). these often academically overlooked places of knowledge formation and dissemination challenge long-standing discourses that invisibilize learning outside of academic centers. drawing specifically on community cultural wealth, dache et al. reject higher learning in college and universities as the only way forward (8). instead, calle allows for the reimagination of a future within the limitations of current cicumstances. el puente functions using calle, situating itself as a site for public resistance, and an avenue toward decolonial imaginaries with community members at the forefront. criticality also allows us as informed students, researchers and practitioners within the field to ask new questions surrounding how to deepen relationships between higher education institutions and the surrounding community, and how to utilize institutional resources to learn from the community. these questions underscore the salience of decolonial and critical critiques to both the field of human rights and wider field of education. these fields continue to grapple with the kind of interventions that may be adequate to address today’s myriad challenges. climate change, the coronavirus (covid19) pandemic, and increasingly stratified societies, are prompting the field to both acknowledge and respond to these rapidly changing conditions. thus, going forward, we will have to contend with the gap between questions raised by decolonial and critical critiques and more long-established questions that predominate the fields of human rights and international education. nonetheless, how we engage in research related to these topics can allow us to maintain measure with these challenges. research implications as members of the comparative and international education field mark the onehundredth anniversary of paulo freire’s birth, international educators need to reimagine ways of helping students fundamentally connect their lived-experiences to our field’s wider knowledge base. william foley’s seminal writing brings issues related to critical pedagogy, human rights, and participatory education to the forefront of the field. collectively, the examples highlighted provide a lens into equity-oriented approaches to education and a deeper understanding of how to conceptualize these reforms. foley’s work additionally demonstrates narrow discourses surrounding the field of human rights, underscoring the need for deeper dialogue and engagement of new perspectives. going forward, education scholarship can be better utilized by non-academic stakeholders by deepening collaboration between scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and research participants. design thinking (dt), espoused by lake, flannery and kearns simpson current issues in comparative education 204 (2021) offers powerful insight into stakeholder engagement practices, arguing that dt facilitates working in teams to recognize diverse contributions and engaging in active listening in order to find shared meaning. the iterative, relational and context-responsive process enables for the development of valued and viable responses to challenges through the capacity building of all stakeholders. stein et al. (2021)’s developing stamina for decolonizing higher education: a workbook for non-indigenous people, is a timely resource that allows readers to balance the imperatives of intellectual, affective and relational approaches to decolonization. by moving beyond the inherent limitations of institutional and non-institutional spaces, the co-authors gesture towards approaches that map our responsibilities to indigenous communities alongside what is feasible in each of our contexts. ultimately, design thinking and developing stamina, prepare us to face the inherent complexity, uncertainty, complicity, and paradoxes within the fields of human rights and education. peter simpson is a master’s student at teachers college, columbia university in the department of international and transcultural studies. his research and professional interests include international higher education and the third mission of colleges and universities. what can decolonial critiques & critical pedagogy teach current issues in comparative education 205 references anderson-levitt, k. m. 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(2019). why teach people’s history. https://www.zinnedproject.org/why 6_badami_fatima_praxis for a post-information future evaluating the impact of a pedagogical framework based on experiential learning current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 22, issue 1, special issue 2020 © 2020, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 22(1), 83-103. praxis for a post-information future: evaluating the impact of a pedagogical framework based on experiential learning hasnain r. badami edlab pakistan rubab fatima graduate school of education, harvard university this paper traces the implementation of a pedagogical framework in a low-cost private school in karachi designed to put students’ engagement with the world at the center of the learning process. the need for such a framework arose as a response to the realization that education system in pakistan is lagging behind in preparing children of a post-information future. through classroom observations, formal and informal interviews, and assessment of lesson plans conducted over the period of a year, the study investigated whether a learning cycle based on experiential learning could enhance student engagement in the learning process and help them develop the skills necessary to navigate an increasingly uncertain future. the observations before and after the training revealed significant impact on such variables as divergent thinking, the ability to ask open-ended questions, and willingness to probe concepts deeper as opposed to passive learning. keywords: student engagement, learning cycle, experiential learning, critical pedagogy, lesson planning, critical thinking, instructional design educators, social scientists, and policy makers agree that pakistan is facing an education emergency in matters of both quantity and quality. while we lament the 22.8 million children out of school in the country (unicef, 2020), deficiency of trained teachers; lack of unified curriculum; outdated textbooks; multiple examination boards, and unrealized policies are some of the many hurdles facing provision of quality education in the country (lall, 2012; siddiqui, 2016). moreover, the existence of multiple educational institutions – public schools, elite private schools, madaris, etc. – cater to particular socioeconomic classes and contribute to further social stratification which also exacerbate the challenges (malik, 2012; rahman, 2004; siddiqui, 2012). these difficulties have resulted in reducing education from being a transformative experience for its seekers and the society as a whole to merely being a time-bound process of acquiring knowledge that is incomprehensible and irrelevant to the current local and global scenario. with their focus on transmitting a fixed amount of knowledge, rote-memorization, and standardized testing, education system in pakistan appears to be rooted in pedagogies of the past while preparing learners for an ever-evolving and unpredictable future (shabeen, 2011; malik, 2012). such an approach, which papert (1993) terms as instructionism, was promising in industrial age but is hardly a solution to the problems posed in the 21st century. we are quickly moving towards a post–information age, which is characterized by civic praxis for a post-information future current issues in comparative education 84 disengagement despite an influx of information and increasing social connectedness (taube, 2004). while the present pedagogical model is driven primarily by the needs of industrial age that assumes a one-size-fits-all approach, this age poses a unique crisis of understanding and demands a pedagogy that not only builds “deep conceptual understanding” (sawyer, 2014, p. 2) but also allows the learner to position himself and his knowledge in relation to the world. hence, the post-information era necessitates the development of individuals’ engagement with global issues together with conceptual development. this paper presents a pedagogical framework for training teachers to reconceptualize the purpose of education as a tool for personal and social transformation. the study described in the paper trained teachers of a trust-based school in pakistan on using the framework to increase students’ engagement with the world. findings from posttraining assessments show that students demonstrated – among others – increased ability to connect classroom concepts to the real world, to ask open-ended questions, and to engage in critical discussions. beginning with a brief overview of the need for such a framework, the paper summarizes literature on experiential learning and critical pedagogy – two theories that form the basis of the framework presented. next, the paper delves into a description of the 5a framework, using an example from the study. the two succeeding sections on findings and discussion present the impact of implementing the framework. background of the study the framework proposed in this paper is one part of a year-long consultancy program for school development operating in karachi, pakistan. the need for a framework arose in response to the observation that one-time workshops and training have limited impact on empowering teachers and enhancing pedagogy. while there is an abundance of research on sound pedagogical practices, there are no holistic frameworks that provide a sustainable approach to teacher development and meaningful learning in the classroom. an initial assessment of teaching practices employed at the school under study showed that passive learning was a pervasive issue in the classrooms. this meant that students were disengaged with what they were learning and could not relate it to their own experiences owing to the use of rotelearning or lecture-based teaching practices. simultaneously, content presented to the students was disconnected with the world outside as a result of – among others – outdated or missing real-life examples and rigid or unquestionable conclusions in the texts. an example of this phenomenon was an observation made by the authors in a class session where grade 7 students were learning about climate change. the teacher read and translated the social studies chapter on climate change into native language, explained what it said, and students were finally made to answer questions that tested whether they understood what was written in the book. while at the end of the class the students could narrate a handful of facts relating to the topic, they did not come out of the learning process more aware of the implication of climate change, how it impacts our societies socially and economically, possible political and economic reasons behind the issue, and more importantly, their responsibility as citizens of the world. such observations led the authors of this study to peruse literature on 21st badami & fatima current issues in comparative education 85 century pedagogy that aimed at promoting students’ engagement of the learning process with their lived experiences as well as local and global issues. literature review borrowing from the authors’ academic training in philosophy and psychology respectively, the 5a framework synthesizes research on experiential learning and critical pedagogy, presenting a code of practice that turns students into primary actors in the learning process. as part of the framework, the classroom is reconceptualized as a space for crafting an experience for the learner and the teachers as masters of that craft. this method stands in contrast to narrative education or the ‘banking concept of education’ criticized by freire (1968/2005) in his seminal work, pedagogy of the oppressed. freire (2005) cogently articulates the oppressive nature of the modern education system where the learner is merely a passive recipient of disembodied knowledge that is narrated to the student by the teacher as a primary actor. the alternative, as the twentieth century scholars argued, is critical pedagogy. giroux (2019) interprets critical pedagogy as one that “views education as central to creating students who are socially responsible and civically engaged citizens” and distinguishes it from a pedagogy of repression that exists “to wield authority over passive subjects” (p. 509). in the same vein, building on the works of earlier pragmatic philosophers as well as social and cognitive psychologists, kolb (2015) argued that learning is the result of the interplay between grasping and transforming experience. as opposed to the purely behavioral or cognitive view of learning, experiential learning emphasizes the necessity of combining sense experience with higher order reflection to create knowledge that can be used in novel situations. while both theories – experiential learning and critical pedagogy – define two distinct philosophies of teaching and learning, their emphasis on making learning a process of critical engagement with lived experience proves to be a fitting response to the demands of 21st century education. the current pedagogical trajectory – that considers knowledge as fixed and teachers as the ultimate dispensers of that knowledge – is centered around the age-old question: what should students know about the world? alternatively, the concept of student engagement with the world argues that a different approach to designing curriculum and deploying pedagogy is needed which instead inquires: what do my students think about the world? this idea captures, to some degree, freire’s notion of “reading the world” (freire & macedo, 2005). similar to freire’s idea that reading of the word and world are interconnected, students’ engagement with the world outlines the idea that the learning process is not merely an identification or comprehension of the world by the students but also a positioning of the self in the world. eleanor duckworth (2006) mentions a similar notion in her book, the having of wonderful ideas. she writes, as lisa schneier (personal communication, 1997) has said, we must find ways to present subject matter that will enable learners to get at their own thoughts about it. then we must take those thoughts seriously, and set about helping students to pursue them in greater breadth and depth. (p. xiii) this thought resonated with many twentieth century educationists such as earl c. kelly, who proposed that learning is the process of interacting with experience and deducing meaning from it (raiola, 2011). this serves as a reminder for educators to praxis for a post-information future current issues in comparative education 86 consider education as an interactive and immersive experience as opposed to merely being a narration of facts expounded by theorists or researchers of the past. in the same vein, rachel carson (1988) – a marine biologist and educator – presented a contrast between the learning process as a “way for the child to want to know” and education just being “a diet of facts” (p. 33). all of these educators present a mutual vision of what a pedagogy built on students’ engagement with the world represents and its significance in the learning process. the 5as – a theoretical framework adopting from the work on experiential learning, the process reflects the neurological basis of learning whereby new experiences – synaptic activation – modify neural pathways, resulting in growth and pruning of neural networks (zull, 2002; 2011). similarly, the framework follows a simple process for forming new learning: • experiencing a phenomenon • making sense of the experience • forming a judgement about the experience deriving from the above, the framework comprises five phases: aim, activate, analyze, apply, assess (see figure 1). in the classroom, teachers enable students to experience learning as a process of engaging with the world by guiding students through these phases. unlike traditional pedagogies, the 5a framework blurs the clear demarcation between the roles of the teacher and student. instead the students and their experience of the world become the primary focus of the learning process and the teachers assume the role of the “leader-facilitator,” that is: they simultaneously provide vision while also extending freedom to the students (breunig, 2011, p. 60). freire (2005), carson (1988), duckworth (2006), and many others have also reinforced the notion of the teaching and learning process being mutual. the following subsections outline the five phases in detail and present examples from a grade 6 lesson on the impact of plastic on the environment conducted by a teacher as part of this study (see table 2). figure 1. illustration of the 5a framework badami & fatima current issues in comparative education 87 aim as part of the 5a framework, the learning process is a journey of discovering meaningful ideas that help learners understand their experience of the world. the first phase of the framework, aim, determines the desired end goals of the learning process. since the purpose of learning is not merely the accumulation of knowledge but students’ engagement with it, the learning process constitutes three dimensions: knowledge, analysis, and application. dewey (1933) who laid the foundation for connecting experience with learning outlines the tenets of reflective thought which hint at these three dimensions: information related to it [observation/experience] is not merely amassed and then left in a heap; it is classified and subdivided so as to be available as needed. inferences are made by most men not from purely speculative motives, but because they are necessary for the efficient performance of the duties involved in their several callings. (p. 49) the end goal of the thinking process then becomes applicative. whatever we learn is needed to be applied somewhere. for instance, a part of the lesson on the impact of plastics on the environment, a sample of the learning goals and outcomes designed for this topic is given table 1 (see table 1). table 1. example learning goals & outcomes for a lesson on the impact of plastic dimension learning goal learning outcome knowledge i want the students to know the impact of plastic on the environment. students will outline the benefits and dangers of using plastic products (such as cheap product, easily available, but difficult to decompose, danger to marine life, etc.) analysis i want students to analyze the dangers of continued use of plastic and solutions to the problem. students will compare different alternatives to using plastics. application i want students to apply their understanding of the topic to bring one change in their immediate environment that could counter the impact of plastic. students will propose, plan, and implement a change in their immediate environment that can counter the impact of plastic. she began her class by writing on the board the term plastic planet and asked her students what that could mean. spending a few minutes to discuss their initial ideas, she proceeded to share the goals with her students, allowing them to self-regulate their learning. as such, the aim of a lesson determines the roadmap of this learning journey for the teacher and student both of whom act as co-inquirers in the process. praxis for a post-information future current issues in comparative education 88 activate having laid out the map of the learning journey upfront, it is now important to motivate learners to partake in the process. the willingness comes when learners are met with a problem or a puzzle that initiates reflective thought (dewey, 1933). as a result, curiosity is ignited which dewey believes is one of the three “native resources” required for fruitful learning (1933, p. 35). the second phase, activate, then becomes the central experience the first impression of the topic which kickstarts learning. keeping in view the learning sought, the teacher could present a story, an experiment, a word problem, a visual, or simulate a real-life situation. using the example of the lesson on the impact of plastic, one way the teacher presented a central experience to activate her students’ curiosities was to help them understand that plastic does not decompose easily and hovers in the environment for thousands of years. two days before the beginning of her lesson plastics, she shared a temporary new policy for their class: no student was allowed to take any plastic product outside of the class. as a result, for two days, students collected all their plastic-based trash and stored it in the bins, shelves, and desks of the classroom. by the time her lesson began on the third day, students could see a substantial amount of trash everywhere. the teacher asked her students to imagine what would happen if the policy continued. in groups, as students brainstormed consequences of not being able to dispose of the trash – not having space to sleep, too much pollution, dirty and messy classroom experience, etc. – the teacher prompted students to consider their classroom as an analogy for earth. she shared with her students the general idea that plastics took very long to dispose and asked them to pen down the possible groups of people, animals, plants, or marine life that might be impacted by this problem. analyze the central experience presented in the activate phase is the dilemma that hooks the learners making it the medium through which necessary knowledge and skills are developed. having experienced the abundance of plastic in their lives, students investigate the relation between plastic and the environment. to scaffold the process of analyzing the central experience, teachers lead students through three steps: explore, explain, engage. we will consider each step using the example from the previous sections. explore. the teacher guides student exploration using a prompt that jumpstarts inquiry and encourages them to ask questions. this step borrows from dan rothstein and luz santana’s simple process of encouraging inquiry – the question formulation technique (rothstein & santana, 2011). for this topic, the teacher used a provocative quotation by an american actress and activist, sophie bush: ‘to me, i think people who don’t think it’s a big deal to toss a plastic bottle in the garbage are not only being irresponsible, but i think they’re being disrespectful of all the other humans on earth.’ students use this prompt to ask as many questions as they can while exploring the quotation, their central experience, and the topic at hand. explain. having problematized their experience by raising a diverse set of questions, learners then move on to look for answers. the 5a framework encourages teachers to be facilitators of learning. for that purpose, teachers purposefully select books, speakers, discussion prompts, and other activities that will help learners discover concepts and ideas pertinent to the learning goals to help them fill gaps in their badami & fatima current issues in comparative education 89 understanding identified in the explore phase. for the lesson on the impact of plastic, students watched a documentary called plastic planet, read articles on the impact of plastics on marine life, and read a chapter from their books on the composition and decomposition of plastic. engage. the engage phase borrows from richard paul’s (2012) model for explicitly learning to think in a disciplined fashion (nosich, 2011). this phase creates a space for dialogue in which teachers model higher-order thinking by helping students question their experiences, the knowledge they have received, the sources of that knowledge, and their assumptions. for instance, in the lesson on plastics, an idea that constantly resurfaced was the proposition of banning plastic products. one of the students who had a family member with a disability questioned the soundness of the proposition countering that banning plastics altogether could make simple tasks difficult for certain groups of people such as using a straw to drink water – especially for people who could not afford expensive alternatives. in the classroom, the explain and engage steps often occur simultaneously and repeatedly with students acquiring knowledge from various sources while critically reflecting on it and connecting it to their experiences. apply the apply phase is a response to the oft-quoted lament that our education system is producing graduates who can recount distinct bits of disjointed information but are unable to produce original thoughts, solutions, or ideas on important local and global issues. as pointed out by dewey (1938) that meaningful learning allows the learner to reflect on their experiences and to extract from them knowledge that can be used to serve us better in the future. the application phase has a specific requirement: to be able to successfully apply a concept, phenomenon, or theory learnt in the classroom, learners should be able to use it to explain a phenomenon or solve a problem found in the real world. for the lesson on plastics, students applied their learning to impact various kinds of changes within their school. some students petitioned to have separate bins installed for plastic trash and contacted organizations, with the help of their teacher, that would buy and recycle plastic waste. others ran awareness campaigns for younger students, explaining to them why too much plastic was dangerous and how to limit single-use plastics. assess despite being placed at the end of the 5a learning cycle, the assess phase hardly happens at the end. in contrast to the customary style of conducting tests at the end of the learning process, the 5a framework reconceptualizes assessments as activities conducted at any stage of the learning process which informs learners of their progress in attaining the aim set out in the beginning of the learning process. such assessments are designed with the purpose of identifying not just the mastery of content but necessary skills as well, such as the ability to raise intelligent questions, think critically, solve problems, communicate thoughts, and present ideas creatively. moreover, insights from assessments eventually also become the guiding points for teachers to plan goals for future lessons. during the lesson on plastics, students were given various forms of assessments. one way students were made to recall the information they gathered was by giving them short quizzes on the documentary they watched praxis for a post-information future current issues in comparative education 90 and the texts they read. at another point, students were asked to share one-line reflections on the critical discussions they had in the engage phase within their groups. the final project in the apply phase was scored using a rubric designed together by the students and teachers. table 2. summary of the 5a framework with example phase purpose example aim teachers plan goals and outcomes to guide learning and share them with students to allow them to self-regulate the learning process. topic: impact of plastics on the environment teacher asks students to think about the term plastic planet and shares goals and outcomes of the topic. students briefly share initial thoughts about the aim. activate teachers present a central experience pertinent to the lesson to ignite students’ curiosities. students are prompted to follow the new temporary policy: students are not allowed to take plastic-based trash outside of their classrooms. students brainstorm what would happen if such a policy was not reversed. this helps students realize, through an analogy, the short and long term impact of plastics on the environment. analyze teachers lead students through three steps to inquire and critically reflect on their learning. explore: students are prompted to ask questions about the central experience and connect it to the day’s learning goals. teacher prompt: ‘to me, i think people who don’t think it’s a big deal to toss a plastic bottle in the garbage are not only being irresponsible, but i think they’re being disrespectful of all the other humans on earth.’ example questions by students: • how is using plastic disrespectful to humans? • isn’t throwing plastic in the bin a good idea? • why is plastic bad? explain: students peruse various sources to acquire information and ideas relevant to the topic and to the questions they have raised in the previous step. students watch a documentary called plastic planet, read articles on the impact of plastics on marine life, and read a chapter from their books on the composition and decomposition of plastic. badami & fatima current issues in comparative education 91 engage: teachers engage students in a critical dialogue by helping students question their experiences, the knowledge they have received, the sources of that knowledge, and their assumptions. teachers and students discuss the information taken from the various sources and their own experiences relating to the topic. teacher models higher-order thinking by prompting students to think about the various solutions to the plastic problem and weigh the pros and cons of each for the various stakeholders in the environment such as different groups of people, animals, marine life, etc. apply students apply their learning to explain a phenomenon or solve a problem found in the real world. students work in groups on a project of their own choosing. they are provided with a rubric to ensure that the projects meet preestablished criteria. assess students are assessed throughout the learning process using various formative and summative methods of assessments to demonstrate whether the aims put forward have been met. students complete short quizzes at various points in the learning process such as after watching a documentary in explain phase and after the discussion in engage phase, student are marked for participation in engage discussion using a pre-established rubric. their projects in the apply phase are graded using a checklist. all of these assessments together form the final grade for each student. methodology the year-long, qualitative study consisted of training teachers of a low-fee, k12 private school to use the 5a framework and assess the impact of implementing it in the classroom. the school comprises two campuses and was funded by a private educational trust committed to improving the quality of education offered. the school is located in a suburb of karachi populated by middleand lower-class families and caters to students from diverse backgrounds. the teacher to student ratio is 1:25 in the primary grades and 1:20 in the secondary grades. around 20 percent of students enrolled come from two local orphanages and the school provides foundational classes for basic literacy. moreover, the financial assistance policy of the school provides complete or partial fee relaxation to students after a rigorous process. the study was broadly divided into three phases: pre-training assessment, training, and post training assessment. data was collected from 150 classroom observations, 25 formal and informal interviews, and assessment of 200 lesson plans designed by the teachers. the training was conducted with 50 teachers of different subjects from grade 1 till 12. due to a high teacher turnover – owing to the teachers receiving low salaries, getting married or pursuing higher studies – several teachers left the school or were transferred between different campuses; as such, data from 12 teachers who participated in the study from the beginning and remained till the end was considered for analysis. the school follows the sindh board of education, and graduating praxis for a post-information future current issues in comparative education 92 students have to sit for their standardized board examination at the end of grades ix and x. as policy, the school hired individuals with at least a graduation in relevant disciplines; however, due to lack of competent candidates, the administration had to compromise on hiring teachers with at least a graduation in no specific discipline for most grades and subjects. around 25% of teachers had previously attended trainings pertaining to different areas such as classroom management, child development, lesson planning, and other subject-specific workshops. the researchers believed that significant impact on the teaching style could be seen if teachers planned their lessons based on the 5a framework under expert guidance before implementing them in the classroom. as such, teachers engaged in lesson planning every month and received feedback from researchers. using a standardized checklist originally developed by university of southern california’s center of excellence in teaching (usc, 2020), teachers and students were observed twice each month in one-hour units. after the first phase, teachers were trained by the researchers on planning and delivering lessons based on the 5a framework. the training consisted of 50 hours of workshops on incorporating the framework in their teaching as well as individual coaching sessions to help them deal with specific challenges. after the training, researchers extended feedback every month to teachers on their lesson plans and conducted at least two classroom observations for every teacher (one planned and one random) to assess the impact of the training on teaching style as well as student engagement. findings this section presents findings pertaining to two major areas where training was focused: student engagement and lesson planning using the framework. student engagement student engagement was broken down into the following variables: the quality of questions and linking classroom concepts to real world. pre-training. a clear demarcation between disciplined and undisciplined behavior dominated student-teacher interaction. students were regularly reminded that they were to remain quiet unless they were asked a question or needed clarification. engagement with the content presented to the students was limited to explanation by the teacher followed by close-ended questions to the students to ensure that content had been understood and learnt. the result was learners’ incapacity to produce original answers or ideas which teachers in the study attributed to lack of literacy, attention, and motivation on the part of students. moreover, almost all of the 12 teachers did not share learning outcomes with the students and began their classes either directly with explanation of the topic or with close-ended questions. except for two teachers teaching science for grades 3 and 8, application of concepts to the real world was missing. most classes were structured around explanation and practice exercises or question and answers narrated by the teachers to the students. when asked during the interview whether the practice of narrating both questions and answers to the students was burdensome for the teachers and counterproductive for the students, teachers responded saying that students were incapable of producing original answers and made a lot of mistakes which is why badami & fatima current issues in comparative education 93 answers had to be dictated. students later memorized these answers for exams. only one teacher teaching social studies to grade 9 encouraged student-generated discussions in the classroom by asking open-ended questions. post-training. as part of the framework, teachers were instructed to engage students in asking open-ended questions and holding critical discussions. an analysis of the questions produced by students showed that overtime learners produced more questions that were open-ended and considered linkages of the primary topic to other topics in the same discipline or other disciplines. during informal interviews, teachers explained that students displayed more energy and enthusiasm for learning concepts in classes where students were given the freedom to produce questions before explanation. one of the teachers, teaching math to grade 1 – commented that beginning lessons with activate and explore phase made it easy for her to conduct the rest of the lesson because by the time her students reached the explain and engage phase, they had already thought extensively about the concepts. explanations, which were usually considered boring by the students because they were given using teacher-directed lectures, became student-driven and exciting. student engagement with the learning process showed the most significant improvement when teachers began using real life examples to teach concepts and encouraged students to link ideas to their own lives. during informal interviews, teachers seemed content to share that students who rarely participated in class had stories and examples to contribute to discussions. one teacher from a grade 3 class commented: ‘many students are eager to share their stories. we have to think of ways to accommodate everybody in the limited class time.’ when asked possible reasons for such a change, she said: ‘we are asking students to share their stories and about times when they or somebody they know experienced something related to what we are learning.’ another teacher who taught grade 6 social studies explained that many of his students came from working class backgrounds and spent a lot of time on the streets. when sharing how the framework has impacted the level of student engagement in his class, he said: ‘my students are getting a chance to combine their street life with school life because i give them the space to talk about things that are relevant to them.’ lesson planning pre-training. before the training, teachers were asked to submit their lesson plans for the previous year to understand their current approach. of the 12 teachers, only 4 had plans they had made specifically for their students, the rest either did not use plans, or used teacher guides instead. the teachers who did submit original plans did not seem to follow a specific method for lesson planning and almost all of the plans used different approaches to teaching the content. some common elements in the plans included identification of topic and subtopic, exercises to be done in class, and homework. only one teacher, for grade 8 english, differed from the general trend and identified the expected prior knowledge of students in the plan and mentioned the development of language skills. none of the plans mentioned any strategies for applicative learning, skill-based teaching, or active learning. moreover, teachers were also asked during the interviews on their opinion on the need for lesson plans. those who did not prepare any plans emphasized that their experience in the profession rendered the plan unnecessary. most teachers even went on to say that preparing praxis for a post-information future current issues in comparative education 94 lesson plans was an added task which did not contribute much to the teaching and learning process. post-training. however, as part of the intervention teachers were required to make lesson plans for every session under the guidance of researchers. since the structure of the plan was such that teachers were required to brainstorm critical questions and reallife applications of concepts they were teaching, they were bound to include these elements. insofar that the framework bound the teachers on these elements, it acted as continued professional development for them because teachers were required every month to think critically about their subjects, find applications of the concepts they were teaching, and be informed about the origins of big ideas in their disciplines while making their lesson plans. this helped combat a problem prevalent before the training in which teachers considered content from the prescribed books as the only knowledge available on the subjects. they were driven to review other sources for a better understanding of what they were teaching simultaneously dealing with the challenge of untrained teachers or teachers with limited content-mastery. the math coordinator for primary grades shared the following when asked how this framework helped teachers: ‘this model has been designed for growth of the teacher because it requires first for the teacher to be prepared before she finally takes the lesson to the students. once teacher is trained and has learnt only then he/she can deliver to the students fruitfully.’ discussion an area in the study that showed the quickest change was student engagement, and post-training observations demonstrated that an intervention as simple as introducing opportunity for sharing learner experiences and stories in regular lessons could have a significant impact on engaging the learners in the learning process. this contrasted sharply with the pre-training observations where students were alienated from the learning process by eliminating their voices and disconnecting the ideas that they studied in the classroom from their lives. such a scenario was reminiscent of freire’s (2005) idea that education, as a one-way process, had the tendency to be oppressive insofar that it explicitly excluded students’ lived experiences and thoughts about the world. implementing a framework that incorporates such a space brought learners back into the learning process and made them active agents in the classroom. throughout the framework, there are several ways of allowing students the opportunity to connect learning with what matters to them. while sharing lived experiences relevant to the lesson is one way, asking questions that are significant for them is another way to help students identify with the learning process. an example that brought this to the forefront was a grade 8 social studies lesson on rural to urban migration. when students were prompted to share questions that they could think of relating to the topic, many of them connected rural to urban migration to infrastructural deterioration and overpopulation of cities like karachi. this is in line with dan rothstein and luz santana’s study where they saw that, when given the opportunity, students engaged in divergent thinking which helped them employ different perspectives to think about the same topic (rothstein & santana, 2011). this also showed that such issues did not go unnoticed by the young learners but were ideas that they considered. such ideas, if left unexamined, take the form of unchecked biases and prejudices. dewey (1933) also hints at this notion differentiating the badami & fatima current issues in comparative education 95 disciplined reflective thought from random thought. in the example above, the teacher took the opportunity to help students consider the various dimensions of the issue. for instance, she asked students to consider why anybody would want to leave their hometowns and families to migrate, and to consider both the benefits and challenges of rural to urban migration for the cities as well as the migrants. moreover, as researchers undertook the year-long program with the school, a trend emerged. in the first quarter of the year, teachers were wary of the training as the framework was introduced and implementation began. teachers with a teaching experience of eight years or more often commented that they didn’t require training and knew the content that they had to teach inside out. however, in the second quarter of the program, teachers noticed the impact on student participation and input, and realized that the program was worth giving a try. in an informal conversation, a grade 5 urdu teacher said: ‘i have to do a lot of work to prepare the lesson plan but in the classroom, i do less work and it is my students who do the most work.’ while student engagement and inquiry were a positive change for the researchers, teachers – around the third and fourth quarter – felt that implementing the framework hindered in covering the curriculum prescribed by the school administration and the examination board. this suggested that despite being given a framework to encourage students to think beyond pre-established content, teachers still believed that their primary responsibility was to cover the prescribed curriculum. this reminded of duckworth’s plea to the educators to discard the idea of transmitting all the prescribed knowledge, and instead to “make such knowledge…seem interesting and accessible to the child” (2006, p. 8). however, such a change requires a re-evaluation of the philosophy of teaching; while the framework does help shape teachers’ ideas about the transformative nature of education, the researchers hypothesize that a change in perception and philosophy of education require a significant amount of time and mentoring. limitations & implications the impact of the framework on students’ academic results and content mastery was out of the scope of the study. hence, the paper does not discuss if the framework affects academic scores and students’ performance on standardized tests. future studies can assess the impact of the framework on students’ academic performance particularly focusing on the role of critical thinking and student engagement with learning on content mastery and performance on standardized tests. moreover, during the study, it was observed that while some teachers were quick to take up the new practice and endeavored to brainstorm creative ways to deliver their lessons, most other teachers often appeared demotivated or reluctant to change current practice. the researchers hypothesize that passion towards teaching could be a contributing factor in explaining the progress some teachers made throughout the year as well as the reluctance towards change shown by other teachers. a particularly interesting area for further training could be facilitating teachers to recognize their roles as social change agents before training them on specific skills. praxis for a post-information future current issues in comparative education 96 conclusion this paper argues for a bottom-up approach to pedagogical transformation, as opposed to a top-down approach that demands progressive policies for change. that is not to say that more informed national policies and external support are not needed or significant. instead, similar to the suggestion offered by razzaq and forde (2014), this paper argues that for a reform to be substantially transformative and sustainable it has to include the primary stakeholders – the teachers – and to translate policies, suggestions, and research into practice for the classrooms. the 5a framework offers such a praxis that borrows from big ideas in education which have proven to be effective in isolation but have not been presented as a coherent model for teaching and learning yet. the framework has presented the ability to carve a niche for itself in any classroom owing to the flexibility with which it can be implemented. most teachers, who participated in the study, found that the framework gave them freedom to employ a variety of techniques ensuring that teachers also had ample opportunities for learning and growth alongside the students. acknowledgments: we would like express our special gratitude to edlab pakistan for extending their full support to us when the project was presented to conduct a study based on the 5a framework. we are also thankful to anusha amin for her assistance in conducting interviews, performing classroom observations, and providing feedback. also, hajra muhammad saleem has been especially helpful in providing useful ideas during several brainstorming sessions. hasnain r. badami is a seasoned learning & development professional with diverse experience as a trainer, instructional design specialist & critical thinking consultant for schools and corporates. his work with teachers and schools focuses on creating reflective and meaningful classroom experiences for learners. his research centers on critical pedagogy & alternative learning design. email: hasnainbadami9@gmail.com. rubab fatima is an ed.m. candidate at the harvard graduate school of education, specializing in learning & teaching. she has also been associated with the school development program at edlab pakistan as a school consultant and trainer. her research focuses on alternative pedagogies aimed at creating spaces of dialogue for learners. email: rubabfatima@gse.harvard.edu. badami & fatima current issues in comparative education 97 references breunig, m. (2011). paulo freire: critical praxis and experiential education. in t. e. smith, & c. e. knapp, sourcebook of experiential education (pp. 56-63). taylor & francis. carson, r. (1988). sense of wonder. harper perennial. dewey, j. (1933). how we think. massachusetts. dewey, j. (1938). experience and education. kappa delta pi. duckworth, e. r. (2006). the having of wonderful ideas and other essays on teaching and learning. new york, ny: teachers college, columbia university. freire, p. (2005). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: the continuum international publishing group inc. (original work published 1968) freire, p., & macedo, d. (2005). literacy: reading the word & the world. taylor & francis. giroux, h. a. (2019). when schools become dead zones. in k. j. saltman, & a. j. means, the wiley handbook of global educational reform (pp. 503-515). john wiley & sons, inc. kolb, d. (2015). experiential learning: experience as the source of learning & development. new jersey: pearson edcuation, inc. lall, m. (2012). why education matters: school ‘choice’ and differing views on citizenship in pakistan. citizenship studies, 16(2), 269-286. doi:10.1080/13621025.2012.667619 malik, a. h. (2012). a comparative study of elite-english-medium schools, public schools, and islamic madaris in contemporary pakistan: the use of pierre bourdieu’s theory to understand "inequalities in educational and occupational opportunities". retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1807/34798 nosich, g. m. (2011). learning to think things through: a guide to critical thinking across the curriculum. pearson education. papert, s. (1993). tlte children's machine: rethinking school in the age of the contjitlter. new york: basic books. paul, r. (2012). critical thinking: what every person needs to survive in a rapidly changing world. foundation for critical thinking. rahman, t. (2004). denizens of alien worlds: a study of education, inequality and polarization in pakistan. oxford university press. raiola, e. o. (2011). earl c. kelly: education for what is real. in t. e. smith, & c. e. knapp, sourcebook of experiential education (pp. 180-192). taylor & francis. razzaq, j., & forde, c. (2014). the management of large-scale change in pakistani education. school leadership & management, 34 (3), 299-316. doi:10.1080/13632434.2014.905467 rothstein, d., & santana, l. (2011). make just one change: teach students to ask their own questions. cambridge, ma: harvard education press. praxis for a post-information future current issues in comparative education 98 sawyer, r. k. (2014). the new science of learning. the cambridge handbook of the learning sciences, 1, 18. shabeen, r. (2011). the place of creativity in pakistani primary education system: an investigation into the factors enhancing and inhibiting primary school children's creativity. . online submission. siddiqui, s. (2012). education, inequalities, and freedom: a sociopolitical critique. narratives publication. siddiqui, s. (2016). education policies in pakistan: politics, projections, and practices. oxford university press. taube, v. g. (2004). connected and disconnected? on the impact of internet use on social connectedness. computational & mathematical organization theory, 10, 227-241. unicef. (2020). education. retrieved from unicef.org: https://www.unicef.org/pakistan/education usc. (2020). cet classroom teaching observation checklist : usc center for excellence in teaching. retrieved from http://cet.usc.edu/cet-classroom-teachingobservation-checklist/ zull, j. e. (2002). the art of changing the brain: enriching teaching by exploring the biology of learning. sterling, virginia: stylus publishing, llc. zull, j. e. (2011). from brain to mind: using neuroscience to guide change in education. sterling, virginia: stylus publishing, llc. badami & fatima current issues in comparative education 99 appendix classroom observation checklist dimension substanda rd tier (below minimum) tier 1 (minimum) tier 2 (proficient) tier 3 (excellent) class organization instructional plan • instructor changes the established class session plan without prior notification to students. • the class session demonstrat es clear signs of planning and organizatio n, and follows a logical flow. • the class session includes instruction and formative assessment to assess student learning for that class session. • the class session includes instruction, formative assessment, and reflection components . communicatio n of clear learning goals for the class session • instructor communica tes no learning goals for the class session and/or each lesson activity. • instructor communica tes inappropria te or unrealistic learning goals for the class session and/or each lesson activity. • instructor clearly identifies realistic learning goals for the class session. • instructor clearly connects the learning goals for the class session to the course learning objectives. • instructor clearly identifies the learning goals for each instructiona l activity, and connects them to the course learning objectives. time management • room and/or technology issues occur during class that could have been addressed before the start of class. • the class session starts and ends on time. • planned sections of the class session are well-timed. • little or no time spent on noninstructiona l activities. • instructor utilizes and references educational technology for passive learning activities outside of class to support effective use of inclass time. • instructor maximizes in-class time, using active learning or applications rather than passive learning. • instructor clearly indicates time limits for all student activities. praxis for a post-information future current issues in comparative education 100 • instructor prepares the room and relevant technology before the start of class. learning environment classroom climate • instructor raises students’ stress or anxiety by using discrimina tory, dismissive, or other abusive language. • instructor minimizes students’ struggle with material. • instructor discourage s student input. • instructor violates confidenti ality by publicly revealing students with accommod ations. • instructor ignores disruptive student behaviors. • instructor consistentl y uses verbal and body language that is responsive to students’ stress or anxiety. • instructor encourage s student participati on. • instructor treats all students equitably. • instructor is responsive to students’ different educationa l backgroun ds and learning needs. • instructor has established classroom norms that foster a positive and inclusive environme nt. • instructor encourage s interaction between students. • instructor uses practices that increase students’ motivation and foster a growth mindset. presentation form • instructor uses inappropri ate or offensive gestures and/or speech. • instructor displays a negative attitude in • instructor volume, pace, and diction allow observer to follow the class session. • instructor faces students • instructor incorporat es appropriat e eye contact and effective non-verbal communic ation (e.g., hand gestures). • instructor is engaging, responsive , and constructiv e in both tone and content of their speech. badami & fatima current issues in comparative education 101 tone and/or content. when speaking. • instructor avoids distracting manneris ms or speech patterns, such as filler words and nervous habits. presentation substance • instructor does not use, or uses inappropri ate, visual support for presentatio n and/or examples/ illustration s. • instructor provides visual support for verbal presentatio n and uses concrete examples/ illustration s to clarify content. • instructor cites sources for content discussed. • instructor follows accessibilit y best practices by verbally describing and/or captioning any images used in presentatio n. instructional content knowledge of subject • instructor does not appear to understand course content. • instructor’s factual statements are consistent with current knowledge in the field. • instructor correctly answers questions about course-level content. • instructor answers questions confidently, clearly, and simply. • instructor ties current content to topics or knowledge from the profession and/or more advanced courses. disciplinespecific language • instructor does not use, or incorrectly uses, disciplinespecific and/or academic language. • instructor uses disciplinespecific and academic language. • instructor explains use of disciplinespecific terms. • instructor facilitates the use of disciplinespecific language by students. contextual relevance and transferability • instructor teaches content devoid of real-world scenarios • instructor provides real-world applications of class session • instructor has students provide real-world examples of • where appropriate , instructor uses examples where their praxis for a post-information future current issues in comparative education 102 and/or examples. • instructor assumes unrealistic skill level of students in the class. content. • instructor explicitly builds on prior student knowledge. class content or apply content to real-world scenarios. discipline converges with other disciplines in addressing challenges. • where appropriate , instructor addresses “wicked problems” identified by usc on a local, national, or global level. student engagement appropriate content or level • class content is too easy or difficult for student knowledge level. • instructor does not encourage higherorder thinking. • class content appropriate ly challenges students. • class content promotes mastery of course learning objectives. • instructor engages students in higherorder thinking skills during class. • the instructor spends the majority of class time leading students in higherorder thinking activities. active learning • instructor uses no activelearning exercises. • instructor has unrealistic expectation s for activelearning exercises. • instructor uses inappropria te or offensive activelearning exercises. instructor uses activelearning exercises that are not accessible to everyone in the class. • class session contains at least one activelearning exercise to apply course content. • instructor monitors and manages activelearning exercises. • instructor uses activelearning exercises after no more than 30 consecutive minutes of lecture. • instructor ensures that all students are on-task. • instructor is responsive to student engagemen t and adjusts strategy accordingly . • instructor facilitates student-led explanation • instructor uses activelearning exercises after no more than 15 consecutive minutes of lecture. • instructor requires students to submit or present inclass work by end of class. • where appropriate , instructor leverages student use of electronic technology to facilitate active learning. badami & fatima current issues in comparative education 103 s and/or discussions. formative assessment/fee dback • instructor violates ferpa by publicly sharing student grades. • instructor provides nonconstructiv e and/or discouragin g feedback. • instructor compares student work to an ambiguous or unrealistic standard. • instructor provides students constructiv e and encouragin g feedback on how to improve their comprehens ion or performanc e in class. • instructor provides information to students about their performanc e on class activities compared to a preestablished standard. • instructor leads students in structured reflection on class learning activities. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 51 what you sow is what you reap: violence and the construction of male identity in jamaica barry chevannes university of the west indies what is wrong with our males? this is the question on the lips of an increasing number of people. the sight of idle males, young and strong, on the street corner, the daily news of the brutal, senseless murders they commit, the virtual dereliction of higher education by them, their cruelty to women, their display of a value system alien to the one most of us know--all these and many more examples of behaviors most of us fail to understand prompt the question. this essay, as the title suggests, argues that whatever it is our males have become or are becoming, we ourselves who ask the question have contributed. of the over 380 murders committed in jamaica in 1996 and the nearly 500 in 1997, for which arrests were made, nearly eight out of every ten the police believed were committed by persons--males we assume--thirty years old and younger. some of them were as young as a thirteen year old grade 8 or grade 9 student. we may assume also that the unsolved murders were committed by the same age group. along with the murders we should also consider shooting, a crime which involves personal injury. eighty percent of shootings in 1996 and 86 percent of shootings in 1997, for which arrests were made, were committed by the same group. the comparable figures for robbery are 88percent in 1996 and 78 percent in 1997. the group also accounted for 70 percent of rape and carnal abuse in 1996 and 61 percent in 1997. in other words, jamaica's murderers and major criminals are mainly youths. that is to say, they come from that section of the population which most indulges in football, including six-a-side, which comprises the most avid players and fans of the game, whose favorite music is dance-hall, whose idols are the most popular dj artistes, and who wear or aspire to the latest in designer clothes and footwear. at age 30, the oldest would have been born in the late 1960s and grew up knowing the political violence of the 1970s, but would have been too young to participate in it1. the younger ones would have only heard tell of it, and would therefore not have known or been a part of the youth-led community-based volunteerism that also came with the 70s. we are led to believe from the reports which describe them as "unskilled laborers and unemployed" that most would have come from among the army of males disappearing from out the school system at grades 8, 9 and 10, ill-prepared for the world of work, unemployed. in a situation where one person out of a population is a deviant, we would focus an explanation of his deviance on the formation of his personality. but in a situation where an entire section of a population is deviant, our focus inevitably must be directed to processes that shape the foundations of behavior. apart from our most basic instincts of survival, such as breathing, eating and drinking, human behavior is the result of learning the meanings, values and intentions of our actions. these meanings, values and intentions are acquired by social intercourse with a collective, a family, a peer group, a barry chevannes november 15, 1999 52 community, a society. without the collective we would remain animals, of course, but we would never become human. for one thing, we would never be able to speak, and, if we could not speak, we would never be able to think or to communicate effectively, or be the object of the communication of others. this process whereby we construct our foundations of behavior is what we call socialization. in what now follows i present a summary of the main highlights of the socialization process in jamaica whereby the normative ideals of gender identity and behavior are constructed and represented. some of them are common to the caribbean region, if not universal. the summary is based on recent studies conducted on the island. gender division common to virtually every known society is a division of labor along gender lines. the division takes as its defining axis the family, however constituted, since this is the basic unit of social organization in society. at its most general, work aimed at creating and maintaining a nurturing environment for the young and vulnerable members of the species is the responsibility of the female; work aimed at providing support for the unit is the responsibility of the male. in jamaica and the rest of the caribbean males and females are socialized to identify domestic work as female, and work outside the domestic sphere, but supportive of it, as male. thus, cooking, washing, bathing, grooming, dressing and nursing children, tidying up the house, and such the like, are chores seen as the responsibility of the females, while chores relative to the household economy, such as animal husbandry, artisan skills, farming, wage labor, and other outdoor forms of income-earning, are the responsibility of the male. the fact that many boys are required to perform some "female" tasks, as happens in a family of all or mostly boys, or that many girls are required to undertake "male" tasks, in a family of all girls, is of little consequence as far as the behavioral norms are concerned. what matters is the gender significance of what is done. even as they perform such cross-gender tasks children are made aware of their gender significance, which is usually rationalized as preparation for an independent and self-reliant life. boys, as soon as they are able to, will resist performing such simple tasks as washing up dishes and tidying the house. the gender divisions in the household are often contrasted as light work or work requiring little physical exertion against heavy work demanding great physical strength. hence the ideas are that tough work is male work, and that a boy should be trained to be capable, by endurance, of tough work. the socialization of the boy child is often aimed at making him tough. his punishment is generally speaking much more severe than that meted out to the girl child. believing in corporal punishment as a means of control and a means of "bending the tree while it is young", jamaicans further believe that from the time a boy approaches adolescence only a man is strong enough to bend a wayward sapling. up to that age, corporal punishment is generally exercised by mothers, thereafter by fathers, uncles or older siblings who are able to "drop man lick". to the provider role which a father is expected to perform is added the role of ultimate disciplinarian, the one to whom a mother appeals if her punishment is ineffectual. "wait till yu faada come home!" often gets quicker results than the cajoling or flogging of a mother. incidentally, this role of father is hardly compatible with that of a warm and nurturing parent. the society cannot have it both ways. in situations where the mother what you sow is what you reap: violence and the construction of male identity in jamaica current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 53 is the sole parent, the punishment of boys, if they are not close friends and companions of their mothers, can be downright cruel. a boy is also the first to suffer deprivation where the children are exposed. if resources do not allow for the children to attend school all at the same time, girls are given the advantage over boys. interestingly, one would have thought that not being able to afford "lunch money" parents would ensure the children's attendance at school where they are able to get food supplied by the school feeding program. but the people think otherwise. no lunch money, no school. lunch money for only one, the girl goes, the boy stays back. necessity is made into a virtue, as suffering becomes a means of producing a hardened man who knows how to survive. "school is girl stuff!" this declaration by an eight-year old inner city boy to my research assistant, reveals the association of meaning built up in the minds of many boys. he was actually quite proud of the fact that it was his absence from school that allowed his sister to be present in school. but training in survival through deprivation and harsh treatment and constructing male identity through provider roles are not the only factors that give girls a school advantage. parents will push through school any child, girl or boy, who shows exceptional intellectual endowment, but because of their own naturally earlier development, girls tend to be more favored. the nurture-provider gender axis forms one of the bases of gender identity among children. whereas girls are preoccupied with acquiring nurturing skills, boys are learning from quite early the need to access money. in rural communities their farming initiatives are encouraged, in urban communities their initiatives on the streets and in the markets. for many boys, unless they work, they cannot guarantee their own attendance at school. in the scale of priorities, school and education rank lower than making money, although an education is also valued. by the time he was 13 years old, bully tells us that he owned six heads of cattle in his village in portland, his 12-year old brother three and his ten-year old brother two. his father, he said, was proud of them. by contrast, their only sister became the only sibling to sit and pass the common entrance examination (which ensures continuation on to secondary school). now a jamal (jamaica's main adult literacy organization) student at 20 years old, he refers to their early morning routine of animal husbandry as "animal school", the real school coming several hours after and three miles away2. in an inner city community where we recently conducted fieldwork, a fourteen year old boy who had dropped out of school to become an armed peddler of cocaine, was hoping that when he had earned enough to be able to get himself and his mother out of the ghetto and into the united states he would then go back to school. but for now, making money was far more important. what does a young jamaican boy expect to do with money? he learns that this is how he begins to "make life" and earn the respect of his family, his peers and the wider community. making life is active, not passive. it governs gender relations as well as economic activities. by the time a boy reaches eight or nine years old, he would have already known that in his present relationship with girls and his future relationship with women, the active role is his. "is man look wuman, not wuman look man!" by contrast, a girl or woman who assumes the active role in inter-gender relations is considered loose. these ideas are common to females as well and determine their expectations of males. in barry chevannes november 15, 1999 54 research carried out in jamaica by claudia chambers and me, women reported that one of their reasons for engaging in multiple partnerships was economic3. and in a study for the national family planning board more men approved of multiple partnerships than actually engaged them, the difference being that they could not afford the outside relationship4. only in recent years have we observed successful female informal commercial importers using their economic power to keep younger men, whom they do not expect to work. but generally speaking, the construction of male identity has as a principal building block the ideal of control over economic resources. we can therefore imagine the crisis of identity suffered by a man who is failing in the imperative to "make life", but who must relate to women. the turn to illegal activities must be understood in this context. in herbert gayle's 1997 study of coping strategies in an inner city community, men are expected to "make life" by fair means, juggling, or by foul means, hustling. juggle, if you can, but hustle if you must. but you must do something. to do nothing is to be judged and branded "worthless."5 as a second line of defense in the struggle to become and remain a man, hustling raises an issue of morality. for many men, meeting the demands of a male identity is a far greater moral imperative than the virtues of honesty and respect for property and even life. we do well to remember that anansi the spider, the main figure in jamaican folklore, is male, and in one of the tales about him, he survives at the expense of his wife and children. survival as a virtue has been a part of the social and cultural life of african-jamaicans from the earliest times. it remains a fundamental part of the ethos of the people, particularly in these hard times. and although it applies to females also, as when some women enter relations with men for economic reasons--no romance without finance, or when domestic helpers pilfer without remorse from employers they believe to be better off, the main thrust in the socialization for survival is directed towards the male. apart from the exposure to deprivation, survival skills are learned by the unsupervised exposure to the world outside the yard, to the street or the road, in effect to the peer group. a girl's life, for as long as she remains dependent, is surrounded by a protective ring, which starts at home, encompasses the school and ends at home. her whereabouts are known--home, school or on an errand. even the time it takes to get home from school is sometimes known and monitored by parents, or must be accounted for. by contrast, as soon as a boy approaches pre-pubescent years and the peer group begins to exercise its magnetic pull, he is allowed to socialize outside the home, that is "out a' street", or "out a' road"--out of the direct control and supervision of parents. once his chores and errands are done, there is no demand for a boy to remain in the yard. indeed, too great an attachment to the confines of the yard is regarded as problematic, the symptom of a maladjusted, effeminate male--a maamaman. left up thus, a boy learns from and with his peers the tricks and trade of the street culture, how to navigate the dangers, how to exploit them. as a socializing site, the street, or the road (village square), is a male domain, in contrast to the yard, which is a female domain. there, males of all ages have the license to move about and socialize without censure. in this unsupervised setting, boys gather experience in risk-taking. they play their own games of chance, including gambling, model their behavior after young male adults, hang out on the corner or in the square, what you sow is what you reap: violence and the construction of male identity in jamaica current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 55 fish in the river, swim in the sea, go bird shooting, hop trucks, test and perfect their bicycle-riding skills, follow a sound system, invent or learn their own speech pattern, learn how to talk to girls, experience the art of heterosexual intercourse and homophobic discourse, and run boat (organize communal cooking). it is the peer group that will put the final touches, so to speak, to the construction of his male identity--his anti-phobic heterosexuality, power and control over women through control over resources, paternity, and the importance of respect. the peer group virtually replaces mother and father as the controlling agents, or, if not an entire substitute, a countervailing force. an adolescent boy's friends--his "spaar", "staar", "my yout", "posse", "crew", exact an affinity and a loyalty as sacred as the bond of kinship, as strong as the sentiment of religion. they socialize one another, the older members of the group acting as the transmitters of what passes as knowledge, invent new values and meanings. this is what parents mean when they speak of "bad company". "bad company" simply means my son's friends whom i do not know, or whom i do not approve of. its bonding power and its potential for deviance scare parents. when "bad company" turns out to be everywhere the same, sharing the same departure from the norms of the yard and acquiring the same symbols and the same meaning, then we have a generation gap. that is alright if the departure is not great. when, however, it results in the kinds of divergences that produce one of the highest murder rates in the world, we have not a generation gap but a generation of strangers, people we ourselves have produced but no longer recognize. we do not, for example, know how or why it is that the gun has become such a symbol of young male identity at this turn of century, but it has. the proliferation of guns is not simply a function of the drug trade but the ultimate representation of what it means to be a man, the object of the fear and respect of others and the fearless defender of one's own self-respect. not every youth who owns a gun is a gunman. in inner city jamaica and many other parts of the country, the illegal possession of the gun by many male youths functions in exactly the same way as the legal possession of it--the ultimate defense. in an era in which the greatest social sin among young males today is to dis, that is to show disrespect, the gun is the ultimate guarantor of respect. that also is why the gun salute has been appropriated from the state. the gun has become a sort of language among the young people. the most common gesture of a young male in an angry exchange is a hand tensed in the shape of a pistol and an arm pivoting in symbolic intent. and who can forget dionne hemmings's gesture after capturing the olympic gold for jamaica--her right arm and hand extended in symbolic gun salute? the socalled inner city don is a role model not only because of his ability to command and dispense largesse, but also because he is a living source of power--the power over life and over death, the ultimate man. among the youth a common name for the penis was rifle, according to a 1991 study (chevannes & chambers, 1991). in inner city communities the dream of many a young boy is to be able to own a gun, preferably personally, but jointly with the crew if necessary. no one willed or intended all this to be so. no political boss or don would admit that his/her drive for five-year power was intended to produce press button (pre-pubescent assassins) and shata ("shotters"). no television station or cable company would concede that it has any responsibility for violence and coarse behavior becoming a way of life, barry chevannes november 15, 1999 56 nor would any franchise holder in kingston. the parents who afford the nike track shoes but will not afford the school fees, or who abuse teachers for attempting to discipline children, the teachers who neither teach nor mentor, the women who transport the guns, the mothers who shield the community "protectors", the officers and agents of the law who shoot when "attacked with a knife"--none see themselves as sharing responsibility for this generation of strangers. the failure of the system of justice to dispense justice with dispatch and equity, even the "global", twenty-first century, american society in which one can virtually walk in a store with dollars and walk out with guns, load them in a barrel and ship them to jamaica, have to be seen as contributing parts of the problem. and therein lies a great difficulty, for where blame is so diffuse, no one can accept responsibility. but in a way we all are responsible. we provide the building blocks, the young people design and construct their own edifice. we are reapers of our own sowing. are jamaican males being marginalized? certainly not, if the main factor being considered is power. despite the increasingly larger proportions of women at the university of the west indies, it is the men who are elected to the seat of student power. at community level, whether the issue is dons or youth club leaders, there is no marginalization of males. and as far as the churches are concerned, women's overrepresentation in the membership and ministering groups, but under-representation in the leadership echelons is well-documented (austin-broos, 1997; toulis, 1997). the marginalization discourse always ignores these facts. if educational performance is our criterion, the picture still does not allow us to conclude with an unreserved yes. what is clearly the case is male under-participation or underrepresentation in the key institution designed to prepare the young for life, namely the education system. this, coupled with the high visibility of male youth unemployment, creates a greater impression of marginality. there are proportionately more unemployed young females than unemployed young males, but the impression is one of male and not female marginality. young unemployed females do not hang out on the street corners and in the village squares, neither do young unemployed males hang around the yard trying to find something to do. the socialization process does not operate that way. but under-participation in the education system, through lower enrollment and attendance rates, is bound to have consequences for educational performance, and, since occupational placement is increasingly being determined by educational competence, bound to result in some social dislocation. as bad as our present problems are, they would be far worse but for the ability of the informal sector to absorb functionally illiterate males, who are somehow able to make and consolidate their transition to manhood, sometimes rising to positions of leadership within their communities. expansion of the formal sector of the economy at the expense of the informal would therefore make it difficult for males to drop out of, or under-participate in, school and still get by. insofar as jamaican values place a premium on fashioning the male into a tough, invulnerable sort of human being, no change can be expected in parents protecting their girls and exposing their boys. girls will continue to exhibit higher rates of enrollment and attendance, especially where the family's economic circumstance forces parents to what you sow is what you reap: violence and the construction of male identity in jamaica current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 57 be selective in their attention. but even if the economy were to allow all children to attend school at the same time, there are urgent issues which still need to be addressed. one is the deprivation of education to the all-age school leavers, who will have no chance for another three or more years to access any form of formal training, although the soon to be instituted national assessment program should guarantee institutionalized education for every child through to grade 11. the second issue concerns what we teach and how. a conscious effort has to be made to make school more attractive to boys. i would like to focus a few remarks on the secondary school system, which i believe could function in quite a different way if our own ideas about what a secondary education is designed to do itself changes. up to the present, and looking beyond the turn of the millennium, we have seen education in general as a means to an end, not an end in itself. we send our children to school, not so much that they be self-fulfilled by being educated, but that they study to become professionals--the doctors, engineers, lawyers, people who earn a large income. it is fair to say that this has been the motive of our rural forebears throughout the postemancipation years of the 19th century, right up to the present. the middle and upper middle classes with origins in the black rural folk are an example of the worthwhileness of the effort and the sacrifice. but there is another aspect to education that we have neglected, and that is its teleological function. here education is not just a means to the end of upward mobility, but an end in itself. to realize one's full potential as the only being who cannot be oneself unless one is a part of a society, one must be educated. the function of education is to make us more human. it is therefore an important aspect of the socialization process. socialization is therefore an interactive process, in which each individual internalizes the meanings, values and behavioral norms of a collective. within the collective, some people exert greater influence than others in the construction of such meanings, values and norms, in their transmission, as well as in the timing of their transmission. thus, for infants and very young children, the older members of the family are more influential. later on, teachers exert greater influence, sometimes surpassing that of parents and older siblings. this fact is seldom of concern to parents, who see the school as an effective adjunct to the home. however, it is often the case that the peer group or the wider community or society exert influences that are not only greater than the influence of parents and teachers, but contradictory to those nurtured within the family and classroom. in such cases the sites where the socialization takes place are both outside the home and outside the control of parents. secondly, socialization is an interactive process. if we are socialized by others, we also socialize others. for the construction of meaning, the determination of values and norms are never fixed and frozen in time or space, but are ever the creation of our interaction. this is true even of children. children do socialize one another, and socialize others as well, including their own parents. it is therefore misleading to conceive of socialization as a one-way process, from adults to children. thirdly, for any individual socialization is an on-going and never-ending process. we never cease being socialized or socializing others. were this not so, once socialized we could never change our values or our barry chevannes november 15, 1999 58 outlook, could never acquire new ways of speaking, or construct new meanings. finally, socialization does not replace consciousness and freedom. it does not assume conformity. the fact that one learns how to talk does not translate into the compulsion to talk. thus, part of the process itself is given to determining and communicating the consequences of deviance, the meaning and weight of sanctions. conformity to the ideals may be the result of fear of the consequences of deviance as it may be the result of affective identification. adolescence is itself a period of transition from childhood to adulthood. we could call it a long period of liminality. one of the difficulties facing our adolescence is the way the transition is structured. first it exacerbates the contradiction between nature and society. nature tells them they are ready for reproduction, but society tells them they are not. this could be tolerable, were it not so long-lasting. society tells them they need to spend an increasingly longer span of years acquiring an education, while nature quietly speaks to them at increasingly earlier ages. add to that the social context in which the constraints on sexual behavior are weak, and sexual stimulation is an omnipresent feature of daily life. during this period of transition the adolescent is biologically an adult, but socially a child, subject to and dependent on others. as a recognized institution overseeing that period of transition, the secondary school could, it seems to me, serve to enact the ritual transformation, so that the students who enter as boys leave as men. as it stands now, for boys there is no marked ritual. they undergo no event, real or symbolic, to signal their transformation into manhood. manhood must be fought for and won. for many boys it comes only when they begin to work and contribute to the household, for others when the earn the right to their own key to the house, and still others when their paternity over some neighbor’s daughter's baby is acknowledged. but for this to happen, three things are required. first, teachers would have to see their role as helping boys to make the transition to manhood. the objective of this aspect of the socialization process would then be not only to give them the foundation on which to build careers as professionals or skilled people later on, but also to help them acquire a sound sense of self, based on who they are but fired by who they could become. the teacher thus becomes a mentor, the wise guide, instructor and confidant, helping a child over the transition. second, what we consider education would have to be broadened to embrace as many as possible of the defining characteristics of manhood in our current social context, if only to contend with them. the concept of education could be expanded to include exercises in the ways of accessing personal power--through the art of self-defense and self-control, grooming and fashion-consciousness, responsible sexuality and gender relations, the art of music appreciation and word-power, leadership and responsibility, home-making and financing, and so many other ways, including sports, that contribute to the social definition of manhood. some of these could be built into the curriculum, others instituted as co-curricular education. graduation then becomes the ritual re-integration into the community as men. and here the third requirement would trip in--the concurrence of parents and the wider community that they no longer have boys but men. a male could not be accorded the status of being a man until and unless he gains a secondary education. the message to a boy would be this: if you want to be a man, you must go to school. what you sow is what you reap: violence and the construction of male identity in jamaica current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 59 rituals are a necessary part of social life. we cannot live without them altogether. the need to insert them in the education system is so strong among jamaicans that it is taken to extremes. even basic schools now hold a graduation ceremony. given this impulse, graduation from secondary school could take on far greater significance than is already invested in it. one of the reasons secondary schools in jamaica attract very strong loyalty from their alumni, who retain life-long bonds of friendship, could very well be the fact that they were the sites where boys became men. nice ideas, one might say, but we could all die at the hand of some young gunman by the time high schools become rites of passage institutions. do we have to wait for this to happen before we begin to see a softer, caring, more refined and socially responsible type of young man? the answer is no. in any case it is unrealistic to hold the schools alone responsible for such an enormous project. all the major public institutions, service, sports, economic, ngos, have to be engaged, as many now are, each in its own way attempting to address at national and community levels what everyone agrees is an urgent social problem. but i would recommend that the problem of crime demands a special focus. according to recent economic and social survey of jamaica (essj) reports from 1994 to 1997, over 70 percent of the murders and shootings regularly take place in kingston and st andrew and the adjacent parish of st catherine--the kingston metropolitan region, in fact. and not simply the kingston metropolitan region. the police are very specific-the western region of the corporate area has the highest concentration. this is where most of the marginalized inner city communities are to be found. the reports further identify the population bearing the main responsibility for these crimes--the youth, that is males between 15 and 30 years old, sometimes as low as 13. the problem can be addressed by targeting this population and, given our understanding of their peculiarities as young males, co-opting and bringing them in "from the cold" and from the margins. kingston has enormous but unexploited potential as a cultural capital. its natural harbor, backdrop of mountains, historic buildings, art galleries, institute of jamaica, institutions of higher learning, theatres, gardens (what's left of them) and people constitute a veritable gold mine. its bustling street markets along heywood and princess streets and spanish town road to the coronation market are living studies of culture many a visitor would pay to experience. kingston is still the reggae capital of the world, with some of the finest world-class musicians and recording studios. but it is probably the only major capital in the wider anglo-phone, francophone and hispanic caribbean without a tourism market. one of the major reasons for this is, without doubt, the high level of crime. even those of us living within kingston itself are so contained within our own grilled prisons passing for homes and our security-guarded communities as to be unable to exploit the rich culture of our own city. few uptown housewives care to venture to the downtown markets as they once did in saturday morning rituals, meeting and gossiping with their bonded country-higglers and hand-cart men. the ward theatre, an icon of the performing arts, has become a victim of the fear and paranoia unleashed by the youth. barry chevannes november 15, 1999 60 but what if the male youths of kingston were to be sold the idea that inasmuch as they now own and control the city they could exploit its rich cultural heritage by offering it as a tourism destination? in this they themselves have much to offer, for they are among the country's most creative people. there is far more wealth to be gained by tourism, gained in greater peace and safety and shared in more extensive reach, than by drug trafficking, extortion racket and robbery. the idea in fact calls for a community tourism focus, since the product is not, as on the north coast, the sea and the sun but people-their past heritage and present accomplishments, their joie de vivre and hospitality. people, local and foreign, would pay handsomely for that. crime as such would not thereby cease, for even in the best of times and the safest of places robberies and murders do take place, but they do not leave the rest of the population feeling exposed and vulnerable. for this to happen, though, the youths have to buy into it. they would have to own and control the product. this is not beyond them. we have only to recall their extraordinary level of volunteerism and community building in the 1970s. targeting and co-opting the male youth of kingston could transform our inner-city communities at the margin of the mainstream from derelict eyesores into centers of recreation and learning. the result could be the transformation of gunmen and shata into creative and productive men, and the dawn of a new era of peace for jamaica. after all, it is always in the margins that prophets and visionaries appear, and from the margins that societies are renewed. notes 1. jamaica has had a stable two party system of democracy since 1944, based on a firstpast-the-post territorial representation. elections are generally intense, but beginning in the 1960's, political representation in the densely populated inner-city areas of kingston introduced possibly the most effective means of winning and defending constituencies, namely armed gangs of youths. supporters of the opposing side would be pushed out through violence, and the constituency turned into a virtual garrison. once the rise of democratic socialism in the 1970s was accompanied by friendly relations with neighboring cuba, many read communism in the making and a deadly struggle between the two political parties saw over 800 mostly poor innercity youths killed in the months leading up to the election in october, 1980. but the 1970s was also a period of heightened volunteerism, which merely intensified a long tradition of building societies, clubs and church groups. under michael manley's democratic socialism, the youth clubs flourished, citizens associations and councils grew, a national youth service was introduced, labor day transformed into a work day, and community projects promoted. the backbone of all this was the male youths between 18 and 30. 2. interview conducted in november, 1998. 3. chambers, c. & chevannes, b. (1991). report on focus groups: sexual decisionmaking project. kingston: institute of social and economic research, university of the west indies. 4. see chevannes, b. (1985). jamaican men: sexual beliefs and attitudes. kingston: national family planning board. what you sow is what you reap: violence and the construction of male identity in jamaica current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 61 5. gayle, h. (1997). hustling and juggling in inner-city communities in kingston. m.sc. thesis. kingston: department of sociology and social work, university of the west indies. references austin-broos, d.j. (1997). jamaica genesis: religion and the politics of moral orders. chicago: university of chicago press. toulis, n.r. (1997). believing identity : pentecostalism and the mediation of jamaican ethnicity and gender in england. washington, dc: berg. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 107 editorial introduction education and social exclusion for many, education conjures up thoughts of the ideal, if not idyllic notions of hope, possibility, and limitless democracy, while for others, it calls forth the harsh and stark reality of the limits of a free and democratic society. the clash between these two perspectives make clear all that is at stake in the universalization of education worldwide: the seemingly endless possibilities are limited by increasingly expanding levels of exclusion that exist throughout educational systems worldwide. initiatives, such as the convention on the rights of the child (1989) have aimed to universalize education as a right for all children, yet the realities of social exclusion continue to plague education efforts, with particularly problematic results for children from disadvantaged groups. unequal educational chances in turn lead to unequal life chances, and hence, to fewer opportunities to participate actively in social, economic, and political life. this millennial release of cice's fourth issue provides space to contemplate and discuss the goal of education for all set a decade ago in jomtien, thailand, and gives educators and administrators an opportunity to explore and assess patterns of exclusion in the education process. this issue of cice grows out of the cies 2000 northeast regional conference on the same topic, which cice sponsored along with teachers college (tc), the harvard graduate school of education (hgse), and unicef. many of the articles submitted to cice for this issue are based on presentations given at the conference and thus continue the debates started in february, 2000. the articles we received ranged broadly in scope, revealing a variety of perspectives regarding the definitions, evidence and implications of social exclusion as it relates to education. in an effort to produce a unique compilation of literature, cice selected articles by giving priority to issues discussed infrequently or rarely presented from the perspectives shown here. we begin the issue with four articles presenting debates external to the educational process itself, but impacting it from a wider societal level. these are followed by two articles focusing on issues more related to the internal functioning of education in schools. the last article combines an examination of external influences on education with an explanation of resulting internal, curricular adjustments. sangeeta kamat critically examines the discourse of decentralization and educational reform in deconstructing the rhetoric of decentralization: the state in education reform. based on an analysis of a recent world bank paper, kamat challenges the common notion that decentralization of education implies the weakening of the state, arguing that some models of decentralization exacerbate social inequities at the local level. through the lens of henri lefebvre's theory of the state as a socio-spatial configuration, kamat recasts decentralization reform discourse within the context of globalization, suggesting that decentralization must be understood as a necessary feature of the current phase of globalization. editorial introduction 108 april 30, 2002 lidia henales and beatrice edwards present three stages of neo-liberal theoretical development and examine its historical application in latin america. in neoliberalism and educational reform in latin america, they argue that education reform toward privatization and voucher systems has been implemented through loans from international financial institutions with neo-liberalist agendas. in the context of neoliberal orthodoxy, the most effective school prospers in a market economy, just as any efficient enterprise would. despite this tendency toward success among some schools, however, the authors show that neo-liberal reforms in education have, in fact, contributed to increased inequality in education. grazia scoppio also contributes to the external debate through a comparative analysis of recent school reform in england, u.k., california, u.s., and ontario, canada. in common trends of standardization, accountability, devolution and choice in the educational policies of england, u.k., california, u.s.a., and ontario, canada, she shows that on the one hand, the reforms of standardization, testing, school effectiveness, and accountability have enhanced centralization; on the other hand, reforming schools by increasing self-management and school choice have enhanced decentralization. based on an analysis of policy implementation, scoppio suggests that proponents of the recent reforms are more concerned with global economic competitiveness than with educational equality and equity. bonnie johnson and nalini chhetri continue the external debate with their discussion of minority education policies in china in exclusionary policies and practices in chinese minority education: a case of tibetan education. using the case of tibet under chinese rule, they illustrate how modifying minority education policies, aimed to address distinct regional needs, often results in exclusionary practices. the paper discusses the contradictory nature of the national educational policy of the people's republic of china as it attempts to contain regional ethnic resistance while maintaining national unity. rachel kline brings the reader closer to the school level by tracing the development and implementation of a particular intervention, the escuela nueva, designed to address disparities in educational opportunities in rural communities in colombia and guatemala. in a model for improving rural schools: escuaela nueva in columbia and guatemala, the author analyzes the characteristics of the model that are central to its success in impacting teachers' practices and students' achievement, differences in the implementation process in colombia versus guatemala, and various effects of the mass expansion of the program to the national level. laurie mook, in an article focusing on school-level activity, discusses the topic of inclusion/exclusion by examining the impact of college student-faculty interaction on equality of educational opportunity and achievement. while most studies of the role of student-faculty interactions in reinforcing social inequalities have focused on classroom settings, this study directs attention to interactions outside of the classroom. analyzing data from a large u.s. sample, and looking at several types of interactions, the author examines how the type and rate of interaction varies across student populations in exclusion and inclusion in student-faculty informal interaction: a critical perspective. education and social exclusion current issues in comparative education vol.2(2) 109 finally, this issue ends with a historical contribution by nancy lesko that examines the role of the adolescent at the turn of 20th century in the united states, and points to the particular experience of girls as an excluded sub-group. in making adolescence at the turn of the century: discourse and the exclusion of girls, the author explains the use of the "technology of adolescence," namely education systems and juvenile justice systems, to regulate the lives of young people as well as reinforce dominant social norms at a time of great transition and uncertainty in the united states. current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 22, issue 1, special issue 2020 © 2020, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 22(1), 39-57. refugee higher education and future reconstruction efforts: exploring the connection through the innovative technological implementation of a university course in nakivale refugee settlement, uganda matthew gallagher arizona state university, education for humanity carrie bauer arizona state university, education for humanity higher education (he) for refugees and displaced persons has often been considered a luxury. however, the humanitarian and educational sectors have recently committed to offering he to this population. this is a welcome development, as research demonstrates that he is intrinsically connected to development at the individual, community, and national levels. this study presents the findings of an he program with thirty refugee students in uganda which utilized offline technology to improve content knowledge in agribusiness, digital literacy, and other skills. the study’s results advance the idea that refugees, upon return to their home country, are better able to contribute to the reconstruction efforts of post-conflict societies when they have participated in he programs. introduction future reconstruction efforts in post-conflict areas, where warfare has ended but reconstruction and peace are still in the formative process, are dependent on current efforts in higher education (cloete, 2011). higher education (he), defined here as all post-secondary educational program opportunities, is necessary for successful and sustainable reconstruction processes implemented through inclusive, sustainable, gender-equitable, and peaceful means (wusc, 2018; cloete, 2011). despite this, he for refugees and displaced persons has often been thought of as a luxury and not a priority (dryden-peterson, 2012). this is evident through the 70.8 million displaced people and refugees around the world for whom educational opportunities are extremely limited and access rates scant in comparison to global averages (unhcr, 2019a). approximately half of all refugee children have access to primary school, only 22% have access to secondary school, and only 3% have access to he in comparison to 36% of global youth (save the children, 2017; unhcr, 2019a; unesco, 2017). refugee higher education and future reconstruction efforts current issues in comparative education 40 while access to he education still lags far behind where it needs to be for these marginalized populations, global humanitarian efforts and support for he education have recently increased. in the early 2000s, the dakar framework for action (2000) and africa regional training conference on tertiary education (2003) brought the issue of he for displaced populations to the forefront. in 2015, the united nations adopted sustainable development goal 4, which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” by 2030 (unhcr, 2019c). in 2018, the comprehensive refugee response framework and the global compact on refugees highlighted he education as a solution for refugee inclusion and integration, thereby allowing them to “thrive, not just survive” (grandi, 2019). most recently, attendees at the december 2019 global refugee forum targeted education and its financing as a main goal for humanitarian efforts moving forward, setting a goal of increasing refugee participation in he from 3% to 15% by 2030 (#15by30). however, despite growing support and efforts, existing he programs do not always address the current barriers refugees face in accessing he, such as their isolated location in low-resource environments, and a lack of technological and built infrastructure, electricity, access to devices, and internet connectivity, among others (bauer & gallagher, 2020). additionally, existing he programs do not tailor their content and structure to provide the knowledge and nurture the skills refugees will need to contribute to reconstruction efforts when they return to their countries of origin, such as “self-management; thinking and solving problems; working together and communicating, ...understanding the business…, effectively using numbers, it, and language” (thayaparan et al., 2015, p. 341). in this context, arizona state university’s (asu) education for humanity program (e4h) piloted a four-month program from april to july 2019 that provided a university-level course to 30 learners (see methods for additional learner data) in a resource-constrained environment via solar-powered, offline/online technology that allows access by any wifi enabled device via a wi-fi hotspot. this article presents an overview of the existing literature and explores the role that the results of this program has in informing the field of refugee higher education, the use of technological solutions to meet international goals, and the connection between university-level topical knowledge, digital literacy, and other gained skills with future reconstruction efforts in post-conflict societies. literature review a refugee, as defined by the 1951 refugee convention which codified their rights at the international level, is “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion” (un general assembly, 1951, p.3). currently, refugees face an average displacement time of 26 years gallagher & bauer current issues in comparative education 41 (unhcr, 2016). in 2018, 2.9 million displaced people, including 600,000 refugees, returned to their home communities (unhcr, 2019b). the socio-ecological framework model refugees live in a context where their behaviors influence and are influenced by their unique social environment. this study draws upon the social-ecological framework of berkes and folke (1998) and the socio-ecological frameworks of bronfenbrenner (1977, 1979) and henderson and baffour (2015). the frameworks are utilized to provide structure for this paper’s position that refugees that have participated in he can have a more beneficial impact on post-reconstruction societies once they return to their home countries due to the mutual and collective influence of individuals and communities on each other. the framework embraces the idea that individual gains and those of the larger system(s) are all connected and interdependent. the figure below (figure 1), adapted from bronfenbrenner’s (1979) model, visualizes how these various levels interact and influence each other, and, for the purpose of this study, represents how individual access to he has important ripple effects when applied at the community and national levels. figure 1. socio-ecological framework model. adapted from “toward an experimental ecology of human development,” by u. bronfenbrenner, 1977, american psychologist, 32(7), 513-531. this framework emphasizes that the decisions, actions, and behaviors of individuals are impacted by their existence in specific physical environments and contexts that have mutual exchanges (colding & barthel, 2019). however, as researchers, we also recognize that refugees are not homogenous or monolithic. their intersectional lives, refugee higher education and future reconstruction efforts current issues in comparative education 42 the overlapping oppressions and identities, defined both individually and via social relationships and structural levels, are impacted by their lived situations (crenshaw, 1991; collins, 2000). as such, refugees’ multiple-situated identities at both the individual level (i.e. how they define themselves via ethnicity, gender, etc.) as well as the way external systems define them (i.e. refugee policies of host-country and global governing bodies; citizenship status; economic access, etc.) affect them and their access to he. using the socio-ecological framework to structure the literature, the next few paragraphs will explore the benefits of he, how they affect refugees at the individual level, and explore the ripple effect that occurs when each benefit accumulates and then radiates outwards to the interpersonal, organizational, community and national levels. finally, we will present how this accumulation influences reconstruction efforts in postconflict societies. this structure will demonstrate how the interdependent relationships between educated refugees and their larger communities influence one another and have the potential to benefit post-reconstruction societies. higher education and prosperous societies higher education has long been hailed as a fundamental component of stable and prosperous societies (ferede, 2018), and its presence in society has been shown to improve feelings of hope and increase the spectrum of available opportunities for individuals affected by displacement (crea, 2016). wright and plasterer (2012) showed that participation in he creates resilient, supportive, and thriving communities, and provides the foundation needed for the creation of stable, functioning societies. bloom et al. (2014) notes that investments made in he help to accelerate technological diffusion, decrease knowledge gaps, reduce poverty, and result in greater economic returns for society. reflecting on the various roles of he, van laar et al. (2017) and pheeraphan (2013) both note that the role of he is not to simply train students for a specific job with content knowledge and technical/hard skills, but to cultivate and nurture the skills needed to adapt to evolving job responsibilities, process information, and become lifelong learners. brown (2018) noted the wide spectrum of skills that he cultivates, including soft skills like written and oral communication; critical thinking; leadership; confidence; teamwork; and work ethic, and technical/hard skills which directly relate to the type of subject being studied, such as building knowledge for construction or mathematical knowledge for accounting. in addition to topical content knowledge and soft skills, he also develops core competencies in digital literacy, including skills to understand and use technology in a society where access to information is predominantly through digital platforms, which gallagher & bauer current issues in comparative education 43 are not often available in secondary education (kay, 2010; trilling & fadel, 2009). technology divides often exist in marginalized societies, which then carry over to postconflict societies (pheeraphan, 2013). in some refugee camps and settlements, digital literacy programs are recognized as an area of need and offered to learners, but this is not yet the norm (giz, 2016). recognizing the important role digital literacy skills will play in building knowledge-based economies, van larr et al. (2017, p.577-578) expressed that “the development of the global knowledge society and the rapid integration of ict make it imperative to acquire digital skills necessary for employment and participation in society.” refugees recognize the benefits of gaining digital literacy skills by demanding access to technology as part of any he opportunities offered to them (dryden-peterson, 2012). crea (2016) learned from refugee students enrolled in he that access to technology helped increase their technical and professional skills. in cases where students had not been exposed to technology, these skills were not developed, and negatively affected their professional opportunities. higher education and the role of the individual in community and national reconstruction efforts on an individual level, the literature concludes that he strengthens psycho-social functions (ferede, 2018), builds positive self-identity necessary for leaders to mitigate feelings of fear and persecution (zeus, 2011), promotes a sense of pride, accomplishment, and personal growth, and improves leadership, communication, and language skills (crea, 2016). furthermore, participation in he allow refugees to gain the necessary knowledge and skills to contribute to their development and growth at the personal level a critical need as knowledge-based economies increasingly become the global norm, (van laar et al., 2017; pheeraphan, 2013; dryden-peterson & giles, 2010). moving outward from the individual level on our socio-ecological model, once a critical mass of individuals possess these types of skills and knowledge, it influences society’s ideology, cultural norms, and public policies (henderson & baffour, 2015; clark, 2006). on an interpersonal level, he cultivates soft skills such as inclusivity, tolerance, collaboration and teamwork, and critical thinking and problem-solving skills (brown, 2018), that can contribute to the development of social networks, the establishment of cultural norms and beliefs, and influence public policy (van larr et al., 2017; thayaparan et al., 2015; henderson & baffour, 2015; pheeraphan, 2013; tahiraj, 2010). these skills manifest in the development and implementation of inclusive policies and programs in post-conflict societies (wusc, 2018; tahiraj, 2010), thereby linking the individual skills gained from he to the community and national levels of the socio-ecological model. the ability to listen to and understand other’s views gained from the collaborative work stressed in he manifests at the community and national levels through policies and programs that aim to meet the needs of the many (brown, 2018). refugee higher education and future reconstruction efforts current issues in comparative education 44 in the context of post-conflict reconstruction efforts and activities, the skills and knowledge gained from he will be expressed at all levels of our socio-ecological model. higher education “equip[s] students to contribute to socio-political and economic reconstruction” (wusc, 2018 p. 6). university-level courses provide refugees with the topical, readily applicable knowledge and skills necessary for reconstruction efforts (thayaparan et al., 2015; trnavcevic, 2010) that are needed at the individual, community, government, and cultural levels for a well-functioning society (henderson & baffour, 2015). in looking at the contributions of resettled university graduates, wusc (2018, p.5) notes that “many resettled students make the decision, later in life, to return to their countries of origin to contribute their skills and knowledge to rebuilding efforts, helping to ensure a more inclusive, sustainable, and peaceful process.” making a more practical connection between he and the skills needed for reconstruction, collier (2000) argues that one of the risk factors in post-conflict societies is ethnic dominance. higher education often promotes integration and intercultural competence by providing opportunities for learners to collaborate with people from diverse backgrounds and create more stable and diverse interpersonal social networks (law et al., 2019). this applies to the gender equity of reconstruction efforts and policy as well: an individual’s gender and intersectional identity influence how they view and perceive conflict and reconstruction and will influence public policy in communities at local and national levels (kaufman, williams & ebc., 2016 henderson & baffour, 2015). reflecting on the long-term durability and sustainability of these post-conflict reconstruction efforts, wright and plasterer (2012, p.104) concluded that the knowledge and skills refugees obtain through he result in more effective and durable solutions and are “a strategic [issue for] long-term processes of post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding.” post-war south korea provides an example of when national policy makes a direct connection between he and durable development and reconstruction. south korea prioritized the development of formal education institutions (primary, secondary, and tertiary) and self-described the effort as ‘education fever.’ the country now cites this effort as a reason for its ability to grow and succeed post-conflict (seth, 2010). indeed, currently ranked 36th globally, they have been highlighted as one of the most developed and strongest he systems in the world (mani, 2018). looking once again at our socio-ecological model, post-reconstruction societies do not develop in a vacuum. individuals apply their gained knowledge and skills, build and participate in democratic processes, create social networks, and together affect the economic prospects of their immediate communities, which, in turn, collectively gallagher & bauer current issues in comparative education 45 determine the relative success of post-conflict reconstruction efforts. therefore, efforts to provide individual refugees with he access, along with the topical content knowledge, soft skills, and digital literacy skills that accompany it, will collectively and positively impact the success and sustainability of reconstruction efforts in postconflict societies (bloom et al., 2014). future reconstruction efforts are therefore dependent upon current efforts in he. when refugees return home, reconstruction efforts will be reliant upon citizens with knowledge and skills gained from he to lead and implement reconstruction efforts. the literature has demonstrated that a more durable and sustainable post-conflict society is created when populated by citizens with the ability to think critically and solve problems in the face of the inevitable challenges faced during reconstruction efforts. summarizing the benefits of he in the area of national reconstruction efforts, trnavcevic (2010, p.99) states that “the reestablishment of education contributes to normalization, democratization, and economic recovery.” purpose statement the purpose of this study was to assess growth in agribusiness and digital literacy knowledge and skills of refugee learners of nakivale settlement, uganda who participated in the agb250: agribusiness course. this paper will demonstrate how this program advances the idea that refugees, upon returning to their home country, can better contribute to the reconstruction of post-conflict societies when exposed to higher education content delivered via innovative methods that aim to build digital literacy skills. methods despite the demand for he, the various benefits it provides, its ability to foster strong and resilient post-conflict communities, refugees still face many access barriers, such as cost, infrastructure, connectivity, access to devices, lack of documentation and many others (bauer & gallagher, 2020). an innovative technological solution was one way to simultaneously diminish these barriers, create opportunities for access to he, and offer the opportunity to acquire digital literacy skills. the open-source course was housed in the learning management system moodle, on a raspberry pi computer1 in a solarspell, which is a portable, solar-powered, digital library for use in low-resource locations. its digital library provides locally-relevant, open-access, educational resources to learners by emitting an offline wi-fi hotspot to which any wi-fi-enabled device within a 50-foot radius can connect. the solarspell 1 the combination of the moodle lms with a raspberry pi computer is called a moodlebox, an idea originally generated by nicolas martignoni. for additional information, see: https://moodlebox.net https://moodlebox.net/ refugee higher education and future reconstruction efforts current issues in comparative education 46 therefore mimics an online experience to help build learners’ information literacy, technology, and digital learning skills in a safe, offline learning environment (bauer & gallagher, 2020). given previous research on technology’s ability to open education pathways to refugees (dahya, 2016; mendenhall et al., 2018), this program used technology to create educational access for a marginalized community and paired it with human support. in order for learners, facilitators, and the faculty member to stay connected, the asu team used a 95/5 model. the 30 learners could access the 95% offline material via 12 internet-enabled devices (6 laptops and 6 tablets) and the other 5% was accessed online via mobile connectivity from smartphones. all devices were provided by asu. the initiative took one year to design and build. implementation occurred from april to july 2019 by asu’s e4h program, in partnership with windle international uganda (wiu). the site and agribusiness course topic were chosen based on e4h’s internal research and needs assessment conducted via interviews in camps, settlements, and urban centers in the middle east and east africa with refugee-service providing organizations. nakivale, uganda was chosen based on numerous factors discovered through this process, including: 1) strong learner interest due to wiu’s existing agriculture vocational program, 2) the community’s robust agrarian economy, and 3) uganda’s liberal laws and policies in regards to refugees, such as their employment rights, freedom of movement, and access to social services including health and education, mandated through its membership in the intergovernmental authority on development (igad), and as a co-signatory of the djibouti declaration on refugee education (world bank, 2016). student enrollment consisted of 10 females and 20 males, from six countries: burundi (5), democratic republic of the congo (9), rwanda (3), somalia (1), south sudan (4), and uganda (8). students were recruited through windle’s vocational center in nakivale, uganda, of which all 30 students were active in the agricultural vocational program. facilitators consisted of one female and one male, who were english speakers, with it backgrounds. the students, in addition to the two local facilitators who managed and implemented the course, were recruited by wiu through flyers and whatsapp messages. guidelines for target learner recruitment included: age of 18+, strong english skills (as the course is in english), were ready for courses at the university level, expressed interest in the course topic, were a mix of refugees (non-ugandan learners) and host community members (ugandan), and gender parity. facilitators were hired based on their english and digital literacy skills and to achieve gender parity. windle was instructed by the e4h team to strive for equity in gender representation and to recruit from the refugee and local communities. while success was more readily apparent in community diversity, windle struggled to achieve gender equity as they were limited by the applicant pool. course oversight, grading, and feedback on student gallagher & bauer current issues in comparative education 47 assignments was overseen and implemented by the asu course professor via the course gradebook and whatsapp. the program culminated in a certificate ceremony for those who passed the course. the study utilized a mixed methods research design. qualitative components included facilitator interviews and student questionnaires prior to and after program implementation, and embraced an emergent design, allowing for unstructured dialogue with research participants and the use of probing questions (lincoln & guba, 1985). this positioned the facilitators as knowledge producers and allowed for flexibility to revise and adapt the questions (cresswell, 2014). the interviews were conducted, and the questionnaires were distributed by education for humanity’s research and evaluation specialist (a white man) and project manager (a white woman) who are both from the united states. in collecting information from marginalized people in a developing country, both staff recognized the inequities in power that their backgrounds presented (beneria, 1999; mies, 1991; suet-tang, 2008). to mitigate the effects of these dynamics, windle staff reviewed all protocol and questionnaires for cultural appropriateness, ethical standards, and to ensure useful responses. asu’s institutional review board provided internal clearance. interview and questionnaire data collection occurred in-person with signed consent forms. interviews were audiorecorded and lasted approximately 15 minutes, and transcriptions were created afterwards. to generate an information feedback loop throughout the program, a supplementary set of data collection tools was developed. the comprehensive evaluation process was separated into three program phases: 1) pre-implementation assessment, which consisted of the pre-program student questionnaire and facilitator interviews; 2) program monitoring, which consisted of bi-weekly calls with the researchers, facilitators, and course professor, bi-weekly reports completed by the facilitators via whatsapp, and course activity monitoring; and 3) post-implementation assessment, which consisted of the post-program student questionnaire and facilitator interviews. analysis of qualitative responses was completed using dedoose. qualitative analysis was purely inductive; codes and themes were generated from the collected data and not from the socio-ecological framework or other theory. quantitative analysis was conducted on the student preand post-questionnaires in the form of paired t-tests via spss. results and findings this section presents results and findings regarding learner development in digital literacy and agribusiness comprehension and skills. they will be presented in three subrefugee higher education and future reconstruction efforts current issues in comparative education 48 sections: 1) program participant expectations; 2) agribusiness program outcomes; and 3) digital literacy program outcomes. quantitative data will be presented along with themes discovered in the qualitative responses from the learners, facilitators, and professor. when applicable, illustrative participant quotes are presented as supporting evidence to each theme area, and coded as follows: students (s1 to s30), and facilitators (f1 to f2). program expectations the pre-program questionnaire found that 92% of students had never taken an online course (n=24), and 85% had never taken a university-level course (n=26). this indicated that the majority of students had no prior comparable experience to relate to the current agb250 course and that learners would be taking the course without influence from previous university course experience. to gain feedback on program expectations, students were asked to complete the following sentence: “at the end of the agb250 agribusiness course, i expect to…”. of the 28 responses, six main themes were found. twelve students hoped that the course would improve their digital literacy skills, including their comfort and confidence levels in using computers, tablets, and smartphones. similarly, the course facilitators stressed the importance of exposing students to the different technologies utilized in the course. they believed the students would be highly motivated to participate based on the opportunity to use these devices, thereby capitalizing on this rare opportunity to strengthen their digital literacy skills. facilitators cautioned that while they expected students to be excited about using new technologies, they also expected them to struggle in the early days due to low digital literacy. facilitators expected that this would require time to orient students to the various course devices. nine students focused their responses on agribusiness: five learners hoped to improve their skills in agribusiness and four hoped to improve their knowledge of agribusiness. facilitator responses supported this, indicating that the course could improve students’ business knowledge of agriculture: “in uganda, agriculture is seen as one of the main economic ways of living. i think it would be very good for [students] to know that when they grow a certain kind of crop, it will have a certain price at the market... economically, the course will be beneficial for them” (f2). nine students also reported that they hoped to apply what they learned from the course, including sharing information with fellow community members, securing a job in the agribusiness field, or starting their own agriculture-based business: “i hope that the agribusiness course will help me for the rest of my life, not only as the source of an employment opportunity, but also during my daily life” (s2). three students expressed hope that this course would help them academically: “i will gain more skills and experience in agribusiness, and i also hope to continue with this course up to the master's level” (s15). three students expected to gallagher & bauer current issues in comparative education 49 work together with course facilitators and fellow classmates to collaboratively improve their knowledge and skills in both agribusiness and digital literacy: “my expectation is to work together with my fellow learners to develop our skills for the future” (s11). finally, three respondents looked forward to receiving a certificate upon successful completion of the course. program outcomes agribusiness skills at the end of the eight-week course, 26 of 30 students completed and passed (table 1), as based on grading standards that included polls and other interactive activities, reflection boards, unit quizzes, and a final exam. for those that did not, three dropped out without completing any course content, and one dropped out due to difficulty understanding english. final course grades were as follows: table 1. course grades (n=30) a+ 17% a 57% a7% b 7% incomplete 13% the completion and pass rate was 87% for this often marginalized population attempting a university-level course delivered via new technology in a low-resource environment. reflecting on the program barriers, a facilitator summarized, “i’ve been working with refugees since 2015. most of them do not complete their studies. they easily drop out because there are so many challenges. but when you have an 87% completion rate like this program, that was really great…so, so great!” (f2). similarly, the course professor remarked, “this was the best class i have ever had. i would put these students right up there with my best asu students.” in terms of learning outcomes, students self-expressed that the course increased their knowledge of agriculture: “the greatest strength of the agb250 course is that it equips a learner with the skills and knowledge about how agriculture is carried out globally” (s14). additionally, both facilitators shared that the students increased their knowledge of business and economics, which are of increased importance due to their current environment: “you know the way they live here in the refugee camp…they have to survive, their livelihood has to be enhanced. so, they gave us feedback that they looked at this as something very positive and are taking it on” (f2). regarding the business and economics knowledge the students acquired, the facilitators discussed that students learned they needed to focus their business ideas and specialize in a specific service or product: “...students told us they learned how to refugee higher education and future reconstruction efforts current issues in comparative education 50 specialize, instead of doing too many different activities. this makes it easier to find a market. it is an important step for them. they are now aware of where to allocate their resources, especially time” (f1). the students also reported that the course motivated their business mindset: “the course taught us how we can manage our resources either in agriculture or other businesses” (s1). a facilitator expanded on this topic, “they got to know how they can predict prices in the market and how to specialize. we had an instance of a student saying they were dealing in three products, but now says he's going to look into the market and what people like most is what he will focus on” (f2). facilitators also observed an increased desire among students to continue their education and gain access to educational resources through online learning: “they really loved it. they want to experience more because they kept on mentioning that and asking us for other courses” (f1). overall, when asked to reflect on the agribusiness content in the course, eight students remarked that the course had met their expectations as they had increased their knowledge of starting and running a business. two learners took the opportunity to request additional courses in agribusiness in order to continue improving their skills and knowledge in agribusiness. one student shared that their expectations were met because there was more business content in the course than they had expected. program outcomes digital literacy skills in both the pre-program and post-program questionnaire, students were asked to rate their skills in three areas of digital literacy: motivation, confidence, and comfort. for level of motivation to be digital learners (table 2), results indicated that the biggest change was students moving from ‘somewhat motivated’ (37% pre-program; 8% postprogram) to ‘motivated’ (11% pre-program; 42% post-program). the percentage indicating they were ‘very motivated’ or ‘not at all motivated’ remained consistent from pre-program to post-program. table 2. what is your current level of motivation for digital learning? rating pre (n=27) post (n=24) very motivated 44% 46% motivated 11% 42% somewhat motivated 37% 8% not at all motivated 7% 4% for their digital learning course confidence level, pre-program results were distributed across all four confidence levels (table 3). at the program conclusion, all students gallagher & bauer current issues in comparative education 51 indicated that they were either ‘very confident’ or ‘confident’ in digital learning courses (63% and 38%, respectively). table 3. what is your current level of confidence in digital learning courses? rating pre (n=26) post (n=24) very confident 27% 63% confident 35% 38% somewhat confident 27% 0% not at all confident 12% 0% for comfort level in digital learning course interaction (table 4), responses indicated growth in students feeling ‘very comfortable’ (37% pre-program; 50% post-program) as well as ‘comfortable’ (30% pre-program; 46% post-program). similarly, questionnaire responses indicated a decrease in students feeling ‘somewhat comfortable’ (26% pre-program; 4% post-program) and ‘not at all comfortable’ (7% pre-program; 0% post-program). table 4. what is your current comfort level in interacting with digital learning courses? rating pre (n=27) post (n=24) very comfortable 37% 50% comfortable 30% 46% somewhat comfortable 26% 4% not at all comfortable 7% 0% paired t-tests were used to analyze the significance of the results for both sets of questionnaire data regarding digital literacy (table 5). students were included in this analysis if they completed both the preand post-questionnaires (23 of 30 students). analyses indicated all three areas showed statistically significant change (table 5). students reported the most change in their digital learning course confidence, (t(21)=5.01, p=.00). students also reported statistically significant change in their digital learning motivation (t(22)=2.55, p=.020) and their comfort level in digital learning course interaction (t(22)=2.51, p=.020). refugee higher education and future reconstruction efforts current issues in comparative education 52 table 5. paired t-test results survey question survey timing average rating (1-4 scale) change sd t p-value significant? (α = .05) what is your current level of motivation for digital learning? (n=23) pre 2.83 0.47 0.898 2.554 0.02 yes post 3.30 what is your current level of confidence in digital learning courses? (n=22) pre 2.59 1.00 0.926 5.006 0.00 yes post 3.59 what is your current comfort level in interacting with digital learning courses? (n=23) pre 2.87 0.56 1.080 2.510 0.02 yes post 3.43 throughout the program, students took steps to proactively improve their digital literacy. the course designers, consisting of the professor, his teaching assistant, and a member of e4h staff, chose to provide twelve internet-enabled devices for the thirty students; they hoped this approach would encourage students to work and learn together. however, the research found that the limited number of devices was frequently noted as a challenge by students and facilitators. learners took the initiative to coordinate classroom attendance times so they would each be able to access a device on their own or with one other person. this was driven by students’ desire to strengthen their digital literacy skills. regarding digital learning, facilitators described the value of a strong, consistent network connection and reliable power, which allowed students to focus solely on the course content. they also described the motivation and commitment of students to complete the course, which they attributed to the course being university-level and from an american institution. these two characteristics pushed the students “to see if they could learn just as well as those from a first-world university” (f1). overall, when reflecting on their digital literacy skills, students attributed their improvement to the fast, consistent, and strong network connection that solarspell provided a phenomenon not usually available in refugee settlements. one student shared, “the greatest strength was the network speed, which allowed us to use the devices to access the course very quickly without interruption” (s16). discussion as presented earlier, only 3% of refugees have access to he in comparison to 36% of global youth (save the children, 2017; unhcr, 2019a). based on these statistics, gallagher & bauer current issues in comparative education 53 unhcr, the german federal foreign office, and the german academic exchange service set an ambitious goal of increasing refugee participation in he to 15% by 2030 (unhcr, 2019a). if academic and humanitarian organizations work to achieve this goal, it offers the potential to increase the topical knowledge and skill base of refugees, and to create a critical mass of community members to pursue, implement, and sustain reconstruction efforts in refugees’ home countries via innovative solutions. within this context, we will now explore more deeply the study’s results and findings. university-level courses despite the numerous barriers that refugees face in accessing he, this program demonstrated that when these barriers are addressed, refugees are able to succeed in university-level courses. this success should be seen as a welcome sign for academic and humanitarian organizations intent on not just meeting unhcr’s 15% by 2030 goal, but having students succeed in the he programs in which they participate. moreover, the program’s students were not satisfied with a single university-level course, but expressed interest in pursuing more courses and degree pathways. these students recognized the value he offers to them in the short-term, as demonstrated by the students applying their newly acquired agribusiness knowledge at the local market. in their request for additional courses and degree pathways, they also recognized the value he offers for the long-term. as presented in the literature review, the knowledge and skills that refugees gain through he increase their prospects for personal development as well as the possibility of playing key roles in future reconstruction efforts. organizations offering he to refugees should endeavor to stress readily applicable content knowledge and skills in areas important to reconstruction efforts. additionally, refugee he programs should adopt a structure that supports inclusivity, tolerance, gender equity, teamwork, and critical thinking and problem-solving skills. within the program presented here, thirty students from six different countries, both male and female, demonstrated the teamwork and problem-solving skills that will be necessary in future reconstruction efforts and that are nurtured through he when they proactively coordinated their schedules to improve their digital literacy skills. digital literacy knowledge-based economies are now the engine of thriving nations (van larr et al., 2017). higher education prepares refugees for transition into the expanding knowledge-based job market as they gain the confidence, knowledge, and skills necessary for employment (o’sullivan 2002; crea 2016). for the reconstruction efforts that await the world’s current refugee population, digital literacy skills will be critical to develop, implement, and sustain them. as demonstrated through this study, incorporating innovative technology approaches into he offerings improved the digital literacy of students. specifically, students’ daily usage, maintenance, and management of the program’s smartphones, laptops, and solarspell technology served to improve refugee higher education and future reconstruction efforts current issues in comparative education 54 students’ motivation to be digital learners, raise their confidence in digital approaches to learning, and increase their comfort level with digital learning technology. improvements in all three of these areas were highly significant, indicating clear and lasting progress. there exists a possibility that providing internet-enabled devices to every student from the program’s outset would have strengthened digital literacy skills more than what was measured, and this remains an area for future research. overall, organizations offering he to refugees should endeavor to take advantage of students’ demonstrated interest in acquiring these skills by incorporating technology into their program structures. this will not only increase students’ investment in and dedication to the he pathway, but will build the digital literacy skills necessary for them to contribute to building a thriving and resilient post-conflict society. higher education in resource-constrained environments in light of current efforts to achieve the #15by30 goal, the results of the solarspell pilot study take on added significance. the 27 current members of the connected learning in crisis consortium, of which arizona state university is a co-lead, are universities and education providers that are leading the effort to provide he in areas of displacement. in order to offer he programs, these universities have been restricted to operating in refugee communities equipped with computer labs, internet access, and electricity (gladwell et al., 2016; wusc 2018). while these efforts should be continued, the lack of an offline solution means that refugees located in low-resource environments will continue to lack access to he programs. the offline solarspell technology has demonstrated its ability to expand current efforts to offer he to refugees, and expand the geographic footprint in which he programs can be offered. this expansion offers an opportunity for these universities, as well as the humanitarian education sector as a whole, to reach the stated goal of 15% of refugees participating in he by 2030. as the literature presented here has demonstrated a connection between participation in he, development at the individual and community levels, and reconstruction at the national level, future reconstruction efforts will benefit from having more refugees participating in he programs. moreover, expanding he access for refugees in low-resource environments are of particular importance, as future reconstruction efforts in post-conflict societies will need individuals with universitylevel education, and the knowledge and skills that go along with it, represented in all areas of the economy, if these efforts are to be sustained long-term. this pilot program has demonstrated an option to achieve this with marginalized refugee populations, to meet the #15by30 goal, and to meet the needs of national post-conflict reconstruction efforts. conclusion the purpose of the program was to grow the agribusiness knowledge and digital literacy skills of 30 refugee learners of nakivale settlement, uganda who participated gallagher & bauer current issues in comparative education 55 in arizona state university’s agb250: agribusiness course via the education for humanity: powered by solarspell technology. the program was small in scope (reaching 30 refugees) and limited in reach (confined to the nakivale community in the refugee-friendly country of uganda), and additional analysis from future implementations of university courses utilizing the solarspell offline technology will be needed to increase the validity of the results. improvement in the area of students’ soft skills were not measured through the study, but were evident in the qualitative themes that emerged. future implementations of the program will need to assess the growth of students’ soft skills, as the literature has demonstrated their importance in successfully implementing and sustaining reconstruction efforts. additionally, longitudinal studies will be critical to determine the extent of the connection between refugee higher education at the individual and community levels and the success and sustainability of reconstruction efforts at the national level. utilizing the socio-ecological model to frame the results, the study demonstrates the ability of he delivered via offline technology to build the following knowledge and skills of refugees at the individual level, which will be necessary for future reconstruction efforts at the community and national levels: topical content knowledge and digital literacy gained directly from university-level courses, and critical thinking, problemsolving, teamwork, and collaboration skills strengthened through program participation. this result is relevant to all academic institutions and humanitarian organizations committed to achieving unhcr’s pledge to increase refugee participation in he from 3% to 15% by 2030, and to current refugees who will implement and support the future reconstruction efforts of post-conflict societies. matthew gallagher is the research and evaluation specialist for the education for humanity program at arizona state university. he is also a current phd student in arizona state university’s school of community resources and development dr. carrie bauer is the instructional design specialist for the education for humanity program at arizona state university. she led the course design team and the technology design team for the education for humanity: powered by solarspell program. references refugee higher education and future reconstruction efforts current issues in comparative education 56 bauer, c. and gallagher, m. 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(2011). exploring barriers to higher education in protracted refugee situations: the case of burmese refugees in thailand. journal of refugee studies, 24(2), 256-276. https://www.unhcr.org/5d08d7ee7.pdf https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/tertiary-education.html https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/24736 https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.wusc.ca/new%20website/02%20impact/reports%20and%20publications/wusc-state-of-play-08.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.wusc.ca/new%20website/02%20impact/reports%20and%20publications/wusc-state-of-play-08.pdf © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.1(1) 3 editorial introduction are ngos overrated? . . . the past decade has witnessed an erosion of belief in the capacity of democratic institutions to intervene effectively in shaping social and economic life and help solve our most pressing problems. a common refrain is that government is part of the problem, not the solution. . . . deregulation, privatization, reduction of social services, curtailments of state spending-these have been the watch words, rather than participation, greater responsiveness and more creative and effective forms of democratic state intervention. in the context of these global political developments, rethinking a wide range of questions about democratic institutions is a matter of urgency (wright, 1995). the dramatic changes of the late 1980s and early 1990s produced political and economic shifts in the relationship between the state, civil society and markets worldwide. many academics and practitioners vigorously debate the social implications of these changes. three central theoretical approaches explore these trends: 1) states are large bureaucracies disconnected from the constituencies they were meant to represent-this view, accordingly, supports a shift in responsibilities and resources from ineffective state institutions to nongovernmental organizations; 2) ngos may have merits, but it is unclear whether they can maintain autonomy and legitimacy; 3) the state is a dominant force which reflects and reinforces power relations found in the market and the market, in turn, controls ngos. to acknowledge changes in large social processes, and in the interest of tracking the trends and analyzing the results of these changes, teachers college organized a symposium in 1998. that symposium at the comparative and international education society (cies) annual conference examined the roles and responsibilities of ngos in the shifting political arena. it was designed to respond to a provocative article by michael edwards and david hulme [1], also posted here, courtesy of world development. the following five articles featured in this issue are based on the authors' presentations during that symposium. governments, bilateral and multilateral agencies and local actors have promoted ngos for many of the reasons you will find discussed in this issue of cice. strengthening nongovernmental organizations is a key element in the building of civil society. therefore international agencies have launched large initiatives to create free-markets and build civil society on the assumption that democracy would follow. educators and social advocates proclaim the virtues of local ngos in promoting social change. the authors express varied concerns regarding the simultaneous proliferation and vulnerability of local ngos around the world. the title of this issue, "are ngos overrated?" is deliberately broad to provoke debate on the purpose, significance and activities of various types of ngos. editorial introduction 4 november`15, 1998 mark ginsburg's article ngos what's in an acronym? highlights some of the problems inherent in the characterization and evaluation of ngos. he notes that the heterogeneity of ngos, (in terms of sectors they serve, their scope, and their level and sources of funding), the varying theoretical approaches used to analyze ngos, and different conceptions of democracy, often result in contradictory depiction of ngos. gita steiner-khamsi highlights the "crisis in ngo legitimacy." in too far from home? 'modulitis' and 'ngos' role in transferring pre-packaged reform, she observes that critiquing ngos for moving from "state-independent to state-dependent entities" does not apply to post-socialist countries. she calls attention to the changing relations between ngos and the state, and the role ngos play in the transfer of educational modules and models of school reform. perhaps ngos and state forces would be better served in reaching their goals if they worked more closely together. robert arnove and rachel christina's ngo-state relations: an argument in favor of the state and complementarity of efforts, provides excellent examples of case studies in palestine, papua new guinea and nicaragua in which "increased complementarity of ngo-state relations" could have been and sometimes were accomplished with significant success. steven klees and lynn ilon share a concern for market forces dominating ngos' agendas. in can ngos provide alternative development in a market-based system of global economics?, ilon explains that market demands compromise the service delivery goals of many ngos. klees comments in ngos: progressive tool or neoliberal force?, on the pressure on ngos to take on responsibility for projects that were not part of their original objectives. although klees observes that "the ngo sector has been…part of a system that reinforces unequal development," both authors believe that ngos offer promise for social change. in this issue nelly stromquist and michael edwards are discussants of the previous five articles. in ngos in a new paradigm of civil society, stromquist reflects on the emergence of ngos since the 1970s as a force "making claims on the polity and for the polity." she acknowledges and responds to the specific arguments made by the other authors. she observes that ngos risk co-optation and misuse, but believes their presence guarantees that "new spaces for reflection and creative action permeate civil society." it is fitting that michael edwards offer a response to the debate. in his article, are ngss overrated? why and how to say "no", he reviews some of the reasons for the criticisms leveled at ngos and proposes that there must be "room-to-maneuver" to allow agencies to profit from opportunities and manage threats. he urges ngos and researchers to collaborate to create "environments for learning that nurture both reflective practitioners and engaged academics." as political shifts have affected our institutions, we are fortunate to have technological innovations that have made it possible for cice to debate these shifts. this is a continuing discussion. we hope that internet resources will allow global citizens to are ngos overrated? current issues in comparative education, vol.1(1) 5 imagine a new kind of community. this inaugural issue signifies our hope that wide discussion will stimulate social and educational creativity. notes: [1] edwards, m. & hulme, d. (1996). too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations. world development, 24 (6), 961-973. reference: wright, e. o. (1995). introduction. in e.o.wright (ed.), associations and democracy. (1). london and new york: verso. microsoft word 41edintro.doc © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 3 editorial introduction education for democracy in the post-development era: what will the curtain reveal? across countries, students are open to less traditional forms of civic and political engagement such as collecting money for a charity and participating in non-violent protests or rallies. a small minority of students would be willing to participate in protest activities that would be illegal in most countries, such as blocking traffic or occupying buildings1. what does it mean to "educate" students for democracy? are democratic principles a luxury only achieved after "modernization" and the transformation to capitalism? do free citizens only exist in the free market and if not, are there other possibilities aside from those with the prefix "anti-" attached? assuming one may arrive at the "genuinely unbiased" notion of democracy referred to in our call for papers for this issue, should education even necessarily be considered as the means to achieve it? the task is complicated by contradictions, not least of which is the idea of pluralism, contained in a curriculum which implies that there is only one, "best" form of citizenship. in this sense the difference between education and indoctrination, is by no means obvious. a popular solution that has been documented is the determination of goals in terms "education for," with the best of intentions attached--diversity, tolerance, peace and human rights. as ideals, these may be inarguable, but as goals for education, are they achievable? the authors whose articles are presented in the current issue of cice, "education for democracy in the post development era," have provided us a variety of perspectives which to consider these issues. some describe social and political contexts democracy is conceptually almost unrecognizable in terms of the way in which we have come to understand it. others alter the grounds of the argument altogether by introducing alternative approaches, which they argue are more universally applicable, such as peace education, or by insisting that democracy can no longer be conceived of as an exclusively national phenomenon, and should be approached from a more cosmopolitan framework. in prospects of educating for democracy in struggling third wave regimes: the case of malawi, zikany kaunda and nancy kendall refer to the weaknesses of present national and international conceptualizations of democracy and advocate for an alternative model, better suited to the malawian context. their model emphasizes normative and cultural aspects, as well as the important role that both formal and nonformal educational structures can play in providing a culturally acceptable program of education for democracy. most importantly, their article refers to the question of whether or not the model of democracy created by the "developed" west, can be of any utility in places where these same countries have in the past behaved so undemocratically. editorial introduction 4 december 18, 2001 writing from a similar perspective, andrea dyrness, in popular education and post-war democratization" the case of pennat, guatemala, argues that in guatemala, education for democracy must also address the "culture of terror" and the "culture of fear" that the civil war has left behind. she asks whether education can help to achieve a national transition to democracy, while at the same time helping individuals and communities recover from the devastating effects of political violence and repression. dyrness examines a specific ngo program, 'pennat,' (programa educativo del niño, niña y adolescente trabajador--educational program for child and adolescent workers), which is explicitly oriented toward social change, based on a popular education philosophy that aims to empower the most excluded members of society. she concludes that in terms of both what it does, as well as who it serves, pennat makes a unique contribution to post-war democratization and to building a "culture of mutual respect and peace." the possibility of revising popularly held notions of democracy, is hypothesized by dale snauwaert in cosmopolitan democracy and democratic education. snauwaert argues that democracy can no longer be conceived of as exclusively a national phenomenon. he advocates in its place a more "cosmopolitan" conception of democracy, grounded in "universals" such as "moral equality" and "inherent dignity." snauwaert underscores the relationship between education and democracy and argues in favor of a, "(…) democratic education grounded in the principle of humanity (…) devoted primarily to the cultivation of emphatic, respectful and wide-awake cosmopolitan citizens." a similar stance of revisionism is present in leonissa ardizzone's towards global understanding: the transformative role of peace education. ardizzone writes that civic education, tolerance education, human rights education and education for democracy, are all actually components of a curriculum of peace education. peace education is education directed towards the creation of a culture of peace. by implication then, traditional approaches to civic education may be held partially accountable for global conflict in failing to promote critical thinking, intercultural understanding and "(…) a long history of structural violence within a global culture of war." according to both ardizzone and snauwaert, civic education must transcend national borders and prepare students for "global citizenship." the future of education for democracy is a very important topic for the current cice editorial board. along with many of our readers, we hope to have a role in influencing that future. we hope that the discussion started in this issue will continue and contribute to educational goals for positive social change. notes 1. torney-purta, j., lehmann, r., oswald, h. and schulz, w. (2001). citizenship and education in 28 countries: civic knowledge and engagement at age 14 (p.176). amsterdam, the netherlands: the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement. © 2006 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(2) 63 editorial introduction the fiftieth anniversary of the comparative and international education society zeena zakharia teachers college, columbia university the comparative and international education society (cies), formerly comparative education society, was founded in 1956, bringing together academics and professionals with an interest in comparative education in the united states, and elsewhere, into a formal body of scholarship. with its founding, cies, the oldest established society of its kind, signaled recognition of comparative and international education (cie) as a distinct academic field, although debate over the meanings of, and relationship between, the comparative and the international has persisted for decades. since its inception, the cies, though essentially a national society, enjoyed membership from scholars of other countries and has played a significant role in the growth and development of the field and its ongoing debates within the academy. with a growing impact on the formation and implementation of educational policies and technical assistance programs around the world, scholarship in the field came under attack in the 1960s as being largely an adjunct of western imperialism, super-imposing u.s. educational models and ideals, while neglecting the cultural and political realities of the developing and post-colonial world. even as the field profited from the political climate of the cold war era, internal debates over the ideal relationship between comparative education scholars and various policy institutions and development agencies persisted. with its tremendous growth and diversification, the field witnessed major paradigm shifts and changing conceptualizations of difference, and therefore the meaning of “comparative” in comparative education research. however, scholarship continued to be largely euroand u.s.-centric. furthermore, cies membership was critiqued for not being fully representative of the diversity of scholars in the field, a concern whose echoes were most recently heard again at the 50th annual meeting of the comparative and international education society in march 2006. when we began planning for this issue of cice to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the comparative and international education society, our initial concern was how an issue reflecting on the society’s past could be brought to bear on current issues in comparative education, in fitting with the journal’s mission. the call for papers solicited contributions that critically reflect on past and enduring critiques of cie, historically grounded, yet reflective of the field’s current debates and challenges, and future directions, along a historically situated trajectory. submissions were invited to examine such topics as the field’s shifting theoretical paradigms and research approaches and methods; its alleged role as a missionary of the “center” to the disadvantaged “periphery;” its contribution to cultural imperialism; its (in)capacity to work for international peace and justice; and its dedication to the empowerment of local communities. zeena zakharia 64 april 21, 2006 the resulting collection of papers, indeed, reflects on the field’s past, present, and future. by providing insights into the history and changing role of cies, identifying gaps in its scholarship, and addressing the ongoing debate over comparative methods, the papers demonstrate the society’s rich history and scholarship and expand on critiques of the field. the papers also attend to the various critiques by redressing misconceptions, proposing areas for future research, and suggesting concrete ways forward for teaching future generations of cie researchers. taken together, the authors thus provide a vision for a field dedicated to justice through scholarship based on nuanced understandings. in a brief history of the comparative and international education society, elizabeth sherman swing presents a chronological institutional history of cies, based on her work as the appointed cies historian. the author describes the founding of the society and highlights major developments, such as the controversy surrounding the changing of its name to include international, the weakening identification with teacher associations, and the establishment of the cies collection at the kent state university archives. in addition, she provides a brief overview of issues arising since the 1990s, including how the society has grappled with national and international political concerns and its recent trend toward decentralization through committees and special interest groups (sigs). in providing an account of the interrelated histories of cies and the world council of comparative education societies (wcces), maria manzon and mark bray situate cies into its larger context, as one of 35 constituent societies of the wcces. their paper, the comparative and international education society (cies) and the world council of comparative education societies (wcces): leadership, ambiguities and synergies, highlights the various roles cies has played in the founding, development, and leadership of the wcces, its influence on member societies, and promotion of comparative education worldwide. the authors illustrate the ambiguities and tensions arising from the fact that, unlike other national societies, cies has never had the u.s. label attached to it, thereby claiming an international constituency and scope for which wcces was intended to be the umbrella body. in the international race over the patronage of the south: comparative and international education in eastern europe and the unites states, gita steiner-khamsi and william dejong-lambert identify a significant gap in north american scholarship on the history of comparative and international education, which has failed to take into account the considerable impact of the cold war on area and development studies in the field. in critiquing this oversight, the authors provide an account of the positive effects of cold war rivalries on cie in eastern europe and the u.s., thus presenting an argument for re-examining developments in educational research during the decades of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s from a post-cold war perspective. frances vavrus and lesley bartlett look at issues of epistemology to address the ongoing debate over comparative methods in comparatively knowing: making a case for the vertical case study. the authors assert the importance of giving attention to various levels of analysis in order to achieve validity in knowledge production. they propose the vertical case study as a means of gaining contextualized knowledge by comparing claims of actors from different social locations and providing a balance of perspectives grounded in a thorough understanding of the micro-level context. the authors then editorial introduction current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(2) 65 explore the implications of such comparative ways of knowing for the training of graduate students preparing to conduct research in cie. the authors thus provide a different approach to conceptualizing the “comparative” in cie, an issue persistent in critiques of a body of scholarship that has been dominated by single-country studies. vandra l. masemann concludes the issue with an incisive critique of the papers in her afterword. she begins by critically examining the assumptions underlying the call for papers, then addresses each of the articles, providing areas for reflection and extension. in dealing with changing conceptualizations of its role, modes of operation, core scholarship, membership, and approaches to teaching the field, the collection of papers touches on running themes in the history of cies and addresses central concerns from the past, through the present, and to the future of comparative and international education. in reviewing the papers for publication, the editorial board was struck, however, first, by the observation that they continue to reflect the privileged position of euro-american academia, and second, by the fact that none were authored by colleagues from the global south, an observation also noted by masemann in her commentary. these observations are in concordance with internal critiques of cies and may indeed signal where the field is currently situated. in comparatively speaking: an oral history of the first 50 years of the comparative and international education society (steiner-khamsi & johnson, 2006), cies former presidents note that, while cies membership has visibly changed from the former white boys’ club it once was to a diverse body of scholars, its cannon continues to be largely focused on european and north american scholarship. in striving to publish authors from diverse positions and geographic contexts, cice seeks to broaden, if not shift, this focus, thus contributing to the reconceptualization of the field as one with multiple perimeters and centers, as it continues to grow and reshape its contours. as masemann (in steiner-khamsi & johnson, 2006) suggests, the strength of our field is in its diversity. notes 1. i would like to thank ameena ghaffar-kucher for her helpful feedback on an earlier version of this introduction. references steiner-khamsi, g., & johnson, e. (producers). (2006). comparatively speaking: an oral history of the first 50 years of the comparative and international education society [documentary]. (available from cies and teachers college, columbia university). © 2003 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(2) 67 guest editorial introduction social studies of literacy and comparative education: intersections lesley bartlett teachers college, columbia university this issue of cice emphasizes the crucial role of language and literacy in educational processes while it extends contemporary social analyses of literacy. too often, the comparative education literature has ignored critical issues relating to language, such as language policy and planning, literacy instruction in theory and practice, and the role of language ideologies in educational politics, to name only three. and yet these issues are central to contemporary debates in the field, such as the globalization of educational policy and the convergence and divergence of educational practices, the attempted use of schools to create more democratic, egalitarian relations among linguistically and culturally diverse populations, and the relationship between schooling and economic development. in what follows, i give a brief overview of social studies of literacy, including some of the main conceptual developments. in that review, i indicate the contributions made by authors in this volume to current debates in the field of literacy studies. finally, i suggest that debates in literacy studies have much to offer the field of comparative education. theoretical development in social studies of literacy in this section, i briefly outline some of the major conceptual advances in the field of literacy studies in order to contextualize the directions for research suggested by the articles in this issue. i organize these in four sections: literacy and power, literacy and development, multiplicity, and identities. literacy and power early research on literacy ignored the social context of the acquisition and use of literacy, treating it instead as a neutral technology; much of the contemporary reading research working in the quantitative paradigm repeats this mistake. however, social studies of literacy have revealed the coupling of literacy and power. renowned brazilian literacy theorist paulo freire charged that literate people held a decided advantage over illiterate people. further, he criticized the normal pedagogical 'banking education' model, in which teachers 'own' knowledge and 'deposit' it in the minds of students; he called instead for a 'consciousness-raising' form of education which valued students' prior knowledge and encouraged them to learn to "read the word and the world," or simultaneously learn to read and to critique social relations of inequality (freire, 1970, 1975, 1976; freire & macedo, 1987). analyses of literacy and power tend to be skewed toward the extremes of optimism or pessimism. adherents of critical literacy maintain that literacy can empower learners (giroux, 1988; mackie, 1981; purcell-gates & waterman, 2000). indeed, freire himself proposed that 'hope' is a crucial resource for educators (freire, 1994). others take a less sanguine view (freebody & welch, 1993). some, recognizing that access to literacy and other levels of education falls broadly along the familiar contours of social inequality, lesley bartlett 68 may 12, 2003 despair of ever using a form of education to interrupt social reproduction. for example, youngman's political economic analysis of literacy policies and programs demonstrated how easily literacy levels could become yet another symptom of class privilege (youngman, 1986, 2000). the role of language in social reproduction, or rather in the cultural production of social structures, was greatly illuminated by the conceptual contributions of french sociologist pierre bourdieu, especially his notions of linguistic capital, linguistic markets,and linguistic habitus. in his landmark 1977 article "the economics of linguistic exchanges," bourdieu argued that linguistic exchanges invoke a complex network of power relations in which the producer, by producing an utterance or text, makes a bid for social authority, and the recipient or audience decides to what degree to recognize that claim to authority (bourdieu, 1977). bourdieu introduced the concept of linguistic capital to describe the respect or authority enjoyed by a speaker. those with high linguistic capital speak with "command," i.e., the power to influence a listener toward the desired interpretation. further, utterances are always ventured in a particular field or market, in which certain social expectations for speech and interaction obtain. a linguistic market is a "system of relations of force which impose themselves as a system of specific sanctions and specific censorship, and thereby help fashion linguistic production by determining the 'price' [or value] of linguistic products" (bourdieu and wacquant 1992: 145). in a linguistic market, people undertake speech production with a certain "anticipation of profit," or anticipation of the expected reception of one's words. thus, according to bourdieu, linguistic capital is created, adapted, asserted, and re-evaluated through linguistic encounters. furthermore, linguistic production is governed by linguistic habitus, or a historically and socially constituted sedimentation of experiences in linguistic markets (bourdieu and wacquant 1992: 145). linguistic habitus signifies the internalized inclination toward certain types or styles of linguistic production, which is considerably shaped by one's personal history of social interaction and one's sense of the value of one's language. with the concepts of habitus, markets, and capital, bourdieu detailed the micropolitics that blunt the possible impact of education upon social change. and though bourdieu primarily discussed speech, his concepts apply equally to literacy. in the vein of power and literacy, social studies of literacy could greatly benefit from incorporating an awareness of the power-knowledge connection as elucidated by foucault. foucault emphasized the role of the human sciences in the normalization of social principles, institutions, and discourses, including conceptualizations of the knowable and the ineffable, and the concomitant subjugation of local knowledges (foucault, 1980). his critical interrogations apply equally to educational sciences and pedagogies (ball, 1990; usher & edwards, 1994). though she doesn't work within the paradigms discussed here (critical literacy, political economy, bourdieu's practice theory, and foucauldian post-structuralism), linguistic anthropologist aurolyn luykx addresses issues of literacy and power. in her article in this issue, luykx warns about the dangers of standardizing and codifying a language based not on local linguistic practices but rather on the imported, educated expertise of language and development professionals. her ethnographic study of the codification and institutionalization of indigenous languages in bolivia cautions us to question the social studies of literacy and comparative education: intersections current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(2) 69 assumption that literacy (and/or schooling) leads, necessarily, to empowerment, even as it provides a fascinating glimpse of the potential subjugation of local languages by wellmeaning educators. literacy and development consonant with their ignorance of power, early studies of the relationship between literacy and development treated literacy as a neutral technology with a singular, predictable impact on the individual and society (goody, 1977, 1968; ong, 1982); many orthodox conceptualizations of literacy still maintain this idea. 'development' is a notoriously vague concept, which scholars applied to cognitive, social, political, or economic development (sometimes simultaneously). further, earlier literacy scholars often floated (as though interchangeably) between claims about individual and societywide development. however, social studies of literacy gradually and effectively challenged the multi-faceted claim of a causal relationship between literacy and development. the conceptual revolution for this strand of literacy studies came with the publication of social anthropologist brian street's ethnography of multiple forms of literacy in iran (street, 1984). street cogently argued against what he dubbed the autonomous model of literacy and for an ideological model of literacy. the autonomous model, he argued, presents literacy "in technical terms, treating it as independent of social context, an autonomous variable whose consequences for society and cognition can be derived from its intrinsic character" (street 1993: 5). the autonomous model portrays education as a transparent skill learned gradually as the individual moves through universal stages of cognitive and physical development. this skill, the model holds, results in individual rational thought, intellectual development, social development, and economic mobility. the model also assumes a homology between the individual and the society; it predicts that literacy will result in national economic growth and social and political development. in contrast to the dominant autonomous model, street proposed the ideological model of literacy. ideological analyses of literacy "view literacy practices as inextricably linked to cultural and power structures in society, and recognize the variety of cultural practices associated with reading and writing in different contexts" (street 1993: 7). literacy, street argued, "is a social process, in which particular socially constructed technologies are used within particular institutional frameworks for specific social purposes" (street 1984: 97). literacy is subject to cultural construction and social practice. its significance varies across time and across as well as within cultures; literacy takes meaning from the situations in which it is embedded. further, literacy events, or activities that include literacy, are social acts produced by people in specific situations with varying degrees of power and authority, and thus varying abilities to influence the conduct of such events. thus, street's conceptualization joined a social analysis of power relations as well as language and literacy ideologies to a cultural awareness of the (bottom-up) invention of meaning. further, his vast literature review and his ethnographic research demonstrated that there is no empirical basis to assume an automatic, causal, and/or universal relationship between literacy and development. literacy has no autonomous 'effect' on lesley bartlett 70 may 12, 2003 development in any form (cognitive, social, political, or economic); instead, in each case literacy's influence is filtered through its interaction with complex, contextual particularities. street's publication also marked a significant methodological shift. prior ethnographies of literacy primarily relied on the concept of literacy events, a notion adapted by heath (heath, 1983) from hymes's work in the ethnography of communication (gumperz & hymes, 1972). literacy events are, quite simply, events that involve reading and/or writing. however, street introduced the idea of literacy practices, a concept further developed by scholars working in what has come to be called new literacy studies (barton, 1991; barton & hamilton, 2000; baynham, 1995; street, 1995). the concept of literacy practices places literacy events and individual actions in a solidly social frame, contextualizing the event in the power structures and cultural meanings at play (street 1993: 7). like bourdieu's practice theory, the concept of literacy practices clearly situates individual acts and interpersonal relations in a social structural framework. multiplicity the fragmentation of a unitary, universalist conception of literacy into a multitude of literacy practices had numerous effects within the field of social studies of literacy. the notion of pluralities materialized throughout the literature. employing a gramscian conception of power and hegemony, some scholars investigated the difference between dominant literacy genres, attached to authoritative institutions and commanding segments of the population, and vernacular literacy genres, local literacies developed and employed by those with relatively less authority (barton & hamilton, 1998; luke, 1996). furthermore, new literacy scholars emphasized the domains in which literacy practices occurred. domains are "structured, patterned contexts within which literacy is used and learned" (barton & hamilton, 2000). they might be institutional spaces (church, school, home, prison, etc.) or, more abstractly, they might discourse communities transubstantiated in unrelated physical settings (e.g., reading a legal document on the bus or contesting a charge on a credit card bill in the home) (hamilton, 2000). the pluralization continues. recently, a group of british, australian, and u.s.-based scholars known as the new london group proffered the concept of multiliteracies to signify two facets of contemporary social studies of literacy: "the multiplicity of communication channels" related to literacy; and the "increasing salience of cultural and linguistic diversity" (cope & kalantzis, 2000). multimodality is a burgeoning topic (kress, 2000), while numerous ethnographies of literacy have documented the continuing importance of local diversity (aikman, 1999; bartlett, 2001; prinsloo & breier, 1997; robinson-pant, 2001; street, 1993, 2001). in much of this literature, the term "literacy" itself has been made plural in order to emphatically reject a unitary notion of literacy. literacies, according to one definition, "are coherent configurations of literacy practices" (barton & hamilton, 2000). i have several concerns with this trend. first, even in plural form, the notion of "literacies" is too static for my taste. as "configurations," literacies become nominalized and reified, not unlike problems noted with the culture concept. this nominalization sets up searches for boundedness or, alternately, declarations of hybridity (which, ultimately, social studies of literacy and comparative education: intersections current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(2) 71 assert the distinctiveness and discernibleness of the things that are 'mixed') that may have very little to do with institutional and/or structural histories or with subjective experiences of literacy. my second concern seems, ironically, the reverse of the first. the literature on multiplicity-vernacular and dominant literacy genres, multiple domains, multimodality, local literacies-emphasizes differences between literacies. however, much of the quantitative work on literacy, especially on literacy and pedagogy, stresses what transfers from one literacy task to another. our insistence on differences, it seems to me, leads us to ignore similarities. while i am not arguing for an autonomous model, i am suggesting that it may be time for us to give equal weight to strategies or practices that remain stable across contexts. i argue that the concept of literacy practices allows us to overcome the limitations of reification and (overgeneralized) differentiation. as a person-centered concept, it allows us to follow individuals or groups through diverse physical settings and discourse communities, documenting both similarities and differences across literacy events. further, in the spirit of bourdieu's practice theory, it permits analysts to examine the cultural production in the face of historical and structural constraints, rather than policing the boundary/ies of literacy/ies. identities likewise, the concept of identities encourages a person-centered examination of literacy practices. further, it begins to answer some of the questions i posed about transfer, while allowing for the examination of social change. social studies of literacy have made it clear that becoming and being literate is as much about social work as it is about any cognitive shift. as bourdieu suggested, in asserting linguistic capital through a literacy practice, a person makes a social claim to authority that must then be evaluated by the audience; or, as mcdermott explained, 'becoming literate' is as much about "passing" for literate as it is about learning to read. however, some have suggested that, precisely because they are so absolutely socially embedded, it is very difficult for learners to acquire other literacies and perform them naturally. for example, jim gee emphasized the social identities attached to ways of communicating. he questioned whether one could learn a secondary discourse through direct instruction rather than indirect socialization, and he suggested that secondary discourses rarely commanded as much respect or approbation as primary discourses (gee, 1990). gee's formulation insinuated that literacies were much more durable and less amenable to acquisition than previously thought. yet many have contested this static notion of literacy and pessimistic view of learning. in particular, recent work by bartlett and holland clarifies how identity work invokes personal social change (bartlett & holland, 2001). drawing on innovations in the cultural historical school of psychology, sociohistorical theory, and social practice theory, bartlett and holland suggest that literacy learners can employ cultural symbols that are meaningful to the figured world of literacy (e.g., books, letters, teacher dictums) to manage their own feelings, thoughts, behavior and actions on a broad scale. these symbolic elements of identity can then be used to challenge and overcome ascribed, lesley bartlett 72 may 12, 2003 positional identities firmly rooted in social structures, such as class and race. the article in this issue by ingulsrud and allen addresses one aspect of literacy and identity-the attempted inculcation, in china, of a national identity through literacy instruction. in this case, they hypothesize that the provision of standardized cultural symbols-roman script putonghua-helps to instill a shared national identity. of course, while the government's intent is clear, only ethnographic research can reveal how individual students did (or did not) 'take up' and use those cultural symbols. literacy studies and comparative education the fields of literacy studies and comparative education have some things in common. they share some scholars. as demonstrated in this review, social studies of literacy are addressing many issues of interest to comparative educators: the contribution of literacy and schooling to economic, political, and social change; global standardization and local diversification; the tension between generalizability and contextually-rich specificity, as well as between causally-based predictability and descriptive accuracy; and the role of schooling in establishing limits and opening possibilities for social structures and cultural production. like comparative education, literacy studies is striving to examine educational policy and practice simultaneously, in order to capture a more complete picture of educational processes. however, there is much they don't but could share that would redound to their mutual benefit. for example, to get beyond charges of localism, literacy studies could adopt qualitative comparative methods (schriewer & kälble, forthcoming). likewise, concepts developed in literacy studies-specifically educational practices and identities-promise much to the field of comparative education. the essays in this issue demonstrate the potential of careful studies of language and literacy for the field of comparative education. bibliography aikman, s. 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(2000). the political economy of adult education and development. new york: zed books. © 1999 michael w. apple all rights reserved 6 april 30, 1999 rhetorical reforms: markets, standards and inequality michael w. apple university of wisconsin, madison right turn in his influential history of curriculum debates, herbert kliebard has documented that educational issues have consistently involved major conflicts and compromises among groups with competing visions of "legitimate" knowledge, what counts as "good" teaching and learning, and what is a "just" society (kliebard, 1986). that such conflicts have deep roots in conflicting views of racial, class, and gender justice in education and the larger society is ratified in even more critical recent work as well (see, e.g., rury and mirel, 1996; teitelbaum, 1996; selden, 1999). while i believe neither that these competing visions have ever had equal holds on the imagination of educators or the general citizenry nor that they have ever had equal power to effect their visions, it is still clear that no analysis of education can be fully serious without placing at its very core a sensitivity to the ongoing struggles that constantly shape the terrain on which education operates. today is no different than in the past. a "new" set of compromises, a new alliance and new power bloc has been formed that has increasing influence in education and all things social. this power bloc combines multiple fractions of capital who are committed to neo-liberal marketized solutions to educational problems, neo-conservative intellectuals who want a "return" to higher standards and a "common culture," authoritarian populist religious fundamentalists who are deeply worried about secularity and the preservation of their own traditions, and particular fractions of the professionally oriented new middle class who are committed to the ideology and techniques of accountability, measurement, and "management." while there are clear tensions and conflicts within this alliance, in general its overall aims are in providing the educational conditions believed necessary both for increasing international competitiveness, profit, and discipline and for returning us to a romanticized past of the "ideal" home, family, and school (apple, 1993; apple, 1996). in essence, the new alliance has integrated education into a wider set of ideological commitments. the objectives in education are the same as those which guide its economic and social welfare goals. they include the dramatic expansion of that eloquent fiction, the free market; the drastic reduction of government responsibility for social needs; the reinforcement of intensely competitive structures of mobility both inside and outside the school; the lowering of people's expectations for economic security; the "disciplining" of culture and the body; and the popularization of what is clearly a form of social darwinist thinking, as the recent popularity of the bell curve (herrnstein and murray, 1994; see also, kincheloe and steinberg, 1996) so obviously and distressingly indicates. the seemingly contradictory discourse of competition, markets, and choice on the one hand and accountability, performance objectives, standards, national testing, and rhetorical reforms: markets, standards and inequality current issues in comparative education, vol. 1(2) 7 national curriculum have created such a din that it is hard to hear anything else. as i have shown in cultural politics and education (apple, 1996), these tendencies actually oddly reinforce each other and help cement conservative educational positions into our daily lives in many nations. new markets, old traditions behind a good deal of the new right's emerging discursive ensemble was a position that emphasized "a culturalist construction of the nation as a (threatened) haven for white (christian) traditions and values" (gillborn, 1997a, p.2). this involved the construction of an imagined national past that is at least partly mythologized, and then employing it to castigate the present. gary mcculloch argues that the nature of the historical images of schooling has changed. dominant imagery of education as being "safe, domesticated, and progressive" (that is, as leading toward progress and social/personal improvement) has shifted to become "threatening, estranged, and regressive" (mcculloch, 1997, p.80). the past is no longer the source of stability, but a mark of failure, disappointment, and loss. the notion that progressivism is now in the dominant position in educational policy and practice and has destroyed a valued earlier past is echoed in the public pronouncements of such figures as william bennett, e.d. hirsch, jr., and others. all of them believe that only by tightening control over curriculum and teaching (and students, of course), restoring "our" lost traditions, making education more disciplined and competitive as they are certain it was in the past--only then can we have effective schools. these figures are joined by others who have similar criticisms, but who instead turn to a different past for a different future. their past is less that of awe and authority, but one of market "freedom." for them, nothing can be accomplished--even the restoration of awe and authority--without setting the market loose on schools so as to ensure that only "good" ones survive. we should understand that these policies are radical transformations. if they had come from the other side of the political spectrum, they would have been ridiculed in many ways, given the ideological tendencies in our nations. further, not only are these policies based on a romanticized pastoral past, these reforms have not been notable for their grounding in research findings. indeed, when research has been used, it has often either served as a rhetoric of justification for preconceived beliefs about the supposed efficacy of markets or regimes of tight accountability or they have been based--as in the case of chubb and moe's much publicized work on marketization (chubb and moe, 1990)--on quite flawed research (see, e.g., whitty, 1997). yet, no matter how radical some of these proposed "reforms" are and no matter how weak the empirical basis of their support, they have now redefined the terrain of debate of all things educational. after years of conservative attacks and mobilizations, it has become clear that "ideas that were once deemed fanciful, unworkable--or just plain extreme" are now increasingly being seen as common-sense (gillborn, 1997b, p.357). tactically, the reconstruction of common-sense that has been accomplished has proven to be extremely effective. for example, there are clear discursive strategies being employed here, ones that are characterized by "plain speaking" and speaking in a language that "everyone can understand." (i do not wish to be wholly negative about this. the importance of these things is something many "progressive" educators, michael apple 8 april 30, 1999 including many writers on critical pedagogy, have yet to understand {apple, 1988}.) these strategies also involve not only presenting one's own position as "common-sense," but also usually tacitly implying that there is something of a conspiracy among one's opponents to deny the truth or to say only that which is "fashionable" (gillborn, 1997b, p.353). it is hard to miss these characteristics in some of the conservative literature such as herrnstein and murray's (1994) publicizing of the unthinkable "truth" about genetics and intelligence or e.d. hirsch's (1996) latest "tough" discussion of the destruction of "serious" schooling by progressive educators. markets and performance let us take as an example of the ways in which all this operates one element of the conservative restoration--the neo-liberal claim that the invisible hand of the market will inexorably lead to better schools. as roger dale reminds us, "the market" acts as a metaphor rather than an explicit guide for action. it is not denotative, but connotative. thus, it must itself be "marketed" to those who will exist in it and live with its effects (roger dale, quoted in menter, et al, 1997, p.27). markets are marketed, are made legitimate, by a depoliticizing strategy. they are said to be natural and neutral, and governed by effort and merit. and those opposed to them are by definition, hence, also opposed to effort and merit. markets, as well, are supposedly less subject to political interference and the weight of bureaucratic procedures. plus, they are grounded in the rational choices of individual actors (menter, et al, 1997, p.27). thus, markets and the guarantee of rewards for effort and merit are to be coupled together to produce "neutral," yet positive, results. mechanisms, hence, must be put into place that give evidence of entrepreneurial efficiency and effectiveness. this coupling of markets and mechanisms for the generation of evidence of performance is exactly what has occurred. whether it works is open to question. in what is perhaps the most comprehensive critical review of all of the evidence on marketization, geoff whitty cautions us not to mistake rhetoric for reality. after examining research from a number of countries, whitty argues that while advocates of marketized "choice" plans assume that competition will enhance the efficiency and responsiveness of schools, as well as give disadvantaged children opportunities that they currently do not have, this may be a false hope (whitty, 1997, p.58). these hopes are not now being realized and are unlikely to be realized in the future "in the context of broader policies that do nothing to challenge deeper social and cultural inequalities" (whitty, 1997, p.58). as he goes on to say, "atomized decision-making in a highly stratified society may appear to give everyone equal opportunities, but transforming responsibility for decision-making from the public to the private sphere can actually reduce the scope of collective action to improve the quality of education for all" (p.58). when this is connected to the fact that, as i shall show shortly, in practice neo-liberal policies involving market "solutions" may actually serve to reproduce--not subvert-traditional hierarchies of class and race, this should give us reason to pause (whitty, 1997; whitty, edwards, and gewirtz, 1993; apple, 1996). thus, rather than taking neo-liberal claims at face value, we should want to ask about their hidden effects that are too often invisible in the rhetoric and metaphors of their proponents. given the limitations of what one can say in an article of this length i shall select a few issues that have been given less attention than they deserve, but on which rhetorical reforms: markets, standards and inequality current issues in comparative education, vol. 1(2) 9 there is now significant research. the state and neo-liberal reform the english experience is apposite here, especially since proponents of the market such as chubb and moe (1990) rely so heavily on it and because that is where the tendencies i analyze are most advanced. in england, the 1993 education act documents the state's commitment to marketization. governing bodies of local educational authorities (leas) are now mandated to formally consider "going gm" (that is, opting out of the local school system's control and entering into the competitive market) every year (power, halpin, and fitz, 1994, p.27). thus, the weight of the state stands behind the press towards neo-liberal reforms there. [1] yet, rather than leading to curriculum responsiveness and diversification, the competitive market has not created much that is different from the traditional models so firmly entrenched in schools today (power, halpin, and fitz, 1994, p.39). nor has it radically altered the relations of inequality that characterize schooling. in their own extensive analyses of the effects of marketized reforms "on the ground," ball and his colleagues point to some of the reasons why we need to be quite cautious here. as they document, in these situations educational principles and values are often compromised such that commercial issues become more important in curriculum design and resource allocation (ball, bowe, and gewirtz, 1994, p.19). for instance, the coupling of markets with the demand for and publication of performance indicators such as "examination league tables" in england has meant that schools are increasingly looking for ways to attract "motivated" parents with "able" children. in this way, schools are able to enhance their relative position in local systems of competition. this represents a subtle, but crucial shift in emphasis--one that is not openly discussed as often as it should be--from student needs to student performance and from what the school does for the student to what the student does for the school. this is also accompanied too uncomfortably often by a shift of resources away from students who are labelled as having special needs or learning difficulties, with some of these needed resources now being shifted to marketing and public relations. "special needs" students are not only expensive, but deflate test scores on those all important league tables. the entire enterprise establishes a new metric and a new set of goals based on a constant striving to win the market game. what this means is of considerable import, not only in terms of its effects on daily school life but in the ways all of this signifies a transformation of what counts as a good society and a responsible citizen. let me say something about this generally. i noted earlier that behind all educational proposals are visions of a just society and a good student. the neo-liberal reforms i have been discussing construct this in a particular way. while the defining characteristic of neo-liberalism is largely based on the central tenets of classical liberalism, in particular classic economic liberalism, there are crucial differences between classical liberalism and neo-liberalism. these differences are absolutely essential in understanding the politics of education and the transformations education is currently undergoing. mark olssen clearly details these differences in the following passage. it is worth quoting in its entirety. michael apple 10 april 30, 1999 whereas classical liberalism represents a negative conception of state power in that the individual was to be taken as an object to be freed from the interventions of the state, neo-liberalism has come to represent a positive conception of the state's role in creating the appropriate market by providing the conditions, laws and institutions necessary for its operation. in classical liberalism, the individual is characterized as having an autonomous human nature and can practice freedom. in neo-liberalism the state seeks to create an individual who is an enterprising and competitive entrepreneur. in the classical model the theoretical aim of the state was to limit and minimize its role based on postulates which included universal egoism (the self-interested individual); invisible hand theory which dictated that the interests of the individual were also the interests of the society as a whole; and the political maxim of laissez-faire. in the shift from classical liberalism to neo-liberalism, then, there is a further element added, for such a shift involves a change in subject position from "homo economicus," who naturally behaves out of self-interest and is relatively detached from the state, to "manipulatable man," who is created by the state and who is continually encouraged to be "perpetually responsive." it is not that the conception of the self-interested subject is replaced or done away with by the new ideals of "neo-liberalism," but that in an age of universal welfare, the perceived possibilities of slothful indolence create necessities for new forms of vigilance, surveillance, "performance appraisal" and of forms of control generally. in this model the state has taken it upon itself to keep us all up to the mark. the state will see to it that each one makes a "continual enterprise of ourselves"...in what seems to be a process of "governing without governing." (olssen, 1996, p.340) the results of ball and his colleagues' research document how the state does indeed do this, enhancing that odd combination of marketized individualism and control through constant and comparative public assessment. widely publicized league tables determine one's relative value in the educational marketplace. only those schools with rising performance indicators are worthy. and only those students who can "make a continual enterprise of themselves" can keep such schools going in the "correct" direction. yet, while these issues are important, they fail to fully illuminate some of the other mechanisms through which differential effects are produced by neo-liberal reforms. here, class issues come to the fore in ways that ball, bowe, and gewirtz (1994) make clear. economic, social and cultural capital middle class parents are clearly the most advantaged in this kind of cultural assemblage, and not only as we saw because schools seek them out. middle class parents have become quite skilled, in general, in exploiting market mechanisms in education and in bringing their social, economic, and cultural capital to bear on them. "middle class parents are more likely to have the knowledge, skills and contacts to decode and manipulate what are increasingly complex and deregulated systems of choice and recruitment. the more deregulation, the more possibility of informal procedures being employed. the middle class also, on the whole, are more able to move their children around the system" (ball, bowe, and gewirtz, 1994, p.19). that class and race intersect and interact in complex ways means that-even though we need to be clear that marketized systems in education often expressly have their conscious and unconscious raison d'etre in a fear of "the other" and often are hidden expressions of a racialization of educational policy--the differential results will "naturally" be decidedly raced as well as rhetorical reforms: markets, standards and inequality current issues in comparative education, vol. 1(2) 11 classed. [2] economic and social capital can be converted into cultural capital in various ways. in marketized plans, more affluent parents often have more flexible hours and can visit multiple schools. they have cars--often more than one--and can afford driving their children across town to attend a "better" school. they can as well provide the hidden cultural resources such as camps and after school programs (dance, music, computer classes, etc.) that give their children an "ease," a "style," that seems "natural" and acts as a set of cultural resources. their previous stock of social and cultural capital--who they know, their "comfort" in socialencounters with educational officials--is an unseen but powerful storehouse of resources. thus, more affluent parents are more likely to have the informal knowledge and skill-what bourdieu would call the habitus (bourdieu, 1984)--to be able to decode and use marketized forms to their own benefit. this sense of what might be called "confidence"--which is itself the result of past choices that tacitly but no less powerfully depend on the economic resources to actually have had the ability to make economic choices--is the unseen capital that underpins their ability to negotiate marketized forms and "work the system" through sets of informal cultural rules (ball, bowe, and gewirtz, 1994, pp.20-22). of course, it needs to be said that working class, poor, and/or immigrant parents are not skill-less in this regard, by any means. (after all, it requires an immense amount of skill, courage, and social and cultural resources to survive under exploitative and depressing material conditions. thus, collective bonds, informal networks and contacts, and an ability to work the system are developed in quite nuanced, intelligent, and often impressive ways here.) however, the match between the historically grounded habitus expected in schools and in its actors and those of more affluent parents, combined with the material resources available to more affluent parents, usually leads to a successful conversion of economic and social capital into cultural capital (see bourdieu, 1996; swartz, 1997). and this is exactly what is happening in england. these claims both about what is happening inside of schools and about larger sets of power relations are supported by even more recent synthetic analyses of the overall results of neo-liberal and neo-conservative policies examines the tendencies internationally by comparing what has happened in a number of nations--for example, the united states, england and wales, australia, and new zealand--where this combination has been increasingly powerful. the results confirm the arguments i have made here. let me rehearse some of the most significant and disturbing findings of such research. beyond test scores it is unfortunately all too usual that the most widely used measures of the "success" of school reforms are the results of standardized achievement tests. this simply will not do. we need to constantly ask what reforms do to schools as a whole and to each of their participants, including teachers, students, administrators, community members, local activists, and so on. to take one set of examples, as marketized "self-managing" schools grow in many nations, the role of the school principal is radically transformed. more, not less, power is actually consolidated within an administrative structure. more time and energy is spent on aintaining or enhancing a public image of a "good school" and michael apple 12 april 30, 1999 less time and energy is spent on pedagogic and curricular substance. at the same time, teachers seem to be experiencing not increased autonomy and professionalism, but intensification (apple 1988; 1993). and, oddly, as noted before schools themselves become more similar, and more committed, to standard, traditional, whole class methods of teaching and a standard and traditional (and often mono-cultural) curriculum (whitty, power, and halpin 1998, pp.12-13). only directing our attention to test scores would cause us to miss some truly profound transformations, many of which we may find disquieting. one of the reasons these broader effects are so often produced is that in all too many countries, neo-liberal visions of quasi-markets are usually accompanied by neoconservative pressure to regulate content and behavior through such things as national curricula, national standards, and national systems of assessment. the combination is historically contingent; that is, it is not absolutely necessary that the two emphases are combined. but there are characteristics of neo-liberalism that make it more likely that an emphasis on the weak state and a faith in markets will cohere with an emphasis on the strong state and a commitment to regulating knowledge, values, and the body. performance this is partly the case because of the increasing power of the "evaluative state." this signifies what initially may seem to be contradictory tendencies. at the same time as the state appears to be devolving power to individuals and autonomous institutions which are themselves increasingly competing in a market, the state remains strong in key areas (whitty, power, and halpin 1998, p.36). as i claimed earlier, one of the key differences between classical liberalism and its faith in "enterprising individuals" in a market and current forms of neo-liberalism is the latter's commitment to a regulatory state. neoliberalism does indeed demand the constant production of evidence that one is in fact "making an enterprise of oneself" (ollsen, 1996). thus, under these conditions not only does education become a marketable commodity like bread and cars in which the values, procedures, and metaphors of business dominate, but its results must be reducible to standardized "performance indicators" (whitty, power, and halpin, 1998, pp.37-38; see also clarke and newman, 1997). this is ideally suited to the task of providing a mechanism for the neo-conservative attempts to specify what knowledge, values, and behaviors should be standardized and officially defined as "legitimate," a point i shall expand upon in the next section of this paper. in essence, we are witnessing a process in which the state shifts the blame for the very evident inequalities in access and outcome it has promised to reduce, from itself onto individual schools, parents, and children. this is, of course, also part of a larger process in which dominant economic groups shift the blame for the massive and unequal effects of their own misguided decisions from themselves onto the state. the state is then faced with a very real crisis in legitimacy. given this, we should not be at all surprised that the state will then seek to export this crisis outside itself (apple, 1996; whitty, power, and halpin, 1998). other, more proximate, effects inside schools are equally striking. for instance, even though principals seem to have more local power in these supposedly decentralized schools, because of the cementing in of neo-conservative policies principals "are rhetorical reforms: markets, standards and inequality current issues in comparative education, vol. 1(2) 13 increasingly forced into a position in which they have to demonstrate performance along centrally prescribed curricula in a context in which they have diminishing control" (whitty, power, and halpin, 1998, p.63). because of the intensification that i mentioned before, both principals and teachers experience considerably heavier work loads and ever escalating demands for accountability, a never ending schedule of meetings, and in many cases a growing scarcity of resources both emotional and physical (whitty, power, and halpin, 1998, pp.67-68). traditionalism further, as in the research in england, in nearly all of the countries studied the market did not encourage diversity in curriculum, pedagogy, organization, clientele, or even image. it instead consistently devalued alternatives and increased the power of dominant models. of equal significance, it also consistently exacerbated differences in access and outcome based on race, ethnicity, and class (whitty, power, and halpin, 1998, pp.119-120). the return to "traditionalism" led to a number of things. it delegitimated more critical models of teaching and learning, a point that is crucial to recognize in any attempt to think through the possibilities of cultural struggles and critical pedagogies in schools. it both reintroduced restratification within the school and lessened the possibility that detracking would occur. more emphasis was given to "gifted" children and "fast track" classes, while students who were seen as less academically able were therefore "less attractive." in england, the extent of this was nowhere more visible than in the alarming rate of students being excluded from schools. much of this was caused by the intense pressure to constantly demonstrate higher achievement rates. this was especially powerful in marketized contexts in which the "main driving force appeared to be commercial rather than educational" (whitty, power, and halpin, 1998, p.90). in their own analysis of these worrisome and more hidden results, whitty, power, and halpin (1998) demonstrate that among the dangerous effects of quasi-markets are the ways in which schools that wish to maintain or enhance their market position engage in "cream-skimming," ensuring that particular kinds of students with particular characteristics are accepted and particular kinds of students are found wanting. for some schools, stereotypes were reproduced in that girls were seen a more valuable, as were students from some asian communities. afro-caribbean children were often clear losers in this situation. the overall conclusions are clear. "[in] current circumstances choice is as likely to reinforce hierarchies as to improve educational opportunities and the overall quality of schooling" (whitty, power, and halpin, 1998, p.14). this is not to dismiss either the possibility or necessity of school reform. however, we need to take seriously the probability that only by focusing on the exogenous socioeconomic features, not simply the organizational features, of "successful" schools can all schools succeed. eliminating poverty through greater income parity, establishing effective and much more equal health and housing programs, and positively refusing to continue the hidden and not so hidden politics of racial exclusion and degradation that so clearly still characterize daily life in many nations (and in which marketized plans need to be seen as partly a structure to avoid the body and culture of "the other")--only by tackling these issues together can substantive progress be made. unless discussions michael apple 14 april 30, 1999 of critical pedagogy are themselves grounded in a recognition of these realities, they too may fall into the trap of assuming that schools can do it alone. national curriculum and national testing i showed in the previous section that there are connections between at least two dynamics operating in neo-liberal reforms, "free" markets and increased surveillance. this can be seen in the fact that in many contexts, marketization has been accompanied by a set of particular policies for "producers," for those professionals working within education. these policies have been strongly regulatory and have been quite instrumental in reconstituting common-sense. as in the case of the linkage between national tests and performance indicators published as league tables, they have been organized around a concern for external supervision, regulation, and external judgement of performance (menter, et al., 1997, p.8) and have increasingly been colonized by parents who possess what is seen as "appropriate" economic, social, and cultural capital. this concern for external supervision and regulation is not only connected with a strong mistrust of "producers" (e.g., teachers) and to the need for ensuring that people continually make enterprises out of themselves. it is also clearly linked both to the neo-conservative sense of a need to "return" to a lost past of high standards, discipline, awe, and "real" knowledge and to the professional middle class's own ability to carve out a sphere of authority within the state for its own commitment to management techniques and efficiency. the focus on efficient management plays a prime role here, one in which many neo-liberals and neo-conservatives alike find useful. there is no necessary contradiction between a general set of marketizing and deregulating interests and processes--such as voucher and choice plans--and a set of enhanced regulatory processes--such as plans for national curricula and national testing. "the regulatory form permits the state to maintain 'steerage' over the aims and processes of education from within the market mechanism" (menter, et al., 1997, p.24). such steerage has often been vested in such things as national standards, national curricula, and national testing. forms of all of these are being pushed for in the united states currently and are the subject of considerable controversy, some of which cuts across ideological lines and shows some of the tensions within the different elements contained under the umbrella of the conservative restoration. i have argued in cultural politics and education that paradoxically a national curriculum and especially a national testing program are the first and most essential steps toward increased marketization. they actually provide the mechanisms for comparative data that "consumers" need to make markets work as markets (apple, 1996). absent these mechanisms, there is no comparative base of information for "choice." yet, we do not have to argue about these regulatory forms in a vacuum. like the neo-liberal markets i discussed in the previous section, they too have been instituted in england; and, once again, there is important research available that can and must make us duly cautious in going down this path. one might want to claim that a set of national standards, national curricula, and national tests would provide the conditions for "thick morality." after all, such regulatory reforms are supposedly based on shared values and common sentiments that also create social spaces in which common issues of concern can be debated and made subject to rhetorical reforms: markets, standards and inequality current issues in comparative education, vol. 1(2) 15 moral interrogation (ball, bowe, and gewirtz, 1994, p.23). yet, what counts as the "common," and how and by whom it is actually determined, is rather more thin than thick. the authors of an extremely thorough review of recent assessment programs instituted in england and wales provide a summary of what has happened in the struggle over a national curriculum. gipps and murphy argue that it has become increasingly obvious that the national assessment program attached to the national curriculum is more and more dominated by traditional models of testing and the assumptions about teaching and learning that lie behind them. at the same time, equity issues are becoming much less visible (gipps and murphy, 1994, p.209). in the calculus of values now in place in the regulatory state, efficiency, speed, and cost control replace more substantive concerns about social and educational justice. the pressure to get tests in place rapidly has meant that "the speed of test development is so great, and the curriculum and assessment changes so regular, that [there is] little time to carry out detailed analyses and trialing to ensure that the tests are as fair as possible to all groups" (gipps and murphy, 1994, p.209). the conditions for "thin morality"--in which the competitive individual of the market dominates and social justice will somehow take care of itself-are re-produced here. the combination of the neo-liberal market and the regulatory state, then, does indeed "work." however, it works in ways in which the metaphors of free market, merit, and effort hide the differential reality that is produced. while on the one hand this makes a socially and culturally critical pedagogy even more essential, it also makes it much more difficult to actually accomplish. thinking strategically in this article, i have raised serious questions about current educational "reform" efforts now underway in a number of nations. i have used research largely, but not solely, on the english experience(s) to document some of the hidden differential effects of two connected strategies--neo-liberal inspired market proposals and neo-liberal, neoconservative, and middle class managerial inspired regulatory proposals. taking a cue from herbert kliebard's historical analysis, i have described how different interests with different educational and social visions compete for dominion in the social field of power surrounding educational policy and practice. in the process, i have documented some of the complexities and imbalances in this field of power. these complexities and imbalances result in "thin" rather than "thick" morality and in the reproduction of both dominant pedagogical and curricular forms and ideologies and the social privileges that accompany them. unless we honestly face these profound rightist transformations and think tactically about them, we will have little effect either on the creation of a counterhegemonic common-sense or on the building of a counter-hegemonic alliance. the growth of that odd combination of marketization and regulatory state, the move towards pedagogic similarity and "traditional" academic curricula and teaching, the ability of dominant groups to exert leadership in the struggle over this, and the accompanying shifts in common-sense--all this cannot be wished away. instead, it needs to be confronted honestly, and self-critically. having said this, however, i want to point to a hidden paradox in what i have done. even though much of my own and others' research recently has been on the conservative restoration, there are dangers in such a focus of which we should be aware. michael apple 16 april 30, 1999 research on the history, politics, and practices of rightist social and educational movements and "reforms" has enabled us to show the contradictions and unequal effects of such policies and practices. it has enabled the rearticulation of claims to social justice on the basis of solid evidence. this is all to the good. however, in the process, one of the latent effects has been the gradual framing of educational issues largely in terms of the conservative agenda. the very categories themselves--markets, choice, national curricula, national testing, standards-bring the debate onto the terrain established by neo-liberals and neo-conservatives. the analysis of "what is" has led to a neglect of "what might be." thus, there has been a withering of substantive large scale discussions of feasible alternatives to neo-liberal and neo-conservative visions, policies, and practices, ones that would move well beyond them (seddon, 1997, pp.165-166). although crucial, it is then not enough to deconstruct restorational policies in education. the right has shown how important changes in common-sense are in the struggle for education. it is our task to collectively help rebuild it by reestablishing a sense that "thick" morality, and a "thick" democracy, are truly possible today. perhaps some answers can be found in books such as democratic schools (apple and beane 1995) [3] or in publications such as rethinking schools. [4] both provide critically oriented alternatives to the policies and practices now being proposed by neo-liberals and neoconservatives. but one thing is certain, answers will not be found by mistaking the rhetoric of the market for reality. notes [1] whether there will be significant changes in this regard given the victory by "new labour" over the conservatives in the last election remains to be seen. certain aspects of neo-liberal and neo-conservative policies have already been accepted by labour, such as the acceptance of stringent cost controls on spending put in place by the previous conservative government and an aggressive focus on "raising standards" in association with strict performance indicators. [2] see the discussion of the radical state in omi and winant (1994) and the analyses of race and representation in mccarthy and crichlow (1994) and mccarthy (1998). [3] translations of this volume have been or are due to be published japan, spain, argentina, brazil, spain, portugal and elsewhere. thus, it is clear that providing critical answers to the pressing issues of "what do i do on monday?" is seen as crucial in a number of nations. [4] rethinking schools is one of the best examples of the ways critical academics, elementary/middle/high school teachers, students, and community activists can work together in non-elitist ways. information can be gotten from rethinking schools, 1001 e. keefe avenue, milwaukee, wisconsin 53212, usa. for faxes, the number is 414-9647220. the email address is: rsbusiness@aol.com references apple, m.w. (1988). teachers and texts. new york: routledge. rhetorical reforms: markets, standards and inequality current issues in comparative education, vol. 1(2) 17 apple, m.w. (1993). official knowledge. new york: routledge. apple, m.w. (1996). cultural politics and education. new york: teachers college press. apple, m.w. and beane, j.a. (1995). democratic schools. washington: association for supervision and curriculum development. ball, s., bowe, r., and gewirtz, s. (1994). "market forces and parental choice." in s. tomlinson (ed.) educational reform and its consequences. london: ippr/rivers oram press. bernstein, b. (1990). the structuring of pedagogic discourse. new york: routledge. bernstein, b. (1996). pedagogy, symbolic control, and identity. bristol, pa: taylor and francis. bourdieu, p. (1994). distinction. cambridge: harvard university press. bourdieu, p. (1996). the state nobility. stanford: stanford university press. chubb, j. and moe, t. (1990). politics, markets, and america's schools. washington: brookings institution. evans, j. and penney, d. (1995). "the politics of pedagogy," journal of education policy 10:27-44. gillborn, d. (1997a). "race, nation, and education," unpublished paper, institute of education, university of london. gillborn, d. (1997b). "racism and reform," british educational research journal 23:345-360. gipps, c. and murphy, p. (1994). a fair test? philadelphia: open university press. herrnstein, r. and murray, c. (1994). the bell curve. new york: free press. hirsch, e.d., jr. (1996). the schools we need and why we don't have them. new york: doubleday. kincheloe, j. and steinberg, s. (eds.) (1996) measured lies. new york: st. martins press. kliebard, h. (1986). the struggle for the american curriculum. new york: routledge. luke, a. (1995). "series editor's introduction" to j.l. lemke, textual politics. bristol, pa: taylor and francis. mccarthy, c. (1998). the uses of culture. new york: routledge. mccarthy, c. and crichlow, w. (eds.) (1994). race, identity, and representation in michael apple 18 april 30, 1999 education. new york: routledge. mcculloch, g. (1997). "privatizing the past?" british journal of educational studies 45:6982. menter, i., muschamp, p., nicholls, p., ozga, j., with pollard, a. (1997). work and identity in the primary school. philadelphia: open university press. o'hear, p. (1994). "an alternative national curriculum." in s. tomlinson (ed.) educational reform and its consequences. london: ippr/rivers oram press. olssen, m. (1996). "in defence of the welfare state and publicly provided education," journal of education policy 11:337-362. omi, m. and winant, h. (1994). racial formation in the united states. new york: routledge. power, s., halpin, d., and fitz, j. (1994). "underpinning choice and diversity?" in s. tomlinson (ed.) educational reform and its consequences. london: ippr/rivers oram press. ransom, s. (1995). "theorizing educational policy," journal of education policy 10:427-448. seddon, t. (1997). "markets and the english," british journal of sociology of education 18:165-185. selden, s. (1999). inheriting shame: the story of eugenics and racism in america. new york: teachers college press. swartz, d. (1997). culture and power. chicago: university of chicago press. wacquant, l. (1996). "foreword" to p. bourdieu, the state nobility. stanford: stanford university press. whitty, g. (1974). "sociology and the problem of radical educational change." in m. flude and j. ahier (eds.) educability, schools and ideology. london: halstead. whitty, g. (1997). "creating quasi-markets in education." in m.w. apple (ed.) review of research in education volume 22. washington: american educational research association. whitty, g., edwards, t., and gewirtz, s. (1993). specialization and choice in urban education. new york: routledge. whitty, g. power, s., and halpin, d. (1998) devolution and choice in education. bristol, pa: open university press. 4. karn et al., 2023 more girls are accessing school, but are they learning? an exploratory study of the factors influencing girls’ mathematics achievement in pakistan.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 1, winter more girls are accessing school, but are they learning? an exploratory study of the factors influencing girls’ mathematics achievement in pakistan sumit karn teachers college, columbia university vandita churiwal teachers college, columbia university chris henderson teachers college, columbia university mia chin teachers college, columbia university shreya sanjeev teachers college, columbia university although primary school enrollment in pakistan has increased in the last two decades, schooling quality for girls and boys remains a central challenge. furthermore, strides made toward gender parity are yet to address pervasive inequities in schooling outcomes. to provide insight on this matter, this paper interrogates girls' achievement in mathematics within the broader context of girls' access to quality schooling, asking: to what extent does gender influence mathematical achievement among grade four students in pakistan? building on sen and nussbaum’s 'capability approach' and 'freedom as development' frameworks, we explore the extent to which girls' educational achievement represents what nussbaum defines as 'instrumental freedom.' we conducted an ols regression to analyze pakistan’s timss 2019 data to examine the effect of gender on mathematical achievement. results show that despite overall inequity in access to education for female students, girls outperform boys. however, while mathematics achievement might contribute to instrumental freedoms via the attainment of numeracy, discriminatory gender norms deny a vast majority of pakistan's girls and young women the substantive freedoms central to their development. in pakistan, the reality that young women are still 75 percent more likely to be disengaged from further education or employment presents a missed opportunity and significant cause for concern. keywords: gender equity, girls achievement, sense of belonging, mathematics education, large-scale assessments, quality teaching. © 2023, karn et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 73-90. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en karn et al., introduction between 1990 and 2019, the expected years of schooling in pakistan increased from 4.6 to 8.3 years, and the mean years of actual schooling increased from 2.3 to 5.2 years (undp, 2019). while 59 percent of the net attendance ratio is obtained at the primary level, this number reduces to 38 percent by the middle and secondary levels (dhs, 2017). although primary school enrollment in pakistan has increased overall, schooling quality remains a stubborn challenge. for example, pakistan experiences ‘learning poverty’ with approximately 48 percent of all children being unable to read or comprehend written text by age ten (world bank, 2019). in addition to early-grade reading, mathematics skills are foundational for academic success in upper primary and secondary education as well as adult engagement in political and economic spheres (sitabkhan & platas, 2018). the importance of increased mathematics skills is also associated with increased individual earnings later in life (hanushek, 2015). to date, however, there is limited longitudinal and/or comparable data or analysis on mathematics achievement in pakistan. one barrier towards progress is that data on mathematics achievement in lower and upper levels of schooling has been inadequately captured. for example, we have been able to access gender disaggregated data on regional youth reading rates for 15–24-year-olds for some time (indicating a pervasive gender gap in favor of males). however, until pakistan participated in the 2019 trends in international mathematics and science study (timms) we lacked gender-disaggregated data on achievement in mathematics at both primary and secondary school levels (unicef & unfpa, 2019). representing an anomaly in global mathematics achievement trends (ghasemi & burley, 2019), we now know that grade four girls in pakistan perform better on average than boys. despite boys experiencing more variability in scores and a poorer overall average score, boys are better represented at higher levels of achievement in mathematics than girls (timms, 2019; unesco gem, 2022). our ability to meaningfully evaluate the degree to which improved parity of access to schooling for girls in pakistan which is 0.90 at the primary level accompanies comparable academic achievement is limited (unicef & unfpa, 2019). as such, we are interested in the issue of girls’ achievement in mathematics within the broader context of girls’ access to quality schooling. specifically, we want to know what this represents regarding broader aspirations for gender parity in global education access and outcomes (see sustainable development goal (sdg) 4.1). this paper uses data from the timms 2019 assessment to produce initial and exploratory insights to focus on the factors influencing girls’ mathematics achievement in pakistan. we are also motivated by a dearth of evidence on mathematics achievement in the south asia region more generally (sitabkhan & platas, 2018). for this reason, our paper addresses a prevalent knowledge gap in the field and analyzes the extent to which, if at all, gender influences students’ mathematics learning outcomes in pakistan. to better understand the constellation of factors influencing mathematics achievement, we interrogate the extent to which home-life and school-life factors have a bearing on girls' mathematics achievement. to answer this question, we employ an ordinary least squares regression analysis of the dependent variable of ‘learning achievement in mathematics’ 74 current issues in comparative education more girls are accessing school, but are they learning? an exploratory study of the factors influencing girls’ mathematics achievement in pakistan with four independent variables of ‘gender,’ ‘parental involvement in education,’ and ‘resources at home’ (as proxies for home-life factors), and ‘clarity of teaching instruction’ and ‘student sense of belonging’ (as proxies for school-life factors). literature review over the past two decades, numerous western governments have positioned girls’ education at the forefront of their bilateral aid and development agendas. for example, since 2012, the united kingdom’s foreign commonwealth development office (fcdo) has funded the girls’ education challenge (gec) to the tune of £400-£600 million per year (the guardian, 2020). likewise, multilateral and philanthropic agencies, such as unicef, plan international, and the malala fund, have forefronted girls’ education to promote and uphold education’s promise for girls’ lives. moreover, such agencies broadly promote educated women's role in community and national development, climate change mitigation, and peacebuilding. as pakistani scholar khoja-moolji (2018) critiques in “forging the ideal educated girl: the production of desirable subjects in muslim south asia'', development-sector discourse on girls’ education in the global south places girls “on the precipice of failure” if not saved by the promise of education (p.120). this promise, khoja-moolji believes, is accompanied by the economic rationalization that “educated girls will be able to enter the labor force, pull themselves out of poverty, and contribute to national gdp” (p.5). the south asian girl thus becomes “an actively charged figure” upon whom calls for projects, funds, and reforms are placed for herself, her family, and her community, thereby “legitimizing myriad state and non-state interventions” on their behalf (p.9). across south asia, steady strides have been made toward gender parity in access to education. for example, with only 34 percent of girls in the region attending primary school in the year 2000, by 2020 just over 60 percent attended school, representing a 26 percent increase and a rate of access to primary school comparable to boys (world bank, 2020). however, in tension with this reality, young women in south asia are less likely than young men to engage in further employment, education, or training (unicef & unfpa, 2019). highlighting this fact, only 21.9% of all women participate in pakistan’s formal labor market (undp, 2019). obscured by regional averages, statistics for girls' and women’s low levels of participation in further education or employment are more pronounced in pakistan due to gender-based discrimination, which is more widespread than in sri lanka or the maldives (unicef & unfpa, 2019). in addition, the scarcity of female teachers at higher levels of pakistan’s education system also means that there is a lack of female role models for girls, which contributes to a poor sense of belonging in school and can “reinforce norms that undermine girls’ academic achievement” in higher education or employment (unicef & unfpa, 2019. p. 78). therefore, girls continue to face barriers in school retention and experience lifelong challenges to fully participate in pakistan’s social and economic development. with a national population of 220 million and 22.5 million children not enrolled in formal schooling (representing 10.2 percent of the total population), pakistan has the second highest rate of out-of-school-children (oosc) in the world, of which 55 percent current issues in comparative education 75 karn et al., or 12.3 million are girls (world bank, 2019). the government of pakistan (gop) is thus committed to “strengthening human and social capital, which will allow the population to contribute to and effectively benefit from economic growth” (osf, 2012). through article 25a of the constitution, pakistan provides “free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years in such manner as may be determined by law” (dhs, 2017). across primary, middle, and secondary school levels, children from the highest wealth quintile have the highest net attendance ratio compared to children from the lowest (dhs, 2017). therefore, pakistan’s demographic and health services (dhs) (2017) highlights how students in urban areas and wealthier quintiles are more likely to be enrolled in school. for example, 42.3 percent of males from the lowest wealth quintile attend primary school compared to 74.7 percent from the highest quintile. by comparison, only 30.2 percent of females from the lowest quintile attend primary school, and 72.6 of females from the highest (dhs, 2017). with these facts in mind, it is important to note the limited cross-section of pakistan’s children represented in the timss 2019 survey sample. regarding the factors that improve girls’ access to quality education, teachers are known to be one of the most important school-level inputs for student learning outcomes and a sense of belonging (lovenheim & turner, 2018). however, especially in lowand middle-income country contexts, the quality and uniformity of teaching vary greatly. teacher effectiveness depends on teachers’ access to pre-service and in-service continued professional development, as well as quality teaching and learning materials (geeap, 2020). since 2016, however, pakistan's percentage of fully trained teachers has declined from 88 percent to 77 percent (world bank, 2021). in high-income countries, parental involvement in learning is a key home-level determinant in student achievement, which is known to have a positive effect on children’s learning and development outcomes ( coleman, 1966; muller, 2018). findings from lowand middle-income settings are more mixed, as this study highlights (kim, 2018). children born into households where parents are experiencing poverty or other forms of social instability experience adverse effects of parental involvement (kim, 2018). to address the challenges above, and as we outline in more detail below, findings from this literature review and the current availability of timss 2019 data for pakistan inform the thematic focus of our study: “more girls are accessing school, but are they learning? the factors influencing girls’ mathematics achievement in pakistan.” research question: to what extent does gender influence mathematical achievement among grade 4 students in pakistan? dependent variable: score_math (mathematics learning outcomes) independent: female (gender) predictor variables: parental involvement (par_involve), home resources (hm_resources), clarity of instruction in schools (clarity_inst), and student sense of belonging (belonging) 76 current issues in comparative education more girls are accessing school, but are they learning? an exploratory study of the factors influencing girls’ mathematics achievement in pakistan data and methods definitions of variables: the timss assessment data capture grade 4 and 8 student performance in mathematics, science, and other schools, student, and household characteristics. the following definitions represent the specific variables employed for this study: ● mathematics learning outcome: a dependent variable providing the mathematics achievement of grade four students in pakistan. ● female: an independent variable identifying students' biological sex as ‘male’ or ‘female.’ ● parental involvement in children’s education: a predictor variable describing parents’ assistance and support to their children in informal learning. ● resources at home: a predictor variable depicting socioeconomic status with the potential to facilitate student learning. ● clarity of instruction: a predictor variable capturing teachers' effectiveness and capacity to provide clear instruction. ● sense of belonging: a predictor variable referring to students’ sense of belonging and connectedness to school. table 1 definitions of variables as described by timss 2019 variable analytical category (per our analysis) type code mathematics learning outcome dependent variable asmmat01 = score_math timss 2019 aims to provide a comprehensive picture of the mathematics achievement of grade four students in each participating country. this includes achievement in each of the content domains (number = 50%; measurement and geometry = 30%; data = 20%) and cognitive domains (knowing = 40%; applying = 40%; reasoning = 20%) (martin and mullins, 2017, p. 14) as overall mathematics achievement. female identity independent variable (ordinal variable) itsex = female identification of a student based on their biological sex as either ‘male’ or ‘female.’ parental involvement home life predictor variable (categorical variable) acbg14e = par_involve parental involvement is defined as assistance and support parents give to their children in all forms of informal learning and teaching practice related to school (alreshidiet al., 2021). it is measured through the school questionnaire specifically under question 14 where students are asked how they characterize parental involvement in school activities (fishbein et al., 2020, p. 99). current issues in comparative education 77 karn et al., resources at home home life predictor variable (categorical variable) asdghrl = hm_resources socioeconomic status is often indicated through proxy variables. timss 2019 developed two scales that expand upon the classic conception of socioeconomic status to home resources with the potential to facilitate student learning. the grade four timss home resources for learning scale is based primarily on data derived from the home questionnaire (martin and mullins, 2017, p. 64). students were scored according to their own and their parents’ reports regarding the availability of five resources on the scale in exhibit 5.1 (martin et al., 2020). clarity of instruction school life predictor variable (continuous variable) asbgicm = clarity_inst the timss 2019 student and teacher questionnaires include instructional clarity, which captures a teacher's effectiveness and capacity to provide clear instruction (i.e., the clarity with which teachers convey the curriculum to students). students were asked about aspects of teachers’ mathematics instruction during their mathematics lessons: whether they know what their teacher expects them to do, and whether their teacher is easy to understand, has clear answers to their questions, is good at explaining mathematics, does a variety of things to help the students learn, and explains a topic again when the students do not understand. responses were combined into the timss instructional clarity in mathematics lessons scale, as described in exhibit 12.8 (martin et al., 2020) student sense of belonging school life predictor variable (continuous variable) asbgssb = belonging students’ sense of belonging, also referred to as school connectedness, by timss 2019, broadly encompasses the notion that students who feel more attached to their school also tend to report greater enjoyment in learning and greater confidence in their capabilities (martin and mullins, 2017, p. 68). the items forming the sense of school belonging scale asked students about their attitudes toward school, including the extent to which they like being in school, feel that they belong, and have good relationships with teachers. fourth grade students were asked how much they agreed or disagreed with the five statements listed in exhibit 7.9 (mullins et al., 2020). summary of statistics for variables: in table 2, we present a summary statistics for the variables: mathematics learning outcome, gender, parental involvement, resources at home, clarity of instruction, and sense of belonging, based on a sample of 3,448 grade four students in pakistan who participated in timss 2019. forty-six percent of the students were female. for question items relating to achievement in math, out of a maximum of 1000 points, the mean score was 322.70 with a standard deviation of 99.97. this is the second lowest score among participating nations after the philippines (mean score = 297). there was a range of 677.42 points between the highest and lowest scores. finally, for parental involvement, 20 percent of students scored very low parental involvement, 22 percent of students had low involvement, 26 percent of students had medium involvement, 13 percent of students had high involvement, and the remaining 19 percent of students had very high involvement. the standard deviation of parental involvement was 1.38. a minimum score of 1 and a maximum score of 5 provided a range of 4 points in parental involvement. for the variable of resources at home, which was a composite of five 78 current issues in comparative education more girls are accessing school, but are they learning? an exploratory study of the factors influencing girls’ mathematics achievement in pakistan separate socio-economic status question items in the timss student survey, 33 percent had few resources at home, 67 percent had some resources at home, and the remaining 23 percent had many resources at home, with a standard deviation of 0.49. the variable for clarity of instruction scored a mean of 10.20, with a standard deviation of 2.34, with a low score of 2.55 and a high score of 12.75, and a range of 9.70 points. for students’ sense of belonging in school, the mean score was 11, with a standard deviation of 2.25. there was a range of 9.61 points, with the lowest score of 3.14 and a high score of 12.75. table 2 summary statistics for gender, resources at home, sense of belonging, clarity of instruction, parental involvement and achievement in mathematics of 4th grade students in pakistan (n = 3, 448) variable definition and metrics mean sd math_score mathematics learning outcome 322.70 99.97 female female = 1, male = 0 0.46 home life par_involve parental involvement in children’s education 1= very low 2 = low 3 = medium 4 = high 5 = very high 0.20 0.22 0.26 0.13 0.19 1.38 resources at home resources at home 1 = few resources 2 = some resources 3= many resources 0.33 0.67 0.23 .49 school life clarity_instruc tion clarity of instruction for teachers based on a scale from 1-12, with a higher score meaning more clarity of instruction. 10.20 2.34 belonging sense of belonging based on a scale of 1-12, with a higher value connoting a sense of belonging. 11.00 2.25 source: timss 2019 limitations of the study current issues in comparative education 79 karn et al., due to the quantitative nature of this study there are numerous limitations, which warrants the descriptive presentation and analysis of our findings as well as a call for further research on this topic. first, our study was constrained by the limited number of variables included in pakistan’s 2019 timss dataset. for example, in line with previous studies (aslam & kingdon, 2012; alcott & rose, 2015) we wanted to evaluate the effect of parental education on girls' learning outcomes. yet the omission of parental education in the pakistan survey prevented us from including it as an important predictor variable. third, the scales used in timss consist of students’ self-reported information, meaning the results are limited to students’ own reflections and statements, thereby compromising the overall validity of some predictor variables. fourth, the variable “resources at home” was used as a proxy for students' socioeconomic status. as such, this variable is not a comprehensive or conclusive representation of socio-economic status. lastly, due to the wealth quintile that grade four girls participating in the pakistan timss assessment likely belong to, we are careful not to overstate the extent to which our findings represent mathematics learning achievement for all grade four girls in pakistan. analytical strategy using stata, we conducted a statistical analysis with the publicly available timss 2019 data set of grade four students in pakistan. we conducted a multiple ordinary least squares (ols) regression analysis to understand the influence of gender on mathematical achievement. our analysis includes four independent variables: parental involvement, home resources, clarity of instruction, and sense of belonging. we categorized the variables into home life (home resources and parental involvement) and school life (measured by the clarity of instruction and sense of belonging). to generate an exact copy of the variable with valuable names, we used the clonevar command in stata. by doing this, we generated new variables and labeled them, including math achievement scores, gender, parental involvement, resources at home, clarity of instruction, and sense of belonging. we then employed list-wise deletion to remove missing data for all variables except home resources. next, we recoded gender as a binary nominal variable, and we recoded and relabeled parental involvement into five ordinal categories starting from ‘very low’ to ‘very high.’ similarly, we recoded and relabeled home resources into three categories starting with ‘few resources’ to ‘many resources. this process reduced the risk of deviation between variables' definitions and value labeling. since there were 763 missing observations from the home resources variable, we decided to impute the missing observations. the average value of the home resources variable falls under the ‘some resources’ category. hence, we imputed the missing data into that category. after recoding the variables, we conducted the multiple ols regression model to examine the effect of gender on mathematical score achievement while controlling for all other variables. with gender as our independent variable, we simultaneously included four predictor variables in the model: parental involvement, resources at home, sense of belonging, clarity of instruction, and sense of belonging. we also created a dummy variable for resources at home to understand whether there is a linear relationship between the categories of resources at home and grade four student performance in mathematics. 80 current issues in comparative education more girls are accessing school, but are they learning? an exploratory study of the factors influencing girls’ mathematics achievement in pakistan finally, to understand the influence of gender on mathematics achievement scores among grade four students in pakistan, we analyzed the interaction of our predictor variables to form a more sophisticated understanding of the influence of school life and home life factors on boys’ and girls’ respective performance in mathematics. results as shown in table 3, a multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine the effect of gender on mathematical achievement among grade 4 students in pakistan. using timss data from 2019, we simultaneously entered five predictors into the model: female, parental involvement, resources at home, clarity of instruction, and sense of belonging. model 1 presents a simple regression with gender as the predictor of mathematical achievement. here, we observe that girls perform 0.065 standard units higher than males in grade four mathematics, and the relationship is statistically significant (p<0.05, beta = 0.065). we, therefore, accept the alternative hypothesis that student gender is associated with mathematics achievement. the effect of gender is slightly reduced, however, once we adjust for parental involvement, resources at home, clarity of instruction, and sense of belonging (model 5, beta = 0.052, p<0.05). in model 2, we observe that with each additional unit of parental involvement, there is a decrease in mathematical achievement by 0.024 standard units; however, this association is not statistically significant (model 2, beta = 0.025, p>0.05). in model 3, we see a 0.006 standard unit increase in mathematical achievement with every additional unit increase of resources at home. this association is also not statistically significant (model 3, beta = 0.006, p>0.05). when computing dummy variables for resources at home, we found that there is no linear relationship. students with ‘some resources’ score 40.02 points higher than students with ‘few resources,’ and the relationships are statistically significant (p<0.05). similarly, students with ‘many resources’ score 40.48 points higher than students with ‘some resources’. this relationship is also statistically significant (p<0.05). model 4 shows that for each unit increase in clarity of instruction, there is a 0.184 standard unit increase in mathematical score achievement; this relationship is also statistically significant (model 4, beta = 0.184, p<0.01). lastly, in model 5, for every unit increase in students’ sense of belonging, there is a 0.059 standard unit increase in mathematical score achievement. this relationship is also statistically significant (model 5, beta = 0.059, p<0.05). in total, two out of the five predictor variables are statistically significant (p<0.05). collectively, all five predictors explained four percent of the variance in mathematical achievement. current issues in comparative education 81 karn et al., table 3 ols regression for timss 2019 math scores in pakistan (n = 3,448) variable model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 model 5 female 0.065*** 0.068*** 0.068*** 0.052** 0.052** (3.434) (3.464) (3.464) (3.418) (3.414) home life parental involvement -0.024 -0.025 -0.020 -0.016 (1.251) (1.258) (1.237) (1.239) resources at home 0.006 0.005 0.006 1. resources at home 2. resources at home 3. resources at home (3.625) (3.564) 0.000 (.) 0.46 (0.257) 40.48** (0.262) (3.560) -40.48** (0.257) -40.02** (0.262) 0.000 (.) school life clarity of instruction 0.184*** 0.158*** (0.718) (0.801) sense of belonging 0.059** (0.837) r2 0.004 0.005 0.005 0.038 0.041 adj. r2 0.004 0.004 0.004 0.037 0.040 standardized beta coefficients; standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 source: timss 2019 we next conducted an interaction effect analysis to understand the effect of home life (measured by parental involvement and resources at home) on females’ performance in mathematics compared to males. we observe that for each additional unit in increase for 82 current issues in comparative education more girls are accessing school, but are they learning? an exploratory study of the factors influencing girls’ mathematics achievement in pakistan parental involvement, females perform 10.052 units lower than males (p<0.001). in this sense, compared to boys grade four girls’ mathematics performance in pakistan reduces when there is increased parental involvement. yet for each additional unit increase of resources at home, females perform 11.333 units higher than males (p<0.05). thus, despite the insignificant relationship of home resources with overall grade four student performance in pakistan, it is worth noting that this variable contributes to higher levels of mathematics achievement for girls. table 4 interaction effect of parental involvement and resources at home with gender on mathematical achievement (n=3,448) math score coefficient std. error t p>|t| parental involvement 3.499 1.81 1.94 0.053 female x parental involvement -10.052 2.49 5.34 0.00 resources at home 4.511 4.89 -0.92 0.356 female x resources at home 11.333 7.23 1.57 0.117 source: timss 2019 discussion and conclusion results from this study show that despite overall inequity in access to education for female students in pakistan, girls are performing better than boys as measured through mathematics achievement. in particular, girls’ ‘sense of belonging’ at school had a significant positive effect on ‘math achievement’. furthermore, ‘clarity of teaching instruction’ in schools showed the most positive and significant effect on math achievement compared to the other predictor variables considered in the study. on the other hand, ‘parental involvement’ in school activities was shown to have a significantly negative effect. ‘home resources’ were also shown to have a statistically insignificant effect on ‘math achievement’ for grade four students in pakistan. while girls outperform boys, overall mathematics achievement in pakistan is considerably low compared to other timms participating countries. thus, considering the critical value of early-grade mathematics skills as a broad predictor for later mathematics achievement and academic success, this reality is a cause for concern (aunio et al., 2021). identity despite inequitable rates of access to education, pakistan’s girls are still performing better than boys in early-grade math achievement (farooq, 2020; timms, 2019). this is a notable finding because an overwhelming array of sociocultural and economic factors discourage girls' full and equal participation in schooling in pakistan (azhar, 2008; batool et al., 2003). moreover, within a broader landscape of discriminatory gender norms, males with sufficient financial means have comparatively unimpeded access to school. however, as we have discovered, this does not correlate with better achievement current issues in comparative education 83 karn et al., in mathematics overall (rehman et al., 2013). therefore, considering girls’ limited opportunities and often inhospitable learning environments, there is a pressing need for more comprehensive research on the factors contributing to girls’ higher-on-average rates of mathematics achievement compared to boys (ali et al., 2012; batool et al., 2013). due to discriminatory gender norms and the extent to which women are much less likely to be engaged in further education or employment than men, our research should prompt pakistan to leverage girls’ early-grade mathematics achievement, support and reinforce higher-level cognitive skills in later grades and continue to advocate for and fund lifelong access to learning for all (unicef & unfpa, 2019). positively, pakistan’s ‘vision 2025’ puts forth a commitment to advancing education reform and pledges to increase public expenditure for education from 0.2% of gross domestic product (gdp) to 1.4% of gdp (gop, n.d.). as indicated in our findings, however, the gop must adopt gender-responsive budgeting, prioritize home and school-life factors that best determine girls’ engagement and achievement at school, and engage systems-level research that informs gender-responsive policy. our concluding analysis below provides further guidance. home-life factors the ‘parental involvement’ variable is shown to have a statistically insignificant effect on math achievement in pakistan. poor parental education levels and low literacy attainment are compounding factors (dhs, 2017). however, this finding is inconsistent with global studies whereby parents’ involvement in children's education has been a statistically significant and positive factor in students’ achievement at school (shah et al., 2012; suleman et al., 2012a). at the nexus of home environment and academic achievement, parents who take additional responsibility for their children’s learning have traditionally corresponded with increased interest in academic achievement among children (khan, 2019). as such, further research on why and how the variable of parental involvement in the timms 2019 dataset has an insignificant effect on girls’ achievement is required. although our findings show a statistically insignificant influence, in line with the studies mentioned above we still advocate that children of illiterate or under-educated parents require improved access to remedial or accelerated education within formal and non-formal educational settings. moreover, parents require access to adult education programs targeted toward home-support strategies for their children's learning (shah et al., 2012; suleman et al., 2012a; khan, 2019). surprisingly, the ‘resources at home’ variable also showed a statistically insignificant effect on math achievement for grade four girls in pakistan. like ‘parental involvement,’ this finding is inconsistent with previous research whereby ‘home environment’ and ‘home resources’ are statistically significant factors in pakistani students’ academic achievement (parveen, 2007; muola, 2010). as much as we have employed the ‘resources at home’ variable as a proxy for students' socioeconomic status, the factors that constitute this variable may differ across studies. typically, the socioeconomic status of a child is broadly determined by parental educational level, parental occupation, and income level, with previous studies finding that low socio-economic status or few resources at home have negatively influenced academic performance and have traditionally been a powerful predictor of students' academic under-performance (jeyne, 2002; suleman et al., 2012b). 84 current issues in comparative education more girls are accessing school, but are they learning? an exploratory study of the factors influencing girls’ mathematics achievement in pakistan school-life factors compared to our other predictor variables, ‘clarity of instruction’ positively and significantly influenced math achievement. ‘instructional clarity’ represents the ability of teachers to organize the teaching and learning environment effectively and to carry out the teaching process in ways that cater to students' specific cultural, learning, and development needs (yagan, 2021). as stated earlier, teachers are known to be the most important school-level factor influencing student achievement (lovenheim & turner, 2018). therefore, our findings suggest that to continue strengthening mathematics achievement for girls in pakistan, ongoing investment in the development of gender-responsive pedagogies through pre-service and in-service teacher professional learning programs is paramount. the ‘sense of belonging’ variable also had a positive and significant effect on mathematics achievement for girls in pakistan. this finding is corroborated by previous research where a positive correlation has been observed between a ‘sense of belonging’ and academic success among students in low-income countries (mcmahon et al., 2008). this is an important finding for pakistan, especially due to the aforementioned barriers to girls’ access to and retention within pakistan’s school system. pakistan spends far less on education than is recommended by unesco’s guidance on girls’ education; as such, the government of pakistan has not yet established an education system responsive to the unique needs of girls and young women (hrw, 2018). moreover, due to an upward bottleneck in the education system meaning fewer girls and young women progress to higher levels of schooling as they get older – our findings emphasize the importance of further investments in the school-level factors that promote retention, such as girls’ ‘sense of belonging’ and teachers’ ‘clarity of instruction’. in light of the evidence presented above, we strongly recommend that the gop participates in the next round of timss grade four and grade eight assessments. this will contribute towards the availability of longitudinal and comparable data on girls’ mathematics achievement and inform policy iterations that improve equitable access to quality learning for all girls. additionally, to reduce the need for proxy variables – like those we have depended on in this study – we recommend that pakistan’s ministry of education prioritizes the inclusion of question items contributing to variables such as ‘parental education,’ ‘socioeconomic status,’ and ‘effective teaching instruction.’ since pakistan is party to several international treaties on inclusive and equitable education, the measures related to sustainable development goals (sdgs) are yet to reach wide-scale policy implementation (iqbal & ashraf, 2023). in this view, to better align with the aspirations of sdg 4: quality education, substantive steps should be taken to introduce an all-inclusive education policy and impartial curriculum free from materials that promote gender-based discrimination (arsha & khanam, 2023). furthermore, as pakistan works towards ensuring the sdg 4 goal of inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong opportunities for all, a more nuanced understanding of the impact that barriers to access and inadequate quality of education have on girls’ long-term educational engagement and achievement is needed. finally, not forgetting pakistan’s 22.8 million out-of-school children and youth (55% of whom current issues in comparative education 85 karn et al., are girls), non-formal education providers also need to take stock of the home-life and school-life factors that enable out-of-school girls’ engagement and retention; by fore fronting these factors, we hope that effective pathways are put in place to enable an accelerated transition from non-formal to formal schooling and future employment for all. sumit karn is a doctoral student in the comparative and international education program at teachers college, columbia university. he endeavors to comprehensively investigate educational inequities and ascertain the extent of public opinion's sway on policymaking in lowand middle-income countries. in addition, his scholarly pursuits encompass gender education, research-practice partnerships, the deficit of trust in public educational institutions, and the privatization of education. vandita churiwal is a graduate student at teachers college, columbia university. she previously worked in the education sectors of india, lebanon, and for the unesco asia-pacific regional office in bangkok, thailand. with her integrative project focused on the empowerment of syrian refugees in lebanon, her work is targeted toward equitable educational outcomes for vulnerable children in lowand middle-income countries. chris henderson is a doctoral fellow at teachers college, columbia university. he also works as a senior consultant in south and southeast asia and the middle east for humanitarian and development agencies, including unicef, unhcr, and the world bank among others. his work and research focuses on girls’ education and education in emergencies and his dissertation is focused on rohingya teacher motivation and the refugee crisis in bangladesh. mia chin is passionate about advancing basic education and systems strengthening reforms within the humanitarian-development nexus. prior to commencing the doctoral program at teachers college, mia completed her mpa at columbia university’s school of international and public affairs (sipa). she brings over ten years of education, humanitarian, and development experience in asia and the middle east with academic institutions, civil society, undp, ingos, and usaid. currently, mia is an education technical specialist advising usaid's largest education portfolio globally to improve jordanian and refugee children's access to quality education. shreya sanjeev is a doctoral 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it is, so to speak, to reverse the tapestry in order to expose in all its unglamorously disheveled tangle the threads constituting the well heeled image it presents to the world (eagleton, 1986, p.80). education reform: restructuring state-civil society relations a remarkable new reform movement in education has taken hold over the past decade-a movement that includes all the major countries of the third world and the eastern european countries in transition2. this moment in the history of education is also remarkable for the nature of reforms that from one country to the next bear an extraordinary degree of resemblance to one another. the reason for this is fairly wellknown to international educators--that is, that these reforms are part of an overall package of structural adjustment programs (saps) imposed by the international monetary fund (imf) and the world bank3 aimed to facilitate economic growth of these national economies. closing the education gap is seen as integral to closing the economic gap within and between countries. therefore the first order of priority of these reform proposals has been to radically restructure basic education systems in each of these countries in ways that can move us closer to the goal of education for all, if not by 2000 (as pledged at the world conference on education for all held at jomtien in 1990), then at least by 20254. the fact that these reforms are related to the structural adjustment package is extremely relevant to our discussion here. the social and economic tenets upon which the saps are based also guide the reforms in the education sector. one basic tenet is that global cultural and economic trends require policymakers to rethink notions of the state that prevailed through the period of extensive modernization of third world societies. current thinking within international policy circles is that during the post-independence period it was necessary to nurture a strong state so as to develop the capacities of the nation--both natural and human. given the rapid globalization of the economy and increased border crossing of people and ideas, however, a strong and interventionist state is also said to hinder rather than promote economic growth and the general well being of the population5. what is posited here is the maturation of market relations on a global scale which require a more unrestricted space for their full development-production of capital here being directly related to the production of well being6. related to this new perspective on the state is a new conception of civil society as having emerged as an autonomous actor in its own right, and hence not requiring the patronage of the state as much as it did in an earlier time. this new thinking around the role and function of the state has had profound implications on education policy making in the third world, specifically within latin deconstructing the rhetoric of decentralization: the state in education reform current issues in comparative education vol.2(2) 111 america and south asia. education has gone from being largely a state obligation to being increasingly turned over to civil society and non-state organizations. one simple explanation for this shift, often referenced by social theorists and policymakers alike, is the reduced budget of the state for social sectors (bray, 1999; king, 1999). this is an integral feature of the structural adjustment programs designed by the imf and world bank. certainly this is a condition that makes for the reduced role of the state in education and, consequently for the expanded role of civil society. however, my focus here is less upon the conspicuous cause of these reforms and more upon uncovering the latent imaginary that undergirds the reforms, and what this imaginary implies for statecivil society relations, and for democracy and equity7. i argue that a new imaginary is at play--one that is represented in the discourse of globalization and neoliberal market policies--and education reforms are an integral part of constituting this new imaginary. a central concern here is how do we deconstruct this new imaginary to understand its (dis)articulation with earlier discourses of democratization and equity and the new discourses of globalization and marketization. in this paper, i attempt a partial deconstruction of a key reform proposal--the decentralization of basic education--and analyze how it responds to the state-civil society problematic as a way to unravel this new imaginary. decentralization as a mechanism of restructuration in current education reform discourse, decentralization has become a common rallying point bringing together diverse actors such as non-governmental organizations, the state bureaucracy and international aid agencies to work jointly on improving education. it serves as a unifying force because, historically, decentralization has been equated with democracy on the basis of greater local sovereignty and increased responsiveness to the needs of marginalized groups. however, comparative analysis of decentralization has shown us that there are various models of decentralization, some of which actually translate into greater centralization, and others which may exacerbate the social inequities that exist at the local level (bray, 1999; puiggros, 1996; ridell, 1996). bray (1999) makes a useful distinction between functional and territorial decentralization wherein the former is a separation of powers between parallel authorities or units (i.e. non-hierarchical) and the latter is an allocation of powers to different tiers of the education system from the state bureaucracy to the school. bray (1999) elaborates on the latter form of decentralization since it most closely approximates the accepted notion of the term. within territorial decentralization, he distinguishes between three meanings of decentralization that are often used interchangeably but imply quite different things-deconcentration, delegation, and devolution. he provides numerous insightful examples of how each has occurred in various contexts, and very seldom for reasons of equity, democracy or even efficiency. apart from specific political crises that arise in any given historical moment in a nation state, bray (1999) concludes that it is quite impossible to draw any systematic conclusions or generalize about how, where, and when decentralization and centralization may occur. his well-documented paper is, however, more descriptive than analytical. it does not situate this policy initiative within a globalizing condition8. several studies on decentralization of education highlight the problematic of the shifting role of the state in different country contexts, and its implications for democracy (see ridell, 1996; kaufman, 1997; puiggros, 1996; sayed, 1997). early work on this question in sangeeta kamat 112 april 30, 2002 comparative education is found in an article on educational decentralization in peru, chile, and mexico that directly addresses the crucial question of "weak state or strong state?" (mcginn & street, 1986). in each case, the authors show how decentralization was put into effect to strengthen the central government and not weaken it. an important point they make is that governments (state) and people (civil society) are not necessarily separate or oppositional entities, and that groups across government and civil society may be either closely allied or opposed to one another. state policies such as decentralization thus need to be analyzed in terms of how certain alliances are strengthened and certain others weakened. my research attempts to build on the above critical scholarship in comparative education by analyzing current proposals for decentralization and state reform in the third world and its implications for democracy. in this paper, i limit my discussion to a recent policy paper of the world bank on decentralization entitled beyond the center: decentralizing the state that includes a significant section on guidelines for decentralization of education in latin america (burki et al, 1999)9. i hope the document analysis will also demonstrate that a theory of the state is integral to deepening our understanding of how exactly the role of the state may be reconstituted within a global field of actors. in terms of a theoretical framework, i draw upon the marxist geographer henri lefebvre's theory of the state in the age of globalization. i find lefebvre's work particularly compelling in the context of the state-civil society debate. a number of social theorists have proposed the withering away of the state as both market and society have developed in extraordinarily complex ways (see, for instance, appadurai, 1996; sassen, 1996). they argue that neither the market nor civil society can be contained any longer within the territorial and political unit of the nation-state, rendering the state obsolete as an instrument of government. contrary to this widely held position, lefebvre argues that the state is being reconfigured in a new set of relations and is absolutely necessary to the workings of globalization. let me briefly outline some parts of lefebvre's analysis that are especially germane to our discussion here10. the reconfiguration of the state is understood within an analytic of what lefebvre calls the "production of space"--that is the state is conceptualized not as a fixed entity or container which holds market and society, but as an ensemble of social relations that form a complex, intertwined temporal and spatial grid (brenner, 1997). interventions of the state in the capitalist economy must be conceived spatially, as attempts to organize, instrumentalize and regulate social space. space, according to lefebvre, is one of the privileged instruments of the state in its efforts to control social relations among individuals, groups, and classes. (brenner, 1997). lefebvre's notion of "state space" (l'espace etatique) is the basis on which he theorizes the spatial form of the modern state, specifying three main elements of state space: (1) as a national territorial space; (2) as an internal grid of state sociospatial organization composed of politicoinstitutional and administrative configurations, built environments, and symbolic monuments; and (3) as the mental space produced by the state (brenner, 1997). reading the world bank report on decentralizing the state (burki et al., 1999) with lefebvre's theory of state space, i uncover the topology of power and social control deconstructing the rhetoric of decentralization: the state in education reform current issues in comparative education vol.2(2) 113 defining the geography of globalization. the authors clearly state that the goal of this "normative framework for decentralization" is to help countries under pressure to decentralize to maintain political stability and democratize while at the same time improve efficiency of public service delivery and preserve macro economic stability (p. 17). the former objectives they affirm have been important in many latin american countries which have moved from military to civilian rule and need to manage civilian discontent and gain grassroots support. although these are laudable goals in themselves, the authors state that there are other objectives that are equally important-namely, efficiency of resource use and macro economic stability. decentralization is presented as a win-win situation where all four objectives are met, and the interests of all groups--ruling parties and opposition groups, national governments, and indigenous communities--are equally protected. thus, the vision proposed here articulates the demands for democracy with the ongoing processes of capital accumulation and debt servicing. in this introductory section, the articulation of democracy with decentralization is made in a rather transparent manner. the authors use a commonplace though powerful discursive device of constructing binaries with one side of the binary representing a desirable policy option and the other representing a highly undesirable option (and hence a non-option). a clear instance of this is provided in the following set of statements: in a fundamental sense, democratization, and with it decentralization, can be understood as a strategy to maintain political stability to provide an institutional mechanism for bringing opposition groups into a formal, ritualized bargaining process. as such, it constitutes an alternative to civil war or other forms of violent opposition (p. 9; italics mine). a binary is constructed between institutional mechanisms and civil war as being the only two available options for citizen participation in government. the "formal, ritualized bargaining process" may be understood as representing "state processes", that is, those that are constructed and legitimized by the state. within latin america itself, indigenous and peasant organizations have questioned the integrity of the "formal, ritualized bargaining process" itself, and have tried to propose alternative processes which have been met with great state opposition. indigenous and peasant communities in struggle have consistently argued that the formal, ritualized processes for redress serve more to regulate and manage discontent rather than resolve it11. here, by positing state processes versus civil war, the authors make it appear as if there are no other mechanisms for democracy, and that state processes as such represent the only possible policy option. contestation over "formal, ritualized bargaining process(es)" is made invisible and extraneous to the policy debate. the state, not as a territorial unit, but as a set of politico-institutional processes (re: lefebvre), is centered as the only viable form by which democratization can proceed. in addition, democratization, rather than being a philosophy or a value in and of itself, is a tool placed at the service of political stability12. the following chapter of the report, entitled "getting the rules right", elaborates upon the politico-institutional arrangements necessary for effective decentralization. here the sangeeta kamat 114 april 30, 2002 authors delineate the complex issue of states sharing power, and the conditions under which such a sharing can be successfully exercised. to quote: this report takes the view that the most useful way to see decentralization is as a management reorganization of the public sector, in which the rules of hierarchical bureaucracy are replaced by a much more limited set of constraints on the behavior of subnational political actors.... decentralization thus implies not subnational sovereignty, but a new set of rules that define the relationship between national and subnational governments and replace the rules of hierarchical bureaucracy (p17-18; italics mine). outlined above is a definitive role for the state; that is, the state, far from becoming a nominal player in the intersections between local and suprastate, is placed as a key actor in regulating these intersecting relations. the authors are clearly hard pressed to provide a qualitative descriptor for the "new set of rules"; if the previous set of rules were hierarchical, what will the new ones look like? it is not clear that they will embody the opposite of hierarchy. the chapter goes on to elaborate upon the new set of rules that states need to adopt so as to play this new role effectively. each recommendation bears the mark of bland factuality for which world bank reports can claim special expertise. below, i summarize some of the key recommendations that have particular relevance for the construction of the state. the recommendations rely heavily on legislation, although the authors state that the rules can come in a variety of forms, "not all of them legislation". however, they assert that "explicit legislation is key to successful decentralization". legislation "reduce(s) uncertainty and provide(s) for a common set of ground rules for the political process". this, they assert, will both "coordinate subnational governments' reactions against abusive central government, while restricting the subnational government's scope for bargaining"(p. 18). two specific recommendations made in this direction are 1) to strengthen the office of the presidency in relation to the legislature which could include "powers to rule by decree" and "an unassailable presidential veto", and 2) to institute electoral rules that "discourage party fragmentation--party fragmentation makes policy making more difficult and weakens the position of the president." drastic actions such as "constitutional changes in electoral rules" are recommended as the best way out. these two changes, they argue, will strengthen the position of governments "to defend the national interest against the parochial interests of individual legislators" (p. 18-19). the report does not specify legislation or other steps that would accomplish the former objective--namely, to protect subnational governments against abuse by central governments. these recommendations are explicitly designed to produce a powerful state with authority that is not exerted in a visible manner, that is not manifest in day to day administrative relations, but latent as an organizing grid within which the local must help improve efficiency, provide quality service delivery, preserve macroeconomic stability, and last of all, ensure democracy. the management reorganization of relations between the state and local bodies is to occur through a set of legislative rules that will deconstructing the rhetoric of decentralization: the state in education reform current issues in comparative education vol.2(2) 115 provide an almost, if not wholly, constitutional framework that will regulate the decisions of local bodies, and accord the central government with powers to discipline local bodies if they do not sufficiently regulate themselves. within the logic of management reorganization, decentralization can be understood as a social space "produced" (literally speaking) in which social relations are rationalized, partitioned, and territorialized within an abstract, objectified grid--after all, what can be more abstract and objectified than the law? the "new" state of globalization explicit in the above recommendations is a strong role for the state, not a weak one as often concluded by globalization researchers. the imperative for a stronger state appears to arise not merely from this new "built" environment of decentralization but also from the deregulation of finance capital wherein suprastate organizations, including private corporations, can invest in local public sector operations such as schools. on one hand, the deregulation of finance capital, an essential feature of neoliberal reform, does not make sense without the decentralization of public industries such as schools because only then can multiple markets be made available for investment. on the other hand, decentralization guarantees too much autonomy that may hinder optimum returns on these investments. this point is made clear by the authors who devote an entire chapter to "addressing the macroeconomic threat" to highlight the key crisis points created by decentralization (burki et al., 1999). in this chapter the main question that occupies the authors is how to protect against overspending and bail-outs by subnational units. the problem of controlling subnational debt receives much attention and clearly there is a good deal of anxiety over local bodies--i.e., school districts, individual schools, private organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and elected municipal governments--borrowing from international lending agencies and banks more than they can pay back. and there is the fear that the central government will have to bail them out, thus increasing debt and lowering investment confidence in the country. according to the authors, the only effective way to prevent this is to have a "hegemonic and internally disciplined political party with the power to suppress any defiant behavior on the part of subnational politicians" (p. 6). later, they add that "(a)s long as the national government pursues a conservative fiscal policy, such a system can force mayors and governors to refrain from excessive borrowing" (p. 48). the authors are quick to point out that hegemonic governments are becoming rare in latin america and once again reiterate the need to formulate new electoral rules that revise the use of proportional representation in these countries. the recommendations proposed here echo lefebvre's foresight that the globalization of capital and the re-scaling of state territorial power are two intrinsically related processes within the same dynamic. a crucial element of lefebvre's theory of the deliberate production of state space-namely, politico-institutional and administrative configurations--is also apparent in the structural reorganization of education systems. for instance, the decentralization of education has spawned a wide range of new partnerships that include, but are not limited to, non-governmental organizations, private investment, multilateral institutions, local school districts, vouchers, competitive grants and transfers, civic bodies, parents, neighborhoods, school communities, private evaluation bodies, and so sangeeta kamat 116 april 30, 2002 on. none of these new forms and relations mirror the territorial state as such; that is, none of these replicate the territorial state at the local level. rather, the territorial state is superimposed upon, and at the same time decentered by, these myriad forms and relations in ways that constitute a new political geography in which relations between local bodies and suprastate agencies are increasingly structured and rationalized towards meeting global financial interests. however, the re-scaling of state territorial power cannot function in an orderly manner without the mental space produced by the state wherein consensus is established on the regulatory priorities of the state. this consensus is engendered, in part at least, by articulating the policy of decentralization with a discourse of democratization. in everyday political and administrative routines the state may be less present than before, strengthening instead its role in producing consensus for the normative framework that determines much of how decentralized relations will be self-governed and selfregulatory. besides textual analysis, ethnographic research is needed to understand the processes by which the "mental space" of the state is created at the level of the everyday. conclusion in this paper, i challenge the commonplace notion that decentralization of education implies a weakening of state power--a notion that is often forwarded by both supporters and critics of state power. instead i have proposed that current education reforms are systematically reorganizing state and civil society in the context of globalization. through the lens of lefebvre's theory of the state as a sociospatial configuration that consists of multiple scales that are at once unified and fragmentary, i attempt to read an official proposal for decentralization of education in latin america. i conclude that decentralization portends a different configuration of state sociospatial organization to manage the precarious equilibrium of global capital trade, investment and speculation. such a configuration is one in which the state is at once decentered by opening the stage to multiple other actors who must coordinate and conduct the everyday business of education and, simultaneously, is strengthened by organizing the field of possibilities, and laying the boundaries for local policy. this process is pursued ironically in the defense of national interest when the definition of nation itself is under question. it is worth noting that while the new thinking on the state is elaborated upon and foregrounded in policy documents, the reconstitution of its counterpart--civil society--is minimally referenced in the policy discourse. what will civil society and democracy look like under the new edifice of the state is not addressed, except in vague and populist terms. the re-imagining of society and its polity remains mostly implicit and embedded within the artful redesigning of the state. further research is needed to deepen our analysis of the new role of the state in managing the "satanic geographies" (to borrow neil smith's phrase) constructed by global capital. notes 1. a version of this paper was presented at the northeast regional cies conference, teachers college, new york city. february 5 6, 2000. i wish to thank the students at tc for providing me with an engaging and interested audience. i have also benefited greatly from discussions with my students in the globalization and deconstructing the rhetoric of decentralization: the state in education reform current issues in comparative education vol.2(2) 117 education policy graduate seminar at the university of massachusetts, amherst. i also owe thanks to steven klees and gita steiner-khamsi for their interest in this work. 2. from the early 1980s, similar large scale reforms in k-12 education were carried out in england under the thatcher government. this has been followed by similar set of reforms in australia, u.s., and canada. the reforms usually include the standardization of curriculum and assessment procedures making teaching "teacherproof", local management schemes, devolution of budgetary responsibilities, decentralization of power from central government to local communities and to individual schools, privatization of public schools through vouchers and charter schools, and increased corporate investment in schools. an almost identical set of reforms and discourse on education has been introduced by the imf and world bank in various countries of the southern and eastern hemisphere as part of a comprehensive restructuring of state and economy in the third world. i use the term "reform movement" to capture both the geographical sweep of these changes and the fundamental effects of these new policies. see david, 1992 for a discussion of the education reform movement in the u.s. and the u.k. 3. in brief, structural adjustment programs (saps) comprise a set of conditionalities that have been imposed by the international monetary fund (imf) and the world bank in over 70 countries of the third world and eastern europe. the conditionalities emphasize opening the country to foreign investment, privatizing public sectors, devaluation of currency, reduced subsidies and credits, and cuts in social sector spending. the reforms in education, health and other soft sectors are carried out by the world bank, and hence the rest of paper will refer to the world bank as the main actor among the set of international agencies involved in policy making for the global economy. 4. in 1990, on the initiative of the un and the world bank, 155 countries met in jomtien, thailand to set specific targets that would make "education for all" a reality. an important, albeit ambitious, agreement made at this conference was to guarantee universal access to primary education across the globe by the year 2000. follow up studies indicate that for most countries of south asia and particularly sub-saharan africa the prospects of achieving this target are extremely bleak, leading to a new set of time lines and forecasts. 5. after the recent east asian financial crisis, the world bank has retreated from its earlier position of a minimalist state and now stresses the importance of an "effective and strong state" (world bank, 1997). 6. notice the ontology of nature (dominant in the west) which is generally applied to humans (maturation leads to autonomy, freedom) is also extended to "the market" in notions of "free market". 7. for a more in-depth analysis of the causes of education reform, see samoff, 1994. sangeeta kamat 118 april 30, 2002 8. interestingly, bray's paper is part of a volume on the "dialectic of the global and the local" in comparative education. 9. the 108 page paper is written by shahid burki, perry guillermo, and william dillinger. burki and guillermo are senior officials at the latin american and caribbean regional office of the world bank. the paper is published by and archived at the world bank, washington d.c. and serves as a discussion piece for policy analysis at the world bank, and could potentially serve as a basis for policy decisions in the future. however, it is not an institutionally approved publication. the paper includes a disclaimer citing that these are views of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the world bank. my reference to it as a world bank report is thus a provisional one and is based on my assessment that the report does coalesce an emergent perspective at the bank which is present in a scattered form in a number of speeches and articles by senior officials at the world bank. 10. although henri lefebvre's main body of work was published in french in the 1970s, his texts have only recently been translated into english. the production of space on which much of neil brenner's article is based was translated in 1991, and has generated much interest among north american social theorists. i find brenner's article an excellent introduction to lefebvre's theory of state and appropriate to my purpose here, since it is one of the first ones to relate lefebvre's analysis to globalization. 11. the struggle of the zapatistas (ezln) represents one of the most well-known instances of an incessant struggle to formulate alternative modalities or forms through which to voice, negotiate, and build consensus on their demands. see holloway and palaez, 1998. 12. chomsky (1989) and zinn (1990) have so eloquently documented in the political history of the u.s. that when democracy inconveniences political stability, it is the former that is sacrificed. references appadurai, a. (1996). modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. minnesota: university of minnesota press. bray, m. (1999). control of education: issues and tensions. in r. arnove and c.a. torres (eds.) comparative education: dialectic of the global and the local. boston, ma: rowman and littlefield. brenner, n. (1997). global, fragmented, hierarchical: henri lefebvre's geographies of globalization. public culture, 10(1), 135-167. burki, s., perry, g. and dillinger, w. (1999). beyond the center: decentralizing the state. latin american and carribean studies. washington d.c.: world bank. deconstructing the rhetoric of decentralization: the state in education reform current issues in comparative education vol.2(2) 119 retrieved at http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/offrep/lac/pubs/beyondcenter.pdf chomsky, n. (1989). necessary illusions: thought control in democratic societies. boston, ma: south end press. david, m. (1992). education reform in britain and the united states. in r. arnove, p. altbach, and g. kelly (eds.) emergent issues in education: comparative perspectives. albany: suny press. eagleton, t. (1986). against the grain: essays 1975-1985. london: verso press. holloway, j. & pelaez, e. (1998). zapatista!: reinventing revolution in mexico. london: pluto press. kaufman, c. (1997). educational decentralization in communist and post-communist hungary. international review of education, 43(1), 25-40. king, k. (1999). introduction: new challenges to international development cooperation in education. in k. king and l. buchert (eds.) changing international aid to education: global patterns and national contexts. paris: unesco/norrag. mcginn, n. & street, s. (1986). educational decentralization: weak state or strong state? comparative education review, 30(4), 471-90. puiggros, a. (1996). world bank education policy: market liberalism meets ideological conservatism. nacla report on the americas, 29(6). ridell, a. (1996). globalization, decentralization and privatization: emasculation or opportunity for educational planning. world development, 24(8), 1357-72. sassen, s. (1996). losing control? sovereignty in an age of globalization. new york: columbia university press. sayed, yusef (1997). understanding educational decentralization in post?apartheid south africa. journal of negro education, 66(4), 354?65. smith, n. (1997). the satanic geographies of globalization: uneven development in the 1990s. public culture, 10(1), 169-89. world bank (1997). world development report: the state in a changing world. washington d.c.: world bank. zinn, h. (1990). declarations of independence: cross-examining american ideology. new york: harper collins. foley, w. suggestions for critical hre current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 1, winter 2021 suggestions for critical awareness, accountability, and transformation in human rights education william j. foley jr. teachers college, columbia university human rights education exists as an implementing entity of the universal declaration of human rights. scholars such as andre keet and others have criticized the dissemination of universal rights through education because it covets western ideology over local ethical and epistemological constructs. using tibbitts’ revised typologies of human rights education, this paper offers suggestions for critical pedagogy for the teaching of, for, and through human rights. these suggestions are drawn from examples of critical practice from throughout the world. introduction human rights education (hre) is a powerful, if nascent, institution that is spreading throughout the world as a crucial piece of the human rights framework (russell & suárez, 2017). this rapid dissemination across education requires that practitioners and researchers critically evaluate the purpose, pedagogy, and power that creates hre. curriculum is often guided by the legal standards of the state that is implementing education, this formulates the basis of many national curricula. hre differs from other curricula in that it is set by law to instruct people on the multinational parameters from which other laws should stem. entrenched in the universal declaration of human rights (udhr), hre propels itself and the document it derives from as a normalizing function. the teaching of human rights is a legal mandate that ensures compliance with the standards outlined by international law. the legal presuppositions of the udhr offer the risk that its prescriptions are not suitable for every context. indeed, it is arguable that the udhr is a tool for western political and (especially through hre) epistemic hegemony (keet, 2014). thus, hre may purport learner-agency through the dissemination of the rights enshrined by law, while actually enhancing the control of western ideologies over local beliefs (keet, 2014). the risk for hre to promote hegemony has sparked an interest in disruptive and critical hre pedagogies that seek to redress power structures through activism and teaching. a critical evaluation of hre may begin by analyzing why hre is taught. tibbitts and fernekes (2011) point out that hre is specifically to promote the udhr. the uniqueness of hre is that it does not find its origins the nation-state. the ideology that udhr represents is not exclusive to one place, but sprawling method for asserting what keet (2015) recognizes as very specific interests. those interest are spelled out in the udhr (1948) which states: “every individual and every organ of society (…) shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and the freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance” (page). this preamble clearly articulates that signatories to the declaration are charged with education for the sake of the legal rights that are so enshrined. the udhr (1948) admits that there is a need to teach © 2021, foley jr. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(1), 77-89. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en foley current issues in comparative education 78 about human rights making it a demand for a specific curricular focus. it seems assumed that the protection of the rights as enumerated rests on the ability of people to know what they are and to know that they can want to demand them. these interests have very real mechanisms that use hre to promote the udhr. while schooling is often a tool wielded through power to assert commonalities across the nation state, the udhr had many levers through which hre flow. the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco), amnesty international, the organization or security and co-operation in europe (osce) and others, have all committed themselves to hre (osce/odhir, 2012). the diversity of these speak to keet’s (2015) recognition that human rights intertwine power, legal authority, and knowledge through many different bodies. in the purpose of hre lies the problem. if the concept that is human rights is indeed universal, then why do people need to be educated on it? it is hard to argue that the udhr finds it itself in a singularly agreed-upon moral compass. at the time of the creation of the udhr, the american anthropological association wrote it was a “statement of rights conceived only in terms of the values prevalent in western europe and america” (american anthropological association as cited by nickel, 2019). an original draft for the arab charter on human rights was first published in 1994, and later adopted by member states in 2004, out of a desire for a framework more rooted in islam that is incompatible with the udhr. the african charter on human and peoples’ rights was brought to bear in the 1980s. this charter’s emphasis on “peoples” in the plural form is a sharp difference with the udhr. the un’s own website remarks on the reservation that delegates from china had when discussing the idea of universal and individual rights (united nations, 2021). since the udhr there have been additional documents required to extend rights to people who have not been afforded them. the specific rights and protections necessary for disabled people, indigenous communities, and children were not initially included in the universal declaration. not all other modifications have been welcomed. during the 1993 world conference on human rights in vienna several states moved for a more culturally relevant udhr which was met with a statement reinforcing the supremacy of the original document. the consensus that the udhr portends is not truly universal. instead, human rights was set forth as something that the world as a political body is meant to gather around in legal and philosophical consensus. the universality lies only in the accord between nations and between a nation and the document. for there to be human rights, they needed to be written, agreed upon, and adopted. the need for declarative consensus-driven statements on human rights make it impossible for them to be truly a priori. this paper begins by recognizing that since human rights are not a priori they cannot really be universal. human rights are just as much a construct as gender binaries and state borders. tibbitts’ (2017) analysis for different hre modalities provide a structure by which the critiques of keet (2017) and others can be furnished in critical educational contexts. along with tibbitts’ modalities this paper also uses bloom’s taxonomy to leverage commonplace pedagogical training to extend access to practitioners seeking to implement critical human rights education (chre). this paper offers some ideas for how hre can deconstruct universal human rights while still promoting human dignity and outlines the potential for best practices across various contexts. suggestions for critical awareness, accountability, and transformation in hre current issues in comparative education 79 literature review tibbitts (2017) suggests three typologies of human rights education that practitioners implement in the field. these typologies are the typical practices for instructing about, through, and for human rights. they can also be useful for articulating how hre may or may not be critical. tibbitts first suggests an awareness model that usually presents human rights in formal education as a content centered mode sponsored by governments. this type usually targets schools and the students in these schools, seeking to provide direct instruction about what human rights are, and towards the history of the udhr (tibbitts, 2017). the second model in tibbitts’ typology is the accountability or professional model. usually offered by both governments and civil society actors and aimed at developing the skills of professionals to ensure the protection of human rights within their fields. a typical, but not exclusive example, is the idea of training law enforcement in the protections afforded to all people under the udhr. many other professions such as teachers, doctors, and civil servants amongst others all demonstrate the ability to increase their application of human rights with such training (tibbitts, 2017, p. 87). the final model presented is the transformation model; this model is aligned with freirean critical praxis and aims to empower learners to recreate social change that is more aligned with the legal prescriptions of the udhr (tibbitts, 2017, p. 91). each of these typologies is a method for instructing learners on some aspect of the udhr. theses typologies indicate how hre is more than just the teaching of the meaning, parameters, and potential for the udhr. this is especially true of the awareness model which is typically situated in formal educational settings (tibbitts, 2017). the awareness model teaches about human rights and seeks to disseminate information about the udhr. keet (2014) argues that human rights act as a tool to replace local notions of right and wrong with globally dominant ones; proposing that “if hegemony is taken to mean the manufacturing of consent, which is constructed around floating signifiers, human rights discourse can then certainly be regarded as hegemonic” (keet, 2014, p. 48). hre, along with any education that is intended to disseminate and promote attention to a particular cannon, would share in the interests of the same bodies from which that cannon derives. simply put, if the national curriculum tends to promote the affairs of the nation and is implemented by national actors; than international curriculum would promote and be enabled by interests of powerful interand multinational actors. the hegemony that hre proposes is not bound by any kind of border nor even ideology. both capitalist and communist nations alike are signatories to the udhr. this adulation of the udhr as a global force for good sets it as a virtue that bears political capital that hre constructs through its curricular presentation as an unquestionable fund of knowledge (keet, 2014). the accountability model as posited by tibbitts can be used loosely to teach through human rights because the accountability model is usually intended for professionals that are obligated to secure individuals’ rights, (tibbitts, 2017). thus, this model might be seen as teaching through human rights because it defines how learners are intended to meet their professional obligations and serve their clients. keet and zembylas (2011) both emphasizes how human rights can reconstruct harmful power relations and agree on the need for new models (zembylas, 2011). this interpretation is usefully juxtaposed against with the accountability model because this model localizes human rights as a significant professional standard. as zembylas (2017b) points out this kind of standard foley current issues in comparative education 80 rarifies how human rights embodies and fulfills a western framework to act as a colonizing mechanism. in the author’s words, “(t)he human rights regime is embedded within a specific cultural and historical framework involving the foregrounding of western colonial knowledges” (zembylas, 2017b, p. 488). human rights are an entity that self-promotes western ideology through setting standards such as those for professionals. in part, the argument against the udhr as a global standard is in the hegemony of centralizing decisions over right and wrong, but zembylas (2017a) also offers several logical arguments against globalizing hre as a set of standards. first, that the colonial knowledges were often responsible for harm being caused in the first place and are thus not fit to be the standard bearer for good (zembylas, 2017a). moreover, zembylas (2017a) argues that concepts of human dignity are entirely contrived from the individual and social fabric of peoples, not in axiomatic statements. a singular professional or ethical standard is simply not enough for the world over because we all describe the world in different realities. in structuring a decolonial hre, zembylas (2017) inserts several dimensions drawn from the seminal work of tuck and wang (2012). zembylas describes that decolonial hre must be critical of the current historical, political, and material situation of learners, it must implement tangible decolonial processes, and center the human rights ethic on individual and collective emotions (zembylas, 2017b). additionally, a decolonial hre would also make note of the particular social relations in a context (zembylas, 2017b). tibbitts final model is the transformation or activism model, the latter name was added later to better specify what this type intends (tibbitts, 2017). this model teaches for human rights because it seeks to transform society using the udhr as a standard for justice (tibbitts, 2017). the transformation model is arguably the most critical as tibbitts (2017) aligns it with freirean praxis. nonetheless, in using human rights discourse as the standard for transformation the aforementioned power structures are re-implemented. ahmed (2017) argues that hre does not have to reproduce hegemony and that transformation can occur outside of legal parameters. defining a disruptive hre that does not fit into previous categories, ahmed (2017) argues that hre can be used to systematically transform power relations though this must often be done outside of legal norms. in this view transformation may not be reliant on the standards of the udhr. bajaj (2008) highlights some notions of critical peace education where “the transformation of educational content, structure, and pedagogy is to address direct and structural forms of violence at all levels” (p. 135). structural violence is physical as well as epistemic and symbolic harm that can be implemented by oppressive curriculum. because formal education settings are typically the province of the state and elite actors, bajaj (2008) argues that peace education should likely happen outside of school. likewise, chre would also benefit from separation from formal structures embedded with power, or at least within formal settings that provide space for the open critique of power. critical peace education shares some similarities with ahmed’s (2017) chilean example, discussed above, in that it is entirely participatory. both examples also require some measure of learning to happen outside or even against power structures. suggestions for critical awareness, accountability, and transformation in hre current issues in comparative education 81 repositioning hre tibbitts’ (2017) typologies are a useful lens by which to consider reforming hre. since these typologies are drawn from the field, they outline the typical modes by which hre is currently happening. instead of attempting to rebuild hre from the ground up, it is possible to use tibbitts’ (2017) typologies as an inroad into critique and critical praxis. additionally, these models are simultaneously congruent with bloom’s (1956) taxonomy which helps to make them more approachable for educators. awareness is structured at the bottom of bloom’s (1956) taxonomy, the most basic form of learning: remembering and understanding, specifically for the udhr. accountability exists in the middle phases: apply and analyze, used in hre to specify how the human rights are applicable to specific situations such as careers. the final stages are to evaluate and to create, which share similarities with the traditional transformation model wherein leaners are empowered to critique and re-create their specific contexts to better implement human rights. these typologies provide a possible blueprint for theorizing and implementing chre. using these typologies to teach about, through, and for human rights may be amended for criticality into: 1) impart an understanding of the current political, economic, social, and historic reality of learners’ context, 2) enfranchise learners to hold state structures and power-holders accountable to the human rights model so as to ensure a minimal legal framework to exist peacefully and analyze current power structures, and 3) enable learners to transform societies they live in from the current human rights model to a locally constructed model. below are possible methods for these renewed objectives the awareness model the first learner objective could be situated within the awareness model. traditionally this model is used to teach about human rights as legality and theory often in a formal setting that relies solely in the udhr as the bulwark of the curriculum. this typology might include utilizing curriculum from unesco or unicef that operate within the hre guidelines proposed by the united nations. other international ngos and scholars have also proffered an array of curricula aimed at teaching about the udhr and human rights theory. this is largely not critical because the traditional awareness model reinforces the prominence of the udhr by making it the purpose of a learning unit. treatment of human rights through curriculum presents it as an immutable truth that is being handed to students for them to remember. keet (2014) argues that to be critical hre must not make declarative statements about what is or is not a right. when integrating human rights into standardized curriculum it becomes such a statement. treating the udhr as canonical reifies it as an iconoclast standard that must be adhered (keet, 2014), akin to math or science. gibson and grant (2017) offer brayboy (2011)’s concept of genesis amnesia as an entryway into critical instruction. genesis amnesia describes the presentation of opinion through curricula by the powerful as to present those opinions as fact (solyom & brayboy, 2011). oftentimes, students may suggest that the world simply “is the way it is,” without having the tools to recognize that contexts do not exist in a vacuum. gibson and grant (2017) point out that the language of hre can be intentionally used alongside history to promote justice. as gibson and grant (2017) suggest, “one of our primary challenges as social justice and human rights educators is to get our students to see the water in which they swim” (p. 225). here, learners are meant to learn the history of their oppression and how it circumscribes the present. historicizing hre – foley current issues in comparative education 82 or infusing the curriculum with the historical conditions that have led up to the present – unmoors learners’ material conditions away from determined truth and repackages them as situational realities. this kind of criticality is nestled within the application of knowledge. instead of teaching history in an abstract way, linking history to the lived experiences of the learners connects them with the past. these links are important learning tools that integrate lessons into our individual schema. some examples emerge as critical methods for the awareness model. the zinn education project (2019) is a collaborative effort between two ngos rooted in the work of the historian howard zinn who authored the alternative “peoples’ history of the united states.” the zinn project (2019) seeks to engage students in “the empowering potential of studying u.s. history [that] is often lost in a textbook-driven trivial pursuit of names and dates. people’s history materials and pedagogy emphasize the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history”. teaching tolerance (tt) is a project of the southern poverty law clinic in the united states. tt crowd sources materials from journalists, authors, and educators aimed at “social justice and anti-bias. the anti-bias approach encourages children and young people to challenge prejudice and learn how to be agents of change in their own lives”, which is done through four area standards of social justice (teaching tolerance, 2019). facing history is another example which utilizes alternative modes for history instruction to present critical pedagogy in the classroom (facing history, 2019). their model relates history to students’ lives to promote diversity and teach towards “about racism, antisemitism and prejudice” (facing history, 2019). each of these examples come from the united states (us) and are grounded in promoting democratic citizenship specific to the us context. curriculum sets are not the only means by which to approach critical instruction around history, social conditions, and rights. a school in the united states also provides an example of utilizing critical pedagogy to raise awareness of oppression. el puente academy uses a critical curriculum that merges traditionally disparate disciplines to link historic constructs to modern consequences (de jesus, 2003). their ideology is based on the principle of sankofa (de jesus, 2003), an akan tribe word that loosely translates into a study of history as to not lose the past (berea college, 2019). students at el puente did not learn historical facts in a vacuum. project based learned (pbl) incorporates facets of the local community into the classroom such as trip to local factories that are now abandoned alongside studies of economic policies that were implemented and led to the decline of manufacturing in the region. student concepts self-drove some of the inquiry. one student reported learning the difference between being hispanic versus latino; and how it was empowering to understand their cultural community better (de jesus, 2003). these are also relevant historical and political distinctions that complicate oppression and class distinctions in concert with racial constructs. consequently, students reported learning about more than just history, but also about their own identities (de jesus, 2003). these examples are not universally applicable, though they are still samples of critical pedagogy specifically centered around teaching students about the history of oppression. each of these bring to the center the voices of oppressed communities while providing space for students and teachers. suggestions for critical awareness, accountability, and transformation in hre current issues in comparative education 83 the accountability model the accountability model typically consists of older professionals and learners holding trainings that are sponsored by civil society or governments (or both) to leverage their professional duties in upholding human rights (tibbitts, 2017). tibbitts does not explicitly deny students and classrooms this model but observes that it is more commonly found among adult professionals. already the accountability model offers some vision of criticality. chre might even evolve the accountability model by folding the other traditional typologies into it and expanding the model to young leaners. a critical accountability model could bring awareness of the entitlements promised by the udhr while empowering learners to hold power structures to those standards. the accountability is shifted from the learners’ self-accountability. in this accountability model the udhr is utilized specifically for the protection of the learner. this model still recognizes that the udhr (and perhaps other rights models stated within the local context) may be a problematic standard, but a nonetheless useful one. this model is situated at the intermediate levels of bloom’s (1956) taxonomy: analyze and apply. the legal tenants of the udhr are analyzed against the learner’s context and applied for their fulfilment. tibbitts (2015) argues that hre can have significant influence over the lives of adult learners and critical accountability can leverage this this influence. in studying hre trainers in turkey, tibbitts (2015) notes that women were able to teach their children about the oppressive nature of certain gender roles. the same participants were also more likely to engage in the women’s movement in turkey (tibbitts, 2015). learners were able to use the standards learned as part of their work to better their entire lives including their interpersonal relations with men and boys. the power structures that existed at all different levels of society were challenged by learners who had the agency to do the challenging. this example demonstrates how the critical accountability model can actively support learners in oppressive contexts by giving them knowledge of the existing legal framework that can afford specific protections. however, this example also limits the accountability model to adults that are likely already interested in human rights work. critical accountability is not limited to human rights workers or adjacent professionals. all people, including young learners, should be given the tools to hold power accountability in many situations. extending the accountability model to youth would entail participatory methods that promoted their abilities to question authority. the freedom schools of the southern united states are one method for enhancing student autonomy and activism. during the 1968 summer of freedom, black activists formulated a plan to provide genuine learning opportunities for members of their communities during the summer months when formal school was not in session. activities worked together with educators to plan, develop, and implement curriculum that taught general academics, focused on civics, and intentionally taught equality (perlstein, 1990). these schools trained young learners to be activists by guiding them through anti-racist work such as canvassing, protesting segregation, and singing freedom songs (hale, 2011). the freedom school model carries on in the united states today. one community freedom school in washington, dc notes in their mission a specifically dual focus on academic excellence and community service through the same philosophy of nonviolence that the civil rights movement was founded on (ew stokes pcs, n.d.). the children’s defense fund also utilizes the freedom school summer model for remedial education (jackson foley current issues in comparative education 84 & howard, 2014). these continue to be sites for black student liberation in a country where segregation and disparity are still commonplace. in the children’s defense model educators are servant/leaders. the camps’ teachers utilize a pedagogy that empower learners to be active participants in the entire camp experience (howard, 2016). the curriculum continues to center civil rights which has produced among students an increased desire to engage in their community, in civil society, and to have greater interest in their academics (howard, 2016). both the freedom schools as well as the hre trainers in turkey are examples of how educational settings can be used to hold power structures accountable. they also relate ahmed’s (2017) uses the chilean student movement of 2017 to indicate how educative experiences grounded in rights can disrupt power structures. ahmed’s example is certainly educative, but less grounded in the udhr – students were protesting initially against increased transit costs. though outside the legal concept of the udhr increased fares that would have made attending school difficult decreased chilean students’ access to their right to and education. similarly, the above examples may not seek to educate towards the udhr specifically, but they do note how the educating towards rights and equality can secure human rights if there are also demands made of authority. these examples discuss how a human rights model can be used to help learners become agents of accountability. freedom schools were a demonstration of the right to an education. they also encouraged students to be activist for their other us civil rights many of which are comparable to the udhr. educating trainers and learners in their rights enabled them to hold their families, societies, and more accountable. the transformation model the transformation model could be considered linked to social justice as critical pedagogy is integral to this model’s stated outcome which is activism. typically, learners work alongside instructors to critique power structures to advocate for justice. in some ways the traditional transformation model is like the critical accountability model. the servant leadership/educator role of the freedom schools is usual in the transformation model. learners and educators are voluntary participants that are engaged in human rights work that challenges the status quo. in some ways the transformation model is the enactment of the call for human rights to be globalized through the various facets of society (tibbitts, 2017). evidence from the field suggests that the intent of this model is to “incorporate a critical stance towards features of one’s own society, the nature of power/authority, and even the human rights system itself” (tibbitts, 2017 p. 91). here, it is suggested that the separate areas of critique are delineated across typologies. critique of power structures and authority is reserved for the critical accountability model where learners hold authority responsible. in the critical transformation model, critique of the human rights system becomes the nexus of programming. in so doing the transformation model links to the final stages of bloom’s taxonomy. learners are encouraged to evaluate human rights for their local applicability. after, they are charged with creating – or reinvigorating a localized system. this transformation model diverges from its previous format in its rejection of the udhr. critical transformation logically follows the accountability model which relies on the udhr as a minimum standard. this evolution from accountability to suggestions for critical awareness, accountability, and transformation in hre current issues in comparative education 85 transformation is necessary because “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. they may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change” (lorde, 2007, p. 112). lorde (2007) argues that a hegemonic foundation is not capable of truly challenging oppression. a different ethos is required to facilitate liberation. even meeting the basic standards of the udhr is likely improbable if they are strictly defined by one positionality. stavenhagen (2008) notes how countries that have promised to meet the standards of the udhr for all their citizens are often still unable to do so. in part, systems meant to enable rights are assimilative and not liberative. that is if the bedrock of the benefit [in stavenhagen’s (2008) perspective this benefit is the right to education] is hegemonic then any attempts to grow that benefit will also be hegemonic. many indigenous students, for example, attend compulsory schools that technically afford them the right to education while actually disenfranchising them. as an alternative, stavenhagen (2008) points to canada where “the first nations and the inuit have the option of establishing their own education programmes and exercise control over primary and secondary schools, (p 127). in these environments what constitutes a right to education is challenged. these schools offer programming that respects indigeneity, including multi-lingual instruction that opens the potential for competing epistemological views (stavenhagen, 2008). they create environments where the normative right to an education is challenged with alternative systems. the right to education is no longer strictly defined as equal opportunity for success within the formal systems parameters. new york city, united states, provides an example of critical transformation. new york city is one of the most diverse cities in the world and reflects the broader us migrant identity. in the us the right to education is often stylized as teacher-led schooling that embraces hierarchical features such as principals, policies, and a particular student/teacher relationship. in new york, this often means that minoritized, immigrant, and other students are subject to authorities that do not come from or represent their communities. humanities preparatory academy (hpa) serves students that have failed in other schools and is largely latinx population of students that are migrant or the descendants of migrants, as well as other students who in the us would be identified as people of color and are thus marginalized (hantzopoulos, 2011). the academy has instituted a number of practices that create heterarchical systems for all community members. one physical implementation is the removal of the commonplace teacher workroom which is a space that permits teachers to separate themselves from students for privacy and work. this separation epitomizes the hierarchical relationship between teachers as representative of sanctioned knowledge and student as object that requires teaching. at hpa there is one space where both professionals and learners come together (hantzopoulos, 2011). in the “hub” both learners and educators share space and resources to meet their common goal of working for the community (hantzopoulos, 2011). these contrasts typical schooling in the united states which features hierarchy and curriculum implementation. significantly, the space functions as the metaphoric heart of the institution. that is, the most radical space – where the hierarchy is leveled – is where all the community members must themselves work. the critical transformation model could leverage spaces like this. in such spaces, ideas are also able to be equalized alongside bodies. foley current issues in comparative education 86 critical transformation implies creation, and that creativity needs space. these spaces need to be able to recognize alternative concepts of right, wrong, and reality. de sousa santos (2012) argues that the pluriversity challenges dominant schemas with subaltern epistemologies. pluriversities recognize that the sources of the udhr are not in a moral position to teach the world because of their history of domination. one feature of the pluriversity is the elevation of marginalized epistemologies with a focus on how they contrast and oppose dominant paradigms (martinez-vargas, 2020). the “plural” is quite literal. viewpoints meet in conversation and do not seek to converge or aspire to acquiesce. in these settings martinez-vargas (2020) argues that participatory research is integral to maintain a plurality of positions. in participatory research the agenda is derived from the community. instead of researcher and object, the members who engage research are also the studied. localizing human rights is an analogous project. the creation of community standards for right and wrong need to be determined by the members of the community that those rules govern. the creation process is equally participatory in this concept. beginning with the deconstruction of the udhr by participants, the community can then move forward with analyzing the value of the udhr’s tenants in their own context. following evaluation, the community can create their own standards for the preservation of human dignity. this may require some convergence, but the many voices of the pluriversity represent various communities who can independently create their concepts. the pluriversity through its participatory nature offers space to legitimize questioning the human rights system much as tibbitts indicated the traditional transformation model could. conclusion the traditional teleology of human rights education perpetuates a hegemonic brand that stems from a certain positionality’s concept of justice. the udhr is grounded in western ontology with little credence to the world at large. this paper has presented numerous critiques of the traditional human rights system as well as hre. using tibbitts’ (2017) typologies this paper was able to identify possible methodological shifts within standing hre practice. bloom’s (1956) taxonomy is infused as a scaffold for educators trained in western pedagogy to understand the typologies as shifting towards a vertical process of liberation. these suggestions are not definitive, nor do they seek to be prescriptive. such intent would ultimately recreate the same ethos of certitude of one value statement over another. these examples highlight the possibility of a course correction. human rights educators, as with most teachers, center their work on the care for justice that the udhr has always intended. beginning with that cause, these educators can push the boundaries of hre. locating our work within the traditional and critical typologies is a place for educators to begin. from there, using the critiques above educators can evaluate their own programming for its liberative potential. ultimately, the work of pushing hre forward will only be partially done through theorizing. educators and learners will bear the burden of challenging traditional hre in their domains. this paper hoped to have offer some ways for those challenges to happen. will foley is a special education teacher at a public international school in washington dc. he is pursuing graduate studies at teachers college in the department of international and transcultural studies. he is interested in curriculum studies. suggestions for critical awareness, accountability, and transformation in hre current issues in comparative education 87 references alice ces. 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(2019). why teach people’s history. https://www.zinnedproject.org/why 1. korte et al., a transnational comparative study of teachers' experiences of remote teaching and learning during covid-19.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 1, winter 2023 a transnational comparative study of teachers’ experiences of remote teaching and learning during covid-19 pandemic satu-maarit korte university of lapland, finland minna körkkö university of oulu, finland outi kyrö-ämmälä university of lapland, finland miia hast university of lapland, finland sanna mommo university of lapland, finland merja paksuniemi university of lapland, finland gregor maxwell uit arctic university of norway mhairi beaton leeds beckett university pigga keskitalo university of lapland, finland this article presents the findings of an international comparative multiple-case study that examined the sudden change from classroom to remote online teaching during the covid-19 pandemic. the study specifically explored the experiences of teachers in northern finland, england, and norway, seeking to provide new information about the education situation and identify the focus areas to guide the education of future teachers. the data were collected in three different ways in three different contexts: via an online survey of in-service teachers in lapland, finland (n = 164), and through different semi-structured interviews with teachers in england (n = 20) and northern norway (n = 30). the data analysis was conducted in two phases. the first phase focused on teachers’ experiences in teaching and learning and the second phase on teachers’ challenges. the results reflect teachers’ desire for additional education on online pedagogy, as well as the significance of teacher collaboration and knowledge sharing. © 2023, korte et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 25(1), 4-24. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en a transnational comparative study of teachers’ experiences of remote teaching and learning the findings can be used to develop preand in-service teacher education, supporting the dynamic digitization of teacher education programs and policies. we recommend that strategies should be developed for how such programs can strengthen future teachers’ interaction, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. keywords: online pedagogy, remote teaching, teacher education. introduction the global lockdowns during the covid-19 pandemic impacted everyone’s lives. this comparative study examines the experiences, especially teachers’ perceptions and challenges, in finland, england and norway during the global pandemic. the aim of the study reported in this article was to contribute to knowledge about the competencies required by educators to effectively respond to societal challenges through education provision which has fundamentally altered following increased utilization of the affordances of the digital. the authors expected that a cross-case comparison would permit the authors to answer to the following research question: based on the experiences of teachers during the pandemic, how could preand in-service teacher education be developed? globally, schools and other educational institutions from primary to adult education closed their doors and transferred to remote teaching or favored hybrid teaching (unesco, 2021, 2022). the school closures have left an indelible mark and had long-lasting effects on educational systems, students’ learning, and teachers’ approaches. the greatest disadvantage of remote teaching was that it widened learning gaps between students. according to the unesco and global education monitoring report (2021), the pandemic aggravated educational inequalities by disproportionally affecting the learning possibilities of the most vulnerable groups, including girls, refugees, persons with disabilities, and forcibly displaced persons living in poor or rural areas. while some students seemed to benefit from learning remotely during the lockdowns, others needed face-to-face in-person interaction with their teachers and more robust personal guidance (korte et al., 2022; unesco ibe 2020; unesco, 2021). according to the unesco institute for statistics (uis) (2021) assessment, by november 2020, children had lost out on 54 percent of their yearly contact teaching time, which means over a year’s learning was lost on average. remote teaching put schools, students, and teachers in an unequal position because some schools and homes, especially those in lower socioeconomic areas, lacked the necessary infrastructure and internet connection to cope with remote learning (un, 2020). moreover, teachers were not adequately trained to teach remotely or in a hybrid form, even though the situation varied greatly between and within countries (unesco, 2021). meanwhile, many students lacked the necessary information and communication technology (ict) skills (un, 2020). in addition to the academic implications, the period of remote teaching was detrimental to many students’ social and emotional well-being because real-time teaching and interaction with peers and teachers were minimized (unesco ius, 2021). school closures also meant students could not access all health and psychosocial services provided by their schools (un, 2020). moreover, in some countries, the provision of free current issues in comparative education 5 korte et al. school lunches was problematic at first and needed new arrangements (unesco, 2021, 2022). since the shift to remote teaching was rapid, this period was stressful for the majority of teaching and guidance staff as well as managers in the education sector (korte et al., 2022; unesco, 2021; 2022). the most drastic change for children during remote teaching was the exponential increase in study time in digital environments, which isolated them from their peers, while families took on activities often handled by schools, such as setting up learning spaces, highlighting the socioeconomic differences between homes (jæger & blaabæk, 2020). educational sectors worldwide must prepare for possible future global crises, which may be managed by applying the lessons learned from covid-19. teacher education should equip teachers not only for society’s current demands but also for future needs and challenges they will face in their workplace, including mental health and other societal pressure. this reflects how teaching can be a multifaceted, challenging profession that requires broad expertise developed throughout one’s career. as hattie (2009) stated, the ultimate aim of a teacher’s learning process is to develop skills and knowledge that make a difference in the classroom and enhance students’ achievement. when the classroom was taken away in 2020, according to numerous studies (e.g., beardsley et al., 2021; könig et al., 2020; perifanou et al., 2021), there were parallels between instructors’ remote teaching experiences around the world. the objective of education is usually to guarantee that all groups of people, regardless of their difficulties, have access to equal educational rights, which is achieved in different ways in different schools and communities (parmigiani et al., 2020). during pandemic lockdowns, delivering effective education proved particularly challenging (page et al., 2021). florian and camedda (2020) noted that teachers were concerned about their lack of effective preparation for working in diverse classrooms. many educators faced remote instruction implementation challenges, along with difficulties in promoting learning engagement and motivation during fully remote instruction (abdel latif, 2022). on a positive note, remote instruction improved teachers' proficiency to use digital technologies for teaching (beardsley et al., 2021) and with positive student learning outcomes (khoirudin, ashadi, & masykuri, 2021). national governments worldwide responded to the situation quickly, providing guidance and support for teachers and students. the crisis led to educational innovations and highlighted the importance of the educational sector, especially teachers’ essential role in ensuring the continuity of education during critical times. however, previous research on the covid-19 scenario mainly focused on a single national context, such as finland (korte et al., 2022); comparative approaches examining different pedagogical experiences remain rare. this research is a multiple-case study in which the three case studies are analyzed first independently and then comparatively. we expected that a cross-case comparison would shed light on how preand in-service teacher education should be developed based on the teachers’ experiences. the data collection strategies differed in the three countries. in finland, satu-maarit korte, minna körkkö, miia hast, sanna mommo, merja paksuniemi, and pigga keskitalo developed and implemented a survey (summer and fall 2020) that provided data on teachers’ remote teaching experiences and remote teaching competence during the early phase of the covid-19 pandemic in northern finland. in england, mhairi 6 current issues in comparative education a transnational comparative study of teachers’ experiences of remote teaching and learning beaton carried out qualitative semi-structured interviews with teachers focusing on children’s voices and storytelling in summer 2020. in norway, gregor maxwell conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with newly qualified teachers in fall 2020. the case-study method enabled us to combine results from three countries and compare them according to the research questions and draw final conclusions (yin, 2018). this comparative study contributes to the research on online pedagogy, remote teaching, and teacher education by examining experiences, especially teachers’ perceptions and challenges, in three countries in the north european context, during the global pandemic. this contributes to our understanding of the unique crisis the covid-19 pandemic created for education, which is particularly relevant for designing future teacher education, both preand in-service. background operating contexts in finland, england, and norway since the 1970s in finland, compulsory education reforms have aimed to ensure equal treatment for all children. nowadays, pre-primary education and compulsory schooling (primary, junior high, and high school) are provided for children and young people aged 6–18 (oppivelvollisuuslaki 1214/2020). following basic education, students can choose either vocational or academically oriented upper secondary education, leading to a vocational qualification or matriculation (finnish national agency for education, n.d.). finnish teacher education is research-based, the objective of which is to develop reflective teachers who take an analytical and critical approach to their work (toom et al., 2010). all teachers graduate with a master’s degree. during the pandemic, children with special educational needs, as well as firstto third-grade pupils of families working in critical professions (such as medical fields), were provided with normal schooling, and after some time, all first to third graders had the choice to attend normal school. compulsory education in england consists of one year of pre-primary education, referred to as “reception,” followed by six years of primary schooling and four years of secondary schooling. post-compulsory education consists of a two-year course at a sixth-form college preceding university study or vocational education undertaken at a further education college. however, since 2010 many policy changes have been implemented to reform education, particularly teacher education, as la velle and reynolds (2020) have noted. whiting et al. (2016) described how as a result of this policy churn, there is an almost bewildering number of mostly school-based routes to qualifying as a teacher in the english system. however, whiting et al. (2019) stated that most student teachers opt for teacher education courses provided by higher education institutes. these are predominantly one-year postgraduate courses to achieve qualified teacher status (qts). additionally, some undergraduate programs lead to qts. during the initial phase of the pandemic, only the children of key workers, including parents working in health services, attended school in person. all other students were expected to attend educational provision virtually. students’ ability to attend school virtually was dependent on the availability of digital devices in their homes, necessitating programs providing laptops to homes in some geographical areas. as the pandemic progressed, the definition of key workers was expanded, but during subsequent lockdowns, teachers current issues in comparative education 7 korte et al. continued to simultaneously provide both in-person and virtual learning options for their students. compulsory education in norway consists of 10 years of primary and lower secondary schooling (grades 1–10). pre-school (ages 1–5) and upper secondary education (grades 11–13) are optional, but the majority of children undertake both of these (nokut, n.d.). the norwegian directorate for education and training is responsible for supervising the quality of primary and secondary education (nokut, n.d.). norway has a five-year integrated master’s degree for all pre-service teachers at the primary and lower secondary school levels (grades 1–10), which was introduced to complement the centralized system that trains teachers for upper secondary education. the new teacher training program was introduced nationally in 2017, with pilots carried out during 2010–2017 in tromsø and oslo. like finland, norway aimed to produce research-competent teachers who could work critically and analytically, as well as develop more specialized teachers with further training in specific academic subjects. during the pandemic, there was a temporary change in the education law to accommodate the various restrictions in place. for example, there was the option to allow children who received special education back into schools, regardless of the national policy on homeschooling. however, a large number of children still failed to receive the special education they should have had at the time (utdanningsnytt, 2022). methods using a multiple-case study method, this research investigated teachers’ experiences during the covid-19 pandemic in finland, england, and norway. in each country, the data was collected during 2020 before writing this case-study article. thus, each case was independent and focused on different aspects of remote teaching and therefore, methodology differed between cases according to projects’ and researches’ aims. the finnish data was collected through an online survey, the english data through semi-structured individual interviews with follow-up group interviews and norwegian data through semi-structured individual interviews. a case study methodology is an approach that focuses on a contemporary phenomenon in a real-world context (yin, 2018). in comparison, a multiple-case study design selects cases with common characteristics, seeking to understand the differences and similarities between them (stake, 2005, 2013). researchers analyze the data both within a situation and across situations to identify such trends (stake, 2013; yin, 2018). the advantages of the multiple-case study designs/approaches are that its use offers evidence from several cases that try to find commonalities and differences, and therefore can spark more broadly about the phenomenon under study; however, multiple-case studies can be expensive and time-consuming (baxter & jack, 2008; eisenhardt & graebner, 2007). each case study answered the following sub-research questions: how was remote teaching perceived by teachers during spring 2020? and what kinds of challenges did teachers face? through the findings, we answer the overarching research question: how could preand in-service teacher education be developed based on the experiences of teachers during the pandemic? in finland, the european social fund funded project 1 (may–december 2020) provided quantitative and qualitative survey data on 167 teachers’ remote teaching experiences 8 current issues in comparative education a transnational comparative study of teachers’ experiences of remote teaching and learning and remote teaching competence during the early phase of the covid-19 pandemic in northern finland. in england, the data were drawn from the uk research and innovation (ukri) european and social research council (esrc)-funded project 2—a collaboration between teachers and researchers in finland, canada, and england. the data was collected through 20 qualitative interviews with teachers focusing on children’s voices and storytelling. in norway, qualitative interview data from 31 newly qualified teachers were collected through the ongoing longitudinal project 3, a study that follows the first three cohorts of teachers trained under norway’s newly introduced five-year integrated master’s teacher training program. the sampling methodologies and analysis procedures varied according to each study’s purpose in their national contexts. even if all of them answer the common research questions, we see this as a limitation for our study when the data were not gathered using the same methodological principles. therefore, for the purpose of the recent paper, the multiple-case study method was used to interrogate the findings from each of the national contexts. the implementation of this kind of methodological and researcher triangulation (bekhet & zauszniewski, 2012; johnson & christensen, 2020; flick, 2014, 11–12) can be seen as a factor increasing the reliability of this study, in which the researchers independently familiarized themselves with the survey or interview research material and compared the obtained results. methodological triangulation is helpful for interpreting results, collating more thorough data, increasing validity, and improving the comprehension of examined phenomena. yet, there are few published instances it has been employed in the education field (bekhet & zauszniewski, 2012). although the data was collected and analyzed using different methods, in line with stake (2013), a rigorous comparison of the key findings from different policy and cultural contexts was beneficial for providing insights into the professional learning needs of teachers in a post-pandemic world. however, the comparative value of the different cases was limited since individual case studies were independent and the material was not gathered following identical approaches in the three countries. all the participants were recruited by emailing information about the research and the voluntary participation invitation. in northern lapland, an email was sent to all the principals of schools. the principals then forwarded the message to the teachers of that municipality. the message included a link to a webropol survey, the objective of the research and the data protection procedure. the teachers gave their consent for research by ticking a relevant box when responding to the survey. in england, all the early years classroom teachers of the chosen two primary schools were invited to participate in an interview. written information and data protection procedure about the research and a consent form were sent to teachers by the researcher. in norway, written information about the study and data protection, and a consent form were sent to teachers by the researcher. the cross-case analysis had two phases. in the first, researchers in the three countries analyzed the results of the case in their respective country according to the teachers’ perceptions and challenges. these were the themes that were identified as common across the three different cases through inductive thematic analysis. then, in the second phase, the findings from the three studies were compared in terms of similarities and differences in the two common themes (teachers’ perceptions and challenges). through current issues in comparative education 9 korte et al. the second phase, the research question “how could preand in-service teacher education be developed based on the experiences of teachers during the pandemic?” was answered. the next section describes the context of each case study, followed by the methodologies, and the phase one findings together with interpretation of themes in each case (stake, 2013). we then offer the discussion of the cross-case analysis of phase two findings. case study 1: finland methodology the purpose of this study was to investigate teachers’ experiences and how they perceived remote teaching during spring 2020. furthermore, we aimed to understand how their competence allowed teachers to meet the challenges presented by the sudden change. we conducted an online survey in finnish lapland of 167 educators from primary, junior high, and high schools regarding their experiences of conducting remote teaching in 2020. the survey containing both open-ended and likert-scale questions, was sent to all primary school teachers in lapland via the principals of the schools. the open-ended questions focused on the transition and execution phases of remote teaching, student assessment, positive aspects of remote teaching, and problems encountered. the likert-scale questions were answered using a five-point scale (0 = not at all, 5 = very much). they were more detailed questions about the transition, planning, and execution phases, technical tools and solutions for remote teaching, success of teaching, stress encountered, and technological pedagogical competence. the sample of respondents represented different age groups and both new and experienced teachers. the findings on teachers’ technological pedagogical competence were reported in detail elsewhere (see korte et al., 2022) and are not included in this paper. the open-ended responses were analyzed using data-driven thematic analysis (graneheim & lundman, 2004; mayring, 2014). for each open-ended question, the analysis involved coding sentences on different themes and combining those themes when necessary. the quantitative responses were analyzed with spss analysis software using logistic regression analysis (rita et al., 2008). cross-tabulation, correlation coefficients, and correlation matrices were applied to explore the associations between the various variables in the data, and one-way anova was used to analyze the statistical significance of the mean differences between groups. regression and factor analyses were employed as multivariate techniques in the analysis. key findings teachers’ perceptions of remote teaching during spring 2020 the results regarding teachers’ remote learning experiences revealed that the workload increased considerably (mean 4.0); however, the teachers felt that remote learning was successful (mean 4.0). according to the teachers, remote learning has some positive effects: certain students benefited from remote learning, and their learning outcomes clearly improved (due to, among other things, the possibility of progressing at their own pace, better concentration, and the removal of social pressure). moreover, the teachers mentioned positive aspects, such as receiving help and teaching ideas from colleagues, the development of students’ and teachers’ ict skills, the facilitation of personalized teaching, and the development of students’ self-regulation. 10 current issues in comparative education a transnational comparative study of teachers’ experiences of remote teaching and learning analysis of correlations between individual remote learning tools and teachers’ experiences of success in remote learning showed that smartphones and tablets provided by employers improved the experience of success in remote learning. about 12% of those who used an employer-provided smartphone for remote learning felt that they were successful or highly successful in implementing remote learning, which was higher when compared with those who did not use an employer-provided smartphone. furthermore, about 20% felt they did well or very well at implementing remote learning, which was again higher when compared with those who did not use an employer-provided tablet. logistic regression analysis was used to examine the association between individual remote teaching tools and teachers’ experiences of success or their workload. the initial analysis revealed that using digital tools provided by one’s employer was statistically significantly (p = 0.017) associated with an increase in teachers’ experience of work success. next, all non-significant variables were removed and a new analysis performed. the only device that had a constant effect on the experience of success during remote teaching was a tablet provided by the employer (odds ratio: 5.0). using a personal or employer-provided desktop was associated with diminished success in remote learning. in fact, when participants used their own desktop computers, this slightly increased the workload experienced (odds ratio: 0.9, p = 0.024). challenges faced by teachers during spring 2020 teachers mentioned several problems with implementing remote learning. for a start, they experienced technical problems due to poor internet connections, students’ lack of technological skills, and students’ varying access to remote learning tools. they also reported difficulties in reaching and communicating with students, with some absences and dropouts from the online lessons. teachers also experienced challenges with supporting students’ learning, motivation, and self-direction, as well as with individualizing learning. teachers wished for more training related to online pedagogy in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of remote learning (e.g., pupils’ work, individualization, and activities), as well as training on the use of remote learning software and applications. case study 2: england methodology the second case was designed to examine the roles of voice, agency, and narrative as theoretical concepts in early years education settings. two primary schools in yorkshire, northern england known for their provision of high-quality education were chosen as data collection sites. a qualitative, ethnographic, co-participatory approach was adopted for data collection and analysis throughout the project, facilitating an understanding of the diverse experiences of individual teachers (clarke et al., 1996). it has been noted that differences in professional cultures between classroom teachers and academic researchers can cause miscommunication; therefore, it was proposed that adopting this ethnographic, co-participatory methodology would ensure a highly productive relationship between participants and the research team (ebbutt et al., 2000). current issues in comparative education 11 korte et al. the first phase of the project was a baseline audit consisting of semi-structured interviews with 20 early years practitioners (evans, 2018). all staff in the early years classrooms in the two focus schools were individually interviewed, with the interviews lasting between 30 and 45 minutes. conducted in july 2020, the focus of the interviews was on teachers’ experiences of teaching and learning when they were physically separated from most of their pupils for several months. all interviews were conducted and recorded, subsequently transcribed and thematically analyzed (miles et al., 2018). emergent themes included professional uncertainty, ethics of professional care, embracing new opportunities, digital poverty, the challenges of hybrid teaching, and the need for professional learning. key findings teachers’ perceptions of remote teaching during spring 2020 when the teachers articulated their experiences of the rapid shift to online learning, this proved to be an emotive subject. the staff interviewed represented a wide range of career stages and experiences as early years practitioners. yet, as professionals working in schools known for providing high-quality education, they were used to exhibiting high levels of professional competence and confidence in their work. the teachers spoke movingly about how unsettling it was to suddenly embrace new ways of providing learning opportunities for their students. these feelings of uncertainty were exacerbated by wider concerns about the health and well-being of young people during the global pandemic. both schools maintained excellent pastoral care for their students; to do so, in the first few weeks of the pandemic, during the initial school shutdown, school staff in england focused more on the welfare of their students than on the provision of online learning, in line with many of the studies in owens’ and ennis’s meta-analysis (2005). contact between staff and students took the form of “checking in” with each other rather than making informed moves to advance the learning of students. during this time, the possibilities in the digital sphere were explored (könig et al., 2020). the teachers also mentioned that the new teaching situation provided benefits. all staff valued the opportunity to hold one-to-one sessions online with students, considering this quality time with individual students in their home environment beneficial. for these students, speaking with their teachers about their safety seemed to provide a comfortable environment that allowed them to participate more fully than they did in the classroom. this aligns with the findings of beaton et al. (2021a), who found that for many students with disabilities, particularly those with autism, the online learning environment during the pandemic was viewed as a safe and effective space for learning. as they became more confident in their use of technology to provide learning opportunities for students, the teachers recognized the opportunities this situation offered for exploring new pedagogies (chauhan, 2017). one teacher spoke enthusiastically about encouraging individual students and their families to lead some of the learning from their home, such as one student and her mother who demonstrated making crepes in french. several of the teachers spoke about online learning having initially been challenging, but once they began to experiment with the affordances of the medium, they enjoyed the freedom it provided to try new ways of working. 12 current issues in comparative education a transnational comparative study of teachers’ experiences of remote teaching and learning teachers’ perceptions of remote teaching during spring 2020 one major challenge highlighted by the teachers was the lack of digital devices for some of their pupils. in areas of high economic deprivation, some pupils had access to only a mobile phone rather than a laptop or tablet, which was often shared with siblings. this is an ongoing issue in areas of high deprivation (rallet & rochelandet, 2007). for some pupils, access to a mobile phone was also challenging due to the high cost of data usage. in addition, teachers expressed concern about the competence of some parents to facilitate home learning, particularly those who did not speak english as a first language. yet, over time, many of these issues were addressed with the support of older siblings or other family members. a concern that remained throughout the pandemic was the challenge of hybrid teaching since the children of “key workers” attended face-to-face in their classrooms while most students were taught remotely in their homes. the data analysis indicated that the pandemic required teachers to be adept at using new technology and familiar with the affordances of digital provision within education (chauhan, 2017). the teachers articulated that the sudden move to online learning shook their professional confidence in their ability to provide meaningful and effective learning for their students. although they rose to the challenge and rapidly developed their ability to work with the available hardware and software, two of the teachers noted that developments in technology moved rapidly, and it was challenging for teachers to keep abreast of new developments. the analysis also highlighted the need for teachers to be aware of the values that underpin their practice. a key theme arising from the data analysis was the underpinning ethic of professional care for others, which informed the decisions the teachers made (könig et al., 2020). although the provision of online learning was not necessarily of a high standard immediately after the lockdown commenced, each of the teachers noted that their professional priority was to make the best choices for their students, despite the adverse social context. the novel situation created by the pandemic demonstrated a need for teachers to determine their own professional learning needs and for teachers to be trusted to make independent pedagogical choices as circumstances changed, similar to the proposals made by beaton et al. (2021b). case study 3: norway methodology to compare the new teacher training program’s aims and objectives with its practical outcomes, recent newly qualified teachers (nqts) from uit the arctic university of norway (uit) were surveyed and interviewed at various time points to create a longitudinal study. data were analyzed using thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006). individual interviews were held over three years (2015–2017) with around 30 graduating students of both genders a few days after they submitted their master’s theses, and then they were interviewed again after one, two, three, and five years in service. due to the current issues in comparative education 13 korte et al. global pandemic, only the interviews after four and five years of service were included in the analysis presented here. these included 31 teachers after retention losses were accounted for: 14 teachers from the first cohort, 6 from the second, and 11 from the third. an open-ended, semi-structured interview guide (kvale, 2008) was adapted for each year of data collection to capture changes in the students’ experiences regarding their work as nqts. each interview lasted 45–60 minutes and was recorded and transcribed. the analysis was intended to capture the perceived realities of the nqts as the pandemic unfolded. first, the data were interpreted inductively by grouping all similar thematic statements using broad bucket coding in nvivo 12 (bazeley, 2007). to determine overarching themes, the process included coding whole sentences and sequences based on their content. process memos were used to write down the researchers’ reflections and generate ideas for categorizing the data (maxwell, 2012). after the initial bucket coding, similar codes were merged and some were deleted. the included codes were drawn from frequently used statements concerning the actions and processes informants found important. whiteboards were used as a creative visual tool to identify and qualify the explanatory relationships between the categories (maxwell, 2012). informants’ experiences were summarized in a table to visualize similarities and differences, and the codes were connected to the theoretical framework to gain a deep understanding of the nqts’ experiences. key findings teachers’ perceptions of remote teaching during spring 2020 norwegian teachers generally approached the challenge of suddenly moving to remote online teaching with trepidation. some raised concerns about the increased workload and uncertainty around technology use. there was also great concern about pupils’ welfare. teachers specifically raised concerns about the difficulties that some children faced in reaching all the main curriculum outcomes/goals/learning outcomes. some teachers were resigned to the likelihood that not all children would achieve the goals and believed that their general welfare was more important. on the upside, one teacher noted that because the pandemic required them to think differently while teaching online, their teaching became more varied. some also reported being inspired to use more digital resources when they eventually returned to the classroom. one teacher reported a positive outcome of the pandemic lockdowns: they had developed better and closer relationships with their pupils due to working more intensively with them in digital environments. in addition to the new form of lesson delivery, the onset of the pandemic also required that teachers worked together in new ways. some of the norwegian teachers reported improvements in collaboration and support from colleagues, fostered by working online. challenges faced by teachers during spring 2020 several teachers felt proud to be considered “essential workers,” and the pandemic raised the general public’s awareness of and respect for teachers. nevertheless, increased workloads, lack of technological equipment, and concerns about students’ educational outcomes were all cited as challenges. 14 current issues in comparative education a transnational comparative study of teachers’ experiences of remote teaching and learning furthermore, changes to regular teaching activities meant that previously planned classes and field trips had to be completely reorganized or canceled. specific concerns about information technology equipment were raised regarding pupils’ and teachers’ access to high-quality, functional, and up-to-date equipment. previously, they had managed with older equipment that could be shared and spread over several classes, but it quickly became apparent that more and newer equipment was needed. challenges were encountered, too, with delivering adapted and special education effectively. specific issues related to how pupils who normally had classroom assistance would maintain their education. teachers complained that it was burdensome for the main class teacher to take on extra individual-focused teaching since classroom assistants were effectively absent from online/distance education settings. one teacher, however, suggested that it was actually beneficial for general working collaboration since the pandemic meant there were fewer assistants involved in some pupils’ education. several teachers said they considered leaving the profession during the lockdown period; however, to our knowledge, none of those who mentioned this followed through and left (though the reasons for some participants’ dropout from the project were difficult to verify). while teachers generally believed they delivered good-quality education during the lockdowns, they also raised concerns about a lack of resources and feeling underprepared. norwegian teachers expressed a need for greater digital competence and called for fresh education on technology and how to use it, along with improved information on technology-based equipment. discussion differences and similarities of the findings from the case studies our comparison of the three case studies’ findings indicates there were both similarities and differences in teachers’ experiences in the three countries. remote teaching was an unexpected development for teachers that placed new demands on their competencies, and in different ways, it was viewed both positively and negatively by teachers. this comparative multiple-case study has examined teachers’ experiences, especially their perceptions and challenges, in three countries during the covid-19 pandemic to determine which areas should be developed in preand in-service teacher education based on teachers’ experiences. teachers’ perceptions and challenges were divided in five sub-themes that emerged from the comparison of the data in the three countries: 1) teacher-student relations, 2) teachers’ competence, 3) teachers and surrounding society, 4) students’ competence, and 5) technology. in teacher-student relations we looked at teachers' experiences regarding their relationship with the students individually and as a group, how they communicated and what kind of concerns teachers had for their students. particularly challenging for teachers was supporting students’ individualized learning, as mentioned by finnish and norwegian teachers. however, in norway the teachers felt closer relationships with students than they had in the classroom as they could give them more intensive attention during online meetings. current issues in comparative education 15 korte et al. in the three countries teachers were concerned about the well-being of students. in finland, teachers worried more about students who were absent from online lessons. reaching students during the pandemic proved more difficult in some cases than in face-to-face teaching (ahtiainen et al., 2020). for such reasons, the norwegian and english teachers voiced concerns about whether certain students would achieve the main learning outcomes. so, remote teaching seemed to considerably affect teacher–student relationships. in teachers’ competence we analyzed aspects regarding teachers’ professional know-how. in the three settings, the teachers reported feeling underprepared, which the english and norwegian teachers described as having shaken their professional confidence. similarly, previous studies reported teachers’ challenges with pedagogy during the pandemic (e.g., beardsley et al., 2021; jaenudin et al., 2021; perifanou et al., 2021). all teachers wished for additional training on using educational technology and online pedagogy. teachers reported some common positive experiences related to their improved proficiency in using digital technologies and new and diverse pedagogies, which is in line with the study by beardsley et al. (2021). similarly, ahtiainen and colleagues (2020) found that teachers’ digital skills improved during remote teaching and learning. regarding teachers and the surrounding society, we concentrated on anything that mentioned teachers outside of their own classroom and student context. teachers from the three countries reported that communication and collaboration between other teachers improved during the remote teaching. norwegian teachers reported having experienced the increase in teachers’ professional appreciation because of the covid-19, while english teachers raised concerns about students’ parents’ ability to facilitate home learning. students’ competence encompasses the teachers’ views on any given skills of the students. the teachers in finland and england found that remote teaching increased students’ ict skills. the finnish teachers also mentioned that students’ self-regulation skills increased. however, the finnish teachers also raised concerns about students’ lack of digital skills. the aspect of technology refers to the teachers’ experiences regarding the use of technology. teachers in all three countries experienced technical problems while teaching remotely, especially relating to a poor internet connection, lack of devices, and lack of high-quality functional equipment for teachers and students. in this way, our findings corroborate the results of previous studies (ahtiainen et al., 2020; beardsley et al., 2021). according to previous studies (e.g., könig et al., 2020), school-provided technology positively affects teachers’ success in mastering the challenges of online teaching. the finnish case study confirmed and widened this notion by suggesting that technological devices provided by employers could decrease teachers’ workloads during the covid-19 crisis. finnish and norwegian teachers found that their workloads increased with remote teaching and learning. yet, the findings of the finnish case study indicate that the use of an employer-provided desktop is statistically significantly associated with a reduction in workload, whereas the use of a teacher’s personal desktop 16 current issues in comparative education a transnational comparative study of teachers’ experiences of remote teaching and learning is statistically significantly associated with a perceived increase in workload. moreover, the results suggest that tablet computers provided by employers correlate statistically significantly with teachers’ success in organizing remote learning. however, these findings concern only the finnish case study so generalizations should be made with caution. alongside technology provision, many other factors are related to teachers’ workload and success in remote teaching, such as support from colleagues and students’ access to devices, which are aspects that were not examined in this study. besides challenges, the finnish and english teachers stated that the online environment was a safe and effective space for their students to learn. findings of the teachers’ perceptions and challenges on the remote teaching situation are widely applicable since teachers in different parts of the world had similar experiences, facing many of the same benefits and obstacles concerning remote teaching (unesco, 2020). however, as policy reports emphasize, there were many contextual differences between countries and areas concerning their preparedness for a crisis and their ways of organizing the period of remote and hybrid teaching, reflecting different socioeconomic and cultural circumstances (unesco and global education monitoring report, 2021). there can be substantial differences within a country and even between schools (unesco, 2020). this was seen in the english case study, which revealed that pupils particularly lacked sufficient technological devices in areas of economic deprivation, with the digital divide exacerbated during school closures (unesco international bureau of education, 2020; un, 2020). we presume that similarities noted between the three case studies derived from the relatively similar educational systems in the three northern european countries and their high levels of digitization. differences between the three case studies’ findings, meanwhile, can be seen to have arisen from their contextual variations, along with aspects we did not study or consider in this study. teachers in the three countries worked at several schools with different technological and pedagogical preparedness, which was also not measured in this comparative study. in addition, although the three respective countries have high digitization, the schools also applied different rates and levels of digitization during the lockdowns (unesco, 2022). overall, teachers’ technological pedagogical competence varied, which affected their experiences of remote teaching between and within the three countries. implications for preand in-service teacher education international policy reports highlight the need to increase teachers’ readiness for crisis situations and strengthen their competence in remote and hybrid teaching (unesco, 2021; un, 2020). this study sheds light on how school closures and a period of remote teaching affected teachers’ instruction. from the results, it is possible to identify certain implications for preand in-service teacher education, which may be developed to better prepare teachers to lead their students’ learning today and in the future. first, curriculum attention should be drawn to technological, pedagogical, and psychological aspects of schooling, to ensure teachers’ better preparedness for changing learning environments and possible crisis situations. regarding technological and pedagogical aspects, future teachers would benefit from learning the pedagogical uses of multiple digital learning environments and video meeting tools, which in normal times, current issues in comparative education 17 korte et al. can be beneficially utilized in their face-to-face contact teaching and daily teacher work. remote and hybrid teaching could also be applied and practiced during different phases of initial teacher education. since faculty collaboration and support are essential to successful remote teaching, it will also be useful for student teachers to apply collaborative learning approaches in teaching practice. moreover, regarding psychological aspects of the profession, students’, families’ and teachers’ well-being should be addressed, with training on how to support such well-being, as well as recognize the effects of unexpected and exceptional times (e.g., school closures) on well-being. teachers already in the field would benefit from tailored professional development possibilities on the above-mentioned topics. those teachers who experienced school lockdowns during 2020 could act as experts whose knowledge can be used to help develop both student teachers’ education and qualified teachers’ professional learning. conclusion this article presents a multiple-case study conducted in finland, england, and norway, presenting situations in northern educational contexts in the respective countries. findings from these case studies are generally not valid for wide contexts and organizations. to overcome that, a strength of this study is its comparative approach as the findings are drawn from slightly different settings that complement one another. furthermore, although the results reported here originated from a relatively small number of informants, our detailed description of the specific cases enables the findings to transcend their original contexts and contributes to how we can understand similar social contexts (hellström, 2008). both qualitative and quantitative analyses produced knowledge of teachers’ perceptions and challenges they encountered. through the quantitative analysis of the finnish case, it was possible to gain a more nuanced picture, for instance, of the support that teachers received with remote teaching, the technological tools they applied, and their workload. at the same time, the findings from england voice the teachers’ concern about the parents' abilities to facilitate learning at home, while the norwegian teachers mention their concerns about not being able to achieve the curriculum learning goals. in future studies, it would be beneficial to compare findings from a wider range of countries and contexts concerning teachers’, students’, and guardians’ experiences. it would also be interesting to examine what kinds of influences cultural, locational, and educational contexts have on the findings. furthermore, empirical studies could identify and investigate which of future teachers’ competencies and practices are linked with the technological, pedagogical, and psychological aspects of schooling in the future. the covid-19 pandemic impacted education provision globally and sped up a process of increasing digitization, which was underway before the pandemic. however, the speed of the transition was an issue because it did not allow teachers to prepare for new ways of working. in this study, we investigated what could be learned from remote teaching experiences during the pandemic and how we can evaluate and develop teachers’ education in a post-pandemic world. the findings suggest that teachers wish for additional education on online pedagogies and the practical and pedagogical use of technologies. furthermore, we highly recommend future teachers engage in activities that support group dynamics and team building with colleagues, to enhance and 18 current issues in comparative education a transnational comparative study of teachers’ experiences of remote teaching and learning improve collaboration and the work atmosphere so that greater ideas and thoughts are shared. acknowledgements this research was supported by an international cooperative project – distarctic: distance teaching and learning in the arctic communities – financed by the danish agency for higher education and science. ph. d. satu-maarit korte (university of lapland, finland), is a senior lecturer in media education. her key research interests are technology-mediated learning, media and psychosocial well-being, and neural foundations of learning. ph. d. minna körkkö (university of oulu, finland) is postdoctoral researcher. her research interests include teacher professional development and teacher competence as well as student teachers’ reflection. especially, she is interested in using a video and other technologies as tools in teachers’ and students’ learning and competence development. ph. d. outi kyrö-ämmälä (university of lapland, finland), is a university lecturer in teacher education. she is also a vice dean responsible for teaching at the faculty of education. her key research interests are inclusive education, inclusive teacher education and pupils’ cognitive skills. ph.d. miia hast miia (university of lapland, finland), is a university lecturer in craft education. his main research areas are craft technology, learning analytics in skill and art subjects, digital pedagogy, and artificial intelligence in teaching and learning. lic. sanna mommo is a university teacher of craft education at the teacher training institute of the university of lapland, finland. her teaching focuses on the didactics of both textile work and multi-material handicraft. her researcher research focuses on the pedagogical implementation models of multi-material crafts, the cultural significance of crafts and materiality. ph.d. merja paksuniemi (university of lapland, finland), is a university researcher at the faculty of education. her key research interests are teacher education, wellbeing and education, and ideologies and social contexts of education. ph. d. gregor maxwell (uit the arctic university of norway) is an associate professor in inclusive and special education. his research interests are inclusion and participation for marginalized children and 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https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2020/08/sg_policy_brief_covid-19_and_education_august_2020.pdf © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 96 november 15, 1999 human rights education and peace building helge brochman norwegian refugee council eldrid k. midttun norwegian refugee council introduction current issues in comparative education (cice), november 1999, carries an article by bernath, holland and martin entitled "how can human rights education contribute to international peace-building?" the article presents some interesting findings and discusses some of the fundamental elements of human rights education (hre). a discussion of this type of education is both welcome and timely and should be encouraged among scholars and practitioners. it seems that there is growing awareness of the importance of hre as a key element in education in emergencies and in conflict/post conflict areas. this is likely the result of the increasing number of internal conflicts around the world as well as the need to work towards the prevention and amelioration of conflicts in order to build more stable and democratic societies. we strongly agree with the authors' views on the importance of hre as an instrument in building peace in post-war societies. however, we would like to broaden the scope slightly by presenting hre as a preventive measure which can reduce the risk of conflict occurring or recurring, as well as set important standards for countries in transition from authoritarian rule to democratic societies. we will also share some experiences in the implementation of hre projects particularly in southern caucasus, as a way of contextualizing and demonstrating some of the practices suggested by bernath, holland and martin. in our conclusion, we will advocate for the potential benefits of hre across, not just within, national borders. in 1996, the norwegian refugee council (nrc) started its hre program in armenia in response to a request by unhcr. in 1997, the program was expanded to georgia including the breakaway republics of abkhazia and south ossetia) and in 1998 to azerbaijan. the main elements in nrc's hre are a teacher's resource book, which is translated into local languages, the training of teachers and of trainers, and, to some extent, material for pupils. nrc works in co-operation with governments, governmentrelated institutions and other ngos. the norwegian ministry of foreign affairs funds the program. in our initial development of the hre program certain key components were presumed necessary. looking back on four years in armenia and two years in georgia, we can examine both the validity of these assumptions and their manifestations. in this respect our discussion responds to the issues raised by bernath, holland and martin, specifically in the "essential components" portion of their article. hopefully our experiences can inspire others to share their views and "lessons learned," thus contributing to the development of this important field. human rights education and peace building current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 97 obstacles bernath, holland and martin mention the "well-known obstacles of development and political and economic culture" as well as the breakdown of social order. we would like to highlight what we see as the reluctance on the part of humanitarian organizations, governments, and donors in general to prioritize basic education in conflict-ridden areas. working in conflict/post conflict/transition areas with hre and similar activities represents a number of challenges. there are a number of obstacles that have to be faced. we will focus on a few areas where difficulties are likely to arise and also mention circumstances that assist the introduction of hre programming. bureaucratic obstacles to be able to work within the school system in a country one has to have the approval of the school authorities, assuming that there is a functioning central authority. this may involve a number of challenges. for example, in the highly bureaucratic and centralized system of the southern caucasus, individuals at the top levels of government displayed a positive attitude toward hre, but as a result of a break-down in government funding, program responsibilities and possibilities became unclear. such a development then created competition for support at both the local and international levels. in approaching school institutions such as those in the southern caucasus, international organizations should be aware that the schools might have their own agendas. similarly, individuals within these institutions are competing for assignments, especially from the internationals that can usually provide better--or more reliable--payment than local authorities. in light of these considerations, one should exercise caution when entering into agreements with institutions and individuals. building local capacity, however, is an important element in the nrc program. internationals usually have a limited amount of time in a country, so it is vital to find local institutions that can take the responsibility for sustaining and developing the program. in the southern caucasus fostering relationships with local actors has taken time, but it now seems to be gaining momentum. in georgia the program is currently implemented through an independent teacher training institution (with links to the ministry of education) and in armenia in close co-operation with an agency of the ministry of education. the nrc hopes to strengthen these units and their capacity to promote hre in the schools. practical/logistical obstacles in their article bernath, holland and martin demonstrate an awareness of the likely limitations of a conflict/post-conflict environment and remind planners of the fact that low cost and/or simplified delivery modes and methods can be both more effective and more easily replicable for use by trainers and teachers. our experiences confirm that hre programs should be very aware of the practical realities and school facilities in the area of intervention. providing fancy material and ideas for activities is futile if there is no infrastructure to make use of them--videos and transparencies are useless in a seminar room with no electricity. one should be prepared to work low-tech and overcome obstacles such as a lack of heating or immovable chairs which are most likely the conditions under which local trainers and teachers work daily. helge brochmann and eldrid k. midttun 98 november 15, 1999 inspiring trainers and teachers to use their own creativity and their surroundings to find ways of demonstrating a point may change the attitude of teachers and pupils alike. as an example, one of the most important tools of the swedish freelance educator, håkan wall, who has been involved in the entire caucasus hre development process, is a piece of string. for different lessons, a certain length may represent the age of "our common earth," while a six meter string can represent the world population. the next time around, the string can be used as a clothesline for children to hang their selfproduced drawings of what they see as basic needs. the messages and instructions should also be simple, especially if you are working through an interpreter, which will usually be the case in our work if you are not a russian (or armenian, georgian, azeri) speaker. supporting circumstances in the southern caucasus, there were also a number of circumstances that facilitated the introduction of the hre program. first, the three countries in the area were all part of the relatively well functioning soviet educational system, although the system was eroding due to a lack of funds and maintenance. another factor was that the governments wanted to build ties to the west. they saw that adherence to concepts such as human rights and democracy could further this goal. active participation in the efforts of the un decade for human rights education would also be seen as a signal of democratization. influenced by factors such as these, the governments and school authorities eventually developed an overall positive attitude toward hre, and as a result the nrc has enjoyed a good relationship with local authorities. methodology and implementation the bernath, holland and martin article claims that "the most effective educators" and the "most successful practitioners" are strong believers in and users of interactive educational methods. while we, out of our experience in the caucasus as well as in several countries in africa, would endorse these observations, no doubt some representatives of other systems and structures may not agree that these methods are valid for all subjects and levels. whatever the case, we need to be prepared for the acceptance, internalization and practice of many of these methods to take time. the teaching of hre might run into some cultural obstacles even if the local attitude towards human rights and democracy is positive. these obstacles appear at different levels--the school system, teachers, and parents, to mention just a few. the school culture in many of the countries of the former soviet union has some characteristics that are not especially compatible with human rights and democracy. schools tended to be authoritarian, dogmatic and competitive. these kinds of traditions can, of course, be found in many countries, not just those which were formerly communist. regardless, it is quite a challenge to introduce hre in a school environment that is teacher centered and authoritarian. the teacher is assumed to have the right to ask any question, and for the pupil the task is to answer correctly the questions raised by the teacher. otherwise they should remain silent. discussions and different points of view are absent. there is always one correct answer and one obvious lesson to be learned from each topic raised. however, these practices and attitudes are contrary to the ideas of hre, and thus the introduction of different teaching methodologies is an essential part of the program. student centered learning should predominate in the school system though that will human rights education and peace building current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 99 take time to accomplish. however, one cannot wait to start hre until the school environment becomes more participatory. given the situation in the southern caucasus with the school system and the educational climate drawn between soviet heritage and democratic reform, it is important that hre should focus at least as much on methodology as on content. the old pedagogical slogan that "what you do is more important than what you say" is more than relevant in this context. for the students this slogan represents a total shift away from what they have been used to--namely to listen, accept and repeat. informing the pupils about their rights in a theoretical way is therefore unlikely to impress them unless at the same time they experience some change of behavior in the teacher and his/her teaching methods, as well as improvements in the classroom situation. a new methodology based on participation and more learner-centered approaches may help pupils develop a positive attitude to the whole concept of human rights. ideally, they will be encouraged and rewarded for bringing forth their own thoughts and ideas, they will learn that there are often several possible and acceptable answers to a question and perspectives on an issue, depending on the individual's views and situation. the pupils will most likely find that "critical thinking" confirms the reality they see and know, and this acknowledgement could provide the basis for changes and improvements. some schools have started using participatory and interactive methods in teaching human rights, and they have reported that pupils responded positively. in one particular school the attendance rates rose in classes that were receiving hre and other classes that were not yet involved in the program began requesting it. some teachers alsofound that it is more interesting to work using participatory methods and have started using them in other subjects as well. they claim that they develop a better relationship with their pupils and that their lessons become more engaging. many teachers, however, seem reluctant to introduce new methods into their teaching. they may be in favor of human rights teaching, but would prefer to do it the old way-with an emphasis on factual knowledge, in a manner which can easily be controlled. this is where we believe it is appropriate to engage in a discussion to discourage "human rights competitions" in which children memorize the articles and are rewarded for their memory skills, rather than on an understanding of the issues and the practice of the intentions. several of the teachers interviewed expressed fears that they will lose control of the classroom if they start regrouping students and allowing more participatory activities. they seemed to be afraid of the potential for chaos and lost discipline. [1] we should note that the teachers who have participated in the nrc's hre seminars have been probably the most active and most motivated towards this kind of education. thus, the majority of teachers would likely share the concerns of the teachers mentioned earlier in the paragraph. at our teacher training courses, especially in armenia, we noticed age and gender differences regarding teacher attitudes towards using new methods. younger, female teachers seemed most comfortable learning and implementing newer methods, while older male teachers were often more skeptical and resistant to engaging in thegroup helge brochmann and eldrid k. midttun 100 november 15, 1999 activities. in order to facilitate the introduction of hre into local schools, the training sessions included representatives of the regional education authorities as well as the headmaster and one or two teachers from participating schools. we feel that this strategy has paid off, since convincing the headmaster is essential if teachers are to gain support in the implementation of hre. in sum, the methodology presented in the nrc hre program is interactive and participatory. emphasis is placed on dialogue, discussion, visualization, concretization, and activities such as role-plays and group work. our experience has been that teachers are mostly positive and enthusiastic about taking part in these activities. the seminars are more active and lively than the ones to which they are accustomed, and they are challenged and allowed to use their own creativity. however, it will probably take more training before a substantial number of them feel comfortable transferring these methods into their own classrooms. content several international agencies and organizations are working with similar educational programs, but under different labels. looking into programs such as "peace education," "tolerance education" (unhcr), "education for conflict resolution," "schools as centers for peace" (unicef), "education for human rights and democratic citizenship" (council of europe) and "human rights education" (amnesty international, nrc and others) one will largely find similar content and approaches. the nrc program focuses on a global perspective, conflict management, tolerance and how to deal with prejudices and stereotypes, identity formation, and knowledge about human rights instruments and protection mechanisms. our experience has been that this complex content is not quite what the recipients have expected, and we have sometimes been met with the attitude that human rights are theoretical and law oriented. this was the initial reaction at the first introductory session in armenia. university professors and other academics felt that the subject matter was so difficult and complicated that it would only be possible to teach it in the upper classes, maybe first at high school or university level. however, in nrc trainings, human rights are approached as being a basic human need, and are connected people's everyday lives. eventually, our dialogue partners accepted this perspective that hre could be taught from the very beginning of primary school and some aspects even in pre-school classes. after the trainings, both teachers and authorities seem to appreciate this approach. we need to be aware that authorities in post-conflict/transition countries will normally experience and resent attacks on their human rights record and practice. it is likely that human rights groups and activists will have emerged and demanded wide-reaching and dramatic changes in their society. challenged to include human rights education in their public system, the authorities may fear that a closer focus on their government's performance in the area of political rights and freedom of speech will follow. understanding this we must try to introduce our particular objectives, texts and approaches in a way which will seem less threatening--while not compromising agreed upon international standards and conventions. given that the titles describing hre programs range from "peace, reconciliation and conflict resolution" to "civic education" to "human rights education," it is our experience that a term may be acceptable in one country while rejected in another. thus, human rights education and peace building current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 101 the acceptance of hre content may be encouraged semantically by simply changing titles. tensions between rights and responsibilities the bernath, holland and martin article refers to the important relationship between the learning situation and the real life of the learners, but it does not mention specifically the links between rights and responsibilities. the nrc program and many others link human rights explicitly to responsibilities. according to article 29 in the universal declaration of human rights, all human beings have rights, but they also have the duty to respect the rights of others. although the soviet system always reminded citizens of their obligations to society, recent trends underscore the responsibilities accompanying human rights. because corruption has repeatedly emerged in the societies of the southern caucasus, the necessity to teach about respect for the rule of law, respect for others, and the connection between a democratic society and law-abiding citizens is clear. the fear of some teachers--that too strong a focus on rights will result in unruly and impudent children--may be eased if responsibilities are also stressed in the delivery of hre programs. every pupil has the right to state his or her opinion freely in the classroom, but he or she also has the responsibility to listen to others without interrupting, and to speak only when given the floor, so that everyone has the opportunity to share their opinion. a suitable exercise to raise awareness on this topic can be to discuss the responsibilities of different groups in society: pupils, teachers, children, and parents. even though there may be a great difference between the ideals and the reality, the obligation of all citizens to work toward a realization of common and larger democratic goals should be emphasized. cross-border approach the nrc hre program operates in contexts where the potential outbreak of violence is ever present. armenia and azerbaijan are in conflict over the nagano karabakh area. georgia is in conflict with south ossetia and abkhasia, both of whom claim independence. one of the ultimate goals of the hre program is to help prepare the ground for peaceful coexistence between different ethnic groups, the refugees and the internally displaced. nrc believes that pupils and teachers should learn to respect each other in spite of differences and to solve conflicts in a peaceful manner. the fact that nrc has offices or conducts programs in all contended areas gives credibility to the organization's neutrality. this has made it possible for local nrc staff in the three countries to meet. the pilot hre program in armenia caught the interest of the other countries, and the same basic material, first translated into russian, gave potential partners the chance to study the contents and the program's approach. discussions with the georgian ministry of education made it possible for the abkhasians and the south ossetians to make use of the russian rather than the georgian version, a recognition of the fact that the content was more important than the language. the material is similar, but adaptations were made through dialogue with education experts in each country in their own language. the trainings share a common curriculum, and the inter-active methodology has been adopted by all. helge brochmann and eldrid k. midttun 102 november 15, 1999 to promote cross-border understanding, the nrc has acknowledged the importance of working in the different areas with the same program simultaneously. local hre coordinators were hired as staff in each country. based on their common interest in the program, it was possible in december 1998 to invite an armenian, an azeri, a georgian and a south ossetian to a joint training in oslo. this positive interpersonal event laid the foundation for further contact and co-operation, in spite of occasional political crossborder difficulties. core groups of trainers were then established to strengthen and build local capacity and expertise, and to support individual co-ordinators in the provinces. subsequently, in the autumn of 1999, nrc held a joint training of trainers seminar for groups from all the involved areas. the seminar demonstrated that twenty trainers from different national, cultural and political backgrounds, despite bilateral conflicts, could work very well together. they came to understand that they shared some common heritage, and that they could profit by learning from each other. plans were made for the exchange of materials, ideas and even resource persons. the ability to focus on a regional perspective was a major advantage. these areas have much in common, with the shared history of the soviet union and recent independence being just two examples. bringing representatives from each area together makes it less relevant to focus on one conflict over another. instead, one can concentrate on regional similarities to stimulate a more constructive and less contentious or narrow discussion. the political problems have not disappeared and the conflicts may flare from time to time. but we are convinced that the more people know, respect, and practice human rights, the greater the chance for a peaceful future. evaluation bernath, holland and martin, in their passage on evaluation, consider a wider scope of impact than the nrc program in the caucasus has so far attempted. however, over time, the evidence and proofs of changes initiated partly through hre in schools would hopefully manifest themselves in the type of results they present since the start of the caucasus program "informal feed-back mechanisms" to check working methods, materials and strategies have been used at different levels and with varying scope. a few such mechanisms are: • bringing draft learning materials to the training sessions and challenging the teacher participants to study the contents and presentation and to suggest needed changes. (it was not easy at first to get a response, because teachers were not used to being asked their opinion.) • inviting representatives of the ministry, educational institutions and ngos interested in hre to roundtables and presentation workshops to discuss different materials, approaches and working methods to share experiences and suggest strategies for going forward working with the different target groups in the society. • in many cases ngos and young lawyers' associations provided important support to local teachers open to hre by visiting classes. as participants at trainings they can provide valuable comments for further work. • asking the teachers to take home draft materials for the school children and having them comment on their reactions to the textbook as a whole. human rights education and peace building current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 103 • seminar and workshop evaluations, covering the whole range of activities, methods and contents of materials and documentation. looking forward the advantages of a regional approach seem obvious. the caucasus educators have discussed the idea of having hre teachers meet across the borders, perhaps at some point bringing school children as well. based on experiences thus far, and building on current contacts and networks, we believe that realizing this idea is more a matter of finding adequate funding than participant objection or troublesome borders. the possibility to continue and develop a program along this line depends upon a number of factors, ranging from the political developments in each country and in the region(such as shifting individuals as heads of the ministries of education), to the competence and tenacity of local trainers and staff. it also involves funding commitments on the part of both the international and local communities. the main objective for the future is to make the program sustainable within and across borders by enabling local partners to take over. from the beginning, the nrc has planned for eventual phasing out. to this end, we have searched intensively for partners who are or can be included in permanent structures or sustainable networks. hence the close contacts with ministries, provincial education authorities, teacher training institutions and curriculum planners. while the international education experts have been active partners, they have been present as visitors twice a year, only for trainings and dialogues. the day-to-day co-ordination and accountability has been carried out by local staff. at the moment there are strategic discussions as to how and when to phase out the nrc's direct project support to the caucasus countries. concrete achievements include hres having been inserted into the official school curriculum at fourth, ninth, and eleventh grades in georgia. in armenia, a first to third grade hre textbook has been well received and the fourth to sixth grade textbook is underway. in azerbaijan efforts have been limited to training and implementation in a certain number of schools. future efforts will concentrate on relationships and co-operation with authorities, production of materials and capacity building within ngo networks. the main objective of the programs has been and is to provide direct support until a certain level of sustainability is reached. this may mean into the year 2001 for armenia and georgia, and until the end of the same year for azerbaijan. endnotes [back] [1] parents are another group that may be skeptical of the introduction of new ideas in school. children coming home from school talking about their human rights and perhaps even becoming critical of their parent's supervisory methods may cause resentment in societies which traditionally have emphasized children's obedience. to avoid conflicts of this kind, it is important to bring parents into the discussion about the new subjects or topics being introduced to their children. one effective approach may be to have some helge brochmann and eldrid k. midttun 104 november 15, 1999 basic material to present to parents and invite them to meetings and seminars. the nrc includes these plans in the program, but we have limited experience with this as of yet. however, a recent report from armenia states that parents were enthusiastic about the material on human and children's rights. references bray, m. (1986). education and nation building. in m. bray, p.b. clarke & d. stephens (eds.), education and society in africa (pp. 23-35). london: edward arnold. fanon, f. (1967). a dying colonialism. new york: grovepress. freire, p. (1992). pedagogy of the oppressed, translated by mary bergman ramos. new york: continuum. heggoy, a. (1984). colonial education in algeria: assimilation and reaction. in p.g. altbach & g.p. kelly (eds.), education and the colonial experience (pp. 97-116). new brunswick: transaction books. machel, g. (1996). website. impact of armed conflict on children. [online] available at: http://www.unicef.org/graca/ psacharapoulos, g. (1989). time trends of the returns to education: cross-national evidence. economics of education review, 8(3), 225-231. schultz, t.w. (1989). investing in people: schooling in low-income countries. economics of education review, 8(3), 219-223. shaull, r. (1984). foreword. in freire, p., pedagogy of the oppressed, translated from the portuguese in 1968 by myra bergman ramos. new york: continuum publishing corporation. state of the world's children. (1999). website. statistical tables. [online] available at: http://www.unicef.org/sowc99/ © 2003 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 5 student-faculty power/knowledge relations: the implications of the internet in the college of education, sultan qaboos university hamood al-harthi sultan qaboos university mark b. ginsburg university of pittsburgh abstract the study examines the experiences of professors and undergraduate students at sultan qaboos university (squ) in oman in using the internet in relation to their courses. the focus is on whether and how such use intersects with the traditional form of studentfaculty power/knowledge relations. the findings indicate that the existence of the internet and even its use by professors and students have not changed the existing structure of student-faculty power/knowledge relations. this is the case because the internet is perceived as just another, less-valued source of knowledge. faculty control over knowledge evaluation and selection and student regulation discourages students from going beyond knowledge selected by faculty, at least in relation to coursework. the study concludes that the availability of the internet alone cannot change existing student-faculty power/knowledge relations in sultan qaboos university; a restructuring of the institution and society defined processes of student evaluation, teaching methods, and selection of curriculum knowledge is also required. introduction a key feature of educational settings is the nature of student-faculty power/knowledge relations, that is, the degree to which faculty and/or students control the selection, evaluation, organization, and transmission of knowledge. in traditional power/knowledge relations professors and teachers exercise unquestioned authority to control curriculum content and their students; this authority, which is granted either directly or by delegation from religious or government officials, is based on their recognized position as the "most knowledgeable" or "the expert" in the society. as freire (1970) explains, with respect to what he terms a "banking" form of education, the teacher/professor acts to deposit knowledge in students, while the students are simply the passive recipients of this transaction, because it is assumed that "the teacher teaches and the students are taught; the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing; the teacher talks and the students listen meekly" (freire, 1970: 5859). historically, in oman, the context of this research, the authority of teachers in traditional islamic schools (madares) came from an appreciation of teachers as the holders of knowledge, including the knowledge of prophets. this appreciation resulted in teachers having absolute authority over students (but not autonomy vis-à-vis religious leaders) to decide what was right for their students, including the information that did and did not need to be learned. in this context, education focused on the qur'an and other religious texts, knowledge was treated as given by allah, and teaching and learning emphasized hamood al-harthi and mark b. ginsburg december 17, 2003 6 memorization1. this curricular and pedagogical approach continued even after the introduction of "modern" western (particularly british) models of schooling in 1970. thus, oman has maintained a "banking" form of education in primary, secondary, and higher educational institutions. however, such traditional student-faculty power/knowledge relations in higher education institutions such as sultan qaboos university (squ) may now be facing significant challenges due to increased access to the internet in oman. besides being a means of communication, the internet is an alternative source of knowledge, one that may be used by students to challenge professorial authority as the ultimate (or sole) knowledge base. although other sources of knowledge existed before the internet, such as family, mass media, daily interaction, or libraries, the internet potentially poses a special challenge to the authority of professors' knowledge (and the knowledge included in the texts they assign). this is because the internet is more up-to-date and an "open," "shared" source of knowledge that "is mostly about people finding their voice, speaking for themselves in a public way. in this view, the internet is less about content and information and more about new relationships to content and information" (kenway, 1996: 222). in contrast to universities in the pre-internet era, where typically the professors (or religious or government officials) selected, organized, and evaluated a narrow range of content, interpreted through a particular perspective, and the students did or did not absorb that content, the internet potentially provides students with a broader range of content and multiple perspectives. the issue not only pertains to selecting content but also to producing and disseminating knowledge about students' realities. for instance, the library could also function as an "open" source of knowledge and as a basis for questioning and challenging the teacher/professor as a source of knowledge, if students were left on their own to use books. however, the library, in contrast to the internet, lacks a mechanism enabling students to produce and distribute their own knowledge. consequently, besides being a source of knowledge, the internet could also be a model for all people to construct and disseminate knowledge in "temporary" forms (via email and chat rooms) and in more "permanent" forms (via postings on personal websites). this may change students' relations with teachers/professors by giving them access to both independent sources of knowledge and independent channels to construct and distribute knowledge. as a result, the internet can be seen as a means for social transformation of student-faculty power/knowledge relations (goodenow, 1996). however, depending upon the way the internet's use is socially constructed by faculty and students, it might turn out not to be a transformative instrument, but rather it may function to maintain existing power/knowledge relations. for instance, the faculty might organize their courses so that the internet is used to replicate traditional teacher/professor control over what content students learn and how the learning of that content is evaluated (dhanarajan, 2000). furthermore, students on their own might use the internet in this way because they recognize and perhaps accept the evaluative role of the faculty. haddad (2000), for example, argues that the internet alone will not change the current structure of student-faculty power/knowledge relations because the internet is just a tool. the issue is not just whether students have access to the internet, but how student-faculty power/knowledge relations: the implications of the internet in the college of education, sultan qaboos university current issues in comparative education, vol.6(1) 7 its use is organized and evaluated in the context of student-faculty power/knowledge relations. to explore these issues, an ethnographic study was conducted examining how faculty and students in mathematics education and social studies education programs at sultan qaboos university in oman use the internet in relation to their courses. the focus was on whether and how this use intersects with the traditional form of student-faculty power/knowledge relations. specifically, this study addressed the following questions: 1how do professors define their roles in relation to students with respect to knowledge selection, organization, and evaluation? 2how do students define their roles in relation to professors with respect to knowledge selection, organization, and evaluation? 3how do professors and students conceptualize and utilize the internet in relation to their courses? why? theoretical framework as opposed to the more common understanding of power as overt force, foucault (1978, 1979, 1980) sees power as disciplinary. according to foucault (1978), "power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere. and it is simply the over-all effect, which determines our movements" (p.93). power as discipline may be exercised through knowledge. foucault (1980) states that "[t]he exercise of power perpetually creates knowledge and, conversely, knowledge constantly induces effects." (p.52) according to foucault (1979), power and knowledge work together in each society through a "regime of truth," which distinguishes the discourses that are accepted and function as truth and those that are not accepted and considered to be false. taking traditional student-faculty relations as an example, faculty members are understood discursively to have the authority to determine who can make true statements and what kind of statements are taken as true. thus, faculty members have the power to fix the flow of meaning and define students (criab, 1992). faculty exercise power over students in schools and universities by using various instruments of disciplinary control, such as observing student behaviors and performance as well as establishing and implementing, regulations and evaluation procedures (e.g., examinations) to stratify and label students (ball, 1990). for instance, gore (1998) observed that the techniques of power, including surveillance, normalization, exclusion, classification, distribution, individualization, totalization, and regulation or examination, operated in a variety of sites of pedagogical practice (high school physical education classes, first-year teacher education program, a feminist reading club, and a women's discussion group). one way to understand the web of power relations in educational settings is to examine how curricular knowledge is constructed. according to eggleston (1977), the construction of curriculum occurs through: hamood al-harthi and mark b. ginsburg december 17, 2003 8 processes of interaction, often hidden, that bring about … a selection of curricular content … that is remarkably consistent and predictable. essentially they are processes of conflict that give rise to a range of compromises, adjustment and points of equilibrium of varying degrees of stability. in all these negotiations [power is] an underlying concept [operating at] two levels. [the first is] the power to make decisions that influence the work of students and [faculty]. [the second is] the control over … [what] can be achieved by students or withheld from them by determining access to high or low status curricular components and the evaluation and opportunities associated with them. (p.23) according to young (1971), the power of some to define what is "valued" knowledge leads to problems of accounting for how knowledge is "stratified" and by what criteria. stratification of knowledge means that certain knowledge is highly valued and other knowledge less valued or even devalued. as a consequence of this stratification, the holders/transmitters of different knowledge are also esteemed or depreciated with respect to their ranking or specialty (bourdieu, 1988). the impact of knowledge stratification on student-faculty relations can be seen, according to young (1971), in that if knowledge is highly stratified, there will be clear definitions of what is taken to count as knowledge which will provide the criteria for deciding what knowledge to include and exclude in curricula. it would follow, then, that highly stratified curriculum models are likely to presuppose and legitimate a rigid hierarchy between faculty and students. on the other hand, if knowledge is not highly stratified, then some access to knowledge control by the students would be implied, and the processes of exclusion and selection would become open for modification and change. bernstein's (1975) concept of knowledge framing is relevant here. knowledge framing refers to the nature of the context in which knowledge is transmitted and received. it is the degree of control faculty and/or students possess over the selection, organization, pacing and timing of knowledge transmission and reception in pedagogical relationships. in other words, framing affects student-faculty power/knowledge relations. "[it] control[s] the dissemination of educational knowledge, and the form of the knowledge transmitted. in this way, principles of power and social control are realized through educational knowledge codes and, through the codes, enter into and shape consciousness" (bernstein, 1975: 94). this means that despite the fact that some may argue that students possess knowledge, at least their personal or local community knowledge, faculty control over the selection and evaluation of classroom knowledge may lead to students' knowledge being defined as illegitimate and thus unusable even by students themselves (dunn, 1986). recognizing the pervasiveness of knowledge stratification and of a strong framing of educational knowledge, however, should not lead us to the assumption that no alternatives to this situation exist. young (1998), for example, suggests that it is possible for curriculum to be based on differentiated but not stratified knowledge and for curriculum knowledge to be seen as problematic (i.e., socially constructed) rather than simply given and passively accepted, and it "can therefore be transformed" (p.21). student-faculty power/knowledge relations: the implications of the internet in the college of education, sultan qaboos university current issues in comparative education, vol.6(1) 9 additionally, kreisberg (1992) promotes an alternative to the traditional student-faculty power/knowledge relations, what he labels "power-with" relations, which are characterized by collaboration, sharing, and mutuality. power-with relations in education may be achieved by a "collaborative learning approach," based on a nonfoundational, socially constructed understanding of knowledge (see bruffee, 1993). in this approach, students work together on focused but open-ended tasks that teach them to depend on each other as sources of knowledge rather than depending exclusively on the teacher (or teacher selected texts) as the only authoritative source of knowledge. according to bruffee (1993), by engaging in this collaborative learning, students learn to construct knowledge as it is constructed by scholars in academic disciplines and professional fields. power-with student-faculty relations may also be organized through what gitlin et al. (1992) term "educative research." according to these authors, one of the reasons for the hierarchical relations between university professors and students is the former group's ability to conduct systematic research, thus giving them the "right" to define what is and what is not legitimate knowledge. gitlin et al. argue that any change away from the traditional form of relations between students and university professors must begin by involving both groups in "educative research," where both have a say in setting the agenda or topic and all have the potential to benefit and learn from the experience. generally speaking, the above alternative seeks to create synergetic, co-agency relations between students and faculty by empowering both to have a dialogical relationship that results in a critical transitivity (freire, 1973). for freire (1973), moving from naïve to critical transitivity and, thus, from "banking" to a more "liberatory" form of education can be done through an active, dialogical, critical and criticism-stimulating method. this requires a shift from traditional teaching methods that isolate and simplify particular aspects of reality to new "methods" that involve students in dialogue and coinvestigation with teachers (frankenstein, 1992). however, we should be careful not to simplify the political dynamics of power/knowledge relations in schools and universities. faculty are not totally autonomous and they alone should not be blamed for banking education and exercising power over students, nor should it be expected that they can easily change power/knowledge relations by, for example, encouraging students to participate in a dialogue. as kreisberg (1992) states, "although [faculty] are central figures of authority and control in the classroom, in the larger hierarchy of educational bureaucracy they are remarkably isolated and often strikingly powerless" (p.9). thus, we need to interpret student-faculty relations in a larger context of power relations, as a part of a complex web of power relations exercised in the educational institution and the society as a whole. efforts to change the stratification and framing of knowledge may encounter powerful resistance from those who hold positions of power. according to young (1998), "moves to 'destratify' or give equal value to different kinds of knowledge, or 'restratify' (or legitimize other criteria of evaluation), by posing a threat to the existing power structure, are likely to be resisted" (p.16). esland (1971) argues, for instance, that the problems of change and resistance to change are closely related to the social distribution of knowledge, particularly with the social distribution of expertness and its control hamood al-harthi and mark b. ginsburg december 17, 2003 10 through professional mandate, and the rules and control of communication by "accredited reality" definers. so as long as knowledge is understood as given, valued and devalued, and distributed unequally among different groups, any attempt to change the status quo of knowledge structure will be resisted. however, the existence of power relations, according to foucault (1978), depends on a multiplicity of points of resistance. so while knowledge is an instrument of power, it is also a point of resistance. this means that hegemony and power relations are not always left without resistance. instead, there is always counterhegemony (gramsci, cited in wiener, 1994). methodology methodologically, the study involved ethnographic research that was conducted by hamood al-harthi at squ during a two and half month period (january 26-april 10, 2002) and focused on students and faculty in the college of education. data collection involved thirty-five class visits, observations in computer labs and professors' offices, interviews with thirteen professors, three individual students, and four focus groups of students (each group comprising 3-4 students), having informal conversations with professors and students, and distributing and collecting open-ended questionnaires from forty students. the sample included third-year mathematics education students and third-year2 social studies students and faculty members who taught these two groups during the fieldwork period. there were forty-four third-year mathematic education students and twenty-nine social studies education students. the student sample thus potentially provided a relevant contrast between students studying and planning to teach a subject such as mathematics, which may be considered a relatively absolute and fixed form of knowledge, and students studying and planning to teach a subject such as social studies, which may be considered a more relativist and debatable form of knowledge. data were analyzed using inductive and deductive analysis approaches developed from the following sources: glaser & strauss (1967), spradley (1979), and lecompte and preissle (1993). material from observation field notes and transcripts of interviews and the open-ended questionnaires were sorted first into domains defined the above-noted three research questions. then excerpts from the material were then further sorted into sub-domains of meaning (e.g., professors as the main source of knowledge, professors controlling the definition of relevant knowledge through exams and other forms of evaluation, reasons for drawing on the internet for class assignments) based on a careful review of the field notes and transcriptions. then similarities and differences across individuals and settings were elaborated and thematic conclusions were drawn. findings the main findings indicate that the existence of the internet and even its use by professors and students in squ have not changed the structure of student-faculty relations, primarily because the internet is perceived generally as just another, lessvalued source of knowledge. the issue is not simply whether students have access to the internet and use it, but how such use is organized and evaluated in the context of student-faculty power/knowledge relations. the conditions that could make the internet a major contributor to changing traditional student-faculty power/knowledge relations were not seen in the fieldwork for this study. two of these conditions are that student-faculty power/knowledge relations: the implications of the internet in the college of education, sultan qaboos university current issues in comparative education, vol.6(1) 11 (a) the internet should be less about content and information and more about relation to content and information and (b) the internet should be a model for all people, including students and faculty, to create and disseminate knowledge. consequently, despite the fact that more than 90 percent of the students and faculty indicated they used the internet, this use was limited to receiving knowledge (often pre-defined by faculty) rather than to creating and disseminating knowledge. in addition, for the most part the internet simply shifts the place of exercising power/knowledge relations toward the web rather than changing the relations themselves toward enhancing the power/knowledge of students. for instance, the majority of students indicated that they only used the internet for their courses because professors required them to do so. in fact, most students and professors complained about the internet's lack of credibility as a source of knowledge and, accordingly, it was merely used as a supplementary text for the professor-assigned readings. instead of the internet actually changing power/knowledge relations, these relations seemed to colonize the way students and faculty used the internet and, thus, reduced any impact it might have as an independent source of knowledge. this was clear in the evaluation of knowledge, selection of knowledge, and regulation of students, processes that directly and indirectly, contributed to reducing the importance of the internet as a source of knowledge and to maintaining traditional student-faculty power/knowledge relations. for example, despite the fact that about half of the students who responded to the questionnaire ranked professors as second or third in terms of their importance as sources of knowledge below students, library, and the internet and that the required textbooks were seen as old and in need of up-dating, almost all students relied on professors and the textbooks they assigned as the main source of knowledge for the coursework. this is the case despite the availability and use of other sources of knowledge, such as the library and the internet. the primary reason for such use was because examinations were based on the content of the textbook and because the professor decided which content would be included on exams. therefore, since students viewed "valuable" sources of knowledge as those that were relevant to passing examinations, they tended to discount themselves, the library, and the internet as sources of knowledge in relation to courses (except for research papers, for which the library and the internet constituted more important sources of knowledge). most, if not all, students and many professors saw passing examinations with a high grade as the ultimate aim of attending courses and, indeed, of university attendance. because of this perception, students focused on the means to satisfy professors' requirements to pass exams and avoided behaviors that would not satisfy them. most students understood that the main requirement to pass exams was to memorize materials from the textbook and the professor's lectures. emphasizing memorization as opposed to other forms of processing knowledge (e.g., analysis and problem-solving) contributed significantly to professors' control of knowledge and students. similar to the case for memorization of the subject matter, the focus on lecturing or the "banking education" model made students passive recipients of knowledge they received from the textbooks and professors' lectures. the "banking education" model was the main, if not the only, model of teaching methods in most of the courses hamood al-harthi and mark b. ginsburg december 17, 2003 12 observed. professors selected certain knowledge to transmit through lecturing, which worked to control both knowledge and students by giving professors the space to exercise their power/knowledge over students by delivering what they (or the higher authorities) thought was appropriate for students. nevertheless, in spite of the above-summarized perceptions of faculty and student roles and of the uses of the internet, professors' control of knowledge and students were not completely unchallenged. at least some students showed different types of resistance to this control. for example: * a small number of students consulted internet sources when they did not understand or were not convinced by what the professor or the textbook said. * occasionally, in class sessions students expressed public disagreement with what the professor said what appeared in an assigned reading. * half of the students indicated in the questionnaire that they felt they were more knowledgeable than a particular professor in some aspect of the curriculum. * more than half the students considered the professor to be second or third in importance as a source of knowledge, after the internet and the library. * most students complained about professors' teaching methods, which were dominated by lecturing and projected that they would much more interactive and (even) dialogical methods when they became school teachers. conclusion despite increased access to the internet by both students and professors at squ, the banking form of education still dominates. observations and interviews detected very, very few instances of an emphasis on differentiated, but not stratified knowledge (young, 1998), power-with relations (kreisberg, 1992), collaborative learning (bruffee, 1993), educative research (gitlin et al., 1992), or critical transivity (freire, 1973). for the most part professors and students at squ continue to perform as capable (and culpable) participants in transactions through which professor-selected knowledge is deposited in varying amounts into students' heads. one might say that the internet has merely introduced the opportunity for some limited forms of electronic banking education to take place. it is important to note that some faculty members, particularly some of those who have more recently received their doctorates in england and the united states, seem open to alternative forms of faculty-student power/knowledge relations and that some students complain about (and fewer students openly resist) existing curricular and pedagogical arrangements. this suggests that the continuation of traditional faculty-student power/knowledge relations is not simply a matter of individuals' free choice, but instead reflect the existence of what foucault (1979) calls a "regime of truth." the discourses circulating within the particular regime of truth at squ are at times formalized, for example, in policy. at other times the discourses circulate more informally, though not necessarily with less resonance. for instance, squ policy states that professors at the individual and collective (i.e., department or faculty/school) levels are responsible for defining the curriculum and selecting instructional materials (e.g., textbooks) to be used in various courses. neither student-faculty power/knowledge relations: the implications of the internet in the college of education, sultan qaboos university current issues in comparative education, vol.6(1) 13 government nor university policy directly requires professors to adopt textbooks that have been negatively evaluated by faculty and students as "old" or "irrelevant." however, students are given the ("old" and "irrelevant") textbooks and told that these (along with professors' lectures) will be the main source of content for the course, i.e., what will be evaluated via examinations3. only a few professors mostly as individuals have raised the issue of changing the process of determining the curriculum and selecting instructional materials for courses, or have developed a private, individual strategy of using other handouts and encouraging students to go to the library. on the other side, students are generally complicit in this system, although at times begrudgingly, and rarely consult the internet (or library books) as an alternative to textbooks, except when they need clarification on a topic addressed in required texts and professors' lectures. another example involves the pedagogical dimension. again, while university policy requires that professors devote a certain number of hours to classroom contact with students, no government or university policy requires professors to employ lecture as their dominant and, in many cases, their only pedagogical strategy. instead, an informal discourse that circulates as a part of the "regime of truth" at squ (and many other institutions of higher education) makes lecturing the "obvious" choice, in part because it enables them to have a strong control over the knowledge transmitted in classes, while at the same time making it easier to control students. an informal discourse at squ (and elsewhere) also encourages students to celebrate lectures, at least when they effectively communicate the content knowledge that they "need" to know for successful performance on exams. the final example relates to a dimension that has already been mentioned, student evaluation. as with the curricular and pedagogical dimensions, squ policy states that professors at individual and collective (i.e., department or college/school levels) are responsible for evaluating students' academic achievement. however, neither university nor government policies require that written examinations be the only possible form of evaluation. nevertheless, most, if not all, faculty members rely heavily on examinations, which cover material from their lectures and the textbooks they assign, as their main form of evaluating students. in the relatively few cases in which other forms of student evaluations, including research papers and presentations, laboratory exercises, etc., are employed, professors still retain control of selecting and evaluating knowledge, with the internet considered of little value, if tolerated as a knowledge source at all. this (over)emphasis on examinations, of course, encourages students to focus on mastering only or primarily faculty selected knowledge something that many students view positively, if only because preparing to take such exams requires studying only a finite, pre-determined body of knowledge. this analysis of curriculum, pedagogy, and student evaluation at squ has more than technical implications. power/knowledge relations may or may not change, depending on whether those who are currently in more powerful positions recognize the need for change and come to see alternatives to the current "regime of truth." but such changes are unlikely unless these powerful agents either see advantages from such changes for themselves or come to view non-change as too destabilizing; if, for example, less powerful individuals (both faculty and students) organized, mobilized, and demanded hamood al-harthi and mark b. ginsburg december 17, 2003 14 changes in such a way to make the university "ungovernable." the findings of this study are important for policy makers and practitioners, not just those at squ but also those working in other governmental and non-governmental agencies in oman and in countries where socio-economic arrangements are similar to oman's. the overwhelming practice of power/knowledge relations and the "banking education" in squ is not helping students in squ or people in oman to deal with the new local and global challenges and opportunities, particularly those related to globalization. dealing effectively with these challenges and opportunities seems to require an education that goes beyond a focus on receiving and memorizing information defined as important by others. if university graduates and other people in the country tend to either accept or reject totally information, perspectives, etc. without thinking carefully about alternatives, let alone considering themselves as producers of new/refined ideas, they are likely to fit in with (or perhaps fall prey to) the ideas of one of two extreme groups. on the one side, there is the group of westernists who accept and try to imitate all aspects of western cultures and reject local ones. on the other side, there is a group who reacts against the "aggression" of and rejects all aspects of western cultures, instead giving primacy to local cultures, particularly in terms of religious fundamentalism. while the issues around which these groups as well as moderates, who seek to combine elements of western and local omani cultures are very complex, mentioning them in relation to faculty-student knowledge/power relations reminds us of the broader context in which "regimes of truth" operate. notes 1. despite the fact that the qur'an encourages readers to think and explore themselves and their universe, to create new ideas and inventions, and to not merely imitate inherited thoughts and actions, teaching the qur'an has mainly emphasized memorization of passages. 2. we initially planned to focus on fourth-year (senior year) mathematics education and social studies education groups to observe their teaching practice in schools, which students do in their senior year. however, the social studies program was suspended temporarily in 1998 and then restarted in 1999. therefore, at the time of the fieldwork there were no fourth-year social studies students. we dropped the plan to observe teaching practices in school and focused on third-year students as they had more experience in taking courses at squ than first or second year students. 3. government and university finance policies do have an indirect bearing on textbooks being emphasized, in that there is a line item for purchasing textbooks that are to be distributed to students free of charge. it seems that buying computers (instead of textbooks), thus expanding internet, would not violate any formal policies, but seems to be an "unthinkable" option given an informal discourse contained within the "regime of truth" at squ. student-faculty power/knowledge relations: the implications of the internet in the college of education, sultan qaboos university current issues in comparative education, vol.6(1) 15 references bernstein, b. 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(1971). an approach to the study of curricula as socially organized knowledge. in m. f. d. young (ed.), knowledge and control new directions for the sociology of education (19-45). london: collier-macmillan. young, m. f. d. (1998). the curriculum of the future: from the 'new sociology of education' to a critical theory of learning. falmer press. 1_editorial introduction current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 22, issue 1, special issue 2020 © 2020, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 22(1), 3-4. editorial introduction paula mantilla-blanco teachers college, columbia university this year marked the latest truly global challenge for education systems worldwide. the covid-19 pandemic motivated numerous calls to face urgent, unprecedented issues in the field of education, ranging from school infrastructure to unequal access to digital resources. efforts to imagine the “post-covid” world and the role of education in it have become commonplace. the challenge of envisioning education for post-covid intersects with the uncertainties of when or how such “post” will take place. but a post-pandemic world is far from being the only imagined “post” reality that shapes educational efforts in the present. this special issue of current issues in comparative education engages with questions about the temporal dimension of issue-driven programs, taking the projections into the future as an analytical tool to understand controversies in the present. tavis d. jules draws on the case of tunisia to illustrate how the concept of transitologies can be used to understand educational forms and reforms in “postspaces.” the author traces four different historical periods in tunisia and suggests that educational codings in periods of transition are framed by political and economic power. shedding light on the complexity of educational projects in post-spaces, this article offers theoretical insights into the connections between transitological and policy discourses. maryfaith mount-cors, jill gay, and rokhaya diop explore how gender equality can be addressed within schools and communities at the start of primary school in lowand middle-income countries. this article draws on the case of an early primary reading program in senegal, as well as on existing literature on gender-related issues, to discuss barriers to gender transformative approaches. the authors introduce strategies to acknowledge and address these barriers and underscore the importance of addressing gender equality in the present to ensure a future transformation. matthew gallagher and carrie bauer describe and analyze an innovative education program in the nakivale refugee settlement in uganda. this program used offline technology to provide a university-level course in agribusiness to refugee students. highlighting the ways in which this program enhanced skills such as digital literacy, the authors stress the importance of providing higher education opportunities for refugees so that, upon returning to their home countries, refugees will be better equipped to contribute to future post-conflict reconstruction efforts. seulgi kang takes an imagined post-unification korea as a scenario for testing the decentralization theory on education finance. the author conducts an analysis of the relationship between educational outcomes and education finance models in 40 oecd countries to identify whether fiscal decentralization is effective in closing the gaps between two different socio-economic communities. kang applies this analysis to make a case for a deconcentration model in a future unified korea. current issues in comparative education 4 hasnain r. badami and rubab fatima propose a pedagogical framework rooted in experiential learning and critical pedagogy. drawing on the case of a low-fee private school in pakistan, the authors introduce the 5a framework and assess the impact of implementing it in the classroom through a qualitative methodology. noting the need to prepare students for a post-information age, this model is designed to help teachers reconceptualize the purpose of education as a tool for transformation. kara d. brown, payal p. shah, and e. doyle stevick offer a relevant critique of labeling practices in the field of comparative and international education (cie). the authors note how the labels that scholars and students attach to specific places reflect power, perspective, and plurality. this article offers examples and introduces a framework to address categorization processes, advocating for a more intentional approach to labels in teaching cie. the authors put forth a pertinent invitation to question the use of the “post” prefix itself. finally, paul tarc’s timely essay on education for a post-covid-19 world closes this special issue. tarc reflects on the global transition to online education and how the challenges posed by covid-19 might shape a future return to face-to-face education. going beyond concerns about the practical implications of a return to normality, the author takes the abrupt move towards an online environment as a vantage point for reimagining face-to-face pedagogies. this issue calls attention to the multiple ways in which education is tasked with addressing – and creating – a reality that has yet to come. adding nuance to the forward-looking nature of education, this collection of articles contributes to our understanding of the temporal dimension of comparative education. paula mantilla-blanco is a doctoral fellow in international and comparative education at teachers college, columbia university, and the editor in chief of current issues in comparative education. email: plm2128@tc.columbia.edu; for cice business please contact cice@tc.columbia.edu. © 2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 125 commentary concluding remarks: the power of participation ilan kapoor faculty of environmental studies york university, canada abstract i reflect on the preceding five contributions in this issue by focusing on the power dimensions of participation. i emphasize how power underlies and frames not only the activities and management of participatory development, but also our own personal/institutional involvement as development researchers and workers. i end with some thoughts on where these inescapable power dynamics leave our engagement with participatory development. introduction "the power of participation" has two senses to it. the first points to the popularity of, and attraction to, the notion of participation. thus, in development circles these days, it would be difficult to find many organizations that are not at least trying to integrate "beneficiary participation" into policy or programming. even the world bank, once the object of severe criticism regarding its relative neglect of civil society, has taken participatory development up with enthusiasm. but such appeal should perhaps give us pause. for, "participation as empowerment" can easily slide into "participation as power." here, it can be deployed to wield authority, helping to maintain and further elite or institutional hegemony. this is the second meaning of "the power of participation," and i would like, in what follows, to tease out several of its dimensions. i will be greatly helped, in this endeavor, by the preceding analyses by adely, burde, clemons & vogt, grant lewis & naidoo, and makuwira. consensus-making power is integral to consensus-making. in my article (2002), i underline that community consensus is an insufficient indicator of participation; much depends on how that consensus is achieved. who institutes the rules of discussion and consensus-making? for what purpose? and what is the quality of the consensus reached? these are key questions for scrutinizing the power dynamics of participatory development. thus, simply consulting people, adding up individual votes, or as grant lewis & naidoo mention in the case of school governance in south africa, fastidiously following election rules without regard for the establishment or quality of deliberation among participants, impoverishes the meaning and value of participatory decision making. even with appropriate discussion rules and lively debate, there can be "micro power" processes at play. rhetorical devices sensationalist arguments, technical or esoteric language, misrepresentation of evidence, loud or aggressive speech can all unduly sway opinion or silence and intimidate participants. while often subtle, these devices may also be intentional, as when government or ngo officials bring in scientific ilan kapoor may 10, 2004 126 "experts" to speak to (read: persuade) community members about, say, the viability of a hydroelectric dam. consequently, reaching consensus is compromised when the quality of deliberation is itself compromised by power inequalities. but it is important not to take for granted the very condition of having to achieve a consensus. the concern here is not just that consensus-making may be coerced, but also that the consensus must be single. as the case studies by adely, burde, clemons & vogt, and grant lewis & naidoo all reveal, the demand for a single policy direction or decision risks stifling social plurality. it sets up an all-or-nothing equation in which some community members win and others-usually minorities or the disadvantaged--lose. it assumes a monolithic community, prescribing one formula for all women, classes or racialized/ethnicized groups, irrespective of differences, inequalities and tensions between and among these groups. in post-conflict situations, burde shows how this problem may be even more serious, "aggravat[ing] rather than assuag[ing] the social divisions that are particularly dangerous and pronounced." in all the above instances of power-induced consensus-making, the political result may well be that elites win. indeed, it is precisely the latter's socioeconomic, cultural and patriarchical power that allows them to coerce decisions or force a single consensus, so that the less privileged end up being "asked to put aside their ... goals for the sake of the common good" (grant lewis & naidoo) and poor people are effectively "excluded from the decision-making process" (makuwira; cf. burde). thus, despite the trappings of empowerment, participatory processes can end up reproducing or even advancing elite domination. managerialism "managerialism" in this context refers to the process by which participatory development is subjected to technocratic and institutional demands. for example, makuwira writes about participatory basic education in malawi, not as empowering for communities, but as a "tool for achieving better [i.e., more efficient] project outcomes." participation is thus molded to fit bureaucratic or organizational needs: people can meet, but decisions have to be taken quickly to obey budgetary or reporting deadlines; community input is good, but quantitative information (e.g., counting votes) is privileged over qualitative information (e.g., women's narratives); or, as clemons and vogt state, participation takes place, but it is supported by insufficient technical and financial capacity, or is even used instrumentally to "legitimize the implementing agency as 'grassroots oriented'." in this scheme of things, participation is "managed" (adely; grant lewis & naidoo) and "institutionalized" (in the same way that mental patients are said to be); it becomes "tokenistic," with the alleged beneficiaries treated "largely [as] objects rather than subjects" (makuwira). but managerialism can be more than just bureaucratization. indeed, if institutions merely pay lip-service to beneficiary involvement, if they hijack participation for organizational needs, then what really matters is not whether or not participation works, but whether it helps improve and advance the organization (cf. ferguson, 1990). under the managerialist cloak, then, participation stands far from community empowerment, wherein facilitating organizations are meant to work themselves out of a job; it stands, concluding remarks: the power of participation current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 127 rather, for the aggrandizement of institutional authority. such a stance is particularly ominous in the context of foreign "aid": for, participation can be deployed to become yet another western conditionality, a further means to make demands, or perhaps even exact penalties, on communities in the third world. panopticism faced with these decidedly negative dimensions of participation, it is not surprising, as adely points out, that some communities have resisted being part of participatory development projects. but what if, with enough persistence on the part of the "facilitating" organization, such resistance eventually gives way to acquiescence, conscious or unconscious? this indeed is the import of foucault's notion of "panopticism" (1984, p. 239), whereby the surveillance of people in modern societies (for example, in the form of tv monitoring, the creation of social security "dossiers," or more recently, "security assessments") is so pervasive that people, even those who do not like it, end up internalizing it. the inherently public character of participation makes such panopticism more than a possibility. makuwira speaks of the "supervision" of community schools by a host of officials village leaders, village committees, district education officers, ngos, teachers; and adely and burde quote evidence of project beneficiaries feeling obliged, under the scrutiny of government officials and neighbors, to give only the "official story." rather than fostering information exchange and free debate, then, participation in this case stifles, censors, disciplines or silences participants, particularly those who are already disadvantaged. while communities may initially dislike or be suspicious of participatory development, it is not inconceivable that, gradually, they develop an "interest" in participation: ngo or government officials may find it helps "monitor" the community; husbands/fathers may use it to keep a tab on their wives/children; elites may see in it an opportunity for keeping dissent in check; and everyone may enjoy it for its production of gossip and rumor about friends and neighbors. eventually, to follow foucault's logic, each community member could end up self-disciplining, that is, internalizing the political, social, cultural and patriarchical dos and don'ts. panopticism gives a bizarrely menacing twist to the practice of "participatory monitoring and evaluation" (mentioned by makuwira). intended for the community to assess its own participatory efforts, the practice would translate, under a panoptic lens, into a community "monitoring itself monitor"! although of course extreme, this surveillance of surveillance places participatory development squarely in the camp of 1984. self-implication but what about our own participation in participation (as academics, researchers, or development workers)? given the imbrication of elite and institutional interests with participatory development, what is our own "interest" in it? as gayatri chakravorty spivak (1988) argues, we are all inevitably part of institutions (academic, developmentrelated) that have their own class, geopolitical and organizational demands; so when we ilan kapoor may 10, 2004 128 carry out research or do field work on participation, we cannot pretend to have "pure" or "objective" motivations (kapoor, 2004). there is an unmistakable self-righteousness and benevolence that is part of the culture of development, at least in part due to the pervasive notion that "we" are helping "them." as adely intimates, such self-congratulation may well be more pronounced when it comes to participatory development, given the "progressive" connotation imputed to "empowerment." yet, the bureaucratic imperatives described earlier, as well as such constraints as research grant deadlines, the need to receive high grades, pleasing thesis committees, defending one's research/organizational "turf," and tenure/ promotion pressures to publish or perish all these tarnish development "assistance" and the pursuit of knowledge. it is problematic, then, to flash participatory development as a badge or romanticize our involvement in it. innocently or benevolently claiming that one is helping a third world community become participatory, for example, is not only self-aggrandizing but also risks perpetuating elite, panoptic or institutional power, all at the expense of the disadvantaged. (i cannot help but draw parallels here with the current u.s. and british governments' triumphalist claims of "bringing freedom" to iraq.) one of the ultimate ironies of participatory development is that we may well be asking more of third world communities than we ask of ourselves. molenaers and renard (2003) report, for instance, that world bank poverty reduction schemes in bolivia not only make civil society involvement a condition of aid, but also have such high expectations of participation as to be unrealistic. yet, how many of our own poverty reduction programmes in the west, or indeed political, social, educational or work institutions, are participatory in the way that we desire participatory development to be? very few, if any, i imagine. i am not arguing that participation programs in third world communities should be held to any lower a standard than in the west (or southern metropolitan centers). but when public participation over "there" becomes a conditionality or is unduly ambitious relative to "here," then it is suspiciously disciplinary. when we have such high expectations of the marginalized third world "other," we are probably doing one or all of the following: (i) trying to control and "manage" disadvantaged communities (in ways that have already been discussed above); (ii) projecting and compensating for our own inadequacies (e.g., lack of meaningful citizen participation in liberal democracies); and (iii) using the third world as our laboratory, that is, experimenting on marginalized communities for our own edification and perfectibility. in all such cases, participation is once again but a ploy, a decidedly powerful instrument. i thus whole-heartedly identify with adely's students in their "soul searching" vis-à-vis the dilemmas of participatory development. i would add, though, that it is important not just that we soul search about participation "over there," but that we reverse the anthropological gaze to also ask about our own (personal, historical/colonial, geopolitical, gendered, socioeconomic, cultural, institutional) implications and stakes in participation. conclusion: what to do? concluding remarks: the power of participation current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 129 my point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. if everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. so my position leads not to apathy but to a hyperand pessimistic activism." (foucault, 1984, p. 343) indeed, my point in teasing out some of the many power (and often highly negative) dimensions of participatory development is not to say that it is evil, but that it is dangerous. the idea is not to "write off" participation, as some of adely's students suspect critics of participatory development have done, but to develop a healthy skepticism about it, or as burde characterizes it, "to note that it is a complex tool that can be manipulated in multiple ways." developing an interest in, perhaps even a good deal of political commitment to, participation (viz. "participation as empowerment") is important; but it is equally significant to be aware that these may be vested and interested (viz. "participation as power"). on the one hand, this awareness means developing a scrupulous vigilance to the power of participation in its many, changing forms (personal, institutional, etc., as well as old and new). but on the other, once identified, the idea in my view is not to try and eliminate power (i don't think one can), but to try and minimize its oppressive and unequal effects by opening it up for collective and democratic contestation and debate. this may be a monumental and tension-filled task, especially given such obstinate problems as class and gender inequalities; but such are the challenges of participatory development. they mean that "we always have something to do." acknowledgement my thanks to kent murnaghan, as always. references ferguson, j. (1990) the anti-politics machine: development, depoliticization and bureaucratic power in lesotho. cambridge: cambridge university press. foucault, m. (1984). the foucault reader, p. rainbow (ed.). new york: pantheon. kapoor, i. (2002). the devil's in the theory: a critical assessment of robert chambers' work on participatory development. third world quarterly, 23(1), 101-117. kapoor, i. (2004). hyper-self-reflexive development? spivak on representing the third world 'other'. third world quarterly, 25(4), 627-647. molenaers, n. & renard, r. (2003). the world bank, participation and prsp: the bolivian case revisited. european journal of development research, 15(2), 133-161. spivak, g.c. (1988). can the subaltern speak? in c. nelson & l. grossberg (eds.), marxism and interpretation of culture. chicago: university of illinois press. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 28 december 1, 2000 standing education on its head: aspects of schooling in a world with hiv/aids michael j. kelly school of education, university of zambia introduction hiv/aids has radically transformed the world, including the world of education. the content, structures and programs that responded to the needs of a world without aids no longer suffice in a world with aids. this appears in the way school participation can enhance the risk of hiv infection. it also surfaces in the way school efforts to deal with hiv/aids in a traditional way, as part of the school curriculum, have failed to meet their objectives. these and other factors necessitate a radical re-thinking of educational provision. an initial step in this direction would be for the formal school system to incorporate some of the participatory features of non-formal education, with emphasis on the involvement of young people at all stages. when society encounters a problem affecting the young, it tends to turn to its schools, and ask what they are doing about it. for example, many say that schools should teach more practical skills, so that young people will be more employable upon completion of their school programs. it is further apparent in the way many societies require schools to give more attention to the teaching of values with a view to arresting the decline in moral standards. in relation to hiv/aids, the same tendency appears with schools expected to communicate knowledge, instill values and promote behaviors that will enable students to protect themselves against hiv infection. these expectations are legitimate given that, in the absence of a vaccine, other preventions involve some learning and some relatively permanent change in behavior arising from a communication process. what is common among messages about abstinence, safe sex, fidelity to one partner, reducing the number of sexual partners, protecting against vertical (mother to child) hiv transmission and using clean needles is that they must be communicated to and incorporated by the individual if they are to be acted upon. in other words, there must be some teaching and learning. this being so, it seems reasonable to expect that the school as society's most formal teaching-learning institution should play a very active role in the communication of messages about hiv/aids. yet there are reasons for caution. first, schools are not idyllic hiv-free institutions. they have their own problems with the disease. second, they manifest such inadequacies in incorporating it realistically into the curriculum that one might ask whether they should even try to do so. addressing the role of schools with respect to this disease is simply one component of the difficult question of education in an hiv/aids dominated society. the world has not been the same since hiv/aids made its first appearance in the late 1970s and early 1980s. neither can education be the same. yet there has been very little recognition of this change. existing responses to the way the epidemic interacts with education, standing education on its head: aspects of schooling in a world with hiv/aids current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 29 especially through the schooling system, have been piecemeal. although there has been considerable tinkering around the edges, this has not been accompanied by great efforts to re-examine education in its entirety, or to ask whether, as currently conceived and provided, education can meet expectations that it be a potent force for gaining control over hiv/aids. in some settings, the education system may have undergone the equivalent of a somewhat botched varicose veins operation. in none has it been given the heart transplant that it really needs. this paper argues that hiv/aids stands education on its head. education in a world with aids must be different from education in an aids free world. the content, process, methodology, role and organization of school education in a world with hiv/aids must be radically altered. the entire educational edifice must be dismantled. every brick must be examined, and where necessary, re-shaped before it is used in a new structure that has not yet been designed. the new structure will almost certainly incorporate a number of aspects of non-formal education provision. it seems likely that it will also be more community-based, with the traditional school replaced by a community-based service organization which will provide not only education but other services as well. recognizing that the very structures of current educational provision may enhance the risks of hiv infection for school students and teachers in a country with high levels of hiv prevalence points clearly to the need for some such radical restructuring of education. the difficulties in using the current education paradigm to induce behavior that ensures that the learner remains hiv free underscores the same need for change. there are other pointers--the aids mortality and morbidity of teachers who work in a person-intensive industry that is dominated by a virtually unchanging methodology of one teacher before a class of twenty to fifty students; the erosion of managerial staff and the consequent loss of the experience on which their management was built; the aidsrelated incapacity of the traditional education system to accommodate the poor; the entrenchment by educational systems, as socializing organs of society, of the very disempowerment that renders girls and women highly vulnerable to hiv infection; the inability of education as traditionally provided to respond to the special conditions of an unimaginably large number of orphans and vulnerable children; the divorce between schools primly going about their customary teaching business and the aids-related horrors, violence and destitution in communities--all of these social dilemmas demand the restructuring of education. these issues deserve thought. though raised here, they are not considered any further in this article. our concerns, rather, are with the hiv risks of schooling and with some of the underlying reasons for the problems related to the inclusion of hiv/aids in the curriculum. studies recently undertaken on behalf of the economic commission for africa on the impact of the epidemic on education in a number of african countries have highlighted many of these risks and problems. these issues were also raised at the "education for all 2000" conference held in johannesburg in december 1999 and subsequently at the world education forum in dakar in april 2000 (uneca, 2000; kelly, 2000). the problems schools experience are also frequently alluded to in program evaluations that seek to incorporate hiv/aids and reproductive health into school michael j. kelly 30 december 1, 2000 curricula (macintyre et al., 2000), but these allusions should be combined to see that they constitute a formidable problem. an appreciation of the extent of this problem will make it possible to be realistic about what schools can and cannot accomplish in the field of hiv prevention. the vulnerability of school children to hiv infection age-related data in various african countries regularly show aids cases at their lowest for boys and girls between the ages of five and 14. because of mother-to-child transmission they are higher in children below the age of five, and after the age of 14 they increase very rapidly, especially for girls. because of the low occurrence of aids among those aged 5-14 many regard these children as a "window of hope." programs targeted at this group are thought to provide a special opportunity to prevent infections and reduce transmission of the disease (unaids, june, 2000). however, a number of circumstances relating to the way schools are organized and managed increase the risk of hiv infection for students, teachers and the community in which the school is embedded. first, school participation for children aged 5-14 is not risk-free. indeed, as the following considerations show, in many cases it may increase the risk. if there are many more aids and aids-related cases among those aged 15-19 than among those aged 5-14, this can only be because in many cases the hiv infection which must precede has occurred well before the individual reached age 15. in much of the developing world (where the aids crisis strikes hardest), those attending primary school are of mixed ages. because many children begin school late, they are older than they should be for their grade. this situation is compounded by the common practice of repeating one or more grades. in many countries it can be expected that at least half of those in primary school will have repeated at least one year, thereby extending the within-class age range (nkamba & kanyika, 1998). this management and organizational feature means that the same class may contain pupils ranging from the sexually naive and innocent to the knowledgeable and experienced. being at school did not provide any protection. compounding the problem of mixed ages, many primary and junior secondary school children are already sexually active. somewhere between ages ten and thirteen, the majority of boys and girls reach puberty, but there are indications from various parts of the world that the age of initial sexual awareness and experience has fallen considerably and that it continues to do so. reports abound of pregnancies in pre-teenage girls. almost half the primary school children in malawi are reported to be sexually active (domatob & tabifor, 2000). there is evidence from zambia of considerable sexual activity among street children, boys and girls, aged eight or less (uneca, 2000). additionally, children in primary schools and adolescents receive very little help from their parents or other adults about sexual and reproductive health issues. there is almost no communication about these matters in the homes of children in africa and asia. left to grapple with them on their own, young people turn to one another both in and out of school for information, standards and some modicum of guidance. this aspect of the peer culture replaces the support that otherwise responsible adults fail to provide. standing education on its head: aspects of schooling in a world with hiv/aids current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 31 furthermore, the lack of adult communication about sexual and reproductive health issues is of particular concern when one considers that many school children are in danger of sexual harassment. reports are escalating about the extent of sexual abuse of children, especially girls, in the 5-14 age group (smart, 1999). the abusers are rarely complete strangers to the child--in many cases the abusers are members of the child's family. in the process of the abuse, many children become infected with hiv and potential transmitters of infection to their schoolmates or teachers. school circumstances may aggravate such dangers. the need to pay school fees may lead young girls from poor families into the sale of sexual favors. intense competition for academic success and progression to the next higher educational level may lead to sexual relationships (heterosexual or homosexual) with teachers or brighter fellowstudents. long walking distances to and from a school that is located far from one's home, and traveling always by the same route, contribute to the risk of sexual harassment from school-mates or from strangers. yet, providing term-time boarding or hostel accommodation for young, sexually active students who receive almost no guidance or support in a form that speaks to them can increase the risk that they will engage in sexual activity with one another or with individuals from the surrounding community. in a number of african countries such as tanzania, kenya, malawi and zambia, the practice of "weekly boarding" aggravates the boarding risk. weekly boarders arrive at a school on a sunday evening or monday morning, bringing with them food supplies for the following five days. they make their own accommodation arrangements, do their own cooking, and supervise themselves. on friday evenings they return to their homes to replenish their food supplies. the need for food, accommodation, security, recreation, pleasure and exploration or experimentation makes the weekly boarders susceptible to sexual activities with members of the local community or with one another. the increased risks and teaching problems cited above are likely to be more severe in countries that already experience high rates of hiv prevalence. in other words, where the challenges are greatest, school risks are highest and the capacity to deliver prevention messages is weakest. the vulnerability of teachers to hiv infection if schools expose children to the possibility of increased sexual activity, and consequently, to hiv infection, they may be organized in such a way that they also expose teachers to similar risks. it is well known that those who are highly mobile, such as truck-drivers, or those who are part of a migratory labor force, such as farm, plantation and mine workers in many parts of the world, are more vulnerable than others to hiv infection. although those who work in education are not usually regarded as mobile or migratory, teachers and other education personnel may share some of the hiv infection risks of more mobile workers. two factors accentuate the risk of casual sexual encounters and hence of hiv infection: distance away from home and family, and access to income, albeit small sums. in each of the following situations, teachers or education officials may experience increased vulnerability to hiv infection. michael j. kelly 32 december 1, 2000 in almost all african countries trainee teachers posted to a school for practice teaching usually have to make their own temporary accommodation arrangements. many teachers, finding themselves posted to schools with little by way of institutional accommodation, must search for suitable housing. until they have found accommodations, their families cannot join them. these circumstances are much the same for education officials who are transferred from one location to another without adequate provision made for their families to accompany them from the outset (this is not unique to education but happens in most areas of public sector employment in many african countries). teachers in rural schools in many parts of asia and africa often have to travel long distances, for a considerable length of time away from home, to pick up their monthly pay-checks. education personnel are sent frequently on training courses that last from a few weeks to a few years. in the majority of cases, spouses may accompany them on a program that lasts for more than one year. however, they are separated generally from their spouses and families if the program lasts for less than a year. the absence of family, loneliness, and the availability of some money combine to make them vulnerable to casual sex (or quasi-steady temporary relationships) and hiv infection. difficulties in including hiv/aids education in the curriculum in the southern african countries discussed above few schools come to grips with issues of sexuality. they tend to displace to more superficial concerns the attention that would be more profitably devoted to this area. in practice this means that in many high-risk developing countries, schools do little to help their pupils increase their understanding and change their behavior in order to manage their emerging sexuality responsibly. that said, several countries among those hardest hit by the aids pandemic have adapted their school curriculum to include hiv/aids education, or are in the process of doing so, in the expectation that this will help stem the tide of hiv transmission. in some cases, family life or sex education programs have promoted positive adolescent reproductive health benefits and behaviors (gachuhi, 1999, p. 12). the information and skills acquired by young people in these cases helped them to delay the initiation of sexual activity. yet at their present level of development, the uneca 2000 studies suggest that programs such as life skills, family life, reproductive health, sexual, or hiv/aids education encounter a number of problems related to design and implementation, and raise certain questions. first, the design of these programs may be faulty. programs appear to have been developed from the top, with minimal participation of classroom teachers, parents, and young people themselves. in addition, program delivery is almost exclusively in the hands of teachers, again with minimal involvement of parents and young people. this approach has the effect of assimilating the life skills programs into other curriculum areas that too often have little relevance or reality outside the classroom. thus, although the programs seem to provide young people with better factual information, this does not lead to the necessary changes in behavior. also, uganda, zambia and other african countries report that both teachers and students express a strong desire to have life skills and hiv/aids education as examinable subjects. this suggests that much may be going into the head, but little into the heart. finally, the majority of the programs target older children, those aged nine and upwards. in light of what has already been said about the standing education on its head: aspects of schooling in a world with hiv/aids current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 33 enhanced hiv risks of school children, this is too late. programs should target children at an early age, from the day they enter school. in many countries, responsibility for the program and its components appears to rest almost entirely with the education ministry. there is very little evidence of collaboration with other partners (except in some cases with ministries of health), with nongovernmental organizations (ngos) or community based organizations (cbos), or with the private sector. the much-vaunted multi-sectoral approach as a crucial component in a comprehensive hiv/aids response is conspicuously absent. none of the programs seeks to contextualize messages about hiv/aids within the cultural discourse of traditional ideas and perceived traditions. hence, they do not acknowledge and build on the understanding and beliefs of those they seek to influence (kippax, smith & aggleton, 2000). although there is some evidence that programs may lead to delays in the onset of sexual activities, the extent to which they lead to a reduction in hiv transmission, sexually transmitted diseases (stds), rape or coerced sex has not been evaluated. very few programs go so far as to include in the design a reduction in hiv/aids incidence among learners as one of their performance indicators. in the current aids crisis, this is the bottom line. second, there are many problems with program implementation. as mentioned, at first sight some programs appear to be successful. but where they should really count, they are less effectual. most often bio-medical topics and barrier methods of hiv prevention appear to be presented in their own right, without a corresponding effort made to promote an understanding of relationships, respect for the other, and rights. this has led to a tendency to equate prevention with the proper use of condoms. presenting the biomedical and mechanistic aspects outside the context of the learner's developing sexuality runs the risk of focusing attention on these aspects, and the factual knowledge involved, as if these provided the complete answer to hiv transmission. at the same time, many programs seem to downplay the potential of abstinence as a means for preventing hiv transmission. by doing so, they not only fail to challenge their students, but they also adopt a defeatist attitude towards what they regard as the inevitability of sexual activity among young people. among teachers, there is a widespread problem relating to teacher knowledge, understanding and commitment. this is further complicated by the lengthy cascade model2 for training serving teachers, by legitimate concerns about the dilution and even misrepresentation of content, and by the teacher's dubious status as a role model when she or he may be known to be hiv infected. teachers question their role in this form of education. they have "anxiety concerns" and "resistance concerns." anxiety concerns refer to fears of violating taboos, giving offence to parents, being accused of encouraging promiscuity and loose moral practices in the young, or being regarded as using their teaching in this area as a form of personal sexual outlet. resistance concerns relate to doubts whether sex education, the formation of appropriate sexual attitudes, and the transmission of very specific behavioral guidelines really belong to their work as teachers when their whole training and orientation were directed towards what are essentially academic areas. michael j. kelly 34 december 1, 2000 hiv/aids education and the cultural context programs that include hiv/aids in the curriculum face the problem that their listeners hear messages at different levels. first they hear the educational program itself with its scientific messages about the cause of hiv/aids and how it is transmitted. this tends to be an academic, notional level, where messages are received and stored for subsequent action within the context of the scientific, academic, modern, western world. as it relates to personal behavior, this may be quite a superficial level. much deeper and more influential is the traditional view that interprets the disease and its causes in terms of the cultural world of taboos, obligations, and sorcery. sickness and disease are almost invariably considered to have external causes other than the viruses, germs and microbes identified by medical science. very often, the external cause is thought to be an ill-willed, malevolent human agent who uses the powers and forces that are at the disposal of a witch or sorcerer. the external cause can also lie with ancestral spirits who are offended by the violation of certain taboos. this can include having intercourse with a woman before she has been "cleansed," and/or with a woman who has had a miscarriage, or failing to observe certain rituals (such as the "cleansing" by a man of his brother's widow). in the case of hiv/aids, this traditional interpretation of a sickness and its causes draws strength from the inability of western science to produce a complete cure. the deep-rooted view that sorcery and witchcraft are the root causes of hiv/aids manifests itself not just among rural people, but also among those from urban and well-to-do settings. the educated are no strangers to it. neither are those who adhere to the major world religious traditions. individuals from all classes and categories seek to discover the source of the ill-will that brought them their sickness, in the belief that once this cause has been identified appropriate remedial action can be taken. none of the educational programs takes this cultural perspective into account. none of them seeks to interpret hiv infection in terms "not of the malevolence of external witches but rather the witchcraft ('evil') that is within each one (…) for in african belief, all persons, inasmuch as they have propensity to wrongdoing, are potentially witches" (magesa, 2000, p.82). no educational program is known in eastern and southern africa that takes sorcery/witchcraft seriously and uses this world-view in strengthening school children to protect themselves against hiv infection. no attempt appears to have been made to take account of the positive role that traditional healers can play in the fight against hiv/aids. in consequence there is a lamentable lack of headway, with the frequent complaint that wide diffusion of knowledge about hiv/aids is not leading to any correspondingly wide change in behavior. hiv/aids and sexuality in addition to the obstacles noted above, one of the most critical problems that hiv/aids education poses for schools is that educators, in common with the education systems to which they belong, tend to shy away from dealing with the basic, existential issues of child and adolescent sexuality. in so far as they broach this subject at all, they remain content for the greater part with an abstract presentation of themes and principles, a rigid presentation of true propositions, and an enumeration of biological and physiological facts. the perspective is that of genitality--the particularized, physical standing education on its head: aspects of schooling in a world with hiv/aids current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 35 consummation of the all-encompassing energy that lies within each human being--but not of a sexuality that involves the human drive for love, communion, community, friendship, family, self-perpetuation, joy, humor and self-transcendence. in this process, many educators remain unaware that there is an enormous communication gap. they do not perceive that the young people they work with think differently from themselves. the educator can present much information on dangers and high-risks. some may provide an authoritarian list of "do's and don'ts." some may even try to use fear to motivate the young person to adopt sexually safe behavior. yet these approaches, which are characteristic of methods in a traditional school setting, fail to speak to young people. consequently, they do not share the potential of non-formal approaches to enter into dialogue with the underlying cultural imperatives which motivate young people from within more powerfully than anything the educator may propose from without. these underlying cultural demands and expressions are contained in social pressures and cultural contradictions. socially, they manifest themselves in the power of peer pressure and the group, and the need for young people to conform and belong. moreover, parental failure to discuss sex with their children, teaches an implicit message: that sex is something which should not be discussed across ages, between adults and the young, but only between the young themselves, as equals. the usual socialization process teaches boys that they must be "physically strong, emotionally robust, daring and virile," and that they should not depend on others, worry about their health, or seek help when they face problems (unaids, march 2000). for a girl, the socialization process teaches her that her principal role in life is to meet the physical, psychological, economic and sexual needs of a man, to be obedient to him and to show him unquestioning loyalty, to bear and rear his children, and to arrange for his comfort. finally, abstinence is discouraged because of the widespread disbelief in the possibility of total sexual abstinence, particularly among boys (and there is even some suspicion and concern when there are signs of such abstinence). cultural contradictions abound. among them, there is the veneer of "respectable," approved sexual behavior encountered in society, while it is common knowledge that large numbers of adults are following a different sexual code. more overtly, different standards exist for different genders. as a result, social expectations condone in men and boys what they condemn in women and girls. society often condones or overlooks forced sex, at least as long as it does not exceed certain legally defined limits. there is widespread and more-or-less accepted violence against women and girls. finally, an enormous mix of cultural values and counter-values send confusing messages. this is embodied in the weakening and progressive demise of traditional cultural systems, the simultaneous importing of systems in which immediate pleasurable gratification assumes a dominant role, and the entertainment industry's presentation of situations and role models which give prominence to temporary relationships and casual sex. alongside the dilemmas listed above, another is created because society has failed to inculcate the real value of human sexuality--contact with and surrender to the personality, not merely to the body of the partner. society fails to appreciate that inadequate enculturation and socialization must be transformed into respect for the michael j. kelly 36 december 1, 2000 other as a person whose rights must be respected and towards whom responsibility must be manifested. the way forward these observations point to the need for considerable re-thinking of education's curriculum response to hiv/aids. weak links in the current response are at program design and delivery stages. neither draws sufficiently on such demonstrated strengths of many non-formal education programs as the involvement of parents, significant community members, or community youth members. both rely too heavily on a centralized approach and on the teacher as the provider of information and developer of attitudes. yet because of a lack of expertise and training, because of personal sensitivities, and because of remoteness in age and mind-set from younger people, the teacher may not be the appropriate person for this role. in addition, little if any provision is made at the program design and delivery stages for the deeper aspects of human sexuality, traditional approaches, or youth culture. in the light of these issues, the way forward would seem to require close attention to the following points: • involving young people in program design and delivery, with a firm focus on promoting peer education. • involving community members, especially local and religious leaders, parents, and youths with standing among their peers, in content specification and delivery; drawing heavily on the resources of two different cultures-the quasimodern youth culture and the traditional culture of as region or people. • using participatory methods and experiential learning techniques. • approaching sexual and reproductive health education from the broader perspective of human sexuality and accommodating the physiological details within this as part of a more comprehensive whole. • providing more of a challenge to the idealism of young people (including "making abstinence cool"). • developing a learning climate that firmly and frequently re-affirms the principles of respect, responsibility and rights. those education programs that include these considerations stand a good chance of being successful in enabling young people to maintain or adopt behavior that will protect them against hiv infection. but if they are to do this they must deal with issues about which school programs are too often silent, and they must adopt design and delivery models which are foreign to school education as currently conceived. yet, some of these considerations are integral to programs targeting out-of-school youth. these programs tend to be characterized by the prominent role they accord to young people as peer educators. because the education is not coming from an outside body, but from contemporaries or the peers themselves, it is more readily assimilated into the peer culture and norms. in other words, the approach recognizes the powerful socializing influence that youth have over each other and seeks to win the potency of peer pressure over to its side. standing education on its head: aspects of schooling in a world with hiv/aids current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 37 the first tentative steps, therefore, in the radical transformation of school education could be to learn from and put in practice the positive lessons coming from hiv/aids education programs addressed to out-of-school youth in non-formal settings. it is approaches such as these that in-school hiv/aids education programs must adopt if they are to help reduce the risk situation inherent in educational institutions and equip their students to protect themselves against hiv infection when they leave school. notes 1. the harvard aids review (1995) dramatically highlights the vulnerability of mobile workers in india. 2. the cascade model refers to a training system that relies on the teaching of new material to trainers who train new trainers, who in turn, repeat the process, expanding skills in a 'cascade-like' fashion among the target population. 3. dan richey, louisiana state coordinator for governor's program on abstinence, new orleans time picayune, 31st august, 2000. references domatob, a., & tabifor, h. (2000). the impact of hiv/aids on the education sector in malawi [commissioned country report for united nations economic commission for africa]. (uneca). addis ababa: uneca. gachuhi, d. (1999). the impact of hiv/aids on education systems in the eastern & southern africa region and the response of education systems to hiv/aids: life skills programs. paper presented to all sub-saharan africa conference on education for all 2000, december 6-10, johannesburg, south africa. kelly, m. j. (2000). the encounter between hiv/aids and education. harare: unesco subregional office for southern africa (also available in french as l'éducation face au vih/sida). kippax, s., smith, g., & aggleton, p. (2000). schools, sex and hiv-prevention. paper presented at the xiiith international aids conference, durban, july 2000. magesa, l. (2000). recognizing the reality of african religion in tanzania. in j. f. keenan. (ed.) catholic ethicists on hiv/aids prevention (pp. 76-84). new york: continuum international publishing group. macintyre, k. et al. (2000). assessment of life skills programs. a study of secondary schools in durban metro and mtunzini magisterial districts. durban: tulane university/population council/university of natal. michael j. kelly 38 december 1, 2000 nkamba, m., & kanyika, j. (1998). the quality of education: some policy suggestions based on a survey of schools [sacmeq policy research report no. 5]. paris: international institute for educational planning. smart, r. (1999). children living with hiv/aids in south africa: a rapid appraisal. pretoria: department of health and save the children (uk). unaids. (2000). men and aids a gendered approach. geneva: unaids unaids (june, 2000). epifact sheets by country. [online]. available at: http://www.unaids.org/hivaidsinfo/statistics/june00/fact_sheets/index.html. uneca (united nations economic commission for africa) (2000). hiv/aids and education in eastern and southern africa: the leadership challenge and the way forward [paper commissioned for the african development forum, december 2000]. addis ababa: uneca. © 2005 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(1) 51 commentary social entrepreneurs and education j. gregory dees fuqua school of business, duke university when i was first approached about an issue of cice devoted to the topic of social entrepreneurs and education, i was encouraged by the interest in a topic that has been the focus of my work for the past decade, but curious about the kinds of papers that might be submitted. social entrepreneurship is still very new to the academic world, especially outside of business and public policy schools. academic attention to this "field" is only about a decade old. most courses and research efforts were started in the past five years, with the vast majority occurring in business schools. only recently has this topic been attracting the attention of scholars in disciplines such as education, public health, and social work. outside of business schools, initial reactions are often mixed and occasionally negative. people dedicated to social issues can be put off by the connotations of the term "entrepreneur," especially because of its association with business. business is often seen as part of the problem, not the solution. it is not unusual for the concept of "social entrepreneurship" to raise the specter of market hegemony. the concept may also bring to mind the worst aspects of business, forms of abuse and exploitation that can accompany the pursuit of profits. since my work was cited in the call for papers for this issue, i have been given the honor of making some closing comments. overall, i want to congratulate the authors and the editors for balancing constructive, inquisitive, and critical perspectives. the work presented here should advance our thinking about social entrepreneurship in general, not just in the world of education. the four papers that made it into this issue are encouraging and thought provoking. they suggest that there is a positive role for social entrepreneurship in education, but they also raise a number of important issues and tensions that need to be addressed, as this construct gets further refined, developed, and extended into new domains. the case studies from bangladesh and thailand illustrate the potential power of social entrepreneurs to identify opportunities to make a difference and to use their social resources to pursue these opportunities effectively, often under adverse conditions. sperandio's analysis of four examples illustrates the wide variations that exist among social entrepreneurs even in a single country working on similar problems. these cases differ in their strategies for achieving impact and their strategies for attracting resources to support their work. they will also differ in the magnitude and sustainability of their impact. su and muenning construct a richly detailed study of social entrepreneurs addressing the educational needs of shan burmese refugees in thailand. this depiction offers deep j. gregory dees 52 december 1, 2005 insights into entrepreneurial resourcefulness and adaptability. one of the remarkable skills of entrepreneurs in any sector is their ability to draw on social connections and other intangible assets to mobilize the tangible resources (money, people, facilities, etc.) that they need to carry out their work. they persuade others to contribute resources and are creative in getting the most out of the resources they mobilize. entrepreneurs also constantly innovate and adapt to changing circumstances and needs. yai and noi, the two social entrepreneurs in this case, provide powerful illustrations of these entrepreneurial virtues. both of these case-based papers also raise intriguing questions for further research. one question concerns the tension between crafting specific localized solutions and generating scalable ideas that have the potential to address social needs on a widespread basis. needs are often much greater than any one local effort can address, but it can be difficult to achieve scale with solutions that are tailored to local conditions. this question of scale is particularly challenging for social entrepreneurs. another question concerns the sustainability of new, resource-constrained initiatives, especially those that challenge the status quo. keeping promising social ventures alive long enough to create sustainable impact is no easy task. it is a matter of finding the right operating model and resource strategy. sustainability and scalability are two cardinal issues on which we need more rigorous research. while the two remaining papers approach the topic from a more critical perspective, both are highly instructive and should help move the discussion of social entrepreneurship forward. by juxtaposing social entrepreneurship with social justice activism in the context of malawi, sharra reminds us that social entrepreneurship alone is not a substitute for activism. fortunately, many social entrepreneurs are recognizing that effecting social change requires advocacy and in some cases the creation of a social movement, not just launching a social venture. these approaches are not substitutes, but can be complementary to one another. sharra also raises questions about the fragmentation and decentralization that can come from various individuals and nongovernmental organizations (ngos) pursuing their own entrepreneurial solutions with little coordination. one of the virtues of social entrepreneurship is that it permits different experiments to be conducted in the search for better ways of serving social needs, such as education. the challenge is how to spread effective ideas and practices when they are discovered. if social entrepreneurship is about achieving impact, as i have argued elsewhere, then many social entrepreneurs will have to find ways to join with others to share useful knowledge and act in common cause to trigger broader social change. we do not have to choose between social entrepreneurship and social activism; we should encourage and equip citizens to do both. both of these paths are best served when grounded in live experience, as sharra recommends. though he does not study social entrepreneurs, i am certain he would find that many of them pursue visions grounded in lived experience. both sharra's article and the intriguing essay by humphries and grant express reservations about the term "entrepreneur" because of its link to a corporate, business, and market ethos. together they raise the issue of how we can embrace "social entrepreneurship" without turning all human relations into crass market transactions. in social entrepreneurs and education current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 53 the end, humphries and grant strike a hopeful note, but i want to address this concern further. as noted by these authors, i have been quite explicit in my rejection of the definition of social entrepreneurs that focuses only on the use of commercial methods. while some social entrepreneurs will find a commercial approach well suited to their purposes, others will not. markets have their limits and, as we have seen in the case studies offered in the two other papers, there are many ways for social entrepreneurs to structure their organizations and relationships in order to achieve their intended social impact. however, i am certainly more comfortable with the connotations of the term "entrepreneur" than these authors. the term "social entrepreneur" is not meant to convey the mindset common to large business corporations. entrepreneurs, even in business, are the subversives. by "reforming or revolutionizing the pattern of production," as economist joseph schumpeter put it, they are the agents of "creative destruction"--out with the old and in with the new. howard stevenson, a professor of entrepreneurship at harvard, explicitly contrasts them with "administrators" who preserve the status quo. entrepreneurs may be part of what habermas calls "the system," as humphries and grant suggest, but they are not corporate or bureaucratic. they promote change within the system, and some of them actively work to change the system. yes, most business entrepreneurs are concerned about profit. without it they cannot survive. but for many entrepreneurs this is not the primary motivation. by marrying the concept of entrepreneurship with the word "social," i hope to describe someone who focuses on social change instead of profit as the goal, and approaches this goal with an entrepreneurial spirit, one of determination, innovation, and resourcefulness. also, i do not see markets as negatively as these authors appear to see them. to me markets are mechanisms that are suitable in certain circumstances and not suitable in others. it is too easy to lay the world problems at the feet of the abstraction called "the market." any student of history knows that non-market institutions have been just as harmful. governments, including both political leaders and the military, have been responsible for their share of horrors and injustices. the problems facing the burmese shan in thailand are not the result of market, but of the burmese government and longstanding ethnic animosities. history is littered with many more examples, including many involving governments hostile to markets. consider thailand's other neighbor, cambodia, for a rather dramatic example during the reign of the khmer rouge. religion, despite its moral impulses, has also served as an institutional setting and justification for terror, injustice, prejudice, and abuse. think of caste systems, inquisitions, crusades, widespread oppression of religious minorities, and terrorist activities justified on religious grounds. ethnic, tribal, and family conflicts have also contributed to grave injustices and deep prejudices. many so-called market atrocities are simply the acting out of these non-market conflicts in the setting of the market. markets have their flaws, but when conditions are right, they have produced enormous benefits. when customers and workers have the freedom to choose among competing firms and can do so armed with the information to make sound decisions, markets work reasonably well. they feed, clothe, and shelter millions without resorting to government j. gregory dees 54 december 1, 2005 coercion or treating people as the object of someone's charity. the profits generated in markets provide the financial resources for government programs and for charity. unless goods and services are sold for more than they cost to produce, namely at a profit, there is no economic surplus with which to pay for shared public goods, to supplement the incomes of those who cannot work, or to create reserves for bad times. markets can even provide financial incentives to get past prejudices when these get in the way of good business. these incentives are not always strong enough to overcome ethnic and religious biases, but they move actors in the right direction. they also engage people in crafting their own lives by offering choices. we can debate whether they offer too much choice, but some level of choice is a generally good thing. finally, there is a kind of decency, autonomy, and respect in market transactions, when markets are working well, that is very attractive to most of us. customers have a standing to complain or take their business elsewhere. recipients of charity are expected to accept the gift with gratitude. we say, "do not look a gift horse in the mouth." much as we may admire charity, it is a power relationship, one that can be demeaning to the recipient. my point is not to defend markets as the right organizing principle for all human affairs. they are not that. profit-seeking behavior in markets has motivated egregious behavior. my point is simply that the situation is not simply black and white, with markets being bad and other social institutions being good. markets have virtues that can be channeled into social good. at the same time, the social relationships in habermas's "lifeworld," as grant and humphries refer to it, are not always healthy or conducive to human flourishing. consider the abuse and conflict even within families. i fear that blaming an abstract version of "the market" or "the system" allows us to avoid addressing deeper problems in human relations. when it comes to improving society, i am a pragmatist who believes in experimentation and innovation as important methods for finding better ways to promote human flourishing. more than ever, i am convinced that we need to break down the walls between our economic and social lives, not to advance the hegemony of "the market" but to integrate our lives and better serve our personal and shared purposes. markets should be one tool in our toolkit for creating the kinds of communities and societies in which we want to live. this tool can be modified and refined to better serve our social needs. social entrepreneurs should be creative and critical in their use of markets and the design of their ventures. though we start with different views of the world and travel different paths to get there, i have come around to a view that is consonant with the final vision sketched by humphries and grant when they speak of investing "all human activities, including our economic activities, with respect for human dignity and responsibility for the earth that sustains us" (p. 46). i share their hope that breaking down the boundaries between different spheres of life will result in more effective social institutions as well as more socially beneficial forms of economic exchange. though i think social entrepreneurship is currently relatively rare, i happily embrace their suggestion that the values and characteristics inherent in social entrepreneurship should serve as aspirations for all human beings. social entrepreneurs and education current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 55 let me close by saying that i am heartened by thoughtful critical attention that the authors in this issue of cice have given to the construct of "social entrepreneurship." a decade ago, there were only a handful of people using this terminology. with a lively intellectual debate and a robust research agenda, i am optimistic about the prospects for this field of inquiry going forward. i believe that the social entrepreneurship construct has great potential for helping us mobilize resources for the social good and for stimulating new thinking about economic and social institutions. i hope that this issue of cice is just the beginning of a longer constructive and critical conversation. references humphries, m. & grant, s. (2005). social enterprise and re-civilization of human endeavors: re-socializing the market metaphor or encroaching colonization of the lifeworld? [online]. current issues in comparative education, 8(1), pp. 41-50. available at: http://www.tc.edu/cice/articles/8.1/humphries_grant.html [december 1, 2005]. sharra, s. (2005). from entrepreneurship to activism: teacher autobiography, peace and social justice in education. [online]. current issues in comparative education, 8(1), pp. 7-17. available at: http://www.tc.edu/cice/articles/8.1/sharra.html [december 1, 2005]. sperandio, j. (2005) social entrepreneurs and educational leadership in bangladesh [online]. current issues in comparative education, 8(1), pp. 18-29. available at: http://www.tc.edu/cice/articles/8.1/sperandio.html [december 1, 2005]. su, c. & muenning, p. (2005). the politics of social entrepreneurs in access to education: a case study of shan burmese refugees in northwestern thailand. [online]. current issues in comparative education, 8(1), pp. 30-40. available at: http://www.tc.edu/cice/articles/8.1/su_muenning.html [december 1, 2005]. © 2005 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(1) 31 the politics of social entrepreneurs in access to education: a case study of shan burmese refugees in northwestern thailand celina su brooklyn college, cuny peter muenning mailman school of public health, columbia university abstract this paper examines social entrepreneurship in a burmese refugee community as it strives to provide primary education to its children1. despite facing discrimination and fearing thai authorities, our project leaders exemplified social entrepreneurship, most notably building social capital and agency within the refugee community, and surprisingly resolving intractable problems. key processes included helping parents claim ownership of the program, depoliticizing the children's access to education, and encouraging high expectations of school performance. social relationships built an internally sustainable project at virtually no cost and established bridges across antipathetic parties. we argue that the social entrepreneurship model is useful in contexts where poor communities cannot access non-governmental organizations or government agencies. introduction the shan are an ethnic group persecuted by the national government in burma (myanmar). the burmese government, now ruled by the military state peace and development council (spdc) dictatorship, has banned the shan language from all public institutions, pitted shan against other ethnic minorities to forestall organized dissent, and captured many shan as forced labor for the national army (karen human rights group, 2000). by some estimates, there are hundreds of thousands of ethnic shan displaced from burma (win, 2001) who form communities in the mountains of northwestern thailand. most of these displaced persons earn barely sustainable wages (human rights watch, 1998). despite consistent reports of human rights abuses against shan in burma (shan human rights foundation, 1998; mirante, 1989), the thai government claims that most shan leave burma for purely economic reasons (khuenkaew, 2001). the thai government does not abide by united nations regulations regarding refugees, since it never signed on to the 1951 refugee convention. it has openly ordered the united nations high commission for refugees to stop processing applications for refugee status in thailand (martin, 2004; human rights watch, 1998). the thai government fears that official recognition of the shan refugee crises would result in an uncontrollable refugee situation (hynd, 2002). limits on immigration are also needed to prevent drug trafficking, unsustainable population growth, and damage to economic and political ties with burma (macan-markar, 2003; son & poonyarat, 2002). su and muenning 32 december 1, 2005 in truth, the government allows most shan burmese refugees who pay for their work permits to stay. rights officially associated with these work permits, however, are rarely known by the shan or protected by thai officials (martin, 2005; martin, 2004). rather, work permits serve primarily to protect employers ensuring them workers if there is an immigration raid. permits are costly, with renewable annual fees of approximately $100. since some households earn an average of $1-2 a day, the permits impose a formidable burden. in contrast, the minimum wage for a thai worker in the northwestern provinces is approximately $5-6 a day (bank of thailand, 2005). families without work permits fear discovery by thai government officials or locals. many such families resort to bribing officials to escape "police detection" (wong, 2001), and are sometimes not paid for their work since they have no recourse for complaint. because they wish to remain in thailand, the refugees accept whatever work they are given, even if a job compromises their health. prolonged exposure to polluted water and unprotected application of pesticides are common hazards they face. the shan appear to be tolerated by the thai populace, partly because they provide cheap labor (sparkes, 1995). still, some thais may regard them as "illegitimate" foreigners. moreover, their low income results in de facto marginalization from their thai neighbors. the shan refugees might be trapped in subordinate roles because some thai nationals resent their transcendence (i.e., by pursuing their own businesses in the informal sector) (human rights watch, 1998; karen human rights group, 2000). nevertheless, the shan may have an easier time assimilating into thai society than other burmese minorities because they are considered "ethnic cousins" of the thai; they practice theravada buddhism, and their languages are related (wansai, 2005). although 90% of the adult refugees receive no formal education in burma and only a handful can read or write, almost all of them recognize that education would help their children thrive economically. while thai laws technically allow shan children to attend thai schools, parents are unfamiliar with the bureaucracy, do not speak thai well, and cannot afford books or school uniforms (ruiz, 2002). formal non-governmental organizations (ngos) are reluctant to provide services to this population, and local politics are extremely volatile. therefore, because no top-down formula can be implemented in a sustainable way, innovative social entrepreneurship models are needed to address the obstacles faced by the shan. in this paper, we use quantitative and qualitative data collected from a community of shan refugees in thailand to demonstrate that social entrepreneurship provides a useful model for addressing gaps that traditional ngos and aid agencies do not fill. in this case study, we study how the disparate shan and thai communities united via innovative social entrepreneurship on the part of thai project leaders. social entrepreneurship fowler (2000) employs a very narrow characterization of social entrepreneurs by only considering projects where financial profit can help social entrepreneurs raise money to work towards a social goal. economics plays prominently in his definition of social entrepreneurship as "the creation of viable [socio-] economic structures, relations, institutions, organizations and practices that yield and sustain social benefits" (p. 649). he contends that the social entrepreneurship model is "less sensitive to loss in public the politics of social entrepreneurs in access to education: a case study of shan burmese refugees in northwestern thailand current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 33 trust," or loss of support from the local community, because it centers on commercial enterprises that prioritize market forces more than local social relations. fowler contrasts this with a model of "civic innovation," whereby existing conventions and institutions are remolded for civic benefit via "on-going, self-willed citizen engagement and support" (p. 649). in contrast, we primarily draw from dees (1998, 2003), who maintains that the following conditions are present in social entrepreneurship: adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value); recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission; engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning; acting boldly without being limited by resources currently in hand; and exhibiting heightened accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created" (1998, p. 4). dees is careful to emphasize that social entrepreneurs do not necessarily engage in commercial enterprises in their pursuit of social goals. in this paper, we agree that social entrepreneurship emphasizes creativity, flexibility, and collective work to accomplish community goals. we argue that the social entrepreneurship model should be broad enough to include non-commercial enterprises and key elements of the civic innovation model; that its very strength and flexibility stem from a reliance on local social relations and trust-building, without which little can be accomplished without financial resources such as development aid or market profit. in our case study, shan burmese refugees had little access to financial aid or capital in thailand, but they managed to gain access to education by focusing on social relations and fostering public good in their means as well as their ends. methodology we obtained descriptive information on the sociodemographics, education, and health of all refugee households using a census form translated into shan. a local shan schoolteacher collected data via door-to-door interviews, ensuring inclusion of all houses within the community. in addition, the authors spent between one and two months a year for four years between 2001-2005 conducting open-ended interviews with the project directors (our "social entrepreneurs") and community members. these data were consistent with the data collected at the time of the original census. the schools collected height and weight, and recorded behavioral and academic performance at the end of each semester in student logbooks. data from these logbooks were collected and tabulated annually. where data were missing, the project directors obtained height and weight of the children in the community themselves. qualitative data were collected via direct observation, interviews with approximately 30 households, and repeated question sessions between the project leaders and community members. to respect confidentiality, this paper uses pseudonyms of interviewees. the authors helped with fundraising for project operations and provided advice, but were not directly involved in day-to-day operations or the collection of data. while the researchers' financial involvement in the project could bias the reporting of project outcomes in some settings, our objective is to relate a model of social entrepreneurship that formed naturally and produced clear outcomes. su and muenning 34 december 1, 2005 project history at the project's 2001 inception, a local thai national, yai, volunteered to teach shan children for two hours each day. classes took places in a small thatch-roofed hut with logs laid sideways as tables. start-up costs were negligible since the space was available, classroom materials were donated, and yai himself did not have full-time employment. yai focused on his teaching responsibilities full-time, garnering school supplies and constructing lessons outside of classroom hours. he was supported by noi, who ran a small cooking business out of their home. some of the shan refugees contributed time for school help and pooled financial resources for notebooks and school supplies. in keeping with a social entrepreneurship model, yai and noi's project reflected high levels of effectiveness in working together with the shan community to provide an education for their children; they created a resource worthy of investment. this school operated for two years, and most shan children in the area attended. although the number of children in the vicinity varied due to migration fluctuations, there were always between 35 and 46 children in this informal school. the students in the classroom were between 4 and 14 years of age. because all children were taught at the same time, younger students were able to learn more advanced math skills, while the older students were often instructed well below age-appropriate levels. while the beginning pupils practiced writing the alphabet, the most advanced students practiced reading by themselves. yai and noi demonstrated qualities of social entrepreneurship by focusing on routine structured activities, trust-building and cultural respect rather than financial costs of running a school. they accomplished this by engaging in conversations on what a school meant to the families, and what the children expected, rather than imposing set projects, curricula, or programs. yai and noi built social capital by encouraging the children to study in groups outside of class, with more advanced children helping the relative newcomers. by the end of the two years, all students attending the school were reading and writing thai. non-compulsory attendance among these local shan refugee children was near 100%. we do not mean to infer that up-to-date school materials are not important, or that the dignity that comes with a positive, well-supplied, school is insignificant. rather, we highlight yai and noi's willingness to move forward, running an informal school despite obstacles. the school and yai acted as social linkages between the refugees and the greater thai community. the school lent the shan legitimacy in the eyes of thai locals. it was significant that all of the children from the four clusters of refugees we studied attended the school every day; this convinced local thais that the shan refugees had collective rather than merely individual needs. by the same token, the informal school helped to convert primary education into a public concern, potentially protecting the refugee families from local officials by eliciting the sympathy of the greater thai community. yai's knowledge of thai customs and laws, coupled with the thai community's support of the children's education, created new opportunities for innovation. locals even sent their own children to yai's school during the summers. this exemplifies how the social entrepreneurship model paid off, as the refugee children attained literacy and made unprecedented connections with thai children. the politics of social entrepreneurs in access to education: a case study of shan burmese refugees in northwestern thailand current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 35 while the school linked shan refugees with their thai neighbors, garnering the district government's support along the way, it remained endangered. its overt operations risked attracting attention from the larger provincial government located in a nearby town. the fear of discovery prompted the district government to close the school after two years of operation. yai and noi, by that point epitomizing social entrepreneurship so well that their "reach exceed[ed] their grasp" (dees, 2001, p. 2), then faced a new challenge in facilitating primary education access. rather than acquiesce to defeat, they sought new opportunities to ensure schooling for shan refugees. the dividends of social entrepreneurship yai and noi assessed what the community did possess: 1) a body of children eager to learn who were now proficient in thai, and 2) a trusting group of parents willing to contribute whatever they could to their children's learning. further, they saw a political opportunity in the fact that thai laws do not technically prohibit shan children from attending thai schools. yai and noi therefore went to each local thai primary school to assess capacities. they found that classrooms did indeed have empty seats, and that local teachers (moved by the children's struggle to learn) would be willing to admit shan children into their classrooms provided that they purchased mandatory school uniforms and books. in keeping with social entrepreneurship principles, the education gap was not filled by formulating a new policy per se, but by bridging existing norms in civil society and innovatively working with existing policies and resources. the fact that teachers were sympathetic highlights the notion that government was not monolithic, and yai and noi did not see it as such. therefore, they were able to work with public school teachers to leap a barrier erected by other public officials. signs of sustainable social value began to emerge. for instance, little by little, it appears that the children themselves took on the school-training roles of yai and noi. during one visit to household clusters, noi met new burmese arrivals who had heard all about this place called "school". the children were eager to participate, and had started to learn basic thai phrases by playing "student" as other children played "teacher" (personal communication, february 2004). this is evidence of the enduring social capital that was built not only among adults in the community, but also among children. a few barriers nonetheless remained. though the children learned to speak thai without an accent, they were still easy to identify because they were undernourished. their precarious health status also made learning difficult. the next priority, then, was to dig latrines in each of the communities and to repair or build wells and water pumps to reduce the incidence of diarrhea. children were vaccinated and provided with deworming pills to eliminate intestinal parasites. they were also given vitamins to address micronutrient malnutrition, which n turn improved their school performance. these public health interventions epitomize how social entrepreneurs draw upon existing (sometimes surprising) resources. they also highlight the idea that social entrepreneurs do not operate in centralized ways, via pre-programmed agendas. rather, needs and capacities are frequently reevaluated, and creative solutions present themselves alongside the emergence of new problems. avoiding sense of dependency within the community was paramount. yai and noi therefore encouraged refugee families to articulate and accomplish goals themselves. for su and muenning 36 december 1, 2005 instance, they explained the benefits of having latrines, and provided instruction on their construction, but they largely stood aside when it came to building them. yai and noi's persistence in maintaining a sense of collective purpose helped to instill a sense of social entrepreneurship and ownership in the community households as well. it wasn't long before the community members were participating in creative decision-making, cobbling together various means of transport (ranging from bicycles to an employer's lorry) to get the kids to school. today, as in its inception five years ago, the project operates for under us $3,000 per year (in constant 2005 dollars) despite having grown to serve almost 50 children and roughly 150 adults. this is especially impressive given the institutional limitations; there was no way to generate supplemental income within the community without breaking national laws and changing local thai opinions to favor the shan community. perhaps more remarkably, shan children have taken the top three academic spots at one of the schools, they have generally outperformed thai children academically in the past three years, and one has won a national essay contest (garnering the equivalent of three months' wages for his parents). this exceptional academic performance likely arises from the children's history of self-study, the after-school tutoring provided by yai and noi, and both the children's and parents' appreciation of the value of schooling. this social entrepreneurship model helps the refugee children and their families to build the kind of relationships with thai nationals that helped them access public schools in the first place, and to potentially overcome antipathies between refugees and locals. the refugee children's participation and success in the larger context of thai schools also helps to reinforce the goodwill that persuaded public school teachers to allow these children to enroll initially, thus "[reproducing] the conditions" that make education accessible to new arrivals (giddens, 1984). the social and human capital created by social entrepreneurs pays dividends. public school enrollment provides the children with the cognitive abilities and social credentials that they will need to survive. educational attainment is highly correlated with longevity and higher health status (ashenfelter, 1991; tofler et al., 1993; antonovsky, 1967). further, reading and writing are essential skills that will help them access higher wage opportunities. in this case, educating shan children clearly has benefits for the individuals and families. yet it also impacts the local thai community by providing higher baseline rates of education and thus higher rates of job creation and productivity (ashenfelter, 1991; glewe, 1991). if the shan are seen as hard workers that contribute to the economy in the first generation and provide entrepreneurship and technical skills in the second generation, they are more likely to become accepted within thailand. conclusions in this paper, we explored how specific lessons from social entrepreneurship—creating social capital, a sense of ownership, agency, and collective buy-in—can build a strong social program with the momentum and initiative to adapt to changing circumstances. we also showed how the social capital built by fostering community enthusiasm for children's education elicited the larger thai community's sympathy for the project. the politics of social entrepreneurs in access to education: a case study of shan burmese refugees in northwestern thailand current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 37 these two factors helped allow the project to adapt to radical changes in environmental conditions, turning a death knell (the government's closing the informal school) into a great opportunity for advancement. as addressed by researchers focusing on ngos, "civil society" is not comprised of a monolithic mass but of often competing groups living in varying political circumstances, and universal formulas for fostering civil society, especially via top-down programs, are rarely successful (mcilwaine, 1998). the social entrepreneurship model's emphasis on flexibility and change, then, is useful in analyzing efforts by poor communities with no access to help from ngos or governmental agencies. in this case study, the refugees' political status was ambiguous and constantly shifting; the social entrepreneurs therefore focused not on formal programs but on building the types of relationships that could then generate the popular support and acceptance that would facilitate surreptitious public school enrollment. at first glance, the shan burmese refugees' ability to remain in thailand might seem especially precarious. they have no designated land on which to reside, and they do not have the protection of refugee status. yet from a social entrepreneurship perspective, the uncertainty and ambiguity of their standing in thailand can be used to their advantage, giving them the socio-cultural space for self-determination. likewise, it was the project's organic development, flexibility, and lack of official ngo status that rendered it more effective than a formal institution might have been. though refugees' assertions of basic rights are usually perceived as treacherous political moves by thai officials, social entrepreneurship has successfully shifted the political implications of school attendance in the case study community, even de-politicizing this assertion of human rights in the local thai community's eyes. in keeping with dees' definition of social entrepreneurship, this project helped not only to meet education needs in the shan burmese refugee community, but it reduced yai and noi's burden of teaching the children and providing social services (dees, p. 4). it also helped the community organize itself, so that momentum endures long after yai and noi had finished their work there. finally, this combination of human and social capital hopefully facilitated the assimilation of the shan immigrants into the thai community for generations to come, with minimal friction and xenophobia. we note that this case study fits well with dees' description of social entrepreneurship (2003), but not with that of fowler, who focused on the hybridization of market and commercial enterprises with social ends (2000). we suggest that further articulation of the social entrepreneurship model is needed. based on our analysis, the social entrepreneurship model must explicitly include efforts that abide by its principles but do not include commercial ventures or a financial focus. yai and noi are successful social entrepreneurs specifically because they did not focus on, and were not held back by, financial costs; they did not focus on financial redistribution, but on the sharing of existing resources and creation of bridging social capital. nevertheless, some of the very risks articulated in earlier articles about ngos and civil society remain for social entrepreneurs (mcilwaine, 1998; fowler, 2000). ironically, while the refugees' potential to become active members of the larger community increases su and muenning 38 december 1, 2005 with greater access to primary and secondary education, this education might also encroach upon the space they have to live as shan burmese. the road to assimilation is much easier for them than for other refugees, and it might substantially raise their collective standard of living. higher standards of living and basic human rights should not automatically preclude the preservation of shan burmese culture. the shan will need to explore different ways of strengthening social networks within their community, so that new connections are not built at the expense of those within their culturally indigenous community (woolcock, 1998). in short, the next challenge surrounds how to maintain culture and heritage, so that the shan will have a link to their past as they build their future. this article, then, presents three clear potential avenues for further research. first, what are the tensions between shortand long-term effectiveness in social entrepreneurship? we have evaluated shortand some medium-term results of a project aimed at increasing access to education, but we have not yet evaluated the project's long-term impact on tensions regarding the refugees' assimilation into thai society, preservation of shan culture, and possible participation in a post-spdc, democratic burma. long-term impact is therefore linked to larger nation-building debates, such as whether shan state will pursue secession (sen, 2001), and whether burmese transitional justice should follow the model of post-pinochet chile, post-apartheid south africa, or another framework (rothenberg, 2001). second, future research might explore the ways in which the social entrepreneurship itself helps to shape the needs and identity of constituents over time. to what extent will the goals and norms of the shan refugee community change as school enrollment continues and increases? even without government funding, questions of accountability and independence remain. finally, further investigation is needed into the kinds of circumstances where social entrepreneurship thrives, and where it is not as appropriate. we believe that the strengths and lessons highlighted in this article's case of social entrepreneurship can be replicable, but they were highlighted in a case with malleable political and social contexts. this case, then, is more helpful in highlighting the strengths of the principles of the social entrepreneurship model than in articulating its limits. notes 1. this case study was funded in part by the andrew goodman foundation and the martin-baro fund for mental and human rights. references antonovsky, a. (1967). social class, life expectancy, and overall mortality. milbank memorial fund quarterly, 45, 31-73. ashenfelter, o. (1991). how convincing is the evidence linking education and income? (working paper no. 292). princeton: industrial relations section, princeton university. the politics of social entrepreneurs in access to education: a case study of shan burmese refugees in northwestern thailand current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 39 bank of thailand. (2005). population, labour force, and wage. [online] available at: http://www.bot.or.th/bothomepage/databank/econdata/sdds_e/sdds_e.htm. dees, j. g. (2001). the meaning of social entrepreneurship revisited. working paper. stanford: stanford university graduate school of business. [online]. available at: http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/centers/case/documents/dees_se.pdf dees, j. g. (2003). social entrepreneurship is about innovation and impact, not income. skoll foundation. [online]. available at: http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/centers/case/articles/1004/corner.htm fowler, a. (2000). ngos as a moment in history: beyond aid to social entrepreneurship or social innovation? third world quarterly, 21, 637-654. giddens, a. (1984). the constitution of society. berkeley: university of california press. glewe p. (1991). schooling, skills, and the returns to government investment in education (working paper no. 76). washington: the world bank. human rights watch. (1998). unwanted and unprotected: burmese refugees in thailand. [online]. available at: http://www.hrw.org/reports98/thai/ hynd, m. (2002). forced migration online research guide: thailand. oxford, uk: university of oxford refugee studies centre. [online]. available at: http://www.forcedmigration.org/guides/fmo012/ karen human rights group. (2000). exiled at home: continued forced relocations and displacement in shan state (khrg #2000-03). chiang mai: nopburee press. khuenkaew, s. (2001, october 22). refugees in limbo. bangkok post. martin, v. (2004). myanmarese refugees in thailand: no freedom, no choices. world refugee survey. washington, dc: us committee for refugees and immigrants. martin, v. (2005). prospects for hope? myanmarese refugees in thailand. world refugee survey. washington, dc: us committee for refugees and immigrants. macan-markar, m. (2003, january 7). thailand's humanitarian reputation at risk. asia times. mirante, e. (1989). victim zone: recent accounts of burmese military human rights abuses in the shan state. contemporary crises, 13, 209-226. mcilwaine, c. (1998). contesting civil society: reflections from el salvador. third world quarterly, 19, 651-672. rothenberg, d. (2001). burma's democratic transition: about justice, legitimacy, and past political violence. legal issues on burma journal, 10, 57-65. su and muenning 40 december 1, 2005 ruiz, h. (2002). worldwide refugee information: country reports: thailand. washington, dc: u.s. committee for refugees. sen, b. k. (2001). secession and self-determination in the context of burma's transition. legal issues on burma journal, 10, 11-22. shan human rights foundation. (1998). dispossessed: forced relocations and extrajudicial killings in shan state. chiang mai, thailand: shan human rights foundation. son, j. & poonyarat, c. (2002, august 28). thailand's myanmar 'appeasement' blasted. asia times. sparkes, s. (1995, december 4). on the shan borderlands in mae hong son. nordic newsletter of asian studies. tofler, g. h., muller, j. e., stone, p. h., davies, g., davis, v. g., & braunwald, e. (1993). comparison of long-term outcomes after acute myocardial infarction in patients never graduated from high school with those in more educated patients. american journal of cardiology, 71, 1031-5. wansai, s. (2005). shan-burmese relations: historical account and contemporary politics. unrepresented nations and peoples organization. [online]. available at: http://www.unpo.org/news_detail.php?arg=47&pr=434 win, s. m. (2001). shan: the thai-burma border conflict and shan resistance. the hague: unrepresented nations and peoples organisation reports. wong, e. (2001). the political geography of displacement in mainland southeast asia: the case of the shans. unpublished master's thesis, national university of singapore, singapore. woolcock, m. (1998). social capital and economic development: toward a theoretical synthesis and policy framework. theory and society, 27, 151-208. bernardi et al., 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 1, winter 2022 what is the political culture for young brazilians? the process of political socialization through social networks ana julia bonzanini bernardi federal university of rio grande do sul andressa liegi vieira costa university of lisbon jennifer azambuja de morais federal university of rio grande do sul in this paper, we sought to analyze if the internet and social networks usage could be impacting the constitution of an assertive political culture among young people in south brazil. we hypothesize that although these new socialized agents are widespread among the young, apathy and disinterest in politics remain. to test our hypothesis, we analyzed data from a survey conducted with secondary school students from porto alegre in 2015 and 2019 for values related to democracy, feelings about politics, responsiveness, and political efficacy. results confirm that the political culture of the young remains apathetic, but those socialized by new agents seem to be closer to developing an assertive type of political culture. keywords: brazil, youth, political culture, political socialization, social networks introduction the apathy for political affairs among young people is not recent in the brazilian scenario. low levels of political interest, participation, and distrust of youth corroborate the establishment of a hostile political culture towards democracy and its institutions, leading the youth to disbelief in politics (baquero, 2018). the novelty appears with the usage of new information and communication technologies, especially within the internet and social networks, which are becoming a socializing agent of the new generations, aside from family, school, and other media types. in addition, the internet is enabling different forms of interaction and social participation, which allows young people to publicly express their views on politics, creating a new space for free-speech interaction. this possibility impacts political socialization, which comprehends the process of internalization of norms, traditions, and political values of the society. in this sense, this article proposes the following question: “is the use of internet and social networks impacting the constitution of a civic political culture of the brazilian youth?” in this regard, we aim to verify if the appropriation of the internet and social networks by young people impacts their interest, participation, and trust in politics. our main hypothesis is that, even though it is a new socializing agent, the internet is not corroborating the © 2022, bonzanini bernardi et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(1), 78-95. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en what is the political culture for young brazilians? current issues in comparative education 79 internalization of more democratic values, furthermore, maintaining the low level of interest in politics. according to dayrell (2003), youth is constituted by a series of experiences lived by individuals in different contexts, from socioeconomic, ethnic, generational, and even geographic contexts, with different ways of interpreting politics and democracy. especially within the context of social inequality existing in the country, it is clear that there is no homogeneous youth, but rather youth(s) as a plural. in this paper, we explore the youth(s) between 13 and 25 years old attending secondary school in the city of porto alegre, south of brazil. this paper applies a quantitative protocol through survey data used for descriptive and inferential data analysis to meet its purpose. data consists of surveys conducted by the latin america research center (nupesal / ufrgs)1 in the scope of the project “democracy, media, and social capital: a comparative study of the political socialization of young people in southern brazil”, coordinated by marcello baquero and rodrigo gonzález. surveys were applied in 2015 and 2019, with 690 and 863 individuals, respectively, aged between 13 and 242, attending public and private secondary schools of porto alegre, capital of rio grande do sul (brazil). the paper is divided into three sections, apart from this introduction and the final remarks. first, we draw a general discussion of political culture, socialization agents, and new media, followed by a contextualization of the brazilian youth and its relation to politics. secondly, we bring data from our research to address the political culture of youngsters from porto alegre/rs to test our hypothesis. to do so, we divide the respondents according to the institutions they appointed as the most relevant source of political knowledge, considering three main groups: traditional agents (family, church, friends, and school), mass media (printed journals, television, and radio) and new media (internet and social media). thirdly, we cross those groups with variables of political culture to verify if youth socialized by new agents are more assertive by validating if there is a positive and significant relation between the main agent of socialization and variables of interest in politics, participation, and sense of efficacy in politics. our final remarks then follow this discussion. results show that although young people are more socialized by digital agents this does not mean they are more assertive on politics. thereby we see a decrease in interest in politics and a long-lasting disillusion with the political system in this new generation that continues reproducing a hybrid type of political culture. political culture, socialization, and internet among young people a political system is represented by its culture, which reflects behavioral features and settles a pattern of values (easton, 1957). therefore, the importance of citizenship, socialization and political culture have been long-standing principles for understanding youth participation in democratic systems. in this regard, we address political culture as “the specifically political orientations – attitudes toward the political system and its various parts, and attitudes about the role of the self in the system” (almond & verba, 1963, p. 12). scholars that employ this framework pioneered by almond and verba (1963) additionally found in their studies that the transmission and reproduction of values and 1 the research center on latin america (nupesal/ufrgs) is allocated in the graduation program of political sciences from the federal university of rio grande do sul. it was created by professor marcello baquero in 1985, and since then has been developing a vast experience in quantitative research regarding the youth. 2 according to the unesco theoretical framework (2014), youth is described being aged 15 to 24 years old. we extended this age ratio, to 13-24, as in first year of secondary school most students are aged 13. bernardi et al. current issues in comparative education 80 beliefs within society occur through the political socialization process (almond & verba 1963; baquero, baquero, & morais 2016; schmidt, 2000). academics like jennings and niemi (1974) and sigel (1989) emphasized political socialization as a permanent process through the experiences of individuals through their lives. political socialization is also part of cognitive development that evolves along stages (piaget, 1977; vygotsky, 1991). besides, it is related to the civic education of a subject, which corresponds to a systematic diffusion of knowledge about the government and public affairs, once there is no mechanical reproduction of democratic attitudes and values (niemi & hepburn, 1995; niemi & sobieszek, 1977). initial studies on socialization focused on the impact of family in the early years as the main influencer on political attitudes (beck & jennings, 1975; hyman, 1959). the second phase of studies considered school as a central player in socialization, especially in the context of inequalities, when families did not meet a minimal socioeconomic and/or cultural background (banks & roker, 1994; beck, 1977; bernardi & costa, 2018). therefore, considering socialization as a dynamic process, it is crucial to understand the role and influence of the different agents. later, to comprehend electoral behavior, various studies approached the impact of the mass media, and more recently, the effect of the internet and social media on voter’s decisions (freire, masson, & turgeon 2018; miguel & birolli 2011). recent research repositioned the importance of examining the youth as political actors and, in this sense, their socialization process (baquero et al., 2017). the concept of political socialization displays a valuable role in understanding the connection between youth, politics, and the internet (morais, 2021). political participation is likewise influenced by political socialization processes, especially among young people (fuks, 2011). following social changes related to economic and technological transformations, people became more likely to reassemble around identities, which became the only source of social meaning (castells, 2011). the development and use of new technologies showed great potential for the mobilization of civil society by creating new possibilities for sociability far from the state institutional structures (gohn, 2016). given the transformation of participation channels, norris (1999) studied the possibility that despite decreasing participation, citizens are likely to become more active through new channels as in social networks and internet forums, establishing new patterns of civic engagement. what norris (1999) calls critical citizens represents individuals more politically engaged and concerned about displaying their discontent with the political system. moreover, dalton and welzel (2014) consider that the dissatisfaction with the functioning of the democratic institutions in effectively promoting well-being generated a more assertive type of citizenship. in this sense, the assertive political culture, or the critical political culture, means a culture of participation and civic engagement while respecting human rights and democratic values. both concepts were developed because individuals are more willing to engage in politics to contest traditional forms of authority, displaying low levels of confidence in political institutions yet engaging in news forms of political manifestations (dalton & welzel, 2014; newton & norris, 2000; norris, 1999). the concept of new media (or digital media) refers to the internet and social media, markedly to differentiate from analogical forms, usually mentioned as “mass media” (chandler & munday 2011; martino 2014). albeit mass media operated in a unilateral manner, where individuals were silent receivers of information, the internet, and social media offer a platform where people can actively take part in informing themselves – for better or for worse. despite all benefits of digitalization, there are still negative impacts what is the political culture for young brazilians? current issues in comparative education 81 on democracy that pose new challenges, such as disinformation, fake news, and polarization through algorithmic biases. hence, the internet and social networks position themselves as new socialization agents of youth, and differently from traditional agents – such as family, school, church, and friends – and the mass media – like print newspapers, television, and radio – they can have an impact of ‘auto socialization’, in the sense that sources of information are conditional to the own agent’s findings. the brazilian scenario the brazilian democratization in the 1980s, after over 20 years of dictatorship, represented a contradictory process between formal democracy and social inequality (baquero, 2001). the authoritarian history and a past of political and economic instability have created obstacles to building a democratic culture in the country. moreover, the lack of a participative civil society and weakened political institutions have contributed to a fragile democracy. a general lack of interest in politics has been observed, along with low levels of political participation and trust in the institutions, leading to apathy, individualism, personalism, patrimonialism, and even corruption (baquero, 2008). therefore, we observe what baquero called a hybrid political culture, where there is a predominance of authoritarian behavior and values combined with a positive perception of democracy as an ideal, but not as a social practice, which is associated with a context of inertial democracy that has been long reproduced since the re-democratization (baquero, 2018). acknowledging contemporary politics in brazil, we feature the same patterns reproduced repeatedly. in june of 2013, protests arose all over brazil, having as the main characteristics a spread distrust in political institutions, and general dissatisfaction with outcomes from the political system such as poor public policies and corruption (filgueiras, 2018). demonstrations were characterized by the strong participation of young people. it was initially a plural movement, organized mainly by social media, drawing the debut of brazilian online activism. however, its ideological orientation gradually shifted, being identified as ambiguous mobilizations (secco, 2013; avritzer, 2016; pinheiro-machado, 2019). a diffusion of anti-politics visions was strengthened in the following years within a strongly polarized society (baquero, ranincheski, & castro, 2018). therefore, demonstrations arose once more in 2014, related to the world cup and aggravated within the electoral scenario, and in 2015 and 2016, with movements pro and anti-impeachment of the former president dilma rousseff. there was a strong political activation online by new groups created in 2013, yet displaying a different profile, no party identification, and an appeal to moral values (gohn, 2016). by 2018, the far rightwing candidate, jair bolsonaro, benefited from brazilian crises and cleavages to win the elections, representing an illiberal backlash (hunt & power, 2019). the political scenario in brazil by 2015, when the survey was conducted, was marked by the recent presidential election held in october of 2014, massive corruption scandals and accusations, the impeachment process of president dilma rousseff, and for demonstrations pro and against the government and the impeachment (bernardi, 2017). by 2019, the far-rightwing president, jair bolsonaro, was in his first year of mandate, after the controversial 2018 elections marked by spread misinformation on the internet and social media, especially by whatsapp's messaging app. bernardi et al. current issues in comparative education 82 avritzer (2018) observes a pendular democracy in brazil that moves from democratic waves to antidemocratic reversals. the 2018 elections displayed a rise in online campaigns, and bolsonaro adopted aggressive campaigns on social media and whatsapp. while "temer and bolsonaro’s government are part of a shift toward reducing the democratic governance spaces”, anti-authoritarian movements also emerged or were strengthened during the 2018 elections, which showed that digital politics can likewise impact democratic developments (lima, 2020). while in 2015, 97.1% of brazilian homes had a television, in 2019, this percentage remained stable at 96.4%. on the other hand, internet access increased from 57.8% in 2015 to 82.7% in 2019. the landscape of internet access in the country was shaped mainly by the growing importance of mobile phones used for this purpose. by 2019, 94% of brazilian residences had a mobile phone – with 81% of people aged over ten years old owning a mobile for personal use –, it was the main device for internet access, used for this purpose by 98.6% of brazilians, compared to 46.2% of access via computers. by 2015, 17.3% only accessed the internet via mobile, while in 2019, this rate represented 58%. in 2019, the age group that used the internet the most was between 20 and 24 years old (92.7%). this percentage accounts for 90.2% for those aged between 14 and 19 years old, and 77.7% for those aged between 10 and 13 years old (ibge, 2015 and 2019). the construction of youth citizenship is a strategic issue in the brazilian democracy, notably due to the difficulties imposed on the socialization of these young people by the structural framework of the brazilian political culture. the research center on latin america (nupesal), coordinated by professor marcello baquero, has periodically analyzed data on political socialization in southern brazil, seeking to assess what young people think in a longitudinal perspective; this has generated a series of relevant articles, dissertations, and theses (silveira, 2005; zorzi, 2016; bernardi, 2017; morais, 2021; bernardi & costa, 2018). for instance, baquero and baquero (2014) found that in porto alegre, 55% of young people in 2001, 58% in 2004, and 67% in 2010 did not usually participate in any political activity. bernardi (2017), when comparing the process of political socialization during high school, in the years 2002 and 2015 in porto alegre, found a discrepancy in civic competence and the valorization of democratic attitudes among young people from public and private schools – while private students were much more interested and engaged in politics, students from public schools lacked interest in civic engagement. the data showed a significant disparity in the quality of the educational system between public and private schools, which is reproduced in the index of civic competence (hoskins, villalba, van nijlen, & barber, 2008). within this framework, we can argue the existence of multiple types of young people. according to dayrell (2003), youth consist of a series of experiences lived by individuals in different contexts (i.e., socioeconomic, ethnic, generational, and even geographic) whom each has different ways of interpreting politics and democracy. data analysis: the youth of porto alegre/rs in this section, we analyze data regarding youth people from porto alegre. as appointed in the relevant literature regarding important socialization agents (beck, 1977), the data shows how each agent performed in 2015 and 2019. to observe the impact of social media and the internet on the political culture of the youth, we divided our respondents according to their answers regarding which institution was the most relevant when forming an opinion on political issues. to analyze the impact of new media, we then applied the following clusterization: what is the political culture for young brazilians? current issues in comparative education 83 table 1 importance of socialization agents when forming an opinion on political issues (%)3 agent 2015 2019 agent 2015 2019 family 38.6 35.7 traditional agents 63.3 58.9 school 17.7 16.0 church 3.4 3.3 friends 3.6 3.8 printed journals 7.8 7.5 mass media 15.3 16.2 television 7.3 8.4 radio 0.2 0.4 internet 18.8 22.0 new media 21.4 24.9 social media 2.6 2.9 total 100 100 total 100 100 n 2015 = 586, n 2019 = 837 source: nupesal, 2015, 2019 when observing table 1 above, we first pointed it out that the traditional agents were the only group that lost influence, with a 4.4% decrease, as a primary source of socialization for young people when forming their opinions on political issues. meanwhile, the mass media showed an increase of 0.9% and the new media of 3.5%. for the mass media, we notice a shift where television became the most influential, overtaking printed journals. regarding the margin of error in both years of only 0.05, we can observe that even with the slight changes during the period, the media, and in particular the new media, occupied some space that used to be from traditional agents. table 2 shows the access to the internet in each group in 2019, as for 2015 we did not have this data available. as we can see, internet access is widely distributed between all groups, but higher among youth socialized by new media. table 2 access to the internet in 2019 (%) at home at school mobile access traditional agents 96.0 57.8 89.3 mass media 94.6 57.9 83.5 new media 97.5 67.0 94.1 n 2015 = 586, n 2019 = 837 source: nupesal, 2019 3 when forming an opinion on political matters, which of the institutions below do you consider most important? bernardi et al. current issues in comparative education 84 digital socialized agents and political culture: are they more assertive? regardless of each agent’s power in the socialization process, it is essential to account for the young as an individual with its interests developed in an environment of multiple influences. therefore, the variable of interest in politics is highly insightful, as it indicates how much the young person is willing to engage in politics. table 3 socialization agents x interest in politics (%) year much little nothing total traditional agents 2015 23.5 59.0 17.5 100 2019 18.6 55.9 25.6 100 mass media 2015 13.6 68.2 18.2 100 2019 19.5 62.4 18.0 100 new media 2015 37.5 53.3 9.2 100 2019 30.7 55.6 13.7 100 n 2015 = 569. p = .000, n 2019 = 837. p = .000 source: nupesal, 2015, 2019 according to table 3 above, we conclude, first, those young people in their majority display little interest in politics. however, this group has reduced among those socialized by traditional agents and mass media. nonetheless, the ones socialized primarily by traditional agents overall lost interest in politics, given the almost 5% decrease in those very interested and over 8% increase in those not interested at all. meanwhile, those socialized by mass media mostly shifted from little interest to much interest, once the latter has increased almost 6%. on the other hand, there was a decrease in interest in politics for those socialized by social media – a loss of almost 7% among the very interested ones and a rise of 4.5% among those not interested. still, they are the group presenting the youngest people with high interest in politics and least young people not interested at all in the matter, both in 2015 and 2019. interest in politics is also important concerning political efficacy, as individuals will only be interested in subjects they can somehow understand or relate to. a sense of efficacy and system responsiveness is one of the main aspects that encourage people in general (especially youths) to engage in politics. since the 1950s in political science and the mid1970s in psychology, many scholars have been debating the concept of political efficacy (campbell, gurin, & miller, 1954; almond & verba, 1963; easton & dennis, 1967; beaumont, 2010; verba, scholzman, & brady, 1995). although they disagree in some aspects regarding definitions or measurement methods, most authors corroborate that strong political efficacy is positive for democracy and correlates with political participation (easton & dennis, 1967; niemi, craig, & mattei, 1991; kahne & westheimer, 2006). what is the political culture for young brazilians? current issues in comparative education 85 graph 1 internal political efficacy: accordance to the affirmations regarding itself in the political system (%) n 2015 = 569. p*= .001; p**= .027; p***= .006 n 2019 = 837. p*= .001; p**= .003; p***= .000 source: nupesal, 2015, 2019. first, we observe a general trend of decline in political efficacy when comparing 2015 and 2019, which is more prominent for the first affirmation: “i don’t like political discussions because people tend to disagree, and i prefer not to bother”. the graph above displays the proportion of young people that agreed or partly agreed with the proposed statements. while by 2015, those socialized by mass media were the ones who liked the least political discussions, by 2019, those socialized by traditional agents took the lead. however, the percentage for mass media only increased less than 4% in the period, although traditional agents and new media raised over 20% each. regarding new media, this change is likely to be related to the growing hostility in the online environment in the country. according to data from the v-dem institute, between the period, the use of hate speech by political parties went from periodically to exceptionally often, and the use of false information from rare occasions to extremely often. moreover, the country presented serious polarization in both years, with an even higher level in 2019 (v-dem, 2021). concerning traditional agents, we highlight a trend present in the 2014 elections, and strengthened by 2018, of fights between family and friends due to political discussions regarding shocking points of view, which was likewise present in the online environment, as the example of whatsapp groups (ortega, 2018). considering the second affirmation, “it’s no use participating in politics because nothing changes”. first, we observe that young people socialized by new media are the most participative ones, once the majority disagreed with the affirmation in both years, especially in 2015. all groups presented a growing skeptical view about participating in politics, yet by 2019 the ones socialized by traditional agents and media had the most similar opinions about the matter. finally, regarding the last affirmation, “political issues are too complicated for me, that’s why they don’t interest me”, first, we observe a trend, among young people primarily socialized by traditional agents and by new media, of reducing understanding about politics, being this gap between the period higher for the former. on the other hand, those 52.2 72.4 50.1 57.3 35.8 50.6 60.5 64.7 53.4 56.0 46.4 44.8 36.1 58.0 37.4 43.2 25.2 33.5 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 2015 2019 2015 2019 2015 2019 i don't like political discussions, because people tend to disagree and i prefer not to bother* it's no use participating in politics because nothing changes** political issues are too complicated for me, that's why they don't interest me*** traditional agents mass media new media bernardi et al. current issues in comparative education 86 socialized by mass media remained more stable, with a slight increase in their understanding of politics. nevertheless, those socialized by new media are the ones that disagree the most that politics are too complicated. graph 2 external political efficacy: accordance to the affirmations regarding the political system (%) n 2015 = 569. p* = .034; p**= .040 n 2019 = 837. p* = .034; p**= .040; p*** = .001 source: nupesal, 2015 and 2019. graph 2 displays the visions of young people about the political system. first, we see that young people, in general, perceive corruption as widespread among politics, led by those primarily socialized by mass media, both in 2015 and 2019. the second affirmation about politicians being all the same displays lower agreement but the same trends as analyzed before, both of a growing perception and those socialized by mass media presenting higher agreement with it. in 2014, corruption was among the main topics on social media, reflected both by the campaign that moderated the public opinion and the internet regarding the political system and the media cover of news about corruption, mostly selectively processing the information on corruption associated with the workers’ party (pt) (avritzer, 2016). this rhetoric persisted the following years, especially used by the conservatives to criminalize the left-wing and create a selective outrage. therefore, corruption appears as the core topic of disregard about the political system, with operation car wash connected to the perception of the political class as corrupt (gallego, 2019). in the 2018 elections, jair bolsonaro employed the anti-corruption movement as one of his campaign lines (maitino, 2018). according to costa (2018), the perception of corruption in brazil accentuates the lack of support for the political system and weakens democratic attitudes. finally, the third affirmation (“in some circumstances, an authoritarian government is better than a democratic one”) was only available in the 2019 database. it was added to the analysis, given its relevance. by that, we conclude that those socialized primarily by 75.6 78.8 49.1 56.2 49.3 85.2 86.8 53.6 61.7 46.5 69.7 74.9 37.5 46.5 33.8 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 2015 2019 2015 2019 2019 all politicians are corrupt* politicians are all the same** in some circumstances, an authoritarian government is better than a democratic one*** traditional agents mass media new media what is the political culture for young brazilians? current issues in comparative education 87 new media present the most democratic views instead of those socialized by traditional agents. table 4 socialization agents x participation in protests (%) year participate have participated before don't participate total traditiona l agents 2015 8.8 33.3 57.8 100 2019 11.7 21.7 66.6 100 mass media 2015 19.5 30.5 50.0 100 2019 14.1 28.9 57.0 100 new media 2015 17.9 32.5 49.6 100 2019 17.6 28.8 53.7 100 n 2015 = 544, n 2019 = 828. p 2015 = .02, p 2019 = .01 source: nupesal 2015, 2019 when analyzing the participation of young people in protests, according to table 4 we first observe that most of them do not participate. those socialized primarily by mass media were the ones who participated the most in protests in 2015, followed by new media, which overtook the lead in 2019. considering 2015, those socialized by mass and new media participated more than double those socialized by traditional agents. however, in 2019, while those who participated remained stable among those socialized by new media, this rate decreased for mass media and increased for traditional agents. taking into consideration those who answered they had participated before (participate occasionally), we have a few observations: 1) for traditional agents, some have started participating more, but the majority completely stopped participating in protests; 2) for mass media, all of them stopped participating; 3) for new media, most of them stopped participating. costa (2019) observed that, by 2017, brazil developed critical citizens, more politically engaged in demonstrating their dissatisfactions towards the political system, being the media a core actor to mobilize people by criticizing the system. however, they were not mobilized and engaged based on democratic and civic values. both the traditional media and the internet influence the participation of brazilians in protests, along with elements such as perception of corruption and the existence of anti-pt sentiment. bernardi et al. current issues in comparative education 88 graph 4 on social media, what do you usually do when your friends post about political issues (2019) (%) n 2019 = 818. p* = .001, p** = .015, p*** = .05 source: nupesal, 2019 according to the graph above, young people primarily socialized by new media are generally more engaged on social media, but it happens at different levels according to the action. first, it is essential to highlight that they read or watch the video on the post more than the others, which shows that they tend to be more aware of the ongoing debates and trending political issues. on the other hand, the question was related to friends, and given the filter bubble and echo chamber logics of social media, there is a chance that people will be exposed to the same kind of content, according to their network. likes are the second most popular reaction. however, for this category, those socialized by mass media do it slightly more than those by new media, and both over 10% for those socialized by traditional agents. for comments, those socialized by new media do it more, but those socialized by mass media have a closer engagement in this type of online activity. as the comments section is too a way of engaging in political discussions and expressing points of view and opinions, only one-third of those socialized by traditional agents engage on it, while those socialized by mass and new media are more eager to do it. finally, the same trend is observed for sharing and, even if it is the least popular way of engaging in social media, we see that between 30% and 39% share the information, so we notice the information’s potential to circulate on social media. 72.9 60.1 33.1 30.7 75.8 72.7 42.0 38.2 86.4 72.5 43.6 39.0 0 20 40 60 80 100 read and/or watch* like* comment** share*** traditional agents mass media new media what is the political culture for young brazilians? current issues in comparative education 89 graph 5 can social networks be instruments of political participation (2019) (%) n 2019 = 768. p = .008 source: nupesal, 2019 finally, according to graph 5 above, as expected, we observe that those young people primarily socialized by new media believe the most in the role of social media as instruments for political participation. they are more likely to join political discussions on social networks and engage in internet mobilizations. hence, as observed before, we conclude that those socialized by new media are more participative online and offline. the difference between traditional agents and mass media is slight, both for ‘yes’ and ‘somewhat’. however, it is important to highlight that those socialized by mass media and traditional agents are mainly divided between 'yes' and ‘somewhat', mostly understanding social media as instruments of political participation. this observation can be related to several factors, such as the risen access to the internet in the country and the growing role of social media in the 2018 elections since it was the core mechanism for political campaigns. final remarks one of the reasons to study the relation between new technologies and political culture in brazil was the broad participation of young people in the protests of june 2013. it triggered several political developments that still reverberate in the country. furthermore, studies point to the internet as a new socializing agent by which young people are ‘auto socializing’ and internalizing values (baquero, baquero, & morais, 2017; morais, 2021). therefore, in this paper, we sought to analyze if the use of the internet and social networks could be impacting the constitution of an assertive political culture among the young people in the south of brazil. we hypothesized that although these new socialized agents are widespread among the young, apathy and disinterest in politics remained. to test our hypothesis, we studied data from a survey conducted with secondary school students from porto alegre in 2015 and 2019 for values related to democracy, feelings about politics, responsiveness, and political efficacy. 49.0 42.6 8.4 48.2 46.5 5.3 62.3 41.0 3.5 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 yes somewhat no traditional agentes mass media new media bernardi et al. current issues in comparative education 90 we conclude that even if the importance of the internet and social networks as socializing agents for young people in porto alegre has not shown a substantial difference among the studied period, with apathy and disinterest even arising, the role of these agents on the way that young people perceive politics has been reshaped. even though young people's apathy regarding politics remains and even arose between 2015 and 2019, youngsters socialized by new agents are still more eager to understand politics4, feel more interested in the subject5, and are more willing to participate in politics6 than those socialized by other groups. overall, young people perceive politicians as corrupt and inefficient and reiterate claims of low effectiveness in the democratic system while claiming that participating in politics does not change reality and that their families have little influence on political decisions. however, these numbers are lower among young people primarily socialized by new media hence we observe that political efficacy and efficiency are the highest among them. this group shows the highest levels of political interest and is also more likely to use social networks to engage in political issues. they read (86.4%), like (72.5%), comment (43.6%) and share (39%) more posts/videos about politics than the other groups, likely to be more well informed about topics, while they are also the group that agrees the most that social networks can be an instrument of political participation (62.3%). accordantly, those socialized by new media are the ones that participate the most in political protests (46.3%). these data point that in brazil, differently from the claims of dalton and welzel (2014), the political culture remains similar to the previous generations. in this context, the internet as a socializing agent corroborates with reinforcing the existing political culture. in this sense, whereas we cannot say the internet and social networks made the political culture of youngsters more assertive, we can observe that those who pose them as the primary agent are closer to an assertive political culture, even though the majority of youngsters continue to show sign of a hybrid political culture. it is also important to underline that this research was conducted prior to the covid-19 pandemic, so digital media’s impact will be even higher if explored nowadays. regardless no major shift was revealed by the data. it is important to reaffirm as agre (1997), that the internet can renew the institutions and clearing society from authoritarian legacy. nevertheless, citizens must understand the different ways by which the internet can combine with broader social processes. that means significant investment is required on quality education, so young people can learn how to use the internet and social media as a tool for empowerment and knowledge, hence, increasing political engagement. once dealing with a brand-new phenomenon implies constant changes, research on this area requires further attention. still, this paper brings considerable contributions, especially by indicating that even with no significant changes in the short period analyzed, young people socialized by the internet and social media display relevant differences that may represent a potential for democratic stability. 4 only 33.5% of youngsters socialized by new media agreed with the sentence “political issues are too complicated for me, that why they don\t interest me”being the lowest levels among the analyzed groups in 2019. 5 30.7% of youngsters socialized by new media said they feel much interested in politics in 2019 being the highest levels among the analyzed groups in 2019. 4 43.2% of youngsters socialized by new media agreed with the sentence “it\s no use participating in politics because nothing ever changes”being the lowest levels among the analyzed groups in 2019. what is the political culture for young brazilians? current issues in comparative education 91 ana julia bonzanini bernardi holds a phd in political science by the federal university of rio grande do sul (ufrgsbrazil). researcher at the latin america research center (nupesal/ufrgs) and assistant professor at school of sociology and politics foundation of são paulo (fespsp-brazil). e-mail: anajuliabbernardi@hotmail.com andressa liegi vieira costa is a phd candidate in political science at the institute of political and social sciences (iscsp, university of lisbon). researcher at the centre for public administration & public policies (capp/iscsp), nupesal, and the laboratory of media and public sphere studies (lemep/uerj – rio de janeiro state university). jennifer azambuja de morais holds a phd in political science with a post-doctorate in political science by the federal university of rio grande do sul (ufrgs brazil). professor at the 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(2016). cidadania desigual: socialização política comparada em escolas públicas e privadas de porto alegre/rs [unequal citizenship: comparative political socialization in public and private schools in porto alegre/rs] (tese de doutorado). universidade federal do rio grande do sul, porto alegre, rs, brasil. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 99 developing the mongolia education sector strategy 2000-2005: reflections of a consultant for the asian development bank john c. weidman university of pittsburgh this paper presents reflections on the author's work as an international consultant for the asian development bank technical assistance (ta) project that developed the mongolia education sector strategy 2000-2005. it illustrates the use of a sector-wide approach to building a strategy for obtaining donor funding by laying out priorities across the education sector in mongolia, showing how this particular project funded by the asian development bank (adb) was structured to incorporate broad-based participation of major donors and other stakeholders in the country. the paper includes a description of the mongolian context and a framework for sector-wide approaches to educational assistance with examples drawn from the 1999 mongolia education sector strategy study. it concludes with an assessment of strengths and weaknesses of this particular sector-wide approach based on the author's mongolian experience. the mongolian context mongolia is a landlocked country of 2.65 million inhabitants living in an area of 1.565 million square kilometers. the country is sandwiched between russia and china, each of which also has a mongolian population (0.5 and 3.5 million, respectively). thirty-four percent of the population is under the age of 14. about 25 percent of the population resides in the capital city, ulaanbaatar, 25 percent resides in other urban areas, and most of the remainder is nomadic. estimated 1999 per capita gross domestic product (gdp: purchasing power parity) was $2,320 distributed as follows: 33 percent agriculture, 24 percent industry, and 43 percent services. real gdp growth was about 3.5 percent in 1999. forty percent of the population was living below the official poverty level (cia world factbook 2000). the people's government of mongolia was declared in 1921 under a single-party government that held power until 1990. the mongolian people's republic was established in 1924 as the world's second communist country. mongolia maintained close political and economic ties with the ussr, but was never one of its constituent republics. at the peak of this relationship, almost a third of mongolia's gdp was provided by the soviet union. this included significant support (e.g. books, equipment, training of academics and researchers) for mongolian education. following the fall of the soviet union in 1989, the external financial support coming from the council for mutual economic cooperation (cmec) evaporated. a new, political structure was established with the passage of a constitution in 1992 to guide the country's transition to a democratic government and a market rather than a command economy (weidman and bat-erdene, 2002). the mongolian education system has several components: (1) preschool and kindergarten; (2) four years of primary education, beginning at age eight; (3) four years of lower secondary education, with compulsory education ending after grade 8; (4) two years of upper secondary education; (5) postsecondary and higher education; and (6) john c. weidman 100 may 1, 2001 table 1. basic indicators for the education sector, 1995-1998 indicator 1995-96 1996-97 1997-98 1998-99 1. state expenditure budget for education sector (million tugrugs, current prices) 23525.3 31188.4 42161.0 47815.5 education sector as percentage of total state expenditure budget 15.8 14.8 14.7 14.7 2. education sector as percentage of total gdp 5.5 5.3 5.6 5.5 percentage of students in public and private schools public schools 78.0 74.0 72.0 70.8 3. private schools 22.0 26.0 28.0 29.2 investment (million tugrugs) in building reconstruction and vocational and technical schools 64.3 74.5 167.0 205.0 4. in equipment and training facilities 20.0 32.5 97.0 135.0 number of public universities institutes and colleges 29 29 29 33 number of students in all public postsecondary programs* 29167 31391 35229 46185 5. number of teachers 2693 2683 2799 3261 number of private universities institutes and colleges 41 51 57 71 number of students in all private postsecondary programs* 8930 11861 14405 19087 6. number of teachers 383 522 617 925 technical and vocational secondary schools 34 33 38 38 number of students 7987 11308 12320 11650 7. number of teachers 495 767 742 656 number of primary and secondary schools 664 658 645 630 primary schools (grades 1-4) 83 79 89 96 lower secondary schools (grades 1-8) 232 208 219 214 general secondary schools (grades 1-10) 349 371 337 320 number of students in primary and secondary schools 403847 418293 435061 447121 8. number of teachers in primary and secondary schools. 19411 20090 18511 18118 9. percentage of drop-outs 4.29 3.53 3.92 2.5 number of kindergartens 660 667 660 658 number of children in kindergartens 64086 67972 70035 73955 10. number of teachers in kindergartens 2004 2098 2985 3015 *data combine enrollments in postsecondary vocational (diploma), bachelors degree, and post graduate degree programs. sources: analysis of 1998 education sector statistical data. ulaanbaatar: ministry of sicence, technology and culture, 1999, table 1.1; mongolian statistiacal yearbook, 1998. ulaanbaatar: national statistical office of mongolia, 1999. tables 5.1 and 8.3 developing the mongolia education sector strategy 2000-2005: reflections of a consultant for the asian development bank current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 101 technical and vocational education and training (tvet). the tvet component comprises specialized upper secondary schools as well as post-secondary diploma programs housed in higher education institutions. the vestiges of its soviet heritage remain in a separate science and technology component under the mongolian academy of sciences, though there continue to be efforts to bring the research institutes and advanced degree granting authority of the academy under the universities. most ph.d. programs have been moved into the universities, but the academy retains control over the advanced research degree, the doctor of science. non-formal and distance education activities cut across the entire system. at each succeeding level of education, females outnumber males, resulting in higher education enrollments in which there are twice as many females as males (mongolia education sector strategy 2000-2005). table 1 shows several basic indicators of the mongolian education system. ongoing reforms in mongolian education have been designed to change from a highly specialized and compartmentalized system of education based on the russian model to a more flexible system, including improving efficiency and effectiveness of education at all levels through rationalization and decentralization. since 1990, there has been a relaxation of state control over curriculum in mongolia with efforts at diversification based on local community needs. this includes eliminating the ideological content that had been prevalent, especially in social science and humanities disciplines, and shifting from a teacher-centered to a more student-centered curriculum. administration of schools at all levels has been decentralized and less reliance placed on national planning approaches to the allocation of spaces for students in various types of curricula. the government has introduced measures aimed at cost sharing with parents and students so that education funding can be supplemented by sources other than the central government. legislation has also been passed allowing private sector provision of education at all levels (weidman and bat-erdene, 2002). a sector-wide framework for education figure 1 shows a framework for sector-wide approaches to educational assistance. it is intended to reflect an interactive process in which the boundaries between segments are permeable rather than fixed. in the center of the figure is the ministry of education, generally the lead government agency in both planning and development of educational systems. the top and bottom parts of figure 1 show the two primary groups of experts who are responsible for the technical input to a project, including preparation and submission of reports to the government and adb. international consultants must be citizens of adb member countries and are chosen on the basis of the fit between their expertise and the qualifications specified in the terms of reference for a project. selection may be done either through direct recruitment of specific individuals by adb or through offering of tenders. in the latter case, adb prefers to shortlist a small number of firms to be invited to bid. local consultants are generally citizens of the host country, also selected for their specific expertise as it relates to project requirements and their knowledge of the national educational system. when international consultants are not conversant in the language(s) of the host country, local consultants often assist with interpretation at john c. weidman 102 may 1, 2001 meetings and of necessary government documents (though translation of longer documents, regulations, etc. is preferably done on a contract basis). it is also important for project consultants to have ministry counterparts who are at least partially released from their normal duties to provide assistance with the identification of documents and data necessary for fulfilling the terms of reference. for the mongolian education sector strategy study, a senior ministry of science, technology, education and culture (mostec) official was assigned to the project on a full-time basis and worked as one of the local consultants. the left and right parts of figure 1 represent the major actors in the educational funding process, both providers (donor agencies) and recipients (country stakeholders). of course, the ministry of education in the center is the primary provider of education in a country, but it must work in cooperation with donors and stakeholders. donor agencies (including development banks) work directly with relevant ministry officials in determining priorities for funding, often including officials in a finance ministry or similar entity along with representatives of the executive branch of government in final negotiations for grants and loans. even when there is grant funding, donors tend to expect some type of contribution from the receiving government such as office space, supplies, transport, etc. figure 1. a framework for sector-wide approaches to educational assessment ministry of education international consultants country stakeholders local consultants donor agencies developing the mongolia education sector strategy 2000-2005: reflections of a consultant for the asian development bank current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 103 in mongolia, mostec was the agency responsible for execution of the education sector strategy study. mostec officials also worked with the adb project officer in formulating the design and terms of reference for the project. this included responsibility for organizing a national conference to discuss the preliminary recommendations for the education sector strategy that had been developed during the course of the technical assistance project funded by adb. donors, stakeholders, and ministry officials were invited to participate in the conference (paid for with project funds) and contribute their observations. both international and the two local consultants who had not worked previously for mostec were selected directly by the adb project officer based largely on his experience working with all of them over an approximately three-year period during which he had been responsible for adb education projects in mongolia. project design in 1996, adb approved funding for the education sector development program (esdp) in mongolia, comprised of an integrated package of policy reforms, investments (loans), and associated technical assistance (ta) intended to make the sector cost efficient, effective and responsive to the emerging economy. the policy reforms included measures to (i) rationalize education structures and staffing, (ii) promote cost recovery schemes, (iii) support privatization and private provision of education, and (iv) develop a comprehensive policy framework for technical education and vocational training (tevt). the investments were designed to (i) strengthen education management capabilities at central, local and institutional levels, (ii) reduce the numbers of teachers through a voluntary separation incentive, (iii) improve management and academic program development in higher education, and (iv) upgrade quality and relevance of educational content at the upper secondary and higher education levels. the associated ta was designed to strengthen the institutional capacity of the education sector to achieve the objectives of esdp. the mongolian government has demonstrated strong commitment to undertaking needed reforms and improvement in the education sector and intends to continue sector-wide initiatives in a planned way for the next decade. the education sector strategy study was designed to lay the groundwork for planning by analyzing current experience and lessons learned; providing a clear articulation of mongolia's educational policies, goals and objectives; and setting the parameters for educational and human resource development for 2000-05. the government wanted assistance for developing a planning document that would provide the analytical base for addressing key issues in human resource development, establish a rationale, suggest priorities for interventions in the sector, and provide a sound basis for mobilizing domestic and external resources. the 1999 education sector strategy project was designed to support mostec's planning process for improving access, quality, relevance, cost-effectiveness and sustainability of the education and training sector in the context of mongolia's transition from a centrally planned economy to a market-oriented economy. the specific objectives were to assist mostec to (i) analyze and refine the government's policy and plan for educational development; (ii) define, elaborate and fine tune the government's goals, objectives and strategies for educational development by sub-sector; (iii) establish broad priorities and strategic options for educational development for 2000-05; and (iv) prepare an overall john c. weidman 104 may 1, 2001 medium-term investment program broken into sub-programs/projects. the scope of the project included (i) provision of two person-months of international consultant services in educational planning, two person-months of international consultant services in general education and training, and six person-months of local consultant services in education planning, general education and education finance; (ii) local research and data collection to update the 1993/94 sector analysis; and (iii) workshops with stakeholders designed to examine issues, debate options, and identify appropriate strategies for educational development in the medium-term. for the work of the project, the mongolian education sector was divided into six subsectors: pre-school education; primary and secondary education; tvet; higher education; science and technology; and non-formal and distance education. mostec appointed a working group to oversee the project consisting of the international consultants (education planning expert and team leader, general education expert), the local consultants (education finance expert, educational planning expert, general education expert), the state secretary of mostec and his three senior department directors, and six specialists representing the areas of emphasis in the sector strategy study. project outcomes an updated education sector study providing current data on all facets of the mongolian education system was completed by the consultant team to inform the strategy building process. they also reviewed all donor projects between 1993 and 1999 to get an indication of their magnitude and impact. figure 2 illustrates the range of donor assistance during this period. this also shows the success of the mongolian government in using it historical alliance with russia to capitalize on funding from both western (especially the u.s.a, germany, the united kingdom, and the european union) and asian sources (especially korea, japan, and australia). in the early stages of strategy development, members of the working group made arrangements for meetings of a number of discussion groups specifically related to each of the sub-sectors of education. participants in these groups included key administrators, principals, teachers and donor representatives. their focus was to review sub-sector needs and to make proposals about future developments. these initiatives were refined and developed into draft strategies, projects and activities by work group members in conjunction with the consultants. the drafts were submitted to a national workshop on education sector strategies 2000-05, held in ulaanbaatar on june 10, 1999, for further consideration and reactions. the national workshop involved almost 100 invited participants. it included members of the parliament of mongolia, officers of mostec, officers from other ministries, key educational administrators and teachers, other stakeholders, and representatives of donor organizations. in addition to consideration of the national overview, participants were involved in small group reviews, which concentrated on draft strategies for each sub-sector. animated discussions occurred within these groups. probably the most frequent concern raised by stakeholders was that the government could be doing more to make certain that there is equity and uniform access. developing the mongolia education sector strategy 2000-2005: reflections of a consultant for the asian development bank current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 105 figure 2. intervention of international assistance in mongolian education (source: mostec, 2001) pre-school education primary education basic education upper secondary education n o n -f o r m a l ed u c a t io n higher education technical and vocational education and training denmark danida • support to primary and secondary education (community-based school, student-centered instruction, in-service training etc. 1992-1998) unicef • primary school teacher training (1997 2001) • non-formal education for school drop-outs (19972001) osi (soros) • high education support program • school 2001 (1999-2001) • step-by-step • civic education • political and social science reform world bank • privatization in education sector (1997 1998) australia (ausaid) • strengthening of training capacity in economics and management associated disciplines (1995-1999) • capacity building european union (tacis/tempus) • tempus jeps, cps • economics educaiotn at national university (num): 1995-1998 • num: institional stenthening (1999-2001) • strenthingin the acadmey of managmeent (1999-2001) • national observatory (1997-1999) undp • management education (1993 – 1997) • pre-school education (the netherlands) • ict unesco • non-formal distance education (danida (1992 – 2001) • basic learning materials initiative (danida 1998-2000) • school management (1993-1994) asian development bank • her dev sector review and masterplan (1993-1994) • education sector dev program (1997-2000) • education sector strategy study (1999) uk (save the children) • pre-school education (1995 – 2000) • social workers training (1999-2000) japan • re-construciton of schools in ulaanbaatar (2000-2003) • ag univ (au), nat univ (num), tech univ (mtu) • grass roots • scholarships germany • small business training • legal education • support to tvet (1999-2001) • daad • university rector’s conference koria (koica) • non-formal educaiton center • food technology college canada • knowledge web usa • higher-educaiton reform (usia citizens exchange, 1992-1993) • university affiliation (usia) • fulbright & humphrey scholarships john c. weidman 106 may 1, 2001 outcomes of the discussions were reported at a workshop plenary session. this reporting also included the determination of priorities for strategies within sub-sectors. subsequently, the working group and consultant team reviewed outcomes from the workshop and prepared descriptions of the strategies along with associated projects and activities with cost estimates for the sector strategy report to be submitted for government approval. these recommendations were discussed with the state secretary and minister of mostec, final revisions made, and the report submitted for government approval (mongolia education sector strategy 2000-2005, endorsed by government resolution no. 20, february 02, 2000). reflections the process of developing strategies by sub-sector groups was a strength, because it brought together educators, consultants, mostec officials, donors, and other stakeholders with a common interest and concentrated high levels of expertise and effort. however, greater emphasis could have been placed on close examination of common elements in the strategies so that common issues and linkages across strategies would have been recognized and carefully considered as part of future implementation arrangements. in fact, the sub-sector groups were quite consistent in identifying the following four areas as being central areas of concern, regardless of the level or content of education: 1) alleviating deficiencies with buildings and facilities. 2) providing teacher training and re-training. 3) developing curriculum and providing textbooks and other educational materials. 4) increasing student participation in education. most educational buildings are now more than 20 years old and are in acute need of renovation and refurbishment. heating systems in many school buildings either do not function or are in poor condition, a major difficulty in a country that experiences such severe winter conditions. much of the equipment in schools is also in poor condition. these physical requirements cannot be ignored and a vast quantity of resources will be needed to rectify them. the reform of mongolian education has required a revised curriculum at all levels and this, in turn, has created needs for new approaches to teacher pre-service education, teacher in-service training to accompany the provision of textbooks and educational materials. although subsequent strategies may reflect slightly different approaches in different sub-sectors, these are simply variations on the more general theme of the impact of curriculum change. the third common element also comes from curriculum change and is highly inter-related with the second, provision of textbooks and materials appropriate for the new curriculum. the fourth element of vital importance is raising the level of student participation in educational programs. each of these areas continue to be government priority. stakeholders' comments tended to reflect the policies of their employers, e.g., representatives from agencies in the united nations favored inter-sectoral approaches and lowering the age at which mongolian children normally begin school from 8 to 6. of course, since the government was eager to receive donor funding, there was openness to developing the mongolia education sector strategy 2000-2005: reflections of a consultant for the asian development bank current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 107 stakeholder comments, especially to representatives from those agencies known to favor funding projects in high priority areas. generally, organizations that are faced with an exercise in strategic planning find that their information sources for developing projects are incomplete and mostec was no different in this regard. consequently, a few of the strategies involved conducting needed research for understanding the current situation in mongolia with respect to such things as labor market demands and associated training needs. across the subsectors, there tended to be recommendations for some projects and activities based predominantly on research or data collection, largely so that implementation could be informed directly by current conditions in mongolia. however, before implementation of any particular strategy begins, all strategies should be reviewed to ensure that, where it is appropriate for reasons of operational efficiency, research and investigations are conducted simultaneously or in an appropriate sequence (mongolia education sector strategy 2000-2005). probably the most common criticism of mostec encountered during the course of the education sector strategy study was that donors and stakeholders were not routinely provided with ready access to information. one significant problem was that many mostec reports and statistical documents were printed in mongolian and translated in order to be useful to donors. the lack of funds in mostec for reproduction of documents and statistical reports was another problem. there is, however, increasing demand on mostec to prepare reports in english for agencies such as unesco that can be disseminated in electronic rather than print formats. even the mongolian national statistical office is now printing its annual statistical abstract in both english and mongolian. there were also concerns that the project was structured in a way that made certain the sub-sector teams working on strategy development would be dominated by mostec officials. of course, since mostec was the executing agency for the education sector strategy study, it might be argued that such suspicions are inevitable. non-mostec stakeholders were included in each of the sub-sector teams, but mostec officials were responsible for preparing all draft materials for the project report. even though a few of the donors indicated that concerns they raised during sub-sector meetings were not incorporated into the report disseminated for the national education sector strategy workshop, most stakeholders were pleased with the opportunity to have their voices heard in the development of educational reform strategies. only time will tell how well the implementation of the strategies recommended will continue to reflect the concerns of stakeholders. while the process and outcomes from the 1999 mongolian education sector strategy project may not have met all expectations from stakeholders, it did reflect a sector-wide approach. most stakeholders were pleased to have the opportunity to provide feedback on the draft report, even if their view conflicted with mostec officials. the consultant team and working groups tried to incorporate as many relevant stakeholder suggestions into the recommended strategies, even if they were in conflict. the general framework presented in this paper suggests major elements that are worth considering when designing projects to incorporate perspectives that are sector-wide and sensitive to john c. weidman 108 may 1, 2001 the particular interests of donors, teachers, administrators, government officials, and other stakeholders in the educational system. references central intelligence agency (2000). the world factbook 2000. directorate of intelligence. [on-line]. available at: http://www.cia.gov/ government of mongolia, ministry of science, technology, education and culture (1999). mongolia education sector strategy, 2000-2005. ulaanbaatar. weidman, john c. and regsurengiin bat-erdene. (forthcoming, 2002) higher education and the state in mongolia: dilemmas of democratic transition. in d.w. chapman & a.e. austin (eds.), higher education in the developing world: changing contexts and institutional responses. westport, ct: greenwood press. author note caroline r. pryor, department of teaching, learning, and culture, texas a&m university, college station; zohreh eslami-rasekh, department of teaching, learning, and culture, texas a&m university, college station. correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to caroline r. pryor, department of teaching, learning, and culture, texas a&m university, 4232 harrington towers, college station, texas 77843. e-mail: cpryor@coe.tamu.edu; carolinepryor@yahoo.com © 2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 50 december 15, 2004 iranian and u.s. pre-service teachers' philosophical approaches to teaching: enhancing intercultural understandings caroline r. pryor texas a&m university at college station zohreh eslami-rasekh texas a&m university at college station abstract this study investigated philosophical approaches to teaching held by pre-service teachers in iran and the us. the study's participants were 30 pre-service teachers from iran, a predominantly muslim country, and 30 american pre-service teachers. data were collected using the 105-item philosophy of education scale (poes, author a, 2003) composed of five philosophical approaches and seven teaching dimensions. scores indicated iranian-us pre-service teachers differed in their beliefs about the executive (behaviorist) teaching approach; similarities were found in the citizen teacher (socialresponsibility) approach. as researchers, we purport the results to have implications for enhancing conversations about cultural values and applications in educational settings. introduction the post-september 11 atmosphere has generated a renewed interest in the islamic world and issues related to education in muslim countries have become prominent topics of discussion in media and among scholars. because education encompasses several dimensions (e.g., content, pedagogy, context, policy), each highly related to cultural expectations (dewey, 1933; kincheloe, 1999; wactler, 1990), understanding the foundational assumptions teachers embrace regarding the goal of education and the role of teachers is one way to promote intercultural understanding. evaluating ideologies that underlie teachers' approaches to teaching and learning (cochran-smith & fries, 2002) about other educational systems through examination of approaches and beliefs may demythologize (haggerson, 2002) the intercultural expectations educators possess about one another as well as unveil and expand pedagogical knowledge that may enrich our community. the benefits of such exchanges are numerous; they provide for the opportunity to: evaluate ideologies that underlie approaches to teaching (cochran-smith & fries, 2002), learn about the world and the human experience, (watkins, 2002), encompass diversity, (compton-hall, 2003), and connect with research of a non-local nature (florio-ruane, 2002). for iran, a predominantly muslim country, and the united states possessing a widely diverse population and history steeped in western european culture, calls for such iranian and u.s. pre-service teachers' philosophical approaches to teaching: enhancing intercultural understandings current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 51 exchanges regarding the importance of intercultural philosophical exchange are beginning to emerge in literature (unesco, 2003; alexander, 2001). several international events however, have limited opportunities for such exchanges. for example, (a) the american hostage crisis in tehran has negatively impacted iranianamerican relations (trimel, 1998), (b) iran continues to refuse to hold talks with the u.s. government and most cultural and educational exchange groups have either abandoned or severely curtailed their activities in iran following the severing of u.s.-iranian relations in 1979 (trimel, 1998; rubin, 2000), and (c) perceived differences in philosophy and theology continue to foster a so-called "clash of civilizations" expounded by pundits and scholars. (center for common ground in iran ). yet, crossley's (2002) research suggests a renewal of international inquiry and exchange by examining the context in which [cultural] exchanges occur. in educational settings, cultural exchanges are partially created by teachers' decisions regarding the application of philosophical approaches (brousseau, book, & byers, 1987) and beliefs about outcomes for student learning (wactler, 1990). for example, teachers communicate cultural perspectives to their students through decisions about what knowledge students should learn and how best to teach this knowledge (unesco, 2003; feinberg & soltis, 2004). as researchers, we posit that the provision of discourse regarding teachers' beliefs about approaches to teaching contributes to a larger portrait of intercultural perspectives (bogdan & biklen, 2004). this article, attempts to describe how pre-service teachers in iran and the us explain beliefs about the goal of education and the role of the teacher. two questions guide this inquiry: 1. how are iranian and us pre-service teachers' philosophical approaches to teaching similar or different? 2. what can we learn about each culture that will promote intercultural understanding? although the present study investigates a small sample of us and iranian pre-service teachers (n=60), the sample offers a preliminary portrait of the teachers' goals for their students and the teaching methods utilized to reach these goals. to further enhance this comparison, as researchers, we studied pre-service teachers most likely to encounter students with multiple linguistic and cultural perspectives as these teachers use strategies which enhance learning to live together and adapting rapidly to change (i.e., interpret behavior, relation building, and decision making) (international conference on education, 2001). in the us, the k-4 level is the largest of these student populations (montone & loeb, 2000; shaul, 1999), and in iran, this population of learners is prevalent in the middle-secondary level (4-12) students who study english as a second language (atai, 2000). the discussion section is centered upon the importance of educational philosophy to teachers' decisions about practice—the values and beliefs they hold about teaching. after this initial discussion, two aspects of understanding a culture's vision for its society are presented: (a) philosophy or approach to education, and (b) organization of schooling in each culture (feinberg & solits, 2004). lastly, the beliefs and values of usiranian pre-service teachers are compared using a philosophy of education scale in order to gain information derived from the world in which teachers live and work— their classrooms. the purpose of this article is to provide information that might caroline r. pryor and zohreh eslami-rasekh 52 december 15, 2004 translate into broader global understandings and provide legitimacy for future large scale investigations. it is valuable then, to begin with an introduction to how understanding educational philosophy informs our knowledge of culture and cultural values, followed by sections on us and iranian specific philosophies, schooling systems, and results of the scale findings, concluding with an analysis of our findings and suggestions for further studies. the importance of understanding educational philosophies ross (1992) defines the philosophy of education as an individual's vision about the purpose and process of education. understanding one's philosophical orientation to teaching provides one with a foundation from which decisions may be made regarding appropriate and important content and its subsequent instructional methods. (oliva, 2005; tanner & tanner, 2000). wactler (1990) suggests that an educator's most basic analytic skill is a foundational understanding of approaches to teaching. carbone (1991) posits the term “teacher as philosopher” due to the strong link between teachers' values, curriculum design, and implementation. understanding one's philosophical approach may provide teachers with a useful framework for differentiating instructional decisions supportive of the cultural and diverse needs of students (hall, 2002). thus, similar to beach and lindahl's (2004) reasoning that an educational leader must understand philosophies of planning in order to guide an organization, leaders must also understand international educational philosophies in order to enhance educational decisions that frame future social goals and international interactions. these philosophic understandings act as events or markers (benchmark “bits” of information) (denzin & lincoln 2003). research completed in the 1980s suggests that an intercultural exchange of events (in this case educational philosophies) can (a) foster a more comprehensive global perspective on approaches to teaching (feinberg, 1989), (b) promote understanding of these approaches' derivation in principles. (brousseau, book & byers, 1987), and (c) eliminate unexplored, inter-global assumptions (unesco, 2003). feinberg (1989) suggests the desegregation of intercultural data as renormative –evaluation of data for perspectives known or unknown. for example, many americans are confused about the differences between national affiliation (i.e., arabs, persians, turks) and religious affiliation (muslim and islam) even though statistical surveys indicate that the five countries with the largest muslim population are not arab (shabbas, 1998). further, most americans equate islamists with arabs, a misunderstanding that leads to fear/hate of “those people” (shabbas, 1998). therefore, the following sections, islamic philosophy of education and schooling in iran, provide a brief historical, political, and religious background for both countries. islamic philosophy of education the examination of philosophic approaches to education in iran begins, as does all muslim life, with understanding the tenets and centrality of religion's role—the islamic belief – in iranian society. at the core of islamic beliefs is a fusion of balanced growth in personality through the training of the spirit, intellect, the rational self, feelings, and bodily senses (riaz, 2000). to develop this core, islamic education aims to prepare students in such a manner that their attitudes toward life, and their actions, decisions, and approaches to everyday matters of life are governed by the spiritual and ethical iranian and u.s. pre-service teachers' philosophical approaches to teaching: enhancing intercultural understandings current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 53 values of islam. for example, muslim educators believe that the most important purpose of education is to prepare for a life of purity and sincerity. this total commitment to character building is based on the ideals of islamic ethics and is considered the highest goal of education (riaz, 2000). to foster this aim, students are taught to seek the glorification of god in achieving a state of morality and to act according to principles of islamic righteousness. it is incumbent upon all muslims to perform the best and most dignified acts within reach of one's capacity. islam's utmost emphasis is on deed— acting upon what is learned (rizvi, 1986). education in islam emphasizes that for the comprehension of principles and the implicit meaning of articles of faith, it is imperative that scientific and technological knowledge be acquired and applied (quddus, 1990). as a philosophical approach, utilizing the scientific perspective of knowledge may appear to come in conflict with the role of religion in eastern teaching approaches; however, islamic educators provide for a balanced view of philosophic integration (the use of several philosophic approaches). philosophic integration serves as a foundation for clarifying education's social purpose, a continuous process necessary for the complete and balanced development of individuals. in iran however, educational interpretation by secularists and religious thinkers vary in perspective, balancing between religious and secular values. many islamic educational supporters believe that modern western education over emphasizes reason and rationality and encourages scientific inquiry at the expense of spirituality and faith. it has been highly challenging for muslims to resist western “liberalism” because all branches of knowledge have been affected by western thought and islamic substitutes for liberal concepts have not yet been created (shahbazi, 1998). islamic critics of “liberal education” believe that liberalism has created a perplexing variety of views and thoughts, without providing for the survival of islamic values (rizvi, 1986). proponents of islamic education believe that secular education and thinking generated by a modern scientific approach promotes attitudes of empiricism and creates doubt about the need to think in terms of religion (riaz, 2000). schooling in iran the iranian educational system has long been influenced by various politics, ideologies, and philosophies. javam (2003) noted four major educational phases: pre-islamic, islamic, westernized education, and education after the islamic revolution. religions in contemporary iran include shiah muslim (89%), sunni muslim (9%), and zoroastrian, jewish, christian, and baha'i (2%). islam arrived in iran by arab invasion more than 1400 years ago in the year 637 a.d. previously, iranians were mostly zoroastrians, one of the oldest of the revealed world-religions. persia eventually adopted the shiah strain of islam, which reveres ali, the son-in-law of mohammed, and his descendants, while sunni islam (which does not hold ali up as the only continuation of the tradition from muhammad) prevailed in most of the arab world. arab rulers were followed by a succession of dynasties, most of who were of turkish origin, until 1925, when reza shah founded the last pahlavi dynasty (monarchy) and tried to restore persian national pride and power. westernized education reached its peak during the pahlavi monarchy in which iran became a superficially westernized country (javam, 2003); in part due to exposure to western ideology through cultural and educational exchanges during this period. iran (formerly persia ) today is a predominantly muslim country. caroline r. pryor and zohreh eslami-rasekh 54 december 15, 2004 iran changed from a monarchy to an islamic republic after the revolution of 1979. the following year, ayatollah khonmeini assigned a committee the task of reviewing the educational system and recommending a new program that captured the philosophy, culture, and religious ideals of islamic iran (shahbazi, 1998). currently, the iranian preuniversity educational system stresses the importance of islamic ideas in five main areas: student population, goals, staff, school environment, and curriculum— with the aim of creating a new generation of students with an “islamic personality” in keeping with the principles of the islamic revolution (kulayi, 2000). commitment to islam and loyalty to the islamic revolution are key components for hiring and promoting staff members in schools and increased emphasis in the curriculum is placed upon ethical education. to reflect these changes, the textbooks have been “purified” to emphasize the ideology and politics of the islamic revolution (shabhazi 1998). these changes are exemplified in the islamic philosophic approach to education as educators infuse islamic ideology (such as seeking knowledge) into iranian schools. for example, one of the first arabic sentences taught to children is “muslim men and women are morally obliged to seek knowledge” ( talab al-ilm farizda ala kul muslim wa muslima ). another phrase that children are expected to recite mentions muhammad and “knowledge from the cradle to the grave” ( min al-mahd allahd ). teachers stress the relationship between religion and schooling as demonstrated by the first word of the quran: “read”. muslims posit that this placement emphasizes the importance of literacy education (kulayi, 2000). values such as knowledge, literacy, and loyalty to the islamic revolution are essential, by definition, of an iranian educator. some educator conflict in this loyalty may be evident however, as advancements in technology, ease of communication, and an increase in the amount of international trade and travel impact the degree of modernity in muslim countries such as iran. with differing degrees of impact, transformation into a modern, liberal, and technological society is one possible future shift in educational approach. philosophy of education in the united states modernization—broadly based philosophical approaches to teaching—is not historically uncommon in the us. however, philosophic approaches to teaching under girding the united states educational system have been anchored by two opposing perspectives: relativism (student centered-self actualization) and positivism (achievement-evaluation) (feinberg, 1989). in part, because the attributes of attainment-evaluation are observable, positivism has dominated the united states system. during the american colonial period of 1650-1776, the influence of european protestantism such as standardized curriculum and measurement, unifusive behaviors, and privatization of religion, were cornerstone beliefs, standard in the development of public-private schooling (smith, 1984). although relativistic philosophy impacted some, but not all, european educators (e.g., pestalozzi, froebel, rousseau, montessori) during the period of 1750-1900, its influence was lessened in the united states. thus, early us educational models drew primarily on positivistic beliefs; more humanistic models of relativism-progressivism periodically emerged, especially during conditions of social strife such as during the economic and political uncertainties of the 1890's, 1930's and 1960's (smith, 1984). educational philosophic shifts in the us system have been more visible than in iranian systems. unlike iranian culture which traditionally has had a dominant set of normative iranian and u.s. pre-service teachers' philosophical approaches to teaching: enhancing intercultural understandings current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 55 values commonly understood and smoothly translated into school practice (see discussion section about emerging changes appearing in iran ) us educators periodically reflect on, discuss, and reconsider the efficacy of positivism and relativism in school practice. however, although the conflicts attributable to the oppositional attributes of positivism and relativism are well described in literature (see feinberg& soltis, 2004; fenstermacher & soltis, 2004; oliva, 2005; tanner & tanner, 2000), the social values upon which teachers make decisions are based on a long-standing belief in the principles of a democratic society (gutmann, 1987). the three main principles composing a democracy are liberty-freedom, justice-fairness, and equality-equal opportunity (beane & apple, 1999; gutmann, 1987; gutmann & thompson, 1996; ravitch & therstrom, 1992 and others), values commonly translated into expectations of school practice (author a, 2000; 2003; parker, 2005 and others). schooling in the us american belief in these three democratic principles, and expected in-school practice rests on positive attitudes towards three cultural norms: (a) opportunity for full social participation for all citizens (goodlad, 1996), (b) equal opportunity in a diverse society (spring, 1999), and (c) a moral norm of justice and fairness (gutmann, 1987). to communicate the importance of these beliefs to its citizenry, us pre-service teacher education programs have encouraged the preparation of pre-service teachers to lead students in understanding these values in order to become effective citizens in a democratic society (darling-hammond, 1994; davis, 2003; parker, 1996b; soder, 1996). the current challenge for the american educational system in its outreach for global intercultural understanding appears to be how to respond to positivistic values of us governmental mandates such the federal no child left behind act of 2001 and/or reframe educational approaches to incorporate philosophies of a more progressivehumanistic and self-sustaining nature of inquiry. method participants the iranian participants were nine male and 21 female pre-service teachers, ages 21-26, majoring in middle-high school level tesl (teaching english as a second language) in a post-baccalaureate education program in an iranian university; english is not taught at the elementary school level in iran. the us participants were 30 female pre-service teachers, (a typical demographic), predominantly white, ages 21-22, majoring in elementary grades (k-6), who finished coursework in english as a second language and multi-cultural education. these participants were first semester seniors at a research university in the southwestern us, and enrolled in a social studies methods course. in us schools, english as a second language is more commonly taught at the elementary level. the most important controlling criteria for participation were pre-service teaching status and exposure in the university program to methods of teaching english as a second language. procedure instruments. the philosophy of education scale (poes, see figure 1) is composed of seven dimensions of teaching, derived from the core standards of the interstate new teacher assessment and support council (intasc) (1992), and the national council of accreditation of teacher education (ncate) standard one (2000 revision) of effective caroline r. pryor and zohreh eslami-rasekh 56 december 15, 2004 teaching: classroom environment, lesson plans, classroom management, activities, grading/evaluation, knowledge, and teacher's role. the seven dimensions of the poes are triangulated across five philosophical teaching approaches described in the literature. within each dimension (e.g., grading/evaluation), five cells represent each approach; each cell is composed of three indicators representing a particular approach. each indicator is independently rated using a five point evaluative scale, after which the cell is compared across the five approaches of a dimension and each approach is ranked using the five-point scale. the summated ranked scores derive an overall philosophical orientation score. these ranked scores also portray the contribution of each dimension to overall philosophical approaches. figure 1 provides one example of dimension-indicator scoring on the poes. in all, the poes is comprised of 105 indicators, each independently rated, and 35 philosophical approach items, each ranked. figure 1. philosophy of education scale and sample scoring this form has seven rows (e.g., “classroom environment”) of large boxes. each large box has a small box and three descriptors of teaching beliefs and practice. first, start with the descriptors. rate each of the three descriptors in each large box in the first row, going from left to right, using the scale below as a guide. rating numbers may be repeated. most like me 5 4 3 2 1 least like me second, rank each of the five large boxes in across each row from the one most like you (5), to the one least like you (1) using the scale above. use each ranking number only once; place this number in the small box. repeat this process for the remaining rows. third, add the small boxes (down), for each column. (copyright author, 2003). sample scoring across one dimension of teaching (lesson plans). rate indicators rate indicators rate indicators rate indicators rate indicators rank approach rank approach rank approach rank approach rank approach lesson plans 5 1 3 2 4 4 specific objectives and standards clearly defined 1 long-term, broadly structured outcome 3 emphasis on depth of knowledge 1 open-ended objectives 2 flexible goals based on community and citizenship needs. 4 essential elements of instruction are addressed 1 thematic and integrated curriculum 3 instruction extends beyond standardized testing 2 inquiry 3 practical knowledge and life skills 5 meets district guidelines, scope and sequence 1 student centered learning 2 extensive resources (field trips, guest speakers) 3 emphasize technological skills and information interpreting techniques 5 higher-order, critical thinking and problem-solving note. to determine overall philosophical approach, sum total only the small boxes down the column. iranian and u.s. pre-service teachers' philosophical approaches to teaching: enhancing intercultural understandings current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 57 figure 2. philosophy of education scale classroom environment      _ task-oriented _ student-oriented _ content-oriented _ technologyoriented _ culturally enriched environment with global perspectives _ organized/effici ent _ flexible activities _ goaldirected/semistructured _ productiondominated activity _ safe learning community _ commercially prepared material _ studentgenerated material _ teacher-prepared materials _ high use of multi-media _ interactive learning environment \\ lesson plans      _ specific objectives and standards clearly defined _ long-term, broadly structured outcomes _ emphasis on depth of knowledge _ open-ended objectives _ flexible goals based on community and citizenship needs _ essential elements of instruction are addressed _ thematic and integrated curriculum _ instruction extends beyond standardized testing _ inquiry _ practical knowledge and life skills _ meets district guidelines, scope and sequence _ student-centered learning _ extensive resources (fieldtrips, guest speakers) _ emphasis on technological skills and information interpreting techniques _ higher-order, critical thinking and problemsolving classroom management      _ teacher/schooldeveloped rules _ classroom meetings and peer review _ teacher models desired behaviors _ individual responsibility is stressed _ parental involvement in solving problems _ positive reinforcement for desired behaviors _ rules established cooperatively by teacher and students _ self-evaluation on ethics and moral development _ teachers and students discuss expectations _ student input in consequences and guidelines _ defined consistent consequences for undesired behaviors _ serious problems dealt with individually _ students responsible for his or her own conduct _ procedures govern student interaction with technology _ individual rights, community focus, selfresponsibility, respect for others caroline r. pryor and zohreh eslami-rasekh 58 december 15, 2004 activities      _ regular/consiste nt individual assignments _ journal writing _ in-depth research projects on content areas lecture/ discussion/ inquiry _ student-teacher share _ community service _ lecture-direct instruction _ cooperative learning _ _ peer teaching _ leadership development/ teamwork skills _ daily or weekly homework assignments/ projects _ student-selected activities and projects _ extensive reading _ students create presentations and projects _ emphasis on diversity in debate/discussio n/role play grading / evaluation      _ standards-based testing _ portfolio assessment _ essay and objective tests _ graded on level of decisionmaking, resources used and application _ evaluation based on contribution to civic responsibilities _ objective measurement _ effort considered as achievement _ ability to apply knowledge as achievement _ evidence of technological competence _ student/teacher jointly developed rubrics _ scored evaluation measures _ self and peers evaluate process as well as products _ thorough and rigorous standards _ feedback and evaluation often given in electronic formats _ immediate feedback, justification/ interpretation of grades knowledge / instruction      _ step-by-step instruction _ discovery and personal experiences _ intense study of content area _ students search for information _ student discovery, inquiry/critique, research projects _ individual practice _ manipulation experimentation/ inquiry _ perspectives of knowledge important _ exploration of knowledge _ understanding of democratic process _ focus on mastering basic skills and standards _ students construct personal understanding of content _ breadth of knowledge important _ interpretation of meaning _ practical knowledge equals content knowledge teacher role      _ manager _ facilitator _ expert _ interpreter _ leader _ organizer _ inquirer _ mentor _ consultant _ citizen _ planner _ co-learner _ guide _ connector _ patriot column total column total column total column total column total iranian and u.s. pre-service teachers' philosophical approaches to teaching: enhancing intercultural understandings current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 59 measures. the poes measures five teaching approaches found in the literature (e.g., feinberg & soltis, 2004). the approaches used in the poes are the: (a) executive (behaviorism, a production model), (b) humanist (progressivism, student centered), (c) subject specialist (perennialism, content focused) (tanner & tanner, 2000), (d) explorer (deconstructivism, revealing social myths, pinar, slattery, reynolds, & taubman, 2000), and (e) citizen teacher (essentialism, core civic values, ravitch & thenstrom, 1992). reliability. studies of the 105-item poes investigating us pre-service and in-service teachers (average sample size n=+100) (pryor, 2003, pryor & kang, 2003;pryor, 2004;), reported reliability ranging from.61 to.68, considered well above the benchmark range of 0.50 to 0.60 set by nunnally (1967) for an instrument intended as an analytic tool. these studies were developed by: (a) determining indicator-cell coefficients (cronbach's alpha), (b) coefficients for each of the seven dimensions and five corresponding philosophical approaches, and (c) averaging the mean coefficients of either the five approaches or the seven dimensions, leading to the same result. small sample size in this present study prevented replication of this reliability. the poes was administered by the professor of each participant group as part of their course work and class discussions. data analyses. to compare iranian and us philosophical differences anova analysis and t-tests were performed to determine within-group and between-group differences on overall philosophical orientation. a matrix was developed using mean score and ttest differences for each group, on (a) each philosophical orientation and (b) four teaching variables salient to instructional design: knowledge (content information), lesson plans, classroom activities, grading/evaluation (tanner & tanner, 2000). the remaining three variables were considered tangential to this study because they represented policy rather than instructional decisions (classroom environment, management, role of teacher) not considered in this analysis. table 1: comparison between iranian and u. s. pre-service teachers on philosophical orientations. iranian (n=30) u. s. (n=30) m sd m sd t p ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- executive 3.15 0.41 4.03 0.48 -7.66 <0.001** humanist 3.79 0.46 4.31 0.34 -4.97 <0.001** subject specialist 3.60 0.43 4.01 0.44 -3.62 0.001** explorer 3.79 0.56 4.04 0.46 -1.89 0.063 citizen teacher 3.83 0.44 4.27 0.43 -3.91 <0.001** note: ** statistically significant at 0.01 level. scales range from 1(least like me) to 5 (most like me). caroline r. pryor and zohreh eslami-rasekh 60 december 15, 2004 results iranian and us pre-service teachers' philosophical orientations to teaching table 1 portrays the differences in iranian and us pre-service teachers' overall philosophical approaches to teaching. these two groups differ significantly on mean scores for each orientation, except for the explorer approach, in which there was no between group difference. the anova analysis indicated (f=11.293, p<0.001) a significant difference in the ratings iranians gave to these five philosophical approaches; these pre-service teachers did not highly rate either the executive or subject specialist approaches. us pre-service teachers' scores were more equally spread out among the philosophical beliefs, as indicated in the anova analysis (f=3.418, p=0.011); us preservice teachers tend not to highly rate the explorer approach. these f values also indicate that the iranian pre-service teachers' philosophical tendencies are more strongly held than are those beliefs of the us pre-service teachers. the most highly rated philosophical approach (for both groups) was citizen teacher. table 2: comparison between iranian and u. s. pre-service teachers on four variables. iran (n=30) u. s. (n=30) m sd m sd t p ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- executive lpa 3.24 0.83 4.48 0.46 -7.09 <0.001** cab 2.58 0.55 3.69 0.74 -6.57 <0.001** grc 3.13 0.84 3.78 0.67 -3.27 .002** knd 3.64 0.67 4.19 0.53 -3.48 .001** humanist lp 3.86 0.55 4.22 0.59 -2.41 0.019** ca 3.68 0.74 4.22 0.47 -3.41 0.001** gr 3.53 0.85 4.27 0.47 -4.28 <0.001** kn 4.08 0.71 4.53 0.44 -2.97 0.005** subject lp 3.79 0.70 4.36 0.52 -3.57 0.001** specialist ca 3.10 1.05 4.01 0.60 -4.12 <0.001** gr 3.90 0.60 3.60 0.62 1.91 0.061 kn 3.61 0.58 4.07 0.59 -3.01 0.004** explorer lp 3.71 0.64 3.94 0.66 -1.39 0.171 ca 4.14 0.77 4.21 0.63 -0.37 0.716 gr 3.58 0.66 3.63 0.66 -0.33 0.745 kn 3.71 0.82 4.36 0.51 -3.64 0.001** citizen lp 4.30 0.60 4.43 0.55 -0.89 0.376 teacher ca 4.41 0.64 4.39 0.49 0.15 0.88 gr 3.36 0.61 4.03 0.60 -4.37 <0.001** kn 3.27 0.76 4.23 0.50 -5.86 <0.001** note. a: lesson plan; b: classroom activity, c: grading, d: knowledge. ** statistically significant at 0.01 level. scales range, 1=least like me to 5=most like me. n=30 for each group iranian and u.s. pre-service teachers' philosophical approaches to teaching: enhancing intercultural understandings current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 61 iranian and us philosophical beliefs about four teaching variables table 2 portrays iranian and us pre-service teachers' differences within each philosophical approach, across four instructional variables. iranian and us pre-service teacher differences on these four variables are significant for both the executive and humanist approaches. of these two approaches, the t score on the variable “lesson iranian and us pre-service teachers' philosophical approaches—by variable—differ less in the subject specialist and citizen teacher approach, and except for the knowledge variable, there is no difference between iranian and us pre-service teachers' ratings within the explorer approach. these between group similarities are also evident in the subject specialist-explorer approaches for the grading variable, and in the citizen teacherexplorer approaches on lesson planning and classroom activities. discussion as researchers for this study, we sought to investigate the ways in which iranian and us pre-service teachers were similar or different in selecting their overall philosophical approach to teaching and what we might learn about philosophical approaches that would promote intercultural understanding. to derive knowledge about an overall approach, it was vital to learn about these two groups through a lens of what they do believe, focusing secondarily on how the groups might hold similar-dissimilar beliefs. for example, one finding of this study indicated that philosophical differences are visible in participants' beliefs toward the executive approach (i.e., us more so than the iranians who are less favorable toward the executive approach, indicating a less favorable iranian belief in the positivistic, achievement only model). in explaining the sources of the beliefs of each group, between group differences toward the approach were examined. for information that was further illuminated using within approach data; we found the use of disaggregated data (e.g., with approach on the variable of lesson planning) could contextualize the philosophical differences that we sought to explain. in the following section, iranian pre-service teachers' approach to lesson planning, one example variable --“lesson planning” – is used as this variable is typically central to the selection and organization of other teaching strategies (johnson, 2000; van der valk, ton, broekman, & harrie, 1999), and the primary tool used by pre-service teachers to develop lessons (lechner & barry, 1977; oldham, van der valk, ton, broekman, & berenson, 1999; strang, 1996). other instructional differences related to “lesson planning” are portrayed in table 2, by philosophical approach (e.g., the two groups differ in the subject specialist approach on their rating of approach to classroom activities ). iranian pre-service teachers' approach to lesson planning several representative slogans of the islamic revolution may help explain the iranian pre-service teachers' low rating of the executive approach and high rating of the citizen teacher approach to developing lessons. it is plausible that the low rating may have been caused by a shift from the pre-revolutionary pahlavi dynasty, under the rule of the shah which did not provide for free discussion among educators (rashedi, 1984). the slogans of independence ( esteghlal), freedom ( azadi), and democracy, of the revolutionary era have currently been influential in promoting inquiry, debate, and discussion, each of which are indicators on the poes citizen teacher approach. slogans of independence are caroline r. pryor and zohreh eslami-rasekh 62 december 15, 2004 seen in aspects of iran 's educational programs. javam (2003) for example, noted that the islamic revolutionary phase emphasizes the importance of self-sufficiency in science, industry, and agriculture. further, the acceptability of slogans of independence favored by this revolutionary young generation may justify their high rating of indicators within the citizen teacher approach: critical thinking and problem solving. however, as predominant as the citizen teacher approach might be among islamic iranian preservice teachers, social/religious values in which the good of the society prevails over the individual rights, desires, or personal achievement remains a salient social value. religion continues to play the dominant role in education, with concern for community eminent in achieving a state of morality and spirituality more important than the attributes of efficiency found in the executive, factory production model (author b, 2004; riaz, 2000). high rating of the citizen teacher approach (i.e., lesson planning) however, is a rather incomplete portrait of current islamic educational philosophy. to fully understand the present predicament of education in iran, it is necessary to comprehend two distinct historical phenomena: the interaction between islam and educational institutions and the development of modernizing (westernizing) trends in education (rashedi, 1984). the muslim clergy in post-islamic revolution culture continually calls for a new islamic education free of western influence and domination; teaching materials change yearly in an attempt to follow islamic religious principles. complicating this influence is the iranian ministry of education which centralizes curriculum including newly emerging changes--technology and computer skills have been recently added to the curriculum. data in this present study indicated an iranian disposition towards a citizen teacher philosophy and, by inference, the suggestion of western cultural influence on iranian philosophical approaches. other reports counter this finding, suggesting the executive approach is the primary islamic educational directive—instructional lesson plans are teacher directed (toward islamic values)—inquiry is little used (javam, 2003). how free this new islamic educational system in iran might be from western influences or in fact, to embrace western influence is, therefore, unresolved as emerging educational practices reflect and debate underlying values of philosophical approach. us approach to lesson planning us pre-service teachers, more significantly than iranians, highly rate the executive approach to lesson planning. in their rating of the citizen teacher approach, these two groups are similar; no significant difference was found (on the variable of lesson planning), and both groups rated lesson planning as a citizen teacher as its highest approach. for the iranian pre-service teachers, this finding may be explained by sectarian values that foster inclusiveness and a sense of community including learning attributes such as sharing personal learning and knowledge, or use of investigation and inquiry which is supported with activities such as peer tutoring (raxvi, 1986). in contrast, the us expectation of education has long been the efficiency, factory production model (see feinberg & soltis, 2004; kincheloe, 2004 and others) and preservice teachers' education lesson planning models used in us universities tend to respond to this expectation (berliner, 1987). this approach continues today, driven in part by us federal mandates such as the no child left behind act of 2001 (marshak, 2003) in which the efficacy of the executive approach is linked to excellence in lesson delivery and high use of measures of student assessment. therefore, it is not unexpected iranian and u.s. pre-service teachers' philosophical approaches to teaching: enhancing intercultural understandings current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 63 that us pre-service teachers in the early stages of a school-based field-experience report that they use direct instruction lesson plans to help them list and teach the state and district academic standards, keep students on task, and respond to federal mandates to teach in a manner that is measurable and well-regulated (odell & huling, 2000). other reports indicate that us pre-service teachers would prefer an inquiry-teaching model, but are often reluctant to implement this approach ( gunzenhauser, 2003 ). the us pre-service teachers in this present study who most highly rated the citizen teacher approach (inquiry, debate, discussion, and civic involvement) also highly rated the indicators of citizen teacher lesson planning. for these pre-service teachers, lesson planning is a different process than it is for those who highly rate the executive approach—that is, planning becomes a process of inquiry (parker, 1996). for this group of pre-service teachers, religious or spiritual values such as behavior as goodness, or dedication are not central educational goals (nord & haynes, 1998); rather, the value of lesson planning is that it fosters student inquiry (tanner & tanner, 2004). thus, a dichotomy of approach exists in pre-service teacher education programs, as it is not uncommon for these programs to foster strategies of inquiry despite the executiveassessment model found in the public schools (cochran-smith, 2004). given the significant us propensity toward the direct instruction model of the executive approach to teaching, it is important to understand several other aspects of us culture that give rise to a secondary, but strongly believed, citizen teacher approach. the first of these aspects is the multidimensional nature of us democratic society. democratic theory underlying its cultural structure has long held that the principles of individual liberty and freedom (e.g., voting rights) are primary to the social contract between government and man (see john locke, 1690 in lamprecht, 1928). teachers who govern classrooms as executives support this principle of individual achievement; exemplars of this principle are spelling bees, mathematics tests, or recitations of historical facts. a second aspect however, stands in contrast to this individuality –the social norm in which a person's responsibility should be less focused on individual rights than on one's communal responsibility to the good of the whole (gutmann & thompson, 1996). despite historical use of the executive model, (fenstermacher & soltis, 2004; tanner & tanner, 2000) many believe that the current us philosophical approach to teaching is aligned with the citizen teacher philosophy; exemplars of this policy are the encouragement of parent's involvement in public school choice, teacher participation in text book selections, and flexibility in designing educational practice (tanner & tanner, 2000). critics of us policies find the citizen teacher approach unsupported citing examples of hegemony, hidden curriculum, and economic resource concentration as exemplars of disbelief in a democratic us educational philosophy (beane & apple, 1999; giroux, 2004; kincheloe, 2004). us pre-service teachers; therefore, find they must evaluate their beliefs about “best teaching practices” based on competing philosophies and complex cultural expectations. no clear set of regulations is offered to us teachers; rather, values of citizenship and social responsibility (justice-fairness) serve as a fulcrum for judging teaching practice. conclusion this article agrees with the postulate that cultural isolationism will not enhance intercultural understandings (smith, 2002). broader intercultural understandings require caroline r. pryor and zohreh eslami-rasekh 64 december 15, 2004 learning about exemplars of culture, places, and artifacts in which culture is evidenced. for teachers to share these understandings, they need to understand how various cultural values are viewed in international educational practice. feinberg (1989) suggests that permission to inquire about culture means one should neither ignore nor solve the questions of cultural relativism or normative principles; rather, investigations should share and explain the basis for decisions. clarity in this matter may be seen in the following definition of why one investigates philosophical orientation: philosophy of education involves reflection on the purposes and procedures of a practical activity and it has an interest in improving practice. the question changes [after inquiry] from how to understand, to how to act. …practice belongs neither to the philosopher nor to the anthropologist (feinberg, 1989 p. 171). moreover, the rationale feinberg offers avoids notions of perfecting relativism in understanding cultures: “in practical activity, we are not choosing among whole cultures, but rather are making selective decisions about certain aspects of a culture” (p. 170). in the case of investigating the philosophical orientations of iranian and us preservice teachers, tools such as the philosophy of education scale (author a, 2004) may generate conversations about values and beliefs that underlie educational decisions and enhance cultural understandings. as researchers, the similarities and differences we found in the overall philosophical approaches and practical activities of iranian and us pre-service teachers provide praxis for further investigations of cross-cultural comparisons. first, it is suggested that care be taken not to create a cultural dichotomy between east and west (kubota, 1999) or muslim and non-muslim countries. constructing fixed, apolitical, and essentialized cultural categorizations such as muslim/non-muslim may promote divisiveness and cultural ‘otherness.' second, as data indicated, the complexities of defining cultural and religious values and the social weight of these should be considered by researchers as these definitions may circumvent definitions indigenous to a population (e.g., the goal of education does or does not include religion) (bogdan & biklen, 2003). however preliminary the information in this present study, the intention to notice multiple influences on the formation of philosophies of education in islamic countries suggest additional conversations of intercultural understanding. although this study illuminates similarities and difference in overall approaches to teaching and practical activities of iranian and us pre-service teachers, we, as researchers, do not offer these as broad generalizations. for example, both iranian and us pre-service teachers highly value the citizen teacher approach, and the us, more than iranians, value the executive approach; it is important to note that difference exists in the location (e.g., lesson planning) of the practical application of a philosophical approach. this study offers initial insight into the cultural rationale of why these preservice teachers may hold certain philosophical beliefs and suggests that these explanations center on cultural perceptions of an individual's role in society, the role and influence of religion, and social expectations of the implementation of values. there are several limitations of this preliminary study: sample size, lack of qualitative explanations from the pre-service teachers, and lack of understanding of the field experiences that may influence these teachers as they try out their newly developed iranian and u.s. pre-service teachers' philosophical approaches to teaching: enhancing intercultural understandings current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 65 skills. research is needed to replicate this study with larger samples in which socially diverse sub-samples might offer additional explanations of the foundations of philosophical approaches to teaching. references (2003). united nations education, scientific, and cultural organization unesco. accommodation curriculum in second language. in (authors) education in a multilingustic world, paris. 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(2002). the hermeneutic scholar. in m. wolfe & author (eds.), the mission of the scholar: research and practice (pp.112-128). new york: peter lang. an historical perspective on coordinating education post-conflict: biopolitics, governing at a distance, and states of exception noah w. sobe [1] loyola university chicago abstract this article analyzes a 1944 publication entitled international relief in action 1914-1943: selected records with notes alongside the 2004 standards for education in emergencies that were developed by inee (the inter-agency network for education in emergencies). in doing so, the author aims to reveal how biological life, expectations of individual, and social collectivities are conceptualizes in relation to one another. the author argues that the contrast between the 1944 and the 2004 realities demonstrates a shift from a “eugenic” model to a greater focus on individual well-being, and that this shift has significant implications for how communities and society are organized and valued. “there can hardly be any question that contemporary knowledge and the best of professional practice in public and private community service must be mobilized in order to meet the peculiar challenge of international aid to social reconstruction.” as an introductory comment on the topic of “education in emergencies”, the theme of the present issue of current issues in comparative education, we may laud and welcome on many levels the vision and call to action expressed in this quote. while these words may be appropriate to our present moment, they come in fact from a 1944 text intended to help prepare relief workers for meeting the refugee crises of that time and the post-conflict reconstruction projects then on the horizon. i propose that bringing a comparative historical frame to bear on the standards for education in emergencies developed by the inter-agency network for education in emergencies (inee) in 2004 can help to reveal the political and cultural logics embedded in the roles and social purposes that education is being envisioned to play in emergencies, chronic crises and early reconstruction. harnessing education to post-conflict reconstruction can be viewed in terms proposed by giorgio agamben (2005) as a “state of exception” that normalizes an existing order within which the “exception” becomes increasingly less exceptional. this essay examines the ways that educational emergencies can be turned into opportunities for the extension of authority over others (particularly around the control of life) as well as occasions for the translation of global discourses within specific localities. despite the tendency to view education in emergency as an aberration to the ordinary business of schooling, there is much to suggest that there are fundamental ways in which modern educational practices grow out of and are linked to such settings. the specter of violence and civil unrest has haunted the provision of mass education from its earliest incarnations. ian hunter (1994) argues that the religious wars of seventeenth century europe produced a host of educational imperatives linked to liberal notions of tolerance and freedom. from hunter’s perspective, however, stabilizing individuals’ private dispositions through notions of liberty and selfgovernance was less an expansion and materialization of democratic political philosophy than a pragmatic, administrative mechanism designed to regulate societies in a way that tempered fratricidal violence (see also popkewitz, forthcoming, 2007). this is consonant with one of the key arguments of michel foucault’s (1979) discipline and punish, which maintains that schools © 2007 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 9(2): 45-54. 46 summer 2007 pioneered disciplinary techniques of self-reflection and self-control that were then taken up by other social institutions. schools have historically served as a site where the efforts of state and non-state actors align in the project of producing modern, governable subjects who are both docile and productive. clearly there are many ways to analyze education reform projects in postconflict and emergency settings. the analytic strategy taken here is to look at these initiatives as embodying a politics of managing biological life, regulating individual conduct, and fostering desirable, “proper” social assemblages. when we look comparatively at instances of educational reconstruction from 1944 and 2004, it becomes clear that there are critical shifts in how biological life, individual conduct and social collectivities have been put into relation with one another. the central argument made below is that in the 1944/2004 contrast we witness a shift away from a “eugenic” model to a focus on individual well-being that has profound implications for how communities and “the social” are organized and valued. an inter-agency network for education in emergencies, 1944 the quote that opens this essay comes from an instance of an inter-agency collaboration that was put together as world war ii seemed to be drawing to a close. a partnership between three different relief-active us-based religious organizations, the american friends service committee (afsc), the brethren service committee, and the mennonite central committee resulted, in 1944, in the publication of a volume titled international relief in action 1914-1943: selected records with notes. the book was expressly designed as a teaching aid along the lines of a textbook for relief workers; it featured 57 two to three page profiles of various relief efforts undertaken over the previous thirty years. each relief effort profile also included six to ten discussion questions for readers to consider. the project was overseen by hertha kraus, at the time a professor of social work at bryn mawr college. kraus, who was of german-jewish origin, had been involved in quaker relief services in berlin after world war i, and was forced from her position as head of the cologne department of public welfare with the nazi takeover in 1933 (bussiek, 2003). eldon burke, a 1936 university of chicago phd in history and member of the church of the brethren, also collaborated in the project.[2] when the volume was prepared, allied victory seemed within grasp and each of the three sponsoring organizations was already enough involved in relief efforts to know that the cessation of hostilities would reveal an extensive need for reconstruction projects in conflict-affected countries around the globe. for comparative purposes, and admittedly somewhat fancifully, i am proposing we treat the collaborative project of these three us-based protestant denominations long known as “peace churches” as an inter-agency network. my objective is not to point out that “we have done this before”; it is to discern ways that what is occurring now is both similar to and different from what has historically occurred in this arena. to be sure, using the 1944 instance as a reference point is problematic in that the 57 project records collected in quaker-brethren-mennonite collaboration are not restricted to child welfare and education-related projects. in contrast, though the inee minimum standards do touch on many more aspects of chronic crises and emergencies than schooling (for example, in the “assessment framework” and “situation analysis checklist”, inter-agency network for education in emergencies, 2004), they are chiefly concerned with educational provision and policy. alongside this, one cannot fail to note that a much broader coalition of agencies has been assembled in the present day inee effort, including international ngos, un agencies, and the world bank, in addition to religiously affiliated organizations. it also bears mentioning that the two cases are ill-matched in terms of significance or consequence, given the much greater scale of inee efforts and uncertainty on the extent to which hertha kraus’s project did in fact influence reconstruction after world war ii, and the analysis that follows should certainly not be taken as an exhaustive characterization of all relief efforts undertaken in an historical perspective on coordinating education post-conflict current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 47 the mid/late 1940s. nevertheless, the 1944/2004 comparison is useful for revealing changes in philosophy and social/cultural assumptions about education in emergencies. despite the above caveats, a certain comparability is established by virtue of the fact that both instances are projects of creating standards, establishing best-practices, and building professional expertise through training initiatives. in 1944, the training was to take place through the formation of study groups whose discussions about the book would result in “exploratory trips along the highways and byways of foreign service planning” (kraus, 1944); since 2004, training has been taking place through inee’s aggressive training of trainers (tot) initiative. this article focuses on what were and are held as appropriate standards and best-practices in each instance. biopolitics and distancing “life” from eugenics at an inescapable level, loss of life, its increasing precariousness, and threats to its healthy perseverance or flourishing, consistently form the background problem which education in emergencies and chronic crises attempts to address. yet, how “life” is conceptualized in relation to both human bodies and social bodies is anything but fixed and constant. in this section i will argue for there being a fundamental difference with respect to bio-power and the politics of life between the following two notions: • “the central goal [of international relief] will spring from faith in the supremacy of personal values applied to the concrete challenge of our day: rehabilitation of man himself, so that all men in all countries may have a greater chance and freedom to function on their highest level.” (kraus, 1944, p. 215) • “education is not only a right, but in situations of emergencies, chronic crises and early reconstruction, is a necessity that can be life-saving and life-sustaining, providing physical, psychosocial and cognitive protection.” [emphasis in original] (inter-agency network for education in emergencies, 2007)[3] michel foucault (1978) identified two poles around which power over life has evolved since the seventeenth century. he argued that one can speak of an “anatamo-politics of the human body” that took the form of regulations that optimized the capabilities and machine-like efficiencies of individual bodies, as well as of a “biopolitics of the population” that set its sights on the “species body” and concerned itself with birth rates, life expectancy, aggregate levels of health, and the like (p. 139). in the nineteenth century these two poles were brought together in the form of concrete arrangements, such as in the deployment of sexuality and, i would add, postconflict reconstruction efforts. when discussing the notion of “bio-power”, to name the joining of individual health with populational health, foucault offered the following: for millennia, man remained what he was for aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for a political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being into question. (p. 143) the injustices that human politics bring upon human life come into high relief in post-conflict emergencies; the effects of “natural” disasters should also be seen in connection with human politics, a point well illustrated by hurricane katrina as well as a host of less well-renowned disasters in other parts of the world. yet, in foucault’s argument, the point is not that the most formidable power human societies face is simply the power over death. he notes that “it is as managers of life and survival, of bodies and the race” (p. 137) that modern governments have been able to wage war. the fruitful management of life and survival are the preeminent concerns noah w. sobe 48 summer 2007 of education in emergencies. in the 1944 instance at hand, one finds the management of life discussed in “eugenic” terms, which i broadly define as a political rationality that establishes fundamental linkages between the individual and the “social body”. in her introduction to the 1944 volume, hertha kraus underscored the importance of integrating foreign aid with national planning. this of course would be difficult in situations that called for “speedy, spontaneous improvised service” (p. 1), but it was held up as the ideal standard towards which aid workers should strive. returning people to proper collective living was set as the chief goal of social reconstruction and the restoration of “organized services to the millions so that each individual may find the right response to bitter needs which he cannot meet alone” (p. 216). the 1944 excerpt bulleted above speaks to a human flourishing underpinned by opportunity and freedom, yet the text goes on to specify the three domains in which it was apparently most critical to function at the “highest level”: • in the family area – as provider, as the educator of the young, and as the anchor of emotional security and stability. • in the economic area – as manager, producer, and consumer. • in the political area – as the vital cell of an ordered community, as leader or willing follower in national and international co-operation. [emphasis added] (p. 216) one sees in this an anatamo-politics of the human body, concerned with people’s capacities for economic productivity (as “provider” and “producer”) and proper pro social dispositions (“emotional security and stability”), melded with the biopolitics of population, most noteworthily captured in the notion that human political existence needed to be reworked so that each individual formed one “vital cell of an ordered community”. eugenics as a twentieth-century social movement encompassed a variety of projects ranging from being concerned with fashioning “fitter families” and “better babies” to advocating forced sterilization and racial “purification” policies (selden, 1999; kline, 2001). i am applying the term “eugenic” to speak broadly about an interest in rationally planning the quality of a population. this is a theme that is common on an operational level to both racial betterment advocates and public health educators (rose, 2007). given the repugnant nazi policies of racial purity in the background of the 1944 efforts to prepare people for post-conflict reconstruction work, it is ironic to find eugenic themes in the standards for social reconstruction that were presented as antidote and solution to the problems created during the second world war. nonetheless, if we concern ourselves with the larger cultural formations and discursive regimes that simultaneously enable and limit what it is possible to think and do at any given moment, this should not necessarily be a surprise.[4] even though the guiding principles for post-conflict reconstruction in this 1944 instance were seemingly humanistic and centered on enhancing human potential, they demonstrate an unsettling compatibility with a eugenic perspective on bio-power that takes population, nation and the productive quality of bodies as foremost concerns. my purpose in engaging in such an extensive analysis of this one historical document is, as stated previously, to see what it might illuminate about the inee efforts of the present. to aid this illumination, we can turn to a comment rose offers on the distance between our present political and biomedical circumstances and the eugenic body that occupied center stage from the nineteenth century through the late twentieth century: an historical perspective on coordinating education post-conflict current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 49 the political rationalities of our present are no longer inspired by the dream of taking charge of the lives of each in the name of the destiny of all … the ideal of an omnicompetent social state that would shape, coordinate, and manage the affairs of all sectors of society has fallen into disrepute. the idea of “society” as a single, if heterogenous, domain with a national culture, a national population, a national destiny, coextensive with a national territory and the powers of a national political government has entered a crisis. (2007, p. 62) if states (and international agencies) are no longer chiefly preoccupied with managing populations en masse, this does not mean that they have abandoned the politics of subjecting life to judgments of value. rose proposes that “quality is no longer evolutionary fitness but quality of life, the political territory of society gives way to the domesticated spaces of family and community” (p. 64). these shifts seem very much captured in the contrast between the 1944 and 2004 instances of inter-agency collaboration on post-conflict reconstruction. in framing education as “not only a right” but “a necessity that can be life-saving and life-sustaining” the inee standards bring to the table a perspective on bio-power that takes life as it is lived in its everyday respects as the object of management, furtherance, and improvement. inee documents place great emphasis on community partnership, something that i will be returning to in the following section. however, in reference to the bio-politics of human life that is connected with educational reconstruction post-conflict, it is important to note that with the inee, national community membership and the furtherance of the national social body are no longer the ultimate goals of reconstruction. quite tellingly, the online overview to the inee minimum standards notes that they are intended to “give guidance and flexibility in responding to needs at the most important level – the community” (inter-agency network for education in emergencies, 2007). harmonization with national education programs is a concern within the minimum standards, though more as a matter of technical optimization of programs than good social governance (in the sense, for example, of facilitating an inclusive, democratic politics). it is worthwhile to note that the mandate to strengthen national education programs appears as merely one of the indicators within the “analysis strategies” to be used in developing “response strategies” (p. 24). in place of the national “corporate” entity, political authority is seen to reside in the local community. “community participation” is set as one of two standards common to all categories and is defined as “allow[ing] members of an affected population to be heard, empowering them to be part of decision-making processes and enabling them to take direct action on education issues” (inter-agency network for education in emergencies, 2004, p. 12). with this view of “community” as something to be animated, enabled, and facilitated, we have traveled some distance from kraus’s “ordered community” within which the optimal individual functioning is as a vital, constitutive cell. no longer does vitality serve the community; for inee, community serves vitality. if, as just proposed, we have identified a fundamental reconfiguration of eugenic body and body politic, the question still stands as to what form of biopolitics is embedded in the notion that post-conflict education needs be “life-saving and life-sustaining”. based on an examination of contemporary biomedicine nikolas rose (2007) notes that we are increasingly seeing a “molecularization” of life that blurs the boundaries between treatment and prevention as well as between natural and prosthetic. rose also points to the restructuring (at least in certain cultural settings), of “health” as no longer simply the avoidance of sickness and premature death, but as corporeal optimization that encompasses a wide range of factors and leads to an overall “wellbeing”. it is in this milieu that notions such as “lifestyle” become imbued with an ethical dimension. noah w. sobe 50 summer 2007 rose refers to “somatic individuality” as the new model of this kind of subjectivity and proposes that we are increasingly seeing claims for “biological citizenship” and “a universal human right to the protection … of each human person’s bare life and the dignity of their living vital body” (2001, p. 21). a central aspect of this human rights discourse is that human beings appear not to need to ground their claims for protection on the basis of political and social collectivities, rather merely in the name of their biological existence.[5] inee documents clearly exhibit this new biopolitics in the notion that the life-saving and life-sustaining post-conflict education should provide “physical, psychosocial and cognitive protection” (inter-agency network for education in emergencies, 2007) – sentiments that also pervade the 1989 un convention on the rights of the child. there is a politics of risk management in these protections that could be subject of an article in itself,[6] and for present purposes we can focus on the prevalence in inee documents of the concept of “psycho-social well-being” as a key indicator of a shift away from an anatamo-politics of the human body centered on docility and productivity. the new politics of life embedded in contemporary post-conflict educational reconstruction can certainly be welcomed for ethically prioritizing the individual, though – cribbing foucault’s dictum that “everything is dangerous” – we would do well to remain cognizant of the forms of social responsibility that can be lost when the relationship between individual and social bodies is reconfigured to focus nearly exclusively on molecular and corporeal vitality. community, stakeholding, and governing at a distance community involvement in post-conflict reconstruction and appreciation of local cultural contexts were central concerns of the 1944 inter-agency network. the importance of “different attitudes, different values, and different community resources” (1944, p. 2) is a common theme across kraus’s volume and the following two discussion questions are representative of the approach taken. these particular questions followed a case study of 1919 quaker relief work in provisioning rural serbian villages with agricultural tools, building material, and food and medical supplies. relief workers in training were asked, among other considerations, to ponder: 4. is it desirable to co-operate with an established civic committee which has previously had responsibility for some related function, or would you rather develop a new committee to cooperate with your service? … 5. how does the status of women in a given culture affect their potential contribution to a community service? how can we discover and understand their status within the culture in which our service operates? (1944, p. 47) the first question usefully directs our attention to the ways that international post-conflict aid has great potential for restructuring local communities. the second can be read as a deep appreciation of the necessity for flexibility and adaptation to local circumstances in reconstruction projects. one might choose to see these two gestures as at odds with one another; however, i think the larger point is that any policy action calibrated on “local context” invariably reconfigures that “context”.[7] in the previous section, i argued that coordination with national-level planning and the national polity had moved from being a matter of good, democratic governance (1944) to a matter of technical optimization (2004). here, conversely, as i will demonstrate, we have a reverse parallel: cultural context and community involvement move from being mere matters of technical effectiveness (1944) to issues closely linked with social and political governance (2004). the inee minimum standards deploy notions of community and participation that help us better understand a set of regulative social mechanisms that are becoming increasingly standardized across the globe. the standards suggest that contemporary reconstruction projects in post-conflict an historical perspective on coordinating education post-conflict current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 51 and chronic crisis situations are efficiently promoting a certain type of state and certain kinds of political rationalities. inee documents note that community participation in emergency education programs can take symbolic/token or “full” forms, observing that the former is considerably less effective for ensuring lasting, quality programs than the latter. moreover, alongside measures of program adequacy, inee carefully specifies a number of key indicators (and provides additional “guidance notes”) to ensure that “emergency-affected community members actively participate in assessing, planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating the education programme”. among the procedures that the minimum standards recommend are the formation of “community education committees” that draw their membership from youth and women’s groups, parents and parent organizations, local agencies, and civil society organizations. inee documents explicitly state that the responsibilities and activities that characterize this community-based approach are to leave an imprint on the affected areas, as such an approach “will help to create structures (if they are not already in place) and strengthen existing structures” (2004, p. 15). the community education committee is set as one of the key stakeholders in emergency education projects, and – in language that seems to be stubbornly determined to bring about its own reality – is charged with working with “the community … through a participatory grass-roots planning process” that aims to result in a “community-based education action plan” (p. 16). the “will to community” that pervades the inee minimum standards is by no means unique in our present day and age. one could quite reasonably point to the volumes of social capital research (e.g. putnam, feldstein, & cohen, 2003) or even communitarian political philosophy (e.g. sandel, 1996; walzer, 1983) to explain the practical and salvational promise that “community” now holds across multiple social domains. it is important, however, to remember that community-based audits and community-based action plans are regulative social mechanisms which embody political rationalities that specify what is proper for both the state and the individual. these mechanisms presume a state that seeks to decentralize decision-making and devolve its authority. in place of intimate involvement in the day-to-day lives of its citizens, this is to be the kind of state that governs at a distance (see, franklin, bloch, & popkewitz, 2003).[8] community-based politics are clearly predicated on an appreciation of the associational lives of citizens. nonetheless, the concept of membership, inasmuch as it operates as a human right, also establishes responsibilities and normalizes enthusiasm, initiative, dedication, and perhaps volunteerism as the proper dispositions and behaviors of community “members”. it is ironic that, given the commitment to diversity and pluralism embedded in much of the contemporary rhetoric of community, this mode of social regulation in effect propagates a moral code anchored in principles that are held to be natural, obvious, uncontestable, and appropriately universal (rose, 2000). we see a politics around membership at play in the inee minimum standards’ requirement that community education committees be largely formed from existing associational matrices. a broad base of membership becomes the grounds that legitimate actions taken by such entities and, as a result, qualify them as social actions. the individuals who are to participate in “community involvement” clearly must possess some of the characteristics that meyer and jepperson identify as central to the increasingly prevalent modern notion of “agentic actorhood”, notably an “extreme readiness” (2000, p. 107) to act as the authorized agents for broader interests and for other individuals. in this regard, we can cite the inee mandate that communities willfully – and, in fact, as one of their organizing principles – attend to vulnerable groups that fall within their catchment areas. through membership, the engaged individual is to be of the community, for the community, and ought to have the sensibilities and dispositions to match. inee strategies of coalition-forming and techniques of reconstituting the bases for collective action may turn out to be entirely sound responses to postnoah w. sobe 52 summer 2007 conflict and chronic crisis situations. nonetheless, it would seem prudent to proceed with an awareness that the virtuous community and the civility that is supposed to accompany it are contestable, idealized creations, as well as forms of governance specific to particular times and places. conclusion: states of exception emergencies readily become excuses for intervention. at the outset of this piece, i referred to giorgio agamben’s concept of the “state of exception” as a way of aligning the post-conflict situation with his argument that through the disruption of “normal” social operations sovereignty establishes itself and its objects. agamben (1998) argues that control over and transformation of bare life are the fundamental operations of sovereignty, which accordingly positions the concentration camp as a paradigmatic case of modern biopower (c.f., foucault, 1978). following rose (2001; 2007), i have argued that contemporary politics of life represent a different, non-eugenic form of bio-politics, which we see embedded in the inee minimum standards. post-conflict and chronic crisis settings afford opportunities for the propagation of a view of life that no longer needs a social body to be transformed into a good life (eu zēn) and can instead pivot on notions such as “well-being” for its optimal realization and fulfillment. nonetheless, engagement with collective social forms clearly remains central, as i have argued above with respect to inee’s communitybased features. i have maintained that political technologies and technologies of the self elide one another as education is deployed in emergency situations. the contrast between the 1944 instance of an inter-agency network dedicated to training and developing professional practices and the contemporary instance of a similar phenomenon sheds light on what of consequence is occurring when education is viewed as a life-saving and life-sustaining necessity and when community participation standard number one is simply “participation”. we also gain insight into the role that education plays in governing societies, which is not solely through the exercise of the school’s mandate to raise children in the proper sorts of ways. instead, the projects of education, establishing schools, analyzing needs, and evaluating outcomes, etcetera, advance political rationalities and regulative ideals that supervise the textures and meanings of ethical practice. notes [1]. i am indebted to amy shuffelton, emily warren, and carrie rackers for reading drafts of this article and for discussions on the issues raised here. [2]. both kraus and burke later played active roles in reconstruction and relief efforts after world war ii – kraus advised the american military government, was an afsc delegate to germany, and was involved with the united nations relief and rehabilitation agency (unrra); burke served as the american representative to the council of relief agencies licensed to operate in germany (cralog). [3]. there are minor textual differences between (inter-agency network for education in emergencies, 2004) and excerpts from the document that are posted on the inee website http://www.ineesite.org/. the present analysis makes use of both sources. [4]. wendy kline (2001) offers the provocative argument that the “golden age” of the eugenics movement in the united states occurred much later than historians typically acknowledge. she maintains that the cultural significance that “good parenting” took on in the 1950s had its roots in the fitter families campaigns of the 1930s, thus positioning eugenics as a much more significant twentieth-century cultural and social movement than is sometimes acknowledged. an historical perspective on coordinating education post-conflict current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 53 [5]. this is not to say that seventeenth century natural right philosophers (e.g. locke) didn’t appreciate human life, rather that their claims about the entitlements of existence were grounded in concepts other than the “biological”. [6]. there is extensive literature on the management of risk as a key element of social governance in our present day and age. see, e.g., the journal risk & society as well as (beck, 1992, 1999; ericson, 2005; lindqvist & nordänger, 2007; rose, 1999). [7]. one might point to the heisenberg uncertainty principle as the theoretical warrant for this assertion, though i think it would be equally effective to argue that the contemporary enthrallment with “context” is guided by assumptions about what constitute legitimate “contextual” categories that end up being remarkably continuous with the much critiqued, traditional anthropological notion of “culture” as a reified causal explanatory matrix. [8]. see (callon & latour, 1981) for the classic exposition of the concept of “governing-at-adistance”. references agamben, g. (1998). homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life. stanford, calif.: stanford university press. agamben, g. (2005). state of exception. chicago: university of chicago press. beck, u. (1992). risk society: towards a new modernity. london; newbury park, ca: sage publications. beck, u. (1999). world risk society. cambridge: blackwell. bussiek, b. (2003). hertha kraus: quaker spirit and competence. impulses for professional social work in germany and the united states. in s. hering & b. waaldijk (eds.), history of social work in europe (1900-1960): female pioneers and their influence on the development of international social organizations (pp. 53-64). opalden: leske+budrich. callon, m., & latour, b. (1981). unscrewing the big leviathan: how actors macro-structure reality and how sociologists help them do it. in k. d. knorr-cetina & a. cicourel (eds.), advances in social theory and methodology: towards an integration of micro and macro sociologies (pp. 276-303). london: routledge. ericson, r. (2005). governing through risk and uncertainty. economy and society, 34(4), 659-672. foucault, m. (1978). the history of sexuality (1st american ed.). new york: pantheon books. foucault, m. (1979). discipline and punish : the birth of the prison. new york: vintage books. franklin, b. m., bloch, m. n., & popkewitz, t. s. (2003). educational partnerships: an introductory framework. in b. m. franklin, m. n. bloch & t. s. popkewitz (eds.), educational partnerships and the state: the paradoxes of governing schools, children, and families (pp. 1-26). new york: palgrave macmillan. hunter, i. (1994). rethinking the school: subjectivity, bureaucracy, criticism. new york: st. martin’s press. noah w. sobe 54 summer 2007 inter-agency network for education in emergencies. (2004). minimum standards for education in emergencies, chronic crises and early reconstruction. paris: inter-agency network for education in emergencies. inter-agency network for education in emergencies. (2007, 2/14/2007). minimum standards > overview. retrieved march 1, 2007, from http://www.ineesite.org/page.asp?pid=1240 kline, w. (2001). building a better race: gender, sexuality, and eugenics from the turn of the century to the baby boom. berkeley: university of california press. kraus, h. (1944). international relief in action 1914-1943: selected records, with notes. scottdale, pa: herald press. lindqvist, p., & nordänger, u. k. (2007). better safe than sorry? risk and educational research. educational studies, 33(1), 15-27. meyer, j. w., & jepperson, r. l. (2000). the “actors” of modern society: the cultural construction of social agency. sociological theory, 18(1), 100-120. popkewitz, t. s. (forthcoming, 2007). cosmopolitanism and the age of reform. new york: routledge. putnam, r. d., feldstein, l. m., & cohen, d. (2003). better together: restoring the american community. new york: simon & schuster. rose, n. s. (1999). powers of freedom: reframing political thought. cambridge, united kingdom; new york, ny: cambridge university press. rose, n. s. (2000). community, citizenship and the third way. american behavioral scientist, 43(9), 1395-1411. rose, n. s. (2001). the politics of life itself. theory, culture & society, 18(6), 1-30. rose, n. s. (2007). politics of life itself: biomedicine, power and subjectivity in the twenty-first century. princeton, n.j. ; oxford: princeton university press. sandel, m. j. (1996). democracy’s discontent: america in search of a public philosophy. cambridge, mass.: belknap press of harvard university press. selden, s. (1999). inheriting shame: the story of eugenics and racism in america. new york: teachers college press. walzer, m. (1983). spheres of justice : a defense of pluralism and equality. new york: basic books an historical perspective on coordinating education post-conflict reproduced with permission from world development, volume 24, michael edwards and david hulme, "too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations" pp. 961-973. © 1996 elsevier science ltd, the boulevard, langford lane, kidlington ox5 1gb, uk. 6 november`15, 1998 too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations michael edwards save the children, london, u. k. david hulme* university of manchester, u. k. summary in promoting a "new policy agenda," bilateral and multilateral donor agencies are keen to finance nongovernmental organizations (ngos) and grassroots organizations (gros) on the grounds of their economic efficiency and contribution to "good governance." this paper reviews the impact of this trend on ngo/gro programming, performance, legitimacy and accountability. it finds that much of the case for emphasizing the role of ngos/gros rests on ideological grounds rather than empirical verification. in addition, though the evidence is inconclusive, there are signs that greater dependence on official funding may compromise ngo/gro performance in key areas, distort accountability, and weaken legitimacy. introduction in recent years, and especially since the end of the cold war in 1989, bilateral and multilateral donor agencies have pursued a "new policy agenda" which gives renewed prominence to the roles of nongovernmental organizations (ngos) and grassroots organizations (gros) in poverty alleviation, social welfare, and the development of "civil society" (robinson, 1993). [1] the details of this policy agenda vary from one donor agency to another. there are significant differences between, for example, the world bank and the european bilateral agencies, and among the bilaterals (moore, 1993). in all cases, however, two elements dominate. the first is economic markets and private sector initiatives are seen as the most efficient mechanisms for achieving economic growth, producing goods, and providing services. even if they do this imperfectly the argument is that "[i]mperfect markets are better than imperfect states" (colcough, 1991, p. 7). ngos are viewed by many official agencies and members of the public as more efficient and cost-effective service providers than governments, giving better value-for-money, especially in reaching poor people (meyer, 1992; sollis, 1992; vivian, 1994). ngos (especially the churches) have long provided services in health and education, but this was usually by default rather than design, as governments in africa and asia lacked the resources to provide universal coverage. in the new policy agenda ngos are seen as a preferred channel for social welfare and this is a fundamental change. [2] the second element in the new policy agenda is political: "good (i.e. democratic) governance" is seen as essential for a healthy economy, even thought the evidence underlying this claim is mixed (moore, 1993; healey and robinson, 1992). ngos and gros are awarded a key role in the democratization process by bilateral and multilateral agencies, as witness recent policy statements from the world bank (1994) too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations current issues in comparative education, vol 1(1) 7 and the british overseas development administration (oda, 1993) among others. they are seen as an integral component of a thriving civil society and an essential counterweight to state power, opening up channels of communication and participation, providing training grounds for activists, and promoting pluralism. this role has been documented particularly clearly in latin america (loveman, 1992; lehmann, 1990) and is supported by many ngos and ngo analysts themselves, though delinked from the priorities of the donors (korten, 1990; clark, 1991). salamon (1993, p. 1) goes so far as to claim that a veritable "associational revolution" now seems underway at the global level that may constitute as significant a social and political development of the latter twentieth century as the rise of the nation state was of the latter nineteenth century. the rise and rise of ngos the prominence awarded to ngos and gros as implementers of the two dimensions of the new policy agenda has led official agencies to channel increasing amounts of money to and through them. although the data vary considerably from country to country, two trends are visible. first, the proportion of total bilateral aid channeled through ngos is increasing. the proportion of total aid from member countries of the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) channeled through ngos rose from 0.7 percent in 1975 to 3.6 percent in 1985, and at least 5percent in 199394 [3], some us$2.3 billion in absolute terms (oecd, 1988; 1994; 1995). for some bilateral donors the figure is much higher; for example, 30percent of total swedish aid was channeled through ngos in 1994 (oecd, 1995). second, and perhaps more significantly, individual ngos are becoming more dependent on official aid, especially during the last year or two when there has been a discernible flattening-out of voluntary income from the public in many northern countries. for example, the five largest development ngos in the united kingdom all show a significantly rising trend, with levels of dependence on government grants oscillating between 18 percent and 52 percent in 1994, up from between 7 percent and 15 percent 10 years earlier. [4] levels of dependence are much higher in continental europe and in north america; for example, it is common to find government grants making up between 50 percent and 90 percent of the budgets of major ngos in scandinavia, the netherlands and canada, most of which is eventually passed on to ngos in the south. figures for southern ngos are harder to come by, but the explosive growth of ngos in many countries is clearly related to the availability of official funding (fowler, 1991; constantino-david, 1992). in nepal the number of ngos registers with the governments increased from 220 in 1990 to 1,210 in 1993 during a donor "spending spree" (rademacher and tamang, 1993, p. 34). in tunisia there were 5,186 registered ngos in 1991 as opposed to 1,886 only three years earlier (marzouk, 1996). direct funding of southern ngos by bilateral and multilateral donors (by-passing the traditional northern ngo route) is also increasing (clark, 1993; bebbington and riddell, 1996). for example, the british overseas development administration (oda) is already funding over 450 local ngos in india directly, and a similar number in bangladesh (good, 1994). rapid growth in ngo numbers has been accompanied in some countries (particularly south asia) by a trend toward expansion in the size of individual ngos and ngo programs on a scale not witnessed before. ngos such as brac and proshika in bangladesh, sarvodaya and sanasa in sri lanka, and sew and the working women's forum in india, each work with millions of people in thousands of villages. brac, for michael edwards and david hulme 8 november`15, 1998 example, has more than 10,000 staff, covers 15,000 villages, and plans to expand still further to work with three million people and with children in over 100,000 schools (aga khan foundation/novib, 1993, p. 7 and 16). the orangi pilot project in karachi (pakistan) has assisted over 72,000 families to improve their sanitation and sewerage systems (hasan, 1993). sewa has over one million clients in its low-cost credit program, while sarvodaya works in over 7,000 villages with more than half a million people (edwards and hulme, 1994). official funding has been a significant factor in supporting this expansion: for example, most of the working women's forum budget originates from unfpa (ramesh, 1995) and major inputs to other south asian ngos have come from european and canadian bilateral agencies, and most recently from the world bank (hodson, 1996). ngo growth and official funding of ngos are not new phenomena, but the trends outlined above do give rise to important questions concerning ngo performance and accountability, ngo-state relations, and the ability of ngos to act independently in pursuing their goals. specifically, we hypothesize that official funding: 1) encourages ngos to become providers of social and economic services on a much larger scale than thitherto, even though their long-term comparative advantage in this field is doubtful; 2) compromises the performance of ngos and gros in other areas of development activity such as institutional development and advocacy; 3) weakens the legitimacy of ngos and gros as independent actors in society; 4) distorts the accountability of ngos and gros away from grassroots and internal constituencies, and overemphasizes short-term, quantitative outputs. if these hypotheses are true then this must cast doubt on the ability of ngos and gros to be effective vehicles for the delivery of the new policy agenda and its long-term aim of sustainable poverty alleviation. in relation to these hypotheses and on the basis of a review of the available literature, this paper aims to do two things: first, to outline why in theoretical terms current trends might give cause for concern; second, to evaluate whether these concerns are born out in practice. before going any further two caveats are essential. first, although we have reviewed a very considerable literature for this paper, much of what has been written in anecdotal, produced within the ngo community, and based on small, selective samples; independent and rigorous comparative research on and about ngos and gros is still rather rare, and it is therefore dangerous to generalize from such scanty material. second, it is difficult to disaggregate the impact of official funding from preexisting or coexisting trends (such as internally driven growth and weak performance measurement and accountability). organizational growth, increasing dependence on official aid, and a focus on the provision of social welfare services, are not necessarily related to each other. therefor, the paper goes to some lengths to lay out the general background concerning ngo performance and accountability, to provide some basic context for the discussion of official funding which follows. the paper aims to provide an overview of current trends rather than to present detailed case studies. case material is, however, cited at key points in the paper and included in the references. ngo programming and performance too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations current issues in comparative education, vol 1(1) 9 service provision the belief among donors that ngos give "value for money" has led to large amounts of official funds being channeled to ngos for work in the health and education sectors, credit schemes, and small-scale infrastructure, sometimes under "investment funds" or "social funds" intended to mitigate the social consequences of economic and structural adjustment packages (voorhies, 1993; arellano-lopez and petras, 1994). the perception of ngos as service providers is also common among governments in the south as documented for example in india (brown and tandon, 1992), bangladesh (sanyal, 1991), nepal and the philippines (farrington and lewis, 1993), zimbabwe and ghana (wellard and copestake, 1993), and the gambia (davis, hulme and woodhorse, 1994). this is a global phenomenon and in the north government support to ngo service provision is also increasing, though here there is evidence that in addition to cost advantages, governments are attracted to ngo provision because ngos can be discarded when necessary (smith and lipsky, 1993). [5] as noted above, the availability of large-scale funding for ngo service provision has fueled the rapid growth of well-known ngos such as brac, particularly in south asia. although such large ngos remain unusual, the trend toward expansion is clear. does the evidence support the case that ngo service provision on this scale is more cost-effective than state provision? [6] following on from tendler's (1982) work, recent studies of gro and ngo performance in africa (riddell and robinson, 1992; fowler, 1991, 1993; vivian, 1994; weilard and copestake, 1993), asia (riddell and robinson, 1992; farrington and lewis, 1993; hashemi, 1992) and latin america (lehmann, 1990; carroll, 1992; bebbington and thiele, 1993) have questioned many of the accepted wisdoms about levels of poverty-reach, cost-effectiveness, popular participation, flexibility and innovation among ngos and gros. a new and more critical view of the comparative advantages and performance of gros and ngos is emerging based on empirical evidence. there is evidence that some large ngos are able to provide some services more cost-effectively than governments. for example, the orangi pilot project's cost of developing sanitation systems in karachi is less than one-third of the equivalent cost in the commercial or government sectors (hasan, 1993, p. 66). similar cost advantages have been claimed for brac in primary education and the provision of credit (akf/novib, 1993), and both brac and other large ngos (such as uno in brazil and aware in india) assert that there is no necessary tradeoff between scale of service provision and quality of work (howes and sattar, 1992; carroll, 1992; wils et al., 1993). ngos are not, however, automatically more cost-effective than other sectors, as was shown by tendler's research (1983 and 1989 -which contradicts the evidence concerning uno) and by riddell and robinson's (1992) study of 16 african and asian ngos. there is no empirical study that demonstrates a general case that ngo provision is "cheaper" than public provision. in terms of their evidence that ngos commonly perform better than government or commercial institutions (smillie and helmich, 1993; farrington and bebbington, 1993). claims that ngos reach "the poorest of the poor" are often inaccurate, however, as had been demonstrated in the case of ngo credit schemes (hulme and mosley, 1995) and other economic interventions (riddell and robinson, 1992). hashemi (1992) finds that large ngos in bangladesh fail to reach the poorest in their efforts to achieve rapid expansion in geographical coverage -the drive for "breadth" rather than "depth." even taken together, the largest ngos in bangladesh michael edwards and david hulme 10 november`15, 1998 (including the grameen bank) reach less than 20 percent of landless households in the country (farrington and lewis, 1993, p. 55). the sustainability of large-scale service provision by ngos has also been questioned. virtually all service-delivery ngos operate on large subsidies from external donors, resources which increasingly are denied to governments. were ministries of health and education allowed access to resources on this scale, it is argues, then over time they too would be able to provide services as cost-effectively. indeed, the widening gap between government and ngo resources makes state inefficiency a "self-perpetuating reality" (farrington and lewis, 1993, p. 333). as a deeper level, there are worries about the longterm impact of ngo service provision on access to quality services for all (lafond, 1995). robinson (1993, p. 8) points out that large, influential and well-funded ngos may be able to "concentrate resources in regions and sectors that might not be most important for national development," with a "patchwork quilt" of services of carrying quality emerging against a background of weak central oversight (edwards, 1994a). ngo substitution for the state in key areas of provisioning also raises questions of accountability between a government and its citizens, which are discussed in section 4 (wood, 1996). there are echoes here of debates about the public/private mix in social services in countries such as the united kingdom and the united states. the evidence from these debates suggests that such fears are well founded, with unequal access and spiraling costs already a reality (salamon and anheir, 1993). as meyer (1992, p. 1123) puts it, "the preference of external donors for working with the non-profit sector in no way attests to evidence that public goods for the domestic economy will be better provided by the nonprofit sector." finally, there are arguments that ngo service provision acts as a palliative, a barrier to the more fundamental structural changes in the ownership of land and capital assets which are essential if significant economic and political changes are to occur (riddell and robinson, 1992). in this last respect it is worth noting, however, that recent criticisms of brac and other bangladeshi ngos from islamic fundamentalist groups have focused on their success, not their failure, in empowering women at the local level (karim, 1995). in their defense, large ngos such as brac have argued that they are not taking over government responsibilities -merely "helping to create the conditions that will ensure, in the future, that basic education is a real possibility for all children in the country" (akf/novib, 1993, p. 41) via a "temporary substitution role combined with training input" (farrington and lewis, 1993, p. 22). as f. h. abed, the founder of brac has pointed out, "we have to act. . . do we sit small and beautiful or do we scale up and try to take the consequence? brac has decided to try to take the consequences of becoming large" (akf/novib, 1993, p. 16). the problem here is that governments may be unable or unwilling to: take over" responsibility for such services when brac withdraws (farrington and lewis, 1993), while the undesirable consequences of externally funded ngo growth prove more severe than predicted, as the case sarvodaya cited below demonstrate (perera, 1993). the evidence does not show that scaling-up the provision of services using donor funds inevitably leads to a decline in quality, nor to the wider problems highlighted above. but it does indicate that very careful management of too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations current issues in comparative education, vol 1(1) 11 expansion is necessary to stop a face-off in quality and that most contemporary ngo service-provision is not sustainable in its present forms. in terms of their capacity to innovate there is evidence that individual ngos have been effective in some fields of service-delivery, for example in financial services for the poor (hulme and mosley, 1995), oral rehydration therapy (howes and sattar, 1992), and paraveterinary services in agricultural technology development (farrington and bebbington, 1993). ngos have also played a pivotal role in pioneering new planning methodologies, particularly participatory rural appraisal (chambers, 1993). as ngos become more involved in large-scale service provision, however, and rely more on funding from official donor agencies, what happens to their flexibility and ability to innovate? organizational growth necessarily brings with it a higher level of bureaucracy. it is certainly possible to manage growth successfully (billis and mckeith, 1992, hodson, 1992), but the dangers of bureaucratization are very real (korten, 1990; hellinger, hellinger and o'regan, 1988; friedmann, 1992). the acceptance of increasing amounts of donor funds, which usually come with complex (and often conflicting) requirements for project appraisal, reporting, evaluation and accounting, presents even large ngos with problems (salamon and anheir, 1993; smillie and helmich, 1993). [7] when donors finance service delivery they expect contracted outputs to be achieved and may withdraw if targets are not met (perera, 1996; hodson, 1996). commenting on the experience of world vision in implementing health and welfare projects in uganda with world bank funding, voorhies (1993) stresses the delays and damage done to implementation by the bank's funding and procurement procedures, as well as by differences in philosophy, an experience also reported by actionaid in the same program. a common complaint among such ngos is that the need for flexibility on the ground "runs counter to the limited, logically framed, measurable outcomes favored by many donors" (fowler, 1993, p. 335). in addition, there is evidence from asia and latin america that time and space for reflection and innovation are reduced, as ngos become contractors to donors and/or governments (farrington and lewis, 1993, p. 33). there may also be a conflict as yet unperceived by official agencies, it seems, between the economic and political dimensions of the new policy agenda. cost-effective service provision rests on standardized delivery systems and internal structures (often hierarchical) able to manage large amounts of external funding. the qualities required to promote success in democratization are very different: independence from external interests, closeness to poor people, long time horizons for capacity-building, and a willingness to confront those in power. it is difficult to combine both roles in the same organization successfully. "local institution development" (uphoff, 1986) -strengthening gros and indigenous ngos to carry out their mission more effectively -is clearly an important component of any program, which aims to promote sustainable approaches to poverty alleviation. ngos in latin america who are dependent on short-term funding from donors, however, often perform weakly in this process because they lack the time and incentives required to nurture local organizations (carroll, 1992, p. 99). fowler (1992, p. 23) makes a similar point about the dangers of "overfunding" ngos and gros in the south, predicting an inverse relationship between dependence on official donor funding and the capacity to support and facilitate what he calls "development-as-empowerment." the theory here is that donors will be unable or unwilling to support the long time horizons, michael edwards and david hulme 12 november`15, 1998 slow careful work, and gradual (ands often nonquantifiable) results, which characterize successful local institutional development. an interesting corroboration of this prediction comes from hasan (1993) of the orangi pilot project in karachi, who cites the unwillingness of the world bank to adopt a "low profile" as one reason for the difficulties experiences in hyderabad (pakistan) when opp attempted to replicate the success of their original work there with official funding. current donor claims about a commitment to institutional development are inconsistent with the short-term, outputoriented project methodologies they utilize. democratization from the literature it is possible to identify a growing involvement by gros in representation, lobbying and (in some situations) formal party politics: and by ngos in mediation, advocacy, training and "civic education" (fowler, 1991). for obvious reasons, these roles are more highly developed in relatively open and democratic political systems such as india, where pressure from ngos and gros can achieve significant "micro policy reform" (korten, 1990; edwards and hulme, 1992). when organizations come together to form federations and alliances, they can also influence the formal political process, as in the philippines (the fall of president marcos) and mexico (participation in presidential elections: convergencia, 1993. constantinodavid,1992). despite these successes, some commentators remain skeptical about the prospects for gro and ngo involvement in the formal process of democratization. writing on latin america. lehmann (1990. pp. xiv and 205) points out that, in contrast to their leaders, the rank and file membership of many urban social movements show little enthusiasm for formal involvement in politics. while latin america social movements have proved vital to the survival of the poor, they have made little impact on the formal political process and should "leave political parties to get on with the real business of ideological struggle", while being proud of their record in rendering "liberal democratic movements more sustainable and helping to cement human and political rights in society." writing in the very different political context of contemporary africa, fowler (1991, 1993) reaches much the same conclusion. ngos, he argues, are unlikely to have a significant impact on political reform, partly because african governments have become adept at containing such a possibility through regulation and fragmentation of the ngo "movement," and partly because ngos themselves have failed to develop effective strategies to promote democratization, especially, what fowler (1993, p. 28) calls "citizenship…the organic link between the state and citizens that is missing in much of africa." in south asia ngos have played a "janusheaded" role, claiming to be apolitical in terms of party politics while simultaneously "empowering" the poor (hulme, 1994). sanasa's success in financial service delivery in sri lanka in partly attributable to its policy of noninvolvement with politicians and political parties (hulme and montgomery, 1994). in the same country, when the founder of sarvdaya movement appeared likely to stand against the government as the leader of a united opposition, the movement was subjected to severe state harassment (perera, marasinge and jayasekera, 1992). in part, these disappointments (if that is what they are) reflect the paradox of organizations promoting democratization which are themselves only weakly democratic. gros and cooperative movements (which are membership organizations) might be expected to perform better in this respect that ngos, though carroll (1992) too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations current issues in comparative education, vol 1(1) 13 finds little evident for this in his sample of agencies in latin america. a consistent criticism of ngos and gros in the literature is their failure to develop participatory mechanisms for internal debate and decision making, despite their stated values and principles (bebbington and thiele, 1993; wellard and copestake, 1993). it also reflects what is an unresolved dilemma for gros and ngos in most societies -how to engage in the political process in order to achieve fundamental changes in the distribution of power and resources without becoming embroiled in partisan politics and the distortions which accompany the pursuit of state power (constantino-david, 1992). funding from northern governments for such activities complicates the picture considerably. bebbington and thiele (1993, p. 182) describe the politicization of ngos in central america during the 1980s when the us agency for international development (usaid) funded a range of right-wing groups, and northern ngos supported a range of left-wing groups. is this strengthening civil society or is it merely an attempt to shape civil society in ways that external actors believe is desirable? will this promote endogenous and sustainable forms of democracy or call forth a backlash of authoritarianism against "foreign interference" (brautigam, 1992)? what role can "opportunistic" ngos with no mission other than the winning of donor or government contracts play in democratization (bebbington & thiele, 1993, p. 57)? this is of particular concern where new ngos are being formed very rapidly on the back of readily available official funding (as in the cases of some ngos in nepal or tunisia) with weak social roots and no independent supporter base. in turn, this process may leas to a widening rift between well-resources service providers and poorly-funded social mobilization organizations, a danger identified by pearce (1993) in chile and central america. important areas of gro/ngo activity, which do not fit into the donor agenda, may therefore lose out, while ngos may succumb to the temptation to on functions they know will attract large amounts of donor funding, to the detriment of other aspects of their mission. the increasing dependence on northern ngos on emergency grants from official donor agencies may reflect a similar process. one of these less attractive areas for official aid is advocacy -addressing fundamental inequalities of power and resources by speaking out in favor of particular groups, organizing to defend the interests of poor people, and lobbying governments for policy change. as in other aspects of this debate, the impact of the new policy agenda on gro/ngo performance in the field of advocacy may be both positive and negative. on the positive side, ngos (especially international ones) now have unparalleled access to decision makers in the north, and are beginning to use this access in a much more sophisticated way. there is some evidence of impact from this activity on policy and practice, particularly in the world bank (clark, 1992: edwards, 1993) although this should not be exaggerated. in theory, democratization should open up similar opportunities for ngos and gros in the south. the dependence of any ngo on external funding, however, is something of an "achilles heel." bratton (1989, p. 584) concludes that the african ngos he has studies find it difficult to perform as "effective policy actors" because their own governments can dismiss them as "dancing to the tune of a foreign piper with no legitimate right of entry into domestic policy debates." he contrasts the influence of the savings and development movement and national farmers' association in zimbabwe, with the failure of voluntary agencies development assistance (vada) in kenya to assert any leverage over official policy, citing as michael edwards and david hulme 14 november`15, 1998 important factors the latter's lack of domestic funding base and popular support, and its financial dependence on usaid (bratton, 1990). similar comments have been made about the likely impact of government funding on ngo advocacy in the north. increasing reliance on government contracts is already hindering the involvement of some us ngos in public campaigning (smith, 1990; salaman and anheier, 1993; smith and lipsky, 1993) and there is a fear that increasing reliances on government grants will induce a similar creeping compromise in the willingness of uk ngos to speak out (fowler, 1992; edwards, 1993). a context in which ngos compete against each other for official support seems unlikely to foster the collaborative relationships on which successful policy alliances are built (miller, 1994; covey, 1995). a final note of caution should be sounded on the possibility that very large ngos (southern or northern) might "crowd out" their smaller sister agencies (jorgensen, larsen and udsholt, 1993, p. 6), coming to dominate both resources and ideas to such an extent that they act as a barrier to the very pluralism and diversity of opinions and approaches that are the hallmark of a healthy civil society. performance measurement, legitimacy and accountability ngo legitimacy the increasing funding of ngos by official donor agencies thrusts the question of legitimacy into center stage, for if ngos are becoming more responsive to external concerns, are substituting for government and are growing larger on the basis of foreign funding, what is happening to the links -to their values and mission, and to their relationships with "the poor," supporters and others -through which they derive their right to intervene in development? the oxford english dictionary defines "legitimacy" as "the condition of being in accordance with law or principle…conformity to sound reasoning…authenticity and genuineness." the last characteristic is particularly important for ngos and gros, since their distinguishing feature is voluntarism -the fact that they can only invite voluntary involvement in their activities and must therefore use discussion, bargaining, accommodation and persuasion in their dealings rather than bureaucratic control (fowler, 1988; uphoff, 1993, 1995). esman and uphoff (1984), bratton (1990) and others have pointed out that popular support and selffinancing provide a basis for legitimacy. this implies that gros or ngos, which have shallow roots in society, depend for their survival on outside funding have a much weaker claim. but even if voluntary organizations are not member-controlled, they can still gain by being transparent, accountable and acting in a spirit of genuine partnership with others. in this respect, increasing dependence on official aid is significant, for at least three reasons. first, legitimacy may be eroded by increasing reliance on official donor funding (hellinger, hellinger and o'regan, 1988; lehmann, 1990). as van der heijden (1987, p. 106), quoting a traditional african proverb, puts it, "if you have your hand in another man's pocket you must move when he moves." to what extent are organizations dependent on official funding "nongovernmental," and how does this affect their claims to legitimacy using the criteria listed above? is it possible to have an independent mission while relying on donor funds? as we put it some years ago, the degree to which a strategy or mix of strategies compromises the logic by which legitimacy is too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations current issues in comparative education, vol 1(1) 15 claimed needs to be considered carefully, and can provide a useful means of testing whether organizational self-interest is subordinating mission when a choice is being made" (edwards and hulme, 1992, p. 213). second, does the funding of ngos to deliver social welfare services change the nature of the relationship with donors from one of partnership, to one of contracting? the switch from partner to contractor (like that from "beneficiary" to "consumer" when services are privatized) constitutes a fundamental change in the value base of the relationship. the legitimacy of the ngo is no longer based upon values and voluntarism but on its contract to a legitimate agency. the claim for legitimacy comes closer to that of a private sector operator -being able to provide the service at the best price. third, there are a deeper set of concerns about the possible "rewriting of the social contract" between government and its citizens as a result of ngo substitution for the state in key aspects of the development process, particularly the provision of services (farrington and bebbington, 1983, p. 188). the accountability of a non-elected ngo when providing services to "clients" is very different to the formal relationships between governments and citizens, giving rise to what wood (1996) has a called "a franchise state" in countries such as bangladesh. ngo accountability the concept of accountability -the means by which individuals and organizations report to a recognized authority (or authorities) and are held responsible for their actions -is a crucial component of claims to legitimacy. accountability is a complex and abstract concept, however, and relatively little research has been conducted on this topic with regard to ngos (brett, 1993). although accountability is viewed as a desirable organizational characteristic by most writers, empirical studies commonly indicate that both leaders and subordinates in public and private organizations [8] seek to avoid accountability (fox, 1992). the common perception that, somewhere else, there are organizations that are perfectly accountable must be dismissed. there is, however, clearly a level at which the absence of accountability begins to make the likelihood of illegitimate actions by an organization much more probable. effective accountability requires a statement of goals (whether in adherence to certain rules pr achievement of identified performance levels), transparency of decision making and relationships, honest reporting of what resources have been used and what has been achieved, an appraisal process for the overseeing of authority(ies) to judge whether results are satisfactory, and concrete mechanisms for holding to account (i.e. rewarding or penalizing) those responsible for performance (oda, 1993). gro and ngo accountability may be formal (for example, an evaluation of whether agreed objectives in a program have been met) or informal (for example, ongoing discussion between partners). it may emphasize the honesty and efficiency with which resources are used (commonly referred to as "probity"), or the impact and effectiveness of work (commonly called "performance"). avina (1993) usefully distinguishes between short-term functional accountability (accounting for resources, resource use and immediate impacts) and strategic accountability (accounting for the impacts that an ngos actions have on the actions of other organizations and the wider environment). michael edwards and david hulme 16 november`15, 1998 crucially, gros and ngos have multiple accountabilities -"downwards" to their partners, beneficiaries, staff and supporters; and "upwards": to their trustees, donors and host governments. multiple accountability presents any organization with problems, particularly the possibilities of having to "overaccount" (because of multiple demands), or being able to "underaccount," as each overseeing authority assumes that another authority is taking a close look at actions and results. legally, most ngos, as nonmembership organizations, are accountable to their trustees (a self-selecting group, usually of the "great and the good"). by contrast, gros are accountable to their members. both usually have an obligation to account to the governments of the countries in which they operate, though in practice this often means little more than a brief annual report and audit (tandon, 1995). morally, and in terms of their wider claims to legitimacy, they are accountable to other constituencies, most obviously "beneficiaries" and contributors, but also to staff, for whom a real stake in the organization is often an important quid pro quo for salaries, which are lower than their commercial sector counterparts (hodson, 1992). but of course equal accountability to all at all times is an impossibility. many of the concerns expressed about the nonaccountability of ngos relate to the difficulties they face in prioritizing and reconciling these multiple accountabilities. the danger is that accountability will be skewed to the most powerful constituency, which under the new policy agenda may mean the official donor agencies. that is why clarifying and improving the accountability is the way to ensure that a line remains drawn between transparent compromise and blind cooption (eade, 1993, p. 161). part of the dilemma faced by gros and ngos in this area lies in the nature of the work they do (which is qualitative and contingent) and the problems involved in measuring performance particularly if the objective is "empowerment" (marsden, oakley and pratt, 1994). many of the factors, which influence ngo performance, lie outside the control of the ngo concerned (government policies, for example). as fowler (1995) points out, there is no obvious "bottom line" for ngos in this area and organizational (as opposed to project) indicators are even more difficult to find, especially given the seeming obsession of many ngo managers with size and growth as indicators of "success." these problems make the measurement of "strategic accountability" extremely difficult. yet without accurate ways of measuring performance it is very difficult to be properly accountable to anyone. [9] for some ngos and gros, there is also a political dilemma to accountability. if the organization's overt of covert goal is "empowerment" (i.e. making those who have little power at present more powerful) than transparency on this issue will at best, make it easier for vested interests to identify what is happening and thus more effectively oppose it or, at worst, lead to the deregistration and closure of the organization for being subversive. although the accountability of gros (to their members) may seem straightforward, there is surprisingly little evidence that they perform better than ngos in this respect. indeed, carroll (1992, p. 89) finds the opposite to be true in latin america. these conclusions are confirmed by bebbington and thiele (1993, p. 21) who state "that we cannot say a priori that any one type of organization is inherently more or less responsive to, or representative of, the needs of the rural poor." in gros problems of accountability often arise due to social and political factors(such as interest group manipulation), whereas among ngos, economic factors (and particularly links to too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations current issues in comparative education, vol 1(1) 17 donors) are likely to be more influential (pearce, 1993). indeed, it is ngos, especially those based in the north that come in for the most damning criticisms. lehmann (1990, p. 201) calls their lack of accountability "extraordinary," while smillie (1993, p. 1) finds that "northern ngo survival has been almost completely de-linked from performance," since they appear under little obligation to tell the truth to their supporters (edwards, 1994b). how, then, might the new policy agenda affect the accountability of gros and ngos? first of all, there is an obvious fear that donor funding may reorient accountability upward, away from the grassroots, supporters and staff (edwards & hulme, 1992; fischer, 1994; tandon, 1994). carroll (1992, p. 90) use the example of asepade, a honduran ngo, to illustrate the conflicts which can emerge between devolution to the grassroots and accountability to donors. asepade "allowed themselves to be carried away by their fears that standards of success, mostly imposed by the conditions of donors, would not be me if they didn't control the administration of the project." but "without meaningful accountability to their beneficiaries, scaling-up cud seriously distance (ngos) from the poor" (pearce, 1993, p. 226). fox and hernandez (1989) and fischer (1994) provide some evidence that gro leaders can be further distances from their members by foreign influence, though this can be mitigated by the deliberate encouragement of new generations of leaders from within the organization. given that gros are membership organizations, the reorientation of accountability away from the grassroots is a particular threat as de facto it turns members into customers. the type of appraisal, monitoring and evaluation procedures insisted on by donors, especially their heavy reliance on "logical framework" approaches or their derivatives (such as zopp in the case of the german agency gtz) ma also distort the accountability by overemphasizing short-term quantitative targets and favoring hierarchical management structures -a tendency to "accountancy" rather than "accountability." in this process there is a particular danger that women will be penalized as qualitative changes in gender relations are inadequately monitored ad women are excluded from senior positions in large, growing, hierarchical institutions. [10] the competitive nature of contracting also fosters an orientation toward treating information as a public relations activity (i.e. releasing the good and hiding the bad) and this compromises transparency. the contemporary management by large ngos in both north and south of their external image provides evidence of this problem. [11] there is, however, some evidence that donor funding may strengthen some forms of accountability by increasing external pressures for accurate reporting (tendler, 1989). second, the sheer volume of donor funds made available to gros and ngos may result in problems of probity, especially where internal management and financial systems are originally based on informality and trust. the example of sarvodaya in sri lanka provides a good illustration of this. the organization's accounting and reporting systems were adequate for a small and medium-sized organization, with an energetic leader with highly personalized management style. rapid growth, however, led to the breakdown of these systems and confusion on the part of the organization and donors as to whether functional accounting was simply weak or whether it was hiding improprieties (perera, 1996). michael edwards and david hulme 18 november`15, 1998 third, closer links with donors (and the suspicion of foreign influence this creates in government) may result in a move away from self-regulation to regulation from above by the state. this is not to say that self-regulation is always a good thing, nor that it is sufficient to ensure accountability, but the informal consultative processes and codes of ethic that characterize the voluntary sector in many countries (north and south) have preserved a balance between flexibility, innovation and regulation (caroll, 1992, p. 93). more formal procedures may reduce ngo capacities. brown and tandon (1992) use the examples of capart, the national wastelands development board, and the central social welfare board in india to show how government regulation of ngos can discourage innovation and speed of response, and promote politicization and patronage. similar criticisms have been made about the social service national coordination council in nepal (farrington and bebbington, 1993, p. 51; rademacher and tamang, 1993). government coordinating mechanisms my also provide avenues for the state to gain access to ngo funding and information on organizations they consider "subversive." conclusions our review of the literature suggests three conclusions in relation to the hypotheses presented at the beginning of this paper: (1) the new policy agenda and donor funding present ngos and gros with both threats and opportunities; (2) there are sound theoretical reasons, and some empirical evidence, to suggest that these threats are real and must be dealt with consciously and deliberately; (3) there are no universal relationships between increasing dependence on official aid, and particular trends in ngo programming, performance, legitimacy and accountability. context, circumstances and the quality of relationships between the actors are of crucial importance. a partnership approach, which emphasizes participation, learning, reciprocity and transparency, may permit the problems that accompany organizational growth and donor funding to be managed: gro/ngo performance, legitimacy and accountability need not be eroded. donors (whether official or northern ngo) must therefore be encouraged to move toward funding arrangements which provide stability and predictability in the long term, and timeliness and flexibility in the short term (van der heijden, 1987). long-term institutional support requires a "continual dialogue about objectives and strategies, rather than simply a specification of outputs and targets" (carroll, 1992, p. 164) and evaluations by overseas consultants. this is very difference from the cut and thrust of the "contract culture." in this task, it may be better to channel official donor funds to ngos and gros via an independent public institution which can protect them from undue donor influence, as recommended for the united states (hellinger, hellinger & o'regan, 1988) and in other countries (smillie, 1993; baron, 1993), or via local ngo networks which can ensure quality control through selfregulation and peer pressure, as in the philippines (constantino-david, 1992). official donors (such as the european union and the british overseas development administration) who are considering more direct funding of the ngos and gros in the south need to reflect on the alternatives available to them in this respect, rather than simply expanding their own offices in southern capitals (cormbrugghe, douxchamps and stampa, 1993). for their part, the evidence available to us suggests that ngos who wish to remain effective and accountable under the new policy agenda should diversify their funding too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations current issues in comparative education, vol 1(1) 19 sources and pursue strategies to raise funds locally -the only way to promote sustainability (and associated legitimacy) in the long term. brac in bangladesh, for example, already raises over one-third of its total budget from domestic resources, while the indonesian ngo bina swadaya raises over 50 percent (akf/novib, 1993; farrington and lewis, 1993). enhancing accountability is also vital. for example, the organization of rural associations for progress (orap) in zimbabwe has developed a democratic structure from grassroots level (small groups of families) up to the executive board, so that representatives of each level can have a voice in decision-making at the next level up (wellard and copestake, 1993, p. 78). traidcraft and the new economics foundations (in the uk) are experimenting with "social audits" which allow different stakeholders a voice in setting performance indicators and monitoring progress on an annual basis (zadek and gatward, 1995). participatory methods for monitoring and evaluation are gaining increasing currency in ngos such as the aga khan rural support programme in india, using pra and other techniques to promote downward accountability as well as more effective reporting to donors and trustees (shah and shah, 1995). ngos and gros also need to invest more in their own organizational development so that they are better able to identify the negative impact of changes in their funding sources or role, and act accordingly. this means more attention to research, monitoring and evaluation, so that the all-important link between performance measurement and accountability can be strengthened. above all, it means being clear about the overall direction of the organization and its function in society. with these things in place, ngos and gros may be able to position themselves to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the new policy agenda while avoiding the negative consequences that may flow from official funding, organizational growth, and a focus on service deliver. three things must be noted, however: first, the empirical evidence on trends in ngo performance is too limited to confirm or deny this speculative conclusion; second, the economic and political roles accorded to ngos and gros under the new policy agenda may be incompatible, at least in the same organization; and third, the close identification of ngos and gros with foreign donors may make it difficult for them to establish longer term (sustainable) relationships with national governments and domestic sources of funds. our focus on the new policy agenda and the influence of official donors may have led us to underestimate the influence of endogenous factors, and overestimate the negative impact of donor funding, but it is on this basis that we posit that the modes of programming ngo and gro operations, of defining performance indicators, of claiming legitimacy and of accounting for achievements may be being reshaped. from a neo-liberal perspective the encouragement of ngos and gros by official agencies is desirable for its contribution to economic efficiency and political pluralism, though it may only be transitional as the commercial sector evolves and effective interest groups crystallize. from a radical perspective it may lead to cooptation: the abandonment of a mission for social transformation to become the implementer of the policy agendas of northern governments. michael edwards and david hulme 20 november`15, 1998 notes [1] we use the term ngo as a shorthand for all nongovernmental, nonprofit developmental organizations. we distinguish between international ngos with their headquarters in the north (northern ngos, such as save the children uk); intermediary ngo's in the south (or "grassroots support organizations" in carroll's (1992) terminology, who support grassroots work through funding, technical advice and advocacy); and grassroots organizations of various kinds in the south (gros, or "membership support organizations" in carroll's words, which are controlled by their own members). the implications of the "new policy agenda" for programming, performance, legitimacy and accountability are quite distinct for each of these types of organization. the term "official donor agencies" refers to both multilateral organizations such as the world bank and european union, and to bilateral such as the british overseas development administration (oda) or the swedish international development cooperation agency (sida). "governments" refers, unless specified otherwise, to national governments in africa, asia, and latin america. our focus in this paper is on development activities rather than humanitarian assistance. [2] recently (in the 1993 world development report, for example), there have been intimations of a partial shift back toward donor support for state provision of a core of basic social services to the poor (edwards 1994a). this may be a part of a wider recognition among donors that markets play a less effective role in the social sectors than first thought. this has not, however, changed the donors' belief that ngos are efficient service providers that can be easily scaled-up. [3] the figure for 1993-94 underestimates the volume of oecd aid flowing through ngos very considerably, because it omits funding from the us government and ignores ngo funding multilateral agencies. [4] for example, the share of total income received from the uk government by acord rose from 19 percent (1986) to 31 percent (1992), by action aid from seven percent (1986) to 18 percent (1992), by oxfam from 15 percent (1984) to 24 percent (1993) and by save the children fund from 12 percent (1984-85) to 37 percent (1992-93). it must be noted, however, that some of this is due to recent heavy injections of funds earmarked for emergency work. [5] witness the recent decision by the us government to privatize the functions of usaid, and the uk home office report (knight, 1993) which recommended formal separation of existing ngos into service providers contracted by government, and lobbyists. the report was shelved after intense ngo pressure, but the underlying intention was clear. [6] fowler (1988) makes the point that a sound, fair comparison between ngo and government cost-effectiveness cannot be made because of the different levels of power they have in determining the parameters of the operating environment in which effectiveness is to be realized and judged. ngos can be made more or less cost effective by the policies and laws that governments formulate and apply. the reverse does not hold. too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations current issues in comparative education, vol 1(1) 21 [7] northern ngos are sometimes guilty of similar requirements from their partners in the south. [8] see the economist, "a survey of corporate governance" (january 29, 1994) for a discussion of the weakness of accountability in private sector corporations. [9] the complex issues of ngo performance measurement and accountability are covered in detail in edwards and hulme (1995). [10] some participants at the workshops at which an earlier version of this paper was presented criticized us for not paying explicit attention to gender issues in the discussion of ngo performance and accountability. this remains an important area for further research. [11] it is very difficult to obtain accurate information on the performance and impact of ngos, especially very large ones, in either the north or the south. there is anecdotal evidence that the credit repayment rates and other performance indicators quoted by large ngos in bangladesh and elsewhere are inaccurate, but until rigorous, independent evidence is established as is impossible to draw conclusions. references aga khan foundation canada/novib. (1993). going to scale: the brac experience 1972-1992 and beyond. the hague: aga khan/novib. areilano-lopez, s. & j petras (1994). ngos and poverty alleviation in bolivia. development and change, 25(3), 555-568. avina, j. 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[* this paper began life as a background document for an international workshop on "ngos and development: performance and accountability in the new world order" in june 1994, sponsored by save the children fund-uk and the institute for development policy and management at manchester university. thanks are due to the participants at the workshop for their insights, and to the swedish international development agency (sida) and the uk overseas development administration (oda) for their financial support. we also thank the two anonymous referees for the comments on an earlier draft of this paper. responsibility for the contents of the paper and any errors it contains is ours alone; the views expressed are our views and not necessarily those of save the children fund-uk or idpm. final revision accepted: january 2, 1996.] © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 52 december 1, 2000 south africa as the epicenter of hiv/aids: vital political legacies and current debates johnny sachs emeritus reader, university of london, uk honorary senior lecturer, university of cape town, south africa introduction south africa now is the world's epicenter for the rapid increase of hiv and aids. it is spread predominantly by heterosexual activity and mother-child transmission, and the particular subtype is hiv-c. antenatal surveys in 1999 showed that the incidence varied from 7 to 27.9 percent in different parts of the country. in 1990, the overall incidence was only 0.7 percent (department of health, 1999). this paper addresses some educational and health angles in the hiv/aids pandemic, highlighting the impact of apartheid and discussing the reasons for south africa's lead in the global increase of hiv/aids. when searching for effective responses to this epidemic, it is particularly important to embrace disciplines other than medical services, such as education, and to dissect the socio-political structures that continue to enable the disease's spread. this article is based on my own experience in the south african sociopolitical arena of hiv/aids, the hiv/aids &std strategic plan for south africa 2002005 (department of health, 2000) and the managing the impact of hiv/aids on the education sector (coombe, 2000). the legacy of apartheid since 1994 there has been a democratic government in south africa. however, the legacy of the apartheid years still critically affects the present in all walks of life, not least of all in the health and education arenas. it is important to understand that apartheid aimed at segregating not only black from white, but also the different ethnic groups within the black population, according to ethnic origin. the government of the time claimed that this segregation was separate but equal. it is now well known how unequal it was, with a well-developed white community whose living standards were equivalent to that of the most advanced industrial countries, and a predominantly black community whose living conditions were equal to some of the least developed countries. some of the vagaries of the apartheid years are particularly relevant to facilitating the spread of hiv and aids today. geographical displacement over four million black people were displaced from urban to rural areas designated as "homelands" for the different ethnic groups. in addition, within the urban areas, people of color were moved from designated "white spots" to designated "black spots". these were mainly grossly disadvantaged areas on the periphery or outside the urban areas. there were also forced removals within the urban areas. in cape town, johannesburg, and other cities, hundreds of thousands of people were summarily displaced from near the center to the periphery, and sometimes outside the city. thus soweto (south west township) was the home for citizens removed from the center of johannesburg. the effect was to leave behind the grave of a viable community and establish an outskirts south africa as the epicenter of hiv/aids: vital political legacies and current debates current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 53 conglomeration. soweto became another segregated township outside the city. the inhabitants had to endure long distances to travel to work, inadequate health and educational services, disrupted families and exceptionally poor housing. south african blacks were also forced to carry identity books commonly known as "passes." these were established to control and bully the citizens, and often used to endorse a person out of the urban and peri-urban areas back to their so-called homelands [1]. an individual born and bred in johannesburg could be "endorsed out" to his/her designated homeland even though s/he had never been there before. there were all sorts of restrictions on blacks living in the city and one of the most common reasons for endorsing out was temporary unemployment. the effect of all of this was to create an enormous reservoir of people in the barren countryside with little hope of work or even a subsistence existence. by the nature of apartheid, these areas were also grossly deprived of inter alia health and educational facilities. in such areas it will be very difficult to inform the communities of the dangers of hiv and aids, how to prevent their spread and indeed provide the infrastructure and facilities to do so. migratory labor the migratory labor system was particularly diabolical. male black workers were brought in from the homelands to supply the mines and industrial complexes in the urban areas. they were not allowed to bring their families with them, and they lived in overcrowded single-sex hostels with little recourse to study, recreation or even basic living conditions. furthermore, following the breakdown of apartheid there was an influx of people from other parts of africa, some political but most economic refugees. they came from countries where hiv and aids were rife. in addition, many miners had been recruited into south africa from north of the border. while there are no formal statistics on the hiv status of these immigrants, it can be assumed that they would reflect the incidence in their home countries, which were amongst the highest in the world. following the break down of apartheid and the ensuing democratic elections, the pass laws were, of course, abolished, and people had the right to move where they pleased. this caused an influx of individuals and families into "informal settlements" which often had no water, electricity or sanitation, and minimal health and educational services. the impact on this demographic change on the spread of hiv is self-evident. education and health segregation educational and health facilities were, of course, segregated. the system of bantu education applied to black schools was one of the tenets of apartheid which has left a legacy of a substandard educational system, with poorly qualified or unqualified teachers, overcrowded classrooms, insufficient resources particularly in the previously disadvantaged schools for black children and a tradition of disruption. the system was aimed at educating blacks to read and write so as to serve the white community. similarly, health facilities were not only grossly maldistributed and under funded, but also fragmented in the black areas leaving an inadequate infrastructure throughout the poverty stricken regions of the country. johnny sachs 54 december 1, 2000 school children played a role in the disruption of the apartheid system. the controversial slogan 'liberation before education' led to various boycotts and disruptions of schools, and vicious responses by the authorities. the school revolts in soweto in 1976 were particularly damaging. the overall result was that many of the best pupils went into exile, and the school system became laced with political activity. this left a legacy of conflict and contempt for the authorities. the considerable difficulties with discipline this caused remain to this day. the apartheid police system the police were geared to protect the white community and enforce apartheid. they applied the pass laws rigidly and cruelly. in the black areas, crime was rife with little recourse to the police or courts for redress. the police, both black and white, were seen as representatives, and indeed instruments, of apartheid, and were hated by all black people. in the past, the attitudes and policies of the police force were of racial discrimination. south africa is involved in transforming all its services, and the police force has been one of the most challenging agencies, with poor resources, low morale and some senior police with their own hidden agendas of disruption. there is also a legacy of corruption. creating a responsible and effective police force is of concern to the government, and all south africans. there was thus contempt for the police force, which had been seen as an instrument of the apartheid system of the previous government. this could lead to the rejection of any messages, particularly if they are unwelcome, from authority. at another level, the inability of the police to control the incidence of rape contributes directly to the spread of hiv. current political debates above i have outlined some of the legacies of apartheid affecting the spread of hiv and aids in south africa. i will now address some of the debates influencing current perceptions and public discussion of the pandemic. the aids myth if one wanted to generate a machiavellian plot to undermine the containment of the spread of hiv in a particular country, one would induce the president of that country to publicly doubt the accepted theory that hiv causes aids. this is indeed the situation in south africa. president mbeki was concerned about why the spread of hiv in africa was so rapid and different from the spread in developed countries. mbeki also questioned the use of anti-retroviral drugs to contain the spread of hiv and progression to aids, postulating that it was perhaps a deliberate strategy of the pharmaceutical companies to increase their sales. there are a few but disproportionately vocal proponents of this so-called aids myth around the world, representing a kind of dissident's viewpoint of those who urge further research into the causes behind the spread of hiv/aids. president mbeki has embraced the "dissident's" viewpoint: hiv does not cause aids but aids is rather due to poverty, malaria, drug abuse, tb, malnutrition, among other factors. according to this thesis, aids is a syndrome caused by a number of different etiological factors, including drugs, poverty, malnutrition, tb and other infectious diseases; if hiv does exist, it is incidental. this thesis has no clinical or scientific credibility, and is strongly rejected by the international scientific community. president mbeki was, in my view, seduced by south africa as the epicenter of hiv/aids: vital political legacies and current debates current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 55 their rhetoric against the use of anti-retroviral therapy for use in treating hiv positive individuals, including the prevention of transmission of hiv from mother to child. in addition he would remember only too well how the anc was considered a dissident organization. their argument is that these anti-retroviral therapies (art) are toxic, and indeed are responsible for the development of aids. the medical view is that these drugs may well have some toxic effects, but the benefit obtained from them far outweighs the potential hazards. despite the president's exploration of alternative theories, the government strategy on the prevention of spread of hiv and aids (as outlined elsewhere) is based on the concept that hiv causes aids. however, the message from the president was confusing, and gave an at-risk population mixed messages. recently, the president has stepped away from the debate, and the government is proceeding on the basis that hiv causes aids. the advisory panel in the meantime, the president has set up an advisory panel with dissidents comprising about half its members. the report of the advisory panel is still awaited, but the likelihood of any positive outcome is negligible. besides the waste of resources to fund the advisory panel, an opportunity was lost to set up a more relevant, ongoing forum. invited could have been scientists, clinicians, human rights activists, health care workers, economists from south africa, africa and other successful and unsuccessful countries confronting aids and hiv. the question would center on: what strategies have worked in other developing countries; how to get the prices of art and other drugs down; how to best implement the infrastructures to deliver health care appropriate for preventing the spread of hiv, and how to provide compassionate care for people living with hiv/aids (pwa) in a country with limited resources. maternal-child hiv transmission (mcht) the use of art in the prevention of mcht has generated some controversy in south africa. the debate between the activists and the department of health on the use of nevapicrine for the prevention of mcht highlights some of the difficulties in controlling the spread of hiv and aids. behind the polemic is the exorbitant cost of anti-retroviral drugs and others used to combat opportunistic infections in aids. the government has been in constant conflict with the multi-national pharmaceutical companies and has been thwarted in the courts from using generic drugs often sold at a tenth of the price. on the other hand, the activists are aware that art could reduce the transmission rate by more than 50 percent and are frustrated by the prevaricating of the government's department of health (doh). however, the doh argues that the infrastructure for delivering the drugs and monitoring its effect will be crucial, and has set up centers in the different provinces where nevapcrine is being provided to pregnant mothers. consequently, structures for testing for hiv, counseling and followup are also needed and currently being established. johnny sachs 56 december 1, 2000 conclusions the south african government, the international community, and international agencies are working together in south africa. all parties must emphasize that the broader focus needs to be on other health, socio-economic and political considerations, and not just in providing medical services. also important are the integration of the activist's efforts with the doh initiatives, and the removal of competition and destructive confrontation amongst local and international, donor organizations, politicians and media. we are at a critical juncture; if we fail to put aside our differences and work together, we will sacrifice the future generations of our country. note 1 there are nine indigenous african languages and nine corresponding homelands designated according to the particular language that predominated in that area references coombe, c. (2000). managing the impact of hiv/aids on the education sector. document commissioned by un economic commission for africa. department of health (1999). national hiv sero-prevalence survey of women attending public antenatal clinics in south africa. pretoria, south africa. department of health (2000). hiv/aids & std strategy plan for south africa 20002005. pretoria, south africa: government printers. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 48 april 30, 1999 quality education and social stratification: the paradox of private schooling in china haojing cheng michigan state university brian delany michigan state university since the opening of the first elite private school in june 1992, private schools have mushroomed in china. [1] by november 1996, there were more than 60,000 private institutions, hosting 6.8 million students (china education daily, 11/1/1996). though the percentage of private schools is still less than 4 percent of all schools in china, the current boom in private schools, especially the primary and the secondary level, evokes many debates and concerns over their legitimacy, policy, implementation, problems, and effects (kwong, 1996). are these private schools pioneers for quality education or are they a result of an increasingly stratified society? what roles do they play? what are their potential effects? this paper aims to explore what private schooling means in china today and includes discussions on context, definition, assumptions, and implications of china's educational market. it draws on library research as well as field research on private schools in china, in order to deepen the understanding of the restoration of private schooling. this analysis suggests that while the current revival of elite private schools might be a result of pursuit of social efficiency and reflects the intensification of social inequality, it also serves the interests of wealthy parents rather than the public. though private schools pilot some education changes in curriculum, teaching, accountability, and school management, the sharp contrast between elite schools and their public counterparts indicates that elite private schools mainly serve the needs of economically privileged group. these private schools may widen the gaps that already exist among the different segments of population in china. this article questions the assumption that private schools only strive toward quality education for a public good and suggests that the emergence of private schools reflects on-going struggles between classes and groups in competition for values, resources, and power. hence, the resurgence of private schools may have less an effect on quality and equity of education but more toward social stratification. this analysis combined the data from library research and fieldwork. from 1995-1997, i collected data regarding private schooling, under the guidance and support of brian delany, by reading government documents, newspapers, popular and professional journals, as well as talked to teachers about perspectives regarding the policy, strategies, and public attitudes about running private schools. since the schools visited are called elite private schools in beijing and guangdong province, we realized the limitation of the data due to regional discrepancies on educational resources, policy and philosophy. context of educational reform and privatization a shifted educational policy quality education and social stratification: the paradox of private schooling in china current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 49 as a result of the growing importance of a market economy, schooling in china has undergone remarkable changes. in the 1950s, basic education expanded for purposes like that of serving the children of workers and farmers, within a political reform associated with egalitarian hopes and the building of the nation (cheng, 1996). the educational reform prompted by economic reform in the 1980s, on the other hand, is driven by the demands of modernization, which emphasize that science and technology are needed to increase productivity. in the central government's 1985 "educational reform decision" the funding and authority of education were decentralized to the lower levels of governments. according to this decision, provincial governments are mainly responsible for funding education (the decision, 1985). the "law of compulsory education" in the following year promulgated the rights of individuals to receive nine years of schooling (the law, 1986). this law also legitimated differentiated curricula for students beyond compulsory education. by decentralizing financial responsibilities to lower levels of government and connecting education with productivity of the market, the government shifted from its egalitarian goal of education to the goal of pursuing social efficiency (cheng, 1996). in the latter goal, equal opportunities rather than equal access are stressed through sorting students into different curriculum tracks (cohen & neufeld, 1981). the concept of "decentralization" is not new to china. it can be traced back to the 1950s when the government adopted the "walking on two legs" strategy--the combination of regular government funded education and the community-run schools with government subsidies. as many private schools emerged during this wave of decentralization in public education, the "walking on two legs" policy provided a convenient rationale for the acceptance of private schooling under market mechanisms (delany, 1997). in the 1990s, educational reform is geared toward further opening the market. this creates opportunities for alternative funding of schooling in addition to financial decentralization in education. the "outline for reform and development of education in china" by the central committee in 1993 states that "the mechanism for financing schools will be reformed" in that the state as the only sponsor of schools will (…) be supplemented by a great variety of other sponsors in society " (the outline, 1993, p. 22). this policy legitimates a market mechanism--an exchange between education and other leverages of the market like political, cultural, and monetary resources. the adoption of the market mechanisms in education shifted the driving force of educational reform from political dynamics to economic ones. the advent of a market economy in china makes it possible for some parents to choose alternatives to public education for their children. problems with public schools such as rigid curriculum, exam-oriented instruction, lack of autonomy, and unequal access under the traditional two-track system secondary schools, have troubled many parents and students. to compound this, the government has traditionally identified several "key schools" which received supplemental support in terms of funding, facilities and teachers, but were very selective of which students could attend. however, under the previous centralized educational system, it was difficult for parents to choose schools for their children thus, limited space in public key schools meant that only a few parents are able to send their children to these schools. the tension between the demands of parents and the limited accommodations of key schools has led parents to seek alternative haojing cheng and brian delany 50 april 30, 1999 resources for quality education. according to james (1994) this demand for alternatives to public schooling is known as differentiated demand. recent studies have shown that differentiated demand exists in both developed countries and developing countries (cummings & riddle, 1994; tilak, 1994; bray, 1996). parental choice via charter and private schools in the united states is a prime example of mechanisms used elsewhere to accommodate and rationalize this demand. definition of private schools in china, private schools are those run by individuals, privately owned enterprises or non-governmental organizations. this definition is insufficient because some nongovernmental schools are run by social forces (such as the democratic party or other legally approved groups), some by people (minban are operated by the people), and some by individuals. it is easy to blur their distinctions if we call them all "nongovernmental" (lai, 1996). the definition of a private school is therefore complex. three criteria are adopted here to distinguish different types of schools: ownership, funding, and management (lai, 1996). among these three criteria, ownership is the most important to distinguish private schools from other non-government schools (cheng 1994). schools owned, funded, and managed by all levels of government are called public schools. schools are funded by state-owned enterprises or rural communities. in terms of ownership, schools that are either owned by all the people or are collectively owned like villages are considered "run by the people" (minban) (lai, 1996). schools wholly-owned, funded, and managed by private entities and citizens are called private schools. though many schools in the last category are still under the supervision of the government in terms of policy, curriculum and evaluation, the private ownership distinguishes them from other types of schools (cheng, 1994). in this article "private schools" refers to those "elite" private schools that charge high fees. internal management private schools are relatively autonomous although they are still under general supervision of the state. some schools have a school board to supervise principals' responsibilities, while other schools form school committees composed of investors, principals and parents to supervise the school management (zhu, 1996). in private schools, principals are in charge of admitting students, hiring personnel, choosing material, attracting funds and managing schools. they enjoy more freedom, but have more responsibilities. in this sense, private schools may be fully decentralized in terms of responsibilities and this new management style may be more adaptable to the market economy. in this respect, it has the potential to pilot management reform in public schools. assumptions the following is a list of assumptions that have led to the growth of private schools in china: 1. private schools will provide quality education to students for their academic and holistic human development (xi, 1996, qu, 1996, wu, 1996). by providing better conditions, diverse curricula, and experienced teachers, private schools promise quality education for their clients. 2. in an ideal market, it is assumed only quality products will succeed. in a sense, success in the market place defines quality, though we may argue over this marketquality education and social stratification: the paradox of private schooling in china current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 51 driven definition. 3. parents believe that quality education in private schools will enable their children to succeed in competition (bi, 1997). 4. as additional families send their children to private schools, public education expenditures for these children can be reallocated to those schools underfunded by government (bray, 1996, qu, 1996). 5. private schools are considered to better serve the educational needs of parents and children (zhang, 1996). there are "high-priced" students (students who are admitted to a particular school on their parents' ability to pay school fees rather than on their test scores) in public key schools. 6. private schools are regarded as laboratories for public school reform because they are believed to be able to mobilize funds and human resources, develop educational philosophy, create their own management styles, seek a connection between school and society, and improve curriculum and teaching. in this way and because private schools offer increased competition, they may force higher standards among public schools and in both senses "make up for the deficiency" of the state-run educational system (zhang & sha, 1996). traveling through private schools funding, fees and facilities funding sources of private schools consist of tuition fees, financing fees, school construction fees, contribution fees or other types of fees. though different schools charge different types of the above fees, some of which they return to students upon graduation, those fees are always high. for example, the annual average income of an employee in a state-owned enterprise is 3,000 yuan ($375 usd) and tuition can range from 13,500 yuan ($1,700 usd) to 15,000 yuan ($1,900 usd) annually (zhu, 1996). other school-related expenses can range from 18,000 yuan ($2,200 usd) to 40,000 yuan ($5,000 usd) (xia, 1996). many private schools have a market-driven mechanism. according to deng (1997), private investors are given favorable prices on valuable land if they set up schools on it. in addition, the government grants tax-exempt status to school run enterprises. some entrepreneurs attempt to evade taxes by attaching their business to a private school and thereby attaining non-profit status (deng, 1997). this pattern is not exclusive to china. private schools that are categorized as commercial ventures are found in other countries (bray, 1996). beautiful campuses, comfortable and even luxurious living conditions, and advanced teaching and learning facilities make many private schools appealing. taking guangya elementary school in sichuan province as a case study, all classrooms have colored walls and roofs. classrooms are equipped with pianos, tvs, vcrs, and computers (hou, 1996). other schools considered in this study have central air conditioning, fitness rooms, and language labs, as well as student dormitories equipped with ultra-violet sterilizing lamps and child care teachers and nutritionists. principals and teachers are in charge of students' extracurricular activities, and in one of the elite private schools visited, a big stadium and swimming pool were under construction. these conditions and equipment are only fantasies to schools in poor rural areas where it is still difficult to find safe classrooms, desks and chairs, and textbooks for children. haojing cheng and brian delany 52 april 30, 1999 curriculum many private schools claim that they provide curricula with diverse content and teaching methods. besides courses on computer and foreign languages, some schools offer music, dancing, and art courses, taking students' special talents into account (hou, 1996). other schools design their own syllabi according to their own conditions. most provide extracurricular activities. they also incorporate teaching methods from developed countries and regions such as the us, uk, singapore, taiwan and hong kong. (hou, 1996). however, private schools share a dilemma created by the emphasis on the state curriculum. there is concern about the evaluation methods of students who still need to compete with their public counterparts. it would be hard for them to reconcile the gap. teachers in private schools usually find themselves short of class hours necessary to balance the gap between the state curricula and school curricula (zhang, 1996). parents, students and teachers according to a 1994 xinhua survey, of the parents who send their children to private schools, 39 percent of the parents are heads of companies and factories or senior executives of high-tech enterprises; 17.9 percent are employees in beijing firms and institutions of other provinces; 14 percent have been abroad; 8.6 percent work in foreignfunded ventures; 5.5 percent are self-employed. according to one parent, "it is worth paying such a large amount to let my child study here. it is a very nice school. i hope my son can become a university graduate in the future and help my business to succeed" (south china sunday morning post, 1994, p 7). in addition, many parents do not have enough time to take care of their own children and many are divorced. to these parents, private schools are ideal places for their children because they enjoy a small teacherstudent ratio and are cared for by teachers, counselors and school nurses (zhang, 1996). although some schools still select students based upon their previous academic performance, most private schools are open to anyone who can afford them. many private schools attempt to foster in these students good living habits and selfindependence (zhang, 1996, p. 81). parents seem satisfied with the progress their children make in academic learning, singing, dancing, typing, calculation and playing chess and musical instruments. however, positive comments about students from principals and parents fail to assess the overall development of students in private schools. there is no long-term assessment plan and students' voices are generally not heard. the quality of teachers and teaching is another selling point of private schools. in most elite schools, the teacher and student ratio is 1:5 compared to 1:10 in the public schools (xi, 1996, p. 12). most private schools either hire high-ranked and experienced teachers, or outstanding young teachers from teachers' colleges. generally speaking, their salary is much higher than those in public schools. private school teachers' salaries range 20,000 and 30,000 yuan ($2,500 to $3,700 usd) a year (survey, 1996, p. 52), considerably higher than those of their counterparts in public schools. in addition, teachers in some of these schools did express that they enjoyed more flexibility in teaching than they used to do in public schools (xia, 1996). yet my interviews revealed that there are also drawbacks to teaching in private schools. some of the teachers did not feel that they were prepared for quality education and social stratification: the paradox of private schooling in china current issues in comparative education, vol.1(2) 53 the demanding workloads of private schools. others expressed tension between their visions about teaching and pressure from school boards or the state. in addition, the comparatively high credentials of teachers may not necessarily lead to effective teaching as when teachers are forced to adapt to alternative content and methods of teaching, they change from experienced to inexperienced and in-service teacher training has not been regarded as a formal agenda for private schools. conflicts and challenges of educational reform trade-offs despite some of the positive aspects of private schooling discussed above, there are also trade-offs in china's current educational reforms. values of quality, efficiency and equity are likely to be traded-off depending on the goal of the educational reform (cummings & riddle, 1994). as pointed out earlier, in china the goal of educational reform is to improve productivity not to realize egalitarian ideology. efficiency is best judged by productivity. improving productivity requires that students pursue different curriculum tracks. the tracking that results is inequitable and there is a difference in educational quality between urban and rural areas. this inequity is compounded by an increasingly stratified society and forces the redistribution of educational opportunities. the placement of "high-priced" students in public key schools reveals that children from families with power and money obtain better opportunities, while students from poor rural families are more likely to drop out of school (cheng, 1996). for many parents in china the pursuit of social mobility is preferred to that of equity in private schools. according to bi, "the majority [parents] wanted their children to excel among their peers" (bi, 1997, p. 28). in the increasingly stratified chinese society most parents want to provide their children with leverage over other children so family resources are transferred to elite private schools. as a result, private schools have to cater to the needs of wealthy parents who expect their children to outperform their peers. therefore, accountability to parents is crucial to the market mechanism. labaree (1997) argues that "parents see private schools as a mechanism for adapting students to the requirements of hierarchical social structure and the demands of the occupational marketplace" (p. 46). interestingly, because it is parent-initiated, private schools are considered bottom-up rather than top-down reform, as is often the case in the public sector, even though the effects of this reform may not be equitable. however, many private schools still claim that they pursue the public good by targeting the all-round development of students. the shifted values in educational reform in both public and private sectors suggest that equity of education is irrelevant (delany, 1997). conclusions in reality, education is not an independent variable for social change. instead, schooling reflects the continuous conflicts outside schools that shape educational process. "from a conflict perspective, educational change occurs through conflict and competition between social class, ethnic, national, religious, and gender groups, whose interests are incompatible, or when structural contradictions are unsuccessfully mediated" (ginsburg, cooper, taghu, & zegerra, 1990). thus, schools become a social arena for political, economic and social power to compete for values. in the pursuit of social mobility, individual gain may create conflict among private school clients and may have haojing cheng and brian delany 54 april 30, 1999 repercussions within society at large. the values that will shape and be shaped by education largely depend on the result of competition (carnoy & levin, 1985). to a large degree, the current trend of private schooling in china breaks the traditional monopoly of state-run education, diverting it to a pluralistic system, and challenging the traditional curriculum, teaching methods, educational philosophy and school management. despite these features, the problems and potential effects of privatization cannot be ignored. the roles that private schools play are still unclear. the possibility that these schools will only serve a few, the trade-offs of educational goals and the intensification of social stratification temper what remain unexamined assumptions favoring support for the boom in private schooling. governments should bear the responsibilities for setting goals and supervision and school professionals should be responsible for curriculum, teaching and internal management. policy frameworks must not overlook the demands for quality education by parents as a whole. moreover, policy makers must be cautious in regulating and evaluating private schools. in many ways these short-run visions for efficiency may damage long-term goals of education in pursuit of the public good. notes [1] guangya elementary school in sichuan province. references beijing xinhua in english 1146 gmt 23 mar 1994. bi, c. 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(1996). thoughts on certain questions concerning private schools. in j. kwong, x. chen, w. li, and j. ma (eds.). chinese education and society, 29(5). © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 122 may 1, 2001 pacts / partnerships and governing the parent and child thomas s. popkewitz university of wisconsin-madison we can think of school reforms whether they be local projects, national projects, or international development projects as embodying salvation themes that join the individual's destiny to collective ideals of commitment and sacrifice of the nation. the idea of partnership is one example of a contemporary salvation theme. salvation themes also embody a field of cultural practices that relate to social exclusion as well as inclusion. reforms that include seemingly opposite ideological agendas--neo-liberalism introducing markets and decentralization introducing community participation-redesign the relation of the social pact of the state in its obligations to its citizens and the partnership through which individuals and groups in civil society participate. in the cultural practices of the school there are normalized qualities of the child and teacher that also inscribe practices of exclusion by constituting children and teachers who do not 'fit' the distinctions and dispositions of reasonable people. my purpose in this work, however, is not to demonize salvation narratives but to probe the themes of progress and rescue as a set of mentalities, which render algorithms for the self, family and government. introduction reforms of teacher education and curriculum embody salvation narratives about the moral sensibility, self-responsibility and self-motivation that enables the child to act as the democratic citizen-of-the-future. this paper offers a reading of pacts and partnerships in education reform primarily in the context of the u.s. and the european union. my intent is not only related to national reforms but to contribute to discussions about partnerships, alliances and cooperation in international development discourses, namely the activities of the world bank. the issue of the globalization of salvation themes is raised in the work of john meyer and associates (1997). my use of it, however, relates to the inscription of salvation themes as of a particular, specific kind of cosmopolitanism that inserts enlightenment hopes in the historically particular systems of governing of the present. in the language of current u.s. reforms, the cosmopolitanism of the teacher is expressed through "professionalism" in which the teacher replaces provincial values and local affinities with norms of action that accept diversity and promote the values of a universal humanity. the individual participates in partnership through collaborative, lifelong learning. the salvation theme of the cosmopolitan teacher and child is not only a theme of future hope and future redemption. the cosmopolitanism embodies rules of ordering and classifying how the world and self are to perform as agents and with agency, which is related to foucault's (1979) notion of governmentality. in this sense, then, i wish to consider the systems of reason that circulate in schooling as a material practice generating the principles that order, classify and divide action and participation1. why talk of the governing of the subject through the curriculum, the teacher, and teacher education through this notion of cosmopolitanism? there is a current trend in some literature that makes cosmopolitanism part of the issue of globalization and in this pacts / partnerships and governing the parent and child current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 123 the new citizen is contrasted to localism and nationalism, as though this were only a recent phenomenon. yet, the modern school since the 19th century has embodied the governing of the child and family through notions of cosmopolitanism that were to use of rules of reason about "the learner," child development, and other universalizing discourses to order one's life's trajectory. modern curriculum, from this perspective, functions to replace tradition or local norms in the production of the cosmopolitan "self." further, when the cosmopolitan self is examined, it appears not as a fabricated global persona, but as a subjectivity that embodies and normalizes particular characteristics and dispositions. the principles generated to order the 'reasonable person' of schooling are also dividing practices that qualify and disqualify individuals for action and participation (popkewitz & lindblad, 2000). the discursive mapping of the individual who works in partnerships, then is not only an act about salvation, but embodies a continuum of values whose sets of distinctions and values also fabricate their opposite-the characteristics and dispositions of the individual who is not active or learning. it is in this making of the normal and reasonable that the concept of inclusion joins with that of exclusion. in this short paper, i will focus on the problem of partnership in schooling as it relates to the alchemy of school knowledge. the alchemy is the traveling of disciplines of knowledge production--physics, history, literary criticism--into the space of schooling. as the sorcerer of the middle ages sought to turn lead into gold, modern curriculum theory produces a magical change as knowledge is transported from the social spaces of historians or physicists, for example, into social spaces of the school. my reference to the alchemy is to suggest that the very knowledge systems of schooling--its alchemies--are systems of inclusion/exclusion that need to be scrutinized. my strategy is a synthetic presentation of the knowledge of schooling that forms a contour of u.s. and in some instances, european teacher and teacher education reforms. the argument is drawn from a broader historical study of u.s. reforms and an eight country european study of educational governance and social inclusion and exclusion2. my purpose in this analysis is diagnostic. it is to historicize school knowledge as a cultural practice that encloses and interns the possibilities of action. however, the irony of a diagnosis that shows the contingency of these arrangements, in effect, makes it possible to judge the present inscriptions and arrangements. it also makes for the possibility of alternatives. the pact and partnership: governing of the self changes in the organizational patterns of schooling are occurring across europe and north america. we can think of these changes as different trajectories connected either to conservative strategies of neo-liberalism and marketization, or to liberal and left efforts to decentralize bureaucracies and move towards local and community involvement. however, when these different ideological positions are examined in the concrete discourses of professionalization and pedagogical reform, the different teacher reforms and governmental policy changes overlap in their systems of reason (popkewitz, 1996). the changes in school organizational patterns embody a new sense of displacement and the new calculus of intervention. thomas s. popkewitz 124 may 1, 2001 one way to think about the organizational changes is to first consider the relation by which the obligations of the state and the obligations of citizenship are established through seemingly opposite categories: the social pact that binds a government to its citizens, and the partnership contract between communities and governments. by pact i am referring to the historically defined position of the state as the guardian of the good and the progress of the nation. the modern ideas of the welfare state and the socialist state are enactments of the pact wherein the state provides provisions of social security, employment, medical care, and schooling. the pact is expressed in the case of many european union members as the arrangement where the state represents a collective obligation by ensuring that all in society have adequate conditions for participation, social justice and equity. the idea of state standards for teaching and curriculum in the u.s. and the british tqa (teaching quality assurance) are examples that inscribe the idea of the school as properly part of the state's social pact. historically, the pact has been mutually constructed in relation to the social networks of civil society, what we might call, the partnership. in the u.s., charter schools, voucher systems and "choice" programs deploy the logic of a partnership--the new collaboration of businesses, local governments, local parent groups who work together through a rhetoric of "choice." the policy is to improve the quality of schooling by producing greater parental involvement and working relations with teachers. these partnerships work in one of the senses of the important american phrase, "we, the people." the partnerships are the constitution of a 'we' through which collective actions of the citizenry form the governing agendas through the participatory mechanisms of a democracy. the "we" in "we, the people" has a double sense, however, which illustrates how the pact and the partnership are not contradictory or opposites but stand in a double relationship though which new patterns of governing are being constructed. the first sense is what i have just described, the sense of the partnership in which people participate and govern. the 'we' also is the government that represents the people, it is the pact which constitutes a state that acts in the name of the people. the school is historically, one site of these double relations: the state organizes the school (the pact) to administer the social and moral goals of the 'society,' and, at the same time, produce the child whose liberty enables participation in the formulation of social and cultural agendas (the partnership). the significance of the different practices that join the pact and partnership lies in a revisioning of the principles that govern the relation between the state, society, community and individuality. the rules that relate the partnership and the pact are not formal institutional procedures but are 'made' through the distinctions, differentiations, and categories that are inscribed to order how children are thought of, 'seen,' and acted on. examples of this are the theories of childhood that divide children into age groups, and the theories of personality and growth, all of which order individuality into different capacities, capabilities, and notions of character (see, e.g., baker, 2001; hultqvist & dahlberg, 2001; bloch, & popkewitz, 2000, & walkerdine, 1988). as one examines the documents of reform both in the u.s. and europe, one is struck that state authority is to regenerate and repair the family through democratization that involves mutual respect, decision-making, protection of and care for the child and the family. the pacts / partnerships and governing the parent and child current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 125 partnership expresses new governing principles that define the duties and obligations parents are to have for their children's learning, discipline, and attendance at school. in the sense, then, of governing principles, the distinctions among conservative, neo-liberal minimalist state governing, social democratic social welfare reforms, and the transatlantic discussions of the third way merge in the pedagogical distinctions and differentiations around the parent and the child. community as a governing practice a central metaphor in the salvation narratives of local control and teacher professionalism is that of "community." in the political alignments of the third way (giddens, 1998), for example, government is to foster partnership by fostering community renewal and development. today's political landscape calls for reforms that emphasize the community -community health programs, community schools, community-based welfare systems, etc. (rose, 1994). the community project, from one ideological viewpoint, is to empower through finding an authentic group voice in public arenas. with a different ideological agenda, community is evoked to talk about parental choice and school improvement through market pressures. community is a metaphor of the pact and partnership. the metaphor is evoked to signal the ways in which the collective obligation of society is organized in specific locales and through specific groups of people who can decide what is reasonable for the processes of change. it captures the salvation theme of the state that is to administer in order to produce individual participation that will save the democracy and economy. it is seductive in that it appeals to a renewal of the general social good through civic action that is local and in which those directly affected can take effective actions. but community participation should not be thought of as some abstract, pure principle that stands out from social practices. it is a word ordered by the amalgamation of discursive practices in which it is deployed. the notion of community overlaps with discourses of pedagogy and reform to fabricate particular kinds of people who are vested with the particular capacities and capabilities of the school. the salvation themes embody a particular "reasonable person" who operates with a particular type of pragmatism. the organizational changes that call forth a new democratization of the school through metaphors of community embody particular ways of classifying and dividing the parent or child. progress is constructed through the collaborative work of people in a continuous process of problem solving, modifying and creating new ends as the problems of daily life are confronted. the formation of the citizen is not related to externally validated morals and obligations but in a set of practices through which the self works on itself. the individual is pragmatic, acting flexibly, ready to respond to new eventualities and 'empowered' through self-reflection, self-analysis, and life-long learning. the "new" child and parent are continually pragmatic and active in reworking their self capacity and potentialities through perpetual intervention. this universe is contingent and in the making rather than having a closed or settled condition. the resulting discourses of change embody new patterns of calculative routines that "make" the citizen who manages his own personal ethics and collective allegiances (also thomas s. popkewitz 126 may 1, 2001 see rose, 1999; rose & miller, 1992). the site of administration is the production of individuals who work on themselves through self-improvement, autonomous and "responsible" life conduct, and 'lifelong' learning. the salvation theme is to empower and to emancipate the child/family through their moral aspirations and desires. the new expertise of the teacher the call for democracy in contemporary teacher and teacher education reforms embodies new types of expertise. the expert is one who engages individuals and communities so that they can be better managed, healthier and happier. the teacher is one who is personally responsible for "problem solving" in a world that is personally unstable. the professional teacher is "self-governing," and has greater local responsibility in implementing curriculum decisions--a normativity also found in the structuring of the new "constructivist" child (popkewitz, 1991; 1993). the teacher administers the child who is flexible, ready to respond to new eventualities and empowered through the voices of local "communities" to construct and reconstruct his or her own "practice," participation, self management of choice, and autonomous ethical conduct of life. teachers are to "coach" the child, and "collaborate" with the parent to empower them and to give "voice" to community. this teaching role, this "expertise" of the teacher, contrasts with the early part of the century where teachers were to "educate" the parent and the child to universal rules of national sagas. the collaborative, participatory teacher or child is not an autonomous actor who exists without governing patterns. the expertise of the professional is ordered through sciences of education that increasingly provide a calculated, systematic rationality in which to improve schools, order community participation, and guide family development. the notions of collaboration, the rules that constitute "problem-solving" child and teacher, and the notions of community and parent participation are not born of "experience" but of experiences that are ordered and classified in relation to overlapping policy agendas and research programs. professional knowledge is not of a self-wisdom acquired through practice but rather the inscriptions of particular systems of rationality related to the new pact and partnership, systems which intern and enclose the boundaries of what constitutes experience and its administration. the practices of the new expertism fabricate a teacher who is selfactualized and who remakes her biography through continually calculating and rationally researching the self. new assessment methods are performed for teacher supervision and for the calculation of the child. one can think of the teacher education reforms designed to produce the 'reflective teacher' as simultaneously creating the possibility of increasing teachers involvement while also isolating and creating illusions of democratization (zeichner, 1996). the teacher assesses the child in similar fashion; through life histories and portfolios the (constructivist) child makes and remakes his or her own biography. pacts / partnerships and governing the parent and child current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 127 the alchemy of the curriculum school subjects are performed as an alchemy. the expectations of curriculum related to the school timetable, conceptions of childhood, and conventions of teaching transform disciplinary knowledge into strategies for governing the child. learning physics is about 'concept mastery,' the psychology of 'cooperative small group learning' and the 'motivation' and the 'self-esteem' of children. the only thing left of disciplinary practice when it arrives in the school is the namesake -physics or history. the alchemy of school subjects needs to be placed in the field of cultural practices that gives intelligibility to particular kinds of people who are vested in schooling with historically constructed capacities and capabilities of individuality. the revisioning of the pact and partnership, the notions of community, the new expertise of the teacher, and new assessment techniques are governing practices that are to remake the biographies of the child, which produce new systems of enclosures and internments. were we to examine mathematics, for example, we would see that what is portrayed as the reason of mathematics is not mathematical reason but the transportation of a psychology directed to the inner capabilities of the child. the "innate reasoning" of the child in the teaching of mathematics is a logic of the psychology of children's development of justifications and conjectures. teaching is the administration of the child who practices an inductive and deductive reasoning. the "reason" of mathematics teaching can be understood as the cultural production of individuals who work on themselves through self-improvement, autonomous and "responsible" life conduct, and "lifelong" learning (see, e.g., rose, 1999). the alchemy embodies a grid of logic that gives it intelligibility and through which individuals are observed and within which they understand themselves as reasonable people. the alchemy translates the disciplinary knowledge into particular distinctions about a psychology of the collaborative child and teacher, concepts that have little to do with the social spaces of physics or history. the instructional problem is for the child to act and participate according to a universal set of rules about learning, or what is called in today's reform, the pedagogical content of teaching. but the rules of reason for this learning are not a universal set of principles applied to children's development but particular historically mobilized divisions and displacements (see, e.g., lesko, 2001). it is at this point that the problem of social inclusion/exclusion can be considered. if we compare the dispositions and sensitivities of the cosmopolite to that of urban education (popkewitz, 1998b; also see mirón, 1996), it becomes clear that urban education provides a series of salvation stories of the u.s. efforts toward an inclusive society. however, the distinctions and categories of the urbanness of the child are categories of difference from the cosmopolite. the differences of teaching and of capabilities are constructed through the normalizing practices that "make" the urban child different from what continually goes unnamed--the normality of distinctions inscribed as the child who problem solves. the child who is administrated in urban and rural education is the child who lacks selfesteem and who needs remediation. the politics of school knowledge involve overlapping discourses that relate the partnership, the pact, and pedagogy, and through this construct distinctions that qualify and disqualify individuals for participation. the discourses of reform that move from thomas s. popkewitz 128 may 1, 2001 partnerships, community participation, home-school collaboration, parent "choice" vouchers, and the new pedagogies of teaching and teacher education install the characteristics of the educated person and its opposite, the individuality that lies outside of the reason, the individuality that is not the reasonable person who collaborates and solves problems. towards a study of schooling my concern has been with how can we diagnose current reforms as a mutual set of relations that construct the pact and the partnership. the salvation themes in current reforms are not merely paths to redemption but effects of power that cannot be takenfor-granted. this notion of diagnosis is expressed by rose (1999) who argues that the task of inquiry is to disturb "that which forms the very groundwork of our present, to make the given once more strange and to cause us to wonder at how it came to appear so natural" (p. 58). to show the contingency of the arrangement that we live by is to show how thought has played a part in holding those arrangements together and to contest the strategies governing human possibilities. it is this politics of knowledge in education that i have engaged in. my discussion about "reason" as a field of cultural practices enabled a consideration of how multiple different layers of school reforms overlap to inscribe divisions in an unequal playing field. what pass as universal principles of learning or teaching are not universal, but are in fact specific and historically constructed in power relations. the distinctions serve as seemingly natural signposts to signal "the capable" child in school; the rules of psychology and teaching generate the principles of a child's progress, "development," and collaboration; these rules also generate the dispositions through which the teacher "knows" the problem-solving child (and the child who is not problem solving). but i argued that the fabrications are not natural to thought or planning but are historically fabricated as effects of power. the fabrications are divisions that exclude as they include, disqualify as they qualify individuals for action and participation. the distinctions and divisions of a child who will be flexible and problem-solving are inscriptions of a normality at the level of being--the capabilities, dispositions, and capacities of the child and teacher--and it is on this level that the politics of education works to qualify and disqualify individuals for participation. in some ways, this analysis goes against the grain. often contemporary critiques of such reforms think of them of as tied to conservative agendas associated with neo-liberalism and the metaphors of markets and privatization. if my argument is appropriate, what is associated with neo-liberalism is a calculus of intervention and salvation that involves multiple historical trajectories that overlap with but are not determined by the state policies associated either with reagan and thatcher or with hayekian and freedman economics3. the realignment of the idea of the welfare state, the policies that mutually construct centralizing and decentralizing policies overlap with other discourses of pedagogy, school administration and notions of participation and are not reducible to neo-liberalism. what is significant in understanding neo-liberal ideas, then, is not their economic reductionism nor the establishment of another state theory of government, but considering how such practices relate to other practices to form a field of cultural practices that form the principles which order and govern the production of individuality. as wagner (1994) suggests, it would be historically incorrect to pacts / partnerships and governing the parent and child current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 129 understand the economic language without considering how that language is worked within cultural practices. notes 1. i discuss this more fully in popkewitz, 1991; 1998; and in press. 2. the european study is directed by sverker lindblad of uppsala university, sweden. 3. without moving into an economic analysis, the very restructuring of keynesian economics that is assumed in neo-liberalism begins to appear after world war two when fordist production systems no longer are viewed as increasing productivity. further, what is called 'markets' and privatization exist within complex systems of regulated spaces that have little to do with 19th century notions of markets. references baker, b. (2001). in perpetual motion: theories of power, educational history, and the child. new york: peter lang. bloch, m., & popkewitz, t. (2000). constructing the parent, teacher, and child: discourses of development. in l. d. soto (ed.), the politics of early childhood education (pp.7-32). new york: peter lang publishers. foucault, m. (1979). discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. new york: vintage books. giddens, a. (1998). the third way: the renewal of social democracy. malden, ma: polity press. hultqvist, h. & dahlberg, g. (eds.) (2001). the changing child in a changing world. current ways of thinking and practicing childhood. new york: routledge. lesko, n. (2001). act your age! a cultural construction of adolescence. new york: routledge falmer. meyer, j., boli, j., thomas, g. & ramirez, f. (1997). world society and the nation-state. american journal of sociology, 103(1), 144-81. mirón, l. (1996). the social construction of urban schooling: situating the crisis. cresshill, nj: hampton press. popkewitz, t. (1991). a political sociology of educational reform: power/knowledge in teaching, teacher education, and research. new york: teachers college press. thomas s. popkewitz 130 may 1, 2001 popkewitz, t. (1993). changing patterns of power: social regulation and teacher education reform. albany, ny: state university of new york press. popkewitz, t. (1998a). the culture of redemption and the administration of freedom in educational research. review of educational research, 68(1), 1-34. popkewitz, t. (1998b). struggling for the soul: the politics of education and the construction of the teacher. new york: teachers college press. popkewitz, t. (2000). educational knowledge: changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community. new york: suny press. popkewitz, t. (in press). rethinking the political: reconstituting national imaginaries and producing difference in the practices of schooling. international journal of inclusion. popkewitz, t. s. & lindblad, s. (2000). educational governance and social inclusion and exclusion: some conceptual difficulties and problematics in policy and research. discourse, 21(1), 5-54. rose, n. (1999). powers of freedom: reframing political thought. cambridge, ma: cambridge university press. rose, n. (1994). expertise and the government of conduct. studies in law, politics, and society, 14, 359-97. rose, n. and p. miller (1992). political power beyond the state: problematics of government. british journal of sociology, 43(2), 173-205. wagner, p. (1994). the sociology of modernity. new york: routledge. walkerdine, v. (1988). the mastery of reason: cognitive development and the production of rationality. london: routledge. zeichner, k. (1996). teachers as reflective practitioners and the democratization of school reform. in k. zeichner, s. melnick & m. gomez (eds.), currents of reform in preservice teacher education (pp. 199-214). new york: teachers college press. © 2004 curren t issue s in com parative education , te ach e rs college , colum bia un ive rsity, all rights reserved current issue s in com parative education , vol.6(2) 113 non-governmental organizations (ngos) and participatory development in basic education in malawi jonathan maku w ira sch ool of profe ssional developme nt and le ad e rsh ip university of ne w england abstract this article critically examines the extent to which one emerging ngo facilitates the participation of its beneficiaries and other stakeholders in the decision-making processes at the identification, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of basic education programmes in malawi. the author argues that despite the comparative advantage of this ngo[1], the participation of their stakeholders, including local community members, is tokenistic as decisions are largely top-down. the author recommends that ngos learn to relinquish their grip on power and develop confidence in their beneficiaries as well as other stakeholders. introduction the emergence of the concept of participatory development, that is, development that is conceived not only as society-centered (pieterse, 2001) but also as democratic and people-centered (burkey, 1993; brohman, 1996; carmen, 1996; maser, 1997; ife, 2002), has also led to the redefinition of the role of the state and civil society in addressing national development priorities. the unprecedented upsurge of ngos and their role in facilitating participatory development has also invited some degree of scrutiny. despite the importance that is increasingly attached to their facilitative role, there is very little understanding of how ngos actually engage their beneficiaries in the decision-making processes of identification, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the projects that affect their beneficiaries' lives. the purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the conflicting debate regarding issues of participatory development. in particular, the paper seeks to highlight how local people participate in the decision-making process of the projects that claim to support them, and the impediments these beneficiaries encounter in that process. this is done by examining one emerging non-governmental development organization called tigali literacy project (tlp). as an emerging ngo, tlp is ideal in this study because of its focus on rural communities, and hence is representative of most marginalized communities in malawi. furthermore, the organization is typical because of its focus on two fundamental issues that affect malawi, that is, literacy and health education (especially about hiv/aids and other sexually transmitted diseases). background to the research project the research reported here was conducted in malawi in 2000 as part of a doctoral research project. since the multi-party political system was introduced in 1994, many policy reform processes have taken place, especially in the education sector. the new policies have two major thrusts--the provision of free primary education (fpe) and poverty alleviation. jonath an mak uw ira may 10, 2004 114 in october 1995, the government produced a policy document entitled, policy framework for poverty alleviation programme, which advocates that poor people should be "empowered to improve their plight and contribute to national development" (united nations development programme (undp), 1997, p.14), with the state providing a conducive environment for the programme's success. this success is dependent on "a strong partnership with non-governmental organizations (ngos), donors, and the private sector" (undp, 1997, p.14). not only does the policy call for the participation of the beneficiaries in the decision-making processes but also, as the government of malawi (gom), (1995, 2000) observes, the participation of ngos in all programmes aimed to alleviate poverty through the provision of basic education. the paradox of participatory development the current participatory development discourse, and how non-governmental organizations facilitate participation, has come under heavy scrutiny. scholars are debating the efficacy of ngos in service delivery. for example, tendler's (1992, cited in tvedt, 1998) claim that ngos are flexible and effective at obtaining true meaningful participation of the intended beneficiaries, as well as achieving the correct relationship between the development process and outcomes, has recently been challenged. cleaver (2002) contends that participatory approaches to development are largely dichotomised into means/ends classification. on the one hand, the efficiency argument sees participation as a tool for achieving better project outcomes. on the other, participation is seen as a process which enhances people's capabilities to improve their own lives and bring forth social change to the disenfranchised (nelson and wright, 1995). similarly, how to involve the beneficiaries, not only in the social, economic and cultural aspects of development, but the political processes that affect their lives is equally problematic. brohman (1996), for example, acknowledges the complexity of participation. brohman (1996) argues that "questions often remain over who participates (e.g., just an elite group or broader range of people), what they participate in (e.g., a more limited or broader range of decision-making), how they participate (e.g., as benefit recipients or project designers), and for what reason they participate (e.g., as a means towards other objectives or an end in itself)" (p. 251). ngos as facilitators of participatory development whether or not the concept of participation can or has been fully embraced by development ngos as an instrument of social change is highly contended. white (1995, in lewis, 2001) notes that the politics of participation on who participates, what they participate in, how they participate and for what reason may vary from nominal or "tokenistic display" to "transformative participation" (see myers, 1999; yamamori, et al., 1996; lewis, 2001). according to lewis (2001), in "transformative" participation, "people find ways to make decisions and take action, without outsider involvement and on their own terms" (p.118). white (2000) regards this form of participation as highly empowering as decisions stem from the actual recipients. in other words, development organizations can only play a facilitative role. it is common however, for participants to have very little influence and no ultimate control of projects that affect them (representative participation). the role of the ngo sector in participatory development in basic education in malawi non-governm ental organ izations(ngos) and participatory deve lopm e nt in basic education in malaw i current issue s in com parative education , vol.6(2) 115 the role of the ngo sector in education in malawi can be traced from the european missionaries (banda, 1982). the early stages of the missionary ngos were not only challenging but also lacked coordination and direction on matters of policy, particularly in terms of who participated in determining the standard and the relevance of curricula. banda (1982) and hauya (1993) recount that, despite the fact that missionary ngos and government education providers managed to get organized and gave direction and support to each other, the africans were simply passive recipients of the education chosen either by the colonial government or the missionary ngos. hauya (1993) further observes that, after 1901, missionary ngos' participation in education was reduced to that of simply assisting the government in the provision of resources, specifically the construction of school infrastructure. given the authoritarian practice of dr. hastings banda's regime, in which no differing views were entertained, the missionary ngos had little or no role in matters of policy towards education, despite being the proprietors of those institutions (pachai, 1973). while a number of local and international ngos were involved in the provision of basic education, especially pre-school and adult education, they had little involvement in issues of advocacy, capacity building and community empowerment (faiti, 1995). the democratisation process which ensued after 1994 multi-party general elections was characterized by more openness and less restriction paving the way to the growth of new ngos. the new president, bakili muluzi, pledged to "build an open society, governed by democratic rules and institutions which encouraged participation of individuals, groups and communities, in the political, economic and human development of the country" (rogge, 1997, p. 3). the proliferation of ngos thereafter testifies to this assertion. the problem while there is recognition of the proliferation of ngos in malawi, including those providing basic education, there is little documentation on the nature of ngos and local community participation in education since 1994. not only is there a dearth of evidence on what strategies ngos use in the identification, development, implementation and evaluation of basic education programmes, but also on factors that contribute to the success or failure of participation. further evidence suggests that: most of the ngos do not understand the economic and social environment in which they operate and do not consider that the communities in which they work are part of a broader system of opposing agendas and interests. …the staff in these ngos lacks skills in policy analysis and advocacy, information in the form of arguments backed by empirical evidence and access to [sic] policymaking arena (council for non-governmental organizations in malawi (congoma), 2000 p. 2). while the government's call for participation of ngos in providing education at all levels appears to be a noble policy commitment, a number of problems are apparent. currently, the government has no policy on how to collaborate with ngos. the low level of ngo participation in policy identification, development and implementation has, to some extent, rendered ngos ignorant of government development priorities. jonath an mak uw ira may 10, 2004 116 furthermore, while a number of basic education programmes have been undertaken by various ngos both in rural and urban areas, documentation of the extent to which they facilitate participation of their beneficiaries in basic education is scarce. in addition, there is little literature on how the ngos in malawi mobilise and engage their beneficiaries in the decision-making processes of the programmes that directly affect their lives. research methodology the research reported here used both qualitative and case study approaches. using purposive or criterion-based sampling, the study participants comprised staff of the tlp, implementing a literacy project with particular emphasis on access and gender; as well as ministry of education officials, politicians, staff of the district commissioners' offices, and members of the local communities. various documents such as policy briefs, project proposals, and annual evaluation reports were also used as sources of data. tlp provides an exemplary case study not only because of its focus on remote communities, but also because of its approach of combining both health and literacy education. as such, the use of in-depth interviews supplemented by documentary evidence was not intended to eliminate inconsistencies in order to arrive at a verifiable and absolute truth, but rather to facilitate the discovery of commonalities as well as contradictions, tensions, ambivalences and disruptions in the emerging issues related to participatory development. the main questions centred on how the beneficiaries were engaged in the decision-making processes. furthermore, some of the questions focused on such issues as who initiated the meetings, what role the participating organizations play in the process, and expectations of the beneficiaries. findings and discussion participation in the e stablish me nt of tlp a central concern of participatory development theory is that changes and enhanced resources should largely be influenced and determined by locally perceived needs (burkey 1993). instead of letting outside experts and other external parties determine what needs to be changed in the communities, the local people should be encouraged to examine and identify their own problems. but as noted by brohman, (1996, p. 251) the major challenge to participatory development concerns who participates, in what do they participate, and how and why they participate. the establishment of tlp provides a picture full of ambivalences, contradictions, claims and counter-claims regarding local community members' participation in the project establishment. tlp is an emerging ngo which was established in 1997 in the southern region of malawi in response to the health and social needs of adolescent girls. the major focus of tlp is "a non-formal education programme that combines literacy and health education for adolescent girls who have missed out of school" (tlp profile n.d, p. 1). in specific terms, the major objectives of tlp are to offer a literacy programme and a health education curriculum that addresses local health problems particularly relating to hiv/aids and nutrition to non-school attending girls aged between 10 and 18. non-governm ental organ izations(ngos) and participatory deve lopm e nt in basic education in malaw i current issue s in com parative education , vol.6(2) 117 a thorough analysis of tlp's documents reveals that the organization was established after a "needs assessment" that, according to top tlp officials,engaged a number of people. we involved a number of participants in this; all our team of course, twelve supervisors, members of the village and, if you like, this was a huge data collection exercise by local people, led by consultants" (ngo official-d). contrary to this claim, one of the project officers in the tlp pointed out that there was a plan in existence before the local community members were consulted: initially we had set our plans for a project in the area. but what we did next was to contact the district executive director, who referred us to the traditional authority, who again gave us an okay. … so what we did was to call for a meeting with one of the village headmen and to discuss the development issues. the village headmen called for all the people in his area to come to the meeting and then we had the chance to introduce our plans. when a number of chiefs and village headmen agreed to the plans, we then started our program with the girls (ngo official-a). however, further analysis of the interviews with the majority of the officials revealed that the intended beneficiaries had little or no influence in the establishment of the organization and the project. the line of consultation was top-down. while it may be argued that access to the area has to be sought from the higher authorities, the subsequent process raises a lot of questions as to whether or not local people initiated the meeting. according to this piece of evidence, the traditional authorities may have asserted some degree of influence on the village group heads to mobilize their people for the meeting, hence consolidating the top-down consultative processes. the district education and youth offices provided further evidence of poor participation. they pointed out that "participation is not good. there is very little sensitization of the programs to the other lots of people who could take charge in the event of their departure" (district education officer). while ngos are hailed as agents of participatory development (chambers 1997; fowler 1997), the findings suggest a departure from the fundamental principles of participation and consolidate not only the view that participation is predominantly instrumental but, as kapoor (2002) argues, is also under-theorised and politicised. the interplay of power and the politics of control are ignored. thus, the views further demonstrate the possible covert practices ngos engage in to legitimise their existence. for example, five tlp employees provided further evidence on how participation can be subtly used. when i asked them whether they participated in the establishment and identification of the programmes, they expressed ignorance of their establishment. what was clear, from their point of view, was the top-down consultative process which the management staff initiated before meeting the beneficiaries: i really don't know how exactly the project was started. but what i know is that there was a call by the village headman to tell us that he had received a letter from tlp that they would be coming to address us on the issue of a school. so jonath an mak uw ira may 10, 2004 118 many people came to hear about this. when the day came the tlp officials outlined the importance of the school to the villagers. so that's how the school started. i understand that they visited the traditional authorities and the district headquarters before they approached the village headman for this (ngo official-b). another official expressed similar sentiments: the program began like this: our project manager had to go to the village and meet the village headmen and tell them the aim of the project. then the village headman accepted that the school might be opened upon seeing the facts from the manager. from there, the officials had to employ myself as supervisor (ngo official-c). the excerpts above denote the degree to which the local people were alienated from participatory decision-making processes. in addition, it is also evident that there were communication gaps between the senior management and junior staff of the organization which ultimately affected the degree to which the junior staff could contribute to participatory approaches to deve o t21 tj 45 0 0 45 1283 0 tm (23 tj 45 0 0 45 1589 0 tm ((r) tj 45 0 0 45 254 0 tm 1(d) tj 45 0 45 1258 0 tm (ch)6tj 45 0 0 45 1091 0 tm (3) tj 45 0 0 45 1303 0 tm (s6 tj 45 0 0 45 1411 0 tm ( 0 tj 45 0 0 45 1192 0 tm (4) tj 45 0 0 45 1029 0 tm ((h) tj 45 m0 45 1469 0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 1491 0 tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 1357 0 tm (5e) tj 45 0 0 45 470 0 tm (s6 tj 45 0 0 45 1252 0 tm (l) tj 45 0m ( ) tj 45 0 0 45(i) tj 45 0 45 1593 0 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 1589 0 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 134 0 tm (ct)6tj 45 0 0 45 1653 0 tm (d)) tj 45 0 0 45 624 0 tm 1695tj 45 0 0 45 1153 0 tm (7h) tj 45 0 0 45 835 0 tm (u)1tj 45 0 0 45 1347 0 tm ((a) tj 45 e0 45 1772 0 tm (d) tj 45 0 0 45 1800 0 tm ( ) tj et q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc q 0.24 0 0 0.45726.24 550.62 cm bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f2.0 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0 tm2 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 4 5 76 291 tf ( tj 45 0 0 45 230 0m (d tj 45 0 0 45 946 0 33m (i) tj 48 0 0 45 19i2 35m (y ) tj 45 0 0 45 633 tm (ct)6t87.52 768 re w n /tm (p) tc 45 0 0 45 362 0 1m (ge) tj 45 0 0 45 333 040m (h) tj 45 0 0 45 889 ( ) tj 45j 45 0 0 45 385 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 518 01tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 580 526m (h) tj 45 0 0 45 466 0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 846 (a) tj 45j 45 0 0 45 499 0 tm (o) ta 45 0 0 45 520 0 tm (h) tj 45 0 0 45 154 06(h) tj 45 0 0 45 1469 0 t0 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 4v4 077m (m) tj 4290 0 45 778 tm (go) tj 45 0 0 45 624 0 tm (h) tj 45 0 0 45 509 0 (d)) tj 4 45 0 0 45 663 0 t tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 83 (o) tj 45 g386 0 45 375 0 t0 tm ( ) tge 45 0 0 45 792 0 tm (m) ttm (t) 45 0 0 45 ) tj 45 0 450 45 19(l) t(e) tj 45 0 0 45 1268 0 t0 tm ( ) t 0 0 45 1303 0 t9 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 308 r) n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc5 902 0 tm ( tj 45 0 0 45 981 0 tm 3m ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 605 0 106 (o) tj 45 0 0 45 630 0 j tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 86 0109) tj 4511 0 45 1593 0 tm 2 ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 949 0 t1tm (ce) tj 45 0 0 45 183 1 0 tm ( ) 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc q 0.24 313.40.244475.2 696.54 cm bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 t378.300 0 tf ( ) tj et q q q 12.24 12.060 tj 45 0 0 45 25 0 (ca) tj 45 0 0 45 236 0tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 425 05) tj 45 0 0 45 1053 0 t ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 179 0 t1023 tj 45 0 0 45 1589 0 tm2 2;2 0 tm 45 665 0 tm (t)39) tj 4511 0 45 1593 0 tm tm (a) t 45 0 0 45 605 0 186m (g) tj 45 0 0 45 154 00 tm (f) tj 45 0 0 45 51 tm (u) tj 45 00 4 sc q 0.25m (n) tj 45 0 0 45 180 0 tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 193 0 tm ((l) tj 45 90 45 134 0 16m (s) tj 45 0 0 45 303 0tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 159 3tm (ce) tw 45 0 0 45 236 0ttm (g) tj 45 0 0 45 383 0 tm (m) tj 45 0 45 333 0 u)0m ( )5 0 0 45 230 0 t0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 407 0 0 ( tj 45 0 0 45 981 0 t48m (a) tj 45 0 0 45 549 05 1 tf (y ) tj 45 0 0 45 9 tj 45 0 0cj 45 0 0 45 4i6 0 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 83 5tm ((l) t 45 0 0 45 570 0 0bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f21 (u)0m ( )j 45 0 0 45 617 037m (o) tj 45 0 0 45 5l8 0 tm (f) tj 4539 0 45 636 0m (ge) tj 45 00 0 45 917 0 a) tj 45j 45 0 0 45 499 7 tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 859 0 tm ca) tj 45 0 0 45 236 78 bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f2.99m ( ) tj 45 0 0 4 5 76 8n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc q 0.2484y ) tj 45 0 0 45 671 0 tm tm (p) tj 45 0 0 45 403 8 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 416 904m (d) tj 45 0 0 45 854 0 t 0 0.24 126.24 550.62 cm94tm (t) tj 4450 45 1128 9 tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 925 0 tm (a) tj45 0 0 45 605 0 10(4) tj 45 0 0 45 1029 0 tm0(e) tj 45g5 0 0 45 605 0 1069 (a) tj 45 0 0 45 549 0 t tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 208 10 1 tf (co) tj 45 0 46 0 tm (e) tj 45 90 0 45 981 0 tm 1 tf (ge)45 5)802 45 256 0 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 316 11(s) tj 45020 0 451111 0 tm (1) tj 45 0 0 45 470 0j 45 237m (o) tj 45 0 0 45 5l8 1277m (h) tj 45 0 0 45 385 131t)6tj 4541 0 45 1037 0 tm0 tm (s) t 0 0 45 1303 0 tm0 tm ( ) t5 0 0 (m) tj tm (85m ( ) tj 4595 0 45 491 10 tm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 71 0 6) tj 45 90 0 45 981 0 tm 55 tj 45 0 0 45 1394 0 tm (7tm (e) tj 4320 0 45 340 10 tm (r) tv1 0 45 1593 0 tm t1) tj 45 09 0 45 973 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1491 0 tm 59m (h) tj 45 0 0 45 889 1572 tm (r) tj 45 0 0 45 71 0 4) tj 45 0 0 45 1029 0 tm62e ct 7hu (a) tj 45 e0 45 1772 0 tm (d) tj 45 0 0 364f2.0 1 tm ( ) tj et q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 co tj 45 0 0 45 9 2 tm (r) tj 45 0 0 45 717tm (e) tj 4320 0 45 340 ( ) tj 45 0tj 45 0 0 45 37 0 tm (e) 0 0 45 1552 0 tm ( tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 83 190m (d)) tj 0 0 45 16y2 0 tm (n) tr tm (d0210 tm (2m (o) tj a45 00 4 sc q 0.254 (e) tjj 4560 0 45 655 0654545454545454545419 0 t2(e) tj 45587.52 768 re w n 2tm (e) tj 4320 0 45 340 345) tj 45 0 0 45 1176 0 t36tm (c) tj 4330 0 45 5l8 008 (ge) tj 45 0 0 45 333 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 846 04m ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 288 0 tm (ct)6t87.52 768 re w n4 0 (i) te 45 0 0 45 442 0 tm (e) tx 45 0 0 45 412 03j 45 0 0cls 0 0 0 sc q 0.242 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f2.06m (ge) tj 45 0 0 45 933 062tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 699 0 tm (a) td 45 0 0 45 5l8 0 tm (f) tj 45 0 0 45 561 099m ( ) t 0 0 45 1631 0 tm732 tm (r) tj 45 0 0 45 7175/cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc q 0.24 7j) tj 45 0 0 45 1228 0 tm82tm (a) td 45 0 0 45 5l8 847m (m) tj 4290 0 45 778 tm (d) tjc 45 0 0 45 792 0 0 tf (co) tj 45 0 0 45 49tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 549 092pen et enii i inv eed e e e e oon t ow fatt td n o vv e 90tm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 239 93tm (e) tj 45 8 0 45 609 959m (h) tj 45 0 0 45 130 07eo h tj 45020 0 451111 0 tm05r egoah r2m (h) tj 45 0 0 45 889 122 ru (a) tj 45 e0 45 1772 0 tm (d) tj 45 0 0 338.4.0 1 tm ( ) tj et q q 12.24 12.0601587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc 0.24 0 0 0.24 126.24 56 .82 cm bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f2.0 1 tf (l 0 tm (i) 10 45(o) tj 455 0 0 45 981 0 tm 3) tj 45 0 0 45 1096 0 tm tm (d) tj 45 0 0 45 831 0 tm (m) tj 45 0 0 45 87 0tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 76 0 t t 45 0 0 45 282 0 1 tj 45 0 0 45 1627 0 tm (7m (s) tj 4 0 0 45 12'2 0 m (ct)6tj 45 0 0 45 2m3 065) t1j 4386 0 45 375 0 t3(a) tj 45 0 0 45 1285 0 t4tm (a) tj45 0 0 45 605 0 4 tm (g) tj 45 0 0 45 154 1970 0 45 45 0 0 45 288 0 6m (n) tj45 0 0 45 90 0 t479 (ct)6t87.52 768 re w n4 0m (t) tj 45 90 45 1326 52tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 474 0 tm (e) tj 4540 0 45 236 0 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 617 50 0 0.24 347.04 497.58 cm0 tm (e) tj 45930 0 45 45 06tm (h) tj 45 0 0 45 154 066 0 0.24 347.04 497.58 cm091 tf ( t, 4539 0 45 636 0m1m tj 45 0 0 45 134 0 tm71r) tj 45 0 0 45 1543 0 t7(7m (s) tj 4 0 0 45 509 0 (m (ct)6tj 45 0 0 45 2m3 76tm (v) tj 4525 0 45 621 092m (e) tj 45 0 0 45 130 81tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 210 845) tj 45g4475.2 696.54 cm 1 (e) tj 45 0 0 45 804 0 tm (d) tj 45 0 0 45 854 01tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 524 92 /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc q 0.249 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 305 97tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 95 09(a) tj 4532 0 45 1187 0 tm014 (w) tj 45 0 0 45 322 0tm 7t) tj 45 0 0 45 981 0 tm (') tj 45 0 0 45 163 0 tm 059m ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 580 m07( ) tj 45 0 0 45 179 0 t10( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1331 08 10 8h 5g5 0 0 45 605 0 1164 a e (u)0m ( )j 45 0 0 45 45 237m (o) t1490 0 45 83 0 tm tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 800 ttm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 256 12bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f2�.319e o e445 0 0 45 5)802 45 256 492 tf (o) tj 45 0 0 45 35 506 9m ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 580 m61tm (e) tj 4320 0 45 340 1635o d fr (a) tj 4 e0 45 1772 0 tm (d) tj 45 0 0 311.0 4 1 tm ( ) tj et qq q 12.24 12.0601 0 0 45 1631 0 tmeneod0210 tm (2m1m (a) tj 45 0 0 45 210 tm (n) tjr 45 0 0 sc q 0.2( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1113 0 t29(d) tj 45 0 0 45 976 0 t3( ) tj tn 45 0 0 45 242 0 tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 2m3 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 1700 0 n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc q 0.24 313.40.244475.2 696.54 cm bt 45 0 0 4tm(1.92 311.0 4 1 tm ( ) tj et qq q 12.24 112.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 sc q 0.24 0 0 0.24 0.24 510.78 cm bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f2.tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 829 07m (a) t 45 0 0 45 605 0 131 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 83 0(t) tj 45 0 0 45 999 0 tm( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1016 0 tm96m (i) tj 45 0 0 45 130 0 1m (p) tj 45 0 0 45 157 0 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 256 2 5m (d) tj 41190 45 1321 0) tj3 cm bt 45 0 0 45454531t)6tj 45e0 45 1604 0 tm (tm (s) tj 4 0 0 45 12;2 0 (d) tj 45 0 0 45 976 0 t38 ) tj t 45 0 0 45 362 0 (j) tj 45 0 0 45 1433 0 t0 tm (a) t5 0 0 45 544 0 t ( ) tj 45j 45 0 0 45 385 0 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 308 0 tm (e) tn0 0 0 45 236 0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 451 0(a) tj 495 0 0 45 ft9 0 t0 tm (h) tj 45 0 0 45 451 59tm (n) ts 0 0 0 sc q 0.242 /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc q 0.24 45m ( ) tj 4595 0 45 491 67tm ( ) t4 0.24 510.78 cm tm (u) tj 4 0 45 1543 0 t7(7m (s) t 0 0 45 1543 0 t761m (e) tj 459e0 45 1772 0 9m (n) tj 45 0 0 45 4v4 81tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 748 0(tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 76 8 tm (t) tt 45 0 0 45 804 0 tm (d) ti 4510 0 45 182 0 tm (l) tn 45 0 0 45 242 9(7m (s) tgj 45 0 0 45 866 0 tm ( ) tci45 0 0 45 322 0tm 0 (e) tj 45 0 0 45 958 0 tm5t) tj 45 0 0 45 981 0 tm (tm (n) tz 45 0 0 45 580 m07a) tj 4532 0 45 1187 0 tm0942.48.45726.24 484.38 cm1tj 45 0 0 45 5)802 45 256 0 ) tj 45 0 0 4(e) tj 45 0 07265 0 tm ( ) 89 0 tm (c11923 tj 45 0 0 45 1589 0 tm21) tj 45 t0 0 45 1176 0 t 2tm (h) tj 5 0 0 45 2 4510 tm (h) tc490 0 45 83 0 tm (d) tj tj 45 0 0 45 256 127) tj 45 0 0 4(e) tj 45 0 30( ) tj 45 0 0 45 179 0 t132tm h s fr (a) tj 4 e0 45 1772 0 tm (d) tj 45 0 0 298.6 4 1 tm ( ) tj et qq q 12.24 12.0601 (b 45 0 0 45 347 02 (t) tj4 0.24 510.78 cm0 (i) tj 45 0 0 45 76 8tm (n) ts 0 0 0 sc q 0.2 0 45 150 m1 0 45 1593 0 tm tm (a) re w81 tj 45 0 0 45 12y70 n587.52 768 re w 0 ge onh a n a nlr d ed ed gei e e t e e i (o) tj 45 0 0 45 630 0 j3(e) tj 45 0 0 45 10845 0 0 (a) tj 45 0 0 45 1411 0 tm 31( ) tj 45 0 0 45 949 0 t ( ) tj 45 90 0 45 981 0 tm 7 ( tj 45020 0 451111 0 tm493) tj 45 0 0 45 1422 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1096 0 tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 134 0 tm 550m (t) tj 45 90 0 45 83 0 tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 130 0 tm (n) tj 4523 0 45 357 0 tm (g) tj 469. 13258.730 0 tm ( tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601l587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cp 45 0 0 45 617 5tm ( ) tj 452 0 45 1331 0n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc5 902 91m (a) tj 45 0 0 45 76 ( tm ( ) tj 45 0 45 1685 036)0m ( )5 0 0 45 230 0 tm tm (a) h 45 0 0 45 113 0 tm (t) te 41190 45 1321 0 tm (l) tr 0 0 (m) tj t 19 tj 45 0 0 45 1700 0 tm (fr) tj 45 0 0 45 1733 0 tm ((a) tj 4 050 45 1567 0 tm (n) tj 45 0 0 245.58 0 tf ( ) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 d587.52 768 re w n /cs1 c 0 0 45 1153 0 t4 ) tj 45 0 0 45 1053 0 t7tm (d) ti 4510 0 45 182 00m (h) tj 45 04 550.62 cm bt 45 0 0j 45 0 0 45 403 40 45 0 tm (i) tj 45 0 0 4tm h) tj 45 0 0 45 451 480 (e) tj 45 0 0 45 804 0 tm (h) te 41190 45 1321 02tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 208 24j 45 0 0cj 45 0 0 45 4i6 09 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 83 320m (i) 5 90.24 470.94 cm 35 t (u)0m ( )w 45 0 0 45 699 0 0 0.24 347.04 497.58 cm07tm (d) tj 45 0 0 45 831 705 0 sc q 0.24 0 0 0 j0102tm (o) tj 458 0 45 1605 747 (ct)6tj 45 0 0 45 2m3 763m (v) tj 4525 0 45 621 089m (d) tj 45 0 0 45 760 011m ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 748 0( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1113 0 85(d) tj 4j 45 0 0 451295 0899m ( ) t5 0 0 45 999 0 t 23m (e) tn0 0 0 45 236 9 tm (a) td 45 0 0 45 5l8 97tm (d) tj 45 0 0 45 854 0 tm tj 45 0 45 0 0 tm /f2d024t 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f2.0 12(o) tj 45 0 0 45 630 0 j 4tm hcotm (p) tc45 0 0 45 949 0 t1(a) tj 495 0 0 45 ft9 0 tm 45 12y70 j 45 0 0 45 185 10 ti tm (a) tj 45 0 045 1552 128 bt 45 0r5 0 0 45 630 0 j30 445 0 0 6 0 0 45 19 0 tm 52tm (a) td 45 0 0 45 889 15 tm (e) tj 4540 0 45 236 m (l) tj 45v1 0 45 1593 0 tm 95( ) tj 45 0 0 45 949 0 t6454545454545454545419 0 tm6tm (n) tjo0m ( ) tj 45 0 0 45(i) tj 0 0 45 1283 0 tm 8 7h u (a) tj 45 e0 45 1772 0 tm (d) tj 45 0 0 232.380 1 tm ( ) tj et q q 12.24 12.0601wh 45 0 0 45 800 tm (t)45e0 45 1604 0 tm 9 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 83 tj 45 0 0 45 5)802 45 256 36m (a) re w81 tj 45 0 0 5tm (e) ts0 0 45 1029 0 tmtm (ge) tk 0 0 45 1176 0 t227 ((o) tj 45 0 0 45 356 2 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 407 2tm (ct)6tj 45 0 0 45 130 085m ( ) tj 4595 0 45 491 31m (ct)6t87.52 768 re w n 26 (e) tj 4540 0 45 236 0 8m (e) tx 45 0 0 45 412 371) tj 4544 0 0 45 62 0 t3tm (go) tj 45 0 0 45 624 40 45 150 0 tm0 45 487 0 t435m ( ) 1i 4350 0 45 869 0 tm (v) t 45 0 0 45 288 0 t0 45 0 tm (i) tj 45 0 491m (r) tj 45 0 0 45 412 01tn n vved t oo coi 3 665 a fr ng et idt cof30 0 45 446 0 tm (i) (h) tj 45 0 0 45 889 102m (go) tr5 5)802 45 256 0 tm ( ) t 0 0 45 10845 0 0 8t 5ege a ah i ng tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601j 45 0 0 45 4i6 0 j 45 0 0 45 256 0 tms 452bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f2.0 1 tf (w5 5)802 45 256 0 (o) tj 45 0 0 45 630 0 j3e) tj 45 90 0 45 981 0 tm57h u (a) tj 45 e0 45 1772 0 tm (d) tj 45 0 0 205.740 1 tm ( ) tj et q q 12.24 12.0601587.52 768 re w n /cs1 csotj 45 0 0 45 8340 41190 45 1321 025 /cs1 cl 45 0 0 4re w n25tm (e) tj 45 7 0 45 681 2 tm ( ) tw 4595 0 45 491 31 ht n r tm (a) t 0 0 45 1176 0 t12(a) tj 45re w81 tj 45 0 0 308m (t) t 45 0 0 tm /f2�.335m ( ) 1 0 0 45 10845 0 0 75 ai 7h6 0 0 0 45 792 0 tm (d) j 45 0 0 45 881 0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 7 m bt 45 0 0 455 0 0 192.540 0 tm ( ) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601j 459 0 45 95 0 5m (m) tj 45 0 0 45 79 0 51m (h) tt90.24 470.94 cm tm (n) cl 45 0 0 4re w n10tm (r) tp tm0 45 487 0 tm (a) tj 4 41190 45 5 712 0tm (ce) tj 45 0 0 45 183 16445 0 0 45 5)802 45 256 75 t a 7m (s) te 45 0 0 45 609 360m (v) tn86 0 45 375 0 t3(6m (j) tc0 0 45 1285 0 t4ttm (d) ti 4510 0 45 182 420m (d)) tj 0 0 45 16y2 ( ) tj 45 90 0 45 981 0 t41(d) tj 45 0 45 15 90 0 t47 m c5 ed ed h hi 0 45 624 48m (n) tjj 45 0 0 45 425 0 4m (d) tj 45 0 0 45 854 52tm (h) tj 45 0 0 45 451 535a f h rgei e h p fr (a) tj 4 0 0 0 45 72 0 tm (d) tj 4 ( /cs152.70 0 tm ( ) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601cj 455 0 0 45 40 4bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f215m (d) tj 455 0 0 45 81 0 tm (a) tf, 0 0 45 230 0 tm00m (e) tj 45 0 0 45 800 2 tj 415w 45 0 0 4 2 0 tm60) tj6 45 0 0 45 110 0 tm(e) 11j 40 0 45 470 0j 452( 45 150 1190 45 1321 025 /cs1 ca 45 0 0 45 545 2 tm (n) tn0 0 45 1375 0 t275 tj 45 tj 45 0 0 45 83 30 ) tj 45j 45 0 0 45 263 027m (v) tu 0 45 1394 0 tm35 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 83 3( ) tj 45c45 0 0 45 949 0 tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 356 00 tm (m) tj 45 0 0 45 87 46c p g dc8(e) tj 45d0 0 45 1375 0 t8t0 45 0 tm (i) tj 45 0 8tp fr n io t vp goe pa aov t i45 12y70 0 tm ( ) 254 0 tm 1(d) tj45e1 0 45 1037 0 tm38e ohi et fi 0 45 624 43tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 858 44m (i) tjt 41190 45 1321 (tm a) tj 45 0 0 45 474 49tm (t) te 41190 45 1321 521m (h) tn0 0 45 13 5l8 54tm (r) tj 45 0 0 45 580 51(d) tj45w0 0 45 1357 0 t599m ( ) t0 45 87.52954 0 621 45 0 tm (i) tj 45 0 0634m (h) tj 45 0 0 45 385 674 (i) ta 45 0 0 45 210 6 tm (n) tj 459e0 45 1772 0 tm (h) tj 45 0 045 1605 748bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f2.01m (v) tp 45 0 0 45 831 789m (d) tl0 45 0 0 tm /f280tm (a) tj 45 0 045 1552 82 ahah e fr ng /cs113.10 0 tm ( ) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cj 45 0 0 45 157 45m (g) tj 45 0 0 45 154 70 (p) tc45 0 0 45 949 0 t12 0 45 1s 0 0 45 624 0 tm(2) tj 45 90 0 45 981 0 tm510 0.24 .0 0 45 1153 0 tm63m (o) tj 45 0 0 45 854 m( ) tj 45m45 0 0 45 193 0 2aa2 d i 0 45 624 61a c79tm h ii e goco fr ng /cs99.645 0 0 tm ( ) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601b tm (d0210 tm (25m (s) tu 45 0 0 45 609 5s) tj 45) tj 45 0 46 0 t6tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 409 80 (d) tj 4 0 0 45 1738 0 ttm (d) ti 4510 0 45 182 121m (h) tn0 0 45 1375 0 t0 tm ( ) tg 0 tm (i) 10 4507tm (m) t020 0 45552 0 tm 84h e 9m hh m ehh 41190 45 1 5 68tp e a i e non-governm ental organ izations(ngos) and participatory deve lopm e nt in basic education in malaw i current issue s in com parative education , vol.6(2) 119 one of the students respon tj 45 0 0 45 32589 0 tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 603 0 tm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 629 0 tm (g) tj 45 0 0 45 655 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 670 0 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 685 0 tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 710 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 725 0 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 741 0 tm (h) tj 45 0 0 45 767 0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 789 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 804 0 tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 823 0 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 847 0 tm (m) tj 45 0 0 45 887 0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 909 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 925 0 tm (q) tj 45 0 0 45 950 0 tm (u) tj 45 0 0 45 977 0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 1000 0 tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 1020 0 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 1035 0 tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 1048 0 tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 1073 0 tm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 1099 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1115 0 tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 1134 0 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 1157 0 tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 1171 0 tm (d) tj 45 0 0 45 1198 0 tm (:) tj 45 0 0 45 1210 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1225 0 tm (") tj 45 0 0 45 1242 0 tm (f) tj 45 0 0 45 1268 0 tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 1281 0 tm (r) tj 45 0 0 45 1299 0 tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 1318 0 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 1334 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1349 0 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 1364 0 tm (h) tj 45 0 0 45 1390 0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 1412 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1427 0 tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 1453 0 tm (ffi) tj 45 0 0 45 1497 0 tm (ci) tj 45 0 0 45 1530 0 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 1553 0 tm (l) tj 45 0 0 45 1567 0 tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 1586 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1601 0 tm (fr) tj 45 0 0 45 1634 0 tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 1660 0 tm (m) tj 45 0 0 45 1700 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1715 0 tm (ttj 45 0 0 45 171544 0 tm (l) tj 45 0 0 45 1772 0 tm (ptj 45 0 0 45 171800 0 tm ( ) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc q 0.24 0 0 0.24 90.24 696.54 cm bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f2.0 1 tf (co) tj 45 0 0 45 45 0 tm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 71 0 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 86 0 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 109 0 tm (ct) tj 45 0 0 45 144 0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 167 0 tm (d) tj 45 0 0 45 194 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 210 0 tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 230 tm (u) tj 41 5 0 0 45 263 0 tm (r) tj 45 0 0 45 281 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 298 0 tm (ch) tj 45 0 0 45 345 0 tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 358 0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 3845 0 0 48 0 45 1115 0 tm (s) tj 4 cs 0 0 0 sc q 0.24 0 0 0494n) tj 45 0 45 462 0 tm (s) tj 45 d 0 45 482 0 tm (p) tj 45 0 0 45 925 0 tm 50) tj 41 v 0 45 535 0 tm (n1 tj 45 0 0 45 358 0 tm 54tj 41 0 0 41 90263 0 tm 5e) tj 45 0 0 45 1567 0 tm(i) tj 41 c q 0.24 0 0 04959 21 tj 45 0 0 45 1099 0 tm(m) tj 45 0 0 45 804 0 tm (6) tj 45 0 0 45 269 0 tm 8su90o2 03055 tj 45 0 0 45 1035 0 tm (7) tj 45 0 0 45 1225 0 t 1086 tj 45 i 0 45 1099 0 tm ( ) tj 45 15 0 tm (s) tj 4 11ai1(h) tj 45 0 0 45 823 0 tm 118 1 (h2 tj 45 0 45 1157 0 tm 389 tj 45 0 0 45 1567 0 tm 4n) tj 45 d 0 45 823 0 tm 143c151 65 tj 45 0 0 45 84 0 tm (188 tj 45 0 0 45 1099 0 tm215 tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc q 0.24 0 0 0.24 422.16 73.54 cm 83.1 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f2.0 1 tf ( ) tj et t 0 45 1 30 0 tm ( t 45 0 0 45 196 0 tm 4) tj 41 c q 0.24 0 0 04964 tj 45 0 0 45 1364 tm 79 tj 45 0 0 45 804 0 tm c) tj 41 0 0 41 1334 0 tm ( tj 41 c q 0 1157 0 tm 5d tj 45 0 0 45 1318 0 tm 7) tj 45 0 0 45 670 0 tm 195e9 tj et q q q 345 0 tm (i) tj 45 u 0 45 372 0 tm (t) tj 41 0 0 41 407 0 tm ( 0 tj 45 0 0 45 1660 0 tm(i) tj 41 n 0 45 45 0 tm (n)) tj 41 0 0 41 1530 0 tm463 tj 45 0 0 45 422 0 tm (79 tj 45 0 0 41 1334 0 tm51) tj 45 0 0 45 789 0 tm 53t 932 tj 45 0 0 45 324 0 tm 959 tj 45 0 0 45 1349 0 tm975 tj 45 0 0 45 1035 0 tm99n65 tj et q q q 345 0 tm 1081 tj 41 0 0 41 1334 0 tm 119 tj 45 0 0 45 167 0 tm 114i 94 tj 45 0 0 45 1364 0 tm (o) tj 45 0 45 1334 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1225 0 tm 35 jonath an mak uw ira may 10, 2004 120 but we really have a clash of issues here because we believe that the approach should be that of letter and then words first. there is in fact a general consensus among us that the approach should be the conventional one to introducing reading (tlp student-4). these remarks explain the role of expatriate or external staff in influencing local decision-making, which is not succinctly articulated in development literature. (kapoor, 2002) such phrases as 'we teach them,' 'i don't think,' and 'i still don't like' are patronising and do not reflect the fundamental principles of participatory development. according to the project manager's views, the beneficiaries are viewed as backward because of perceived inadequacies in the indigenous mode of learning. the findings also reveal how change can be resisted if the intended beneficiaries are excluded from decision-making processes that affect them. what the ngo may consider 'relevant' may be 'irrelevant' to the locals and beneficiary population. further, it demonstrates how expatriate staff downgrade indigenous knowledge based on pre-conceived and modernist notions of development. participation should result in freedom, exercised in an environment where differing views find a common platform. such statements, as shown above, portray discourses of domination and are clear indicators of lack of freedom among the beneficiaries to make decisions on issues that affect them. clearly, these discourses reaffirm kapoor's (2002) critique of chamber's (1995) pra methodologies and call for a deeper scrutiny of who controls development and whom it benefits. furthermore, the results strongly suggest that, despite the rhetoric, a top-down model of development thrives in impoverished contexts. participatory monitoring and evaluation an analysis of the proposal documents made available during the research process hardly mentions how the beneficiaries and other stakeholders would be engaged in monitoring and evaluating the project. however, contrary to this piece of evidence, one of the tlp officials claimed that other stakeholders were involved in the monitoring and evaluation processes. referring to one of the evaluation exercises that were conducted earlier, the officials reiterated: "as i said earlier, a large number of people were involved along with our team members. also some villagers were involved. in all this exercise, the consultants took the leading role" (ngo official-d). tlp has supervisors whose task is to collect and compile data in respective localities. their modus operandi, as noted by one of the ngo leaders in the organization, explains the degree of participation of local community members in the monitoring and evaluation process. from the villages, we meet our teachers every fortnight for feedback and the like. we meet the village committees every three months to discuss the feedback on the issues of our programmes. the supervisors usually collect data almost daily and file up everything till we meet every fortnight. we, at the office, visit the village schools every day and make sure that everything is fine. the project non-governm ental organ izations(ngos) and participatory deve lopm e nt in basic education in malaw i current issue s in com parative education , vol.6(2) 121 manager comes every six weeks or two months. when she comes, we brief her on the latest developments from the programme (ngo official-a). monitoring and evaluation for the organization rested heavily not on the direct beneficiaries (the students) but rather on the other members of the community who form part of the village committees. almost all the students who were interviewed admitted having taken no part in the monitoring and evaluation, that is, actively participating in ascertaining what is going on, how the program is progressing and what needs to be done. some of the views below highlight this argument: "since the program started, i have not been involved in the evaluation process. i know the committee members usually meet with program officials" (tlp students-2). another student commented: "yes, at the end of the week we are asked to give reports of what we have learnt. after that we are not told anything" (tlp student-5). this pattern of response was common among students who participate as direct beneficiaries of the programme, essentially underscoring the elusiveness of transformative participatory development (brohman, 1996) and whether or not the organization had enough capacity to carry out the tasks. regarding the problem of poor information management: "we need to establish proper reporting procedures in which information from beneficiaries can be properly managed as we do not seem to have any at the moment" (ngo official-c), it can be concluded that as an emerging ngo, the implementation of participatory development may be difficult due to lack of theoretical orientation (see congoma, 2000). absence of participation in monitoring and evaluation was further revealed by some members of the district assembly. for example, the education department expressed dissatisfaction with their participation in the process. according to one of the district education officers, there was very little interaction between his office and tlp, which he said could affect project's sustainability. our office is not involved in any of those programmes in terms of monitoring and evaluation. we are usually called to see what they have already done. we would have loved to be engaged in most of the activities so that we should know what is happening regardless of the financial rewards, so that when they pull out, we can smoothly take over. (district education officer) some government officers expressed similar sentiments regarding lack of joint monitoring between the ngo and government departments. both the department of community development and social welfare services are essential to any development activities at the district level. their poor participation in the monitoring and evaluation is a clear indicator of how narrowly participatory development is understood by ngos. the views expressed by various participants do highlight that periodic judgement of action by the program rests with the ngo officials, rather than being a joint activity with local community members, especially the students themselves. while the local community members are engaged once every three months, their contribution in reflecting on the progress is minimal, demonstrating that the beneficiaries are not subjects to the monitoring and evaluation processes, hence contravening the fundamental principles of participatory monitoring and evaluation. jonath an mak uw ira may 10, 2004 122 challenges there are possible reasons for the failures in the discourses of participatory development. first, participation seems to be understood as mere consultation rather than a process where ordinary people are actively engaged in the decision-making processes. second, there is the issue of theoretical knowledge, which, according to this study, is lacking not only among low ranking ngo staff but even the senior members of such ngos. third, the "politics" of development that is m non-governm ental organ izations(ngos) and participatory deve lopm e nt in basic education in malaw i current issue s in com parative education , vol.6(2) 123 brohman, j. (1996). popular d evelopme n t: rethin kin g the theory and practice of d evelopme nt. oxford: blackwell. burkey, s. (1993). people first: a guid e to self-reliant, participatory rural developme n t. london: zed books. carmen, r. (1996). autonomo us developme nt: hum anas ing the l 0 0 45 348 0 tm896 0 tm (nd) tj 45 0 0 45 944 0 tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 962 0 tm (c) tj 45 0 0 45 j 41 s tm (p) tj 45 0 00245 574 0 tm (e) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc q 0.24 0 0 434. 90.24 616. 7 cm bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f1.0 1 tf (-) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc q 0.24 0 0 43824 90.24 616.86 cm t 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f1.0 1atf (c) tj 45 0 0 45 32 0n tm ( ) tj 45 0 41 172 0em (fo) tj 45 0 0 45 99 0 tm (x) tj 45 0 1 45 523 0ctm ( ) tj 45 0 0 25 447 0 tmm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 185 0 tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 173 0 tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 316 0on tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 55 704 0 tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 188 0 tm (nt) tj 45 0 3 45 429 0 tm (o) tj 45 0 0501 706 0 tm ( ) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc q 0.24 0 0 0.24 90.24 6656.7 cm bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f1.0 1r.0 pac24 90.24 616.86 cm bt 45 vs rutnimesul jb accmopjbnd jonath an mak uw ira may 10, 2004 124 myers, b.r. (1999). walking w ith the poor: principle s and practice s of trans formative d evelopme nt. new york: orbis books. pachai, b. (1973). malaw i: th e history of the nation. london: longman. pieterse, j.n. (2001). developme n t theory: decons tructions /re constructions . london: sage publications. rogge, t. (1997). a brief overview of the ngo sector in malaw i: options for cida programming . blantyre: malawi. tendler, j. (1982). turning private voluntary organizations into d evelopme n t age n cie s: que stions for evaluation program me evaluation. discussion paper no. 12, washington d.c: usaid. tvedt, t. (1998). angels of me rcy or developme nt diplomats? ngos and foreign aid . trenton: african world press. undp (1997). poverty and h um an developme nt in malaw i. lilongwe: undp. white, s.c. (2000). depoliticising development: the uses and abuses of participation. in d. eade (ed.) developme n t, ngos and civil society. london: oxford publications. white, s.c. (1995). depoliticising development: the uses and abuses of participation. developme nt in practice , 6(1), 6-15. yamamori, t., myers, b. l., bediako, k. & reed, l. (eds.) (1996). se rving w ith the poor in africa. monrovia, california: marc. early childhood care and education: worldwide challenges and progresses volume 11 / 2009 issn 1523-1615 available at http://www.tc.edu/cice editorial introduction 3 early childhood care and education: worldwide challenges and progresses yoon lee and matthew hayden articles 6 early childhood care and education in zambia: an integral part of educational provision? carolyn m. thomas and matthew a.m. thomas 15 incorporating indigenous knowledge and practice into ecce: a comparison of programs in the gambia, senegal and mali alicia ranck soudée 24 the better early childhood development program: an innovative brazilian public policy alessandra schneider, vera regina ramires, maria da graça gomes paiva, and leila almeida 33 a new look on early child care and education (ecce) as joint responsibility maria da graça gomes paiva, alessandra schneider, maria lúcia salle machado, and pollyana vilela duarte perinazzo 42 about the contributors 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 11 (2008-2009) editorial board managing editor kathleen keenan senior editors stephanie bengtsson tricia a. callender matthew hayden antonia mandry michelle morais de sa’e silva hakim williams associate editors maria jose bermeo lauren connolly dina paulson gretchen wietmarschen web and publications editor andrew shiotani international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, ingrid gogolin, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www.tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2009 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 11: 3-5 editorial introduction early childhood care and education: worldwide challenges and progresses yoon lee teachers college, columbia university matthew hayden teachers college, columbia university there has been a heated debate over the last several decades about when the education of young children should begin, with many researchers claiming that growth and development starts at birth or even during the prenatal period. regardless of the earliest starting point, scientists who carry out brain development research have at least concurred with one key finding: learning during the early years is critical. the consensus seems to be that early exposure to learning experiences in a stimulating environment will lead children to perform better in primary schools. in time these individuals become more productive, healthier citizens in democratic society. researchers have determined that the long-term effect of early learning and education can be observed in all children with varying abilities, including those with or at risk of developmental delay. this movement in education has been almost universal. many developed countries have begun to turn their attention to “very early” education of children from birth to pre-primary ages. by drawing on a variety of funding resources, efforts have focused on generating and choreographing various early childhood education programs. the introduction of universal preschool programs in north american and west european countries is one example. in addition, more early childhood professionals have involved families and communities in order to improve quality care and development of young children especially from birth through age three. due to the proliferation of the variety of such programs it has become critical to ensure program quality and administration. in accordance with the recent change in the climate of early childhood education, this trend seems to be spreading to developing countries as well. according to unesco the global pre-primary gross enrollment ratio grew from 33% to 40% between 1999 and 2005. (unesco, 2008). the data confirms that more countries are advocating the compulsory pre-primary education programs of 5-year-old children, specifically before their entrance into formal primary education. in addition, these developing countries have further expanded their public childcare, family, and social and welfare services. these services target lower-income families and working parents, as well as private early childhood programs in urban cities for families with more resources. focused development of early childhood education programs is now in demand. the general disposition is that the age-scope of early childhood education should be extended from preschool and pre-primary ages to all young children from birth (gallagher, clifford, & maxwell, 2004). due to the wide gap among these young children’s development and learning, a variety of childcare and educational models has been proposed in all countries. bearing in mind the importance of family involvement in this age group, there is an ongoing reification of programs that are familybased, community-based, or parenting education programs versus traditional center-based 4 current issues in comparative education editorial introduction preschool programs. furthermore, instead of replicating the program models from developed countries, these developing countries’ programs tend to consider the individual families’ culture and background. for example, it is acknowledged that families in many middle eastern and asian countries particularly favor home-based childcare services rather than center-based services until children are provided with compulsory primary education (unesco, 2008). thus, the great need of early childhood care and education programs should not overshadow the method used. actual implementation should be carefully planned based upon each country’s culture, rather than counting on the idea and belief projected by developed countries’ research. although much research has been done, concerns and issues in early childhood education exist throughout the world. most importantly, the quality of these early childhood education programs needs to be examined. although the development and expansion of early childhood programs has greatly increased (barnett, 1995), there have been only a limited number of instruments to monitor their implementation and measure their overall quality (nichd early child care research network, 2000). it remains unknown how these early childhood programs are operated and if they are truly offering learning experiences and environments for young children’s growth and development. improved and systematic program evaluation and monitoring are needed. as a result, professional teacher training and development programs have been targeted for analysis. secondly, more support and advocacy in the field of early childhood education and development is needed in today’s political climate. in order to promote early childhood programs and their quality, it is necessary to provide a policy framework of standards and norms that serve as the foundation of those programs. based on this framework, then, increased government budgets or other alternative financial resources may in due course become available. lastly, within the international context of early childhood education, a greater attention to diverse, particular populations should be given. these groups include indigenous populations, low-income families, rural communities, hiv/aids patients, and groups from non-mainstreamed cultures, among others. this issue of current issues in comparative education contains four articles that address early childhood care and education from a comparative and international perspective, particularly with respect to early childhood policy, increasing educational access and quality, serving vulnerable children, and teaching quality. the first two articles focus on early childhood education in africa, while the last two articles focus on early childhood initiatives in brazil. in early childhood care and education in zambia: an integral part of educational provision? carolyn thomas and matthew thomas investigate the increasing attention being paid to early childhood education in zambia, and question whether such focused attention on one area of zambia’s educational system will draw too many resources away from parts of the system that are already faltering. in incorporating indigenous knowledge and practice into ecce: a comparison of programs in the gambia, senegal and mali alicia ranck soudée examines the implementation of early childhood development programs that contain emphases on indigenous knowledge and evaluates their potential to serve as models for programs in other african countries. in the better early childhood development program: an innovative brazilian public policy authors alessandra schneider, vera regina ramires, maria da graça gomes paiva, and leila almeida report on the implementation and effects of a program focused on family and culture. in the brazilian millennium fund for early childhood program: a new look on early child care and education (ecce) as joint responsibility authors maria da graça gomes paiva, alessandra current issues in comparative education 5 editorial introduction schneider, maria lúcia salle machado, pollyana vilela duarte perinazzo focus on an examination of attempts to improve teacher education for early childhood education and the role of private and public partnerships. references barnett, w. s. (1995). long-term effects of early childhood programs on cognitive and school outcomes. the future of children, 5(3), 25-50. gallagher, j. j., clifford, r. m., & maxwell, k. (2004). getting from here to there: to an ideal early preschool system. early childhood research and practice, 6. retrieved april 21, 2009, from http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v6n1/clifford.html. national institute of child health and human development (nichd) early child care research network (2000). characteristics and quality of child care for toddlers and preschoolers. applied developmental science, 4(3), 116-135. united nations educational scientific and cultural organization. (2008). what approaches to linking ecce and primary education? united nations policy brief on early childhood. united nations educational scientific and cultural organization. (2008). strategies for reaching the efa goal on ecce. united nations policy brief on early childhood. copyright © 2009 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved © 2002 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 38 december 16, 2002 minding the political gap: the educational imperative of ngos cathyrn s. magno southern connecticut state university the paradox facing women seeking influence over social, economic and political matters is clear and daunting: if women are to fully participate in society, with most societies around the world functioning within a male-dominated ethos, should they create their own spaces outside of the mainstream where their voices can be fully expressed and their discourse explored, or should they enter existing institutions and structures to attempt to make change from a minority position? i contend that this should not be an either/or dichotomy. i suggest that in re-constructing gender paradigms we must listen to those women seeking influence in present times and examine their approaches to authentic power. the "re-construction" i seek encourages a re-vamping of the political science discipline in order to account for women's pathways to political influence. i will argue that women, through nongovernmental organizations (ngos), can safely practice and hone their skills in order to both enter the "mainstream" on their own terms and participate politically within the ngos themselves. supporting women's education and growth through ngos is one way to redress the gender gap in political education and the inequalities that persist in society at large. the underlying assumption of this paper is that the public sphere, and its concrete manifestation, "civil society," consists of various and sundry spaces, some mutually supportive and some in contention. these spaces serve to enhance democracy, particularly for those for whom opportunities to participate in decision-making at the state level are few. in order to participate in national decision-making, women have constructed ngos which seek to impact policy-making, and by so doing, they have carved out some public space for themselves. within this space, they not only craft and submit legislation and other material inputs to the formal government, but they generate political capital for and among themselves. in turn, this fosters a fluid relationship between the ngos and the state, and has the effect of bolstering women's political careers and other political endeavors. in this way, ngos serve an emancipatory function, as the nonformal and informal educational processes occurring there assist women in realizing their political selves and support them in taking action toward social change. the arguments put forth in this article reflect findings of qualitative research conducted in 1999.[1] over 50 women were interviewed[2] and three ngos were observed[3] in an effort to document the presence of political capital and describe the political experience of women. included were palestinian arab, jewish mizrachi and ashkenazi women within the state of israel. their voices underpin my understanding of a possible reconstruction of women's political participation. political science has historically lacked exploration into where women are politically active and why they are there. most empirical research on political participation has been collected in the form of survey data and has focused primarily on indicators such as voting rates and political party affiliation. because it is difficult or even impossible to quantify much of the political minding the political gap: the educational imperative of ngos current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 39 participation in which women are engaged, the findings presented here are instead qualitative. to examine women's participation, it is necessary to look at the nongovernmental, informal sectors of political and public life, namely because women are not found in the formal arena. also, it is critical to amplify women's voices by using methods that allow them to articulate their own understandings. this feminist postmodernism calls for critique of traditional approaches that are inherently partial in furthering a dominant narrative (ardovini-brooker, 2002); it allows the women being studied to speak for themselves. the israeli setting fifty years after israel was established as a democratic state, women remain grossly underrepresented in the formal political arena. this is despite the legacy of prime minister golda meir, ostensible military equality, and lack of gender gaps in educational attainment or voting rates. does this mean that women are simply not "political?" i believe the answer can be found by examining recent developments in israeli civil society. over the past 10-15 years, there has been a flowering of women's nongovernmental organizations (ngos) in israel, and women's participation in the peace movement there is world-renowned. contemporary israel is "a welfare state with a socialist, egalitarian rhetoric, a capitalist economy, and strong religious and traditional influences" (swirski & safir, 1993, p. 1). it is "a vigorous democracy where a variety of interests compete and clash; yet it differs greatly from the western world in its strong national vision….it is a 'mobilized democracy' where the elite exerts a tremendous power over the people" (yishai, 1997, p. 5). this happens within a system of political parties and a powerful national governmental body, the knesset. the knesset is a 120-member national legislature to which representatives are elected based on political party lists. in israel there were, for the may 1999 elections, 31 lists. each party has a 100-person list. to be on the list, one must be a party member and be chosen by the party leadership to occupy a space. the party lists candidates according to whom they would most like to have receive a knesset seat, and the lists are ordered with the number one being the first person to have a seat. the number of seats a party wins is determined by popular vote. in the 1999 election, most parties included women on their lists, but several placed their female candidates at the bottom of their lists, thereby assuring that they would not receive mandates while "officially" recognizing women. while female candidates had little chance of achieving knesset seats, the 1999 elections yielded the most female knesset members (mks) in israel's history 15. that number was up from nine in the previous (14th) knesset. a number of women have made their way into the israeli formal political sphere, and it is important to understand their connections to women's organizations and their female constituencies at large. golda meir, who served in the most powerful position in the country, rising through the ranks of her political party, was explicitly not a feminist (agassi, 1993; shalev, 1995). [4]some of the most respected and notorious women in israeli politics are not feminists first and foremost. for example, penina rosenblum did not run on a predominantly feminist platform in 1999; rather, it was her modeling career and business acumen that gained her notoriety. in contrast, marcia freedman is considered by many to be israel's first feminist mk, elected in 1974. she describes the experience as challenging, embarrassing at times and ultimately discouraging. today, cathyrn s. magno 40 december 16, 2002 she does not believe in politics, stating "i don't believe it's the way to make social change. those in power are not interested it is in their interest to maintain the status quo" (m. freedman, personal communication, october 28, 1999). the specific context of israel lent itself well to the study of women in ngos because of their great numbers in the civil society sector; the minimal number of women in formal politics however mirrors most countries in the world. therefore the findings of this study, while reflecting the israeli experience, have strong implications for gender and politics globally. exploring feminist political critique critical to my examination of civil society are theories describing the public sphere as composed of multiple, alternative publics (fraser, 1997; benhabib, 1992). these public spaces today often take the shape of ngos. women and other oppressed groups in diverse, power-stratified societies such as israel, have found it necessary to form alternative public niches, more in the past decade than ever before, as an attempt for "participatory parity rather than a threat to democracy" (fraser, 1997, p. 81). it has been claimed that "in the experience of women, many assumptions about the nature of the democratic state have not been supported" (stromquist, 1998, p. 2). for women, democracy's central pillars of liberty and equality have been compromised by the social implications of their gender. as far as traditional political scientists were concerned, the only groups worthy of study were political parties and interest groups, because they were participants in electoral politics; women's behavior as a group was interesting only insofar as women voted, had opinions, joined parties, or formed a cohesive interest group….formal, measurable activity was more appropriately the stuff of politics than were the informal politics of everyday life (flammang, 1997, p. xi). feminist critique (pateman, 1989; benhabib & cornell, 1987; fraser, 1997) has countered established political science tenets, and several feminists (nelson, 1989; tronto, 1991) have called for comprehensive transformation of the political science discipline. they emphasize that all political subjects are gendered, that there are problems inherent in the methodological individualism of the traditional discipline, and that political science needs to move in a radically democratic direction and look more closely at the contexts in which politics are expressed. flammang (1997) discusses the need for feminist scholarship in terms of how it can transform the discipline of political science, epistomologically, methodologically and empirically. whereas conventional political science epistemology presumes objective observers studying autonomous individuals, feminist researchers assume gendered observers studying "socially interdependent people" (flammang, 1997, p. 3). feminist theorists are at odds over both the ends and the means for feminist activism. feminist critical theory attempts to understand the ways in which patriarchy and male domination is instilled in political institutions and processes, while also recognizing the diverse responses and modes of resistance employed by women of different backgrounds (e.g., racial, social class, religious, etc.). however, feminists, in particular, minding the political gap: the educational imperative of ngos current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 41 have not yet developed a critical model of public space and public discourse (benhabib, 1992). through the lens of feminist critical theory, i examine the patriarchal nature of the formal political system as well as women's resistance and construction of their own political spaces. this article, therefore, is built upon feminist critical theory, through which it attempts to offer a construction, or re-construction, of how political science treats women's political participation. it does so by using a new term, "political capital," to identify the ways in which women build knowledge and interpret the political world in which they live (magno, 2002). while this approach does not break down the dominant structures (meaning, it does not assume a society outside of the nation-state or suggest that the formal political system be dismantled), it does offer a reinterpretation of pathways to empowerment and political activity. if feminist knowledge is understood to be "a moment of emancipation" then feminist critical theory moves beyond critique to "construct 'knowledge' about the world in the service of an emancipatory politics" (steans, 1998, p. 31). because politics is a maledominated activity around the world (randall, 1987; seager and olson, 1986; phillips, 1991), emancipatory politics for women is essential to an understanding of how political institutions are shaped and influenced. as a result of postmodernist and other critical thinking about the political process and the function of civil society, the conditions are now ripe for different forms of political activity (steans, 1998). as women participate in large numbers in ngos and have historically participated in various kinds of voluntary associations, it is important to understand the emancipatory moments occurring in these public spaces and how they benefit individual women and women's issues. in ngos, women's subjective experience comes together with political knowledge to increase their personal and organizational political capital thereby effecting social change. it is important to note that some theorists believe that women should not hurry into formal politics, worrying that women's approach to politics will be co-opted by the male political game (lafferty, 1981). indeed, phillips (1991) encourages skepticism toward orthodox channels, but strongly contends that even if it is not the top priority, women need to hold political office. she goes on to explain that a feminist reconstruction of politics does not simply mean adding more women to the formal political mix.[5] the integration of personal and political life is likely to be on male terms unless women became conscious of their own needs and values. women have sought to "radicalize the very practices of democracy: to cut through the pomposity of male rhetoric; to subvert unnecessary hierarchies; to open up decision-making to those who were once objects of policy; to create the world anew" (flammang, 1997, p. 4). consciousness-raising and political dialogue have been major components of women's ngos and the women's movement in general around the world. while ngos can act as stepping-stones to formal politics, the women in this study did not necessarily see joining the formal political arena as the eventual form of political participation -therefore their notion of how to be political fell outside the normative view of "politics." in other words, the women do not expect a liberal feminist conception of eventuality that assumes equal participation in the formal political arena. in this way, one sees women's opinions about women's ngos as a contribution to the cathyrn s. magno 42 december 16, 2002 transformation of our definitions of the "political" rather than as a piece of the formal political arena or as a wholly alternative sphere. ngos form an integral, connected and in every way viable part of the political system. in addition to introducing new ways of networking, interacting with politicians, legislating reforms and creating centers of political education, they influence "traditional" political behaviors such as voting, feelings of efficacy and growth of interest groups. as such they must enter into the theory, research and epistemology of political science. examining civil society there is a rapidly growing literature base on civil society (walzer, 1995). at a time when rational choice theory is becoming the dominant paradigm in american political science and the empirical democratic theory of the 1950s continues to hold its stead, theories on civil society and social capital[6] are gathering widespread interdisciplinary enthusiasm. this is in part because they recognize that economic models are inadequate means to fully understand and analyze social and political life (foley & edwards, 1997). edwards & foley (1998) argue however that the terms "civil society" and "social capital" "suffer from acute definitional fuzziness" (p. 126), that widespread discussion of these terms "[suffers] from a lack of clarity" and that "the notion of social capital is generally undertheorized and oversimplified" (foley & edwards, 1997, pp. 550-551). along with other scholars (i.e., booth & richard, 1998), edwards & foley (1998) argue that for social capital "to have robust analytic value and theoretical coherence, it must be considered in concert with, but differentiated from, other forms of capital" (p. 136). this paper responds to their criticism and call for new differentiation by extracting some properties of the concept of social capital to form a second term, "political capital," in an effort to add depth and recognition of the complexities of the term "social capital." although putnam (1993) views social capital as linking civic associations and regime performance, the means by which social capital influences regime behavior remain elusive. the concept of political capital used here incorporates two elements of social capital, namely norms and networks. it is more educative in nature, however, as it also includes skills and knowledge. finally, it includes a core political element: in order to convert political education to political capital, political activity must be taken. this is a distinct departure from the concept of social capital. increasingly, current forms of institutions and political representation seem ineffective in achieving the main goals of democratic politics (wright, 1995), such as the active political involvement of citizens. many scholars have responded by building arguments for the enhancement of secondary associations (cohen & rogers, 1995) and the importance of civil society to a stable democracy (walzer, 1995). inasmuch as the politics of a civil society can move political and social institutions away from hierarchical, patriarchal, nationalist, racist forms and toward egalitarian, horizontal, non-sexist versions, civil society can indeed be a target of democratization (cohen, 1995). especially in pluralist, diverse societies, civil society discourse tends to promote ideals such as political transparency, justice, equality and voluntary association. to date, political theory has yet to address the mobilization of women at the civil society level (nathan, 1998), and this paper hopes to inspire that discussion. what women do with the political capital they have or gain through ngo participation minding the political gap: the educational imperative of ngos current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 43 is a crucial aspect of this study. many of the political women in israel came out of the women's movement which took place there in the 1970s and 1980s, and their current political roles vary from ngo activity to knesset member. many scholars are currently debating the intersection between social movement activism[7] and institutionalization. meyer & tarrow (1998) note a shift in contentious politics in the gender arena, observing that one outcome of feminist activism is the increased visibility of women in leadership roles in both women's movements and other organizations. katzenstein (1998) does not see institutional actors once part of social movements as abandoning political goals. she encourages us to consider both the radical and more moderate forms of activist politics. her vision of institutions as able to absorb movement activists is essential to an understanding of women's political roles. if a dichotomous distinction between outsiders and insiders is maintained, then women who often must rely on the backing of feminist social movements to gain political capital necessary to obtain political office will have to choose between her identity and her career. furthermore, it denies the recognition that all locations (public spaces) in society are implicated and have a voice in issues of power (katzenstein, 1998). especially given the increase in the number of ngos advancing political agendas, the blurring of political space is heavily impacting women's movements and women themselves. minding the political gap as civil society expands in nations around the world, how does women's growing involvement in ngos affect their status vis-à-vis politics? tinker (1999) asks, "does women's involvement translate into greater political power, or does participation in ngos once again marginalize women?" (p. 88-89). the israeli and palestinian women interviewed for this study addressed this question. most of the studies on israeli women in politics have focused on women's representation in the knesset (azmon, 1990; brichta & brichta, 1994; etzioni-halevy & illy, 1981) or on female political elites (weiss & yishai, 1980; herzog, 1994). in contrast, this study assessed the political activities of women outside of formal politics. the political sphere in israel as well as most other countries in the world, traditionally public, has been maledominated. specifically in israel, women have been excluded from formal participation on some issues central to their well-being, because of the dominance of religious law over civil law in areas of family, divorce, etc. however, women have found a forum for participation in civil society, specifically through ngo activities focusing on conflict resolution and other women's issues.[8] this civil society participation is, in effect, its own kind of educational social movement which has the catalytic effect of increasing women's political capital -making the public woman political. in order to achieve such an active society, certain political education is needed. i argue that along with the general education acquired in schools, marginalized status groups (i.e., women, ethnic minorities, etc.) require additional assets, to wit, social networks and specialized knowledge and skills. further, given their exclusion from the formal political sphere, women and other marginalized groups need a public space in which to act on their knowledge. it is this combination of education and activity -political capital -that fuels social change among civic associations in this study, women's ngos in israel. also, ngos have provided an arena in which women's participation not only links them to one another through horizontal networks but also links them to policy-making and cathyrn s. magno 44 december 16, 2002 the state through vertical networks. political capital is defined here as the combination of political education (skills and knowledge) and networks together with political action. the public space in which this moment of conversion occurs is where investment can be made, in order to achieve returns of political influence and impact. five findings of the study are particularly relevant to this discussion. they all indicate that women can and do participate politically and provide evidence of the worth of ngos in building their political education and activism. these findings show that ngos can fill public space with centers of learning and growth. women, although they vote in equal numbers to men in israel, do not occupy positions of power in the formal system in equal numbers to men. therefore, these findings on women's political participation outside the formal system are critical to understanding how and why women engage in action for social change in the nonformal sphere. as one woman interviewed said, through ngos "women suddenly find that there is a big world, bigger than their own world…i think the more the better. this is what we call civic society now? no question, the more the better." the key findings are detailed in the passages that follow. 1. ngos create new discourse one of the major advantages of participating in politically-oriented ngos, as opposed to political parties for example, is that ngos open opportunity for creating and exposing new discourse. according to one woman interviewed, "our main job [in ngos] is to infuse a different input into the general political atmosphere, in the general thinking." ngos' location outside of the establishment is critical to their freedom of speech and activity. as one woman put it: first of all you have the right to criticize the establishment. you're not dependent on it you can say whatever you want and do whatever you want and you don't have to bend your head. that's a big plus…. especially when you're speaking about the establishment and you know that it's a male establishment. so that gives us an alternative to that's what i mean when i say when you're in politics you're actually trapped. it doesn't matter what you do, you're still working within that establishment. a third woman said, "ngos are free to explore and use other theories that are not accepted by the establishment" (interview 26). it was also noted, by several interviewees, that ngos play a definite political role, as one woman noted, "i do think that the discourse starts from the outside, from the grassroots. from my experience of being a radical, i think that it goes also into the knesset." 2. ngos are educational spaces the founder of one ngo stated, "one needs to educate women politically, one needs to get them involved, and ultimately, some of those women will go and run for office." in this way, ngos act as a type of greenhouse where women are safe to grow the skills, knowledge and networks they need for political activity. all three of the women's ngos i studied offer nonformal political education courses of various sorts which include not only political skills and knowledge but also aspects of consciousness-raising such as the history of feminism. one organization initiated a "café politic" in which women were minding the political gap: the educational imperative of ngos current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 45 invited to gather to discuss any political topic they wished; this type of informal education proved paramount to women's activism. one woman named skills learned in ngos such as, "democratic skills, analyzing skills, documentation, reflection and so on all of these are skills you need for politics." according to study participants, women learn how to lobby and how to make their voices heard. a woman from one of the ngos i visited said, "part of the work we do here is from time to time to have political discussions to sharpen our argument….i think women do find themselves empowered." regarding knowledge for politics, one woman said, "the self-image that women have and the image of the typical politician don't go together. there's a dissonance there." ngos' political training courses and the ngos themselves do well in attempting to alleviate this dissonance by raising women's confidence, knowledge and skill levels. as stated by one interviewee, "it's the ngo's responsibility to train more….i think we must develop some curricula. [one ngo] does some of that. they have had seminars for women. but not enough." this speaks to recognition of the importance of political training among women in ngos as well as the need for increased attention to the connection between building skills and being politically active. essential knowledge that women reported gaining in ngos ranged from consciousness-raising to fundraising to political savvy. 3. ngos act as stepping-stones into formal politics for women the majority of women interviewed were interested in utilizing the skills, knowledge and networks they gain in ngos to move into the formal political sphere, thereby creating change from within. 78% of women believed that ngos can or do act as stepping-stones into formal politics for women. one interviewee noted, "if you look at the women members of the knesset, the great majority of them started out in women's organizations….if the career of the men goes through the army, the career of the women goes through the women's organizations" (interview 4). this finding is critical, given concurrent findings regarding the lack of opportunity for women in the formal political sphere. 48 out of 50 women said there is not enough opportunity for women to participate in formal politics. this was for primarily two reasons: 1) that formal politics is a "dirty business," and 2), men have networks, especially the army, which allow them easier access to formal politics than women. one scholar has written that "many of the formal channels are now blocked to women…any woman who wants to seriously express her opinion must do it through an extraparliamentary process" (chazan, 1993, p. 152). 4. ngos may constitute a women's ghetto, but are essential nevertheless some women noted concern that ngos might turn into a women's ghetto. one woman said that "at a certain point i feel a little bit frustrated, because most of the women are stuck on the level of the ngos." another interviewee expressed her worry this way: many of the people who are involved in activism are satisfied. and this satisfaction could create a false perception of change. because you're active, and you change your life, you think that the life around you is changing or the political situation is changing. but this is a mistake….ngos could be a place for a woman to be active and to learn new skills and discover their abilities for more cathyrn s. magno 46 december 16, 2002 political involvement. but the problem that exists and the contradiction that exists is that many could see the ngos as the ultimate field for them. and this is very, very mistaken. and i think this is a very sensitive combination that you have to create. to work in an ngo or to create more opportunities for women to experience that power, but without seeing it as the ultimate space. despite this potential negative consequence, most women (43 out of 50) strongly believe in the political worth of ngos, for women and for other subordinated groups. one woman promoted the idea of ngos working as a parallel public sphere to formal politics, explaining, i would like to see ngos as a parallel partner, where [women] would be finding parallel positions in both [formal politics and ngos], rather than as an alternative. and if it becomes an alternative for all sorts of political reasons, the danger lies in it being a collusive kind of pseudo power, which doesn't really give them real power in decisionmaking, and real-world politics. they may feel good and some of them may feel powerful, but i think that's an illusion which men and women will be colluding in to maintain a sort of structural inequality which to me is very dangerous. 5. ngos influence the formal political system it was clear from the perspective of both politicians and ngo representatives that ngos influence formal politics. "ngos make change. they are a place where civilians make change. it's not enough, but it's something." the research revealed evidence of ngos participating in the formal system (i.e., drafting legislation) and knesset members working with and relying on ngos for information and, at times, support. it was described as a symbiotic, or at least reciprocal, relationship. one woman said: i can tell you that the formal political system is asking for our help very often, almost every day….and it happens the opposite way that we come with an offer, a proposal for any subject and to say to them, 'listen there is something to work on and it has high chances,' and he is in the formal political system so he can do something with it….[the ngo has] impact, and i think it's two-sided. conclusion many women interviewed felt that they are excluded from the mainstream of formal structures such as the formal political systems. some discussed their disdain for entering the male-dominated "system," preferring instead to effect change from the outside. others felt that it was important and indeed necessary for women to enter the formal system and demonstrate their capacity to serve in high positions and their rights to occupy such positions. the educational capacity of ngos, however, was undisputed. ngos offer the opportunity for women to acquire political knowledge and skills, establish networks, and take action on issues of concern to them. the importance of ngos as a viable part of the political landscape was also undisputed. women and other subordinated groups are not well represented politically, despite equal educational opportunity. therefore, the potential for ngos to close the political gap is tremendous and should be acknowledged and further examined by educators and political scientists alike. minding the political gap: the educational imperative of ngos current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 47 while the research for this study was conducted in israel, the patriarchal nature of political systems worldwide implicate the applicability of findings to women and other underrepresented groups in democracies elsewhere, though the knowledge and experiences of women cannot be generalized. through further examination of political capital, both for women and other oppressed or underrepresented groups in societies around the world, scholars and practitioners can identify means to invest in such capital and grow it to equalize the voices that have thus far gone largely unheard. notes 1 certainly, since 1999, the violence sweeping israel and the occupied territories has affected every aspect of life in the region. the ineffective attempts by formal governmental representatives to bring peace support the increased involvement of ngos and women in these efforts, both because they have fewer political constraints (i.e., elections) and they have grassroots connections to increase education and understanding in both populations. 2 the study was based on a referred sample of women from varying ethnic groups and of varying ages, all of whom had some connection to a women's ngo or the formal political arena. 26 were ngo staff members, 16 were ngo volunteers or training participants, and 7 were politicians. the majority of interviewees (27) were aged 46-60, and the second largest group was aged 23-30. the only significant difference in findings among the sample was based on age, and this revealed a basic distaste for the "establishment" among the older group, while the younger group saw the potential of ngos to act as stepping-stones to formal politics as viable and desirable. this supports the growth of political capital, and the importance of networks between ngos and the formal political sphere. 3 the three organizations were chosen because they are three of the largest women's ngos in israel. one, the israel women's network (iwn), was chosen based on its commitment to advancing the status of women through politics. the second, bat shalom, was chosen because it is a very visible organization in the area of peace and conflict resolution and because of its unique ties with a palestinian women's organization. the third, the haifa women's coalition (hwc), was added as a third site approximately one month into my research, because of its reputation as a multi-cultural organization comprising jewish and arab women. it was chosen also because of its location in the periphery and its dedication to women's rights issues. i felt that my study would be strengthened if i could provide data on political capital from a variety of women's organizations. while these three ngos had varying goals, they all provided venues where i could assess the spill-over effects of their particular activities into other political areas. 4 some might say women are under-represented in government today because of golda meir; she was unabashedly anti-feminist. shalev (1995) even considers meir merely a "token figurehead" (p. 8). 5 women as individual politicians do not necessarily pursue "women's interests." while studies have shown that women employ different styles of political engagement than men, they tend to be wary of speaking for women (phillips, 1991). cathyrn s. magno 48 december 16, 2002 6 social capital is defined by putnam (1993) as referring to "features of social organization, such as trust, norms, and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions" (p. 167). 7 meyer & tarrow (1998) define movements as "collective challenges to existing arrangements of power and distribution by people with common purposes and solidarity, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents, and authorities" (p. 4). 8 indeed, on the international level, the far-reaching recognition of the human rights of women, for example, can be seen in terms of the fourth world conference on women. as stated by bunch (1998), "the beijing document reflects the power of civil society." references agassi, j. b. 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(1997). between the flag and the banner: women in israeli politics. albany: state university of new york press. microsoft word rethinking-cosmopolitanism.doc © 2009 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education, vol. 12: 1-xx. rethinking 'cosmopolitanism' as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization & education noah w. sobe loyola university chicago this article proposes that for scholars in comparative and international education the study of "cosmpolitanisms" offers a productive avenue for thinking outside of the traditional paradigms of area studies and for understanding the new world-generating optics and multi-layered geographies that appear to be emerging with globalization. the piece explores the concept of "vernacular cosmopolitanisms" and discusses recent scholarship – on 21st century american education and on early-20th-century yugoslav education – that have used cosmopolitanism as an analytic category. the article argues that studying actually, existing cosmopolitanisms is a useful strategy for examining the ways that solidarities are formed, identities are developed, and principles of inclusion and exclusion are elaborated amidst local and global assemblages. ne of the key analytic challenges that globalization presents is the need to develop social science research strategies appropriate to understanding emergent social, political and cultural forms. in this article i argue that the study of cosmopolitanisms offers a productive avenue for thinking outside of the traditional paradigms of area studies and for understanding the new world-generating optics and multi-layered geographies that appear to be emerging with globalization. these new, often non-territorial configurations bring people, knowledge, institutions, and objects together in novel and sometimes surprising assemblages. these are the social spaces within which educational issues increasingly take their shape, thus prompting a need for comparative education researchers to rethink their methods and conceptual tools. my suggestion is that one strategy (among numerous possibilities) to address this situation is to take up the study of ‘cosmopolitanisms.’ i am not suggesting that scholars of comparative and international education examine the various ways that cosmopolitanism as an intellectual ethic descends from european enlightenment and earlier thinkers – where it is typically seen as a paradigmatic alternative to the national organization of civic/political allegiances. instead, i suggest that we turn our gaze to actually existing cosmopolitanisms and focus on a variety of actually existing practical stances. following an argument advanced by ifeoma kiddoe nwankwo (2005), i would maintain that the term "transnationalism" – while useful for referring generally to movements that cross national boundaries – is inadequate for describing the positioning of self and community amidst local and global assemblages that we can get a purchase on by making use of the concept of cosmopolitanism. i would propose that we can think, for example, about "vernacular cosmopolitanisms" such as "islamic cosmopolitanism," "chinese cosmopolitanism," and "slavic cosmopolitanism." each instance is homologous in that each cosmopolitanism involves a historically specific set of techniques for living and forming solidarities outside the local, as well as strategies for knowing forms of belonging connected with estrangement, displacement, and/or distance from the immediate local. while the global diffusion of images and media is often credited with opening up the potential of a "global imagination," too often the role of schooling is overlooked in this and similar processes. in numerous settings around the globe, cosmopolitan dispositions and commitments are thoroughly enmeshed in the curricular and pedagogic practices of modern schooling. this is not to make the argument that cosmopolitanisms are structurally part of any "grammar" of schooling. rather, it is to suggest that researchers of comparative and international education might productively focus on the culturally and historically varying ways in which schools o noah w. sobe produce versions of the cosmopolitan child as a future citizen. at the same time, attention must be paid to its opposite, the future citizen who is trapped in circuits of exclusion for not being sufficiently progressive, worldly, and global-minded. vernacular and actually existing cosmopolitanisms my purpose here is not to advocate for cosmopolitan orientations or to contribute to any emerging consensus that curricula and schools ought to be more cosmopolitan. in the conclusion of this piece i will take up the question of what positive, normative vision is embedded in the research strategy i am proposing. however, the first order of business is to elaborate on what is meant by the concept of "actually existing cosmopolitanisms" and to provide a definition of the seemingly oxymoronic concept of a "vernacular cosmopolitanism." the proposition that we can loosen cosmopolitanism from its kantian and european enlightenment moorings has a number of analytic implications. one of these is to locate the present project in scholarly circles, which maintain that universals are inevitably articulated from particular perspectives. this can be advanced as at once an epistemological and an empirical argument, noteworthy versions of which are becoming increasingly prevalent in anthropological circles (geertz, 2000; shweder, 1989). in this intellectual paradigm, one of the challenges of analysis is to understand how ’particular‘ systems of reasoning come to appear as ’universal.’ a second implication is that what i am proposing here can be seen as allied with the ’provincializing europe‘ thrust of post-colonial studies. dipesh chakrabarty usefully points out that identifying european universals as culturally-specific is not an adequate analysis – one must additionally seek to document how such ’reason‘ has become ’obvious' in the ways that it has (chakrabarty, 1992, pp. 20-21; 2000, p. 43). this kind of post-colonial analysis denaturalizes concepts (e.g. ’citizenship‘, ’politics‘) that historically have been held to be abstractions that transcend boundaries of time and place. one goal of this current of analysis would be to show these as ’provincial‘ projects that are, in fact, bound by time and place. for example, when immanuel kant was proposing a world political community grounded in cosmopolitan right in the 1780s and 1790s, it is significant that he was writing at a time of transition from feudal to capitalist modes of production. kant argued that increasingly globalized international commerce was the historical condition and an already existing model for the cosmopolitical community he envisioned. also worth noting – because so much has been made of the cosmopolitan/national binary – is that kant's cosmopolitan project was in fact presented in opposition not to nationalism but to statism, something that again speaks to the particular political and social contexts in which ’enlightenment cosmopolitanism‘ was articulated (cheah, 1998, pp. 22-27). an influential piece on cosmopolitanism by sheldon pollock, homi bhabha, carol breckenridge and dipesh chakrabarty (2000) proposes that it be considered a historical category "not pregiven or foreclosed by the definition of any particular society or discourse" (pollock, bhabha, breckenridge, & chakrabarty, 2000, pp. 577-578). the suggestion in their work is that we can productively think of multiple cosmopolitanisms. certainly, there are other scholars who would disagree with this contention, for example by pointing to the continuity and integrity of certain key elements (for example, having to do with membership and identity) as they develop in a body of texts whose authors were in conversation with one another (see, e.g., pagden, 2000). all the same, the position taken in this article is that the social fields in which we can examine cosmopolitanism are enough crowded, disjointed, and episodic as to preclude a single intellectual genealogy. the proposal here is that regardless of whether the term ’cosmopolitan‘ is used in particular settings or not, there are instances in which it is a useful analytic descriptor for research purposes. in this, i am concerning myself less with an "institutionalized system of cosmopolitan governance" and more with "cosmopolitan attitudes," or, put differently, "cosmopolitanism as a way of being in the world" (appiah, 2006; waldron, 1995). this is also to speak of cosmopolitanism more in its cultural and civic dimensions. in this vein, i would propose that it can be useful to stipulate two key features that might allow comparative education researchers to "recognize" a vernacular cosmopolitanism: 1. viewed as a question of identity and identity formation, a cosmopolitanism concerns self-definition in relation to and in relationship with the world beyond one's immediate local conditions. 2. viewed as a form of political action, a cosmopolitanism can be seen as a strategy for locating self and community amidst local and global formations. cosmopolitanism in relation to schooling as the previous discussion starts to suggest, concepts of cosmopolitanism ricochet around academic literature these days. above i have discussed what one might mean by a ’vernacular cosmopolitanism;’ in this section i elaborate on the ways that cosmopolitanisms figure as educational questions. there is, appropriately, a normative way of interrogating cosmopolitanism in political philosophy that looks, for example, at categories and definitions of world citizenship, universality, human rights and the like. notions of cosmopolitanism are also used by scholars such as david held (1995) to examine the idea of a global democracy based on liberal conceptions of human rights. martha nussbaum (1996) has perhaps done the most significant work in translating this kind of discourse into concrete educational recommendations and visions. she makes strong arguments for educating children with a sense of world citizenship and an allegiance to a global humanity; and, she has proposed humanities-based curricular projects designed to nurture ideal, cosmopolitan citizens who can rise above their national patriotisms. nussbaum's challenge has been taken up by a number of educational theorists (see, e.g., donald, 2007; hansen, 2008; papastephanou, 2002). in the post-9/11 environment, the possibilities of normative cosmopolitanism have shifted in some intriguing ways. katharyne mitchell (2007) has pointed out that former us president george w. bush embraced international education programs within a cosmopolitan idiom that emphasize communicating with and understanding others who are different from ourselves. with programs such as the national strategic language initiative, we are seeing the emergence of what mitchell usefully terms "strategic cosmopolitanism" – or, "cosmopolitan learning in service of the national interest" (p. 709). strategic cosmopolitanism extends beyond the kinds of "global competencies" that the us department of defense prizes and of which it is in desperate need. it also intersects with a neoliberal vision where learning about others is less for purposes of multicultural tolerance and more motivated by ideas of ’global competitiveness‘ and the need to fashion individuals who can rapidly adapt to shifting national and international contexts (mitchell, 2003). nussbaum's cosmopolitanism (which can be referred to as an ethical cosmopolitanism) follows in the kantian tradition of articulating a "regulative ideal" – a governing principle that sets forth an absolute ideal of the good (stoddard & cornwell, 2003). in an analogous manner, neoliberal strategic cosmopolitanism in the us is regulative in its ambition to specify sets of proper individual behaviors, dispositions, and proficiencies. over the past several years, this ’regulative‘ dimension of cosmopolitanism has been seized up on by a group of educational researchers who analyze cosmopolitan educational imperatives as a form of ’governmentality‘ (e.g., hultqvist & dahlberg, 2001; popkewitz, olsson, & petersson, 2006). as is well known, the term was coined by the french philosopher and historian michel foucault (1978 / 2000) to describe a terrain of analysis that centered on the arts of governing. in the simplest terms, noah w. sobe governmentality refers to the way techniques of governing become enshrined in modes of thought. to examine cosmopolitanism in this manner is to examine a set of practices and rationalities that far exceeds the boundaries of institutions and political philosophies and extends well into the social administration of individuals, families and communities. popkewitz, olsson and petersson (2006) state that they, are interested in the rules and standards of conduct in producing the selfgoverning actors who are simultaneously responsible for the social progress and for … personal fulfillment. (p. 433) they then propose that, cosmopolitanism … provides a way to examine the system of reason that regulates, differentiates and divides the acts and participation of the child in the name of universal human principles such as the learning society. (p. 433) for these scholars, then, cosmopolitanism goes beyond attachment to things non-local; it references the principles and norms that are bound up in how children are taught to think about humanness in local and global dimensions. two instances of governing cosmopolitanisms to illustrate the ways that comparative education scholars can analyze particular, actual cosmopolitanisms i will discuss two instances of the culturally and historically varying ways that schools seek to produce a cosmopolitan child as a future citizen. the first draws on my own historical scholarship on the particular notions of worldliness and extra-local forms of self identification that yugoslav schools sought to produce in the 1920s and 1930s. the second example is of the "new cosmopolitanism" that is being expressed in contemporary american educational reform through the vision of – and the work done to create – "lifelong learners." here i rely on scholarship by thomas popkewitz who proposes that the "universalization" of this new mode of cosmopolitanism creates a schema for exclusion and disablement even as it valorizes inclusiveness and participation. yugoslavia came into existence with the territorial reorganizations that accompanied the end of the first world war. with political sovereignty came the mandate to fabricate "yugoslavs" through a unified school system. the yugoslav project was frequently attached to a larger project of slavic integration and notions of pan-slavism circulated widely. in a recent book (sobe, 2008) i have argued that for yugoslavs in the interwar era, the "slavic world" served as a space for cosmopolitan identity work to such an extent that it is appropriate to discuss "slavic cosmopolitanism" as one of the important regulative ideals circulating in and through the educational system. in the 1920s and 1930s czechoslovakia was the most important reference point for yugoslavs actively seeking to modernize social institutions and cultural behaviors. both yugoslav teachers and students traveled to czechoslovakia in significant numbers, "importing" lessons and bringing examples back home that – on the basis of notions about slavic kinship, coevality, and reciprocity (uzajamnost) – were seen as uniquely appropriate for the yugoslav context/project (sobe, 2005a, 2005b, 2006). this practice of using czechoslovakia to think about "modern" modes of living and social organization extended into the yugoslav school through curricular mandates that valorized czechoslovak "heroes" such as jan hus and tomas masaryk. yugoslav children were also to take part in celebrating czechoslovak national holidays and to participate in a form of slavic gymnastics ("sokoling") that had been pioneered in prague. yugoslavia's attraction to czechoslovakia was part of envisioning a slavic world and forms of belonging that exceeded and surpassed local conditions and local constraints. in an uncanny presaging of the educational harmonization efforts underway in europe at present, in 1927 a yugoslav czechoslovak inter-parliamentary commission proposed that school laws and regulations in the two countries be coordinated, diplomas be recognized, and czechoslovak and yugoslav students be permitted to study freely in one another's countries at both the tertiary and secondary level. to be sure, this vision of slavic integration and cooperation was never realized to the extent for which it was called. nonetheless, it helps to illustrate the "cosmopolitical" significance of interwar yugoslavia's "slavic" interests and activities. the slavic cosmopolitanism that can be seen in yugoslavia in the 1920s and 1930s is very clearly a vernacular cosmopolitanism. it was, to use arjun appaduri's words, "a world-generating optic" (2000, p. 8). while the world that was being envisioned did not encompass the terrestrial globe, it did propose its own form of universal reason and locate self and community betwixt and between local and global formations. and, it did specify a host of behaviors, dispositions and modes of thought that were considered ’proper‘ for the ideal yugoslav. at the same time, those who were able to properly attach themselves to this social world in formation were disqualified, excluded and pathologized as outside the realm of the reasonable. in interwar yugoslavia, the list of those who were deemed not ’worldly‘ enough could include strident ethnic nationalists, roma, and the tradition-bounded peasantry. looking at a substantially different setting, thomas popkewitz in a 2008 book discusses the "new cosmopolitanism" that has begun to emerge in the united states at the beginning of the 21st century. this new cosmopolitan "is spoken about in universal terms" and is manifested as "the lifelong learner who acts as the global citizen" (p. 112). in popkewitz's account, this new cosmopolitanism is saturated with myths of participation and inclusion that help to undergird its pretensions to universality. he points to the rhetoric of the 2002 "no child left behind" (nclb) legislation as creating "a space of mystical participation in a common good that, in fact, differentiates and divides" (p. 112). in popkewitz's argument, the "inclusionary project" that is carried out through nclb and numerous other contemporary american educational initiatives postulates an ’all children‘ that is much more about sameness than diversity or difference. the contemporary american child as a future citizen is to live in the mode of the lifelong learner who possesses "self-responsibility in making choices, problem solves, works collaboratively, and continually innovates" (p. 163). this mode of life is to be universalized and made open to "all." yet, simultaneously, it becomes the standard against which ’all children‘ are measured, classified, and differentiated. the normalization of the characteristics of the ’lifelong learner‘ leads popkewitz (2008) to refer to the regulative cosmopolitanism that is entering the educational arena as one calibrated on producing an "unfinished cosmopolitan." the new cosmopolitanism is ’unfinished‘ because "the lifelong learner lives in a continuous course of personal responsibility," and inhabits a world where "life is now thought of in segments of time where quick actions are required to meet the challenges of new conditions and where nothing seems solid or stable" (p. 119). this contrasts with the cosmopolitan vernacular that popkewitz describes as prevalent in us educational circles a century earlier. early 20th-century american cosmopolitanism engineered the child to fix problems and reduce uncertainty in the name of democratic ideals and within the social public sphere (p. 45-109). in the early 21st century, the problem-solving individual has the capacity and responsibility to work across multiple domains and within multiple kinds of "communities," none of which have clear sets of boundaries. contemporary "unfinished" american cosmopolitanism starkly contrasts with this earlier american cosmopolitanism in its dividing and differentiating mechanisms. at the turn of the 20th century, individuals were organized in relation to a social whole that gained its definition because of a given "national ethos" or on the basis of so-called "civilizational" values. these formed the criteria that qualified and disqualified certain kinds of people. increasingly, according to popkewitz (2008), divisions occur at a different level. comparisons are made less noah w. sobe and less among people in terms of where they stand in relation to a quintessential ’americanness‘ or in relation to ’american values.’ rather, popkewitz argues that "comparativeness operates at the micro level, related to the particular lifestyles, choices, and problem solving organized in collaborative communities" (2008, p. 113). here it is evident that in popkewitz’s scholarship ’cosmopolitanism‘ captures a process of the globalization and universalization of categories and forms of reason, in addition to indexing particular ways of being in the world. conclusion in this piece i have tried to present an argument that looking at ’cosmopolitanisms‘ seems a well-matched analytic tool for critically approaching the "collapsing of distances," the broadening of the "outlines of communities", and the reframing of the sources of individual and social selves that are claimed to accompany the globalization of today. in addition to looking at contemporary instances, comparative education scholars can also productively examine different historical instances of actually existing vernacular cosmopolitanisms. as i stated at the outset, my purpose here has not been to advocate for or against any particular kind of cosmopolitan orientation. yet, i do take some inspiration from the late jacques derrida who in a 1999 lecture before the international parliament of writers, and in reference to that group's efforts to create "cities of refuge," asked the question: "where have we received the image of cosmopolitanism from?" (2001, p. 3). derrida included in his talk a discussion of cosmopolitanism as it moves through stoic, pauline, and kantian thought. neither interwar yugoslav slavic cosmopolitanism, nor new american unfinished cosmopolitanism fully completes the possible range of images of cosmopolitanism that human societies have produced and are continuing to produce. as the above examples illustrate, there is both danger and promise in cosmopolitanisms. there is much more about cosmopolitanisms that comparative and international education research can tell us. references appadurai, a. (2000). grassroots globalization. public culture, 12(1), 1-19. appiah, k. a. (2006). cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers. new york: w. w. norton. chakrabarty, d. (1992). postcoloniality and the artifice of history: who speaks for "indian" pasts? representations, 37, 1-26. chakrabarty, d. (2000). provincializing europe: postcolonial thought and historical difference. princeton: princeton university press. cheah, p. (1998). introduction part ii : the cosmopolitical today. in p. cheah & b. robbins (eds.), cosmopolitics: thinking and feeling beyond the nation (pp. 20-41). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. derrida, j. (2001). on cosmopolitanism and forgiveness. london ; new york: routledge. donald, j. (2007). internationalisation, diversity and the humanities curriculum: cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism revisited. journal of philosophy of education, 41(3), 289308. foucault, m. (1978 / 2000). governmentality. in j. d. faubion (ed.), essential works of michel foucault, volume 3, power (pp. 201-222). new york: new press. geertz, c. (2000). available light: anthropological reflections on philosophical topics. princeton, n.j.: princeton university press. hansen, d. (2008). curriculum and the idea of a cosmopolitan inheritance. journal of curriculum studies, 40(3), 289-312. held, d. (1995). democracy and the global order: from the modern state to cosmopolitan governance. stanford, ca: stanford university press. hultqvist, k., & dahlberg, g. (2001). governing the child in the new millennium. new york, ny: routledgefalmer. mitchell, k. (2003). educating the national citizen in neoliberal times: from the multicultural self to the strategic cosmopolitan. transactions of the institute of british geographers, 28, 387-403. mitchell, k. (2007). geographies of identity: the intimate cosmopolitan. progress in human geography, 31(5), 706-720. nussbaum, m. (1996). patriotism and cosmopolitanism. in j. cohen (ed.), for love of country: debating the limits of patriotism. boston: beacon press. nwankwo, i. k. (2005). black cosmopolitanism: racial consciousness and transnational identity in the nineteenth-century americas. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. pagden, a. (2000). stoicism, cosmopolitanism, and the legacy of european imperialism. constellations, 7(1), 3-22. papastephanou, m. (2002). arrows not yet fired: cultivating cosmopolitanism through education. journal of philosophy of education, 36(1), 69-87. pollock, s., bhabha, h. k., breckenridge, c. a., & chakrabarty, d. (2000). cosmopolitanism. public culture, 12(3), 577-589. popkewitz, t. s. (2008). cosmopolitanism and the age of school reform: science, education, and making society by making the child. new york: routledge. popkewitz, t. s., olsson, u., & petersson, k. (2006). the learning society, the unfinished cosmopolitan, and governing education, public health and crime prevention at the beginning of the twenty-first century. educational philosophy and theory, 38(4), 431-449. shweder, r. (1989). post-nietzschian anthropology: the idea of multiple objective worlds. in m. krausz (ed.), relativism: interpretation and confrontation (pp. 99-139). notre dame, in: university of notre dame press. sobe, n. w. (2005a). balkanizing john dewey. in t. s. popkewitz (ed.), modernities, inventing the modern self and education: the traveling of pragmatism and john dewey (pp. 135-152). new york: palgrave. sobe, n. w. (2005b). cultivating a 'slavic modern' : yugoslav beekeeping, schooling and travel in the 1920s and 1930s. paedagogica historica, 41(1+2), 145-160. sobe, n. w. (2006). slavic emotion and vernacular cosmopolitanism: yugoslav travels to czechoslovakia in the 1920s and 1930s. in a. e. gorsuch & d. p. koenker (eds.), turizm: the noah w. sobe russian and east european tourist under capitalism and socialism (pp. 82-96). ithaca: cornell univ. press. sobe, n. w. (2008). provincializing the worldly citizen: yugoslav student and teacher travel and slavic cosmopolitanism in the interwar era. new york: peter lang. stoddard, e. w., & cornwell, g. h. (2003). peripheral visions: towards a geoethics of citizenship. liberal education, 89(3), 44-51. waldron, j. (1995). minority cultures and the cosmopolitan alternative. in w. kymlicka (ed.), the rights of minority cultures (pp. 93-122). oxford: oxford university press. copyright © 2009 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 80 november 15, 1999 violence in south african schools1 salim vally educational policy unit university of the witwatersrand with yolanda dolombisa and kim porteus introduction while the world was riveted by the media coverage of the horrific massacre of 13 high school students in the united states in april of this year, the litany of violent acts in south african schools this year alone far surpassed in number the tragedy in colorado. in the past three months alone, educators, parents, and students alike have been murdered in south african schools: a school principal murdered in soweto; a pre-school teacher murdered in full view of sixty children in gauteng; rose mnisi murdered as she walked home from her school in the northern province; a school bus driver murdered in the presence of 85 learners; a grade 12 pupil stabbed by a fellow student; and a parent shot while waiting in his car for his daughter outside her secondary school after the principal and his deputy shot at pupils who allegedly intended to attack teachers. the high level of violence in our schools reflects a complicated combination of past history and recent stresses--on individual, school, and community levels--in a society marked by deep inequities and massive uncertainty and change within school operations. despite the end of the apartheid in south africa, "race" and ethnic tensions remain at the center of much of the violence in the country2. even with the enormous political changes that have taken place in south africa since 1994, numerous social and economic challenges remain. in schooling for example, although various policies have been unveiled and legislation enacted to hasten desegregation, the incidence of racial rancour in many school communities attests to the intractable and continuing violence in south african schools. over the past few years, there have been multiple outbursts in vryburg, groblersdal, trompsburg, richmond (northern cape), potgietersrust, christiana, and delmas, as well as in pretoria and in johannesburg. the long shadow of apartheid ideology, to borrow the title of an article on "open" schools written before the 1994 elections (carrim, mkwanazi and nkomo, 1993), continues to cast its stygian gloom, no longer through racially explicit policies, but by proxy: high school fees, exclusionary language and admission policies, and other transparent maneuvers such as "crowding out" black learners by bussing-in white learners from outside the feeder area. confronted with sporadic eruptions of overt prejudice and faced with persistent reports and complaints of a pervasive and insidious racism in many schools, the south african human rights commission (henceforth sahrc) embarked on a study of human rights, prejudice, racial conflict and racial integration in public schools. the sahrc study, racism, racial integration and desegregation in south african public secondary schools (1999) is the first national study on racism and integration in schools. it seeks not only to violence in south african schools current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 81 examine overt racial manifestations and practices that prevent integration but also the more elusive, but nonetheless inhibiting, visceral and inferential forms of racism. while the study unsurprisingly shows that subtle racism is ubiquitous and has the ability to mutate and adapt in post-1994 south africa, it also reveals shockingly crude practices of racism and race-related violence, all the more startling because of its prevalence. excerpts of the sahsrc study are used in this article to illustrate the relationship between racism and violence in south african schools. this article begins to illustrate the ways in which violence currently impacts schools in south africa. it addresses the ways in which violence remains intertwined with racism in south african schools, the effects of violence on teachers, and the resulting impact of violence on the classroom practice of teachers (often in the form of corporal punishment), which often creates a culture of violence in the schools themselves. racism and schooling the sahrc report contributes to a steadily burgeoning corpus of recent local and regional studies on the same issue. (see, for example, christie, 1990; carrim, 1992, 1998; naidoo, 1996a; akhurst, 1997; zinn, 1997; duncan, 1998; soudien, 1998; zafar, 1998; carrim and soudien, 1999.) the sahrc study confirms the view of these authors that racism persists in schools despite school desegregation. indeed, carrim (1998) notes that almost five years after 1994 there is still no nationally instituted anti-racist program or violence prevention package in place in the schools; there are no structured programs to help teachers cope with multi-racial/cultural/lingual/ability classrooms; and there are no nationally or provincially coordinated programs for students to develop anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-discrimination awareness or violence prevention in the formal workings of the school. it is almost as if these are expected to occur almost entirely of their own accord. the sahrc report explains that if a coherent school desegregation policy is not developed, the status quo will remain intact, racial and ethnic tensions will mount and lead to bitter disputes and direct confrontation (zafar, 1998). a primary goal of the sahrc study was to acknowledge racism as a structural feature of society and to examine racism in a historical context. the writers of the sahrc report support the view that racial inequality in schools is not merely an aberration or a result of cultural ignorance or misunderstanding; it is structurally linked to wider social relations and the economic, political and social fabric of society. as aldous huxley stated, in reply to nazi propaganda: "[racism] is a cloak for selfish economic aims which in their uncloaked nakedness would look ugly enough." the apartheid education system engineered race, class, gender and ethnic categories to serve and reinforce the political economy of the racial capitalist system. present-day racism and violence in education in south africa must be understood with reference to this history and to contemporary political and economic disadvantage and patterns of inequality in society. racism in education does not constitute an autonomous form of oppression, but rather is inextricably linked to power relations and reproduced in conjunction with class, gender and ethnic inequalities. the wider context in which racism is generated is therefore important; even if sound anti-racist educational policies for the classroom, corridor and playground are developed, this will not be enough to eradicate racism and violence from society. what happens outside the school gates will salim vally november 15, 1999 82 inevitably impact on the gains made in schools. despite the requirement of long-term structural change to effectively eradicate this culture of violence, we do not wish to imply that inequalities in schools cannot be mitigated in the short term. on the contrary, a number of strategies for racial integration can and must be employed if fundamental rights are not to be breached--even within the constraints of present social relations. we share gillborn's (1995) conviction that particularly in south africa the education system has the ability to challenge racism and produce long-lasting effects on students and, in turn, on their communities. the legacy of racial segregation in south african schools through the legislative provisions contained in the bantu education act of 1953, the extension of university education act of 1959, the coloured persons act of 1963, the indian education act of 1965 and the national education act of 1967, education for black south africans was explicitly linked to the political, economic and social domination of all black south africans. the first school for slaves in 1658 and schools throughout the colonial period were designed to fit black south africans into subordinate positions in a racially-structured self-perpetuating division of labor. formal schooling in south africa is rooted in both the mission and colonial systems of education. in the 1950s verwoerd introduced the notorious "bantu education" system of schooling for "africans," supplanting missionary control of education with that of a state committed to white supremacy and the pursuit of these policies through education. expansion of primary, secondary and higher education for "africans" in the 1960s and 1970s occurred in the context of the development of bantustan policy, in which "african" political aspirations were to be redirected to artificial and economically nonviable "homelands." educational funds were allocated unequally to children administered under "white," "indian," "coloured," "african" and other bantustan education departments. but the expansion of poor quality education resulted in massive political resistance among youth, who resisted state-prescribed educational goals and regulation throughout the 1970s and 1980s. reform efforts failed. first, the 1981 de lange commission of inquiry was attacked. then, in 1986, the then minister of national education, f.w. de klerk, announced a ten year plan to finance upgrading black education. in 1989 he admitted the plan had failed: a sluggish economy was unable to provide the necessary funds to keep pace with the increasing numbers of students. thus, enrolments at primary and especially secondary levels increased sharply while, simultaneously, resources were being squeezed. in the 1980s, the private provision of education grew in south africa (as elsewhere) in response to the inability or unwillingness of state schools to admit black children. the majority of black children who failed matriculation examinations were not reabsorbed into the system; age restrictions on entry to secondary schools had been imposed in the early 1980s. as a result private schools began opening their doors to increasing numbers of black children, but prohibitive fees meant that they were restricted to children whose parents could afford the fees. in the 1980s, "alternative schools"--whose fees and standards varied as widely as their ability to sustain themselves--also mushroomed to absorb increasing numbers of children. pressure to open white schools increased in violence in south african schools current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 83 major centers like cape town and johannesburg in 1989. in 1990, white schools were permitted to admit black students under limited conditions which included a provision that the school remain 51 percent white and that the "ethos and character" of the school be maintained. in black schools, apartheid education meant minimal levels of resources, inadequately trained and few staff, poor quality of learning materials, shortages of classrooms, and the absence of laboratories and libraries. besides these tangible deprivations, schools also inculcated unquestioning conformity, rote learning, autocratic teaching, authoritarian management styles, syllabi replete with racism and sexism, and antiquated forms of assessment and evaluation (vally, 1998). schools were fragmented into 19 different education departments and funding varied on the basis of race. in 1986 per capita subsidies for "whites" were r2,365 compared with r572 for africans in department of education and training schools3. per capita subsidies in the homelands were even lower, with kwazulu-natal the lowest at r262. although there was an increase in real spending per pupil between 1985 and 1992, which was an attempt to close racial gaps in funding, by 1992 spending for white pupils was still four times that of spending for african students. in 1993, average spending per pupil was r4,700 for whites compared with r1,440 for africans (chisholm, vally and motala, 1998). reforms in education even though segregation has been strictly enforced since 1948, following the 1976 soweto uprising, the south african catholic bishops conference decided to defy apartheid educational legislation and enroll black students in catholic schools. in the 1970s as well, private schools traditionally catering to an elite group of south africans also enrolled black students. these were usually the children of african diplomats, black south african government officials, or exceptionally wealthy black parents (carrim et al., 1993). limited desegregation of white state schools began in 1990, and coloured and indian schools began to admit african students in 1985, even though this practice was officially illegal until 1990. in october 1990, the minister of (white) education in the house of assembly, piet clase, announced the possibility that white state schools might legally admit black pupils. to do this, white school parent communities needed to vote on the issue. schools were required to achieve an 80 percent poll, out of which they needed to obtain a 72 percent majority. schools were given the option to vote for one of three models, known as the clase models (for a summary of these models see carrim, mkwanazi and nkomo, 1993). although unrestricted formal desegregation by decree came into being in 1993, there were 60,000 black students at model c schools already and about 40,000 african and coloured students in indian schools4. by the end of 1995 the number of african students at coloured, white and indian schools did not exceed 15 percent (or approximately 200,000) of the total student enrolment at these schools. (see race relations survey, 1994/1995; naidoo, 1996a.) salim vally november 15, 1999 84 there have also been other important developments. for example, both the south african constitution and the south african schools act (sasa) of 1996 have had a pivotal impact on school desegregation. the sasa preamble states: whereas the achievement of democracy in south africa has consigned to history the past system of education which was based on racial inequality and segregation; and whereas this country requires a new national system for schools which will redress the past injustices in educational provision, provide an education of progressively high quality for all learners and in so doing lay a strong foundation for the development of all our people's talents and capabilities, advance the democratic transformation of society, combat racism and sexism and all other forms of unfair discrimination....whereas it is necessary to set uniform norms and standards for the education of learners at schools and throughout the republic of south africa. the sasa repealed all apartheid legislation pertaining to schools, abolished corporal punishment and admissions tests, codified compulsory education for children between the ages of 7 and 15 and provided the framework for a unified school system. school integration, racism and violence although post-1994 educational legislation created the policy framework for the full integration of public schooling, social, economic and demographic barriers limit the possibilities for full integration. for example, school fees in most of the former white schools are prohibitive for most black parents, and this is compounded by transport (the effects of "group areas" and residential segregation remain) and other inhibiting issues. desegregation neither addresses the material needs of the vast majority of learners nor dramatically changes the racialised patterns of schooling. however, the new legislation nevertheless begins to address the long-term consequences of educational stratification in south africa by providing a growing, albeit limited, proportion of urban black learners with access to better-resourced facilities. yet even the schools that are beginning to desegregate retain a racialised character. based on an illuminating study on school choice by working-class parents, hoadley (1998) writes: schooling is…delineated largely in terms of class. the dramatic changes in composition of some schools since the opening up of the school system can broadly be described as follows. middle class black and white students have moved to independent schools and privileged state schools, freeing up spaces in "boundary schools" (former model c schools on the borders of historical group areas), which have been taken up largely by middle and lower middle class black, coloured and indian students. the sahrc 1999 study confirms that while desegregation allows learners from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds to access education, they primarily accommodate the values, needs and aspirations of learners from the racial group for which these schools were originally established. learners from other racial groups are simply expected to assimilate into the prevailing ethos of these schools (duncan, 1998). the racial values and practices of many communities still remain and are reflected in the various schools. violence in south african schools current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 85 quite often these values and practices remain unambiguously chauvinistic and deeply authoritarian. the sahrc study has found schools which are contradicting not only constitutional provisions and basic human rights, but also numerous education policies, laws and regulations. for example, the admissions policy of a school in the free state sets out its "character, values, culture, medium of instruction and structure of authority" which learners must follow. linked to the question of school integration are the issues of teacher preparation, background or experience in integrated schooling. as schools become more integrated, are teachers prepared to address the "character, values, culture" and languages of students who are now in their classrooms? moreover, as the next section explains, some of the policies regarding teachers have rendered school desegregation far more complex. a culture of violence school violence and teaching one of the key features of educational reform in south africa has been the retrenchment and redeployment of teachers. under this policy many teachers have been laid-off because of severe budget cuts, often causing teacher shortages in some schools and severe overcrowding of classrooms. in addition, some teachers have been relocated to remote or under-served parts of the country. this year the redeployment of teachers considered to be in "excess" sparked off a wave of violence across south africa5. police shot two pupils at ilinge high in vosloorus during a dispute over the time-tabling of subjects. according to the chairperson of the school's learner representative council, the redeployment of teachers led to the scheduling of many subjects in the same period causing pupils to miss lessons. during the ensuing protests by students, the school's management called in the police, ultimately resulting in greater violence, and several pupils were shot. learners, who accused their principals of being responsible for the pending redeployment of teachers from their schools, seriously injured the principals of zamdola and dumezweni secondary schools. incensed learners from ntombizodwa and siyajabula secondary schools in katlehong boycotted classes and stoned cars in protest of the dismissal of temporary teachers and the redeployment process. moreover, harassment by gangs led to a stay-away by the entire teaching staff from vuyiswa mtolo in kwa mashu, durban6. the teachers protested the violent assault of their principal and the shooting of a pupil on the school premises on the first day of the school year. teachers at a school that achieved a nine percent matriculation rate (secondary school) last year claimed that armed gangsters regularly arrive at school to rob teachers and pupils. fearful of being accosted, many teachers arrive late at school and leave early. an armed gang also attacked mqhawe high in durban and caused extensive damage by setting the main building on fire. the rampant violence against students and school staff has been pervasive, disruptive and has severely impeded south africa's schools in their efforts to improve education and address issues of equity in communities where it is most needed. responding with violence in reaction to the violence in schools many have called for the reintroduction of punitive discipline such as corporal punishment, and absurdly, the censorship of the popular yizo-yizo department of education sponsored television series, which realistically salim vally november 15, 1999 86 depicted violence in schools. the kwazulu-natal education minister, eileen shandu, during her term in office openly flouted the constitution and education legislation by supporting corporal punishment, which is now a criminal act7. it is not surprising therefore that many schools in kwa zulu-natal openly practice corporal punishment. a school in this province lists corporal punishment in its disciplinary procedure and notes instances of corporal punishment on a form titled "biblical correction release."8 numerous studies have shown that, far from curbing violence, corporal punishment in fact encourages anti-social aggression, vandalism and perpetuates the cycle of violence. according to many learners, punishment is an integral part of a persistent racist ethic (sahrc report, 1999). countless learners refer to unjust and/or undue punishment while others are reprimanded mildly or not at all. while black learners acquire demerits, suspension or expulsion for minor misdemeanors, white learners who commit similar or worse offences are released. in a recent and striking case of corporal punishment, a teacher broke the arm of a sixyear-old learner for sleeping during a lesson9. sexual violence also continues unabatedly. findings by a women's abuse shelter revealed that 75 percent of pupils from six schools in soweto had direct experience of a rape and 40 percent of rape victims did not report the attack to police.8 preliminary results from a study investigating sexual violence among south african children (n=1200) (mrc, 1999) conclude that 30 percent of girls who were raped, were raped by a school teacher. school security cash-strapped provincial education departments offer security services to schools with either inadequate or no security. the gauteng education department (in johannesburg) though, budgeted r5 million (approximately $1million) for various security arrangements, such as panic buttons linked to police stations. security fencing, burglar guards and alarm systems are only provided to schools that have expensive equipment, and these are usually schools in wealthier areas. a spokesperson for the gauteng mec encouraged schools to pay for their own guards and to obtain the services of security companies linked to armed reaction units10. one school on the cape flats installed an electric fence around its perimeter to prevent gang related acts of violence and vandalism, however learners in the school have been thrown against the fence by fellow learners11. a more useful initiative is the centre for the study of violence and reconciliation's "40 schools project."12 the project initially began as a program to help learners, educators and parents to cope with the effects of violence, abuse and trauma in schools. it has now expanded to include the training of counsellors and deals with ways of making schools safe spaces. the institute for women's development has also begun recruiting peer counsellors to break the culture of silence around sexual abuse in soweto schools13. conclusion with recommendations clearly the violent atmosphere in south african schools is a reflection of the broader society. the solution in the long term is to address the socio-economic conditions that engender the problems of violence. many learners come from situations where unemployment, poverty and abuse are the norm. most gang-related violence in schools is caused by out-of-school, out-of-work youth and they should be given priority violence in south african schools current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 87 attention. the habitual and frequent nature of violence in south african society and schools has induced a dangerous feeling of disempowerment amongst education actors. we suggest two aspects of education which can be ameliorated so as to positively impact the south african education system. first, in previous issues of quarterly review (published by the university of the witwatersrands, educational policy unit) we stressed the importance of counselling, absent at present in most poor schools14. budgetary constraints prevent education departments from employing specialised teachers to assist schools with a track record of violence, and occasional visits by social workers have failed to address the problem and to win the confidence of school communities. therefore, one solution would be to relieve well-liked and trusted teachers of teaching hours to provide counselling services, conceived broadly to include participatory facilitation designed to allow children to consider and process their experiences and their worlds. second, south africa enjoys significant language diversity. specifically in the education context, language issues are closely linked to questions of power and the pursuit of human rights. rather than using it for divisive and segregationist purposes--as is current common practice--south africa's rich linguistic heritage could be used as a classroom resource, for cognitive development and as a way to enhance the human potential of learners and of all south africans. while significant strides have been made to humanise schooling, such as the prohibition of corporal punishment, educators in south africa must continue their efforts to increase safety and justice in their schools--to break the cycle of violence. notes portions of this article are excerpts from the educational policy unit's quarterly review, published in july 1999 and the south african human rights commission report on racism in public secondary schools, february 1999, both written by this author. "r" denotes the local currency, the south african rand. in april 1992, minister clase unilaterally announced that all white schools would be converted to model c status and become state-aided schools run by a management committee and a principal. a set number of teachers were paid by the state while the rest of the expenses were borne by the parents. the management committee had the power to appoint teachers, decide on admission policies, deal with curriculum developments and impose fees. city press 16 may 1999, sunday tribune 24 april 1999, the star 23 april 1999, sunday world 18 april 1999. natal mercury 12 march 1999. natal mercury 21 april 1999. salim vally november 15, 1999 88 daily news 18 march 1999. the citizen 16 march 1999. sowetan 5 march 1999. the star 4 may 1999. cape times 18 march 1999, cape times 25 may 1999. sunday world 2 may 1999. sowetan 5 march 1999. vally, s. education policy and implementation development: inequalities in education quarterly review of education and training, wits epu, 11 december 1998. references absolute crd (1998, march). report of the task team on vryburg high school. akhurst, j. (1997). challenges to teachers as schools in south africa become more integrated: an anti-racist perspective on current practices. journal of education, 22. school of education, university of natal pietermaritzburg. alexander, n. (1989). language policy and national unity in south africa/azania. buchu books. carrim, n. (1992). desegregation in coloured and indian schools. johannesburg: education policy unit, university of the witwatersrand. carrim, n. (1998). anti-racism and the 'new' south african educational order. cambridge journal of education, 28(3). carrim, n., mkwanazi, z. & nkomo, m., (1993). the long shadow of apartheid ideology. in b.p. bowser (ed.), racism and anti-racism in world perspective. london: sage. carim, n. & soudien, c. (1999). critical anti-racism in south africa. in s. may (ed.), critical multiculturalism. london: falmer. chisholm, l., vally, s. & motala, s. (1998). review of south african education 1994-1997. johannesburg: education policy unit, university of the witwatersrand. christie, p. (1990). open schools. johannesburg: ravan. constitution of the republic of south africa. act 108 of 1996. violence in south african schools current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 89 department of education. (1995). towards a language policy in education. discussion document. department of education. (1996). south african schools act. pretoria. department of education. (1997a) curriculum 2005. learning for the 21st century. pretoria. department of education. (1997b). language in education policy. department of education. (1997c). norms and standards for teacher education, training and development. department of education. (1998a). admission policy for ordinary public schools. notice 2432 of 1998. department of education. (1998b). revised draft national norms and standards for school funding. duncan, n. (1998). racism in the playground. examining racism at desegregated schools. unpublished paper. gauteng department of education. (1995). gauteng school education act. johannesburg. gauteng department of education (1996/1997). annual survey of schools. gauteng department of education. (1998). report on school governance and school management team training programmes. gender equity task team. (1997). gender equity in education. report. department of education. gillborn, d. (1995). racism and anti-racism in real schools. buckingham: open university press. hoadley, u.k. (1998). for better or worse: school choice in a south african working class context. paper presented at kenton-sase conference, kei river mouth, 29 october 1 november. naidoo, j. (1996a). racial integration of public schools in south africa. durban: education policy unit, university of natal. naidoo, j. (1996b). the racial integration of schools: a review of the literature on the experience in south africa. durban: education policy unit, university of natal. republic of south africa no. 100 of (1997). education laws amendment act. pretoria. salim vally november 15, 1999 90 south african institute of race relations. race relations survey: 1994-1995. sairr. soudien, c. (1998). our school is not coloured struggling with identity at city central, cape town, south africa. in going for the gap. kenwyn: juta. vally, s. (1999). report on racism in public secondary schools. south african human rights commission. vally, s. (1998). inequality in education? revisiting the provisioning, funding and governance of schooling. quarterly review of education and training in south africa, 5(4). vally, s. & mokgalane, e. (1996, march). between vision and practice: policy processes and implementation. quarterly review of education and training in south africa. zafar, s. (1998). school-based initiatives to address racial and cultural diversity in newly integrating public schools. epu research report. durban: education policy unit, university of natal. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 75 editorial introduction sector-wide approaches in education: coordination or chaos? for much of the history of international development, the dominant operational paradigm has been the project approach. this method's hallmark is the direct provision of services, usually by a foreign agency, to a designated site in a specific country. while often debated, the shortcomings of this approach are well cited and range from duplicity of effort among many different but uncoordinated service providers to fears of cultural hegemony and transfer. developed at least partly in response, the sector wide approach (swap) requires several partners on larger scale policy and project development efforts, and places tremendous emphasis on the concept of partnership. this comprehensive approach seeks to include all actors in the education planning process and challenges traditional notions of "top down" and "bottom up" policy development. this issue of cice offers an analysis of the idea of this enlarged partnership approach in the education sector and the role of supporters such as the world bank. the authors in this issue explore the theoretical and conceptual ground that "partnership" covers and the practical realities such endeavors encounter and produce. many of the questions posed in our call for papers concerning the independence of the third sector, local capacity building, dependency and ownership are highlighted and addressed by these articles. readers will see that while collectively these authors' contributions to the discussion surrounding the benefits and costs of swaps range widely in geographic context, they also reveal significant common experiences and questions for all concerned with educational development. bonnie mullinix begins our issue with a thorough examination of the concept of partnership in educational development. in nurturing partnership: a southern african continuum of flexible stages in partnership development, mullinix "shares lessons learned over years of working to create effective partnerships for development." grounded in case studies from an international ngo working together with many namibian partners, mullinix offers a continuum which traces the development of partnerships throughout their many stages of flux. while highlighting the nonlinear form that partnership development inevitably takes, she simultaneously provides the beginnings of a useful map which lays out the costs and benefits for the increasing number of organizations travelling beyond cooperation and collaboration in educational development. the case of nepal, offered by mary ann maslak, serves as a springboard from a generalized partnership discussion into a more specific description of the role that swaps have had in south asia. in the swap: one strategy for educational development in nepal, maslak traces the evolution of development assistance in nepal from the traditional project based approach to the sector wide approach. the distinctions between these two paradigms are well marked in the nepalese system, and she finds that the implementation of sector wide approaches has created a whole new set of advantages and disadvantages for both donor and host agencies that need to be further analyzed. editorial introduction 76 may 1, 2001 john c. weidman continues this volume's examination of the effectiveness of sector wide approaches in education, this time in the mongolian context. in his article, developing the mongolia education sector strategy 2000-2005: reflections of a consultant at the asian development bank, weidman provides an excellent description of the various stakeholders who become involved in the development of sector strategies. his research demonstrates that a myriad of viewpoints can help strengthen policy development but suggests that greater work needs to be done to identify "common issues and linkages across strategies." weidman explores the interactions between these different groups and describes the greater considerations stakeholders must recognize as they shift from independent operation into larger partnerships. however, in world bank development policy: a sap in swap's clothing, steven j. klees critically examines the rhetoric and reality surrounding partnership. he counters the notion that partnerships like those associated with swaps will change the nature of two decades of neoliberal economic policy. klees argues, in particular, that the world bank's extension of swaps as the basis for their development framework and poverty reduction strategies is yielding the same structural adjustment policies that have increased poverty and inequality, and devastated education, health, and other basic social services. thomas s. popkewitz, in pacts/partnerships and governing the parent and child, gives needed attention to theorizing some of the problems educational partnerships can present. the article "offers a reading of pacts and partnership in education reform" and places the notion of partnership in the context of "salvation themes" which unite the individual to the nation. in doing so popkewitz shows us how the relationship between the state and society (the pact and the partnership) is constructed through reform. by engaging in the politics of knowledge in education popkewitz encourages us to see the overlap of apparent oppositions and consider processes we might otherwise take for granted. simon & dantas, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 covid-19 and higher education: crossed perspectives in the construction of knowledge and the rise of citizen science. theoretical reflections and practical approach in the 11th encounter of ceied researchers. sandrine simon universidade lusófona lucimar dantas universidade lusófona ensuring that learning is participatory and even further democratized seems particularly important at a time when people are kept apart because of a covid-19 pandemic that thrives on proximity. whilst learning is based on exchanges, it also benefits from the existence of a learning community, the access to which needs to be equal and taking account of learners’ diversity. how is higher education equipping itself to adapt to new learning conditions? how can it ensure that it can meet new types of needs? to address these questions, a workshop was organized at the interdisciplinary centre for research on education and development (ceied), lisbon, on an emerging area of research called ‘citizen science’. citizen science has been gaining popularity in many disciplines. here, we are interested in how it could help to improve education and learning, as well as how current research in education might also help approaches in citizen science to move forward. reflections on theory were carried out in parallel with a one-day practical online workshop on ‘operationalizing citizen science’, involving researchers in the center’s three areas – education, museology, and urbanism. this article explains the outcomes of this event. keywords: citizen science in education; distance learning; inclusive social learning; design thinking practices. introduction in july 2021, the annual research meeting of the interdisciplinary research centre for education and development (ceied) involving its three areas of interest (education, urban planning, and museology) focused its 11th edition on citizen science (cs). entitled ‘do cientista cidadão a ciência cidadã: olhares cruzados na construção do conhecimento’ (from citizen scientist to citizen science: crossed perspectives in the construction of knowledge), it encompassed, on top of plenary sessions, a visual art exhibition, a series of parallel sessions dedicated to doctoral research and a one-day practical workshop on design thinking and operationalizing cs. the latest were organized around various themes which triggered specific questions in relation to cs. the dialogical process between the various components of the conference was based on questions triggered by the covid-19 crisis and the need to improve teaching and learning conditions in a world © 2022, simon & dantas. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 50-70. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en covid-19 and higher education current issues in comparative education 51 where students are gaining more and more autonomy whilst still needing to belong to a supportive community of learners and teachers. for a new approach inspired by csto unfold in a satisfactory, professional, ethical, and scientifically rigorous manner, initial and open debates about its objectives, usefulness, methods, and beneficiaries are necessary. based on this great aggregating theme, ceied invited doctoral students, researchers and professors in education, urbanism and museology, to participate. the objective was to highlight that, thanks to a wide range of information and communication technologies (icts) and the will to build knowledge differently and to understand better each other’s perspectives, ‘learning experiences’ and, by extension, ‘education systems’ could be enriched, and approaches such as cs could help to do so. table 1 presents how the ceied’s research relates to cs. table 1 links between ceied’s areas of research and citizen science. term useful references description relevance for research in citizen science museology pierroux (2020); hetland et al. (2020); noel-cadet and bonniol (2015); atwood mason (2014); sancho querol (2021) the study of the history of the museum institution and of its changing role in the society during centuries. (dictionary igi global) the shaping of societies and mentalities occurs, partly, through culture. citizen science encourages the creation of inclusive museums that can reflect and express people’s needs, art, and aspiration. urbanism franco &cappa (2021); simon et al (2022); paulos (2009); colston et al. (2015); roger and motion (2021); saundlers et al (2018); soanes & lentini (2019). the study of how inhabitants of urban areas, such as towns and cities, interact with the built environment. (dictionary igi global) research in urbanism is seeking ways to make urbanism more ‘social’ and participatory i) in view of making it more democratic and ii) to benefit from people’s knowledge and encourage the co-creation of urban spaces. education roche et al. (2020); golumbic & motion (2021); hitchcock et al. (2021); mitchell et al. (2017) the process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and of preparing oneself or others intellectually (dictionary.com) reforms in education encourage moving away from the ‘transfer of knowledge’ from experts to ‘non-experts’, aiming to value different types of knowledge, forms of learning, and informal versus formal education. simon & dantas current issues in comparative education 52 pedagogical approaches kloetzer et al. (2021); bonney et al. (2009b); crain et al. (2014); herodotou et al. (2028) educational decisions made by the instructor to support student learning, engagement, and instructor-student, student-student, or student-content interactions (dictionary igi global). reform in pedagogical approaches encourage inclusive processes through debates, teamwork, experiential learning – all investigated in citizen science – in order to expand the field of knowledge and scientific literacy. participatory approaches pateman et al. (2021); bonney et al. (2009a); skarlatidou & hacklay (2021); freire (1987); krazny & bourney (2005) https://www.participatory methods.org/page/aboutparticipatory-methods participatory methods (pms) include a range of activities with a common thread: enabling ordinary people to play an active and influential part in decisions which affect their lives. with cs, people become better heard, their voices shape outcomes. because respect for local knowledge and experience is paramount, the result is interventions that reflect local realities with better supported long-lasting social change. this annual meeting not only constituted an important moment of knowledge sharing among the center's scientific community, but it was also a reminder of the relevance of our individual efforts and our collective contribution to a science centered on the common good, cognitive justice and citizenship. this paper presents our conclusions and findings. the results from the thematic debates are presented in part 1, whilst part 2 focuses on our attempt to operationalize cs using an online participatory ‘mural’ involving students based in different countries to reflect on learning and teaching conditions and requirements in a ‘hybrid’ world where universities are physically semi-open because of the pandemic. theoretical considerations the emergence of citizen science citizen science (cs) established itself as a field of research and practice in the 1990s and refers to the active engagement of the global public in scientific research tasks. it emerged from a variety of participatory approaches that had already been developed, illustrating a strong need to not only democratize decision-making processes and involve people who would be holding projects but also to improve the quality of data gathered when making policies that lead to societal changes (vohland et al., 2021). originally conceived as a way to facilitate good quality large-scale data gathering, cs has now the potential to revolutionize how we envisage education (aristeidou & herodotou, 2020; hitchcock et al., 2021; mitchell et al., 2017) and learning processes (kloetzer et al., 2021; herodotou et al., 2018) as well as scientific research and its impacts (krazny & bonney, 2005; schaefer et al., 2021). whoever provides data as part of scientific research should also have a say concerning the scientific approach, and the benefits research should bring. the collective creation of knowledge through exchanges between experts and practitioners is covid-19 and higher education current issues in comparative education 53 questioning roles and giving a voice to those who, despite often being viewed as the ‘passive public’, often know best. for this reason, cs is considered as encouraging social inclusiveness, on top of contributing to enriching the ‘sharing of knowledge’ already boosted through the use of icts (hacklay & francis, 2017; pateman, dyke & west, 2021; skarlatidou & hacklay, 2021). traditionally used in natural sciences, cs is now extending its range of activities to social sciences and gaining popularity, including in areas related to education and the construction of knowledge (crain, cooper & dickinson, 2014). research in all disciplines could benefit from it and contribute to its advancements – the question is how. more specifically: how do we (methodologically) organize inclusive and fair participation and the representation of perspectives and needs? how can we ensure that sensitive data remains confidential, that being an enthusiastic participant doesn't make you a cheap source of extensive "big data", and that your opinion is correctly interpreted? how do we integrate the principle of reciprocity at the beginning of the project so that participants really benefit from the research projects being carried out? how do we make scientists admit that they also (not just the participants) benefit from the participatory process of cs in the co-creation of knowledge? how can cs contribute to reforming learning processes and the education system? bonney et al. (2009), who started working on the potential of linking cs to the field of science education and learning more than ten years ago, put a special emphasis on informal science education (ise) – an insightful improvement of the pus (‘public understanding of science’) concept, born in the 1940s and 1950s, which was mainly focused on the “delivery of content rather than on helping the pubic experience and understand the process of research” (p.10). to address this concern, bonney et al. involved citizens in the co-creation of knowledge through ppsr projects (public participation in science research) and through non-formal education and reviewed a wealth of scientific projects that successfully generated knowledge over the long run. the experience they relate is also inspiring for more formal education settings and could, in particular, contribute to reforming interdisciplinary education on sustainability, for instance. higher education institutions still do need to improve such an area which has, so far, been presented in way too conceptual manners to students who do not see a clear link or relevance with their life and needs and are not invited in the co-creation of knowledge in this field (brundiers et al., 2021). the benefits to students that cs could bring by better being integrated into higher education have been explored by nasem (2018) which mentions, as part of those, an increase in students’ engagement, opportunities to engage students in authentic research, bringing an applied relevance to the content of the courses, introducing students to the principles and processes of research activities, and creating pathways for inclusion of science in students’ lives outside of courses. these benefits, especially the improvement of students’ learning and skills acquisition through cs, have been further explored by hitchcock et al. (2021). corroborating what we discussed during our research meeting, roche et al. (2020) highlighted that important challenges still exist when integrating cs in higher education, further enhanced by the covid-19 pandemic. the authors identified several dilemmas facing the field, “from competing for scientific goals and learning outcomes, differing underlying ontologies and epistemologies, diverging communication strategies, to clashing values around advocacy and activism”. they also stressed that “although such challenges can become barriers to the successful integration of cs into mainstream education systems, they also serve as signposts for possible synergies and opportunities” (p.1). they key objective is to find ways to reform educational practices and settings in constraining pandemic times to empower citizens to take ownership of their science education and learning. simon & dantas current issues in comparative education 54 thematic sessions doctoral students were invited to present their work and explain to what extent it related or could relate to citizen science. after receiving all proposals, it became clear that we could group the various works into various thematic sessions. we entitled the latter as it follows: teaching profession: the educator's perspective; inclusion; the role of education and learning for societal changes; learning, professional training, and difficulties and constraints in becoming a learner; pedagogical approaches; participatory approaches; learning with icts. you will recognize these groupings and titles in table 2. they included work on education, urban studies, and museology, the three phd programs of the ceied. linking ceied doctoral work and citizen science to animate discussions that would help people relate their work to citizen science, a series of reflective questions were suggested to the moderators that emerged from an analysis of the references (see table 1) on each area of research of the ceied linked to cs by the author. these were intended to help moderators to trigger discussions. the seven axes that we focused on were identified after collecting the various presentations and grouping them in ways that would enable an interdisciplinary exploration of cs, linking doctorates in education, urbanism, and museology. these questions are presented in table 2: table 2 linking ceied doctoral research axes with cs considerations questions raised on the theme of ‘teaching profession: the educator's perspective’: how is this issue generally perceived and treated in theory and practice in cs? are educators facilitators of learning, or do they transfer knowledge? are urban planners participating on an equal footing with other stakeholders in a social urban approach? new advances in museology invite people to participate in museum life and exhibitions: are 'spectators' really part of the exhibition itself? how do actors who facilitate a participatory process position themselves in the process? can cs help key actors in education, urbanism, and museology to better understand what their role will be if their research involves more citizens’ participation? in cs, the role of the facilitator is difficult. whoever initiates an action-research project occupies a difficult position, remaining on the sidelines, but nevertheless having to be active in the participatory process in which everyone needs to be involved. while "participatory processes" can encourage people's participation from start to finish to impact public policy -, there remain some important boundaries to appreciate and respect. a decision-maker has been trained to make decisions. a participant, while enjoying being involved, may not want to be placed in the position of a decision-maker. questions raised on the theme of ‘inclusion’: how is this issue generally perceived and treated in theory and practice in cs? can cs approaches help research towards a more inclusive perspective? reciprocally, research in education, museology and urbanism can offer some illustrative examples of inclusion that can enlighten cs research from the perspective of: methods (how to be more inclusive and how to encourage inclusion? how can you be sure that everyone can express themselves equally?); motivation; ethics and reciprocity: cs is concerned with ensuring that groups of citizens –generally silenced in one way or another can be realistically integrated and express what they think, know and need. the question is how to invite and motivate them to participate; do some people need training, or better access to technology; do they speak the same 'language'? how can they feel welcome? genuine inclusion in cs is difficult to perfect and requires honesty, trust, conflict negotiation covid-19 and higher education current issues in comparative education 55 how can we ensure that all participants get the same benefits out of working together? skills and a very clear sense of the importance of inclusive processes in society. questions raised on the theme of ‘participatory approaches’: how is this issue generally perceived and treated in theory and practice in cs? in education, urbanism and museology, the value of participatory processes is increasing, albeit in different forms and degrees for all three domains. can these three areas learn from each other in terms of participatory approaches? can they be used as examples of application of participatory processes to demonstrate the usefulness of cs in different areas of research? or, to illustrate the various ways css carry out different domains, applications and with different stakeholders? can different types of citizen participation be identified to contribute to "different types of scientific results"? cs includes several participatory approaches. in some of them (in particular contributory cc), participants provide specific information without being in contact with other participants, nor necessarily knowing how the data provided will be used. in other approaches, it is agreed from the outset that the participants will be part of the discussion about the process of analyzing the results, their dissemination, and the final objective. the participatory approaches used undoubtedly affect the participants' motivation, the quality of participation, whether they remain in the process until the end or not, etc. the success of cs depends on the quality of participatory processes. questions raised concerning ‘the role of learning in societal changes’: how is this issue generally perceived and treated in theory and practice in cs? will greater participation in research help with social change? many recent research initiatives have proven that social projects do not go very far if people do not have the autonomy to appropriate projects, from their conception to their completion and long-term maintenance. this is often the reason for encouraging more participation. has this been demonstrated in the areas of education, urbanism and museology? for example, does participatory urbanism help to create more sustainable cities? will social change be more successful if initiated as bottom-up, topdown, or participatory processes? in some cs projects, the value of citizen participation is considered as important not only because policy makers have realized that many people in the general public have a certain practical knowledge and know-how that they themselves do not have and that that specific knowledge is necessary in making certain decisions to transform society, but also because these people can bring really useful insights into how social change can be encouraged. enabling and inviting cs project participants to give their opinion on general changes in society, rather than merely being asked to provide data is important – though not generalized for all cs projects. questions raised on ‘lifelong learning, professional training, and difficulties and constraints in becoming a learner’: how is this issue generally perceived and treated in theory and practice in cs? being a student in an educational institution can present some 'barriers to entry' and it can be difficult to overcome them. do more participatory forms of education present the same barriers? deciding to participate in a cs project can be difficult and uncomfortable, but it can also be just the opposite. once involved in it, staying involved in it all the way through can also be challenging. questions raised on the themes of ‘pedagogical approaches’: how is this issue generally perceived and treated in theory and practice in cs? to what extent is "participation" taken into account in learning approaches? how is it reflected in new pedagogical approaches? participation and pedagogical approaches are designed to encourage it by questioning the process undertaken from the beginning of a cs project to the end can vary considerably. some cs projects encourage citizen participation throughout the project, while others view "participation" as the discreet simon & dantas current issues in comparative education 56 the roles of participants (are there still experts vs students or do we all have something to learn and teach? how is this reflected in the way we share and learn? can pedagogical approaches compromise participation? provision of data by participants (contributory cs). the "pedagogical" approach used in computer science can strongly affect people's motivation to participate, as well as the trust built with project facilitators. citizens need to feel that the value of their contribution is recognized. questions raised on the themes of ‘learning with icts’: how is this issue generally perceived and treated in theory and practice in cs? does technology facilitate exchange of perspectives, knowledge and know-how, discussions between different types of students who do not normally learn together? are teachers/educators as technologically literate as their students? learning processes are changing – because of the pandemic, but also of a whole range of new online tools. do technology-enabled learning experiences automatically promote citizens’ involvement in social change? if so, how are the online learning experiences connected? in cs, digital technologies are widely used (apps, online participatory platforms, participatory geographical information systems, etc.) and are considered ways to make citizen involvement easy and even inviting (because 'access' to participation is in the hands of the citizens, mixing data, words, images, videos. however, issues such as digital divides or technological literacy (or illiteracy) may exclude some. in the case of complex problems involving various and different stakeholders, conflict management and negotiating online techniques might be needed. conclusion on the outcomes of the discussions on existing research at the ceied each parallel session led to very rich debates and exchanges of ideas. moderators orientated those towards feeding a reflection on the link between research being carried out at the ceied and research on citizen science. the outcome of such reflection is presented below, for each of the parallel sessions. in the session focused on the teaching profession: the educator's perspective, several participants referred to the beneficial changes brought by the covid-19 pandemic, particularly the change in methods and the broader use of digital tools. for many, cs is a way of humanizing the teaching-learning process. the teaching profession must be part of this and become an agent of transformation and transmission of science. within the ‘construction of knowledge’ process, teachers have a fundamental role to play in the training of participative and active citizens. teachers and schools (although they often feel their role is not valued) are an essential part of creating a more reflective, critical-thinking society. the session inclusion emphasized the call to better communicate the results to citizens participating in research projects, and the importance of putting knowledge at the service of all. a citizen-centered research calls for qualitative research methods or, when such methods are adopted, these intend to contribute to a better knowledge of socioeducational phenomena and, consequently, to serve as a basis for inclusive interventions. this session gave further insights into the need to improve the contexts and practices of inclusive citizenship, paying attention to ethics and data protection, and that the transnationality and transculturality of research focuses and instruments are useful dimensions for inclusive citizenship. the session the role of education and learning for societal changes focused on learning processes (inside and outside educational institutions) and their impacts on society. participatory approaches that could improve learning and social change were explored. for instance, the project "museum as social technology" looked at cs, social technology, covid-19 and higher education current issues in comparative education 57 and social innovation while emphasizing that the place of technology is not of digital technological resources, but of knowledge sharing processes, knowledge accumulation, collective and participatory construction, and acknowledging these methods as technology. these themes, as well as the interest of students in developing skills from «experimental learning», were also explored in another project on urban agriculture and sustainable cities, which highlights the fact that, without the contribution of cs, it will be difficult to make cities 'sustainable' in socially meaningful way. the project on ecomuseology reported the importance of the territory and co-creation alongside the potential of cs to increase their values. the project international movements for a new museology, with a focus on latin america, stressed the role and (missing) place of women, native peoples, quilombolas, and afro-descendants and the importance of reciprocity of knowledge between academia, museums, and civil society. from the session focused on learning, professional training, and difficulties and constraints in becoming a learner raised the call for acknowledging that, in the various institutional training processes, people and their individual learning processes are deeply articulated with collective objectives. listening to people’s various experiences is thus crucial, and this can be done through interviews, questionnaires, or other tools. other related themes addressed the experience of initial or continuing educational courses, community inclusion in the construction of knowledge, the role of families in teaching and learning, and the need to create stronger links between educational centers and other institutions and stakeholders. the session on pedagogical approaches concluded that cs is best used if there is an evaluation of investments made (in education and museums), and the life experiences and previously constructed knowledge should be better integrated into learning. both make the call to turn the process reflexive and become part of pedagogical processes. other issues raised are the interconnections between the various dimensions of the territory and the school along with the various dimensions of social inequalities, which once better understood could be better integrated into learning, which in turn can lead to the creation of social identities. to sum up the core of lessons and practical advice from the debates, we can see first, cs as an umbrella platform under which incipient issues and «old acquaintances» emerge and overlap. second, the discussion and experiences stressed the importance of participatory approaches in all three areas (education, museology, and urban planning), and third, to face the challenges and opportunities digital advancements for the production of knowledge. this is especially important as digital and mobile technologies are increasingly becoming ubiquitous, and their usage is becoming more than taskand workrelated, as pointed out in smaniotto et al. (2019). digital and mobile technologies are opening more and new opportunities to facilitate participatory processes; this is associated with both positive and problematic aspects, such as lack of access to technologies and unequal perception of icts’ potentials. under this guise the following needs are identified: • to develop methodologies and strategies that help ensure processes that are really participatory. • to establish the dialogue and sensitive listening, traced back to authors such as paulo freire (1987). this is also associated to the call for crafting dialogue strategies and joint activities between different stakeholders, museums, and schools, in order to foster and enhance mixed types of learning. simon & dantas current issues in comparative education 58 • involve the community in the processes of collecting, interpreting, and reflecting on decisions and actions relating to them since the construction of the city, society and care for the environment are issues that concern every single person. • the importance of deconstructing adult-centered actions and exploring the agency of vulnerable groups, such as children, elderly, native peoples, minorities, etc., for a more complex and wealthier socio-spatial development. • the way in which collective artistic practices can be an efficient way to empower disadvantaged communities. urban art projects can develop social relevance (through the visual and thematic content they produce and through the collective bond they create) and deliver important working principles for cs. • to rethink the role of cinema in today's society, beyond entertainment, as a factor of critical thinking, of participation, and as a promoter of social relationships. the preservation of cinematographic heritage can be understood as critical citizenship. finally, the debates underlined the need to re-examine the philosophy and methodology at the base of each discipline. the awareness of these needs and the principle to return the results of studies and research to society calls for improving education and setting cs into a reflecting pedagogy, both reinforce the multidimensional nature of cs. operationalizing citizen science: the example of the hackathon cs in practice in view of making this event both stimulating conceptually and theoretically but also practical and more lively, we decided to carry out a practical activity that would involve the participation and creativity of all. since the ceied is, above all, concerned with modes of learning, how these can evolve and under which circumstances, and how learning goes beyond educational science towards more interdisciplinary approaches (the ceied is, indeed, the interdisciplinary research centre for education and development), we focused on an activity where all of us would learn from each other. in our view, cs is mainly about this: improving our collective knowledge to improve decision-making in society (vohland et al., 2021) and helping each other to improve our understanding of each other’s’ perspectives and needs. the ceied has not developed a specific cs method, or tool (yet). contributory cs (poisson et al., 2019), traditionally used in natural sciences, invites participants to provide specific discrete hard data (numbers, statistics) to contribute to overall research, for instance on biodiversity. in other cases, participatory gis (hacklay & francis, 2017) can be used in which participants can provide on-the-ground information that cannot be collected otherwise very easily. the literature on cs highlights the existence of various interpretations of what cs is about (eitzel et al., 2017) and, also the fact that there is not one right way to carry out citizen science. however, as heigl et al. (2019, p.1) have stressed, “cs has amazing potential as an innovative approach to data gathering and experimental design, as well as an educational and outreach tool”. the ceied aims to explore further how our research could contribute to cs and how we could use cs tools that already exist. table 3 gives an overview of terms that are being used during the practical workshop and will help the reader to get a better grasp on their meaning in the context of cs. covid-19 and higher education current issues in comparative education 59 table 3 key terminology in the practical workshop term useful references description relevance for research in citizen science design thinking brown (2019); razzouk& shute (2012); muellerroterberg (2018); nasem (2018) www.sda.ac.uk design thinking is a nonlinear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. using design thinking is generally a participatory exercise and facilitates the exchange of knowledge, skills, expertise. it also allows the various participants to get to know each other and to understand different perspectives. divergent thinking brown (2019) and service design academy https://asana.c om/resources/c onvergent-vsdivergent divergent thinking involves creativity to generate ideas and develop multiple solutions to a problem. the creative process encouraged by divergent thinking allows citizens to be open, to innovate, to take part in the creation of knowledge and to suggest policies and strategies. convergent thinking brown (2019) and service design academy https://asana.c om/resources/c onvergent-vsdivergent convergent thinking focuses on reaching one well-defined solution to a problem. the narrowing-down process that characterizes convergent thinking helps to crystallize what, in the end, matters most and for whom, and to negotiate strategies. methodology the hackathon resorted to designing thinking methodologies and worked on concepts such as divergent and convergent thinking, leadership skills, the use of digital tools, and the ability to creatively present the proposals thought up by the participants for the problems they pointed out. each team had the support of a facilitator, a member of the organizing committee, in guiding and supporting the various steps and tasks of the activity. design thinking (brown, 2019) can arguably, be considered one useful tool in cs. the use of design thinking (dt) (brown, 2019) can help to identify which solutions could help to get out of a situation that seems to be going no-where by guiding how to both define a simon & dantas current issues in comparative education 60 problem (by refining its definition and understanding better various stakeholders’ perspectives on this problem), and then, on how to identify a potential solution that responds to people’s needs. the double diamond model (figure 1) derived from this is generally used to visualize the creation process in design thinking, namely, to grasp better the idea of how we move between divergent and convergent; first to understand the problem and then to create the solution. figure 1 the use of design thinking to identify a high impact – low effort solution. source: adapted from brown (2019) and service design academy (www.sda.ac.uk) the idea behind this methodology is to carry out a participatory process that allows stakeholders to think of both many aspects of a problem and many solutions (through ‘divergent thinking’, where brainstorming sessions are encouraged and people are free to open their imagination), and also to identify which specific aspects of the problem people should focus on and why (this happens during the convergent thinking phase during which more focus is required and understanding from which perspectives solutions will be identified needs to be discussed).an alternation between divergent and convergent phases of reflection, facilitated around specific questions, then leads to identifying the solution with the highest impact and lowest effort.it is on this approach that we decided to start experimenting. the importance of this practical activity is illustrated by the fact that an entire day was dedicated to it (a third of the workshop event). the idea was to work together on finding a solution to a problem. teams the practice of cs in the ‘hackathon’ (practical workshop with a presentation of the results at the end of the day) was organized in interdisciplinary teams made of undergraduate, covid-19 and higher education current issues in comparative education 61 master's and ph.d students and ceied researchers. throughout the day, the teams worked around a challenge launched by the organizing committee, with the objective of choosing a problem in a given context and present respective proposals for solutions to an interdisciplinary jury in three minutes. the activity took place online due to restrictions imposed by the covid-19 pandemic. at the end of the day, each team presented the result of its work to a jury made up of experts in the three scientific areas that make up ceied – education, museology, and urbanism. the jury commented on the proposals and forwarded several recommendations derived from them to the university’s management bodies and course directors so that the voice of the participants was considered in the decisions for the following school year. the challenge the scenario we suggested our participants to focus on (and extract a problem and derive a solution from) is presented in frame 1 below. we wanted to make sure that our students could relate to it, have various perspectives on it, and would be able and willing to work on it. frame 1 scenario selected for our participatory activity challenge: the so-close/so-far dilemma many months have passed since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, the successive confinements, and de-confinements and the abrupt leap to online education that we were forced to make. we are now experiencing a phase of progressive return to face-to-face activities, although we have to maintain a physical distance that the pandemic has imposed. this dilemma forces us to rethink how we live together and share common spaces, like the university campus, for example. while we have developed strategies for teaching and learning with various online tools, the college campus experience continues to be important to the academic community. it is equally important that we take advantage of all the potential technological tools have to offer. within higher education, face-to-face and online approaches need to be carefully balanced so that the experience is enjoyable, productive, reflexive, and social. these precious years also need to encourage students to gain individual and professional confidence as they find their place within the young adult community and progressively build a professional network. while it is possible to learn at a distance, individually and even collectively, aren't we missing some important dimensions arising from the experiences of «physically learning together»? what will be the new role of the university campus as a physical space in this new context of return to presence? how can we make new uses of this space? how does it mediate the various needs of students those we have long been familiar with and others that may have emerged from the covid-19 crisis? through this hackathon, we are invited to reflect on the various problems that going back to the university campus raises. we will work together to formulate creative and innovative solutions that can help give new impetus to how we use this physical space that welcomes us as members of a broader learning community. we will exercise our creativity in small interdisciplinary teams, including undergraduate, masters, and doctoral students, with the aim of putting into practice participatory research simon & dantas current issues in comparative education 62 processes in citizen science but also highlight how collaborative research can strengthen our creative capacity, and the opening of mind to the new and the multidisciplinary identity of ceied. guidelines and expected outcome some of the guidelines given to support creativity, divergent thinking, and generating lots of ideas included: • developing other people's ideas by starting to accept them and investigating possibilities to combine ideas. • actively listening to create opportunities to build and elaborate. • working on the basis that, to start with, ‘more is more’; in the first (divergent) stage it's all about quantity and it is important to focus on getting as many ideas as possible, rather than striving for really "good" ideas. • postponing judgment by suspending inner criticism and resisting the urge to evaluate ideas as soon as they appear. it is important, at that stage, to let the ideas flow and consider them all valid. analysis time is for later. • remembering that the team is everything and therefore making full use of all potential, ensuring that every team member is included. the expected outcome, out of this process, was twofold. firstly, we wanted each team to collectively formulate a proposed solution to the problem they selected in the context of the proposed challenge. each solution was presented to the jury, at the end of the day, in three minutes. secondly, we also wanted to explore how such a participatory process could work and what lessons could be learned in the context of research on cs and research using citizen science. students were invited to connect to the conference zoom platform to communicate orally as well to a mural platform (resembling figure 1, allowing people to enter the text as if they were writing on post-its and placing them on a wall during a workshop) to write down their thoughts and suggestions. each team had its page on the mural platform – the interactive work platform where they found information for each process phase. results the tables below summarize the results of the work developed by the different teams themselves, based on the challenge launched: table 4 results teams 1 team 1 problem there is a lack of socialization with equity, considering the physical and social distances and the different needs involved. proposal develop a support network for the technological transition, so that you can become familiar with the different digital platforms and have a virtual environment for interaction by video call, with scheduling for groups. covid-19 and higher education current issues in comparative education 63 benefits the trait of innovation and understanding of social and cultural differences associated with emotional intelligence as a way of offering interaction through digital platforms, enhancing the use of digital tools, re-establishing social skills. competitiveness some constraints: access to digital media; lack of training for the use of digital tools. table 5 results teams 2 team 2 problem social exclusion at the university in the face of new contexts. proposal greater solidarity among the university community and economic support for the most vulnerable people. for example, expand the help already provided. the most important thing is to contribute with technological literacies, carry out campaigns to collect food, clothing, make monthly payments more flexible, and help with access to technology. benefits time for students to organize themselves in general terms, improving their daily lives and adapting to the new social context. competitiveness the team did not comment on this issue. table 6 results teams 3 team 3 problem how to guarantee the safety of groups on campus, and maintain a quota of physical presence, of students and teachers, during the school year? proposal . conduct lectures with students, faculty, and staff. to contribute with their testimonies, on the importance of vaccination. . raise awareness of the importance of complying with hygiene and safety rules, so that everyone can physically be in college. . give hygiene and safety kits to students. . give an incentive in the tuition fee to students who get vaccinated and provide proof of the same, for example 5% of the tuition fee, and that a part of this amount, for example 2.5%, reverts to the fund for vaccination in the palops. . guarantee a minimum quota of face-to-face classes for those who can attend classes physically, depending on the state of the pandemic. benefits . education on the problems; . increased level of trust and security. . contribution to increasing collective well-being within the university. competitiveness the team did not comment on this issue. simon & dantas current issues in comparative education 64 table 7 results teams 4 team 4 problem how can we get back together at ulht? proposal . facilitating the mobility of foreign students: develop ulht's interaction with the ministry of foreign affairs and other entities to speed up student mobility. . respect physical distance needs: delimit the number of students per square meter. alternate class days according to each training area . disseminate information about health care: post information boards in strategic places. promote debates on new forms of contact. improve common hygiene spaces . implement more friendly procedures in the administrative and academic fields: improve student service. expand dialog channels benefits the team did not comment on this issue. competitiveness the team did not comment on this issue. table 8 results teams 5 team 5 problem insecurity proposal provide accurate and scientifically correct information on bios security measures to address the issue of insecurity for the entire educational community. raise awareness of the risks and the need to adequately address the pandemic. improve communication within the school community. increase the adhesion of the educational community to the return of school activities. reducing the emotional impact of the pandemic. benefits avoiding the impact of covid-19 transmission for the healthy permanence of educational activities. competitiveness the team did not comment on this issue. covid-19 and higher education current issues in comparative education 65 note that the information given in tables 4-8 was provided by the teams themselves and that the ‘competitiveness’ component – which really referred to constraints – was only addressed by team 1. we do feel that the term ‘competitiveness’ suggested by the methodology was somehow unclear. lessons learned the collective activity took the whole day, including the presentation of results to the jury. it was a very rich experience that students enjoyed because their opinion was valued and because teams took time to know each other and to understand each other’s perspectives. the challenge proposed for the hackathon and the work methodology used was intended to provoke the participants to extrapolate the barriers of the predictable and imagine possible and viable futures for the use of the university campus. at the technical level, it required the simultaneous use of two work platforms, one of which was never used by them. in terms of teamwork, it was necessary to listen to and respect different opinions and reach a consensus in choosing the problem to be worked on and its respective intervention proposal. to all these requirements, we must add the time management of tasks, which must be fulfilled. considering this scenario, we noticed difficulties in achieving the proposed objectives, namely in the innovative nature of the proposals, which in general remained at the predictable level, in the context of the personal difficulties of the team members and existing interventions, very focused on the immediate fight against the pandemic. it is possible that the different types of activity requirements, specifically those of a technical level, and the short execution time, influenced these results. on the other hand, another possibility of interpretation can be evoked: our concrete actions are conditioned by the work methodologies of our area of training and performance. in education, one issue discussed by participants in the activity, the «time-lapses» are longer, and the conceptual changes envisaged over the long run are more difficult to imagine, given the relatively crystallized nature of the effectiveness of educational models in societies and the necessary critical reflection around new educational models and contents. despite a few difficulties in carrying out the practical exercise, several positive outcomes should be highlighted. with the hackathon, we witnessed an exercise in the simultaneous mobilization of different skills, from the use of digital tools, the ability to take leadership initiative, to reflect on a current topic, to present intervention proposals in reality, taking a more active and critical stance, and making the voice of students heard. the role of the facilitator proved to be crucial since negotiation is key to the whole process: people need to learn to clarify their statement(s) and idea(s) and to ask other people to clarify theirs, if needed. also, even though the mural is quite intuitive and easy to use, this mode of operates is not familiar to everyone and occasionally needed to be further explained. interestingly, creativity requires time – sometimes more than expected, since people are less used that one would hope to open their imagination and come up with ‘as many ideas as possible’. self-imposed constraints or else constraints imposed by society or others, often limit the range of options and scenarios one could imagine or hope for. developing the ‘divergent thinking’ phase, whilst staying focused on the issues at stake, is an exercise itself. ‘converging’ seems more in our habits, even though both selecting one specific problem and then, later, one specific solution, still presents its own difficulties – notably that of remaining within the remit of the scenario originally presented. simon & dantas current issues in comparative education 66 there is, of course, a high level of subjectivity both in the reduction of all inter-connected problems characteristic of the presented scenario and in the presentation of potential solutions and the selection of the high-impact/ low-effort solution. further research could be carried out to better document these choices, and, of course, a citizen project would not, a priori, exclude this. conclusion the 11th ‘encontro’ of the ceied researchers, which took place in july 2021, focused on learning and the (co)creation of ‘knowledge’ and chose to do so by exploring to what extent research being carried out at the ceied does relate, could/should relate, and might contribute to research in an emerging field – that of citizen science. since cs focuses on various forms of participation of citizens in the construction of knowledge, the scientific research process, and even on the policy impacts, exploring it further in the context of research on education, museology, and urban studies makes perfect sense. to some extent, introducing this idea in a meeting primarily targeted at graduate, master, and doctorate students was important too: it attempted to empower further young researchers who belong to a generation who is so respectful of the education system and experts behind it that it hardly dares questioning it. yet, both educational structures and how knowledge is being approached need reforming. the context in which we are working is one within which online learning and exchanges, digital tools, and open-access abundant information are in use and circulation. in our view, working at identifying clear objectives concerning the ethics and scientific rigor behind the construction of knowledge, as well as constructing co-operative tools (herodotou et al., 2018) to identify the objectives behind the construction and use of knowledge, deserve special and careful attention – a whole new research agenda, indeed, both in formal and informal educational settings (mitchell et al., 2017; hitchcock et al., 2021).to this end, generating a dialogue between theory and practice is crucial since it values a type of knowledge that is ‘experienced’, contrary to expert, ‘generalized’ knowledge that occasionally drifts away from the ‘true, gritty reality’. cs can help in doing so, and so do the three areas of ceied – education, museology, and urbanism – which, despite their diversity, all point to topical and urgent areas for the 21st century: social learning, creativity, and the co-creation of public spaces. although we agree with the fact that “the future of how cs will be integrated into education and learning will continue to be influenced by globally-accessible digital platforms” (roche et al., 2020:7), the outcomes of the conference we organized (both from a theoretically and from a practical perspective) taught us that the challenges presented by the covid-19 pandemic on learning and the creation of knowledge go well beyond this. at the heart of it is the question of whether students, through becoming more autonomous learners throughout the covid-19 pandemic, aspire to be more independent and individualists or whether they value ‘communities of learners, the power of negotiation and of cooperating in learning and, ultimately, the extent to which they believe that what they learn at university must realistically emerge from the collective cocreation of knowledge. keeping an overview on research in cs that is contextualized, critical and interdisciplinary has been the editors; objective of a comprehensive book on cs (vohland et al., 2021). herodotou et al. (2018) put a special emphasis on iterative processes observed in learning processes developed through cs. simon et al. (2022) focused on identifying covid-19 and higher education current issues in comparative education 67 research pathways in cs. furthermore, schaefer et al. (2021) helped understand the difficulties in evaluating the outcomes and processes of cs, itself a ‘moving target’. more than ever, cs allows us to remind ourselves that learning, knowledge, and education are not static and that, instead, they constantly evolve as triggers to, or consequences of, societal changes. the critical lesson to capture from this is that higher education needs to ensure that it becomes more flexible and receptive to such changes to facilitate the cocreation and the recognition of up-to-date and ‘inclusive knowledge’. acknowledgements we would like to address a warm thank you to the keynote speakers who helped to present the ceied’s research in the context of citizen science. these included: prof. antonio teodoro, elsa estrela, giovanni allegretti, judite primo, and maristela simão. also, a warm thank you to the moderators of the numerous parallel sessions who did help us to gain a better understanding of the existing or potential links between doctorands’ research and cs in their synthesis. they include, in alphabetical order: dulce franco; marta jecu; adriana melo; elisabete pinto da costa; judite primo; leonardo rocha; vitor rosa; rosa serradas duarte; maria odete silva; ana paula silva; maristela simão; sandrine simon; constança vasconcelos; inês vieira, and sónia vladimira correia. the authors declare that this research hasn’t generated any conflict in interest or competing interest. this research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sector. sandrine simon is a researcher at the ceied, lusófona university lisbon, where she mainly focuses on urbanism. she coordinates the research group on citizen science – author of simon et al. (2022) and works on the creation of an online participatory urban governance platform to facilitate urban sustainability. lucimar dantas is an auxiliary researcher at ceied, lusófona university. her research interests are in learning processes mediated by language. she coordinates the ceied doctoral college citizen science. she also coordinates the research and learning community nelp – núcleo de estudos de língua portuguesa [research group on portuguese language]. references aristeidou, m. & herodotou, c. (2020). online citizen science: a systematic review of effects on learning and scientific literacy. citizen science: theory and practice, 5(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.224 atwood mason, m. (2014). participatory museology: free expression as the key to relevance. curator: the museum journal, 57(4), 401-403. https://doi.org/10.1111/cura.12080 bonney, r., ballard, h., jordan, r., mccallie, e., phillips, t., shirk, j., & wilderman, c.c. 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(2019). when cities are the last chance for saving species. frontiers in ecology and the environment, 17(4), 225-231. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2032 vohland, k., land-zandstra, a., ceccaroni, l., lemmens, r., perelló, j., ponti, m., samson, r., & wagenknecht, k. (eds.) (2021). the science of citizen science. springer. may 10, 2004 © 2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 64 essay learning and teaching about participatory development: the practical and theoretical challenges fida adely school of international and public affairs columbia university introduction since the 1970s, participatory development has become part and parcel of most practitioner-oriented development studies programs. this reflects a shift in the field of development that has been going on for the past few decades. "participatory rural appraisal" (pra) is one approach to participatory development that has received much attention and is the source of much debate. pra represents a philosophy of or approach to development (specifically rural development) as well as a concomitant set of techniques, which places emphasis on local knowledge and local solutions. pra sought to challenge practices within the development field, which relied heavily on assumptions about development expertise residing with outsiders-assumptions that pra's advocates argued doomed development to failure. pra emerged primarily from experiences in rural development and built on methods such as action research, rapid rural appraisal and applied anthropology. pra places great emphasis on the role of the facilitator, and writings about pra devote considerable time to outlining the attitudes and characteristics a facilitator should possess (chambers, 1997). pra techniques also rely heavily on mapping, diagramming and public dialogue about community problems and issues. one of the key expressed goals of such techniques was to make pra accessible to the illiterate and others who might be left out of traditional information gathering processes. interestingly, some of the strongest critiques of pra point to the reliance on such techniques and the public nature of these pra exercises, as the source of pra's major weaknesses (kapoor, 2002; mosse, 1994). for example, david mosse (1994) argues that pra techniques represent one approach to gathering knowledge and information, an approach that may be biased against women and that is often not conducive to the types of knowledge about agriculture embedded in the practice of communities. ilan kapoor (2002) argues that the reliance on public deliberation in pra exercises ensures that dominant voices will prevail. he argues that pra does not have any mechanism built into it to manage differences and that the public nature of pra not only fails to address such difference but actually serves to gloss them over. this paper will examine some of these critiques of pra, as well as its practical challenges, by drawing upon the experiences of the author teaching about participatory development in a graduate level development studies program. background since the fall of 2002, i have been a lecturer at columbia university's school of international and public affairs. in this capacity, i teach courses in the economic and learning and teaching about participatory development: the practical and theoretical challenges current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 65 political development concentration, a development studies program designed to prepare young professionals interested in entering the field of development1. in addition to teaching development related courses, i coordinate the "workshop in applied development". this is a practicum in development through which teams of students undertake pro-bono consulting engagements for international development organizations. my comments in this paper stem specifically from teaching a course entitled "program and project management for development" (ppmd), as well as my experiences advising students in the workshop in applied development. after a brief description of each of these courses, the paper will examine three key themes or issues which have emerged through these teaching experiences, relating them to broader debates about pra in the literature on development. the ppmd course is not a course about management in the traditional sense of the word2. rather, it is a course about tools for and approaches to development work, with a significant amount of time devoted to discussions about participatory development and, specifically, pra. in the fall of 2003, my colleague and i chose to have all students in the course work in teams to actually design and implement a pra in class. in my section of the course there were six pra presentations throughout the semester. initially, we intended to have students use one of the development cases the course was designed around as the hypothetical setting for their pra exercise. however, i gave my class the option of designing a pra that would be more connected to the reality of their prior experiences in development. it was my hope that this would enable them to focus on process rather than content for role-playing. in the end, four of the six groups chose this option. in addition to the actual role-plays, the second time i taught this course, i had students write down some of their reflections on doing pra and i draw upon some of these reflections here. the large majority of the students who take ppmd go on to participate in the development practicum i referred to above, the workshop in applied development (hitherto referred to as the workshop). the workshop is a course for second-year master's degree students in our program. students work in teams with a faculty supervisor to assist "clients" on a wide variety of assignments in international development. some past projects have involved capacity building initiatives, poverty reduction projects, post-conflict reconstruction, micro-credit projects, marketing for local producers, and hiv aids programming. in recent years, projects have been arranged with a wide variety of international organizations such as the international organization for migration, the world bank, unicef, unifem, undp, and ngos such as trickle up, world neighbors, and technoserve. in addition, we have undertaken projects with foundations, grassroots organizations, and us based agencies, such as the new york association for new americans3. some of these projects are important practical experiences in the application of participatory development techniques. this year, for example, one team i have been working with conducted pra exercises in villages in rural ecuador in order to learn more about the ways in which people save money, traditional forms of lending, and local ways of coping with fluctuations in income, expenses, and financial crises. through both of these experiences--teaching ppmd and advising students in the workshop--key issues emerge about the practical challenges of doing participatory fida adely may 10, 2004 66 development. these issues have also been raised in some of the literature on this topic (kapoor, 2002; michener, 1998; mosse, 1994). the following section then outlines three key issues, with specific reference to the context in which they emerged in the classroom or in the course of the practicum, and it draws parallels with writing on these topics by students and scholars. "does this ever work in practice?": key issues and concerns about pra in my discussions with students and in their written reflections, three key themes recur again and again. these themes encompass concerns about: the reality of "local" differences, inequalities and power differentials; the practical challenges of dealing with these local disparities when doing pra; the practical challenges of being "really participatory" given the reality of how development organizations and their work is organized; and the effectiveness of participatory approaches such as pra given these challenges and constraints. i consider each of the three themes below. 1. even people in relatively small and homogenous communities have different ideas and perceptions about what their priorities are, the causes of local problems and potential solutions or approaches to improving their lives. as one reads through the range of literature that has emerged to critique or to improve upon participatory development techniques, a recurring theme is the failure to recognize or adequately address inequalities in local communities where development work is being undertaken. in their reflections, and our discussions, several of the students in my courses pointed to the challenges of managing differences and inequalities at the local level and the mechanics of doing this. some understood this challenge as an issue of reaching consensus and wondered how one could reach consensus through pra type exercises. one student, reflecting on the pra in which she had recently participated in my class, felt that without the explicit goal of reaching consensus and a process for achieving that consensus, individual ideas could and did get subsumed by those in a group who were more vocal: without explicit attempt to reach a consensus as a method, individual ideas may have actually been suppressed to a greater degree, and ownership in the final output may have been less by certain groups. (sg, written reflection for ppmd course, fall, 2003). kapoor (2002) in his evaluation of robert chambers' writing on pra raises similar issues. kapoor critiques chambers for his lack of attention to reaching consensus, arguing that the absence of any principles for addressing differences and for delineating what is community consensus fails to address ways of "checking power relations in pra space" (p. 108). kapoor argues that although chambers addresses the issue of local differences and local inequalities, he assumes that methods of sharing information and sharing it in a public way will enable communities to address these differences and that competing claims will be managed by "better technique" (p. 108). david mosse (1994), writing about his own experiences doing pra, argues that the very public nature of pra activities may in fact ensure that facilitators are only getting the "official" story about a community and that this inevitable ends up being the one shaped by those dominant in the community. learning and teaching about participatory development: the practical and theoretical challenges current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 67 2. given local power differences, how does one organize pra participants and how explicit should a facilitator be about his/her intentions, particularly when the intentions have to do with taking on local power differences? closely related to the first issue raised above is the very practical issue of how one groups people for pra exercises. in role-playing pras, students in my classes often struggled with how to deal with power differences in group formation. this question, which is caught up in the specific mechanics of "how to do pra", is related to the concerns about consensus raised by the student quoted above and by kapoor. the criticism is that not discussing how differences (inequalities, power differentials) should be handled leads to their being glossed over and neglected. students' concerns about grouping people for pra exercises were typically posed as questions such as: should we put men and women in the same groups? should government officials and poor farmers be involved in the same pra activity? for example, one group of students in their role-play used the case of a poverty reduction program in bangladesh--one the class had read about--to design a mock pra. in setting up the pra, they put all the program officials in a small group on their own, the poorest people from the community were in their own group, and other villagers were organized in a similar fashion. in the debriefing, some of their classmates argued that such an approach to grouping would not be effective because it did not allow for people with competing perceptions or priorities to address their differences. again, this example points to the way in which the mechanics of how to do pra have much to do with structural issues of inequality and power. this emerged again and again in our class role-plays and in discussions in the previous year's class. a related question which emerged in thinking about group formation was how explicit facilitators should be about their "designs" for group formation. in other words, is it legitimate for facilitators to group people in a certain way without making it explicit or without ever discussing why they choose particular groupings? in my colleagues' section of the ppmd course, a major debate emerged about this as a result of an in-class role-plays. one of the teams clandestinely grouped people according to particular traits by giving them a particular color bean and then asking them to vote with their bean. they did not reveal to the participants that there was any design to the color of the beans until the class was over. some of their classmates--the "participants"--objected to this method, arguing that this lack of transparency jeopardized trust between the facilitators and the participants. this experience enabled discussion and learning about two important dimensions of such work. the obvious one is trust between facilitator(s) or development workers and the communities in which they work. the related issue is how explicit a facilitator should be about trying to "tangle" with power differences in a community. on this later issue, hazel johnson and gordon wilson (2000), drawing on a case of a community waste management project in zimbabwe, argue that: fida adely may 10, 2004 68 social divisions have to be overtly recognized, actively negotiated, and represented if there is to be a.) greater coherence of action & b.) inclusion of hitherto excluded groups in development interventions. (p. 1891) furthermore, they argue that development cannot be sustainable or institutionalized without explicitly addressing these divisions/differences. in recent discussions with students in a seminar on development, some students argued that such an approach-namely, the approach which insists that participatory development should take on local differences, seek to change structures or to empower those who are disenfranchised-was unrealistic within the context of what most development projects set out to do. however, they acknowledged that this may be the unsaid aim of some activities such as forming a women's microcredit group. trying to tackle issues as sensitive as local inequalities is not unrelated to trust. when there is no relationship with a community, pra activities can raise suspicions and concern in a community, particularly one with a history of bad experiences with outside "officials". mosse (1994) refers to such an experience, one in which the pra facilitators had to leave the community because of the level of resistance. in the spring of 2004, a group of our students participating in the development practicum had a similar experience while conducting pra activities in two different villages in ecuador. the team of students went to each village for two days to gather information about local strategies for saving and borrowing in order to make recommendations to their client about appropriate microfinance approaches for rural communities in this region. in the first community, the team's client had a long and positive relationship with the community. in the second village, there was no relationship such relationship and the community was not convinced of the benefit of participating in the pra. lacking a relationship with the client organization and the students (representatives of the client in this instance) the community initially refused to partake in the pra activity questioning the motives of the team and the usefulness of an exercise that would take them away from their work for several hours. the students managed this by reiterating the purpose of the exercise and making sure not to promise anything they or their client could not deliver. in the end, in response to demands from the community, they also agreed to reciprocate the time by teaching an english class to local school children. in situations where there is no established relationship with a community and a lack of trust, the goal of seeking to change or upset local social structures does seem lofty if not ridiculous. however, what johnson and wilson (2000) argue is that acknowledging and addressing differences must be part of every development process and from the inception. 3. how participatory can participatory be?: can participatory development ever be as bottom up as the pra literature would have us believe? how can one do participatory development pra when faced by the practical and organizational constraints of doing development work? when one reads the literature on pra (e.g., chambers, 1997; selener et al, 1999), one understands that it is about a whole process, about building a relationship with a community because of a philosophy or attitude that prioritizes local knowledge and learning and teaching about participatory development: the practical and theoretical challenges current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 69 know-how. thus, the community is involved in identifying needs, prioritizing them, and thinking through solutions; they are full participants in an integrated development process. pra--at least by its founding proponents--was never really envisioned as a set of tools to pick and choose from in a piece-meal fashion. in reality, however, this is how such methods are typically employed. for those of our students who have done development work, they know and have experienced the reality of the often piece-meal approach to participation. most are committed to participation or being participatory in their work, but know first hand about the challenges of being "truly" participatory when for example, needs, or at least fundable programs, are already predetermined by the organizations for which they work. similarly, they are aware that development workers are sometimes placed in situations where an employer might ask them to conduct pra exercises (which can take several hours) without any sense of what a follow-up process might be or if there will even be one. in such circumstances, one is put into the situation of asking local people to give up valuable time without any clear stake in it for them. concerns about such challenges have emerged clearly in my teaching, through roleplays and in activities related to the development practicum. i describe two examples briefly here. in one of the pra role-plays that students did last semester, a group simulated a scenario in which efforts to undertake pra were compromised by lack of follow-up in an earlier phase of a project. the students pretended to be undertaking a pra exercise--a mapping exercise--in a local community that was to be significantly impacted by the building of a major highway. in the scenario they created, they told their classmates (who were the "villagers") that there had in fact been another group of development workers brought in 12 months earlier to do a similar exercise and that nothing had come of that earlier effort. in setting things up this way, the student facilitators were hoping the villagers would be agitated and that their role-play would demonstrate the uncomfortable sort of situations that one is often put in as a development practitioner who is supposed to engage a community in genuine participatory processes. in another incident, a group of students was concerned about being put into a similar situation to that just described in the role-play. through our development practicum, this group of students had been asked by a united nations organization to develop and conduct "participatory benchmarking" workshops with local communities in two countries around select "millennium development goals" (mdgs). students were wary about engaging local communities in discussions about the mdgs as they had no indication from their client organization as to how the client would be following up with the communities. they did not want to be put in the position of running another workshop that would be a one-time affair. in the case of one country, the students were particularly concerned as they felt that this particular community was already quite cynical about development organizations coming in to do "participatory" workshops. in this case, the team worked to pressure their client to be clear about follow-up. however, when it became clear that no real resources had been committed in country to follow up, the team rethought the goals of the workshop in this particular country and decided to present the workshop as an effort to bring local development actors together to discuss fida adely may 10, 2004 70 how their efforts could be better coordinated and the local assets of the community better employed in pursuit of the mdgs. related to this issue of "how participatory can participatory be" are questions about the basic effectiveness of pra as an approach, again with particular concerns about the constraints under which development practitioner's work. in discussions with students, this has also been expressed as a question of whether the fruits of "successful" pra or other participatory processes can ever be scaled up. as one student put it: while the exercises seems to be instructive and stimulating in many ways, it is less clear how the outside facilitator would be able to use the experience to make concrete conclusions germane to the project design, implementation, impact and so on. this is perhaps a larger question that i have about pra. it is not difficult to imagine the value of pra for a project leader who is working in the field and who can be much more effective with a fuller and more informed picture of the local community. however, i wonder how qualitative insights and more nuanced understanding of a specific local milieu that can be gathered by pra facilitators can then be transformed into information that is actually used to guide design and inform project evaluation, especially in large organizations with numerous and dispersed decision makers. if pra exercises merely become the subject of a summary narrative report sent in from the field, i suspect that such reports will only be one among many sources of information used to make decisions, and may lose much of their special significance. (am, written reflection for ppmd course, fall 2003). conclusion "i have to believe that all this focus on participation is a good thing." each time i have taught the ppmd course or discussed participation in other development courses, some of the most interesting soul-searching discussions about "doing" development work emerged in discussing the weaknesses of pra and the challenges of doing participatory development more generally. when i say "soulsearching" i do not exaggerate. for students making a career change or taking on thousands of dollars in loans because they are committed to development as a cause, they want their classes to help them figure out how to do it well and how to do it in a way that is really participatory. students are troubled by the critiques we read of participatory development and of the development enterprise more generally, but they are committed to trying to address development challenges. thus, i have found it useful to share their insights here. i conclude with some reflections on the teaching of participatory development and working with students who want to be development practitioners. i begin with a general observation about the belief in the "power of participation" and the depths of this sentiment among students. as alluded to above, students believe that the focus on participatory development is an important and good trend in development. their commitment to participation in principle is sometimes so strong that participation is romanticized or idealized. thus, for example, there is sometimes a tendency to think that pra is the right approach to any project or a belief that incorporating "local voices" learning and teaching about participatory development: the practical and theoretical challenges current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 71 can redeem any project. the development practicum in our program proves to be an invaluable experience for exploring the real challenges and constraints to doing participatory development. the in-class role-plays begin to unpack such challenges as well, especially when there are others partaking in the same exercise who may have had more experience in actual development work before coming to the program. what has been striking through this reflection on the teaching of participatory development is the extent to which class role-plays and some written reflection help to elucidate issues which parallel prevailing critiques in the literature on pra and participatory development. such hands-on types of exercises have been very effective in identifying core issues for doing participatory development. also, much more so than in merely reading an article, the lessons about participatory development challenges are more actively experienced and as a result more fully understood and internalized. reading some of the relevant literature along side such exercises is a good strategy, but just as important is to facilitate discussion (debriefing sessions) and reflection on such activities. the quote that opens this section ("i have to believe that all this focus on participation is a good thing") conveys what is almost a sense of urgency from a student reacting to critiques of participatory development. frustrated with critiques of participatory development, she argued that "academics" seem to wait for each new development trend so they can critique it and write it off as another failed attempt to improve upon development. for students such as this one, who view themselves as development practitioners, it is vital to create opportunities for them to construct their own knowledge and critique of development. in such a way, they will become more critical and thoughtful practitioners themselves and hopefully contribute to the improvement of pra techniques, as well as participatory approaches more broadly. many of the students who come through comparative education or international education and development programs will move on to careers in development. as educators in such programs, we must struggle with the balance between teaching about the very real critiques of development, while providing students bound for development jobs with the critical skills needed to do this work and to do it better than it has been done by building on past lessons. participation has become a keystone of development and one with great potential to strengthen development efforts. however doing participatory development is wrought with many of the same challenges development continues to face. thus in teaching about participatory development (and in this case i have been speaking specifically about pra), we must point out these issues and also create opportunities for our students to learn about these challenges on their own and to struggle with ways to move forward. acknowledgements a special thanks to the students in my program and project management for development class over the last two years, to the students in my issue in development seminar this semester and to those students who made the time to meet with me individually to discuss some of these issues further. fida adely may 10, 2004 72 notes 1. for some students enrolled in our program development is a new field, but many of our students have had some development-related experience. 2. this course was initially developed by my colleague coralie bryant, the director of the economic and political development program at columbia university. she and i both taught this course last semester each of us taking one section and conversations with her throughout the past two years have been key to my reflections on participatory development and approaches to teaching pra. 3. i have been coordinating this workshop for four years now. i identify potential projects (with the help of colleagues and students), negotiate initial terms of projects, create student teams, and coordinate a team of faculty advisors, each of whom supervises two teams. in addition, i advise two teams each year. references chambers, r. (1994). origins and practice of participatory rural appraisal. world development 22 (7), 953-969. chambers, r. (1997). whose reality counts. bath, great britain: intermediate technologies publication. johnson, h, & wilson, g. (2000) biting the bullet: civil society, social learning and the transformation of local governance. world development, vol. 28 (11), 1891-1906. kapoor, i. (2002). the devil's in the theory: a critical assessment of robert chambers work on participatory development. third world quarterly, 23 (1), 101-117. michener, v. (1998). participatory approach: contradiction and co-option in burkina faso. world development, vol. 26 (12), 2105-2118. mosse, d. (1994). authority, gender and knowledge: theoretical reflections on the practice of participatory rural appraisal. development and change, 25, 497-526. selener, d., endara, n. & carvajal, j. (1999) participatory rural appraisal and planning workbook. quito: international institute for rural reconstruction © 2008 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 10(1/2): 32-40. from ngos to csos: social citizenship, civil society and “education for all” – an agenda for further research karen mundy ontario institute for studies in education university of toronto a decade ago, when cice published its first issue “are ngos overrated?” both academic debates and development policy discussions were focused on the expanding role played by ngos in the developing world. today the language has changed – and so too, in some ways, has practice. in this article, i want to look at the new turn to “civil society” in development discourse. in particular, i want to answer the question: what does civil society have to do with the achievement of education for all – particularly in poor countries where universal access to basic education has not been achieved? below, i look first at how civil society engagement is being constructed in the official policy discourse of development aid organizations, raising questions about the narrowness and limitations of this conceptualization. i then argue for using a “social citizenship” lens when thinking about civil society and its role in the achievement of education for all. throughout, i introduce examples from a recent study of civil society organizations (csos) and their interactions with internationally funded sector programs in education in four african countries: burkina faso, mali, kenya and tanzania (mundy et. al., 2007). education for all governance reforms: the core agenda over the past two decades, reforms to the way in which educational systems are managed and governed have been attempted across a large number of developing countries. these reforms typically draw upon an “ideal” governance agenda that includes decentralization, the creation of public-private partnerships, and a variety of efforts to enhance participation and local level oversight. the notion of engaging civil society is a central feature of this governance reform agenda. the governance reforms that occupy the greatest space in officially sponsored educational development programs and policies revolve around the call for greater local accountability mechanisms and decentralization of governance. the common sense view that emerged in the 1990s is typified in the 1990 jomtien declaration on education for all: partnerships at the community level…should be encouraged: they can help harmonize activities, utilize resources more effectively, and mobilize additional financial and human resources where necessary (wcefa secretariat, 1990, p. 58). more recently, this agenda has been incorporated by the world bank in its agenda for improving “short route accountability.” “short route” forms of accountability emphasize the power of client-citizens as the main form for political agency in the education sector. as summarized in documents like the world bank’s 2004 world development report making services work for the poor and the report of the millennium development project’s task force on education, key short route accountability reforms include: decentralization of educational management and financing; the involvement of parents in school based management; the provision of better information on current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 33 karen mundy school performance and student achievement to parents and communities; the introduction of school choice mechanisms (including demand-side mechanisms); and the expansion of ngo and public-private service provision to stimulate competition and efficiency among schools, as well as broader access. to get a sense of the scale of support for such reforms, one only need look at the world bank’s own lending portfolio, where a large majority of current projects in primary education include two reform goals: financial decentralization to local government (80%) and the introduction of school level management mechanisms (90%) (wb/ieg, 2006, p. 43). clearly it would be hard to find a single country receiving international support for efa where experiments with these governance reforms are not now in progress. in contrast to official donor interest in short-route accountability, long route accountability mechanisms – which we would recognize as comprising both the aggregation of interests at a national level and operation of formal democratic politics (elections, legislative oversight of policies) – are marginalized or viewed as relatively impotent to the achievement of efa. in official donor documents, politics at the national level is widely viewed as negative or tainted: national level collective action and even government itself are viewed as marred by elite capture; the state, its bureaucracy, and other collective actors (as for example, teachers unions) are viewed as essentially undemocratic and unresponsive to equality issues. as a recent world bank report concludes: “public funding cultivates a large bureaucratic machinery and strong interest groups whose lobbying could result in inertia” (world bank, 2006, p. 38). donor documents often, however, include a hortative call for greater engagement with “civil society.” such calls are typically either quite vague, or carefully circumscribed. thus reference to civil society often excludes or marginalizes teachers unions or presents them primarily as the “bad sort” of political agents, those involved in elite capture and blockage of educational reform (c.f. corrales, 1999; stein et al., 2006; grindle, 2004). there is rarely much elaboration of the actors that belong to nationally organized civil society or any discussion of conflicts or tensions among them. as an example, the fast track initiative documents advise consultation with civil society, listing only “civic or indigenous groups, ngos…” (efa/fti, 2005, p. 13).[1] sometimes private providers and business leaders are included as part of civil society – though without elaboration of their specific interests or “stake” in efa. furthermore, the national role for civil society is rarely supported by research evidence.[2] finally, it is important to note that much recent donor discourse on efa focuses on the idea of an international compact for achieving education for all. such a compact requires southern governments to develop a “sound” and “nationally owned” efa plan, while northern governments promise to provide long-term reliable finance (sperling, 2005; birdsall & vaishnav, 2005; un millennium task force, 2005; mundy, 2007). the notion of an international compact typically includes the idea that local level nongovernmental actors will “hold their own governments to account”. however, little consideration is given to how the local level accountability structures advocated by donors (ptas, school committees) might translate into the engagement of citizens and organized civil society in the ownership and oversight of national efa programmes. furthermore, calls for a global efa compact avoid the question of who and how international donors will be held accountable for their commitments. in sum, the overall “theory of action” for civil society that is set out in key official donor documents on educational development still focuses on using civil society for accountability and 34 fall 2007 / spring 2008 from ngos to csos service delivery purposes at the local level. while interest in engagement with national level civil society actors is increasingly seen as important to new donor-supported efa plans, there is little discussion of how local level citizen action either in the form of service provisions or through new accountability mechanisms like school councils, is linked to national and international civil society actors, capable of holding national governments and the international community to its efa commitments. education, governance and social citizenship in his famous work, t. h. marshall described the extension of free public education as part of a process through which democracies moved from the protection of civil and political rights towards the incorporation of social rights – creating a more extensive form of social democracy in which collective efforts were made to offset economic inequalities through redistributive measures (marshall, 1964). marshall used the term “social citizenship” to capture the new emphasis on social rights as distinct from civil and political rights. few would dispute marshall’s thesis that education became a fundamental (virtually taken-for-granted) entitlement and cornerstone of social citizenship in many industrialized democracies during the first half of the 20th century. nor would they disagree with the thesis set forth in the work of meyer, ramirez, boli and their students: that schooling itself developed normative cultural status at the level of the world polity or world system (in part through its promotion by international organizations) (meyer & boli, 1982). schooling came to be seen as one among a core of institutions that links citizen to state, by integrating the individual into collective aspirations for economic progress and social justice. because schooling became a right of social citizenship, it also emerged as an important arena for citizen’s to make rights claims. at the same time, however, as schooling became “taken for granted” as an institution within modern social democracies, its status as a site for citizen claims-making may have eroded. more recently, processes of globalization seem to have changed the nature of citizen claims-making, through the erosion of the nation-state’s control over domestic policies, and the relocation of some forms of decision-making to the transnational sphere (robertson, 2006, p.2). scholars who study world politics, however, have frequently argued the value of using a social citizenship lens to make sense of the potential for the democratization across local, national and transnational scales of governance (held, 2005; fraser, 2005; scholte, 2005). in addition, the theories of action increasingly being mobilized by transnational civil society actors focus explicitly on the efficacy of linking up citizens’ demands for fundamental rights across national boundaries (cornwall & nyamu-musembi, 2005). i would like to argue that it is against this standard -of collective action in support of social citizenship -that we should evaluate the work of civil society actors – ngos, teachers unions, parents associations, faith-based organizations and others, as an important component (in michael edwards words) of a “commitment to equal citizenship and democratic self-government” (edwards, 2004, p. 96). conceptualizing civil society in the efa arena through a social citizenship lens forces us to think about the right to education as a right of citizenship, and to begin to imagine how the interface of local, national and global forms of citizen claims-making can move us towards the realization of educational and other human rights. it moves us beyond the official discourse for educational governance reform, which has been too heavily focused on the construction of a purely localnational accountability politics in education. current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 35 karen mundy in what follows, i explore how a critical social citizenship lens, applied at three scales of governance, can help us to answer the question: are csos (including ngos) overrated as agents in the achievement of education for all? i. a social citizenship lens at the community-school interface most of us feel an instinctive affinity with the notion that local citizens and their voices ought to matter in the shaping of educational services. we also know that a wide range of “democratic decentralization” experiments is underway in developing country contexts. for example, in our recent field research in africa we found the following: widespread use of direct user committees (primarily in the form of “school management committees”); devolution of system oversight to elected local authorities; a myriad of crosscutting experiments in citizen engagement in education through “social funds” or funds placed at the discretion of individual parliamentarians; and pilot projects focused on the creation of community “school report cards” (mundy et. al., 2007). a substantial body of mainly world bank funded research supports such experiments, by offering convincing examples of cases in which local level citizen voice improves the quality of educational services. however, an equally large body of research argues against such policies – for many of the reasons noted in the section on democratic decentralization experiments above. thus, for example, there is often tension or lack of clarity about how different decentralization experiments map onto one another, with the relationships between local elected authorities and school committees particularly unclear (chapman et. al., 2002; manor, 2004; mundy et. al., 2007). administrative challenges at the local level often lead to the creation of highly scripted forms of participation – as for example in our africa study where school councils were told how many pencils and erasers to buy (mukundan, 2003; gershberg, 1999; bray 2003; cadell, 2005). efforts to introduce private providers or to mobilize local level contributions to schools operate at cross purposes to the message of citizenship entitlement sent out by national promises of “free” education (rose, 2006). researchers also find that these reforms re-produce intra-community as well as inter-community inequality, limiting the redistributive scope of central government (bray, 1999; pryor, 2005; dyer & rose, 2005). what seems to be missing, across all of these studies, is a sustained focus on the social citizenship effects of these experiments in democratic decentralization. we should be asking not only whether experiments in local level participation and accountability produce more effective services, but also, whether they lead to new capacity and effectiveness in citizen-led claims-making are these capacities equally distributed? do they scale up at the national level in the sense of consolidation of formal democratic polities? in what ways can such capacities be better supported? as an example, in our african study, we found that reforms decentralizing school finance and administration do not seem to create contexts within which parents are more able to make claims for better or alternative educational service to their national governments. furthermore, ngos and other formally organized civil society actors active in the education sector rarely work with local communities to communicate their demands to formal parliamentary structures or the media. ii. a social citizenship lens on the interface between “civil society” and the national polity in a wave of recent research, political scientists have shown convincingly that a movement towards free multiparty democracy reinforces promises of universal access to basic education, and to increased spending for this purpose, at least in africa and latin america (stasavage, 2004, 2005; brown, 1999, 2000; brown & hunter 2004; nelson, 2006). to some degree, formal democracy 36 fall 2007 / spring 2008 from ngos to csos seems to lock governments into greater spending on the needs of the median voter, for whom entitlement to basic education remains an extremely important component of citizenship. public satisfaction with basic social service contributes mightily to opinions about democracy itself (bratton, 2007). we also know that even across formal democracies, educational entitlements are surprisingly varied both in terms of extensiveness and structure. the literature on social citizenship tells us that the character of the relationship between civil society and the state, and the way in which popular voice has been institutionalized in forms of collective agency vis-à-vis the state, may be the defining factors in such variation. we thus need much more research, either single case or cross-national research, on the changing nature of state-civil society relationships and its implication for the achievement of social and procedural democracy within the education sector in the developing world. while some studies of this type exist, they have largely focused on how governments can manage traditional interest groups, with a particular emphasis on teachers unions (grindle, 2004; nelson, 2006; gershberg, 2004; lowdan, 2004; corrales, 1999). there has also been a recent wave of studies that map existing cso actors and their relationships to donors and governments (mundy et. al., 2007; dofturi & takala, 2005; murphy, 2005; mia, 2004; lexow, 2003; miller grandvaux et. al., 2002; commonwealth education fund, 2007). what seems to be needed are more studies that focus explicitly on how to achieve greater direct voice for citizens in education, and how popular forms of collective agency can enhance reform processes at the national level in the manner suggested in the historical literature on social citizenship. a social citizenship lens would guide us to look more carefully at the limits and possibilities for national level collective action in education as well as across other social citizenship arenas, paying special attention to the opportunity for political alliances and institutional reforms that can amplify the voice of the median (poor) citizen at the national level. ideally such research would be combined with research at the community-school interface, so that we can better understand how the political architecture for social citizenship at the national level conditions the effectiveness of democratic decentralization reforms in a variety of developing country contexts. though far from comprehensive, our africa study may suggest a starting point for his type of research. in it, we suggested just how important collective action by civil society organizations is to the popular struggle for educational rights––and how often csos fail to coordinate their work, have limited ability to engage in policy dialogue, and are sidelined or co-opted by governments and donors (mundy et. al. 2007). while civil society actors have gained an important seat at the national policy table in the countries we studied, from a social citizenship perspective we can see that csos often have no formal strategy for engaging directly with citizens or with elected officials in a sustained or cumulative manner; nor is it clear how they link to broader social movement politics in their given countries and whether they authentically represent popular voices in the policy process. iii. the transnational efa interface from a social citizenship perspective it is especially difficult to translate existing research on the formation of social citizenship regimes at the national scale into a workable agenda for studying governance at the global scale. the interface among international actors (both state and non-state) and between these actors and national level actors is difficult to conceptualize using a social citizenship lens, precisely because there is neither a global state nor any real movement towards the construction of a state-like current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 37 karen mundy authority system at the world level. instead, globalization has created a hybrid system in which sovereign states (and the myriad of international organizations they have created) compete with a range of non-state agents to influence what are still primarily domestic guarantees of citizenship (robertson, 2006; scholte, 2005). claims-making for social rights in this context is understandably diffuse, often simultaneously operating across many levels. a number of analytic studies have tried to capture the process through which citizen-led claimsmaking for efa operate at the transnational level. one 2005 case study suggests that global level civil society efa efforts have been “captured” by key international organizations, like the world bank; and that national level cso efforts are often led and shaped by international csos (murphy, l., 2005; murphy, j., 2005). clearly, these are trends that do not fit “normatively” within the social citizenship agenda. on the other hand, a number of studies have praised international level civil society actors for gaining a seat at the international efa policy table (as for example, through seats at world assemblies and the fast track initiative). in this instance, transnational civil society actors have helped to generate a new mode of citizen claims-making which links northern citizens (holding their governments accountable) to the claims-making efforts of southern citizens, both to their own governments and the international community (mundy, 2007, mundy & murphy, 2001). the achievement of a universal right to education is, at least in aspirational terms, likely to remain a key issue in any effort to build a form of global social citizenship. it makes sense to question global-level efa efforts in the same way we might interrogate a national regime for social citizenship: in normative terms, to see how far efa efforts presently or potentially support procedural and social equality necessary to the construction of a global democratic polity (held, 2005); and in analytical terms, to throw a spotlight on the character of collective action and the potential for alliances that support the expression of popular claims-making at a global scale. conclusion in this paper i have suggested that, rather than asking whether ngos are overrated, scholars in comparative education should switch their attention to a different question: what does civil society have to do with the achievement of education for all–– particularly in poor countries where universal access to basic education has not been achieved? most official donor discourse on civil society continues to support civil society participation for reasons of instrumental efficiency: as a way of enhancing educational service delivery or ensuring accountability for funding at the local level. recently donors have also welcomed civil society participation in national policy level dialogue, but this invitation is quite limited and de-linked from the mechanisms for local level civil society participation being supported by donors. as a corrective, i have suggested that a “social citizenship lens” can help us to evaluate and interrogate the contributions made by civil society to “education for all”. a social citizenship lens prompts us to ask how far civil society engagement in efa activities supports the procedural engagement of citizens (“voice”) and their social equality (conceptualized as a right of citizenship). furthermore, i have argued that we need to conceptualize social citizenship rights and citizenled claims-making as processes that increasingly play out across local, national and international levels. by studying how opportunities for social citizenship claims at local, national and global levels are facilitated by organized civil society, we can move beyond the official donor discourses to better assess both the character and potential for collective action and popular claims-making at a global scale. 38 fall 2007 / spring 2008 from ngos to csos notes [1]. another fast track document, however, does note: “annual sector reviews are conducted by the recipient country and its donor partners in a spirit of peer reviewing and learning; 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(2006). two kinds of education politics. in e. stein, m. tomassi, k. echebarria, e. lora, & m. payne (eds.), the politics of policies: economic and social progress in latin america, 2006 report (pp. 221-241). inter-american development bank and david rockefeller center for latin american studies, harvard university. downloaded june 1 2007, from http:// www.iadb.org/res/ipes/2006/chapter10.cfm. swift, d. (2000). civil society and the sector wide approach to education reform. paper presented to the international working group on education meeting in florence, june 14-16, 2000. un millenium project. (2005). toward universal primary education: investments, incentives and institutions. task force on education and gender equality report. london: earthscan. accessed on january 10, 2005 from http://www.unmillenniumproject.org. world bank (2004). world development report: making services work for the poor. washington, d.c.: world bank. world bank. (2006). world development report: equity and development. washington d.c.: world bank. world bank / independent evaluation group (2006). from schooling to access to learning outcomes: an unfinished agenda an evaluation of world bank support to primary education. washington d.c.: world bank. editorial introduction minimum standards for education in emergencies, chronic crises, and early reconstruction: issues and debates on quality, impact, and accountability mathangi subramanian [1] teachers college, columbia university like many of my colleagues whose time in the classroom coincided with the passage of no child left behind (nclb), my teaching career was haunted and defined by the specter of standardized test scores. i spent the first six months of every school year streamlining my lessons to incorporate only the material that appeared in the state standards, and was therefore likely to appear on the states tests. i spent the final three months of every school year, after testing was over, in trepidation about the future of my students and my career. by the time i left the classroom, i considered “standards” synonymous with “oppression,” an opinion shared by many researchers, educators, and policy analysts who claim that nclb’s emphasis on mandated content and testing not only forces schools to focus on subject matter that may be irrelevant to their students’ future well-being, but also because it systematically discriminates against low-income communities of color, particularly those that are comprised of non-native english speakers (darling-hammond, 2007; fine, 2003; noddings, 2005). ironically, the standards movement in the united states developed in response to a series of national reports that revealed the public school system’s failure to provide its poorest students with a basic education (wenglinsky, 2005). by specifying the content that should be taught in every grade level, the authors of the first national standards sought to both encourage educators to have high expectations for their students, and to hold them accountable for what happened in their classrooms. furthermore, these original authors opposed standardized testing in favor of flexible, authentic assessments that could (and should) be adapted to diverse learning environments. in its purest form, then, the american standards movement seeks to enforce article 26 of the universal declaration of human rights, which states that every human being is entitled to a free education, at least through elementary school (united nations, 1948), a right that the united states has yet to fulfill for all of its children. the u.s. is not alone in its struggle to uphold children’s right to a basic education. every day, across the world, committed educators in industrialized and developing nations face countless challenges in creating school systems that effectively serve all of their citizens. while obstacles abound in times of normalcy, they increase astronomically when unforeseen circumstances plunge entire nations or regions into emergency situations. the united nations defines “complex emergencies” as “crises requiring a system-wide response” (kagawa, 2005, p. 488). most often, nations experience complex emergencies as a result of natural disasters or war. in the past five years, large and diverse populations have experienced severe natural disasters. these disasters include a tsunami affecting south and east asian nations in 2004, flooding as a result of hurricane katrina affecting the american gulf coast in 2005, a major earthquake affecting pakistan in 2006, and flooding as a result of cyclone yemyin and other storms affecting the south asian subcontinent in 2007. in each of these unfortunately events, inadequate and unreliable infrastructure and environmental degradation resulting from poorly regulated © 2007 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 9(2): 3-5. 4 summer 2007 economic development exacerbated damage and lengthened the time needed for recovery. these circumstances are typical of developing nations as well as impoverished regions of industrialized nations (kagawa, 2005). children in natural disasters experience emotional trauma when they lose relatives and friends to death or separation and physical trauma when they are unable to access necessities such as food, shelter, clean water, and health care. in natural disasters, schools not only serve as central locations for distributing aide and finding lost family members, but also as places where routine activities provide a much needed sense of normalcy in the face of chaos. most modern wars are fought between racial, ethnic, or religious groups. of the 27 violent conflicts in the world in 1997, all but one of them was a civil war (kagawa, 2005). modern warfare is particularly hard on children, who are recruited as child soldiers in unprecedented numbers, targeted as possible civilian casualties, and are geographically displaced with or without their families. although education is always a political act, it is particularly so when educators work with children who have learned to fear and hate others. education in wartime can be a grounding influence on children who are denied feelings of safety and security often associated with childhood. unfortunately, this is not always the case: as recent violence in afghanistan illustrates, for many youth, the simple act of attending school can be life threatening (biswas, 2007). like the first standards in the united states, the inter-agency network for emergency education (inee) minimum standards were developed to fix a failing system – only this time, the system was a region, a nation, or a government suffering through a complex emergency. the inee web site calls education “life-saving and life-sustaining,” crediting it with creating spaces where children can feel physically safe, establishing routines and distractions that improve children’s mental health, and instilling hope in the face of chaos and destruction (inee, 2007). fundamental to these reasons is the premise that education both creates and requires order. the articles in this issue address the many ways in which the standards have been implemented, as well as the historical and social circumstances that shaped and determined their purpose and content. taken together, they describe the variety of ways in which we think about education in both ordinary and extraordinary times. in education in emergencies: standards for human rights and development, marina andina conducts a quantitative and qualitative analysis of human rights and human capital discourse in planning documents for the minimum standards as well as the minimum standards themselves. her analysis places the standards in historical context, and explores how the documents’ language reflects not only our beliefs about education, but also humans’ fundamental need for order and control. in inee minimum standards: a tool for education quality assessment in afghan refugee schools in pakistan, katayon qahir and jackie kirk describe how the minimum standards have been used as an assessment tool in schools in afghan refugee camps in pakistan’s north west province. the authors describe how the standards fare in a unique physical and cultural context, and provide invaluable scholarly documentation of their use on the ground. in negotiating change: participatory curriculum design in emergencies, marian hodgkin reminds us that curriculum is never politically neutral, a fact that becomes especially salient in areas of ethnic, racial, or religious conflict. hodgkin describes how curricula created haphazardly during an emergency situation can linger in a country for years, and how this phenomenon necessitates the creation of participatory systems for efficiently developing curriculum regardless editorial introduction current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 5 of the state of the nation in which it is to be used. furthermore, hodgkin reminds us that while curriculum is often used as a tool for war, if it is created collaboratively, it can also be used as a tool for peace. in an historical perspective on coordinating education post-conflict: biopolitics, governing at a distance, and states of exception, noah sobe contrasts an historical version of the minimum standards with a document that an “inter-agency network” of peace churches designed for relief workers in 1944. through his exploration of the genesis of these documents, sobe examines the ways in which we think of education, emergencies, and normalcy. sobe’s work reminds us of the often overlooked but pivotal role of education on the political and social workings of every society. in both its national and international forms, the standards movement attempts to address two questions that shape this issue of cice: first, how can we use human resources to create order in the face of disorder; and second, what is the fundamental purpose of education in normal and non-normal times. by creating guidelines for educational content and pedagogical practices, standards attempt to bring uniformity to unwieldy educational systems across the globe. by outlining what children need to learn at what age, standards take a political stance, defining what it means to be a productive citizen of a nation or people. when we develop and enforce standards in a failing school, a conflict-ridden nation, or an area of physical devastation, we display our faith in the power of education to promote normalcy, economic and technological progress, and peace. it remains to be seen whether the minimum standards, like those created by nclb, will be criticized or praised, embraced or discarded, empowering or oppressive. notes [1]. special thanks to cambria dodd russell and tiffany dejaynes for their feedback on earlier drafts. references bisaws, s. (june 20, 2007). afghan schools try to make a new start. bbc south asia. retrieved august 9, 2007 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6768801.stm. darling-hammond, l. (2007). evaluating “no child left behind.” the nation. retrieved august 8, 2007 from http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/darling-hammond. fine, m., r. jaffe-walter, p. pedraza, v. futch. (2007). swimming: on oxygen, resistance, and possibility for immigrant youth under siege. anthropology and education quarterly, 38(1):76-96. inee. (2007). inter-agency network for education in emergencies. retrieved august 7, 2007 from http://www.ineesite.org/. noddings, n. (2005). what does it mean to educate the whole child? educational leadership, 63(1): 8-13. united nations. (1948). universal declaration of human rights. retrieved august 4, 2007 from http://www.un.org/overview/rights.html. wenglinsky, h. (2005). using technology wisely: the keys to success in schools. new york: teachers college press. mathangi subramanian inee minimum standards: a tool for education quality assessment in afghan refugee schools in pakistan katayon qahir, female education program, the international rescue committee (irc), pakistan with jackie kirk [1] , child & youth protection and development unit, irc, new york abstract this article details a pilot minimum standards assessment in afghan refugee schools supported by the international rescue committee’s female education program in the north west frontier province of pakistan. a set of specifically selected, contextualized indicators, based on the global inee minimum standards, served as a tool for teachers and school administrators to look holistically at the quality of education in their schools and as a stimulus for developing actions to further improve the quality of learning for afghan refugee children in pakistan. 1. introduction the international rescue committee (irc) has a long history of supporting afghan refugees in pakistan. irc’s female education program (fep) improves the quality of life for conflictaffected afghan populations living in pakistan, especially girls and women, by providing access to effective and relevant educational services. in line with the recognized good practices of education in emergency contexts and refugee education (international institute for educational planning-unesco, 2006; inee, 2004; sinclair, 2002; sommers, 2001; for example), fep seeks to maintain access to basic education, particularly for girls, while at the same time supporting students’ and teachers’ repatriation and subsequent reintegration into schools inside afghanistan, thereby harmonizing refugee education in pakistan with the reconstruction of education inside afghanistan. furthermore, irc/fep seeks to leverage key tools, methodologies, and strategies developed in the refugee setting in pakistan as the refugees begin to repatriate to afghanistan (irc-fep, 2007). irc’s female education program, which has been running since 1992, currently supports 22 schools, for a total of 13000 refugee students and 500 teachers in pakistan’s north west frontier province (nwfp): 65% of students and 72% of teachers are girls and women (irc-fep, 2007a). these primary and secondary schools vary in size and structure. they are in camp settings and urban locations in and around peshawar city. some are simple, purpose-built structures in the camps, while others are converted residential premises. in a context of ongoing insecurities, political uncertainty for afghan refugees, dwindling donor attention and resources for refugee education, and a history of tribalism, patriarchy and repression of girls and women, fep faces multiple challenges in providing quality education and training for women and girls. comprehensive teacher training, together with the full accreditation of students’ learning by the ministry of education in afghanistan, are key successes of the program. training and professional development for teachers is designed to address the strategic needs of girl students (for quality teaching in the classroom) and women teachers (for professional experience, income and community status). © 2007 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 9(2): 20-32. current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 21 in 2004, fep school and office staff and community members participated in consultations to develop the global minimum standards for education in emergencies, chronic crises and early reconstruction. since their launch, fep staff members have received additional training on the minimum standards and have been planning ways of using them at the school level to engage school community members in self-assessment and quality development. in a recent exercise, fep used the standards as a tool to collaboratively review and assess the quality of education provision from the perspectives of the school community in fep-upported schools, to identify gaps and make suggestions for further improvements. this process complements the ongoing project monitoring and evaluation activities, which are more specifically tied to donor project indicators and activities. furthermore, they do not necessarily engage the teachers, school administrators, and fep staff in holistic reflection on the entire education program, or on the progress made over time. in the context of afghanistan’s history of oppression of women, gender is a critical element of all fep programming, which has a strong focus on providing quality education for girls and on capacity building for women teachers, trainers and administrators. although there are some explicitly gender-focused indicators, gender is a crosscutting theme through the minimum standards: as the examples below illustrate, gender issues were at the forefront throughout the fep minimum standards assessment process. this article first describes the self-assessment process undertaken in fep-supported schools and then documents some of the findings from the pilot initiative. it is written from the perspective of fep office-based staff who facilitated a self-assessment process for the teachers and school administrators in fep-supported schools and who will support the schools in their follow up. the examples and opinions presented in the text come from the assessment discussions that took place in the schools, with a focus on the indicators which stimulated the most interesting responses at the school level. the article ends with reflections on lessons learned from the process and provides recommendations for other agencies and organizations conducting a similar review. 2. the assessment process fep began by contextualizing the inee global standards to the fep realities, identifying the most relevant standards and tailoring these to develop fep-specific indicators. fep’s monitoring & evaluation (m&e) team led this contextualization and indicator selection process, which involved all the resource trainers. in order to engage fully with the dari-speaking afghan teachers and administrators, who speak little or no english, the standards and indicators first had to be translated into dari language, a challenging process. the m&e team doing the translation made efforts to include some fep-schools-related examples to clarify some unfamiliar terms (for example ‘education committee’), but even for them, there were very technical and new terms and concepts that required further external clarification. a total of 25 indicators across the different categories and standards were selected as being the most relevant to the fep school-level setting: the emergency phase indicators were not included in the field assessment, nor were those related to sector coordination. rather, the most pertinent indicators were those in the categories of access and learning environment, teaching and learning, and teachers and other education personnel. some of the indicators were relevant as written, while others were adapted slightly (see appendix 1 for list of selected indicators). after selection and contextualization of indicators, a set of guiding questions was developed to facilitate a self-assessment process in each of the four pilot schools. the m&e team developed questions as a means to elicit input from teachers, principals and headmasters on the content of each of the selected indicators, and to facilitate a self-assessment process for the teachers and katayon qahir with jackie kirk 22 summer 2007 administrators in each school. the guiding questions maintained consistency of approach by the fep team and enabled the staff to draw out different factors relevant to each indicator. along with the guiding questions, each of the fep facilitators had as reference a set of minimum standards definitions. the fep staff facilitated the assessment process for teachers and administrators. each assessment took approximately five hours in each school during which teachers and administrators in the fep schools engaged in a comprehensive, rigorous discussion involving both critical reflection and taking pride in progress made. after the assessments were completed, the fep m&e team met to reflect on the process, to share what they learned, and to discuss plans for future school support. below are the key findings of the assessment, organized according to the minimum standards categories, with the fep-contextualized indicators that seemed to resonate most at the school level and to stimulate the most interesting discussions. this article discusses information shared, examples given, and suggestions made by participants in the assessment sessions in the four pilot schools. 3. self-assessment outcomes 3. 1 minimum standards category: community participation indicator: children and youth are involved in the development and implementation of education activities. the active participation of students in activities and decisions affecting their lives is a key commitment of the fep program and one which is challenging to implement in a context in which authority and decision-making power usually lies with elders, and especially male elders. assessing achievements using this indicator was therefore considered a priority. participants in the assessment process in each school asserted that students’ participation in educational activities has included: students undertaking different activities as active members of school management committees (smcs), for example, male students raising community awareness about the importance of education and encouraging parents to send their girls to school; male students being involved in security patrols around the school to make sure that the younger students are safe when going to school and back home; all students participating in class competitions in health and hygiene-related activities and in sports competitions, including although to a lesser extent due to cultural barriers – girls; and all students participating in making class rules in the beginning of each academic year. whilst an opportunity to celebrate some of the achievements of the teachers and the progress made in creating student-centred schools, and to promote student-centered teaching and learning, the assessment also pushed stakeholders to acknowledge that students are not really involved in school administration and management and have no opportunities to make suggestions outside of the classroom. this is because the school principals feel that while the school administration members are trained specifically for the roles and responsibilities of school administration and management, students are not, and this lack of knowledge and experience in administrative tasks precludes student involvement in school improvement. child rights have not been integrated into the curriculum so far, and were only explicitly addressed through peace education training for teachers from 1999-2001 provided by a local ngo. after discussion of the full meaning and implications of the standards and the importance of giving inee minimum standards current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 23 learners rights to make suggestions for improvement of their own education and learning, the teachers in the four schools resolved to take steps to increase student participation: they asserted their belief that peace and child rights education is particularly important now that afghanistan is in a reconstruction phase. indicator: the community education committee holds public meetings to conduct social audits of education activities and their budgets. indicator: all stakeholders, including marginalized groups, community education committees, national and local education officials, teachers and learners, are included in evaluation activities these indicators, regarding the engagement of the community in education, are especially important for the fep in the current context of repatriation to afghanistan and the need to ensure sustainability of education in locations where the formal system may be very weak. none of the fep-supported schools currently have a formal education committee. small committees of teachers, students, and a few other community members in each school include cultural, financial, environment, discipline, health, competitions groups and the parent teacher association (pta). however, after assessing the indicators and their importance, the school administrators are now planning to form formal education committees involving more community members and parents to promote relationships with influential religious leaders and elders and to ensure school sustainability. the challenges of women’s participation in such committees were also discussed. for example, in one camp in which fep supports a school, the community has a shora e aali (community high council) where the school principal discusses school-related issues; the council consists of religious leaders and other influential elders but does not include women. teachers and administrators at well-established fep-supported schools are used to a certain routine and find it difficult to move away from traditional teaching practices and from school management and governance practices that have become established over time. in their prior experience of education, such concepts have not been prioritized, and until now community participation has been considered mostly in terms of financial support. although some participants found it difficult to accept greater involvement of community members in educational activities and school related matters, others were impressed by the minimum standards’ idea of an education committee, and identified various activities for such committees beyond just fund-raising. more challenging, however, was the idea of involving community members in the management of school finances, because to date, according to fep monitoring reports from the schools, there are no community members on any school financial committees, which are usually comprised of only a small number of teachers and headteachers. indicator: training and capacity-building opportunities exist for community members, including children and youth, to manage education activities. according to the minimum standards, communities may require training to meaningfully participate in educational activities . fep-supported schools have conducted training on social organization, community mobilization, and communication to a few of their school community members involved with different committees. however, participants in the assessment processes acknowledged that they had not conducted any other trainings or sessions to enhance community participation in educational processes. they started to discuss the possibility of providing more katayon qahir with jackie kirk 24 summer 2007 training in, for example, community participation, administrative & management, human rights, and children’s rights. although teachers and administrators first look to fep to conduct this training for them, they also committed to looking for other sources like local training centers to provide initial training for trainers. at the same time, though, schools were uncertain if they could manage to train larger and different community groups or invite them to regular meetings on school-related issues because of work schedules, especially the work schedules of those seeking income outside the home. for example, one of the school principals said “we have not worked with a lot of community members so far, so we are not sure if a large number of community members would agree to come to a community participation training if we plan one for them…. a large number of our students come from poor families, so even when we invite parents to attend pta meetings, some of them do not come saying that they have jobs to do to for income. so mostly this is why community members have little or no involvement in school activities.” as highlighted in the inee minimum standards, community ownership of and participation in their children’s education is a key factor in ensuring sustainability. to encourage this type of engagement, community members need to be involved in different activities and decisionmaking at the school. it has to be acknowledged, however, that working in such ways, and reaching out to communities, may require a considerable shift in the mindsets of teachers and school administrators, who are used to operating without such community involvement. this is particularly true with staff in fep-supported schools that are used to a far less inclusive model of school governance and management. at the design stage of the fep program in 1991, community members and school administrators were involved in an initial needs assessment. in further discussion of community participation, however, teachers highlighted how, although parents are informally involved in assessment of schools through their personal evaluation of their children’s education and by attending some meetings, parents or other community members do not visit schools during class time, nor do they share ideas about any changes they want to see in teachers’ performance. through the assessment process, participants in the pilot schools decided that they should include such activities in the terms of reference for the future education committee. fep staff members pay regular supervision and monitoring visits to support teacher development. school headteachers also observe teachers’ performance, however, not in a regular or systematic manner. moreover, students are not directly given a chance to evaluate the educational activities in their schools. fep staff members understand that in pakistani and afghan contexts, parents’ involvement in their children’s education through, for example, paying visits to school, can help increase parental trust in schools and therefore help to ensure children stay in school. parental involvement in and understanding of educational activities can also contribute to improvements in students’ performance. as highlighted in the minimum standards, as direct beneficiaries of educational activities, students’ active involvement in monitoring and evaluation can be very positive in terms of bringing their perspectives to bear on decisions being made as well as ensuring that they feel their views on how they can learn better and on what positive changes can be made are respected. the assessment discussions around these issues highlighted the need for fep school administrators to conduct regular monitoring and evaluation activities, and also to include parents and students in such activities. additionally, during discussions of wider involvement in education evaluation and decisionmaking, teachers requested increased opportunities to give their ideas to their schools’ administration for the development and improvement of education. the headteachers and inee minimum standards current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 25 principals seemed happy to consider ways to implement this suggestion; however, there might be some challenges in creating this change in the administrative system, and fep has to be prepared to support the process. headteachers and principals are trained in school management and administrative tasks, and teachers trained in pedagogy and subject content may not be considered as capable of being involved in overall educational and management activities. fep therefore plans to conduct sessions for principals encouraging them to involve teachers in all aspects of school development and improvement and may also develop training for teachers on leadership and school-level advocacy and engagement. 3.2 minimum standards category: access and learning environment 3.2.1 protection and wellbeing indicator: teachers and other education personnel are provided with the skills to give psychosocial support to promote learners’ emotional well-being. indicator: curricula address the psychosocial well-being needs of teachers and learners in order for them to be better able to cope with life during and after the emergency. to date, many fep teachers have benefited from the irc’s psychosocial training, which is especially designed to train teachers to teach war-affected children and to help them cope with their psychosocial issues. they are supported in the classroom level by the fep trainers. in 2003, fep developed a training manual specifically on psychosocial well-being that has subsequently been shared widely with and used by different programs in pakistan, afghanistan and irc kenya. rather than following a specific psychosocial curriculum, teachers are encouraged to be constantly attentive to the well-being of their students and to integrate activities which provide psychosocial support into different subject areas. all teachers have also been explicitly trained on ‘avoiding corporal punishment’, and the teachers’ and headteachers’ perspectives on the impacts of this recent training were discussed at length during the minimum standards assessments. although there is no concrete, comparable preand post-training data available, it was acknowledged by the participants that although corporal punishment and other types of demeaning punishments have been reduced, it remains an issue that requires more attention in the future from the fep technical support staff as well as from the school administration. teachers described how, despite the trainings, sometimes even the best trained teachers find it difficult to handle students’ mistakes and bad behavior. fep is planning to revise and re-conduct the corporal punishment training for all school personnel and will be working with the school administrators to ensure school-level follow up. 3.3 minimum standards category: teaching and learning indicator: sufficient teaching and learning materials are provided, as needed, in a timely manner to support relevant education activities. preference is given to locally available materials for sustainability indicator: training, including follow-up monitoring, encourages the teacher to be a facilitator in the learning environment, promotes participatory methods of teaching, and demonstrates the use of teaching aids. katayon qahir with jackie kirk 26 summer 2007 because of fep’s focus on teacher training and professional development and the fep team’s experience in teacher education curriculum development and delivery, indicators related to teacher training were also prioritized for school level discussion. for many years, fep has been purchasing and providing schools with teaching aids such as world maps, alphabet letters, charts, stationary, and flip-charts each academic year. in pedagogy trainings, teachers learn how to use locally available materials as teaching aids. consequently, now such teaching aides, both commercial and homemade, are widely used in all fep-supported afghan refugee schools. teachers asserted that students, community members and parents also participate in the provision of local materials. for example, in science lessons, students make models of machines such as fans and atoms using local materials, and geography teachers work with students to make models of islands and volcanoes. such examples, highlighted by the teachers and principals in the assessment discussions, are validated by evidence from regular monthly monitoring visits by fep trainers and m&e persons and during the celebrations of science day that they attend annually in the schools. the assessment discussions highlighted the importance of the appropriateness of the teaching aids to the communities’ culture and norms. for example, teachers prefer to use pictures of girls with head covers (chadar), and of familiar places like mosques, schools, or simple houses. when performing puppet shows for primary grades, teachers present puppets in local clothing styles. fep conducts teacher trainings using participatory methods which teachers can more easily apply in class once they have experienced these methods themselves. on a monthly basis, fep trainers pay supervisory visits to schools to help teachers properly utilize the skills they learn in the seminars and to ensure that active learning is taking place in all classes. during the minimum standards assessment, it was discussed that during the supervisory visits, it is observed that the teachers do no respond uniformly to training. for example, some teachers still do not apply some teaching methods effectively: some still do not have well written lesson plans or do not utilize teaching aids effectively. such teachers receive constructive feedback from fep trainers, have the opportunity to share their concerns or ideas, and are then observed the following month. teachers usually appreciate the training and supervision, but for a few, there is limited classroom-level change. trainers sometimes face participants who have much experience and knowledge in their specific field of teaching and are unwilling to accept updates regarding the subject or teaching skills and methods. fep trainers recognize that changes in beliefs and actions happen gradually. hence, they try to show patience and respect to teachers and always prepare for questions or disagreements. they have developed ways to work with resistance by, for example, sharing the rationale behind any new discoveries/information with the training participants, and discussing the positive and negative sides of old teaching methods or familiar activities with concrete and clear examples. as highlighted in the minimum standards, and as is particularly important in the afghan communities with which fep works, methods and activities used in schools must respect communities’ traditions and sensitivities. an example provided by an fep resource trainer in the assessment discussions was that in the more conservative camps, puppet shows were at first not accepted because teachers believed that puppets are not allowed in islam, so the session on puppets was initially excluded from the pedagogy seminar. experiences in the fep schools have shown that subjects such as health education for primary grades are more effectively taught through the use of puppets and similar teaching aids which make the sometimes abstract concepts easier for students to grasp. because the fep trainers felt committed to the value of teachers working with puppets, they conducted meetings and discussions with headteachers and teachers and, after inee minimum standards current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 27 much discussion, teachers finally understood the positive aspects of the session and accepted that puppets are allowed in islam outside of worship. indicator: parents and community leaders understand and accept the learning content and teaching methods used. discussion of this indicator – linked to discussions described earlier on parents’ role in the schools – was very thought-provoking, engaging the assessment participants in considering roles and responsibilities of parents in the school that had never been discussed previously. it was agreed that so far, parents have accepted the educational content and teaching methods in the fepsupported schools, as the students take their textbooks home and for some students at least parents (especially in the city schools where the education levels of fathers is relatively good) are directly involved in their children’s learning, assisting them at home. indeed the fep-supported schools are well-known and respected amongst the refugee community. the curriculum used in schools is approved and used by the ministry of education inside afghanistan, a fact that is important to families. students’ parents also attend pta meetings where they share concerns regarding their children’s education. however, parents and community members do not visit schools or monitor classes during class time. teachers and school administrators welcomed the idea of receiving monitoring visits from students’ parents and are now planning to follow up on this, especially through the formation of education committees. indicator: assessment and evaluation methods are considered fair, reliable and non-threatening to the learner. apart from the ongoing, informal assessment of students’ learning conducted by the teachers in their own classes, more formal examinations are administered in all fep-supported schools according to the guidelines received from the ministry of education in afghanistan, through the afghan consulate education sector in peshawar. in pedagogy seminars teachers are trained on the provision of a safe and protective atmosphere during examinations. opinions shared during the assessment process were that, for the most part, teachers establish appropriate examination conditions: students are not preferred or discriminated against, as with nepotism for example. all are treated equally. again, these sentiments were corroborated by evidence from the monthly monitoring visits of schools by fep trainers. in-depth discussion of this indicator, however, revealed that in the two urban schools teachers sometimes react harshly to weak students during examinations. for example, they get angry when students request extra time or if they ask a lot of questions. once, one of the teachers in a city school asked a student for a gift in return for good marks. hence, principals and headteachers closely monitor the examination process in each class to ensure that students are not subjected to any threats or pressure. they also check the examination questions a week before the examination to make sure questions are relevant and appropriate for each particular class. there are clearly challenges and inconsistencies, however, and frank discussion between teachers and headteachers of the challenges of examination and the difficulties in maintaining consistency in positive teacher behavior may not have taken place without the stimulus of the minimum standards self-assessment activity. katayon qahir with jackie kirk 28 summer 2007 3.4 minimum standards category: teachers and other education personnel indicator: a selection committee, including community representatives, selects teachers based on a transparent assessment of candidates’ competencies and considerations of gender, diversity and acceptance by the community. as the fep-supported schools become more autonomous and self-governing, teacher selection is an important task that has to be conducted by the school community, especially given the imperative to work within certain cultural, community norms. this indicator was therefore selected as a critical one. there is no formal job announcement procedure at the fep-supported schools. job vacancies are disseminated verbally through school staff and students to the communities. currently, teachers apply directly to the schools and then the schools provide a letter from the principal for the applicants to go to the irc-fep for a screening test and interview. the selection criteria are a passing score in the screening test and acceptance of the teacher by the school community. any teacher not in good standing in the community would not be hired by the school, although in some cases, when no other teacher is available, schools may convince community members to accept the applicant under verbal agreement to certain conditions of conduct. the selection of teachers is a particularly critical issue in the fep-supported schools because the afghan refugee community is very protective of their daughters and keen that they be taught by female teachers. as 65% of fep-supported students are girls, (irc-fep, 2007b), hiring female teachers is prioritized, although, as the school principals highlighted, in some locations there is flexibility, especially when there are no female teachers available. at one city-based school, where parents are considered to be better educated and less conservative, there is one male science teacher due to the unavailability of a female science teacher. an older man has been hired because parents will not accept young male teachers. moreover, many of the girls in the community attend english language centers where there are male teachers. in one of the camp-based schools some secondary classes are taught by male teachers because there are no qualified female teachers in that camp. participants in the assessment of this school agreed that it is the parents’ very strong trust in the principal that makes it possible for the girls to study up to grade 12. in other camp and city schools, however, communities are unwilling to let their daughters be taught by male teachers. therefore, there was further concurrence between assessment participants on the need for enhanced community participation in aspects of school governance and management, such as teacher selection, which had not previously been considered. indicator: the code of conduct is signed and followed by education personnel, and appropriate measures are documented and applied in cases of misconduct and/or violation of the code of conduct this indicator is another one that is fundamental to the fep commitment to providing safe, quality learning opportunities for vulnerable girls, and one on which there have been numerous activities. in line with the irc’s global mandatory reporting policies (mrp), a general code of conduct is signed between irc-fep and the teachers. this code of conduct highlights irc policies on sexual abuse and exploitation and also insists on the responsibility of all individuals to report misconduct. however, no local, school-based code of conduct has yet been developed. rather, when hiring any new teacher, principals verbally communicate the school’s expectations in terms of professional inee minimum standards current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 29 conduct and informally monitor teacher conduct. discussing this indicator, especially with progress towards increasing autonomy of the fep-supported schools, principals reflected on the importance of a school-level code of conduct, and decided to establish a consultative process to develop one. participants envisaged a code of conduct to be signed between teachers and school principals and the future formation of education committees. fep staff will further discuss how teacher accountability could be more related to the community than to the individual headteachers. 4. conclusions and recommendations our text provides an example of the sort of discussion topics and outcomes that may be stimulated by the selection and contextualization of minimum standards indicators for schoolbased application. the self-assessment exercise that was stimulated by the minimum standards in these four schools will need to be followed up by technical support to the teachers and school administrators to help them implement some of the new commitments that were made. for example, enhanced community participation in new areas such as teacher selection and in school accounts requires careful planning and perhaps additional training and coaching for school administrators. the self-assessment process as facilitated by the fep staff was clearly only one step in an ongoing process of school development and improvement. the minimum standards served as a means to introduce some new ideas into the school communities and as a stimulus for new reflections, critical thinking and planning for future initiatives. overall, the assessment process in the four fep-supported schools was evaluated as useful and effective for fep office staff, school administrators and teachers. for the first time, teachers and school administrators were engaged in self-assessment and in critical, holistic reflection on the achievements of the fep-supported schools and on areas to further develop the quality and relevance of education. through discussion of relevant, contextualized standards from the categories community participation, access and learning environment, teaching and learning, and teachers and other education personnel, teachers and school administrators identified gaps and areas for improvement. some of the solutions were discussed and concrete decisions taken both by fep and the schools. through follow up visits, fep staff will support the application of the different undertakings of the schools. moreover, the same assessment is planned for all the remaining fep-supported schools. this year, as a move towards the fep program’s goal of educational sustainability, fep handed over two camp-based schools to communities. the results of this pilot will enable the fep to determine how best to hand over the remaining 20 schools. the minimum standards assessment process, as undertaken in the four schools, aligns with this process of gradually building capacity at the school level to ensure quality education and shifting responsibilities to inclusive, communitybased management. adapted to the local context, a sub-set of particularly relevant standards and indicators serve as a tool for school-level assessment and prioritization of future directions. all school staff members involved were in agreement that application of the minimum standards at the school level can help them to work towards quality educational provision. that is not to say the process was without its challenges: fep has also learned much about how to use the global indicators meaningfully in the context of afghan refugee educators. with future assessments, the fep will certainly allocate more time for the assessment process at each school, and will also ensure that community members are involved; possibilities will be explored for students to also participate in the process. in terms of the process, other recommendations for organizations considering a similar exercise include: katayon qahir with jackie kirk 30 summer 2007 internal assessment and contextualization of indicators before application of the assessment at field site this is a critical step in the application of the minimum standards that requires a relatively high level of technical expertise and input translation of the standards, indicators and guidance notes in local languages this is also a critical step and one for which time is required as well as technical support. the language of the standards is dense and complex and should preferably be handled by a translator who is knowledgeable about education. allocation of enough time for the whole process including preparation the process was time-consuming during both the preparation and the school level assessments. at the school too, each indicator selected can stimulate a rich discussion, for which time should be available, especially as some of the indicators are challenging and it may take time to identify ways for the school community to work towards its achievement. initial training on the inee minimum standards the assessment process made sense to the participants because there was a relatively high level of awareness and understanding of the basis and principles of the minimum standards. inclusive process both internally and at school level in the spirit of the standards, involvement of as many stakeholders as possible in the assessment is important. the discussions will be richer with the inclusion of the different voices and any decisions made will be grounded in consensus. this is clearly challenging, especially where, as in some of the fep-supported schools, there are doubts as to the communities’ and students’ capacity to contribute to educational discussions. nonetheless, the importance of inclusiveness and participatory process should be stressed. documentation to facilitate the follow-up in order to be able to follow up from the assessment, a comprehensive record of the discussions as well as any decisions taken is important. reflection on points raised in discussions will help to ensure that technical follow up can address challenges and resistance. notes [1]. also acknowledged is the important contribution of fep m&e team members, fahima rahimpur, fariha popal, humaira jalali, khadija raufi, gulghutai waizi, hosay zadran, shazia nayebkhil, ramzia, noorulhaya, fatima wardak, nooria wardak as well as other fep staff, teachers and school personnel who contributed to the assessment process and this article [2]. community participation standard 1: participation emergency-affected community members actively participate in assessing, planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating the education programme. key indicator: training and capacity-building opportunities exists for community members, including children and youth, to manage education activities. references inee (2004). minimum standards for education in emergencies, chronic crises and early reconstruction. retrieved june 10, 2007 from http://www.ineesite.org/standards/msee_report.pdf inee minimum standards current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 31 international institute for educational planningunesco. (2006). the guidebook for planning education in emergencies and reconstruction. retrieved june 10, 2007 from http://www.unesco. org/iiep/eng/focus/emergency/guidebook.htm irc female education project (fep) (2007a). irc pakistan: the female education program. program brief. peshawar: irc-fep. irc female education project (fep) (2007b). fep monthly report: march 2007. unpublished internal program document. peshawar: irc. sinclair, m. (2002). planning education in and after emergencies. paris: international institute for educational planningunesco. sommers, m. (2001). care & protection of children in emergencies: a field guide. westport, ct: save the children federation. appendix 1: selected indicators for fep school-level assessments 1. children and youth are involved in the development and implementation of education activities. 2. the community education committee holds public meetings to conduct social audits of education activities and their budgets 3. training and capacity-building opportunities exist for community members, including children and youth, to manage education activities. 4. communities, education personnel and learners identify education resources in the community. 5. an initial rapid education assessment is undertaken as soon as possible, taking into account security and safety. 6. all stakeholders, including marginalized groups, community education committees, national and local education officials, teachers and learners, are included in evaluation activities 7. no individual is denied access to education and learning opportunities because of discrimination. 8. through training and sensitization, communities become increasingly involved in ensuring the rights of all members to a quality and relevant education. 9. the learning environment is free from dangers that may cause harm to learners. 10. teachers and other education personnel are provided with the skills to give psychosocial support to promote learners’ emotional well-being. 11. curricula address the psychosocial well-being needs of teachers and learners in order for them to be better able to cope with life during and after the emergency. katayon qahir with jackie kirk 32 summer 2007 12. the physical structure used for the learning site is appropriate for the situation and includes adequate space for classes and administration, recreation and sanitation facilities 13. communities participate in the construction and maintenance of the learning environment. 14. basic health and hygiene are promoted in the learning environment. 15. adequate sanitation facilities are provided, taking account of age, gender and special education needs and considerations, including access for persons with disabilities. 16. adequate quantities of safe drinking water and water for personal hygiene are available at the learning site. 17. sufficient teaching and learning materials are provided, as needed, in a timely manner to support relevant education activities. preference is given to locally available materials for sustainability 18. training, including follow-up monitoring, encourages the teacher to be a facilitator in the learning environment, promotes participatory methods of teaching, and demonstrates the use of teaching aids. 19. learners are provided with opportunities to be actively engaged in their own learning. 20. participatory methods are used to facilitate learner involvement in their own learning and to improve the learning environment. 21. parents and community leaders understand and accept the learning content and teaching methods used. 22. assessment and evaluation methods are considered fair, reliable and non-threatening to the learner. 23. a selection committee, including community representatives, selects teachers based on a transparent assessment of candidates’ competencies and considerations of gender, diversity and acceptance by the community. 24. the code of conduct is signed and followed by education personnel, and appropriate measures are documented and applied in cases of misconduct and/or violation of the code of conduct 25. staff performance appraisals are conducted, written up and discussed with the individual(s) concerned on a regular basis. inee minimum standards © 2005 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 85 “holistic yet tangible”: embracing the challenge of complexity for education for sustainable development patrick hanley harvard university the possibility of a sustainability transition becomes actual when mediated by and through ecosemiotics. max oelschlaeger (in noth and kull, 2001, p. 232) abstract unesco defines education for sustainable development (esd) as covering a broad range of issues from natural resources and hiv/aids to poverty reduction. esd thus becomes a term that must be subtle yet clear, holistic yet tangible. one option for esd, in dealing with this complexity, is to simplify its content and narrow the issues it addresses. another more viable option for esd is to retain a broad range of issues and related domains of knowledge while unifying the range of epistemologies it employs. the challenge then is to agree on an epistemology that is inclusive of all domains of knowledge while being practical for education initiatives in the field. this article will examine the utility of an ecosemiotic conception of the epistemological relationship between humans and nature (how we conceive of how we come to knowledge about nature), and a pragmatic method of making value judgments in helping esd meet the challenges of complexity introduction unesco’s draft international implementation scheme for the united nations decade of education for sustainable development recognizes the need for education for sustainable development (esd) to cover a broad range of issues from natural resources, hiv/aids to poverty reduction (unesco, 2004, p. 5). covering such a range of issues will require a wide range of fields of knowledge, from the physical and social sciences to religion and local mythology. it is written in unesco’s draft international implementation scheme: no aspect of life is left untouched by the pursuit of sustainable development, just as development that is increasingly sustainable will have an impact in every part of life. complexity and interconnectedness mean that esd must convey messages that are subtle yet clear, holistic yet tangible, multi-dimensional yet direct (unesco, 2004, p. 13). esd curricula cannot concentrate only on one dimension, such as science in exclusion of religious beliefs, or global knowledge in exclusion of local knowledge, or vice versa. to succeed, esd cannot afford to ignore, consciously or sub-consciously, any aspect of human culture no matter how “superfluous” or how “outright false” others may consider them (patton, 1996, p. 82). but by aiming to be multi-dimensional and holistic, esd risks being too cumbersome to work fluidly in the field and risks not being clear, tangible and direct. patrick hanley 86 april 21, 2005 one option for esd is to simplify its content and narrow the issues it addresses, but this would undermine the far-ranging goals of sustainable development. esd needs to work with the complexity of human culture, rather than try to confront it or tame it. another option is for esd to retain a broad range of issues and related domains of knowledge while unifying the range of epistemologies it employs. a difficulty with a wide range of domains of knowledge is the difference in theories of knowledge and meaning-making inherent in each domain. the challenge is to develop epistemologies that are inclusive of all domains of knowledge while being practical for the creation of curricula in the field. curricula are based implicitly or explicitly on theories of how we gain knowledge about the world and how to make judgments about meaning or value. the exact theories of knowledge and value judgment on which an education initiative is based will have a strong influence on what is taught and what is learned. to begin a dialogue this article will offer one perspective on the utility of an ecosemiotic conception of the epistemological relationship between humans and nature (how we conceive of how we come to knowledge about nature), and a pragmatic method of making value judgments in helping esd embrace the challenges of complexity. this article is an exercise in the development of “appropriate theory” (that is, theory that is easily learned and applied, adaptable to local contexts and encouraging of community participation) directed at promoting local community participation in the creation and implementation of esd curricula. history in 1836 ralph waldo emerson published nature, which describes the benefits of developing a way of looking at nature as a system of signs open to an infinite number of interpretations dependent on the individual interpreter. emerson combined this semiotic perspective of nature with a pragmatic theory of value judgment. emerson fluidly moved from one knowledge domain to another, embracing complexity as he made connections between objects of nature and social justice, human history, ethics, religion as well as science. he viewed all interpretations of natural objects with an open mind believing that every interpretation is likely to have some value for the individual interpreter or the interpretive community. likewise, emerson was critical of attempts to fix interpretations of natural signs, to say that every individual should have the same interpretation of a natural sign. for example, emerson criticized emanuel swedenborg, the eighteenth century theologian, for not having a more flexible attitude towards the potential meanings of natural signs. swedenborg was open to religious interpretations of natural signs, but for him every natural sign has a one-to-one correspondence to a specific spiritual truth. emerson writes about swedenborg: he fastens each natural object to a theologic notion;a horse signifies carnal understanding; a tree, perception; the moon, faith; a cat means this; an ostrich that; an artichoke this other;and poorly tethers every symbol to a several ecclesiastic sense. the slippery proteus is not so easily caught. in nature, each individual symbol plays innumerable parts, as each particle of matter circulates in turn through every system. the central identity enables any one symbol to “holistic yet tangible”: embracing the challenge of complexity for education for sustainable development current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 87 express successively all the qualities and shades of real being. in the transmission of the heavenly waters, every hose fits every hydrant. nature avenges herself speedily on the hard pedantry that would chain her waves. she is no literalist. every thing must be taken genially, and we must be at the top of our condition to understand any thing rightly.his theological bias thus fatally narrowed his interpretation of nature, and the dictionary of symbols is yet to be written (emerson, 1941, p. 302). emerson judged interpretations of signs according to how they could contribute to the improvement of individuals, rather than by any swedenborg-like attempt to fix interpretations for all individuals. in the 1870s, conceiving of nature as a system of signs was critical in the movement to create the world’s first national parks as a means to protect natural symbols important for a u.s. nationalist identity (guha, 2000, p. 53). this model was also at the core of john muir’s work in preserving the sierra mountains in a large part for their spiritual symbolic worth. at the turn of the twentieth century, nature study was quickly growing into one of public education’s first national reform movements. nature study developed as a semiotic epistemology that incorporated a broad range of interpretations of natural objects, from scientific descriptions to moral teleology. but some education leaders with a theory of knowledge based in objectivity clashed with nature study. this debate culminated in the 1932 publication of the yearbook of the influential national society for the study of education which strongly recommended that nature study be effectively ended, to be replaced by a more objective approach to nature under the name elementary science (arnold, 1976, p. 99). almost one hundred years after emerson first articulated his semiotic perspective in nature, its significance in conservation and education was quickly fading, being criticized relentlessly for being too inclusive of a wide range of domains of knowledge, too “subjective” and too complex. during the 1960s, environmental education adopted elementary science’s objective approach to knowledge of nature, without much discussion about alternative epistemologies. thus, environmental education adopted the only remaining widely utilized theory of knowledge in education, the general objectivist model. environmental education has succeeded within its limited realm, which is best suited for teaching about environmental problems and the human/nature physical relationship from a physical and social science perspective. both through inertia and the deeply ingrained epistemology of the scientific method, esd risks following environmental education by grafting itself upon an objectivist model. discussion about what theory of knowledge and method of value judgment esd should cultivate may help esd avoid the internal schisms that plagued nature study and it may also help esd avoid the epistemological confinement environmental education finds itself within. unlike environmental education, esd is still in its early stages and has some ability to choose which epistemology or combination of epistemologies would best serve its needs. patrick hanley 88 april 21, 2005 an ecosemiotic theory of knowledge one concern is that esd may inherit from environmental education a conception of our epistemological relationship with nature that would undermine any goals of inclusivity and respect. environmental education is firmly founded upon a “spectator theory of knowledge” where observers are believed to sit passively outside of nature “getting the view of a spectator,” as john dewey’s wrote. according to dewey: there is something both ridiculous and disconcerting in the way in which men have let themselves be imposed upon; so as to infer that scientific ways of thinking of objects give the inner reality of things, and that they put a mark of spuriousness upon all other ways of thinking them, and of perceiving them and enjoying them (dewey as quoted in west, 1989, p. 98). “scientific ways of thinking of objects” has led to attacks on other forms of knowledge, leading to a loss of complexity. unesco, in a similar spirit of dewey, acknowledges the importance of: recognising and working with culturally specific views of nature, society and the world, rather than ignoring them or destroying them, consciously or inadvertently, in the name of development (unesco, 2004, p. 13); a key component of any theory of knowledge where objectivity is the aim is the belief in de-cultured knowledge, which implies that objects and processes of the natural world can be only known as they really are through methods designed to de-culture our knowledge. if we remove our subjective biases inherited from our own cultures we can rise above culture and arrive at a universally recognized “real” understanding of nature. this belief in a de-culturizing process necessarily devalues local culture, including local views of nature. william cronon writes that knowledge about nature cannot be decultured: ideas of nature never exist outside a cultural context, and the meanings we assign to nature cannot help reflecting that context. the main reason this gets us into trouble is that nature as essence, nature as naïve reality, wants us to see nature as if it had no cultural context, as if it were everywhere and always the same…if we wish to understand the values and motivations that shape our own actions toward the natural world,…then the nature we study must become less natural and more cultural (cronon, 1996, pp. 35-36). an alternative to the habit of viewing the world through the lens of a spectator theory of knowledge and viewing “nature as naïve reality” is an ecosemiotic theory of knowledge. mediation, not observation, is the operative action. knowledge of nature is thought of as gained through the mediation of signs. ecosemiotics is defined by winfried noth as, “...a theory of how human culture interprets nature. ecosemiotics in this vein is hence the study of the culturalization of nature” (noth, 2001, p. 73). the ecosemiotic model subverts the fantasy/fact debate, recognizing that all knowledge of nature is mediated by an active mind embedded within a particular culture. “holistic yet tangible”: embracing the challenge of complexity for education for sustainable development current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 89 the ecosemiotic theory of knowledge is informed by c.s. peirce’s theory of signs. the three elements of signs according to peirce are object, representamen (or representation in less technical phrasing) and interpretant (or interpretation). for example, a sign mediates between an object in nature (or a thought before the mind) and the interpretation of the object. the sight of a tree is a representation of the actual tree (the object). the interpretation (interpretant) of the representation of the tree could be in the form of an attitude, emotion, past memory, religious belief, scientific description, etc. the interpretation of a sign has a direct consequence on both actions of the individual and the individual’s future use of signs. according to peirce, “a belief is an habitual connection of ideas (peirce, 1931, p. 218).” and “…a belief is itself a habit of the mind by virtue of which one idea gives rise to another (p. 215).” a belief is a habit of the mind, which occurs when one idea habitually gives rise to a second idea. from an ecosemiotic perspective, talk of changing attitudes or values is ultimately about changing what interpretations habitually arise in relation to particular objects. for example, an educator could help encourage people to habitually associate the sight of a tire full of stagnant water with the idea that this could be a potential breeding ground for malaria carrying mosquitoes or to habitually associate the sight of a condom or word “condom” with the idea of a necessary way to prevent the spread of hiv/aids. esd can be seen as trying to change the way people “read” their local environment, encouraging as habits of mind the association of interpretations (consistent with sustainable development) with objects they see in their daily lives. by continuously asking what objects, interpretations and representations a particular issue means in the local environment, educators can keep esd curricula clear, tangible and direct. pragmatic method of value judgment applying an ecosemiotic theory of knowledge to esd requires a method of judging the value of particular interpretations of objects, such as water filled tires. esd must have a way to decide which interpretations are to be encouraged within education initiatives. esd has specific goals and aims and cannot be content with a purely open ended discussion of the diversity of interpretations. but at the same time esd cannot survive on a purely objective theory of truth, where value is based on some sense of “truth” in relation to “reality” rather than based on practical consequences of beliefs. a pragmatic method of value judgment may prove to work well for esd in conjunction with an ecosemiotic approach. a pragmatic method of ascertaining value of interpretations would judge not in reference to any notion of an external reality, but rather based on consistency with the aims of sustainability. judging either the meaning or value of beliefs based on consequences rather than the power to explain reality is the basis of american pragmatism, which not coincidently was first formally theorized by peirce but has its roots in emerson. pragmatism for peirce was a theory of meaning based on potential consequences of specific beliefs and was later adapted by john dewey to be a method for making value judgments. peirce wrote: patrick hanley 90 april 21, 2005 the intellectual significance of beliefs lies wholly in the conclusions that may be drawn from them, and ultimately in their effects upon our conduct (peirce, 1931, pp. 218-19). following dewey’s instrumentalist adaptation of pragmatism, the question to be asked is what practical consequences might conceivably result as a consequence of having a particular interpretation of objects in the local environment? if the practical consequences are consistent with the aims of sustainability, then the interpretations should have value for sustainable development and thus for esd. the question that should be continuously open for debate then becomes how to know whether or not a specific interpretation is consistent with sustainability? what are the guidelines for sustainability and who is to decide what is sustainable? applications as conceptualized in this article, a semiotic/pragmatic perspective will not resolve any conflicts between knowledge domains such as science and religion. but it can be used as an effective cultural tool to foster dialogue that is inclusive of all knowledge domains while keeping discussion away from debates about “truth.” a semiotic/pragmatic perspective may be offensive to some domains of knowledge; for instance, some religious leaders may not want to say that theirs is just one of many possible interpretations, or scientists may not want to give up debating about their power to explain reality. this semiotic/pragmatic perspective is a tool for discussion and not any claim of truth. it is a useful way to keep dialogue focused on the goal of sustainability as the standard for making value judgments and to keep dialogue grounded in objects in local environments and people’s daily “reading” or interpretations of these objects. a semiotic/pragmatic perspective can help dialogue structured by an inclusive framework, rather than from the framework of any one knowledge domain. this lessens the need for participants to compete with other cultural fields for relevance and importance in the dialogue as may happen when an observation from a religious perspective is made during a scientific discussion, or vice versa. this also decreases the need to move discussion from one knowledge domain to another, which can disrupt dialogue and create spaces where stakeholders speak past each other. with a semiotic/pragmatic view, the discussion across cultural fields can be about different interpretations of natural signs that various stakeholders have and the value of various interpretations for esd. community participation in curriculum creation on a local level, esd needs to be effective doing open-ended participatory learning and action (pla) exercises as well as more focused pre-designed individual initiatives focusing on a set of related issues. pla is used to refer to a range of participatory methodologies, including rapid rural appraisal and participatory rural appraisal, designed to rapidly assess the needs of local communities while at the same time empowering community members to act on their behalf using local and global knowledge and technology. “holistic yet tangible”: embracing the challenge of complexity for education for sustainable development current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 91 i will provide one example of how the ideas discussed in this article could be applied to esd with the understanding that there are countless other ways to apply it. in this example, a pla exercise is used to promote community participation in the creation of curriculum. asking which objects in their local environment have particular value to them collectively or as individuals could start an activity. from the onset, the educator should make it clear that she is not searching for objective truth as grounded in any “scientific expert” conception of reality. no interpretation will be dismissed as “non-scientific” or “false.” instead she is asking about any meaning or interpretation of any object found locally that an individual feels has particular importance for their community. the presumption is that after continued discussion the more meaningful objects to the local community will be elucidated, whether their meanings are important for the preservation of their local culture or whether they signify problems the community faces such as hiv/aids. for example, the objects identified could range from a tree considered sacred to mosquitoes as vectors of disease to a practice such as the harvesting of rice. then the objects could be mapped showing their location in the local environment. the group using the map could visit the objects and discuss their interpretations of the objects. asking what idea, feeling, emotion, story, memory etc. comes to mind when they perceive the object, such as a local tree or water well, could be a part of this process. the next step would be to introduce the concept of sustainability, discuss general problems and solutions related to sustainable development such as agriculture or health issues and how sustainable development depends on strong economies, social health and a flourishing environment. the interpretations could then be categorized by participants according to whether they signify problems or solutions related to sustainable development or if they are more neutral when it comes to sustainable development. each object identified as signifying a “problem” and each object signifying a “solution” could then be further broken down into the three pillars of economy, society and environment. at this stage the educator may introduce as options open for discussion some outside knowledge of possible problems and/or solutions in the form, for example, of a technology or practice. for example, a water-filled tire could be introduced as a “problem” object related to malaria and a properly disposed tire as an object that is a “solution.” participants would be asked what are the economic, social and environmental causes of the problem? what are some economic, social and environmental aspects of the solutions? thus, each meaningful object relevant to a problem or solution for the local community could have added to it multiple layers of meaning derived in dialogue with community members that put the problem and solutions in larger context. next participants would begin to make connections between various objects, interpretations, the three pillars, issues, problems and solutions in order to develop a few general themes that could form the framework of a local curriculum. if this bottomup process is carried through, then the abstract themes of a curriculum could always be patrick hanley 92 april 21, 2005 readily reduced to specific objects found in the local environment. the curricula should not remain static, but rather community members should be encouraged to meet and discuss the addition of new representations or new interpretations to existing representations as signs grow and evolve. school-wide applications esd could also be taught as a habit of mind that can be applied to any subject. applying a semiotic/pragmatic perspective to a school’s curriculum, children could be encouraged to ask themselves the value of what is being taught relative to a concept of sustainability they have in their mind. “we are being taught x and y are possible interpretations of these objects, are these consistent with sustainability?” students should be encouraged, on an ongoing basis, to locate objects of significance in their local environment and to come up with interpretations from various domains of knowledge and from the three pillars of economics, society and environment, to be shared with other students and community members. again, the interpretations’ value for sustainability should be open for debate. conclusion the challenge of complexity for esd can be summed up in that one statement in the unesco draft implementation scheme: “complexity and interconnectedness mean that esd must convey messages that are subtle yet clear, holistic yet tangible, multidimensional yet direct (unesco, 2004, p. 13).” attention to local culture and worldviews will help develop messages that are subtle, in using references to local culture yet clear in the lesson deemed necessary for sustainable development. a semiotic approach to esd will provide both room for all ranges of human experience, thus being holistic and multi-dimensional, yet remain grounded in actual natural objects and processes. discussion of interpretations and values of local objects and processes will keep the learning and teaching grounded and tangible. a site of erosion can be visited, touched, sensed and at the same time interpreted on a variety of levels: from what science knows about erosion, to local experience with erosion and local practices that abate erosion, to any particular religious relevance of the mountain or hillside. with a semiotic approach to nature, participants can tangibly touch the “subject” while flowing from one level of meaning to another seamlessly without presumption of any one domain of knowledge’s way of interpreting or attributing meaning to the subject privileged over others. the spirit of emerson and the complexity of human culture can be found in education initiatives around the world that hold a renewed sense that sustainable development in the coming decades will require the application of the full complexity of human experience, expression and emotion. working in this spirit is the andean condor conservation project in argentina, whose director luis jacome, recently remarked, after releasing captive bred condors accompanied by the sounds of chanting, flute playing and shell blowing and the sight of children throwing feathers into the air, "letting them go is a symbol of the condors who once flew here. it is important to argentina both culturally and ecologically (nichols, p. 2005)." “holistic yet tangible”: embracing the challenge of complexity for education for sustainable development current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 93 references arnold, j. (1976). nature study: an analytical history of its demise. master’s thesis, ithaca, new york: cornell university. cronon, w, ed. (1996). uncommon ground: rethinking the human place in nature. new york: w.w. norton. emerson, ralph waldo. (1941). the works of ralph waldo emerson: four volumes in one. new york: tudor publishing. guha, r. (2000). environmentalism: a global history. new york: longman. nichols, v. (jan. 27, 2005). “returning condors to the wild.” cbs news. from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/27/world/main669911.shtml nöth w. and kull k., eds. semiotics of nature. sign system studies. 29(1) 2001. patton, l. and doniger, w., eds. (1996). myth and method. charlottesville: university press of virginia. peirce, c.s. (1931). collected papers of charles sanders peirce vol. 7. cambridge: harvard university press. simpson, f. (2002). conjunctive use of water resources in deccan trap. best practices on indigenous knowledge ii.13 from http://www.unesco.org/most/bpik13-2.htm. unesco, (october 2004). united nations decade of education for sustainable development 2005-2014, draft international implementation scheme. west, c. (1989). the american evasion of philosophy: a genealogy of pragmatism. madison, wisconsin: university of wisconsin press. © 2002 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 3 editorial introduction beyond "gender sensitization" and "gender mainstreaming": comparative and international education towards the democratic "re"-construction of gender this issue of cice is devoted to furthering our understanding of the complex ways in which gender relations are constructed and maintained within educational settings and of the implications of gender discourses produced within these contexts, or in relation to education, for reconstructing a more truly democratic "gender order" (connell, 1987). since the 1970s, there has been much attention devoted to the ways in which social institutions, including education, served to reproduce inequalities in the larger society (bourdieu & passeron, 1977; bowles & gintis, 1976). some of these theories have demonstrated that schooling processes are deeply implicated in shaping gendered identities which legitimate different modes of behavior for boys and girls within schools, and reproducing a social order that values hegemonic masculinity (connell, 1995; haywood & mac an ghaill, 1996). the emergence of resistance theory rendered visible the role of schools and those who inhabit them in constructing gender identities and reproducing gender inequality. although gender was not central to his analysis, paul willis' critical ethnographic account of a group of twelve "non-academic working class lads" in their last two years at a school in the west midlands in england in the mid 1970s, was the first study which demonstrated how boys' identities are defined in relation to, and in opposition to femininity and subordinated forms of masculinity and underscored how gender and sexuality served to secure and legitimate their power and domination (lesko, 2000; skeggs, 1992). more recently, the theoretical focus has shifted to a number of more explicitly gendercentered approaches to compensate for the previous neglect, or undertheorizing of, women's experiences (grant, horan, & watts-warren, 1994). this issue of cice attempts to contribute further to gender-centered theorizing in education by deconstructing gender discourses as they occur within the context of various formal and informal educational sites, including elementary and secondary schools, non-governmental organizations (ngos) and in the international development arena, in order to provide clues as to how we might go about democratically reconstructing gender. collectively, they underscore the need to challenge and transform gender relations if educational spaces and society more generally are to become more democratic educational spaces. the first article by gail boldt provides a critical reconceptualization of gender, power, and agency which is informed by her thoughtful reflections about her own personal experiences and the conceptualization of "power as a doing." in toward a reconceptualization of gender and power in an elementary classroom, boldt elaborates the struggles she faced as an elementary school teacher committed to challenging sexism and gender inequity by raising the consciousness of children she taught. citing episodes in the classroom, she discusses her initial interpretations and reactions from a model of "school as reproduction of sexist society", and then describes how utilizing a view of editorial introduction 4 december 16, 2002 identity as performative (butler, 1990, 1993) allowed her to reconceptualize her concept of power as it was enacted among her young students. she discusses the children's uses of liberal feminist discourses in ways that were effective for some identity claims and highly limiting for others. by elucidating the implications of viewing girls as in need of empowerment and encouraging them to make choices that the teacher/adult sees as beneficial for girls, boldt warns us how easy it is even for a critical educator with best intentions to contribute to perpetuating the very disempowered status of girls and women. for boldt, the democratic "re-construction" of gender in an elementary classroom starts from her acknowledgment that she is no less likely than the children are to hold contradictory, biased, or self-interested positions and her determination to devalorize the role of the teacher. she discusses how changing her original view of girls as victims and boys as victimizers changed her conceptualization of the role she as the teacher could play in the classroom. she sees a transformative role of elementary education in the teacher's more respective attitude toward children and open discussions of contested claims and practices in the daily life of the classroom. just as boldt sees hope in a teacher's conscious effort to live together with children in a respective way, alice ginsberg in building on student knowledge: a new frame for gender equity in education that transcends the sameness/difference dichotomy sees hope in the efforts of middle and high school teachers who use critical pedagogy to raise the consciousness of teenagers. the second article by ginsberg reports on some of the successful efforts of participants in a three-year professional development program called gate (gender awareness through education), which was piloted in the school district of low-income urban neighborhood in the united states. although both ginsberg and boldt write on the us schools, minority students attending urban public schools in ginsberg's article make a sharp contrast with white, middle-class students in a private elementary school featured in boldt's article. a number of teachers profiled in ginsberg's article found ways to transcend a discourse of sameness versus difference that emphasizes the teaching of "appropriate" attitudes, behaviors, or choices for boys and girls, looking instead to pedagogies and practices where student knowledge was central, and student agency was essential. ginsberg argues that gate participants' concern with helping "at risk" boys and girls had meaningful and positive impacts on these students' lives only when teachers successfully engaged students in defining the problems and seeking answers in specific contexts. similarly, pointing out that her very concern with helping girls initially prevented her from viewing girls as powerful, boldt suggests that an enthusiastic critical educator does not automatically translate into practices that acknowledge students' agency. both boldt and ginsberg reconfirm that what we need in order to promote gender equity is much more than those adults who are highly aware of gender issues, calling for students' active participation in the democratic "reconstruction" of gender. in the third article of the issue, the terrain shifts from the formal schooling context of the united states to the informal educational sphere of nongovernemntal organizations (ngos) in an entirely different geographical space, namely israel. in minding the political gap: the educational imperative of ngos, cathryn magno underscores the emancipatory potential of nonformal and informal educational processes in assisting women in realizing their "political selves" and encouraging them to take action toward social change. magno builds upon feminist critical theory to reconstruct the manner in which beyond "gender sensitization" and "gender mainstreaming": comparative and international education towards the democratic "re"-construction of gender current issues in comparative education, vol.5(1) 5 the discipline of political science treats women's political participation, envisioning nothing short of a re-vamping of the field in order to account for women's pathways to political influence. magno argues that civil society contains spaces wherein democracy can be enhanced, particularly for those for whom opportunities to participate in decision-making at the state level are few. magno argues that women's participation in civil society through ngos constitutes its own kind of educational social movement that has the catalytic effect of increasing women's "political capital". the ngos profiled in her study foster the networks, skills and knowledge that enable women to take action toward re-constructing gender paradigms and approaches to authentic power. supporting women's education and growth through ngos, magno maintains, is one way to redress the gender gap in political education and the inequalities that persist in society at large. all four articles in the issue deal centrally with notions of agency and empowerment, concepts which have enabled educators to imagine greater possibilities for structural change from collective action. as weis reminds us, "agency is not enacted without reference to social structure (of which the school is only one part); indeed it is absolutely enacted in relation to such structure (…)" (1996, p. xi). in, constructing consensus: the feminist modern and the reconstruction of gender, frances vavrus also focuses on issues of empowerment and agency, as conceptualized in recent development documents, but with a view to underscoring the real-world limitations that accompany such terms in the absence of broader structural changes in the political economy. while not wholly negating the role of true empowerment and agency in fostering positive social change, vavrus calls for changes in the national and international political-economic climate alongside these more individual sources of transformation. through a textual analysis of contemporary international development documents, vavrus assess the complexities and ambiguities inherent in those discourses which locate women and education at the heart of development programs designed to address such varied topics as population, hiv/aids and environmental conservation. vavrus problematizes those discourses which have served to construct and sustain a consensus regarding women's education as the primary solution to complex development problems from the vantage point of "the ways that crises are policed by examining the problems and solutions specified in international development policies". adapting said's method of "strategic formation" to study the connections among texts and between texts and society, vavrus utilizes a "developmentalism" framework to explore the ways in which women in the third world are conceptualized as capable of transforming themselves through such avenues as education, empowerment and individual agency. vavrus challenges the construction of women as the sole targets for intervention, rather than on gender relations as the locus of social re-construction, contending that "developmentalism has made women visible without a concomitant re-visioning of the macroecomomic environment that shapes gender relations". vavrus article thus highlights the inadequacies inherent in those agentic discourses which focus exclusively on the individual as the source of change and transformation, and exposes them for what she regards as a strategy that "lifts the burden for development from international financial institutions and national policy makers and places it squarely on communities and individuals, especially on women". the cice editorial board would like to thank the members of our international editorial introduction 6 december 16, 2002 advisory board, especially professor fran vavrus, for their suggestions and direction in shaping this issue. additional thanks, as always, is extended for their continuing support and inspiration. our home institution, teachers college, deserves recognition and deep appreciation for its increasing level of support, both institutionally and intellectually. our external reviewers provided timely and constructive feedback on all articles and we greatly appreciate their time and energy in reviewing submissions. last, but certainly not least, we express once again our deep thanks to the authors of this issue's articles for their efforts and dedication in helping us publish this issue. references bourdieu, p. & passerson, j. c. (1977). reproduction in education, society and culture. london: sage. bowles, s. & gintis, h. (1976). schooling in capitalist america: educational reform and the conditions of economic life. new york: basic books. butler, j. (1990). gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. new york:routledge. butler, j.. (1993). bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of "sex." new york: routledge. connell, r. w. (1987). gender and power. cambridge: polity press. connell, r. w. (1995). masculinities. cambridge: polity press. grant, l., horan, p.m., & watts-warren, b. (1994). theoretical diversity in the analysis of gender and education. in a. m. pallas (ed.), research in sociology of education and socialization, 10 (p. 71-109). jai press. haywood, c. p. & mac an ghaill, m. (1996). schooling masculinities. in m. mac an ghaill (1996) (ed.), understanding masculinities: social relations and cultural arenas (pp. 50-61). buckingham: open university press. lesko, n. (2000). (ed.), masculinities at school. thousand oaks: sage. skeggs, b. (1992). the cultural production of 'learning to labour'. in a. beezer & m. barker (eds.), reading into cultural studies. (pp. 181-196). london: routledge. weis, l (1996). forward. in b. a. levinson, d. e. foley, & d. c. holland (eds), the cultural production of the educated person: critical ethnographies of the educated person (pp.ixxiv). new york: suny press. willis, p. (1977). learning to labor: how working class kids get working class jobs. london: saxon house. 5. shizza copyeditted .docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 2, special issue 2023 coloniality, resistance, and reimagining the future: exploring the influence of language policies on learner identities in pakistani schools shizza fatima stanford university this paper explores student experiences of language-in-education policies through the lens of colonial processes and traces such logic as they operate through educational institutions. drawing on semi-structured interviews of high school seniors and recent graduates, i investigate how students in pakistani secondary schools interact with intersecting modern/colonial structures that rationalize existing hierarchies of power along colonial, racial/ethnic, and gendered lines. the findings suggest that students have internalized dominant colonial ideologies and they also constitute key sites for decolonial resistance at the same time. student experiences of colonial hierarchies in the school were mediated by their socioeconomic class, gender, ethnic and linguistic background. however, despite internalizing dominant hierarchies, many students understood their experiences through the framing of colonial power structures, which simultaneously positioned them as potential actors for decolonial resistance. in this paper, i analyze their experiences in detail, and in doing so, this study adds to the growing voices in the field of international and comparative education that critically examine the role of modern/colonial formations in the structuring of education globally. keywords: coloniality, pakistan, decolonial resistance, language of instruction, education policy introduction interviewer: does your school have language rules? shahid:1 yes. in our [english-medium] school, anyone caught speaking a language other than english was made to deliver a one-minute speech in front of the whole school during the next day’s morning assembly. one girl used her speech to criticize the administration, [saying] that forcing students to give a speech for violating the language rules was humiliating. the admin turned her mic off, but the whole crowd was cheering. she was expelled. since the state apparatus in pakistan continues to operate on colonial structures, english remains the language of official work and holds considerable currency in the labor market. social class and upward mobility, including access to higher education and well-paying jobs, are determined through proficiency and education in english (rahman, 2004). in the education sector, colonial-era policies have divided schooling into 1 all names of people and places are pseudonyms. © 2023, fatima. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 25(2), 79-99. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en fatima two distinct streams. higher education institutions and private schools provide education in the english language, whereas government schools employ urdu, the national language, as the medium of instruction (coleman, 2010). such division along language lines, in addition to the unequal distribution of resources between public and private secondary schools, has formed deep tracks within the education system, making english-medium synonymous with high-quality and upper class, and urdu-medium with low-quality education for the poor (shamim, 2011). while economic disparities arising from unequal access to education are compounded by two-tiered language-in-education policies (durrani, 2012; mahboob & jain, 2016; mustafa, 2015), educational institutions that are based in colonial ideologies have also been shown to influence learner identities and perceptions of self and others in complex ways (fanon, 1967; rahman, 2004; said, 1994; shamim & rashid, 2019). although extensively studied in other post-colonial contexts (fanon, 1967; kalua, 2009; said, 1994; shange, 2020), this influence remains understudied in pakistan. this study aims to fill this gap and understand how student beliefs about self and others are shaped by their experiences of language-in-education policies—through semi-structured interviews of pakistani high school seniors and recent graduates. the purpose of this inquiry is to explore how students in pakistani secondary schools interact with intersecting modern/colonial2 structures that rationalize existing hierarchies of power along colonial, racial, ethnic, linguistic, and gendered lines. thus, the research questions are: how do students experience language-in-education policies in their everyday interactions in the school? how are existing neocolonial class structures perceived and reproduced through embodied practices and student presentations of self? how do students contest shared meanings and how do they modify them in their daily interactions in the school? the findings suggest that students have internalized dominant colonial ideologies and that, at the same time, they also constitute key sites for decolonial resistance. student experiences of colonial hierarchies in the school were mediated by their socioeconomic class, gender, ethnic and linguistic background. however, despite internalizing dominant hierarchies, many students understood their experiences through the framing of colonial power structures, which simultaneously positioned them as potential actors for decolonial resistance. in this paper, i analyze their experiences in detail, and in doing so, this study adds to the growing voices in the field of international and comparative education (rahman, 2002; mustafa, 2015; khoja-moolji, 2017; degraff, 2019; allweiss, 2021) that critically examine the role of modern/colonial formations in the structuring of education globally. historical background: the colonial project and english education an important development in establishing western-centric education in pre-partition colonial india was bentick’s english education act of 1835, which established a 2 i use the term modern/colonial in light of walter mignolo’s (2000) analysis of modernity and coloniality as two sides of the same coin, and two aspects of one reality. mignolo (2000) argues that modernity, ushered through the industrial revolution, was made possible through the exploitation of colonies in the global south, and is thus, intimately related to coloniality, which he calls the “dark side of modernity.” current issues in comparative education 80 coloniality, resistance, and reimagining the future: exploring the influence of language policies on learner identities in pakistani schools hierarchy between western and indigenous knowledges. the british administration deemed it important to educate its indian subjects in western knowledges in an effort to “form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, indian in blood and colour, but english in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect,” according to british official thomas macaulay (macaulay & young, 1935, p. 359). carnoy (1974) has argued that the purpose of this policy was to instill a deep awe of english language and culture among the indian elite and a deep disdain for their own background. khoja-moolji (2017) argues that the collective effect of this policy was the establishment of english knowledges as dominant and a displacement of the prevalent pluralistic conceptualization of knowledges. durrani (2012) posits that this education policy divided the locals into two classes: the elite—to be trained and educated in english—and the masses, who were to be taught in the vernacular or not at all. the consequence of such a division for post-independence pakistan, according to khoja-moolji (2017) was a deeply tracked education system, the valorization of english over local languages, and a heavy reliance on european and american experts for policy making. post-independence education policies: the colonial model continues after the departure of the british and the subsequent partition of the sub-continent into india and pakistan, political power was transferred over to the english-trained local elite. it was in the interests of this class to maintain existing structures of sociopolitical power based on colonial ideologies (carnoy, 1974). as a result, british-era language policies in education were recycled (durrani, 2012) and political independence changed relatively little in pakistani educational institutions, transitioning them from colonial to neocolonial configurations (altbach, 1971). english continues to be the working language of the most powerful institutions of the state, including the higher bureaucracy, judiciary, armed forces, and elite corporate institutions (rahman, 2016). thus, english is accorded high social capital and is a symbol of power that is intimately tied to the post-independence social structure. the local elite class has thus used english to consolidate power and reproduce existing social structures that benefit them (islam, 2018; rahman, 2002; shamim & rashid, 2019). english and urdu are pakistan’s official languages, while the development of other vernacular languages has been left to the provincial governments. of all the local languages, however, only urdu, sindhi, and pashto3 are employed as media of instruction in public schools. in describing post-colonial language policy, durrani (2012) highlighted that there was little political interest in maintaining the elements of linguistic diversity in pakistan’s language-in-education policies. comparing post-colonial language policies to their colonial counterparts, durrani argued that pakistan’s education system perpetuated the colonial-era policy: english-medium education for the elite and urdu-medium for the masses. 3 sindhi has an official role as medium of instruction in primary schools in the province of sindh while pashto is used in government schools in the province of khyber pakhtunkhwa (coleman, 2010). 81 current issues in comparative education fatima this dichotomy between english and vernacular-medium education has been a recurrent theme in pakistan over the years. after independence, the official stance of the government was to transfer all official work and education to urdu, however, this move was perpetually forestalled by the elite because it went against their political and economic interests (rahman, 2019). english-medium schools thus continue to be popular among pakistani elite and middle-class parents as a ticket to their children’s upward social mobility. educational institutions: an overview while it is impossible to fully account for the diverse variability in educational institutions, schools can be divided roughly into the following categories: (1) elite private english-medium schools, (2) non-elite, low-cost private english-medium schools, (3) vernacular-medium government schools, and (4) religious schools (madrasas) (coleman, 2010). most university education is conducted in english, with limited majors in the arts and languages offered in urdu or other local languages. gross enrollment ratios across pakistan continue to remain low, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels at 43 percent and 8.9 percent, respectively in 20194 (world bank, 2020). table 1 provides a breakdown of k-12 students by type of institution. most students in both rural and urban areas attend public schools, and the share of students in private schools is larger in urban areas compared to rural districts. more recent data is not available. table 1 percentage of children currently in school – by level and type of school province\type of school 2018–19 urban rural total pakistan: government 39 69 57 private 56 25 37 religious institution 1 1 1 ngo/trust 3 6 5 others 0 0 0 matric: government 53 72 63 private 43 24 33 religious institution 2 1 1 ngo/trust 2 3 3 others 0 0 0 note: matric level includes 9th and 10th grade. source: pakistan bureau of statistics. 4 more information on pakistan’s educational statistics can be found in pakistan bureau of statistics pslm survey report (pakistan bureau of statistics, 2020). current issues in comparative education 82 coloniality, resistance, and reimagining the future: exploring the influence of language policies on learner identities in pakistani schools those who can afford to educate their children do so through private schools where educational quality is proportional to tuition fees, while those from low-income backgrounds educate their children in tuition-free government schools of poorer quality (coleman, 2010). in a neoliberal global economy that increasingly attaches utilitarian terms to education, this tracking is a source of deep frustration for those impacted by poor-quality education and subsequent exclusion from the economy (shamim & rashid, 2019). even though educational experiences vary greatly throughout the country, a common thread among them is the shared “colonial wound” (mignolo, 2009, p. 161) that is a salient feature of educational institutions across the country. literature review: colonialism, language, and education colonial formations: from global to local contexts in her study of coloniality and chuj maya youth in guatemala, allweiss (2021) argues that “education, development, and indigenous youth are simultaneously targets of racialized colonial logics and important sites of decolonial resistance” (p. 208). framing the positioning of these youth at the intersection of modern/colonial racialized and gendered logics, allweiss links their struggle to that of marginalized youth around the world who are targeted by global webs of modern/colonial hierarchies. through her work, allweiss calls on scholars of comparative education to unpack and disrupt global geographies and logics of modern/colonial exploitation that intersect with education globally and amplify spaces of resistance and decolonial possibility. this study builds upon allweiss’ analysis of global colonial hierarchies while paying close attention to the context-specific features of how modern/colonial logics manifest themselves in the pakistani case where, according to khoja-moolji (2017), the trauma of colonial annexation of lands is still part of the fabric of society and must be attended to in addition to colonialism’s transmutation into global capitalist relations of exploitation. hence, in her presentation of restorative and reparative work through a decolonial praxis, khoja-moolji emphasizes the need for attention to “the intersection of histories of classic colonialism with wider webs of class, capital and identity” (p. s148). thus, in this study, i understand the experiences of pakistani youth as mediated by their positioning along modern/colonial racialized and gendered logics. colonialism and education in describing the role of education in the colonial project, ashcroft et al. (2003) argue that education acts a “tool of colonialist subjectification [which] established the locally british or english as normative through critical claims of ‘universality’ of the values embodied in english literary texts and represented the colonized to themselves as inherently inferior beings” (p. 426). education has thus been a crucial tool in the artillery of empire to perform what gramsci (1971) has called domination by consent. post-colonial scholars across the world have described schools as central to the modern/colonial project by privileging european knowledges while seeking to erase indigenous knowledge ecologies and modes of being (allweiss, 2021; fanon, 1967; khoja-moolji, 2017; said, 1994). in the arab context, said (1994) spoke about his own education and “the tremendous spiritual wound” (p. 7) caused from being taught by domineering foreigners to respect foreign norms more than his own. said concluded that his education deemed indigenous knowledge and culture to be congenitally inferior and a source of deep embarrassment. this inferiority complex associates local norms and knowledges with 83 current issues in comparative education fatima ideas of shame and embarrassment, the only remedy of which is presented through anglicization, or becoming what rahman (2004) has called “brown englishmen” (p. 79). altbach (1971) has noted that even after the end of direct colonization, advanced nations continue to influence their former colonies and other developing countries, including the educational systems and intellectual lives therein. in the case of former colonies such as pakistan, the influence of global colonial relations is augmented by the perpetuation of colonial power structures by a strong local elite class that continue to manipulate these structures for their own benefit. this is reflected in pakistan’s education system through language-in-education policies as well as administrative structures of schools. a privileging of modern/colonial knowledges and values over indigenous ones is a common feature of students’ educational experiences (rahman, 2004), emphasizing the importance of understanding coloniality not as an event of the past, but rather a structure (wolfe, 2006) that continues to organize the lives of youth in subaltern locations globally. language ideologies and colonial power structures language ideologies are defined by linguistic anthropologists as a set of beliefs about language that serve as rationalizations of language usage and structure (silverstein, 1976). language ideologies “locate the meaningfulness of linguistic signs in relation to other signs in particular historical, political-economic, and socio-cultural contexts” (rosa & burdick, 2017, p. 103). ideologies around language are thus never really about language but serve to rationalize or justify societal structures on the basis of linguistic distinction. language does not exist in a vacuum but is located in relation to a broader set of political, and socio-cultural signs and symbols. in the context of racialized imperial logics, language ideologies serve as a tool to rationalize colonial structures of power by establishing the speakers of the colonial language as superior to those of indigenous languages. this colonial linguistic domination, termed the “coloniality of language” (veronelli, 2015, p. 108), is a key feature of the modern/colonial apparatus that attaches notions of rationality, humanity, knowledge, intellect, and expressivity to the colonial language while deeming the colonized/colonialized as sub-human and therefore lacking in expressing rational thought, and having no language altogether (veronelli, 2015). in the context of a eurocentric education framework, this has manifested in explicit and implicit sanctions against local languages –and by association the knowledges intimately connected to them–, and a valorization of the english language –and the western knowledges associated to it–. such sanctions against local languages and valorization of english are a common characteristic of many pakistani schools across the country (rahman, 2002; mustafa 2015; shamim & rasheed, 2019), deeply influencing the ways in which students engage with their local linguistic and cultural heritage. fluidity of learner identities and decolonial possibility language and communication are also key aspects of the production and regulation of various social identities, including national, ethnic, professional, racial, class, and gender identities (kroskrity, 2001). the process of identity construction through linguistic distinction is neither uncontested nor static or monolithic. according to rosa and current issues in comparative education 84 coloniality, resistance, and reimagining the future: exploring the influence of language policies on learner identities in pakistani schools burdick (2017), “language does not simply reflect preexisting identities—it actively participates in the construction, reproduction, and transformation of identity” (p. 109). consistent with this argument, bhabha (1994) has emphasized the notion of fluidity and negotiation entailed in the production of cultural identities. he argues that cultural differences cannot be ascribed to pre-given traits. instead, the articulation of identities is an “on-going negotiation” (p. 2). applying bhabha’s concepts to african cultural identities, kalua (2009) has shown that “culture, which arises from people’s actions, including their capacity to reinvent and reconstitute themselves in the narrative of their existences cannot be a totality” (p. 30). african identities are thus not fixed but keep shifting and changing over time. conceptualizing learner identities in my analysis of student subjectivities in the pakistani context, i borrow from the ideas of bhabha and kalua on the fluidity and mutability of cultural identities. i understand pakistani students as positioned across multiple locations of stratification in the colonial matrix of power that hierarchizes their subject-positions along the lines of class, gender, race/ethnicity, religion, and ability. student identities or subjectivities, as posited by bhabha (1994), kalua (2009), and rosa and burdick (2017), are actively constructed, reproduced, transformed, and renegotiated through interaction with their environment. these interactions, in turn, have the possibility of changing the social environment that structures the lives of its inhabitants, and thus can reveal the ways in which modern/colonial logics shift across time and space. in this study, i explore the experiences of pakistani students in elite and non-elite private english-medium, and public urdu-medium secondary schools. i seek to understand how students’ self-perceptions are influenced through their positioning within their educational institutions and the ways in which they engage with larger social structures and re-negotiate their identities. my research questions include: how do students experience language-in-education policies in their everyday interactions in the school? how are existing neocolonial class structures perceived and reproduced through embodied practices and student presentations of self? how do students contest shared meanings and how do they modify them in their daily interactions in the school? through this analysis, i illuminate the complexities of students’ identity formation within colonial contexts and explore how students engage in decolonial resistance. by bringing attention to these processes, i engage in the process of decolonizing pakistani education since, as ashcroft et al. (2007) argue, the recognition of such forces indicates the possibility of their contestation. as such, the goal of this paper is to extend the ongoing discourse on post-/anti-/de-colonial resistance, and to unpack and disrupt the geographies and logics of modern/colonial power structures in educational systems in pakistan. data and methodology the current study lies at the intersection of post-colonial theory, language ideologies, and theories, policies, and practices of education with a central focus on pakistani students and their educational experiences. an appropriate method to grasp students’ experiences in pakistani schools is through a qualitative study with in-depth interviews. this approach allows students to articulate their self-perceptions, understanding of 85 current issues in comparative education fatima others, and delve into how school interactions influenced their beliefs. i have approached data collection using case-study logic (small, 2009), a method aimed at eliciting an increasingly accurate understanding of the research questions, with the objective of saturation, when new cases provide little new information. 33 online semi-structured interviews were conducted with a total of 15 participants. each subsequent interview was built upon data collected from the preceding ones, in order to identify similar mechanisms underlying different students’ experiences. furthermore, i conducted at least two interviews with each participant to build rapport, ensuring rich and accurate data collection. after 33 interviews, a point of saturation in the data was achieved. the small sample size also allowed me to investigate each student’s case in-depth, because each respondent provided a considerable amount of information. the findings of this study are, therefore, not aimed at generalizability, but seek to provide deeper insights into student experiences with modern/colonial logics. the participants were between 18 and 25 years old, with eight participants in high school and the remainder having graduated. participants were recruited from the four major provinces of pakistan, namely punjab, sindh, baluchistan, and khyber pakhtunkhwa (kpk), in order to include diverse perspectives and experiences. respondents also had diverse educational backgrounds, including both english and urdu-medium, public and private schools, and were comprised of both men and women. table 2 provides pseudonyms and demographic details of all students who participated in the study. interviews were conducted in urdu and english, with participants often code-switching. these were transcribed and translated to english, prioritizing the preservation of meaning while acknowledging potential losses in translation. context and cultural nuances were emphasized for accuracy, and feedback was sought from respondents and local students to refine translations. interview analysis employed codes from theoretical frameworks and existing literature, as well as emergent themes from the data (inductive approach). i made multiple iterative coding passes, adhering to charmaz (2012) and saldaña’s (2013) recommendations. i wrote analytic memos consistently to explore themes and connect to research questions. coding began after the first interview to recognize and apply emergent themes to subsequent data. the small sample size, resulting from pandemic-induced recruitment challenges, limits its scope in encompassing pakistani students' diverse experiences. nonetheless, the study offers unique insights from participants who shared their stories, and thus i believe it contributes to comparative education research. table 2. participant demographic information current issues in comparative education 86 pseudonym gender province region moi school type education level coloniality, resistance, and reimagining the future: exploring the influence of language policies on learner identities in pakistani schools researcher positionality significantly influences research design, data collection, and analysis (peshkin, 1991). i approach this study as a pakistani, a graduate of an elite english-medium school, with ethnic roots in punjab. this positions me as both an insider and outsider regarding certain research aspects. my insider status might blind me to some societal assumptions, while my outsider perspective may limit my grasp on specific cultural nuances. to mitigate these limitations, i sought feedback from my pakistani respondents through member-checking. my aim wasn't to eliminate inherent biases but to acknowledge and understand how they might influence the study's outcomes (luttrell, 2000, p. 500). 87 current issues in comparative education alia female punjab rural urdu/ english government graduate amjad male punjab urban english non-elite private undergraduate majid male punjab urban urdu/ english non-elite private 12th mazhar male punjab urban english non-elite private undergraduate saima female punjab urban urdu government graduate sara female punjab urban english elite private undergraduate hania female sindh rural english government 12th nadia female sindh rural urdu/ english non-elite private 12th sameena female sindh rural english non-elite private graduate iffat female baluchista n rural urdu/ english government 12th sameer male baluchista n urban english elite private 12th shahid male baluchista n urban english elite private 12th aslam male kpk rural urdu government 12th beena female kpk rural english government 12th nazish female kpk rural english government 12th fatima findings in this section, i discuss the key themes that emerged from the data. the first section discusses students’ associating english language with being educated, respected, and modern. the next section presents student’s ideas about local languages as being associated with illiteracy, backwardness, and premodernity. the following section outlines school policies on language use and how they influenced students’ ideas about themselves and others in the school. the last section discusses how students actively engaged in decolonial resistance by challenging existing hierarchies and (re)imagining alternative education systems. coloniality of language: english speakers are parha-likhay students in the sample actively engaged in meaning-making and identity construction in relation to linguistic distinction. each language is constructed in the students’ social reality as relating to a particular set of socio-cultural, political, and historical symbols that collectively seek to define what it means to be a speaker of said language in the academic environment. the english language was associated by students across all educational streams—from government schools in kpk to elite private schools in islamabad—to being parha-likha, a construct associated with notions of knowledge, superiority, intelligence, respect, and professionalism. nazish, a student at a government boarding school in kpk put it as follows: “those who speak english are treated with a lot of respect. everyone says that they are parhay-likhay (educated).” similar ideas were also echoed by other students. amjad, a private school graduate from lahore stated: “[the] mindset here is that whoever knows english knows everything.” this revealed a potential conflation between english and knowledge altogether. whoever is considered a proficient speaker of english is deemed parha-likha, that is, educated, rational, and knowing everything. furthermore, students often conflated english with language altogether; that is, to know english meant to know language itself, and conversely, to not know english meant to be “lacking communication skills” (sara, elite-private school student) altogether. classmates who did not speak in english were described by sara, a graduate of an elite private school in islamabad and a second-year university student, as not knowing “how to talk properly.” ideas of appropriateness were attached to english by several other students as well. iffat, a graduate of a government urdu-medium school, defended monolingual school language policies by appealing to this idea of what was appropriate. she claimed that the rules were “important because [through them we] give others the impression that we are parhay-likhay. if we talk properly and respectfully, others get impressed.” for iffat, the notion of being parha-likha is comprised of multiple constructs ranging from appropriateness, education, and respect. these values become attached to speakers of english who are constructed as possessing qualities ranging from education and literacy, to being respectful and proper. these symbols collectively define the english speaker as a dominant actor in the academic space who is accorded a privileged status through their association with the english language and its connection to western knowledges. local languages and colonial reproduction local languages have been hierarchized as inferior to english in the modern/colonial current issues in comparative education 88 coloniality, resistance, and reimagining the future: exploring the influence of language policies on learner identities in pakistani schools western-centric education framework. as a result, policies pertaining to local languages reinforce the notion that local languages and knowledge ecologies have no place in the school and, by association, neither do the speakers of these languages. students across the education system have thus come to associate local languages with particular signs and symbols that reflect their inferior status in the academic institution. they attach ideas of paendo (rural/rustic), and jahil (ignorant/illiterate) to local languages and cultures, constructs that collectively signal premodernity, rurality, illiteracy, ignorance, and unprofessionalism. however, students’ conceptualizations about local languages are not straightforward, and regional languages’ subordination in the colonial power matrix has not erased their intimate links to students’ identities and communities. therefore, local languages elicit ideas of identity, belonging, culture, regional and/or national pride, and unity; at the same time, they occupy a subordinated status compared to english. students were palpably aware of the inferior status of local languages and culture in the school. sara mentioned that her elite private school promoted “western culture [as being] right, and our norms and our cultural background [as] paendo.” the english speaker is associated with modernity, which is constructed in opposition to paendo, a label that is used to describe speakers of local languages as pre-modern, backward, and illiterate. it is important to note that language is one of the many signs that construct the individual or group as paendo, along with other elements including clothing, rituals, practices, social class, and so forth. these signs collectively serve as templates that shape interpretations of what an individual or group of people can and cannot be. school policies on language use: colonial logics of silencing the jahils language is a prominent symbol of identity, and by regulating language use, schools inevitably give messages to the students regarding appropriate and inappropriate language, and by association, appropriate or inappropriate students. such practices work to hierarchize languages and their speakers in the school. sameer, a private school student from baluchistan described school policy on local languages as follows: “urdu is second-tier now. there is an urdu corner for students caught speaking it. it’s a collar of shame.” policies are often hostile to the use of local languages, and nearly all students in the sample experienced some form of explicit language policy or implicit social norm that discouraged the use of local languages within the school. while informal conversation in urdu was deemed acceptable in some cases, in other schools there was an explicit prohibition on speaking in any language other than english. shahid, whose experience was stated in the opening sentences, describes the school as one that was extremely rigid about language use. he stated that the policy “frustrated the students [because] teachers would teach in english, regardless of [the students] understanding it or not. seventy-five percent of the students [could not] follow the lectures.” such experiences work to silence the students who are not proficient enough in english to understand the lecture or converse fluently with peers, resulting in deep frustrations and alienation in the school. a similar experience was described by nadia, a 12th grade student from a non-elite low-cost private english-medium school in sindh: “[students] didn’t perform well [in 89 current issues in comparative education fatima school] but they would talk like scientists [in urdu]. the teacher would strictly insist on using english in class, and so they wouldn’t talk at all.” this silencing can leave deep impacts on students’ perceptions of themselves as well as their capabilities. in the case of nadia and her classmates, students felt alienated in the classroom because they were not allowed to express themselves in a familiar language. as a result, they disengaged from learning altogether. nadia further goes on to describe this alienation: “the school has become a place for us where we think it is out of reach. and we are inferior. [as if] we don’t know anything…all because of language.” for nadia and her peers, the school felt “out of reach” because they could not access an education in english, which led them to feel that they were inferior and did not know anything. thus, students associate inadequacy and inferiority with lack of english proficiency as a result of their educational experiences. since students’ fluency in the native language has no value in the academic institution, the native language also becomes a symbol of illiteracy, which, together with lack of english proficiency, constructs the native language speaker as jahil, a wholly ignorant individual who does not fit in the academic space. sara described such a student at her school in the following terms: “here, they call them jahil (ignorant/illiterate), those who can’t speak english. and you can tell this from the way they talk. a guy in our class can’t speak english… he talks weird, in that harsh, typical urdu/punjabi tone, so we don’t even want to talk to him.” the identity of the non-english speaking student thus gets associated with notions of jahalat based on the “way they talk.” the jahil is understood, through their association with local language and culture, as a person who is illiterate and ignorant. this association shapes social interaction and works to stigmatize speakers of local languages and subsequently silence them in the academic institution. one aspect of this stigmatization is that their use of language is construed as “harsh.” alia described the students in her public urdu-medium school as follows: “most of the students from the rural areas speak punjabi, the typical and crude one.” similar words were also used by saima, a public-school graduate from punjab when referring to pashto as a “harsh” language. such associations of harshness/crudeness to local languages enable the rationalization of their position as inferior to the dominant language in the modern/colonial power structure and thus, unworthy of engagement within academic spaces. what is interesting to note, however, is that associations between languages and ideas about their speakers are not straightforward in any way. one language can at once occupy multiple locations that simultaneously position it as a “crude” language unfit for academic engagement and as a language that is intimately attached to notions of shared communal belongings. in the case of urdu, which has symbolic significance as the language of the muslims of the subcontinent, its linkages to pakistan’s independence movement have enabled its construction as a flagbearer of national identity and unity. such attachments of urdu to an imagined national community (anderson, 2016) were prevalent in my conversations with students. students described urdu as related to “our roots,” and expressed its importance as a “unifying force” that brought citizens together current issues in comparative education 90 coloniality, resistance, and reimagining the future: exploring the influence of language policies on learner identities in pakistani schools as “a single nation.” similarly, students also associated other regional languages, such as pashto and sindhi, with communal ties and cultural identity. colonial ideologies and decolonial possibilities students’ encounters with colonial logics of exclusion and silencing in school shape their beliefs about language, education, knowledge, and culture. the consistent messaging from a eurocentric educational framework had resulted, to a certain extent, in an internalization of colonial power structures that positioned western knowledges as dominant and local knowledges as irrelevant within the school. in gramsci’s (1971) terms, domination by consent had been achieved in some ways. several students saw language policies in the school as appropriate and as benefiting the students. aslam, a government school student in kpk, described the prohibition against the use of pashto in school as an important feature that would prepare students for “professional” life. since pashto was constructed as having no place in professional institutions, aslam thought it was important to actively discourage its use in school. as mentioned above, ideas of what was “appropriate” in an academic/professional institutions offered key rationalizations for school rules against local language use. rigorous training in using linguistic codes associated with being parha-likha (educated) was seen as a favorable feature of education since it would prepare the student to succeed in school, university, and the job market—arenas that are deeply stratified along colonial hierarchies. at the same time, students understood their personal experiences through the framing of global modern/colonial discourses. for instance, sameer had come to understand the connections between english education and superiority, compared to urdu education and its associated inferiority through the lens of modern/colonial logics: “i think it’s our colonial legacy. the english speaker is parha-likha. and urdu-medium is a disgrace in our society.” here, sameer connected the two-tiered education system to white supremacist colonial logics. while sameer thought that it was next to impossible to escape such harmful logics, through his own resistive work of writing an online blog on social justice issues and anti-colonial possibilities, he was engaged in repurposing his own english education at an elite private school as a tool to confront the same colonial power structures that his schooling was designed to reproduce. similarly, hania, a government school student from rural sindh, described the privileging of english over local languages through the framing of colonial power structures: “we speak english over here because the british ruled us. and we are still under their rule mentally.” students were palpably aware of the continuation of colonial hierarchies and understood their educational experiences through the structure and logics of colonization. by describing contemporary colonization as one that was “mental,” hania alluded to the ways in which colonization had not only structured social, political, and educational institutions, but also the very desires and internal orientations of people. she went further to discuss how “[we] still like to dress like the people who ruled us.” for hania, the choice of clothing is an important feature of resistance against this “mental” colonization, and she openly admired women who “dress according to [their] own culture and morals.” the regulation of women’s clothing has long been an avenue through which ideas of modernity and backwardness are expressed, which khoja-moolji (2017) calls “another form of colonialism against rural 91 current issues in comparative education fatima women” (p. s161). similarly, allweiss (2021) has described the ways in which maya women wearing the traditional dress are met with contempt by the settler colonial powers who seek to erase their identities. women’s traditional, and religious, dressing was thus an important feature through which pakistani students engaged with ideas of modernity, rurality, backwardness, and progress. sara, who was a frequent target of discrimination at her elite school because of her religious headscarf and shalwar kameez,5 discussed the ways in which her choice of clothing led peers and teachers to make assumptions about her: “if you’re wearing shalwar kameez, or if your clothing is covering your body, they’re just automatically going to assume everything about you. they assume that i’m paendo and i’m from a very strict [religious] background.” for sara, ideas of indigenous and local knowledges/cultures were intertwined with her religious beliefs and practices. her school attached notions of paendo, backwardness, and premodernity to those practices, stigmatizing students for their association with them. through such subtractive practices, the school sought to erase this aspect of sara’s identity, but her continued expression of her religious beliefs through her clothing was what allweiss (2021) has called an act of refusal against a gendered and anglicized image of what an educated, parha-likhka student in an elite private school should look like. pakistani youth thus experienced modern/colonial hierarchies in distinct ways because of their particular social locations. for some students, it was through education in an unfamiliar language which severely restricted their potential for intellectual growth, while for others, it manifested in policing around language use or dress code. students responded to such structures in diverse ways which positioned them simultaneously as targets of colonial reproduction through internalization and reenactment of certain colonial logics and decolonial social change through resistance to others. one avenue where this played out was students’ response to school language use policies. while students in some schools bought into the rationale behind such rules, students in other situations refused to conform and instead devised multiple strategies to resist and express themselves in local languages at the school. in shahid’s school, students devised secretive ways to evade teachers’ eyes during recess so they could communicate in urdu or other native languages. after the incident where a girl openly condemned the school administration for punishing her for speaking urdu, shahid explained that the entire student body supported her more than they would ever support the school administration. “she had fought well,” said shahid, framing her actions as a struggle for self-expression in the school. therefore, in some instances, students pushed back against the contours of modern/colonial logics around language ideologies in the school through active acts of resistance. these actions positioned the students as sites of decolonial resistance and made possible through their efforts a change in their social environment. as shahid explained, even though they expelled the girl, ultimately his school had to abandon the 5 traditional dress consisting of a long and loose-fitted shirt, pants, and a stole that drapes over the chest. current issues in comparative education 92 coloniality, resistance, and reimagining the future: exploring the influence of language policies on learner identities in pakistani schools rigid language policies because of students’ retaliation against them, resulting in a shift towards decolonization of the school. (re)imagining the future students’ understanding of their educational experiences through the framework of western-centric colonial hierarchies opened the possibilities for them to act as resistive agents against such logics and (re)imagine alternative futures for themselves and their nation. when students experienced the harmful ways in which eurocentric education models, and particularly colonial language-in-education policies, functioned to undermine local knowledges and languages in the school, they contested such hierarchies. this was especially true in instances where these hierarchies worked to exclude them from the educational institution, particularly for students who were from lower socioeconomic classes and were multiply discriminated due to lack of educational opportunities in addition to insurmountable language barriers in higher education. such a dissatisfaction with the way things were currently structured opened up the space from which students could (re)imagine alternative futurities. “[schools] should teach us the actual culture of pakistan, instead of asking us to be like america, or uk, or whatever,” said sara when ruminating about an education outside colonial logics. for sara, this would mean an education that did not borrow its knowledges and values from the west, but instead was inward-focused and centered on local knowledges and cultures. for other students, especially those from rural backgrounds where language-in-education policies worked in conjunction with poor educational quality to undermine students’ learning, the key feature of an alternative education system was a language of instruction that they could understand. sameena, a graduate of a non-elite low-cost private english-medium school in rural sindh, elaborated on this: “shifting our curriculum from english to urdu can drive significant progress and boost societal self-esteem. many struggle, including me, with english as a barrier to understanding and university admissions.” sameena had experienced great difficulties in her educational journey, and she attributed her challenges to the fact that she was forced to learn through an unfamiliar language because of the current colonial educational structure. this narrative is extremely common across pakistan and came up frequently in my conversations with students from lower socioeconomic and rural backgrounds. such students faced multiple disadvantages that not only jeopardized their educational and economic futures, but also influenced their beliefs about their own capabilities and their self-esteem, something that many students believed was negatively impacted when they struggled against the grain to learn in a foreign language. thus, a place for local languages and knowledge ecologies in the school, as mentioned by students, would improve students’ learning outcomes and by association their belief in their capabilities, which is an important aspect of decolonial resistance through reimaging education. discussion and conclusion this study sheds light on how pakistani youth encounter modern/colonial hierarchies in the school and how such logics structure their lives, and their beliefs, including their 93 current issues in comparative education fatima ideas about self, others, and society at large. the experiences of pakistani students illuminate the very material consequences of modern/colonial logics of exclusion and silencing in the school that seek to erase their local languages and knowledge ecologies. the structuring of their educational experiences along colonial logics resulted in students internalizing existing hierarchies. however, at the same time, many students understood their experiences through the framing of colonial power structures, which simultaneously positioned them as potential actors for decolonial resistance and (re)imagining alternative futurities. students exhibited particular language ideologies in relation to western and local languages, which reflected social structures they were embedded in. accordingly, english represented particular sociopolitical and historical signs and symbols, positioning it as the dominant language in the modern/colonial hierarchy. students associated english with ideas of superiority, knowledge, respect, intellect, modernity, rationality, and being parha-likha. local languages, on the other hand, were associated with ideas of paendo and jahil, constructs that signaled illiteracy, ignorance, backwardness, rurality, and premodernity. however, at the same time, students felt deeply emotionally connected to their local languages, which occupied multiple locations that positioned them simultaneously as below english in the colonial hierarchy and as intimately tied to notions of identity and communal belonging. ideologies around language and language of instruction were, as rosa and burdick (2017) theorized, not really about language but served to rationalize societal structure based on linguistic distinction. the positioning of english as the “language of knowledge” and rationality thus served to justify its position at the top of the hierarchy and the language of instruction and academic engagement. similarly, as theorized by veronelli (2015), local languages and their speakers were associated with notions of illiteracy and lacking capacity for rational expressivity, which served to justify their erasure from the academic institution along with the exclusion of their speakers from educational advancement and opportunity. such logics sought to dehumanize speakers of local languages who were construed as jahil, paendo, and lacking “personality” because of their use of “crude,” “harsh,” and “improper” language. students’ encounters with colonial hierarchies were mediated by their social class, gender, race/ethnicity, and ability. students from poor and rural backgrounds experienced coloniality through a deeply stratified education system that denied them access to high quality education and forced them to learn through a language that was unfamiliar. in doing so, the colonial structure stunted their intellectual growth and limited their possibilities for academic progress, a condition that has been termed “linguistic apartheid” (p. xi) by haitian educator michel degraff (2019). on the other hand, students from higher socioeconomic class and elite backgrounds did not experience language barriers in education, but were socialized into colonial norms that sanctioned native languages and cultures in the school and valorized western knowledges and cultures. an important aspect of colonial logics that was experienced by women was mediated through the policing of dress code, which constituted as a key site for the enactment of colonialism against rural and religious women. students thus current issues in comparative education 94 coloniality, resistance, and reimagining the future: exploring the influence of language policies on learner identities in pakistani schools encountered coloniality in ways that positioned them across multiple locations of stratification in the colonial matrix of power depending on their class, gender, race/ethnicity, religion, and geographic location. students were also active agents of decolonial possibilities and were engaged in resistive action against colonial logics of exclusion and silencing. their understanding of their educational experiences through the framing of colonial power structures enabled them to recognize colonialism as a structure that was deeply influential in organizing their lives. this positioning opened a space for resistance against colonial hierarchies and a (re)imagining of alternative futurities. as bhabha (1994) and kalua (2009) posited, the articulation of student identities was an on-going negotiation with their educational environment. students were active agents of change, rather than passive recipients of societal norms. the experiences of pakistani youth are an important avenue from which to investigate global hierarchies of coloniality that influence the lives of marginalized youth across the world, especially youth in post-colonial countries that continue to perpetuate colonial educational structures. degraff (2019) has posited that decolonization is even more urgent when the medium of instruction is a foreign language that disenfranchises most of the population. speaking in the context of haiti, degraff claims that despite more than two centuries since independence, haiti has yet to break the intellectual, cultural, and political chains of neo-colonialism. this analysis holds true for many post-colonial contexts across the world, including pakistan, where deeply held colonial beliefs attach notions of increased humanity to education in english, while associating local languages with being sub-human, a condition that is common in societies across the world that suffer from the colonial wound (allweiss, 2021; degraff, 2019; mignolo, 2009; said, 1994). therefore, the insights and experiences of pakistani youth presented in this paper offer promising comparative possibilities. the struggles of pakistani students speak to those of colonized/colonialized youth around the world who challenge global neo-colonial, imperialist, and racialized power structures that seek to dehumanize and erase indigenous ways of being. through resistive and reparative work, scholars combating colonialism can serve as important allies in the struggle against modern/colonial systems of racialization, oppression, and dehumanization globally. the current study has illustrated that pakistani students have internalized colonial hierarchies and constitute key sites for decolonial resistance at the same time. their voices offer insights into the structuring of colonial logics locally while also being in conversation with colonial frameworks globally. shizza fatima completed her master’s in international education policy analysis at stanford university. her research 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(2020). school enrollment, secondary (% gross) pakistan. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/se.sec.enrr?locations=pk 99 current issues in comparative education © 2003 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 17 institutional evaluation, knowledge and multiculturalism: some ways ahead in brazilian higher education ana canen faculty of education, universidade federal do rio de janeiro introduction in the contemporary world, the pivotal role of technology for knowledge production and fostering a competitive edge among countries in a highly globalized scenario has been widely recognized. the impact of information technology on the way knowledge is conceived has also been broadly discussed. authors such as polsani (2002) highlight the extent to which a new "rhizomic network" approach has been replacing a hierarchical and centered approach to knowledge building as a result of information technology development. however, while the importance of technology in knowledge building has been recognized, consensus has not been reached about what knowledge really means and what kind of knowledge should be fostered for educational policies. such debates are informed by differing underlying concepts, each with serious consequences for educational goals, practices and knowledge production itself. as argued elsewhere (canen & grant, 1999), tensions exist between definitions of knowledge which regard it as directly linked to market demands only versus those transformational, multicultural views which assign to knowledge categories of citizenry development, appreciation of cultural diversity, as well as critical and independent thinking. these varied definitions impinge on educational policies and practices aimed at outlining and assessing the worth and merit of knowledge building goals and strategies. similar dichotomous tensions have also underpinned discussions about the role of technology, viewed either as another source of overall inequality and exclusion or as a means by which developing economies have a chance to overcome constraints and speed up their development process. as centers of knowledge production, higher education institutions have been at the core of this volcanic debate. this is particularly evident in brazil, where the rise of a newly elected labor party government whose electoral claims that ensured a major victory in the elections of 2002 were mainly built on proposals of policies (including educational ones) dedicated to social inclusion, democracy, citizenry building, valuing of local cultures, and an overt stand against marketization and neoliberalism, at least at the discourse levels. taking into account the above mentioned scenario, this present paper aims to discuss the recent proposal for a national system of evaluation of higher education in brazil (sistema nacional de avaliação do ensino superiorsinaes, 2003), presented by a government committee for evaluation of higher education set up by the ministry of education in april 2003. the document analyses and makes recommendations of criteria, theories and strategies for changing processes and politics of evaluation in higher education. the proposal has been submitted to the academic community for discussions and should be sent to the brazilian national congress before the end of 2003 for deliberations about legislation concerning institutional evaluation in brazil. ana canen december 17, 2003 18 i contend that a national institutional evaluation policy proposal can give precious insights as to the thrust and tensions surrounding the concept of knowledge, the role of technology and the way government perceives universities' missions towards those. this is due to the fact that such a proposal reflects government directions and criteria for judging the merit and worth of knowledge produced by higher education institutions with consequences for their resourcing, financing, accreditation and related implications. this case study has comparative relevance, as it illustrates dilemmas inherent to educational policies in countries beset by social disparities and cultural diversity that are eager to move away from educational goals linked to market perspectives but still struggle to conceive of alternative models that ensure educational inclusion without compromising educational quality and relevant knowledge for the contemporary scenario. the article is based on what i call a critical multicultural evaluation perspective that values institutional cultural diversity but nevertheless challenges relativistic approaches to it (i.e., those evaluation perspectives that claim institutional evaluation should stop short of making evaluative judgments with reference to values alien to the goals and mission spelled out by the institution itself). i argue that institutional evaluation policies that try to strike a balance between strategies that value culturally distinct institutional approaches to knowledge and those that ensure a regulatory control for quality assurance and institutional accountability are in a better position to help institutional growth. i also suggest that the will to go beyond what is generally perceived as productoriented approaches to knowledge should not mean the demise of the search for technological and academic excellence in higher education institutional lives. the ways by which those issues have been addressed in the discourse of the brazilian sinaes document will be discussed, as well as possible consequences and implications of such a proposal for knowledge building in multicultural countries. institutional evaluation of higher education in brazil: what potentials of a critical multicultural model? institutional evaluation in higher education represents a crucial process by which judgments about the worth and merit of institutional practices and knowledge building are gauged. in fact, as already claimed by smith (1980) at the very beginning of the 1980s, evaluation is subject to myriad value judgments of what is good or ideal. i suggest institutional evaluation has mostly been perceived through dichotomous lenses, being either viewed as an objectivist process aiming at arriving at evaluative conclusions based on objective criteria and values (scriven, 1994), or in more "ethnographic", relativistic and constructivist views generally identified as those that stop short of proposing criteria for making value judgments and evaluative conclusions and rather focus on evaluation as resulting from negotiation and dialog with institutional actors (penna-firme, 1995), taking into account specific institutional cultural values and missions. these latter views are far from being circumscribed to evaluation, being rather linked to postmodern and poststructural assumptions that "there is no single 'truth' that all truths are but partial truths" (lincoln & guba, 2000, p.185), which leads to the impossibility of having aprioristic and pseudo-universal criteria for judging the merit and worth of any enterprise, including the evaluative one. institutional evaluation, knowledge and multiculturalism: some ways ahead in brazilian higher education current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 19 from the early 1990s up to the beginning of 2003, brazilian debates and policies concerning institutional evaluation have been mostly marked by this dichotomous approach. the phase between 1994 and 1998 saw the flourishing of the program of institutional evaluation of brazilian universities (paiub). this program was conceived as a process aimed at evaluating higher education institutions according to their values and missions based mostly on internal and external evaluative assessment dynamics geared towards pinpointing strengths and areas in need of strengthening (ristoff, 1996; sobrinho, 1996). as explained elsewhere (canen & oliveira, 2000), that process received government financing and was carried out in several universities, because of the general perception that it enhanced institutional growth due to its diagnostic and formative perspective, and its basis on general principles and indicators dedicated to respecting and valuing institutions' culturally plural identities. such a program can be said to demonstrate the thrust towards more ethnographic, constructive and relativistic approaches to institutional evaluation in that it stopped short of making evaluative conclusions that could overstep the institution's own mission and values. as such, paiub was both lauded and criticized because it produced long reports that were perceived as useful internally, but that provided little clarity externally about the kind of knowledge universities produced and the merit and worth of the institution for society at large. a slow dismantling of the paiub for lack of continued governmental financial support and a growing thrust towards classificatory, product-oriented institutional evaluation have marked the second phase of institutional evaluation spanning 1998 and 2002 in brazil. this type of evaluation is mainly translated into institutional ranking based on students' performance on national course exams--the so-called provões (brazilian nickname for "big exam")--which all university students must take at the close of their courses. while such classificatory policies have been lauded by a few who extol its efficacy as a means to provide accountability for society about knowledge produced in the universities, they have been seriously attacked by most of the academic community on the grounds that: they reduced institutional evaluation to students' evaluation; they did not take into account cultural diversity and plural institutional identities; and they claimed objectivity but were perceived as seriously biased towards measuring market demands and competencies deemed necessary in a globalized society. that type of institutional evaluation policy can be said to have silenced multiculturally-oriented perspectives in favor of homogenized, centralized and product-oriented evaluation processes under the guise of objectivity and accountability. at this point, it is important to note that academics have generally pointed to the influence of international agencies such as the world bank in the shaping of educational policies, and indeed in the concept of knowledge that underpins those policies in countries like brazil, which are heavily financially indebted to more developed countries. in fact, as argued elsewhere (canen & grant, 1999), the privileging of the 'knowledge for productivity' ideology has been to the detriment of more multiculturally oriented perspectives, and has had consequences on institutional evaluation, particularly from 1995 to the end of 2002. since the inauguration of a new labor-oriented government whose ideological premises challenge market educational perspectives and whose rhetoric conveys defiance towards the influence of international agencies, it is ana canen december 17, 2003 20 relevant to evaluate the present thrust of institutional evaluation and the role of knowledge and technology underpinning it. i suggest that the will to go beyond a product-oriented approach to knowledge should not mean the perpetuation of a dichotomous approach that puts knowledge for democracy and knowledge for technological and academic excellence in opposition. in fact, i argue that a multicultural critical approach to institutional evaluation (canen, 2001a) and to knowledge building should go beyond such dichotomies to try and work out hybridizations and syntheses that derive from the dialog between culturally diverse institutional identities and missions and those espoused by democratic societies committed to equity and excellence in knowledge building. at this point, it is important to note that a critical multicultural approach is that which not only values cultural diversity but also challenges racist, sexist and other discriminatory perspectives and practices in education, bearing in mind transformational pedagogies and evaluation approaches turned towards democratic tenets of society. whilst democracy and inclusion deserve discussions of their own (epstein, 1996; mcginn, 1996), as does multiculturalism and its many meanings and controversies (canen, 2001b, 2003; canen & grant, 1999; glazer, 1997; grant, 2000; mclaren, 2000), a critical multicultural perspective as understood here should help view institutional evaluation as a complex process in which formative, diagnostic evaluative instruments aimed at valuing institutions' cultural distinctiveness and identities could be articulated with summative external evaluation processes aimed at providing clear criteria and goals for higher education institutions. those evaluations should include indicators that make institutions accountable for the kind of knowledge they provide. however, that such knowledge be consistent with the democratic tenets of that society arguably should not be a hindrance towards its search for technological excellence. brazilian current sinaes proposal: what relationship with knowledge production and technology? the current proposal of the national system for evaluation of higher education in brazil, called sinaes (2003), has tried to reedit the paiub principles (which were in place between 1994 and 1998, as discussed above) with respect to institutional identities, a global view of institutional performance and a commitment to inclusionary and democratic education, as opposed to the last government's evaluation policy that was perceived as an exclusively product-oriented approach to knowledge and evaluation. however, it is important to point out that the first challenge for a national system within the context of a society as multicultural and highly socially unequal as brazil-a society in which regional, cultural and ethnic plurality prevail-is how to value cultural diversity and indigenous knowledges without falling into a relativistic approach to knowledge building and evaluation. inextricably linked to that challenge, a second challenge refers to the plural scenario of higher education in brazil. in fact, brazil cannot be said to have a single system of higher education, but many systems, which include: public universities (federal and state universities run respectively by the federal and state governments with no student fees); private universities; and alternative private higher education institutions outside the university model (i.e. higher institutes for teacher education; university centers; institutional evaluation, knowledge and multiculturalism: some ways ahead in brazilian higher education current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 21 isolated faculties; technologic courses and others, which have also had a boom in the last few years). in this respect, amaral & polidori (1999) point out that the expansion of the higher education system in brazil has been mostly the result of the expansion of the private sector, with mixed results and uneven performance. indeed, the expansion of the private sector in higher education has also been perceived by many as a direct consequence of the influence of international agencies in brazilian educational scenario that deem public higher education as "not-profitable". the consequence is that institutions committed to research and ground breaking academic thought (most of the public universities and a few of the private ones can be said to fit into this profile) coexist side by side with others committed to alternative values and missions, mostly dedicated solely to teaching rather than research. this exceptionally pluralistic and complex scenario is paved with uneven academic results and impacts. in this sense, the sole use of relativistic strands of evaluation might risk losing objective standards for assessing the worth and merit of knowledge produced in this diverse scenario, even though they respect cultural institutional identities. bearing the above in mind and building on the critical multicultural approach previously discussed, i suggest that the current proposal of the sinaes (2003) has gone more in the way of striking a balance between formative, culturally diverse evaluation strategies and external summative evaluation for accountability purposes than had the previously discussed institutional evaluation policies. in fact, the sinaes (2003) document demonstrates an aim to go beyond a dichotomized view of evaluation as discussed before in that it spells out its intention of valuing cultural diversity and plural institutional identities while at the same time defending regulation and quality control by central government. the following excerpt supports this assertion and describes the policy's main approach to institutional evaluation:"to have a far-stretching view of the evaluative processes without dissociating them from the necessary regulation and control by the state in fostering and supervising the system in its whole (...), which recognizes the importance of diversity but as long as it is compatible with the demands of quality, social relevance and autonomy" (sinaes, 2003, p.7). however, i also argue that in order to accomplish that, the document proposes a systematic evaluation approach consisting of some processes and structures that raise concerns about the transparency of evaluative criteria and to the way knowledge production and technology are conceived. firstly, the regulatory perspective could be seriously menaced by the fact that the evaluation system proposed in the sinaes (2003) stops short of providing any evaluative grade, but rather culminates in long descriptive reports. one can infer that the resistance to providing any clear category or weights to the various indicators and aspects designed to evaluate institutions of higher education in more global terms stems from the opposition to league tables and classificatory assessment (as espoused in the "provões") which the document associates with the market-oriented approach to education that the new government is keen to challenge. however, associating objectivist evaluation process (scriven, 1994) as a whole to market or neoliberal strands could be an undue overgeneralization that risks being perceived as a denial to offer to society clear and concise evaluative statements about the quality of knowledge produced within the plurality of higher education institutions. that denial could further be reinforced by the kind of instrument deemed to replace the "provões" for student assessment. in fact, by being targeted at a sample of students that could be ana canen december 17, 2003 22 voluntary and by putting the evaluative results within a framework of "areas" rather than "courses", as proposed in the document, that instrument could possibly fail to give a clear picture of institutional performance per faculty, department or other institutional unit, mitigating their approach to knowledge as well as their singular projects and impacts. secondly, i suggest that the way knowledge and technology are perceived in the document has been colored by a dichotomous approach that tends to place in opposition the concept of knowledge for "market demands" (in which the role of technology is enhanced) and the concept of knowledge for citizenry, democracy and multicultural sensitivity (in which either the role of technology is silenced or is limited to the impacts of information technology in knowledge building and in promoting more equitable access to information). that seems to be implied, for instance, in one of the indicators for students' assessment within the proposed self-evaluative schedule of institutional performance within the referenced document. it spells out that institutional evaluation should "evaluate the social responsibility of the institution relative to its policies of expansion of entrance vacancies; [and] it should consider whether such policies are committed to criteria defined by public policies and knowledge development needs or rather to market demands"(sinaes, 2003, p.88). as inferred from the above excerpt, a dichotomous approach that separates social responsibility and democracy from what is perceived as "market demands" (without making it clear what such categories mean and with an implied negative view towards the latter) might risk sending a mixed message to higher education institutions that technical excellency and "market" relevancy of knowledge are negative aspects, thereby compromising projects and institutional cultural identities attuned to such values in knowledge building. though other interpretations could be made concerning the message delivered in the document, its ambiguity could render it vulnerable to such misconstructions as suggested here. rosenfield (2003) contends that government has colored its stand against financial investment in technological development and research with ideological propaganda that associates such an investment with market oriented approaches to knowledge. it is interesting to point out that although there is no explicit discussion about knowledge within the document, each time the categories "science" or "technology" are mentioned they are associated with expressions and ideas related to: their "inclusive nature" (as in the proposed evaluative indicators to assess curricula and programs); the extent to which the community has access to them (as in the proposed evaluative indicators to assess extension and socially geared institutional activities); the extent to which science is linked "to the needs of the population"; and "the scientific and social relevance of science" (as in the proposed evaluative indicators to assess the staff's scientific productivity). that seems to highlight the relationship between the sinaes, knowledge production, and technology as mainly built around the "usefulness" of the latter two to promote social equity and democracy. in fact, as can be noted, the sinaes (2003) seems to have substituted regulation through market values to regulation based on the extent to which higher education institutions adhere to democratic, inclusionary values. nevertheless, as pointed out by epstein (1996) and mcginn (1996), democracy and inclusion are complex issues that need to be clearly addressed and defined. however noble and coincidental those regulatory ideals institutional evaluation, knowledge and multiculturalism: some ways ahead in brazilian higher education current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 23 espoused by the sinaes (2003) proposal may be to a multicultural perspective defended here, the lack of clarity about what those categories mean and how they are to be translated into higher education institutions leave a vacuum that may be filled by misconstrued views that pit technological development for the purpose of academic excellence against purposes of democratic consolidation, to the detriment of the former. that such a dichotomous approach should prevail in the document becomes even more worrisome when one looks at the centralizing approach to the management of the evaluation process as a whole. for instance, the sinaes proposes a national central evaluation committee of twelve members chosen by the president of brazil. this committee would be comprised of experts in education and evaluation whose duties would include planning, supervising, collecting documentation and giving a final say in the evaluation process before sending the results to the ministry of education for appropriate actions. the homogeneous composition of the centralized national evaluative committee and its worrisome direct and close link to central power could arguably mean a preponderance of the regulatory and controlling dimension of the evaluation to the detriment of its multiculturally-oriented one. likewise, even though claiming there should be an institutional self-evaluation dimension, as an intrinsic part of the institutional evaluation process as a whole, so as to recognize and appreciate a plurality of cultural identities among institutions and to allow a formative approach to evaluation to flourish, the fact that such a self-evaluative dimension should be done based on a checklist previously elaborated by the national central committee might be harmful to the initial multiculturally oriented goal. in order to ensure representation of the academic community and civil society at large on that committee and, more importantly, to provide a space for alternative models of knowledge building and technology enhancement disparate from a pre-determined ideological straight-jacket, other criteria for both the selection of committee members and institutional selfevaluation should be sought. by underplaying the role of technology development for knowledge building in higher education, government rhetoric seems to be sending a message of an apparent dissociation of national educational values from international agencies' "productivity oriented" proposals, conveying a sense of a "nationalistic", democratic and inclusive approach to knowledge. however, paradoxically, such a reduction of the concept of knowledge could well mean an increasing dependence on those very agencies for access to new technologies and "developmentally useful" knowledge (king & mcgrath, 2002), since national minds and projects would be stifled by a lack of financial resources and support. in a critical multicultural approach (canen, 2001b, 2003; canen & grant, 1999; glaser, 2000; grant, 2000; mclaren, 2000), i have argued that we should be wary of dichotomies and rather glean the constructed meanings of knowledge in their multiple hybridizations and loci, lest we risk falling into a paradox of stifling institutional diversity and technology enhancement projects under the very flag of multiculturalism, democracy and inclusion. conclusions the present paper discussed institutional evaluation in brazil under a critical multicultural approach. it contended that even though the current document with a proposal for a national institutional evaluation system has moved more in the direction ana canen december 17, 2003 24 of trying to balance respect for cultural diversity and regulation for quality control in evaluation of higher education institutions, some imprecisions and imbalances should be addressed so as to ensure that that aim is achieved. it has particularly highlighted the need to spell out the expected objectives for higher education in brazil as well as to clearly state the meaning of knowledge and the criteria to judge its merit and worth in accordance not only with cultural diversity and democratic values, but also with technological development and the recognition of its impact on knowledge building. it has spelled out concerns about a misconstrued and pervasive view within the document that dichotomizes technological development for knowledge for excellence and knowledge for democracy, to the detriment of the first one. in this sense, it has also argued for the need to challenge a homogenizing and centralizing dash in the structures and processes of the proposed institutional evaluation process, so as to ensure a plural representation deemed central for a multiculturally oriented institutional evaluation. it was contended that such a step would allow higher education institutions to give air to alternative models of knowledge building and technology enhancement not only away from the dichotomous approaches discussed above, but also from ideological straightjackets that stifle knowledge building and technology enhancement under the flag of vague and ill-defined notions such as those of "usefulness" or "social relevancy" of knowledge. it should be pointed out that discussions of institutional evaluation in brazil within the context of the new government are still in the "first half of the game", as stated by the representative of the secretary of state for higher education in brazil during a recent meeting with the academic community to discuss the issue. much is surely going to pop up, particularly in the wake of the several debates the sinaes proposal has been engendering inside and outside the academic community. the current proposal is certainly a step forward in the new brazilian government efforts of seeking alternative models of knowledge and institutional evaluation that keep well away from neoliberal strands perceived as exclusive and that value cultural diversity and democratic societal values. rather than insurmountable obstacles, the risks and challenges of such an enterprise as pointed out within the limits of the present article should be thought of as stepping stones leading to new, more multiculturally-oriented and significant models of knowledge for the contemporary world. such models should value cultural diversity and democratic values but nevertheless not stifle technological enhancement and alternative approaches to knowledge building. brazilian challenges to achieve that aim could offer precious insights to other multicultural countries and provide possible options to be worked out for a new perspective in evaluation and knowledge building for the present millennium. in memory of professor nigel d.c. grant institutional evaluation, knowledge and multiculturalism: some ways ahead in brazilian higher education current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 25 references amaral, a. & polidori, m. (1999), quality evaluation in brazil: a competency based approach? higher education policy, v. 12, pp. 177-199. canen, a. (2001 a), avaliação da aprendizagem em sociedades multiculturais. ed. papel & virtual, www.papelvirtual.com.br canen, a. (2001b), universos culturais e representações docentes: subsídios para a formação de professores para a diversidade cultural, educação e sociedade, v. 77, pp. 207 227. canen, a. (2003), child education and literacy learning for multicultural societies: the case of the brazilian national curricular references for child education (ncrs), compare, v. 33, n.2, pp. 251-264. canen, a. & grant, n.d.c. (1999), intercultural perspective and knowledge for equity in the mercosul countries: limits and potentials in educational policies, comparative education, v. 35, n. 3, pp. 319 330. canen, a. & oliveira, m.t. (2000), institutional evaluation in the mercosur: transformation or control?, international journal of educational development, n. 20, pp. 277 286. epstein, i. (1996), educating street children: some cross-cultural perspectives, comparative education, v. 32, n.3, pp. 289-302. glazer, n. (1997), we are all multiculturalists now. massachusetts: harvard university press. grant, n. (2000), multicultural education in scotland. edinburgh: dunedin academic press. king, k. & mcgrath, s. (2002), the globalization of development knowledge and comparative education, compare, vol. 32, no.3, pp. 281-284. lincoln, y. & guba, e.g. (2000), paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, and emerging confluences. in: denzin, n.k. & lincoln, y.s. (eds.), handbook of qualitative research. california: sage publications, pp. 163-188. mcginn, n. f. (1996), education, democratization and globalization: a challenge for comparative education, comparative education review, v.40, n.4, pp. 341-357. mclaren, p. (2000), multiculturalismo revolucionário.porto alegre: artmed editora. penna-firme, t. (1995), avaliação de inovações educacionais, seminário internacional de avaliação da educação, pp. 67 74. rio de janeiro: funcação cesgranrio (printed). ana canen december 17, 2003 26 polsani, p. r. (2002), education in the network: knowledge flows and learning nodes, <http://21st.century.phil-inst.hu/m-learning_conference/polsani/polsani_short.pdf> ristoff, d. i. (1996), princípios do programa de avaliação institucional, avaliação, n.1, pp. 47-53. rosenfield, d. l. (2003), aliança: mst & monsanto, o globo, 1 december 2003, p.7. scriven, m. (1994), evaluation as a discipline, studies in educational evaluation, v. 20, n.1, pp. 147 166. sinaes (sistema nacional de avaliação da educação superior) (2003), comissão especial de avaliação, secretaria do ensino superior (sesu), ministério da educação, brasília, brazil. smith, n. (1980), evaluation studies: sources of values influencing educational evaluation, studies in educational evaluation, v. 6, pp. 101-118. sobrinho, j. d. (1996), avaliação institucional: marco teórico e campo político, avaliação, n.1, pp. 15-24. microsoft word 41edintro.doc © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 3 editorial introduction education for democracy in the post-development era: what will the curtain reveal? across countries, students are open to less traditional forms of civic and political engagement such as collecting money for a charity and participating in non-violent protests or rallies. a small minority of students would be willing to participate in protest activities that would be illegal in most countries, such as blocking traffic or occupying buildings1. what does it mean to "educate" students for democracy? are democratic principles a luxury only achieved after "modernization" and the transformation to capitalism? do free citizens only exist in the free market and if not, are there other possibilities aside from those with the prefix "anti-" attached? assuming one may arrive at the "genuinely unbiased" notion of democracy referred to in our call for papers for this issue, should education even necessarily be considered as the means to achieve it? the task is complicated by contradictions, not least of which is the idea of pluralism, contained in a curriculum which implies that there is only one, "best" form of citizenship. in this sense the difference between education and indoctrination, is by no means obvious. a popular solution that has been documented is the determination of goals in terms "education for," with the best of intentions attached--diversity, tolerance, peace and human rights. as ideals, these may be inarguable, but as goals for education, are they achievable? the authors whose articles are presented in the current issue of cice, "education for democracy in the post development era," have provided us a variety of perspectives which to consider these issues. some describe social and political contexts democracy is conceptually almost unrecognizable in terms of the way in which we have come to understand it. others alter the grounds of the argument altogether by introducing alternative approaches, which they argue are more universally applicable, such as peace education, or by insisting that democracy can no longer be conceived of as an exclusively national phenomenon, and should be approached from a more cosmopolitan framework. in prospects of educating for democracy in struggling third wave regimes: the case of malawi, zikany kaunda and nancy kendall refer to the weaknesses of present national and international conceptualizations of democracy and advocate for an alternative model, better suited to the malawian context. their model emphasizes normative and cultural aspects, as well as the important role that both formal and nonformal educational structures can play in providing a culturally acceptable program of education for democracy. most importantly, their article refers to the question of whether or not the model of democracy created by the "developed" west, can be of any utility in places where these same countries have in the past behaved so undemocratically. editorial introduction 4 december 18, 2001 writing from a similar perspective, andrea dyrness, in popular education and post-war democratization" the case of pennat, guatemala, argues that in guatemala, education for democracy must also address the "culture of terror" and the "culture of fear" that the civil war has left behind. she asks whether education can help to achieve a national transition to democracy, while at the same time helping individuals and communities recover from the devastating effects of political violence and repression. dyrness examines a specific ngo program, 'pennat,' (programa educativo del niño, niña y adolescente trabajador--educational program for child and adolescent workers), which is explicitly oriented toward social change, based on a popular education philosophy that aims to empower the most excluded members of society. she concludes that in terms of both what it does, as well as who it serves, pennat makes a unique contribution to post-war democratization and to building a "culture of mutual respect and peace." the possibility of revising popularly held notions of democracy, is hypothesized by dale snauwaert in cosmopolitan democracy and democratic education. snauwaert argues that democracy can no longer be conceived of as exclusively a national phenomenon. he advocates in its place a more "cosmopolitan" conception of democracy, grounded in "universals" such as "moral equality" and "inherent dignity." snauwaert underscores the relationship between education and democracy and argues in favor of a, "(…) democratic education grounded in the principle of humanity (…) devoted primarily to the cultivation of emphatic, respectful and wide-awake cosmopolitan citizens." a similar stance of revisionism is present in leonissa ardizzone's towards global understanding: the transformative role of peace education. ardizzone writes that civic education, tolerance education, human rights education and education for democracy, are all actually components of a curriculum of peace education. peace education is education directed towards the creation of a culture of peace. by implication then, traditional approaches to civic education may be held partially accountable for global conflict in failing to promote critical thinking, intercultural understanding and "(…) a long history of structural violence within a global culture of war." according to both ardizzone and snauwaert, civic education must transcend national borders and prepare students for "global citizenship." the future of education for democracy is a very important topic for the current cice editorial board. along with many of our readers, we hope to have a role in influencing that future. we hope that the discussion started in this issue will continue and contribute to educational goals for positive social change. notes 1. torney-purta, j., lehmann, r., oswald, h. and schulz, w. (2001). citizenship and education in 28 countries: civic knowledge and engagement at age 14 (p.176). amsterdam, the netherlands: the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement. ©2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 63 editorial introduction participatory development: a promise revisited states around the world continue to delegate to localities the task of educating their own populations. this purported change in the locus of control of educational systems may be attributed to increasing external and internal political pressure to respond to local educational needs, as well as diminishing educational resources from central governments. it is meant to make education more relevant to local needs and enable communities to have more power and control over their lives. as policies encouraging decentralization have proliferated throughout the world and escalated into a reform epidemic, many scholars have questioned whether the promises that fueled participatory processes have been kept. in other words, have decentralized education systems translated into empowerment and community involvement in decision making? who is actually participating, and who is not? how do different communities define 'participation'? in the context of decentralization, what factors contribute to local participation? what kinds of decision-making processes are communities now involved in, as a result of decentralization? authors such as ilan kapoor (2002) have extended the dialogue on participatory development by criticizing the lack of theoretical grounding for participatory methods that enable many of the pitfalls already discussed in the literature. as diverse answers to the questions above are brought to the fore, it is critical that we continue to look more closely at the theories and methods related to participatory development and question its more common assumptions. in response to kapoor and robert chambers' work, this issue of cice presents diverse perspectives, research findings, and commentaries concerning the participatory development discourse. references kapoor, i. (2002). the devil's in the theory: a critical assessment of robert chamber's work on participatory development. third world quarterly, 23(1), 101-117. © 2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 19 the 'islamic' in islamic education: assessing the discourse farid panjwani institute for the study of muslim civilizations london, united kingdom abstract the paper assesses the dominant discourse on islam and education that argues for an education derived from an exclusively 'islamic' vision. in addition to exploring the historical roots of this discourse, the paper analyses it with respect to its (i) arguments for an islamic vision of education, (ii) conception of islam, and (iii) proposals for the implementation of such a vision. the paper argues that, at all three levels, the discourse suffers from serious conceptual and empirical weaknesses. it proposes that in seeking to overcome these weaknesses, the discourse will have to reconceptualize several elements, including its conception of islam and its approach to the history of muslims. introduction if one were to comb through the extant works from the first few centuries of the history of muslims to find a book entitled, 'islam and…', one would likely be searching in vain. for example, the bibliographical work of al-nadim (1970, original in the tenth century) does not carry any such title. if a similar search were made today, however, one could fill an entire library with books carrying titles such as islam and democracy, islam and capitalism, islam and science, islam and the west, and, certainly, islam and education. [1]clearly, this indicates a significant shift in the understanding of the very idea of islam. at the very least, it indicates that islam, in these contemporary writings, is an object of study or an idea to be juxtaposed with other ideas (iqbal, 2002). what are the implications of this approach? what is its historical context? 'islam and education' is a strand within the trend of relating the idea of islam to other social, political and intellectual ideas. in this sense, the discourse is part of a widely advocated call for the islamization of various aspects of society –economics, knowledge and science, politics, etc. by exploring the discourse on islam and education, this paper seeks to evaluate the underlying assumptions of this discourse. undoubtedly there is a diversity of approaches to, and stances taken on, writings about islam and education. while a vast majority of this literature is based on the view that there is a distinct islamic position with regard to education (sardar, 1989; iqbal, 1996; wan daud, 1998; ali, 2000), some critical voices question this fundamental assumption (hoodbhouy, 1992; tibi, 1995; soroush, 1997). the advocates of a distinctively islamic approach to education also differ among themselves on various matters; some argue for a common inter-faith religious framework on education (the islamic academy, 1990; conway, 2001) while others claim, at least implicitly, a superiority of the islamic approach over those of other religions (mukadam, 1997). this paper focuses on the writings that are underpinned by a belief in a distinct islamic view of education. within this framework, some writers restrict the notion of islamic to farid panjwani 20 december 15, 2004 religious education (ahmed, 1999); others argue for a complete educational system derived from within an islamic perspective (ul islam, 2003); while still others argue for the wholesale islamization of knowledge (iiis, 1995). this paper seeks to critically asses these approaches by exploring the following: (i) the construction of arguments for an islamic approach; (ii) the underlying conception of islam used in the writings; and, (iii) practical proposals for the implementation of islamic education. through a critical analysis of a wide range of writings on the subject, the paper will argue that, at all three levels, the discourse suffers from serious philosophical, empirical and pragmatic shortcomings. it will conclude by offering alternatives that may help overcome these shortcomings. arguments for an islamic approach a contemporary discussion on islam and education usually begins with a critique of western and western-based educational systems in societies that have a significant muslim population. professor ashraf ali, a leading proponent of islamic education in uk writes, underlying this paper is the conviction, variously expressed that education in britain today all too frequently promotes an unduly secularist approach to life. …[i]t (education in britain today) can, perhaps unintentionally, too easily breed skepticism and relativism and lead to the loss of the sense of sacredness of life, with all the impoverishment of the human spirit which this entails. (the islamic academy, 1990, p.2) other critiques of these educational systems found in this literature include permissiveness, declining intellectual standards, lack of discipline among students, and the violence and peer pressure that exist within these systems (al-taftazani, 1986; sarwar, 1996; haque, 2002). while one can agree at least in part with this critique, there are some observations that should also be made. almost all the data and arguments to levy criticism are drawn from western sources--this is true even for the data used to critique the education systems in muslim societies. sardar (1989), for instance, in his attempt to show that 'western science is inherently destructive and is a threat to the well being of mankind' (p.97) relies almost exclusively on european and american writers. similarly, salam (2001), in his critique of the so called secular methodologies of research, relies upon both muslim and non-muslim writers (as indicated by the names of the authors quoted). clearly, this reliance on western authors, research and data, demonstrates that muslims are not alone in their concern about contemporary social and educational conditions, in the west or elsewhere (young, 1971; ilych, 1971; freire, 1998; bloom, 1998, bellah, 1996; apple, 1996, roy, 2003). the current dominant discourse on islam and education, however, does not capitalize on this shared concern. rather by failing to note this shared concern, much of the literature on islamic education contributes, perhaps unintentionally, to widening the gap between islam and the 'west'. it depicts western civilization as deeply problematic and islam or the 'islamic' approach as the solution (sardar, 1991; iqbal, 1996; ahmed, 1999; ali, 2000). in adopting this exclusivist position, it creates dichotomies; in a way, this 'west equals bad and islam equals good' approach is a mirror image of huntington 's thesis regarding the clash of civilizations ( huntington, 1996). the 'islamic' in islamic education: assessing the discourse current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 21 perhaps the reason that many of those who write about islam and education fail to recognize that their critiques about education systems are widely shared by muslim and non-muslim scholars is their conviction about the solution they wish to offer. the solution they wish to offer is 'islam' or 'islamic'. they do not arrive at their solutions through patient, penetrating and open-minded engagement with the identified problems. rather their criticism of education in western, as well as muslim societies, simply serves as a preamble to their proclamations about a religious, in this case islamic, solution. this assertion-rather than argumentation--is often betrayed in the way the perceived problems and their solution are linked. here is a typical example: the need for an islamic education system is not only a matter of conviction, but also crucial for mankind. no other system can save human beings from destruction and perdition, apparent to anyone with insight into and concern for human welfare. on such a system depends the future well-being of all peoples of the world. (sarwar, 1996, p.7) since the goal is to proclaim the necessity of an 'islamic'--accepted as a divinely ordained-system over the western system, the later is portrayed as 'man-made.' again, sarwar (1996) provides a good example: the man-made education system has led to many forms of social degeneration: misuse of human intellect and creativity to suit political and economic objectives; abuse of drugs, power, authority and wealth; increased murder and crime; and self debasement through suicide…wars, genocide, persecution and torture continue even today; whilst most developed countries supply arms, tacitly supporting abuses of human rights, condemning or acquiescing in an appalling show of double standards, dictated by political and economic considerations without reference to moral or ethical concerns. it is clearly logical and desirable to argue for a system based on the creator's revealed guidance which [sic] is the basis for the ultimate success of mankind. (sarwar, 1996, p.7) sarwar's argument does not acknowledge the positive contributions of such 'man-made' education systems. even if one were to accept that the man-made western educational systems are failing today, it does not necessitate an argument for a divinely-based system. exchanging one man-made system with another one is an equally logical response, but it is never entertained by the author. instead, a leap of faith is made to assert that the solution lies in a divinely-guided system: islam. conception of islam in 'islamic' education here we come to a central issue within the discourse on islamic education, namely its underlying conception of islam. ould bah (1998) argues that 'islamic' meant that education was intimately related to islam and god. i am often asked: is the study of philosophy allowed in islam? invariably my response is to ask, 'what do you mean by islam?' i have noticed that to many, this question comes as a surprise. this is a key point, since the term islam is often so often taken for granted that one sees no need to ponder over it. it is not that one does not have a conception of what one means by 'islam'. however, the term is used without much reflection--its farid panjwani 22 december 15, 2004 obviousness acting as a guarantee for its comprehension. it is important therefore, to ask: what conception of islam underpins the discourse on islam and education being examined here? to respond to this question, we will have to step back into the past. from the earliest years of their history, muslims witnessed juxtaposition of their faith and worldly power. within a hundred years after the death of the prophet muhammad, muslims were ruling over a vast empire. the quranic assurance that they were the best community (the quran, 3:110) was nourished and confirmed by this situation, which continued for another thousand years or so. during this time, muslims had become diverse and internally divided, faced tough enemies, even suffered military defeats, but never were they shaken in their belief about the superiority of their religion and themselves as its followers. the colonial encounter in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, brought a revolutionary shift. unlike the subjugation by the mongols in the thirteenth century, which was essentially military in character, colonialism brought a total eclipse of muslim military, political and intellectual life. and, in any case, the mongol advance was halted by a muslim dynasty--the mumluks-but there was no such respite against colonial rule. the result was that for the first time muslims felt a need to defend their religion against an 'other' that claimed worldly superiority over them. in the indian context, this condition produced a wide range of responses, some military, some political and some intellectual. in the intellectual realm, some muslims, such as syed ahmad khan (d.1898) and syed amir ali (d.1928), took up the task of defending the muslim faith and its traditions against these attacks. [2] syed amir ali's book the spirit of islam (1902) provides a good example of the manner in which this defense was taken up. like many other muslims of his time, he sought to show that, despite its appearance, muslim religious tradition was indeed compatible with the then prevailing ideas and practices of modernity. for this, he could not appeal to the reality of muslims in his time; it was obvious that in material terms, there was a marked difference in the quality of life between predominantly muslim societies and the societies in western europe, france and england in particular. in his defense, thus, syed amir ali had to draw upon ideals and history rather than reality and the present. he claimed that islam in its ideal form--or in its spirit-was compatible with the victorian notions of individual choice, private property, diligence in profession and business, high regard for science, rationality, etc. the ideals of islam were, he claimed, no different from the ideals of modernity. in fact, he claimed, that there was once a time--a golden age--when muslims too practiced these ideals. like general ivolgin in dostoevsky's the idiot (1869), amir ali sought to compensate for the 'decline' of his own time by glorifying the past. he selectively drew examples from the history of muslims to argue for the compatibility of islam and science and to claim that at one time muslim societies were far more advanced than european societies in scientific endeavors. his last step was to explain the gulf between the past and the present. his explanation was that this situation existed because muslims were not following the true 'islam' or the 'spirit of islam'. his approach-often called apologetic for it sought to provide an apology for islam--was thus a complete system of thought seeking to argue for the inherent compatibility of islam and western notions, and to explain the contemporary situation of muslims. the 'islamic' in islamic education: assessing the discourse current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 23 beginning with individuals like syed amir ali, this approach became widespread over time, both among ordinary believers and scholars. it is this apologetic stance and the accompanying conception of islam as ideal that underpins the discourse on islam and education being considered here. these are exemplified below. "islam is a comprehensive way of life. it is vision and civilization and a great blessing which flowered from the revealed knowledge delivered by the almighty allah" (ali, 2000, p. 49). "muslims belong to an ideal divine system perfected by allah as a way of fulfilling his grace and blessings unto mankind" (ould bah, 1998, p.1). "islam, after all, makes it a duty for everyone to seek knowledge and discover facts, and increase the welfare of mankind." (sardar, 1989, p. 25). islamic' in the phrase 'islamic education' means that education is intimately related to islam, which god completed and perfected over fourteen centuries ago (ould bah, 1998). in line with the apologetic approach, the idealized conception of islam is sustained by a reference to a supposed glorious age. for instance, while bemoaning the divide between the secular and the religious in contemporary educational systems, hewitt (1997) claims that the islamic concept of knowledge is unitary. in addition to quoting some quranic verses, he claims that in the past, muslim scholars were trained both in religious scholarship and in scientific and philosophic fields, which he sees as an example of the practice of the unitary concept of knowledge in islam. he shows no interest in alternative explanations of why scholars mastered many fields of learning; for instance, the possibility that the mastery of many or all the fields of learning available at a given time may not have been an 'islamic' feature but rather, a reflection of the comparatively limited stock of knowledge available at that time (mottahedeh, 1986). the phenomenon is found in other societies as well. european societies, for example, had the notion of the 'renaissance man', which referred to persons who excelled in multiple fields, particularly in both the arts and sciences. furthermore, even if many muslims had mastered several branches of learning, this in itself would not mean that they had a unified concept of knowledge. they also distinguished among many types of knowledge-alum al-sharia (sciences of sharia), alum al-aqliya (sciences of reason), ulum al-marzula (harmful sciences) and ulum-mahmooda (praiseworthy sciences)-and in these, some types of knowledge were preferred over others and a moral hierarchy was associated with them (ibn khudun, 1967). it is only through such oversimplification or misrepresentation of the history of muslims that apologetics have been able to present islam as an ideal and proclaimed it to be the solution to contemporary issues. from theory to practice: implementing islamic education how does the discourse fare when it comes to proposing solutions to the problems it identifies? an analysis of writings that seek to advocate an islamic solution in education shows that they often make an invalid comparison of practice and theory. time and again authors go into factual details to describe the problems with contemporary farid panjwani 24 december 15, 2004 education in the west and in muslim societies. they give facts and figures and quote authorities. however, when these authors turn to proposing solutions or, rather, 'islamic' solutions, their tone changes from factual to rhetorical and from argumentative to assertive. though he himself fails to provide any way forward, sardar's (1991) observation--more than a decade ago--that there is a 'widespread school of thought' that asserts that 'all we need is to show complete and uncritical love of and devotion to islam and everything else will fall into place' (p.71), is still valid. it is thus no surprise that when on rare occasions some writers attempt to describe in detail the implementation of the project of islamic education, the result is hardly different from what is being proposed in other secular contexts albeit with reference to quranic terms and the history of muslims. remarking on a proposal for islamic universities, sardar notes that "despite the islamic trappings, the model that bilgrami and ashraf are offering differs little from western universities" (1991, p.71). similarly, iqbal (1996) in proposing an 'islamic' model of teacher training ends up giving examples of modern teaching methodologies by over-stretched and anachronistic interpretations of quranic verses and the hadith. his 'genuinely islamic' proposal is that in islamic teacher training, a reasonable percentage of marks have been allocated to the observation of ibadah and islamic morals and values. "each prayer of the day should have a credit of one mark and each friday prayer, two marks." (p.233) if macro-level proposals suffer from this lack of creativity, so do the micro-level suggestions. in his over promised title 'putting statistics in its place: implications for teaching in islamic institutions of higher learning', ratnawati (2003) regurgitates the familiar arguments about the limitations, as well as the potential of using statistics or quantitative methods in research. he ends with advice to muslim teachers that they ought to be aware of these limitations and make students aware of them also. in what sense this advice is new or specifically applicable to islamic institutions of higher learning, we are never told. furthermore, ratnawati's sources are almost all nonmuslims, showing again that the issue at stake is not islam/muslims versus nonmuslims/the west. the way forward thus far, i have noted three inter-related problems found within much of the writing on islamic education. first, it seeks to be exclusive in its understanding of contemporary educational conditions. in part, this is because it wants to advocate a particular interpretation of islam as a solution to current problems. second, the islam it appeals to is a theoretical islam that, though thought by its advocates to be grounded in scripture, it is simply a projection of whatever is valuable to the authors at the given time. third, most of the writings on islamic education fail to provide any feasible and creative solutions to the problems of education. is it possible for the discourse to emerge from this impasse? to the extent that the above critique is sustainable, the entire discourse needs to be rethought. such rethinking is not the work of any one individual; a collective effort has to be made. however, i would like to offer a conceptual shift that may serve as a way forward for the rethinking of the discourse on islam and education. this shift entails complementing the conception of islam as an ideal with the role of human agency in interpreting these ideals. the 'islamic' in islamic education: assessing the discourse current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 25 the apologetic approach with its stress on ideals and a glorified past needs to be reconsidered bringing to bear the reality of muslim history as a history of human beings who continuously, but imperfectly, have sought to grapple with their human condition in light of their interpretation of islam's ideals. in other words, there is a need to shift from 'islamic' history to the history of muslims, though even this may serve only as an initial move and not be sufficient for a thorough revision of the discourse. fortunately, today there are voices that have begun to question the dominant 'islamic' approach and foray into alternatives. for example, in may 2004, the bbc world service broadcast an interview with two muslim women authors. irshad manji-the author of the trouble with islam (2004)-and asma gul hasan-the writer of why i am a muslim? (2004) came to loggerheads on the program, as they disagreed on almost every issue discussed. what became apparent was that beneath the differences on particular issues, there was a philosophical schism with regard to their basic notions of islam. [3] the following passage from the interview is an illustration of the interviewees' differing standpoints. in the excerpt, ms. hasan is responding to ms. manji's assertion that while literalism with regard to a religion's sacred book is found in all the major world religions, only among muslims is it part of the mainstream. hasan: unlike irshad, i think that islam is a religion of moderation. it says in the quran there is no compulsion in religion; you know that religion is a matter of your choice and is a matter of freedom. i disagree with irshad that literalism is a part of mainstream islam. i don't think that moderate muslims are literals. in fact, most muslims belong to a school of islamic thought that believes that the quran is a living document. it even says in the quran shouldn't they keep looking again and again to the quran… (bbc, world service broadcast, 2004). manji: asma, you know what it says in the quran but really how many muslims know that that's what it says and more than that how many muslims actually practice that. i think the kind of islam that you are describing is islam in theory. and let's face it, everything is wonderful in theory but you need only open your eyes and take a look at what's happening on the ground among muslims to know that what you are describing is quite sanitised… (bbc, world service broadcast, 2004). while hasan is seeking to defend islam by appealing to ideals, manji is proposing to bring in human agency-in this case muslims themselves-into the picture. another muslim contemporary who supports viewing history in this manner is iranian scholar abdolkarim soroush, who argues for a distinction between the ideals of a religion and their actual interpretations and practices in history through the human apparatus. responding to a question about islam and modernity, abdolkarim soroush summarizes this notion of historical islam as follows: first of all we have the phenomenon of islam. muslim intellectuals still talk about islam as if it were a simple, unified entity; a singular object. but in reality the history of islam, like the history of other religions such as christianity, is fundamentally a history of farid panjwani 26 december 15, 2004 different interpretations. throughout the development of islam there have been different schools of thoughts and ideas, different approaches and interpretations of what islam is and what it means. there is no such thing as a 'pure' islam that is outside the process of historical development. the actual lived experience of islam has always been culturally and historically specific and bound by the immediate circumstances of its location in time and space. (noor, 2002, p.25) thus, at any given time in the history of muslims, the ideals of islam were understood and practiced in many different ways; the divine will has always been received through human receptacles. similarly, abdullahi an-naim (2004), while discussing the issue of human rights argues that "in my view, the question can be meaningful only when it is about muslims not islam…" (p.2) perhaps it is time that writers on education and islam take notice of this shift and begin focusing on muslims rather than on islam. an appreciation of the role of human agency could lead to the recognition that while islam may have ideals, they were continuously formed and reformed in the interaction between the revelatory text and the concrete realities of muslims; this was and should continue to be an interpretive and ongoing activity. above all, this process could lead to a very different set of questions from those that are asked today. for scholars, questions are a tool and the quality of their scholarship is integrally linked with the type of questions they pose. if the question posed is, 'what is the islamic concept of knowledge?' it can easily push one to seek a unified, unhistorical concept of knowledge in a unified, unhistorical notion of islam. the use of the term islamic as an adjective can become a totalizing notion constructed to describe muslims and their cultures. however, a question focused on the social actors, the muslims, allows for the recognition of historical, cultural and social forces that shape societies. if the question is, 'how have muslims understood knowledge?' then we are likely to search for contextbased answers that would show that since their earliest history, muslims have had a healthy diversity of views with regard to this important epistemological issue. while all muslims referred to the basic texts (i.e. the quran), their answers were also shaped by their socio-cultural world, theological positions and intellectual dispositions. thus, one soon realizes that there is no single unitary concept of knowledge in islam but rather that there are many concepts of knowledge held by muslims in different times and places and that these concepts were interacting with each other and with other pertinent concepts, giving them both a level of stability as well as fluidity. the focus on the 'islamic' in current discourses on islamic education thus needs to be revisited. not as an abstract idealized concept but rather, focused on the concrete historical agency of muslims. such a shift might help a better understanding on how muslims dealt with the intellectual and educational issues of their times. it may show that while retaining their ideals, muslims have worked with people of other faiths to engage with problems of their times-be they in practical matters such as medicine or irrigation, in governance and administration, or in intellectual matters. such findings could both enrich our knowledge and, more importantly, liberate muslims to seek pertinent solutions. the 'islamic' in islamic education: assessing the discourse current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 27 notes 1. i recognize that the title alone is not sufficient to categories a book. at times, a title reflects more the desires of the publishers than the thoughts of the author. yet, more often than not, there is a resonance between a title and the central premise of a book. 2. such attacks included those by christian missionaries, politicians and scholars who portrayed islam and muslims (muhammadans, as they were called) as backward, unenlightened, religious zealots. smith (1946), bayly ( 988), bose & jalal (1998), crane & barrier (1981) and fenner (1966). 3. the conceptual divide being explored here is not restricted to muslims or to the discourse on islam. it is a widespread phenomenon and can be noted in other religions as we well as in other human contexts. references ahmed, a. 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(1996) habits of the heart: individualism and commitment in american life. university of california press. bloom, a. (1998) closing of the american mind. new york : simon and schuster. bose, s, & jalal, a. (1998) modern south asia: history, culture, political economy. london: routledge farid panjwani 28 december 15, 2004 crane & barrier (eds.) (1981) british imperial policy in india and sri lanka, 1858-1912: a reassessment delhi : heritage publishers. conway, r. (2001) which beliefs drive technological innovation? muslim education quarterly, 18(3), 38-47. freire, p. et al (1998) the paul freire reader. new york : continuum. haque, m. (2002) review of the progress of islamic education. muslim education quarterly, 19(4), 68-73. hewitt, i. (1997). the need for the state funded (va & gm) muslim schools. in religious education: a muslim perspective. london : national muslim education council for uk. hoodbhouy, p. 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(1998) the educational philosophy and practice of syed muhammad naquib al-attas: an exposition of the original concept of islamization. kuala lumpur : international institute of islamic thought and civilization (istac). watt, m. (1985) islamic philosophy and theology. edinburgh : edinburgh university press. young, m. (1971) knowledge and control: new directions for the sociology of education. london : collier-macmillan. © 2005 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 94 april 21, 2005 mainstreaming sustainable development into african school curricula: issues for nigeria biodun ogunyemi olabisi onabanjo university ago-iwoye, nigeria "our biggest challenge in this new century is to take an idea that sounds abstract sustainable development and turn it into reality for all the world's people" (united nations, 2001). abstract this paper examines sustainable development within the context of issues arising from the un's declaration of a decade of education for sustainable development (esd), 20052014. africa's mode of response to the esd challenge could be gleaned from the new partnership for africa's development (nepad). nigeria already has a national conservation education strategy which predated nepad and may serve as the launching-pad for esd-related activities and strategies for the development of appropriate knowledge, values, skills and perspectives. this paper posits that the country will only make a success of its current efforts if there is the political will to learn from past mistakes and borrow from best practices across the globe. introduction the united nations (un) general assembly's adoption of a decade of education for sustainable development (desd), in 2002, was in recognition that current economic development trends are not sustainable and that public awareness, education, and training are key to moving society toward sustainability (mckeown, 2002). however, desd poses different challenges to countries and regions of the world. this is because of peculiar situations they face in the task of bringing about changes in knowledge, skills, values, and perspectives related to environmental, economic and societal issues that impinge on the arrival of a new paradigm for intergenerational development implicit desd. the task is particularly daunting for africa in view of its widespread poverty, illiteracy, diseases and underdevelopment. for africa to make a significant showing in the desd requires a critical appraisal of its developmental challenges with a view to identifying educational policy options for action. this paper was conceived within that context with three goals in mind: first, to examine the implications of the concept of sustainable development for the african continent with reference to the desd; second, to highlight curricular elements in mainstreaming sustainable development into african schools with focus on nigeria; and third, to re-focus some likely problems and issues associated with promoting the new paradigm of sustainable living in nigeria and africa. materials for the study were generated through secondary sources. thus, the analysis was based on a review of related literature and documents available mainly in libraries and electronic media. mainstreaming sustainable development into african school curricula: issues for nigeria current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 95 sustainable development and education for sustainable living "sustainable development" has meant different things to different writers. some have tended to focus on production and thus narrowly viewed it as a process of achieving a buoyant economy (e.g. stepanov, 2004; adesanya, 2004). for those who focus on the natural environment (e.g. taranets & alyona, 2004; raheem, hanninem & ogunyemi, 2004), sustainable development is all about achieving an ecological balance. and yet for others (e.g. scoullos, 2004; newman, 2004), the process goes beyond what is expressed in these two narrow perspectives, to include all what humanity and nature require for their existence both at the present moment as well as in the future. this last perspective is particularly evident in the popular report of the world commission on environment and development (wced) which asserts that sustainable development is "a process in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations" (wced 1987, p.43). this definition of sustainable development has been amplified to integrate issues of economic growth, social development and environmental protection following the rio earth summit of 1992 and the johannesburg world summit on sustainable development (wssd) of 2002. documents emanating from the conferences and other international and regional forums suggest that sustainable development is anchored on three pillars of sustainability: environment, economy and society. the emerging consensus shows that sustainability principles emphasize that the pursuit of economic viability as an end in itself, driven by a neo-classical model of economics, does not maintain or enhance ecological health and human well-being (newman, 2004). chapter 36 of agenda 21 of the rio summit underscores the importance of education in achieving sustainability principles or sustainable living. the rio conference specifically called on all countries to develop and implement an education for sustainable development strategy by 2002. the world conservation union explains that, since rio and johannesburg, education for sustainable development (esd) has been understood beyond the traditional view of education about sustainability which focuses merely on dissemination of knowledge. rather, esd is seen as a process of adaptive management and systems thinking, requiring creativity, flexibility and critical reflection. and central to this process is learning to access and influence systems for public participation for decision-making (iuch, 2003). the core objective of esd, according to unesco, is the promotion of values and ethics through education at different levels, in order to make an impact on people's lifestyles and behavior and help to build a sustainable future (tilbury, 2002). it is designed to motivate, equip and involve individuals and social groups in reflecting on how we currently live and work, in making informed decisions and creating ways to work towards a more sustainable world. indeed, it is about learning for change amongst adults and youth in order to achieve sustainable living (iuch, 2003). while synthesizing earlier reports, unesco (2003) identifies four principles or conditions of sustainable development (sd) accompanied with associated educational skills for attaining them. the first condition is "recognition of the challenge"; this biodun ogunyemi 96 april 21, 2005 requires skills in "learning to know". secondly, sd demands "collective responsibility and constructive partnership": the skill needed here is "learning to live together". the third condition for attaining sd is "acting with determination"; this calls for skills in "learning to do". the last principle of sd is "the indivisibility of human dignity"; with the educational task of "learning to be". to implement these principles within the esd framework, unesco (2003) highlights four domains which are basic education, reorienting existing education programs, developing public awareness and understanding of sustainability, and training. it is thus hoped that the implementation of the sd principles in concurrence with the associated educational tasks, within these four domains, would translate into sustainable living. in more practical terms, effective implementation of esd principles among nations of the world is expected to crystallize in the attainment of the millennium development goals of the united nations. these goals include halving the proportion of people living below the poverty line; halting and reversing the spread of hiv/aids; halving the proportion of underweight under-five year olds; halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water; and achieving universal primary education. others are reducing maternal mortality ratios by three quarters; reducing under-5 mortality by two-thirds; reversing loss of environmental resources by 2015; and achieving equal access for the boys and girls to primary and secondary schooling by 2015. a tenth goal that has been suggested for nigeria (and possibly other african countries) is "the need to consolidate democracy as its process is likely to serve as a catalyst to the minimization or eventual elimination of poverty in the social formation" (yaqub, 2003). without doubt, most of the issues raised in the millennium goals focus on the developmental challenges facing africa today and, thus, underline the critical relevance of esd. the new partnership for africa 's development (nepad), regarded as the blueprint for the continent's response to the sd challenge, targets eight areas of priority in promoting a healthy environment: combating desertification, wetland conservation, invasive alien species, coastland management, global warming, cross-border conservation areas, environmental governance, and financing. however, the nepad's conceptual domain has been viewed as narrow in the context of esd (okidi, 2003). globally, only a handful of nations have drafted strategic frameworks for advancing the process of implementing an education for sustainable development strategy as demanded by the rio summit. most of these countries are from the northern hemisphere; including netherlands, australia, spain, the united states and united kingdom. whatever approach nigeria and other african countries eventually come to adopt, the school system would certainly occupy a centre-stage position. mainstreaming sustainable development in school curricula as the un secretary-general, mr. kofi anan, in the quotation used to preface this article indicates, the greatest challenge about sd is how to translate it to practical realities in the lives of people. within the framework of esd, reorienting existing education programs demands rethinking and revising education from nursery school through university, to include a clear focus on the development of the knowledge, skills, perspectives and values related to sustainability. "this", according unesco (2003), "implies a review of existing curricula in terms of their objectives and content to develop transdisciplinary mainstreaming sustainable development into african school curricula: issues for nigeria current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 97 understandings of social, economic and environmental sustainability". unesco further calls for a review of recommended and mandated approaches to teaching, learning and assessment so that lifelong learning skills are fostered. skills to be fostered, in the process include skills for creative and critical thinking, oral and written communication, collaboration and cooperation, conflict management, decision-making, problem-solving and planning, using appropriate icts and practical citizenship. what the foregoing suggests is the urgent need for curricular review to respond adequately to the challenges of esd in nigeria in particular and africa as a whole. curriculum, in this context, is taken as the totality of the experiences learners acquire under the guidance of the school. such experiences could be distilled into three: program of studies, program of guidance, and program of activities. the program of studies essentially focuses on the basic academic learning (involving school subject contents packaged as social sciences, humanities, sciences, etc.). the program of guidance involves things like remedial support for weak learners and counseling in career choice (e.g. choice of school subjects). activities involved in the third component are involvement in voluntary associations, participation in community projects, drama, games and sports and such other events that were traditional termed "extra-curricular". curriculum, therefore, transcends the conventional compartmentalized school subjects listed on the school time-table and calls for the integration of theoretical and practical experiences of learners all through school life. curriculum theorists like wheeler (1973) and ivowi (1998), have come up with various elements of the curriculum building or review process ranging from four to six. an overview however indicates that the main issues about curriculum revolve around four basic elements. these are statement of objectives; selection and organization of content; identification of materials and methods; and evaluation of effectiveness. applying these elements to curriculum review in relation to esd in nigeria would suggest a number of strategies and activities which include the following: revisiting the objectives and policies of education: two aspects of education are often cited in various documents and declarations. first is "education for all" (efa) which, according to the dakar framework for action and the millennium declaration, concerns primary schooling for all children everywhere, boys and girls alike. the second aspect is "education for environment and sustainability" or "education for sustainable development" (efes or esd) which, according to article 36 of agenda 21 and the thessaloniki declaration should be strengthened and included directly and indirectly in school curricula and at all levels of formal, non-formal and informal education (tilbury, 2002). drawing inspiration from global and regional declarations and targets, nation states are expected to set targets for giving focus to esd-related activities. nigeria 's national policy on education (federal republic of nigeria, 1998) has set out some broad outlines on individual and collective responsibility towards the development of the society. however, both the national policy and the country's constitution (1999) seem non-committal on the right to education which is critical to the attainment of the millennium goals as well as the objectives of esd. selection and organization of content: introducing esd issues into school programs as "new" content materials presupposes at least three activities: analysis of existing subject biodun ogunyemi 98 april 21, 2005 contents, decision on mode of integration, and active involvement of stakeholders to guarantee acceptability and continuity. there is presently no consensus on what constitutes environmental problems and the entire selection process is likely to yield better result through what kaivola and houtsonen (2001) call "collaborative knowledge building". this involves listening and sharing solutions, from local government to local government, and from community to community. a lot of inspiration could be drawn from examples of informal approaches like story telling and religious or cultural festivals to motivate people, connect with them and share ideas (tilbury, 2002). this could be followed by content analysis of existing school subjects to identify needs and gaps for plugging in the issues they think are of practical relevance within a synergy of global, regional, national and local perspectives. the point must be stressed, however, that school time-table at the primary and secondary levels in most countries (including nigeria) are already over-loaded, and it may be a futile exercise trying to carve out another separate subject called "sustainable development". in the same vein, it is inappropriate to assume that sustainable development lies solely within the precinct of natural science, as it equally has its roots in cultural values, ethics, and human behavior with significant bearing in humanities and social sciences. for a country like nigeria where a core-curriculum on environmental education (ee) had been developed since the early 1990s (ogunyemi, 1998), what may be needed is building on past efforts as ee "is (only) undergoing a transition to education for sustainable development" (iunc, 2002). materials and methods: the peculiar requirements of ee and esd call for innovative methods in view of our emerging information society (kaivoh & houtsonen, 2001). indeed, nobody really knows how to meet the new demands of sustainability, and what is required is a social process that involves people in creating a new way of living a good life, that is equitable, and that safeguards diversity, productivity and resilience of the ecosystem (tilbury, 2002). this calls for new processes less oriented to instruction and more oriented to action for sustainability. for example, the sourcing of information on environmental problems through local newspapers, magazines, field trips, video tapes, radio programs and action research is likely to drive home the messages faster and deeper than the traditional teacher-dominated classroom teaching. approaches like values clarification and problem solving that present learners with options and critical thinking for action are also likely to be more successful in promoting sustainable living (abdullahi, agho & olarinoye, 2000). such strategies help teachers to construct knowledge collaboratively to solve problems, including environmental problems. community-school relations would have to be fostered more strongly than ever before, for example, through the use of experts within the community and among the non-governmental organizations (ngos) as resource persons in addressing issues like traditional ways of controlling erosion, forest conservation, and pollution. as kaivola and houtsonen (2001) demonstrated in finland, it is possible nowadays to integrate the special knowledge and skills of different professionals asynchronously using the internet and computer programs which allow participants to contribute notes and comment on views and notes. kershaw (2002) also reports that, in response to the earth summit in rio, local authorities in dorset (england) worked with voluntary organizations, consulting over visions and agreeing mainstreaming sustainable development into african school curricula: issues for nigeria current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 99 on the actions needed to enact those visions. this eventually gave rise to the county council's agenda 21 strategy and the implementation of a wide range of initiatives with a community education focus. evaluation of effectiveness: sustainability principles emphasize immediate application of knowledge to demonstrate gains rather than the traditional pencil-and-paper achievement tests. even where test of information acquisition is involved, the weight allotted to the recall domain would certainly be less than that of students' demonstrated ability to solve practical problems within their locale. how many issues of pollution, environmental sanitation, use of water resources, loss of biodiversity, etc has a student addressed in the last one week, month, term or year within and outside the school? how often do students draw correlations between certain school activities like sports, agriculture and sanitation and sustainable development? students' anecdotal records, direct observation, and responses to questionnaires are some of the techniques which could produce clear indicators of effectiveness of an esd strategy in school curricula. initial problems associated with these and other innovative evaluation techniques could be minimized with a well-thought collaborative framework within and outside the school system. policy issues and problems for nigeria implicit in the outlined strategies and activities are some fundamental policy issues and problems that need to be addressed for success in nigeria 's efforts to promote esd. the first and perhaps the most important is the absence of political will. nigeria embarked on activities aimed at integrating environmental education (ee) into school curricula in the early 1990s following the dumping of toxic waste in a nigerian village, koko, by an italian company. with the active participation of leading ngos in the country and technical support of the world wide fund for nature (wwf), the nigerian conservation education strategy (nces) was developed in 1992. since then, however, nothing significant seems to be happening as the prototype curriculum which should have formed the take-off point for sustainable development in school curricula, is yet to be fully implemented. this tends to reinforce the widespread notion that the nigerian (and african) problem is not formulating good policies, but that of implementation (okidi, 2003). teachers are indispensable partners in the successful implementation of environmental education or its more expanded variant called esd (kaivola & kaasinen, 2001). their empowerment in the knowledge, skills, values and methodology of sustainability principles is bound to have a multiplier effect on learners in both the formal and informal education sectors. however, recent assessments of the state of pre-service and in-service teacher education in nigeria point to feelings of neglect, alienation and disenchantment (ivowi, 1998; ajayi, ogunyemi & sotonade, 2004). when teachers are paid poorly and/or irregularly, they cannot be expected to put in their best in implementing school curricula and will certainly not act in manners capable of fostering development in the short or long term. from all indications, it seems the problem is quite overwhelming for the present operators of nigeria 's universal basic education (ube) program which covers the primary and junior secondary school levels. biodun ogunyemi 100 april 21, 2005 another related the issue is poor funding of education, including teacher education. most nigerian schools are presently in a sorry state characterized by dilapidated structures, overcrowded classrooms, poor staffing, and unavailability of basic teaching and learning materials, including computers. with the exception of the few elite schools in urban areas, nigerian primary and secondary school students are made to learn under difficult conditions thereby stalling their creative ability and development into reflective young citizens as demanded in education for sustainable development (ajayi, ogunyemi & sotonade, 2004). teacher education institutions such as colleges, university institutes and faculties of education are given second-rate treatment as against those associated with elite professions like medicine and law, with adverse effects on selfimage and occupational prestige of teachers in training as well as those who train them. under such circumstance, it becomes pretty difficult if not impossible for teacher educators to undertake meaningful research that would equip them as the reservoir of human resources of trainers in sustainable development issues and strategies. another likely difficulty in this context is matching words with action. sustainable development demands that we marrying theory with practice. national governments are supposed to demonstrate leadership by mainstreaming esd into all sectors and activities – agriculture, sports, recreation, health, industrialization, construction, etc (okidi, 2003). for example, a critical assessment of nigeria's national goals vis-à-vis daily activities of those in government does not support the acclaimed desire for "a land full of bright opportunities for all citizens" given the wasteful use of resources by those in government, pervasive and cries of marginalization from various segments and sections of the nigerian society (yaqub, 2003). in addition, political instability in nigeria and much of africa makes policy continuity almost an exception rather than the norm. policies seem to come and go with governments that enunciate them. this is particularly so under the military regime which was in the saddle for about three decades out of nigeria's 44 years of political independence. esd requires a number of sub-regional, regional and global cooperation and commitments to succeed (okidi, 2003), and unless the country stabilizes its democratic infrastructure, it might lose out in the current efforts to use education for promoting sustainable development. the workability or otherwise of nepad as a regional framework hinges good governance. and, as okidi (2003) observes, african governments need to look more inward and not place too much hope on the $64 us annual grant promised them by their foreign partners or donor agencies on the condition of good governance. the countries of the north are more interested in the raw materials which those of the south supply industries in europe and america than doling out free gifts. african countries are not currently in a position to process their own raw materials for the development of their people. they continue to exploit their natural resources in unsustainable manner, in order to mobilize funds for purchasing the finished goods produced in the north. apart from the associated ecological problems, they are at placed at two receiving ends since countries of the north determine both the prices of the raw materials as well as those of the finished products. mainstreaming sustainable development into african school curricula: issues for nigeria current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 101 it is widely believed that nigeria, for example, has enormous resource potentials that, if carefully explored and critically exploited, could truly make it one of the greatest countries in the world. failure in this respect borders largely on leadership (yaqub, 2003). legal frameworks, education and policy controls may therefore not achieve much in promoting sustainable development in nigeria and other african countries without the requisite supportive environment. conclusion this paper set out to analyze the implications of the un decade of education for sustainable development (desd) for curriculum reforms in african schools with particular reference to nigeria. it is discovered that some activities in the areas of universal basic education, curriculum reforms and promotion of democratic institutions going on in the country have potentials for sustainable development. however, it could be concluded that much need be done in mainstreaming esd concepts and issues into school programs as well as moving nigeria along the path of sustainable living envisaged in the millennium goals and nepad. references abdullahi, a. i., agho, m. o. & olarinoye, r. d. (2000). strategies in the implementation of environmental education curricula. nigerian journal of curriculum studies, 7 (1&2), pp. 16-19. adesanya, l. a. (2004). economic empowerment for sustainable development: the case of a nigerian poverty reduction project. paper presented at the un decade of education for sustainable development conference, braga, portugal, may 19-22, 2004. ajayi, k, ogunyemi, b & sotonade, f. (2004). teacher education and the challenge of sustainable development in nigeria. paper presented at the project workshop on measuring indicators of sustainable development in school curricula: a study of ethiopia, ghana and nigeria at the university of jyvaskyla, finland, april 2004. federal republic of nigeria (1998). national policy on education (3 rd edition). yabalagos: nerdc press. iuch (2003). supporting the united nations decade of education for sustainable development 2005-2015. switzerland: the world conservation union. ivowi, u. m. o. (1998). a new structure for nigerian school curricula. studies in curriculum, 2, december, 1-11. kaivola, t. and houtsonen, l. (2001). collaborative knowledge building to promote inservice teacher training in environmental education. journal of information technology for teacher education, 10 (3): 227-240 kershaw, m. s. (2002). esd – reorienting of education systems. [online]. retrieved 20 july, 2004, available at http://www.igib,gov.uk/policy/issue%202.pdf. biodun ogunyemi 102 april 21, 2005 mckeown, r. (2002). education for sustainable development toolkit. usa: university of tennessee. nepad (2001). the new partnership for africa 's development (nepad). abuja, nigeria. newman, j. (2004). institutional obstacles to integrating principles of sustainability into decision-making processes in higher education. paper presented at the un decade of education for sustainable development conference, braga, portugal, may 2004. okidi, c. o. (2003). environmental management imperatives in africa 's sustainable development. chief s. l. edu memorial lecture 2003. lagos, nigeria conservation foundation. ogunyemi, b. (1998). social studies curriculum under the 6-3-3-4 system: conceptual and implementation issues revisited. nigerian journal of curriculum studies, special, 88-95. ogunyemi, b (2003) global citizenship through social studies education: perspectives, problems and prospects in nigeria. in lasonen, j. & lestinen, l (eds.), teaching and learning for intercultural understanding, human rights and a culture of peace, proceedings of the unesco conference on intercultural education, 15-18 june 2003, jyvaskyla, finland. pigozzi, j. (2003). unesco and the international decade of education for sustainable development (2005-2015). connect, xxvii, 1-2, pp. 1-7 raheem, k, hanninem, k. & ogunyemi, b. (2004). education for sustainable development: the role of environmental education in developing countries with focus on nigeria. paper presented to the un decade of education for sustainable development conference, braga, portugal, may 19-22, 2004. sambo, a. a. (2000) curricula as a mode of thought. nigerian journal of curriculum studies, 7 (1&2), pp. 11-15. scoullos, m. (2004). science, culture and education for sustainable development. paper presented at the un decade of education for sustainable development conference, braga, portugal, may 19-22, 2004. stepanov, v. (2004). ethics in system of economic-ecological relations. paper sent to the un decade of education for sustainable development conference, braga, portugal, may 19-22, 2004. taranets, i & alyona, e. (2004). environmental education in russian protected areas for sustainable development. paper sent to the un decade of education for sustainable development conference, braga, portugal, may 19-22, 2004. mainstreaming sustainable development into african school curricula: issues for nigeria current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 103 tilbury, d. & goldstein, w. (2002). esd: an outlook on the process since rio 1992 and the priorities for johannesburg 2002. [online]. retrieved 20 july, 2004, available at: http://www.igib,gov.uk/policy/issue%202.pdf. unesco (2003). united nations decade for sustainable development (january 2005december 2014: framework for a draft international implementation scheme. unesco, july 2003. wced (1987). our common future. oxford university press. wheeler, d. k. (1967). the curriculum process. london: hodder and stonghton. xinhua news agency (2002). backgrounder: some global challenges on sustainable development. johannesburg, xinhuanet 2002-08-26 08:09:50. yaqub, n. (2003). review of the 2000/2001 national human development report. the nigerian social scientist, 6(1), march 2003, pp. 41-48. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 89 the "swap": one financial strategy for educational development in nepal mary ann maslak st. john's university sector wide approaches (swap) have been adopted as a method of development assistance in south asia for more than 20 years. this method channels the funds of a governmental or non-governmental foreign development agency to a target country's national treasury for the purpose of financing budget expenditures in the sector that calls for external assistance. by participating in the swap, the donor is entitled to select and fund projects according to its own priorities (as used in the project approach). the donor is also granted considerable influence in developing national policies in the lowincome country's identified sector. the purpose of this paper is to examine the use of this relatively new type of external educational funding, swap, in nepal, one of the poorest south asian nations. the paper is divided into four sections. the first section provides a brief description of the traditional "project" approach and the contemporary "sector wide" approach to development. the second section gives a historical account of nepal's past experiences with project and sector wide approaches, and evaluates their impact on its development. the third section examines the situation in present-day nepal, assessing the advantages and disadvantages of the foreign funding models for educational policy and programming. finally, the conclusion advances the argument that both approaches sustain and advance educational opportunities in nepal. the project and sector wide approaches to educational finance in 1975, participants of the united nations world conference defined development in terms of its broadest objective, that is, bringing about "sustained improvement in the well being of the individual and of society and to bestow benefits to all" (papanek, 1977, p. 14)1. while ameliorating the lives of individuals and society may be taken for granted as the anticipated outcome of development initiatives, the realization of development itself is a complex process. the process not only requires the formulation of a multifaceted concept of development, but it also demands the ability to plan, implement, and evaluate development initiatives. one notable element in the development process is the role and activity of the foreign donor. foreign donors have traditionally subscribed to the "project approach" in aiding development in low-income countries. this approach provides direct services to a specific sector in the target country. largely conducted by the foreign agent, this method involves a lengthy and complex process of program planning, implementation and evaluation. specifically, it begins with a basic needs survey of the targeted geographic region(s). based on that assessment, the project team designs and implements a program that attempts to meet the needs of the identified population. throughout the specified length of the intervention, the team monitors and evaluates the program's progress until the end of the project. mary ann maslak 90 may 1, 2001 this programmatic approach to development in low-income countries may be criticized on two major accounts. the first is ideological hubris; the second is practical inefficiency. first, we may question the extent to which the lending agency's personnel discuss with the target country's development planners the development rationale, beliefs, and principles that are truly germane to the needs of the country in question. if this discussion does take place, how are the results of the discussion integrated into the actual development initiatives? if this discussion does not take place, the foreign donor is likely to assert its own development goals and objectives that may not align with the developing country's notion of development and corresponding practical needs. in the absence of genuine dialogue, the foreign agency enters the identified country with its own justifications for conducting projects, based on their development ideas and strategies. projects often flounder as a result of this disjunction between the poor country's development ideology and strategies, and the donor country's plan and program, contributing neither to development in general, nor improvement in specific identified sectors of growth in particular. the second criticism pertains to the practical dimension of development projects. there is the prevailing problem of duplication of multiple projects, yielding numerous programs that offer wildly fluctuating degrees of quality (personal interview, 1998). in other cases, the misuse of funds, which includes allegations of corruption and malfeasance, means that monies are diverted away from the targeted population and siphoned into the coffers of powerful and influential governmental officers (personal interview, 1998). in contradistinction to the project-oriented approach to development is the sector wide approach (swap). whereas the project approach involves the planning, implementation and evaluation of specific programs--with or without the collaboration of the identified country--that attempt to address the needs of that country, the sector wide approach is first and foremost a form of financial assistance for the identified country. in the sector wide approach, the donor agency supplies the country's national treasury with money in order to finance budget expenditures in a governmental sector that requires external assistance to promote development initiatives. the donor agency is entitled to select and fund projects according to its own priorities (as in the project approach), and also gains a representative seat on a country's national planning board. in other words, the sector wide approach requires the foreign development agency's representatives to work in concert with governmental officials from the poor country to negotiate policies and plans for development in the identified sector. nepal has employed the use of both types of approaches in their educational funding. the history of project and sector wide approaches to educational funding in nepal: 1950 1999 the ministry of education and culture (moec), headed by a cabinet minister of the crown, established a national board of education in 1952, whose purpose was to formulate an educational plan that offered formal and non-formal primary school opportunities for children throughout the kingdom. this plan called for the use of nepali, the national language, as the language of instruction for the children enrolled in the programs2. although the nepalese government provided the majority of the financial support for its educational programs during the 1950s, there is ample evidence of the intervention of the project approach that sought to usher nepal into the "modern age." the "swap": one financial strategy for educational development in nepal current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 91 during the 1950s, the united states operation mission (usom) provided a training program, the "village development project," and its complementary "village development service," to nepalis interested in working in the rural regions of the country. the purpose of the project and service was to conduct a needs assessment survey, and based on the results of the survey, provide services to urban and rural dwellers. however, the mission had a hidden agenda, as evidenced by the fact that it opened several schools throughout the country, training village development workers (vdw) to teach "development skills" that were based not on the needs of the survey but on an american rural development plan3. this use of the project approach led to a shift in the kingdom's status in the scheme of development, from the "forbidden kingdom" (which implies a patriarchy isolated from the rest of the world) to a "developing country" (which implies a forward-looking nation aspiring to obtain the results of globalization and modernization). by the end of its first five year plan (1956-1961), the country's budget was divided into "regular" and "development" sections. the local government funded the "regular" budget; the "development" section of the budget was funded by international agencies' projects. in addition to the village development project and village development service, the "development" division of the budget was complemented by the projects initiated and implemented by the rotary club and the red cross. the government utilized a project approach in order to meet the plan's goals. the kingdom's education officials invited non-government (ngo) and international nongovernmental organizations (ingos) to offer educational programs (chand, 1991)4. however, even with this well orchestrated approach, the ingos and ngos could not supply enough programs to fill the government's goals for the number of non-formal educational programs throughout the country. given this situation, his majesty's government (hmg) funded non-formal educational programs in areas where the international and national non-governmental organizations could not accommodate children living in rural areas. examples of such projects were the integrated hill development project (1975-80) and the lahachok project (1975-1980). the lahachok project aimed to further the efforts of the ingos and ngos to explore the potential of non-formal education as a form of rural development. based on the successful lahachok experience, the seti project in nepal's far western development region, initiated by the ministry of education and culture, is another example of the project approach to educational development in nepal. the seti project was started in 1981 with the financial and technical assistance of unesco and undp/unicef/agfund. two lessons learned from the lahachok and seti programs would not only influence the scope of educational programs implemented in nepal in the future, but would also change the ways in which and the extent to which those programs would be funded. first, children (especially girls) who participated in either the lahachok, or especially the seti project, had the highest enrollment, retention, graduation, and achievement rates. second, based on this success, the government announced its interest in broadening the scope of the educational system. moreover, the government concluded mary ann maslak 92 may 1, 2001 that the new system could neither be adequately funded by the existing amount of government financial support, nor by the few projects that offered programs. consequently the government not only expanded its use of the project approach, but also adopted the sector wide approach. in 1984, with financial assistance from the world bank, the ida [international development association], and unicef, the ministry of education and culture (his majesty's government) planned and initiated the primary education project (pep) that sought to extend the existing educational services. both a formal and non-formal educational initiative, pep (1985-1991) aimed to enroll more children in both the government-sponsored formal or non-formal educational programs in six of nepal's 75 districts5. based on achievements of the formal and non-formal pep, the nepalese government made it a priority to obtain substantial external grants and loans for the basic and primary education sub-sectors in order to expand the educational initiatives6. the basic and primary education master plan (1991-2001), and the primary education development project scripted the importance and scope of this initiative by utilizing the sector wide approach, designating policy chairs for significant financial supporters from unesco, unicef, danida, unicef, undp, the ida, and the world bank (skar & cederroth, 1997). the international donors, who served on the government's planning board, crafted policies that attempted to improve access, quality and management efficiency of primary education in nepal as part of the bpep. they also set out to improve the curriculum, examination, and teacher training systems of both formal and non-formal education under the aegis of pedp7. in an effort to streamline the multitudinous non-formal educational programs offered by ingos and ngos and coordinate these with government services, nepal's educational planners, supported by the social-service division of the national government, designed the out-of-school program (osp) for use in non-formal educational programs in nepal. the general goals of the osp program are: (1) to provide basic literacy skills to those primary school age children who do not enroll in the primary schools or drop out from the schools; (2) to boost school enrollment rate by motivating graduates to enter the formal schools; (3) to reduce gender disparity in literacy by enhancing school enrollment rate of girls while increasing the general awareness of the importance of girls' education; and (4) to provide skills to increase living standards by conducting productive activities (moec, 1997)8. in sum, it calls for a significant expansion of not only the formal and non-formal educational system in nepal, but also the ways in which the system has been funded. as a result of the success of the bpep, phase i, the nepalese educational sector continues to seek and obtain financial supporters (in the form of project approach as well as the sector wide approach) to promote the country's educational development9. this history has notably influenced the current educational situation in nepal, which is the subject of the following section. the "swap": one financial strategy for educational development in nepal current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 93 educational funding in present-day nepal nepal has witnessed an expansion of both educational programs and funding during the past 50 years. the basic and primary education program (bpep i), implemented in 1992 with multi-donor funds to improve the access, quality and management efficiency of primary education, saw the completion of the first phase in 199810. currently, the basic and primary education program ii or bpep ii (1999-2004) is in the second phase of implementation. specifically, it addresses the inclusion of the sector wide approach to funding. specifically, it addresses the inclusion of the sector wide approach to funding, although the term "sector wide approach" is not used. the term "basket approach" is used instead. the aim is to establish a unified financing (i.e. basket) "(…) to channel donor support to an agreed core investment program within the subsector basic and primary education program." (bpep ii, 1999, p. 52). in so doing, this approach seeks to use "(…) a single set of monitoring, reporting, financial tracking instruments and procurement procedures [that] would be used by all donors to reduce a potentially major burden on hmg." (bpep ii, 1999, p. 52). in other words, the "basket" concept is an approach to program funding whereby each donor would contribute funds towards the total list of policies and activities in the core investment program. the "basket" includes donations from the major external support agency (mesa), which includes danida, eu, ida, and norad, and hmg11. more precisely, nepal's basic and primary education program, phase ii (bpep ii) (19992004) core investment program receives financial support from five external agencies. danida committed $25.4 million for the five-year plan. the norwegian agency for development (norad) promised $23.5 million. the european union (eu) pledged $20 million, while the finish international development assistance (finnida) offered $5 million. in addition, the international development association (ida) guaranteed $27.6. compared to the $5 million tendered by the nepalese government (his majesty's government or hmg), the contributions of these foreign external governments and agencies constitute the vast majority of the educational sector's total financial base (bpep ii, 1999, p. 52). although the sector wide approach draws in the largest financial donations, the project approach is also utilized in present-day educational funding in nepal. the bpep ii specifically recognizes the esas (external support agency), most importantly jica (japanese international cooperation agency), unicef and the adb to supplement the basket (the sector wide approach) with funds for specific projects. in addition, the project approach is also employed with regard to danida, norad, the eu, unicef and finnida, which contribute technical assistance and foreign training. what are the advantages and disadvantages of external educational funding for nepal? much has been written on the merit (or lack thereof) with regard to the project approach in nepal. less has been written on the significance of the sector wide approach's advantages and disadvantages in terms of nepal's educational development. there are four apparent advantages for a country's utilization of swaps. first, money would be spent on priorities set by the country, not the external agencies. (project approach utilizes the money to implement and continue the donor's program.) second, aid may be more efficiently managed through the country's existing structures, with ideally only mary ann maslak 94 may 1, 2001 one set of monitoring and accounting mechanisms, as opposed to being managed by multiple local and foreign agencies, which have different, and at times, conflicting monitoring and accounting methods and systems. third, in-country foreign personnel who assists in policy development and program implementation ensures financial accountability, minimizing the ability on the part of local government officials to succumb to political pressures to expend resources on matters other than agreed programs. fourth, the amount of money invested by the external agency or governmental office can exceed the amount committed by the local government. this bonus surplus can either provide additional money to expand existing policies and their programs, or help develop policies to fund new programs. however, the use of sector wide approaches can also disadvantage the poor country. this funding strategy may be disadvantageous in three ways. first, by inviting the financially wealthy institutions to participate in terms of this approach, the local government runs the risk of excluding organizations that cannot provide the substantial financial and personnel commitment to plan and run the necessary educational programs. in other words, swaps' exclusionary practices can severely curtail and reduce opportunities for knowledgeable, high quality, yet financially smaller organizations to participate in policy design and implementation of educational development in low-income countries. second, there is the assumption that the large government and international agencies are the best providers of such services of consultation and guidance, even though in reality and practice, other supporters may provide better service for their country. (to date, however, there has not been a thorough evaluation of the quantity and quality of existing services in nepal.) third, although it is the avowed design that the low-income country develop policy and programs in collaboration with the guest agency, the country may end up playing second fiddle because of its dependence on the financial assistance offered by that agency. this monetary dependency may result in the poor country's adoption of positions on educational policy and programming that compromise their original ideas and visions for improving education, in the end deferring and submitting to foreign funding. it should be noted that swap also presents advantages and disadvantages as far as the donor is concerned, although they lay outside the purview of this brief article. generally speaking, the swap gives the donor advantage by allowing the agency to put forth its own agenda, not only in the identified sector, but also in the larger social, cultural, and political structures of the society. on the other hand, swap also poses disadvantages for the donor agency. first, the host government may deny access of financial resources offered by the guest agency to divisions of the targeted sector. second, the traditional independence of ingos and national ngos and governmental agencies may become severely compromised. third, in the case where ingos and ngos are not invited to provide financial assistance, there is the risk of funding-cuts to that educational program. fourth, technical specialists fear that a move toward sectoral funding will either mitigate the priority given to these activities, or diminish the technical quality of the programs. conclusion the "swap": one financial strategy for educational development in nepal current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 95 educational funding in nepal has undoubtedly expanded in the past 50 years. the nepalese government assumed primary responsibility for funding formal and nonformal educational programs during the early 1950s. by the mid 1950s, the influence of foreign money, in terms of specific 'projects,' significantly altered the ways in which the kingdom designed educational policies and funded educational programs. given the expansion and success of the educational system that was largely supported by foreign efforts during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the educational policy of the 1990s added the use of the sector wide approach to plan and fund educational policies and their corresponding initiatives. the sector wide approach to financial and technical support is a popular trend in today's development initiatives in nepal, reinforcing and sustaining the educational policies and programs there. moreover, until local governments and their national government and non-government organizations are prepared and ready for adequate and substantial financial commitments, sector wide approaches will remain a significant presence and factor in the educational development initiatives in nepal. but swap, despite its apparent merit, does pose potential problems for the country receiving help. by sketching some of the pros and cons in the case of nepal, this paper suggests some of the larger issues that may be addressed when we seek to investigate and determine the efficacy of this particular paradigm of foreign aid. notes 1. hanna papanek, "toward models of development: development planning for women," in women and national development: the complexities of change, (chicago: university of chicago press, 1977), 14. 2. the 1954 commission recommended the establishment of a single system, a single curricula, for primary education. they described a curriculum based on the indigenous needs of the children in nepal with stronger vocational orientations, and recommended that thenceforth all newly established primary schools should follow this pattern. this initiative, however, is contradictory, for although recognizing the different needs of the indigenous population, the government imposed the curriculum as the "national" pattern with "nepali" as the primary language. 3. by the late 1950s, the u.s. government ordered a directive to remove the project managers and insert project consultants. a project evaluation was not completed upon closure of the program. see: fujikura. t. (1996). technologies of improvement, locations of culture: american discourses of democracy and 'community development' in nepal. studies in nepali history and society, 1(2), 271-311. 4. in order to organize the ngo and ingo agencies, the government established three service delivery models (sdm) and required each organization to register in one of the models. in the first model, sdm i (the integrated approach), the ingo finances and implements the service. the second model (the sdm ii) refers to an association of the ingo and ngo as donor. (in this capacity, the financial assistance provided by the ingo basically strengthens the capacity of the affiliated ngo.) the third model (sdm iii) engages the ingo in a support capacity with a local ngo. whereas ingos who work in the sdm i and ii models require registration (in which part of mary ann maslak 96 may 1, 2001 the registration goes to the government), the ingos working in the sdm iii model do not require an official consent to coordinate programs because either the donors are aligned with one more ngos that assume responsibility for program implementation, or the organization slips in, largely unnoticed by the government and conducts their programs independent of an ngo. just as the ingos function within the service delivery models, the nngo (national non-government organizations) operate within a similar system. the social science national coordination council (ssncc) originated in 1977. it serves as a registration agency for any national social organization assuming social welfare activities in nepal. the council differentiates ngos into one of three categories. category one ngos (congos) staff volunteers to perform required educational services. these ngos function throughout the entire country and usually maintain a grassroots infrastructure. category two ngos (ctngo) recruit professionals for assistance with local programs and remunerate individuals for their work. category three ngos (ctngo) serve as executors of government programs such as small farmers development project (sfdp), which is primarily the responsibility of the ministry of agriculture and agricultural development banks. finally, category four (cfngos) act as the communicator of information from various ngo projects to villagers and serve to educate the local citizens to available programs. 5. the largest districts were jhapa and dhankuta in the eastern development region, tanuhu and kaski in the western development region, and dang and surkhet in the midwestern development region. 6. _____ nepal: education and human resources sector assessment, may 1988. kathmandu: ministry of education and culture with the united states agency for international development. 7. it should be noted that although the word "project" is used in the pep, bpep and pedp nepalese educational policy statements, these "projects" are nepalese government policies and corresponding programs for general education throughout the country and they are neither donor-designed nor pet projects. 8. the first level, osp i, emphasizes basic literacy attainment through the nine-month, 450-hour instruction conducted in daily two-hour sessions. its curriculum, based on naulo bihana i and naulo bihana ii, emphasizes child-child, child-family and childcommunity relationships, cooperation, the impact of education, and personal and environmental cleanliness and health. the main objectives of osp i are to make outof-school children literate and to prepare them for formal schooling. bpep initiated osp ii in 1990 with the main objective of assisting osp i graduates to stabilize literacy and to provide functional skills. the course focuses on strengthening and broadening the skills acquired in osp i. this nine month, 450-hour program taught in two-hour daily installments uses naya phadako i and naya phadako ii, the curriculum materials which focus on civic consciousness, discipline, cooperation, unity, equality, children's rights, income-generating activities, institutional loans, and health and environmental issues. osp iii, still in the development stage and considered the final link in the non-formal educational system, aims to provide the "swap": one financial strategy for educational development in nepal current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 97 necessary vocational skills for income-generating activities based on local needs, feasibility, and demand. 9. the bpep ii document devotes one section to the analysis of the bpep i. the research that documents the bpep i's successes come from a variety of sources, including hmg statistics and computer section which annually undertakes the task of updating educational statistics and publishes that information in several formats. cerid (center for educational innovation and research, tribhuvan university), and independent scholars also contributed evaluations of the bpep i. this information can be found in _____. (1999). basic and primary education program (bpep ii) 1999-2004 program implementation plan (main report) keshar mahal, kathmandu: his majesty's government, ministry of education. 10. this document is referred to in hmg's ninth development plan (1999-2002). 11. it is unclear if finnida is in fact a "basket" contributor. the bpep ii document includes the organization in one reference, and excludes them in another. references chand, d. (1991). development through non-governmental organizations in nepal. kathmandu: group three pvt. ltd. des chene, m. (1996). in the name of bikas. studies in nepali history and society 1,(2), 259270. irvine, j. (2000). south asia and basic education: changing unicef's strategic perspectives on educational development and partnerships. prospects, 30(3), 297-311. papanek, h. (1977). toward models of development: development planning for women. in h. papanek (ed.), women and national development: the complexities of change (p. 14). chicago: university of chicago press. seddon, d. (1993). nepal: a state of poverty. delhi: vikas publishing house, pvt ltd. skar, h.o. & cederroth, s. (1997). development aid to nepal: issues and options in energy, health, education, democracy and human rights. copenhagen: nordic institute of asia studies. ----(1997). the basic and primary education master plan 1991-2001. the master plan team. ministry of education and culture (moec). his majesty's government. july 31, 1999. ----(1999). basic and primary education program (bpep ii). program implementation plan (main report.) keshar mahal, kathmandu: his majesty's government, ministry of education. p. 52. mary ann maslak 98 may 1, 2001 skar, h.o. & cederroth, s. (1999). efa 2000 assessment for afghanistan. [online] available at: http://www2.unesco.org/efa/wef/countryreports/afghanistan/contents.html ----(2000). the education for all: the year 2000 assessment. bangladesh country report. dhaka: government of the people's republic of bangladesh. [online] available at: http://www.unesco.org/efa/wef/countryreports/bangladesh/contents.html ----(2000). the education for all: the year 2000 assessment. india. new delhi: ministry of human resource development, government of india. [online] available at: http://www.unesco.org/efa/wef/countryreports/india/contents.html ----(1999). the education for all: the year 2000 assessment. nepal country report. kathmandu: ministry of education. [online] available at: http://www.unesco.org/efa/wef/countryreports/nepal/contents.html ----(1999). the education for all: the year 2000 assessment. pakistan country report. islamabad: government of the people's republic of pakistan. [online] available at: http://www.unesco.org/efa/wef/countryreports/pakistan/contents.html ----(1999). the education for all: the year 2000 assessment. sri lanka country report. isurupaya, battaramulla: ministry of education and higher education. [online] available at: http://www.unesco.org/efa/wef/countryreports/sri_lanka/contents.html ----(1999). promoting primary education for girls in pakistan. washington, d.c.: united states agency for international development. (note: nepalese educational documents and the efa country reports do not specify authors.) ----(1999) basic and primary education program (bpep ii) (1999-2004). program implementation plan. main report. (kathmandu: hmg). ----(2000) good practice in lending operations: education sector. pakistan: balochistan primary education program. may 20, 2000. [online] available at: http://www.worldbank.org/gender/know/balpep.htm personal interview with satya bahadur shrestha, non-formal education council, ministry of education and culture 1998. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 110 may 1, 2001 world bank development policy: a sap in swaps clothing steven j. klees university of maryland education and development rhetoric over the past decade has increasingly focused on the idea of partnerships as central to improving policy. based on the need for more and better partnerships, sector wide approaches (swaps) to development activities have been adopted and extended by many agencies, especially the world bank (henceforth the bank). many hope that partnerships like those associated with swaps will change the nature of two decades of neo-liberal economic policy in which structural adjustment programs (saps) enforced by the bank and the international monetary fund (henceforth the imf or the fund) wreaked havoc throughout the world. in this paper, i examine the current fervor with partnerships and their embodiment in the rhetoric surrounding swaps and the bank's extension of swaps. while i use some of the literature specific to education in this analysis, the underlying problems with these partnerships can only be understood only by looking at their broader applications, which, unfortunately, are yielding development policies that will likely be as devastating to educational and social services as were the saps of the last two decades. partnerships i am not able to think of a term that has so rapidly been diffused in development circles as "partnership." partnership has been much easier to accept than earlier terms, like "empowerment" or "participation," which had to be co-opted from their original association with alternative, critical views of development theory and practice. there have always been joint undertakings, of course, but nowadays most projects have multiple partners, and almost no agency undertakes a project alone. a principal rationale for expanding partnerships has been the clear failure of even very successfullooking education and other social sector projects to be expanded to a scale where they can have a significant impact. in theory, partners working together can make this happen, through pooling resources and better coordination and management (king, 1999). one of the most appealing elements of the rhetoric on partnering has been the idea of multilateral and bilateral aid agencies collaborating with ngos and other civil society organizations, with the rationale of involving grassroots participation and local knowledge. however, we need to keep in mind that this partnering with ngos began in the 1980s as a direct result of the ideological shift in the u.s. and the u.k. to neo-liberal policies that emphasized a diminished role for the public sector. working with ngos instead of governments became a part of the de-legitimization of government. while many ngos continue to have very progressive agendas and staff, this major shift of the bank and other aid agencies to financing programs through ngos resulted in the creation of more right-wing ngos, more cutthroat competition among all ngos, and a more dominant role being played by international ngos (klees, 1998; mundy, 1998; nelson, 1995). world bank development policy: a sap in swaps clothing current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 111 today, there is almost nothing of the bank's or other aid agencies that does not prominently feature partnership. the bank's 1999) education sector strategy report, its first official statement on education policy in two decades, devotes one whole chapter of the report (out of seven) to "partnering: a world of opportunities." they say: "the job of strengthening education is too big for any single institution" (p. 17). the bank proposes partnering with governments, parents and communities, ngos and foundations, the private sector, teachers and teachers' organizations, and international, regional, and bilateral organizations. this is partnering with a vengeance: no one is left out. at least, almost no one--the bank's willingness to partner with teacher unions appears to be very limited. teacher unions are only mentioned once in the entire report and that is where the bank suggests that unions want "to maintain the status quo" and "can grind change to a halt" (p. 3). in the chapter on partnerships, there is a section on teacher "organizations" which admits they must be given an opportunity to participate not only in implementing reform, but also in developing new programs. as in all cases of consultation with the civil society, however, the information provided, the views expressed and the interests represented by the various participants must be weighed in the balance -with the ultimate decision being a political one. the interests of teachers, as workers, have to be considered in relation to the preeminent interests of students and their parents, as consumers (p. 19). no other potential "partner" is singled out for such a caution, and "consultation" is not partnership. while civil society features prominently in bank rhetoric in this report and elsewhere, note that the report gives it the same caution and consultative role as teacher organizations. despite these reservations, the bank is pleased to tell critics that they are working with progressive civil society groups, for example, their well-publicized partnership with oxfam (2000) in the "education now" campaign, or even that they are quietly holding indirect talks with the zapatistas. the most notable education partnership of the 1990s, "education for all" (efa), has demonstrated some of the key problems with partnership fervor. with almost the whole world as partners, efa has, at best, had very modest results, and some would call it an "abject failure" (king, 2000; torres, 2000; bennell, 1999, p. 1). halfway though the decade, the bank was a leading player in the surprisingly uncontested shifting of most efa goals from the year 2000 to 2015 (development assistance committee, 1996). with all these partners, no one is to blame, failure is unfortunate, and we move on to the next decade. the partnership fervor has also stifled critique, debate, and alternatives. prior to efa, bank policies were constantly and openly challenged by major aid agencies--for example, it was unicef that gave us structural adjustment with a human face in the 1980s (cornia, jolly, and stewart, 1987). since the formation of global efa partnership, this has visibly changed. formerly vocal critics of the bank and its policies, like the canadian and scandinavian aid agencies, unicef, and undp may still offer criticisms, but much more softly and privately. partnership has also softened the critical voices of many ngos and other civil society organizations. swaps and their offspring sector wide approaches (swaps) got their start at the bank as sips (sector investment programs). a genuine swap is supposed to have six features: be sector-wide; based on a clear and coherent policy framework; local stakeholders are supposed to be fully in steven j. klees 112 may 1, 2001 charge; all main donors must agree to it; implementation must be developed jointly; and it should depend on local capacity, not technical assistance (jones, 2000; buchert, 1999; harold and associates, 1995). in theory, the swap seems to be simple logic--all donors are supposed to work together in a country with the government and other local stakeholders to come up with a joint educational or other sectoral plan and cooperate to achieve more relevant and effective policies, more efficient management, and larger scale outreach through the pooling of resources. in practice, few applications of swaps are documented and those that are do not remotely meet the six conditions above (jones, 2000; king, 1999). the bank now admits to "overoptimism," that swaps must "now be seen realistically as a long-term ideal" (jones, 2000, p. 276). the real consequence of swaps is that forcing consensus on a sector program makes donor power stronger and more monolithic. aid recipients become even less able to find space to follow their own agendas, which they do now, for example, by taking advantage of the different agendas of donors, sometimes playing one donor off against another. moreover, the donor community is a world of very unequal power. coordination easily becomes control. the donor community itself is worried about these issues. roger iredale (1999, p. 50), formerly of the united kingdom's overseas development authority, is "concerned about the concentration of power implicit in swa[ps]." wim hoppers, of the netherlands government development cooperation, talks about the resulting "concentration of the grip that we as northernbased agencies have on poor countries' education systems" (1999, p. 31). moreover, the bank sometimes slips and actually puts in print the agenda that iredale, hoppers, and many others, fear. in discussing its comparative advantages as an aid agency it points out that "the bank can use its position as the largest external source of funds in most developing countries to encourage other partners to contribute to priority activities" (world bank, 1999, p. 21). that is, its priority activities. based on the swap idea, the rhetorical touchstone of current bank development policy is its "comprehensive development framework" (cdf). the cdf is wolfensohn's brainchild, initially proposed by him in 1995, soon after he became president. it is supposed to be "a holistic approach to development," based on developing a crosssector, long-term vision and plan. it needs to be "owned" by the country, but based on consultation and partnership with all stakeholders. a key feature of the cdf is that "(…) social concerns [are] treated equally (…) with macroeconomic and financial concerns." it is "designed to be a means of achieving greater effectiveness in reducing poverty" (world bank, 2000b, p. 21). it is also designed to move countries towards a broad range of other outcomes, such as: clean governance; participatory democracy; universal primary education and strong secondary and tertiary systems; a health system focused on family planning and childcare; expanded social services and safety nets; and environmental protection (world bank, 1999, p. 6; world bank, 2000b, p. 21). although the cdf idea has been around the bank for four or five years, it still has little more content than the paragraph above. from the way reports are written and how the bank staff have talked about the cdf over the last several years, i infer that no one has a good idea of what it means. the latest cdf proposal (wolfensohn, 1999) is still labeled a "discussion draft" and just talks about how improvements are needed in all sectors and how an exhaustive list of partners must be involved. on paper, the bank (1999, p. 20) world bank development policy: a sap in swaps clothing current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 113 says cdf is "a compass -not a blueprint" and that they are still "exploring" cdf (p. 44) or engaging in "pilot efforts to operationalize it" (p. x). they are supposed to be "testing" it in a number of countries, but progress reports show little progress (world bank 2000a). no wonder! the cdf idea is swap writ even larger. this would be a swap that includes all sectors, all the international agencies, all governmental ministries, and all the endless other partners to map out a long-term development vision and operational plan! this, in a world where for decades we have been trying unsuccessfully to do "simple" things like getting the education and health sectors to work together, within a country or even within the bank. and, of course, with the bank leading this cdf effort, contrary to the stated intent, country ownership becomes more problematic. the bank's "comparative advantage" vis-à-vis its many partners, including the country itself, gives it unprecedented power over fashioning a global long-term development vision and plan. while, at least for the moment, cdf is more illusory than real, its essence is incarnated in the new and very real poverty reduction strategy (prs) process. prs has grown out of a number of complex social and institutional changes. most directly, neo-liberal development policy, ethnocentrically, but perhaps accurately, referred to as the washington consensus, has been declared a failure (although many would say it has been a resounding success for big business). the economic crisis in southeast asia caused very serious damage to the imf's image as global development architect and the bank has tried to rush in to fill that gap. in the accompanying melee of institutional infighting and larger political processes, the prs process was born as a new approach to development policy. at the 1999 meetings of the world bank group, it was agreed that henceforth, before the bank or the fund begin any work in a country, they must--jointly--begin with a prs paper (prsp), which lays out a plan "to foster growth and reduce poverty" that will serve as a basis for future work (world bank, 2001b). this prsp, like the swap and cdf, are supposed to be country owned, with the bank and the fund playing an advisory role, and they are supposed to be developed with the widespread participation of all stakeholders, from other donors to the grassroots organizations. the bank's view of the prsp framework is that it should ensure that the needs of the poor come first. [this will] require a true transformation of society, driven by the countries themselves [and which] must enjoy broad support from the true experts on poverty: the poor themselves. armed with poverty reduction strategies, countries become masters of their own development with a clearly articulated vision for their future. (…) countries are in charge, but they are not alone in the fight against poverty. (…) [t]he world bank and imf stand ready to provide support to governments in the development of their strategies without in any way predetermining the outcome or undermining country ownership. i find it hard to believe that anyone can believe this rhetoric, including bank staff. in practice, of course, prsps are nothing like this. while there was initial hope among many ngos and other civil society organizations that this would be a fundamental change in the orientation and operation of the bank and the fund, there is now steven j. klees 114 may 1, 2001 considerable disappointment, and even the bank's own evaluations of prsps to date show little adherence to the principles proposed (world bank, 2001b). other evaluations of prsps have been extremely critical. real participation in prs processes was seen as non-existent and consultation was described as rushed, superficial, and half-hearted. prsps looked little different than the saps of the previous decade with the same limited attention to social sector "protection" and the same stringent loan conditions (actionaid, 2001; alexander, grusky, and dossani, 2001; oxfam, 2001; grusky, 2000). conclusions the "partnerships" embodied in swaps, cdfs, prsps, and their ilk are touted as a key feature of the newly developing alternatives to the supposedly harsher neo-liberal, structural adjustment, policies of the 1980s and 1990s. the washington consensus has supposedly cracked and the search is on for a post-washington consensus (stiglitz, 2001, 2000; gore, 2000; korzeniewicz and smith, 2000; broad and cavanagh, 1999). the rhetoric is now relentlessly focused on "pro-poor" policies. but pro-poor to the bank still means pro-growth. the experience of the eighties and the nineties led many, including some at the bank, to conclude that strategies to spur economic growth had made the rich richer, harmed the poor, and vastly increased inequality (chossudovsky, 1998; bello, 1994; george and sabelli, 1994). now, the bank is publicizing "new research" explicitly to counteract this view, once again saying that economic growth is the route to the reduction of poverty and inequality. bank staffers david dollar and aart kraay's (2000) much-publicized paper is titled "growth is good for the poor." dani rodrik (2000, p. 10), an imf consultant and harvard professor, writes: "the policies that promote growth are not that much different from those that target the poor directly (…)" the result so far has been a sap in swaps clothing. prsps churn out the same failed neo-liberal policies of the eighties and nineties. what the bank and the fund continue to advocate is more openness to trade and foreign investment; less protection of domestic industry; laws that encourage "flexible" labor markets (i.e., weaken unions and employment safeguards); more emphasis on exports; macroeconomic stability; no new taxes; and small government through privatization, greater efficiency, and contained social sector budgets, but with some attention to protecting the poor--i.e., saps with a human face (world bank, 2001a; sachs, 2000; dollar and pritchett, 1998). the only thing that seems different about today's policies from those of the past two decades is that they are wrapped in the holistic, participatory, partnership language of swaps, cdfs, and prsps. and the idea of participatory partnership has become allencompassing. most mind-boggling is the bank's publication of a new book voices of the poor (narayan et al., 2000b), which purports to be a distillation of interviews with 60,000 poor people from around the world. as part of the prsp process, something called a participatory poverty assessments (ppas) is sometimes conducted. the bank and the fund say they now recognize "the ability of the poor to make a valuable contribution to the analysis of poverty and are consulting them directly" through ppas (robb 2000, p. 20). special attention is given to the voices of indigenous people. the bank has a website and publications, which try to "capture" their knowledge and use it to inform bank policy and practice. with everyone in the world as partners, no one has to take the blame, except perhaps, as usual, the country1. the bank is careful to make clear that it is not responsible for world bank development policy: a sap in swaps clothing current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 115 policies that fail. in their education sector strategy report (world bank, 1999, p. viii), they say that the outcomes that programs are "designed to help achieve (…) are determined by many actors and factors beyond the control of the bank." this shedding of responsibility combined with the insistence that it is the client, not the bank, who makes the decisions, culminates in a blame-the-victim outlook, as reflected in the opening of the first chapter of the report: the stakes are high. the choices that countries make today about education could lead to sharply divergent outcomes in the decades ahead. countries that respond astutely should experience extraordinary progress in education, with major social and economic benefits, including "catch-up" gains for the poor and marginalized. countries that fail to recognize and respond risk stagnating or even slipping backwards, widening social and economic gaps, and sowing the seeds of unrest (p.1). presumably, the bank will recommend the "astute choices" needed to avoid this frightening future. if the country does not follow them, they will not "catch-up" and "stagnate" or worse. if the country does follow the bank's astute recommendations and still stagnates or worse, the unfortunate result is outside the control of the bank and is not their responsibility. given this context, catherine odora hopper of hsrc in south africa writes: "there is no concept that can conjure up a more disturbing propensity for pretence than 'partnerships' in development cooperation at the close of this century" (1999, p. 19). jesse mugambi of the university of nairobi, in an article entitled partnership between lenders and beggars, writes: "partnership is the wrong word to describe" relationships when "africa's share of world trade is less than 2%"(1999, p. 16). i recognize that there also is a progressive side to all the changes examined in this paper. the change in development rhetoric is important. participation, empowerment, voices of the poor, and even partnership open more possibilities that the narrow language of economic efficiency. while i do not think there is much difference between the saps with a human face of the early 1990s and the prsps of today, there is some, certainly, in rhetoric. and perhaps the washington consensus has a bigger crack than it did a decade ago, leaving more room for alternatives to develop. some recent sectoral policy announcements can be seen as positive, such as the bank promising to not allow lack of resources be a barrier to achieving efa goals or, after two decades of supporting user fees for basic education and health services, promising to work to eliminate them--if these promises do not prove to be as empty as past ones. the bank has even set up (very small) divisions that focus on issues like child labor and street children. within these divisions and others there are bank staffers who disagree strongly with bank policy and believe they can work within to achieve significant change. many local, national, and international ngos are engaged in what has been termed "critical cooperation" with the bank and the fund, with the hope that it can lead to significant change within these institutions (covey, 1999; fox and brown, 1999). there have been some positive results. ngos have been instrumental in forcing both institutions to engage in consultations with civil society organizations in their operations, to change some of their policies, and to reduce some of the secrecy that steven j. klees 116 may 1, 2001 surrounds many of their activities. ngos have been able to keep the pressure on, in part, by publicizing quickly and disseminating widely the continued bad practices and harmful consequences of the bank and the fund (actionaid, 2001; alexander, grusky, and dossani, 2001; mundy and murphy, 2001; oxfam, 2001; selvaggio and henriot, 2001; grusky, 2000). while all of the actions and changes above have progressive potential, all of them also serve to legitimate a system that is still focused on the profits of business rather than the elimination of poverty, turning out saps under the guise of prsps. progressive ngos are quite aware of the difficult line they walk between cooperation, challenge, and confrontation, often doing all at the same time. i myself hold the most hope for increasing challenge and confrontation. the street protests over the past two years in seattle, washington, chiang mai, prague, seoul, quebec and elsewhere cause anxiety within the bank, put wolfensohn on the defensive, and changed the rhetoric of heads of state. neo-liberalism has fueled strong social movements of indigenous people, landless people, environmentalists, workers, students and others. these movements increasingly forge real partnerships and directly challenge global institutions and structures. alternative summits, like those recently held in porto alegre and quebec, offer hope for more coordinated challenges to neo-liberalism and more attention to alternatives to it. in a world where the end of history and ideology has been proclaimed for a decade, it is hard to remember that there are a wide array of alternative economic and social policies that, for example: establish food security through subsidies; direct growth through government partnership with the private sector and ngos; have strong participation of citizens in public decision-making; fund social services through progressive taxation combined with large north/south transfers via debt relief and other mechanisms; and develop new structures of ecological economics (alliance for responsible trade, 2001; wampler, 2000; korten, 1998, 1994; edwards, 1999; faux, 1996; daly and cobb, 1994; amin, 1986). i wish to conclude by returning to education. clearly, to me, we can have no serious educational progress without confronting the development issues raised here. the growing view of education as a human right puts this confrontation clearly on the table. the bank, despite pressure from other un agencies, refuses to recognize a basic right to education. doing so would negate its instrumental and technical means-ends analysis of what is the "correct" amount of educational "investment" needed to achieve economic growth. moreover, examining the obstacles to fulfilling a child's right to an education becomes even more subversive of the economic order. there is now a u.n. special rapporteur on the right to education, katarina tomaševski (2001), who writes of poverty as a human rights violation. this leads to discussions of the right to economic survival, the right to a sustainable livelihood. these issues tie educational progress to fundamentally revolutionary economic transformations. as we move into the 21st century, we will need unprecedented cooperation and coordination from the local level to the global, simply to survive, let alone progress. such change can be furthered by new partnerships, but not based on some unexamined and idealized "let's all do this together" idea. the concept of partnership, as generally used today, misses, and actually negates, the dissent, struggle, and collective action that world bank development policy: a sap in swaps clothing current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 117 are necessary to transform fundamentally unequal, unfair, and oppressive relations into partnerships of mutuality. note as i was doing final editing on this article, the washington post (april 28, 2001) arrived with the headline on the first page of the business section: "world bank defends policies: leader blames poverty on bad governments." in response to a "small group of protesters" who "chanted anti-bank slogans outside" wolfensohn "lashed back (…) at critics (…)." references actionaid (2001). elimu update: newsletter of the elimu campaign. london: actionaid, january. alexander, n., grusky, s., & dossani, s. (2001, spring). the world bank's endangered social and environmental standards. news and notices for imf and world bank watchers, 2(4), 10-13. alliance for responsible trade [online]. alternatives for the americas. available at: http://www.art-us.org/ amin, s. (1990). delinking: towards a polycentric world. london: zed books. buchert, l. (1999, december). partnerships in the sector-wide approach: comparative experiences from bukina faso, ghana, and mozambique. in k. king (ed.), special theme: "swapping partners": the new politics of partnership and sector wide approaches. norrag news, 25. bello, w., et al. (1994). dark victory: the united states, structural adjustment, and global poverty. pluto press with food first and transnational institute (tni). bennell, p. (1999). education for all: how attainable is the dac target in subsaharan africa? paper presented at the oxford international conference on education and development, september 9-12. broad, r. & cavanagh, j. (1999, fall). the death of the washington consensus? world policy journal, 79-88. chossudovsky, m. [online]. global poverty in the late 20th century. available at: http://www/algonet.se/-d581/features/chossu/global/poverty.html. cornia, g., jolly, r., & stewart, f. (1987). adjustment with a human face. oxford: clarendon press. steven j. klees 118 may 1, 2001 covey, j. (1999). is critical cooperation possible? influencing the world bank through operational collaboration and policy dialogue. in j. fox & l.d. brown (eds.), the struggle for accountability: the world bank, ngos and grassroots movements. cambridge, ma: the mit press. daly, h. e. (1996) beyond growth: the economics of sustainable development. boston: beacon. daly, h.e & cobb, j. 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(1999). the struggle for accountability: the world bank, ngos and grassroots movements. cambridge, ma: the mit press. george, s. & sabelli, f.(1994). faith and credit: the world bank's secular empire. boulder, co: westview press. gore, c. (2000). the rise and fall of the washington consensus as a paradigm for developing countries. world development, 28 (5), 789-804. grusky, s. (2000a, may). the imfand world bank-backed 'poverty reduction strategy papers'--comments from southern civil society. globalization challenge initiative. available at: http://www.challengeglobalization.org/html/prsp_may2000.shtml grusky, s. 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(2001). from debt to poverty eradication: what role for poverty reduction strategies? baltimore, md: catholic relief services. stiglitz, j. (2000a). introduction. in c. gilbert d. and vines (eds.) the world bank: structures and policies. cambridge: cambridge university press. stiglitz, j. (april 17, 2000b).what i learned at the world economic crisis. the new republic on-line, accessed december 4, 2000. available at: http://www.thenewrepublic.com/041700/stiglitz041700.html. tomaševski, k. (2001). removing obstacles in the way of the right to education. gothenburg, sweden: novum grafiska ab. torres, r.m. (2000). one decade of education for all: the challenge ahead. paris: unesco. wampler, b. (2000, march 16-18). participatory publics and the executive: participatory budgeting problems in recife and porto alegre. paper presented at the latin american studies association xxii international congress, miami, fl. wolfensohn, j. (1999). a proposal for a comprehensive development framework: a discussion draft. washington, dc: world bank, 1-35. world bank (1999). education sector strategy. washington, dc: the world bank group world. human development network. world bank (2000a). comprehensive development framework country experience, march 1999july 2000.washington, dc: the world bank. world bank (2000b). world development report 1999/2000: entering the 21st century. new york: oxford university press. world bank development policy: a sap in swaps clothing current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 121 world bank (2001a). poverty, growth and inequality. understanding the debate. available at: http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/pb/pbpovgrowth.htm. world bank (2001b). poverty reduction strategy. available at: http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/strategies.htm microsoft word 42crossley.doc © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 81 comparative and international education: contemporary challenges, reconceptualization and new directions for the field michael crossley research center for international and comparative studies graduate school of education, university of bristol united kingdom introduction in this article the contemporary challenges faced by the field of comparative and international education are considered in the light of work relating to two recent special numbers of the journal comparative education, titled "comparative education for the twenty-first century" (crossley & jarvis 2000; crossley with jarvis 2001). underpinning this collective work is recognition of the widespread revitalization of interest in comparative and international education--and of the simultaneous need for critical reflection if the field is to better meet the needs of the twenty-first century. indeed, together, the two special numbers of comparative education were designed to stimulate and contribute to a critical and forward-looking debate on the future of the field itself. in tune with the current on-line discussion in current issues in comparative education (cice), future submissions on such issues are, therefore, also welcomed from the editorial board of that journal. in the light of the contemporary challenges identified, a case for the fundamental reconceptualization of the field is advanced along with a pointer towards some new directions for the future. contemporary challenges the impact of intensified globalization is possibly the most often cited challenge facing the field of comparative and international education at this point in time. somewhat paradoxically, interest in globalization has attracted many new scholars and professionals to comparative and international research--but, at the same time, it has generated critiques of traditionally accepted modes of operation and frameworks of analysis. at the heart of this are challenges to the prominence of the nation-state as the primary unit of analysis in so much work carried out within the field. global forces, it is argued, are dramatically changing the role of the state in education, and demanding increased attention to be paid to factors operating beyond the national level (watson, 1996). the mechanisms and processes driving globalization (dale, 1999) are thus prioritized for examination, as is the increased significance of multi-lateral agencies in shaping global policy debates and agendas (jones, 1998; mundy, 1999). however, recognition of the fact that the effects of globalization differ from place to place, draws attention back to the nature and implications of such differential effects--even at the national level. few empirically grounded studies have compared these differences in any sustained way to date--and those that have been carried out have largely focused upon western industrial societies or the newly industrialized economies of east asia (brown & lauder, 1996; green, 1997). the impact of globalization on the poorer, postcolonial societies of the "south" has received much less attention, despite the dramatic implications for development processes in such contexts (mebrahtu, crossley & johnson 2000; tikly, 2001). here there is much urgent work for the field of comparative and international education in the future. michael crossley 82 may 14, 2002 the challenges posed by globalization, however, also pull in other directions reflecting what arnove and torres (1999) have usefully characterized as the "dialectic of the global and the local". to cite giddens (1999, p.3), globalization is: a complex set of processes, not a single one. and these operate in a contradictory or oppositional fashion. most people think of it as simply 'pulling away' power or influence from local communities and nations into the global arena. and indeed this is one of its consequences. nations do lose some of the economic power they once had. however, it is also has an opposite effect. globalization not only pulls upwards, it pushes downwards, creating new pressures for local autonomy. this draws attention to the fact that national and local cultures can and do play a significant role in mediating global influences. from this perspective, units of analysis that pay attention to the local effects of globalization are also prioritized. this, in turn, adds renewed legitimacy to qualitative modes of research that emphasize grassroots fieldwork, ethnography and the interpretive/hermeneutic paradigms that emphasize micro-level studies of education (in its broadest sense) in context (see contributions to crossley & vulliamy, 1997). while much more can be said about the challenges posed by globalization, it is argued that, despite its pervasive influence, numerous other challenges also face the field, and demand attention in their own right. related to the latter methodological issues, for example, are very significant paradigmatic and epistemological implications raised by increased sensitivity to culture and context. this is reflected in the impact on the field of post-structural scholarship (peters, 2001), and of the application and critique of post-modernist and post-colonial theoretical frameworks (cowen, 1996; tikly, 1999). in many respects post-colonial frameworks also draw attention to the challenges generated by dramatically changed geopolitical realities; from the decline of colonialism; from attention to culture and identity; and from the turbulent latter years of the 20th century. this is reflected in the field's heightened awareness of the dangers of ethnocentrism, and its recognition of the problematic use of distinctions and terminology relating to, for example, "developed" and "developing" countries, and the "north" and the "south". for the present writer, the methodological challenges of such developments point most strongly to the need for new forms of international relationships in terms of comparative and international research; to the importance of collaborative research and partnerships between "insiders" and "outsiders"; to research and development work that is more sensitive to local, social constructions of reality; and to strategies that facilitate the strengthening of research capacity within the south (crossley, 2001). in many respects, the rational for this is related to efforts to help "bridge" the gap between educational research and its potential to improve policy and practice. this is, in itself, one of the most prominent challenges faced by educational research communities world-wide (crossley & holmes, 2001). the widening constituency of policy-makers and practitioners who have taken renewed interest in comparative and international research are certainly looking for findings that will be of use to them in their professional activities. while this is a complex arena in which there are few simple comparative and international education: contemporary challenges, reconceptualization and new directions for the field current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 83 answers, the challenges raised by such diversity of audiences are of considerable and renewed significance for the field. relatedly, the intensification of international competition, spurred on by globalization, neo-liberalism and marketization, has major implications for cross-national studies of educational achievement, for those engaged in or dealing with the powerful influence of national and international league tables, and for the theoretical frameworks that we employ in our analyses. if the funding of research is increasingly linked to commercial interests, for example, the potential for critical theory, or for alternative cultural perspectives to influence the construction of new knowledge, may be increasingly challenged--even in, paradoxically, the new "knowledge" economy. so questions of power and "whose knowledge counts?" in the process of development arise, perhaps, more strongly than ever before. to this we could add the challenges raised by rapid advances in information and communications technology (ict). as many have pointed out, these are many and varied--but it is argued that their implications arise most strongly in cross-cultural contexts, where the "digital divide" is greatest, and both their potential benefits and problems deserve urgent attention. growing tensions between the global, the national and the local, thus, so fundamentally underpin all aspects of contemporary society and development, that a similarly fundamental reconceptualization of the field of comparative and international education is required, if we are to more effectively address such issues. reconceptualization and new directions how this reconceptualization might be advanced is the focus of ongoing work, but a number of pointers to the future can be derived from the above analysis. the international on-line debate stimulated by the present publication, will also, helpfully, keep dialogue very much alive and make an ongoing contribution. returning to the issues raised in the two special numbers of comparative education, and to the writer's earlier work (crossley, 1999), the following themes emerge most strongly. firstly, it is argued that it is the comparative and international research focus that is at the forefront of the resurgence of interest in the field and it is to ways of reconceptualizing research that we must increasingly look in the future. this includes theoretical, methodological, substantive and organizational dimensions. work such as that by bray and thomas (1995) on multi-levels of analysis helps to point one way forward by acknowledging the potential of many different units of analysis. other pointers may come from pioneering efforts to promote more genuinely collaborative international teams--especially linking different "territories" such as the north and the south, or policy and practice. such organizational possibilities then have major implications for the theoretical and methodological frameworks that we might employ. sensitive to the differences between various theoretical discourses, cowen (2000), however, wisely cautions against a search for the one "right" mode--and celebrates the diversity of comparative educations. writing within the second "response" special number of comparative education, kazamias (2001) makes an impassioned plea for closer linkages between the humanities and the social sciences within our multimichael crossley 84 may 14, 2002 disciplinary field. for kazamias, the reclamation of the historical dimension of the field would counterbalance its post-world war ii dehumanization, and represent a priority direction for the future. whatever position we might adopt with regard to the role of history, there is certainly much to be gained from a more effective bridging with the best of past scholarship within the field, even as we look towards the future. this is especially so in a time of renewed growth and enthusiasm if we wish to help those new to the field to avoid the pitfalls that others have so well documented before them (see, for example, noah & eckstein, 1998; broadfoot, 2001). while there is not space here to present a detailed or exhaustive account of these issues, other more substantive directions for the future that have significant potential are reflected in apple's (2001) call for comparative studies of neo-liberal projects and inequalities, and alexander's (2001) plea for comparative pedagogy. conclusion in concluding here, it is to the contemporary significance of culture and context that the discussion returns. concern with context, it is argued, is perhaps the most enduring characteristic of disciplined comparative and international research in education. it is also central--but in many different ways--to the contemporary reconceptualization of the field. context underpins the importance of new comparative work from different cultural perspectives, such as that recently published by louisy (2001), hayhoe and pan (2001) and bray and gui (2001). sensitivity to culture and context is also central to postcolonial theorizing, to the rationale for differing units of analysis, and to many emergent strategies designed to bridge the gap between research and policy and practice. in looking to the future, therefore, it is argued that "context matters" (crossley with jarvis, 2001) more than ever as we search--with justifiably renewed enthusiasm--for new directions in the field of comparative and international education. references alexander, r. (2001). border crossings: towards a comparative pedagogy. comparative education, 37(4), 507-523. apple, m. (2001). comparing neo-liberal projects and inequality in education. comparative education, 37(4), 409-423. arnove, r. f. & torres, c. a. (eds.) (1999). comparative education. the dialectic of the global and the local. lanham: rowman and littlefield. bray, m. & thomas, r. m. (1995). levels of comparison in educational studies: different insights from different literatures and the value of multi-level analyses. harvard educational review, 65(4), 472-490. bray, m. & gui, q. (2001): comparative education in greater china: contexts, characteristics, contrasts and contributions. comparative education, 37(4), pp.451-473. comparative and international education: contemporary challenges, reconceptualization and new directions for the field current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 85 broadfoot, p. (2001). stones from other hills may serve to polish the jade of this one: towards a "comparalogy" of education. in k. watson (ed.), doing comparative education research. issues and problems (pp.85-10). oxford: symposium books. brown, p. & lauder, m. (1996). education, globalization and economic development. journal of education policy, 9(1), 29-51. cowen, r. (1996). (ed.), comparative education and post-modernity. special number of comparative education, 32(2). crossley, m. (1999). reconceptualizing comparative and international education. compare, 29(3), 249-267. crossley, m. (2001). cross-cultural issues, small states and research: capacity building in belize. international journal of educational development, 21(3), 217-230. crossley, m. & holmes, k. (2001). challenges for educational research: international development, partnerships and capacity building in small states. oxford review of education, 27(3), 295-409. crossley, m. & jarvis, p. (eds.) (2000). comparative education for the 21st century. special number of comparative education, 36(2). crossley, m. with jarvis, p. (eds.) (2001). comparative education for the 21st century: an international response. special number of comparative education, 37(4). crossley, m. with jarvis, p. (2001). context matters. comparative education, 37(4), 405-408. crossley, m. & vulliamy, g. (eds.) (1997). qualitative educational research in developing countries. new york: garland. dale, r. (1999). specifying globalization effects on national policy: a focus on the mechanisms. journal of educational policy, 14(1), 1-17. giddens, a. (1999). globalization. lecture 1 of the bbc reith lectures, bbc news online network homepage, 1-6. green, a. (1997). education, globalization and the nation-state. london: macmillan. hayhoe, r. & pan, j. (eds.) (2001). knowledge across cultures: a contribution to dialogue among civilizations. hong kong: university of hong kong, comparative research center. jones, p. (1998). globalization and internationalism: democratic prospects for world education. comparative education, 34(2), 143-155. michael crossley 86 may 14, 2002 kazamias, a. m. (2001). re-inventing the historical in comparative education: reflections on a protean episteme by a contemporary player. comparative education, 37(4), 439-449. mebrahtu, t., crossley, m. & johnson, d. (2000). globalization, educational reconstruction and societies in transition. oxford: symposium. mundy, k. (1999). educational multi-lateralism in a changing world order: unesco and the limits of the possible. international journal of educational development, 19(1), 27-52. noah, j. j. & eckstein, m. a. (1998). doing comparative education: three decades of collaboration. hong kong: university of hong kong, comparative education research center. peters, m. (2001). post-structuralism, marxism and neo-liberalism: between theory and politics. lanham: rowman and littlefield. tikly, l. (1999). post-colonialism and comparative education. international review of education, 45(5/6), 603-621. tikly, l. (2001). globalization and education in the post-colonial world: towards a conceptual framework. comparative education, 37(2), 151-171. watson, k. (1996). globalization and learning. special issue of international journal of educational development, 16(4). © 2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 100 may 10, 2004 whose theory of participation? school governance policy and practice in south africa suzanne grant lewis harvard graduate school of education jordan naidoo harvard graduate school of education abstract this article analyzes south africa's efforts to promote broader participation in educational decision-making through local school governance structures in which parents serve as majority members. we utilize the "theory of action" framework to understand both government policy and school-level actors' meanings of two dimensions of governance: participation and representation. the analysis considers policy statements, government efforts to monitor implementation, and extensive data from parents, principals, teaches and learners in six diverse schools in two provinces. the "theory-in-use" among most of the school-level actors reflects the policy signals and dominates governance discourse. school governance and participation is being defined in very narrow terms that emphasize participation for efficiency reasons, rather than for democratic purposes. parents' participation is framed by what principals view as appropriate within the boundaries of supporting the efficient running of the school. truly re-defining roles of school level actors will require addressing power structures and conventions if it is to allow for the authentic participation of communities in the governance of schools. introduction with the increasing decentralization of fiscal, political, and administrative responsibilities to lower-levels of government, local institutions, and communities, the notion of participation has taken on greater currency, emerging as a fundamental tenet in the promotion of the local governance of schools. greater local participation serves the two main thrusts of the neo-liberal agenda, which appears to be driving most calls for greater decentralization, namely the promotion of "good governance" and the shrinking of the state and the expansion of private sector activity (maclure, 2000). many scholars have argued that masked by the language of "empowerment," the goals for greater local participation in school governance are managerialist effectiveness and financial efficiency (gardner and lewis, 1996). furthermore, while there is some smallscale evidence to support the efficiency argument, the evidence for empowerment and democratization is often partial, tenuous and reliant on the rightness of the approach rather than on proof of outcomes (cleaver, 1999). this article examines south africa's experience in promoting broader participation through the establishment of local school governance structures, a model designed with the expressed aim of contributing to the democratic transformation of south african society1. by exploring the theories of action (argyris and schön, 1974) underpinning the specification and interpretation of these policies in practice, we are able to assess the extent of transformation and the nature of participation in school governance. more whose theory of participation? school, governance policy and practice in south africa current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 101 specifically, we examine whether local participation is limited to managerialist effectiveness or extends to a shifting of the locus of control over school governance to parents. analytic framework: theories of action a major criticism of the participation discourse is that it is based on a naïve understanding of power and the power relations that exist both between central and local actors and within local groups (hailey, 2001). a participatory process may merely provide opportunities for the more powerful and serve to maintain exploitation and exclusion (hildyard et al., 2001). by extension, we argue that a simplistic understanding of power and power relations characterizes views of the relationship between policy makers and local actors. policy makers often equate policy intention with policy practice and exhibit a simplistic understanding of the motivations of individuals to participate. this denies individual agency as it relates to the construction of social structures and practices. in reality, school governance discourses are received in very different ways by individual members of school governing bodies depending on a variety of factors, not least individuals' own theories about governance. national policy mandates, such as the south african schools act (sasa) are but frameworks or national architecture that provide a rubric within which actors, based on their own theories of action continually design, enact, and reenact policy at all levels. this design, enactment and reenactment occurs at the level of the school and within the school governing body itself. therefore, we deem it essential to go beyond an understanding of the policy intent and to view the various school-level stakeholders as active agents in the creation of their changing conceptions of school governance and participation. their perspectives can be understood by an articulation of theories of action (argyris and schön, 1974) or '"cognitive maps" that constitute frameworks used to guide, interpret, and justify their actions (spillane et al, 2002). based on their particular theory, individual stakeholders adopt particular strategies to deal with changing governance demands. in this paper we posit that particular theories of action, or maps that guide action, inform new educational governance policies in practice. the concept of theory of action provides a means to explore assumptions informing educational policies and practices at systemic, programmatic and individual levels. within a theory of action, one may distinguish between theories that are explicit (espoused), and implicit (theories-in-use): when someone is asked how he would behave under certain circumstances, the answer he usually gives is his espoused theory of action for that situation. this is the theory of action to which he gives allegiance, and which, upon request, he communicates to others. however the theory that actually governs his actions is his theory-in-use, which may or may not be compatible with his espoused theory (argyris and schön, 1974: 6-7). in the context of school governance, espoused theories may be likened to the intentions and functions that policy documents or actors assert are the objectives of school governance bodies, while the theories-in-use are linked to functions that are actually performed. a stated policy objective or intention of governance reform such as promotion of democratic practices may ignore the reality of "activities" in practice. for example, a reason often cited for the establishment of governing bodies (as in sasa) is suzanne grant lewis and jordan naidoo may 10, 2004 102 to extend democracy. but in reality their activities may be focused on supporting efficient functioning of the school organization with little regard to extending democratic participation. school governance and decentralization policies typically are based on theories of action that presume that the institutionalization of local school autonomy will have broad effects on education. a tacit assumption made by most central policy makers involved in formulating and implementing large scale educational governance reform is that a universally applied remedy is received by local schools in uniform ways (fuller and rivarola, 1998). yet, the outcomes of governance policies are far more complex and informed by more than a set of limited stated purposes. it is shortsighted to believe that a new policy will lead to the enactment of all changes it beckons (sayed, 2002). internal dynamics, institutionalized features of environments or sectors, and individuals' interaction with new governance policies condition their evolution and impact. examining the espoused theories of action and the theories-in-use at a programmatic level (e.g. in terms of the stated rationale of sasa), and in terms of individuals who are involved in governance practices, enables us to develop a better understanding of participation. we turn briefly to discuss the theory of action informing the government's school governance policy before giving attention to the individual theories. theory of action behind the school governance policy the elections of april 1994, which marked the formal end of apartheid rule and a shift from authoritarian to democratic rule in south africa, introduced a new south african constitution that included an unequivocal commitment to representative and participatory democracy, accountability, transparency and public involvement (rsa, 1996c). the essential vision is that people should participate beyond episodic national elections in shaping their destiny. participation, it is suggested, does not extend simply to the right to elect representatives but translates into the right to influence decisions. the south african constitution thus presents an interesting challenge in declaring that the new democracy is both a representative and a participatory one. the challenge is taken up in education through various legislation2, in particular by sasa (rsa, 1996b). sasa's espoused theory is to create a new school governance landscape based on citizen participation, partnerships between the state, parents, learners, school staff and communities, as well as devolution of power towards the individual school and community. sasa provides for the election of school governing bodies (sgbs) by learners, parents, and staff. in theory, it grants schools and their constituent communities a significant say in decision-making by devolving power to stakeholders who participate in "democratic governance" of schools. a basic set of functions is stipulated for all sgbs, including the determination of school admissions policy, setting language policy, recommending teaching and non-teaching appointments, managing finances, determining school fees, and conducting fundraising. these measures are intended to "advance the democratic transformation of society" (rsa, 1996b: preamble). while promoting local democratic processes and parent/community ownership, the south african government faces additional challenges of needing to integrate the historically decentralized system, improving the efficiency of the system, and redressing apartheid imbalances. the dual expectations of serving democratic transformation and financial efficiency through the capture of local whose theory of participation? school, governance policy and practice in south africa current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 103 resources are evident in the twinning of decentralization policies for school governance and financing, particularly in sasa and national norms and standards for school funding (doe, 1998)3. since 1996, government attention to governance in south africa has focused on form, that is, on the formal articulation of rules, roles and responsibilities. the legislation related to governance largely articulates the structure, roles and functions of different levels of government: their composition, powers, channels of accountability, and rules guiding their operations. these prescriptions convey a singular sense of how the policy ought to be implemented. at the school level, the policy statements articulate and enforce a highly structural norm, viewing parental participation in school governance through a technocratic, apolitical perspective that privileges form and structure over local meanings and process. this approach gives little consideration to the practice of the policy across diverse, historically-situated contexts that characterize post-apartheid south africa. and, because a single "right practice" is implied, no attention to process and contestation is required. moving from the explicit or espoused theory evident in policy texts to understanding the implicit or theory-in-use, we obtain some insights by examining government monitoring efforts and official "stocktaking of implementation". in these, the government has tended to concentrate on policy fidelity to the legal prescriptions and a technicist view of change. the 2003 annual survey for ordinary school for the department of education's management information system (emis) contains a new section on sgbs that reinforces a preoccupation with compliance. there are 68 yes/no questions asking if the school is complying with sgb legal requirements. the wording of some of the questions indicates a vision of a singular norm: 3.6.2 the sgb has a proper school development plan based on a properly conducted school audit. [1=yes; 2=no] it is also clear that the central government sees that implementation difficulties can be solved through clarification of assigned roles, as these yes/no questions in the 2003 annual emis survey indicate: 3.10.1 the sgb does not understand the role that it should play. 3.10.2 there is general confusion about the roles of the governance and management structures in the school and this confusion has led to tension and conflict. 3.10.3 there is slight confusion about the roles of the governance and management structures in the school that can be rectified by training. this technical, structural perspective is further evident in the recent review of the financing, resourcing and costs of education in public schools (doe, 2003), which defined implementation problems as due to policy intentions having, "… been misunderstood by managers at the various levels of the departments, or at the school, perhaps because of insufficient explanation and socialisation from the doe and the peds (provincial education departments)." (doe, 2003: 10) it was then suggested, "the suzanne grant lewis and jordan naidoo may 10, 2004 104 remedy may then be awareness campaigns, or a rewording, though not a redesign, of the policy." (doe, 2003: 10) indeed, a considerable amount of analysis on sasa has focused on central government theories of action, that is, central government understandings of how the devolution of authority to schools will work4. however, continued focus on central government understandings is limiting and keeps researchers and policy analysts ensnared in an assessment of policy intents. such a focus promotes implementation research that seeks to identify the policy-practice gap by determining whether the policy is implemented as intended (grant lewis and motala, forthcoming). rather, we need to understand the different meanings the policy has for diverse actors at various levels, by examining the multiple understandings of how it works and the practices that reveal different "theories-in-use." we turn to that now. theories of action at the school level in the following section we explore the nature of participation in school governance in south africa using data from a collective case study of six schools in gauteng and kwazulu natal (naidoo, 2004)5. the main focus is on stakeholders' "sense-making" or theories of action regarding two dimensions of school governance: participation and representation. participation in examining school governance practices in south africa, initially one gets a picture of increased involvement of parents in school governance, and the ideal situation of all stakeholders working together and making decisions by consensus in pursuit of a common interest. for example, the principal of one black school6 indicated that the different stakeholders in their sgb worked together as "basically there is a complimentary type of scenario where we need one another to advance the best interest of the school." most stakeholders seem to deny school politics or diverse and competing constituent interests, values, and demands. yet there is also much uncertainty about governance and, as a result, at most schools great effort is devoted to ensuring that the sgb is acting appropriately, as defined by the letter of the law. election procedures are followed strictly, sgbs meet at least quarterly, meeting notices are sent out, minutes are kept, meetings are chaired by the parent sgb chairperson and so on. in effect the theoryin-use at most of the schools reflects the policy signals and dominant governance discourse, which emphasizes the value of participation on efficiency and democratic grounds. different stakeholders referred to sasa as defining the purpose of the sgb, stressing that the law provided the opportunity for all stakeholders, but especially for parents, to be involved in school governance. the chairperson of one sgb emphasized, "the preamble to sasa gives you the purpose, the rationale, which is bringing the governance of schools into the hands of parents." the idea that the participation of the governed in their government is fundamental to active democratic citizenship is accepted without question and the discourse of participation has taken on the force of common sense without critical reflection on its practice. a principal insisted that there could be little opposition to parents being involved. this argument has been made in other contexts as well; in the united states the argument is often made that those closest to the action (educators and principals) and those with a direct stake (parents and learners) in schooling should have a strong voice in decisions (anderson, 1998: 572). all whose theory of participation? school, governance policy and practice in south africa current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 105 stakeholders come to espouse that participation, in theory, is "the cornerstone of democracy-a revered idea that is vigorously applauded by everyone" (arnstein, 1969: 216). as a result, in their initial responses, all stakeholders emphasized the importance of parental participation in school governance, even if such buy-in is only rhetorical. however, a more in-depth interrogation of specific stakeholders' theories-in-use regarding parent and learner participation reveals that many stakeholders, particularly principals and educators, do not necessarily value participation in itself or for advancing democratic decision-making in school. in their practices, such participation is often little more than information sharing or limited consultation, promoted by principals and educators for how it can help the school or make their work easier. a more in-depth study of specific stakeholders' views also reveals that participation by parents in governance is individualistic and sporadic, depending almost entirely on the good graces of principals or the initiative of individual parents, who may or may not have the power to challenge existing patterns of participation. furthermore, participation is limited to certain issues determined by the principal and/or the parent serving as sgb chairperson. in general, sgb parent members did not supervise management nor were they involved in broad policy-making. across all the schools studied, but to a lesser extent at the former model c schools7, learners and parents faced real challenges in expressing their voices in governance through the sgb. these challenges were emphasized in such comments as, "the sgb doesn't involve all the parents," "the sgb is easily manipulated," and "the teachers dictate the terms in the sgb." in such an environment, it is hardly surprising that few school or community stakeholders envisaged participation in school governance in terms of democratic objectives and greater community involvement in decision-making. the majority accepted that their role, as one parent put it, "is to see to it that the school runs smoothly". some parents did, however, attempt to fashion an expanded role for parents. for example, the chairperson at eastern secondary described the parents' role in the following all-encompassing terms, "as a parent on the governing body, you have to make sure that parents are visiting the school and make sure that the parents know about the kids' problems in the school. you have to see that teachers are teaching our kids and that the district is delivering. the other part is to address the needs of the community." clearly there is an expectation on the part of some parents, in contrast to other school stakeholders, that the sgb has a broader role and should not be limited to supporting efficient management of the school. in general, though, most parent sgb members tended to define the role of the sgb more narrowly, in terms of the support it could provide the school. the expression of parental voice is hindered as parents are obliged to adopt the theory-in-use that efficient management is equivalent to school and community interests. the defining conception of the sgb is echoed by one principal who said, "the community needs to be conscientised about their role. they have to understand that being on the sgb means helping to make sure that the school runs properly." while some educators saw the participation of parents as beneficial, they were concerned about parents overstepping their boundaries. one teacher explained that the sgb should "see to the smooth running of the school's administration but there are some other grounds where the sgb shouldn't be in such as managerial matters." many teachers clearly felt uncomfortable with sgb involvement in what they defined as suzanne grant lewis and jordan naidoo may 10, 2004 106 professional matters, and according to one principal, teachers viewed parent participation "as interference of parents who are not educated." tensions between educators and parents are exacerbated by some teachers' references to the sgb as the "parents' body," an act that sidelines the sgb, setting it apart from the "real work" of other, perhaps more legitimate bodies, such as site councils and school management teams led by teachers. some teachers were positive about the sgb, viewing it as a necessary mechanism for democracy, but they feared that parent participation was constrained because, "the teachers dictate the terms in the sgb. we have political power. the parents always endorse our position." this raises questions about what is meant by participation and its connection to spheres of influence in schools. clearly participation is not dependent on membership of the sgb alone or attending meetings; it also depends on who has power. although what it means "to participate in governance" is variously interpreted by parents, learners, teachers and principals, currently principals' definitions are most dominant. despite explicit regulations as to who should participate and how, participation in practice is structured and institutionalized through the actions of principals who define who participates, how they participate, and what decisions are open to participation. almost all principals felt that the sgb's purpose was "to run the school in the correct manner according to the rules we have been given by the department;" to ensure that necessary resources are available; and, equally importantly, to assist in creating a school environment with limited conflict between various stakeholders. this raises the question of whether sgbs are really intended to give parents a voice, or whether they are there simply to serve as a mechanism to contain parental discontent and ensure that additional resources are available to the school. parents' participation in particular depends significantly on what they are "allowed" to do by principals. school personnel appear not to want parental involvement beyond token involvement in fund-raising and other support activities, inhibiting parent involvement in decisions about curriculum and school organization. most stakeholders tend to accept roles defined for them and do not interrogate the prevailing discourse of participation. in many schools, participation often translated to little more than sharing information or consulting parents on issues deemed to be in the school's interest. such participation, corresponding with rungs 3 and 4 on arnstein's (1969) "ladder of citizen participation," represents tokenism, but is above non-participation. it allows the havenots to hear and to have a voice, although they lack the power to ensure that their views will be heeded by the powerful (arnstein, 1969: 217)8. from the espoused theories of various stakeholders, one gets a picture of sgbs functioning in an open and democratic manner, with widespread consultation among all the stakeholders and on-going attempts to reach decisions by consensus. in almost every school the decision-making process appears to be similar to that described by the principal of a township school, "a proposal is put forward, we discuss, motivation is given and we reach a decision through consensus." however, in practice the consultation process is managed by the principal, all stakeholders are not equal participants, and consensus is often more illusory than real. furthermore, "consensus as a decision-making rule," one of the common unwritten rules of engagement that is perceived by sgb members as democratic, may actually cement the power of principals and impede democracy by privileging the status quo. not all members of the whose theory of participation? school, governance policy and practice in south africa current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 107 community are affected in the same way or benefit equally from every sgb decision but sgb members are under pressure to reach a decision the same way on all issues (mcdermott, 1999). in effect the theory-in-use serves to define certain boundaries and ensure a more passive role for parents and learners, and for the sgb as a whole, in the governance of the school. representation sasa is committed to representation in governance of stakeholders, defined as groups (parents, learners, and school personnel) who affect or are affected by the goals, policies, practices, actions and decisions of the school. the weighted electoral arrangements in favor of parents is "to involve parents more in school governance, enabling them to actively support schools" (doe, 1997: 1) with the expectation that the sgb would represent the school community as a whole. there is no expectation that sgbs would constitute microcosms of the school community. sasa's definition of constituency, which complicates the issue of representation in practice, is reflected in the two intersecting notions identifiable in the way sgb members speak about representation, namely "idealized school community as basis for representation" and "stakeholder group as basis for representation." the notion of a homogeneous community, expressed in all the study schools, denies complex issues of school politics or diverse, competing constituent interests, values, and demands. in reality, the diversity of school communities in south africa cover the demographics of race (including color and ethnicity), culture, language, socio-economic status, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and location (urban and rural). the diversity of the ex-model c/hod/hor schools is starker in terms of race and language differences, and the spread of where the learners live. yet the diversity in terms of language, culture, and socio-economic levels are true for all schools. the diversity is further accentuated by the fact that the communities are ever changing with the upwardly mobile moving to those schools that are perceived as providing a higher quality of schooling. representation is particularly problematic in these privileged schools, where the "school-as-community" is narrowly drawn and is restrictive and exclusionary. for example, the principal of one former model c school said, "the nice thing, living in a small community, we know the people in the area. we know if a person is applying for fee exemption but is running a ski-boat and that sort of stuff." this definition of the school community conflicts with the reality that at least 50% of the students (black, colored and indian)9 come from as far as 15 miles away, many of whom still live in segregated black townships. in general at the former white, colored and indian schools, the dominant groups who play a big role in defining "community" seek to sustain its historical identity. although the community and common interest metaphor was dominant, some stakeholders are beginning to define representation in terms of their responsibility to a particular constituency, for example parents, learners or educators. even then "representing parents" or "representing teachers" raises another issue: stakeholder groups are not homogeneous. even if some parents see themselves as representing all parents, they may represent particular parent interests. across the schools the interests of the poor are articulated and defined for them by the middle-class (the black educator suzanne grant lewis and jordan naidoo may 10, 2004 108 middle-class in black schools and the white, colored or indian professional middleclass in mixed schools). the majority of stakeholders, especially principals, felt that the sgb represents "their constituency" because they had an "elected sgb that is there to support the school." for many, to have held elections and formed an sgb with representatives of each type of stakeholder meant representation had been achieved. the idea of stakeholder groups as the basis for representation intersects with the idea of idealized communities as the basis for representation. both ideas work to homogenize the parent community even though internal cleavages and stratification remain pronounced-particularly across the divides of race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and ability (fakir, 2003). this may be a form of "privileging unity," which refers to the assumption that there always exists the idea of common good involving shared common interests and agreement on principles and policies. this is problematic for three reasons: (1) common good may serve to exclude; (2) it is likely to reflect the interests and perspectives of the historically dominant groups; and, (3) the less privileged may be asked to put aside their identity, experience and goals for the sake of the common good (young, 2000). conclusion we conclude that south african government efforts to broaden participation in educational governance is serving technocratic, efficiency ends rather than broadening participation in any authentic way. to date sasa is not translating into the empowerment of school communities or stimulating substantial organizational changes. rather, the initiatives are serving to reinforce existing patterns of power and privilege in schools and in the broader society. our study suggests that one of the main reasons for this is that, at all levels of the system, devolved school governance and participation of the school community in decision-making is being interpreted in a strikingly narrow way. the capacity to influence decision-making has been viewed in a formal, quasilegalistic sense, restricted to institutional roles defined externally or defined by the most powerful actors at the school. in asking such questions as "what does governance mean?" and "who governs and how?" analysis has generally failed to consider that actual practices of governance emerge out of actors' theories of action in particular localized struggles. while sasa and such policy prescriptions provide the template of "how governance should work," the definition of roles in practice is not a simple matter of learning one's role, mastering technical skills, or following official procedures. it involves some conflict, negotiation, and compromise. the lack of authentic participation by parents and learners reinforces the efforts of policy makers, principals, and administrators to equate democratic school governance with rational decision-making, minimal conflict, and decisions by consensus. any re-definition of roles has to confront established power structures and conventions and their obsession with managerial and organizational efficiency, as these are often antithetical to genuine broad-based participation of local communities. whose theory of participation? school, governance policy and practice in south africa current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 109 notes 1. south africa is a valuable case in point because it has moved further than any other sub-saharan african (ssa) country in introducing, on a national level, school-based governance and financing. while more than 25 ssa countries have implemented one or more major decentralization initiatives (naidoo, 2001), south africa's attention to both financing and governance is unusual. african countries have tended to move either towards administrative decentralization with limited school-level authority or towards devolution of school financing to a sub-national level of government. however, the pressure to introduce market mechanisms into public school systems is strong in many ssa countries with insufficient public resources, declining quality and policy agendas set increasingly by international financial institutions. we can expect that many african countries will watch the south african experience with interest. 2. major policy reforms affecting the structure and processes of education and training were introduced. legislation including the white paper on education and training (doe, 1995), the south african qualifications act (rsa, 1995) and the national education policy act (rsa, 1996a), and south african schools act (rsa, 1996b) gave legal effect to the new policies. 3. sasa assigns significant, some say onerous, fundraising and financial management responsibilities to sgbs. the national norms and standards for school funding details how funding policies will address apartheid inequities while improving efficiency. several analysts have been concerned about the relationship between school financing models and democratic participation. see sayed, 2001; porteus and tshoane, 2001; karlsson, mcpherson and pampallis, 2001. 4. studies focused largely on analyses of legislation, policy documents, and frameworks include work by de clercq (1998, 2001), karlsson, mcpherson and pampallis (2001), sayed (1995, 2001), and tikly (1997). grant lewis and motala (forthcoming) argue that this research has reinforced government obsession with assessing policy fidelity and led to rationalist prescriptions from researchers and policy makers. 5. the data on the six schools are from jordan naidoo's dissertation research in fulfillment of the d.ed. at the harvard graduate school of education. the field visits were over a six-month period in south africa in 2002. the study schools were selected according to level of school and community resources; mix of former apartheid education administrations; and geographical location. the schools were compared by: responses to the new governance policies; interpretation of policies, behavior and attitudes relating to governance; and, organizational governance practices. 6. in the six schools in the study, several former apartheid departments are represented. the department of education and training (det) was responsible for the governance and management of education for blacks/africans outside the socalled "bantustans" or "homelands." the house of delegates (hod) refers to the suzanne grant lewis and jordan naidoo may 10, 2004 110 apartheid structure responsible for schools for indians and the house of representatives (hor) was responsible for schools for coloreds. schools for whites were the responsibility of the provincial department of education. urban black residential areas are predominantly townships, racially segregated areas established by the apartheid government. all three of the gauteng schools in the study are township schools. 7. the clase models (a, b, c and later d) introduced in 1990 by the apartheid government set a new policy for "white" state schools. model c (semi-private/semistate option) was a state-aided school run by the management committee and principal, with the power to appoint teachers, decide on admission policies, and set fees. 8. arnstein's much-quoted "ladder of public participation" consists of eight rungs, which depict what she considered to be an "elevating" framework of meaningful public interaction with planners. rung 5 of the ladder is a higher-level tokenism that allows the have-nots to advise but the power-holders retain the continued right to decide. the top three levels of the ladder (rungs 6, 7, and 8 of partnership, delegated power, and citizen control) mean that the have-nots obtain full managerial power. 9. the use of these racial categories and classification are not supported by the authors, but reflect the racial categories that underpinned apartheid policies. the terminology endures in the new south africa. references anderson, gary l. 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(1999). controlling public education: localism versus equity. lawrence, kansas: university of kansas press. suzanne grant lewis and jordan naidoo may 10, 2004 112 naidoo, jordan (2001). education decentralization in sub-saharan africa: a review of the literature. unpublished qualifying paper for the harvard graduate school of education. naidoo, jordan (2004). educational decentralization and school governance in south africa: from policy to practice. unpublished doctoral dissertation, harvard university graduate school of education. porteus, kimberley and tshoane, margaret (2001). the evolution of school governing bodies: their history, form and function. unpublished manuscript. republic of south africa (rsa) president's office (1996a). national education policy act no. 27 of 1996. cape town: government printer, republic of south africa. republic of south africa (rsa) president's office (1996b). south african school's act no. 84 of 1996. pretoria: government printer, republic of south africa. republic of south africa (rsa) president's office(1996c). constitution of the republic of south africa act 108 of 1996. pretoria: government printer, republic of south africa. republic of south africa (rsa) president's office (1995). south african qualifications act no. 58 of 1995. pretoria: government printer, republic of south africa. sayed, yusuf (2002). democratising education in a decentralised system: south african policy and practice. compare, 32 (1), 35-46. sayed, yusuf (2001) post-apartheid educational transformation: policy concerns and approaches. in yusuf sayed and jonathan jansen (eds.) implementing education policies: the south african experience. cape town: uct press. sayed, yusuf (1995). educational policy developments in south africa, 1990-1994: a critical examination of the policy of decentralization, participation, and power. unpublished doctoral dissertation, university of bristol, 1995. spillane, james p., reiser, brian j. and todd reimer (2002). policy implementation and cognition: reframing and refocusing implementation research. review of educational research, 72 (3) (fall), 387-431. tikly, leon (1997). changing south african schools? an analysis and critique of postelection policy. journal of education policy, 12 (3), 177-88. weber, everard (2002). an ambiguous, contested terrain: governance models for a new south african education system. international journal of educational development, 22 (6), 617-635. young, iris marion (2000). inclusion and democracy. new york: oxford university press. © 2005 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 3 editorial introduction why an issue on social entrepreneurs? constanza lafuente teachers college, columbia university in its first issue, "are ngos overrated" (1998), current issues in comparative education (cice) initiated a debate on the significance, challenges, and purposes of various types of non-governmental organizations (ngos) in advancing social and educational change. this topic was triggered by the dramatic political and economic transformations of the 1980s and 1990s that shaped the relationship between states, civil societies and markets around the world (cice, 1998). authors argued that, among their serious weaknesses, ngos had shown increased dependence on state funding and upwards accountability, thereby compromising ngo performance, and ultimately, their legitimacy (edwards & hulme, 1998), and that many had engaged in implementing prepackaged international reforms, rather than challenging these imported reform packages with alternative ones (steiner-khamsi, 1998). in addition, the contributions demonstrated that while certain indispensable functions of the state could not be replaced (arnove & christina, 1998), and ngos had been 'overrated' by progressives, they continued to represent the most significant challenge to contemporary development strategies (klees, 1998). seven years later, the issues raised by the debate on ngos appear to resonate with the emerging discussion on social entrepreneurship, a term that has been increasingly incorporated into the discourses of practitioners, donors and policy makers in the development field since the late 1990s. the two are intimately linked in the discussion of potential and limitations for advancing social change. in fact, a growing number of donors have begun to support social entrepreneurs, rather than ngos, based on a belief that social entrepreneurs are more effective and innovative in generating social change. the term social entrepreneur has therefore been increasingly incorporated into the debate on the strengths and weaknesses of ngos. attention to social entrepreneurship as a source of social innovation has also been recognized in the academe. an increasing number of programs--mostly business and public policy programs--are promoting research on the subject, and training social entrepreneurs. this increasing interest of donors, practitioners and researchers inspired cice to question why such heightened attention to social entrepreneurship is taking hold today. indeed, dees (2001) argues that social entrepreneurship is not new. is the growing interest in social entrepreneurship therefore a reaction to the failed promises of ngos, the most notorious of which being their detachment from the communities they serve? since social entrepreneurs generally establish organizations to carry out their projects of social change, are these organizations and projects any different from ngos? how does social entrepreneurship apply or manifest itself in the educational arena? and what are the implications of social change agents borrowing strategies from the business world and applying them to advance a social agenda through education? constanza lafuente 4 december 1, 2005 to analyze the implications of social entrepreneurship for research within the field of comparative and international education, first, we examine how social entrepreneurs are often conceived, since the concept of entrepreneurship has been "long hallowed in the context of business and economic ventures" (brown et al., 2004, p. 260), and only recently has it increasingly been applied to social problem solving. as reviewed by brown et al. (2004), social entrepreneurs are conceptualized in three related ways. the first understands social entrepreneurs as combining social impact with commercial enterprise. the second, represented by dees (2003; 2001; 1998), focuses on the innovation of social entrepreneurs for social impact, regardless of the economic feasibility of their ventures. building on definitions of entrepreneurship in economics and management theories, dees provides an ideal type of social entrepreneurs. thus, social entrepreneurs represent this ideal type in different ways, and to different degrees. for dees, social entrepreneurs are change agents who adopt social missions, recognizing and pursuing new opportunities. they tackle roots of social problems, and work towards decreasing existing social needs more willingly than treating problems' manifestations, engaging in processes of continuous innovation, adaptation, and learning. they act without being limited by existing resources at reach, and therefore, they might start working before they may have the necessary resources. in addition, they exhibit high accountability to the communities served and for the outcomes created (dees, 2001; 1998). the third understanding is mainly concerned with their potential to "catalyze social transformation, well beyond the solutions of the social problems that are the initial focus of the problem" (brown et al., 2004, p. 262). the field of comparative and international education is concerned with issues of social change, and the role of civil society and its organizations in education. inquiry into the implications of social entrepreneurship for education provides avenues to expand insights and bring new perspectives to these issues. education--whether taking place inside or outside of schools--is one of the areas in which social entrepreneurs are said to be innovating and creating change. whether their projects advance changes in school classrooms or outside of schools, ultimately, their practices do have implications for education and vice versa. however, most of the literature on social entrepreneurship is currently based in business and non-profit and civil society studies. this issue of cice seeks to stimulate debate on the ways in which social entrepreneurship is conceptualized and manifested within the field of education. the contributors tackle a wide range of questions, such as: how and where are social entrepreneurs developing opportunities and innovations in education, and for whom? how does a perspective of social entrepreneurship relate to teachers as catalysts for change? how do social entrepreneurs make use of networks to advance educational change? can and should the educational innovations of social entrepreneurs at the local level be institutionalized? how can academic programs educate for a practice of social entrepreneurship that transcends the market metaphor? in from entrepreneurship to activism: teachers as agents of social change, steve shara argues that while social entrepreneurship shares similar concerns with social justice activism, the business ethos in the idea of entrepreneurship is not suited to the social concerns that teachers and educators deal with in their everyday lives. the article identifies characteristics of social entrepreneurship that are shared with why an issue on social entrepreneurs? current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 5 the concerns of peace and social justice, but cautions against a rush to blur the distinctions between social entrepreneurship and education. based on fieldwork conducted in malawi, the article presents a historical context for peace and social justice activism in malawi, and the ideas needed to promote teacher independence and activism to make teaching relevant to social change and innovation. in the politics of social entrepreneurs in access to education: a case study of shan burmese refugees in southwestern thailand, celina su and peter muenning draw on dees's characterization of social entrepreneurship to present a case study of shan burmese families in northern thailand. the thirty families they examine face hardships finding work, accessing healthcare and placing their children in schools. two thai nationals, yai and noi, assist this community by establishing a primary school. over four years, this nonformal school succeeds in raising educational standards so that shan children can be comfortably integrated into thai schools. yai and noi promote academic achievement, and generate momentum throughout the community to keep the school sustainable. their concomitant efforts to improve sanitation and healthcare for shan families exemplify an innovative and adaptable social mission that improves refugees' qualities of life. jill sperandio discusses how social entrepreneurs are developing educational opportunities outside the formal system of education for low-income children and women in social entrepreneurs and educational leadership in bangladesh. sperandio argues that social entrepreneurs innovate and experiment with new methods in the delivery of education, since they are less constrained by the 'educentric' paradigm. the article also points out that for countries that are struggling to provide disadvantaged groups with access to education, social entrepreneurship offers the potential of increasing the availability of education and of introducing innovations that may be adopted by the national education system. in their essay entitled social enterprise and re-civilization of human endeavors, maria humphries and suzanne grant remind us that the market as an organizing metaphor is increasingly used to organize the delivery of social services. they take dees's (2003) distinction between social and economic entrepreneurs, to argue that that all economic activity is social activity; and suggest that the uncritical market metaphor may be seen not only as an inadequate disciplinary mechanism for the conduct of social enterprise, but as the generator of the social ills social entrepreneurs seek to address. the potential of social entrepreneurship to advance education and social change has not been sufficiently explored by comparative and international education scholars. this issue of cice contributes towards this end. it is expected that ultimately this will bring further vitality to our field and provide new insights to the research community studying social entrepreneurship. notes 1. i would like to thank gita steiner-khamsi and zeena zakharia for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this introduction. constanza lafuente 6 december 1, 2005 references arnove, r. & christina, r. (1998). ngo-state relations: an argument in favor of the state and complementarity of efforts. current issues in comparative education [online], 1 (1). available at: http://www.tc.edu/cice/articles/ra111.htm [november 28, 2005] brown, d., letts, c. & alvord, s. (2004). social entrepreneurship and social transformation: an exploratory study. the journal of applied behavioral science, 40, (3), 260–282. current issues in comparative education (1998). are ngos overrated? editorial introduction. current issues in comparative education [online], 1 (1). available at: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/cice/articles/edintro1.htm [november 28, 2005] dees, j. g. (1998). the meaning of social entrepreneurship. stanford: stanford university graduate school of business. dees, j. g. (2001). the meaning of social entrepreneurship revisited. working paper. stanford: stanford university graduate school of business. [online]. available at: http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/centers/case/documents/dees_se.pdf [november 28, 2005] dees, j. g. (2003). social entrepreneurship is about innovation and impact, not income. skoll foundation. [online]. available at: http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/centers/case/articles/1004/corner.htm [november 28, 2005] edwards, m. & hulme, d. (1998). too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations. current issues in comparative education 1(1). [online], available at: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/cice/articles/medh111.htm [november 28, 2005] klees, s. (1998). ngos: progressive force or neo-liberal tool? current issues in comparative education [online], 1 (1). available at: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/cice/articles/sjk111.htm [november 28, 2005] steiner-khamsi, g. (1998). too far from home? 'modulitis' and ngos' role in transferring prepackaged reform. current issues in comparative education, 1(1). [online]. available at: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/cice/articles/gsk111.htm [november 28, 2005] melo ferreira, a. l. (2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 o papel da bibliografia das publicações indígenas do brasil na reafirmação das identidades intelectuais ameríndias ana luísa melo ferreira université panthéon-sorbonne paris 1 o ensino superior brasileiro e a produção científica foram, historicamente, espaços destinados a uma elite branca privilegiada. aos povos indígenas, bem como a mulheres e negros, foi-lhes negado, ao longo dos anos, o poder de participação e produção de um conhecimento considerado também legítimo. no entanto, uma nova corrente intelectual indígena decolonial surge para mostrar que há outras formas de saber válidas. ao mesmo tempo em que se reafirmam enquanto indivíduos e como comunidade, eles contribuem para a difusão de uma pluralidade de ideias e interpretações de mundo. deste modo, o principal foco deste artigo é entender qual o papel da participação indígena na produção científica acadêmica e como recentes iniciativas – tal qual a bibliografia das publicações indígenas do brasil – contribuem para o resgate de sua autoestima e a sua afirmação em um meio excludente. palavras-chave: indígenas, academia, ciência, metodologia, decolonialismo introdução karú-sakaibê é o criador da vida, dos céus e das montanhas, dos rios, dos animais e dos munduruku. os velhos sábios contam que karú-sakaibê andava pelo mundo sempre acompanhado de seu grande amigo rairu, um jovem brincalhão, no entanto poderoso. em uma dessas brincadeiras, rairu formou uma figura de tatu usando folhas e gravetos, finalizando-a com um pouco de cera de resina de mel e, para que secasse, enterrou-a. o que rairu não imaginava, contudo, é que sua mão ficaria colada na cauda do pequeno tatu, e, no intuito de soltá-la, ele acabou o trazendo à vida. o tatu, tão forte quanto seu dono, cavou tanto, mas tanto, que chegou ao centro da terra, arrastando consigo o pobre rairu. lá, ficaram chocados com o que encontraram: um povo bonito e diferente. correram, então, para contar a karú o que havia acontecido, e o deus decidiu que aquela gente não ficaria mais escondida ali, mas que agora habitaria a superfície. por isso, deulhes a chuva, a mandioca, a batata, as plantas medicinais e outros alimentos, e eles se tornariam, assim, uma nação orgulhosa e guerreira. este conto (munduruku, 2021), bem como incontáveis outros, está no cerne da origem munduruku. mitos como estes, centrais na cosmovisão indígena, são comumente classificados como estórias infanto-juvenis, nada além de um folclore ingênuo para os olhares longínquos. isso se dá pois as formas de conhecimento indígena são invalidadas por uma supremacia branca do conhecimento. na realidade, os arranjos modernos institucionais garantem um cânone do conhecimento à europa que perpetua processos racistas ao naturalizar a “excepcionalidade” da europeidade (araújo & maeso, 2016). isso quer dizer que a forma como produzimos saber ainda é pautada em uma perspectiva eurocentrada, uma prática política, histórica e acadêmica na qual grupos excluídos tiveram pouco ou quase nenhum © 2021, melo ferreira. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 159-174. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en melo ferreira current issues in comparative education 160 poder de contribuição. logo, a maneira tradicional de se fazer conhecimento silenciou as vozes daqueles localizados às margens, como mulheres, negros e povos originários. esta maneira, classificada como monopólio da ciência por valadares e silveira júnior (2017), evidencia a falta de representatividade na produção do saber, ao passo que quem detinha os meios de conhecimento partia do pressuposto de que a experiência de homens brancos era a mesma da humanidade em geral. isto posto, propor-nos-emos, neste trabalho, a fazer uma crítica ao modelo acadêmico no brasil e, ao mesmo tempo, apontar iniciativas de resistência de contrapúblicos subalternos1, mais especificamente dos povos indígenas. estes últimos, por meio de uma coordenação orgânica, buscam reivindicar seu lugar na construção e estabelecimento de epistemologias alternativas que também sejam consideradas legítimas. além disso, iremos examinar como os povos indígenas, no ambiente acadêmico e fora dele, buscam trazer para si a autonomia de serem produtores soberanos de conhecimento, seja ele tradicional ou não. deste modo, a participação ativa dos povos originários na ciência se torna crucial para a superação de contradições na academia e nos métodos científicos, propondo e provocando novas metodologias que englobem e validem diferentes perspectivas. é o caso, por exemplo, da bibliografia das publicações indígenas do brasil (bpib), organizada de forma colaborativa por diferentes intelectuais indígenas brasileiros e que será estudada a seguir. escolhemos este tema a partir do entendimento de que a produção que aborde o protagonismo indígena na academia ainda é limitada e não dá o devido destaque às potentes iniciativas dos povos originários. nós acreditamos na capacidade dos povos indígenas em ocupar e revolucionar espaços outrora negados, e na importância em estarem presentes em lugares historicamente excludentes e etilizados, como é a academia. assim, trazer a ótica de quem está na linha de frente desta reconfiguração no fazer ciência representa o nosso desejo em poder entender melhor tal fenômeno e, concomitantemente, contribuir com um olhar sensível às suas formas de agir. no entanto, a falta e o difícil acesso aos dados sobre indígenas na ciência acabam por nos limitar, parecendo-nos a melhor solução nos apoiar em uma bibliografia pré-existente e, sobretudo, nas entrevistas dos personagens principais desta narrativa. por meio desta metodologia, buscamos usar ferramentas que permitissem centralizar as experiências ameríndias e em seguida analisálas mediante um processo horizontalizado. conduzimos a nossa pesquisa no intuito de responder a alguns questionamentos, em particular se participação de povos indígenas na produção científica consegue, em algum grau, fomentar a descolonização da academia e de suas metodologias e de que forma iniciativas como a bpib contribuem para uma melhora na autoestima dos pesquisadores indígenas na academia. para tal, nos baseamos em uma revisão da produção científica dando preferência aos estudos de pessoas indígenas, brasileiras e estrangeiras, mas também recorrendo, caso necessário, ao que já foi escrito por não-indígenas. além disso, entrevistamos dois pesquisadores indígenas ativistas pela legitimação do conhecimento ameríndio, bem como uma das responsáveis pela criação da bpib. ao longo dos meses de junho e julho de 2021, conversamos com o professor doutor em direito álvaro de azevedo gonzaga, da etnia guarani-kaiowá; com edson krenak, da etnia krenak, doutor em antropologia cultural e possui especialização jurídica pela universidade de viena; e com aline franca, mestre em biblioteconomia e bibliotecárica coordenadora da bibliografia das publicações indígenas do brasil. eles nos trouxeram um panorama baseados em suas vivências enquanto indígenas (no caso do professor álvaro e de edson krenak), assim como 1 a definição de contrapúblicos subalternos foi explorada por nancy fraser (1990) em seu artigo rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. article’s title current issues in comparative education 161 ativistas pela causa e dignidade dos povos indígenas, como é o caso de aline franca. as entrevistas foram organizadas de forma semiestruturada, com perguntas gerais e em seguida aprofundadas conforme a discussão se desenrolava, e realizada de maneira remota. optamos por esses três entrevistados por serem pessoas que se posicionam de forma assertiva na defesa da produção intelectual indígena. edson krenak, por exemplo, é ativista por uma educação descolonizadora e se articula nacional e internacionalmente a fim de repensar as literaturas e metodologias ameríndias. álvaro de azevedo gonzaga, por outro lado, é professor, advogado e militante pelos direitos humanos e pelos direitos dos povos indígenas. além de já ter escrito livros sobre o decolonialismo indígena, possui uma longa trajetória de investigação e atuação na causa indígena. aline franca, cujo tema de dissertação de mestrado em biblioteconomia foi a representação bibliográfica da autoria indígena no brasil (2016), articula-se diretamente com intelectuais originários para abastecer o seu projeto, bibliografia das publicações indígenas do brasil. dessa forma, todos detêm um vasto conhecimento empírico e epistemológico que, ao serem compartilhados, enriquecem o nosso debate e contribuem com novas interpretações críticas sobre o papel deste grupo na consolidação da sua forma de ser e saber. a invisibilidade na academia devemos começar a discutir a participação de grupos marginais2 na academia – mais precisamente os povos indígenas – fazendo um recapitulativo do modelo de educação tradicional brasileiro. neste âmbito, é essencial relembrar que o atual estágio de apagamento, contradições e incoerências é o resultado de um longo processo de exclusão sistêmica de todos aqueles que não se encontrassem na interface homem-branco-rico. foi neste contexto, portanto, que se estabeleceu um modelo totalitário de racionalidade que ainda orienta a nossa forma de classificar o que é conhecimento e, por conseguinte, do que é e como fazer a verdadeira ciência (piza & pansarelli, 2012). a história da educação superior no brasil é marcada por profundas desigualdades (derossi & carvalho, 2021). a exclusão de grupos marginais fez parte, desde o princípio, da agenda portuguesa de impedir a autonomia intelectual em sua colônia mais próspera, monopolizando, assim, a esfera de ensino (durham, 2003). tal fato pode ser observado durante a criação da primeira instituição de ensino superior brasileira, em 1808, motivada pela chegada da família real portuguesa fugida da ameaça napoleônica e não pelo desejo intrínseco de suprir as necessidades educacionais nacionais (braga & mazzeu, 2017). até então, os únicos a terem acesso às universidades eram herdeiros de família abastadas que deviam se deslocar aos centros urbanos da metrópole, em portugal, para estudar. em seguida, para eles também foram destinados espaços restritos de produção de conhecimento quando a mesma já acontecia no brasil. deste modo, a educação esteve reservada à uma pequena parcela da população privilegiada, ressaltando seu caráter elitista, excludente e centralizador (novaes et al., 2018). para garcia (2000), os déficits estruturais da educação superior brasileira ainda refletem a “hegemonia dos que se pretendiam proprietários do saber, que eram também os proprietários das terras e de 2 partiremos da noção de grupos marginalizados, ou minorias, presente no trabalho de danner et al. (2020). desta forma nos referimos a grupos invisibilizados, silenciados e excluídos pelo sujeito colonizador. estes grupos são, segundo os autores, vítimas de uma menoridade moral, condição essa que apaga seus discursos e lhes nega sua maioridade política. no caso dos povos indígenas, eles viveriam numa condição de maioridade relativa, sob uma tutela tecnocrática na qual eles seriam meros objetos do estado, mas nunca sujeitos. melo ferreira current issues in comparative education 162 todas as riquezas produzidas, e que se valiam do saber para justificar seu poder” (p.68). isto é visível, por exemplo, em dados que revelam que, nos anos 1900, cerca de 65.3% da população brasileira ainda era analfabeta (braga & mazzeu, 2017). a educação moderna, em vista disso, teve como base premissas racistas, classistas e misóginas que deixaram de fora grande porcentagem da população brasileira. a começar pela modernidade que, segundo ballestrin (2017), é tanto uma época quanto um processo, uma ideologia e uma lógica que positivou a razão e a civilização através da violência colonial sobre outros modelos de sentir, pensar e agir (p. 522). neste contexto, solidificouse uma forma específica de racionalidade que tem como uma das consequências a destruição de outras formas de saber (hoffmeister et al., 2016). ela pauta, todavia, os nossos princípios epistemológicos e regras metodológicas complexas, tornando-os por vezes inacessíveis. nesta racionalidade, o que não é quantificável se torna irrelevante. a contínua reprodução das narrativas ocidentais, em particular da europeia, leva à formação de uma subjetividade domesticada e heteronônoma (piza, 2018, p.113). por outro lado, ela reduz a sua complexidade ao não considerar outras perspectivas não-imperiais, tão essenciais para a pluralidade no debate das ideias. o desenvolvimento do capitalismo econômico, que se inicia a partir da acumulação primitiva do capital (federici, 2004), esteve diretamente associado ao monopólio da ciência, de acordo com valadares e silveira júnior (2017). tal fato levou a imposição de supostas verdades universais – baseadas, sobretudo, em conceitos da revolução científica emergentes no século xvi (gomes, 2012) – aos grupos explorados. como consequência, culturas e saberes fora do eixo eurocêntrico foram invalidadas, tornando-se, inclusive, objetos de estudos caricatos e estereotipados vistos sob a ótica dos detentores da razão. deste modo, o conhecimento, como o percebemos hoje, solidificou-se nos objetivos e intenções daqueles que detinham a hegemonia de poder (monk & garcía-ramon, 1987). no contexto brasileiro, esta hegemonia esteve e está intimamente relacionada ao seu passado colonial. boaventura de sousa santos (2018), em sua obra epistemologias do sul, explora o epistemicídio como o fenômeno que colocou o colonialismo como uma forma de conhecimento que se autorregulava. ele o considera, também, um dos maiores crimes contra a humanidade. segundo o autor, [...] o genocídio que pontuou tantas vezes a expansão europeia foi também um epistemicídio: eliminaram-se povos estranhos porque tinham formas de conhecimento estranho e eliminaram-se formas de conhecimento estranho porque eram sustentadas por práticas sociais e povos estranhos. mas o epistemicídio foi muito mais vasto que o genocídio porque ocorreu sempre que se pretendeu subalternizar, subordinar, marginalizar, ou ilegalizar práticas e grupos sociais que podiam constituir uma ameaça à expansão capitalista ou, durante boa parte do nosso século, à expansão comunista (neste domínio tão moderna quanto a capitalista); e também porque ocorreu tanto no espaço periférico, extra-europeu e extra-norte-americano do sistema mundial, como no espaço central europeu e norte-americano, contra os trabalhadores, os índios, os negros, as mulheres e as minorias em geral (étnicas, religiosas, sexuais). (p.200) esta ideia é reforçada por grosfoguel (2016), ao afirmar que a legitimidade do monopólio do conhecimento gera estruturas que produzem (e reproduzem) o racismo e o sexismo epistêmico, desqualificando a oposição feita ao projeto por sua vez patriarcal, colonial, imperial e universal que regem o sistema-mundo (p.25). bell hooks (2013), indo mais além, article’s title current issues in comparative education 163 acrescenta que da teoria resultante deste modo de conhecimento é feito um uso instrumental que cria hierarquias desnecessárias de pensamentos que endossam políticas de dominação. para ela, obras consideradas teóricas são repletas de jargões, referências obscuras e difíceis de ler (p.89) que impedem a identificação e decodificação dos que estão às margens, trazendo-lhes consequências reais e materiais. nancy fraser (1990), como mencionado anteriormente, aborda o pensamento de subalternidade e de como é possível reagir a ele, especialmente enquanto grupos invisibilizados. nele, a autora analisa as premissas habermasianas de participação democrática e ressalta a importância da presença de grupos socialmente excluídos nos espaços públicos de tomada de decisão. na contramão ao discurso de jürgen habermas3, ela demonstra que levar em conta a condição periférica na qual estes segmentos da sociedade estão inseridos é um fator central do processo reivindicatório. conforme aponta gayatri spivak (2010), a manutenção das estruturas que acentuam as diferenças entre grupos hegemônicos e subalternos está no fato de que, para o último, é crucial que outros falem por ele. ser subalterno, por conseguinte, é não falar ou ter sua fala tutelada por outros. portanto, o confronto entre contra-públicos subalternos e poder hegemônico acaba sendo uma etapa inicial de democratização, ao propiciar uma maior pluralidade de representação na esfera pública (seja ela em espaços de tomada de decisão ou de ensino, especialmente pelo seu caráter político). edson krenak acredita que a universidade ainda é um local onde não há abertura para a diversidade de expressões. o que acontece, de fato, é que este modelo educacional funciona pela lógica da doutrinação, para uniformizar o pensamento dos estudantes. trata-se, de acordo com ele, de uma academia colonizada que busca silenciar as vozes e deslegitimar as tradições indígenas. existe, sim, um debate teórico, mas que só interessa aos teóricos para os currículos e egos deles. [...] não existe nenhuma contribuição política, legal, social, emancipatória para os povos indígenas na universidade. as línguas indígenas, por exemplo, são posse dos departamentos de linguística ou de antropologia, mas elas quase não têm expressão nenhuma em termos de produção de conhecimento. a língua indígena é o local de conhecimento branco, colonizador. (krenak, comunicação pessoal, 10 de julho, 2021). como consequência dessa exclusão conjuntural, estudantes indígenas se sentiam e se sentem abandonados e solitários, em particular face às políticas tradicionais – e equivocadas – de “inclusão”. por outro lado, eles são confrontados cotidianamente frente aos métodos e a professores cujas práticas têm profundas raízes no racismo estrutural. “indígenas chegavam [à sala de aula] com uma bagagem enorme de conhecimento tradicional e não conheciam equações de segundo grau. só por isso os professores já os desqualificavam, diziam para voltar para a escola [primária]” (krenak, comunicação pessoal, 10 de julho de 2021). o ativista ressalta, entretanto, que a própria formação de tais docentes é colonizadora, não poupando sequer professores indígenas de darem 3 orientado pela escola de frankfurt, habermas parte do conceito de que há uma suposta racionalidade que deve ser aplicada durante os momentos de discussão, mas que, para isso, é preciso abandonar a nossa identidade e a nossa subjetividade. para ele, a esfera pública é um local neutro no qual pessoas devem suspender as suas diferenças enquanto indivíduos e debater como se fossem todos iguais. esta posição é problemática visto que não somos somente diferentes, como possuímos trajetórias diferentes que nos moldam e nos orientam. nossas emoções, deste modo, são um motor que nos fazem lutar para sermos levado em consideração nas tomadas de decisão em uma democracia. melo ferreira current issues in comparative education 164 continuidade à maneira de educar que os oprime. para ele, falta uma formação essencialmente indígena. em contrapartida, a academia é um espaço de onde emergem contra-condutas que, segundo alabarce et al. (2020), causam tensão entre projetos neoliberais que colocam o saber acadêmico constantemente em risco. é no meio acadêmico que se procura entender o mundo, a sociedade e seus fenômenos naturais ou humanos. as universidades, apesar de suas falhas, ainda se mantêm como um espaço de discussão e de busca por educação de qualidade, plural e emancipatória. de acordo com romão (2013), o ensino superior e a sua maneira de existir estão em uma profunda crise identitária; é certo, porém, que é através deste processo que se torna possível se reinventar. em diálogo com as obras de paulo freire, o autor acredita que a solução para o ensino superior está em sua própria superação institucional, curricular e científica. para ele, o ato de superar [...] não significa negar-se e negar a sua história, mas descobrir-se em um novo contexto, a partir da síntese de suas próprias contradições internas, o que significa encarar a superação dialética como autotransformação, como substituição do imediato pelo mediato, em suma, enquanto “mediatização”, como gostava de dizer paulo freire (2013, p. 93). neste cenário, grupos socialmente esquecidos desempenham um papel central na superação, pois possuem as ferramentas para apontar equívocos e trazer novas interpretações da nossa realidade, muito mais subjetiva do que se ouse afirmar. a seguir, exploraremos como povos originários assumem para si a responsabilidade de serem também agentes ativos na busca do conhecimento, saindo do local passivo de eternos sujeitos de estudo para operarem como produtores de saber. ciência também é coisa de indígena no que tange a participação de estudantes ameríndios na academia, compartilhamos a perspectiva de smith (2021) ao assegurar que a atividade de se fazer pesquisa é transformada quando povos indígenas passam a ser os pesquisadores e não apenas os meros objetos de pesquisa. com a sua presença nesses locais, as questões são formadas de maneiras distintas e as prioridades são repensadas (p.193). é a produção de conhecimento feito por eles e para eles e suas comunidades. o brasil conta, atualmente, com 494 docentes indígenas em exercício na educação superior, dos quais 196 são mulheres e 298 são homens. de 386.073 professores, eles representam 0.1%, do total, conforme dados do instituto nacional de estudos e pesquisas educacionais anísio teixeira (inpe), do ministério da educação4. no que tange a sua presença nas universidades, eles eram, em 2019, 0.7% dos estudantes matriculados a se autodeclarar indígenas. contudo, apesar dos números discretos, eles mostram um cenário otimista: a presença de alunos indígenas no ensino cresce exponencialmente a cada ano (herbetta & nazareno, 2020). os povos originários também estão na pós-graduação, tornando-se mestres e doutores na vanguarda de uma produção acadêmica feita por e para indígenas. eles fazem parte de uma nova classe intelectual autóctone, sendo a autoria acadêmica indígena um fenômeno social em emergência (reichert, 2019). é, destarte, uma ação política que ousa romper com 4 estes dados nos foram disponibilizados pelo instituto nacional de educação, do ministério da educação, através da lei de acesso à informação. eles foram baseados no censo de 2019 sobre o número de docentes total e indígenas das instituições de educação superior. article’s title current issues in comparative education 165 moldes coloniais. assim, “a autoria indígena está no fato de ter reconhecido o seu lugar de fala, independentemente da condição em que tal fala se inscreve” (portela & nogueira, 2016, p.158). as autoras ainda lembram que o ingresso de indígenas no ensino superior é um acontecimento recente (2016, p.12), que teve seu início no governo petista de luiz inácio lula da silva (2003-2010). os anos 2000, assim sendo, foram marcados por iniciativas que buscavam maior inclusão destes povos no campo social das políticas públicas, em particular no acesso ao ensino superior. em 2012, a aprovação da lei 12.211/2012 – conhecida como lei de cotas – foi uma inegável conquista e um importante avanço na democratização do ensino a segmentos historicamente excluídos (baniwa, 2013). a ação afirmativa, sancionada pela ex-presidente dilma rousseff (partido dos trabalhadores), permitiu que o número de vagas direcionadas a povos indígenas aumentasse em 544% desde a implementação dessa lei, segundo dados do censo da educação superior, do ministério da educação (inep/mec, 2018). é necessário, porém, observar a iniciativa com cautela, visto que ela é o pontapé para “pensar o enfrentamento mais pragmático das desigualdades associadas à exclusão e discriminação racial, sociocultural, econômica e étnica” (baniwa, 2013, p.18). felipe cruz, antropólogo indígena brasileiro, percebe, a partir de sua experiência, que estudantes autóctones pretendem dominar não só o conhecimento branco, mas ocupar lugares estratégicos dentro da academia como forma de romper práticas de tutela que vão na contramão do almejado protagonismo indígena (2016, p.26). deste modo, povos originários buscam, na formação superior, uma via alternativa e legítima de participação sociopolítica para atender seus desejos e os de suas comunidades. isso também os capacitam na gestão de seus territórios ao mesmo tempo em que lhes dão condições favoráveis para exercerem sua cidadania. paralelamente a cruz (2016), álvaro de azevedo gonzaga, durante entrevista, retoma o conceito de etnocídio mencionado anteriormente por boaventura de sousa santos e explica as razões pelas quais presença de estudantes indígenas no ensino superior é uma estratégia para vencê-lo. a luta etnocida [indígena versus conhecimento colonizado] é justamente essa. o etnocídio nada mais é do que ‘eu estrangular’ a sua cultura. a cultura universitária tem uma política etnocida, na qual os indígenas precisam entender o seu papel na universidade, abastecer-se de conhecimento colonizador para que possa operacionalizar, dentro dos aparelhos estatais, dentro das estratégias políticas que existem, formas de ação. no direito, por exemplo, aprender como se judicializam determinadas questões é uma delas. (azevedo gonzaga, comunicação pessoal, 22 de junho, 2021). krenak, seguindo a mesma linha de raciocínio que azevedo gonzaga, aponta que foi o sentimento de serem massacrados por um sistema que não os contemplava o que os permitiu reagir. “isso deu espaço para aquilo que é bastante indígena, para a resistência. nos deu forças para criar laços e comunidades indígenas dentro das universidades. foi assim que nos fortalecemos” (krenak, comunicação pessoal, 10 de julho de 2021). este fortalecimento se deu com maior ingresso de indígenas na universidade e na ocupação de lugares considerados não-indígenas. nós já começamos a trilhar este caminho, ao entrar nas universidades e discutirmos, questionarmos e termos esse debate público. alguns indígenas têm melo ferreira current issues in comparative education 166 usado suas mídias sociais para questionar estes parâmetros. nós estamos forçando os portões a se abrirem para nós, mas, quando entramos, não queremos entrar sozinhos. queremos entrar como parceiros, com nossos conhecimentos e nossas tradições. não queremos entrar para sermos formados nos padrões colonizadores. a gente quer dialogar e precisamos ter a habilidade de sentar a mesa para negociar. (krenak, comunicação pessoal, 10 de julho de 2021). daniel munduruku, em sua obra o caráter educativo do movimento indígena brasileiro (19701990), acredita que esta tomada de consciência está ligada ao processo de apoderamento, feito pelo seu povo, do mecanismo teórico ocidental. “esta capacidade de alargar os horizontes mentais para enxergar de forma mais clara o entorno, o nacional, exigiu nova postura e redimensionamento do que era, até então, dado como verdade” (munduruku, 2012, p.211). a organização dos povos indígenas faz parte de um momento de mudanças históricas que, impulsionadas por transformações políticas, influenciaram a forma como eles passaram a perceber a sua relação com o estado e como eles se posicionariam face a ele. surgiram, à vista disso, novas demandas que se converteriam em pautas de luta (silva, costa e esteves, 2017). célia xakriabá (2018) crê que dialogar com outras epistemologias se mostra uma tarefa desafiadora, visto que uma das necessidades é a de descolonizar conhecimentos perpassados no meio acadêmico (p.56). segundo ela, o protagonismo de acadêmicos e anciões indígenas é crescente. pouco a pouco eles deixam de ocupar o lugar de objetos de pesquisa para se tornarem produtores de conhecimento das suas comunidades. “ocupar, marcar e demarcar o espaço no meio acadêmico é sem dúvida uma ferramenta de luta” (xakriabá, p.102). a autora nos lembra que: apesar de ainda existir um grande desafio, a nossa presença na universidade faz diferença e tem sido muito mais que formação acadêmica, tem também nos preparado para transitar em mundos diferentes, conhecer o “novo”, outras culturas, outros conhecimentos, mas com a convicção de que o que queremos mesmo é fortalecer e tornar ainda mais significativas a nossa cultura e a nossa identidade. (xakriabá, 2018, p.57). baniwa (2013) reitera os princípios de comunidade mencionados por xakriabá (2018), ao ressaltar que povos originários não visam se enquadrar em lógicas academicistas que alimentam e sustentam os processos de reprodução do capitalismo individualista. na contramão da barbárie e selvageria resultantes do atual modelo econômico, eles gostariam, na realidade, de compartilhar seus saberes, valores comunitários, cosmologias, modos de ser e de viver onde o bem-estar coletivo seja a prioridade (2013, p.18). a grande dificuldade, portanto, está neste encontro entre civilizações que de um lado se baseiam em princípios de partilha, e a de outra, a ocidental, prepotente e autocentrada (tamaná, 2021). os saberes das comunidades indígenas são apresentados através da oralidade e, apesar das extensas tentativas de aculturação coloniais que os cerceiam, eles resistem para manter seu legado. a diversidade cultural presente em seus conceitos epistemológicos é de grande valor para a sua construção acadêmica e para sua pedagogia da vida (coimbra e branco, 2020). ademais, o próprio movimento indígena é considerado como uma universidade por alguns, já que possibilita a produção de um conhecimento corporificado pelo engajamento na luta. é uma instituição certamente invisibilizada, porém que valoriza a trajetória, e não só o ponto de partida ou de chegada (xakriabá, 2018, p.57). article’s title current issues in comparative education 167 a ciência indígena se mostra uma via possível e necessária para a construção de uma sociedade solidária, na qual não apenas o bem-estar humano seja levado em conta, mas toda forma de vida que existe no planeta terra. a proteção dos conhecimentos tradicionais, além de sua aplicação, pode direcionar a humanidade para um futuro em que a natureza não seja vista como território de dominação e sim como parte essencial a cada um de nós. o modo de ser indígena deve servir para a nossa perspectiva ocidental como uma revolução em conceitos que seguem nos colocando em risco, pois ainda funciona como um meio para fins neoliberais. não obstante, isso perpassa pela legitimação destes saberes, pela descolonização do conhecimento. um dos obstáculos encontrados e a ser superado pelos povos originários ao longo de suas trajetórias acadêmicas é a necessidade de aprender teorias e conceitos que não se encaixam no pensar holístico de seus povos, sendo uma agressão ao seu sistema mental (munduruku, 2017). quando se trata de saberes tradicionais autóctones, eles se baseiam em uma dependência dos fatos observados, em uma observação contínua e direta do que se estuda relacionada às suas origens e ancestralidade. a ciência, por outro lado, opera com modelos explicativos e pré-estabelecidos. a esta segunda se dá uma heurística maior do que ao conhecimento dos povos originários, que acaba sendo reduzido a estereótipos. além disso, mesmo que alguns desses estudantes indígenas se destaquem na formação acadêmica, tornem-se mestres e doutores, ainda figuram no imaginário social como “exceção à regra”, tendo sua produção acadêmica pouco difundida (portela & nogueira, 2016). é por isso que iniciativas como a bibliografia das publicações indígenas do brasil, a qual estudaremos a seguir, são cruciais para a divulgação da ciência indígena. a bibliografia das publicações indígenas do brasil, uma ferramenta de autoestima a autoestima é um elemento essencial à nossa existência, que determina como nos sentimos sobre nós mesmos. é o sentimento que valoriza nossos traços sociais, mentais e espirituais que configuram a nossa personalidade, e é um importante indicador do nível de satisfação que uma pessoa tem consigo mesma (maggio, 2000 como citado em solano & salas, 2010). no contexto dos povos indígenas, ela está associada a um período de busca étnica no qual se explora a sua própria etnicidade até que ela seja internalizada. deste modo, alcançar esta apreciação de si reflete em maiores níveis de satisfação pessoal em comparação com aqueles que não trabalharam a sua etnicidade, mostrando que a forma como os corpos indígenas se posicionam está conectada a como eles veem o seu papel no mundo. “a coisa mais bonita que temos dentro de nós é a dignidade”, disse eliane potiguara em 2008, em seu trabalho identidade e voz indígena. não importa quão maltratados ou tristes estejamos, é preciso ser resiliente. para ela, bonito é florir, mesmo que isso aconteça em meio aos ensinamentos impostos pelo poder. é lindo poder renascer diariamente. “um futuro digno espera os povos indígenas de todo o mundo. foram muitas as vidas violadas, culturas, tradições, religiões, espiritualidade e línguas. a verdade está chegando à tona, mesmo que nos arranquem os dentes!” (p.79). o processo de resgate da autoestima indígena perpassa, de um lado, por iniciativas de políticas públicas, mas ele provém sobretudo dos meios de ações independentes de empoderamento autônomo próprios às comunidades ameríndias. a fim de superar a tutela de raiz colonial, surgem novos dispositivos que transmutam a responsabilidade de expressão para si e questionam a organização social que os coloca como coadjuvantes de melo ferreira current issues in comparative education 168 suas próprias histórias. a bibliografia das publicações indígenas do brasil, da mesma forma que iniciativas como leia mulheres indígenas5, por exemplo, vem para relembrar que o conhecimento tradicional indígena pode trazer progresso à comunidade que os cerceia. a bibliografia das publicações indígenas do brasil foi criada em 2019 por aline franca, daniel munduruku6 e thúlio gomes7. trata-se de uma bibliografia colaborativa hospedada na plataforma wikilivros que lista as publicações de diversos autores indígenas brasileiros. sua principal intenção é de possibilitar a autores e pesquisadores, indígenas ou não indígenas, o acesso às produções ameríndias locais. a bibliografia conta com obras literárias, bem como teses e dissertações indígenas. de acordo com aline franca, sua fundadora, a bibliografia [...] é um instrumento de organização de informação que, para nós que somos bibliotecários, é muito cotidiano, banal. só que normalmente as bibliografias são temáticas e até então não existia uma bibliografia disposta a registrar essa produção bibliográfica dos escritores indígenas. a questão era resolver essa lacuna informacional que era minha, mas também era dos escritores indígenas, para que a gente tivesse esse repertório e as pessoas pudessem acessar e ver que existe literatura indígena – e ela não é pequena, não. (franca, comunicação pessoal, 06 de julho de 2021). a iniciativa surgiu de um sentimento de indiferença com a produção indígena no meio bibliotecário, percebido por ela durante um estágio na graduação. no momento em que eu escutei uma pessoa falar “isso é coisa de índio, ninguém vai procurar, não serve para nada, pode deixar em uma caixa ali no canto” e eu falei “não, isso não é justo”, ali eu já tinha muito claro para mim, mesmo que eu não soubesse, qual era o meu posicionamento, de qual lado eu estava. (franca, comunicação pessoal, 06 de julho de 2021). a bibliotecária, assim, decidiu colocar em prática uma ferramenta que funcionaria para listar documentos que demonstrassem que existe uma produção literária e científica indígena. franca afirma que houve uma excelente receptividade por parte destes autores e pesquisadores, [...] porque veio ao encontro da necessidade que já existia. eu comecei a fazer o levantamento ao mesmo tempo em que entrava em contato com alguns escritores [indígenas], a apresentar essa proposta a eles e pedir que eles me dissessem se faltava alguma de suas obras. a ideia era elaborar uma ferramenta que fosse fácil, simples e útil, mas que desde a sua gênese fosse coletiva. assim como as formas 5 o projeto leia mulheres indígenas foi criado por intelectuais e ativistas indígenas no intuito de difundir e valorizar a produção intelectual de mulheres indígenas brasileiras. 6 daniel munduruku, nascido em belém do pará, em 1964, é um professor, ativista e escritor indígena brasileiro pertencente à etnia munduruku. possui graduação em história, filosofia e psicologia pelo centro universitário salesiano de são paulo (unisal), bem como mestrado e doutorado em educação pela universidade de são paulo (usp) e pós-doutorado em linguística pela universidade federal de são carlos (ufscar). seus livros já receberam diversos prêmios literários nacionais e internacionais, entre eles o prêmio jabuti e o prêmio madanjeet singh para a promoção da tolerância e da não violência, da unesco. 7 thúlio pereira dias gomes, um dos fundadores da bpib, é bibliotecário-documentalista da biblioteca universitária de campos dos goytacazes (bucg), órgão pertencente à universidade federal fluminense (uff). é graduado em biblioteconomia e gestão de unidades de informação pela universidade federal do rio de janeiro (ufrj). possui mestrado em ciência da informação pela da universidade federal do rio de janeiro (ufrj) em parceria com o instituto brasileiro de informação em ciência e tecnologia (ibict), e doutorado em ciência da informação pela universidade de são paulo (usp). article’s title current issues in comparative education 169 de ver o mundo dos povos indígenas passa por essa percepção da coletividade, eu queria que a iniciativa tivesse esse perfil. (franca, comunicação pessoal, 06 de julho de 2021). aline, durante a entrevista, usa a metáfora de “colocar pedras preciosas à mostra”, algo que ela considera ter conseguido. trata-se, portanto, de coletar e expor tais pedras em um lugar em que elas precisam estar para serem vistas, para trazê-las para um outro patamar. é assim que elas poderão ser vistas e as pessoas saberão que elas existem. é, logo, um fenômeno de reafirmar e validar tais produções e seus devidos tipos de conhecimento. isso é valioso, posto que, de acordo com de oliveira (2006), povos ameríndios ainda atribuem ao outro um alto significado a como eles se reconhecem. a luta pelo reconhecimento identitário é, porém, uma luta política que busca a autoafirmação e que vai ao encontro de uma dignidade tão menosprezada no passado (p.55). eu não percebia a dimensão que a bibliografia tomou. conforme eu comecei a movimentar alguns pesquisadores para saber se eles me indicavam outros pesquisadores indígenas, eu senti que muitos deles ficavam felizes em contribuir. a bibliografia se tornou algo como se fosse um hall dos pesquisadores indígenas. eu acredito que, de alguma forma, houve esse tipo de impacto. não foi proposital, porque a ideia não era criar um hall dos doutores e mestres indígenas, mas a ideia era justamente agir dando visibilidade para a produção acadêmica desses pesquisadores, que são muitas vezes invisibilizados dentro do próprio universo acadêmico. eles estão dentro da academia, produzindo conhecimento. não que o conhecimento tradicional não seja válido, mas eles romperam essa barreira da vivência em um meio não-indígena, se submeteram ao universo acadêmico para produzir conhecimento que também é validado pela academia e eles passam a transitar nos dois campos de conhecimento, no acadêmico e tradicional. (franca, comunicação pessoal, 06 de julho de 2021). para bergamaschi (2014), essa transição poderia ser descrita como interciência. seria, em outras palavras, o diálogo entre diferentes ciências, levando-se em conta as distintas formas de interação entre ciência moderna e o conhecimento tradicional. nesse contexto, tais estudantes estariam a cargo de “indianizar” espaços acadêmicos com seus modos de fazer pesquisa e de produzir conhecimento (p.27). ainda que soe utópico colocar em contato duas culturas e concepções de aprendizagem antagônicas, este movimento de ocupação de ferramentas acadêmicas vem para rever, criticar, reformular e, quem sabe, subverter o modelo pedagógico formal, resultando em um universo mais diversificado e fraterno. a bpib, nesta perspectiva, cumpre a sua missão de coletivizar os saberes. o professor álvaro de azevedo gonzaga, um de nossos entrevistados, iniciou a nossa discussão ressaltando o papel do reconhecimento étnico para a consolidação de sua autoestima universitária, até então em conflito pelas incertezas de seu passado ameríndio. para falar sobre o futuro dos povos indígenas, ele precisou passar pelo processo de compreensão de sua ancestralidade. assim, a sua história de autoidentificação e a busca pela sua ancestralidade indígena começam durante seus estudos na pontifícia universidade católica de são paulo (puc-sp) ao se deparar com outros estudantes indígenas, mais especificamente o grupo pindorama8. nesse período, foi capaz de se reconhecer enquanto membro do povo guarani-kaiowá, de reconhecer seus semelhantes e a sua atuação na construção de novos saberes. esse processo foi o que bergamaschi (2014) definiu como um “caminho de volta para casa”. 8 o projeto pindorama foi idealizado por professores da puc-sp, cujo objetivo é receber estudantes indígenas e de fortalecer as suas identidades. melo ferreira current issues in comparative education 170 atualmente, álvaro é orientado por uma força decolonial que ressignifica a participação do indígena na ciência. conforme backes (2018), isto ocorre dado que povos ameríndios abraçam seus conhecimentos mesmo que a cultura ocidental e sua epistemologia hegemônica teimem em desqualificá-los. logo, indígenas desafiam constantemente a matriz colonial e constroem pedagogias decoloniais (p.55). segundo ele, no entanto, além de conhecer os instrumentos coloniais de educação, faz-se urgente impor-se em todas as esferas públicas, sejam elas as ruas, as instituições ou as redes sociais. afinal, [...] se não ocuparmos esses espaços, que força de resistência vamos oferecer? se a gente desiste, pela dificuldade ou porque não ocuparemos o espaço ostentado, a gente entregou mesmo. o capital venceu. estamos passando por um momento normaticida9 extremo, em que a luta, a resistência e todos os instrumentos que forem possíveis, e vozes que nos forem dadas, a gente tem que usar. (azevedo gonzaga, comunicação pessoal, 22 de junho de 2021). azevedo gonzaga afirma que é fundamental organizar uma forma de resistência que se apodere dos mecanismos operacionais colonizadores e opressores, cujas técnicas foram, ao longo de séculos, aplicadas contra eles. durante a nossa conversa, ele fez um paralelo com a famosa frase de paulo freire, que acredita que o sonho do oprimido é virar o opressor. azevedo gonzaga crê que esse não seria o caso dos povos ameríndios, visto que existe uma dimensão hierárquica, uma dimensão de respeito ancestral que não permite que se seduzam pelo modelo colonizador. esta mesma perspectiva é vista no trabalho intelectuais indígenas, interculturalidade e educação, de bergamaschi (2014), ao afirmar que os emergentes intelectuais indígenas possuem um forte compromisso com seu grupo social e com as lutas de seus povos. as universidades, para os grupos ameríndios, podem ser aliadas na busca pelo empoderamento coletivo. é um aparato de afirmação, de fortalecimento de seus saberes ancestrais e de sua capacidade de negociação e intervenção no processo de criação de políticas públicas. é, outrossim, um instrumento para reforçar suas identidades, culturas e etnias. estar na academia lhes dá uma nova força social, política e epistemológica. propostas como a bibliografia das publicações indígenas do brasil conectam a formação acadêmica com as tradições dos povos ameríndios e trazem esperança àqueles que buscam reconhecimento em suas práticas. ela pauta caminhos interculturais entre indígenas e não-indígenas, traz para a arena pública nomes até então apagados e democratiza o acesso a um conhecimento constantemente invalidado. é um compromisso com a justiça social – tão banalizada no brasil de hoje. conclusão nós, enquanto pesquisadores, temos a delicada missão de produzir uma ciência emancipatória e também o compromisso moral de fazê-la de forma crítica. é por meio da produção científica que legitimamos discursos racializados que podem – ou não – serem usados contra nós. é preciso, portanto, lembrar-nos que eles não são inocentes, e que por trás de qualquer posicionamento há uma intenção, seja ela hegemônica ou libertadora. no que tange a produção acadêmica atual, fortemente estruturada em pilares racistas, sexistas e colonizadores, faz-se mais que necessário que nos engajemos, de maneira coletiva, para transformá-la. e é o que os povos ameríndios no brasil, na contramão de 9 normaticídio, pela perspectiva de álvaro de azevedo gonzaga, é a aplicação de normas que subtraem direitos de pessoas vulneráveis. article’s title current issues in comparative education 171 uma onda conservadora que busca destruir toda a forma de conhecimento libertador, fazem a cada dia. os povos indígenas possuem a impressionante capacidade de serem fiéis a quem são e ao que acreditam, revelando ter um traço de humanidade que nos parece perdido em meio ao caos e à autodestruição ocidental. na cosmovisão dos povos originários, valores como como a proteção à natureza, a valorização das suas histórias, de suas vivências e de suas vidas em comunidade atuam como baluarte de sua própria existência. para eles, somos todos “nós”. portanto, o respeito pela vida, pelos seus ancestrais e pela sua história devem nos servir como uma alternativa legítima de se fazer ciência. ainda que tenhamos internalizado, através de uma socialização cruel e unilateral, que certas características não servem a certos grupos de pessoas, há uma forte contracorrente que nos mostra que é possível. mulheres ocupam, cada vez mais, espaços considerados outrora masculinos. pessoas negras mostram que, hoje, não há mais lugar para o racismo. e indígenas se organizam para mostrar que existem outras formas de ver o mundo e que elas são tão válidas quanto todas as outras. eles percorreram um longo percurso para chegarem aonde estão e daqui eles não sairão mais. ana luísa melo ferreira é mestranda em ciências políticas, com foco em comunicação política e institucional, na université panthéon-sorbonne (paris 1). sua pesquisa é centrada nos ativismos de povos indígenas na américa latina, em particular na organização política de mulheres indígenas latino-americanas. melo ferreira current issues in comparative education 172 referências bibliográficas alabarce, m. c., hernández, n. m., & arce, g. m. 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(2020). interculturalidade e ensino de ciências: o cotidiano de uma sala de aula. archivos analíticos de políticas educativas= education policy analysis archives, 28(1), 165. © 2008 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 10(1/2): 41-45. revisiting transformational ngos in the context of contemporary society nelly p. stromquist university of southern california ten years ago cice invited me to comment on five articles on the subject of ngos. at that time, i stated that ngos had vital roles to fulfill, and that, despite the critique of ngos presented in the issue, a significant number of them made important contributions to their society. since then, i have completed four years of research investigating feminist institutions in latin america. this comparative study (stromquist, 2007), and constant readings on the subject of ngos, have reaffirmed and deepened that understanding. the breadth of variation among ngos has continued to increase, making it necessary to distinguish more sharply between them. my attention centers not on recreational associations (e.g., the american fuchsia society), philanthropic groups (e.g., rotary international), or relief organizations that address emergencies (care, world vision), but rather on ngos that advance democracy, social justice, and a better world in general (e.g., amnesty international, greenpeace, human rights watch, and the multitude of groups that work on gender issues and indigenous rights). i call the latter transformational ngos. my fundamental argument in this article is that transformational ngos are central to everyday local and global life, for they contribute to the ways in which individuals produce and improve civil society. now, more than a decade later, i continue to place the discussion of ngos in terms of their role within civil society. in principle, nation-states should elevate the cultural and moral levels of their people (gramsci, 1984), but they need the support of civil society to do so. the various civicoriented groups in society, through member participation and dialogue, both form and reaffirm identities that promote democratic citizenship. the informal or new formal environments provided by ngos enable the emergence of new organizational cultures with fewer traditional hierarchies (grugel, 2000); these cultures tend to challenge previous norms of clientelism and authoritarianism. ngos transcend political parties, and their agendas represent both a mode of protest as well as the proposal of alternative ways of doing and being (bibi, 1995). the spaces that ngos create constitute central mediators between the individual and the state, thus serving to link individual and social wills (grugel, 2000). in today’s hypercompetitive capitalist environment, ngos also serve as central brokers between state and market forces, raising ethical concerns sometimes forgotten in the shuffle. ngos, as key organizations within civil society, are critically needed to produce a counterweight to state policies and priorities by bringing attention to problems the state ignores or denies. transformational ngos have shown the ability to set agendas, negotiate outcomes, confer legitimacy, and implement solutions (simmons, 1998). these are steps that contribute to the production of new meanings in society—meanings that over time develop cohesive representations of values and institutions in the social imagery. their leaders represent concrete forms of organic intellectuals who perform functions of articulation and critique, promoting new forms of seeing reality and, in the process, oppositional views and solutions to “dogmatic forms of thought and action” (suárez, 2004, p. 5). ngo impact and leverage assertions that ngos lack legitimacy because they do not have formal representation and usually 42 fall 2007 / spring 2008 revisiting transformational ngos in the context of contemporary society face limited accountability miss the greater point of ngo action. by bringing issues that had been under the radar of formal politics to the fore, ngos generate public opinion about them, which makes active forces from the periphery rather than those of the center of the political arena. logically, these issues originate outside the political system, within sectors not formally “representative” of the polity. transformational ngos are very active at the local level, the first venue in the generation of democratic debate. the charge made by some observers that ngos lack accountability needs greater precision. if by accountability one means that ngos do not formally report to the national constituency, this is true. however, ngos are accountable to those that they serve; poor responses to constituency needs usually result in an ngo’s failure to survive. additionally, ngos are highly accountable to those who fund them, and the demonstration of goal attainment and financial propriety are a regular part of their contractual obligations with donor agencies, which are typically from the north. their reliance on these funds makes them vulnerable to changes in donors’ policies and priorities. the alternative to external sources of support is often dissolution of the ngo: the work of ngos is fraught with problems of sustainability since most of their funding is drawn from outside sources. often they cannot learn from their own performance because they are seldom funded to conduct self-evaluation. it must also be recognized that ngos, like many other organizations, are not exempt from internal conflict and dissent. the massive proliferation of ngos throughout the world is evidence of the growing value of their useful roles. one estimate places the number of ngos in developing countries at about one million (haque, 2002). several bilateral agencies have become willing to work more with ngos. in 1992, ngos received 13 percent of all development assistance (about $8 billion), which represented more than the entire amount transferred by the un system (simmons, 1998). another indicator of their increasing brokering with the state is that 1,500 ngos had consultative status (i.e., have gained the right to provide advice) in the un economic and social council in 1998, compared to 976 in 1991 and 41 in 1948 (simmons, 1998). in latin america, 43 percent of all aid coming into the region is from eu countries; an increasing proportion of these funds is channeled through ngos. the strategy by european ngos (which support many ngos in the south) is to work on citizenship issues as the only meaningful foundation for participation and development, seeing democratization as a conscious development strategy (grugel, 2000). this is a crucial logic: domestic ngos are sought not as mere executors but as social actors that can perform socially reconstructive functions. a major leverage of transformational ngos rests on their ability to shame governments, as exemplified by human rights watch, which has highlighted abuses by the state in unlawful imprisonment or physical torture. since the 1970s the number of human rights ngos and the scope and intensity of their activity has increased; it is estimated that there are now more than 200 ngos each in the uk and the us working on human rights, and a growing number in developing countries (held et al., 1999). the work of ngos is not always visible—the mainstream media does not report on it, and not even academic researchers investigate it. in many nations, legislative advances have occurred due to the intervention of ngos. these advances are related to communal rights to property, the way property is used, and rights to informed participation about land development options. advances in international legislation, also due to ngo intervention, make it necessary for communities holding mineral resources to grant “social license” regarding the use of their property before mining companies can come in. within the us, ngos have been important actors in the questioning current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 43 nelly p. stromquist of undemocratic decisions by legally challenging questionable decisions by governments. for instance, in 2006, in response to a letter sent by the fbi to all companies requiring all employees to sign a “national security letter” (nsl), the american civil liberties union (a long-standing ngo) succeeded in obtaining legal judgment considering the requirement unconstitutional. the case was originally filed in april 2004 and is part of a series of cases against the nsl section of the patriot act. ngo opposition to driftnet fishing in 1992 led to the us dolphin conservation act of 1994 (simmons, 1998). as was the case for the civil rights struggle in the us, many american ngos work through incremental but no less persuasive ways to erode negative practices and to promote fair legislation. women’s and feminist ngos a way to illustrate the work of ngos is by highlighting feminist ngos’ contributions to social change. most of the rights women have achieved in the past three decades can be traced to the activism of the women’s movement and established feminist ngos. the four un conferences on women, the convention to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women, roe v. wade, and title ix have all resulted from calculated ngo effort the issues for action involve both distributive policies—those providing new symbolic and material benefits to all within designated categories—as well as redistributive or structural policies—those that seek reallocation of benefits between or among class, ethnic, racial, gender, or other collectivities (barnett, 1986; stromquist, 2004). generally, the educational work of feminist ngos focuses on issues of empowerment, domestic violence, and income-generation. unfortunately, most do not touch formal education and thus fail to question it, leaving schooling as an unquestioned institution even though it plays a substantial part in the reproduction of gender ideologies. with their sensitivity to and knowledge of the private sphere (i.e., intimate and domestic gender relations), these groups have expanded the view of the political, going beyond electoral politics and the politics of public office to include the power and powerlessness that exists at the micro levels in intimate relationships and the household. it must be recognized that women’s ngos did not emerge from the erosion of confidence in the capacity of democratic institutions to intervene effectively in shaping social and economic life. rather, they emerged because the state was doing little to transform the status quo. so, it was not a response to state “erosion” but to state “blindness.” women’s groups, especially in latin america, have made major contributions to the intellectual construction of an “amplified” or “full” citizenship, which brings to center stage social rights in the widespread, politically focused conception of citizenship (sojo, 2002). through their discourse and action, they have expanded conceptions of democracy to include not only institutionalized political and civil rights but also social rights. the research i conducted on three feminist ngos (one in the dominican republic and two in perú) shows that these groups—which seek to advance the situation of women and transform gender relations—promote collective action, thus giving women a public voice as well as the knowledge and skills to engage in the public sphere. although women are fractured by differences in race, class, and sexuality, the category “women” has proven to be an adequate basis for mobilization (stromquist, 2007). these groups concentrate on adult women and their claim to material benefits and citizenship rights. they pay considerable attention to the restricted private space women experience in their everyday life and attempt to expand their rights in the household and intimate relations by demanding sexual and reproductive rights and striving to eliminate domestic violence against women. at 44 fall 2007 / spring 2008 revisiting transformational ngos in the context of contemporary society the same time, these ngos are bringing previously “private” issues into the realm of the public —for instance, women-led ngos have advocated for the incorporation of gender in all areas of decision-making, a position adopted since the fourth world women’s conference (in beijing, 1995) known as gender mainstreaming. conclusion certainly, ngos cannot solve such widespread problems as poverty and cross-national inequalities, programs that require not only knowledge and persuasion but also the ability to exercise political and economic pressure. nor should ngos be conceptualized as forms of service delivery operating in areas left unattended by state downsizing (as some international financial institutions would want). yet, their role remains crucial in contemporary society. transformational ngos address much more than identity politics; often, they can serve as precursors to new ways of imagining global society and thus global citizenship. transformational ngos are not disinterested apolitical participants, nor are they a magic bullet. but by being one or more steps removed from formal politics and structured governmental bureaucracy and by having the possibility to dialogue in unmonitored spaces, they enjoy freedom to be innovative and to pursue controversial agendas shunned by political representatives. they serve as central counterweights to the state, a purpose more precious than ever before given the frequent dominance of the executive branch within the democratic state at the expense of more judicial and representative authorities. transformational ngos expand the debate, demand to cover felt needs and problems not reflected in what are usually elite political transactions, and deepen democracy to include the voices of those from the margins. moreover, in a globalizing world increasingly characterized by competition and individualization, ngos may contribute to making the reflexivity of social actors anticipated by giddens (1991) and beck & beck-gernsheim (2002) a reality, and in so doing accomplish the realization of a transformed imaginary of citizenship. references barnett, m. (1986). the politics of scarcity: new directions for political science research on gender, race and poverty in américa. in m. barnett, c. harrington & p. white (eds.). readings on equal education, vol. 9: education policy in an era of conservative reform (pp. 213-230). new york: ams press. beck, u. & beck-gernsheim, e. (eds.). (2002). individualization: institutionalized individualism and its social and political consequences. london: sage. bibi, g. (1995). the ngo phenomenon in the arab world: an interview with ghanem bibi. middle east report 193, 26-27. giddens, a. (1991). modernity and self-identity. cambridge, u.k.: polity press. gramsci, a. (1984). la formación de los intelectuales. mexico: grijalbo. grugel, j. (2000). romancing civil society: european ngos in latin america. journal of interamerican studies and world affairs 42(2), 87-107. haque, m.s. (2002). the changing balance of power between government and ngos in bangladesh. international policy review 23(4), 411-435. held, d., grew, a., godblatt, d., & perraton, j. (1999). global transformations: politics, economics and current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 45 nelly p. stromquist culture. stanford: stanford university press. simmons, p.j.(1998). learning to live with ngos. foreign policy 112, 82-96. sojo, c. (2002). la noción de ciudadanía en el debate latinoamericano. revista de la cepal 76, 2537. stromquist, n. p. (2007). feminist organizations and social transformation in latin america. paradigm publishers. stromquist, n. p. (2004). the impact of globalization on gender and education: an emergent cross-national balance. keynote speech delivered at the kenton conference, drakensberg, south africa, september 30 october 3, 2004. suárez, d. (2004). gramsci: la tradición crítica y el estudio social de la educación. archivos analíticos de políticas educativas, 12(44): 1-32. early childhood care and education: worldwide challenges and progresses volume 11 / 2009 (rev 11/2009) issn 1523-1615 available at http://www.tc.edu/cice editorial introduction 3 early childhood care and education: worldwide challenges and progresses yoon lee and matthew hayden articles 6 early childhood care and education in zambia: an integral part of educational provision? carolyn m. thomas and matthew a.m. thomas 15 incorporating indigenous knowledge and practice into ecce: a comparison of programs in the gambia, senegal and mali alicia ranck soudée 24 the better early childhood development program: an innovative brazilian public policy alessandra schneider, vera regina ramires, maria da graça gomes paiva, and leila almeida 33 a new look on early child care and education (ecce) as joint responsibility maria da graça gomes paiva, alessandra schneider, maria lúcia salle machado, and pollyana vilela duarte perinazzo 42 about the contributors 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 11 (2008-2009) editorial board managing editor kathleen keenan senior editors stephanie bengtsson tricia a. callender matthew hayden antonia mandry michelle morais de sa’e silva hakim williams associate editors maria jose bermeo lauren connolly dina paulson gretchen wietmarschen web and publications editor andrew shiotani international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, ingrid gogolin, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www.tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2009 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 11: 6-14. early childhood care and education in zambia: an integral part of educational provision? carolyn m. thomas millersville university matthew a. m. thomas teachers college, columbia university the field of international development has recently been consumed by a shift in contemporary educational discourse, one that moves early childhood care and education (ecce) closer to the forefront of what is considered progressive policy formation. in zambia, the current educational environment seems to indicate that the creation and continued development of ecce programming may be premature and potentially damaging to an already tenuous primary school education system. this article aims to interrogate the call for ecce programs in zambia, using evidence from the existing situation in primary schools in the country as the basis, drawing on qualitative interviews conducted with 48 primary school teachers and headmasters. the authors, considering the implications of the current educational situation, question the unrestrained promotion of ecce in zambia, which has the potential to siphon funds from glaring needs already in existence within the educational system. the field of international development has recently been consumed by a shift in contemporary educational discourse, one that moves early childhood care and education (ecce) closer to the forefront of what is considered progressive policy formation. international aid agencies, such as the world bank, who, unesco, unicef, dfid and others (freeman & dooho, 2003), have promoted the creation and expansion of ecce programs in developing nations, often relying on research from northern nations as a means to form an “objective” theoretical foundation (penn, 2004) in support of its advancement. many developing nations, including zambia, have been caught in this storm of educational policy reform and have, consequently, demonstrated a new commitment to educational provision for pre-primary students. while ecce is ultimately a beneficial component of a child’s educational experience (aidoo, 2006), a myriad of educational and contextual factors must be considered before governments leap into sweeping national educational reform. in the case of zambia, the current educational environment seems to indicate that the creation and continued development of ecce programming may be premature and potentially damaging to an already tenuous education system. this article aims to interrogate the call for ecce programs in zambia, using evidence from the existing situation in primary schools across the country as the basis. the first section contains pertinent background information regarding zambia’s educational history and policies. the second section draws on qualitative interviews conducted with 48 primary (grades 1-7) and basic (grades 1-9) school teachers and headmasters from both rural and urban areas. publicly-funded ecce is a relatively new concept in zambia and it is, therefore, necessary to understand the primary schooling situation, as primary schooling has been free in zambia since 2002 (global campaign for education, 2004; sampa, 2005) and is much more established than ecce in general. the last section considers the implications of the current educational situation, as well as questions the unrestrained promotion of ecce in zambia. current issues in comparative education 7 early childhood care and education in zambia ecce background and policies zambia is a democratic republic located in sub-saharan africa, having gained its independence in 1964 from great britain following forty years of direct rule by the british (küster, 1999). immediately after independence, the state government acquired almost total control of the educational system and quickly expanded it; the university of zambia was opened in 1966 and during the next ten years, five new primary teacher-training colleges were opened (carmody, 2004; manchishi, 2004). the challenge faced by this newly independent government was to address the needs of children, as well as development demands of the whole country with very limited financial resources (pence, 2004). government leaders acknowledged the importance of educating the nation’s children and in 1990, zambia was a participant in the world conference on education for all held in thailand and agreed to take the necessary steps to universalize primary education and reduce illiteracy before the end of the decade (lungwangwa et al., 1999). additionally, zambia was among 190 countries that adopted the millennium development goals and committed to meeting the goal of achieving universal primary education by the year 2015 (united nations, 2005). these two events provide an international backdrop for the exploration of early childhood care and education in zambia and its potential impact on the quality of life for young children in the country. early childhood education is, in theory, of great importance to the nation’s ministry of education (moe). currently, under the moe, educational provision is guided by the national education policy document, educating our future, which focuses on equitable access to quality education at all levels (moe, 1996). the fifth national development plan 2006-2010, a policy paper outlining educational provision by the moe, defines early childhood care, development and education as the level of education, both informal and formal, which a child from birth to age six undergoes prior to reaching the compulsory age (seven years) of entry to a primary or basic school (moe, 2006). this policy paper outlines critical strategies to develop a national early childhood care, development and education curriculum framework and to produce and distribute teaching materials for early learners. additionally, it states the need to develop monitoring and evaluation instruments for this level of education. regarding the development of ecce, it further notes major challenges in this sub-sector in past years: fragmented curriculum; lack of standards, monitoring and supervision; and the confinement of ecce to pre-schooling instead of offering a more comprehensive learning experience (kamerman, 2006). the moe states in its strategic plan 2003-2007 that early childhood care and education is an integral part of basic education, especially in the rural areas. pre-schools are operated by local authorities, local communities, ngos and private individuals (unesco, 2006). however, because education at this level is in the hands of private providers, financing of early childhood care and education has remained unclear. home-based pre-schools in urban areas have mushroomed, albeit at the expense of quality education. it has been documented that much of the curricula of private pre-schools are outdated and inadequate for this age group and the home environments are not conducive to learning (unesco, 2006). in a paper presented by dr. sichalwe kasanda, permanent secretary of the ministry of education, at the early childhood care and development policy dialog meeting in lusaka in 2006, the urgent need for a coherent policy in this area was outlined. issues such as policy formulation, program implementation and sustainability were examined and the participants concluded that unless these issues are acted upon, it is unlikely that early childhood care and education policy will make a difference in the life of young zambian children (kasanda, 2006). dr. kasanda (2006) notes that the philosophical framework for increased early childhood care has already been laid 8 current issues in comparative education c. thomas and m. thomas in the 1996 national policy on education and supplemented by the educational sector advisory group’s proposed vision developed in 2005, which provides for an innovative life long education for all learners. according to ministry officials, the broad philosophical goals are clear and encompass education that is linked from one level to another, from early childhood care through basic school and high school to university. dr. kasanda continues: …every learner should have access to early childhood care, education and development facilities by 2012 or there should at least be one caregiver to ten early learners by 2020. the targets set based on the available data would have to be prioritized and costed and a clear plan reflecting all programme elements put in place. under normal conditions, this second level of policy formulation indicators would be judged as more credible than mere expressions of intent or aspirations. (kasanda, 2006, p. 2) the presentation states that exploration of this program needs to continue if a difference is going to occur in the lives of young children in zambia. “it will have to be first and foremost, absorbed in the general education development policy framework and made part of a coherent, systematic, comprehensive and proactive development reality of zambia” (kasanda, 2006, p. 4). indeed, coordination and collaboration across all levels and ministries in the government is essential for a strong and cohesive ecce policy (aidoo, 2006; unicef, 2008). while the early childhood care and education program may have an important role to fulfill in the fabric of zambian educational policy, it should not become an integral part of the education policy of zambia until primary and basic schools in the nation develop and sustain an adequate learner-friendly environment. zambia is committed to education for all, an initiative to provide primary education for all school-aged children in the country and to reduce illiteracy before the end of the decade. there are currently overwhelming obstacles hindering the provision of primary school education and these issues must be adequately addressed prior to new programming being developed which has the potential to siphon funds from glaring needs already in existence within the educational system. the premise of this article supports the obligation of the zambian moe to grant an unwavering commitment to educational provision at the primary and basic school level, acknowledging that government financial support is essential to further the program of educational reform. government funding, even at a minimal level, is imperative to adequately support an ecce program; however, since there are continuing severe shortages of funds for primary schools, it seems implausible to effectively promote an ecce policy within the country at this time. a concerted effort by the moe to effectively resolve the current concerns of teachers and administrators who are working in the educational field should occur prior to beginning new programs, which might also be inadequately funded. a closer examination of current, existing needs within the basic schools in southern zambia underscores the urgency of increased governmental support at this level before engaging in funding additional educational programs. existing conditions many challenges inhibiting delivery of educational provision to primary school children are apparent in conversations with teachers and administrators who are currently teaching within the governmental school system. in 2006 and 2008, interviews were conducted with teachers in southern zambia and certain themes kept recurring, indicating common concerns about the current educational system. because these interviews occurred at the end of a six-week teacher current issues in comparative education 9 early childhood care and education in zambia training module, the headmasters and teachers were already well acquainted with the interviewer and were perhaps more honest in their responses because of this familiarity (hesse-biber & leavy, 2006). repeatedly, respondents pointed to a set of challenges currently influencing educational quality and provision including, but not limited to, the following: lack of instructional materials, textbooks, and teacher manuals; over-enrolment of students; and a severe teacher shortage. in response to an interview question regarding the major challenges facing teachers in zambia, the most frequent response offered concerned the lack of vital instructional and learning materials: the major challenges for teachers these days…we lack materials to be used. you find that you have a class of maybe fifty pupils against ten pupils’ books. and at times you don’t even have materials to use. maybe you want to do charts, but no crayons, no paper. everything you have to dip into your pocket, even with your meager income that you receive at the end of the month. (teacher b2, personal communication, august 2, 2006) another grade 9 teacher reiterated the same point: lack of materials and infrastructure. currently, like at this school, we don’t have enough classrooms. we need classrooms. that’s why you’ll find some students come at different times because we don’t have enough rooms. we need more rooms. we don’t have enough books. teachers have to share books and we don’t have modern equipment for teaching like overhead projectors. we don’t have any overhead projector here. (teacher c1, personal communication, august 4, 2006) lack of a sufficient number of textbooks is a recurring problem in most, if not all, primary and basic schools in southern zambia. due to this lack of materials, one teacher struggled with the problem of engaging all students in the lesson: coming to the issue of lacking textbooks and so on materials, that discourages us more as teachers because if the class is overcrowded and there are less textbooks, you cannot attend to each and every pupil to say, because you can attend to two or three more, but what about those pupils who sit at the back? they also need to benefit. (teacher d4, personal communication, july 16, 2008) indeed, if primary teachers are not able to plan lessons utilizing textbooks, it seems likely that ecce programs will suffer from the same issues, possibly to a greater extent, as precious financial and material resources will be spread even thinner. the lack of materials is not solely an issue for students. an insufficient number of teacher manuals is problematic for teachers, as well. preparation for classes becomes a major task for most teachers, especially in the most rural areas where means of gathering information and conducting research are difficult at best, impossible at worst. one deputy head teacher noted the challenge for teachers to provide quality instruction sans teacher manuals: you’ll find that when a teacher’s handbook is offered you find maybe one handbook has to be shared between three teachers. and who takes it home to go and prepare? so they have to leave it at school. and how do they prepare at home? so that becomes a problem, really. you have to make a time table to say, 10 current issues in comparative education c. thomas and m. thomas ‘no, you take it this day and i will take it the next.’ and so preparation becomes a bit difficult. but i would like a situation where a teacher has a handbook he can use. a teacher has all the other teaching resources that he or she can use. that way then their preparation would come very easy. (deputy head c, personal communication, august 4, 2006) while it is claimed that ecce has the potential to provide positive cognitive outcomes (unicef, 2008; unesco, 2006), it seems difficult to imagine that quality instruction and, therefore, cognitively challenging instruction, will occur in these dire educational environments. over-enrollment compounds the problems of inadequate materials and infrastructure. class sizes continue to be large and teachers must frequently manage forty to fifty-five students in a class (unesco, 2006). an environmental science teacher for eight years commented “grade 9 we have 65; grade 8 we have 70” (teacher b3, personal communication, august 2, 2006). a deputy head with 19 years of teaching experience commented “the major challenges, as i said, we are a developing country. here, if you happen to go in a classroom, you’ll find 50, 60. how does one teacher control all these?” (deputy head d, personal communication, august 3, 2006). a headmaster with 26 years of combined teaching and administrative experience commented: over-enrollment…the children are too many, there are too few schools and at the same time, the teachers are too few. so there is so much work for those that are in service at any given moment. i’ve never had a class that is less than forty-five. it’s forty-five and above. and you can imagine if someone is teaching composition in any language and you have to mark those books almost on a daily basis. pupils must see results every other day. it means the teacher will be so busy throughout. (headmaster c, personal communication, august 4, 2006) additionally, a teacher at an urban school stated: in such a case, you’ll just try to at least to reach to each and every child, though it won’t be possible. you’ll find that you have 70 children in a class, so you just try, you just try your best for at least maybe three-fourth of the class to reach the level where you want them to be. like on books, where books are not enough, as an expert teacher, you just need to be creative. instead of depending on the book, maybe you just draw something on the charts because the books won’t be enough to give each and every child, so i just draw something on the chart for everyone to understand what you wanted them to see from that particular book. (teacher d5, personal communication, july 16, 2008) given the severity of over-crowding in zambian schools, it seems unreasonable that international aid agencies highlight the benefits of ecce, since they often utilize studies conducted in countries with pupil/teacher ratios between 4:1 and 10:1 as their basis (penn, 2004). related to the problems of over-enrollment and large class size is the number of teachers who are employed by the government. the moe is the sole employer for all teachers in public schools and several times a year a list of new teachers’ postings is released, which states where a particular teacher has been posted, or assigned, for at least a two-year period. location requests cannot be submitted and new teachers must sometimes travel long distances to their stated posting location. current issues in comparative education 11 early childhood care and education in zambia one recurring theme in the interviews was the extended length of time for graduates of teacher training colleges to become posted by the moe. teachers usually wait two or three years until they are posted because there are insufficient funds in the education budget to hire the necessary number of teachers each year. despite these known restrictions, students still attend teacher training colleges and desire to become teachers; there is no shortage of educators who are waiting to be posted. one deputy head commented on this situation: when i was completing my training i got employed before my results were out. so by the time my results were out…by the time i got my diploma…i was already employed and teaching. but of late, the system has changed…two years, three years. some have waited for three years. (deputy head a, personal communication, august 1, 2006) one headmaster with 34 years of teaching experience has not seen a change in posting time: it’s getting worse and definitely impacting negatively on the teacher that comes because by the time he has come out to actually start work he has been off the line of teaching for three or four years… all the methods are forgotten. he’s just as good as somebody that would have come from the street. that’s how i look at it myself. when they’re in college, they have a chance to maybe plan lessons for a short time, then they go away for a period of four years without ever writing a lesson plan. when they come back even the books that they were learning to use are no longer the ones that they use…these new books…so this teacher just comes as a new person. that’s why they are finding it difficult to teach and they are finding it difficult to teach. (headmaster d, personal communication, august 3, 2006) one grade 6 teacher commented, “i completed in 2002 and i started in 2005.” (teacher d1, personal communication, august 3, 2006). teachers are, by necessity, waiting two or three years for their postings to basic schools. the vast majority of teachers and headmasters interviewed agreed that postings have been very slow during the 2000-2008 years. in spite of the desperate need for teachers to reduce student to teacher ratios in both rural and urban schools, a solution seems unattainable without the unwavering commitment of the moe. teacher and administrator interview responses reveal grave concerns for the educational future of primary-aged children in the nation and provide a platform to inform national leaders of the urgency for renewed interest in educational provision. although a key objective of the moe is attainment of the millennium development goals by 2015, governmental leaders must chart and sustain a workable plan if they are to achieve primary education for all in zambia. when asked if they thought government leaders were effectively pursuing this millennium goal, headmasters and teachers responded with obvious concern. a science teacher remarked “teaching is a good career. i’ve seen children who didn’t know, now they know….gives me joy. and i’d wish the government invests more in them” (teacher e2, personal communication, july 31, 2006). a very poignant comment was made by a headmaster who responded to a question about whether the government is making an effort to better the present educational situation. i feel if they are putting effort, it’s not enough, it’s not enough. honestly, it’s not enough. they could do better, they could do better. they could definitely do better than that because i feel that we really need to sit down and look at our 12 current issues in comparative education c. thomas and m. thomas priorities. it will get better, it will get better, but it will take some time and a lot of effort and it requires a lot of sacrifice from every one of us. (headmaster d, personal communication, august 3, 2006) this headmaster seems to raise the question, “how should zambia invest its time, effort, and money?” implications the premise of this article supports the concept of education for all, including ecce. however, funding of and support for established educational programs have been woefully inadequate, as evidenced by the interviews of people who are extremely familiar with the difficulties in government schools. how can new programs be successfully developed and sustained when a current crisis in the primary and basic schools exists? much of the research used to support the promotion of ecce has been grounded in studies from the united states, a drastically different educational environment, where significantly higher levels of resources and support exist (penn, 2004). even recent research from south africa suggesting that merely one year of ecce schooling can provide high returns for low investments (dfid, 2005) should be carefully evaluated, as south africa is one of the wealthiest and most developed nations in africa. the economic and cognitive returns of ecce presume that the level of instruction is of high-quality, a rather large assumption to make for a nation like zambia, where schools are over-crowded, under-funded, and understaffed. educators within the zambian educational context, some of whom are associated with the university of zambia, have been calling for educational reform for several years (hanyona, 2005; kelly, 2000; komakoma, 2003; seshamani, 2001). these educators have the potential to provide particularly relevant recommendations, since they are intimately associated with the educational system in zambia. additionally, they have called for a genuine commitment to primary and basic school education on the part of the government that goes beyond a mere expression of words. these educators, as well as administrators and teachers in southern zambia, are appealing for a more intentional pledge by governmental leaders to enhance primary education. the authors of this article join in the plea for increased moe determination to provide a meaningful education for all primary and basic school-aged children comprising a much smaller student to teacher ratios, an increased number of teachers, an adequate number of desks, chairs and textbooks per classroom and available essential resources such as maps, charts, markers, poster paper and pencils. providing for these existing needs is imperative before embarking on creating a national program for ecce. a recent symposium held in livingstone, zambia, outlined expectations for increased investment in ecce by national governments (unicef, 2008). additionally, the efa 2007 report lists several initiatives that would need to be instituted in order to launch a successful ecce program, many of which would require government funds (unesco, 2006). clearly, the establishment of an ecce program would necessitate financial support from the moe, funding which is desperately needed in the primary school sub-sector of education. while ecce is fundamentally a positive, research-based, educational agenda, this article highlights a circumstance where intentional aid agencies and the moe have encouraged its implementation without adequately assessing zambia’s educational situation or considering the financial and pragmatic implications of its promotion. is zambia embracing the early childhood education reform movement before accurately evaluating the current educational provision to which current issues in comparative education 13 early childhood care and education in zambia it is already committed? the authors of this article urge the educational leaders of zambia to thoughtfully assess their commitment to primary and basic school education before adding more financial stress to an already strained educational budget. the educational accomplishments of the children of zambia are at stake and their education is of paramount importance to the ongoing development of the nation. references aidoo, a. a. (2006). ensuring a supportive policy environment. paper presented at the third african international conference on early childhood development. libreville, gabon: association for the development of education in africa. carmody, b. p. (2004). the evolution of education in zambia. lusaka, zambia: bookworld publishers. department for international development (2005). from commitment to action: education. hm treasury: department for international development (dfid). freeman, t. & dohoo, s. (2003). local solutions to global challenges: towards effective partnership in basic education. final report, joint evaluation of external support to basic education, ministry of foreign affairs. global campaign for education. (2004). undervaluing teachers: imf policies squeeze zambia’s education system. oxford: global campaign for education. hanyona, s. (2005, 15 january). teacher crisis blamed for poor results. news from africa. hesse-biber, s. n., & leavy, p. (2006). the practice of qualitative research. thousand oaks: sage publications. kamerman, s. b. (2006). a global history of early childhood education and care. paper commissioned for the efa global monitoring report 2007, strong foundations: early childhood care and education. unesco: paris. kasanda, s. (2006). early childhood care and development policy for zambia: how will it change the quality of life for the zambian child? paper presented at the ecced dialog meeting. lusaka: mulumbo early childhood care and development foundation. retrieved november 9, 2008, from http://www.mulumbo.net.zm/documents/dr%20kasanda%20paper.pdf. kelly, m. j. (2000). what hiv/aids can do to education, and what education can do to hiv/ aids. retrieved october 9, 2005, from http://www.sedos.org/english/kelly_1.htm. komakoma, j. (ed.). (2003). the social teaching of the catholic bishops and other christian leaders in zambia: major pastoral letters and statements, 1953-2001. ndola, zambia: mission press. küster, s. (1999). african education in colonial zimbabwe, zambia and malawi: government control, settler antagonism and african agency, 1890-1964. hamburg, germany; new brunswick: lit; distributed in north america by transaction publishers. lungwangwa, g., silanda, e., mwansa, d., kamwengo, m. m., mwape, g., & mukuka, l. (1999). 14 current issues in comparative education c. thomas and m. thomas education for all 2000 assessment (september, 1999). lusaka, zambia: zambian ministry of education. manchishi, p. c. (2004). the growth of teacher education in zambia since independence. the african symposium, 4(4), 2-22. ministry of education. (1996). educating our future: national policy on education. lusaka: zambia educational publishing house. ministry of education. (2006). fifth national development plan 2006-2010. zambia: poverty reduction strategy paper. retrieved november 13, 2008, from http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/ scr/2007/cr07276.pdf. pence, a. (2004). early childhood development virtual university. early childhood and family policy series no.9. paris: unecso penn, h. (2004). childcare and early childhood development programmes and policies: their relationship to eradicating child poverty. childhood poverty research and policy centre, chip report no. 8. retrieved november 14, 2008 from http://www.research4development.info/pdf/outputs/ childhoodpoverty/chiprep8.pdf sampa, f. k. (2005). zambia’s primary reading program (prp): improving access and quality education in basic schools (vol. 4). paris, france: association for the development of education in africa (adea). seshamani, v. (2001). cost sharing in primary education in zambia: a budgetary analysis. in “will the poor go to school?” cost sharing in education in zambia (pp. 11-19). lusaka: oxfam-zambia and the jesuit centre of theological reflection. unesco. (2006). zambia: early childhood care and education (ecce) programmes. efa global monitoring report 2007. geneva: international bureau of education. unicef. (2008). zambia: early childhood development in focus. press centre. retrieved november 11, 2008 from http://www.unicef.org/media_45248.html?q=printme. united nations. (2005). the millennium development goals report 2005. new york: united nations. note: editorial correction (11/2009) we correct an earlier version of this issue of current issues in comparative education, which had indicated an affiliation between matthew a.m. thomas (co-author of the article, “early childhood care and education in zambia”) and the education development center. this version corrects this affiliation. the article does not represent the views of the education development center. copyright © 2009 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 77 nurturing partnership: a southern african continuum of flexible stages in partnership development bonnie b. mullinix1 monmouth university introduction partnership is becoming an ever more present component of educational reform. as a term with a substantial cross-disciplinary history, it represents a significant step beyond cooperation and collaboration. still, we have a tendency to use the term loosely, to avoid defining it, or to define it to mean whatever suits our immediate needs. yet when clearly understood and ethically employed in each of its various developmental forms and stages, it is a powerful tool with great potential. partnership strategies are being increasingly imbedded in the practice of international, bilateral and multilateral agencies. hence, the question that arises is how can a clearer understanding of the partnership development process assist us to support and nurture such partnerships? this paper shares lessons learned over years of working to create effective partnerships for development. it focuses on the relationship between international nongovernmental organizations (ngos) and local ngos. it consolidates these lessons in the form of a model represented as a continuum of partnership relationships. the model of partnership development shared emerges from five years of experience grounded in the southern african context and based on world education's practical experience working in a variety of partnership arrangements with over 120 ngos in various parts of africa. following the relationships across a phased continuum from pre-partnership through emergent partnership to full partnership, clear differentiable indicators were identified for each of nine proposed dimensions of the relationship (focus of interaction, activities/ projects/ programs, time and orientation, benefit, trust and respect, organizational structures, organizational strategies and information access, locus of influence, and written agreements or contracts). in tracing the origins of this model, the paper reflects on the importance of fostering partnership as a tool for promoting meaningful development and education policy and increased understanding on local, national and international levels. the paper concludes by sharing composite case constructs of partnerships that illustrate the interplay between the dimensions and phases of the partnership continuum model and the realities of ngo needs. partnership--a transdisciplinary concept whether in the arena of international development, educational reform and development or grassroots community development, it is generally accepted that longterm impact and successful reform require the coordinated efforts of many people. as a concept common to many disciplines, partnership holds the promise of emerging as a cross-disciplinary theme of distinction. education, social services, medicine and business, the public and private sectors are all contributing to the dialogue regarding the importance of partnership for achieving goals and expanding impact (stevens, 1999; day, 1998; goodlad , 1994; osguthorpe et al. 1995; eisler, 1990; caplan, 1976; mcknight, 1994; poole, 1995). poole (1995) defines partnership as: bonnie b. mullinix 78 may 1, 2001 an association between two or more persons, groups, or organizations who join together to achieve a common goal that neither one alone can accomplish. this association is characterized by joint membership rights, by democratic participation, and by shared responsibility. each member agrees to contribute resources to the partnership with the understanding that the possession or enjoyment of the benefits will be shared by all. partners work hard to strengthen each other and to endure conflict and change, because they recognize that their shared goal extends beyond the reach of any one member. (p.2) this definition goes far beyond the standard legal and economic definitions associated with business partnerships (winicur, 1993). it begins to venture into what organizational theorists define as social partnerships; waddock (1991) identifies social partnerships as an increasingly popular form of collaborative action in which organizations from multiple sectors interact to achieve common goals. as such, she views them as specialized versions of what various scholars have termed collective strategies (astley, 1984), problem-solving networks (austrom & lad, 1986), or action sets (aldrich & whetten, 1981; whetten, 1987). in its broadest use, there seems to be an agreement across disciplines as to the core definition and purpose of partnership. while various disciplines seem to explore the details of this concept in different ways, there are many examples of how partnership is seen as a viable structural mechanism for increasing the sustainability and impact of development and reform efforts. working from a counseling and family/community support perspective, caplan (1976) used the concept of partnership to shift operational paradigms from paternalism to empowerment, and from individual to family/community centered interventions. saleebey (1992) in social work and mcknight (1994) in health helped colleagues to recognize the benefits of focusing on strength and capacity rather than deficiency and weakness as well as the problem-solving capacities latent in communities and partnership approaches. whether nation-wide, systemic or school-based, the challenges of education reform are so large and complex that the importance of partnership strategies are increasingly acknowledged (lauglo, 2001; cloete et al, 1999; national commission for excellence in education, 1983). within education, the past decade has witnessed growing numbers of classroom teachers and teacher educators organizing school-university partnerships intended to promote professional development, improve the preparation of teachers and increase children's learning (goodlad 1994; osguthorpe et al., 1995). although these new learning communities promise to contribute to educational reform, personal growth and professional development (birrell et al., 1995, 1998), few u.s. studies have provided clear, conceptual models for initiating and sustaining collaborative change within such partnerships. indeed, the challenges encountered often overshadow steps made towards true reform, while complications associated with merging divergent organizational cultures and traditions form seemingly insurmountable barriers (day, 1998). there is at least one source of critical reflection on the challenges of school-university partnerships within the united states that begins to outline indicators and inform understanding of effective partnerships. in centers of pedagogy: new structures for educational renewal, patterson, machelli and pacheco (1999) identify six key elements of effective collaboration (or partnership): mutual trust, honest communication, common nurturing partnership: a southern african continuum of flexible stages in partnership development current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 79 goals, flexible governance, positive tensions and a culture of inquiry. the authors also identify structural characteristics that support partnership: projects, new roles, realistic expectations and perspectives; significant and equivalent reward structures; and opportunities for sharing and discussion. the majority of these elements are reflected in the model of partnership presented herein. of the remaining perspectives, riane eisler (1990) provides a particularly interesting sociological interpretation. she clearly differentiates between partnership and dominator cultures, injecting a critical culture and gender analysis previously absent from the discussion of partnership. in the chalice and the blade (1990), eisler makes a clear distinction between two cultural models: the partnership culture, which she symbolizes with a chalice, and the dominator culture, which she symbolizes with the blade. in a partnership culture, cooperation is based on trust, diversity is celebrated, and all people and groups are valued. differences are resolved peacefully and no single individual or group controls another. women and men are equal partners and nurturance and caring are honored. in a dominator culture, cooperation is enforced by fear, differences are crushed, and conflicts are resolved through conquest. select people are considered to be natural superiors and the stereotypical view equating masculinity with aggression is accepted (eisler & loye, 1990). the spirit behind the partnership culture described above is particularly helpful in understanding the approach world education that was used in namibia and the context from which the model emerges. to overcome an historical legacy of dominator cultures, partnership was the most appropriate approach for educational reform. the context and origins of the partnership continuum in 1994, world education began providing a range of capacity building services to enable namibian nongovernmental organizations (ngos) to better address the needs of a population historically disadvantaged by colonialism, apartheid structures and years of struggle for independence. titled " reaching out with education to adults in development " (read), this five year project represented a substantial investment on the part of the united states agency for international development (usaid) in the ngo community in namibia. world education's operational approach emphasized participatory, nonformal adult education and training programs that seemed well suited to namibia's current transition and challenges. by helping to develop skills and systems through training, study tours, and technical assistance and by providing financial support through grants, world education was able to slowly build trusting relationships and help ngos grow. central to determining the most effective mix of services was the development of explicit partnerships between world education and the ngos. this strategy was not new to world education, which has made the support of networking and the exchange of southern expertise among ngos (in the region and on the continent) a hallmark of its practice. the experience in namibia served as a practical and collaborative base to deepen and clarify the understanding of partnership and how to nurture it. world education had over five years to explore these multiple definitions of partnership with their namibian ngo colleagues. the read project had inherent limitations; it was a usaid funded project, focused on grant distribution and capacity building for ngos and slated to end bonnie b. mullinix 80 may 1, 2001 in december 1998. as such, it was automatically directed towards certain types of relationships and confined time-bound partnerships. it had to work with organizations that understood and accepted this reality and struggle with the inherent displaced equality that comes from donor relationships. thus it became necessary to explicitly work towards replacing the concept of monetary value (funding) with a broader concept of value (resource contributions) that each partner could provide (maude, 1998). over the five year project period, read worked directly through various stages of partnership with over 100 organizations. the concept of a partnership continuum provided the project staff with a framework that offered a variety of models for partnering with namibian ngos and a way to move beyond initial project constraints. these models allowed read to partner with local ngos based on their needs at a particular stage and time in their organizational development. the partnership continuum prepartnership partnership partnership getting to know each other working to achieve mutually valued objectives developing and implementing programs together most organizations that work towards effective and sustainable development realize the advantages and necessity of coordinating efforts and resources in order to attain their goals and will often work to strategically maximize the use of resources and expertise from local and international organizations. in the early years of the project, read staff realized that they were experiencing a strategic movement along a partnership continuum. paced according to organizational needs and local realities, this movement resulted in the development of strong and effective partnerships. on reflection, it became clear that the partnerships which we were developing represented not only important development interventions but also, on occasion, the first steps towards developing a more broad-based and integrated relationship with selected partners. thus, the optimal relationship in any partnership process is one that encourages ngos to maintain a relationship with the partner organization that best suits their needs at a particular stage and time in their organizational development. the emphasis and value is not on the outcome, but rather on the ability to utilize this model in order to maximize the benefits to the collaborating organizations, and have an impact on their development goals. with this concept of a continuum in place, we began to identify critical indicators that would help us to determine which type of partnership we were undertaking. recognizing that the majority of organizations concluded their relationship at the partner level, we strove to clarify the levels of relationship and allow the ngos a clear choice of how and when to proceed from pre-partnership to partnership or beyond to partnership. this exploration allowed us to identify nine dimensions of partnership relations that varied across this three-phased continuum. they included: (1) focus of interactionthe primary purpose behind the partnership; (2) activities/ projects/ programs the work undertaken during the course of the partnership; nurturing partnership: a southern african continuum of flexible stages in partnership development current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 81 (3) time and orientation -the length of time and orientation of the association; (4) benefit the benefits accrued to partners; (5) trust and respect-the development, extent and locus of trust and respect between partner organizations; (6) organizational structures the degree to which organizational structures are autonomous or integrated; (7) organizational strategies and information access the degree to which partners coordinate their organizations strategies and share information; (8) locus of influencehow organizations utilize and conceptualize their locus of influence to promote individual or partner-based interests; (9) written agreements or contracts-the existence and/or focus of written agreements between partners. these dimensions map clearly across the partnership continuum and form a fluid matrix that can be used to guide ngos through creating mutually supportive partnerships. all partnerships exist within a context, and the namibian ngo community was no exception. with over 23 years of active armed struggle and, decades of resistance or forced submission to oppressive and racist structures imposed by colonial or minority powers, a natural and deep seated suspicion and resentment of outside intervention exists within the intended target population (ngos and local communities alike). since independence, many ngos have struggled for transition from their origins as resistance organizations to emerging development organizations, while maintaining their integrity and ethics and remaining true to their historical roots. for many, the association with nations, organizations, and money that had not previously supported their struggle was not appropriate. as the united states and usaid fell directly into this category, the read project represented a challenging situation that required that world education prove itself as open, flexible, understanding, supportive, and trustworthy before it could expect to be accepted into the ngo community. this was a major hurdle to be overcome the first year. the project was launched in 1993. the first year was devoted to developing relationships with the ngo community, understanding their particular needs, and providing initial support in the form of small grants and short-term training workshops. in year two, these relationships expanded and a new stream of activities specifically tailored to hiv/aids concerns was added along with longer-term training series and grant procedures. in year three world education, recognizing increased characteristics of sustainability and growth among ngos who participated in multiple project offerings, decided to focus 80 percent of its support and capacity-building efforts on a smaller group of partner ngos. to formalize these relationships, world education created a process that involved conducting a joint institutional assessment ("jia") with the ngo and the development of partnership agreements that outlined organizational bonnie b. mullinix 82 may 1, 2001 objectives and a balanced mix of support services for a specified period of time. ngos selected from three types of support: grants, training, and technical assistance (mullinix, 1998). many partnership agreements included grants to carry out the mission and service delivery activities of the organizations. while subgrants and financial support had previously been available from read, they had been tied to discrete deliverables identified in approved proposals with strict budgetary and line item contstraints. the flexible nature of the grant component developed through this partnership process allowed ngos to monitor, actively reflect on and respond better and more efficiently to the needs of their clientele. almost all partner ngos chose to have staff participate in the well-established training of trainers (tot) workshop series. designed collaboratively by experienced namibian ngo and world education trainers, this 10-month experiential and contextuallygrounded training effectively prepared participating trainers to design, analyze, implement, and document quality participatory training tailored to the ngo's clients' needs (mullinix, aipinge, et al, 1998). for ngos with specific management or content consultation needs, on-site or off-site technical assistance support was designed into the agreement. read project staff might assist with financial training or analysis, strategic planning or board training. where it was necessary to find specialized expertise elsewhere, world education drew on its broader partnership network and tapped expertise from related southern organizations, demonstrating its trademark commitment to south-south exchange (mullinix & long, 1997). despite the donor's decision to cut over a quarter of the project's operating budget during this final phase, the fourth and fifth years of the project managed to maintain this successful strategic approach, enabling the partners to explore joint ventures and activities. the focus on institutionalizing services and identifying exit strategies for the project and ngos enabled read to ensure that many of its services in greatest demand would be woven into the fabric of the namibian ngo community. one example of this was world education's support of the development of a cadre of master trainers and ngo partners who would continue to offer the tot workshop series and other participatory training and nonformal education courses in namibia (mullinix, 1999; kalunduka, 1999; garb, 2000; kondombolo, 2001). this and other explorations into fuller and more reciprocal partnerships arrangements helped to ensure that the project's impact would continue beyond world education's presence. nurturing partnership: a southern african continuum of flexible stages in partnership development current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 83 partnership development continuum dimensions pre-partnership partnership partnership focus of interaction getting to know each other working to achieve mutually valued objectives developing and implementing programs together activities/ projects/ programs limited specifically defined relationships which allow organizations to become acquainted with each other opportunistic organizations work together because it is convenient and appropriate (a good match) integral organizations develop joint programs or activities that grow directly out of common skills and interests time and orientation short-term, nonspecific specified/longer-term, objective/activity oriented open-ended goal/mission oriented benefit increased networking organizations develop relationships and skills increased capacity organizations are able to do more and/or access more resources than they could alone. increased status organizations are able to become more than what they would be alone . trust and respect building trust and earning respect trust and respect exist among a limited number of key staff members mutual trust and respect throughout partner organizations organizational structures completely autonomous separate but coordinated appropriately integrated (e.g. exchange of staff/board) organizational strategies and information access separate strategies public information shared separate but coordinated development and pursuit of strategies proprietary information exchanged proprietary information and strategies developed and marketed together locus of influence separate shared or differentiated according to expertise and capacity integrated, with acknowledgment of expertise and capacity written agreements or contracts none written agreements or contracts focusing on the specific roles of each organization in the implementation of a given project/activity written agreements or contracts highlighting broad areas of mutual interest and commitment to work together. bonnie b. mullinix 84 may 1, 2001 model developed through collaborative consultation between bonnie mullinix, leslie long and martin tjituka with input from other local ngo staff, african ngos and world education staff. reflections on partnership as the previous exploration confirms, the word " partnership " conveys has different meanings to different people. for many, it implies equality of resources financial, human, and network. where it is perceived that equality does not exist, the question remains as to whether there can be a true partnership. to many, there is a notion of commitment over time. when organizations enter into a partnership, the expectations are that the partnership will exist for a number of years with a commitment of support through difficult times. the challenge of understanding and nurturing the development of partnerships over time is central to the current discussion. as the read project wound down, world education continued to reflect on project experience in building capacity and relationships with local organizations through partnership. while many insights emerged, two were identified as particularly critical to project success: project responsiveness and a critical and deep understanding of the possible forms of partnership. project approach and responsiveness ngos in namibia --as in many parts of the world--are mission-driven but resource poor. they have limited financial resources, small staffs, and they aspire to meet urgent and pressing needs. setting aside time to systematically take stock of their organizations and to comprehensively identify organizational needs can be seen at times as burdensome or undoable. further, the process of critically examining one's own organization and sharing the information with another organization can be a threatening prospect. to respond to these realities and concerns, read offered a variety of options for entry activities that would begin to build trust, understanding and respect between the organizations and their respective staff. with important groundwork laid through such initial activities, the joint institutional assessment was generally an appropriate next step. however, read did not make the completion of a jia a prerequisite for assisting ngos. nor did it require all ngos to go through all steps in the partnership process sequentially. by encouraging responsiveness to ngo contexts and needs, and given the flexible application of the partnership process, read was able to initiate relationships that led to increased sharing of information and goals, a formal joint institutional assessment, the identification of appropriate types and levels of support and involvement, and the construction of appropriate and responsive partnership agreements. forms and advantages of partnership through partnership between namibian nongovernmental organizations (ngos) and an american private voluntary organization (pvo), both organizations found that they could do more than they would have on their own. ideally, the partnerships world education has established will continue to help the organizations 'become more', expanding our collective horizons and impacting positively on development. central to the concept of partnership at all levels is empowerment. for world education/namibia, nurturing partnership: a southern african continuum of flexible stages in partnership development current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 85 the partnerships embarked on are only truly meaningful when they result in the empowerment of communities and individuals. world education considers itself lucky to have had sufficient time to build and expand upon such relationships to not only see organizations grow through different stages of partnership, but to hear the stories of their work and see its effects on the people and communities who, as partners in development, we are all dedicated to reach. visioning partnerships movement along a continuum of partnership relations exposes various dimensions of the relationships as it develops. the following case constructs illustrate partnership relationships between local ngos (fictitious, but based on true composites) and international ngo (for our purposes, world education) at three characteristic points along the continuum model. the nine dimensions identified in the model are also embedded in these scenarios. they serve as indicators of the phase of partnership in which each organization profiled finds itself. these cases are meant to highlight the nature of partnership as one constantly in flux, with movement along the continuum neither a linear nor solely progressive process. that said, the following cases if read alongside the partnership development continuum exemplify relationships that are characteristically descriptive of each of the partnership development continuum phases they represent. pre-partnership the environmental action league (eal) was involved in promoting responsible ecotourism in an area rich in culture and scenic beauty but traditionally poor in economic resources. they had a long history of working with local people; long enough to see that even development efforts in the region that started up with the best intentions often mismanaged the natural resources and the people. they needed funds to carry out their plans and would occasionally explore new donors who came on the scene. they would pick a well-established community project (one not likely in danger of failing or being too disturbed by outside intervention) and invite the donor to visit and consider funding its expansion. this would give them an opportunity to see what the donor/organization could offer and how they could work with them without jeopardizing any existing projects or community relationships. partnership the aids action network (aan) formed in response to the growing health crisis in the country. the members of this ngo feel strongly that they must promote local education and help stem the tide of hiv/aids that is rapidly extending over their region. while they have little in the way of funds or even knowledge of how to approach this, they have a firm base in the communities and the more they learn, the more they identify strategies that will help in reaching those at risk. world education, an international ngo with both the experience and the funds for such a project, recently arrived in namibia. the aan and world education enter into a partnership: with the local knowledge and contacts of the aan and the skills and expertise of world education, they are able to build an effective program. partnership bonnie b. mullinix 86 may 1, 2001 the income equity foundation (ief) began their work as a locally funded initiative working in the poor sections of the capital city. over the years they have expanded to cover the country, offering small loans and training and support to women's income generating groups and small business people. as they expanded, they benefited from the technical assistance of world education, an international ngo working in the region. as they built trust and relationships grew tighter they embarked on new projects together, accessing funding through joint projects and sharing the contacts and connections they each had freely with the others. ief would regularly include world education as technical advisors in their projects and world education would actively seek out opportunities for ief staff to consult on projects elsewhere in the world, or bring other organizations on visits, fostering south-south exchanges between ief and other world education partners in the region . now, the board of each organization has representation from the other partner. recently, the two organizations drafted and signed a memorandum of agreement that outlined their strategic plan for future joint ventures. nurturing partnerships-a work in progress as the wealth and depth of our experiences with partnership increase, so do the variety of partnerships exhibited. like new and emerging species of plants, they are unique and complex. as with plants, careful examination of colors, features, and characteristics provide clues that help us to categorize them according to origins, influences, complexity, maturity, etc. as with plants, w e can learn from our experience and analyses how to nurture them so they may thrive and grow into more intricate and elegant versions over time. it is experience and deep practical knowledge of the species and approaches to nurturing them which that produces strong, healthy plants. so too is the process of nurturing partnership. deep, grounded understanding of the organizations coupled with flexible and appropriate strategies and respect for the influences all inform the establishment of strong and successful partnerships. while partnerships may represent the perennial " work in progress," the more experience we have in working with them, the better chance we have of appreciating the nuances of their complexity and understanding how to effectively nurture them. notes 1. bonnie b. mullinix millicent is fenwick research professor in education and public issues at monmoth university, new jersey. references aldrich, h., & whetten, d. a. (1981). organization-sets, actions-sets, and networks: making the most of simplicity. in p. nystrom & w. starbuck (eds.), handbook of organizational design (vol. 1, pp. 386-408). london: oxford university press. astley, w. g. (1984). toward an appreciation of collective strategy. academy of management review, 9, 526-535. nurturing partnership: a southern african continuum of flexible stages in partnership development current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(2) 87 austrom, d. r., & lad, l. (1986). problem solving networks: towards a synthesis of innovative approaches to social issue management. in best paper proceedings of the academy of management [annual meeting: social issues in management division] (pp. 311-315). chicago: academy of management. birrell, j., ostlund, m. et al. (1998). collaboration, communities, and covey: a model for personal and professional change. clearing house, 71 (6), 359-362. birrell, j., fawson, p, ostlund, m. & seehafer, s. (1995). reshaping the role of the byu/public school partnership. record in educational leadership , 15 (2), 89-93. caplan, g. (1976). the family as a support system. in g. caplan & m. killilea (eds.), support systems and mutual help (pp. 19-36). new york: grune & stratton. cloete, n., muller, j., & roberts, j. (2000). what works and what's new in education: africa speaks! paris: association for the development of education in africa (adea). [online]. available at: http://www.adeanet.org/publications/proceedings99.html day, c. (1998). the ideal, real and surreal in school-university partnerships: reflections of a boundary spanner. teaching and teacher education, 14 (8), 807-19. eisler, r. (1990). the chalice and the blade. san francisco, ca: harper & row. eisler, r., & loye, d. (1990). the partnership way. san francisco, ca: harper san francisco. garb, g. (april, 2000). e-mail and personal communication regarding field visit. senior program director, southern africa, world education. goodlad, j. (1994). educational renewal: better teachers, better schools. san francisco: josseybass. kalunduka, g. (december, 1999). personal communication in letter. master trainer, rössing foundation, windhoek, namibia. kondombolo, n. (march, 2001). personal communication. master trainer, supporting education through school and community involvement and training (sescit) project, oshakati, namibia. lauglo, j. (2001). engaging with adults: the case for increased support to adult basic education in sub-saharan africa. washington d.c.: the world bank, africa region human development working papers series. maude, m. r.(1998). on partnership. fund raising management, 29(5), 34-36. mcknight, i. (1994). two tools for community well-being: health systems and communities. american journal of preventive medicine, 10, 23-25. bonnie b. mullinix 88 may 1, 2001 mullinix, b. b. (1999). spiraling towards sustainability: supporting facilitator and training program development through experiential learning. monograph, co: association for experiential education (aee). mullinix, b. b. (1998). nurturing partnership: world education's experience supporting namibian ngos. in reports. building capacity for civil society: the challenge of sustainability. boston, ma: world education. (32) (summer 1998) mullinix, b. b. with aipinge, amupanda, areseb, engstrom, february, sinkonde and zaire. (1998). training of trainers workshop series manual: participatory training and curriculum development. (editor, coordinator and author) boston, ma: world education. mullinix, b. b. & long, l. (1997). enhancing the human resource development base of nongovernmental and governmental organizations, usaid/namibia. in training as a development tool. washington, dc. : usaid research and reference services, center for development information and evaluation. national commission for excellence in education. (1983). a nation at risk. washington, d.c.: national commission for excellence in education. osguthorpe, r., harris, c., harris, m. & black, s. (1995). partner schools: centers for educational renewal. san francisco: jossey-bass. patterson, r.s., machelli, n.m. & pacheco, a. (1999). centers of pedagogy: new structures for educational renewal. san franscisco francisco : jossey-bass. poole, d. l. (1995). partnerships buffer and strengthen. health and social work 20(1), 2-5. saleebey, d. (ed.). (1992). the strengths perspective in social work practice. new york: longman. stevens, d. (1999). the ideal, real and surreal in school-university partnerships: reflections of a boundary spanner. teaching and teacher education. 15(3), 287-99. whetten, d. a. (1987). interorganizational relations. in j. w. lorsch (ed.), handbook of organizational behavior (pp. 238-253). englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. waddock, s. (1991). a typology of social partnership organizations. administration and society, 22(4), 480-516. winicur, b. (1993). partnership characteristics reviewed. national public accountant, 38(9), 6-8. acknowledgements dr. mullinix gratefully acknowledges the collaborative input from her colleagues leslie long and martin tjituka as well as the insights gained from the many namibian ngo staff, kenyan ngo and world education staff who directly and indirectly contributed to the formation of this model. ely et al., 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 © 2022, ely et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 8-30. resilience and despair: exploring the educational experiences of graduate students during the covid-19 pandemic to guide strategies for action frank o. ely university of windsor fallon r. mitchell university of windsor katherine e. hirsch university of windsor michael diana university of windsor krista j. munroe-chandler university of windsor paula m. van wyk university of windsor cheri l. mcgowan university of windsor the purpose of the current study was to explore graduate students’ mental health and educational experiences during the covid-19 pandemic. graduate students (n = 28) in canada completed an online survey consisting of both closedand open-ended questions related to their mental health, degree progress, and access to campus workspace. data were analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative approaches before being synthesized through a pillar integration joint display to merge study findings. based on self-report data, approximately 60% of participants were experiencing poor-to-moderate mental health at the time of the survey. participants also expressed dissatisfaction with online learning and felt uncertain about their degree trajectory due to changes and restrictions associated with the pandemic. based on the participants’ responses, recommendations for assisting graduate students during the pandemic were presented. highlighted by these recommendations was the importance of accessing workspace on campus and the challenges associated with university mental health resources. overall, nearly 16 months into the pandemic, participants’ mental health was negatively impacted by the restrictions. although the study findings may not be generalizable to all post-secondary institutions, they could be used to inform university administrators regarding the continued challenges faced by graduate students during the pandemic. keywords: graduate students, mental health, coronavirus, higher education https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en resilience and despair current issues in comparative education 9 on march 11th, 2020, the world health organization (who) characterized covid-19 as a pandemic (who, 2020). many countries across the world closed non-essential buildings, restricted gatherings, implemented physical distancing protocols, and ordered shelter-in-place mandates to reduce further spread of the virus (dodds & hess, 2020; maranda & yakubovich, 2020). individuals rapidly shifted from in-person interaction to physically distanced or online methods (jenei et al., 2020). abiding by restrictions presented difficulties in many facets of life (e.g., personal, social, professional). as the calendar turned to 2021, covid-19 restrictions and stay-at-home orders continued to present challenges for individuals globally; yet the conversation began to change. rather than focusing solely on restrictions, the conversation extended to the impact such restrictions were having on various aspects of life, such as education and mental health (cheng et al., 2020; elmer et al., 2020). one population that may have been susceptible to the challenges presented by such restrictions were graduate students. limited research pertained to graduate students’ experiences during the covid-19 pandemic; the majority was based in china, switzerland, and the united states with few studies examining graduate students in canada. although canada shared similarities with these countries, findings from other countries may not have been generalizable (son et al., 2020). for example, as of june 2021 in the united states, some states had removed many covid restrictions like shelter-in-place and mask mandates (the new york times, 2021), while many provinces in canada remained under stay-at-home orders with masks mandated in all indoor spaces (government of ontario, 2021)1. such variations in restrictions between countries demonstrated a need to consider the educational experiences of graduate students in specific geographic locations. from the lens of comparative education, such understandings were critical to ensure graduate students were not ‘left behind’ while others entered a new normal (oleksiyenko, 2020; oleksiyenko et al., 2021). additionally, it was important to consider the mental health and educational experiences of graduate students from specific canadian provinces, as restrictions differed from province-toprovince. in particular, the educational experiences of graduate students in ontario was of interest given it is the most populated province in canada (statistics canada, 2021) and faced extended restrictions (government of ontario, 2021). for example, on april 3rd, 2021, ontario entered its third state of emergency, initiating a province-wide stay at home order and on january 5th, 2022, restrictions for businesses, gatherings, and public events were reinstated. understanding the challenges faced by graduate students in ontario may provide graduate program administrators with insight to inform strategies to support their students for the duration of the pandemic (cohen et al., 2021; imeri et al., 2020). this study focused on the experiences of graduate students from one university located in southwestern ontario that took a robust approach to dealing with covid-19. while many universities initiated extensive return-to-campus restrictions (oleksiyenko, 2020), the university in the current study maintained such restrictions well into the 2021-2022 academic year for a variety of reasons (e.g., consultation with the local health unit, regional increases in positive covid-19 cases). however, as gradual return-to-campus measures were initiated, it was unclear which departments and individuals (e.g., faculty, staff, undergraduates, or graduate students) would be granted access to the campus. while the experiences of graduate students from this university may not be reflective of graduate students at all other universities, understanding their perspective may provide critical insight regarding the impact of pandemic-related restrictions. maintaining restrictions into 2022 may have been in the interest of community health and reducing the spread of the virus. however, the impact these extended restrictions had on graduate students’ mental health and educational experience/progress overtime was unknown. the purpose of this study was to explore graduate students’ educational experiences at a university in southwestern ontario that took a robust approach to health and safety during the ely et al. current issues in comparative education 10 pandemic. the following objectives were addressed: (1) to determine the state of mental health among graduate students; (2) to examine how the mental health of graduate students was affected by the pandemic; and (3) to understand how the pandemic impacted graduate students’ degree progress and educational experiences. literature review as many north american universities transitioned from in-person to online education (e.g., vanleeuwan et al., 2020), students faced significant challenges like interruptions to degree progress, financial insecurity, isolation from peers and professors, and uncertainty about the future) jenei et al., 2020; kee, 2021; maranda & yakubovich, 2020; oleksiyenko, 2020; suart et al., 2021). these challenges prompted universities across the globe to consider online pedagogy and its effectiveness, and the financial impact faced by students (oleksiyenko, 2020; oleksiyenko et al., 2021). moreover, the general uncertainty surrounding the pandemic did impact individuals’ mental health (usher et al., 2020). while students were at a heightened risk for poor mental health before the pandemic (son et al., 2020), trying to navigate the ever-changing mitigation responses to the spread of covid-19 may have amplified the potential for poor mental health among postsecondary students (cheng et al., 2020; kee, 2021). additionally, post-secondary students experienced increased mental illness during the pandemic, particularly when struggling to adapt to remote learning (chirikov et al., 2020). in the united states, a survey of 195 undergraduate students showed the majority experienced heightened stress and anxiety, disrupted sleep, social isolation, and had concerns about academic performance due to the pandemic (son et al., 2020). taken together, many university students experienced difficulty responding to the changes that occurred during the pandemic. while undergraduate students comprise much of the post-secondary student population, graduate students make up roughly 14% (statistics canada, 2020) and 19% (national center for education statistics, 2021) of all post-secondary students in canada and the united states, respectively. interestingly, when compared to undergraduate students, graduate students often occupy dual positions at their institutions as both students and employees (e.g., teaching assistants, research assistants) (zahneis, 2020). thus, graduate students may have experienced unique challenges during the pandemic, given their dual role (jenei et al., 2020; zahneis, 2020). imeri et al. (2020) reported that pharmacy graduate students experienced several negative effects after shifting to online learning, including limited professional and social support, reduced collaboration with peers, cancelled or modified research projects, a lack of mentorship, and difficulty maintaining work-life balance. recently, researchers in canada explored how the pandemic impacted graduate students and postdoctoral fellows engaged in laboratory-based research programs (suart et al., 2021). the participants reported high levels of distress, poor communication from administrators and supervisors, barriers to working from home, and concerns regarding future employment opportunities (suart et al., 2021). while highlighting important effects the pandemic had on graduate students, the study targeted only individuals in laboratory-based research programs. however, graduate students who conducted research outside of a laboratory, or who were enrolled in course-based programs, may have experienced challenges during the pandemic. furthermore, the numerous ways in which the pandemic impacted graduate students may have significant psychological consequences (cheng et al., 2020; jenei et al., 2020). prior to the covid19 pandemic, graduate students were six times more likely to suffer from anxiety or depression when compared to the general population (evans et al., 2018). of further concern, in a one-year span from preto early-pandemic (2019-2020), the prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder was reported to be 1.5 times greater and major depressive disorder doubled among graduate students within the united states (chirikov et al., 2020; imeri et al., 2020). graduate students across resilience and despair current issues in comparative education 11 disciplines reported difficulty concentrating, and felt socially isolated, fearful, angry, anxious, and helpless (kee, 2021; suart et al., 2021). this early evidence lent support for debilitating mental health among graduate student populations. further, graduate students reported feeling overlooked by their institutions (kee, 2021; suart et al., 2021; zahneis, 2020), and in some cases needed to request that their universities established mental health hotlines (oleksiyenko, 2020). taken together, investigation into the challenges faced by graduate students during the pandemic is both timely and imperative. method study design pragmatism suggests that using multiple approaches will lead to enhanced understanding of a phenomenon (onwuegbuzie & leech, 2005). using a pragmatist perspective, a survey design was employed to explore graduate students’ educational experiences during the pandemic. the survey included a series of quantitative items to explore students’ educational experiences during the pandemic and qualitative open-ended questions to gather a more comprehensive understanding of the quantitative data (hagger & smith, 2019). the sample was limited to a kinesiology department at one university to control for the resources offered to, and restrictions on, graduate students during the pandemic. all authors consisted of graduate students or faculty members who were well-versed in the institution and government restrictions faced by the participants. participants participants included 28 graduate students (mage = 25.63; sd = 2.87) from a kinesiology department at a university in ontario, canada; representing 40% of this program’s enrollment. most participants identified as male (n = 15; 53.6%), white (n = 11; 39.3%) or caucasian (n = 12; 42.9%) and were enrolled in a dissertation/thesis-based program (n = 20; 71.4%; see table 1 for complete demographic information). table 1 complete demographic information participant demographic information (n = 28) demographic categories frequency n (%) gender female 13 (46.4) male 15 (53.6) race white 11 (39.3) caucasian 12 (42.9) arab 1 (3.6) black 1 (3.6) métis 1 (3.6) mixed race 2 (7.1) living situation alone 8 (28.6) family 17 (60.7) partner 2 (7.1) ely et al. current issues in comparative education 12 housemates/roommates 1 (3.6) caregiver yes 2 (7.1) no 26 (92.9) level of study master's 24 (85.7) phd 4 (14.3) program type thesis/dissertation 20 (71.4) internship 8 (28.6) year of study 1 7 (25.0) 2 17 (60.7) 3 4 (14.3) 4 0 (0.0) procedure following university research ethics board clearance, an anonymized online survey was distributed to graduate students. recruitment occurred via social media posts from the department’s graduate student association and an email sent by the department. the survey was administered through qualtricstm and took approximately 30 minutes to complete. midway into data collection, a second email was circulated by the department to recruit additional participants. data collection occurred from may 26 to june 16 of 2021. for most of this time, the province of ontario was in a lockdown (i.e., april 8 to june 11, 2021; government of ontario, 2021). this lockdown consisted of a province-wide stay-at-home order wherein citizens were only permitted to leave their homes for essential services (e.g., groceries, pharmacies). on june 11, 2021, ontario moved into stage one of its “roadmap to reopen” framework (government of ontario, 2021). in stage one, residents were provided access to some previously closed services, such as outdoor dining; however, many indoor services remained closed (e.g., indoor dining, gyms). measures participants were asked to complete a survey including 16 closedand nine open-ended questions to assess their mental health, online learning, degree progress, and access to campus facilities during the pandemic. mental health the mental health inventory-5 (mhi-5) contains five items that measured current states of mental health (berwick et al., 1991). specifically, the frequency with which participants felt happy, calm and peaceful, nervous, downhearted and blue, and so down in the dumps that nothing could cheer them up in the previous month. items were scored on a 6-point likert scale ranging from 1 (none of the time) to 6 (all of the time). scores were transformed into a variable ranging from 0-to-100, wherein higher scores indicated optimal mental health (theunissen et al., 2011), with those less than or equal to 60 reflecting poor-to-moderate mental health (kelly et al., 2008). the validity and reliability of the mhi-5 have been tested with post-secondary students (faisal et al., 2021), wherein construct validity (elovanio et al., 2020), internal reliability (trainor et al., 2013), and predictive validity (thorsen et al., 2013) were supported. resilience and despair current issues in comparative education 13 additionally, three closed-ended items were administered regarding participants’ mental health and access to resources related to mental health. these reflected self-reported changes in mental health throughout the pandemic, usage of mental health resources provided by the university during the pandemic, and changes in mental health due to restricted access to the university and its resources. further, participants were asked three open-ended questions on mental health. specifically, they were asked to elaborate on any mental health changes, report whether the provincial government’s restriction changes affected their mental health and share how they believed the university, department, and graduate student association could have helped their mental health. degree progress and online learning participants completed five closed-ended questions on their degree progress during the pandemic and their experiences with online learning. these included whether participants considered ending (or ended) their graduate studies permanently and/or temporarily, if they would end their studies temporarily or permanently if the 2021-2022 academic year remained online, and if their anticipated degree completion had been affected by the pandemic. if participants reported anticipating delayed degree completion, they were asked to report the number of extra semesters they required. one item assessed participants’ level of satisfaction with online learning. further, open-ended questions assessed the challenges of completing their degree during the pandemic, the challenges associated with online learning, the impact of online learning, and whether and how they felt the university, department, and graduate student association could have removed or alleviated these challenges. access to building participants were asked to report when they last accessed the department building. further, closed-ended questions related to department building access were asked. these included (1) their status for applying and/or receiving access to return to conduct research on campus, (2) their interest in working in the department building, and (3) how likely they were to return to the department building if allowed. participants were administered one open-ended question regarding any benefits they perceived to being in the department building. data analysis descriptive statistics were calculated to analyze responses to closed-ended questions. means and standard deviations were calculated to determine levels of satisfaction with online learning and interest in returning to the department building. frequencies were calculated for the remaining closed-ended questions. scoring of the mhi-5 was explained above. open-ended questions were analyzed using a reflexive thematic analysis (rta; braun & clarke, 2019). rta is an approach used to identify, analyze, and report themes across a dataset allowing for a conceptual story to be told from the data (braun & clarke, 2006, 2019) and a tool for researchers to explore people’s perceptions and experiences. the goal of rta is for researcher(s) to engage with the data in a reflexive and thoughtful way throughout the analytic process. conducting an rta has been conceptualized through six phases wherein researchers (1) familiarize themselves with the entire dataset, (2) engage in coding, (3) generate initial themes, (4) develop and review such themes, (5) refine, define, and name themes, and (6) write up findings (braun & clarke, 2006, 2019). in sum, this process acknowledges and appreciates the researchers’ role wherein codes and themes are not found, but rather develop through a reflexive, and often collaborative, analytic process. following the analysis of closedand open-ended questions, both types of data were integrated together through a joint display (e.g., johnson et al., 2019). researchers have advocated for using ely et al. current issues in comparative education 14 a joint display when sharing data from multiple forms of analysis to integrate the data in a meaningful way (guetterman et al., 2015). the present study utilized a pillar integration which is a joint display method that synthesizes the findings by visually organizing and combining data from multiple methods. this process was particularly helpful to answer the second research question “how graduate students’ mental health has been affected by the pandemic?” as responses from questions related to both mental health and educational experience (i.e., degree progress and online learning, access to building) were used to address the question. research questions one and three were addressed by mental health questions and educational experience questions, respectively. results mental health scores of the mhi-5 reflect that many participants (n = 16; 57.1%) had poor-to-moderate mental health (m = 58.33; sd = 17.92). when reflecting on the previous 16 months, more than a third (n = 10; 35.7%) of participants reported their mental health had fluctuated, while half (n = 14; 50.0%) indicated it had worsened. while some participants (n = 8; 28.6%) experienced changes to their mental health in relation to a perceived lack of support from on-campus mental health services, the majority (n = 15; 53.6%) had not attempted to access these services; others experienced no change (n = 2; 7.1%) or were unsure (n = 3; 10.7%). regarding the resources that were offered by the university, only a few participants (n = 5; 17.9%) mentioned utilizing these services, while the majority (n = 23; 82.1%) had not. open-ended responses from participants reflected several themes around mental health, such as poor mental health, challenges working from home, and confusion regarding restrictions. poor mental health was seen through participants having difficulty with daily functioning (e.g., getting out of bed, dressing), experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression, feeling hopeless, lacking a sense of purpose, and having poor work-life balance. participant 14 illustrated how covid-19 impacted various aspects of their life and well-being: my mental health has decreased significantly . . . i have seen a therapist throughout this time to mitigate the impact it has had. i've struggled with drinking . . . to get out of bed . . . to see the point in anything. i've struggled maintaining relationships with friends and family due to my depression. i rarely find joy in things that i used to. i have lost sight of why i'm even pursuing this degree and its overall significance. participant 18 attributed their mental health challenges with working from home, which was further compounded by issues such as the closure of mental health outlets: it has been nothing but negative. trying to balance everything while only being online, and at home with no proper workspace and separation from work and personal life is nearly impossible to manage while trying to maintain decent academic success. while being completely online is one challenge, the compound effect of gym closures, social event closures, and anything that can help improve mental wellness being closed completely derailed everything. these quotes demonstrated participants’ mental distress and the ways in which restrictions negatively impacted the well-being of graduate students. while participant 14 noted they had been seeing a therapist to cope, participant 18 highlighted the loss of coping strategies due to covid-19 restrictions (i.e., closed gyms, restricted social engagements). the inability to access previously established coping resources may have contributed to decreased mental well-being reported in this study and the literature (e.g., imeri et al., 2020; suart et al., 2021). resilience and despair current issues in comparative education 15 moreover, participants described the changes to the ontario covid-19 response framework as confusing, frustrating, and disappointing, and had difficulty navigating such changes. for example, participant 13 expressed distrust in the loosening of restrictions: “… even when things are open, i have not wanted to go out why bother trying to go out and get used to it when we’re just going to go into another lockdown.” additional sentiments of distrust and hopelessness towards restrictions were articulated by participant 8: “the switching back and forth [between different restrictions] has negatively impacted my mental wellness. i would say it has completely erased any sense of hope.” difficulties navigating the framework and restrictions led some respondents to disengage from actively staying up to date with changes to restrictions. for example, participant 6 mentioned, “i honestly can’t keep up with the restrictions so i just assume we can’t do anything.” frustrations with ontario’s covid-19 response framework may have exacerbated poor mental health by fostering feelings of distrust and hopelessness met with disengagement that led to participants self-imposing or making assumptions about restrictions. while the government’s response to the pandemic needed to be dynamic and flexible, participants’ responses potentially indicated a desire for organizations, such as the provincial government and universities, to produce guidelines that were clear, stable, and easily understood. degree progress and online learning when asked about their satisfaction with the online learning environment, most participants indicated they were unsure (n = 11; 39.3%) or dissatisfied (n = 11; 39.3%). many participants considered ending their graduate studies temporarily during the 2020-2021 academic year (n = 12; 42.9%), while others contemplated the prospect of both a temporary and permanent leave at some point in the last 16 months (n = 5; 17.9%); however, no participants indicated ending their studies during the pandemic. however, despite most participants suggesting they considered ending their studies, 89.3% (n = 25) reported they would continue their studies during the 20212022 academic year if it continued online. nonetheless, most participants (n = 17; 60.7%) anticipated they would require additional semesters to complete their degrees due to the pandemic. several themes related to participants’ degree progress and experiences with online learning were noted, including a lack of social connection, barriers impeding degree requirements, and technical and logistical challenges. as demonstrated by the following quote from participant 14, online learning hindered formal and informal social connection, and learning experience: it has made the learning experience lifeless. by which i mean lacking experiences and conversations inside or outside of the classroom that hold a great deal of value to me . . . it has hindered my motivation to the point of apathy. further, participants mentioned how restrictions created barriers that prevented them from completing their degree requirements. participant 9 described the impact the pandemic had on fulfilling internship and research requirements: my internship was scheduled for the summer of 2020 and was completely cancelled before it began. i considered a leave of absence, but instead enrolled in a summer course. my internship was rescheduled for summer 2021, but again has been cancelled . . . this does threaten my ability to graduate on my hoped-for timeline. in addition, several participants provided examples of technical and logistical issues associated with online learning and meetings. examples included inefficient communication with peers, poor internet connection, difficulty navigating software, extensive screen time, difficult/distracting living situations, and financial burden. to illustrate, participant 2 cited communicating virtually as a challenge: ely et al. current issues in comparative education 16 i think the delay in communication may have been a challenge. online you can’t just pop into someone’s office to ask a quick question or have colleagues available in lab. everyone is a text or email away but there is a mental barrier with asking quick questions over tech. the challenges associated with the virtual environment were reiterated by participant 19 who experienced anxiety when navigating online interfaces: “it was a huge challenge and very anxiety inducing to present online as it was incredibly difficult to gauge others’ emotions and social cues during class.” by limiting their ability to access and engage in formal (e.g., feedback, internships, presentations) and informal (e.g., conversations with peers) learning opportunities, covidnecessitated online learning may have devalued the educational experience for graduate students. the negative feelings and barriers encountered by participants may have led to several negative outcomes for graduate students, such as reduced mental health, delayed degree completion, financial instability, and general uncertainty surrounding their future (jenei et al., 2020; suart et al., 2021). access to campus most participants (n = 22; 78.6%) had not accessed the department building since march 2020 or earlier; one participant (3.6%) had never accessed the building during their graduate degree. while three students (10.7%) reported receiving clearance to conduct research on campus and five (17.9%) had submitted applications for clearance but were awaiting approval, the majority (n = 20; 71.4%) had not applied. although few students applied for, or were granted, access to campus facilities, most participants (n = 16; 57.1%) were interested in working from the department building such as a graduate student workspace. four participants indicated they had no interest in working from campus (14.3%) and eight were unsure (28.6%). most respondents suggested they were very likely (n = 17; 60.7%), likely (n = 3; 10.7%), or somewhat likely (n = 4; 14.3%), to work from the department building at least once per week if granted permission; while two were not likely (7.1%), and two would never (7.1%) work from the department building. the researchers established themes associated with access to the graduate students’ department building which included benefits to campus access, achievement of a work-life balance, and reasons why some participants did not intend to access campus moving forward. beginning with the benefits to accessing the department building, participants believed access would provide them a sense of purpose, research preparation, opportunities for socialization, and improved concentration, motivation, and productivity. participant 5 indicated that: getting to go work in the [department] building, even if only a couple times a week, would increase my productively, sense of purpose, and help with my routine. i think this may be the single thing that would drastically improve my overall mental health and productively. further, participant 8 discussed how returning to the department building would positively influence their work-life balance: it would help me separate work from home life. when i work from [the department], i am able to leave the stress and anxiety at the school and enjoy being home. only working from home has made it nearly impossible for me to relax as i am constantly reminded of the things i could be working on. although most participants indicated a desire to access the department building, some respondents expressed they would not access campus as they had moved home (i.e., away from the university), had childcare considerations, or simply did not have a need. as illustrated by participant 21: “i moved back in with family so the [department] building is an hour drive. my resilience and despair current issues in comparative education 17 research is ongoing, completely virtual, and i plan on being finished within the next few months so i probably wouldn't return to the building.” prior to the pandemic, some graduate students had the option to work from home or on campus, which allowed them to choose the location that best suited their wants or needs. the students who preferred to work from home prior to the pandemic may have encountered fewer challenges when restrictions forced universities to close classrooms and lab spaces and shift to online education. while some participants noted they preferred to work from home, most participants expressed a desire to work from the department building noting that it would have improved their mental well-being. the participants who wanted to work from campus, but were unable due to restrictions, had trouble achieving work-life balance potentially further contributing to reports of poor mental health that were evident within this study. data integration a pillar integration joint display was created to synthesize and merge the study findings (e.g., johnson et al., 2019; see table 2 and 3). the open-ended questions often provided additional support or explanation to the closed-ended questions. the overarching themes will be explained in the discussion. current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 © 2022, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 8-30. table 2 integration of closedand open-ended questions organized by research question closed-ended category pillar building themes open-ended category research question #1: the state of mental health among graduate students in one academic department in ontario for the month of may 2021 mhi-5 finding: 57% of participants scored 60 or less description: almost 60% of participants were experiencing poor-to-moderate mental health for the past month. mental health during the pandemic was poor with feelings related to anxiety and depression. quote: “at least every other month, there are 1-2 weeks where i feel severely depressed.” description: participants felt hopeless and depressed, while struggling to find purpose. research question #2: how the mental health of graduate students has been affected by the pandemic online learning findings: very satisfied (0%) satisfied (22%) unsure (39%) dissatisfied (39%) very dissatisfied (0%) description: most participants were dissatisfied (or unsure) with the online learning environment. dissatisfaction with online learning relative to in-person learning. quote: “it has made the learning experience lifeless . . . lacking experiences and conversations inside or outside of the classroom that hold a great deal of value to me . . . it has hindered my motivation to the point of apathy.” description: participants felt online environments stripped their learning experiences. long-term academic enrollment impact findings: end degree permanently (0%) end degree temporarily (7%) continue degree (89%) unsure (4%) description: most participants indicated they would continue their degree, even if the 20212022 academic year remained online. students remained committed to pursuing strategies and adaptations to maintain academic trajectory. quote: “my internship was rescheduled for summer 2021, but again has been cancelled . . . i am, however, staying with the organization and have reconfigured my role to be one i can complete from home... this does threaten my ability to graduate on my hoped-for timeline.” description: despite challenges to degree progress, participants continued to pursue their degrees by attempting to adapt their studies. resilience and despair current issues in comparative education 19 closed-ended category pillar building themes open-ended category changes in mental health since restrictions findings: improved (4%) worsened (50%) fluctuated (36%) no change (11%) prefer not to answer (0%) description: most participants perceived their mental health worsened or fluctuated since restrictions began. unstable mental health due to and compounded by pandemic related restrictions. quote: “it has been nothing but negative. trying to balance everything while only being online, and at home with no proper workspace and separation from work and personal life is nearly impossible to manage while trying to maintain decent academic success. while being completely online is one challenge, the compound effect of gym closures, social event closures, and anything that can help improve mental wellness being closed completely derailed everything.” description: constraints of working from home, compounded by closures of mental health outlets, deteriorated students’ mental health and academic success. research question #3: how the pandemic impacted graduate students’ degree progress and educational experience academic enrollment impact – findings a: considered temporarily ending their degree (43%) considered temporarily and permanently ending their degree (18%) continued their degree without interruption (39%) description: more than 60% of participants considered taking a temporary leave from their degree. many students face a turbulent academic trajectory due to the pandemic. quote: “my internship was scheduled for the summer of 2020 and was completely cancelled before it began. i considered a leave of absence, but instead enrolled in a summer course.” description: uncertainty of participants’ ability to achieve degree progress led to contemplations of degree termination. impact on degree completion findings: believe degree will be completed later than expected (61%) degree will be completed on-time (18%) unsure (21%) description: most participants felt that their degree would be delayed due to the pandemic. students believed their degree progress would be, or has been, negatively impacted. quote: “my hours will take longer to complete, my research ethics application for my original study needed to be amended, and the delivery of my survey for my research is being setback.” description: various constraints such as internship availability, revision to ethics applications, and ability to conduct research all impacted participants’ ability to complete their degree. ely et al. current issues in comparative education 20 closed-ended category pillar building themes open-ended category extra semesters findings: none (18%) 1 2 (46%) 3 + (14%) unsure (4%) missing data (18%) description: 60% of participants believed they would require at least one additional semester to finish their degree. degree completion was expected to be prolonged due to adaptations necessitated by the pandemic. quote: “i've completed my coursework and am now focused on my thesis. if everything continues to be online, i will have to significantly adapt my research idea or take time off until it is safe to complete research again.” description: uncertainty surrounding degree progress left students contemplating future studies with a need to create contingency plans. a no students reported ending their degree or considering ending degree permanently. resilience and despair current issues in comparative education 21 table 3 integration of closedand open-ended questions organized by research question closed-ended category pillar building themes open-ended category recommendation #1: remove ambiguity around, and provide access to, graduate student workspace on campus approval to conduct research or work on campus -findings: yes (11%) applied with no approval (18%) no (71%) prefer not to answer (0%) description: almost 90% of participants did not have access to work from the department building, more than a year after pandemic related restrictions were put in place. ambiguity related to access of the department building and the criteria for receiving access. quote: “i know some departments on main campus . . . already have a lot of their students back on campus because they can claim they need to be for research purposes. however . . . some of the students that have campus approval go to campus to work even if they do not need to be there for research . . . i think the department could advocate for students who want to be on campus even though their research can be done from home.” description: participants expressed a desire for campus access above and beyond research purposes demonstrating confusion regarding restrictions to accessing campus facilities. interest in working from campus findings: yes (57%) no (14%) maybe (18%) unsure (11%) description: the majority of participants expressed an interest in working from the department building. students have interest in working from the department building and feel it would have a variety of benefits. quote: “it would help me separate work from home life once again. when i work from [the department], i am able to leave the stress and anxiety at the school and enjoy being home. only working from home has made it nearly impossible for me to relax as i am constantly reminded of the things i could be working on. moreover, working in [the department] would help me feel more connected with other students again . . . knowing other people are around helps me feel connected and engaged in learning.” description: access to the building could help foster work-life balance and mental health, not just a means for conducting research. ely et al. current issues in comparative education 22 closed-ended category pillar building themes open-ended category likelihood of attending campus at least once a week findings: very likely (61%) likely (11%) somewhat likely (14%) not likely (7%) never (7%) description: most participants would choose to work from the department building at least once a week if provided access. students are willing to be flexible and accommodating in attaining access to workspace in the department building. quote: “i am having a hard time separating my personal form work life. . . . work[ing] in the [department] building, even if only a couple times a week, would increase my productively, sense of purpose, and . . . routine. i think this may be the single thing that would drastically improve my overall mental health and productively.” description: participants expressed a desperation for even limited access to campus workspace. recommendation #2: ensure university mental health resources and services are meeting the needs of graduate students university resources findings: have used (18%) have not used (82%) description: most participants have not utilized any mental health resources provided/offered by the institution. university mental health resources were unutilized. quote: “the counselling services is quite busy with long wait times, so i have gone elsewhere.” description: some participants noted the use of mental health resources internal (e.g., student counseling services) and/or external (e.g., therapist) to the university changes in mental health due to restricted access to university resources or services findings: yes (29%) no changes (7%) no attempt to seek services (54%) not sure (11%) prefer not to answer (0%) description: more than half of participants had not attempted to utilize mental health resources provided/offered by the institution. students cited several concerns regarding the use of university resources quote: “i think offering counselling services in person would be more beneficial than online. i felt like the services did help a lot but i felt like i had to whisper in my house for no one to hear my confidential information and that maybe my emotions and body language did not transfer the same as in person. i believe there is a safe way to set this up, i don't understand how you can get a massage or go to the chiropractors to get physical treatment but cannot meet with a therapist in person.” description: restrictions or modifications to university services left participants’ feeling vulnerable about speaking from their home, confused about why such restrictions were in place, and detached from the therapists whom they saw. current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 © 2022, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 8-30. discussion this study explored graduate students’ educational experiences approximately 16 months into the pandemic. the educational experience of graduate students was overwhelmingly and negatively impacted during the pandemic, evidenced through poor mental health and challenges with online learning. importantly, participants expressed ways in which their educational experience and mental health could have been improved. these included removing ambiguity around access to campus workspaces and ensuring the university’s mental health resources and services met the needs of graduate students. participants reported experiencing poor mental health at the time of the survey. these findings were consistent with research wherein graduate students reported poor mental health (chirikov et al., 2020), heightened stress (imeri et al., 2020), and anxiety (kee, 2021; suart et al., 2021) during the pandemic. moreover, these previous studies featured a data collection period of april to june 2020 (e.g., suart et al., 2021). as such, these studies recorded the mental health of graduate students shortly after the pandemic began. in contrast, data were collected in this study nearly one year later (may to june 2021) and suggested that graduate students experienced poor mental health well into the pandemic. suart et al. (2021) cautioned that with time and distance from the onset of the pandemic and initial lockdown, negative feelings from the pandemic may continue to persist and deepen among graduate students. while these findings indicated that feelings of poor mental health were persistent among graduate students 16 months into the pandemic, the source of mental health challenges may have changed from early in the pandemic. based on data collected in 2020, graduate students were fearful and anxious regarding the health-related implications of covid-19 for themselves and their families (kee, 2021; suart et al., 2021). however, the current study may suggest the root of continued mental health concerns was based on how the pandemic impacted the educational experience of graduate students. specifically, graduate students remained dissatisfied with online learning (imeri et al., 2020; kee, 2021) with some describing their learning experience as “lifeless” and/or purposeless. such feelings align with work by kee (2021) wherein graduate students preferred in-person learning environments, suggesting online learning had not replicated the interactive experiences students desired. despite dissatisfaction with online learning, almost 90% of participants reported that they would continue their studies even if online learning continued. thus, it could be postulated that graduate students accepted online learning as their new reality. one way to interpret this idea of acceptance is through the kübler-ross model of grief. the kübler-ross model of grief outlines five stages of grief individuals experience when faced with tragic or difficult life changes (craytor & kübler-ross, 1969). these include denial (i.e., disbelief to unexpected news), anger (i.e., frustration due to the unfairness of the situation), bargaining (i.e., focusing on what could have been done to change/prevent the situation), depression (i.e., a sense of loss once one acknowledges the situation cannot be changed), and acceptance (i.e., learning to live with this new reality) (craytor & kübler-ross, 1969). suart et al. (2021) used this model to explain the reactions of graduate students following the closure of laboratory spaces due to the pandemic. they suggested that graduate students were largely in the bargaining stage following laboratory closures, but that participants also felt depression in relation to working from home. roughly 16 months into the pandemic, the graduate students in this study seemingly moved-on from the bargaining stage and were balanced between the stages of depression and acceptance. that is, graduate students remained in the depression stage (manifested through feelings of apathy and helplessness) but were also trying to accept the new reality that was online learning (evidenced by continuing their studies). however, the acceptance stage is often characterized by feelings of calmness and being at peace (craytor & kübler-ross, 1969), which did not seem to be present among participants. acceptance without the presence of positive feelings may be concerning as graduate students could have accepted online learning, despite the dissatisfaction they feel ely et al. current issues in comparative education 24 towards the experience. if graduate students felt a need to accept this new reality, despite the negativity they perceived towards the online learning experience, this could foster decreased mental health and cause serious challenges to graduate students having a positive educational experience. the pandemic also appeared to impact the degree progress of graduate students. many participants reported facing a turbulent academic trajectory, evidenced by thoughts of leaving their academic program or the cancelation of internship opportunities. such experiences could have been indicative of graduate students’ uncertainty towards their future academic and professional careers (jenei et al., 2020). graduate students believed their degree would be, or had already been, negatively affected by the pandemic, resulting in delayed graduation for most participants. unfortunately, such delays in degree completion were seen in other studies (e.g., suart et al., 2021; zahneis, 2020). researchers have suggested that changes to the learning environment (kee, 2021), forced adaptations to research projects (imeri et al., 2020), and limited access to research materials (zahneis, 2020) contributed to the challenge of fulfilling degree requirements during the pandemic. these circumstances demonstrated the difficulty the pandemic, and the variability of its associated restrictions, had on graduate students and their ability to progress in their academic careers. this lack of, or delayed, progress could have placed graduate students in difficult financial situations (jenei et al., 2020) and increased feelings of stress towards their future (suart et al., 2021). these results can be used as leverage to make recommendations for actions that will best support graduate students. to begin, although restricted access, complete closures, and lockdowns play an important role in mitigating physical risk, graduate students may have been primarily concerned with the psychological harm caused by ongoing isolation from their department workspaces (suart et al., 2021). to offset this, our first recommendation is to prioritize graduate students’ access to workspace within their department building; within the constraints of capacity limits. prioritization usually follows: 1) essential workers, 2) students attending in-person class and their instructors, and 3) occasional staff, faculty, and students. having the latter category formally include graduate student access to workspace, outside of cleared research space, could have been an important strategy moving forward. researchers in comparative education have suggested that the actions and inactions of universities in response to the pandemic could, in part, have demonstrated the value placed on certain groups over others (cohen et al., 2021; oleksiyenko; 2020). these new pandemic-created norms in higher education may have unintentionally created new inequalities that needed to be considered and alleviated (oleksiyenko et al., 2021). for example, suart et al. (2021) found that over half of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows did not have their own dedicated workspace at their home; thus, it would seem having space on campus would have been helpful to provide equal opportunity to all graduate students. further, participants highlighted a variety of benefits associated with working from their department building, such as fostering a work-life balance and improving their mental health. graduate students were aware of the logistical challenges surrounding the re-opening of campus workspace and reported a willingness to be both flexible and accommodating in attaining access. while it was apparent that there was no ‘one way’ to re-open university facilities, laboratories, and workspaces (suart et al., 2021), there was a need for university administrators to be transparent and intentional when communicating such information (chirikov et al., 2020; kee, 2021). participants felt ambiguity related to who can access their department building and the criteria required to receive access. to offset feelings of jealousy or frustration towards individuals who were permitted access (suart et al., 2021) and mitigate the perception that their role at the university is of lesser importance than their peers (zahneis, 2020), administrators should have communicated a clear and transparent process for graduate students to access department workspace. resilience and despair current issues in comparative education 25 a second recommendation is related to the use of university mental health resources. graduate students may choose not to engage in psychological counseling for a variety of reasons, such as stigmatization or a lack of awareness (liu et al., 2020). during the pandemic, researchers found similar trends, with low engagement in mental health services among post-secondary students (liang et al., 2020). similarly, more than 80% of participants in this study did not attempt to access university mental health resources, despite the prevalence of poor mental health among participants. on one hand, it was apparent universities could not mandate the use of such resources. on the other hand, one should consider why graduate students were not utilizing such resources (chirikov et al., 2020; kee, 2021). one explanation was the potential barriers associated with virtual counseling sessions, as participants noted not having a safe space in their home from which to speak openly. kee (2021) suggested that if traditional face-to-face counseling services were not possible, universities needed to be creative in how these services could be provided (e.g., virtual communication). however, offering online mental health resources and services may not have been enough (chirikov et al., 2020), especially if what was provided was not in a modality that worked for graduate students. thus, we recommend that university administrators (e.g., graduate coordinators) work with graduate students to develop strategies that could be utilized and increase awareness of mental health services. this aligns with discussion in comparative education to “build back better” as we continue moving through the pandemic (cohen et al., 2021). that is, to take this opportunity to update the ways in which certain aspects of our universities operate as opposed to simply re-installing the pre-pandemic systems. although this study offers insights into the experiences of graduate students, institutionand department-specific factors may have limited the generalizability of the findings. while these recommendations may not be directly generalizable to every university, they demonstrated the need for universities to consider the unique needs of their graduate students (suart et al., 2021). further, the geographic location of the university may have also affected the experiences of graduate students and the response the university took towards navigating the pandemic. suart et al. (2021) suggested that institutions needed to deliberately tailor how they address covid-19 issues based on the needs of their specific university. thus, institutions should have been mindful of the circumstances their graduate students faced and understand graduate students may have been impacted differently across the world. another issue of generalizability was the lack of diversity among participants, who, while representative of their department’s graduate student population, predominantly self-identified as white or caucasian. researchers have noted that minority graduate students may have experienced exacerbated mental health issues due to inequalities or discrimination within their program (miller & orsillo, 2020). therefore, these results may not be reflective of the experiences of diverse populations of graduate students. there are areas of future research related to the educational experiences of graduate students during the pandemic. researchers could explore if the experiences documented in this study were similar to other universities; providing knowledge on strategies that best address pandemicrelated challenges from multiple perspectives (suart et al., 2021). also, of interest is whether graduate students who had been brought back to campus had improved mental health compared to those who continued to work from home. further, researchers could explore if one’s living situation (e.g., live with family, live independently) had an impact on mental health when working from home. again, such insights could inform universities on the importance of allowing on-campus workspace, and how this may have affected graduate students’ mental health. last, researchers should more closely examine why graduate students remained committed to their degree, despite their apparent dissatisfaction with online learning. ely et al. current issues in comparative education 26 conclusion in summary, nearly sixteen months into the pandemic, graduate students’ mental health, degree progress, and educational experiences were negatively impacted due to the pandemic and related restrictions. recommendations for assisting graduate students during these times include: (1) prioritizing graduate student access to workspace within the constraints of current capacity limits in university buildings, and (2) collaborating with graduate students to develop effective mental health strategies with a high potential for uptake. acknowledgements we acknowledge the restrictions related to the covid-19 pandemic have and continue to be dynamic and change rapidly across the world. all references to restrictions presented in this paper may not be reflective of the current restrictions in any respective region. we have no conflicts of interest to disclose. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to frank o. ely: elyf@uwindsor.ca frank o. ely is a phd student in kinesiology at the university of windsor. his research focuses on narrowing the gap between research and practice in sport psychology by exploring ways to translate, disseminate, and implement research into practice. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1691-6895 @frank_o_ely fallon r. mitchell is a phd student in kinesiology at the university of windsor. her research focuses on accessibility, usability, and inclusion in various recreational settings. she is interested in working with vulnerable populations, including children, older adults, and individuals with a disability. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4077-7028 @fallonrae97 katherine hirsch is a phd candidate studying sport and exercise psychology at the university of windsor in the department of kinesiology. her research is largely focused on the role of athlete leaders in promoting positive group dynamics in team sports. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6513-6265 @katie_hirsch12 michael diana is a sport management master’s student in the department of kinesiology at the university of windsor. @michaeldiana dr. krista munroe-chandler is recognized for her work in the psychology of sport and exercise. a full professor in the department of kinesiology at the university of windsor, her research interests include imagery use by performers, youth sport development, and exercise and mental health in university students. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6677-8614 @kristajchandler paula m. van wyk is an associate professor in the department of kinesiology at the university of windsor. her research focuses on movement performance and injury prevention, particularly among vulnerable populations. she has actively been supervising undergraduate and graduate research students. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8452-5303 @pvandubs resilience and despair current issues in comparative education 27 dr. cheri l. m. mcgowan, professor and associate dean research & graduate studies in the department of kinesiology at the university of windsor, is known for her work in hypertension prevention and management. from a pedagogical perspective, she strives to create an optimal training environment for graduate trainees to ensure scholastic and research growth, promote excellence, and foster professional competence. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8647-3543 @cherimcgowan12 references berwick, d. m., murphy, j. m., goldman, p. a., ware, j. e., barsky, a. j., & weinstein, m. c. 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(2020). for many graduate students, covid-19 pandemic highlights inequities. the chronicle of higher education. https://sakai.unc.edu/access/content/group/1f997b9cf1e4-4abb-9af91e1a231bc177/resources%20for%20mentoring%20during%20the%20pandemic/for%20 many%20graduate%20students%2c%20covid19%20pandemic%20highlights%20inequities.pdf © 2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 70 december 15, 2004 higab and the education of the self lene kofoed rasmussen danish national institute of social research copenhagen, denmark abstract when female adherents of islamic movements advocate the higab – the headscarf or veil – they simultaneously rework the concept of higab and the category of the muslim woman. this can be seen as part of a wider objectification of the muslim consciousness following the dissemination of mass education in the modern middle east. this paper analyzes the discourse of female islamists as expressed in a recent publication in which the higab and islamic activism are described as matters of self-education. the muslim woman and her level of education are represented as pivotal to the integrity of the society, and the higab is subsequently rewritten to signal an ethical and responsible woman serving this purpose. the paper argues that this discourse promotes a modern approach to education. introduction among western observers and islamic scholars, the most common interpretation of the higab is that of a headscarf or veil worn by muslim women that is collectively sanctioned to preserve modesty and regulate desire in society. subsequently, the adoption of the higab by female adherents of islamist movements is perceived as a submission to prevalent notions of modesty. committed female islamists in cairo, however, promote the higab as an individual choice. thus, female islamists' commitment to islamic activism, in their choice to adopt the higab, may be understood as a process of ameliorating and educating themselves. to these activists, there is: “… no more obvious way of reforming oneself than putting on the islamic dress” (shahrazad al-`arabi, 1989: 98). conceptual framework a salient feature of modernity in the middle east is the objectification of the muslim perception, which is "…the process by which basic questions come to the fore in the consciousness of large numbers of believers: ‘what is my religion?', ‘why is it important to my life?', and ‘how do my beliefs guide my conduct?'" (eickleman & piscatori 1996: 38). these modern queries concern muslims of all classes. in his analysis of the process of objectification in the development of modernity in western europe michel foucault identified a mode of objectification that he called subjectification : the way a human being turns him or herself into a modern subject (1983: 208) [1]. when foucault first addressed the question of subjectification, he formulated the notion of “the self-policing subject”, i.e. a subject internalizing control that was formerly collectively organized and sanctioned. this evolved into a theory of "bio-power", i.e. power invested and partly masked in the bodies of modern subjects. at this stage the modern subject was understood as having little agency and influence on his or her own life. in the later work of foucault, the internalization of control comes about through the individual's active participation in the objectification of him or higab and the education of the self current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 71 herself; eventually it seems that the modern individual is actively fashioning his or her own identity (1985, 1986). if female islamists adapting the higab are submitting to collective regulations of desire, it is reasonable easy to imagine that these women are not in any way adapting modern strategies in the foucauldian sense. alternatively, as this article proposes, the adaptation of the higab may take the form of a process of educating and disciplining the self. female islamists are subscribing to new interpretations of the muslim woman and islam in general and thereby not only objectifying islam, but simultaneously adopting a new objectifying approach towards themselves. when they present themselves as educated and disciplined individuals capable of educating others, it is a modern technique of subjectification. in turn, this modus operandi further promotes the education of women, both formally and, in a wider sense, as a project of reforming oneself and others. the adaptation by women of what i deem the “islamism as education technique” has far reaching implications, among them an improvement in the autonomy of women and the furthering of a modern approach to education as a learning process, that, in contrast to a traditional repetitive way of learning, includes reflection, interpretation, and arguing. ultimately this helps opening the gates to learning institutions for girls and young women who formerly had little access to education. the reading and writing muslim woman for the purpose of illuminating a recurrent feature a “narrative of conversion” in the discourse of female islamists, a novel authored by a female islamist, (yunis 1993), is textually analysed in this article. in the novel, the author rewrites images and concepts related to muslim women potentially transforming the understanding of "a muslim woman". the text corresponds to a similar retelling of the muslim woman in the practice and discourse of cairene female islamists in the 1990s (rasmussen 1999). [ 2] the author of the novel, as well as female islamists at large, put forward a narrative of conversion, in which the adaptation of the higab symbolizes the educational process of a committed woman. through the narrative of conversion the author links the muslim woman and her ability to become educated to the integrity of the society as a whole. the narrative is furthermore utilized for urging women to get educated, and in a subtle way to adopt a reflecting and interpretive approach towards themselves, to texts and to the society around them. in the last decades of the 20 th century a rapidly growing market of new "islamic books" emerged, with a number of women among the authors. one of them is mona yunis, a schoolteacher with a masters degree in middle eastern history. she is the author of the novel vagh bala makyadj, a face without make-up. [3] she is also a dedicated female islamist for whom the islamization of society is an important goal in life and a duty of all muslims regardless of gender. her novel is a detailed account of the path to take on the higab of a young woman. it is exemplary in summarizing the narrative of conversion that is commonly put forward by committed female islamists when asked the reason why they wear the higab (rasmussen 1999). the conversion in question is the transformation of a muslim of tradition into what by the actors themselves are considered a modern, committed muslim. the narrative of conversion conjures up a muslim woman who is educated and capable of educating others. lene kofoed rasmussen 72 december 15, 2004 the story begins with a young female university student having a picnic with her husband, to whom she has been wed recently. while resting at the beach she becomes lost in her thoughts, and at a point she starts weeping. the husband asks her why she is crying, and her reply is the book-length account of a process of self-education, presented as the first-person narrator's path to adopting the higab. the obligation to take on the higab that may at first seem a religious act alone is transformed into an obligation to convert oneself during a process that encompasses both formal and informal education. the novel is divided into three parts. the first part relates a month-long discussion about the higab among a group of female university students. although all the young women partaking in the discussion are muslims, the opinions on the higab are varied. is the higab obligatory for the muslim woman? the discussion evolves into a critical questioning of the foremost supporter of the higab, fatima. the second part of the novel consists of meetings between fatima and the narrator of the story, where the questions raised in part one are debated more profoundly. the third part deals with "the best years of my life" of the narrator, the time when she has overcome her doubts, has put on the higab and engaged herself with islamic activities at the university together with fatima and other like-minded female students. the process is completed: in the beginning of the account the narrator is dominated by doubt, in the second part by difficult pondering and in the last part by clarity and conviction. at the end of the novel we are back on the beach where the husband assures his wife that he will do everything possible to support her in her decision. throughout the three parts of the novel a number of issues are debated and linked to the higab question. the style is repetitive; the main issues are introduced as questions in the first part, taken up again and scrutinized in the reflections of the narrator in the second, and finally presented in the clear light of understanding in the third part. the form and structure of the novel in itself represent the process of reflection and interpretation, that the readers are urged to engage in and make the strategy of their lives. the issues raised are, among others, the responsibility of the individual woman to make a choice and the obligation of the muslim woman to study and obtain knowledge. these issues are presented as major concerns to muslim women, who want to play an active role in society. i will summarize the argument concerning the responsibility of the individual woman to make a decision. this is the main subject of the novel and sums up well the narrative of conversion and the importance of education in the discourse. the focus on the individual choice sets this account apart from the perception of the higab as a collective submission to prevalent notions of modesty. the argument here is rather that adopting the higab ought to reflect the conversion into a committed muslim (and not simply stay a muslim of birth and tradition). in the discourse of the novel this change can come about only by studying and adopting techniques of reflection and interpretation. the issue is introduced through an objection to the higab raised by another female student in the group discussion. the student regards inward matters, such as the intention of the muslim woman, as more important than outward ones, i.e. the higab. another student supports her view by arguing that someone wearing the higab can act higab and the education of the self current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 73 wrongly, too (ibid.: 17-21). fatima answers that islam comprises both inward and outward matters, and that human beings will be judged on both. she adds that one will not be rewarded for wearing the higab if the intention is to obtain credit from others. and, as it is repeated again and again throughout the story, in this and other cases related to islam one has to ignore the views of others (ibid.: 25). the stage is set for a turning of the gaze toward one-self, ones intentions and motives. so far the group has been discussing the responsibility of the individual. the issue is raised again in the exchange between fatima and the narrator: please talk to me about the higab, i would like to listen to you, fatima. my sister, the case is much simpler than all this talk. do you think that the angels will be judged on their deeds? no. will the human being be judged? yes. therefore it is our responsibility to take a direction in our lives. what do we want? what would we like to obtain? god's satisfaction? or the passing world? do we follow the devil? or do we discipline ourselves to reach a higher level, where we can control our greediness, pleasures, lust, and the misguidings of the devil? (ibid.: 78) here it is stipulated that it is not enough just to wear the higab to become a committed muslim woman. the main task seems to be controlling oneself; the mantra is “we discipline ourselves”. beside the content, the exchange above is noteworthy in two ways; in having a woman as the main interpreter of the islamic message and in yunis´ use of the dialogue to make sense of an islamic concept, the higab. it seems that not only can a woman interpret islam, the right interpretation can also be reached through discussion and exchange among women. by breaking away from the traditional ideal of imitating interpretations by islamic scholars, yuni's and her protagonist's approach islam in a modern fashion and by way of the tools of modern education, such as reflection and argumentation. eventually the narrator decides to put on the higab. i thanked god who convinced me in my decision in spite of my father's outbursts of anger and my mother's objections. my father refused to let me go to the university, and i was not allowed to contact my friends. i was totally isolated from the surrounding world. (ibid.: 92-93) by asserting that one might have to go against the will of ones parents, a contrast is made to the muslim woman caught in the tradition of the parental generation and “the house of obedience”, an islamic expression of what has been understood as the proper place of women – at home under male control. the alternative to tradition and obedience is described when the narrator is back at university a few days later. this is the time of comprehension and serenity reached after much pondering: these days were the best of my life. (...) i realized that islam is not just to perform prayer, to fast, to pay alms, and to go on a pilgrimage. it is much more comprehensive lene kofoed rasmussen 74 december 15, 2004 and more general. i understood, as well, that the higab is just one step on the right path, and that this step has to be followed by other steps. i realized that a lot of women are satisfied by this first step, as if it were a goal in itself.(...) we felt responsible, so we practised da`wa, inviting others to the orders of god in a sensitive and friendly manner. (ibid.: 93-94) da`wa is here represented as one of the responsibilities that muslim women take upon themselves when becoming committed. as with other islamic concepts, the meaning of da`wa is today transformed in accordance with a changing society. from being a matter of mission, da`wa seems, in this discourse, to have become a matter of educating oneself and others. in the last quote the responsibility of the muslim woman is specified further: i will never forget these days, when we learned verses of the koran by heart and read koran interpretations and other useful books. in that way i learned the importance of knowledge in our life, and that ignorance is the tragedy of muslims. i am sorry to say it, but they are ignorant both concerning religious knowledge and secular knowledge. actually, the first step to obedience to god is knowledge and education. god will pave the way to paradise for the one who takes the path of knowledge. (ibid.: 94) here it is clearly asserted that the commitment to islam is a commitment to knowledge and education. like the issue of making your own decision, all the issues of the novel are subject to the creation of a new muslim woman, who wears the higab, takes part in society, seeks knowledge, and ignores the objections and hostility towards the higab from the surrounding society. inward matters are emphasized, underscoring that reflection of the individual is crucial. unlike the traditional understanding of the higab, the rationale for the higab in this text is not that it installs outer limits and collective control. instead, in a face without make-up the higab becomes a sign of self-discipline and the internalization of control. the higab is represented as a symbol of the transformation of a young, confused girl into a responsible woman. the transformation comes about through a commitment to god, yet education seems to be a precondition for this commitment. the novel strongly advocates an educated muslim woman who plays an important role in society. this new muslim woman seems to have earned her right to a new societal position through education, and her main task is to further develop herself and to promote education of other women, too. the message is that a woman can not only read and study but she can serve as an example and as a teacher for others. the novel, as a whole, is a representation of an educational process. the educational intention is not only reflected in the actual content, but also in the structure of the text, which aims to pull the reader through the same process of doubt-questioningpondering-conviction. the intention of the author is two-fold: to convince the reader that the islamic commitment is the result of a process of thorough investigation, reflection and choice, and, secondly, to point out that this path lays open for the reader, too. a face without make-up is, so to speak, both a story about education and reformation and an act of mission. a narrative of conversion is presented as a technique higab and the education of the self current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 75 for transforming oneself into a responsible self-controlling subject. the muslim woman is obligated to go through a transformation via self-education to full commitment. the narrative of conversion serves the author, as well as female islamists at large, in constituting herself as an islamist and, at the same time, in a subtle way, in practising da`wa, inviting others to islam (rasmussen 1999). the islamic concept of da`wa is usually translated into inviting others to islam or simply mission. in the discourse of female islamists da`wa has been turned into a matter of education and moreover becomes a major obligation of muslim women. this is reiterated in the novel and in other articulations of female islamists. the aim is to establish the muslim woman as a subject capable of becoming educated and of serving as a good example to follow, therefore capable of educating others. different interpretations of the muslim woman the islamic book market is swamped with books about women, family, and gender relations. the text referred to here is distinctly different from most: a great number of books on "the woman in islam" consists merely of rules and regulations for women to follow. for instance in fatwa collections by religious authorities, such as fatawa al-mara´ al-muslima, the fatwas of the muslim woman, (author and year of publication missing) or in more elaborated accounts of the good manners of muslim women (for instance, a series called ila okhti al-muslima, for my muslim sister by jusriyya mohammad anwar (1994), with titles such as hayatik beina al-rigal, your life among men, zinatik wa tsiyabik likul al-munasabat, your decoration and dress for any occasion, and sulukiyat muhimma fi hayatik, important manners in your life.) there are, however, other books on the market that, as well as the novel analysed above, debate the role of the muslim woman in societal terms. sheik muhammed mutawalli alsha`rawi is probably the most widespread author on sale at the street markets in cairo, and he has published a number of titles concerning women (including qadaya al-mara´ al-muslima, issues concerning the muslim woman (1982) (see stowasser 1987), almara´ wa al-ragul wa khusum al-islam, the woman, the man, and the opponents of islam (year of publication missing), and al-mara´ fil-quran al-karim, the woman in the holy qur'an (1990). these books by al-sha`rawi debate matters of society, and they address women directly. when it comes to the higab question, however, al-sha`rawi differs from the female islamists. like in the following quotation, where al-sha`rawi praises the women adopting the higab at the time of the prophet: not one of them spoke in high-sounding terms about "having to be convinced of the necessity to do this". (...) it sufficed for these women that this commandment had come down from god... (al-sha`rawi in stowasser 1987: 275) according to al-sha`rawi, there is no need for any process of convincing oneself. like yuni's account a direct appeal to women is present, but the message here is different: do you, muslim sister, want to excite even further the adolescent who is already charged with sexual voracity? it is an obligation to veil from him all that may further excite his sexual drive, because he has plenty and more than plenty of that as is. (ibid.:273) lene kofoed rasmussen 76 december 15, 2004 the responsibility of women invoked here is merely one of not provoking sexual voracity. the appeal to involve oneself in a process of transformation, to obtain an education and influence one's surroundings, is absent in this presentation. the discourse of female islamists constitutes a break with these and similar textualizations of the muslim woman. though these women also advocate the higab, their rationale for doing so is quite different from the fear that women's sexuality creates disorder in society. the regulation of desire is not irrelevant to female islamists, but according to them, self-discipline, rather than the actual higab, will serve this purpose. with this challenge of a traditional understanding of the position of women in society, they challenge as well the bulk of ula`ma, the islamic scholars, and their exclusive right to interpret the islamic texts. mona yunis and other female islamists not only offer an interpretation of the higab that differs from the traditional interpretation of al-sha`rawi and other ula`ma; their argument of the higab as a symbol of an ethical and educated woman in control also creates a position from where women can take part in the interpretation of islamic texts in other matters as well. a face without make-up is part of a current literary trend in the arab world where women write about the life of women, or as put by fedwa malti-douglas, "women increasingly participate in the creation of their literary selves" (malti-douglas 1995: 5). among western scholars studying middle eastern women there has been a great interest in these writings of women, yet the focus has mainly been on the literary contributions of secular-minded feminists (for example, badran and cooke 1990). as a textual analyst, i argue that the literary contribution by women advocating islam has further reaching implications. the female islamists potentially have a larger audience than the secularised women, who speak for and to a very limited segment of the egyptian upper middle class. the islamists regardless of their own class background might more directly talk to a wider audience of girls and young women of the lower middle class. these girls and women are often unacquainted with and sometimes hostile towards ideas that are derived from a western framework. when female islamists are advocating modern techniques of education and moreover making the adoption of these techniques a precondition for becoming a committed muslim woman, they are at the same time adapting modern education to islam. this in turn opens up the gates of education for women who have formerly been relegated to the periphery of society. discussion when debating and rationalizing the use of the higab and other islamic concepts, female islamists are taking part in the objectification of the muslim consciousness. the women involved are simultaneously objectifying themselves or, in the terms of foucault, adopting techniques of subjectification. representing islamism as an educational process is such a technique. when turning islamic activism into a matter of self-education, the gaze is directed at the intentions, ethics, inner thoughts and responsibilities of the self. the “islamism as education” technique is present in the novel: a face without make-up in that it is about constituting the committed muslim woman by way of a narrative of conversion. this narrative is often evoked by female islamists, and elements of the lifehigab and the education of the self current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 77 story of the individual woman fit well with the narrative of conversion that serves to establish one's own devotedness. the former monopoly of religious knowledge of ula`ma, the religious scholars educated in the mosque, and their authority are contested today. the challenge of ula`ma is related to the processes of objectification that were brought about mainly by the establishment of mass education in most middle eastern settings during the 20 th century. women, along with young people and other lay and autodidact students of islamic sources, who were formerly relegated from the realm of religious interpretation, are among the new contributers to the islamic discourse. new voices claim their right and ability to interpret the central texts. at this background, a distinct female islamist discourse has been shaped promoting the muhaggaba, the woman who is wearing the higab, as a modern self-policing subject. nevertheless, some participants in the comprehensive interpretative task, including some of the new male islamic intellectuals, continuously approve of the higab as a necessary curbing regulation of the sexuality of women. thus, the idea of women's sexuality as a threat to society prevails in part, as does the higab as a collectively sanctioned device. to be sure, though articulate and assertive, female islamists are not free to define the higab, the muslim woman or other parts of islam as they deem fit. in foucault's most pessimistic scenario of modernity, the modern subject is no more emancipated than individuals in previous times, as control has not decreased in modern society, but has simply been transferred from the collective to "the docile body" of the individual. if this approach is applied to the current female islamist discourse, the internalization of control that is prevalent in the practice of female islamists does not bring any improvement to the position of women. if a different (and later) foucauldian approach is applied, however, it can be argued that the transformation of the muhaggaba into a modern subject offers women notable improvements. lois mcnay (1992) suggests a reading of the technologies of subjectification as practices through which individuals actively fashion their own identities instead of just being passive subjects to (bio-)power (foucault 1985, 1986). according to mcnay, foucault hereby reinstalls "autonomy" as a category into his theory of modernity, yet avoiding defining "autonomy in essentialized terms as, for example, the realization of an individual's prediscursive or innate potential, because, in the final instance, these practices are always determined by the social context" (mc nay 1992: 4). autonomy, when so relativized and emptied of normativity, might apply to the case of the female islamists in cairo, who actively fashion their own identity through modern techniques of subjectification. when female islamists put forward a new image of the muslim woman as an ethical subject, increased self-esteem and empowerment of women adopting this image are likely to follow. a modern approach to education seems to be a precondition for that to take place. the islamism-as-education technique urges the committed woman to obtain practical skills, such as reading skills, speaking before a larger audience, applying for a job, initiating a formal education, and so on. the higab when signaling self-discipline, might in some cases render superfluous other regulations of the movements and actions of the women who wear it, and thereby make such steps possible. at another level the bending and twisting of islamic concepts such as higab and da`wa might, when put lene kofoed rasmussen 78 december 15, 2004 forward by women who claim to be committed muslim women, become acknowledged in a wider audience and eventually further learning processes based on reflection, interpretation and arguing. the most salient conquest of the discourse of female islamists is the adaptation of modern education to islam; if their interpretation of the muslim woman is acknowledged, women need not choose between commitment to their religion and involvement with modern education. notes 1 other modes of objectification are: science, or "modes of inquiry which try to give themselves the status of sciences"; and what foucault has called "dividing practices", i.e. social categorizing of e.g. criminals and the insane (1983: 208). 2 the novel is part of the data for the ph.d. thesis den muslimske kvinde genfortalt. nye narrativer i kønsdebatten i 1990´ernes cairo, (retelling the muslim woman: new narratives in the gender debate in the 1990s cairo ), rasmussen 1999. the data also included other publications and interviews with committed female islamists contributing to a distinct discourse dealing with a range of societal issues from point of view of female islamists. 3 all extracts from yunis 1993 are in my translation. references al-`arabi, shahrazad (1989): al-bu`d al-siyasi lil-higab, the political dimension of the higab. el-zahra´ lil-`alam al-`arabi, cairo. badran, margot & cooke, miriam (1990): opening the gates: a century of arab feminist writing. virago press, london. eickelman, dale & piscatori, james (1996): muslim politics. princeton university press, princeton, new jersey. foucault, michel (1985): the use of pleasure. the history of sexuality vol. 2. vintage books, new york. foucault, michel (1986): the care of the self. the history of sexuality vol. 3. penguin books, london. foucault, michel (1983): 'the subject and power', in dreyfus & rabinow (eds.): michel foucault. beyond structuralism and hermeneutics. the university of chicago press, chicago. malti-douglas, fadwa (1996): a woman and her sufis. ccas occasional paper, georgetown university, washington. mcnay, lois (1992): foucault and feminism: power, gender and the self. polity press, cambridge. higab and the education of the self current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 79 rasmussen, lene kofoed (1999): den muslimske kvinde genfortalt. nye narrativer i 1990´ernes kønsdebat i cairo. unpublished ph.d. thesis. university of copenhagen. stowasser, barbara f. (1987): 'religious ideology, women, and the family: the islamic paradigm'. in stowasser (ed.), the islamic impulse. ccas, georgetown university, washington, dc. yunis, mona (1993): vagh bala makyadj, a face without make-up. dar el-tauzi`a wa alnashar al-islamiyya, cairo. microsoft word 04_cice_fall2006_mosselson_yhl.doc © 2006 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 9(1) 20 roots & routes: a re-imagining of refugee identity constructions and the implications for schooling jacqueline mosselson, ph.d. center for international education university of massachusetts amherst abstract the ways in which refugees are assumed to adapt to united states society have serious consequences on their enjoyment and fulfillment in their schooling experiences. this is further compounded by the incorporation of refugees under a more general umbrella of "immigrant" studies. here, excerpts are shared from an experiential study of fifteen adolescent bosnian female refugees in new york city schools to articulate an alternative identity paradigm, roots & routes, which captures the ways in which refugees consciously balance their ethnic and new national identities in understanding themselves, their lives, and how they represent themselves to others. this paradigm enables a more holistic view of refugee experiences in schools. it allows one to see the individual experiences of refugees who are often high academic achievers and assumed by their teachers to be "adapted" while actually still reporting relatively high rates of isolation. introduction scholars and practitioners in the field of comparative and international education, especially in the united states, have recently turned their attention towards the extent to which immigrants and their schools and families need to adapt to or accommodate each other's needs. in this article, i posit that before we can address this issue, we need to question assumptions of "adaptation," "accommodation" and especially "assimilation" to view the processes at work for the students in question. further, i problematize the use of the term "immigrant" as an umbrella term that includes refugees and sometimes even non-immigrant minority groups. i discuss these points through an analysis of data collected in a qualitative study of the experiences of relocation and schooling of fifteen female adolescents from bosnia in new york city. ultimately, i argue for a re-imagined paradigm of identity constructions in exile that breaks from the linear and sequential paradigms of traditional psychology towards recognizing individual growth and experiences. i then delve into the implications of this new paradigm in a study of refugee academic achievement and behaviors in the classroom, discussing my notion of masks of achievement. background despite an influx of refugees into the united states during the last few decades, there has not been a parallel growth in the study of refugees in the u.s. (ahearn & athey, 1991), with most studies remaining under the rubric of "immigrant" studies. ethnic studies of refugees overlook developmental processes and subjective experiences, while psychological approaches neglect cultural issues in identity formations. refugees are a product of conflicts in international, roots & routes: a re-imagining of refugee identity constructions and the implications for schooling 21 december 7, 2006 national, and regional politics, and the reception of refugees in host countries is also influenced by international, national, and regional politics. both refugees and immigrants have similar experiences; all newcomer children are in direct confrontation with the language and culture of the new land and must learn to balance or reconcile previously held beliefs and values with the norms of their new societies (kaprielian-churchill & churchill, 1994). there remains a fundamental difference between the situations of immigrants and refugees. immigrants exercise a measure of control over their futures as they prepare and plan for emigration. refugees, in contrast, are compelled to leave their home and homeland usually by force and often on short notice. they have little choice about where they go and typically never have the possibility to return home. they often find themselves without a state, without citizenship, without nationality, and without a home. this basic absence of a real freedom of choice and of movement is a fundamental cause of their powerlessness (ogbu, 1991), and a source of anguish. it is within this context of exile that their experiences and needs can be understood (kaprielianchurchill & churchill, 1994; portes & rumbaut, 1996). studies comparing refugee and immigrant achievement rates consistently show higher academic success among refugees than among immigrants (suárez-orozco, 1989; loescher, 1993; kaprielian-churchill & churchill, 1994; jones & rutter, 1998). this suggests that the reason behind flight to the u.s. impacts the people involved in at least one area, that of education, and thus contexts of exit seem to play a role in the transition of refugees and immigrants to their life trajectories in their new homes. this illustrates the vitality of studying refugees as a group distinct from immigrant groups (see portes & rumbaut, 2001) and from minority groups (see gibson, 1988). it is clear that the identity construction of refugees is closely linked to coping mechanisms utilized in response to their refugee situations. furthermore, their status as a group who lived through a war situation and whose country has been dramatically changed by war deeply affects their identity formation. identity acts as a rooting point from which individuals make decisions (elliott, kratochwill & cook, 2000). given the centrality of identity and the centrality of refugeeness on identity, it is evident how greatly refugees differ from immigrant and nonimmigrant minority groups. adolescent refugee students are most at risk with respect to school performance and general well-being, whether they are considered within the refugee group separately or within the secondary school population as a whole. at a time when they are undergoing the physical, emotional, and sexual changes of adolescence (blos, 1967) and also trying to deal with the trauma of their young lives, they must adjust to a new country, with different language and behavioral patterns, and they must make decisions and take steps toward career goals. methodology in 2001, i conducted an experiential study of how female adolescent refugees from bosnia described and understood their resettlement experiences (leedy & ormrod, 2005). in semistructured interviews with fifteen refugees between the ages of 15 and 24 who attended school in the new york city area, the themes of identity construction and schooling experiences were explored. each interview lasted between 2.5 and 5 hours and was participant-driven, which, while there was a specific list of topics that needed to be covered, looked more like an informal conversation than an interview. in addition, i interviewed ten members of the bosnian refugee community in order to triangulate and contextualize the core participants' self-narratives, although it is the data from the teenage refugees that is presented here. all refugees were jacqueline mosselson current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 22 contacted using personal contacts and the chain effect, whereby those in the community know others who are information-rich. the personal nature of the selection process helped increase trust between the researcher and the interviewees, and confidentiality was guaranteed for all participants. pseudonyms were chosen together and are used exclusively in transcripts and reporting. the interviews were coded and analyzed for specific themes and interpreted based on readings of developmental psychology and expectations of refugee schooling experiences. the research was delimited by choices made in target population and selection process. while these factors contributed to flattening differences amongst a typically extremely heterogeneous population, they also posed potential limitations to the generalizability of the findings. thus, it is with caution that one transfers these findings to another population. however, the participant-focused research and analysis process puts the refugee voices at the center of the research and serves as a starting point for understanding the nuances of the resettlement experience from the perspectives of the refugees themselves. roots & routes: an alternative paradigm for refugee identity constructions and its implications for educators this study uses the interpretive frameworks of critical psychology and cultural studies to argue, based on my findings, that the identity constructions of refugees can be better understood in terms of their attitudes to their country of origin and their diasporic community in the u.s., rather than in terms of their relationships with hegemonic u.s. society. developmental psychological paradigms frame identity development in terms of a linear sequence of stages, with a set goal being an assumed successful assimilation or adaptation measured by attitudes towards and relationship with the mainstream culture (broughton, 1987). these theories do not account for the ways in which individuals depart from such stage theories and fail to deal with the diverse forms of coping mechanisms, assimilative and adaptive responses that occur. this research exposes a gap between identity development paradigms and the actual experiences of the refugees. in this current era of increased cultural hybridization (appadurai, 1996), refugees may be more concerned with issues of their own personal cultural hybridity as they navigate their new understandings of nationality and identity, which are reflective of their individual experiences and aspirations, and less concerned with issues of adaptation or assimilation to u.s. cultural norms. my work articulates an alternative paradigm, a coupling of the refugee's roots & routes, which captures the ways in which refugees consciously balance their ethnic and new national identities in understanding themselves, their lives, and how they represent themselves to others. this emergent paradigm illustrates a re-imagining of the ways in which refugees' identities are responsive to the unique situations of each refugee's life. i expand on gilroy's (1991a) work on origins and orientation to form this new hypothesis. gilroy makes important departures from established identity theories by suggesting immigrant and minority identity is characterized by past ethnic experiences and future ethnic expectations. i suggest that, for refugees, because of the added component of their experiences of, and responses to, war trauma, identity can be better characterized by their descriptions of where they came from (roots) since the country of their youth no longer exists as they knew it, and their responses to their ethnic diasporic communities as epitomizing their future directions (routes). further, it became clear that each individual's identity changed over space and time, in response to past and current events and future aspirations; in other words, their identities remained fluid. viewing refugee self-understanding in this manner allows for a move away from reliance on roots & routes: a re-imagining of refugee identity constructions and the implications for schooling 23 december 7, 2006 the linear and sequential paradigms that posit identity development as movement through specific stages towards a goal of assimilation or "identity resolution." such paradigms gauge the developmental progress of the refugees in comparison to each other, rather than in terms of their individual experiences and place them perpetually in a peripheral relationship to the larger society. the more holistic approach offered by the roots & routes paradigm allows one to see more processes at work as illustrated in the final section of this paper. the roots & routes couplets privilege the individual experiences of the refugees in understanding their adaptive processes to the flight and resettlement phenomena. this paradigm is based on a notion of couplets. each couplet represents an orientation which i claim most appropriately illustrates the way the refugee constructs her identity in order to balance her past experiences (her roots) and her future aspirations (her routes). the couplets which best describe the responses of the fifteen refugees in my research population are: multicultural & transient; nostalgic & loyalist; nonchalant & pragmatic. based on the self-narratives of the refugees, i found that both their attitudes towards their countries of origin and towards the ethnic enclaves catalyzed their self-understandings and the ways in which they viewed their future--that they would eventually return home (nostalgic), that they neither plan on returning home nor remaining in the u.s. (multicultural), or that they may return home but may stay in the u.s. (nonchalant). these attitudes were coupled with views regarding the diasporic community. the nostalgic refugees separate themselves from the ethnic enclave, talking derisively about futile attempts to create a mini-country here; they prefer to limit their friendships, to remain loyal to friends at home or from home who are here and also plan on returning to their country of origin. the multicultural refugees reject the ethnic enclave for similar reasons but have the added dimension of fearing close ties with any group. they shun the community and find solace in the idea of transience, that they can be friends with people from many different backgrounds. they make the connection that if they were to find themselves in a state of flux again, they would have a group of friends anywhere in the world within a short time frame. the refugees who are nonchalant about returning home displayed an indifference to the diasporic community. they were ambivalent about their need for friends from the same place; yet they recognized the practical implications of being involved in the community but were content and comfortable with any friends that they made at school. thus, it became clear that a coupling of the spheres was appropriate and captured the ways in which refugees in my population constructed their identities: table one: summary of the roots & routes couplets rooting routing multicultural: value the possibility of being able to live anywhere in the world since the country of their youth no longer exists. transient: prefer to distance themselves from the diaspora and the majority, enjoying relationships with other internationals, maintaining an eye on further international living. jacqueline mosselson current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 24 nostalgic: remain focused on returning to their country of origin and are only here for the purposes of their education. loyalist: distance themselves from the diaspora and prefer to keep their relationships with those they knew at home, or those who are in a similar situation to themselves, expecting to return home in the near future. nonchalant: life is here; they entertain the possibility of returning home but state they probably prefer to stay here. pragmatic: neither seek out nor reject diaspora as friendships but live in its milieu and appreciate the practical assistance the community offers them. this identity construction also acts as a coping mechanism for each of the refugees, again reflective of the individual experiences that are behind the couplets. the refugees in the multicultural and transient paradigm find solace in the idea that should they face a situation of uncertainty and flight again, they know they will be able to manage and be happy--"i know now that i will be happy no matter what happens to me" (alina, 18). refugees in the nostalgic and loyalist paradigm manage their war trauma and their relative guilt at taking advantage of opportunities here that are not available in bosnia by keeping a strong focus on returning home, working hard in the meantime so that they can go back. further, they strictly maintain friendships with bosnians in similar positions. the refugees in the nonchalant and pragmatic paradigm are able to rely on the bosnian community for assistance when needed, and take comfort from that fact. each looks to her own attitudes to bosnia and to the bosnian community as a base from which to define her own identity. the two parts of each couplet represent the ways in which the refugees understand themselves. the multicultural and transient refugees explain their adaptation in terms of their inability to return to bosnia and their inability to bond with other bosnians in new york city; they defined themselves first in these terms, and then explained how much they value being friends with "foreigners only" (nives, 16), and the need to feel as if they are "just passing through" (nataša, 24). the refugees in the nostalgic and loyalist paradigm also defined themselves through this dual referencing: first, by defining themselves fully through the temporary nature of their stay in the united states; second, by aligning themselves with a life in bosnia. this naturally leads to a distancing from the bosnian community. from this perspective (temporary purpose of being here and rejection of the ethnic enclave), the refugees explained their aspirations to return home and their determination to maintain their childhood friendships and befriend only bosnians in similar situations. the refugees in the nonchalant and pragmatic group similarly understand their identities through orientations to the bosnian enclave. they characterize their attitudes to bosnia as being similar to attitudes toward a summer home--"it's fun, but it's not real life" (denisa, 18). additionally, they discuss their practical adjustment in terms of assistance from the bosnian enclave. from this anchoring, they discussed their lives and their adaptation. thus, all the refugees defined themselves from within the frameworks of bosnia and the bosnian community. roots & routes: a re-imagining of refugee identity constructions and the implications for schooling 25 december 7, 2006 the differences between the identity constructions therefore epitomize the roots & routes of the refugees. they use their attitudes toward bosnia and the bosnian enclave to anchor their identities and to orient themselves toward where they are going. the specific roots & routes are thus interrelated and are indicative of past experiences and the individual's current situation, and both contribute to the refugee's future expectations. for example, those in the multicultural and transient couplet all experienced the loss of at least one close family member and the disruption of family life as a result, while the nostalgic and loyalist refugees all had intact families remaining at home. the nonchalant and pragmatic refugees traveled to new york with their most significant caregiver, with secondary family members remaining behind. it is important to note that the constructs remain fluid, and there is some overlap between each. for example, all the refugees in this study are pragmatic in their approach to benefiting from being in the united states. they recognize that opportunities exist here in terms of schools that do not exist in bosnia and work to ensure that they can take full advantage of these opportunities. further, there is overlap in how the multicultural & transient refugees and those in the nostalgic & loyalist couplets discuss their attitudes to the bosnian community--all assume that the bosnians in astoria are unhappy because they are trying to create a "little bosnia" in new york city. the multicultural & transient and the nonchalant & pragmatic couplets also overlap in how the refugees describe their attitudes to new york city--both state that they are only here because of circumstances, and both are trying to maximize the opportunities that their circumstances have presented to them. however, the reasoning behind each of these attitudes is somewhat different (e.g., in the former example, the multicultural & transient refugees describe rejecting the bosnian community because it stirs painful memories, whereas the nostalgic & loyalist refugees describe rejecting the community because they are going to return to bosnia and not stay in the u.s.). therefore, the various constructions are sound in acting as coping mechanisms through which the refugees understand their identities relative to each other. yet, the constructions are neither static nor deterministic in their bent. should the circumstances for each of the refugees change, their identities may undergo a similar shift. refugees and education building upon my individualized framework of roots & routes and borrowing from gilligan et al.'s (1990) research on academically successful adolescent girls, i also worked with the refugees in this study to better understand their decisions and attitudes towards their schoolwork. the roots & routes couplets move away from stepwise developmental patterns that position the refugee in relational opposition to each other in terms of gauging their emotional well-being. the roots & routes framework allowed for a more individualized focus that could help educators better understand the refugees in their classrooms. i thus operationalized these identity patterns by placing them in terms of the school place and understanding the attitudes and approaches of refugees in terms of their education. this led to my secondary hypothesis of masks of achievement (mosselson, 2006, 2007), which echoes gilligan et al.'s (1990) findings that high academic achievement can often mask depression and adjustment difficulties among academically successful adolescent girls. for refugees, the masks of achievement may serve not only to hide depression, post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd), loneliness, and so on, but may also serve as a way for the refugees to connect with their classmates and the school professionals with whom they work. the roots & routes perspective assists us to move beyond psychological categorization. it allows us to look at jacqueline mosselson current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 26 the individual level and to engage in the interpretive frameworks of critical psychology and cultural studies as well as existing literature in comparative education, to see how the reimagined identity constructions fit in with the educational aspirations of the refugees, what the implications of their attitudes are, and thus how schools and teachers can better meet the needs of refugee populations. research has shown consistently that refugees, when not held back by school authorities, are often among the highest academic achievers in their host countries, a finding that has been born out over time and seen in australia, the u.k., sweden, the u.s., and canada, among other places (kaprielian-churchill & churchill, 1994; jones & rutter, 1998). education plays a vital role in the identity construction and coping of refugee adolescents (jones & rutter, 1998). education has a dual function for many of the refugees in this study. first, it provides a sense of control over their transience; second, the refugees can transform themselves from the "foreigner" to the "a student." refugees have experienced life as fragile and tenuous. they have learned that material assets and status can be lost. one refugee, ines (age 19), told me that her family was financially privileged and well respected in mostar before the war. upon her arrival in new york, she had to adjust to "being the same as everyone else and getting furniture from the street." her status and her relative wealth were irrelevant now. she states "the only thing that matters is education--if my dad could show people a harvard degree instead of pictures of our old house, it would be better. they could use that, but his memories and stories are useless." the loss she has experienced informs her current attitude towards her schooling, and she is resolved to gain access to the best education she can. the centrality of education and its transportability was a theme repeated by each refugee. in every interview, both with the core and secondary populations, the importance and transportability of education was stressed to me. the research participants constantly referred to how "education goes with you wherever you go. it's possible nothing else does" (fadila, 22). education restores in the refugees a sense of hope in their futures, a hope which they previously may have doubted. education also allows the refugees space to retreat from the "exotic" or "foreigner" label. all the refugees complained of being seen as different and felt their teachers' anxiety and apprehension toward them during their first few months in the united states. for those who were initially resettled outside new york city, these feelings were all the more acute (n = 4); however, all core participants reported unease from their classmates and school personnel during their immediate transition. as the refugees studied hard and excelled academically, the apprehension dissipated and the attitudes of their teachers underwent a palpable change for the better (mosselson, 2007). as alina (age 18) explained: after six months they started saying, 'oh you should think of college, you're smart,' and 'how can i help you?' and i wanted to scream, but i needed your help then, and now i figured it out all by myself… i was the same person all the time, but they didn't know, because all they saw was my a grades. fadila (age 22), like all the refugees in this research, had similar sentiments. she, however, had a simple explanation: before i proved myself in high school, they didn't know what to do with me. i was a refugee. they were afraid of what i'd seen, and they didn't know how to handle a kid who had seen the worst of life when they couldn't imagine it. but roots & routes: a re-imagining of refugee identity constructions and the implications for schooling 27 december 7, 2006 then, when i started getting a's, they were so happy, because now they could talk to me. school success also acts as a convenience for relating to others. as a cultural institution, school success signals success in america (popkewitz, 1998). as a technology of power (foucault, 1977), school plays a central role in cultural formation and understanding. by being successful in this arena, refugees are indicating compliance with american culture and values that can be easily understood by those working with them. further, school success categorizes the refugees in easily identifiable ways, which makes them accessible to their classmates and teachers. ultimately, refugees are then given the space from which to remain exotic or to understand their shifting identities without being burdened by others' misunderstandings or prejudices. thus, education acts as a vehicle through which refugees can gain control over their situations on two levels--by creating both a sense of a more secure future and a more secure present. conclusion: implications for the schoolplace a roots & routes perspective on understanding the concerns and processes in play for adolescent refugees helps educators to see more fully the refugees in terms of their individual experiences rather than in terms of expectations of adaptation to the mainstream. this in turn can, i believe, help educators learn how to better understand the refugees in their classrooms. getting high grades is often a lonely experience, and the refugees in my study confirm this. further, teachers in new york city have commented informally to me that refugees do well in the u.s. and that "they're just so grateful to be here" that i "don't need to worry about doing research on them at all," with one teacher even telling me, "they're all fine, they're a tough bunch" (mosselson, 2006). however, clinical studies have documented that despair, depression, ptsd, and even suicide are relatively high among refugee teens, despite their educational achievements (rutter, 1994). furthermore, the notion that school success indicates adaptation or even assimilation is superficial at best. by reformulating refugee identity construction in terms of their past experiences and future aspirations, combined with an understanding of their school performance in terms of how it interacts with their identity concerns, teachers can better work with refugee students to see beyond the masks of achievement and encourage their goals and understand their emotional needs, rather than relying on their grades to assess their emotional well-being. refugees often spoke to me about their ideas for ways in which to make their classroom experiences less painful. these ideas echoed many aspects of critical pedagogy, for example, including student voices in the curriculum. further, many of the refugee students wanted to find a way to be student advocates, discussing ways in which they could become speakers at other local schools to share with teachers and students their refugee and resettlement experiences. refugee students also discussed ideas of working collaboratively to provide peer support in the form of weekly meetings to work on issues of mutual concerns (e.g., peer counseling, homework help, and other group projects), and some students had ideas about action projects which were larger in scope. many of the refugee students pointed out that they felt frustrated about being silenced in their classrooms; they felt that many of their classmates could be interested in their experiences and that they could contribute. some of them talked about how their mathematics education in their country of origin could help explain concepts to other students who were struggling, but they felt discouraged in bringing it up--one student was even told by her teacher that she should not encourage the use of "shortcuts." another jacqueline mosselson current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 28 student told me, laughingly, that they had to watch a movie on living through war so that the students would understand the impact of war, but no-one ever asked her to talk about it. all the refugees talked about how their ethnicities were not valued and could not understand this as they see it as a form of "cultural capital" from which everyone could benefit. to conclude, my research privileges the local or individual level as the unit of analysis over the more general or macro level. in working on identity construction among refugees, the roots & routes paradigm makes an important departure from linear and sequential, goal-oriented paradigms of development in favor of the individual level and more appropriately captures the experiences of the refugees themselves. applying this micro-level analysis to the school place highlights individual experiences and brings awareness of masks of achievement that may more accurately assess the processes at play for refugees who are often high academic achievers but may be suffering various forms of trauma due to war, flight, and relocation. this approach can better address the needs of students, and inform teachers as it provides more fluid ways to work with individuals and moves away from hegemonic approaches towards identity development and education. in sum, the roots & routes paradigm enables a more holistic view of refugees in the school place and allows educators to see the individual experiences of refugees who are often academically successful and assumed by their teachers to be "fine" while actually still reporting relatively high rates of isolation. references ahearn, f. l., jr. & athey, j. l. 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(1987). becoming somebody: central american immigrants in us inner-city schools. anthropology and education quarterly, 18, 287-299. quezada morales, 2022a current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 chile's digital learning strategy during the covid-19 pandemic: connecting policy with social realities? romina quezada morales teachers college, columbia university figure 1 students at colegio reina norte in santiago in 2021, after the school reopened source: mineduc (cc by nc nd 2.0 license, no changes made). chile on the wake of the pandemic chile is located in south america. it shares borders with argentina, peru, bolivia, and the pacific ocean. its territory has an extension of 469,820 square miles, in addition to 776,874 square miles in the antarctic. it has 16 administrative regions in the mainland, and its capital is santiago. in 2017, chile's population was 17,574,003 people, out of whom 17.6% were between 5 and 17 years old, while 12.4% identified as indigenous (sistema de información de tendencias educativas de américa latina [siteal], 2019). © 2022, quezada morales. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 136-150. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en chile's digital learning strategy during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 137 the 2018-2022 president of chile is the center-right, sebastian pinera, who previously served as president from 2010 to 2014. piñera’s second term was being harshly criticized domestically before the pandemic, to the point that, on october 18, 2018, the chilean people protested against santiago's increased subway fares, which originated a series of other claims, including education (plazas, 2019). in santiago, teachers suspended classes the monday following the beginning of the protests. mario aguilar, president of the teachers union, supported the initiative by inviting teachers to fight in a non-violent way (meléndez tormen, 2019). this wave of social unrest was called chile’s awakening. then, the summer vacation period started. it seemed like the 2020 school year would start normally but, only after about eight weeks into it, on march 15, 2020, schools had to close due to the covid-19 pandemic (economic commission for latin america and the caribbean [eclac], 2020). synchronously, in february 2020, former minister of education marcella cubillos resigned after being criticized for her performance, but claimed that she wanted to participate in the movement for a constitutional plebiscite (castillo, 2020; el país, 2020). as a result, raúl figueroa took over the country’s education policy during covid-19 at the pinnacle of the corresponding social and educational crisis. the chilean education system in context chile’s education system is composed of four main levels: pre-school for children from 0 to 6 years of age, basic education from 6 to 13 years of age, high school from 14 to 18 years of age, and higher education (siteal, 2019). education is compulsory from the last year of pre-school to the last year of high school, a total of 13 grades. special education is integrated either in school establishments or special school establishments. adult education is provided for compulsory levels. at the beginning of 2020, there were about 3.6 million students enrolled in the national education system (crespo, 2020). the higher education system is divided into the technical-professional and the university branches. while all high school graduates can access the technical-professional branch (usually two years), those who aspire for public, and some private universities must take the prueba de selección universitaria (university selection test). the university branch grants undergraduate (4 to 5 years) and graduate degrees. during the chilean dictatorship (1973-1990), neoliberalism heavily influenced the education system. as explained by ávalos and bellei (2019), parents were given the choice of schools for their children, and a system of competitive vouchers was set in place for schools that ensured quality and high achievement. the state supported public schools, which were administered by the state, and subsidized schools, privately managed but incorporated the voucher system; private schools also existed. as the dictatorship came to an end in 1990, chile struggled with erasing inequity while keeping the core features of market-driven schools; the country continues to struggle today – by 2015, only 35% of the student population were enrolled in public schools. because chile’s educational system encouraged schools to select their students based on their families’ socioeconomic status, and families to select their schools based on comparative standardized results, the neoliberal management has resulted in segregation and inequality (ávalos & bellei, 2019). several high school students quickly realized that they were not given the same opportunities for success. in 2006, these high school students organized themselves as the penguin revolution, which sought free, quality education, and the elimination of discriminatory entrance practices (bellei et al., 2018). in 2011, the confederation of chilean students (confech) issued another set of demands centered on the bank loans that they needed to pay for their tuition costs, and which led to unpayable debts after graduation (ávalos & bellei, 2019). teacher protests for improved work quezada morales current issues in comparative education 138 conditions added up to the claims, leading then president bachelet (2014-2018) to issue a set of reforms to ensure social justice (ávalos & bellei, 2019). chile’s neoliberalist education system, seeking to meet the demands of the market by encouraging domestic private management and emphasizing international rankings, has remained in place, but its implementation has alternated along with the country’s presidents (ávalos & bellei, 2019). president bachelet’s (2014-2018) educational reforms aimed at reducing socio-educational segregation by granting more authority to schools and teacher councils through a local network to manage public schools at a larger level than municipalities (ávalos & bellei, 2019; muñoz stuardo & weinstein cayuela, 2019). however, since swearing off, chile’s president sebastián piñera has issued law projects that return to prioritizing subsidized schools. specifically, the admisión justa (fair admission) nationwide project aimed at creating a merit-based system of admissions where parents can choose schools for their children, which reversed bachelet’s main tenets. the unstable educational reforms in chile fed the discontent of the population, eventually contributing to chile’s awakening in late 2018. chile’s digital agenda and online resources during the pandemic in his 2018-2022 presidential program, president piñera (2017) declared that the first priority in education was for children to achieve proficiency in english language and information and communication technology (ict), and the second was to get ready for the digital revolution. the 2013-2020 imagina chile digital agenda, by the undersecretariat of communications (subsecretaría de comunicaciones, 2013), proposed five pillars towards the digital revolution: connectivity and digital inclusion, environment for digital development, education and training, innovation and entrepreneurship, and services and applications. in addition, three national projects have accompanied the digital agenda. in 2009, the program yo elijo mi pc (i choose my pc) was created to reduce the digital gap between 4th through 6th grade students with the highest income and those with the lowest income by granting those with the lowest income a pc of their choice (ministerio de desarrollo social, 2018). a similar program, me conecto para aprender (i connect to learn), aims at granting all 7th graders enrolled in public institutions a computer and internet access for one year (ayuda mineduc, n.d.). finally, in 2018, chile’s ministry of education (mineduc) began implementing the plan nacional de lenguajes digitales (digital language national plan), which focused on providing training to teachers and students from schools that meet the quality standards set by the government, called liceos bicentenario, this with help from the kodea foundation and fundación telefónica chile (siteal, 2019). immediately after the covid-19 pandemic hit the country, chile launched the online platform aprendo en línea (i learn online). the first case of coronavirus in chile was identified on march 3, 2020 (reuters, 2020). on march 18, president piñera called for the implementation of the dynamic quarantine, based on social distancing practices only in the most affected neighborhoods and regions (diario las américas, 2020). due to social distancing, on march 20, 2020, chile announced the planning of aprendo en línea, which contains curricular content for students from all 13 compulsory levels to continue their studies (unesco, 2020). the platform, created by mineduc’s unit of curriculum and evaluation (uce), is of free access and available at https://curriculumnacional.mineduc.cl/. figure 2 shows the initial interface of the platform, and its main page for students a year after the launch of aprendo en línea. chile's digital learning strategy during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 139 figure 2 aprendo en línea´s student interface on may 28, 2020 (in crespo, 2020), showing the initial curriculum priorization, and its equivalent on july, 28, 2021, showing the evolution in priorities according to uce (crespo, 2020), aprendo en línea was designed to create dialog between textbooks and technology. manuals for parents and teachers to understand how the platform worked were also created, and digital versions of the textbooks could be accessed on their corresponding link. at first, the platform was in line with the curriculum, but priority was given to spanish language and math, with other subjects covered to a lesser extent. in addition, each subject was divided by grade. each grade displayed a weekly plan to be used four times a week and indications on when to use the textbooks. each lesson had a corresponding video where a teacher briefly explained the learning content (all videos were linked to youtube). finally, there was an exit ticket, which provided evaluation on the learned concepts. as the platform evolved, the content of each subject increased and became closer to the national curriculum. in 2021, the platform focused on linking textbooks with videos, activities, and other online resources, in a more consistent way across grades and subjects. emphasis on spanish and math quezada morales current issues in comparative education 140 remained through a special thumbnail at the bottom of the main page that directed to content only in those subjects. resources from other platforms or in other formats complemented aprendo en línea. at first, for those places without internet connection, mineduc made available tv educachile, an open signal that reached up to 90% of the territory, including the easter and juan fernández islands (cntv, 2020; mineduc, 2020 b; prensa presidencia, 2020). at the same time, some lessons in the platform had links to aprendo en casa (i learn at home), a series of printable activities designed to reinforce learning and help parents guide the process at home (crespo, 2020). for rural areas, physical aprendo sin parar (i learn nonstop) booklets were distributed among 380,000 students in 3,800 schools in rural areas (mineduc, 2020 c). third, mineduc offered google classroom for educational establishments at all levels, from pre-school to higher education. school directors could request access at www.comunidadescolar.cl. by the end of may, 2020, more than 900 superintendents in 4,000 educational establishments had g suite accounts (crespo, 2020; mineduc, 2020). in addition, the digital literacy platform gathered more than 400,000 teacher-members who created reading clubs with their students. its goal is to become the largest reading platform in the country (crespo, 2020), and it can be accessed at https://planlectordigital.mineduc.cl/#!/. in 2021, the platform had already incorporated the aprendo tv block that tv educachile initially broadcasted (mineduc, 2020 d), as well as aprendo fm. figure 3 illustrates how some aprendo tv blocks and textbooks were displayed in 2021. figure 3 aprendo en línea´s upper half of the portal for 2nd grade, reading and comprehension unit, showing digitalized textbooks, aprendo tv blocks, and suggested reading titles aprendo en línea gathers previous efforts and the future vision of chile’s digital agenda. prior to the pandemic, mineduc had started aprendo+, a portal which supports the ministry's current priorities, such as fostering the knowledge on indigenous peoples; it can be reached at www.yoaprendomas.cl. another initiative previous to the platform is educarchile, available at www.curriculumnacional.cl. when comparing contents, aprendo en línea built on those resources for its content, eventually concentrating most chile's digital learning strategy during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 141 of these websites and platforms. a list of the resources mentioned in this section can be found in appendix a. digital learning measures: narrowing gaps in access to quality education? the change from in-person to at-home schooling and the rapid digitalization of the education system impacted the access to education and the quality of the outcomes during the pandemic; however, the extent to which digital measures helped school administrators to face that impact is difficult to understand without hearing from them directly. to give those who had to adapt to digital learning some voice, this report discusses the experiences of the following: 1) one national education policy expert, 2) one learning resources coordinator in a public school in northern chile, and 3) one technology coordinator in an elite private school in santiago during the process of adapting to digital learning. the goal of these semi-structured interviews was to explore the different digital learning strategies among systems and regions at the school-home level, and then compare them with the national vision and the information that official documents and aprendo en línea provide. the interviews took place between november, 2020 and february, 2021, between two academic years. the findings of the exploration indicate that school administrations, but also the type and position of schools within the education system, determined which digital strategy schools adopted and how successful it was. they further revealed the social disparities that prevailed by the lack of digital tools, as well as new socio-educational challenges. all in all, current chilean officers stood out as the ones accountable for addressing the digital divide, which in this case can be understood as those who learned how to use digital tools (us national telecommunications and information administration (ntia), 1999), and those who are learning to create them. the main takeaways from the interviews are presented below. accessing digital learning: the role of school administration and the limits of state administration the evidence hinted at school administrations being key to ensuring the continued provision of education in chile during the pandemic. according to all three interviewees (personal communications, november 13, 2020; december 28, 2020; february 4, 2021), engaged instructors and intuitive directors made a difference to adapt to digital learning and meet demands. school principals in the interviewees’ public and private schools organized training workshops for their teachers, although private schools responded faster than public schools. in the words of the private school interviewee (personal communication, february 4, 2021): “we urgently called that same company who had trained us [in education programming] to see if they could help us implement google classroom because nothing was digital…and they helped in record time. the platform was working a month later”. in that way, timely reactions by the interviewees’ school administration greatly contributed to the provision of schooling, even when money or technology were not an issue. fear to see dropouts increase was latent within the public school’s administration, while the private school’s concern was the provision of quality digital education. the interviewee from the public school described how the principal deployed a team of teachers to tutor students who were dropping out, which brought them back to class: “i was assigned three kids who had been missing and one, for example, had dropped out and gone to work, he did not want anything…later, teachers were able to communicate with students, via the telephone and all.” (personal communication, december 28, 2021). meanwhile, the technology coordinator in the private school was in charge of the quezada morales current issues in comparative education 142 technical aspects of education – setting up google classroom, watching over zoom, making sure that all students were accessing the material –, and a coordinator that ensured that the quality of education remained steady. each situation was very different, but schools prioritized digital tools whenever needed according to the profile and context of each institution. directors played a key role in guiding their schools through the pandemic, but the profile of each school often facilitated or delayed the acquisition of technological tools for class. the private school where the technology coordinator works, for instance, could access and readjust funds faster, but faced parents’ demands to keep the same quality education for their children. while these demands posed a challenge to teachers and administrators, school staff were able to find solutions within the school. similarly, as the interviewee from the public school explained (personal communication, december 28, 2020), subsidized schools had to go through their sostenedores1 to obtain funds but, since sostenedores are usually directors or owners in subsidized schools, these could respond more rapidly to financial needs. public schools, however, go through government dependencies called municipalities to make requests. in that way, devices such as projectors and tablets reached schools in northern chile after a protracted period of time. it is thus a probability that the acquisition of technology followed a much faster pace in private schools, faster in subsidized schools, and much slower in public schools. in the public-school interviewee’s own words, “private education, despite being subsidized, is speeding up, and public education is stuck behind due to very serious administrative, bureaucratic issues” (personal communication, december 28, 2020). addressing social vulnerability: prior issues and post-digital challenges socially vulnerable student populations like indigenous youth, those living in remote areas, and students with disabilities were prone to be affected by a digital learning strategy that did not take connectivity issues or special needs into account, but most of them continued to receive an education, at least in urban areas. regarding indigenous students, the teaching of aymara in northern chile, for instance, had been increasing one level per year before the pandemic, for all public schools. in urban areas with a majority of indigenous students, the impact of the pandemic on the aymara population was not greater than that of other populations. although the teaching of aymara could not continue increasing by level as usual, grading aymara became part of the language exams that the ministry of education required from students (personal communication, december 28, 2020). in isolated, remote urban areas like easter island, schools were able to re-open faster due to the low rates in covid-19 cases, so rapa nui students also continued with their learning (personal communication, november 13, 2020). finally, students who receive special education kept up with their studies as well. during the quarantine, chile mandated that all schools wishing to welcome students in their establishments needed to petition for reopening. while many of them submitted petitions, many others found a way around, with teachers going to their students’ homes to teach (personal communication, november 13, 2020). digital learning was harder to implement in rural areas. when schools closed in march, 2020, many rural schools did not have the technological infrastructure to use digital tools (personal communication, november 13, 2020). neither aprendo en casa, aprendo tv nor radio were mentioned by the interviewees. in the few, remote public boarding schools that welcome chile’s most vulnerable youth, education was secondary because students were sent back home during the pandemic and, as such, could not receive their daily school meal: “those students…and are few in number, so nobody pays much attention…when they have managed to connect, one sees them under an umbrella next chile's digital learning strategy during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 143 to the river – the place that has internet connection” (personal communication, november 13, 2020). therefore, not all students or teachers could make use of the digital learning platform, which further increased the gap between urban and rural areas. adapting to the digital world made some students and teachers vulnerable in terms of health and wellbeing. many students were required to sit in front of a computer device as many hours as if they were attending school in-person, which is about 40 hours a week. meanwhile, all teachers had to learn how to use aprendo en línea, zoom, google classroom, or any other requirement from their establishments; school administrators had to be available to parents at all times, and some schools had to dismiss some of their personnel due to school closures. in the case of the public school, the learning resources coordinator noticed that many teachers and students gained weight and declared feeling more stressed (personal communication, december 28, 2020). in this sense, the prolonged use of digital learning was detrimental to school communities, making them vulnerable in their personal lives. in terms of enrollment, the role of parents, and whether they could support their children with their digital academic tasks, are possibly related to lower enrollment rates. those parents whose children attended private schools were oftentimes better equipped to help them study because of their cultural capital, but even they struggled with following up on the education of their offspring. for example, the private school from the interviews provided technology tutorials for parents (personal communication, february 4, 2021), while the public school remained available through whatsapp to address technical or curricular questions (personal communication, december 28, 2020). even so, parents with limited resources did not have internet access at home and had no choice but to pick up printed material from schools and try to teach their children without the proper basic knowledge. as a result, some parents were unable to provide academic support to their children. some parents even revealed to have reading comprehension difficulties. those parents “were exhausted, and there was the difficulty of not understanding […] you begin to realize that illiterate parents begin to surface when they cannot return the questionnaire we sent” (personal communication, november 13, 2020). those socio-economic differences that digital tools unveiled affected enrollment. previous to 2021, about 186,000 individuals ages 5 to 21 were out of the system, but another 39,500 did not enroll in the 2021 academic year (mineduc, 2021). implementing digital learning policies now and beyond the pandemic beyond urban-rural gaps in accessibility, the implementation of digital resources that the government made available to the chilean population was not always the most suitable option to communicate with students. if there was a need to communicate, the public school interviewee noted that teachers in public schools opted for public access communication channels to stream their courses and speak to their students. whatsapp and facebook emerged as the most available and reliable communication channels (personal communication, december 28, 2020). in contrast, the private school used its own resources, such as a google application to teach students in kindergarten and up until 4th grade, and where parents could communicate with teachers (personal communication, february 4, 2021). aprendo en línea remained a complimentary communication tool. in terms of content, aprendo en línea was effective in prioritizing the teaching of certain topics that met minimum learning standards like spanish and math mentioned above, but not the standards of private schools, increasing the impacts of the pandemic on education inequality. according to all three interviewees (personal communications, november 13, 2020; december 28, 2020; february 4, 2021), teachers rarely ever resorted to the platform quezada morales current issues in comparative education 144 for additional material; instead, they continued to create their material, usually adapting their own lesson plans to a digital format. in the public school from the interviews, teachers referred parents to the platform in case they were looking for supplementary material for their children, but they did not use it in class. if parents or teachers made use of the platform, it was to ensure that their children were learning the core points of the normal curriculum (personal communication, december 28, 2020). meanwhile, the interviewee’s private school did not reduce its school hours in order to have students learn as much as they would do in person (personal communication, february 4, 2021), so aprendo en línea, as a resource adapted for learning with reduced hours, could not become the main teaching platform. these results suggest that aprendo en línea worked as a material repository to guide teachers and parents in assisting their children to learn, but it has not become an equalizing tool in narrowing quality gaps in education. figure 4 minister of education raúl figueroa in 2021 visiting a school in valparaíso, where only some students were taking in-person classes source: mineduc (cc by nc nd 2.0 license, no changes made). the reactions of the chilean government in education during the pandemic showed uncertainty in the path schools should follow to include ict learning and programming in their curricula. while the pandemic did push teachers to use emails, zoom, and social media, it has been unable to reassert its plans to teach subjects such as programming and robotics. the private school interviewee mentioned that “there is a very good plan on digital languages. that’s what it’s called […] the issue is that that program’s intended use is during free disposition hours2 […] i think it should be integrated to the national curriculum” (personal communication, february 4, 2021). this quote reflects the position of the national education policy: a strong will to create policies that reduce the digital divide, but a long way to go before they can be effectively implemented. chile's digital learning strategy during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 145 conclusion chile’s dynamic quarantine aimed at keeping communes3 with low covid-19 rates open and active. however, a spurious uprising in cases took over the country in late april, 2020, going from 520 to 888 overnight (t13, 2021), indicating the failure of the virus contention strategy. chile only went below 888 on july 27, 2021, after a few months of a vaccination campaign, with 753 new cases (t13, 2021). in the meantime, the protests from chile’s awakening achieved the national plebiscite in october 2020, where 78% of the population voted for a new constitution and a constituent convention to draft the new document (gobierno de chile, n.d.). as foreseen by the plebiscite and chile’s political climate, on december 19, 2021, left-wing candidate gabriel boric – and a former leader of the student protests in the early 2000s – won the presidential elections (the washington post, 2021). boric's administration’s main task in education will certainly have to address the advantages and disadvantages of the digital learning strategy led by the piñera administration. equality in education is at the center of chile’s demands for the years to come, but the way in which it has been approached during the covid-19 pandemic created new challenges for policymakers. the digital divide may have decreased when understood as the ability to have and use a device, but the most marginalized sectors are not keeping up with the pace at which digital learning is occurring in the country and globally. the urbanrural gap requires immediate solutions. in terms of quality, aprendo en línea offered a set of guidelines to achieve the core components of the national curriculum, but it did not lessen digital knowledge gaps between private schools, and subsidized and public schools. as establishments reopened, mineduc has offered remedial resources, including material on aprendo en línea. still, many students lagged behind, and those who dropped out of the system because of socioeconomic hardships and lack of internet services will still be unable to access those opportunities. more familiarization with vulnerable populations and all school types throughout the country might help policymakers find ways in which to reduce the divide left in use of ict, and to face the ongoing divide in digital programming while the new constitution comes into place. notes [1] sostenedores, which literally translates into sustainers, are physical or moral figures of the chilean school system in charge of schools. they may be school principals or school owners. in the case of public schools, municipalities were in charge of financing funding up until 2020, when mineduc became the direct manager of local public school funds (personal communication, november 13, 2020; december 28, 2020). [2] free disposition hours (horas de libre disposición) are hours within the school schedule were students can take activities or classes that are not part of the mandatory curriculum. [3] similar to neighborhoods. acknowledgements the author would like to thank the school leaders and the policy expert, who kindly accepted to participate in this project, and for their additional feedback and material. thanks as well to those who enabled the author to contact the interviewees, and to those who provided input on the methodology of the reports. may this series of reports be useful to you. last, the author would like to thank cice, the authors and reviewers for their contributions to this special issue's report section, and marcella winter, co-principal investigator of the project. quezada morales current issues in comparative education 146 romina quezada morales is a doctoral candidate in international and comparative education, political science concentration, at teachers college, columbia university. her academic background is a combination of linguistics and international politics. her current research analyzes the participation of indigenous peoples in education, with a focus on latin america. romina has worked for several international institutions, organizations, and diplomatic bodies, focusing on language, culture and education. since 2018, romina has been serving as coordinator of the k-12 outreach program and the americas dialogue on education policy initiative at the institute of latin american studies, columbia university. references ávalos, b. & bellei, c. 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(2021, december 22). la izquierda obtuvo el triunfo en las elecciones de chile. la democracia también ganó. https://www.washingtonpost.com/es/post-opinion/2021/12/22/nuevopresidente-gabriel-boric-elecciones-chile-2021-triunfo-izquierda/ united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization [unesco]. (2020). responding to covid.19: education in latin america and the https://en.unesco.org/fieldoffice/santiago/covid-19-education-alc/response us national telecommunications and information administration. (ntia). 1999. falling through the net: defining the digital divide. a report on the telecommunications and information technology gap in america. national telecommunications and information administration. retrieved july 20, 2021, https://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/ntiahome/fttn99/contents.html image credits figure 1: mineduc (2021, may 25). colegio reina norte 9980. [creative commons by nc nd 2.0 license]. retrieved august 28, 2021, https://www.flickr.com/photos/mineduc/51282298029/in/album72157719483483396/ figure 2: quezada morales, r. (2021). screenshot 1 taken on august 10, 2021, from crespo, d. (2020, may 28). in seminario web no. 5 américa latina: recursos y plataformas para la respuesta educativa [video]. https://en.unesco.org/events/webinar-5latin-america-resources-and-platforms-educational-response-covid-19; screenshot 2 taken on july 28, 2021. [the aprendo en línea platform is under the creative commons 3.0 international license]. https://curriculumnacional.mineduc.cl/ figure 3: quezada morales, r. (2021, july 28). [the aprendo en línea platform is under the creative commons 3.0 international license]. https://curriculumnacional.mineduc.cl/ figure 4: mineduc (2021, june 30). valparaíso, instituto del puerto 1. [creative commons by nc nd 2.0 license]. retrieved august 28, 2021, https://www.flickr.com/photos/mineduc/51282592905/in/album72157719483483396/ chile's digital learning strategy during the covid-19 pandemic current issues in comparative education 149 appendix a resources made available by mineduc and used during the covid-19 pandemic as of december, 2021 name of resource type of resource availability aprendo en línea online platform, initially prioritizing language and mathematics, but eventually comprehensive https://curriculumnacional.mineduc.cl/ aprendo+ website (existing prior to the pandemic) https://www.yoaprendomas.cl/614/w3channel.html educar chile website (existing prior to the pandemic) https://www.educarchile.cl/ plan de lectoescritura digital (pled) online platform offering reading syllabi from schools around chile https://planlectordigital.mineduc.cl/#!/ aprendo en casa printable activity booklets that reinforced educational practices at home available on aprendo en línea at the beginning of the pandemic aprendo sin parar booklets that covered prioritized areas during the covid-19 pandemic, in printed form, specifically distributed to rural areas in print for rural areas quezada morales current issues in comparative education 150 aprendo tv video blocks that reinforce educational practices at first, available through different tv services and on chile’s national television’s website at https://www.tvn.cl/ (mineduc 2020 e); available on aprendo en línea at https://curriculumnacional.mineduc.cl/ aprendo fm radio capsules that reinforce educational practices available since late 2020 on spotify´s aprendo fm channel, 122 radio stations throughout the country, and on aprendo en línea at https://curriculumnacional.mineduc.cl/ (mineduc, 2020 f) © 2003 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 40 december 17, 2003 computers in ghanaian secondary schools: where does equality come in? obed mfum-mensah ontario institute for studies in education university of toronto abstract the application of information and communication technology (ict) in schools is perceived as a means for transforming teaching and learning processes, and has thus been met with significant enthusiasm. the developing world also perceives ict as a tool that will promote socioeconomic, political, and sustainable development. this perception underpins the introduction of computers and the internet in some secondary schools in ghana. this paper draws on the concept of "educational equality" and the history of education in ghana to argue that the introduction of ict in ghanaian schools is likely to lead to a "digital divide" between the urban schools (haves) and rural schools (have nots) and will thus exacerbate the existing disparities in ghana's educational system. furthermore, the lack of an adequate policy framework for implementing ict in ghanaian secondary schools will likely perpetuate this inequity. introduction education policymakers in ghana have hailed the introduction of information and communication technology (ict) in ghanaian secondary schools as a remarkable step that will contribute to knowledge production, communication and information sharing among students and teachers in the school system. this perception stems from assertions in the literature about the benefits that come with ict literacy in schools (mucherah, 2003; ets, 2001; hakkarainen et al, 2000). hakkarainen et al (2000) points out that ict is a transformative tool and its full integration into the school systems is necessary to prepare students for the information society they will inherit. contrary to the promising notion of ict as a means of knowledge production, numerous scholars have highlighted the need to address the numerous problems that the introduction of ict will bring. these issues include: a lack of adequate planning for implementation of ict (mooij and smeets, 2001); inadequate teacher training (webb, 2002); inequalities in ict distribution (nachmias, mioduser, & shemla, 2001; sutherland-smith, snyder & angus, 2003); lack of information regarding the distribution of ict; low levels of literacy in general, and lack of relevant content and technology applications to meet the needs of diverse societies (ets, 2001; hakkarainen et al, 2000). the literature identifies the tendency for ict to lead to a digital divide between urban and rural schools (hartviksen & akselsen, 2002). a review of the available literature reveals significant inequity in the implementation of ict in ghanaian secondary schools. the literature (dankwa, 1997; parthemore, 2003) reveals that ict provision to secondary schools is skewed in favor of schools categorized as premier schools and schools in urban areas. unfortunately, this is not a new trend. since the introduction of formal schooling in ghana, educational resources have been unequally distributed in the school system (folson, 1995; foster, 1965; graham, 1971; and mcwilliam and kwamena-poh). at this juncture, it is critical that policy makers obed mfum-mensah current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 41 ensure that ict does not become another tool for perpetuating educational inequalities in ghana's school system. the term ict is used in ghana to describe both the study of and the use of computers and other technologies that are used for communication and information systems (see national ict policy and plan development committee). in this article, i will utilize the following definition of ict: "digital technology, communications tools, and/or networks that help to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information in order to function in a knowledge society" (ets, 2001, p. 1). i will utilize farrell's (1999) "educational equality" model, particularly the concepts of "equality of access" and "equality of output," to explore ict provision and implementation in ghanaian secondary schools. the article employs these concepts and the history of ghanaian educational development to examine how ict is likely to perpetuate the existing inequalities in ghana's educational system. "digital divide" is defined as the absence of equity in ict implementation (ets, 2001, p.1) and is likely to widen the knowledge gap that exists between the urban (core) and rural (periphery) communities highlighted in the development literature (farrell, 1999; samoff, 1999). the discussions in this article are based on review of literature on ict, , review of ngo documents involved in implementing ict in ghana, my experience as a teacher and administrator in a ghanaian secondary school, and informal conversations with educators including, headmasters and teachers in the upper east, eastern, greater accra and central regions of ghana. accessing detailed information from the ghana education service and the ministry of education was a methodological dilemma in the study due to lack of transparency.this paper presents a contextualized review of the phenomenon and considers the critical need for a policy framework to serve as the basis for equitable implementation of ict throughout secondary schools in ghana. educational inequality and "technology for all" joseph farrell (1999) points out that schooling is a long-term process in which children may be sorted at many different points and in several different ways. thus schooling operates as a selective social screening mechanism. it enhances the status of some children, providing them with an opportunity for upward social or economic mobility. it also ratifies the status of others, reinforcing the propensity for children born poor to remain poor as adults, and for children born into well-off families to become well-off adults. studies on postcolonial education in sub-saharan africa reveal that schooling has been a mechanism for perpetuating these/such social inequalities (farrell, 1999; mfummensah, 2003; samoff, 1999). according to farrell the term "equality" refers to equitable service provision as well as the actual patterns in which something (e.g. income or year of schooling) is distributed among members of a particular group. when the concept is applied to public policy, "equality" has to do more specifically with non-discrimination (samoff, 1999). farrell conceptualizes "educational equality" as encompassing four dimensions including equalities of access, survival, output and outcome. he (defines equality of access as the probabilities of children from different social groups getting into particular levels or portions of the school system. he applies this concept to the inequalities in the distribution of educational resources. he posits that most children residing in remote computers in ghanaian secondary schools: where does equality come in? 42 december 17, 2003 rural areas, those in urban slums, and those belonging to groups outside of mainstream society are disadvantaged when it comes to the distribution and access to educational resources. farrell defines equality of survival as the probabilities of children from various social groupings staying in the school system to some defined level, usually the end of a complete cycle. he explains that in any given level poor children are generally less likely to survive educationally than are well-do-to children. similarly, children born in rural areas are less likely to survive educationally than urban children. equality of output, refers to the probability that children from various social groupings will learn the same things to the same levels at a defined point in the schooling system. the concept is expressed through differences in the level of achievement in nation's school system which farrell points out as systematically associated with differing social origins. he points out that among those who have reached a given level of nation's school system, children who are poor, rural, female, or from any other socially marginalized groups learn less. equality of outcome, refers to the probability that children from various social groupings will live relatively similar lives subsequent to and as a result of schooling. here too, farrell posits that in societies where the economy is expanding, and where there is no dominant group in the society, formal education becomes a predominant influence on the level of employment acquired. the "equality model" presented above by farrell shows how formal schooling can be a powerful selective tool for ratifying or building a new social order. the model can also serve as a useful lens for analyzing the educational inequalities that have characterized the ghanaian educational system and can be extended to analyze ict implementation. since the time formal schooling was introduced in ghana to date, educational provision has been skewed in favor of those in the urban communities and there has been inequitable distribution of educational resources and services (asiedu-akrofi, 1982; graham, 1971). postcolonial educational reforms, policies and practices have done little in terms of bridging the gap that has been created between schools in the urban communities and their counterparts in the rural and isolated communities. most schools in the urban areas have been in existence since the colonial or early postcolonial era. premier schools such as achimota, prempeh college, and wesley girls, were fashioned along the lines of elite british schools and are well known beyond the borders of ghana. most of the rural schools that were established from the 1970s onwards, especially those that proliferated in the 1990s after the implementation of the senior secondary school (sss) concept, are based on the egalitarian ideology of mass secondary schooling (ministry of education, 1974 & 1999b). since their establishment, most of these rural senior secondary schools have faced problems of poor infrastructure, lack of logistical support, inadequate material input, and lack of qualified teachers. in light of such general inequalities in ghana's school system, a current challenge is the equitable implementation of ict policy for secondary schools. this issue becomes intricate when factors such as accessibility of electricity and telephone grids, the current state of school infrastructure, and availability of technical support are considered. obed mfum-mensah current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 43 accessibility educational policy makers, non-governmental organizations (ngo), bilateral and multilateral donor organizations, and school administrators are making the collective efforts to promote ict in ghanaian secondary schools. because of the efforts of ngos and donor organizations in particular, ict facilities have extended to some schools, mostly in urban communities (dankwa, 1997; parthemore, 2003). parthemore (2003) points out that many secondary schools in ghana can now boast of computer labs through which students are gaining basic computer literacy. a number of these schools have internet capabilities, enabling students to deepen their connection to the outside world. although this is encouraging information, extensive review of documents of ngos that are spearheading ict implementation in ghanaian schools reveals that most secondary schools now benefiting from ict are either located in urban areas or are classified as premier secondary schools (dankwa, 1997; hawkins, 2002; parthemore, 2003). according to parthemore (2003), computer literacy education in ghana has been concentrated in major urban areas. a few better schools in outlying areas have attempted to "catch up" with their urban counterparts by contracting with private companies to provide computer education. the costs for private computer training are prohibitive and it is rarely if ever the case that all students have access. other schools have taken part in the ghana education service sponsored scheme where for every hundred textbooks they purchase from a private firm, they receive one computer system. recently schoolnet, a foundation based in switzerland, chose fourteen schools in ghana in which to implement ict programs. of these schools, five are located in accra, three in kumasi, four in cape coast, on in tema, and one in aburi. of these fourteen schools, eleven belong to those schools categorized as premier schools. apart from aburi, the rest of the locations are all cities. aburi, is however located about twenty minutes from accra. now that the distribution of ict in schools is also progressively skewing in favor of the urban schools, as it has been with other educational services since western-type formal schools started in the country, policy makers face the challenge of promoting equitable ict implementation. the equitable implementation of ict in the secondary school system is a complex issue. however, recent educational policies may offer some perspectives on this issue. in 1987, the government of ghana expanded the secondary school system by establishing rural senior secondary school (sss) to accommodate the growing numbers of junior secondary school (jss) students in rural communities. the government made promises to ensure the standardization of all sss in terms of resources and quality of output (ministry of education, 1999a, 1999b). over the years, the government did not embark on its promises, hence the persistent wide urban and rural gap in the standards of secondary school system. to date secondary schools that have been established in rural communities in ghana are faced with the problems of poor infrastructure, lack of material input, inadequate logistics, and lack of qualified teaching personnel. the environment in which the majority of these schools operate does not promote any serious learning and academic advantage. many of these rural schools, like the one in which i taught and served as the school administrator, do not have standard resources computers in ghanaian secondary schools: where does equality come in? 44 december 17, 2003 or well-equipped facilities. for example, throughout my three years teaching in this rural school, my students never had physical access to basic scientific instruments such as beakers, test tubes, and burners, apart from seeing this equipment in science textbooks. recently, the government reiterated its commitment to extend computers to all schools in the country in the news media. the government also emphasized its commitment to promote equitable ict in the school system so that all students will equally benefit from ict regardless of their geographical location. the successful implementation of such a policy would be a great achievement in the educational system. however, existing inequality, poor infrastructure and the nation's present economic situation (as a highly indebted country) is likely to pose a challenge to implementing equitable ict in the school system. accessibility of ict in secondary schools also interconnects with other development issues, such as accessibility and connectivity to electricity and telephone grids. the themes that emerged from the policy arena challenges to ict in rural schools are lack of telecommunication and resources (finance, infrastructure, personnel and their training, software, and textbooks). the telecommunication and expenses will be considered in this section while the issue of resources will be considered in the next section. since 1998, the government of ghana has extended electricity to many rural communities in the country. however, many rural communities are yet to be connected to the electricity grid. most rural communities that have secondary schools do not currently have access to electricity and telephone services. in such localities, the idea of promoting computers in classrooms will require more financial backing, and a considerable amount of time, considering the pace of development in ghana. in a recent ghanaian case study (ismail, 2002), it became apparent that the high costs for providing electricity (where there is none) and connectivity to telephone services are major setbacks to providing ict in rural areas in ghana. students enrolled in premier schools like the achimota school, wesley girls school, and prempeh college and those in urban areas who have easy access to computers and internet cafés have already made a considerable increase in the use of computers and the internet do not face such challenges. on the contrary, most students enrolled in rural secondary schools have never set eyes on a computer. while students in urban areas can now boast of their proficiency in the use internet and basic computer programs, the silent majority of their colleagues in the rural secondary schools do not have a clue as to how to click a mouse. availability of an appropriate environment for ict facilities is another issue that will determine accessibility of ict for rural schools. some schools have successfully implemented ict projects because they possess the infrastructure to accommodate ict equipment donated by benevolent organizations. inadequate infrastructure is a problem facing many rural secondary schools. the infrastructure of most rural schools lacks the appropriate environment and the needed security for storing ict equipment, even if they become available. such concerns are also setbacks to ict implementation in rural schools. obed mfum-mensah current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 45 technology for all and equality of output the use of ict in secondary schools will soon be a policy mandate in the ghanaian educational system. the government has made the promise to extend computers and internet services to every secondary school in the nation. the ministry of education has developed a curriculum for ict training. the ministry has also indicated its plan to include ict in the senior secondary school certificate examination. these developments at the policy levels show that ict will soon become a tool for assessing students' ability and determining their fitness for transition to post-secondary education and employment. this is where the equality of output concept comes into play. farrell (1999) posits that among those who have reached a given level of the school system, children who are rural or those from marginalized groups learn less. will the school system be able to ensure that students who are at the same level of the secondary system are provided with the same ict knowledge and skills? the history of ghana's educational development and recent case studies all point to the fact that the distribution of educational resources especially, material inputs, teaching personnel, and well-equipped facilities, have always been skewed in favor of some section of the society. (folson, 1995; glewwe and jacoby, 1994; graham, 1971; mcwilliam and kwamena-poh, 1975; mfum-mensah, 2003). these educational resources pointed out above have direct effect on students' acquisition of knowledge and learning, and hinder equal implementation of ict policies. many urban secondary schools in the nation have now implemented ict as part of their schools curriculum. however, most secondary schools in rural areas do not yet have access to ict. students in schools that have ict facilities are using this tool for projects and are able to connect with schools around the world. through ict students and teachers in these schools are contributing to the knowledge production and information sharing with other students and teachers around the world. analysis of the ngo documents and other emerging case studies in ghana reveal some interesting themes, which we need to consider in the light of equality of output. first, the implementation of ict has resulted in positive impacts in secondary schools that have ict programs. second, the dimension of impact extends to include students and teachers. third, the provision of technical support for ict has been a challenge for its effective implementation (ismail, 2002). the world bank impact assessments reveal that through ict, students in ghanaian schools have gained knowledge and skills. the case study also points out that through ict, students have gained positive attitudes toward school, and collaborative learning projects have been implemented in schools. similarly, the tool has contributed to teacher's professional satisfaction. these revelations show how some schools and students have taken the lead in the acquisition of ict skills and knowledge even before its inclusion in the school curriculum. the literature and other emerging ghanaian case studies on ict implementation reveal that technical support is a challenge to ict implementation (amenyo, 2003; ismail, 2002; ministry of education, 2002). this body of literature points out that the major challenge for schools that have ict is lack of resources and proper implementation by trained personnel. as can be seen through previous policy implementation processes and case studies, due to the scarcity of educational resources in rural areas, there is the probability that the distribution of educational resources will skew in favor of those in urban schools (folson, 1995; glewwe and jacoby, 1994; mfum-mensah, 2003). it is most computers in ghanaian secondary schools: where does equality come in? 46 december 17, 2003 likely that a situation will be created where schools that have the technical support will get comparative learning advantages over those without, therefore creating a digital divide in the school system. ghanaian ict policy framework milli et al (2002) define a framework as a set of interacting objectives that together realize a set of functions. a framework for educational policy and practice is therefore a working objective that highlights the participants, the relationship between the participants, and the set of interaction scenarios between the participants. an educational policy framework can help to define the roles and responsibilities of educational actors, which include policy makers, administrators, teachers, students, funding agencies, development organizations, and civil society. as a blueprint, an educational policy framework can be a process through which various actors and policy makers translate educational policy into practice. in spite of the benefits of a policy framework highlighted above, to date, ghana's ministry of education has not established a clear framework for the implementation of ict. almost six years after some premier and urban schools ushered into their first experience with ict, the ministry of education has now submitted a draft ict policy to the cabinet for approval. because of the lack of a policy framework, ict implementation in the school system is currently uncontrollable and irrespective of government initiatives. the literature on ghana's ict policy (republic of ghana, 2003; ismail, 2003) reveals that there is currently no coordination on the proposed national ict policy. second, the other ministries are not actively involved in the policy formulation process. third, there is lack of human resource capacity to devise and implement an appropriate ict policy for ghana. these policy level issues make the implementation of ict in the educational sector more challenging. this problem does not pertain only to the ghanaian education system but also most educational systems in the developing world. hawkins (2002) posits that while many educational ministries around the world have made the commitment to computerize schools, few have developed coherent strategies to integrate its use fully as pedagogical tools in the classrooms. despite the above challenges, education policy makers are quite enthusiastic about the introduction of ict in ghanaian secondary schools (ministry of education, 2002). conclusion the introduction of ict in school systems in ghana and other sub-saharan african nations is a major step to promoting innovation. however, like ghana, many of these educational systems currently do not have any coherent ict policy framework in place. the current lack of policy frameworks for ict implementation in these educational systems shows that they are not equipped to keep up with the ict revolution that is taking place. however, education policy makers in this region still have the chance to take advantage of the technology that is becoming more widely available. amenyo (2003) cautions that any attempt to implement a well-meaning ict project in a haphazard and context-independent manner would not help in sustaining it. nations in the developing world are not the only regions caught in the "digital divide" phenomenon, brought about by ict implementation. recently emergent in-country case studies and other comparative studies (harding, 2002; hartviksen & and akselsen, 2002; obed mfum-mensah current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 47 nachmias et al, 2001; sutherland-smith et al, 2003) point out that even in advanced countries like australia, canada, israel and united states, there is evidence of a persisting digital divide, despite a significant growth in computer ownership and usage overall. in the united states, evidence exists of this disparity between whites on one hand and blacks and hispanics on the other hand. similarly, in canada we find the same problem between rural and urban areas where approximately 53% of rural households have access to the internet, compared to 68% of urban households (harding, 2002). because of the need for equitable educational provision in school systems, the emerging revelations pose serious policy implications for governments, educators and the development community. for the ghanaian society, the disparity in ict provision in schools can be seen as an example of the digital divide that is likely to be created between the "haves" and "have nots" in the ghanaian school system. references asiedu-akrofi, a. 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(2002). pedagogical reasoning: issues and solutions for teaching and learning of ict in secondary schools. education and information technologies, 7(3), 237255. negotiating change: participatory curriculum design in emergencies marian hodgkin [1] teachers college, columbia university abstract this paper examines an important component of the developing field of education in emergencies: curriculum decision-making processes. the paper argues that in order to fully meet the commitment articulated by the inee minimum standards to provide quality education for all, curricula decisions cannot be ignored or postponed until after a crisis has occurred. practitioners, advocates, and policy makers in the field of education in emergencies must recognize that in order for quality education to be provided equitably, curricular decisions must not only be fully part of the remit for those organisations, agencies, or governments providing education in emergencies, but the decision-making processes must be transparent, inclusive, and participatory. the inee minimum standards as they continue to be promoted, contextualised, and institutionalised, could play a crucial role in this process. an increasing amount of attention has been paid to education in emergencies during the last decade. the principal mandates of humanitarian relief organisations typically involve provisions of food, shelter, water, sanitation, and healthcare. education is often seen as part of longer-term development work rather than a necessary intervention in emergency responses. today, attitudes and assumptions are changing as education is increasingly included in the planning and provision of humanitarian relief.[2] however, when education is included as part of a humanitarian response, there is a tendency to focus on the provision of school supplies. one example of this is the unicef ‘school in a box’ kits, which comprise basic materials such as pencils and chalk, but on their own do not provide quality intervention (anderson, martone, perlman robinson, rognerud & sullivan-owomoyel, 2006). the inter-agency network for education in emergencies (inee) is a body working to ensure that education in emergencies is not only part of a humanitarian response, but also that the education meets minimum standards of quality, access, and accountability. inee has conducted broadbased advocacy efforts to ensure that the importance of education in emergencies is globally recognized. it has also facilitated a global consultation to develop a set of minimum standards for education in emergencies, chronic crises, and early reconstruction. the resulting document contains six categories of standards, including: community participation, analysis, access and learning environment, teaching and learning, teachers and other education personnel, and education policy and coordination (inter-agency network for education in emergencies [inee], 2004a). the minimum standards also include key indicators and guidance notes to help in their implementation. the minimum standards handbook has been adopted and used in over 80 countries and 25,000 copies have been distributed to humanitarian agency staff, educators, government ministries, donors, and multilateral agencies (inee, 2006). workers across six continents have been trained in their use, and increasing efforts are being made by the network to further contextualise the global standards so they may be a useful tool in any situation, from post-crisis to reconstruction and development. © 2007 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 9(2): 33-44. 34 summer 2007 this paper examines an important component of education in emergencies: curriculum decisionmaking processes. it argues that in order to fully meet the commitment articulated by the inee minimum standards to provide quality education for all, curricula decisions cannot be ignored or postponed until an indeterminate ‘post crisis’ phase of development. practitioners, advocates and policy makers in the field of education in emergencies must recognize that in order for high quality education to be provided with accountability and equity, curricular decisions must not only be fully part of the remit for those organisations, agencies or governments providing education in emergencies, but the decision-making processes must be transparent, inclusive, and participatory. this is not an easy task. curriculum development or revision in times of stability and peace can be fraught with sensitivities: issues of power, knowledge, and collective identity emerge in debates over what should be taught and how. in emergencies, particularly in those involving violent conflict where education itself can exacerbate or cause tensions, these issues become even more difficult to surmount. however, this paper will argue that participation is itself one way of responding to exactly these challenges. it can occur at different stages of the decision-making process, and could begin in small ways in individual classrooms and schools, without necessarily entailing wholesale national educational reform. this paper draws upon the experience, literature, and practice of educationalists working on negotiated curriculum theory. negotiated curricula are learning plans that are collaboratively developed by teachers, students, and occasionally parents. proponents of negotiated curriculum techniques highlight the advantages of encouraging students to be active agents in their own learning as they contribute to the choices and directions of their learning. teachers are not presented as experts of knowledge, rather teachers and students engage in joint problem solving, the sharing of responsibility and mutual learning. these theories of negotiation in education provide a starting point in exploring how participatory curriculum design might be attempted in emergency situations. through examining literature from a number of sub-fields from the education and development disciplines, this paper aims to provide insights into how the ultimate goal of quality education for all expressed in the inee minimum standards might be realised. the argument is grounded in an in-depth study of the inee minimum standards and their development as well as other tools that have been developed to aid practitioners in the field. it also draws upon the author’s observations and analysis after participating in several professional trainings on the inee minimum standards and having informal conversations with members of the network who use the minimum standards in their work. the pedagogical approach and practical techniques from contemporary progressive curriculum scholarship provide a theoretical framework and a useful model for adoption and adaptation. this problematisation of the current discourse is designed to incite discussion of the critical issue of curricula design in emergencies and to prompt much needed empirical research into current practices in order that we might more fully understand the opportunities for change that emergency contexts present. the term “emergency” encompasses a wide range of situations. these include natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts and floods as well as complex emergencies that are ‘man-made,’ often caused by conflict or civil unrest (inee, 2004a). education is increasingly recognized for providing life-saving and life-sustaining relief in acute emergency phases and is a necessary component of early recovery and ongoing development (inee, 2006). in this way education can provide continuity across all stages of the relief development continuum. there is growing recognition that “all individuals – children, youth and adults – have a right to education during emergencies” (inee, 2004a, p. 5), in part because of education’s normative status as a negotiating change current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 35 fundamental human right enshrined in the universal declaration of human rights, the covenant on the rights of the child, the geneva and refugee conventions, and other international protocols and principles (women’s commission, 2004). furthermore, there is increasing evidence that education can enhance psychosocial wellbeing, ensure protection, facilitate the provision of other key services (such as health or nutrition) and disseminate life-saving knowledge (such as landmine awareness or hiv/aids education) (inee, 2004a). not only is education in emergencies increasingly recognised as a central part of the humanitarian remit, but studies are now being carried out to investigate the potential for educational innovation in crisis and early recovery contexts. the crisis situation is, by definition, one of dramatic and often swift social change, usually having substantial impact upon education systems. a situation of wide and substantial social and educational change reveals structural power relationships in the curriculum design processes, prompting further questions with implications for the inee minimum standards as they develop and humanitarian policy more widely. the work of the international rescue committee (irc), an international ngo that does substantial emergency education programming, provides one example of educational innovation in crisis.[3] during the years of taliban rule in afghanistan, when schooling for girls and women was not permitted, local communities had to improvise. many established clandestine home-based schools run from the homes of community members and supported with training and materials by the irc (winthrop, 2006). these schools have continued to operate since the fall of the taliban in 2001, educating both boys and girls with no access to government schools. not only do these home-based schools improve access to education, particularly for rural children, they have fostered success in completion rates and exam results compared to government schools (kirk and winthrop, 2006). the current afghani government is exploring the potential of mainstreaming these home and community-based schools into the government education system. the chronic crisis experienced in girls’ education during the taliban years led to innovations and understandings about the value of small class sizes and close teacher/student/parent relationships which may well not have developed in other circumstances. the fall of the taliban regime and the establishment of a more moderate government has incited widespread national change within the education system. crisis situations can provide an opportunity for educational transformation as existing power structures breakdown or change. yet in some such situations educational changes do not necessarily result in productive innovations. therefore it is important to understand the process of educational development in order to positively influence this potential for change. changes may ensure increased empowerment for those with less power, but not necessarily. they may conversely create new hierarchies or rebuild former power structures within educational decision-making. the question then for curriculum design is who directs this change, and how substantial is it? the following sections of this paper discuss current approaches to curricula development during and after emergencies and make the case for participatory practice in curricula design processes. arguing that negotiated curriculum techniques can provide a useful model for genuine participation by all stakeholders, including students, the paper concludes by calling for practical steps to be taken to incorporate elements of genuine participation into institutional structures and practices of individual educators. as they continue to be promoted, contextualised, and institutionalised, the inee minimum standards could play a crucial role in this process. marian hodgkin 36 summer 2007 curricula development during and after emergencies this paper takes a broad view of the concept of curriculum design, seeing curricula as living documents that involve a design process that goes beyond narrow content and skill-based decisions, engaging a number of actors at different levels in the process and within complex socioeconomic, political, and cultural frameworks. unpacking curricula decision-making processes provides insight into the relationship between people within those structures and sheds light on the relationship between knowledge and power. the knowledge-power relationship operates in two directions: on the one hand educational professionals at every level (with specialist knowledge) who contribute to the development of a curriculum have clear power over priorities and outcomes. on the other hand, those in positions of power may influence and define “knowledge” and give it value. “knowledge…far from being constructed in isolation from power relations, is embedded in them (or against them)” (kothari, 2001, p. 141). this paper will explore the ways in which participation and negotiated curriculum processes can help to address the iniquities within these knowledge-power structures. the inee minimum standards (2004a) give guidelines on the possible need to revise curricula, stating that existing curricula should be: reviewed for appropriateness to the age or developmental level, language, culture, capacities and needs of the learners affected by the emergency. curricula are used, adapted or enriched as necessary…. where curriculum development or adaptation is required, it is conducted with the meaningful participation of stakeholders and considers the best interests and needs of the learners. (p. 56) however, the guidance note relating to this standard states that “curriculum development can be a long and difficult process…[as] in emergencies curricula are often adapted from either the host country, the country of origin or other emergency settings” (inee, 2004a, p. 57). the substantial unesco international institute for educational planning’s [iiep] (2006) guidebook for planning education in emergencies and reconstruction similarly establishes the potential for curricula development: “an emergency or post-conflict situation…often provides a critical opportunity for educational authorities to examine the curriculum and revise it” (p. 6). however, the strategies and guidance notes actually recommend that during an emergency, little more than the removal of “elements that may fuel conflict” from the curriculum are necessary (inee, 2004a, p. 2-6). this therefore makes it easier “to insert important non-traditional topics into the learning process, such as health and hygiene education…environmental and landmine awareness,” with the suggestion that more substantial “curriculum review and renewal” typically take place “in the post-conflict situation” (iiep, 2006, p. 2-6). given the extreme emergency circumstances, it is clear why local educational professionals and humanitarian providers often use curricula from other contexts or slightly modify existing documents rather than attempt wholesale redesign of curricula in a crisis. however, a danger of this approach is that a supposedly temporary expedient may in fact last for years. a prime example of this is the case of the rwandan history curriculum. after the genocide in 1994, all national history curricula from primary to tertiary levels were suspended due to the highly contested nature of the historiography and the fear that ethnic tensions might be exacerbated. twelve years later, although absence of the curriculum is a matter for debate, there is still no national history being taught in rwandan schools, a failure that is itself detrimental to the reconciliation process (hodgkin, 2006). negotiating change current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 37 the deferral of meaningful curriculum review and reform is also disadvantageous in that it fails to engage effected populations in the decision-making process. in fact, although it might appear to be neutral, such a decision never is. the rationale seems to be that because major curricula change is not considered in the height of emergencies, participation is not viewed as essential. this rationale stems from the premise that decisions about the nature and extent of change come before decisions about process, in particular who is involved in these decisions. the primary focus should instead be on the process rather than on the content or outcome of curricula changes. in other words, our starting point should be the process, and the extent to which these processes involve inclusive and participatory decision-making. participating in change the development paradigm has swung from being often dictatorial, patriarchal, and patronising to one that is more concerned with participatory programming (henkel and stirrat, 2001). there is much written about the need for ‘ownership,’ community ‘buy-in,’ and ‘bottom up planning’ that is not reliant on one-size-fits-all approaches, all-knowing foreign experts or regular monetary hand-outs. humanitarian actors within the last decade have also recognised the rights of affected populations to participate in making decisions that affect them and the duty of the humanitarian community to be accountable not only to their donors, but also to the populations they serve. the sphere (2004) humanitarian charter and accompanying minimum standards in disaster response were developed in the years after the rwandan genocide, a time of serious reflection that represented a sea change in humanitarian strategy and practice. the cornerstone of this project is the recognition and expression of commitment to the rights of people affected by disasters, in particular the obligation to provide “quality and accountability” in the process of service delivery (p. 5). the first standard in the sphere handbook refers to participation: “the disaster-affected population actively participates in the assessment, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation” (p. 28). however, the key indicators which purport to measure the achievement of this standard display a limited conception of participation, requiring that local populations “receive information…and are given the opportunity to comment” (p. 28). the inee minimum standards also include a minimum standard on participation a category which is a cross-cutting standard that focuses on community participation in educational planning and response. however, the indicators in the inee minimum standards are far stronger than those in the sphere handbook, with specific suggestions such as “the community education committee holds public meetings to conduct social audits of education activities and their budgets” (inee, 2004, p. 14). the accompanying guidance notes are also highly detailed. here it is interesting to refer to the documentation of the development process of the minimum standards. in 2004, four field-based regional consultations (involving 137 delegates from over 51 countries) each produced their own set of regional standards. the regional documents, in particular the asia collective consultation report (2004), contain substantial recognition of opportunities for participation: all agencies (government, international, ngos) must coordinate to provide the necessary technical support and material resources to enable the stakeholders to engage in the local curriculum development process…. educational reform…can be activated by participatory local curriculum development processes. (inee, 2004b, p. 8) marian hodgkin 38 summer 2007 the final comprehensive version of the minimum standards, while emphasizing participation in curriculum design more than the version created by sphere, is more cautious than some of these regional documents. perhaps this reflects a perception among expert technical advisors who drafted the final inee minimum standards handbook that anything more extensive would be unrealistic. indeed, although a criticism often levelled at the inee minimum standards is to claim that the standards are too high, [4] in the case of curriculum reform and design, the inee standards are perhaps more “realistic” and “minimal” rather than “minimum.” while both the sphere handbook (2004) and inee minimum standards advocate community participation, what that ought to entail in a particular context will vary enormously. we should therefore regard participation not as an absolute standard but rather as a continuum ranging from tokenistic presence through genuine consultation to full joint decision-making. a useful metaphorical expression of the varying degrees of participation is roger hart’s (1992) ladder of young people’s participation: when considering participation in the context of an emergency, there are factors that both facilitate and constrain participation, especially at the top end of the continuum. crisis situations often involve the disruption of the status quo–traditional power relationships are altered and there may be an opportunity for more people to participate in decisions that affect their own lives. as we have already seen, this can trigger innovation in education and other societal constructs. therefore, crisis situations can be fertile ground for educational development. in emergency contexts, those working to facilitate or provide education programmes will be humanitarian or development agencies that often consider their missions, and mandates, to be apolitical and neutral. however, their position of power and influence as a result of their financial and human resources inevitably causes new power structures to evolve around their operations. often, while development and humanitarian relief agencies pay lip-service to the ideal of participatory programming, the reality is that participation is limited to a very particular normative framework, based on international and humanitarian law or human rights principles, for example. agencies are also limited in what they can offer by their own mandates and donor-driven criteria. negotiating change current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 39 participation may occur, but only on the terms of the development agencies themselves, an approach which fails to give adequate weight to the more evidence-based approaches comprised of ground-up needs, expectations, capacities, and the aspirations of the affected populations themselves. although the aspirations and expectations of a population may correspond with an agency’s policies, many do not. for example, a needs assessment might reveal a strong local demand for education that cannot be fulfilled by an agency where education is outside its mandate. or a local population’s views on education for girls may not be compatible with an agency’s gender equality-based policies. such competing expectations present real challenges regarding the achievement of genuine participation. further, curriculum development initiatives will often rely on the involvement of external actors – including humanitarian aid and educational development professionals – managed and funded by westerners. therefore, participation itself may be imposed from the outside, a western concept that is alien within the given context. while certain aspects of education in emergency programming may be open to participatory processes, the construction of school buildings or the recruitment and retention of teachers, for example, the realm of curriculum reform may be seen as something that should be reserved for “the experts,” without considering the decision-making stages that are part of any curricula design process. allison anderson (personal communication, february 26, 2007), an inee focal point on minimum standards, commented, “the regional consultation process in 2004 was filled with debates over who had the right to develop curricula, with government officials voicing their feeling that this is the domain of governments.” whereas decisions about school buildings and teacher compensation may be seen as having marginal importance, decisions about what is learnt and how (i.e., knowledge) are connected to power not only in the educational process but within social structures more generally. thus, often the processes that may have wide social impact are not open to participatory decision-making. the issues raised above concern some of the potential problems with participatory decisionmaking. in considering how true participation can be extended to include children and youth, there are further barriers to surmount. youth participation should be a crucial dimension of any humanitarian or development programming; however given the particular educational context, curriculum design in crisis is even more in need of youth input. of those civilians affected by armed conflict, a disproportionate number are youth, who are most likely to be recruited as soldiers, are primary targets of sexual violence, and are most likely to miss out on education (united nations department for social and economic affairs [un-dsea], 2005). youth are subject to several cumulative barriers when it comes to true participation during emergencies. not only are they part of a disadvantaged community in crisis, often with a limited voice within local or external power structures, in emergency situations they are labelled as ’victims’ and/or ‘survivors‘ who often do not possess recognized expertise. often in emergency situations children and youth are characterised as being vulnerable victims in need of protection rather than active participants. attention to the experiences, roles, needs and aspirations of young people in specific conflict zones is rendered impossible by an approach that assumes ‘trauma,’ ‘vulnerability,’ and ‘victimhood’ as defining and universal characteristics of children who have lived through war. (hart, 2006, p. 9) most fundamentally, they are not adults and therefore not viewed as capable of being able to make decisions that affect them and their communities. participation guidelines frequently focus on formal community organisations such as parent teacher associations, which will often exclude youth input. marian hodgkin 40 summer 2007 the negotiated curriculum contemporary progressive education debates have prompted the development of new theories of curriculum design. the suggestion that curricula should be developed using negotiation techniques is one such school of thought; this paper considers the potential value of applying these theories within emergency education contexts. the concept of negotiated curricula entails inviting students to contribute to and modify the curriculum. all parties – students, teachers, even parents – are given an opportunity to express their points of view, needs and wants and to work together to reach an outcome that is satisfactory for all concerned (boomer, 1992). a central part of negotiation is the ownership principle: people tend to work hard for things they wish to own or to keep and enhance that which they already own. theorists argue that negotiation brings with it a sense of ownership, and it is this active, intentional and participatory involvement in the decision making processes that “results in more effective learning than does the passivity that attends the performance of a teacher’s imposed pedagogical pattern” (boomer, 1992, p. 16). a key component of negotiated curriculum theory is the recognition that curricula and their enactment are always “embedded in a rich socio-political context which must be acknowledged, interpreted and dealt with since it strongly influences and constrains classroom and institutional possibilities” (boomer, 1992, p. vii). negotiated curriculum techniques aim to recognise and make explicit existing power relationships inside classrooms, schools, education systems, and within society itself. in doing so, they work to offset the harmful effects of the ever-present inequalities of power present in schools and society more generally (boomer, 1992). an approach based on negotiated curriculum techniques may be a good point to start to address some of these genuinely difficult problems associated with ensuring true participation. a central part of any negotiated process is communication and openness. certain constraints and imperatives need not damage the participatory relationship if they are made explicit. there will always be power relationships in schools and society generally. …[the] harmful effects of power will be offset only if those in power make quite explicit the values, assumptions and criteria on which they base their actions. in this way others will have a better chance to defend themselves, more opportunity to question and more chance of negotiation. (boomer, 1992, p. 8) as i have identified the ways in which youth are disempowered in emergency contexts, this principle of recognizing the barriers to their participation and the potential of youth to contribute is all the more important. as we have explored, one difficulty with true participation is the non-negotiable nature of certain norms and values, such as basic human rights for the development and humanitarian aid communities. what negotiated curriculum methodologies teach us is that those in power (relief workers, development practitioners, classroom teachers) must make these values and assumptions fully explicit; only then will the disempowered be able to question, negotiate and participate on a truly level playing field. a negotiated curriculum does not imply that every facet of the curriculum is necessarily open to negotiation. it does, however, require a full explanation about what is and is not negotiable and, additionally, a commitment to negotiate those aspects that are open to negotiation. explanatory openness should also apply to externally imposed constraints such as an agency’s mandate, financial, and material resources. negotiating change current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 41 in recognizing the real difficulties with participation that have been identified above, this paper suggests that a constructive approach emphasizing the process is at least as important as any outcome. adopting a negotiated design approach allows expertise to be valued in a creative way and does not disempower others in the process. those leading curriculum development processes should adopt the role of facilitator rather than directing choice: the new role is one of process helper, facilitator, resource linker, and public documenter. these concepts of role provide the context within which the teacher is still a source of ideas, an expert, a provider of information, a guide and leader. (boomer, 1992, p. 28) this involves taking risks. if power is shared with others, the result will be a compromise and may not align with the facilitator’s objectives. if the facilitator has been open about any nonnegotiable elements, this degree of power sharing and unpredictability of outcome is acceptable. this compromise should not be seen as a giving up of ideals by the facilitator, but rather as an opportunity for mutual learning. the implication of this is that learners (i.e., youth) are essential to the participatory process even in emergencies. borrowing from the work of paolo freire (1970), curriculum developers should be learners and learners should be curriculum developers, and as boomer (1992) argues: “all negotiators…are learners” (p. 48). in the context of education in emergencies, how extensive should participation be? is it realistic in a crisis to expect full participation at every point of the decision-making process? participation is only genuine if it gives those involved real input into the decision making process, but the level of this input can range from the broadest national strategies to smaller-scale immediate decisions in classrooms. as kothari (2001) argues, power must be analysed as something which circulates, and we should not rely on “the dichotomies of macro/micro, central/local, powerful/powerless, where the former are sites and holders of power and the latter the subjects of power. instead, all individuals are vehicles of power” (p. 142). if we recognize that “power relations run through a particular social body and are not confined to particular central sites or located solely among the elite” then we can also identify ways in which participation can be used in decision-making at different levels (p. 150). at some of these levels negotiation can encompass all relevant decisions, whereas at others there will be many more constraints, but they should be explicit, justified and subject to constant review. conclusion: participatory curriculum design in emergencies in this paper i have examined curriculum decision-making processes in the context of education in emergencies. i have explored the ways in which negotiated curriculum techniques can contribute to genuine participation by all stakeholders, including youth, in these processes. quite rightly, education is now seen as an important part of humanitarian response to emergencies. the inee minimum standards for education in emergencies promote the assurance of educational access and quality for those affected by crisis. they recognise that education is not something that should wait until an emergency situation has stabilised, but needs to be part of the first phase of humanitarian action. this paper contends that curriculum development should be a part of the educational planning process from the beginning and should not be, as is sometimes the case, treated as something that cannot properly be considered in a crisis and therefore should wait until after a return to stability. the transitional period during which curriculum development is not implemented can sometimes last for years. the postponement of curricula decisions is never neutral and the maintenance of marian hodgkin 42 summer 2007 an existing curriculum will always have implications for both students and society. this paper argues that the societal change and disruptions to the balance of power structures that are a feature of crisis situations provide an opportunity for curriculum development that should be capitalised upon. any curriculum development process should involve a careful analysis of power relationships at both macro and micro levels. this is particularly pertinent in emergency contexts, where power dynamics shift and groups of particularly disempowered and vulnerable people are often those most affected. participation is increasingly recognised as important in humanitarian contexts, and within the field of education in emergencies. this paper argues that not only should curriculum design be integrated into the first phase of education programmes in emergencies, but also that the curriculum design process should encompass effective and genuine models of participatory decision making. it is recognised that true participation is difficult to facilitate, and is a risky process in that outcomes are not always predictable. negotiated curriculum theories provide useful conceptual frameworks for thinking about participation, as well as practical techniques for planning, design, and implementing new or revised curricula. at the heart of this approach is an insistence on open communication, concerning not just the goals or objectives of the curriculum but also the decision-making process itself and the inevitable internal and external constraints. if a negotiated and fully participatory approach were to be wholly integrated into humanitarian programmes it would necessitate significant reassessment of the structures and mode of work of the humanitarian community. because of the need for openness and explicit communication that participatory aid programmes require, humanitarian relief organisations would have to develop substantial and at least medium-term relationships with the host community. yet we can learn from negotiated curricula techniques that negotiation and participation may operate on many levels. efforts should be made to incorporate elements of genuine participation even within existing organisational structures and operational practices. organisations involved in planning education in emergencies should actively consider and incorporate participatory and negotiated curricula reform as part of their remit. although the inee minimum standards make a significant contribution to the inclusion of participation in education in emergencies, they downplay the possibilities for participation in curriculum design. however, like the best curricula, the inee minimum standards are not static. rather, they are a dynamic entity developing and continually being monitored and evaluated. considering how the inee minimum standards should evolve as they are revised in the coming years, attention must be paid to the lessons that can be learned from negotiated curriculum theories and practice. notes [1]. the author would like to thank marise cremona, allison anderson and celia oyler for their helpful feedback on drafts of this paper. [2]. it was recently decided that education will be included within the un inter-agency standing committee’s (iasc) cluster initiative. the iasc endorsement of education as part of the cluster process is a significant achievement as it indicates not only the recognition by the international community of the critical role that education plays in humanitarian response but also their willingness to support its provision. (communication from the inee secretariat, february 2007). [3]. the international rescue committee is working with the unesco international institute for educational planning and the university of amsterdam to develop a number of casestudies investigating opportunities for positive change within or in the aftermath of conflict-related emergencies. negotiating change current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 43 [4]. one save the children manager and member of inee has commented: “it is a problem that the minimum standards ended up more like maximum standards. this means that the standards will usually not be fulfilled in most of the emergencies in which we work” (save the children, confidential informant). a unesco employee in nepal, also part of the inee network, similarly stated: “the standards are too high. in nepal, even in normal times, such standards are not met and therefore, in times of emergency, it is not relevant for the country to have such high standards” (unesco, confidential informant). references anderson, a., martone, g., perlman-robinson, j., rognerud, e., & sullivan-owomoyela, j. (2006). standards put to the test: implementing the inee minimum standards for education in emergencies, chronic crisis and early reconstruction. in humanitarian practice network paper. london: overseas development institute. boomer, g. (ed.). (1992). negotiating the curriculum: education for the 21st century. new york: taylor & francis ltd. freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: continuum. hart, j. (2006). putting children in the picture. forced migration review, 26 (supplement), 9-10. hart, r. (1992). children’s participation: from tokenism to citizenship. florence: nicef innocenti research centre. henkel, h & stirrat, r. (2001). participation as spiritual duty; empowerment as secular subjection. in b. cooke & u. kothari (eds.), participation: the new tyranny?, (pp. 168-184). london: zed books. hodgkin, m. (2006). reconciliation in rwanda: education, history and the state. journal of international affairs. 60(1), 199-212. international institute for educational planning [iiep] .(2006). guidebook for planning education in emergencies and reconstruction. paris: unesco. inter-agency network for education in emergencies [inee]. (2006). promotion and use summary. new york: inee, from www.ineesite.org. inee. (2004a). inee minimum standards for education in emergencies, chronic crisis and early reconstruction. new york: inee. inee. (2004b). asia collective consultation report. new york: inee, retrieved february 15 2007 from www.ineesite.org. kirk, j. & winthrop, r. (2006). meeting efa: afghanistan – home-based schools. washington dc: academy for educational development. kothari, u. (2001). power, knowledge and social control. in b. cooke & u. kothari (eds.), participation: the new tyranny?, (pp. 139-152). london: zed books. marian hodgkin 44 summer 2007 the sphere project. (2004). sphere humanitarian charter and minimum standards in disaster response. geneva: the sphere project. united nations department for social and economic affairs [un-dsea]. (2005). world youth report. new york: united nations. winthrop, r. (2006). emergencies, education and innovation. forced migration review, 26 (supplement), 12. women’s commission for refugee women and children. (2004). global survey on education in emergencies. new york: women’s commission for refugee women and children. negotiating change © 2005 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 18 december 1, 2005 social entrepreneurs and educational leadership in bangladesh jill sperandio lehigh university, college of education abstract social entrepreneurship, with its focus on innovative leadership, mirrors current interest in leadership for change in the field of education. in countries where national governments lack the resources to meet the educational needs of their populations, social entrepreneurs can develop innovative ways of providing access to education, and innovative methods of delivering education, to disadvantaged social groups. this article uses studies of educational projects in bangladesh to consider the range of social entrepreneurship and what can be done to encourage and nurture social entrepreneurs in the field of education worldwide. introduction social entrepreneurship has become a universally embraced concept that is increasingly associated with education. national governments, including that of britain, have called for the support of social entrepreneurs to meet the needs of disadvantaged groups that national budgets or social services have failed to help. social entrepreneurship is seen by these governments as having the potential to renew interest in community action and non-formal education to solve local problems in increasing complex and rapidly changing societies (danaher, moriarity, & danaher, 2003; oyanagi, 2003). in many developing countries (defined for the purposes of this article as those having low levels of economic wealth resulting in limited development of educational services), financially strapped governments are struggling to meet their goals of providing socially disadvantaged groups with access to education through publicly funded education systems. this has led to an increased willingness to let other groups, both for-profit and in the voluntary or non-profit sectors, develop alternative methods of offering education. to these governments, social entrepreneurship offers the potential of increasing the availability of education and of introducing innovations that may be adopted by the national education system to improve its quality and effectiveness. a recent theme in educational research has focused on the ability of educational institutions and systems to adapt to a rapidly changing, technologically complex society. this research has considered issues of effective school leadership, of understanding the process of introducing and sustaining innovation within schools, and of guiding changes necessitated by changing social and cultural environments (fullan, 1991,2001; evans, 1996; gardner, 2004; senge, et al., 2000). while the primary goal of this research has been to improve and develop public education, it can potentially inform educational development in the private and voluntary sectors. the research might be guided by experience gained in the voluntary and non-profit sectors, including the work of social entrepreneurs involved in innovative education-based projects. social entrepreneurs and educational leadership in bangladesh current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 19 this article will examine the contributions of social entrepreneurs to initiating educational change in bangladesh and the implications of their work for education worldwide. studies of four projects undertaken by individuals and non-profit groups to enhance the educational opportunities of low-income children and women in bangladesh will be described and analyzed for insights about the nature of social entrepreneurship in the field of education, and how it can best be utilized and promoted. the studies will be used to initiate a discussion of the contributions social entrepreneurs can make to the bangladeshi goals for improving access to education for deprived groups, and to increasing quality of education throughout the national system. the article will consider how the case studies can contribute to improving educational quality and enhancing our understanding of educational change worldwide. conceptual framework definitions of social entrepreneurship and most models of effective leadership of educational change have their origins in studies of corporate practice in highly industrialized countries. fullan (2001) notes "the requirements of knowledge societies bring education and business leadership closer than they have ever been before. corporations need souls and schools need minds (and vice versa) if the knowledge society is to survive -sustainability demands it." (p.137). entrepreneurship, which dees (2003) notes has a simple dictionary definition of 'an undertaking, especially one of some scope and complication' (p.3), has come to assume a place of considerable importance in the business literature. its definition by the business community frequently links individual creativity and innovation with an ability to sustain a business enterprise by good management and income generation. kanter (1983) states "corporate entrepreneurs ...have something in common: the need to exercise skills in obtaining and using power in order to accomplish innovation. beyond this, there is no one model for an entrepreneur."(p.212). bhide (1999) states that apart from some combination of a creative idea and a superior capacity for execution, there is "no ideal entrepreneurial profile."(p.63). entrepreneurship within the field of social improvement has been defined in several ways (institute for social entrepreneurs, 2002). one interpretation focuses on the simultaneous pursuit of both financial and social returns on investment, or using earned income strategies to achieve a social objective and seeking to sustain an organization committed to social improvement through earned income rather than donations or subsidies from individuals or the public sector. fowler (2000) discusses this issue of earned income as an integral part of social entrepreneurship, noting two strategies that are frequently employed. non-profit social organizations can incorporate commercial ventures to generate more self-finance for their operations, or commercial enterprises can generate a surplus that can cross-subsidize quite separate social development activities. these strategies ensure the health of the organization and its ability to operate free of the constraints that donors frequently require as a prerequisite for their support. the innovation and creativity of the entrepreneur may be exhibited both in the method of addressing the targeted social problem and in the way financial independence and project sustainability is achieved. other definitions of social entrepreneurship focus on the importance of innovative practices and leadership that can change how social institutions operate, rather than jill sperandio 20 december 1, 2005 their ability to self-finance. leadbeater (1997) discussed the role of imaginative community initiatives, led by enterprising peoples, in filling 'gaps' in the british welfare system. thompson, alvy and lees (2000) use examples from britain to shape their definition of social entrepreneurs as "people who realize where there is an opportunity to satisfy some unmet need that the state welfare system will not or cannot meet, and who gather together the necessary resources (generally people, often volunteers, money and premises) and use these to 'make a difference'" (p.328). bolton and thompson (2000) define entrepreneurs as "people who habitually create and innovate to build something of recognized value around perceived opportunities" (p. 413). thompson (2002) acknowledges the similar characteristics that social entrepreneurs share with entrepreneurs in the field of business, including creativity, innovation, and good management skills. he notes, however, that the former operate in the community and are "more concerned with caring and helping than with 'making money'… they help change people's lives because they embrace important social causes." (p. 413). like corporate entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs show diversity in both their experience of leading projects and their motivation for doing so. some may be experienced and successful business people who wish to contribute to the societies that have enabled them to prosper on a personal level. others are seeking to satisfy a strong personal desire to help and improve their societies, but with only limited experience of the practicalities of leading projects. dees (2003) advances the uncoupling of social entrepreneurship and financial return on investment a stage further. noting that "far too many people still think of social entrepreneurship in terms of nonprofits generating earned income" (dees, 2003, p. 1), he warns of detracting attention from the intended social outcomes and from the innovative ways of achieving social impact. unlike the business approach to social entrepreneurship that embraces the "double bottom line" putting equal emphasis on income generation and social benefit, dees suggests innovation and social impact must be the measure of sound social entrepreneurship, which should be promoted broadly with the intent of improving the world. he notes that creative resource strategies that enhance social impact need not be entirely profit oriented because "an enterprise is not necessarily a business" (p.3). dees suggests that compassion, voluntary sharing of wealth, and interdependence should be at the heart of social entrepreneurship. in the field of educational research, the language of social entrepreneurship resonates most strongly with that of the 'leading in and for change' literature emerging from national and state school reform movements in the developed world, despite the very different social contexts in which social entrepreneurship and school reform currently take place. case studies of successful innovation in the corporate world have been used to model the nature and process of change; these models have been transferred to educational setting to consider how change and innovation can be introduced and guided in a school or national education system. senge et al., (2000) discuss the "diverse innovations needed to lead to a coherent overall pattern of deep change" (p. 53). fullan (1990) notes the need for everyone in the educational system to understand the process of change if schools are to become congenial to innovation, an idea echoed in the model of self-renewing schools and learning communities postulated by joyce, wolf and calhoun (1993). social entrepreneurs and educational leadership in bangladesh current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 21 many models of effective educational leadership for change and innovation draw on corporate studies. evans (1996) defines effective leadership for change as requiring a quest for integrity, an effort that is at once moral, philosophical, and practical, and that is binary, both top-down and bottom-up. schwahn and spady (1998) note the importance of leaders empowering others if they are to achieve their goals by stating, "empowerment honors the intrinsic motivation of people to use their expertise to best advantage and gives them a direct stake in achieving personal and organizational success." (p.6). fullan (2001) asserts that charismatic leaders alone cannot produce deep and sustained reform as this depends on organizational, rather than individual, understanding of the need for change. he postulates a model of leadership for innovation focused on five leadership traits – maintaining a clear moral purpose, understanding the change process, sharing knowledge, cultivating relationships, and setting a vision and context for innovation. understanding the need and purpose for change and innovation, being guided by a clear moral purpose, communicating a strong vision of projected outcomes, procuring or leveraging resources, and managing these resources to support innovation effectively are commonly occurring themes in literature of social entrepreneurship and educational change. as such, social entrepreneurs might be expected to be potentially effective innovators and leaders of change in formal and non-formal education in the developed and developing world. the case studies the four case studies that follow describe non-profit projects attempting to address issues of access to education and the empowerment of women and girls, issues for which bangladesh continues to seek solutions. there are high levels of illiteracy, unemployment, and poverty amongst the country's population of 144 million people. it is estimated that 40% of children eligible for primary education do not participate in the full five-year cycle of schooling despite government efforts to achieve universal primary education and non-government organization efforts to provide for children neglected by public sector schools. additional problems of schooling in bangladesh include the fact that teachers in public schools deliver a prescribed curriculum by emphasizing rote learning, and a third of children who do attend school remain non-literate or semiliterate (brac, 1999). these problems are greater in urban slum areas with highly transient populations. each case study will be examined for characteristics assigned to social entrepreneurship and leadership for educational change: innovativeness, vision and moral purpose in leadership, the building of relationships, the effective use of resources and building of sustainability, and the transferability of innovation and organizational features to other situations. bangladesh rural advancement committee in the context of education, the bangladesh rural advancement committee (brac) closely fits both the model of social entrepreneurship and that of educational change. brac's founder, fazle hazan abed, has used many of the techniques employed by mohamed yunus, recognised as a pioneer of large-scale social entrepreneurship and jill sperandio 22 december 1, 2005 advocate of a social-consciousness driven private sector. his vision is reflected in the activities of the grameen bank, which initiated a highly successful process of making of small interest-free loans available to rural bangladeshis. brac similarly includes many different enterprises that generate income for loan programs, but the organization has also pioneered large-scale social entrepreneurship in the field of education. brac's educational program (bep) focuses on combating the high dropout rate from government schools (30% by fifth grade) and providing education for children of the rural poor who have never attended school due primarily to their parents' need for their labor (walden, 2003). in 1985, the program began with 22 schools, and it now serves 34,000 schools with 1.1 million students. children pay no fees, and bep provides their school materials (brac, 2005). bep has clear and noteworthy outcomes. in addition to equipping over 1 million children with basic literacy and mathematical skills, bep schools have been of particular benefit to girls in a country where female literacy is 29%. girls make up 70% of the students of the brac schools, which is especially significant considering that research from other developing countries indicates that improved educational opportunities for girls may help them delay marriage and childbirth (brac, 1999). bep cites five features of its program as being innovative in the context of the bangladesh education system: gender focus, flexible school timing, appealing learning environment, community schools, and class size. the focus on gender includes the recruitment of women teachers to help retain female students. class size is limited to 33 students taught by the same teacher during the three or four year course, to promote a friendly relationship between the teacher and students. flexible school timing allows children to contribute their labor to the family as well as attend school, which contributes to high attendance and low dropout rates of the schools. developing small neighborhood schools allows easy accessibility for students and parent and community involvement. the attractive learning environment includes a curriculum tailored to rural life, which encourages a learner-centered participatory approach, group activities, childto-child activities, a design that promotes creativity, and an emphasis on critical thinking and problem solving abilities. initial funding for the bep was drawn from brac's commercial activities, but the success of the educational enterprise and effective marketing to international aid organizations has led to high levels of donor funding. at present, 96% of its operating costs come from a consortium of international donors, and targeted donations contribute as well. interviews with the project manager at the brac headquarters in dhaka suggest that this support, while vital to expanding the educational schemes, does not jeopardize the organization's integrity (sperandio, 2005a ). in the process of fulfilling its primary purpose of providing access to education for the children of the rural poor, brac has provided work opportunities for 34,000 teachers, the majority of whom are women. female teacher trainers on bicycles or motorbikes visit women teachers in village schools around their district. for these women, involvement in the organization has been an empowering experience, given the traditional status of social entrepreneurs and educational leadership in bangladesh current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 23 women in bangladeshi society and the limited employment opportunities available to them. as a result, they are thoroughly invested in the success of the organization. the transferability of bep is illustrated by the interest expressed by a number of other countries seeking to extend access to primary education and to increase girls' access to education, and by its replication in countries such as afghanistan, mali, and zambia. society for lowest urban mass a one-man initiative to provide basic education for children from the poorest families has been started in one of the shantytowns in the northeast section of the city. chitto halder runs a two-room school; an additional room of the organization houses several sewing machines and tables; a fourth is a small office, complete with a computer this school, the bright stars project, is operated by the society for lowest urban mass (slum), a group halder has organized to act as a school board. started in 2003, the school provides a free education for 5-14 year old underprivileged children who have either dropped out of or have never attended government schools. the children meet each afternoon in the two classrooms, with 20 children and one teacher per class. the students receive school uniforms, snacks, books and stationary, and the opportunity to participate in art competitions and sports. halder has used his knowledge of the community, gleaned through visits to the families of the students, to design an educational package that is attractive to parents faced with the prospect of reduced income from the lost labor of their children attending school. in addition to the educational package, mothers and elder sisters of students can participate in six months of sewing and tailoring training at the school (slum, 2004). both the free classes and the sewing training are financed by an english medium kindergarten school that operates in the same premises for the children of a slightly higher social group that is able to pay a small amount for schooling. for this social group, the school is seen as an excellent preparation for the government schools. the small class size, attention to english language teaching, and use of the books and curriculum used in the government elementary schools create a demand for places in the school. another innovative aspect into the bright stars project is the links forged by its founder to several private international schools catering to the expatriate and high-income bangladeshi families in the area. this has provided the bright stars project with access to a source of teacher training for its teachers, who are given the skills to adopt childcentered teaching techniques and create simple teaching aids from local materials. as a result, the classroom activities look very different from those found in the local government schools that are highly dependent on textbook-based rote learning. halder hopes to expand, but only within the small slum community in which he currently operates. he plans to set up two community centers, each containing a school, a health center and a vocational training center. in these centers, services for those unable to afford to pay will be financed by those who can and from the sale of goods produced in the training center. loans or donations would allow the purchase of the building and the payment of the salaries until the centers became established and selfsupporting (society for lowest urban mass, 2004). jill sperandio 24 december 1, 2005 quality teaching project the links forged by halder to the benefit of the bright stars project lead back to a teaching training scheme initiated by a british teacher trainer in conjunction with the administrators and owners of a large for-profit international school with a strong community service ethos. the teacher training program--quality teaching--was designed to improve teaching techniques for teachers in the privately operated, government supported non-formal primary education sector (atwuc, 2004). it focuses on teaching skills that foster student participation and cognitive development. the underlying assumptions of the training are that by helping teachers to develop student skills such as understanding, analysis, organization, prioritizing, planning, evaluation, communication and reasoning, teachers help underprivileged children access their rights to protection and survival while giving them the tools for life long learning. participants in the training scheme study in an environment in which they can think about teaching and learning, and network and bond with other teachers in similar circumstances. the quality teaching project (qtp) was collaboratively developed by the teacher training school and the international school, in order to make this training available to groups of teachers from local schools serving low-income students. beneficiaries of the training are expected to progressively take on the leadership, training, and communication roles initially adopted by the expatriate trainer and teachers at the international school. opportunities for teachers who have completed the training to meet and share experiences, support and encourage one another, and generate ideas and solutions, have also been provided. an association of the teachers who have completed the training was founded in june 2004 with the motto 'working together', and the association now produces a newsletter and organizes meetings and social events. although the founders of the training scheme have now left the country, the international school continues to host the training and meetings, and act as banker for the association. the fee paid to teachers who now lead the training sessions is recovered from groups, often non-government organizations (ngos) or private aid organizations such as world vision, that view the project as an important way to improve delivery of their own educational services, and that indirectly finance teachers who do not have the benefits of organizations like qtp. the qtp introduces teaching methods that are innovative in the context of bangladesh's traditional education system to people without formal teaching certification who are using them to help disadvantaged children obtain an effective education. it uses a social network that includes volunteer expatriate teachers and trainers, the infrastructure of a private school, local ngos and charity organizations who buy the training and fund individuals who cannot pay, and has been expanded by an association of 'graduates' of the course to provide sustainability and support. if, however, demand for the course by the outside agencies that can pay for it ceases to exist or if the international school withdraws support, qtp may not prove sustainable (atwuc, 2004). the asha project a final case study, from the same area of dhaka and with connections to the two small projects previously examined, is the asha project, an initiative of a british couple. they social entrepreneurs and educational leadership in bangladesh current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 25 established a hostel for illiterate street girls found working in the markets of a squatter settlement, where they were employed to sort rags, carry bundles, or break bricks. meider jonno asha 'hope for girls' (asha) provides an education in both english and bangla for the 20 girls living at the hostel and nearly 100 more who walk to the hostel every day. the mission of the hostel founders is empowering the girls through education to escape the early marriage, early child-bearing, and low paid work that are common among their social class. a small payment is made to parents of the older girls to encourage them to allow the girls to continue to attend school, and regular open days and events are held to bring the parents into the community of the hostel. teachers at the hostel are either international volunteers or untrained bangladeshis from the surrounding community, who provide lessons that range from science to training in the production of handicrafts. the older girls are expected to help educate the younger, in the "pupil teacher" structure of the hostel. the hostel is registered as a charity in scotland and receives most of its funding from scottish church donations, although a small amount of money is raised by selling the craft work of the girls in the hostel shop. the oldest cohort of girls, now 17 and 18 years old, have spent four years in the hostel, and are highly literate in bangla, have a good command of english language skills, and receive training in handicrafts and teaching skills from their work in the hostel. seeking an opportunity to raise the expectations of the girls, and give them a realistic understanding of modern work environments, the hostel leaders and the international school involved in the quality teaching project collaborated to offer the girls an opportunity to take part in a "work for women" initiative. this involved the girls attending the international school two days a week for two months, shadowing women employed there in a variety of work in order to learn about their lives and careers as well as their daily experiences in the classroom. these women, who are all volunteers, served as role models and mentors for the girls during the visits, and supported their participation in classroom-based tasks. the people involved in the asha project and "women and work" collaboration might describe their efforts as charity or community service. however, the asha project involves many elements of social entrepreneurship and leadership for educational change. the hostel is innovative in that it offers girls an opportunity to reject an environment that disadvantages them in favor of one where they are safe and can concentrate on acquiring skills to improve their lives. the combination of non-formal teaching and peer teaching has enabled the girls to become literate in two languages in four years, and gain a basic understanding of mathematics, science, and some craft training. the "women and work" project was innovative in that it provided adolescent girls with an opportunity to see themselves in a modern work environment, and to receive encouragement from women they admire. the girls' diaries clearly indicate the empowering nature of the experience. one noted that her mentor "…boosted [her] confidence by saying that [she] can achieve what [she] truly want[s]. [the mentor] fed [the girl's] dream by pointing out that there are plenty of female teachers and [she] can become one of them too. if [she does], [she does] not have to depend on anyone." (asha participant diary). moreover, few bangladeshi girls would have the opportunity to see a jill sperandio 26 december 1, 2005 computer-based work place and interact with women from different social classes and different countries as these girls have done. the sustainability of these initiatives is questionable, because they are dependent on the goodwill of donors of both money and facilities, and on the leadership of the hostel and international school. the innovation is also highly situational; it has proven to be successful for this group of girls in a particular place at a specific time. however, the projects offer insight for effective methods of improving the education of disadvantaged girls, which could guide other educational endeavors in other contexts. analysis these case studies describe enterprises differing significantly in scale and resourcing that are driven by the same vision: the empowering of disadvantaged individuals, particularly girls and women, through the provision of basic education and opportunities to learn marketable skills in a country where access to education and employment is limited for many people. the leaders of these enterprises are innovative in their use of available resources. they employ innovative approaches to the delivery of education, although it could be argued that they are innovative only when compared to the formal educational system of the country in which they are situated. several of the projects described are financially self-sustaining, and all of them generate some level of self-funding. from the standpoint of initiating and leading educational change, these projects demonstrate how much can be done with very limited resources when the vision is clear and the individuals concerned with achieving this vision are driven by a strong sense of moral purpose. the leaders involved with these projects perceived a need and then acquired the knowledge necessary for tackling the problem, and they were willing to employ unconventional methods to achieve their goals for improving educational in bangladesh. in the process they developed relationships and networks that expanded, supported, and sustained the enterprise. discussion these case studies suggest that social entrepreneurship has the potential to make major contributions to education in three key areas: experimenting with innovative methods of teaching and learning; developing models of collaboration including support networks and partnerships with educational enterprises in the private sector, and modeling nontraditional leadership for educational institutions. a more detailed examination of each of these areas is warranted, as they also suggest ways in which educational social enterprise can be encouraged and nurtured. innovative methods of teaching and learning the case study projects suggest how the non-formal education sector, with innovative leadership, can lead the way in advancing educational change within a country. in the national or formal education sector, introducing educational change, particularly in teaching methodology, requires realigning training colleges and certification, reeducating school administrators, and retraining the existing teaching force, all of whom are hampered by traditional practices, professional organizations, and lack of financial resources. social entrepreneurs and educational leadership in bangladesh current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 27 social entrepreneurs seeking to develop new educational structures or experiment with new methods are less constrained by this paradigm. they may be free of the constraints placed on government-regulated schools that require public approval for change, and on private sector schools where change is conditional on increasing income. social entrepreneurs are often 'starting from scratch', rather than restructuring, renewing, or reforming. if they are outside the formal system, they do not have to cope with organizational memory and tradition, or with the associated feelings of loss as traditional, trusted methods are discarded and new ideas and mindsets are introduced. new enterprises find it easier to involve individuals on the basis of their interest and commitment, and to train them to use innovative teaching methods that do not rely on expensive teaching aids or textbooks. if new methods are seen to be effective in allowing disadvantaged groups to achieve academically, demand will increase for teachers trained in the methods and for institutions offering the methods. the financial resources necessary to scale up will follow. building social networks and collaborating with commercial educational enterprise the case studies raise the issue of scale in relationship to the effectiveness of a project, where scale is defined by the numbers of people who benefit. while all the projects appear very successful when measured by outcomes for participants, bep is clearly free of the concerns about sustainability and income generation that the other projects face. the very size of the bep operation attracts attention; the numbers of people it serves, the clearly delineated organizational structure, the business expertise that it can summon, and the amount of time its leader devotes to promoting the project, have accrued funds that not only sustain the program but allow it to expand and contemplate new projects. the smaller projects are only a few among many small projects operating in the urban areas of dhaka, and as such are much less visible and find it much harder to generate and attract income. the case study enterprises suggest that lack of financial resources can be offset in other ways. innovative project leaders develop links to community resources, both public and private, knowing that use of just one computer and printer, for example, will allow the production of teaching materials, access to the internet, a training tool for computer use and typing, and a way of locating new resources that can assist teachers in a number of one classroom schools. in three of the case study projects, the sharing of the modern infrastructure and access to services of private sector international schools--the use of buildings, auditoriums, banking, and volunteer help of teachers and students trained in progressive teaching and learning--helped anchor the projects. the high status international schools' recognition and endorsement gave the projects a higher profile in the community and to donors, which helped them lever other resources. the international school community benefited from the collaboration by having the opportunity to share skills and develop awareness and compassion in line with the schools' declared mission to be involved with the wider community. the links between the case study projects illustrate the importance of networking and collaboration for small enterprises to increase their sustainability and access to resources--bright stars teachers benefited from the quality teaching project; their school provided a demonstration site for the teaching methods being advocated and supplied jill sperandio 28 december 1, 2005 trainers and organizers for the training scheme. in addition, the scheme is linked to the asha project to provide training and an opportunity to find teaching positions in nonformal education for the low-income asha participants. helping foster such links and networks could be an important method for nurturing the work of social entrepreneurs. educationally informed leadership the cited examples of social entrepreneurship demonstrate the importance of leadership from outside the formal education sector. recognition of the importance of introducing non-traditional leadership in school systems in the united states has been a recent issue. hess and kelly (2005) note "…efforts to bring non-traditional principals into school systems often attract candidates whose experiences and strengths are in short supply… an infusion of such principals who can pioneer new routines and mentor their peers can provide workable examples of entrepreneurial leadership and help transform school management" (hess & kelly, 2005). bep's work with rural schools demonstrated the effectiveness of leaders with business backgrounds, while highlighting the need for these leaders to experience modern educational thinking and methodology in order to avoid replicating an existing system that has failed a large proportion of the population. conclusion bangladesh is home to varied examples of social entrepreneurship focusing on the provision of basic education to disadvantaged sectors of the population. while the definition of social entrepreneurship is still evolving, the case studies examined in this article suggest evidence of congruity with evolving theories concerning effective leadership and change in educational settings. the use of corporate examples in the developed world for informing the construction of models of such leadership could be augmented by studies of effective social entrepreneurship in the field of education and the organizational structures that enable social entrepreneurs to empower people. social entrepreneurship has the potential to provide a laboratory for developing innovative approaches to many aspects of education and educational change, including teacher training, classroom and school organization, and community involvement. as such, it warrants further research, particularly that which may contribute to clarifying the definition of educational innovation. are the innovative educational practices adopted by social entrepreneurs situation-specific to the localities in which they are developed, or can all countries learn from them as they attempt to meet the challenges of sophisticated technology and rapidly changing lifestyles? fostering social entrepreneurship in education is clearly desirable, but how this is best accomplished is unclear and needs further research. the case studies from bangladesh suggest that help with initial start up costs is useful, as are opportunities to develop links and networks with other entrepreneurial projects, whether formal education initiatives or the private education sector. how to provide social entrepreneurs the freedom to experiment and innovate while ensuring the safety and rights of children affected is also an issue that needs to be addressed. publicizing examples of educational excellence produced by social entrepreneurship, and of the entrepreneurial educational leaders who create successful projects, will offer an opportunity to enhance local and national educational systems worldwide. social entrepreneurs and educational leadership in bangladesh current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 29 references association for teachers working with underprivileged children (atwuc) (2004). quality teaching: a way of thinking [proposal from world vision, may 23, 2004 to the international school of dhaka]. unpublished data. bolton, w. k., & thompson, j. l. 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(2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 freire, dialogic feedback, and power issues: an autoethnography rosaria indah universitas syiah kuala, banda aceh, indonesia the centrality of feedback is undeniable in education. however, not all feedback effectively encourages learning or improves performance due to predicaments in feedback delivery and receptivity. several studies suggest other ways where feedback is offered in a dialogic fashion instead of a monologic one. nevertheless, few papers do so in the context of medical education, especially when the learning processes involve marginalized people such as disaster-affected patients. this paper draws on autoethnographic experiences of providing dialogic feedback for medical students using paulo freire's dialogue concepts. this feedback was given during reflective sessions in community-based medical education at post-disaster areas in aceh, indonesia. the findings show that freire's dialogue concepts help assess dialogic feedback quality and offer insights into power relations between teachers and students. to achieve the aim of providing dialogic feedback, to obtain new understandings, educators need to establish a more equal position in student-teacher relationships. in sum, the findings highlight the applicability of freire's concept of dialogue in offering feedback for students especially when the training takes place in a context of disaster-affected people. keywords: autoethnography; dialogue; disaster; feedback; medical education. introduction providing feedback is a practice that has been described as not only central in learning, but also as complicated, multi-layered, and disputable (boud & molloy, 2013; steenutheim & wittek, 2017; winstone & carless, 2019). feedback may produce many positive effects, such as improving student performance and enhancing learning by offering students information on their tasks, processing the tasks, self-regulation, and progress as a person to advance their performances (hattie & timperley, 2007). other than cognitive or informational inputs, feedback may also offer motivational inputs (brookhart, 2017). however, not all feedback could effectively encourage learning or improve performance. some studies reported challenges in giving feedback including contextual constraints (henderson et al., 2019), individual capacity in feedback provision and receptivity (adcroft, 2011; elnicki & zalenski, 2013; forsythe & johnson, 2017), and ways of offering feedback (kost & chen, 2015). in order to stimulate learning, scholars suggest various models to offer feedback. in undergraduate medical education, educators have been using models such as pendleton rules (chowdhury & kalu, 2004; pendleton, 1984), sandwich (von bergen et al., 2014), agenda-led outcome-based analysis (aloba) (silverman, 1996), partnership-empathyapologyrespect-legitimationsupports (pearls) (milan et al., 2006), and stop-keepstart © 2021, indah. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 20-38. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en freire, dialogic feedback, and power issues current issues in comparative education 21 (sks) models (delong & delong, 2011). in medical specialty education, models include continue-alter-stop-try (cast) (sefcik & petsche, 2015) and one-minute preceptor (omp) (sabesan & whaley, 2018). in general, these models highlight the importance of teachers’ empathy when offering feedback. if carefully delivered, feedback may clarify tasks given to students or suggest how to do them more effectively (hattie & timperley, 2007), facilitate self-regulation and reflection (nicol & macfarlane-dick, 2006; telio et al., 2015), encourage positive motivation (brookhart, 2017), and offer opportunities for negotiation and dialogue (nicol & macfarlane-dick, 2006; telio et al., 2015). the final aspect, dialogue, is the focus of this paper. dialogic feedback several studies suggest that providing dialogic feedback for students produces better learning than monologic feedback (ajjawi & boud, 2017; merry et al., 2013; telio et al., 2015). dialogic feedback helps some students manage their emotional responses when receiving corrective information from their teachers (merry et al., 2013). compared to unidirectional feedback, dialogic feedback is more effective in encouraging students to utilize it in subsequent learning processes (ajjawi & boud, 2017; merry et al., 2013). one possible explanation for this utilization is that dialogue and negotiation may construct an educational alliance between students and teachers (telio et al., 2015). dialogic feedback, however, cannot always happen. scholars have identified contexts that inhibit dialogic feedback from occurring, such as unsupportive institutional cultures (ramani et al., 2017), discussing traumatic memories during dialogues, and silencing students through unintentional domination of teacher's ideology (marjanovic-shane et al., 2019). in the medical education world, especially in clinical teachings, dialogues during ward rounds and bedside teachings were inhibited by ‘pimping’. medical educators and students are familiar with question-answer activities called 'pimping' (chen & priest, 2019). historically, the word 'pimping' came from the german word 'pümpfrage', which means 'pump question' often used by medical educators to 'teach' their students (brancati, 1989). in reality, pimping is a form of oppressive questioning of students, which usually begins with a medical teacher ignorantly posing a series of question to a group of students, inviting argumentations to produce a fuller understanding of the subjects being questioned (kost & chen, 2015). this so-called platonic dialogue may evoke negative emotions in medical students. they may feel ashamed and embarrassed due to their inability to provide 'smart' answers (van schaik, 2014). this problem in stimulating learning in medical education calls for a new way of establishing dialogues with students, which may help them achieve the primary aim of dialogue: producing new understandings and shared meanings that may facilitate learning. dialogue the word 'dialogue' originated from the greek language: 'logos' means 'meanings of words' and 'dia' means 'through' and in combination dialogue literally means a flow of meanings through the exchange of words between speakers (bohm, 2013, p. 6). as individuals perceive meanings differently, their exchanges of meanings through dialogue may create a shared-meaning and produce new understandings (eadie, 2009). the exchange of meanings is usually carried out through questions, and the question-answer dialogue may reflect role relationships among the speakers, for example, authority and indah current issues in comparative education 22 power (mishler, 2005). therefore, power relations in dialogues may influence the production of new understandings. extensive research has theorized and explored power relations between doctors and patients by closely examining meanings exchanged between them (ainsworth-vaughn, 1998; filc, 2006; foucault, 1990). however, a dearth of research has explored balanced power relations concepts in dialogues between medical educators and their students when educators provide feedback (angoff et al., 2016; lapum et al., 2012; ranz & korin langer, 2018). to further explore how dialogue can facilitate feedback, i next turn to freire's dialogue concept in learning. freire’s concept on dialogue paulo freire, a brazilian educationalist, argued that education’s ultimate purpose is to encourage people to think critically about their ways of living and try to change for the better (freire, 1970). freire argued that thinking, as a part of learning processes, occurs when both students and teachers communicate dialogically. these dialogues help students reflect upon the context, stimulate awareness, encourage acts to change the situations, and then reflect upon these actions (freire, 1970). dialogue may facilitate collective liberation of minds, especially when the learners are part of an oppressed society (freire, 2018). freire argued that a liberating dialogue should meet five conditions: 1) equality, 2) humility, 3) intense faith in oneself, 4) hope, and 5) critical thinking (freire, 2018), as shown in table 1 along with their definitions in teaching and learning practices. table 1 five prerequisite conditions for the establishment of dialogues in teaching and learning practices (freire, 1975) prerequisite conditions for dialogue teaching and learning practices 1 equality avoid domination and express profound love 2 humility respect students’ role and previous knowledge, care for their dignity, friendship strategy 3 faith recognize and have intense faith in one’s ability 4 critical thinking avoid normalizing situations, sensitive to epistemic inadequacy 5 hope maintain an optimistic mindset, expect something from the dialogue the first condition to establish a good dialogue is equality. freire defined equality not as an exactly equal position between teacher and student, but as a situation where teachers express their profound love to students by ensuring students exercise their right to speak (freire, 2018). freire contended that colonialism destructs equality as well as any other conditions where one subjugates others because subjugation denies other’s right to speak (freire, 2018). there is no dialogue without equality, and without dialogue there is no communication, therefore, there is no learning. a better teacher should ‘demystify’ their freire, dialogic feedback, and power issues current issues in comparative education 23 expertise to avoid subjugation over their students (labaree, 2000) without losing the ability to direct the learning process (bartlett, 2005). however, there is a lingering question: is it possible for student and teacher to be exactly equal in their relationship? studies exploring student-teacher relationship (str) discuss power and equality issues. it is evident that teachers always have a bigger power in str due to three factors: teachers have more knowledge and expertise, they have higher social and professional status, and students’ marks are in teachers’ hands as part of teachers’ obligation to assess their students (aruta et al., 2019). however, students are not powerless. they can also claim power in the str by resisting, dissenting teacher’s instructions, and misbehaving (taylor, 2019). therefore, there are power claiming processes in str, which make the relationship dynamic, communicable, and hopefully, closer to equality. a study described ideal power dynamics in medical student-teacher relationships where teachers locate themselves in a ‘friendly but not friends’ zone’ in ‘superior versus friend’ continuum of power claim (blakey & chambers, 2020). the relationships within that zone may enable students to convey their opinions about sensitive issues in health (such as alcohol use and death) and teachers to administer appropriate discipline to respect others’ viewpoints (blakey & chambers, 2020). from medical students’ perspectives, teachers and students should be able to see that ‘power need not always be equally divided’ and the dynamics in power claiming may serve as means to improve partnership instead of roadblocks to establish equality in str (kapadia, 2020). after equality, the second condition for dialogue is humility. humility is a frame of mind that enables a person to respect others (freire, 2018), far from arrogance and ignorance (heidemann & almeida, 2011). freire posed a question: “if i am tormented and weakened by the possibility of being displaced, how can there be a dialogue?” (freire, 2018). he also argues that practicing dominance inhibits dialogue and humility encourages it. having great faith in their power to transform the condition is the next prerequisite condition to create dialogue. both teachers and students need to believe that the power to transform a condition is more likely to exist in the struggle for liberation (freire, 2018). freire also suggested teachers to invest in promoting critical thinking in learning processes, which is the opposite of naïve thinking that makes one see only ‘normal’ occurrence in daily life (freire, 2018). critical thinkers can locate swift generalization, a false argument, and epistemic inadequacy in vague concepts or illegitimate truthclaiming, that may be questioned in a dialogue within liberating educational environments with their teachers (burbules & berk, 1999). the fourth prerequisite condition is hope. an optimistic attitude in students is a result of teachers’ efforts of instilling expectations of positive outcomes in their lives. although hope can’t stand alone in achieving the outcomes, without hope the efforts are weak (freire, 2021). the existence of hope encourages the act toward change instead of merely waiting. hopelessness is the opposite of hope and consists of a denial of the world and an active escape from it. in conclusion, dialogic pedagogy needs alterations of teaching methods as well as understood power relationships between students and teachers (aronowitz, 2015). this alteration of power relationship may positively influence medical students’ relationships with patients. reports and studies have been calling for a change in hierarchical and asymmetrical power relationship toward a more balance one, like in the case of indonesia (claramita et al., 2013; indah, 2021; ministry of health republic of indonesia, 2011). this paper seeks to obtain insights on dialogic feedback provided for medical students after indah current issues in comparative education 24 their interactions with marginalized and disaster-affected communities, who have lost family members, properties, and livelihood. the next subsection presents this study’s method and how freire’s dialogic feedback was employed in medical education in a postdisaster area. methods this study is a part of a larger ethnographic study exploring doctor-student-patient interactions in post-disaster areas in indonesia (indah, 2019). it draws on participant observations, interviews, and focus-group discussions involving medical students of the faculty of medicine x university (fomx). the students were assigned to learn at several health centers in areas that were devastated by a giant tsunami in 2004. the tsunami killed 126,741 people in this area and 93,285 were declared missing (arie et al., 2009). ethics approval was obtained from fomx human ethics committee (number 01/ke/fk/2017). the observed participants were two groups of five medical students, ages 22 to 25, most of them are female (70%), representing the gender structure in their school. the participants had completed an undergraduate program in medicine from fomx using a reformed curriculum prioritizing competence in disaster management (indah, 2010). when the study was conducted, they pursued their clerkship in family medicine clinical stage in tsunami-affected areas in banda aceh, aceh, indonesia. auto-ethnographic techniques were employed to obtain insights into my subjective experiences as a researcher (siddique, 2011) as i explored students’ perspectives in their natural settings. despite the fact that autoethnography is an uncommon methodology in the field of medical education, it provides powerful tools to obtain “more reflective, more meaningful, and more just” education practices (adams et al., 2017, p. 1). in this study, i refused to simply document medical student-patient interactions in situ. instead, i tried to involve the students in reflective practices encouraged in medical education (aronson, 2011; branch jr & paranjape, 2002; ryan, 2010). autoethnography also offers opportunities to employ a strong local knowledge as an insider and exercise a commitment to give back to my homeland after gaining a privileged position in advanced education (yakushko et al., 2011). the autoethnographic writing allows researchers to write in a highly personalized style (wall, 2006) as i exercised my reflectivity and use my positionality (plowman, 1995) in analyzing data from my interactions with students. this methodology has been utilized by health science (ettorre, 2010; foster, 2014; siddique, 2011) as well as health professional education researchers (acosta et al., 2015; gallé & lingard, 2010; grant, 2019; indah, 2018). in the application of auto-ethnographic techniques, however, researchers should be cautious of their potential downsides, which are neglect of research ethics, too much reliance on memory, and trapped in self-indulgence (chang, 2016; o’reilly, 2009). therefore, i had been continuously being cautious of the influence of my positionality in this research. i reflected on the application of the dialogic feedback diligently to accurately interpret my encounters with medical students. in addition to reflectivity, participant observation (hammersley & atkinson, 2007; o’reilly, 2009) was another method utilized in this study to produce a more complete illustration of students’ experiences during their learning processes. when i was conducting the observation, i could not avoid playing double roles: a medical teacher and a researcher, which was quite challenging sometimes. i asked for the students’ oral and written consent before recording almost every interaction observed. freire, dialogic feedback, and power issues current issues in comparative education 25 the data were documented in many ways: logbooks, audiotaped records, and field notes. the data analysis started concurrently with data collection (patton, 1990; richardson & st pierre, 2008) and included an iterative process (de laine, 1997). i also wrote analytical and methodological memos as i reread the data (emerson et al., 2011). i utilized nvivo10 qualitative software from windows to conduct coding and interpreting the data. i created a coding scheme based on two sources. first, some of the codes were predetermined from theories i utilized and second, they came out from topics emerged from reading the data. therefore, i drew the codes deductively (from theoryobservation-confirmation) as well as inductively (from observation-pattern-conclusion). i then categorized the codes into several categories and subcategories (saldaña, 2021). during the process, i wrote memos to connect codes and record emerging ideas and themes. i interpreted data by developing theoretical, methodological, and emotional notes (gobo, 2008), which were very helpful in creating a starting point to describe some concepts (peshkin, 2000). reflexive descriptions complemented the interpretation to maintain subjectivity and accountability (hammersley & atkinson, 2007; richardson & st pierre, 2008). to do so, i incorporated 'critical' analysis when writing the findings. i tried to resist domestication (thomas, 1993) to describe how my position as a medical teacher established elements of freire's dialogic concept (freire, 2018) and maintained criticism toward the interactions between the students, patients, and myself. findings this section presents some of the cases where i, as a medical educator and researcher, provided feedback in the form of dialogues to the medical student participants. they were engaged in various medical encounters in health centers at some post-disaster areas in banda aceh. harun and biopsychosocial perspective the following dialogue was a reflection session after a home visit to understand chronic disease management. we went to visit maryam, a 68-year-old woman, which was in a disaster-affected area. she lived with her son and his family in a house that was heavily destroyed by the tsunami. maryam survived a stroke a year ago and had uncontrolled high blood pressure and type-2 diabetes. she had not been able to visit health centers by herself due to her poor sight. i followed harun, a medical student who was assigned to the home visit. after the activity was completed, we had a reflection session during lunch together, and i offered him a dialogue to provide short feedback. rosa: how do you think the home visit went? harun: i think it went well. but i feel sorry for that woman. her house was still severely damaged by the tsunami, and it has not been renovated even after 12 years. she is diabetic and has severe hypertension. it seemed that her son and daughterin-law were not very supportive as they sat with us only briefly and left us there. rosa: yes, i agree. i felt sorry for her too. i appreciate your attention on the psychosocial aspect of the disease. in your opinion, what do you think healthcare providers should do to overcome the challenge? indah current issues in comparative education 26 harun: i prescribed some anti-hypertensive drugs and oral anti-diabetic drugs as pharmacological therapy. however, i should have paid attention to the nonpharmacological approach, as well. i think i should have talked to her son and daughter-in-law. she needs family support on diet and stress management to control her blood pressure and sugar level. yeah, i regret that i did not say anything when the son was with us briefly. i know i sometimes think that patients would not understand what i said, preferred to skip the explanation after examining them, and did not include their family members. rosa: yes, you are right. but don't worry. we can discuss your ideas with the chronic disease and geriatric management team. in the above dialogue, i applied the five elements in freire's dialogue. the first element, equality, was established well. both harun and i had equal understandings on the learning objective, and we take equal turns in the dialogue to avoid domination. the second element of dialogue, humility, was employed by respecting students' evaluation of the management of the patient. i then asked about the role of healthcare providers because i believe the student, based on his concerns on lack of time spent with family members of the patient, had acquired understanding beyond the individual aspect of biomedical paradigm. he embraced family aspects of health and the biopsychosocial perspective of it. critical thinking was employed when we discussed problematic aspects of the patient's situation and what is not proper in his approach. to affirm the student's critical reflection on his previous action, i confirmed his evaluation. to cultivate hope, i expressed my expectation for harun to actuate his idea through the work of chronic disease and geriatric management team. this expectation was an affirmation that his progress on creating new understandings is a great achievement and would be a foundation for a more comprehensive treatment. the dialogue with harun was an example of many other dialogues with medical students that successfully provide opportunities to give feedback in interactive ways and achieved learning objectives of those educational activities. however, some of the dialogic feedback encountered challenges due to various reasons. the subsequent dialogue provides an example of those challenging times of offering dialogic feedback. ‘i have no idea how to improve’ the second case involves iman, a 25-year-old male medical student participant. he and i participated in a junior school-based medical check-up. the school was in a tsunamiaffected district and mostly attended by students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. some of the school’s students lost their guardians in the disaster and therefore were forced to live in a nearby orphanage. some of them appeared shy or a bit hesitant to be examined and afraid of getting some vaccination shots. then one of the medical check-up team members clarified that there was no injection involved and the team would only perform physical examination and consultation. the medical check-up team members performed physical examinations in several stations, including an anthropometry (height and weight), visual acuity measurement using snellen chart, ishihara color-blind test, dental check, chest examination, and a health promotion station where the high school students were asked to watch a documentary on the effects of smoking, followed by a q&a session. freire, dialogic feedback, and power issues current issues in comparative education 27 i could see the anxious as well as curious expression on the high school students’ faces as they took turns to be examined. iman was assigned at the chest examination post with a stethoscope in his hands. to be able to observe, i sat beside him. we both agreed that this particular session was aimed to apply excellent communication with patients. iman started the chest examination without greeting the students or asking for their consent. he ended the examination without offering any medical advice or suggestions. he only started with saying 'excuse me' to a student and then put the diaphragm of the stethoscope on the student's chest and ended by a short ‘thanks’. consequently, unenthusiastic students left iman’s station and moved to the next one. their reaction stimulated me to pose some questions to iman. rosa: iman, what do you think about the school students' responses toward your examinations? iman: i think they are doing fine, doc. rosa: do you think you can improve your interpersonal communications with them? iman: ah [thinking pause] i don't have any idea what to improve, doc. i encountered a challenge to stimulate iman to think about encouraging ways to do the chest examination. i posed some other questions, but he appeared to have no idea which part of the examination that he may improve. then i decided to provide feedback through the coaching method (sabesan & whaley, 2018). i did not want him to feel under pressure. i decided to offer an example. iman lent me his stethoscope and i started a chest examination by smiling at a male high school student in front of us who looked a bit terrified. after greeting him and introducing myself, i saw that he became more relaxed and interested. he told me his first name and some other personal information that i requested. i listened to his answers attentively and then asked for his consent before putting the stethoscope diaphragm on his bare chest. after the examination had been completed, i reported my findings to the high school student and asked if he had any questions for me. with a curious expression he asked a question about ways to grow taller more quickly, which i answered accordingly. he seemed satisfied with my answer and then i ended the interaction with a smile and expressed his gratitude. the student left the station, and i gave the stethoscope back to iman. after observing my interaction with the student, iman changed his ways of interacting with the students. he paid more attention to students' responses and modified his approach accordingly. he performed the examination in better ways than before, asked more questions to the students and was asked to answer many of the high school students’ questions. as a result of his transformed ways of doing chest examination, iman's station became the favorite station with a big crowd of students around where he sat. i observed as iman listened to their questions and answered accordingly: on his personal experiences of smoking cigarettes and cannabis and their effects on health, how it feels to be a medical student, his favorite sports and so on. i enjoyed looking at the fascinated high school students and iman. during a lunch break afterward, i asked iman to reflect on the checkup session. indah current issues in comparative education 28 rosa: what do you think about the medical check-up? iman: it was fun. i learned how to articulate the prevention of problems such as respiratory problems due to smoking and how smoking cessation works. i did not do this kind of patient education much when i was in hospital rotation. most of the time, i just followed the residents, and they were the ones who did it. rosa: i saw that the ways you communicate with the high school students have improved. do you think you have changed some approaches? iman: yes. definitely. i think i have changed the way i communicate. in the beginning, i did it without proper eye contact, did not greet them or introduce myself. but then i learned that i have to be less interrogative, i started to call them 'bro,' asked for their names. i introduced my name to decrease the gap. i also learned how to ask for their consent for the chest examination. the benefit came instantly: they were less hesitant, and we got along much more relaxed. then i used my experience of smoking to understand why they smoked. thank you for reminding me how to be empathic. i modified my words with the use of fewer medical jargon. i'm glad that i was able to recognize their reactions when i used the medical terms; they were quieter, less talkative, maybe because they did not understand what i said before. i regret what i did at the teaching hospital. i remember my patients’ expression when i explained that we need to 'taper-down the metil-prednisolone use.' i think i made them confused. how silly i was. iman’s case highlights several aspects of freire’s dialogic feedback in the context of social interactions between medical students and educators. first, it seems that an exact equal position is very difficult to obtain in a student-teacher relationship, especially when the level of understanding of the task and its goal was incongruence. in this case, to achieve an equal understanding, i provided feedback by coaching (launer, 2014). after iman understood the goal of the task, he had better self-regulation in improving his performance. second, humility can be employed when the teacher respects the student’s understanding, lack of understanding or misunderstanding as ways of learning. when i, as a teacher, reflect on the interaction, i know that i wanted iman to progress and respected his reaction and learning process through making mistakes, fixing, and improving his communication skills by further practice. third, i let him practice first, then provide feedback, and then let him use the feedback to practice again with a new approach, because i had faith in iman's power to change how he interacts with his patients. i did not criticize his modification, because i know every student has his/her own way to doing things better than their teachers. fourth, the dialogue offered a perspective in assessing and valuing critical thinking. initially, it was hard to stimulate a critical stance of the situation. however, through a reflective conversation during the activity, iman could compare the patients' reactions with his previous experiences communicating with patients using many medical jargons. iman began to criticize his past practices and was able to identify challenges in them and express his intention to change his approach in communicating with patients freire, dialogic feedback, and power issues current issues in comparative education 29 fifth, hope. i believe that iman was able to transform his understanding to better practice, beyond imitating my approach because he provided evidence that he could do so. the dialogic feedback amplified my expectation that iman could self-regulate his progress by observing the effects of his new approaches when establishing the dialogues with high school students. in sum, this case highlights that freire's approach is useful to analyze how dialogic pedagogy in giving feedback may stimulate reflective learning in classrooms and beyond (aronowitz, 2015). the challenge of establishing a more equal understanding of the goal of learning described in this case offers an insight that to establish a dialogue in providing feedback, both medical teacher and student need to probe whether they had congruence in understanding the goal of the learning session. 'i just need to change my habit' the two previous cases represent many other cases where dialogic feedback was established relatively well and promoted changes in attitude. however, not all dialogic feedback turned out well. several of them failed to help my medical students achieve their learning objectives. the following dialogue took place after a ward round and pimping questions led by a senior attending doctor. the round aimed to exercise communication skills in health institution settings. an incident happened when sakdia, a female medical student, forgot to introduce herself to a female patient, and the patient refused to be examined by sakdia. the patient said: "i do not want to be examined by this rude nurse." after the ward round was over, i had a reflection session with sakdia. rosa: what do you think about our problem in establishing communication with the female patient this morning? sakdia: i forgot to introduce myself, but i did not realize it was a problem until the woman refused to be examined and addressed me as 'nurse'. but the nurses, nutritionist, nursing aid in this health center wear a different color uniform. can't the patients distinguish me as a junior doctor, doc? rosa: well, this morning's round answers that question. it seemed that patients couldn't differentiate 'who is what' if we do not introduce ourselves and roles. in your opinion, what does lack of self-introduction entail? sakdia: i have no idea. but i think if i can develop a habit of self-introduction, they will know my position and behave accordingly. i will improve my approach to patients, doc. the dialogic feedback with sakdia offered an example when most of the elements of dialogue were established, but it failed to produce a new understanding. i tried to approach her by showing humility, my faith in her power while stimulating critical thinking and hope. however, the first element of freire's dialogue, which is equality, was difficult to obtain as the dialogic feedback took place after the pimping questioning led by my fellow medical educator. it seemed that what happened during the pimping session left many medical students in an uncomfortable mood, including sakdia. it was hard for her to locate herself on a more equal level with me and feel free to speak up. as a result, instead of critically evaluating the problems in her interaction with patients, she was defensive to maintain her power in front of me, one of her teachers. consequently, the indah current issues in comparative education 30 problem of asymmetrical power relation, with lack of self-introduction as evidence, was abandoned. the inequality in student-teacher relationship led to less-productive dialogue and ineffective feedback. as a result, my particular dialogue with sakdia failed to produce new understandings (eadie, 2009). discussion this study explores my experiences as a medical educator in providing dialogic feedback for medical students using paulo freire's dialogue concepts. the study’s findings offer examples of how dialogic feedback may promote better learning through producing new understandings for both students and educators. in many attempts, including my dialogues with harun and iman, it seems that dialogic feedback may facilitate selfregulation and reflection (nicol & macfarlane-dick, 2006), encourage positive motivation (brookhart, 2017), and offer opportunities for negotiation and dialogue in feedback conversation (nicol & macfarlane-dick, 2006; telio et al., 2015). the dialogic feedback established in the findings may promote better learning (ajjawi & boud, 2017; merry et al., 2013; telio et al., 2015). the humble and respective approach in the dialogic feedback appears to help some students to manage their emotional responses (merry et al., 2013). it seems that collegiality and educational alliance (merry et al., 2013) between students and teachers allowed most of the students to express their emotions more comfortably. in iman's case, the dialogic feedback encouraged him to utilize feedback given in his subsequent learning processes (ajjawi & boud, 2017; merry et al., 2013). nevertheless, educators should be mindful that student might not 'get it' in the first dialogue. dialogue with iman presents an example where dialogic feedback should comprise iterative activities that continuously promote the exchange of ideas, produce new understandings, and enhance learning. therefore, the educators should still respect students' achievements, being humble and faithful toward any expressions of ideas hoping that students' abilities will improve over time (merry et al., 2013), despite the reality that the students have not immediately arrived at the level of ability that the educators expected. dialogue with iman also suggests that educators may also direct the student by employing another way of providing feedback, such as role-modeling, to offer insights on how a task may be executed. according to freire, being 'equal' with students does not deny teacher's responsibility to be directive (bartlett, 2005). the findings also show that asymmetrical power relations between educator and student may hinder the dialogic feedback to achieve new understandings. as shown in my dialogue with sakdia after a 'pimping' session, the big gap in power relations created by the previous teacher hindered a more equal position between sakdia and myself. during the pimping session, sakdia was under pressure to produce a 'smart' answer instead of being authentic about what she understood. consequently, the situation negatively affected the dialogic feedback that came afterward, damaged the student-teacher rapport, and impeded learning (freire, 2018). it seems that this situation related to a highly hierarchical relationship between students and teachers, which is one of the characteristics of medical education culture (angoff et al., 2016; donetto, 2012). it seems there is a discrepancy between medical education culture and the culture of patients, which are two out of three different cultures around medical education practices (the other one is health facility cultures). when analyzing the dialogical feedback practices, i considered approaches at micro and macro levels (gabler, 2021). the microlevel approach considers a smaller circle of interaction, such as dynamics in studentteacher relationships. it looks at each student specific way of learning and interpreting freire, dialogic feedback, and power issues current issues in comparative education 31 their teacher’s responses within a cultural context in medical education. the macro-level approach scrutinizes medical doctor/student-patient interactions. in this study, i have used both approaches. when the culture that regulate doctor-patient interactions is gradually transformed from highly hierarchical in the past toward a more equal relationship, it seems that cultures around student-teacher interaction are transforming in a relatively slower pace. medical doctors are expected to treat patients as their equals when in medical education there is a rather big power distance between senior and junior medical doctors and between medical teachers and their students. this situation creates a gap in the relationships between patients and medical students. the students are used to tension between them and their teachers and struggleto apply a more equal approach with their patients. for example, i have never seen a medical teacher introduced herself to her students although they have never met before. medical teachers i observed also rarely share their power of knowledge by suggesting reference to read or theoretical framework to understand. what mostly shared were medical opinions. the asymmetrical power relationship due to medical education cultures were obvious and worsening with regular pimping sessions and one-way feedback provisions. in sum, it appears that there were strong influences of culture on the way student participants responded to dialogical feedback that i wanted to establish with them. the dialogues in findings, however, provide evidence that medical students benefited from a more balanced power relation between teacher and students offered by dialogical feedback provision. harun, iman, and other students in this study have increased their ability to reflect on their actions, which potentially benefit their future patients, especially those who had been experiencing political, financial, and social oppressions. in addition, they were not the only beneficiaries of the new understandings. i, as a medical teacher, also obtained new insights from the established dialogues. as i employed critical thinking during dialogue with harun, i obtained insights that medical education should pay more attention to change the biomedical paradigm into biopsychosocial one. from a pedagogical point of view, those dialogues taught me the teacher's responsibility to offer direction in learning, be aware of students’ long journey of learning, and always be respectful along the way. from employing autoethnography as a methodology and reflectivity and participant observation as methods, i learned that providing dialogic feedback is a skill as well as an art that needs to be practiced with humility and perseverance. as with most studies, the design of the current study is subject to limitations. first, this study involved only a few groups of medical students at only one medical school. the unique cultures of the medical school, educators, and patients involved affect how they interacted. consequently, analysis of the findings considered elements of cultures where the interactions occurred. second, autoethnographic methodology employed in this study relied on my personal assumption about the world, which includes my interpretation of the ways people speak, value, and believe. what i find interesting may be different compared to what other people do. therefore, the findings of this autoethnographic study should be understood in light of my positionality and personal view as a tsunami survivor, medical doctor, and teacher working with marginalized patients at the disasteraffected area, which made writing this article both reflective and uncomfortably challenging (farrell, 2017). despite these limitations, the application of the autoethnographic methodology in this study contributes methodologically to production of meanings and emotional dynamics in the student-teacher interactions (ellis et al., 2011). indah current issues in comparative education 32 given the limited scale, scope, and the specific methodology of this study, further explorations are recommended to study the utilization of freire’s dialogic concepts in dialogic feedback in broader and different settings and use different approaches such as phenomenology, critical discourse, or conversation analysis. conclusion the employment of freire's ideas in this research indicates the usefulness of these ideas in providing feedback for medical students. freire's five elements of dialogue provide directions for medical educators in offering dialogic feedback. the findings of this study also call for medical educators to be cautious of the challenges of providing dialogic feedback, such as asymmetrical power relations between teachers and students. other instructional methods employed (e.g., pimping) may also affect the power relations between teachers and students and negatively impede dialogic feedback effectiveness, especially in a context where medical education is in a context where hierarchical relationship is a norm of student-teacher relationships. without careful attention to power relations, it is challenging to stimulate students' reflexivity toward self-actions. therefore, this paper calls for an implementation of educational transformation that creates a more balanced power relation between teacher and students. this may enable dialogic feedback to take place, which may benefit medical students, teachers, and their future patients, especially those who have experienced marginalization. acknowledgements this work was funded by indonesian endowment fund for education/ lembaga pengelola dana pendidikan (lpdp) (grant no. prj-1125/lpdp/2015) and sydney school of education and social work, the university of sydney. my phd supervisor dr. matthew a.m. thomas, and colleagues of r3 (the redfern research roundtable): dr suren ladd, dr ren-hao xu, and dr john iromea are greatly thanked for inspiring and constructive comments during the improvement of the manuscript. disclosure statement the author reported no potential conflict of interest and confirmed that she contributed to research proposal writing, data collection and analysis, and the publication of this article. all personal identifiers have been removed or disguised so the persons described cannot be identified through the details of the story. rosaria indah is a lecturer at fakultas kedokteran and a researcher at pusat riset ilmu sosial 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(2011). insider outsider: reflections on working with one’s own communities. women & therapy, 34(3), 279–292. © 2005 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(1) 7 from entrepreneurship to activism: teacher autobiography, peace and social justice in education steve sharra michigan state university abstract this article argues that while social entrepreneurship shares concerns similar to those of social justice activism, the corporate and business ethos in the idea of entrepreneurship is not suited to the social concerns that teachers and other educators deal with in their everyday lives. the article points out characteristics of social entrepreneurship that are shared with the concerns of peace and social justice, but cautions against a rush to blur the distinctions between social entrepreneurship and education. based on fieldwork conducted in four malawian schools in 2004, this article places the historical context of peace and social justice activism in malawi in the struggle for independence, and in the theoretical concept of umunthu. using autobiography as a research methodology, the article discusses the approaches and implications for promoting teacher independence and activism to make teaching relevant to social change and innovation in malawi. introduction since 1994, malawi has embraced a multiparty system of government, as well as liberalization of the economy, education, and social sector services. with support from international agencies and non-governmental organizations, the country has pursued a decentralization policy alongside a privatization agenda. the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations working in education has taken the idea of entrepreneurship to a new level. educational policy and practice have been caught up, perhaps unwittingly, in the process. given the prevalence of the idea of entrepreneurship and its penetration into education, and given the relative absence of the idea in educational scholarship, the time seems ripe for a discussion of the broad issues raised by developments in the field of social entrepreneurship. the lack of discussion on social entrepreneurship in educational scholarship easily creates the impression that the idea has nothing in common with education. yet given global, historical and political developments in malawi and around the world, particularly since the end of the cold war, this is far from accurate. this article argues that an understanding of social entrepreneurship and how it manifests itself in education needs to embody a concept of social justice. the article points out that rather than blur the social and the entrepreneurial, the corporate and business ethos found in entrepreneurship are not suited to the social concerns that teachers and other educators deal with in their everyday lives. the first concern in this article is to caution against any rush to see an easy, unproblematic fit between social entrepreneurship and education. some of the characteristics that define social entrepreneurship are indeed shared with the concerns of teachers who teach for peace and social justice. however, rather than see teachers as steve sharra 8 december 1, 2005 social entrepreneurs, as some scholars do (bornstein, 2004), the article suggests that a more suitable fit may be to reconceptualize social entrepreneurship as peace and social justice activism. the article places peace and social justice in the historical context of the activism that informed the struggle for independence in malawi, and in current efforts to make education relevant to social problems. following this context is a discussion of the methodology and theoretical framework of the study. i then define social justice activism, and social entrepreneurship, before providing examples of incidents that reveal how injustice creates perceptions that make it difficult for teachers to be social justice activists in malawi. the article suggests what ideas are needed to promote teacher independence, resilience, and umunthu/ubuntu, the humanness that constitutes the human community and encompasses the awareness and activism necessary to make teaching relevant to social change and innovation. the article ends with considerations of implications for policy, curriculum, and teacher education and development, in thinking of how to reconceptualize social entrepreneurship as social justice activism in malawi. the question of how to make the move from entrepreneurship to activism is an important beginning point. from entrepreneurship to activism in malawi, schools, teachers and communities already have to deal with issues and ideas spilling over from the global and historical contexts that have brought the idea of decentralization and privatization to the fore of development. non-governmental development organizations (ngdos) have been a major part of this (fowler, 2000). because teachers conventionally bear the expectation to implement educational policies, any discussion of how educational research should deal with the issue of social entrepreneurship should place teachers at the center. social entrepreneurs are said to operate with social impact as their main goal, and business acumen and efficiency as their strategy (dees, 1998, 2001; bornstein, 2004). the emphasis falls more on the entrepreneurship and less on the social, as pointed out by dees (1998, 2001): “social entrepreneurs are one species in the genus entrepreneur. they are entrepreneurs with a social mission” (p. 2). the implications for this definition in education are complex, and require a perspective that is capable of reconciling the apparent dilemma and contradiction of tying social change to profit, even if only as a means to a social end, as some scholars suggest (see dees, 2003). if the idea of social entrepreneurship is going to be useful to education, especially in sub-saharan africa, it will need to be stripped of its current corporate-sounding and profit-making character, putting more emphasis on the social than on the entrepreneurship. to that end, in order for the “social” aspects of innovation and efficiency to be promoted in teacher education and development research and practice, this article suggests a reconceptualization of social entrepreneurship as peace and social justice activism. a peace and social justice identity shares several of the characteristics that social entrepreneurship espouses, but finds questionable the emphasis on entrepreneurship. the notion of entrepreneurship has strong connotations with profit making, and is distanced from historical and political contexts. furthermore, just as there are several aspects in the idea of a social entrepreneur that share conceptual mutuality with the idea of a social justice activist, there are also aspects that do not. some of the shared aspects deal with concern with and desire to solve social problems, pioneer social change, and promote community service. from entrepreneurship to activism: teacher autobiography, peace and social justice in education current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(1) 9 those aspects not shared between the two emanate from the entrepreneurial ethos associated with businesses. the two categories therefore do share overlaps, although their differences are significant enough to warrant caution in discussing their fit in education. as with social justice activism, social entrepreneurship sees itself as “critical to solving current social problems in an increasingly globalized world” (grenier, 2003, ¶2). both social entrepreneurship and social justice activism tackle “the underlying causes of problems, rather than simply treating symptoms” (dees, 1998, 2001, p. 4). as thompson (2002) observes, social entrepreneurs: are people with the qualities and behaviors we associate with a business entrepreneur but who operate in the community and are more concerned with caring and helping than with ‘making money’. in many cases, they help change people’s lives because they embrace important social causes (p. 413). in this study, social justice was taken as a central perspective informing the analyses of educational practices that seek to make schooling relevant to the understanding of community problems and the contexts in which these problems occur (ayers, 2004; allen, 1999; nieto, 1999; peterson, 1999). the concept of “social justice” emerged out of the stories that participating teachers told and wrote in their autobiographies. the teachers narrated lived experiences that create a social justice and human security perspective, described as a “peace problematic” in the african scholarship on peace (hansen, 1987, p. 2). seeing teachers’ lived experiences from this perspective provides a practical rationale for teachers to be given opportunities to redefine themselves in peace and social justice contexts. this stresses the social, rather than the entrepreneurial, a process that draws on the historical perspectives of social justice activism in malawi. this activism made it possible for malawi and other formerly colonized countries to overcome racist and colonial domination, and win the struggle for independence. the entrepreneurial spirit that went along with the struggle had a strong educational, socioeconomic and political motivation, whose self-emancipatory message does not appear as prominent in the current thinking about social entrepreneurship today. race awareness and historical context seeing teachers as social justice activists requires an understanding of the historical legacy of the anti-colonial struggle, and how colonized subjects used education and a critical awareness of racism to empower themselves (chiume, 1983; chipembere, 2001). the struggle for independence in many african countries provides an illustration of how a social justice perspective on the problem of race gives rise to an awareness of what actions were needed for african people to emancipate themselves from colonialism. in many cases, this critical awareness developed within the educational setting of colonialism. for teachers today, being aware of how education can be used for emancipatory and social justice purposes means doing away with pedagogical practices that fail to question the ideologies implicit in knowledge production and dissemination, and the globalization discourse these ideologies come couched in (n’zimande & mathieson, 2000; hallak, 2000; popkewitz, 2000). part of the crisis in malawi has been brought about by the abandonment of african perspectives on what constitutes community wealth and historical resilience, a steve sharra 10 december 1, 2005 consequence of the capitalist global order, the creation of which colonialism played a pivotal role in (sindima, 1995). a social justice perspective for teachers requires the awareness of the twin roles education played in the struggle for africa, i.e., pioneering the independence struggle, while creating class differences based on elitism and the privileging of a foreign ideology over endogenous epistemologies. the methodology used in the study took this awareness into account. methodology and theoretical framework i went into the field aiming to discover what genres of writing were best suited to teaching for peace and social justice in malawi. the research focused mostly on 21 malawian teachers in four malawian schools, from february to august 2004. the research methodology involved classroom observations, interviews, and a writing workshop. the teachers had endless stories to tell about their lives growing up and going to school in malawi under a dictatorship, and their lives now as teachers. autobiography therefore turned out to be an important genre of writing for these specific teachers. i worked with the teachers to plan lessons that would address malawian problems from a peace and social justice perspective. in order for teachers to plan lessons and teach them from a peace and social justice perspective, it was necessary for them to define peace and social justice from their own perspectives, with the awareness of how other peace educators defined these concepts. the data collected from the study comprised of teachers’ autobiographies, interview transcripts, notes from classroom observations, and a journal i kept throughout my stay in the field. a four-part thematic framework has been used to analyze the data. in the framework, peace, social justice and human security are defined as the humanness that constitutes human identity. african epistemologies define this humanness as umunthu, in the chichewa language; ubuntu or umotho, in some southern african languages (musopole, 1994; sindima, 1995, 1998; ramose, 1996). from these definitions come topical issues that contribute to the peace curriculum in the classroom and the school, informed, in part, by lived experience, told through storytelling and life writing. the peace curriculum enables a peace pedagogy, which leads to praxis (freire, 1970; spence and makuwira, 2005). the peace and social justice framework used as its central assumption the idea that lived experiences provided teachers with a form of knowledge that enabled them to recognize social injustice. social injustice was therefore seen as arising out of the denial of their humanness. in becoming activists for peace and social justice in their schools and communities, these teachers therefore sought solutions that started with autobiographical accounts of their lives as malawians and as teachers, using their stories to confirm their humanness, as a starting point. the research highlights new perspectives on teacher education and peace building in malawi by bringing teachers’ life writing to the fore and demonstrating the importance of african perspectives on lived experience (assefa & wachira, 1996; prah, 1996; ramose, 1996), in the formation of a peace-activist identity amongst teachers. it is this from entrepreneurship to activism: teacher autobiography, peace and social justice in education current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(1) 11 peace and social justice activist identity that this article is pointing to as a reconstructed identity for teachers, sharing those social concerns that social entrepreneurs also see as needing innovations and solutions. defining social justice when the participants were invited to take part in the study, the key terms that were used in introducing the project to them were teaching, writing and peace education. to make the connection from writing to education to peace and social justice, there was a need to investigate the contexts of the problems the teachers were talking about. a good number of the participants wrote about cases of social injustices committed against them as children, as teachers, and as members of society. it is this revelation about the teachers’ shared stories of injustices through which their life writing shares a connection with their teaching and social justice. according to barash and webel (2002): a society commits violence against its members when it forcibly stunts their development and undermines their well-being, whether because of religion, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual preference, or some other social reason. structural violence is a serious form of social injustice (p. 7). this understanding of social injustice and human insecurity underscores the need for a pro-active sense of peace: “creating material conditions which provide for the mass of the people a certain minimum condition of security, economic welfare, economic efficacy, and psychic well-being” (hansen, 1987, p. 4). thus awareness of contexts of injustice is considered in this article as the first step toward defining social justice activism, a process that is linked with personal narrative and lived experience. as stated earlier, social justice activism does share concern with social entrepreneurship, but the conceptual differences in the two constructs are equally significant. defining social entrepreneurship dees (1998, 2001) points out that although they have not always been labeled as such, social entrepreneurs have always been around, and have contributed to many of the establishments we have today. dees defines social entrepreneurs as those who “play the role of change agents in the social sector” (p. 4), listing five characteristics that enable the creation of social value: the recognition of new opportunities; the promotion of innovation; adaptation and learning; the overcoming of resource limitations; and a heightened sense of accountability to constituents. stressing social and lasting impact, dees sees the social entrepreneur as someone who envisions opportunity where others see obstacles. yet the emphasis on social entrepreneurship risks excluding schooling contexts, seeing social entrepreneurs in individualistic terms taken out of the social, political and historical settings of lived experiences. for teachers, this reconstruction cannot succeed without using real, lived experiences of teachers lives, many of which have, admittedly, little to do with business entrepreneurship. the notion of entrepreneurship would appear to ignore the historical and racial contexts of schooling. a social justice notion would consider these contexts as important (henry, 1998; peterson, 1999; nieto, 1999; bigelow, 1999). in the next section i report one incident that i observed while conducting this research, which raises two issues that, as this steve sharra 12 december 1, 2005 paper suggests, need to be examined further in reconstructing a social justice identity for teachers. the issues in question are passive resistance and perceptions of self and other. passive resistance; perceptions of self and other the incident offers an example of an event that could have been seized upon by teachers to highlight the importance of social justice activism in their work. for reasons that showcase the political power relations the teachers deal with in their daily lives, this did not happen. one monday morning, i arrived at one of the four research sites, and was greeted with the news that seven teachers from tsigado school had been removed from the list of returning officers for the forthcoming presidential and general elections that were to be held on may 20th, 2004. the teachers had been removed to make room for seven teachers from a neighboring school, who themselves were being moved from their school so as to make room for court clerks and other government officers who had also been recruited for the exercise. the head and two other teachers from tsigado went to their teacher development centre [1], to ask for clarification from a primary education adviser (pea). primary education advisers in malawi, formerly referred to as district inspectors of schools (dis), serve as immediate supervisors of head teachers and their schools, and as liaisons between the schools and the district education office. the rest of the teachers were on “chalk-down”—they would not teach until the matter was resolved and their fellow teachers reinstated. in the week before, head teachers who would serve as presiding officers on election day had threatened to lock up all voting materials if the district commissioner were to go ahead with a plan to remove several head teachers and replace them with civil servants from other government departments. the commissioner got wind of the planned action and immediately reinstated the head teachers. the incident does not necessarily depict the said teachers adopting an activist stance, but the fact that they did not seize the given moment to pursue a social justice stance points to the general absence of an activist culture amongst the majority of malawian teachers and educators. a social justice stance would have involved a number of actions to raise awareness about the teachers’ plight beyond the school: discussions with students, other teachers, and the community; letter writing campaigns; the involvement of the teachers’ union; and so on. in order to build a social justice consciousness in malawi’s education, there is need to begin with those teachers who already espouse change, peace and social justice as part of their teaching identity. the general absence of social justice activism shows how historical, ideological and political contexts have not been adequately interrogated in malawian educational discourse. one particular teacher in the study talked about “teacher independence” as having contributed to how he began the process to reconstruct his teacher identity. teacher independence as social justice activism in this section i discuss views expressed by two teachers who, in an autobiographical context (chaunfrault-duchet, 2004), exhibited an awareness of the need to build a peace from entrepreneurship to activism: teacher autobiography, peace and social justice in education current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(1) 13 and social justice consciousness. all the teachers in the study expressed a sharp awareness of the problems besetting them, but they differed in the ways they reacted to them. with the earlier incident, the teachers were engaged in passive resistance, refusing to teach, but not taking their action further. with the two teachers i discuss below, their responses to the perceived injustices were different. not only did they continue teaching during crises, they also sought connections and networks of support, by being actively involved in the reform process, and thinking of their students’ welfare in their decision making process. they did not necessarily call themselves social justice activists, but their awareness of the injustice they face is an important step in the process to reconstruct and redefine teacher identities. one of these teachers was nduluzi, a teacher who was actively involved in the currently ongoing primary curriculum and assessment reform (pcar) project, since its inception in 2001. during one workshop session, a number of teachers expressed reservations with the reform, saying teachers were hardly involved, yet they were the ones expected to implement the reforms. nduluzi expressed shock that the teachers had not been involved in the reform process. he launched into a step-by-step description of the process that had led to the reform. he mentioned the sources from which the main concepts of the reform were being taken: the policy investment framework (pif), the poverty reduction strategy paper, and the vision 2020 paper, among others2. nduluzi used the term “developing independence,” narrating his experiences being involved at the highest level of the reform, while being a “mere primary school teacher”, just like the others. he talked of how he developed his independence and stopped being under the spell of the abuse, exploitation and manipulation: i want to tell you that you have the opportunities. i’m not in the training profession by chance. i was trained. i qualified. when i get to a place, or even at the ttc i know they don’t see my problem. so on my own i tell myself i am a teacher, i know how to teach. so that gives me confidence (transcript, april 14, 2004). nduluzi said he did not let his frustration get in the way of his teaching. he told the teachers how to take the initiative and use the resources available to do school projects. another teacher who participated in the study, pinde, also spoke of her resilience in the face of frustration and injustice. she gave examples of being denied deserved promotions and opportunities for further education, but said because of her selfmotivation, she persevered and overcame feelings of hopelessness. in the interview with pinde, she said injustices were relevant content to discuss in the classroom with students, noting that when you as a teacher know what is going on, “you can handle these children properly, to prepare them so as not to have this kind of unjust attitude” (transcript, july 22, 2004). pinde offered ways teachers could involve students in creating an awareness of injustices, using a specific example in which a group of teachers were cheated out of money that was due to them after they went on an international trip. the senior ministry steve sharra 14 december 1, 2005 officers who also went on the trip all got their per diem money, but not the teachers. she said: when you are teaching them, you can use current events, things you hear outside the classroom. you can explain to them. even this very story, you can bring it to them and make them discuss it. “with this problem, who was at fault? was it the teachers, or was it their bosses?” the children can know that it wasn’t the teachers’ fault. it was the bosses’ fault . . . if it were you, how would you handle it? so the children will grow up mindful of stories like these (transcript, july 22, 2004). while nduluzi’s and pinde’s experiences do not contradict the accounts of frustration and anger the other teachers expressed, nduluzi and pinde used an approach that asked “how can we surmount this obstacle?” (dees, 2001, 2003, p. 4), as opposed to giving up in frustration. these incidents might sound anecdotal and isolated, but they are indicative of paralysis, resistance, resilience and independence as various responses to injustice. in thinking of the implications that this study raises for peace and social justice activism amongst malawian teachers, and for considering the place of social entrepreneurship in education, a number of issues come to the fore. new directions currently malawi is in the grip of a drought that has brought about a severe food crisis, for the second time in four years. coupled with the hiv/aids pandemic, and a highly contentious political atmosphere with unresolved issues from the 2004 presidential election, ngos and international aid and cooperation agencies are actively involved in attempts to deal with malawi’s problems. it is already known that the participation of the people on whose behalf such interventions are justified is more of lip service than a practicality (makuwira, 2004). it thus remains to be seen, on the one hand, what impact the decentralization and privatization agenda is going to have on education in the long run. on the other hand is the undeniable need for funds and resources that malawian schools are in dire need of. a spirit of entrepreneurship among school and community leaders would offer some solutions toward the problem of crumbling school infrastructure and dwindling supplies. how to reconcile this reality with the necessity for a social conscious poses a problem educational scholarship is yet to tackle. social justice activism thus entails finding alternative ways of continuing to produce excellence in teaching, while enhancing awareness of injustice, its contexts, and how to deal with it. this article has argued for a reconceptualization that places more emphasis on social justice activism than on entrepreneurship in teachers’ work. the paper has argued for the centrality of teachers and their lived experienced, and has urged caution against haste in considering the place of social entrepreneurship in education. the paper has pointed out that while social entrepreneurship and social justice activism share similar ideals for social change and innovation, they have significance differences that educational policy and practice cannot overlook. at the policy level, the implications call for further interrogation of how international aid and cooperation agencies are pushing the decentralization, privatization and entrepreneurship agenda in malawi, and how that agenda is impacting education. at the curriculum level, the implications call for the need to identify and enhance from entrepreneurship to activism: teacher autobiography, peace and social justice in education current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(1) 15 understanding of the historical, socioeconomic, political and autobiographical contexts of activism in malawi. at the teacher education and development level, the implications for peace and social justice activism amongst malawian teachers raised by this study call for further considerations of how a praxis rooted in a peace and social justice curriculum and pedagogy, informed by autobiography, and the endogenous epistemologies of umunthu, play a role in restoring human dignity and promoting peace and social justice amongst malawians. it is in these directions, among others, that a reconceptualization of social entrepreneurship as social justice activism in malawian education needs to proceed. notes 1. teacher development centers were introduced in the late 90s, to serve as central locations where as many as 15 schools per zone cluster for zone-level professional development, conferences, meetings, and other school-related programs and activities. 2. vision 2020 was a united nations development 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(2002). the world of the social entrepreneur. the international journal of public sector management 15 (4/5), 412-431. © 2006 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.8(2) 95 comparatively knowing: making a case for the vertical case study frances vavrus teachers college, columbia university lesley bartlett teachers college, columbia university abstract this article enters into contemporary debates regarding methodology and training in comparative and international education by addressing epistemological questions about what can be known of the world and how it can be known through comparative research. we contend that debates over qualitative versus quantitative methods or area studies versus cross-national studies miss the mark as they address only superficial differences in the field when much deeper divisions exist over the nature of comparative knowledge. based on our view of comparative knowledge, we propose the vertical case study as a means of comparing knowledge claims among actors with different social locations in an attempt to situate local action and interpretation within a broader cultural, historical, and political investigation. we also put forth a program of study that would enable students of comparative and international education to conduct research promoting full and thorough knowledge of multiple levels of comparison within a single vertically-bounded case. comparative and international education: fifty years of debate the 50th anniversary of the comparative and international education society (cies) provides an ideal opportunity for students and scholars of comparative and international education to reflect on the debates that have shaped the field and continue to define its contours. these debates come to life in the recently-completed oral history of the field, comparatively speaking, a documentary in which past presidents of cies discuss the origins of the society, the tensions among its members, and their visions of the future for comparative and international education. some of the most memorable footage comes in response to questions about the principal divisions in the field for many decades: the distinction between comparative education and international education; the theory/practice divide; and the meaning of “comparative methods.” from our vantage point at teachers college, the latter issue constitutes the most contentious contemporary debate. cast as deliberations over qualitative versus quantitative methods or as case studies versus cross-national studies, we believe these debates over methods miss the mark as they address only superficial differences in the field when much deeper divisions exist over the nature of comparative knowledge. in this article, we seek to move several issues of current debate from the more common terrain of methodology and methodological training to the less familiar landscape of epistemology. we contend that students and scholars of comparative and international education need to pay greater attention to epistemological issues related to what can be known about the world and how it can be known through comparative research before attending to the rules and procedures—the methods—used to gain such knowledge. as masemann argued in her 1990 presidential address, “… our conceptions of ways of frances vavrus and lesley bartlett 96 april 21, 2006 knowing have limited and restricted the very definition of comparative education that we have taught to students and used in our own research and, indeed, have promulgated to practitioners” (p. 465). based on our deliberation with students and colleagues on these matters, as well as our own research experiences, we propose the vertical case study as a means of comparing knowledge claims among actors with different social locations in a vertically-bounded analysis (see below). drawing inspiration, yet departing, from bray and thomas’s work on multilevel analyses (1995), we argue that attention to context and the local level is not optional but obligatory in order to generate trustworthy knowledge. this commitment to context is reflected in the discussions of the vertical case study and of the program of study for graduate students we propose below. in sum, we believe the vertical case study offers the best possibility of broadening the historically dominant epistemological bases of both comparative and international education. an epistemological case for the vertical case study case study methods are not new to comparative and international education. in their insightful review on the topic, crossley and vulliamy (1984) identify three case-study traditions in the broader field of education—the anthropological, the sociological, and the evaluative—which share a common conviction regarding the centrality of contextual understanding and detailed micro-level research. their embrace of case study research in comparative education is not merely methodological; rather, crossley and vulliamy make an epistemological ‘case for the case’ by arguing that what can be known about one context cannot be assumed to be true in another context. this issue, which they refer to as “ecological validity” (p. 198), highlights the importance of examining how cultural, economic, historical, and political forces within a given context play out in schooling (see also vulliamy, 1990). as broadfoot argues, “education can only be fully understood in terms of the context in which it is taking place…. the unique contribution of comparative studies is that of providing for a more systematic and theorized understanding of the relationship between context and process, structure and action” (broadfoot, 1999, pp. 225-226). the vertical case study differs from the traditional ethnographic case study described by crossley and vulliamy in its concomitant commitment to micro-level understanding and to macro-level analysis. it strives to situate local action and interpretation within a broader cultural, historical, and political investigation (for examples of such research see bartlett, 2006, and vavrus, 2005). the vertical case should be grounded in a principal site—e.g., a school, a community, an institution, or a government ministry—and should fully attend to the ways in which historical trends, social structures, and national and international forces shape local processes at this site. in other words, local understandings and social interactions should not be considered demographically or geographically bounded. instead, in a vertical case study, understanding of the microlevel is viewed as part and parcel of larger structures, forces, and policies about which the researcher must also develop a full and thorough knowledge. within the field of comparative and international education, the approach that comes closest to the one we are proposing is the multilevel analysis put forth by bray and thomas (1995). they contend that all comparative education research occurs along three dimensions: the geographic/locational, tied to levels (world region, country, comparatively knowing: making a case for the vertical case study current issues in comparative education, vol.8(2) 97 state/province, district, school, classroom, and individual); the demographic not tied to a place (ethnic or religious groupings, for example); and the societal, by which schooling is linked to broader political or economic structures and forces (p. 473). therefore, instead of comparison across nation-states, bray and thomas argue for comparison across different dimensions and, specifically, geographic or locational levels to avoid “incomplete and unbalanced perspectives on educational studies” (p. 472). we, too, make this recommendation from a methodological perspective but substantiate it on epistemological grounds. what makes single-level analysis “incomplete and unbalanced” is often, though not always, the absence of contextualized knowledge that takes into account how larger forces, structures, and histories inform local social interactions and understanding. as we discuss below, economic or political processes are frequently treated as autonomous, as though they have the power to determine human behavior; such research leads to ill-informed policy prescriptions. contemporary examples in the field of comparative and international education include the presumptions that education universally functions as a “vaccine” against aids, constitutes human capital formation resulting in economic mobility and societal growth, or leads to improved maternal and child health. despite these general tendencies, studies at the micro-level have demonstrated that such educational outcomes depend largely on the context, the type of education provided, and the local reception of educational efforts. an example from the comparative study of literacy bears out this point regarding the limitations of single-level analysis. much work in comparative and international education claims that the acquisition of basic literacy by adults has certain ‘effects;’ for example, various studies claim that maternal literacy reduces child mortality, improves maternal health, contributes to poverty reduction, and increases women’s likelihood to participate politically with very limited attention to either context or content of literacy instruction (see unesco, 2006, chapter 5 and watkins, 2001, chapter 1 for useful summaries). yet there is significant debate over what literacy actually means, and this is reflected, at least implicitly, by the fact that countries measure literacy in highly variable ways (unesco, 2006, chapter 6). in such circumstances, efforts to study literacy solely from a quantitative perspective, which is often necessary to conduct cross-national studies, means that scholars are using incomparable data. indeed, rich case studies of literacy have demonstrated that the meaning and politics of literacy vary radically in different contexts and that the potential opportunities afforded by literacy are profoundly constrained by locally-relevant social, political, and economic structures and power relations (for examples, see ahearn, 2001; bartlett, forthcoming; dyer & choksi 1998; kulick & stroud, 1993; luke, 1996; street, 1984). current debates over research methods and the most appropriate research training for students in comparative and international education, be they students of literacy or not, do not adequately address the epistemological importance of contextualized knowledge. too often, case study research is cast as ‘not comparative’; too often, we are convinced to conduct quick, insufficiently grounded evaluations, participatory or not, upon which policies are then based. from our perspective, multilevel analysis is necessary to balance perspectives in comparative research, but it is only sufficient when it includes a thorough understanding of the particularity of the micro-level. frances vavrus and lesley bartlett 98 april 21, 2006 the benefits of vertical case studies vertical case study research promises a number of advantages for current and future scholars and policy analysts. first and foremost, we believe it helps to counter the tendency to view local knowledge as an add-on to the knowledge that ‘really counts’ by making comparison among microand macro-levels the centerpiece of the research endeavor. we concur with crossley and vulliamy that case studies in education have “exposed the gap between rhetoric and practice” in the policy arena (1984, p. 198). rhetoric, they note, is what is generated by studies that do not focus on local practice but instead “uncritically describe what ought to be happening” as articulated in official policy (ibid, emphasis in original). vertical case study research has the potential to place local knowledge on a more equal footing with official, authoritative knowledge by analyzing what 'ought to be' based on policy pronouncements and cross-national comparisons as well as what ‘is happening’ as recounted by local actors. a second and related benefit to this approach is that it requires scholars to think critically about the politics of knowledge production in comparative and international education and their role in perpetuating research that privileges certain ways of knowing over others. for instance, short-term consultancies are a great temptation because of the funding and prestige that often accompanies them. yet crossley and vulliamy caution those in the field against participating in the production of ever more “descriptive, anecdotal studies which lack both rigor in terms of data collection and a theoretical framework within which to make sense of the data—the more so in cases of ‘quick and dirty evaluation’” (1984, p. 203). the absence of full and thorough knowledge of the local context is one of the dangers of short-term projects, which rarely allow one to get her hands dirty digging through layers of meaning at the micro-level because such excavation takes time. the research preparation we propose is designed to help researchers make two critical decisions: first, to decide whether their knowledge of a region is sufficient for the task set out by the funding agency; and second, to determine whether the research parameters for the project will permit the development of sufficient understandings of the particular to make the consultancy meaningful. in addressing these two issues, researchers are confronted with the uncomfortable possibility that they may be reproducing dominant power/knowledge relations by accepting the status of ‘development expert’ when one does not, in fact, possess expertise on the region and by producing reports lacking in theory and in substance because the conditions of the consultancy do not allow such depth of engagement at the local level (parpart, 1995). as samoff (1999) warns, research commissioned by international development agencies or other interested parties often promotes an understanding of education and development that comes to be viewed as a global consensus. moreover, he argues, educational reforms based on this ‘global’ view are not likely to succeed if the micro-level is ignored in their formulation: “…effective reform requires agendas and initiatives with strong local roots and the broad participation of those with a stake in the outcomes, including not only officials, but also students, parents, teachers, and communities. unless the beneficiaries of the reform become its bearers, it is likely to be still-born” (p. 84). vertical case study research, we believe, is a particularly effective way to promote engagement comparatively knowing: making a case for the vertical case study current issues in comparative education, vol.8(2) 99 with the knowledge borne by each group of stakeholders in a policy reform initiative or in a research project. the final advantage of the vertical case study is that it recognizes the decentering of the nation-state from its privileged position as the fundamental entity in comparative research to one of several important units of analysis. marginson and mollis (2001) make this point cogently in their article on the challenge that globalization presents to comparative education. they write, “governance remains national in form, and nationstates continue to be central players in a globalizing world, but partly as local agents of global forces, [as] the nation-state now operates within global economic constraints” (p. 601). thus, the importance of multilevel research that situates the nation-state within a world marked by global agencies and agendas is more apparent today than ever before. yet the national-global relationship is only one part of a vertical case because the localnational and the local-global connections are of equal importance. the goal of this type of case study is to develop a thorough understanding of the particular at each level and to analyze how these understandings produce similar and different interpretations of the policy, problem, or phenomenon under study. building further on marginson and mollis’s work, we view the vertical case study as a middle ground of sorts between what they refer to as the universalist strand of comparative research that emphasizes similarity across cases and the ultrarelativist strand that takes difference to an extreme: against the universalist position, we argue that method in comparative education should be oriented toward the interpretation of differences and the recognition of the ‘other’…. against the ultrarelativist position, we argue that comparative education needs to interpret individual difference not simply as terminal but in the context of a wider set of variations, recognizing that there are commonalities structured by the relations between ‘others’ and between ‘other’ and ‘self.’ (2001, p. 588) the vertical case study lends itself to the simultaneous comparisons of similarities and differences, across multiple levels, which are necessary to avoid both ultrarelativism and universalism. what do students need to know? developing depth and breadth in cie we begin with the assumption that it is possible for researchers to understand how actors at multiple levels interpret their world and the role of education in it and that graduate training in comparative and international education ought to reflect this potential. if this is the case, then discussions about the education of future scholars shift from debates over qualitative or quantitative methods, or area studies versus disciplinebased programs to deliberations over how to enable students to conduct research that promotes full and thorough knowledge of multiple comparisons in a single case. the recent moderated discussion on area studies and the disciplines in comparative education review (merkx et al., 2006) provides insights into lingering divisions in the field today regarding the value of local understanding that are often cast as matters of methods and training alone. motivans, who works at unesco’s institute of statistics, describes the statistical community in which he works as follows: “we work in an institutional culture that values ‘facts’ and objectivity over opinions and views and reductionist interpretation over ones that portray the complexity of issues. facing these deeper frances vavrus and lesley bartlett 100 april 21, 2006 epistemological roots represents a challenge to recognizing and valuing context” (2006, p. 147). king, an economist at the world bank, argues that area studies enables educational economists to avoid some of these problems because it helps them to value “the cultural context in which education decisions are made” (2006, p. 132). yet is an appreciation of the “cultural context” the same as an understanding of local knowledge? we concur with motivan’s assessment that the deeper epistemological issue is whether one can avoid reductionism in quantitative or qualitative cross-national comparative research and instead learn to embrace the complexity of local understanding in one’s scholarship. while this may be a particular challenge to those tasked with developing statistical models to explain educational behavior, it is no less problematic for those responsible for evaluating policy or conducting research using qualitative appraisal methods that do not allow one to develop a deep knowledge of the context in which one is working. similar agreement among the contributors to the moderated discussion is evident in their disavowal of an either-or stance between area studies and discipline-based studies, but there are still unmistakable tensions over the extent to which the development of local understanding is embraced. hayhoe, professor and past president of cies, fully supports area studies for the possibility it affords to those whose perspectives have been marginalized in the field: “i see area studies as a vital means of learning from nondominant cultures and civilizations. this learning may fundamentally change contemporary theories of education and development over time” (2006, pp. 142-143). while concurring with hayhoe about the importance of area studies, fellow professor brustein criticizes it for not contributing to the knowledge in the field that ‘really counts’: knowledge that can be generalized from one context to the next. he contends, “area studies fail frequently to take advantage of opportunities to generalize from their rich contextual findings to the broader world” (2006, p. 136). in this discussion one finds not so much a debate over area studies and the disciplines as a division over thorough knowledge of the particular at the expense of general knowledge about the comparative. yet comparative research does not have to mean only “the analysis of educational systems and problems in two or more national environments” (jary & jary, cited in rust, 2002, p. 54). it can, we believe, refer to comparison among levels whereby local, national, and international understandings of an educational matter are analyzed vertically (from one level to the next) rather than horizontally (across national boundaries). a vertical analysis does not preclude cross-national comparison, as one could compare an analysis in one context with one conducted in another. however, the primary purpose of a vertical case study is to promote comparison among levels rather than across states. to prepare graduate students to conduct vertical case study research, one must begin by inculcating an appreciation of these multiple levels and by developing the skills to study thoroughly each of them. such training necessitates area studies to acquire the language skills, historical understanding, and cultural awareness needed for sustained fieldwork in one community; it requires discipline-based coursework to ground research in a theoretical and methodological tradition; and it requires interdisciplinary knowledge to grasp how different theoretical traditions conceptualize and study the local, the national, and the international. as broadfoot writes, “comparative education needs to be … at the forefront of recognizing the increasing complexity of interacting international and intercultural variables and the consequent need for an interdisciplinary approach” (1999, comparatively knowing: making a case for the vertical case study current issues in comparative education, vol.8(2) 101 p. 227). for instance, doctoral studies would consist both of a multi-year area studies sequence in a region of the student’s choice, an introduction to multidisciplinary approaches to educational problems, and a sequence of discipline-based courses appropriate to the research project the student envisions. students would also take qualitative and quantitative research methods courses to prepare them for the fundamental task of developing multiple levels of understandings in the case they decide to study. by developing depth through the study of a discipline alongside the study of a language and the history of a region, students would be prepared to design a study that has local relevance and to carry out research in which the community is engaged. by requiring breadth of methodological and theoretical training, students would be better prepared to use a multiplicity of tools to enable them to develop a thorough understanding of their particular case. this process not only improves the ecological validity of doctoral research; it also lays the foundation for long-term engagement with a community in which a researcher continues to deepen her understanding of educational issues at the micro-level. conclusions in the past half century, much has changed in the field of comparative and international education. the meanings of comparison have shifted; the relationship between “comparative education” and “international education” has been modified. in the context of radical shifts in international relations, biand multilateral educational development institutions have altered their common-sense explanations of the relationship between education and development, as well as their funding priorities. in order to accompany these changes, scholars in comparative and international education need to concentrate more attention on the fundamental questions of what we can know and how we know it before we can adequately address methodological questions. attention to the contextual limits of knowledge is, we argue, an important step toward developing not only trustworthy knowledge but also an adequate conceptualization of comparison among current and future scholars in comparative and international education. references ahearn, l. (2001). invitations to love: literacy, love letters, and social change in nepal. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press. bartlett, l. (2006). the comparative ethnography of educational projects. unpublished manuscript. bartlett, l. (forthcoming) human capital or human connections? the cultural meanings of education. teachers college record. bray, m. and thomas, r. (1995). levels of comparison in educational studies: different insights from different literatures and the value of multilevel analyses. harvard educational review 65(3): 472-490. broadfoot, p. (1999) stones from other hills may serve to polish the jade of this one: towards a neo-comparative ‘learnology’ of education. compare 29(3): 217-232. frances vavrus and lesley bartlett 102 april 21, 2006 crossley, m & vulliamy, g. (1984) case study research methods and comparative education. comparative education 20(2): 193-207. dyer, c and choksi, a. (1998) education is like wearing glasses: nomads’ views of literacy and empowerment. international journal of educational development 18(5): 405-413. kulick, d. and stroud, c. (1993) conceptions and uses of literacy in a papua new guinean village. in b. street (ed.) cross-cultural approaches to literacy (pp. 30-61). cambridge: cambridge university press. luke, a. (1996). genres of power? literacy education and the production of capital. in r. hasan and g. williams (eds.) literacy in society. boston, ma: addison-wesley. marginson, s. & mollis, m. (2001) “the door opens and the tiger leaps”: theories and reflexivities of comparative education for a global millennium. comparative education review 45(4): 581-615. masemann, v. (1990) ways of knowing: implications for comparative education. comparative education review 34(4): 465-473. merkx, g.w., hayhoe, r., luk, b.h.k., king, k., gajardo, m., king, e., et al. (2006). comparative education, area studies, and the disciplines (moderated discussion). comparative education review 50(1): 125-148. parpart, j. l. (1995). deconstructing the development ‘expert’. in m.h. marchand and j. l. parpart (eds.), feminism, postmodernism, development (pp. 221-243). london and new york: routledge. rust, v. (2002). the meanings of the term comparative in comparative education. world studies in education 8(1): 53-67. samoff, j. (1999). institutionalising international influence. in r.f. arnove & c.a. torres, (eds.), comparative education: the dialectic of the global and the local (pp. 51-89). lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. steiner-khamsi, g., & johnson, e. (producers). (2006). comparatively speaking: an oral history of the first 50 years of the comparative and international education society [documentary]. (available from cies and teachers college, columbia university) street, b. (1984). literacy in theory and practice. cambridge: cambridge university press. unesco. (2006). the 2006 education for all global monitoring report: literacy for life. paris: unesco. vavrus, f. (2005). adjusting inequality: education and structural adjustment policies in tanzania. harvard educational review 75(2): 174-201. comparatively knowing: making a case for the vertical case study current issues in comparative education, vol.8(2) 103 vulliamy, g. (1990). the potential of qualitative educational research in developing countries. in g. vulliamy, k. lewin, & d. stephens, doing educational research in developing countries: qualitative strategies. london: falmer press. watkins, k. (2001). the oxfam education report. london: oxfam international. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 6 december 1, 2000 the "education vaccine" against hiv jan vandemoortele unicef enrique delamonica unicef introduction evidence is emerging that the social profile of the aids pandemic is changing over time. during its initial stage, the more educated, mobile and better-off members of society seem to be most vulnerable to hiv infection. with increased information, knowledge and awareness, however, their behavior changes faster than that of illiterate and poor people in terms of delaying first sexual encounter, reducing the number of partners, increasing condom use, and other actions to decrease risk of infection. relatively little has been published on the socio-economic correlates of hiv infection. a few studies have shown higher prevalence rates at higher levels of income (over & piot, 1993, p. 464). this article attempts to fill some of the void in the existing literature. it focuses on the correlation between hiv infection and the level of education, the latter being a good proxy indicator for a person's overall socio-economic status. if the hypothesis holds true that, beyond the initial stage of the aids pandemic, education reduces the risk of hiv infection, then new hiv infections will gradually become concentrated among illiterate and poor people as the epidemic spreads among the population. the hypothesis implies that education is the best available protection against hiv infection. indeed, the "education vaccine" against hiv is likely to be the only one available for the foreseeable future. this article discusses the way "education vaccine" works. furthermore, it provides some direct and indirect evidence in support of the changing social profile of the disease and highlights the significance of the empirical results. education and hiv infection an inverse association between the disease burden and the level of education exists for most infectious diseases. the incidence of malaria and cholera, for instance, are known to be negatively associated with the level of education. but because of its main propagation channel, hiv/aids first affects those with more opportunities, including more educated, mobile and better-off people. beyond the initial stage, the disease burden quickly follows the normal pattern of other contagious diseases. particularly in the case of hiv/aids, the segments in society that are initially most vulnerable are also best equipped to protect themselves and change their behavior. thus, the argument about the "education vaccine" is already obvious from existing evidence for other infectious diseases. it is often said that people who wear a tie do not get cholera. in the case of hiv/aids, education is likely to determine a person's vulnerability to hiv infection. the "education vaccine" against hiv current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 7 some studies contest the validity of the "education vaccine" against hiv (hargreaves & glynn, 2000). those that lump together evidence from countries that are at very different stages of the hiv pandemic will not capture the changing profile of the disease. if the evidence of countries that are at different stages of the pandemic-such as botswana and bolivia or malawi and malaysia1 are lumped together for analytical purpose, then it is unlikely that a clear pattern will be discernible between the level of education and the hiv prevalence rate. studies based on data for the late 1980s and early 1990s-when the pandemic was emerging-mostly show a direct and positive relationship between the level of education and the prevalence rate2. more recent studies, however, no longer show a positive correlation between education and hiv infection. some are beginning to show a negative correlation (mnyika et al., 1996; konde-lule et al., 1997). if the social profile of the pandemic changes as infection spreads, then in countries where the hiv prevalence rate is low, surveys are likely to show an inverse correlation between education and the risk of hiv infection. in countries with high levels of hiv infection, surveys are likely to indicate a positive correlation. in countries with intermediate hiv prevalence rates, surveys are likely to show a weak correlation or no correlation at all between education and hiv infection. thus, when evidence from countries that are at different stages of the aids pandemic is pooled, no clear pattern between education and hiv infection is likely to emerge. what the evidence does not allow us to conclude is exactly how the 'education-vaccine' against hiv works. some argue that it works mainly through aids information and sex education at school. others believe that basic education is more important as it equips and empowers a person-especially young women-to understand and internalize relevant information and to translate knowledge into behavioral change. the spread of education also changes the family and community environment in which such behavioral change become socially acceptable. indeed, young women who want to protect themselves against hiv must often change their behavior in ways that conflict with traditional values and customs. in many countries, open and frank discussions about hiv transmission at home, in school or in public are still challenged by a wall of silence that surrounds the disease. the four allies that make the virus so prevalent in many developing countries all start with 's'. they are silence, shame, stigma and superstition. these four "s's thrive in a climate of ignorance and illiteracy. education is key to defeating this deadly alliance. both aids-specific information and basic education are likely to play a role. disentangling their relative importance is difficult, if not impossible because aidsspecific information is more easily absorbed by literate people and because basic education helps to address the four s's even without aids-specific information. both types contribute to behavioral change that reduces the risk of hiv infection. knowledge about hiv/aids since the early 1990s, demographic and health surveys (dhs) have regularly incorporated questions related to the knowledge about hiv/aids. our analysis of 32 such surveys indicates that nearly one in every two illiterate women is ignorant about jan vandemoortele and enrique delamonica 8 december 1, 2000 the basic facts about hiv/aids. their lack of minimum knowledge about aids is about five times higher than that for women with post-primary education (figure 1). among those with basic knowledge about the disease, illiterate women are three times more likely to think that a healthy-looking person cannot be sero-positive. their belief that there is no way to avoid aids is about four times higher compared with their educated counterparts. the proportion of women who do not know that the hiv virus can be transmitted from mother to child is, on average, three times higher for uneducated women than for those with post-primary schooling3. figure 1. women's ignorance about hiv/aids by level of education evidently, cross-country averages hide huge differences. in peru, for instance, women are three times more likely to lack basic knowledge about hiv/aids than women in uganda-a country with a long-standing public campaign about hiv/aids (kaleeba et al., 2000). but the difference between these two countries is most striking for illiterate women. nearly eight in ten illiterate women in peru do not know about aids, against only one in ten in uganda. the difference between the two countries for women with post-primary education is not as striking-11 and three percent respectively, according to the data in their dhs. similarly, the two surveys (1994 and 1997) in indonesia that collected aids-related information show improved knowledge about aids between 1994 and 1997. however, progress was only observed among educated women, whereas their illiterate counterparts saw no improvement at all in their knowledge about hiv/aids. in short, the demographic and health surveys evidence is compelling. without any exception, all 32 countries that were surveyed in the middle 1990s show a uniform pattern: knowledge about the various aspects of hiv/aids increases with higher levels of education. the "education vaccine" against hiv current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 9 child mortality the changing profile of the pandemic is also reflected in mortality rates. dhs surveys in kenya, for instance, show that the average under-five mortality rate (u5mr) increased from 91 to 105 per 1,000 live births between the 1989 and 1998. but figure 2 indicates that the impact was not the same for all kenyan children. children whose mother had no education or did not complete primary school, saw their risk of premature death rise by a staggering 45 per cent. children whose mother had post-primary education, on the other hand, continued to see a fall in their u5mr. figure 2. widening mortality gap in kenya (u5mr by level of maternal education) in a period of less than 10 years, the disparity in the risk of premature mortality between these two groups of children soared from 1.5 to 2.3. similarly, widening disparities between rich and poor children in terms of infant mortality and child malnutrition have been documented for other countries (sahn, stifel & younger, 1999). after decades of steady decline, the increase in u5mr in kenya is likely to be related to the hiv/aids pandemic4. if so, the differential increase in u5mr by level of maternal education points towards the effectiveness of the "education vaccine" against hiv. sero-prevalence and education dhs surveys indicate the person's knowledge about aids by level of education and the level of maternal education of children who die before their fifth birthday. they do not report actual hiv infection rates by level of education. thus, they provide suggestive evidence about the "education vaccine" against hiv. to probe this impact of education further, we examined the results of small-scale surveys in zambia and uganda that report the education level of sero-positive people. a 1994 sentinel survey in zambia (figure 3) shows a positive correlation between seroprevalence and education among pregnant women aged 25-29 (fylkesnes et al. b, 1997). at face value, this might contradict our argument about the "education vaccine" against hiv, but it must be recalled that women who belonged to that age group in 1994-the jan vandemoortele and enrique delamonica 10 december 1, 2000 year of the survey-became sexually active in the early and mid-1980s. that was the time when little was known about the spread of hiv. the positive correlation actually confirms that educated and better-off people are more vulnerable to hiv infection during the initial stage of the pandemic than illiterate people are. figure 3. hiv infection rate among young women by level of education however, the correlation between sero-prevalence and education was no longer observed for the age group 15-19, the group that became sexually active a decade later when information on the pandemic was more widespread. the survey suggests that educated women started to change their behavior in the 1990s based on information and knowledge. a steep reduction in their average infection rate was observed both in urban and rural areas. by contrast, the hiv prevalence rate among women without education remained relatively constant5. a sentinel survey of childbearing women in a town in western uganda provides further evidence of the changing social profile of the aids pandemic (kilian et al., 1999). uganda is a country where strong public information campaigns have been used since the mid-1980s in an effort to reduce new hiv infections. implemented under a slogan of 'faithfulness, abstinence, condoms,' the efforts of these information campaigns are now paying off. in 1987, there were an estimated 239,000 new cases of hiv/aids each year. by 1997, the figure had fallen to 57,000 (unicef, 1999, p. 19). but even in this exceptional case, the positive impact on the poor-those with little or no education-has been the least. figure 4 shows that in the period 1991-94, young women (age 15-24) with secondary education were still more likely to be infected than their illiterate counterparts albeit that the positive association between education and hiv infection was already weaker than in the case of zambia for the age cohort 25-29, as shown in figure 3. but the positive association between the level of education and the rate of hiv infection was no longer observed in 1995-97. the relationship was actually reversed during the 1990s due to the "education vaccine" against hiv current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 11 behavioral change among educated women, such as condom use, delayed first sexual encounter and fewer partners (kilian et al, 1999, p. 397; blanc, 2000, p. 17). the hiv infection rate among educated women dropped by almost half, whereas it fell less steeply for women without formal schooling. figure 4. hiv infection rate among pregnant women by level of education significance the evidence presented in this article seems to confirm the hypothesis that the social profile of aids pandemic is changing. the disease is increasingly discriminating against illiterate and poor people. this underscores the urgency for achieving universal primary education with a view to equipping the poor with basic capabilities to protect themselves against hiv infection. it also implies that public awareness campaigns need to be devised so as to reach the illiterate and less educated people and to be understood by them. above all, the changing social profile of the aids pandemic makes a compelling case for using education as one of the most powerful tools for slowing and reversing the spread of hiv. girls' education appears as an absolute priority. recent studies in africa show that teenage girls are five to six times more likely to be infected by the hiv virus than boys are their age (unaids, 1999, p. 15). moreover, gender-specific infection rates seem to be closely related to the overall hiv prevalence rate. at low prevalence levels, the infection rate among male adolescents is higher than among females; but young females become the most vulnerable group in society when the country reaches a high prevalence rates. in peru, for instance, young males (ages 15-24) are twice as likely to be sero-positive as young females their age (0.4 and 0.2 percent respectively). in lesotho, however, hiv infection among girls is twice as high as for boys (26 and 12 per cent respectively) (unicef, 2000, p. 4-5). in most countries, adolescent females are disproportionately represented among the newly infected people. jan vandemoortele and enrique delamonica 12 december 1, 2000 the implication of the changing social profile of the pandemic is far-reaching. a disease that affects predominantly poor and illiterate people is unlikely to generate the same level of political commitment and public resources as a disease, which does not discriminate against the poor. this is valid both at the international and national levels. for example, research and development on diseases that occur only in developing countries often fail to attract much attention and resources. for example, out of 1,223 new chemical entities that were developed between 1975 and 1997, only 13 treated tropical diseases (pecoul, chirac, trouiller & pinel, 1999). once aids is perceived as a disease that predominantly affects the poor, then public commitment to find a cure or a vaccine or to support public awareness campaigns could be in jeopardy. when the non-poor no longer feel they have a stake in such efforts, the voice of the poor and the illiterate alone is unlikely to be strong enough to maintain public support and strong political commitment. susan george (1999) makes this point obvious: "as the disease [aids] moves inexorably down the social scale, the 'biopolitician' will learn that few votes are garnered by funding programmes for the dregs of humanity" (p. 145). at the same time, the above evidence provides a glimmer of hope in an otherwise gloomy context. indeed, the good news is that hiv infection rates are declining among people with primary and post-primary education, even in countries where the overall hiv prevalence rate is still on the rise. similarly, the good news in kenya is that the risk of premature death continued to decline for children whose mother had post-primary education during the 1990s, in spite the increase in the country's average u5mr. such positive aspects deserve to be highlighted, because a world without hope offers few opportunities for improvement. notes 1. 1 at the end of 1999, the proportion of adults (ages 15-49) living with hiv/aids was estimated at 36 per cent in botswana and 0.1 per cent in bolivia; at 16 per cent in malawi and 0.42 per cent in malaysia. (www.unaids.org/epidemic_update/report/table_e.htm, october 31, 2000) 2. these studies include evidence from tanzania, uganda and zambia. most, but not all, properly take into account other factors such as age and sexual behavior. 3. the differences between the (unweighted) averages for two education groups in the 32 surveys-no education and post-primary education-are statistically significant. 4. the latest data show that 14 per cent of kenya's young women (15-24 years) are hivpositive (unicef, 2000, p. 4). 5. 5 it could be argued that the difference between the two age groups does not necessarily suggest a change in behavior, but that it simply reflects a lower level of sexual activity among adolescents. however, dhs surveys for zambia have shown that the majority of girls become sexually active before age 18, irrespective of their level of education. the "education vaccine" against hiv current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 13 references blanc, a. (2000). the relationship between sexual behavior and level of education in developing countries [report]. unaids: blancroft research international. fylkesnes, k. et. al. (1997). the hiv epidemic in zambia: socio-demographic prevalence patterns and indications of trends among childbearing women. aids, (11)3, 339-345. george, s. (1999). the lugano report. on preserving capitalism in the twenty-first century. london, uk: pluto press. hargreaves, j. & glynn, j. (2000). educational attainment and hiv infection in developing countries: a review of the published literature. london, uk: london school of hygiene and tropical medicine. kaleeba, n., kadowe, j. n., kalinaki, d. & williams, g. (2000). open secret: people facing up to hiv and aids in uganda. strategies for hope series, 15. actionaid. kilian, a. et al. (1999). reductions in risk behavior provide the most consistent explanation for declining hiv-1 prevalence in uganda. aids, 13(3), 391-398. konde-lule, j., wawer, m.j., sewankambo, n. k., serwadda, d., kelly, r., li, c., gray, r.h. & kigono, d. (1997). adolescents, sexual behavior and hiv-1in rural rakai district, uganda. aids, 11, 791-799. mnyika, k.s., klepp, k.i, kvale, g. & ole-king'ori, n. (1996). risk factors for hiv-1 infection among women in the arusha region of tanzania. journal of aids, 11, 484-491. over, m. & piot, p. (1993). hiv infection and sexually transmitted diseases. in jamison, d. t., mosley, w. h., mensham, a. r., and bobadilla, j. l. disease control priorities in developing countries. oxford, uk: oxford university press. pecoul, b., chirac, p., trouiller, p., pinel, j. (1999). access to essential drugs in poor countries. a lost battle? jama, 281, 361-367. sahn, d., stifel, d. & younger, s. (1999). inter-temporal changes in welfare: preliminary results from nine african countries [working paper no. 94]. ithaca: cornell food and nutrition policy program. unaids (1999). aids epidemic update: december 1999. geneva: unaids. unicef (1999). progress of nations. new york, ny: unicef. unicef (2000). progress of nations. new york, ny: unicef. microsoft word 42bray.doc © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 70 may 14, 2002 comparative education in east asia: growth, development and contributions to the global field mark bray comparative education research center the university of hong kong in recent decades, the field of comparative education in east asia has grown dramatically. this article charts the growth, and remarks on its significance for the global field. the article commences by noting the role of asian professional societies in the world council of comparative education societies (wcces). it then comments on the roots and historical evolution of the field in east asia, before turning to developments since 1990. four main implications for the field as a whole are noted. they concern the volume of research, the languages of reporting, the geographic focuses of comparative studies, and the topics studied. dramatic growth of the field of comparative education in east asia has had great significance in itself and has changed balances in the field as a whole. this article comments on the scale and nature of work in east asia, and highlights some significant features. many of the scholars to whom the paper refers are members of professional societies. the paper includes discussion of the role of such societies, and begins with the umbrella world council of comparative education societies (wcces). the wcces: foundation and growth the wcces was formed in 1970, having evolved from an international committee of comparative education societies which had been convened by joseph katz, of canada, in 1968 (epstein, 1981; wilson, 2002). five societies came together to form the council, namely: • the comparative & international education society (cies) of the usa, which had been established in 1956; • the comparative education society in europe (cese), which had been established in 1961; • the japanese comparative education society (jces), which had been established in 1964; • the comparative & international education society of canada (ciesc), which had been established in 1967; and • the korean comparative education society (kces), which had been established in 1968. the fact that two of the five societies were asian deserves note. even at that time scholars in asia were playing a major role, and their visibility increased over the following decades. in 2001, the wcces had 29 member societies, the asian members of which included, in addition to the japanese and korean societies: comparative education in east asia: growth, development and contributions to the global field current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 71 • the chinese comparative education society-taipei (cces-t), established in 1974; • the comparative education society of india (cesi), established in 1979; • the china comparative education society (cces), established in 1979; • the comparative education society of hong kong (ceshk), established in 1989; and • the comparative education society of asia (cesa), established in 1995. the role of the asian societies has not been limited to mere membership of the world council. especially prominent has been the hosting of the world congresses of comparative education. to date, 11 world congresses have been held. the fourth was hosted by the japanese society in tokyo in 1980, with an official pre-congress event organized by the korean society in seoul. most recently, the 11th world congress was hosted by the korean society in 2001 at the korea national university of education in chungbuk. the development of comparative education societies in the region, it must be admitted, has not been entirely linear and smooth. for example, the activities of the hong kong society have fluctuated, in part reflecting the enthusiasm and initiatives of a small group of people (bray, 1999). the indian society has also fluctuated in vigor. it had a major impact during the initial period after its creation, but during the 1980s and 1990s it gradually fell into neglect. encouragingly, the indian society did send a representative to the meeting of the wcces executive committee at the time of the 11th world congress, and that representative has hopes of reviving the society. india certainly has many scholars who could contribute to such a revival, and the goal is to mobilize some of those scholars to achieve the reawakening of a body which has been dormant for some years. meanwhile, further growth is evident in at least one other part of the region: in 2001, a group of comparative educators in the philippines resolved to form a national society which in due course would seek affiliation with the wcces. as a result of all these initiatives, within the wcces asia is much better represented than africa or latin america, each of which had only one member society in 20011. roots and historical evolution of comparative education in east asia some scholars (e.g. van daele, 1993) have asserted that the field of comparative education originated in europe. certainly european scholars have been very visible in the history of the field; but it is also arguable that the field had multiple origins which included roots in east asia (zhang & wang, 1997). in ancient times the education system of the chinese empire was viewed as a model by neighboring nations. for instance, in 607 ad prince shotoku of japan sent a diplomatic and academic mission to china to gain ideas for the shaping of japan's first national system of education (kobayashi, 1990). considerable investigation of education systems in different countries was also undertaken in subsequent centuries, and in due course became an academic field of study. various books were published in china at the end of the 19th century (li, 1983), and 1901 brought the launch of a chinese-language journal entitled world education. this journal was quite wide-ranging, and the 1903 issue, for example, contained articles on the u.k., u.s., france, italy, belgium, holland, austria, sweden, and russia (bray & gui, 2001). mark bray 72 may 14, 2002 however, much of the emphasis at that time was on foreign rather than comparative education. this emphasis remained longstanding throughout the region, and was noted by kobayashi (1990) with reference to japan even in the late 1980s. the field also showed geographic imbalances, with the principal focus on the industrialized countries of europe and north america, though with some emphasis on parts of asia. referring to mainland china and taiwan, similar remarks have been made by gu (2001) and lee (1999). the remarks by shu and zhou (1990) also deserve attention. they began by quoting kelly (1987), who was based in the u.s. kelly had described the 1980s as "a time of pessimism in comparative education", with "a growing disillusionment with schools as a vehicle for change" (kelly, 1987, p. 477). shu and zhou contrasted this assessment with the note of optimism struck by education policy-makers in asia who had confidently underscored the importance of education as "a vital force of development" (unesco, 1985, p. 5). shu and zhou (1990) then highlighted the social and cultural diversity of the region which, they suggested constituted a great advantage for comparative studies. however, they added: although many asian nations have in recent years attached increasing importance to educational research as the cutting edge of educational development, such research has lagged behind educational changes….in international conferences of comparative education, asian scholars continue to be under-represented (shu & zhou, 1990, p. 68). shu and zhou supported these remarks with analysis of the attendance at, and papers presented in, the seventh world congress of comparative education held in montreal, canada, in 1989. however, they also stressed that comparative education research was not only the domain of academics. in that vein, they noted that asia was the first continent to be endowed with a unesco regional office (in bangkok), and also the first to develop a regional plan and model for educational development (known as the 1960 karachi plan). developments since 1990 against this backdrop, it is useful to chart some developments since 1990. the asian development bank (adb), which was mentioned by neither kobayashi nor shu and zhou, has become increasingly active in the education sector. the adb produced an important sector policy paper in 1988, which was updated in 1991 (adb, 1991). a decade later, the adb published another far-reaching analysis of education in the region (adb, 2001). the adb has also produced many other studies of education both in individual countries and in groups of countries several important developments also occurred in the academic world, including the following: • at the university of hong kong, a comparative education research centre was established in 1994; comparative education in east asia: growth, development and contributions to the global field current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 73 • at the national chi-nan university in taiwan, a graduate institute of comparative education was established in 1995; • at hiroshima university, japan, a center for the study of international cooperation in education was established in 1997; • at the city university of hong kong, a comparative education policy research unit was established in 1999; • at seoul national university, korea, an institute of asia pacific education development was established in 1999; and • at the central china university of science & technology, wuhan, a centre of international & comparative education was established in 2001. several journals also emerged, some of which focused explicitly on comparison. in 1992 the journal entitled foreign education conditions, published in beijing in chinese, was renamed comparative education review and became the official journal of the china comparative education society. in 1997 the newsletter of the chinese comparative education society-taipei evolved into a full journal of comparative education; and in 2000 a japanese-language journal entitled comparative study of education and culture was launched by kyushu university in japan. other journals were launched with focuses that accommodated comparative education, even though the field was not explicitly named in their titles. for example, in 1996 the singapore journal of education was renamed and reoriented as the asia pacific journal of education; and in 1999 tanglaw, published by de la salle university in philippines, was renamed and reoriented as the asia-pacific education researcher. in 2000 the southeast asia ministers of education organization (seameo) launched the journal of southeast asian education; and in 2001, the institute of asia pacific education development in seoul launched the asia pacific education review. factors underlying recent development a range of factors has contributed to the growth of comparative education in different ways in different parts of the region. thus the factors underlying the work of the adb and unesco have been rather different from those underlying the work of academics in universities; and the field has flourished in mainland china for rather different reasons from hong kong and taiwan, for example. the work of the adb and unesco is mainly based on practical needs. the organizations primarily exist to serve the governments of their member states. the adb and unesco develop projects and give policy advice, and seek to enhance the quality of their work through comparative analyses. the scale of the adb's technical assistance in education during 1990s was over three times that for the preceding two decades (hirosato, 2000). unesco work did not expand so much, but the bangkok regional office nevertheless sponsored many regional and sub-regional comparative studies (unesco, 2002). national development has also been a major force for development of the field in other contexts. in mainland china, for example, one of the key figures is gu mingyuan of beijing normal university. gu, who from 1983 to 2001 was president of the china comparative education society, wrote in 1990 that the ultimate aim of comparative education "is to promote educational development and reform in our own country mark bray 74 may 14, 2002 [china]" (reprinted in gu, 2001, p. 221). with such motivation, scholars in mainland china during the late 1980s and early 1990s primarily focused on foreign systems from which they felt that china could learn useful lessons. as mainland china has developed, the emphases within the field of comparative education have changed. china's opening to the outside world has permitted outsiders to obtain information from primary sources of a type previously denied, while even more significantly, has permitted large numbers of chinese scholars to move out and back, gaining extensive knowledge of other countries and systems of education. particularly impressive has been the growth of expertise in the english language in many chinese universities, which equips these scholars for travel and interaction with much broader international frameworks than was previously the case. also, the university sector has expanded significantly and has become more competitive. as a result, china now has more academics who, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, are being pressed to undertake research and to publish their findings. this pressure affects the field of comparative education as well as other fields. the expansion of the university system and the pressure to publish findings have also been important factors in hong kong and taiwan. from the perspective of comparative education, hong kong has had the added advantages that it is naturally outwardlooking because it is small. also, its universities place considerable emphasis on english as well as chinese, and all its universities have a mix of local and non-local academics. taiwan is also outward looking, but for slightly different reasons. among them is that taiwan's political circumstances make it conscious of the need for alliances in a competitive environment. the 1990s also brought significant political shifts in cambodia, laos and vietnam. these countries were previously in the soviet sphere of influence, and were generally closed to comparativists and other scholars in the rest of the world. the fact that they have opened their doors, and that many people in these countries have learned english, has greatly increased the interflow with the english-speaking international community. implications for the field as a whole the patterns and developments charted above are significant not only for east asia itself but also for the whole field of comparative education. four main areas are given specific comment, namely: the volume of comparative research, the languages of reporting, the geographic focuses of comparative studies, and the topics studied. the volume of comparative research in per capita terms, several of the comparative education societies in east asia, which are one major vehicle for research output, are much larger than their counterparts elsewhere in the world. in absolute size, the us-based comparative and international education society is the world's largest society with 2,400 individual and institutional members. however, one third of the cies membership is international, and in 1998, for example, the cies had only 650 individual members and 628 institutional members in the u.s. itself--a country with a population of 263 million. by contrast, the taiwan society had 320 members in an island of 22 million; and the hong kong society had 80 members in a territory of just 7 million. the japanese society was also substantial in size, comparative education in east asia: growth, development and contributions to the global field current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 75 with a membership exceeding 600, and the korean society had over 300 members. in comparison, the british association of international and comparative education (baice) and the comparative and international education society of canada (ciesc) each had fewer than 200 members. the volume of publication is also much greater in east asia than in other parts of the world. thus the chinese-language journal comparative education review published by beijing normal university, appears 12 times a year with 5,600 copies per issue. by contrast, its english-language counterpart with the same name published by chicago university press in the usa is published only four times a year with 2,400 copies. [2] the journal comparative education published in the united kingdom by carfax, appears four times a year with fewer than 2,000 copies per issue; and compare: a journal of comparative education, which is the baice journal, appears only three times a year with fewer than 600 copies per issue. to the journals may be added many books, again with much larger print-runs in asia than their counterparts in other regions of the world. one striking example is a book by wang, zhu, and gu (1982), of which 108,700 copies had been printed by 20013. throughout the world, higher education expanded dramatically during the 1990s and seems set for continued expansion during the decades ahead (task force on higher education and society, 2000). in east asia, particularly notable growth is projected in china, which started from a low base, has a huge population, and in the new century has opened up further with entry to the world trade organization (oecd, 2000). the growth of the university sector increases the number of courses in all spheres, including comparative education, and also increases the emphasis on research. the languages of reporting the field of comparative education is, by its nature, strongly aware of linguistic divides. like other domains of enquiry, the principal vehicle for international reporting is english. the english language dominates the professional work of the unesco regional office, and is the official working language of the asian development bank. however, the growth of comparative education research in chinese-speaking communities has brought a rise in chinese as a vehicle for the reporting of comparative education. other important work is being reported in japanese, korean and various other languages. thus, the comparative education work conducted in asia on the one hand contributes to the international discourse conducted in english, and on the other hand provides a balance to that discourse with scholarly outputs in other languages. geographic focuses of comparative studies insofar as asian comparativists are focusing on asian societies, they contribute to a balancing in the center of gravity, which was previously dominated by europe and north america. the asian societies are diverse in cultures (buddhist, christian, islamic, confucian), in economic wealth (japan may be contrasted with philippines), in size (china may be contrasted with brunei darussalam), and in political ideology (north korea may be contrasted with singapore). this presents a rich tapestry of variables for comparative study, and can provide examples and insights to enhance overall conceptual understanding in the field. this potential has not yet been fully utilized, but progress has been made and further progress can be expected. mark bray 76 may 14, 2002 at the same time, some asian comparativists focus their work on europe and north america. in so doing, the asian comparativists can bring to analysis of those regions a very different set of lenses from those used by north americans and europeans themselves (see e.g. fuji, 1999; zhu & li, 1999). japanese scholars, for example, come from a centralized education system which is largely monocultural and which places strong emphasis on formal approaches to learning. the types of questions that japanese scholars ask about education systems may be rather different from those of scholars that take decentralization, pluralism and discovery learning as a set of norms. they may also present very different perspectives on the roles of comparative and international perspectives in education systems (see e.g. fujikane, 2001). a few asian comparativists are also focusing on africa, the middle east and latin america. however, the number of asian researchers addressing these parts of the world is small. this domain would seem to deserve stronger emphasis in the future. the topics studied given the range of cultures and societies in east asia, it is natural that the topics studied by east asian comparativists should also vary. again, while some work parallels that in other parts of the world, other dimensions have distinctly asian contexts and themes. the latter category includes: studies of the implications of confucian and other traditions for education; the competitive nature of education systems in asia and the allied pervasiveness of supplementary private tutoring; the role of education in the economic growth of newly industrialized societies; and the implications for education of various types of political transition. east asian scholars have also made major contributions to large multinational projects, such as those conducted under the auspices of the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea). the third international mathematics & science study (timss) is among the most prominent of these. for those concerned with cross-regional rather than cross-national comparisons, asia can provide examples of the relationship between colonialism and education, for comparison with africa, latin america and the south pacific. a further underresearched area would be to compare the links between islam and education in asian countries (such as brunei darussalam and indonesia), african countries (such as egypt and senegal), and middle-eastern countries (such as iran and yemen). conclusions comparative education has a long history in east asia; and scholars in two countries of the region, namely japan and korea, took a leadership role in the foundation of the wcces in 1970. since that time, comparative education has blossomed further. particularly impressive have been developments in mainland china, hong kong, and taiwan. certain international bodies, including unesco and the adb, have also had an impressive impact. however, the field is stronger in some parts of the region than others. many countries in the region, including some with large populations, have no national comparative education societies. part of the vision of comparative education society of asia (cesa) comparative education in east asia: growth, development and contributions to the global field current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 77 has been to serve such countries. so far, however, cesa's work has been more visible in the parts of asia which already have their own societies. thus the decision to establish cesa was made in hong kong (in 1995), the first conference was held in japan (in 1996), the second conference was held in mainland china (in 1998), and the third conference was held in taiwan (in 2001). the decision to hold the fourth conference (in 2003) in indonesia marked an important step in cesa's outreach to other parts of the region. further effort is also needed in the nature of work conducted. many so-called comparative studies in east asia (as elsewhere) really come under the heading of commentary on foreign education systems, and lack in-depth comparison. also, the extent to which some articles in the professional journals promote theoretical advances leaves much to be desired. however, it may be argued that relatively unsophisticated forms of scholarship in comparative education are at least better than an absence of any form of inquiry. unsophisticated analyses, particularly when presented by younger scholars, may have the potential to mature. such arguments can be used to justify the open-gate policies of many conference organizers who welcome almost all who volunteer to present, and who conduct little prior screening for content and methodological rigor. while some might lament the effect this has on overall standards of conference presentation and intellectual discourse, others would assert that it permits the field to grow because it welcomes to the forums all who have an interest. this dilemma, it might be added, is certainly not exclusive to asia. it is encountered by practically all 29 member societies of the wcces, and in world congresses themselves. nevertheless, the emphases of comparative analysis have undergone shifts. while the nation-state remains a dominant unit of analysis within the field, greater recognition is being given to other units of analysis (bray & thomas, 1995). some studies use multiple levels of analysis, and show how complementary insights can be obtained from analysis of different levels. this observation is of course applicable to all parts of the world; but a growing number of east asian studies show the value of intra-national as opposed to inter-national comparisons (e.g. adamson & li, 1999; lewin & wang, 1994). some scholars have focused on cities as a unit of comparison (e.g. zhang, 1998); and others have chosen cross-national focus on provinces (e.g. rao & cheng, 1999). these trends, and the circumstances of expanding higher education, increased crossnational liaison, and stronger emphasis on research augur well for the field of comparative education in east asia. certainly the field faces challenges to improve the quality of work, to widen its scope, and to expand further the volume of research. however, recent decades have shown exciting developments. the east asian voice is likely to be heard much more loudly on the world stage in the coming years. this will help to balance the western dominance in the field which was evident during most of the 20th century. notes 1. the african society was the southern african comparative & history of education society (saches), and the latin american society was the sociedade brasiliera de educação comparada (sbec). in former years, two other african societies had been members, namely the egyptian comparative education society (eces) and the mark bray 78 may 14, 2002 nigerian comparative education society (nces). however, these societies had both become defunct. the same applies to two societies in latin america, namely the sociedad argentina de educación comparada (saec) and the sociedad colombiana de educación comparada (scec). more positively, in august 2001 a new argentinean society was created and indicated intention to seek admission to the world council. a cuban group also planned to seek admission, and discussions had taken place concerning a society in venezuela. 2. it must be recognised that each issue of the english-language comparative education review is thicker than its chinese-language counterpart, chiefly because the articles are longer. however, chinese is a more 'compact' language, generally needing less space than english to cover the same content. 3. the second edition of this book was published in 1985, and the third edition in 1999. this figure refers to the print run of all three editions. references adamson, b. & li, t. 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[online]. available at: http://www.unescobkk.org. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 91 education: a key to power and a tool for change--a practitioner's perspective fay chung director, unesco international institute for capacity building in africa (iicba), addis ababa why do schools play a critical role in political conflict? education as a key to power political power may be imposed by force and violence, or it may be won through persuasion and education. in the long run, force and violence seldom succeed in winning the loyalty of a population, but in the short run they can have dramatic effects, including massive death tolls and mass movements of populations. according to machel (1996), "the days of set-piece battles between professional soldiers facing off in a field far from town are long gone. today, wars are fought from apartment windows and in the lanes of villages and suburbs, where distinctions between combatant and noncombatant quickly melt away". civilian fatalities in wartime have increased steadily, climbing from five percent at the turn of the century, to 15 percent during world war i, to 65 percent by the end of world war ii, to more than 90 percent in the wars of the 1990s (machel, 1996). in periods of political upheavals, educational institutions are often perceived as a key to power and schools often become the targets of attack. where schools are controlled by one group, they may be seen as fair game for attacks by another group. this was the case in rwanda where the interehamwe, who led the genocide, routinely attacked and mined schools, killing large numbers of teachers. fundamentalists, no matter their denomination, value education as the key to power, and the victory of the taliban who were educated in fundamentalist institutions is a symbol of the power of education. thus schools are often the battlegrounds for the hearts and minds of the next generation. schools also play an important socializing role as one of the key institutions for transmitting national, community and religious values. for example, many african nations rely on education as the main mechanism to accomplish national goals that include unification, shared language, and more balance among regions (bray, 1986). it is not surprising that orthodox serbs and muslim albanians struggled for control of kosovo schools, as they both sought control over the community and religion. nor is it surprising that roman catholic schools are ubiquitous as an important way to instill catholic values in children and youth. in addition to their socializing role, schools may have the inverse effect: they may challenge dominant forms of socialization. education has the potential to bring about change in worldviews and in values. the scope of possibility that schools offer may be cherished in societies that are open to outside influences, or it may be spurned as the source of evil in societies that wish to insulate the population against these influences. schools that offer a modern education, including access to the natural sciences and to technology, to social and historical analysis, and to an international language, may be seen as liberating or as dangerous, depending on the point of view. for example, within fay chung november 15, 1999 92 a stratified society, education of the oppressed can threaten the status quo (freire, 1992). educated citizens may no longer accept a worldview and social order that deprives them of basic human rights or access to opportunities. these uses of education provide the settings for several dilemmas. the following pages highlight the observations and questions of a practitioner from years of work among communities subjected to violent conflict, displacement and civil strife. although the majority of the examples are drawn from experiences in africa, similar trends have emerged in other parts of the world. describing these dilemmas raises more questions than answers: it points to the need for increasing the amount of empirical and case study research conducted in order to better understand the extent of these trends, the phenomena they produce and methods that may be useful in addressing them. problems lack of access to education exacerbates conflict in examining numerous conflicts in africa, over 20 in the last decade, it is important to analyze the causes of the conflicts. in some cases it may be because of extreme physical hardships, such as the years of famine, which preceded the takeover of power by the stalinist mengistu regime in ethiopia. the famine was exacerbated by the war, by high population growth and by a feudal land ownership system. however, it is also important to recognize the role of education, usually the lack of educational opportunities for the majority, in these conflagrations. for example in both rwanda and sierra leone, unemployed and poorly educated youths played key roles in committing atrocities. in rwanda many of these youths believed that by killing the tutsis their problems such as poverty and unemployment would be solved. in both countries primary, secondary and tertiary education were limited to a small minority. lack of access to secondary education in pre-genocide rwanda may account for the hostility of the perpetrators to educated people. further research might examine this question: to what extent does lack of access to education account for hostility toward educated groups? some of the negative consequences of lack of access to education for the uneducated are clear, yet the deprivation of many may benefit those holding political power. many political leaders assert that their state budgets cannot afford education for all. inadequate funds have been a pretext for providing limited access to education. rulers who argue that they cannot afford education for all may have fundamental political objections to providing this social service. they may believe that the present social structure and stability will be threatened if citizens are educated, and that unrest may be even more likely if there are many educated people without jobs. some of these beliefs may stem from colonial days: many colonial governments believed that educating the natives was a dangerous and unsound policy, as it would make them less malleable and more ungovernable. colonial powers developed educational curricula and methodology specifically designed to maintain dependence and control the ideology of the masses (heggoy, 1984; fanon, 1967). yet evidence of the effects of mass illiteracy demonstrate the devastating, and in many cases lethal, consequences of this claim. for example, in many african countries only half the children have access to primary schooling, and a minute percentage have access to secondary education (state of the world's children, education: a key to power and a tool for change--a practitioner's perspective current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 93 1999). future research might examine the parallels between present day governments denying funding to pubic education and the policies of their colonial precursors. whilst a large of number of educated unemployed may incite fear of social instability among the elite, lack of mass education, according to many researchers, severely limits the potential for development--particularly for modern economic development. (schultz, 1989; psacharapoulos, 1989). although large numbers of educated people may increase the potential for political dissent, experiences in rwanda and sierra leone indicate that large numbers of uneducated and unemployed youths may be an even more volatile and destabilizing force. because of its negative effects on economic development, keeping people illiterate and uneducated may be, in the long run, more "expensive" then educating them. to address education for all, some governments have combined low cost materials provision, distance education, and the use of community recruited teachers who are paid at levels that are affordable by the state and the community. how do the successes of these initiatives influence political actors? who participates in discussions about policy regarding education for all? does a desire for social control have a greater influence over determining policy outcomes than the questions of affordability? education in emergencies international agencies and charitable organizations have addressed education during conflicts or complex emergencies in a random manner. the ad hoc approach to education in emergencies has meant that education programs were frequently designed on the spot by well-intentioned aid workers, but often without the professional assistance or the requisite experience. unicef's work, in collaboration with unesco and unhcr, to form a network of educators working in emergencies, and to establish procedures as well as a teacher training program for community recruited paraprofessionals, has been ground breaking. yet much more work is required to ensure that the children and adults in emergency situations receive not only the grades onethree education that is often provided, but that a full range of secondary and tertiary education is available. it is clear that some so-called "emergencies" such as in somalia, may last for several decades. to provide effective support, international organizations must start by defining better the differences among types of emergencies. research questions might include: what constitute appropriate goals for teacher training in various emergency situations? how can an organization most effectively conduct an education needs assessment in an emergency setting? after a more thorough understanding of the scope of the problems, these agencies should provide greater technical as well as financial support to education programs in emergency situations. successes liberation movements in southern africa liberation movements have traditionally supported education. this was true in all of the southern african liberation movements in namibia, south africa, and zimbabwe. in some countries it was a response to colonial governments' overt policies which systematically denied blacks access to education. the mass rural education programs used by southern africans often relied on temporary shelters that might include a shady spot under a tree or grass thatched huts. brick and mortar buildings were uncommon; if fay chung november 15, 1999 94 they were used, it was usually in locations far from the war front, such as for the schools run in tanzania by the liberation movements. the lack of permanent buildings led to a healthy emphasis on the types of learning that took place rather than the type of buildings constructed. this emphasis on learning (software) rather than on bricks and mortar (hardware) may explain the success of countries ruled by former liberation movements in providing education for all. this stands in contrast to countries in central and west africa, where high costs of construction as well as teachers' pay have prevented many countries from achieving even primary education for all. establishing education systems in refugee camps and in semi-liberated zones provided the experience for former liberation movements to establish policies after independence which provided primary education for all and secondary education for the majority. this was done through programs using distance education in classrooms supervised by community-recruited teachers and working in community-built classrooms. it would be valuable to conduct research on the history of education programs that were started in refugee camps and later traveled to the country of origin with the returning refugees. hope civil society building is currently the focus of many transitional and post-conflict nations, as it is expected to foster stable and just infrastructure. educational institutions enhance critical civil society mechanisms and associations that can provide the basis for building a new society. they provide the possibility of pursuing a different future from the present in which militarized youths who would otherwise be unemployed have been recruited into the militias. education and training at all levels, but with particular emphasis on providing job training ranging from the simplest to the more complex professional training, can do a great deal to lay the foundations for a better future. education must be seen as an important way of resolving problems faced by countries experiencing ethnic conflict and mass illiteracy, and in their search for a better future. to support this goal, it is essential for international and multinational organizations to take not only a keen interest in but also responsibility for education. where attempts by foreign governments to remove warlords have failed, there is no reason why humanitarian assistance for schools, channeled through the parents and community, should not be increased as a sound investment in peace for the next generation. education is not only a way of returning the population to normalcy, but is also a way of empowering the people against the armed violence of those vying for political power. whilst i do not believe that education is a panacea for all the problems of a society, it can provide certain opportunities that are closed to a society which does not choose to educate its populace. less educated people may be more likely to accept inherited values, and preserve loyalty to inherited prejudices such as "all tutsis or serbs are bad", whereas educated people are more likely to see common values across different ethnic groupings. whereas illiterate and poorly educated youths may be unable to leave their own boundaries, education provides an outlet for unemployed youths who can migrate to countries with a shortage of labor. finally, education is one of the first and most critical ways in which traumatized people can regain control over their lives. it is therefore not surprising that both parents and education: a key to power and a tool for change--a practitioner's perspective current issues in comparative education, vol.2(1) 95 children are likely to see schools as a sign of hope, a sign that they can escape from the violence and suffering that have been imposed upon them by political change. conclusion although the preceding pages raise more questions than answers, i hope to have provided some insights into the dilemmas facing practitioners and some ideas for future research. because education is the key to power, it is the most effective tool agencies and individuals can use in combating political violence, poverty and injustice worldwide. as noted by richard shaull (1984), "every human being . . . is capable of looking critically at [the] world in a dialogical encounter with others. . . the word takes on new power. . . .when an illiterate peasant participates in this sort of educational experience, he comes to a new awareness of self, has a new sense of dignity, and is stirred by a new hope" (pp. 13-14). references bray, m. (1986). education and nation building. in m. bray, p.b. clarke & d. stephens (eds.), education and society in africa (pp. 23-35). london: edward arnold. fanon, f. (1967). a dying colonialism. new york: grovepress. freire, p. (1992). pedagogy of the oppressed, translated by mary bergman ramos. new york: continuum. heggoy, a. (1984). colonial education in algeria: assimilation and reaction. in p.g. altbach & g.p. kelly (eds.), education and the colonial experience (pp. 97-116). new brunswick: transaction books. machel, g. (1996). website. impact of armed conflict on children. [online] available at: http://www.unicef.org/graca/ psacharapoulos, g. (1989). time trends of the returns to education: cross-national evidence. economics of education review, 8(3), 225-231. schultz, t.w. (1989). investing in people: schooling in low-income countries. economics of education review, 8(3), 219-223. shaull, r. (1984). foreword. in freire, p., pedagogy of the oppressed, translated from the portuguese in 1968 by myra bergman ramos. new york: continuum publishing corporation. state of the world's children. (1999). website. statistical tables. [online] available at: http://www.unicef.org/sowc99/ © 2003 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 118 may 12, 2003 responses challenges to nls response to "what's 'new' in new literacy studies" joyce kim teachers college, columbia university in the past twenty years, 'new literacy studies' (nls), with its socio-cultural approach to examining literacy as it is acquired and used by members of various cultures in relation to structures of power and authority, has become one of the major theoretical frameworks in literacy research. street's seminal ethnography, literacy in theory and practice (1984), marked the shift in the field of literacy studies from an ethnography of communication to a more perspicacious examination of power relations. in that book, street exposed the autonomous model of literacy, which posits literacy as a decontextualized set of skills with universal application, as just another literacy ideology--one tied to specific views of the world and relations of power. this insight revolutionized the field of literacy studies. more recently, scholars have expanded the field by developing new, fruitful concepts, such as literacy ecologies (barton, 1994), discourses (gee, 1996)[ ], and multiliteracies (cope & kalantzis, 2000). in addition, refusing to privilege school-based literacies, they have emphasized the ways in which literacies are embedded in and constitutive of family and community relations (barton, 1994; barton & hamilton, 1998; clark & ivanic 1997; hull & schultz 2002; prinsloo & breier, 1996). as nls undergoes rigorous academic and theoretical scrutiny, critiques of its comparability and transferability concerning the relevancy of nls for practitioners and policy makers have emerged. street, in this volume, aptly addresses the issues of comparability regarding the theoretical foundation of nls. however, a careful critique of transferability, in the realm of policy in general, and in the realm of education practice in particular, though laudable, remains elusive. comparability, which requires the use of standard terminology and analytic framework across ethnographic research studies (lecompte & preissle, 1993), lies at the heart of "the limits of the local" (brandt & clinton, 2002) and related arguments (collins & blot, 2003). in his paper, street addresses this issue by stating that nls focuses on the "hybridity" of local and school literacy practices, and refers to the great strides made by scholars (see bartlett & holland, 2002; maybin, 1994; barton & hamilton, 1998; gee, 1996; pahl, 2002a & 2002b) in the development of conceptual apparatuses, linking ethnographies of local literacy practices to broader theories. in his presentation of the paper presented in this volume, street mentioned "textuality", "figured worlds", "identity" and "power" as generalizing concepts. as fascinating as these recent developments are, perhaps there should be an analytic framework of some kind of mapping, a typology if you will, of these conceptual apparatuses concerning different but related issues stemming from literacy practices such as: multilingualism, biliteracy, social theory, text/power/identity, and discourse. a common typology or mapping of present and past nls research will guide further research, thereby fostering the use of standard terminology and framework for comparability of fruitful epiphanies. challenges to nls response to "what's 'new' in new literacy studies" current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 119 transferability begs the question: how can nls apply its theoretical concepts and empirical studies to pedagogical practices and policy making, especially when the autonomous model of literacy has served as the basis for policy and pedagogical practices for a number of years? while street offers a critique of the 'scientific methods' found in the positivist model so imbued in policy and research funding, and notes the valiant efforts among nls scholars (see erickson & gutierrez, 2002), the ways in which nls can achieve legitimacy in the arena of educational policy seem steeped in contested political and academic wills with no clear step-by-step process for nls to gain a valued place in education policy. a final, and serious, limitation of new literacy studies is its evasion, in many cases, of concrete suggestions for literacy practitioners, especially classroom teachers. understandably, those working within this ethnographic framework seem to prefer description and analysis to prescription, and street posits that nls engage in educational practice through their advocacy for "dynamic dialogue" of understanding and appreciation for different literacy practices. teachers may be convinced by the insights of nls, but they must work within the increasingly narrow constraints of the school system. teachers might wish to include the at-home literacy practices of limited english proficient (lep) students in school domains, but they are limited by the constraints of standardized tests and time to bridge the home-school divide. special educators must often use quantitative instruments to 'document' literacy deficits before students can get the services they need; how are these teachers to subscribe to new literacy studies? although the resources of insightful ethnographies (see hull and schultz, 2002) are valuable, teachers seeking to encourage hybridity of local literacy practices and school practices still remain without guidelines and administrative support. while sociolinguists argue that varieties of literacy are structurally equal and practice theorists decry the arbitrary dominance of one form of literacy over others, practitioners must decide whether and how to teach dominant literacies without becoming complicit in the reproduction of power. in his talk, street addressed this conundrum of the teachers who want to bridge the home-school divide by encouraging and challenging teachers to be good ethnographers of their classrooms, as well as their students' local and school literacy practices. he charged educators with the responsibility of finding out what knowledge the students bring to the classroom and to build upon that knowledge in the vygotskian sense. because it is only at this junction of critical language awareness and a politically charged educational environment that the theory gets refined and practice becomes feasible, we must now ask ourselves: how can the field of education develop teachers to be mindful of students' local practices while honing students' school literacy skills? and what kind of school infrastructure needs to be in place for such successful practice? notes 1 it must be noted, however, that many of these third world intellectuals were educated in developed countries. ul huq himself was a yale graduate, and amin received his training in paris. joyce kim 120 may 12, 2003 2 this point was made most effectively by bernard cohn (1996) in colonialism and its forms of knowledge: the british in india. cohn points out that the british were able to maintain control of this vast territory by invading not only its physical space but also its epistemological space. t. m. luhrmann (1996) has examined this dynamic in relation to bombay's parsi minority, providing a detailed account of their aspirations and delusions of sharing the colonizers' civilized knowledge. references bartlett, l. & holland, d. (2002). theorizing the space of literacy practices. ways of knowing journal, 2(1), 10-22. barton, d. (1994). globalization and diversification: two opposing influences on local literacies. language and education, 8(1-2), 3-7. barton, d. & hamilton, m. (1998). local literacies: reading and writing in one community. new york: routledge. brandt, d. & clinton, k. (2002). limits of the local: explaining perspectives on literacy as a social practice. journal of literacy research, 34(3), 337-356. clark, r. & ivanic, r. (1997). the politics of writing. new york: routledge. collins, j. & blot, r. (2003). literacy and literacies: texts, power and identity. new york: cambridge university press. cope, b. & kalantzis, m. (eds.) (2000). multiliteracies: literacy learning and the design of social futures. new york: routledge. erickson, f. & gutierrez, k. (2002). culture, rigor and science in educational research. educational researcher, 31(8), 21-24. gee, j.p. (1996). social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses. london: taylor & francis. hull, g. & schultz, k. (eds.) (2002). school's out!: bridging out-of-school literacies with classroom practice. new york: teachers college press. lecompte, m.d. & preissle, j. (1993). ethnography and qualitative design in educational research. new york: academic press. maybin, j. (1994). language and literacy in social practice. clevedon: multilingual matters/the open university press. pahl, k. (2002a). ephemera, mess and miscellaneous piles: texts and practices in families. journal of early childhood literacy, 2(2), 145-166. challenges to nls response to "what's 'new' in new literacy studies" current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 121 pahl, k. (2002b). habitus and the home: texts and practices in families. ways of knowing journal, 2(1), 45-53. prinsloo, m. & breier, m. (1996). the social uses of literacy and practice. philiadelphia: sached books. street, b. (1984). literacy in theory and practice. new york: cambridge university press. street, b. (2003). what’s “new” in new literacy studies? critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice. current issues in comparative education, 5(2) © 2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 3 editorial introduction islam and education the post-september 11 climate has prompted renewed interest in the islamic world, particularly regarding issues of democracy, poverty, gender, and education. this has generated a flurry of critical attention on the subject of islam and education and education in islamic countries by the popular media and academic journals, as well as an impetus for self-reflective educational research and policy recommendations. theoretical constructs that place religious/secular, traditional/modern, public/private approaches to education at opposite ends of a continuum have been inadequate in characterizing education in predominantly muslim countries, raising important questions about the construct "islamic education." though the role of islam in education and of education in muslim countries has been hotly debated both by muslims and nonmuslims, it has not been adequately studied by scholars of comparative education. this issue of cice extends the theoretical debate surrounding education in the islamic world and examines the different ways in which education in islamic countries and islamic education (in predominantly muslim countries and elsewhere) are being framed by researchers, practitioners, and the media in light of current international affairs. susan douglass and munir a. shaikh provide guidelines for terminology relating to islam in defining islamic education: differentiation and applications as a means to enhance understanding of islam and of muslims. focusing on the american context, they chart out a typology of islamic education in various institutions, illuminating concepts of education that are associated with islam and muslim educational traditions that are parallel to concepts within western education. in the 'islamic' in islamic education: assessing the discourse, farid panjwani critically assesses the dominant discourse on ‘islam and education' and argues that, at various levels of analysis, the discourse suffers from serious conceptual and empirical weaknesses. he suggests that in order to overcome these weaknesses, the discourse will have to reconceptualize several elements, including its exclusivist approach and its approach to the history of muslims. jeffery milligan's article on islamization or secularization? educational reform and the search for peace in the southern philippines considers how the filipino government has historically dealt with educating its minority muslim population, suggesting that the use of secularization policies has not always been effective. he contends that the recent autonomy given to muslim mindanao by the philippine government has provided muslim educators with the freedom to challenge the secularization thesis and possibly to offer a viable alternative to the assimilative and alienating policies of the past. in islam, democracy and citizenship education: an examination of the social studies curriculum in pakistan, iftikhar ahmad discusses the ongoing power struggle in pakistan between the islamists and moderates through an examination of the government mandated social-studies curriculum. editorial introduction 4 december 15, 2004 caroline pryor and zohreh eslami-rasekh investigate the philosophical approaches to teaching held by pre-service teachers in iran and the us in iranian and u.s. pre-service teachers' philosophical approaches to teaching: enhancing intercultural understandings. the comparative study points to similarities and differences in teaching approach, w ith a view to enhancing understanding about cultural values and applications in educational settings. finally, lene kofoed rasmussen analyzes the discourse of female islamists in which the higab and islamic activism are described as matters of self-education in higab and the education of the self. the paper argues that this discourse promotes a modern approach to education. © 2003 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(2) 77 what's "new" in new literacy studies? critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice brian street kings college, london the context and background a rich vein of articles and books has recently addressed some critical issues in the field of new literacy studies, both in terms of theoretical perspectives and of their implications in educational and policy contexts. i address some of these critiques as a way of both updating nls and of addressing its implications for practice. what has come to be termed the "new literacy studies" (nls) (gee, 1991; street, 1996) represents a new tradition in considering the nature of literacy, focusing not so much on acquisition of skills, as in dominant approaches, but rather on what it means to think of literacy as a social practice (street, 1985). this entails the recognition of multiple literacies, varying according to time and space, but also contested in relations of power. nls, then, takes nothing for granted with respect to literacy and the social practices with which it becomes associated, problematizing what counts as literacy at any time and place and asking "whose literacies" are dominant and whose are marginalized or resistant. to address these issues ethnographically, literacy researchers have constructed a conceptual apparatus that both coins some new terms and gives new meanings to some old ones. my own work, for instance, begins with the notion of multiple literacies, which makes a distinction between "autonomous" and "ideological" models of literacy (street, 1985) and develops a distinction between literacy events and literacy practices (street, 1988). the standard view in many fields, from schooling to development programs, works from the assumption that literacy in itself--autonomously--will have effects on other social and cognitive practices. introducing literacy to poor, "illiterate" people, villages, urban youth etc. will have the effect of enhancing their cognitive skills, improving their economic prospects, making them better citizens, regardless of the social and economic conditions that accounted for their "illiteracy" in the first place. i refer to this as an "autonomous" model of literacy. the model, i suggest, disguises the cultural and ideological assumptions that underpin it so that it can then be presented as though they are neutral and universal and that literacy as such will have these benign effects. research in nls challenges this view and suggests that in practice literacy varies from one context to another and from one culture to another and so, therefore, do the effects of the different literacies in different conditions. the autonomous approach is simply imposing western conceptions of literacy on to other cultures or within a country those of one class or cultural group onto others. the alternative, ideological model of literacy, offers a more culturally sensitive view of literacy practices as they vary from one context to another. this model starts from different premises than the autonomous model--it posits instead that literacy is a social practice, not simply a technical and neutral skill; that it is always embedded in socially constructed epistemological principles. it is about knowledge: the ways in which people brian street 78 may 12, 2003 address reading and writing are themselves rooted in conceptions of knowledge, identity, and being. it is also always embedded in social practices, such as those of a particular job market or a particular educational context and the effects of learning that particular literacy will be dependent on those particular contexts. literacy, in this sense, is always contested, both its meanings and its practices, hence particular versions of it are always "ideological", they are always rooted in a particular world-view and in a desire for that view of literacy to dominate and to marginalize others (gee, 1991; besnier & street, 1994). the argument about social literacies (street, 1995) suggests that engaging with literacy is always a social act even from the outset. the ways in which teachers or facilitators and their students interact is already a social practice that affects the nature of the literacy being learned and the ideas about literacy held by the participants, especially the new learners and their position in relations of power. it is not valid to suggest that "literacy" can be "given" neutrally and then its "social" effects only experienced afterwards. it follows from this distinction that researchers in nls employing an "ideological" model of literacy would find it problematic to simply use the term "literacy" as their unit or object of study. literacy comes already loaded with ideological and policy presuppositions that make it hard to do ethnographic studies of the variety of literacies across contexts. so we have found it helpful to develop alternative terms. i have developed a working distinction between "literacy events" and "literacy practices" (street, 1988) that i suggest is helpful for both research and in teaching situations. barton (1994) notes that the term literacy events derived from the sociolinguistic idea of speech events. it was first used in relation to literacy by a.b. anderson et. al. (1980), who defined it as an occasion during which a person "attempts to comprehend graphic signs" (pp. 59-65). shirley brice heath, further characterized a "literacy event" as "any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of the participants' interactions and their interpretative processes" (heath, 1982, p. 93). i have employed the phrase "literacy practices" (street, 1984, p. 1) as a means of focusing upon "social practices and conceptions of reading and writing", although i later elaborated the term to take into account both "events" in heath's sense and of the social models of literacy that participants bring to bear upon those events and that give meaning to them (street, 1988). david barton, in an introduction to his edited volume on writing in the community (barton & ivanic, 1991, p.1) attempted to clarify these debates about literacy events and literacy practices and in a later collaborative study of everyday literacies in lancaster, england, barton and hamilton begin their account with further refinements of the two phrases (1998, p. 6). baynham (1995) entitled his book literacy practices: investigating literacy in social contexts. similarly prinsloo and breier's volume on the social uses of literacy (1996), which is a series of case studies of literacy in south africa, used the concept of "events", but then extended it to "practices", by describing the everyday uses and meanings of literacy amongst, for instance, urban taxi drivers, struggle activists in settlements, rural workers using diagrams to build carts and those involved in providing election materials for mainly non-literate voters. the concept of literacy practices in these and other contexts not only attempts to handle the events and the patterns of activity around literacy events, but to link them to something broader of a cultural and social kind. recently, i have further elaborated the distinction with respect to work on literacies and what's "new" in new literacy studies? critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 79 multilingualism, in an important edited volume by martin-jones and jones (2000). as part of that broadening, for instance, i noted that we bring to literacy event concepts and social models regarding what the nature of the event is and makes it work, and give it meaning. literacy practices, then, refer to the broader cultural conception of particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing in cultural contexts. a key issue, at both a methodological and an empirical level, then, is how we can characterize the shift from observing literacy events to conceptualizing literacy practices. a wealth of "ethnographies of literacy" has emerged deploying and developing these and other key concepts in a variety of international contexts, including the u.k. (barton & hamilton, 1998); the u.s.a. (collins, 1995; heath, 1983); south africa (prinsloo & breier, 1996); iran (street, 1986); india (mukherjee and vasanta, 2003); mexico (kalman, 1999); south america (aikman, 1999); and multiple development contexts (street, 2001). the strength and significance of the approach and the considerable literature it has generated is attested by a recent spate of critical accounts that have addressed some of the problems raised by it both in general theoretical terms and, more specifically, for practice in educational contexts. i firstly summarize some of the theoretical critiques and then turn to the applications to policy and practice that they entail. theoretical concerns in terms of theory, brandt & clinton (2002) have recently commented on "the limits of the local" apparent in many nls studies. they argue that nls ought to be more prepared to take account of the relatively "autonomous" features of literacy without succumbing to the autonomous model with its well documented flaws. this would involve, for instance, recognizing the extent to which literacy does often come to "local" situations from outside and brings with it both skills and meanings that are larger than the emic perspective favored by nls can always detect. whilst acknowledging the value of the social practice approach, they: wonder if the new paradigm sometimes veers too far in a reactive direction, exaggerating the power of local contexts to set or reveal the forms and meanings that literacy takes. literacy practices are not typically invented by their practitioners. nor are they independently chosen or sustained by them. literacy in use more often than not serves multiple interests, incorporating individual agents and their locales into larger enterprises that play out away from the immediate scene. (brandt & clinton, 2002, p. 1) they also point out the important and powerful role of consolidating technologies that can destabilize the functions, uses, values and meanings of literacy anywhere. these technologies generally originate outside of the local context; they cannot be undertood simply in terms of local practices. whilst the field has learned much from the recent turn to "local literacies", they fear that "something [might] be lost when we ascribe to local contexts responses to pressures that originate in distant decisions, especially when seemingly local appropriations of literacy may in fact be culminations of literate designs originating elsewhere" (p.2). i would agree with most of brandt & clinton's characterization here of the relationship brian street 80 may 12, 2003 between the local and the "distant" and indeed it is the focus on this relationship, rather than on one or other of the sites, that characterizes the best of nls. brandt & clinton's account here provides a helpful way of characterizing the local/ global debate in which literacy practices play a central role. but, i would want to distinguish between agreeing with their caveat about overemphasizing "the local" and labeling the "distant" as more "autonomous". the "distant" literacies to which brandt & clinton refer are also always ideological and to term them autonomous might be to concede too much to their neutralist claims. brandt & clinton's concern with the overemphasis on the local in some nls accounts; their recognition that for many people the literacies they engage with come from elsewhere and are not self invented; and that there is more going on in a local literacy than "just local practice", are all important caveats to deter nls from over emphasizing or romanticizing the local, as it has been accused of doing (cf response by street to mccabe, 1995 in prinsloo & breier, 1996). but this important debate can be continued without resorting to terming "distant" literacies as "autonomous"--as brandt& clinton imply in their attempt to address certain "autonomous" aspects of literacy without appealing to the "autonomous model" of literacy. the features of distant literacies are actually no more autonomous than those of local literacies, or indeed than any literacy practices: their distantness, their relative power over local literacies and their "noninvented" character as far as local users are concerned, do not make them "autonomous", only "distant", "new", or hegemonic. to study such processes we need a framework and conceptual tools that can characterize the relation between local and "distant". the question raised in the early nls work concerning how we can characterize the shift from observing literacy events to conceptualizing literacy practices does, i think, provide both a methodological and empirical way of dealing with this relation and thereby taking account of brandt and clinton's concern with the "limits of the local". nls practitioners might also take issue with the apparent suggestion that distant literacies come to local contexts with their force and meaning intact. as kulick & stroud (1993) indicated a decade ago in their study of new literacy practices brought by missionaries to new guinea, local peoples more often "take hold" of these new practices and adapt them to local circumstances. the result of local-global encounters around literacy is always a new hybrid rather than a single essentialized version of either. it is these hybrid literacy practices that nls focuses upon rather than either romanticizing the local or conceding the dominant privileging of the supposed "global". as we shall see when we discuss practical applications of nls across educational contexts, it is the recognition of this hybridity that lies at the heart of an nls approach to literacy acquisition regarding the relationship between local literacy practices and those of the school. collins and blot (2002) are similarly concerned that, whilst nls has generated a powerful series of ethnographies of literacy, there is a danger of simply piling up more descriptions of local literacies without addressing general questions of both theory and practice. in exploring why dominant stereotypes regarding literacy are so flawed, such as the notions of a great divide between oral and literate, and the now challenged assumptions of the autonomous model, they invoke nls, but then want to take account of its limitations and to extend beyond them: what's "new" in new literacy studies? critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 81 such understanding also has a more general intellectual value for it forces us to explore why historical and ethnographic cases are necessary but insufficient for rethinking inherited viewpoints…although ethnographic scholarship has demonstrated the pluralities of literacies, their context--boundness, it still has also to account for general tendencies that hold across diverse case studies. (pp. 7-8). they argue, then, for "a way out of the universalist/particularist impasse" which had troubled brandt as we saw above, "by attending closely to issues of text, power and identity". these are issues that are at the heart of current developments in nls, from bartlett and holland's concern with identities in practice (see below), to street's attention to literacy and power in the ideological model and maybin's refinement of bakhtin's "intertextuality" with respect to literacy practices. writing in situated literacies (2000), maybin, also links nls to wider strands of social-critical work, offering a way of linking foucauldian notions of discourse, bakhtinian notions of intertextuality and work in critical discourse analysis with the recognition from nls of "the articulation of different discourses [as] centrally and dynamically interwoven in people's everyday literacy activities". gee (2000), in the same situated literacies volume, also located the "situated" approach to literacies in relation to broader movements towards a "social turn" which he saw as a challenge to behaviorism and individualism--a challenge which nls has also pursued. janks (2000), located in south africa, likewise links literacy studies to broader social theory, invoking the concepts of "domination, access, diversity and design" as a means of synthesizing the various strands of critical literacy education. freebody, writing from australia, but like janks taking a broad theoretical and international view, likewise writes of the relationship between nls and "critical literacy", an approach to the acquisition and use of reading and writing in educational contexts that takes account of relations of power and domination (freebody, forthcoming). bartlett & holland (2002) likewise link nls to broader social theory. they propose an expanded conception of the space of literacy practices, drawing upon innovations in the cultural school of psychology, sociocultural history and social practice theory. in locating literacy theory within these broader debates in social theory, they build, especially, on the concern of bourdieu to characterize the relationship between social structures (history brought to the present in institutions) and "habitus" (history brought to the present in person) and suggest ways in which nls can adapt this approach: bourdieu's theory suggests that we can analyze literacy events with an eye to the ways in which historical and social forces have shaped a person's linguistic habitus and thus impinges upon that person's actions in the moment (p. 6). however, they argue that bourdieu's theory is itself "limited by his tendency to underplay the importance of culturally produced narratives, images and other artefacts in modifying habitus" (p.x). it is here that they suggest ways of extending both bourdieu and literacy studies by putting them together with other key concepts in their work: we propose to strengthen a practice theoretical approach to literacy studies by specifying the space of literacy practice, examining in particular the locally operant brian street 82 may 12, 2003 figured world of literacy, identities in practice, and artefacts (p. 6). applying their concept of "figured worlds"--"a socially produced and culturally constructed realm of interpretation"--to literacy practices, they suggest that 'a figured world of literacy might include "functional illiterates", "good readers" and "illiterates" any of which might be "invoked, animated, contested and enacted through artefacts, activities and identities in practice" (p. 6). in the world of schooled literacy in particular, scholars have noted the tendency to invoke and deploy such figurings and identities to characterize children and their attainment--holland and bartlett enable us to see such characterizations as themselves part of what we should be taking into account when we try to understand literacy practices in context: we should be wary of taking them at face value, a skepticism that will prove useful as we move towards applying social literacy theory to education in general and schooling in particular. pahl (2002a and b) has built upon holland and bartlett's use of habitus in relation to figured worlds in order to help her describe the multi modal practices of young children at home in her research on london families. drawing also upon kress and van leeuwen (2001) for multi-modality and street 1988; 1995) for literacy practices, she describes the ways in which young children take from and adapt family narratives as they do drawings, create three dimensional objects and write graffiti on walls. the work of figuring these family worlds is done through a combination of oral, visual and written artefacts through which over time key themes--such as a family's connection with the railways in india or with a farm in wales--become sedimented and persistent. through these narratives, embedded in material and linguistic form, the identity of family members is constructed and adapted over time. again, there is a pedagogic message regarding how schools might recognize and build upon such home practices, but there is also an important theoretical contribution to nls, namely that pahl shows how any account of literacy practices needs to be contextualized within other communicative modes. also, like bartlett & holland (2002) and collins (1995), she develops a sophisticated analysis of how such practices relate to concepts of textuality, figured worlds, identity and power. another update and extension of nls is to be found in hornberger's edited volume (2002) in which authors attempt to apply her conception of the "continua of biliteracy" to actual uses of reading and writing in different multilingual settings: biliteracy is defined as "any and all instances in which communication occurs in two (or more) languages in or around writing" and is described in terms of four nested sets of intersecting continua characterizing the contexts, media, content, and development of biliteracy. a number of the authors, as in the martin-jones & jones (2001) book, draw out the links of nls to such multilingual settings. applications to education the next stage of work in this area is to move beyond these theoretical critiques and to develop positive proposals for interventions in teaching, curriculum, measurement criteria, and teacher education in both the formal and informal sectors, based upon these principles. it will be at this stage that the theoretical perspectives brought together in the "new literacy studies" will face their sternest test: that of their practical applications to mainstream education. hull and schultz (2001) have been amongst the first researchers what's "new" in new literacy studies? critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 83 to directly apply insights from nls to educational practice and policy. they build upon the foundational descriptions of out-of-school literacy events and practices developed within nls, to return the gaze back to the relations between in and out of school, so that nls is not seen simply as "anti school" or interested only in small scale or "local" literacies of resistance. they especially want to use the understandings of children's emerging experiences with literacy in their own cultural milieus to address broader educational questions about learning of literacy and of switching between the literacy practices required in different contexts. they are troubled by a tendency…to build and reify a great divide between in school and out of school and that sometimes this dichotomy relegates all good things to out-of-school contexts and everything repressive to school. sometimes it dismisses the engagement of children with non-school learning as merely frivolous or remedial or incidental (hull & schultz, 2002; p. 3). in contrast to this approach and drawing strongly on work in nls, they argue for "overlap or complementarity or perhaps a respectful division of labor". they cite dewey's argument that there is much we can learn about successful pedagogies and curricula by foregrounding the relationship between formal education and ordinary life. from the standpoint of the child" he observed, the great waste in the school comes from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside of the school in any complete and free way within the school itself; while on the other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning in school (dewey, 1899/ 1998; pp. 76-78). but how are we to know about the experiences of the child outside of school? many teachers express anxiety that the children in their classes may come from a wide variety of backgrounds and it is impossible to know them all. hull & schultz (2002) respond by invoking the work of researchers "who have made important contributions to understanding literacy learning through ethnographic or field-based studies in homes, community organizations and after-school programs" (p. 14). their edited volume consists of accounts of such research in a variety of settings. they are aware of the criticism of such approaches that might over-emphasize the "local" or even "romanticize out-of-school contexts" and aim instead to "acknowledge the complexities, tensions and opportunities" that are found there. nor is their aim to provide an exhaustive account of such contexts--teachers are right to argue that this cannot all be covered. instead, they aim to provide us all, but especially those responsible for the education of children, with understanding of the principles underlying such variation and with help in listening to and appreciating what it is that children bring from home and community experience. indeed, the book consists of both articles about such experience and comments by teachers and teacher educators on their significance for learning. here, then, nls meets educational practice in ways that begin to fulfill the potential of the approach, but through dialogue rather than simply an imposition of researchers' agendas on educators. in australia the work of peter freebody and allan luke, provide powerful examples of the application of new theoretical perspectives on literacy, including nls, to education, especially work on curriculum and assessment in queensland (cf luke, and carrington 2002; luke and freebody 2002. brian street 84 may 12, 2003 in a forthcoming edited volume (street, forthcoming) a number of authors from a variety of international contexts likewise take on this challenge and attempt to follow through such practical applications of the nls approach. as with hull & schultz's work, the authors are conscious of the links between theoretical debate and the work of teachers in school addressing literacy issues. the collection of case studies ranges from formal education, including elementary, secondary and higher education and informal sectors such as community associations, international development programs and workplace literacies. across these educational contexts, the authors are concerned not just to apply the general principles of nls but with offering practical critiques of its application that force us to refine the original conceptualization: the volume, then, is intended to be not a static "application" of theory to practice, but a dynamic dialogue between the two. in attempting to work through the implications of these approaches for different sectors of education, the authors find limitations and problems in some nls approaches--such as the "limits of the local" in educational as well as theoretical terms--that require them to go back to the underpinning conceptual apparatus. theory as well as practice is subject to the critical perspective being adopted there and researchers and practitioners will have to either adapt or even reject parts of nls as it engages with such new tasks. such a challenge is raised by current research by baker, street and tomlin (2002) applying literacy theory to the understanding of numeracy practices in and out of school (baker et al, 2002; baynham & baker, 2002). numeracy even more than literacy has been seen as a "universal", "context free" set of skills that can be imparted across the board, irrespective of children's background experiences and prior cultural knowledge. recent approaches to "situated learning", when allied to those from situated literacy suggest that such a "banking" model of education, as paulo freire termed it, is inappropriate especially in the multilingual, multicultural situations that characterize contemporary hybrid cultural contexts. the question that street & baker address is how far such a culturally-sensitive approach can be applied to numeracy education: can we talk of multiple numeracies and of numeracy events and practices as we do of literacy? can we build upon cultural knowledge of number, measurement, approximation etc. in the way that hull & schultz and those in the literacies across the curriculum volume believe we can do for cultural knowledge of literacies, scripts, languages? again, the questions being raised by nls, when applied to new fields such as this will lead to critiques not only of current educational practice but also of the theoretical framework itself. as with the critiques by brandt, collins etc., nls will be forced to adapt and change--the validity and value of its original insights and their applications to practice will be tested according to whether they can meet this challenge. in an international context the application of nls to both schooling and adult literacy has likewise raised new questions and faced new problems contingent on the nature of the particular context. the aim of such "applications" has not been to simply impose a pre-given template on to local work in the field but to enter a dialogue (cf street's 2001 edited volume of essays on literacy and development in a dozen different countries for detailed examples). a telling case of such work is the community literacies project in nepal (clpn, 2001) supported by the u.k.'s department for international development (dfid) and based in kathmandu. clpn provides a resource for supporting local literacy initiatives, be they women working in credit groups, forestry user groups, or what's "new" in new literacy studies? critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 85 people setting up wall newspapers and local broadcasting. such organizations come to clpn for support when their members need to enhance their literacy but instead of sending them to sit in formal classes--to be "infantilized", treated like their children with desks, grade levels and demeaning assessments--the clpn team attempt to work with them in the local context and to build upon what they already know as a way of developing what else they want to know--to create better forms for the credit group, to read and write minutes for the forestry users group, to makes tape recordings for broadcast . however, as with other "applications" of nls (cf rogers, 1994; street, 2001), the local context generates it own new problems that force us to rethink and adapt the initial conceptualization. in this case, as in many development contexts, the problem arises as to whether there is a conflict between theory and policy and between the local and the needs of scale faced by administrators? the more those ethnographers explain the "complexity" of literacy practices, the more policy makers find it impossible to design programs that can take account of all that complexity. the more ethnographers demonstrate that literacy does not necessarily have the effects that the rhetoric has suggested--improved health, cognition, empowerment--the harder does it become for policymakers to persuade funders to support literacy programs. the more ethnographers focus on specific local contexts, the harder does it seem to "upscale" their projects to take account of the large numbers of people seen to be in need. so how can contemporary literacy projects bridge this apparent divide between policy and research in general and in particular between large scale needs and micro ethnographic approaches? the community literacy project nepal aims to do precisely this. based on a spirit of engagement between theory and practice, academic and applied concerns, it aims to make a contribution at the interface, clarifying conceptual issues, and enhancing knowledge on the one hand and aiding policy making and program building on the other (cf rogers, 1992). the participants approach the issues in a spirit of reflective and critical enquiry, less concerned to advocate particular approaches, methodologies and theories than to extend current thinking and thereby facilitate informed local practice. anna robinson-pant's book about nepal, 'why eat green cucumbers at the time of dying?' exploring the link between women's literacy and development (unesco, 2000), which won the unesco literacy prize, provides some of the answers to the worries about ethnography that some literacy campaigners might express. "why eat green cucumbers at the time of dying?"--why take on the luxury of new literacy practices when your communicative repertoire seems already sufficient?--because, says anna robinson-pant, "learning to read--like eating cucumber in rural areas--is both a luxury and a challenge when you are old" (indeed, at any age) (p. 1). taking on reading, new readings, and new literacy practices, broadening the communicative repertoire, and challenging dominant epistemologies are continuing processes, not a one-off shift from "illiteracy" to "literacy", from dark to light, as the early approaches to literacy work would have it. there are always new things to experience and learn and life can always be enhanced--even at the time of dying! policy issues despite the willingness of dfid to fund such imaginative approaches to literacy work brian street 86 may 12, 2003 overseas, in the uk itself as in the u.s.a., the qualitative and ethnographic--style work that characterizes nls and underpins such an approach is currently out of fashion in higher policy circles. a recent important political development in the validating and funding of research in education in general and literacy in particular has been the demand that such research conform to "scientific" standards. key words in this approach include "systematic reviews", "rigor", and "evidence-based policies". in both the u.k. and u.s.a., governments and their agencies are insisting that funding will only be permitted on the basis that programs and the research on which they are based can be proven to be "scientific". a number of commissions and panels have reviewed research on literacy in this light e.g. the national academy of science report "preventing reading difficulties in young children" (snow, burns, griffin, 1998); the national reading panel set up by the national institute of child health and human development (nrp, 2000); and the u.s. department of education's (ed) newly formed institute of education sciences plan to evaluate research as part of its web-based what works clearinghouse project. for instance, the clearinghouse, founded in august 2002, aims to become a trusted, one-stop source of scientifically proven teaching practices for educators, policy makers, and the public. it will contain systematically evaluated research to help educators more easily identify scientifically proven teaching methods as required by the no child left behind act of 2001 (nclb). academic researchers, including those active in the field of literacy, are playing a leading role in these developments. for instance, in the usa robert slavin, the founder of "success for all", argued in a recent paper in educational researcher that: "the use of randomized experiments that transformed medicine, agriculture and technology in the 20th century is now beginning to affect educational policy" (p. x). he concludes from a survey of such research that "a focus on rigorous experiments evaluating replicable programs and practices is essential to build confidence in educational research among policymakers and educators" (slavin, 2002, p. x). in particular, this approach suggests ways in which what is known from experimental studies of literacy acquisition can be built into programs and policies for early schooling. in the u.k., the evidence for policy and practice information coordinating centre (eppi-centre) has been established at the institute for education in london to conduct "systematic reviews" of research in designated fields and the english national literacy strategy was justified on similar grounds, although the use of "systematic reviews" etc. was less well developed at the initial stages. researchers summarizing the research base for the national literacy strategy have since claimed that we now "know what works" in teaching initial literacy and that the task is simply to apply this in schooling (beard, 2000; harrison, 2002). critiques of these approaches have come from a number of well-known qualitative researchers in the literacy field (gee, 2002; coles, 2001; goodman, 2001; hamersley, 2001; erickson & gutierrez, 2002). a special issue of educational researcher (vol. 31, no. 8, nov 2002) was devoted to the question of "scientific research in education" and a special edition of the journal of teacher education was devoted to teacher preparation research (journal of teacher education 53 (3): may-jun 2002; see refs below). in the uk the british educational research journal likewise published a number of articles on systematic reviews in its nov 2001 issue (vol. 27, no. 5, 2001). hamersley, for instance, writing in that issue, links the trend to "systematic reviews" to a resurgence of positivist epistemology as an alternative to "narrative" ("subjective", qualitative, interpretive?) what's "new" in new literacy studies? critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 87 reviews. hamersley comments: "what is curious about the dual (both doing research and producing research reviews) application of the positivist model to the task of reviewing is that it takes little or no account of the considerable amount of criticism that has been made of that model since at least the middle of the twentieth century" (hamersley, 2001, p. 545). adam lefstein (2003) provides a helpful survey of much of this literature, invoking the philosophical terms "techne" and "phronesis" to analyze the difference between "scientific technical rationality" and "practical reason" as they are applied to education and specifically to the uk literacy strategy. in the u.s. likewise qualitative researchers in the literacy field have addressed both the wider epistemological assumptions underpinning the "scientific" move and the specific issues regarding acquisition of reading that are often the focus of such approaches. ken goodman has set up an email network (see refs) that circulates details of new initiatives, e.g. the what works clearinghouse project, and offer scathing critiques. joanne larson's wittily titled literacy as snake oil (2001) has a number of sharp criticisms of the way the reading panels have been set up, run and then invoked for policy purposes. the authors demonstrate some of the problems with the "scientific" approach--its inability to engage with the nuances of cultural meanings, the variation in uses of literacy across contexts and the problems already highlighted with the autonomous model of literacy and attempt to construct more meaningful solutions. (cf , 2001; coles, 2001). similarly, critics in a special issue of educational researcher, berate the u.s. dept of education initiatives for "confusing the methods of science with the process of science" (berliner, 2002). erickson and gutierrez, for example, critique the nrc committee for taking "an evidence-based social engineering approach to educational improvement" and argue for replacing the "'white coat' notion of science…with a more complicated and realistic view of what actual scientists do" (cited in lefstein, 2003). all of this has considerable importance for literacy work, both in terms of the kind of research that can get funded , the kinds of procedures for reviewing research that are considered legitimate and the policy effects of that research which does get through the sieve. the wider political and ideological context of such research is itself part of what counts as engaging with literacy in theory and practice conclusion the effects of these critical engagements with social theory, educational applications and policy is that new literacy studies is now going through a productive period of intense debate that firstly establishes and consolidates many of the earlier insights and empirical work and secondly builds a more robust and perhaps less insular field of study. a major contribution arising from the work cited here has been the attempt to appeal beyond the specific interests of ethnographers interested in the "local" in order to engage with both educationalists interested in literacy acquisition and use across educational contexts, both formal and informal, and with policy makers more generally. that practical engagement, however, will still need to be rooted in sound theoretical and conceptual understanding if the teaching and studying of literacy are to avoid being simply tokens for other interests. we still, then, need to analyze and contest what counts as "literacy" (and numeracy); what literacy events and practices mean to users in different cultural and social contexts-the original inspiration for nls but also what are the "limits of the local"; and, as the writers cited here indicate, how literacy relates to more general issues brian street 88 may 12, 2003 of social theory regarding textuality, figured worlds, identity and power. references anderson, a. b., teale, w.h. and estrada,e (1980) 'low-income children's preschool literacy experiences: some naturalistic observations' in newsletter of the laboratory of comparative human cognition 2, 59-65 aikman, s. 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(forthcoming) (ed.) literacies across educational contexts. philadelphia: caslon publishing. street, b. (2000) "literacy events and literacy practices" in m. martin-jones & k. jones (ed.) multilingual literacies: comparative perspectives on research and practice amsterdam: john benjamin's, 17-29. street, b. (2001) ed. literacy and development: ethnographic perspectives. routledge: london. what works clearinghouse. http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/ssunreg.cfm?articleid=4110&ul=%2fnews%2fsh owstory%2ecfm%3farticleid%3d4110. © 2003 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.6(1) 3 editorial introduction technology for all? the impact of technology on knowledge production and educational development as modern technology is rapidly changing the nature of knowledge production, it is becoming increasingly important in the field of educational development to examine whether, as a result, these changes are fostering inclusion or creating greater disparity. in the "information age," technological innovation, theoretically, should broaden access to education and encourage sustainable development. many in the educational development field ascribe a transformative role to technology, regarding the ability to acquire and use "knowledge" as critical to developing human capital. others question whether technology is being used as a panacea for complex educational development problems, questioning who is generating "knowledge," for whose benefit, and with what future implications. this issue of cice examines the salient matters involving knowledge and technology that concern international educational development. the present articles raise evocative questions about values placed on various types of "knowledge," how "knowledge" is evaluated by learning institutions, and how these various ways of viewing "knowledge" shape policy. among policymakers in economically developing countries, such as brazil, a dichotomy exists where "knowledge" is defined either in terms of market value, or in terms of social development. the proposed national system of evaluation of higher education (sineas) stimulates discussion on the priorities of higher education. canen's "institutional evaluation, knowledge and multiculturalism: some ways ahead in brazilian higher education" illustrates how such policies seem to support a productoriented approach to education and knowledge production. in "computers in ghanaian secondary schools: where does equality come in?" mfum-mensah discusses how weak policy design results in failure to reach those who need to benefit most from technology in education. mfum-mensah examines ghana's educational policy in historical context to question whether technology will exacerbate or ameliorate social disparities. the notion of technology as a great equalizer is also explored on levels other than socioeconomic disparity. in "student-faculty power/knowledge relations: the implications of the internet in the college of education, sultan qaboos university" al-harthi and ginsburg look at the power dynamic between two groups of participants, questioning the extent to which technology can transform this dynamic. does the "internet culture" challenge traditional notions of authority/knowledge and pedagogy, or does culture shape internet use? what happens when the two are ideologically different? shin and cho's "the culturally situated process of knowledge production in a virtual community: a case of hypertext analysis from a university's classweb discussion boards" also examines the dynamics of power and knowledge. their article questions whether mainstream uses of technology in higher education exacerbate "disability" in the broadest sense of the term. the definition of "disability" in this context is non-native english-speakers in english-only virtual learning environments. the article editorial introduction december 17, 2003 4 demonstrates how certain types of communication and literacy are favored over others and, as a result, exclude certain students from engaging in the activity of knowledge production. "distance, disability and the commodification of education: web accessibility and the construction of knowledge" by foley analyzes the ideologies surrounding various types of learners, and web accessibility. like canen's article, foley looks at the "marketizing" of disability in online instruction. as demonstrated in this collection of articles, the complexities of how knowledge and authority are negotiated resonate throughout educational development policy and practice. this issue of cice questions whether the current direction of policy and practices related to technology contested alliances: international ngos and authoritarian governments in the era of globalization iveta silova lehigh university the ngo boom of the 1990s was matched by mounting literature on the influence of ngos on world politics. the 1998 inaugural issue of cice – are ngos overrated? – brought these debates into the very center of international and comparative education. the journal issue inspired a fascinating conversation about the powers and limits of ngos in the area of education by highlighting the variety of types, qualities, and functions of ngos, as well as discussing various ngo roles vis-à-vis the state. some articles emphasized the virtues of ngos in promoting educational change, while others criticized ngos for imposing a neoliberal agenda and maintaining systemic inequity. as michael edwards concluded in 1998, there was only one possible answer to the question whether ngos were overrated or not: “it all depends on the ngos concerned, the type of work that they do, and the contexts they work in” (p. 55). a decade after the initial debate, the reality is that there is still no clear answer to the question cice editors originally posed. what a decade of intellectual debate and research has brought, however, is a realization that ngos are obscure organizations, whose impact is often impossible to predict. ngos forge contested alliances with governments, international organizations, and local communities (often contested from within and without); and, notwithstanding their success or failure in reaching their officially proclaimed goals, ngos are capable of altering larger political, economic, and social processes in unpredictable ways. in the words of william demars (2005), ngos are “wild cards in world politics:” “their impact is up for grabs, and they attract local and global actors who compete, and sometimes cooperate, to play, capture, and or neutralize them” (p. 4). the status of ngos as obscure organizations is most evident in the context of authoritarian or centralist states. my own experience of researching (and participating in) the work of international ngos in the former soviet republics of central asia and the caucasus for over a decade offers some interesting examples. since the collapse of the soviet union in 1991, ngos have had a profound impact on political processes in the region, but their impact has been highly variable. ngos have contributed to overthrowing authoritarian governments (for example, in georgia and kyrgyzstan), but they have also inadvertently helped to legitimize some of the most authoritarian regimes in the world (for example, in turkmenistan and uzbekistan). in this context, the role of ngos is far more complex than much of the literature would suggest (mercer, 2002). this paper argues that we should look beyond the officially proclaimed goals of ngos in assessing their impact. instead, we should examine the political contexts within which ngos forge contested alliances with international organizations, authoritarian regimes, and local actors to better understand the hidden agendas inherent in the very nature of these organizations and the inadvertent consequences resulting from these complex interactions. ngos and authoritarian governments while the presence of ngos is usually associated with democratic or democratizing states (diamond, 1994; 1997), ngos have been increasingly successful in finding their way into some of the most authoritarian regimes. for example, despite the fact that the north korean government has created a virtual “ngo-free zone” by excluding all but a few ngos and un observers, it still © 2008 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 10(1/2): 26-31. current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 27 iveta silova accepts their food aid (demars 2005, p. 164). similarly, ngos have also emerged in two of the most authoritarian republics of the former soviet central asia — turkmenistan and uzbekistan. even in these hostile environments, however, a few ngos have found innovative strategies to provide education support through their activities inside and outside the country. the point is that ngos manage to penetrate some of the most authoritarian states, which remain beyond the reach of other governments and international organizations. once there, ngos have proved able to devise innovative strategies and tactics for maintaining whatever level of engagement the security situation, the donor generosity, or the government control would allow (demars, 2005). of particular interest is how ngos forge contested alliances with authoritarian states and international organizations in order to ensure government “recognition” and “support” for their activities on the one hand and international funding on the other. in authoritarian states, ngos find themselves torn between two extremes that are both vital to their existence. on the one hand, they need to acquire international funding, which is generally reserved for democratization projects, and are therefore compelled to forge alliances with international agencies. on the other hand, they often get involved with the increasingly non-democratic institutions at home in an attempt to avoid persecution or closure by coercive governments. more often than not, however, ngos play both sides simultaneously, devising innovative maneuvering tactics and unique survival strategies to achieve their goals. in kyrgyzstan, for example, ngos teamed up with elites (and oligarchs) to initiate the november 2006 protests, which resulted in a constitutional reform and made kyrgyzstan the first predominantly parliamentary government in central asia. as doten (2007) observed, the ngo alliance “provided bridges between the bonded regional patronage networks of businessmen and parliamentary deputies” unifying “organizational ability, money and supporters into formations that have the power to reshape their nations” (p. 6). given contended realities of both international pressure for democratization and the domestic push for increasing governmental control in the post-soviet context, ngos fluctuate between the two poles in unpredictable ways, making processes of ngo alliance formation more complex. in a new edited volume, how ngos react: globalization and education reform in the caucasus, central asia, and mongolia (silova & steiner-khamsi, 2008), we examine the remarkable repertoire of strategies used by ngos to cope with a governance environment that is centralist and, for the most part, donor dependent. based on the in-depth examination of one of the largest ngos in the region—the network of open society institute/soros foundations—we propose the following three terms to distinguish the roles of ngos: complementary, cooperative, and surrogate (see the concluding chapter by steiner-khamsi in silova & steiner-khamsi, 2008). while these terms do not help us predict the outcomes of ngo-led activities, they are certainly important in understanding the political contexts within which ngos operate. the complementary role of ngos the most common strategy for dealing with a centralist government is to present a corrective to ongoing reforms that is in line with the mission of the ngo. in practice, this means that ngos initiate, design, and implement a pilot project on the assumption that the project will then be scaled up by the government or donors. the complementary or corrective function of ngos is closely associated with the structural adjustment reforms (saps) initiated by international financial institutions. the decentralization of finance, creation of an open textbook market, privatization of preschools and higher education—to name just a few reforms initiated by international financial institutions—target a reduction of public expenditure and an increase of market forces in education. several national foundations of the soros network attempted to counter these reforms by building local capacity and enhancing civic participation. two of the case studies (the chapters 28 fall 2007 / spring 2008 contested alliances on armenia and georgia), best represent how osi has attempted to broaden decentralization reforms. in particular, governments and development banks narrowly define the decentralization of finance as the ultimate goal, thus reducing the role of the community to simply paying fees and generating additional income for under-funded schools. in contrast, the national foundations have supported community participation, community schools, community newsletters, and a series of other projects that emphasize the other aspect of decentralization: civic participation. their goal is ultimately more transparency and more social accountability of governments, seen as prerequisites for an open society. in centralist states, however, ngos playing the corrective role are not always successful. while the case of armenia explains how ngos succeeded in broadening the meaning of decentralization reform (see the chapter by armenuhi tadevosyan in silova & steiner-khamsi, 2008), the case of georgia documents factors that curbed ngo impact. in georgia (see the chapter by anna matiashvili in silova & steiner-khamsi, 2008), the government issued the decentralization decree in 1999, and a year later signed a cooperation agreement with the open society georgia foundation (osgf) to pilot several models of administrative decentralization in the education sector. however, two unexpected events occurred that annulled the agreement. first, a much bigger donor (the world bank) stepped forward with a us$60 million credit, provided that the government of georgia give financial autonomy to schools. as part of the program, percapita financing was introduced and vouchers issued, both for public and private schools. the project was very narrowly defined in that it provided training for school administrators and educational authorities, mostly in the domain of educational finance. the second key event was the peaceful rose revolution of 2003, in the wake of which former agreements with ngos were discontinued and replaced. osgf was not exempt from this general approach, even though the soros network has been credited for having been closely associated with political events leading up to the revolution. the new government and the world bank brought in their own stakeholders and experts, displacing the local capacity built in the previous period. as steiner-khamsi (2008) observes, “the distancing posture and the institutional amnesia have more to do with legitimacy issues surrounding large loans and credits than with the actual outcomes of similar projects already in existence” (p. 269). more importantly, this case study highlights the political context within which the complex alliances between ngos, centralist governments, and international donors may abruptly change. the cooperative role of ngos in addition to counter-balancing reforms, some ngos choose to cooperate with centralist governments by selectively strengthening governance capacity in areas that comply with the ngo’s own mission. more often than not, cooperation with centralist governments may result in legitimizing authoritarian regimes. dailey and silova (2008), for example, examine how a close collaboration between unicef and the turkmenistan’s government has allowed unicef to implement its “global education” program[1]on a country-wide scale, yet it has involved complex politics and required many compromises in program development and implementation. in particular, the concept of “school-community interaction” was skillfully re-cast by government officials to increase state control over families and communities by requiring students to report on their parents’ and grandparents’ knowledge of and respect toward the ruhnama (the compulsory and almost exclusive textbook written by president niyazov). instead of reaching the original goal of “enriching and diversifying the range of learning/teaching methods employed in schools” (unicef, 2003), the project has, apart from some positive effects, inadvertently resulted in providing the state with a wider variety of educational tools for ideological indoctrination of students and tighter policing of families and communities (dailey & silova, 2008). current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 29 iveta silova however, there are some interesting exceptions. in particular, the soros foundation kyrgyzstan and the foundation for support of educational initiatives (a kyrgyz ngo) assisted the regional department of education in implementing a voucher system for teacher training. the integration of the pilot into existing government structures was a key feature of the project. the regional department of education agreed to de-monopolize in-service teacher training and permitted ngos and other organizations to serve as training providers. furthermore, the training facilities were provided for free, and the transportation cost for teachers were to be covered by government funds. there was also a hand-over planned with regard to financing the project. the original agreement was that the department of education would not need to contribute any funds in 2005, pay forty percent of the project cost in 2006, and fully cover all costs in 2007. the tulip revolution and other political changes in 2005 ended with a replacement of senior government officials throughout the country, and previous agreements were annulled. regional education authorities only agreed to honor and fund the popular voucher pilot in 2007 after massive public pressure. as the authors of the case study (alexandr ivanov and valentin deichman) explain, the voucher financing mechanism was demanding from a management perspective. it required that the centralist government, represented at the regional level, coordinate, facilitate and negotiate. none of these practices were familiar to kyrgyz government officials. even though the pilot project was financed in the end with government funds, for the time being management of the pilot, both in the issyk-kul region and possibly in new regions as well, relied on support from ngos. the surrogate role of ngos the case studies on turkmenistan and uzbekistan represent ngo strategies under regimes that are not only centralist, but also authoritarian. in these two countries, the initiatives substitute for reforms that have either been annulled (uzbekistan) or never targeted (turkmenistan). in particular, the soros network has never been granted entry into turkmenistan and the office in uzbekistan was closed down in 2004. the authors of the turkmenistan case study (erika dailey and iveta silova) analyze how some ngos operate in absentia. for example, osi provides scholarships for turkmen citizens to study abroad, including in the neighboring country kyrgyzstan, and sponsors national initiatives that promote open society values, such as youth seminars, from afar. in uzbekistan, jacqueline ashrafi documents how the open society institute assistance foundation-uzbekistan (osiaf) implemented textbook reform by devising innovative strategies in order to comply with two divergent objectives. on the one hand, osiaf needed to encourage critical thinking and raise awareness of human rights. on the other hand, the textbook had to strictly follow the rules of the ministry of education by reflecting political ideology of the state. even though the strategies used in turkmenistan and uzbekistan represent an extreme of how ngos must operate under a centralist, authoritarian government, their methods for coping reflect legacies from the communist past (steiner-khamsi, 2008; silova, 2004). interestingly, residents of post-socialist countries with a centralist and authoritarian governments have become skilful in dealing with an over-controlling center. they have learned “the politics of duplicity” (kligman, 1998), which allowed them to manipulate “the system” in subtle and creative ways in attempt to reach their goals. used as a typical survival mechanism during the communist regimes, “duplicity”[2] refers to the consciously differentiated nature of public and private actions, discourses, and behaviors. for example, kligman (1998) describes “a public self that engaged in public displays of conformity in speech and behavior, and a private self that may have retreated to 30 fall 2007 / spring 2008 contested alliances the innermost depths of the mind to preserve a kernel of individual thought” (p. 15). this careful distinction between the public and the private has been used as powerful survival mechanism, allowing people to manipulate “the system” during the communist period. interestingly, these unique coping strategies have been successfully transferred to post-soviet contexts, providing useful tools for ngos to deal with the “reverse side” of an over-controlling center. as the case studies of turkmenistan (dailey and silova, 2008) and uzbekistan (ashrafi, 2008) reveal, ngos identify niches that are beyond strict government control by supporting progressive national initiatives from outside the country, or by carefully undermining rules and regulations within the country. arguably, the outcomes of these manipulations remain highly unpredictable, depending on the specific political contexts within which ngos are embedded. contested alliances undoubtedly, ngos have had a profound impact on political, economic, and social processes in centralist and authoritarian states of the caucasus and central asia. notwithstanding various ngo roles – complementary, supportive, or surrogate – education initiatives implemented by ngos have produced complex alliances between international donors, authoritarian states, and ngos. these alliances are far more powerful than much of the ngo research would suggest. in particular, a close collaboration between ngos and centralist or authoritarian governments could lead to selective implementation of educational initiatives and inadvertently result in legitimizing the authoritarian regime itself. at the same time, the alternative strategies of “correcting” or opposing the existing regimes may involve not only practical limitations of program implementation (such as limited outreach to program participants), but also personal risks to local program participants. in this complex environment, some ngos may have imperiled their participants, failed to make an impact on a large scale, or failed to achieve their own missions altogether (dailey and silova, 2008). yet to varying degrees all have contributed to the larger processes of post-soviet transformation by expanding the limits of innovation, manipulation, and dissent in authoritarian states. notes [1]. unicef and the ministry of education jointly initiated a global education program in 2002 to introduce the “child-friendly learning approach” in turkmenistan’s schools. the concept of global education is to educate the ‘whole person’ by addressing the intellectual, emotional, physical, moral and spiritual dimensions of the learner in a comprehensive approach. [2]. kligman (1998) defines duplicity as “a deceitful behavior… ‘speaking or acting in two different ways concerning the same matter with the intent to deceive’… it involves willful, conscious behavior in which social actors are aware of their intentions” (p. 14). references ashrafi, j. (2008). quotas for quotes: mainstreaming open society values in uzbekistan. in i. silova and g. steiner-khamsi (eds.), how ngos react: globalization and education reform in the caucasus, central asia, and mongolia (pp. 231-246). bloomfield, ct: kumarian press. dailey, e. & silova, i. (2008). invisible and surrogate education: filling educational gaps in turkmenistan. in i. silova and g. steiner-khamsi (eds.), how ngos react: globalization and education reform in the caucasus, central asia, and mongolia (pp. 211-230). bloomfield, ct: kumarian press. demars, w. (2005). ngos and transnational networks: wild cards in world politics. london: pluto. diamond, l. (1994). rethinking civil society: toward democratic consolidation. journal of democracy 5, pp. 4–18. current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 31 iveta silova diamond, l. (1997). in search of consolidation. in l. diamond, m.f. plattner, y-h. chu, and h-m. tien (eds.), consolidating the third wave democracies: regional challenges (pp. xiii–xvii). london: johns hopkins university press. doten, c. (2007). color evolution: ngos and oligarchs unite for change in kyrgyzstan. al nakhlah: the fletcher school journal for issues related to southwest asia and islamic civilization. [online]. available: http://fletcher.tufts.edu/al_nakhlah/archives/spring2007/doten-2.pdf. edwards, m. (1998). are ngos overrated? why and how to say “no.” current issues in comparative education, 1(1), pp. 55-61. available at http://www.tc.edu/cice. kligman, g. (1998). the politics of duplicity: controlling reproduction in ceausescu’s romania. berkeley, ca: university of california press. mercer, c. (2002). ngos, civil society and democratization: a critical review of the literature. progress in development studies, 2(1), pp. 5–22. silova, i. & steiner-khamsi, g. (eds.). (2008). how ngos react: globalization and education reform in the caucasus, central asia, and mongolia. bloomfield, ct: kumarian press. unicef. (2003). towards child-friendly learning with global education [online]. available: http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/iige/partnerships/leafletspuskn.pdf. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 57 conceptual and practical approaches to hiv/aids: the brazilian experience isabela cabral félix de sousa rio de janeiro, brazil fundação oswaldo cruz; rio de janeiro, brazil introduction within the field of social psychology, modern cognitive theory argues that people use conceptual frameworks to classify their experiences (mcdavid and harari, 1974/1980). yet these frameworks are limited: their translation into social practices is imperfect and can lead to negative outcomes. in this paper i show how conceptual frameworks have limited the understanding of the course of the hiv/aids epidemic in brazil, and thus failed to address properly its related problems. health education, to be an efficient response, must be part of broad health promotion programs that target all conditions that lead to the infection and the disease. historically, encouraging individual behavioral change has been used to address health problems. unless a health promotion approach addressing social problems alongside individual problems is employed, there is little hope to change the course of the hiv/aids epidemic. it is important to note, however, that although the role of health education as a concept is by definition restricted, pointing only to individual behavioral changes, this does not mean that schools play a limited role. for instance, the concept of "health promoting schools" has envisioned them as ideal sites to target the health problems related to the individual child and to social aspects that lead to the disease. finally, i provide recommendations for educators, primarily based upon building more symbolic resources intended to amplify peoples' visions and actions. the case of brazil and the need for a health promotion approach conceptual frameworks are influenced by cultural, social, economic and political forces. they often lack necessary information which leads to stereotypes and prejudices (mcdavid and harari, 1974/1980). as a result, risk groups for hiv/aids have not been properly identified in brazil. although women have been particularly at risk due to their gender subordination and biological vulnerability, recognizing women as a group at risk is a recent development. studies on reproductive tract infections have exposed the vulnerable position of women, pointing to problems that preceded the epidemic. in the beginning of the epidemic, homosexuals were thought to belong to a group of greater risk. for this reason, i will start by discussing how this perception unfolded in brazil. in brazil, the lack of a self-identified homosexual community delayed the response to hiv/aids related illnesses. instead of a defined community, however, we see a spectrum of sexual identities and practices. for social scientists and educators, the problem of addressing hiv/aids lies not only in the many taboos surrounding sexuality, but also in the difficulty of establishing categories related to sexual identities and behaviors. in the homosexual world in particular, where these identities and isabela cabral félix de sousa and fundação oswaldo cruz 58 december 1, 2000 practices tend to be more secret and marginal, the confusion is exacerbated. thus, the complexity may not be grasped completely in self-reported sexual identifies nor in accounts of sexual behaviors. for instance, lago, (1999) studying self-reported definitions of bisexual men in brazil, argues that there is no basic sexual activity criterion for identifying them. he states that among bisexuals, identification is related more significantly to homosexual attraction rather than equivalent to homosexual practice. comparing brazil to other countries, parker (1993) contends that the epidemic in brazil received less attention than that given to the epidemic in the united states and central africa because brazil was dissimilar in epidemiological features, social and cultural forces, and reactions. according to parker, international epidemiologists look in two directions to map hiv transmission--one through male homosexuality and drug injection, and the second through heterosexual relations and transfusions with contaminated blood. these directions only narrowly apply to brazil because male homosexuality and bisexuality practices occur differently from those in the united states in that there is no identified gay community in brazil, and because blood contamination has been related more to social and political forces than to the lack of economic resources. moreover, daniel (1993), discussing the problem of using an imported epidemiological model for identifying hiv cases in brazil, says in regard to homosexuality among brazilian men: " (...) men that have sexual relations, occasionally or frequently, with other men continue to consider themselves 'men' both 'heterosexual' and 'macho', playing an active role in sexual relationships" (p. 37). the difficulty with concepts also emerged in defining risk groups. for example, even though more men than women in brazil are considered to be in risk groups that have acquired aids, such as homosexual men (41.9%) and bisexual men (19.5%) (peixinho et al., 1990), women are recognized increasingly as a group at risk for hiv infection and for developing aids. indeed, some argue that women face a greater risk than men of acquiring the disease due to the following: the social approval of male bisexualism given that men continue to exhibit "macho" behaviors, the neglect of women's sexuality with the exception of prostitutes, the delay of biomedicine to accurately diagnose hiv/aids among women before the terminal stage of the disease, and the inferior status of women--particularly those from poor classes (guimarães, 1994). aside from these sociocultural conditions that place women, particularly the poor, at a disadvantage, women are also at a biological disadvantage as they are two to three times more likely than men to acquire the disease (royce et al., 1997). that the medical system represents women in one of two ways--either as prostitutes or as "family women" (barbosa, 1993)--has led to an incorrect mapping of the aids epidemic. although epidemiologists have considered brazilian female prostitutes to have been at risk since 1985, this recognition has not happened vis-à-vis family women who were also at risk (guimarães, 1994). koifman, quinhões, monteiro, rodrigues and koifman (1991) studying aids cases during the 1980s among adult women from the municipality of rio de janeiro found an even higher percentage of the disease among family women than among prostitutes. this higher incidence of hiv infection in family women relates to their companions who are bisexual, but who define themselves as macho and heterosexual. many family women do not know of their partners' conceptual and practical approaches to hiv/aids: the brazilian experience current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 59 homosexual behaviors until physicians reveal to these women that they are infected with the disease (amaral, 1999). as pointed out by lago (1999), male bisexual practices are marked by secrecy. indeed, in koifman's et al. study, the group of women with the highest percentage of aids were housewives (33.9%), domestic workers (14.4%) and prostitutes (6.7%). interestingly, these categories of women are replicated among hiv infected women themselves creating a discriminatory marker. according to knauth (1999), brazilian hiv infected family women distinguish themselves from the "other" women by believing that while they are infected due to their roles as wives, the latter women are infected because they engaged in health-compromising behavior, actively searching the disease. the epidemiological data of hiv/aids is not promising for young women. pimenta (1997) contrasts data of the united nations program for aids which found that 40% of the new incidence affects women ranging from 15 to 25 years old with brazilian data estimating that it is affecting mostly those from 15 to 39 years old. aside from gender differences, the hiv/aids infection is reported to appear mainly among the young, those between the ages of 15 and 24. considering this age group and using estimates from a health and demographic survey (macro international inc., 1997) this means that almost 32 million young brazilian people could be at risk. however, it is the poor youth, and even more likely, street youth, who are particularly at risk. almost a decade ago, luna (1991) cited evidence showing that there was hiv infection among more than one third (245) of the 700 abandoned brazilian youths that belong to funabem (fundação nacional do bem-estar do menor) and feem (fundação estadual de educação ao menor). it is important to stress that beyond the issue of risk groups, the very same social conditions that lead to the spread of hiv are closely associated with other conditions associated with previously known reproductive tract infections. the likelihood of contracting hiv increases when the person has other reproductive tract infections (amaral, 1999), particularly for women. the fact that hiv/aids epidemic emerged in the midst of a pattern of neglect of reproductive tract infections in brazil and elsewhere (faúndes & tanaka, 1992) shows that there has been a fertile terrain for social and health problem to escalate. thus, one can assume if the older problems of reproductive tract infections had been better addressed, the devastating problems generated by hiv infection could at least have been attenuated. wasserheit and holmes (1992) provide a detailed account of reproductive tract infections and social neglect. these authors state that they have been overlooked worldwide because of: the false assumptions that these infections are not serious, not life-threatening, very complex, costly to care for, and are present mainly among the promiscuous adult population. the values and attitudes associated with these infections are taboo and donor agencies have a policy of providing only preventive care and not focusing on how curative care of reproductive tract infections can prevent other infections and diminish prevalence. in addition, there is gender division of the delivery of health care services. usually aids and sexual transmitted diseases services target only men and family planning and maternal-child health clinics target only women. meanwhile society continues its permissive tolerance of male promiscuity and perpetuates the low status of women, which may prevent them from controlling their sexual encounters. all of this means that priority is not given to isabela cabral félix de sousa and fundação oswaldo cruz 60 december 1, 2000 diseases that affect more women than men as is the case with reproductive tract infections, thus placing responsibility on women to avoid infection and pregnancy. not only health education but health promotion is needed according to candeias (1997), the meaning of health education and health promotion that specialists generally accept is that delineated by green and kreuter. green and kreuter (1991) define health education as: "any planned combination of learning experiences designed to predispose, enable and reinforce voluntary behavior conducive to health in individuals" (p. 432). these authors state that health promotion is broader and involves: "any planned combination of educational, political, regulatory, and organizational supports for actions and conditions of living conducive to health of individuals, groups, or communities " (p. 432). thus, in the case of hiv/aids, health education cannot fulfill completely its promise, nor should it be expected to, if coordinated actions related to health promotion, which include education and environmental supports, are not in place. candeias (1997) explains that environmental supports encompass not only social, political, economical, organizational and regulatory circumstances related to human behavior, but also all political actions related to health. at times, however, health education and health promotion have been used interchangeably in the developing world (candeias, 1997). the concept of health education is more limited than that of health promotion because it only addresses individual behavioral changes. although social change is part of the health promotion conceptualization, in practice health promotion has historically concentrated more on individual behavior changes (sousa, 2000). nevertheless, this does not mean that health education cannot be linked to health promotion. in fact, minkler (1989) argues that health education should move to health promotion in order to tackle both the individual and the social levels. still, the concept of 'health promotion schools' implies that schools should promote strategies targeted to reduce disease and promote health by allied changes in both the individual and social levels. according to st. leger (1999), this means that the schools' traditional focus, which was either health behavioral change or health maintenance, now also encompasses advocacy, empowerment and support. educational interventions emphasize that the transmission of hiv/aids is associated with actions such as sexual intercourse, blood transfusions, the injection and use of other skin-piercing instruments, organ and semen donation, perinatal transmission, and with the delivery of vaccines. however, less stressed in educational interventions are the nonbehavioral problems affecting the transmission of the disease. these stem from an economic base (no money to buy condoms and health care, no efficient blood screening), occupation (prostitution, blood donation to get money) and environmental isolation (lack of family support and lack of access to school and/or work). these non-behavioral problems are exactly the issues health promotion should address. it is often assumed that health education can protect health status if people learn to avoid the behaviors leading to the spread of hiv infection. however, people need to have sufficient material and symbolic resources to avoid the health compromising behaviors. material resources refer to: condoms in the case of sexual intercourse, disinfected piercing instruments in the use of drugs or other activities, decontaminated blood in blood products and transfusions, decontaminated organs and semen, use of conceptual and practical approaches to hiv/aids: the brazilian experience current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 61 drugs to both prevent vertical transmission and health related complications, and better access to vaccines. symbolic resources refer to access to information as well as the understanding of cultural values and norms. in other words, symbolic resources provide a shared cultural understanding of current events, affectivity, social norms and social ties. people and institutions provide these resources. the three main institutions--family, school and work--can generate both material and symbolic resources to prevent and treat health problems. these institutions can act in alliance with each other, in the way that health clinics and neighborhood associations do to promote health. in a world divided between rich and poor nations, this epidemic has increased rapidly among the majority of the poor living in the developing world. as the link between hiv/aids and poverty is reported increasingly, the lack of both material and symbolic resources is crucial. the fact that the epidemic is growing among the poor can be seen in extreme cases such as south africa where one fifth of its population is already infected (veja, 2000) and is considered pandemic. daniel (1991) says: "it is inevitable that aids claims the largest number of people from this majority of the poor, mainly because they have no access to resources-whether material or symbolic: not only no hospital, but also no education or information to help them cope with the disease" (p. 545). it is also apparent that these poor conditions undermine average survival after diagnoses. in the last decade, brazil embraced the political strategy to distribute freely drugs for hiv/aids patients to help their survival (veja, 2000). before this policy, the average survival after diagnosis was reported to be only 5.1 months, less than half as long as the average in countries such as the united states, spain, italy, australia, and england (chequer et al., 1992). yet many people are either abandoned entirely, or helped only by institutions that are ill-prepared to cope with the problem. the lack of health education can be crucial. in fact, the hiv/aids scientific advances that should increase the compliance to the drug usage are not always known. porto and vargas (2000) applying questionnaires to 168 women in a poor community in rio de janeiro found that 77 percent of this population were not aware of the preventive measures to avoid the vertical transmission of hiv from the mother to the infant. moreover, essential knowledge about the disease and its transmission is lacking among the most in need. silva and sousa (2000) interviewing 65 poor women in a public health clinic who studied only until the 8th grade, found that only four of them had well-rounded knowledge related to hiv/aids. it is important to note that not all material and symbolic resources available in any society are conducive to enhancing the health of individuals and groups. an extreme example is one related to street youths' symbolic resources. luna (1991) studying 103 brazilian street youths, states that their reports indicate that they engage in high-risk sexual activity not only for money, but also as a rite of passage for men (homosexual or bisexual experimentation and sexual intercourse), as birth control for women (anal intercourse) and for both sexes, as a means to get affection. moreover, it is possible that material resources are available but symbolic resources may enter in competition with them. avoiding pregnancy is one of these situations where women may resort to the symbolic role of becoming a mother. in a fascinating study, kanuth (1999) explains that it is primarily through motherhood that hiv infected poor isabela cabral félix de sousa and fundação oswaldo cruz 62 december 1, 2000 brazilian women can hold on to their status as women and to their social identity threatened by the disease. of course, these women's choice to have the child despite infection could be seen as part of their right to lead a gratifying life. considering all the complexities imposed by hiv/aids and by society at large, it is hoped that neither health education nor health promotion becomes prescriptive. health education must provide people with a multitude of symbolic resources so that they can decide how to avoid infection and improve their health status. it is also expected that health promotion programs will be inclusive, providing as many material and symbolic resources as possible for people to choose from. perhaps then this comprehensive approach, designed to go beyond the individual level will be capable of addressing the social problems that contribute to the spread of hiv/aids such as the causal relationship between poverty, ignorance and infection. some challenges of the hiv/aids epidemic that educators can address some challenges with regard to the hiv/aids epidemic are left for all of us if we are to build societies based on health promotion approaches. the initial recommendations for educators relate to building and providing more symbolic resources. first, educators should study and discuss with the population the symbolic contents related to hiv/aids and to the experience of death. this means addressing the psychological factors of people dealing directly or indirectly with family members who died or will die. thus, a task can be for educators to try teaching hope for children who have experienced the death of their parents from aids. another difficult task that educators can embrace is to encourage and give practical advice to parents who will die of aids and leave their children as orphans (with or without the infection). educators should also study and address other symbolic issues related to the identification and explanation of cultural issues and problems. this may mean examining the specific ways in which individuals and institutions deal with a health problem, comparing hegemonic health models with popular health models. third, educators can contribute by studying and discussing social patterns that do not apply only to the hiv/aids epidemic. health promotion should focus on reducing and eliminating discrimination. who (1997) recognizes the need for school policies to avoid discriminating against students and teachers with hiv/aids. but there are other noninfectious diseases and social differences that continue to generate discrimination. the need for policies to reduce and eliminate discrimination against hiv infected people is the responsibility of all institutions. without social solidarity and tolerance, the challenges of this epidemic will continue even if a cure is found because the challenges do not lie only with hiv/aids related problems, but with the way we have organized our societies in discriminating, hierarchical models. an effort in this direction is the remarkable work by lopes-júnior (2000) in the brazilian northeast who has been investing in social networks of students and teachers to disseminate values of tolerance, the recognition of human rights and the need to build a culture that values individual rights and respects individual history. the last recommendation for educators and the most difficult to achieve is not to focus only on building symbolic resources since social action is pressing. for instance, i interviewed a woman in a public health clinic who told me she was cured of aids conceptual and practical approaches to hiv/aids: the brazilian experience current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 63 because the hospital gave her leave. she did not have a home, a family or a job. it is possible that the hospital did not have the resources to keep her or that they did not evaluate a real need. it is also accurate that the concept of home care is regaining status among the middle and upper classes. yet how should an ill and poor woman without any resources proceed? to this woman, unfortunately, simply leaving the hospital made her think she had been cured. promoting health demands actively searching socially appropriate alternatives, so that flagrant situations of social neglect and exclusion such as this will be less likely to occur. references amaral, e. (1999). as dst e o hiv na rotina da atenção integral à saúde da mulher. [stds and iv in the routine of comprehensive health care for women] revista da aps, 1, 29-34. barbosa, r. h. s. (1993). aids, gênero e reprodução. [aids, gender and reproduction]. estudos feministas, 1(2), 418-423. candeias, n. m. f. (1997). the concepts of health education and promotionindividual and organizational changes. revista de saúde pública, 31(2), 209-213. chequer, p., hearst, n., hudes, e., castilho, e., rutherford, g., loures, l. & rodrigues, l. and the brazilian state aids program co-ordinators. (1992). determinants of survival in adult brazilian aids-patients, 1982-1989. aids, 6(5), 483-487. daniel, h. (1991). we are all people living with aids: myths and realities of aids in brazil. international journal of health services, 21(3), 539-551. daniel, h. (1993). the bankruptcy of the models. myths and realities of aids in brazil. in h. daniel & r. parker (eds.) sexuality, politics and aids in brazil. in another world? (pp.33-47). washington, dc: the falmer. de meis, c. d., de vasconcellos, a. c. p., linhares, d. & andrada serpa, m. u. (1991). hiv-1 infection among prostitutes in rio de janeiro brazil. aids, 5 (2), 236-237. dias, c. (2000). o continent condenado. [the condemned continent.] veja, 33(29), 48-50. faúndes, a. & tanaka, a. c. (1992). reproductive tract infections in brazil: solutions in a difficult economic climate. in a. germain, k. holmes, p. piot & j.n. wasserheit (eds.). reproductive tract infections. global impact and priorities for women's reproductive health (pp. 253-273). new york: plenum. green, l. w. & kreuter, m. w. (1991). health promotion planning. an educational and environmental approach. mountain view: mayfield. guimarães, c. d. (1994). mulheres, sexualidade e aids: um projeto de prevenção. 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[male bisexuality: a negotiated identity?] in m.l. heilborn, (ed.). sexualidade: o olhar das ciências sociais. [sexuality: the social sciences lenses]. (p.157-174). rio de janeiro: jorge zahar. lopes-juniór, e. (2000). a construção social da escola do sujeito: sexualidade, relações de gênero e protagonismo juvenil no interior nordestino. [the social construction of the learning subject: sexuality, gender relations and juvenile protagonism in the inland northeast]. perspectivas em saúde e direitos reprodutivos, 1(2), 24-25. luna, g. c. (1991). street youth: adaptation and survival in the aids decade. journal of adolescent health, 12, 511-514. macro international inc. dhs program. (1997). brasil pesquisa nacional sobre demografia e saúde 1996 [brazil-national research of demography and health 1996]. (available at 11785 beltsville drive, suite 300, calverton, md 20705, usa). mcdavid, j. w. & harari, h. (1980). psicologia e comportamento social [psychology and social behavior]. (f. r. guirmarães & h.r. krüger trans.). rio de janeiro: iterciência. (original work was published in 1974). mcpherson, m. (2000, summer). the institutional impact of hiv/aids in africa. sd developments, 1-2. minkler, m. (1989). health education, health promotion and the open society: a historical perspective. health education quarterly, 16 (1), 17-30. monteiro, s. (1998). aids prevention in brazilian public schools: a partnership between four municipalities and a nongovernamental organization. ciênica e cultura journal of the brazilian association for the advancement of science, 50 (5), 319-328. parker, r. g. (1993). aids in brazil. in h. daniel & r. parker (eds.). sexuality, politics and aids in brazil. in another world? (p.7-31). washington, dc: the falmer. peixinho, z. f. , mendes, n. f., long, i. m., moura, n.c., hernandez, h. j., lacouture, c. l., dines, i., coscina, a. l. , gonzaga, a .l., giraldes, p. r.c., porto, a. g. m. ; nakaie, conceptual and practical approaches to hiv/aids: the brazilian experience current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 65 c., paiva, a. c. m. (1990). soroepidemiological studies of hiv-1 infection in large brazilian cities. natural immunity cell growth regulation, 2, 133-136. pimenta, m. c. (1997, november). estratégia de prevenção entre mulheres. [preventive strategies among women]. seminário aids e mulheres no programa de cooperação brasil-franc. [ proceedings from the seminar aids and women in a cooperation program of brazil-france]. salvador, bahia. porto, c. b. m. & vargas, e. p. (2000). gravidez e infecção pelo hiv: estratégias de promoção à saúde. [pregnancy and hiv infection: strategies to promote health]. in e.r. brandão (ed.), saúde, direitos reprodutivos e cidadania [health, reproductive rigths and citizenship] (pp. 95-138). juiz de fora: editora da universidade federal de juiz de fora. royce, r. a. et al. (1997). sexual transmission of hiv. new england journal of medicine, 336, 1072. silva, d.g. & sousa, i.c. f. (2000). como andam conceitos de hiv/aids e dst entre as mulheres de baixa renda? [evaluating concepts of hiv/aids and dst among poor women?] i fórum e ii conferência de cooperação técnica horizontal da américa latina e do caribe em hiv/aids e dst. rio de janeiro, rj. sousa, i. c. f., rozemberg, b., boruchovitch, e. & schall, v. t. (1998). a missing agenda in brazilian schools: the debate on popular health practices. ciência e cultura journal of the brazilian association for the advancement of science, 50 (5), 328-336. sousa, i. c. f. (2000). reviewing research trends in health education and health promotion for children: the need to address issues related to social class, cultural background, policies and research methods. ciência e cultura journal of the brazilian association for the advancement of science, 52(3), 154-160. st. legger, l. h. (1999). the opportunities and effectiveness of the health promoting primary school in improving child health a review of the claims and evidence. health education research, 14 (1), 51-69 wasserheit, j. n. & holmes, k. k. (1992). reproductive tract infections: challenges for international health policy, programs, and research. in a. germain, k. holmes, p. piot & j.n. wasserheit (eds.), reproductive tract infections. global impact and priorities for women's reproductive health (pp. 7-33). new york: plenum. who technical report series 870. (1997). promoting health through schools. report of who expert committee on comprehensive school health education and promotion. geneva: world health organization. acknowledgments i thank the financial support received from cnpq (process number: 30.0863-96-3) and the valuable comments given by william robert lambert, rocio rivas and dana burde while preparing this article. © 2003 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 126 may 12, 2003 afterword: theories, policies, practices joanne kleifgen teachers college, columbia university the social situations and ideas represented by the papers in this volume raise a number of questions for extended discussion around literacy theories, policies and practices. in this contribution, i focus on the relationship among these three, with particular attention to the knotty issues around policies and practices. we can ask a number of questions: about the directionality of policy-making regarding orthographic and pedagogical choices for literacy (top-down, bottom-up, bi-directional); about the social consequences of these choices; and about the role of education in enacting literacy practices on the ground and the preparation of educators so that they have the tools to influence and implement language and literacy policies. finally, we must ask whether addressing theories, policies and practices for language in education is sufficient for a difference to be made in students' lives. whose language policies? in terms of who makes the language-policy decisions (including orthographic choices) and their accompanying social consequences, we have in the ingulsrud and allen paper an example of a top-down language policy, with the chinese government's stated goal of 'unifying' the people through standard mandarin (putonghua) by the year 2010. the orthographic choices come from the top; that is, teachers follow the government mandate to begin teaching reading by using romanized hanyu pinyin and moving quickly from there to mandarin chinese characters. these top-down decisions are made not only to bring chinese children to literacy, but to teach them to speak the national language, putonghua, all part of a broader campaign toward political education (cf., arnove & graff, 1987). in short, the local vernacular in some areas of china is bypassed in favor of the standard vernacular as the bridge to literacy. ingulsrud and allen show how this policy is enacted by putting the burden on teachers who are responsible for children in their first years of schooling, and the authors discuss the consequences of such a policy especially in regions where minority languages are spoken. luykx presents the bolivian case, in which earlier, more repressive, top-down language policies have given way to recognizing the value of incorporating indigenous languages (and the development of written codes for them) into education. these new policies are carried out by soliciting the expertise of university scholars to codify these vernaculars so that they can be used to teach literacy in schools. yet, luykx shows that this approach to literacy by selecting outside experts to design a writing system (known as corpus planning) is having unintended consequences. she clearly points out the need to pay more attention to the social aspects of orthography rather than to focus exclusively on technical and historical criteria for corpus planning. decentralizing language policy can be a good thing if done judiciously. but bad choices made without careful planning and interdisciplinary collaboration can be a recipe for failure. luykx's research is a case in point. in bolivia, historical linguists were charged with making orthographic decisions, and they seemed to favor ancient forms taken from proto-languages over a community's contemporary practices in quechua or aymara. so, for example, spanish borrowings afterword: theories, policies, practices current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 127 that are prevalent in today's speech community are banned from the written code, and suffixes are inserted that reflect historical sound-shifts rather than current speech. so, if top-down and delegated policies such as these have adverse consequences, where should we go next? to the speech community of course, we might say. let us assume that the ideal practice would be to place some of the decision-making power in the hands, not of government officials or university language experts alone, but also of the speakers of the vernacular in local communities. but, which of the multiple groups within a community will share in language-policy decisions? which of the numerous language varieties existing in a community will predominate? (recall luykx's description of the controversy around varieties of guarani.) and, which constituencies will be given voice in the decisionmaking? for instance, there are the indigenous linguists, who through a university education understand the workings of orthographic-phonetic relations and are able to lend expertise in such an endeavor; there are the educators, who see the value of using learners' linguistic knowledge as a bridge to literacy via a phonemically-based written version; and there are the parents, who may want their children educated in the majority language because they fear that native-language literacy is just another way to suppress economic access and political power. research on sociolinguistic situations in other parts of the world illustrates the complexities around who should be making such choices, and they reflect the fact that policy and planning may occur at every level from national to local groups (kaplan & baldauf, 1997; corson, 1999) and even throughout the various levels within educational systems (ricento & hornberger, 1996). i offer an example here as a case in which the views of parents, community members, politicians and the intelligentsia are often at odds with one another. orthographic debates around haitian creole (kreyol) are caught up in what it means to be haitian and what a language is for. monolingual kreyolspeaking parents worry that the use of the vernacular in the schools with its phonemically-based orthography to replace written french limits their children's chances for upward mobility (schieffelin & doucet, 1994). in my own research in one sector of the haitian diaspora here in new york, a number of parents (though parents' views are mixed even in this community) are convinced that kreyol is not meant for writing but for talking. these parents do not think that a written version of their everyday vernacular makes sense in their children's education (kleifgen, 1991). many haitians still regard kreyol as a language that is "caught" rather than taught, and they prefer that english or french be the languages of reading, writing, and learning for their children. in short, the question asked directly by luykx and indirectly by allen and ingulsrud, "whose language is it anyway?" continues to be an open one. whose practices? so how does all this complexity in terms of language policy and multilingual populations affect educational practice? in his contribution to this series, street discusses the growing tendency to favor top-down governmental policies towards practice, which impose positivist models for teaching literacy. these long-ago discredited models run counter to all of the research in new literacy studies spearheaded by street, whose work in the field spans 20 years (e.g., street, 1984, 1993, 1995, 2001). this line of research is being marginalized, as the current climate in both the u.s. and the u.k. is to dictate joanne kleifgen 128 may 12, 2003 which research approaches 'count', to decree that we already know 'what works', and to prescribe 'scientifically proven' methods for schools. these top-down policies assume that a one-size-fits-all set of skills will be all that is needed in order to make a difference in a child's quality of life. yet, even some of the more nuanced approaches, which take into account people's uses of languages and literacies both inside and outside schools, are themselves struggling to show success. for example, the multiliteracies manifesto published by the new london group (1996) proposed a set of four features for promoting equity and achievement for students of all ethnolinguistic backgrounds: situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice. yet, research has found that these features have not been appropriated fully, even in classrooms with innovative curricula (michaels & sohmer, 2001). whose answers? street suggests that there be more active engagement among the various constituenciesresearchers, policy makers and literacy practitioners-if we wish to have any effect on the educational achievement of all ethnolinguistic groups. dialogue, indeed deeper collaboration between those engaged in research, policy-making and practice at all levels is fundamental. luke (2003) takes the call for collaboration further by arguing that the development of language and literacy policies must take place alongside other social policies associated with health, employment and immigration, among others. he illustrates the point this way: it is all too easy for systems … in the case of australian indigenous communities, to deliver education and, indeed, 'alphabetics' on one hand while running other policies that actually accelerate the deterioration of the communities' kinship structure, traditional values and forms of work, private sector investment, and community social infrastructure on the other. in such scenarios, indigenous communities, linguistic minorities, diasporic communities and others are often blamed for having 'squandered' or abused 'government handouts' and other resources made available. perhaps we need a kind of "participatory design" akin to that originally developed by scandinavian researchers and workers with the aim of creating better artifacts for the workplace (ehn, 1988). this conjoint-action approach was an attempt to bridge the gap between designers and end users. to apply the approach to the making of language policies, we might argue that the design of artifacts (read policies) is of higher quality when users (read practitioners and students) are included in the process. in such a scenario, policy makers immerse themselves in the daily activities of the people for whom their policies are designed. whatever approach is taken, teachers, researchers, community members, and educational policy makers need to develop sustained and deep collaborative actions. and eventually, they must find ways to coordinate these efforts with other social policy makers so that all students, no matter what their ethnolinguistic background, can hope for good health, satisfying work, and, yes, rich literate lives. references arnove, r. & graff, h. (eds.). (1987). national literacy campaigns. new york: perseus press. cooper, r. l. (1989). language planning and social change. cambridge: cambridge university press. afterword: theories, policies, practices current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 129 corson, d. (1999). language policy in schools: a resource for teachers and administrators. new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. ehn, p. (1988). work-oriented design of computer artifacts. almquist & wiksell international, stockholm, sweden. kaplan, r.b. & baldauf, r.b. (1999). language planning: from practice to theory. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. kleifgen, j. (1991). kreyol ekri, kreyol li: haitian children and computers. educational horizons, 69(3), 152-158. luke, a. (forthcoming). literacy and the other: a sociological approach to literacy research and policy in multilingual societies, reading research quarterly. michaels, s. & r. sohmer (2001). "discourses" that promote new academic identities. in li, d. (ed), discourses in search of members, pp. 171-219. new york: university press of america. ricento, t. & hornberger, n. (1996). unpeeling the onion: language planning and policy and the elt professional. tesol quarterly, 30(3), 401-427. schieffelin, b.b. & doucet, r.c. (1994): the "real" haitian creole: ideology, metalingusitics and orthographic choice. american ethnologist, 21, 176-200. street, b. v. (ed.). (2001). literacy and development: ethnographic perspectives. london: routledge. street, b. v. (1995). social literacies: critical approaches to literacy in education, development and ethnography. london: longman. street, b. v. (ed.). (1993). cross-cultural approaches to literacy. cambridge: cambridge university press. street, b. v. (1984). literacy in theory and practice. cambridge: cambridge university press. the new london group (1996). a pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. harvard educational review, 66(1), 60-92. microsoft word 05_cice_fall2006_mossayeb_shirazi_yhl.doc © 2006 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 9(1) 30 education and emigration: the case of the iranian-american community sina m. mossayeb teachers college, columbia university roozbeh shirazi teachers college, columbia university abstract this paper explores the plausibility of a hypothesis that puts forth perceived educational opportunity as a significant pull factor influencing iranians' decisions to immigrate to the united states. drawing on various literatures, including research on educational policy in iran, government policy papers, and figures from recent studies and census data, the authors establish a case for investigating the correlation between perceived educational opportunity (or lack thereof) and immigration. empirical findings presented here from a preliminary survey of 101 iranian-born individuals living in the u.s. suggest that such a correlation may indeed exist, thus providing compelling grounds for further research in this area. the paper expands on existing literature by extending prevailing accounts of unfavorable conditions in iran as push factors for emigration, to include the draw of perceived educational opportunity, as a coexisting and influential pull factor for immigration to the u.s. introduction popular discourse about iranian immigration to the united states focuses on the social and political freedoms associated with relocation. the prevailing literature on iranian immigration explains why people leave iran, but accounts remain limited to a unilateral force--namely, unfavorable conditions in iran. drawing on existing studies of iranian educational policies and their consequences, we propose an extension to this thesis. we hypothesize that perceived educational opportunity is a significant attraction for iranians in considering immigration to the u.s. to establish a foundation for our research, we provide a background on iran's sociopolitical climate after the 1978/1979 revolution and examine salient literature on iran's higher education policy. following this overview, we review recent u.s. census data and other relevant indicators that supply additional insight into the educational attributes of iranian-born immigrants. we demonstrate that recent resolutions passed by the supreme council of the cultural revolution of iran (sccr) explicitly connect increasing emigration rates to educationrelated issues. finally, we explore the bearing of perceived educational opportunity on iranian immigration to the u.s. through a preliminary survey of 101 iranian-born individuals living in the u.s. we regard the study as a step toward investigating the potential correlation between perceived educational opportunity (or lack thereof) and immigration. education and emigration: the case of the iranian-american community 31 december 7, 2006 historical background the educational landscape of iran has been significantly impacted by the emergence of the islamic republic. radical shifts in the state's ideological framework have led to much change in the structure, content, and policies associated with education. these, in turn, have affected the demographics of education and corresponded with an observed increase in emigration from iran. this section provides a brief description of the historical backdrop to these trends. in 1979 the iranian monarchy was toppled by a broad-based revolution. groups that initially found common ground in their desire to overthrow the shah contended for power after the revolution (keddie, 1981). in the hopes of a freer iran, some academic and political expatriates returned from abroad at this time. however, in place of a monarchy, they found an even stronger ideological hegemony under the leadership of ayatollah ruhollah khomeini (torbat, 2002). to maintain control of the country and eliminate prospective threats to the state's ideology, the new regime suppressed rival factions. khomeini launched a cultural revolution (engelab-e farhangi)--resonant with the chinese cultural revolution almost two decades prior (sobhe, 1982)--in an effort to consolidate the state's power. a salient feature of this process was a sweeping campaign to purge all perceived "non-islamic" entities and oppositions out from influential positions.1 iranian universities were a hotbed of political activity during this time. perceiving these as a threat to the embryonic state, khomeini condemned higher education institutions in iran as being the seat of moral corruption, claiming that "our university students are westoxicated2. . . many of our professors are at the service of the west. they brainwash our youth" (behdad, 1995, p. 193). in another speech, khomeini declared that, "all of [iran's] backwardness has been due to the failure of most university-educated intellectuals to acquire correct knowledge of iranian islamic society" (khomeini, 1981, p. 291). the regime closed all institutions of higher education3 in april 1980, only to reopen them three years later, after being "purified" and "islamicized" (sobhe, 1982). the cultural revolution may be characterized as a threefold process: purification, preservation, and (re)production. initially, universities, public sector posts, and other positions of influence were purged of all anti-regime personnel; this included rival parties, dissident factions, and some minority ethnic and religious groups (keddie, 1981; sanasarian, 2000). preservation and production followed. posts made vacant by the purge were filled with state supporters, to produce a monolithic and ultimately hegemonic state ideology. many of those selected for high ranking positions in the public sector and academia neither had the required qualifications nor skills associated with their new posts. sina m. mossayeb and roozbeh shirazi current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 32 impact of educational policy on iranians and immigration the cultural revolution in iran has had a significant impact on the educational and professional landscape of post-revolutionary iran. policies and practices used to implement the goals of the cultural revolution have been associated with discriminatory treatment of various sectors of iranian society, decreased educational quality and access, and staggering rates of emigration. drawing on the works of nader habibi (1989), keiko sakurai (2004), and akbar torbat (2002), this section explores the relationship between aspects of educational policy in iran and emigration, by focusing on various practices undertaken after the revolution for the allocation of educational and professional opportunities. in "allocation of educational and occupational opportunities in the islamic republic of iran," nader habibi (1989) illustrates how admittance into higher education has been based on ideological grounds, rather than on merit. political screening, as defined by habibi, is the use of administrative means to control access to higher education and public sector jobs, which are viewed among the eminent vehicles for social mobility in iran. he suggests that the practice of screening applicants has served, more or less, as a discriminatory carrot-and-stick policy that has punished those who have been labeled as incongruent with the state's ideology, and rewarded those who have supported it. in turn, this has led to a depreciation of the university credential and the usefulness of higher education in the private and public employment sector. while habibi discusses the general policies of screening and purging in iranian higher education, keiko sakurai (2004) looks more specifically at the role of the university entrance exam, the konkur, as an apparatus in admitting state supporters and excluding groups that are not aligned with it. she also discusses the institutionalization of quotas favoring supporters who are predominantly poor, religiously conservative, and rural-dwelling. thus, while such quotas are initiated under the auspices of social justice and equalization, sakurai contends that the underlying reason for such policies is politically motivated, to the state's advantage. sakurai makes two salient points: first, that policies of admission have increasingly marginalized qualified urban and minority populations, while integrating and assimilating conservative and rural populations within the state's ideological construct; and, second, that imbalanced preference for "social justice" has led to deteriorating educational quality. habibi and sakurai's findings suggest that the iranian regime has created an environment that both assimilates and isolates different segments of its citizenry. for those who choose to align themselves with the state's ideology, entrance into the universities may be understood as a measure of integration into the ideological construct of an islamic republic.4 the result of such a policy has been the marginalization of a large sector of the iranian population, effectively preventing its integration into a post-revolutionary iran. the regime's screening and purging policies have led to a measure of isolation from the state, and in extreme cases, emigration to another. no less disconcerting to observers has been the associated brain drain that has accompanied disenchantment with the state policies of screening and purging, as well as declining educational opportunity in iran. akbar torbat (2002) demonstrates how educational policies in iran propel emigration from iran to the u.s. in particular. he suggests that political pressures in education and emigration: the case of the iranian-american community 33 december 7, 2006 iran and political freedoms in the u.s.--followed by economic, social, and professional considerations--motivate iranian emigration. torbat (2002) contends that discriminatory policies, diminished quality, insufficient resources and capacity, and increased demand for higher education have led to an amplified rate of brain drain (for both professionals and academics, and potential professionals and academics). like habibi (1989) and sakurai (2004), torbat notes the detrimental effect of mediocre instruction and quality on iran's social and economic development. however, torbat maintains that political factors are the greatest barrier to a "reverse brain drain" (2002, p. 294-295). taken together, the arguments made by habibi (1989), sakuari (2004), and torbat (2002) suggest that both policy and quality issues associated with iranian higher education have incited at least some iranians (between 1.5 and 3 million) to leave iran. the authors make a case that social and political restrictions are felt most in the space of education. habibi's discussion of political screening illustrates a process of marginalization for many iranians, as well as the depreciation of educational credentials. torbat illustrates both lost opportunity (qualified students not being admitted) and opportunity cost (resources that could have been spent on more qualified students and faculty members) to students and the state, due to screening and purging practices. he explains how marginalized iranians seek other outlets to meet their needs by immigrating to areas (such as the u.s.), where perceived opportunity and private benefit may be found. torbat shows that the intersection of limited capacity and high demand for higher education confounds prospective students and graduates, causing disenchantment with prospects of higher education in iran. while concurring with habibi and torbat about the negative effects of the admission process, sakurai's discussion of the state's policies to equalize opportunity, even if only quantitatively, illustrates a phenomenon of integrating and assimilating many iranians to become loyal citizens of the islamic republic. all three authors see the trajectory of iran's economic and social development as subject to deterioration if these practices are maintained, and the brain drain of both current and potential human resources continues. the findings of these authors provide sufficient cause to further explore the relationship between perceived educational opportunity and emigration. emigration trends and policy interventions by the sccr due in part to the deteriorating quality, limited access, and restrictive policies related to higher education, emigration from iran drastically increased in the years following the revolution (hakimzadeh & dixon, 2006). in the u.s. alone, annual immigration rates peaked at nearly 25,000 for iranians (see figure 1). while iranian immigration to the u.s. is not a new phenomenon (abdollahi, 1979; menashri, 1992), emigration rates steadily increased after the formation of the islamic republic (torbat, 2002). according to the u.s. census 2000, 283,225 iranian-born immigrants were living in the u.s. by the year 2000 (the majority of which were in california) (2002).5 sina m. mossayeb and roozbeh shirazi current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 34 figure 1: iranian-born immigrants admitted to the united states, 1970 to 2004 note: the 1990 peak is due in part to people who arrived in the 1980s but did not adjust their status until the early 1990s. source: yearbook of immigration statistics, 1970-2004, u.s. department of homeland security office of immigration statistics (as cited in hakimzadeh & dixon, 2006). figure 2: educational attainment of iranian-born american immigrants source: u.s. census 2000 (2002). islamic republic of iran (c 1979 ) 16910, 7% 16065, 6% 39410, 16% 34160, 14% 16620, 7% 67305, 26% 60320, 24% less than 9th grade 9th to 12th grade (no diploma) high school graduate (includes equivalency) some college (no degree) associate degree bachelor's degree graduate or professional degree education and emigration: the case of the iranian-american community 35 december 7, 2006 a large percentage of iranian-born american immigrants are educated and education-bound (see figures 2 and 3). over 50,000 are enrolled in schools, 68.8% of which are university students (u.s. census, 2002). approximately 51% of the recorded population hold a bachelors degree or higher, and nearly 87% have a high school diploma or higher. in an independent survey of 3,849 iranian-americans, conducted by the iranian studies group at the massachusetts institute of technology (mit), 48% responded that education was the single most important factor in deciding to where to live in the u.s. (iranian studies group, 2005). figure 3: school enrollment of iranian-born american immigrants, age 3 and over source: u.s. census 2000 (2002). such demographic data suggests that a relationship between iranian immigration to the u.s. and a perception of educational opportunity may indeed exist, and is worthy of empirical investigation. in addition, a series of resolutions passed by iran's supreme council of the cultural revolution (sccr) in the past three years indicates that education is central to emigration concerns in iran. in june 2003, the council approved a resolution aimed at crafting policies and strategies to decrease the rate of emigration, particularly among iranian elites and specialists (sccr, 2006). table 1 below provides a summary of the resolution. table 1: sccr--policies and strategies for reducing the rate of elite immigration 1organizing methods of absorption & employment of these people in the higher education system of the country. 1-2providing elites with special facilities. 1-3giving more information to elites about research & scientific capacities & capabilities of the country. 1-4expanding the capacity of m.a. & ph.d. courses & increasing the level of education at these courses on the basis of developmental needs of the country. 290 430 5325 9870 35030 0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000 40000 nurse ry s chool, p reschool kindergartenelementary sc hool (g rades 1-8) high school (g rades 9-12) college or graduate sc hool sina m. mossayeb and roozbeh shirazi current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 36 1-5consolidating social & emotional ties & interests of elites with religions & national interests. 1-6making efforts to preserve social status of elites & specialists & institutionalizing production of thought as a public value. 1-7deepening religious believes [sic] & thoughts among elites & specialists. 1-8strengthening interaction & communication between researchers & scientific associations. 1-9preparing facilities & regulations in the field of enterpruneship [sic] for specialists. 2devising policies of [sic] returning elites & specialists to the country. 2-1paying attention to the social status of elites & specialists, informing them about needs & scientific facilities of the country & inviting them to return to the country. 2-2collecting qualitative & qualitative statistics about expatriate iranian specialists. 2-3collecting research programs, specialized needs & the employment capacities of industrial & scientific centers of governmental & private sectors. 2-4holding regional scientific [sic] between scientists & officials to get access to real ways of returning elites to the country. 2-5granting credits & facilities to the centers that can pave the grounds for absorption of expatriate iranian elites & specialists by making use of their programs & facilities. 3policies for making use of specialized ability of expatriate iranian elites & specialists. 3-1collecting documented statistics & figures about the number of elites & specialists & their abilities in different fields of science. 3-2identifying essential & vital needs of scientific, academic & industrial centers of the country. 3-3signing contracts with elites & specialists for educational objectives, executing projects, & scientific support of research plans. 3-4making use of capabilities of immigrant elites (remotely) by means of modern information technology & utilizing electronic & computer environment as the complement of universities of the country. 4relevant organizations & the issue of preparing instructions. 4-1ministry of science, research & technology and ministry of health & medical education are required to prepare & notify by-laws, executive instructions of abovementioned policies & strategies within six months after notification of this resolution. 4-2following organizations & institutions are required to cooperate with the above mentioned ministries regarding the specified articles. 4-2-1 the ministry of education regarding articles 1-6 & 2-1. 4-2-2 the ministry of foreign affairs & the organizations of islamic communication & culture regarding articles 2-2 & 3-1. 4-2-3 the organizations of management & planning regarding articles 1-1, 2-2, 1-6 & 2-5. 4-2-4 the irib regarding articles 1-3 & 1-6. 4-2-5 the institution of the supreme leader's representation at universities regarding articles 1-5 & 1-7. 4-2-6 the council of scientific research in the country regarding article 1-4. 4-2-7 the council of employment regarding article 1-9. 4-3 the supervision & inspection board is required to follow up & supervise the execution of these policies & strategies & submit a report to the sccr. source: sccr (2006). the sccr resolution targets education-related issues to decrease brain drain. these intervention strategies include improving educational facilities (points 1-2 and 1-7), increasing the capacity of graduate level courses (point 4), promoting the status of university educators (points 1-6 and 1-7), and assessing the needs of academicians (points 3-2 and 3-4). other points focus on expatriate "elites" (i.e. academics and professionals), soliciting their return to iran for the purpose of providing services to the country. furthermore, in january 2006, president ahmadinejad and his cabinet's national budget allocated an additional 50% in resources towards education. this figure is unlikely to be met according to the economist intelligence unit's (2006) country report: iran at a glance 2006-2007, but it is certainly a symbolic gesture of the importance being placed on educational expansion and reform. education and emigration: the case of the iranian-american community 37 december 7, 2006 empirical research: educational opportunity and iranian emigration while the existing literature highlights the social and political contexts of iranian emigration, as well as the phenomenon of brain drain from iran after the 1978/1979 revolution, empirical data devoted to explaining iranian emigration in relation to perceived educational opportunity abroad remains absent. as we have shown, recent u.s. census data reveals high levels of educational achievement among the iranian-american community, yet there has been no scholarship to investigate educational opportunity as a motivating factor for iranian immigration to the u.s. the following study was designed to evaluate the hypothesis that perceived educational opportunity is a significant pull factor for iranians immigrating to the u.s., alongside coexisting social, political, and religious push factors for emigration. the findings provide evidence to support further research into this area. research design the survey was designed to investigate opinions of iranian-americans regarding education in iran and the u.s. and reasons for emigration from iran to the u.s. our intent was to see if the data would: (a) uphold existing accounts of iranian migration to the u.s., and (b) shed new light on the relationship between iranian migration and educational opportunity in the u.s. the survey consisted of 47 closed-ended questions and an opportunity to elaborate through an open-ended "comments" section. the survey comprised five general question categories: (1) demographic background, (2) reasons for emigration, (3) views on education in iran, (4) views on education in the u.s., and (5) additional comments or feedback. our demographics questions were designed to corroborate our sample as representative of the existing profile of the iranian community in the u.s. (according to u.s. census data). questions relating to emigration were designed with the intent of testing existing accounts of iranian emigration, as well as our own assumption that educational opportunity plays an instrumental role in iranian emigration to the u.s. finally, our questions regarding views on education in iran and in the u.s. address iranianamerican perceptions of educational quality, access, and opportunity in iran and in the u.s. for comparative and correlative purposes. sampling in order to obtain a broad and diverse sample, the survey was posted online at irandokht.com and persianmirror.com--two prominent websites devoted to news, culture, and arts in the iranian-american community.6 to achieve gender parity in the sample, irandokht.com was selected because it is primarily geared toward a female iranian-american audience. both sites state that there are 2.2 to 3 million iranians residing outside of iran. they cater primarily (but not exclusively) to this group, particularly those in the u.s. in addition to posting the survey to these websites, a research assistant disseminated the survey to individuals with links to the iranian community in southern california. these, in turn, forwarded the survey link to other individuals and groups (unknown to the authors). participants were able to access the survey online from august 18, 2006 until september 4, 2006. survey collection was completed once a sample size of n=101 was achieved. a total of 70.7% of respondents were born in iran, and the median year of arrival to the u.s. was 1978. the median age of respondents upon arrival to the u.s. was 19 years. table 2 presents a basic demographic profile of survey respondents, including religious affiliation and household income. sina m. mossayeb and roozbeh shirazi current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 38 table 2: demographic profile of survey respondents general descriptive statistics household income respondents born in iran (%) 70.9 income percent total median age upon arrival in u.s. 19 $0-9,999 11.1% 10 median year of arrival in u.s. 1978 $10,000-14,999 1.1% 1 female : male ratio (unspecified) 40:51 (10) $15,000-24,999 5.6% 5 $25,000-34,999 6.7% 6 religious affiliation $35,000-49,999 16.7% 15 religious affiliation percent total $50,000-74999 13.3% 12 muslim 41.1% 37 $75,000-99,999 8.9% 8 jewish 6.7% 6 $100,000-149,999 18.9% 17 christian 3.3% 3 $150,000-199,999 5.6% 5 bahai 11.1% 10 $200,000 or more 12.2% 11 zoroastrian 4.4% 4 number of respondents 90 no religious affiliation 24.4% 22 number who did not respond to question 11 atheist/ agnostic 4.4% 4 source: authors' data other (please specify) 4.4% 4 number of respondents 90 number who did not respond to question 11 findings this section presents a primarily descriptive narrative of our preliminary findings. these are organized and discussed under three major areas. the first is derived from survey questions that test existing accounts of iranian emigration, namely sociopolitical push factors. the second emerges from survey questions that explore the possibility of alternate accounts of emigration, namely educational pull factors. finally, the third area emerges from questions that examine the permanence of iranian emigration. (1) religious and political persecution and lack of social freedoms are reasons for emigration from iran. pursuit of educational opportunities is a reason for immigration to the u.s. analysis of our data upholds existing accounts regarding the social and political aspects of iranian emigration among our sample. respondents identified the lack of social freedom, as well as religious and political persecution, as reasons for emigration. respondents were allowed to cite more than one reason for emigration from iran. however, lack of social freedoms was the most commonly cited push factor, of the three. of the sub-sample of respondents born in iran (n=65), 12% said they emigrated for reasons of religious persecution. political dissent, political persecution, or harm that may have befallen respondents or their families as a result of their political views were cited by 15% of respondents as reasons for emigration. additionally, 46% of respondents attributed a lack of social freedoms (e.g. freedom of speech, women's rights, etc.) as a cause for emigration. the pursuit of educational opportunities was the most frequently cited reason for immigration to the u.s. this response outnumbered the aggregate of social, political, and religious push factors for emigration. table 3 highlights some of these findings. education and emigration: the case of the iranian-american community 39 december 7, 2006 table 3: reasons for emigration reasons for emigrating from iran response percent religious persecution in iran 12.0% political persecution in iran 15.0% lack of social freedoms in iran 46.0% aggregate of social, political, religious reasons 73.0% pursuit of educational opportunities abroad 87.5% ranking of reasons for leaving iran most important very important important somewhat important not important n/a response average religious reasons 10% (6) 12% (7) 10% (6) 5% (3) 33% (19) 29% (17) 3.54 family reasons (moving closer to family in the u.s.) 7% (4) 4% (2) 13% (7) 13% (7) 24% (13) 39% (21) 3.70 political reasons 12% (7) 11% (6) 19% (11) 21% (12) 14% (8) 23% (13) 3.18 economic reasons 9% (5) 9% (5) 28% (16) 9% (5) 26% (15) 21% (12) 3.43 reasons of social freedom 36% (21) 12% (7) 17% (10) 10% (6) 5% (3) 19% (11) 2.21 educational reasons (for yourself or for members of your family) 57% (36) 19% (12) 11% (7) 3% (2) 6% (4) 3% (2) 1.79 total respondents 63 (skipped this question) 38 source: authors' data. (2) an overwhelming majority of iranians who immigrated to the u.s. left iran in pursuit of educational opportunities for themselves or for their family members. data from our sample suggests that, while the lack of social, political, and religious freedoms in iran are major contributing push factors for iranian emigration, educational opportunity is at least an equally important pull factor to the u.s. of the sub-sample of respondents born in iran (n=65), 87.5% indicated that they emigrated from iran to the u.s. in search of educational opportunities for themselves or their family members. moreover, 57% of this sub-sample stated that the pursuit of educational opportunities was the single most important reason for leaving iran. of the respondents who stated that they left iran to pursue educational opportunities (n=56), 82% stated that they believed there to be more educational opportunities in the u.s. than in iran. also, of this sub-sample, 72.4% stated that they believed the quality of higher education in the u.s. to be greater than that of iran. this is not to suggest that respondents necessarily held negative views of higher education in iran; 40.6% stated that they did not know about the quality of education in iran, and 31% believed higher education in iran to be "good" or "excellent." sina m. mossayeb and roozbeh shirazi current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 40 respondents also reported lack of access to higher education as a problem for iranian secondary school graduates--43.8% of respondents believe that there is not sufficient access to higher education opportunities in iran. moreover, 85.5% of respondents believe that ideological affinity with the regime plays a "very important" or "somewhat important" role in the hiring of faculty and the admission of students in iranian higher education. these preliminary findings suggest a correlation between sociopolitical conditions in iran and a desire to seek educational opportunities abroad. furthermore, the findings suggest that educational issues may act as both push factors for emigration, in terms of perceived lack of access or quality in iran, and as pull factors for immigration, in terms of perceived access and quality in the u.s. (3) a majority of the iranian-americans sampled would be willing to consider relocating or "moving back" to iran if they perceived a positive and lasting change (political, social, economic, etc.) in iran in the foreseeable future. scholarship on the post-revolutionary iranian diaspora focuses primarily on the unfavorable conditions that specific populations of the iranian community faced in the aftermath of the iranian revolution. political and religious persecution is among the most notable, particularly among secular nationalists, various marxist factions, monarchists, as well as religious minorities, such as the baha'is and jews. restrictions on social freedoms are another commonly cited reason for emigration. given the role that sociopolitical change played in fostering emigration from iran after the revolution, we thought it significant to investigate whether attitudes toward living in iran would shift if "positive" change were to occur in iran. to investigate the permanence of emigration, we asked respondents whether they would return to iran if they perceived "positive" lasting sociopolitical changes in iran. when asked, "if you perceived a positive and lasting change (political, social, economic, etc.) in the foreseeable future in iran, would you consider living in (or returning to) iran?," 71.4% of respondents (n=84) affirmed that they would. the question was deliberately worded to present sociopolitical change in iran in the most general and vague terms possible, so as to avoid suggesting a bias or preference for a particular sociopolitical outcome (i.e. externally-led regime change, internal reform, revolution, etc.). the findings suggest that, while education is an attractive reason to immigrate to the u.s., it is not necessarily a reason to remain permanently. this finding may serve to challenge existing accounts of schools as sites of social integration and/or agents of assimilation for immigrants. though iranians are likely to be highly educated and affluent in the u.s., a majority of our sample indicated a willingness to consider relocating to iran under desirable conditions. this shallow footing in the u.s. may be due in part to the sociopolitical conditions under which a large part of iranian immigration to the u.s. occurred-while 48.4% of respondents viewed themselves as immigrants when they arrived in the u.s., 46.8% regarded themselves as a temporary resident/visitor (coming to the u.s. for a short period of time with definite intentions to return to iran). we regard this finding as a potential starting point for further inquiry into how iranian-americans and possibly other immigrant groups construct and sustain "immigrant" identities in the u.s. education and emigration: the case of the iranian-american community 41 december 7, 2006 limitations the difficulties of conducting an exploratory study do much to dampen overly enthusiastic prognostications. we encountered numerous difficulties that must be addressed to properly contextualize our findings and set the stage for more rigorous future inquiries. first, our dissemination of the survey was entirely electronic. the disadvantages of collecting data from online surveys include sampling bias by excluding those who do not have access to, or knowledge of, computers or the internet, as well as bias from posting the survey onto two websites. it is our hope that the large readership and popularity of the selected websites may serve to mitigate some measure of this bias. while we acknowledge that the study's findings cannot be generalized to the entire iranianamerican population, we nevertheless believe the participants in our survey represent the views of the college educated (i.e. majority) of this population. according to recent u.s. census data (2002), 51% of the iranian population in the u.s. holds a bachelors degree, while another 34,000 (from a total of 283,225) are currently enrolled at university. we expect findings from this exploratory study to fall in line with this population. the electronic format of the survey, by excluding participants who do not use or own a computer, necessarily reduces our ability to generalize the findings more broadly. however, this does not negatively impact the significance of the findings. despite a lack of empirical research on computer usage in the iranian-american community, we assume computer usage in this population to be quite high, as evidenced by the existence and high readership of numerous iranian-american websites, between 70,000 to 100,000 persian language blogs, and persian's status as one of the web's most commonly used languages (naughton, 2006). an additional limitation to the study relates to the exclusive reliance on data collected from one instrument, rather than a variety of instruments, such as interviews and focus groups. the strategy of conducting an online survey served to facilitate the collection of data in a community that is widely dispersed, with the exception of a large population of iranianamericans in southern california. perhaps the greatest challenge in conducting the research was the large rate of attrition in our survey--many participants declined to answer certain questions and the publisher/editor of a well-known iranian-american website refused to post the survey on the site for fear that "the survey would be too invasive." the difficulties of conducting social research in the iranian-american community have been noted in previous research (shirazi & nazemian, 2004), but have not been adequately explored. finally, we may have inadvertently overlooked other important considerations and consequently left ourselves open to criticism. it is our hope that this exploratory study both contributes to wider debates on immigration and education and also leads to deeper inquiry into a well-known but little understood immigrant community in the u.s. conclusion policies stemming from the cultural revolution have had a great impact on the course of postrevolutionary iran's educational system. due to an array of discriminatory and restrictive policies that, in theory, have served to islamicize iranian universities and secure the influence of regime supporters, iran has witnessed a steady decline in educational quality and a related increase in brain drain. authors cited in this article (habibi, 1989; sakurai, 2004; sobhe, 1982; torbat, 2002) point to the severe ramifications of state education policies on the present and sina m. mossayeb and roozbeh shirazi current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 42 future economic, social, and political development of iran. moreover, the authors cited here also illustrate the marginalization of many iranians, while integrating and assimilating others. despite extensive analysis of admittance capacity, the frustration of non-admitted prospective students, declining numbers of competent faculty and administrators, and increasing rates of brain drain, none of the aforementioned authors have conducted an empirical investigation of educational opportunity as an attractive factor for iranian immigration to the u.s. however, this does not imply that the current body of research does not support this thesis. indeed, we build our conjecture on both the qualitative and quantitative studies in the field, hypothesizing that iranian immigration to the u.s. is influenced by perceived educational opportunity in the u.s. and limits of opportunity in iran. our preliminary findings indicate that while discriminatory policies of the iranian regime and the lack of sociopolitical freedoms are among the integral reasons behind iranian emigration, combining them with the study of perceived educational opportunities abroad is both worthwhile and promising. situating iranian emigration in the context of educational opportunity yields empirical data that deepens existing accounts of why millions of iranians have left iran over the course of the past three decades. while lack of political, social, and religious freedoms have been, and continue to be, compelling reasons for leaving iran, the current study suggests that educational opportunity plays an important and oft-overlooked role in why iranians immigrate to the u.s. it remains unclear whether educational opportunity has served as an end to, or as a means for, immigration to the u.s. it is reasonable to consider that educational opportunity may not only serve as a reason to immigrate, but also as an exit strategy from undesirable sociopolitical conditions through the acquisition of student visas. however, student visas, as non-immigrant documents, do not fall under the umbrella of immigration per se. furthermore, between 2000 and 2005, student visas accounted for only 20% of non-immigrant visas issued to iranians (hakimzadeh & dixon, 2006). thus, if educational opportunity is indeed a mechanism for leaving, such an argument can only be applied, at best, to a small subset of non-immigrant student visa recipients.7 such distinctions, however, fall outside the scope of the current study and require further investigation. the preliminary findings presented here shed light on educational opportunity as a pull factor influencing immigration decisions, alongside sociopolitical push factors. the majority of participants believe that there is limited access to higher education in iran and cite educational opportunity abroad as the most common reason for leaving iran for the u.s. on a broader level, this may suggest that u.s. immigration policy is shifting toward increasingly recruiting immigrants with higher levels of education in order to control the composition of immigration. however, in the case of the iranian-american community, we found that immigrants, while accomplished and successful in their adopted home, maintain a strong sense of connection to iran, despite estrangement from the incumbent regime and more than a quarter of a century of hostilities between the governments of the u.s. and iran. this hints that while education is an attractive reason to immigrate to the u.s., it is not necessarily a reason to remain permanently. education and emigration: the case of the iranian-american community 43 december 7, 2006 notes 1 targeted groups included the tudeh communist party, the marxist oriented fedaian-e khalq (fedaian party), the social-democratic jebhe melli (national front), and rival islamic groups like the mojahedin-e khalq (mojahedin party) (habibi, 1989). 2 the term westoxicated or weststruckness (gharbzadeh/ gharbzadegi) comes from jalal al-e ahmad (1982). 3 it should be noted that university faculty and students played a significant role in the revolution, despite non-congruence with khomeini's agenda. consequently, universities became centers of political activism, organization, and protest (keddie, 1981; sobhe, 1982). 4 it is important to note that alignment with state ideology, in some cases, is superficial, in order to access state services; however, symbolic submission to state ideology still plays a role in maintaining the façade of a monolithic state ideology. 5 while u.s. census data estimates the iranian-american community at 330,000 members, the iranian interest section in washington d.c. reports passport records for approximately 900,000 iranians in the u.s. for details on the underreporting of iranian-americans, see fata and rafii (2003). 6 persian mirror (www.persianmirror.com) is headquartered in new york (ny) and receives over 3 million hits per month. irandokht (www.irandokht.com) is headquartered in los angeles (ca) and receives over 4 million hits per month. 7 hakimzadeh and dixon (2006) summarize data from the u.s. department of state on visas issued to iranians as follows: "…during 2005, 5,314 immigrant visas were issued to iranians. the majority (2,900) of immigrant visas for iranians were granted through immediate relative petitions. another 1,808 visas were granted based on family preference, and the remainder included diversity immigrants, employment preference, and returning residents and armed forces special immigrants, respectively. in the last five years, the most commonly issued non-immigrant visas for iranian nationals have been the student, temporary worker, and foreign government representative visas. between 2000 and 2005, 20 percent of the 15,824 nonimmigrant visas issued to iranian nationals were student visas (3,323), 21 percent were temporary worker visas (3,316), and 19 percent were visas issued to representatives of foreign governments (2,987)." acknowledgement the authors would like to thank persianmirror.com and irandokht.com for their participation and assistance in conducting the survey for this study. references abdollahi, m. (1979). capitalism and brain-drain: a dialectical analysis of the migration of highly qualified manpower from less developed to more developed capitalist countries, iran and the u.s. phd thesis, western michigan university. al-e ahmad, j. (1982). gharbzadegi (j. green & a. alizadeh, trans.). lexington: mazda publishers. sina m. mossayeb and roozbeh shirazi current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 44 behdad, s. (1995). islamization of economics in iranian universities. international journal of middle east studies, 27, 197-217. economist intelligence unit. (2006). country report: iran at a glance 2006-2007. london: the economist intelligence unit. fata, s., & rafii, r. (2003). strength in numbers: the relative concentration of iranian americans across the united states. iran census report 2003. washington,dc: national iranian-american council. habibi, n. (1989). allocation of educational and occupational opportunities in the islamic republic of iran: a case study in the political screening of human capital in the islamic republic of iran. iranian studies, 22(4), 19-46. hakimzadeh, s., & dixon, d. (2006). u.s. in focus: spotlight on the iranian foreign born. washington, d.c.: migration policy institute. iranian studies group. (2005). the iranian-american community survey 2005. [online]. available at: http://www.web.mit.edu/isg/survey.htm. keddie, n. (1981). modern iran: roots and results of revolution. new haven, ct: yale university press. khomeini, r. (1981). islam and revolution: writing and declarations of imam khomeini, vol. 1 (h. algar, trans.). london: mizan publisher. menashri, d. (1992). education and the making of modern iran. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. naughton, j. (2006). how the bloggers of tehran are keeping iranian freedoms alive. the observer. [online]. available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1951616,00. html. sakurai, k. (2004). university entrance examination and the making of an islamic society in iran: a study of the post-revolutionary iranian approach to konkur. iranian studies, 37(3), 386406. sanasarian, e. (2000). religious minorities in iran. london & new york: cambridge university press. supreme council of the cultural revolution. (2006). policies and strategies for reducing the rate of elite immigration. [online]. available at: http://www.iranculture.org/en/provs/v iew.php?id=94. education and emigration: the case of the iranian-american community 45 december 7, 2006 shirazi, r., & nazemian, v. (2004). socio-linguistic study of iranian-americans in new york city. paper presented at the iranian alliances across borders second international conference on iranian diaspora, university of maryland, college park, md. sobhe, k. (1982). education in revolution: is iran duplicating the chinese cultural revolution? comparative education, 18(3), 271-280. torbat, a. e. (2002). the brain drain from iran to the united states. the middle east journal, 56(2), 272-295. u.s. census 2000. (2002). u.s. census 2000. [online]. available at: http://www.census.gov/main/www/cen2000.html. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 39 teach them while they are young, they will live to remember the views of teachers and pupils on the teaching of hiv/aids in basic education: a case study of zambia's lusaka and southern provinces rosah moonga malambo university of oslo introduction according to unaids and world health organization (unaids, 2000) data, a total of 33.6 million adults and children are estimated to be living with hiv. sub-saharan africa is the region with the highest number of these cases, estimated at 23.3 million. by the end of 1999, 16.3 million adults and children died due to hiv/aids. 13.7 million of those 16.3 million deaths occurred in sub-saharan africa (usaids, 1999). although unfathomable and difficult to express, perhaps the 1999 association of commonwealth universities (acu) bulletin puts it best: the numbers seem too huge to grasp, the implications too terrifying to contemplate. the devastation of human life on such a scale is nothing less than a holocaust. yet there is much that can be done to stem the tide of horror caused by the 'big disease with the little name' (p. 5). the bulletin further states that a global state of emergency was declared at the commonwealth heads of government meetings in 1999. this declaration is a result of three facts. first, there is the lack of a near-term prospect of a vaccine. second, existing drug therapies, though relatively effective, are too expensive for most poor countries. third, interventions can be effective, and there is a tremendous need to start educating people at a younger age across the broader spectrum of the population. this paper limits itself to the efforts being made by the ministry of education (moe) in zambia on fighting the spread of the disease among school children and teachers. the impact of hiv/aids on education in zambia in zambia, as in many countries, a two-way relationship exists between health and education. teaching and learning are affected by the personal health of school communities and by school activities. obviously, all that is learned about health can have powerful effects on the health and well being of pupils. in addition, no amount of good school facilities, abundant materials and high quality teaching can result in the intended learning if children are too sick or weak to learn. this relationship between education and health is of great importance in zambia where poverty related malnutrition, environmentally related malaria, life style related sexually transmitted diseases (including hiv and aids), and other health problems are widespread. a 1999 zambian ministry of health (moh) report summarizes the impact of hiv and aids on education by highlighting that there are decreasing numbers of trained teachers and education officers, increased teacher absenteeism, reduced public finance for schools, more orphans with less access to education, and fewer children able to afford, attend and/or complete school (p. 48). rosah moonga malambo 40 december 1, 2000 the moh (1999) estimates that between 90,000 and 100,000 zambians are said to develop full-blown aids each year. it also indicates that zambia's cases stabilized at 600,000 in 1994 and 1998, but could rise to 19 percent by the end of the year 2000. neighboring countries like zimbabwe and botswana have a prevalence rate close to 25 percent, while cases in uganda have dropped to 10 percent. the moh (1999) lists many social factors affecting the hiv/aids epidemic in zambia including sexual behavior, cultural practices and poverty which gives rise to factors such as lack of disposable needles, gloves, sterilizers, autoclaving machines and laboratory reagents (p. 21). in response, the moh is spearheading campaigns against hiv infections through their hiv/aids unit that falls under the aids/std/tb and leprosy program (nastlp). the moh's efforts are strengthened by those of the ministries of education, information, community and social services, which are also working against the spread of hiv. moe policy interventions on the teaching of hiv/aids the zambian moe regards hiv/aids as a cross cutting issue to be addressed in all subject areas. in 1993 it adopted an integrated approach to the teaching of hiv/aids. this followed along the heels of policy enacted in 1992 that encouraged the formation of anti-aids clubs in primary and secondary schools, teacher training colleges and other institutions of higher learning. extra curricular activities including drama, cultural clubs and peer counseling were also expected to incorporate hiv/aids awareness messages and mandated to be offered in primary and secondary schools and teacher training colleges. as this study and others show, however, in general, zambian teachers are either not aware of using extra-curricular activities to teach hiv/aids, or they do not see them as viable channels (chiwela and mwape, 1999, p. 22). this is because much as there is policy on the formation of anti-aids clubs to supplement the teaching of hiv/aids, very few teachers and pupils are members and these clubs do not even exist in some schools. as a result, the moe, unesco, unicef, the world bank's basic education sub-sector investment program (bessip), and other co-operating partners have concluded that life skills programs in schools are the best way to address hiv/aids prevention. this program, slated to be integrated in all subjects and introduced in all schools by the end of the year 2000, will include comprehensive training for education managers, college lecturers, teachers, head teachers and student teachers. emphasis will be placed on the basic subject content of hiv/aids and other health-related facts as well as on staff roles in attitude and behavior formation, and behavior change. hiv/aids curricula already exist in zambia's three teacher training colleges supported by the danish development agency (danida). all students spend one semester on the subject, while those studying home economics, environmental science, literature and languages spend two extra weeks specifically covering hiv/aids. syllabi are currently being piloted through the zambian teacher education reform program (zarep). teach them while they are young, they will live to remember the views of teachers and pupils on the teaching of hiv/aids in basic education current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 41 case study between january and february 2000 a case study was conducted in zambia's urban lusaka province and rural southern province to uncover and analyze the views of teachers and pupils on the teaching of hiv/aids in basic education. data was collected with the help of a zambian research assistant over a five-week period. these provinces were selected to facilitate quick access in light of the limited time available for data collection. the researcher sampled for information and not representativeness. the sample for this qualitative case study totaled thirty-eight pupils and sixteen teachers. research techniques involved interviews, observations, and document review. the main aim of this study was to examine the views of teachers and pupils on the teaching of hiv/aids in basic schools (i.e. schools that cover grades 1 to 9 which include, primary and lower secondary schools also known as upper basic classes). this gave rise to several sub-questions including: • how much training do teachers receive in the teaching of hiv/aids in schools? • what school activities cover hiv/aids? • what do pupils know about hiv/aids? • what impact does the teaching of hiv/aids have on pupils? • are there any cultural conflicts that arise when discussing hiv/aids? • how can the teaching of hiv/aids be improved? this study was guided by early childhood development theories (rosso and malek, 1996; colletta, balachander & liang, 1996; o'flaherty, 1995), which state that there are benefits to starting the teaching of any subject at an early age and deciding the content according to the age of the children. other influential theories included: (1) behaviorist theory, which emphasizes teaching for behavior change; (2) cognitive interactionist theories, which state that understanding and insights guide behavior; (3) thorndike's theory of connectionism, and (4) skinner's theory of operant conditioning, which states that reinforcement and repetition are important for teaching behavior change (bigge & shermis, 1992). five schools were selected from lusaka province. these included two government schools (munali basic and chelston basic), one christian school (st. mary's primary, for grades 5 and 7 samples and the secondary school for grade 9 samples), one private school (rhodes park primary) and one community school. a community school has no age limits and is run by the community and or the church. teachers tend to be volunteers paid by the community and/or the church. pupils who do well in these schools eventually enter the formal school system. the community school in lusaka province caters to drop-outs, especially girls. three schools were selected from southern province. they included two government schools (magoye basic and monze east basic schools) and one christian school (st. joseph's). the choice of these schools not only allowed for a comparison of urban versus rural school systems, but for the comparison of data generated from schools being governed by different organizations. this is based on the assumption that even if the curriculum is centralized, its implementation can differ according to school management styles. sixteen teachers were selected from the above-mentioned schools using non-random rosah moonga malambo 42 december 1, 2000 sampling. the sample was therefore purposeful and comprised of those involved in the teaching of hiv/aids. one or two teachers were selected from each school from either grades 5, 7 or 9, depending on the teachers' availability and presence on the day interviews were being conducted. the thirty-eight pupils were selected by stratified and simple random sampling methods using class registers. these included one pupil from each of the grades 5 and 7 stratas and three or more pupils from some schools at the grade 9 strata. grade 9 pupils were selected to evaluate cumulative knowledge, as this is the grade when pupils move from lower to middle and upper basic classes respectively. a total of eight focus group discussions were held with pupils, including four groups in government schools in lusaka and southern province (two in each province), three in the community school, and one with girls only at a christian school in southern province. focus group discussions had an average of ten participants selected with the help of teachers who chose the children on the basis of their ability to communicate effectively in group discussions. the groups consisted of eight to twelve respondents of the same grade and sex, (intended to allow for free discussions) who sat together with the researchers in a circle to facilitate eye contact and group work. data collection started with informal discussions to create rapport between respondents and researchers and all discussions were tape recorded for future analysis. separate nonstandardized, open-ended interview guides were used and the sessions were conducted in both english and zambian vernacular. interviews lasted between 30 minutes to one hour. data collection stopped when the sample became saturated. documents reviewed include the moe policy on the implementation of the integration of hiv/aids teaching, a proposal on the integration of psychosocial life skills, three textbooks used in the teaching of hiv/aids in schools (macmillan and longman health education readers, teaching aids and kalulu). these documents gave insight into what was happening on the ground, while the pupil readers gave insight into what kind of curricula existed. findings training background on hiv/aids for teachers although the moe has a clear policy on the integration of hiv/aids into basic school and college curricula it is not foolproof. as one moe official saw it, there were two main problems. first, there were no teaching/learning materials provided. second, teachers were not trained. in addition, the officer admitted that although the teacher training colleges had developed a training manual, it was not in use. there was no reason given for this. the moe officer did explain that they will adopt some of the contents from the life skills education initiative used in uganda under the school health education project (shep). the teaching of life skills will specifically include the skills of knowing and living with oneself, the skills of knowing and living with others, and the skills of making effective decisions (mabala, 1998, pp. 1-5). this psychosocial life skills curricula would also be included in all subjects to address behavior change. the moe officer was also optimistic that the involvement of the world bank's bessip program would improve material distribution and in-service training for teachers since bessip is teach them while they are young, they will live to remember the views of teachers and pupils on the teaching of hiv/aids in basic education current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 43 encouraging district education resource centers to meet more often to discuss issues such as how to teach a hiv/aids curriculum more effectively. overall, teachers indicated that they received inadequate training in preparing them for teaching hiv/aids. the largest number of respondents (81 percent) cited either not receiving training at all or learning on their own. many teachers reported that schools needed teaching and learning materials and that the subject needed to be given more class time. they cited shortage of time and rare opportunities to go into detail, adding that "very few teachers attend seminars and workshops on hiv/aids. (…) we only use our ability to educate the children." another teacher went into even greater detail explaining that "children need to be given the information so that they can share it among themselves, their families and communities. the teaching needs to start early so that they can grow up enlightened." in fact, both teachers and pupils viewed hiv/aids teaching as very important and something to be encouraged. both also indicated that the teaching of hiv/aids had positive effects on the pupils' lives with some pupils promising that they would avoid infection. when asked how the teaching of hiv/aids could be improved, nine teachers or 66 percent said, "get all teachers more involved, train them and let it be part of the school syllabus," and "there must be a deliberate mention of hiv in every subject." there is no need to spell out the connection between inadequate training and inaccurate information being passed on to pupils. it is important to note, however, that the pupils themselves were aware of the fact that their teachers were not doing enough in the teaching of hiv/aids. perhaps even more importantly, they indicated that they would like to see their teachers getting more involved in the teaching of the subject. pupils also wanted to see teachers more involved when teaching the subject, and to lead by example by practicing the sexual behavior changes they teach pupils, such as avoiding casual sex, sticking to one partner, and using condoms. it is evident that the responsibility to teach the subject of hiv/aids has added to societal pressure on how many teachers conduct their private lives. some pupils said that teachers ought to discuss these issues openly and be role models: "teachers are shy, they are not open when discussing issues on sex." chiwela and mwape (1999) in their study justify teachers' shyness and lack of openness by indicating that teachers, just like any other adults, feel embarrassed to deal with matters related to sex with their pupils (p. ii). this is largely because in zambian society, it is inappropriate to discuss sex with younger people. chiwela and mwape also established that some teachers were against the use of charts showing sex acts and demonstrations on how to put on a condom because teachers thought they bordered on being pornographic materials. such beliefs, held by society for decades, can be removed by incorporating the use of more such charts so that people become more used to seeing them and may then be able to discuss sex with less reservations. when asked during this study how the teaching of hiv/aids could be improved in schools, a combination of 20 of the pupils interviewed alone and in focus groups stated: "teachers should start teaching aids," "parents should ask teachers to start teaching aids in schools," and "teachers should feel free to discuss aids." one male teacher from rosah moonga malambo 44 december 1, 2000 a rural government school however defended the teachers. he explained that teachers might be interested in teaching hiv/aids, but that they have neither the real support nor incentives to do so. he cited the absence of teaching and learning materials as a case in point. in a similar study, chiwela and siamwiza (1999) also found that nearly half of the school administrators in zambia admitted that nothing was being done to enable teachers to teach these topics. these authors also noted that there was no system in place to monitor how teachers handled such issues in class (p. 15). school activities covering topics on hiv/aids the main activities cited by both teachers and pupils as covering hiv/aids were extracurricular clubs where the technique of children teaching other children using 'child to child' messages tends to be employed. the most-often cited clubs were the anti-aids and red cross clubs, facilitated by teachers or health workers who are sometimes invited to give talks on hiv/aids to club members. a few pupils also mentioned singing clubs, debate clubs, biology and science clubs as options for learning about hiv/aids. these findings have significant implications for the implementation of moe policies. although policy on the formation of extra-curricular clubs was adopted in the early 1990s, some schools still do not have such clubs. for example, out of the thirty-eight pupils interviewed in this study, only three were members of the anti-aids club at their school. yet, at the same time, when pupils were asked how the teaching of hiv/aids could be improved in their schools, ten pupils, or 26 percent, responded by forming anti-aids clubs. it should also be noted that although these clubs are said to contribute to the teaching of hiv/aids participation by both teachers and pupils is voluntary. what do pupils know about hiv/aids? all 38 of the pupils interviewed in-depth, along with the 89 who participated in focus group discussions, knew of hiv/aids. there were a few who did say, "i don't know" (grade 2 pupil) and "i am not sure" (grade 9 pupil), but this was because they thought the researcher wanted them to define the letters hiv/aids. they were able to answer all subsequent questions competently. the findings from this study do indicate, however, that even if knowledge of hiv/aids is very high, there are still some pupils who are not sure what the difference between hiv and aids is. consider the following response from a grade 7 male pupil: "hiv is a disease you get after unsafe sex." when asked what aids was, he then answered, "hiv and aids are the same." interestingly, all seven grade 5 pupils used the word disease in their answers. the pupils either said that hiv was a disease in itself or that "it is a disease you get before you get aids and aids is a disease without cure or disease that kills people who like sex. (…) it's a disease with more diseases." consider that during one of the focus group discussions with grade 7 pupils, a pupil caused laughter when he stated that "hiv is a disease that came from monkeys in america." he insisted that he was speaking from an informed point of view as he was certain he had read somewhere that hiv was first diagnosed in the united states of america associated with chimpanzees. these responses could be taken to reveal exactly what kind of information is emphasized to teach them while they are young, they will live to remember the views of teachers and pupils on the teaching of hiv/aids in basic education current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 45 pupils or they could be a reflection of what children conclude on their own after reading magazines and/or listening to television. transmission of hiv when asked how a person becomes infected with hiv, the majority responded that hiv is transmitted through sex. more than half of the respondents (53 percent) were able to qualify their answer by saying, "you can get aids by having sex with the infected partner." this could mean that half of the pupils believe that having sex causes hiv. it could also mean that they just forgot to qualify their answers. the same goes for the eleven pupils or 29 percent of respondents who stated that hiv is caused: "by having sex without a condom," "by having unprotected sex," or "by having sex with many sexual partners." these responses assume that even if people are hiv negative, they can get hiv after having 'unprotected sex' (sex without a condom). the pupils did not indicate understanding of the need for one of the persons to be hiv positive for the disease to be transmitted during any type of sexual intercourse. however, 14 pupils or 36 percent did say a person can get hiv through blood transfusions or from using un-sterile utensils like razor blades, needles and/or sharp objects. it should be noted, however, that only four out of that fourteen (29 percent) mentioned that the transfusion involved hiv infected blood, or that the un-sterile utensils, etc. must be contaminated with hiv infected fluids. the cure for aids when asked what the cure for aids was 63 percent of the pupils answered that there was no cure; 23 percent said that the cure was abstinence from sex or, as one grade 9 male student put it, "you just have to control yourself when you get sexual feelings." to some degree this may not be considered an answer since many may consider sex a basic physiological need. one pupil responded that a cure for aids was "to not sleep around." the pupil actually meant that reducing sexual partners would be a cure for aids. this is probably because zambian national television carries messages about sticking to one faithful partner. the pupils did not realize that a person could have one hiv infected sexual partner who could transmit the infection. another pupil from a christian school responded, "god can heal, if you have faith." this response indicates a belief that god can cure hiv and aids. most of the pupils also mentioned contraceptives, stating that you can protect yourself "when having sex, if you use condoms each time" -a statement that also sounds like it may come from a television commercial. the prevention of hiv/aids when asked how a person could prevent becoming infected with hiv almost all the pupils (84 percent) responded by using a condom. this response was expected due to the many advertisements on national television that talk about using condoms. in fact, many of the pupils' responses were in line with the moh's descriptions of prevention as safer sexual practice, mutual fidelity, non-penetrative sex, partner reduction, condom use and avoidance of risk-conducive situations. one respondent was however quick to add that "using condoms, is not 100 percent safe." like nine others, this pupil advocated abstaining from sex as a sure way of hiv prevention. interestingly many pupils talked about abstinence but very few added that they should abstain until marriage, then rosah moonga malambo 46 december 1, 2000 marry a partner after they have proof that the partner is hiv negative. other pupils used phrases like "by not sleeping around," "avoid sex," "no sex," "being faithful," "stick to one faithful partner." other respondents who talked about the use of un-sterile utensils as a possible way of contracting hiv, also talked about using sterile needles, razor blades and other sharp objects as a way of preventing the hiv infection. yet only once, during this study as part of a focus group discussion with seven boys in an urban government school, did a pupil who had earlier talked about blood transfusion as a possible transmitter of hiv respond that it was important to "test blood for hiv." overall these responses indicate that there are still gaps in information given or retained by pupils. the source of pupils' knowledge of hiv/aids this study established that the main source of the pupils' information on hiv/aids was television and radio (66 percent). it also revealed that many pupils who learned about hiv/aids in schools tended to be taught in anti-aids clubs by teachers and health workers. it is interesting to note that the community school in the lusaka province taught hiv/aids through sports related activities instead of in class while one christian school in the southern province taught it through the zambia young christian society (zycs). the zycs is actually in the process of developing a syllabus for the teaching of hiv/aids and another christian school in lusaka province that does not currently teach hiv/aids is also developing a syllabus. reading through the proposed subject contents, however, it is clear that the approach is purely fact-driven and does not address behavior changes or life skills. two pupils also cited church as a source of information on hiv/aids and eight said they got information from their parents. one boy, from a grade 9 class said, "my mother told me, but she was shy." on average, however, student interviews revealed that some parents appreciated the teaching of hiv/aids and had also started discussing the subject with their children. it was encouraging to find that some parents are now discussing sexual issues with children, but it is a pity that parents feel shy or embarrassed to discuss an issue that can determine their child's future. effects of hiv/aids lessons on pupils to determine the effects of hiv/aids teaching on pupils, both teachers and pupils were asked how the information has changed the lives of pupils and how they would use this information in future. most teachers responded that children are now more aware of the dangers of hiv/aids, that they keep away from these dangers, and that they also teach others about hiv/aids. one teacher who responded that it has increased pupils' knowledge of the disease also said: "kids are now aware of the seriousness of the disease, they promise to keep away from dangerous sexual activities. (…) male pupils always move with condoms in their pockets." other teachers who saw positive behavior changes added that "it has reduced indulgence in immoral behavior, they practice safe sex and say no to sex," and "it has contributed to the prevention of aids in that pupils now know how aids is spread and that it brings low production." teachers also mentioned the issue of aids orphans, and that both those who have lost their relatives as well as those who have not "would not want to make the same mistake." although most teachers recognized that only a few teach them while they are young, they will live to remember the views of teachers and pupils on the teaching of hiv/aids in basic education current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 47 pupils had probably actually changed their behavior, they tended to credit awareness and any behavior change to the in-school teaching. it should be noted however that change in behavior is also directly related to many television and radio campaigns organized by ngos targeting adolescents in and out of school. together, these combined efforts, in and out of school, may have led to the reduction in the number of new infections in the 15 to 19 age group in 1999 (moh 1999, p. 9). consider that about half of the pupils (47 percent) responded that the hiv/aids information has made them more aware of the dangers of the disease and therefore will be more careful about their lives. several pupils said: "it has helped me to be careful with my life and not to sleep around so that i will not die young," and "it has helped me not to have sex until i am married and to think more about my future life and success." the extent to which pupils will put into practice what they learn remains uncertain. for example, one pupil who did not think that the information on hiv/aids changed his life in any way, said: "it hasn't really changed my life but at least i know what aids is and in future i know how to take care of myself. i will always keep the information in my mind and teach others about aids." eleven pupils (29 percent) responded that they would abstain from sex until marriage while others said they would use condoms whenever they had sex. it was interesting to find that some girls used the information to prevent pregnancy, with one girl even saying that it had helped her not to get pregnant and thereby helping her finish her education. two teachers from two different schools in the rural southern province reported that they had witnessed a reduction in the number of pregnancies at their respective schools in the past two or three years and that they actually had no pregnancies in 1999. the teachers attributed the reduction to the increase in the number of pupils using condoms. last but not least, 82 percent of those interviewed and most of the pupils who participated in all focus group discussions, said their greatest wish was to teach their children, friends, families and community members about hiv/aids. how the teaching of hiv/aids could be improved in schools 62 percent of the teachers responded that there was a need for more teaching materials especially for the lower grades (i.e., grades 1 to 5). teachers, as well as four pupils (11 percent) said that schools needed more books, videotapes, charts, magazines and teachers' guides and manuals on hiv/aids. some teachers said: "a subject based on hiv/aids notions should be introduced. all teachers should be involved in teaching the dangers of the scourge and it should be given a 40-minute period each week." the fact that teachers responded in this manner was interesting because they often complain of an overloaded curriculum. this is an indication of just how aware teachers are of the importance of the subject. another suggestion from both teachers and pupils was to start teaching the subject early in schools. this proved slightly controversial as one teacher commented: "i think hiv/aids teaching should be introduced at an early stage so that pupils can know about the killer disease (aids) even as they grow they can be able to teach others about it." yet others disagreed stating, "it is unfair to teach the grade 1 to 4 pupils because they rosah moonga malambo 48 december 1, 2000 don't understand." one female pupil from a private school echoed this view, but what neither the teachers nor the pupil seem to realize is that understanding is contingent on teaching according to the level of understanding of pupils, which is practiced in all subjects. subjects, which continue from grade 1 until the last grade (grade 12), are built on content as a child advances in school. the same could be done with topics related to hiv/aids. teachers and pupils also suggested the formation of anti-aids clubs, red cross, drama clubs and zycs clubs, to compliment the efforts of class teaching of hiv/aids. these clubs could then perform for the whole school or give organized talks to other pupils in order to reach pupils who are not club members. pupils also suggested that more teaching needs to be intake place in rural communities. this was particularly true as radio and television messages target the urban population who have access to the media. hiv/aids discussions in zambian culture both pupils and teachers were asked whether there were any cultural conflicts in the teaching of hiv/aids. nine out of 16 teachers (56 percent) said "yes". they responded that parents were not happy with schools discussing sexual issues with children who were still young because early teaching of sexual issues brings about promiscuity at an early age for the children. in zambia, the word "sex" has been considered culturally taboo. the same goes for names used to describe sexual activity. as a result other words such as "sleeping" and "playing" had to be used when describing sexual acts. chiwela and siamwiza (1999) found that teachers also hold the same belief that exposing young people to sexual information and related images, stimulates them to practice what they see or hear (p. 11). in this study one teacher said: "parents have accused us of teaching children to have sex and use condoms." there is a strong belief among some parents and adults in zambia that children try out what they learn. this argument has been discussed even on national television where women think that sexual discussions given to young girls during initiation ceremonies, make them curious and therefore they start practicing sex earlier than those who have had no exposure to sexual education. this assertion may have some truth to it but children can learn about sex from television and friends. moreover, there has been no change in the average age of first having sex despite an increase in sex education. the good thing about teaching safer sex practices is that children are informed. they would then finally make their own informed choices before they have sex. some teachers added that even though the community believes that they teach promiscuity because they teach children how to use condoms, they are happy about the aids awareness among their children. as one teacher put it: "yes, those days it was not culturally accepted although nowadays, parents and teachers are open to discuss aids with children, to some extent the language used, but now society is slowly accepting these facts. (…) it is also discussed during initiation ceremonies." when asked whether they discussed hiv/aids with their friends, more than half of the pupils said that they did. this indicates that at least children have started talking to each other about the disease. consider the following: "we discuss it with friends to help each teach them while they are young, they will live to remember the views of teachers and pupils on the teaching of hiv/aids in basic education current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 49 other, we also discuss with parents because they want us to know more about it," and "i discuss it only with my mother, i do not feel comfortable to discuss it with my dad." similar responses were also given by a group of twelve girls attending grade 7 classes at the community school during focus group discussions. about a quarter of the girls said that they have discussed hiv/aids with their mothers but not fathers at least once. some pupils responded that their age could be why their parents had not discussed this topic with them. many of them said they thought their parents thought they were still too young. as one 12-year-old, grade 7 male pupil said: "i don't know why i do not discuss hiv/aids with my parents, but now my mother told me that one day we will sit down and discuss. maybe my parents think it is too early for me to know such things until i grow a bit older." another 13-year-old, grade 7 male pupil from a private school responded that "my family members do not have time to discuss aids, i also think i am still too young, that is why my parents do not want to discuss this issue with me." a 14-year-old, grade 9 female pupil from an urban christian school responded, "i think my parents still stick to principles of their time, for example, some parents believe that it does not show respect to discuss issues relating to sex and sexuality with children." a 12-year-old, grade 5 male pupil from an urban government school said, "it is not good to discuss sexual issues. i am scared to discuss with my parents because my parents get embarrassed and annoyed when you talk about sex." lastly, one 14-year-old, grade 9 female pupil from a rural urban government school, had this to say, "my parents think i learn about most of the things at school." other pupils added that their family members might think that "each and every family member discovers about such things like aids from other people" or because "everyone in our home knows about it, so they express less concern about discussing it." these responses indicate that overall parents are not doing much to discuss the issues of hiv/aids with their children. during a focus group discussion with ten boys at a private urban school, one pupil said that the parents could be infected themselves and would find it difficult to advise children on how to avoid infection. at the moment, due to the stigma associating hiv/aids with promiscuity or unfaithfulness, parents who are infected might be more effective in teaching their children to avoid infection so that the children do not end up like them. these findings agree with siamwiza (1999) who indicated that far too many people, including teachers, find themselves in a situation where they are embarrassed to teach about hiv/aids because of their own hiv status or vulnerable situation (p. 32). however, some orphaned children are believed to have made positive decisions about their sex lives due to experiences they have had with their parents before they died. lastly, during focus group discussions some pupils responded that discussions on hiv/aids were more open in urban areas compared to rural areas where people are still very conservative. one adult during an informal discussion made the important point that that zambian culture teaches young people to respect elders. similarly girls are asked to respect older women and men. how then can young girls be expected to say 'no' to sexual advances from older men including teachers? rosah moonga malambo 50 december 1, 2000 conclusion although the hiv/aids subject has been integrated into science, social studies, environmental sciences, english, home economics, religious and moral education, geography, physical education and the proposed psychosocial life skills, it has been given less emphasis because it appears as a topic in passing. pupils had high knowledge levels on hiv and aids, especially on the sexually related prevention methods of hiv infection. most of the pupils also knew that there was no cure for hiv/aids although many cited use of condoms. overall, however, the knowledge displayed by pupils lacked detail. for example, most pupils did not associate hiv/aids infection with an infected person or infected blood and infected razor blades, needles and other sharp objects. lack of school discussions could have led to the lack of factual details about the disease. teachers and pupils were, in general, not satisfied with the extent to which hiv/aids is taught in schools. pupils and teachers would also like to see an increase in the supply of teaching/learning materials in schools including audio-visual materials. pupils also pointed out that they would like to see teachers improve their approach and involvement in the teaching of hiv and aids in schools. in general, the pupils were very enthusiastic about being part of the hiv/aids awareness campaign group. most pupils were very interested in teaching their children, families, parents and the community about the disease. they said that they would avoid getting infected and think about their future. both pupils and teachers felt that the teaching of hiv/aids was a very good and important subject that needed to be allocated more class time than what is currently in practice. pupils talked about doing everything possible to prevent infection and not die at an early age. the culture of sex education in zambia has changed slightly with a few parents reported as having discussed hiv and aids with their children. few other family members seem to discuss the topic with children. more still needs to be done to change the attitudes of majority of parents who think that children are too young to discuss sex and children who feel they cannot discuss sex with parents. more programs are needed to address parents' problems in facing the reality of inevitable discussions on hiv and aids, for the current increasing trend of infection to be reduced. it is time that the older generations in zambia realized that children have the right to information, to enable them to make informed choices. this therefore calls for change in the sexual behavior patterns of adults as well as children in the society these children are expected to live in as independent adults. lastly, although this study sampled for information over representation and/or generalization, its findings do depict a similar picture to that of the larger study done by chiwela, siamwiza and mwape (1999 that was generalized to zambia as a whole. references association of commonwealth universities (acu) (1999, december). simply put higher education matters aids: silence = death. the acu bulletin (141). teach them while they are young, they will live to remember the views of teachers and pupils on the teaching of hiv/aids in basic education current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 51 bigge, l. m. & shermis, s. s. (1992). learning theories for teachers. (5th ed.) new york: harper collins. central statistics office of zambia (1998). measure evaluation: zambia sexual behavior survey. chapel hill: university of north carolina. chiwela m., j. & siamwiza, j. r. (1999). teachers' knowledge, attitudes, skills and practice in teaching hiv/aids prevention, impact mitigation and psychosocial life skills in school and college curricula in zambia. zambia: unesco. chiwela m. j. & mwape, k. g. (1999). integration of teaching hiv/aids prevention and psychosocial life skills into school and college curricula in zambia. lusaka, zambia: unesco. colleta, j. n., balachander, j. & liang, x (1996). the condition of young children in subsaharan africa the convergence of health, nutrition and early education. washington, dc: the world bank. mabala, s. r. (1998). life skills in zambia proposed strategy for inclusion of life skills in the zambian school and out of school systems. lusaka: ministry of education. malambo, m. r. (2000). a case study on the views of teachers and pupils on the teaching of hivaids in basic education in zambia: the lusaka and southern provinces. unpublished doctoral dissertation, university of oslo, norway. ministry of education (moe) (1996). education our future: national policy on education. lusaka: zambia educational publishing house. ministry of health (moh)/central board of health (1999). zambian hiv sentinel surveillance: time trends in the hiv epidemic in the 1990s. lusaka: moh. ministry of health/central board of health (1999, september). hiv/aids in zambia: background, projections, impacts and interventions. lusaka: moh. o'flaherty, j. (1995). intervention in the early years: an evaluation of the high/scope curriculum. london: national children's bureau. rosso, d. m. j. & marek, t. (1996). class action improving school performance in the developing world through better health and nutrition. washington, dc: the world bank. siamwiza, r. (1999). a situation analysis of policy and teaching hiv/aids prevention in educational institutions in zambia. (a unesco/unaids project on integrating hiv/aids prevention in school curricula). lusaka: unesco. diaz, k. (2021) current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 23, issue 2, special issue 2021 covid-19 and digital learning in the dominican republic: implications for marginalized communities katia diaz columbia university with covid-19 placing a strain on its public institutions, the dominican republic is attempting to ensure a streamlined digital education process by extending digital republic, a past initiative that provides online frameworks and platforms for its students and teachers. however, already long existing issues are exacerbating access to education for vulnerable communities. while past policies included special needs services, the following initiative has yet to provide information on access for disabled students. likewise, low-income students face financial challenges to gain the resources necessary to thrive during remote learning. the following case study explores the country’s education system, how its policies benefit certain groups and negatively impact others. by conducting in-depth policy analysis and interviews, the study analyzes the impact of digital learning during the pandemic among vulnerable communities in the country. introduction the pandemic has placed an undue burden on educational systems in the caribbean. this is particularly so for countries with resource constraints like the dominican republic. with covid-19 placing a strain on its public institutions, the dominican republic is attempting to ensure a streamlined digital education process by providing more digital platform initiatives (cobo et al., 2020). the digital tools are an addition to digital republic, a past initiative that provides online frameworks and platforms for all citizens through the use of technology (muñoz et al, 2020, p. 83). however, already existing issues are exacerbating access to education, particularly for vulnerable communities. lack of education access for special needs and low-income students has been a continuous issue. the current education system has seen a divide between urban and rural areas. for example, low-income students residing in rural regions have difficulties accessing quality education and resources compared to their urban, higher-income counterparts (j.a. rodríguez, personal communication, january 29, 2021). education policies also do not include special needs students. currently, reforms provide special needs services and programs centered on integration and inclusion (special education directorate & vice ministry of technical and pedagogical services, 2017, p. 4-5). however, these initiatives do not fully address frameworks that do not take into account special needs students in regular classes who have little access to specialized services for specific disabilities (acevedo, 2016). these issues are part of a larger educational gap revealing years of © 2021, diaz. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 23(2), 143-158. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en diaz current issues in comparative education 144 “institutional capacity issues” (un convention on the rights of the child, 2015, p. 14). with the implementation of digital learning in response to the pandemic, however, existing problems have been exacerbated with marginalized groups being left behind. once again education access is being denied, either intentionally or unintentionally. the following case study explores the current education system in the dominican republic, how its digital online policies benefit certain groups, and how it reveals underlying effects for other communities. it will explain how covid-19 exacerbates previous ongoing issues and how the government addresses them. by conducting policy analysis and interviews, the study analyzes the impact of digital learning during the pandemic among vulnerable communities in the country. why are digital learning strategies important amidst a pandemic? before delving into the research, it is important to note the impact of covid-19 in the country. the following case study explores a unique perspective on how latin american and caribbean countries are tackling the crisis. although digital tools like social media apps and platforms have been present in the region, the crisis has pushed many countries to incorporate innovative technological tools and existing media platforms in the classroom (cobo et al., 2020). by adapting curricula, pedagogical practices, and classroom logistics for online education, teachers and students are using a new form of learning amidst a crisis. the dominican republic is only one of many countries incorporating digital learning. however, this innovative solution also has its costs. as a developing nation, the dominican republic suffers from structural issues such as lack of access to technology. these problems make it difficult to successfully implement remote learning for all citizens and residents (el nacional, 2020). this is notwithstanding other faults plaguing the country. according to paige cone (2019) from the ohio state university, the country suffers from “inadequate spending in the education sector, scarce quantity of teachers and low quality of teacher education, delays in formation of secondary schools, and expansive management shortages.” exploring the effects of remote learning impacting vulnerable communities, the study aims to be a first step in exploring alternatives and solutions to address the educational gap in the country. ultimately, these results could provide an avenue by which quality education could be accessible for all students. overview: education system and “digital republic” to investigate the country’s issues and ramifications, it is also important to explore the dominican republic’s education system. currently, the country offers four levels of schooling: pre-primary, primary, secondary, and tertiary (united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization –unesco, 2021). previously, education was compulsory for eight years, providing schooling for children 6-14 years old (oecd, 2008, p. 29). however, compulsory education has been recently extended to 13 years (the covid-19 and digital learning in the dominican republic current issues in comparative education 145 national institute of education planning & unesco, 2019, p. 2) for secondary education, children aged 14-18 receive four years of additional schooling to strengthen skillsets. this includes general education within the first cycle while vocational, continuing general education, and art options are in the second cycle. there are also two additional systems in place, or subsystems, that focus on adult education and children with special needs. each level of education is coordinated through three agencies: 1. the ministry of education, (secretaría de estado de educación—see or minerd) which helps to coordinate primary and secondary schools. 2. ministry of higher education, science and technology (secretaría de estado de educación superior, ciencia y tecnología –mescyt) which focuses on colleges and universities as well as research institutions concentrating on technological, biological, industrial, and agricultural advances. and, 3. the national institute of professional and technical training (instituto nacional de formación técnico professional) that centers on alternative schooling for nontraditional students and technical/vocational training (organization for economic cooperation and development –oecd, 2008, p. 29-32) currently, there are 2.7 million students who have matriculated at the start of the academic school year as of 2018 (national office of statistics, 2019). while the education system provides a basic approach to education, the country has made a series of reforms over the years to improve. its most recent, the institutional strategic plan 2017-2020 (plan estratégico institucional), has yielded great results. according to the evaluation report published by minerd, school literacy has increased with 999, 026 adult individuals obtaining literacy skills thanks to the program national plan of literacy quisqueya learn with you (alfabetización quisqueya aprende contigo) (minerd, 2018 p. 37). additionally, the report found that more students aged 15 have continued their education from 8.6 years to 9.18 years (minerd, 2018 p. 36-37). these achievements are a testament to the various programs established including a focus on early childhood development centers and nutritional programs, among other initiatives (minerd, 2018, p. 94). alongside these measures, the government aims to improve its system through online educational tools available to students and teachers. this is where república digital or the digital republic program comes in. in response to the 2030 sustainable development goals, digital republic aims to provide access for all citizens while “enabling economic and social development” through the use of technology (muñoz et. al, 2020, p. 83). the program extends beyond the educational system with information and communication technologies (icts) to be incorporated within the government (for transparency purposes) and includes gender equity and "social inclusion" (muñoz et. al, 2020, p. 83-84). one of its purposes is to bridge the "digital divide" among vulnerable populations who do not have access (i.e., low-income families, those from rural areas, and families with diaz current issues in comparative education 146 "lower levels of education”) (dominican republic government, p. 10). so far, the program offers projects including broadening wifi access, capacity-building classes on technology for women and low-income individuals, and computer access for children and their families. the results of the program have been met with mixed reviews, however, with some officials calling it a success in closing the digital divide while publications questioning the limitations of the program’s outreach to successfully provide access to all communities. for example, the publication diario libre notes that these projects have only reached 5% of the student population (1 in 4 households) compared to official statistics from the dominican republic’s sustainable development executive summary reporting that almost 90% of residents in the country have access to mobile technology (dominican republic government, p. 10) with the onset of covid-19, however, virtual learning became a priority. extending digital republic, the government implemented a series of initiatives to adapt the educational system into online learning and provide families with the tools they need to continue their education despite a worldwide pandemic. these initiatives include expanding free wifi up to “1,000 access points,” a national education portal where educational content can be accessed by grade level, and social networking apps like whatsapp which help to connect students and teachers throughout their remote learning (cobo et al., 2020). in addition to these resources, the ministry of education supported approximately 2,000 vulnerable families by providing sanitary kits at educational centers (listin diario, 2020). this initiative was in collaboration with the organization world vision and the general directorate for community participation (dirección general de participación comunitaria) and the office for international cooperation (oficina de cooperación internacional—oci). sixty centers distributed the kits in the following provinces: santo domingo, san cristóbal, monseñor nouel, la vega and santiago (listin diario, 2020). aside from the kits, world vision also provided informational videos that can help parents facilitate their homes into educational spaces for their children. while these initiatives have greatly benefitted some communities, other groups are being marginalized—whether through exclusionary practices or inaccessible methods. thus, the educational system has two underlying issues that have become more apparent during the pandemic: the socio-economic divide within rural and urban schools among wealthier and low-income students, and lack of access and guidance for children with disabilities. urban vs. rural: socio-economic divide within digital learning processes one of the most notable inequalities within the dominican republic’s education system is the socio-economic divide between schools in the cities and institutions in rural areas where access is less defined. for example, secondary schools have a lower attendance in covid-19 and digital learning in the dominican republic current issues in comparative education 147 rural areas compared to urban zones (oecd, 2008, p. 150). according to research by nidia beatriz columna pérez (2020), the attendance rate for general urban areas is “9.53%, while rural area rates are as high as 19.36%” (p. 2). keeping in mind discrepancies between the areas, the researcher also emphasizes how both urban and rural provinces have no indicators to provide analysis of policies. each district and territory are classified “homogenously” by “residence zone” without any other factors making their analysis of policies difficult to discern (pérez, 2020, p. 2). how then, does socio-economic status link to inequalities in the education system? crucial prevalent issues stem from socio-economic divides among the public and private schools, generating a gap between lower-income and higher-income families. with more privileges than their public counterparts, private schools are enjoyed by those who can afford it with higher-income families enrolling often than lower-income students (oecd, 2008, p. 167). there are few resources and inadequate facilities in “marginalized urban and rural areas” (un convention on the rights of the child, 2015, p. 14). unlike public schools, private schools have more resources and better-trained staff, providing an advantage in education quality for those who can attend. with the pandemic, however, resources have been spread thin. according to r. olaechea, a private school coordinator in the city of santiago, private schools have been ahead in the curriculum than most public schools since the pandemic (personal communication, february 5, 2021). governmentfunded schools started online learning in november compared to private schools which started in september of last year. this discrepancy is only one example of the advantages of private schools which regularly provide extra hours of schooling to cover more of the curriculum needed. private schools generally end their classes at 2:00-2:30 p.m. while public schools end at noon. aside from regular classes, the coordinator emphasized, teachers provide additional hours for tutoring as needed. not to mention, most parents whose children attend private schools have the money and resources for virtual learning including providing them with wifi access and computers. even with the digital republic’s initiatives to bridge that gap by offering internet and computers, this project is not reaching far enough to those who need it the most. this advantage to one group only increases the gap between private and public schools with around 80% of students in public schools falling behind in the academic year (garrido, 2021). yet, much like their public school counterparts, rural areas also suffer from a similar fate. the school coordinator noted that rural areas as far as the south close to the haitian border continue to have limited technological access for learning. her assessment is not only true but troubling. in a large study conducted by the international organization for migration (iom) and other partner organizations (2020), 16% of those who are taking classes remotely have not been able to continue their education, emphasizing that 40% of individuals among this group live in “border territories” (iom et. al, 2020, p. 1). how, then, do these differences affect school productivity and performance? diaz current issues in comparative education 148 in this way, one can see the differences in performances based on economic status. looking at previous pisa results, one can view how income was a strong “predictor” for performance, at least in math and science compared to reading which found little correlation (avvisati et al., 2019, p. 3). however, disparities in access and education quality can be seen among different populations. for example, there is a larger concentration of low-performing students in one area compared to other areas with highperforming students. according to the assessment, there is a lower chance for a disadvantaged student to be enrolled in a top-performing school (around 15%). these “clusters” of students, as indicated in the report, shows where resources have also been distributed. disadvantaged schools often report more teacher and resource shortages (31% of students enrolled with reports submitted by principals) while advantaged schools have also experienced similar issues but to a lesser extent (17% of students enrolled with reports submitted by principals) (avvisati, et. al, 2019, p. 5). yet, teachers are more certified in disadvantaged schools than advantaged ones, although they have less experience (avvisati, et. al, 2019, p. 5). while these disparities remain a fixture in the education system, covid-19 exacerbated them further. in an interview with j.a. rodríguez, a public teacher for a language immersion program, the instructor noted how family members and their children struggled to keep up with schooling during the pandemic (personal communication, january 29, 2021). at first, there were “no classes at all," he said. once the ministry of education implemented television programs with homework packets, however, it seemed that a structure was put into place to help children continue their schooling. at the time, the government spent around rd$ 1,575,043,073 to fund 44 broadcasting companies that would establish educational programming throughout the country (servicios de acento.com.do, 2021). while some students benefited from the programming, others continued to struggle to keep up with schooling despite its implementation. j.a. rodríguez emphasized that not every family has a television in their home which left some students unable to finish their homework. others could gain access by going to the houses of their friends or family where television was available. for example, the interviewees' cousin and his family are the only household in the neighborhood to own a television. most of the students nearby go to their house to watch the educational programs to complete their tasks. ultimately, around 26% of students were able to effectively benefit from the television programs (garrido, 2021). access to education and the resources available like the internet and technology is still a "privilege," as the public teacher emphasized. unfortunately, these testimonials are not a surprise considering the struggles public schools face since the start of the pandemic. according to a report by (2020), approximately 91% of students in public schools utilize digital tools like whatsapp on a regular basis to continue their education with “four hours or less” spent on tasks for classes. however, 41% of these students are only able to gain just around “two hours” of schooling (garrido, 2021). while minerd’s plans to implement television programs were covid-19 and digital learning in the dominican republic current issues in comparative education 149 well intentioned, its execution did not bring about the desired change the ministry hoped for. the results were once again mixed. for some families with only one television and multiple children at different stages in their education, the programs were ineffective (féliz, 2020). reflecting on the implementation, j.a. rodríguez noted how the television programs were well made but left plenty of students with little motivation to learn. not to mention, he said, the programming did not reflect the curricula implemented in schools (personal communication, january 29, 2021). the execution may be problematic, but the country’s digital strategies also did not consider the gap in access among different students. in a recent joint report by the dominican institute of evaluation and research for education quality (instituto dominicano de evaluación e investigación de la calidad educativa—ideice) and local organizational network the observatory toward the implementation of the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (2020), there is a gap among the use of technology by students (p. 4-5). for example, the report outlined how 79% of students reported having access to internet, leaving behind 450,000 students who do not have access (ideice & the observatory, 2020, p. 5). additionally, the report noted how some students may have the technology but not the training to use the tools effectively. as a result, digital learning strategies have been ineffective so far in tackling the existing issues within the country’s education. left behind: exclusionary practices affecting special needs students while the education system has suffered from the unequal distribution of resources, the system fails to include those with special needs or who have a disability. in turn, exclusionary practices persist in a country with 1,160, 847 individuals living with a disability (the observatory, p. 2). according to the observatory, the education system lacks proper practices to address individuals with disabilities (p. 4). for example, children with disabilities are being turned away at schools, denying them access to primary education. facilities in public and private schools are not structurally equipped to accommodate those with physical disabilities. additionally, there are few teachers with little special education training such as individuals familiar with sign language. not to mention, braille is hardly available for individuals who are blind or visibly impaired (the observatory, p. 4-5). these inadequacies reflect a long-standing education system unable to provide inclusionary practices into their classrooms although these issues are currently being addressed by the government. in an interview with a public official from minerd’s special education directorate, the publication metro found that at the time “around 48% of public schools [had] students with disabilities in their classrooms” (acevedo, 2016). while this number was a large percent of students in need of special services, this statistic showed that schools were illequipped to provide an inclusive education to students with disabilities; an issue that the government was well aware of. a previous study conducted by the government found diaz current issues in comparative education 150 that “59% of educational centers were unable to incorporate inclusive pedagogical practices that could help students in their learning and development” (acevedo, 2016). in response to these issues, improvements were made but problems continue to surface even today. nevertheless, incorporating a strategy perhaps may be far difficult considering the infrastructure available. below is a list of the challenges exacerbated by the pandemic that children with disabilities continue to face: • a need for a support team of specialists necessary to meet a child’s needs. • the lack of supporting tools and adequate technology to follow their classes from home. • difficulties for family mediation, care and personal attention. particularly, when the country still does not have the legal and social framework that facilitates care and conciliation. • the economic difficulties experienced by families and that are aggravated by the care of children and adolescents with disabilities. • a need for a protocol for specialists, health personnel and caregivers of children and adolescents. (la red dominicana, 2020) ideally, teachers would be able to integrate special needs students within their classrooms by evaluating each child’s learning style, adjusting curriculum as needed and planning learning sessions that focus on a child’s “cognitive, psychological, and social development (flores & hernández, 2016, p. 18). placing inclusive frameworks into action, higher education institutions in the country are providing certifications and master’s programs in diversity and inclusion as well as special education (peláez & ramirez, p. 14). these initiatives are being established in response to law no. 5-13 which stipulates that the national council of disability (consejo nacional de discapacidad –conadis) must partner with academic institutions to provide training in special education (peláez & ramirez, p. 14). currently, institutions like the autonomy university of santo domingo (la universidad autónoma de santo domingo) and the pontifical catholic mother & teacher (la pontificia catolica madre y maestra) offer electives or pre-requisites regarding special education needs and diversity (peláez & ramirez, p. 14-15). with the foundation in place to develop teachers knowledgeable in special education, the government has implemented other reforms through the institutional strategic plan 20172020. currently, the ministry of education has implemented the resource center for the attention towards diversity (centro de recursos para la atención de diversidad –cad) which aims to “promote education access for students with special needs – without exclusion toward any condition of any kind” (minerd, 2018, p. 128). the centers have "interdisciplinary teams” which provide “psycho-pedagogic counseling in 516 primarylevel educational centers” (minerd, 2018, p. 128). a total of 32,955 students benefited from the program with 1,916 psycho-pedagogical evaluations being implemented, and language evaluations conducted for up to 860 students (minerd, 2018, p. 129). furthermore, cad’s implemented support spaces to help students struggling with covid-19 and digital learning in the dominican republic current issues in comparative education 151 reading and comprehension and provided resources and specialized teachers for students with visual impairments (minerd, 2018, p. 129). there are also other programs with partnered agencies providing further training for individuals working with special needs children. among these programs is the partnership of national institute of education and training of the magisterium (instituto nacional de formación y capacitación del magisterio –inafocam) and the national university of pedro henríquez ureña (universidad nacional pedro henríquez ureña—unphu). this project offered a series of workshops for teachers and pedagogical experts working in the special education field (inafocam, 2017). these reforms are a big improvement, considering that just two years earlier the government reported a shortage of untrained staff with 64% of public schools reporting not having any personnel with credentials in special education (acevedo, 2016). looking at these policies and programs, it seems like the dominican republic is on its way to providing inclusive education for students with special needs. yet, reports of unequal access among this vulnerable group persists – especially now more than ever with the pandemic forcing students with disabilities to cease their education. currently, research on special education during covid-19 is limited. however, according to a report by the economic commission for latin america and the caribbean (eclac) and unesco (2020), the pandemic has exacerbated and highlighted these inequities in the latin american and caribbean region. particularly, the risk of “disengagement and dropping out of school” is a particular concern (p. 14). more troubling are the covid-19 online platforms that do not address special education curricula or services, even with government efforts planning to include special needs children in their school reopening strategies (garcia, 2020, p. 15). furthermore, minerd’s special education directorate has been conducting an assessment to identify what services children with disabilities need during this time (ozuna, 2020). although another well-intentioned effort in part by the government, this lack of awareness to include special needs students earlier on shows that services were not even considered when the agency launched its remote learning strategy. as a result, many educational staff who work with students with special needs had no choice but to rely on their “own resources and ingenuities” to help their students continue their education (ozuna, 2020). it seems like implementing concrete educational methods for students with special needs and individuals with disabilities continues to be a problem. yet, there have been improvements since the implementation of the institutional strategic plan 2017-2020. even prior to the initiative’s inception, there were efforts toward inclusivity in the form of cross-collaborative programs that tailor to specific needs or public and non-profit initiatives (pre-pandemic). for example, the dominican association of rehabilitation (asociación dominicana de rehabilitación) and conadis continue to provide resources, legal support, educational training, and workshops for individuals with disabilities. however, during the pandemic, there are no inclusionary methods provided across the diaz current issues in comparative education 152 board in the classroom. researcher katherine hernández morales (2021) underscored the need for officials to ensure full inclusivity where agencies “continue developing and adapting curricula and didactic materials, hire specialists for distinct needs, and provide adequate spaces in education centers for greater access” (p. 79). once again, the realities of implementing inclusive education are far from perfect, leaving special needs students behind in their education despite the progress. discussion the covid-19 crisis has brought a different dimension onto education systems—one that could be considered a double-edged sword. in the case of the dominican republic, digital learning strategies have proven to benefit some students during the pandemic. however, it also laid bare the inequalities that continue to persist in the country. it divided the education system into the have’s and have not’s, with low-income students in rural regions and public school students struggling to gain access to digital tools and traditional media. for those with disabilities, accommodations and services were not considered during the government’s efforts, leaving teachers and students to fend for themselves. while progress has been made over the years, the country’s institutional capacity to provide quality education for all has been call into question again. yet, there is a silver lining to the crisis. recognizing the importance of digital tools, both policy officials and teachers understand that technology should be incorporated regularly into the classroom moving forward. however, the next question to consider is how we can implement these tools in an inclusive way for all communities. this research is only one step in addressing this question. given the limited time frame in this study, future research must take into account the rapid changing policies and programs being implemented in response to the pandemic. these assessments must be flexible in monitoring best practices while ensuring that results are updated on a regular basis. furthermore, other vulnerable communities that have been impacted should have their own assessments made. for example, haitian migrants and individuals of haitian descent should have their own separate study. further research on this should also consider the impact of covid-19 and access to their education. likewise, a gender perspective on education access during this time should also be evaluated. as it stands, this study only reflects one aspect of the education system. with only a few on-the-ground interviews and extensive policy analysis, the study is limited. more indepth research should include implementing surveys in public and private schools as well as in rural and urban areas to gauge further improvement or lack thereof in access to resources. additionally, more interviews with teachers, parents, and students should also be conducted to provide a more holistic view of the issue. yet, more importantly, researchers must keep in mind the cultural sensitivity of the case study. given the sociopolitical and institutional climate in the country, researchers must focus their study on a covid-19 and digital learning in the dominican republic current issues in comparative education 153 local perspective away from the eurocentric ideals and frameworks used as benchmarks to compare low-income countries. in doing so, the study can be a fair and balanced approach to the country’s education efforts. conclusion remote learning is here to stay. yet, whether it is for better or worse remains to be seen. as we continue to face our new normal, countries like the dominican republic have no choice but to adapt with new technological tools to help its residents continue their education. however, officials must solve how they can successfully implement digital learning strategies in the country. it is imperative that no person is denied their education because of the barriers in place. with covid-19 leaving its mark, the ripple effects of the dominican republic’s education system are not only visible but exacerbated. if education initiatives can address these effects during its digital learning programs, students can finally obtain a quality education that is beneficial for their growth and development. in doing so, a better education can be achieved for all students in the country now and into the future. katia diaz is a graduate of columbia university’s graduate school of arts & sciences. previously, she was a fulbright u.s. student scholar teaching college students english in the dominican republic. katia has over five years working in national and local governments. currently, she works in communications at an international foundation. diaz current issues in comparative education 154 references acevedo, c. 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[country report database]. http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/do microsoft word 41kaunda_kendell.doc © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 36 december 18, 2001 prospects of educating for democracy in struggling third wave regimes: the case of malawi zikani kaunda creative center for community mobilization (creccom) nancy kendall stanford university democracy and culture will never be at peace with one another. in fact, they are at war. democracy is winning right now, and we are seeing a breakdown of people's behavior. but we can never be happy without our culture. we cannot just destroy it for democracy. we must find a balance, times when democracy wins, times when culture wins1 (head teacher, southern region of malawi, 2000). malawi is a small country of about 10 million people that was considered one of the stars of democracy in africa following its first multiparty elections in 1994. however, as in many other third wave2 african democracies, the initial progress malawi made towards democratization appears to have stalled or even lost ground3, even as the international "rules of the game" appear to have solidified in support of some form-however shallow--of democracy (young, 1996). why is this happening? we will focus on presenting a voice seldom heard in debates about why many democracies in africa are struggling--the voices of "the masses," those whose everyday lives and actions are often only infrequently in direct contact with national governance structures and actors, but who are, nevertheless, expected to both directly and indirectly understand, control, and hold these structures accountable. this article will describe how people in rural malawi4 understand "democracy," and the types of changes that community members identified as being caused by democracy. a discussion of the types of "education for democracy" that have occurred in malawi since 1994 will follow. we will argue that one of the primary weaknesses in present international and national support for democratic rule and education for democracy is the emphasis on (particularly national) democratic structures and institutions, as opposed to the "culture" of democracy--norms, values, and the local systems that support them. lastly, we discuss what we think the role of "education for democracy" should be in malawi, how current efforts could change to play this role, and how likely it is for such change to occur. malawi's political context in 1994, malawi transitioned from dr. h. kamuzu banda's thirty-year one-party dictatorship to a multiparty democracy. in relatively free, fair, and bloodless elections, banda was voted out of office in favor of bakili muluzi. for the first five years, malawi's indices of political and civil liberties climbed to some of the highest in africa (freedom house, 1995-1999); international praise and donor aid flooded the country; and people rejoiced at the changes brought about by the power of their votes. research conducted in 19975 indicated that people generally felt the benefits of democratization outweighed the costs. prospects of educating for democracy in struggling third wave regimes: the case of malawi current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 37 muluzi won the second presidential elections in 1999 amidst claims of fraud (chirambo, 1999). similar, credible claims of corruption and intimidation were made following some parliamentary by-elections held after 1999. there were also worrying changes made to the constitution once the ruling party controlled enough vote--the senate, never convened, was stricken from the constitution; the quorum needed for parliamentary votes was lowered; parliament tried to unconstitutionally dismiss four high court judges; and so forth. malawi's civil and political indices began declining, as did donor praise and support6. and people began to worry--their daily lives were being more negatively affected by "democracy" with each year that passed, as corruption, crime, and inflation increased (chirambo, 1999). methodology the research sited in this paper was conducted between 1996 and 2001. in 1996, the authors observed and participated in action research on girls' education for a usaidfunded project in malawi. research methods included interviews, observations, focus group discussions, participatory theater for development performances, and workshops with government personnel. kaunda has been involved in similar usaid-funded research on girls' education and educational quality from 1994 to the present; during this time he has conducted or overseen research in over 1,750 villages throughout malawi; and has participated in over 150 workshops for government personnel. in 1999 and 2000, kendall conducted 14 weeks of research on the effects of democracy on primary education in malawi. she conducted interviews, participant observations, classroom observations, focus group discussions, and participatory rural appraisal exercises in two villages in the southern region of malawi; interviewed more than 30 ngo, donor, ministry of education, and other government personnel; and conducted document reviews. in 2001, the authors worked together on a six-week ethnographic study of the effects of democracy on primary education in three villages in malawi7, collecting information through interviews, focus group discussions, participatory rural appraisals, classroom observations, and participant observations. the information gathered from 1999 to 2001 forms the core of the research presented below. this research is ongoing, and the conclusions drawn at this point will be further tested and elaborated over the coming year with survey data, additional national and district level interviews, and further ethnographic research. perceptions of democracy in malawi the majority of interviewees felt there is a general, widespread misunderstanding of democracy that reaches from the top echelons of government to schoolchildren. interviewees in the 2000 and 2001 studies from all regions, of both sexes, and of all ages, most frequently defined democracy as freedom to do whatever a person wants, regardless of the consequences of their actions to others. interviewees frequently gave examples of general rudeness, changes in cultural practices, robberies, corruption, and even murder committed in the name of democracy. the following quote exemplifies the types of community-level changes people identified: democracy has destroyed our cultural values, and is making it more difficult for us to manage the young ones. these days, the boys can come to school, and just drink beer or smoke indian hemp right at the school. when we try to counsel zikani kaunda and nancy kendall 38 december 18, 2001 them, they say 'this is a democratic world and we are allowed to behave as we like.' it is the same with boy-girl relationships…their parents are often the ones who set these examples. their behavior has become immoral, you will find some men drinking in the morning or forming relationships at the market when they go to do some small business. (teacher, central region, 2001) almost two thirds of all interviewees believed that the definition of democracy as absolute freedom was a misunderstanding because it appeared to cause so much social dislocation, and appeared opposed to existing cultural and social norms; at the same time, support for the idea of a "true" democratic rule remained strong. as one village head commented: democracy is misunderstood these days. here people say democracy means the freedom to do whatever you want; this is why people come with guns and trucks to steal our cattle…some people, when they do these things, they will even point to [a minister involved in a large corruption scandal at the ministry of education]… and they will say 'you see, that is democracy, don't tell me i can't do what i want'. (village head, central region, 2001) interviewees also associated this "misunderstanding" of democracy with a shift in emphasis from communal to individual responsibilities and care. when asked about hunger in her village, a grandmother replied: people's behavior is very much changed. in the past, everyone would eat together, men over there and women over there, all out of the same pot. then that changed, so each family was eating together. but if the children of that house were hungry, they would come over and eat with us. no one went hungry. these days…we do not feel free to feed other people's children. their parents must work for them…(village elder, central region, 2001). another woman commented: in the past…anyone in my village could tell me when i was misbehaving. now with democracy, if you try to caution a child about their behavior, they can even abuse you, and their parents may even come to shout at you. so these days, everyone keeps more to themselves. (parent, northern region, 2001) when asked what was wrong with current understandings of democracy, most interviewees replied that personal freedoms have to be limited by their effects on the community. that is, the majority of interviewees provided a definition of "correct" democracy that is easily aligned with western notions of citizen rights and responsibilities, but it was a definition they felt was not presently operating8. interviewees attributed the general misunderstanding of democracy to two causes. first, democracy was widely perceived as an imported idea that is alien to people's history, culture, and daily lives. a parent expressed this perception as follows: you know, democracy is a foreign thing to malawi. it was brought here by foreigners and it will take us long to learn about it. no one understands it yet, prospects of educating for democracy in struggling third wave regimes: the case of malawi current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 39 not even those at the top, so people are not behaving as they should. they will even curse each other in parliament…this type of disrespect is not right, but we see it even in our children now. (parent, northern region, 2001) because of the perception that democracy is foreign, people generally felt there was only one 'correct' democracy, which had to be taught to them by outsiders. we were frequently asked to take up this role during our research: we do not understand democracy here. even we teachers have not been taught what it is, so we cannot teach the children properly. because of this, people abuse it every which way…we need to be taught by outsiders like you about what this democracy is. (teacher, southern region, 2000) at the same time that people felt reliant on outside sources of information, they reported receiving almost no guidance or information from the government or other sources about any aspect of democratization in malawi. as one village head said: you see, the problem is that we do not know about democracy. the government doesn't tell us much. i myself do not even know what to do most times. someone can steal something. i heard i can no longer punish him, but instead he must be taken to the police. but the police these days are useless…[have you ever heard from anyone (official) about the new laws of the country?] no, we do not know the new laws. (village head, central region, 2001) second, democracy was perceived primarily as a national-level political phenomenon. due in part to banda's extraordinarily repressive and paternalistic regime, anything perceived as being in the realm of the national government is still seldom openly challenged in villages. as one village head explained when asked why he did not begin a dialogue about democracy in his own area: these days are not so different than the past. the mp [minister of parliament]…came to shout and threaten me because i was seen walking with an opposition member. he said he would burn my house down. i said 'is this democracy…in a democracy can i not talk to anyone?' he had to leave then, but i know that if we discuss democracy…this will cause problems for me. (village head, southern region, 2001) to openly protest local 'misunderstandings' of democracy, people must protest the government representative's misunderstandings of democracy. however, fear of speaking, or particularly taking actions against, the government is still prevalent at the community level. current efforts to educate for democracy how have people in malawi gotten the information they have about democracy? the vast majority of interviewees reported that the radio and political rallies were their primary sources of information on democracy. however, there have been four key efforts to provide information about democracy on a national scale: 1) party rallies before the 1994 elections; 2) a revised civics curriculum designed to provide information zikani kaunda and nancy kendall 40 december 18, 2001 to schoolchildren; 3) ngo efforts to provide civics education about democracy, human rights, and the constitution; and 4) mass education campaigns via the radio and posters9. each of the four efforts had either serious shortcomings or constraints, and each appears to have provided little useful information or space for creating a lasting, localized 'culture' of democracy. the party rallies suffered a number of impediments to providing basic information about democracy. first, the country's new democratic structures, and the roles the parties would play in them, were not fully determined until after the 1994 election and the party rallies that accompanied it. second, each party was generally more interested in discrediting other parties and winning over voters with broad promises, than they were in educating people per se. the types and breadth of promises made during the campaigns--for example, freedom to do whatever one wanted, jobs for everyone, free shoes for everyone, immediate universal free primary education (ufpe), no more selfhelp development activities--severely weakened the government's ability to fulfill its campaign promises. this eroded public trust, and led many people to (often bitterly) associate democracy with the promises of absolute freedom and change that politicians so eagerly offered them in 1994. a second key effort to educate about democracy took place in the education sector. the united states agency for international development (usaid) funded a complete overhaul of the banda-era civics curriculum in the mid-1990s. the curriculum was completed in 1998. despite donor pressure, the government has yet to distribute it. in 1997, the government distributed revised curricula for all subjects; and introduced a new, single subject called social studies/general studies, which incorporated the bandaera civics, geography, health, and other assorted topics. this is the only civics component in the present curriculum. it includes approximately two class periods a year from standards (grades) 5 to 8 on topics such as: multipartyism in malawi, multipartyism in surrounding countries, central versus local government, the structure of local government, the structure of central government, and the six steps of passing a bill in parliament. no definition of democracy in the 21st century10 appears in the curriculum. ngo efforts to provide information about democracy after the 1994 elections were quickly mired in politics, with the political parties almost consistently criticizing any ngo effort as being biased towards one party or another. the result, according to an ngo representative was that: …we could only say the broadest things, and we almost stopped using the word democracy. we talked more about international human rights, but we could not link these to what was happening politically in malawi. (democracy ngo representative, personal communication, 1999) furthermore, malawian ngos were a relatively new phenomenon in malawi--most were founded no earlier than 1993, and were based in malawi's cities. particularly during their first years, they suffered from numerous resource, management, and personnel constraints that severely limited their ability to have a widespread impact, especially in rural areas. no interviewee identified an ngo as a source of information prospects of educating for democracy in struggling third wave regimes: the case of malawi current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 41 about democracy, although one interviewee had received a radio from a german-funded civic education project11. radio continues to be both the most powerful media outlet in malawi (malawi communications, 1998), and the most monopolized by the ruling party (ott, phiri, and patel, 2000). the important role the radio could play in providing information about democracy is well understood by politicians and donors alike. however, because it has remained monopolized by the ruling party during the election campaigns, it has been used primarily as a platform for providing technical information on how to vote, and limited (and sometimes biased) information about the various political candidates. before the 1999 elections, elaborate schemes to allow equal time to the various political parties and their candidates were drawn up and agreed to by the ruling party, but they were never enacted (ott et al., 2000). donors and ngos continue to pressure the government to enact the liberalization reforms agreed to in 1999. the logic of current efforts to educate for democracy taken individually, the efforts to "educate for democracy" described above appear flawed in quite different ways. we argue that there is, in fact, a logic to their weaknesses. it is this underlying logic that must change to create a system of "educating for democracy" that can help shape a political culture supportive of democracy in malawi. what are the shared weaknesses of all four efforts? first, all of the efforts focus on generating information at the top and providing it to people at the bottom. although this focus is sometimes warranted, the consistent use of a top-down approach helped foster the notion that democracy is a foreign idea, and placed access to information on democracy firmly under the control of the government. given malawi's history, this creates an immense roadblock to later participation and mobilization at the local level. it also helped create a structure with no established lines of communication from the bottom to the top. second, the methods used to provide information do not model, or allow for participation in, democratic processes. for example, ngos could provide information in ways that create a democratic atmosphere of participation and open dialogue, but these methods are for the most part not used--both because of resource limitations and political fears. likewise, the school in countries like malawi is hardly a structure that embodies or incorporates many democratic principles12. what little civics curriculum there is was presented to students in a top-down manner that provided no opportunity for discussion. furthermore, almost all teachers we interviewed said they needed further training on both the topic of democracy, and the methods they should use to teach the topic, before they could feel comfortable teaching the social studies material. this sentiment is illustrated by one head teacher's comment: the school should play a major role in educating our future leaders on democracy. but the curriculum has so little information, and we teachers ourselves do not understand democracy. without information from the government, we cannot just teach about democracy any which way. (head teacher, southern region, 2000) zikani kaunda and nancy kendall 42 december 18, 2001 similar constraints to modeling democratic, participatory processes exist in radio and political party efforts to educate for democracy. third, there is no opportunity for local dialogue or input into processes of democratization. none of the efforts facilitates people working together to blend basic information about national laws and democratic structures with aspects of their own histories and cultures. in a number of cases, these histories and cultures offer fascinating approaches to consensual and participatory democratic processes (p. mwaipaya, personal communication, 1999) that are entirely ignored in the present education for democracy efforts. in short, local dialogue, and lines of communication between local and national actors and structures are not encouraged in the present efforts. in addition, none of the efforts provide space for people to question the values that are presently associated with democracy (absolute freedom, corruption, lack of care for others), but seem so undemocratic to most people. we argue that these weaknesses are evident in all current efforts to educate for democracy because the globalized, mainstream donor and government definition of democracy in the 21st century, has generally narrowed, to emphasizing a minimalist or basic, as opposed to a broad or comprehensive, definition of democracy. it focuses on the processes (government by the people), as opposed to the outcomes (government for the people) of democracy (bratton and van de walle, 1997); tends to present an elitist stance (stewart, 2001); and emphasizes the 'triumph' of liberal democratic models (held, 1996). for example: u.s. interests in malawi are aimed first and foremost at supporting the dramatic political transition that brought malawi...to democratic multi-party elections…fundamental economic liberalization and structural reform have accompanied this political transformation. attention now centers primarily on the consolidation of these gains, strengthening the policy and institutional framework across sectors…(usaid, 1999). even the growing literature on and funding for civil society, which in countries like malawi includes many organizations with strong normative stances (for example, church groups), usually focuses on the institutional, as opposed to normative or cultural; and national, as opposed to local, aspects of civil society13. for example, the british council's web page on 'civil society' states: british council's focus on civil society is central to its work in governance as we see the pressure exerted on state and local government institutions by citizens [sic] organizations as key to the development of accountability and democracy…when looking at the role played by civil society in accountability and governance we look at the role of political parties, academic bodies and the unions. (british council, 1999) an alternative model of democracy that attends less to the roles of institutions and elite actors, and more to the norms, values, and culture of democracy, would address many of the weaknesses of present national and international efforts to strengthen and educate for democracy in africa. fukuyama (1995) presents one framework for bridging these prospects of educating for democracy in struggling third wave regimes: the case of malawi current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 43 alternative and mainstream definitions. he describes four levels upon which consolidation of democracy must occur: ideology, institutions, civil society, and culture. culture is defined as the "…deepest level [which] includes phenomena such as family structure, religion, moral values, ethnic consciousness, 'civic-ness', and particularistic historical traditions" (p. 7). ideology, institutions, and more lately civil society (defined primarily in institutional terms), have drawn the attention of academics, governments, and donors, and are central to the present globalized conception of democracy. culture has not. fukuyama believes that culture underlies civil society. therefore, future work on democratic consolidation must focus on the interplay of culture and civil society, which will in turn lead to a better understanding of institutions, ideology, and democratic consolidation in different settings. furthermore, fukuyama argues that, "…while modern western political thought tries to construct a just order from the top down…traditional asian cultures start with levels 4 and 3 and work upward" (p. 10). this allows asian cultures to specifically address the role of culture and values in institutional and ideological structures in a way that western societies do not. this leads to democratic models that look quite different than western models, but are both shaped by, and function smoothly within, existing cultural structures. robinson argues for the inclusion of a focus on 'the masses' and political culture [defined as "…political practice that is culturally legitimated and societally validated by local knowledge…" (robinson in lewis, ed., 1998, p. 311)], in order to understand why african democracies are behaving as they are. she points out that models that focus on local cultural context in africa have been largely ignored, and argues that: regime change theory is about elite competition. it brackets community norms, customs and symbols of power and considers such factors irrelevant to transition outcomes…[but] in light of the post-1989 african experience…without minimizing the importance of elite values and behavior, my insistence is on the need to revisit the political relevance of non-elites and subordinate groups…(robinson, 1998, p. 333). we agree with the emphases that both robinson and fukuyama encourage, but argue that the simple addition of a focus on culture or non-elites to the existing mainstream framework for understanding democracy is not enough. this is true particularly in countries like malawi, where there is a very small population of (primarily urban) elites, and a very large population of (primarily rural) non-elites, as well as a long historical tradition of communal leadership and organizational structures, coupled with a short historical tradition of state boundaries and structures. instead, we argue that efforts to understand and support democracy in malawi must originate from a 'cultural,' 'nonelite,' historical perspective, that refocuses attention on norms, values, and local interpretations of democracy and its alternatives. this approach provides space for dialogue about the shapes democracy can take, privileging local understandings, histories and justifications over 'foreign' notions that are often supported primarily by national and international elites. the information arising from this approach should then shape our understanding of the roles that elites and institutions can play in supporting democracy. in the long run, we believe such an approach provides a model for understanding why democratic regimes in countries like zikani kaunda and nancy kendall 44 december 18, 2001 malawi are failing, and what roles various actors and organizations can play to sustain democracy, in whatever new form it may take. this approach in turn provides new models for educating for democracy. the future of education for democracy in malawi a mainstream view of the role of education in supporting democracy is: even though many africans interpret democracy in universal terms, and value it intrinsically as well as instrumentally, their understanding of democratic principles is extremely vague. education can help to offset some of these shortcomings by closing gaps in political knowledge, but it does not always deepen commitment to democratic values. (bratton and mattes, 2001, p.120) on the contrary, to be effective, education for democracy in malawi will have to play a dual role of providing information about what systems of democracy have developed in other areas, and stepping back from the western conflation of democratic principles (of, for example, basic individual rights and responsibilities), with western processes, including present systems of representation and decisionmaking (taylor, 1996). this would provide the space necessary for malawians to determine how democratic principles are best carried out in their own communities and country--from the bottom up--and with space for the consideration of values and cultural norms that may reshape the institutions of democracy in malawi. taylor emphasizes that, without such space for accommodation to culturally different normative beliefs--which may sometimes lead to (particularly institutional) outcomes, viewed as fundamentally "undemocratic" by westerners--the long-term ability of a country to create a stable democratic system in which issues of pragmatic power relations and notions of belonging are adequately addressed are slim. the school14 should therefore serve as a site in which community and state work together in active dialogue to determine the shape of both the school and the democracy. however this process must have limits. carr and hartnett (1996) caution that: …a democratic theory of education…must show how democratic participation in educational decision-making is to be circumscribed by conditions designed to preserve and protect the democratic values and educational aims that such a theory is intended to foster and promote…a democratic theory of education must, therefore, limit democratic decision-making in order to prevent educational decisions from being made which would prevent the next generation of citizens from acquiring the knowledge, virtues and dispositions that their participation in the process of conscious social reproduction requires. (pp. 189190) education for democracy must therefore emphasize the notion and practice of democratic participation leading to conscious social reproduction, not a set-in-stone series of externally-constructed rules and regulations, or a locally-determined educative process that stifles the ability of students to achieve the same rights as those who determined that local process. prospects of educating for democracy in struggling third wave regimes: the case of malawi current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 45 a college-educated urban man who was visiting his sister in one of the villages, explained the present role of formal education in understanding democracy as follows: education is necessary to understand democracy. education teaches us what we do not have. it makes us feel we are underdeveloped. once we have that feeling, then we look to the world and see how far behind we are. we can struggle to catch up. but these people here [in the village], they are uneducated. they cannot understand where we are in the world; they need more guidance to understand what this democracy is and what it can bring us. (southern region, 2001) certainly, we should envision roles for the formal school other than to reemphasize the foreign nature of a model of democracy in which malawi is simply 'underdeveloped,' but are there other models of education in malawi that we can draw on to reimagine education for democracy? in comparison to formal school settings, many non-formal educational settings in malawi embody norms and practices more closely aligned with educating for a new model of democracy. they are engaged with many more people and often model culturally appropriate--and often much more participatory--ways of learning. for example, initiation camps15 in the southern region of malawi regularly incorporate community members, who often feel disempowered in the formal setting (children, parents, elders, local leaders), into both teaching and managerial roles. they use handson teaching and learning methods that often emphasize a give-and-take relationship between teachers and learners, and provide space for an explicit discussion of the norms and values that shape everyday life decisions. they sometimes draw on historical practices and beliefs that provide alternative models for democratic participation and decision-making16. they are also, tellingly, often in direct conflict with the formal school about what they teach, when they teach it, and how they teach it. the formal schools greatest strengths for educating for democracy lie in their direct relationship to the state and its vast (in comparison to non-formal education institutions) human and material resources. their weaknesses rest in their frequent conflicts with local ways of knowing, their historical roots, dependence on the state, and relative inability at this time to carry out their existing functions (jere et al, 2001). the formal school could be vastly strengthened as a tool for educating for democracy, by turning to local non-formal structures and incorporating valuable lessons on modeling democracy, participatory methods, teaching and learning, and normative concerns. it could also be useful to incorporate some of the personnel from the non-formal sector (for example, having village leaders come in to talk about local history, local structures of leadership, local arts, etc.). unless the school incorporates these lessons, its structures and ideology will remain suited only to transmitting and modeling state-driven information about foreign, locally inappropriate models of democracy. however, incorporating non-formal ways of teaching and learning may not be feasible precisely because of the school's connection to the state. israel (2001) says, "it takes a society that is committed to openness, change, cultural pluralism, and respect and tolerance for human differences to allow for the kind of classroom environment and pedagogy that nurtures responsible citizens of a…democracy" (p. 1). we would argue zikani kaunda and nancy kendall 46 december 18, 2001 that it calls for both society's and the state's commitment to create these environments. the school is intimately connected to the state, and change in the school is inherently political in nature--a dialogue to one degree or another between the state and society about what kinds of citizens should be nurtured (carr and hartnett, 1996). if the state is uninterested in creating an environment that truly fosters local participation and debate, then the school will be unlikely to serve as an effective institutional vessel for these ideals, regardless of the society's wishes. conclusion state efforts to educate for democracy in malawi should incorporate local, culturallyappropriate, non-formal educational practices into the formal school. at the same time, the relationship between the community, school, and state must shift to create a system of more open dialogue and debate. this vision of educating for democracy is an ideal built around our long-term involvement with both formal and non-formal education systems in malawi, and our belief that the formal system provides the opportunity to work towards a vision of democracy shared between the state and local communities. but this model is an ideal, and there are more than the usual practical constraints to implementing it. such a program of education for democracy must have political support--local, national, and international--in order to be implemented effectively. donors presently play a significant role in supporting both the education system and efforts to strengthen democracy and "good governance" in malawi. these institutions would likely need to play some role--both financial and ideological--in fostering this new approach. however, that would mean they would have to radically alter some of their perceptions of the relationship between schooling and democracy, the importance of education for democracy, and the shape of democracy itself17. donors are limited by their own cultures and internal structures, which seldom easily respond to or work in concert with local cultural systems18. in a country like malawi, with a history of severe government repression, the upper echelons of government must also be on board enough to guarantee they will not deliberately try to derail efforts to educate for democracy. this is, we believe, unlikely to occur in the current climate. processes of democratization are not technical in nature-they are inherently political. people who understand the current laws, feel actively involved in the governance of their country, and feel that corruption and intimidation are not acceptable components of their democracy, would threaten the government's present ability to act without concern for, and often in conflict with, their constituents' needs and desires. in such a situation, knowledge really can be powerful, which leaves the school vulnerable to political pressure. school-based intimidation is already appearing in small pockets, even at a time when the school plays such a small role in educating for democracy19. politicians are aware that education can prove a powerful weapon in supporting democracy. their move away from supporting efforts to provide even basic information that might empower people to hold them accountable for their actions, much less efforts that might foster debate and open participation, cannot be ignored. furthermore, previous efforts in malawi to mediate tensions between formal and nonformal education systems have generally met with limited success20. formal schooling, prospects of educating for democracy in struggling third wave regimes: the case of malawi current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 47 especially in sections of the southern and central regions of malawi, is still associated with norms and values considered contrary to local religious practices and traditions. the historical roots of the formal education system cannot be ignored in examining its ability to incorporate different ways of seeing and functioning into its structure. without extensive restructuring, it may, in the end prove impossible for the school to serve as an effective mediator between the community and the state in educating for democracy. however, given the limited resources of the state, and the increasingly limited local support for existing democratic structures, it seems likely that if the government wishes to strengthen democratic support and legitimacy in malawi, the school will have to adapt to fulfill the role of a true educating force for democracy. notes 1. regional locations for quotes are provided for two reasons: first, to assure confidentiality to the interviewees by not providing village or district locations; and second, because malawi's strongest lines of political division at this time are regional. 2. this is a term coined by samuel huntington; he defines a wave of democratization as "a group of [democratic] transitions…that occur within a specified period of time and that significantly outnumber transitions in the opposite direction during that period (quoted in diamond, 1999, p. 2)." the third wave of democratization began in the 1970s with portugal, then spread to eastern europe, and washed over africa in the late 1980s and 1990s. 3. generally, recent research on democratization in africa has emphasized the crossstate similarities of transitions to democracy, and the widespread erosion of the gains made during this initial wave of democratization. for example, bratton and van de walle (1997) provide detailed information on the trends of democratization across third wave african democracies through 1994, emphasizing the expansion, in turn, of waves of political protest (peaking in 1991), liberalization reforms (peaking in 1992), competitive elections (peaking in 1993), and basic political rights (peaking in 1994). they then note that, by 1997, there is evidence that many of the democratic gains of 1990-1994 were eroding across the continent. authors such as harbeson detail the deficits of "…political organizational capacity…weaknesses of civil society, political parties, and democratically restructured legislatures to consolidate democracy in…contemporary sub-saharan africa" (p. 243, 1997), again emphasizing the continental nature of these trends. 4. research will be conducted in urban areas in january, 2002 which may reveal important differences between rural and urban populations in malawi. however, 85% of malawians still live in rural areas, and it is these rural voices in particular that are so seldom heard in national and international policy and governance circles. 5. this information was gathered through action research focused not on democracy but on girls' education. zikani kaunda and nancy kendall 48 december 18, 2001 6. within the last two weeks, "the nation" and "the daily times" newspapers have reported that a danish aid audit uncovered k10 million unaccounted for by the ruling party, leading to a freeze of some, and possibly all, danish aid to malawi. some japanese aid was also recently frozen following charges that the ruling party bought luxury boats with money intended for small-scale fishermen. 7. research was conducted in one village in each region of the country. the villages were chosen in consultation with district level government personnel, who were asked to identify villages that were "average" in characteristics such as distance from an urban center, natural resources, school size and quality, political activity, and 8. ngo activity. 9. this supports the findings of bratton and mattes' (2001) study, which claims that 88% of malawians could provide a definition of democracy, and 66% supported democracy. but the ethnographic detail of a qualitative study allows for a closer examination of how these general findings play out, and the division between what people perceive as the "correct" definition of democracy, versus the common "misunderstanding" of democracy that plays out on a daily basis, helps explain why only about half of all malawians reject all democratic alternatives, only 57% are "satisfied" with the way democracy works in malawi, and general lawlessness and social breakdown are increasing yearly. 10. we do not discuss the role of poster campaigns in this article; the radio and poster campaigns had many similar weaknesses, but the poster campaigns raised further issues of distribution, pictoral representations, and literacy. 11. brief definitions of democracy in the historical past (for example, in ancient greece and rome) do appear in two of the history units in the social studies curriculum. 12. it should be noted that there are some newer ngo efforts that have been funded by donors to provide information directly to communities about democracy. however, they generally cover only a small geographic area, and most have not yet been evaluated. for the purposes of this paper, we have focused on the ngos that were mandated to provide national coverage and began their projects by 1996. the later, more localized ngo efforts will be interesting to evaluate; they show promise of having more of an effect than these earlier efforts, at least in part because they attend to the specific needs of the communities in which they work. 13. cf. fuller, 1999. 14. cf. foley and edwards, 1996; and gyimah-boadi, 1996. 15. we will focus primarily on the school when explaining the role we feel education must play in strengthening democracy in malawi, although similar roles must be played by other non-formal and formal structures. for example, levinger, israel, and schubert (1999) identify "the governmental units (national, state, and local) charged with administering the education system" and "the institutions within a society that set and implement public policies that influence education (e.g. the courts, the prospects of educating for democracy in struggling third wave regimes: the case of malawi current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 49 legislature, the executive branch of government" (p. 1) as other settings in which processes of education for democracy should occur. we would add to this list nonformal educational settings such as initiation camps, religious schools or groups, and media outlets. 16. in the southern region, particularly amongst the yaos, both boys and girls undergo initiation ceremonies. these ceremonies originally took place at puberty, and taught boys and girls about caring for their changing bodies, how to be good wives and mothers and how to behave towards other community members. they also included, often quite graphic, information about, and demonstrations of, sex. the boys were usually circumcised. the ceremonies traditionally took place in the simba (bush), and boys and girls were initiated in separate camps under the watchful eyes of elder counselors. these days, children are being initiated at much younger ages (people claim this is at least in part because of poverty; both the initiation counselors and the child's parents receive money when a child is initiated); and the initiations are occurring in different environments, vary more in length (from a week to over a month), and vary more in the graphic nature of the material presented to children. 17. more detailed information on non-formal educational settings and their distinct characteristics in malawi are available from the authors. 18. generally, education for democracy for 'the masses' is given a relatively unimportant position in donor and government funding activities. for example, total expenses for malawi's 1999 elections were k1,172,394,519. of this total, the government provided about k800,000,000 and donors provided about k400,000,000. less than k14,000,000 of the government funds were used for education activities. donors provided a separate pot of about k90,000,000 directly to ngos to carry out civic education campaigns, and gtz provided a separate pot of unlisted quantity for the training of political leaders (ott et al., 2000). all the rest of the funds were used to prepare for voter registration and polling, to buy voting supplies, to transport officials, and so forth. obviously, such expenses are necessary, but the focus remains on the 'basic' technical exercise of voting, not on assuring that the people for whom the exercise is held are on board. 19. see ferguson (1990) for a detailed account of the interaction of donor, national, and local cultures around the topic of 'development.' we argue that similar interactions occur around the topic of 'democracy,' and in fact, that the two notions are closely intertwined. 20. interviews with community members, teachers, and local leaders; central and northern regions, 2001. 21. however, see creccom's work with initiation counselors and local leaders to support girls' education for an example of a successful effort to open up a dialogue between actors in the formal and non-formal education sectors. zikani kaunda and nancy kendall 50 december 18, 2001 references bratton, m., & van de walle, n. (1997). democratic experiments in africa: regime transitions in comparative perspective. cambridge: cambridge university press. bratton, m., & mattes, r. (2001). how people view democracy: africa's surprising universalism. journal of democracy, 12(1), 107-121. british council. (1999). civil society. british council. [online]. available at: http://www.britishcouncil.org/governance/civsoc/index.htm carr, w., & hartnett, a. (1996). education and the struggle for democracy: the politics of educational ideas. buckingham: open university press. chirambo, k. (1999, june 21). ethnic consciousness dominates malawi polls. [online]. available at: http://www.sardc.net/sd/elections99/malawi/mal_ethnic.html diamond, l., & plattner, m., eds. (1999). democratization in africa. baltimore: johns hopkins university press. ferguson, j. (1990). the anti-politics machine: "development," depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in lesotho. cambridge: cambridge university press. foley, m., & edwards, b. (1996). the paradox of civil society. journal of democracy, 7(3), 38-52. freedom house. (1994-2001). fh country ratings. freedom house. [online]. available at: http://www.freedomhouse.org/ratings fukuyama, f. (1995). the primacy of culture. journal of democracy, 6(1), 7-14. fuller, b. (1999). government confronts culture: the struggle for local democracy in southern africa. new york: garland publishers. gyimah-boadi, e. (1996). civil society in africa. journal of democracy, 7(2), 118-132. harbeson, j. (2000). externally assisted democratization: theoretical issues and african realities. in j. harbeson & rothchild (eds.), africa in world politics (3rd ed.). boulder: westview press. held, d. (1996). models of democracy (2nd ed.). stanford: stanford university press. israel, r. (2001). education and democracy. the quality link, 4, 1-2. jere, d., chilora, h., kasambara, j., kaphesi, e., kamangira, y., maliakini, s., & mabeti, f. (2001). democracy and quality of primary education in malawi. the quality link, 4, 1011. prospects of educating for democracy in struggling third wave regimes: the case of malawi current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 51 levinger, b., israel, r., & schubert, j. (1999). an analytical framework for strengthening the links between education and democracy. presented at the annual meeting of the comparative and international education society, toronto. malawi communications. (1998). malawi communications: "another sorry tale of frustration". [online]. available at: http://www.gn.apc.org/article19/prs/malacom.html ott, m., phiri, k., & patel, n., eds. (2000). malawi's second democratic elections: process, problems, and prospects. blantyre: christian literature association in malawi (claim). robinson, p. (1998). democratization: understanding the relationship between regime change and the culture of politics. in p. lewis (ed.), africa: dilemmas of development and change. boulder: westview press. stewart, r. (2001). african views on democracy: a public opinion perspective. presented at the annual spring conference of the stanford-berkeley joint center in african studies, stanford university. taylor, a. (1996). education for democracy: assimilation or emancipation for aboriginal australians? comparative education review, 40(4) 426-438. united states agency for international development (usaid). (1999). building democracy in malawi. usaid. [online] available at: http://www.info.gov/democracy/afr/malawi.html young, c. (1996). africa: an interim balance sheet. journal of democracy, 7(3), 53-68. © 2006 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 104 april 21, 2006 afterword vandra l. masemann ontario institute for studies in education at the university of toronto the events leading up to the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the comparative and international education society have led to some reflection on the history of the society and on the role of comparative education as a field of study in those last fifty years. the papers in this issue of current issues in comparative education form part of this process of reflection. personal reflection i have had a long interest in the questions raised in this particular issue of cice. when i attended my first cies meeting in san francisco in 1975, it was my first conference in the united states. i gave an invited paper on “comparative studies of education in the anthropological mode” (masemann, 1976), which owed a lot to my experience of having done fieldwork in west africa at a girls’ boarding school, as an anthropologist qua anthropologist without a single course in comparative education, or even education for that matter. i remember what i said after i returned to toronto: “the strange thing about the americans is that they all seem to think that the whole world is a field site for their students.” they did not seem to think of other countries as being held in parity of esteem by the united states. the novelty of that feeling has never left me. in 1975, i had no idea what entrenched paradigms existed in the field and what my role would be in the field of comparative education. now that i look back, i think that i fought for recognition of the marginal and the voiceless and the invisible during the ensuing 30 years. i saw africa receding in the public and political consciousness over the decades, i saw women and girls as lacking voices, or when they acquired a voice, lacking listeners. i saw indigenous cultures become invisible under the juggernaut of industrialization and now globalization. in regard to my misgivings about quantitative methodology, i always remembered a visit by social critic paul goodman (author of “growing up absurd”) to the university of toronto in the late 1960’s in which he said that one should always mistrust numbers with zeros. the more zeros, the more one should mistrust them. nelly stromquist (2005) notes in a recent review of comparative and international education: ...the influence of cie is determined not only by its intellectual value but also by the proximity, of its practitioners to the circles of power. those wielding influence are not academics but rather the staff members of international organizations and their transnational counterparts who subscribe to dominant, market-oriented development models that are not substantiated by empirical research (p. 107). he went on to equate zeros and money and power, and counting with all of them. as for my theoretical leanings, they owe much to my parents and grandparents who ranged from social democratic on the right end to fabian socialists on the left end of the political continuum. afterword current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(2) 105 the process of reflecting on the field one aspect of this exercise of reflection about the past has been the process of gathering together information about the historical development of both the formally-constituted comparative (and international) education societies, and about the less administrative and more theoretical processes of the development of the “field” itself. the second task in this process of reflection is to ask questions about the development of the field, and to subject its development to the same kind of analytical processes of comparison as one does in the first level of data-gathering. for example, one can even pose theoretical questions about the foci and lacunae in the study of comparative education. in other words, what have we focused on, and what have we omitted to study? what theoretical approaches have gained in popularity or gone out of favor? what approaches have been purposely avoided? what have we not even noticed that we weren’t focused on? and what has it meant that we didn’t even notice the gaps or the systematic exclusion of certain phenomena or approaches? what if “we” are taking it upon ourselves to make massive over-generalizations about the development of the field because there are other ways of thinking about it, or because people with very divergent approaches do not have access to the travel grants, technology, institutions of higher education, or forums for speaking that we do? and what if there is not one field at all? the papers in this issue consider all of these questions, and that is their richness. my remarks in this commentary will examine any number of questions that they raise in relation to the development of the field and our attempts to understand its history, in my case, from a critical approach. i will also try to identify alternative accounts of the historical facts presented. i will attempt, in this commentary to abide by the injunction of the noted french historian of science on the distortions of history: “before we join end to end the journeys along a road, we should first make sure it is the same road.” (canguilhem, 1975:21) the call for papers the first task, however, is to examine the call for papers for this issue of cice to see what the assumptions were about this task we have ahead of us. i will examine this piece of writing as “text” and draw out what assumptions are made about the importance of the 50th anniversary of cies and its relationship to the development of comparative education as a field. the first two sentences are as follows: fifty years ago, the comparative and international education society was founded, signaling the emergence of comparative and international education (cie) as a distinct academic field. since then, the field has experienced significant growth within the academy and has directly affected the formation and implementation of educational policies around the world. the first sentence attributes to the cies the honor of being the cornerstone of the founding of comparative education, and conflates the establishment of the society with the founding of the field. in fact, the field had existed long before that date. the so-called ‘father” of comparative education is usually considered to be the renowned french educationist, marc-antoine jullien, who had the idea of developing a “science” of vandra l. masemann 106 april 21, 2006 education, since he saw education has having played a crucial role in forming a revolutionary consciousness in students before the french revolution.. he published his famous work in comparative education, esquisse et vues preliminaries d’un ouvrage sur l’é̀ducation compareé̀ entrepris d’bord pour les vingt-deux cantons de la suisse at pour quelques parties de l’allemagne at de l’italie…(outline and preliminary views for a work on comparative education undertaken for the twenty-two cantons of switzerland and for some parts of germany and italy, that can be subsequently carried out in the same way for all european states…) in 1817, in which he proposed a project for studying education in all the countries of europe, eventually using a standardized questionnaire with 266 items. it was “the first attempt to separate an empirical field of observation into its constituent parts, to devise techniques of inquiry and to use formal models of analysis” (gautherin, 1993, p. 757). while his work was somewhat neglected during the nineteenth century, the first course on the science of education was officially introduced at the sorbonne in paris in 1883. between 1883 and 1956, comparative education was developing in the countries of europe and north america, and in other countries such as china. ruth hayhoe is fond of saying that there was a textbook in comparative education in china two years before kandel’s work was published (personal communication, april 5, 2006). the next section of the call for papers is as follows and forms the foundation of this collection and the core of the main argument that one is pursuing as one reads the papers: as cie developed as a field and came to play an increasing role in shaping educational strategies and policies, it came under attack as being largely an adjunct of western imperialism and as having been insensitive toward the cultural and political realities of the developing and post-colonial world. since these powerful critiques of cie were first articulated in the 1960s, how has the discipline reacted? how have the lessons from this experience affected our research and practice? what is our sense of justice toward the people whose development we are supposed to support? when i first read this section, i assumed that one or some of the papers submitted would be from “the south”, as i had heard from harold herman from the southern african comparative and history of education society last year that he felt comparative education had been dominated by countries of the north and that it had not (specifically in the body of the wcces) been able to spread to other countries of the south since it was in the contradictory position of supporting the dominance of the north. so, it is noteworthy that we have not heard from the south in this collection. we are, instead, talking about the south or the east. and we are, of course, in the north. however, there are many questions to attend to each paper, and i must carry on with my task. the papers elizabeth’s swing’s paper is the result of three years’ intensive work in the cies archives of kent state university in ohio. it is, in a sense, an administrative history. it afterword current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(2) 107 gives details about the development of the cies as an academic society, and the changes that it underwent as it grew in size, held its own independent conferences, changed its original name to include the word “international,” hosted many diverse theoretical approaches and substantive interests, and diversified its internal structure to a greater level of complexity. her paper can only give a brief hint of how important the cies is in the lives of its members, and she gives a fitting salute to it from a student at the end of her paper. in closing, i might comment that the paper that she wrote was never intended to be one on the state of the field in the last fifty years. that is a paper that needs yet to be written, summarizing all the papers that have been given at the fifty conferences, and outlining the main interests and approaches of the participants. nelly stromquist has written a general overview of comparative and international education for the 75th anniversary of the harvard educational review (stromquist, 2005). what is noteworthy about the cies in the context of this issue of cice is the assumption that the cies is the comparative and international education society. as is remarked upon in the manzon and bray paper, it does not contain the initials us in front of its name, in the way, for example, that usaid does. it has also been the practice of cies to admit members from any country in the world, although these members used to be listed separately in the cies directory. lastly, it has been the practice in cies to have at least one board spot reserved for an overseas member. all of these practices have been carried out in the name of fostering international relations, but they have had the effect of stratifying the societies hierarchically and lessening, in some cases, the participation of country nationals in their own local societies, if and when they can get funding to attend the cies meetings. this has certainly been the case in canada. for those starting out in the field, it is often confusing for canadians who learn about both societies and who wonder if ciesc is the canadian “branch” of cies. it is also sometimes confusing for canadians at the meetings who find themselves identified as belonging to one of the regional committees of the cies, depending on where they live in canada, as a northern extension of the usa, or else who are assigned a room for a canadian “regional “ meeting. it has often been remarked--only half in jest--that one can more often find a quorum for the ciesc meetings at cies meetings than at the meetings in canada. these underlying currents are also present in the relationship between the cies and the wcces (world council of comparative and international education societies), termed by manzon and bray as “synergies and ambiguities”. in short, the cies sees itself as the premier society of comparative and international education, international in scope and welcoming to individual members from all countries. the world council, on the other hand, is a federation of member societies, with the president of each being a member of the executive committee. it holds a world congress every three years, to which individuals from any country are welcome to submit proposals to present. which organization, then, is truly the “world” society? the answer is complex. mark bray, maria manzon, and i are at present editing the collected histories of the world council and its member societies (masemann, bray and manzon, forthcoming). we have learned a great deal about the in-country development of comparative education from the 22 chapters submitted by member societies. the vandra l. masemann 108 april 21, 2006 world council has as one of its tasks the fostering of the development of comparative education around the world, so these authors report that its congresses seemed to spark the growth of interest in the host country, for example, in brazil (1987), the then czech and slovak republic (1991), and cuba (2004). in addition, the history of comparative education at the country level is played out in the context of the local regulations for institutions of teacher education, the place of the foundations of education within the teacher education and general education program, the development of graduate education in educational research, and the role of the central government or private institutions in promoting educational research and international development more generally. each country has its own story to tell. comparative education has not just spread like a vine over the whole world with the cies as its root. there is great deal more diversity in approaches, in the local history of its development, in the contested terrains in each country than we hear about at cies conferences. it is ironic that because of our interest in internationalism, we seem to have over-generalized the history of the development of comparative education and have lost sight of its development on the national scene, including within the united states. even cies conferences sometimes have references to uniquely american programs, such as multiculturalism, minority group education, urban education, bilingual education, and “no child left behind”, which members of the international audience do not understand because it is assumed by the presenters that these terms either are known by everyone or that their meaning is transferable. one final comment about the manzon and bray paper is that while it claims to have a post-modern viewpoint, i find the discussion to be firmly functionalist. the synergies and ambiguities resonate to me as the disfunctionalities of a parsons or a merton. as for the papers by gita steiner-khamsi and william dejong lambert and by frances vavrus and lesley bartlett, they present discussions of empirical problems within the field of comparative studies that could require another entire article to discuss. i can just comment here on some of the very interesting points they raise. i note the somewhat over-generalized history of the field of comparative education at the beginning of the steiner-khamsi and dejong lambert paper: until the 1960s, comparative education in north american was firmly based in the discipline of history, enamored with one-country studies, and fixated on educational systems in europe. by the end of the decade, the field was transformed into comparative and international education, with a composition of researchers and practitioners who were multi-disciplinary, cross-national and international in orientation. (p. 84) i disagree that studies had been mainly historical. moreover, i think it is too condensed and elliptical a view. there is wealth of information on the development of comparative education before the 1960s, which is simply not remembered or taught. (i realize that the present ahistorical tendency to put recently published references on one’s course outlines so as to appear current in one’s thinking has led to a certain loss of institutional memory.) many researchers had described the structure of educational administration, afterword current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(2) 109 in europe particularly. sociological approaches started in the early part of the twentieth century, with the focus on social problems in cities, with the rise of left-wing, social issue-oriented political parties in the uk and sweden. even in anthropology, the field of national character studies had been in vogue before world war two. moreover, in referring to the seeming transformation of the field in the 1960s as they point out themselves, people such as sir michael sadler and isaac kandel had done work in technical assistance long before the 1960s. up to the third page, this account ignores developments in parts of the world other than the usa; for example, the development of the deutches institut für pädagogische forschung in frankfurt and the flight of eastern europeans to study there, the relationships between other countries and russia, and the long history of comparative education in china. i agree completely with the sentence “one of the fallacies perpetuated in historical accounts of comparative and international education is that the development branch of the field emerged as a response to the post-colonial context of the 1960s.” (p. 85, this issue) indeed many countries were doing it as part of their colonial mission. there is ample literature about french, british, and german attempts to educate their colonial subjects. moreover, efforts by missionaries and the military to either convert, assimilate, or eradicate indigenous peoples had also been part of the sad history of colonialism. the proliferation of peace corps volunteers and other volunteer agencies led to the entry of many graduate students into higher education in the late 60s and 70s who may have thought that international development only started when they first learned about it! i thought that the paper needed to have further discussion about the role of the nonaligned nations. there was a real attempt by countries such as india and tanzania to tread the middle path. unesco also was caught up in this struggle, as its attempts to introduce a “new information order” eventually led to the withdrawal of the united states from unesco. there was also almost no discussion of the other countries in the world and how they dealt with the cold war. for example, canada certainly gave a great deal of foreign aid to tanzania, and i can remember that julius nyerere was welcomed at the highest levels when he visited the university of toronto in the 1960s. the most surprising part of this article to me was the reference to the russian criticism of us comparative and international education, and the need “to refute the generalized defamation of u.s. comparative and international education as a field that advanced the ‘imperialist-neocolonialist cultural foreign policy’ of the u.s. government (kienitz, 1967, p. 103), and replace it with more nuanced analyses.” (p. 92, this issue) i assume this was the origin of the comment in the call for papers that comparative and international education had been under attack in the 1960s. i had assumed that this criticism was a much more profound one of the long term effects of not reaching out to countries from the south, and of continuing to construct a dichotomy of aid-donor and aid-recipient nations in the international development enterprise. if it is any comfort at this point, i think the russians and eastern europeans who are now grappling with calls for educational reforms in the context of globalization, and regulations for entry into the european union under neo-liberal economic agendas, are no longer blaming comparative education for their woes! vandra l. masemann 110 april 21, 2006 my last comments focus on the paper by vavrus and bartlett. i agree that it is essential to have vertical case studies in comparative education for all the reasons the authors have laid out here. i can only agree with my earlier words, quoted here: …our conceptions of ways of knowing have limited and restricted the very definition of comparative education that we have taught to students and used in our own research and, indeed, have promulgated to practitioners (p. 96, this issue). i agree that it is essential for the reason that they state: “in a vertical case study, understanding of the micro-level is viewed as part and parcel of larger structures, forces, and policies about which the researcher must also develop a full and thorough knowledge” (pp. 96-97, this issue) in fact, i agree with practically every word in the article. it is what is not in the article that i wanted to read more about. i found it difficult to accept that “vertical case study research has the potential to place local knowledge on a more equal footing with official, authoritative knowledge,” (p. 98, this issue) and i began to ask myself why this was. i think that the kind of research studies outlined here need to take more explicit account of relations of power and ideology. i realize that the authors have themselves cautioned against reproducing “dominant power/knowledge relations by producing reports lacking in theory and in substance” (p. 98, this issue). but this discussion too needs to address some of these issues head on. i want to hear more about critical approaches, pressures toward the pat answer in doing local ethnographic fieldwork, the implicitly functionalist beliefs of educational administrators, the ameliorist mindset of teachers, and some of the mythologizing and reifying of child development in special education. if ethnographic fieldwork is to have lasting value, we need to hear about some of the great myths of education, in vertical case study form, from the top to the bottom. conclusion while i have finished up here on my favorite topic of doing ethnography, the main message i have to deliver is that comparative education is a very complex thing, with a very complex history. we need to be more mindful of generalizing about that history and to make a more concerted attempt to recover it and use it for improving our understanding of where we have been and where we want to go. we need to search for the accounts that have not yet been told. we need to search for the pluralistic account, rather than the monolithic account. there are many stories that remain to be heard. references canguilhem, g. (1975). études d’histoire et philosophie des sciences 3rd. ed. paris: vren. gautherin, jacqueline (1993). marc-antoine jullien (‘jullien de paris’ 1775-1848). prospects 23, (3/4), 757-73. afterword current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(2) 111 kienitz, werner (1967). die entwicklung von vereinigungen der komparatisten im ausland [the development of associations of comparativists abroad]. vergleichende pädagogik, 3 (1), 103-104. masemann, v. (1976). anthropological approaches to comparative education. comparative education review 20, (3), 368-380. masemann, v., bray, m., and manzon, m. (forthcoming). common interests, uncommon goals: the histories of the world council of comparative education societies and its members. hong kong: comparative education research centre. stromquist, n. p. (2005). comparative and international education: a journey toward equality and equity. harvard educational review 75, (1), 89-111. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 170 april 30, 2002 a model for improving rural schools: escuela nueva in colombia and guatemala rachel kline harvard university, graduate school of education introduction the extreme inequity between rural and urban areas is a central problem throughout latin america. living in a rural area generally means lower wages, fewer job opportunities and inferior education. according to the inter-american development bank (idb) (1998), poverty relates to the kind of education available to students; "educational quality is much lower for students from low-income families, most of whom attend public schools" (p. 55). the escuela nueva (en), or new school, an innovative rural school reform in colombia, addresses these disparities in educational opportunities, and therefore, indirectly, economic inequalities. the escuela nueva (en) model is instructive because of its successes in improving education for marginalized colombian rural students. from a policy perspective, it is notable because of the significant effect the national government has had on teacher practices in some of the country's most remote classrooms. the en school reform model answers one of the greatest challenges in the governance of educational systems--how to coordinate the instruction occurring in individual classrooms within the larger system. it provides a distinctive prototype for how to impact teacher practices in the most isolated schools from the most central level of the government. though the colombian governance model of en essentially addresses educational issues through centralization, it weaves in elements of decentralization related to its own evolutionary history. unlike many governance structures, the en model addresses technical problems of access, efficiency, effectiveness, relevance, and equity through specific changes in the classroom and directly with teachers as opposed to changes in system or individual school management. this article will begin by describing the context in which the escuela nueva model was developed and then traces the process of its development. the second section will define the components of the en model. following is an analysis of the characteristics of the model that are central to its success in impacting teachers' practices and students' achievement. the fourth section reviews some of the evaluations of escuela nueva, exploring various effects of the mass expansion to the national level. lastly, the article describes a guatemalan reform based on the escuela nueva model as a demonstration of the possibilities of transferring the en model to different contexts. the development of escuela nueva the success of en is directly related to its history. en started in the 1970s as a grassroots initiative and has progressed to a national reform coordinated by the colombian ministry of education. a critical aspect of its development is the organic nature of its formation (mcginn, 1996), a process that drew on the input of many educators and allowed for numerous revisions to be made throughout its nearly two decades (19711989) of evolution. the context in which en developed was also critical. from 1960 to a model for improving rural schools: escuela nueva in colombia and guatemala current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 171 1986, the colombian government engaged in a period of "consolidation by centralization in the educational system" (londono polo, 1996, p. 42). this effort to "bring order to its chaotical education system," resulted in the central government paying teachers directly so as to circumvent state level corruption. the teaching profession also became more defined and standardized following the teacher's statute in 1979 (londono polo, 1996, p. 44). in the 1960s, when the unitary schools (the roots of en) were started, a mere 18.3 percent of rural students completed primary education. the urban children were in relatively better condition, with 42 percent of them completing the primary school cycle. colombian primary education was supposed to consist of five grade levels. however, because most rural schools tended to have only one or two teachers, some teachers taught more than one grade level in the same classroom. a resulting problem of these multi-grade classes was that students only spent 50 to 60 percent of instruction hours engaged in schoolwork (rojas & martinez, 1993). in 1983, before en expanded, only 20 percent of rural students completed primary school in five years and 35 percent of rural students were dropping out in the first grade (psacharopoulos, rojas & velez, 1993). in 1985, in addition to problems within the school system, 23.8 percent of colombian children did not even attend school (reimers, 1993). internal efficiency of rural schools was also affected by frequent use of a curriculum geared toward urban students, a lack of instructional materials, school buildings in disrepair, and teachers who usually employed passive frontal methods of pedagogy. parents and communities were rarely involved in these schools (colbert & arboleda, 1990). the "organic" process of the development of en was a key factor in its successful implementation during the pilot stage, and later, to the extent that organic development continued, through en's growth. in essence, en was a refinement and expansion of the ideas from the unesco sponsored "unitary schools" project, designed in the 1960s to address the above-mentioned problems confronting rural primary schools. the multigrade unitary schools involved cooperative learning facilitated by teacher guides, selfinstructional cards for students, and automatic promotion so that students would not be discouraged by failure. following an initial implementation in 150 schools, the colombian ministry of education declared the expansion of the program to all oneteacher schools in 1967. however, it eventually became clear that the unitary schools had flaws--teachers and supervisors did not fully understand the reform and many teachers felt that creating their own educational materials required too much work. meanwhile, a group of rural primary school teachers in the department (state) of norte de santander developed their own solution to the problem of multi-grade schooling. they created learning guides with self-instructional activities for all the basic subjects and all five grade levels. unlike the unitary schools materials, these ready-made guides did not increase teacher preparation time. the schools that used the learning guides, as well as other components, were labeled "escuelas nuevas." by 1976, as a result of funding and support from unicef and usaid, and recognition from the colombian ministry of education, the en program was implemented in 500 primary schools throughout rural colombia (mcginn, 1996; rojas & martinez, 1993; rugh & bossert, 1998). rachel kline 172 april 30, 2002 one critical aspect of en's expansion is that, in 1978, one of the key innovators of en, professor oscar mogollon, was transferred to the ministry of education's central office to coordinate teacher training and participate in creating regional en support groups (rojas, 1994). having educators like professor mogollon in the ministry of education meant increased support from the ministry to ensure en's sustainability and expansion. by 1982, en had been instituted in 2000 schools. at this stage, the training of teachers was delegated for the first time to trainers who had not been en founders. between 1982 and 1986, the en program was officially institutionalized under the ministry of education, with its extensive expansion financed by a loan from the world bank. by 1989, the ministry reported the existence of 17,948 en schools (rojas, 1994). the components of escuela nueva the en model addresses the technical problems of rural education through several inputs aimed directly toward the classroom. the developers of the materials, as educators themselves, understood that the materials needed to be adaptable to the local context and to the needs of the students and teachers. the program was not meant to be static, but rather an ongoing exchange between students, teachers, and the community. the training of teachers is a vital component of the en model that speaks to en's broad approach to educational change. the developers recognized the importance of teachers' understanding to their ability to teach. therefore, three one-week teacher trainings take place during their first year, paralleling the students' learning activities. the first training covers the goals and methodology of en and the use of some of its components. the second covers how to use the student learning guides, flexible promotion, and the use of instructional materials. the third training focuses on the creation and use of the school library. teacher learning is then supposed to continue in micro-centers, where teachers congregate once a month to exchange ideas and help each other solve teaching problems or involve their communities in reform efforts (schiefelbein, 1991; mcewan & benveniste, 1999). teacher support is perhaps the most crucial component of en's success. in addition to providing teachers with educational materials, resources, and opportunities for capacity building, the ministry trains local supervisors to serve as pedagogical advisors to teachers. this requirement by the central government acknowledges the necessity of leadership in carrying out a major change. while the reform is supposed to involve the local community, if the teacher is the only person in an isolated village trying to implement the reform, it may remain extremely difficult to do without governmental support (rojas & martinez, 1993; rojas, 1994; schiefelbein, 1992; schiefelbein, 1991; mcewan & benveniste, 1999). helping teachers feel invested in the reform is a difficult task to address, but vital nonetheless. in en, teacher ownership is supposed to come not from giving teachers influence over the administrative functions of the school, but over what they actually teach. en's significant flexibility within a centralized structure is fundamental to its successes, as it allows for the similarities and differences between rural communities to be taken into account. the micro-centers help reinforce this sense of ownership by giving teachers the opportunity to discuss problems and come up with creative solutions together. access to a community of peer teachers through the micro-centers is a model for improving rural schools: escuela nueva in colombia and guatemala current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 173 another incentive for teachers to support the reform (rojas & martinez, 1993; rojas, 1994; schiefelbein, 1991; schiefelbein, 1992; mcewan & benveniste, 1999). the en model creates the opportunities for students and community members to also have a degree of ownership over what could have been viewed unfavorably as an imposed reform. for example, the student government requires students to take on leadership roles and make decisions that have tangible impacts in their school environment. such involvement is aimed at teaching civic and democratic values. students interact with their communities by making maps of the community, drawing on examples from local customs in their various activities, and inviting community members to the school to share knowledge about their communities. through their active participation, both in and out of the classroom, the students are involved in changes in their school. in this way, the en model also helps to break down divisions between schools and the larger community, facilitating implementation and increasing effectiveness of the education reform. the self-instructional en learning guides are a key component of program flexibility and adaptability to the local context and student learning needs. they were designed to encourage active engagement of students in the learning process. they present information in such a way as to enable already-literate students essentially to teach themselves the material, and to move at the speed and level that is appropriate for them. this allows the teacher to address the individual needs of students without detracting from the learning of other students at different levels. the learning guides also take pressure off teachers to constantly plan lessons for various grade levels, and they can help teachers make the material more interesting for the students by providing guidance for connecting the curriculum to the local community, hopefully making schooling more relevant for the students. the learning guides direct students through activities that often require them to work with their peers and explore their communities. they are complemented with "learning corners," where additional instructional materials are housed. each classroom has a small library and a suggestion box for students to give input. the above analysis of the most crucial aspects of the en reform is based on the model that was defined explicitly before 1989, when there was a mass expansion of the program. in this process of expanding nearly to the national level, aspects of the reform described above were compromised due to issues of scale and management (mcginn, 1996, mcewan, 1998). evaluation and implementation the en model has been evaluated at various times throughout its implementation. two different samples used as the basis for evaluations produced similar results, mostly favorable. in 1987, psacharopoulos et al. (1993) evaluated data gathered by instituto ser de investigacion, concluding that students in en schools scored significantly higher in third grade spanish and math, and fifth grade spanish than students in traditional rural schools. they also found that en students did better on civic values and self-esteem tests in both third and fifth grades. using a different sample in 1992, patrick mcewan (1998) found that en students scored significantly higher in third grade spanish and math. in fifth grade, although en students scored higher, the differences were not rachel kline 174 april 30, 2002 statistically significant. it seems from these results that some improvements in student achievement can be attributed to the en program. however, other examinations of the reform after the major expansion funded by the world bank have highlighted great variations in the components of the escuela nueva model among en-labeled schools (mcewan, 1999; mcginn, 1996). these inconsistencies have been attributed to a lack of communication and coordination at the national levels, teacher training days being cut, and learning guides not being delivered to schools that had already had training (republic of colombia, 1990). another issue highlighted by mcginn (1996) is that the escuela nueva components, flexible and changeable by design, were essentially "frozen" during the expansion process (mcginn, 1996), causing the overall quality to deteriorate. mcewan's (1992) data (three years after the expansion) showed that merely 33-45 percent of en classes were using the learning guides and only two-thirds of en schools had a library. in addition, with expansion to new areas, there were often not demonstration schools for teachers-in-training to visit (mcginn, 1996). despite this decrease in inputs, mcewan and benveniste (1999) still provide evidence that there was more active learning and group work, with more focus on student creativity, and written and oral expression in the escuelas nuevas. they go on to explore the factors that may affect teacher motivation to implement en reforms, observing that "as escuela nueva has shown, teacher capacity can be effectively addressed by policy and is important to the implementation of educational innovations" (mcewan & benveniste, 1999, p. 11). with the escuela nueva reform "packaged," the training days and material supports decreased, and the effects of the reform on teacher practices are likely to decrease also. the reform, now stemming from a more distant center, i.e. the ministry, has lost some of its decentralized components and flexibility. this is not to say that escuela nueva schools can not still help solve the technical educational problems in rural colombia, but it is less likely that it will effect changes in classrooms as significantly as before. the model still exists, in theory if not in practice, with its history well-documented. the question remains whether the centralized supports, structure, and opportunities for teacher participation can survive the spread to every rural school in colombia. another context: the guatemalan nueva escuela unitaria can other countries with similar problems adapt the escuela nueva model to attain similar improvements in student achievement, development of civic values, and selfesteem that resulted from the escuela nueva model before it was nationally expanded? is the escuela nueva model one that can be transferred to other contexts to improve education for other marginalized populations? though not the only attempt, the most successful reform effort based on the escuela nueva model occurred in guatemala. in the 1960s, the guatemalan government also faced serious challenges in providing quality education to its large rural and indigenous population (comprising 60% of the total population in the 1960s). in 1967, 33 percent of the nation's primary schools were located in rural areas and 50 percent of first grade students were enrolled in these schools (craig et al., 1998). guatemala has the added factor of a diverse indigenous population (comprising 50 percent of the total population in the 1980s) which speaks 23 different languages. a model for improving rural schools: escuela nueva in colombia and guatemala current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 175 in general, the education system was inefficient, with high drop-out and repetition rates. according to rubio et al. (1997), it took an average of 11.6 years of instruction for one student to graduate sixth grade. as in colombia, although the education system was lacking in general, students in rural areas of guatemala were worse off. in 1996, 49.9 percent of girls and 51.2 percent of boys that enrolled in 1991 in urban areas completed sixth grade, while only 18 percent of girls and 21.8 percent of boys that enrolled in rural school in 1991 graduated sixth grade (rubio et al, 1997). in 1989, there were over 3,200 rural primary schools that had only one teacher to teach six grade levels. for students in these schools, the prospects were even worse, as less than 10 percent of children in rural, multi-grade schools finished sixth grade (kraft, 1998). reasons for these poor results are similar to those cited in colombia--irrelevant curriculum, learning through rote memorization, a lack of resources and training for teachers, and traditional rural lifestyles requiring students, especially girls, to work at home. in 1989, in an effort to remedy some of these problems, the government worked with the usaid/guatemalan mission to implement the guatemala basic education strengthening project (best). initially funded for six years by usaid, with matching funds from the guatemalan government, the project targeted the mayan-speaking indigenous people, isolated rural populations, and girls. its major objective was "to improve the efficiency, coverage, and quality of basic education services to rural populations that have traditionally had the least access to education services" (rubio et al., 1997). to achieve these goals, best included four major initiatives: (1) the new one room/ one teacher schools (nueva escuela unitaria or neu), based on the colombian escuela nueva, and aimed at improving rural education at a relatively low cost; (2) the girls' education component aimed at keeping girls in school and improving their achievement; (3) the bilingual education program (digebi or direccion general de educacion bilingue intercultural) aimed at improving the education and achievement of mayan children; and (4) educational management information system (emis) aimed at strengthening the government's ability to manage the educational system (rubio et al., 1997). while other best initiatives are interesting in a variety of ways, this analysis will focus on the nueva escuela unitaria (neu) component of the best project that was based on the colombian escuela nueva. the development of nueva escuela unitaria (neu) the development of neu was an incremental process over many years, involving the government, teachers, communities, foreign aid agencies, and non-profit and private organizations. though best started in 1989, the ministry of education did not implement the first neu schools until 1992. the program was piloted in 100 one-teacher rural schools in two regions. the pilot schools were selected largely based on the degree of interest demonstrated by teachers. as a result of successes in these 100 schools, another 100 schools were added to the project. teachers and administrators in these first pilot schools were very involved in creating and implementing the components of the neu schools. they met to identify problems and needs, and then designed a plan for solutions and general administration of the schools. the teachers from the pilot schools helped to create the curriculum, student self-instructional workbooks (similar to the en rachel kline 176 april 30, 2002 learning guides), and teacher guides. they also instituted teachers' circles (similar to en's micro-centers) in which teachers gathered to review new teaching materials, share information and experiences, and partake in in-service training. the multifaceted neu schools also integrated active pedagogy, flexible promotion, student government, and community involvement. "while the neu project went beyond these basic characteristics of the escuela nueva and developed its own basic model, the influence of the colombian schools is still visible in the overall approach to rural education" (craig et al., 1998, p.78). in 1995 and 1996, more neu schools were started by private non-profit and religious organizations outside the government, such as the social investment fund, which started 74 schools, the catholic salesian order of don bosco which started 549 schools, plan internacional, an international charity, which started 21 schools and had plans for 80 more, and the guatemalan coffee growers, which had plans to start 100 schools (craig et al., 1998). by 1998, there were 283 government schools and over 1,000 privatelyfunded neu schools throughout guatemala. evaluation of nueva escuela unitaria (neu) evaluation was part of the original plan for the best project. chesterfield and rubio (1996a, 1996b, 1997a, 1997b) have done a series of in-depth studies of the neus. as in colombia, they generally show positive outcomes in a number of different areas. in terms of enrollment and efficiency, guatemalan neu schools were better than oneteacher schools without the reform (escuela unitaria or eu). in 1992, 58 percent of first grade girls and 66.3 percent of first grade boys in neu schools continued on to second grade compared to 53.2 percent of eu girls and 51.9 percent of eu boys. a greater percentage of neu students completed sixth grade in the normal cycle of six years than those in eu schools (18.3% of neu girls and 24.5 percent of neu boys compared with 10.4% of eu girls and 10.9% of eu boys). these percentages are still very low for the education system in general but they are a significant improvement. one argument against the neu reform may be that, with the extra instructional material and teacher training, it was more expensive than traditional one-teacher schools. however, due to the fact that neu schools were more efficient, with fewer students repeating grades, it actually became more cost-effective per student. the savings were greater with boys than girls because overall neu was more successful in helping boys to finish in the normal cycle than girls (chesterfield & rubio, 1997a). in addition, during each year of the program's implementation, more girls and boys were being promoted than in eu schools. another study analyzed indicators of the democratic practices of 220 students in first and second grade (half in neu and half in eu schools), defined as egalitarian beliefs, interpersonal effectiveness, and leadership/involvement. egalitarian beliefs were measured by comparing incidents of working by taking turns, as well as by measuring the degree to which students helped one another. according to the study, in one region, 83 percent of the working by taking turns incidents were by neu students compared to only 17 percent by the eu students in the same region. there was not as great a difference in the amount that students helped each other, but neu students still were more likely to do so than eu students. for leadership, researchers measured the a model for improving rural schools: escuela nueva in colombia and guatemala current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 177 frequency of students giving directions to their classmates. once again, neu students (85%) gave directions much more frequently than eu students (15%) (chesterfield & rubio, 1996b). in terms of academic achievement, students in neu schools consistently scored higher on spanish language achievement tests and girls scored higher on math achievement tests, compared to other multi-grade school students. a study by the institute for international research (iir) showed that neu students had a higher level of achievement in math and reading and parental satisfaction was higher with neu (craig, 1998). related to the other goals of best, however, in general, neu has not been as effective in helping girls to match the progress of boys, even though their progress has been better than female students not in neu schools. two other problems with neu are (i) higher retention rates that mean more children in school, especially in the higher grades; and (ii) public teacher education is traditional and urban-based in guatemala and does not therefore train teachers for work in neu schools, which may have a significant impact on neu's sustainability. while these specific problems have not been formally documented in the research on escuela nueva in colombia, one author did make reference to the objections of some colombian teacher training institutions to the less formal hands-on training received by en teachers (mcginn, 1996). analysis of neu's success it is clear from these studies that the neu reform improved the education of rural children in multi-grade schools in guatemala. the main reason for its success is that it includes many of the components of the successful colombian escuela nueva model. while the incorporation of specific elements, such as learning guides and flexible promotion, is certainly partly responsible for its achievements, it is equally important that the guatemalans did not merely import a set 'package' of components. the guatemalans may have learned about the potential to compromise the quality of the reform by packaging the components and 'freezing' its further development and adaptability from colombian experience of expanding escuela nueva to the national level. a major reason for the neu's success was that the reformers adapted the ideas to their local context. they respected the fundamental principles on which en was built--basing changes on teachers' knowledge, providing opportunities for teachers and communities to take ownership of the reforms, and maintaining flexibility in the model so it could be adapted to fit the local area. maintaining this flexibility was particularly important in guatemala with its diverse indigenous population, where traditions and culture may be vastly different from town to town. guatemalan educators devised a curriculum, learning guides, and teacher guides based on their own experiences and knowledge. in addition, guatemalan educators later created bilingual materials to use in multi-grade schools in indigenous areas, something that was not necessary in colombia. one reason it did not take over 15 years, as in colombia, to develop a model that seemed to work was because of the various lessons learned from the colombian experience. still, adapting it to their own context took time. rachel kline 178 april 30, 2002 the act of educators creating these teaching materials and then having other teachers review and critique them in the teachers' circles empowers teachers, and can help them be invested in the implementation of the reform. though the ministry of education and foreign development agencies originally funded and initiated neu, teachers' involvement in the fundamental planning and creation of the reform was a vital aspect of both en's and neu's success. teacher input transformed both programs into grassroots initiatives rather than imposed reforms. one other important factor in the successful transfer and adaptation of the en reform is the strong leadership that united the two projects. one of the key innovators of the colombian en model, professor oscar mogollon, became the director of the neu project in guatemala. he and his family moved to a rural area and worked with teachers on developing educational materials. his influence and involvement in neu has undoubtedly impacted the level of success that the reform ultimately had. it is important to consider the effect of mogollon's involvement when thinking about transferring this reform to other contexts where he may not be involved. conclusions the guatemalan nueva escuela unitaria (neu) project provides hope that the escuela nueva reform can be successfully used as a model for improving public education in other settings. the fundamental characteristics of escuela nueva--development over time, a structured yet flexible and multifaceted nature, extensive and varied support for teachers, and opportunities for meaningful involvement of students, teachers, and community members--can, and should be, adapted to the local context. building the nueva escuela unitaria reform on these fundamental principles, rather than on specific components, was vital to its success in guatemala. while much was learned from the experiences in colombia, reformers in guatemala did not deny their own experiences and knowledge about what would work in their own context. though questions remain about how to maintain high levels of success as expansion increases and leadership changes, the escuela nueva model and its adaptation in guatemala has demonstrated one way a central government can effectively impact teacher practices and learning processes in remote classrooms. the rural educational problems confronted by colombia are issues for both less and more developed countries. similar to latin america, many regions around the world are struggling with how to improve education for poor, marginalized populations. there is a need for additional research to understand better these processes and address this issue. nevertheless, the escuela nueva and nueva escuela unitaria reforms can serve as an inspiration and model for how policy makers and teachers can better educate their marginalized communities through innovation, cooperation, and a deep understanding of the context. references chesterfield, r. & rubio, f. 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(1989). policy initiatives to improve primary school quality. cambridge, ma: harvard institute for international development, bridges research report no. 5. wohlstetter, p. (1997). getting school based management right. in m. fullan (ed.), the challenge of school change (pp. 181-190). illinois: iri/skylight training and publishing, inc. bridge over black[ened] water: a new refrain for ngos mark ginsburg global education center, academy for educational development department of international educational policy, university of maryland in 1970, paul simon and art garfunkel released their award-winning album, “bridge over troubled water.”[1] although the album’s title song was not produced as part of a social marketing campaign for nongovernmental organizations (ngos), its lyrics seem well-suited for that purpose. for example, the first verse and refrain state: when you’re weary, feeling small when tears are in your eyes, i will dry them all i’m on your side when times get rough and friends just can’t be found like a bridge over troubled water i will lay me down like a bridge over troubled water i will lay me down (simon and garfunkel, 1970) in particular, the lyrics above could be used to promote one of the images of ngos – those “new great organizations” – that i mentioned in my contribution to the first issue of current issues in comparative education (ginsburg 1998). such ngos could be described metaphorically as a bridge, available to help people in need to cross over, whether the troubled water refers to hunger, disease, poverty, or inadequate education. the conception of ngos as “new great organizations” is informed by a preference for “privatized” democracy (see sehr, 1997), and can be contrasted with a view of ngos as “no good organizations,” which undermine opportunities for people to engage in “public” democratic (sehr, 1997) processes to shape state policy and action. simon and garfunkel’s song is less likely to support this latter image of ngos, however, unless the troubled water is seen as the workings of authoritarian and corrupt states. i still feel comfortable with what i wrote ten years ago, that how one views ngos depends on one’s perspective, and thus my reflections here will focus more on extending the analysis, rather than revising it. i will do this by considering three relatively recent developments, which in different ways have provoked me to keep wrestling with the question posed in that 1998 article: “what’s in an acronym?” the first development connects to my activity as a journal editor and a scholar. in working with david suarez on his manuscript that was eventually published in the comparative education review, i came to appreciate how intergovernmental organizations (igos) and international nongovernmental organizations (ingos) can serve as “receptor sites for transnational ideas… promot[ing] and diffus[ing] … global models at the national level” (suarez, 2007, p. 53). building on suarez’s analysis of the role of ngos in developing and diffusing ideas and practices in human rights education, mayumi terano and i analyzed the role of ngos in mobilizing participation in unesco’s culture of peace programme, specifically in india and japan (terrano and ginsburg, © 2008 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 10(1/2): 6-9. current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 7 mark ginsburg 2008). through this activity, i encountered further evidence to support a positive image of ngos. here are cases where ngos are playing a “great” role – promoting human rights education and encouraging people to organize their lives in support of peace. moreover, they are doing this sometimes in coordination with an intergovernmental organization or a nation-state, though their efforts are sometimes focused on the non-human rights and non-peaceful agendas of some nation-states. the second development has been associated with changes in the institutional location of my professional work. between 1976, when i received my doctorate, and 2004, when i began working on the education reform program in egypt, i based my professional life in universities. most recently, in september 2006, i took up a position at the headquarters of the academy for educational development (aed), a “nonprofit organization working globally to improve education, health, civil society and economic development ... collaborat[ing] with local and national partners … [and] serving people in all 50 u.s. states and more than 150 [other] countries” (aed, 2007). given its core values (passion, respect, results, integrity, innovation, diversity, and excellence) and its mission (“to make a positive difference in peoples’ lives by working in partnership to create and implement innovative solutions to critical social and economic problems”) (aed, 2007), it seems appropriate to view this ngo as an example of a “new great organization.” however, the situation is more complex in that most of aed’s international education activities are performed under contract from bilateral organizations (especially, u.s. agency for international development), multilateral organizations, ministries of education, and corporations. because there may be contradictions among these organizations as well as between these organizations and groups of educators and other citizens in given countries, the nature of aed’s activities may be viewed positively or negatively by the various stakeholders. for example, providing technical assistance – as part of a usaid-funded education reform program – to egyptian faculties of education in their efforts to develop and implement institutional improvement plans could be seen as a positive and professionally productive contribution or a negative and culturally destructive intervention. this is particularly the case because of the different views (e.g., by equilibrium and conflict theorists – see ginsburg, 1998) of the contributions of international organizations in this arena. nevertheless, as is the case of workers in most organizational contexts (ginsburg, 1988), i and other aed staff strive to meet the challenges of existing or potential contradictions. (e.g., in a case where the u.s. government “negotiates” with another government to provide technical assistance, training and research; then contracts the work to ngos, who hire u.s. and local country staff; and then activities are organized via some form of participatory decision making with local educators and community members within a contractual framework and under u.s. and other government observation, whose interests are really being served?) the third development has perhaps had the biggest impact on my thinking, if not as much yet on my actions. this deals with the revelations of the role of blackwater worldwide and other ngos[2], which have been the recipients of u.s. contracts for security work in iraq. here i do not want to discuss the legitimacy of the u.s.-led invasion and occupation of iraq, which has been the subject of disagreements among governments and among citizens in a variety of countries. i also will sideline an assessment of the reasonableness of the level of force used against iraqis by blackwater employees in several incidents, though this is the subject of official investigations as well as informal debates (see johnson and broder, 2007).[3] instead, i want to highlight the issue of a government contracting out (combat-zone) security duties, in the case of iraq, creating “the largest private security force ever employed by the united states in wartime” (fainaru, 2007). [4] at least in comparison to providing education and other social services, it seems less likely that the use of ngos (in this case, private firms) is more cost-effective; certainly the contracted 8 fall 2007 / spring 2008 bridge over black[ened] water employees are paid much more than regular military personnel, not to mention national guard troops. and it is hard to argue that private security firms can measure up better than governmentrun operations in terms of the degree of citizen (democratic) control that can be exercised over its activities.[5] in this regard, note that since june 2004, contractors have had “immunity from iraqi law” (decreed in cpa order 17, signed by l. paul bremer, 27 june 2004) and that “the laws governing security contractors … have not been clarified” (fainaru, 2007). therefore, i am inclined to conclude that whether or not one generally favors a role for ngos and whether or not one is a proponent of privatized or public forms of democracy (see ginsburg, 1998; sehr, 1997), that contracting out combat-zone security functions to nongovernmental organizations pushes privatization too far. indeed, it pushes this matter “over the rail,” transforming even the most hopeful image of ngos as providing a “bridge over troubled water” into one where u.s. and iraqi people will have to struggle to build a bridge over the now “black[ened] water.” in revisiting my contribution to the 1998 cice special issue on ngos, i still can see the “new great” and the “no good” notions of “what’s in an acronym.” if anything, it becomes clearer to me that the issue of whether or not an organization is a nongovernmental entity, though relevant, may be less important than the nature of its work (human rights, peace education, development, security, military combat) and the government or other sources from which it obtains the resources (human and financial) to do such work. in this sense, we are likely to see – from different perspectives – ngos both contributing to troubling, muddying, or even “blackening” the waters as well building bridges over such troubled waters to enhance the lives of humans and other living things. notes [1]. this was the final album by simon and garfunkel. it was released in january 1970 and “reached number one on the billboard hot 100 chart on february 28, 1970, and stayed on top of the chart for six weeks” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bridge_over-troubled-water _(song), p. 1 of 4; accessed 6 january 2008. [2]. blackwater, founded in 1996, is a for-profit organization, and thus some might not include it under the heading of ngos. however, although the united nations definition of ngos excludes for-profit organizations, as willets (2004) observes, “many ngos generate income from commercial activities” and “a few intergovernmental economic organizations do allow an individual company to have access under their provisions for ngo.” [3]. much attention has been focused on the incident on 16 september 2007, when “blackwater guards opened fire … at a baghdad traffic circle, killing 17 iraqi civilians,” but there were previous incidents that have been noted, for examples, 7 february 2006 in kirkuk and 24 may in downtown baghdad (fainaru, 2007). [4]. fainaru (2007) reports that “[p]rivate security firms rushed into iraq after the 2003 invasion [because the] … u.s. military, which entered the country with 130,000 troops, needed additional [human resources] to protect supply convoys, military installations, and diplomats. … the [u.s.] defense department has paid $2.7 billion for private security … [and the u.s.] state department has paid $2.4 billion for private security … since 2003.” [5]. my point is not that u.s. (let alone iraqi) citizens can completely control the security work (or other activities) of the u.s. in iraq. that for many months the majority of u.s. citizens did not support the war or the occupation is a clear reminder of this. the point is that u.s. citizens have even less direct control over the actions of private contractors, who some argue are not even effectively controlled by u.s. government authorities (see fainaru, 2007). current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 9 mark ginsburg references academy for educational development (aed) (2007). about aed. available at: http://www. aed.org/about/index.cfm. fainaru, s. (2007, december 24). warnings unheeded on guards in iraq: despite shootings, security companies expanded presence. washington post, p. a1. available at: http://www.washingtonpost. com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/23/ar2007122302442.html?sid=st2007122302511. ginsburg, m. (1988). what is to be done? critical praxis by educators of teachers. in contradictions in teacher education and society (pp. 199-220). new york: falmer. ginsburg, m. (1998). ngos: what’s in an acronym? current issues in comparative education 1 (1). available at: www.tc.edu/cice/vol01nr1/mbgart1.htm. johnson, d. & broder, j. (2007, november 14). fbi says guards killed 14 iraqis without cause. new york times. available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/world/middleeast/14blackwater. html?_r=1&oref=slogin. moore, s. (2007, december 11). disputed in iraq: blackwater now splits california town. new york times. available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/us/11blackwater.html. simon, p. & garfunkel, a. (1970). bridge over troubled water. [title song written by simon and sung by garfunkel]. on bridge over troubled water. columbia records (produced in cooperation with roy halee). suarez, d. (2007). education professionals and the construction of human rights education. comparative education review 51(1), 48-70. sehr, d. (1997). education for public democracy. albany, ny: state university of new york press. terano, m. & ginsburg, m. (2008, in press). implementing the culture of peace programme in india and japan: understanding national variations in a global initiative. in j. lin & c. bruhn (eds.) educators as peacemakers: transforming education for global peace. greenwich, ct: information age publishing. willets, p. (2004). what is a non-governmental organization. in g.m. kutting (ed.), conventions, treaties and other responses to global issues, in encyclopedia of institutional and infrastructural resources, encyclopedia of life support systems (eolss), developed under the auspices of the unesco, eolss publishers, oxford, uk, [http://www.eolss.net]. response paper: empower or control? education in emergencies and global governance dana burde new york university abstract do programs that provide education in emergencies empower those whom they are intended to assist, or do they coerce and control? is the interagency network for education in emergencies (inee) a global body that seeks to bureaucratize, regulate, and “govern from a distance” (sobe, this issue), or does it represent the emergence of universally accepted human rights and the triumph of world society principles and norms in one of the last bastions of marginalized territory: the international conflict or disaster zone? all of the articles in this issue directly or indirectly engage in this central debate. beyond the subfield of education in emergencies, these questions address one of the most important issues facing international educators and humanitarian workers today—the melding of the humanitarian and development paradigms and the perceived politicization of aid that has accompanied this change. the four articles published in this issue of current issues in comparative education present a range of vantage points from which to view this dichotomy. this response paper discusses the issues that they raise that are most closely and urgently related to this debate. do programs that provide education in emergencies empower those whom they are intended to assist, or do they coerce and control? is the interagency network for education in emergencies a global body that seeks to bureaucratize, regulate, and “govern from a distance” (sobe, this issue), or does it represent the emergence of universally accepted human rights and the triumph of world society norms in one of the last bastions of marginalized territory: the international conflict or disaster zone? all of the articles in this issue of current issues in comparative education directly or indirectly engage in this central debate. beyond the subfield of education in emergencies, these questions address one of the most pressing issues facing international educators and humanitarian workers today—the melding of the humanitarian and development paradigms and the perceived politicization of aid that has accompanied this change. according to some scholars, the spread of universalizing norms of mass public education to even the most difficult and hard-to-reach regions represent the dangerous triumph of liberal market democracy and global governance techniques (duffield, 2005; fox, 2001). education reforms, in this context, may be used to re-orient societies toward western notions of security and democracy, and introduce a market-oriented economic model into the education system. they may also be part of a new security paradigm that seeks to regulate communities within weak states in order to minimize risks to the stable, prosperous states that support these humanitarian efforts. neoinstitutionalists are more sanguine about universalizing forces in education. as progress and justice became nation-state goals in the twentieth century, they argue, universal (mass) education triumphed as the primary means to achieve these goals because it held value for fledgling states who wanted to gain entry to the international system (finnemore, 1996; meyer, ramirez, & soysal, 1992). according to this argument, as a global good and a global norm, mass education became one of the features with which modernizing states could distinguish and legitimize themselves, © 2007 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 9(2): 55-64. 56 summer 2007 joining the group of largely western/northern states that set the standards for social acceptance and participation in the increasingly globalized economy. adopting international standards for education and other systems integral to the functioning of the nation-state may extend the benefits of world society standards to those who have been marginalized and disadvantaged. furthermore, it enhances the legitimacy of any state, but particularly that of a fragile state affected by conflict. yet critics argue that the rationalization, professionalization, and bureaucratization of education as part of humanitarian assistance—a vehicle that may be used to empower and include—also creates a vehicle that may be used to coerce and control. this dichotomy is evident in this issue, and it is important to explore further. the four articles published in this issue of current issues in comparative education present a range of vantage points from which to view this dichotomy. in this response paper, i discuss the issues the authors raise that are most closely and urgently related to the debate outlined above. first, i situate the rise of education in emergencies within the larger debate on humanitarian action and the context of the expansion of humanitarianism. second, i explore the universalizing role of the inee as it relates to the empowerment/control debate presented by these articles. finally, i argue that while “new humanitarian” aid organizations and institutions, including inee, work with communities and individuals rather than states to circumvent problems posed by weak or fractured states, inee and the education in emergencies movement is neither an exclusively controlling nor empowering network. instead, they may serve both purposes, at different times, under different conditions, and a dichotomy may not exist at all. education in emergencies and two kinds of humanitarians the tension between empowerment and control, described above, emerges both in the broad discussion of humanitarian action as well as education in emergencies as a subset of the field. “traditional” humanitarians, on the one hand, typically view humanitarian space as politically neutral, requiring strict separation from the influence of potentially corrupting forces and their activities that could serve a broader purpose. “new” humanitarians, on the other hand, aim to address the root causes of conflicts and see their efforts as linked to progress, justice, and universal access to services that will improve the human condition (barnett, 2005; stoddard, 2002). because these two schools of thought have been critical to the development of the field of education in emergencies, it is worth dwelling on their differences before discussing how they relate to the articles in this issue. traditional humanitarians argue that aid must rest on the principles of neutrality, impartiality, independence, and universality. neutrality requires that aid not be used to promote the interests of one side in a conflict over another. impartiality requires that aid be given based on need, without discrimination according to race, religion, ethnicity or other markers. independence requires that aid be free of religious, political, or other associations. universality requires that aid should reach victims of crises regardless of where they are (terry, 2002). these principles are closely linked to the missions of organizations like the international committee of the red cross (icrc) that serve particular roles in combat, tending to victims and promoting adherence to the rules of war. organizations that espouse these traditional principles are concerned with delivering aid, but they are also concerned with gaining and maintaining access to victims of conflict. violating any one of these principles could be perceived by warring parties as an attempt to benefit the other party to the conflict and therefore result in denied access to affected populations. empower or control? current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 57 in today’s world of expansive humanitarian missions, the traditionalists’ fundamental concern is to avoid the politicization of humanitarian aid. to this end, they hew closely to the principles outlined above, eschew state partners, and accept little to no funding from state sources to avoid becoming an instrument for achieving a particular political strategy. because they believe that development and relief activities must be segregated they guard against expanding their mandates beyond traditional needs (barnett, 2005). thus, the traditional view of humanitarian relief work limits the goal of this work to activities that address urgent (physical) needs and encompass immediate relief. new humanitarians like save the children, international rescue committee (irc), and the united nations international children’s emergency fund (unicef), on the other hand, believe in the power of aid to transform underlying social inequalities. an expanded humanitarian mandate allows these organizations to address inequalities through a transformational agenda by reforming economic and social systems. their goals and missions tend to be compatible with woodrow wilson’s internationalism, which states that foreign policy could and should be used as a progressive force to attack the root causes of poverty and promote democracy, peace, and liberalism throughout the world (barnett, 2005; stoddard, 2002). the fact that government bilateral aid agencies often support this expanded mandate is not generally problematic for these ngos; many of them encourage it by calling for increased coherence between relief and development efforts. as a result, in many crises, new humanitarians often experience a coincidence of interest with government funders. yet new humanitarians perceive their positions as apolitical to the extent that they “act according to universal values and avoid partisan politics” (barnett, 2005, p. 728). as the expansion of humanitarian aid brought many new organizations into the field, it exposed the tensions between traditional humanitarians and new humanitarians. according to traditional humanitarians, a broader mandate could erode the goals of humanitarianism and be more easily manipulated for other (political) purposes. any activities beyond the traditional purview of aid were suspect, and many international actors resisted the idea of including education in the humanitarian paradigm. both because of the additional programs categorized as relief activities and the closer relationship to government bilateral agencies, traditionalists saw these interventions as a politicization of aid. they criticized new humanitarianism as the strategic linking of humanitarian and development goals to security issues to form a coherent political, social, and economic international system. they argued that this new humanitarianism advanced the interests of core countries over those affected by conflict, assuming a governance role in the borderlands—those traditionally marginalized areas of the global south—and filling the postcold war vacuum that was created by the departing superpowers (duffield, 2002). although some humanitarian agencies and donors have not yet incorporated education into their activities, the expansion of the humanitarian aid paradigm is now widely accepted. for example, hodgkin (this issue) notes that most of the large international relief organizations and their donors that do not focus exclusively on health issues in their mission statements now include education as a key component of humanitarian action and have signed on to inee’s universalizing principles. the other articles in this issue take the integration of education in emergencies into the humanitarian paradigm as a point of departure. the success of education in emergencies programs symbolizes the triumph of the new humanitarians. despite this shift, however, the warning from traditionalists must be heeded. the altruistic motivations that lie behind the goal of expanding the reach of education also encourage dana burde 58 summer 2007 the bureaucratization, professionalization, standardization, and institutionalization of the techniques used to achieve them. a movement’s success is marked by its institutionalization and internalization (finnemore & sikkink, 1998; keck & sikkink, 1998). when the effort to empower others becomes bureaucratized, however, it creates two critical results: it consolidates western norms as universal values, and it concentrates power in the hands of humanitarians. the four articles published in this issue of cice raise questions regarding the governance, politicization, and universalization of education that are central to this debate. some of these authors laud the inclusion of education in humanitarian action as a critical component of the aid paradigm, while others voice concern about the extension of western-centered notions of aid and education to areas that may be unsuspecting recipients of the liberal market structures that accompany these interventions. education in emergencies embodies this struggle between traditional and new humanitarians—specifically, the debate over whether expanded humanitarian action is driven by the humanitarian impulse or instrumentalized as a political tool. the next section looks more closely at the reasons for optimism and for caution in the remarkable success of inee. empower or control? both traditionalists and new humanitarians would agree that their overarching goal and guiding principle is to alleviate the current suffering of (distant) strangers (barnett, forthcoming; boltanski, 1999). altruism and the desire to empower vulnerable groups to take charge of their lives lie behind efforts to promote and extend access to quality education. aid workers and advocates who promote education in emergencies programs are highly motivated and well-intentioned. indeed, humanitarianism is designed to be an “emancipatory project, intending to liberate individuals from the causes of suffering and increase their capacity to determine their fates” (barnett, forthcoming, p. 2). as sobe notes in this issue, extending the reach of quality education efficiently and effectively, however, may have its own unintended consequences. below, i discuss three of these consequences: (1) the debates surrounding global standards, (2) the emergence of community participation in the context of global governance, and (3) the increased power held by humanitarians. global standards: good for all and universal? andina (this issue) documents and analyzes the spread of western norms as global standards. she outlines the move toward progress and justice, which are highlighted in the inee references to human rights and human capital and respectively defined as material success and equality (finnemore, 1996). using a neoinstiutionalist framework, she analyzes the inee minimum standards to assess “how global level forces influence and shape processes and discourse” (p. 16) and searches for references to “global standards” and “global principles” in the inee documents from the regional and global consultations organized to create the minimum standards. as andina points out, the inee minimum standards are structured and supported by references to education as a human right. neoinstitutionalists view these processes as part of the global expansion of world cultural norms. they view global norms and standards as key elements in creating shared understandings about “who is a person, what constitutes an organization, and what…a nation-state look[s] like” (ramirez, 2006). they argue that mass schooling gained worldwide acceptance because it was a key feature of the modern nation-state. nation-states adhered to “world models of the organization of sovereignty (the modern state), and the organization of society as composed of individuals (the modern nation)” (meyer, ramirez, & soysal, 1992, p. 129). mass schooling was an inherent ingredient in this model of organization. nation-states, or empower or control? current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 59 those bodies desiring to strengthen their image as nation-states, were increasingly legitimized by the degree to which they were able to adopt global (western) standards for mass education and other forms of social organization. the neoinstitutionalist paradigm, however, carries two controversial elements: (1) how “good” are these global standards? (2) how “universal” are they? the first question challenges whether internationalized standards lead to broader social goods. as sobe does in this issue, many scholars and traditional humanitarians argue that describing standards as “international” and “universal,” is, in fact, code for western/northern, and that poorer states in the globalized south may not perceive these norms as benevolent (duffield, 2002; kennedy, 2004). and, as a result, they may be coerced into these standards rather than choosing to adopt them. second, although these international standards certainly have taken hold in many parts of the world, it is not clear that they have been as triumphant as the neoinstitutionalists/world society theorists would argue. [1] interestingly, this seems to be supported by the evidence in andina’s analysis of the language used in the minimum standards documents. she points out that there are more references to international standards and norms (global culture) in the final minimum standards document, created by authors in the global center, than in the documents created during the regional consultations, in the global periphery. she concludes that the authors of the final document were “more influenced by the need to place the msee within the existing global culture than were those at the regional level” (p. 13). if this is the case, how far then, really, does the global culture extend its influence? global governance and community participation the neoinstitutionalists are right to point out that most of the world has accepted the nation-state model as the legitimate form of political organization and way to organize society and deliver social services. in this structure, “schooling the masses” became the mechanism for establishing symbolic links between governments and citizens (meyer, ramirez, & soysal, 1992, p. 131). yet governance systems within nation-states continue to vary dramatically, despite the efforts of international institutions to promote a particular type of governance (e.g., liberal market democracy). liberal market democracy has not necessarily achieved dominance. furthermore, the degree to which the liberal democratic model of social, political, and economic governance is accepted among nation-states remains contested. aid organizations promote different types of governance models depending on their missions and funding agencies. in education programs, these differences are often characterized by the relative emphasis placed on centralization versus decentralization, and on community or private structures versus state or public structures. sobe points out that inee documents emphasize “community” partnership and inclusion. he notes that “national community membership and the furtherance of the national social body are no longer the ultimate goals of reconstruction” (p. 49). instead, community and participation have become units of self-governance and a set of mechanisms, respectively, used to regulate behavior in an increasingly standardized way around the world. the community is used as a unit of governance for multiple reasons. first, according to some (freire, 1970), it gives a voice to the dispossessed. many humanitarians promote engaging community to rebuild social cohesion, address social malaise, and deliver social services. according to this reasoning, local actors can work collectively to accomplish community projects because of their social networks and mutual trust. community “provides the relationships of trust and the habits dana burde 60 summer 2007 of cooperation essential for members of society to work together to solve common problems” (warren, 1998, p. 81). the local community referred to in humanitarian program implementation, however, may be scattered, divided, traumatized, or uprooted. second, community is deliberately included and privileged in inee’s plans precisely to avoid the overbearing, regulative approach that sobe cites, that traditional humanitarians worry about, and that is often attributed to the hegemonic efforts of outsiders. community, in the vision of the inee advocates, is not meant to constrain and control, but to liberate and empower. the inee exhortation to create committees that are representative of community members is intended to stimulate civil society structures that are as broadly representative as possible. yet, as most aid workers will be the first to acknowledge, the best intentions do not necessarily produce the most emancipatory results. sobe identifies correctly some of the flaws in this effort. third, community emerges as the unit of governance in the inee structure for another reason, in addition to the empowerment (or control) rationale described here. the minimum standards are intended for people affected by conflict and crisis. in many of these circumstances, national government is weak, divided, or hostile. the local government may be corrupt, absent, or unrepresentative of the local community. within a fragile or chaotic state, a local community necessarily emerges as the carrier of social services. despite its weaknesses, the (local) community is, in fact, considered the most critical player in the inee minimum standards. community may be the closest, feasible available option to provide services not necessarily on a permanent basis, but until a broader, perhaps more representative body can assume responsibility for providing social services. however, in this context as well, relying on community members to the degree that they figure into the inee minimum standards raises a set of questions regarding the nature of community and the role of community in promoting mass education. given that mass schooling is used to enhance the legitimacy of the nation-state, and that the fate of this schooling is inextricably connected to sovereignty and national boundaries, how might mass education function in the absence of the state? [2] in the event that the nation-state has broken down or fragmented, what role do international standards for mass schooling play? if creating functioning public institutions signals a legitimate nation-state, strengthening local community associations as a key aspect of governance may work at cross-purposes, undermining the nation-state rather than strengthening it. this involves a shift away from a centralized state and incorporates community structures to manage social services. concentrating power in the hands of the humanitarians another aspect of the “empower or control” debate addresses the power of those who intend to empower. by establishing that education is a right, even under the most difficult circumstances, international organizations intend to draw on universal norms and standards to enforce its access for all, thereby empowering those who have been excluded from the right to participate in their own liberation. yet as traditionalists note, aid agencies are powerful actors in selecting, granting, changing, promoting, standardizing, or withdrawing services to populations affected by conflict and crisis. the act of accumulating power has its own consequences, and these agencies are granted authority to intervene in many facets of human lives. although the resulting institutionalized ethics can “enhance a project of emancipation, it can also lead to new forms of domination” (barnett, forthcoming, p. 3). as sobe points out using insightful references to earlier efforts at promoting post-conflict reconstruction, “contemporary reconstruction projects in post-conflict empower or control? current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 61 and chronic crisis situations are efficiently promoting a certain type of state and certain kinds of political rationalities” (p. 50-51). hodgkin (this issue) calls for overtly acknowledging the political rationalities sobe and many others highlight while separating decisions that are negotiable from those that are nonnegotiable. she outlines the troubling issue of curriculum reform after conflict, noting that deferring curricular decisions until political sensitivities have subsided risks turning a temporary and expedient solution into one that may last for years (p. 36). using a negotiated approach to curriculum decision-making, she believes, will allow more opportunities for “genuine participation by all stakeholders,” particularly youth, thereby increasing the likelihood that quality education will be provided to all (p. 35). increasing the ability to “positively influence” the potential for change (hodgkin, this issue, p. 34) is one of the key ideas underpinning hodgkin’s discussion of the curriculum process. yet within this effort, humanitarians return to the conflict in their aims: who decides what is positive, and who is involved in influencing the potential for change? as hodgkin notes, humanitarian organizations may consider their mandates politically neutral, yet power structures invariably surround their activities and decisions. this fact is evident in the author’s discussion of competing local versus global norms. how should organizations address local norms that mandate exclusions? hodgkin presents the very real possibility that an international agency promoting girls’ education may be doing so in violation of local norms and customs. she addresses this problem with candor: certain international rights and standards are nonnegotiable. the problem, she argues, is when these nonnegotiable aspects are not presented to those beneficiaries participating in the curriculum development process transparently alongside full knowledge of an international ngo’s operating environment and its external constraints. the implication may be that if the powerful at least acknowledge their power, they take one step closer to power-sharing. this is a delicate argument. while acknowledging the asymmetrical power dynamics between international aid agencies and the populations they work to support and discussing which elements are negotiable and which are not may alleviate tensions, it does not eliminate the power imbalance. thus, the international aid worker is left with a conundrum: how to promote change without “judging universal values to be superior to local values” (barnett, forthcoming). it may be that this conundrum is irreconcilable. focus on agency: voices from the margins the conundrum—how to promote change without privileging one way forward over another— may be irreconcilable for the moment, but additional points deserve mention here. first, local agency plays a significant role; and second, constant critique may keep the darker side of altruism in check. neoinstitutionalists are criticized for their over-deterministic emphasis on international structures and their lack of attention to “agency,” a term they often use as a catchall to refer to any action of or among individuals. although i will avoid elaborating this critique here, it is useful to reflect on it in relation to qahir and kirk’s (this issue) article on a refugee education program in pakistan. the authors present a case study describing the way in which an afghan refugee education program sponsored by the irc in pakistan works toward the goals sought by education in emergencies programs. they present an insiders’ account of the process a group of educators underwent to assess the degree to which they were meeting the minimum standards. the educators discussed dana burde 62 summer 2007 systematically several key indicators that pertain to each category promoted by the minimum standards. irc’s female education program (fep) staff engaged themselves as well as irc’s program resource people and trainers and the program’s teachers and administrators in the review process in each school. it is worth noting that the fep staff excluded the categories and standards that were considered irrelevant to the “fep school-level setting,” in this case, the “emergency phase” indicators and the “sector coordination” indicators; they also included some indicators that were “relevant as written,” and “adapted others slightly” (qahir & kirk, this issue, p. 21). the approach to education for afghan refugees in pakistan described here highlights the degree to which local populations acquire, revise, and apply international norms. these efforts at acquisition involve struggles and tensions. the afghan educators described in this piece, and other educators who work for international agencies promoting girls’ education among populations with historically low female literacy rates, use the language of international human rights to promote the kind of educational program they believe will satisfy the goals of their own community. women and men who believe that girls should be educated use global references to strengthen their local arguments with international donors and government representatives. for example, afghan refugees living in balochistan employ universal rights language to advocate for education services among international agencies (burde, 2005). yet local populations often associate international norms and standards, such as human rights, with the west. these local educators also know that their communities, some of whom may harbor suspicions toward outsiders’ interest in their communities, value education for reasons that predate western involvement in the region. current western involvement may be associated with many other (negative) activities apart from education. while receiving western support, these educators must often guard against a backlash to western intervention from within their own communities. to do so, many educators working with illiterate societies in rural afghanistan and pakistan use local norms to support education for girls and boys. education or knowledge is invoked in the qur’an more than any other topic, falling third after “allah” and “lord” (boyle, 2006). thus, local educators often cite passages from the qur’an to stress the importance of education for all children and to downplay links to western support. local community members’ agency plays a more prominent role in determining whether western motivated programs empower or control local populations than many observers grant it (duffield, 2002; sobe, this issue). a critique such as the one found in this journal increases the likelihood that power will not inhere in a single set of institutions, but rather will shift and emerge in new forms and new locations. conclusion: empower and control? the dichotomy between empowering or controlling communities that i have presented above may not be a dichotomy after all—it may be a “both/and” discussion rather than “either/or.” a foucaldian approach (duffield, 2002; 2005; sobe, this issue) to the discussion would likely focus on the power of hegemonic ideas to bend and co-opt the education in emergencies program “beneficiaries,” and, indeed, the program administrators, to the will of a force that modifies and regulates their lives through the structures, activities, and words that surround them and in which they participate. i will take this argument in a slightly different direction. it is clear that inee and the minimum standards are able to empower and control simultaneously, yet the empowering aspects of the minimum standards do not necessarily serve as a subset of the dominant controlling paradigm. just as efforts to empower may be used to control, they are also used to break free of control. empower or control? current issues in comparative education, vol . 9(2) 63 it seems clear that neither the foucaldian nor the neoinstitutionalist view captures the full picture. both leave out the voices from the margins. education is a blunt tool for social change, and its recipients everywhere use it in unpredictable and uncontrollable ways. organizations, institutions, and journals that encourage debate and critique will continue to provide openings for empowerment against a backdrop of hegemony. notes [1]. see for example steiner-khamsi (2002, 2004) and schriewer (2000). [2]. see waters and leblanc (2005) for an interesting discussion of mass public schooling in refugee camps in the absence of a nation-state and the tensions this entails over determining the type of citizen promoted. references andina, m. (2007). education in emergencies: standards for human rights and development. current issues in comparative education, 9(2), 6-19. barnett, m. (2005). humanitarianism transformed. perspective on politics. 3(4). barnet, m. (forthcoming). “humanitarianism as a vocation.” boltanski, l. (1999). distant suffering: morality, media and politics. cambridge university press. boyle, h. (2006). memorization and learning in islamic schools. comparative education review. 50(3). burde, d. (2005). save the children’s afghan refugee education program in balochistan, pakistan 1995-2005. save the children: islamabad, pakistan. duffield, m. (2002). global governance and the new wars: the merging of development and security. london: zed books. duffield, m. (2005). human security: linking development and security in an age of terror. 11th general conference of the eadi. bonn 21-24 september. finnemore, m. (1996). review: norms, culture, and world politics: insights from sociology’s institutionalism. international organization, 50(2), 325-347. finnemore, m. & sikkink, k. (1998). international norm dynamics and political change. international organization, 52(4), 887-917. fox, f. (2001). new humanitarianism: does it provide a moral banner for the 21st century? disasters, 25(4), 275-289. freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: continuum press. hodgkin, m. (2007). negotiating change: participatory curriculum design in emergencies. current issues in comparative education, 9(2), 33-44. dana burde 64 summer 2007 keck, m. & sikkink, k. (1998). activists beyond borders: advocacy networks in international politics. ithaca: cornell university press. kennedy, d. (2004). the dark sides of virtue: reassessing international humanitarianism. princeton: princeton university press. meyer, j. w., ramirez, f., & soysal, y. (1992). world expansion of mass education, 1870-1980. sociology of education, 65(2), 128-49. qahir, k., & kirk, j. (2007). inee minimum standards: a tool for education quality assessment in afghan refugee schools in pakistan. current issues in comparative education, 9(2), 20-32. ramirez, f. (2006). from citizen to person? rethinking education as incorporation. center on democracy, development, and the rule of law. freeman spogli institute for international studies. working paper 53. california: stanford. schriewer, j. (2000). world system and interrelationship networks: the internationalization of education and the role of comparative inquiry. in educational knowledge: changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community, ed. tom popkewitz. (305–343). albany: suny press. sobe, n. (2007). an historical perspective on coordinating education post-conflict: biopolitics, governing at a distance, and states of exception. current issues in comparative education, 9(2), 45-54. steiner-khamsi, g. (2002). re-framing educational borrowing as a policy strategy. in internationalisation. comparing education systems and semantics, eds. m. caruso and h. e. tenorth, (58-89). frankfurt: peter lang. steiner-khamsi, g., ed. (2004). the global politics of educational borrowing and lending. new york: teachers college press. stoddard, a. (2002). trends in us humanitarian policy. in the new humanitarianisms: a review of trends in global humanitarian action ed. joanna macrae. london: overseas development institute. terry, f. (2002). condemned to repeat? the paradox of humanitarian action. ithaca: cornell university press. warren, m. (1998). community building and political power: a community organizing approach to democratic renewal. american behavioral scientist, 42(1), 78-92. waters, t. & leblanc, k. (2005). refugees and education: mass public schooling without a nationstate. comparative education review, 49(2), 129-147. empower or control? © 2003 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 122 may 12, 2003 response to "whose language is it anyway? historical fetishism and the language of expertise in bolivian language planning" by aurolyn luykx mercedes del rosario teachers college, columbia university nanda warren teachers college, columbia university aurolyn luykx examines how language ideologies influence state policies and pedagogies in bolivia and, by implication, the rest of the andean region. she goes beyond the technical questions of how to create standardized written varieties to the much more fundamental question of why. by challenging some widespread assumptions about language revitalization and the way indigenous languages should be written and used in schools, luykx opens the door to considering more effective strategies for improving the condition of marginalized indigenous groups. she does not elaborate on what these other strategies might be, or on a more appropriate role for language planning, so her paper raises a number of questions for further investigation. as she examines the effects of such policies on language use, luykx tries to situate the speakers in the whole process of standardization, and explicitly criticizes the prevailing notion that standardization is necessary to revitalize, fortify, and bestow prestige upon a language. luykx challenges the dominant practice of confining standardization to written communication and text-based pronunciations that are alien to the way local native speakers actually speak the language, and questions why the first step in language revitalization is assumed to be standardized, school-based literacy. however, although she successfully calls attention to the effects of standardization on marginalization of indigenous languages in bolivia in particular and the andean region in general, luykx fails to provide alternative means to foster language fortification and revitalization. luykx clearly recognizes the long history of inequality and oppression that has fueled the demand for linguistic and cultural rights. at the same time, she suggests that support for indigenous languages would be better focused on the domains where they have traditionally been the strongest, at the family and local community level. but should indigenous languages remain limited to a small number of domains, such as the home, the church, and the village marketplace, with spanish remaining the exclusive language for school, literacy, and wider communication? luykx hints at some alternative uses of indigenous languages in schools that do not involve standardization, but does not elaborate on them. what other options exist for expanding indigenous languages into written domains? luykx criticizes language planners' attempts to make indigenous languages behave more like spanish rather than focusing on their unique strengths and cultural value. however, isn't there some value to be gained by extending the reach of indigenous languages into territories previously dominated by spanish? luykx articulates in no uncertain terms the fate indigenous languages suffer amidst the prevailing practice of standardization, specifically the manner in which school-based literacy, with its text-based pronunciation, serves as the foundation of a standardized response to "whose language is it anyway? historical fetishism and the language of expertise in bolivian language planning" by aurolyn luykx current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 123 language, regardless of how foreign its morphology, phonology and syntactic features are to the local, native speakers. despite such articulation however, luykx fails to provide alternative means first, to achieve standardization without marginalization and consequently, to divorce standardization from school-driven literacy and text-based phonology. her paper would have achieved a breakthrough in literacy studies if she had offered solutions on how these could be done or presented alternatives to language planning that are not defined by historical constructs and language ideology rooted on "purity" and "antiquity". in the question and answer session following her presentation at teachers college, luykx offered some alternative areas of language planning that could contribute to empowerment and language revitalization. she advocated a wider use of indigenous languages in local bureaucracies so that people could accomplish necessary tasks in their native language. she also suggested more intercultural (not necessarily bilingual) education that emphasizes ethnic tolerance and more positive attitudes towards indigenous languages. her paper would be strengthened by a further discussion of these alternatives. a critique of standardization as a means to empowerment should offer some other ways of challenging the linguistic, and therefore the social and political, status quo. nonetheless, luykx's paper has contributed to the discussion of indigenous language revitalization and education by questioning the ideological assumptions that sometimes limit that discussion. she points out that the focus on standardization and school-based literacy has drawn attention and resources away from other activities. the challenge to those who are concerned with indigenous language rights in bolivia and beyond is to pursue these other possibilities further, always keeping in mind the experiences and diverse attitudes of the indigenous people involved. listening to the legitimate grievances of marginalized people should lead to valuing not only the indigenous languages, but the speakers of those languages as well. reference luykx, a. (2003). whose language is it anyway? historical fetishism and the language of expertise in bolivian language planning. current issues in comparative education, 5(2) microsoft word 41ardizonne.doc © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 16 december 18, 2001 towards global understanding: the transformative role of peace education leonisa ardizzone adelphi university introduction what some practitioners call education for democracy, civic education, tolerance education, or human rights education, are all ultimately education for the creation of a culture of peace. in fact, all of these are necessary ingredients for peace. peace education has always been concerned with understanding the root causes of all forms of violence and their subsequent eradication. democracy, human rights and peace remain central to our practice and fundamental to our goals for education. certainly, in the wake of the world trade center tragedy--and its global repercussions--some may ask the question of whether there is any potential for peace. what is certain however is that a "quick-fix" solution, or a pre-packaged "tool," imposed either locally or globally, which fails to account for specific contexts will not work. rather, what is necessary is a paradigm shift that shapes content and pedagogy by incorporating issues of human security, equity, justice and intercultural understanding through the promotion of global citizenship, planetary stewardship and humane relationship. these are the core values of peace education (as put forth by betty reardon, 1988, and related to the united nations charter, universal declaration of human rights and unesco) and they can be derived from and applied to many contexts. these shared values--which are defined and supported by the united nations and other international bodies--are the key to our survival, and should therefore be incorporated into education. although education for peace, human rights, democracy, and the like have been criticized as another form of western imperialist indoctrination, these types of education seek to create a critical citizenry, informed not by western hegemonic values, but by universal values culled from a global context that incorporates both western and non-western perspectives. these values must then be adapted to suit specific learners to prepare them to be global citizens in a changing world. historical perspective on education for peace originally a study of the causes of war and its prevention, peace education has evolved into the study of violence in all its manifestations and educating to counteract the war system for the creation of a peace system; a peace system on both the structural and individual level1. the content and the methodology of peace education are progressive; promoting egalitarian learning environments, open inquiry and significant learner participation.peace educators, such as david hicks, ian harris and betty reardon, all endorse the power of education as a means of transforming society. by creating an awareness of the links between structural violence and direct violence, these educators strive to create a means for a peaceful future2. understanding of, and support for peace education has never been more necessary. although there is currently some global recognition that the world is in crisis, it should be noted that this current crisis stems from a long history of structural violence within a global culture of war. peace educators have long recognized that public support for peace education arises from recognition of towards global understanding: the transformative role of peace education current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 17 economic, social and environmental crises. although some theorists have framed this perceived crisis in terms of the triumph of capitalism and individual liberty over socialism and equality (smith and carson, 1998), it seems more likely that the general perception of crisis arises from more direct threats to national and economic security. in any event, the relevance of peace education derives not just from its perspective on outbreaks of violence in the form of war, terrorism, abuse, etc., but on its attempts to address long-standing and chronic threats to human security. peace education is holistic and transformative, incorporating a number of ideas in its definition and practice. a multi-disciplinary, international field, peace education calls for long-term responses to conflict on the national international and interpersonal levels in order to create more just and sustainable futures (hicks, 1988). education for peace is "education for the long haul, for ongoing struggle" (reardon, 1988, p. 47). by promoting the development of critical thinking skills that lead toward media, scientific and political literacy, as well as incorporating learning how to cooperate and resolve conflict non-violently, peace education functions to foster the "development of a planetary consciousness that will enable us to function as global citizens and to transform the present human condition by changing societal structures" (reardon ,1988, p.x). reardon's concept of peace education incorporates a variety of knowledge, skills and attitudes for interpreting ideas as well as the development of reflective and participatory capacities for applying knowledge to overcome problems and achieve possibilities (reardon, 1999). reardon's notion of nurturing reflective and participatory capacities parallels paulo freire's (1970) concept of "conscientization", an idea that informs peace education through its emphasis on raising the critical consciousness of learners as a means for social change. freire, in developing his humanistic, liberatory, and revolutionary pedagogy, coined the term "conscientizacão" to define "learning to perceive the social, political and economic contradictions and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality" (1970, p.17). developed out of his analysis of the nature and effects of oppression, freire's pedagogy stresses the need for the oppressed themselves to observe the situation of their oppression, thus enabling the consciousness-raising process to begin. this shift in awareness is necessary because "as long as the oppressed remain unaware of the causes of their condition, they fatalistically 'accept' their exploitation" (freire, 1970, p.51). of course, since very few opportunities are in place both domestically and internationally that allow the oppressed to see the true nature of their existence, many feel powerless to change their situation, accepting the day-to-day hardship and violence that surrounds them. however, freire stresses that the reality of oppression must not be perceived as permanent but rather as a limiting but ultimately transformable system. freire's acknowledgement that society is dynamic rather than static not only makes his pedagogy truly liberatory and transformational, but also provides further support for the practice of peace education in the era of globalization. peace education theorists, such as magnus haavelsrud (1980), have reiterated this and other freirean notions concerning the need for education to develop an awareness and understanding of causal relationships, thereby expanding ones horizon. by understanding the micro/macro leonisa ardizzone 18 december 18, 2001 relationships (or popularly termed local/global), learners can perceive contradictions in social, political and economic spheres. through this initial perception, and subsequent understanding, learners undergo a profound transformation characterized by an expanded world-view and greater understanding of the interrelationship of all beings on the planet. global support for peace education several global education campaigns take into account larger structural issues while addressing the needs of children and all learners striving to create a culture of peace. one example, the unesco declaration and integrated framework for action on education for peace, human rights and democracy produced by the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization, came out of the 44th session on the international conference on education (1995). the declaration, created out of the need to remove obstacles to peace such as "violence, racism, xenophobia, aggressive nationalism", as well as human rights violations, religious intolerance, and the wide gap between wealthy and poor, stresses the importance of education in the development of individuals who will promote peace, human rights and democracy (unesco, 1995, p. 4). the document emphasizes that, by improving curricula and pedagogy, the result of education can be caring individuals who are responsible citizens and respectful of human dignity. furthermore, the unesco framework provides comprehensive strategies for achieving a culture of peace, stating that education must be holistic, involve educational partners, and utilize administrative modes that allow for greater autonomy. the unesco framework also insists that education must be continuous and consistent, implemented locally, nationally and internationally and include proper resources. additionally, the content of education should include education for citizenship at an international level and address the conditions necessary for the construction of peace, including conflict resolution, human rights, democracy, an end to racism, and the elimination of sexism. the framework states that "the ultimate goal of education for peace, human rights and democracy is the development in every individual of a sense of universal values and types of behavior on which a culture of peace is predicated" because it is "possible to identify even in different socio-cultural contexts values that are likely to be universally recognized" (p. 9). perhaps most importantly, the unesco framework insists that content should be developed democratically, including all voices in the design of peace education programs since "no individual or group holds the only answer to problems"(p.9). it is therefore necessary to "understand and respect each other and negotiate on equal footing, with a view to seeking common ground" (p.9). two additional examples of international support for peace education are the global campaign for peace education and the manifesto 2000. the global campaign for peace education, supported by the hague appeal for peace (hap), utilizes the unesco framework as well as the values put forth in the hague appeal for peace agenda, encouraging the support of education programs that will work toward the creation of a culture of peace. according to the hague agenda for peace & justice for the 21st century, "a culture of peace will be achieved when citizens of the world understand global problems, have the skills to resolve conflicts and struggle for justice nonviolently, live by international standards of human rights and equity, appreciate cultural towards global understanding: the transformative role of peace education current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 19 diversity, and respect the earth and each other. such learning can only be achieved with systematic education for peace." (hague appeal for peace, 1998, p. 1). manifesto 2000, written by nobel peace laureates who are committed to creating a culture of peace as put forth by the united nations international year for the culture of peace 2000-2001, supports both the hap initiative and the unesco framework. the manifesto emphasizes the necessity to respect all life by rejecting violence, sharing with others, listening to understand, preserving the planet, and rediscovering solidarity. the manifesto, along with the unesco framework and the hague appeal for peace provides very clear guidelines for how education can decrease both the direct and structural violence prevalent in our society. these international documents not only demonstrate support for peace education, but also represent a collection of core values that transcend national boundaries. however, the fact that the united states pulled out of unesco and that the majority of unesco member states are from the third world, further supports the notion that these ideas do not necessarily come from, or are even supported by the west (mundy, 1998). international applications of education for peace because of its radical nature, peace education inevitably meets with resistance. those in power want to preserve the status quo, utilizing education as a means to this end. however, inroads are being made and examples of peace education can be seen in many diverse settings. a survey of different peace education applications show a variety of formats, objectives, settings and localized or context/condition dependent ideologies (petroska-beska, 2000; bar-tal, 2000). examples of various peace education initiatives include latin american efforts linked to popular education (diaz, 1993; cabezudo, 1993), balkan efforts focused on conflict resolution and democracy education (corkalo, 2000; murdzeva-skarik, 2000), programs in cyprus and northern ireland that address intercultural understanding (duffy, 2000; hadjipavlou-trigeorgis, 2000), and asian projects that deal with disarmament and anti-nuclear education (yamane, 1996; floresca-cawagas & toh, 1993). in each setting, peace education does not function as indoctrination, but rather emerges from the needs and desires of the local population. diaz (1993) writes about implementing peace education in the latin american context. specifically, he addresses adapting peace pedagogy to an area mired in structural violence. in this setting, peace education is linked to popular education and non-formal education because these venues remain outside of government control and are therefore less heavily censored. diaz contends that, in the latin american context, it is necessary to use a flexible pedagogy that incorporates the promotion of critical consciousness or "social literacy"(diaz, 1993, p. 73). in colombia, for example, peace education starts with real life experiences that are then interpreted and analyzed. this reflection on the quotidian allows for greater critical understanding and the opportunity for taking social action, as exemplified by the formation and activities of codecal (corporacíon integral para el desarrollo cultural y social) throughout latin america. additional contexts characterized by intense structural and direct violence in which peace education operates can be found on the african continent. in view of the crises that plague africa, including lack of food, shelter, medicine, and the presence of violence and corruption, ihejirika (1996) states that "peace education should be seen as a basic leonisa ardizzone 20 december 18, 2001 necessity" (p. 226). the author contends that specific goals such as resolving conflict and raising consciousness should be targeted at children, families, schooling and the community, and be relevant to the local situation. two youth based programs in sierra leone and nigeria exemplify many of these characteristics. concerned youth for peace in sierra leone was formed in 1996 by "young men and women who believe in the promotion of international co-operation and peaceful solution of conflicts". the youth group strives to unite organizations and individuals committed to the peace process through educational programming, materials, and a sharing of ideas and resources. a similar non-formal youth program in nigeria utilizes the arts to promote peaceful interaction and personal understanding (ekwueme, 2001). another example, based in south africa, is the "center for conflict resolution", a program that through its youth project works for a "just and sustainable peace in south africa" (dovey, 2000, p. 95). the project started with young people and has moved throughout the community to incorporate educators and community members. this expansion led to the "peace education partnership program", a service "that was more programmatic, long-term and implementation-focused" (p. 98). this brought peace education into schools ultimately becoming formalized as the schools program, the focus of which is on creative and constructive approaches to conflict and mediation. these programs continue to grow and center on adapting materials to better address all south africans. additional examples of peace education adapted to fit local needs in high-conflict areas can be seen in northern ireland, cyprus and israel-palestine. in northern ireland, ad hoc peace education initiatives have been created for many years mainly through individual schools and churches. more recently, large-scale efforts have emerged through schools, youth and community agencies, higher education and adult education (duffy, 2000, p. 4), which focus on integration between catholics and protestants. duffy states that these programs have demonstrated a mixture of success and failure, but important groundwork for intercultural understanding has been laid. intercultural understanding has been a key element in cyprus. hadjipavlou-trigeorgis's (2000) critique of the cypriot education system, which socializes both turkish and greek students to remain in a state of conflict, has led to a dialogue between turkish and greek educators and community members to change the education system. the peace education paradigm they have put forth is characterized by inclusion, flexibility, openness, mutual humanization and mutual awareness (p. 9). educators involved in this discussion have become trainers in peace building of both fellow educators and students. although settings where direct violence and conflict are omnipresent seem ideally suited for applying education for negative peace, implementation and finding common ground is often difficult. nowhere is this more evident than in the middle east. in fact, the common ground in the region, particularly in the conflict between israel and palestine, is often violence itself. given this situation, peace education in the middle east must foster the process of reconciliation, requiring formation of peaceful relations between former adversaries based on mutual trust, acceptance, cooperation and consideration of mutual needs (bar-tal, 2000). "coexistence education" (ce) is a model reconciliation program. this program for jews and arabs in israel and the palestinian authority helps students construct a worldview that reflects the reality of the peace towards global understanding: the transformative role of peace education current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 21 process, helps to advance it, and prepares them to live in the peace era. (hertzlazarowitz, 2000). it is also a model peace education program because it is both created locally and adapted to the specific context. osseiran (1996) contends that adaptation is the only thing that can make peace education possible in the middle east, stating that "it is crucial to relate economic and strategic interests to local realities, and to question why these particular countries…are going through these wars…knowing the 'other' and relating the dangers that threaten his or her existence to one's own, will permit humankind to coexist in peace"(p. 247-8). although some of the aforementioned peace education programs have made their way into formal school settings, most are situated in the non-formal sector. more often than not, out-of-school efforts obtain more support and freedom to promote peace education values because they are not as hindered by governmental restrictions. additional examples of peace education based in non-formal settings, from japan and the philippines, provide further evidence for the greater support for and flexibility of grassroots efforts. in japan, one example of peace education happens in "peace museums", a setting that often attracts schools but also includes the larger community. peace museums offer a response to war museums. while both museums depict war, the peace museums add images of resistance and positive images of peace. japan's peace museums are also noteworthy for their use of progressive, learner-centered pedagogy (yamane, 1996 & 2000). although peace museums are relatively few in number throughout the world, other venues for peace education are more widespread. for example, in addition to the previously mentioned non-formal youth organizations in sierra leone and nigeria, student organizations in the philippines, which are part of the tagasan network and based on the collective action of people, are vehicles for entry into participation for the creation of more just social structures (dionisio, 1996). the filipino youth groups are involved with advocacy work, education, and support for worker movements. the transformation of education is also a central goal of the tagasan group. specifically, transforming education to be more responsive to the needs of filipino people. a second transformation goal revolves around changing individual attitudes, especially with regards to a commitment to social justice. conclusions the examples i have described of localized peace education programs refute the idea that peace education is another western implemented "quick fix". the notion that peace education is another form of western hegemony presupposes a certain degree of acceptance within the dominant ideology of the west. however, peace education is hardly mainstream or universally accepted. although examples of peace education exist in europe and the united states, there is a great deal of resistance to peace pedagogy that questions dominant structures and institutionalized oppression. therefore, peace education in the united states, as in other countries, receives more support (or rather, less resistance) when offered through the non-formal education sector. evidence for dominant resistance to peace education lies in the fact that very few formal school settings support education for peace--and those that do focus mainly on conflict resolution--often ignoring the critical transformative pedagogy necessary for peace. on the other hand, non-formal education programs (examples of which flourish in innercities) provide young people with education that promotes social responsibility and leonisa ardizzone 22 december 18, 2001 critical-consciousness (ardizzone, 2001). like the philippine and nigerian examples, youth-run organizations in marginalized urban sectors of the united states serve as legitimate locations for youth to foster an ethic of social responsibility and take action for social change (ardizzone, 2001). the outcomes of recent elections, as well as the nationalistic responses to the world trade center incident, clearly demonstrate that american formal education does not promote critical thinking and intercultural understanding. the inadequacy of american education derives, in part, from its failure to address the specific contexts of learners. the many examples of locally implemented peace education programs throughout the world illustrate that peace education, and education in general, can thrive in localized settings. the programs in ireland, the middle east and cyprus that promote intercultural understanding, peace museums in japan, socially-minded youth organizations in sierra leone, nigeria, south africa, the philippines, and the united states, and popular education programs in columbia and latin america, provide evidence for the appropriateness of education that adheres to the guiding principles of peace education as outlined by the unesco framework. while these programs differ in their specificity, they are all holistic, utilize administrative modes that allow for greater autonomy, involve educational partners, and include proper resources. ideologically, these programs are consistent in that they attempt to create an awareness of the relationships between the different levels of human existence and presence, namely the personal, the structural, the cultural, the regional, the national, and subglobal, adding a global dimension to all these levels through education (burns, 1996, p.120). the presence of these various programs points to a national, and more importantly international imperative to promote education for peace in localized settings. in doing so, local education can serve to foster a global awareness, allowing learners to critically understand their local context within the larger global context. peace education implemented in this fashion not only promotes positive international relations and understanding, but also elevates the goal of education to its highest level by creating a critical, informed citizenry that is prepared to work for the common good. notes 1. the two conceptions of peace used by peace educators, negative peace and positive peace, illuminate the broad aims of the field. negative peace refers to the elimination of war and all other forms of direct violence (such as abuse, gun violence, fighting, etc…). the main goal of education for negative peace is the development of a citizenry that is informed to take action for the achievement of peace and disarmament. on the other hand, positive peace focuses on the elimination of all structural and cultural obstacles to peace, and thus the creation of true peace. positive peace takes concern beyond the end of war and physical violence, addressing the need for justice, equity, democracy and an end to structural violence (oppression, exploitation, racism, poverty, etc…). specifically, education for positive peace addresses problems of economic deprivation and development, environment and resources, and universal human rights and social justice (reardon, 1988). of these issues, the study of injustice is most central to peace education because, in many ways, the other issues derive from it. towards global understanding: the transformative role of peace education current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 23 2. peace education utilizes a broad definition of violence. violence incorporates war, physical abuse, emotional abuse, torture, homicide, oppression and exploitation. to further distinguish between types of violence, peace researcher johann galtung developed the concepts of direct violence, structural violence, and cultural violence. examples of direct violence are acts of war, torture, fighting, gun-violence, physical and emotional abuse. the fundamental ingredient in direct violence is an actor or actors making direct violence a personal act. on the other hand, there is no actor or single act in structural violence. structural violence, also known as indirect violence, exists as a continuous state of violence due to societal mechanisms such as exploitation, penetration, segmentation, fragmentation, and marginalization (galtung, 1988). these two forms of violence, direct and indirect, are interconnected, with one often causing the other and vice versa. references ardizzone, l. (2001). getting their word out: youth peace builders of new york city. unpublished doctoral dissertation, teachers college, columbia university. new york. bar-tal, d. (2000). the elusive nature of peace education. [online]. available at: http://contsruct.haifa.ac.il/~cerpe/papers/bartal1.html burns, r. & aspeslagh, r. (1996). peace education and the comparative study of education. in r. burns & r. aspeslagh, three decades of peace education around the world: an anthology. new york: garland. cabezudo, a. (1993). peace and disarmament education in latin america. in m. haavelsrud (ed.), disarming: discourse on violence and peace. norway:arena. corkalo, d. (2000). challenges for peace education in new demoncracies: the case of croatia. [online]. available at: http://construct.haifa.ac.il/~cerpe/papers/corkalo.html diaz, j. (1993). peace education in a culture of violence. in m. haavelsrud (ed.), disarming: discourse on violence and peace. norway: arena. dionisio, e. (1996). tagasan: student organizations as alternative education. in r. burns, r. & r. aspeslagh (eds.), three decades of peace education around the world: an anthology. new york: garland. dovey, v. (2000). a south african journey: towards peaceable school communities. international journal of curriculum and instruction, 2(1), 95-107. duffy, t. (2000). "fragile steps": forging a culture of peace in northern ireland. [online]. available at: http://construct.haifa.ac.il/~cerpe/papers/duffy.html ekwueme, l.u. (2001). the role of creative arts in promoting peace education among youths in a society. wcci triennal world conference, september, 2001, madrid, spain. leonisa ardizzone 24 december 18, 2001 floresca-cawagas, v & toh, s. (1993). from the mountains to the seas: education for a peaceful philippines. in m. haavelsrud (ed.), disarming: discourse on violence and peace. norway: arena. freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: seabury press. galtung, j. (1976). peace and social structure: essays in peace research, volume two. copenhagen: christian eljers. galtung, j. (1978). peace and social structure: essays in peace research, volume three. copenhagen: christian eljers. galtung, j. (1988). peace and social structure: essays in peace research, volume six. copenhagen: christian eljers. galtung, j. (1996). peace by peaceful means: peace and conflict, development and civilization. london: sage. haavelsrud, m. (1996). education in developments. arena: norway. hadjipavlou-trigeorgis, m. (2000). a partnership between peace education and conflict resolution: the case of cyprus. [online]. available at: http://construct.haifa.ac.il/~cerpe/papers/mariaht.html hague appeal for peace (1998). the hague agenda for peace and justice for the 21st century. un ref a/54/98. harris, i.m. (1988). peace education. jefferson, nc: mcfarland & co. harris, i.m. (ed.) (1996). peace education in a postmodern world. peabody journal of education, 71(3). hertz-lazarowitz, r. (2000). research in peace education: the isreali scene. [online]. available at: http://construct.haifa.ac.il/~cerpe/abs/rachelhl.html hicks, d.(ed.) (1988). education for peace. london: routledge. ihejirika, s.i. (1996). the role of peace education in peace building in africa. in r. burns & r. aspeslagh (eds.), three decades of peace education around the world: an anthology. new york: garland. lantieri, l. & patti, j. (1996). waging peace in our schools. boston: beacon press. mundy, k. (1998). educational multilateralism and world (dis)order. comparative education review, 42(4), 364-376. towards global understanding: the transformative role of peace education current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 25 murdzeva-skarik, o. (2000). university peace workers have a challenging anxiety in the balkans. peacebuilding, 2(4), 5-7. osseiran, s. (1996). peace education as a protest and resistance against marginalization and eurocentrism: peace education in a violence context: the middle east wars as a case study. in r. burns & r. aspeslagh (eds.), three decades of peace education around the world: an anthology. new york: garland. petroska-beska, v. (2000). peace education as a framework for changes in the overall education system. [online]. available at: http://construct.haifa.ac.il/~cerpe/papers/petroska.html qobo, s. (1999). the challenges of education transformation in south africa. international journal of curriculum and instruction, 1(1), 111-120. reardon, b.a. (1988). comprehensive peace education: educating for global responsibility. new york: teachers college press. reardon, b.a. (1999). peace education: a review and projection. sweden: malmo university. salomon, g. (1999). research on peace education: provocative questions, challenging criteria. peacebuilding, 2(2), 11-12. smith, d.c. & carson, t.r. (1998). educating for a peaceful future. toronto: kagan and woo limited. synott, j. (1999). practicing peace education in an indigenous education context. peacebuilding, 2(2), 6-10. unesco. (1995). declaration and integrated framework of action on education for peace, human rights and democracy. yamane, k. (1996). a peace museum as a center for peace education: what do japanese students think of peace museums? in r. burns & r. aspeslagh (eds.), three decades of peace education around the world: an anthology. new york: garland. yamane, k. (2000). japanese networks of museums for peace: its influence on peace education. peacebuilding, 2(4), 3-5. © 2009 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 11: 33-41. a new look on early child care and education (ecce) as joint responsibility maria da graça gomes paiva alessandra schneider maria lúcia salle machado pollyana vilela duarte perinazzo unesco, porto alegre, brazil improving the quality of early childhood education has been a priority in brazil, but it is still a challenging issue to be faced. the fact that an indefinite number of institutions exist on the borders of the educational system, the lack of systematic supervision, and incomplete official statistics are only a few of the challenges. the millennium fund for early childhood education has been developed to directly improve the quality of educators who work with brazil’s most socially vulnerable students. an innovative model of joint responsibility utilizing public and the private sectors in porto alegre, rio grande do sul, has resulted in the implementation of a social technology called educational board. this experimental model has been carried out in municipalities of four southern states of brazil for the past five years. this article addresses the approach developed at the educational boards (which focused on in-service professional development and network capacity building), the program’s impact on improving early child care and education (ecce) in brazil, as well as the lessons learned so far. scientific evidence has shown that the child’s early years demand adequate protection, care and stimulation as the foundations for his or her well-being and development (unesco, 2006). in other words, fulfilling the child’s well-being and basic needs both in terms of nourishment and nurturing, particularly from pregnancy to six years of age, recurrently demands not only technical but also more skillful human knowledge of what a healthy and happy childhood actually means to everyone as both a right and an absolute priority to be praised and guaranteed in any community or society. as claimed by clouder (2008), “whoever works with children has got to recognize within himself/ herself his/her own childhood so as to promote the child’s well-being. if we forget our childhood, we lose our humanity. we no longer see each other as humans”. in addition, the ability to pick up the child’s social signals of happiness, well-being, or anger, does require from both parents and caregivers high-quality knowledge on early child care and education. more and more, the development of relational competences through playing and through the joyfulness of playing requires not only updated knowledge or guidance from solely specialized literature, but should go beyond that when it comes to daily routines in adverse education and poor care conditions of daycare centers—whether the centers are philanthropic, communitarian or public. on top of that, if the child belongs to a family in social vulnerability, and he/she is regularly being attended by child practitioners who are not professionally qualified to guarantee his/her well being from the very beginning, local authorities from both public and private sectors should be both sensitized and mobilized to invest in professional qualification on early child care and education (ecce) involving the whole staff of those centers. that is to say that giving these children the right start should be a commitment not only for those who interact with them, but also for those in charge of enacting public policies or deeply engaged social responsibility actions, large companies and corporations included. 34 current issues in comparative education m. paiva, a. schneider, m. machado, and p. perinazzo brazil is the ninth largest economy in the world, with an area of 8.5 million square km. however, the disparity between the rich and the poor is quite dramatic: out of 190 million people, the richest 10% hold 45.3% of all national income, whereas the poorest 50% receive only 13.9%. more than 23 million people are from 0 to 6 years old (13 million from are 0 to 3 and 10 million are from 4 to 6 years old). in relation to ecce, the enrollment rate of children from ages 0 to 6 in daycare centers is 43% (compared to 27.9% in 1996), of which only 15.5% from ages 0 to 3 and 76% from ages 4 to 6 are enrolled in preschools in 2006 (brazilian institute of geography and statistics, 2007). serious problems of quality in professional development have become a great challenge in ecce. young children constitute the weakest and most defenseless age segment in regards to adverse education and care conditions—not to mention the indefinite number of institutions that still run at the margin of the regular educational system, working apart from any official supervision and, consequently, not included in the official statistics. another important indicator of quality, teacher development, also points out some problems to be taken into consideration. as an illustration, in 2002, 64% of preschool teachers have completed secondary education and only 23% of preschool teachers have completed a higher education (ministry of education and culture, 2006). the situation is even worse for daycare centers because they have not been clearly represented in the statistics. despite the legal changes introduced in the decade of 1990, serious problems in the access and the quality of early childhood education in the country still remained (unesco, 2005). in other words, communitarian daycare centers, which take care of the poorest segments of the population, are exactly those that show the worst working conditions, and many count only on the few resources provided by the community. too little diversified playing activities with children, rigid and stuck to weak routines, either idleness or little stimulation of children’s motor cognitive, affective, cultural and social development, and the lack of a well-designed curriculum on child education and care were some of the points highlighted by the commission. in december 2003, the brazilian millennium fund for early childhood program was launched in porto alegre, state of rio grande do sul, brazil. over the last few years it has been established in 15 local governments located in the states of rio grande do sul, santa cartarina and, more recently, in são paulo and minas gerais. the program aims at improving the quality of ecce services provided by communitarian, philanthropic or public daycare centers by enhancing the quality of training for child professionals. it encourages innovation by providing a well-equipped room with materials such as toys and books for professionals to share or reflect upon their daily experiences in ecce through playful and recreational activities similar to children’s games and toys. these rooms/spaces are called the educational boards. designed and implemented as a permanent space for learning, the pedagogical work developed at the boards focuses on professional development and institutional changes by means of (de)constructing different perceptions/beliefs related to ecce, while strengthening institutional collective work. the respect and the promotion of diversity, while focusing on individual narratives and experiences, is the starting point of all the work in order to achieve high-quality professional development. consequently, training early child educators—principals, educators, supervisors, administrative and work staff—who perform directly with children in social vulnerability, has become the main goal of the in-service professional development and network capacity building as strategically pedagogical tools. the present paper aims at briefly describing and analyzing the program as an innovative shared current issues in comparative education 35 a new look on early child care and education as joint responsibility partnership between some representatives of the public sector and private companies, on a joint responsibility basis, towards the promotion of a public awareness about the importance of a child’s early years and the positive impacts of a qualified childhood education. the program generates an increased mobilization of local communities in favor of early childhood and high-quality inservice professional development. a new social technology will be briefly introduced and further analyzed—educational board—which focuses on in-service professional development. the target population involved comprised of eight staff representatives of each of the five daycare centers enrolled in each educational board settled in 15 municipalities of four southern states of brazil. by starting off from the participants’ own childhood experiences, background and perceptions, some positive aspects related to changes in their ecce practices in their original daycare centers are expected. hopefully, in the long run, some significant benefits will result from the development of their relational competences with the children. since launching the program in 2003 the gerdau group, a local steel corporation with international branches inside and outside brazil, has been providing support and follow-up throughout the implementation of the program, not to mention their commitment to nurturing strategies that promote the expansion of the program to other brazilian states. as the main partner and funding organization at the moment, gerdau has been actively involved in favor of social policies and/or practices as well. therefore, thanks to the official agreement signed between three partners, namely unesco, maurício sirotsky sobrinho foundation (a broadcast corporation) and gerdau, with the support of the local municipalities—the municipal and state secretariats of education in particular—such joint responsibility has been mobilizing the active participation of local representatives from different segments within every community. these have acted as co-managers of the program (i.e. the local council). the permanent supervision, capacity building and mentoring has been carried out by technical coordinators in charge of every educational board, under the coordination of an executive team that is permanently searching and mobilizing new partners from the private sectors for replication of the educational board as an effective social technology nationwide. a brief overview of ecce in brazil dramatically low statistics in the 0 to 3 age group show that brazil has not been meeting its constitutional obligation as stated in the article 227 of the federal constitution which claims that: it is the family, the society and the state duty, to ensure both children and adolescents, with absolute priority, the right to life, health, nourishment, education, leisure, professional training, culture, dignity respect, freedom and family and community life, as well as to guard them from all forms of negligence, discrimination, exploitation, violence, cruelty and oppression. in addition, in the national educational act (law of directives and bases of national education ldben, 1996) articles 29 and 30 deal specifically with they point out that, as first levels of basic education, ecce should promote children’s whole development from ages 0 to 6 years old, covering different dimensions such as cognitive, social, physical, psychological and emotional development from crèches to preschools. internationally, the world declaration on education for all has been influential by recognizing the paramount importance of the child’s early years in relation to not only the extreme vulnerability of these children, but their tremendous potential for which adequate protection, care and stimulation are essential to provide the foundations for the child’s well-being and development (unesco, 2005). likewise, ecce professionals in brazil, in general, and caregivers from philanthropic, 36 current issues in comparative education m. paiva, a. schneider, m. machado, and p. perinazzo communitarians and/or public daycare centers, in particular, seem to lack knowledge and training as well as demand to update their expertise on concerning quality teaching and learning experiences, particularly for children aged 0 to 6. at present, 37,000 thousand ecce educators, out of over 300,000, do not fulfill basic teacher education requirements to perform their duties with quality, as announced by the ministry of education on october 20th, 2008. in order to better overcome such demanding issues, the minister of education has recently provided funding for basic education by means of a fund called the national fund for development and sustainability of basic education (fundeb) which is to be altered in order to also include ecce as a beneficiary. all of the current initiatives may be viewed as follow-ups to the dakar forum on education in 2000 and to the dakar framework for action on education for all (efa), which was signed by brazilian representatives, and is in favor of the implementation of high quality education for underprivileged children through 2015 (objective 1 of the dakar framework). another follow-up worth mentioning here is the brazilian nationwide movement called “everyone for education” which aims at improving basic education and professional development, eradicating illiteracy and providing access to school for all children from the ages of 4 to 17 years old by the year 2022. yet, despite the strong efforts and commitments of the brazilian federal government with sound investments on ecce both nationally as well as internationally, demands have not yet been fulfilled, which has generated the need for finding other effective alternatives to back up and help overcome the problem in a shorter time—hopefully by 2015, as officially agreed in dakar. in the following sections we will describe the design and joint responsibilities of the program between public and private sectors which may help both state and local governments (municipalities) to deal with ecce in a more effective way, particularly with philanthropic, communitarian and public daycare centers and preschools. the millennium fund for early childhood program in brazil according to brazelton & greenspan (2002): a child experiences in the first months and years of life determine whether he or she will enter school eager to learn or not. by school age, family and caregivers have already prepared the child for success or failure. the community has already helped or hindered the family’s capacity to nurture the child’s development. the millennium fund for early childhood program seeks to promote in-service training and capacityand network-building for coordinators, principals and staff of previously selected daycare centers and preschools, as well as to improve the infrastructure of those institutions by purchasing quality instructional materials and equipment. it aims to engage and mobilize local partners from the private sector, municipal department staff and ngos, on a joint responsibility and commitment basis. the leading questions underpinning all the work are: what sort of quality in the daycare centers do we aim to achieve? how can we achieve that? how long does it take? what risks are to be faced? how much can be gained from network capacity building? based on such goals and objectives some strategies have been outlined such as the establishment of educational boards, training and supervision by qualified technical coordinators appointed by municipal secretariat of education. the next step is the mobilization of companies as strategic partners (fundraising), or local partners (as suppliers or financial supporters to local educational boards or ecce institutions). the third and very important initiative is the mobilization of the whole community to develop initiatives and undertake social commitments towards public policies that not only meet local demands for enrollment but mostly for better quality of the ecce current issues in comparative education 37 a new look on early child care and education as joint responsibility services currently provided. the program has been designed to encompass five major components, namely daycare centers and preschools (staff development), the executive team, the educational boards, the local council and the advisory council. the executive team, committed to the whole management of the program (sensitizing/ mobilizing, in-service training, implementing, working, monitoring and evaluating the program), has as its members representatives of unesco, maurício sirotsky sobrinho foundation and gerdau (the latter being the financial supporter of the 2008-2009 edition of the program) and the technical coordinators in charge of the program in the four brazilian states involved. however, the core coordinating team is locally settled at the unesco office in porto alegre, having one senior technical advisor (who coordinates the whole team), a technical advisor and an administrative assistant. every fortnight there is a teleconference meeting in which all the decision-making process and courses of actions are discussed and planned together. as for the local council, they are considered the “joint managers” of the program in every municipality. its members are public government representatives (municipal secretariat of education and other departments), ngos, private institutions, municipal councils and the media. finally, the advisory council is a consultative body whose main duty is to follow up and legitimize the implementation of the program. it has among its members representatives of unesco, mauricio sirotsky sobrinho foundation and gerdau representatives, state secretariats of education, health and social welfare, municipal chamber of commerce and other child/ adolescent institutions. the dynamics of the millennium fund for early childhood should be perceived as a series of concentric circles. qualification of ecce professionals is both the core issue and the starting point. to implement it, the design of a tool has become the priority. that tool is the educational board. with the implementation of educational boards, ecce professionals become the protagonists of their own professional change and development. in turn, such changes in their understanding and behavior towards ecce issues are expected to be gradually incorporated into their daily routines at the daycare centers and preschools. high quality ecce classrooms and outer spaces are expected to positively interfere into a better child whole development process. as a consequence, both family and community will become more committed to ecce, having the active and effective support of the local council, in order to guarantee both the continuity and sustainability of the educational boards—now already institutionalized and perceived as a public space for permanent in-service training and other educational events to be held in the community. in the long run, a new social model/culture of local governments on the issue of ecce is expected to be implemented as a guarantee of a future, democratic generation characterized by solidarity and well-being. educational boards: a new social technology educational boards have been designed as ecce classrooms with thematic corners and enough room to hold around 40 participants from five most socially vulnerable daycare centers appointed by the municipal secretariat of education. it should be envisaged as a strategic tool to improve ecce, since it is specially equipped to encourage professional sharing of experiences and learning. the target group for the educational boards are those from either philanthropic/communitarian or public daycare centers and preschools that work with children from the ages of 0 to 6 years old. professionals meet every week, for 4 hours, bringing to the educational board their recurrent or recent demands/conflicting practices to be shared and experienced with the group. for the first three months the whole planning is focused on the educator as a person and then on the 38 current issues in comparative education m. paiva, a. schneider, m. machado, and p. perinazzo educator’s professional skills and competences on early child education. it follows a socratic approach of questioning and an “action-reflection-action” strategy to improve the pedagogical practices already incorporated. participants are requested to write on their notebooks at least six lines a week about their learning experiences as reflective narratives to improve their reflective skills. boards are learning centers of multiple languages, in which professionals and staff from, at least, five different ecce institutions gather once a week under the supervision of a previously selected and trained technical coordinator, whose expertise is on early child development (ecd). for 12 months, on a weekly basis, totaling 360 hours of studies and professional practices, principals, educators and staff members experiment, share, reflect upon and design/propose new daily socio-interactive activities to be carried out with children aged 0 to 6 years old. the educational boards resemble, therefore, an ecce classroom (with books, toys and different equipment) with different thematic spaces /corners such as the fantasy corner, the theater corner, the fine arts corner, the baby/toddler corner, the story-telling corner and the playing corner so as to guarantee better ecce from the start. educational board some advantages of setting up an educational board are: customization: through the methodology of the educational board the process of learning takes place closely or in accordance to the daily ecce routines in the schools enrolled, in the hope of better qualifying all the participants. current issues in comparative education 39 a new look on early child care and education as joint responsibility synergy: a networking of cooperation and shared learning is built in through playing, which unlocks potentials of the local protagonists involved in the program (i.e. the technical consultant, the ecce schools, enterprises, municipal public sectors and other representatives from the local community), so as to both praise and improve the quality of the ecce school representatives enrolled. optimization: the human resources have their potentials developed, without leaving aside their profound spirit of cooperation. local autonomy: the more local partners are involved with the millennium fund for early childhood, the less the dependency upon the program itself (or even upon unesco technical support) is envisaged. a standard of quality: the educational board seeks to implement a standard of quality that imprints the program identity as an innovative social technology to be institutionalized as such in the community on long-term basis. each educational board takes into account, as part of its methodology, a vast array of materials and events such as extramural seminars, personal experiences, the reading of theoretical and technical ecce instructional materials, classroom observations, case studies, guided visits to museums, attending local shows scheduled, dramatization, guided studies, and the implementation and monitoring of ecce school projects to be carried out in the schools involved. the main focus is on the qualification of all services offered to children from the ages of 0 to 6 years old, as a guarantee of a more democratic and humanizing education. besides the technical and fictional literature on ecce available in every educational board, the program has been designed together with a series of four books as supporting instructional materials[1] covering the following topics: a) a new look on science upon early childhood (book 1); b) children discovering, interpreting and acting upon the world (book 2); legislation, policies and pedagogical influences upon ecce (book 3); and on the daily routine at the daycare centers and preschools (book 4). although it is a book series, it is strongly recommended not to follow them in a sequence but in alternation, according to the educators’ needs or expectations. an array of texts, activities, topics for research, reflection, and debate is also provided. another supporting instructional material to be highlighted is the website, http://www.fundodomileneo.com.br, which is currently being redesigned and updated to include topics and materials not only in portuguese, but also in english. final considerations the millennium fund for early childhood program in brazil, as a joint responsibility between unesco, maurício sirotsky sobrinho foundation and gerdau, besides the partnership with the public sector, has provided evidence so far that it can contribute to improve quality in professional development through the kind of approach implemented in the educational boards—an alternative and effective tool towards both institutional transformation and social mobilization in favor of better ecce—at least in the 15 municipalities enrolled in the program. in addition, as a promoter of professional development by investing on in-service training and on network capacity building, it has generated better outcomes on social commitment to ecce through the partnership and networking of local public and private sectors, daycare centers and preschools, families and the community members. as a “win-win” strategy on ecce, equity, rather than 40 current issues in comparative education m. paiva, a. schneider, m. machado, and p. perinazzo equality, in early childhood education has become the major focus, which has considerably facilitated the incorporation of different perspectives on human resources throughout the implementation of the program. as its added value, the program in brazil has envisaged to bring about a new look upon the ecce educator, particularly those from philanthropic, communitarian and public daycare centers and from preschools, and a new look upon issues related to ecce in the brazilian context. new educational spaces for debate/reflection and cultural clashes as active components of selfcriticism and self-education have opened up. the possibility of better overcoming the dichotomy between education and care in favor of an intrinsic, interrelated conception of both has emerged, not to mention the reinforcement of the need towards more socially committed public policies focused on the promotion of early childhood care and education in brazil. endnotes [1]. all the four book series provide a very thorough list of references on ecce both nationally and internationally that have not been included here due to word limit. references brazil. (1989) lei federal de 1988. constituição da república federativa do brasil [1988 federal law. constitution of the federal republic of brazil]. 3 ed. são paulo: jalovi. brazil. (1996) lei de diretrizes e bases da educação nacional[national educational bases and guidelines law]. lei nº 9.394/96, de 20 de dezembro. brazelton, t.b & greenspan, s. i. (2002). as necessidades essenciais das crianças [children’s essential needs]. porto alegre: artmed. brasil. (1989). clouder, christopher (2008). the future of childhood. v seminário internacional da primeira infância: a atenção à primeira infância e o impacto na redução da pobreza e da violência [fifth international seminar on early childhood: early childhood care and its impact of poverty and violence reduction]. porto alegre: pontifícia universidade católica-puc-rs. conferência de abertura. instituto brasileiro de geografia e estatística. (2007). síntese de indicadores sociais: uma análise das condições de vida da população brasileira [summary of social indicators: an analysis of the brazilian population’s living conditions]. rio de janeiro: ministry of education, secretaria de educação infantil e fundamental [secretariat of early childhood and primary education]. (2006). parâmetros de qualidade para a educação infantil [quality standards for early childhood education]. brasília. ministry of education. (2008). educação infantil tem 37 mil professores sem formação minima [early childhood education has 37 thousand teachers without minimum training]. folha on-line – educação. retrived on october 31, 2008 from http://www1folha.uol.com.br/folhaeducacao. ult305u16277.shtml. united nations educational, scienctific and cultural organization. (2005). olhares das ciências sobre as crianças. [science’s perspectives on children]. brasília: unesco, banco mundial, fundação current issues in comparative education 41 a new look on early child care and education as joint responsibility maurício sirotsky sobrinho. (série fundo do milênio para a primeira infância: cadernos pedagógicos;1) united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization. (2005). a criança descobrindo, interpretando e agindo sobre o mundo [the child interpreting and acting upon the world]. brasília: unesco, banco mundial, fundação maurício sirotsky sobrinho. (série fundo do milênio para a primeira infância: cadernos pedagógicos; 2) united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization. (2005). legislação, políticas e influências pedagógicas na educação infantil. [legislation, policies and pedagogic influences in early childhood education]. brasília: unesco, banco mundial, fundação maurício sirotsky sobrinho. (série fundo do milênio para a primeira infância: cadernos pedagógicos; 3) united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization. (2005). o cotidiano no centro de educação infantil [everyday life at the center of early childhood education]. brasília: unesco, banco mundial, fundação maurício sirotsky sobrinho (série fundo do milênio para a primeira infância: cadernos pedagógicos; 4) united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization. (2005). educação para todos: o compromisso de dakar [education for all: dakar framework for action]. brasília: unesco, consed, ação educativa. available from http://www.unesdoc.unesco.org/ images/0012/001275/127509porb.pdf. united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization. (2007). efa global monitoring report. strong foundations: early childhood care and education. paris, france. copyright© 2009 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved microsoft word 42abdeneur.doc © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 57 tilting the north-south axis: the legitimization of southern development knowledge and its implications for comparative education research adriana abdenur princeton university introduction a large noticeboard hangs in a hallway of the ministry of education in the mozambican capital of maputo; pinned to it are meeting schedules for teacher trainers from nearby botswana who have come to exchange ideas on aids education with their mozambican counterparts. at the university of el salvador, brazilian scholars help local administrators to implement the country's first graduate program in international relations, drawing on their experiences creating a similar program at the university of brasília. in new york, staffers at the united nations development programme regularly update the web of information for development, a massive online database launched in january of 2000 that allows developing countries to share detailed information on their development projects and local experts. how does the current scholarship in comparative education, and in particular the work done so far on the transfer of education models, allow us to understand these cooperation efforts? in analyzing educational models in the developing world, scholars of comparative education have typically contrasted them to templates taken from developed countries, or else pitted "southern" models against one another to determine which one best approximates a "northern" counterpart. the literature on education transfer illustrates this narrow adherence to a north-south axis: scholars working in this subfield have formulated theories to explain the dynamics of education transfer that dichotomize the world into northern lenders and southern borrowers. this binary approach to development ultimately hides more than it reveals; it obscures not only the wide gamut of development levels among countries but also the complex network of cooperation ties across and within those levels of development. as a result, studies adhering uncritically to this dichotomy tend to disregard complex gradients of power associated with cooperation ties. technical assistance does not flow narrowly from a core set of industrialized countries to developing countries; even a cursory examination of technical cooperation ties among developing countries reveals, for example, a circularity of resources and expertise which traditional frameworks have failed to consider: these developing countries do not only borrow development knowledge--they also lend it. despite a wide variety of works in development and politics that problematize the north/south dichotomy and propose either more nuanced systems of classification or the discarding of such systems altogether, the continuing adherence of comparative education scholarship to a largely fictional north-south axis has resulted in large-scale neglect of patterns of international exchange that are not readily explained by the northsouth model. this approach leaves little room for analyses of cooperation ties involving lender countries that have traditionally been peripheral to the development discourse. adriana abdenur 58 may 14, 2002 perhaps even more interestingly, the simultaneous lending and borrowing of education models among developing countries prompts several questions for which comparative education so far offers very few clues. how do the politics of cooperation among developing countries differ from those originating in industrialized countries? are these south-south lending activities merely symbolic attempts to project an image of progress? how do governments that must deal with severe development problems at home justify offering resources to other developing countries? just as importantly, how do governments justify borrowing from a fellow developing country? these questions are relevant to many areas of technical cooperation, but they are particularly pertinent to the field of education transfer because the adoption of education models constitutes one of the core areas of cooperation among developing countries. this focus is not only a product of financial constraints that limit materialsbased assistance by developing countries; it is also a reflection of a fundamental epistemological phenomenon that has transformed both development theory and development practices. more specifically, this focus reflects a crucial crossroads in the way that governments view and value development knowledge--the technical and cultural expertise required to carry out development projects. over the past century or so, growing disparities in development have yielded a variety of perspectives on how development can best be achieved. each perspective, in turn, ascribes legitimacy to different sources of development knowledge. i argue that new sources of legitimacy, based more on developmental affinity than on economic and political authority, have generated a rich network of south-south cooperation that remains for the most part terra incognita to scholars of education transfer. in sum, the main contribution of this article is not a reworking of the north-south dichotomy--which has been tackled many times before--but rather the distinction between two sources of criteria for development: affinity and authority. a few caveats are in order here. first, authority and affinity are analytical tools rather than concrete descriptive terms. although they do not correspond precisely to de facto development ties--in fact they more often than not overlap and interact--analytically separating the two sources of legitimacy allows for greater clarity in academic scholarship of development relations. likewise, i use "south" and "north" as ideal types rather than poles in a binary framework. finally, even though the focus of this article is on the state as an actor of development, the argument is largely applicable to other agents in development, including ngos. this article is thus anchored in those facets of development that are particularly relevant to the state as a unit of analysis. the argument is laid out in three parts. the first part of the article explores the scholarly neglect of education cooperation among developing countries by reviewing the relevant literature in comparative education and identifying the approaches taken so far to south-south education transfer. the second part provides an outline of the main currents of thinking about development, focusing on education and knowledge. after delineating the gaps that have resulted from the neglect of south-south ties, the last part of the article sketches out an agenda for further cumulative research on education transfer. tilting the north-south axis: the legitimization of southern development knowledge and its implications for comparative education research current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 59 literature review in the postwar period, the modernist paradigm of development held that countries go through a unidirectional process of transition from traditional to modern society; it prescribed emulation of the industrial north as the sole remedy for the backwardness of the south. this paradigm lost favor in the post-colonial period as scholars and development experts began to question the narrow interpretation of development and proposed instead that there are several paths to this end. the backlash against modernism was strengthened by the burgeoning field of colonial studies, whose key figures challenged northern domination often vociferously (fanon, 1961; memmi, 1957/1992; said, 1978) and helped debunk the once-hegemonic modernist paradigm. despite the success of colonial studies in rejecting the reductionist worldview proposed by modernization theorists like rostow (1960), scholars of colonial and post-colonial education (some of whose work is described below) have failed to recognize that the criteria for legitimacy in transfers of development expertise have changed substantially during the past few decades. this excessively narrow focus has often led these scholars to overlook dimensions of international cooperation--most notably ties among developing countries--that have contributed significantly to the generation and legitimization of local knowledge. development knowledge has figured prominently in a number of the field's seminal articles, but its geopolitical dimensions have seldom been analyzed in depth. altbach (1984) broke new ground by describing how the unbalanced production and flow of academic literature worldwide has deprived the third world of information that is crucial to social and scientific development. the corollary to his argument is that this deprivation is essentially systemic--a form of intellectual domination established during the colonial period and perpetuated thereafter through subtler, though no less insidious, political mechanisms. while altbach's argument that third world countries have continued to enjoy very limited access to this type of information is persuasive, he dismisses cooperation among developing countries by saying that third world countries have not engaged in significant collaboration for the production and sharing of knowledge. although publishing and other information-related forms of collaboration among third world countries has indeed been limited, this vast over-generalization seems indicative of the readiness with which scholars are willing to dismiss the agency of developing countries. while some academics have recognized the role of south-south intellectual transfer (arnove, 1980; king & buchert, 1999), few have set out to explain its scope and politics. despite this significant gap in the literature, strong criticism leveled by writers such as albert memmi (1957/1992) at colonial patterns of dominance has generated perspectives that problematize the north-south axis. andrea smith (1994), analyzing colonial education, has pointed out that even in north-south transfers knowledge does not flow in one direction; she notes that, far from being a monolithic instigator of change in the colony, the metropolis itself is also transformed by the colonial process. by debunking the myth of a single-vector transfer of knowledge, smith convincingly portrays colonial relationships as textured and flowing both ways. other scholars have complicated the simplistic view of metropolis/periphery by noting that "internal colonialism" also engenders centers and peripheries within a given country (epstein, 1971). these dynamics are often mirrored in the post-colonial period, as noted by scholars of adriana abdenur 60 may 14, 2002 neocolonialism (altbach, 1971; elsemon 1981). yet, although such studies problematize north-south relations, they do not depart from that axis; instead, they show that the relationship is bi-directional rather than uni-directional. they do not, in other words, explore the more horizontal links that emerged during and after the colonial era. recent studies that touch on south-south education ties are few and far between. in a notable exception, sandra gillespie (2001) has investigated the transfer of knowledge between china and africa. her study contextualizes south-south transfer within the world systems framework proposed by immanuel wallerstein, but it does not deal in great depth with the complex issues surrounding the legitimacy of this particular transfer. rather, gillespie's main contribution is a detailed examination of education transfer within the larger arena of foreign policy, which helps to ground the field in a broad international political context--a bird's eye view of the global arena that is essential in establishing a solid theoretical framework encompassing exchanges along several axes. whereas the contribution of comparative education to the study of south-south cooperation has been remarkably thin, there is substantial literature on the subject by scholars of international relations and development experts. the vast body of work descending from studies of regionalism and globalization offer new frameworks for analyzing the multiplicity of cooperation ties at the turn of the millennium (nye, 1968; huntington, 1996). especially since the emergence of dependency theory in the 1960s and 1970s, there has been a noticeable increase in the literature covering both bilateral and multilateral relations among developing countries. this is no doubt partly a result of an increase in actual transfer activities during the second half of the twentieth century; but it is also a reflection of a new worldview informed by structuralist perspectives such as wallerstein's world systems theory, which categorized countries according to four levels of involvement with the world economy--center, semiperiphery, periphery, and external (wallerstein, 1974). unfortunately, a large portion of the south-south literature that arose out of this worldview is prescriptive and technical rather than descriptive and analytical. publications such as the cooperation south journal, which the united nations development programme has published biannually since 1995, provide a plethora of studies pertaining to cooperation among developing countries, but they seldom include attempts to theorize the specific nature of such ties and even more rarely question the dichotomous view of the world on which they are premised. comparative education scholars have also drawn on the critical school of international relations, particularly on the work of robert cox (1996). yet cox's description of a new international economic order, despite its astute observation that the international arena is characterized not only by state actors but also by complex international networks, largely ignores more horizontal power structures. although cox purports to formulate a framework that will encompass all international relations rather than the oversimplified power structures delineated by the realist balance-of-power model, he conceptualizes the new international economic order as a negotiation between the north and the south (cox, 1996). tilting the north-south axis: the legitimization of southern development knowledge and its implications for comparative education research current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 61 as a result of this narrowly vertical definition, comparative education scholarship incorporating the work of cox and other critical theorists of international relations has consistently reflected the restricted perspective of the north-south axis. karen mundy (1998) has applied critical theory to education multilateralism to describe the emergence of a new political sphere in education assistance and development. like cox, she concentrates on north-dominated organizations at the expense of southern partnerships, which despite their relatively limited reach complicate overarching explanations of world politics--traditional and critical alike--through their sheer presence on the global scene. in sum, the dearth of scholarship on south-south education transfer follows a broader trend in the field of comparative education of concentrating far too narrowly on the north-south dimension of international development. the next section explores in greater depth the emergence of south-south cooperation networks and outlines the intellectual debates that accompanied and propelled the formation of those networks. the quest for a greater symmetry in the backlash against modernist theory, colonial and neo-colonial patterns of domination remained the object of sharp criticism by scholars and writers through the 1960s and 1970s. as these attacks gained momentum, they were no longer restricted to academic forums; soon they began to permeate the discourse--and shape the practices-of national governments and international organizations. this movement found a particularly eloquent expression in the call for empowering the south through knowledge of development. for instance, as the political legitimacy of colonialism crumbled, explicit calls for greater symmetry emerged in the literature concerning the transfer of knowledge (noah & eckstein, 1988). in 1972, unesco convened a group of experts to draft recommendations on how to engage in the transfer of development knowledge without exacerbating the dominance of traditional assistance programs. the scholars rejected the term "transfer of knowledge", which assumes a rigid pole of knowledge accumulation and a passive recipient, in favor of the "exchange of knowledge", which prescribes a bi(or multi-) directional sharing rather than single-vector assistance (ribes, 1981). a number of case studies highlighted what the writers perceived to be a critical need for local participation and outsiders' greater familiarization with local culture and society prior to project design and implementation. the authors concluded their report with a vague call for "self-training", asserting that the "original adaptation of imported elements" would allow recipient countries to help themselves. despite its generous consideration of local needs and the necessity for selective adoption of policies and policies rather than wholesale models, this analysis nevertheless adheres to the traditional north-south perspective. while acknowledging the one-sided dominance that has been built into traditional technical assistance, it aims only at increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of development projects, rather than at creating truly indigenous sources of knowledge or subverting northern dominance. in sum, the unesco experts were calling for further consideration of context and circumstance rather than human capital capacity. their analysis stops short of an explicit attempt at redefining--and thus, empowering-knowledge "recipients" as alternative sources of knowledge. adriana abdenur 62 may 14, 2002 what, then, generated knowledge transfers in which the north was no longer automatically regarded as the ultimate authority? beginning in the 1970s, there was a substantial increase, both quantitative and qualitative, in cooperation activities between developing countries. this increase was triggered by the end of colonialism, a system whose narrowly vertical power structure largely crystallized trade within territories colonized by a single european country. as colonial yokes were severed, territorial restraints on trade and cooperation imposed by the colonizing countries also broke down (johns, 1988). the cold war intensified the establishment of cooperation ties among post-colonial and other developing countries as the united states and the soviet union fought to expand their respective spheres of influence. ideology came to play a significant role in determining whether a particular link was acceptable; the u.s.a. and the soviet union prevented satellite countries from shifting sides by supporting regimes that shared their causes or interests, and they lured developing countries into their camps through financial assistance and transfer of knowledge. although in many cases the economic help proved a more appealing bait than ideology for its own sake, a number of regimes established or strengthened ties with one particular superpower out of ideological affinity. gillespie (2001) has described how academic exchanges between china and african countries (mostly flowing from the former to the latter) were fuelled by china's concerted effort to secure and retain the loyalty of african regimes with a leftist bent. ideology has since given way to more pragmatic considerations since the end of the cold war, but it still plays a part in development ties: for instance, china has continued exchange programs with several poor nations whose loyalty to the mainland might otherwise waver in face of the generous economic assistance offered by rival taiwan. partly as a result of the blocs formed by opposing ideological camps, third world countries began to perceive the potential of cooperation among themselves. in 1972, the establishment of the loosely organized third world forum was a sign that a third world perspective (the tiers-mondiste paradigm) was beginning to crystallize not only in the academy but also in policy-making. mahbub ul huq, a world bank senior official from pakistan, characterized the ultimate purpose of this grouping as the "intellectual self-reliance, both at the national and at the international level, which could give some form and substance to our aimless search for appropriate development strategies at home and to our disorganized efforts to coordinate out negotiating positions abroad" (cited in cox, 1996, p.381). this attempt by developing countries to increase political leverage by banding together was reinforced by the oil crisis of 1973, when developed countries rather abruptly sidelined development issues in order to focus on their own imperiled economies. ul huq was not a solitary critic. he was part of an international network of intellectuals, many from the third world, who around this time began to formulate solid critiques of traditional approaches to development and assistance1. samir amin, an egyptian intellectual and former officer of the united nations development programme, believed that self-reliance was not only an intellectual goal but also an economic one. amin (1977) proposed that, in order to redress the dramatic inequalities between north and south, third world countries should collectively limit the export of raw materials to the first world. tilting the north-south axis: the legitimization of southern development knowledge and its implications for comparative education research current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 63 these ideas are variants of a uniquely third world paradigm that was emerging in the late 1960s and 1970s. an intense questioning of traditional forms of dominance, strongly influenced by the historical structuralism of marxist thought, began to take shape in third world academic circles. scholars such as raúl prebisch (1970) drew up a new worldview based on the concepts of metropolis and periphery. although a number of variations emerged around this theme, these theories--known collectively as dependency theory--had as a least common denominator the notion that developing countries were kept subjugated to industrialized countries through forms of dominance inherited from the colonial period (cardoso & faletto, 1979; frank, 1988). dependence theorists suggested that industrialized countries maintained this exploitative dynamic by appropriating the surplus of developing countries, coopting their elites, and fostering the illusion in the periphery that its inhabitants were indeed free. the implication of this perspective, especially as refined by wallerstein, was that the potential for transforming the world system lay in the third world itself--a corollary that no doubt strengthened the drive of the tier-mondistes. the dependency theory school had a significant impact on international relations and on development policy, both directly and indirectly. it strengthened, for instance, the conviction of third world development experts that industrialized countries eschewed local expertise in their development assistance programs, favoring forms of knowledge that were not always applicable to the local context. in general, this period brought about a deep suspicion regarding the motives of industrialized countries even in their aid activities. crucial decisions regarding the global economy were now being made by international organizations (imf, oecd) that excluded third world countries (mundy, 1998). more specifically, this period gave rise to a marked increase in regionalism and block formation in the south. in the late 1970s, south-south cooperation gained impetus with the signing of what is perhaps the most ambitious cooperation agreement among developing countries so far--the buenos aires plan of action (bapa), which called for the expansion of trade and other networks within the third world. the plan, signed by 138 countries, marked the systematic approach of the united nations development program to what it called technical cooperation among developing countries (tcdc)-a separate division within the organization (undp, 1978). the bapa was a highly optimistic and ambitious document, and it had a deep impact on the formation of official ties among developing countries. in latin america, for example, it expedited the creation of a solid network of technical cooperation agreements. in the mid-eighties, the organization of american states established a horizontal cooperation program for multilateral and bilateral cooperation agreements between developing countries. the program encompasses the technical cooperation agencies of brazil, argentina, and mexico, and supports a number of other bilateral and multilateral cooperation venues between latin american countries (cidi, 2002). the program's launch coincided with other initiatives, taken both individually and jointly by developing countries. in brazil, the establishment of a government cooperation agency (abc) reflects this trend in its organizational structure: it is split into two separate divisions, one that coordinates assistance received from developed countries and multilateral organizations, and one that coordinates cooperation with other developing adriana abdenur 64 may 14, 2002 countries. the latter is largely concerned with providing other lusophone countries such as angola, mozambique, and east timor with assistance in areas in which brazil has accumulated a solid record. for example, the abc has been actively involved in the training of portuguese-language teachers in east timor, drawing on its long tradition of popular education programs to help consolidate the education system of that newly independent country. the trend is not restricted to the latin american context; nor is it peculiar to government agencies. recent issues of cooperation south, which tracks cooperation among developing countries, include an essay on india's technical cooperation programme, which provides scholarships for academic exchanges with other developing countries and has sent around 500 indian experts to assist in development projects elsewhere (parthasarathi, 2000); a report on the africa-asia business forum, a coalition of 350 african and asian business executives who meet regularly to promote trade, share ideas, and carry out collaborations in the form of joint ventures and technology transfers ("windows on the south," 1999); and a description of a free-email project begun by costa rica and currently being expanded throughout central america and the dominican republic ("windows on the south," 2000). the transfer of education and training models has played a key role in south-south cooperation activities. this focus reflects the centrality of education and training in dependency theory, which posits that the control of knowledge enables the metropolis to inculcate in the periphery the illusion of freedom. to dependence theorists, this control allows the north to promote and validate those types of knowledge which are most convenient to northern interests, often in spite of--and to the detriment of--local and traditional forms of knowledge. by undermining local knowledge in the south, the north was seen as undermining the south's sources of power. this perspective gained strength in the 1970s when northern countries pushed for a "basic needs" approach to development assistance, sidelining education (whose impact on a society would take decades to determine) in favor of more visible, immediate-impact efforts in health and nutrition (mundy, 1998). scholars of education soon seized upon this concept to critique the structure of knowledge as one of the most fundamental tools in perpetuating northern dominance, and they began to call for vigorous efforts to indigenize the production of knowledge without striving for complete isolation (mazrui, 1975). authority and affinity this vibrant call for the development of localized knowledge, combined with the increasing attention paid to cooperation among developing countries, signals a fundamental shift in the source of legitimacy for development. this legitimacy was once predicated on political and economic authority, which largely corresponded to the developed world and was greatly reinforced by the colonial pattern of domination and its legacy. the colonial power structure ascribed dominance to the colonizer and relegated the colonized to a position of subservience. the mixture of terror and paternalism that characterized colonial relationships ensured not only that the colonized remained dominated, but also that he aspired to the "civilized"--hence, "knowledgeable"-status of the colonizer. the colonizer, in other words, had ownership and control of knowledge that produced power, and this knowledge was meted out strategically to specific sectors of the population, notably instance the elite, whose complicity was tilting the north-south axis: the legitimization of southern development knowledge and its implications for comparative education research current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 65 instrumental in safeguarding the colonizer's stronghold on the territory. the colonizer could thus define the knowledge-power relationship under a semblance of generosity (i.e., for permitting that some colonized persons enter their sphere of civilization)2. in the post-colonial period, outright coercion was replaced by the modernist prescription for emulation of the industrialized countries as the only path to development. in the 1960s, as dependency theory and its equally rebellious theoretical cousins took hold and governments began to question the wisdom of this worldview, there began to emerge new sources of legitimacy for the transfer of development knowledge. development scholars like ul huq and mazrui began to place greater value on familiarity with the local context ("indigenous knowledge") and political affinity (kinship with the former colonized as opposed to the former colonizer). as developing countries incorporated this new perspective into their international cooperation activities, they began to actively construct an alternative political space where affinity supplemented authority as a source of legitimacy for development knowledge. the intellectual discourse around issues of development reflects changing views of the role of developing countries. particularly notable is the concern with dampening the hierarchical connotations of development-related expressions. in the 1970s, some scholars appropriated the maoist term collective self-reliance to describe their attempt to break the pattern of dependency, and then shifted to "softer" terms such as cooperation, assistance, and horizontal cooperation, and--most recently--south-south cooperation. behind this shifting discourse was a strong emphasis (sometimes bordering on zealous insistence) that developing countries were capable of both producing and sharing development knowledge independently of the industrialized world. despite the sometimes radical overtones of this discourse, it was far more than hot air; indeed, this discourse accompanied concrete changes in the cooperation practices--most notably the establishment of government agencies in developing countries geared specifically at fomenting collaboration with other developing countries--that in turn signaled new sources of legitimacy for development knowledge. this is not to say that cooperation achieved symmetry. despite the effort to erase connotations of hierarchy from the language on cooperation between developing countries, these collaborative ties also imply complex political processes. the concepts of affinity and authority are useful insofar as they allow us to tease out the different sources of legitimacy for development knowledge and identify the dominant criteria for adoption of development projects in a given context. however, these are weberian ideal types--analytical tools for comparative analysis. in reality authority and affinity are seldom mutually exclusive; they overlap and interact. moreover, what to one actor seems like affinity might look like authority to another; this mismatch of interpretation itself yields complex power plays. regional leaders such as brazil, south africa, and india may use their lending capacities to reassert their positions within their respective geopolitical arenas. borrowing from such countries entails not only affinity but also authority, although of a different sort than that represented by industrialized nations. even cooperation among countries at similar development levels involves complex political negotiation; for instance, lenders must justify using what are already scarce resources to assist others, and borrowers must justify the importation of models and knowledge that originate in other contexts of underdevelopment. adriana abdenur 66 may 14, 2002 power persists in these ties partly because of the centrality of knowledge in this shift in legitimacy. the role of information and education in cooperation among developing countries cannot be understated. it is no coincidence that a substantial potion of southsouth cooperation takes the form of technical assistance and education projects. this focus in part reflects the widespread belief that human capital formation is a key ingredient of national development. in addition, borrowing education and training from another developing country might be sometimes politically far less problematic than borrowing, say, economic models, which would make policymakers accountable according to a multitude of readily quantifiable variables. finally, borrowing in these areas is a relatively cost-effective way to trigger and sustain socioeconomic change. even exchanges that should be strictly classified as technical assistance rather than transfers of education impact the education system by altering the very sources that provide content (and sometimes, form) for education programs. enhanced knowledge of aids prevention techniques, for instance, can trickle down as far as primary school as experts adapt school curricula to include that enhanced knowledge. these cooperation programs thus target specific individuals whose expanded human capital has a "multiplier effect". by focusing strategically on people who have a real impact on policy, borrowers can assure that whatever assistance they do receive has maximal effect. at the same time, lenders can optimize the impact of their own scarce assistance resources, which helps to justify lending activities at the level of internal politics. the centrality of education in south-south cooperation is thus closely tied to the role of knowledge as a fundamental tool of development. the primacy accorded to education in this arena in turn opens up exciting new possibilities for empirical research in comparative education. conclusion and new directions for research this article has outlined the development of a new source of legitimacy for development knowledge that privileges social, political, and economic affinity between cooperation partners over the ascribed authority of an industrialized lender. the new focus on affinity, while not eclipsing the preeminence of authority, has yielded rich networks of collaboration in the south. expanding the theoretical framework used by scholars of comparative education to include these networks allows us to redirect empirical research to unexplored areas of education transfer. despite the political focus of this theoretical exploration, unearthing the complexity of south-south ties in the field of education yields several possibilities both for empirical research and for theoretical refinement of analytical frameworks. here below i describe two particularly promising lines of work for further research on this topic. first, case studies that trace the circuitry of assistance within education development ties would shed light on the circularity of resources that becomes evident when we consider developing countries as lenders as well as borrowers. one area that is especially in need of further work is the topic of regional leadership, which might yield interesting data on relationships of authority among developing countries. as mentioned above, regional leaders such as brazil, south africa, and india have specific programs for "horizontal" cooperation that focus on education and training activities. exploring the reasons why these countries lend assistance while receiving themselves substantial aid from the tilting the north-south axis: the legitimization of southern development knowledge and its implications for comparative education research current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 67 north would greatly enhance our understanding of the politics of education at the international level. a complementary line of work would involve more explicitly comparative studies contrasting the politics of borrowing among countries at different levels of development. these comparative studies would be particularly fruitful in regards to the specific politics of borrowing and lending within these configurations. areas of interest would include means of justification for engaging in such activities, the discourses that arise out of those means of justification, and the political resistance encountered by constituencies and political entities accustomed to authority as the primary source of legitimacy in development. finally, empirical research need not be geared strictly towards refining the theoretical framework. much of the scholarship in comparative education is carried out with the explicit purpose of assisting policymakers and development specialists to effectively adapt borrowed models of education. greater attention to the flow of models between developing countries would no doubt generate important practical information on local context and capacity for adaptation. notes 1. it must be noted, however, that many of these third world intellectuals were educated in developed countries. ul huq himself was a yale graduate, and amin received his training in paris. 2. this point was made most effectively by bernard cohn (1996) in colonialism and its forms of knowledge: the british in india. cohn points out that the british were able to maintain control of this vast territory by invading not only its physical space but also its epistemological space. t. m. luhrmann (1996) has examined this dynamic in relation to bombay's parsi minority, providing a detailed account of their aspirations and delusions of sharing the colonizers' civilized knowledge. references altbach, p. g. 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(1981). scientific life in indian and african universities: a comparative study of peripherality in science. comparative education review, 25, 164-8. epstein, e. h. (1971). education and peruanidad: "internal" colonialism in the peruvian highlands. comparative education review, 15, 188-201. fanon, f. (1961). les damnés de la terre. paris: maspero. gillespie, s. (2001) south-south transfer: a study of sino-african exchanges. new york: routledge. frank, a.g. (1988). the development of underdevelopment. in c. k. wilber (ed.), the political economy of development and underdevelopment (4th ed.) (pp.109-20). new york: random house business division. huntington, s. (1996). the clash of civilizations. new york: simon & schuster. inter-american council for integral development, cidi. (2002). horizontal cooperation in the oas. washington, dc: organization of american states. johns, r. a. 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(1998). educational multilateralism and world (dis)order. comparative education review, 42(4), 448-478. tilting the north-south axis: the legitimization of southern development knowledge and its implications for comparative education research current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 69 noah, h.j. & eckstein, m. a. (1988). dependency theory in comparative education: twelve lessons from the literature. in j. schriewer & b. holmes (eds.), theories and methods in comparative education (pp. 165-192). frankfurt am main: peter lang. nye, j. s., jr. (ed.) (1968). international regionalism. boston: little brown and company. parthasarathi, a. (2000). india's experience with tcdc. coopeation south, 2000 (1), 108112. prebisch, r. (1970). change and development: latin america's great task. washington, d.c.: interamerican development bank. ribes, b. (1981). domination or sharing? endogenous development and the transfer of knowledge. paris: unesco press. rostow, w. (1960). the stages of economic growth: a non-communist manifesto. cambridge: the university press. said, e. (1978). orientalism. new york: vintage books. smith, a. (1994). colonialism and the poisoning of europe: towards an anthropology of colonists. journal of anthropological research, 50, 383-393. united nations development programme (1978). buenos aires plan of action. new york: united nations. wallerstein, i. (1974). the modern world system: capitalist agriculture and the origins of the european world economy in the sixteenth century. new york: academic press. windows on the south: current trends, perspectives and events (1999). cooperation south, 1999 (2), 148-150. windows on the south: current trends, perspectives and events (2000). cooperation south, 2000 (1), 114-119. © 2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 30 december 15, 2004 islamization or secularization? educational reform and the search for peace in the southern philippines jeffrey ayala milligan florida state university abstract since 1001 many observers of education in the muslim world have expressed concerns about the radicalizing influence of madrasahs. these critiques often assume that the dichotomization of sacred and secular common to civic society in the west is a necessary ingredient of any educational reforms designed to prevent the spread of religious extremism in the muslim world. this essay critically examines this secularization thesis through an analysis of current educational reforms in the southern philippines, where local officials have initiated efforts to islamize education in the context of a decades-long secessionist movement. introduction since september 11, 2001, there has been growing concern in the west about the allegedly radicalizing influence of islamic schools-madaris-in pakistan, saudi arabia, indonesia and other muslim countries. in some contexts-pakistan, for instance--the failure of government schools to meet the needs of muslim children is seen as providing an opening for private madaris that function largely outside government control. in others, such as saudi arabia, the government schools themselves are accused of teaching extreme interpretations of islam. in both contexts, an implicit assumption of western critics is that one major cause of islamic radicalism is the focus on religion in these schools. secularization, therefore, is often seen as an important step toward a modern, and moderate, educational system. such prescriptions for change, however, run counter to the belief that islam is a complete way of life that does not recognize the dichotomization of sacred and secular that is commonly accepted in western democracies (ghazi, 2003). these differing perspectives represent a challenge for educators inside and outside the muslim world who seek reforms that will honor the place of islam in the lived experience of muslim communities while delivering an education that will foster their peaceful development. the education of muslims in the southern philippines has faced this challenge for more than a century. almost four hundred years of muslim resistance to spanish and later american colonization have left a bitter legacy of animosity and mistrust between the muslim minority and christian majority in the philippines (majul, 1999). for the last century, successive colonial and postcolonial governments deployed secular educational policy as a primary weapon in their effort to heal that social rift (milligan, 2004, in press). those efforts have failed, however, to integrate muslim filipinos into the national mainstream or to prevent the outbreak of an islamic secessionist movement that has since raged for more than three decades and taken on disturbing international ramifications (vitug & gloria, 2000). recently, however, the government of the philippines has allowed a measure of local political and educational autonomy in muslim mindanao. this has provided muslim educators with a new freedom to conduct policy experiments that challenge the secularization thesis and map out possible islamization or secularization? educational reform and the search for peace in the southern philippines current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 31 alternatives for the reform of education in muslim communities wracked by religious and political conflict. historical context islamic education arrived in the southern philippines with islam itself some time in the late 13 th or early 14 th century. over the next two hundred years, it spread throughout the southern islands of mindanao and the sulu archipelago (majul, 1999). thus, by the time spain arrived to colonize the philippines in the 16 th century, islam had become a key feature of cultural identity and, hence, education throughout the region. spanish colonization, however, with its policy of aggressive christianization, introduced a dichotomization of philippine cultures along religious lines that would eventually lead to a series of armed conflicts over the next three centuries (majul, 1999). from this point forward, muslim filipinos' adherence to islam would be seen by successive colonial and postcolonial governments as, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, an unmitigated evil impeding the political and economic integration of mindanao and sulu into the philippine body politic. educational policies would come to reflect those views. though spain gradually introduced a system of higher and later public education in those regions of the country it controlled, this had little impact on muslim filipinos due to their aggressive resistance against colonial integration. the u.s. invasion of the philippines in 1898, however, brought that resistance to a bloody end in the ensuing decade. while american rule of muslim filipinos generally eschewed the violent antiislamic policies of the spanish regime, it was implemented through a colonial discourse that posited a continuum between civilization--epitomized by white, euro-american, christian culture--and savagery--epitomized in the philippines by the muslim filipino. thus, islam became a marker of ignorance, backwardness, and the need for education. u.s. colonial rule in muslim mindanao, therefore, became peculiarly pedagogical in character. in fact, one academic observer at the time described it as a “new experiment in colonization, an experiment that has been, and still is, the story of a great modern advance in race pedagogy, a notable example of colonization that gets its theory and justification from the principles of modern pedagogy” (torrance, 1917, p. 1). this pedagogical imperialism would come to be characterized by policies and practices that were similar to those developed in the americans' earlier encounters with africanamericans and native-americans. boarding schools--particularly for girls and indigenous elites--were established. farm schools worked to eradicate indigenous systems of land tenure and fix individual farmers on small plots of land. vocationallyoriented curricula prepared muslim children for their roles in the colonial economy. language policies attempted to replace local dialects with a single lingua franca. in effect, american schooling replaced militant spanish catholicism as the weapon of choice in integrating muslim filipinos into an emerging philippine state as a marginalized and subordinated minority stripped of all but a nominal muslim identity (milligan, 2004). these policies, as well as the underlying conception of muslim filipinos as uncivilized, backward, and dangerous passed largely unchanged into subsequent independent governments. they were encoded in textbooks and curricula that virtually erased the history, experiences, customs and religion of muslim filipinos. such policies presented muslim filipinos with a stark choice, a choice put rather bluntly in a history of the commission on national integration: “in the process of helping them attain a jeffrey ayala milligan 32 december 15, 2004 higher degree of civilization, they have to discard some of their traditional values and customs” (clavel, 1969, p. 71). tragically, through a combination of unchanging attitudes and bureaucratic inertia, this educational dispensation continued more or less intact into at least the 1980s (milligan, in press). unsurprisingly, these policies were met with various forms of resistance. the most obvious form of this resistance has been an armed movement to establish an independent islamic state in mindanao. the ensuing conflict has claimed more than 100,000 lives since the early 1970s and earned mindanao the dubious distinction of being a “front” in the war on terrorism (vitug & gloria, 2000; abuza, 2003). but resistance has taken educational forms as well. the parallel system of formal and informal islamic education that had existed in muslim mindanao for centuries continued right through the 20 th century. by the 1950s, however, larger and better-organized schools patterned on arab models had begun to emerge in several cities in muslim mindanao. as the secessionist movement gained momentum in the early 1970s the numbers of madaris grew rapidly to well over 1,000 in the western provinces of mindanao (boransing, magdalena and lacar, 1987). while some of these schools received international support from the middle east, most were supported by the tuition of muslim families, one of the poorest populations of an already poor nation. finding no support for their distinct cultural and religious identities in the public schools, many muslim families sent their children to the madaris-exclusively or at least on weekends--in order to sustain their islamic identity. these religious schools, however, offered little in the way of social and economic mobility within the larger philippine society. muslim filipino children thus attended school seven days a week and tried to negotiate as many as five separate languages in an often futile attempt to secure a future as both filipino citizens and muslims. by the mid-1990s private madaris that attempted to integrate government authorized curricula and islamic curricula emerged to fill the need that public schools had long neglected. thus the parallel system of islamic education strengthened from the 1980s forward. from secularization to islamization this history of conflict and forced integration into a social mainstream shaped by centuries of anti-muslim bias and a clearly western, christian-oriented conception of modernity is the backdrop against which current efforts to islamize education in mindanao must be understood. from the beginning of the 20 th century, the cornerstone of philippine educational policy for its muslim minority was integration. the underlying assumption of this policy was that the dichotomization of philippine society between muslims and christians was an unfortunate legacy of spanish colonization. this mistrust was no longer justified in a postcolonial state in which everyone was an equal citizen. it was largely perpetuated, however, by the backwardness and ignorance of the muslims. the integration policy assumed that a unified curriculum, common textbooks and unified policies, combined with efforts to increase muslim filipinos' access to secular public education, would gradually resolve muslim-christian tensions. from the early 1950s on this resulted in efforts to expand secular public schools and establish a government university in the muslim regions (isidro, 1979). at about the same time, the government created the commission on national integration, an agency intended to provide a broad range of development assistance but which put most of its efforts into the provision of college scholarships for muslim youth (clavel 1969). a highly islamization or secularization? educational reform and the search for peace in the southern philippines current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 33 centralized national department of education administered these policies. these efforts failed, however, to head off the eruption of the armed secessionist movement in the early 1970s. many of the cni scholarship recipients never finished their education (clavel, 1969). some of those who did, such as moro national liberation front chairman nur misuari, turned up as leaders in the secessionist movement (majul, 1999; vitug & gloria, 2000). the overthrow of the marcos dictatorship and reinstitution of elite democracy in 1986 created a political rupture within which new possibilities for muslim filipinos began to take shape. the new administration of corazon aquino, which saw lingering communist and islamist insurgencies as artifacts of the marcos dictatorship, was sympathetic to muslims' claims of oppression and relatively willing to acknowledge the historical legacy of christian filipinos' biases in furthering that oppression. while this new openness did not go so far as to interrogate the extent to which new policies perpetuated those biases, it did create a climate in which decentralization and local autonomy could be seriously entertained as viable political responses to the conflict (brilliantes, 1987; tanggol, 1990; ocampo, 1991). this new climate led to the creation of the autonomous region in muslim mindanao in 1990. the act creating the armm charged its regional government with the creation and maintenance of a public educational system that would teach “the rights and duties of citizenship and the cultures of the muslims, christians and tribal peoples in the region to develop, promote and enhance unity in diversity” (republic of the philippines, 1990). it also went on to require arabic language instruction for muslim children, to require schools to “develop consciousness and appreciation of one's ethnic identity,” and to give the autonomous government the power to regulate the madaris. responsibility for the educational measures delineated in the act was devolved to a regional department of education, culture and sports in 1991. thus, by the mid-1990s the legal and policy frameworks were in place to, theoretically, allow muslim filipinos to determine the content and direction of their education for the first time since losing their independence to the u.s. at the beginning of the century. muslim filipino educators quickly seized upon this new freedom to islamize education in the armm (tamano, 1996). their efforts led to two new initiatives in armm educational policy, initiatives that are also supported by the national department of education for muslim children residing outside the region (mutilan, 2003; m. boransing, personal communication, july 7, 2004). the first of these initiatives involves the islamization of public education in the region. though the geographic concentration of muslims in western mindanao and the growth in the numbers of muslim schoolteachers since the 1970s has meant that many muslim children attend majority muslim schools taught by muslims and located in muslim communities, the centralization of policy making in manila ensured that curricula did not reflect, and at times conflicted with, local values (bula, 1989; pascual-lambert, 1997; rodil, 2000). centralized testing policies enforced teacher compliance with this curriculum; those who chose to deviate from it jeopardized their students' already slim chances for social advancement. thus the new autonomy to design curricula that reflect local values represents a significant shift in policy. muslim educators in the armm have, therefore, seized upon that autonomy to infuse islamic values into the public school curriculum both in the formal values education program and in the curricula of other subjects. textbooks are to be written jeffrey ayala milligan 34 december 15, 2004 and disseminated that depict muslims and islam favorably and accurately reflect their values. to this end locally respected ulama have been engaged to help review, revise, and write new curricula and textbooks. arabic language instruction is to be expanded as well in order to enhance muslim children's opportunities to interact with the rest of the muslim world as well as enable them to read the koran, the traditional purpose of arabic instruction in the madaris. the goal of these efforts is to make public schools more attractive to muslim families and thus reduce the incentive to send children to madaris outside of government control and susceptible, in some instances, to radical islamist influences (m. mutilan, personal communication, july 5, 2004). the second initiative involves the so-called integration of the madaris (macada-ag, personal communication, june 23, 2004). ever since the introduction of government education under the american colonial regime, islamic education, though respected and supported within the filipino muslim community, represented a social and economic dead end for muslims as citizens of the philippine state. the vast majority of madaris focused almost exclusively on religious instruction, thus students who attended them did not receive instruction in those subjects that would enable them to attend universities or compete for positions in the larger society. even those madaris that did offer such instruction were often not recognized by the government or were of such poor quality that their graduates were equally handicapped. thus graduates of the madaris, some of whom do go on to receive an advanced islamic education in the middle east, are employable only as poorly paid teachers in islamic schools. this contributes to a sense of exclusion, frustration and discrimination that has radicalized many. the aim of madrasah integration, therefore, is to encourage and support madaris to expand their curricula to include subject matter taught in the public schools. this would enable those integrated madaris to seek government recognition and thus be eligible for limited public support under the fund for assistance to private education. it would also, theoretically, afford those students who choose a madrasah education a measure of social mobility through the acquisition of knowledge and skills necessary to transfer to public schools, attend government universities, or to seek employment in the national economy. in effect, these reforms aim to integrate what for centuries have been two separate systems of education: government education and islamic education. thus the century-long search for an approach to education that would enhance the prospects of peace between muslims and christians has shifted from the long-held faith in secularization to islamization (saligoin, 1997; abdullah, 2003; ghazi, 2003; boransing, 2003). this shift reflects and is reflected by a corresponding intensification of islamic identity in the broader filipino muslim community (milligan, 2003). madrasah integration, for instance, began in the private sector with the establishment of institutions such as the ibn siena integrated school in marawi city. established in 1995 by a consortium of muslim intellectuals and local ulama, ibn siena offers both the traditional curriculum of the madrasah and an approved government curriculum. in the first five years of its existence, it grew to an enrollment of more than 2,000 students (c. derico, personal communication, june 27, 2004). this intensification of islamic identity in the broader community is also reflected in the growth of the jema'at al tabligh in the southern philippines. from tentative beginnings in the region in the late 1970s, the movement has grown to include tens of thousands of adherents (boransing, et al, 1987; vitug & gloria, islamization or secularization? educational reform and the search for peace in the southern philippines current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 35 2000). it is described locally as a “roving university,” a form of non-formal adult education that teaches an expression of islam that strictly adheres to the life and teachings of the prophet muhammad while eschewing separatism (manoga, 2002; m. a. faisal, personal communication, june 28, 2004). making good on the potential inherent in these public policy and private educational experiments has been severely hampered by endemic poverty, continued financial dependence on the central government, corruption and infighting within the armm, and the lingering habits of a century of educational centralization (s. tamano, personal communication, july 12, 1999; chua, 1999; a.h. macada-ag, personal communication, june 23, 2004). over the last decade, however, officials of the department of education in the armm have begun to articulate policies responsive to the charge to teach muslim culture, develop consciousness of one's ethnic identity, and “adopt an educational framework that is meaningful, relevant and responsive to the needs, ideals and aspirations of the people in the region” (republic of the philippines, 1990). the general intent of these policies is the islamization of education in the autonomous region. after a century of colonial and postcolonial government efforts to subordinate islamic identity to national identity and to dismiss it as irrelevant to educational development in the southern philippines, muslim educational leaders in the armm have placed that identity at the heart of a program of educational reforms they think necessary for the social and economic development of muslim mindanao. islamic education, ethno-religious conflict and the search for national unity current responses to muslim filipinos' long struggle for educational equity remain, for the moment, at the level of policy statements. their effective implementation faces challenges beyond the usual poverty, inadequate funding and bureaucratic lethargy that hinder most efforts to reform philippine education. for instance, a key motive behind the century-long policy of integration via education was the threat to national unity inherent in the diversity of philippine society. this became a national security concern as a result of the muslim secessionist movement in mindanao. the majority's insensitivity and outright bias toward muslim filipinos caused the policy of integration to be experienced as the attempted de-islamization, assimilation and subordination of the muslim minority to the christian majority. muslims generally resisted this. current efforts to allow more autonomous policy-making in the armm may succeed in removing some of the oppressive, prescriptive aspects of elite-dominated centralization. efforts to islamize public schools serving muslim students represents a profound shift from ignoring or actively denigrating islam to giving it a place of honor in the curriculum comparable to the place it holds in the larger filipino muslim community. this is likely to enhance the sense of self-worth and dignity of muslim children as muslims. but is it likely to do the same for their sense of being filipino? perhaps more importantly, islamization policies do not address the curricular silence and bias regarding muslim filipinos in the education of the christian majority. this raises the possibility that, to the extent the policy is effective in strengthen islamic identity among filipino muslim schoolchildren, it may leave untouched, if not exacerbate, the gulf between filipino christians and filipino muslims that the integration policy was meant to eradicate. jeffrey ayala milligan 36 december 15, 2004 madrasah integration faces its own hurdles. while it is unlikely that most owners of private madaris will object, in principle, to the addition of subjects such as science, mathematics, english, or social studies to their curricular offerings, there is considerable skepticism regarding the costs and the loss of control (a. h. macada-ag, personal communication, june 23, 2004). madrasah integration will require owners to re-train existing teachers or hire new ones. this represents an enormous expense for schools that are dependent on the tuition they can charge of generally poor families. the department of education in the armm and the national department of education are also unlikely to shoulder this expense. they simply do not have the resources. assistance from the international donor community--particularly from muslim countries--may address some of the need, but it is highly unlikely that such aid will meet all of it. lacking financial leverage over the private madaris, therefore, it is unclear how the department of education in the armm will persuade them to integrate public school subjects into their curricula. the enabling legislation of the armm does give it the authority to regulate madaris ; however, unfunded mandatory integration or threats to close noncompliant madaris may simply further alienate and perhaps radicalize many madrasah owners and operators. again, this would represent a defeat of one of the key objectives of the islamization policies. these problems are only possibilities at this point as islamization policies are formulated and put into practice in muslim mindanao. whether these, or other unforeseen challenges come to pass will have to await future analysis. however, the fact that they are being tried in a setting with such a long history of influence from u.s. political and educational ideals is enlightening (milligan, in press). for this experiment seems to constitute a rejection of the notion that strict separation of sacred and secular, of religion and public education is the most appropriate response to religious conflicts in schools and society. coming on the heels of a century-long effort to subordinate, if not actually eradicate, islam as the center of filipino muslim identity, it represents a rejection of the secularization thesis in the u.s. 's last colony. when muslim filipinos were given the freedom to shape the ends and means of their own education they chose to foreground islam. thus, filipino muslim educational experience suggests that secularization of education may only be feasible where it is already culturally acceptable. imposing secularization where it is not acceptable--in some muslim communities, for instance-may in fact be counter-productive, exacerbating rather than mitigating religious tensions. the islamization of public education in muslim mindanao represents, in effect, a bet that lowering the wall of separation between mosque and state in the philippines will create a space in which more moderate muslim voices can articulate viable educational alternatives to the assimilative, alienating educational practices of the past that have contributed to the conflict in muslim mindanao. this makes it an experiment worth watching for the insight it may offer into the challenge of providing education to minority muslim communities in other diverse societies. references abdullah, m.f. 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(1996). educational visions for muslim mindanao. cotabato city:department of education, culture and sports, armm. tanggol, s.d. (1990). regional autonomy and social development: some notes on the case of muslim mindanao. philippine journal of public administration, xxxiv, 1,1-24. torrance, a. f. (1917). the philippine moro: a study in social and race pedagogy. unpublished doctoral dissertation, new york university, new york. vitug, m. d., gloria, g. m. (2000). under the crescent moon: rebellion in mindanao. quezon city: ateneo center for social policy and public affairs/institute for popular democracy. microsoft word 42stromquist.doc © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 87 reflective treatise globalization, the i, and the other nelly p. stromquist1 harvard university of all the forces touching upon comparative and international education, there is perhaps none more important than globalization. much is being written about it; much still remains to be said. i am using such an unorthodox title to this paper to highlight how globalization is impacting individuals in special ways. today, we are seeing a veritable economic and technological and, thus, cultural revolution that is simultaneously affecting values, institutions, practices, and futures. the staggering amount of information, goods, and persons circulating across countries is moving us toward greater homogeneity, despite various singular responses from some states and communities. you and i, as both individuals and comparative educators, need to develop wider and deeper understandings of the meanings and processes of globalization and of the full reach it is attaining through both market and state forces. values, power, and politics new values permeate the increasingly globalized contemporary society. we may not agree on whether what we call "globalization" is recent or ancient, but it is undeniable that much of the form, intensity, and widespread nature it evinces, has little in common with previous human experience. today, individualism and competition are highly dominant values, with little space left for contestatory and liberatory thought. the priority assigned to the satisfaction of personal wants and desires is occurring to the detriment of discussions of a more transcendental or spiritual nature. likewise, the identification of the power and political issues that underlie many decisions and events is becoming outdated, as emphasis becomes placed on production and the creation of new goods, displacing reflection about current and past events. in the field of education, research based on empirical facts leaves practically no space for more reflective treatises as to where our society is going. research findings seem to be the only way to present knowledge; essays are avoided or seen as unwarranted or, at best, circumspect expressions of subjectivity. yet, issues of power differentials in society and their impact on educational institutions are more important than ever. why? the nature of decision-making in education has changed substantially. the key players are no longer those most affected by education-the parents--and the professionals in charge of imparting formal education--the teachers-but rather private firms and international financial institutions. through wellestablished lobbies in central countries, firms make themselves heard. international lending institutions, through persistent circulation of ideas, provision of advice, and promises to fund reforms that move in desired directions exercise considerable influence on educational policies. today, in fact, it would be a rare case to find instances of educational reform emanating from the legislature; all now derive directly from the executive branch of government with very little teacher participation, and even despite the opposition of teachers' unions (grindle, 2002; ibarrola, 2001). consequently, the nelly p. stromquist 88 may 14, 2002 measures propounded by contemporary reforms are very much alike in terminology and intention across countries, and the new educational consensus is not being shaped by its most legitimate parties. the politics of education have acquired peculiar forms. first of all, there has been a relentless attack on the quality of public schooling, and even on the possibility of reshaping it. second, everywhere in the world, "educational reforms" have been enacted. as the market and the unit that impels it--the business corporation--have assumed greater salience in everyday life, there has been a spillover of economic values into all social institutions. third, values such as productivity, efficiency, quality control, local participation, and choice permeate most educational reforms. thus, reforms pursue decentralization, privatization, testing of students and teachers, national standards, and accountability, which have been identified--with limited foundation--as the means to reach the new educational values. at first sight, the host of reforms today promises a welcomed modernization of the administration and pedagogical practices of schools; they also promise to deliver something desired by all of us: higher student achievement. on deeper examination, these reforms tend to be shallow and aimed more at the reduction of costs than at the solid and stable improvement of classrooms. a careful review of teaching practices conducive to learning in the united states (national commission on teaching and america's future, 1996) concluded unambiguously that, holding constant the socioeconomic levels of blacks and whites in this country, 50 percent of the variability in their performance could be explained by the competence of teachers, especially their ability to promote higher-order thinking. this key finding led the national commission to advocate that much more attention be given to the training of teachers and to their more equitable distribution among schools. the commission recommended also that instead of high-stakes testing, educational systems should use a "system of performance assessment to learn how students learn;" such system would include essays, oral exams, portfolios-certainly all measures in which the teacher's judgment would be crucial (darling-hammond, 2001). but what has happened to this recommendation and others based on educational research? it has been quite common for them to become ignored. educational decisionmakers, or "change champions" as some supportive parties even term them, have proceeded with very little regard for existing research findings. rather, what guides them is the strength of their convictions that market forces produce better results than governmental action, which the prevailing educational decision-makers see as cumbersome and protracted. quite often, reforms have sought to minimize costs, which leads educational economists such as carnoy (2000) and klees (2002) to conclude that these initiatives are "finance-driven." moreover, many educational reforms have focused on the structure of schooling rather than the actual classroom dynamics (stigler, 2002). the latter, the point of contact between student and formal knowledge, brings in the teacher as the crucial actor. instead, we have moved to many kinds of administrative and governance changes under the assumption that all affect classroom practice. which, in fact, they do not. globalization, the i, and the other current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 89 globalization, with the creation of increasing economic power and employment opportunities in the north, has generated unprecedented physical mobility toward this area. emigration from sub-saharan countries and central european countries to europe, and emigration from latin america to the united states and canada have undeniable impacts on educational systems in northern countries. the impact is twofold, given the bipolar nature of the immigration to these countries. on the one hand are the englishspeaking children of sophisticated professionals who come here to work in cutting-edge firms as those in the electronics and bio-technical industries. on other hand are the large masses of non-english speaking children of semi-literate and even illiterate parents. the first make demands for better and more offerings by the public schools in the suburbs. the latter are caught in a bewildering world of increasingly destitute, ethnically segregated, and violence-prone public schools in the inner cities. this scenario, in a minor scale, is repeated in developing countries, with the cities playing the magnet role over the rural areas. is it any wonder that public schools are under constant attack? privatization and parental choice in the form of charter schools and voucher programs enables the wealthier classes to exert more control over the kinds of schools in their communities. it also enables them to use more state resources for their direct benefit. the technological revolution in information and communication has brought the internet, satellite tv, and the wireless telephone. these technologies per se can be used for both positive and negative ends. on the welcome side, there is now immediate and direct contact among people, institutions, and governments. on the unwelcome side, cultural models of consumerism, competition, individualism, and violence circulate easily and constantly. the media are a powerful external influence that far exceeds the pedagogical experience of children and adolescents in schools. from cartoons in japan to mtv in senegal, visual and oral narratives bring new identities and irretrievably shape traditional cultural norms--some for the better, others for the worse. through the creation of consumerism, the media have also augmented intergenerational differences. in many countries, "adolescents" are a segment in many ways difficult to reach by older age groups. nonetheless, schools are important sites for the socialization of new generations. by fostering the formation of close and relatively long-lasting (at least covering the three years of junior high or the three years of senior high school) peer groups, schools have a powerful impact on future adults, who are moving in greater numbers toward self-satisfaction rather than trying to understand of other cultures or the development of solidarity values. because of the intense proximity schools create for young students, schools continue to have a greater influence than the media in the final analysis--although increasingly peer groups and the media act in unison. the importance of social markers, such as social class, gender, and ethnicity, is not declining with the increased complexity of our contemporary world. both in their own right and in their intersection with each other, each of these markers merits deep analysis. women certainly have a greater presence in politics and economic arenas than they may have had a decade ago, but improvements are not uniform or even sustainable. news of women attaining deanships and presidential offices in major universities is offset by depictions of grotesque pornography in which women are the primary referent. gains of women in occupations and public office emerge in sharp contrast with enduring sexual divisions of labor and the expectation that women must continue their domestic responsibilities (arnot, 2000; kenway and kelly, 2000; and blackmore, 2000). the participation of minorities in modern conscripted armies is nelly p. stromquist 90 may 14, 2002 accepted without much contestation of how disadvantaged groups are the new "cannon fodder". women, for all their legitimate claims, remain curiously silent about wars and military conflicts that are still basically masculine and which tend not to affect women as much as they affect men. a new research agenda for immediate action what i have discussed above is by no means exhaustive of the changes that are taking place in our globalized world. (for a parallel discussion of globalization challenges to comparative education research, see marginson and mollis, 2001.) yet, they alone create a new agenda for comparative and international educators. let me elaborate on some of items in this research agenda: the growing integration between economics and schooling is shaping both the knowledge that is considered legitimate and the forms schooling will take. universities are rapidly modifying their disciplines to meet the new industrial pressures as well as creating new indicators of scholarly "contribution" to the university. it matters now much less to research a social issue than to study a productive problem. concomitantly, it is much more important to conduct large-scale "funded" research than to examine problems under small grants. because of these developments, an important agenda for comparative educators will be to engage in more research studies focusing on the intersectionality between university to k-12 schooling to understand with greater precision the new knowledge being produced and circulated from the university to k12, and thus shaping primary and secondary education, and the demands (met and unmet) emerging from k-12 to higher levels of education. as the migration of people accelerates, the south is coming to the north. this makes it necessary to understand the dynamics of both regions. educators in the north, including those who are not comparativists, need to learn the background of students, their cultural norms, their cognitive patterns, and the nature of the school systems of origin, and to determine how the north must adjust to new pressing conditions rather than demand full assimilation. these immigrants range from the moroccans and libyans in italy to the guatemalans and argentines in the united states. since considerable legal and illegal migration is occurring, comparative educators face the challenge of helping develop anti-racist curricula. comparative educators in the south need to become familiar with educational reforms going on in core countries in the north (and that will reach developing countries in the very near future) to demystify their content and promise. another aspect of the ample flows of people across countries is the increased rate in the diffusion of hiv/aids. to the catastrophe in africa, we will soon have to add the explosion in india. consequences of this for comparative education is the necessary connection to be established between health and education, both for children and adolescents in school and for adolescents and adults out of the formal education system. the whole notion of "national" development must be brought into complete and detailed revision as interdependencies between countries grow and as asymmetrical relations between many of them characterize the new ties. modernity and postmodernity are concepts and paradigms that barely scratch the surface of ongoing changes in our contemporary worlds. the new forms of economic activity and economic "growth", the globalization, the i, and the other current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 91 new manifestations of cultural and ethnic identity, the emerging forms of citizenship and civic attitudes, the growing gaps across generations in values, experiences, and preferred futures must be systematically reviewed and assessed in the context of realities strongly shaped by massive information, communication, and production technologies. schools must respond to these new realities, in part through teacher reformation and modifications in subjects and curricular content. in part, schools must face the new realities by accepting that other forms of knowledge transmission, particularly through the mass media, are major rivals to the classroom. the presence and involvement of private firms in education continues to be in a crescendo mode. the implications of a tight association between the business world and schools are not fully known. on the positive side, the linkage suggests more financial resources and more expertise along the lines of administration and planning for the schools. on the downside, this connection promises a narrow focus on education as means for economic production. a case in point is a recent while house initiative, announced in april 2001 and now moving to implementation, to create centers of excellence for teacher training (creative associates, 2002). three such centers are being established in latin america and the caribbean with the purpose of improving primary education teaching through teacher training and material dissemination. at the same time, these centers are meant to be "a pioneering model of how public-sector/privatesector partnerships work to benefit all parties involved" (creative associates, 2002, p. 1). selected corporations are being invited to become founding partners and make taxdeductible contributions of $1 million per firm over four years. will firms simply donate resources or will they exert influence on issues to be addressed through primary schooling? while philanthropy is mostly a virtue, what consequences do the increased participation of business firms in public schools portend? comparative studies of these emerging roles and processes would illuminate our understanding of changes in the provision and definition of "public education." the expansion of messages in media forms, from cinema to tv programs to specialized magazines, many targeted to precise age groups and socioeconomic levels, and the pervasiveness of the entertainment industry, makes it imperative to understand to develop a stronger interdisciplinary tie between education and social communications. the preponderance of visual and oral narratives is affecting how learning occurs, including how children now prefer to learn in schools, as well as the content of learning. from a gender perspective, forms of masculinity and femininity are being shaped and recomposed through the mass media represent an enormous field of research to explore. the influence of the media is also salient in policy making. many political leaders-authors and proponents of national educational reforms--proceed by imitation of ideas and hearsay of successful programs. they have been found to lack the habit of reflection and systematic inquiry that is essential for sound policy design (darling-hammond, 2001). the enormous material consumption unleashed in the north and the consequent demands that it has made on the environment, particularly in the developing countries, has made the environment a global issue. and environmental destruction merges in perverse ways with the invasion of rights and territories of indigenous populations. from the jungles of colombia to the deserts of central asia, the protection of rivers, nelly p. stromquist 92 may 14, 2002 oceans, forests, air, and indigenous seeds and plants becomes an issue to be addressed both through political and educational means. in this context, environmental education as well as indigenous knowledge becomes a field for comparative education to engage in. this environmental education, however, should not be limited to such topics as "heal the bay," but should also include issues of environmental justice (questioning the uneven disposal among communities of environmental hazards), and the role of transnational corporations in the creation of consumer demands and their satisfaction through often rude exploitation of environmental resources in weaker geopolitical regions. another subject of increasing importance is that of human rights. with the almost unstoppable economic and political power of northern countries, there is the assertion by governments and citizens in those states that they are entitled to many unilateral positions and definitions regarding what is "right" and "wrong". we live in a much more complex world than it was even 15 years ago. technologies amenable to violent use are now much more easily accessible than in the past, and it is true that some that groups are making improper use of them. but, at the same time, the little peace and civility we have are the product of hundred of years of efforts in trying to respect and understand the "other". international law and diplomacy, conventions on basic rights such as political, economic, and political freedoms, agreements on the rights of women and minority groups cannot be thrown overboard to pursue immediate self-gratifying responses. school systems face enormous challenges today making young generations understand that human rights and peace go together; that you cannot trample on someone else's right to claim yours without incurring retribution at some later point. appeals for the development among people (particularly students) of a stronger ethic of caring and empathy will not be sufficient; work has to take place both to illuminate the inequalities that exist in society as well as to redress the undesirable conditions, even when it means that advantaged groups will see their power reduced in the process. work among educators of different nationalities, experiences, and political objectives is essential. the treatment of civic education and history in new, appealing, accessible, and balanced ways is needed. this will have to be done on a comparative basis and, further, following an interdisciplinary approach that recognizes the contributions of history, politics, and economics. as forces of civil society in the form of educational organizations, nongovernmental organizations (ngos), and community and grassroots groups are activated in response to the array of changes brought by globalization, comparative educators need to engage in a greater understanding of the non-formal education and informal education through courses more focused on adult learning and popular education offered by these elements of civil society. the work of numerous ngos, operating in many countries and within multiple contexts, must be given greater attention by governments. at present, we have a very narrow view of what education is, all too often conflating education with formal schooling. this, unfortunately, leaves out the creative and very promising work of many ngos that have identified effective modes of popular education with adults that, in some instances, may be applied to younger populations (stromquist, 2000). we educators have come to understand ngos mostly through the eyes of political scientists and public administrators. this is an arena where pedagogical lenses are sorely needed. understanding the educational work to be done through non-official forms approaches globalization, the i, and the other current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 93 and through informal ways of teaching and learning presents a promising frontier in the context of our globalized world. and, in this respect--particularly, the educational work of ngos in the south--much remains to be learned by educators in the north. concluding thoughts education, at its deeper level, is about helping people to deal with their environment and, as necessary, to transform it. globalization is introducing multiple changes to our environments and imposing more commonality than divergence. it is also introducing an avalanche of concepts, values, and practices that wraps us through physical rather than intellectual energy. globalization forces are bringing together multiple issues and exposing the powerful intersections of economics, politics, culture, and technology. although at first there might be the tendency to see all these forces as essentially macro, the "i" is being challenged in crucial ways. before we can recognize the "other", we have to know ourselves well. this requires a position of ethics, not just being bystanders of external developments. a key dictum of dewey's philosophy, applicable today more than ever, was that "ethics is prior to epistemology". the "i" of those reading this essay will be mostly middle and upper-middle class individuals. how do we force ourselves to recognize our situated lives and the benefit we draw from current circumstances? one possibility, among many others, is recognizing our location of privilege and how it shapes our research agendas, particularly the issues we do not consider worth examining--from race to gender to geographic location. globalization is highlighting how education cannot be considered an isolated field but must attain centrality as part of a comprehensive intellectual domain, noting the many nodes created by macro and micro forces. educators must respond to the complexity of globalization by creating interdisciplinary teams, not just within the social sciences but also across such fields as law, health, business, and technology. educators must also respond to globalization by getting to know the "other" much better: the experience from developing countries has important lessons to tell, and as some of the south increasingly becomes part of the north through migration, making sense of multiple human meanings and experiences is an unavoidable task. the challenges posed by globalization are immense and, while they will take years to be satisfactorily addressed, we must start now. notes 1. nelly stromquist is professor of international development education at the university of southern california and a visiting professor at harvard university. references arnot, m. (2000). gender relations and schooling in the new century: conflicts and challenges. compare, 30(3), 293-302. blackmore, j. (2000). hanging onto the edge: an australian case study of women, universities, and globalization. in n.p. stromquist & k. monkman (eds.), globalization and education: integration and contestation across cultures (pp.333-352). boulder: rowman & littlefield. nelly p. stromquist 94 may 14, 2002 carnoy, m. (2000). globalization and educational reform. in n.p. stromquist & k. monkman (eds.), globalization and education: integration and contestation across cultures (pp.43-61). boulder: rowman & littlefield. creative associates. the white house centers of excellence for teacher training. washington, d.c.: creative associates, 2002. grindle, m. (2002). the politics of educational reform in latin america. seminar presentation at the d. rockefeller center for latin american studies, harvard university, cambridge. darling-hammond, l. (2001). linking research and practice. paper presented at the aera national conference, seattle, 10-14 april 2001. ibarrola, m. de, (2001). el debate entre lo público y lo privado en las reformas de los 90 en la educacion básica en américa latina. in c. ornelas (ed.), investigación y políticas educativas. ensayos en honor de pablo latapí. mexico, d.f.: santillana. kenway, j. & kelly, p. (2000). local/global labor markets and the restructuring of gender, schooling, and work. in n.p. stromquist & k. monkman (eds.), globalization and education: integration and contestation across cultures (pp.173-195). boulder: rowman & littlefield. klees, s. (2002). world bank education policy: new rhetoric, old ideology. international journal of educational development, 22(5). marginson, s. & mollis, m.(2001). the door opens and the tiger leaps: theories and reflexivities of comparative education for a global millennium. comparative education review, 45(4), 581-615. national commission on teaching and america's future (1996). what matters most: teaching for america's future. new york: national commission on teaching and america's future. stigler, james (2002). the teaching gap: reflections on teaching and how to improve it. presentation at the graduate school of education, harvard university, 13 march 2002. stromquist, n.p. (2000). nongovernmental organizations and the education of adult women. in r. cortina & n.p. stromquist (eds.), distant alliances. promoting education for girls and women in latin america (pp.75-101). new york: routledge falmer. © 2003 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 27 distance, disability and the commodification of education: web accessibility and the construction of knowledge alan r. foley north carolina state university abstract the uses of internet technology within educational settings reflect particular perspectives on a host of issues including ability, race, and learning styles, but are often not examined for their implicit ideological or epistemological foundations. web accessibility (ensuring that web content is accessible to persons with disabilities), though laden with progressive intent, is increasingly connected to neo-liberal agendas within higher education. the delivery of instruction online, and the increased use of technology in all modes of instruction positions teachers and learners within particular discursive formations and mediates instruction in ways that privilege certain epistemologies. in the present article the concept of articulation is utilized to make sense of the diverse ideological and philosophical perspectives that find a nexus in web accessibility and that are analyzed vis-à-vis the increasing technologizing of instruction. as part of this analysis, distance education technology and web accessibility standards are discussed and the notion of "marketizing" disability is explored within the context of shifts toward online instruction. introduction the increased use of technology in colleges and universities is fairly obvious to even the casual observer, but its integration into educational practice is changing both the fabric of distance education and traditional in-person, on campus course offerings. this change affects the ways students and teachers interact as well as the ways in which knowledge is constructed, pedagogies enacted, and certain types of knowledge are privileged. in addition to the mediation of instruction and the effects on teaching and learning directly attributable to technology (e.g. the disruption of the constraints of time and physical location), the evolution of technology in on-campus and distance education courses has the potential to exclude groups of students and faculty on the basis of disability. this exclusion emerges in a physical/material form that of basic access to course materials bound up in technologies that are not usable for individuals with disabilities. it also emerges in a philosophical/ideological form in which understandings of disability both within the technology and its utilization are predicated on certain understandings of disability that preclude the full participation of all students. what makes web accessibility a particularly interesting issue is that it can be found at the confluence of several seemingly disparate forces within the university. understanding the context of this confluence provides insight into the ways in which technology, in particular those used in distance education mediate the construction of knowledge. it is important to note that the implications for this discussion are not limited to those students or faculty with disabilities because the forms of instruction and policy bases touch all aspects of web-based distance education and an increasing number of the components of "traditional" instruction (e.g. face-to-face, on-campus courses). alan foley december 17, 2003 28 furthermore, in the context of educational reform and budgetary crisis, web accessibility plays a complex role in efforts toward moving instruction online. this paper looks at a host of issues revolving around web-based distance education and web accessibility including the epistemological perspectives from which much internet based distance education is constructed, the articulation of divergent interests around the concept of web accessibility, and the marketization of both disability and university courses. i begin by offering an overview of common distance education technologies currently used in higher education and a brief discussion of the two main bodies of standards intended to guide the development of web content accessible to the broadest possible audience. next, i use the analytical concept of articulation to explore the political and practical aspects of web accessibility and the conceptualization and implementation of related policy. of particular interest is how divergent ideological interests utilize the issue of web accessibility to mobilize other agendas. building on the discussion of articulation, i discuss web accessibility and the marketizing of instruction with its attendant issues for instructors and students. i conclude by considering some of the ways in which distance education trends and particular understandings of learning privilege certain types of knowledge over others. distance education technologies and web accessibility in order to get a sense of the context of this discussion, a clarification of the terms "distance learning" and "accessibility" is appropriate. within these descriptors is an overlapping set of practices that are often viewed as synonymous and are often used interchangeably. each term has its own distinct history and significance that have lately intersected important ways. the intent here is not to fully explore these concepts but to generate a working definition of these ideas for use here. prevalent distance education technologies email and the world wide web (www) make up the two central components of the internet that are being used in education today. however, a growing number of programs are making use of applications called courseware1 or coursemanagement software (cms) that automate communication between faculty and student, the delivery of course materials and assessment. webct and blackboard are two well-known examples of courseware. together with email and the www, these programs are stretching the definition of distance learning to include some more traditional university functions. distance learning is neither a new nor a particularly uncommon form of education. it has previously used the postal service, radio and television as a means of communicating between teacher and student (sumner, 2000), but internet based distance learning has the potential to constitute something entirely different. the speed with which participants communicate, the distances between participants, and the multidirectional nature of those conversations stand in sharp contrast to previous methods of distance education. this updated retooling of distance education often carries with it the cachet of progress and the promise of reform as well as the multitude of meanings that accompany them. distance, disability, and the commodification of education: web accessibility and the construction of knowledge current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 29 yet understanding what constitutes distance education is no easy task as these tools seep into courses offered on campus and courses both for educational and administrative purposes. techniques previously reserved for distance models are increasingly commonplace in the traditional mode of higher education and the lines between traditional and distance education begin to blur. where once distance learning was truly the delivery of instruction between separate physical spaces, this new incarnation is based on the delivery of curriculum via the internet by placing entire programs online. distance education was once focused on the physical separation between teacher and student; today it refers to the tools by which instruction is mediated. the internet has tremendous abilities to deliver instruction over great distances. it also has tremendous power to mediate the construction and re-construction of knowledge, automating and narrowing instruction (and curricula) by defining and prescribing particular pedagogic methods inscribed by particular philosophical and theoretical conceptions of teaching and learning. for example, the testing features in webct emphasize objective testing and timed performance. additionally, distance-learning technologies via the internet construct (and re-construct) both the teacher and learner within particular discourses of power that often exist tacitly in particular technology forms. for example webct structures interaction between teacher and learner in ways that are determined by the design and process of the technology. it is important to note that this is not a natural consequence of the integration of the internet into education, but an artifact of the policies and practices that surround its use. this comprehensive view of the integration of the internet into instruction is the basis for a broader definition of distance learning in order to better understand how these tools affect instruction. at the same time understanding the epistemologies that structure the development of these tools can offer insight into how learning at a distance may become more collaborative and less potentially oppressive. accessibility standards the rapid growth of the internet has changed the ways people communicate, teach and learn, while at the same time increasing the isolation of those who do not have access to these technologies. over 20.9 million americans aged 15 years and over have an identified work disability (kaye, 2000). an additional four million children of school age have a chronic physical or mental health condition that limits their full participation in "mainstream" educational activities (wenger, kaye, & laplante, 1996). the goal of accessibility standards is to help make the web more accessible for people with disabilities. this includes individuals with visual disabilities, hearing disabilities, physical disabilities and cognitive or neurological disabilities. accessibility standards help web designers identify and address accessibility issues. the world wide web consortium2 or w3c leads what is perhaps the most comprehensive web accessibility standards initiative. the w3c's web content accessibility guidelines3 (wcag) were the first major effort to establish guidelines for design. this standard consists of 14 guidelines, each with three levels of checkpoints4. the wcag is not a legal mandate, but rather a comprehensive set of guidelines to ensure accessibility. alan foley december 17, 2003 30 in addition to the wcag guidelines, there are emerging legal mandates for accessibility. currently, there is no direct legal mandate for university web sites in the united states, but there is strong precedent. indeed, many states and universities are developing their own standards based on the wcag. in the united states, section 508 of the federal rehabilitation act5 sets standards for web pages designed or maintained by federal agencies. section 508 requires that electronic and information technology that is developed or purchased by the federal government is accessible by people with disabilities. section 508 does not directly apply to the private sector. while many universities have adopted the standard outlined in section 508 as part of their accessibility policy, they are not required to do so under the current law. however, there is widespread expectation that similar laws may be passed in the future regarding the publication of web sites in organizations that receive federal funds. predicting future legislation is a tricky endeavor at best, though it seems inevitable that accessibility policy will be more broadly based some point in the future. globally, the adoption of accessibility standards in canada, the european union, the united kingdom, australia, japan, and brazil, make this an international issue in which designers and developers face mandates to ensure that people with disabilities are able to access the contents of web sites and web applications. for example, in canada and the united kingdom, web site designers for the national governments are required to follow both the priority 1 and priority 2 checkpoints of the wcag. within the disability groups outlined by the wcag, there is a spectrum of issues and technologies. the case of individuals with visual disabilities is a good example. this group includes but is not limited to blind users, users with low or impaired visibility, as well as users with color deficits. each group has a specific set of needs and often uses a set of tools to address those needs. for example, a blind user may use a screen reader to read the content of a web page aloud. in order for a page to be read by a screen reader, the page has to have text associated with all components of the page, including images. in contrast, another user with low visibility may need the page to be rendered in large print. another user may be colorblind and may find pages with red-blue color combinations difficult to read. there are a variety of methods for meeting the needs of those users whether through assistive devices such as a screen reader or through presentational standards. the wcag guidelines attempt to reflect the requirements of as many of these users as possible. what is often lost in the policy language is that users with disabilities by no means represent a uniform category, nor can they be neatly divided into subcategories. articulation analyzing "webs" of ideology there are multiple contradictory subject positions, ideological formations, and processes that surround and circulate throughout the conceptualization and implementation of web accessibility practices and policies. on the one hand, there are profoundly progressive tendencies driving policies to open the doors of the university to students with disabilities and community members in ways that were not previously possible. on the other hand, web accessibility in the u.s. is linked to bureaucratic concerns such as reducing a university's legal exposure to lawsuits, maximizing use of existing technological infrastructure and broader efforts to move instruction to the web. understanding these inter-connections is central to this analysis. the implementation of distance, disability, and the commodification of education: web accessibility and the construction of knowledge current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 31 distance learning technologies, reflects ideological and political interests structures interaction between teacher and learner, and mediates the construction of knowledge these inter-connections and the coexistences they create are an example of an articulation a temporary and contingent linkage between particular discursive formations and/or individuals. the concept of articulation helps us examine the complex ideological formations and understandings of disability behind such initiatives as web accessibility as ever changing and more than a necessary result of particular structures of power and policy. as stuart hall notes, "[an articulation] is a linkage which is not necessary, determined, absolute and essential for all time" (grossberg, 1996). when examining web accessibility and technology as examples of articulated ideological formations and various subject positions, it is crucial to recognize that such circumstances are constantly shifting. over time, these policies will be under pressure to continue to meet the ideological pressures of various blocs affected by them. for example, there is currently a confluence of needs for universities to provide accessible content and their desire to maximize income in difficult economic times. by ensuring accessible web-based content, universities can simultaneously broaden their markets while trimming expenses. one might be led to wonder, as material and political conditions change will this particular articulation of legal requirement and economic necessity continue to exist? additionally, how does this particular articulation affect the provision of instruction at the university? these articulations between legal requirement, progressive intent, and market forces occur within the broader context of reform and change within higher education. this raises questions about the role of the university in supporting improvements in technology infrastructure and the commodification of instruction. for example, the primary responsibility for the improvement of instructional web sites is often placed on the faculty themselves. at the same time, there is often little discussion of how to support these individuals within web accessibility policies themselves policies are often unfunded mandates. subsequently, there is serious potential for web accessibility policies to simply shift the responsibility of web accessibility to individual faculty and staff, intensifying and conflating the roles of teaching and technical production. web accessibility and marketizing instruction the effort to promote and create accessible web pages can also be seen as part of a larger trend within the university to move instruction to the web. this process may have benefits especially for individuals with disabilities and non-traditional students. for individuals with disabilities, distance learning offers an alternative to place-specific classes and internet technologies offer potential for ease of use for a wider range of assistive technologies. the flexibility offered by asynchronous6 internet based learning technologies often makes courses offered via this medium appealing to students with disabilities. this updated retooling of distance education carries with it the cachet of progress and the promise of reform as well as the multitude of meanings that accompany them. conversely, critics like noble (1998) point to the dangers of courses offered online. while they often generate revenue for the cash poor university, online offerings have tremendous potential to erode faculty autonomy and job security as well as contribute to alan foley december 17, 2003 32 the narrowing of the curriculum especially by limiting instruction as constrained by technology and reinforcing particular pedagogic methods which reflect certain understandings of learning. the courseware tool webct provides an interesting example of both attempts to accommodate the accessibility standards while simultaneously marketizing disability and commodifying instruction. webct and tools like it reflect the conditions necessitated by diverse interests including movements to standardize instruction, efforts to move instruction to the web, and web accessibility initiatives. the actual accessibility of webct as a tool is increasingly less an issue than it has previously been. as a company, webct at least recognizes that the issue exists7 (webct accessibility, 2003), but the confluence of needs and interests that are simultaneously engaged with and served by web accessibility policies finds a nexus in cms tools like webct. the connection between internet based distance learning and the bureaucratic and ideological agendas within the university is central to this understanding of internet based distance education tools, web accessibility, and the construction/valorization of particular forms of knowledge. in reference to a slightly different context, it has been aptly noted that "teacher development, cooperation and 'empowerment' may be the talk, but centralization, standardization and rationalization may be the strongest tendencies" (apple & jungck, 1998, p133). in its application, internet based distance learning is most often deployed in exactly this manner. internet based distance learning offers a new revenue stream to the university, its reusability facilitates standardization, and the development of offerings can de-professionalize the professoriate. often courses are "developed" by tenure track faculty only to be delivered routinely by adjunct instructors or part time instructors in a gradual process of standardization and deskilling. when the content of the curriculum is constructed independently of the instructor, its content and perspective are easier to control and more reliably delivered to students. at the same time, a standardized curriculum makes fewer demands intellectually on the professor. hence, the university may employ less qualified, and subsequently, less expensive faculty. additionally, the consequences of these processes are significant in terms of curricular standardization. the quasi-market internet based distance learning tools are often used as ways to market university education to larger markets. in addition to being appealing for individuals with disabilities, these courses are also cast as appealing more directly to the lifestyles of nontraditional students. consider the following quote from a student in a distance education program brochure at a large state university: working full-time and being a single parent does not leave me much time for attending classes on campus. through distance education, i can balance the demands of my job and time with my two daughters. without distance education, i would not be able to finish my degree. courses delivered via the internet offer flexibility around full-time jobs and family obligations. this logic of appealing to non-traditional students in higher education can be seen as part of the marketizing logic of devolution. in the most general sense, distance, disability, and the commodification of education: web accessibility and the construction of knowledge current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 33 devolution describes a process of decentralization. post-secondary institutions in the u.s. have long had a degree of relative autonomy from central bureaucracies with respect to issues of curriculum, teaching and admissions. the use of popular distance education technologies, ostensibly for providing instruction in as cost-effective a manner as possible, centralize and format curricula for particular markets thereby shaping the form of instruction to reflect (perhaps unwittingly) particular epistemological approaches to teaching and learning. within higher education, decentralization coupled with a competitive market for students via internet technologies results in a quasi-market. the characteristics of a quasi-market include the separation of purchaser and provider and elements of user choice among service providers so that, "provision of a service is separated from its finance, so that different providers, including sometimes private and voluntary sector bodies, can compete to deliver the service" (whitty, power, & halpin, 1998, p.3). in the united states, higher education functions as a quasi-market in its separation of funding from the provision of service. as in the primary/secondary school environment, higher education is a regulated market. its governance is often a complex blend of state education systems, private accrediting associations, and federal support through student loans and other initiatives. without proper accreditation from approved private associations university students are not eligible for federally backed financial aid loans (blumenstyk, 1999). additionally, the states wield (increasingly) powerful influence over public universities through legislation and budgetary control. ball (1997) argues that devolution is more than a structural transformation, but a replacement of, "the fordist discourse of productivity and planning with a post-fordist rhetoric of flexibility and entrepreneurialism (p.258)." the post fordist notions of flexibility and entrepreneurialism are central to the marketizing forces behind initiatives to place instruction online and "encourage" professors to generate online instruction. thus there is not only a transformation of the university through the growing relevance of internet based distance learning, but a also a change in the university student and professor as the context in which they engage the curriculum as and each other changes. for american universities, these transformations have occurred at least in two ways. internet based distance learning have diminished space and time limitations that existed earlier. universities that once enjoyed a relative monopoly within a geographic region must now compete for students from around the world. for example, teachers in a particular state who are seeking advanced degrees and certification need not necessarily attend the local campus of their state's university system. instead, they may choose from a variety of new programs on-line, such as walden university or cappella university, or an online program from a competing state institution. they may also choose to participate in new programs at traditional universities that offer limited time in residence in conjunction with correspondence work done online. a second transformation is what has been called, "exporting the crisis" (whitty et al., 1998). as in other areas of publicly provided services, neo-liberal reform of education has removed or changed intermediary layers of administration between individual institutions and the state. this shift has transferred the responsibility for administrative alan foley december 17, 2003 34 functions traditionally managed by the state onto individual institutions. at the same time, these administrative functions must be delivered from the same pool of funds previously available. subsequently, university administrators are under increasing pressure to find new sources of revenue (e.g. grants) to support their programs. while state legislators and governors, as well as federal leaders use the language of autonomy and market accountability, they maintain strong regulatory power over higher education. in some instances, this has served to further muddy the water with regards to accessibility. important and sometimes impasse-creating questions about funding accessibility initiatives emerge when unfunded mandates are made. given the stakes surrounding online education, accessibility policy becomes an important component service provision and market control. there is however an interesting paradox. because disability exists on a continuum, that is, because no one experiences disability the same and because the range and effects of disability vary, the responses to accessibility vis-à-vis marketing distance education also vary. a student who has chemical sensitivity and cannot attend classes on a physical campus but has no other physical or cognitive disabilities, makes a good case for moving an entire degree program online. conversely, a deaf student who normally takes courses on campus, but is taking a course that uses video delivered over the web presents a financial challenge when pre-produced video must be captioned. thus the ways disability is understood and attitudes toward disability affect the development and utilization of instructional technologies that mediate instruction and position learners. it is within the context of devolved and quasi-markets that making web-based courses accessible to individuals with disabilities becomes either another marketing device or a financial liability. designing instruction constructing knowledge in addition to the demands on professors to develop courses, often professors are employed as "content experts" in the development of online course offerings. at the college and university level, most web-delivered course content is heavily influenced by professional instructional technologists and web developers given the limited time and technical expertise of teaching faculty. in general, the field of instructional technology has not incorporated a developed critical and sociocultural language into its discourse. there have been isolated attempts to bring issues of culture and production of knowledge to the forefront, but they have been sparse and infrequent (e.g. devaney, 1998; hlynka & belland, 1991; streibel, 1986; streibel, 1998). this results in a good deal of instructional technology work and research that considers technology as "immune" from ideology, and which takes up identity as a static construct; not considering the fluid and socially constructed aspects of identity so mediated by information technology. subsequently, educational technologists often do not consider how the ways in which they use technology or the assumptions they make about individuals and technology position people within particular and often inflexible subject positions. these views of technology and identity as ideology-free impact the instructional tools that instructional designers construct for diverse populations including considerations for acculturation, ethnicity, educational media design, proficiency, or culturally specific learning strategies. for example, "objective" statements about ability and disability position people within particular and often inflexible subject positions that are neither value neutral nor often accurate (charlton, 1998). furthermore, conceptualizations of disability are not static. what is considered a disability changes in different social and historical distance, disability, and the commodification of education: web accessibility and the construction of knowledge current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 35 contexts (e.g. foucault, 1988). there have been significant strides in theorizing the conceptualization of disability that move beyond highly medicalized, deficit-based understanding of persons with disabilities toward a "social model" of disability that contends that disability is a social status resulting from cultural values and practices that stigmatize, marginalize, and oppress disabled people (e.g. erevelles, 2000; peters, 1995; pugach & seidl, 1998; ware, 2001). unfortunately, the vast majority of educators and policy makers still conceptualize disability according to dated models that tend to view disability as a medical condition a deficit in the person with the disability (i.e., as "sick," or "not normal) (pfeiffer, 2002). thus, discourse in instructional design discourses construct disability as something that must be identified discretely and accommodated. noting the lack of understanding of difference and the articulation of divergent interests in the deployment of instructional technology underscores the complex and contradictory role internet based distance education plays in the ways instruction is delivered and which epistemologies undergird the development of both technologies and online educational processes. the process by which curricula delivered via internet based distance learning is standardized may be seen as a partial consequence of the limits of the technology itself. access to a sufficient number of computers, the computing power they represent, the bandwidth available to those machines, and compliance with accessibility standards within various technologies all serve as constraints on the nature and form of the content delivered over them. for example, the use of video online is limited by the requirements it places on networks and individual computers. high quality video requires large amounts of disk space and fast internet connections. additionally, video presents several obstacles for users with disabilities. video is often not captioned (for users with hearing impairments), video is often presented in low-quality and small window sizes (issues for users with visual impairments), and often video, especially streamed video, is difficult to start, stop, and search (issues for users with cognitive disabilities). further limits are placed on curriculum by the technical knowledge and time required in the production of curriculum materials. this includes the ability to make a web page, use courseware, create video and do it all in a manner that meets accessibility standards. even more limits arise in the ways in which user access to content is constructed. individuals using assistive technology8 (at), older computers, and even different platforms experience the environment differently and have varying levels of access. this can have profound effects on the nature of the work possible under these circumstances. it is important to point out some concrete ways in which technology determines the form and content of the curriculum, as well as our interaction with it. these limitations within the technology are a reflection of the values of those who design, implement and maintain computer networks and software. for example, the decision to include multiple choice assessment tools into the webct courseware package was made on a very specific set of beliefs about teaching practices in higher education (or perhaps in ignorance of others). this decision almost certainly reflects certain understandings or misunderstandings of ability and difference. disability, courseware, and other internet based learning technologies also provide a vantage point from which to observe other competing interests in higher education. it is alan foley december 17, 2003 36 in this sense that disability and efforts to make web content accessible become part of a larger struggle involving bureaucratic and market-based issues. as a bureaucratic issue, the development and implementation of web accessibility policies shield institutions from liability when courses and other web content are not accessible. similarly, the push for web accessibility also becomes a strange bedfellow with other interests in the university that wish to optimize instruction, broaden market bases, and minimize expenses (internet based forms of distance education are largely considered to be costefficient, especially when the same course is repeatedly delivered to large groups). thus the progressive aspects of web accessibility initiatives and disability advocacy become articulated to elements of market-based and neo-liberal reform within higher education. this confluence of these disparate interests presents some interesting challenges, particularly for those viewing accessibility as a social justice or political issue. the advocacy for accessibility becomes advocacy for implementation of technology programs that might have other less-progressive implications. conclusion understanding what constitutes distance education is no easy task as internet based distance education tools seep into the more traditional forms of education. techniques previously reserved for distance models are increasingly commonplace in the traditional mode of higher education (e.g. online asynchronous discussion) and the lines between traditional and distance based education begin to blur (i.e. the use of courseware in classes that also meet face-to-face). where once distance learning was truly based on the delivery of instruction between separate physical spaces, current forms of distance instruction are based on the delivery of curriculum via the internet and the distance is more often temporal rather than spatial. distance-learning technologies via the internet construct (and re-construct) both the teacher and learner within particular discourses of power. within the complex and contradictory subject positions, ideological formations, and processes that surround and circulate throughout the conceptualization and implementation of web accessibility practices and policies. the concept of articulation provides a footing for understanding the complex ideological formations behind distance learning programs and understandings of disability and as ever changing and more than a necessary result of particular structures of power and policy. notes 1. courseware, a term resulting from the combination of the words course and software, is often broadly defined as prepackaged computer based educational materials in which the computer mediates the educational experience. i use the term fairly specifically to refer to such software suites as webct, blackboard and the like which facilitate computer-based distance education via the internet. 2. the w3c is the organization responsible for the standardization of a wide variety of web related technologies such as hypertext markup language (html). the w3c also coordinates a project known as the web accessibility initiative (wai). this ongoing initiative consists of several projects including publishing a set of standards for web content, another set of standards for software used to create web pages as distance, disability, and the commodification of education: web accessibility and the construction of knowledge current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 37 well as a set of standards for browsers used to view web content. url: http://www.w3.org/ 3. http://www.w3.org/tr/wcag10 4. priority one checkpoints are those that the web developer must satisfy to insure that the page itself is accessible. priority two checkpoints are those that the web developer should satisfy to ensure that certain groups will be able to access information on the web page. priority three checkpoints are those the web developer may do to ensure that all content on the page is completely accessible. 5. the regulations referred to as section 508 are actually an amendment to the workforce rehabilitation act of 1973. 6. asynchronous discussions allow users to send and receive messages without a simultaneous connection. these are more commonly called bulletin boards. synchronous discussion is a real time conversation where participants are online simultaneously. these areas are often referred to as chat rooms. 7. an interesting point to make regarding webct and accessibility should be made though. while webct claims its product is accessible, it does not ensure that all content delivered via webct is accessible. for example, a professor might place content in webct in an inaccessible format such as a pdf file containing a scanned imaged of handwritten notes. thus webct's claims cannot be taken as definitive accessibility and the issue of individual faculty accountability is raised. 8. assistive technology is specialized hardware and software tools individuals with disabilities frequently rely on to access web content. these tools range from screen readers to touch screens and head pointers. blind users frequently use software called a screen reader that reads the contents of a web page out loud. screen readers enable users to hear, rather than view, the contents of a web page; however, a screen reader can read only text, not images or animations. users with impaired mobility may rely on the keyboard instead of the mouse to navigate web pages. references apple, m. w., & jungck, s. (1998). "you don't have to be a teacher to teach this unit": teaching, technology, and control in the classroom. in h. bromley & m. w. apple (eds.), education/technology/power: educational computing as a social practice (pp. 133-154). albany, ny: state university of new york press. ball, s. j. (1997). policy sociology and critical social research : a personal review of recent education policy and policy research. british educational research journal, 23(3), 257-274. blumenstyk, g. (1999, march 19, 1999). in a first, the north central association accredits an on-line university. the chronicle of higher education, p. a27. alan foley december 17, 2003 38 charlton, j. i. (1998). nothing about us without us: disability oppression and empowerment. berkeley: university of california press. devaney, a. (1998). will educators ever unmask that determiner, technology? educational policy, 12(5), 568-585. erevelles, n. (2000). educating unruly bodies: critical pedagogy, disability studies, and the politics of schooling. educational theory, 50(1), 25-47. grossberg, l. (1996). on postmodernism and articulation: an interview with stuart hall. in d. morley & k. h. chen (eds.), stuart hall: critical dialogues in cultural studies (pp. 131150). london: routledge. hlynka, d., & belland, j. c. (1991). paradigms regained: the uses of illuminative, semiotic, and post-modern criticism as modes of inquiry in educational technology : a book of readings. englewood cliffs, n.j.: educational technology publications. kaye, h. s. (2000). computer and internet use among people with disabilities. disability statistics report (no. 13). washington dc: u.s. department of education, national institute on disability and rehabilitation research (nidrr). peters, s. (1995). disability baggage: changing the educational research terrain. in p. clough & l. barton (eds.), making difficulties: research and the construction of special educational needs (pp. 59-74). london: paul chapman. pfeiffer, d. (2002). the philosophical foundations of disability studies. disability studies quarterly, 22(2), 3-23. pugach, m. c., & seidl, b. l. (1998). responsible linkages between diversity and disability: a challenge for special education. teacher education and special education, 21(4), 319-333. streibel, m. (1986). a critical analysis of the use of computers in the classroom. educational communications and technology, 34(3), 137-161. streibel, m. (1998). a critical analysis of three approaches to the use of computers in education. in l. e. beyer & m. w. apple (eds.), the curriculum; problems, politics, and possibilities (2nd ed.). albany, ny: suny press. sumner, j. (2000). serving the system : a critical history of distance education. open learning, 15(3), 267-285. ware, l. (2001). writing, identity, and the other: dare we do disability studies? journal of teacher education, 52(1), 107-123. webct accessibility. (2003). [online] http://www.webct.com/products/viewpage?name=products_accessibility [accessed april 2, 2003]. distance, disability, and the commodification of education: web accessibility and the construction of knowledge current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 39 wenger, b. l., kaye, h. s., & laplante, m. p. (1996). disabilities among children (no. 15). washington dc: u.s. department of education, national institute on disability and rehabilitation research (nidrr). whitty, g., power, s., & halpin, d. (1998). devolution and choice in education : the school, the state, and the market. buckingham [england] ; bristol, pa, usa: open university press. volume 12(1) / fall 2009 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education guest editorial introduction 3 cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education andria wisler articles 6 rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education noah w. sobe 14 the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism: education for a shared humanity dale snauwaert 23 lonely business or mutual concern: the role of comparative education in the cosmopolitan citizenship debates anatoli rapoport 33 cosmopolitanism in civic education: exploring cross-national trends, 1970-2008 patricia bromley 45 study abroad and development of global citizen identity and cosmopolitan ideals in undergraduates karen hendershot and jill sperandio 56 educating the world: teachers and their work as defined by the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) helen harper and judith dunkerly 66 world-systems analysis in comparative education: an alternative to cosmopolitanism tom g. griffiths and lisa knezevic 76 smashing cosmopolitanism: the neo-liberal destruction of cosmopolitan education in eastcentral europe robert j. imre and zsuzsa millei essay 86 the evolution of a cosmopolitan identity: transforming culture shannan spisak 92 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 1 (2009) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden guest executive editor andria wisler visiting assistant professor, georgetown university, program of justice and peace executive editors cambria russell, andrew shiotani senior editors kathleen keenan, ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, cambria russell, michael schapira editors sarah flatto, michelle reddy, briana ronan, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors holly brewster, richard cheng, henan cheng, cara furman, anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, ghazala mehmood, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, carina omoeva, amritpal sandhu, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira style editors ruaridh macleod, ghazala mehmood, elizabeth morphis, amritpal sandhu web editor andrew shiotani associate web editors ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, ingrid gogolin, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2009 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 12(1): 23-32. lonely business or mutual concern: the role of comparative education in the cosmopolitan citizenship debates anatoli rapoport purdue university cosmopolitan and global discourses are more and more often used for conceptualization and interpretation of citizenship. however, in the united states, the majority of schools are still resistant to incorporating cosmopolitan and global perspectives into citizenship education curriculum. this paper addresses challenges of cosmopolitan and global citizenship education in the united states. three major challenges, namely (a) terminological and theoretical divergence, (b) lack of awareness among educators, and (c) patriotism-focused curricula are discussed. also, the perspective areas of comparative education research to advance cosmopolitan and global education agendas are identified. citizenship is one of the most contested concepts in social sciences. hence, citizenship education since the very beginning of public schooling has been and still remains at the focal point of political and educational debates. the intensification of debates in the last decades was mostly the result of belated attempts to coordinate curricular development in citizenship education with the rationalization of numerous emerging facets of citizenship. marshall’s (1950) theory of the historical progression of citizenship based on the development of civil, political, and social rights has been challenged by a rising number of competing models of citizenship (carter, 2006). these models are usually conceptualized and interpreted through various discourses. abowitz and harnish (2006) identified seven such discourses: civic republican, liberal, feminist, reconstructionist, cultural, queer, and transnational. urry (1999) categorized models of citizenship as cultural, minority, ecological, cosmopolitan, consumer, and mobility (in adalbjarnardottir, 2002). the purpose of this article is to explore the relations between comparative education research and the two most controversial models of citizenship education, namely cosmopolitan and global citizenship. i begin by summarizing conditions that make various forms of supra-national citizenship, including cosmopolitan and global, a significant part in citizenship education discourses. i will then analyze the main problems that cosmopolitan and global citizenship education face in the united states, and, finally, i will suggest how comparative education research can contribute to the development and advancement of a cosmopolitan and global worldview in citizenship education, particularly in the united states. throughout its history, citizenship has been interpreted as an individual relationship with a nation state in which loyalty to the state and building a common identity were at the core of citizenship education (lawson and scott, 2002). since the rise of a nation state, nationality and citizenship have been almost synonymous (davies, evans, & reid, 2005; heater, 1999). to be a citizen implied that a person at minimum had a number of responsibilities to the state and other members of the community and, at the same time, enjoyed rights that the state awarded him or her as a compensation for entrusted responsibilities. shared legal rights and responsibilities inevitably required that all those who possessed those rights and accepted responsibilities also shared values and beliefs. hence, to become a citizen a person had to be socialized through the system directly or indirectly controlled by the society or community. this system is called a public 24 current issues in comparative education a. rapoport education, and citizenship education is one of its most important components. the development of a national system of education was one of the first tasks of a polity usually called a nation state and concurrently one of the first indicators of such a polity emergence. conversely, because national identity (nation state membership) and citizenship (a set of legal rights and responsibilities to a socio-cultural-political entity called nation) were believed to be inseparable, attempts to break the links between education and the state were met with fierce resistance (davies, evans, & reid, 2005). the nation-state is no longer a sole repository of citizenship. there are a number of aspects that weaken national citizenship and make this concept vulnerable and susceptible to increasing skepticism. first, if we accept the imaginary status of nation (anderson, 1991; zajda, 2009), why would we assume that a nation-state or, in other words, a geographic space with a legal governing system to protect or expand itself, is less vulnerable or less susceptible to changes? in this regard, the term nation-building presents an interesting example of syntactic dichotomy: on the one hand, the nation-building process, as the term implies, aims at building a nation; on the other, due to its ideological nature, nation-building is an endless never-stopping process whose ultimate goal, a nation, never takes a final shape. that is why history, or rather mythology, that is usually taken for history is so carefully monitored and constructed to make sure that “a continuous process of redefinition, revision, reinterpretation, and rewriting of historical narratives” (zajda, 2009, 4) is under control. the emergence of globalization and global consciousness profoundly influenced the notion of citizenship and citizenship education rationales by infusing a more distinct global perspective and by challenging the core principles of citizenship as an idiosyncratically nation or nation-state related concept. global citizenship is central to understanding cosmopolitanism. most researchers use the terms ‘global citizenship’ and ‘cosmopolitan citizenship’ interchangeably. tully (2008), for example, used the term cosmopolitan to denote global liberal citizenship that he juxtaposed to global (global/local) or global democratic citizenship. delanty (2002), on the contrary, argued that globalization opens up possibilities of cosmopolitan citizenship, and cautioned not to confuse cosmopolitanism with globalization. the dialogue surrounding the national versus cosmopolitan citizenship dichotomy is complicated by fundamental traditionalism of a society and by the lack of convincing examples of cosmopolitan citizenship. the dialogue is increasingly complex due to the political interests of elites who usurp nationalistic discourses to pursue their own populist goals. history knows numerous examples, some of them recent, when accusation in alleged cosmopolitanism equated public ostracism, arrest, or even death. such stigmatization of cosmopolitism and globalization complicates the dialogue even further. theoretical and systemic challenges that global or cosmopolitan citizenship conceptually pose deeply impact programmatic or curricular narratives as well as all educational discourses. although the idea of cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan citizenship has been known since the times of the greek and roman stoics, it received attention in formal citizenship education discourses fairly recently and not everywhere. even in countries where the discourses of transnational citizenships are actively supported and where political leaders and educators are involved in the discussion, teachers face substantial difficulties in teaching about global or cosmopolitan citizenship. teachers in hong kong and shanghai, for example, support global citizenship education but experience pressure from the exam-oriented curriculum, lack of training, and inadequate support from the school administration and government officials (lee & leung, 2006). current issues in comparative education 25 lonely business or mutual concern after examining how individual teachers in ontario schools prioritized global citizenship issues in their teaching, michele schweisfurth (2006) concluded that the teachers had to and were able to “interpret the prescribed curriculum imaginatively” (p. 49) to justify their own aims in teaching about global citizenship. despite the global citizenship education-friendly civics curriculum and standards in ontario, the general encompassing message to teachers was about curricular standardization. although teachers were taught through professional development to look at the curriculum guidelines from a global citizenship education angle, they found themselves at the periphery of the profession. numerous researchers observe an increasing interest in global and international education in the united states. the interest is fostered by the ubiquity and omnipresence of globalization, its positive and negative impacts are evident through increasing diversity and mobility of the population, recent economic growths and crises, and through an almost palpable interdependence of cultures. if we are so eager to apply a global framework in teaching social sciences, natural sciences, or humanities, why do we become so hesitant when it comes to conceptualizing global or cosmopolitan citizenship? why do we more and more often hear about cosmopolitan citizenship, global citizenship, or transnational citizenship at research conferences, yet hardly ever in classrooms? in 1994, martha nussbaum argued that one of the fundamental goals of american citizenship, namely a national unity in devotion to justice and equality, would be better served “by the very old ideal of the cosmopolitan, the person, whose allegiance is to the worldwide community of human beings” (1994, 4). however, fifteen years later “the very old ideal of a cosmopolitan” is still missing in classroom discourses. i would like to focus on three reasons why cosmopolitan or global perspectives in citizenship education are still not welcomed in us schools. first, teachers are practitioners. unlike theoreticians, practitioners like to operate with concrete terms. cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitan citizenship, global citizenship, and transnational citizenship are disputed concepts that have supporters and opponents. not surprisingly, these controversial concepts generate a lot of criticism, mostly related to their social and political aspects. cosmopolitanism ignores the crucial humanizing role of identity politics in a complicated world of contracts, markets, and legal personhood, stated benjamin barber (2002) while debating martha nussbaum’s (2002) vision of cosmopolitanism. additionally, wood (2008) denounced global citizenship because citizenship is a technology of governance rather than “an unambiguously emancipatory, empowering institution” (wood, at 25) and there are no formal political structures at the global level inclusive of citizenship. the emerging global civil society, frequently related to cosmopolitan citizenship, faces several accusations itself: it is terminologically ambiguous, its supporters uncritically apply nation-state phenomena to global processes, and it undermines democracy by weakening the democratic institutions of nation-states (corry, 2006). armstrong (2006) argued that the supposedly “global” elements of global and cosmopolitan citizenship are not universal and transcendent. although the role and place of the nation-state in citizenship education is constantly changing as a consequence of both sub-national and supranational forces (barr, 2005; ramirez, 1997), the potentially pervasive role of the nationstate in the construction of global citizenship remains problematic due to unresolved tensions in cultural and value-oriented perspectives between western and non-western countries (white & openshaw, 2002). for example, glazer (2002) indicates cosmopolitanism is a purely western value strongly resisted by the developing world. the advocacy of cosmopolitanism, glazer (2002) 26 current issues in comparative education a. rapoport contends, is viewed suspiciously in developing countries as an arrogant insistence of former colonizers to reinstall their western values. global citizenship is critical to understanding cosmopolitanism. however, not only is global citizenship a highly contested concept, it is also barely known to the majority of educators. thus, unawareness is the second reason why cosmopolitanism or global citizenship is hardly present in us classrooms. though schools can be aligned with transnational efforts in promoting global civility (reimers, 2006), not all schools and educators share this view or know how to pursue this goal. research demonstrates that teachers are mostly oblivious to the purposes, methods, or content of global citizenship education. of over 700 teachers in england who rated education for global citizenship as important, very few were confident of their ability to teach it (davies et al. in yamashita, 2006). a study of how indiana teachers conceptualize global citizenship (rapoport, 2008) demonstrated that the concept of global citizenship is still rarely mentioned in the classroom. the participants of the study agreed that it was important to infuse global dimensions into all aspects of citizenship education. however, it remained unclear if they had a clear vision of what global citizenship entailed or if they possessed a comprehensible rationale for teaching global citizenship. without additional curricular guidance or substantive and programmatic methodological support, teachers in the study rationalized and contextualized cosmopolitan and global citizenship based on their own extensive international experiences. the major factor that influenced their curricular choices and decisions in regard to global citizenship was their understanding of the concept. for this reason, they conceptualized global citizenship through the frameworks and discourses of the subject that they were teaching. as one of the teachers put it, “we cannot teach what we do not know” (p.11). the lack of curricular guidance also contributes to the problem. in 2008, the term globalization was mentioned in the social studies standards of only fifteen states. moreover, social studies standards of only two states (maryland and mississippi) contained the term global citizenship. as for cosmopolitan citizenship, this term was absent from social studies standards of all states (rapoport, 2009). possibly, states do not include concepts of cosmopolitan or global citizenship into their standards because these concepts are relatively new and highly contested. as a result of such shortsighted policy, these concepts are neglected in us schools. a number of theoretical works (bottery, 2006; engler & hunt, 2004; reimers, 2006) remind us that teachers need clear guidance to justify their interest in teaching about trans-national forms of citizenship, even those committed to teaching from a global perspective, particularly in the time of accountability and test-driven curricula. the absence of guidance, together with the increasing trend to permeate educational discourses with international or global narratives, sends mixed messages to both education officials and teachers. a final challenge to cosmopolitan and global perspectives in citizenship education is the fear that any perspective going beyond national citizenship undermines patriotism. in most cases, patriotism is conceptualized in its traditional meaning. this is particularly true in the united states where, on the one hand, schooling disproportionately favors national identity over learning about the world and, on the other hand, teachers can be accused of being unpatriotic when they promote critical discussion of government policy (loewen, 1995; myers, 2006; white & openshaw, 2002). patriotism is generally defined as a special affinity one has toward their country, a “sense of positive identification with and feelings of affective attachment to one’s country” (schatz, staub, & levine, 1999). current issues in comparative education 27 lonely business or mutual concern despite the expanding theoretical substantiation of the need to shift popular allegiances to the rule of law and constitution rather than to an individual country (habermas, 2001; nussbaum, 2002), most scholars correlate the paradigm of patriotic discourses with an individual country or locality. however, patriotic sentiments are seen differently by different people. on the one hand, patriotism denotes loyalty to the nation, or country, a pride for the nation’s culture and achievements, a respectful understanding and appreciation of the nation’s history, or a love of country based on political allegiance, shared values, and a shared history and culture (finn, 2007; fonte, 1997; lutovinov, 2006; ravitch 2007). on the other hand, patriotic discourses are becoming more inclusive; their materials increasingly question subjects and objects of national pride and critically revise and reevaluate national histories and myths (apple, 2002; gomberg, 1990; lowen, 1996; merry, 2007; nash, 2005; nussbaum, 2002). as a social construct that gradually developed as a result of human cultural activity, patriotism in its various forms appeared as a societal phenomenon. after going through reciprocal typification, and habitualization, it became an institutionalized construct, a part of social reality (berger & luckman, 1966). educators should remember that social constructs, such as patriotism or citizenship, particularly interpreted through their traditional more conservative framework, can be manipulated by various actors to achieve immediate political or social goals (apple, 2002; li & brewer, 2004; rapoport, 2009, skitka, 2005; sperling, 2003). however, the traditional meaning of patriotism has been challenged more and more often (apple, 2002; branson, 2002; nussbaum, 1994; merry, 2007). the idea of patriotism as a more inclusive construct, particularly in regard to multicultural and intercultural discourses, is becoming more acceptable. “a useful definition of patriotism,” noted akhmad and szpara (2005) “should not hinge on the legal status in a polity but embrace citizens’ allegiance to universal human values, democratic ideals, and the human rights and dignity of all people in the world” (p. 10). in sum, three central challenges to global and cosmopolitan citizenship education in the u.s. are terminological and theoretical divergence; lack of awareness among educators; and patriotismfocused curricula. they are justifiable topics for debate, although they understandably slow down the transition to the new level of citizenship education. there are more and more curricular materials (e.g. global citizenship in your classroom http://www.globalsolutionspgh.org or high school for global citizenship http://hs-gc.org) on global and cosmopolitan citizenship and curricular and classroom action research (gaudelli & fernikes, 2004; myers, 2006) that help us teachers better see the perspectives of global and cosmopolitan citizenship education. however, the examples are not numerous enough to turn into critical mass that would make healthy theoretical debates a part of conventional discourse among practitioners and school administrators. fernando ramirez (2006) noted, “cosmopolitanism is arguably both more necessary and more possible than in years past… schools should thus focus deliberately on the public purposes of educating children to be more cosmopolitan and tolerant, better prepared for citizenship and for global citizenship” (p. 283). including a cosmopolitan component in various forms of citizenship education prepares children for a world that the vietnam war generation of 1960’s and 1970’s could only dream of, the post-cold war generation of 1980’s and 1990’s could only hear of, but in which present day schoolchildren will definitely live . cosmopolitan and global citizenship are developmental components of citizenship education and provide students with multiple perspectives and loyalties. cosmopolitan citizenship education can also at least partially help resolve the internal conflict of 28 current issues in comparative education a. rapoport every democratic multicultural society —balancing diversity of multiculturalism and uniformity of citizenship. cosmopolitanism, both semantically and practically, transcends routinely understood multiculturalism and expands the traditional notion of citizenship, thus potentially becoming a more inclusionary and transformative framework for sustainable democratic development (snauwaert, 2002; walker & serrano, 2006). cosmopolitan citizenship framework helps minorities find their voices by asserting that value variability is an asset, rather than a liability. by teaching cosmopolitanism, educators encourage marginalized groups to view their differences as assets, thereby empowering these groups to use their differences to achieve. this viewpoint helps reconsider an earlier view of education advocating the elimination of difference as the sole path to successful democracy (walker & serrano, 2006). moreover, it is relevant considering the worldwide phenomenon of transnational migration and the unprecedented movement of diverse racial, cultural, ethnic, and religious groups across nation states. in fact, cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan citizenship have been a part of american educational tradition for a long time. thomas popkewitz (2009) asserted that introducing the concept of cosmopolitanism to the child was central to the pedagogy of the school and, as a result, early progressive education adhered to the ideas of north american enlightenment philosophers who spoke of cosmopolitanism as a universal mode of living providing a more progressive world of freedom and liberty. ironically, popkewitz attributed the notion of “american exceptionalism” to the principles of cosmopolitan citizenship “as an epic account of the progressive development of the highest ideals of cosmopolitan human values and progress” (p. 387). what does it mean to teach cosmopolitan or global citizenship? what does it mean to incorporate a cosmopolitan component in citizenship education? how do we deconstruct cosmopolitan citizenship, provide knowledge, and develop skills and dispositions that are critical for future global citizens? what is the place of cosmopolitan citizenship education in the broader matrix of citizenship education? how can teachers appropriately apply the interdisciplinary potential of cosmopolitanism in the classroom and beyond? practitioners addressing global and cosmopolitan perspectives in their teaching face these questions. comparative inquiry and analysis play a significant role in providing teachers and administrators with new visions and innovative ideas to incorporate cosmopolitan and global frameworks into citizenship education. comparative and international education research can help advance cosmopolitan and global agendas in citizenship education by demonstrating that there is no real alternative to the advancement of transnational and supra-national forms of citizenship. almost all recent works in comparative education addressing citizenship education indicate the transformative role of globalization and a growing need for multi-dimensional citizenship education considering the polyphony of contexts from local to global (dejaeghere, 2008; kennedy, hahn & lee, 2008: myers, 2006; myers, 2007; szelėnyi & rhoads, 2007). comparative education research reflects the dynamics of citizenship and citizenship education around the world, as well as a visible shift of citizenship paradigm to include more pronounced forms of cosmopolitan and global citizenship. the increasing number of studies on global citizenship education reflects two significant trends in the world of education. first, despite existing skepticism, more schools include aspects of cosmopolitan and global citizenship in their curricula. second, schools are still hesitant, and desire more knowledge and familiarity with the concept of cosmopolitanism and global citizenship. thus far, a comparative method in international education research efficiently provides evidence for significant political and curricular reforms in education. comparative and international education researchers can transfer knowledge of the significance and perspectives of cosmopolitan current issues in comparative education 29 lonely business or mutual concern and global citizenship education to us teachers. to effectively impact citizenship education in the u.s. and to advance the inclusion of cosmopolitan global worldview, comparative research should focus on: • analysis of conditions conducive to the development of cosmopolitan and global citizenship and contexts that make cosmopolitan and global consciousness possible; • debates around the notion and essence of citizenship, cosmopolitanism, and globalization and how these concepts are constructed, interpreted, negotiated, and applied in various discourses and practices, particularly educational, in different societies; • policies that impact multiple forms of citizenships; and • curricular and professional development practices that help teachers and education administrators to better understand the ideas of cosmopolitanism, expanding citizenship, multiple loyalties, and perspective consciousness. research in comparative and international education is intrinsically cosmopolitan. by engaging in comparative research, scholars and practitioners assert that despite differences in cultures, contexts, or conditions, there is something that enables us to observe, study, and compare phenomena in various educational systems. martha nussbaum (2002) said that becoming a citizen of the world is often a lonely business. because only a few were able to comprehend the world as a unique community of humans, it was hard to distance from the imagined communities and mythologies that people identified with. we are living in a different time. we understand that the world is much more multi-faceted and interdependent. humanity is in the process of acquiring the capacity to look beyond national borders, to transcend values and ideals. cosmopolitan and global citizenship education is a perfect instrument to help in this process, and comparative education research will keep this instrument properly calibrated. references abowitz, k. k., & harnish, j. 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(2009). nation-building, identity, and citizenship education: introduction. in j. zajda, h. daun, & l. saha, (eds.), nation-building, identity and citizenship education: cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 1-11). amsterdam: springer. copyright © 2009 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 14 december 1, 2000 keeping the education system healthy: managing the impact of hiv/aids on education in south africa carol coombe independent education advisor introduction hiv/aids not only attacks individuals. it also attacks systems. until recently, hiv/aids has been perceived primarily as a health problem, which can be contained by effective health education programs. but the deadly virus has not been contained and continues to spread so widely that it is now having a profound adverse impact on communities and institutions. government's health-focused hiv/aids plans have failed to consider what must be done when the disease is out of control and state systems are themselves threatened. this article suggests that while working to limit the spread of the disease, it is necessary to recognize and manage the pandemic's impact on the education system. the spread of hiv/aids in south africa south africa has the fastest-growing hiv/aids epidemic in the world, with more people infected than in any other country (unaids, 2000). about half of south africa's population of 40.6 million are children1. over four million people are hiv positive. it has been predicted that by 2005 6 million south africans will be hiv positive and 2.5 million will have died of aids or a related illness. mortality rates will double by 2010, and life expectancy will drop from 68 to 40 years (table 1). changes in behavior will not alter these projections, as people who are now hiv positive will die (marais, 2000, p. 5). it is probable that 50-65 percent of south african 15-year-olds will die of hiv/aidsrelated illnesses within the next thirty years (kelly, 2000). by 2005, nearly one million children will have lost one or both parents (unaids, 2000; pretoria news, 28 june 2000). by 2015, when the epidemic peaks, ten percent of south africa's population--about 3.6 to 4.8 million children--will be orphans (smart, 1999, p. 22.). traditional patterns of childcare will be under pressure to accommodate large numbers of children infected and affected by hiv/aids (smart, 1999, p. 28). table 1. the consequences of the pandemic: projections to 20102 1999 2005 2010 percentage of sa workforce hiv positive 11.5% 20% 22.5% percentage of sa workforce aids sick 0.4% 1.65% 2.7% new aids cases per annum 145,256 466,365 625,180 number of aids orphans 153,000 1,000,000 2,000,000 life expectancy of sa females (years) 54 43 37 life expectancy of sa males (years) 50 43 38 hiv/aids will cause productivity to decline in all sectors because of illness on the job, absenteeism due to personal or family illness, and funeral attendance. public sector services will cost more, and economic growth will slow as the number of skilled workers keeping the education system healthy: managing the impact of hiv/aids on education in south africa current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 15 declines and cannot be replaced. child mortality will increase as poverty deepens. survivors who are orphaned, unsupervised and inadequately parented are more likely to engage in criminal activities. ultimately, south africa is likely to experience a real reversal of development gains. further development will be more difficult, and development goals, including those set by government for the education sector, will be unattainable for the foreseeable future. south africa's strategy: losing the battle against the spread of hiv/aids taking action government and its partners have demonstrated their commitment to combat the pandemic. health information on hiv/aids is systematically collected and reported in south africa. the metropolitan life-doyle model has been used throughout the 90s to predict the pandemic's course. the first south african hiv/aids strategy and implementation plan (department of health, 1994) has been succeeded by a new national plan for combating hiv/aids launched mid-2000 by the department of health. the implementation of the hiv/aids/std strategic plan for south africa 20002005 (department of health, 2000) is monitored by the hiv/aids and std directorate of the national department of health and executed by provincial health departments in cooperation with other sectoral departments. government's hiv/aids budgets doubled during the 1990s but were substantially under-spent (mail and guardian, 3-9 november 2000). government's new strategy is strictly focused on the predisposing factors of hiv/aids, preventing or finding a cure, and monitoring health interventions. it does not address the social, development, human rights, economic and infrastructural consequences of hiv/aids for vital sectors like labor, education, agriculture, the public service, or the public sector. government is now under pressure to consider how hiv/aids will influence the country's future. the department of public service administration has commissioned an impact survey. the south african national defense force has publicly recognized that the pandemic threatens to reduce or even destroy the capacity of the defense force (pretoria news, 7 october 2000). parliamentarians asking questions about hiv/aids and economic policy were recently told that government had no data on which to plan for the impact of the pandemic. parliamentary committees are now expected to scrutinize government's response to hiv/aids in the context of development (sunday independent, 5 november 2000). losing the battle to contain the virus despite the strategic planning of the department of health, and increased resources for fighting the pandemic, south africa is losing the battle against hiv/aids. prevalence rose from 0.7% in 1990 to over 22% in 2000 (moore and kramer, 1999, p. 14). south africa now has more hiv positive people than any other country in the world. what happened? on one hand, government's strategic plans have been impeded by a lack of informed political leadership, vision and commitment; concentration of resources on essential post-apartheid transformation during the 90s; mistrust and lack of cooperation among potential partners; program management inadequacy at all levels; and a lack of focus and concentration (marais, 2000; coombe, 2000). at the same time, government is fighting this battle on difficult ground. in taking on hiv/aids, it is also taking on the complex legacy of apartheid, the region's migrant labour system which has for decades carol coombe 16 december 1, 2000 disrupted family and community life, high levels of poverty, and profound gender and income inequality. south africa's excellent transport infrastructure and traditionally high levels of mobility permit the rapid spread of hiv into new communities. very high levels of other sexually transmitted diseases (stds), the low status of women, social norms which accept or encourage high numbers of sexual partners, and resistance to the use of condoms also challenge government's battle plans (marais, 2000). the pandemic thrives on sexual violence, male domination, and child abuse in south africa. hiv/aids prevalence rates are highest among young people, especially teenage girls. many adolescents are sexually active at 12 years old, but few practice safe sex because of pressure to engage in unprotected intercourse, to have a child, or because they lack access to user-friendly health services and are uninformed about condoms and risk (craig and richter-strydom, flisher et al., buga et al. cited in smart, 1999). over one-quarter of women 16 to 20 years report they have been forced to have sex (richter cited in smart, 1999, p. 27). in the face of violent and coercive male behaviour, combined with their own limited understanding of their bodies and the mechanics of sexual intercourse, young women have little chance to negotiate safe sex, including contraception or condom use (varga and makubalo cited in smart, 1999, p. 28). abuse of young girls and children within families is on the rise (smart, 1999, p. 30) highlighting three myths or theories apparently linking child sexual abuse and hiv/aids. the prevention theory is based on the assumption that all sexually active people are likely to be hiv infected and, in order to be 'safe', one must choose a partner who is not yet sexually active. the cleansing theory suggests that having sex with a child will cleanse the infected individual of the virus. finally, the retribution theory is linked to the deliberate spreading of infection to all sectors of society (mckerrow cited in smart, 1999, p. 30). the impact of hiv/aids on the education system it is within this context of catastrophe, challenge and loss that south africa's education departments3 struggle to maintain their balance. until government's impact assessment is completed late in 2000, experience in the region, information from other sectors, demographic analysis, and anecdotal information provide clues about how hiv/aids is likely to compromise education quality in south africa. learners: declining and changing demand for education there are currently just over 12 million learners at school (50.5% female) in south africa, in about 30,000 primary and secondary schools (department of education, 2000a). as hiv/aids reduces the number of parents 20 to 40 years old, numbers of orphaned children increase, and poverty deepens, school enrolment rates are expected to decline. dropouts due to poverty, illness, lack of motivation and trauma are set to increase, along with absenteeism among children who are heads of households, those who help to supplement family income, and those who are ill. there may be greater demand for second-chance, flexible out-of-school education by learners returning to education after absence as care-givers or wage-earners. on the other hand, these demands may be offset by fewer births and more deaths of under-fives, and the fact that family units will have less disposable income for fees, voluntary funds, transport, books and uniforms. unless keeping the education system healthy: managing the impact of hiv/aids on education in south africa current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 17 state provisioning changes to meet more complex learning demands, more young people will be functionally illiterate and unqualified. educators: reducing supply and quality of education the education service, the largest occupational group in the country, includes 375,000 teachers, 5,000 inspectors and advisers, and 68,000 managers and support personnel (department of education, 2000a, pp. 157-161). at least 12 per cent of all educators are reported to be hiv positive (abt associates, 2000). in southern africa an hiv positive person without access to drugs dies within seven years of infection. that means that over 53,000 educators will die by 2010, or between 88,000 and 133,000 educators if prevalence reaches 20 or 30 per cent. many others will be ill, absent and dying, or preoccupied with family crises, and school effectiveness is bound to decline. job mobility of educators is likely to increase, and as teachers die or leave the service for better jobs elsewhere, student/teacher ratios will decline. but the supply-demand equation is complicated. teacher recruitment targets may be lower than at present if enrolments decline or do not grow as expected. given uncertainty about likely levels of chronic morbidity, mortality and other types of 'wastage,' it is difficult to make teacher requirement projections with any degree of confidence. in any case, new recruits cannot make up for the loss of the education service's most experienced senior teachers, managers, teacher educators, professors, and science and mathematics specialists. trauma in classrooms the hiv/aids pandemic will have a traumatic impact on all educators and learners. the work of educators--both those who are hiv positive and those who have developed full-blown aids--will be compromised by periods of illness. once they know they are hiv positive, many are likely to lose interest in continuing professional development. even among educators who believe they are not infected or do not want to be tested, morale is likely to fall significantly as they cope emotionally and financially with sickness and death among relatives, friends and colleagues, and wrestle with the uncertainty about their own future and that of their dependents. most educators will have to take on additional teaching and other work-related duties in order to cover for sick colleagues. although discrimination is illegal, stigmatization of infected learners and educators is a deeply rooted response. hiv/aids will have a traumatic impact on learners. children are being abused and young women are subject to violence. many live in families that are overextended and are under pressure to contribute to family incomes as poverty deepens. they are losing parents, siblings, friends and teachers to the disease. many will have to move long distances to find new homes. for others, there are no homes at all. as a result, learners are increasingly absent from school and distracted. management: embattled leadership educational management capacity is fragile at national, provincial, district and school levels. the system is finding it difficult to attract skilled managers. many principals have not yet received sufficient support or training to enable them to be creative about local management of education. the situation will become worse as the pandemic takes hold. in the private sector, some companies are already training replacements for skilled carol coombe 18 december 1, 2000 technical and managerial personnel they expect to lose to hiv/aids. similar strategies are not yet in place in education. in addition to the loss of managers, the system will lose experienced senior teacher-mentors and teacher educators in universities and colleges whose career experience cannot be replaced. institutions will depend on younger, less experienced educators and the quality of teacher education will decline. education sector action the framework for action until late in 1999, the department of education had no policy on hiv/aids. in august 1999, the department's corporate plan, 2000-2004 identified action on hiv/aids as one of its five priorities. the department of education (1999b, 2000b, 2000c) has highlighted three objectives related to hiv/aids: (1) raising awareness about hiv/aids among educators and learners, (2) integrating hiv/aids into the curriculum, and (3) developing models for analyzing the impact of hiv/aids on the system. the department of education's national policy on hiv/aids for learners and educators (1999a) takes account of government's responsibilities for children's rights specified by international agreement (nineteenth session of the un committee on the rights of the child cited in smart, 1999, p. 58), the constitution of south africa (1996), and the law (aids law project and lawyers for human rights, 1997; south african law commission, 1998). education's hiv/aids policy is entirely consistent with the priorities of the department of health's strategic plan but goes further to provide guidance on discrimination in schools and institutions, workplace advocacy and sensitization, and sports safety. it specifies that: 1. the constitutional rights of all learners and educators must be protected equally. 2. there should be no compulsory disclosure of hiv/aids status. 3. the testing of learners as a prerequisite for attendance at an institution, or of an educator as a prerequisite of service, is prohibited. 4. no hiv-positive learner or educator may be discriminated against; they must be treated in a just, humane and life-affirming way. 5. no learner may be denied admission to or continued attendance at an institution because of his or her actual or perceived hiv status. 6. no educator may be denied appointment to a post because of his or her actual or perceived hiv status. 7. learners and educators who are hiv-positive should lead as full a life as possible. 8. infection control measures must be universally applied to ensure safe institutional environments. 9. learners must receive education about hiv/aids and abstinence in the context of life-skills education as part of the integrated curriculum. keeping the education system healthy: managing the impact of hiv/aids on education in south africa current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 19 10. educational institutions will ensure that learners acquire ageand contextappropriate knowledge and skills to enable them to behave in ways that will protect them from infection. 11. educators need more knowledge of, and skills to deal with, hiv/aids and should be trained to give guidance on hiv/aids. the director-general of education and heads of provincial departments of education are responsible for implementing national policy on hiv/aids and education. schools are encouraged to develop their own policies on hiv/aids. principals are responsible for implementing policy in their institutions, and governing bodies are expected to supplement budgetary allocations for health, safety and other equipment. confronting hiv/aids in education education's hiv/aids work must be assessed in terms of both health and operational concerns. health concerns are those which focus on learning about the pathology of the disease, and preventing its spread by better education, advocacy and sensitization. this has been the conventional bureaucratic approach to hiv/aids. there are, however, other, equally significant operational concerns which focus on understanding the nature of the pandemic and its influence on the education community as hiv/aids continues its inexorable spread, and responding creatively to a much more complex teaching and learning environment in order to maintain education quality. understanding means accepting that the pandemic has not been halted or even slowed, that it is not 'business as usual' in education, and that as hiv/aids affects the supply, demand and quality of education it must be factored into planning for the future. responding means seeking ways to protect the education system before it is further compromised by the pandemic, so as to sustain an adequate and acceptable quality and level of education provision. it means stabilizing the system (system self-preservation) to ensure that even under attack by the pandemic, the system works so that teachers are teaching, children are enrolling and staying in school, managers are managing, and personnel, financial and professional development systems are performing adequately. it includes mitigating the pandemic's potential and actual impact (counteracting the pandemic) to ensure that children affected and infected by the pandemic are receiving counseling and care; that there is a culture of care in schools and institutions; and that human rights compromised by hiv/aids are protected in learning institutions and education workplaces. and it requires creatively and flexibly responding to it (outwitting the disease) to ensure that the system continues to provide meaningful, relevant educational services to communities of learners in complex and demanding circumstances by finding new times, places and techniques for learning and teaching, and is far more demandthan supply-driven. working on health concerns: learning and preventing the department's principal focus thus far has been on teaching safe sex and creating an hiv/aids-aware environment in schools. the national coordinating committee for life skills and hiv/aids began to design curricula in 1995 (departments of health and education, 1997/1998). each provincial education department is required to apply the carol coombe 20 december 1, 2000 curriculum and train teachers in its use. all south african educational institutions have also received copies of the department's hiv/aids emergency: guidelines for educators (department of education, 2000d) which require that educators exemplify responsible sexual behavior and create a supportive environment for those infected or affected by hiv/aids, thereby 'making the school a center of hope and care in the community'. the booklet stresses that male educators have a particular duty of care, and that having sex with learners betrays the trust of the community, is against the law, and is a disciplinary offence (department of education, 2000, p. 2). some headway is being made in teaching safe sex, and creating a culture of care in schools. but progress is slow. there is evidence (human sciences research council, 2000) that only 15% of schools have a policy on hiv/aids. male teachers still represent one of the greatest dangers to children and to female educators. the medical research council recently reported (pretoria news, 5 october 2000) that many young women are forced to have sex by employers and schoolteachers. one-third of all reported rapes of girls younger than 15 were perpetrated by schoolteachers. implementation of life skills curricula varies from province to province, but has generally been inefficient. there are about 21,300 primary schools (8.4 million learners), and 5,000 secondary schools, and another 2,500 combined schools (over four million learners). introducing life skills curricula at primary level alone means re-training 64,000 school educators and 21,000 lay counselors. apart from the huge numbers to be reached, teaching materials require adjustment, additional master teachers/counselors need regular upgrading training and replacement, and models of peer-group support must be elaborated (department of health, 2000). life skills content is also suspect. more robust evidence about sexual behaviors, including violence against women and children and male bisexuality, is needed to improve hiv/aids teaching, learning and counseling. not enough is understood yet about how custom and tradition, poverty, family disorientation during the apartheid years, persistent gender inequality, and hiv/aids-related myths are linked to each other and to the spread of the disease. working on education sector impact concerns: understanding and responding in its corporate plan, 2000-2004, the department of education (2000b) has tried to come to grips with the knowledge that hiv/aids is threatening to undo south africa's considerable post-apartheid educational achievements. the department of education recognizes that 'the demand, supply and quality of learning and teaching will be affected by the hiv/aids epidemic' and that this in turn will 'affect the pattern of human development and economic growth in south africa' (department of education, 2000b). an analysis of the impact of hiv/aids on the education and training system has been commissioned by government and will be presented to the department of education late in 2000. the analysis is taking account of keeping the education system healthy: managing the impact of hiv/aids on education in south africa current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 21 1. the impact of hiv/aids on society and human resource development: changes in skills requirements, the vulnerability of educators to the pandemic, staff attrition and mobility patterns, and changes in household expenditure patterns. 2. how hiv/aids affects the supply of education: how many educators by category will be infected, develop aids, and die; shifts in rates of educator absenteeism, attrition, recruitment and ill-health retirement, benefit costs, contact time in classes, other aspects of departmental functioning; the extent to which government policies and practices assist in management of hiv/aids-related difficulties. 3. how hiv/aids influences the demand for education: projected future numbers of learners, of learners infected and affected by hiv/aids, of orphans, of households and schools at risk; effects of the disease on enrolments, wastage and completion rates; the extent to which sector policies and practices help prevent the spread of hiv/aids, and meet the needs of learners so they can contribute to society and the economy. however, the question is whether, with better information on the pandemic's likely impact on the education sector, education departments will in practice be able to respond. there are a number of management hurdles to be cleared. first, despite a sense of urgency in the national department of education, there is evidence that as yet provincial departments do not understand that hiv/aids is inimical to education quality. this makes it difficult to anticipate whether and how education departments will use the impact assessment findings, and recruit managers who can start being more creative about 'providing an increasing range of learning possibilities, and offering learners greater flexibility in choosing what, where, when, how and at what pace they learn' (white paper on education and training, 1995, p. 21). second, innovation in education is difficult under any circumstances because of administrative and procedural constraints, the complexity of the education bureaucracy, and the high cost of personnel. the third problem is how to devise management structures suitable to addressing an issue like hiv/aids which cuts across the whole sector in much the same way that 'gender' does. finally, these difficulties are compounded in south africa by persistent managerial shortcomings, and the lack of creative management capacity within the sector--the full-time staff capable of fighting this war. these hurdles are clearly evident in current arrangements in the education sector for combating hiv/aids. south africa's director-general of education, and heads of provincial education departments of education, are responsible for implementing hiv/aids programs. at national level the minister's advisor on hiv/aids, and the chief director (hiv/aids coordination) are full-time hiv/aids-dedicated officials, but have no executive authority. hiv/aids-related functions have been parceled out to various departments and directorates. every provincial education department is required to appoint two hiv/aids program managers, as well as a working group to communicate policy, monitor implementation, and advise on progress. hiv/aids provincial business plans are designed to make best use of national and international carol coombe 22 december 1, 2000 resources, although officials and cooperating partners have all been frustrated by what they perceive to be complicated procedures for accessing funds. it will take time before structures and personnel are working effectively. directorates and individual personnel often lack clear mandates. officials are under such pressure that there is little time for cooperation. officials have only part-time to give to hiv/aids functions, as they are already overloaded with other competing commitments. tensions inevitably arise between staff in different departments, different directorates, and at different levels. as a result, structures may get out of phase, and disjunctures and overlaps arise. overworked officials consequently tend to focus narrowly on a single task or set of tasks which can be carved out of the whole, and for which tangible outcomes can be identified. this results in lack of coherence among initiatives. it also means that as staff come and go, priorities change. line management problems are compounded by the shortage of skilled and experienced managers capable of maintaining system performance, and mandated to do so. there is no doubt about the personal commitment of responsible officials, but individually and collectively public officials may not perceive the complex nature of the pandemic, or may lack strategic techniques to counteract it. they are in some cases overcome by inertia because the challenge is too big, resources too dispersed, and their units are understaffed and under pressure. perhaps they do not understand messages coming from principals, teachers, and district officials. certainly they do not have support from planners, demographers, economists, sociologists and anthropologists, care workers and others whose advice is now required. if this is a war, it needs generals to fight it. some of these problems could be overcome by cultivating stronger links with partners in and out of government. cooperation problems persist everywhere. the contribution of ngos, faith-based organizations, unions, international organizations, and communities to the battle against hiv/aids in the past has been not just considerable, but fundamental. protecting the compromised health of the education service will depend in future on how well government learns to work with other departments, and with local organizations, and the extent to which it is able fund and support their contributions to the battle against hiv/aids. mitigating the consequences of hiv/aids for education the situation seems to be desperate and getting worse, without a contingency plan to protect the system against hiv/aids. but there are things that can be done, however challenged the present and future may look. a foundation for action the first step is to recognize that the hiv/aids pandemic is not just a health problem, but that it brings psycho-social, economic and other consequences which threaten the efficient operation of the system itself. making this conceptual break-through makes it possible to redefine the education sector's response to the pandemic, and then to act systematically in fighting it. taking these practical steps is possible if there is a foundation from which to launch education's counter-offensive. south africa's past experience suggests some elements of such a foundation for action on hiv/aids. keeping the education system healthy: managing the impact of hiv/aids on education in south africa current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 23 systematic information more needs to be known quantitatively about how hiv/aids influences teacher and teacher educator attrition (especially in key areas like supervision, management, and science/maths teaching), education costs, education requirements, the complexity of grade cohorts, and wastage and completion rates. how can adequate information be collected and analyzed systematically? who is responsible for reporting, collecting and collating? who will analyze it and feed it into the decision-making process? much information is already available from demographers and sentinel sites at ante-natal clinics. further data can be extracted regularly from school reporting forms and personnel systems without adding to institutional reporting burdens. it should be possible to deduce a set of 'alarm bells,' or indicators which warn managers when a situation reaches crisis levels in schools, districts and provinces. concerns about sustaining the quality of education require more detailed research and analysis. how do existing knowledge and value systems complicate life skills teaching? what should the education system look like in future when a high proportion of learners will be unparented orphans, or part of a child-headed household? what needs to be done to ensure the system meets the needs of children in distress and those who look after them, monitors hiv-affected children's rights, promotes a culture of care in schools, and operates in more flexible, non-formal ways to meet very complex educational needs. what will happen to south africa's four million aids orphans? who will care for them and how will they be educated? what do we know about 'orphanhood'? what more do we need to know? the education sector urgently requires a research agenda on hiv/aids and its impact on the education system, with priorities agreed, academic and other research partners mandated, resources allocated, and research outcomes linked to change. collective dedication the impact assessment commissioned by government on behalf of the department of education will provide a focal point for reaching agreement within education departments, in consultation with partners, about how to stabilize the system and protect education quality. politicians, planners and practitioners, and development agency partners must now together assert their collective will to understand and deal with the effect of hiv/aids on the education system. adequate planning and strategic principles innovative structures and systems are needed to plan education's response to hiv/aids. some strategic principles have emerged from south africa's experience during the '90s. first, interventions must be manageable, within the capacity of the system to implement. second, the grassroots is at work and government needs to shift from a top-down 'delivery' structure to cooperatively devised support frameworks for local initiatives. third, peer group support is essential for all pupils, students, teachers, lecturers and other educators. collectivity, cooperation, collaboration, coordination and consultation, based on trust, are needed to sustain a culture of care in schools. finally, full-time officials with clear job descriptions need to be mandated to work on hiv/aids impact matters. these principles and others need to be fully elaborated as a basis for planning and management. carol coombe 24 december 1, 2000 streamlined funding it is essential now to make funding arrangements more efficient, and to make adequate provision for local non-government partners. it is up to the finance and education departments, as well as local and international funding partners, to sort this out as a matter of urgent priority. effective partnerships cooperation and trust must characterize south africa's response to hiv/aids. that means (1) breaking the current impasse between politicians, government officials, ngo and institutional activists, academics and the media about what to do, and who is responsible; (2) involving communities, parents and local leaders in any campaign through the school governing body, and using the school as the ultimate communitybased organization and the nerve-center for local response; (3) listening to what teachers and district officials say about what needs to be done, how it can be done, and what they need to do it; (4) pushing unions to get the message out to their members; and (5) making better arrangements with international development cooperation agencies in support of both government and local initiatives. three strong networks exist which can carry messages throughout south africa: schools, unions, and faith-based organizations. their potential for leadership at local level as aids-focused community-based organizations requires further exploration, along with the role of traditional leaders and south africa's mothers. crisis management capacity the department of education has an obligation to deploy the best managers and leaders it can find to counteract the pandemic. because so much is at stake, it is essential to recruit dedicated teams of proven, mature senior managers, on contract if necessary. this is not a part-time assignment for individuals dotted around the bureaucracy. fighting hiv/aids, protecting children, teachers and other educators, and shielding the system itself is a full-time professional assignment, at least in the shortto mediumterm until the situation stabilizes. responsive decision-making having a foundation for action in place should make it possible to act creatively to deflect the worst ravages of hiv/aids. difficult decisions will need to be taken about targeting resources where they are most needed (by making provision to replace teachers lost to hiv/aids, for example, and meet the needs of the growing orphan population), and avoiding wastage (by building fewer schools where populations are decimated, by creating new learning opportunities for children forced out of school). educators should be able to identify at-risk schools and learners (female pupils, children who walk a long way to school, those in boarding hostels). with stronger aidsdedicated planning and management, education departments and their partners should be able to provide a wide selection of materials to support peer group work among children, teachers, and other care-givers, promote a 'culture of care' in schools and institutions, and start planning for 'randomized' education and training for learners affected by aids. keeping the education system healthy: managing the impact of hiv/aids on education in south africa current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 25 conclusion hiv/aids is not just a health problem. for twenty years the disease has spread inexorably through southern africa. all efforts to contain it have failed, and south africa now has the largest hiv-positive population in the world. the pandemic affects not only the health of individuals, but is attacking the education system itself. demand for education is dropping and changing, many teachers are ill and dying, and the trauma of loss associated with hiv/aids is entrenched in south african classrooms. in south africa, as in africa as a whole, we can no longer assume that it is 'business as usual' for education. the response of south africa's education departments has so far been practical and multi-faceted. there is both political and official commitment to address operational as well as health difficulties created by the pandemic. an hiv/aids-in-education policy and regulatory framework is in place, along with adequate budgetary provision, and practical implementation structures, at least at national level. but management structures now in place are clearly not adequate to handle this crisis, and there are no full-time managers with sufficient skill and executive power to take decisive action to counteract the pandemic's threat. as the pandemic begins to bite, greater resources and creative energies will be needed to protect the quality of education provision. education officials and their partners inside and outside government now need to learn how to stabilize the system, devise innovative ways to reduce the impact of hiv/aids on the sector, and respond creatively to new management and learning requirements. in an education environment radically altered by hiv/aids this will require a foundation for action featuring collective dedication among all stakeholders in education, systematic information collection and analysis, dedicated structures and full-time staff responsible for strategic planning, effective partnerships of all stakeholders, professional crisis management capacity, and streamlined funding. when closing the 13th international aids conference in durban in july 2000, nelson mandela said that 'we have to rise above our differences and combine our efforts to save our people. history will judge us harshly if we fail to do so now, and right now.' each day, on the basis of south africa's experience, much more is known about the adverse consequences of hiv/aids for education systems. the time to act is now. notes 1. the publication of the sa national council for child welfare, hiv/aids and the care of children, uses a figure of 19,775,600 children under the age of 18 in 1997. 2. the hiv/aids epidemic has progressed more or less in line with model projections during the 1990s. these projections are based on the most recent statistics, using the metropolitan-doyle model (moore and kramer, 1999, p. 14). 3. south africa has one national and nine provincial departments of education. carol coombe 26 december 1, 2000 references abt associates inc. (2000). the impending catastrophe: a resource book on the emerging hiv/aids epidemic in south africa. prepared for lovelife campaign (www.lovelife.org.za). aids law project and lawyers for human rights (1997). hiv/aids and the law. johannesburg, south africa: lawyers for human rights. coombe, c. (2000). managing the impact of hiv/aids on the education sector in south africa. addis ababa: united nations economic commission for africa (uneca). department of education (1995, march 15). white paper on education and training. government gazette no 16312. pretoria, south africa: government printer. department of education (1999a, august 10). national policy on hiv/aids for learners and educators in public schools, and students and educators in further education and training institutions of the department of education. government gazette no 20372. pretoria, south africa: government printer. department of education (1999b). call to action: tirisano. pretoria, south africa: department of education. department of education (2000a). annual report 1999. pretoria, south africa: department of education. department of education (2000b). department of education: corporate plan, january 2000-december 2004. pretoria, south africa: department of education. department of education (2000c). implementation plan for tirisano, january 2000december 2004. pretoria, south africa: department of education. department of education (2000d). hiv/aids emergency: guidelines for educators. pretoria, south africa: department of education, communications directorate. department of health (1994). south african hiv/aids strategy and implementation plan. pretoria: department of health. department of health (2000). draft hiv/aids/std strategic plan for south africa, 2000-2005. pretoria: department of health. kelly, m. j. (2000). african universities and hiv/aids. pretoria, south africa: south african universities' vice chancellors' association (sauvca). mandela, n. (2000, july 21). nelson mandela closes the 13th international aids conference. financial mail, p. 6. keeping the education system healthy: managing the impact of hiv/aids on education in south africa current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 27 marais, h. (2000). to the edge: aids review 2000. pretoria, south africa: university of pretoria, center for the study of aids. moore, d., kramer, s. (1999). hiv and aids: getting down to business. cape town, south africa: aids research unit of the metropolitan life group. smart, r. (1999). children living with hiv/aids in south africa: a rapid appraisal. pretoria, south africa: department of health, and save the children (uk). south africa (1996). the constitution of the republic of south africa (act 108 of 1996). pretoria, south africa: government printer. south african law commission (1998). consultative paper on children infected and affected by hiv/aids. pretoria, south africa: south african law commission. © 2008 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 10(1/2): 3-5. editorial introduction are ngos overrated?[1] ten year anniversary double issue mathangi subramanian teachers college, columbia university ten years ago, the inaugural issue of current issues in comparative education (cice) asked its authors to tackle the question, “are nongovernmental organizations (ngos) overrated?” it was a fitting beginning for a journal meant for international education scholars, who often entered the field because of their commitments to acting upon the theories they develop and critique, and their beliefs that academic work ultimately must be useful outside of the academy. indeed, cice’s authors and readers routinely collaborate with nongovernmental organizations, and are therefore personally and intimately familiar with the daily challenges of working with these agencies. in framing the first issue of cice around the efficacy of ngos, the journal’s founding editors were indirectly asking a much larger question that are of universal concern among scholars and activists alike: as outsiders, is it more responsible for us to use our power and wealth to provide for basic human needs or to change entire systems based on our ideas of what social justice looks like? or, more simply put, how do we use the resources available to us to make the world a more just place? before world war ii, ngos were practically invisible in international politics: policymakers and world leaders regarded them as agencies purely designed to deliver services that the state lacked the resources, time, or motivation to provide (mundy & murphy, 2001). while collective action among ngos led to widespread social reform, particularly during the nineteenth century in the areas of labor and human rights, they received little attention from nations vying for global power and financial security. this positioning reflected the widespread belief that the most effective foreign aid was service position, and that it was the job of the people receiving the aid to reform their own nations, systems, and institutions. ngos rapidly proliferated in the late 1990s, when governments began the current pattern of seeking out private solutions to public problems (edwards & hulme, 1995). as ngos continue to expand their reach and influence, their role is becoming increasingly complex (steiner-khamsi, 1998). although governments continue to expect ngos to act primarily as providers of direct services, ngos often develop ambitious agendas for political reform (edwards & hulme, 1995; mundy & murphy, 2001; wils, 1995). now, the ultimate goal of many ngos is “mainstreaming,” or “the incorporation of ngo models into the official policy framework” of the nations that ngos serve (wils, 1995, p. 58). no longer satisfied with addressing the symptoms of poverty, more and more, ngos are seeking out ways to address the root of the problem itself. this shift has led to successful reform efforts, including the development of the education for all (efa) movement (mundy & murphy, 2001; stromquist, 1998). furthermore, ngos “implement” the agendas of reformist initiatives ranging from women’s rights to environmental protection to anti-nuclear proliferation efforts (stromquist, 1998, p. 62). without the action of ngos, these movements would involve far fewer participants and would be available to far fewer nations. because reformist agendas that ngos are now pursuing may undermine the authority and power structure of the institutions that provide them with financial and political support, scholars and 4 fall 2007 / spring 2008 editorial introduction activists question whether ngos can ever truly pursue reformist agendas (edwards & hulme, 1998; mundy & murphy, 2001; wils, 1995). funding institutions often respond to reforms by selectively funding social service programs, which tend to emphasize service provision, more often than economic programs, which tend to emphasize personal empowerment and, eventually, structural change. additionally, funders demand greater and more specific accountability, asking for data representing “results and impact” (wils, 1995, p. 60). these reporting requirements place greater value on quantifiable activities (such as the provision of direct services) rather than efforts that are best captured qualitatively (such as the communication of new ideologies and reform measures). while such accountability measures have rewarded ngos that achieve impressive results (stromquist, 1998), they may also penalize those that pursue agendas considered too radical or progressive (edwards & hulme, 1998). critics argue that as a result of these pressures, ngos often feel more accountable to funders than to the constituents they purport to serve (edwards & hulme, 1995; edwards & hulme, 1998; mundy & murphy, 2001; wils, 1995). not only does such questionable allegiance detract from organizations’ motivations to work towards widespread change, wils (1995) claims that ngos that lose touch with the communities they serve tend to advance policy agendas that are inadequate or ineffective. furthermore, it is unclear whether the reforms that networks of ngos and other non-state agencies procure are merely temporary, subject to the whims of global politics and transient international leadership (mundy & murphy, 2001). finally, global policies, such as those derived from the efa movement, are often not as promising as they first appear: while nations may agree to educational reform, ultimately, many lack the resources and motivation to follow through on the promises they make to networks of organizations that lack the ability to enforce the policies they develop. the number and impact of ngos continues to increase alongside the strategies scholars, activists, and policymakers devise to address the problems associated with poverty and oppression. can ngos convince entire nations to engage in substantial social reform? can ngos receive private funding while remaining primarily accountable to those they serve? can ngos be trusted to work for reform that may disrupt the status quo that provides them with their financial and political power? in short, can ngos actually change the status quo? in bridge over black[ened] water: a new refrain for ngos, mark ginsburg reviews how recent events, such as the case of blackwater worldwide, have changed the way scholars and activists evaluate the role and effectiveness of ngos. in donor logic in the era of gates, buffett, and soros, gita steiner-khamsi explores the impact of philanthropic funding sources, many of whom are not required to abide by tight regulations imposed by states, on the ways ngos operate. in the growing market for ngo influence, lynn ilon addresses the positioning of ngos as recipients of aid from organizations with ulterior political and economic motives, and questions the ability of ngos to do reform work within this context. in ngos, civil society, and development: is there a third way?, stephen klees discusses the ways in which local and global forces compromise the ability of ngos to achieve lasting reform. klees then outlines a new type of reform effort integrating grassroots activism, participatory democracy, social justice, and networking into a truly transformational organization. current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 5 mathangi subramanian in contested alliances, iveta silova visits the many roles that ngos play in authoritarian and postauthoritarian settings. in from ngos to csos: social citizenship, civil society and “education for all” – an agenda for further research, karen mundy advocates using a social citizenship lens to both evaluate the impact of civil society on the effectiveness of education for all, as well as the potential of ngos to create widespread social change. in revisiting transformational ngos in the context of contemporary society, nelly stromquist argues that transformational ngos can and have improved the daily lives of everyday people by reshaping the way that individuals participate in civil society. although the roles of international education scholars, activists, and policymakers, both within and outside of ngos, remain uncertain, unfortunately the same cannot be said about the realities of poverty and oppression, which remain stubbornly consistent. for the past decade, the editors at cice have had the honor and a pleasure to participate in scholarly dialogues surrounding the many manifestations of the pursuit of social justice currently occurring in the field of comparative and international education. i know i speak for my past, present, and future colleagues when i express my genuine hope that the journal will continue in this role for decades to come. notes [1]. thanks to cambria dodd russell, andrew shiotani, and pete cronin with their help on earlier drafts. references edwards, m., & d. hulme. (1995). ngo performance and accountability: introduction and overview. in m. edwards and d. hulme (eds.) non-governmental organisations: performance and accountability, 3-16. london: save the children. edwards, m., & d. hulme. (1998). too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations. current issues in comparative education 1(1), 6-28. mundy, k., & l. murphy. (2001). transnational advocacy, global civil society? emerging evidence from the field of education. comparative education review 45(1), 85-126. steiner-khamsi, g. (1998). too far from home? ‘modulitis’ and ngos’ role in transferring prepackaged reform. current issues in comparative education, 1(1), 35-41. stromquist, n. (1998). ngos in a new paradigm of civil society. current issues in comparative education, 1(1), 62-67. wils, f. (1995). scaling-up, mainstreaming, and accountability: the challenge for ngos. in m. edwards and d. hulme (eds.) non-governmental organisations: performance and accountability, 5362. london: save the children. bridge over black[ened] water: a new refrain for ngos mark ginsburg global education center, academy for educational development department of international educational policy, university of maryland in 1970, paul simon and art garfunkel released their award-winning album, “bridge over troubled water.”[1] although the album’s title song was not produced as part of a social marketing campaign for nongovernmental organizations (ngos), its lyrics seem well-suited for that purpose. for example, the first verse and refrain state: when you’re weary, feeling small when tears are in your eyes, i will dry them all i’m on your side when times get rough and friends just can’t be found like a bridge over troubled water i will lay me down like a bridge over troubled water i will lay me down (simon and garfunkel, 1970) in particular, the lyrics above could be used to promote one of the images of ngos – those “new great organizations” – that i mentioned in my contribution to the first issue of current issues in comparative education (ginsburg 1998). such ngos could be described metaphorically as a bridge, available to help people in need to cross over, whether the troubled water refers to hunger, disease, poverty, or inadequate education. the conception of ngos as “new great organizations” is informed by a preference for “privatized” democracy (see sehr, 1997), and can be contrasted with a view of ngos as “no good organizations,” which undermine opportunities for people to engage in “public” democratic (sehr, 1997) processes to shape state policy and action. simon and garfunkel’s song is less likely to support this latter image of ngos, however, unless the troubled water is seen as the workings of authoritarian and corrupt states. i still feel comfortable with what i wrote ten years ago, that how one views ngos depends on one’s perspective, and thus my reflections here will focus more on extending the analysis, rather than revising it. i will do this by considering three relatively recent developments, which in different ways have provoked me to keep wrestling with the question posed in that 1998 article: “what’s in an acronym?” the first development connects to my activity as a journal editor and a scholar. in working with david suarez on his manuscript that was eventually published in the comparative education review, i came to appreciate how intergovernmental organizations (igos) and international nongovernmental organizations (ingos) can serve as “receptor sites for transnational ideas… promot[ing] and diffus[ing] … global models at the national level” (suarez, 2007, p. 53). building on suarez’s analysis of the role of ngos in developing and diffusing ideas and practices in human rights education, mayumi terano and i analyzed the role of ngos in mobilizing participation in unesco’s culture of peace programme, specifically in india and japan (terrano and ginsburg, © 2008 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 10(1/2): 6-9. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 182 april 30, 2002 making adolescence at the turn of the century: discourse and the exclusion of girls nancy lesko teachers college, columbia university introduction at the turn-of-the-20th-century, a time of national uncertainty (wiebe, 1967) and massive cultural change in the u.s. (lutz, 1991), the adolescent came to occupy a highly visible and recognizable place and was commonly invoked in discussions about the erosion of anglo protestant values in urban areas (collins, 1979), threats to the nation and empire (rosenthal, 1984), and fear of racial suicide (bederman, 1995). the adolescent, a being defined as "becoming" and hence, potentially in peril (in today's terms, "at risk"), was a trope for turn-of-the-century worries about unknown futures and the ability to succeed and triumph in changing circumstances. adolescence was a social fact produced through a set of both educational and material practices that functioned as a technology to regulate the lives of young people, as well as reinforce dominant social norms at a time of great transition and uncertainty. the technology of adolescence, which included the control of sexuality, separate juvenile justice facilities for delinquents (bakan, 1972), and segregation of girls' and boys' curricular areas in increasing years of compulsory schooling, served to create certain kinds of persons within certain particular social arrangements1. rallying around the concept of the "adolescent", social reformers re-ordered social institutions, such as the juvenile justice and education systems. the emerging discourse of adolescence in the late 1890s and early 1900s was, in large part, attributable to g. stanley hall, commonly referred to as the "father of adolescence." hall's idealized as well as popular view of the adolescent as the apex of human development was based on the concept of evolution drawn from darwin's work in biology and spencer's social application of darwinism. for hall, the period of adolescence was the beginning of a new life that, if properly administered, could contribute to the evolution of the race. within a social darwinian framework, the growth and development of individuals reflected the development of the race from savagery to barbarism, and barbarism to civilization. hence, adolescence would be the point in which the individual, reflective of society as a whole, would either develop into a superior, western self or remain stunted in a savage state. he and his colleagues also issued 'pedagogical imperatives,' that is, disciplinary and instructional techniques that were essential for each stage of adolescence. the discussion of the special potential and pitfalls of adolescence resonated with worries about manhood, masculinity and dominance, which were coded as civilization or the future of the race. the notion of the adolescent was linked to nationhood, particularly the future of the u.s. as a nation. the composite portrait of urban laggards--sullen, nonvirile youth who smoked cigarettes, masturbated, and lived in unhealthy conditions-threatened the further evolution of the race and the material growth of the nation. furthermore, in the northeast of the u.s. at this time the actual number of white, middlemaking adolescence at the turn of the century: discourse and the exclusion of girls current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 183 class boys was low. these population figures likely augmented fears of social decay through a lack of manly christian leaders (macleod, 1983). within this context, the education of boys was meant to produce young, masculine christians. in order to sculpt strong-willed boys rather than weak-willed, effeminate youth, reforms reflected boys' "naturally-occurring" interests in sports, camping, and physical activities. adolescents were massified and then the massed populational characteristics were applied as naturally occurring characteristics of individuals. a concrete social situation in which certain youth played particular kinds of games became, for example, a statistic (such as a percentage of all immigrant youth) and eventually an inherent trait of youth in general (popkewitz, 1998). the cataloging of boys' interests, spontaneous ideas, and activities furthered the dominance of adults and made young people ever more dependent on adult experts, all in the name of developing young males' strong powers and firm wills. although white, middle-class boys were the focus of reform efforts, their problems could not be articulated or understood without the specter of women and girls. while the discussion of adolescence was largely centered around boys (the girl problem had a lower profile and fewer resources), the girl problem was fundamental to this discourse. although seemingly absent, girls were always present, in fact, hauntingly present. in playing in the dark, toni morrison (1992) offers a critical reading of american literature that argues that blackness is necessary in order for whiteness to exist. similarly, i will argue that girls were necessary to define masculinity and manhood by virtue of their difference from and distance from manliness. fin de siécle masculinity came to depend upon femininity in order to define itself. this paper examines the multileveled absence/presence of girls in reformers' ideas and theories and in progressive programs and policies for girls. like boys, girls were linked to discussions about nationhood; however, the relationship of girls to the concept of nationhood was distinctly different from the relationship of boys to the nation. girls' bodies mattered as much in 1900 as in 2000: girls required help to save themselves for marriage and children, which ultimately supported white racial progress and patriarchy along the way. the objective of programs for girls was in line with the values associated with the woman's sphere-to make "better mothers and guides [for] the next generation" (dyhouse, 1981, p. 110). a large body of advice literature for women and girls appeared in the early 1900s in britain "characterized by a strident, imperialist vocabulary, urging women to regard the preservation of their own health as a moral duty, a duty they owed to 'the empire and the race'" (dyhouse, 1981, p. 136). health became a moral and patriotic duty and extended to untidy dress, the lagging step, and the dull eye and heavy countenance. empire and race demanded good posture, a brisk pace, and a bright, cheerful face (dyhouse, 1981, p. 137). fears of precocity overshadowed every discussion about girls and their organizations. girls, like boys, were dangerous when they failed to go through the right steps and slow pace of socialization to their future status and girls' bodies were examined to interpret their moral status. for girls, too much independence, early paid work, or experiences without school or family oversight made precocity imminent2. sexual precocity was most feared, and state intervention in the u.s. around adolescent girls was generally nancy lesko 184 april 30, 2002 around issues of sexuality. separating girls from males and from urban environments was deemed sufficient to keep them pure. juvenile justice as a technology of gendered sexuality while team sports and character building were directed at boys, efforts targeting girls were largely centered around the juvenile justice system, with early interventions by this system (the ultimate means of control) directed at young women's precocity. in calling for state regulation of female sexuality, middle-class women reformers envisioned the creation of a "maternal state" that would become, as nearly as possible, a "real mother" to the girls (odem, 1995, p. 109). the juvenile justice system that was produced during the progressive era institutionalized new ideas and practices, as it also mixed new legal ideas with traditional approaches to rearing children (schlossman, 1977). the enlightened juvenile courts, reformatories, and probation policies contributed significant elements to the emerging discourse on adolescence. victorian justice for youth had thrown accused juveniles into detention facilities that warehoused all kinds of adult criminals; those convicted of crimes were sent to large prison facilities that sought to control every moment of the prisoners' lives. common across different reform efforts was an insistence on prevention and diagnosis. the broad surveillance that was usual can be gauged by examining records of intake examinations at the western house of refuge, a women's reformatory in albion, new york. the form assesses physical, temperamental, moral, and mental traits. at the bottom of each report is the diagnosis-from normal to feeble-minded or alcoholic to hysteric. the progressive juvenile justice of prevention launched a surveillance of every aspect of juveniles' (especially girls') bodies and souls. the conventional marking of the beginning of the juvenile justice system is cook county, chicago in 1899--a central piece of the making of adolescence as a social fact (bakan, 1972) as well as of state intervention in the lives of girls. the primary aim of juvenile courts was not to decide guilt or innocence, but to "assess the conditions in a youth's life that had led to delinquency" (odem, 1995, p. 111). in the gendered and sexualized practices of juvenile justice from its inception, we see an additional aspect of adolescence as a technology of selfand population-making. although the "boy problem" dominated public consciousness and private and public efforts, and boys committed more serious crimes, by the late 1800s the "girl problem" came into its own and reformatories for girls proliferated. girls were brought to court almost exclusively for alleged early sexual exploration and received harsher punishments than did boys (schlossman & wallach, 1978, pp. 70-71). in part, their disproportionate share of "justice" was justified as preventive intervention into the lives of antisocial girls, who were depicted as especially vulnerable to temptations and immoral forces. massachusetts had inaugurated female juvenile justice in 1856 with the first reform school for girls, but campaigns for the moral protection of young women were not new. what was new in the late 1800s and early1900s was the broadened scope of the campaigns and the mounting demands for state regulation of the problem. public anxiety about the morality of young women greatly intensified and spread to all regions of the country during this period of rapid urban and industrial growth. instead of the religious and voluntary efforts pursued earlier, moral reformers now began to insist on a forceful response from the state (odem, 1995, p. 1). making adolescence at the turn of the century: discourse and the exclusion of girls current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 185 widespread fears of immigrants and of the poor were also reflected in disproportionate representation in the juvenile courts. promiscuous girls called forth prejudice against racial, ethnic, and class differences and concerns about inter racial/ethnic/class mixing. girls were mostly charged with non-criminal activities, generally "immorality," which might be actual sexual acts, but was often merely a "sign" in their appearance or conversation that they had had intercourse in the past or "might do so in the near future" [emphasis added] (schlossman & wallach, 1978, p. 72)3. since immigrants were considered, like other groups on the lower rungs of the civilized/savage-state continuum, instinctively emotional and lacking in self-restraint, their daughters were read in the same way. thus, language and demeanor that seemed insufficiently demure and repentant were interpreted as evidence of "immorality." whenever a girl used vile language, masturbated, or indulged in lascivious thoughts, the court intervened. in milwaukee, for example, alleged girl delinquents were subject to close questioning about their private lives and "every girl who appeared in court was subjected to a vaginal examination" [emphasis added] (schlossman & wallach, 1978, p. 73). even if an intact hymen indicated a girl was a virgin, doctors could diagnose "self-abuse" through masturbation and make a case for the necessity of state supervision. thus, female delinquency was primarily precocious sexuality, judged by victorian standards of women's moral passiveness in this area and necessary preparation for marriage and motherhood. courts wanted the performance of docile femininity; if a girl would not "feign repentance" and if her parents "would not at least feign shock," the court responded punitively (schlossman & wallach, 1978, p. 75). state interventions regularly involved the isolation of delinquent girls from males, preferably in rural settings like those that delighted g. stanley hall. according to schlossman and wallach (1978), "the mere act of isolating delinquent girls came to be seen as a rehabilitative tool"[emphasis added] (p. 76)4. reformers who urged prevention also supported using the state for surveillance, legal prosecution and detention, and institutionalization of girls and young women who engaged in suspect behavior-effectively controlling, removing, and excluding them from membership in a democratic society. educational system paralleling reform in the juvenile justice system was the simultaneous domestication of girls' education during the "progressive" era. within the very schema of adolescence as a developmental stage, femaleness loomed as an obstacle that had to be navigated and surpassed; femininity haunted the modern developing male adolescent. boys were segregated from girls to guard their emergent masculinity and superiority. one beacon of civilization was a clear, marked differentiation between the sexes: advanced societies sported greater differences between men's and women's appearances, social positions, characteristics, and, of course, education and training. at the 1903 national education association (nea) conference, g. stanley hall asserted: in savagery women and men are more alike in their physical structure and in their occupations, but with real progress the sexes diverge and draw apart, and the diversities always present are multiplied and accentuated (1903, p. 446). nancy lesko 186 april 30, 2002 hall encouraged educators to aim for more manly boys and more womanly girls, and there is evidence that this advice was widely heeded. for example, the mission statement of st. louis high schools called for an education to "develop manhood and womanhood with strength of character and trained intelligence" (graves, 1998, p. 129). given the cultural preoccupation with promoting civilization and avoiding degeneracy, this rhetoric was likely quite meaningful, and it soothed those nervous about disorderly women because preparing for adulthood would follow the adult norms for separate male and female spheres. in england, the boer war and fears of national decline also produced a panic around working-class girls and their education. an overwhelming majority of army volunteers for the war had been rejected; in manchester, for example, 8,000 out of 11,000 volunteers were unfit. the national report on young men's physical deterioration laid the responsibility, in part, on mothers' insufficient knowledge about "household affairs, hygiene and nutrition" (dyhouse, 1981, p. 92). the report recommended an emphasis on domestic education for girls in state-supported elementary schools, which would teach female students, for example, how to cook cheap and nutritious meals. lessons on childcare and infant management also came into being, because the infant mortality rate remained high, another eugenic concern for the future of the british empire. in secondary schools, domestic science elevated the preparation for future positions as wives and mothers through a scientific mantle, and girls were routinely encouraged to substitute domestic science for natural science studies. overall, girls needed fewer lessons in academics and more shaping into "efficient women citizens, good homekeepers and mothers" (dyhouse, 1981, p. 114). feminist scholars record similar processes in the u.s. at the turn-of-the-century. in response to an enrollment of 60 percent girls, los angeles educators' "fear of feminization" fueled curricular reforms like manual training and domestic science, higher salaries for male teachers, and a dramatic shift in the definition of "school" that included the "thorough masculinization of interscholastic sports and student government" (bissell brown, 1990, p. 510). despite the fact that the girls' basketball team had winning seasons between 1902 and 1907, by 1910, all interscholastic female teams at los angeles high had been disbanded and only intramural girls sports continued. in contrast, high school administrators offered a well-organized, competitive sports program run by rugged men in order to coax boys to stay in school, while channeling girls into cheerleading. despite the growth of competitive sports for boys, girls were systematically excluded from this informal educational sphere. the shift in the definition of "school" that removed girls as active participants into positions of support was repeated in other activities. for example, at los angeles high, there was a movement from female-dominated literary clubs to male-dominated student government organizations. extracurricular clubs and sports were a key part of the educators' effort to give high schools an active, virile, masculine image and thereby persuade boys to stay in school. (bissell brown, 1990, p. 508) manual training programs, designed "not to turn out mechanics but to make men" (bissell brown, 1990, p. 509), a night school program for male truants, and the hiring of more male teachers were aimed to keep boys in school. making adolescence at the turn of the century: discourse and the exclusion of girls current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 187 to recruit and keep more male teachers, despite the lack of evidence that male teachers kept male students in school, men were offered ever-higher salaries; between 1890 and 1905, the gap between male and female teachers' salaries quadrupled (bissell brown, 1990, p. 506). karen graves' study of st. louis high school curricula demonstrates that social efficiency perspectives masculinized the courses of study by demoting and weakening the classical curriculum (academic study for its own worth rather than for vocational ends), which became seen as feminine. science and commercial courses of study became the most valued and most popular tracks, which graves links to a decline in the number of courses needed for graduation. we see several things occurring simultaneously: the decline of academics-for-themselves, the rise of preparation for citizenship and work, lowered requirements for high school graduation, and a masculinization of secondary schools that is linked to vocational education and extracurricular activities. girls' presence in secondary schools needed to be carefully managed, for their dominance of a high school population produced a frightening image: if the boy quits school to go to work before he reaches the eighth grade, while the girl goes forward to the high school, intelligence itself is pretty sure to smack of femininity (graves, 1998, p. 280). if male supremacy was to be preserved, high schools could contribute by keeping boys in school, offering practical courses of study, and emphasizing the value of extracurricular activities, especially sports, which were all at the expense of girls who became increasingly excluded from the educational agenda. male dominance in the curriculum also involved the ascent of a sporting, muscular, practical man over the effeminate, intellectual man. conclusion although adolescence had been demarcated before the late 1800s, the line between youth and adulthood became sharper, more intently watched, and democratically applied by the turn of the century. hall emphasized adolescence as a new birth, a new opportunity to move upward as a civilized society or downward into a state of savagery. the shapers of the modern, scientific adolescent made adolescent bodies and sexuality the primary foci in the proliferating discourse of adolescence. according to foucault however, such unceasing talk about sexuality cannot be seen as liberation, but rather as compulsion, a compulsion that requiring the control of adolescent sexuality. controlling sexuality was the centerpiece of evolutionary progress, and adolescence was the time when sexuality and sexualized bodies became disturbingly visible. the "budding girl" included a romanticized vision of the next generation of "angels in the house," but the focus on girls' maturing bodies was simultaneously titillating and voyeuristic.[5] the idea of adolescence as always becoming (and not really existing in the present) fostered a hide-and-seek of knowing, watching, and cataloguing of developing bodies. prevention necessitated unlimited scientific looking. the adolescent body, endlessly divided and described-as strong muscled or sunken-chested, chaste or self-abused-was the site of diagnosis, prescription, and action. nancy lesko 188 april 30, 2002 thus, the administrative gaze of juvenile justice workers, teachers and educators, as well as parents, psychologists, play reformers, and scout leaders, was everywhere cultivated as the primary means of control. precocity had to be prevented. this was the banner under which state and private interventions were orchestrated. reformers uniformly recommended close monitoring of adolescent bodies to protect against precocity; boys' regimens mandated team sports and the building of strong bodies, while girls' programs were directed toward high culture and domestic skills. working against youthful precocity enhanced economic dependency as well as the removal of any adult-like responsibilities. a slow, steady coming-of-age was prescribed. these prescriptions segregated youth from the world and from the pressures of adulthood, and gave them leisure, which became the most highly regulated and contested portion of their lives. at a time when movie theaters, beaches, dance halls, and other new, urban pleasures beckoned, it is unsurprising that juvenile justice was built largely on the misuse of leisure time. the turn-of-the-century focus on girls invoked racial, gender, and national concerns. but this compulsion was shaped by neo-victorian progressive traditions with a white middle-class base, and simultaneously identified working class, ethnic immigrant, african-american, and native american youth as deviant. civilized societies evidenced strict separation of men and women and precocious girls would contribute to social degeneration, racial suicide, and imperial decline. this discursive analysis of adolescence was a strategic one, aimed at demonstrating how "truths" of adolescence participated in and contributed to new ways of making-selves and making-society at the turn-of-the-century. this new form of governmentality emphasized keeping youth asexual, unintellectual, and dependent. i have argued that modern facts of adolescence emerged within worries over the future of western masculinity, the nation, and the white race, which raised the problems of degeneracy/progress to a frenzy. adolescence became a way to connect with this set of worries and to establish new professionals who diagnosed problems in order to prevent further decline. adolescence became a way to prepare individuals for a new social order, while maintaining the social hierarchy. public schools and the juvenile courts were central elements of an enlarged and intensified discourse about adolescence, a discourse that remains vital and powerful even today. this discourse on adolescence relied heavily on the increasing control and systematic exclusion of girls in education, as well as throughout society as a whole. girls' formal and informal upbringing was needed to both safeguard their purity and docility and prepare them for the role of wife and mother. within schools, domestic science often replaced natural science, and girls were enjoined to become supporters of male-centered activities rather than participants and leaders. the infant juvenile justice system watched girls closely for any nuance of possible impurity, and under the guise of protection, suspected girls were removed to reformatories. the removal of girls into the juvenile justice system was symbolic of how adolescence as a technology was a form of control of not only girls/women as individuals, but of society as a whole. it controlled not only how to behave, but who to become--as gendered individual citizens of a nation, and as a gendered (masculinized) nation in the world. making adolescence at the turn of the century: discourse and the exclusion of girls current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 189 as modern, scientific production of truths and technologies, hall and his colleagues' work on adolescence, although seemingly outdated and discredited, continues to exert enormous influence in both defining adolescents as natural and thus beyond social change or critique, as well as structuring what can count as "truth" about adolescence. furthermore, emphasis on interpreting adolescent actions and ideas as a stage of human development is one of the strongest aspects of this discourse. the discursive strategy that we have inherited reads an individual's characteristics--sunken-chested, weakwilled, smoking, masturbating--in terms of future effects, and looks everywhere except in the present social relations, for the explanation. this interpretive strategy empties the present and lets the adults/scientists off the hook; like the discourse on nation that it mimics (anderson, 1983), it looks toward the past and the future. notes 1. put in different terms, adolescents, like the primates of donna haraway's work (1989), occupy border zones between the mythic poles of adult/child, sexual/asexual, rational/emotional, civilized/savage, productive/unproductive. the stakes in being able to define proper sexuality and reason, for example, are high. from this perspective, the categories and processes involved in adolescents' identities are simultaneously sites of broader cultural debates about knowledge, identity, representation, and power. on the terrain of adolescent bodies is a struggle for what will count as an adult, a woman, a man, rationality, proper sexuality, and orderly development. 2. the rhetoric in england over girls sometimes declared them as having too much energy that needed channeling and sometimes not sufficient energy, and these typifications were attached to working-class and middle-class girls, respectively (dyhouse, 1981). in putting the emphasis on fear of precocity, the otherwise contradictory problems can be seen to stem from the same issue. 3. the expanded state regulation of adolescent female sexuality was part of a broader trend toward control of sexuality in general. "expressions of sexuality that did not conform to a marital, reproductive framework were increasingly subjected to government surveillance and control, as evidenced by a range of legal measures enacted during the period. these included legislation prohibiting the dissemination of obscene literature, the criminalization of abortion, stringent measures targeting prostitution, and heightened legal repression of homosexuality." (odem, 1995, p. 2) threats to marital, reproductive sex were the common denominator in this reading. such a view is not inconsistent with a foucaultian reading which sees the governing of sexual selves occurring in all the talk of sexuality, with homosexuals coming to be regarded as a separate species. so, i would add that a populational reasoning is being constructed in the proliferation of sexual categories, as well as, an incitement or compulsion to be normatively sexual. 4. this same logic appears in many contemporary discussions of single sex schooling, where the segregation of girls is the major and sufficient intervention. nancy lesko 190 april 30, 2002 5. hall discussed female adolescent and sexual development in the following works: adolescence, i: chap 7; ii: chap 17; "budding girl" "education and the social hygiene movement." (cited in odem, 1995, n. 15, p. 209). references anderson, b. (1983). imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london & new york: verso. bakan, d. (1972). adolescence in america: from idea to social fact. in j. kagan & r. coles (eds.), twelve to sixteen: early adolescence (pp. 73-89). new york: w. w. norton & co. bederman, g. (1995). manliness and civilization: a cultural history of gender and race in the united states, 1880-1917. chicago: university of chicago press. bissell brown, v. (1990). the fear of feminization: los angeles high schools in the progressive era. feminist studies, 16(3), 493-518. collins, r. (1979). the credential society: an historical sociology of education and stratification. new york: academic press, inc. dyhouse, c. (1981). girls growing up in late victorian and edwardian england. london: routledge and kegan paul. graves, k. (1998). girls' schooling in the progressive era: from female scholar to domesticated citizen. new york & london: garland. hall, g. s. (1903). coeducation in the high school. national education association journal of proceedings and addresses, 42, 442-455. haraway, d. (1989). primate visions: gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. new york & london: routledge. lutz, t. (1991). american nervousness: an anecdotal history. ithaca & london: cornell university press. macleod, d. i. (1983). building character in the american boy: the boy scouts, ymca, and their forerunners, 1870-1920. madison, wi: university of wisconsin press. morrison, t. (1992). playing in the dark: whiteness and the literary imagination. cambridge: harvard university press. odem, m. e. (1995). delinquent daughters: protecting and policing adolescent female sexuality in the united states 1885-1920. chapel hill & london: university of north carolina press. making adolescence at the turn of the century: discourse and the exclusion of girls current issues in comparative education, vol.2(2) 191 popkewitz, t. s. (1998). dewey, vygotsky, and the social administration of the individual: constructivist pedagogy as systems of ideas in historical spaces. american educational research journal, 35(4), 535-570. rosenthal, m. (1984). the character factory: baden-powell and the origins of the boy scout movement. new york: pantheon books. schlossman, s. (1977). love and the american delinquent: the theory and practice of "progressive" juvenile justice, 1825-1920. chicago: university of chicago press. schlossman, s. & wallach, s. (1978). the crime of precocious sexuality: female juvenile delinquency in the progressive era. harvard educational review, 48(1), 65-94. wiebe, r. (1967). the search for order, 1877-1920. westport, cn: greenwood press. microsoft word 06_cice_fall2006_gomolla_yhl_not_copyedited_.doc © 2006 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 9(1) 46 tackling underachievement of learners from ethnic minorities: a comparison of recent policies of school improvement in germany, england and switzerland mechtild gomolla institute of education university of muenster, germany abstract over the past few decades, in many western countries with large immigrant populations, inequalities in education relating to ethnic background have increased. interventions traditionally consist of selective compensatory arrangements that focus on instruction in the second language--especially in early stages of schooling--and the treatment of issues of difference, equality and racism within the curriculum. this article discusses recent educational policies that attempt to systematically integrate aspects of linguistic and cultural diversity and equity targets within broader policies of school effectiveness and school improvement. the paper presents the author's findings in an international comparative study of schoolimprovement strategies that tackle ethnic inequalities in education in germany, switzerland and england. using theories of institutional discrimination and organizational action, strengths and weaknesses of these strategies in their specific political context, particularly structural limitations for inclusiveness resulting from marketand performance-oriented education reforms, will be highlighted. introduction over the past few decades, in many western countries with large immigrant populations, inequalities in education relating to ethnic background have increased rather than diminished. interventions that address these inequalities traditionally consist of selective compensatory arrangements that focus on instruction in the second language--especially in early stages of schooling--and the treatment of issues of difference, equality and racism within the curriculum. international and national surveys of educational achievement, such as the pisa studies, have generated widespread discussion in europe regarding the gap between the opportunities of children and young adults with immigrant backgrounds and those of their non-immigrant peers, with regards to accessing more highly qualified educational paths (deutsches pisakonsortium 2001, 2004; bos, lankes, schwippert, valtin, & walther, 2003). for this reason, provisions for pupils from immigrant families have been reinforced in several european countries. for example, in germany strategies include early assessment of language skills, extension of instruction in german as a second language in preschool classes and primary schools, preparatory classes for children with german as a second language, flexible times for transition from preschool classes to primary school and expansion of full-time schools (beauftragte der bundesregierung für migration, flüchtlinge und integration, 2005). tackling underachievement of learners from ethnic minorities: a comparison of recent policies of school improvement in germany, england and switzerland 47 december 7, 2006 as in many other parts of europe, the german system of education has undergone extensive reforms to focus on policies of devolution and choice, and the implementation of new systems of quality management. however within this fundamental restructuring of the organizational structures, funding, and contexts of public schooling, equity-issues are scarcely considered. these deficiencies in current educational reforms continue the assimilatory tradition of previous decades (see krüger-potratz, 2005). provisions to improve the performance of underachieving ethnic groups are restricted to selective compensatory arrangements that focus on the assessment of language skills and instruction in the second language. conventional structures and processes of schooling, however, are not taken into consideration. large-scale surveys of achievement raise serious questions concerning the institutional barriers for children from immigrant families and socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. qualitative studies, which illuminate the complex and often hidden mechanisms of the reproduction of ethnic inequality at the different levels of schooling, indicate that a broader provision for linguistic and socio-cultural diversity is necessary (gogolin & neumann 1997; gomolla & radtke 2002; weber 2003). moreover, in education systems where individual schools enjoy high levels of autonomy, inequalities increase between the performances of different social and ethnic groups. this is especially the case in anglo-american countries, where marketand performance-oriented reforms are the most pervasive (see whitty, power, & halpin, 1998; slee & weiner, 1998; radtke & weiß, 2000; gomolla, 2005). this article discusses recent educational policies that attempt to systematically integrate aspects of linguistic and cultural diversity and equity targets within broader policies of school effectiveness and school improvement. specific interventions observed in an international comparative study of school-improvement strategies that tackle ethnic inequalities in education in germany, england, and switzerland are presented. each of these strategies is analyzed in their specific political context using theories of institutional discrimination and organizational action. in particular, structural limitations for inclusiveness resulting from marketand performance-oriented education reforms are highlighted. immigration, education for immigrants and institutional discrimination the term "institutional discrimination" derives from debates on institutional racism within the civil rights movement in northern america. the phrase "institutional racism" was introduced by stokely carmichael and charles hamilton (1967) to describe how white interests and attitudes saturate the key institutions that shape american life. especially in england, the term has moved from the field of political activism and academic debate into popular usage since the 1990s (gillborn, 2002). in germany, discussions on institutional racism – although the term institutional discrimination is more common – have only begun recently. wider attention to discrimination has resulted in particular from discussions regarding the european union's new anti-discrimination legislation and the adoption of a national bill on equal treatment in 2006.i in addition, the recognition of ethnic inequalities in education has ensued debates about institutional discrimination (gomolla 2005; gomolla & radtke, 2002; hormel & scherr 2004; jäger & kaufmann, 2002; kristen, 2006; schofield, 2006). unlike "racial" harassment, theoretically understood as a result of individual or group prejudice (allport, 1954), institutional discrimination scrutinizes the organizational structures and mechtild gomolla current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 48 processes in the basic institutions of social life as sources of discrimination, for example, education, health system, social services, housing, police or the media (feagin & feagin, 1986; troyna & williams, 1986). in a recent report from england, institutional discrimination is defined as a result of: the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. it can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people. (macpherson of cluny, 1999, 6.3.4) this quotation highlights the ways in which discrimination pervades the normal course of life and professional culture of institutions and those working in them. because this kind of discrimination is a part of the daily routine and the institutional habitus, it is hardly recognized by individual professionals or even by the persons it disadvantages. thus, research on institutional discrimination aims at describing and explaining the complex and sometimes contradictory ways as to how social differences are constructed and reconstructed in education practices and particularly, how organizational structures, rules and practices contribute to these processes. furthermore, empirical investigations of the processes that occur within schools can draw from newer theories of organizational action. these theories, such as behavioral decisionmaking theory and neo-institutionalism, challenge the image of organizations as technical, rational instruments that steer organizational activities in efficient ways and are conveyed by scientific management (dimaggio & powell, 1991; march 1990; meyer & rowan, 1977, 1978; olsen, 1991). by focusing on the issues of how decisions are facilitated or restricted by the organization's rationality and the micro-politics of organizations, these theories offer a useful analytical framework to analyze how unequal opportunities for different groups to fulfill their educational potential are affected by the institutional and organizational structures of schools and their environment (gomolla, 2005, 2005a, 2005b; gomolla & radtke, 2002). for example, a german case study of the elementary school selection processes highlighted how a broad spectrum of mechanisms of discrimination affected the school career of children from immigrant families, often in combination with socio-economic and gender characteristics over the entire span of a school career (gomolla & radtke, 2002). this is illustrated by the fact that in secondary schools, children from immigrant families are overrepresented in the lowest qualifying track. ascriptions concerning bilingualism and cultural background play a role in teacher expectations, predictions of children's further development, recommendations made to parents regarding students' further education, and practices of assessment and allocation. the disadvantaging and exclusion of children from immigrant families is the result of a complex interplay between various forms of direct and indirect discrimination embedded in the daily routines of schooling (feagin & feagin, 1986). for example, bilingual children deemed deficient in german may be held back at school entry while later in elementary school their older age marks them as potentially having special educational needs. though these mechanisms were often determined by organizational necessities and restraints seen in single schools (e.g. sending children for one more year to preschool due to a lack of resources for instruction in the second language), they could also be traced back to several sources: (1) the legislative and policy context of the education system and other political fields, especially immigration politics; (2) organizational structures at the community and school level; (3) established practices and routines in single organizations; and (4) a pedagogical common sense that is steeped in deficittackling underachievement of learners from ethnic minorities: a comparison of recent policies of school improvement in germany, england and switzerland 49 december 7, 2006 oriented and ethnocentric assumptions. from the perspective of institutional discrimination, a transformation toward increased inclusiveness demands comprehensive strategies of wholeschool-change to tackle ethnic inequalities. such strategies must affect not only schools, but also their wider institutional settings. raising quality and equality in education: case studies from three countries an international comparative study carried out by the author investigated initiatives that systematically attempt to integrate equity targets and linguistic and socio-cultural differences into mainstream policies of school improvement (gomolla, 2005, 2005a). three different strategies were studied: (1) in the german federal state north-rhine westphalia, intercultural learning was introduced as a subject in the federal state program for school development entitled, "developing school culture and institutional opening of schools" (gös). (2) in england, initiatives to improve the performance of ethnic minority pupils were embedded within the scope of general school improvement across the country, and finally, (3) in the swiss canton of zurich, the school improvement program, "quality in multi-ethnic schools" (quims) was developed. based on theories of institutional discrimination, the study focused on three overarching questions: (1) how are strategies framed to deal with issues of diversity and social justice within the broader scope of new systems of quality management in education? (2) what new opportunities do these strategies offer for the development of inclusive schooling in ethnically diverse societies? do they allow for a better adaptation of the organizations to heterogeneous preconditions and educational needs? are they used within schools as an organizational framework in which to raise discrimination as a topic and to uncover and change the mechanisms of discrimination? (3) what new opportunities for institutionalizing ethnic and social inequalities are provided by the broader policy context of these initiatives, especially regarding current market and performance-oriented reforms? the comparison consisted of two main steps. first, each of the three strategies was analyzed in isolation in its specific political context. second, a more general recapitulative comparison was carried out on the basis of the three national studies. in addition to the analysis of the political strategies by document studies and expert-interviews, the author carried out case studies in each country focusing on exemplary primary schools. the schools were selected on the recommendations of educational experts in each country because they were considered to be especially active and successful in implementing these strategies. data collection took place in spring 1999 and autumn 2000. data was collected through classroom observations, document analysis, and interviews with teachers at the schools as well as professionals in educational administration and other organizations that supported school improvement activities. in the following sections, the core features of each program will be presented. the varied scope of examined strategies will be highlighted by some findings from the ethnographic school studies. model 1: intercultural learning as a focus of school development in north-rhine westphalia mechtild gomolla current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 50 during the 1990s, reform of the german education system was initiated with the introduction of school autonomy measures and new systems of quality assurance at center stage. however, equity issues have rarely been mentioned explicitly within the scope of these mainstream reforms. school development schemes focusing on the achievements of children from immigrant families exist only as specialized programs. an example is the scheme for "intercultural learning" within the federal state program "developing school culture and institutional opening of schools" (gös) in north-rhine westphalia (the largest state in germany). schools participate in the program on a voluntary basis. in return, gös offers participating schools assistance in further developing their educational expertise and practice. schools receive limited financial aid, consultations, and networking help; they also benefit by sharing beneficial experiences. "intercultural learning" is one of five areas in which the schools can propose projects. this topic subsumes many differing aims: overcoming xenophobia and racial intolerance, creating international meetings, supporting multilingualism and cultural diversity. the scheme involves using teaching methods that aim at more holistic learning experience, such as real-life situations, learning by doing, and hands-on learning. the spectrum of projects within the area of "intercultural learning" includes exchange projects with schools in other parts of the world to family-literacy-classes and co-operation with parents and local communities. however, problems of ethnic inequalities are not explicitly mentioned or dealt with. the intercultural learning scheme can be characterized as an enrichment of curricular and extra-curricular activities through aspects of linguistic and cultural diversity. school change as a result of these activities is restricted to situational and problem-specific adaptations to specific local needs, which concern only selective aspects of school life. issues of discrimination are only addressed on the surface. the strengths and weaknesses of this approach were studied in a primary school, that has been participating in the gös-program since the end of the 1980s. this inner-city school is located in a former industrial area, where there is a high rate of unemployment and poverty as well as high ethnic diversity. for many years, the head teacher engaged in strengthening relations with other institutions, immigrant organizations and parents in the local community. most of these activities were developed as a contribution to improve opportunities for children from immigrant families, most of who come from a turkish background. within the scope of the gös-program, projects were carried out primarily in social studies, science, religion, sports and remedial classes in the afternoon. the program did not substantially influence german and mathematics lessons. although a gradual institutional change could be observed in many respects, for example, in the wide range of leisure activities in the afternoon, inter-religious initiatives, annual ceremonies and celebrations, in the cooperation with individuals and organizations in their respective suburbs, or the wide range of strategies to assist cooperation with parents, attention to structural issues remained unaddressed. the school atmosphere was positively affected by a high commitment to include every child, however, students' achievements and assessment practices for the transfer to specialized or secondary schools were rarely mentioned with regard to questions of inclusion and the development of non-discriminatory practices. tackling underachievement of learners from ethnic minorities: a comparison of recent policies of school improvement in germany, england and switzerland 51 december 7, 2006 model 2: initiatives to tackle ethnic inequalities in education in england in england, starting with the education reform act of 1988, the education system was restructured radically. in addition to increased local management of schools, a market model was imposed in which schools were presented as providers that must compete against other schools for students. the technology employed to raise standards covered a wide range of interventions, including: a new national curriculum with standardized tests; tracking individual students based on national, local, and individual targets; public league tables; school inspections; redefining head teachers as corporate managers; new teacher assessments up to performance-related payment, amongst other initiatives based on the achievements of pupils. for almost an entire decade, issues of diversity and equity were banished from the agenda. consequently, social segregation in schools, achievement gaps between different socio-ethnic groups, and especially the quota of black male juveniles expelled from school, grew rapidly (gillborn & mirza, 2000). the 1997 elected (new) labour government continued their predecessors' quest for raising standards. however, within the existing structures, new initiatives were also introduced to tackle educational inequalities and social exclusion. measures encompassed explicit targets to improve achievement in english and mathematics in primary schools; reduce class sizes for 5to 7-year-olds; create early excellence centers; introduce literacy summer schools, out-of-school learning activities, and family literacy schemes; and "educational actions zones" in areas of educational underperformance. in addition, a daily lesson in literacy and numeracy was introduced, which was also intended for imparting english as a second language (dfee, 1997; barber, 1999). in 1999, the concluding report of the inquiry into the murder of the black college-student stephen lawrence in 1993, and the failed subsequent investigation of the police, who refused to acknowledge a racist background of the crime, provoked intensive public debates across the nation on institutional racism as a pervasive problem in british society (macpherson of cluny, 1999). the race relations (amendment) act of 2000 emphasized the duties of public bodies and institutions to positively pursue and achieve race equality outcomes. as a result, problems of ethnic inequalities in education have been faced more explicitly than in previous decades. ethnic monitoring, which is the process of collecting, storing and analyzing data regarding people's ethnic backgrounds, was established at both the national and local levels as a primary instrument in identifying problems of educational inequalities and for placing specific interventions and controlling their success. another important instrument was the newly introduced ethnic minorities achievement grant (emag). emag distinguishes itself from previous provisions for second language instruction for immigrant children from former commonwealth countries in several ways: the use of emag was extended from providing second language instruction in early stages of schooling to the improving of the results for underachieving ethnic groups at all levels of schooling. now allocation of extra resources is based on concrete targets to raise the achievements of particular underachieving groups from local education authorities (leas). additionally, the bulk of the resources (85%) is allocated directly to schools, to enable them to respond more efficiently to local needs. for example, teachers paid by emag not only work in the classroom, but also play an active role in school improvement activities. the emag is flanked by comprehensive systems of support and control, such as providing schools with statistical data, best-practice models, working schemes, materials, and raising issues of diversity and equity within audits with experts from leas. a revision of the national curriculum with regard to issues of ethnic mechtild gomolla current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 52 diversity included the introduction of the new subject "citizenship education". the attempt of the british government to tackle the underachievement of learners from ethnic minorities can essentially be described as output-driven strategies aiming at improving the performance of disadvantaged groups. an open exploration of structures, activities, ways of thinking, and effects of individual and organizational practices is not the primary concern of these initiatives. strengths and shortcomings of this approach were studied in a primary school in south london, which has a high proportion of refugees, asylum seekers, children receiving free school meals, and children with special educational needs. the teachers succeeded in combining obligatory instruments of school improvement with a concern for individual needs and a clear commitment to ensure a safe environment for all children and positive social relations within the school community. for example a general flexibility concerning disruptions in the classroom was observed. because many children from refugee and asylum-seeking families had been traumatized by their war-time experiences or their escape, newcomers were often temporarily grouped together regardless of age, and their parents and siblings were welcomed during lessons. weekly family-literacy-lessons, which fulfilled a variety of functions, were integral to successful integration. teachers of english as a second language were versed in the careful assessment and tracking of individual students, and in delivering effective language instruction within the classes and in special groups. according to official school data these activities contributed to good academic results, compared with other schools with similar social preconditions. the successful work of highly dedicated teachers cannot alter the fact that the students in this school are doubly disadvantaged – first as refugees, immigrants or asylum seekers, and second because they attend school in one of poorest districts of the country, where more pupils with special learning and emotional needs share fewer resources than neighboring schools in betteroff districts. although the school received limited government support for bilingual children and children with special educational needs, the resources were rigorously allocated to the "most urgent cases". the emotionally supportive school climate is of little help against the systematic disadvantages experienced by large groups of learners with english as a second language when taking the national tests. in spite of the commitment to not discriminating against or excluding any child, some strategies to meet targets for standardized testing were tolerated, despite running the risk of marginalizing the most vulnerable children. ability grouping in higher classes as well as targeting special children were regarded as necessary, not only for the benefit of the students themselves but also to raise the overall achievements of the school. not least because of the high engagement in the school, it was particularly disheartening for teachers, parents and students to be placed at the bottom of school rankings.ii though questions of ethnic equality are considered to be an important theme on the standards agenda, the potential of the initiatives that address this need is undermined by determining factors at the macro-level. these include the social segregation and hierarchy of schools, the measurement of educational success via the outcomes of externally-examined tests in core subjects, the authoritarian top-down systems of school improvement and the tough competition for high positions on the performance tables. the bottom line is that under these strategies, segregation and selection increase--particularly for the most disadvantaged groups (bhattacharyya, ison, & blair, 2003; tikly, osler, & hill, 2005). tackling underachievement of learners from ethnic minorities: a comparison of recent policies of school improvement in germany, england and switzerland 53 december 7, 2006 model 3: "quality in multi-ethnic schools"(quims) in the swiss canton of zürich the school improvement project "quality in multi-ethnic schools"(quims) in the swiss canton of zürich began in 1996 as an integral part of a general reform of the education system of the state. similar to the educational reforms in england and in germany, the extension of the local autonomy of schools and the development and implementation of new systems of quality management took center stage. as opposed to england, however, mechanisms of market competition were not in the fore; rather, the conservation of a state-based public school was emphasized (ed zürich, 1997). against the background of growing numbers of middle-classfamilies leaving inner city districts with ethnically diverse populations, the government responded with the gradual development of an area-wide model of quality assurance in multiethnic schools--a powerful political message against social segregation and for a common public primary school (see also ochsner, kenny, sieber, 2000). quims offers extra financial and professional help to schools with 40% or more pupils from immigrant backgrounds. the money must be used to develop special strategies according to local needs. this project aims at raising the standard of education in these schools so that they will also attract swiss or middle class parents and pupils. secondly, the project strives to close the gap between the achievements of different social groups. a third goal is to improve students', parents' and teachers' satisfaction with the school environment. the following fields of school development are seen as the most important in improving learning and social development for all children: (1) effective teaching and learning, (2) instruction for bilingual children in german as well as in their first languages, (3) a general adaptation of practices of diagnosis and assessment to the needs of linguistical and socio-cultural heterogeneity, (4) participation and co-operation with parents, (5) cooperation with other educational institutions and (6) an inclusive and non-discriminatory school ethos. participating schools can choose one or two out of these modules for a school improvement project. they receive well-structured schemas for school development and additional support from the educational administration, including advisory services, professional development, materials, handbooks, local networks and evaluation. in terms of the dynamics of school change, the quality-assurance-program quims was the most promising, allowing for both situational and problem-specific adaptation to linguistic and cultural heterogeneity as well as forms of organizational change, characterized as organizational learning. the primary school visited for the case study is located in an industrial city in the canton of zürich, which also had a high proportion of children with diverse linguistic backgrounds, mostly from the former states of yugoslavia, turkey and italy. in this school, the decision to take part in quims and the implementation of the program was accompanied by an intensive phase of team building and the setting-up of new work structures in the school for external team supervision and other improvements. in this process, the teachers gained the confidence that was needed in order to explore their own practice and to develop a common mission statement with regards to issues of diversity and equity. it allowed them to explore their teaching experiences in linguistically and socio-culturally diverse classrooms and to experiment with alternative styles of teaching and forms of cooperation (e.g. team-teaching, sitting in on classes, developing a feed-back orientated learning culture amongst staff, etc.) generally the program, which began by dealing with teachers' concrete requirements and problems in the classroom, simultaneously sensitized the teachers to ethnic and social inequality and stereotyping. though the participants found it easier and more obvious to mechtild gomolla current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 54 discuss the challenges of linguistic and cultural diversity in the classroom, power structures in the overall organization of schooling were also discussed as causes of discrimination, for example the structural barriers that could prevent a child from an immigrant background with a good school performance from attending a secondary school for higher achievers. compared with the initiatives to tackle ethnic inequalities in england, the swiss strategy offers some important advantages for the development of inclusive schools, which also deal with factors at the level of the education system. an auspicious factor is the clear focus on the processes of teaching and learning, instead of performance data. linguistic and cultural diversity is not incorporated additively into the core activities of the school, but as an inducement for institutional transformation in the main fields of practice. quims attaches value to attractive incentives and financial and professional support for participating teachers and schools, as well as co-operation between schools and the local administration in partnership. non-existent league-tables and the deliberate abdication of the right of parents to choose the primary schools their children attend concede necessary freedom to individual schools. based on careful, open explorations of their own practices, analysis of needs and professional on-site consulting, they can develop their own strategies, to ablate the institutional structures and practices that have proven to be obstacles to learning and the development of particular children or social groups. conclusion the strategies examined in this paper demonstrate that the quest for quality and effectiveness in the education system can be compatible with a commitment to equality. they exemplify a broad spectrum of strategies to improve the quality of teaching and learning in linguistically and culturally diverse schools. the varied scope of examined strategies results from different conceptualizations as well as determining factors at the macro level of the education system. the investigated program in north-rhine westphalia may be particularly effective in some schools in terms of supporting students' emotional and social development, participative competences or their general attitudes. however, this kind of selective compensatory arrangement and the enrichment of curricula through projects on intercultural learning obviously fall short in tackling educational inequalities. different to the german gös-program, ethnic diversity-based school development in england and in switzerland is conceptualized as an integral element of mainstream systems of school improvement. drawing on current school efficacy and school improvement research, these strategies emphasize the centrality of teaching and learning, and of classroom processes in determining schools' academic effectiveness. additionally they stress processes of wholeschool-change (coelho 1998; blair & bourne, 1998; mächler, 2000; richardson & wood, 2000; rüesch, 1999; sammons, 2002). besides the general advantages of such an approach, as described above, the comparison of the british and the swiss program indicates that school improvement towards more inclusiveness requires beyond adequate pedagogical concepts and instruments for organizational change (e.g. professional support, evaluation systems), arrangements in the broader system of education, which are conducive for the realization of inclusive and non-discriminatory practices in schools. in england, attempts to improve the quality of the organizational practices also in terms of inclusiveness and equality is undermined by highly selective school structures in combination with a market environment for schools, tackling underachievement of learners from ethnic minorities: a comparison of recent policies of school improvement in germany, england and switzerland 55 december 7, 2006 league tables and restrictive forms of school improvement. these preconditions of school improvement at the macro-level open the field and construct opportunities for discrimination to take root in educational institutions in multiple new ways. these effects should be considered more systematically in future research on school effectiveness, school improvement and inclusion (see slee & weiner, 1998). enhancing the effectiveness of schools towards inclusiveness cannot compensate the quest for more basic reforms of the education system, in particular the cut-back of selective structures of schooling. but the recognition of ethnic diversity and equity as an integral part of mainstream reforms opens at least opportunities for these issues to become an evaluative criterion in the quality of other elements of reforms (such as aspects of the market-model). notes 1 newer documents from the european union and the european commission forbid forms of direct and indirect discrimination (eu, 2000, 2000a; ecri, 2002). though the term "discrimination" was avoided, this complex definition of discrimination was also incorporated into the german "allgemeines gleichbehandlungsgesetz", which was adopted in august 2006 (bundesministerium der justiz, 2006). 2 see rea & weiner (1998) for a critical discussion of new statistical methods, such as "value-added", which are intended to be a valid and equity-based critique of the use of both raw league tables and misleading information about inner-city schools. references allport, g. 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(2002). effective schools, improving schools and inclusive schools. in: c. campbell (ed.). developing inclusive schooling. perspectives, policies and practice. institute of education, universityy of london. schofield, j. (2006). migrationshintergrund, minderheitenzugehörigkeit und bildungserfolg. forschungsergebnisse der pädagogischen entwicklungsund sozialpsychologie. aki-forschungsbilanz 5. berlin: arbeitsstelle interkulturelle konflikte und gesellschaftliche integration (aki) wissenschaftszentrum berlin für sozialforschung (wzb). slee, r. & weiner, g. (with tomlinson, s.) (eds.) (1998). school effectiveness for whom? challenges tackling underachievement of learners from ethnic minorities: a comparison of recent policies of school improvement in germany, england and switzerland 59 december 7, 2006 to the school effectiveness and school improvement movements. london: falmer press. tikly, l., osler, a., hill, j. (2005). the ethnic minority achievement grant: a critical analysis. journal of education policy, 20( 3), 283-312. troyna, b. & williams, j. (1986). racism, education and the state. london et al.: croom helm. weber, m. (2003). heterogenität im schulalltag. konstruktion ethnischer und geschlechtlicher unterschiede. opladen: leske und budrich. whitty, g., power, s., halpin, d. (1998). devolution and choice in education. the school, the state and the market. buckingham; philadelphia: open university press. © 2008 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 10(1/2): 22-25. ngos, civil society, and development: is there a third way? steven j. klees university of maryland for more than a decade, there has been talk by politicians, academics, and others of a “third way,” referring to means and principles of social organization other than the state and the market (giddens, 2000). most of this discussion about a third way for development focuses on the roles that can be played by ngos and other elements of civil society. the overarching question that guided this journal issue, “are ngos overrated?” relates very closely to whether there really is a third way. for this paper, i was asked to reflect on the paper i wrote ten years ago (klees, 1998) in response to that same overarching question. while that paper, entitled “ngos: progressive force or neoliberal tool?,” did not discuss the idea of a third way, it was implicit in the examination of ngos as a progressive force for development. looking back on that paper, i find that the main points still apply today. however, what i find missing from that paper is the ways in which ngos are embedded in the “dialectic of the global and the local.”[1] below, i discuss both what was in that earlier paper and some of what was missing from it. in klees (1998), i made five principal points. first, i began with underlining the progressive promise of ngos, mostly drawing on my personal experience where i consistently found local ngos to be innovative organizations in touch with the grassroots and led by committed social activists. at their best, ngos empowered individuals, communities, and nations to face, resist, and transform the unequal relations of neoliberalism. however, most of my paper was about the other side, how the ngo sector has been an integral part of a system that reinforces unequal development. this brings me to my second point: the incredibly rapid expansion of ngos since 1980 has been the consequence of the neoliberal focus on privatization and curtailing government. third, as a consequence, the nature and environment of ngos has changed drastically. cooperation among ngos was often replaced with cutthroat competition for funding. to get funding, ngos became apolitical, and service delivery was emphasized over advocacy. ngos thus became the new temp workers of development, useful to national and international agencies for specific tasks but easily discarded as circumstances changed and consequently limited in their ability to challenge development practice. fourth, i argued that despite ngos’ good efforts and intentions, rather than contributing to sustainable poverty alleviation, at a systemic level, they contribute to sustaining poverty. this argument sees neoliberalism (again, without bad intentions) as reproductive of the social order in the sense that its structures and policies maintain poverty, inequality, and marginalization. ngos, chiefly by contributing to the delegitimization of the state, are part of that reproductive apparatus. fifth, ngos which are dedicated to progressive social change are in an incredibly difficult position. resources are scarce and, when available, come with many strings attached. ngos try to remain true to their own agenda by a variety of strategies: not taking money from those agencies they current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 23 steven j. klees disagree with; not depending too much on one funding agency; and playing agencies off against one another. despite my belief that these five points hold true today, i think it important to elaborate and embed them in ways that offer a better look at the dialectical workings of the local and the global. below, i consider some of these issues. local specificity while global forces are key, how things play out depends very much on the specific nature of local circumstances and context. an important part of that is that ngos are embedded in a web of relationships with other civil society organizations (csos) – trade unions, media, social movements, religious and traditional organizations, community based organizations (cbos), local associations, and informal groups. the question of whether ngos are overrated is really one of whether civil society is overrated in any particular instance. moreover, ngos themselves are very varied, complicating the analysis. a variety of distinctions are made among ngos to capture some significant differences in their form and functioning: e.g. local (lngo), national (nngo), and international (ingo); or to substitute a political economic characterization for a geographical one, northern and southern ngos. there are also donororganized ngos (dongos), government-run ngos (gongos), advocacy ngos (angos), public interest ngos (pingos), and business and industry associated ngos (bingos) (kamat, 2004; edwards and hulme, 1997). thus, the question of what is progressive, of where a third way might lie, is complex. while analyzing how these differences play out is beyond the scope of this paper, the answer to the question of whether civil society is overrated will be answered differently in different contexts. for example, while often the relationship between ingos, nngos, and lngos is best characterized as contractual relations, sometimes “the power relationship has been more equal” and there is a true partnership (malhotra, 2000, p. 658). while often csos take an accommodating stance with government, in some places, like malawi, coalitions of csos follow national-level confrontational strategies (miller-grandvaux, welmond, & wolf, 2002). moreover, there are very different contexts in which csos are operating. for example, in conflict or even post-conflict societies, outspoken cso representatives may face assassination or imprisonment. therefore, the performance of csos is very dependent on local context. global forces however, the contextual specifics that govern part of ngo and cso behavior are greatly influenced by global forces and circumstances. in klees (1998), i talked about neoliberalism but was not explicit as to how that ties to globalization. there is merit to the argument that globalization and neoliberalism are not synonymous. tickel and peck (2003) call them “overlapping and intersecting project[s]” (p. 4) and further emphasize that “neoliberalism is far from a monolithic, undifferentiated project.” santos similarly recognizes that there is not “a single form of globalisation” and that it is “a very complex phenomenon riven by deep cleavages and contradictions” (dale & robertson, 2004, p.148). nonetheless, both recognize the phenomenon of what some call “neoliberal globalization” (p. 150). from this perspective, neoliberal policies and structures condition the form globalization takes. despite local variation, neoliberal globalization has provided the underlying context in which the nature and role of ngos and csos have evolved around the world. a central feature of this 24 fall 2007 / spring 2008 environment, as kamat (2004, p. 162) examines, is “the new policy context of privatization and a shrinking state.” some consequences of this were discussed in klees (1998) and summarized above, but others are also important. ngos have become massively involved in “surrogate service provision” for the state (malhotra, 2000, p. 658). malhotra (2000, p. 659) likens their role to a “global soup kitchen,” designed to keep “the lid on simmering public discontent and social explosion” that would follow from the delegitimization of the state if no one was there to fulfill some of its roles. thus, as kamat (2004, p. 164) argues, “an effective policy for trade liberalization and privatization requires a minimalist state and a dynamic civil society,” the latter because “the work of the state still needs to be done.” nonetheless, while available funding directs most ngos to service provision, there are still many ngos that engage in advocacy and monitoring, and often ngos engage in both service provision and advocacy. sometimes, engaging in service delivery even serves as a cover for advocacy activities (fowler, 2000, p. 640). moreover, advances in information and communications technology have helped angos to network nationally and internationally, resulting, for example, in the world social forum. nonetheless, the world economic forum clearly predominates and multinationals, bingos, and other representatives of the private sector often have substantial influence in policy forums that are supposed to feature civil society (kamat, 2004). conclusions what can we conclude from this thumbnail sketch of the nature and role of ngos and csos? in klees (1998), i concluded that while the ngo phenomenon had been “overrated” by progressives, it was still both a “progressive force” and a “neoliberal tool.” that is still true, although today i would add that this plays out differently in different contexts. nonetheless, many progressives would argue that the “bulk of ngos” have been ‘compromised and co-opted’ (fowler, 2000, p. 641), and the state has been further weakened and delegitimized. under these circumstances, the so-called ‘third way’ principally becomes part of a structure that furthers the neoliberal market agenda, maintaining poverty, inequality, and marginalization. still, there is progressive potential in the flourishing of civil society. the serious commitment many csos have to grassroots activism, participatory democracy, and social justice combined with unprecedented ability to network opens the possibility of transforming state and market in new ways, perhaps even a third way, towards a fair and sustainable development. notes [1]. this comes from the title of arnove and torres (2002). references arnove, r. and torres, c. (2003) comparative education: the dialectic of the global and the local (2nd edition). new york: rowman & littlefield. dale, r. and robertson, s. (2004) interview with boaventura de sousa santos. globalisation, societies, and education, 2(2), 147-160. edwards, m. and hulme, d. (eds.) (1997) ngos, states and donors: too close for comfort? basingstoke: macmillan. fowler, a. (2000) ndgos as a movement in history: beyond aid to social entrepreneurship or civic innovation? third world quarterly, 21(4), 637-654. ngos, civil society, and development: is there a third way? current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 25 giddens, a. (2000) the third way and its critics. malden, ma: blackwell. karmat, s. (2004) the privatization of public interest: theorizing ngo discourse in a neoliberal era. economy 11(1), 155-176. klees, s. (1998) ngos: progressive force or neoliberal tool? current issues in comparative education 1(1), 49-54. available at http://www.tc..edu/cice. malhotra, k. (2000) ngos without aid: beyond the global soup kitchen. third world quarterly 21(4), 655-668. miller-grandvaux, y., welmond, m., and wolf, j. (2002) evolving partnerships: the role of ngos in basic education in africa. washington, dc: academy for international development. tickell, a. and peck, j. (2003) making global rules: globalisation or neoliberalisation. in j. peck and h. yeund (eds.) remaking the global economy: economic-geographical perspectives (pp. 163-181). london: sage. steven j. klees © 2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 88 may 10, 2004 theorizing, restructuring and rethinking nonformal education in east and west african communities1 andrea clemons loyola marymount university christina vogt university of southern california introduction since its inception, the united nations (un) has emphasized creating educated citizenry. beginning in 1948, the right to education was articulated clearly in article 26 of the universal declaration of human rights. it recognized education as an "indispensable means of unlocking and protecting other human rights by providing the scaffolding that is required to secure good health, liberty, security, economic well-being, and participation in social and political activity." (un, 2004). when the right to education is guaranteed, people's access to and enjoyment of other democratic rights are enhanced (un, 2004). nonetheless, despite the great increase in school enrollments in developing countries over the last 40 years, 875 million adults are still illiterate, over 100 million children have no access to school, and countless youth and adults who attend school and other education programs fall short of the required level to be considered literate in today's complex world (un, 2004). in 1990, the world's most influential global education initiative, education for all (efa), was birthed to educate the illiterate populations of impoverished nations. in doing this, the un specified that there exists a priority to promote efa policies within a sustainable and well-integrated sector framework clearly linked to poverty elimination and development strategies. initiatives must ensure the participation of civil society in the formulation, implementation and monitoring of strategies for educational development. in the context of un policy discourse since the efa conference in jomtien (1990), the dakar framework for action (1999), and the decade for literacy (2003), the possibility of nonformal basic education in sub-saharan africa has been debated by global education actors, policymakers, and grassroots advocacy networks because these actors, not the central government, have the onus for implementation of nonformal initiatives. despite numerous discussions concerned with the efa agenda, there exists little indepth information detailing the actual experiences and sustained efforts of these initiatives in the nonformal education sector. against the background of un meetings and the demand for education in africa, we are obligated as policy shapers and analysts to improve our research and our understanding of such programs, specifically as they impact the social development of local communities. consequently, this article presents west and east african nonformal education projects as a platform from which to view the interrelationship of participation and theorizing, restructuring, and rethinking nonformal education in east and west african communities current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 89 transformation in the educational experiences of community, ngo, and state participants. in the context of neo-liberal pressures, carried by an international freemarket movement in the 1980s, a wave of administrative decentralization initiatives in education rippled across africa. in the 1990s, a wave of democratization added itself to global decentralization pressures. as these cases demonstrate, the education decentralization process in nonformal education has resulted in varied and often unintended local interpretations, reactions, and ultimately inaction despite nationally and internationally accepted efa reform directives. the implications of our findings argue for a rethinking of participatory development for nonformal education programs in decentralized systems. background of the problem undoubtedly, globalization has introduced financial strains to poorer nations' already overextended educational budgets. first, structural adjustment policies have redirected many governments' funds toward building communication, transport and technological infrastructures in order to ramp up for world trade to increase outputs of goods and services, ostensibly making them more viable competitors in the world's markets. yet, according to the world bank's poverty reduction strategy papers (prsps) educated citizenry are also necessary for development (mutume, 2003). this premise holds appeal for global education initiatives because less developed nations must develop the human capital needed to improve the quality of life and compete in the global markets. however, a clash in paradigms has arisen when globalization has come at the expense of not only a nations' most needy (klees, 2001), but also health and human services' expenditures of many african governments (mutume, 2003). second, the north/south divide resulting in the polarization of wealth and labor has never been greater. for example, a recent report by the ilo (2004) in the early 1960s stated that the per capita income in the world's poorest nations was us$212. in the richest it was us$11,417. by 2002, the figures stood at us$267 and us$32,339. given the fact that, in general, central governments have less money to spend on education combined with structural adjustment policies which have diverted funds elsewhere, one has to conclude that foreign investment and aid will be essential to expand education initiatives in developing nations. additionally, to further defray educational costs, persistent economic and political pressures on numerous national governments have resulted in decentralization of their educational systems. more of the onus has been shifted to local governments, ngos and citizens, where financial and professional resources may be least available. decentralization has been endorsed by researchers and reformers despite the surprising lack of data in that few education studies have generated or even considered empirical evidence of local decentralization processes (rhoten, 2000; cohen & peterson, 1996). despite the few empirically grounded studies of decentralization, the literature remains remarkably theoretical. undoubtedly, without a clear understanding of how decentralization policy is being implemented in local regions, we have an unclear picture of education provision within the community. for instance, decentralization has often come tied to the democratic notion of how to get more children into the classroom a notion embedded in much education policy and andrea clemons and christina m. vogt 90 may 10, 2004 embodied by states' experiments with community-based schools, as in senegal, mali, togo, and tchad (diarra, fall, gueye, mara & marchand, 2000). however, what has appeal in democratic principle of equality has often failed in practice. for example, in southern asia as well as sub-saharan africa, less than three-fourths of the pupils reached grade 5. in the least developed countries taken together, slightly more than half reached this level, and many drop out by the second grade (un, 2004). therefore, traditional education may be less than effective where conflicting priorities exist based upon local necessities. as the global and national discussions of education development slowly move away from the question of how to get more children into traditional classrooms towards how to enable more children (and adults) to achieve agreed upon learning outcomes, the face of educational initiatives has been remaking itself. for example, the decade for literacy -spearheaded by unesco -stressed that nonformal education must supplement formal schooling because nonformal education teaches life skills, reflects community values and emphasizes learning by doing. nonformal education, according to the division for the advancement of women (daw), provides an excellent means to reach girls in indigenous and disadvantaged groups and improve their quality of life. not surprisingly, unesco (2003) has clearly articulated the growing need for project partnerships to fund nonformal initiatives because of inadequate national or local resources. yet, in procuring funds elsewhere, many local projects have been burdened with managing numerous outside stakeholders. this has raised the skepticism of indigenous peoples and anti-globalization pundits who warn of the dangers of subjugating local recipients of nonformal initiatives often culminating in the loss of regional, as compared to state, control. however, what has appeal in democratic principle of equality has often failed in practice. although it has a noble ring, participatory development has not necessarily originated from altruistic principles, but rather as an essentiality for outside funding agencies, which often come to the table with greater bargaining power. when considering local politics, participatory development has criticized outside investors for co-opting local communities into the sponsoring agency's agenda while serving primarily to legitimize the implementing agency as "grassroots oriented" (chambers, 1994). on the other hand, what chambers' (1994) failed to anticipate was kapoor's (2002) concerns that "local controls" may not be without their own duplicitous agendas. arguably, village politics often mimic the gross inequalities at the global level. therefore, as researchers and practitioners, if we accept that globalization combined with decentralization of nonformal education introduces a complex phenomena, we must further agree that site specific research must be dependent upon localized social and political contexts of reform as much as on specific national or global directives (crook & manor, 1998). in illustrating the difficulty of accounting for the divergent interests of stakeholders, two brief case studies are offered to provide practical insight into localized educational initiatives in east and west africa. while both cases illustrate the need for more indepth planning and monitoring, the first case defends the conclusions of chambers theorizing, restructuring, and rethinking nonformal education in east and west african communities current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 91 (1994) while the latter case speaks to the comments of kapoor (2002). what these seemingly disparate case studies underscore is that nonformal initiatives have very diverse configurations where the best of intentions can easily become sullied if subtle, yet consequential, incompatibilities are not anticipated. case 1west africa: senegalese nonformal community based basic education the senegalese case of the ecoles communautaires de base (ecb), a public-private partnership for community-based nonformal basic education is important because it reflects an attempt to reform the system of education in senegal. more importantly, it documents a historically centralized state's attempt to implement a real sharing of power among actors at all level of education provision a struggle to build genuinely democratic processes in education provision. as the ecb initiative was pushed by senegal's decentralization policies; however, significant problems in creating a localized efa initiative unfolded. according to official documents, the aims of the ecb are twofold: to increase access to basic education and to provide an education truly in the service of community development. early in the ecb reform initiative, the principle objectives sought to reduce expensive education costs, minimize regional disparities in schooling, improve drop-out and repetition rates, particularly for girls, and minimize rifts between schooled students and their milieu, especially in rural areas (république du sénégal, men & mcebln, 1996). additionally, this "permanent nonformal schooling" comprised the loftier objectives of several nonformal provisions: a compensatory bridge to formal schooling, supplementary vocational training, and a more socially relevant "alternative" to the formal schools. the perception then was of a "complementary relationship between the formal and the nonformal model" with ecbs as a "complementary path to efa." (daeb, unicef, ineade, 1999). yet, in reality, within the senegalese sub-sector of nonformal education, ecbs are characterized strictly as a compensatory provision, a literacy campaign that is secondary to that offered in the "classical" model (i.e. formal primary school). ecbs are presented by state actors as a crucial, cost-effective and compensatory school model, needed to provide a "basic education for all" and "to assure a minimum level of skills," but not to "liberate" learners and to "strengthen their contributions to social development" (unicef & unesco, 2000) as claimed by ngos and desired by community participants. thus, it remains highly questionable as to what gives the senegalese community-based school an identity as an "alternative" model of education, unless it is in the sense that communities, with the assistance of external agencies, carry the burden of the provision. as a result, the ecb is "alternative" in that it is exempt from the regulations governing publicly provided schools and as part of a "de facto emergence of an 'informal' sector in education where the state fails to provide" (hopper, 2000, p. 25). in support of these claims, the expectations expressed by community members were notably different from the assumptions of government and non-government ecb actors. andrea clemons and christina m. vogt 92 may 10, 2004 local perceptions also differed from evidence presented in official publications and evaluations. for example, one parent expressed her expectation of a professional life for her children in the ecb; on the other hand, her perspective engaged social and economic options beyond those officially ascribed to the ecb initiative. the surrounding group agreed with the statement that agriculture is the last thing we think of. even when the agriculture is good, we don't earn more than 300,000 cfa (i.e., $550.00). in the past, there have been years when we have not returned a ton of peanuts. we want our children to be lifted up by other things. we want them to be civil servants, ngo trainers, or even security guards (diarra et al, 2000, p. 99). when other members of the school community spoke of the force of education in the lives of their children, views differing from the compensatory perspective, suggested by the majority of government comments, continued to surface. a representative of the ecb management committee expressed, for example, that the power of education was particularly transformative and meaningful for girls: "it [the ecb] could be very important to improve the lives of girls. they can get up through education. if they have ideas, they can do a lot of things"; while another member implied the ecbs' superiority over formal primary school as an alternative to formal secondary school: "we know that the authority of the ecb is invested in the households. but if we are attached to the ecb it's because it brings more advantages than the formal school" (community respondent 3). these excerpts suggest critically divergent perspectives of the ecb. first, community members explicitly endorse the policy aim of expanding access to formal education through "alternative" modes such as the ecb. second, their expectations not only imply hope for an education that serves as a compensatory provision of productive skills and "bridge" to the formal system but also an alternative one that reaches beyond convention and impacts to transform lives in the village. elements in the comments of community members and teachers illustrate how the people in the village tended to prioritize the supplementary human resource training aims of "trade" and earning money but not to the exclusion of their hope for a formal education and not over the popular education goal, "to get up through education." it seems then that community actors are invested in the connection of the ecb to the conventional mainstream educational system. this is in line with the state's expectations of a complementary provision, but it diverges from national rhetoric primarily supportive of human resources training aims. in contrast to both state and community perceptions, the claims of ngo operators promoted a more exclusively alternative provision. ngo operators, those organizations responsible for community mobilization, teacher training and ecb funding, tended to embrace expectations of an alternative schooling provision through ecbs over other aims. an ecb operator blamed the government for the divergent interests between ecb operators and ecb communities. theorizing, restructuring, and rethinking nonformal education in east and west african communities current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 93 the government is big into paradigms. and even after 30 years, they are still trying to force it on everyone. it was certainly not my vision to provide a bridge to formal education. they [the state] do know how to prepare a child for formal school, and they'll perpetuate that paradigm to get kids into formal schools. i'm into breaking paradigms while they are invested in getting kids to face it. similarly suggestive of progressive political paradigms, most representatives of the ecb operator in the kolda region reported the ecb's impact in terms of the more explicitly political mobilization of participants: restructuring (i.e. transforming) the organization of the community and the life of the children through the ecb. but i think nonformal education, precisely the ecb's are going to help in the refoundation of education in senegal. it's the accomplishment of teaching in national languages. i think that we have seen children who have in two years in an ecb resolved problems, which children who have spent six years in the formal school could not. that's why people look to the ecbs. this same sentiment is captured in the comments by an ecb teacher, an ecb supervisor, an ecb coordinator, and a dakar-based director of pedagogy, all working for ngo operators. they cited the improved relations between families and villages "because it gives a civic and moral education that many children and adults don't have." as well, they noted, "many new [community-based] organizations have been created in a dynamic inspired by the ecb to permit a participatory approach in the resolution of local problems." the state and ecb operators did fulfill their promise to expand access to schooling to those who had previously not had a formal education. ngo operators also achieved their goal of enrolling more girls than boys in ecbs. in all, the actual achievement of ecb objectives at a deeper social development level, however, was not met. as data demonstrated, the recent ecb initiative sought to support local participation and organization but was not accompanied by adequate and sustained support. this gap between expectation and implementation merely undermined communities' organizational capacity and sociopolitical identity as "owners" of their local schooling projects. this is not to say that community members did not comply with the directives given them by the ecb operator; in fact, they did cooperate. however, because their expectations were subordinated to government and ngo objectives, the local communities were not perceived as participating effectively. subsequently, with extremely limited technical and financial capacity for participation and restricted mechanisms for cooperation, the resultant community behavior was one of "wait-andsee." as a result, both ngo and decentralized government agents were left to do what they had been doing all along perpetuate exclusionary agendas. senegalese and other education policy makers must recognize that a standard framework in the form of official "terms of reference" is important, but it is only the first -and probably the easiest -step towards an effective education program (rhoten, 1999). the multidimensional nature of education must integrate all agents in the ecb andrea clemons and christina m. vogt 94 may 10, 2004 program/alternative education system and include dialogue, common decision-making, and agreed upon responsibilities. the duty of the government is not only to monitor how agents fund and support their roles and responsibilities according to decentralization policy, but to actively plan and intervene where operators have shown they can not be efficient according to the goals outlined by educational policy. in this senegalese case study, unintended local interpretations and reactions has ultimately resulted in inactions despite nationally accepted efa reform directives. however, the lack of mutual understanding relevant to the ecb community school programs is not an argument against nonformal community schools or other alternatives to formal school models. simply, it illustrates the need for all actors to continue in a productive, ongoing dialogue that refines a mutual understanding of alternative social and educational goals. similarly, chambers (1994) articulated the promotion of a truly participatory alternative provision, which requires reflection and detailed planning at all levels, but not least at the community level. case 2 east africa: ugandan community based gender training in contrast, kapoor (2002) stated participatory development "... valorizes local, as opposed to western knowledge and aims to empower people to determine much of the agenda" (p.103). kapoor further noted that chambers (1994) was concerned with outsiders (often westerners), taking on the role of experts. using this as a starting premise, our second case describes a grassroots' initiative involving an east african university-sponsored community-based gender campaign and a us-based ngo. in kenya, where females comprise 70% of the illiterates (unesco, 2003), women leaders attribute the lower status of women to the country's social and political structures. "it is a deliberate intention by men; they refuse to give us the political or social space. you have to fight to get anything. but unless women hold key positions, nothing about this country will change." in education, this belief implicates kenyan women's assumption that where gender inequalities exist, efa goals will not be attained. when president daniel arap moi, who ruled kenya for 24 years, finally relinquished his tightly held reigns of power, many kenyans, especially womanists rejoiced. the departure of moi opened up a long awaited space for the women's movement to surge forward. as one enthusiastic observer jubilantly confirmed: this is a day to celebrate the end of a very long and difficult struggle against evil governance. now, we kenyan women are celebrating this change! we fully believe that this new government will construct the long-anticipated transition from dictatorship to democracy. to fulfill its promise of installing more women in key government positions, the new government has appointed eight additional parliamentarians increasing the total to 16. six women are in kenya's cabinet, with three as full ministers and three in assistant ministerial posts. another womanist commented on these governmental changes: theorizing, restructuring, and rethinking nonformal education in east and west african communities current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 95 these appointments signify a strong indication of the new government's commitment to promote justice by constructing of a fully 'gendered citizenship'. gender discrimination might soon be a remnant of the past, because this trend shows that the kenyan people do have confidence in women! other spaces have recently opened in kenya to further advance the rights of women. first, women-led ngos are becoming more prevalent with over 200 organizations, including the largest: the education center for democratic women, fida (national women's lawyer association), the league of kenyan women voters, the national commission on the status of women and the national council of kenyan women. simultaneously, the women's movement has become more powerful. specifically, development of women, kenya's first women's organization, was established as a nonpolitical ngo during colonial rule. however, since moi's departure, it has become very closely aligned with narc, the current ruling party. thus, this and other established women's organizations now hold very elite status. however, despite the mobilization of women and the relatively substantial progress in efa initiatives, very serious violations of women's rights still remain. women's organizations are frustrated claiming their complaints have fallen on deaf ears in a maledominated society. they argue that patriarchal indifference towards gendered crimes continues to be further exacerbated by limiting women's social rights, thus, relegating them to second class citizenship. several kenyan academics have been responsible for citing that both statutory laws and traditional society norms are, to a great extent, still restricted to the patriarchy, which employs social control mechanisms that perpetuate women's subordination. however, a large part of this problem lay in the fact that, "most women are often unaware of their legal rights. therefore, where the customary or tribal law conflicts with state laws, women are still highly disadvantaged." however, the combined sociopolitical climates toward women with the staunch activism of kenyan academic womanists provide fertile ground for gender campaigns. with these assumptions, a pilot was planned by a us-based ngo and a major kenyan university. according to unesco's decade for literacy campaign (2003), the social benefits of girls' nonformal education included lower maternal mortality rates, increased family incomes and health indices, hiv/aids prevention and greater participation of women in economic and political decision-making. conforming to the guidelines of the decade for literacy, and grounded in the ideology that gender awareness must be heightened at the local level, initiating low-cost, nonformal village education projects led by university students held great appeal in furthering women's empowerment in fighting customary practices which conflict with legal rights. before sending information and supplies to the university, students were to define the greatest obstacles for girls and women's education within their local villages. after receipt, they were to mobilize and advocate at the grassroots for elimination of these gendered inequalities through nonformal education projects. upon completion, these students would write up their experiences noting the obstacles, challenges and andrea clemons and christina m. vogt 96 may 10, 2004 triumphs of their village campaigns. for their efforts, they would be rewarded monetarily in the amount of two months' local salary. to further enlighten, their stories were to be posted on the internet and presented at well-attended educational conferences, thus capturing their voices and experiences and bringing recognition to them, their work and their institution. additionally, this approach would have added a rare component to participatory development in that final project documentation compiled by local voices would breach the norm of reporting project outcomes by outside funding agencies. this ideological approach might directly encourage activism from the next generation of leaders who are educated citizenry studying at a renowned local university in communities where access to higher education is reachable by a select few. finally, it was assumed that this personal transformation would result in students' continued fight for change from within their kenyan villages and communities. in accordance with chambers' (1994) ideologies, many of these project goals shifted the locus of control from the outside agency to the local level. however, as with the first case, too many goals were elusive from the beginning. except for loosely defined objectives, a guiding framework was almost nonexistent. the ngo wrongly assessed that the head of the university gender department would be seriously interested in the plight of her village sisters. moreover, it was also assumed that she would earnestly train students to intervene upon outdated and oft illegal practices within their communities. several problems arose from these very basic assumptions combined with the laissez faire implementation style of the ngo. first, the ngo did not account for the class disparities within this gendered campaign because women are the marginalized group, which in kapoor's (2002) works comprise the voiceless and underserved. however, kapoor (2002) did not anticipate that within this 'downtrodden subculture', inequities also exist. the point here was underscored as one citizen argued, "the feminist movement has too often failed to bring real changes into the lives of rural women, mostly due to their very close alliances with political and academic elites from which their success has been forthcoming." second, a close personal dialogue was not established between the two partners. in doing this, it might have been less acceptable for the offending party not to earnestly adhere to the intended goals. nonetheless, after a short time, it became quite clear that the professor was not truly invested in grassroots' development, but rather she was more interested in utilizing the funding to develop her academic department. in fact, not one objective of the ngo was met during the course of the pilot project. in essence, supplies were sent and money was granted yet nothing was accomplished perhaps because of the intentionally vague priorities set by the ngo, which was overly concerned with being an egalitarian participatory development partner. to be fair, some uncontrollable obstacles did arise during the course of the agreement. the country experienced a temporary "shutdown" of its universities due to labor strikes. many students abandoned their courses and returned home to their local communities to wait for re-opening of their institutions. however, since that time, the university representative has neither offered to return any of the funding nor restart the project. theorizing, restructuring, and rethinking nonformal education in east and west african communities current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 97 the ngo made the mistake of having a "hands off" approach because of the inordinate amount of trust placed in the university as well as the philosophy that local decisions would be the "right ones". or as kapoor (2002) stated, the lack of a critical stance can mean simplifying or ignoring broader relationships between, say, local communities and socioeconomic power structures. similarly to privilege, 'what works and what does not' is to downplay such important political questions as 'what works for whom?' and 'whose interests are being served?' (p. 102) this kenyan case study gives an account of a development scheme that assumed that inclusion paves the way for equality. more importantly, it also provides a vantage point to examine the interrelationship of conflicting tacit priorities of project participants. by analyzing the intersection of intention, interpretation, perception, and inaction, both the east and west african cases make evident the obstacles of contested notions of participatory development in nonformal education initiatives. concluding remarks both cases of decentralized nonformal education in west and east africa presented here are characterized in terms of the unsuccessful resolution of their respective intended outcomes. the first failed more as a consequence of "outsiders". the second case floundered under the misaligned intentions of "locals" and those of the ngo. in this regard, what both chambers (1994) and kapoor (2002) underscore is the necessity of a truly collaborative effort. consensus of this type is attainable only via ongoing dialogue between policymakers, implementers, and grassroots organizations in which long-term local reforms are more equitably decided. a more holistic approach has the potential to create more than local, non-uniform and non-sustainable initiatives. while the decentralization goals of administrative efficiency and political authority are seemingly clear-cut, the empirical evidence in support of these claims might often provide more speculative language than clear examples of success. finally, while we deplore the global polarization of wealth and remain skeptical of decentralization practices, pragmatism dictates that neither will be discontinued anytime soon. therefore, our experiences buttress a call for research that deepens our understanding of how all participants are engaged in development projects; that is, if we are sincerely invested in laying the foundation for well-managed and socially just projects. better research may help manage the precious few resources available for positive educational gains where essentially, time, money and good faith are running short. notes 1. this article draws on research conducted in senegal between 2000 and 2001. this research examined documents and 30 respondent narratives, allowing a view into how an ecb education is shaped, interpreted, and received by devolved actors. through the use of a multi-level model and a mixed set of analytic tools, representatives of national governmental agencies, international governmental andrea clemons and christina m. vogt 98 may 10, 2004 agencies, national ngos, international ngos, and local communities active in education and decentralization activities in senegal participated in structured and semi-structured interviews and surveys. the surveys and interviews aimed to assess and probe participants' beliefs, attitudes and knowledge concerning the political, economic, and social milieu of an ecb education in senegal. this case study relies on research conducted in kenya during portions of 2002 and 2003. through the examination of local documents and news, national newspapers and radio broadcasts, the openness of kenyan society for implementation of genderspecific programs was analyzed. representatives of the university, national ngos, international ngos, local citizens and students participated in semi-structured interviews. these interviews aimed to assess and probe participants' beliefs concerning the political and economic advancement of women. ongoing dialogue, including email sent between the university and the international funding ngo were examined to appraise the consistency and quality of the ongoing dialogue. references chambers, r. (1994). the origins and practice of participatory rural appraisal. world development 22(7), pp. 953 969. cohen, j. & peterson, s. (1996). methodological issues in the analysis of decentralization. cambridge, ma: harvard institute of international development. daeb, unicef & ineade. (1999). aide-memoire pour le suivi des ecoles communautiares de base appuyees par l'unicef. dakar: ineade. no document number. diarra, d., fall, m., gueye, p.m., mara, m. & marchand, j. (2000). les écoles communautaires de base au sénégal. paris: institut international de planification de l´éducation. hopper, w. (2000). nonformal education, distance education, and the restructuring of schooling: challenges for a new basic education policy. international review of education, 46(1), 5-30. international labor organization (2004). retrieved from http://www.ilo.org. kapoor, i. (2002). the devil's in the theory: a critical assessment of robert chamber's work on participatory development. third world quarterly, 23(1), 101-117. klees, s. (2001). sector wide approaches in education: coordination or chaos? world bank development policy: a sap in swaps clothing. current issues in comparative education [online], 3 (2). available at: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/cice/articles/al152.htm [retrieved may 5, 2004] theorizing, restructuring, and rethinking nonformal education in east and west african communities current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 99 mutume, g. (2003). a new anti-poverty remedy for africa? adjustment policies weaken prsp goals, critics charge. africa recovery [online], 16(4). available at: http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/[retrieved march 10, 2004] rhoten, d. (1999). global-local conditions of possibility: the case of education decentralization in argentina. ph.d. dissertation. stanford, ca: stanford university. un. (2000). the world's women. trends and statistics. (new york, ny: united nations publication). undp, unesco, unicef, world bank. (1990). meeting basic learning needs: a vision for the 1990s. jomtien, thailand: unesco. undp (2003). retrieved march 14, 2004 from http://www.undp.org/dpa/frontpagearchive/2003/november/17nov03/index_prfr.ht ml united nations. (2004). retrieved march 21, 2004 from http://www.un.org/news/press/docs/2002/ecosoc5999.doc.htm unesco. (2003). retrieved march 30, 2004 from http://www.un.org/av/photo/subjects/literacy.htm duong, 2022 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 1, winter 2022 book review shadow education in myanmar: private supplementary tutoring and its policy implications by mark bray, magda nutsa kobakhidze & ora kwo. comparative education research centre, university of hong kong, 2020, 158 pp. open access. isbn 978-92-9223-649-6 (unesco), isbn 978-988-14241-8-1 bich-hang duong university of minnesota working on research projects on south east asian (sea) education, i have been interested to understand more about myanmar’s education system. while there has been increasing research on private tutoring in sea countries such as cambodia, singapore, and vietnam, i wonder if this practice is also prevalent in myanmar. if the country bears a similar trait in its education system, what lessons can other regional countries learn to deal with this practice? the book shadow education in myanmar: private supplementary tutoring and its policy implications is a helpful read for me. having written extensively on private tutoring, the book’s co-authors--mark bray, magda nutsa kobakhidze, and ora kwo--provided an in-depth analysis of the private tutoring situation in myanmar. the book examines private tutoring in secondary schools in yangon, myanmar’s largest city. it resulted from a collaboration between the university of hong kong, the yangon university of education, and unesco. using a mixed-method approach, the researchers collected data from students in transition grades (grades 9 and 11), teachers, and principals of eight randomly selected urban and peri-urban schools. the authors also compared the views of multiple stakeholders, including parents and personnel from international agencies and non-governmental organizations. these perspectives are significant in that while focusing on myanmar, the book situates private tutoring as a widespread phenomenon that has drawn attention from actors at both the local and global levels. along these lines, the first chapter, “international perspectives on shadow education,” sets the stage for the study by reviewing the development of private tutoring in various countries around the world. this review shows that private tutoring has a long history, and as the name ‘shadow education’ suggests, it has become an integral part of many education systems.1 chapter two provides an overview of the local context of myanmar pertaining to private tutoring. the authors underscore the national education strategic plan (2016-2021) as the foundation for the current educational reform in myanmar, echoing other scholars who noted that the country is transforming politically, socially and educationally (lall, 2013; lee, 2016). 1 the term ‘shadow education’ was first used by bray (1999) to suggest that as the mainstream curriculum changes, much of the content in the shadow changes accordingly. © 2022, duong. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(1), 140-142. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en shadow education in myanmar current issues in comparative education 141 the central component of the book lies in chapters four and five, highlighting the research’s findings concerning the perspectives of students, parents, and teachers. with rich evidence from quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews, chapter four portrays a broad picture of the scope of private tutoring in yangon and reasons for students and parents to pursue private classes. the research shows that higher-performing students were more likely to receive tutoring than lower-performing ones as learning achievement was regarded as measurable through examination results. however, the situation remains paradoxical because significant household expenditures were spent on private tutoring. myanmar parents justified this spending as a legitimate attempt to satisfy the examdriven curriculum and as an indispensable investment in human capital. meanwhile, just as in many other settings in asia (e.g., kennedy & lee, 2018), the broader visions of education in myanmar are still deemed unattainable, including schooling for the public good. chapter five provides an insight into the perspectives of teachers related to private tutoring. it is interesting to note that although teachers were strictly prohibited from providing private tutoring, nearly half of the sampled teachers indicated that they had tutoring classes. also, some teachers thought that their principals were encouraging the practice, while many reported the other way round. these contradictory results indicate the complexity and ambiguity associated with competing forces and variegated relationships in the shadow educator sector. an important inference is that private tutoring bans tend to be ineffective, no matter how fierce they are. this brings us to the next chapter that discusses policy implications related to private tutoring regulations. in chapter six, the authors reflect on some fundamental issues around private tutoring, including financing the education system, learning assessment, and parents’ rights to invest in their children’s education. in this regard, teachers’ inadequate salaries and highstakes exams are reported as major causes for the perpetuation of private tutoring; yet these chronic issues persist not only in myanmar but also in other sea countries (bray, 2002; duong & silova, 2021). all things considered, the authors suggest that it is better to regulate the shadow sector rather than eliminate it. the book proposes two primary areas of private tutoring regulation: (i) regulating private tutoring provided by serving teachers and (ii) regulating the practice in the marketplace. among diverse views about teachers’ provision of fee-based extra lessons, the authors explicitly stated that tutoring current students must not be tolerated because of ethical issues. nevertheless, tutoring students from other schools, as occurring in the marketplace, appears judicious as it shares the government’s responsibility to increase the teachers’ salaries. more important is the recommendation for school leaders who should take primary action in handling the private tutoring practice at the school level. additionally, the authors point to the need to create school-level channels to communicate among teachers, students, and parents regarding private tutoring. finally, with respect to regulating the practice in the marketplace, the authors suggest attending to the business and education dimensions of private tutoring, including taxation, health and safety, tutors’ qualification, and pricing issues. these recommendations are particularly pertinent to transitional contexts where the marketplace for private tutoring is branching out. this book depicts the first comprehensive picture of shadow education in myanmar, zooming in on the country's largest city. it contributes to the international scholarship on private tutoring with the exemplary approaches to the mixed methods. i highly appreciate the meticulous integration of qualitative narratives that helps to illustrate and add nuance duong current issues in comparative education 142 to the quantitative data. given that the statistical analysis is primarily descriptive, audiences interested in quantitative research might be curious to learn about the relationships between aspects of private tutoring potentially derived from the inferential analysis. that said, the book is a valuable reference for comparative education researchers who may take advantage of much information in the book, including sample survey questionnaires and interview guides, to replicate research or compare with other educational contexts. finally, education administrators, especially school leaders, would find recommendations in this book practical and helpful in addressing an educational phenomenon that, as the authors rightly indicate, will never disappear but calls for collective action for a more equitable and inclusive education system. bich-hang duong is a postdoctoral researcher at the university of minnesota. she received her ph.d. degree in comparative and international education from lehigh university (usa). her research interests include citizenship studies, cultural politics of education, educational equity, professional learning and development, comparative education, and critical theory. references bray, m. (1999). the shadow education system: private tutoring and its implications for planners. paris: unesco international institute for educational planning (iiep). bray, m. (2002). the costs and financing of education: trends and policy implications. asian development bank manila. http://cerc.edu.hku.hk/wpcontent/uploads/2013/11/costs_financing.pdf bray, m., kobakhidze, m. n., & kwo, o. (2020). shadow education in myanmar: private supplementary tutoring and its policy implications. cerc monograph series in comparative and international education and development no. 13. comparative education research centre, university of hong kong. duong, b.-h., & silova, i. (2021). portraits of teachers in neoliberal times: projections and reflections generated by shadow education research. globalisation, societies and education, 19(5), 696–710. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2021.1878013 kennedy, k. j., & lee, j. c.-k. (2018). routledge international handbook of schools and schooling in asia. in routledge international handbook of schools and schooling in asia. routledge. lall, m., san, t. s., nwe s. n., myat, t. t., & khaing, l. t. t. (2013). teachers’ voice: what education reforms does myanmar need?. myanmar egress. lee, m. n. n. (2016). contemporary education policies in southeast asia: common philosophical underpinnings and practices. asia pacific education review, 17(3), 465–478. © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 3 editorial introduction deadly education: the spread of hiv/aids hiv will kill at least a third of the young men and women of countries where it has its firmest hold, and in some places up to two-thirds. despite millennia of epidemics, war and famine, never before in history have death rates of this magnitude been seen among young adults of both sexes and from all walks of life. (unaids, 2000) hiv/aids is changing the world in unprecedented ways. it attacks individuals, alters populations and challenges systems. it kills ten times more people per year than war and society's young adults suffer disproportionately (unaids, 2000). according to unicef (2000), nearly one third of all people with hiv/aids are between the ages of 15 and 24. in the year 2000, 500,000 children died of aids, bringing the total of children's deaths to date to 4.3 million. every minute, six young people under the age of 25 are infected with hiv. in the face of such shocking statistics, the most common solution offered to stop the spread of the disease revolves around changing individual behavior via education initiatives. with no promise of a medical cure in sight, prevention is the focus of all efforts. indeed, education becomes a panacea, viewed both as the key to decrease individual infections by promoting health-maintaining and life-sustaining behaviors, and as the stabilizing force for the social fabric of communities and countries torn apart by the debilitating effects of the disease. yet, almost all attempts to contain the disease are failing. heated debates continue regarding whether educational programs can accomplish public health objectives in preventing hiv transmission. this volume of current issues in comparative education examines some of the issues surrounding these debates. our contributors write from the perspectives of researchers, scholars, and practitioners currently engaged around the world in the struggle to create and implement what one author calls the "education vaccine" for hiv/aids. their articles present some of the great challenges confronting those currently working to contain the disease through social service mechanisms, and reveal some of the most confounding questions hiv/aids presents. if education is to serve as the foundation of prevention, what should we make of the continuing rise of infections among school age populations? if education is to fight the frontline battle of prevention, what are the implications of the increasing rates of infection among schoolteachers? how will education systems carry health promotion curricula to students when educator populations are themselves decimated? in the "education vaccine" against hiv/aids, jan vandemoortele and enrique delamonica provide compelling evidence of a rapidly changing social profile of the aids pandemic and its implications for education. they argue that hiv/aids has been discriminating increasingly against the illiterate and the poor worldwide. if aids is perceived as a disease that predominantly affects the poor, then public commitment to find a cure or a vaccine, or to support public awareness campaigns may be in jeopardy. given the potential consequences of the changing profile of the hiv/aids pandemic, deadly education: the spread of hiv/aids 4 december 1, 2000 the authors the urgency for achieving universal primary education in order to equip the poor with the basic capabilities to protect themselves against hiv infection. in this context, the authors view education as one of the most powerful "vaccines" for slowing and reversing the spread of hiv/aids. carol coombe, an independent education consultant from south africa, argues in keeping the education system healthy that hiv/aids not only attacks individuals, it also attacks systems. she states that until recently, hiv/aids has been perceived primarily as a health problem that can be contained by effective health education programs. as the deadly virus continues to spread, it is having a profoundly adverse impact on communities and institutions. in the case of south africa, the government's health-focused hiv/aids plans have failed to consider what must be done when hiv/aids is out of control and state systems are themselves threatened. this article suggests that while working to limit the spread of the disease, it is necessary to recognize and manage the pandemic's impact on the education system itself. michael kelly, a jesuit priest and lecturer at the university of zambia, focuses on one particularly devastating development within the intersection of health and education-hiv/aids in schools and its effect on students and teachers. in his article standing education on its head, kelly describes how school participation can enhance the risk of hiv infection. he argues that by continuing to deal with hiv/aids in a traditional way in the conventional school curriculum, school systems are failing to meet their objectives. these and other factors necessitate a radical re-thinking of educational provision. he suggests that the formal school system move to incorporate some of the participatory features of non-formal education, with emphasis on the involvement of young people at all stages. rosah moonga malambo, a graduate student at the university of oslo, presents findings of a case study examining the views of teachers and students on the teaching of hiv/aids in basic schools in zambia. in teach them while they are young, they will live to remember, malambo found that although the hiv/aids topics were integrated into school curricula, they have been given less emphasis than other curricular components and appear as topics in passing. the article notes that lack of school discussions could have led to the lack of factual details the students display about the disease. finally, the author discusses cultural beliefs and their impact on the spread of hiv/aids. highlighting the tendency of some parents and adults to avoid discussing hiv/aids, the article suggests that more programs are needed to help parents and adults realize the importance of providing information and discussing hiv/aids related issues with children in order to reduce the current increasing trend of hiv/aids infection among young adults. perhaps nowhere is the challenge of finding an education solution to the hiv/aids epidemic more pressing than in south africa. in his article south africa as the epicenter of hiv/aids: vital political legacies and current debates, johnny sachs, who works with the department of health to restructure the public health laboratory service and the south african hiv vaccine initiative, points out that south africa is the world epicenter for rapid increase of hiv/aids. he discusses reasons for south africa's lead in the global increase of hiv/aids, highlighting the impact of the legacies of apartheid. editorial introduction current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 5 indeed, when searching for effective responses to this epidemic, sachs stresses that it is particularly important to embrace disciplines other than medical services, such as education, and to dissect the socio-political structures that continue to enable the spread of the disease. finally, isabela cabral félix de sousa, a researcher from the oswaldo cruz foundation and the brazilian national research council, provides an example of how western conceptual frameworks have limited the understanding of the course of the hiv/aids epidemic in brazil and therefore failed to properly define hiv/aids risk groups. in conceptual and practical approaches to hiv/aids: the brazilian experience, félix de sousa argues that the lack of a self-identified homosexual community in brazil has delayed the addressing of hiv/aids related problems and put women at greater risk of becoming infected by hiv/aids. in addition, the author discusses how historical tendencies to address health problems by targeting individual behavioral change have further exacerbated the problem. she stresses that unless a health promotion approach addressing individual and social problems is employed, there is little hope to change the course of the hiv/aids epidemic. to be efficient, health education must be part of broader programs aimed at social change and targeting all aspects that lead to the infection and the disease. we hope that as you read this issue, you will gain a clearer perspective on ways in which the issue of hiv/aids is paradoxically at the center of controversy and sidelined by silence about its causes and prevention. while many discussions in the hiv/aids literature focus on the content and form of health education curricula, the editors of cice seek new and diverse arguments relating to school safety, the politics of health education, issues of responsibility, and the consequences of the spreading pandemic on the education system itself. we hope that this issue will shed some light and spark further debate on current theory and practice surrounding this deadly epidemic. references unaids (2000). hiv/aids in africa [online]. available at: http://www.unaids.org/fact_sheets/files/africa_eng.html unicef (2000, november, 28). press release [online]. available at: http://www.unicef.org © 2002 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 24 december 16, 2002 building on student knowledge: a new frame for gender equity in education that transcends the sameness/difference dichotomy alice e. ginsberg educational equity consultant introduction anyone who spends an hour or so at my high school will find plenty of evidence substantiating the need for making gender awareness a significant part of the academic curriculum. (male history teacher at a large urban high school) having spent at least an hour at this particular school, it is hard to disagree with this statement. it is also hard to ignore the bars on the doors and windows and other "prisonlike" conditions of the building which speak so boldly of what life is like for african american and latino students attending under-funded, urban public schools in poor "troubled" neighborhoods. yet as teachers and administrators, all participating in a special three-year professional development program called gate (gender awareness through education), gathered together to tell story after story of how girls are being "shortchanged" and how boys are "failing," it became clear that the term "gender awareness" is an ambiguous one. as a group, they considered the questions: what is generic and what is socially constructed? how do race, class, and gender issues intersect? how do we avoid reinforcing stereotypes when teaching awareness? when we say it is harder to work with girls, aren't we saying something about ourselves? do students espouse tolerance and then behave in ways that indicate intolerance? it is the premise of this paper that many times the answers to these complex questions are often reduced to discussions of whether boys and girls should be treated exactly the same, or whether we should teach to their (perceived) differences. for example, professional development around gender equity often focuses on simplistic techniques such as counting how often one calls on girls and boys; just as curriculum development is frequently reduced to the "add women and stir" variety. similarly, those who argue that "boys and girls learn differently" (gurian, 2001) fail to consider the very real implications of race, ethnicity, class and other differences on students' identities, learning styles, and experiences in school. this paper considers the wide variety of approaches these teachers, and other participants in the gate program, used to explore and address gender issues at their respective schools. in this paper, i share some of the ways in which teachers and administrators in urban schools are starting to move beyond the sameness/difference dichotomy, primarily through building a curriculum in which student knowledge is central, and student agency is essential. opening the gate in the early 1990's, the pennsylvania humanities council (phc) began gate, a threeyear program to address gender inequities in the school district of philadelphia. as a program officer at the phc, i was the director of this program. gate was developed in conjunction with an advisory board of educational experts, women's studies scholars, and community leaders. piloted in the school district of philadelphia--a large urban building on student knowledge: a new frame for gender equity in education that transcends the sameness/difference dichotomy current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 25 school district with over 250 schools and 200,000 students--participating schools were selected through a competitive application process. this process began with a mailing to all teachers in the district which included the (rather broad-based) questions: • are you interested in the differences between the ways boys and girls learn in the classroom setting? • do you desire a more inclusive, multicultural curriculum? • do you want to create a more cooperative and interactive learning environment? although the goals of the program were likewise all over the place, in essence the program promised that it would help participants integrate women's studies and feminist pedagogy into the k-12 curriculum. schools interested in participating were asked to assemble a team of approximately ten individuals, which was to include teachers of different subject areas, administrators, and parents. gate was noteworthy in that, in addition to the "team" concept, it integrated many other current ideas about successful school reform. for example, schools were selected at each grade level, and schools in feeder patterns (e.g., community clusters) were given selection priority. eventually the chosen schools included: an elementary school with a significant population of special education children (35% of who were blind or visually impaired); a large middle school and two large high schools, each located in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, comprised of students that were over 80% african american and primarily from low-income families. it was hoped that more schools would be phased into the program as additional funds became available. all combined, approximately 40 practitioners and parents signed-up to participate in the program, although attendance at the monthly seminar meetings was rarely more than 50% due to a wide variety of factors largely related to scheduling conflicts. in addition, , over the course of the three year program many teachers dropped out and were replaced due to retirements, transfers, etc. on average, the participants were 50% caucasian and 50% african american; 18% of the participants were male. of those who were teachers: 12% had been teaching for less than five years; 50% had been teaching for over 10 years; and 38% had been teaching for over 20 years. gate participants represented all grade levels and disciplines including physical education, art, gifted education and special education, as well as a variety of administrative positions ranging from principal to department chairs, to school disciplinarians and secretaries. the few parents that signedup were not particularly active over the course of the program, as a three-year commitment from parents to what was essentially a professional development program is difficult to sustain (see, for example, shapiro, ginsberg, & brown, 2002). the monthly gate team meetings were co-facilitated by k-12 teachers and university professors, and were structured so that participants had a significant voice in the focus and process of the meetings. the meetings varied in content but generally included selfreflection, discussion of relevant literature (fiction as well as non-fiction), classroom observation, and curriculum development. in addition, the city itself was used as a resource, and participants took trips to a wide variety of museums and cultural sites, and were treated to special workshops with local and national feminist scholars. finally, like the gate program itself, the evaluation process was multifaceted and ambitious. under the leadership of dr. joan shapiro, professor of educational alice e. ginsberg 26 december 16, 2002 administration and policy studies at temple university and former co-administrator of the women's studies program at the university of pennsylvania, data was collected over a six-year period. dr. shapiro, in close cooperation with myself and with the assistance of the seminar facilitators, used a participatory evaluation approach which dr. shapiro explains as follows: "with sensitivity to context, this form of evaluation considers it important that the evaluator's report and recommendations are credible and of value to those who have been involved in the project. participatory evaluation allows diverse voices to be heard" (pennsylvania humanities council, 1997). as such, data collection included monthly reaction sheets completed by participants after each seminar meeting; interviews and focus groups conducted with participants, school team leaders, and seminar facilitators, over the course of the project and beyond; reflective essays and formal evaluations written by participants and seminar facilitators; teacher/action research studies; and ongoing participation and observation at monthly gate meetings and in participants' classrooms. student voices were documented primarily through action research data and anecdotal evidence from gate participants, but were not, however, part of the formal evaluation process. competing discourses of gender in many ways, the timing for such a program was perfect. the american association of university women (aauw) had just released its seminal report: how schools shortchange girls (baily et al., 1992), to be quickly followed by the popular book failing at fairness: how america's schools cheat girls (sadker & sadker, 1994). gender equity in education was suddenly a topic for talk shows. likewise, the school district of philadelphia was about to undergo a process of wide-scale reorganization by hiring a new nationally recognized superintendent and implementing an ambitious district-wide reform plan called "children achieving." children achieving was to include, among other things, the creation of new curriculum standards and community clusters, strengthened partnerships between schools and communities, and increased accountability at all levels (primarily through standardized testing). one might easily conclude that gate, though a very small and disconnected part of this larger undertaking, was ultimately a successful program (depending, of course, on the criteria one uses to define "success"). rather than debating the success or failure of the gate program, however, in this paper i consider some of the different ways that participants framed the issue of gender "awareness" in education, and the corresponding implications for policy and practice. although student voices are included herein, the primary focus is on teachers and administrators. as the paper's title suggests, i ultimately seek to challenge the dominant ideology surrounding gender work in education, e.g., that girls and boys are either inherently the same or inherently different. these competing discourses--debated over and over in books such as women's ways of knowing (belenky, clinchy, goldenberger, & tarule, 1986), failing at fairness (sadker & sadker, 1994), girls and boys learn differently! (gurian, 2001), and gender gaps: where schools still fail our children (american institute of research, 1999), among many others--were especially prominent in gate. this was particularly the case at the beginning of the program, before teachers and administrators had a chance to engage in systematic classroom observation and to open-up questions about the relationship of gender to race, class, and other cultural differences. indeed, as will be explored in building on student knowledge: a new frame for gender equity in education that transcends the sameness/difference dichotomy current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 27 greater detail throughout the paper, one could go as far as to say that gate suffered from an "identity crisis," as participants struggled to understand what it meant to identify and single-out gender as an issue to be addressed within the larger framework of students' lives, and the larger culture of school reform. there are many different facets of gender bias in education, including: teacher and administrator bias (both conscious and unconscious); under-representation of girls and women in the curriculum; differential tracking and career counseling; sexual harassment and bullying; and inequitable or at least differential distribution of resources and support. addressing any of these issues further requires delving into more complicated areas of girls' self-esteem, biological differences between males and females, the cultural construction of gender, teachers' own experiences and values, and community and cultural expectations and traditions. furthermore, all of these concerns are greatly complicated by related issues of how race and class impact students' achievement. the name gate was broad enough to appeal to a wide variety of educators and to encourage work across these different areas. however, the ambiguity of its title further contributed to gate's identity crisis. included in the program were teachers and administrators who already considered themselves to be feminists, highly aware of gender issues, and actively working to promote feminist pedagogy in their schools. others were just beginning to acknowledge and explore these issues--trying to remain open minded, but still somewhat skeptical. some participants were primarily concerned with helping african-american boys--a group they deemed to be most "at-risk"--while others saw gender simply as a synonym for girls. as one seminar facilitator summed it up: "the opinions [in our group] ranged from that of the 'reality checker' to the 'extremist' who saw phallic symbols and [menstrual] bleeding as factors that influence the perceptions of everyone human." in looking at their applications almost a decade later, it is easy to see several competing, and often contradictory discourses about gender in education that framed practitioners support and understanding of the program. such discourses are still prevalent today. one such discourse might be called the sameness discourse, where teachers actively strove to be "gender-blind" e.g., not to treat boys and girls differentially in any way. for example, a large number of teachers noted on their applications that they were primarily concerned with giving boys and girls equal amounts of attention and resources: • "i am very aware of my own tendency to pay more attention to boys than to girls in the classroom." • "why are girls' sports not given as much attention and money as boys' sports in the schools…?" • "females and minorities are currently underrepresented in the areas of math and science." another discourse reflected exactly the opposite perspective, focusing on (perceived) differences between genders--regardless of whether or not these differences were thought to be innate (biological) or socially constructed: • "i would like to further address the need for revised curriculum based on the knowledge that girls and boys do have different learning needs." • "[i am interested in addressing] teaching differences in boys and in girls re: attention alice e. ginsberg 28 december 16, 2002 span, classroom structure and discipline." • "the behaviors of male teenagers as opposed to female teenagers, as well as the attitudes which each group brings to the educational environment need to be examined." still others were more interested in investigating gender stereotypes and the construction of gendered identities, such as those who noted: • "how many girls during shop class have been told not to handle the saws, let the boys do that or keep to the sanding and let the boys cut the wood?" • "girls are still taught that their primary role in life is to learn to cook, clean and keep house for their future husbands." • "parents have different expectations for boys and girls." within this particular discourse, teachers and administrators were more or less aware of the larger political, social, and cultural implications of these stereotypes, and the ways in which schools were only one of many institutions in which they were perpetuated: • "sex education in our health classes need to do more than teach students facts about the male and female reproductive systems…part of our discussions also need to focus on other differences between males and females, including the 'male superiority,' and the 'right' many men feel they have to dominate and control women." • "many of our male students seem to be able to relate to females in sexual relationships but have difficulty accepting females as equals, either in or out of the classroom." while some teachers and administrators felt that girls should receive special attention and extra resources to compensate for past inequities, a discourse similar to affirmative action, others were hesitant to focus on girls at all, underscoring the need to focus on supporting urban, minority and "at-risk" boys instead: • "like many of my colleagues, i am reluctant to withhold any of my attention from the boys because many of them seem to be so 'at risk.' i am very interested in exploring and trying to deal with this conflict." • "minority and female teachers need to begin to appreciate the obstacles that many urban males face." • "why are there classes for pregnant girls in order to keep them in school but not for males who are struggling with no support systems?" • "how can females help and support men to be more nurturing--more emotional and accepted?" likewise, many participants were reluctant to focus too heavily on gender at all, recognizing that race and class were hugely significant issues for students in urban schools--perhaps even more so than gender: • "i am interested in learning strategies that help students investigate their racial stereotyping, particularly as it relates to african-american and asian communities. too often each accuses each other of receiving preferential treatment in school and in government agencies." • "i am interested in learning more about the values that asians hold. i expect that through participation in the program i will be better prepared to help our asian students discuss and share their needs, fears, and modes of thinking." building on student knowledge: a new frame for gender equity in education that transcends the sameness/difference dichotomy current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 29 • "in the past couple of years i've seen a rise in racism among my students. both physical and verbal abuse is escalating." • "as an african american woman, i am particularly interested in helping teachers become sensitized to the pressures that african-american youth face." and one lone teacher went as far as to write that her primary interest was in addressing "issues that transcend all groups." in other words, in an application to a program called gender awareness through education, this teacher was reluctant to single-out any specific group of students as needing special attention, assistance, or remediation. moreover, teachers, administrators and parents from different schools and in different seminar groups attempted to address these questions and dilemmas in radically different ways. one group of elementary school teachers, for example, consistently tried to minimize any differences or inequities between children in their school--noting that the "problems" began at the middle and high school levels, and that their concern was preparing children for this transition. the schools team leader, for example, noted on several occasions that: "at the elementary level girls shine. i am concerned when they get to a larger school…" and "our kids do fine….our girls are much brighter than the boys. they get into high school and we get reports that they are not doing so well. how do you get a kid to realize it could happen to them?" the high school participants with whom they met monthly, on the other hand, were quick to acknowledge a wide range of gender issues of ongoing concern to them. (indeed, gender was hard to ignore in a school of 3,000 students where an average of 350 female students became pregnant and gave birth every year.) yet many of these teachers and administrators seemed to want to address gender issues primarily in terms of equity of numbers and representation. for example, the teachers became increasingly aware that there were no female inductees on the school's "hall of fame." according to one teacher: "[gate] made us think. now hold it!" the teachers made a concentrated effort to include girls the following year. in a similar example--but this one regarding discrimination against boys--one teacher noted that only male students swept the floor (e.g., in labs, etc.), even though "everyone had been responsible for the dirt." according to the seminar facilitator, "the group concluded that tasks should not be determined by gender. the teacher said that she would make a genuine attempt to correct the problem." the participants were likewise interested in making sure that they gave girls and boys equal amounts of attention. one high school teacher for example, noted that she asked her students to keep track of how many times she called on boys or girls during math class, and began making a conscious effort to be fairer. the teachers also looked to incorporate more literature by and about women into english and history classes. gate was very instrumental in this regard, as much of what the participants did during the monthly seminar meetings was read and discuss such literature themselves. seminar readings included morrison's the bluest eye, cisneos' house on mango street, kingsolver's the bean trees, and tan's the kitchen god's wife, among many others. as these teachers and administrators often noted, they wanted activities that could be directly translated into the classroom, that were "content" and "focus" based. by contrast, another group of middle and high school teachers and administrators alice e. ginsberg 30 december 16, 2002 participating in the program opted for what might be called a critical pedagogy approach. in other words, they were less interested in "fixing" the problems than they were in understanding them; they were less interested in telling students how to behave and what was "fair," than they were in helping students to frame their own questions and consider the answers from multiple perspectives. perhaps most importantly, they engaged in on-going classroom observation, which, in many cases, progressed into action research projects and the development of an inquiry community for analyzing and comparing data. this data ultimately helped them to challenge some prevalent assumptions about gender which enabled them to move beyond the sameness/difference debate. challenging assumptions while all of the gate participants accomplished a great deal in terms of becoming more "aware" of gender issues in their schools, and, to whatever degree possible, addressing and mediating those issues, in the remainder of this paper i argue that those that used a critical pedagogy approach ultimately engaged their students more deeply, were more self-reflective about their own biases and perpetuation of gender stereotypes, and created more sustained changes in their school culture. i illustrate this by exploring a number of examples and case studies of teachers who used innovative and unique approaches to challenge prevalent assumptions about gender with their students, enabling them to see their own lives, cultures, communities and education itself in radically new ways. i will address in more depth a few of the most compelling questions that were raised through this process, describe some of the accompanying action research projects and data collected, consider how this data was analyzed, as well as the resulting ideas, reforms, insights and questions were raised by educators and students alike as a result. the questions raised by gate participants that i wish to focus most directly on--all interrelated--include: how does discussion of gender issues naturally move from "school" issues to "home" issues? how can we know students personally without invading their privacy? do we adjust academic standards to meet reality? how does being "powerless" cut across all lines? do i point out how girls differ from boys, or just encourage them without making a big deal about my perceived differences? these questions were particularly powerful in gate because the schools involved were in poor, minority, urban neighborhoods, with a great deficit of resources, and where students' home and school experiences often resulted in clashing realities and expectations. these were students that could greatly benefit from what is often termed an "ethic of care" which, in this context, means: increased access to role models, mentors, psychological and physiological support services; efforts to reach out to families and communities and to involve them more meaningfully in their children's education; and school staff who better understand and respect students' diverse cultures and values. as shapiro and stefkovich (2001) further describe it, the ethic of care suggests that: "students are at the center of the educational process and need to be nurtured and encouraged, a concept that likely goes against the grain of those attempting to make 'achievement' the top priority" (pp.16-17). this does not mean that achievement is irrelevant, a discourse that is prevalent in attacks that urban schools should focus more building on student knowledge: a new frame for gender equity in education that transcends the sameness/difference dichotomy current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 31 heavily on teaching students "the basics" rather than bolstering self-esteem. it does mean, however, as shapiro and stefkovich (2001) further suggest, that all educational stakeholders need to continually ask themselves: "who will benefit from what i decide? who will be hurt by my actions? what are the long-term effects of a decision i make today?" (p. 17) unfortunately, in many cases, just the reverse occurs. students (and their families) in such communities are often deemed trouble-makers, not intelligent, lazy, not committed to school, etc. boys are often thought to be headed for unemployment or prison, while girls are written-off as "sure to get pregnant" at an early age and likely end up on welfare. while statistics may show that these concerns are not ridiculous, the point is to understand and address the larger social and political systems that rob students of choices and create these often depressed realities. while no one is arguing against personal responsibility, the tactic of "blaming" students needs to be challenged within a broader framework of "care" and building on student knowledge. building on student knowledge gate participants did indeed challenge these assumptions of student laziness, lack of intelligence, etc., but they did so by listening closely to students' voices, and giving students increased opportunities to engage in self-reflection, critical exploration, and problems solving. one middle school teacher, for example, read and discussed sonia sanchez's short story "norma" with her class. in the autobiographical story, sanchez describes a girl she went to school with who was very gifted in math, while sanchez herself seriously struggled with it. this girl, however, was defiant and outspoken, and often got into trouble. she eventually dropped out of school. years later, sanchez encounters this girl on the street; she had become a teenage mother of many children and was now a drug addict. when the gate teacher asked her students what they thought of the story, and in particular what it said about the issue of student achievement, one outspoken fourteen-year old african american female student responded: "when a girl has an attitude, life makes it hard for her if she doesn't get rid of it when she grows up." another student added: you teachers look at girls, and if a girl seems dumb, you say, "oh, she's probably going to drop out and get pregnant." if a girl seems smart you say, "oh, you're going to be a doctor or a lawyer." well this story proves you shouldn't judge yet. these two comments, along with many others, provided the teachers with a number of important insights. the first was, in the teachers' own words: "how sensitive and perceptive students are to teachers' unconscious and conscious expectations for them based on one-dimensional factors." in addition, the first student raised the issue of whether girls who do not conform to rigid gender and racial norms (e.g., "have an attitude" rather than are compliant and passive) are unfairly penalized. race and class are unstated but prominent factors here as well, as many gender norms surrounding "good behavior" are often created within white, middle class culture values and norms. the second student quoted above raised the issue of whether intelligence is really the marker of future success, as education rhetoric certainly perpetuates, or whether students' future success is achieved through a more multifaceted combination of encouragement, support, caring, positive expectations, and patience from teachers and alice e. ginsberg 32 december 16, 2002 other adults. a high school history teacher addressed a similar set of concerns about post-school "success," through a class-wide examination of the play, raisin in the sun. while this work is frequently included in school curriculums to represent "the african american experience," this teacher decided to broaden the discussion of the play, by having students work in small groups to explore a variety of issues both within the play itself, as well as in their own homes and communities. he began by asking students to chart the stresses, rewards, responsibilities, challenges, compromises, and sacrifices implicit in the work lives of the female characters. students then developed a series of questions and conducted interviews with family and community members to learn more about how they viewed "women's work." as one student reflected at the end of the project, "i've seen how hard my mother works day after day, and i've been told of her struggles often, but i don't think i've fully appreciated her hard work, or any mother's hard work, until now." what is noteworthy here is not only that students gained a greater appreciation of women's work, and a deeper understanding of some of the social and political systems that restrict and marginalize women's opportunities and contributions, but also that students were at the center of the learning process. as the teacher noted, he was able to "make gender central," without making it like he was teaching his students "appropriate gender roles, or appropriate ways of talking about gender." he further noted that what made the project work was that it was "building on student knowledge." in other words, students were exploring issues that were important to them, through a series of questions which they developed and that were posed to people that they care about. and, finally, the project was important because the information they collected was reflective of and relevant to their own lives and experiences. this process of "building on student knowledge" was repeated by teachers from many different grade-levels and disciplines. a middle school art teacher, for example, explored "gendered conversations" that took place among students in her classroom about the depiction of women's bodies (both naked and clothed); appropriate expressions of masculinity such as whether there are such things as "sissy colors"; the negative portrayal of women in rap videos; and whether white teachers could be "trusted" to teach black history. while some of these conversations were seemingly unrelated to the formal art curriculum, this teacher concluded that they were, in fact, deeply reflected in students' art work, as well as the ways that they talked about the issues and images raised in their classroom assignments. this is clearly exemplified in one assignment, where students were asked to create their own mythical creatures, and one girl wrote: my story is about a mermaid name shereise. she has her hair in a bun. a green fish tale. she also has blue eyes and lives in the meditterane sea. she died. she was killed by a fisherman because she didn't let him touch her. horrible! isn't it! the symbol of the fisherman in this story suggests both a male in power and a being building on student knowledge: a new frame for gender equity in education that transcends the sameness/difference dichotomy current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 33 from another culture (e.g., land vs. water). it is thus highly significant that she was killed because she didn't let him touch her--which could be read literally as sexual abuse, or metaphorically as refusing to be captured (e.g., subsumed by another culture; assimilated). in other words, despite the depiction of the mermaid's storybook blue eyes, this is clearly no disney story. a science teacher asked her students to study and write reports about male and female scientists only to be told that her students could not find many female scientists in their textbooks. when she asked why that might be the case, male students responded with comments such as: "i think we probably didn't find more women because women are lazy," "it's too dirty for women and they're not strong enough anyway," and "girls have to spend so much time looking pretty they can't spend the long hours it takes to be a scientist." to her surprise, some female students supported such comments (whether seriously or with irony it is not easy to tell), noting that girls needed to concentrate on being homemakers because "men don't want to take care of themselves," and "boys bring home the bacon and girls cook it." thus, rather than ignoring the disparity between the number of boys versus the number of girls taking higher level science courses and entering science careers, or rather than simply telling girls "they can do it," and encouraging them to pursue science despite the obvious psychological obstacles they needed to overcome, this teacher took a notably different approach. she sought to better understand her students underlying assumptions about gender and science-assumptions that could not easily be dismissed--and help students to begin to become more conscious of such assumptions as well. following an ordinary classroom assignment on "current events," a high school history teacher found herself and her students deeply immersed in a project which involved ongoing correspondence with men and women at local prisons. this project was, as the teacher describes: "student initiated and had the interests of students…the incarceration level for many members of the african american community is high. many students knew someone who was locked up or knew someone who knew someone in jail." the point of this project was not to overtly "warn students" against the consequences of committing crimes, but rather for students to collect their own data comparing "what they knew or had heard about prison" with stories and advice from actual prisoners. through this process students not only learned a great deal about the criminal justice system, but, according to the teacher: they were encouraged to think about alternatives to violence in conflict situations….we were able to take negative experiences and make them into positive learning experiences. students appreciated the advice and influence of parents, family, and other adults with regard to attempting to keep them out of jail. students began to understand such concepts as prison industrial complex, rehabilitation, death penalty, life in prison, etc. it is also significant to note, with regards to gender, that students considered why female prisoners were less likely to answer their questions, and, as a class, they speculated as to why this might be the case: were there too many questions? should they have written women in letter format as opposed to questions format? are women more ashamed of alice e. ginsberg 34 december 16, 2002 imprisonment than men? these questions formed the basis for ongoing exploration, which eventually led one young woman to go to work in a prison after graduation. a high school special education teacher, who also wondered about the relative "silence" of females, convened a group of girls from one of her classes whom she found to be unusually quiet in class. she wanted to better understand why they did not talk more, and why they let boys make degrading and negative comments about them. among one another (e.g., "safe space") the girls were very vocal about their experiences in school. what the teacher found as they talked over lunch greatly surprised her. while the girls' explained their silence with comments such as "it ain't my place 'cause i ain't got nothin' to say" and "you mind your business till it's your turn, just shut your mouth and let somebody else talk," the teacher began to wonder whether "what they were saying had a connection to the issue of power." she went on to ask the girls: let me see how this sounds--see if this sounds right to you, it almost sounds as if you've let them run their mouths because you let them think they're in control, but you're not giving them control over you because you are not giving them a chance to argue with you. the girls all agreed that this sounded correct, lending a very different definition of girls' silence--in this case being a kind of passive-aggressive defiance. it was not only teachers, however, who attempted to use critical pedagogy and action research to better understand students and help them excel. a dean of students (e.g., school disciplinarian), for example, explored the relationships between mothers and sons who were brought to her office. she became concerned by the number of mothers who seemed to condone their son's violent behavior, even to the point of allowing them to carry guns. her systemic, open-minded observation led her to identify a number of "recurring themes" including: mothers' expectations for their male children; issues of physical safety and protection; the way behavior is explained; and the question of who is "in charge." over time, the dean came to understand that, in many cases, these boys were expected to "protect" their families, in what were unquestionably very real and very dangerous situations. yet rather than conclude that these neighborhoods were "hopeless" or that these young men were innately violent, she began to consider the problem in the larger context of poverty, racism, and the failure of social welfare systems. while the project ultimately created more questions than it did answers, the process was nonetheless a highly rewarding one. noted the dean: how can parents and teachers work with these young men to help them toward successful relationships with others in their families and in the workplace? should i acknowledge that our views and goals might be different, that what seems to work on the street does not work at school or even that what seems to work on the street could in reality be putting their children at risk? how would this be received? what are the alternatives? can the curriculum itself help open up these topics for discussion, so that some student might recognize choices where they previously saw the world as beyond their control, or out of their control? building on student knowledge: a new frame for gender equity in education that transcends the sameness/difference dichotomy current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 35 here, the dean recognizes that there are no easy solutions to these problems. her final point, however, that the curriculum itself could be used to open up discussion of such issues, is an especially important one. once again, the emphasis is not on teaching student "appropriate" behavior or roles, but rather on engaging students themselves in the process of defining the problems and in seeking answers. in other words, schools should be places where students are not simply given knowledge, but are given agency. this is a critical step in the process of critical pedagogy, for, as finn (1999) suggests: "if we teach children to critique the world but fail to teach them to act, we instill cynicism and despair" (p.185). conclusion many more examples of such work can be culled from the gate program (see for example, pennsylvania humanities council, 1997; ginsberg, 1999; ginsberg, shapiro, & brown, 2000, forthcoming, 2003; shapiro, ginsberg, & brown, 2002) this is not to say, of course, that gate was without disappointments and hurdles. as anyone who has ever attempted to implement a reform program of this nature in a large urban school district knows, such programs rarely go "as planned." gate was hindered by the isolation of the teachers involved who found little support from their non-participating colleagues, and who were faced with multiple, often competing reform mandates at once. many participants were also reluctant to take a critical pedagogy approach or engage in teacher research because of the great amount of time involved in such activities in a culture where time is an extremely limited commodity, and where high stakes testing was of primary concern. on the other hand, gate offered teachers and administrators opportunities to meet regularly, and to build a sustained professional development and inquiry community. in this capacity, they were able to pose and investigate joint questions, bring diverse perspectives and viewpoints to each others' work, and, perhaps most importantly, to find others who supported them in their quest to make gender an internalized critical lens of exploration. the program also emphasized the need to redefine professional development in ways that are less didactic and "packaged," and are more focused on giving teachers, administrators, parents, and students a chance to fully engage in curriculum content and construction, as well as to define gender on their own terms. as one high school history teacher noted: when gate began i was thinking in terms of introducing a more balanced approach to women's place in history, whereas now i see the need for helping young women to determine their identities on their own terms. while gender equity in education has been frequently reduced in public discussion to a discourse of sameness vs. difference--a discourse that tends to reduce boys and girls to singular and one-dimensional categories--there are other ways to understand and approach the issue. using a critical pedagogy approach which challenges first assumptions and privileges student knowledge and experiences, educators can approach gender equity in a way that is both site-specific, respectful of different cultures, and invites ongoing inquiry and action. as one seminar facilitator emphasized in her final report: "if it hadn't stimulated new questions it would not have achieved alice e. ginsberg 36 december 16, 2002 anything. since participants and facilitators left the project with many more questions regarding gender, we can be certain that gate represented a success professional development program." most importantly, students, many of whom are continually silenced in school settings, can be given an agency which allows their voices to finally be heard--and counted. as one gate teacher concluded at the end of the program: from the beginning of my gender-focused activities, one fact emerged--my students have a lot to say. my greatest source of satisfaction is the number of young people who know that i listened and heard their voices as we attempted to work through this together. references american institute of research. (1999). gender gaps: where schools still fail our children. new york: marlowe & company. baily, s. et al. (1992). aauw report: how schools shortchange girls. washington, d.c.: american association of university women. belenky, m. f., clinchy, b. m., goldenberger, n. r., & tarule, j. m. (1986). women's ways of knowing: the development of self, voice and mind. new york: basic books. finn, c. (1999). literacy with an attitude: educating working-class children in their own selfinterest. new york: state university of new york press. ginsberg, a. e. (1999). when policymakers and practitioners partner: a stakeholder analysis of an urban school reform program. unpublished doctoral dissertation. ginsberg, a. e, shapiro, j. p., & brown, s.p. (2000, fall/winter). opening the gate (gender awareness through education): a doorway to gender equity. women's studies quarterly. ginsberg, a. e., shapiro, j. p., & brown, s. p. (forthcoming 2003). staying focused on gender in urban education: stories, strategies, and student achievement. portsmouth, nh: heinemann press. gurian, m. (2001). boys and girls learn differently! san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. pennsylvania humanities council. (1997, december). gender awareness through education. report. philadelphia: author. sadker, m., & sadker, d. (1994). failing at fairness: how our schools cheat girls. new york: charles scribner and sons. shapiro, j. p., & stefkovich, j. a. (2001). ethnical leadership and decision making in education. mahwah, new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. shapiro, j. p., ginsberg, a. e., & brown, s. p. (2002, october 4). family and community participation in urban schools: the ethic of care. paper presented at the toronto conference, 7th annual values and leadership conference, sponsored by building on student knowledge: a new frame for gender equity in education that transcends the sameness/difference dichotomy current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 37 oise/university of toronto, toronto, canada. background to this article: cice is not responsible for the content of external links. pennsylvania humanities council microsoft word gibson and rios_editedandformatted _tanya jan 15_ webeditor.doc © 2006 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 9(1) 69 globalization, immigration, and the education of “new” immigrants in the 21st century margaret a. (greta) gibson university of california, santa cruz anne ríos rojas university of california, santa cruz migration, no longer restricted to regional spaces or particular nation-states, is a matter of global concern today. the accelerated movement of peoples, goods, and technologies across regional, national, and transnational borders is one of the undeniable by-products of globalization that is transforming the social, cultural, and political landscapes of societies throughout the globe. globalization, however, and the rapid social changes it has engendered, is as much about deterritorialization and the displacement of a large and growing number of peoples, as it is about the free movement of capital, information, and services (suárez-orozco, 2001), resulting in profound if not violent human consequences and intensifying patterns of inequality (bauman, 1998; alexander, 2005). as papademetriou (2006) notes, these “new” migrations “touch the lives of more people and loom larger in the politics and economics of more states than at any other time in the modern era” (p. xv). the current “age of migration” (castles & miller, 1993) and the resulting forms of cultural diversity it has given rise to, raise critical questions pertaining to immigrant identities, multiculturalism, and multicultural integration for liberal democracies and their supporting institutions. for western industrialized societies seemingly burdened with absorbing large flows of newcomers, immigration often inspires prickly, if not virulent, debates around citizenship, belonging, displacement, and exile. whether framed in terms of incorporation or exclusion, the construction of the “immigrant” as a subject requiring intervention wields substantial symbolic power in “advanced” societies dealing with the “problems” of immigration today.1 industrialized nations’ contested relationships with immigration are manifested not only in official policies directed at immigrants, but also in popular representations of immigration and immigrants in newspapers, magazine covers, and other print media across the globe. leo chavez (2001) describes the range of visual imagery and metaphors employed to speak of immigration in the united states, including “national crisis,” “illegals,” and “invasion.” such images speak to tacit assumptions and unstated questions of who legitimately belongs to the nation, who are the “real” citizens, and where immigrants and the children of immigrants fit in relation to such conceptions. an underlying message these images convey is that immigration poses a threat to the nation-state’s supposed cultural homogeneity and is thus a problem requiring redress and control (martín muñoz, garcía castaño, lópez sala, & crespo, 2003). in this manner, multiculturalism is rendered a “challenge” rather than a form of “enrichment” (baubock & rundell, 1998). margaret a. (greta) gibson and anne ríos rojas 70 december 7, 2006 as suárez-orozco (2001) notes, one of the most visible indicators of globalization, and the largescale migrations it generates, is the unprecedented enrollment of children of immigrants in european and american schools. the education of today’s new immigrants must be understood within the web of power relations that span transnational spaces opened up by globalization and that shape children’s life trajectories and options for the future (suárezorozco, 2001). the contentious nature of immigration and attendant representations of immigrants must be kept in mind when considering the experiences of immigrant children, as these often translate into policies and practices that affect educational opportunity. after all, schools do not stand apart from political processes and discourses; rather, they are implicated in them in particularly powerful ways. as carrasco and colleagues observe, schools serve as spaces of mandatory contact between differentially positioned groups that might not have come together on their own accord (carrasco, ballestin, beltran, gaggiotti, kaplan, marre, et al. 2004). for this reason, they become a principal location for struggles over membership and citizenship (bejerano, 2005). these moments of contact can either become politicized, escalating into conflict, or they can be tempered in ways that create inclusive communities and allow for expanded forms of belonging and citizenship. although the struggles of multicultural contact are not restricted to the educational arena, schools, as microcosms of larger society, are often sites of contestation and contradiction for immigrant and minority youth who must negotiate their inherent paradoxical potential to be both “free[ing] and fetter[ing]” (henry, 1963), “additive and subtractive” (gibson, 1995; valenzuela, 1999), and “welcoming and unwelcoming” (gitlin, buendía, crosland & doumbia, 2003). an analysis of the schooling of immigrant children and youth must therefore engage with the contentious nature of immigration, the contradictions it engenders, and the manner in which national systems of education, even in their efforts to welcome and include, reproduce “unequal and dual forms of citizenship” (burch, 2001, p. 265; see also westheimer & kahne, 2004). as gomolla (this volume) argues in her comparison of school-improvement strategies in britain, germany, and switzerland, schools (and nations) vary significantly in their approaches to addressing the educational opportunity gap between immigrant and nonimmigrant populations. gomolla speaks in particular to how market-driven and performance-oriented educational reforms can work to inadvertently exclude the children of immigrants. in particular, she highlights the ways in which the pervasiveness of institutional discrimination and racism in the micro-politics of community and school settings limit educational opportunity. her essay is a testament to the value of cross-national comparative research focused on how different nation-states address issues of inclusion and social justice. most promising in her analysis was the swiss school that emphasized the centrality of teaching and learning (over testing) and focused on change at the level of the whole school. too often, teachers, students, and schools are celebrated for their testing achievements rather than for the meaningful ways in which they promote safe and inclusive environments for students. mechanisms of discrimination that construct racial and ethnic inequalities, as gomolla importantly notes, often interact with class and gender. qin (this volume) contributes to the literature in this area. her work, which focuses primarily on the role of gender in the educational adaptations of immigrant children, draws upon a rich collection of recent qualitative studies that document immigrant girls’ apparent advantages over boys in schools in the u.s. these studies and others provide mounting evidence that in a wide array of immigrant groups and across national settings girls remain in school longer, receive higher grades, and are globalization, immigration, and the education of “new” immigrants in the 21st century current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 71 more likely to attend institutions of higher education than boys.2 qin’s research points to the interaction between home and peer factors, as well as school structures, in shaping immigrant girls’ and boys’ differential school adaptation patterns. her attention to the gendered nature of ethnic identity formation and acculturation is of particular interest in light of this volume’s focus on problematizing and moving beyond the classic straight-line model of assimilation. drawing from data collected as part of the lisa study at harvard, a longitudinal investigation that charted the acculturation and adaptation patterns of over 400 immigrant youth for five years, qin found that over time immigrant boys across all five groups studied were “significantly less likely than girls to identify with their culture of origin” and that “the immigrant girls were more likely than boys to choose ‘additive’ or ‘hyphenated identities,’ indicating attempts to bridge the two cultures” (p. 14). qin’s findings add to an accumulating body of work that suggests that school success is enhanced when immigrant and minority students remain anchored in their communities of origin while also drawing upon a strategy of “selective acculturation” (philips, 1976; portes & rumbaut, 1996) or “additive acculturation” (gibson, 1995). quite rightly, qin calls for more research examining the intersecting impacts of gender, ethnicity, and class on academic achievement. specifically, additional research is needed on why immigrant boys may have a more difficult time than immigrant girls pursuing the additive strategy described above. additionally, the field would benefit from studies that shed light on how schools themselves, through their structures and practices, promote or impede the acquisition of bicultural and hybrid competencies. other relevant areas of inquiry include the ways in which immigrants and the children of immigrants negotiate the contradictions inherent in nationalist frameworks, as well as the manner in which they participate in (re)imagining alternative forms of citizenship and belonging in their everyday lives that extend beyond assimilationist and integrationist discourses. the concept of “cosmopolitanism” that walker and serrano (this volume) discuss is a potential paradigm for understanding the transnational networks and reformulations of citizenship taking place at simultaneously local and global levels. drawing from their work with the otavalos population in ecuador and overseas, walker and serrano counter assumptions that the more cosmopolitan a group becomes, the less it remains rooted in and attached to its indigenous culture and values. in fact, one might characterize the otavalos as successfully practicing a strategy of selective or additive acculturation. although their study is not centered on school sites, walker and serrano’s findings have valuable implications for education in the modern era of globalization. their work speaks to the urgent need to create more cosmopolitan learning environments and to nurture cosmopolitan identities. in looking to how schools might do this, a note of caution is offered. identities, no matter how cosmopolitan, are always constituted in relations of power that are historically determined. the cosmopolitanism practiced by actors whose flexible and privileged locations within the global economy have allowed for their more or less free movement across borders must be kept distinct from the tactics developed in the context of coerced displacement and continued surveillance that circumscribe the parameters of belonging and structure the social and material experiences of less privileged groups. like walker and serrano, mossayeb and shirazi (this volume) focus on an immigrant group that remains strongly anchored in the culture of its country of origin. however, in contrast to the otavalos, their case centers on a privileged, welleducated, and affluent group: iranians who chose to immigrate to the united states to take advantage of the perceived educational opportunities, particularly in higher education. in examining educational and acculturation strategies across immigrant groups, it is important to margaret a. (greta) gibson and anne ríos rojas 72 december 7, 2006 attend closely to the types of cultural, social, and economic capital immigrants bring with them. clearly, the iranians surveyed by mossayeb and shirazi are an advantaged group, rich in the forms of capital that typically propel success in school. in conducting comparative research on immigrant and refugee populations, it is essential to take stock of the ways in which a group’s educational strategies and negotiations are conditioned not only by institutional structures but also by its multiple social locations in the new society, including race, class, gender, and sexuality. with respect to the iranian group, it might be instructive to ask how its class position shapes its educational trajectories in the united states. it is also useful to ask how the educational strategies of refugee and affluent immigrant groups, such as the iranians in the u.s., differ from those of groups lacking similar advantages. the final paper, by mosselson (this volume), specifically challenges researchers to attend to the experiences of refugees and the ways in which they may differ from those of other immigrant groups. her study focuses on a group of female adolescent refugees from bosnia who have settled in new york city. even within her comparatively small sample of 15 young women, she finds substantial variability in patterns of identity construction and coping strategies. although her study offers little information on these women’s family situations prior to migration, it does highlight once again the need for understanding the types of capital the migrants bring with them and the strategies they employ in coping with their new environment. mosselson points to an important finding that refugee students’ academic achievements, as measured by their grades and accommodating behavior in school, may mask the oftentimes severe difficulties they in fact are encountering in adapting to their new surroundings. she cautions teachers and other educators to take a far more holistic approach to understanding the situations of their immigrant students. she also urges teachers to draw from the knowledge and experiences that these students bring with them to school. in considering immigration and education in the 21st century, it is necessary to keep in mind that education does not equate with schooling and that much of the education of immigrant children takes place outside of schools in their families and communities. it is imperative to recognize that the world is multicultural and that both multiculturalism and multicultural education are the “normal human experience” (goodenough, 1971, 1976).3 moreover, in this era of globalization, it is increasingly clear that multicultural competencies are an asset. more than any other time in history, schools need to prepare children for “world mobility,” a concept advocated by margaret mead some 60 years ago (mead, 1946, cited in st. lawrence & singleton, 1976, p. 22). in seeking to prepare children for a globalized world, educators and researchers must, however, attend carefully to how schools themselves, through their unequal relations of power, provide differential access to the cultural knowledge that is valued and rewarded within schools (goodenough, 1976). it is also necessary to explicitly and deliberately examine the constraints which inequality imposes on the acquisition of competence within school settings (lewis, 1976) and to question who holds the authority to judge competence (hill-burnett, 1976). the articles in this volume offer valuable opportunities to move beyond frameworks that construct immigration as a problem and that insist upon “repairing” immigrant students’ alleged deficits. an important step in moving forward rests in the ability to shift the focus from immigrant children’s “deficiencies” to the range of practices and “funds of knowledge” (moll, amanti, neff, & gonzalez, 1992) they bring with them. immigrants and migrants possess a wealth of cultural resources and competencies that allow them not only to function within their globalization, immigration, and the education of “new” immigrants in the 21st century current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 73 local communities but also enable them to participate in a diverse and global society. their high mobility, their travels across regional and national borders, their ability to speak multiple languages, and their ability to assume different identities depending on the context indicate that immigrants ought to be viewed as active social actors in the global community whose contributions as more than simply economic. frameworks such as additive acculturation, selective acculturation, and cosmopolitanism, among others,4 which challenge the limits of assimilationist discourses and capture immigrants’ agency, must continue to inform research imperatives. the value of these paradigms rests in their power to illuminate the myriad ways in which immigrants and their children draw upon their symbolic and material resources to navigate through educational systems in this increasing globalized world and to disrupt and transform static and hegemonic notions of citizenship and belonging. notes 1. degenova (2002) urges scholars to interrogate the teleological assumptions inherent in such terms as "immigrant," "immigration," and "illegal," noting how these concepts are most often posited from the perspectives of the immigrant-receiving societies. for this reason, we encapsulate certain terms in quotes as way of complicating their normal and taken-for-granted nature. the quotations are intended to signal towards questions that ask “for whom” immigration is a “problem.” to avoid the tedious exercise of continuously using quotation marks, we place terms in quotations only once. 2. for earlier works commenting on the gendered nature of immigrant students’ schooladaptation patterns see gibson, 1991, 1997; rumbaut, 1994; tomlinson, 1991. 3. we draw here from a special collection of papers published in 1976, which continue to speak today to the paradoxes and dilemmas of multicultural education (gibson, 1976). 4. see, for example, rosaldo’s (1994) discussion of “cultural citizenship.” as an analytical framework, cultural citizenship speaks to practices that disrupt the hegemony of official citizenship and assimilationist discourses to present alternate visions and voices of what it means to belong. the lens of cultural citizenship opens up avenues for exploring the role of schools and school structures in affirming alternative forms of belonging and membership among immigrant students. references alexander, j. 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(2004). what kind of citizen? the politics of educating for democracy? american educational research journal, 41(2), 237-269. volume 12(1) / fall 2009 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education guest editorial introduction 3 cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education andria wisler articles 6 rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education noah w. sobe 14 the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism: education for a shared humanity dale snauwaert 23 lonely business or mutual concern: the role of comparative education in the cosmopolitan citizenship debates anatoli rapoport 33 cosmopolitanism in civic education: exploring cross-national trends, 1970-2008 patricia bromley 45 study abroad and development of global citizen identity and cosmopolitan ideals in undergraduates karen hendershot and jill sperandio 56 educating the world: teachers and their work as defined by the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) helen harper and judith dunkerly 66 world-systems analysis in comparative education: an alternative to cosmopolitanism tom g. griffiths and lisa knezevic 76 smashing cosmopolitanism: the neo-liberal destruction of cosmopolitan education in eastcentral europe robert j. imre and zsuzsa millei essay 86 the evolution of a cosmopolitan identity: transforming culture shannan spisak 92 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 1 (2009) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden guest executive editor andria wisler visiting assistant professor, georgetown university, program of justice and peace executive editors cambria russell, andrew shiotani senior editors kathleen keenan, ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, cambria russell, michael schapira editors sarah flatto, michelle reddy, briana ronan, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors holly brewster, richard cheng, henan cheng, cara furman, anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, ghazala mehmood, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, carina omoeva, amritpal sandhu, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira style editors ruaridh macleod, ghazala mehmood, elizabeth morphis, amritpal sandhu web editor andrew shiotani associate web editors ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, ingrid gogolin, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. volume 12(1) / fall 2009 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education guest editorial introduction 3 cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education andria wisler articles 6 rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education noah w. sobe 14 the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism: education for a shared humanity dale snauwaert 23 lonely business or mutual concern: the role of comparative education in the cosmopolitan citizenship debates anatoli rapoport 33 cosmopolitanism in civic education: exploring cross-national trends, 1970-2008 patricia bromley 45 study abroad and development of global citizen identity and cosmopolitan ideals in undergraduates karen hendershot and jill sperandio 56 educating the world: teachers and their work as defined by the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) helen harper and judith dunkerly 66 world-systems analysis in comparative education: an alternative to cosmopolitanism tom g. griffiths and lisa knezevic 76 smashing cosmopolitanism: the neo-liberal destruction of cosmopolitan education in east-central europe robert j. imre and zsuzsa millei essay 86 the evolution of a cosmopolitan identity: transforming culture shannan spisak 92 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 1 (2009) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden guest executive editor andria wisler visiting assistant professor, georgetown university, program of justice and peace executive editors cambria russell, andrew shiotani senior editors kathleen keenan, ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, cambria russell, michael schapira editors sarah flatto, michelle reddy, briana ronan, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors holly brewster, richard cheng, henan cheng, cara furman, anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, ghazala mehmood, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, carina omoeva, amritpal sandhu, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira style editors ruaridh macleod, ghazala mehmood, elizabeth morphis, amritpal sandhu web editor andrew shiotani associate web editors ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, ingrid gogolin, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2009 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 12(1): 33-44. cosmopolitanism in civic education: exploring cross-national trends, 1970-2008 patricia bromley stanford university this study examines how far education systems worldwide have progressed from depicting society as rooted in a homogenous, bounded nation-state towards cosmopolitan emphases on a common humanity and social diversity. the research uses a unique longitudinal and cross-national primary source of data – high school civics, history, and social studies textbooks published since 1970. textbooks are central to socializing particular identities because they define legitimate knowledge and desirable social attributes, and also communicate privileged concepts of national or global citizenship. in this way, they can exacerbate national and sub-national ethnic and cultural conflicts, or help to support the development of cosmopolitan identities. i find a broad increase in cosmopolitan emphases of universalism and diversity in civic education curricula in much of the world. however, even within cosmopolitan theories there are divergent views on the potential implications of a more universal and diverse notion of citizenship for society. in the wake of world war ii, international attention turned to the detrimental role of education systems, and especially textbooks, in promoting hyper-nationalism. social science curricula at the time emphasized culturally homogenous citizens of unitary national states, often demonizing and stereotyping the ‘other’. early work by the united nations and many bilateral commissions aimed to reform school curricula with the goal of eradicating bias from society. such reforms reflected a broader and fundamental change in notions of citizenship – from focusing on the construction of a unitary national identity to embracing cosmopolitan ideals of protecting universal human rights and the diversity of special groups such as women or minorities. textbooks are central to efforts to socialize particular views of citizenship because they define legitimate knowledge and desirable social attributes, and also communicate preferred concepts of identity. in this way, they can exacerbate national and sub-national ethnic and cultural conflicts, or help to support the development of cosmopolitan identities. this study examines how far education systems worldwide have progressed from depicting society as rooted in a homogenous, bounded nation-state towards cosmopolitan emphases on diversity and human equality using a unique longitudinal and cross-national primary source of data – high school civics, history, and social studies textbooks published since 1970. i find a broad increase in cosmopolitan emphases in civic education curricula in much of the world. in the following sections i outline the existing research that frames this study, describe my data and methods, present findings, and discuss differing cosmopolitan interpretations of the results that lead to divergent implications for society. one view argues cosmopolitanism is fundamentally beneficial, and the ultimate fulfillment of cosmopolitan benefits will be best realized through the creation of a world state. a contrasting cosmopolitan perspective argues it is the absence of a world state that enables global social and cultural integration to flourish, and regards cosmopolitan trends as creating opportunities for evil as well as good. background in recent years many have noted a resurgence of attention to cosmopolitanism, often attributing this rise to the confluence of globalization, decolonization, migration and multiculturalism (see, for example, the thorough discussion in chapter 1 of vertovec & cohen, 2002). these global 34 current issues in comparative education p. bromley trends may be particularly amplified in the wake of world war ii, following the de-legitimization of nationalism (kaplan, 2006) and an increased emphasis on international cooperation through, for example, the creation of the united nations system. the construction of an increasingly integrated world has weakened an older notion of nation-states as insular polities with a culturally homogenous citizenry by shifting the locus of authority above and below the state, a process sometimes called “glocalization” (robertson, 1992). supra-nationally, these pressures cultivate a common, cosmopolitan frame of reference among individuals as agentic equals possessing inherent human rights. sub-nationally, they foster the identities and equality of diverse groups in society. despite widespread recognition of these trends, much social science research exhibits a methodological nationalism that precludes researchers from examining the effects of these global phenomena (beck & sznaider, 2006). in contrast, a cosmopolitan lens enables the exploration of changes in citizenship education worldwide. on one level all cosmopolitan approaches are similar in that they encourage the vision of an interconnected society and culture that is unbounded by the political territory of the nation-state, leading to analyses that consider influences and changes that go beyond national borders. a central component of cosmopolitanism is universalism, traditionally represented by the notion of world citizenship. indeed, the word ‘cosmopolitan’ itself comes from the classical greek ‘kosmou politês’ meaning a ‘citizen of the world’. the ideals of world citizenship remained a central tenet of cosmopolitanism through the enlightenment, most notably in the work of immanuel kant. contemporary cosmopolitan thinking has expanded notions of universalism from world citizenship to include the modern conception of human rights, an inherently universal notion. pogge (2008), for example, outlines a contemporary view of cosmopolitan morality “formulated in terms of human rights” (p. 176, emphasis in original), meaning that it “centers on the fundamental needs and interests of individual human beings, and of all human beings” (p. 184, emphasis in original). similarly, levy & sznaider (2004) describe “the recent proliferation of human rights ideas as a new form of cosmopolitanism” (p. 143). in the same vein, beetham (1999) outlines a proposal of human rights as a model for cosmopolitan democracy. in addition to incorporating the ideas of human rights, many contemporary interpretations of cosmopolitanism explicitly emphasize the potentially homogenizing force of universalism as emerging hand-in-hand with the celebration of diversity. in other words, cosmopolitanism “means not a replication of uniformity but an organization of diversity, an increasing interconnectedness of varied local cultures” (hannerz, 1996, p. 102). thus, being a cosmopolitan involves willingness to tolerate, celebrate, engage openly with, and even seek out diverse social and cultural experiences (levy & sznaider, 2004; hollinger, 1995; delanty, 2006a, 2006b; pollock et al, 2000). appiah (1997) extends this incorporation of diversity to include attachment to the nation-state through a ‘cosmopolitan patriotism’ or ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’. others accept diversity from social or cultural sources like gender or ethnicity, but conceptualize cosmopolitanism largely as an alternative to the political identities associated with national patriotism (nussbaum, 1994). although emerging together, the dual trends of universalism and diversity can come into conflict. cosmopolitan theories share the challenge of addressing whether universalism is benign, beneficial, or a form of hegemony, and how to balance universal principles with the empowerment of diverse groups in society (see breckenridge et al., 2002 for an in-depth discussion). a common clash occurs when the interests of corporate social groups, such as indigenous groups but also including nation-states, place obligations on members that possibly contradict the universal principles of human rights or limit individual freedoms. many scholars address this tension by celebrating a specific form of diversity, one rooted in individual choice, tolerance, and voluntary current issues in comparative education 35 cosmopolitanism in civic education participation in social groups. cosmopolitans promote diversity in the sense of accepting group membership as an individual choice and source of identity, but insist individual rights should not be subordinate to the interests of any particular social group (appiah, 1997; kymlicka, 1995). in the words of hartman & gerteis (2005) cosmopolitanism “defends diversity only insofar as it allows and expands individual rights and freedoms” (p. 228). in sum, contemporary cosmopolitanism includes two main emphases, universalism, in the form of global citizenship and human rights, and diversity, in the form of celebrating heterogeneous social groups and promoting equal rights for divergent groups. a mounting body of evidence suggests that conceptually and practically, notions of the nation-state as a territorially bounded polity governing a homogenous citizenry with a common culture are giving way to this cosmopolitan model. for example, sassen (2006) argues that notions of authority and rights, once constructed as territorially bounded to the nation-state, are increasingly denationalized. similarly, fligstein (2008) focuses on the emergence of a transnational identity in the european sphere. looking beyond europe, much recent scholarship shows that universal human rights are on the rise as a core component of contemporary world culture (keck & sikkink, 1998; ramirez et al., 2006; elliott, 2007). other world cultural studies show the empowerment of diverse groups such as indigenous peoples (cole, 2005), women (wotipka & ramirez, 2008), and children (boyle et al., 2007) over time. these de-nationalized, cosmopolitan trends are also reflected in civic education. meyer et al (forthcoming) find a dramatic increase in human rights emphases in civic education across many countries over time. using cross-sectional data from 28 mainly european countries, mintrop (2003) shows that there is a new face to civic education that emphasizes social movements, rights discourse, and critical thinking. similarly, levinson (2004) traces the rise of a new form of civic education in mexico designed to democratically empower students through student-centered pedagogy. in costa rica and argentina, suárez (2008) describes the rise of global human rights as a central feature of national civic education. while important in their own right, the majority of these studies are limited either by their focus on particular countries or regions, or they consider only a single time point. those that have global scope examine areas outside education or only partially consider the range of topics associated with cosmopolitanism. for instance, meyer et al. (forthcoming) looks only at human rights, rather than examining world citizenship, human rights, and diversity. thus, the question remains as to how far the shift towards a cosmopolitan world view plays out in citizenship education around the world, particularly given that mass schooling is still mostly under the control of national governments. data, measures & method i tracked the rise of emphases on universalism and diversity in 465 history, civics and social studies textbooks from 69 countries around the world published since 1970. the majority of books come from the georg eckert institute for international textbook research in braunschweig, germany. the institute collects social science textbooks from countries around the world and has a library with over 60,000 social science school books published since world war ii. it was founded after the second world war with the explicit aim of reforming social science curricula and textbooks to move them away from the nationalism thought to have generated the crises and tragedies of the first half of the twentieth century. textbooks were originally gathered and used as part of a project to examine human rights education led by john meyer and francisco ramirez (meyer et al., forthcoming). 36 current issues in comparative education p. bromley each book was coded on parameters designed to measure the cosmopolitan emphases of universalism and diversity (coding protocol available from author). to reduce error, each concept is constructed using two measures, and the measures themselves are constructed as indices of multiple items from the coding scheme, with the exception of a single question on whether global citizenship is mentioned. universal emphases are measured by a dichotomous indicator for whether the book mentions international citizenship and a factor index assessing the amount of discussion of human rights in the book. the four items in the human rights index are substantially inter-correlated and load heavily onto one underlying factor. the items are: (a) the amount of explicit discussion of human rights (zero to five scale, zero being no discussion and five being over half the book) (b) the number of international human rights documents mentioned (e.g., united nations charter, convention on the rights of the child) (c) reference to any national human rights documents or national governmental bodies (e.g., the declaration of the rights of man or an ombudsman’s office for human rights) (d) discussion of any major human rights disaster (e.g., the holocaust), conceived in human rights terms rather than simply as a great historical tragedy. diversity emphases are measured, first, using an index of the amount of the book dedicated to heterogeneous social groups and interests. the specific groups and interests included are: women, the elderly, racial and ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, immigrants or refugees, disabled or special needs, homosexuals, the poor (or poverty), health, education, language or culture. each group or interest is measured on a scale from zero-to-five (zero being no discussion and five being over half the book) and summed to create an index that ranges from zero to thirty-seven. second, diversity is measured using an index ranging from zero to eleven of whether these same groups and interests are mentioned as bearing rights, which indicates an emphasis on the equality of divergent groups and interests within society. in the course of developing the coding scheme and analyzing the textbooks, every effort was made to reduce error, including the challenges of translation, by checking inter-rater reliability, searching out fully bilingual translators (most often native speakers of the textbook language pursuing a higher education degree in english), sitting with translators as they coded textbooks to answer questions, and reviewing each coding sheet to check for inconsistencies. most importantly, the questions are factual in nature, not relying on the judgment or content knowledge of coders and translators. there are several limitations to this data. it is not feasible to obtain a representative sample of textbooks from each country over time, and it is impossible to know the extent to which each book is used in the classroom or assess how students are being influenced. these drawbacks limit the transferability of my results and hinder my ability to consider the extent to which curricula is a specific mechanism through which national identity is constructed. however, the difficulty of obtaining relevant longitudinal, cross-national data contributes to the dearth of research that extends beyond nation-state boundaries. the method used to analyze data is descriptive. i analyze whether the mean scores on the measures of universalism and diversity described above change significantly over time around the world. to track change over time the books are divided into two periods, 1970-1994 and 19952008. this split reflects both substantive reasons (to capture changes in eastern europe from the 1990s) and has a methodological rationale (the sample is divided roughly evenly at this time point). looking at trends in five or ten year increments results in similar findings to those reported current issues in comparative education 37 cosmopolitanism in civic education here. means are presented for the whole sample and sub-samples representing six world regions, western europe and north america (plus australia and new zealand), eastern europe, subsaharan africa, the middle east and north africa, asia, and latin america and the caribbean. the sample size within each region and time period influences the significance of the means test, and further methodological checks indicated that creating more detailed regional breakdowns (such as splitting asia into east asia and south asia) weakened the analyses. however, checking more nuanced country groupings was valuable to ensure that generally countries within a region follow similar trends. a notable outlier is the case of israel, where books exhibited higher levels of universalism and diversity than other countries of the middle east. given the unique position of israel in the middle east, it is included in the worldwide trends but excluded from regional analyses. findings & discussion the results of a descriptive analysis are clear. there is a longitudinal trend towards greater emphasis on universalism and diversity across a broad range of countries. table 1 reports the findings for measures of universal emphases in textbooks. panel a shows a significant worldwide increase in discussions of human rights in civic education. looking at regional trends, all parts of the world except the middle east and north africa show an increase in human rights, and the rise is significant in all regions except asia. it is possible textbooks in the middle east and north africa are following a different path than the rest of the world, however it is also important to note that results from this region are the least reliable due to the difficulty of obtaining books. there are far fewer books from the middle east and north africa in this analysis than from other world regions. panel b of table 1 shows the proportion of books that mention global citizenship or membership in a world community. again, there is a general trend towards discussing global citizenship in curricula around the world, including countries of the middle east and north africa. here, the only exception is in eastern europe. discussions with coders suggest that the earlier mentions of ‘global citizenship’ in eastern europe referred specifically to an international communist or socialist community, which was imagined as becoming the dominant global framework. further, some scholars observe the persistence of traditional civic education in newly independent states, especially in eastern europe, and attribute an emphasis on creating national values to the instrumental needs of nation-building and a desire for economic growth (rokkan, 1975; green, 1990; kolstoe, 2000). in the post-1995 period, the newly formed eastern european countries may be de-emphasizing notions of global community relative to other world regions in order to focus on nation-building. table 2 presents evidence of increasing curricular emphases on diversity. panel a indicates the amount of discussion of particular groups and panel b notes the proportion of books mentioning the rights of these groups. the amount a text dedicated to discussing diverse groups has generally increased since 1970, most notably in latin america and also significantly in eastern europe and in the middle east and north africa. in sub-saharan africa and in western europe and north america the amount of diversity discussion was already markedly higher than the rest of the world when this study began in 1970. the early attention to diversity in these two very different world regions could be attributed to a number of influences. in the west, perhaps the democratic process in liberal societies or perhaps a culture of individualism leads to greater representation of diverse social groups and interests in education systems. in sub-saharan africa, it is plausible that the legacies of colonialism shaped the curricula of former colonies to look like their western colonizers. further, the actual level of ethno-linguistic diversity in society, 38 current issues in comparative education p. bromley 1970-1994 1995-2008a (n=252) (n=213) a. mean score on human rights index (0 4.74) worldwide 0.77 1.36 *** western europe & north america 0.99 1.42 * eastern europe 0.48 1.42 *** sub-saharan africa 0.70 1.43 * middle east & north africa 0.66 0.49 latin america & caribbean 0.47 2.58 *** asia 0.63 0.88 b. proportion of books mentioning intl. citizenship (0-1) worldwide 0.15 0.27 *** western europe & north america 0.09 0.27 ** eastern europe 0.19 0.18 sub-saharan africa 0.20 0.42 † middle east & north africa 0.00 0.29 † latin america & caribbean 0.32 0.61 * asia 0.12 0.20 *** p<.001, ** p<.01, * p<.05, † p<.1, one-tailed tests a significance indicates t-test comparing difference between periods 1 and 2. b the numbers of books for each region and time period are: western europe and north america (103 and 56), eastern europe (62 and 59), sub-saharan africa (27 and 12), middle east and north africa (7 and 7), latin america and the caribbean (23 and 22) and asia (25 and 57). table 1. indicators of universalism in textbooks worldwide over time high in many sub-saharan african countries, may contribute to a greater emphasis on social diversity in texts. in africa and the west, diversity discussions increased only slightly between 1970 and 2008, suggesting a possible ceiling effect. unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this paper to empirically test such speculations, but additional analyses along these lines are currently underway by the author. panel b similarly shows most regions (the west, sub-saharan africa, latin america and the caribbean, and the middle east and north africa) increasingly emphasize equality among diverse social groups and interests by depicting them as rights-bearing, and the increase is statistically significant in all regions except the middle east and north africa. unexpectedly, eastern europe and asia show a decline in rights language since 1970. as before, eastern european countries may be lower because they are particularly concerned with building a unitary national identity in the post-1995 period due to their newness. asian countries tend in general to depict society as more homogenous, although recent studies suggest a trend to group empowerment, for example the increasing recognition of women and children’s rights in japan (chan-tiberghien, 2004). in general, the findings that illustrate an increase in diversity are not as strong as for universalism: fewer regions show a statistical increase in diversity and significance levels are weaker. skrentny (2002) argues that all sorts of minority rights claims increasingly become re-conceptualized as human rights claims. this re-framing of the rights of diverse groups as human rights may current issues in comparative education 39 cosmopolitanism in civic education 1970-1994 1995-2008a (n=252) (n=213) a. mean score on amount of diversity (0 37) worldwide 8.91 9.62 western europe & north america 12.53 13.80 eastern europe 5.66 6.83 † sub-saharan africa 10.93 11.08 middle east & north africa 1.57 5.57 † latin america & caribbean 3.91 15.73 *** asia 5.97 6.21 b. mean score on number of rights (0 11) worldwide 1.39 1.88 * western europe & north america 1.89 3.09 * eastern europe 1.35 1.32 sub-saharan africa 0.67 1.17 † middle east & north africa 0.57 0.71 latin america & caribbean 0.17 3.95 *** asia 1.58 0.77 *** p<.001, ** p<.01, * p<.05, † p<.1, one-tailed tests a significance indicates t-test comparing difference between periods 1 and 2. b the numbers of books for each region and time period are: western europe and north america (103 and 56), eastern europe (62 and 59), sub-saharan africa (27 and 12), middle east and north africa (7 and 7), latin america and the caribbean (23 and 22) and asia (25 and 57). table 2. indicators of diversity in textbooks worldwide over time contribute to the observed relatively greater increase in human rights emphases than diversity rights in curricula. overall the findings suggest a worldwide trend towards cosmopolitan emphases in civic education textbooks, with slightly greater emphases on universalism than diversity. the form of cosmopolitanism may vary, for example emphasizing human rights in eastern europe and international citizenship in the middle east, but every region of the world increased significantly on at least one measure of cosmopolitanism, except asia. but even asia shows a raw increase on three of the four measures. further, case studies of individual countries within asia suggest that a qualitative change towards a model of cosmopolitan citizenship is underway in ways that are not captured in this study (see, for example, law (2004) for taiwan and hong kong, moon (2009) for south korea, and chan-tiberghien (2004) for japan). although the indicators used here enable cross-national and longitudinal comparison of textbooks to a far greater extent than previous studies, these macro-level measures certainly fail to capture many more nuanced changes and meanings that can be gleaned from looking at individual cases. in contrast to case studies, the aim here was to show a shift towards cosmopolitan emphases in civic education curricula worldwide. the next challenge is to consider what theories of cosmopolitanism propose as the implications of such changes. 40 current issues in comparative education p. bromley although cosmopolitan theories tend to share a focus on increasing universalism and diversity worldwide, scholars diverge dramatically in their analysis of the mechanisms that create global interconnectedness, and the implications of the emergence of a global society. most cosmopolitanisms operates under a strong normative framework, arguing that the construction of a world community, and even a world state, is the most moral and just governance outcome. beck and sznaider argue “what cosmopolitanism is cannot ultimately be separated from what cosmopolitanism should be.” (2006, p. 4). historically, the cosmopolitanism of ancient philosophers and more modern political philosophers like immanuel kant was focused on a utopian future, concerned with creating world citizenship and a world republic. recently, normative political philosophers, notably david held, have revived the notion of cosmopolitanism to champion the values of human rights and democracy as general principles of transnational governance to cope with negative effects of economic globalization (held, 1995; 2004). this line of work argues that the emergence of a world society, world culture and even a world government is a positive development for all. thus, the emergence of cosmopolitanism in citizenship education is interpreted as leading towards a more just and equitable world, and potentially a step towards creating a formal system of global governance. a contrasting line of cosmopolitan research, often called world polity theory (referring specifically to the neo-institutional studies of john meyer, francisco ramirez and colleagues), tends to be agnostic about the morality of a global culture, citing pros and cons of the trends they observe. in the classic paper outlining a world cultural approach, meyer et al (1997) state that due to the emergence of a world society “greater good becomes possible and likely but so too does greater evil, as good and evil become more derivative of world culture and therefore of greater scale than in earlier times” (p. 173). further, world polity theory asserts that a global society exists because of the lack of a world government and argues that the nation-state is defined and legitimated as the primary actor on the world stage. from this perspective, the rise of universalism and diversity indicates a decline in charisma of the nation-state and increasing interconnectedness worldwide, but do not portend the demise of the state. the first line of work interprets an increase in transnationalism as a step towards more formal global governance. to the extent that world society theory takes a normative stance, it is critical of notions of a world government. meyer et al (1997) argue that “a powerfully organized and authoritative worldwide actor would obviously lower the dynamism of world society” (p. 169). thus, world polity scholars do not interpret increasing emphases on universalism and diversity in textbooks as a natural step on the road to a single world government or homogenous world society, nor do they view the creation of a formal system of global governance as the ultimate goal of cosmopolitanism. lines of cosmopolitanism also differ in their understanding of the mechanisms driving an increase in universalism and diversity. for some, the trends of cosmopolitanism arise unintentionally, in some cases due to the pressures of globalization (held et al, 1999) or as a byproduct of the activities of experts, professionals, and nation-states enacting globally-accepted scripts for rational behavior (meyer et al., 1997). the world polity perspective argues countries adopt a range of practices, such as signing international human rights treaties, because it is the expected, rational and legitimate thing for countries to do, not necessarily because they believe in the treaty or intend to enforce it. this often leads to extensive decoupling between formal policies and on-the-ground realities. in some cases a symbolic policy adoption can influence practice in a way that conforms to the cosmopolitan ideals of global governance, but this is unrelated to the initial reason for ratifying a treaty (see the example of improvements in human rights practices in hafner-burton and tsutsui 2005). the emphasis on rational actorhood and decouping among world polity scholars also explains why they do not assume the empirical observation of increasing emphases current issues in comparative education 41 cosmopolitanism in civic education on universalism and diversity will have inherent benefits for individuals worldwide. nationstates may not intend to enact the ideals put forth in curricula, and global interconnectedness may deepen asymmetries in forms of economic, political, social and cultural power. alternatively, others argue the globalization and world polity mechanisms laid out above are a deformed version of cosmopolitanism (beck & sznaider, 2006). in this view, cosmopolitan trends must emerge from a struggle by individuals to promote and implement the ideals of cosmopolitanism itself, not as a byproduct of economic globalization or of countries and individuals enacting scripts of rational actorhood. papastephanou (2002) differentiates between globalization and the intentional creation of cosmopolitan trends by claiming “the first signifies an empirical phenomenon whereas the second denotes an ideal” (p. 75). in the case of schooling, gunesh (2004) argues that “‘cosmopolitan education’ – or perhaps it should be ‘education for cosmopolitanism’ – would be based on a clear conceptualization of the outcomes, in terms of ‘cosmopolitanism’ or ‘the cosmopolitan individual’, rather than on an educational context, such as a particular type of school, or on a purpose arising from particular views of the ‘needs’ of contemporary global society” (p. 268-269). in other words, for this group of cosmopolitans, the observed trends towards universalism and diversity are meaningless unless they stem from intentional individual action in pursuit of cosmopolitan ideals. thus, from this perspective observing the empirical trends has no bearing on cosmopolitanism and only an assessment of the mechanisms of change can provide insight. in time this particular divide between the variants of cosmopolitan thinking may lessen. beck & sznaider (2006) argue for a ‘neo-cosmopolitanism’ or ‘cosmopolitan realism’ that embraces world changes that support their goals even if they occur as side-effects of globalization. they suggest adopting “the farther cosmopolitan rituals and symbols spread, the more chance there will be of someday achieving a cosmopolitan political order” (p. 8). conclusion this research has shown an increase in universalism and diversity emphases in high school citizenship education curricula worldwide in the period since 1970. empirically, this extends studies of cosmopolitanism in education to a greater range of countries and over a longer time period than previous research. theoretically, it illustrates that cosmopolitan perspectives vary in their interpretation of the processes driving such trends and the implications for society. some interpret the rise of universalism and diversity as a step towards an ideal world governed by a single global polity. others argue that these trends indicate a shift in the conception of citizenship worldwide, but that nation-states will and should remain the most legitimate global actors. further, while some depict the construction of a cosmopolitan world as utopian, others avoid taking a normative stance on the emergence of a global polity. despite these differences, cosmopolitan studies of all persuasions greatly add to our understanding of social and educational issues by emphasizing that countries are not independent units of analysis and by recognizing forms of identity and attachment beyond the nation-state. acknowledgments work on this paper was funded by a grant from the spencer foundation (200600003) to john meyer and francisco ramirez, and benefited from their generous feedback on initial drafts. it received additional support from a stanford school of education dissertation improvement grant. finally, the study was possible only because of the impressive textbook collection of the george eckert institute, in braunschweig, and the extraordinarily helpful assistance of brigitte depner and her staff, and the many individual colleagues who helped collect textbooks, including garnett russell, suk ying wong, rennie moon, david suárez, marine chitashvili, pepka boyadjieva, 42 current issues in comparative education p. bromley shushanik makaryan, marika korotkova, gili drori, sandra staklis, marina andina, luke terra, nii addy, carrie oelberger, jaime quevedo, dijana tiplic, martin benvenidas, kaisa snellman, elina makinen, magdalena gross, and elizabeth buckner. references appiah, k. a. 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(eds.), the global diffusion of markets and democracy (pp. 303-343). cambridge: cambridge university. copyright © 2009 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved. © 2006 elizabeth sherman swing 66 april 21, 2006 a brief history of the comparative and international education society1 elizabeth sherman swing cies historian the founding of the comparative education society, 1956 to 1960 the comparative and international education society, initially the comparative education society, evolved from annual conferences at new york university begun in 1954 by william w. brickman. although only thirty-five were present at the first conference, brickman labeled a collection of papers presented there: “proceedings of the first annual conference on comparative education (1954)” – thus signaling hope that he and this group would henceforth occupy comparative education turf in the united states. the comparative education society (ces) was founded at the close of a subsequent conference (april 27, 1956), with brickman as president and gerald read of kent state university, secretary-treasurer. during the first six years of its existence, the comparative education society led study tours on five continents and in twenty-four countries. it also inaugurated a new journal, comparative education review, and it drafted and ratified a constitution calling for annual elections and a nine member board of directors. from the beginning it courted an international membership. in addition to americans, scholars from canada, england, france, germany, switzerland, chile and the netherlands served on its board of directors or on the editorial board of its journal. organization building, 1960-1975 in the years following the founding of ces, a group who could be considered “founding fathers” assumed positions of leadership. william w. brickman served as president from 1957 to 1959. he was followed by william h.e. johnson, 1959-1960; joseph katz, 1961; c. arnold anderson, 1962; claude eggertsen, 1963; r. freeman butts, 1964; donald k. adams, 1965; david g. scanlon, 1966; william w. brickman again, 1967; stewart e. fraser, 1968; reginald edwards, 1969; foster, 1970; andreas kazamias, 1971, cole s. brembeck, 1972, harold j. noah, 1973; robert f. lawson, 1974; and rolland g. paulston, 1975. in the 1960s focus was on three issues: constitutional reform, a name change, and a decision to hold separate meetings. constitutional reform took place in 1966 when the society ratified a revised constitution that regularized practices already in place. it also gave student members the same rights and privileges as mature scholars. on the matter of a name change there was heated debate, echoes of which can still be heard today. what did the word international connote? did it describe a community of comparativists? debate notwithstanding, on february 14, 1968, the board of directors unanimously approved a name change. they put the issue before the business meeting two days later, following which mail ballots were sent to the membership. of these, 149 were in favor of a change and 51 opposed. the september 1968 newsletter states: “the constitution is now amended to read, ‘the name of this organization shall be the comparative and international education society’ ” (article 1, section 1). a brief history of the comparative and international education society current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(2) 67 the third issue of the 1960s, the separate meetings issue, reflects a particular historical moment. until 1970 the society met annually in chicago during february, coordinating its meetings with those of the american association of colleges of teacher education, the national society of college teachers of education, and the association of student teaching – organizations with which it affiliated at the time of its inception. in an era, however, when harold noah and max eckstein, george bereday, and brian holmes were exploring new methodologies in comparative education, identification with teacher education was beginning to weaken. the first separate annual meeting took place in atlanta in 1970. thereafter, the board voted to hold its annual meetings in a locale designated by the incoming vice president. growth and consolidation, 1975 to 1990 during the years that followed, cies established societal markers that reflected an emerging maturity. in 1980 it established a cies collection in the kent state university archives, thus providing a vehicle for the preservation of historical memory. the cies collection, which now occupies over 80 cubic feet, has become an important resource in the field of comparative education. it includes correspondence by cies presidents and cer editors, issues of the cies newsletter, minutes of board meetings, policy discussions, and much more. another societal marker was establishment of eggertsen lectures, set up by former students of claude a. eggertsen of the university of michigan, a founder, past president, and honorary fellow. brian holmes gave the first eggertsen lecture in 1980. a third societal marker is the designation honorary fellow for selected senior scholars. the first honorary fellows were elected in 1987. contentious issues and systemic change, 1990 to 2006 the modern era has given rise to particularly contentious issues, both epistemological and practical. on the one hand, debates have raged over what is sometimes referred to as thinking within or thinking outside the black box. see, for example, the issues raised by vandra masemann and george psacharopoulos in the pages of comparative education review (34, 1990, nos. 3 and 4). at the same time, like other comparative education societies cies has grappled with international political concerns: apartheid in south africa, events in tiananmen square, globalization, border crossing difficulties for participants in cies conferences. in addition, the society has had its own domestic issues: a contested election in 1990, problems with the internal revenue service because it had not properly filed for tax exempt status – a situation that illustrates the difficulty of transforming a gathering of like-minded scholars, not always the most practical people, into a larger professional organization. not all issues have been worrisome, however. in 2000 cies received its first endowment, a bequest of $100,000 from george f. kneller, a ucla professor of the philosophy of education. terms of the endowment include a directive to establish an annual george f. kneller lecture. the modern era has ushered in systemic change. the constitution of 1998 created a new office – historian, an office with a three-year renewable term and executive committee status. the first historian was appointed in 1999. the constitution of 1998 also introduced the first bylaws in the history of the society. amending the constitution still requires two-thirds approval by mail ballot; but passing or rescinding a bylaw requires no more than a two-thirds affirmative vote by a quorum of the board, a procedure that elizabeth sherman swing 68 april 21, 2006 can take place either during a board meeting (article xii, sections 1 and 2) or electronically (bylaws, article v, section c). a significant recent development is a trend toward decentralization through committees and special interest groups. when the constitution of 1998 was ratified, the cies had three standing (permanent) committees: the nominations committee, the awards committee, and the new scholars committee. in 2000 three newer committees – the investment committee, the gender and education committee, and the underrepresented ethnic and ability groups (ureag) – were converted from ad hoc to standing committee status by changing the bylaws, an event that took place at a regular board meeting. in addition, special interest groups, such as those on language or peace, have formed in response to member interest, thus signaling flexibility in the accommodation of disparate interests and concerns. as it celebrates its first half century, the cies has become more than just a professional association. loyalty runs long and deep. the membership includes some of forty years standing, but even among the younger generation cies generates a special ambience. a graduate student, who was a member of the board of directors, has offered the following testimony: the annual cies conference creates a social space where human beings from many different parts of the world connect on topics of mutual interest and learn from one another (even from those [with whom] they may strongly disagree). the greatest value of being a member of this society has come from my interactions with people who have different frames of reference and different realities. (maria fatima rodrigues, cies newsletter, no. 121, may 1999.) for those to whom cies speaks, these “different frames of reference and different realities” are indeed evidence of the strength of this fifty year old work in progress. (april 9, 2006) notes: 1. an edited version of this article appeared in the program for the fiftieth anniversary conference of the comparative and international education society in honolulu, hawai’i, march 2006. microsoft word 41snauwaert.doc © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 5 cosmopolitan democracy and democratic education dale t. snauwaert adelphi university the purpose of this paper is to explore the close connection between the principles of democracy and the cosmopolitan nature of international human rights. it constitutes a philosophical exploration. the word 'cosmopolitan' refers to the existence of an ethic that transcends national, communal, cultural, and civilizational boundaries. literally it refers to citizens, not of any localized polity, but of the world. globalization is not only economic. it is also ethical. unlike many aspects of unfettered economic globalization, ethical globalization is a positive development in human history. it constitutes moral progress and serves as a counter-balancing agent to both economic globalization and ethnic tribalism (ignatieff, 2001). the aim of this paper is to explore the nature of this ethic as it has emerged in terms of the articulation and institutionalization of international human rights. in principle, international human rights are not only consistent with the core ideals of democracy but they expand the scope of the egalitarian logic of democracy transnationally. this expansion, in turn, necessitates the development of a cosmopolitan theory of democratic education. democracy is a system of rights premised upon the logic of equality (dahl, 2000). at its core is a fundamental belief in moral equality, a belief that all human beings possess an equal inherent dignity or worth. its logic runs as follows: if we are morally equal, then we also possess rights, inviolable claims to the actual enjoyment of particular social goods guaranteed by the society (dahl, 2000; shue, 1980). the two basic rights of a democracy are: the freedom to conceive and pursue one's own conception of the good life (consistent with the equal rights of others) and political self-determination. the right to self-determination entails the basic notion of government by consent, which involves the right to political and legal equality (including the right to representation) and concomitant rights such as rights to freedom of expression, association, due process, etc. as moral equals, all citizens of a liberal democracy have an inviolable claim to have their interests represented in the political process. in a world that has become highly interdependent, the boundaries of the nation-state have become very porous, rendering many fundamental decisions beyond the control of national governments and thus beyond the consent of the governed (held, 1995). the underlying presupposition of this paper is that democracy can no longer be conceived as exclusively a national phenomenon but must be thought of as a cosmopolitan. it will be argued that this cosmopolitan conception is consistent with democracy as a moral and political ideal premised upon the logic of equality and that it demands a moral education whose fundamental purpose is the cultivation of authentic self-awareness. principles of national sovereignty and nonintervention in modern political theory and practice, individuals have been conceived exclusively as citizens of nation-states; their rights and obligations, and conversely the state's legitimate authority over them, find their source in national sovereignty. as f. h. hinsley (1986) suggests, sovereignty is conceived as "the final and absolute authority in dale t. snauwaert 6 december 18, 2001 the political community (…) and no final and absolute authority exists elsewhere"(p.26). sovereignty renders the individual a subject of the nation-state. up until the emergence of the existence of international human rights, the nation-state has been conceived as being free to treat its citizens in a manner consistent with its own political constitution, for the notion of sovereignty generates a right of national self-determination. in modern political theory, the nation claims a right of self-determination based in the existence of sovereignty, which in turn gives it the authority to treat its citizenry in a manner consistent with its political ideology. the right to self-determination, in turn, generates the principle of non-intervention, the claim that no sovereign state has a right to intervene in the affairs of another sovereign state. thus, the nation-state system, based in the existence of national sovereignty, has been governed by two fundamental principles: self-determination and nonintervention (hinsley, 1986; hoffman, 1996; holmes, 1989; mapel, 1996; nardin, 1996a). from a democratic perspective, sovereignty is based in the consent of the people; the state derives its authority to govern from the people, on behalf of the people. as already noted, democratic sovereignty follows from the logic of equality. it is based on the rights of individuals. from an international perspective, the principle of nonintervention is established to protect the rights of individuals of a nation, whether democratic or not, from external threat. however, the principle does not protect individuals from the threat of their own governments. in response to this lack of protection offered by the principle of nonintervention, in the post-world war ii era, the international community has articulated a complex set of human rights and humanitarian legal and moral principles in order to protect individuals from both invading forces and their own governments. on the basis of a cosmopolitan extension of the democratic logic of equality, these principles and standards call into question the absolute nature of the principles of sovereignty and nonintervention. international human rights and humanitarian law the recognition of international human rights in the world community begins in the post-world war ii era with the nuremberg trial, judgment, and obligation, which formed the basis of the united nations (un) declaration of human rights and subsequent international human rights laws and conventions (nuremberg, 1970). this perspective posits a cosmopolitan extension of the logic of equality. it has its grounding in the long articulation and practice of the "just war doctrine". the just war doctrine maintains that the use of force is not only an extension of politics but is, at its core, a moral question, for there is a prima facie ethical presupposition against doing harm to others in accordance, originally, with the christian ethical principle of charity and neighborly love and the golden rule. this principle is found also in all the major religious traditions of the world. this assumption suggests that peace is the moral standard in human affairs and any deviation from it requires justification. the doctrine understands peace not merely as negative, as an absence of violence, but as positive, as including and requiring justice. at the heart of "just war" theory is the concept of jus ad bellum: war is only morally justifiable in self-defense, in response to injustice. aggression is morally unjustifiable because it violates the other's basic rights to life and security. the crime of aggressive war is unlawful and immoral because aggression disrespects the inherent dignity of the other's humanity. responding in force to protect others from injustice and to restore justice is justifiable as long as there is just cause and cosmopolitan democracy and democratic education current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 7 the ends and means are just, i.e., discriminate and proportional. this notion of the criminality of aggressive war is widely shared in the international community, although it is not always adhered to. in addition, just war theory puts forth the principle of jus in bello, the morality of the conduct of war, which articulates the notions of war crimes and crimes against humanity. implicit in the principle of jus in bello is the protection of the inherent dignity of noncombatants as well as the soldiers themselves. inherent in these principles is the logic of equality. these principles of just war theory have led to the internationally recognized nuremberg obligation, the obligation of nonparticipation in the crime of war, war crimes, and crimes against humanity (elshtain, 1992; holmes, 1989; nardin, 1996b; ramsey, 1961; turner johnson, 1999; walzer, 1997; wasserstrom, 1970). based upon existing international law, emanating from the just war tradition, the nuremberg tribunal argued that "crimes against peace" (aggression against sovereign nations) are punishable under international law, for they blatantly violate the principles of sovereignty and nonintervention. the tribunal also argued that "war crimes" are punishable for they violate treaty agreements and the customs of legitimate conduct of war established by the standards of the jus in bello dimension of just war. in addition, "crimes against humanity" (i.e., murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhuman acts against civilians, or persecution on political, racial, or religious grounds when such acts are carried out in connection with any crime against peace or war crime) were also deemed violations of international law on the grounds that such crimes violate our basic sense of human dignity and justice, and thus were deemed to be crimes against the international community. members of the nazi regime were found guilty of all three crimes (nuremberg, 1970). subsequent to nuremberg, state agents were immune from prosecution based upon the two foundational principles of national sovereignty discussed above: self-determination and nonintervention. the defendants argued that they were following the laws of the nation. the tribunal argued that when the crimes are of such a heinous nature that they offend the basic principles of justice recognized by the international community, when an act violates our basic sense of human dignity, it becomes an issue that concerns humanity as a whole. the tribunal ruled that the protection of human dignity takes precedence over national sovereignty. this constitutes a refutation of the absolute nature of sovereignty in that the logic of equality constitutes a higher authority. the result of the prioritization of human dignity over sovereignty generated the "nuremberg obligation": a duty to uphold international law and morality even if the action taken violates domestic law (falk, 1989). individuals are obligated to obey the imperative of international law and morality even when in conflict with national law. individuals are also personally responsible for violations of international law, even when their crimes are not punishable under national law and even when the individual acts under order (if, that is, a moral choice is possible). from the perspective of the nuremberg obligation, all individual citizens, including state agents, have an obligation to uphold international law and the basic principles of cosmopolitan justice even when not stipulated by national law or custom or even when in direct violation of national law. dale t. snauwaert 8 december 18, 2001 although the nuremberg tribunal was devoted to the trial of nazi war crimes, the adoption of the principles derived from the nuremberg judgment by the united nations at its opening session (un general resolution 95) clearly indicates that the nuremberg principles are applicable beyond the context of world war ii (falk,1989; glueck,1966; woetzel,1962). the nuremberg obligation is a set of customary principles that codifies the individual's moral obligation to refuse to participate in crimes against peace, including the planning of and preparation for aggressive war, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, even when dictated by national law or the orders of superiors. by implication, in a democratic society founded upon the consent of the people, the nuremberg obligation mandates that citizens actively oppose acts of state that are criminal in character under international law or violate international morality. subsequent international human rights conventions, beginning with the un universal declaration of human rights and followed by the covenant on civil and political rights, the covenant on economic, social, and cultural rights, the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, international covenant on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination, international convention on the suppression and the punishment of the crime of apartheid, convention of the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, convention on the rights of the child, as well as the whole european system for the protection of human rights, follow from the precedent set at nuremberg. although the nuremberg judgment and obligation were linked to aggressive war, and thus crimes against humanity were only legitimate in the context of war, these subsequent international human rights conventions de-couple human rights violations from the crime of aggression, thereby placing crimes against humanity on an independent ground (cooper, 1999). in summary, our shared humanity carries with it a moral imperative to respect the dignity of every human life. this imperative is not merely an abstract philosophical ideal; it is grounded in the customs and principles of democratic societies and the international community. this cosmopolitan imperative is consistent with, perhaps even identical to, the logic of equality inherent in democracy, for both cosmopolitanism and democracy find their moral grounding in the fundamental respect for the inherent equal dignity of all persons (gutmann, 1999), a respect that transcends cultural and political boundaries. the nuremberg obligation and international humanitarian law and human rights conventions constitute a cosmopolitan extension of the democratic logic of equality beyond the nation-state. to give further credence to the potency of a cosmopolitan reading of democratic equality, there is evidence that the cosmopolitan extension of democracy's logic of equality leads to peace. in his prophetic essay "perpetual peace," immanuel kant argues that liberal republics will not go to war with each other, and thus the spread of liberal republicanism/liberal democracy will create, in the long run, the conditions for a perpetual peace between liberal nations (kant, [1795] 1983). this peace is based upon both the structural nature of decision-making in liberal republics (e.g., divided branches of government and government by consent) and the cultural sharing of liberal morality (moral equality, commitment to nonviolent conflict resolution, the rule of law, etc.). in the last decade, this proposition has received considerable attention and a significant amount of empirical evidence seems to confirm kant's insight (brown, 1996; doyle, 1997; cosmopolitan democracy and democratic education current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 9 ray, 1995; russett, 1993). it seems that liberal democracies have never fought each other, although they are as war prone toward non-liberal states as any other non-liberal state. what kant's peace proposition suggests is that a shared political morality based upon respect for the inherent dignity of humanity creates the conditions of peace. respect morally prohibits violence; it demands peace and justice, for any aggressive or exploitative act violates one's dignity by turning the victim into an object and thereby dehumanizing them. thus, the spread of democracy potentially would lead to a more just and peaceful world (kant, 1964, [1795] 1983; lutz-bachmann, 1997). however, there are at least two fundamental questions that arise as challenges to the above position: the war proneness of powerful democratic states toward non-democratic states and the clash of civilizations (huntington, 1996). first, what is of concern here is the finding that democratic states are as war prone toward non-democratic states as any other state. this indicates an exclusion of the nondemocratic "other" from the moral community. there is a long history of democratic states engaging in acts of aggression, war crimes, aiding and abetting oppressive and criminal regimes, etc. (chomsky, 1994; ford, 1970). henry kissinger's response to the free election of president allende in chile and his subsequent cia assassination captures the essence of this attitude: "i don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country going marxist because of the irresponsibility of its own people" (cited in (galeano, 2001), p.14). the total disrespect of the principles of cosmopolitan equality and democracy here are stark and deeply troubling. this blatant disrespect does not, however, negate the principles themselves but rather it strongly points to the importance of a democratically educated and active citizenry cognizant of and committed to the nuremberg obligation and the logic of equality. samuel huntington (1996) maintains that we have entered into a new phase of world history wherein a clash between civilizations is the primary form of conflict. in the modern era, war has moved from conflict between nations to conflict between ideologies to conflict between civilizations. from this perspective, the logic of equality is not universal per se but is inherently western, and from the perspective of nonwestern states, its advocacy is hegemonic. the clash of civilizations hypothesis, based upon the presupposition of cultural relativism, suggests that a cross-cultural ethic is not possible. philosophically moral relativism is, however, logically inconsistent, in that it makes absolute claims about the relative nature of morality. more specifically, it claims that morality is ultimately grounded in cultural communities whose cultural beliefs and practices are relative; thus in principle a transcultural ethic is impossible. however, cultural relativists maintain that each culture should be respected, that each culture should be free from the coercive interference of others, free to adjudicate life on its own terms. if morality is relative, then on what grounds does one culture refrain from interfering in the life of another? according to relativism, there are no grounds to adjudicate moral differences between cultures and thus we are faced with the fact that conflict will be resolved through power. if there is no conceivable cross-cultural ethical standard, then we must face a state of international anarchy and perpetual civilizational war, and in these wars, as the events of september 11, 2001 indicate, anything goes, including the deliberate mass murder of innocent people. dale t. snauwaert 10 december 18, 2001 at the core of cultural relativism, however, is the claim of self-determination: the community claims a right to proceed internally according to its own conceptions of the good life. however, as discussed above, this rights claim presupposes an obligation of nonintervention in the affairs of other states. if one claims a right, then inherent in that claim is an obligation consistent with that right. all rights claims entail obligations; the claim to the right, in this case selfdetermination, in itself requires that one meet the obligations implicit in it, for if one does not, then one forfeits the right. in other words, it is the right itself that invokes the obligation, making the right contingent upon the fulfillment of the obligation (shue, 1980). the rights claim itself mandates the reciprocal obligation. in other words, rights involve moral reciprocity. if one claims a right, then one is obligated to respect the rights of others. if each community possesses a right to self-determination, all communities are obligated to refrain from intervening in the affairs of other communities. one's right to self-determination entails a moral responsibility of nonintervention in the affairs of others. thus, if a society has a right to self-determination (or if individuals possess inalienable rights), then entailed in those rights are inherent responsibilities, such that if the right is invoked, then a reciprocal responsibility exists independently of any enforcement agency. implicit in this argument are two fundamental meta-ethical principles: (1) moral reciprocity and (2) shared commonality. implicit in the claim of a right of selfdetermination is the presupposition that all human communities are morally equal. they all possess an equal right to self-determination and have an equal obligation to adhere to nonintervention: the right and obligation are reciprocal and thereby universal. moral equality is in turn based on a shared commonality: the shared commonality is their humanity. all human communities are entitled to self-determination and constrained by the obligation of nonintervention because they are human. nonintervention is the norm unless there are gross human rights violations (hoffman, 1996). one could also argue that human commonality exists as well between individuals. due to the fact that he or she is a fellow human being who possesses certain inalienable rights inherent in that humanity, persons external to our own community may demand moral concern from us. we may share a common humanity, transcending particular cultures and polities, with others. if the individual possesses rights inherent in their humanity, then all individuals in turn have a reciprocal obligation to respect the rights of others, even those who are alien communally, on the basis of a shared humanity. if there exists moral reciprocity and a shared human commonality, then an ethic that transcends individual moral communities is possible. in fact, a global ethic in nascent form is implicit in the claims of cultural relativism. in order for any society, national or international, to exist, there has to be a shared common set of ethical values. without such a set there is anarchy, a war of all against all. certainly there are fundamental principled ethical differences between civilizations. however, implicit in the claims of civilizational relativism is the right of self-determination, and for self-determination to be real all parties must acknowledge a transcultural, transnational ethic of cosmopolitan democracy and democratic education current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 11 nonintervention that preserves that right. without it we have perpetual war and the hegemony of the powerful. what this argument calls for is a dialogue between civilizations based upon our fundamental humanity to discover and forge, in thoughtful and sensitive ways, mutually shared values consistent with the democratic imperatives of selfdetermination. as evidenced by the international humanitarian and human rights movement, the world community has already begun this dialogue. this dialogue, however, is only in its infancy. democratic education cosmopolitan democracy calls for citizens who can respond in ways consistent with the inherent dignity of all human beings. this principle of moral equality, or what we could call the principle of humanity, in turn is based upon at least two other basic moral values and dispositions: sympathy and respect (bok, 1995; glover, 2000; the-dalailama, 1999). sympathy is a positive value in that it calls for the active response of care, while respect is a negative value in that it requires refraining from violating the rights of others. these dispositions in turn require a moral identity and sensibility that is grounded in an authentic sense of self. alice miller succinctly captures the point: "individuals who refuse to adapt to a totalitarian regime [of whatever kind] are not doing so out of a sense of duty or because of naiveté but because they cannot help but be true to themselves" (p. 84). this authenticity is the basis of self-determination and thus moral agency, for "only if we do not allow ourselves to be reduced to the instrument of another person's will can we fulfill our personal needs and defend our legitimate rights" (p. 265), and one could add, respond to others consistent with the imperatives of human dignity (miller, 1980). two central psychological dispositions, among others, that inhibit the realization of our moral identity and sensibility are fear and rigid belief structures (glover, 2000). fear is based in duality, in separation. fear separates us from our innermost selves and from other human beings. this fear is the fertile bed of violence and injustice. at the core of all fear is the fear of death. the fear of death, in turn, is based on a fear of loss of self as a possession. as erich fromm (1976) put it: "the fear, then, is not of dying, but of losing what i have: the fear of losing my body, my ego, my possession, and my identity; the fear of facing the abyss of nonidentity, of 'being lost' " (p. 126). fear of death is thus ultimately grounded in a particular mode of living, a "having" mode. from the perspective of the having mode "i am what i have." and if i am what i have, and what i have, including myself, can in principle be lost, then i live in a perpetual state of anxiety, of existential fear. this anxiety is often unconscious, but it lurks in the background casting a shadow over our lives. this fear is occasionally stimulated, made conscious, and exacerbated by threatening events, real or imagined. living in a state of fear, we lose our authentic self and thus our capacity to respond to others with compassion and respect. belief systems also often serve to construct a having-based self-identity. "i am what i believe". our identity can become so dependent upon our belief system that a challenge to the system is experienced as a threat to our identity. the possibility of the loss of self that this entails leads to self-deception, a willingness to forego truth in favor of the dale t. snauwaert 12 december 18, 2001 preservation of the belief system. in turn, self-deception erodes our capacity for moral responsiveness. moral principle and our natural empathetic response to suffering gives way to an extreme ideological consequentialism that sacrifices human well-being, even human life, for the maintenance of the belief. we lose our authentic self, and with it, our moral capacity. this is a mode of living based on having, not material possessions per se, but of rigid ideologies. we have historically witnessed stark cases of this phenomena, for example, stalin's soviet union, nazi germany, the maoist cultural revolution, taliban controlled afghanistan, pol pot's cambodia, among many others (glover, 2000; rashid, 2000). there is, however, a more authentic mode of living, the mode of being (fromm, 1976). from the perspective of this mode, i am not what i have per se. my possessions, whether material or ideological, do not define me. rather, "i am that i am". authentic selfawareness is being awake to, aware of, present to, a deep inner sense of being. this state of being is a concrete experience of the self--awake to itself, wherein external identifications and socially constructed identities are bracketed. it is an opening to our being which is our essence, and this essence is unique and not contingent upon anything external to it. it is fully secure, ultimately the only thing, truly safe and secure. it is from the level of being, of self-awareness, that we can be authentically present to another. relationship is a spiritual association, a communion, a meeting, a dialogue, an encounter (buber, 1970). it is only when we are awake to our selves that we are capable of being awake and responsive to the subjectivity of the other, as well as being open to change in accordance with the discovery of a new understanding presented to us by an authentic encounter with the other or to critically evaluate the prescriptions of the other after careful examination. this is the meaning of maxine greene's notion of "wide awakeness" as the root of moral agency (greene, 1978). sympathy and respect are interconnected, and in turn self-awareness is the basis of both. wide-awakeness breathes life into moral principle. we have known for a long time that there exists a fundamental interconnection between the polity and its educational system. this is especially true for a democracy. education and democracy are symbiotically interrelated. however, democracy demands a specific kind of education (dahl, 2000; gutmann, 1999; snauwaert, 1993). from the perspective of this paper, a democratic education grounded in the principle of humanity should be devoted primarily to the cultivation of empathetic, respectful, and wide-awake cosmopolitan citizens. as noted above, this education transcends the having, transmission model of education, moving in the direction of authentic being. a discussion of the politics of the implementation of this kind of education is, although crucial, beyond the scope of this short paper. suffice it to say that our model of civic education grounded in the imperatives of the nation-state system is outdated. if we are going to be able to respond to a changing world we need to rethink democratic education from a cosmopolitan perspective. cosmopolitan democracy and democratic education current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 13 references bok, s. (1995). common values. columbia: university of missouri press. brown, m. e., lynn-jones, sean m. & miller, steven e. (ed.). (1996). debating the democratic peace. cambridge: mit press. buber, m. (1970). i and thou (w. kaufman, trans.). new york: scribners. chomsky, n. (1994). world orders old and new. new york: columbia university press. cooper, b. (ed.). (1999). war crimes: the legacy of nuremberg. new york: tv books. dahl, r. (2000). on democracy. new haven: yale university press. doyle, m. w. (1997). ways of war and peace. new york: w.w. norton. elshtain, j. b. (ed.). (1992). just war theory. new york: new york university press. falk, r. (1989). revitalizing international law. ames, iowa: iowa state university press. ford, j. c. (1970). the morality of obliteration bombing. in r. a. wasserstrom (ed.), war and morality (pp. 15-41). belmont, ca: wadsworth publishing company. fromm, e. (1976). to have or to be? new york: continuum. galeano, e. (2001). theater of good and evil. the progressive, 65(11), 14-15. glover, j. (2000). humanity: a moral history of the twentieth century. new haven: yale university press. glueck, s. (1966). the nuremberg trial and aggressive war. new york: kraus. greene, m. (1978). landscapes of learning. new york: teachers college press. gutmann, a. (1999). democratic education (revised ed.). princeton: princeton university press. held, d. (1995). democracy and the global order. stanford, ca: stanford university press. hinsley, f. h. (1986). sovereignty (2nd ed.). cambridge: cambridge university press. hoffman, s. (1996). sovereignty and the ethics of intervention. in s. hoffman (ed.), the ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention (pp. 12-37). notre dame, in: university of notre dame press. holmes, r. l. (1989). on war and morality. princeton, nj: princeton university press. dale t. snauwaert 14 december 18, 2001 huntington, s. p. (1996). the clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. new york: touchstone. ignatieff, m. (2001). human rights as politics and idolatry. princeton, nj: princeton university press. kant, i. (1964). groundwork of the metaphysic of morals. new york: harper torchbooks. kant, i. ([1795] 1983). perpetual peace and other essays (t. humphrey, trans.). cambridge: hackett. lutz-bachmann, j. b. a. m. (ed.). (1997). perpetual peace: essays on kant's cosmopolitan ideal. cambridge: mit press. mapel, d. r. (1996). realism and the ethics of war and peace. in t. nardin (ed.), the ethics of war and peace: religious and secular perspectives. (pp.54-77) princeton: princeton university press. miller, a. (1980). for your own good: hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence (h. a. h. hannum, trans.). new york: noonday press. nardin, t. (1996a). the comparative ethics of war and peace. in t. nardin (ed.), the ethics of war and peace: religious and secular perspectives (pp. 245-264). princeton, nj: princeton university press. nardin, t. (ed.). (1996b). the ethics of war and peace: religious and secular perspectives. princeton, nj: princeton university press. nuremberg, t. i. t. a. (1970). judgement and opinion. in r. a. wasserstrom (ed.), war and morality (pp. 102-114). belmont, ca: wadsworth publishing company. ramsey, p. (1961). war and the christian conscience: how shall modern war be conducted justly? durham, nc: duke university press. rashid, a. (2000). taliban: militant islam, oil and fundamentalism in central asia. new haven: yale university press. ray, j. l. (1995). democracy and international conflict: an evaluation of the democratic peace proposition. columbia, sc: university of south carolina press. russett, b. (1993). grasping the democratic peace: principles for a post-cold war world. princeton: princeton university press. shue, h. (1980). basic rights: subsistence, affluence, and u.s. foreign policy. princeton: princeton university press. snauwaert, d. t. (1993). democracy, education, and governance: a developmental conception. albany, ny: the state university of new york press. cosmopolitan democracy and democratic education current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 15 the dalai-lama. (1999). ethics for the new millennium. new york: riverhead books. turner johnson, j. (1999). morality and contemporary warfare. new haven: yale university press. walzer, m. (1997). just and unjust wars: a moral argument with historical illustrations. new york: basic books. wasserstrom, r. a. (1970). on the morality of war: a preliminary inquiry. in r. a. wasserstrom (ed.), war and morality (pp.78-101). belmont, ca: wadsworth publishing company. woetzel, r. k. (1962). the nuremberg trials in international law. new york: praeger. volume 12(2) / spring 2010 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice education and economic crises editorial introduction 3 education and economic crises andrew k. shiotani articles 5 the effect of an economic crisis on educational outcomes: an economic framework and review of the evidence m. najeeb shafiq 14 monitoring the effects of the global crisis on education provision gwang-chol chang 21 the global economic crisis: setbacks to the educational agenda for the minority in sub-saharan africa moses shiasha ingubu 31 under the same blue sky? inequity in migrant children’s education in china guangyu tan special section: responses to volume 12, issue 1 41 cosmopolitanism and our descriptions of ethics and ontology:a response to dale snauwaert’s “the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism” david t. hansen 45 response to noah sobe’s “rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education” andria wisler book review 50 p. agarwal, indian higher education: envisioning the future reviewed by radhika iyengar 53 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 2 (spring 2010) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden executive editor andrew shiotani senior editors ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, michael schapira, michelle reddy editors sarah flatto, cara furman, brian veprek, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, joseph hirsch, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, cara furman, anne gaspers, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira, brian veprek style editors matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar, michael schapira, brian veprek web editor andrew shiotani associate web editors ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2010 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 12(2): 41-44 special section responses to volume 12, issue 1 cosmopolitanism and our descriptions of ethics and ontology: a response to dale snauwaert’s “the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism” david t. hansen teachers college, columbia university in recent years scholars across the humanities and social sciences have revitalized the ancient concept of cosmopolitanism. dale snauwaert illuminates why this is so in his thoughtful article on what it might mean to educate for a shared humanity. snauwaert shows why many people find so-called “realism” an unsatisfactory political and moral orientation toward the world (also see lu, 2000). states do have an obligation, if they are to be legitimate, to secure the safety of their citizens. but states have no privileged insight into how to develop such security. indeed, history demonstrates time and again how benighted states have proven to be on this score. moreover, a peaceful social and political order is not merely a matter of specific, state-based negotiations and treaties. it is as much a matter of carefully preparing the ground for a tolerant, pacific response to disagreement. such ground-preparation is not undertaken by states as such but rather by a countless array of transnational institutions, communications, and exchanges between scientists, artists, educators, medical people, jurists, and more (cf. waldron, 2006). if divorced from these long-standing and real processes, so-called realism becomes merely a mode of cynicism, a pinched and hopeless outlook on the human condition. it is emphatically not our destiny to see the world in this way. rather it is a choice to do so, and it is a choice which (as history also shows) often has the nightmarish consequence of becoming self-fulfilling. in contrast with so-called realism, snauwaert argues for a universal cosmopolitanism. he highlights gandhi’s notion of the interconnectedness of all life, or what might be called a shared right to life on the part of all living beings including persons. no individual or community has a greater right to life than others. thus to kill in violence destroys not only others (literally) but also the perpetrator’s own humanity. all are reduced to mere things rather than beings with an inherent dignity. snauwaert argues that these moral principles provide the ontological ground upon which to build a cosmopolitan ethics and politics. he contends that an awareness of and active respect for this ground emerges through self-transformation. education becomes, at its center, the process of self-transformation on the part of people everywhere. in turn, that process presumably will lead people to demand that their states re-conceive the meaning of security and safety. instead of envisioning the latter as requiring a bunkered, go-it-alone mentality, leaders of state and its various official institutions can themselves undergo modes of transformation in light of the principles of interconnectedness and of a shared, universal moral identity. snauwaert’s discussion illuminates what has been called “strong” cosmopolitanism. this outlook spotlights universal values and norms. more than that, it suggests that such values and norms “take precedence over local and national political and moral values and principles” (snauwaert, p. 1, italics added). martha nussbaum, a leading theorist of strong cosmopolitanism, argues: 42 current issues in comparative education d. hansen …the accident of where one is born is just that, an accident; any human being might have been born in any nation… we may give what is near to us a special degree of attention and concern…[but] we should always remember that these features of placement are incidental and that our fundamental allegiance is to what is human (1997, pp. 31, 33). this outlook can be contrasted with “weak,” “thin,” or what some have called “rooted” cosmopolitanism (appiah 2005, 2006; cohen, 1992; hollinger 1995, 2002). thinkers in this camp argue for what they regard as a more balanced and realistic picture in which moral obligations are in many cases properly rooted in local traditions and practices. appiah and others suggest it is possible even if not always easy to enact local norms while also taking seriously universal notions of shared human dignity. they reject an a priori designation of the universal as morally trumping the local. for appiah, “a cosmopolitanism with prospects must reconcile a kind of universalism with the legitimacy of at least some forms of [moral] partiality… [cosmopolitanism is] a composite project, a negotiation between disparate tasks” (2005, pp. 223, 232). both thick and thin notions of cosmopolitanism acknowledge the complexity of human affairs and the permanent need for judgment. as immanuel kant once put it, “virtue” or a moral disposition is not a settled accomplishment. the reality is that virtue is the “moral disposition in conflict” (kant, 1993, p. 88 [academy 84]; also see p. 33 [academy 33]). in this light it becomes significant to consider not just what values people endorse but also how they hold and enact them (cf. hansen, et al., 2009). human values differ widely, and these differences often necessitate difficult compromises and uneasy conciliations. it makes a difference whether persons are steely and defensive about their values, or supple and generous-minded in their expression. the distinction between strong and rooted has helped scholars extract from the concept cosmopolitanism what it can contribute to contemporary concerns about justice and equity. one lesson to draw from the debate is that, in the very spirit of cosmopolitanism, we might look beyond what snauwaert characterizes as ethics and ontology. this gaze is not easy to try out in the face of the weighty figure of mohandas gandhi and snauwaert’s trenchant remarks about his universal outlook. but i am not convinced that what snauwaert calls gandhi’s “ontological grounding” is in fact “essential” for the project of world justice. i am not persuaded it is the only alternative to the sort of vulgar pragmatism snauwaert is concerned to avoid, and rightly so since the other side of the reductionist coin of “realism” is the claim that human nature is “a complete social construction” (snauwaert, p. 6). indeed, perhaps the idea that everything human is socially constructed all the way down is the natural – or nihilistic, as snauwaert suggests – consequence of so-called realism. but must we assert that human beings “have” an inherent moral dignity that “must” be acknowledged in order for justice to prevail? or might we assert that human beings are always on the way to dignity, and that we are always in search of better and better accounts of this quest for dignity, and better and better mechanisms for supporting it? can we say that philosophy, poetry, literature, painting, friendship and conversation are not merely expressions of what “already is” but rather are, at least as often, striving to express what is not yet, and therefore cannot be contained by concepts such as “social construction” and “dignity” as typically construed? do we need “awareness” of the interconnectedness of all life, and awareness of a supposed “essential unity” of humanity, in order to cultivate rich grounds for humane and just forms of relation? or current issues in comparative education 43 response to snauwaert do we need recognition of our shared creativity that can be seen in all that we dub “culture”? here i imagine culture at three levels: the familiar anthropological plane wherein communities reconfigure practices and ideals, the level of cultures of art (teaching, practicing science, musical traditions the world over, etc.) in which new forms and techniques emerge in often surprising ways, and the level of the individual person endeavoring to cultivate (“culturate”) her or his life as meaningfully and seriously as circumstances permit. the recognition of cultural creativity at these levels can generate a deep, robust sense of hope in what humans can accomplish if they give themselves over to the task, as many have done across the ages.1 moreover, in this task people do not need to “be” cosmopolitan, as if they must take on a new identity. it is more judicious to say they can be cosmopolitan-minded and cosmopolitan-hearted in various moments amidst the vicissitudes of their highly local, particularized lives. as sympathetic as i am with just about everything snauwaert has put forward in his article, i remain concerned that a fixed, a priori conception of human nature can inadvertently end up becoming state-like. it can argue for itself and for “the safety of humanity” against rival conceptions that would be cast out as anti-universal, anti-dignity, and anti-human. i believe we humans can afford a greater confidence than that, as unsettling, uncertain, and harrowing as such a posture will sometimes be. the truth is that there will be further injustices perpetuated in our time and in the human time ahead. but it is not clear that the road to taming them lies in finding a final, permanent conception of human nature, as much as it lies in learning to recognize and cultivate humane interactions in the here and now as well as the institutions that can support them. perhaps a redeeming feature of human nature, whatever else it may be, is the capacity to re-imagine and redirect its nature in spontaneous, creative ways. perhaps human dignity resides, at least in part, in the insight that we have no final characterization of that dignity. call this the dignity of standing back from descriptions in order to act in ever-responsive ways in an unpredictable cosmos. here the quotidian cosmopolitanism of the street, reported on in an increasing number of studies (cf. cheah & robbins, 1998), points the way as surely as does gandhi, doubtless one of the most aware human beings who ever walked the planet. endnotes 1. ruaridh macleod rightly pointed out that an analysis of kant’s critique of judgment could shore up this perspective on cultural creativity, in part by clarifying why kant’s overall orientation on the moral cannot be assimilated into a narrow, universalistic outlook. i hope to take up this suggestion on a larger canvas than this response article provides. references appiah, k. a. (2005). the ethics of identity. princeton: princeton university press. appiah, k. a. (2006). cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers. new york: w. w. norton. cheah, p. & robbins, b. (eds.) (1998). cosmopolitics: thinking and feeling beyond the nation. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. cohen, m. (1992). rooted cosmopolitanism: thoughts on the left, nationalism, and multiculturalism. dissent, fall, 478-483. 44 current issues in comparative education d. hansen hansen, d. t., burdick-shepherd, s., cammarano, c. & obelleiro, g. (2009). education, values, and valuing in cosmopolitan perspective. curriculum inquiry 39, 587-612. hollinger, d. a. (1995). postethnic america: beyond multiculturalism. new york: basic books. hollinger, d. a. (2002). not universalists, not pluralists: the new cosmopolitans find their own way. in s. vertovec and r. cohen (eds.), conceiving cosmopolitanism: theory, context, and practice, (pp. 227-239). oxford: oxford university press. kant, i. (1993 [1788]). critique of practical reason, trans. l. w. beck. upper saddle river, nj: prenticehall. lu, c. (2000). the one and many faces of cosmopolitanism. the journal of political philosophy, 8 (2), 244-253. nussbaum, m. c. (1997). kant and cosmopolitanism. in j. bohman & m. lutz-bachman (eds.), perpetual peace: essays on kant’s cosmopolitan ideal, (pp. 25-57). cambridge: mit press. waldron, j. (2006). cosmopolitan norms. in s. benhabib, another cosmopolitanism, (pp. 83-101). oxford: oxford university press. copyright © 2010 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved © 2006 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 84 april 21, 2006 the international race over the patronage of the south: comparative and international education in eastern europe and the united states gita steiner-khamsi teachers college, columbia university william dejong-lambert teachers college, columbia university abstract the authors contend that the impact of the cold war on multilateral organizations (especially unesco) as well as on the academic programs in comparative and international education or development studies in education has been largely understudied. both world-systems (usa and its allies, soviet union and its allies) laid claim on the project of world peace that unesco was meant to pursue. furthermore, the boom in area, language and development studies in the 1960s was closely associated with the international race between the two world-systems over the patronage of those postcolonial countries that were viewed as “non-aligned” or neutralist. the salutary effects upon education policy in the united states are described, along with the portrayal of education as an inferior aspect of the capitalist system, behind the “iron curtain.” the authors note the new research field of post-cold war studies that emerged in u.s. academe over the past decade, and find that such studies are surprisingly scarce in comparative and international education which, by virtue of analyzing other educational systems, was at the center of the dichotomy. introduction the history of comparative education is often told in terms of revolutionary paradigm shifts that revamped disciplinary focus, methods, and geographical reach (e.g., altbach 1991). until the 1960s, comparative education in north america was firmly based in the discipline of history, enamored with one-country studies, and fixated on educational systems in europe. by the end of the decade, the field was transformed into comparative and international education, with a composition of researchers and practitioners who were multi-disciplinary, cross-national and international in orientation. the name of its professional association was changed accordingly, from comparative education society (ces) to comparative and international education society (cies). according to standard accounts, disciplinary “orthodoxy” in history gave way to a “heterodoxy” (paulston 1993), inclusive of different social science disciplines. once history was abandoned as the only legitimate disciplinary foundation for the comparative study of educational systems, methodological changes followed suit. for some, the units of comparison became smaller, moving from national educational systems to culturallybounded educative sites or communities. for others, they became broader, as the narrow focus on cross-national comparison in north america and europe was suspended, and academic curiosity and professional interests were redirected towards the third world. this textbook summary of developments in comparative and international education is supported by institutional data. the 1960s was in fact a decade of growth for graduate the international race over the patronage of the south: comparative and international education in eastern europe and the united states current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(2) 85 programs in international education. universities that already offered comparative education programs broadened their curriculum by adding aspects on international education or development studies. in addition, several universities took advantage of the funding made available for area and international studies and established new graduate programs that advanced the field of development and education (see wilson 1994). that something critical happened at this time that transformed the field of comparative education is certain. however, exactly what happened, and when, is less clear. this article challenges classic historical accounts of north american comparative education for failing to consider important details: the impact of the cold war upon the field and the relationship between comparative versus international education. a second and related challenge is to the flawed belief that comparative education –the older branch of comparative and international education programs– was until the 1960s exempt from international technical assistance, international cooperation, or “academic colonialism.” two renowned comparative researchers in early twentieth century, paul monroe (u.s.a.) and sir michael sadler (united kingdom), were also prominent policy advisors for their respective (colonial) governments. another luminary of early comparative education, isaac l. kandel, devoted the second half of his professional life to unesco and provided, what is known as “technical assistance” today, to countries that gained political independence from colonial empires. the fact that the encounter between comparative education and international education was erroneously depicted as a brand new development during the 1960s is a puzzle that deserves further scrutiny. how did the cold war affect comparative and international education as a research field and a professional practice from the 1950s until the mid-1980s? by the mid-1960s, the two agendas in international technical assistance—national defense at home and international presence in non-aligned countries abroad—had become interwoven. seen pragmatically, the cold war had a salutary effect on comparative and international education: it pumped money into area studies, created language and culture fellowships, and generated positions in technical assistance. for those who preferred to write books at home rather than work in development projects abroad, the field of sovietology opened a lucrative avenue for comparative research (see foster 1998). but did it also advance the field of comparative and international education intellectually or methodologically? not all revolutionary changes took place in the 1960s, and not all that emerged in the 1960s was new and better. most importantly, the impact of the cold war on area studies and development studies in education is conspicuously missing. the long decade of the 1960s one of the fallacies perpetuated in historical accounts of comparative and international education is that the development branch of the field emerged as a response to the postcolonial context of the 1960s. at teachers college, columbia university, for example, separate graduate studies were established as the technical assistance program, later renamed international educational development (butts 2006). in the first few years after their establishment, comparative and international development programs in education relied on external funding made available for building area studies at u.s. universities. this changed with the passage of the national defense education act (ndea) of 1958, which was created by the u.s. congress as a response to the cold war. originally, gita steiner-khamsi and william dejong-lambert 86 april 21, 2006 ndea funding was not directed towards the post-colonial world; this responsibility was given to the peace corps, founded three years after ndea. it was the peace corps’ mission to first understand, and then influence the hearts and minds of people abroad. however, ultimately, the ndea also moved into this arena. the ndea-funded title vi grants provided fellowships and language training, and institutionalized area studies at universities. a review of the ndea budget for 1963 illustrates the pre-occupation with socialist countries: 16% of the budget for modern foreign language graduate fellowships was spent for chinese and 13% for russian, followed by arabic (11%), japanese (10%), spanish (10%) and other languages (office of education 1963: figure 20). the ford foundation augmented government support for area studies and international research at u.s. universities in the 1960s, and at the same time extensively funded higher education exchange. at teachers college, columbia university, the period of greatest financial allocation to international educational development was between 1958-1973, when ndea and the ford foundation actively promoted area studies. unsurprisingly, the ndea as well as projects funded by usaid were highly controversial. freeman r. butts summarized the criticism in the introduction of the 1967/68 report of teachers college’s institute of international studies: the air of disenchantment surrounded other aspects of american foreign policy, notably, of course the vietnam war. by association, american educational influence came under attack in some nations as “academic colonialism.” similarly, american social science research efforts in general were sometimes viewed with covert suspicion as agencies of the american militarygovernmental-industrial establishment and sometimes with open hostility as under-cover enterprises of the c.i.a. (butts 1968: 1) the race over the patronage of “non-aligned” or neutralist states the 1958 national defense education act went into effect a few years before the majority of countries in the third world declared independence from colonial governments. however, the main agenda of the ndea, which was to defend the nation against communism by building u.s. expertise, language/area knowledge and intelligence of socialist countries, was implemented on a global scale. soon after, the battlefield consisted of former colonies that had recently gained political independence from european empires, but not yet chosen alliances. the majority of countries in asia and the middle east had achieved independence before 1953, and these regions also now became territory for the expansion of u.s. and soviet influence. the wave of independence movements in africa peaked in 1960, when seventeen nations established sovereignty. the west was hampered by the fact that most of the newly independent nations associated colonialism with european capitalism, making the argument that soviet intentions were exactly the same harder to convey. in any event, eisenhower’s secretary of state, john foster dulles, declared that neutrality was unacceptable: countries of the third world were required to choose sides (borstelmann, 2001, p. 111-113). the international race over the patronage of the south: comparative and international education in eastern europe and the united states current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(2) 87 both superpowers used technical assistance as a strategy to gain access to, and secure influence in, these newly independent countries. in the capitalist west, technical assistance was labeled international cooperation, and in the socialist east ‘fraternalist support for countries that haven’t chosen the socialist path of development’ (steinerkhamsi & stolpe, 2006). at times an abbreviated synonym—internationalist aid—was also used. unesco became, against the intentions of some of its chief architects, the only universal association that bridged the two world-systems. yet, u.s. relations with the developing world—particularly africa—in the late 1950s and early to mid-1960s, were inextricably linked with the issue of desegregation at home. both the eisenhower and kennedy administrations were many times required to formally apologize for instances of racial discrimination suffered by diplomats from newly-independent african nations. the brutal suppression of civil rights activists in birmingham, alabama was a subject of discussion at the first meeting of the organization of african unity in addis ababa, ethiopia in 1963. martin luther king’s receipt of the nobel peace prize the following year constituted a powerful recognition that race relations were no longer a domestic issue. unesco activities thus presented an invaluable opportunity to build alliances, while presenting the status of african americans in the best possible light (dudziak, 2000, p. 153-248). meanwhile, having consolidated power in eastern and central europe, the soviet union was now in a position to advance the socialist agenda in the developing world. marxism-leninism described a world in which the communist revolution had never taken place in capitalist countries because the worst excesses of the system had been displaced to the colonies. this notion proved highly attractive to new leaders in asia, africa, and the middle east, fermenting resentment of the west, and as an argument for where their loyalties should now reside. it also placed the united states in the position of needing to train “ambassadors”—private citizens with the knowledge and expertise— to advertise the american way of life, and spread american influence. the cold war only became violent in the context of smaller proxy wars—korea, vietnam—and other instances where armed struggle was structured into the dichotomy of socialism versus capitalism. on the larger scale it was a war of ideas, in which internal squabbles on one side—the suez crisis, the prague spring—became propaganda victories for the other. demonstrations of technological advancement—such as the soviet launch of sputnik in october of 1957, or the apollo moon landing in 1969— became testimony to the superiority of the soviet or u.s. political system. these events also influenced the choices made in the non-aligned states over which country was the guarantor of long-term security. in this context education became essential. unesco: who owns the project of world peace? the history of unesco has been well documented by comparative education scholars; most prominently by phillip w. jones (1988, 1999, 2005) and karen mundy (1999). most historical accounts of unesco, however, focus on the changing priorities that resulted from the large number of newly independent post-colonial states joining the organization. what is not accounted for is the impact of socialist countries on the unesco agenda. starting in 1954 when the soviet union re-joined the organization, other socialist countries were, after numerous failed attempts, admitted as member gita steiner-khamsi and william dejong-lambert 88 april 21, 2006 states to the united nations. the entry of socialist countries marked the beginning of a race between the two super-powers and their respective allies for the patronage of postcolonial, “non-aligned” or “neutralist” states. both the united states and the soviet union played an early and active role in the establishment of the united nations in 1945, and the formation of the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) in 1946. unesco was originally conceived based upon a common vision of peace and security achievable through collaboration. as the cold war began, however, the un became territory in which conflicts between east and west were continually played out, as each side strived to define itself as the representative of global justice, peace and stability (mundy, 1999). the rivalry between the united states and the soviet union began over the question of membership. the soviet union insisted that all fifteen soviet republics be recognized separately, a demand only withdrawn after the united states countered that all fortyeight states should be given membership as well. ultimately the soviet union was represented by three seats in the un, belonging to russia, belarus and the ukraine. this competition over numerical allies continued and expanded into other states as former colonies emerged as independent nations in the 1950s and 60s. the first director of unesco, british biologist julian huxley, was an ardent anticommunist whose views on eugenics prompted a continual focus on population control in the developing world. huxley viewed unesco as agency for promoting his own personal vision of global, evolutionary change (huxley, 1948; jones, 1988, p. 29-31). meanwhile, the soviet union and other east bloc states withdrew from unesco in the early 1950s, only rejoining after stalin’s death in 1954. there was no doubt for the soviet union and its allies that the project of world peace was, from the onset and by definition, a socialist enterprise. despite these claims, however, being admitted as a socialist country to the united nations was not an easy endeavor. for example, the mongolian people’s republic tried for fifteen years, and was only accepted as a member state in 1961. in this case, stubborn rejection was not only the response of western market economies, but also the eastern neighbor, the pr china. admission to unesco and undp was an important priority for the socialist government of mongolia, and thus portrayed as a victory (see steiner-khamsi & stolpe 2006): our country [the mongolian people’s republic] was one of the first to give its full support to the ideals and tasks of the united nations. this is quite natural since, being a socialist state, it had, long before the foundation of the un, been devoting its foreign policy to the task of consolidating world peace and to the development of co-operation among nations on the basis of the principle of the peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems. (dugersuren 1981: 141) it was also uncontested for the soviet union that the strong influence of “u.s. imperialism” on the un was a threat to international safety and peace. it therefore elevated itself to the role of international peacekeeper, a role that was backed up by its the international race over the patronage of the south: comparative and international education in eastern europe and the united states current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(2) 89 political allies in the second world and several “non-aligned countries” in the third world. the authors of the 102-page booklet the soviet view of the united nations (vavilov, matveyev & oleandrov, 1974), published in english, clearly had a sympathetic audience in mind when they forcefully made a case for viewing the un as an organization that was thoroughly built on socialist beliefs of international peace and solidarity. the booklet was published in the year of the unesco “revolution” when several member states demanded a new international economic order. the revolution was prompted by the withdrawal of the united states, great britain and singapore in 1984 which, in turn, enabled unesco to further shift its emphasis towards third world countries, and to a lesser extent, countries of the second war. an excerpt from the booklet provides an idea of why the united states and its allies felt cornered, and as a result withdrew from the organization: co-operation and understanding between the socialist and the nonaligned countries have put an end to the abnormal situation in the united nations that had existed earlier when a group of states supported by imperialist military blocs had had a majority of votes in the general assembly and other un bodies and had tried to impose their decisions on other groups of countries. (vavilov, matveyev & oleandrov, 1974) the soviet union came to see unesco as a valuable means of swaying unaligned nations. the soviets also saw participation in unesco technical assistance projects as a way of gaining access and insight into technological developments in the west, even as they benefited from the associated prestige. by collaborating with other un countries on nature conservation, ocean exploration or the study of natural disasters, the soviet union could advertise the success of their own science and technology, even as they appropriated innovations as needed. the soviet union also eagerly participated in unesco-sponsored cultural exchanges, designed to promote understanding between east and west. this also enabled them to present soviet culture as collaboration between diverse groups spread across europe and asia. the image of the soviet union as a multi-national or multi-cultural collective was a valuable asset in portraying themselves as the best guarantor of world peace (gaiduk, 2006). the impact of the cold war on comparative and international education: damaging or salutary effects? in comparative education societies in north america and western europe the question of how the cold war impacted the field of comparative and international education has remained anathema. however, comparative education researchers from post-socialist countries have addressed—at times under pressure to justify themselves retrospectively—this important question. in the “east”, former proponents of socialist comparative education in the german democratic republic (gdr) re-examined the developments of socialist comparative education from a post-cold war perspective (john 1998; kienitz, 1994; see also busch 1983). according to these scholars, the period of the early 1970s was critical for further developments in comparative research. in 1972/73, the gdr comparative education society engaged in a fascinating methodological debate on whether comparison should be universally applied, given that capitalist school systems are, from the marxistgita steiner-khamsi and william dejong-lambert 90 april 21, 2006 leninist perspective, at a lower stage of development. the debate is documented in the journal vergleichende pädagogik [comparative education], and the two exponents of the debate were the editor-in-chief h.-g. hoffmann (against comparison) and the deputy editor-in-chief werner kienitz (for comparison). hans-georg hoffmann (1975) argued that comparison should only be exclusively applied for “intra-system” comparison, that is, for comparison with other socialist countries and particularly with the soviet union, acknowledged as having attained the highest level on the socialist path of development. the argument was made that developments in capitalist educational systems should be observed and reported, but not compared. this anti-comparison position gained ardent support from ilse gerth (1973), in charge of international relations at the academy of educational sciences of the gdr. subsequently, in line with positions held by the communist party, these opponents of cross-national comparison obtained a stamp of approval by the association of socialist comparative education researchers. at their annual meeting, held in leipzig, the debates of 1972/73 were reiterated and kienitz’ initial suggestion to compare educational systems in both east and west was officially disbanded (kienitz 1972). hoffmann (1975) summarized the distinctions between bourgeois and socialist comparative education discussed at the meeting of socialist comparativists, and concluded that socialist comparative education should abstain from comparison across political systems. starting in 1975, gdr researchers refrained from using the term “comparative education” for inter-system or cross-national comparison, and instead resorted to the term “auslandspädagogik” (education in foreign educational systems). at the same time, they ceased to engage in country-comparison and instead developed one-country studies, that is, extensive documentation of educational systems in capitalist countries with the sole purpose of documenting how far capitalist educational systems lagged behind socialist ones. the organization of the journal vergleichende pädagogik reflected the outcomes of the methodological debate. the articles and reports were divided in several sections: education in socialist fraternal countries, education in capitalist countries, education in developing countries, and for a while a separate section on education in the german federal republic was enlisted. the method of comparison was only applied to comparable educational systems, that is, in articles and reports published in the first section dealing with “education in socialist fraternal countries.” as leading socialist comparative education researchers in the gdr (werner kienitz, bernd john) acknowledged after the end of the cold war, comparative education was instrumentalized for ideological purposes. the gdr was, for a variety of reasons— including the perceived threat of constant indoctrination by the german “bourgeois” society in the federal republic of germany—the closest political ally to the soviet union. its proximity was also reflected in positions held in comparative education research. other socialist comparative education societies, notably those in hungary and poland, were less ideologically tainted. they engaged in study-visits to western capitalist countries, and acknowledged the usefulness of comparative educational research for educational development in their own countries. in the “west,” the phase of critical self-reflection has yet to be initiated in u.s. comparative and international education. in the early 1980s japanology replaced sovietology in u.s. educational research, or as philip foster (1998) has formulated, “for the international race over the patronage of the south: comparative and international education in eastern europe and the united states current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(2) 91 north american scholars the ‘japanese challenge’ has replaced the ‘soviet challenge’.” (p. 7). what endured from one “challenge” to the other was the fascination with the contrastive method in comparative education and the disinterest in understanding how political and economic constellations affect educational structures, beliefs, and practices. given the stubborn ignorance on political and economic dimensions of education, it is not surprising that appeals have been made to revisit developments in u.s. educational development retrospectively, and to examine the impact that the competition between the two superpowers may have had on domestic developments. it is not a coincidence that the new research field of post-cold war studies has emerged in u.s. academe, as manifested in new academic journals (e.g., journal of cold war studies) and a proliferation of academic books on the topic. to date, several u.s. policies during the period of the cold war have been re-investigated (dudziak, 2000; borstelmann, 2001; westad, 2005), demonstrating the salutary impact that the tensions between the two superpowers had on social reforms in the united states, and as mentioned earlier, in particular in the area of race relations. even though education was an important area in which the superiority of socialist systems over capitalist countries was constantly propagated, there exist few studies dealing with developments in the field of education that were visibly impacted by inter-state competition. surprisingly, there are even fewer studies on the field of comparative education which, by virtue of analyzing other educational systems, was at the center of the dichotomy. a reflection on how comparative education researchers in both world-systems situated themselves within a bipolar “intellectual space” is very much needed and very topical given that 2006 marks the 50th anniversary of the u.s. comparative and international education society and the 50th volume of the journal comparative education review. in an attempt to invigorate a debate on how u.s. comparative and international education dealt with the “other,” and as result prioritized specific topics and methods at the expense of others, we plan on editing a special issue on the topic which is to be published in the journal european education (forthcoming, fall 2006). before exploring in further publications how american educational researchers dealt with socialist education, it might be an opportune moment to present for now how socialist comparativists viewed u.s. comparative and international education. the following is an excerpt from the gdr journal vergleichende pädagogik published under the heading “the development of associations of comparativists abroad” on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the comparative and education society: the oldest and strongest association of comparativists is the u.s.american comparative education society. it celebrated its 10th anniversary in 1966. in 1956, when it was founded, the american society had 152 members from the united states and three from other countries. in 1962, there were 519 members from the u.s.a. and 47 from other countries. currently [1967], the number of members […] is close to 1,400 members. […] one of the noteworthy activities are the scientific “expeditions” of the society. in large teams of researchers they visit various countries and regions after preparing themselves accordingly and then evaluating their experiences in comprehensive publications. for example in 1958, from 150 applicants a group of seven scholars was selected to study gita steiner-khamsi and william dejong-lambert 92 april 21, 2006 educational development in the soviet union. this group studied for six weeks, according to a touring schedule established prior to their visit, various aspects of the soviet people’s education. the voluminous tome “the changing soviet school” (boston 1960) is a result of this study tour. this book vividly illustrates, however, the prejudices, wrong interpretations and fabrications of bourgeois american comparativists; the book was, for good reasons, criticized by soviet scholars. in general, anti-communist tendencies are clearly discernible in the activities of this society as well as its intimate relation with the imperialist-neocolonialist cultural foreign policy of the u.s.a. (kienitz 1967, p. 103) it is essential to re-examine the developments in u.s. educational research during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s—a period of major social and educational reforms—from a postcold war perspective if for no other reason than to refute the generalized defamation of u.s. comparative and international education as a field that advanced the “imperialistneocolonialist cultural foreign policy” of the u.s. government (kienitz 1967, p. 103), and replace it with more nuanced analyses. conclusion the perspective provided by the end of the cold war has allowed for a wide range of reevaluation and reinterpretation across academia. as scholars continue to better understand the impact of the rivalry between the united states and the soviet union upon research and education policy on both sides of the iron curtain, the field of international and comparative education will emerge as having had a fundamental role in determining understanding. comparative education scholars can continue to contribute by describing how education became contested ground as a means of selfportrayal, and de-legitimizing the capitalist or socialist “other” to allied nations in the third world. in the united states, increased funding for area studies as well as the identification of school segregation as an impediment to promoting a positive image of the united states abroad, are examples of the salutary outcomes the cold war provided. meanwhile, behind the “iron curtain” east bloc nations understood education as an area where the superiority of socialism could be demonstrated. the implications of the cold war are thus evident world wide, and continue to constitute an important element for consideration by education researchers, even as the centrality of education makes the research of comparativists essential to understanding the cold war. references altbach, p. g. (1991). trends in comparative education. comparative education review, 35 (3), 491-507. borstelmann, t. (2001). the cold war and the color line. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. busch, a. (1983). die vergleichende pädagogik in der ddr. eine disziplingeschichtliche untersuchung [comparative education in the gdr. a historical study of the discipline], münchen: johannes berchmanns verlag. the international race over the patronage of the south: comparative and international education in eastern europe and the united states current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(2) 93 butts, r. f.(1968). international studies at teachers college. annual report 1967-1968. new york: teachers college, columbia university. butts, r. f. (2006). interview. in gita steiner-khamsi and eric johnson, video producers, comparatively speaking: the first 50 years of the comparative and international education society. new york: cies and teachers college, columbia university. dudziak, m. (2000). cold war civil rights: race and the image of american democracy. princeton, nj: princeton university press. dugersuren, m. (1981). an equal and active member of the united nations. in [name of editor not noted], the 60th anniversary of the people’s republic of mongolia. ulaanbaatar: unen editorial board, and moscow: novosti press agency publishing house, pp. 141146. foster, p. (1998). foreword. in harold j. noah and max a. eckstein, doing comparative education: three decades of collaboration. hong kong: cerc studies in comparative education 5, pp. 1-8. hofmann, h.(1975). schlusswort der leipziger tagung [concluding remarks of the meeting in leipzig]. in wolfgang billerbeck: methodologische fragen der auseinandersetzung mit der bürgerlichen schulpolitik und pädagogik – ein bericht von einer tagung in leipzig. vergleichende pädagogik, 11 (4), 411-431. huxley, j. (1948). man in the modern world. new york: mentor books. ilya v. g, & ilya v. (2006). “the soviet union and unesco during the cold war.” united nations education and cultural organization. available online at http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.phpurl_id=30447&url_do=do_topic&url_sec tion=201.html. john, b. (1998). ideologie und pädagogik: zur geschichte der vergleichenden pädagogik in der ddr [ideology and education: the history of comparative education in the gdr]. köln: böhlau verlag. jones, p. w. (1988). international policies for third world education: unesco, literacy and development. new york: routledge. jones, p. w. (1999). globalisation and the unesco mandate: multilateral prospects for educational development. international journal of educational development, 19 (1), 17-25. jones, p. w. with d. coleman (2005). the united nations and education. multilateralism, development and globalization. london and new york: routledge falmer. kienitz, w. (1967). die entwicklung von vereinigungen der komparatisten im ausland [the development of associations of comparativists abroad]. vergleichende pädagogik, 3 (1), 103-104. gita steiner-khamsi and william dejong-lambert 94 april 21, 2006 kienitz, w. (1972). einige theoretische fragen der entwicklung der vergleichenden pädagogik als wissenschaftsdiziplin (ein diskussionsbeitrag) [a few theoretical questions regarding the development of comparative education as an academic discipline]. vergleichende pädagogik, 8 (4), 368-390. kienitz, w. (1994). existenzprobleme, merkmale, leistungen und fehlleistungen einer vergleichenden pädagogik in der ddr – ein ziemlich persönlicher zwischenreport [existential problems, features, accomplishments and fallacies of a comparative education in the gdr – a rather personal interim report]. in ernst cloer and rolf wernstedt, eds., pädagogik der ddr. eröffnung einer notwendigen bilanzierung. weinheim: deutscher studienverlag, pp. 170-185. mundy, k. (1999). educational multilateralism in a changing world order: unesco and the limits of the possible. international journal of educational development, 19 (1), 27-52. office of education (1963). report on the national defense education act. fiscal year 1963. washington, dc: u.s. department of health, education, and welfare, office of education. paulston, r. g. (1993). mapping discourse in comparative education texts. compare, 23 (2), 101-114. steiner-khamsi, g. & stolpe, i. (2006). educational import in mongolia: local encounters with global forces. new york: palgrave macmillan. vavilov, a., matveyev, i., and oleandrov, v. (1974). the soviet view of the united nations. moscow: novosti press agency publishing house. westad, o. (2005). the global cold war. cambridge, england: cambridge university press. wilson, d. n. (1994). comparative and international education: fraternal or siamese twins? a preliminary genealogy of our twin fields. comparative education review, 38 (4), 449-486. 176 current issues in comparative education book reviews fragile states, by lohar brock, hans-henrik holm, georg sørensen & michael stohl. polity press: cambridge, uk, 2012. 200 pp. isbn-13: 978-0745649429 in an era when good governance features prominently on the global development agenda, there seems to be a corollary spotlight on state fragility. in this book – a quick read that covers much ground – the authors wade into the conceptual waters of state fragility with the following aims: (i) sketching more clearly its conceptual parameters, including its core characteristics; (ii) dissecting its connection to violent conflict; (iii) analyzing the role that international society has played in relation to fragile statehood; and (iv) laying out two proposals for tackling its intractability. these analyses are conducted through the prism of three case studies: the democratic republic of the congo (drc), afghanistan, and haiti. fragile states are sometimes called “weak states” or “failed states”; at times, the terms are used interchangeably, and at other times, distinctions are made. from the onset, the authors explicitly resist the urge to extensively engage the debate surrounding terms such as ‘fragile’, ‘weak’, ‘failed’, ‘failing’, ‘quasi.’ instead, they aver that “the question of labelling is not crucial here; as long as we accept that summarizing concepts are needed, who wins the terminological beauty contest is less important” (p. 15). their exhaustive exploration of the characteristics that actually constitute fragile statehood does perhaps sufficiently buffer them from criticism for their aversion to terminological debate. however, it ought to be briefly noted that nomenclatural imprecision may not necessarily present major heuristic challenges, but ontologically, the wide ranging possibilities of ‘fragile/ weak/ failed’ may be a catch-all phrase that merely complicates efforts to tackle issues that do require actual differentiation. however, one of the book’s strengths is its elucidation of the three core characteristics of fragile statehood, which center on the realms of government, economy, and nationhood. the first of these characteristics refer to the inefficiency and corruption of institutional and administrative structures whereby the legitimacy of the state is almost non-existent: “there are no effective mechanisms for holding leaders accountable to the populations” (p. 16). the second characteristic is constituted by a deficient and fragmented economy whereby consistent provision of even rudimentary services for the populace is often all but impossible: “fragile states lack coherent national economies which are capable of sustaining a basic level of welfare for the population and of providing resources for running an effective state” (p. 16). the third characteristic concerns nationhood, whereby any concretized coalescence around the notion of an imagined national community is non-existent: “in these states, ethnic identities connected to tribal, religious and similar characteristics continue to dominate over the national identity. the national community of sentiment has not grown strong, partly because the state has not been able to create effective citizenship” (p. 17). brock et al. adroitly compare state formation in europe circa 1648 and onward to today’s states. the comparison explains how imposition of a violent colonialism contributed significantly to discontinuities, clientalism, and nepotism that are germane to fragile states, while simultaneously acknowledging that “state formation proceeds in dissimilar ways and moves in different directions” (p. 6). the authors aver that “fragile states owe their continued existence to the ‘world culture’ of the sovereign nation-state which emerged with decolonization and triumphed with current issues in comparative education 177 the break-up of the ‘socialist world system’” (p. 39). however, it is at this junction that they part ways with ‘radical dependency theory.’ they concur with its basic tenets regarding the role of external domination in facilitating the weakness of fragile states, but critique it for its omission of or lack of comprehensive attention to endogenous factors: “fragile states have emerged from a mixture of domestic and international conditions, both of which are fundamentally unlike anything experienced by the successful states in the west” (p. 10). this nuanced analysis, upon which i will elaborate below, is the core strength of this book. that state fragility is a consequence of both endogenous and exogenous factors is a cornerstone of this book, and by deploying the drc, afghanistan and haiti as three geographically disparate case studies, the authors are able to highlight these factors. they feature, inter alia: a long history of external domination, including colonialism and subsequent interventions; protracted violence; identity politics; self-seeking elites; and grossly mismanaged resources which become a “curse” rather than a source of widely distributed economic benefit. because violence is often such a staple of fragile states, brock et al. expend considerable effort in deconstructing the connection between violence and state fragility: they “do not argue that there is a deterministic, law-like relationship between state fragility and violence” (p. 48); but acknowledge that “state fragility...is both a cause and a consequence of violence” (p. 47). within the calculus of violent conflict, the authors do consider the role of resources, economics, and identities, but posit that these are ‘enabling factors’, that may prolong/fuel the conflict, rather than being the ‘basic causes’ of the conflict/violence; that is, these are all subordinate to the “political processes that generate and perpetuate violent conflict” (p. 52). while it is an arduous task to disentangle the political from the socio-economic, brock et al. anchor their analysis within a structure/process perspective, which factors in the impacts of colonialism, the cold war, neoliberal politics and economics, and the u.s.-led war on terror (subsequent to the 9/11 attacks). in this context, it may be useful to consider a dynamical systems approach to studying state fragility, as a way of overcoming the urge to prioritize political factors over the socio-economic. such an approach involves visual mapping of the complicated and multi-layered connections of myriad factors (for an application, see for instance peter coleman’s 2011 work, the five percent: finding solutions to seemingly impossible conflicts.) despite the authors’ weighing of both internal and external factors to state fragility, they pivot to a critique of interventionism, arguing that “both domestic and international conditions make interventions problematic undertakings” (p. 97). they posit that the increasingly reified notions of sovereignty and non-intervention that were promulgated in the decolonizing era have been tested and/or sullied as a result of the botched affair in somalia, the international paralysis over the rwandan genocide, the delayed bosnian intervention, the iraq war and the most recent libyan revolution. in fact, these suggest an incoherent global template for interventionism, despite the 2001-created agenda entitled ‘responsibility to protect’. brock et al. demonstrate how the hesitancy by nations of the west and the global south is not unfounded, since the impacts of interventions (both military but especially development aid) in the three case studies – drc, afghanistan, and haiti – have been mostly nullified by the fragility of those states and the endogenous conditions that constitute them. the authors conclude that the aforementioned presents the global community with a significant dilemma between respecting national sovereignty and protecting citizens from “genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” (p. 162). this dilemma is aggravated by the fact that the international community seems to lack the capacity to foster sustained stability 178 current issues in comparative education within fragile states. in the face of these conundrums, brock et al. offer two proposals: (i) the need to “re-examine external conditions and forms of engagement that foster or support the mitigation of fragile statehood” and (ii) that the global community should “be ready to do more, and with much greater speed in emergency situations” (p. 165). a requisite component of the first proposal involves an overhaul of international development, whereby effective self-help is fostered and the more economically advanced economies revisit the disequilibrium of “trade relations, market access, investment rules, financial regulation, the rules and regulations of the international organizations, and ‘transnational bads’, such as smuggling, the drugs trade, the arms trade, [and] international terrorism” (p. 167). these are indeed worthwhile recommendations, though more effort should have been expended on their elaboration. nonetheless, this book represents a strong contribution toward widening our understanding of fragile states; and despite the far-ranging analysis of both endogenous and exogenous factors that shape state fragility, the authors are perhaps quite right when they insist that “fundamental social change must come from [within and] not from outsiders” (p. 136). – reviewed by hakim mohandas amani williams, gettysburg college citizenship education in commonwealth countries, by tristan mccowan and sonia gomez. london, uk: commonwealth secretariat, 2012. 100 pp. isbn-13 978-1849290715. citizenship education in commonwealth countries analyzes the use of citizenship education as an educational intervention to promote respect and understanding in different commonwealth countries. according to mccowan and gomez, “given that half of the 2 billion people in the commonwealth are under 25 years old, citizenship education, whether implicit or explicit, represents a window of opportunity to influence a world of active citizenship and peace for the next generation” (p. 25). with this in mind, citizenship education in commonwealth countries offers a complex look at citizenship education in a global era. the authors explore both what it means to be a citizen in a global society and how to create cosmopolitan citizens through education. spanning the range of issues associated with citizenship education from theorizing citizenship to implementing interventions, mccowan and gomez provide useful insights into innovative teaching strategies that foster respect and understanding in cosmopolitan citizens. in the most traditional sense, citizenship “involves a relationship between the citizen and other citizens or the state, and involves concessions and privileges on both sides” (p. 14). because citizenship education has often been framed by patriotic citizenship in a given nation-state, it has failed to address issues of international conflict. however, defining citizenship in a global era proves particularly complicated, as members of diverse ethnic and religious groups claim citizenship within the same national boundaries. in this context, the ideal cosmopolitan citizen emerges – not a national citizen focused on competing successfully in global markets, but a cosmopolitan global citizen who displays empathy through respect and understanding for diverse groups of people. aiming to build cosmopolitan citizens through education, mccowan and gomez employ martha nussbaum’s three capacities: critical self-examination, world citizenship, and the narrative imagination. across different commonwealth countries, citizenship education has been practiced in different ways and to varying degrees. mccowan and gomez review those practices in case studies of © 2008 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 10(1/2): 16-21. the growing market for ngo influence lynn ilon florida international university “can ngos provide alternative development in a market-based system of global economics?” (ilon, 1998) today, a full ten years after i first asked this question, we still have only partial answers. there is no doubt that ngos are playing in a more significant role in global oda (overseas development assistance). while the reasons for supply of aid are varied, certainly furthering the institutional or national strength of the donor is a primary consideration. while ngos may not entirely voice this agenda, ngos are increasingly linked to the economic and political motives behind such aid. additionally, ngos’ position between governments and economies means that they face controls that government recipients of international aid funds do not often face. this positions the ngos in a constrained environment. in this context, ngos sometimes act as agents of state or global economic forces. this article addresses these four points as a means of addressing my original question. growing links to global and bilateral oda cice’s focus on ngos in 1998 was on the heels of what was then a relatively new trend – ngos’ increasing role as direct recipients of aid. historically, some ingos (international nongovernmental organizations) had largely been recipients of grants from governments; rarely did this apply to local ngos. global data on ngos is notoriously lacking and of poor quality, necessitating various authors to work around this problem. writing for the united nations research institute for social development, agg (2006) looked at trends in aid to ngos using organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) data, though she acknowledges the unreliability of the oecd as a source. oecd categories, she reminds us, do not incorporate all ngo funding. nevertheless, the trends are clear. table 1 shows the percentage of oda given to ngos since 1984. table 1: percent of oda directed to ngos, 1984-2003 year % of oda to ngos 1984 0.2% 1991 2.3% 1998 4.7% 2003 5.9% derived from: agg (2006), p.17, figure 10. in 1984, less than one percent of the oda was given directly to ngos. by 2003, the percentage had grown to six percent. this translates into a substantial amount of money as shown in table 2. current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 17 lynn ilon table 2: oda dollars to ngos: 1984-2003 (usd) year millions of usd oda to ngos 1984 0.8m 1991 900.0m 1998 1,100.0m 2003 2,200.0m derived from: agg (2006), p. 23, figure 16 usaid (united states agency for international development) has developed an “ngo sustainability index” (usaid, may 2007) which track progress of ngo development – a clear indication that ngo strengthening is important enough to track and index. how are ngos faring in an environment where they are increasingly funded through international aid? agg (2006) examines the reasons behind this growth and disputes two commonly argued (often heralded) notions. first, she notes that governments frequently argue that ngos are more efficient in getting aid to local recipients than are governments (who sometimes contract with ngos). she finds no study that supports this conclusion (agg, 2006). she examines the “capacity building” notion. this posits that, if local ngos are a more direct voice of local communities, then oda to ngos might be explained by a desire to build ngo capacity. agg (2006) along with fisher and green (2004) dispute this notion arguing, instead, that the relationship between local ngos and their global partners is uneasy, complex and not always advantageous to local ngos, or their ability to speak for local communities. unease in a global environment increasing ngo funding has meant increasing integration into a global economic and political spectrum, though this is often an uncomfortable fit. several authors suggest that the need to integrate ngos into a global oda scenario has caused many ngos to trade local effectiveness for global integration and legitimacy (agg, 2006; gilles and yontcheva, 2006; mayer and gereffi, 2006; cooley and ron, 2002; fisher and green, 2004; dolhinow, 2005). cooley and ron (2002) contend that the increasingly global environment in which ngos live creates a number of constraints. the authors site several specific problems: first, ngos are often required to act as policy agents of donor organizations. whereas local communities may have identified specific needs, these needs do not always coincide with the goals of the donor. for example, a local community may need better local health facilities while the donor may be motivated by a desire to show immediate health results, such as hiv testing, in order to justify their spending and legitimize further funding. immediate results may conflict with long-term institution building and the ngo is left to negotiate between the two. known as the “principal-agent” problem in economics discipline, the result is that recipient needs are mitigated by the actions of the agent (ngo) in order to maintain a relationship with the donor. second, as ngos increasingly vie for development monies, the international fund-seeking environment becomes more competitive. this pervasive focus on bidding for the next grant means that the organizations face constant threats of lay-offs and down-sizing. these short term grants also means that start-up costs are increased as each grant begins a new cycle. third, this competitive environment has another consequence. as a result of the competition between ngos, some ngo energies are siphoned off into competitive actions such as highlighting 18 fall 2007 / spring 2008 the growing market for ngo influence competitors’ weaknesses and downfalls. their limited resources are spread thinner in countering such forces and building a defense against attacks by others. fisher and green (2004) add a fourth and a fifth constraint. they proffer that local ngos typically do not have an international base upon which to build their legitimacy as an organization. their ability to demonstrate their viability and effectiveness depends upon their ability to gain legitimacy locally, which transmits that legitimacy to global levels. the local environment may not always be conducive to such efforts. “for delegates from politically volatile nations, for example, negotiating multilateral agreements will likely be low on the list of domestic political priorities…” (fisher and green, 2004, p. 8). the fifth constraint, as articulated by fisher and green (2004) is the link to information on a global scale. links between organizations and scientists, academics and policy-makers are easier when an organization is transnationally located rather than nationally located. keeping current on complex scientific and policy information is a challenge for local ngos, who have limited links to both the professional networks and the policy trends of global sources. increasing influence on a global scale incorporation into a global network of oda has meant that many ngos must learn to operate in a new international environment – far from the community roots from which many sprang. gilles and yontcheva (2006) ask whether oda monies to ngos really go toward poverty reduction. they develop a model which attempts to predict the amount of international aid targeted to ngos on the basis of recipient country characteristics. these characteristics were poverty level, democracy[1], level of militarization[2], living standards, health care, and economic interests (imports to recipient country from donor country). using several different specifications of the model, they find that poverty is the only significant and stable explanation for ngo aid allocations. these results are remarkably robust across regions of the world. table 3 shows that poverty remains the only consistent explanation of oda to ngos across all four regions delineated. table 3: determinants of oda to ngos by region explanatory variable africa western hemisphere middle east asia living standards (life expectancy) * * imports militarization * * poverty * * * * democracy * derived from: gilles and yontcheva (2006), p. 13, table 4 what we learn from the gilles and yontcheva (2006) study is that poverty levels partially determine the distribution of monies to ngos from bilateral donors. there are two possible explanations. first, donors may feel that their monies are best spent through ngos in the poorest of countries either because ngos can access more local avenues for getting to the poorest people or because current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 19 lynn ilon they have structural advantages over more traditional oda organizations. second, it is possible that donors see ngos as relatively effective actors in programs that are poverty-focused. whether ngos are effective in addressing poverty issues is unanswered by gilles and yontcheva’s (2006) work. gereffi et. al. (2002) make a strong case that ngos have become effective actors in at least one realm – that of advocating for global certification of environmental and labor standards. contending that their efficacy takes the form of “manufacturing shame” (p. 2), the authors trace the complex means by which local and regional ngos have changed the global contents for environment issues and labor. they see “voluntary” industry led certification as having a weak base often requiring industry self-monitoring. in the authors’ view, ngo influence has substantially changed this regulatory content. “the contrast between industry-led certification and the ngo variety is stark” (p. 5). examining forestry and apparel industries as examples, they contend that these examples “underscore the growing power of ngos to compel corporations to adopt new environmental and labor standards.” (p. 7). mayer and gereffi (2006) echo this finding. they claim that “fierce pressures” have resulted in proliferation of codes of conduct for many industries (p. 8-9). ngo success in this particular arena has changed the nature of ngos working collectively on global issues. “over time… certification arrangements became more pro-active and preemptive with ngos no longer waiting for accidents but rather seeking out ongoing corporate wrongdoing” (gereggi et. al., 2001, p. 3). this changing ngo environment has had mixed results. ngos in a global environment can ngos provide alternative development in a market-based system of global economics? ngo influence is growing. yet, ngos’ occasionally uncomfortable relationship with bilateral and global donors continues to grow in size and influence. while donor rationale for increasing this assistance remains unclear, there is some evidence that it increases most when a country has high levels of poverty. ngos face increasing pressures when they move from entirely local actors to a place on the global stage. no longer wholly linked to local community needs, they must negotiate viability within a global context that pits them against other local ngos and agendas of local governments. while they receive their legitimacy from local arenas, they must nevertheless assure that the agendas of global development partners are attended to, even while they lack the informational linkages that would put them on a more equal footing. even so, they have succeeded on a global scale in pushing environment and labor standards toward a global norm and causing whole industries to adopt their practices. this changing environment has taken its toll on ngos. in an excellent article tracing the ngo influence in grassroots organizing along the us-mexico border, dolhinow contents, “as ngo funding becomes more competitive, ngos often find they must follow donor agendas in order to keep their funding. as ngos push the more fundable project they move away from community needs and closer to the neoliberal interventions preferred by many donors” (dolhinow, 225, p. 559). fisher and green (2004) call this phenomenon, “disenfranchisement” and link it to myriad global forces. “even though these civil society actors are connected transnationally, their geopolitical status – and the power associated with it – comes from their specific national context” (p. 10). these authors propose a theory of disenfranchisement based on three factors. “endogenous resources” refers to the limited resources of ngos, such as human resources, knowledge of english and 20 fall 2007 / spring 2008 the growing market for ngo influence a politically stable environment. “transnational connectivity” refers to their ability to link into global networks of experts and like-minded organizations. “geopolitical status” refers to their ability to derive status from the status of their home country within a global context, such as political influence and natural resources. while this may explain some of ngos’ challenges in adapting to their changing environment, it does not go far enough in helping us to understand how ngos fundamentally change when placed in this global environment. as ngos derive their increasing strength and influence from global donors, they move away from a primary focus on voicing the needs of local communities and, instead, increasingly become the voice of the donor. dolhinow (2005), examining a specific case of small communities on the us-mexico border, finds that ngos tie residents “to the neoliberal state through their position in civil society, often propagate dominant neoliberal discourses of leadership and activism, and at times reinforce dominant and marginalizing forms of social governance” (p. 575). this leads us back to global market influences. mayer and gereffi (2006) trace this new global environment to three market characteristics. first, the flow of goods and production across borders are no longer tied to local government capacity. markets can move based on foreign direct investment derived from outside forces. second, in face of less local government influence, regulation on a global scale is generally weak except in the case of markets. only markets have really strong global structures such as the imf, the wto and the world bank. each is fairly well funded and managed by widely adhered to regulations. labor, environment, development and humanitarian global organizations lack these substantial resources (the ilo, unesco, who for example). third, government regulatory capacity within developing countries is overwhelmed by global market forces. thus, local governments frequently bow to global economic forces to set local standards and regulations. in their view, this global market environment limits ngo effectiveness in promoting global standards and regulations. while ngo growth and, in some cases, influence has been growing since i first posed the question of market influence on ngos, a changing environment has meant that the powerful ngos are increasingly linked and constrained by global forces – especially those imposed by market forces. their ability to be the voice of global social movements has increased but, at the same time, they do so by weakening their links to local communities. they do not yet have the transnational resources or links to compete on the same ground as traditional development actors. neither can all but the smallest devote themselves entirely to voicing the needs of the poorest communities. while their place within a global development context is growing and increasingly powerful, there remains a question as to whether they continue to effectively voice the needs of the world’s poorest populations. notes [1]. taken from the ‘political score’ based on an index called overall polity score of the country indicators for foreign policy (cifp) developed by the canadian department of foreign affairs and international trade. [2]. ratio of military personnel as a percentage of labor force (world development indicators). references agg, c. (2006) trends in government support for non-governmental organizations: is the “golden age” of the ngo behind us? civil society and social movement programme paper 23. united nations research institute for social development. current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 21 lynn ilon colley, a. & ron, j. (2002). the ngo scramble: organizational insecurity and the political economy of transnational action. international security 27(1), 5-39. dolhinow, r. (2005) caught in the middle: the state, ngos, and the limits to grassroots organizing along the us-mexican border. in n. laurie and l. bondi (eds.) working the spaces of neoliberalism. blackwell. fisher, d. & green, j. (2004). understanding disenfranchisement: civil society and developing countries’ influence and participation in global governance for sustainable development. global environmental politics 4(3), 65-84. gereffi, g., garcia-johnson, r., & sasser, e. (2001). the ngo-industrial complex. foreign policy 125, 56-66. gilles, n. & yontcheva, b. (2006). does ngo aid go to the poor? empirical evidence from europe. imf institute wp/06/39. international monetary fund. ilon, l. (1998). can ngos provide alternative development in a market-based system of global economics? current issues in comparative education, 1(1), 42-45. available at http://www.tc.edu/ cice. mayer, f. and g. gereffi (2006). economic globalization, private governance and the rise of the state. in n. woods (ed.), making global self-regulation effective. oxford: oxford university press. united states agency for international development (2007). 2006 ngo sustainability index for central and eastern europe and eurasia. usaid. quezada morales, 2022b current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 24, issue 2, special issue 2022 advancing digital learning in a traditional system: uruguay during the covid-19 pandemic romina quezada morales teachers college, columbia university figure 1 aprender school children using ceibal laptops in 2020 source: personal communication, november 15, 2020. uruguay: a new government and a novel virus the oriental republic of uruguay is located in south america, next to the river of silver, and is the second smallest country of the region, with 176,215 sq. km. (sistema de información de tendencias educativas de américa latina [siteal], 2020). it shares borders with brazil and argentina, and faces the atlantic ocean (siteal, 2020). according to the 2011 census, there were 3,286,314 people living in uruguay, but the country registered a negative population growth rate in 13 out of its 19 departments. back then, 21.8% of the population were between 0 and 14 years of age. regarding ethnicity, © 2022, quezada morales. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education, 24(2), 189-203. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en quezada morales current issues in comparative education 190 90.7% of the population identified as white, 4.9% as indigenous, and 7.8% as afrodescendants (instituto nacional de estadística [ine], 2011).1 after 15 years of left-wing government (risso, 2020), luis lacalle pou took office as president for 2020 to 2025 in march, 2020 when the covid-19 disease was spreading throughout the world (horwitz, 2020). lacalle pou declared a national health emergency on march 13, 2020 when the first 4 cases of covid-19 were registered in the country (horwitz, 2020). although quarantine was only required for those over 65 years of age (fernández simón, 2020), the administration of covid-19 tests was swift and effective – 1,000 daily tests were being administered by may 5, 2020 (el observador, 2020b). because of those quick actions, school activity cautiously resumed in june, 2020 (fernández simón, 2020). as early as april 22, 2020, certain rural schools re-opened, registering 50% of physical attendance; by may, 2020, all schools began to reopen progressively: on june 1, all rural and special schools except for the capital montevideo and the metropolitan area; on june 15, all primary education schools, high schools, early childhood centers, preschool education centers, and technical education, except for montevideo and the metropolitan area; on june 30, 2020, all educational establishments (uruguay presidencia, 2020). however, cases began rising rapidly in early 2021, which led uruguay to close schools again on march 24, 2021; from may until june 21, 2021, students gradually went back again to their classrooms (xinhua, 2021). a universal education system, but with limited completion uruguay’s educational system is centralized, with five agencies involved in education: the national public education administration (administración nacional de educación pública [anep]), the ministry of education and culture (ministerio de educación y cultura [mec]), the child and adolescent institute of uruguay (instituto del niño y adolescente del uruguay [inau]), the university of the republic (universidad de la república [udelar]), and the technological university (universidad tecnológica [utec]) (instituto nacional de estadísticas de la educación [ineed], 2015). while mec represents education at the legislative level, links education with technology and culture, and revalidates certificates, it does not issue policies (poder legislativo, 2020). under the coordination of the central governing council (consejo directivo central [codicen]), anep is the body that oversees some pre-primary education establishments2 and all school, teacher, and technical and professional education, as well as the national institute of education statistics (ineed) and national policy (ineed, 2015). each year, anep sends inspections to upper secondary schools to monitor that these are meeting the needs of the schooling population (ineed, 2019). uruguay’s education system is divided into early childhood (primera infancia, ages 0 to 3), pre-primary education (educación inicial, ages 3 to 5), primary education (educación primaria, years 1 to 6), lower secondary education (media básica, years 7 to 9), and upper secondary education (media superior, years 10 to 12). education is compulsory from age 4 until the completion of upper secondary education. urban pre-primary and primary schools may be common, full-time, extended-time, practice or aprender3, which welcome children from the most vulnerable backgrounds (ineed, 2015). secondary education schools (liceos) are standard, nocturnal, full-time, extended-time, rural, or integrative educational centers (ineed, 2019). tertiary education is divided into nonuniversity education and degree-granting universities (poder legislativo, 2020). the school year in uruguay runs from early march to mid-december, with vacation breaks at the end of june and mid-september (uruguay educa, 2020). advancing digital learning in a traditional system current issues in comparative education 191 the majority of students attend public education in uruguay, but many repeat grades and eventually drop out. for instance, in 2020, about 83% of uruguayans attended a public primary or lower secondary education establishment (ine, 2020). however, from 2006 to 2018, secondary education students who were repeating a grade were more numerous than those who studied the grade that corresponded to their age, and in 2018 51% of all 23 year-old students had not finished compulsory education (ineed, 2019). in addition, about 40% of the students who finish upper secondary education do so below the expected academic goals, which places uruguay far below latin america’s average of around 61% (see cepal stat in ineed, 2019). to aggravate the problem, while attendance is crucial for students to succeed, about 20% of the teaching staff in public elementary schools were absent more than 20 times in 2017 (11% of the school year), and 48% of teachers in preprimary and primary education suffer from chronic absenteeism (ineed, 2019). in sum, according to the 2018 continuous household survey (encuesta continua de datos [ech]), 98% of uruguay’s youth completed primary education, but 73% completed lower secondary education, and only 40% completed upper secondary education (ine, 2018). uruguay lived under civic and military dictatorship between 1972 and 1985, but education reforms became a priority immediately afterwards. in march, 1985, the education law was adopted, initially for two years, but stayed in place until 2008. the 2008 general law on education (ley general de educación, no. 18.437) dictates uruguayan education nowadays (ineed, 2014). ever since, uruguayan education programs have focused on the expansion of schooling – primary education is basically universal, but secondary education is not –, new topics such as social and educational inclusion, and equal access to information and communications technology (ict) (informe sobre el estado de la educación en uruguay, 2014). some programs that stand out are the community classroom program (programa de aulas comunitarias, pac), which aims to reinforce knowledge and offer class flexibility among students in first grade of secondary education to prevent them from dropping out (mancebo & monteiro, 2009), community teachers (maestros comunitarios), where regular teachers work beyond their work hours to locate and attract students in basic education at risk of dropping out of school (así nos va, 2020), and plan ceibal, which focuses on icts and is further explored in the following lines. digital learning in uruguay: a priority before covid-19 as of 2019, uruguay had four plans related to ict teaching. the most widely spread one is plan ceibal. in spanish, ceibal stands for educational connectivity in basic computing for online learning (plan de conectividad educativa de informática básica para el aprendizaje en línea) (plan ceibal online, n.d.). plan ceibal originated from the initiative by the non-profit one laptop per child (olpc), which has operated in different countries in latin america since 2005 (one laptop per child) (n.d.). in uruguay, ceibal began functioning in 2007 as a multi-stakeholder initiative that involved, among others, the presidency, the technological laboratory of uruguay (laboratorio tecnológico de uruguay [latu]), anep, mec, and the national telecommunications administration (admininstración nacional de telecomunicaciones [antel]) (united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization [unesco] et al, 2011). plan ceibal’s aims at distributing free, wireless connection laptops to students and teachers (united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization et al., 2011). it has an educational component, flexible in nature, which encourages the development of activities in class; a social component that ensures equity and inclusion; and a technological component that provides internet and computer access. by 2009, plan ceibal quezada morales current issues in comparative education 192 had achieved all the goals above in primary education (unesco et al., 2011). table 1 displays the evolution of plan ceibal. table 1 evolution of plan ceibal year steps taken 2007 plan ceibal began operations by delivering laptops to students 2009 all primary education students had a ceibal laptop 2011 implementation of a digital learning platform with a digital library 2013 development of platforms specific to mathematics and english learning, as well as a laboratory specialized in 3d modelling, programming and robotics 2015 some schools in montevideo began working with optic fiber 2016 all 6th graders had access to english language lessons through ceibal 2017 all public education centers in the country had free wifi access and about 564,000 students and teachers had ceibal laptops. note: information adapted from consejo de dirección (2017). anep decided to close schools on march 18, 2020, except for those that provided meals. one day earlier, on march 17, anep made available the crea platform, an existing part of plan ceibal, so that teachers and students and their families could communicate virtually (el observador, 2020a). within crea, ceibal implemented ceibal en casa (ceibal at home), uruguay’s online platform, with the aim of adapting the existing content of plan ceibal´s resources – which complement face-to-face education – to a platform that could function as a full package for teaching and learning at the pre-primary and primary levels (personal communication, may 10, 2021). ceibal en casa offered two options to continue learning. the first one was through interactive video-conferencing and social networking, and the second one was through assisted activities and lessons organized by grade (ripani, 2020). ceibal en casa’s activities aimed at providing information and skill building on how to support students during the covid-19 pandemic (plan ceibal, 2020). plan ceibal and ceibal en casa have been featured by unesco (unesco et al., 2011) and the oecd (ripani, 2020) as successful digital learning models. ceibal en casa is not open for public display, but all uruguayans have access to it at ceibal.schoology.com. figure 2 shows ceibal en casa’s main interface, while appendix a provides some facts and figures that describe the platform and its usage. advancing digital learning in a traditional system current issues in comparative education 193 figure 2 ceibal en casa’s main interface, once users log in source: personal communication, may 10, 2021. in addition to ceibal, uruguay’s mec implements the digital literacy national plan (plan nacional de alfabetización digital) to provide all adults with tools that allow them to use technologies (mec, 2010), the ibirapitá plan, which provides retired adults with tablets and organizes workshops to teach them how to use them (plan ibirapitá, n.d.), and the youth programmers plan, part of plan ceibal, and which focuses on teaching the new generation how to do programming (jóvenes a programar [jap], n.d.). the most recent document regarding icts and inclusion is the agenda uruguay digital 2025, which focuses on the adoption of technologies for sustainable use in all social areas (uruguay presidencia & agencia de gobierno electrónico y sociedad de la información [agesic], n.d.). digital learning during the covid-19 emergency context: the old and the new to have a better understanding of the strategy implemented by uruguay’s plan ceibal during the covid-19 pandemic, this report presents an exploratory study with three interviewees: a private school director in montevideo, an aprender school director in montevideo, and a plan ceibal member who occupies a leadership position. the semistructured interviews were conducted between november, 2020 and may, 2021, and centered on the leaders’ experiences to implement suitable teaching and outreach strategies to continue providing education. the findings suggest that uruguay’s digital quezada morales current issues in comparative education 194 learning strategy has grappled with conciliating traditional views on education and digital learning. they further point to not all schools using digital learning resources during the pandemic even when these were available to them and their students, which suggests in some cases a digital divide originated by choice (gunkel, 2003). the socioeconomic gap seems then to depend not so much on the lack of means to acquire technological devices, but on the balance between the traditionally valued education system and the incorporation of new technologies. the research findings are discussed below. technology and education: conciliating the modern within tradition the interviews suggested that international educational assessments influence uruguay’s education policy and that plan ceibal, as an institution, partly aims at filling any gaps identified through them. more precisely, the program of international student assessment (pisa) has a considerable impact on what subjects and skills should be prioritized.4 in 2018, uruguay ranked 2nd in the region with 424 points, only behind chile with 438, and before mexico with 416 (oecd, n.d. b). the importance paid to pisa by the interviewees coincide with official releases from anep (2018a, 2018b, 2018c, 2019; uruguay presidencia, 2019). however, despite obtaining good results in the region, the interviewee from plan ceibal expressed that “…pisa results are out. we all become very concerned with the terrible results and everyone has a different explanation for that” (personal communication, may 10, 2021). concerned with public criticism, the same interviewee highlighted the work that ceibal does to improve pisa results: “i believe that, as an external factor outside of the administration, ceibal was somehow achieving results in some projects” (personal communication, may 10, 2021). in other words, ceibal has been working towards achieving the international standards that pisa demands. as a result, when the covid-19 pandemic arrived, the structure of ceibal en casa continued to reflect those priorities. uruguay’s interest in standing out internationally is reflected in digital learning, but national realities are experienced otherwise. in 2018, fundación ceibal created an international network to foster good digital education practices throughout latin america called adela (n.d.), and plan ceibal offers teacher training teachers opportunities abroad, as was the case of the training in mexico in 2017/18 (plan ceibal, n.d.). however, schools in the country see education differently. for instance, the director from the private school conceded that, “although uruguay’s standards are well recognized at the global level…there was a plateau where teachers had stagnated in their training, updates, challenges, and we had to constantly upload strategies to see if we could get them going” (personal communication, november 30, 2020). for the private establishment, the rapid pace of the covid-19 pandemic was an opportunity for teachers to catch up with the use of digital technologies, or the “21st century skills” (personal communication, november 30, 2020), but progress did not take place through plan ceibal. therefore, it may have been that plan ceibal offered the resources for many other private schools to catch up with icts, but that they opted for different strategies. uruguay’s leading international efforts in digital learning may find it hard to fit within a traditional education system. the previous example on the struggles of the private school to provide training so that teachers reach pisa’s standards shows that ceibal provides the tools, but that its schools may choose not to use them. as the interviewee from plan ceibal recalled, ceibal is an external institution within a centralized system, which “has been an important factor to inject the education system with new aspects and projects which have at least made us be aware of our capacity to do and achieve great things” (personal communication, may 10, 2021). at the same time, technologies may be advancing digital learning in a traditional system current issues in comparative education 195 perceived as a reason for uruguay’s decline in quality education. the director of the aprender school, for instance, believes that technology has negatively impacted education by leading youth to be more socially isolated and interact only with their devices (personal communication, november 15, 2020). both of the above perspectives together reflect the intricacies of digital learning in uruguay, namely the availability of modern resources coupled with teacher awareness of their negative consequences on society. technology for learning: eruption, irruption, or disruption? as a country with quite successful digital learning policies in place, uruguay had the resources in place to face the covid-19 pandemic, so it did not see an eruption – multiplication from all sides – of digital tools to teach. ceibal en casa was created thinking of parents’ demands to have their children make good use of their time spent at home (personal communication, may 10, 2021), while plan ceibal continued to be available. as time went by, ceibal en casa evolved into a more complete platform where teachers could find additional resources for class and send their students to use them, but there was no need to produce material against the clock because plan ceibal already existed (personal communication, may 10, 2021). in addition, through plan ceibal’s (2017) youtube channel, students with disabilities could access some videos that complemented activities. ceibal en casa attracted about 12,000 users, as appendix a shows. while uruguay’s interest to close the digital divide in access to technologies before the pandemic helped the country to make ceibal en casa available, the way in which digital learning was implemented in schools varied according to their administration. as the director of the private school explained, many other private schools in the country opted for hiring a provider to build their digital platform according to their needs. that process was possible because “the platform evolved and improved as it received input from educational centers” (personal communication, november 30, 2021). the platform, called educational administration system (sistema de gestión educativa [siged]),5 existed as a paid service in the private school prior to the pandemic, so the flexibility and rapidity to adapt to customers turned it into an effective option. therefore, although the platform “was working at 20% capacity or less, because there was no need for it” before covid19, this private school still preferred the private provider and not plan ceibal during the pandemic because it met its needs faster and in a customized way. digital learning was perceived as disruptive for many teachers, which cannot be fully explained by their lack of access to technologies (ntia, 1999), but by their choice and reluctance to use them (gunkel, 2003). the teachers in the aprender school used mostly whatsapp to communicate with parents, and eventually opted for printed material because there were households without mobile connectivity even though schools and students were equipped with laptops: “all work related to networks, at home, relied on whatsapp and the printed packets that teachers made paying from their own pockets because teachers were providing for their kids” (personal communication, november 15, 2020). meanwhile, the private school underwent a slow process in adapting to siged and even using computers: “[teachers] didn’t want to [teach online] because that somehow meant invading their privacy. we had to overcome all those things. then, they didn’t even have a laptop” (personal communication, november 30, 2021). therefore, the digital divide for some teachers was disruptive because their students’ access to technologies at home was not appropriate despite connectivity provision strategies or because of their own resistance to have technology take over their lives. quezada morales current issues in comparative education 196 does technology contribute to the social function of schools? the use of digital technologies for learning in uruguay during the pandemic was mostly motivated by the need to stay connected with one another, for students and their families, and for schools. the director of the aprender school explained that schooling is not questioned within uruguayan society, so children attend school; aprender schools are also the alternative for children who would be out in the street wasting their time if they were not at school learning in the afternoon shift, and are important meal providers (personal communication, november 15, 2020). therefore, staying in touch with students during the covid-19 pandemic was vital to avoid dropouts. this aprender school made use of its maestros comunitarios program to reach out their students by going to their homes and helping them fill out their homework. in some cases, communication through whatsapp was possible, but seeking contact through other digital means was not an option. the private school also mentioned the importance of staying in touch: “we had never had that many meetings with parents as we did this year, on zoom… because communication strategies are a priority for us during the crisis. so, every time we were about to adopt any policy, we would anticipate a parent zoom. we have organized as many as 15 in one week” (personal communication, november 30, 2020). the differences in outreach strategies are visible, but they also show that digital technologies met a social function by connecting with students and parents. whenever communication was not possible, students lagged behind. in the aprender school, evaluations took place according to teacher appreciations, as stated in the national policy, while the private school was able to grade their students as usual; appreciations determined whether students could pass to the next grade (personal communications, november 15 & 30, 2020). that strategy was positive for children who had not attained the expected year outcomes (i.e., students did not automatically pass into the next grade), but also showed that some students suffered more than others from social distancing and the lack of connectivity, possibly increasing uruguay’s problem of those who lag behind. plan ceibal is aware of its limits, but it also strives to address them: “it is a fact that there are people who are not being able to participate [in ceibal en casa] due to private infrastructure issues, to their equipment not being suitable or are broken or because they do not have connectivity or their connectivity is poor, and the gap between those who have less and those who have more resources is increasing. we know that and we feel it. but, well, i believe that an effort is being made to let the gap increase as little as possible” (personal communication, may 10, 2021). curiously enough, neither the lack of connectivity nor the use – or not – of ceibal prevented these schools from creating caring communities during social distancing. the private school, for instance, is of catholic orientation, so it would organize meetings to follow up with students’ well-being; follow-ups were individualized and could be carried out via zoom. possibly because the care expressed through the meetings and the individual attention paid by schools, when students returned to in-person classes, the director mentioned not seeing any socioemotional issues as consequences of social distancing (personal communication, november 30, 2020). the aprender school sent encouragement videos to their students via whatsapp with the goal of helping children cope with isolation, and some students replied by sending videos as well (personal communication, november 15, 2020). these examples show that digital learning is indeed more isolating than in-person schooling, but that smart ideas and technology can help increase students’ socioemotional well-being in emergency situations like the covid-19 pandemic. advancing digital learning in a traditional system current issues in comparative education 197 figure 3 sequence of students working on their socioemotional well-being and how teachers compiled their work in a whatsapp video in the aprender school (2020) source: personal communication, november 15, 2020. conclusions uruguay’s digital learning strategy during the pandemic made use of its existing digital platform plan ceibal to implement ceibal en casa, a space for basic education children to stay in touch with learning, but which did not aim at replacing classes based on the national curriculum. while ceibal en casa registered a constant number of student users in 2020, it was less used in 2021 when students went back to social distancing because both teachers and students had already gone through a period of adaptation to distance learning (personal communication, may 10, 2021). as for plan ceibal, the schools in this work opted for different strategies despite all schools and all primary students having access to a laptop through ceibal. while some of those choices can be explained by students’ lack of connectivity at home – which is indicative of their economic situations – they depended on how open teachers and school administrators were to digital technologies, as well as on the importance that they gave to international standards. therefore, ceibal’s digital learning strategy did not impact the socio-economic gap in quezada morales current issues in comparative education 198 terms of access to technology, but in terms of which teachers took a leap forward in digital learning. looking ahead, uruguay’s successful plan ceibal is keeping the country in a very good pisa ranking in latin america, but domestic policies in digital learning must understand the digital divide both as a lack of connectivity in all homes, and as a choice by many teachers and administrators to willingly find a way around digital learning. uruguay’s education policy is centralized, which opens spaces for closing the divide understood as access to technologies, as plan ceibal has successfully proved. still, even with those tools available in schools, social and economic realities may not allow to make the best use of the platform. attention should be paid to why both the directors of the private school and the aprender school did not choose plan ceibal or ceibal en casa during the pandemic. what could plan ceibal improve to become private schools’ first choice? how can it be effective for vulnerable school children at risk of dropping out in emergency situations? can uruguay’s plans to implement a hybrid system in 2022 (infobae, 2022) help close the socio-educational gaps above, or will they increase them even further? these are among the questions that need consideration to achieve not only high results in international standardized tests, but also effective, quality education in the country. notes [1] each person may indicate more than one identification. [2] in uruguay, depending on the type of institutions and programs, pre-primary education may be overseen by anep, mec, or inau. [3] aprender is a word that reads learning in spanish, but, in this case, it also stands for priority attention in environments with relative structural difficulties (atención prioritaria en entornos con dificultades estructurales relativas). these schools aim at providing individualized support and accompaniment to marginalized students so that they stay in the system and do not need to miss class due to difficult personal situations (see https://www.dgeip.edu.uy/programas/aprender/). [4] pisa is part of the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) and takes place every three years in any country that may wish to participate to measure whether 15-year-old students are learning and how, traditionally focusing on reading literacy, mathematics, and the natural sciences, and expanding on other skills such as financial literacy (oecd, n.d. a). pisa exists since 2000, and uruguay has constantly participated since 2003 (anep, 2018). [5] see edutec at siged.com.uy/web/ (retrieved october 14, 2021). acknowledgements the author would like to thank the school directors and plan ceibal leader who kindly accepted to participate in this project, and for their additional feedback and material. thanks as well to those who enabled the author to contact the interviewees, and to those who provided input on the methodology of the reports. may this series of reports be useful to you. last, the author would like to thank cice, the authors and reviewers for their contributions to this special issue's report section, and marcella winter, co-principal investigator of the project. romina quezada morales is a doctoral candidate in international and comparative education, political science concentration, at teachers college, columbia university. her academic background is a combination of linguistics and international politics. her current research analyzes the participation of indigenous peoples in education, with a focus on latin america. romina has worked for several international institutions, organizations and diplomatic bodies, focusing on advancing digital learning in a traditional system current issues in comparative education 199 language, culture and education. since 2018, romina has been serving as coordinator of the k-12 outreach program and the americas dialogue on education policy initiative at the institute of latin american studies, columbia university. references adela. 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(2021, june 8). especial: uruguay amplía retorno a clases presenciales en escuelas primarias. accessed october 9, 2021, http://spanish.xinhuanet.com/2021-06/08/c_139994845.htm image credits figure 1. aprender school in montevideo, uruguay. (2020). taken from personal communication, november 15, 2020. figure 2. plan ceibal. (2021). taken from personal communication, may 10, 2021. figure 3. aprender school in montevideo, uruguay. (2020). taken from personal communication, november 15, 2020. advancing digital learning in a traditional system current issues in comparative education 203 appendix a facts and figures of uruguay’s digital strategy during the covid-19 pandemic number of plan ceibal uses during the pandemic after ceibal en casa was implemented 730,000, as opposed to 90,000 before the pandemic (france 24, 2020). number of student users in ceibal en casa 12,000 (personal communication, may 10, 2021), out of a national enrollment of 87,929 children in preprimary education and 244, 303 students in primary education in 2020 (anep, 2021) mobile data use not needed. a pact was made with antel to provide national free internet during the health emergency (ripani, 2020). focus of ceibal en casa two foci of implementation: technical and pedagogical, and socioemotional to deal with isolation (ripani, 2020). featured sections include reading at home, computational thinking, programming, mathematics, and recreational activities (personal communication, may 10, 2021). number of resources available through ceibal en casa more than 173,000 resources, 7,000 books, 1,500 open access resources (ripani, 2020). © 2002 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 51 constructing consensus: the feminist modern and the reconstruction of gender[1] frances vavrus teachers college, columbia university women and girls play a particular role in these 'redemptive' [policy] declarations. out of all the groups who have suffered in the twentieth century, their experiences are drawn upon and identified in such reports. on one level, this is a welcome development for feminists, who have long criticised the absence of any international recognition of the educational demands of girls and women. on the other hand, the special significance given to women by such diverse bodies as the world bank and small ngos (non-governmental organisations) raises questions about such a consensus. -elaine unterhalter, 2000 some of the most important questions for feminist researchers in comparative and international education concern the consensus about women's education that has emerged in recent years across a vast array of development discourses.[2] what recent shifts in the terrain of international development account for women's "special significance" today? and what might widespread agreement about women's "educational demands" reveal more broadly about changing relations between the public and private sectors? in the 1970s, the women in development (wid) movement drew attention to women's critical yet neglected role in public (state-orchestrated) economic development initiatives; however, it is only since the early 1990s that education for women has become "[p]erhaps the cause célèbre of education and development" among international financial institutions, government officials, and ngos alike (sutton, 2001, p. 78; emphasis in original). the growing influence of feminist research and advocacy within international development agencies and in the associated fields of demography, education, environmental studies, and public health partially explains recent changes in policy priorities. yet another reason has to do with changes in prevailing opinions within the field of development economics: from the 1950s and 1960s, when an interventionist state was considered critical for the facilitation of the modernization process in the third world [3]; to the 1970s and 1980s, when neoliberalism championed a small state and free markets as the key to development; to the mid 1990s and into the present, when public-private provision of basic social services, such as education and health, is seen as essential to economic growth (vines, 2001). in this article, i explore how neoliberalism has contributed to the construction of a consensus about women's education in international development discourses. i argue that the heightened visibility of women, and of education, exemplifies a broader shift in development priorities away from physical capital projects dependent upon state involvement to human capital programs designed to "empower" individuals and communities through their participation in decentered development schemes. the female figure that emerges in these more recent development discourse--"the feminist frances vavrus 52 december 16, 2002 modern"--embodies many of the qualities considered necessary for the success of decentralized micro-development (greene, 1999, p. 227). the feminist modern marks a welcome departure from the representation of women in the third world as inevitably passive and oppressed (mohanty, 1991). however, this discursive shift does not necessarily mark a radical re-construction of gender because the development "crisis" it signals fails to call into question the foundational economic rationale for expanding women's education that permeates international policy.[4] the following sections focus on the construction of a consensus about women's education in international development policy and on the function of the feminist modern figure in contemporary development discourses. the final section considers the challenges put forth in this issue of cice to formulate democratic re-constructions of gender. neoliberalism and the "crisis" of culture neoliberalism has become a catchall term in development and in "anti-development" discourses (elyachar, 2002, p. 495), but i use it to describe specifically the articulation of a set of political policies, neoclassical economics principles, and human capital theory.[5] the pro-privatization and decentralization policies of the reagan and thatcher governments in the 1980s illustrate the "evil government view" common to most neoliberal political administrations (adelman, 2001, p. 113). the reagan-thatcher opposition to state regulation, for instance, complemented neoclassical economic theory that was gaining prominence in international development discourses at this time. neoclassical economics contends that open markets with minimal government interference will lead to national economic growth. according to meier, "correct [neoliberal] policies were to move from inward-looking strategies toward liberalization of the foreign trade regime and export promotion; to submit to stabilization programs; to privatize state-owned enterprises; and to follow the dictates of the market" (2001, p. 19). meier explains that along with a reduced role for the state in orchestrating development came a move away from physical capital investments to human capital development. from a neoliberal perspective, economic growth does not come about through state planning so much as by cultivating the knowledge and skills of a country's human capital, particularly when "accumulated" in "forward-looking, profit-maximizing agents" (romer, 1986, cited in meier, 2001, p. 19). neoliberalism, in its political and economic facets, has had a profound effect on development policies in the third world, owing to the fact that the leading international financial institutions--the international monetary fund (imf) and the world bank (wb)-have generally embraced the view that the role of the state should be minimized in the development process (adelman, 2001). for instance, during the global economic crisis of the 1980s, the wb issued loans to poor countries to support broad structural adjustment programs (saps). these loans required approval from the imf, and its strict antiinflationary programs called for sharp reductions in state provision of social services, such as health care and education. to compensate for the loss of government funding for these services, the populace was brought into cost sharing, or cost recovery, programs that require payment of fees for services that were previously provided for free or for a nominal charge (turshen, 1999). as stiglitz (2002) argues, imf conditions on structural adjustment loans may have reduced government expenditures and reduced inflation, but they have also increased the financial burden on poor families to educate their male-and female--children. he notes, "families in many developing countries, having to pay constructing consensus: the feminist modern and the reconstruction of gender current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 53 for their children's education under so-called cost recovery programs, make the painful choice not to send their daughters to school" (p. 20). the "small state" philosophy that has dominated international development for the past few decades provides a rationale for promoting women's education--of a particular type--in the third world. jones (1997) argues that the wb began a "crusade" in the 1970s, urging borrowing countries to make public investment in primary schooling while imposing user fees at the secondary and tertiary levels (p. 122). coupled with this policy imperative were two others: equity and decentralization. according to jones, bank economists contended that these were two issues to which countries should commit themselves because they would improve the quality of human capital and the efficiency of the education system, respectively. taking jones's analysis a step further, women's education became an ideal target for development interventions because it tapped into equity and decentralization concerns without calling into question the social and economic disparities compounded by structural adjustment policies. since only modest gender gaps exist at the primary level in most regions of the world today, with the exceptions of south asia and some arab states, socioeconomic disparities rather than the gender gap could have become the cause championed by international development institutions (knodel & jones, 1996). along with the issue of equity, the promotion of decentralization through community "empowerment" and management helped to focus attention on women as pivotal local stakeholders and as potential entrepreneurs (elyachar, 2002). these decentralization discourses were circulating through development institutions at the same time that feminist researchers and activists were making significant inroads in international policy circles. in particular, the articulation of decentralization with women's education was facilitated by the formation of the "triple roles framework" in the 1980s that drew attention to the multiple demands on many women as mothers, wage earners, and community managers (moser, 1989). the framework contained a critique of development agencies that treated women "as cheap labour for a variety of interventions" (kabeer, 1994, p. 276); however, its focus on the local, i.e., the household and the community, also had the effect of essentializing women's roles and insufficiently analyzed gender relations in the context of changing patterns of governance between the state and the populace. feminist interventions, as well as neoliberalism, have helped reshape international policy over the past decade to create a new visibility for women's education in many different areas of development. although feminist rationales for promoting education for women are often quite different from those of neoliberal politicians and economists, there is a consensus among these different groups of actors regarding education as a panacea for a wide range of development problems.[6] this consensus was evident as early as the 1990 world conference on education for all held in jomtien, thailand, where women's education was cited as a top priority for international development agencies. the policies that emerged from the jomtien conference constituted a shift in the very meaning of basic education because of its new linkage to words like women, empowerment, the environment, and population: "indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that jomtien marked the emergence of an international consensus that education is the single frances vavrus 54 december 16, 2002 most vital element in combating poverty, empowering women, promoting human rights and democracy, protecting the environment and controlling population growth" (unicef, 1999, p. 13). in the years since jomtien, a number of international conferences have been held that strengthen the consensus regarding women's education as the primary solution to complex development problems, such as overpopulation, hiv/aids, and environmental degradation. despite the significant decrease in the gender gap in primary school education in most regions, the "crisis" in international education has been defined primarily in terms of women's lack of access to schooling. policymakers and activists are rightly concerned about cultural barriers to female enrollment and achievement wherever they exist, but the narrow focus on gender discrimination as the primary obstacle to development obscures other crises that deeply affect women's lives. my use of the term crisis, taken from stuart hall et al.'s policing the crisis (1978), suggests that crises are produced through a complex process in which popular and scholarly attention is drawn to certain problems but not to others. hall and his co-authors examine the panic about black youth and violence that swept britain after several highly publicized muggings and escalated into a crisis in public opinion. however, they show that the small number of such attacks did not warrant such public outcry, leading them to consider how the media represented these events in relation to other racial and economic tensions in the country. although gender-based discrimination is a serious problem that keeps girls out of school in many places, i contend that crises triggered by neoliberal policies have not received the attention they deserve, in part because doing so would call into question the "cookie-cutter approach" to structural adjustment formulated by international financial institutions (adelman, 2001, p. 118). we can begin to consider the ways that crises are policed by examining the problems and solutions specified in international development policies, such as those addressing the critical issues of population, hiv/aids, and environmental degradation. two of the most influential conferences of the past decade were the 1992 united nations conference on environment and development (unced) held in rio and the 1994 international conference on population and development that took place in cairo (icpd).[7] while there have been a number of important conferences on hiv/aids in recent years, the world bank's influence in international education deems it necessary to consider its current position on the role of women's education in combating the disease (samoff, 1999). the bank's views are clearly presented in its recent report entitled education and hiv/aids: a window of hope (2002). taking the unced, icpd, and wb documents as examples of contemporary international development discourse, i look at how they represent women's education vis-à-vis the disparate development problems they seek to solve. in particular, i am interested in the categories and assumptions that hold developmentalism together as an influential body of discourse and give it the authority to turn discursive representation into action. to conduct such an analysis, i turn to the seminal work in postcolonial studies by edward said. in his groundbreaking book orientalism, said explains his method for studying the discursive construction of the orient (1978). the task, he writes, is to understand "the sheer knitted-together strength of orientalist discourse, its very close ties to the enabling socio-economic and political institutions, and its redoubtable durability" (1978, p. 6). to constructing consensus: the feminist modern and the reconstruction of gender current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 55 accomplish this formidable undertaking, said uses a method he calls "strategic formation" to study the connections among texts and between texts and society (p. 20).[8] he does this by looking at stylistic features of orientalist narratives and the sociohistorical context in which they were written to demonstrate that these texts are representations and not descriptions of reality. substituting "developmentalism" for "orientalism", i adopt a similar strategy to examine the discursive devices in development policies to understand how they produce the representations that give shape to the problems that women's education is supposed to solve. there are many intertexual references in the unced, icpd, and wb documents that merit discussion, but i limit my comments to three particularly prominent ones: culture, human capital, and women's empowerment. beginning with the concept of culture, it is important to note that culture evades simple definition in the anthropological literature as well as in development discourses. in general, however, contemporary anthropologists use the term to describe common beliefs and patterns of living that are mutable from one generation to another and contested among those whose lives they govern. in the field of international development, there remains a tension surrounding education and culture that emerged during the colonial period and lingers into the present. for instance, in colonial tanganyika, british education and health officials vacillated between a view of "african culture" as the cure for myriad development problems in the territory, and african culture as the very cause of these problems. these are the "culture-as-cure" and "culture-as-cause" perspectives described perceptively in colwell's work on maternal and child health policies in tanganyika to which i make reference below (2001). in contemporary development discourses, one also observes this tension between embracing "indigenous knowledge" and local customs on the one hand, and blaming "traditional" attitudes and values on the other. for example, the unced document states repeatedly that education about child spacing (p. 28), family size (p. 42), and reproductive health services (p. 47) should be "in keeping with freedom, dignity and personally held values and taking into account ethical and cultural considerations." the icpd policy is more specific about how to incorporate cultural considerations into population and health education so long as they do not compromise the accuracy of the scientific knowledge conveyed: "information, education and communication activities should rely on up-to-date research findings to determine information needs and the most effective culturally acceptable ways of reaching intended audiences" (p. 60). if materials about reproductive health and hiv/aids are not already in existence in the schools, then the icpd suggests that "education projects should be based on the findings of sociocultural studies and should involve the active participation of parents and families, women, youth, the elderly and community leaders" (p. 61). these two documents, especially the policy from the icpd, recognize the importance of cultural dimensions of reproductive health and of different cultural contexts in which population and health education occur. this is a welcome change from the population discourses of the 1970s and 1980s, when population control and family planning took precedence over women's reproductive health rights (greene, 1999). however, policies that adhere to a culture-as-cure perspective are typically based on the functionalist assumption that "society is underpinned by a value consensus and that the various frances vavrus 56 december 16, 2002 institutions in society contribute to the ongoing stability of the whole" (taylor et al., 1997, p. 24). in other words, these policies suggest that young women, elderly men, and community leaders share a set of cultural precepts by virtue of living in the same community and that these shared values will lead to a consensus about how to teach contentious issues like reproductive health in the schools. the culture-as-cause perspective tends to present an even more simplified view of culture because it divorces the cultural dimensions of population and health from the political-economic ones. for instance, the wb policy on education and aids begins with a section entitled "how we got here" (p. 3). only one of the seven items on this list mentions political-economic factors by name (in reference to commercial sex); moreover, it is assumed throughout the document that the wb's macroeconomic reform program-saps--will alleviate rather than exacerbate the spread of the disease (p. 55). instead of considering its own culpability, the wb is exculpated in the text because the primary obstacles to aids prevention are cultural and not political-economic. for instance, phrases like "extended family networks" and "cultural and religious conservatism" focus attention on culture as the cause rather than cultural considerations being one of several factors contributing to the spread of hiv/aids (p. 3). when disease is constructed primarily as a cultural problem, education becomes a logical solution because it assumes that a lack of modern, scientific knowledge leads people to engage in high-risk sex. the wb document suggests, for example, that schools by their very definition "have the benefit of staff equipped with the tools of teaching and learning," and that they are normally places "where adolescents can obtain accurate information on reproductive health" (p. 30). in both the culture-as-cause and culture-as-cure perspectives, one finds a normative view of schools as sites where up-to-date knowledge is conveyed even though ethnographic research on reproductive health education shows that this is often far from the case (vavrus, forthcoming). in addition to culture, a second common theme in the unced, icpd, and wb policies is human capital. more specifically, these influential documents produce and reproduce the assertion that the development of women's human capital is the sine qua non of national development. explicit and implicit references to human capital theory abound in these texts as they explain why women's education programs will ameliorate the problems of high fertility, aids, and environmental degradation. while education and health--the twin pillars of human capital--are critical for women and men, developmentalism links them primarily to women and to the state's need for costeffective development. the wb document, in particular, makes many efficiency arguments about the critical role of women's education for human capital development: • girls' education can go far in slowing and reversing the spread of hiv by contributing to female economic independence, delayed marriage, family planning, and work outside the home. (p. xvii) • it [education] is highly cost-effective as a prevention mechanism, because the school system brings together students, teachers, parents, and the community, and preventing aids through education avoids the major aids-related costs of health care and additional educational supply. (ibid.) • secondary school education is what really makes a difference to increasing age at marriage, delaying first sexual encounters, improving negotiation for protected sex, and promoting other risk-reducing behaviours. ensuring girls' access to secondary constructing consensus: the feminist modern and the reconstruction of gender current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 57 school is also key to better employment opportunities for women, and often an opportunity to break the cycle of poverty and reduce the risk of exposure to hiv. (p. 47) women's human capital development is also discursively linked to cost-effective national development strategies in the unced and icpd policies, but these documents situate the discussion within broader discourses of poverty alleviation and female empowerment.[9] for instance, the unced text identifies education and women's rights as an "effective strategy" for dealing with environment and development problems. it continues with its four primary objectives of sustainable development and poverty alleviation, one of which is to "create a focus in national development plans and budgets on investment in human capital, with special policies and programmes directed at rural areas, the urban poor, women and children" (p. 27). the icpd document reinforces the unced's articulation of sustainable development and human capital in its explanation about why women's education is critical to population reduction and national development: "education is a key factor in sustainable development (...). the reduction of fertility, morbidity and mortality rates, the empowerment of women, the improvement in the quality of the working population and the promotion of genuine democracy are largely assisted by progress in education" (p. 57). echoing the unced, the icpd places education--women's education, in particular--at the center of "population-environment relationships" because of the positive benefit it is assumed to have on the protection of natural resources (p. 60). this recognition of women's role in population change and environmental conservation is a positive shift away from the era when women were barely visible in development discourses, but the unproblematic use of economic and demographic terminology to justify schooling for females raises questions about the kind of education international institutions are likely to support. for instance, will higher education in the third world ever be supported by the wb with the same zeal that basic education receives today (spivak, 1999)? will arguments for women's schooling move beyond rates-of-return analyses to include a broader humanistic rationale for education? and will international financial institutions support education in the third world that emphasizes the humanities rather than the mastery of basic skills in a move that might counter the "dehumanization of education" in recent years (andreas kazamias, personal communication, november 18, 2002)? these are critical queries for scholars in the field of comparative and international education, and i will return to them in the final section below. before concluding, however, i want to consider the third recurring theme in the policies under discussion, namely, the theme of women's empowerment. my position is one of strong support for empowerment if it means reducing women and men's vulnerability to forces they cannot control (cf. markee, 1997). however, the discourse of empowerment illustrated in these policies constructs, to varying degrees, a highly autonomous female subject upon whom much of the responsibility for national development falls. consider the following examples: • empowerment of women is essential and should be assured through education, training and policies to accord and improve women's rights and access to assets (...). population/environment programs must enable women to mobilize themselves to frances vavrus 58 december 16, 2002 alleviate their burden and improve their capacity to participate in and benefit from socio-economic development. (unced, p. 39) • these events [other un conferences] are expected to highlight further the call of the 1994 conference for greater investment in people, and for a new action agenda for the empowerment of women to ensure their full participation at all levels in the social, economic and political lives of their communities. (icpd, p. 6). • girls' education can go far in slowing and reversing the spread of hiv by contributing to poverty reduction, gender equality, female empowerment, and awareness of human rights. it also has crucial implications for female economic independence, delayed marriage, family planning, and work outside the home. (wb, p. 7) the repetition of key phrases, such as "empowerment", "mobilize themselves", and "female economic independence", illustrates the process said described as strategic formation, whereby a body of discourse becomes authoritative through intertexual references to the same phenomenon (1978, p. 20). in this case, the authority of developmentalism to mobilize policy about women in the third world is derived, in part, from a common vocabulary about education leading inevitably to female empowerment. international development and the feminist modern the categories and assumptions inscribed in development discourses are somewhat unstable because of changing currents in the international arena. for instance, we can consider mohanty's analysis of the representation of women in an earlier generation of development texts: this average third world woman leads an essentially truncated life based on her feminine gender (read: sexually constrained) and her being 'third world' (read: ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, victimized, etc.). this, i suggest, is in contrast to the (implicit) self-representation of western women as educated, as modern, as having control over their own bodies and sexualities, and the freedom to make their own decisions. (1991, p. 56) in contrast to the "truncated life" of the oppressed third world woman described above, the female figure who has emerged in development discourses since the early 1990s can be described as "the feminist modern" (greene, 1999, p. 226). this woman is assumed to have far more agency to change her own circumstances than one finds in population discourses from the 1960s to the 1980s. according to greene, "thus, what marks the feminist modern as modern is the emphasis on women as subjects capable of performing on their own, or with the help of experts, particular techniques to improve their health and welfare" (1999, p. 227). greene appropriately notes the importance of supporting efforts to make women subjects, rather than objects, of development policies. however, he also challenges us to think about the complexity of modernity and the ways that we "conceptualize ourselves as subjects capable of transforming ourselves as particular objects for improvement" (ibid.). in other words, developmentalism conceptualizes women in the third world as capable of transforming themselves, but it presupposes a particular kind of improved person with "modern" beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. constructing consensus: the feminist modern and the reconstruction of gender current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 59 if we consider greene's notion of the feminist modern in relation to the unced, icpd, and wb documents, what would it reveal about the themes of culture, human capital, and empowerment? first, the feminist modern emphasizes the problem noted above that culturalist arguments tend to downplay the role of political-economic forces in shaping development dilemmas. a recent statement on women's education by the executive director of the united nations population fund, nafis sadik, exemplifies this tendency: there are many obstacles to closing the continuing gender gap in education, but none of them are insurmountable. many of these are solely in the mind (…). poverty is frequently offered as a reason for marrying off young girls, but i think a far more powerful motive is the cultural conservatism that assigns no value to girls except as future wives and mothers. a girl's future is often predetermined and her choices and options pre-empted by cultural norms and practices. culture that denies choice to women must be changed. (cited in unesco, 2000, p. 18) this construction of the problem leaves little room for disagreement because, certainly, conservative views do curtail women's education and health options under certain circumstances. however, greene reminds us that when patriarchal culture becomes the primary target of development interventions, it diverts attention away from "countercausalities--political and economic forces--that also have a profound effect on women's lives (1999, p. 224). second, the feminist modern reveals the impact of neoliberalism on the field of international development during the past few decades. for instance, human capital and cost-benefit concepts have so permeated development discourses that it now seems like common sense to discuss policymaking as a technical, economic matter rather than as a political process where different groups vie for representation. finally, neoliberal equity arguments have become closely linked to the meaning of women's empowerment so as to depoliticize the term and to make changing power relations the responsibility of individual female actors (vavrus, 2000). despite the desirability of a scenario in which education leads to a reduction in vulnerability over forces a woman does not control, this remains a potentiality rather than a promise that education can always fulfill. conclusions the discursive shift from the "always oppressed" third world woman mohanty critiqued to the female figure cogently described by greene illustrates a recent reconstruction of women in international development. yet is the feminist modern an example of the "democratic re-construction of gender" under consideration in this issue of cice? i believe it is not, for two primary reasons. first, one must be careful not to equate "democratic" with neoliberal policies promoting a "shift to the people and away from the developmentalist state" (elyachar, 2002, p. 510). the co-optation of potentially democratic development practices, such as participatory rural appraisal and microenterprise strategies, by international financial institutions raises questions about whether these moves usher in a more democratic post-development era or whether they simply relocate the onus of development from third world states to female entrepreneurs. in particular, does the embrace of local knowledge and culture inevitably lead to democratic participation in development, or is culture "a new type of discipline frances vavrus 60 december 16, 2002 that circumvents the state by ways of [micro]finance and ngos" (elyachar, 2002, p. 511)? circumventing state control over development projects is certainly, in some cases, a necessary and desirable strategy for effecting social change, but there is also the possibility that bypassing micro-level development schemes may be essential when such programs contribute to the further disenfranchisement of the poor. a second reason for doubting the democratic potential of the feminist modern stems from its emphasis on women as individual targets for intervention rather than on gender relations as the site for social re-construction. i contend that developmentalism has made women visible without a concomitant re-visioning of the macroeconomic environment that shapes gender relations. the narrow focus on the individual in these discourses lifts the burden for development from international financial institutions and national policy makers and places it squarely on communities and individuals, especially on women. at first glance, discourses of decentralization appear empowering for women because of their potential for granting greater control of economic and political decision making to female actors, and this may, indeed, be the case in some situations. however, the reconfiguration of public (state)-private (community/individual) relationships will not necessarily bring about democratic transformations in gender relations without concomitant changes in the national and international political-economic climate. it is imperative that those of us in the fields of comparative and international education pay greater attention to how development crises are policed and that we work to "arrest" those representations that do not promote the democratic re-constructions sorely needed today. notes 1 i would like to thank monisha bajaj and audrey bryan for their important contributions to this article. 2 the term "discourse" is widely used in gender and development studies but often left undefined. in this article, i draw on the discourse theory of development outlined by peet and watts: "a "discourse" is an area of language use expressing a particular standpoint and related to a certain set of institutions. concerned with a limited range of objects, a discourse emphasizes some concepts at the expense of others (…). discourses vary among what are often competing, even conflicting, cultural, racial, gender, class, regional, and other differing interests, although they may uneasily coexist within relatively stable ("hegemonic") discursive formations" (1996, p. 14). 3 i shall use the term third world in this article even though it is often used today as a synonym for "underdeveloped". the term was first used by representatives at the 1955 bandung conference in indonesia to express their countries' non-alignment with either capitalist or socialist world powers. robert young suggests using third world "as a positive term of radical critique even if it also necessarily signals its negative sense of economic dependency and exploitation" (1990, p. 12). it is this dual sense of third world that i intend to highlight in the following pages. 4 there are many definitions of policy, with most of them based on "rational models" that assume consensus among different social institutions (a functionalist model) and linear stages of policy development, from conception to implementation to evaluation constructing consensus: the feminist modern and the reconstruction of gender current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 61 (an evolutionary model) (taylor et al., 1997, pp. 24-25). in contrast, my notion of policy is derived from a sociocultural approach that emphasizes process, power, and practice (ball, 1994; shore & wright, 1997; sutton & levinson, 2001). this approach suggests that policy is a statement of an institution's stance on an issue, and that every stance is a political strategy designed to effect change in a particular direction. additionally, a sociocultural approach to policy analysis is concerned with practice, or "what is enacted as well as what is intended" (ball, 1994, p. 10). 5 i use the term articulation as described by stuart hall in the following passage: "a connection or link which is not necessarily given in all cases, as a law or fact of life, but requires particular conditions of existence to appear at all . . . which can under certain circumstances disappear or be overthrown, leading to the old linkages being dissolved and new connections--rearticulations--being forged. it is also important that an articulation between different practices does not mean that they become identical or that one dissolves into the other. each retains its distinct determination and conditions of existence. however, once an articulation is made, the two practices function together, not as an immediate unity (. . .) but as 'distinctions within a unity.'" (cited in greene, 1999, p. 10) 6 i develop the education-as-panacea concept further in desire and decline: schooling amid crisis in tanzania (forthcoming, peter lang publishing). 7 the unced document i examined is entitled agenda 21: programme of action for sustainable development (available at gopher://gopher.un.org/11/esc/cn17/unced). it conveys the final set of agreements negotiated among the governments at unced. the icpd document is entitled population and development: programme of action adopted at the international conference on population and development, cairo, 5-13 september 1994 (available at gopher://gopher.undp.org:70/00/ungophers/popin/icpd/conference/offeng/poa.txt). 8 the other method of discursive analysis used by said is "strategic location," which means locating an author in relation to the entire corpus of orientalist literature (1978, p. 20). it is this process that most clearly distinguishes said's method of analysis from foucault's archaeological approach, to which said repeatedly notes his debt. whereas foucault questions the importance of determining authorship of texts, said believes that the durability of orientalism derives from authors referencing of the representations of one another. the issue of authorship is not central to my analysis because the unced, icpd, and wb texts were written by committees and not by individuals. however, i do note occasions where a text references one of the others because, like said, i believe this cross-referencing process helps create the "knitted-together strength" of developmentalism (1978, p. 6). 9 unterhalter (2000) provides a useful discussion of the distinctions among several other important education and development policies in the 1990s: the 1990 education for all conference in jomtien, thailand, the 1995 beijing world conference on women, and the world bank's 1995 priorities and strategies for education. the icpd, like the beijing conference, pays far more attention to poverty alleviation as a precursor to women's empowerment than either the 1995 or the 2002 world bank texts. although i am looking frances vavrus 62 december 16, 2002 at discursive similarities in the icpd, unced, and wb documents, there are also subtle yet significant differences among them that warrant further study. references adelman, i. (2001). fallacies in development theory and their implications for policy. in g. meier and j. stiglitz (eds.), frontiers of development economics: the future in perspective (pp. 103-134). washington, d.c.: the world bank. ball, s. j. (1994). education reform: a critical and post-structural approach. buckingham, uk: open university press. colwell, a. s. c. (2001). vision and revision: demography, maternal and child health development, and the representation of women in colonial tanganyika, ph.d. dissertation (urbana-champaign, university of illinois). elyachar, j. (2002). empowerment money: the world bank, non-governmental organizations, and the value of culture in egypt. public culture 14(3), 493-513. greene, r. w. (1999). malthusian worlds: u.s. leadership and the governing of the population crisis. boulder: westview press. hall, s. et al. (1978). policing the crisis. new york: holmes & meier publishers. jones, p. (1997). on world bank education financing. comparative education 33(1), 117129. kabeer, n. (1994). reversed realities: gender hierarchies in development thought. london and new york: verso. knodel, j. & jones, g. w. (1996). post-cairo population policy: does promoting girls' schooling miss the mark? population and development review 22(4), 683-702. markee, n. (1997). managing curricular innovations. new york: cambridge university press. meier, g. m. (2001). the old generation of development economists and the new. in g. m. meier and j. e. stiglitz (eds.), frontiers of development economics (pp. 13-50). washington, d. c.: the world bank. mohanty, c. t. (1991) under western eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. in c.t. mohanty, a. russo, and l. torres (eds.), third world women and the politics of feminism (pp. 51-80). bloomington: indiana university press. moser, c. (1989). gender planning in the third world: meeting practical and strategic gender needs. world development 17(11), 1799-1825. peet, r., & watts, m. (1996). liberation ecologies: environment, development, social movements. london and new york: routledge. constructing consensus: the feminist modern and the reconstruction of gender current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 63 said, e. (1978). orientalism. new york: vintage books. samoff, j. (1999). no teacher guide, no textbooks, no chairs: contending with crisis in african education. paper presented at the 43rd annual meeting of the african studies association, 11-14 november. shore, c. & wright, s. (1997). anthropology of policy: critical perspectives on governance and power. london and new york: routledge. spivak, g. c. (1999). a critique of postcolonial reason: toward a history of the vanishing present. cambridge, ma and london: harvard university press. stiglitz, j. e. (2002). globalization and its discontents. new york and london: w.w. norton & co. sutton, m. (2000). policy research as ethnographic refusal: the case of women's literacy in nepal. in m. sutton and b. levinson (eds.), policy as practice: toward a comparative sociocultural analysis of educational policy (pp. 77-99). westport, ct: ablex publishing. taylor, s. et al. (1997). educational policy and the politics of change. london and new york: routledge. turshen, m. (1999). privatizing health services in africa. new brunswick, nj and london: rutgers university press. unesco. (2000). the dakar framework for action. paris: unesco. unicef. (1999). the state of the world's children 1999. new york: unicef. unterhalter, e. (2000). transnational visions of the 1990s. in m. arnot and j. dillabough (eds.), challenging democracy: international perspectives on gender, education and citizenship (pp. 87-102). london and new york: routledge. vavrus, f. (2000). governmentality in an era of 'empowerment': the case of tanzania. in t. s. popkewitz (ed.), educational knowledge: changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community (pp. 221-242). albany, ny: suny press. vavrus, f. (forthcoming). desire and decline: schooling amid crisis in tanzania. peter lang publishing. vines, d. (2001). comment. in g. m. meier and j. e. stiglitz (eds.), frontiers of development economics (pp. 135-146). washington, d. c.: the world bank. the world bank. (2002). education and hiv/aids: a window of hope. washington, d.c: the world bank. young, r. (1990) white mythologies: writing history and the west. london: routledge. © 2006 elizabeth sherman swing 66 april 21, 2006 a brief history of the comparative and international education society1 elizabeth sherman swing cies historian the founding of the comparative education society, 1956 to 1960 the comparative and international education society, initially the comparative education society, evolved from annual conferences at new york university begun in 1954 by william w. brickman. although only thirty-five were present at the first conference, brickman labeled a collection of papers presented there: “proceedings of the first annual conference on comparative education (1954)” – thus signaling hope that he and this group would henceforth occupy comparative education turf in the united states. the comparative education society (ces) was founded at the close of a subsequent conference (april 27, 1956), with brickman as president and gerald read of kent state university, secretary-treasurer. during the first six years of its existence, the comparative education society led study tours on five continents and in twenty-four countries. it also inaugurated a new journal, comparative education review, and it drafted and ratified a constitution calling for annual elections and a nine member board of directors. from the beginning it courted an international membership. in addition to americans, scholars from canada, england, france, germany, switzerland, chile and the netherlands served on its board of directors or on the editorial board of its journal. organization building, 1960-1975 in the years following the founding of ces, a group who could be considered “founding fathers” assumed positions of leadership. william w. brickman served as president from 1957 to 1959. he was followed by william h.e. johnson, 1959-1960; joseph katz, 1961; c. arnold anderson, 1962; claude eggertsen, 1963; r. freeman butts, 1964; donald k. adams, 1965; david g. scanlon, 1966; william w. brickman again, 1967; stewart e. fraser, 1968; reginald edwards, 1969; foster, 1970; andreas kazamias, 1971, cole s. brembeck, 1972, harold j. noah, 1973; robert f. lawson, 1974; and rolland g. paulston, 1975. in the 1960s focus was on three issues: constitutional reform, a name change, and a decision to hold separate meetings. constitutional reform took place in 1966 when the society ratified a revised constitution that regularized practices already in place. it also gave student members the same rights and privileges as mature scholars. on the matter of a name change there was heated debate, echoes of which can still be heard today. what did the word international connote? did it describe a community of comparativists? debate notwithstanding, on february 14, 1968, the board of directors unanimously approved a name change. they put the issue before the business meeting two days later, following which mail ballots were sent to the membership. of these, 149 were in favor of a change and 51 opposed. the september 1968 newsletter states: “the constitution is now amended to read, ‘the name of this organization shall be the comparative and international education society’ ” (article 1, section 1). a brief history of the comparative and international education society current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(2) 67 the third issue of the 1960s, the separate meetings issue, reflects a particular historical moment. until 1970 the society met annually in chicago during february, coordinating its meetings with those of the american association of colleges of teacher education, the national society of college teachers of education, and the association of student teaching – organizations with which it affiliated at the time of its inception. in an era, however, when harold noah and max eckstein, george bereday, and brian holmes were exploring new methodologies in comparative education, identification with teacher education was beginning to weaken. the first separate annual meeting took place in atlanta in 1970. thereafter, the board voted to hold its annual meetings in a locale designated by the incoming vice president. growth and consolidation, 1975 to 1990 during the years that followed, cies established societal markers that reflected an emerging maturity. in 1980 it established a cies collection in the kent state university archives, thus providing a vehicle for the preservation of historical memory. the cies collection, which now occupies over 80 cubic feet, has become an important resource in the field of comparative education. it includes correspondence by cies presidents and cer editors, issues of the cies newsletter, minutes of board meetings, policy discussions, and much more. another societal marker was establishment of eggertsen lectures, set up by former students of claude a. eggertsen of the university of michigan, a founder, past president, and honorary fellow. brian holmes gave the first eggertsen lecture in 1980. a third societal marker is the designation honorary fellow for selected senior scholars. the first honorary fellows were elected in 1987. contentious issues and systemic change, 1990 to 2006 the modern era has given rise to particularly contentious issues, both epistemological and practical. on the one hand, debates have raged over what is sometimes referred to as thinking within or thinking outside the black box. see, for example, the issues raised by vandra masemann and george psacharopoulos in the pages of comparative education review (34, 1990, nos. 3 and 4). at the same time, like other comparative education societies cies has grappled with international political concerns: apartheid in south africa, events in tiananmen square, globalization, border crossing difficulties for participants in cies conferences. in addition, the society has had its own domestic issues: a contested election in 1990, problems with the internal revenue service because it had not properly filed for tax exempt status – a situation that illustrates the difficulty of transforming a gathering of like-minded scholars, not always the most practical people, into a larger professional organization. not all issues have been worrisome, however. in 2000 cies received its first endowment, a bequest of $100,000 from george f. kneller, a ucla professor of the philosophy of education. terms of the endowment include a directive to establish an annual george f. kneller lecture. the modern era has ushered in systemic change. the constitution of 1998 created a new office – historian, an office with a three-year renewable term and executive committee status. the first historian was appointed in 1999. the constitution of 1998 also introduced the first bylaws in the history of the society. amending the constitution still requires two-thirds approval by mail ballot; but passing or rescinding a bylaw requires no more than a two-thirds affirmative vote by a quorum of the board, a procedure that elizabeth sherman swing 68 april 21, 2006 can take place either during a board meeting (article xii, sections 1 and 2) or electronically (bylaws, article v, section c). a significant recent development is a trend toward decentralization through committees and special interest groups. when the constitution of 1998 was ratified, the cies had three standing (permanent) committees: the nominations committee, the awards committee, and the new scholars committee. in 2000 three newer committees – the investment committee, the gender and education committee, and the underrepresented ethnic and ability groups (ureag) – were converted from ad hoc to standing committee status by changing the bylaws, an event that took place at a regular board meeting. in addition, special interest groups, such as those on language or peace, have formed in response to member interest, thus signaling flexibility in the accommodation of disparate interests and concerns. as it celebrates its first half century, the cies has become more than just a professional association. loyalty runs long and deep. the membership includes some of forty years standing, but even among the younger generation cies generates a special ambience. a graduate student, who was a member of the board of directors, has offered the following testimony: the annual cies conference creates a social space where human beings from many different parts of the world connect on topics of mutual interest and learn from one another (even from those [with whom] they may strongly disagree). the greatest value of being a member of this society has come from my interactions with people who have different frames of reference and different realities. (maria fatima rodrigues, cies newsletter, no. 121, may 1999.) for those to whom cies speaks, these “different frames of reference and different realities” are indeed evidence of the strength of this fifty year old work in progress. (april 9, 2006) notes: 1. an edited version of this article appeared in the program for the fiftieth anniversary conference of the comparative and international education society in honolulu, hawai’i, march 2006. © 2005 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 8(1) 41 essay social enterprise and re-civilization of human endeavors: re-socializing the market metaphor or encroaching colonization of the lifeworld? maria humphries waikato management school, university of waikato suzanne grant waikato management school, university of waikato abstract an implicit normalization of the capitalist market model—in both the facilitation of human endeavors and our relationship to the earth—is clearly evident in the work of j. gregory dees, as it is in much organizational theory and education. to better understand the effects of this market mentality, a more critical approach to social entrepreneurship is required. in this article, we re-conceive dees's characterization of social entrepreneurs as potentially achievable by all human beings and as a part of all their activity. this re-conception transforms what is possible in the human. we advocate for the elaboration of a relational ethic as the means to achieve habermas' "communicative action" in order to counter the instrumental logic of "the system" that, we argue, puts all at risk. introduction the growing gap between rich and poor within and among countries, and the devastation of the natural environment have been attributed to the predominance of economic development through a free market metaphor by thinkers from all but the most conservative positions on the political spectrum (baumann, 1998; chomsky, 2003, 1996; george, 2002; kelsey 2002, 1999; korten, 1996; shiva, 2000, 1993; stiglitz 2003, 2002). "the free market" as an organizing metaphor, has been taken up by or imposed on many countries to inform all trading activities. it is increasingly used to organize the delivery of social services through the ever extending commodification of human social needs such as the opportunity to learn, the desire for companionship, the need for care when we are unwell and so on. in previous work (martin et al, 2004) we likened the "free market" to a single hulled ocean going vessel which stifles diverse ways of knowing and being. in this paper we argue that we are at risk of allowing this vessel to harness the concept of social enterprise to the redress of human needs and that this harnessing will stifle the generation of creative ways of being human. the appeal of social enterprise as a market(able) solution to social and environmental concerns stealthily draws our mind to the belief that ever more of the human endeavor can be achieved through the market; that evermore of the social and environmental costs of a market approach can be met through the extension of that very metaphor. we suggest that by encouraging a more fluid concept of social enterprise and by working to make more fluid our thoughts about humphries and grant 42 december`1, 2005 the best way to co-ordinate human endeavors in general, we will enrich the human experience and perhaps contribute to a safer, fairer society. in this paper we review the discussion of the concept of social entrepreneurship provided by j. gregory dees. dees (2001) provides a broad ranging discussion of the emergence of the concept of entrepreneurship and its usefulness as a response to social issues. drawing on the work in business of such leading figures as say, schumpeter, drucker, and stevenson, he argues that their ideas are "attractive" because they can be as easily applied in the social sector as the business sector. they describe a mind-set and a kind of behavior that can be manifest anywhere" (p.2). he advocates building the notion of social entrepreneurship on this strong tradition in the market sector. he recognizes, however, that social entrepreneurs differ from other entrepreneurs because they have a social mission and it is this social mission that provides them with some "distinctive challenges" (2001). in general, we diverge from his thinking in terms of our more limited confidence in the appropriateness of the contemporary market metaphor. we further disagree with his suggestion that the characteristics observed in a group of social entrepreneurs somehow characterize a group of people with essential and unique qualities. dees (2001) acknowledges the inadequacy of the market metaphor for the social entrepreneur: …markets do not do a good job of valuing social improvements, public goods and harms, and benefits for people who cannot afford to pay. these elements are often essential to social entrepreneurship….it is much harder to determine whether a social entrepreneur is creating sufficient social value to justify the resources used in creating that value (p. 3). he demonstrates that markets do not often provide the right disciplines for social entrepreneurs. their resources may come from a mixture of variously focused consumers, grant givers, volunteers and so forth and these further muddy the waters of the supposedly useful market disciplines in the profit focused sector. thus dees calls for a definition of social entrepreneurship that reflects the need for a "substitute for the market disciplines that works for business entrepreneurs" (p. 3). for those who see "markets" in a more critical way, the metaphor may be seen not only as an inadequate disciplinary mechanism for the conduct of social enterprise, but may be seen as the generator of the environmental and social ills that dees understands social entrepreneurs seek to address. it is the further naturalization of the use of this uncritical market metaphor—and its implicit de-socialization of economic activity—that underlies our deepest concerns—and on which we attempt to engage a discussion in this essay. dees characterizes the "ideal" social entrepreneur as: • adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (not just private value); • recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities that serve that mission; • engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation and learning; • acting boldly without being limited by resources currently in hand; and social enterprise and re-civilization of human endeavors: re-socializing the market metaphor or encroaching colonization of the lifeworld? current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 43 • exhibiting heightened accountability to the constituencies served and for the outcomes created (dees, 2001, p. 4). we agree that the characteristics depicted here are currently not generalized among the population. we do not, however, declare this to be evidence of a naturally occurring limited subcategory of humanity. we would argue that rather than being a set of characteristics found only in a small group of exceptional people as indeed may be the case now (dees, 2001), many of these characteristics could be encouraged to flourish among more people through education, through different employment policies, and through the vitalization of a more relational ethic in societies generally. instrumentality and managerialism predominate today. this has been achieved through the historical emphasis on the education of human beings as functionaries for capitalism; through the implied and insidious and limited re-definition of human beings as producers and consumers, agents in contracts, or human resources. the recognition of these concepts as the social fabrications of a specific time and place, serving a specific form of society, and the understanding that we might create something different, suggest that educators could advocate that current emphasis might usefully be reconsidered. we could, for example, re-conceive dees's ideal characteristics as potentially achievable by all human beings, expressed in all their activity, and through such re-conception, transform what is possible in the human. we concur with professor dees that it is by focusing on the social mission of entrepreneurs that we have the starting point for a creative turn in our thinking. we suggest, however, that the distinction dees makes between social and economic entrepreneurs in his paper could be taken in another direction. we would argue that all economic activity is social activity. it is its reduction in the context of the predominating market metaphor that allows us to think of "profit" as a "legitimate objective," a statistic on a page, rather than a complex social construct that represents (or perhaps obfuscates) the harnessing of human ingenuity, struggle, and even pain and their transformation to a financial equation or abstraction. this, in our view, is a flaw in the deeply naturalized acceptance of "the market" as a reasonable conduit for the coordination of the vital interactions of humans with each other and the earth that sustains us. we explore this view more fully in this essay. we suggest that without a critical perspective, social enterprise will not have the capacity to address the organizational and environmental issues before us with the wisdom generated from an awareness of the relationality among all aspects of the social, political, financial and spiritual aspects of being. this task, if it were to be undertaken, would be enhanced if education in general were more critical of currently naturalized metaphors for social organization—metaphors that might be different. dees (2001) provides us with a good platform from which to begin. we would endorse his call, but not limit our thoughts to the distinguishing of social enterprise from markets in general. rather, we would suggest the use of his idealized definition of a social entrepreneur to enquire into the predominating market metaphor more deeply; to propose the generation of alternative metaphors of social, economic and environmental coordination that would require the fabrication of a different human being. we would encourage an increasing normalization of his ideal social entrepreneur as a typical human being. humphries and grant 44 december`1, 2005 in the next section of this essay we invite consideration of our call to transform the predominant instrumental ethic that drives much human engagement. we are particularly interested not only in the concern with the instrumentalization of people and the earth but in the transformation of this predominant ethic to one of relationality. we propose the amplification of a relational ethic that may bring the spirit of humanity implied in dees's definition of social entrepreneurs, not only to understand his segregation of social enterprise from the market "proper" but to encourage a critical transformation of that very market in ways that amplify the values articulated by dees (2001, p. 1) across all the sectors, whose boundaries are indeed blurring. we do this by drawing more fully on the characteristics of a social entrepreneur provided by dees (2001, p.4), and on the organizational critique and the transformational aspirations of critical theorists, particularly through our interest in the work of jürgen habermas. habermas is concerned about the increasing colonization of "the lifeworld" by the encroaching instrumental logic of markets in all spheres of human endeavors and so are we. he suggests that new social movements such as environmentalism, feminism, and post-colonialism, provide avenues for the development of new values and identities. he argues that these movements represent transition from old politics based on economic and military security to new politics involving the enhancement of quality of life, equality, and enhanced political and social participation. we concur with habermas. there are many voices challenging liberal capitalism. we believe that the changes they call for may bring us a more human and environmentally sound future if the concerns expressed by these voices are not merely assimilated into, but leaving largely unchanged, the predominating market modality of instrumentalism (grice and humphries, 1997). this instrumentality, garbed in the cloak of functionality, is expressed as a commitment to efficiency, productivity and growth. however, it largely serves a limited assumption for the right (and espoused duty) of capital to seek places and processes through which to maximize return on investment, and the necessity for all to be in its service. we refer readers to the integration of the concept of "flourishing," a concept that entails wellbeing, dignity and the achievement of one's creative potential and we draw towards an appreciation of a relational ethic. by a relational ethic, we mean a prioritization of concern about who we are to each other, what we might legitimately expect from each other as human beings—always in relation one to another and to the earth. this way of being invites a subtle shift from an instrumental ethic that assesses how we might harness the energies of others to extract the maximum value of the relationship for our own benefit. it means treating each human being as fully human—as purposeful and free—not as a means to our own ends. this shifting of focus could only be achieved, in our view, by paying overt attention to and transforming the instrumental ethic dominating the contemporary organizational modalities now reaching into all aspects of human endeavor and by collaboration with human communities whose interests and needs are proposed to be channeled through a social enterprise paradigm. if this is not to be done through a functionalist discourse, or with a presumption that "free markets know best" then the relationships between social entrepreneurs and their communities must be complex and must have emancipatory intent. this context requires the dialogue that habermas advocates. social enterprise and re-civilization of human endeavors: re-socializing the market metaphor or encroaching colonization of the lifeworld? current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 45 of markets and the lifeworld habermas introduces the distinction between "the life world" and "the system" to focus of the differing ways social cohesion may be fostered (ingram, 1987, p. 115). "the life world" is the sphere in which social relationships form the binding/bonding processes of communities. it is the world of magic and metaphor, of emotions, and of varied forms of articulating entitlement and the caretaking responsibilities of one for another and the earth. "the system" refers to the economic and bureaucratic practices that characterize contemporary western societies. in this sphere, the binding/bonding effect is intended to be met through largely mechanistic or instrumental arrangements we refer to as "the market." the "contract" is its most articulated vehicle. in western society, argues habermas, what is left of "the life world" is being encroached by the logic of "the system." he calls this encroachment "colonization." we can see this most explicitly when we look at the transformation of various care-taking responsibilities from families to professional service providers who win and serve "contracts" in health care and disability services, education, eldercare, and so much more. habermas has some concerns about this colonization that we share: to the degree that the economic system subjects the life-forms of private households and the life conduct of consumers and employees to its imperatives, consumerism and possessive individualism, motives of performance, and competition gain the force to shape behavior… (habermas, 1987, p. 325). working in, and responding to, the frankfurt school of critical theory, habermas developed a concern for emancipation particularly in response to adorno and horkheimer and their deeply pessimistic view of contemporary western society (edgar and sedgwick, 2002, p. 275). critical theorists, in this tradition often link the predominant ways in which power is formulated and institutionalized in these societies to the exacerbation of the problems humanity must address. they want to do this in a way that generates emancipatory change (carr, 2000, p. 208). from a transformational perspective, this is to make a contribution to the emancipation of humanity, the creation of just societies and the responsible stewardship of the earth. the ideas, the hope and the inspiration that are needed for the deep transformation of western society are more likely to emerge from the lifeworld than from "the system." subjecting the life world to the logic of the system is thus likely to dry up the very source of creativity needed for such transformation. enlarging the group of people that are committed to developing the character traits dees describes, would be a marvelous contribution that educators could make. for habermas, the boundary between the two spheres, "the lifeworld" and "the system" is marked by the contrast between "communicative and functional rationality" (jackson, 1999, p. 45) while the latter emphasizes "the search for instruments of effectiveness", the former offers the "potential for using reason for more noble ends" (jones, 2003, p. 169). habermas is deeply concerned with the pathologies that emerge when the system "colonizes" the lifeworld, when rational instrumental processes invade "areas of social life that have been or could be co-coordinated by the medium of understanding" (white, 1995, p.8). this medium of understanding requires education in elaborated ways of thinking and being; it requires a different tack than that of the single hulled vessel. humphries and grant 46 december`1, 2005 could a critical approach to social enterprise provide a different tack, a tack that may put the single hulled vessel on a path on which it may morph into a more sophisticated vessel for a mutually beneficial future? we propose that by reconceiving the metaphorical vehicle in which we journey through our human life and from which we navigate our human experience to a multi-hulled vessel, we endorse diversity and relationality in ways a single hulled craft does not. for illustrative purposes, let this imaginary new vessel be a two hulled craft. each hull must be stable and sound in its own right, the bridge that binds them and holds the steering house must be robust and the navigators elected to this steering house must understand the necessity of the wellbeing of each hull and its occupants to the wellbeing of the whole. a fabulous further reflection on this craft is that its direction is set "by the space between"—the space we are calling "the relationship." it is the relationship between us that is both the destiny and the process. (martin et al, 2004; humphries and martin, 2005). the possibility of such morphing of our vehicle requires both critical thinking and transformational action. we believe the work of habermas provides us with some theories towards such a move. habermas seeks to retain the potential of the contribution of critical theorists to achieve a just or "emancipated" society (white, 1995). we tend to hold a similar view. however, rather than seeking to maintain the demarcation that allows for an instrumental ethic to prevail in the sphere of the market, as do habermas and dees, we would invite a reconsideration of the very validity and limited insight that currently endorse a despiritualized, de-socialized mode of being in an arena as significant as our economic activities. we would see social enterprise as the process through which we can invest all human activities, including our economic activities, with respect for human dignity and responsibility for the earth that sustains us. dialogue and communication are at the heart of habermas's project and represent one of his most significant departures from the frankfurt theorists. "what raises us out of nature is the only thing whose nature we can know: language." through interactions between people, meaning is created. meaning is not to "be read off the world." and it is in this turn in the analyses that we depart from dees's empiricist approach to a characterization of social entrepreneurs. we see such people not as a discrete category of human beings who display unique natural traits, but as examples of people expressing values and ways of working that might be more generalized through education. this is an evolutionary point of view: under the right conditions, the power of uncoerced and free conversation will contribute to emancipatory movements towards a more truly democratic society. in the last section of this essay we apply the complex ideas discussed above to our interest in developing a relational ethic that would help shift consciousness from the transaction/functionalist ethic that predominates in management education and that has become so "normalized" that it appears as the natural way of doing things. it is this very naturalization, through education, that brings to the social sphere, entrepreneurship that may have the colonizing effects habermas is concerned about. social enterprise and re-civilization of human endeavors: re-socializing the market metaphor or encroaching colonization of the lifeworld? current issues in comparative education, vol.8(1) 47 a relational ethicattention to the space between habermas is among those theorists who not only challenge the subtle processes of systemic control as violation of the principles of mutuality (habermas, 1977), but also propose working towards societies that are based on mutual respect through what he calls communicative action (habermas, 2001 [1984]). habermas (2001 [1984], 1977) challenges (hegemonic) practices oriented to achieving pre-established objectives of specific interest groups through instrumental action and advocates instead mutual understanding generated from inter-subjectively agreed and recognized relationships, calling on ideals which espouse full emancipation for all human beings. actions are communicative "when the participants coordinate their plans of action consensually, with the agreement reached at any point being evaluated in terms of the inter-subjective recognition of validity claims" (1990, p. 58). habermas "relies both on the possibility and the transformative capacity of dialogue" (kersten, 2000, p. 236), so that the learning processes in "the family, the public sphere, community life, and cultural expressions" (welton, 1995a, p. 28) may be reappropriated from the control of technical, instrumental rationality and put back in the hands of those engaged in consensus building and dialogue. he argues that it is only through communication and interaction that people can master society, form social movements and achieve power. along with arendt (1970), he argues that "common conviction in unconstrained communication" (habermas, 1977, p. 4) may provide the capacity of a people to achieve collective goals of agreement. legitimate power does not co-opt others through deceptive means, it is driven by mutuality of agreement and understanding; a concept habermas (1977) terms intersubjective agreement. we come to such agreement through communication. he suggests that the "very possibility of language implies a deep reciprocity between speakers" (edgar and sedgwick, 2002, p. 275). this view allows habermas to postulate an "ideal speech" situation where his concern for an egalitarian approach to voice and discourse leads him to conclude that democracy and emancipation require a public sphere where "all participants have equal power, attempt to reach understanding, do not act manipulatively or strategically, and understand their obligation to offer reasons" (stephens and cobb, 1999, p. 26). that is to say, he imagines places where all participants have reciprocal rights to question each other as to the "sincerity, factual accuracy and meaning of what they say as well as their moral right to say it" (edgar and sedgwick, 2002, p. 74). stephens and cobb (1999, p. 26) also suggest that the ideal speech situation creates spaces where true democracy is ethically possible: a place where "every stakeholder is accorded equal opportunity to be heard" and space is preserved for critical thought which is not "subject to the contextualized pressures of particularized interests or power" (edgar and sedgwick, 2002, p. 118). habermas offers "a guiding metaphor for bringing about social change" (stephens and cobb, 1999, p. 27) where "the paradoxes produced by a self-referential critique can be avoided if we develop a concept of communicative reason that emphasizes intersubjectivity and dialogue" (fleming, 1997, p. 16) this requires, among other things, an education in the art of dialogue rather than in the processes of achieving and retaining control. kersten (2000, p. 239) notes that dialogue requires at least three things to build faith in human capacity to regain control over economic, social and political affairs—rather than handing responsibility for these to the vagaries of "the system." these are: a critical and humphries and grant 48 december`1, 2005 reflective understanding of one's own world; an emphatic grasping of the world of the other; and the shared building of a joint world, based on undistorted social consensus. this form of dialogue speaks to us of human potential and the power of communication to generate a world worthy of our self-respect. it speaks to us of our responsibility. if social enterprise moves us in this direction, we welcome its higher profile. we have proposed that developing an ethic of relationality, rather than complying with the instrumental ethics of the dominant market modality will move us towards the manifestation of such an ideal. dees (2001) provides us a platform to explore these ideas further. in this essay, we have expressed our concern about the move of social responsibility from civil society to its expression through a market modality and the disciplinary effects of the associated technical logic. this expression of concern is not to suggest that "the market" should not be more socially responsible, responsive, and response-able to social and environmental values of communities. the mind-shift sought here is the empowering of communities to ensure that our processes of trade and exchange are governed by guiding principles of democracy. this requires the generation of a civil society strong enough to instruct its governments, and governments robust enough to facilitate the mutuality necessary for a just society. to begin the work of the transformation, we envisage an open and broad ranging critique of the ideological principles that are increasingly governing all aspects of our human existence and our relationship to the earth. we advocate against an uncritical promotion of the instrumental gospel of market speak, and the showcasing of fabulous achievements with no broader political analysis, that leave significant issues untouched by human consciousness and thus human conscience. we suggest that such a critique be developed across the educational spectrum, at all ages and in all disciplines. to limit this discussion to the arena of "social enterprise" is to risk limiting the discussion to a small group of predefined social activists—and to allow the rest of us to deflect or diminish our responsibility for a safer, fairer world for all. references bauman, z. 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(1995). the cambridge companion to habermas. cambridge: cambridge university press. volume 12(1) / fall 2009 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education guest editorial introduction 3 cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education andria wisler articles 6 rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education noah w. sobe 14 the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism: education for a shared humanity dale snauwaert 23 lonely business or mutual concern: the role of comparative education in the cosmopolitan citizenship debates anatoli rapoport 33 cosmopolitanism in civic education: exploring cross-national trends, 1970-2008 patricia bromley 45 study abroad and development of global citizen identity and cosmopolitan ideals in undergraduates karen hendershot and jill sperandio 56 educating the world: teachers and their work as defined by the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) helen harper and judith dunkerly 66 world-systems analysis in comparative education: an alternative to cosmopolitanism tom g. griffiths and lisa knezevic 76 smashing cosmopolitanism: the neo-liberal destruction of cosmopolitan education in eastcentral europe robert j. imre and zsuzsa millei essay 86 the evolution of a cosmopolitan identity: transforming culture shannan spisak 92 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 1 (2009) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden guest executive editor andria wisler visiting assistant professor, georgetown university, program of justice and peace executive editors cambria russell, andrew shiotani senior editors kathleen keenan, ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, cambria russell, michael schapira editors sarah flatto, michelle reddy, briana ronan, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors holly brewster, richard cheng, henan cheng, cara furman, anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, ghazala mehmood, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, carina omoeva, amritpal sandhu, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira style editors ruaridh macleod, ghazala mehmood, elizabeth morphis, amritpal sandhu web editor andrew shiotani associate web editors ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, ingrid gogolin, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2009 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 12(1): 56-65. educating the world: teachers and their work as defined by the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) helen harper university of nevada, las vegas judith dunkerly university of nevada, las vegas in our times globalization and cosmopolitanism are terms that speak to the intensification of bordercrossing, and in connection to education, to the global conditions and possibilities that are directing change in learning and teaching. much of this change demands a rethinking of the identity of the teacher and a revisioning of the work of teaching (luke, 2004, tierney, 2006). this paper looks to one intergovernmental, transnational site, already heavily involved in international relations, where this rethinking might find productive ground: the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco). in a critical examination of key public documents, it is evident that in some instances unesco seems to be moving toward a notion of “teacher” framed not by national interests supported by the global community– the more traditional role taken by the un and unesco–but, by global interests and initiatives with regard to world citizens. this is critical, and if what we are seeing is indeed real, it represents a shift towards a more cosmopolitan identity for 21st century educators. globalization is characterized by the extensive movement or flow of information, ideas, images, capital and people across increasingly permeable political borders due to economic and technological change (castles, 2004; luke & carrington, 2001). the speed, durability, flexibility and mutability of these transnational flows and networks affectevery aspect of local and national life, albeit unevenly, to the effect that the local and the global are not experienced as polarities but more often as combined and mutually implicating phenomena (beck, 2002). globalization is transforming or at the very least influencing the social, economic and political life within the nation-state. what is evident is that increasingly “cultural homogeneity and cultural heterogeneity are appearing simultaneously in the same cultural landscape” (burbles & torres, 2000) and that, “21st century forms of life and identities are ethically and culturally simultaneously global and local” (beck, 2002, p. 36; see also apple, kenway, singh, 2005). thus, it is possible that one is both local resident and a global worker, a national citizen and global citizen, a consumer of local products and of international goods. one’s identifications, commitments, and affiliations could be local but also global. this shifting amalgam of life patterns, identities, commitments and affiliations includes those associated with and produced in formal and informal educational sites. there is considerable discussion and increasing scholarship devoted to the effects of globalization on formal education. we know that globalization is increasing the diversity in our classrooms, altering the nature and role of technology in the classroom, as well as changing the nature of work and of community life in which our students are engaged or will be engaged. in these “new times” teaching and the teacher need to be redefined (luke & elkins, 1998). allan luke (2004, 2002) has called for a re-envisioning of education that moves beyond the nation state to consider the contemporary cosmopolitan, transcultural, transnational contexts and conditions of students and teachers in the 21st century. he argues for teaching as “cosmopolitan work” and asks, “what if current issues in comparative education 57 educating the world we envisioned as part of our rethinking of democratic education a reconstruction of teachers and students as world citizens, thinkers, intellectuals and critics and within this context as national and community-based subjects?” (2004, pp. 1429-1431). luke suggest a perspective that frames local and national pedagogical identities within a larger international perspective. in doing so he privileges “cosmopolitanism” as the overarching frame for teachers, students, their work and their identities. cosmopolitanism is not a new term. in ancient greek philosophy cosmopolitans were “citizens of the world,” and many of the enlightenment philosophers, in response to volatile local and religious sectarianism, wrote in some detail about the possibilities of world citizenship (see kymlicka, 2001; kant, 1795/1996). in response to globalization and its backlash, an aggressive resurgence of nationalism, cosmopolitanism has returned to academic discourse (benhabib, 2006; appiah, 2006; hayden, 2005; beck, 2002, 2000; nussbaum, 1996), and to educational discourse (goldstein, 2007; tierney, 2006; rizvi, 2005; luke 2004, 2002). cosmopolitanism is thus a sensibility that is required of diversity brought about by intensified globalization (todd, 2009). while there are various definitions of cosmopolitanism, this article focuses on the experience of living at the interface of the local and the global. ideally, this experience creates greater global awareness, numerous global affiliations and the development of sensibilities that support global citizenship as it is lived locally. at the same time cosmopolitanism means that the local is never lost. thus it combines “an ethos of macro-interdependencies with an acute consciousness of the inescapabilities and particularities of place, characters, historical trajectories and fate” (paul rabinow in beck 2002, p. 18). as part of this local-global ethos, educational philosopher david hansen (2008) names a cosmopolitan sensibility as “a sustained readiness to learn from the new and different while being heedful of the known and familiar” (p. 289). for hansen, cosmopolitanism names a sensibility that promotes an openness, indeed a desire, to expand awareness of what and who lies within and beyond the circle of the local and familiar, to listen and engage creatively and productively with such knowledge, and to be not only informed but formed by this new knowledge, while remaining ever mindful of one’s knowledge and loyalties to local knowledge. cosmopolitanism would seem to name both a circumstance and a sensibility. what does this mean for the cosmopolitan teacher and where can we find such a teacher? students in the 21st century will need an education informed by a cosmopolitan sensibility to prepare them for global participation. the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) as many readers are no doubt aware, the united nations organization (un) includes a general assembly currently representing 193 member nation states from around the globe. the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) is a specialized agency of the un. unesco represents one of the outstanding non-governmental organizations working to address issues of global improvements in a wide array of areas related to education. as such, it is appropriate to draw from their extensive body of work in education for this analysis. unesco has a long history of initiatives, but at the present time its work in education is organized into seven themes: early childhood, primary education, secondary education, technical and science education; higher education; literacy; hiv/aids education; and teacher education. at this time, the major priority of unesco is “education for all” (efa) which involves the provision of free, compulsory primary education to everyone by 2015. this follows the un millennium development goals (see also the final report of the world education forum: dakar, unesco, 2008a). as stated directly on its website: “unesco believes that education is key to social and economic development. we work for a sustainable world with just societies that value knowledge, promote a culture of peace, celebrate diversity and defend human rights, achieved by providing education for all (efa)”(retrieved april 23, 2008 from http://www.unesco.org) 58 current issues in comparative education h. harper and j. dunkerly in this paper we will trace the implicit and explicit naming of the teacher and the work of teachers in these unesco documents. specifically we will be examining public, online documents produced in the last ten years, with particular attention to how teaching and the teacher is articulated by the unesco, sometimes in partnership with other un agencies and funds (e.g. unicef: the united nations children’s fund, ilo: international labor organization, world bank) and in relation to recent scholarship on globalization and the development of the cosmopolitan teacher. we conclude with how the policies and initiatives of the un, along with recent scholarship on the cosmopolitan teacher, can be used to reformulate teacher education beyond the nation state. the unesco teacher the unesco website includes a great deal of information on its education initiatives. we focused on the website information and various publications found in the teacher education section, the teacher status section, and in various documents concerning ‘education for all’, including “the final report of the world education forum: dakar” (unesco, 2008a) and “a human rightsbased approach to education for all” (unicef/unesco, 2007). we also looked at specific issue documents, statement positions and reports including, among others: “guidelines for quality provision in cross-border higher education” (2007); “inclusive education: the way of the future” from the 48th conference of the international conference on education, (ice): (geneva, 2008b); “a decade of education for sustainable development quarterly update” (july, 2008c); “impact of women teachers on girls’ education: policy brief” (2006a) and “the contribution of early childhood education to a sustainable society” (2008d). within the parameters of this search, we found no single site or published document that referenced the ‘global’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ teacher, although the nature of teaching and the role of the teacher was addressed or implied in the statements and descriptions found in various documents. this is not surprising. the term ‘cosmopolitan teacher’ is new to educational discourse. moreover the work of the un and unesco has dealt largely with national governments and the role that national leadership can play in securing conditions for educational opportunity, including building capacity for teacher development. this means a focus on turning un/unesco initiatives into national initiatives with the support of the 193 member states. this work is aligned with liberal internationalism, which has dominated much of the 20th century, rather than with cosmopolitanism per se (hayden, 2006). the former is focused on how nation states work together on issues of freedom, equality, peace, progress, democracy, etc; whereas the latter is focused on the development of global sensibilities and the establishment of supranational organizations, structures, and legal systems that protect the interests of individuals regardless of where they reside. despite the fact that there are no references to a global or cosmopolitan teacher, there are instances in the unesco documents where commonly agreed upon notions of the teacher and teachers’ work are described. we argue that these descriptions simply and indeed in some recent cases, formalize an identity for the cosmopolitan teacher. teacher as professional the publication that most completely focused on naming the teacher is the ilo/unesco “recommendations concerning the status of teachers” (unesco, 1966), which determined and defined the rights and responsibilities of teachers, international standards for their initial preparation and further education, recruitment, employment and as advocated for safe teaching and learning conditions. although it is a dated document, it is cited on the unesco website and in several more recently produced documents, including a report that examines the progress made on implementing the 1966 recommendations: the ilo/unesco 2003 report current issues in comparative education 59 educating the world from the committee of experts on the application of recommendations concerning teaching personnel. the recommendations from the “status of teachers” document aimed to elevate the status of teachers and establish international guidelines for the work of teachers to insure that regardless of where they teach, teachers are trained professionals, and acknowledged as such. unfortunately, there has not been significant progress on many of the recommendations suggested, but nonetheless these documents and many others serve to set a standard for the profession: “teaching should be regarded as a profession: it is a form of public service which requires of teachers expert knowledge and specialized skills, acquired and maintained through rigorous and continuing study; it also calls for a sense of personal and corporate responsibility for the education and welfare of the pupils in their charge” (unesco recommendations for teachers 1966, p. 6; see also ilo/unesceo report from the committee of experts on the application of recommendations concerning teaching personnel, 2003). the details concerning the teaching practices of the cosmopolitan teacher are well-articulated in the joint unesco/ unicef documents discussed below. teachers are recognized in the unesco documents as having the most direct impact on the day-to-day educational experiences of children because it is “their task to translate national policies into practical action in each school” (unicef/unesco, 2007, p. 93). yet, despite the centrality of the teacher to realizing unesco goals expressed through national initiatives, she is conspicuously absent from many locales for reasons ranging from safety issues for female teachers, to lack of teacher education, to conflict and displacement. this shortage of teachers and the shortage of trained professional teachers in particular, is a severe limit to the advancement of education locally and globally: the most serious issue facing the teaching profession today is the acute or impending shortages of qualified teachers. the growing demand for teachers caused by education for all, combined with an aging teacher population in developed countries, will create shortages of at least 15 million teachers in the next decade. (ilo/unesco 2003. p. v). formalized through unesco documents, the global identity of the teacher functions as a universal yardstick against which the local teachers and schools can define themselves. future research should focus on how teachers and schools name themselves in relation to the unesco documents, especially those schools operating under the unesco flag ( e.g.; aspnet schools). for many individuals unesco offers an impractical identity since it does not recognize them as teachers nor would it be easy to attain the credentials required. as indicated by unesco, the attainment of professional status may require considerable ‘capacity-building’ in countries that cannot yet meet this standard. in support of increasing capacity building, unesco offers a number of initiatives and several specific publications; for example “capacity building of teacher training institutions in sub sahara africa” (2005a); and “teacher professional development: an international review of the literature” (2003). without stating it directly, unesco works to offer a standard global identity of the ‘professional’ teacher and intends to provide some means or support to secure such an identity. teacher as border-crossers as evident in the development of the 2005 unesco document “guidelines for quality provision in cross-border higher education” the need for global or international standards, guidelines and transnational or supranational organizational structures concerning teachers and education is increasing. in the case of cross-border higher education, the unesco document indicates 60 current issues in comparative education h. harper and j. dunkerly that since the 1980s, the mobility of students, teachers, programs and institutions has grown considerably, together with new delivery modes and cross-border providers, such as campuses abroad, electronic delivery of higher education and for-profit providers. this creates challenges concerning quality control and accreditation that cannot be met by national frameworks, if indeed such frameworks exist (unesco, 2005b; p. 8). moreover even if national frameworks for cross-border education do exist, they may not be easily translated into the qualifications and quality standards of the growing number of countries receiving cross-border education. crossborder teaching speaks to the need for a more robust frame of cosmopolitanism to better address circumstances of 21st century teaching and learning. the guidelines offered in the unesco document speak to, among other things, the development of international governing agencies and professional networks to ensure populations are not left vulnerable to poor quality cross-border educators and education. implicit in these guidelines is the notion that the teacher will be subject to and defined by the supranational organizations and structures that would determine accreditation, quality practices, and fair credentialing. unesco does not exclude national governance but forwards international initiatives in this area. teacher as purveyor of human rights the nature and specific work of the global/cosmopolitan teacher, although not referenced as such, is evident in the unesco/unicef documents on efa, most notably in unicef’s a human rights-based approach to education for all (2007). following previous unesco documents, this unicef document names the teacher as a professional with specific “rights” and particular responsibilities in relation to the teaching of human rights. rights of the teacher are named explicitly, “teachers are entitled to respect, remuneration and appropriate training and support, and they cannot fulfill their obligations to children unless these rights are realized.” (unicef, 2007, p. 72) these are understood as the rights of a professional, which aligns with documents on the status of the teacher, cited earlier. perhaps most importantly, the teacher in this document is also seen as a purveyor of human rights and the rights of all children in particular. the unesco teacher implied in several documents, and directly stated in the text “human rights-based approach to education for all” (unicef/ unesco 2007) is defined as someone who teaches universal human rights and insures that human rights are respected (p.xii). the attention to universal human rights, the specific rights of children, along with a focus on the rights of the teacher, speaks to the welfare of the individual regardless of what nation state in which they reside or work. it is an indication of a global or cosmopolitan emphasis. as described by patrick hayden, (2005), the contemporary idea of human rights has from the outset been universal in aspiration and global in its scope, and “is perhaps the most powerful expression of cosmopolitanism in the realm of global politics” (hayden, 2005, p.38). as part of the emphasis on education as a right of the child, inclusion is an important theme in the unesco documents. according to unesco’s guidelines for inclusion, inclusion is seen as: …a process of addressing and responding to the diversity of needs of all learners through increasing participation in learning, cultures and communities, and reducing exclusion within and from education. it involves changes and modifications in content, approaches, structures and strategies, with a common vision which covers all children of the appropriate age range and a conviction that it is the responsibility of the regular system to educate all children. (unesco, 2008b, p. 8) current issues in comparative education 61 educating the world although all stakeholders need to be supporting inclusion, teachers are ultimately the ones who bear the burden of this responsibility: “effective inclusion involves implementation both in school and in society at large. however, it is only rarely that such a symbiosis exists between the school and society. thus, it is the regular teacher who has the utmost responsibility for the pupils and their day-to-day learning” (unesco, 2008b, p. 12). although unesco indicates that countries need to define principles and practical ideas with regard to inclusion, “the principles of inclusion that are set out in various international declarations can be used as a foundation. these then can be interpreted and adapted to the context of individual countries” (unesco/unicef, 2007, p. 65). the country and ultimately the teacher are working from a foundation set by unesco and its member states. a teacher’s work is local but also strongly global or cosmopolitan in nature in relation to the rights of children and as part of that, the articulation of inclusive education. working in the context of rights-based education, the local teacher is to ensure that educational practice is: child-centered, respectful of all children, that the school and classroom culture ensures no discrimination of individuals or groups of individuals in respect of admission procedures, treatment in the classroom, opportunities for learning, access to examinations, opportunities to participate in particular activities, such as music or drama, or marking of work… teachers need to take active measures to involve girls on an equal basis with boys. (unicef/unesco, 2007, p. 95). redefining teacher education yet, in order to achieve these goals, unicef/unesco indicates teacher education needs to be redefined. teachers must become skilled in not only content, but also in context if child-centered, rights-based education is to be realized. within the framework of a human rights-based education, teachers, children and parents are to be involved in developing policies to ensure a school culture of respect and inclusion. moreover teachers are encouraged to ensure local engagement with schools and that schools that are responsive to local contexts. “within a framework of core standards and principles, individual schools should be able to adapt to the needs of the local community and provide a relevant curriculum that takes account of local concerns and priorities” (unicef/unesco, 2007, p. 96). the teacher is specifically named in relation to the work she is to undertake and the training she will need at the local level. she is to be responsive and engaged in the local context yet in doing so simultaneously meeting the unesco global initiatives. we have discussed the ways in which unesco names the teacher who works locally as a global professional and as a purveyor of rights, both her own and for the children she instructs. we turn now to another facet of the unesco teacher, which is to promote and practice sustainable development (unesco, 2005c; 2005d). in 2005, the united nations declared a decade of education for sustainable development (2005-2014, desd) for which unesco serves as the lead agency. this declaration defined education for sustainable development (esd) as providing students with the learning opportunities that involve learning and respecting past global achievements while caring for and preserving our resources for the well being of all world citizens. it emphasizes the need to educate children to be caring citizens who exercise their rights and responsibilities locally, nationally and globally. 62 current issues in comparative education h. harper and j. dunkerly unesco documents on esd link it inextricably with issues such as human rights, poverty reduction, sustainable livelihoods, climate change, gender equality, corporate social responsibility, and the protection of indigenous cultures. in doing so, it also names the teacher as someone who engages in a holistic, humanistic approach to both curriculum and world-view. in the contribution of early childhood education to a sustainable society, (unesco, 2008d) delegates from sixteen countries discussed barriers and opportunities for sustainable development. they concluded that in order to meet the decade’s goals, esd must start in early childhood and with early childhood educators. the delegates recommended that early childhood teachers move beyond environmental education focusing on “nature walks” and instead provide children with an opportunity to: …engage in intellectual dialogue regarding sustainability, and in concrete actions in favour of the environment. in addition, it should incorporate learning to be compassionate and respect differences, equality and fairness as the world is increasingly interdependent and inter-connected. it was suggested that, instead of talking about the 3rs: reading, writing and arithmetic, one should refer to the 7rs for education for sustainable development: reduce, reuse, recycle, respect, repair, reflect and refuse. (unesco, 2008d) while the documents referring to education for sustainable development may not be as numerous as those dealing with teacher education or human rights, they provide a focal aspect of the role of the teacher and education in unesco’s world-view that is no less compelling. a decade of education for sustainable development quarterly update (july, 2008) states emphatically the role of esd: “it constitutes a comprehensive approach to quality education and learning. by dealing with the problems faced by humanity in a globalized world, esd will shape the purposes and content of all education in the period ahead; esd is, indeed, education for the future” (p. 1). the cosmopolitan teacher this is a preliminary study and certainly further inquiry is needed to determine unesco’s various positions with regard to the nature of teaching, the role of the teacher, and the ways in which unesco’s work might forward the redefinition of teaching and teacher through a cosmopolitan, transnational frame. nonetheless, we have some provisional comments, observations and conclusions from this brief study. first, of some surprise to us was the enormous body of work that has been produced by unesco and its partners on education; and, for us, working in the united states, how little attention this work seems to be garnering. we suspect that the quality and quantity of the unesco initiatives, along with the contexts and conditions of 21st century students and their teachers may change that. secondly, we were surprised by the specificity of some documents in articulating teacher practices and curriculum in relation to unesco policies, position statements, and projects. specific classroom practices are outlined in several of the documents we read. as an example, the specific focus on human rights education and education for sustainable development was detailed and offered specific curricular direction, thus unesco does more than articulate general statements and goals. in naming teachers and teachers’ work we were surprised that at least in the most recent documents, economic development was not highlighted more. it was present in the documents we reviewed but not as prominent as previous scholarship had led us to expect (see in particular weber, 2007). in the documents we examined, the press for efa, rights-based education, inclusive education, environmental education and cross-border education guidelines with local and national current issues in comparative education 63 educating the world involvement, framed within unesco initiatives, speak directly to the naming and development of the cosmopolitan teacher. in our estimation, based on our reading of the documents, unesco seems to be moving to a notion of “teacher” framed not by national interests agreed to by the international community, but by global (or at least unesco-based) interests and initiatives. this view in regard to world citizens (individuals in their local/global contexts) would ideally be supported by national governments and adapted to by local communities. this is critical, and if the observed trend is indeed real, it is a shift towards a more cosmopolitan identity for educators. perhaps more recognition of the creative, productive, and difficult tensions in living one’s ‘everyday’ identity simultaneously as local and global is needed, particularly in the area of education. in addition, while the unesco documents provide increasing support for the work of the local teacher, framed and supported by global contexts, there seems limited space for local teachers to effectively respond back to national and international agendas, however supportive they might be of them. what this responsive space might look like, and what capabilities and knowledge a ‘reflexive’ cosmopolitan educator might need to live at the interface of the local and global in her classroom and in her community, will be the basis of our next study. references appiah, k. a. (2006). cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers. new york: w.w. norton. apple, m., kenway, j. singh, m. (2005). globalizing education: policies, pedagogies, & politics. new york: peter lang. beck, u. (2002). the cosmopolitan society and its enemies. theory, culture, and society, 19 (1-2), 17-44. benhabib, s. (2006). another cosmopolitanism. oxford: oxford university press. burbules, n. & torres, c. (2000). globalization and education: critical perspectives. routledge: new york. castells, m. (1996). rise of the network society. cambridge: blackwell. edwards, r. & usher, r. (2000/2008). globalisation and pedagogy: space, place, and identity. new york: routledge. goldstein, t. (2007). educating world teachers for cosmopolitan classrooms and schools. asia pacific journal of education, 27 (2), 131-155. hansen, d. t. (2008). curriculum and the idea of a cosmopolitan inheritance. journal of curriculum studies 40(3), 289-312. hayden, p. 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(2007). globalization, “glocal” development, and teachers’ work: a research agenda. review of educational research, 77 (3), 279-309. copyright © 2009 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved © 2005 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 114 april 21, 2005 education for sustainable development and the question of balance: lessons from the pacific kathryn a. jenkins university of new england armidale, australia bertram a. jenkins university of new england armidale, australia abstract in this paper, we discuss the challenges for education for sustainable development (esd) with respect to achieving an appropriate balance between the three pillars of sustainable development--economy, society and the environment. in order to do this, we focus on specific concerns confronting a number of developing countries in the pacific where unsustainable activities provide lessons for the implementation of esd. esd requires commitment from governments, commercial operators including transnational corporations, and local communities to facilitate positive changes through development of sustainable practices. in addition, we examine links between esd and environmental education (ee) and advocate that they have the potential to work together to bring about the desired changes necessary to create a sustainable future. introduction increasingly, there is consensus that our current lifestyles are environmentally and politically unsustainable (mckeown & hopkins, 2003). degraded environments, depleted resources, over-consumption, widespread poverty and conflict are some of the many issues that threaten the stability of the world in which we live. society must now transform its economic, social and environmental practices in order to stop threatening its own life support systems as well as the lives and livelihoods of its members. education, in its broadest sense, is one important means of achieving this change towards a sustainable world. education is viewed as helping to provide the means to build the knowledge, skills, values and behaviors necessary for individuals, communities and nations to generate sustainable futures (keating, 1993). ironically, however, education can also contribute to "reproducing an unsustainable society" by being part of the problem as well as the solution (sterling, 1996, p.18). education has often been accused of playing a part in replicating the dominant social, cultural, political and economic norms that exist within society (sterling, 1996, p.18). this reproduction helps perpetuate unsustainable modes of operation through education, business and governance. for example, schools, as part of the formal education sector, may inadvertently or by design transmit knowledge passively and in an uncritical way, thus supporting the status quo rather than effecting change (orr, 1992; stevenson, 1987). consequently, to be able to contribute to the wholesale societal change that is necessary to facilitate sustainable futures for all, current educational practices must be subject to scrutiny and reoriented as a transformative education, "an education that helps bring education for sustainable development and the question of balance: lessons from the pacific current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 115 about the fundamental changes demanded by the challenges of sustainability" (unesco, 2004, p.15). education for sustainable development unesco's draft international implementation scheme highlights the need for "positive societal transformation" by providing all people with an education that will allow them to adopt "behaviors and practices which will enable all to live a full life without being deprived of the basics" (unesco, 2004, p.4). education for sustainable development (esd) has been charged with providing this revolutionary education (united nations, 1992; united nations, 2002; unesco, 2004). such transformation implies changes in values and understandings; ones that show respect for all humans (both present and future generations), for difference, for the environment, and for the links that exist between all these elements (unesco, 2004). the holistic, value-laden, action-oriented nature of esd, viewed as essential to generate such positive outcomes, is quite radical given current pedagogical practice. nevertheless these same approaches, shared by environmental education (ee), already have provided many implementation challenges. esd has been emphasized increasingly in the discourse of ee in various countries (stables, 2001), and therefore it is important to consider how these two educational frameworks relate to each other. esd is regarded as firmly rooted in ee with "goals and outcomes similar and comparable to those inherent in the concept of sustainability" (unesco, 2002, p. 9). ee evolved as a means of providing humanity with the "knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivations and commitment to work individually and collectively toward solutions of current (environmental) problems and the prevention of new ones" (unesco-unep, 1976, p.2). therefore ee tends to be viewed as more focused on environmental maintenance and improvement, unlike esd, which encompasses the broader notions of concern for the well being of the environment, society and the economy. although pro-environmental actions and behaviors are implied in maintaining and improving the environment, in practice ee can operate somewhat differently. frequently, ee is practiced as education "about", "in" and "for" the environment. education "about" the environment interpreted into an education about the natural world and how it works--a cognitive dimension (lucas, 1980). education "in" the environment meant experiential learning outside the classroom (lucas, 1980), for example, an artistic response to the environment. knowing "about" the environment and having the skills to work "in" and experience the environment did not necessarily translate into actions that would protect or improve the environment. therefore, education "for" the environment required people to learn how to act in order to improve and maintain the environment (lucas, 1980). similarly, more recent classifications of esd parallel with these ee interpretations. education "about" and "for" sustainability are both necessary, as they provide people with not only the knowledge but also the "skills and capacity to plan, motivate and manage change towards sustainability" (tilbury, 2004, p. 104). esd, which includes economic and social dimensions as well as environmental ones, is viewed as being less constrained and more holistic than traditional forms of education "about" the environment (taylor, nathan & coll, 2003). nonetheless, fien (1993; 1997) has argued that the more socially critical forms of ee, such as education "for" the kathryn a. jenkins & bertram a. jenkins 116 april 21, 2005 environment (fien, 1993; fien, 1997), also attempted to make strong links between issues of social, economic and political justice in relation to environmental welfare in the past. education "for" the environment aimed to "promote (an) informed and active concern for the quality and preservation of human life and the environment (from which it is inseparable)" (fien, 1993, p.43). even as early as 1975 and the formulation of the global framework for ee in the belgrade charter, issues of environmental preservation were linked with socially just modes of development. this landmark document articulated concerns about inequality between rich and poor nations calling for a new type of economic growth that would not affect people, their living conditions or their environment detrimentally. mckeown and hopkins (2003) do make the point that although ee was not devoid of wider social and economic concerns this clear shift in emphasis exists implicitly within esd. after analyzing three seminal documents that help envision ee and esd--the belgrade charter (1976), the tibilisi declaration (1977) and agenda 21 (the result of the rio earth summit, 1992)--mckeown and hopkins (2003) have highlighted the major differences they ascertained between ee and esd. esd is said to focus more upon support for universal basic education, an "emphasis on social development, including human rights, governance and social justice, and a more balanced approach to addressing the plight of both the environment and society's need for quality of life, which includes environmentally appropriate development" (mckeown and hopkins, 2003, p.122). the more radical, action-oriented and politicized education "for" the environment considered aspects of social justice, yet in practice ee of this kind was quite rare as it was more challenging and threatening for teachers and practitioners to implement. the threats emanated from the idea that for appropriate environmentally sound behaviors to become commonplace, the ways in which the world operates required radical change. esd, which also aims for "positive societal transformation", will undoubtedly face similar challenges when confronting the status quo. for the purpose of this paper, we will focus on specific challenges for sustainable development, therefore esd, in the pacific. despite the articulation of the broader concerns for ee, esd concentrates explicitly on the three pillars of development--society, environment and economy (unesco, 2004, p.12), while ee is regarded as supporting a more narrow perspective. documentation of ee is said to focus on the environment while esd documents focus on the environment and development (mckeown and hopkins, 2003). now the recommendation for the un general assembly to adopt a decade for education for sustainable development as a means of moving towards sustainable development has come to fruition. will esd and ee co-exist? this creates the question; what does this mean for ee and esd? how will they articulate with each other? obviously, there will be many perspectives and modes of operation that develop over time. ee could be viewed as indispensable to achieving the broader goals of esd, thus as "one of the pillars of sustainable development" (braslavsky, 2003, p.247). ee and esd are recognized by some as having both similarities and differences that allow them to operate discretely but still prove complementary (mckeown and hopkins, 2003). some organizations will replace implementation of ee with implementation of esd. this means that ee will become subsumed in policy and implementation documents; as eventuated for example, in relation to the 1999 national curriculum documents for primary schools in england and wales (chatzifotiou, 2002). education for sustainable development and the question of balance: lessons from the pacific current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 117 chatzifotiou (2002) notes that there appeared to be a quick conversion from the term ee to esd, but this change had not been clearly addressed by the national curriculum. more traditional views of ee may continue to operate within the more narrow focus of education "about" and "in" the environment supported by those practitioners and academics who have a passion for them. still these academics and practitioners will be able to contribute to esd by increasing environmental knowledge and skills. this situation of trying to articulate ee and esd is reminiscent of the late 1960s when supporters of the existing areas of "outdoor education" and "nature study", feared being taken over and weakened by the emergence of ee (mckweon and hopkins, 2003). these areas, however, went on to co-exist and influence each other positively. ultimately, esd and ee have the potential to work together to achieve a sustainable future, whichever perspective and mode of operation are followed. is esd problematic? there is growing awareness that understandings of esd and how it should translate into practice can remain quite elusive. this openness to interpretation, however, is often viewed as positive. multiple and contested meanings allow people to reflect and act upon them in order to generate alternative sustainable futures (huckle, 1996, p.3). writers describe esd as being contested (huckle, 1996; gough, 2002), its language of implementation as vague (chatzifotiou, 2002), multifaceted (unesco, 2004) and problematic (bonnett, 2002; stables and scott, 2002) in that it is "open to a variety of interpretations and arguably also subject to internal contradictions" (bonnett, 2002, p.9). various reasons for this have been theorized, however. the competing and often opposed interests that notions of sd and therefore esd bring together (e.g. environmental and business interests) appear to be one obvious rationale as to why esd can be viewed as being extremely problematic. in fact, stables (1996, cited in stables and scott, 2002, p.42), refers to sd as a "paradoxical compound policy slogan" that allows it to be attractive to interest groups with "widely differing views", i.e. individuals, governments, business, ngos and communities, and enables any and all to "buy into" it to some extent. he goes on to point out that compound terms encourage the belief that the two key terms "sustainable" and "development" are "unproblematically complementary". there are obvious links and complexities reflected in the terminology of esd. for example, "economic interests are served by development while ecological concerns are addressed by sustainable development; at the same time economic interests are served by sustaining profits" (stables, 2004, p. 42). a question of "appropriate balance"? sustainable development involves achieving an appropriate balance, but appropriate may not always mean an even balance, as it will depend on the context of the issues being considered surrounding environmental, societal and economic aspects of development. if this balance becomes inappropriately skewed, e.g. towards economic growth, then the environment and quality of human life can become stressed and even threatened. the repercussions of this imbalance can manifest itself in a myriad ways such as pollution, over-consumption "decreased quality and quantity, increased inequity or injustice in relation to natural resources and…an increasing role in conflict and disaster" (switzer 2002, p.1). ultimately, esd is required to help address issues of how to produce this appropriate balance. kathryn a. jenkins & bertram a. jenkins 118 april 21, 2005 in this paper, we focus on specific concerns confronting developing countries in the pacific where unsustainable mining, logging and fishing practices threaten the livelihoods, health and economies of local communities. in addition, we consider other issues that have particular resonance in the pacific including global warming, nuclear testing and land tenure. we advocate that education, in particular esd and ee, can work together to address these kinds of issues. sustainable development--lessons learned from the pacific we provide a number of examples from the pacific region to demonstrate the kinds of challenges that esd has to face. although the pacific region includes australia, new zealand, japan and the usa as prominent developed nations, our focus here is on a specific group of relatively small, less developed pacific islands sandwiched between more powerful nations in the region. the islands we refer to exist predominantly in overlapping zones of the north pacific and the south pacific oceans. we acknowledge that france and the uk have territories in the south pacific. we examine some of the sd issues and lessons from this region in order to better understand the difficult problems that esd will need to address to produce effective change. destructive resource extraction practices which are common to this region such as mining, logging and fisheries, along with the fact that all these pacific island nations are very small and isolated, may render them more vulnerable to exploitation. although we have chosen to concentrate on this particular area in the pacific, we acknowledge that similar issues and problems also exist in other regions of the world such as sub-saharan africa. we use examples from the pacific to illustrate what happens when the three elements integral to sustainable development, economy, society and environment, are not considered before development decisions become actions. many pacific islands in the region we have chosen to examine are rich in natural resources that are sought after by transnationals--transnational resource extraction companies that operate in the region and elsewhere. papua new guinea (png) and bougainville have significant deposits of gold and copper; new caledonia has a large deposit of nickel, and the solomon islands, vanuatu and fiji have rich timber reserves (lockwood, 2004, p.13; scheyvens & cassells, 1999). pollution from mining and land degradation caused by logging are often associated in the pacific with unsustainable practices carried out by large transnational companies (lockwood, 2004, pp.21-23; macintyre & foale, 2004, p.150; scheyvens, & cassells, 1999, pp.114-119). evans, goodman & lansbury (2001) highlight the negative effects that local communities in the pacific have encountered as a result of mining. lockwood (2004, p.22) implicates logging companies from south east asia for the unsustainable exploitation of forests in the pacific. furthermore, the region's fish resources are exploited by commercial fishing fleets from nations such as the us, japan, taiwan and korea (lockwood 2004, p.23). these commercial activities take place to make substantial profits for shareholders and produce consumer goods or raw materials for markets in developed nations. one of the major challenges for esd is to convince commercial operators to take into consideration the triple bottom line of economy, society and environment when planning and carrying out resource extraction. this is not straightforward because an endeavor to maximize profit margins may tend to dictate terms only for economic sustainability. the specific challenge for esd then is to convince business interests to further consider society and the environment as important elements of any commercial operation. developed nations education for sustainable development and the question of balance: lessons from the pacific current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 119 also need to lead the way in this transformation to sustainability. this is one of the major issues and challenges also for contemporary neo-liberalism, which is often seen to advocate for profits over the well being of people or the environment (chomsky, 1999). after having broadly covered some sd and natural resource management issues in the pacific, we focus next on a selection of specific examples from the region. issues such as global warming and rising sea levels, nuclear testing and pollution, resource depletion and land disputes have all been produced in the pacific arena as a result of unbalanced and inappropriate development. we examine these issues more closely because they may pose major challenges for esd. in the first instance, we consider the phenomenon of global warming because it is linked to unsustainable development and raises issues about equity between nations that are industrialized, newly industrializing nations and nations that remain low on the scale of industrial development in the pacific. ee and esd are essential here to highlight environmental consequences of global warming and plan holistic solutions in partnership with local populations. secondly, esd can facilitate an implementation process whereby an informed grassroots is linked up to and has meaningful dialogue with policy makers, supports multilateral agreements as the kyoto protocol and brings pressure to bare on the commercial drivers of industrial development. a relentless pursuit of economic development has given rise to large-scale industrial activities across the world based on the burning of fossil fuels that are considered to be largely responsible for the phenomenon of global warming. global warming is raising sea levels (abc online, 2005, stainforth, et al., 2005), which is a considerable threat to people living on low-lying islands and atolls in micronesia, the marshalls, kiribati, tokelau and tuvalu (connell, 2004, p.60; lockwood, 2004, p.30). we argue that the international community has a moral responsibility to assist in areas where increasing flood proneness due to rising sea levels can be linked to global warming. there is now unanimous agreement among the scientific community across the world that unsustainable global industrial practices and anthropogenic effects could trigger global warming and rising sea levels. the countries that produce the bulk of the greenhouse gas emissions owe vulnerable low-lying island nations who suffer the consequences of these industrial activities. esd has a role to play in communicating the broad facts about global warming, its causes and consequences. esd could also promote the use of accords and agreements between nations as a means of reducing greenhouse emissions. more importantly, esd must engage with industry to encourage changes in technology and adoption of sustainable practices that will result in lower pollution levels. the second example we discuss below demonstrates how a regional social movement was able to successfully stop the unsustainable practice of nuclear testing in the pacific. esd in its transformative capacity could have an important role to play in facilitating these kinds of social movements in the future. nuclear testing is associated very closely to economic security issues for a number of developed nations. it led to protests and broader global and regional community responses to the threat of pollution and the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons. nuclear testing appears to safeguard higher order economic interests of a handful of developed nations across the globe. kathryn a. jenkins & bertram a. jenkins 120 april 21, 2005 a nuclear arms race during the height of the cold war saw many industrialized nations (e.g., usa, uk, france, ussr) stockpile nuclear weapons and develop more effective nuclear bombs. however, the nuclear deterrence that was desired was also a means of defending territory and economy against possible communist threats to capitalist production and industrial progress. we argue that these nations saw testing their nuclear devices in the pacific as an economic imperative. consequently, nuclear testing polluted many atolls in the pacific (lockwood 2004, p.13). it is a constant reminder of the potential for irresponsible behaviors by more powerful nations in polluting the sovereign territories of less powerful pacific island nations (dawes & green, 1999; green, 2001; lockwood, 2004, pp.12-13). these areas now need to be marked clearly on maps as a precautionary measure to prevent local people from harvesting food or spending prolonged periods near contaminated sites. hopefully, esd will help us avoid this kind of pollution in the future by advocating against the practice of nuclear testing on the grounds that nuclear contamination is unsustainable and inhumane to people who have to live with the consequences. we concentrate next on identifying some historical issues that impacted upon land tenure and resource ownership, which may have set the stage for unsustainable practices in this pacific region. we need to examine the period of european expansion over the past 600 years, if we wish to learn how colonialism has had adverse effects on cultural and social relations in the region when land was expropriated from traditional owners in colonized nations. the lessons learned in many colonial regimes of how taking away land can lead to conflict and social instability, should prompt us to respect the needs and values of indigenous peoples today. both ee and esd can be used to inform traditional landowners about the environmental and social impacts of land use changes as well as the effects that such changes could have on local economies. simultaneously, commercial operators need to understand the wider impact of their proposed endeavors and the need to establish appropriate environmental standards and a process through which they can engage with landowners to negotiate intended land uses. any bid to acquire land or territory for commercial purposes can have unacceptable economic, socio-cultural and environmental consequences for local communities. besides, changing land relations by force or political manipulation could lead even to armed conflict and war, which is not a desirable outcome for any of the parties involved. developed nations did have negative influences on land relations in the pacific during the colonial period in the 20 th century when they vigorously competed for colonies and suitable sites for the production or extraction of raw materials to fuel their economies. people from colonizing countries often exchanged trinkets for the rights to use and control customary lands and to establish plantation crops in places such as bougainville (havini, 2004). in other places, parcels of land were transferred to outsiders or privatized without the consent of the traditional owners. for example, the british brought indian labor into fiji to work sugar plantations (lockwood, 2004, p.12), whereas in the solomon islands they transferred portions of land belonging to the people of guadalcanal to people from adjacent malaita who are culturally different (wake, 2004, p.107). on bougainville, land was transferred to foreign plantation owners and labor was brought in from the highlands of png causing conflicts between locals and imported workers who had divergent cultural practices (havini, 2004, p. xvi). changed education for sustainable development and the question of balance: lessons from the pacific current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 121 land relations during the colonial period later led to armed conflicts in many of these pacific island nations: in bougainville (may & spriggs, 1990; regan, 1998; sirivi & havini, 2004), the solomon islands (dinnen, 2003; lockwood, 2004, pp.29-30) and fiji (lockwood, 2004, p.27; premdas, 2003). there are many examples from the pacific where the expropriation of land, for mining, in particular, has resulted in conflict. both ee and esd could contribute to the designing and implementation of mediation and negotiation processes or interventions that promote coexistence and peace and thereby help to avoid bloodshed. land disputes, which are commonplace in the pacific, can readily deteriorate into armed conflicts due to exploitation and environmental degradation. in bougainville, for example, such issues eventually resulted in a civil war and the death of thousands of people (böge, 2004; may & spriggs, 1990; regan, 1998; sirivi & havini, 2004). in spite of such precedents, neither the png authorities nor the transnational companies contracted to mine natural resources appear to have taken on board the lessons from mining in places like ok tedi or panguna. in october 2003, hundreds of local people from kianantu in png protested violently against the mining company, highland pacific, over poor environmental practices and other land ownership disputes (turner, 2004). in a different part of png, landowners of the porgera gold mine have demanded closure of the mine following a number of killings and human rights violations allegedly committed by security personnel employed by the company (huafolo, 2005). however, these problems with mining are not confined to png. the exploitation of natural resources in west papua by mining companies in partnerships with the nation-state of indonesia and its armed forces is another example of the kind of imbalance that we are addressing in this paper where the local people are repressed by the military while their environment and society are being affected adversely (mapes, 2002; rumbiak & walton, 2004, p.9). this case is also very symptomatic of what is also taking place currently in new caledonia where french troops break up blockades set up by indigenous kanak resistance (rheebu nuu committee) to the large goro nickel mining project. furthermore, on marinduque island in the philippines, the local people are complaining of severe health problems as a result of poisoning experienced after toxic waste dumping into the sea by the marcopper mine over a period of 20 years (southall, 2005, p.9). what all these examples reveal is how economic considerations--safeguarding economies, expanding territory, increasing production or extraction of natural resources for the global market--tend to override the needs for social stability, cultural integrity and environmental security in pacific island nations. they also reveal the enormity of the challenge for esd, to balance out these competing interests in the region. discussion can esd prevent such imbalances from taking place in the 21 st century? the examples that we have provided expose how direct environmental, social and economic impacts have been caused by various activities in this region of the pacific. these kinds of problems highlight a need for ee and esd at several levels of engagement. these include: education for the governments of developed nations that endorse or support unsustainable activities in the region; education for local pacific island governments that sign contracts with transnational companies; education for the transnational companies themselves in order to minimize impacts and ensure that high environmental standards kathryn a. jenkins & bertram a. jenkins 122 april 21, 2005 are set and met; and education for local communities to enable people to understand economic, social and environmental consequences of a planned commercial activities. esd can then provide the necessary processes through which multiple stakeholders can meet and discuss their divergent perspectives and plan sustainable outcomes together rather than wait for conflict to erupt before they act. at this point it is important to note that without a commitment from all stakeholders involved, including local communities, sustainable development is less likely to occur. governments, regional organizations (pacific regional environmental program), civil society organizations (local and regional ngos) and international organizations (unesco, unep, green-peace, friends of the earth) all have a crucial role to play in planning, designing and implementing this form of multidimensional esd. conversely, esd is unlikely to succeed if the ultimate goal is to lead with economy as the priority node in the triangular relationship. esd must not be co-opted to mean that economic considerations must always come first with socio-cultural values and environmental quality taking second and third place respectively. rather ee and esd need to form an integrated approach that is far-reaching and proactive. the pacific regional environment program (sprep, 2003) provides a good model for the region. their vision is to better enable the pacific islands to plan, manage, and use the environment for sustainable development. the program focuses on sustaining the integrity of the ecosystems of the pacific islands region to support life and livelihoods. the program carries a large range of projects that involve schools, universities, ngos and community groups. by these active means, a transformative education can effectively engage with the "real" issues in order to deliver sustainability in the 21 st century. if this model is to work, business interests and transnational activities will need to fall in line with the promises made at unced in 1992 regarding self-regulation. at least in relation to unsustainable resource extraction practices such as those mining operations discussed in the examples from the pacific, transnational actors have not demonstrated that they are capable of self-regulating to minimize environmental, social or economic impacts for local communities. mining activities carried out by transnational businesses or multinational corporations can and do affect people in adverse ways by altering ecosystems and polluting air, land and water. activities that prevent local people from producing food on uncontaminated land or harvesting clean food and water from natural systems are disrupting lives and degrading the environment simultaneously. unsustainable practices reduce the productivity of areas as a result of degradation and pollution of both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, which have implications for environmental health, food security and community harmony. nevertheless, lockwood (2004, pp.22-23) argues that because pacific islanders need cash, they may choose immediate economic gain over longer-term conservation and therefore have to face the consequences. macintyre & foale (2004) argue further that this paradox is about competing economic and environmental interests. more importantly, there is no reason why the rigorous environmental standards and best practices used by companies when working in developed nations should not also be exercised and met when operating in less developed nations of the pacific. such an initiative would reduce the incidents of pollution caused by mining companies and protect the interests, livelihoods and environments of local people in pacific island nations. education for sustainable development and the question of balance: lessons from the pacific current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 123 there are far too many examples in the pacific of environmental and social impacts resulting from resource extraction projects. these projects are based largely upon economic decision-making and concerns, which suggest that there is an urgent need to strengthen institutional arrangements for sustainable environmental management (smith, 1993, pp.30-48) and change modes of operation to prevent unsustainable practices by transnationals and nation-states. ultimately, it is clear that all elements of society (not only those operating within the pacific) will be required to re-orientate themselves in light of the altered value system required to implement sustainable development (unesco, 2004, p.14). in the pacific, like elsewhere, esd, in its broadest sense, both formal and informal, will have an important role to play in promoting this shift towards sustainable development-friendly values. esd can provide the channels through which people can respond to unsustainable practices, empower local people and enable those affected to act early in preventing activities such as pollution from taking place. appropriate international laws and standards can also support positive changes towards sustainability and global equity. the unesco document, the decade of education for sustainable development, highlights some of these sd friendly values: "respect for the dignity and human rights of all people throughout the world and a commitment to social and economic justice for all; respect for the human rights of future generations and a commitment to intergenerational responsibility; respect and care for the greater community of life in all its diversity, which involves the protection and restoration of the earth's ecosystems; respect for cultural diversity and a commitment to build locally and globally a culture of tolerance, non-violence and peace (unesco, 2004, p.14)." still a great deal remains unresolved in relation to how esd will bring about the transformative education that is needed to maintain a balance across the three pillars. our view is that both ee and esd could and should work together, in tandem, to address this question of balance. ee and the newer esd model of transformative education are relevant and could coexist to serve a common end. ee provides a reasonable framework for action and is fed by considerable academic debate about what ee is and how it can work better to improve environmental quality and management. the esd vision on the other hand provides us with possible pathways and processes for implementation of education strategies that promise to deliver better environmental, social and economic outcomes. esd can do this by engaging multiple stakeholder groups in actions to transform current unsustainable situations and build on improving capacity to facilitate sustainability. however, there is a genuine need to move beyond rhetoric and act in ways that illustrate our awareness that economic, environmental and social considerations do not occur in isolation from one another; they are in fact interconnected. a cascading series of effects along multiple pathways can follow on from an unsustainable resource extraction activity such as mining. for example, tailings from mining operations dumped into waterways affects fishing and the gathering of aquatic foods. after a flood, pollution spreads to contaminate arable land, thereby disrupting kathryn a. jenkins & bertram a. jenkins 124 april 21, 2005 the local agricultural economy. contaminated water or fish or food grown on contaminated land, all have negative effects on human health and wildlife. in turn, the contamination of land and waterways anger traditional custodians triggering conflicts or claims for compensation or land disputes or lawsuits. this type of scenario calls for a concatenated ee & esd model; an education program that informs and engages multiple stakeholders in continuous dialogue; education processes that can link local communities to higher level decision makers and policymakers in governments; and an education process that can influence the setting of appropriate environmental standards that commercial operators need to follow. all too often, the responses from the international community or local communities and/or governments are reactive, or at best ameliorative, in situations where unsustainable practices are in use. prevention is a far better approach than amelioration and esd has the potential to deliver preventative education. still, we need to pay careful attention to the challenging question that akpezi ogbuigwe, from unep nairobi, asked delegates at a recent workshop in bangkok that focused on esd in the asia-pacific: "how badly do we want to change?" (ozeenews, 2005). this is an important question to ask ourselves in the context of esd. the new approach to sustainable development through esd is a positive and plausible idea however, like most approaches to improve environmental management and achieve sustainable development, it is necessary for all stakeholders to be willing to move beyond the rhetoric for it to actually work. academic debate alone about esd, although very important, may not be sufficient to facilitate changes in the real world. esd needs to go much further than academic argument to bring about actions for change in the arena where sustainable development is happening on the ground. such changes include positive behaviors and best practices that will reduce impacts on environment, society and economy. the overall concept suggests that esd can and should balance out the environment, the economy and the needs of society in terms of various socio-cultural considerations. this is however easier said than done when profit motives and the competitive urge to succeed in economic terms overrules other considerations such as what might be good for the environment or desired by people, including the less powerful members of local and global communities. for instance, in a less developed country (like a pacific island nation) where society has little power to protect borders or regulate the activities of large multinationals or powerful nations, local people can become the sacrificial lambs of the global economy. the unesco document that introduces the decade of education for sustainable development indicates that these relatively complex issues pose clear challenges for esd: "in some areas of the world, the effects of globalization pose a threat to the survival of local communities, particularly of minorities and indigenous peoples, and to the forests and other habitats upon which communities depend. changing patterns of world trade and production trigger new challenges of migration, settlement, infrastructure, pollution and resource depletion (unesco, 2004, p.9)." the examples we have provided from the pacific suggest that environmental impacts also cause social, cultural and socio-economic impacts in the way certain industrial activities such as mining, for instance, can affect lives and livelihoods of local people. therefore, esd must include a political dimension that can critique the impacts that human activities and the application of their technologies have on the whole environment including its economic, social, cultural, political and biophysical education for sustainable development and the question of balance: lessons from the pacific current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 125 dimensions as well as some of the complex interactions between them. such a socially critical perspective already exists within ee as education "for" the environment (fein, 1993; fein 1997), which is holistic and through which relevant issues can be politically contested to confront such problems as corporate responsibility, transnational crime and the plight of local people with respect to social and environmental impacts. therefore educators must be cautious to highlight the importance of including political critique within esd. this could very well happen by ee working together with esd to influence positive change. we need to reflect on the fact that society and economy operate within our natural ecosystems and that the exact technological know-how or science to understand the bounds of resilience of natural systems may never be known precisely--or known in the time frame that is required. hence it is important to be precautionary and accept that economy happens within the bounds set by ecology and not the other way about. this courtesy should be paid to current and future generations. we may find that a small group of people, say on a pacific island, may not choose to mine the largest deposit of nickel available on the global market in light of the real costs to them in transformation of landscape, pollution and loss of livelihood. more powerful groups need to respect the wishes and choices made by small groups in such circumstances. esd is flexible enough to accommodate considerations of choice, equity and values to allow local people to choose not to proceed with an activity, which from their perspective is unacceptable even though global market forces may consider otherwise. concerning development decisions, it is often about how to achieve an appropriate balance between the three elements to achieve sustainable development outcomes given a specific context. undoubtedly, the degree of balance between the various elements of sd will be dynamic and ever changing, and dependent upon the many contextual issues of each separate development decision. it is hoped that a broad, values based, politicized esd will help the community, governments and multi-nationals translate the notion of what is contextually an appropriate balance into environmentally, socially and economically just practices. references abc (2005). rising seas threaten ports, islands, retrieved january27, 2005, from abc news online, http://abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1279406.htm armstrong, p. 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(2004). lessons learned from peace-building practices in asia pacific. in a. heijmans, n. simmonds, & h. van de veen (eds.), searching for peace in asia pacific: an overview of conflict prevention and peace-building activities (pp. 105-134). london: lynne rienner publishers. volume 12(2) / spring 2010 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice education and economic crises editorial introduction 3 education and economic crises andrew k. shiotani articles 5 the effect of an economic crisis on educational outcomes: an economic framework and review of the evidence m. najeeb shafiq 14 monitoring the effects of the global crisis on education provision gwang-chol chang 21 the global economic crisis: setbacks to the educational agenda for the minority in sub-saharan africa moses shiasha ingubu 31 under the same blue sky? inequity in migrant children’s education in china guangyu tan special section: responses to volume 12, issue 1 41 cosmopolitanism and our descriptions of ethics and ontology:a response to dale snauwaert’s “the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism” david t. hansen 45 response to noah sobe’s “rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education” andria wisler book review 50 p. agarwal, indian higher education: envisioning the future reviewed by radhika iyengar 53 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 2 (spring 2010) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden executive editor andrew shiotani senior editors ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, michael schapira, michelle reddy editors sarah flatto, cara furman, brian veprek, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, joseph hirsch, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, cara furman, anne gaspers, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira, brian veprek style editors matthew 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university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 12(2): 45-49 response to noah sobe’s “rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education” andria wisler georgetown university the fall 2009 edition of current issues in comparative education (cice) (volume 12, issue 1) bridges the real and imagined distance between two all too often disparate fields within educational scholarship – philosophy and comparative education. the discipline of philosophy most fruitfully influences my own research pursuits in comparative education through its effects on my understanding of research and on my role as a researcher. philosopher of education robert bullough (2006) lists educationalists who similarly have “turned toward the humanities for fresh questions and critical insights into established practices, trying to make better sense of what they were witnessing and experiencing as educators and scholars” (p. 5). terrence mclaughlin suggests that “a comparative approach to education needs a philosophical dimension and that the concerns and techniques of philosophy have an important contributory role to play in the development and flourishing of comparative education” (halstead & mclaughlin, 2004, p. 467). in re-reading the articles in this issue, i am reminded of the strengths and limits of philosophy in comparative education as well as some of the misconceptions that surround this intellectual discipline. an incredulity among some social scientists about philosophy’s relevance to global affairs and the human condition continues to marginalize philosophy in comparative education research. thus, this issue contributes to philosophy being understood in wittgensteinian fashion as an activity, rather than as a body of doctrine or ideology. in utilizing philosophy this way, the authors in this issue respond to alasdair macintyre’s call to “confront questions that have so far gone unasked, just because they are not questions answerable from within any one discipline” (2006, p. 12). the fall 2009 issue of cice shines a spotlight on the philosophy of cosmopolitanism and its relationship to education and comparative education. as contributor noah sobe concludes, “there is both danger and promise in cosmopolitanisms. and there is much more about cosmopolitanisms that comparative and international education research can tell us.” i would like to offer two possibilities for what cosmopoltianisms can tell us about comparative and international education research, as a springboard into my response inspired by sobe’s article. first, from my perspective, rooted in justice and peace studies, i am intrigued by several authors’ assessments of cosmopolitanism as a cognitive or reason-based framework. in other words, the cosmopolitan person will use reason to be autonomous, have self-responsibility, procure agency, plan life rationally, while respecting diversity and difference. i am not convinced that it is predominantly reason that drives the embodiment and enactment of a cosmopolitan mode of living. i am less persuaded of reason’s impact by observations of my students, whether they are in the fifth grade, in their fifth semester of college, or departing on their fifth humanitarian or peace work assignment to a conflict zone. does the cosmopolitan person use reason to organize difference, to self-actualize, and to grapple with human agency? it seems that in many cases morality, ethics, emotional dissonance, and religion trump the call of reason as the normative framework directing action and inaction on global issues of poverty, educational development, or human rights. 46 current issues in comparative education a. wisler second, and more directly in response to sobe’s article, i am confident that cosmopolitanisms will continue to affect traditional methodological models of comparative education and other educational research that uphold a static version of the field site, such as a school or nation-state, as the primary unit of analysis, while discounting the movement of knowledge, identities, and people over campus and country borders. mclaughlin (2004) notes that the idea and practice of comparison needs a philosophical dimension in order to develop rich theoretical frameworks and substantiate methodological choices. seemingly on queue, sobe offers a philosophical inquiry on how existent cosmopolitanisms can be utilized as analytic categories, a strategy for researchers to explore the ways that “solidarities are formed, identities are developed, and principles of inclusion and exclusion are elaborated amidst local and global assemblages” (p. 6). sobe’s article offers a “who’s who” of significant voices in the dialogue between cosmopolitanism and comparative education. his intention for citing such a cache of theorists and researchers is explicit – “to locate the present project in scholarly circles” (p. 7). more importantly, however, sobe works to “loosen cosmopolitanism” from the possessive grip of enlightenment philosophers and the underlying inference that cosmopolitanism is solely a kantian project, when it can rather be understood and employed as a historical category across temporal and spatial perimeters. he then discusses the use of “vernacular cosmopolitanisms” for investigating two instances of the role of schooling in the production of the cosmopolitan child – the first in present day united states and the second in pre-world war ii yugoslavia. sobe marks a visionary signpost at the beginning of a path for considering alternatives to traditional paradigms of area studies in light of globalization’s bestowments of “multi-layered geographies” that circumvent standard notions of territorial cartography. heeding the arrows forward, i am inspired to balance sobe’s meta-relational view of cosmopolitanisms and comparative education with a more nuanced unpacking of two aspects of his article. specifically, i extrapolate on how the work of arjun appadurai (2000), whom sobe quotes briefly, can concretely influence the creation of a new “world-generating optic” in a comparative education research project (p. 8). i do this in light of my research in post-yugoslav countries (wisler, 2008), introducing readers to another “vernacular cosmopolitanism” from this region of the balkans. cosmopolitanisms can work to re-guide attention from the debate of case studies versus crossnational studies to the need for a regionally historical and cosmopolitan research perspective. citing ifeoma kiddoe nwankwo (2005), sobe asserts that the term “transnationalism” is “inadequate” when deliberating one’s identity and positions amidst local and global communities. considering methodological analysis in cases of nation-state dissolution, and where ethnic and religious identities transcend nation-state lines, the unfitness of not only the term but also the physical scope of “transnationalism” persists. for example, the nation-state as the determined unit of analysis in both case studies and cross-national studies is deceptive when considering that bosnia and herzegovina (bih) was until recently part of a greater whole, namely the yugoslavia that sobe refers to, and strongly associated with a region, the balkans. my own study of the balkans – which included study of the region’s languages – afforded me fluency in its issues, but admittedly from the perspective of how the region was perceived and taught in u.s. higher education. appadurai (2000) expresses his concern with this phenomenon in relation to area studies: much traditional thinking about “areas” has been driven by conceptions of geographical, civilisational, and cultural coherence that rely on some sort of trait list – of values, languages, material practices, ecological adaptations, marriage current issues in comparative education 47 response to sobe patterns, and the like. however sophisticated these approaches, they all tend to see “areas” as relatively immobile aggregates of traits, with more or less durable historical boundaries and with a unity composed of more or less enduring properties. these assumptions have often been further telescoped backward through the lens of contemporary u.s. security-driven images of the world and, to a lesser extent, through colonial and postcolonial conceptions of national and regional identity. (p. 7) he continues to comment on how the current construction of area studies conveys a false sense of permanence among spatial, topographic, and societies organizations, when they are merely fabrications of how “culture” is conceived by the west. these associational inventions stem from past geo-political fear and security manufactured during the cold war (and now during the “war on terror”); their temperance “was soon forgotten” and fixtures solidified without question or doubt (p. 7). appadurai’s (2000) scrutiny struck a chord, or perhaps discord, in me as i recognized the contradiction inherent in my research endeavors and language training. both were, on the one hand, funded due to the prevailing “lens of contemporary u.s. security-driven images of the world” (p. 7). on the other hand, they were simultaneously attempts to problematize exactly the trait-based approach focusing on a predestined violence and ethnic politics that has dominated balkans studies. specifically for my research, i spent a semester as a participant observer in one interdisciplinary post-graduate higher education program (ip) in sarajevo. i also visited several other programs and met with their students and professors, specifically in ljubljana, slovenia; skopje, macedonia; zagreb, croatia; and belgrade, serbia. moreover, i interviewed and talked to professors and students from throughout the post-yugoslav region, whom i met at conferences and events, including in copenhagen, denmark; schlaining, austria; marburg, germany; and dubrovnik, croatia. thus, the ip in sarajevo within which i spent the most time could be considered more traditionally as my “field site,” but because i only visited other universities and programs for brief periods, i do not conceptualize this research as “multi-sited.” i had intentionally chosen the entire region encompassing the former country of yugoslavia as my geographical and geopolitical context because i thought that pre-selecting one or more of the now seven independent countries would discount the region’s very recent past as one country, the legacy of educational and intellectual roots of the now-dissolved yugoslavia, and the intellectual cooperation that transcends the countries’ current borders. despite that informed choice, i had failed to see what seemed like the necessary problematization of the field site concept. many questions lingered: should i pursue this research to albania, a close neighbor and long-time thorn on the yugoslav rose? and to denmark, malaysia and the u.s., where so many of the individuals i got to know sought intellectual and physical refuge during the recent wars? should i stray as far as headquarters of the piggybanks of many of the interdisciplinary higher education programs i was researching? three concerns enveloped these questions. first, the traditional delineation of the field site upholds the realist, static construction of the nation-state in a globalizing world, and does not account for sobe’s “vernacular cosmopolitanisms.” (my preliminary use of the nationstate category was undoubtedly a residue from the criteria of my funding agencies, which set stipulations on my research expenses in particular countries.) second, my original constitution of what was once yugoslavia did not make sense as a region today on the ground, in light of the high-speed transference of knowledge, movement of peoples, europeanization, and the political and economic power of the worldwide yugoslav diaspora. third, although i originally comforted 48 current issues in comparative education a. wisler myself with an assurance that the universities and programs together structured my field site, my confidence waned when i realized that the idea of the “university” was a façade; in reality, the school is a construction that merely contained individuals, thoughts, images and desires all in trans-national, trans-cultural motion. it was only as i began on-site fieldwork that i also began to question my conceptualization of the field site, as it began to resist the geographical localization in which i conceived it – that is, the countries historically once part of the federation called yugoslavia. although i had perceived illogicality in excluding any one of the former-yugoslav countries from my research inquiry, i did not foresee the permeable borders over which my inquiry seeped. i had constructed my field site through cartographical referencing about which sobe warns us; in short, this geographical lens had blinded my otherwise transdisciplinary vision. although realistic, my field site was not as neat as writers of methodology textbooks make it out to be. appadurai (1996) characterizes what i felt, saw, and experienced in post-yugoslav higher education as “a world of flows.” he writes: “the various flows we see are not coeval, convergent, isomorphic, or spatially consistent. they are in…relations of disjuncture” (1996, p. 5). elsewhere he explains these various flows within five “-scapes” – ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, and ideoscapes: the suffix -scape allows us to point to the fluid, irregular shapes of these landscapes….these terms with the common suffix -scape also indicate that these are not objectively given relations which look the same from every angle of vision but, rather, that they are deeply perspectival constructs, inflected by the historical, linguistic, and political situated-ness of different sorts of actors: nationstates, multinationals, diasporic communities, as well as sub-national groupings and movements…and even intimate face-to-face groups, such as villages, neighborhoods and families. (p. 33) the conceptualization of a -scape resonates with sobe’s concern with “new, often non-territorial configurations [that] bring people, knowledge, institutions, and objects together in novel and sometimes surprising assemblages;” these configurations need to be accounted for in the comparative education researcher’s methodological choices and analytical categories. it was certainly not my intention to be in the field scrutinizing what seemed to be one of the last remaining straightforward concepts of fieldwork, namely the field site. as a novice researcher, i clutched clarity and simplicity when it came my way, so i was concerned with how i would acknowledge the flows of knowledge and people over the site’s borders. however, i was able to creatively deal with this discord and in so doing am able to contribute the idea of fieldscape in lieu of field site to the dialogue between philosophy and comparative education, and a cosmopolitan-inspired comparative education methodology. drawing on appadurai’s (1996, 2000) work, i acknowledge my research in the post-yugoslav states as emanating from what i call a fieldscape. although easily critiqued as a mere semantic difference, the conceptual difference between a field site and a fieldscape is significant in response to sobe’s call for use of “vernacular cosmopolitanisms.” “the academic imagination” and local epistemologies do not stop at a classroom door, a university gate, a country’s border crossing, or a continent’s shores (appadurai, 2000, p. 6). rather, the idea of the fieldscape, as the landscape of post-yugoslav higher education, is more conducive to conceptualizing the cosmopolitan flow of knowledge, people, and ideas across the borders of academic disciplines, universities, and countries. conceptualizing the field site as fieldscape allayed me of my aforementioned concerns and has allowed me to understand this current issues in comparative education 49 response to sobe educational research as fluid as appadurai suggests. similar to a “vernacular cosmopolitanism, ” it is something that will look differently dependent on the angle of historical, linguistic, political, or disciplinary vision and thus contributes one part to the imagined world of the balkans. references appadurai, a. (1996). modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. minneapolis: university of minnesota. appadurai, a. (2000). grassroots globalization and the research imagination. public culture, 12(1), 1-19. halstead, j.m. & mclaughlin, t.h. (2004). philosophy, education and comparative education. comparative education 40(4), 467-470. macintryre, a. (2006). the end of education: the fragmentation of the american university. commonweal, 133(18), 10-14. mclaughlin, t. (2004). education, philosophy and the comparative perspective. comparative education, 40(4), 471-483. nwankwo, i. k. (2005). black cosmopolitanism: racial consciousness and transnational identity in the nineteenth century americas. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. wisler, a. (2008). peace knowledge: a philosophical inquiry in post-yugoslav higher education. unpublished manuscript. available through proquest dissertation database. copyright © 2010 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved microsoft word 9 paper final round 10.docx © 2015, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 18(1), 26-41. analyzing public discourse: using media content analysis to understand the policy process nancy green saraisky teachers college, columbia university one of the most basic and obvious sources of data for education policy analysis is text. this article discusses content analysis as an important part of the methodological toolbox for elucidating patterns and trends about education policy. focusing specifically on media, i show how media content analysis can produce nuanced insights about the ways in which educational ideas are understood in a local context. drawing on a research project that analyzed thirteen years of media coverage of the programme for international student assessment (pisa), i demonstrate the utility of media content analysis for understanding the way in which ideas and global trends influence national education policy on the ground. introduction much comparative education scholarship of the past decade has concerned itself with understanding how the global and the local interact to produce education policy. these studies have used a variety of methods to try and understand how actors, institutions, ideas and interests combine to influence education politics and policy. empirically, this work has taken a variety of forms, from large-n quantitative studies to the deep exploration of a single case. one method that has recently been employed to understand a particular phenomenon across different contexts is content analysis. this is not surprising in that text is perhaps the most obvious source material in the study of education policy. in this article, i focus on one type of content analysis, namely media content analysis, and propose it as a fruitful method for understanding the construction of educational issues in public life. drawing on contemporary comparative education research for examples, i show that media content analysis can help comparativists understand how public communication influences and reflects understandings about education in the public sphere. the article proceeds in four parts. first, i define content analysis and discuss how it relates to other methods of textual analysis, namely discourse analysis. i then focus specifically on media analysis as a useful method for understanding policy context. i provide an overview of the role of media in the policy process generally and offer some recent examples of comparative education research that have used media content analysis to explore the impacts of international large-scale assessments. in the third section, i present an example of a media analysis of the programme for international student assessment (pisa) in the united states, and share specific ideas about how a researcher might approach conducting a media content analysis of this nature, from theoretical framing through data analysis. the last section discusses limitations of media content analysis and concludes. analyzing public discourse current issues in comparative education 27 what is content analysis? content analysis refers to a general set of techniques for analyzing collections of communications. in lasswell’s classic construction, content analysis examines “who says what through which channel to whom with what effect” (lasswell, 1948, p. 117). perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of content analysis as compared to other types of analysis is that its data derives from communicative practices. as such, it is most widely used to collect and analyze data to understand the meanings ascribed to an issue within a given context (krippendorf, 1989, p. 403). this process involves discerning meaning about attitudes, symbols, cultures and institutions from which inferences are ultimately drawn. the analysis is often not of the literal description of the content, but rather the illumination of patterns and trends that are not immediately observable. many different types of content may be used for analysis. most content analysis is textual document analysis, which analyzes any type of printed materials, (e.g., newspapers, magazines, letters, books, testimony, governmental publications, statutes, etc.) but other sources (e.g., films, radio broadcasts, television programming, etc.) are also appropriate. there is some disagreement about the place of content analysis in the methodological toolbox.1 content analysis is often juxtaposed with discourse analysis in terms of ontology and epistemology; while both examine textual sources, content analysis is seen as trying to uncover reality as it exists, while discourse analysis is seen as trying to uncover reality as it is produced (hardy, harley and phillips, 2004). in this opposition, content analysis is positivist, objective, and quantitative while discourse analysis is interpretivist, intersubjective and qualitative. generally, content analysis proceeds from an understanding that meaning can be counted and coded, and content analyses use a codebook with an a priori coding scheme that allows the researcher to map the patterns and meaning of particular content from which inferences can be drawn (lowe, 2004). as with all empirical research, content analysis methods rely on systematic and replicable techniques to generate data for investigation. advocates of content analysis highlight that the strength of the method is in its reliability and replicability; if the analytic categories and coding scheme are properly designed, anyone should be able to conduct the analysis (krippendorf, 1989; neuendorf, 2004). this constrains the degree to which an individual researcher’s views can mediate the interpretation of data. a more moderate ground can be found with those who suggest a slightly relaxed understanding of the relationship between content and discourse analysis, whereby prior empirical work and the scholar’s research questions provide the categories for research but additional valid analytical constructs can emerge as the data is collected and analyzed (hardy, harley and phillips, 2004). a prominent form of content analysis is media analysis because media are generally acknowledged to play a key role in interpreting and disseminating ideas about public policy. media content analysis can be an economical form of data collection, since much media data is available online or, for the academic researcher, through subscription 1 see macnamara (2005) for a discussion of the tensions about whether media analysis is best suited to quantitative or qualitative use. green saraisky current issues in comparative education 28 search services. given the ubiquity of electronic data and archives, it is fairly easy to locate and collect primary data. though social media are undoubtedly profoundly changing the way education policy communication happens (see supowitz, daly, & del fresno, 2015), this article focuses on the analysis of traditional print media (newspapers), in both their print and electronic forms, as these media have been the source of most comparative education media analysis to date. media content analysis media are recognized in the policy studies literature as playing an important, perhaps key, role in the policy process, as both purveyors of information and as ciphers for competing ideas. media are usually accorded a prime role in the process of policy agenda setting. hallin and mancini (2004) caution that most research about the media and the policy process treats media as a monolith, one that operates similarly in all contexts, when in fact the media are rooted in specific political and economic contexts and behave according to those local logics. research has demonstrated the key role that media play in political agenda setting by choosing which stories and issues are reported on, and then how those issues are covered (mccombs & shaw, 1974; gamson & modigliani, 1989; gamson, 1992). media coverage is theorized to both reflect and create public policy and public opinion. while research suggests varying degrees to which media actually influence the policy process,2 it is clear that media do affect how issues come to be understood as public issues, reflecting broader cultural, historical and institutional affinities. media operate in at least two ways to define public problems. the first is through framing. framing refers to the ways in which issues are organized and understood in the public arena; that is, frames are the organizing ideas, words, images and themes that are used to describe and structure information about a public policy issue. issue framing is a key element of political discourse and policymaking, and has been shown to have an impact on attitudes and policy preferences amongst voters, politicians and journalists (chong & druckman, 2007). the concept of framing is analytically useful in illuminating how ideas are generated, diffused and mobilized (benford & snow, 2000). the second way media influence the policy process is in playing a gatekeeping role in whom is given status to comment on public problems and prescribe solutions. the conferral of status is captured in the concept of standing. as ferree, gamson, gerhards & rucht (2002) note: “[standing] refers to gaining the status of a regular media source whose interpretations are directly quoted. standing is not identical to receiving any sort of coverage or mention in the news; a group may appear when it is described or criticized but still have no opportunity to provide its own interpretation and meaning to the event in which it is involved. standing 2 for instance, as henig points out, two of the most widely read books on the politics of agenda setting (kingdon, 1995 and baumgartner and jones, 1993) disagree about the degree of the media’s influence (henig, 2008, p. 180, footnote 5). analyzing public discourse current issues in comparative education 29 refers to a group being treated as an actor with voice, not merely as an object being discussed by others.” (p. 13) an analysis of standing views actors as signifying agents who are actively engaged in constructing meaning about social ideas. standing, sometimes also referred to as ‘voice,’ is an essential component of policy discourse since it determines which actors have legitimacy and power. standing can also reflect media convention, or editorial priorities, as well as media savvy. not every actor has an equal chance of gaining standing; some actors are “better prepared and motivated to speak out on a particular topic, but the customary practices of news gathering make some speakers highly salient to the media while others are less so.” (ferree, et.al, 2002, p. 86) media content analysis in comparative education research recently comparative education scholars have turned to media analysis as a route to understanding the ways in which historical, institutional, cultural and political contexts combine to influence education policy. for instance, as international assessment has become a topic of scholarship in comparative education, several researchers have turned to media analysis to expand their understanding of how, why and under what conditions international assessments are used across varying national contexts. much of this work has focused on one specific assessment, the programme for international student assessment (pisa). pisa is an international assessment administered every three years by the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd) to a representative sample of 15-year old students from participating countries. the assessment measures student performance in three subject areas, mathematics, and reading and science literacy. for instance, takayama (2010) uses media articles and other textual sources to examine how japanese politicians and education actors use the media to construct an education “crisis” in japan. takayama, waldow and sung (2013; 2014) draw on media accounts in three countries to provide a comparative analysis of the responses to pisa results in australia, germany and south korea. a team of european researchers used media accounts, along with other sources, to compare the effects of international assessments across six different country contexts (www.knowandpol.eu), and other recent work (e.g., martens and niemann (2010); fladmoe (2011); dixon, arndt, mullers, vakkuri, englompelkkala, and hood (2013); dobbins and martens (2012) also analyzes press responses to rankings on pisa. the research findings are mixed, but each accentuates the role of the press in pisa reception and the analyses generally show the importance of national education politics and culture in shaping the press coverage of pisa. what can we learn from media content analysis? pisa and u.s. education discourse in order to illustrate how a researcher might conduct a media content analysis and what such an analysis might expose, this section uses specific examples from my own work on a media content analysis of american media regarding the programme for international student assessment (pisa) (green saraisky, 2015). this project sought to green saraisky current issues in comparative education 30 understand the process of reception; that is, how pisa, as an internationally developed and administered assessment instrument, is understood in a local (in this case, national) context. the research grows out of the aforementioned academic literature that suggests that rankings and performance indicators can shape national education discourse in important ways. i was interested in evaluating how pisa is used in education policy debate, and in whether or how pisa has influenced american education policy. the media analysis must first be located within a theoretical framework that situates the research questions and also provides a rationale for why media content analysis is an appropriate method for answering those questions. in this case, the research aimed to understand the ways in which pisa results were being used in american education discourse: who uses pisa, and to what end? when are references to pisa being activated? how are ideas about educational success constructed in the public arena? these research questions were based in theory from political science and political sociology, as well as an interpretive framework about reception from comparative education (steiner-khamsi, 2014). they provided the scaffolding for the analysis and guided the development of the coding protocol, which incorporated variables that captured both framing and standing elements. given the emphasis on understanding reception in a single country context and the focus on policy, media content analysis is a useful tool. while newspapers are not the only textual sources that could have been used, they are excellent sources for understanding public discourse. this is particularly true in the u.s., where journalists may play a stronger role in interpreting policy than in europe, for instance, where political parties can have more influence on the discourse (hallin and mancini, in ferree, et. al., 2002, p. 81). developing a coding scheme a prior literature review of research on pisa reception informed the research questions and the construction of the coding scheme. neuendorf (2002) argues that in order to minimize research bias, categories must be developed fully before the coding of data commences. however she suggests performing a literature review and a preliminary reading of a sample of texts to capture important variables before the codebook/codesheets are finalized. a similar process was used in the development of the codesheet for the analysis of pisa references in the american media. after reading the relevant scholarly literature (both theoretical and empirical), a list of variables for coding was developed. then i scanned a small number of media articles to see if the initial list resonated, and if there were other important themes that had been inadvertently excluded and added them to the coding scheme. it is important to note that the coding categories discussed herein are by no means exhaustive, either relative to this specific project or with regard to media content analysis in general. all aspects of the research design, from theory to conceptualization to operationalization and sampling, are specific to the research questions and the researcher’s interests. the brief overview here is meant to merely be suggestive of the types of questions and categories one might ask when conducting media content analysis in a comparative education setting. analyzing public discourse current issues in comparative education 31 here i will highlight three aspects of the codesheet for the pisa media analysis: general descriptive categories, framing categories and standing categories. each ultimately provided voluminous data that was used for both quantitative and qualitative analyses (see pizmony-levy, 2013 and olafsdottir, 2007 for prior examples of this type of analysis). the coding process linked theory to operationalization, and underscored the quantity and quality of information media can provide about the national context of education politics and policy. the first section of the codesheet gathers descriptive information about each newspaper article (figure 1). some data are responses to open-ended questions, with the exact language of the article recorded, and other data are coded numerically, depending on the variable type. after the article was given an identification code, the following data were recorded: figure 1: codebook categories for article description news source ____ new york times ____ wall street journal ____ washington post ____ usa today publication date (write in: month/day/year) author’s name (write in) headlines/subheads (write in verbatim) article type ____ news ____ feature ____ editorial ____ op-ed ____ other source type ____ print ____ online section ____ front page ____ national ____ international ____ business ____ feature ____ other visuals ____no ____yes if yes, write in what kind (e.g., photograph, chart, , graph)________________________ this information provides a wealth of important data, before the coder even looks at the content of the article. for example, these data show which news outlets are publishing articles about pisa, allowing for an analysis of whether the media outlet’s political ideology correlates with pisa coverage. the language of article headlines and subheadings can be analyzed for tone and for framing effects. the data on location of the article shows whether pisa is addressed simply as a news item around the release of results, or incorporated more broadly throughout educational discourse. indications of whether and how media included visual representations of pisa, for instance with green saraisky current issues in comparative education 32 graphics of ranking tables, add nuance to how pisa is understood by the media. these data are the basis for several findings, to which i return later. next, to analyze the article’s content, i developed a two level coding scheme based on the concepts of framing and voice to help focus and deepen the analysis. each article in the sample was coded for framing and then re-analyzed for standing and voice variables, as i discuss in greater detail below. the two levels of analysis allowed for a thorough understanding of how pisa was covered generally and more specifically elucidated who was given the authority and legitimacy to speak about pisa and its meaning. article-level analysis. previous literature and pre-coding review had suggested three frames that were prominently used to understand pisa. the first was about the overall status of education in the united states; the second was about economic status; and the third was about the policy environment. i developed thirty-nine variables across the three categories to measure the strength of the various frames. article level variables also included the extent to which the references to pisa were rather simple or were more detailed; whether or not international assessments other than pisa were referenced; and whether or not other country participants on pisa were referenced. figure 2 is a snapshot of the coding scheme for the first frame, the overall status of education in the us. for each frame and each sub-category, i coded a dichotomous indicator of whether the article included that category. analyzing public discourse current issues in comparative education 33 figure 2: codebook framing categories for “us education status” frame variable us education status ____ pisa reflects general education status us education is in crisis ____ low rank on pisa ____ low rank on other assessments ____ look at china ____ achievement gap ____ us ‘not competitive’ us education needs improvement ____ need to improve overall economic equity ___ improve equity of inputs ___ improve equity of outputs ____ need to improve teachers ____ improve teacher recruitment ____ improve teacher training ____ improve teacher pay ____ need to improve education culture ____ general calls for school reform pisa does not reflect education status ___ pisa data has limits ___ other variables are more important ____us demographics ____ us culture ____ us politics/political system ____ other (write in) speaker-level analysis. in addition to analyzing how educational policy issues were framed in relation to pisa, i explored the notion of standing; that is, which actors are given a voice in the public debate. in order to understand which actors have voice in the discussions about the importance of pisa for u.s. education policy, i coded every actor and every speech act in each article. speech acts included only speech that is quoted directly, in quotations, in the articles; paraphrases or restatements of comments from people or reports are not included in the analysis. the speakers were categorized into eight main groups of affiliations, and then each individual speech act was coded for green saraisky current issues in comparative education 34 pisa mentions, tone and framing themes. figure 3 provides a snapshot of the codebook for speaker entries. figure 3: codebook speaker categories speaker id speaker name (write in) speaker affiliation ____ government ____ us president ____ us secretary of education ____ federal official ____ state level education leader ____ oecd ____ ngo ____ university ____ teacher or teachers organization/union ____ parent or parent organization ____ student or student organization ____ school leadership ____ other (write in) sampling next, the researcher must address her sampling parameters. as in any research design, sampling is critical to answering the research questions of interest. in the united states, the most commonly analyzed media sources include the major national newspapers of record. in the pisa research example, four of these leading us newspapers, all dailies and each considered a paper of record from across the political spectrum, were purposefully sampled (see figure 4). these sources are known for their influence and are often used in studies of american discourse (e.g., fiss and hirsch, 2005). sampling these sources makes sense, as they are well-known, proffer high editorial standards, and are recognized as important news sources for educational elites. however, focusing exclusively on these media outlets produces elite bias in the sample. while this may be appropriate, as educational elites play an outsized role in policy formation (domhoff, 2006) such sampling does not capture the discourse in many other sources (e.g., online news feeds, educational blogs, specialized trade publications, smaller regional newspapers). the researcher needs to be aware of the ways in which her sampling procedures affect her research findings and think carefully about which media sources are most appropriate. analyzing public discourse current issues in comparative education 35 figure 4: overview of media sources source frequency of publication political orientation1 circulation2 (includes both print and digital circulation) new york times daily left/liberal 1,865,318 wall street journal daily right/conservative 2, 378,827 washington post daily left of center 473,462 usa today daily centrist 1,674,306 1political orientation of media coverage can be contested. my categorizations are drawn from a variety of sources, including swanson and barlage (2006), mcgann (2013) and yettick (2009). 2 circulation figures from alliance for audited media, 2013. using factiva, a subscription-based search engine owned by the dow jones company, i was able to search all four newspapers’ databases. i searched for “pisa,” “programme for international student assessment” and “oecd pisa.” unsure that factiva was actually capturing all articles and blog posts from each media source, i searched the online archives of each media source manually, using the same search terms. this uncovered several more articles that included the search terms but had not been retrieved in the initial searches. the time period for all searches was delimited from january 1, 2000 through december 31, 2012. after the search was completed and articles downloaded, each article was coded by hand by the researcher. there are many software packages that perform content analysis. for this analysis, given the size of the sample and the nature of the analysis, human coding was an appropriate method. all data were managed in excel and statistical analyses were run using stata 12.0. analysis of media content media content analysis provides a fascinating window into the construction of pisa as a measure of educational excellence in the united states. looking at public discourse over time allows for a systematic yet nuanced understanding of the ways in which pisa is being used in educational discourse and educational policy. some of the most interesting findings were unexpected and might have otherwise gone unnoticed, if one was simply an interested observer of international assessment results reading the newspaper in the united states. take the issue of time. previous accounts of pisa reception tended to look at newspaper coverage of pisa immediately before and immediately after the release of results, which happens every three years. instead, i coded all articles over an entire thirteen-year period, 2000-2012, using two temporal variables. by analyzing pisa reception over a thirteen year period, the data show that media coverage, and thus pisa reception, is not constant. rather, it shows periods of greater and lesser activity. using the publication dates of the articles in the sample, figure 5 shows the dramatic increase in media coverage by year throughout the first decade of testing. there is a dramatic green saraisky current issues in comparative education 36 increase in the sheer number of articles referencing pisa in the american press from 2010-2012, when fifty-three articles, or 72% of the sample, were published. this was an average of more than 17 articles per year, up from 2.3 articles per year through 2009. identifying this pattern was the basis for some of the most informative findings of the research. figure 5: media sample over time source: green saraisky, 2015. another temporal variable was the “discourse moment.” following ferree et. al. (2002), i distinguish between three time periods in which the articles are published and coded accordingly: articles that were published within a one-month period surrounding the release of new pisa results; articles that discuss pisa scores but were published more than one month before or after the release date; and articles that refer to pisa but were actually about a different educational or social issue. figure 5 shows the shift in news moments over time, suggesting that while pisa results were initially covered in the news as news items around the triennial release of results, as the idea of pisa became a taken-for-granted measure of educational excellence in the public consciousness, it was referenced more consistently throughout the years. 1 2 1 2 4 6 4 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 2 1 1 1 10 12 9 1 2 1 1 1 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 n um be r of a rt ic le s nyt wsj wp usat analyzing public discourse current issues in comparative education 37 figure 6: coverage of pisa by discourse moment and by source the theoretical literature suggests that elites play a key role in the policy process (kingdon, 2011), and the analysis of speech acts bore this out. at the speaker level, the discourse is guided by a mere handful of elites: the data show that six speakers provide almost 30 percent of the commentary on pisa in the us. there is virtually no public voice in the discourse, despite the fact that education is one of the most public of issues – virtually all citizens have been in an education system at some point. teachers, parents and students are almost non-existent in the discussion. instead, a small, highly elite group of policy analysts and researchers drive the discourse. out of the speech acts coded, the single most frequently quoted actor in the american media is the european head of the organization for economic cooperation and development, which administers pisa limitations and conclusion media content analysis is not without its limitations. first, there are theoretical disagreements about how much influence media have in the policy process, and the assumptions of the media’s importance in the classic policy studies literature have surely been changed with the advent of electronic and social media. beyond that, however, the media can never give a complete picture of why certain policy ideas come to the fore, or why certain policy choices are made or not. the public discourse on any given education topic represents only one of the many venues in which policy deliberation occurs. additionally, media content is produced within an environment of particular constraints. media tend to publish shorter, dramatic stories rather than those that are 7 5 4 3 12 7 1 20 8 3 3 wp nyt wsj usat discourse moment n ew s so ur ce pisa, within one month pisa, after one month other ed issues, citing pisa green saraisky current issues in comparative education 38 longer or more nuanced and complex. the pressures of deadlines, competition from other news outlets, the limits of reporters’ and editors’ own knowledge about a given topic, and the political leanings of news sources may conspire, together or in combination, to limit how education news is covered (henig, 2008). it is also important to distinguish between elite and popular press, and the readership of each. such characteristics place limits on the generalizability of findings, as can research that analyzes a limited number of media sources or coverage at only one point in time. nonetheless, if done well, media analysis provides a reliable, valid and replicable method for understanding the public context of education. the categorization and analysis of media can elucidate trends, beliefs or the zeitgeist of the times. media content analysis helps to show how education fits into the contemporary polity as a whole. media discourse plays a prominent role in issue identification and issue framing, and acts as an important conduit in transmitting information and opinion. while media discourse does not represent complete variation in cultural attitudes, beliefs, and values, it provides a strong measure of the overarching cultural and political arguments being made within a given country, as well as important variations within and across nations. while electronic media, including blogs and social media, continue to rapidly change the media’s role, traditional newspapers remain appropriate sources to provide insight into national cultural and political landscapes. the empirical examples presented about the reception of pisa in the us media between 2000 and 2012 exemplify the way media content analysis can be used to produce nuanced insights about the construction of educational discourse that might otherwise remain latent. while hardly a comprehensive overview, the examples are meant to provide some instances of the kind of data and analysis that can emerge from media content analysis. a recent focus of the comparative education literature has been the way in which ideas and global trends have influenced national education policy on the ground. one can view the public representation of ideas about education as the outcome of a contest about meaning of education. media are one set of organizations that can show researchers what education “means” and how it is interpreted or problematized in a particular time and place. toward that end, media content analysis is a method that comparativists can leverage to analyze the ways in which ideas about education shape the direction of education policy and discourse. if you have any questions or comments on this piece, you may contact nancy green saraisky at nlg2004@columbia.edu references benford, r.d. & snow, d.a. 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(2010). governance by comparison: how ratings and rankings impact national policymaking in education. transtate working papers, 139. retrieved from http://www.staatlichkeit.uni-bremen.de mccombs, m. and shaw, d.l. (1974). the agenda setting function of mass media. public opinion quarterly, 36(2), 176-187. neuendorf, k. (2002). the content analysis guidebook. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. neuendorf, k. (2004). content analysis: a contrast and complement to discourse analysis. qualitative methods (newsletter of the apsa organized section on qualitative methods), 2(1). 33-36. olafsdottir, s. (2007). medicalizing mental health: a comparative view of the public, private and professional construction of mental illness. indiana university, proquest dissertations and theses full text. pizmony-levy, o. (2013). testing for all: the emergence and development of international assessment of student achievement, 1958—2012. indiana university, proquest, umi dissertations. steiner-khamsi, g. (2014). cross-national policy borrowing: understanding reception and translation. asia pacific journal of education, 34(2), 153-167. analyzing public discourse current issues in comparative education 41 supowitz, j., daly, a. & del fresno, m. (2015, feb 23). #commoncore project. retrieved from http://www.hashtagcommoncore.com takayama, k. (2010). politics of externalization in reflexive times: reinventing japanese education reform discourses through “finnish pisa success.” comparative education review, 55(1), 51-75. takayama, k., waldow, f., sung, y.l. (2013) finland has it all? examining the media accentuation of 'finnish education' in australia, germany and south korea. research in comparative and international education, 8(3), 307-325. doi: 10.2304/rcie.2013.8.3.307. takayama, k., waldow, f. and sung, y.l. (2014). rethinking the pattern of external policy referencing: media discourse over the “asian tigers’’ pisa success in australia, germany and south korea. comparative education, 50(3), 302-321. doi:10.1080/03050068.2013.860704 microsoft word 16_2_samar_farah_gita_steiner-khamsi.docx © 2014 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 16(2): 3-5. editorial introduction: rethinking culture, context, and comparison in education and development samar farah teachers college, columbia university gita steiner-khamsi teachers college, columbia university in this issue, cice brings together noted scholars in education who were invited to reflect on the theme rethinking culture, context, and comparison in education and development. this special issue can be seen as a sequel to the most recent one, entitled comparative and international education: the making of a field and a vision into the future. the previous issue addressed meaningful theoretical contributions to the field of comparative and international education since its establishment. in april 2013, the international and transcultural studies department at teachers college (tc) held a symposium entitled rethinking culture, context, and comparison in education and development. at the symposium, four invited speakers—karen mundy (oise, university of toronto, canada), frank-olaf radtke (university of frankfurt, germany), joseph tobin (university of georgia, usa), and antoni verger (universitat autònoma de barcelona, spain)— as well as faculty and students from teachers college, columbia university, gathered to discuss “how best to conceptualize context and rethink distinct levels and scales in educational research…” more specifically, the goals of the symposium were to: understand how and why similar phenomena are, for cultural or contextual reasons, translated, interpreted and received differently. investigations of educational policy are interrogating the system logic and system processes of educational policy. in response to these challenges, researchers have developed new research methods, including multimodal approaches that deserve further scrutiny. taken together, these questions, conceptual developments, and research techniques pose provocative questions about the shifting nature of comparison in educational research. in an effort to share this discussion beyond the confines of a two-day symposium, the editors of cice have chosen to publish a special fall issue that includes two featured papers written by joseph tobin from the university of georgia, and antoni verger from universitat autònoma de barcelona, as well as the response pieces of teachers college faculty who participated in the symposium, including lesley bartlett, gita steiner-khamsi, and herve varenne. the end product, as seen in this issue, is a thought provoking set of articles that address contentious aspects within the field which attempt to push the methodologoical and theoretical boundaries of the field of comparative and international education, provoking us to question our understandings of culture, context and comparison. in “comparative, diachronic, ethnographic research on education” joseph tobin presents his ground breaking method of inquiry for exploring early childhood education in three different samar farah gita steiner-khamsi 4 current issues in comparative education countries and across two unique time periods. to use his own words, “the trick is to think simultaneously about space and time, in a sort of ethnographic version of physics’ unified field theory” (tobin, p. 2). rather than drawing on traditional methodologies to do so, tobin uses a “video cued multivocal ethnography” to reveal reflections and reactions of educators across different cultural contexts. more importantly, however, his study redefines the type and scale of ethnographies that can be conducted comparatively. antoni verger masterfully applies the example of ppp (public-private partnership) in education as an illustration to demonstrate why a preoccupation with culture, context, and comparison matters for understanding the rapid global expansion of the education industry. in his article “investigating global education policy: toward a research framework on policy adoption and the multifaceted role of ideas in educational reform,” he probes deeply into why some specific ideas are deemed more attractive than others and under what circumstances, suggesting that the process of policy change cannot be disentangled from the local context and the politics that come along with it. in “vertical case studies and the challenges of culture, context and comparison,” lesley bartlett reviews the works of both tobin and verger and the varied ways in which they emphasize the importance of context. she then advocates for using the vertical case studies approach to address current challenges in comparative and international education (cie), arguing that society is interconnected and no phenomenon can be studied separate to or outside the context of its greater physical, socio-cultural, political, and temporal environment. gita steiner-khamsi makes a strong appeal to “bring culture, context, and system back into the study of globalization.” in her article on “comparison and context: the interdisciplinary approach to the comparative study of education,” she explores the long-standing debate between disciplinary versus interdisciplinary perspectives in cie, calling on scholars to free themselves of disciplinary boundaries that may inhibit their ability to explore new and relevant methodologies and theoretical approaches to the comparative study of educational systems, beliefs, and practices. finally, in “comments on tobin’s contribution to comparative research in anthropology and in education,” hervé varenne reiterates the importance of comprehensively exploring the question of culture. he does so through a review of tobin’s article from an anthropological perspective, in which he studies cultural differences and the extent to which they are time and context-bound. through his critique of earlier anthropologists, he argues that society cannot be freed of culture and that it is best studied from a comparative perspective, that is, in relation to the “other.” this special issue seeks to stretch the thinking of researchers who are dedicated to the comparative study of education. differences in methodological approaches reflect frequently, but not always, differences in interpretive frameworks. thus, we tend to choose the method that helps us to say what we see conceptually, that is, how we tend to explain differences and similarities in educational systems, beliefs, and practices. by implication, interpretive frameworks are at the same time indispensable and coercive. on the positive side, we need them to succinctly express what we see and how we explain “things.” they enable us to use vocabulary that members of the (same) academic community understand, either because the terminology reflects a particular discipline (sociological, anthropological, economic, etc.) or a theoretical orientation (e.g., world systems theory, functionalist, constructivist, etc.). on the other hand, every “confession” to a particular interpretive framework, such as the choice of a editorial introduction current issues in comparative education 5 particular discipline or theoretical orientation, is a decision against, or to put it more mildly, a hesitation to embrace alternative frameworks. the co-editors of this special issue do “believe” in the value of interpretive frameworks. in fact, we find it an issue of concern that so many studies are simply pragmatic. in other words, they are produced without laying bare, and as a corollary putting up for debate, the disciplinary approach or the theoretical foundation from which the author operates and draws conclusions. having and identifying a clearly defined interpretive framework is better than none. nevertheless, these interpretive frameworks channel our ways of thinking and seeing in particular ways. this special issue is about how we use the method of comparison depending on where we stand in terms of an interpretive framework. samar farah is a doctoral candidate in international and comparative education at teachers college, columbia university. email: sf2585@tc.columbia.edu. gita steiner-khamsi is department chair and professor of international and comparative education at teachers college, columbia university. email: gs174@columbia.edu. microsoft word 16_1_stephen_heyneman.docx originally published as “the international efficiency of american education: the bad and the not-sobad news,” (2013) pp. 279-302 in heinz-dieter meyer and aaron benavot (eds.) pisa, power and policy: the emergence of global educational governance oxford (uk): oxford studies in comparative education symposium books. appears with permission in current issues in comparative education 16(1): 74-89. the international efficiency of american education: the bad and the not-so-bad news stephen p. heyneman vanderbilt university there is ample evidence to suggest that american schools perform worse than schools in many other countries. the u.s. ranks toward the bottom of the industrialized nations on international tests of academic achievement in science and mathematics. not only may american schools perform worse but they may do so at the same time as they use more resources than other schools systems. in essence, american schools may not only be poor in quality but less efficient. this paper will explore some of the evidence on education efficiency. it will suggest that in many ways the assumption is correct, american schools are less efficient. it will suggest that the reason for the inefficiency of american schools is the difference in the ‘demand to learn’ between american and other school children. but the paper will also explore evidence that suggests that american schools are not less efficient and in one new way of looking at the problem, this paper will argue that american schools are more efficient than the schools in the republic of korea, one of the world’s leading school systems. the paper will conclude with some advice on the proper role which international comparisons may play in the design of domestic education policy. background bad news about american education is a tradition. often the news emerges from national commissions (higher education for democracy, 1947; committee on education beyond high school, 1956; task force on education, 1960; nation at risk, 1983; the future of higher education, 2006; state scholars initiative, 2008; wolk, 2009). in many instances the bad news includes statements that american schools have declined in quality or have been bested by school systems in other countries. international tests of academic achievement have been used to suggest that american school children do not learn as much as do children in many other school systems, including the school systems of america’s most important trading partners (lemke, sen, pahlke, partelow, miller, kastberg and jocelyn, 2004; baldi, jin, skemer, green, herget, 2007; herget, 2007; heyneman and lee, 2012). sometimes, the school systems which attain first place in the ranking of achievement become a subject of headline news. this was the case for instance of the scores of shanghai on pisa 2009 (new york times, 2010). attention has turned not only to the rankings of other countries on achievement tests, but on the comparative efficiency of one system versus another in those rankings (new york times, 2007). [1] efficiency: the bad news the bad news is not new. two decades ago the u.s. spent more money on education yet performed worse on tests of 8th grade mathematics (table one). table one displays the results of the international test designed by the educational testing service (ets) used in 1991 prior to pisa. norway, for instance, spent $1,111 for each adult citizen in the population. forty-six percent of the norwegian students performed over the international median in 8th grade mathematics. this would imply that it would cost an additional $ us 24/adult citizen for an additional one percent of the students to achieve over the international mathematics median. the u.s. spent $ us 1040/adult citizen and 45% of the american students performed over the the international efficiency of american education     current issues in comparative education 75 international median. to get an additional percent over the international median, the u.s. would need to spend an additional $23/ citizen. in other countries, however, the cost would be less. in singapore and japan it would only cost $us 7 to have an additional one percent of their students perform over international median; in korea, hong kong, the czech republic, and thailand it would only cost $us 4. arguably the most efficient education systems in 1991 were located in latvia, lithuania and romania, where only $us 2 or $us 3 would be required to have an additional one percent of their students over the international median. and the least efficient school system was that of kuwait which would require $us 287 for an additional percentage of its students to perform over the international median. table 1. international education efficiency (1991). country public expenditure on education/capita (a) in dollars proportion of students over the international median in 8th grade mathematics (b) as a percentage ratio a/b norway 1111 46 24 united states 1040 45 23 kuwait 848 3 287 singapore 724 94 7 united kingdom 649 48 14 japan 602 83 7 israel 584 56 10 republic of korea 362 82 4 hong kong 309 80 4 czech republic 297 70 4 hungary 272 60 4 thailand 206 54 4 iran 183 9 20 latvia 147 40 3 lithuania 71 34 2 romania 55 36 2 sources: second international assessment of educational progress iaep ii, math and science in 20 countries ets 1991; and heyneman, 2004. using pisa results from 2009, it appears that the u.s. has not improved on its level of education efficiency by comparison to other countries (table 2).[2] if one takes the total pisa test score (reading, mathematics and science taken together), the u.s. ranks eighth out of 17 countries. however, if one incorporates education spending, the u.s. ranking drops from 8th to 16th, next to last. the countries with the highest efficiency ranking included russia, poland, the czech republic, and hungary. table 3 illustrates monetary efficiency in a slightly different way. as one can see the u.s. is among the countries which had the highest secondary student expenditures but is positioned lower than many other countries in terms of pisa mathematics performance. table 4 illustrates this same issue using cumulative spending for ages 6 – 15 rather than spending on secondary school students alone. in this case the u.s. is the highest spending country in the sample and yet in middle of the sample in terms of total pisa test score performance. efficiency can be calculated in many ways, achievement on the basis of pupil expenditure is one. another is achievement in conjunction with school time. table 5 illustrates this principle. american schools devote almost 19 hours/week to core subjects, equivalent to latvia and stephen p. heyneman   76 current issues in comparative education poland and far more than sweden, finland, belgium and switzerland. yet finland, switzerland and australia devote less time to core subject but have higher pisa achievement scores. table 2. student performance in pisa 2009 and cumulative education spending per student country total test score score ranking spending (us$) ratio of scores to expenditures ratio ranking average expenditure for one score point finland 1,631 1 71,385 0.023 7 43.77 australia 1,589 2 72,386 0.022 8 45.55 switzerland 1,552 3 104,352 0.015 14 67.23 belgium 1,528 4 80,145 0.019 10 52.45 poland 1,503 5 39,964 0.037 2 26.59 norway 1,501 5 101,265 0.015 14 67.47 denmark 1,497 7 87,642 0.017 12 58.55 united states 1,496 8 105,752 0.014 16 70.69 sweden 1,486 9 82,753 0.017 12 55.69 czech republic 1,471 10 44,761 0.033 3 30.42 portugal 1,469 11 56,803 0.026 6 38.67 hungary 1,464 12 44,342 0.033 3 30.29 germany 1,461 13 63,296 0.023 7 43.32 latvia 1,460 14 . . . . italy 1,458 15 77,310 0.019 10 53.02 greece 1,419 16 48,422 0.029 5 34.12 russia federation 1,405 17 17,499 0.080 1 12.45 oecd average 1,500 69,135 0.021 46.09 source: oecd (2010, 2011) note: 1. total test score is the sum of three core subjects, reading, mathematical and scientific literacy. 2. rankings are based on sample countries this paper examines only. 3. cumulative education spending is in equivalent us dollars converted using ppps. 4. “ratio of scores to expenditure”, i.e., test scores achieved when $1 is spent and “average expenditure for one score point” is an average expenditure to get one test score point. both of them are calculated by the author. efficiency can also be calculated in terms of an output indicator, such as the rate at which enrolled students actually graduate. table 6 illustrates the connection between secondary school graduation rate and total expenditures per secondary school student. the u.s. spends more than any other country with the exception of switzerland, yet the rate of secondary school graduation is lower than any other country save spain and new zealand. the sum of this evidence would suggest that by many different measures the u.s. is less efficient than other countries and that the record of inefficiency is consistent over at least two decades. there are many hypotheses as to why american schools are less efficient than those of many other countries. one hypothesis is that american school children express a lower ‘demand to learn’ than do school children in countries with high efficiency in their school systems (heyneman, 1999). this is sometimes noted as whether 100 percent of the children want to come to school each day and to try hard each day. in essence the ‘demand to learn’ is a culturallyshaped attitude or disposition that places the value of education higher or lower on a scale of socially desirable activities. there is, moreover, a gap in the ‘demand to learn’ between children of different backgrounds in the united states whereas in high efficiency school systems there is less of a gap between children of different backgrounds. this suggests that the barrier to student achievement in american schools is not poverty or race but the lack of the demand to learn and the difference in the demand to learn from one social group to another (heyneman, 2005). this also suggests that better teacher training, a different curriculum or a longer school the international efficiency of american education     current issues in comparative education 77 day will not have the intended effect until the demand to learn is generally augmented and until a high demand to learn is characteristic of all social groups. table 3. secondary education spending and average pisa mathematics scores sources: oecd education at glance 2006, www.oecd.org/edu/eag2006; oecd pisa. imf staff calculations. the line connects countries with the highest observed efficiency and depicts the best practice frontier unadjusted for estimation bias (verhoeven et al., 2007) table 4. relationship between student achievement in pisa 2009 and cumulative spending stephen p. heyneman   78 current issues in comparative education source: oecd (2010, 2011) table 5. relationship between student achievement in pisa 2009 and total hours devoted to core subjects source: oecd (2010, 2011) table 6. secondary education spending and upper secondary graduation rates. source: oecd education at a glance 2006, www.oecd.org/edu/eag2006; oecd pisa and imf staff calculations. the line connects countries with the highest observed efficiency and depicts the best practice frontier unadjusted for estimation bias (verhoeven et al., 2007). the international efficiency of american education     current issues in comparative education 79 table 7. student achievement in pisa 2000 and scores from the civic education study (cived) 1999 (rankings in parentheses). country reading literacy mathematical literacy scientific literacy total test score civic knowledge finland 546 (1) 536 (4) 538 (3) 1620 (3) 109.3 (2) australia 528 (4) 533 (5) 528 (7) 1589 (6) 101.7 (11) sweden 516 (9) 516 (15) 512 (10) 1544 (10) 99.1 (18) belgium 507 (10) 520 (9) 496 (17) 1523 (11) 94.7 (22) norway 505 (13) 499 (17) 500 (13) 1504 (15) 102.9 (9) united states 504 (15) 493 (19) 499 (14) 1496 (17) 106.5 (6) denmark 497 (16) 514 (12) 481 (22) 1492 (18) 100.4 (14) switzerland 494 (17) 529 (14) 496 (17) 1519 (13) 98.3 (19) czech republic 492 (19) 498 (18) 511 (11) 1501 (16) 102.6 (10) italy 487 (20) 457 (26) 478 (23) 1422 (24) 105.4 (7) germany 474 (21) 490 (20) 487 (20) 1451 (21) 99.8 (15) hungary 480 (23) 488 (21) 296 (15) 1464 (20) 101.6 (12) poland 479 (24) 470 (24) 483 (21) 1432 (23) 110.6 (1) greece 474 (25) 447 (28) 461 (25) 1382 (27) 107.9 (4) portugal 470 (26) 470 (24) 459 (28) 1399 (26) 96.2 (21) russia federation 462 (27) 478 (22) 460 (26) 1400 (25) 99.6 (16) latvia 458 (28) 462 (25) 460 (27) 1380 (28) 91.5 (26) oecd average 500 500 500 1500 100 source: oecd (2001) and schulz and sibberns (2004) note: 1. numbers in parentheses are rankings among all participating countries in pisa and cived respectively. 2. average of civic knowledge is international average, not oecd. efficiency: the not-so-bad news achievement in subjects other than math and science. most discussions of achievement concentrate on math and science; some on reading. but the purpose of public schooling and the reason nations invest in public schooling are broader than skills, jobs and productivity. they include the degree to which schools are able to influence citizenship behavior. on this dimension, american schools may do rather well. table 7 illustrates the differences in international ranking using different achievement measures on pisa 2000 and cived 1999. the u.s. was ranked 15th out of 28 countries in reading literacy, 19th in mathematical literacy, and 14th in scientific literacy. however the u.s. was ranked 6th in the field of civics education. this could be rather important. nations which struggle for social cohesion are nations which also struggle economically (heyneman, 2000). civil tension reduces trust and a reduction in trust reduces internal cooperation and trade (heyneman, 2002/3). one reason why the u.s. economy continues to perform in spite of the low ranking in science and mathematics performance may be associated with the rather good job of the american schools in influencing citizenship. internal variation in performance. the u.s. is typical of all large and diverse nations in that academic performance is significantly divergent from on region to another. table 8 illustrates this divergence in brazil. 16% of the students achieved the top levels of mathematics achievement in the south and only 7 % in the north east. table 9 illustrates this divergence in the russian federation. the russian average for pisa 2009 was 475; but this varied from yakutia at 419 to moscow at 546. tables 10 and 11 illustrate this principle in the us and compares the scores of various states in mathematics (table 10) and science (table 11) against the scores of various nations. on both measures the top performing ‘nations’ in the world --singapore, hong kong and taipei, also includes stephen p. heyneman   80 current issues in comparative education minnesota and massachusetts. this suggests that parts of the u.s. school system is as competitive as the best in the world. table 8. percentage of students by mathematics proficiency level in regions of brazil source: oecd (2010). table 12 illustrates this principle in all the american states. this table shows the state proficiency in mathematics and a comparison of the nations with the same or similar proficiency levels. for instance, vermont had a proficiency level similar to australia, denmark, estonia, france and germany. on the other hand, tennessee, my own state had proficiency levels comparable to croatia, greece, israel, russia and turkey. the most inefficient school system in the u.s., according to this criteria is the district of columbia. washington dc level of proficiency was the equivalent to that of mexico, thailand, and kazakhstan. time devoted to studying using private tutors. most studies of education efficiency include time on task within the classroom, hours in the school day, scheduled school days/year. these are important indicators of effort, but are increasingly inadequate. their inadequacy is particularly relevant when considering comparisons with countries in south and east asia. the typical student in asia attends several types of schools simultaneously. they attend government run public schools from which the data pertaining to time on task usually derive. but they also attend ‘cram schools’ on a regular basis. these cram schools are referred to as ‘shadow education’. in japan the cram schools are called juku; in korea they are called ‘hogwans’. in general these schools are not managed according to modern styles of teaching but the opposite; they are there to reinforce rules, principles, formulae, and information. they are cram schools in the literal sense. in korea for instance, 88% of the elementary students and 61% of the students in general high schools receive private tutoring in cram schools (kim, 2010, p. 302). a korean family which earns between $us 6,000 and 7,000/month typically allocates 6.3% ($us 440/high school student/month) on private tutoring (korean statistical information service, 2011). the financial burden on households, the stress on children, the implications for social inequality have long been recognized and have been subject to considerable research (lee and jang, 2010, heyneman, 2010). in india, approximately 72% of the older primary school students and 52% of the secondary school students receive private tutoring (ngai and chung, 2010). although it is difficult to research effectively, the portion of students in china who receive private tutoring in math was 28.8% and in english, 29.3% (zhang, 2011). other estimates have been made for south america (mattos, 2007), europe (ireson, 2004, bray, 2011) and the u.s. (mattos, 2007). private tutoring is so common that economists have begun to estimate its 64   59   47   45   42   31   21   21   26   27   28   28   9   13   17   15   19   22   4   5   7   8   7   11   2   3   3   4   2   5   1   0   1   1   1   1   0%   20%   40%   60%   80%   100%   brazil  north  east   brazil  north     brazil     brazil  centre  west   brazil  south  east   brazil  south     level  1  (<357.8)   level  1  (357-­‐8-­‐420.07)   level  2  (420.07-­‐482.38)   level  3  (482.38-­‐544.68)   level  4  (544.68-­‐606.99)   level  5  (606.99-­‐669.3)   level  6  (>669.3)   the international efficiency of american education     current issues in comparative education 81 fiscal impact. by one estimate for instance, private tutoring in south korea increased from 0.34% of gdp in 1977 to 2.3% of gdp in 2003, an amount equivalent to 50% of the public expenditure on education (kim, 2007). the korean education development institute reports that 84% of the table 9. results by region in russia (pisa 2009) 546   519   506   502   499   497   496   494   492   489   489   488   488   483   482   482   478   477   475   475   474   472   471   470   470   468   467   466   465   463   458   457   457   457   456   453   453   446   446   445   443   441   436   426   425   419   0   200   400   600   moscow   saint-­‐petersburg   tyumen  oblast   novosibirsk   chelyabinsk  oblast   omsk  oblast   samara  oblast   vladimir  oblast   tula  oblast   karelia   tatarstan   komi   tomsk  oblast   primorsky  krai   krasnoyarsk   chuvashia   udmurva   sakhalin  oblast   saratov  oblast   russia  average   tambov  oblast   moscow  oblast   volgograd  oblast   vologda  oblast   kemerovo  oblast   altai  krai   astrakhan  oblast   ryazan  oblast   kursk  oblast   khanty-­‐mansiysk   bashkortostan   krasnodar   perm  krai   rostov  oblast   nizhny  novgorod   voronezh  oblast   orenburg  oblast   kaluga  oblast   sverdlovsk  oblast   ulyanovsk  oblast   adygea   stavropol   mari  el   dagestan   chita  oblast   sakha  (yakuva)   pisa  2009   stephen p. heyneman   82 current issues in comparative education table 10. mathematics results by country and u.s. state (timss 2007) scale score grade 4 grade 8 hong kong-ch. (607) 600 singapore (599) ch. taipei (598), rep. of korea (597) singapore (593) 590 580 ch. taipei (576) ma-usa (572) hong kong-ch. (572) 570 japan (568) japan (570) 560 mn-usa(554) 550 kazakhstan (549) russian fed. (544) england-uk (541) ma-usa (547) 540 latvia (537) netherlands (535) mn-usa (532) 530 lithuania (530), usa (529) germany (525) denmark (523) quebec-ca. (528) 520 quebec-ca. (519) australia (516) ontario-ca. (512) ontario-ca., hungary (517) england-uk (513), russian fed. (512) 510 hungary (510), italy (507) br. columbia-ca., alberta-ca., austria (505) sweden (503), slovenia (502) br. columbia-ca. (509), usa (508) lithuania (506), czech rep. (504) slovenia (501) 500 armenia, timss scale avg. (500) slovak rep. (496) scotland-uk (494), new zealand (492) timss scale avg. (500), armenia (499) basque country-sp. (499), australia (496) sweden (491) 490 czech rep. (486) malta (488), scotland-uk (487) serbia (486) 480 norway (473) italy (480) malaysia (474) 470 ukraine (469), dubai-uae(444), georgia (438), islamic rep. of iran (402), algeria (378), colombia (355), morocco (341), el salvador (330), tunisia (327), kuwait (316), qatar (296), yemen (224) norway (469), cyprus (465), bulgaria (464), israel (463), ukraine (462), romania, dubai-uae (461), bosnia and herzegovina (456), lebanon (449), thailand (441), turkey (432), jordan (427), tunisia (420), georgia (410), islamic rep. of iran (403), bahrain (398), indonesia (397), syrian arab rep. (395), egypt (391), algeria (387), morocco (381), colombia (380), oman (372), palestinian nat’l auth. (367), botswana (364), kuwait (354), el salvador (340), saudi arabia (329), ghana (309), qatar (307) = above the international average = not measurably different from the international average = below the international average note: countries are listed by estimated average scores. figure is not a scaled representation of countries’ scores. international/oecd average scores and u.s. scores are presented in bold font. while the formulation and construction of assessment scales are the same across the timss, pirls, and pisa, the content represented by the scale scores is not the same across different ages within a subject domain. source: http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/reports/2011-mrs.asp#mathematics the international efficiency of american education     current issues in comparative education 83 table 11. science results by country and u.s. state (timss 2007) scale score grade 4 grade 8 600 590 singapore (587) 580 ma-usa (571) 570 singapore (567) ch. taipei (561) 560 ch. taipei (557) hong kong-ch. (554) mn-usa (551) ma-usa (556) japan (554), rep. of korea (553) 550 japan (548) russian fed. (546), alberta-ca. (543) latvia, england-uk (542) england-uk (542) 540 usa (539), br. columbia-ca. (537) hungary, ontario-ca. (536), italy (535) kazakhstan (533) hungary, czech rep. (539) mn-usa (539), slovenia (538) 530 germany (528), australia (527) slovak rep., austria (526), sweden (525) netherlands (523) hong kong-ch., russian fed. (530) ontario-ca., br. columbia-ca. (526) 520 slovenia (518), denmark, quebec-ca. (517) czech rep. (515), lithuania (514) usa (520), lithuania (519) australia (515) sweden (511) 510 new zealand (504) quebec-ca. (507) 500 scotland-uk, timss scale avg. (500) timss scale avg. (500) basque country-sp. (498) scotland-uk (496), italy (495) 490 armenia (484) dubai-uae (489), armenia (488) norway (487), ukraine (485) jordan (482) 480 norway (477) ukraine (474) malaysia, thailand (471) 470 and below dubai-uae (460), islamic rep. of iran (436), georgia (418), colombia (400), el salvador (390), algeria (354), kuwait (348), tunisia (318), morocco (297), qatar (294), yemen (197) serbia, bulgaria (470), israel (468), bahrain (467), bosnia and herz. (466), romania (462), islamic rep. of iran (459), malta (457), turkey (454), syrian arab rep., cyprus (452), tunisia (445), indonesia (427), oman (423), georgia (421), kuwait (418), columbia (417), lebanon (414), egypt, algeria (408), palestinian nat’l auth. (404), saudia arabia (403), morocco (402), el salvador (387), botswana (355), qatar (319), ghana (303) = above the international average = not measurably different from the international average = below the international average note: countries are listed by estimated average scores. figure is not a scaled representation of countries’ scores. international/oecd average scores and u.s. scores are presented in bold font. while the formulation and construction of assessment scales are the same across the timss, pirls, and pisa, the content represented by the scale scores is not the same across different ages within a subject domain. source: http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/reports/2011-mrs.asp#mathematics parents in korea state that private tutoring is a significant economic burden (kedi, 2003). some have commented that private tutoring relates south korea, among other countries, to a low level of efficiency within the oecd member states (grundlach and wobmann, 2001; kim, 2002). others have commented on the distortions to higher education selection (park, 1996), and the fact that memorization of material has a low impact on productivity (paik, 2000). stephen p. heyneman   84 current issues in comparative education table 12. percentage of students proficient in math by state and countries with similar proficiency levels state percent proficient significantly outperformed by* countries with similar percentages of proficient students 1 massachusetts 50.7 6 canada • japan • netherlands • new zealand • switzerland 2 minnesota 43.1 11 australia • belgium • france • germany • netherlands 3 vermont 41.4 14 australia • denmark • estonia • france • germany 4 north dakota 41.0 16 denmark • estonia • france • iceland 5 new jersey 40.4 14 australia • austria • denmark • france • germany 6 kansas 40.2 16 austria • denmark • estonia • france • slovenia 7 south dakota 39.1 16 austria • denmark • france • hungary • sweden 8 pennsylvania 38.3 16 austria • denmark • france • hungary • sweden 9 new hampshire 37.9 18 austria • denmark • france • hungary • sweden 10 montana 37.6 18 austria • france • hungary • poland • sweden 11 virginia 37.5 17 czech rep • france • hungary • poland • sweden 12 colorado 37.4 18 czech rep • france • hungary • poland • u.k. 13 wisconsin 37.0 18 czech rep • france • poland • portugal • u.k. 14 maryland 36.5 18 czech rep • france • hungary • poland • u.k. 15 wyoming 36.0 18 czech rep • france • poland • portugal • u.k. 16 washington 35.9 19 czech rep • france • hungary • poland • u.k. 17 ohio 35.4 18 czech rep • france • poland • portugal • u.k. 18 iowa 35.2 19 czech rep • france • poland • portugal • u.k. 19 indiana 35.1 19 czech rep • france • poland • portugal • u.k. 20 oregon 34.8 20 czech rep • hungary • poland • portugal • u.k. 21 connecticut 34.7 19 france • poland • portugal • spain • u.k. 22 texas 34.7 21 czech rep • hungary • poland • portugal • u.k. 23 nebraska 34.6 20 czech rep • hungary • poland • portugal • u.k. 24 north carolina 34.5 21 czech rep • hungary • poland • portugal • u.k. 25 maine 34.1 22 czech rep • hungary • poland • portugal • u.k. 26 idaho 34.1 22 czech rep • hungary • poland • portugal • u.k. 27 utah 32.4 26 italy • poland • portugal • spain • u.k. 28 alaska 32.2 26 italy • poland • portugal • spain • u.k. united states 32.2 22 italy • latvia • poland • spain • u.k. 29 south carolina 31.9 26 italy • poland • portugal • spain • u.k. 30 delaware 31.3 28 hungary • italy • portugal • spain • u.k. 31 illinois 30.8 27 czech rep • italy • portugal • spain • u.k. 32 new york 30.2 28 hungary • italy • portugal • spain • u.k. 33 missouri 29.9 28 hungary • italy • portugal • spain • u.k. 34 michigan 28.9 30 ireland • italy • lithuania • portugal • spain 35 rhode island 27.7 34 latvia • lithuania 36 florida 27.4 34 greece • latvia • lithuania 37 kentucky 27.3 34 latvia • lithuania 38 arizona 26.3 34 greece • latvia • lithuania 39 georgia 24.7 35 greece • latvia • russia 40 arkansas 24.4 35 croatia • greece • israel • latvia • russia 41 california 23.9 36 greece • russia 42 tennessee 23.1 36 croatia • greece • israel • russia • turkey 43 nevada 23.0 36 croatia • greece • israel • russia 44 oklahoma 21.3 36 croatia • greece • israel • russia • turkey the international efficiency of american education     current issues in comparative education 85 45 hawaii 21.2 38 croatia • israel • russia • turkey 46 louisiana 19.0 39 bulgaria • croatia • israel • serbia • turkey 47 west virginia 18.5 41 bulgaria • turkey 48 alabama 18.2 39 bulgaria • croatia • israel • serbia • turkey 49 new mexico 17.4 41 bulgaria • serbia • turkey 50 mississippi 13.6 43 bulgaria • trinidad and tobago • uruguay 51 district of columbia 8.0 48 kazakhstan • mexico • thailand source: peterson et al. (2011) * number of countries whose percent proficient was statistically significantly higher note: list of countries performing at a level that cannot be distinguished statistically are limited to those 5 with the largest population. we were interested in the degree to which private tutoring might affect korea’s pisa efficiency. the pisa questionnaire asked students about time/week spent in private tutoring. we have added this time to the amount of time in formal school and have compared korea to the u.s. table 13 illustrates this comparison in the learning time devoted to studying math in both the u.s. and korea. korean students report spending 86% more time studying math out of school than american students (2.1 hours/ week as opposed to 0.3 hours/week). while the ratio of time in formal schooling to pisa score is very close between the two countires (3.54 vs. 3.78), when one adds the time spent studying mathematics outside of formal schooling the differences are pronounced. the ratio of time/ pisa score is 2.46 for korean vs. 3.27 for american students. in essence, the american school system is one third more efficient that the korean school system. table 13. mathematical literacy and time studying math math in-school instructional time for math (hours per week) instructional weeks in years total hours ratio of score to time korea 552 4.1 35.6 145.9 3.78 united states 472 3.7 36 133.2 3.54 math out-of-school instruction time for math (hours per week) in-school + out of school instructions total hours ratio of score to time korea 552 2.1 6.3 224.3 2.46 united states 472 0.3 4.0 144 3.27 source: pisa (2004) learning for tomorrow's world . table 5.14. note: math scores are from pisa 2003. out-of-school activities include working with a tutor and attending out-ofschool classes. table 14 continues this same illustration using the total time studying across all subjects not only studying on mathematics. the total time korean students spend studying is about one third more than in the u.s.. the level of their pisa scores is indeed higher, but the ratio of time/ pisa score is considerably different. the ratio for korea is 0.44, and for the u.s. 0.57. by this account, that is by comparison to the total time spent studying in private tutoring as well as in school, the american system is about 30% more efficient than the korean system. stephen p. heyneman   86 current issues in comparative education table 14. mathematical literacy and total time studying math in-school instructional time for all subjects (hours per week) instructional weeks in years total hours ratio of score to time korea 552 30.3 35.6 1078.7 0.51 united states 472 22.2 36 799.2 0.59 math out-of-school instruction time for all subjects (hours per week) in-school + out of school instructions total hours ratio of score to time korea 552 5.1 35.4 1260.4 0.44 united states 472 0.7 22.9 824.4 0.57 source: pisa (2004) learning for tomorrow's world . table 5.14. note: math scores are from pisa 2003. out-of-school activities include working with a tutor and attending out-ofschool classes. implications for twenty years a common refrain about american education is that it is inferior to the public school systems in asia (stevenson and stigler, 1992; stigler and hiebert, 1999). the problem is that it has ignored the fact that the typical youth in asia receives only a portion of his achievement from the public school system and that test scores in particular are influenced by the quality and intensity of the cram schools. but the refrain of inferiority to school systems in asia is not only inaccurate scientifically but is pernicious in another way. it ignores the fact that the image of school systems in japan, korea and parts of china, by local citizens, is that of low quality, not high quality. instead of crowing about international superiority on international tests of academic achievement, local authorities, parents, the academic community adamantly condemn the quality of their systems. typical adolescence in asia involves cramming scientific and mathematical facts. studying is treated as a full time profession in which students are asked to study 80 – 100 hours/week at home, in school, with tutors and in cram schools. the process has generated problems of depression, suicide, bullying and personality disorder (kong, 2011; lee and larsen, 2000, stankov, 2010). high exposure to private tutoring is associated with lower confidence and a dislike of academic work (kong, 2011). choi suggests that there “is a negative influence of shadow education on the way of learning and creativity among high school students,” (choi, date?). yun suggests that in korea “overheated shadow education drops the interests of learners and therefore decreases learners self learning ability” (yun, 2006 p. 198). yang agrees and points out that “as stress from shadow education increases academic motivation decreases. and as the burden on time and mentality among factors of stress from shadow education increases, internal satisfaction decreases … and problem behavior increases.” yang 2011,p. 2). an article in yonhapnews reports on a study in which students depend on what and how to learn in cram schools or private tutors and cannot plan their own study in detail. they accept learning contents meaninglessly and passively and become other-person-led learners without explicit learning goals (yonhapnews, 2007) even for those who successfully pass their examinations and enter a university, depression and meaninglessness continue. unlike the u.s., britain or canada, scores on university selection examinations in asia not only determine which university they are allowed to enter, but which the international efficiency of american education     current issues in comparative education 87 program of study. the result is detrimental to their higher education experience. cho points out that most of the (students) are dissatisfied with their universities or departments since they have not chosen them according to their desires but according to their scores… the years of preparing for the examination under extreme tension and stress also make the winners extremely passive and dull. many of them have difficulties adjusting to university life… courses in liberal arts and social sciences that require analytical and critical thinking confuse and frustrate them endlessly. they are particularly annoyed by questions which do not have definite answers (cho, 1995, p. 155). as tucker (2011, 2012) has explained, performance among asian school children stems from a culturally narrow concentration on simplistic indicators of math and science as indicators of success. so damaging has this process become that the publics are searching for a way to escape and often look to the u.s. as having a more balanced way to raise children and adolescents. they are probably right. while asians look longingly at the educational and personal effects of a typical american adolescence, americans are rarely aware of the negative effects on personality development of an adolescence narrowly devoted to math and science scores. were americans more aware of these effects they might look with less jealousy at the success of asia pisa scores. while it is true that many american school systems are in desperate need of repair, it is also true that some school systems in the u.s are superb. furthermore many americans emerge from the process of adolescence with deep labor market experience, a sense of autonomy and personal independence which the typical youth in asian countries do not have. summary. in comparing ourselves with other countries, we must keep in mind that the indicators of our envy – high scores in math and science -were not acquired in a vacuum, but rather through a different culture with many faults obvious to local populations but not to outsiders. american schools systems are not uniformly poor or inefficient. american students tend to perform better on some types of tests than others; some american states perform well on all tests; and in terms of time spent studying school systems in the u.s. may be considerably more efficient. americans need to be more careful to not import the ‘terror’ of a shadow education adolescence typical of asia. americans need to be more circumspect when criticizing their own education policies as if the deficits were so uniform and the virtues so insignificant. notes [1] efficiency of a school system is defined here in a straightforward way, as output (e.g. test scores) per unit of input (e.g. per pupil expenditure). while such indicators do not tell the whole story of the quality of a nation’s school system, they can highlight discrepancies and problems in need of attention. [2] data and tables have drawn on unpublished papers from three graduate students: bommi lee 2012 “efficiency and effectiveness in education across countries: what should be measured?”; yunkuyung min 2012 “states’ variation in international students’ assessment: case of the u. s. and brazil,” and jeongwoo lee 2012 “an attempt to reinterpret student learning outcomes: a cross-national comparison”. stephen heyneman is a professor of international education policy in the department of leadership, policy & organizations at peabody college,vanderbilt university. email: s.heyneman@vanderbilt.edu. stephen p. heyneman   88 current issues in comparative education references baldi, s., jin, y., skemer, m., green, p.j., and herget, d. 2007 highlights from pisa 2006 performance of u.s. 15 year-olds in science and mathematics literacy in an international context. washington d.c.: u.s. national center for education statistics, department of education. bray, m., 2011 the challenge of shadow education: private tutoring and its implications for policy makers in the european union brussels: european commission. cho, hae-jong 1995 “children in the examination war in south korea: a cultural analysis,” pp. 141168 in stevens, s. 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(is current korean education okay?)”http://app.yonhapnews.co.kr/yna/basic/article/press/yibw_showpress.asp x?contents_id=rpr20070517010800353 (in korean). yun, young-ran 2006 motivation, interest and self-learning ability. inha gyoyukyongu (inha education study). no. 12, pp. 181-98. (in korean) zhang y. 2011 “the determinants of national college entrance exam performance in china – with an analysis of private tutoring,” phd dissertation columbia university. © 2005 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 104 april 21, 2005 realizing education for sustainable development in japan: the case of nishinomiya city1 miki yoshizumi kyoto university takaaki miyaguchi united nations university abstract various approaches have been advocated and practiced to address sustainable development. among these, education has been recognized as one of the key measures to achieving sustainability. in nishinomiya, japan, education for sustainable development (esd) has been established through the learning and ecological activities foundation for children (leaf), a nonprofit organization whose activities have been adopted by the ministry of the environment as the model for japanese esd projects nation-wide. leaf aims to establish mutual learning programs through various types of activities. through an examination of leaf initiatives, key elements for achieving sustainable development are explored and analyzed in relation to the unesco framework for implementing esd (unesco, 2003). the paper suggests that a mutual learning environment is a key element in achieving sustainable development. introduction various approaches have been advocated and practiced to address sustainable development. among these, education has been recognized as one of the key measures for achieving sustainability (un, 1992; unesco, 2005; wced, 1987), particularly since the world commission on environment and development (wced) published our common future in 1987. in supporting the global initiative for education for sustainable development (esd), the japanese government has been an active advocate in stressing the importance of combining sustainable development and education by establishing a number of esd programs across the country (japan environmental education forum, 2000). among these, the learning and ecological activities foundation for children (leaf) initiative based in the city of nishinomiya has served as a particularly influential model; its predecessor, the earth watching club (ewc), was adopted by the japanese ministry of the environment in 1995 as the nation-wide environmental education program. its membership currently numbers over half a million persons. the purpose of this paper is to investigate the key elements necessary for realizing esd by examining the case of a successful program in nishinomiya city. the paper begins by presenting a brief overview of the historical context of esd, then introduces leaf within this context. by examining leaf's various initiatives, key elements for achieving sustainable development are explored and analyzed in relation to the unesco framework for implementing esd (unesco, 2003). the case suggests that creating a mutual learning environment is central to achieving sustainable development. realizing education for sustainable development in japan: the case of nishinomiya city current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 105 background the concept of sustainable development first emerged in the 1980s with the well-known wced publication our common future (1987), and in response to a growing awareness of the need to balance economic and social progress with concern for the environment and the exploitation of natural resources. the commission defined sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (wced, 1987, p. 47). the first time that the sustainable development concept formally met education was at the un conference on environment and development in 1992. the conference gave high priority to the role of education in pursuing the kind of development that would respect and nurture the natural environment. in particular, chapter 36 of agenda 21 emphasized that education is critical for promoting sustainable development and improving the capacity of people to address environment and development issues (un, 1992). the johannesburg summit in 2002 broadened the vision of sustainable development and re-affirmed the educational objectives of the millennium development goals (un, 2000) and the dakar framework for action (unesco, 2000). the summit proposed a decade of education for sustainable development, with unesco spearheading the initiative. in december 2002, the united nations general assembly's 57th session proclaimed the decade for the period of 2005 to 2014. according to unesco, the vision of esd is to realize "a world where everyone has the opportunity to benefit from quality education and learn the values, behavior and lifestyles required for a sustainable future and for positive societal transformation" (unesco, 2005, p. 4). in addition, unesco states that esd has four major domains: (1) basic education; (2) reorienting existing education programs; (3) developing public awareness and understanding of sustainability; and (4) training (unesco, 2003). here, basic education does not mean simply increasing basic literacy and numeracy; rather, it entails sharing knowledge, skills, values and perspectives throughout a lifetime of learning for public participation and community decision-making to achieve sustainability (unesco, 2003). reorienting existing education programs requires transdisciplinary understandings of social, economic and environmental sustainability. training implies that all sectors of the workforce can and should contribute to local, regional and national sustainability. in particular, unesco states the following regarding training: "business and industry are thus key sites for on-going vocational and professional training so that all sectors of the workforce have the knowledge and skills necessary to make decisions and perform their work in a sustainable manner" (unesco, 2003, p. 5). given the breadth of this vision, a universal model of education for sustainable development does not exist. while there may be general agreement on the concept of esd, there will be nuanced differences according to local contexts, priorities and approaches. regardless of these variations, however, esd seeks to provide an environment where children, youth, the elderly, and other stakeholders, such as nonprofit organizations (npos), the public sector, and the private sector, can mutually miki yoshizumi & takaaki miyaguchi 106 april 21, 2005 learn about and transfer knowledge and values for sustainable development. the case of leaf in nishinomiya provides an illustration of how one japanese city has attempted to tackle these issues to implement an esd model anchored in a holistic approach to economic, social, and environmental understanding and the principle of mutual learning. methodology this case study is the result of research conducted in nishinomiya city between june 2004 and march 2005, and is based primarily on data collected through participant observation and interviews. in order to observe the day to day activities and decisionmaking that took place, the authors participated in the environmental learning city steering committee of nishinomiya, the working group initiated by leaf to promote environmental learning in nishinomiya. interviews were conducted with members of leaf and officers of nishinomiya regarding various environmental learning activities. in particular, data were collected through a number of interviews with mr. masayoshi ogawa who launched ewc, the predecessor of leaf, in nishinomiya and established the bureau of environmental learning city project in the nishinomiya city hall. analysis of local and national documents regarding environmental education and education for sustainable development, various leaf publications, and other related literatures were examined in order to survey the environmental learning activities promoted by leaf. data were then compared and analyzed with respect to the definition and objectives of esd, drawn from the united nations decade of education for sustainable development (january 2005–december 2014): framework for a draft international implementation scheme (unesco, 2003). the case of esd in nishinomiya city nishinomiya city the city of nishinomiya, with a population of approximately 450,000 and an area of 100.18 sq km, lies between osaka and kobe in the southeastern part of the hyogo prefecture. this is a city where, in 1962, community and local businesses, especially sake brewing industries, protested against the establishment of petroleum complexes and waterfront land reclamation schemes in order to conserve the quality of water in the community. influenced by an increasing worldwide concern over environmental issues, a community-based environmental learning project called the earth watching club (ewc) was launched in 1992 through the initiative of mr. masayoshi ogawa of the nishinomiya municipal government. the focus of this environmental program was activities targeting children and youths. the great hanshin-awaji earthquake of 1995 that resulted in over 6,000 casualties, was a turning point for community-based environmental learning projects such as ewc, which began to be perceived not only as effective tools for tackling environmental issues, but also for issues such as crime and natural disaster reduction with capacity building at the local level for disaster preparedness. as a result, the concepts of ewc were further developed and in 1998 led to the birth of a nonprofit organization called learning and ecological activities foundation for children (leaf), whose aim is to contribute to the development of a sustainable society by building partnerships among citizens, businesses, and the local government (leaf, 2004). realizing education for sustainable development in japan: the case of nishinomiya city current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 107 overview of leaf to achieve its stated goal of developing a sustainable society, leaf initiated environmental learning activities at schools and in local communities, by targeting a wide range of citizens (leaf, 2004). in particular, they focus on youth and children as agents of change who will shape the future of their community. leaf's approach to realizing this goal encompasses (1) the establishment of partnerships with various civic groups, the private sector, and government agencies; (2) development of respect for the environment, including nature and culture; and (3) cultivation of a "self-learning ability" through which the individual's capacity to learn independently from the assistance of educational institutions is enhanced and extended to the informal arena of the household, the school, and the community. specifically, leaf aims to establish a system that enables people relatively unconcerned with environmental issues to participate in activities of environmental learning through various public events targeting a mass audience. through their environmental learning activities, leaf not only seeks to raise people's awareness of environmental issues, but also awareness about community development. leaf's operations are supported entirely by external funding, such as donations by members and corporations, as well as national and local government trust funds. acknowledged as one of the most successful models of practice, leaf was awarded the 5th green purchasing award in 2002 and the environmental grand prix 2004 for local municipalities from the japanese government. initiatives of leaf leaf's various activities can be categorized into five types: (1) community-based education, (2) nature experience activities, (3) mutual learning programs, (4) policy relevance activities, and (5) global partnership. the following section provides an overview of these and cites examples of activities under each category. community-based education. through their community-based education programs, leaf invites participants to learn about both global and local environments through active communication at the local level. one of the projects in this category is called the eco-card. this project aims to forge links between school, family, and community through so-called eco-actions. all elementary school children in nishinomiya (24,000 enrollment) receive an eco-card annually. when children take part in environmentally friendly activities (eco-actions), such as purchasing an eco-friendly product or separating recyclable goods in the community, they get a stamp from one of 1,500 ecostamp holders, such as local school institutions, stationery shops, the city hall, and any other institution or adult who is part of the program. after collecting more than 10 ecostamps on their eco-card, children are awarded the title of earth ranger for their ecofriendly actions. over 2,000 children are authorized as earth rangers each year. in 2004, 2,048 earth rangers were delegated in nishinomiya city alone, and 82,300 were delegated throughout japan in the same year (japanese ministry of the environment, 2005). what is interesting about this activity is that these eco-stamp holders decide by themselves whether or not an action by a child should be rewarded as an eco-action. thus, while children actively search for what might be considered eco-actions, the miki yoshizumi & takaaki miyaguchi 108 april 21, 2005 stamp holders must also continue to learn and develop their ideas on what can be determined as eco-actions. the eco-card program is further tailored for each segment of the school population. for example, in order to collect stamps, third and fourth grade students must conduct research and interviews with various people from the public and private sectors concerning environmental issues. the information gathered from these interviews are shared with the community through the eco-messenger program, which is a studenthosted radio show aired on a local fm station. in collaboration with schools, leaf organizes special classes where students learn about environmental issues from different perspectives. one such class is called legacy tellers in which the elderly of the community talk about the environment when they were young. by listening to what these legacy tellers have experienced, children can compare environmental conditions between the present and the past. also, children can learn how the natural environment has changed by taking short excursions, called townwatch walks, to various local sites with the legacy tellers (leaf, 2004a). nature experience activities. nature experience activities allow children to experience the natural environment of their community. for example, the miyamizu junior nature observation activities, a program entrusted by the nishinomiya board of education, gives children the opportunity to observe the mountains, rivers and sea in nishinomiya through school excursions to these sites. another project allows children to learn about nature in the mountains through hands-on games and exploratory activities that draw from aspects of the natural environment. some of these pursuits incorporate the legacy tellers through on-site activities that demonstrate how the elders interacted with the natural environment in their youth leaf organizes training seminars on nature experience activities for community leaders from all over japan. after the training seminars, leaders are encouraged to develop nature experience activities for their own communities. involvement of the workforce. to encourage collaboration between the public and private sectors, leaf provides opportunities for corporations to become engaged in developing environmental learning programs for elementary and junior high school students. corporations participate in the project through six different working groups whose themes include clothing, food, housing, energy, eco-friendly stationery, and bottles. thus corporate employees at various levels are afforded an opportunity to learn about environmental issues through their presentations to children on environmentally conscious products. policy relevant activities. leaf also actively involves itself with policy relevant activities that influence municipal development polices. for example, in order to reflect the views of the local community to the policy making level, leaf conducted a citizens' nature survey and a citizens' awareness poll (city of nishinomiya, 2003a; 2005). based on its survey and poll of 5,085 people, including children and youth, leaf prepared a report that represented the opinions of the local community. the report served as the driving force for the municipal government's revision of environmental policies and led to the realizing education for sustainable development in japan: the case of nishinomiya city current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 109 establishment of the new nishinomiya environmental plan and nishinomiya city ordinance on city management, both of which were enacted in march 2005. the ordinance regulates, with legally-binding force, day-to-day activities that are not in line with environmental guidelines. the format of the survey and poll also succeeded in stimulating and increasing public awareness on nature issues. they were designed in such a way that those who were surveyed, numbering 3,993 teenagers and others ranging in age from 7 to 81, had to investigate and report on local insects and plants in the nishinomiya vicinity. in doing so, the survey and poll stimulated participants' awareness on nature, and thus their mind-set toward environmental issues. the nishinomiya municipality has developed a web site with the results of the surveys and polls conducted in 1991 and 2003, and people can go online to learn about past and current conditions of the natural environment in nishinomiya city (city of nishinomiya, 2003b). according to the results of the survey, those who participated reported a deeper understanding and appreciation of the local natural environment, including their knowledge of the fish, birds, insects, and plants of nishinomiya. in order to promote local participation and involvement in shaping regional development policies by the municipal government, leaf also supported the establishment of the environmental learning city steering committee of nishinomiya city, which consists of community leaders and representatives of the private and public sectors. with the involvement of this committee, in 2003 nishinomiya was the first city in japan to be declared an " environmental learning city " (leaf, 2004a). global partnership. leaf develops projects beyond the domestic level to foster global partnership among children around the world. it organizes the junior eco-club asiapacific conference each year. in addition, leaf has created the chikyu kids environmental network, a database of children's environmental activities around the world, spanning over 80 countries. leaf has also coordinated joint projects between nishinomiya and burlington, vermont. these have included such activities as promoting education for sustainability through community partnerships ( institute of sustainable communities, 2002). analysis of leaf program the four pillars of esd, as outlined by unesco (2003) and described here earlier, provide a useful framework through which to reflect on the accomplishments of leaf towards achieving esd. this section discusses leaf initiatives in light of these domains of action. basic education whereas traditional educational methods in japan have served primarily to increase basic literacy and numeracy among children, the activities of leaf have embraced basic education and extended beyond to impart an understanding of the nuanced interaction between the economic, social, and environmental dimensions central to sustainable development. fundamental to this process is the development of the self-learning capacities of a range of participants, as well as the sharing of knowledge, values, and skills towards community decision-making and action involving a variety of miki yoshizumi & takaaki miyaguchi 110 april 21, 2005 stakeholders. the eco-card program, for example, as well as the establishment of the environmental learning city steering committee are illustrations of how providing a milieu in which sharing knowledge and values between school children and other community members can extend learning beyond the classroom into the informal sector. in addition, leaf's introduction of the citizens' nature survey and the citizens' awareness poll has encouraged residents to learn more about their local environment. developing public awareness and understanding of sustainability leaf's engagement of a wide range of citizens has been a critical feature in implementing esd. youth and children, commonly viewed as the agents of behavioral change, are typical targets of educational programs. however, leaf's outreach has extended beyond these participants to sectors of the workforce and the community. seminars organized in collaboration with private companies have shown that such activities are effective, not only in raising awareness of those students involved, but also in helping employees within such companies to become more environmentally conscious and aware of important elements of sustainable development, such as the intricate interaction between economic activities and social and environmental consequences. this leads to mutual learning opportunities for both students and the participating corporate employees. in 2004, approximately 2,000 earth rangers were delegated through the eco-card project and about 90 private companies engaged in leaf's activities. this increase in participation is one indicator that leaf has been successful in raising public awareness through its various activities. furthermore, the use of a public radio station as one of the rewards for the eco-card activity, has proven to be an effective method for raising public awareness at the local level. to date, more than 1,400 elementary students have joined in radio programs which they have developed themselves. in addition, introducing children to environmental learning activities from various parts of the world, organizing international conferences, and building a global database on youth environmental networks and activities has expanded the potential for developing awareness and global friendship among children in over 80 countries. public awareness is therefore an integral component of leaf activities. training leaf has actively sought to develop the training component of its initiatives. to this end, leaf has organized seminars on environmental learning for various groups of citizens and a variety of stakeholders, such as children, youths, adults, the elderly, school teachers, government officers and private companies, in an effort to enhance the sharing of knowledge, skills, and values for sustainable development at the local level. the seminars and environmental learning programs organized in collaboration with the private sector for elementary students have gained much popularity. at present, approximately 90 private companies have joined in the leaf program. such activities illustrate the program's engagement in providing continuous training opportunities. reorienting existing education programs at present, leaf activities do not touch upon the reorientation of existing school curricula, which is considered one of the core elements in realizing esd (unesco, 2005). although the majority of leaf activities take place in school, they are not realizing education for sustainable development in japan: the case of nishinomiya city current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 111 incorporated into the school curriculum itself. leaf involves school teachers, various civil groups, and the private sector; however, mere involvement may not be sufficient to produce a lasting impact on the community. integrating these community-based environmental learning activities into the school curriculum could provide further reinforcement and development of core concepts and skills. analyzing leaf activities within the unesco framework for esd provides confirmation of the components of an effective program. however, it also reveals areas for further development. the first of these is the need to incorporate esd programs into formal curricula for reinforcement purposes. second, while leaf is involved in several public awareness campaigns, more can be done. for example, the eco-messenger program makes excellent use of a local radio station; however, exposure to the public is still limited as the program is not aired regularly. not only should there be an increase in the frequency of the radio show, but it should also target a wider audience, to include adolescents and adults. finally, educating the media is of crucial importance. involving media providers themselves into the esd program may encourage them to incorporate sustainable development issues into a larger number of awareness programs. our analysis of leaf esd activities suggests that, while there are several components for implementing esd, the most important aspect that threads across all four domains of the unesco framework, is establishing a mutual learning environment. mutual learning helps develop public awareness of social, economic, and environmental issues and leads to establishing networks of various stakeholders including students, local residents, local governments, npos, and the private sector, allowing them to discuss and address the issues at the same table. such an environment promotes participation of stakeholders and a sustainable intergenerational dialogue. furthermore, it improves the capacity of participants to learn and address environment and development issues, thus avoiding a common pitfall for many esd programs--the lack of common terminology and vision, and clear channels of communication. conclusion the international movement for sustainable development, as represented by various conferences and symposia, has highlighted the need for effective tools to realize sustainable development. education is now recognized as a key partner in striving for sustainable development. although the proposed objectives of the decade for esd and the vision for esd have been broadly defined, the analysis of leaf activities underscores the importance of creating a mutual learning environment involving a variety of stakeholders. unless people interact, learn, and transfer knowledge and values to one another, it will be extremely difficult to build the capacity to realize a sustainable society. an efficient way to realize a sustainable society is to build such capacity at the local level, rather than through top-down decisions and regulations. leaf provides such an environment for members of the public and private sectors, including children, youth, the elderly, and other stakeholders such as npos. unesco's vision of esd includes both formal and informal education. in this respect, however, the leaf program faces the challenge of reorienting school curricula. leaf activities rely on the participation of people who are already interested in esd to some extent. at present, they do not reach out to those individuals who are unaware of the miki yoshizumi & takaaki miyaguchi 112 april 21, 2005 issues of sustainable development. there is also a problem of the government's vertical administrative structure, where officers working on city planning and economic development are indifferent to environmental learning. thus, it is important to institutionalize esd at the government administrative level so that more people will be given opportunities to participate in esd programs. in order to change existing school curricula and institutionalize esd, further discussion with the municipal government and its policy-makers is needed. while this examination of leaf suggests several effective practical features for a working esd model based on the broadly defined and agreed upon theoretical principles of the decade for esd, further comparative study of esd initiatives in japan and elsewhere could yield interesting findings regarding common core elements of successful esd program design across varying local contexts. such findings could point to interesting generalizable models for local modification and adoption. it is hoped that the current case study contributes in part to this end. notes 1 the opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the united nations university (unu). the authors are grateful to leaf and members of the environmental learning city steering committee of nishinomiya, especially mr. masayoshi ogawa for providing information about the activities of leaf and the municipality of nishinomiya. references city of nishinomiya. (2003a). civil nature survey in nishinomiya: let's find living matters in nishinomiya. nishinomiya, japan: city of nishinomiya. city of nishinomiya. (2003b). results of the survey on the local environment. [online]. available at: http://ikimono.leaf.or.jp/. city of nishinomiya. (2005). new environmental plan for nishinomiya. nishinomiya, japan: city of nishinomiya. institute for sustainable communities. (2002). renkei: demonstrating education for sustainability through community partnerships. vermont, usa: institute for sustainable communities. japan environmental education forum. (2000). suggestion for japanese environmental education. tokyo, japan: syougakkan. japanese ministry of the environment. (2005). environmental education and learning in the years to come: towards sustainable society. tokyo, japan: japanese ministry of environment. learning and ecological activities foundation for children. (2003a). eco watching club nishinomiya activities report. nishinomiya, japan: leaf press. realizing education for sustainable development in japan: the case of nishinomiya city current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 113 learning and ecological activities foundation for children. (2003b). environmental learning assistance of corporate sectors. nishinomiya, japan: leaf press. learning and ecological activities foundation for children. (2004a). annual action report. nishinomiya, japan: leaf press. learning and ecological activities foundation for children. (2004b). becoming friends with nishinomiya's rivers. nishinomiya, japan: international soro-putimisuto nishinomiya. unesco. (2000). the dakar framework for action: education for all. paris: unesco. unesco. (2003). united nations decade of education for sustainable development (january 2005–december 2014): framework for a draft international implementation scheme. paris: unesco. unesco. (2005a). education for sustainable development. [online]. available at: http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.phpurl_id=27234&url_do=do_topic&url_section=201.html. united nations. (1992). agenda 21. [online]. available at: http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/index.htm. united nations. (2000). united nations millennium development goals. [online]. available at: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/. world commission on environment and development. (1987). our common future. new york: oxford university press. yoshizumi, m. (2005). challenge on learning activities for sustainable society in nishinomiya. kyoto: unesco and kyoto university. © 2005 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 83 editorial introduction education for sustainable development: changes and challenges the united nations decade of education for sustainable development (undesd), 2005-2014, strives to incorporate key concepts of sustainable development into educational policies and programs of the un, other international agencies, ministries, non-governmental organizations (ngos), community-based organizations, research institutions, the media and the private sector. the implementation scheme is being developed via a consultative process supervised by unesco. twelve years after the 1992 earth summit in rio de janeiro, undesd draws attention to the important role that education may play in promoting sustainable development. education for sustainable development, as defined by unesco, is not merely a synonym for environmental education. rather, it is the educational process of accomplishing sustainable human development--including economic growth, social development and environmental protection--in an equitable manner. thus, educational programs for sustainable development may include both formal and informal initiatives for poverty alleviation, human rights, gender equity, cultural diversity, international understanding, and peace. challenges exist in implementing these concepts within education, such as incorporating sustainable science into curricula; strengthening collaboration between different levels of education; and compensating for the unequal access to information and knowledge in different parts of the world. this issue of cice, published in collaboration with united nations university institute of advanced studies, explores ways in which education for sustainable development has been conceptualized and implemented in various historical and geographic contexts. by providing a platform for international perspectives on these issues, cice seeks to broaden understandings of existing challenges, and how these are being addressed by academics and practitioners. in “holistic yet tangible”: embracing the challenge of complexity for education for sustainable development, patrick hanley examines the utility of an ecosemiotic approach to the epistemological relationship between humans and nature. he explores the applicability of a pragmatic method for making value judgments, in order to identify ways for esd to meet the challenges of complexity. biodun ogunyemi reminds us that the undesd poses disparate challenges to different nations and regions of the world and offers insight into the case of nigeria in mainstreaming sustainable development into african school curricula: issues for nigeria. in analyzing the challenges for nigeria, he suggests that success with current efforts will require the political will to learn from past mistakes and borrow from best practices across the globe. miki yoshizumi and takaaki miyaguchi note that no single model exists for realizing esd. they examine key elements of a successful japanese esd program in relation to the unesco framework in realizing education for sustainable development in japan: 84 april 21, 2005 the case of nishinomiya city. the authors suggest that creating a mutual learning environment is central to any model for achieving sustainable development. in education for sustainable development and the question of balance: lessons from the pacific, kathryn a. jenkins and bertram a. jenkins address the ways in which esd, operating in conjunction with certain environmental education models, can work to solve specific issues confronting developing countries in the pacific, where unsustainable mining, logging and fishing practices threaten the culture, health and economy of local communities. finally, richard capozzi’s essay, sowing the seeds: moving curriculum and school culture towards education for sustainable development, explores how esd manifests itself in current educational thinking and how sustainability could be better integrated into the school experience. he argues for the development of a model small school founded upon the principles of esd--a school that fosters an egalitarian culture that respects difference; the integration of technology and design, business, and core academic disciplines; a sense of community and place; values that contribute to building a culture of peace; and respect for life and the environment. taken together the articles and essay illustrate some of the ways in which academics and practitioners are responding to the conceptual and practical challenges of education for sustainable development. in doing so, they are effectively changing approaches to sustainability, from education about sustainable development to education for sustainable development. microsoft word 41dyrness.doc © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 26 december 18, 2001 popular education and post-war democratization: the case of pennat, guatemala andrea dyrness university of california, berkeley introduction at the start of the 21st century, guatemala is emerging from a prolonged period of authoritarian rule and one of the worst experiences of militarization in latin american history. the thirty-six year civil war which ended in december of 1996 left over 200,000 people dead or "disappeared," and as many as 1.5 million people displaced from their homes (ceh 1999). these figures belie the deeper psychological and cultural wounds inflicted by the militarization, particularly on guatemala's majority indigenous population. the commission for historical clarification (guatemala's truth commission), concluded in 1999: "to achieve national harmony and reconciliation, a concerted effort at cultural change is required…this can only be contemplated through an active policy of education for peace" (1999, p.38). it is not uncommon for nations to turn to education as a vehicle for post-war social reconstruction, or to embrace educational reform as a means of cultivating democracy. but in guatemala, education for democracy must also address the "culture of terror" and the "culture of fear" that war has left behind (sluka, 2000). what would such an "education for peace" look like? can education achieve the tall order of facilitating a national transition to democracy, as well as helping individuals and communities recover from the devastating effects of political violence and repression? this paper explores these questions by examining a non-governmental program of popular education for working children and youth in guatemala. 'pennat,' or programa educativo del niño, niña y adolescente trabajador (educational program for child and adolescent workers), is an alternative educational program created for working children who are unable to attend regular school. the focus on working youth is important in guatemala because this population is possibly the most victimized by the effects of the war and the current social and economic order. in this paper i will outline aspects of pennat's program and philosophy, and explore their meaning and significance in the context of guatemala's post-war transition. i argue that pennat is important both for what it does and for whom it serves--poor indigenous children. because it is explicitly oriented toward social change, based on a popular education philosophy that aims to empower the most excluded members of society, pennat makes a unique contribution to post-war democratization and to building a "culture of mutual respect and peace" in guatemala (ceh, 1999, p. 39). the guatemalan context the history of guatemala is marked by the profound exclusion and marginalization of mayan indigenous groups, which comprise almost two-thirds of the population, from economic and political participation (sieder, 1999; ceh 1999). the commission for historical clarification found in this exclusionary history the roots of the armed conflict. according to the ceh report, "the proclamation of independence in 1821…saw the popular education and post-war democratization: the case of pennat, guatemala current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 27 creation of an authoritarian state which excluded the majority of the population, was racist in its precepts and practices, and served to protect the economic interests of the privileged minority" (ceh 1999, p. 1). when social injustice inevitably led to protest and political instability, the state's response was one of repression. violence and terror became a means of maintaining social control. long scapegoated in guatemala's history, indigenous people were the primary victims of the government's brutal counterinsurgency campaign. when the guatemalan truth commission released its final report in february 1999, it declared that the guatemalan state had committed "acts of genocide" against the mayan people (ceh 1999, p.24). the report also found the state responsible for 93 percent of the documented human rights violations committed during the armed conflict; while only three percent were attributed to the guerilla forces (ceh, 1999, p.18 & 26). however, while indigenous people gained the status of victims on the official record, the provisions of the peace accords failed to improve the material conditions of indigenous communities most affected by the war (ross, 2001). although political violence and terror had come to an end, the structural violence that preceded it, as well as new forms of violence that are its legacies, are very much a part of guatemalan society (warren, 2000)1. growing economic inequality is perhaps the most serious threat to the peace process and democratization in guatemala (sieder, 1999; warren, 2000). guatemala, with the largest economy in central america, has the worst human development indicators in the region. a unhdp report released in july 2000 ranked guatemala 31st of the 32 latin american and caribbean nations on indicators including education, literacy and life expectancy2. according to the report, 70 percent of guatemalans, particularly those in rural areas and the indigenous, live in poverty. adult illiteracy is 32.7 percent. illiteracy rates are higher among women (51%), and in rural areas, reaching as high as 76percent in ixil and northern alta verapaz and el quiché, regions with majority indigenous populations (pennat, 2000; unesco, 1997). related to growing inequality are rising rates of criminal violence, or delincuencia, after the war. scholars have called attention to a "surge in violence with demobilization" (warren, 2000, p. 238). this is a common pattern in latin american countries making the transition to democracy3. with few new job opportunities after the war, many have found in violent crime a way of life. stories of violent assaults and kidnappings are commonplace in guatemala. the continuing danger of streets and public places leads to high levels of fear, mistrust, and scapegoating, particularly of street and working youth, as we shall see. street and working children the children who are served by pennats program are part of a growing population of working children and youth in guatemala. they work for survival. the majority of these children are indigenous. in the city, the majority of them are migrants from the rural areas, whose families came to the city fleeing the armed conflict or rural poverty. settling in urban slum settlements (asentamientos) on the outskirts of the city, they find work in the informal economy: vending in markets, parks, bus terminals, or on the streets, shining shoes or guarding cars. a smaller number of the youth work in the andrea dyrness 28 december 18, 2001 manufacturing and service sectors: in factories, restaurants, or in construction. in the rural areas, the majority of working children and youth work in agriculture, for substandard wages or no wages at all (pennat, 2000). in guatemala city, many of the youth pennat serves have no parents, and are responsible for the care of younger siblings. many, but by no means all, of the young workers find their homes in the streets4. pennat is concerned with working children and youth, wherever they may live. these are children who are involved in child labor as defined by the guatemalan constitution: "all economic activity that boys and girls younger than 18 carry out independently, for their families, domestically, or any other form of income generation that impedes the child's normal physical and intellectual development" (pennat, 2000, p. 3)5. pennat emphasizes that child labor is a structural phenomenon, whose origins lie in a complex host of socioeconomic, political, and cultural factors, such as extreme poverty, low levels of education and employment among the parents, repetitive and "passive" education that encourages absenteeism and dropping out, lack of a coherent social policy framework to address the needs of youth, and the absence of equitable social development in guatemala (ibid). while the ministry of education has undertaken major educational reforms in the transition from war to peace, it has not included working children among those who are in need of greater educational access. reforms undertaken since the peace accords include an expansion of bilingual education (with spanish and mayan languages), and a decentralization program aimed at increasing coverage and improving educational quality in underserved rural areas (dyrness, 1998)6. but no effort has been made to serve urban working youth, many of whom, ironically, left rural areas in search of better opportunities in the city. hence, the population of working youth in the city is possibly the most victimized as well as the most invisible in the new social order in guatemala. they are not seen as legitimate victims of wartime injustices who deserve special treatment in postwar reconstruction. rather, where they are visible, working and street youth are seen as "delinquents" or threats to social stability, who should be punished, corrected, or eliminated (sluka, 2000; klees, rizzini & dewees, 2000; huggins & mesquita 2000). in effect, they have become the new scapegoat, the new threat to "national security." jeffrey sluka argues that street children have become the "new face of death squad terror in latin america" (2000, p. 5).citing reports from guatemala as well as other latin american nations, sluka writes that street children, along with other "undesirables," have been added to the list of "terrorists" and "subversives," and have suffered torture, disappearance, and murder at the hands of security forces (2000, p. 5-6). in august 2000, the san francisco chronicle called attention to "a dirty war against street children" in central america, reporting a "string of slayings" on the streets of honduras, where there was a complete lack of investigation of the murders7. huggins and mesquita (2000) have documented the rise of youth murders in brazil during the transition from military rule to democracy (1985 to the present), and estimate that in the majority of cases the perpetrator is a police-linked extermination group. street and working children, then, are living witness to the"continuum of violence in war and peace" (bourgois 2001). popular education and post-war democratization: the case of pennat, guatemala current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 29 the evidence from these reports suggests that the lives of street and working youth are the terrain in which new battles over democratization are fought. the pennat program asserts that the education of these children and youth must take priority in national efforts for postwar reconstruction and democratic social change. pennat: programa educativo del niño, niña y adolescente trabajador pennat, or educational program for child and adolescent workers, was created in 1995 to provide a model of alternative education for working children and teenagers in guatemala. through the program's innovative and flexible methods, working children and teenagers can complete the equivalent of ninth grade and receive a governmentrecognized diploma. the goal of pennat is to provide an educational program that both respects the unique circumstances of working youth and empowers them to become agents of their own development. it represents both an expansion of educational access--bringing education to children who are not able to attend regular school--and educational reform, in that its methods are radically different from those of the traditional education system and aim to empower students to take a much greater role in shaping their destinies. pennat currently serves some 2,500 working children and adolescents in a total of 54 "sectors" in the departments of guatemala, chimaltenango, and quetzaltenango. ("sectors" refers to the number of sites or areas of service that pennat has set up within these departments; it can be considered the equivalent of "schools" in pennat's program.). the students range in age from 7 to 17. ninety percent of the children and adolescents work in the informal sector of the economy; 10 percent work in the formal sector, primarily in food industries and construction. the genius of pennat lies in bringing school to the children wherever they are working: in the markets, where the program has negotiated with market administrators to set up classrooms (salones); in parks, bus terminals, or on the street. in so doing, pennat redefines what school is, making the children's work experience the center of their education: [the educational program] always starts with the context of the working child; this means that the curricular framework, in addition to meeting the standards of the ministry of education, [is] based on the conditions of existence in which the children live and work; their history, their cultural inheritance, the risks to which they are exposed, what they think and what they say" (pennat, 1998, p. 23)8. pennat's program is entirely open and flexible: students can enroll at any time, show up for class whenever they can, and otherwise work at their own pace to complete the three stages (etapas) that comprise the educational program (through the sixth grade). teaching schedules are flexible to allow teachers to go in search of students who cannot come to the meeting place. pennat also offers a saturday program for grades 7-9 (educación básica), as well as a vocational training program, and a medical clinic that provides free medical care to working children and their families, vaccination and vitamin campaigns, and health education training to pennat's teachers. popular education philosophy pennat's expressed goal is to develop in its young students a "critical and historical conscience" (pennat, 2000). the philosophy, inspired by the ideas of paulo freire, is andrea dyrness 30 december 18, 2001 based on the principles of democracy, participation, solidarity, creativity, and social conscience. solidarity means respecting the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of the students, which have not traditionally been respected in guatemalan society, and respecting the circumstances in which the children work. bringing school to their workplace is one way of doing this. but the principal way in which pennat offers an education that is relevant and empowering to working youth is by a specialized and adaptable curriculum that meets them where they are. pennat's hallmark accomplishment is the development of its own curriculum based on the needs of working youth, which was approved by the ministry of education. developed by pennat's own educators, the curriculum spans the full spectrum of subjects--math, history/social studies, communication (language), environment/natural science--and includes a number of "adaptable areas" such as mental health, drug education, health and hygiene, and children's rights. pennat teachers emphasize that the program should be competitive with what is offered in the national schools at the same time that is relevant to the needs of working youth. pennat's highly coveted curriculum was published in july of 1998, and beginning in september 1999 the ministry of education committed funds to publish pennat's curricular materials. pennat educators use the methodology of popular education, based on the full participation of students in the educational process. the goal is for the children to become agents of their own learning: activities are geared at promoting participation, provoking reflection, and teaching kids to analyze. the teacher's role is that of a facilitator. teachers describe a variety of pedagogical strategies, including discussion circles, (comunidades de indagación), brainstorms (lluvia de ideas), games, icebreakers, and group-work. in the discussion circles, the simplest story or topic can become the basis for a discussion that asks students to express their opinions, to reason, and to listen and respond to the opinions of their classmates. pennat educators take seriously the principle of dialogue, at the heart of popular education (freire, 1970). dialogue depends on egalitarian relationships between teacher and student, who are both learners and teachers. this entails a radical departure from traditional hierarchical and authoritarian relationships found in public schools. through dialogue, pennat educators establish a culture of trust that will encourage students to take on new roles. democratic structure pennat educators describe their organization as a democracy, and they say this is in sharp contrast to their previous teaching jobs in public schools. they point to the fact that the director and assistant director were themselves educators of street children for several years, so "they are our compañeros (partners)"; they respect and support the teachers' work. the majority of pennat educators are indigenous and speak a mayan language in addition to spanish, which is essential in order for them to relate to their students. all pennat educators have guatemalan teacher certification for primary school and several are pursuing further studies at the university. they say they were drawn to pennat for the chance to serve an important need--educating working kids-and for the program's unconventional approach9. ongoing professional development popular education and post-war democratization: the case of pennat, guatemala current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 31 and time for teachers to reflect together on their work is integrated into the regular schedule of the program. according to pennat's director, to depart from the traditional ("salir de lo tradicional") is at the heart of pennat's approach, and this is only possible through regular trainings that encourage teachers to reflect on different approaches to teaching. educators are continually involved in curriculum development, and in developing new pedagogical methods that are flexible and adapted to the circumstances of the children they work with. pennat views its work--including the articulation of values--as a democratic enterprise that all staff must engage in, driven by the common goal of better serving working children and youth. the culture of reflection and collaboration among the staff makes it possible for the teachers to embody these values to the students. community involvement finally, pennat's program would not be possible without organic connections to the families and communities the program serves. pennat places priority on involving parents and families and working in solidarity with them. a full-time staff person is dedicated to family outreach and organizes family activities throughout the year. through the family outreach program, pennat educators work with families on communication, conflict resolution, and children's rights. educators are in constant communication with the parents and make home visits frequently. the fact that the teachers come to the students' place of work, and that most of the teachers are of mayan origin, helps to build solidarity and establish trusting relationships with the parents, who are primarily indigenous. such fusion of interests between teachers and poor indigenous communities would be hard to achieve in the public schools. while guatemalan public schools, especially in the rural areas, suffer high dropout rates, pennat's director says dropping out isn't a problem for their program. if a student doesn't show up, the teacher finds him. together they will work out a schedule that works for the student10. popular education, violence, and social change while pennat's personalized model can go far in terms of changing individual students' lives, there is also a recognition that in order to fully restore the rights of working children and youth, guatemalan society would have to go through radical structural changes. pennat's ultimate goal is not merely to improve the immediate conditions of these young people's lives, but to contribute to the struggle for larger structural changes that will liberate all working youth from the conditions that oppress them. pennat aims for its students to become agents of social change who will contribute to the progressive eradication of child labor and the development of a culture of peace and democracy in guatemala (pennat, 2000). it is in this aspect that it differs from most other programs for street and working children, and makes a unique contribution to post-war democratization in guatemala. klees, rizzini, and dewees (2000), writing from a brazilian context, argue that most programs designed to solve the problems of street and working youth fail. they fail because they do not address the underlying structures of inequality that produce street and working children, and instead tinker with "technical solutions" that address one or more problems facing street and working youth, such as drug addiction, poor health, or andrea dyrness 32 december 18, 2001 illiteracy. successive "innovations" produce no changes in the overall plight of poor children because, in fact, they are not intended to. klees, rizzini, and dewees maintain that "the endless technical responses [to the problems of poverty] have actually provided a way to avoid committing sufficient resources and making necessary structural changes" (p.92). as roslyn mickelson writes, "even the most carefully designed and comprehensively delivered programs potentially affect the lives of only a few homeless and street children, while the conditions that produced their plight remain untouched" (2000, p. 274). it therefore becomes extremely important for programs seeking to improve the lives of poor children and youth to be explicitly oriented towards social change. the case of pennat is valuable because it demonstrates how an educational program can address the immediate needs of working youth and speak to larger issues of inequality and structural violence that make child labor an inherent feature of the global capitalist system. it begins with a popular education philosophy that views poor, ordinary people as agents of change, and education as a means of critically analyzing the conditions that keep them impoverished (arnold, 1986; freire, 1970 & 1973). pennat's ideology asserts that, while traditional educational practices in guatemala have mirrored the repressive and authoritarian practices of the larger society, popular education empowers poor children and adults to participate in public life and lead the way in the creation of a democracy. the difference between this and a paternalistic approach was articulated by freire: "the important thing is to help people (and nations) help themselves, to place them in consciously critical confrontation with their problems, to make them the agents of their own recuperation" (freire, 1973, p. 16). freire reminds us that "before it becomes a political form, democracy is a form of life" (1973, p. 29). democracy depends on the critical consciousness of human beings, who, through debate and dialogue, examine common problems and take action to change their world. in guatemala, emerging from decades of state terror, habits of critical thinking do not come naturally: habits of domination and dependence, fear and apathy, are slow to disappear. social transformation in guatemala, as elsewhere, depends on a form of education that will "enable people to reflect on themselves, their responsibilities, and their role in the new cultural climate" (freire, 1973, p. 16). as felix cadena states, this education should "help the people reclaim their collective history so that they can bring about the structural changes that ensure the fulfilling of their needs and wishes, both in their daily lives and on a broader cultural level" (cadena, cited in hamilton & cunningham, 1989, p. 444). it is here that pennat makes an invaluable contribution, focusing on the most excluded and vulnerable members of guatemalan society. a society that excludes over two million children from the moral realm of "good citizens" and the rights and protections therein, cannot hope for a democratic future. twenty years from now, these children will be adults. without the attention of programs like pennat, they will be unlikely to participate in a democracy. without the ability to read or write, or the awareness of their own power as citizens, they will be unlikely to vote, or to send their children to school. popular education and post-war democratization: the case of pennat, guatemala current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 33 the pennat program believes that an alternative vision is possible. pennat treats these children as potential future leaders of the country, who, with a deep understanding of the problems of the poor, will push the country toward real democratic social change. as utopian as it seems, this is the vision that pennat educators hold up for their students every day. it is a bold vision, but democracy requires nothing less. notes 1. see nacla report on the americas vol. xxxv no. 1 july/august 2001, pages 8-11, for an update on the rise of terror in guatemala in the aftermath of the gerardi case. 2. the siglo news, july 5-11, 2000. 3. see caldeira, 2000, and huggins & mesquita, 2000 for an account of this in brazil, and bourgois 2001 for a discussion of el salvador. 4. here it is important to draw a distinction between street and working children, who often live in very different circumstances. street children have often been the subject of an international rhetoric that stigmatizes poor families in the third world (rosemberg, 2000). not all children who work live on the streets, and not all children who live on the streets are abandoned by their families; many maintain ties with their families even as they work and live periodically on the streets (ibid.). the designation "street children" often encompasses children who use the streets as their place of work but live in homes with their families, children who live and work on the streets, children who live but do not work on the streets, and children who work on the streets sporadically. though the conditions and experiences of these children vary greatly, the youth share the same stigmatization in the larger society and suffer many of the same abuses. 5. it is very difficult to know exactly how many working children and youth there are in guatemala. according to pennat's director, the official figure is set at 700,000, but non-governmental organizations (ngos) who work in the field estimate the reality to be closer to two million. difficulties in pinning down this number include differences in the age groups counted as "working youth," different definitions of what it means to be working, and the invisibility of many working children and youth who are employed in illegal activities. 6. pronade, or programa nacional de autogestión para el desarrollo educativo, involves rural communities in the creation and operation of new public schools. 7. begun in 1993 with inter-american development bank funds and later supported by the world bank, the program served 300,000 children by july 2000. 8. "endangered children: wave of killings terrorizes street kids, " san francisco chronicle, august 24, 2000. 9. my translation from the spanish. andrea dyrness 34 december 18, 2001 10. this information is drawn from formal and informal interviews i conducted with pennat educators from 1997 to 2000 and from a presentation made by 11. pennat educators at a conference at u.c. berkeley in november 2000. 12. i conducted formal and informal interviews with the director from 1997-2001. references arnold, r., et al. (1986) a new weave: popular education in canada and central america. toronto: cuso. bourgois, p. (in press). the continuum of violence in war and peace: post-cold war lessons from el salvador, ethnography, 2(1). caldeira, t. p.r. (2000). city of walls: crime, segregation, and citizenship in são paulo. berkeley: university of california press. comisión para el esclarecimiento histórico (ceh) (1999). guatemala: memory of silence. report of the commission for historical clarification. conclusions and recommendations, guatemala. [online]. available at: http://worldpolicy.org/americas/guatindex.html dyrness, a. (1998). seeds of change: ngos, the church, and education reform in central america: final report to the strachan foundation. san josé, costa rica: the strachan foundation. freire, p. (1990, c. 1970). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: continuum books. freire, p. (1973). education for critical consciousness. new york: continuum books. hamilton, e. & cunningham, p.m. (1989). community-based adult education. in s.b. merriam & p.m. cunningham (eds.), handbook of adult and continuing education. san francisco: jossey bass publishers. huggins, m. k. & mesquita, m. (2000). civic invisibility, marginality, and moral exclusion: the murders of street youth in brazil. in r. mickelson (ed.), children on the streets of the americas: globalization, homelessness and education in the united states, brazil, and cuba (pp.257-270). new york: routledge. klees, s., i. rizzini, & dewees, a. (2000). a new paradigm for social change: social movements and the transformation of policy for street and working children in brazil. in r. mickelson (ed.), children on the streets of the americas: globalization, homelessness and education in the united states, brazil, and cuba (pp.79-99). new york: routledge. mickelson, r.a. (2000). children on the streets of the americas: implications for social policy and educational practice. in r. mickelson (ed.), children on the streets of the popular education and post-war democratization: the case of pennat, guatemala current issues in comparative education, vol. 4(2) 35 americas: globalization, homelessness and education in the united states, brazil, and cuba (pp.271-283). new york: routledge. ministry of education (1997). programa nacional de autogestión para el desarrollo educativo. guatemala: ministry of education. pennat (2000). plan estratégico marco: 2000-2005. guatemala: pennat. pennat (1998). currículum educativo alternativo. guatemala: pennat. rosemberg, f. (2000). from discourse to reality: a profile of the lives and an estimate of the numbeer of street children and adolescents in brazil. in r. mickelson (ed.) children on the streets of the americas. new york: routledge. ross, a. (2001). geographies of justice: truth-telling and accountability in guatemala. paper presented at the association of american geographers, 2001 annual meeting, new york city. sieder, r. (1999). rethinking democratisation and citizenship: legal pluralism and institutional reform in guatemala. citizenship studies, 3(1). sieder, r. (1998). guatemala after the peace accords. london: institute of latin american studies. sluka, j. a. (2000). state terror and anthropology. in sluka, j. (ed.) death squads: the anthropology of state terror. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. warren, k. b. (2000). death squads and wider complicities: dilemmas for the anthropology of violence. in j. sluka (ed.), death squads: the anthropology of state terror. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. microsoft word 07_cice_fall2006_walker_serrano_yhl.doc © 2006 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 9(1) 60 formulating a cosmopolitan approach to immigration and social policy: lessons from american (north and south) indigenous and immigrant groups jeffrey p. walker teachers college, columbia university ana m. serrano loyola marymount university abstract throughout history the united states has been constantly confronted with the responsibility of integrating diverse groups of people into its society. this paper uses current and historical ideas about the complex nature of indigenous groups, globalization, and education as vehicles for promoting the adoption of cosmopolitanism, a paradigm that values inclusion, tolerance, and respect for the other. cosmopolitanism is discussed as a plausible alternative to historical assimilationist/nativist practices. the paper uses the otavalos, an indigenous population in ecuador, as an instructive example of a community that successfully applies a cosmopolitan approach to its indigenous identity and immigration behaviors to integrate itself into a modern global society. introduction before 1965, immigrants to the u.s. were primarily european (takaki, 1993). more recent data show significant changes in the ethnic configuration and proportion of immigrants entering the u.s. according to the 2000 census, immigrants and their children constitute 20 percent of the total american population (u.s. census bureau, 2000). furthermore, hispanics are overtaking african americans as the largest minority, while non-hispanic whites have declined to twothirds of the population and have even become a minority in california, the most populous u.s. state. based on the latest projections, ethnic groups of color will comprise approximately half of the u.s. population by the year 2050 (u.s. census bureau, 2000). given this minority-majority trend, what macrosystems will be envisioned in order to promote relationships among immigrants, minority groups, indigenous groups, and the larger society? how might these relationships take into consideration a new world order in an era of globalization? this paper responds to these questions by examining america’s historical response to indigenous and immigrant populations. the purpose of the paper is to make a case for a more inclusive approach to community building. we focus on indigenous and immigrant populations because historically, those in power have put serious, overt pressure on these two groups to assimilate. we suggest cosmopolitanism, the practice of valuing all cultures equally, as a plausible alternative to the historical assimilationist/nativist practices. finally, we look at the otavalo indigenous in ecuador, who are both indigenous and immigrant, as an example of a group coping with and taking advantage of globalization to strengthen their community both at formulating a cosmopolitan approach to immigration and social policy: lessons from american (north and south) indigenous and immigrant groups 61 december 7, 2006 home and abroad. the otavalos may teach indigenous, immigrant, and dominant groups how to embrace a more cosmopolitan perspective toward each other. the assimilationist tradition in u.s. immigration policy the primary theoretical framework that social scientists and historians have traditionally used to analyze the relationship of the immigrant culture to that of the larger society has been assimilation. scholars who write about assimilation often describe it as an evolutionary process in which immigrants gave up all traces of their old life in favor of the superior values of america (hirschman, 1983). although the term "assimilation" is a fairly new one in education, the concept itself has been influencing american education for centuries. the establishment of french and spanish missions by colonists in the sixteenth century was clearly intended to transform indigenous native american culture through the integration of christian ideals. by the early twentieth century, educational policy toward those belonging to non-white groups was thoroughly assimilationist. one scholar, in speaking of the native american experience, has summarized this phenomenon as follows: in the early 1900s, federal boarding schools forbade native language use and religious practice, and they separated families. policy makers calculated these to achieve far-reaching social goals, to civilize and christianize young indian people and so draw them away from tribal identification and communal living. (lomawaima, 1993) more recent stories of the "no spanish rules" in southwest schools as late as the 1970s indicate efforts to americanize mexican american students (acuna, 1988). the consequences for speaking spanish on school grounds, according to a study by macgregor-mendoza (2000), could include corporal punishment, and one individual reported that he was not only "beaten with a stick" when caught speaking spanish, but also admonished by teachers for using "a filthy language" (salazar, 1992, p. 330). negative responses to students’ language and/or culture that are deeply situated cultural practices of the community and family do little to facilitate the educational desired outcomes of assimilation. the case of mexican americans is particularly interesting because it blurs the line between indigenous and immigrant populations. many mexicans who cross the rio grande are entering a land their ancestors lived in for generations before the mexican american war. given the greater acceptance of racial diversity and inclusion in america following the ethnic revitalization programs of the 1960s and 70s (banks, 2006), it would be comforting to believe that conformist-oriented policies are no longer given serious credence. unfortunately, as evidenced by the recent success in banning bilingual programs from public schools in arizona and california (crawford, 2000; galindo, 1997), such is not the case. this legislation reveals the resistant attitudes towards cultural difference that still pervade americans today. "the problem," as wuthnow (2006) points out, "is that large segments of white americans still prefer to think in assimilationist terms, hoping against hope that a color-blind society can be created, in which all hues seem white" (p. 184). having described the discriminatory, assimilationist nature of social policy in the u.s., as experienced by native and mexican americans, the following discussion considers cosmopolitanism as a viable alternative response to the education of immigrant and indigenous groups. jeffrey p. walker and ana m. serrano current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 62 expanding notions of global equity much greater attention has been devoted in recent years to the relationship between migration and education, and the implications this has for addressing the issues of integration, cohesion, language education, and multicultural education (luchtenberg, 2004). educators today have a responsibility to counteract the longstanding problems associated with assimilationist and nativist education in the u.s. by developing curricula that are sensitive to the concerns of the rapidly changing global ethos. as banks (2006) points out, "worldwide immigration and globalization raises new questions about how to prepare students for thoughtful and active citizenship" (p. 151), which essentially means teaching students to value difference in themselves and others. some of the more significant effects of globalization on educational policy include the creation of greater international policy networks, more awareness of economic considerations, and a much greater convergence of discourse relating to educational policy objectives (george & wilding, 2002). academicians and policymakers frequently offer new theories for how to transcend the everpresent politicization of race, ethnicity, and immigration in the u.s., with proposals ranging from the assimilationist plea for strengthening western (namely, anglo-protestant) values (huntington, 1996), to the more pluralist suggestion of restoring the "melting pot" (barone, 2001). others proclaim the necessity of a "new assimilation theory" (alba & nee, 2003), or more optimistically assert that the entrenched 'anglo-american' culture has reached its apogee and is now on the decline (kaufmann, 2004). however, one of the more intriguing proposals in the ongoing debate about immigration and assimilation is hollinger's postethnic america: beyond multiculturalism (1995). in it, the author attempts to transcend the debate about multiculturalism in america by offering a "critical renewal of cosmopolitanism in the context of today's greater sensitivity to roots" (p. 5). the problem with multiculturalism, hollinger contends, is that it has come to denote a set of obsolete arguments that no longer persuasively speak to contemporary conditions in the u.s. (p. 83). in his argument, hollinger carefully sharpens the distinction between those advocating multiculturalism, a term which has come to be synonymous with pluralism, and those advancing cosmopolitanism; whereas both groups promote diversity and tolerance, pluralists accept ethnic segmentation as normative while cosmopolitans espouse the importance of multiple affiliations (hollinger, pp. 3-4, 84-86; vertovec & cohen, 2003, p. 18). hollinger's discussion foreshadowed a considerable revitalization of interest in cosmopolitanism during the second half of the 1990s as globalization continued its ascendancy (e.g., appiah, 2006; carter, 2001; dower & williams, 2002; heater, 1996; hutchings & dannreuther, 1999; linklater, 1998; nussbaum, 1996; papastephanou 2002, 2005; snauwaert, 2002). this sea change is largely attributed to a variety of social and political factors, which are enumerated by turner (2002) and include: the partial erosion of national sovereignty and the growth of dual and multiple citizenship; the growth of global markets, especially a global labour market and an expansion of migrant labour seeking forms of quasi-citizenship; the growth of multiculturalism and cultural hybridity as an aspect of mainstream contemporary political life; and the globalization of the politics of migrant communities, giving rise to diasporic cultures. (p. 58) formulating a cosmopolitan approach to immigration and social policy: lessons from american (north and south) indigenous and immigrant groups 63 december 7, 2006 the critical point here is that cosmopolitanism encompasses a particular project that places a high value on the importance of inclusion, tolerance, and respect for the other beyond the debated and limiting concept of 'multiculturalism'. given the nature of cosmopolitanism and its importance for considerations of inclusivity and diversity, it becomes necessary to determine more precisely what implications the concept has for addressing the complex challenges associated with international migration, indigenous populations, and education. snauwaert (2002) discusses the direct implications that cosmopolitanism might have for citizenship education in his broad thesis: since a cosmopolitan perspective calls for the cultivation of "moral reciprocity" and "shared commonality" (p. 10), it is necessary to move beyond the imperatives of the nation-state and consider ways in which educational systems can specialize in the development of "empathetic, respectful, and wide-awake cosmopolitan citizens" (p. 12). the connection between cosmopolitanism and education has important implications for the relationships between immigration and schooling, particularly because of cosmopolitanism’s emphasis on valuing difference. by teaching cosmopolitanism, educators encourage minority groups to view their differences as assets rather than deficiencies, thereby empowering these groups to use their differences to advance themselves. this is a stark contrast with earlier views of education which advocated the elimination of difference as the sole path to successful democracy. it is also particularly relevant considering the worldwide phenomenon of transnational migration and the unprecedented movement of diverse racial, cultural, ethnic, and religious groups across nation states. a model of cosmopolitan education is well equipped to address the needs of increasing numbers of students who have multiple national identities and will have professional and personal commitments around the globe (banks, 2004; banks, 2006; papastergiadis, 2000). as such, well-envisioned educational innovations would consider students’ intellectual, linguistic, cultural, and social welfare to be central when designing the experiences they would encounter in schools. schools would take advantage of the linguistic and cultural understandings indigenous and immigrant students bring to the classroom to advance the education of all students. in the final section we turn to the otavalos, an indigenous population in ecuador, as an instructive example of a community that has taken the opportunities offered by global markets to secure, as well as expand their culture and identity into one that can be truly characterized as 'cosmopolitan'. cosmopolitanism, globalization and transmigration: the case of otavalo indigenous otavalo is two hours north of quito, ecuador in the andean highlands. the town, popular among tourists, has a famous market well known for its local textiles and crafts. the otavalos, similar to american indian and mexican american in the united states, have been accorded an inferior social status. as such, the otavalos have suffered economically, politically, linguistically, socially, and culturally (bebbington, 2000; korovkin, 1998; kyle, 1999; meisch, 1997). as buítron (1951) tells us, "they were conquered and dominated by the incas, later by the spanish, and now by priests, hacienda owners, lawyers and clerks, city officials and political officers, tavern owners, etc." (cited in meisch, 1997, p. 85). as late as the mid-1970s the otavalos experienced great discrimination in their native ecuador. in the 1960s and 1970s, however, the indigenous population of ecuador began organizing for their rights, and in addition to more conscientious legislation, opportunities for trade in europe and the u.s. helped the otavalos find markets for their textiles, crafts and music (bebbington, 2000; korovkin, 1998; kyle, 1999; meisch, 1997). jeffrey p. walker and ana m. serrano current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 64 the otavalos represent a minority cultural group that has managed to exist and in some cases prosper in an industrialized society using their traditional skills, social practices, language and belief systems to maintain their culture and language, while at the same time adapting new technologies and learning the language and culture of others' to survive at home, as well as in foreign lands (kyle, 1999; korovkin, 1998; meisch, 1997). otavalos’ successful local economic development can, in part, be attributed to their past practices. a history of otavalo and its people shows that weaving was a local tradition starting in pre-inca times that has evolved and been modernized throughout the years (korovkin, 1998). in addition to their textile and craft production, otavalos were also merchants, and as such, they can be considered transnational as they build economic relationships at home and abroad. in the past they traveled across south america and, as early as the mid 1940s they traveled to international markets (e.g., northern caribbean and the u.s.) to sell their textiles (kyle, 1999). today, they can be seen in europe, the u.s., and throughout south america selling their textiles and handicrafts in outdoor markets and entertaining crowds with their distinctive andean sounds on street corners (meisch, 1997). according to kyle (1999) otavalo migrants travel "to at least twenty-three countries with an average time abroad of less than one year. in the course of the overseas marketing of their own products and those of other indigenous groups, otavalos have carved out a global market niche for inexpensive handicrafts manufactured by household labour using pre-industrial and industrial technologies of scale" (p. 423). traditionally, otavalos come from a non-literate society. however, their increased economic success and travel crystallized the need for formal education to learn "some spanish and arithmetic" in order to communicate and better understand the market system (korovkian, 1988, p. 135). they adopted new goals of sending their children to colleges and universities. as education increased, rates of illiteracy decreased from 44% in 1950 to 14% in 1990 (korovkin, 1988; meisch, 1997). educational problems such as lack of textbooks, overcrowded classrooms, language barriers, and inadequate teacher wages led the community to enlist the help of the university, government agencies, and international governments to generate a creative solution (korovkin, 1988). these efforts resulted in community-based bilingual educational programs that were eventually staffed by indigenous college graduates. otavalos also study abroad through foreign government programs and their population now includes highly educated individuals who are able to campaign for a continued emphasis on bilingual and cultural education (korovkin, 1988; meisch, 1997). education is not flawless and illiteracy rates remain high, especially among older otavalos. however, the educated otavalos serve as a baseline that support educational programs for the population at large and influence local, political, and social responses to education. as a result of their transnational interactions and cosmopolitan approach, the otavalos have improved the development of their social group through an expansion of their international connections, none of which would have been possible without the appreciation for difference espoused in cosmopolitanism (portes, guamizo & haller, 2002). the otavalos are neither confined to their past existence nor coerced to assimilate to mainstream culture. indeed, they create and recreate their own identity as they control their own situations (de la torre, 2006). according to kyle (1999), the otavalo example "illustrates that transnational corporations are not the only ones able to take advantage of economic opportunities spread around the globe by virtue of their large budgets and organizational prowess" (p. 424). for immigrants and formulating a cosmopolitan approach to immigration and social policy: lessons from american (north and south) indigenous and immigrant groups 65 december 7, 2006 indigenous groups, finding niche markets may be easier in today’s globalized economy, especially if a group has unique commodities to sell. there are exciting lessons to be learned from the success of this small 'peasant' group that has taken the opportunities offered by global markets to secure, as well as expand their culture and identity. as a result of their weaving and merchant traditions, otavalos have continually forged new ways of succeeding, even in adverse situations. they have managed to organize a bilingual education system, as well as affect changes in policies that have constrained their opportunities within ecuador and across foreign lands. throughout their struggles and adaptations, the otavalos managed to hold on to their indigenous identity both at home and abroad. their economic solvency has allowed them to become more concerned with education and government, and has increased their advancement in the two domains. conclusion our goal in this paper was to propose a more cosmopolitan response to policies and education of immigrant and indigenous groups as a way to respond to social policy needs at home and abroad. many of the u.s. educational policies have focused on assimilating indigenous and immigrants into the status quo so as to maintain the notion of "one nation," without considering that a nation’s oneness is not in opposition with diversity. contrasting with the u.s. historical assimilation response to education, the otavalos are a more cosmopolitan example. while it might be thought that the more 'cosmopolitan' a group becomes there will correspondingly be less attachment to parochial/indigenous values and customs, the otavalos disprove this thesis altogether. inasmuch as they entered the global market, traveled around the world selling their wares, and became more 'cosmopolitan,' they did so in a manner that confirmed the value of their indigenous roots. indeed, this is further illustrated by meisch’s (1997) suggestion that the concept of an otavalo diaspora is applicable to the group because they have dispersed throughout the world while retaining their otavalo identity. in an era of globalization, the u.s. will be confronted with ever-larger numbers of documented and undocumented minority immigrants. as such, we will take up the responsibility of educating the new immigrant population to understand our democratic society. to accomplish such a goal, we suggest that schools become familiar with cosmopolitanism as an organizing concept for schooling. we expect that designing experiences using this concept will create more efficient learning environments where students share their histories, beliefs, languages, and intellectual capabilities. by embodying the concept of a cosmopolitan identity, global students transcend the more parochial/pluralist conceptions that have often characterized the debate on multiculturalism in the u.s. in the process, they become, in effect, "rooted cosmopolitans," embracing their origins even as they move beyond their traditional physical boundaries (tarrow, 2005). jeffrey p. walker and ana m. serrano current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 66 references acuna, r. 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(2006). american mythos: why our best efforts to be a better nation fall short. princeton: princeton university press. © 2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 39 islam, democracy and citizenship education: an examination of the social studies curriculum in pakistan iftikhar ahmad long island university abstract since the 1980s the mission of the national citizenship education curriculum in pakistan has been the islamization of society. the government curriculum guidelines require textbooks to emphasize islam as the national ideology of the state of pakistan. recognizing the deleterious effect of an exclusivist curriculum on the civic unity of the nation, some stakeholders propose a liberal-democratic reform agenda for social studies. the main goal of the proposed agenda is to use the curriculum for creating a tolerant, moderate, and enlightened citizenry. however, proponents of a theocratic vision of good citizenship, which currently dominates the curriculum, vehemently oppose these reform efforts. introduction in the pakistani national school system, citizenship education is imparted through a prescribed social studies curriculum, the main thrust of which has been the islamization of society since the 1980s. a recent government proposal for curricular reform has stirred vociferous debate from competing stakeholders, whose visions of citizenship and citizenship education have clashed in the nation's mass media, and in organized street rallies causing disruptions to civic life (gillani, 2004a). the main opposition to the government's curricular reform agenda is driven by religious parties, whose ideology dominates the current social studies curriculum. religious parties and their conservative allies play a decisive role in determining the ideological core of pakistan 's national education curriculum policy. over the last twenty years, they have succeeded in promoting a political agenda marked by a distinctive islamic ideology (haque, 1987). their purpose in presenting islam as a national ideology has been to: (a) sanctify their political role in society; (b) galvanize social forces in pakistan against india and the west; and (c) unify the muslim world. to achieve their political goals, they have revised history, advanced a manufactured heritage of the state of pakistan, and promoted an islamic paradigm of citizenship education in the nation's schools through the social studies curriculum (mustafa, 2004). this paper makes three arguments. first, it argues that the current ideological conflict over the mission of social studies in pakistan is essentially related to the question of relationship between religion and the state. second, it posits that pakistan 's present national policy on the social studies curriculum makes no distinction between religious education and citizenship education in that it seeks to create practicing muslims rather than democratic citizens. and third, based on my findings of the content analysis of the government-approved secondary school social studies textbooks, the paper maintains that those textbooks adhere to the national policy of promoting islam as a political ideology for the purpose of strengthening an islamic state. iftikhar ahmad 40 december 15, 2004 religion and the state in citizenship education: competing visions at the core of the citizenship education curriculum debate is the relationship between religion and the state. nowhere, except perhaps in israel, is the question of religion as central to a nation's raison d'etre as in pakistan. in this respect, two ideological visions, theocratic and liberal-democratic, are competing for hegemony. proponents of the theocratic approach seek to promote an agenda for an islamic state, defining good citizenship through a religious framework. in their view, only an orthodox muslim is a good citizen (government of pakistan, 2002a). in contrast, the liberal-democratic vision proposes a separation of religion and state, defining good citizenship in pluralist terms. the liberal-democrats emphasize that citizenship is a secular concept and that the acquisition of religious knowledge is neither necessary nor sufficient for preparing good citizens (nayyar, 2003). proponents of th itheocratic vision j0 45 733 0 tm (p) tj 45 0ustify their claim by rfoge rl rspt 3n2mim (r) tj 41 0 0 41 124 1(im (r) tj 41 0 0 41 124 180 0 tm (cr) tj 45 0 0 45 24 12.0601 587.52 768 re 7ayj 45 0 0 45 625 318m (i) tj 45 0 0 45 322 0 4tm (u) tj 45 0 0 45 46 36tm (e) tj 45 0 tm /f3.0 1 tf ( ) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc 510.24 0 0 0.24 90.24 523.98 cm bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f2.0 1 tf (p) j 45 0 0 45 513 0tm (r) tjj 45 0 0 45 796 09 (i) tj 45 0 0 45 1125 0tm (f ) tj 45 0 0 45 308 0 m ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1466 0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 146 0 m (t) tj 45 0 0 45 1703 08m (ci) t3223 45 0 0 45 167 0 tm (m) t 45 0 0 45 203 0 tm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 559 24tm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 198 06 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 73 2 tm (z) tj 45 0 0 45 625 30tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 444 0 tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 329 0 2m (h) tj 45 0 0 45 567 3 tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 456 3 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1031 42tm (p) tj 45 0 0 45 299 0 tm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 406 07 tm (e) a 45 0 0 45 472 0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 540 0 tm (p) tj 45 0 0 45 709 5 tm (h) tp 45 0 0 45 537 0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 513 0 tm ( ) tkj 45 0 0 45 666 0tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 1221 6 tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 540 655m ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 790 6tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 1078 7tm (r) tj 45 0 0 45 (p) tj tm (e) tw 45 0 0 45 748 0 4m (r) tj 45 0 0 45 757 0 8m (n) tj 45 0 0 45 133 8 tm (m) t 45 0 0 45 203 82tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 479 08 tm (h) tj 45 0 0 45 859 0 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 513 0 tm (e) tt 45 0 0 45 908 0 tm (m) tj 45 0 0 45 967 05tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 110 0 tm (p) tj 45 0 0 45 236 99tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 549 tm m (i) tj 45 0 0 45 7 0 tm (cl) tjr5 0 0 45 1015 0 tm (ca) tj 45 0 0 45 1069 0 ttm (z) t 45 0 0 45 1069 0 9m (n) tj 45 0 0 45 1525 00 tm (a) tj 45 00 45 1161 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1127 0 tm (a) tjm45 0 0 45 1180 0 tm (,) tj 45 0 0 45 1221 0 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 761 010 tm (n) tb 45 0 0 45 111 0 5tm (p) tj 45 0 0 45 296 10 tm (o) to45 0 0 45 1431 tm (ge) j 45 0 0 45 1691 03 tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 438 10 tm (p) t,45 0 0 45 1351 0 75 (a) tj 45 0 0 45 1374 0 t7 (0) tj 45 0 0 45 1385 0 2tm (z) t05 0 0 45 1431 0 tm3 (2) tj 45 0 0 45 1339 0 tm ( ) tj045 0 0 45 1444 0 tm (e) t;45 0 0 45 1545 0 0m (n) tj 45 0 0 45 1510 0 ttm (n) th45 0 0 45 1545 0 t0 ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1526 0 8 m (i) tj 45 0 0 45 7 0 6 41 124 12m) tj 45 0 0 45 139 ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1628 0 65 (t) tj 45 0 0 45 1303 0691(gi) tj 45 0 0 45 1688 0 t6 (b) tj 45 0 0 45 141 0 t tm (p) t&45 0 0 45 1780 0 tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 1800 0 tm ( ) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc 49q q8 0 0 0.24 90.24 603.66 cm bt 45 0 0 n 45 0 0 45 849 0m (r) tj 45 0 0 45 101 tm (b) tj 45 0 0 45 479 08 (b) tj a45 0 0 45 1327 0 tm (p) tj 45 0 0 45 679 tm (cr) t,mfo n n hinst h unr s r n i nn iin sn ey h as f os tgia e e a u f i s h ot r m nsh r a n n n go p , h a yie n f r etci 2 nptt v wn a t tof eeew cao l o p e of r cit i im (r) tj 41 0 068tm (e) tj 45 0 0 45 146 0 13m (i) ts45 0 0 45 1052 0732m (s) tj 45 0 0 45 153 0 59m ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 2441 77tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 682 0 tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 1800 0 tm ( ) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc 457.74 0 0 0.24 90.24 603.66 cm bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 45 229 0 21 124 12m fan me qr thmo s f e o cix e ia er feodpf anp igfe45 0 0 45 1627 0 tmm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 791 167tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 110 06 tm (n) tm 45 0 0 45 2441 73m (t) tj 45 0 0 45 1728 0 tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1361 0788m (e) t, 45 0 0 45 682 0 tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 1800 0 tm ( ) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc 444.54 0 0 0.24 192.72 656.7 cm bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 45 1385 0 m (2) tj 45 0 0 45 975 tf (o) 0 45 0 0 45 614 09 (0) tj 45 0 0 45 1022 tm (t) t;j 45 0 0 45 87 0 (y ) tj 45 0 0 45 1207 0 6 (() tj 45 0 0 45 777 1 tm (t) tj (r) tj 41 0 0 41 124 1y 45 0 0 45 198 0 2 (b) tj a45 0 0 45 1327 26tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 590 2 tm (i) t,j 45 0 0 45 73 2 9m ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 314 0 2 (b) tj2 45 0 0 45 308 0 tm (p) t0 45 0 0 45 567 3 8m (z) t05 0 0 45 1431 03 tm (e) t3 45 0 0 45 419 0 4m (v) t 45 0 0 45 14 08 420m (s) tj 45 0 0 45 617 43tm (g) tj 45 0 0 45 471 05m (r) tjm 45 0 0 45 390 0 tm (w) tj 45 0 0 45 297 5 tm (p) tj 45 0 0 45 422 0 tm (h) tj 45 0 0 45 859 5 tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 762 58m (c ) tj 45 0 045 1729 013m (i) te 45 0 0 45 642 03tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 125 0 tm (t) t,j 45 0 0 45 73 6 tm (m) tj 45 0 0 45 364 68m (s) tj 45 0 0 45 1247 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 1303 72tm (z) tj 45 0 0 45 689 05m (l) tj 45 0 0 45 1071 7tm (a) tjj 45 0 0 45 463 78tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 909 815m nd n h gi ia gii , av .fs s aa ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 600 17tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1314 072m (n) tj 45 0 0 45 1387 00 tm (t) tw5 0 0 tm /f2.0 1 tf (-) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0519.36 444.54 0 0 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0 0 45 403 143tm (t) tj 0 0 45 1409 0 tm (f) t 45 0 0 45 1408 0 tf (r)tj 45 0 0 45 89330 tm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 1504 0 t8 ( ) tjw45 0 0 45 1069 0556m (t) tj (r) tj 41 0 00 tm ( ) tg 45 0 0 45 489 0161tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 419 16 tm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 1449 06 tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 110 06 6m (n) tj 45 0 0 45 105 071tm (w) tj 45 0 0 45 570 0736m ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 591 00 tm (j0 4d45 0 0 45 1361 0787 (t) tj 45 0 0 45 1703 08tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 1071 0 tm ( ) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc 404.70 0 0.24 326.88 577.02 cm bt 45 0 0 45 0 0 tm f2.0 1 tf (o) tj 45 0 0 5 25 0 tm (r) 45 0 0 45 853 056m (t) tj 0 0 45 1409 8 (gi) tj 45 0 0 45 1052 0 t (w) tj 45 0 0 45 1189 0 ( ) tjyj 45 0 0 45 471 15 ( ) tjw45 0 0 45 1069 09m (cr) tj 45 0 0 45 517 22 (cl) tjr5 0 0 45 1015 023tm (i) t,j 45 0 0 45 73 249m (t) tj 45 0 0 45 551 262m (h) tj 45 0 0 45 261 0 6m (t) tga 45 0 0 45 324 03tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 304 047m (a) tj 45 0 0 45 351 0 4m (n) tj 45 0 0 45 133 1m (fy ) tj 45 0 0 45 893 0 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(q) tcj 45 0 0 45 369 236m (s) ti5 0 0 tm /f2.0 1 tm (n) ts 45 0 0 45 175 2 tm (r) tl 45 0 0 45 551 2 tm (d) ta 45 0 0 45 589 3tm ( ) tjm45 0 0 45 1368 348m (s) tj 45 0 45 1247 tm ( ) tjctj 45 0 0 45 863 0tm (cu) 45 0 0 45 1125 41t (f ) tj 45 0 0 45 308 0 tm (v) tj 45 0 0 45 427 0 6 (o) tj 45 0 0 45 1107 4 tm (r) tj 45 0 0 45 574 493m (s) t,45 0 0 45 1000 tm (r) t 45 0 0 45 203 t2m (h) tj 45 0 0 45 261 5 tm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 709 56tm (t) tm45 0 0 45 1431 tm (a) tji45 0 0 45 1361 6 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 398 63tm (i) tj 45 0 0 45 646 0 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 555 66tm t) tjo 45 0 0 45 444 69tm (o) tj 45 0 0 45 704 02tm (a) tj 45 0 0 45 577 3tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 198 75m (t) tj 45 0 0 45 1303 77tm ( ) tj 0 0 45 1409 80m (i) tj 45 0 0 45 1422 81tm (m) t 45 0 0 45 203 8tm ( ) tjj 45 0 0 45 538 84tm (cu) 45 0 0 45 1125 868m (t) tj 45 0 0 45 314 886 ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 1541 09 tm ( ) j 45 0 0 45 1361 9 8m (z) t 45 0 0 45 1567 0 001m (i) tj 45 0 0 45 682 002m (f ) tj 45 0 0 4 105 0tm3m (i) tu 45 0 0 45 682 00 tm (a) ta 45 0 0 45 987 0 93 (o) tj 45 0 0 45 987 0 t (w) tj 45 0 0 45 1189 0 2 tm ) t 45 0 0 45 141 0 1 tm (t) tj 5 0 0 45 695 01186 (cr) tj 45 0 0 45 308 0 0m (,) tj 45 0 0 45 1221 0 tm (m) tj 45 0 0 45 89 0044m (m) td45 0 0 45 1444 0272m (e) td45 0 0 45 1671 100tm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 730 0319m (t) tj 45 0 0 45 551 10 tm (e) t 45 0 0 45 1691 0375 (n) tji45 0 0 45 1444 03 tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 198 10 4m (v) tj 45 0 0 45 406 t30 (,) tj 45 0 0 45 1221 004tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 198 10tm (a) tjj 45 0 0 45 444 0 tm (e) t 45 0 0 45 1545 0 1tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 121 052tm (p) j 45 0 0 45 1489 0 tm (n) tj 45 0 0 45 1755 00 tm ( ) tt 45 0 0 45 444 05 tm (f) tj 45 0 0 45 65 16tm (f ) tj 45 0 0 45 105 0634m (p) j 45 0 0 45 1489 066m (n) tj 45 0 0 45 1510 0 78m (i) tj 45 0 0 45 7 0 0 tm (r) tf 45 0 0 45 570 0736m ( ) tt 45 0 0 45 153 0 51 (t) tj 45 0 0 45 1303 0 tm (() te 45 0 0 45 682 0 tm (s) tj 45 0 0 45 1 .0 1 tf ( ) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0 0 sc 338.460 0 0.24 326.88 577.02 cm bt 45 0 0 m 45 0 0 45 893 0 m (r) tj 45 0 0 45 45 65m (o) td45 0 0 45 1022 tm (t) te5 0 0 45 141 0 15 (a) tj 45 0 0 45 1368 013 (o) tj 45 0 0 45 1078 0 tm (p) tj (r) tj 41 0 0 tm ( ) j 45 0 0 45 1361 0 tm (m) tj 45 0 0 45 207 0 t (f ) tj 45 0 0 45 308 24 tm (f) tj 45 0 0 45 65 25 (gi) tj 45 0 0 45 517 283m (a) tj 45 0 0 45 867 0 tm (l) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 0164.6c 338.460 0 0.24 326.88 577.02 cm bt 5 0 0 45 0 0 tm /f2.0 1 tf (-) tj et q q q 12.24 12.0601 587.52 768 re w n /cs1 cs 0 00 8 sc 338.460 0 0.24 326.88 577.02 cm bt 45 0 ts 45 0 0 45 175 0 (f ) tj 45 0 0 45 308 04 (t) tj 45 0 0 45 1235 57m (,) tj 45 0 0 45 463 72m (m) tj 45 0 0 45 967 0tm (t) tj 45 0 0 45 314 115m ( ) tj 45 0 0 45 759 01 tm ( ) ja 45 0 0 45 1303 093m n) tj 45 0 0 45 927 23m ( ) tjj 45 0 0 45 124 5tm (p) t2m p t o, n x wh f ihl t hc sodp ,e a ia ia i i tt i ca e na sx o op tt i sl e h in a mr pprt p o s t i an e t f rh p e f z e p n p ar ist np tao r s tm en eeat e o tpi i e ia of r q n h ha l -m ttnns t r n r h f t f it s oi t 45 0 0 455 461 084 (d) tj 745 0 0 45 570 856m (h) t59160 0355m 03 t0m (i) tca405 0 0 45 589 506m (o) j 4 0 tj 45 0 0 1532 0tm (6 45 0 0 4 570 5t6 (s) tji 8 0 0 45 1040 43tm ( ) t 705.24 5265 133 1m m (n) t745 0 0 45 1221 4 tm (a) t745 0 0 45 o 567 674 (s) ttj 45 0 0 r 596 08tm ( ) tj 45 0 0 4768 re w n /cs1 c45 0 0 45 1220 0 tm (i) 84s 0 0205.2 232.38 0 0 0. 45 0 0 45f8 re w n /cs1 cs 935 0 0 45 814 8ttm (w) ta 45 0 0 43 ( ) t 4 0 0 45 45 0 0 45835 0 t62m (h) tj 45 0 0 4a186 79 tf (d) b 645 695 01336m ) tjg 45 00050 0 0 sc 58. tm0 0 0.2 f f si i n -f e p h a0 45 759 01 ttm 06t (w) tj 45 0 0 45 567 3 tck(i) tcj 5 0 0 45n71 0 t9 ( ) tj 492 45 444 1670 (2) tjnj 4510 45 153 01 8m (i) te 45 4 0 45 0 0 45 1189 t e e x e nauca o a re a i a 4 5 0 0 4 5 0 4 5 1 2 5 0 t m ( e ) t 2 i qreo rodio o iftikhar ahmad 42 december 15, 2004 in essence, the conceptual framework, aims, and objectives, signify four kinds of national aspirations: (a) to integrate and balance religious and secular themes in citizenship education; (b) to inculcate an islamic worldview in children; (c) to present islamic ideology as the foundation for national unity; and (d) to seek congruence between belief in islam and the exigencies of the modern age. although the national curriculum is a comprehensive document, it is weak on the use of the vocabulary of democracy. terms like “democracy,” “democratic citizenship,” or “democratic values,” which constitute the core of citizenship education curriculum in democratic societies (patrick, 1999), are certainly mentioned, but appear to be tangential to the goals of the national curriculum. the same schema is followed in the textbooks on civics and global studies. whenever democracy is mentioned, it is done so with qualifications and caveats. thus, the term “islamic democracy” is frequently used, suggesting that curriculum policymakers accept the concept of democracy, as long as it conforms to the moral, social, and political framework of islam. indeed such conceptualization appears to be deliberate; pakistani curriculum policymakers relate the values of individual liberty, religious freedom, gender equality, the rule of law, and equal rights—concepts that are generally the staple of contemporary citizenship education theory to western secularism, and thus deem them inappropriate for an islamic polity (nayyar, 2003). more importantly, because as a mode of socialization and the transmission of values, citizenship education generally takes place in the affective domain, the national curriculum emphasizes an islamic approach in its affective objectives for the themes of government, state, citizenship, rights and responsibilities. for example, some of the objectives in the affective domain for the 9-12 grade civics curriculum are the fostering of a sense of love for islamic teachings, promoting respect for an islamic state, and transmitting islamic values (government of pakistan, 2002a; government of pakistan, 2002b). the purpose of an over-emphasis on islam in the course on civics suggests that the pakistani curriculum makes no distinction between religious education and citizenship education. in essence, the pakistani curriculum seeks to create practicing muslims. more importantly, it seeks to create muslim citizens who are also political beings in that they are expected to aspire to strengthen the islamic state governed by quranic law. although an islamic state is a romanticized idea, the curriculum is unequivocal in promoting it among pakistani youth. these curricular objectives become problematic when considering the educational needs of all students, especially non-muslim students in pakistani schools. it is evident from the government policy guidelines that the overarching mission of the national curriculum on citizenship education is not the preparation of merely good citizens, as conceived in liberal democratic theory, but the kind of citizen who is fundamentally momin, or a devout practitioner of islam. indeed, a remarkable distinction exists between the characteristics of the two types of citizenship: whereas a citizen of a modern nation-state has always been associated with the western notion of civitas (city state), a momin, on the other hand, is a member of an ummah, or muslim islam, democracy and citizenship education: an examination of the social studies curriculum in pakistan current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 43 political community governed by islamic law or the sharia (ahmed, 1987). the sharia is derived from the quran, and includes the rules by which a muslim society is organized and governed. two reports on the islamic model of citizenship education in pakistan illustrate the prevalence of a theocratic vision in social studies textbooks. in the subtle subversion: the state of curricula and textbooks in pakistan (2003), nayyar and salim demonstrate that social studies textbooks published under the national curriculum guidelines stress islamic ideology and contain material that can be characterized as insensitive toward non-muslims and women. the report shows how school history books are being rewritten to foster a particular militant islamic sensibility and warns that this will have profound consequences for the nation's civic life. the main goal of the report is to explain how pakistani school textbooks foster a culture of religious intolerance in the country. nayyar and salim (2003) conclude that the school textbooks on civics and pakistan studies contain “factual inaccuracy and omissions for ideological ends, encourage religious and ethnic prejudice, foster gender stereotypes and intolerance, and glorify war” (p. 6). furthermore, they assert that the social studies textbooks define citizenship in a manner that excludes non-muslim pakistanis from either being pakistani citizens or from simply being good human beings. for example, the report suggests that the textbooks equate patriotism with islamic zeal and describe good people as those “who read the quran and teach the quran to others” (nayyar & salim, p. 12). yvette claire rosser (2004), who offers a western vision on the islamic model of citizenship education, validates nayyar and salim's findings (2003) and concludes that the contents of the pakistani social studies textbooks “are decidedly antidemocratic” (p. 267). she notes that “pakistani textbooks condone and even welcome the military's involvement in politics” (p. 284). rosser's research suggests that the textbooks on pakistan studies eulogize the islamist military ruler, general zia-ul-haq, and his regime for islamizing pakistani society, and portrays india and the west as malicious forces conspiring to annihilate pakistan. the following section chronicles the historical context in which an islamic paradigm of citizenship flourished in pakistan and discusses the present study of the approved school textbooks for civics, pakistan studies, and global studies. citizenship education, islamic ideology, and textbooks citizenship education in pakistan was islamized due to the historical, cultural, political, and geo-strategic realities of the nation. in 1977, when general zia-ul-haq, an islamic ideologue, dismissed a democratically elected parliament, he established a military dictatorship and ruled pakistan until 1988. general zia adopted an islamic ideology on the premise that it would unify a vanquished and culturally diverse nation (jalal, 1990). he co-opted extremist religious factions and appointed their leaders to key government positions, including the pakistan ideology council, a consultative body of islamic theologians that wields enormous influence in educational matters. indeed, it was during the military regime of general zia that, without a public debate, islamic ideology was introduced into the national social studies curriculum. paradoxically, after having iftikhar ahmad 44 december 15, 2004 been implemented for more than two decades, the islamic model of citizenship education has now boomeranged, and some stakeholders attribute the mounting sectarian violence, religious intolerance, and militancy in the country to the national social studies curriculum (nayyar, 2003; musharraf, 2004). although they present anecdotal evidence to support their claim, they raise a pertinent question: is an islamic ideology being instilled in students through the national social studies curriculum? to address this question, i conducted a content analysis of the social studies textbooks currently being used in secondary schools in pakistan. ole r. holsti (1968) defines content analysis as “any technique for making inferences and objectively identifying specified characteristics of messages” (p. 601). my unit of analysis was each sentence in the textbooks and my goal was to identify the vocabulary that echoes the tenets of islamic ideology, as stipulated in the national curriculum policy. prominent education researchers, including james a. banks (1969), and joyce cairn and bill inglis (1989), applied the method of content analysis to study racial and gender bias in social studies textbooks. content analysis has also been used in social science research to make inferences about the sender of the message and the effects of messages on the recipient (frankfort-nachmias & nachmias, 1992, p. 313). my analysis of the government-approved textbooks for secondary school civics, pakistan studies, and global history confirms the salient status of islamic ideology in the textbooks; islam is presented in the textbooks not simply as a religion but a political ideology or ideology of the state of pakistan. for example, the first chapter in each of the two textbooks on pakistan studies begins with “the ideological foundation of pakistan,” which is identified as islam (ahmad, javed, and saeed, nd; kakakhel, ahmad, khan, and abbas, nd). similarly, the ninth and tenth grade civics textbook by m. hasan sheikh (1995) compares the western concept of “nation” with the islamic concept of millat, or islamic regime, and explains that islam rejects nation and nationalism (p. 19). sheikh argues that, whereas the western notion of nationalism is based on ethnicity, millat is based on the ideology of islam transcending the boundaries of region, race, color, language, and culture. hence, this view suggests that there is no place for nation or nationalism in islam and that pakistan is not a nation but a millat (sheikh, p. 19). on the question of the rights and duties of citizens in an islamic state, sheikh offers two separate descriptions: one for muslim citizens and the other for non-muslim citizens. the non-muslim citizen is referred to as a zimmi. pakistani historian k. k. aziz (2001) defines zimmi as “a non-muslim citizen of an islamic state whom the state undertakes to protect in the profession and practice of his religion in exchange for a special poll tax or jizya ” (p. 425). according to sheikh's list of rights, in an islamic state, non-muslim citizens are allowed to practice their religion, build their places of worship, and seek employment. he then outlines five duties of the non-muslim citizen: “loyalty to the islamic state,” “paying jizya”, “worship only at separate and officially-approved locations,” “abstaining from creating discord and civil strife in the islamic state,” and “playing an active role in strengthening the islamic state” (p. 77). he further explains that non-muslims are islam, democracy and citizenship education: an examination of the social studies curriculum in pakistan current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 45 forbidden from holding key political positions in government, such as president or prime minister. this point is also highlighted by kakakhel et al. (n.d.) in the tenth grade textbook pakistan studies, which goes a step further by defining what it means to be a muslim. referring to the constitution of pakistan, kakakhel et al., suggest that a person is recognized as a muslim if he believes in the unity or oneness of allah, and the finality of prophethood (that mohammad was god's last messenger). a textbook for the seventh grade course on global studies focuses entirely on one theme: pan-islamism. there are eleven chapters in this textbook, of which ten describe the geography, culture, population, history, and economy of muslim countries. the first chapter, “ pakistan and the muslim world,” provides a conceptual foundation for the succeeding chapters. other chapters discuss the features of an islamic society, the geostrategic significance of the economic resources of the muslim world, the history of the expansion of islam, the history of western domination over the muslim world, and revolutionary movements in islam. unlike other textbooks, this textbook has a unique feature in that its first chapter begins with the following three sentences: “ pakistan is a sovereign islamic nation. a majority of the people in pakistan are muslims. in addition to the muslims, hindus, sikhs, parsis and buddhists also live here” (nazir, khan, khan, nd, p. 1). beyond this brief factual statement, there is hardly any discussion about the status of non-muslims elsewhere in the textbook, except in the context of the ancient conflicts between muslims and the non-muslims. in brief, i draw five inferences from my content analysis of the social studies textbooks: first, the selection of material and their thematic sequence in the textbooks present islam not simply as a belief system but a political ideology and a grand unifying worldview that must be accepted by all citizens. second, to sanctify islamic ideology as an article of faith, the textbooks distort historical facts about the nation's cultural and political heritage. third, the textbooks offer a biased treatment of non-muslim citizens in pakistan. fourth, the main objective of the social studies textbooks on pakistan studies, civics, and global studies, is to indoctrinate children for a romanticized islamic state as conceptualized by islamic theocrats. fifth, although the vocabulary in the textbooks underscores islamic virtues, such as piety, obedience, and submission, little is mentioned about critical thinking, civic participation, or democratic values of freedom of speech, equality, and respect for cultural diversity. my study also confirms the findings of nayyar and salim (2003) and yvette claire rosser (2004). more importantly, this study discovers that the vocabulary and concepts used in the textbooks are consistent with the vocabulary and concepts that are generally found in the political rhetoric of the pan-islamists, such as the wahabis. wahabism is a radical school of thought in islam that president general zia-ul-haq adopted as a state policy (kepel, 2002). since the scope and sequence of the national social studies curriculum were formulated and implemented during general zia's islamist regime, it is probable that wahabism was indeed introduced to indoctrinate school children. once in place, wahabism was canonized in 1991 by the commission on islamization of education, which “ensured that the educational system of pakistan was based on islamic values of learning, teaching, and character building” (ghafoor & farooq, 1994, p. 4264). conclusion iftikhar ahmad 46 december 15, 2004 the government of pakistan recently announced its intention to reform the social studies curriculum. however, religious parties whose vision of islamic citizenship dominates the curriculum, are tenaciously resisting the government reform efforts. at the core of this conflict is the primary issue of citizenship education: what should children learn and for what purpose? if the government of pakistan succeeds in introducing its agenda of “enlightened moderation,” a variant of liberal democracy, into the national social studies curriculum, it will have profound implications for citizenship education and the national ethos. the purpose of citizenship education is to prepare knowledgeable, tolerant, democratic, and active citizens so that they may function efficiently in an interdependent world. more importantly, citizenship education is a method to achieve civic unity among diverse people. in essence, citizenship education is about nation-building. however, my examination of the pakistani national social studies curriculum guidelines as well as the secondary school textbooks reveals a stark dissonance between the exigencies of a modern age and the mission of the pakistani approach to citizenship education. hence i conclude that because the pakistani model of citizenship education is primarily religious education, it is an atavistic approach to address the educational needs of children growing up in a complex global environment. indeed, its aim is to create citizens who are loyal to a theocratic state governed by the quran. in broad terms, it is inevitable that this pan-islamic model of citizenship education must have serious implications not only for pakistan but also the world outside the borders of pakistan. in specific terms, three key questions require further investigation. first, what if any, are the implications of the use of the social studies textbooks in the classrooms of the schools of pakistan ? second, what do children learn from those textbooks? third, how often do the classroom teachers use the textbooks? these questions are important and can be answered in a plausible manner through rigorous empirical research aimed at collecting information on the content and process of citizenship education in the classrooms of the schools in pakistan. in this respect, the research model of an international study conducted in twenty-eight countries by the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (2001) may be helpful as a guide. because contemporary worldwide trends of reforms in citizenship education curricula are also a part of the global transformation, it would be beneficial if pakistani curriculum policy makers learn from the experiences of other nations, especially muslim nations, that they may be able to serve adequately the educational needs of their children and society. therefore, a meaningful reform agenda for the citizenship education curriculum, as being contemplated by the pakistani government, will have to consider the ultimate goal of preparing the kind of democratic, tolerant, caring, and peace-loving citizens who have the requisite knowledge, values, attitude, and civic participation skills to live in harmony with each other. pursuing this historic mission would be a worthwhile effort toward achieving civic unity. islam, democracy and citizenship education: an examination of the social studies curriculum in pakistan current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 47 references ahmad, f., javed, a. & saeed (nd). pakistan studies: for 10th grade. peshawar: pak printing and packages corporation. ahmed, f. 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(2002b). national curriculum: civic for classes xi-xii. islamabad, iftikhar ahmad 48 december 15, 2004 pakistan: curriculum wing, ministry of education. haque, z. (1987). islamization of society in pakistan. in m. a. khan, (ed. ). islam, politics and the state: the pakistan experience. london: zed books ltd. holsti, o. r. (1968). content analysis. in l. gardner & a. elliott, (eds.). the handbook of social psychology. reading, ma: addison-wesley, pp. 596-692. hoodbhoy, p. a. & nayyar, a. h. (1985). in m. a. khan, (ed.). islam, politics, and the state: the pakistan experience. london: zed books. international association for the evaluation of educational achievement. (2001). citizenship and education in twenty-eight countries: civic knowledge and engagement at age fourteen. amsterdam: iea. jalal, a. (1990). the state of martial rule: the origins of pakistan 's political economy of defence. new york: cambridge university press. jones, o. b. 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(2004, march 16). debating education reform-1. the news international. retrieved on march 29, 2004, from http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/mar2004-daily/16-03-2004/oped/05.htm nayyar, a. h. & salim, a. (2003). the subtle subversion: the state of curricula and textbooks in pakistan. islamabad: sustainable development policy institute. islam, democracy and citizenship education: an examination of the social studies curriculum in pakistan current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 49 nazir, m., khan, m. n., & khan, f. a. (nd). social studies: grade 7. peshawar: rehmat printers publishers. patrick, j. j. (1999). concepts at the core of education for democratic citizenship. in c. f. bahmueller, & j. j. patrick, (eds.). principles and practices of education for democratic citizenship: international perspectives and projects. bloomington, in: eric clearinghouse for social studies/social science education. ppi. (2004, april 23). curriculum changes termed attack on pakistan ideology. dawn. retrieved on june 16, 2004, from http://www.dawn.com/2004/04/23/nat10.htm quaid-i-azam mohammad ali jinnah, (nd). speeches as governor general of pakistan 19471948. karachi. rosser, y.c. (2004). contesting historiographies in south asia: the islamization of pakistani social studies textbooks. in s. c. saha, (ed.). religious fundamentalism in the contemporary world. oxford: lexington books. saigol, r. (1995). knowledge and identity: articulation of gender in educational discourse in pakistan. asr. saleem, f. (2003, december 27). children of ‘jihad'. pakistan facts. retrieved on june 16, 2004 from http://www.pakistan-facts.com/article.php/2003122723374124. sarwar, b. (2004, june 16). jehad and the curriculum. chowk. retrieved on june 16, 2004, from http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?aid=00003311&channel=university%20ave& ord sheikh, m. h. (1995). civics: grade 9th and 10th. peshawar: shafiq printers/publishers. microsoft word 16_1_emily_bishop.docx © 2014 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 16(1): 3-5. editorial introduction: birthday “bumps” emily s. bishop teachers college, columbia university with this issue, comparative and international education: the making of a field and a vision for the future, the cice team is delighted to join in the yearlong celebration of a milestone for our institution and the field of education beyond, the 125th anniversary of teachers college. appropriately, we are the proud home of the happy birthday song but when i was a little girl in london, birthday parties came with a less harmonious tradition: the birthday “bumps”. these “bumps” are a (more or less gentle) shaking up and down of the lucky celebrant, once for each of their years. in that spirit, our birthday gift to teachers college is a (more or less gentle) shaking up of our discipline of comparative and international education and its traditions, by a diverse range of voices in a new kind of harmony. “the field of comparative education is a mature and important area of academic inquiry with a promising future”. this concluding passage of our opening article, noah sobe and jamie kowalczyk’s exploding the cube, reflects our editorial team’s thinking when they first crafted the call for papers for this issue, at the beginning of this anniversary year: for over a century, the field of comparative and international education (cie) has made valuable theoretical and practical contributions that address the pressing challenges that the education sector has faced globally. these theories have provided both practitioners and policymakers with a framework of reference not only for developing strategies and action plans, but also for implementing new programs and solutions for further advancement. as we pursue a new development agenda, in line with the millennium development goals (mdg) and the education for all (efa) movement, a collective vision for a post2015 framework in education is needed. there is a growing understanding that globalization presents demands on education, whereby educational initiatives are increasingly expected to foster global competence and develop 21st century skills. in this changing environment, large-scale assessments provide additional mechanisms to track academic competences and, consequently, place further pressures to adapt existing educational models to the increasingly globalized achievement race. in celebration of our community’s landmark milestone, we invited scholars of both comparative and international education and the broader field of related, relevant disciplines to submit articles that reflected on theories of cie and discussed their applications in education, in the context of the current changing environment. specifically, we posed the question: how have cie theories/theorists influenced institutions, policies, educational models, trends, and/or research agendas in local, regional, and international contexts? we were delighted by the response, and excited by the critical, innovative thinking that inspired the “bumps” shaking up cie traditions, from the principles of education for all to the methods emily s. bishop 4 current issues in comparative education that shape our research. !! in keeping with our tradition of accessibility to scholars and practitioners from beyond the field of cie, our authors focus their attention on fundamental theories and concepts familiar to many outside our discipline, such as the capability approach, neoliberal frameworks or the pervasive influence of foucault. however, as you will soon see for yourself, they put those fundamentals to good use in crafting arguments and analyses that thoroughly rattle concepts central to our discipline. global c(c)ontext(s) in “exploding the cube: revisioning “context” in the field of comparative education”, noah sobe and jamie kowalczyk challenge our understanding of what context is, and suggest a delineation between ‘big c’ context and ‘little c’ contexts to more effectively and accurately identify power dynamics. the cube they are proposing to explode is bray and thomas’ (1995) familiar formulation: the first mainstay of cie to take a “bump” in this issue. in “theorizing privatization in education: comparing conceptual frameworks and the value of the capability approach“, francine menashy tackles three more well-trodden conceptual frameworks – the neoclassical, social primary goods and rights-based approaches – with an argument for the application of the capability approach to an area it is seldom considered: the private sector. in “breaking tradition: taking stock of research on global school choice”, beth wright considers the concept school choice through the lens of prevalent research practices on the issue, and challenges cie scholars to move beyond neoliberal conceptualisations and use new modes of analysis to tackle questions of choice and reform. local contexts in “neoliberalism in two hong kong school categories”, david woo stays with the issue of school choice but moves us into the country-level context section of the issue. he applies a neoliberal lens to discern the impact of a changing hong kong and the shifting demands of a growing and diversifying population on two schools with distinct features. in “canadian youth volunteering abroad: rethinking issues of power and privilege”, mai ngo invites us to rethink our perspective on an aspect of development that resonates personally for many of us: youth volunteering. using institutional ethnography (ie), she maps out power and privilege dynamics to advance the debate on the ethics of the practice. in “particularizing universal education in postcolonial sierra leone”, grace pai uses a vertical case study to challenge the universality of universal education, by illustrating the fact and necessity of local incarnations of global ideals in pre-civil war sierra leone and demonstrating the relationship between the rural bunumbu project and the broader process of nation-building. our concluding guest article, “the international efficiency of american education: the bad and the not-so-bad news” by stephen heyneman (with kind permission from the original publishers), ends with a positive challenge to a cie trend, looking beyond pisa scores to rethink the habitual criticisms of us education. join us in exploring the highs, lows and “bumps” of applying comparative and international education theory to a variety of (c)contexts. we hope you will, on the evidence of these new and established voices in our midst, agree with sobe and kowalczyk (and us) that our field has a promising future ahead. editorial introduction current issues in comparative education 5 notes my thanks to adriana lovera and amlata persaud for their help in revising an earlier draft of this article, and to sandra sirota for her feedback. emily s. bishop is a doctoral fellow in comparative and international education and political science at teachers college, columbia university, and the managing editor of current issues in comparative education. email: emily.bishop@tc.columbia.edu; for cice business please contact cice@tc.columbia.edu. references bray, m. & thomas, r. m. (1995). levels of comparison in educational studies: different insights from different literatures and the value of multilevel analyses. harvard education review, 65(3), 472-490. microsoft word 13 paper final round 4.docx © 2015, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 18(1), 42-53. evidence for action: translating field research into a large scale assessment erik jon byker university of north carolina at charlotte, usa aditi banerjee aser centre, new delhi, india for more than a decade, hundreds of thousands of india’s young adults have volunteered to collect data for an annual household education related survey. the survey is called the annual status of education report or aser, for short. the aser survey is a unique methodology of citizen-led assessments. the purpose of this article is to describe and report about how the aser methodology is implemented. this article examines a case study of aser volunteers (n=37) who are prepared to carry out the aser methodology. this article also analyzes how the aser methodology supports a conceptual framework about equipping everyday citizens, like the volunteers in the case study, to better understand and use data-driven evidence to take action to improve the education and schooling in their communities. introduction since 2005, several lakh (hundred thousand) of india’s young adults have volunteered to collect data for an annual household education related survey. similar to a door-to-door census, the volunteers walk from village to village across india and collect data on indian children's ability to read and complete basic math figure (aser, 2014; byker, 2014a). these young volunteers are part of an initiative today known as “citizen-led basic learning assessments” that was created by pratham, which is one of the largest non-governmental organizations (ngo) in south asia. pratham’s mission is to improve the learning levels of india’s elementary school children. pratham also believes that assessment is a critical factor on the road to improvement. in 2005, the pratham assessment survey was named the annual status of education report or aser for short (aser, 2014). the aser survey is now supervised and implemented by the aser centre, which is an autonomous institution started by pratham that focuses on measurement and assessment. aser is a unique initiative; in fact, it is the “largest household survey of children conducted in india by citizens’ groups, which is annually carried out by more than 25,000 volunteers and covering over 700,000 children in 15,000 villages” (vagh, 2009, p. 2). the purpose of this article is to examine the aser methodology for data collection. the aser methodology converts a form of participatory action research (par) into a large-scale data assessment (french & kingdon, 2010; hickey & mohan, 2004). this article describes and analyzes how the citizens of india carry out the aser methodology. the aser methodology is rather innovative in that it connects everyday citizens with their localities through their large-scale educational assessment. the methodology fits the larger theme of this issue of current issues in comparative education as the aser evidence for action: translating field research into a large scale assessment current issues in comparative education 43 methodology is an innovative method used in comparative and international education. aser is innovative in terms of both scale and time as it supports the systematic assessment of almost one million children in india, all within a four month time period. we organize the rest of this article into four sections. first, we will outline the implementation of the aser data collection. second, we will map out the aser methodology on to the larger aser conceptual framework of assessment driven by evidence-based action. third, we will describe and examine a case study of aser volunteers being trained to implement the methodology in the field. lastly, we will analyze the affordances and challenges of the methodology as well as discuss the practical applications of the methodology within the larger field of comparative and international education. the process of aser data collection the process of collecting data for the aser survey is highly participatory and comprehensive. the aser volunteers conduct their surveys over an intense two-day time period in almost all of india’s rural districts. the volunteers use a surveying tool that is divided in to three sections: (1) the village information sheet; (2) the village school information sheet; and (3) the household survey sheet. the main goal of the aser survey is to generate a statistical database regarding the basic learning levels among india’s elementary aged children in rural areas. the aser comprehensive survey also measures the enrollment status of the children. the statistical data are then disaggregated by district and state levels. since the aser survey has been conducted over a 10 year time period, data can also be analyzed for patterns and changes over time (aser centre, 2014). aser is the most inclusive national data report in india about elementary children’s learning levels (aser, 2014; kingdon & french, 2010; byker, 2014a, 2015a). the entire aser data collection process takes a little over four months and it is a rapid process. shaher vagh (2009) explains that the “the availability of results in the same school year is a tremendous feat for such a large survey, which enhances its potential as a tool to inform educational practice and policy” (p. 1). in the rest of this section, we will outline the aser data collection methodology. we will also discuss the recruitment of volunteers, explain the volunteers’ two-day survey schedule using the aser survey tool, and explain how the data are scrutinized for quality control purpose as well as how the survey data are converted into a large scale assessment report. recruitment the aser data collection first starts with finding volunteers to collect the survey data. in each of india’s rural districts, volunteers are recruited from partner organizations like local colleges and universities, ngos, and district institutions of education and training (diet), which is an institution for preparing teacher candidates to teach in india’s government-run public schools. aser first trains a group of master trainers (mts) to conduct the survey. the mts become the team leaders for each rural district and are tasked with recruiting additional volunteers to carry out the survey. to help with the survey data collection, each mt recruits a volunteer team of between 50 to 60 recruits. byker & banerjee current issues in comparative education 44 survey implementation as mentioned earlier, the aser survey is implemented over a two day time period usually over the weekends. the first day of data collection is usually on a saturday, which is still a school day in most regions of india. the second day of data collection is on sunday, which is typically a day off in most regions of india. aser divides the volunteers into pairs and then assigns each pair to a village to conduct the survey. on the first day of data collection, the volunteer pair meets the sarpanch or village leader. the purpose of this meeting is to get the village leader’s permission to conduct the survey, as well as to gather information about the village. the volunteers then visit the village’s government-run primary and secondary schools. if the village has more than one government-run public school, the volunteers decide to visit the school that has the largest enrollment. upon entering the school ground, the volunteer pair first meets with the school’s principal or headmaster. during this meeting, the pair shares the purposes of the aser survey and obtains permission to collect the school’s data. the school data that they collect includes the following: students’ attendance, teacher attendance, school infrastructure (including if there are working toilets for both the girls and boys), and the type of computer technology equipment available at the school. after the school visit, the volunteers finish day 1 of their data collection by walking around the village and mapping its geography. on the map that they sketch, they draw in the roads that go through the village, as well as the landmarks (health centers, temples, etc.). the volunteers mark the center of the village, which is often distinguished by a temple or place of worship, and then divide the village into four quadrants. the purpose of this mapping is to divide the village into different sections in order to ensure that households are selected from different parts of the village during the household survey on the subsequent day. also, the mapping provides a way for aser to recheck the data collection when conducting an audit of the village data. on day 2 of this data collection, the volunteers conduct the household survey in each of the four quadrants. five households are selected from each quadrant and are surveyed for a total of 20 households per village. the volunteers follow a systematic process to survey these households. the volunteers start in the center of each quadrant and move to the left, stopping at every fifth household in that quadrant. this system is called the “fifth household rule” (aser centre, 2014, p. 4). the fifth household rule’s purpose is to provide structure to the data collection so that there is a broad sampling of households in the village’s four quadrants. the fifth household rule ensures that all volunteer teams are using the same sampling method in their data collection. the volunteers use the household survey sheets in the aser survey tool packet to record the data about basic household information. this information includes the following recording items such as: the material the home is built from, the parents’ highest education levels, the reading materials available in the house, and if there is electricity in the home. the volunteers then record the information about the ages and quantity of children living in the home. the volunteers finish the survey with an evidence for action: translating field research into a large scale assessment current issues in comparative education 45 assessment of the children’s basic reading, math, and english skills. the objective of these assessments is to identify what the children in the household “can do comfortably in terms of their basic reading in the first language, mathematics, and communication in english” (aser centre, 2014, p. 12). over the course of the two days, the volunteers record all the data in the aser survey tool. reporting data aser then compiles all the collected data from the volunteers’ surveys into a large database, which is randomly rechecked for quality control. an example of a quality control measure includes calling the people listed in the household survey forms to double check that the volunteers did indeed survey their homes. also, the aser staff and mts will randomly select villages to reassess and make sure the collected data are trustworthy and reliable. after a rigorous quality control check, the data are compiled into state and national level reports. these reports are organized with descriptive statistics, and are illustrated with charts and graphs to make the data easier to decipher. the entire aser process takes about four months, and the report is issued in midjanuary each year so that state governments have time to implement interventions and policies to address the findings. conceptual framework: evidence-based action the scope of the aser methodology is elegant in that it is an ingenious way to conduct a household based educational assessment, but the scale of the assessment is robust. at the ground level where researchers are in the field collecting data, the methodology is straightforward in how it empowers everyday citizens to engage with their communities by participating in the assessment and measurement of the children in the community. thus, the aser methodology is “balanced on the shoulders of citizen volunteers spread across the huge geographic area of india . . . to engage more people, communities, and parents” about the importance of measuring the education levels of indian children (banerjee & mutum, 2014, p. 24). furthermore, the aser methodology is grounded in a conceptual framework, which grounds assessment as a conduit for evidence-based action. evidence-based action is part of aser’s organizational vision statement. this vision focuses on equipping citizens with the tools for assessment, and on trusting that the knowledge generated by assessments will be a catalyst for change that leads to more citizen-oriented engagement within the community. the aser survey framework explains evidence-based action so that, “when ordinary people are empowered with knowledge, they can bring about extraordinary change” (banerjee & mutum, 2014, p. 6). evidence-based action hinges on a paradox about measurement, which is the need for rigorous measures that is accessible and easy to act upon. the aser methodology insists on guiding citizens to measure what affects the ecological systems in which they are situated (bronfenbrenner, 1979). such measurement incubates a sense of agency and a data-driven lexicon for citizens to communicate and take action steps for improving their communities. byker & banerjee current issues in comparative education 46 evidence-based action is also part of aser’s mission statement. the aser mission statement is written to include the following theory of change: “measure to understand, understand to communicate and communicate to change" (banerjee & mutum, 2014, p. 6). the aser methodology aims to sustain a culture where measurement helps inform the action. it is culture that is based in data-driven realities rather than just assumptions. the aser methodology helps to inform possible policies and outcomes that can improve education processes, especially in india’s rural areas. finally, the aser methodology’s emphasis on measurement is a way to further support capacity building among citizens and institutional partners. in turn, the citizens and institutional partners have a strategic role in carrying out the measurement as well as communicating the findings from their survey and assessment work. keeping the aser vision and mission statement in mind, the aser methodology is guided by the organization’s commitment to their vision of evidence-based action. this vision of evidence-based action provides a lens for the work that the volunteers do. to understand how this happens, we will now turn to a case study of how volunteers go about enacting the aser methodology in the field. the case study investigates a group of mts who are being prepared to carry out the aser survey in the state of punjab. not only are the mts being trained to conduct the aser survey, but they are also tasked with the responsibility of recruiting and helping to train an additional 50 volunteers who will assist them in carrying out aser survey throughout punjab’s many districts. in this case study, we investigate the mts’ preparation and their perceptions of the aser methodology. our study examines two primary research questions framed around the premises of evidence-based action: 1) how are the master trainers trained and prepared to use the aser survey tool, which is part of the aser methodology? 2) what are the master trainers’ perceptions about volunteering to conduct survey research using the aser methodology? methodology to investigate the two aforementioned research questions, we utilize a case study research design (yin, 2008). robert yin (2008) asserts that the case study method is a research design for empirical inquiry that allows researchers to investigate complex phenomena in the authentic contexts. case study research design also allows for multiple data sources in order to examine the sample population under study. the sample the case study’s sample was made up of 37 participants (n=37). the participants were all trained by aser to become mts in the state of punjab. the gender breakdown among the participants was 9 (24%) females and 28 (76%) males. all the participants were between the ages of 19 and 23. most of the participants were enrolled at a college or university in the state of punjab and were working toward a bachelor’s degree. however, 6 (16%) of participants already held a master’s degree. among the participants, 30 (81%) participants indicated that engineering was their major degree program. evidence for action: translating field research into a large scale assessment current issues in comparative education 47 data collection the case study data were primarily collected during the two-day training of the mts. one benefit of using case study research design is that it allows for the inclusion of mixed-methods data collection (creswell, 2014; yin, 2008). thus, we used qualitative and quantitative methods for collecting the data for this case study. there was one source that we classified as quantitative data, which was a questionnaire the participants completed about their training. the questionnaire had basic demographic related questions that could be examined using descriptive statistics. the questionnaire also included questions about the participants’ perceptions about being involved with the aser survey. aside from the quantitative data source, there were two qualitative data sources: field notes from the participant observation and focus group interviews. the field note observations were recorded using time stamp notations and the note-taking was guided by an observation protocol. the protocol included collecting field observations and notes about the following aspects of the mt training: (1) the training pedagogies; (2) the training schedule; and (3) the discussion about how to conduct the aser survey. the focus group interviews were conducted with a semi-structured interview approach. the focus group interview question protocol incorporated questions about the participants’ word associations with their mts’ training as well as their perceptions about the aser methodology. data analysis the quantitative data analysis was primarily at a descriptive level. these descriptive statistics provided “snapshots” about the participants’ demographics and their perceptions about volunteering for aser. the quantitative data offer basic descriptive statistics and are not meant to infer causality or to imply universal findings. we analyzed the qualitative data by following miles and huberman’s (1994) interpretive approach for qualitative data analysis. additionally, we used the constant-comparative method to compare patterns across the data sources (glaser & strauss, 1967). data reduction happened through re-reading the data and coding the data into categories. frequencies in the coded data were identified and analyzed to identify patterns in the data. conclusions were drawn from the patterns to address the study’s research questions. findings we organized the report of the case study’s findings according to the research questions. as described earlier, the first research question inquired about how the mt participants are being prepared to use the aser survey tool and the aser methodology. the second question investigated the perceptions of the participants about volunteering to conduct survey research using the aser methodology. procedures the aser training procedures illustrates the rigorous preparation that the mt participants receive. as reviewed above, the two-day training is tightly scheduled and lasts for almost 20 cumulative hours. each training day starts in the morning and goes byker & banerjee current issues in comparative education 48 until the early evening. the first day begins with introductions and then the volunteers all commit to the aser volunteer pledge, which states: “i, as a citizen of india, have decided to volunteer for the annual status of education report. this effort aims to engage citizens and the government in the process of ensuring quality education for the children of this country. for the past 10 years, volunteers like me have traveled to the farthest districts and reached the remotest villages. we have gone from kashmir to kerala and from gujarat to arunachal, to conduct this survey and collect information with utmost sincerity. today, along with 30,000 volunteers across india, i am going to be a part of the largest citizen-led survey of india. i pledge to carry forward the honest work and vision of those who have come before me and become an example for those who will follow me in the years to come. i understand the importance of recording only correct information in the survey sheets and pledge to do so with complete honesty. under no circumstances will i avoid my responsibilities during the course of the survey. i pledge to uphold the integrity of the important role this movement has entrusted in me and play my part in building a better india.” (aser centre, 2014, p. 27) after reciting the pledge in unison, all the participants sign their name under the pledge, which is located in their training manual. the pledge is a ceremonial part of the training where the participants show their commitment to the aser mission and methodology. after the pledge recital, the training shifts to an overview and description of how to conduct the entire aser survey. then the participants then take a quiz, which contains over 25 questions about the procedures to follow when conducting the survey. after all the mt volunteers complete the quiz, they review and discuss the correct quiz answers. after a lunch break, the mt volunteers are then divided into small groups. the groups load up on a bus to go out in the field to small villages surrounding the training site, and conduct a pilot run of the entire survey training session. on the pilot run the aser accompany the mts in the village. together, they meet with a village elder, draw a village map, complete the school survey, and conduct the household survey of at least five homes in the village. on the second day of the training, the mt volunteers share the data that they recorded during the pilot study visit. they confer and recheck their data in small groups for accuracy. after making sure their aser survey tools are filled out correctly, they reflect in small groups on their experience in the field. the benefit of reflection is that it allows the mt volunteers to discuss what they learned from pilot run and to address any challenges they faced in the field so that they are better prepared to deal with these situations when they are in charge of training the volunteers in their region. then the mt volunteers are divided into new groups as an additional way to build camaraderie and learn from other volunteer’s experiences. each group prepares a presentation on how they will train the additional volunteers that they are expected to recruit. the presentation has several benefits. one benefit is that it gives the mts practice how they evidence for action: translating field research into a large scale assessment current issues in comparative education 49 will present the aser training information to the volunteers they recruit. another benefit is that the mts evaluate each other on their presentation and give feedback on presentation styles, maintaining confidence, and on the thoroughness of the content presented. a final benefit is that it also allows the mts to share ideas they have recruiting the additional volunteers. perceptions to understand the perceptions and motivations of the mt volunteers, they were asked to respond to the following question on the survey: “why did you decide to volunteer for aser?” almost 70% of the participants included the word “service” in their response. indeed, the most common response about service to this question was: “i want to serve my nation.” a little over 18% of the participants shared a response about gaining knowledge about the education of india’s children. for example, one participant wrote the following, “aser is the way to know more about the education levels of our community. by being part of this, we can take a little step to improve the education level of our nation.” finally, there was a mix of other responses to this question about their decision to volunteer, which included: “to gain more experience,” “to gain leadership opportunities,” and “to explore something new, to do our little for the better future of children.” discussion in hindi, the word aser means “impact.” the aser methodology certainly seems to make an impact on the volunteers, like the mt volunteers in our case study, who are helping to conduct the aser survey. in this section, we analyze and discuss the aser impact in greater detail. we start by examining the affordances and challenges of the aser methodology. then, we discuss the practical applications of the aser methodology in the larger field of comparative and international education (cie). we conclude this paper by making recommendations about the future of the aser methodology in cie. affordances the aser methodology is an unpretentious yet rigorous method of data collection in order to spur on evidence for action. the aser methodology reinforces the linkage between evidence and action by building a strong capacity of volunteers (for example: the mt volunteers in our case study), and partner institutions to conduct and understand the aser assessment data. the most vital affordance of the aser methodology is how it has managed to create a culture of citizen-led assessment. indeed, the aser methodology is a reflection of democratic citizenship in action. the methodology facilitates a way for citizens to be active in their community through volunteering, engaging, and participating in an assessment of their community in order to improve the standards. another affordance of the aser methodology is how the measurement contextualizes data to localities. for policies and interventions to be effective, they need to be flexible enough to be contextualized to local settings (byker, 2015a; 2015b). the aser methodology sheds light on the important role that schooling plays in shaping a village. byker & banerjee current issues in comparative education 50 it may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a school to raise a village. the aser methodology supports this notion as it engages its volunteer citizens in participatory field research that multiplies together into a large-scale data assessment. the participatory nature of the aser methodology is fundamental to capacity building as more and more citizens become committed to being part of finding out where their village stands in terms of the overall aser assessment. the notion about the participatory nature of aser is reflected in the response of one of our case-study participants who said, “i heard about aser from my friends, so i wanted to get the same type of experience and knowledge of my country.” finally, the impact of aser methodology leads to a powerful competency: altruism. among the volunteers, there is a great sense of altruism, which is the care and selfless concern for others. it is beyond the scope of this case study to correlate whether the people who volunteer for aser are naturally altruistic, or whether they gain altruistic behaviors because of the aser methodology. we were nonetheless impressed with the altruistic attitudes that this group of participants possessed when it came to serving their nation. challenges the aser methodology has much strength, but there are also challenges to this methodology. one challenge is that the aser methodology is resource intensive. it requires a great deal of human capital in the form of training hours and the actual implementation of the survey. another constraint is the funding involved within this methodology such as costs involved with the material production of the aser survey tool. hundreds of thousands of aser survey booklets and training materials are produced each year. there are also costs associated with training as well as the quality control of the data that come into account. finally, time is also a constraint and challenge. the entire aser assessment, from field research to published report, is completed in just about four months. the rapid timeframe ensures that the report is in the hands of india’s leaders and policymakers in as close to “real-time” as possible. yet, the aggressive time schedule means that the aser centre staff work tirelessly to get each annual report published according to schedule. applications to cie the aser methodology has direct applications to the field of comparative and international education. in fact, the aser methodology of citizen-led assessments has been replicated now in several countries around the globe. pakistan, kenya, uganda, tanzania, mali, senegal, and nigeria have all adopted the aser methodology in conducting large-scale assessments on the education levels of their children. it is important to note that the aser methodology was adopted and re-contextualized in these different countries, which means in many countries the survey tool was renamed according to the language and culture of the region where it was adopted. for example, in nigeria the aser methodology is called uwezo, which means "capability;” whereas in mali, the aser methodology was renamed to beekungo, which means “we are in it together;” and in senegal, aser is called jangandoo, which means “learn together.” in 2013 alone, these citizen-led, large-scale assessments covered over one million children in south asia and sub-saharan africa (banerjee & mutum, 2014). evidence for action: translating field research into a large scale assessment current issues in comparative education 51 conclusion there is much future promise to the aser methodology as a pathway to community engagement in schooling and education through the mobilization of a citizenry. scholars have pointed to the importance of contextualizing educational improvements into the practices of localized school settings (byker, 2014b; iyengar, witenstein, & byker, 2014; kumar, 2004). the efforts of citizens who volunteer for aser are one way that the larger field of cie better understands the learning levels of india’s children, as well as the availability or scarcity of resources in rural indian schools. rukmini banerji (2015), the director of pratham, explains that “citizensled assessments have a very strong potential to lead to citizen-led action for improving learning” (para. 12). indeed, the whole point of citizen-led assessments is for it to lead to positive action on behalf children and schools. related to the future work of cie, the aser methodology provides a powerful model of a democratic form of citizenship engagement in communities and schools. as the findings from our case study show, it is a model that seems to be linked to an increase in awareness and service to a community and nation. more research is needed about a possible correlation with the aser methodology and an increase in altruistic attitudes. even so, the aser methodology has caught on in india, and has spread around the globe. today there are programs that are getting started, like the lakhon mein ek campaign, which is working to improve the status of children’s learning in more than 100,000 villages in india. the program is a direct outcome of the aser methodology, and the objective is to mobilize citizens to and have them gain responsibility for education related action in their villages. we expect that similar programs will multiply in the future as more and more countries and citizens decide to make an impact for the betterment of the children in their communities. acknowledgements: thank you to dr. suman bhattacharjea, nandita banerjee, nimisha kapoor and the aser centre india for their support in the preparation of this article. contact: erik jon byker at ebyker@uncc.edu and aditi banerjee at aditiaser.10@gmail.com references annual status of education report (aser). (2013). new delhi: pratham resource center. annual status of education report (aser). (2014). new delhi: pratham resource center. aser centre (2014). instruction booklet. new delhi: pratham resource center. azim premji foundation. (2004). the social context of elementary education in rural india report. retrieved from: http://www.azimpremjifoundation.org/ byker & banerjee current issues in comparative education 52 banerjee, a. & mutum, a. (2014) the aser assessment and survey framework. new delhi: pratham resource center. banerji, r. (2015). building a movement assessment to action. research on improving systems of education. retrieved from: https://www.rise.ox.ac.uk/content/building-movement-assessment-action bronfenbrenner, u. (1979). the ecology of human development: experiments by nature and design. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. byker, e. j. (2014a). ict in india’s elementary schools: the vision and realities. international education journal, 13(2), 27-40. byker, e. j. (2014b). ict oriented toward nyaya: community computing in india’s slums. international journal of education and development using ict, 10(2), 19-28. byker, e. j. (2015a). the one laptop schools: equipping rural elementary schools in south india through public private partnerships. global education review, 2(4), 126-143. byker, e. j. (2015b). teaching for ‘global telephony’: a case study of a community school for india’s 21st century. policy futures in education, 13(2), 234-246 chudgar, a. (2009). does adult literacy have a role to play in addressing the universal elementary education challenge in india? comparative education review, 53(3), 403 – 433. creswell, j.w. (2014). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches, 4th ed. thousand oaks, ca: sage press. french, r., & kingdon, g. (2010). the relative effectiveness of private and government schools in rural india: evidence from aser data. london: institute of education. hickey, s. & mohan, g. (2004). towards participation as transformation: critical themes and challenges. in s. hickey & g. mohan (eds.), participation: from tyranny to transformation? exploring new approaches to participation in development, pp. 3-24. new york, ny: zed books. iyengar, r., witenstein, m. a., & byker, e. j. (2014). comparative perspectives on teacher education in south asia. in a. w. wiseman & e. anderson (ed.) annual review of comparative and international education 2014 (pp. 99-106). doi: 10.1108/s14793679_2014_0000025010 kumar, k. (2004). perspectives on learning in elementary schools. plenary address. national conference on leadership in india’s elementary schools. retrieved evidence for action: translating field research into a large scale assessment current issues in comparative education 53 from http://www.azimpremjifoundation.org/downloads/plenary%20address.pdf vagh, s. b. (2009). validating the aser testing tools: comparisons with reading fluency and the read india measures. new delhi: pratham resource center. volume 13(1) / fall 2010 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice special symposium issue aid, development, and education editorial introduction 3 introduction to the special symposium issue andrew k. shiotani featured article 7 aid, development, and education steven j. klees responses 29 the ignorant donor: a radical reimagination of international aid, development, and education william c. brehm and iveta silova 37 improving aid effectiveness or transforming the global capitalist system mark ginsburg 44 the aid debate: beyond the liberal/conservative divide sangeeta kamat 51 paradoxes and prospects: moving beyond the study of foreign aid karen mundy reply 56 towards a progressive view of aid, development, and education steven j. klees current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 13, issue 1 (fall 2010) special symposium issue editors: andrew k. shiotani, ryan hathaway, and michelle hollett editorial board managing editor matthew hayden executive editor andrew k. shiotani senior editors ryan hathaway, ruaridh macleod, sarah flatto editors toni cela, anne gaspers, molly hamm, michelle hollett, rachel hatch, jason mellon, carina omoeva, muntasir sattar, angye rincon-castillo web editor andrew k. shiotani international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2010 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, 13(1), 44-50. the aid debate: beyond the liberal/conservative divide sangeeta kamat university of massachusetts, amherst towards the end of the twentieth century a sickness struck the world. not everyone died, but all suffered from it. the virus which caused the epidemic was called the ‘liberal virus.’ (amin, 2003, p. 6) recent works that assess whether development has been well-served, or served at all, by international aid, are overwhelmingly pessimistic in their assessment and in favor of the market as the antidote to international aid (klees, 2010). three of the books reviewed by steve klees – easterly (2006), moyo (2009), and dichter (2009) – conclude that the market is a more potent mechanism for alleviating poverty and ensuring development than are aid institutions. these writings reflect the normalization of the neoliberal logic that endorses a market solution to all socio-economic issues and argues for private capital to stimulate economic development in the third world. the underlying assumption is that economic growth and private enterprise will have spillover effects on social life and assure improvements in health and education indices, a sort of lateral version of the “trickle down” of modernization theory. while this assumption is not new and represents classic liberal thinking, the neoliberal logic inserts an additional twist and endorses private entrepreneurship and quasi-market behavior in social sectors of education and health to substitute for state and international aid investments. as klees states at the outset, to find this view expressed by development experts is hardly surprising. to extend klees’ argument about the ascendancy of the neoliberal perspective over the last three decades, i would append three moments that have been instrumental in mobilizing neoliberalism as the new “common sense”: i) the fall of communist states and the “end of history” that anointed western “free market” ideology as the heir apparent of a new post-cold war geopolitics; ii) the capitulation of third world and post-socialist states to neoliberal policy regimes; and iii) the success of the “neocon” propaganda campaign that equates markets with democracy. klees provides a faithful review of the perspectives of the five authors and rightly situates their work as representing one of two main theoretical/political frameworks: the neoliberal and the liberal. he also identifies a third political framework, the progressive, with which he is aligned and that he finds rather scarce in the scholarship on international aid. however, i find that in his essay klees does not adequately compensate for this lacuna; his essay focuses on the neoliberal and liberal frameworks that represent the mainstream view on aid, but offers very little elaboration of the progressive perspective that klees endorses. my interest in this essay therefore is to extricate the progressive perspective (as defined by klees) from its premature burial and elaborate on progressive analysis on the future of aid and development. i do this by first parsing the very category of “progressive” and contend that its typical usage within u.s. political discourse obfuscates rather than clarifies political analysis. i build on this point to argue that the ways in which the “progressive” perspective is circumscribed in klees’ essay and within general u.s. political debate rules out left critiques of international aid and the alternatives proposed from within this framework. finally, i outline some recent policy actions and people’s struggles in different parts of the third world that illustrate a left current issues in comparative education 45 the aid debate: beyond the liberal/conservative divide perspective on aid and development quite distinct from the liberal progressive critiques that we have on the table thus far.1 it should be abundantly clear by now that my response is not as an opponent of steve klees, a scholar whose work instructs and inspires my own, and a colleague whom i deeply respect, admire and value. in fact there is very little i disagree with in terms of the content of his essay. my concern is with what he excludes and elides that unfortunately is not specific to his essay but refers to a more general condition of political debate in this country. my participation in this debate is as an ally, that is, as a colleague who shares membership in the same progressive camp that klees identifies with in his essay. thus my critique is not directed at the neoliberal camp, a task that klees, samoff, stromquist, arnove, and many others in and outside our field have accomplished admirably. rather, i wish to engage my fellow “progressives” who eschew the market as a solution to the unrelenting poverty, impoverishment, and marginalization of people in the third world and who seek more humane and efficacious solutions to these pressing development issues. restating the terms of the debate the mainstay of my critique is the manner in which the categories of conservative, liberal, and progressive are deployed as distinct and oppositional positions on aid and development, when in actuality these positions may share a lot in common and even converge in their responses to specific situations of international development assistance. the case of u.s. intervention and aid in afghanistan presents us with a classic instance of the convergence among these three positions. along with neoconservatives, one finds self-identified liberals, progressives, and leftists supporting the war and aid effort in afghanistan in defence of women’s rights and democracy.2 left theologian mccarraher (2010) puts it succinctly when explaining why president obama was widely perceived as progressive and even, on occasion, a leftist by the u.s. electorate and intelligentsia: liberalism – or progressivism, an utterly empty word that mashes together a lot of very different tendencies on the left – is now more than ever the left wing of capitalism, the same benediction of capitalist property relations but with a renovated racial and sexual politics. (mccarraher, 2010, italics in the original) early in his essay klees (2010) remarks that “these paradigms are more continuous and overlapping than mutually exclusive” (p. 15), a feature that is not predetermined or natural but needs to be historicized. the term progressive performs precisely the work of allowing a wide umbrella, under which distinct strands of the ideological spectrum can gather and claim allegiance to notions of justice, equality, and democracy while remaining vague about what exactly each of these mean and for whom. an ironic politics unfolds where the term progressive means “something roughly leftist, roughly liberal, and roughly radical, all at the same time” (shah, 2009). shah (2009) explains the use of progressive in this particular way as “uniquely american” and not common to other parts of the world.3 the term “progressive” makes it impossible to distinguish between liberal and left, and this confusion is evident in klees’ essay when he concludes that “riddell and ellerman proceed from a predominantly liberal perspective, although both have some progressive elements” (p. 16). this elision has several troubling implications: first, it perpetuates the illusion that conservativism is the opposite of liberalism; and second, it forces a false rapport between liberalism and left 46 current issues in comparative education s. kamat politics. in her masterful critique of liberalism, brown (2002) clarifies that “liberalism is not a political position opposite to conservatism but a political order that replaces tudor monarchy rooted in explicit class privilege with modern democratic constitutionalism rooted in abstract individualism” (p. 5). further, liberalism is contrary to left politics in that the former suppresses the question of distribution because of “the effects of the depoliticized status of political economy in liberal orders” (brown, 2002, 7). the marxian emphasis on the distribution of power and resources is conspicuously absent from liberalism’s emphasis on social equality and the equal distribution of individuals’ rights, a distinction that disappears when liberalism subsumes the left under the label of progressivism (shah, 2009). this distinction along with the depoliticization of political economy produces qualitatively different responses to the dependencies and inequalities that are embedded in the aid relation. both riddell’s does foreign aid work? and ellerman’s helping people help themselves are good examples of what separates liberal analysis from left analysis. for reasons of space, i will discuss ellerman to illustrate my case. ellerman’s use of the categories of “helpers” and “doers” invites us to imagine a fictional world of “do-gooders” (helpers in his language) and enterprising poor individuals (doers) that the invisible hand of democracy will bring together. here development is envisioned almost as a marketplace that brings together helpers and doers in some kind of natural confluence. through the use of apolitical categories such as “helpers” and “doers,” ellerman presents us with a liberal populist fantasy where structures, classes, institutions, and historical power relations melt away. in other words, ellerman’s formulation depicts the depoliticized political economy that is foundational to liberal political thought (see brown, 2002). moreover, ellerman’s liberal conception is not very different from easterly’s more explicit neoliberal recommendation that “[a]gents of assistance have to have incentives to search for what works to help the poor” (easterly, 2006, p. 382). this is another instance of democracy construed as a market where agents (or “helpers”) can be incentivized to work for the benefit of the poor. both authors seek to transcend the realities of international political economy by calling for direct relations between “developers” and the “poor” mediated by market rules of demand and supply or individual good will.4 change within the liberal perspective turns out to be what eagleton (2003) calls “the present plus more options” (p. 7).5 riddell and ellerman’s recommendations fall within this ambit in their calls for greater “involvement and participation of recipients in decisions,” “transparent criteria,” “alternative distribution mechanisms,” “improvements in coordination,” “codes of conduct,” and “incrementalism and self-help,” even as they warn us that many of the present policy reforms echo exactly these objectives but accomplish very little by way of real change. direct cash transfers advocated as a progressive measure may provide some succor to poor households, but these too, i argue, are not directed towards nurturing a left politics and are part of a liberal framework of distributing largesse to individual households. direct cash transfers construe the poor primarily as consumers in a market economy whose poverty may be eased by allowing for slightly better access to the market. insofar as development and well-being are tied to an individual’s participation in the market, integrating poor people into the dominant neoliberal capitalist economy is a predetermined outcome of such schemes. in other words, the terms of the (neo)liberal economy are not contested; rather, the demand is for a share of its provisions.6 direct cash transfers favoured by progressives is indicative of liberalism constituting the outer limits of progressive politics in this country, a distinction once again clarified by brown (2003): indeed, much of the progressive political agenda in recent years has been concerned not with democratizing power but with distributing goods, and especially with current issues in comparative education 47 the aid debate: beyond the liberal/conservative divide pressuring the state to buttress the rights and increase the entitlements of the socially vulnerable or disadvantaged: people of color, homosexuals, women, endangered animal species, threatened wetlands, ancient forests, the sick, and the homeless. (as cited in shah, 2009)7 my argument thus far has been to show how the term “progressive” concedes ground to liberal and neoliberal perspectives and renders the left perspective unintelligible and ambiguous, and perhaps even out-dated and irrelevant. assimilating the left within the progressive exempts us from engaging with the left position as a distinct, substantial, and promising way forward on issues of aid and development. by way of conclusion, i briefly outline the perspectives and analysis on aid and development from a left perspective that are part of the contemporary political scenario. toward a left critique of international aid there are several references scattered through klees’ essay that speak to a left position on aid. in particular, he agrees with samoff (2009) that the aid system’s “essential role is not to achieve publicly stated objectives but rather to maintain a global political economy of inequality” (quoted in klees, 2010, p. 16). to counteract the structural inequities secured by international aid, klees calls for a transformative politics that is rooted in “widespread collective action” (p. 16). i could not agree more, though i would argue his recommendations remain faithful to a liberal perspective on aid and development and do not articulate a transformative politics. to each of klees’ four recommendations i would attach the following caveats that offer a distinctly left perspective on aid and development. none of these are of course exhaustive of a left politics, but are meant merely to illustrate the distance between a liberal approach and a left approach to aid and development. 1. debt cancellation and reparations: in addition to more aid, we need to support political campaigns that call for debt cancellation and a boycott of the foreign debt that is crushing third world economies. the most recent such call for unconditional debt cancellation has come from a national alliance of political parties, trade unions, and ngos in pakistan that oppose more aid as the answer to pakistan’s economic and humanitarian crisis. the national campaign that held mass rallies in the major cities of pakistan in september this year also demanded that the government refuse any further loans and only accept grants for infrastructure building following the january 2010 earthquake in haiti, there have been similar calls for haiti’s debt to be cancelled. a 2004 world bank/imf study found that in countries receiving debt relief, poverty reduction initiatives doubled between 1999 and 2004. to cite but a few examples from the report, tanzania used savings to eliminate school fees, hire more teachers, and build more schools, burkina faso drastically reduced the cost of life-saving drugs and increased access to clean water, and uganda more than doubled school enrollment (see jubileeusa.org). 2. right to livelihood: instead of channeling cash directly to poor households, conditional or otherwise, states need to institute a national policy that guarantees livelihood and employment to poor households. in 2005, under the constitutional directive of the right to work,8 the indian government enacted the national rural employment guarantee act that entitles every rural household a minimum of 100 days of employment a year at statutory minimum wages. the details of the act were formulated in consultation with social movement organizations and left development economists who inserted terms such as “meaningful employment” and “community development works” into the terms of the act. coupled with 48 current issues in comparative education s. kamat the right to information act (2005) and social audits where locals examine state allocations and expenditures for rural development programs in their areas, the national employment program has facilitated collective action where locals identify areas of village development on which to work and receive public remuneration for these.9 in contrast, direct cash transfers continue to privilege the market and individual responsibility, that is, risk is upon the individual beneficiary to make best use of this meager resource. it does not entail state provision for development works, nor does it foster collective action. it is therefore not surprising that moyo, a neoliberal economist would enthusiastically endorse conditional cash transfers. we live under conditions of predatory capitalism that sanctions “accumulation by dispossession” where the poor are increasingly disposable labor and can be expunged from the economy. the profitability of natural resources such as minerals, oil, water and land are infinitely greater, a reality that is lived by many in africa, the middle east and asia. when the material basis for a decent livelihood and a life of dignity cease to exist, to what ends would the poor utilize their cash benefits? a national public works program like the one i describe above aims to provide stable incomes to poor households and generate collective action on development. 3. social movements: participation, i agree, is basic to democratic governance, but here again klees leaves out mention of social movements that are essential to building robust democracies. the state or other institutions of development are sites where the poor can contest and shape development perspectives only on the basis of strong and dynamic social movements that include labor unions and other mass organizations. klees recognizes that participation prescribed by official aid institutions is most often instrumental and superficial. it is unclear however how “real and strong participation” in governance can be realized without support for social movements and movement organizations. social movements and people’s organizations are the only viable mechanisms through which political participation can be mobilized and are necessary elements for a substantive democracy. whether it is the international campaign for the abolition of third world debt, the national rural employment guarantee program in india, or citizen schools in porto alegre (referenced by klees), these have come into being on the basis of strong organizing by people’s organizations from the grassroots level to national and international campaigning. commitment to participation therefore implies solidarity with progressive social movements and people’s struggles to advance conditions for genuine people’s participation in governance and policy making. with increasing reliance on subcontracting to ngos and private agents, participation in the aid industry is today a highly profitable business. people’s participation is often a mere formality or performance. therefore one has to look beyond the aid infrastructure for meaningful self-organizing efforts among labor groups, women’s groups, urban dwellers, peasants, teachers, political parties, indigenous struggles, and community organizations, and support these efforts without coopting them into the aid infrastructure. 4. bank of the south: aid has served as a vital tool of foreign policy since the bretton woods institutions came into existence. the powerful mandate and operating structures of the world bank and the imf need drastic reform but just as important we need different lending institutions that will shift the balance of power between donor and recipient countries. the bank of the south, founded in 2009 last year with $20 billion in start-up capital by seven south american countries is a modest but important initiative to establish a regional development bank that will serve its member countries. it repatriates the capital reserves of these countries that are in the imf, world bank and other foreign banks to a development bank established and current issues in comparative education 49 the aid debate: beyond the liberal/conservative divide controlled by south american nations. we need similar regional partnerships and institutions in the south to emerge that will correct the asymmetrical relationship between first and third world countries.10 the four caveats i outline above help discern between a liberal perspective and a left approach and also show the slippage on occasion between the liberal and neoliberal perspectives on the future of aid and development. the recent financial crisis in the u.s. gives us an invaluable opportunity to question whether sustainable development is a viable project under capitalist economic arrangements and whether participation in the global capitalist market can provide equitable opportunities and security for people in developed and developing economies. ultimately, the left perspective is premised on the hope that capitalism is not the outermost limit of social and political possibility and that something beyond capitalism is not only possible but also necessary for a just social and economic order. however, the triumph of liberalism symbolizes the impoverishment of a political vision that aspires to and fights for a system beyond global capitalism. acknowledgments the author wishes to thank the editors of cice for their assistance and input on this article. endnotes 1. latin american dependency theorists and anti-colonial scholars were the first to develop a left perspective on aid but after the 1980s their work became increasingly marginal within the u.s. academic context. the world context and postcolonial theory has evolved considerably from the time when their critiques were developed informed by the concept of decolonization. given the persistence of structured inequalities at the geo-political level and within nations, left analysis remains as relevant as in the early postcolonial period but one that accounts for a changed global environment. 2. well known examples are the commentator and new york times columnist thomas friedman and leftist journalist christopher hitchens. the entire progressive movement in the u.s. remains muddled in its position on the war in afghanistan and pakistan. while the iraq war was framed as the “bad war” undertaken to defend u.s. national interests rather than putatively democratic ideals, the war in afghanistan and pakistan has been framed as a “good war.” yet at his west point speech in 2009, president obama acknowledged that it is “national interests” that require escalation of u.s. military intervention in afghanistan, and one has to look only at the map to realize that the war effort is for u.s. dominance in the region. 3. shah (2009) locates this usage as an expression of anti-marxist tendencies among the u.s. left and the anti-communist mccarthy era politics when marxists had to take refuge under the term progressive that accommodated a range of liberals, including free market libertarians and pro-state neoconservatives. 4. the question from a left perspective would be: what if the poor agree that what works for them is a social movement to redistribute power and resources? would that be an incentive for “helpers” to work with “doers” in this project. 5. the unfolding democracy movement in egypt in early 2011 represents a tragic example of the liberal approach pitted against left politics. the egyptian government is desperately trying to work within a “present plus more options” approach and offering concessions, ignoring demands for economic and social justice, right to dignity, and freedom from fear of the state that protestors have consistently asserted as their human right. 6. “resources redistributed to the poor can help re-direct the economy towards their needs and, when combined with job creation efforts, can help set up a self-sustaining system” (klees, 50 current issues in comparative education s. kamat 2010, p. 18). 7. here butler’s critique (and by extension mine) must not be misunderstood as representing an ‘anti-state’ position. rather it is about how one engages with the state and whether the reforms provide a systematic and meaningful shift in the balance of power between the working poor and the ruling class, and encourages the formation of a collective consciousness and solidarity among the working poor, objectives that don’t have a place within liberal and neoliberal policy frameworks. 8. article 39 of the indian constitution urges the state to ensure that “citizens, men and women equally, have the right to an adequate means to livelihood.” further, article 41 stresses that “the state, shall within the limits of its economic capacity and development, make effective provision for securing right to work…”. 9. india’s national rural employment guarantee program harkens to roosevelt’s new deal program of the 1930s where, as a policy response to economic depression, people were employed on “public works” projects such as theaters, libraries, and parks. 10. of course regional alliances among countries of the south are no guarantee that neocolonialism and dependency will not structure these relations, especially given the rise of new centers of power in the south such as china, india and brazil that may well have their own imperialist ambitions. once again it is a dynamic social movement base in these countries that can challenge the imperialist aspirations of their leaders. references amin, s. (2003). the liberal virus: permanent war and the americanization of the world. new york: monthly review press. brown, w., & halley, j. (2002). introduction. in w. brown & j. halley (eds.). left legalism / left critique (pp. 1-37). durham and london: duke university press. dichter, t. (2003). despite good intentions: why development assistance to the third world has failed. amherst, ma: university of massachusetts press. eagleton, t. (2003). after theory. new york: basic books. easterly, w. (2006). the white man’s burden: why the west’s efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good. new york: penguin press. klees, s. (2010). aid, development, and education. current issues in comparative education, 13(1), 7-28. mccarraher, e. (2010). meet the new boss, same as the old boss: an interview with eugene mccarraher, part one of three. the other journal at mars hill graduate school. retrieved from http://www.theotherjournal.com/article.php?id=924. moyo, d. (2009). dead aid: why aid is not working and how there is a better way for africa. new york: farrar, straus, and giroux. shah, s. p. (2009). sexuality and “the left”: thoughts on intersections and visceral others. the scholar and feminist online, 7(3). retrieved from http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/sexecon/ shah_01.htm. © 2010 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 178 current issues in comparative education within fragile states. in the face of these conundrums, brock et al. offer two proposals: (i) the need to “re-examine external conditions and forms of engagement that foster or support the mitigation of fragile statehood” and (ii) that the global community should “be ready to do more, and with much greater speed in emergency situations” (p. 165). a requisite component of the first proposal involves an overhaul of international development, whereby effective self-help is fostered and the more economically advanced economies revisit the disequilibrium of “trade relations, market access, investment rules, financial regulation, the rules and regulations of the international organizations, and ‘transnational bads’, such as smuggling, the drugs trade, the arms trade, [and] international terrorism” (p. 167). these are indeed worthwhile recommendations, though more effort should have been expended on their elaboration. nonetheless, this book represents a strong contribution toward widening our understanding of fragile states; and despite the far-ranging analysis of both endogenous and exogenous factors that shape state fragility, the authors are perhaps quite right when they insist that “fundamental social change must come from [within and] not from outsiders” (p. 136). – reviewed by hakim mohandas amani williams, gettysburg college citizenship education in commonwealth countries, by tristan mccowan and sonia gomez. london, uk: commonwealth secretariat, 2012. 100 pp. isbn-13 978-1849290715. citizenship education in commonwealth countries analyzes the use of citizenship education as an educational intervention to promote respect and understanding in different commonwealth countries. according to mccowan and gomez, “given that half of the 2 billion people in the commonwealth are under 25 years old, citizenship education, whether implicit or explicit, represents a window of opportunity to influence a world of active citizenship and peace for the next generation” (p. 25). with this in mind, citizenship education in commonwealth countries offers a complex look at citizenship education in a global era. the authors explore both what it means to be a citizen in a global society and how to create cosmopolitan citizens through education. spanning the range of issues associated with citizenship education from theorizing citizenship to implementing interventions, mccowan and gomez provide useful insights into innovative teaching strategies that foster respect and understanding in cosmopolitan citizens. in the most traditional sense, citizenship “involves a relationship between the citizen and other citizens or the state, and involves concessions and privileges on both sides” (p. 14). because citizenship education has often been framed by patriotic citizenship in a given nation-state, it has failed to address issues of international conflict. however, defining citizenship in a global era proves particularly complicated, as members of diverse ethnic and religious groups claim citizenship within the same national boundaries. in this context, the ideal cosmopolitan citizen emerges – not a national citizen focused on competing successfully in global markets, but a cosmopolitan global citizen who displays empathy through respect and understanding for diverse groups of people. aiming to build cosmopolitan citizens through education, mccowan and gomez employ martha nussbaum’s three capacities: critical self-examination, world citizenship, and the narrative imagination. across different commonwealth countries, citizenship education has been practiced in different ways and to varying degrees. mccowan and gomez review those practices in case studies of current issues in comparative education 179 five commonwealth countries: canada, england, south africa, sri lanka and vanuatu. they analyze citizenship education practices in each of these countries with respect to the goals of strengthening democracy and building social cohesion. each case involves a unique context in which to implement citizenship education, and the interventions are unsurprisingly diverse. across all five cases, mccowan and gomez cite similar factors that either promote or harm the effectiveness of citizenship education. three factors supporting citizenship education include teacher involvement and ownership, democratic school management and pedagogy, and a democratic environment outside the school. vanuatu, the only small state in the group, has had particular difficulty implementing citizenship education because of its ethnic diversity, geography, and post-colonial political complexity. for vanuatu, “the more complex issue for citizenship education is that of reconciling multiple cultural influences, tradition and modernity, national and local. the formal education system, while on its way to addressing access issues, has yet to find ways to balance multiple cultural influences to promote social cohesion and civic knowledge” (p. 50). according to mccowan and gomez, this small state needs to engage its citizens to build an agreed-upon identity that takes into account the vanuatu’s ethnic diversity and colonial history. as this case shows, postcolonial small states face unique challenges in implementing citizenship education. in addition to describing five case studies of citizenship education, mccowan and gomez present examples of best practices and innovations from across the globe. these innovations span a broad, if somewhat random, group of innovations. as mccowan and gomez state, “[m]ost do not come under the label ‘citizenship education’ as such, but represent innovative ways of working towards political empowerment and intercultural understanding, and so share the same aims” (p. 53). by grouping together innovations from model un to refugee education in thailand to intercultural universities in mexico, the authors illustrate how citizenship education can be effective through diverse means in a variety of contexts. even though the programs’ content, delivery methods, and contexts are unique, each intervention promotes respect and understanding. the cases included could provide insights for teachers or curriculum writers interested in fostering cosmopolitan citizenship among students. citizenship education in commonwealth countries uses the idea of citizenship education as a vehicle for promoting peace and intercultural understanding. taking into consideration identity and the state of citizenship in a global society, mccowan and gomez present a nuanced look at citizenship education with an optimistic yet pragmatic aim of promoting peace through respect and understanding. most impressively, the authors present not only the theoretical basis for promoting citizenship education, but also tackle the problem of implementation. in doing so, they provide both policy-makers and educators with concrete ideas and insights to create new innovations in citizenship education. in addressing implementation across such a broad scope, the authors include a wide array of innovations across different contexts. while presenting such diverse approaches to citizenship education is clearly useful, it would also be helpful for these innovations to be presented within a more coherent framework for implementation. both educators and policy-makers – two groups that might find this work most interesting – would benefit from such a framework when looking to create new strategies for building citizenship education programs. by seeing citizenship education from a cosmopolitan perspective, mccowan and gomez provide a compelling vision for the future. nationalist or patriotic versions of citizenship education seem anachronistic in the present context. yet citizenship is still widely understood as an imperative 180 current issues in comparative education for living in community with others. by extending their notion of community, and encouraging a citizenship education that encourages international respect and understanding, mccowan and gomez take a step forward in the path to peace through education on an international scale. – reviewed by beth wright, loyola university chicago education in small states: global imperatives, regional initiatives and local dilemmas, edited by peter mayo. new york, ny: routledge, taylor and francis group, 2010. 168 pp. isbn-13: 9780415560399 sixteen scholars contributed to nine chapters in peter mayo’s edited book that drew on articles that comparative education published as a special issue in 2008 (volume 44, issue 2). the chapters covered issues that range from basic education, adult education, and entrepreneurship training, to the impact of globalization on educational restructuring, career guidance, advancement of educational research, and funding of higher education in specific small state regions. in spite of a seeming lack of coherence the papers weave in and out of five main research strands: politics and policy making; economic development and labour market characteristics; education and human resource development; administration and sociocultural issues. one of the major strengths of the book is its diversity in terms of not only the range of issues but also the representation of work done on small states – a not easily defined concept – in the southern pacific, caribbean, african, european, and mediterranean regions. some of the claims authors make about the notion of small scale are very specific while others are more tentative, taking into consideration other variables and the presence of similar challenges in regions and communities that might not be categorized as ‘small or smaller’. the authors agree that the question of size is indeed a very critical issue for jurisdictions that grapple with creating educational systems that allow them to better prepare students at all levels of the educational system to participate in a global economy. while some authors seem to focus on the seemingly negative aspects of size, others look to the positive and the advantages of being ‘small,’ or attempt to strike a balance. of great importance to this book is the contribution of the late kazim bacchus, a leading scholar in international, comparative and development education. bacchus’ scholarly work over the years positions him to adequately provide a historical background and introduction to the many issues raised in other chapters of the book. of great significance is his reference, though some scholars might argue somewhat uncritical, to the work of the commonwealth secretariat, world bank, and other organizations and the role they played in identifying the educational challenges facing small states, and supporting their integration into the competitive global economy of the 21st century. it is important to note that as crossley suggested one of the priorities of small states should be the strengthening of their capacity to do research and evaluation. the lack of funds to do this kind of work is a major limitation in terms of small states’ ability to participate in global initiatives, make public the achievements of small states, and challenge the hegemonic discourse of many of the research paradigms used to study local contexts. given the focus of the text, bacchus’ discussion on the varying definitions of ‘small state’ is most critical and relevant to an understanding of its influence on what these various so-called entities find they can and cannot do as they attempt to participate in global imperatives and regional initiatives. the economic, sociocultural, and political issues, their relationships to size, and the volume 13(1) / fall 2010 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice special symposium issue aid, development, and education editorial introduction 3 introduction to the special symposium issue andrew k. shiotani featured article 7 aid, development, and education steven j. klees responses 29 the ignorant donor: a radical reimagination of international aid, development, and education william c. brehm and iveta silova 37 improving aid effectiveness or transforming the global capitalist system mark ginsburg 44 the aid debate: beyond the liberal/conservative divide sangeeta kamat 51 paradoxes and prospects: moving beyond the study of foreign aid karen mundy reply 56 towards a progressive view of aid, development, and education steven j. klees current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 13, issue 1 (fall 2010) special symposium issue editors: andrew k. shiotani, ryan hathaway, and michelle hollett editorial board managing editor matthew hayden executive editor andrew k. shiotani senior editors ryan hathaway, ruaridh macleod, sarah flatto editors toni cela, anne gaspers, molly hamm, michelle hollett, rachel hatch, jason mellon, carina omoeva, muntasir sattar, angye rincon-castillo web editor andrew k. shiotani international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2010 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, 13(1), 37-43. improving aid effectiveness or transforming the global capitalist system mark ginsburg global education center, academy for educational development international educational policy program, university of maryland in the introduction to his article, “aid, development, and education,” klees (2010) poses the question, has the “hundreds of billions of dollars in international aid … loaned to [or otherwise targeted to “assist”] developing countries through bilateral and multilateral mechanisms … helped?” (p. 6). he then posits the question to be “too complicated to be well specified” for empirical study, in part because “there are a myriad of interactive factors that affect poverty and economic growth besides aid” and “international aid serves many [other] purposes.” after reviewing a set of recent books on aid (dichter, 2003; easterly, 2008; moyo, 2009; riddell, 2007) framed mainly by authors subscribing to a neoliberal capitalist perspective, klees concludes by stating that “the best anyone can say is that the situation could have been a lot worse than it is now without aid.” ironically, though, this conclusion may apply to: a) the quality of life for all human beings and/or b) the compensatory legitimation (weiler, 1988) of the world economic system and national political economies. i basically agree with klees’ analysis of the issues and his critical review of these assessments of aid. however, i would take the critique further and promote a more radical – and, in my view, more humane – agenda for change. to begin with, i would problematize “development” much more than klees does. although the question he posed (above) is framed around the term “aid,” he appropriately includes the term “development” in the title of his article, given that most of the focus is on overseas or foreign development assistance. klees does reference frank’s (1967) critical analysis of the global economic system, but refrains from naming the system (yates, 2003),1 let alone calling for a transformation of global capitalist relations (e.g., skocpol, 1977; wallerstein, 1984). instead, his argument could be (mis)interpreted as claiming that “poverty and inequality” result from – and are being reproduced by – neoliberalism.2 i share klees’ critique of neoliberalism, but would emphasize that it is only one of several ideologies (and associated policies and actions) which, historically, have been marshaled (with some success) to mobilize support for and demobilize opposition to the world capitalist system.3 thus, in my opinion, we need to be very careful in using the term “development,” given that its meaning has been captured within a capitalist framework. one might want to try to rescue the term by referencing social democratic, socialist, eco-feminist, or sustainable, human rights-based development, but perhaps it is better to focus our attention and energies on transforming the unjust “capitalist” world system.4 in brief, capitalism refers to a mode of productive and attendant social relations in which the means of production are privately owned and the profits derived from the sale of the goods and services produced are privately accumulated. from a marxist perspective, a fundamental contradiction of capitalism is that “although production is [increasingly] a social activity, the ownership and control of the means of production are privately concentrated” (ginsburg, 1988, p. 8; see also mao tse-tung, 1971). because the logic of capitalism is capital accumulation (i.e., growth and concentration of capital via increasing profits or surplus value), there are systemic pressures against the needs of the majority of people being met. this results from “the restrictions 38 current issues in comparative education m. ginsburg capitalism imposes on the individual and social consumption of the workers ... because the aim of capitalist production is to maximise surplus value, and this necessitates limiting the growth of real wages” (democratic socialist perspective, 2006). according to marx (1875/1972, p. 388), there would be a quite different logic underpinning socialist or communist productive/social relations: “from each according to [one’s] ability, to each according to [one’s] needs.”5 this logic or ethical stance, of course, is not limited to marxism. for example, within the “acts of the apostles” in the new testament, it is written that the apostles “sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, according as anyone had need” (acts 2:45). more recently, the u.n. declaration of human rights (1948) states that every person – “without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or … the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs” (article 2) – has the rights to: a) “employment [with] … just and favorable conditions of work … [and] remuneration” as well as b) “a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of [one]self and of [one’s] family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services” (article 25).6 to illustrate, one can conceive of capitalism as structured similarly to the goals and rules of the milton bradley board game “monopoly.”7 the goal for individual players is to accumulate as much property and other assets as possible. one wins the game when other players have no assets or give up because their chances of acquiring assets seem too limited. there are no rules that require sharing resources or the benefits of such, though rules do not proscribe players from making loans or even outright cash transfers or grants to each other, sometimes done as an act of human kindness or merely to prolong the game. in a sense, the game can be summarized as “from each according to one’s ability (or luck), to each according to one’s greed.”8 how would the game, which i will call “utopia,” be structured if it were based on the logic or ethic referenced above: “from each according to one’s ability, to each according to one’s needs?” to start with, the goal of this game would not be to accumulate property and other assests (i.e., capital), but to identify and mobilize all players’ abilities to participate collectively in determining the needs of various people (e.g., based on a human rights framework), to develop the “needed” kinds of goods/services and policies, and to engage in practices that guarantee an equitable and appropriate distribution of goods/services and realization of rights. notice that in the game of “utopia,” meeting other players’ needs and insuring their rights would not be left to an afterthought, an act of kindness, or a desire to prolong the game. instead, such actions constitute the core – the goals and rules – of the game. imagine how this game might be translated into the real world of human action. pursuing the “utopian” game of life would entail working collaboratively, but likely also struggling to focus local, national, and global political, economic, and cultural systems to determine and to meet human needs. in this reality some of what is termed “development assistance” or “aid” – helping people to meet their needs and realize their rights – would become core activities of the system rather than voluntary, supplementary, or compensatory actions when wealthy individuals, groups, or nations were so inclined or thought such actions were in their best interest. that is, to reference a term freire (1970) used in discussing the paternalism of social welfare programs, we would do away with “false generosity.” another implication of this utopian version of human experience is that attention would be focused on the private sector, not as a model but as a site for analysis and struggle – to focus current issues in comparative education 39 improving aid effectiveness or transforming the global capitalist system local, national, and multinational corporate activity so that it would help to meet human needs and realize human rights. one of my concerns about the debates regarding aid effectiveness, including the contribution by klees, is that corporations are not included in the picture. klees and others note that a sizeable proportion of the relatively limited proportion of wealthy countries’ gdp devoted to aid ends up purchasing goods and services from for-profit and non-profit entities in these countries. however, one also needs to examine how the everyday actions of multinational corporations, for example, reinforce or contradict the stated “development” goals of bilateral and multilateral international donor organizations. this would offer a more complex and accurate picture of the workings of the world system than is provided by a focus on government actions only. attention to multinational corporate activity may be especially important, in that at least in the mid-1990s it was estimated that “more than a quarter of the world’s economic activity … stems from only two hundred corporations, while approximately one-third of world trade takes place among different units of a single global company” (braun, 1997, p. 143). some readers may think proposals for ‘socializing’ the responsibility and benefit of economic activity are too radical to be considered in the current situation. if so, this would indicate that neoliberal and other pro-capitalist ideologies are functioning well, foreclosing alternative discourses, let alone actions. such readers, however, might be interested to learn about two recommendations made by one of the neoliberal economists whose book klees discussed. in her provocatively titled volume, dead aid, moyo (2009) calls for ending bilateral and multilateral aid programs and basically subjecting those living in poor countries to the “invisible hand” (smith, 1776/1976) of the market. for instance, she states that “it should come as no surprise that the … prescriptions are market-based, since no economic ideology other than one rooted in the movement of capital and competition has succeeded in getting the greater number of people out of poverty, in the fastest time” (moyo, 2009, p. 145; emphasis added). whether one agrees or not with her conclusion, however, it is interesting that she also recommends what i would term socializing the risks, responsibilities, and benefits of a) individuals taking out loans for micro-enterprises and b) nations taking out loans to move on their ‘development’ agendas. let me now turn to the recommendations that klees makes in his article in this issue of cice – both in relation to aid and development in general and with reference to education more specifically: • much more money is needed. i agree, but efforts should be made to transform the global political economic system so that human needs and human rights are the main focus, rather than some proportionate compensatory measure. moreover, this applies both to funds that now flow through bilateral and multilateral development assistance channels and to how economic enterprises operate. • disburse some of that money directly to the poor. i agree, although it is important to change the nature of the “game.” as those of us who have played in marathon sessions of “monopoly” games know, even if all players start out with the same resources at the beginning of each game, the goals and rules of the game lead to a conclusion: a “winner” (with most or all of the property and other assets) and “losers” (with zero or limited property and other assets). i suspect that, although it would be an interesting experiment to annually (re)distribute resources equally to all people in the world, under the current “rules of the game,” by the end of each year everyone’s needs would not be met and everyone’s rights would not be realized. • real and strong participation should be the fundamental basis for governance. i agree, but would add that such governance should focus on the economy as well as the polity. as noted, i view 40 current issues in comparative education m. ginsburg collective decision making as critical in relation to determining and meeting needs. • replace the world bank and the imf. perhaps it would be too naïve to consider trying to transform these two bretton woods institutions as well as the world trade organization, which has the potential (because of the general agreement on trade of services) to impact many aspects of human activity, including culture and education (ginsburg et al., 2005). would it be possible to envision, let alone accomplish, a transformation of global institutions, which were not only more democratic in their functioning but also profoundly focused on meeting human needs and realizing human rights? • there are development priorities that might be agreed upon. although i am not proposing we approach the social problems that face humanity in a compensatory “aid” framework, i agree with klees that we need to focus government, ngo, and private sector activity so that it has a (positive) impact on the poor. likely, some educational and other assistance may be needed so that the currently more advantaged populations actively and effectively engage in actions that support (and do not contradict) the goals of meeting human needs and realizing human rights.9 i would argue similarly for emphasizing gender, giving attention to the needs and rights of girls as well as boys, while helping both genders develop capacities and commitments for meeting all people’s needs. of course, i agree with klees that we need to “go to scale,” but on global as well as national levels and in relation to actions of governments and economic enterprises. i also agree with klees regarding the importance (not adequately articulated above) of considering issues regarding the environment as well as peace and conflict, both of which relate directly to human needs. • use human rights as a framework. as sketched above, i view a human rights framework as an important starting point (see also ginsburg et al., 2010). this includes article 26 of the un declaration (united nations, 1948), which grants to “all peoples and all nations” the right to free and compulsory “education…at least in the elementary…stage” as well as the availability and merit-based access to “technical and professional education…and higher education.”10 here i should note that although i understand the arguments that under existing arrangements higher education may have more private/individual than public benefits, i would argue that funding for higher education, which prepares individuals to function in a system focused on meeting human needs and realizing human rights (rather than on an individual student’s future status and remuneration), raises a different set of issues.11 • more research is not needed. i share klees’ view that “doing research” should not be “another excuse for inaction,” but i believe more action research and decision-oriented research will be needed. such inquiry would not be done by “external” agents to identify the problem, but undertaken by local, national, and global actors as they seek to identify needs and evaluate (in a formative sense) efforts to meet the needs and realize the rights of all people. it may take a few years, i say optimistically, to change the game (including its goals and rules) from “monopoly” capitalism to a socialist, religious, or ethical “utopia.” i wish i could be as sanguine as klees seems to be that the 2008 global financial crisis has wiped away the ideological and repressive apparatuses (see althusser, 1971) that have tended to limit thoughts and actions aimed at fundamentally changing the global economic system. while clearly a significant development, this most recent crisis is but one in a long history of crises. moreover, the thoughts and actions of millions of people who were suffering economically and otherwise before 2008 are testimony to the fact that it may take more than experiencing a problem to be willing and able to identify and current issues in comparative education 41 improving aid effectiveness or transforming the global capitalist system work to fix its source. as yates (2003) comments: the … view that workers’ consciousness will [necessarily] become more radical as a result of economic crises provides a very mechanistic view of people’s thoughts and actions. unemployment is as likely to make people drink heavily or hate themselves as it is to make them revolutionaries. a crisis might make people susceptible to right-wing propaganda, more willing to bash immigrant workers than to organize with them. it is wise to remember that the 1930s gave us fascism as well as radical communism. (p. 193) indeed, recent developments provide support for yates’ analysis, while at the same time emphasizing that the contradictions of capitalism – and the crises that arise because of them – potentially provide the space for recognizing the source of the problem (capitalism) and joining with others to construct a different global political economy (ginsburg, 1988). however, this does not happen easily or automatically. the point is not to sit around waiting for radical change to happen, but to engage in social movements as well as struggles in everyday work and life (ginsburg and cooper, 1991). thus, while some efforts should be directed in the short term to improve the effectiveness of “development aid,” even such actions should be animated by concerns toward – and a focus on – transforming the global capitalist system. endnotes 1. as yates (2003, p. 33) observes, “our economic system is seldom called by its proper name. we hear of the market economy or the free enterprise system, neither of which tells us what we need to know.” 2. i draw this conclusion based on the way klees frames his overall argument and because he identifies “neoliberal policies” as the focus of the “challenge[s] by individuals, organizations, social movements, and left-of-center governments.” in terms of such challenges, one might instead frame such efforts as challenging global capitalist relations (e.g., see brecher et al., 2000; danaher and burbach, 2000). 3. for similar reasons, i reinterpret hanf et al.’s (1975, p. 68) conclusion that “formal education in africa and asia in its present form tends to impede economic growth and promote political instability; in short, education in africa and asia today is an obstacle to development.” certainly, there were – and still are – problems with education in africa and asia and other regions of the world, but we need to understand these problems at least in part as resulting from the fact that the education systems have been constructed within – and with at least some attention to serving the ‘needs’ of – the global capitalist system. 4. here i should note, with caveats, my agreement with wallerstein (1984, p. 35) that “there are today no socialist systems in the world-economy any more than there are feudal systems because there is only one world system. it is a world-economy and it is by definition capitalist in form.” this is not to suggest that national and subnational initiatives were – and are – being undertaken to carve out some counter-hegemonic space, and that some of these efforts are informed by marxist or socialist ideas/practices. 5. in the same writing, marx (1875/1972) indicates that under socialism the dictum would likely be different, from each according to one’s ability, to each according to one’s “contribution.” 6. note that we may need to reconsider some of the economic rights enshrined in this declaration, given that they reflect a commitment to, or at least a compromise with, capitalism. for example, article 17 stipulates the right to “own property alone as well as in association with others.” 7. a different conception of capitalism is provided by another board game, “class struggle.” 42 current issues in comparative education m. ginsburg “the object of the game is to win the revolution … until then, classes – represented by different players – advance around the board, making and breaking alliances, and picking up strengths and weaknesses that determine the outcome of the elections and general strikes which occur along the way” (ollman, 1978, p. 1). 8. the radical economist yates (2003, p. 161; emphasis added) explains that neoclassical economists “claim to show that an economy [i.e., capitalism] based on self-interest will be one that satisfies society’s most pressing needs and does so better than other systems … [and] studies have shown that students who take a course in economics [normally monopolized by neoclassical economists’ ideas] are more likely to behave selfishly than those who have not.” 9. in this sense, at least during a transition away from the existing system, freire’s (1970) ideas for a “pedagogy of the oppressed” would likely need to be complemented by curry-stevens’ (2004) proposals for a “pedagogy for the privileged.” 10. in addition to education, and the economic rights referenced earlier, attention should be given to political/civil rights (e.g., not to being “subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” [article 5]; “equal protection of the law” [article 7]; “a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal” [article 10]; “take part in the government of [one’s] country, directly or through freely chosen representatives” [article 23]) and social/cultural rights (e.g., “freedom of thought, conscience and religion” [article 18]; “freedom of opinion and expression … and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” [article 19]; “freely participate in the cultural life of the community, … enjoy the arts, and … share in scientific advancement and its benefits” [article 27]). 11. however, unless – and until – resources are (re)distributed on an annual basis to all people, i believe that subsidies for attending higher education programs should be based on financial need, with the poorest benefiting from free or even compensated enrollment. references althusser, l. 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(1988). the politics of reform and nonreform in french education. comparative education review, 32(3), 251-65. yates, michael (2003). naming the system: inequality and work in the global economy. new york: monthly review press. © 2010 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved © 2012 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(1): 157-175. building on living traditions: early childhood education and culture in solomon islands lindsay j. burton university of oxford the solomon islands, a small developing nation in the south pacific, demonstrates an emerging community-based kindergarten model with the potential to promote context and culture relevant early learning and development, despite deeply embedded foundations in colonial legacies. based on the kahua region of makira-ulawa province, this collaborative, ethnographicallyinformed, study explores how the kindergarten is situated at the core of a cultural revolution. findings enlighten how the kindergarten is serving as the basis to building on living traditions through cultural reinvigoration efforts, while the very essence of the kindergarten’s sustainability has become dependent upon the revitalization of traditional practices historically fundamental to kahuan society. from this, implications drawn address how community-based initiatives can facilitate early childhood education while still supporting context-specific cultures and identities through sustainable initiatives. introduction the postcolonial landscape in the south pacific continues to illustrate how western values, attitudes, and practices permeate present-day life, in addition to how colonial-era knowledge and practices particularly persist in dominating regional education systems. the current reality of early childhood education[1] (ece) in the solomon islands (si), and islanders’ understanding and perceptions of such programs, is intricately linked with the nation’s colonial history. this article explores the distinctive efforts of the kahua people in the si to reclaim ownership over their early childhood educational systems, in culturally-reinvigorating ways, amidst colonial legacies. this is framed around an overarching research question of “how have cultural and contextual factors influenced the development and sustainability of kahua community-based ece?” through this exploration, influences of cultural and contextual factors on ece programs’ sustainability[2] are explored as key foundational elements to societal cultural maintenance. many cultural beliefs about the nature of childhood and children’s development have been unexamined by interventionists in the creation of ece initiatives, thereby contributing to a propagation of universalized views of childhood (cleghorn & prochner, 2010; dahlberg, moss, & pence, 2006; nsamenang, 2008). this in turn has had a strong impact on international policy and practice development, such as the first education for all (efa) goal[3], reflecting what nsamenang (2006) calls an institutional universalism that often does not translate to non-western cultures. consequently, many ece programs around the world dramatically resemble the practices and values of a western-based model, with a decidedly specific discourse for high quality programs for children from birth through age eight. this can be seen in knowledge transfers from the west (i.e. euro-american ideologies and research) that promote restricted practices inclusive of rigid classroom routines, artificial child-centered learning environments, active play-based learning models, individualistic social orientations, and child-specific classroom artifacts (e.g. learning resources, child-sized furniture, soft flooring materials). as a result, a self-perpetuating set of practices and values have emerged that are frequently uncritically transferred around the world to dissimilar contexts and cultures. arguably, these western-dominant ece practices prevent recognition of, and efforts to reinvent, more culturally-relevant, locally sustainable programs 158 current issues in comparative education burton in the majority world[4]. for many majority world societies, early learning has traditionally been embedded within children’s active involvement in meaningful daily practices throughout their communities. therefore, dissimilarly to artificial child-centered western ece formal learning environments, children in many of these non-western cultures are integrated in adultworld activities, as engaged through observer-based models of learning and learning through apprenticeship in informal education environments. in contrast to the international transfer of ece policies and practices, many small states’ indigenous efforts have arisen to counter the continuation of colonization now under the guise of educational globalization (super & harkness, 2008). in this article, small states are defined as those with populations under 1.5 million (holmes & crossley, 2004). situated at the forefront of the intersection between international ece discourses and localized counter-movements is the small south pacific nation of the si and their recent developments in community-based kindergartens (i.e. “kindy”). these kindies are typically leaf huts, locally resourced with bush materials, and conducted in mother tongues by minimally trained local villagers. to date, many remote villages are proving unable to independently establish, run, maintain, and sustain these community-based programs. this challenge has become a critical threat to the wider si education system since the enactment of a national policy requiring all children’s attendance in kindergarten for three years prior to entering primary school (ministry of education and human resource development [mehrd], 2008). to explore the cultural and contextual underpinnings to these developments, this article is based on a collaborative, ethnographically-informed, case study, situated in the remote kahua region of makira-ulawa province. education foundations in international literature western theorists such as rousseau, pestalozzi, and piaget have historically exerted considerable influence in shaping perspectives on early learning and development. their argument was that children acquire knowledge and awareness of their surrounding world through learning experiences that enable them to individually construct their own learning (levine, 2007). however, more recently, sociocultural and postmodernist literatures have shifted the view of young children to emphasize the culturally and socially communicated nature of knowledge and learning (edwards, 2005; rogoff, 2003). this assertion has largely evolved from vygotsky’s (1978) fundamental premise that knowledge acquisition and the development of intellectual potential within a community is due to the sociohistorical context. thus, children are not individually constructing knowledge; instead, this process must be defined through the social and cultural practices, beliefs, and experiences of the community. more recently, this idea has been expanded upon by rogoff (1990), who argues that individual development is shaped by the cultural and social context in which it occurs; therefore, it cannot be defined in universalistic terms. exemplifying this is whiting and whiting’s (1975) study of children in six cultures, which emphasizes the importance of historical traditions and environmental conditions guiding parents in child-rearing. their position is furthered by research on cultural values and parental goals mediated by environmental demands (levine, 1974), claims that parental beliefs/goals/ behaviors are linked to sociocultural contexts (field, sostek, vietze, & leiderman, 1981; rogoff, 2003), and how culturally distinct contexts influence origins of parents’ belief systems (goodnow & collins, 1990) and ethnotheories (harkness & super, 1996). ultimately, all children arrive at formal education with informal learning systems they have developed within their local cultures, comprised of learning strategies and contexts that have fostered their early development (ninnes, 1995). it is widely acknowledged that different cultures provide different settings, and different experiences within those settings, affecting children’s engagement in various situations based on the culture’s particular beliefs and values (gauvain, 2001; tudge et al., 2006). current issues in comparative education 159 l. burton by not accounting for cultural practices, parental beliefs, and environmental constraints, ece programs are not likely to be sustainable endeavors due to their incongruence with the particular cultures and context in which they are being implemented. puamau (2005) writes, because formal schooling is largely derived from foreign value systems, there is a serious cultural gap between the lived experiences of most pacific island students and what is offered in schools, including the way schooling is organized and structured, the culture and ethos of schooling, its pedagogical practices, and the assessment of learning. (p. 13) despite increasing rhetoric suggesting greater responsiveness to issues of cultural sensitivity, this mainstream ece literature has not delved deeply enough to develop context-informed understandings that can be applied within specific ece programs (cole, 1998; fleer, 2003; rogoff, 2003). this is not to overlook the increasing research rooted in indigenous methodologies within the majority world (kagitcibasi, 2000; kim, yang, & hwang, 2006; nsamenang, 2000). within the pacific, the past forty years of educational reform initiated by donors and governments have been regarded by indigenous scholars as largely a failure. this is particularly with regard to two factors: (1) insufficient quality human resources to achieve development goals, and (2) a lingering vagueness of the vision for pacific education and the purposes it aims to fulfill. education reforms have remained largely fixated on improving various aspects of the quantification of education, but there has been little questioning of the values and assumptions underpinning formal education or development. (pene, taufe’ulungaki, & benson, 2002, p. 1) global discourses around ece have generally been framed in terms of outcomes, instead of defining ece as a cultural process or tool. as argued elsewhere (burman, 2001; kincheloe, 2000; macnaughton, 2005), ece is at risk of “inadvertent complicity in a neoliberal imperialist agenda to secure and expand the hegemony of individualist, often european-heritage, positivist values, goals, and pedagogies in early learning and development” (ball, 2010, p. 3). similarly, within pacific forum island nations, education scholars have deemed it critically important to rethink education in context in response to the lasting regional colonial legacy (daiwo, 2001; foote & bennet, 2004; puamau, 2005; thaman, 1998). in recognition that culture is continuously evolving, space must be left by practitioners/policymakers/villagers to continually reflect on and revise approaches to, and goals for, ece. arguably, this should be inclusive of locals’ own evolving images and not merely a dominant image of middle-class, anglo-american, english-speaking cultural constructions of the child. contexts of “smallness” both the si and the specific kahua region studied here epitomize the concept of smallness. the si is itself a small state, with a population of 506,967 (world bank, 2011); makira-ulawa province has a population of 38,000 of which the kahua population is approximately 4,500 (fazey, latham, hagasua, & wagatora, 2007). in this context, the small educational initiative of kindergartens, which have only recently become valued and implemented in pockets of the country, gains interest. 160 current issues in comparative education burton source: fazey, pettorelli, kenter, wagatora, & schuett (2011) figure 1. map of kahua, makira-ulawa province, solomon islands. the si – a double chain archipelago of nearly 1000 tropical, fertile, reef-fringed islands and coral atolls – lies northeast of australia in the southwest pacific ocean (figure 1). the nation faces a variety of challenges, including smallness of scale, remoteness of location, diversity of cultural and linguistic groups, colonial history, and potential for local ownership amidst a highly active foreign aid and political interest arena. within the context of si, the study focuses on the kahua region (i.e. east and west wanione) of makira-ulawa province, as located in the far eastern portion of the si archipelago. kahua was chosen as the focal context due to the region’s 1. culturally and socially tight-knit communities, which facilitated research across the region through strong human networks; 2. reputation throughout the nation as one of the least developed regions in terms of economy, infrastructure, and educational achievements, yet high resiliency in maintaining traditional kastoms[5]; and 3. widespread developments in ece, as spurred by an international nongovernmental organization’s support to the provincial ministry of education, beginning in kahua. furthermore, the kahua region consists of forty-eight remote, predominantly coastal, communities, with an approximate annual growth rate of 2.7% (fazey et al., 2007). the majority of families are dependent on subsistence livelihoods, supplemented through small-scale copra and cocoa farming, and live largely without access to electricity, infrastructure (e.g. roads), or telecommunication services. as a result of rapid population growth, limited natural resources, and increasing western influences, the region is beginning to change from a subsistenceto monetarycurrent issues in comparative education 161 building on living traditions based economy. as such, like many contexts globally, the kahua people increasingly value the importance of education to improve the potential of their future generations. kindergartens in particular have seen a dramatic increase in numbers across kahua, from only one in 2000 to over 18 a decade later. collectively, the above features specific to the kahua region made it a prime location for this study’s exploration of ece development and sustainability in the midst of changing cultural contexts. theoretical underpinnings and research design research using a variety of methods to understand the multifaceted components of ece and development in culturally diverse contexts has increasingly succeeded in developmental research over the past decade (harkness et al., 2006; garcia-coll et al., 2002; weisner, 2005). in particular, sociocultural theorists recognize that early learning and development are not individual constructions, nor are they universal, but instead acknowledge that they are highly mediated by one’s context and culture. this study is rooted in a sociocultural-ecological perspective (bronfenbrenner, 1979; rogoff, 1990, 2003; super & harkness, 1986), which acknowledges the holistic nature of ece as a process defined by the social and cultural practices, beliefs, and experiences found in a particular context, yet also incorporates biological and environmental factors. the theoretical assumptions underpinning the study guided a methodologically synergistic research approach, defined for the purposes of this study as a collaborative, ethnographically-informed, case study. drawing from these different methodological perspectives facilitated the development of methods for understanding local realities of the kahua poeple, as verbally expressed. it also facilitated delving deeper into local realities by observing and partaking in aspects of participants’ daily lives. this thereby additionally accounted for nonverbal features and eventually allowed for comparisons to be discussed and drawn between individuals, families, learning environments, and villages. supporting this research methodology is a strong unifying assumption about the social world as being co-constructed, context-bound, relational, and situated (susman & evered, 1978), while recognizing that human existence is fluid, contextual, and relational (jardine, 1990). accordingly, it became critical for the lead researcher (a non-kahuan) to extensively collaborate with a local research team, and more broadly with kahua communities, to best access and interpret local perceptions and realities. notably, the term collaboration is used here to convey a deeper experience of mutually consciousness-raising interactions and involvement in the research process; this is contrasted by participation and merely implying peripheral participant involvement in researcher-designed activities (crossley, herriot, waudo, mwirotsi, holmes, & juma, 2005; trist, 1986). methods and research strategy the research was led by an expatriate caucasian female and a gender-balanced research team of four local kahua kindergarten teachers and chairmen. the lead researcher trained the local team for one week prior to beginning the study. key training topics included basic understandings of ece, qualitative research facilitation approaches to be used in the study (with hands-on practice), translation skills, and data management to ensure proper documentation throughout fieldwork. together, the team collaborated with ece stakeholders from all levels of kahua society through extensive participant-observations, interviews, and participatory focus groups. recognizing the limitations of approaching the research from a single perspective (e.g. insider versus outsider, female versus male, academic versus villager), the research team’s diversity of perspectives facilitated greater rapport building with wide ranging participants and deepened their collective understandings throughout the research and analysis processes. the lead researcher approached the study as an ethnographer, striving to deeply understand the local context, which in turn provided the basis for strong rapport building within kahua. however, it was ultimately through 162 current issues in comparative education burton the collaboration within the local research team and kahua participants that deep dialogue and mutual consciousness-raising was able to occur. this thereby resulted in richer data collection and conclusions drawn than would have been possible from an individual external researcher perspective. also of great importance to the study was the research teams’ collaborative working relationship with the local grassroots kahua association. the association was officially launched in 2005 in response to limited external support for their small region’s development and as a unification effort against resource exploitation. this demonstrates local communities’ commitment to promoting their own sustainable development and more effective resource management, as deeply embedded with cultural and societal understandings. the association also symbolizes a unifying effort of the kahua people as a cultural group, with desires to reassert the importance of their traditional cultural practices and beliefs, based on democratic principles of upholding equality and social justice for all kahua people. such collaboration formed the essential basis for the study’s theoretical underpinnings and research design. it subsequently provided a means for the researchers to connect with communities through local leaders and turn the research process and findings into practical sustained actions for kahua. similar to any ethnography with a discovery-based design (fife, 2005), the focus of this study unfolded as the fieldwork evolved. therefore, much like the activity of grounded theorizing (glaser & strauss, 1967), fieldwork began with a broad exploration, predominantly implementing participant-observations and unstructured interviews in a single village for four months. subsequently, this provided shape and focus for designing and conducting eight additional months of fieldwork with more structured methods throughout the kahua region (i.e. semistructured observation tool and interview schedules for different categories of participants). throughout the study, dialogue within the research team also served a reflective research tool to deepen understandings of the data collected (schensul, schensul, & lecompte 1999). the research team began the study by exploring the wider range of formal, informal, and nonformal early learning provisions available in kahua communities (e.g. church, peer-to-peer, chiefly cultural teachings, etc.) so as to be able to identify features that potentially related to the sustainability of community-based kindies. this was based on the general premise of the developmental niche conceptual framework, which brings together the interactive relationships between the (1) physical and social settings of the child’s everyday life, (2) culturally regulated customs of child care and child rearing, and (3) the psychology of the caretakers (super & harkness, 1986). by observing and discussing different environments of early learning in kahua communities, as well as their underlying historical cultural changes, consonances and dissonances in approaches to learning could be identified. for example, customs underlying the teaching-learning process was explored between current institutionalized learning (i.e. kindy) and traditional culturallyrelevant exchanges of knowledge through shared experiences (i.e. kastom learning in home). with such an understanding of sustained traditional, and more recent, teaching methods and types of information shared, implications could then be drawn for application in enhancing culturally relevant and more sustainable community-based institutionalized early learning. over the course of one year, a total of 30 villages were engaged in extensive research team participant-observations, unstructured and semi-structured interviews, and 32 participatory focus groups (inclusive of 135 male and 149 female participants in 9 villages). observations and interviews were conducted throughout villages to develop broad understandings of the interplay between early learning approaches, contexts, and cultures. participatory focus groups current issues in comparative education 163 building on living traditions involved small separated groups of men and women (in accordance with cultural norms). these groups were engaged in stone-ranking activities and discussions about community values, understandings, and support towards various early learning environments in their immediate community. in order to understand children’s learning in context, whilst capturing the deeply embedded and influential contextual factors, the methods implemented were repeated among different individuals and communities. extensive purposive sampling was used to obtain a broader range of perspectives across participant ages, gender, social status, relation(s) to children, and geographic location. in addition to heightening different viewpoints, and averting singular visions, triangulation was used to validate data by checking a variety of sources across these diverse ece stakeholders’ interactions with the research team (including data from interviews, focus groups, and participant-observations) (cornwall, musyoki, & pratt, 2001). this thereby strengthened the reliability of the research findings. of greatest significance to this study was the dialogic processes that proved to be most informative. these were facilitated by the relationships and social environments promoted by the research team, through the combination of ethnographic and collaborative research methods. over extended periods of time, authentic engagement with communities around the research issues, as well as open acceptance of local cultures, allowed for deep rapport building between the research team and villagers. word of this support for the research and research team then spread throughout the region, easing the process of rapport building in community after community. without these strong relationships, discussions related to the research topics would have likely been far more guarded, as would participants’ comfort to carry on as usual when being observed. this necessitated approaching the study from the sociocultural-ecological perspective, recognizing that to understand local practices, beliefs, and experiences for the purpose of addressing the research question, then mutual consciousness raising and co-construction of knowledge between the research team and communities was essential. data analysis strategy as a result of the evolving research design throughout the fieldwork, data analysis was not a distinct stage. instead, it was an ongoing process for the research team in which research questions were reformulated, reexamined, and clarified, based on the iterative process central to grounded theorizing. data (i.e. notes from observations, interview notes and transcripts, and focus group data forms) were analyzed holistically to draw out themes to feed back into guiding the research. this required using thematic analysis, in which emerging themes and patterns were identified across the different data obtained from all research methods and team members. data were thematically analyzed using a two-step process of open and focused coding, which was ongoing and cyclical as new data was continuously obtained (strauss & corbin, 1998; esterberg, 2002). open coding allowed for the micro-analytical level of analysis in identifying themes/ categories of significance to the inquiry, out of which focused coding then refined the process (coffey & atkinson, 1996). focused coding is similar to open coding but focuses more specifically on previously identified recurring themes. after refining the recurring themes into more focused coded categories, content analysis was then used to explore quantitatively the frequencies of themes identified and qualitatively to use narrative description to illustrate the themes. findings: building on living traditions “learning” in kahua to understand the cultural context of ece in kahua, one must first understand the concept of learning in context. there are two distinct types of learning within kahua. in the kahua language, 164 current issues in comparative education burton these are known as ramatenia and hagasuria. ramatenia refers to kastom teachings that form the “commandments” which guide one’s life and interactions with others. in contrast, hagasuria refers to more general life skills/knowledge teachings, such as those learned in formal schooling. these two aspects of learning are situated in the kahua principles that form the basis, at least traditionally, of life for the kahua people (table 1, as applied to early childhood learning). table 1. application of kahua principles to kahua early childhood learning[6] principle translation interpretation hemoti sharing together children must share everything (e.g. during snack time, share food with other children/teachers) herongogi asking children must ask first before doing/taking something (e.g. ask the teacher to leave the classroom to “go to sea” to toilet). hemakuani care children must respect others’ property by taking care of it, whether the owner is present or not (e.g. during bathing time, children are not to steal other children’s trousers; children are not to knock down others’ block constructions). hekarigi discussion everything must involve dialogue and discussion with others (e.g. teacher engages children in discussion during free-play time about what they are working on). ramata kahua “operational rules” to guide behavior ramata are inclusive of a process for discussion and the types of behaviors required to maintain respect. they emphasize how to live a good life by understanding what are acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, as all rooted in expressions of respect. traditionally, ramata are taught and applied at family levels, but they are also taught in a less formal manner within the kindergarten. the kahua principles are comprised of four overarching local kahua cultural values, which provide the basis for how the kahua people are to behave and interact. underlying these longstanding, locally defined, traditional principles are deeply rooted obligatory kahua practices of respect, love, and compassion for others. additionally, the kahua principles give rise to ramata, which are the traditionally unwritten specific operational rules for how the kahua people must lead their lives. the principles remain near exclusively an orally transpired tradition, unwritten until the past few years through the work of the kahua association. nevertheless, their traditional understanding as a set of principles to guide daily life, and inclusion in direct and indirect teachings to children, are imperative. in present-day kahua, specific knowledge regarding these principles was found to be quickly diminishing, such as an awareness of the specific vernacular terminology used to express each of them. however, the fundamental actions addressed and enforced through them were observed to still provide a firm basis for daily human interactions throughout the region. codification and objectification of kastom in ece explicit knowledge of the kahua principles by the vast majority of kahua people has been on the decline for over sixty years, as was extensively ascribed by kahuans to increasing “western” influences (e.g. local interest in formal education teachings, “whiteman” material possessions, church/christianity). however, recently there has been a resurgence of traditional practices (e.g. sharing kastom teachings, enforcing gender specific clothing, learning traditional handicrafts). current issues in comparative education 165 building on living traditions most commonly, this was expressed in association with a local frustration in society’s falling prey, as opposed to adequately adapting, to modern external influences. using bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems model, the development of education, and ece specifically, within the si can be seen as a microcosm for what has been happening on the exosystem to kahuan culture and macrosystem in solomon society. through increased incorporation of western-ideologies – as historically introduced with the arrival of the church and formal education by christian missionaries and more recently through international agendas – an objectification of kastom currently can be seen as an effort to circumvent anxieties of this encroaching modernity to si. throughout communities in kahua, the case of shifting approaches to early childhood learning in varied microenvironments stands as a concrete example in alterations to kahuan epistemologies. these illustrate a move from the traditional emphasis on ramatenia (i.e. teachings related to kastom beliefs and practices) being replaced by that of hagasuria (i.e. teachings related to general knowledge), as executed through non-indigenous (western) forms of learning at church and in formal school-based education. notably, kahuans did not describe these two forms of learning as being at complete odds with one another, but instead expressed a need for balance between traditional cultural and non-indigenous knowledge. as one young mother said, “the ways of kahua are being lost. people here are adopting new wisdoms and understandings from whiteman as a result of the education system” (personal communication, september 27, 2009). this sentiment was reinforced by a kahua kindy teacher, kahua culture has changed over time because of western learning. nowadays, people send their children to primary schools, secondary schools, as far as universities overseas out from our solomon islands’ society…when they return, they just live in western style…when western systems come in, it convinces people that they do not need to think highly of our kastoms and people. (personal communication, november 2, 2009) however, the research team found this local concern over declining cultural knowledge to be met by a countermovement towards cultural reinvigoration, as seen with a codification of kastom. exemplifying this is the fact that only in the past few years have the kahua principles been documented and more abstractly discussed, in contrast to their historical oral existence and largely unspoken incorporation into all aspects of life. accordingly, much of the cultural reinvigoration effort in kahua began with community elders and the kahua association’s efforts to combat problems of lacking cultural respect in their communities. subsequently, a majority of parents and primary school teachers have also begun to recognize their lacking knowledge of traditional cultural wisdom to pass on to children, which has been compounded by their realization of the near extinction of this knowledge with their aging community elders. these findings by the research team are of great significance, since on the surface one can observe an intergenerational cultural decay in kahua; however, underlying this (yet to be fully realized), the kindy was found to hold much potential as cultural reinvigorator in addressing these cultural concerns. as one kahua grandfather and kindy chairman expressed, good kahua cultural values are quickly fading away due to western world influences. such styles are sure enough to dominate kahua culture in not a very long time. kahua leaders should not ignore this issue. i recommend kindy school as a first ladder to step forward in education. it is where a traditional leader, a government leader, or a church leader is shaped and can later shape others for the best future and betterment of our nation, the solomon islands. (personal communication, november 2, 2009) 166 current issues in comparative education burton fundamental to the sustainability of community-based kindy initiatives appears to be a dependency on this community-level reinvigoration of culture for generating community-wide support and cooperation in shared beliefs. community support for early learning to explore issues relating to context and culture influencing ece program sustainability, it is important to understand how truly fitting these formal education programs are to local contexts and cultures. the majority of teaching-learning practices, verbalized beliefs regarding learning, and aspirations for children in kahuan ece microenvironments were found to relate to simplified versions of kastom. accordingly, teaching tools, such as songs, traditional stories, and material resources presented surface-level cultural relevance. yet, their underlying implementation for the transpiration of learning and cultural reinvigoration were found to frequently be objectifications of deep kahua culture. based on an analysis and compilation of data from interviews and participant observations, kahua kindies were found to be situated on a spectrum between traditionalism and western ideologies, as demonstrated in figure 2. primary school (pre-class/class 1) church / sunday school kindy home wider community spectrum of approaches to learning (western – traditional) objective extrinsic motivation to learn: preparation for future schooling and paid employment intrinsic motivation to learn: preparation for life; kastom/tradition/subsistence approach to learning rote learning, memorization legitimate peripheral participation (observation-modeling) learning model theoretical, abstract, practical practical, personalized thrust towards change and independence towards conformity and interdependence ownership of knowledge public, commodified knowledge private: belongs to families, tribes, and lineages source of knowledge western; scientifically and formally documented information traditional; kastom beliefs, values, skills, and practices learners’ personal orientation openly competitive, low autonomy quietly competitive, high autonomy questioning by learners actively encouraged and practiced discouraged and regarded as challenge to experts’ authority social context information-oriented, focus on individual achievement individual-oriented, emphasizes unity, stresses interdependence, foundation in significance of understanding and respecting local kastoms language of instruction english, pidgin vernacular: kahua learning resources manufactured materials local bush materials figure 2. spectrum of early learning approaches in kahua microenvironments[7] current issues in comparative education 167 building on living traditions the spectrum of early learning in kahua microenvironments (figure 2) identifies and arranges five microenvironments by the degree to which they incorporate western and traditional learning approaches, based on prominent objectives identified across microenvironments. through each of these microenvironments, a transition was observed by the research team: • starting with the wider community, traditional learning approaches, although still prominently evident in the home, begin to change as some parents prepare children for kindy, such as through school readiness activities (e.g. counting, drawing, and more structured behavior). additionally, kastom teachings were said to be increasingly overt, such as taught to groups of children by the village chief when parents no longer have the knowledge or willingness to do so through their daily practices in the home. • kindy then advances children’s development through the incorporation of more westernoriented learning approaches in preparation for children’s transition to primary school (e.g. handwriting practice, early math concepts, classroom rules). however, kindies still bridge back to the home and community microenvironments through predominant use of the vernacular as language of instruction, use of local resources for learning materials, and incorporation of kastom teachings. • church and sunday school link back to the community, largely through language (services in vernacular despite most denominations using english bibles) and communal practices, while church teachings are distinctly imported from the western world. however, in many ways, some teaching (i.e. biblical values) are also similar to traditional values, such as sharing and fellowship. over time, due to devout beliefs, christianity has become a component of locally perceived present-day culture to the majority of kahuans. • primary school is situated at the extreme end of the spectrum, towards a western learning approach. to a great degree, classroom pedagogy, materials, routines, curriculum, etc. are virtually indistinguishable from western classrooms. however, there is still room for further movement along the spectrum. for example, although the language of instruction is mandated to be english, as per the national curriculum, the vast majority of these classrooms are conducted in si pidgin (a mix of vernaculars and english) due to insufficient english skills of both teachers and students for english to be the sole language of instruction. each of the microenvironments discussed above can be viewed with particular distinctions across a spectrum of learning approaches, origins, goals, etc. yet, fundamental to them all was found to be the underlying (desired, even if not always fully realized) cultural values, as also significantly reflected in local religious beliefs and kahua principles: respect, love, fellowship, and knowledge of kastom. therefore, although nearly all participants consistently voiced a strong perception that local cultural knowledge is being lost in kahua, observations revealed that it still remains a strong foundation to nearly all early learning interactions throughout the villages, regardless of the specific early learning microenvironment. based on participant observations, community support for early childhood learning microenvironments was found to be greater in each of the four independent microenvironments (i.e. wider community, home, church, and primary) in comparison to community support for the kindy. by applying this to the conceptual development niche framework, the lacking support for kindies can be associated with greater shared understandings of approaches to learning in the other microenvironments, as compared to those of the community in relation to the kindy. it is through these overtly observable deeper shared understandings, which have developed over longer periods of time, that have allowed for the creation of states of equilibrium between 168 current issues in comparative education burton externally introduced ideas to kahua and long-standing internal cultural beliefs and practices. for example, historical accounts about childhood conveyed through interviews suggest that acceptance of formal primary school has led communities to place less priority on children working in subsistence gardens. over time, many parents have come to prefer their children attain a good formal education so they can find paid employment to financially support their extended families. contrastingly, a dissonance was observed between the kindy and parental beliefs about children’s learning. si ece curriculum emphasizes children’s learning through play, while community cultural beliefs and objectives largely only recognize a narrower, academic understanding of formal education. for example, while shells and stones are collected as kindy classroom resources to support learning through play, when children bring such materials into the home, they are typically roused outside for bringing what is considered rubbish into the house. these ece consonances and dissonances were found to affect the levels of community support for educational activities and environments. most notably, this resulted in limited support for community-based kindies due to a lack of community shared values and understandings with this new formal ece initiative. championing the ece vision: the case of two kindies exemplifying challenges to kindy sustainability, and the potential influences of the kindy on culture, are two case studies, as were revealed through extensive participant observations and interviews in two villages. on the surface, these two communities are quite similar: both follow the same kahua traditions, cultural practices, and predominantly subsistence lifestyles. however, the effects of beliefs in a paranormal phenomenon about people living beneath their island of makira has developed significantly dissimilarly in each context, particularly as understood through the functioning of their kindies. kindy 1 serves as an exemplar community-sustained ece initiative, having been established and independently maintained since the 1980s, which was long before other communities were even aware of such programs. despite never having received external support, financially or through training, the masterminding of merely a sole inspirational champion for the program has since garnered his community’s support in the vision of supporting ece. nevertheless, during the past few years, this support has dramatically changed due to community separation into two groups over beliefs regarding the aforementioned paranormal phenomenon. the community divide became so severe that even the community church was torn down until a “belief-consensus” could be achieved. with churches in kahua serving as the center of communities, and a significant site of social interactions, the demolition of the church in this community exemplified the demise of amicable daily interactions between these two opposing groups of villagers. this not only affected the quality of communal life, but it also undermined the kahua principles of respect and compassion for others. through this time, the kindy provided the sole unifying element in the community. while adults became estranged over deep-seated beliefs, uniting them has been an enduring commitment to their children’s development, which has demanded cooperation in the preservation of a functioning program. beginning with kindy leaders and village women, slowly the kindy is serving as grounds to rebuilding amicable community relations. in contrast to kindy 1, a second kindy demonstrated a more deeply segregated village over the paranormal beliefs movement. located in the small back portion of a community building, this kindy has had few resources and little community support throughout the few years since its establishment. villagers attributed this to poor kindy and village leadership. upon arrival of the new beliefs movement, disunity amongst villagers reached such a degree that nearly all community-wide endeavors ceased, including mere social greetings to others while in passing. current issues in comparative education 169 building on living traditions the kindy reflected this segregation with an inability to bolster community support for making resources; regular attendance by children; or commitment to support, monitor, compensate, and train teachers. individualist attitudes flourished in the community, such as demonstrated by those with the highest formal education levels, who chose to home-school their young children and recommended a private fee-based kindy as opposed to the faltering community-based program. fundamentally this contradicts the essence of most community-based kindies, which have developed as communal projects, respectful of the different degrees of financial and in-kind support individuals are capable of contributing. further, this conflicts with the deepest values of the kahua principles: respect, sharing, and compassion for others. these two kindy cases depict differing leadership styles, thereby inciting different reactions from their communities in terms of support for their kindies. fundamental to kindy community 1, in addition to the strong leadership of the program and community, was their roots in fellowship, as is central to their south seas evangelical community church. communities throughout kahua of this denomination were observed to embody the highest levels of community unity and cooperation, which are in direct unison with traditional kahua principals. contrastingly, kindy community 2, notably being of anglican denomination, demonstrated much stronger individualist behaviors with lacking regard for community-wide children’s education. based on these examples, the revitalization of kindy 1 appeared to be associated with the presence of competent leaders for the ece vision, effective community collaboration, community awareness of ece, community embodiment of local cultural values, kindy staff involvement, and program responsivity to the local context. as the founder and chairman of kindy 1 stated at the grand opening of their newest leaf hut classroom, our past failures do not bring us discouragement but an encouragement to see our mistakes and put things right. this school was not supported by any organization or government – it was stated by our own concern and we find it hard sometime to meet materials and support for our teachers. [but] let us promote manpower by using our power. (personal communication, july 22, 2008) concluding discussion: drawing on the past, giving rise to the future this study began with an a priori assumption that local knowledge is valuable, which provided justification for the collaborative nature of the research. further supported by ethnographicallyinformed methods, the overarching methodological approach allowed for in-depth exploration, incorporating wide-ranging perspectives, of the evolving kahuan culture and its critical role in both supporting and being supported by local institutionalized ece (i.e. community-based kindies). through this, living kahuan traditions were built upon on to give meaning to the present reality of early learning across kahua communities and insights into the future sustainable development of kahua kindies. a decidedly cultural foundation to ece has been taken in this article, which was supported by local priorities to reinvigorate kahua kastoms, as embodied by the kahua principles. while cultural change has become one foundational justification for the sustainable development of kindies, two additional critical societal elements raise the stakes for their sustained development in kahua at this time. firstly, parents increasingly have long-term employment goals for children, which require formal education, in light of a societal move towards a cash-based economy. secondly, should children desire this formal education, national si ece policy requirements now mandate children’s attendance in kindergarten for three years before being allowed entry into primary 170 current issues in comparative education burton school. recognizing the continued significance of kastom in the kahua people’s cognition and conduct raises insights into their perceptions of education at this time of societal and educational change. it is important to note that kastom is not limited to observable cultural features of cooking, handicrafts, attire, etc., but instead extends deeply into indigenous values, beliefs, and mere existence. as such, kastom has become an important consideration for supporting formal education, and therefore not simply an externally imposed concept that hinders local expression and development. this is supported by previous research suggesting that learning and identity are tied to one’s sociocultural background; and as such, approaches to learning must be adapted to students’ cultures, contexts, and social worlds. in kahua communities, this study found early childhood learning microenvironments to be situated on a spectrum of increasing international transfers of a western-based learning ethos. more specifically, in the kindergarten context, the study revealed that ece epitomizes a transitional institution between traditional practices (from the home and community) and imported institutions from the west (such as church and formal education). within this spectrum, a general trend was identified away from the traditional model and values of learning, as associated with kastom. this cultural shift was ascribed to what here has been termed an intergenerational cultural decay, as has been widely attributed by locals to the increase in external influences on kahuan society, at the detriment of kahua kastom. as counteragent to an intergenerational decay of traditional culture in kahua, the kindy was found to hold potential to serve as cultural reinvigorator by reuniting communities. however, not only was the kindy found to be severely challenged by numerous barriers in maintaining regular program functioning, the very foundational sustainability of the kindy itself was found to be largely dependent on this cultural reinvigoration, and as such, maintenance of local traditional values. through a revitalization of key cultural values and practices rooted in the kahua principles, future generations could better be able to continue embodying the fundamental local values of respect, fellowship, love, and compassion for others, as locally deemed necessary to maintain a harmonious kahuan society. to achieve this in communities and kindies, research findings raised the need for inspirational local championing of the vision for culturally-relevant ece, local ownership-taking based on increased awareness of ece, and sustained communal cooperation rooted in a reinvigoration of traditional kastoms. as the kahua association builds their capacity to practically influence and initiate locally defined development in kahua, it holds great potential to become a key stakeholder in ece, through serving as a regional champion for the ece vision, societal cultural reinvigoration, and regional reunification on the whole. already, strengthened local cultural understandings in kahua were found in turn to be supporting community-based educational initiatives in context-sensitive ways. this is thereby perpetuating a cycle of traditional cultural learning and practice, which if sustained, could influence generations to come. drawing on the research presented in this article, it becomes apprehensible how uncritical international transfers of ece policies and practices cannot directly meet the context and culture sensitive needs and desires of the kahua people. building on this, it is recommended that kahuans next begin to locally define context and culture specific measures with which to encourage the localization of ece programs. this will require regional collaboration to maintain culturallydefined quality assurance standards with which to develop and regularly monitor programs. in applying this call for future education developments, it goes hand in hand with continued research capacity development in kahua. “[p]art of the rationale for such capacity development is to strengthen the ability of small state voices to engage actively with and, where appropriate, challenge the nature and influence of powerful international agendas” (crossley, 2008, p.249). current issues in comparative education 171 building on living traditions eventually, as kahua’s culture-relevant ece initiatives become quality, sustained endeavors, then local voices will be positioned to influence the wider realms of education discourse in the si and beyond. in concluding this collaborative study with the kahua people, the final words are left to a local kahua kindy chairman. he emphasized the utmost importance of local significance for kahuans in championing the future of sustained context and culture-sensitive ece for their children, as resonates with the fundamentals of the kahua principles. he asserted, “we must not give up easily because once you give up, you give up for good. the future of all children and teachers in makira needs us to take pride in early childhood education” (personal communication, august 15, 2009). lindsay j. burton, m.ed., m.sc., d.phil., was a doctoral candidate at the university of oxford while serving as principal investigator for the research reported in this article. over the past decade, she has worked in research and education in the united states, asia, africa, and the south pacific. her work has predominantly focused on early childhood education and program sustainability through collaborative systems innovation. email: lindsay@ lindsayburton.com endnotes 1. early childhood education is used in this study to refer to formal, nonformal, and informal contexts of learning for young children of kindergarten age (approximately 3-6 years old) in the solomon islands. reference to formal si ece, known as kindy, is based on the national si curriculum developed in 2009 “valium smol pikinini blong iumi” (“valuing our young children”), which states, “early childhood education must enable all young children to acquire the necessary skills, knowledge, values, and attitudes for meaningful participation in solomon islands society.” (mehrd, 2009, p. 2). 2. sustainability is used in this study to include cultural and contextual elements, as defined by program responsiveness to ever-evolving local needs, demands, and limitations, while maintaining focus on original program objectives (i.e. culturally-sensitive, appropriate, and meaningful ece for specific context) and populations served (i.e. children 3-6 years old) (daiwo, 2001; kirpal, 2002; mancini, & marek, 2004). 3. education for all goal 1: “expand and improve comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children” (unesco, 2000, p. 15). 4. majority world is used to represent what is commonly referred to as developing countries, third world, and the south. this term intentionally highlights the fact that these countries are the majority of humankind, in a manner that emphasizes what they are in positive connotations rather than what they lack. 5. kastom is the pidgin word used for custom throughout melanesia, predominantly to refer to longestablished local practices and/or behaviors. within kahua, this term is most significantly associated with behaviors of respect. 6. based on 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(re)framing the education of immigrants1 ameena ghaffar-kucher teachers college, columbia university events in the past year, such as the paris riots, the danish cartoon controversy, and immigration rallies across the united states, illustrate the explosive nature of immigration debates, placing a renewed sense of urgency on matters of immigration. in particular, the recent proliferation of "violent acts" by individuals with immigrant backgrounds (such as the july 2005 london bombings and the november 2004 murder of theo van gogh in the netherlands) has increased concern and suspicion about immigrants, resulting in a serious immigration backlash across europe and the u.s. though many of the debates arising from these incidents have been sociopolitical or economic in nature, the questions of how immigration affects education and how education affects immigrants are significant, and need to be addressed, both at the macro level by policymakers and educationalists, and at the micro level by teachers, families, and community leaders. approaches to addressing the challenges faced by immigrant students in schools, however, continue to be entrenched in the classic assimilationist model. rather than constructing new ways to accommodate and embrace the added diversity that immigrants bring to educational settings, schools have been viewed as the primary vehicle for "assisting" immigrant students to assimilate. this is exemplified by transitional bilingual education, which dominates the bilingual education paradigm, and devalues immigrants' rich linguistic heritages by forcing students to learn the language of their new home at the detriment of their mother tongue. much of the assimilationist perspective can be traced to the work of robert park, a sociologist at the university of chicago from 1914-1936. park, who was one of the first researchers of immigrant communities in the u.s. (and an immigrant himself), is responsible for two key ideas within the assimilationist camp: the melting pot metaphor and the concept of marginal men. park (1928) believed that every society was to some degree a successful melting pot, where diverse populations merge, acculturate, and eventually assimilate, albeit at different ranges and in different ways. however, park also maintained that immigrants were often "marginal" men and women, in that they found themselves between two cultures. on the one hand, park believed that such marginal individuals were mired in "inner turmoil and self consciousness" (1928, p. 893). on the other hand, marginality was an indication of social innovation and cultural sophistication. compared to the "indigenous" person, the marginal person was "the individual with the keener intelligence, the wider horizon, and the more detached and rational viewpoint" (park, 1950, p. 375-376). park's (1928) writings also introduced the concepts of cultural hybridity and cosmopolitanism. yet, these positive aspects of immigration have been overshadowed by the negative (on which he wrote more extensively). the commonsense appeal of the notion that marginality results in a state of uncertainty and conflict is what has allowed it to dominate the immigration arena for the last century. ameena ghaffar-kucher 4 december 7, 2006 certainly, countries have historically constructed policies for how they view their own national identities, and hence, how they respond to immigrants who settle within their borders. france is a case in point; with its long history of immigration, it has established "a readiness to grant citizenship. but it has a republican conception of citizenship which does not allow, at least in theory, any body of citizens to be differentially identified" (modood, 2003, p. 102). to be a french citizen means becoming a french man or a french woman and giving up any "prefrench" identity. the paris riots in october and november 2005, as well as the longstanding "headscarf controversy," cast serious doubt on this attitude. such questioning of the assimilation perspective, particularly with regards to its applicability to more recent non-european immigrant groups, has grown in recent years (see for e.g. alba & nee, 1997; conzen, gerber, morowska, pozzetta, & vecoli, 1992; gibson, 1988; portes & zhou, 1993; rumbaut, 1994; sarroub, 2005). moreover, globalization has significantly altered the circumstances of immigrants compared to their predecessors, as well as the nature of their social networks. globalization allows immigrants to maintain stronger ties to their country of origin, through mass media, the internet, cheaper phone systems, and of course, more efficient travel. in effect, new immigrants are more likely to maintain an affinity to their home country and less likely to feel the pressure to assimilate. proponents of assimilation have not adequately addressed the impact of globalization on immigration, or the ways in which "new immigrants" and their circumstances differ from their predecessors. as a result, the classic assimilist model ignores alternative outcomes for immigrants, such as that of isolation and (self-)ghettoization. in a recent poll conducted by the bbc, 38% of the 3000 youth surveyed felt that immigrants should "keep apart" to maintain their own beliefs and culture. the emergence of "parallel societies" in germany is an example of this isolation, whereby turkish immigrants have created their own society in parallel to mainstream german society, in order to maintain the turkish language, traditions, and social mores. among the concerns associated with isolation is the tendency of the parallel society to stagnate, as immigrants make conscious efforts to hold on to traditions that may have in fact evolved in their home country, since society is, by nature, dynamic. isolation can thus be considered a defensive reaction to assimilation policies, neither of which is beneficial to the immigration group and host country. integration (what gibson (1988) refers to as accommodation without assimilation) is where a solution may indeed exist. as an additive bicultural strategy, it allows groups to preserve their religious, cultural, and linguistic identities while fully participating in their new home country's political sphere. though multiculturalism and the metaphor of the salad bowl have been used to describe this phenomenon, integration is far more sophisticated; it acknowledges that there is a dialectical exchange between the immigrants and their new home country, which results not only in changes within the immigration population, but also within the host country (conzen, et. al., 1992). this process of negotiation occurs between the dominant and the immigrant/ minority/ minoritized groups, and also among minority/ minoritized groups, and even within the groups themselves. integration thus calls into question the assumption that "the host society unilaterally dictates the terms of assimilation and that change is a linear progression from 'foreignness' to americanization" (conzen, et al., 1992 pp. 31-32), in the case of the u.s., for example, or from foreign attributes to host citizen attributes, more generally. editorial introduction current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 5 the implications of these dynamics have not been adequately explored in the fields of comparative education and international educational development, despite their potential to shed light on education at the intersection of an array of social, political, and economic concerns. this issue of cice makes a contribution towards this end by exploring questions on education and immigration: to what extent is it reasonable to expect immigrant students and families to adapt to schooling in their new countries, and to what degree should schools and school systems be held accountable for adapting to the needs of immigrant students? what kinds of alternatives exist to classic assimilation models? how do perceived educational opportunities influence immigration patterns? how is cultural diversity manifested and managed in classrooms and schools across the globe; with what effects? and finally, what impact do particular models of immigration have on the education of immigrants? the diverse collection of articles herein thus engages a range of issues from a variety of geographical standpoints, in effect, calling for a reframing of assumptions that dominate current immigration debates. in the role of gender in immigrant children's educational adaptation, desiree qin stresses the importance of considering the construct of gender in studies of immigration. based on findings from a longitudinal u.s. national study, qin contributes to a growing literature on gender differences in educational attainment of immigrant students by focusing on the experiences of chinese immigrant boys and girls in the u.s. her research confirms previous findings that girls outperform boys academically, and attributes this to several factors: (1) changes in parental expectations after migration; (2) differences in socialization; (3) relations at school; and (4) the gendered process of acculturation and identity formation. her research calls for further exploration into why and how gender, in particular, makes a difference in the educational choices and performances of immigrant children. the issue of including "refugees" under the immigrant umbrella is problemetized by jacqueline mosselson in roots and routes: a re-imagining of refugee identity constructions and the implications for schooling. her paradigm, roots & routes, approaches the issue of immigration from a holistic perspective and considers how the refugee women in her study view their past and future in order to create a new (fluid) identity for themselves. a second hypothesis that she discusses is masks of achievement. here, mosselson suggests that refugee students’ high academic achievement can be a tool to hide depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and feelings of isolation. taken together, the rootes & routes paradigm and masks of achievement can assist educators in understanding and addressing the unique needs of refugee students. in education and emigration: the case of the iranian-american community, sina mossayeb and roozbeh shirazi explore the correlation between perceived educational opportunity and immigration from iran to the u.s. the authors present empirical data to support an extension to prevailing accounts of unfavorable sociopolitical conditions in iran as push factors for emigration, to include the perception of educational opportunity, as a significant coexisting pull factor for immigration to the u.s. their research serves as a doorway for future studies on what drives individuals to leave a country, and also, what conditions might encourage them to return. metchild gomolla discusses the impact of the standardization movement across europe on immigrant students in tackling underachievement of learners from ethnic minorities: a comparison of recent policies of school improvement in germany, england, and ameena ghaffar-kucher 6 december 7, 2006 switzerland. she then presents specific interventions from three countries that respond to state legislature which seek to tackle the growing inequities in achievement and opportunities between immigrant and non-immigrant students. her findings suggest that a whole-school approach is needed to effectively level the playing field between immigrant and non-immigrant students. cosmopolitanism, as an alternative paradigm from which to approach immigration issues, is explored by jeffrey walker and ana serrano in their essay, formulating a cosmopolitan approach to immigration and social policy: lessons from american (north and south) indigenous and immigration groups. in addressing the impact of globalization on immigration, walker and serrano advocate cosmopolitanism as a more positive and inclusive alternative to pluralist and assimilationist perspectives of immigrant education. as an example, of cosmopolitanism, they draw on the experiences of the otavalos, an indigenous ecuadorian group that has used its traditions to gain educational and commercial success. finally, in their commentary, globalization, immigration, and the education of "new" immigrants in the 21st century, margaret a. (greta) gibson and anne ríos rojas discuss the impact of globalization on immigration. they then briefly address each of the articles, providing areas for reflection and extension. reframing the debates surrounding the education of immigrants in more positive terms is no small challenge. in the introduction to their edited volume, imagining multilingual schools, garcia, skutnabb-kangas, and torres-guzmán (2006) suggest: to design spaces and both deconstruct and then construct ways for multilingual schools requires a situated view of languages and their speakers and identities, and attention to these different conditions. but especially, it requires attention to the power relations that maintain negative educational models, as well as the ensuing unequal social and political relations which represent linguicism. (p. 20) a starting point for educationalists and policymakers to reframe this debate, then, may be to engage the imagination to think outside of the "assimilation box" and to challenge the deep rooted assumptions in societies that focus on the negative aspects of immigration. the collection of articles in this issue of cice brings to light issues that require further scrutiny; in doing so, they provide a variety of starting points to reframe the debates on the education of immigrants. notes 1. i would like to thank zeena zakharia for her helpful feedback on earlier versions of this introduction. references alba, r., & nee, v. (1997). rethinking assimilation theory for a new era of immigration. international migration review, 31, 826-874. bbc. (2006, december 4). youths want no migration controls. [online]. available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6198696.stm. editorial introduction current issues in comparative education, vol. 9 (1) 7 conzen, k., gerber, d., morawska, e., pozzetta, g., & vecoli, r. (1992). the invention of ethnicity, journal of american ethnic history, 12, 3-41. garcia, o., skutnabb-kangas, t., torres-guzman, m. e. (eds.) (2006) imagining multilingual schools: language in education and globalization. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. gibson, m. (1988). accommodation without assimilation: sikh immigrants in an american high school. itaca, ny: cornell university press. modood, t. (2003). muslims and the politics of difference. the political quarterly, 74(1), 100-115. park, r. e. (1928). human migration and the marginal man. american journal of sociology, 33(6), 881-893. park, r. e. (1950). race and culture. glencoe, il: free press. portes, a., & zhou, m. (1993, november). the new second generation: segmented assimilation and its variants. the annals of the academy of political and social science, 530, 74-96. rumbaut, r. g. (1994). the crucible within: ethnic identity, self-esteem, and segmented assimilation among children of immigrants. international migration review, 28, 748-795. sarroub, l. (2005). all american yemeni girls: being muslim in a public school. philadelphia, pa: university of pennsylvania press. early childhood care and education: worldwide challenges and progresses volume 11 / 2009 issn 1523-1615 available at http://www.tc.edu/cice editorial introduction 3 early childhood care and education: worldwide challenges and progresses yoon lee and matthew hayden articles 6 early childhood care and education in zambia: an integral part of educational provision? carolyn m. thomas and matthew a.m. thomas 15 incorporating indigenous knowledge and practice into ecce: a comparison of programs in the gambia, senegal and mali alicia ranck soudée 24 the better early childhood development program: an innovative brazilian public policy alessandra schneider, vera regina ramires, maria da graça gomes paiva, and leila almeida 33 a new look on early child care and education (ecce) as joint responsibility maria da graça gomes paiva, alessandra schneider, maria lúcia salle machado, and pollyana vilela duarte perinazzo 42 about the contributors 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 11 (2008-2009) editorial board managing editor kathleen keenan senior editors stephanie bengtsson tricia a. callender matthew hayden antonia mandry michelle morais de sa’e silva hakim williams associate editors maria jose bermeo lauren connolly dina paulson gretchen wietmarschen web and publications editor andrew shiotani international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, ingrid gogolin, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www.tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2009 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 11: 15-23. incorporating indigenous knowledge and practice into ecce: a comparison of programs in the gambia, senegal and mali alicia ranck soudée the george washington university early childhood development (ecd) has emerged as a theme in international and african dialogue on education in recent years. unesco’s division of basic education early childhood promotes an integrated approach to early childhood care and education (ecce) policy development and review. the study examines how this is implemented in three west african countries, with similar cultural groups in their diverse populations: the gambia, mali and senegal. in the gambia there is thus far a proposal on how indigenous knowledge should be included in early childhood programs. the clos d’enfants [children’s groups], in mali demonstrates similar ideas through an international partnership with a local initiative program, developed in bamako using mothers, local materials and toys made by the participants. senegal’s program combining local traditions and european pedagogical philosophies, the case des tout-petits [children’s huts], came from the president. analysis of these three cases suggests that these programs and proposals may be a springboard for unesco and partners to further develop ecce with indigenous knowledge and practice in africa. early childhood development (ecd) has emerged as a theme in the international and african dialogue on education in recent years, though it is not the highest priority for governments or donors. the 1989 united nations (un) adoption of the convention on the rights of the child began a more visible drive for early childhood development on the international stage. closely following this, the education for all (efa) initiative from the 1990 world conference on efa in jomtien, thailand, the 2000 world education forum in dakar, senegal, and the development of the millennium development goals in the un, have all led to an increase in government policies and local initiatives in the domain of early childhood programs around the world. most importantly, the first of the efa goals in the 2000 dakar framework for action is “expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children” (unesco, 2000, p. 8). from these international commitments and declarations, unesco’s division of basic education early childhood promotes an integrated approach to early childhood care and education (ecce) policy development and review. the african continent has also established a strong commitment to ecce through the formation of the working group on early childhood development in the association for the development of education in africa (adea) in 1993 and an early childhood francophone africa regional network (rafpe) in 1996. both groups have participated in regional training and policy development for ecce in the region. this paper will consider unesco’s policy that promotes an integrated and local adaptation of ecce programs and how it is implemented in three west african countries, with similar cultural groups in their diverse populations: the gambia, mali and senegal. beginning with an exploration of unesco’s position on ecce, the paper will briefly describe the benefits of preschool education programs and the idea of indigenous or local knowledge in education. the paper will then examine a study from the gambia that shows how indigenous knowledge can be included in early childhood programs. in mali ideas similar to those put into practice in the gambia study can be seen in an international partnership with a local initiative program, the clos d’enfants, developed in bamako involving mothers and using local materials and toys made by the participants. while the first two cases look at ground-up approaches, in senegal the president 16 current issues in comparative education a. r. soudée initiated a program combining local traditions and european pedagogical philosophies, the case des tout-petits. in conclusion, there will be a brief discussion of what unesco can continue or begin to do for ecce and possibilities for further research on these three countries’ ecce programs. what is unesco’s concept of ecce? unesco defines early childhood as the time from birth to age 8. this is generally divided into two groups: 0-3 and 3-6/8. this paper, like most early childhood programs in the countries studied, will focus specifically on the later group or preschool ages 3-6. for unesco, ecce should be holistic and relevant, involving the development of the whole body. this concept encompasses everything from a child’s health, nutrition and hygiene to cognitive skills and social, emotional development. as documented in unicef’s state of the world’s children 2001 (bellamy, 2001) this is a critical time for a person’s brain to be prepared for future learning not only through stimulation by educational activities, but equally by emphasizing healthy practices such as hygiene, vaccinations, and positive emotional stimulation. unesco encourages that national governments should approach policy formation for ecce in phases and a through public-private partnerships (2006). ecce’s numerous benefits begin with children being more prepared for their primary and hopefully continued education. ecce can also provide a way to fight malnutrition and the spread of preventable diseases at critical moments. unesco emphasizes the importance of including parental education in any kind of ecce program so that the positive effects reach the family and not just the enrolled child. in the policy guidelines is it is noted, “the key to improving school performance is to invest in the families of young children” (vargas-baron, 2005, p. 4). the economic returns are not only very high for the child in the long term but also for the parents in the short term. having a safe, stimulating environment to which a child can go, even for a few hours each day, allows a mother to participate more freely in economic activities outside of the home (unesco, 2006). generally the non-formal and private sectors have been the most active in ecce but according to recent reports this may be slowly shifting. the 2007 global monitoring report on efa shows that there is very limited enrollment in ecce, especially in africa, where primary enrollments are still at low levels. most programs that do exist serve urban areas and easier to reach populations. currently, staff have very low levels of education, which unesco sees as one of the many areas of ecce needing improvement (unesco, 2006). unesco’s role as a driving force behind the development of ecce policies by national governments supported the creation of some guidelines for national ecce policy planning. unicef and adea also supported these guidelines written by emily vargas-baron. according to vargas-baron (2005), “the ideal ecd system is developed with full parental participation. parents should become the first and best nurturers, stimulators and educators of their children” (p. 8). furthermore, the ecd system should be comprehensive, continuous, culturally appropriate, and community based. policy decisions should include local and national stakeholders in order to respect and ensure the cultural relevance of programs (vargas-baron, 2005). in order to understand the ideas behind cultural relevance it is essential to take a look at the ideas of local knowledge and practices. what does it mean to include indigenous or local knowledge and practices? indigenous knowledge can be defined as a particular group’s understanding of the surrounding current issues in comparative education 17 incorporating indigenous knowledge and practice into ecce world, ways of sharing information or teaching, and ways of speaking and thinking that are passed down through generations (easton, 2004). within both formal and non-formal education traditional knowledge and practices can be woven together with other pedagogical practices. more often the non-formal and informal arenas see the use of indigenous practices while the formal system does not (easton, 2004). on the african continent, where former colonial systems of education are predominant, the desire to include indigenous knowledge and practice has continued to gain momentum since independence. the african regional framework of action from dakar calls for “community involvement in school decision-making and administration; employment of teachers in their own community of origin; curriculum reform toward locally relevant subjects; use of mother tongue as the language of instruction; the use of schools as community learning centers” (unesco, 2000, p. 24-34). the indigenous knowledge that should be included at the early childhood level begins with use of the mother tongue. one reason is that using a mother tongue tends to better increase literacy rates (leautier, 2004). traditional stories are also important tools to be used in ecce programs as demonstrated by case-studies conducted by students of the early childhood development virtual university (schafer et al. 2004). schafer (2004) summarized findings from uganda and lesotho that emphasized the use of local stories as important to cognitive skills development and continuation of indigenous knowledge. sagnia (2004) also promotes the use of songs, dances, and locally produced toys in ecce programs in the gambia as will be discussed below. local ideas of parenting and children’s roles can and should also influence early education practices (pence, 2004). in many of the documents read (schafer, 2004; pagano, 1999; sagnia, 2004), the rise in urbanization has led to a change in family structure and loss of traditional practices, therefore increasing a cultural preservation argument for the integration of indigenous knowledge in education. how are indigenous and local knowledge and practice being included in ecce policies and programs in the neighboring countries of the gambia, senegal and mali? the gambia: planning for action the gambia is a very small country that lies on both sides of the gambia river and is surrounded on three sides by senegal. in a population of only approximately 1.7 million, ethnic groups and local languages include the mandinka, wolof, fula, jola, and serahuli. the official language is english stemming from former british colonization. the gambia was briefly federated with its neighbor as senegambia from 1982-1989. both are predominantly muslim countries (cia, 2007). the education system is based on the british school system with a lower basic, upper-basic, secondary and tertiary. the government’s department of state for education (dose) strategic plan 2006-2015calls for increased equitable access to and quality in education starting at the basic level through higher education. local languages wolof, pulaar, mandinka, jola and sarahule will be introduced as subjects throughout the system. in terms of ecce there are currently 265 preschool structures serving a little over 1200 students. the education policy calls for the government to set guidelines for preschool educator training, work with ngos and multiple sectors for an integrated approach, and encourage community participation in early childhood development. language of instruction is to be the mother tongue. the national policy document on early childhood is still in progress (dose, 2006). while the gambian government has acknowledged the importance of the type of integrated ecce promoted by unesco, there is not enough data on what is currently being done at the local 18 current issues in comparative education a. r. soudée level. one case study was found through a major unesco partner, unicef. a unicef banjul employee, jenieri sagnia, participated in the early childhood development virtual university through university of victoria and in 2004 produced a study entitled “ indigenous knowledge and practices of parents and families regarding psychosocial care for children in three rural communities in the gambia: implications for unicef programming in ecd.” this research project is an initial step in the policy process, and utilizes surveys, interviews and observations to determine what knowledge and practices for children are already in place in local communities in order to integrate these better with current international best practices of interactive learning through play and in the mother tongue. the study fits well with the 2005 policy guidelines sponsored by unicef, unesco and adea specifically to conduct an assessment of ecce programming and policies in order to set a policy framework to fill any potential gaps. the guidelines aim for the “development of comprehensive, integrated and culturally appropriate [early childhood development] ecd programmes and networks,” (vargas-baron, 2005 p. 1) sagnia (2004) found that the mandinka, fula and wolof communities he studied saw the social benefits of children’s play even though there was also a belief that too much play would interfere with future success. play was seen to make children happy and occupy them so parents could work. in all three communities children observed the work being performed by older members. mothers would talk and sing to their very small children and carry them on their backs. parents would sometimes play with children, especially mothers with their babies. sagnia (2004) found that in the mandinka group local toys were used in play, though they were limited. gender differences included more physical games and longer play allowed for boys. often, grandmothers and older children watched younger children. the grandmothers also were storytellers and singers, or filled in the comfort role of absent mothers (sagnia, 2004). all of these were examples of positive social interactions, emotional and cognitive stimulations beneficial to a young child’s development that could be drawn upon in creating a preschool program in the gambia. unicef already had a successful program, according to sagnia (2004), in the gambia to promote breastfeeding and hygiene within communities. this program was known as the baby friendly community initiative (bfci). the formula for the initiative was “modern/scientific knowledge + local/traditional knowledge = credible knowledge” (sagnia, 2004 p. 85). the unicef participation in early childhood program would begin with the bfci to work with communities in developing understanding of psychosocial development and ecce. sagnia (2004) suggests building on the indigenous practices and educating the communities on benefits of further opportunities for play in group settings with toys, sand, water, songs, dance and stories. training should include local production of toys and the participation of grandmothers as childcare providers and storytellers for perpetuating traditional knowledge and also economic concerns of using what is available at minimal costs (sagnia, 2004). mali: an international partnership with local initiative spreads mali is a much larger country than the gambia that also borders senegal. mali and senegal were very briefly federated at the time of their independence from france. the population of around 12 million is also highly multicultural and includes mande (bambara, malinke, and soninke), peul, voltaic, songhai, tuareg and moor groups. french is the official language due to former french colonization, but the majority-spoken language is bambara. as in the gambia and senegal, islam is the predominant religion (cia, 2007). the education system is based on the french system with primary, secondary and tertiary levels. language of instruction is french with local languages used in pre-primary and early primary current issues in comparative education 19 incorporating indigenous knowledge and practice into ecce classes as a transition to french. there are approximately 51,000 children enrolled in 412 preschool structures in mali. of these, 64 clos d’enfants rely on strong community involvement in providing preschool care and education in some rural and urban settings (unesco, 2006). the most recent educational policy letter in mali calls for developing early childhood and its inclusion under the main heading of basic education (ministère de l’education nationale, république du mali, nd). a national policy document on ecce was not found at this time. despite very low enrollment rates of five percent in preprimary programs, mali has an important ecce initiative that began in bamako with unesco-ficemea and a local women’s group and has now spread to rural villages in benin, niger and senegal. the first clos was opened in bamako in 1997 upon the request of mrs. diakité oumou fayé, president of the jiguiya association (poli and varier 1997, 2003). the idea of a clos combines local resources and traditions and “modern” pedagogical concepts in a formal setting (poli and varier, 1997). the author sees this as in-line with the ideas put forth by unesco’s vision of ecce and in the ideas presented in sagnia’s study. a clos d’enfants is a place where 15 children, aged 3-6, are brought together in a safe, clean environment to socialize and learn. 15 women form five different groups of three mother-educators (mères-éducatrices), each including a younger future mother, a mother and a grandmother. the groups volunteer one day each week to take care of the clos and its activities. in the urban areas there is a small remuneration for transportation costs. learning is in small groups through interactive play using games created by the volunteers. there is at least a healthy snack if not a meal provided each day. a garden and chickens at the site are recommended to be tended by all involved as an economic and educational endeavor. the clos structure and program emphasize the global development of the child on physical, emotional and social levels. one of the requirements is a clean water supply onsite. a further idea is that the trained mother-educators will take their knowledge of health and hygiene back into their family lives as well (poli, 2003). looking at the management structures and the training sessions reveals the influence and importance of indigenous knowledge and practice for the clos. before the clos is opened, the whole community is involved in deciding to adopt the model. the council of elders or other local leaders will choose a male representative who in turn chooses three mothers to form the local management team with him. a clos must be connected with a women’s association. the community chooses the mothers and children. training for the mothers is given by specialists, generally from europe, over a one-week period where the women have a continuous dialogue beginning with what they observe children in the community doing on a daily basis. the women create game bags with local materials, for example clay beads and dominoes, puzzles from postcards, and cloth dolls. a simple structure to house the program is also to be built of local materials by the community. women are further called upon to remember the games and songs, in the local language and from their own childhood, to be shared with the group and used in the clos. throughout the training the women are asked to reflect on their activities, modeling the interactive learning methods that should be used with the children (poli, 1997; 2001; 2003). save the children’s strong beginnings program is another example of a partnership program that incorporates local knowledge into current best practices. as with save the children’s community primary schools, preschools are built based on village demand, and teachers are hired locally to run the schools. pagano (1999) examines this program during a visit early in the implementation of the program at a school site at foutière, in the southern rural part of mali. the strong beginnings program uses bambara beliefs, language and indigenous child-rearing practices (pagano, 1999). 20 current issues in comparative education a. r. soudée pagano (1999) describes the local village chief, education committee and parents’ opinions and expectations of the program as positive. senegal: presidential driving force creates a national ecce movement senegal is the westernmost country on the african continent. as mentioned above, senegal surrounds the gambia and shares a border with mali. similar in population size to mali, at 12.5 million inhabitants, ethnic groups are shared with both the gambia and mali. wolof, pular, mandinka, serrer, jola, soninke are the most populous ethnic groups and the six national languages. french is the official language, as in mali, due to former french colonization. as seen in the other country examples, senegal is a highly muslim country (cia, 2007). because of a shared colonial past, mali and senegal have similar education systems from preschools through to the university level with french as the language of instruction, though the national languages are used in the pre-primary and early primary years. the ecce sector currently includes 971 structures and over 78,000 students, though this is only 6% of the preschool age population. in senegal, several ecce programs have been tested, including community preschools for 3-6 year olds emphasizing health, nutrition and religion along with some instruction. this initiative of the programme for community pre-school education in senegal in 1996 called for community and parental involvement, and volunteer “mother-assistants” with supervision at higher levels. this idea resembles that of the mother-educators in mali’s clos d’enfants. a health focused nursery school type model was tried from 1996-2000 in parts of dakar where the younger children were taught in wolof and the older group in french. other programs included community nutrition centers and early childhood community awareness centers. in 2001 a ministry of family and early childhood (mfpe) was created (rayna, 2003). ecce is included in the current ten year plan pdef from 2003. the example this study will focus on is president wade’s case des tout-petits, or “children’s hut” announced at the 2000 world forum in dakar. the move was made official in 2004 by a decree creating the anctp, national agency of the children’s hut, whose council has members from the majority of government ministries. this type of integrated approach has been advocated for by unesco. the cases are centers providing schooling, health and nutrition, and community education, which focus on children from birth to age 6 and their parents. the building is in a hexagonal form based on play areas for the five senses, and a mother’s room for their education. there is also a kitchen, infirmary, office, storage space, toilets and courtyard. a diagonal bar structure from the ground to the roof symbolises a rooting in the local culture and reaching to others (anctp, 2007). according to the official web site, (http://www.case-toupetit.sn/) the case des tout-petits encompasses a holistic and integrated approach to child development, promotes access for girls, handicapped and rural children while valuing and utilizing local cultural heritage through stories and singing with volunteer grandmothers. this latter concept is similar to the suggestions of sagnia in the gambia study. a trained animator is in charge of the children’s educational activities with help from volunteers, mother-assistants and a religious instructor. a meal or snack is provided through other international health and food programs. some also include gardens, similar to the mali examples. multimedia equipment is also part of the program. the vision of the case des tout-petits is to open access to an integrated early childhood program incorporating traditional culture and modern pedagogical tools through the creation of 28,000 cases by 2015 (anctp, 2007). current issues in comparative education 21 incorporating indigenous knowledge and practice into ecce discussion and conclusions it is clear that there is an increasing understanding and desire at the national government level to encourage and participate in ecce in the gambia, mali and senegal. while data is limited due to the limited number of ecce programs and studies in the region, there is evidence and similarities from the case studies of ways to include indigenous knowledge and practice in an early childhood program that also promotes the whole child’s development. use of mother tongue for interactions, games, storytelling and songs were common ways of transmitting local knowledge across the three cases. community participation, particularly by grandmothers, mothers and local volunteers, was seen as crucial to the success of the program and therefore encouraged in all three cases. sometimes local building materials and locally made toys were also factors in the program plans. in all cases, programs seem to be built on traditional community values of raising children, supplemented by best practice ideas on health, nutrition and interactive brain stimulation to better prepare children for basic education. the author recommends that unesco continue in its partnerships with ficemea, unicef and other groups to promote programs that respond to the holistic and integrated ideals of ecce while taking into account local traditions. perhaps there could be an increase in cross-border programs, as is the case with the clos d’enfants initiative, which has been taken from mali to benin, niger and senegal. the case example from senegal is a much more expensive model because of the national scale and construction materials but the ideas incorporating child and community learning can be widely useful. perhaps the gambia may also see the fruition of sagnia’s recommendations. a more complete understanding of the inclusion of indigenous knowledge in the preschool programs of senegal, the gambia and mali would require research on location or extended contact with local ngos and perhaps schools due to the lack of available data. ideally one could use surveys, observation, and interviews on location in several communities throughout the three countries, similar to sagnia’s study, for a truly in-depth look at the question of incorporating local knowledge in ecce. one would also need to find data in actual ecce programs on how language, childrearing/discipline, toys, games and other facets of local knowledge are currently being used. this would be an important step in facilitating the spread of such programs to other areas with senegal, mali and the gambia as well as to neighboring nations. references agence nationale de la case des tout-petits (anctp). (nd). retrieved march 17, 2007, from http://www.case-toupetit.sn/. aide et action mali. (2006). mali: le clos d’enfants libère un quartier in aide et action le magazine n. 99. 8-9. association for the development of education in africa (adea). retrieved march 15, 2007, from http://www.adeanet.org. bellamy, carol. (2001) the state of the world’s children 2001. new york: unicef. choi,soo-hyang. (2006). “bite off only as much as you can chew”: gambia’s policy for early childhood. policy briefs on early childhood #34. unesco education sector. department of state for education (dose), the republic of the gambia (2006). education sector 22 current issues in comparative education a. r. soudée strategic plan 2006-2015. retrieved march 15, 2007, from http://www.edugambia.gm/index.html direction de la planification et de la réforme de l’education. (2005). situation des indicateurs de l’éducation 2000-2005. document de travail. retrieved march 15, 2007, from http://www.education. gouv.sn. early childhood and family education section. (2002). women, work and early childhood: the nexus in developed and developing countries. policy briefs on early childhood #4-5. unesco education sector. easton, peter b. (2004). education and indigenous knowledge. in local pathways to global development: marking five years of the world bank indigenous knowledge for development program, (pp. 9-12). the world bank, knowledge and learning group, african region. eccd group, consultative group on early childhood care and development. retrieved march 10, 2007, from http://www.ecdgroup.com/participation.asp ficemea, fédération international des centres de méthodes d’education active. retrieved march 17, 2007, from http://www.cemea.asso.fr/ficemea/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=12 gambia, the. (2007). the cia world factbook [online]. retrieved march 1, 2007, from https:// www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ga.html gilbert a.m., poli y., varier a. (2001). créer des clos d’enfants dans le village de samantara (mali). recherche-action sur la famille et la petite enfance, monographie #15. unesco secteur de l’éducation. leautier, frannie. (2004). indigenous capacity enhancement: developing community knowledge. local pathways to global development: marking five years of the world bank indigenous knowledge for development program. the world bank, knowledge and learning group, african region. 4-8. lillemyr ole fredrik, fagerli o., sobstad f. (2001). a global perspective on early childhood care and education: a proposed model. action research in family and early childhood monograph #17. unesco education sector. mali. (2007). the cia world factbook [online]. retrieved march 1, 2007 from u.s. central intelligence agency world factbook website: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/theworld-factbook/geos/ml.html. mbaye, ndeye khady diop. (2004). la case des tout-petits: de la vision a la concrétisation in breda infos 12, 8-9. ministère de l’education, république du sénégal. (2003). programme de développement de l’education et de la formation/education pour tous (pdef/ept). retrieved march 15, 2007, from http://www. education.gouv.sn. ministère de l’education nationale, république du mali. (nd). lettre de politique educative du mali. retrieved march 17, 2007 from http://www.education.gov.ml/. current issues in comparative education 23 incorporating indigenous knowledge and practice into ecce pagano, alicia i. (1999). an examination of early childhood teacher education in four west african nations; ghana, mali, senegal, and the gambia. paper presented at the international conference on teacher education, beit berl college, israel. pence, alan. (2004). ecd policy development and implementation in africa. early childhood and family policy series #9. unesco education sector. poli, yvette and varier, a. (1997). mobiliser les mères et les préparer à encadrer des jeunes enfants: module de formation de base pour des “clos d’enfants.” recherche-action sur la famille et la petite enfance, monographie #7. unesco secteur de l’éducation. poli, yvette and varier, a. (2003). une pédagogie ambitieuse, une organisation réaliste: le clos d’enfants. recherche-action sur la famille et la petite enfance. unesco secteur de l’éducation. rayna, sylvie. (2003). implementation of the integrated early childhood policy in senegal. early childhood and family policy series # 2. unesco education sector. sagnia, jenieri b. (2001). the gambia country report on early childhood development. ecdvu, university of victoria. sagnia, jenieri b. (2004). indigenous knowledge and practices of parents and families regarding psychosocial care for children in three rural communities in the gambia: implications for unicef. ecdvu, university of victoria. schafer, jessica, et al. (2004). exploring and promoting the value of indigenous knowledge in early childhood development in africa. international journal of educational policy, research, and practice: reconceptualizing childhood studies, 5 (3): 61-80. senegal. (2007). the cia world factbook [online]. retrieved march 1, 2007, from https://www. cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sg.html. unesco. (2000). dakar framework for action, world education conference. dakar: unesco. unesco. (2006). efa global monitoring report 2007: strong foundations: early childhood care and education, unesco. unesco bureau internationale d’éducation. (2006). profil de pays : mali: programmes de protection et d’éducation de la petite enfance (pepe). unesco international bureau of education. (2006). country profile: senegal: early childhood care and education programmes (ecce). vargas-baron, emily. (2005). planning policies for early childhood development: a guideline for action. adea, unesco, unicef. zulu, itibari m. (2006). critical indigenous african education and knowledge. journal of pan african studies, 1(3): 32-49. copyright © 2009 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved © 2003 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 50 december 17, 2003 the culturally situated process of knowledge production in a virtual community: a case of hypertext1 analysis from a university's classweb discussion boards sunghee shin teachers college, columbia university eun kyeong cho teachers college, columbia university introduction technology, not as a collection of devices, but as a disinterested, scientifically based process of management system, provided a framework for "thinking about" the identification and solution to a predefined problem. behind the mask of neutrality, disinterest, and a modernist notion of "truth," an ideology of control and a consciousness of process earmarked the development of western thinking (muffoletto, 2001, p.1). with the advent of the internet era, the use of online educational technology has risen significantly. increasingly, higher education institutions have incorporated online (or supplemental) courseware such as discussion boards as part of their education delivery system. technology in education has become an important tool for knowledge production. along with the growing interest in the use of computer technology for knowledge production, research interest on the use of technology in education has also been growing. research on educational technology has mainly focused on how technology facilitates knowledge acquisition efficiently, as if there is no question about what knowledge is or how it becomes so, and as if the major concern is knowledge delivery. for example, researchers often examine how student learning can be facilitated by using research-based and pedagogically sound web-packaged courseware (ammerlaan, 2002; farmer, 2002). yet, there is an alternative view on the use of technology in education. critical postmodern researchers urge us to "challenge the ideological assumptions that inform the interpretation of their experiences" (kincheloe & mclaren, 1998). further, critical research leads us to focus on the injustice of a society and asks us to put more effort on empowering individuals who have been marginalized. by closely examining the everyday life experience, we may gain critical insights into the ways in which power works and the process by which knowledge is certified (foucault, 1980). from a critical perspective, we looked at the experience of students not in terms of how technology can be an effective tool for student learning, but in relation to how technology privileges or marginalizes students in the process of knowledge production. through a critical lens in order to facilitate the use of technology such as classweb, most schools with online learning systems distribute a guide for course instructors about how to operate such a system effectively (table 1). in classweb, a course instructor may launch a discussion board with a particular class or project in mind. for him, there may be a certain the culturally situated process of knowledge production in a virtual community: a case of hypertext analysis from a university’s classweb discussion boards current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 51 table 1. a guideline for operating classweb discussion board source: teachers college, columbia university website framework for what should be learned as a result of the discussion on classweb. registered students may be asked to read and write about given topics on the discussion board as part of the course requirement. in the process, classweb may be used as a tool to realize the instructor's course goals and allow students to maximize their course experience. however, the importance of the socio-cultural approach (vygotsky, 1978) to teaching and learning has prompted educators to consider ways in which people share common concerns for education and interact with each other as a venue of education (i.e., a learning community). thus, classweb discussion boards may be considered not only as a tool for learning, but also as a virtual community. this virtual community is "a new territory in which people are linked by common interests, values, goals, and professional skills, but do not necessarily occupy the same time zone or geographical space" (mckenna, 1998). every community, as a social gathering place, has its own culture. fiske (1998) states: culture is the social circulation of meanings, pleasures, and values, and the cultural order that results are inextricably connected with the social order within which it circulates. culture may secure the social order and help to hold it in place, or it may destabilize it and work toward changing it, but it is never either sughee shin and eun kyeong cho 52 december 17, 2003 neutral or detached. the social circulation of meanings is always a maelstrom, full of conflicting currents, whirlpools, and eddies (p. 367). in a similar vein, the definition of the classweb discussion board user or hypertext writer depends upon the way he is positioned within the social order. located within the educational technology system, the user is a part of the technology; located within the socio-cultural system, the user is an agent or a site of acculturation or socialization. what, then, is the culture of an online learning community? how do students perceive the experience? how does the experience socialize students? how is knowledge produced or constructed in the process? a major concern of research on online communities has been how to make students work efficiently and collaboratively for knowledge production. yet, the cultural aspects of that interaction with knowledge production in the virtual community have not been extensively researched. further, there is a paucity of research on technology and education from critical perspectives. getting into the scene considering student participation in the classweb as an intentional social action in a site of knowledge production, we examined how students perceive and participate in the process of knowledge production in the virtual community and how the classweb experience may help or hinder students' participation in the community. under the premise that locating the hypertexts as data should be inclusive of the multiple contexts that surround the hypertexts, we investigated if and how students' perceptions about and participation in the virtual community are situated in real world contexts. we looked at the classweb discussion boards of four courses offered by a graduate school of education from fall 2001 to spring 2003. all four courses were off-line classes with supplemental online activities. of the observations of the four courses, the source of the data presented in this study is drawn from the two courses that explicitly required students' weekly participation in the discussion boards. we analyzed the hypertexts posted on the classweb boards of those two courses to identify what was behind the texts, and which students were using the classweb to share their experiences. one of the two courses showed active student participation on the discussion board. we sent out a broadcast e-mail to all 45 students registered in the course requesting their participation in the study. from the respondents, we interviewed 10 students. they were six female non-native english speakers, three male native english speakers, and one female native english speaker. texts posted on the classweb discussion boards were analyzed not in terms of the content, but in relation to how they were situated, located or dislocated within the contexts of this cyber community. text analysis: a window to examining the process of knowledge production in search of meanings obscure, multiple, speculative and unfixed that might lie in the hypertexts, we first needed to amalgamate new methods of analysis that properly grasped the ways in which hypertexts are located within hyper-contexts rather than in a self-contained space of writing. the first notable phenomenon was the fact that hypertext situates texts within a field of other texts (landow, 1992)2. other factors that influenced the culture of this online community were the rules and customs that reside behind the scenes of cyber interactions whether they are new inventions or the ones that the culturally situated process of knowledge production in a virtual community: a case of hypertext analysis from a university’s classweb discussion boards current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 53 are carried over from conventional classroom settings. if they do not reside within the scope of students' cognitive awareness, then they should be sought in the level of collective sub-consciousness. from the observations of classweb and interviews with the students, two major themes were identified: (1) abandoned opportunities of students as knowledge producers, and (2) second orality3 only as a second thought. abandoned opportunities of students as knowledge producers virtual community participation is an intentional social action (bagozzi & dholakia, 2002). we found that students were conscious of and concerned about where in the stream of discussion one should place a text. in other words, they were aware of the fact that placing a text in electronically linked space would change its "spatial and temporal relationship to other texts" (landow, 1992). as figure 1 shows, one's action of locating a text changes the stream of discussion, and this instant outcome of posting is one of the factors that encourages student participation. the kinds of active interaction shown in figure 1 were observed in the threads at the beginning of a semester. one of the students who preferred to talk via classweb acknowledged it as "a sphere of idea sharing and brainstorming. it is a main channel for figure 1. the stream of active discussion made by student postings sughee shin and eun kyeong cho 54 december 17, 2003 me… i feel good about sharing ideas with others." it is a channel for self-expression as well as a collaborative process of knowledge production. whenever one "inserts" a text within a networked discussion board, one witnesses how the text becomes a part of a complex dialogue. in some cases, the text is made upon the observations of other students' postings. as one student explained: i was one of the last persons who posted… i always started my work by reading all the contents from each student… in some way, i tried to incorporate every seemingly good component from each person's writing into my own writing. as an autonomous writer becomes part of the complex network, however, a separation anxiety becomes a fear that forces one to adhere to the system. the ways in which students perceived classweb as a system the only sustainable knowledge production system created a fear such as "if there is no response posted after mine, it is a failure." one student confessed that he stopped posting when he saw no one responded to his additional online comments. some felt their ideas were "ignored" and "lost interest" in posting activity. we could see an example of a sudden stop in the flow of discussion in figure 2. figure 2. the stream of discussion without active interaction the culturally situated process of knowledge production in a virtual community: a case of hypertext analysis from a university’s classweb discussion boards current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 55 these kinds of lines postings with no interaction were observed in the threads during the end of a semester. it is not an end that the initiator intended, but an end forced by the result of other students' lack of responses. there is "an end" unlike the expression frequently used in cyberspace discourse "no beginning and end." most of the students who saw the failure of creating a discussion stream expressed hatred toward the discussion board and no more hope for sustainable knowledge that supposedly came from it. one said that when he "didn't find it (classweb discussion board) helpful," he "abandoned [it]." what comes after "abandoning" the source for knowledge production is the renouncement of the expectation that they had when they first entered the land of knowledge. thus, classweb does not sustain the process of knowledge production any more, but rather becomes a system that delivers knowledge to learners (muffoletto, 2001). then, classweb becomes a resource center where they can "pick up readings and assignments" as one of the students, who stopped using discussion board, said. many students said the classweb use was disappointing but some remained. one said "[i] had to post something regularly because it was part of class requirements." as a result, the learner is not an active participant any more, but instead, becomes a passive respondent to and receiver of the knowledge. thus, the use of technology in this context seems to be turning "from an opportunity to an imperative" (boody, 2001). when students start to perceive classweb as a delivery system, they become "receivers" of "messages" sent by "senders." this is the passivity of consumers rather than the activity of critical thinkers. instrumental rationality of skill drilling will flourish again in this context. in light of how foucault (1980) describes the text with power and status relations, we can witness that the dynamic relations between students and classweb that constantly shift, depend on students' change of perception towards classweb from a knowledge production community to a delivery system. thus, classweb as a new status of system relates students with ideological assumptions that they should remain online to survive, which is to be credited or graded. freedom of access, in this context, becomes a means and an end to their academic accomplishments. students are allowed to use the freedom of access to enter into the knowledge production system, but this freedom is imposed upon the students by a system not chosen by the students. second orality only as a second thought although the hypertexts are conceived as a "secondary orality," in that it resembles the preliterate orality, students still tend to perceive it as a conventional writing (ong, 1982). as stressed by many scholars, the strength of hypertext in inspiring unconventional students is that it enables them to choose their own times and paths to read and write beyond spatial or temporal proximity of communicants. many interviewees admitted that the classweb was very helpful in that it allowed them time for organizing their thoughts before posting. in contradiction to the claims about casual writing style of hypertext that promotes active discussions, we found that students still perceived the writing and posting activity as closely related to normal writing. hypertext blurs the boundaries between reader and writer, and we would expect that classweb would benefit this phenomenon in the collaborative process of knowledge production. we have found, however, that the students who are less confident in english are alienated from both writing and reading in the community of knowledge building. sughee shin and eun kyeong cho 56 december 17, 2003 these frustrations were commonly found among the students for whom english is a second language. one non-native student said, "i tend to ramble when i write. and some of my classmates write very well, but at great length." the community that does not sustain the weak in the knowledge building process deprives them of the joy of reading from them, too. one stated, "reading the large amounts of text is quite discouraging." in the cyber community, knowledge is distributed through networks; therefore, deprivation of reading results in deprivation of knowledge. thus, the culture of integration could hardly be found among self-contained individuals who were never involved in discussions. some students explained how they prepare their postings. they write in advance using a notepad or ms word program, and then copy and paste what they write as text on discussion boards. this process could be observed when we looked at the postings with different fonts that indicated that the texts were copied from a different program (figure 3). some students said they wrote their postings in a separate file and transferred the content to the discussion boards. one of the students stated the reason why she went through such a process was because she could "improve [her] argument, and present [her] ideas clearly to others." this process exemplifies the fear of students who were less confident in writing in english when they wanted to participate through the discussion board. they did not seem to benefit the spontaneity of the second orality in web discussion boards. some could argue that, in comparison with a conventional classroom setting, students may feel less anxiety writing online because of the opportunity to edit their responses before sharing them publicly. while this may be true, in order to share their writing with others in the communitystudents have to spend much longer time and more effort in preparing the content and writing than their native speaker counterparts. figure 3. the font change as an evidence of text movement the culturally situated process of knowledge production in a virtual community: a case of hypertext analysis from a university’s classweb discussion boards current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 57 by spending more of their time and energy at the desk just for preparing what to post, they may have less time to participate in real discussions happening in the online discussion boards. thus, the dialogues on classweb were still missing the inclusion of voices of a group of students who felt less confident in expressing their ideas both in oral and written languages. the lengthy and non-oral style texts posted by this group of students seem to be the result of their conscious awareness of being watched by other students as well as the instructor. knowing that the number of postings could be easily counted by either instructors or by teaching assistants, students tried to accomplish the goal of posting a good amount of messages. the classweb allowed the instructor to select options such as whether to allow students to change their postings once they were uploaded. if the instructor did not select the change option, students could not go back to their own postings and change them. this experience of being controlled and watched again intensified the students' perception of participating on the discussion board as a confinement within the classweb, since they were aware of others watching their participation. critical perspectives have raised an issue of "how educational technology became a technology of control." in the classweb, there is an architectural logic, which enables power to operate by means of the spatial design itself, "the disciplinary gaze" that foucault coined more than two decades ago. conclusion a virtual community influences its participants towards compliance, internalization, and social identity (bagozzi & dholakia, 2002). in this study, we problematized normative and universal claims that technology in education is just an effective tool for learning. with a critical perspective, we looked at how knowledge is produced in online discussion boards and how students perceive their experiences in this setting. the classweb discussion experience may have hindered the active participation of a group of students, including those whose first language is not english. we saw that students remained "consumers" as opposed to "producers of the text" when they were dislocated from the streams of discussion. even in the moment of being decentered in the community of knowledge production, they become centered on the system in which ideology imbues people with sets of beliefs and practices. they were required to post under every new thread at least twice per week although real dialogue never evolved. they would make sure that each posting was ready and properly edited beforehand so that it looked like it contained a sustainable point, although they did not sustain communication from the discussion. when the opportunity turned into an imperative, those who suffered in the virtual community were the ones who typically suffered in conventional classroom settings. the liberation from conventional writing can only be possible when the beauty of collaborative learning in online learning is no longer beautified. as popkewitz (1984) asserts: the goal of critical science is to demystify the patterns of knowledge and social conditions that restrict our practical activities…the way in which we think, sughee shin and eun kyeong cho 58 december 17, 2003 argue and reason about social affairs has implications for the scope and boundaries placed upon social affairs (popkewitz, 1984, p. 45). critical views on the process of knowledge production in an online learning space have implications for the development of international and comparative education. considering technology in education as an effective and powerful tool for teaching and learning, there have been attempts to utilize online technology for global education. if we optimistically accept current practices as natural, necessary, or inevitable, the hidden power dynamics or the technological gaze that may reside in the online learning community will be maintained the way it has been. critical perspective asks us to reexamine what we have taken for granted. before accepting and facilitating the notion that online educational technology is a useful tool for global education, there should be more critical research on the culturally situated process of knowledge production in this international society of learning. a critical approach will allow us to re-examine what the network of influencing factors is on the process of being the user or the writer in an online community. it will also legitimize the knowledge of the students, promoting their awareness of user cognition and facilitating the analysis of the process of knowledge production. yet, the paucity of critical approaches about online leaning has raised more questions than answers. more research should be done to provide evidence beyond simple anecdotes. notes 1. hypertext is a term coined by theodore h. nelson in the 1960s. nelson (1981) explains the term as following: "by hypertext, i mean non-sequential writing-text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen. as popularity conceived, this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways (literacy machines, 0/2)." roland barthes (1974) describes the hypertext as an ideal textuality that is similar to characteristics of hypertext today. he says, "in this ideal text, the networks are many and interact, without any one of them being able to surpass the rest . . . it has no beginning . . . none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one…" similar to barthes, for david bolter (1991), "a communications network is … a hypertext in which no one has control, no one has substantial responsibility (writing space)." despite some commonalities in defining attempts, the definitional concept of hypertext is still fluid. 2. landow (1992) explained how hypertext locates texts within other texts in his attempt to illuminate different textualities between traditional writing and hypertext writing. to do this, he used ong's (1982) findings such as "writing and printing produce the effect of discrete, self-contained utterance" by "isolating thought on a written surface, detached from any interlocutor…" (p. 132). he asserted that hypertext destroys the physical isolation of the text in that it allows a reader to place a text within a network of other texts, forcing it to exist as a part of complex dialogue. as a result, hypertext linking has changed the limits of individual text. the culturally situated process of knowledge production in a virtual community: a case of hypertext analysis from a university’s classweb discussion boards current issues in comparative education, vol. 6(1) 59 3. walter. j. ong (1982) argues in his book, orality and literacy that the computer has brought us into an age of "secondary orality" that has "striking resemblances" to preliterate orality "in its participatory mystic, its fostering of a communal sense, its concentration on the present moment" (p. 136). unlike primary orality that promotes spontaneity because the analytic reflectiveness implemented by writing is unavailable, secondary orality promotes spontaneity because through analytic reflection, we have decided that spontaneity is a good thing. references ammerlaan, t. 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(1980). power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings. in c. gordon (ed.), power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings. new york: pantheon. kincheloe, j. l., & mclaren, p. l. (1998). rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. in n. k. denzin & y. s. lincoln (eds.), the landscape of qualitative research: theories and issues (pp. 260-299). thousand oaks, california: sage publications. muffoletto, r. (2001). introduction. in r. muffoletto (ed.), education and technology: critical and reflective practices (pp. 1-4). cresskill, nj: hampton press. landow, g. p. (1992). hypertext 2.0: the convergence of contemporary critical theory and technology. baltimore: johns hopkins university press. mckenna, b. (1998). virtual community. on-line and cd-rom review, 22(6), 399-402. ong, w. j. (1982). orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word. london: meth. sughee shin and eun kyeong cho 60 december 17, 2003 popkewitz, t. s. (1984). paradigm and ideology in educational research: the social functions of the intellectual, (pp. 31-58). london: the falmer press. vygotsky, s. l. (1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge: harvard university press. 182 current issues in comparative education island enclaves: offshoring, creative governance and subnational island jurisdictions, by godfrey baldacchino. montreal, canada: mcgill-queen’s university press, 2010. 301pp. isbn-13 9780773537163. there is a lasting perception of the ocean as an endless resource, a vast expanse that is fundamentally asocial. as philip steinberg writes, the ocean is imagined as “a space ‘outside’ society...an abstract point on a grid, to be developed” (steinberg, 2001, p. 207). however, covering almost three quarters of the planet’s surface, ocean space has always played and important role in societies for sustenance, livelihoods, commerce, and culture. the fact that almost half the world’s population lives within 200 km of the coast demonstrates our extensive connection to the sea (cohen, 1997). the world’s ocean faces dire threats, including rising acidity, oil, nitrate and phosphate pollution, as well as the everyday human trash that finds its way to even the most remote marine regions. as a voluminous medium of constant movement and change, the ocean is a difficult place to govern or regulate. these physical properties complicate questions of management, responsibility, resource allocation, sovereignty, and security. one way of wrestling with these complex issues is by examining how they play out in subnational (or non-sovereign) island jurisdictions (snijs): a category of analysis suggested by godfrey baldacchino in his timely 2010 book, island enclaves. by reviewing mainland/big state-island/ small state relations as they affect snijs, baldacchino examines a broad range of strategies and technologies of creative governance that have taken offshoring to new heights in the 21st century. one policy domain where such novel manifestations of sovereignty are crafted and expressed is that of ocean governance. as small island states know only too well, ocean space still comprehends contested legal regimes, with their oddly striated jurisdictions, extending progressively offshore: territorial waters, the contiguous zone, exclusive economic zones, extended continental shelves, and ending in the high seas or international waters. each of these jurisdictions establishes a gradient of ownership and liability. as a contested and peripheral region, it is a sought after space for economic development and, as baldacchino writes, “contestable, border regions – such as the ocean depths [and including] outer space, and increasingly the arctic, are treated as fair game for mainland subjugation and organization” (p. 35). and like baldacchino’s islands, ocean spaces also represent exemplars of ‘fractal sovereignty,’ ‘ambiguous zones’ and ‘non-spaces’ …“locations that are [seen as] devoid of identity, [of] organically arisen relationships and history” (p. 26). the legal construction of the ocean stems from the 1982 united nations conference on the law of the sea (unclos iii). the resulting heterogeneous jurisdictional spaces are an attempt to strike a balance between full state enclosure of the ocean and a need to preserve freedoms of navigation so important for shipping routes and global trade. these dual functions serve capital well in this legal framework, with the ocean serving as both a horizontal surface of transport and a vertical exploitable resource. they are, however, not without contradictions that manifest in ocean governance, geopolitical tensions, and environmental impacts. as steinberg (1999) describes it, ocean space is “a domain that is resistant to direct state surveillance and territoriality but that nonetheless has been incorporated within statist discourse…[and these] contradictory tendencies in modern-era marine governance…may be viewed as reflecting the ebb and flow of contradictory tendencies in the spatiality of capitalism” (p. 254). of course, the spatial articulation of capitalism has been limited by the physical properties of the ocean, retarding its complete reconfiguration of the seascape, as it has done to many landscapes, as harvey (1985) puts it, in striving “to create a physical landscape in its own image and requisite current issues in comparative education 183 to its own needs at a particular point in time” (p. 150). but neither the ocean’s resources nor pollutants hesitate to spill over any politically, legally or socially constructed boundaries. efforts to territorialize the sea simply further extend the terrestrial boundaries of coastal nations, imposing fixed grids on this seething expanse; yet managing the ocean as a static space has failed to capture its materiality and led to ambiguity regarding sovereignty, security, management and responsibility. one alarming outcome of this has been transboundary environmental degradation in the form of trash gyres: diffuse collections of garbage that gather under a migrating atmospheric high-pressure area in open waters. the complexity and scale of this environmental problem makes it extremely challenging. five large trash gyres have been ‘discovered’ in the north and south pacific, north and south atlantic, and the indian ocean. the north pacific trash gyre is thought to be the largest. while most ocean pollution originates on land, this waste once at sea, becomes ephemeral and fragmented, allowing it to evade quantification and resist the cartesian spatialities imposed upon it. despite these, the north pacific trash gyre has been widely represented in the media through a terrestrial imaginary, adopting such categories as solid, visible, stationary – even described as “an island twice the size of texas” (hoshaw, 2009). these constructions of the sea, as sharing properties of the terrestrial, are incongruent with the physicality of ocean space. these portrayals paint a much different picture than the diffuse and pervasive detritus, constantly in motion. in actuality, this gyre phenomenon shares the properties of its medium, something that flows, penetrating to unknown depths, resistant to tracking or collection, incompatible with these island-like notions. like harvey’s description of an assemblage, the gyre embodies “ephemerality, fragmentation, discontinuity, and the chaotic” (harvey, 1991, p. 44). the resources of the high seas are the common property of all countries, and the largest convergence zone for the north pacific trash gyre inhabits international waters. but still, its seasonal circulation and interactions with different currents does bring it into the purview of many other jurisdictions, and particularly small island developing states like fiji, kiribati and samoa. the gyre also migrates seasonally, crossing these boundaries with prevailing winds. this drifting clearly complicates matters of responsibility, occupying regions that are treated as extraterritorial or non-space. “moreover, being on the edge, out of sight and so often out of mind”, as baldacchino writes: “paradigms tend to be weakest at their peripheries; challenges to sovereignty [are] most apparent at the margin, where power is more clearly contested” (p. 14). despite the evident land/sea binary, the juridical enclaves of the islands discussed in baldacchino’s book seem to share many commonalities with spaces of ocean governance, such as a ‘fuzziness’ of sovereignty, contestable borders, and the probability of being subjugated by mainland entities. but they also share the potential for alternative modes of viable ‘development’. as stated above, the complexity of dealing with this environmental issue is an extremely challenging problem. managing the ocean as a static space has failed to disrupt the incursion of everyday consumer products, such as lighters, plastic bags, soda bottles, and other flotsam and jetsam, journeying thousands of kilometers from their terrestrial locales to drift at sea and eventually sink into the depths or dissipate into increasingly smaller particulates. the spatiality of capitalism demands that ocean space be treated as either a surface of transport or the location of exploitable resources. however, the obvious maritimity of the world’s small island states and territories demands a more comprehensive concern with, and stewardship of, the sea. the degradation of the ocean by marine debris – and noting the equally galling crisis in fish stocks worldwide necessitates new legal, political and social understandings. perhaps, the 184 current issues in comparative education ‘fuzziness’ of sovereignty and juridical ambiguities may allow a chance to, as baldacchino writes, “exploit a situation to serve [another] purpose” (p. 27), one beyond just the economic exploitation for which the law of the sea seems intended. perhaps, by better aligning our aquatic imaginaries with the physical spatialities of ocean space, we can begin to envision policies that reduce trash production, prevent ocean pollution and restore the ocean’s health. other works cited cohen, j. (1997). estimates of coastal populations. science, 278, 1211-1212. harvey, d. (1985). the geopolitics of capitalism. in d. gregory & j. urry (eds.), social relations and spatial structures (pp. 128-163). london, uk: methuen. harvey, d. (1991). the condition of postmodernity: an enquiry into the origins of cultural change. oxford, uk: wiley-blackwell. hoshaw. l. (2010, nov. 10). afloat in the ocean, expanding islands of trash. the new york times. steinberg, p. e. (1999). navigating to multiple horizons: toward a geography of ocean-space. the professional geographer, 51(3), 366-375. steinberg, p. e. (2001). the social construction of the ocean. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. – reviewed by katherine g. sammler, the university of arizona enhancing professional practice: a framework for teaching, by charlotte danielson. alexandria, va: association for supervision and curriculum development, 2007. 200 pp. isbn-13: 978-1416605171 education in small states: policies and priorities, by michael crossley, mark bray, & steve packer. london, uk: commonwealth secretariat, 2011. 120 pp. isbn-13: 978-1849290364 the teaching profession has been the subject of perpetual scrutiny for several reasons, but one of the most prevalent criticisms is that educators’ practices are not supported by standards. it is true that most professions have a set of norms regarding conduct for their members. teachers also have sets of standards, but they are usually more relevant to the actual training of instructors or the way in which the curriculum is to be taught. the natural concern for having a benchmark by which professional conduct is evaluated is that school environments can vary so wildly within even a single district that these standards may be rendered irrelevant depending upon the circumstances. with this problem in mind, charlotte danielson does an admirable job of outlining the standard of conduct to which educators should strive to adhere in enhancing professional practice: a framework for teaching. danielson’s aim is elegant in its simplicity: create a framework which supports new teachers while enhancing the abilities of veteran teachers by giving them a common language to communicate volume 12(1) / fall 2009 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education guest editorial introduction 3 cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education andria wisler articles 6 rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education noah w. sobe 14 the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism: education for a shared humanity dale snauwaert 23 lonely business or mutual concern: the role of comparative education in the cosmopolitan citizenship debates anatoli rapoport 33 cosmopolitanism in civic education: exploring cross-national trends, 1970-2008 patricia bromley 45 study abroad and development of global citizen identity and cosmopolitan ideals in undergraduates karen hendershot and jill sperandio 56 educating the world: teachers and their work as defined by the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) helen harper and judith dunkerly 66 world-systems analysis in comparative education: an alternative to cosmopolitanism tom g. griffiths and lisa knezevic 76 smashing cosmopolitanism: the neo-liberal destruction of cosmopolitan education in eastcentral europe robert j. imre and zsuzsa millei essay 86 the evolution of a cosmopolitan identity: transforming culture shannan spisak 92 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 1 (2009) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden guest executive editor andria wisler visiting assistant professor, georgetown university, program of justice and peace executive editors cambria russell, andrew shiotani senior editors kathleen keenan, ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, cambria russell, michael schapira editors sarah flatto, michelle reddy, briana ronan, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors holly brewster, richard cheng, henan cheng, cara furman, anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, ghazala mehmood, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, carina omoeva, amritpal sandhu, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira style editors ruaridh macleod, ghazala mehmood, elizabeth morphis, amritpal sandhu web editor andrew shiotani associate web editors ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, ingrid gogolin, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2009 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 12(1): 76-85. smashing cosmopolitanism: the neo-liberal destruction of cosmopolitan education in east-central europe robert j. imre university of newcastle zsuzsa millei university of newcastle critiques that seek to examine cosmopolitanism as a concept suffer from a severe popularity problem. rather than engage in this pro/con debate, we are interested in demonstrating that cosmopolitanism can wax and wane, ebb and flow, and has appeared as a grounding ideology for educational programs before, only to be torn asunder by those seeking to consolidate regime change. we do not suggest that cosmopolitanism is good and righteous politics, normatively opposed to or supporting patriotism, nor is it ideologically left, right or centre. we see a burgeoning cosmopolitan outlook in a particular time and place, that was smashed by political and social forces both unforeseen and powerful, changing foundational concepts of education in east-central europe in general and hungary in particular. as a popular concept in the english-speaking world, cosmopolitanism conjures up notions of a well-read, well-fed, bourgeoisie with economic and social capacities to move around the world using their networks and sophisticated understandings of cultural diversity. a cosmopolitan understanding of the world encompasses a commitment to universal human rights, universal human potential, and a deeply embedded acceptance of difference and diversity. these ideas are core parts of a universalist frame of reference, and a philosophical underpinning of a particular view of the modern world held during the industrial revolution until today (held, 2003). this paper challenges the idea that cosmopolitanism exists exclusively in the post-cold war period in east-central europe, and also challenges the idea that the hungarian education system was a monolithic neo-stalinist version of ‘ideology expression’. we claim here that the neo-liberal version of cosmopolitanism which privileges cooperation among nation-states based on an economic free-market, is essentially positing economic cosmopolitanism as the best way forward in the post-cold war period. this position can be challenged by examining institutions of the cold war period. cosmopolitanism is a contested concept, and this is a lens through which we can analyse changes to education from the cold war to the post-cold war period in east-central europe, rather than discuss the problems of the idea itself (see vertovec and cohen (2002) for a comprehensive treatment of various interpretations of cosmopolitanism as an idea). the prevailing neo-liberal ideology that supported the deconstruction of the system can thus be critiqued and challenged. many ‘transitionologists’ and democratisation analysts have claimed in the past that cold war east-central europe suffered under a kind of ideological dictatorship (linz and stepan 1996). this might be true to a great extent in terms of single-party rule, a planned economy, and the sometimes violent management of dissent. in this paper, through a meta-analysis, we develop the argument that these factors do not necessarily mean that some form of cosmopolitanism did not exist. as mincu (2009) suggests, hungary experienced time periods in which there were a mixture of cosmopolitan views. for example, while hungary was undergoing a process of late modernization current issues in comparative education 77 smashing cosmopolitanism between 1770 and 1850, a particular vision of cosmopolitanism emerged as a synthesis of ideas of “historical cosmopolitanism and paternalism (as josephinism) of the hapsburg empire, and second, the romantic feelings of belonging to an ethno-linguistic community” (mincu, 2009, p. 58). the cosmopolitan ideal of french enlightenment in this way was entrapped with nationalistic visions particular to the region which still influence the development of the politics in this area (neumann, 2001, p.39 cited in mincu). here, we use the case of hungary to demonstrate the existence of another understanding of cosmopolitanism under socialism, one which manifested on practical grounds and had a certain democratic effect. this resulted in social justice-based ideas attached to social, cultural, political and economic rights (mincu, 2009). further, cosmopolitanism itself has had a broad range of views (see in comparative education for example popkewitz, 2002, 2007; snauwaert, 2002; walker & serrano, 2006), and the interpretation of those views has been more important than arguments for the value of a cosmopolitan ethos. we are using cosmopolitanism as an ‘existential mirror’ to demonstrate that cosmopolitanism can wax and wane, ebb and flow. it has appeared as a grounding ideology for educational programs in particular times and places before (see for example hansen, 2008; popkewitz, 2002; rizvi, 2000; todd, 2007), and has been torn asunder by those seeking to consolidate regime change. cosmopolitanism can also show a way to understand how education policies and educators themselves have reacted to the possibility of global cooperative endeavours. utilizing a hermeneutics of cosmopolitanism, we can come to better understand the shifts and changes of educational policy, especially during the cold war, and the post-cold war periods. religious, ideological, and nation-state cosmopolitanism: quasi-cosmopolitanism during the cold war there are at least two kinds of cosmopolitan education that predate the modern nation-state, and while neither form is necessarily linked to empire, both have continued into the modern period. first, religious education has long had a cosmopolitan lived reality, in potential as well as everyday practice. the original madrasses in south asia, in what is now northern india and pakistan, had nothing to do with the wahabism of current taliban supporters (9/11 commission, 2004; tahir, jishnu, & khwaja, 2008) and during the british empire expansion and queen victoria’s reign, madrassa education was multi-lingual and delivered an education that emphasized science and reason in the modern world (sengupta, 2006). religious education in many parts of the world continues to be a counter to nation-states, and does so in both conservative and progressive ways. it is not always the case that religious schools are anti-cosmopolitan, unprogressive, and antimodern. we do not claim that religious schools are necessarily anti/pro-cosmopolitan, and we instead demonstrate that religious education in a specific setting, hungary, was in competition with different political forces that were established in the post-world war ii period. in the socialist states of the post-world war ii period, there was a general move to inculcate modernist values in formerly denominationally-run schools (nagy, 2003). religion as a social force in hungary, especially through religious organizations in the education system, operated as an obstacle to solving problems faced in central europe in the immediate post-world war ii period. religious institutions were seen as obstructing the modernization and industrialization programs of the newly emerging socialist states. the church’s hold on the education system was seen as a reinforcement of the class system, as well as preventing the necessary post-war rebuilding. (braham, 1970; mészáros, németh, & pukánszky, 2004). hungary, like others in the region in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, was faced with this problem, and as a solution nationalised most denominational schools (nagy, 2003). the religions themselves were 78 current issues in comparative education r. imre and z. millei cosmopolitan, since they had shared values that went beyond the nation-state and had a global reach. however, this is often conflated with a kind of moral cosmopolitanism that maintains a common value system, somewhat different from a kantian position with an adherence to various articles of faith rather than specific principles of law. it is our view that while these religious approaches can be cosmopolitan, they are not always cosmopolitan, and in general this lends support to the multiple natures and concepts of cosmopolitanism. the second kind of cosmopolitanism we discuss here is one of a political ideology. this political, ideological cosmopolitanism is rife with questions and debates that predate and exceed the modern nation-state, and their origins can be found in the debates surrounding socrates. it is not new to have discussions around the political dimensions of ‘global citizens’ as opposed to citizens loyal to a local political community. typically, modern political ideological types of cosmopolitanism (liberal cosmopolitanism, socialist cosmopolitanism, kantian legal-plural cosmopolitanism which is very close to habermasian legal-constitutional cosmopolitanism) will be used by nationstates to further agendas of political elites of these bodies, only to see a conflict between national agendas and the cosmopolitan ones, even when they share the same ideological bias or pattern (liberalism can compete with cosmopolitanism for example). political cosmopolitanism can thus turn into a instrumental cosmopolitanism performed ‘in the best interests of the nation-state’. during the 1980s a strong decentralization of education started in hungary that provided more autonomy for local councils (representing society) and schools (that were represented by the professional body of teachers). this process of decentralization, self-administration, and the creation of local authorities also served as vehicles for political change after the collapse of communism (sáska, 2002-3). however, there is a great difference between the relative autonomies of councils and professional bodies of teachers in these two systems—reform socialism and market liberalism—due to the operation of two interrelated administrative structures. these structures were the ‘party administration’ that influenced and controlled local decision making through “youth, women and other organizations such as the national people’s front” and the “inner civil intelligence corps” that provided “reports about the atmosphere” (sáska, 2002-3, p. 36). these latter structures ensured that the governing socialist principles were kept. “[t]he abolishment of alienation, the elimination of inequality based on division of labor, and the ideal of self-regulation” (sáska, 2002-3, p. 35) provided a quasi-cosmopolitan look. after the cold war, these structures were abolished, and the local councils and teachers’ bodies were in opposition rather than in a hierarchical relationship with each other, as it would be expected in a market economy. sáska (2002-3) argues that schools’ autonomy became so strong that it was above party politics, since autonomy was their only solution for survival in a starved education system under the neo-liberal regime. in the eastern bloc countries, especially hungary in the 1970s, governments and educators alike saw the benefits of trying to get religious, ideological, and nation-state cosmopolitanism to work in a cooperative way. cosmopolitanism was to be a way in which a cooperative (i.e. a number of nation-states in the region) and collective (i.e. organising for groups within the nation-state to work together unfettered) world-view was established. this ideological example was part of a successful campaign to inculcate cosmopolitan values in east-central european education systems similar to what miller (1998) and unterhalter (2008) describe as thick cosmopolitanism. the regime transformations that occurred there in the 1990s destroyed this notion. it is a common misconception to view the former eastern bloc as a place in which propaganda replaced ‘real’ education, bread lines replaced food production and nationalism was buried under current issues in comparative education 79 smashing cosmopolitanism an avalanche of ideology (for example reuter, 1991). this particular view of the cold war period is in itself an ideological reading of the historical circumstances surrounding the construction and dismantling of the ‘eastern bloc’ and critical social scientists have challenged this myth (neumann, 1999). the success of this cosmopolitanist position in east-central europe provides a way of critiquing the hegemony of liberal discourse described above, through utilizing everyday educational practices from socialist hungary. the idea that people could choose to move from one socialist state to another, and the notion that life might actually be good enough in a place like hungary to move there, can offer a powerful critique of the commonly-held belief of an overtly ideologically driven and oppressive socialist state. the cosmopolitan position had some difficulty in establishing itself in hungary and the eastern bloc in the post-world war ii period, since the marxist-leninist parties still had a negative view of the term. educational policy and practice in hungary in the cold war with the establishment of the hungarian people’s republic in 1945, and the new socialist constitution in 1949, hungary’s educational policy changed dramatically. like the rest of eastcentral europe, hungary was a society that was steeped in nationalism and its education policies reflected this. the nation-states in the region were all grappling with the aftermath of world war ii, and in doing so were in the middle of large industrialization programs. these programs were meant to modernize all of the societies found in the newly created ‘eastern bloc’. this involved the support for heavy industry, manufacturing, and industrializing agriculture so that food production would be able to meet the demands of a burgeoning post-world war ii population. the new hungarian government was faced with a problem in which the peasantry, a large and very poor segment of the population, was left without resources to counter this poverty, and had very low education levels (braham, 1970). moreover, the “hungarian culture oscillated between urbanism and populism” (gyurgyak, 1991 in mincu, 2009), and the experience of fascism in conjunction with the enactment of racial laws influenced civic culture and reinforced intolerant values. as such, there was a great difficulty in bringing together an educated populace, a modern workforce, which could help drive modernization and industrialization. one way to mobilize people of all social classes was to frame modernization and industrialization as a ‘national duty’, which was relatively easy to do since nationalism was such a strong force in all of europe in the 1930s and 1940s. all of the ‘socialist’ nation-states of the eastern bloc, engaged in the same nationalist rhetoric. the other aspect of the post-world war ii development of the region was an attempt to solidify a political bloc that supported, and was supported by the soviet union. stalin’s ussr had also embarked upon the same project to modernize and industrialize, and was looking to counter the effects of the war. since the ‘realized socialist’ countries of the new eastern bloc were looking to build cooperative endeavours with their socialist neighbours, their nationalism was now coupled with the idea that socialist countries were the most advanced in all aspects of modernity, and were naturally suited to cooperating with each other. this also meant that in order to counter the imperialism (whether real or imagined) of the ‘west’, ostensibly led by the united states, the socialist states also engaged in a particular kind of cosmopolitan rhetoric, followed by a set of policy initiatives. one of the battlegrounds for this new ideology was the education system in hungary. in reconstructing education policies and initiatives, the socialist government in hungary needed to include as many of its citizens as it could in a kind of large mobilisation effort to begin its mass education programs (braham, 1970). women and minorities in hungary, as well as technical 80 current issues in comparative education r. imre and z. millei expertise from neighbouring countries, were made to be seen as participants in the greater project. this is where a particular kind of cosmopolitanism emerged. as miller (1998) describes: all moral principles must be justified by showing that they give equal weight to the claims of everyone, which means that they must either be directly universal in their scope, or if they apply only to a select group of people they must be secondary principles whose ultimate foundation is universal. (p. 166) affirmative action programs were instituted in order to ensure that poor families had a much larger representation in high schools than wealthy families (braham, 1970). the attempt at universalisation and equalisation of education was achieved through scholarships for students who could not pay, as well as scholarships for students who achieved high grades (braham, 1970). universalisation of education served to prepare “dedicated and productive socialist citizens” (robinson & robinson, p. ix) to cope with rapid industrial development. children of factory workers, smallholder peasants, un-propertied families, and those with little or no sources of income, were streamed into primary schools and high schools in large numbers (mészáros et al., 2004). universal education meant a facilitation of the harmonious development of children’s versatile capabilities; thus the same education, including skill development, was provided for all children. it is argued by engels (bakonyi, földesi & hermann, 1963) that a person needed to be versatile to help overcome the capitalist division of labour and consequently to facilitate the building of classless society. by having versatile capabilities every person was ready to use his or her abilities and skills in all possible ways to fulfil society’s shifting needs and his or her own individual inclinations (bakonyi et al., 1963). thus, having these abilities and skills at every individual’s disposal opens up and equalizes possibilities for all. along with the view that education should be made universal, the hungarian government also sought to include programs of diversity in order to ensure that students of non-hungarian background remained part of this great modernising enterprise (mészáros et al., 2004). for example, schools teaching minority languages were established and roma children were integrated in schools. until the 1960s most roma children in hungary only attended school for a short time period. after identifying this problem and making it a priority in the 1961 resolution, the number of roma children attending school increased considerably, and by 1990 the majority of roma children completed primary school (forray, 2003). the imagery of certain groups of society also changed considerably. capitalists and liberalbourgeois people were thought to be stuck in their nationalist-imperialist ways. people who lived decadent lives in the ‘west’ were depicted as sickly and weak, while the global proletarians inhabiting socialist states in other parts of the world were divested of the european colonial stereotypes attached to people with dark skin, or originating from various parts of asia (burucs, 1997). this ‘de-orientalization’ that went on in the socialist countries of east-central europe meant that cooperative initiatives could be promoted throughout the world by bypassing culturally inhibiting stereotypes through the creation of this new form of cosmopolitanism. this view changed dramatically in the 1990s. liberalism and capitalism triumphant cosmopolitanism was hijacked in the 1990s by globalisation theorists, and was equated with economic cosmopolitanism (kleingeld & brown, 2009). that is, economic globalisation by way of current issues in comparative education 81 smashing cosmopolitanism liberalization of economies was meant to level out all previous disparities between and among nation-states. this, of course, did not occur, but there still exists a kind of hegemonic interpretation of the primacy of the market. since we are all cooperating capitalists in the contemporary world, this remains proof of the cosmopolitan success under these liberal capitalist norms. normative aspects found in the socialist countries regarding difference and diversity that was meant to be unaffected by economics, were now gone. education policy was increasingly brought into harmony with the economy (gutche, 1993). these normative aspects included the civic, political, economic, social and cultural equality under the law that was enshrined in the cold war version of the hungarian constitution (republic of hungary, 1949, 66. § (1). the constitution declared that the ethnic and national minorities in hungary are participants in the rule of the people’s democracy: they are essential constituents of the state (68. § (1)). under the same points the responsibilities and duties of minorities are detailed, their rights are affirmed and their self-organization to form self-governing councils are promoted in the 1949 constitution. university places were held for children of labourers. women’s day and labor day were celebrated in the spirit of international unification of women and labourers. toys also expressed the political and social context of internationalism. in hungary, toys were manufactured with the particular aim to socialize children to be good workers and to shape children’s consciousness with appropriating ideas of internationalism. zsuzsa révész in jatekkereskedelem (toy trade) called for the production of dolls with all skin colours. révész argued that ‘racial’ dolls before the (anti-fascist) liberation (1945, with the expulsion of nazi troops by the soviet red army) “were represented as grotesque caricatures of people. proletarian internationalism was served by representing ‘racial’ dolls just as kindly as ‘whites’” (burucs, 1997, p. 54). children’s books described children’s lives in other countries. with the new németh government, formed in 1989, the state monopoly on the establishment of new schools was eliminated, the funding of private schools were made possible, various congregational schools were reopened, the expansion of the eight-year gymnasium academic high school was initiated (gutche, 1993). these changes were implemented first in order to serve parents’ free choice for their children’s schooling. the right to free choice of schools, as a sign of the democratising system, however “is not available for all, families with lower income, or level of education, and ones living in small villages only hosting one school can not live with their rights” (ministry of education hungary, 2005, p. 16). the result of free choice was the re-development of a highly segregated school system, especially for roma children (havas & lisko, 2004 in ministry of education hungary, 2005) and in the last 15 years that segregation has grown (ministry of education hungary, 2005). according to the 2000 pisa surveys, the 15 year-olds performances were closely linked to their parents’ cultural capital (vári, 2003). after the regime change roma youth unemployment grew as a direct consequence of low educational levels (forray, 2002-3). groups from the lower economic strata are left out from higher education (ministry of education hungary, 2005). the annual publication of secondary schools ranking showed a steadily increasing distance between schools. this data combined with the pisa survey also demonstrates that a pre-selection of students is in place that is advantageous to those children whose parents have higher education (ministry of education hungary, 2005). additionally, a comprehensive system of nurseries and kindergartens were set up to provide care and education for mothers to be able to participate equally in all aspects of civic life, such as work or party politics (hermann & komlósi, 1972, p. 10). while the kindergarten system was maintained, the first social benefit to go after the fall of the berlin wall was the nursery system attached to factories and offices. socio-cultural approaches to 82 current issues in comparative education r. imre and z. millei cosmopolitanism in which representatives of cultural groups had the right to interact with other societies were also gone, smashed by neo-liberal exclusivist values that were encouraged through the restructuring of education policies in the 1990s. the overarching political cosmopolitan approach which sought to bring together political communities concerned with emancipation and emancipatory practices was also subsumed under the banner of global economies designed to function as rational actors in a free market. there was a growing intolerance and hatred against migrants, which reinvigorated far right political parties. discourse in the media, in schools (hunyadi, m. nádasi & serfőző, 2006) and churches, and violent acts against minorities all testify to this shift (e.g. népszabadság, 2009). conclusion the development of cosmopolitanism in east-central europe, as espoused in the modernization and industrialization project following world war ii, was successful in taking education away from the elites and delivering it to hungarian society as a whole. the attempt to reconstruct ideas of identity in the de-orientalising of the global proletariat opened up the possibility for new kinds of cooperation amongst peoples of various nation-states outside of the ‘west’. with the advent of a ‘western-style’ civic education in the 1990s, most of east-central europe has suffered from the return of a particular kind of nationalism, and indeed most of europe as a whole has emerged from the neo-liberal experiments of the 1990s with a current emphasis on exclusivist nationalism. today we see the rise of right-wing political parties that espouse the ideologies of 1920s and 1930s-era the fascism. . this is not the result of ‘nationalisms buried under socialism’ due to the cold war soviet domination. it is rather the result of an attempt to align with neo-liberal economic policies pushed by the united states and western europe in the immediate aftermath of the demise of the soviet union. in the 1960s children of ethnic minorities were instructed in schools set up and administered by minority councils in their mother tongue. today, increased migration to hungary means the emergence of a new problem: how to deal with ethnic difference. in the 1960s and 1970s, proletarian populations from vietnam, cuba, and mozambique could walk the streets in safety and be accepted in to people’s homes throughout hungary. today, it is quite a different matter. we do not suggest that cosmopolitanism is a good and righteous viewpoint, nor do we suggest that cosmopolitanism is normatively opposed to patriotism, nor do we suggest that cosmopolitanism is ideologically left, right or centre. our discussion here is that while cosmopolitan ideas might provide avenues for reassessment or illuminate ways forward, we see a burgeoning cosmopolitan outlook in a particular time and place that was smashed by unforeseen and powerful political and social forces. this changed foundational concepts of education in east-central europe in general, and hungary in particular. the issue raised is not merely that cosmopolitanism is vulnerable to political forces and agendas in an instrumental way, but rather the problematic view that there is a one-sided list of positive qualities of cosmopolitanism. we view this as a problem for comparative education for a variety of reasons, including the misconstruction of history during the cold war, the misunderstanding of the rise of (ultra)nationalism in the east-central european region, and the incapacity to engage in critiques of the region suggesting that former socialist regimes were all akin to the isolated stalinist politics of enver hoxha’s albania or the kim family’s rule of north korea. acknowledgements this article was written under zsuzsa millei’s research fellowship funded by the faculty of arts and education, and hosted by the australian institute for social inclusion and wellbeing (taisiw) at the university of newcastle. zsuzsa acknowledges that some data used in this paper current issues in comparative education 83 smashing cosmopolitanism were collected under zsuzsa’s new staff grant project jointly funded by the faculty of education and arts, and the university of newcastle. research for this article was partially funded through rob imre’s research projects on hungarian 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(2006). formulating a cosmopolitan approach to immigration and social policy: lessons from american (north and south) indigenous and immigrant groups. current issues in comparative education, 9(1), 60-68. copyright © 2009 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved. © 2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 5 defining islamic education: differentiation and applications susan l. douglass council on islamic education munir a. shaikh council on islamic education abstract this article explores use of several terms that signify islam, and provides guidelines to clarify their use in internal and external discourses. building on this foundation, the article delineates a typology of islamic education and their associated institutions. this enhances understanding of important conceptual differences that hinge upon subtle variations of language as in the distinction between education of muslims and for muslims, and between teaching islam and teaching about islam. the article then seeks to elucidate a theoretical conception of "islamic education," that takes into consideration islamic scripture and prophetic statements, along with commonly-held approaches to education in muslim history. the article concludes that key motivations and characteristics of a holistic and purposeful education program are shared between islamic and western traditions, a phenomenon partially explained by the shared and cumulative transmission of educational values and methods from classical times until the present. introduction the political, economic and social effects of globalization are varied, but they certainly are indicative of our attempt as human beings to define and understand our place in the world. as regions and cultures come into contact with one another, it is often difficult for people to recognize parallel ideas, values, and institutions in other societies. it is much easier to recognize differences and to imagine that they represent an unbridgeable distance from what is familiar. despite trends towards global interdependence, seemingly inexorable differences continue to be underlined among regions and groups through the use of signifiers that create distance. "islamic" is a term that has been used as one such signifier. in particular, the word has often served as an adjective in everyday speech that neatly partitions off familiar terms from normalcy and transforms them into unreachable, alien concepts. within discourse about islam and muslims in the united states and abroad, the term, islamic, is attached to a wide range of phenomena. muslims use the term to refer to what relates to islamic teachings or institutions, but muslims and non-muslims alike frequently use the adjective, islamic, to elevate cultural expressions to the position of normative or consummate institutions or practices. poorly nuanced use of the term, islamic, among public commentators often fails to make any distinction between that which pertains directly to islam and its doctrines, and actions its adherents perform in the cultural or social realm. thus terms used to signify islam and muslims lack precision when used by both muslims and others in public discourse. susan l. douglass and munir a. shaikh 6 december 15, 2004 to prevent the utter misunderstandings that can lead to the mischaracterization and even demonization of muslims, these terms need to be explored and clarified. in the wake of the attacks on september 11, 2001, public discourse in the united states about islam has been especially prominent, aimed either at increasing understanding, or toward eliminating any positive associations with the world religion espoused by roughly one fifth of humanity, including at least five million americans. speculation and policy by pundits and politicians have targeted "islamic education" as a possible "cause" of so-called "islamic radicalism" or "islamic terrorism." accordingly, various recommendations and measures have been contemplated to reform islamic education in the united states and overseas. at a minimum, public discussion should build on a foundation of accuracy and differentiated discourse, since attempts to reform what is poorly understood are bound to fail or backfire. focusing on the american context, the purpose of this article is 1) to explore terminology related to islam and provide guidelines to clarify its use in internal and external discourses; 2) to chart out a typology of expressions of islamic education in various institutions; 3) to develop more accurate definitions that can help to bridge differences between public discourses about islamic education among americans and among muslims; and 4) to illuminate concepts of education that are associated with islam and muslim educational traditions and to identify parallels with concepts that have also been associated with western educational and cultural values. coming to terms: islam, islamic, and muslim a common problem with informative materials related to islam is incorrect or inconsistent use of terminology, in particular use of islam as the name of the religion, islamic as an adjective, and muslim as a noun or adjective. islam is the name of the religion, whose first prophet was adam, and whose final prophet was muhammad; it means a state of peace achieved through surrender to god. muslim is used for an adherent of the islamic faith. writers and commentators have created much misunderstanding by confusing adjectival expressions concerning islam. the term islamic is accurately applied only to that which pertains directly to the faith and its doctrines (such as islamic values, principles and beliefs, islamic worship, islamic law). the term islam connotes the faith as an ideal. the core islamic sources of qur'an and sunnah (the words and deeds of muhammad transmitted through the hadith literature) provide knowledge of this realm. one may examine the faith's constructs, interpret its teachings and practices; however, one ought not to describe a person or any historical phenomenon as islamic. to illustrate the problems in usage, consider seemingly benign formulations like "islamic women," "islamic populations," or "islamic countries," when muslim women, populations or countries are indicated. when historical phenomenon and cultural practice diverge from the faith's teachings, designating something as islamic becomes very problematic. doing so propels the idea of muslims as a monolithic and homogenous group acting purely in religious terms. it also masks cultural and social differences, and occludes secular and historical influences. at their worst, such incorrect adjectival constructions produce oxymorons such as "islamic terrorists" and "islamic extremists," in contrast to the basic definition of islam, the stipulations of islamic law defining islamic education: differentiation and applications current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 7 against wanton violence and extremism in religious interpretation, and the commonlyheld ideals of muslims. [1] the simplest solution is to use islam and islamic solely for what pertains to the religion, and to use muslim judiciously as an adjective to denote the works and acts of muslims and their institutions (such as muslim populations, muslim governments, countries or civilization, muslim art). use of the term, muslim, however, leaves out the important roles played by the many non-muslims living in muslim majority countries to the present day, and also discounts political and cultural movements that are avowedly secular in thrust, and designates them with the name of the majority religion. as for pejorative uses of the signifier, "muslim extremist" is preferable to islamic extremist, since it reflects at minimum self-identification by the person described, but does not malign the religion to the same degree. extremism is not a truly muslim attribute, since islam prescribes moderation in all things. [2] understanding the term, muslim, as an aspiration to achieving peace through surrender to god means that by definition when one violates clear islamic teachings and has departed from submission to god. acts in this world, whether consciously undertaken in the belief that they are godly, may nonetheless be unacceptable in the eyes of god. when muslims condemn terrorism based on clear islamic teachings about the sanctity of human life and the immunity of unarmed civilians from combat, they are affirming the exclusion of such acts from the realm of sanctioned, or islamic, behavior. such acts are not islamic; they violate the obligation to obey god's teachings—they are "unislamic." [3] according to islamic teachings, the final arbiter of meaning is god, and any interpretation of islam by human beings is necessarily imperfect. [4] persons, cultural artifacts and institutions may be derived from and informed by islamic precepts to one degree or other, but cultural and ideological influences may or may not align with islamic principles, and may often contradict them. in short, human acts and constructs fall short of being purely islamic, and therefore ought not to be denoted as such. towards a typology of islamic education the generic term, islamic education, can mean many things. therefore, it is necessary to differentiate among the diverse institutions that engage in education related to islam, particularly in the united states. in order to achieve some precision, a preposition should be employed to make a meaningful phrase describing a type of educational activity and its objective. then, elements of a typology emerge, shedding light on the institutions that carry out forms of education and the goals of each effort. in brief, we can identify four types of educational activity: education of muslims in their islamic faith; education for muslims which includes the religious and secular disciplines; education about islam for those who are not muslim; and education in an islamic spirit and tradition. the following sections describe three types of ongoing educational activities and institutions present in the united states, while the fourth type illuminates some traditional concepts of islamic education. susan l. douglass and munir a. shaikh 8 december 15, 2004 education of muslims in its most literal sense, islamic education can refer to efforts by the muslim community to educate its own, to pass along the heritage of islamic knowledge, first and foremost through its primary sources, the qur'an and the sunnah. this education of muslims might take place in mosques, schools or universities, and other organizations established by muslims over the centuries. in the u.s., boys and girls and adult males and females are served by this type of islamic education. [5] while such education takes as its subject islam, it might not be fairly labeled "islamic," since muslims' efforts may likely fall short of the ideals and principles of islam. for example, some institutions may teach constructive interaction of minority muslim communities with other faith communities, while others practice a more isolationist position. historically, one might explain positions along this spectrum by studying the degree of pressure from the surrounding society, such as suppression of religion under soviet domination, the aftermath of the reconquista on morisco populations in spain, or minority religious life under u.s. first amendment constitutional guarantees. in the american context, recent muslim immigrants may differ from secondor third-generation american muslims or "indigenous" american converts in their educational efforts. in general, these efforts can more accurately be categorized as "muslim education." recent studies by georgetown university's muslims in the american public square project, hartford theological seminary's mosque survey, and the council on american islamic relations indicate that there are at least 1209 mosques ( masjid, pl. masajid ) in the united states, virtually all of which provide a program of religious instruction for adults and/or children, and 20% of mosques are associated with or sponsor full-time schools (bagby, perl, and froeble, 2001; khalidi, 2000; haddad, 1997). many mosques conduct saturday schools, weekend study circles, and after-school programs. available instructional time confines these programs to the basic--some would say the minimum necessary to enable students to understand islamic principles and be able to carry out the core practices of the islamic faith--the five pillars. such programs teach the qur'an, its meaning and recitation, islamic beliefs and practices, and at least a minimal level of arabic language for worship. some such programs are more successful at reinforcing the importance of family in cultural transmission and social support for members of the faith (ismail, 2003). in their objectives and activities, mosque programs generally correspond to weekend religious instruction conducted in american churches, synagogues and temples. education for muslims full-time muslim schools fill the category of education for muslims, because they embrace a much broader enterprise than mosque lectures, after-school programs and weekend schools. these institutions are often described by muslims as islamic schools where educators deliver both "secular" and islamic education. more accurately, these institutions may be considered muslim schools, indicating the goal of living up to the standards of islam, rather than implying its achievement. many muslim schools have names (often in arabic) that evoke goals and aspirations, such as the common "light" ( al-nur ), "faith" ( al-iman ) and "guidance" ( al-huda ), or namesakes of well-known figures in muslim history. there are currently at least 112 muslim schools that provide primary, elementary, middle and/or high school for muslim children in the united states (islamic schools league, 2004). a few non-muslim children also attend these defining islamic education: differentiation and applications current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 9 institutions, and as some schools acquire reputations for educational excellence, their numbers will likely grow. the majority of muslim schools serve primary grades k-6, but numerous k-8 schools and a handful of high schools exist. in addition to these institutions, a growing number of muslim parents home-school their children, like their counterparts in other religious and even secular communities in the u.s. today (muslim home school network and resource, 2004). to evaluate what islamic education for muslims means, it is necessary to understand the curriculum in such schools. to meet the demands of parents who pay tuition, muslim full-time schools generally adhere quite closely to local and state public school curricula. in the core academic subjects, the same commercially produced textbooks for public schools are used in muslim school classrooms. to these standard programs in core subjects, they add instruction in qur'anic recitation and memorization, basic islamic beliefs and practices, and usually arabic language (but sometimes urdu or farsi). in these subjects, neither the curriculum nor the textbooks have been standardized. to the contrary, while formal studies have not yet been prepared, over twenty years of discussion among muslim educators working in various types of schools indicates that achieving standardization is one of their greatest instructional challenges. this is compounded by the fact that curriculum materials related to teaching about islam produced overseas--even for arabic language studies--are viewed as irrelevant or unsuited to young students' lives and culture in the u.s. and europe (tauhidi, 2001; safi, 1999). in teaching the qur'an, for example, many u.s. muslim schools increasingly emphasize that students learn the meaning of passages in translation and the reasons behind islamic practices, rather than simply memorizing the words and practices in arabic without regard for understanding. students also tend to be exposed to a greater range of opinion on details of islamic practice based on scholarship within several muslim schools of law, unlike in most countries where one particular legal school predominates among muslims. muslim educators in the u.s. widely believe that, in order for the youth to live as muslims in a free society that places few outward constraints on individual behavior, students must truly understand and internalize islam's principles, beliefs and practices, and learn how to apply them in contemporary society. like other parochial schools in the american tradition of private schools, muslim schools carrying out education for muslims strive to achieve educational excellence, but also to integrate religious values into instruction across the curriculum and through service-learning in the family, the school and the community. education about islam schools education about islam in american school textbooks has evolved over the past two and a half decades. western civilization textbooks and curricula that used to teach early versions of "world history" in the schools often confined coverage of islam to background information on events in european history, such as the crusades, the fall of constantinople, or the reconquista. accounts of modern muslim societies invariably fell under the rubric of the middle east, and almost exclusively figured in coverage of the arab-israeli issue. beyond that, students received little more than cursory glances at the desert landscape and coverage of muslim societies placing islam at the center of a traditional/modern dichotomy (i.e. only societies that follow a western developmental susan l. douglass and munir a. shaikh 10 december 15, 2004 course are "modern"). early textbook chapters were fraught with inaccuracies and inconsistencies, and demonstrated a tendency to take western orientalist explanations of islam and the history and societies of muslims at face value, long after academic scholarship of islam had moved beyond these presumptions. the lag in applying contemporary scholarship to the writing of world history textbooks seriously hampered coverage of islam and muslims since such coverage began to be included in the late 1980s. however, efforts over the past decade have resulted in considerable improvement (douglass and dunn, 2001). for two decades, teaching about world religions has been part of the public school curriculum, most prominently in social studies. curriculum reform in history helped restore the place of teaching about religion in u.s. studies, and expanded the coverage of major world religions, including islam, in world geography and history classes. in 2000, the council on islamic education co-published with the freedom forum first amendment center the study teaching about religion in national and state social studies standards (douglass, 2000). the result of nearly a decade of curriculum study, it traced the development of national and state standards across the u.s., demonstrating widespread inclusion of study about religion and awareness of the constitutional framework underpinning this inclusion. the study concluded that teaching about religions was required by the newly developed state standards documents, at a wide variety of grade levels. the most significant factor in promoting teaching about religions in the public schools has been dissemination of the first amendment center guidelines for teaching about religion in a constitutionally sound manner (haynes and thomas, 2002). these guidelines have increased teachers' comfort level, although teacher training has been inconsistent from system to system and state to state. recent lawsuits concerning teaching about islam illustrate that teachers are not necessarily universally familiar with the first amendment center guidelines. though the guidelines have been disseminated to every school principal by the u.s. department of education under the clinton administration, they may not have left their desks or otherwise reached the teachers who would implement them. general adherence to the guidelines and their implementation in textbook development has done more than anything else to improve the accuracy of textbook depictions of the basic beliefs and practices, origin stories and subsequent cultural and institutional history of various religions. chief among these changes is the consistent use of attributive phrases, combined with greater factual accuracy. in the past, teachers uncomfortable with the topic of religion would simply omit the topic from their lesson plans. along with the guidelines, the promulgation of state standards for history as a core subject have made such major topics as world religions mandatory in the schools, especially where accountability testing is practiced. even where it is not, the curriculum has benefited from additional clarity in terms of what students are to learn (douglass, 1998). following state curriculum mandates, now subject to testing in many states, major textbook publishers have included content on religion in the books they submit for adoption to the states' public school systems. in world history and geography textbooks, defining islamic education: differentiation and applications current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 11 islam takes its place among historical accounts of all major world religions, including hinduism, buddhism, judaism, christianity, confucianism, daoism and shintoism and some indigenous traditions. coverage of islam includes the origins story, featuring the life of muhammad and the growth of the early muslim community, the political succession and rapid conquests after muhammad's death, and the development of muslim civilization to the ottoman period. accounts of twentieth century history include religious movements, including those in muslim societies, and coverage of the middle east includes discussions of the role of religion in family and social life (douglass, 2000). both elementary and secondary textbooks for u.s. history often mention the diversity of the u.s. population, and might include mention of muslims. coverage of the middle east, asia and africa in world geography textbooks often includes islam and muslim history. [6] inauthentic or inaccurate teaching about islam is not, in fact, education about islam at all. it may be education about the western study of islam, or education about a particular textbook writer's or publisher's view of islam or of what the writer thinks students should be permitted to know. some textbooks, in fact, have taken a secular stance about religions in general, portraying religions as purely sociological phenomena without addressing faith practitioners' views about revelation and prophethood. in other words, the veracity of faith in general can be placed in question by the textbook because it was portrayed as merely a human invention or construct (douglass, 2000). according to the guidelines for teaching about religion, in contrast, such a position is not neutral at all, but represents a particular, secular philosophical position on religion. teaching about religion—whether christianity, judaism, islam, buddhism, or hinduism—should portray the basic tenets of the faith as their adherents understand them, using attributive language in every instance: christians believe that…; muslims believe that…etc. furthermore, textbooks often use inaccurate information or omit information for the sake of simplicity. for example, belief in the biblical prophets adam, noah, abraham, moses and jesus is a fundamental tenet of islam, but textbooks often omitted this information in favor of the "simplicity" of making muhammad the sole prophet and founder of islam. reluctance to mention the central role of abraham in islamic beliefs is a violation of this principle of attributed accuracy, since without abraham, islamic beliefs and practice cannot be adequately understood. overall, however, textbook editors' adherence to the principle of authenticity, fairness and balance has improved over the past decade or so, resulting in greater accuracy in textbook accounts of islam as well as other faiths (douglass, 1998). popular media, the world wide web, and academia a systematic analysis of corporate television, radio, print and electronic media coverage on islam is beyond this article's scope, but it is necessary to mention the media in connection with education about islam because it is so influential in forming public opinion in the u.s. and abroad. since september 11, 2001, a paroxysm of media "versions" of islam, interpretations of certain qur'an verses, and attempts to define what islam "is" or "should be" have appeared in various media. coverage runs the gamut from extreme denigration of islam and muslims to balanced, fair and thorough coverage of islam as a faith, and of muslims in history and contemporary societies. susan l. douglass and munir a. shaikh 12 december 15, 2004 among the new media are web sites developed by organizations, interest groups and private individuals. unlike "ecumenical" sites such as beliefnet.com, such efforts include web sites designed to discourage people from embracing islam, or to encourage formation of negative attitudes about islam and muslims, sometimes to the point of hate-mongering. at the same time, muslims have developed various web sites, some intended merely to inform, others to propagate islam by inviting others to learn about it, and still others to refute polemics and accusations aimed at islam and muslims. many of these web sites tailor their approach to western audiences. other sites maintained by muslims lay bare various internal discourses among muslims, representing a range from so-called "progressive" muslim groups to traditionalists to extremist mouthpieces. for decades, and with increasing intensity since september 11, 2001, academic specialists, journalists and religious figures have produced hundreds of books purporting to educate the public about islam. their authors often appear in electronic media as experts as well. the importance of this discourse--muslim and non-muslim--is underlined by its volume and prominence, and by the way in which its ideas circulate in print, over the airwaves, and on the internet, flowing from one format into another. such a discourse about a world religion and its scripture, beliefs, practices and the views and actions of its adherents and purported adherents, is surely unprecedented in scale. a theoretical conception of islamic education education in the islamic spirit is the last but most important category in this typology, because it is often the first meaning readers attribute to the phrase, islamic education. unfortunately, because of the swirl of media attention focused on education for and of muslims, the term can connote for some people a concept of education so limited as to imply that islamic education omits secular knowledge in favor of religious beliefs, and may be equated with the dissemination of ignorance. some might assume that islamic education might be shorthand for teaching hatred of "the west" or the united states. the concept of islamic education cannot be reduced to such stereotypes, nor is it limited to rigid transmittal of 1400 year-old lifeways from ancient arabia. islamic education is certainly part of a historical tradition, but it is not the polar opposite of modernity, democracy or western values. stereotypes aside, such views of islam and learning also result from over-identification of religious teachings per se with the historical/cultural context of church/science conflicts known in the western educational tradition, which are mistakenly assumed to be universal to human experience. the following paragraphs discuss some key terms and concepts from islamic and arabic terminology that are historically and currently associated with education in the muslim tradition. education is the first duty of a muslim, male or female. [7] knowledge of god is equated with the process of learning and teaching. the well-documented process of preserving islamic scripture demonstrates the early emergence of a literate tradition and its transmission among muslims as a social priority. it was incumbent upon the muslim community from the beginning to commit the words of god and the teachings of muhammad to memory and to writing. among the least examined statements in academic literature is the notion that the qur'an was collected from fragments after muhammad's death. from the earliest period, recitation of the revealed portions of the qur'an was part of the community's life. since the verses were not revealed in the order in which they appear in the completed qur'an, the ongoing process of placing them in defining islamic education: differentiation and applications current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 13 order was part of muhammad's mission to transmit the revelation until completion over 23 years of his prophethood. scribes undertook the work of setting down the qur'an resident in the memory of numerous reciters and in writing. muhammad's own words and his exemplary deeds were also recorded (in hadith ), and the sciences of qur'anic exegesis and hadith authentication and evaluation became the foundation of the scholarly disciplines and islamic law. by the early abbasid period, the literate tradition was well established in many areas of study. history writing became prominent to record the momentous events in the rise of islam. the histories of regions new to islam were often committed to writing for the first time, and the emergence of "universal history" synthesized much of the received knowledge of the biblical and classical pasts, and the civilizations of india and persia (see, for example, gibb, 1987; duri, 1983). the humanities flowered with the development of muslim civilization. scientific knowledge was built upon the foundation of practical knowledge of the arabs in seafaring, navigation and astronomy, trade, animal husbandry and agriculture. caliphal patronage supplied funding and the development of islamic law provided motivation for scholars to set high standards for time-keeping and calendars, accurate orientation of the direction of worship toward the ka'bah, and calculation of inheritance, weights, and measures. curiosity, geographic access, and ample means supplied the dynamic for the massive translation, absorption, development and dissemination of knowledge of all kinds (hassan and hill, 1986; watson, 1983). the timely arrival of papermaking technology from china provided additional impetus to this dynamism (bloom, 2001). the flourishing of this literate tradition resulted in the formation of educational institutions that advanced ideas about islamic education far beyond its rudimentary beginnings, and that continue to shape such ideas today. the dynamics of knowledge acquisition in early muslim civilization provided for a concept of islamic education that placed no barrier between "religious" and "secular" learning. islam in this context should be understood as it was in most civilized traditions in world history--as a universalizing ideal of human knowledge, not as a constraint. scholars identified disciplines that were parts of a whole set of knowledge that a truly educated person must acquire before specializing in any specific discipline. the lack of clear delineation between worldly and spiritual knowledge does not imply that knowledge based on reason, observation and experiment was considered taboo, simply because revelation was assumed to be the paramount truth. the qur'an exhorts believers to use reason to verify both the information provided by the senses, and knowledge based on revelation. [8] furthermore, the qur'an and islamic law recognizes various spheres of human action — aqida (articles of belief), ibadat (forms of worship) and 'ilm (embracing knowledge of the first two as well as worldly knowledge). a hadith expressly states that muhammad advised his followers to think independently about matters of ordinary life and human skill, and not to do such things in unquestioned imitation of his example. he asked his followers' advice and relied on their experience and skill. second, the qur'an is a rich source of inspiration to many fields of knowledge, both for its exhortations to acquire and share knowledge, and for its remarkably intriguing descriptions of natural susan l. douglass and munir a. shaikh 14 december 15, 2004 phenomena. believers are asked in the qur'an to glorify the creator by applying reason to the information absorbed by the senses, and making knowledge out of it. [9] the arabic word for "religion" ( deen ) itself has a strong association with intellectual and civilized life, and can be compared to similar concepts in the western intellectual heritage. deen refers not to a human institution, but to a state of being (islam is called "the deen."). investigation of this concept leads to the arabic root d-y-n, whose meanings underscore the relationship between spiritual, intellectual, and civilized life. the root's four primary meanings are: mutual obligation, submission or acknowledgment, judicial authority, and natural inclination. deen expresses the idea of obligation toward one god, based on natural inclination towards the creator. the root d-y-n also connotes the idea of debt or indebtedness, transactions involving the exchange of trusts and obligations. the word for city— madinah —corresponding to the greek civitas, comes from the same root. a city is a community of complex social relations and transactions based on responsible and reciprocal fulfillment of obligations, submission to civil judgment and authority. the idea of "civilization" (again paralleling civitas ) is also associated with d-y-n ; the verb tamaddana means to found cities, or to humanize thought, and tamaddun means "civilization" or "refinement of society." thus, religion and education are brought together in the human enterprise of knowing and glorifying the creator, and seeking knowledge and putting it to beneficial use in society. this knowledge is developed and transmitted to ensure the continuation of civilized society (cornell, 2002). the concept of knowledge in the islamic tradition, and the term for those who develop and transmit it, are combined in the arabic root ' a-l-m, which forms the word for knowledge — 'ilm, and the participle designating a person of learning — 'alim (pl. ' ulama' ). the islamic tradition of scholarship does not include ordination, but confers the status of scholar upon those whose judgment or knowledge is considered worthy. the ' ulama' have formed a highly influential social group throughout the history of muslim civilization, in their roles as educators, jurists and scholars. ' ulama' were accorded respect and authority that often checked the overweening power of the state, and served as judges and trustees of charitable foundations. the spread of knowledge through this local and transregional class of people was an important factor in the unification of islamic beliefs and practice and in sustaining a literate tradition within muslim societies (bulliet, 1994). two additional concepts from muslim culture and arabic language illuminate social facets of islamic education. one is adab, which means a custom or norm of conduct passed down through the generations. as muslim civilization developed, the word took on the sense of " high quality of soul, good upbringing, urbanity and courtesy," the two last words referring to manners used in elite company, and behavior befitting a civilized person. by abbasid times, adab was to be acquired as a valued educational outcome: "the word was the equivalent of the latin urbanitas, the civility, courtesy, refinement of the cities" (gabrieli, 1999). the concept merged into the education system, where adab acquired an intellectual meaning: the sum of knowledge that makes a person courteous and "urbane" in secular culture. to become mu'addab, one had to study the sciences of rhetoric, grammar, lexicography, metrics, and be well versed in poetry, literature, and defining islamic education: differentiation and applications current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 15 the sciences. the concept of adab supported the aesthetic refinements of civilized life, and was integral to education in an islamic spirit. the more overarching concept of tarbiyah refers to moral education, from a root word related to accumulation. acquiring knowledge, ethics, and a moral worldview is a foundation for achieving what the qur'an requires of every human being — to enjoin what is good, and prevent what is evil. according to a famous hadith in the collection of nawawi (1976), this can be accomplished by the hand, the voice, or the heart. in other words, to work for social justice, a person must gain the tools for right action as well. the moral framework for a muslim is good intention, and to ensure that the means for achieving good or avoiding evil are in themselves good and not evil means. education gives a person the knowledge to recognize the task, the moral foundation to know what to do, and the personal resources to carry out the task. islamically educated persons would combine the aspects of islamic education described above. they would be well versed in the original sources of qur'an and sunnah, as well as the islamic disciplines that provide the tools for study. in learning about the deen, they would learn to carry out the duties of the faith, and to act according to its principles. through ethical and moral teaching, an educated person would act in a socially responsible manner, acquire the social graces of civilized life, and would partake of and contribute to the sum of skill and knowledge according to their time. the mission statement of one muslim school in the united states expresses this goal of a harmonious education and perpetuation of the community's faith and values: we provide an education that builds a love of learning along with the academic skills to continue a child's education for life. we support the formation of muslim character by helping students achieve spiritual goals through the pursuit of knowledge and service to the community and society. we strive to cultivate behavior that reflects islamic morals and values as prescribed by the qur'an and sunnah. we foster an open spirit of inquiry in which faith and reason leads toward higher knowledge, sound individual life choices and responsible citizenship. (education for life, n.d.) the ability of an educated, civilized person to benefit humanity, as well as their capacity to communicate with others, is a goal of learning that creates understanding and shares these values in a civic conversation. its goal is to engage in collaborative efforts to solve common problems and to create a civilized society that shares knowledge for the benefit of all. conclusion it becomes evident that both the obligation to be educated, and the moral, intellectual and cultural concepts of an education in the muslim tradition are not far removed from similar goals and concepts associated with western traditions and aspects of education. several scholars have produced extended academic studies on the known historical connections between these traditions, and can trace clear lines of transmission of educational values and methods that flowed to muslim civilization from the classical tradition, and from muslim civilization to western civilization from the 11 th century onward (legoff, 1993; makdisi, 1981; nakosteen, 1964). the two cultural understandings have drawn upon the same intellectual heritage the monotheistic susan l. douglass and munir a. shaikh 16 december 15, 2004 tradition of moral and ethical standards, the rich and complex greek heritage (as much "of" the east as "of" the west) and the mediterranean melting pot of ideas and disciplines, which also bears influences from asia and africa. this essay began by cautioning that the term, islamic, in public discourse often separates and alienates concepts such as education from any cultural associations that would be familiar to a western-educated, american reader or listener. it is hoped that a level of conceptual and institutional familiarity has been constructed that can bridge between educational ideas and institutions presently existing in the constitutionally protected area of the american public square, including those that are developing in the american muslim community. notes 1 sahih al-bukhari, vol. 7, hadith 577, cited in the alim for windows, release 4.5, silver spring, md : isl software. among many other sources, extremism is condemned in this tradition of the prophet muhammad, "… be moderate in your religious deeds and do the deeds that are within your ability: and none of you should wish for death, for if he is a good doer, he may increase his good deeds, and if he is an evil doer, he may repent to god." 2 for example, the qur'an characterizes the muslim community as following a moderate path in 2:142-143: "… say: unto god belong the east and the west. he guides whom he will unto a straight path. thus have we made of you a community of believers justly balanced that ye might be witnesses over the nations and the prophet a witness over you …". 3 ezzedin ibrahim and denys johnson-davies, transl., an-nawawi's forty hadith (beirut: dar al-koran al-kareem, 1976). for example, on p. 106-107, a hadith which expresses a judicial principle is " there should be no harming nor reciprocating harm." on p. 42-43: "… he who avoids doubtful matters clears himself in regard to his religion and his honor, but he who falls into doubtful matters falls into that which is unlawful …". 4 " he it is who has revealed unto thee the scripture wherein are clear revelations…none knoweth its explanation save god …"(qur'an 3:7). 5 gender distribution among participants in weekend school programs is generally wellbalanced, and ethnic distribution typically reflects the composition of the local community. these statements are based on widely observed experience. boys and girls attend weekend schools in mosques because they otherwise attend public school where there is no religious instruction. no muslim group would claim that weekend school attendance is preponderantly male, as though a bias against female education prevents muslims from sending their daughters to learn the qur'an and prayer. 6 overall trends toward improving the teaching of history are characterized by enhancing the role of primary sources, improving narrative quality, making geography connections more systematically, and bringing history classrooms gradually into the ongoing research of the past fifty years. change has been gradual, however. the council defining islamic education: differentiation and applications current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(1) 17 on islamic education is currently engaged in further standards research related to teaching about the world in history, geography and other social studies disciplines. the new study is expected to be published in 2005. 7 indeed, the first verses of the qur'an revealed in the encounter with the angel gabriel, as reported by prophet muhammad were: " read! in the name of your lord and cherisher, who created; created man out of a clot of congealed blood: read! and thy lord is most bountiful ; he who taught (the use of) the pen; taught man that which he knew not." (qur'an 96:1-5) 8 as in qur'an, 45:13, " and he has subjected to you as from him all that is in the heavens and on earth: behold in that are signs indeed for those who reflect. " or 14:25, " god coins similitudes [parables] for mankind in order that they may reflect. " 9 " god it is that cleaves the daybreak: he makes the night for rest and tranquility and the sun and moon for the reckoning of time: such is the judgment and ordering of the exalted in power the omniscient. it is he who makes the stars as beacons that you may guide yourselves with their help through the dark spaces of land and sea: we detail our signs for people who have knowledge." (qur'an 6:96-97) references ibrahim, e., & johnson-davies, d. (trans.) (1976). an-nawawi's forty hadith. (pp. 110111). beirut : dar al-koran al-kareem. bagby, i., perl, p., & froehle, b. (2001). the mosque in america : a national portrait. washington, dc : council on american-islamic relations. bloom, j. m. (2001). paper before print: the history and impact of paper in the islamic world. (pp. 91-123). new haven and london : yale university press. bulliet r. w. (1994). islam: the view from the edge. new york : columbia university press. cornell, v. j. (2002). religion and philosophy. in s. l. douglass (ed.), world eras: rise and spread of islam, 622-1500 ce. (pp. 335-336). farmington hills, mi : gale group. douglass, s. l. (1998, winter). god spoke: guidelines and coverage of abrahamic religions in world history textbooks. religion and education, 25 ( 1/2 ), 45-58. douglass, s. l. (2000). teaching about religion in national and state social studies standards. fountain valley, ca : council on islamic education. douglass, s. l. & dunn, r. e. (2001). interpreting islam in american schools. in h. donnan (ed.), interpreting islam. (pp. 76-98). london : sage publications. duri, a. a. (1983). the rise of historical writing among the arabs. l. i. conrad (trans.). princeton: princeton university press. susan l. douglass and munir a. shaikh 18 december 15, 2004 gibb, h. a. r. (1987). tarikh. encyclopedia of islam. leiden : e.j. brill. education for life. available at: http:// www.eliman.org. gabrieli, f. (1999). adab. the encyclopaedia of islam, volume 1. [cd-rom] leiden : koninklijke brill nv. haddad, y. (1997, march). islam in the united states : a tentative ascent; a conversation. u.s. society and values: the religious landscape of the united states. hassan, a. y. & hill, d. (1986). islamic technology. cambridge : cambridge university press. haynes, c. c. & thomas, o. (2002). finding common ground: a guide to religious liberty in public schools. nashville, tn : first amendment center. ismail, m. (n.d.). teaching tips and effective strategies for weekend islamic schools. indianapolis,in: american trust publications. islamic schools league. available at: http://www.4islamicschools.org. khalidi, o. (2000). mosque. in w. c. roof (ed.), contemporary american religion. new york : macmillan. legoff, j. (1993). intellectuals in the middle ages. cambridge : blackwell. makdisi, g. (1981). the rise of colleges: institutions of higher learning in islam and the west. edinburgh : edinburgh university press. muslim home school network and resource. available at: http://www.muslimhomeschool.com/index.html. nakosteen, m. (1964). history of islamic origins of western education, a.d. 800-1350. boulder, co : university of colorado press. safi, l. (1999). the transforming experience of american muslims: islamic education and political maturation. available at: http://home.att.net/~louaysafi/articles/1999/am-muslims.html. tauhidi, daud. the tarbiyah project: an overview. daud tauhidi, 2001. http://www.4islamicschools.org/pdf/tarbiyah%20overview%20%20dawud%20tauhidi.pdf watson, a. (1983). a medium for diffusion. in agricultural innovation in the early islamic world. cambridge : cambridge university press. © 2002 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 7 toward a reconceptualization of gender and power in an elementary classroom gail masuchika boldt the university of iowa one day i was reading a story to the third and fourth grade students in my classroom in honolulu, hawai'i, when one boy said loudly to another boy who was bothering him, "you're such a girl." i questioned the boy about what the comment meant and he reluctantly told me that it was an insult the boys often used against one another, "like calling someone ugly or stupid." i looked at the girls. they showed no visible response. i was as perturbed with their silence as i was with the boy's comments and i asked the girls why they didn't defend themselves. in a voice calmer than my own, a girl responded that they were used to the boys acting like they were better than the girls and that sometimes the girls just ignored it. i found myself feeling upset about this exchange. it seemed to bear out my worst fears-that the boys actively and aggressively defined the category of "girl" in a degrading manner and that the girls passively accepted this characterization. as a feminist, the idea of girls as passive in the face of male aggression struck a particular chord. my interest in feminism began in the early 1980s when i worked as a college student at a battered women's counseling center. in coming to understand how women from every walk of life could appear at the center's doorstep, i began to read feminist theory that suggested that american society, through the devaluation of women, positions women as people who are legitimate targets of abuse. it was a scenario that resonated with my own experiences growing up. i came to feel that women's acceptance or at least acquiescence to men's violence, demands, and economic and political dominance made passivity a troubling position. when i became a teacher some years later, i hoped to find ways to counter the sexism i expected to see. i entered teaching in 1989 with the perspective of a critical educator (freire, 1989; mclaren, 1989). my goal was to raise the consciousness of the children i taught, to help them to understand, identify, and root out all traces of sexism and gender inequity, and to create a class of sensitive boys and assertive girls. once in my own classroom, it wasn't difficult to find gender at work. consistent with findings of research conducted in other elementary classrooms, i routinely observed groups of boys commandeering (or attempting to) the computers and class materials, sports equipment and playground space, and the majority of my time and attention (sadker & sadker, 1994; thorne, 1993). i regularly heard some of the boys verbally degrade the girls relative to both gender and sexuality and to see degrading or at least stereotyped representations of girls in writing done by boys (lensmire, 1994; dyson, 1997). it was also common to see the boys demanding narrowly defined, highly stereotyped masculine behavior from themselves and one another, sometimes through the use of taunts like "girl" or "gay" in order to maintain careful boundaries of what it meant to be a "true boy" (boldt, 1996; gilbert & gilbert, 1998; ferguson, 2000). at the same time, girls often seemed to fulfill my worst expectations by seeming to give in to the boys' demands and claiming little or no interest in things the boys claimed as their own. when i would institute fair rotations for sports equipment or computers, gail masuchika boldt 8 december 16, 2002 many of the girls would refuse their turns, saying they weren't interested. when i encouraged the girls to try out for school sports teams, many said they preferred cheerleading. when i assigned group leadership to a girl, she would often quickly acquiesce to an outspoken boy. at times a girl would tell me she didn't like science or math because they were "boys' things." while most of the time the children seemed fairly satisfied with the interests and activities in which they engaged, i often felt deeply troubled by the choices and opinions the children expressed. it wasn't so much that there was anything wrong, per se, with what the children enjoyed or disliked, but i projected those choices onto a future trajectory--that the girls gave in too easily, compromised too cheerfully, and thus would, in the future, experience themselves as compromised in the important things, like careers, economic status, personal (potentially violent) relationships. my thinking on these issues began to change as a result of reading moss's (1989) un/popular fictions. moss argues that there is something deeply problematic about reading girls in school as always endangered, as the special object of our concern, as being unable on their own to engage successfully in society. she contends that positioning girls as "lack" is not particularly helpful to girls and can in fact perpetuate the very disempowered status we are concerned about. the critical recognition of girls or women positioned as "lack" in western epistemology can be traced to de beauvoir's 1953 the second sex. for de beauvoir , the binary concept of "man" and "woman" positions woman not simply as the opposite of man but the absence or lack of man, the lack of everything that is constructed as powerful and desirable within masculine identity. indeed, as butler (1990) states, de beauvoir sees the human person, the subject within misogynistic epistemology as "always, already masculine, conflated with the universal, differentiating itself from a feminine "other" [which is] outside the universalizing norms of personhood, hopelessly 'particular', embodied, condemned to immanence" (p. 11). [1] walkerdine (1989) offers a powerful example of female as lack in relation to education. when walkerdine asked teachers to evaluate both girls and boys as mathematicians, she found that boys, even in the face of evidence suggesting the contrary, are consistently evaluated as the possessors of rationality in the form of true understanding and true potential. girls meanwhile are evaluated as the absence of rationality, with their success in mathematics being devalued by attributing it not to true mathematical understanding but to rote rule following. after reading walkerdine's work, i felt challenged to review my thoughts and assessments of each of the third and fourth graders who were my students. reading through the narrative progress reports i had written each quarter for the children and their parents, i realized that i did indeed speak of girls and boys differently. i praised boys in my class more highly than girls. i spoke of boys as having potential even when there was little performance evidence to point to that. i admired girls' successes less. i saved my highest praise for girls' personalities rather than their accomplishments. i questioned the depth of understanding of even successful female students. seeing these patterns in my assessments, i began to realize that i was taking those things that were toward a reconceptualization of gender and power in an elementary classroom current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 9 traditionally part of the "masculine realm" as the norm, the most desired, and that equality primarily meant girls learning to be more like boys and then being able to compete equally in "the male world." i began to wonder what would happen if i looked at my students very differently, to see what would change in my perception of myself and the children in my class if i interpreted the girls in my class not as passive, as lacking in agency and endangered, but as at least potentially powerful. in this paper i will explore the potential of theorizing both power and gender in the classroom not as possessions or objective descriptions but as performative accomplishments that are in flux and vulnerable to contestation. i begin by documenting my reconsideration of a typical classroom event that helped me to feel that it was at least plausible to view gender relations as more dynamic than that allowed for by my previous subordination/dominance model. i will then suggest the new conceptualization of power that arose for me as a result of re-envisioning what was going on the classroom. i will look at the promise of this for gender equity, but will also highlight limitations of the ways i now see the children using gender. finally, i will discuss how changing my view of girls as victims and boys as victimizers changed my conceptualization of the role i had played and could play in the classroom. [2] re-envisioning gender exchanges one day, not long after i began to look for ways to think about gendered exchanges differently, i was confronted with one of the ongoing hassles of teaching--getting the classroom cleaned up at the end of a messy activity. as i always did, i gave the entire class a quick speech about everyone pitching in and cleaning up quickly so we could get out to recess as soon as possible. then i watched as most of the boys messed around while most of the girls did the work. as i scolded the boys who consistently avoided helping to clean up the classroom, i realized that secretly i admired their freedom. as i scolded the girls for doing too much, i realized that i not-so-secretly was worrying about the meaning of the girls doing clean-up chores day after day beyond their fair share. i was, i realized, envisioning the girls as passive and as training themselves into a life of serving men. i took the boys' freedom from cleaning as the enviable standard. perhaps it annoyed me so because i usually hate cleaning and i grew up in a home where cleaning was always the job of my mother, my sister and me. in my home as in many american homes in the 1960s and 1970s, cleaning was simultaneously gendered and devalued. i began to consider that it was not the choice to clean that was itself troubling; it was that cleaning is positioned in the domestic sphere, that is the uncompensated or undercompensated work of women and servants and that this historically loaded scenario was playing itself out once again in my classroom (tronto, 1993; mcclintock, 1995). i think there is a problem, however, with reading the same behavior--cleaning up the classroom, cleaning at home, cleaning in the past, cleaning in the future--as having always the same meaning. does the role of "she who cleans" mean the same thing when my mother accepted it, when it was forced onto my sister and me, and when many girls seem to choose it in the context of the classroom? i began to realize that much of my annoyance and worry resulted from the fact that i was operating from an assumption that took male privilege as a given, that i routinely felt that those things which the boys claimed as their own--their interests, desires, and accomplishments--were in fact, really gail masuchika boldt 10 december 16, 2002 the best, and that the girls' interests, desires, and accomplishments were second rate. i began then to consider what would change if i saw those who clean in our classroom as the ones who should be envied. there is nothing more inherently satisfying in messing about and getting yelled at than in sharing the camaraderie of others while performing the simple and quick activity of picking up the room, creating a pleasant environment for oneself and getting the praise and gratitude of the others. there is no reason to think that the girls were cleaning up for the boys. i am not arguing that simply choosing something or finding something as pleasurable or tolerable means that there are no more problems, no more critical questions. how it is that one comes to accept or even desire a certain role or behavior and whether that desire is a good thing for that person is an immensely complicated question. our choices have histories. people often come to desire things that aren't good for them, that are undervalued, or that are downright dangerous. clearly there are larger forces at work when most of the girls or most of the boys engage in patterns of behavior. i am trying to sort out, however, five important questions: 1) to what extent is my assessment of the choices made by many girls, their desires or the roles they play, tied to my assumption that boys' choices, desires and roles are the admirable, normal, or powerful ones? 2) to what extent do i judge the choices, desires, and roles of girls as always referring to the boys rather than being self-referential, e.g., cleaning for the boys rather than doing it for the pleasure it brings to themselves? 3) to what extent am i conflating behavior with meaning, assuming that the same action means the same thing in every context or that to choose to do something in a certain context means that one is that thing, trapped into doing it or being it in every context? 4) do behaviors, desires, and expressions mean only one thing, either clearly positive or clearly negative? 5) to what extent did my interpretation of events aggravate or alleviate the troubling constructions of gender in the classroom? in the cleaning scenario, i obviously do not know what it meant to each person in my class who chose to clean or not clean, but it now seems obvious that my response to the situation had been exactly as walkerdine's (1989) research implied--that even when girls were successfully engaging in an activity that i requested or demanded, i interpreted it negatively, as lacking relative to the performance of the boys whose obvious failure--not cleaning when told to clean--i turned into success. what i consistently erased in my assessment was the fact that the behaviors were not uniformly gendered--some girls did not clean and some boys did. in continuing to name this as a gender issue in such a straightforward manner, i may have been giving the children a message that accomplished what it was trying to challenge. that is, i told the children, "why are you boys playing while the girls are doing all the cleaning?" i was essentially communicating what boys and girls are "like", setting up identity expectations in my criticism of the situation--that boys are those whose identity is formed in opposition to demands made by (largely female) teachers. they are those who are naughty and have fun at the expense of others, while girls are those who cooperate even when it means sacrificing their self-interests in the more valued activities. why didn't i instead notice the girls who were not cleaning and the boys who were and say, "why are some of you not cleaning when i told everyone to clean?" when i accepted that the girls were performing primarily for the boys, i saw the girls as toward a reconceptualization of gender and power in an elementary classroom current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 11 if they were in a kind of danger from the boys, in danger of being taken advantage of, of growing up servile, or of learning to allow boys and men to take the best of everything. it is an unfair and patronizing understanding of the lives of the girls with whom i worked. at the same time, there is something sad, unfair, and inaccurate about viewing the boys only in this oppositional role, as those who are constantly potentially threatening to the well being of the girls, as themselves having unproblematic relationships with gender norms. it is easy to see the boys, in successfully demanding that they are more deserving of all that they define as "the best," in the light of the larger culture in which some men often successfully demand all that they define as "the best" for themselves. the reality of the feminization of poverty, of violence against women, of unequal protection under the law and in the workplace means that something is, indeed, wrong. it is easy to feel overwhelmed by networks of power that do the gate-keeping for male privilege and to begin to feel that men and boys possess the power. however, reenvisioning the gendered exchanges between my students helped me to understand that conceptualizing power as a doing rather than a possession holds promise for both girls and boys in the classroom community. rethinking gender, power, and agency one day a small group of girls came in after recess very upset, and reported to me that the boys would not allow them to play basketball. in the class argument that ensued, a girl suggested as an alternative that there be a rotation drawn up that allowed all the kids to take turns being in charge of different sports equipment and different areas of the playground. several boys howled in protest. three of the boys in particular responded with comments like, "but the girls just waste the sports equipment because they're no good at it. they don't use it right. we have the right to that stuff because we're stronger and better at sports. we're bigger and faster than the girls. we play better. it's wasted on the girls." if power is something that is possessed--either you have it or you don't--and if speech functions as accurately representing that power, then this scene would be very disturbing to me in a way that seems relatively hopeless. if the boys were representing what they really believed about the girls and about themselves and their rights as males, then it seems indeed that the future is not likely to show much improvement in gendered relations. an alternative view, however, is that categories of identity that substantiate claims of inherent power, categories of gender, sexuality, race and class, do not have inherent meaning but are "performative" and that therefore power is also performative. butler (1990) describes the performativity of gender as "a doing rather than a being" (p. 25). gender is a phantasm. masculinity and femininity do not exist in any body but are ideas that we more or less approximate in our performances of gender. butler argues that it is not possible to talk about true or natural gender but only to describe the acts that constitute the illusion of natural gender. the illusion is a powerful one; it simultaneously is produced by and is productive of the norms of gender. performing successfully within norms of gender gives children and adults access not only to the immense power of social sanction, but also to the power of sanctioning those who do not perform gender successfully. however, because these norms are not real or natural, they are susceptible to contestation and change. power, therefore is likewise a phantasm, not gail masuchika boldt 12 december 16, 2002 preexisting its production but produced in the assertion of its reality, its representation of itself as the way things should be or must be. these assertions of power are not of course, equal, but occur in fields of discourse in which they carry more or less weight, more or less plausibility. in the basketball argument, the boys invoked a version of sports prowess that positioned them most favorably--that is, that sports are important and that truly worthwhile engagement in sports was the special province of males because the sports performances that count are those predicated on being the biggest, strongest, and fastest. in making this argument, the boys appealed to a powerful american discourse. the sports that are most highly valued, that carry the highest financial rewards and rewards of celebrity, do indeed value strength and speed. in the argument, the boys made a proposition about what constitutes worthwhile athleticism, about who they were as boys, and who the girls were, relative to a conception of sports that supported their dominance and their exclusion of the girls (and of the boys they considered to be less athletic). in the ensuing discussion, the girls ended up responding with two lines of argument. first, they asserted that there are many great women athletes, including a girl in the class who was faster and a better soccer player than any of the boys. the second tact they took was to argue that, at school, things are supposed to be fair. their first argument, about good women athletes, was not particularly successful. the boys maintained the ability to define what counted in sports by simply asserting that most male athletes could beat most female athletes any day. thus, sports was defined as those things that were contests of size and strength. to support the argument that these were the sports that counted, they appealed to professional sports, pointing out the greater amount of money men made in comparison to women, the greater popularity of men's sports, and the number of male athletes in comparison to female athletes. as for the girl in the class who was a good soccer player, they noted that they were not talking about soccer but about basketball. the second argument the girls made was much more successful, however, because it appealed to discourses about schooling and morality that often came up in their daily lives in our classroom--that school is a place where everyone is supposed to have fair chances. in fact, after the girls shifted to fairness, most of the boys seemed to recognize that they weren't going to carry the argument and turned to another tactic. when one of the boys continued to argue that it was fair for the boys to get the equipment and not the girls, one of his male classmates, who seemed to want to cut their loses, said to him in an urgent tone, "no, no, don't say that. say something else, like, 'it's fair for the girls to get it some of the time.'" this seems to me to indicate that it is plausible to read the boys' use of gender as not fixed, but as tentative or as strategic. i now see what the boys were doing as performative, as an attempt at "doing power" (foucault, 1979, pp.26 27; moss, 1989, p.123). what this suggests is that power be seen as a doing rather than a having, that sexism is a process seeking to attain something rather than being a fixed, predetermined fact. the children's assertions of who they were, who others were, and what must be, were always rather tentative and experimental in that they were put out to a social audience where they may or may not toward a reconceptualization of gender and power in an elementary classroom current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 13 have been supported. power claims work when they are affiliated with a whole network of other claims, beliefs, and structures that support and confirm them, make them seem plausible, natural, compelling, or at least invulnerable. girls and boys at school find themselves in environments shaped by the profession of education, their families, and their teachers, and by race, class, sexuality, and history, that support or invalidate the children's attempts to do power or to resist power claims. that children daily engage in efforts at staking out powerful, efficacious, or at least survivable identities in schools in ways that are sexist, heterosexist, racist, and classist, and in ways that are often ferocious, is something that i take as a given because of my eight years of teaching children. children, like adults, jockey for position, creating over and over again the story that there are only so many pieces of the privilege pie. the language the children use for it may be, as bahktin (1981) says, half their own and half someone else's (p.294). in other words, the children do not necessarily generate the categories they use to assert privilege, nor did the idea of identity as oppositional originate with them, but they use the categories in ways that are powerful, local, and personal. what i newly appreciate is that children in my class are much more aware than i realized of many of the attempts to do power over one another based on claims of superior identity. certain dominant, degrading stories about who some children have to be because of their group identities are no longer nearly so plausible today. i now think that something has changed after a generation of struggles for gender equity. i believe that all of the children in my class have access to the idea that "girls can do anything boys can do" or that, at the very least, girls should have the right to do anything that boys are given the right to do. whether or not they always believe it, who is positioned by race, gender performance (boldt, 1996), religion, or class to use the argument persuasively, the limitations of that claim (some of which i will take up later), and whether or not it always works are matters for further exploration. the point is that the assertions of equal ability or the right to equal access have the potential to be compelling when they have enough support in the broader school context as well as in the broader social context so that the children are able to use them, at least sometimes, successfully. i now think that when my girls didn't respond to the boy who said that calling someone a girl is the same as calling them stupid or ugly, it wasn't because they believed it about themselves, that they weren't offended or couldn't defend themselves. it is at least plausible to argue that the girls defended themselves too many times already and knew how these arguments went. the boys would say "girls are stupid." the girls say some version of, "are not," and the boys say, "are too," often over and over again. at other times, in other circumstances, the boys might have had much more thoughtful and respectful things to say about the girls. in this circumstance, the boys had no intention of taking reflective positions or of revealing the complexity of their feelings about girls because in that particular use of the statement, "you're such a girl," the boys were trying to achieve something. the girls' attempts to argue back allowed the boys to use the very occasion of the argument "girls are stupid" to "do power." when the girls took the bait and engaged in the argument, they simply offered the boys another opportunity to assert loudly and repeatedly, for the pleasure and benefit of themselves and many of their peers, that girls are stupid. the decision of when and to what anyone responds can be a strategic one. stanley and gail masuchika boldt 14 december 16, 2002 wise (1987, cited in moss 1989) outline strategies women use in fighting back against sexual harassment, grouping them under headings: reacting against; joining in; letting it pass; and avoiding it. they make the point that only the first is generally recognized as women challenging men, but that the others may be just as effective, and suggest that it is not possible to define what a successful strategy is outside the context of a particular encounter. stanley and wise's argument has led me to look at my students' behaviors less as indicators of "who they are" and "who they will be in the future" and more as potentially powerful and smart strategic responses to a given situation. an example--one day a group of my third grade girls were playing with blocks during free time when suddenly a group of boys came over, knocked over the girls' creation, and took away the blocks they wanted. the girls yelled to me for help. my response was predictable: "boys, give the blocks back right now. you can't play with blocks for the rest of free time." one interpretation of this sequence of events would be that the familiar patterns of aggression and passivity are being enacted before our eyes. the boys come and take what they want, spreading destruction in their path, and the girls do not directly defend themselves, but call on outside authority for help. however, we might also note that this response was effective and required virtually no effort on the part of the girls. the girls knew how to respond in ways that were deemed appropriate to the identities they were assigned as girls. they knew that if they aggressively leapt on the boys to retaliate they might get in trouble too. this method got the boys in trouble while maintaining their absolute innocence. does the use of this passive defense mean that the girls are characterized by passivity, thus rendering the girls powerless in situations when there isn't someone else around to help out? i have discovered that the girls have an entire arsenal of possible responses. a much offended boy reported to me that a group of girls, many of the same who cried out for my help with the pattern blocks, had a fight with him waiting for the bus after school. the boy had taken a pair of girls' underwear from a swim bag and was showing it around. when the small group of girls could not persuade him to stop through pleading, reasoning, insulting and threatening, they punched him until he returned the underwear and promised not to talk about it any more. my response (whether appropriate or not) was something like, "i guess you should have given her underwear back." female on male violence is rarely taken seriously. the girls were able to manipulate the standard of female identity as mild and passive and use a behavior that would have gotten boys, had they used it, in a great deal of trouble with me. seeing the boys' assertions of dominance as attempts rather than actualities allows me to thinking of their versions of masculinitys as a kind of posturing. their expressions of sexism are actions seeking to attain something and do not have a fixed, predetermined outcome. the boys demand things of the girls, but the girls do not necessarily have to accept their demands, and they often don't. when boys in my class proclaimed themselves to be the greatest, the smartest, the most everything, the girls often seemed unperturbed. sometimes they said in tones of scorn, "the boys think they are the best at everything." one might begin to wonder whether the bragging of some of the boys doesn't partly reflect the necessity to proclaim loudly that which they think they need, but about which they are less than confident. if a group of boys refuse to allow girls to toward a reconceptualization of gender and power in an elementary classroom current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 15 play in games, claiming that the girls will ruin their games, i end up wondering whether it is not at least in part the boys' pretenses about who they are--the strongest, the fastest, the smartest--that come under threat when the girls play with them. new boundaries not all girls in every situation could successfully use the tactics i have described, nor were the girls in my school uniformly successful in identifying and defying all the ways that gender was used against them. again, the students' actions can be thought of as tentative and experimental, working toward achieving a goal they desired. the girls had enough experience in the context of acceptable identities and action at this particular site to have a pretty good guess at how to act efficaciously. as is typical of hawai'i schools, there was a great deal of ethnic diversity at the school; however, as is typical for private schools (which this was) the students were almost all from well educated middle and upper class families. most of the children had mothers as well as fathers who were working professionals. the beliefs of parents of both girls and boys that girls should stand up for themselves, that girls should have equal rights, that girls should have a certain kind of toughness, and that boys should respect girls, were regularly expressed by both parents and teachers. thus, the girls had access to liberal feminist discourses that were generally considered persuasive and desirable at the school and in their homes that allowed them to successfully recognize and refuse many of the boys' assertions of power. the boundaries of what constituted normal behaviors, beliefs, and desires for both boys and girls were different in that context than they would have been in other times and places, and were closely aligned with a feminist idealization of competing successfully in a man's world. while i was pleased to newly perceive the girls as more powerful and more intelligent about what was going on than i previously expected, it would be a mistake to see this as now unproblematic. while gender boundaries for themselves may have been expanded, the liberal feminist discourse they drew from did not call the construct of gender itself into question in a sustained way. in other words, the children were not suggesting that gender is an illusion and therefore there is no set of behaviors that can be truly attributed to femininity or masculinity. although at times it seemed that they were arguing this, as when someone would claim, "boys or girls can do whatever they want," i believe that most often what they were suggesting was that boundaries of gender just needed to shift or to be wider. both girls and boys routinely expressed opinions that there are things that are more natural to girls--art, music, reading, writing, dancing, certain kind of imaginary play, interest in animals, and being helpful and cooperative with the teachers--and things that are more natural to boys--sports, "being rascally," interested in gross things and violence, math and science. while at times both girls and boys would defend themselves or one another by appealing to the argument, "boys or girls can do whatever they want," it was probably more often true that the children put pressure on themselves and on one another to perform within accepted gender boundaries. i am not arguing that the results of power played out the same for girls and for boys. there were important differences. one difference was that girls' attempts to render the entire category of "boy" as abject through phrases such as, "all boys are dumb" didn't go far because of the obvious privilege and admiration boys received for being boys. the gail masuchika boldt 16 december 16, 2002 boys had far more success in appealing to american culture in demeaning the entire category of girl. one of the boys, for example, used the argument that women were never the president of the united states to bolster his argument that boys were always better than girls and the girls found the argument cast in these terms difficult to rebut. the children were aware that maleness does continue to be privileged in highly public, powerful, and lucrative ways and this knowledge had an impact on the success of their arguments. a second difference was that in some ways, the girls had more latitude for variation in behavior and interests. a girl could excel at sports, computers, or math, for example, and still escape taunting and criticism. for a girl to be interested in or achieve in what was typically seen as being "a boy's thing" had a logic to it, since to begin with the boys' realm was more highly valued and rewarded. it also had a name, "tomboy," that was at least sometimes viewed with admiration. however, given that any movement by a boy toward the feminine world was a move away from power and privilege, for a boy to assert interest in the pastimes, desires, or stylizations that marked femininity was incomprehensible. there are children's literature books available to the children that showed boys in gender bending roles. william's doll (1972), in which a boy desires to play with a doll, is an example of this. as was the case for others who have attempted to use this book (greever, austin, & welhousen, 2000), children in my class largely found the text to be unconvincing. it may certainly have been the case that some children found books such as william's doll to be hopeful or inspiring. the book did not carry enough weight, however, to change dominant classroom discourse about what interests were acceptable for boys. while the children were able to say the things i wanted to hear in class, "yes, its okay for a boy to play with a doll," in practice a child who appealed to that book was likely to hear a retort such as, "william was a big sissy and so are you!" in fact, the only explanations that were offered for children and particularly boys who were too consistently gender bending, whether in a book or in the classroom, was that the child was "weird" or "gay" (a term the children mostly used for boys but used occasionally for girls). the performance of gender is restricted for both girls and boys by the requirements that their gender also must perform heterosexuality (bulter, 1990, 1993). both boys and girls do power by positioning themselves as having correct gender and thus correct sexual performances over and against those who don't--the "tomboy" girls and the "effeminate" boys. i have argued that there are discourses available that allow some girls wider latitude than existed a generation ago in acceptable gendered behavior and at the primary school level, i rarely heard a "tomboy" girl's sexuality called into question. i have seen little change in the boundaries of acceptable "maleness" and "effeminate" boys were consistently harassed. [3] there are no widespread or powerful discourses available to most kids in school that address the connections made between gender and heterosexuality or homosexuality. therefore, there are few ways that a child whose interests are deemed abnormal for her/his physical sex can defend her/himself (boldt, 1996). finally, criticizing some of the limits of gender norms did not necessarily cause the children to be critical about using identity categories to set off their own identities from those they saw as "outside." the gendered interests and stylizations that were seen as within the range of normal for the children were also those that were seen as normal toward a reconceptualization of gender and power in an elementary classroom current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 17 within their social class. when we came into contact with other schools, on field trips for example, the children sometimes expressed surprise, dismay, or disdain for the behavior and appearance of children who they identified as from lower class schools. this was especially the case when something was at stake. for example, when the school basketball team was defeated by a team from a neighboring public school, the children complained that the players were abnormally big because (unlike the private school boys) public school boys were dumb and had been flunked, that students who were only supposed to be eleven-years-old were really fourteen. hawaiian and samoan boys outside the school were seen as abnormally big, tough, and dangerous, while hawaiian boys who were students at the school (and from middle/upper class families) were often seen as having desirably masculine but not "out of control" or "threatening" bodies (boldt, 2001). cheerleaders from competing schools were criticized as not small and refined enough. both female and male public school bodies were thus criticized in highly stereotypic, gendered terms as unsightly, undesirable, and indicating "low class." teaching and learning i entered teaching with the perspective of a critical educator. that is, believing myself to have a better understanding of the perils of sexism, i was determined to fix sexism and inequity in and out of my classroom, in the present and in the future. when i worked to set up equitable systems in the classroom, making sure that everyone had equal access to all of the computer equipment, for example, and then i saw a girl declining to take advantage of this and choosing to play pet store owner with other girls instead, i was convinced that the girl had made the wrong decision, even when she declared herself to be happy and well occupied. i now believe that many of the concerns i have felt about the children in school were not in response to the context and contours of actual incidents, but largely because of the common adult perception of childhood as a dangerous, fragile time (cannella, 1997; burman, 1994). contemporary discourses of "the child" positions children as "incomplete" and "immature", as progressing toward the goal of being an adult, but as being in need of adult help to navigate this treacherous and important time. if we adults don't figure out how to "do it right" today, then we have damaged the children's future and the future of our society. we indulge in the developmentalist fantasy that today is always about what might be tomorrow. one version of this is that if children, and particularly boys, are not taught the correct enactment of masculinity today, they will grow up to be gay. my own version of it was that even if the children experienced themselves as efficacious and happy today, they would surely fall into danger, meanness, and misery in the future if all traces of sexism were not immediately expunged. both positions fail to acknowledge that they are themselves claims to authority that allow adults to discipline children, ignoring what the children think, feel, want, and experience today, by claiming that as adults we have a more highly developed understanding of "the big picture." for me to look at children's understanding of gender and declare it "immature" or "still developing" only works if i believe that adults' systems of understanding are more true than children's. however, i believe all performances gain legitimacy not through a basis in truth but through a relationship to power. i certainly would not claim that most adults have a fairer and freer vision of gender relations than most children i know. in fact, my students have surprised me many times by how conscious and articulate they are about inequities. heidi, a nine-year-old student, reported to me that it is unfair that gail masuchika boldt 18 december 16, 2002 every saturday, her father wakes her brother at 6 a.m. to take him outside and practice baseball and that afterwards they go to breakfast together. both girls and boys recognized and were able to discuss gender stereotypes when used in literature and sometimes when they were used in class. on several occasions, girls in my class talked to me about teachers who blatantly favored boys. sometimes they asked me to help them because they quite rightly feared the consequences if the adult became angry with them for raising the issue. at times, i was the adult who caused them trouble, by being blind and stubborn about my own limitations or by holding to a version of events that reflected my self interest rather than theirs. teachers can help children who are contesting gendered claims. when things were presented as options in the classroom, i learned to make an effort to understand why children made the decisions they did and to respect the decisions when the children expressed satisfaction with them. i learned to praise and admire the children, regardless of gender, who did what i required for community well being, and to hold the others all accountable. the question for me became not about the specific interests and stylizations through which children signaled and embodied gender, but whether the stories and ideas the children and i used to make gender a meaningful identity were respectful toward others and made space for the children's own agency. i learned to take a more thoughtful view of what children (and adults) were doing when they made statements that invoked gender norms. thinking of these as a doing of power led me to consider that just as the boys often knew they were being unfair when they asserted that girls were stupid or incompetent, that when children invoked race or class that these representations could also be examined, contested, and refused. it was effective for children to be able to repeat my words to each other or even to me, "it doesn't matter what happens elsewhere; in this classroom, we will always work to make things fair." while i might have worried about students taking positions that i found to be stereotyped or inequitable, i learned to focus my attention on the present, on insisting on fairness in the classroom. when the claims of privilege depended on creating a stereotyped "other"-fantasies about what kids from neighboring schools or families from other parts of town -the children came to expect that either i or one of them would ask the question, "do you think you'd say that if the person was in this class? what if that person was your friend? can you imagine ways they might respond to you?" even having those discussions, i knew that there was no way i could predict or control what actually happened when the children were outside our classroom. finally, i also had to question my idealization of myself as the heroic teacher and to question the intensity with which i scrutinized the children's relationships with one another. while the children tease one another and contest one another's right to behave in certain ways, the competition is on more even footing than is the relationship they have with the teacher. that is, teachers, in our taken-for-granted authority over students' lives, have great potential to enact truly damaging discrimination on children. as the teacher, i have the power both to make their daily lives at school fairly miserable and to issue the opinions and reports to the children, their parents, and other teachers and schools that construct children as successful or failing in the official business of school.[4] toward a reconceptualization of gender and power in an elementary classroom current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 19 conclusions gender performed by the boys often positions them as possessors of the identity, interests, traits, and abilities that are to be understood as universally desired and superior. the identity of "girl", with the interests, traits, and abilities that are seen as accompanying "girlness", is thereby positioned as devalued. masculine power is consolidated by its claims that it is unproblematically positive for those that hold it. what i have argued in this piece, however, is that gender identity is imposed with limitations, foreclosures, losses, and punishments for everyone. it also holds potential for everyone. my students and i enact this potential when we (constantly) use gender as a site for producing power. we experience our lives as pleasurable and intelligible in part because our sense of identity allows us to attribute meaning, order, and sense to our lives. our constructions of gender bring us pleasure, desire, and belonging, but they also bring us experiences of exclusion, degradation, humiliation, and loss. we limit others and we are stymied by the limits of what we have created. those limits are not inevitably absolute. if power is indeed a tentative performance--a doing rather than a having--then it is also something that can, at times be turned back. if an act of power is predicated on placing me in a less advantageous or degraded position, the first kind of turning back is the refusal to believe that the degradation accurately represents me. even if unspoken, this is the "am not" part of the "am not are too" argument. the second turning back is the ability to effectively rebuff the action that was predicated on the degradation, what the other person was trying to achieve. this refusal depends largely upon whether one finds support in the larger social and institutional audience. providing that support is one of the most important and legitimate ways i can use my authority in the classroom. i went into teaching looking to cure sexism and injustice in my tiny piece of the world. in the experience of teaching, i came to question my utopian belief that everyone could agree on what fairness would look like and once they did, everyone would be happy. what i found in the real life of the classroom was that to the contrary, fairness wasn't always easy to define. i found that to be fair did not necessarily mean to be happy. i came to understand that for the children to accept that "boys and girls are equal" meant that sometimes some children would have to give up claims to proprietary privilege. that interests aren't natural to gender also threatened the pleasure that the children felt in their expressions of normative gender. finally, i discovered that i was as likely (whether unconsciously or consciously) to hold unjustifiable opinions about how gender functioned in the classroom as the children were. categories of identity are dependent upon defining what one is and therefore boundaries and exclusions, while contestable, are always reestablished. i discovered that for me, the greatest expression of teaching came not through the impossible task of defining the perfectly just identity position, but through a commitment to the daily wellbeing of my students that caused me to be constantly willing to explore and expand "the very meaning of what counts as a valued and valuable body in the world (butler, 1993, p.22). this was carried out through attending with new respect to the children's opinions, needs, and understandings, through learning to listen to them and take their positions seriously, and through the deliberate struggle to help the children and myself to maintain a sense of shared community and humor amidst the conflicts. gail masuchika boldt 20 december 16, 2002 heidi, the girl who one day expressed her disappointment that her father never thought about playing baseball with her, said to me a few days later, "i'm usually glad that my dad doesn't get me up early to play ball. my brother hates it a lot of the time. while i'm sleeping in and watching cartoons in the air conditioning, my brother is out there sweating and getting yelled at." heidi's comments struck me as important in many ways. thinking more about her situation, she was able to identify for herself and for me the understanding that gender is imposed upon both her and her brother, and that it wasn't straightforward that it was only a good thing or a bad thing for either of them. heidi may have felt badly about herself, her father, or their relationship, because her father didn't play with her as he did her brother, but in identifying it as unfair, heidi seemed to be indicating that she didn't believe that she deserved, by virtue of being a girl, to be treated that way. it is plausible to read heidi as refusing to accept the position she was in as accurately representing her identity. i don't know whether heidi questioned her parents or tried to contest the issue, so i don't know if she would have been able to successfully contest her positioning in a way that would have changed the way she was treated if she could have made an argument that was convincing to her social audience, and neither was it clear that she wanted to be treated differently. i do think, however, that heidi would have liked to have had the opportunity for that or other special treatment from her father (and maybe, indeed, had it, but didn't recognize it). there was a time when i believed that because i was an adult who was able to judge children's experiences against adult realities, i had the responsibility to interpret and educate my students into the true meanings of their lives. it now seems at least as reasonable to believe that if the girls and boys in my class experience their own conceptualizations of gender as sometimes efficacious and sometimes limiting (of themselves and others), if they experience gender as a contested category of privilege, then the struggle is well engaged. the things about gender that are taken for granted and the things that are disputed are constantly changing as boundaries shift and new possibilities and limitations are found. in the end, it doesn't matter what we want, desire, or are interested in. it doesn't matter what our physical stylizations or even identified skills and talents are. it does matter if some people are interpreted or forced into accepting, desiring, embodying, or being especially good at roles that are morally, economically, spiritually, politically, or physically devalued. the struggle to recognize the potential, the limits, and the problems of our own or others' power therefore continues to be a vital one. notes 1 i am aware, via butler's (1990) analysis, of irigaray's (1985) argument in response to de beauvoir that the female is not the male's "other" because the terms of both the male and the other are defined via masculine prerogative within the phallogocentric economy. for irigaray, the female simply does not and cannot exist in (and therefore cannot be contained by) phallogocentric language. as butler so eloquently argues throughout gender trouble (1990), the continued use of binary categories by critical theorists runs the risks of sustaining exactly the exclusions and limitations we are hoping to overcome and irigaray's critique of de beauvoir is helpful in pointing out this concern. nevertheless, i find de beauvoir's identification of "female as lack" to be very useful as a description of a toward a reconceptualization of gender and power in an elementary classroom current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 21 dominant and powerful construction of gender. understanding it as a description that clarifies a sustaining logic of masculine privilege is a useful tool, as i hope to show, in thinking about challenging this privilege. 2 the report of episodes and conversations with and among my students that appear throughout this article come from notes i wrote, usually on the same day, about things that happened in my elementary classroom that struck me as particularly interesting, puzzling, or troubling. the notes were taken for purposes of keeping records that i used as the classroom teacher primarily in communicating with students, their parents, and other school personnel about a child or an event or for writing the children's thriceyearly narrative progress reports. i also used the notes in a reflective way, to think about my teaching and to plan for improved instruction or communication with the children. in other words, my purposes in note taking were the purposes of a teacher and not of a researcher. although i was a doctoral student in education during many of the years i taught elementary school and i occasionally wrote about or discussed classroom events, i firmly rejected the idea that i was in my classroom as a researcher. my primary responsibility was as the teacher. while some of the questions i asked or activities i undertook as a teacher were also interesting to me as i theorized about my classroom, this consideration was purely coincidental to my teaching decisions. because i had a full-time co-teacher in the classroom, i often consulted with him about events of the day prior to writing my notes. nevertheless, what i found puzzling or interesting enough to write about, how i remembered things, and what i noticed or failed to notice in the end may tell more about me than about my students. however, as i hope becomes clear, this article ends up being more about changes to my interpretations of the students than about the students themselves. 3 for a more in-depth discussion of the sexuality and the role of "tomboy", see boldt (1996). 4 indeed, the questions about the teacher's role in the creation of school success and failure relative to expectations we enact about gender, classroom behavior, and curriculum, are not discussed here. these are critically important questions and are being widely explored within education. the focus of this paper is my changing perspectives on children's social negotiations of gender in the classroom and where that has taken me as a classroom teacher dealing constantly with this "unofficial" but central part of children's experiences of schooling. references bahktin, m. (1981). the dialogic imagination. (c. emerson & m. helquist, trans.). austin, tx: university of texas press. boldt, g. (1996). sexist and heterosexist responses to gender bending in an elementary classroom. curriculum inquiry 26 (2): 113 131. boldt, g. (2001). failing bodies: power and identity in the elementary classroom. jct 17 (4): 91 104. burman, e. (1994). deconstructing developmental psychology. new york: routledge. gail masuchika boldt 22 december 16, 2002 butler, j. (1990). gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. new york: routledge. _______. (1993). bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of "sex." new york: routledge. cannella, g. (1997). deconstructing early childhood education: social justice and revolution. volume 2. new york: peter lang. de beauvoir, s. (1953). the second sex. first american edition. new york: alfred knopf. dyson, a. (1997). writing superheroes: contemporary childhood, classroom culture, and classroom literacy. new york: teachers college press. ferguson, a. (2000). bad boys: public schools in the making of black masculinity. ann arbor univerisity of michigan press. foucault, m. (1979). discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. new york: vintage books. freire, p. (1989). learning to question: a pedagogy of liberation. new york: continuum. gilbert, g. & gilbert, p. (1998). masculinity goes to school. new york: routledge. greever, e., austin, p., & welhousen, k. (2000). "william's doll" revisited. language arts 77 (4): 324 30. irigaray, l. (1985). this sex which is not one. ithaca: cornell university press. lensmire, t. (1994). when children write: critical re-visions of the writing workshop. new york: teachers college press. mcclintock, a. (1995). imperial leather: race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial contest. new york: routledge. mclaren, p. (1989). life in schools : introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education. new york: longman. moss, g. (1989). un/popular fictions. london: virago. sadker, m. & sadker, d. (1994). failing at fairness: how america's schools cheat girls. new york: simon & schuster. thorne, b. (1993). gender play: girls and boys in school. new brunswick, nj: rutgers press. tronto, j. (1993). moral boundaries: a political argument for an ethic of care. new york: routledge. toward a reconceptualization of gender and power in an elementary classroom current issues in comparative education, vol. 5(1) 23 walkerdine, v. (1989). femininity as performance. oxford review of education 15(3): 267 279. walkerdine, v. (1990). school girl fictions. london; new york: verso. wise, s. & stanley, l. (1987). georgie porgie: sexual harrassment in everyday life. london: pandora press. cited in moss, g. zolotow, c. (1972). william's doll. new york: harper and row. background to this article: cice is not responsible for the content of external links. the university of iowa, college of education http://www.education.uiowa.edu/llc/ reconceptualizing early childhood education http://www.reconece.org/ contemporary issues in early childhood http://www.wwwords.co.uk/ciec/ professor gail boldt, the university of iowa, college of education http://www.education.uiowa.edu/people/facstaffs/gboldt.htm current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 1, fall 2016 © 2016, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(1), 63-75. aesthetic education: a korean and an austrian perspective jin choi seoul national university, korea thomas sojer university of innsbruck, austria korea and austria: two very different schooling systems, and different approaches to educational reform. yet for both, the renaissance of aesthetics has great potential. this paper analyses the arguments in korea and austria for aesthetic education. for each country, we identified a distinctive philosophical approach to meeting the individual needs and challenges of each country’s schooling system through aesthetic education -yielding some fascinating insights and resemblance: in the context of korea, the american philosopher jenefer robinson is taken into account. by contrast, the situation of austria is connected with the thoughts of the french philosopher simone weil. a comparison of these subtle distinctions in thought reveals the intercultural perspective of each country. the final aim of this paper is to highlight the common substance of both approaches and to suggest it as a basis for further intercultural cooperation for the revival of aesthetics within the field of comparative education. “la beauté parle à tous les cœurs” (beauty speaks to all hearts) simone weil, œuvres completes introduction in times of paralyzing functionalist tendencies within schooling and movement toward the standardization of learning and educational processes, a growing number of educational scientists seek alternative concepts of education. in july 2016, a ph.d. student from south korea and a ph.d. student from austria, both in the field of philosophy of education, met at an international symposium held by the university of birmingham, on the topic of specific challenges in each country. it became obvious that on the one hand, korean education lacked the capacity to teach moral principles relevant to today’s society, while on the other hand, austrian education had become devoid of individuality. independently, we were searching for philosophical concepts, which address these questions. to our pleasure, we found two concepts that, as utterly different as they were from each other, answered each case: the korean need for morality and the austrian jin choi and thomas sojer current issues in comparative education 64 necessity for more individuality, with a plea for an increase of aesthetic education. in the context of korea, the american philosopher jenefer robinson sees aesthetic education as a way to train one’s emotions to encourage moral development. the french philosopher simone weil urges teachers to nurture a habit of attention to creating a general climate for individual expression. discussing the current situations of our countries and each country’s philosophy of offering aesthetic education as a common solution, we explored the potential for aesthetic education beyond the two countries and philosophical schools. ensuing from these concepts, this paper affirms the crucial importance of aesthetic education as an alternative to formal education. the korean answer: aesthetic education for moral education aesthetic education in korea is being proposed as the answer to the question, “how can we become ethical and considerate human beings?”. aesthetic education is being offered as an alternative framework for moral introspection in handling an ethical problem in korea. the rapid modernization of korea has not been without its tensions and was accompanied by the confusion over traditional and modern values1. the lethargy and helplessness into which modern koreans tend to fall in the face of ethical dilemmas cannot be reduced to the struggle between confucian morality and western rationality; rather, it can be understood as an inner conflict produced by the disappearance of any ethical or moral standards that previously guided korean society. the confusion people experience today is more related to the forced situation in which real moral concepts are disappearing and the depth of the korean moral sensibility, anchored as they were in confucian precepts, has diminished. because of this discontinuity in ethical ethos, moral actions tend to be limited to fulfilling the given duties of a social relationship and thinking that we have done what is required of us as humans. however, in the diversified and complex society that is modern korea, moral obligations can hardly be prescribed as only that; moreover, just being faithful to these duties is not enough to solve ethical conflicts or dilemmas that we face when we have to make important decisions in life. this is because, in the world of diversified values, different notions of ‘good’ coexist and qualitative values, whose order of rank cannot be known, are intricately intertwined. discovering a ‘single’ appropriate action for situations of ethical problems that we commonly deal with based on a single rule seems impossible and even unethical. it is necessary for us to develop a moral consciousness as one that involves people’s imagination and sublimates the ideals for life. for this approach, i suggest the idea of a “moral imagination” as an alternative concept that can replace moral principles. moral imagination is an awareness of one’s own existential needs and requires bodily awareness, high intelligence, and imagination, not aesthetic education: a korean and an austrian perspective current issues in comparative education 65 an absolute moral concept of what is right or wrong. therefore, i propose that aesthetic education should be a way of expanding one’s moral imagination. specifically, jenefer robinson’s idea of “sentimental education” is used in my proposal as an appropriate educational approach for the development of a deep-seated moral sensitivity, which is based on one’s self-understanding gained through artistic experiences. according to jenefer robinson, the development of cognitive abilities can come from expanding one’s sentimental spectrum, not merely from learning or espousing propositional beliefs about ethics or wisdom2. this sentimental expansion allows us to intervene and sympathize with our internal cognitive, emotional processes, and our external conditions in a more deliberate way. the following first discourse aims, within the educational context of korea, to investigate the educational assumption that art contributes to moral education in children. for this, arts education is posited as something that accompanies emotional changes that bring about aesthetic experiences; sentimental education is proposed as a possible measure for this. jenefer robinson attempts to explain the cultivation of moral sensitivity through artistic experience in a more comprehensive and fundamental way, based on deeper understanding of the attributes of emotion. robinson asserts that our ‘emotion’ is not a temporary mood, but a ‘process in change’ (robinson, 2005, pp. 57-59): our encounters with an object that draws our attention, such as a potentially dangerous encounter in the dark, demonstrates this ‘process in change’. it’s important to note the ‘judgement’, that is, the cognitive response of whether the phenomenon is to be feared of or to be ignored, happens ‘after being surprised’. according to robinson (2005, pp. 57-99), this response of surprise occurred before any judgement was made; however ephemeral, it is clearly caused by a ‘non-cognitive emotional appraisal’ that arose before the ‘judgement as cognitive response’. the reaction of surprise accompanies ‘physiological responses’. these responses are automatically accompanied with non-cognitive emotional appraisals’ such as surprise; they occur before the state of surprise becomes classified into certain states such as fear, terror or relief. as in the previous example, when we find something in the dark we may experience physiological responses, such as the quickening of heartbeat or the dilation of pupils. robinson proposes that this whole process, from ‘non-cognitive emotional appraisal’ to the ‘physiological responses’, the ‘cognitive assessment’ of the situation and the classification of the affect as the psychological terms , such as ‘fear’ or ‘terror’, is what we call ‘affect’ or ‘emotion’. jin choi and thomas sojer current issues in comparative education 66 the above demonstrates that emotion involves non-cognitive emotional appraisal that accompanies physiological responses, as well as cognitive judgements. therefore, if we feel a certain emotion through an artistic experience, any emotion we feel from an aesthetic experience may be explained by the series of processes proposed above. robinson relies on facts discovered in the field of cognitive science to propose the functions of such ‘non-cognitive emotional appraisal’ and sentimental education validated by its existence. according to antonio damasio, our emotions provide the natural tools for our brain and mind to evaluate the internal and external environments and adapt to them accordingly (damasio, 2003), and are essential to keeping us alive. however, aesthetic experiences may invoke emotions within us. of course, these emotions are not the same as those mentioned by damasio and do not actually threaten our lives or provide a continuous and realistic sense of satisfaction. then, how do emotions that work within aesthetic experiences arise and what educational meaning does it have? to answer these questions, the qualities of emotion that robinson mentioned, ‘noncognitive emotional appraisal’ and ‘physiological responses’, become important. robinson (2005, pp. 72-75), based on damasio’s argument, claims that the emotional process can be started without any cognitive intervention such as rational reasoning, but rather by bodily stimuli and instantaneous mechanisms of the brain and that this process itself is what constitutes the ‘non-cognitive emotional appraisal’. since our emotions start from this ‘non-cognitive emotional appraisal’, experiences of art may invoke emotions that accompany physiological responses. for example, even though we already know that the contents of pieces of arts are fictitious, we may already begin to show emotional responses, such as crying or feeling enraged or happy, as we recognize the events or images portrayed in the pieces of art even before we cognitively judge whether they are actual or fictional. in another example, when we appreciate a novel or movie, we may experience similar emotional responses at the same scene after a while even though we already have an (intellectual) ‘knowledge’ of its content. thus, emotional responses may start from ‘non-cognitive emotional appraisal’ regardless of the ‘knowledge’ of something and may be accompanied by instinctive physiological, or bodily, responses. while damasio (1994, pp. 195-296) explains that emotion and the subsequent social behaviors, sympathy and such, are automatic mechanisms of control that not only humans but other animals also possess, he also claims that humans also have a nonautomatic mechanism of control in order to survive in a more complex environment. this seems to be possible because our intelligence has developed so far that we do not merely possess such affects and feelings ourselves, but also have reached a level of remembrance where we ‘know’ that we are feeling such emotions. to rephrase, that one knows and remembers one’s own affects and feelings means that one can expect others to also have aesthetic education: a korean and an austrian perspective current issues in comparative education 67 such affects and feelings, and thereby possess the ability to prepare for and control them to some extent (damasio, 2003, pp. 50-53). here, what is called “knowing” or “remembering” lies beyond the meaning of common sense? it means something is imprinted on the brain because emotion accompanies non-cognitive appraisal and noncognitive appraisal accompanies physical response, and only then can it be remembered by our body unconsciously. therefore, i propose that art experiences or aesthetic experiences can be opportunities for emotional experiences with an ‘educational intent’ in the area of emotional responses that can be acquired through learning. the meaning of emotions invoked by aesthetic experience is directly related to neither threats to one's existence, satisfaction nor wellness. although we are born with innate mechanisms of emotion for survival, individuals may learn by themselves more subtle and complicated emotional responses through acquired emotional experience. as such, it may be said that aesthetic experience can become one of these acquired experiences of emotional responses. such emotions are not simple ones that may be assigned to a single word such as ‘sadness’ or ‘resignation’; rather, they comprise of layers that cannot be expressed in a single word. encounters with art lead us to a procession of emotions that cannot be captured in simple terms. this is apparent in our experience of a remarkable piece of art that we find difficult to describe in simple terms. they provide an opportunity to monitor the emotions experienced through the aesthetic experience, discern what they are and attempt to understand them (robinson, 2005, p. 123). sentimental education could allow us to feel emotions that we could not before, by developing a greater level of sensitivity to more subtle emotions that the artist employs to view the world. it would enable us to process our past experiences as well as present experiences, to judge and understand them, and to evaluate our emotions and actions in a wider and deeper context. how does sentimental education then, help us develop moral sensibilities? the answer to this question may be found in the responses of a stimulated learner – the effects of sentimental education on his or her attitudes and behaviors. the learner, now with an expanded range of emotions, would be able to utilize the range to perceive the environment more sensitively and imagine more possibilities mark johnson (1993) names such an imagination the ‘moral imagination’. he describes moral imagination, not as a uniform application of ethical principles or rules that determine and justify moral acts as obligations, but rather as cognitive actions from ‘self-knowledge’. to exercise one’s own imagination based on a moral understanding of given circumstances is a process by which the individual comes to understand the rules’ values and limitations. since the educational approach of sentimental education assumes that a sense of morals originates from oneself, it complements confucian philosophy as embedded in traditional korean culture, which claims that one’s morality is cultivated internally. jin choi and thomas sojer current issues in comparative education 68 the austrian answer: aesthetic education as an incubator of individuality since the late 1990s the austrian educational system has been in transition. for over a decade, the need for change caused heated debates within politics and academia (hopmann, 2016, p. 8). in the public eye, the confusing amount of different approaches abandons all persons involved in front of an impasse3. being personally affected, it urges the co-author of this paper to remember an intellectual figure, a maverick whose thought the aporia speaks to. in her days, simone weil fought for an utter transformation of schooling and education (vorms, 2007, p. 159). within the context of the austrian school debate, the paper gives great weight to weil’s idea of aesthetic education, discussing the relationship between the perception of beauty and learning. in addition to a specific principle of teaching, we also discuss weil’s aesthetics postulates a philosophical basis for the austrian educational system on the whole. the term beauty, in weil’s thought, is not bound to sensual judgment. beauty is part of the three classical transcendentals, next to truth and goodness. it is crucial to understand that the question of beauty is always a question of truth and goodness, hence a question of salvation. in fact, manifestations of evil and suffering, viewed dialectically as an effect of truth, reveal a sort of terrible beauty4. weil was interested in the relationship between aesthetics and science. especially in mathematics, beauty lies in methods and results as an indication of truth, which has been affirmed by recent research (chandrasekhar, 2013, pp. 50-52). hence the analysis of beauty is an epistemological and moral enterprise. however, in contrast to the korean case, the austrian discourse focuses on epistemology and learning. simone weil’s reception of platonic sources concerning the concept of beauty shows an idiosyncratic character highly influenced by negative theology (dupré, 2004, p. 19). she regards beauty as a mystery and miracle. not a mere attribute of matter itself, beauty exists in relation tithe world of human sensitivity and diverges into reality, both tangible and other-worldly. her writings show a strong reluctance to locate her thoughts on beauty in terms of established aesthetic concepts. neither does she see a need to develop criteria. in this vein, she joins the ranks of intellectuals like baudelaire, flaubert, gilson, kant and schiller, who suspect theories and rational schemes of being incapable of grasping beauty (dupré, 2004, p. 20). divorced from theory, she describes the experience of beauty as located between a disinterested interestedness and a purposeless purposiveness, concepts derived from immanuel kant’s critique of judgment: real art as the incarnation5 of beauty contains no good other than itself and never serves as a means for an ulterior end. despite being consequently the only true end in this world, beauty is yet transcendent (bell, 1993, p. 269). caught in plato’s cave, a man mistakes the shadows for reality. he settles himself in his comfortable fantasies by misusing his intelligence and capacity of reason to idolize aesthetic education: a korean and an austrian perspective current issues in comparative education 69 collective structures of violence (kotva, 2015, p. 114). as an emblem of mankind, oedipus possesses immense intellectual powers but lacks self-knowledge and insight, leading to an escalation of violence (smith, 2001, p. 70). beauty eludes a pervasive mechanism of this kind, which weil calls gravité6. in an other-worldly manner, the contemplation of beauty ascends into the realm of the unknown and becomes an epistemological gateway of truth, hence unveiling a self-deceiving conception of reality (caranfa, 2010, p. 74). the essence of weilian anthropology and, by implication, education too, is the escape from the cave. this is the only viable solution, vigorously averting every form of collective or system and defending the principle of subsidiarity through the sanctification of the individual (smith, 2001, p. 69). the idea of the individual is what distinguishes men from animals and elevates him from the crowd. the capacity to be different from others constitutes humanity. it is the achievement of both, religion and art, to identify and secure the significance of individuality7. in increasingly secularized societies, art inherits the gateway function of religion, out of the cave, and hence becomes of major importance. in light of the aforesaid, an increase of artistic subjects within the school curricula seems advisable. simone weil, however, demands exactly the opposite (tubbs, 2005, p. 300). it is not the art one chooses that will lead him out of the cave, but myriads of hidden aesthetic epiphanies in life need to be embraced8. weil’s so-called attention9 is the capacity to do so, in virtue of its needed passivity can be neither a product of will nor of intelligence (caranfa, 2010, p. 66). the faculty of attention is not specified for certain subjects but needs to be developed in every discipline and field as the very core of learning itself. ensuing, the primary objective of education would not be to gain a specific set of knowledge and skills but to see reality as a whole by seeing beauty10. according to weil, the same perceptive faculty can be found in the tradition of prayer. in many cases, weil does not differentiate between studying and praying; beauty, in its soteriological dimension, is always the orientation towards god. the question of how one can gain the faculty of attention, nevertheless remains. weil adopts a concept of christian mystic writers: it is god who enables man to the capax dei11 through desire and joy. analogically, beauty enables the human intelligence to receive attention as a gift through desire and joy12. if there is anything like a theory of aesthetic education, in consideration of simone weil’s strong reluctance to adopt a theory in general, it can be summarised by the following proposition: every discipline holds the capacity to become art. through the continuous practice of attention in studying, the same presence of beauty originates. due to that, the student can obtain a representation of individuality, which is essential to developing personalities and societies based on the individual rather than the collective (liston, 2008, p. 389). jin choi and thomas sojer current issues in comparative education 70 education has lost its monopoly as a steward of knowledge. wikipedia, facebook, and google glass are only a few examples supporting a paradigm shift that embodies the omnipresence and accessibility of knowledge. it challenges the classical purpose of teaching and leaves open the question of what role education can play in today’s world. applying the intellectual framework of weil, the virtual omnipresence of knowledge creates a deceitful cave, transforming the student into an oedipus 2.0. the daily information explosion requires a well-skilled sense of selection. knowledge by itself is not sufficient to deal with the challenges of the complex structures of today’s multicultural world. in the context of austria, education degenerated into a job-orientated apprenticeship. dismissing all principles of personal development, it is in direct contravention of the austrian enlightenment that the habsburg had proudly implemented the national school system (bernard, 1971, p. 12). it has been the new endeavour to transform all students into functional and productive particles within the collective of the welfare state. school and university are experienced as unavoidable stages in life, to gain credentials for a specific track of employment. schools and universities have given up their mission to impart relevant expertise, and graduates obtain their know-how from the practice of the profession itself. the social consequences are large: although austria finds itself in a lucky place to have the best educational system in history, oecd evaluation results have shown huge demands in terms of education, i.e. economics (greimel-fuhrmann, 2016, p. 252) and young unemployment (radler, 2016, p. 25). i argue that today’s educational utilitarianism lacks most of all of the above mentioned purposeless purposiveness introduced by immanuel kant, a quality being imminent only in things of beauty (laird, 2009, p. 6). as a result, both teachers and students turn into a functional collective, depleting all powers of individualism. the study of john hattie (hattie, 2012, p. 34) affirms the teacher’s personality as a major player in the learning process, or, to put it in the words of simone weil, the teacher has to develop the countenance of waiting for the gift of attention, and embracing the individuality of himself, of the persons and things around him. the faculty of attention as singular act fails. it only bears fruit as a fundamental tone of awareness. impossible to be taught, it only can be imitated: if the teacher’s eyes are not open for the hidden beauty outside the cave, pupils’ eyes never will be (hadaway, 2016, p. 31). in conclusion, the current schooling system of austria is a systematic obliteration of individuality. school should be an incubator of individuality, which would balance the contemporary utilitarian trends. as explained, a renaissance of aesthetic education, following simone weil, sees the merit of the faculty of attention, and has the potential to be an essential contribution towards an alternative to the formal austrian schooling system. iris murdoch reminds us how far from simone weil we are (p. 330) at this moment. this distance arises, to a certain extent, from weil’s lack of immediate goal orientation, aesthetic education: a korean and an austrian perspective current issues in comparative education 71 which enables critics to condemn some ideas as not applicable to the actual needs of the classroom13. yet, every educational scientist who argues that a school system does not need philosophical concepts but only practical methods has not understood what is at stake. the austrian situation is due to decades of evasion and ignorance vis-a-vis the fundamental questions of human life, as we can see by their disregard for individuality in the curriculum. a process of rethinking is urgent, as schools today are to produce the leaders of tomorrow’s world. discussion and conclusion: global humanism against educational functionalism the identity as a researcher demands us to always pursue intellectual honesty with an objective attitude; however, we inevitably cannot escape from certain biases attributed to our regional and theoretical backgrounds. we always unconsciously read ideas and concepts as they are framed by contingencies in one’s environment (tan, 2016). however, the same phenomenon of increased common interest in aesthetic education in the different spatial dimensions of central europe and east asia as well as in the different temporal dimensions of contemporary thinkers jenefer robinson and simone weil, who lived at the beginning of the last century, indicates a tacit international resistance against the pragmatic and functionalist education that is underscored in today’s trend of global neoliberalism. taking account each individual context in a wider perspective by not only comparing the specific cases of each country, but also taking into consideration the historical and cultural backgrounds of these cases, we still find one fascinating resemblance: this resistance may be interpreted as an opposition against the approach of evaluating the accomplishment of the educated person in a reductive and quantitative way, and may be understood to ultimately stem from the intention to reclaim humanism in education. from the two examples of this paper, it becomes evident, considering morality and individuality as classical humanistic values of education, that there is a strong relationship between aesthetic education and humanism. however, as the korean case shows, aesthetic education in the asian context demands a reorientation towards traditional asian values, not classical european values of humanism. still, it can be spoken of a global humanism beyond the cultural-historical humanism of the occident. aesthetics and humanism are importantly linked together when art becomes the ultimate stronghold against the functionalism of schooling. art in its infinite variety possesses the power to unite different cultures, social groups and ages. if aesthetic education can provide an answer for korea’s lack of moral orientation and austria’s disregard for individuality, what can aesthetic education provide for the usa, china, australia, brazil and south africa? with this paper, we want to encourage teachers to renew their commitment to aesthetics as an alternative to formal educational contexts. jin choi and thomas sojer current issues in comparative education 72 although official educational reforms are supine and indebted to economic interests, every school lesson can be interrupted and opened up by a conscious break-in of the arts. about the authors: jin choi is a doctoral student in philosophy of education at teachers college, seoul national university, republic of south korea; thomas sojer is a doctoral student in christian philosophy at the university of lucerne, switzerland, currently working at the university of innsbruck, austria. both authors contributed equally to this work. contact: jin choi at zinchoi@snu.ac.kr and thomas sojer at thomas.sojer@uibk.ac.at references bell, r. h. (1993). simone weil's philosophy of culture: readings towards a divine humanity. cambridge: cambridge university press. bernard, p. p. (1971). jesuits and jacobins: enlightenment and enlightened despotism in austria. urbana: university of illinois press. caranfa, a. (2010). contemplative instruction and the gifts of beauty, love, and silence. educational theory, 60(5), 561-585. chandrasekhar, s. (2013). truth and beauty: aesthetics and motivations in science. chicago: university of chicago press. choi, j., & kwak, d. j. (2015). arts education as a form of sentimental education: in search of the educational values of experiences in arts. the korean journal of philosophy of education, 37(1), 117-137. damasio, a. (1994). descartes' error: emotion, reason and the human brain. münchen: random house. damasio, a. (2003). looking for spinoza: joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain. fort washington: harvest books. dupré, l. (2004). simone weil and platonism. the christian platonism of simone weil, notre dame: notre dame university press, 9-22. greimel-fuhrmann, b. (2016). financial literacy in austria. international handbook of financial literacy. berlin: springer. mailto:zinchoi@snu.ac.kr aesthetic education: a korean and an austrian perspective current issues in comparative education 73 hadaway, b. (2016). the education of attention. waco: baylor university press. hattie, j. (2012). visible learning for teachers: maximizing impact on learning. london: routledge. hopmann, s. (2016). country showcase: creating space for agency. the impact of school reform dynamis on austria’s leaders, teachers, learners and stakeholders. innsbruck: innsbruck university press. johnson, m. (1993). moral imagination: implications of cognitive science for ethics. illinois: the university of chicago press. kotva, s. (2015). gilles deleuze, simone weil and the stoic apprenticeship: education as a violent training. theory, culture & society, 32(7-8), 101-121. laird, s. (2009). musical hunger: a philosophical testimonial of miseducation. philosophy of music education review, 17(1), 4-21. liston, d. p. (2007). critical pedagogy and attentive love. studies in philosophy and education, 27(5), 387-392. mccullough, l. (2014). the religious philosophy of simone weil. new york: i. b. tauris. murdoch, i. (1992). metaphysics as a guide to morals. london: penguin. radler, h. & ban, l. (2016). austrian youth policy: advantages and challenges. vienna: fice. robinson, j. (2005). deeper than reason: emotion and its role in literature, music and art. oxford: clarendon. smith, r. (2001). simone weil. fifty modern thinkers on education: from piaget to the present, london: routledge, 69-72. tan, c. (2016). investigator bias and theory-ladenness in cross-cultural research: insights from wittgenstein. current issues in comparative education, 18(1), 83-95. tubbs, n. (2005). spiritual teacher. journal of philosophy of education, 39(2), 287-317. jin choi and thomas sojer current issues in comparative education 74 vorms, m. (2007). à l'épreuve du monde: l'éducation au sens large. simone weil la philosophie. les études philosophiques, 82(3), paris: presses universitaires de france. weil, s. (1947). la pesanteur et la grâce. paris : gallimard. weil, s. (1950). l’attente de dieu. paris : gallimard. weil, s. (1959). leçons de philosophie. paris : gallimard. weil, s. (2009). œuvres complètes. iv, paris : gallimard. 1 the colonial and imperialist legacy of korea impeded on the development agendas of korea. after gaining independence from japan in 1945 and the end of korean war in 1953, the rapid modernization in korea and subsequently, of the korean education system, brought about moral breakdown in korean society. the western way of learning through intellectual reasoning, and rational moral reasoning implied by it, tended to stand against the moral ethos of east asian tradition. the habituation of proper behaviors, and the cultivation of virtue with all manners (修身), are the foundation of (moral) education and the basis of a person’s character, in the korean moral imagination. conversely, western moral education emphasizes detached moral reasoning and stakes moral choices on it rather than habitual demeanors instructed by convention. as the new concept of morality imported from western education began to be increasingly accepted through the modernized school system in korea, the moral ethos that had previously been dominant in one’s moral orientation toward life has diminished tremendously. traditionally, koreans have a belief that our moral sense first develops with one’s inner nature and ends with oneself as well. this is the basic premises of confucian philosophy. on the other hand, modern western understanding of morality is based on the assumption that morality, or what makes one action moral, comes from outside oneself. moral principles, such as rational principles, exist outside somewhere or objectively, and thereby we have to accept and follow the principles as demanded. this is how our moral reasoning is required, i.e., in applying the objective moral principles to our actions. 2 jenefer robinson teaches and writes on topics in aesthetics and philosophical psychology, especially the theory of emotion. her book, deeper than reason (oup 2005) applied recent advances in emotion theory to issues in aesthetics, such as the expression of emotion in the arts, how music arouses emotions and moods, and how the emotional experience of literature and music in particular can be a mode of understanding and appreciation. jenefer is president of the american society for aesthetics. retrieved from: http://www.artsci.uc.edu/faculty-staff/listing/by_dept/philosophy.html?eid=robinsjm 3 one exemplifying approach in the impasse was the school reform petition in 2011, documented in the online journal the vienna review: http://www.viennareview.net/news/austria/school-reform-austria-petitions-forchange (15th april 2016). 4 this most scandalous and offensive aspect of weil’s thought shows a unique soteriological function of theodicy (mccullough, 2014, p. 150). 5 this paper postulates that there are two kinds of arts: art must be perceptible to the senses (music is to be heard, paintings are to be viewed, fragrance is to be scented), and yet there is a purely idealistic dimension to http://www.artsci.uc.edu/faculty-staff/listing/by_dept/philosophy.html?eid=robinsjm http://www.viennareview.net/news/austria/school-reform-austria-petitions-for-change http://www.viennareview.net/news/austria/school-reform-austria-petitions-for-change aesthetic education: a korean and an austrian perspective current issues in comparative education 75 art, an unspoken, unheard, odourless arts, like certain state of minds which contain the same presence of beauty as the perceptible arts, i.e. the beauty of a special moment. still the latter always is in need of a man of flesh and blood, therefore i use the term incarnation. 6 gravité describes the increasing distance between the world and god, e.g. beauty, truth and goodness. as a results false gods appear in the forms of collectives and cause violence, suffering and war. 7 « et l'art est issu de la religion. c'est grâce à la religion et à l'arts qu’on a pu arriver à la représentation de l'individuel. » (weil, 1959, p. 41) transl.: « and arts has its origin in religion. it is due to religion and arts that one can arrive at a representation of what is individual » 8 « non pas essayer de les interpréter, mais les regarder jusqu'à ce que la lumière jaillisse. » (weil, 1947, p. 136) transl.: “not to try to interpret them, but to look at them till the light suddenly dawns”. 9 weil’s term attention goes far beyond a common faculty of attentiveness. it is, most of all, a gift of mental insight, not a product of own efforts, although the disposition to receive the faculty of attention needs a lot of effort. attention leads to individuality, because it is the faculty to embrace beauty, which emanates from gravité. 10 « les lycéens, les étudiants qui aiment dieu ne devraient jamais dire: moi, j'aime les mathématiques ! moi, j'aime le français ! moi, j'aime le grec ! ils doivent apprendre à aimer tout cela, parce que tout cela fait croître cette attention qui, orientée vers dieu, est la substance même de la prière. » (weil, 1950, p. 72) transl.: « school children and students who love god should never say: “for my part, i like mathematics”; “i like french”; “i like greek.” they should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed towards god, is the very substance of prayer. » 11 concept: the human intelligence is able to conceive of the existence of god and enter into an interpersonal relationship with him. 12 « l'intelligence ne peut être menée que par le désir. pour qu'il y ait désir, il faut qu'il y ait plaisir et joie. l'intelligence ne grandit et ne porte de fruits que dans la joie. la joie d'apprendre est aussi indispensable aux études que la respiration aux coureurs.» (weil, 1950, pp. 75-76) transl.: « the intelligence can only be led by desire. for there to be desire, there must be pleasure and joy in the work. the intelligence only grows and bears fruit in joy. the joy of learning is as indispensable to study, as breathing is to running. » 13 « les études scolaires sont un de ces champs qui enferment une perle pour laquelle cela vaut la peine de vendre tous ses biens, sans rien garder à soi, afin de pouvoir l'acheter « (weil, 1950, p. 80) transl.: « education contains a pearl so precious that it is worthwhile to sell all our possessions, keeping nothing for ourselves, in order to be able to acquire it » current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 20, issue 2, special issue 2018 © 2018, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 20(2), 43-47. book review [1] big data in education: the digital future of learning, policy and practice by ben williamson. sage publications, 2017, 236 pp. $35.15 (paper). isbn 978-1-47394-799-3 zi hu teachers college, columbia university the future of education: a sociotechnical imaginary tablets in their hands, students in the class are working on projects specifically designed for each of them: john is drawing a rectangle and a cylinder on the screen, deciding which one will hold more water and is thus better as a gift of a vase for his friend; jane has her earphones plugged in, listening to speeches from lincoln to reagan and obama — jane’s goal for the new semester is to enhance her public speaking skills. in front of the classroom stands the teacher, ms. lee, holding a slightly different tablet: the algorithms embedded in her tablet allow her to see not only the real-time progress made by all students but also the students’ levels of concentration and other emotional responses, captured through the tiny bio-sensor stickers worn on their wrists. noticing jeff has a much higher level of boredom, ms. lee walks over and asks if he wants to switch from geometry to poetry, an area in which jeff has previously shown more excitement. before lunch, ms. lee goes in to the faculty room and logs onto an atm-shaped computer designed to track and design meaningful cognitive development trajectories for students — an artificial tutor termed joe by faculty members. joe reads that two students are missing their targets today. what to do with these two students? ms. lee clicks on the recommendations icon and it reads add more visually stimulating materials for sarah and adam this afternoon in their coding classes. ms. lee nods and decides that she is going to pick from the 15 widely used visual stimulants from singaporean classrooms. this above scenario looks like a sci-fi movie clip set in the far future. nevertheless, ben williamson’s recently published text big data in education: the digital future of learning, policy and practice notes that with the growing datafication and digitalization of education, and the momentum given to such visions of the future of education by powerful private and public sector actors, these sci-fi-like scenarios may not be far from our present time or reality. in fact, some of these visions are already in existence. williamson’s (2017) text offers a rich account of the most recent technological developments, particularly big data, algorithms and coding, learning analytics, artificial intelligence (ai), neuroeducation, and digital citizenship, as these relate to education. as hu current issues in comparative education 44 williamson (2017) clearly shows, these technological trends are evoking new and oftentimes radically different understandings of education. in other words, they are set to “disrupt” or “revolutionize” education (williamson, 2017, p. 2). as an example, in chapter 6, williamson (2017) looks at the growing interaction between psychology, education, big data analysis, and the resultant emergence of affective computation, which uses computer science methods to track psychological and behavioral changes in students, offering pre-emptive strategies to ‘nudge‘ behavior. devices, such as those to measure students’ moods, already exist, e.g., engagesense, a computer-mounted webcam connected to facial and vision algorithms, designed to measure students’ engagement levels through facial expressions and eye movement. in the case of engagesense, measurements are sent automatically to teachers in real time so that they can adjust their teaching to improve students’ engagement and minimize negative emotions (williamson, 2017, p. 134). these new visions of education, according to williamson, are guided by powerful sociotechnical imaginaries. drawing from jasanoff (2015) and many others (e.g., huxley, 2007; mager, 2015), williamson (2017) defines sociotechnical imaginaries as future visions of society as reflected in technical projects. often seen as a model for a preferred way of life and formation of society, these imaginaries exert significant power over the setting of aspirations and norms, in effect shaping behavior. as such, these imaginaries have important implications in multiple dimensions of education. notably, as data is collected in larger volumes and increasingly analyzed and used in education, it [data] becomes one of the most significant education policy instruments. as a corollary, education policymaking has started to manifest features primarily attached to big data, e.g., a preference for quick fixes; shorter policy cycles or fast policies; and increasing porosity between different locales in policy-formulation and implementation. as education policy-making becomes more data-driven and evidence-based, we are also witnessing a governance turn wherein the authority over policy-making is increasingly dispersed or redistributed from governments to actors with access or ownership of educational data, be it international organizations or private companies. one prime example is the growing influence of the oecd in the field of education with its rapidly expanding programme for international student assessment (pisa), the results of which are now used as performance indicators of countries’ educational systems as well as predictors of national economic competitiveness. data-based evidence has also become increasingly used as an accountability measure. in particular, williamson (2017) invokes the notion of ‘intimate accountability ‘to reflect the shift in educational accountability schemes from bureaucratic practices enacted in distant governmental offices to more ‘intimate’ calculative practices closer to the action to be measured, e.g. schools now need to provide highly intimate details about students, teachers and school-level factors and these details are also being discussed in intimate spaces, like the home. book review: big data in education current issues in comparative education 45 whose imaginary and what consequences? the belief that big data can help transform and improve education is based upon the premise that data is neutral and scientific and thus reliable and trustworthy evidence [2]. williamson (2017) refutes this premise and, at the risk of repeating himself, in almost all chapters reiterates that big data is both socially produced and productive. he contends that the collection, analysis and use of big data is by no means neutral or objective but affected by a wide array of factors marked by clear ideologies and values, begging the question: whose educational imaginary is being enacted? relatedly, williamson (2017) pushes us to look beyond data and to examine the information infrastructure that underpins the production, circulation and use of educational data, but which remains hidden or invisible most of the time. indeed, the infrastructure itself can be saturated with built-in biases. as an example, one might consider how an anglo-american oriented education measurement metric may privilege individualism over collaboration or collectivism, a trait more valued by asian education systems such as in japan and china. it is conceivable that the latter trait [collectivism], among others, could be devalued or overlooked in the metric. yet, when such measurement is finalized and presented, the many decisions and preferences that guided the formation of the measurement become self-evident and taken-for-granted. this example helps shed light on what williamson (2017) means by the social production of data. by arguing that data is socially productive, williamson (2017) highlights the function of data as being normative and performative. namely, data does not just describe the current state of affairs, it actively constructs the social world by privileging certain interpretative frameworks, setting norms and articulating new concerns and directions for future, via the built-in classifications, preferences and decisions embedded in the data infrastructure (see also gorur, 2017). it is because of this productive power that williamson calls us to take more seriously the moral dimension of educational big data. this is imperative as data and technology can exacerbate existing inequalities or create new sets of educational problems. for instance, williamson (2017) notes how classdojo, a software designed to help teachers collect, store and visualize data about students’ behavior in classrooms, can contribute to normalizing the constant surveillance of students in schools while encouraging teachers to reward only observable behavior, particularly behaviors that are aligned with the psychological norms inscribed into the algorithm. or, as another example, if indeed bigdata-supported personalized learning can improve student learning, student groups who have no access to such data or technology may be further marginalized. these troubling issues echo the call by other scholars to engage more critically and productively with increasing standardization and usage of data in education (e.g., gorur, 2012; sellar, 2015). as williamson (2017) states, we need to be cautious, if not downright skeptical, and a little hu current issues in comparative education 46 resistant to the so-called transformative potential of these new technological developments (p. 8). given the multidisciplinary nature of educational big data, williamson’s (2017) ability to critically examine these new technological developments in education from an interdisciplinary perspective is yet another strength of the book. drawing on science and technology studies (sts), for instance, williamson (2017) shows how imaginaries of education embody a mixture of interests from different groups, e.g., private companies driven by profits through the selling of their educational products, and governments motivated to use big data to enhance governance through tracking and nudging citizen’s behavior. studies of these different actors, and their agendas, encourage us to move from surface analysis of data usage in education, to exploration of earlier data-making stages, which can allow us to peek inside the black box of the rapidly expanding global education industry, and its increasing collection and use of educational data (komljenovic and robertson, 2017). to conclude, there is no denying that new technological developments have significantly reconfigured the social world, education included, and the trend is unstoppable. the study of educational big data has indeed become a worthy subject in its own right (see busch, 2011; easterling, 2014) and as williamson (2017) rightly points out, the field of education needs to closely engage itself in these topics, and new agenda for educational research should be initiated. further, it is crucial to continue to engage with diverse disciplinary views to better understand the role of technology and big data in education (e.g., gorur, 2017). some practical questions related to this new educational research agenda include: how to bring together scholars and researchers from various fields to undertake more collaborative interdisciplinary studies of educational big data? and, given the dispersal of authority over education policy-making from the government to other powerful actors like private companies and international organizations, how to coordinate and regulate actions of these non-state actors? lastly, as we take more seriously the moral dimension of education big data and technology, what kind of ethical guidelines should be put in place to ensure that educational technological developments are facilitating quality and equitable education for all? zi (grace) hu is a ph.d. student in the international and comparative education department at teachers college, columbia university. her research interests include sociology of education, global education policies, educational big data and comparative education. her current research involves international large-scale assessments and education policy transfer between china and england. book review: big data in education current issues in comparative education 47 notes [1] i would like to thank camilla addey, oren pizmony-levy and regina cortina for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this article. special thanks also to my ice doctoral cohort who were there for my presentation of my understanding of this book. i also appreciate the careful comments by the reviewer of the current issues in comparative education. [2] see porter (1995) for a brilliant critical analysis of the power and prestige of quantification methods, i.e., numbers, in the modern world. the pursuit of objectivity in science and public life lends to the trust in numbers and vice versa. yet the notion of objectivity itself is, according to porter, weakly defined; it is anything but impersonal and is instead saturated with deliberate human and political decisions. references busch, l. (2011). standards: recipes for reality. cambridge and london: the mit press. gorur, r. (2012). the invisible infrastructure of standards. critical studies in education, 2012, pp. 1-11. gorur, r. (2017). towards productive critique of large-scale comparisons in education. critical studies in education, 58(3), pp. 341-355. easterling, k. (2014). extrastatecraft: the power of infrastructure. space. verso books. huxley, m. (2007). geographies of governmentality. in crampton, j. and elden, s. (eds), space, knowledge and power: foucault and geography. aldershot: ashgate, pp. 185 202. jasanoff, s. (2015). future imperfect: science, technology, and the imaginations of modernity. in jasonoff, s. and kim, s-h. (eds), dreamscapes of modernity: sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power. chicago, il: university of chicago press, pp. 1-33. komljenovic, j. and robertson, s. (2017). making global education markets and trade. globalisation, societies and education, 15(3), pp. 289-295. mager, a. (2016). search engine imaginary: visions and values in the co-production of search technology and europe. social studies of science. available at http://sss.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/10/26/030631271667143. porter, t. (1995). trust in numbers: the pursuit of objectivity in science and public life. princeton, ny and chichester: princeton university press. sellar, s. (2015). data infrastructure: a review of expanding accountability systems and large-scale assessments in education. discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 36(5), pp. 765-777. http://sss.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/10/26/030631271667143 early childhood care and education: worldwide challenges and progresses volume 11 / 2009 issn 1523-1615 available at http://www.tc.edu/cice editorial introduction 3 early childhood care and education: worldwide challenges and progresses yoon lee and matthew hayden articles 6 early childhood care and education in zambia: an integral part of educational provision? carolyn m. thomas and matthew a.m. thomas 15 incorporating indigenous knowledge and practice into ecce: a comparison of programs in the gambia, senegal and mali alicia ranck soudée 24 the better early childhood development program: an innovative brazilian public policy alessandra schneider, vera regina ramires, maria da graça gomes paiva, and leila almeida 33 a new look on early child care and education (ecce) as joint responsibility maria da graça gomes paiva, alessandra schneider, maria lúcia salle machado, and pollyana vilela duarte perinazzo 42 about the contributors 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 11 (2008-2009) editorial board managing editor kathleen keenan senior editors stephanie bengtsson tricia a. callender matthew hayden antonia mandry michelle morais de sa’e silva hakim williams associate editors maria jose bermeo lauren connolly dina paulson gretchen wietmarschen web and publications editor andrew shiotani international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, ingrid gogolin, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www.tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2009 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 11: 24-32. the better early childhood development program: an innovative brazilian public policy alessandra schneider vera regina ramires maria da graça gomes paiva leila almeida unesco, porto alegre, brazil this paper presents the pioneering experience of the programa primeira infância melhor (the better early childhood development program), also known as “pim” that has been developed since 2003 in the state of rio grande do sul, brazil. pim’s goal is to “provide guidance to families, based on their own culture and experiences, to allow them to promote their children’s holistic development from pregnancy to six years of age with emphasis on the first three years of life”. pim has been implemented so far in over 200 towns in rio grande do sul through partnerships between state and local governments with technical cooperation provided by the unesco brasilia office. this paper in addition to outlining the tenets of pim also presents an updated overview of brazilian early childhood in terms of education, health and social indicators. scientific findings in the field of early childhood and results from other programs focusing on this crucial period of development are also discussed in this work. the programa primeira infância melhor (the better early childhood development program) or “pim” started in the state of rio grande do sul (rs) in april 2003. pim’s main goal was to promote children’s holistic development in their early childhood years. pim is one of the most important public policies currently implemented in the region. headed by the state department of health, pim serves as a coordinating conduit between three key outfits: the state departments of education, culture, justice and social development. pim was implemented through a partnership between state and local governments and is structured around three central tenets: family, community and intersectoriality. the program’s goal is to “provide guidance to families, based on their own culture and experiences, to allow them to promote their children’s holistic development from pregnancy to six years of age with emphasis on the first three years of life”. priority is usually given to areas with socially vulnerable and at-risk populations, a high number of children aged 0 to 6 years and pregnant women, high rates of infant mortality and lack of early childhood care and education (ecce) facilities. as of august 2008, pim has been implemented in almost 50% of all towns in rs, reaching 45,750 families and 68,625 children. with the support and technical cooperation of the brasilia office of the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco), pim operates with the aim of attaining the first goal of the world declaration on education for all as outlined in the 2000 dakar framework for action, namely “expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children” (unesco, 2001). the 2000 dakar framework for action expresses the international community’s commitment to a broad-based strategy for ensuring that the basic learning needs of every child, youth and adult are met within a generation and sustained thereafter. in 2006, pim officially became part of the state policy for the promotion and development of early childhood in rio grande do sul with the passing of state law #12544. current issues in comparative education 25 the better early childhood development program child protection legislation and the early childhood situation in brazil according to the national household survey (brazilian institute of geography and statistics, 2007), the estimated brazilian population for 2006 was 187,228,000. there were 14,210,000 children aged 0 to 4 years, accounting for 7.59% of the population. the estimated number of children aged 5 to 9 years was 16,734,000, or 8.9% of the population. approximately 28.9 million families in brazil have children and adolescents under age 14, almost half of all households in the country (48.9 %). these families comprise a particularly vulnerable segment of the population in terms of poverty. according to the brazilian institute for geography and statistics (ibge, 2007), 25.1% of all brazilian families in 2006 were considered poor, meaning that they had a monthly per capita income of less than half the national minimum wage. this percentage increases to 40.4% among families with children aged 0 to 14 years, and is even more dramatic if we consider only families with children in early childhood (0-6 years), 45.4% of which subsist with a monthly per capita income of less than half the national minimum wage. in rio grande do sul, such families constitute 33.6% of the population. brazilian children aged 0 to 6 make up one of the most vulnerable segments of the country’s population, if not the most vulnerable, and should be prioritized in governmental and civil society actions. therefore, it is clear that brazil has challenges to overcome regarding its early childhood population. besides the poverty experienced by most of these children, the country must reduce infant mortality and malnutrition rates. enforcement of the right to a birth certificate for all children, as well as the provision of prenatal care and humanized delivery services to pregnant women are far below expected levels. similarly, the effective guarantee of children’s rights as established in the 1988 federal constitution and in the 1990 statute of the child and the adolescent (estatuto da criança e do adolescente eca), as well as the reduction of developmental risks and domestic violence rates, and the promotion of protective factors to our children’s development and mental health are aspects that demand attention and efforts from governments and society. child labour and the proper provision of quality early childhood care and education (ecce) are also issues yet to be solved. in the field of early childhood education, the national education act (law of directives and bases of national education ldben) has impacted important changes since 1996. nursery schools and pre-schools, that previously were within the purview of social service agencies, are now officially recognized as a right of all children and became part of the basic education cycle in brazil (ldben, 1996). the ldben established two modalities of ecce provision: nursery schools (for children aged 0 to 3 years) and pre-schools (ages 4 to 6). existing and new facilities are expected to adjust to the guidelines set in the new legislation and transition from basic care to educational practices, observing a minimum quality standard and ensuring access to all children. according to the summary of social indicators (ibge, 2007), school attendance among children aged 0 to 6 is increasing in brazil. in 2006, the percentage of children aged 0 to 6 enrolled in ecce programs reached 43% (compared to 27.5% in 1996). however, there are significant differences regarding access to school between age groups. only 15.5% of children in the 0-3 years group attended nursery schools in 2006, compared with 76% of children aged 4 to 6 that had access to pre-school in the same year. poor children are the most affected by lack of access to ecce resources. the 1988 brazilian federal constitution recognizes a child as a full bearer of rights and as an individual in a unique stage of development. constitutional article 227 establishes the principle 26 current issues in comparative education a. schneider, v. ramires, m. paiva, and l. almeida of the best interests of the child by declaring that ...it is the duty of the family, of society and of the state to ensure children and adolescents, with absolute priority, the right to life, health, nourishment, education, leisure, professional training, culture, dignity, respect, freedom, and family and community life, as well as to guard them from all forms of negligence, discrimination, exploitation, violence, cruelty and oppression. (brazil, 1989) nonetheless, local authorities and legislators in power since 2003 have been aware that an advanced legislation is not enough to ensure the compliance and enforcement of all of its provisions. more than that is required. it takes political willingness, sensitivity, involvement and commitment by those in power and social participation and control, as well as investments and coordination between all spheres of government, and more. in this context, pim stands out as an experience in public policy that aims to bring that legislation to life, effectively guaranteeing the rights of children and promoting a comprehensive framework for their development. current scientific knowledge about child development it can be said that there is a general consensus about the importance of investments to support ecce and early childhood, in other words, the period from conception to six years of age. several studies and reports of successful experiences corroborate this statement (coffey, 2007; grunewald & rolnick, 2007; love, schochet & meystroth, 2002; kirpal, 2002; mustard, 2002; schneider & terra, 2001; tarullo, 2002; young, 2002; 2007). every year, neuroscience research provides new evidence that the early years of development set the foundation for the skills and competencies that will influence learning abilities, behaviour and health throughout life (mccain & mustard, 1999). at birth, the human brain is not yet fully organized and the maturation of brain structures is an ongoing process throughout childhood. brain development happens in predetermined stages for each function, basically through the increase and specialization of connections between neurons. formation and reinforcement of neural connections (synapses) are the key tasks of early brain development, particularly in the critical period from birth to 3 years of age, when 90% of brain synapses are formed. the fine wiring of neural networks in the human brain depends on each individual’s specific interactions with their surroundings. environmental influence on the brain changes with age but the deepest and most lasting effects take place in the early stages of postnatal development. as brazelton and greenspan (2002) have pointed out: every child’s early years are, at the same time, the most critical and most vulnerable ones in relation to his/her healthy development. our research, as well as the research of others, has demonstrated that, it is during the early years that the ingredients for intellectual, emotional and moral growth are defined. if not, it is also true that during the child’s growth he/she might be capable of acquiring such talents but the chances get lower and costs get higher as time goes by. (pp. 11-12) one of the most significant findings in this field is the importance of external stimuli for the organization of neural networks (shore, 2000). scientific research confirms what many parents already knew: the way they interact with their children in their early years of life and the experiences they provide or encourage have a significant impact on each child’s development. child development is a multidimensional process that includes a psychomotor dimension (the current issues in comparative education 27 the better early childhood development program ability to move and coordinate bodily movement); a cognitive dimension (the ability to think and reason); an emotional dimension (the ability to feel and build self-confidence); and a social dimension (the ability to establish bonds and relationships to others). these dimensions are interrelated and should be approached in an integrated fashion. all children develop according to a general sequence or schema, but the speed and quality of this process varies from child to child and from culture to culture (myers, 1992). the guiding principle is that every child’s development requires educational opportunities as well as health care, nutrition, and safety concerns. individual achievements in terms of development and learning emerge from a shared process, since they depend both on the kind and quality of interpersonal interactions and the activities mediated by adults and peers. based on these interactions, the child will develop the skills and competencies to gradually master more complex levels of action, thought, emotion and social relationships. grunewald and rolnick (2007) describe the following requirements for successful large-scale programmes geared towards early childhood: (a) focusing on children at risk and encouraging direct parental involvement; (b) promoting a long-term commitment to early childhood development; and (c) fostering innovative and high quality practices. among indicators of childhood risk, the authors list low family income, violence or negligence in the home, low parental educational level, low birth weight, and parental chemical addiction (grunewald & rolnick, 2007). as previously mentioned, such conditions affect a significant share of the child population in brazil. for all these reasons, it is safe to say that “the provision of good-quality early childhood care and support is essential for all children, but particularly important for the poor and vulnerable, to compensate for disadvantage” (unesco, 2007). as economist, and 2000 nobel prize laureate, james heckman observes, investing in early childhood, notably in the most vulnerable young children “is a rare public policy initiative that promotes fairness and social justice” (heckman in unesco, 2007, p. 25). investment in ecce programs is therefore an ethical, social and economic imperative for governments and societies. in the next section, an outline of pim is presented as it was developed in rio grande do sul, brazil. programa primeira infância melhor – pim (the better earlychildhood development program) pim, headed by the state department of health, coordinates efforts by the state departments of education, culture, justice and social development. the program’s concept and implementation reflects a deep recognition of the relevance and complexity of child development and is fully committed to promoting it through the articulation of the necessary sectors and resources. the program’s basic premise is that child development is a complex process that comprises several dimensions: neurological, affective, cognitive and social. it cannot be decontextualized; rather, a child’s environment, the family and the community it belongs to play a core role. similarly, the broader social, cultural, historical, political and economic context will also have significant implications for this process. pim was strongly based on lessons learned from the cuban programme “educa a tu hijo” (cuba, ministry of education, 2002). defined as a non-formal, non-institutional, communitybased, family-oriented early child development (ecd) program, of an intersectorial nature, the program has operated under the responsibility of the ministry of education in cuba since 28 current issues in comparative education a. schneider, v. ramires, m. paiva, and l. almeida its implementation from 1992-94. focusing on the effective and decisive participation of the families and communities as the most important caregivers and educators from 0 to 6, “educa tu hijo’s model”, with the support of trained voluntary cuban workers as home visitors, has been successfully implemented not only in cuba but in other countries, though with some cultural adaptations. the assumption is that both harmonic and holistic development of every human being depends largely on how he/she had been nourished, nurtured and educated in the early years, either in the family context or at day-care centers. by setting up learning environments in which family members, the child and the home visitor interact together through playing activities and games; by exploring the culturally-bound potentials of every family cultural setting, “educa tu hijo” has also contributed to family awareness-raising on the importance of their participation for the betterment of their children’s comprehensive and healthy development. consequently, a new paradigm was claimed to be applied as a guide to the conception and implementation of actions in the fields of health, education, social services and culture in that country. specialized acute interventions are still carried out when required, but the main focus has shifted to an interdisciplinary and intersectorial paradigm that takes into consideration the complex aspects of early childhood health and education. likewise pim is organized around a structural troika: family, community and intersectoriality. the family is viewed as the most important primary human group in the early years of an individual’s life. it is an affective unit of relationship, care, protection and education, not necessarily based on blood or legal ties. the importance of family becomes even more critical in light of the fact that almost 75.28% of the population aged 0 to 6 years has no access to early childhood education facilities in rio grande do sul. (ibge, 2007; ministry of education/inep, 2007) therefore, pim plays an important role in supporting families, providing them guidance and promoting the holistic development of their children. the program views the community as a central space for potentialities and human, material and institutional resources. its customs, traditions and cultural production are key elements for the education, health and development of children. in a discussion of children’s essential growth, learning and developmental needs, brazelton and greenspan included the need for stable and supportive communities and for cultural continuity. in the authors’ words, “how can we nurture our children with the feeling of respect for their own cultural singularity, while helping them to acquire the linguistic skills and the required abilities in math, history, etc. to perform well in the society as a whole?” in their understanding, whoever worries about the child’s wellbeing should also question which steps must be followed in order to motivate the communities to become cohesive, secure and reflective rather than insecure, fragmented or untrustworthy settings (brazelton & greenspan, 2002:164 and 166). the principle of intersectoriality as one of the structuring axes of pim stems from the realization that the fragmentation of initiatives, the excessive sectorization and the emphasis in specialized actions result in inadequate policies and anecdotal programs that waste resources and have reduced efficacy and effectiveness. in the pim framework, intersectoriality is defined as a coordinated network of actions to support pregnant women, children aged 0 to 6, and their families. intersectoriality is considered a key element to the success of pim. integration among governmental departments of health, education, social services and culture, as well as the full commitment of administrators in all spheres, are gradually converting pim into a reality that is not only feasible but also increasingly promising. moreover, the program’s articulation with the second and third current issues in comparative education 29 the better early childhood development program sectors has also contributed to positive results. pim provides assisted families with two modalities of care: individual and group care, complemented by a community-based approach. all parental guidance and child stimulation activities are planned and carried out in a playful way, appropriate to children’s ages and/ or women’s stages of pregnancy, and take into consideration the developmental dimensions targeted by the program, its theoretical framework, and the local context and cultural aspects. moreover, all planning is based on the monitoring of developmental gains that comprises the initial diagnosis of child development and further assessments. both the initial diagnosis and subsequent assessments use developmental indicators based on the selected cognitive, motor, socio-affective and language dimensions. they inform the planning and implementation of activities, which must be adapted to suit the characteristics and needs of each child/family. the individual care modality is designed for families with children aged 0 to 2 years and 11 months, and pregnant women assisted by the program. children are seen once a week and pregnant women are seen once every two weeks in home visits lasting approximately 1 hour. each visit has three distinct stages: a review of the previous visit and an exploration of the present topic (during which the home visitor explains the benefits of the proposed activities for the various developmental aspects of the child and/or for the mother-baby dyad); the actual activity, observed and supported by the family visitor; and the final assessment stage. additional reference material for visits is provided by pim guide books: the family guide book, the expectant mother’s guide book, the expectant mother’s guide book for home visitors, and the guide book for mtgs, monitors and home visitors. the group care modality is designed for families with children aged 3 to 6 and/or pregnant women in weekly and monthly schedules, respectively. meetings can happen in community centers, church halls, parks, and homes big enough to accommodate all participants and include games and playful educational activities planned by home visitors under the supervision of pim technical coordination team. the main goal of the group modality for pregnant women is to provide relevant information on topics such as child delivery and the importance of breastfeeding, as well as to promote socialization and the exchange of experiences. pim is currently implemented in 224 towns in rs. over 60% (323) of the 496 towns in the state have qualified to implement it, an indicator of good program coverage. in august 2008, 45,750 families were being assisted by the program, including 68,625 children and 5,490 expectant mothers receiving care during pregnancy. as a result of the program’s consolidation and effectiveness, a state law has been passed state law #12544 – so as to guarantee the continuity of investments in early childhood at the local level. this law establishes pim as a public policy that aims at promoting the holistic development for children from pregnancy to the age of six as a complement to family and community actions. final considerations the actions and proven effectiveness of pim have opened a new chapter in the lives of all children and families it has assisted, with support from communities and all sectors directly involved and significant repercussions for society at large. guided by ethical and democratic principles and recognizing the importance of both interdisciplinarity and intersectoriality in the promotion of a healthy development for children, the program fosters growth and increases the likelihood of high-quality educational experiences. in doing so, it contributes to a productive and successful 30 current issues in comparative education a. schneider, v. ramires, m. paiva, and l. almeida future, preventing and minimizing developmental and learning difficulties and reducing the risk of school dropout, violence, and conflicts with the law, among others. the pioneering experience of this program has shown that it is possible to mobilize public administrators and society in general to implement early childhood-oriented public policies. the development of pim has taught us important lessons. the first one concerns the efficacy of alliances between state and local governments to coordinate actions to bring about desired results according to specific local characteristics and needs, based on the permanent technical and financial support of the state, which is due to its intersectorial nature. cooperation with multilateral agencies can strengthen a program both internally and externally as it promotes the exchange and dissemination of successful experiences in a given field. community involvement is a key factor in the implementation of pim. participation promotes access to families at the same time as it fosters awareness to the cause of early childhood and establishes a joint network of efforts. the family is the core element of pim, and experience has shown the importance and relevance of this particular focus. in a country like brazil that faces such serious problems of extreme social inequalities, violence and disregard for the most basic of human rights, investing in early childhood is a political strategy of utmost significance. the results will surely be seen in the short, medium and long-term, going beyond the history of each individual child and contributing to much needed changes in the country’s future. as for the implications beyond brazil, pim has recently crossed the borders of our country by opening up the bbc world first steps series, with a video named “catch them young”, reporting the advantages of comprehensive care and education with a pim family that live in caxias do sul, in the northeast of rio grande do sul. besides this commercial presentation, the program has also been reported on at the 9th annual conference of the international step by step association (issa), held in budapest in 2008, as an individual paper entitled: “pim brazil: a public policy with a multi-sectoral approach to ecce on families and children at risk” (almeida, 2008). finally, in the field of comparative and international education, pim is, internally, undergoing a thorough process of monitoring and evaluation regarding its performance and achievements. externally, the program is also engaged in the canadian study with the early development instrument (edi), together with monterey/mexico and canada, so as to find out between and within country comparisons, the edi results of children 5-6 years of age enrolled in ecd programs and their relationship between edi scores and school performance in grades 3 and 4. such comparisons, using a standardized assessment tool as edi, will contribute to show the importance of universal early child development program for all families with young children. references almeida, l. (2008). pim brazil: a public policy with a multi-sectoral approach to ecce on families and children at risk. 9th annual conference of the international step by step association (issa), held in budapest (october 9-12,2008). brazil. constitution of the federal republic of brazil. (1989) lei federal de 1988. 3. ed. são paulo: jalovi. current issues in comparative education 31 the better early childhood development program brazil. ministry of education & national institute of education studies, anisio, teixeira, brazil. (2007). censo escolar: sinopse estatística da educação básica [school census: statistical synopsis of basic education]. brasília: mec/inep. retrieved september 20, 2007, from http://www.inep.gov. br/basica/censo/default.asp. brazelton, t. b. & greenspan, s. i. (2002) as necessidades essenciais das crianças. [children’s essencial needs]. porto alegre: artmed. coffey, c. (2007). early child development is a business imperative. in: young, m. e. (ed.). early child development: from measurement to action (pp. 27-34). washington d.c: the world bank. ministry of education, cuba. (2002). educa a tu hijo [educate your child]. havana: mined, united nations children’s fund (unicef), latin american reference center for preschool education (celep). fundo das nações unidas para a infância. (2005) situação da infância brasileira [situation of the brazilian childhood], 2006. brasília: fundo das nações unidas para a infância. grunewald, r. & rolnick, a. (2007). a productive investment: early child development. in young, m. e. (ed.). early child development: from measurement to action (pp. 15-26). washington, d.c.: the world bank. brazilian institute of geography and statistics. (2006) pesquisa nacional por amostra de domicílios [national household survey] – pnad. brasília: autor. retrieved on september 25, 2007 from http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/populacao/trabalhoerendimento/ pnad2006/default.shtm. _____. (2007) síntese de indicadores sociais: uma análise das condições de vida da população brasileira [summary of social indicators: an analysis of the brazilian population’s living conditions]. rio de janeiro: autor. kirpal, s. (2002) communities can make a difference: five cases across continents. in: young, m. e. (ed.) investing in our children’s future (pp. 293-362). washington d.c.: the world bank. love, j. m., schochet, p. z., & meckstroth, a. l (2002). investing in effective childcare and education: lessons from research. in young, m. e. (ed.). investing in our children’s future (pp. 145194). washington d.c.: the world bank. mccain, m. & mustard, j. f. (1999). early years study: reversing the real brain drain. toronto: the canadian institute for advanced research. mustard, j. f. (2003) desarrollo infantil inicial: salud, aprendizage, y comportamiento a lo largo de la vida [earlychildhood develoment: health, learning and behavior through life]. in: foro internacional primera infancia y desarrollo: el desafio de la decada, colombia, bogotá. anais… bogotá: icbf, alcaldía mayor de bogotá, dabs, unicef, save the children, cinde. myers, r. (1992). the twelve who survive. london: routledge. national educational bases and guidelines law (ldben), 1996. national education plan: law 32 current issues in comparative education a. schneider, v. ramires, m. paiva, and l. almeida 10.172/2001. articles 21 and 22. united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization. (2007) bases sólidas: educação e cuidados na primeira infância; relatório de monitoramento global de educação para todos [strong foundations: early childhood care and education. efa global monitoring report]– ept. brasília: autor. united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization. (2001) educação para todos: o compromisso de dakar [education for all: dakar framework for action]. brasília: consed, ação educativa. available from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001275/127509porb. pdf. schneider, a. & terra, o. (2001) um começo melhor para todos: oportunidades e conquistas dos programas de intervenção na primeira infância [a better beginning for all: opportunities and achievements of early childhood programs]. monografia (especialização em saúde perinatal, educação e desenvolvimento do bebê) – universidade de brasília, df, brasil. shore, r. (2000). repensando o cérebro: novas visões sobre o desenvolvimento inicial do cérebro [re-thinking the brain: new perspectives on the early development of the brain]. porto alegre: mercado aberto. tarullo, l. b. (2007) effective early childhood programs: the u.s. head start experience. in young, m. e. (ed.). early child development: from measurement to action (pp. 219-232). washington, d.c.: the world bank. vygotsky, l. s. (1987) pensamento e linguagem [thinking and language]. são paulo: martins fontes. world bank. (2002) brazil – early childhood development: focus on the impact of preschools. brasília: banco mundial / departamento de desenvolvimento humano. brasil/unidade de gerenciamento do país, região da américa latina e do caribe. young, m. e. (2007) early child development: from measurement to action. washington, d.c.: the world bank. young, m.e. (ed.). (2002) investing in our children’s future. washington, d.c.: the world bank. copyright © 2009 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved © 2002 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 66 december 1, 2000 the contributions of cultural theory to the study of aids and education frances vavrus teachers college, columbia university the social and biomedical dimensions of aids coalesce in the field of education as students and teachers struggle to make sense out of the multiple, and oftentimes conflicting, messages about the disease circulating inside and outside their classrooms. johnny sachs (this issue) provides a poignant example of this struggle in the case of south africa, where president thabo mbeki has questioned the prevailing view that hiv causes aids and can be effectively treated with anti-retroviral drugs. although he has recently moved away from this position, at least in public, the president's views present south africans with mixed messages about the prevention and treatment of aids. controversy about the etiology of the disease extends beyond pretoria, with scientists, journalists, and politicians in many countries engaging in lively discussions over the process by which siv (simian immunodeficiency virus), found in certain nonhuman primates, was transferred from chimpanzees to humans (cohen, 2000). even more acrimonious are current debates among health officials, aids activists, and pharmaceutical companies over drug pricing and patent contracts for triple therapy medications in the third world (rosenberg, 2001). these debates among prominent politicians, researchers, and activists highlight an important sociocultural aspect of the epidemic: what one 'knows' about aids and how one acts based on that knowledge depends on socially-constructed messages about the disease that are meaningful for an individual. in other words, "our social constructions of aids (in terms of global devastation, the threat to civil rights, the emblem of sex and death, the 'gay plague,' the postmodern condition, whatever) are based not on objective, scientifically determined 'reality' but on what we are told about this reality" (treichler, 1999, p.15). we need to study schooling as part of the process by which young people link the biomedical 'reality' of aids from the official curriculum with the social 'reality' of their peers to form their own constructions of personal risk. institutions of formal and non-formal education serve as critical sites in the epidemic because they are places where biomedical messages about the disease become reinterpreted and incorporated into the social world of adolescents. in this article, i draw upon the valuable material presented in this volume of cice to explore the relationship between the social and the biomedical--between representations of aids and the deadly disease itself--in order to develop more efficacious health education programs. i begin by tracing my journey of understanding about the disease and conclude with a discussion of how this journey has shaped my current approach to the study of aids in africa1. throughout the article, i attempt to show that cultural theory can inform empirical research and advocacy about a problem that extends far beyond the biomedical arena. as i began working on this piece, i was struck by the parallels between my life course and the course of the aids epidemic as it has unfolded in mainstream american media over the past two decades. in the early 1980s, as a college student at a conservative the contributions of cultural theory to the study of aids and education current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 67 midwestern university, i considered myself immune from this new illness described in the newspaper because it was a 'gay disease' that could only be transmitted from one man to another. then in the mid 1980s, when young ryan white became infected through a blood transfusion and stories of female prostitutes were featured in the press, the term aids entered popular campus discourse. however, aids was still viewed by the heterosexual majority as something that affected 'them' rather than 'us.' citing reporter david black, treichler (1999) argues that media accounts of aids during the 1980s presented it as the domain of "homos, heroin addicts, haitians, and hookers," or the "4-h club" (p. 53). since 'heterosexuals' and 'hoosiers' were not yet regular club members, we escaped biomedical scrutiny and failed to scrutinize our own practices because they did not fit into high-risk categories of "sexual identities and behaviors" (de sousa and cruz, this issue). though absent from media and medical reports at the time, "family women" and conjugal aspirants from bloomington to brazil were being infected by their bisexual male partners even though these men may not have defined themselves as bisexual (de sousa and cruz, this issue). it was in this context that aids finally hit home, when a former college sweetheart was found dead in his san francisco apartment several years after graduation. the college's safe-sex brochures, predicated on a rigid dualism between heterosexual and homosexual, failed to introduce the possibility that sexual identity was fluid and multifaceted. this is not surprising because sex education programs at the college were "developed from the top" by nurses, doctors, and public health officials with little input from the young people whose lives were being affected by engaging in unsafe sex (kelly, this issue). thus, despite the best intentions of school officials to present the student body with up-to-date medical 'facts,' their lack of engagement with co-eds in program development led to dangerous omissions about sexual identity and high-risk behavior. the participatory methods described by kelly in his article on zambia would have provided critical information about youth culture and sexuality that was missing from the college's public health program. as aids continued to take its toll on individuals in my social world, i slowly began to understand its effects on the collective body, especially in africa. i started graduate school with a specialization in african studies just as aids on the continent was beginning to make headlines in the united states. because traveling to africa was considered rather exotic by my neighbors and family, they inundated me with stories from their local papers to prepare me for my first trip to east africa in 1990. these tales of disease and despair on the continent stood in stark contrast to the studies of strength and resistance i had been reading about in my courses on african history, so i was anxious to discover the 'real' africa for myself. yet as in the case of aids, i saw what i was conditioned to see through coursework, the media, and my conversations with other american students on this study-abroad program. my letters home from tanzania and kenya were full of references to "households" and "kinship" rather than to families; to "rituals" rather than to spontaneous celebrations; and to "aids" as the most pressing health issue for africans while failing to see the toll that diarrheal diseases and malaria were also taking on the lives of those i met. ten years later, i can reflect on this experience as the beginning of a journey whose goal has been to understand the interplay between the social and biomedical dimensions of frances vavrus 68 december 1, 2000 health in one african setting, namely, the kilimanjaro region of tanzania. along the way i have collected newspaper stories on aids in africa, analyzed survey data on education and knowledge of the disease, and conducted ethnographic fieldwork that examines the worldview of tanzanian adolescents in relation to their reproductive health. at this point in the journey, with bags filled with statistical and qualitative data, there remains a need for cultural theory to understand the biomedical consequences of the socially-constructed dimensions of the disease. the articles in this volume of cice demonstrate the contributions that social science research can make to the development of sound health education programs, and i would not advocate dispensing with this research to pursue cultural and linguistic theory exclusively. i suggest, however, that empirical studies of aids and education are one way among many of producing knowledge about the disease. looking first at the statistical data, there is a positive correlation between women's level of education and her knowledge about hiv/aids (vandemoortele & delamonica, this issue). there is also ample evidence showing that sub-saharan africa, especially southern africa, will be hardest hit by the epidemic as it continues to spread through the population. according to malambo (this issue), zimbabwe and botswana have prevalence rates approaching 25%, while coombe (this issue) presents the disturbing figure that one out of ten south african children will lose their parents to the disease over the next fifteen years. based on her analysis of aids and education in south africa, coombe argues for "a research agenda on hiv/aids and its impact on the education system, with priorities agreed, academic and other research partners mandated, resources allocated, and research outcomes linked to change." given the gravity of the situation in sub-saharan africa, a call for cultural theory seems ludicrous when so many lives are hanging in the balance. indeed, and indeed not. the data make it clear that there is an urgency to act upon research findings and to demand that more resources be allocated to the prevention and treatment of aids. but the debates over how to treat people infected with hiv and who should be treated ought to caution us against abandoning theory too quickly in the face of the epidemic2. an analysis of american media coverage of aids in africa makes this point clear. as part of my research examining tanzanian students' views on education and health, i have also been studying news stories on aids and population change in africa written in the u.s. the file i began a few years ago titled "africa--media reports" now has a number of clippings from american newspapers showing the map of africa recast as the face of the grim reaper. the first time i saw this image, i assumed the editor of the local paper simply had bad taste, and i filed the story without a letter of protest. when similar images began to appear in the boston globe and the new york times, however, i realized that this representation of the continent as death itself was far more pervasive than i imagined. both national papers have printed ground-breaking stories on the aids epidemic in africa, but they have also published articles such as those that appeared in the "aids and the african" series that ran for four days in october 1999 in the boston globe. the lengthy articles contain a tremendous amount of data about the epidemic and powerful stories from individuals coping with the disease. however, the text and the photographs that accompany the stories present uniform images of africans that are widespread in american mass media. in this series, africans are portrayed as either the contributions of cultural theory to the study of aids and education current issues in comparative education, vol. 3(1) 69 passive in the face of the epidemic or as irrational for engaging in high-risk sexual behavior. for example, there is a photograph of an african woman sitting in almost complete darkness except for the light that shines on her face and the face of the aids orphan she is holding. in another photograph, a group of scruffy children huddle together outside their thatched house while a woman lies ill on a straw mat in the foreground. the passivity of the women and children in these photographs suggests to the american reader that africans cannot take action themselves to combat the disease. when africans are cast as actors, they are often granted negative agency as prostitutes. though the articles in this series briefly mention female sex workers' economic struggles, it is the struggle to make them understand the importance of condom use that is highlighted by the reporters. the photographs do not show us african health educators teaching sex workers nor do they help the reader to understand the difficult choices women must often make to feed themselves and their families. instead, the accompanying images are of female prostitutes soliciting male customers and then walking off into the south african bush to have sex. these articles undoubtedly achieved the goal of raising public awareness of the aids epidemic in africa, but they also reduced a set of complex social, economic, political, and biomedical issues into a singular health problem facing "the african." the material consequences of these socially-constructed representations are evident in a recent article on aids in the new york times magazine. the author, tina rosenberg, uses the successful example of brazil to refute arguments against providing antiretroviral therapy to aids patients in the third world. she implicates pharmaceutical companies in perpetuating the belief that the triple-drug therapy is too complicated for people in developing countries to understand, though she acknowledges that taking the medications improperly could create drug-resistant strains of the disease. however, rosenberg (2001) describes the education and training program in brazil to show that the adherence rate to the medical regimen in this third world country is about the same as in the united states. thus, the author argues that "the worries of rich countries that the poor and uneducated will mess things up for the rest of us have proved unfounded" (p. 29). these examples from mainstream american media highlight the ways that knowledge about aids and the third world is produced and how it can influence policy-making. statistical knowledge about the disease impinges upon the process of policy formation in a very direct way, but the indirect effect of cultural knowledge does not make it inconsequential. tony bennett (1992), among others in the field of cultural studies, has called for greater engagement between cultural theorists and policy makers. he suggests that there is "the need for forms of cultural theory and politics that will concern themselves with the production and placing of forms of knowledge--of functioning truths--that can concretely influence the agendas, calculations, and procedures" of influential institutions and organizations (p. 32). some of the authors who contributed to this volume of cice are already employed by such institutions, and it is hoped that their research will bring about tangible results in the fields of health and education. yet there remains a need to put cultural theory into policy making if we are to understand how representation and cultural knowledge shape the formation of the problem under study and the possible solutions with which frances vavrus 70 december 1, 2000 to solve it. material intervention and cultural critique are necessary to understand the production of deadly education. notes 1. the metaphor of journey is popular among cultural theorists, and i risk contributing to its overuse by applying it here. however, i can think of no more appropriate metaphor for the tale that unfolds in the following pages than a "journey of understanding" as described by rothenberg (2001). 2. this sentence refers to the title of paula treichler's book on aids entitled how to have theory in an epidemic: cultural chronicles of aids (1999). references bennett, t. (1992). putting policy into cultural studies. in l. grossberg, c. nelson, & p.a. treichler (eds.), cultural studies (pp.23-37). new york & london: routledge. cohen, j. (2000, october). the hunt for the origins of aids. the atlantic monthly, pp. 88104. rosenberg, t. (2001, january 28). look at brazil. the new york times magazine, pp. 26-31; 52; 58; 62-63. rothenberg, d. (2001). positioned perspectives: understanding childhood malnutrition in niger. unpublished doctoral dissertation, michigan state university. treichler, p.a. (1999). how to have theory in an epidemic: cultural chronicles of aids. durham & london: duke university press © 2012 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(1): 83-99. small states and big institutions: usaid and education policy formation in el salvador d. brent edwards jr. university of maryland, college park this article analyses the institutional power of the united states agency for international development (usaid) in the process of education policy formation in el salvador during 20032005. the results show how biand multi-lateral institutions are able to leverage financial and intellectual capital to guide the policymaking process and sway which policies are seen as acceptable and desirable. as is shown, one key to this influence is how usaid was able to manipulate the policymaking process by creating key events and producing key informational inputs that led to future events and subsequent opportunities to present and emphasize their research. additionally, this research underscores how even exceptional leadership and political will at the national level can be insufficient to avoid the agendas that are at times advanced by international institutions. finally, it is suggested that research on education in small states expand the notion of smallness to focus on institutional capacity, particularly within the context of the “global architecture of education.” introduction the ways in which the power of international institutions manifests in processes of education policymaking is a particularly pressing issue for small states. that is to say, while this is an increasingly relevant issue for states of all sizes (jones, 2007), it is an especially compelling matter for small states given the limitations of capacity and resources that often accompany their reduced size (bray & packer, 1993; mayo, 2010; randma-liiv, 2002). the present article takes this problematic issue as its central focus, and in so doing hones in on the dynamics of policy formulation, with particular attention to the way in which international organizations influence these processes. as will be shown, this is an area that has received insufficient scholarly attention in the literature on small states. generally, however, it should be noted that the influence which international institutions possess and exercise in the making of education policy around the world has garnered much attention (dale, 1999; edwards, 2013; mundy, 1998; mundy & ghali, 2009; samoff, 2007, 2009; verger, 2012; verger, novelli & altinyelken, 2012). in what follows, the present article unpacks and analyzes a specific process of education policy formation in el salvador. specifically, this article takes as its object the formulation of plan 2021, a national strategy document for education which was produced during 2003-2005 and which was intended at the time to guide educational policy decisions through the year 2021.[1] this is done in order to demonstrate how international institutions can permeate and affect education policymaking processes such that their preferred policies remain on the agenda[2] – even when faced with a minister of education who possesses a significant level of authority before both domestic agents and international organizations. necessarily, i will shed light on the realities, constraints, and challenges that can beset national educational actors in small states in the formulation of education policy. by breaking down the process through which plan 2021 was created, the article will go beyond simply showing that actors from the national and international levels are inter-twined in such processes to also show how certain international organizations can subtly and purposively exercise what barnett and duvall (2005) define as institutional power (discussed below). edwards jr. 84 current issues in comparative education to be clear, a particular definition of policymaking process is invoked in this article. this definition sees education policy formation processes as those (often) lengthy and contested processes in which national level political, governmental, and, specifically, ministry of education representatives engage – along with international actors – in order to formulate or authorize an official policy text which contains the position assumed by the state (i.e., governmental institutions) with regard to the reforms or alterations that should or will be made to the education system (edwards, 2013). it is, thus, with attention to such phenomena that the issue of institutional power is explored in el salvador (barnett & duvall, 2005). the research in this article is based on two rounds of data collection. the first occurred between september 2009 and june 2010; the second occurred from august 2011 to may 2012. a total of 19 interviews were conducted with key international and national actors who participated in the process of policymaking; in addition, documents directly related to each aspect of the process of formulating plan 2021 were also obtained and examined. interviewees were asked about their involvement in and perspectives of each of the events in the process of policy formation, as well as their view of the overall process. specific data analysis methods were adopted which facilitate the identification, distillation, and explication of influence (edwards, 2012). that is to say, the qualitative data analysis strategies employed were selected because they serve to clarify, from a structural and organizational perspective, the dynamics of interaction and the attribution of causality in education policymaking processes that involve actors from multiple levels. the remainder of the paper begins with a discussion of el salvador’s smallness, followed by a review of the relevant literature on education policymaking in small states. i then discuss the concept of institutional power, as defined by barnett and duvall (2005). next, i present and discuss the results of the study, with an emphasis on the dynamics among key actors from government and biand multi-lateral institutions. the penultimate section addresses theoretical implications while the final section offers a few concluding remarks. the smallness of el salvador with regard to the focus of this issue of cice, el salvador’s characteristics make it a good case to investigate the dynamics of education policymaking, as table 1 (next page) indicates. in terms of population size, for example, el salvador meets the traditional threshold of 10 million (kuznets, 1960). geographically, this country is the smallest in central america. population cut-offs are, of course, arbitrary to a certain extent, and have changed over the years (hindmarsh, 1996). while kuznets (1960) set the limit for smallness at a population of 10 million, others have set it at 5 million (demas, 1965) and, more recently, 1.5 million (commonwealth/world bank, 2000). moreover, the country is susceptible to natural disasters; is dependent on an export-led growth strategy, large trade partners, and remittances; and is, subsequently, easily affected by fluctuations in the global economy – all traits that tend to be common among small states (atchoaréna, da graça & marquez, 2008; commonwealth/world bank, 2000). of most interest for the present research, however, are not the positivist quantitative indicators that are often used to classify small states (hindmarsh, 1996). instead, given that this article examines the dynamics of policymaking, the central dimension is institutional capacity. table 1 notes that the moe in el salvador could be said to have a moderate level of institutional capacity. education specialists working in el salvador have noted, for example, that the moe has been able since the 1990s to establish its credibility and its reputation as a capable public institution by executing a number of legal, organizational, and technical reforms that improved the functioning of and access to the education system (gillies, 2010). yet, as will be shown, the moe in el salvador has current issues in comparative education 85 small states and big institutions at times had difficulty in managing and controlling the policymaking processes, not least because of the huge influx of development aid and international organizations (but particularly usaid and the world bank) following the end of the civil war in 1992 (edwards, martin & victoria, forthcoming; gillies, 2010). this aspect of “smallness” – one that is pertinent not only to the small state of el salvador – is at the heart of the remainder of this article (smawfield, 1993). literature on education policymaking in small states a few scholars and reports have commented on institutional capacity and education policymaking in small states. the joint task force on small states of the commonwealth secretariat and the world bank (2000), for example, have identified insufficient institutional capacity as a key characteristic that distinguishes small states.[3] though discussion around institutional capacity tends to be restricted to the ability of a government to provide public services (commonwealth secretariat/ world bank, 2000), it is also a relevant factor in policy formation. to that end atchoaréna, da graça & marquez (2008) point out that “small economies and high levels of dependence on external no. dimension description 1 population 6.2 million 2 geographic area 8,000 square miles (equal to massachusetts) 3 gdp us$ 21.2 billion 4 gdp / capita us$ 3,702 5 remoteness and insularity geographic proximity to other countries; free trade agreements with central american countries, chile, columbia, dominican republic, mexico, united states 6 susceptibility to natural disasters periodically affected by hurricanes, earthquakes, flooding, volcanic eruptions 7 instiutitional capacity constraints capacity increasing over time, especially since the end of the civil war in 1992; moe has moderate capacity to design and implement reform; as of 2005; moe possessed credibility and reputation as a capable public institution 8 limited economic diversification historically dependent on agriculture, more recently diversified into manufacturing and services. currently, agriculture accounts for 11% of gdp, industry for 30%, and services for 59% 9 country openness export-led growth strategy – dependent on a few large trade partners (e.g., the united states accounts for 48% of exports and 37% of imports); large outflow of emigrants (20.5% of the population lives outside the country); large inflow of remittances (received by 22% of families) 10 income volatility and poverty susceptible to changes in the world economy due to export-oriented growth strategy; 38% of population below poverty line table 1. el salvador and standard dimensions of a country’s smallness sources: central intelligence agency (2012), fajnzylber and lópez (2008), gillies (2010), world bank (2011, 2012a,b). note: dimensions drawn from atchoaréna, da graça & marquez (2008) and the report of the joint task force of the commonweatlh secretariat and the world bank (2000). 86 current issues in comparative education edwards jr. aid…put many constraints on policy development” (p. 167). crossley (2008) likewise comments that, “where small states have engaged with internationally inspired development targets…their own development priorities have often been subsumed, overlooked, or ignored” (p. 247; see also jules, 2008). while perhaps not all small states experience an institutional deficit when it comes to policymaking – iceland, switzerland, and the united arab emirates may be exceptions worth exploring – research has shown that many of them do, including those in the caribbean (jules, 2008) and the pacific (coxon & munce, 2008). when it comes to why small nations often face difficulties in managing the dynamics of policy formation, literature tends to point in the direction of certain international institutions. jules (2006), for instance, speaks directly to the matter of how international organizations – but particularly bi and multi-lateral institutions and renowned universities – intersect with the setting of education policy in small states. he argues not only that these institutions, because of the financial and intellectual capital that they are able to leverage, can influence which policies are seen as acceptable and desirable, but also that it takes exceptional leadership and political will at the national level to avoid the agendas that are constructed and advocated by these international institutions (jules, 2006). jules’ (2006) perspective is particularly insightful because he speaks from experience, having worked as the secretary for education and human resource development of st. lucia, as a member of the team that prepared the education plan for the organisation of eastern caribbean states, and as the chairman of the world bank’s vision 2020 task force for the caribbean (see also jules, 2008). separately, the world bank’s own operation evaluation group explains that small country institutional capacity is at least partially limited because “the activities and requirements of multiple donors place a disproportionate burden on already hard pressed administrative capacity in small developing states, with donors seeking to impose their own…priorities and administrative requirements” (world bank/operations evaluation department, 1999, as cited in commonwealth secretariat/world bank, 2000, p. 42). the present research does not seek to negate the explanations offered in the literature as to why small states may struggle with the dynamics of education policy formation; rather, it seeks to nuance and problematize them in three ways. first, this research attempts to show exactly how financial and intellectual capital can be mobilized by international organizations in the service of their policy preferences. second, this research aims to demonstrate that the imposition of policy by biand multi-lateral institutions, where it occurs, may not necessarily result from direct conflict or because one party somehow coerces the other. third, this research endeavors to problematize the notion advanced by jules (2006) that exceptional leadership and political will at the national level is sufficient to avoid the agendas that are at times advanced by international institutions. in order to address each of these tasks, i employ the concept of institutional power. analytic framework: institutional power barnett and duvall (2005) – in writing on the rules, structures, and organizations that guide, regulate, and control global governance – elaborate on the concept of institutional power. in their words: institutional power is actors’ control of others in indirect ways…[the] focus… is on the formal and informal institutions that mediate between a and b, as a, working through the rules and procedures that define those institutions, guides, steers, and constrains the actions (or non-actions) and conditions of existence of others, sometimes even unknowingly. (p. 15) current issues in comparative education 87 small states and big institutions with regard to processes of policymaking, then, the task is to determine how a (e.g., an international organization) uses certain indirect institutional arrangements and the procedures that govern and mediate their development to steer the decisions of b (e.g., a ministry of education [moe]) – and perhaps in ways that are unknown to b itself. conceptually, as barnett and duvall (2005) explain, while the above definition of institutional power hinges on the procedures that govern the direct interaction between institutions, institutional power is also advanced through “socially extended, institutionally diffuse relations” (p. 16). to provide additional specificity to the present analysis, it is suggested that the relations to which they refer be understood as a variety of elements – i.e., events and sub-processes that serve to comprise the contours of policymaking processes (edwards, 2012). in particular, as edwards (2012) notes, these can include the conduct, presentation, and diffusion of research and information – often through specific events and committees – as well as advocacy work, processes of national consultation, national commissions, international conferences and seminars, and international agreements. the implication for the present analysis, then, is that the process of forming plan 2021 must be unpacked to show the ways in which certain international organizations, working through this diversity of elements, are indirectly able to guide, steer, and constrain the actions and conditions of existence of those entities – but primarily the moe – at the national level that work to develop education policy. usaid/es and the making of plan 2021[4] given the space constraints of this short article, it is not possible to address every aspect of the process that gave rise to plan 2021 nor each policy provision found in the plan’s content. thus, while i do explain the overall process of policymaking, i hone in specifically on the efforts of the education office of the united states agency for international development in el salvador (usaid/es) to advance its central prerogative during plan 2021 development – namely, that more attention and resources be dedicated to students in the most disadvantaged areas. while the focus of usaid/es’s education office arguably constitutes a beneficial use of institutional power, the purpose of the present article is not to criticize usaid/es for the content of its agenda, but rather to bring attention to the way in which institutional power manifests. furthermore, restricting the focus of this article to the prerogatives of usaid/es is not meant to imply that it is the only instance of institutional power in the process of formulating plan 2021. rather, the way in which usaid/es’s involvement reflects institutional power is meant to be indicative of the state of affairs more generally. there are eight key elements through which usaid/es’s institutional power manifested in the process of formulating plan 2021. temporally, they began mid-year 2003 and concluded in march of 2005 with the finalization of the plan’s content. these elements, and their dates, are detailed in table 2 (next page). each of these elements is contextualized and explained below in order to show how usaid/es, while working through formal and informal institutional arrangements and procedures, was able – indirectly – to influence not only the process of policymaking but also plan 2021’s final content. first, however, i comment on the minister of education who presided over much of the plan’s formulation, as well as the timing of her entry into this process. an understanding of the timing of her entry and her leadership will help in explaining, both, how international organizations influence policymaking and the significance of that influence. 88 current issues in comparative education edwards jr. leadership of the ministry of education (moe) in june of 2004, immediately after antonio saca took office as the president of el salvador, a new minister of education was appointed. interviewees repeatedly spoke to her exceptionally strong leadership style and the fact that she was certain about her reform priorities. her adeptness and savvy were the result of over 15 years of experience working not only with the moe in a variety of high-ranking positions, including national director of education and vice-minister, but also with international organizations. as one international consultant working with the academy for educational development (aed) stated, “in terms of management style, [she] knew very well what she wanted and, like most effective doers, she had a … very clear focus on those things. the rest of the things might be interesting, might be good, but she was going to focus on her agenda” (intact20).[5] similarly, an international educational expert with more than 10 years of experience working in el salvador with usaid and aed characterized the minister in the following way: it’s pretty safe to say that if [the minister] didn’t want to do something, it wasn’t going to get done, and it wasn’t going to be in her plan. the ministry, particularly under her…was very much in the driving role. the donors had probably less influence in salvador than they had in many countries...under [this minister], the donors were, in effect, sidelined. they were told what to do. they were given, you know, here’s our plan, plan 2021, it has these elements, you guys, usaid, you’re going to help us with this, you guys, the spanish, you’re going to help us with this and this and this. you don’t need to chat with each other. you don’t need to have donor roundtables or anything like that because we’re the ministry and we’re going to tell you what we want…now, you don’t have to do that, but you’re not …dictating the terms of this relationship. (intact21) element timing description 1 mid-year 2003 usaid/es publishes a request for proposals (rfp) to carry out a study of basic education in el salvador. 2 october-november 2003 academy for educational development (aed) produces the basic education sector assessment (besa). 3 december 2003 a series of roundtable discussions is conducted in san salvador, el salvador on future directions for education reform. 4 february-april 2004 a study on inequity in the salvadoran education system is financed by usaid/es and completed by an international consultant. 5 may 2004 the world bank creates a “summary diagnostic” which combines all recent studies on the education system in el salvador. 6 june 2004 a public event is held by usaid/es on the issue of educational inequity. 7 august-november 2004 a presidential commission – appointed by the newly elected president, antonio saca – produces a report which elaborates a vision for the development of education in the country. 8 january-february 2005 the moe works intensively to elaborate plan 2021. table 2. key elements in plan 2021 policy formation process current issues in comparative education 89 small states and big institutions undoubtedly, then, in the post-june 2004 landscape, the perception is that the process that gave rise to plan 2021 was the domain not of international actors but rather of the moe – and, particularly, the minister herself. the problem, however, is that, albeit unofficially, many of the elements which fed into and influenced the content of plan 2021 were produced before meza took office. moreover, after june 2004, a number of usaid’s formal and informal institutional arrangements, which were out of the control of the minister of education, would have an indirect impact. it is for these reasons that the making of plan 2021, despite particularly strong leadership from the moe, was susceptible to the institutional power of usaid/es, as will be shown. usaid/es and the elements of formulation of plan 2021 element 1: mid-year 2003, knowing that the presidential elections were less than a year away, and recognizing that a study had not been done in many years on the state of the education system, the new education director for usaid/es put out a request for proposals (rfp) to conduct research on the basic education sector. with this action, usaid/es education team set out to produce “studies that would be useful [to policymaking in the new administration] – not just more research” (intactfg1). however, while the rfp called for an investigation of many aspects of the basic education sector, a specific purpose of the rfp was to initiate a process of research and dialogue that would place the idea of educational equity at the center of policy discussions. as usaid’s education director stated: the equity thing...was my particular issue...i was in a position with some power and i used that power to try to influence equity issues...the rfp that came out in 2003 did have a lot of that [(i.e., emphasis on investigating the state of education for the poorest)], and i was hired before that; for the first task, i had to write it. (intact2)[6] the contract for this study was awarded to aed, a global non-governmental organization (ngo) that specialized in health and education research and project implementation. before proceeding, it is important to note that this rfp initiated the long process that would produce plan 2021, albeit unofficially. element 2: between october-november of 2003, aed managed the production of the study. to be sure, the resulting basic education sector assessment (besa) covered a range of issues including teacher quality, management information systems, preschool education, and education finance, among other things. unmistakably, however, both the introductory framing as well as the recommendations of the report – both authored by usaid/es’s education director – were designed to draw attention to equity. the following statement gives an indication of this: “the challenge for the new administration is to demonstrate true commitment to the education of the poor...it is clear that policies applied over the past decade have not placed a high enough priority on providing quality learning opportunities for poor children” (schiefelbein et al., 2005, p. 9). moreover, three of the study’s ten recommendations relate directly to the issue of equity. these recommendations encouraged the government to (a) “promote access to preschool education… from the 40% of households with the lowest incomes”; (b) “set priorities to improve the quality of basic education in…zones inhabited by lower-income children”; and (c) “promote initial access, regular attendance, and retention in school for children from the 20% of households with lowest incomes” (schiefelbein et al., 2005, pp. 16-18). element 3: in december 2003, with the besa in hand, usaid/es organized a series of roundtable discussions[7] in san salvador attended by “more than 70 key individuals from the education 90 current issues in comparative education edwards jr. sector” on future directions for education policy in the country (schiefelbein et al., 2005, p. 22). these roundtables are salient to the overall process of formulating plan 2021 for three reasons. first, as one education specialist in attendance from the moe has stated, the roundtables were “an important factor” because they served “to reinforce…relevant themes…[and] to create a common platform of concepts, ideas, problems, and solutions” (moenl7). second, they “provided a good ‘point of departure’ – a clear signal, ‘guys, we’re moving forward from here’,” as one international education specialist put it (intact20). this sentiment was echoed by salvadoran education specialists, who shared that the roundtables, in the months following, continued to be “cited… as an instrument of reflection, dialogue, and consultation that provided inputs to the making of plan 2021” (moenl10). third, the roundtables were important to the overall process because the education director of usaid/es was able to generate consensus on the need for further research on key issues of interest. thus, following the roundtables, the education director of usaid/es led an informal, inter-institutional group of researchers that included counterparts from the moe and aed. element 4: between february and april 2004, while a member of the “research committee,” as this group was known, the education director of usaid/es financed an in-depth study conducted by an international researcher specifically on educational inequity in el salvador (rosekrans, 2006). although the besa contained recommendations and language that pertained directly to issues of equity, usaid/es perceived the need for an additional study that would demonstrate in a more detailed fashion the inequitable distribution of educational access, educational resources, and educational outcomes across el salvador, and particularly in the rural and impoverished areas. the idea was that this report would provide sufficiently convincing and detailed information such that it could be directly useful to and influential in the setting of priorities and the design of education policy in the new political administration. as the education director for usaid/es stated: we took advantage of the moment to stick in the data, the reality of what was really going on on the ground and the needs of the country, and the equity issues in terms of where the resources needed to be. it was kind an opportune moment of intervention in the thought process of these actors. (intact2) in order to increase the probability of the study’s impact, usaid/es ensured that the findings – based on econometric analysis – were written in such a way as to be intelligible to non-researchers (edwards, 2013). element 5: with may 2004 came the creation of a “summary diagnostic” by the world bank, at the request of the departing minister of education. located in this diagnostic was each of the studies that had been performed over the previous eight months (including, but certainly not limited, to those financed by usaid/es) on various aspects of the education system. the importance of this document is that, when “the newly-appointed minister took her position [the following month], she and her team decided to use the [summary diagnostic] as one of the main inputs for the new 16-year strategic plan, plan 2021” (rosekrans, 2006, p. 8). the future vice-minister of education in the saca administration shared that a conscious decision was made not to perform additional investigation because both he and the incoming minister of education “valued very much the research and studies” which had been produced in the eight months leading up to the change of administration (moenl7). the external studies were seen as sufficient. element 6: in june 2004, just after the inauguration of president saca, usaid/es decided to host another event – a public forum – in order to raise awareness on the issue of equity. in current issues in comparative education 91 small states and big institutions attendance were over one hundred policymakers, government officials, moe staff, and social policy experts, as well as the media. at this event, in addition to a presentation of findings by the author of the equity study, there was discussion by a group of distinguished salvadoran education and development professionals. the second component of the event featured a world bank consultant who spoke on multiple issues, including compensatory programs in mexico, focusing more resources on poorer students, why that was important, and how it could be done. in the end, creating this event, inviting the media, and showcasing both studies and specialists which highlighted equity issues was, as the education director of usaid/es put it, all “a way of building a momentum around paying attention to equity” (intact2). interviewees repeatedly indicated that these efforts had the desired effect, both within the moe as well as within the ministry of finance, representatives of which also attended the public forum. element 7: after june 2004, there are two more elements in the production of plan 2021. the first of these is the presidential commission (or simply commission) which was created by presidential decree in late august 2004. this commission – composed of 16 high-profile and notable individuals from salvadoran society – was given the task of producing a document that would contain a vision for the development of the education system in el salvador in the years to come. the process of developing the vision would produce consensus among key actors, and would also provide the resulting content of plan 2021 with a measure of credibility, given the stature of the commission’s members, and the fact that the moe would take the commission’s vision into consideration when establishing the orientation of plan 2021 itself. in the end, the commission did produce a wide-ranging proposal for how the education system should develop, and it contained both macro-level goals as well as specific targets. in order to develop this document, however, each member of the commission was given a copy of all the studies which had been conducted during the previous year. in addition, the commission listened to presentations made by specialists on certain issues. usaid/es’s education director and the author of the equity study made one such presentation in order to emphasis the fact that spending on education in the poorest regions of el salvador was regressive (edwards, 2013). the net result is that, in its proposal, the commission reproduced the same suggestions that first appeared in the recommendations of the besa from a year earlier. element 8: the last element addressed here in the production of plan 2021 was the concretization of its content.[8] this occurred between january and february 2004 and, as moe officials described, it required the formation of numerous technical teams to work on the design of the specific programs that would give shape to plan 2021 in practice. what stands out is that, as the viceminister of education stated, the work at that time had to do with the “operationalization of ideas” (moenl7). he recounts that each “group took the relevant informational inputs … and then put together all the necessary documentation for that area” (moenl7). because the majority of the informational inputs which were taken into account were produced by biand multi-lateral institutions,[9] the implication is that the main task of the moe in the finalization of plan 2021 was to translate into programmatic terms the major themes that had been raised by the studies which had been conducted over the previous year and a half, in addition to the report of the presidential commission. this explains why the content of plan 2021 itself – unveiled in march 2005 – reflects the issues which usaid/es had been indirectly promoting via research studies since late 2003. for example, among the plan’s principal goals, one sees that the moe decided to focus on “increasing basic education services, with priority given to the poorest sectors” (moe, 2005, p. 19). moreover, one of the “priority actions” was to “augment grade offerings in the most poor rural municipalities” (moe, 2005, p. 20). 92 current issues in comparative education edwards jr. nevertheless, the moe certainly still played a key role. in particular, it not only had the difficult task of the actual elaboration of the documents that bear the name plan 2021, but also the duty to design the mechanisms that would make its new programs a reality, and the responsibility of ensuring that these programs were feasible in budgetary terms. yet institutional power was still prevalent in the process that produced plan 2021. the key to perceiving the impact and importance of institutional power in this process is to understand that the presidential commission as well as many other elements in the policy formation process since mid-2003 were influenced either directly or indirectly by usaid/es, such that the perception held by the incoming moe officials regarding which issues merited attention was itself affected. this is discussed in more depth in the next section. discussion: institutional power and agenda-setting the eight elements presented above show the repeated manifestation of institutional power. this is clear when one considers that institutional power operates indirectly, through both formal and informal means. this is a key point because at no moment in time did usaid/es have direct control over the moe. rather, institutional power worked through intermediary organizations (e.g., aed), informal arrangements (e.g., the research committee), incidental interaction (e.g., presidential commission), informative events (e.g., roundtables, public forum), and, perhaps most importantly, informational inputs (e.g., besa, equity study). thus, in these ways, usaid/ es was able to influence the overall process, impact the agenda for reform, guide the thinking of the moe, and impact a portion of the reform agenda for plan 2021. this display of institutional power helps to nuance how we understand the influence of international organizations in education policy formation. that is, though jules (2006), in his writing on small states, correctly argued that biand multi-lateral institutions (as well as prestigious universities) are able to leverage financial and intellectual capital such that they can guide the policymaking process and sway which policies are seen as acceptable and desirable, the present research contributes by showing a particular manner in which that can happen. as discussed, in this case, usaid/es contributed to and manipulated the process by creating key events and producing key informational inputs that led to future events and subsequent opportunities to present and emphasize their research. of course, neither those events nor the research bore the name of usaid/es alone; in each instance, actions were either taken in partnership with the moe and/or aed or were financed by usaid/es while being guided and modified to reinforce its cause (as with the research report in element 4). relatedly, the present research speaks to the commonly mentioned notion of imposition. to be sure, research on policy formation generally, as well as scholarship on policymaking in small states specifically, refers to imposition and defines it as one actor coercing another, perhaps by threatening to withhold something, such as development aid (dale, 1999; lukes, 2005; world bank/operations evaluation department, 1999, as cited in commonwealth/world bank, 2000). in the case of plan 2021, however, we see that international influence manifested in ways that were not so direct. usaid/es materially affected the process by strategically structuring events through which its perspectives and preferences would embed (samoff, 2007). at least in part, usaid/es was able to do this for structural reasons. to be sure, those structural aspects that enabled usaid/es’s influence need to be problematized. consider the implications of the gap in time between when the new minister – who officially presided over the construction of plan 2021 – was appointed and when the process to formulate plan 2021 initially – albeit unofficially – began. this gap in time allowed usaid/es to take current issues in comparative education 93 small states and big institutions preliminary steps that would impact the discussion around and agenda for reform before, during, and after the change in administration. on one hand, there is a benefit to the fact that usaid/ es and other international institutions remained engaged across multiple administrations. that extended engagement can facilitate continuity and stability. on the other hand, however, it inherently shapes the nature of the discussion around education reform in ways that are not explicit. moreover, incoming administrations tend to operate within the pre-existing discussion, especially when that discussion is founded on a series of studies which are produced by renown consultants or credible institutions and which are then bolstered by high-profile public events that guide consensus on which issues are most pressing (and, often, which solutions are most appropriate) (berman, 1992; hall, 1993). such was the case in el salvador. this is of note because the minister of education which entered in june 2004 was particularly experienced, knowledgeable, and confident. as gillies (2010) notes, “the minister of education was regularly identified in public polls as the most trusted and capable cabinet officer. it would be difficult to overemphasize this point as moe’s power to negotiate reforms is greatly enhanced by this reputation and credibility” (p. 76). despite these and similar claims that, “under [the minister of education], the donors were, in effect, sidelined” (intact21), the present article has shown that institutional power combines with the timing of political transition such that, contrary to jules’ (2006) assertion, even exceptional leadership is not immune. usaid/es did not dictate the terms of the relationship, but it was able to indirectly influence process, agenda, and content in meaningful ways. in light of the above points, future research should investigate institutional power further to ascertain the prevalence of the forms of manipulation found here – forms that may be common among small states, given the limited administrative, financial, and technical capacity they often experience. where such manifestations of institutional power are not present, comparative lessons should be drawn as to those characteristics that enable small states to overcome or mitigate the strategic actions of international organizations and the structural limitations that such institutions are able to use to their advantage. theoretical implications despite the micro-level lens employed in this research, a few implications for theory can be drawn. in particular, this research on plan 2021demonstrates the importance of understanding policymaking in processual and relational terms, as those terms encourage us to see how events generate events which impact the formation of policy (robertson, 2011). external influence often does not insert itself through one direct action, but rather through a series of events and actions which link together and bridge across national political administrations such that, as samoff (2007) points out, the perspectives of the funders are effectively entrenched. finally, shedding light on the dynamics of policymaking in el salvador and the way that usaid/es carefully and intentionally operationalized its influence through intermediary elements gets at what cowen (2009) labels the ‘geometry of insertion’ – i.e., the careful positioning, sequence, and intensity of elements – in education policy formation such that ideas from international actors or locations enter national policy spaces. while the preceding comments have focused on the contributions of the present research to scholarship that brings more of a political economic perspective to the study of education policymaking, the findings of this article also have implications for another theoretical perspective – namely, world culture theory (wct). to that end, there is one particular point that can be made: we see that national education policy does not always follow from a common world culture 94 current issues in comparative education edwards jr. which holds up certain liberal values and policies over others and which has been rationalized, institutionalized, and spread by international organizations and their representatives (chabbot, 1998; mcneely, 1995; mcneely & cha, 1994; meyer, boli, thomas & ramirez, 1997).[10] while wct posits that states automatically, unproblematically, and for purposes of legitimacy enact policy priorities that reflect the content and norms exhibited by and contained in international agreements (e.g., education for all, millennium development goals), the constitutions of multilateral organizations (e.g., unesco), and international development professionals and their networks, the present research suggests that agency and intention are central to policy formation. indeed, as was seen here, the education director from usaid/es purposively and repeatedly used her power to raise the profile of the issue of inequitable education funding and to insert that issue on the agenda and in the thought process of key salvadoran education specialists within and outside the moe. moreover, it bears mentioning that the issue of inequitable education funding is not an issue at the global level; rather, it was her “particular issue” (intact2). the push for that priority thus did not emanate from a world culture, but was driven by the personal preference of a key institutional actor. to summarize, the implications can be stated in the following way. first, education policy formation may at times have more to do with institutional power and personal agenda and less to do with global culture than wct theorists propose, particularly in small states, though more research is necessary to further clarify this point. second, for political economy scholars, the manipulation of education policy formation by international actors may be less evident, more complex, and more indirect than is readily obvious, especially as policymaking spaces within small states (and states of all sizes) find themselves in new and different constellations of actors and are penetrated in new and different ways by of ideas from elsewhere (robertson, 2011). conclusion the analysis here of plan 2021 has shown how an international institution – in this case, usaid/ es – has been able to permeate and affect education policymaking in the small state of el salvador. more specifically, this article has highlighted three aspects of that policymaking: (a) how usaid/ es combined the strategic use of financial and intellectual resources with institutional power to engender a focus on equitable education finance to marginalized areas; (b) that manipulation of process and information – more than imposition, in the traditional sense of direct coercion – accurately characterized the dynamics among international and national actors; and (c) the fact that strong and determined moe leadership was not sufficient to control policy formation, due both to the issue of finance and capacity as well as to the structural issue that usaid/es’s involvement spanned both administrations and provided it with the opportunity to sustain and ingrain its perspective through crucial elements in the process. given the questions that these findings raise, this article can be seen as research that encourages further exploration, as opposed to offering closure on the issue of institutional power and policy formation – both generally and in small states. to that end, two suggestions are offered. first, and most obviously, while it is to be expected that institutional power is always present[11] in processes of setting education policy, it is suggested that not all international institutions are able to exercise institutional power in the ways seen here by usaid/es.[12] those institutions whose knowledge products enjoy particular clout, and those who have worked in and been integral to both a country’s development and education policy for many years (as has been the case with usaid in el salvador [gillies, 2010]) likely are able to leverage institutional power to a greater extent. relatedly, given that institutional power operates through informal arrangements and intermediary organizations, it is those institutions which are current issues in comparative education 95 small states and big institutions extensively networked which may be more potent when it comes to influencing the prevailing thinking at the national level regarding general priorities and specific policies for reform.[13] second, and finally, it is suggested that future research should take the lead of hindmarsh (1996) in questioning the ways that we understand smallness, and what the implications of that are for how we understand education policymaking. as seen in the present article, though el salvador qualifies as a small country on a number of commonly accepted dimensions, the “smallness” that has been central to this analysis has centered more on el salvador’s capacity and the way that has interacted with structural constraints and processual manipulation. the suggestion is thus that the smallness of a country be considered not only in relation to quantitative indicators but also, and perhaps more importantly, in relation to the “global architecture of education” and the ability of a country (or its ministries) to autonomously engage (or not) in it (jones, 2007, p. 325). though indicators of gdp or income, for example, may be related to a conception of size as based on capacity, certainly a positive correlation does not always exist. in-depth and long-term case studies may be well suited to uncovering this aspect of smallness, how it may or may not change over time, for what reasons, and with what implications for education and policymaking. d. brent edwards jr. is a doctoral candidate in international education policy at the university of maryland, college park. during the 2011-2012 academic year, he was a visiting scholar at the central american university in san salvador, el salvador in conjunction with a fulbright research grant. previously, during the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a visiting scholar at the university of amsterdam’s institute for social science research. his research, which focuses on how processes of education policy formation are affected by international influence, has appeared in comparative education review; research in comparative and international education; education, citizenship, and social justice; the urban review; as well as multiple book chapters. endnotes 1. the year 2021 was chosen for its symbolic value as the 200th anniversary of the country’s independence from spain. 2. given this focus, issues of policy implementation are outside the scope of the present essay. 3. it should be noted, though, that the group of 45 small nations on which the joint task force focused are developing, and thus omits small developed countries that may differ in this regard, such as iceland, greenland, the united arab emirates, cyprus, malta, and switzerland. 4. for extensive citations to other literature on education policymaking in el salvador, see edwards, martin, and victoria (forthcoming). 5. interviewees’ responses and observations are referenced in this article using author-assigned interviewee codes and numbers. 6. it should be noted that usaid/es’s education director was able to highlight this issue because it meshed with usaid’s regional strategy at the time (usaid, 2003). 7. these roundtables were co-financed by the world bank and the moe. 8. concurrent with the presidential commission, a process of national consultation was carried out in el salvador. usaid/es contributed to this sub-process by partially financing the consultants who facilitated reflection and gathered the information. then, in december 2004, a seminar financed by usaid/es was held at harvard university in order to foment reflection and discussion among a small group of prominent individuals on educational issues that were of priority to the salvadoran minster of education. for more on these events, see edwards (2013). 9. indeed, it should be noted that, in addition to usaid/es, the world bank and the spanish bilateral cooperation also produced reports which were taken in hand by the moe as it produced plan 2021. 10. the development of world culture theory has recently taken center stage in debates about policy 96 current issues in comparative education edwards jr. formation. for a critical perspective, see carney, rappleye and silova (2012). see jepperson (2001) for an alternative account of its evolution. 11. the extent to which it is successful is, of course, another matter. 12. other scholars have also suggested that research should discern the differences of engagement, influence, and purpose of various international organizations (e.g., berman, 1992; ginsburg, cooper, raghu & zegarra, 1990; steiner-khamsi, 2010; verger, novelli & kosar-altinyelkin, 2012). 13. for an indication of the extent to which usaid has been 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(2012). global education policy and international development: new agendas, issues and programmes. new york, ny: continuum. world bank. (2011). migration and remittances factbook 2011 (2nd ed.). washington, dc: world bank. world bank. (2012a). el salvador at a glance. retrieved from http://devdata.worldbank.org/ aag/slv_aag.pdf. world bank. (2012b). gdp per capita. retrieved from http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ ny.gdp.pcap.cd. © 2004 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 73 weak state, strong community? promoting community participation in post-conflict countries dana burde teachers college, columbia university introduction promoting "community participation" in managing social services is a new orthodoxy among governments and international organizations. it has circumnavigated the globe, appearing in countries as varied as the united states and malawi, nicaragua and bosnia-herzegovina. it is a buzzword in international development work, edging out the "poverty alleviation" and "human capital" themes that came before it (botchway, 2000; cornwall, 2003; ackerman; 2003). and it has emerged recently in programs that promote international humanitarian assistance for countries or regions at war or in conflict, thus establishing itself in the new relief paradigm. in relief work, the increased role of participation is evident from the mushrooming of parent-teacher associations, parent-school councils, and other varieties of community-based school management organizations. the belief that small civic associations are key ingredients for strengthening civil society and enhancing democracy provides persuasive theoretical support for these interventions. thus, community participation in educational governance has become part of the formula to achieve both traditional development goals and social reconstruction after a conflict. yet in international development and humanitarian assistance, the beauty of participation is often in the eye of the donor or facilitator, and less frequently in the eye of those who participate. this is not to say that participation should not be promoted, but rather, to note that it is a complex tool that can be manipulated in multiple ways to varying effect. supporting community associations to deliver social services when a state remains weak can significantly revise the relationship of the state to its citizens. to the extent that it works to increase the efficiency and quality of social services, participation may provide a patchwork solution to systemic problems, veiling more profound and contentious issues of structural change and political representation. the purpose of this article is to explore the effects of community participation in school governance, as an element of development and humanitarian assistance programs, on social capital and civil society building. first, although participation in school governance is meant to produce multiple benefits for school and society, it may, in the long term, change perceptions of the role of the state, subsequently undermining the social contract between citizen and state. second, so much reliance on community participation in the absence of strong democratic state structures may aggravate rather than assuage the social divisions that are particularly dangerous and pronounced after a conflict. finally, newly acquired "social capital" (networks, norms, trust) and political skills among marginalized members of small communities do not necessarily strengthen civil society (see also belloni, 2001)1. rather than the vibrant civil society it is meant to produce, community participation, promoted with uncritical enthusiasm in the field of educational development and education in emergencies, runs the risk of leaving disillusioned and unempowered communities in its wake. dana burde may 10, 2004 74 the following pages will examine community participation in the field of educational development and as it has moved into the field of international humanitarian aid and, hence, into the sub-field of education in emergencies. the first section describes different types of participation in education, its institutional forms, and the paradigms that support it. the second section reviews briefly education in emergencies and the principles it shares with educational development programs. the last section presents the relevant findings from a study of community participation in an emergency education program in bosnia-herzegovina (bosnia), and explores some of the implications for civil society and democracy building. the power of participation: types of participation and the paradigms that support them participation as a mechanism to promote development has achieved such prominence because it holds strong appeal for multiple actors. the act of including the voices and concerns of "beneficiaries" in the projects that are meant to help them offers a counter weight to traditional top-down (multilateral, neoliberal) development approaches. the effort gained enormous popularity among practitioners after chambers (1994) championed the data collection techniques of participatory rural appraisal (pra). pra was meant to garner opinions and decisions directly from local people about their own development. it provided clear and concrete guidelines to development workers to move toward goals of poverty reduction in a way that reflected and represented the needs and interests of the communities with whom they worked. in part because pra carried so much intuitive appeal, and in part because of the practical possibility it offered for finding "what works" (kapoor, 2002), even its critics were lulled into believing that they had found the solution to serious social problems if only the mechanism for participation were used correctly. in addition, pra provided language and tools that grassroots development workers were able to employ in policy and program discussions with multinational organizations. similar to pra, the philosophy of encouraging community and parental participation in education has much to recommend among international development workers, aid workers, and educators alike. proponents as varied as the world bank and save the children us vaunt participation as a virtual "cause celebre" for increasing success in decentralization, cutting costs and excessive state bureaucracy, and improving educational outcomes simultaneously. from the neoliberal (world bank) perspective, community participation can channel badly needed resources into the under-funded education sector and provide schooling where none existed previously. for activists and ngo workers, it has the potential to empower communities by including many marginalized groups in decision-making processes (freire, 1970), increasing the responsiveness both of local government institutions to their constituencies, and of local schools to the conditions around them. because participation is used frequently to convey legitimacy of top-down prescriptions, however, its radical political message of empowering the excluded, poor, and marginalized has been diluted (cornwall, 2003). in addition, the neoliberal neglect of the state undermines participation's ability to cultivate civic action because the state remains weak. it is this interaction between participation, civil society, and the state that will be addressed below. weak state, strong community: promoting community participation in post-conflict countries current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 75 to achieve these important outcomes, community participation in education development programs is most often manifested in changes in school governance and usually refers to increased involvement in management and decision-making on the part of parents, teachers, and sometimes other community members. at the most inclusive end of the spectrum, participants choose their roles, and activities may incorporate policy-making and curriculum development; at the other extreme, activities may be limited to school construction and resource mobilization (bray, 2000). the institutional forms that facilitate community participation can range from community school management councils, to parent-teacher associations, to parent advisory councils. in a school system these associations may be designed to reinforce public education, providing extra assistance in the public school classroom and bringing food supplements for children, or they may be formed to design, build, and run private nonprofit community schools. depending on the school and the organization, parents, teachers, and community leaders comprise varied levels of representation. during violent conflict, when there is no state-run school system, or when services are truncated, relief organizations support communities to organize and provide education for themselves, thus maintaining small, private non-profit schools. community participation holds weight when it is invoked to support social reconstruction because civil society and democracy building activities are considered vital interventions with which to stabilize post-conflict societies. it carries the crucial promise of reconstructing social fabric that has been otherwise destroyed after a conflict. parent-teacher associations and other forms of community participation in school governance are considered ideal civic organizations because they can "double-task" they may improve educational outcomes and at the same time provide a vehicle for broader social change. in this study they are examined for their effect on the delivery of education services, and for their ability to enhance participants' civic skills and social capital. putnam (1993) defines social capital as the "features of social organization, such as trust, norms and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions" and cites parent-teacher associations as creating a particularly productive form of social capital (p. 167). parent, teacher, and community roles in management and school governance in a conflict or post-conflict environment are emerging as a critical principle of education in emergencies. creating local parent-teacher associations, or parent support groups, is meant to increase the social glue that bonds neighbors ("bonding" social capital) and thus build community. subsequent municipal level associations (intermediary or grassroots support organizations) will provide the links to government officials, colleagues and other organizations ("bridging" social capital) necessary to strengthen civil society (putnam, 2002; edwards, 2000). this type of social capital is critical to diversifying support for a common goal and increasing ability to take social action. it also provides links to policy makers and government institutions. bonding capital can be exclusive-insulating a group against perceived intrusions from the outside, or from "others." in excess, it can "accentuate inequalities since additions of social capital will be used to promote the interests only of the group concerned" (edwards, 2000, p. 6). uniting individuals across ethnicities in pursuit of common goals relies on the "strength of weak ties" (granovetter, 1973), which has been cited as one possible mechanism for dana burde may 10, 2004 76 increasing bridging capital. the strength of weak ties is present in loose allegiances formed among groups who have an external, objective reason for affiliation, such as professional development. professional interests allow for relationships to be cultivated in situations based on shared interest. if strong ties are present, such as old friendships in a village, individuals may be more reluctant to violate a social norm (such as speaking with a member of another ethnicity), and thus, strong ties may in fact inhibit developing associations, or bridging capital. the community described in this article was homogenous, like most of the communities in bosnia after the war. looking beyond community building to broader questions of democratic performance, putnam (1993, 2000) argues that increasing levels of social capital is critical to successful governance. in turn, practicing civic engagement will increase social capital and political participation. scholzman, verba, and brady (1999) describe political participation as providing "the mechanism by which citizens can communicate information about their interests, preferences and needs-and generate pressure to respond" (p. 430). these scholars argue that the training for political participation begins in civic organizations. activities in organizations that are commonly considered "apolitical" can help develop communication and organization skills that facilitate political activity later (coleman, 1988, 1990; putnam, 1993; 2000; scholzman, verba & brady, 1999; stolle & rochon, 1998). in promoting education for social reconstruction, community participation in school governance offers both the promise of citizens generating responses to their interests, and the possibilities of mending social networks. to illustrate these points, according to the international development organization, catholic relief services (crs), strengthening civil society through education can be done "indirectly through mobilizing parent groups and other stakeholders to participate in their children's education at local and even national levels" (carneal & pozniak, 2004, p.23). in kosovo before and after the conflict, crs strengthened the "ability of school and regional-based parent teacher councils and parent-teacher associations to be more active participants in the education system and beyond" (p. 24). the theory functions in the same way in a conflict region as it does in any peaceful area, but the benefits from constructive civic action that accrue to an unstable society are higher if it can have a positive impact on civil society. although there is limited research conducted on the impact of community participation in school governance under any circumstances, available data indicate that the effect of participation on civic skills and empowerment even under peaceful conditions is grander than the reality it leaves behind (rose, 2003; levacic, 1995; levin, 1998). the increase in civic skills is thought to come from practice in organizational management and decision-making. parents prefer to be involved in educational content rather than management, few parents participate in administrative decision-making, involvement typically decreases after the first years, and school administrators often dominate councils (levin, 1998, p. 136). the data to support these claims were collected in canada, the us, and britain, but extensive studies of community school management in development projects echo these findings2. in malawi for example, international agencies helped foster community schools that rely on local management committees to construct and maintain the schools, and make weak state, strong community: promoting community participation in post-conflict countries current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 77 governance and policy decisions about them. the schools were developed mainly in rural, under-served areas (i.e., places without access to government schools) to address the severe shortages of access to primary education and to empower communities in the process. the program design encouraged community members to participate in genuine decision-making, including "community identification of locally-recruited instructors" and "promotion of locally-relevant curriculum" (rose, 2003, p. 51). the management committees were meant to be representative of community members, with one-third of the positions reserved for women. in reality, however, participation was "pseudo," based on "a consultative process whereby citizens are…kept informed of decisions at a school level, and are expected to accept decisions that have already been made" (rose, 2003, p. 47). furthermore, the management committees often mirror existing social divisions; women often do not attend meetings, or they remain silent when they do appear (rose, 2003, p. 61). this point is consistent with the feminist criticism of pra techniques and the problematic definition of "community"-community participatory approaches often privilege men. these findings do not seem to provide much hope for the potential of community participation in small civic groups formed to support schools and education systems. yet it is not clear if, as some point out, the mechanisms for participation were better developed and used correctly, it might produce more effective results. emphasizing genuine participation along with appropriate training, carefully constructed mandates, and equitable composition of groups may increase effective involvement (levin, 1998). part of the problem with this proscription, however, as kapoor (2002) notes, is that concentrating on "'what is done' is not conducive to questioning and critique. from a methodological point of view, the resulting tendency is to get bogged down in methods and techniques without stopping adequately to consider initial assumptions or broader issues" (p. 102). another part of the problem is that the notion of genuine participation, by its nature precludes external "animators," or facilitators, who assist communities in organizing themselves. examining the purpose of participation in school governance raises questions regarding of the role of the state. community participation should complement and check the state, not replace it. most important, the purpose of participation (to provide a space for community voices and "claim making") (botchway, 2000) should be clearly linked to the type of participation that is implemented, in order to avoid over-emphasis on techniques. during and just after a complex humanitarian emergency, however, communities that want education services may have to organize to provide it themselves for their children. the next section will describe education in emergencies, some of the questions that arise in defining it, and the relevance of community participation in this context. community participation in education in emergencies although encouraging community participation has been a key principle for many years in the field of international development, it has only recently emerged as a guiding force in humanitarian aid work. it is now nearly universally deployed in emergency education programs and will likely be listed as a standard in the interagency network for emergency education (inee) minimum standards (inee, 2004)3. before continuing, it is important to see emergency education in its proper light. committed humanitarian dana burde may 10, 2004 78 aid workers have fought hard to include education among the key services (water and food, shelter, medical attention) that are delivered during a humanitarian response; education has only recently been added to these efforts, and only slowly after many struggles. a poor understanding of complex emergencies and the inaccuracy of the "relief to development continuum"4 were among the main obstacles to including education in humanitarian assistance programs. entrenched institutional arrangements in the aid industry continue to hamper the delivery of education services, but because conflicts have the tendency to linger on for years, and because of the disproportionate effect they have on women and children, most humanitarian donors and practitioners now accept the need for some form of education to add to the other traditional "pillars" of humanitarian response: water/food, shelter, medical attention. that said, what is education in emergencies? to summarize briefly here, at its most instrumental, emergency education "increasingly serves as shorthand for schooling and other organized studies, together with 'normalizing' structured activities, arranged for and with children, young people and adults whose lives have been disrupted by conflict and major natural disasters" (sinclair, 2001, p. 4)5. although it is beyond the scope of this article to provide an extensive review of emergency education programs and theories, it is worth noting some of the multiple and shifting factors that determine the type of education provided by international agencies during or immediately following an emergency. among others, these may include: 1) the status of the population to whom the service is provided (refugee, internally displaced, or "stayee"-civilian caught in a conflict); 2) the status of the state in the region before the conflict began (functioning, weak, failed) and its ability to provide public services; and 3) the status of the crisis (high/low intensity conflict, and duration). there is significant debate about the distinction between education in emergencies and educational development programs in peaceful countries. in a country like malawi, where the state is hard pressed to deliver public services outside of urban centers, communities are also enlisted to manage and provide education for themselves, as described above, with assistance from international nongovernmental organizations (ingos). regardless of its level of development or industrialization, a country or region in conflict usually suffers from a near total decline of the state, in addition to massive forced migrations, an increased shortage of teachers, land mines, child soldiers, porous borders that encourage organized crime, and a breakdown of communications, health care and other state run services. these crises create new obstacles, or exacerbate existing ones, that cripple education systems and inhibit or prevent delivery of education services. despite the differences between what has been traditionally called development work versus humanitarian assistance (as ingos promote education as a basic right of all children), there are many aspects of program content that remain the same between peaceful and conflict contexts. it is certain aspects of program implementation (e.g., rapid training of paraprofessional teachers, physical protection for program staff, packaged material resources) and the emphasis on new subjects related to protection and security (e.g., land mine awareness) that change during an emergency. in development as well as crisis, international organizations promote the usual sets of reforms that are considered progressive and effective education policies, including, of course, parent-teacher participation in school governance. yet either in the absence of a weak state, strong community: promoting community participation in post-conflict countries current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 79 state, or in the presence of one that is weak, community participation in delivering social services such as education can only achieve limited results. the hoped-for positive impact on social capital and civil society in a country at war is fraught with many of the same difficulties encountered in a country at peace. providing education in a conflict area confronts the added complication of violent social cleavages. administering services unevenly, or (inadvertently) providing support for hate-based education, will exacerbate tensions. given that equitable representation can be problematic under any circumstances, relying extensively on community participation during or after a conflict may perpetuate existing social divisions rather than heal them. the argument in favor of community participation that, in practice, trumps all others and forges a compromise among conflicting views is that some groups would be without education if communities did not assume the task. this may be true, but the danger in this approach is that international agencies may over-emphasize the silver lining in the cloud of distress, promoting education in emergencies as an opportunity to introduce innovative reforms (in both administration and pedagogy). when there is no state, however, this translates into parents and community members often building the space for the school, hiring teachers, paying their salaries, effectively promoting small private schools, replete with fees, for the poor. the emphasis placed on civil society may delay the re-emergence of the state. when a fledgling state does re-emerge after a conflict, the responsibility for delivering social services such as education may remain with under-resourced communities. the following section shows some of the key findings from a study i conducted of an emergency education program in bosnia fostered by an ingo during, and for a brief time after, the war. the program relied on community participation to provide education and safe spaces for children, and it cultivated social capital among some parents and teachers, but it also introduced reforms that did not necessarily decrease economic or social division. the temporary provision of education and protection during and just after the conflict was the first priority of the program, and on these points, it was enormously successful. but the benefits hoped for from the community participation elements of the program were considered nearly equally important. in addition, these hoped for achievements of community participation are now ubiquitous among emergency education programs. the intervention was not enough to create the social change that the ingo envisioned. in this representative vignette, the program ultimately created a sense of despair and abandonment among the teachers. the data were collected in bosnia roughly from 1999-2001, three-five years after the war ended. parent-teacher associations bosnia summary of the study and major findings this is a qualitative case study of preschool parent-teacher associations that had been fostered by an international development organization during and after the war in bosnia. the program provided funding for each preschool's first nine months of operations, after which communities were meant to take over financial responsibility. there were over 100 parent-teacher associations created to support approximately 1000 private, nonprofit preschools at the height of the program. over 90 parents, teachers, government officials and international aid workers were interviewed for this study in eight communities (urban and rural) throughout bosnia. the primary objectives of the dana burde may 10, 2004 80 research were twofold. the first was to analyze how and why parents and teachers participate in local parent-teacher associations; the second was to analyze the impact their participation had on particular social capital indicators, thereby assessing its contribution to civil society building. social capital was assessed by gathering data regarding 1) different types of networks among associations and program participants (bridging or bonding), 2) confidence in elected officials and public institutions among parents and teachers, 3) participants' levels of engagement, and 4) glimpses of trust, or the lack of it (adapted from putnam, 1993). as noted above, education is inextricably linked to both civil society and the state. although the education goals of this program were important, it was also a civil society building project. accordingly, the ingo designed a management and training system to establish three levels of associations (parent, municipal, cantonal6) to support the preschools. "parent-support groups" were the most local and had the same functional and operational definition as a local chapter of a us pta. these nascent groups were given training in organizing, fund-raising, and management, with the aim of increasing parents' participation, helping them to advocate and fund-raise for themselves and, ultimately, to sustain the preschools independently of the sponsoring agency. the international organization reasoned that bringing concerned parents and teachers together to care for and educate children would create the proper conditions for community development, and by extension, for civil society building. the sustainability of the preschools hinged on the sustainability of these organizations. as mentioned, the program began as an emergency education program in the absence of a functioning state, but continued through the reemergence of the state to promote crucial aspects of civil society building. a network of local staff were hired and trained to work with teachers, parents and community members at every level of the program. this network was very effective as long as it was employed by the ingo; in fact, its functioning depended on the ingo. when the grant ended, however, and ingo stopped funding the program, the network disappeared. the disillusionment that accompanies abandonment meant that many program participants lost faith in the ingo, in their government, and in their own ability to create social change. this will be illustrated below. the research findings were threefold. first, with the reliance on parent-teacher associations to manage and maintain the private preschools, the ingo introduced the notion of communities assuming responsibility for their own educational services, thus encouraging community members to revise their expectations of the state. promoting these concepts can "provide the state with a legitimate opportunity for shirking its responsibilities" by shifting those responsibilities to communities, even though these communities may lack the necessary resources to assume this role (botchway, 2000, p. 136; stroschein, 2002). teachers and parents differed in their views on this point. among the teachers, privatization was generally referenced in relation to the major for-profit privatization reforms that were overhauling the country's economy, including old socialist property laws; this affected them directly in their attempts to remain in their preschool space. otherwise, regarding the private nonprofit status of the preschool, they were satisfied weak state, strong community: promoting community participation in post-conflict countries current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 81 with the income and lifestyle their business brought them7. but there was significant consternation among parents regarding the benefits of a private, community-managed preschool. many urban areas in the former-yugoslavia had had access to preschool education prior to the war. when the war ended, government-run preschools reasserted themselves, but with fees that were prohibitively expensive for many community members (this also perpetuated confusion regarding public and private divisions). according to the majority of parents interviewed, given the choice and the means, they would have preferred to send their children to the government "proper" preschools, with the schedules and structures that were familiar to them, with monitored conditions, and with professional teachers certified by the pedagogical institute, rather than to the private community-run preschools. second, the bridges that the program created across ethnic/religious8 groups were limited to professional ties among teachers that i will discuss below. parents generally did not have contact with, or express interest in, meeting with other parents of a different ethnicity/religion. community schools are, exactly as the name implies, local institutions. in places where "ethnic cleansing" has eliminated diversity, there is little likelihood that these new institutions will provide venues for contact among previously warring groups. finally, as mentioned, the teachers appreciated the training they had received, and the opportunity to work and manage their own small business9. yet even in the best-case example (described below) in which some forms of social capital increased (trust, networks), community participation without significant external help, enduring networks, or links to power, is unlikely to succeed. the goals of providing education on a more permanent basis, empowering communities or building civil society were not reached. the vignette presented below illustrates this point. the following description is of a model preschool with a highly functioning parentteacher association. in other words, the group held regular meetings and approximately one fourth of the parents attended. the parents financed the preschool and paid teachers salaries. these paraprofessional teachers had received training (in the form of an intensive eight-day workshop and monthly in-service training) from the ingo that sponsored the education program during and after the war. as was typical of most of the preschools created in bosnia, this one was located in a community in a small town (population approximately 11,000) that had become ethnically homogenous during the conflict. although few minorities had returned to the area, there were significant tensions regarding housing and privatization of property. teachers' attempts at civic action this preschool was shown to me as a model in march 1999-one of the most highly functioning, sustainable preschools. although the preschool was ethnically homogenous, it was said to have a strong parents' association that was networked to regional education associations of other ethnicities. just after the war in 1997, the space for the classrooms had been renovated by the british government aid agency. there were four teachers and three classrooms-two rooms with single groups of children and one with a double class. the teachers were energetic, enjoyed their work and had established close friendships with each other (trust and bonding capital). they dana burde may 10, 2004 82 complained that they lacked materials, but they managed to continue their work after the ingo stopped its support by using parents' fees to cover their salaries. little had changed when i visited them several months later in the summer of 1999. in spring 2000 after the last material support and site visits form the ingo had ended, i returned to conduct interviews again. the spring term was drawing to a close and the teachers were beside themselves with worry about their space. they were caught in the midst of property privatization reforms. few people apart from the upper echelons in government, business, or the media in bosnia understand the process of privatization. because of contract difficulties, and because of the huge changes involved in making a transition from a socialist to a market economy, privatization created enormous problems for the average citizen in bosnia. the teachers in this town were no exception. they did not understand the process, have information about it, or know how to address it. they were told their space was being privatized and that they would have to move the preschool. they reported to me, "now it is difficult because all properties are being privatized. we would buy this playroom, but we don't have enough money." the teachers tried to take action in several ways. first, in april, they contacted the local government. the four of them met with the mayor (a member of an ethnic minority in the area elected in april 2000) who could propose support from the municipal budget. one reported, four of us went to the mayor's office once. we wanted to speak with him about the location, and possible credit we would pay off. if we knew for sure that we would get that credit i would never take another job….if this [the preschool] were mine i would work here all day and night. we were also thinking to keep children over night for those parents that have to travel. but, the money is the problem. he told us that they have collected some money that has to be wired to [the local] bank. he said that maybe he will try to give us some of that money. but that wasn't for sure. he expressed support for the preschool, but had no solutions to offer. in june 2000, the teachers reached out to me-a foreign researcher with established links to international individuals and organizations and with an interest in their plight. it was clear when we discussed the dilemma further that they lacked the skills or contacts necessary to access accurate information (the price of the premises) or to negotiate. they presented ideas that ranged from contacting international donors to seeking aid from the new mayor (again). because of the destruction of buildings during the war and the pressure on housing stock from returning and continuing refugees, finding a new space seemed out of the question. on behalf of the teachers, i contacted some representatives among internationals living in bosnia who were influential and committed to preschool education, but assistance was not forthcoming. the teachers made another attempt to approach the new mayor together. they received words of encouragement but no financial support10. the space they used shrank to two rooms. finally, by october 2000, the teachers stopped trying to find new strategies for action. when i returned for my last visit, they had given up. there were only two teachers weak state, strong community: promoting community participation in post-conflict countries current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 83 working in one room-the double classroom. they told me the company that was privatizing the building had allowed them to continue using one room for the time being. it was just before the bosnia presidential elections in november 2000. i asked them about the elections. one said, it doesn't matter who is elected-[the local nationalist party] or [the more integrated party]. nothing changes around here. i have voted in every election until now but i won't vote anymore because it doesn't matter. look at this preschool. who has money? all the money has been given to political parties and they spend it on their campaigns and we have none. things here are only getting worse. what has changed? i changed the color of my hair, that's what changed. i changed the color and [my colleague] cut hers. according to the findings from this study, during the war, the emergency education program was immensely popular among parents and teachers; it increased their local networks and, among some teachers, their civic participation. teachers appreciated running small businesses; the parent-teacher meetings usually covered topics such as special education issues, scheduling, or finances. this is consistent with the findings of other studies of parental participation in school councils mentioned above, parents are less interested in management than in education content questions, and school administrators (in this case the teachers) generally preside at meetings. likewise, in this case, teachers were generally more active in management than parents and worked harder at creating networks to address obstacles before them. they were motivated to participate in activities related to the preschool, committed to teaching and interested in the time they shared together as colleagues. they tried to take civic action to advocate for the preschools. yet in the long term, they did not have the bridging ties or expertise they required to respond to external threats to the preschools. on a positive note, however, there may be "strength in weak ties" (granovetter, 1973). many parents interviewed in bosnia were reluctant to meet and work with parents of other religious/ethnic groups, but the same was not the case for teachers. based on their view of themselves as belonging to the same professional group, teachers were interested in and willing to attend workshops with colleagues from other backgrounds and were willing to cross boundaries to do so. conclusion the notion of community participation in education management and governance continues to travel the globe as a key policy in development and emergency education programs. aid workers and educators alike pin high hopes on efforts in this reform process to include marginalized or excluded voices. despite the different contexts, early evidence indicates that community participation in education in emergencies is fraught with some of the same difficulties that plague education development projects: lack of empowerment among participants, unchanged or increased social divisions, and a restructuring of the role of the state. in addition, in an emergency, ingos and bilateral donors often conceive (understandably) of an education program begun during a conflict as a stop-gap measure. lack of long-term vision, and confusion over the role that an emergency education program plays in long term social planning, contribute to the dana burde may 10, 2004 84 breakdown in services and blurred responsibilities between states and communities after the program ends. putnam argues that "social capital, as embodied in horizontal networks of civic engagement, bolsters the performance of the polity and the economy, rather than the reverse: strong society, strong economy; strong society, strong state" (putnam, cited in foley & edwards, 1996, p. 40). but in the data described here, and in many places where external actors intervene to support social services and a fledgling civil society, the state is weak and the international organizations are strong. in fact, the communities that participated in the bosnia program seemed to gain strength only temporarily. a layer of competent local advocates ("national staff"), hired, trained and paid by ingos, facilitated and maintained community participation. when the ingo stopped funding the program, the hired advocates took their skills, social and political capital and sought jobs elsewhere. the ptas' links to political power were lost. finally, community participation is crucial in administering aid and services during and after a conflict. cultivating ties among professionals across ethnicities may be a particularly productive part of the process. but strong communities and strong states need one another. the groups described here were left with neither. international organizations that replace the state (albeit partially) during a complex emergency by providing social services, or by assisting communities to do so, should not abandon government ministries during social reconstruction. otherwise, states become accustomed to relying on ngos (international or local) to provide social services, and abdicate responsibility for providing these services themselves. thus the emphasis placed on community participation may become a trojan horse for restructuring the state, fundamentally altering the provision of public education. notes 1. for a compelling and comprehensive look at civil society building in bosnia, see roberto belloni's analysis of the efforts of the international community to build civil society by supporting advocacy groups and citizen participation. 2. for a very interesting look at community participation in an education decentralization program, see gershberg's (1999) study of autonomous school in nicaragua. it is important to point out that the government organized community participation in this case, and schools remain part of the public school system. preliminary results indicate that administrators (principals) dominate school-site councils, and that equity questions have emerged as poorer communities struggle to pay fees. 3. for a sample of some of the education in emergencies programs that incorporate community participation, see the websites of save the children us, catholic relief services, creative associates, international rescue committee, and the united nations children's fund. in general, education interventions during and after violent conflict have made significant achievements over the past decade (notably in the area of increased access to education in refugee/idp camps or during conflicts). weak state, strong community: promoting community participation in post-conflict countries current issues in comparative education, vol.6(2) 85 4. the "relief to development continuum" commonly refers to the stages of aid in a crisis in which "the external response to an emergency moves from relief through reconstruction to development" (smillie, 2000, p. 17). 5. for the purposes of this article, i will focus on emergencies caused by war and conflict, rather than those caused by natural disasters. 6. "cantons" in bosnia are the smallest administrative unit of government in the bosnian federation (the bosniak/croat half of bih territory). there are ten cantons in the federation. 7. it is important to point out briefly the distinction between two types of privatization: for-profit versus non-profit privatization. in the former socialist republics, multinational financial institutions introduced reforms to privatize formerly stateowned businesses, industries, and services throughout various sectors of the economy. this, of course, extended into the health and education sectors (providing legal provisions for new private services, for example). simultaneously, as discussed at the outset of this article, ingos encouraged another kind of privatization-the emergence of the fledgling private-nonprofit (ngo) sector. the overlaps between these types of privatization cause tremendous confusion among both government and civil society actors: the definitions are conflated, and laws regulating non-profit institutions have yet to be properly enforced. 8. the precise nature of the ethnic/religious divisions in bosnia is disputed; the word in bosnian/croatian/serbian that is used to describe the difference among groups is literally translated as "nation" in english. the meaning in context is more precisely captured by the english word "ethnicity." 9. teachers' own perceptions of their work added to the confusion between these definitions. when unemployment and poverty are high, any income is considered profitable. in fact, as is now commonly observed, ingos often offer salaries in emergency and development work that are significantly more than what state employees earn, and that are often considered quite lucrative. these differences further confuse and distort the idea of non-profit work. 10. interestingly, the teachers did not indicate to me that there was any animosity based on ethnicity between them and the mayor. in this particular example, disappointment in the performance of public officials seemed to be meted out equally regardless of ethnicity. references ackerman, j. 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(2001). education in emergencies. in learning for a future: refugee education in developing countries. geneva: unhcr. stolle, d., & rochon, t. r. (1998). are all associations alike? american behavioral scientist, 42(1), 47-65. stroschein, s. (march 2002). ngo strategies for hungarian and roma minorities in central europe. voluntas, 13(1), 1-26. send correspondence to: john e. ingulsrud; 2-1-1 hodokubo, hino-shi, tokyo, 191-8506 japan; john@eleal.meisei-u.ac.jp; kate allen; 1-4-1 wakaba, mihama-ku, chiba. 261-0014 japan; kateob@kanda.kuis.ac.jp © 2003 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 103 first steps to literacy in chinese classrooms john e. ingulsrud meisei university, tokyo, japan kate allen kanda university of international studies, chiba, japan chinese elementary schools bear the task of teaching the largest number of children in the world to read. children learn to read and write roman letters and pronounce chinese syllables before they embark on the long task of learning chinese characters. this process is followed in order to construct a national identity in a linguistically diverse country with numerous languages and mutually unintelligible varieties. a central feature in creating this national identity is teaching all first year children to speak putonghua, china's national language. as children learn to read and write the roman script used to teach the pronunciation of putonghua, many become aware of differences between their local speech variety and the national standard. in this process of acquiring literacy, children discover not only their national identity, but also identities linked to global and local contexts as well as gender identities. through textbook illustrations, children are exposed to gender-based roles that depict social realities instead of social ideals. yet not all have access to school, particularly children in rural and minority areas, and migrant workers’ children in the cities. in this article, we first describe the process by which children in china become literate in schools. we then interpret the school literacy process in terms of multiple identities. finally, we illustrate the ways some of the identities are represented in school textbooks. these representations indicate the enormous gap between urban children and the realities of most chinese children who live in rural areas. the material here is based on the authors’ study of classroom observation in two elementary schools in the city of nanjing between 1990 and 1994, together with recent information on curriculum and access to schools. since our work was in nanjing teaching at universities, we sought opportunities there to observe the process of learning to read in school. our first opportunity was facilitated by the jiangsu province educational commission. our second opportunity, as well as our observations in a kindergarten, was made possible through personal contacts. finally, for two years, we were fortunate to observe the five to seven-week process in elementary (ingulsrud & allen, 1999). many children throughout the world do not have the privilege of learning to read in their native tongue. they have to learn to read in a standard language or lingua franca that is not spoken in their homes. this is because the status of their native variety is either too socially insignificant or politically threatening. in most cases, it is regarded as good economic sense to focus educational energy on learning to read in a more john e. ingulsrud & kate allen 104 may 12, 2003 dominant variety, even though it may differ a great deal from the child’s native language. in these cases, differences are minimized to direct children to learn the standard language. this process of emphasizing linguistic unity in the face of linguistic diversity is called “focussing” by robert lepage (1964). in the people's republic of china, this kind of focussing is the norm: linguistic differences are minimized for the sake of a common language, putonghua (mandarin chinese). approximately two-thirds of the population speak varieties of chinese that are more-or-less intelligible as mandarin. the remaining third, including many who live in the more prosperous areas of south china, speak varieties that are mutually unintelligible. in this nation of vast regional linguistic differences, focussing is reflected in the schools with the teaching of reading through the standard variety. in china, however, the varieties are not completely ignored. there is some realization of the pupils' non-standard backgrounds. consequently, a transitional course is offered as a kind of an accommodation. this course, given in the first semester of grade one lasts, on average, six weeks (four hours a week). the course is longer, often up to twelve weeks, for students in areas where the varieties have greater differences, and even shorter in areas where the varieties are more similar (ingulsrud & allen, 1999). in this transitional course, children learn the sounds and words of the standard language. they learn to speak properly at the same time they learn to read. rather than learn chinese characters in their own vernacular, children are required to learn them according to the sounds of putonghua. therefore access to literacy in china is channeled through (or limited to) the standard language. this is done in order to achieve two goals: the ability to read and write, and the ability to speak a standard language. the additional burden of learning to speak the standard language, particularly for children who do not speak the standard at home, puts many chinese children in a similar position to children in post-colonial societies who attend school conducted in the medium of a foreign language. the putonghua lesson nanjing, where we carried out our study in two elementary schools and one kindergarten, the lessons introducing the roman script, hanyu pinyin, and putonghua do not last very long. at a prestigious and well-funded key school, five weeks were allocated. at a local neighborhood school, the course was six and a half weeks (ingulsrud & allen, 1999). the shorter time in nanjing is due to the nature of the local dialect, a variety of southern mandarin, which is part of the northern chinese dialect group. seen in the light of china’s vast linguistic variation, nanjinghua is a dialect that does not deviate greatly from putonghua. the relationship might be compared to the difference between the english spoken among business leaders in downtown chicago and the english spoken in rural communities in queensland, australia. in addition, the nanjing school teacher can, at least, expect a high degree of linguistic homogeneity in the classroom. when teachers began their lessons in putonghua, they exhorted the importance of a common language for china: putonghua provides the means by which everyone in the nation communicates. the teachers further pointed out that learning hanyu pinyin would allow children to recognize print and help them learn chinese characters. in first steps to literacy in chinese classrooms current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 105 addition to these practical benefits of learning putonghua and hanyu pinyin, there is a value attached to the common language. the value is an aesthetic one. putonghua is pia4oliang “beautiful” and it is ha3oti1ng “sounds nice”. nanjinghua, on the other hand, is bu4ha3oti1ng “doesn’t sound nice”. the basic putonghua lesson can be summarized as follows: 1. sounds are introduced together with individual letters. chalkboards, slates, and overhead transparencies are used. a. pupils see the shapes of letters in a visual metaphor b. pupils hear the sounds and repeat after the teacher c. the teacher presents the place and manner of articulation by means of a transparency. d. if an overhead projector is unavailable, the teacher introduces a rhyme to help young children remember how the sound is pronounced. 2. consonants and vowels are linked to make syllables. 3. tone diacritics are added to the syllables. 4. together with tone and syllable, examples of vocabulary are elicited. in the first lesson, for example, the vowels a, i, u, o are introduced. the illustration from the textbook depicts a doctor with a tongue suppresser asking a child to say “a ---h”. the teacher points to the letter on the board and then vocally models the sound. next, the class repeats in a chorus. after that, individual pupils are called on to say a sound. when asked, each one stands up and voices the sound. it is up to this point that both schools follow the same procedure. however, from here there is a temporary divergence. at the key school, teachers used an overhead projector on a daily basis, thus demonstrating the school’s superior access to funding after initial repetition of the sound, the teacher would show a transparency depicting the cross section of the mouth indicating the position of the tongue, so that graphically the pupils could observe the point of articulation much in the same way that pronunciation lessons are conducted in foreign language classes. on the other hand at the neighborhood school, the teacher quickly explains the place and manner of articulation without visual aids, but then follows the explanation with a rhyme for each sound. here is an example of the rhyme explaining the manner of vowel production: john e. ingulsrud & kate allen 106 may 12, 2003 4 ba 4 yi 3 2 2 zuiba yuan yuan o-o-o “both lips round round o-o-o” 2 3 4 4 yachi duizhi i-i-i “up by the teeth i-i-i” 2 3 3 zuiba zhangda a-a-a “lips open wide a-a-a” 2 3 3 zuiba bian bian e-e-e “lips open slightly e-e-e” phonemic tone in hanyu pinyin is indicated by one of the four diacritic symbols ( 1 2 3 4 ) placed over a vowel in each syllable. when the syllables are taught, the teacher writes the syllable on the board and then elicits vocabulary. it is at this point that correct hearing and production are reinforced. for instance, if the teacher presented the syllable , then individual pupils could offer sample vocabulary by saying: 4 4 baba de ba 4 4 “ba for baba, ‘father’” pupils present vocabulary and the teacher judges whether their suggestions are correct or incorrect depending on articulation and tone. introducing chinese characters from the beginning of hanyu pinyin training, the teacher elicits vocabulary. when the teacher introduces a new syllable with one of the four tones over the vowel she asks for examples in context. until this point, the children had only to contend with pronunciation and tone. any vocabulary that matched sound and tone was acceptable. when chinese characters were introduced, the situation changed. in fact, it came as a great shock to the children. the first chinese character introduced was the character 一. the teacher asked the pupils how it was written: 1 4 4 3 yizi zheyand xie? 1 “how do you write yi?” using the name of the stroke, the children answered: 2 2 2 1 1 1 heng heng heng yi yi yi 1 1 1 “straight across, straight across, straight across, yi, yi, yi” next the teacher elicited vocabulary. one child said: first steps to literacy in chinese classrooms current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 107 3 3 4 hao kan 1 4 1 1 yi jia feiji “one airplane” another child said: 1 4 4 yi kuai qu “go together” a further child said: 1 1 yifu de yi 1 1 “yi, the yi of clothes” the teacher rejected the example of “clothes”. until now this type of answer had been appropriate, but with chinese characters, semantic distinctions must be exercised. both “one” and “together” are represented by the character, 一. the first two examples were acceptable even though they are not semantically equivalent. the example provided by the third child was unacceptable because it was represented by the character, 衣 not 一. this shift away from pronunciation was not readily understood by the children, at least in the few lessons on chinese characters that we observed. with the introduction of characters, the pace of the class slowed down for now the children were becoming genuinely literate. much time was spent in each lesson making sure the pupils were able to write the characters correctly. they began with learning how to identify and write different strokes and single word characters, these being the numbers one to ten. usually new strokes were presented in each lesson and the pupils practiced writing these together with the new characters. after the numbers, the next set of characters were ones that seemed to be the most pictographic such as the single characters for mountain (山), field(田), and soil(土). the assumption is that these single word characters are more easily learned. the children would be familiar with this emphasis on the visual nature of the character since a similar approach was used to introduce hanyu pinyin. in each lesson, the teacher wrote numerous examples of the new character, every time calling out the correct stroke order. the pupils responded by writing in the air and then in their exercise books. there was much emphasis on the shape and size of the character as well as spatial composition. the teacher continually urged the children to make sure their characters were , that is, “ they looked good.” identities through literacy literacy is not just learning to read and write. it is also about acquiring identities. the main identity gained at school is a national identity. historically, china is the world’s john e. ingulsrud & kate allen 108 may 12, 2003 longest enduring empire. except for brief disruptions consisting of a century or two, the chinese empire has lasted for over 2000 years. the unity of the chinese language was maintained in three ways: (1) chinese characters (2) wenyan, literary chinese and (3) guanhua, the speech of the mandarins. of these three cohesive linguistic forces for national unity, chinese characters have been historically the most powerful. they still are today. since the 1911 revolution, however, there has been a gradual effort to reprioritize the cohesive forces, that is, to make the spoken language the primary force for unity, not the written language. it is for this reason that putonghua is taught in schools, and reading and writing are taught in the context of the spoken standard language. this process emphasizes the proximity of the written language to the spoken, and that literacy is acquired through the vernacular. in other words, putonghua is supposed to be the vernacular through which literacy is accessed. by becoming the means for learning chinese characters, the most cohesive linguistic force for national unity, putonghua’s role in promoting national unity is strengthened. indeed, china’s ministry of education has projected that putonghua will be used throughout the country by 2010 (“china to popularize mandarin,” 2002). after the initial weeks of learning putonghua and hanyu pinyin, the teachers announced to the pupils that they would now begin learning chinese characters. this script is not like foreign scripts. this is china’s own script. moreover, to learn chinese characters is to be identified as chinese and true chinese literacy is literacy in chinese characters. the teacher’s announcement to the class underscored the distinctiveness of this literacy when she introduced the first lesson in chinese characters: 3 4 1 2 2 1 2 2 4 4 4 2 1 2 1 2 4 2 4 women shi zhongguoren. zhongguo de wenzi bushi qita guojia de wenzi yiyang. we are chinese. the chinese writing system is not the same as the writing of other countries. the acquisition of literacy is participation in the cultural heritage: the learning of the strokes, stroke order, radicals, brush calligraphy, and learning them all precisely. these are segments of a process that constitute a tradition, largely unbroken for over three millennia. to participate in this acquisition process is to participate in a literate tradition which reinforces the notion that knowledge of the script brings access to the entire literary tradition. in addition, by accessing the tradition, a person assumes a greater moral sensitivity. identifying with the nation’s history and its culture presupposes a degree of knowledge about the literary tradition. consequently, literacy is seen as prestigious. the motivation to acquire literacy may not only be an attraction to the prestige, but also a fear of shame for having not acquired it or having not acquired it properly. it was not only among elementary school teachers in nanjing that we observed attitudes towards precision. newspapers frequently ran articles on prescriptive advice for proper linguistic expression (zhu, 1991). at zhejiang normal university in jinhua in the wu dialect group area, for example, every classroom door had a label painted �普通�写�范字 ‘speak putonghua, write standard characters.’ there were even billboards with this slogan around the campus to remind students. another label we observed on the campus was 普通�是教����言 ‘putonghua is the professional language of teachers.’ these kinds of reminders indicate that there are degrees of first steps to literacy in chinese classrooms current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 109 2 1 3 1 4 nanfang putonghua resistance to standard language forms both in speech and writing (ingulsrud & allen, 1999). who, then, speaks precise putonghua? although beijing is the center of government, its residents do not necessarily speak precise putonghua. there are distinctive pronunciation features that characterize beijing speech. yet many chinese people remark that residents of northeastern china speak putonghua most accurately. regardless of these informal observations, precise putonghua is not marked by a specific region, except that certain regional varieties are seen to have a closer proximity. the precise use of putonghua remains the domain of media professionals, and elementary school teachers and pupils. as they move up through elementary school, children’s putonghua skills gradually cease to be precise. as literacy increases, the focus of precision shifts from the dual emphasis on speech and writing to only precision in writing. by lower middle school, teachers speak putonghua with varying degrees of accuracy. when observing chinese writing classes in an upper middle school in nanjing, the teacher spoke putonghua with such a strong local pronunciation, his lectures were almost entirely unintelligible to us. with the tendency of families, neighbors, as well as teachers to speak the local variety, it is natural that children, as they get older, lose their precision in putonghua pronunciation. despite its official status, precise putonghua is not seen as particularly prestigious. this illustrates a strong tendency toward solidarity. people tend to identify with their locality and thus with the local vernacular. if people speak putonghua, it is done with local phonological characteristics. in southern china, people often describe their putonghua as 南方普通� ‘southern putonghua.’ in view of the local characteristics in most speakers’ use of putonghua, the question remains as to the degree to which speakers must code-switch. for speakers of the mutually unintelligible dialect groups of southern china, code-switching to putonghua is like switching to a foreign language. in contrast, for residents of beijing and parts of northern china, codeswitching is minimal. some areas of china are trying to address the resistance to using standard language forms by offering instrumental motivation. the town of huaxi in southern jiangsu province (also in the wu dialect group area) has successfully taken advantage of the economic reforms and has become wealthy both in agriculture and industry. to encourage more people to speak putonghua, they have offered a salary increase for those who can speak it well. the increase is doubled if a person can also speak a foreign language (fu, 1992). in addition to putonghua, literacy skills are used as an incentive. in response to increasing numbers of women from the provinces who are marrying beijing men, city residents are supporting a plan to test these women’s literacy skills before they receive their residency permits (“efforts made,” 1991). these attempts suggest that identities other than a national identity exist. for children in the grade one classroom in nanjing, their social and cultural identities were not limited to the chinese context. on the first day they began learning hanyu pinyin, several children pointed out the similarity of hanyu pinyin letters to the letters of foreign languages. they also pointed out that the knowledge of these letters would help them learn foreign languages. they further suggested that knowledge of foreign john e. ingulsrud & kate allen 110 may 12, 2003 languages can lead to tangible benefits. in learning a roman alphabet, the children perceived that they were assuming an identity in the global context. the presence of english this identity in the global context is further strengthened by the fact that many firstgraders are already learning english. in one nanjing classroom, the teacher asked how many children were learning english, and out of a class of 55, 14 raised their hands. in the mid-1990s in nanjing, english education for children was done privately after school. english lessons were part of the string of extra-curricular activities that were proliferating for the urban only children including piano, ballet, and soccer. in a recent trip to shanghai, we found that english has become a part of the city’s first grade curriculum with textbooks published by oxford university press. moreover, we found test preparation books for entrance exams to “famous” elementary schools in shanghai. according to one book, mingpai xiaoxue ruxue ceshi (wang, 2003), kindergartners are expected know basic english vocabulary like the names of fruit, household furniture, and appliances, as well as read out poems like the happy birthday song: all this in addition to knowing hanyu pinyin and most of the first-grade level chinese characters. in our classroom observations during the 1990s, we noticed that children offered english words as chinese vocabulary examples. for instance, when the teacher was teaching the syllable ‘lou’ and elicited examples from the class, one child said ‘hello de lou’. the teacher did not correct the child saying that the word is not chinese. instead the child was praised. in contrast, if a child offered a dialect word, the teacher would scold the child and ask for the putonghua rendition. in the schools, english is acceptable but dialect is not. although we felt that even though english was not part of the official first-grade curriculum at the time, its presence was evident and the attitude toward it was positive. consequently, in the design of the cover of learning to read in china: sociolinguistic perspectives on the acquisition of literacy (ingulsrud & allen, 1999), we added english as part of the total literacy package for chinese children: putonghua— hanyu pinyin—漢字—english. there is even more evidence today for this four-part description of early literacy in china. textbooks although instruction by teachers and values of parents are important in shaping children’s identities, images in the media also play a role in reinforcing identities. selecting one medium, illustrations in elementary school textbooks, we have analyzed not only those that were in use during our study in the 1990s, but we have compared them to recently published textbooks. the children we observed in nanjing are part of a privileged elite. this privilege is based on where they are born and live. the textbooks are full of illustrations of this elite. similar to books on other subjects (allen & ingulsrud, 1998; kwong, 1985), chinese language textbooks of the 1980s and 1990s are full of images of a happy childhood – but it is an urban childhood. when the books depict life in school, the majority of teachers are women. women are also shown at home, generally doing housework with help from a daughter. boys are never shown helping out at home, yet they relax at home by first steps to literacy in chinese classrooms current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 111 watching tv, reading, or practicing a hobby. in general, boys and men are represented as active and outgoing, in contrast to women and girls who are portrayed as being more passive. the new chinese language textbooks, yuwen, published by the jiangsu provincial education commission differ in many respects from those of previous years ( zhang & zhu, 1999). to begin with, better quality paper has been used and the texts are full of colorful illustrations and photographs. much attention has been paid to the layout of the text, such as a clear contents page and summaries of the new vocabulary introduced in each lesson. there are also changes in content, as throughout elementary school, emphasis is paid to learning how to write correctly, a feature not apparent in the earlier textbooks. in addition to the greater stress on writing, the new series focus on famous chinese sages, thus drawing attention to the country’s cultural traditions. yet there is continuity with earlier editions. women are still shown in their dual roles of housewife and elementary school teacher. they are still doing the housework with the help of the daughter. illustrations of boys and men continue to outnumber those of girls and women. young children are still presented with a colorful, happy world of school and home. the new books present an idealized urban world together with occasional illustrations of famous places in nanjing, the capital of jiangsu province. this urban world is perhaps as alien and exotic to most of the children who live in the countryside as america and britain might be their parents. while the children are presented with an idealized, affluent world, it is also one in which the career prospects, together with gender relations and population proportions are carefully and realistically depicted. in education, idealizations of the world are expected. however, the social relations of chinese society are accurately presented in the elementary school language textbooks. the fantasy world of the illustrations is bounded by the reality of the future roles the children are expected later to fulfill in society (allen & ingulsrud, 1998). the illustrations in the textbooks reinforce traditional gender-role identities together with the positive value of possessing an urban identity. for most children in china, however, acquiring gender-role identities is more accessible than an urban identity. in the section below, we describe how bureaucratically assigned identities can even bar access to schooling. john e. ingulsrud & kate allen 112 may 12, 2003 those left behind in china, the privileged urban social class is set apart from the rest of the population by the fact that it is part of the non-agricultural urban class, as defined by the household registration system, the hukou. the hukou determines a person’s place of residence and socio-economic status, this being either agricultural or non-agricultural. initially established in the cities in 1951, the hukou system was then extended to the whole of china and still remains in force. the hukou system was not just a means of controlling population migration, but also ensured that the urban non-agricultural population had privileged access to food, housing, education, medical care, work, and social welfare programs, all at the expense of the majority, the rural agricultural population. despite a few alterations over the years to the hukou system, “the essential features of the hukou system remain basically unchanged. socio-economic eligibility is still linked with hukou status” (chan & li, 1999, p. 841). in the past when population movement was more restricted, the disparities of this social system were not apparent to those in the rural areas. however, with the economic reforms of the 1980s, cities, especially those on the eastern seaboard, have prospered and so attracted a “floating population” that experts guess ranges from 80 to 100 million (chan & li, 1999; li, 2002; mallee, 2000). terms such as “floating population,” “blind vagrants,” “excess birth guerrillas,” and “stinky peasants” emphasize the separateness of these migrants. although the socioeconomic circumstances of the migrants vary as some are private entrepreneurs, the majority consists of peasants. the migrants do not have the key to urban status, the non-agricultural hukou. without this certificate, they do not have access to urban benefits, in particular, they are unable to send their children to school or take part in higher education. when groups of migrants living in the cities try to circumvent the system and even set up their own schools with teachers from their hometowns, the police and city authorities have periodically tried to destroy these illegal villages. such incidents in beijing occurred in 1986, 1989, 1990, and 1995 (li, 2002; mallee, 2000). the chinese media recently have acknowledged the existence of these schools and have raised the problem of school access, as well as the persistence of the hukou system (“china makes schooling,” 2002). still, there is no evidence of official rectification of the situation on a national scale. recent studies on poverty in china have not examined the floating population and so have underestimated urban poverty, as well as the overall national poverty rate (gustafsson & zhong, 2000). despite this major reservation, the studies have found that poverty in china is linked to location. it tends to be concentrated in the rural areas, especially in the mountainous regions of the west where many minority groups live. for these people, poverty has increased, “although the overwhelming proportion of china’s poor … belong to the majority population” (gustafsson & zhong, 2000, p. 992). in addition to the burden of poverty, many of the minorities struggle with issues of bilingualism, illiteracy, and schooling. recent reports indicate that the chinese government has pledged over $600 million over a three year period to promote nine years of compulsory education in the rural areas (“china expands compulsory education,” 2002). at the same time, there is debate in the media as to how funding for this education program can be maintained (“who should pay,” 2002) first steps to literacy in chinese classrooms current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 113 since the founding of the people’s republic in 1949, the constitution has guaranteed respect for minority languages. however, the varying language policies over the years have meant that this respect has not always been granted. some minorities have had success in becoming literate in their own language and putonghua whereas others have not (“our language is still alive,” 2002; zhou, 2000). even where there are bilingual schools, many parents have been reluctant to send their children to these schools since they believe that knowledge of putonghua is more critical for their children’s future (hong, 1998). in comparison with the urban areas, access to education in the rural areas is limited and differs greatly in quality. many rural families struggle to find the money to pay for schooling as often schools have illegally imposed extra fees just as local authorities have levied illegal taxes (chan, 2002; li, 2002). to alleviate this problem, the ministry of education has ordered all school fees to be publicized to increase transparency (“chinese schools,” 2002). even with greater transparency, the fact remains that compulsory education is not free and places a drain on the family income. one way to make ends meet is to send a family member to find work in the cities. as a result of all these difficulties, females have the highest rates for dropouts and illiteracy. “80 percent of the 2 million new illiterates each year are females” (hansen, 2001, p. 405). areas of future research the teachers we interviewed in nanjing were forthright in pointing out that children cannot achieve the goals of literacy acquisition simply by relying on classroom instruction. if they are to be successful in terms of the curriculum and among their peers, children need help from home (ingulsrud & allen, 1999). our observations in the neighborhood school, even with the demographic advantages, lead us to conclude that assistance from home is very much a caseby-case situation. some children are neglected while others are pampered with attention. despite the variety of family environments, teachers report that the majority are receiving some kind of help. however, family literacy and adolescent literacy are two areas that have not been researched. another area of research is describing school literacy in rural china. our study was in the urban areas, and although we compared two different kinds of schools, they were both good urban schools. how the rural areas are coping with the task of literacy is a question about which there is very little information. moreover, how the migrant population deals with their children’s education is an area that needs to be explored. conducting research, particularly qualitative research in china continues to be very difficult. many of the questions, whether they are about rural literacy or family literacy, invariably carry a political edge. the results could be less than complementary to the authorities. to what extent the authorities can tolerate criticism is the researchers’ constant calculation and gamble. conclusion we have described literacy in terms of the task, as well as social and cultural identity. the three areas are interrelated, that is (a) the standard norms of writing carry the most prestige, (b) the standard spoken language is used in the acquisition of literacy to insure john e. ingulsrud & kate allen 114 may 12, 2003 that speaking putonghua will be learned and finally, (c) participating in the literacy is seen as an act of national identity. at the same time, since a roman alphabet (hanyu pinyin) is used to learn putonghua and chinese characters, children have noticed that studying the letters of hanyu pinyin is similar to learning the letters of foreign languages. in this process, the children begin to acquire an identity in the global context. this identity is further strengthened by the popularization of learning english, which is already part of the curriculum in many urban schools. the media also play a role in shaping identity. in our study of textbook illustrations, urban living is promoted and traditional gender roles are reinforced. these images are in stark contrast to the social realities of the majority of the population that lives in rural areas. we also raised the issue that not all identities are learned or freely chosen. some are imposed through an intricate system of household registration. as long as people remain where they are registered, children can have access to varying levels of education and healthcare. migration for economic purposes is unofficially condoned, but right of abode is not granted and thus access to schooling is denied. therefore, a person’s identity in terms of household registration can affect even access to literacy. references allen, k. & ingulsrud, j. e. (1998). what do you want to be when you grow up? an analysis of primary-school textbooks in the people’s republic of china. journal of multilingual and multicultural development 19(3), 171-181. chan, a. (2002). the culture of survival: lives of migrant workers through the prism of private letters. in p. link, r. p. madsen, & p. g. pickowicz (eds.), popular china: unofficial culture in a globalizing society (pp.163-188). lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. chan, k. w. & li, z. (1999). the hukou system and rural-urban migration in china: processes and changes. the china quarterly,160(4), 818-855. china expands compulsory education in rural areas. (2002, may 10). people’s daily online. retrieved february 3, 2003, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200205/09/eng20020509_95383.shtml china makes schooling for migrant children easier. (2002, july 10). people’s daily online. retrieved february 3, 2003, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200207/10/eng20020710_99453.shtml china to popularize mandarin by 2010. (2002, june 17) people’s daily online. retrieved february 3, 2003, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200209/13/eng20020913_103122.shtml chinese schools urged to publicize education charges. (2002, june 17). people’s daily online. retrieved february 20, 2003, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200206/17/eng20020617_98018.shtml first steps to literacy in chinese classrooms current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 115 efforts made to wipe out illiteracy. (1991, april 23). china daily. fu, z. putonghua. (1992, may 18). china daily. gustafsson, b. & zhong, w. (2000). how and why has poverty in china changed? a study based on microdata for 1988 and 1995. the china quarterly, 164(4), 983-1006. hansen, m. h. 92001). ethnic minority girls on chinese school benches: gender perspectives on minority education. in g. peterson, r. hayhoe, & y. lu (eds.), education, culture, and identity in twentieth-century china (pp.403-429). hong kong: hong kong university press. hong, x. 1998. minority languages in dehong, china: policy and reality. journal of multilingual and multicultural development, 19(3), 221-235. ingulsrud, j. e. & allen, k. (1999). learning to read in china: sociolinguistic perspectives on the acquisition of literacy. lewiston, ny: edwin mellen press. kwong, j. (1985). changing political culture and changing curriculum: an analysis of language textbooks in the people’s republic of china. comparative education, 21(2), 197-208. lepage, r. b. (1964). the national language question. london: oxford university press. li, z. (2002). urban experiences and social belonging among chinese rural migrants. in p. link, r. p. madsen, & p. g. pickowicz (eds.), popular china: unofficial culture in a globalizing society (pp.275-299). lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. mallee, h. (2000). migration, hukou and resistance in reform china. in e. j. perry & m. selden (eds.), chinese society: change, conflict and resistance (pp. 83-101). london: routledge. our language still alive. (2002, february 28). people’s daily online. retrieved february 21, 2003, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200202/28/eng20020228_91144.shtml wang, c. (ed.). (2003). mingpai xiaoxue ruxue ceshi. shanghai: shanghai wabao fan shi. who should pay china’s rural primary education? (2002, december 21). people’s daily online. retrieved february 20, 2003, from http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200212/21/eng20021221_108837.shtml zhang, q. & zhu, j. (eds.). (1999). yuwen. nanjing: jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe. zhou, m. (2000). language policy and illiteracy in ethnic minority communities in china. journal of multilingual and multicultural development, 21(2), 129-148. john e. ingulsrud & kate allen 116 may 12, 2003 zhu, y. linguistics want to stop ‘pollution’ of chinese. (1991, june 7). china daily. background to this article: cice is not responsible for the content of external links. un tech. cooperation among dev. countries http://www.tcdcwide.net/tcdcweb/index.html cooperation south journal http://tcdc.undp.org/coopsouth/default.asp un web of information for development http://www.undp.org/tcdc/wide/ buenos aires plan of action http://www.iisd.ca/climate/cop5/bapa.html oas horizontal cooperation program http://www.cidi.oas.org/coophoreng.asp brazilian cooperation agency http://www.abc.mre.gov.br south asian association for regional cooperation http://www.saarc-sec.org/ © 2013 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(2): 96-107. education community dialogue towards building a policy agenda for adult education: reflections drawn from experience tatiana lotierzo hirano latin american campaign for the right to education giovanna modé magalhães latin american campaign for the right to education camilla croso laura giannecchini latin american campaign for the right to education fabíola munhoz latin american campaign for the right to education latin american campaign for the right to education in this article, we share the experience of the “amplifying voices” initiative. held by the latin american campaign for the right to education (clade) within the scope of public policy advocacy, “amplifying voices” applies the principles of consultation and dialogue in youth and adult education communities, aiming at a stronger connection between expectations and decision making processes with regards to adult education policies. over the past two years, this initiative has promoted listening and attentive dialogue in order to strengthen participation and affirm the importance of actors’ voices in shaping policy and promoting social change. “it is not in silence that [people] make themselves, rather it is in their words, their work, their action-reflection.” (paulo freire, 1980, p. 78) in this article, we share some thoughts on the latin american campaign for the right to education’s (clade) experience with consultation and dialogue in education communities, within the scope of public policy advocacy. we focus on the case of the “amplifying voices” initiative, which aims to provide an open space for critical thinking and dialogue for youth and adult education actors, towards shaping education policy and promoting social change. clade is a plural network of civil society organizations acting in the defense and promotion of the right to free public education for all as a responsibility of the state, regarding the dimensions of availability, accessibility, acceptability, adaptability, and accountability. such commitment implies recognizing education as a fundamental human right and an enabling right that allows for the realization of all other rights. as articulated by katarina tomasevski (2005), the right to education includes the following dimensions: a) availability: functioning educational institutions and programmes have to be available in sufficient quantity within the jurisdiction of the state; b) accessibility: educational institutions and programmes have to be accessible, physically and economically, to everyone, without discrimination, within the jurisdiction of the state; c) acceptability: the form and substance of education, including curricula and teaching methods, have to be acceptable (e.g., relevant, culturally appropriate, and of good hirano, magalhães, croso, giannecchini, and munhoz current issues in comparative education 97 quality) to students and, in appropriate cases, parents; and d) adaptability: education has to be flexible so it can adapt to the needs of changing societies and communities and respond to the needs of students within their diverse social and cultural settings. for those involved in the campaign, the unconditional defense of the human right to education goes hand in hand with efforts for greater participation at all levels of education policy: from its design to the monitoring of its implementation and evaluation. thus, one of the core premises of the campaign is “promoting pluralistic and collective action among the diverse members of civil society in the fight for ensuring the right to a public and free education for all” (clade, 2010). the campaign seeks to involve “boys, girls and youth, adults, non-governmental organizations, teachers unions, education workers’ associations and social movements” (clade, 2010). according to this perspective, all citizens should have their voices heard and that means that their participation is crucial to relevant political and decision-making processes. regarding education policy, it is crucial that the right of members of the education community—including students, teachers and other education professionals, parents and civil society groups—to participate in public debates be promoted and respected. this means that they should be recognized as the main actors to be consulted and considered during debates on public education policies and also that their perceptions and desires for an education that is meaningful to them should be the basis for collective action towards developing a public education policy agenda. díaz (n.d.) quotes boaventura de sousa santos as saying: the idea of democracy must be understood as something much broader than that which exists under the capitalist system, in that democracy is in fact the entire process through which we transform unequal relations of power into relations based on shared authority. this is important within the family, as it is in the factory, on the street, in the community, in the public space and within relations between countries. as such, additional structural spaces that go well beyond conventional political spaces must be established, thereby radicalizing democracy and making it possible to consolidate the principles of shared authority as a political objective. (p. 2) nevertheless and contradictorily, the voices of those actors directly impacted by education policies are the very ones that are least audible in the processes for developing an agenda for public education. at least in latin america and the caribbean, recent protests demanding free public education for all, as well as other rights, clearly reveal the lack of truly participatory spaces in which citizens can convey their thoughts and make recommendations regarding policies and measures that aim to improve education. ordinary people are rarely asked about the kind of education they desire, what knowledge is meaningful to them, or how they evaluate the education that is currently being offered. a second premise is that participation leads to critical reflection, generating an opportunity to think about one’s rights and, in turn, offering the potential for transformational action. dialogue is therefore seen as a moment of self-awareness and realization. according to freire (1980): conscientization cannot exist outside of a “praxis,” or better yet, without the act of action-reflection . . . for this very reason, conscientization is an education community dialogue towards building a policy agenda for adult education current issues in comparative education 98 historical commitment. it also means historical conscience: it means critical insertion into history, and that [people] must take on their role as actors who build and rebuild the world. . . . conscientization does not seek a separation where the conscience is on one side and the world on the other. rather, it is based on a conscience-world relation. in turn, the false conscience, i.e., the state of semi-intransitive or naïve transitive conscience, is overcome, enabling a better critical insertion of conscientized persons in a reality that is demystified. (p. 26) a third premise for these initiatives is that research-action is valuable activity (freire, 1980). that is, we believe that the exercise of listening and dialogue contributes to the collective building of knowledge, unlike more traditional forms of research. finally, the fourth premise is that this exercise can be a way to document and give visibility to concrete cases that often remain invisible in the media, as well as in official statistics and documents. we agree with tomasevski (2005), that the fight for making human rights a reality should not be guided by statistical data alone, but rather by concrete cases and stories. rights violations become more real and significant when cases are documented at the source, also providing input into the design of strategies for combating such violations. taking these four premises as a starting point, we now look closer at the experience of “amplifying voices.” youth and adults: you have the word “amplifying voices: views and proposals for youth and adult education from the perspective of its subjects” was conceived as an initiative based on the recognition that all people are rights-bearers and should be heard and participate in decision-making processes, particularly those addressing policies and practices that affect them. the focus on the public sector was highly emphasized, due to a campaign priority to advocate for public education at all levels, what is considered a sine qua non to the realization of education as a human right. as such, the name, “amplifying voices,” mirrors the initiative’s main objective: to enable the expectations, demands, and public policy recommendations of those who study or have studied in youth and adult education classes to be known and taken into account by public policy makers and by society as a whole. the expression “youth and adult education” (y&ae, or epja in portuguese and spanish) refers to a level of education aimed at illiterate young people and adults, as well as those who could not complete their basic education. in latin america and the caribbean the concept of youth and adult education has been reinforced by educators, theoreticians, and activists who follow the path opened by paulo freire, as a way to promote students’ empowerment through their self-recognition as rights bearers and key actors in the political and other decisionmaking processes that affect their lives. another factor that contributed significantly to epja practices in the region is the influence of the region’s popular education tradition, which assumes that some ethical, political, and pedagogical approaches are essential within the framework of a politically emancipatory project. from this point of view, one prioritizes the participation of vulnerable sectors that otherwise might be excluded from educational processes. in its pedagogical dimension, popular education is about cultivating self-awareness of one’s knowledge and power to develop one’s thoughts on reality, taking everyday experience as the beginning of educational hirano, magalhães, croso, giannecchini, and munhoz current issues in comparative education 99 process. additionally, popular education encourages people to rebuild the world (freire, 1980) or take action to promote social change. it is worth noting that such an understanding of epja springs mostly from the educational experience in itself. for this reason, epja remains a key issue in the latin america and the caribbean region, due to the lack of public policies and resources that effectively contribute to the realization of this right. in 2011 more than 48 million people in latin american and the caribbean were illiterate, or 8.4% of the region’s population (united nations children’s fund, 2013). most are female rural workers, indigenous persons, and people of african descent, which calls for urgent measures focusing on these groups. in latin america and the caribbean, there are between 40 and 50 million indigenous persons and more than 150 million of african descent; according to siteal (2011), these two groups are disproportionately among the poorest and most marginalized people in the region. they tend to have the most precarious jobs and less access to a relevant quality education, and are often excluded from decision-making processes. depending on the country, the percentage of adult indigenous individuals who are illiterate or have limited literacy varies from 60% to 90% of the population (siteal, 2011). it is also worth noting that in most countries in the region illiteracy is higher among african descendants who live in rural areas than those who live in urban areas. among indigenous and african descendants, women are the most marginalized in terms of accessing and completing formal education. “amplifying voices”: conception and challenges the “amplifying voices” initiative structures itself around a website where epja students and teachers from latin america and the caribbean can post their stories in video, audio or written form, and also find stories from students and teachers in their own and other countries (see http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja). actually, when “amplifying voices” began in 2011, clade staff made an effort to map similar initiatives, identifying epja experiences being carried on in different places and by different actors. this step was critical because such experiences had limited visibility on the internet and therefore were not being used for cross-regional analysis of epja practices and policies.[1] among the experiences that were visible on the internet, the majority placed emphasis on the success of certain literacy training models and not on the epja students’ and teachers’ voices. while the goal of allowing epja students to have their voices heard at a regional and a global level was a step towards their empowerment and the possibility of impacting public epja policies, the choice of collecting and presenting such stories through an internet site also reflected a commitment to promote regional exchanges of knowledge and personal experiences. “amplifying voices” departed from recognition of the web as a fundamental tool for the political advocacy activities that were already being carried out by clade at that time. that is, due to the fact that clade is a decentralized campaign that includes national members in 15 countries, as well as international partners, the use of technology has been an essential tool for political mobilization, especially because it brings the concept of political advocacy to a different level, adding to the participation of campaign members in face-toface meetings and events. similarly, in spite of its internet-based dimension, “amplifying voices” also included efforts to combine distance and face-to-face approaches. the challenge was how to foster engagement of epja students from a wide range of contexts, including those who might not be acquainted with or have frequent access to the internet. this necessitated converting this http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja education community dialogue towards building a policy agenda for adult education current issues in comparative education 100 website into an important tool to promote exchange and raise voices, individually and collectively. the answer for clade was to invite teachers, in addition to students, to become involved. this decision proved valuable because the teachers became responsible for collecting their students’ stories and delivering them to clade staff. at the same time, this strategy encouraged teachers to involve their students in reflexive processes. this included promoting students’ reflection on the very issues that were important to “amplifying voices,” opening the possibility of drawing recommendations concerning epja policies for these students. it is important to highlight that in addition to teachers and students, there was also a crucial engagement from members of civil society organizations in the implementation of this initiative. “amplifying voices” was able to involve different facilitators who either helped clade staff reach out to teachers and students or uploaded the video, audio, and written testimonies to the website. this is, of course, a very challenging initiative, which is still (and gradually) being implemented. thanks to all these concentrated efforts, the website currently represents the opinions of 76 persons (13 teachers and 63 students) from argentina, bolivia, brazil, colombia, costa rica, mexico, nicaragua, peru, paraguay, and uruguay. the “amplifying voices” website (http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja) receives 1,500 visitors per month on average. table 1: number of persons who left their testimonies on the “amplifying voices” website by country source: latin american campaign for the right to education http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja hirano, magalhães, croso, giannecchini, and munhoz current issues in comparative education 101 table 2: number of persons interviewed for the “amplifying voices” website, by country, by group (students or teachers) source: latin american campaign for the right to education in addition to giving visibility to these messages through the on-line platform, clade has worked to communicate these actors’ demands and recommendations in different political advocacy spaces in which it participates. the campaign actively takes part in regional and international meetings and conferences that provide unique opportunities to dialogue with heads of state and other representatives of various government bodies, as well as key actors from multilateral organizations and other stakeholders. these events are invaluable opportunities for political advocacy, allowing recommendations from civil society to be presented to public authorities. to illustrate, clade was present at the 21 st ibero-american congress of education, which was organized by the ibero-american states organization (oei is its acronym in spanish) in september 2011. this congress was attended by all ministers of education from latin america and the caribbean, plus portugal and spain. the congress was also important because it was followed by the ibero-american congress of permanent, technical and professional education, attended by more than 5,000 teachers, mostly from the epja sector. at the september congress clade presented to the ministers the recommendations received through the “amplifying voices” website to that date (see http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/propuestas). an interactive exhibition was set up to show the videos and resources from the “amplifying voices” site.[2] a closer snapshot of “amplifying voices” recommendations from clade’s perspective, policies and programs for epja must be in line with the expectations of epja students. this understanding guided the interviews aimed at finding out these students’ expectations, views, and recommendations for education policies and practices.[3] these interviews were semi-structured around two guiding questions. what are http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/propuestas education community dialogue towards building a policy agenda for adult education current issues in comparative education 102 your expectations about education? what obstacles did you find in your way to receive education? the excerpts below highlight the main issues that emerged from an analysis of the interview data. each interviewee decided how he/she wanted his/her name, age, and location to be revealed. each excerpt concludes with a link to the internet page where the full testimony can be found. four main issues were identified by the interview data analysis: a) experiencing new forms of interaction through written culture; b) increasing one’s knowledge and/or self-confidence; c) realizing rights of citizenship and increasing the feeling of belonging to society; and d) being able to work and recovering one’s dignity. the excerpts also allowed for identification of the issues of accessibility, relevance, and discrimination as crucial to realizing the human right to education, according to the framework elaborated by tomasevsky (2004). experiencing new forms of interaction through written culture this theme refers specifically to students who took part in activities that enhanced their literacy skills. most of these testimonies mention daily experiences wherein the student was negatively affected by the fact that he/she did not know how to read and write, which resulted in experiences of exclusion and discrimination. as an illustration, balvina, an indigenous woman from peru, comments: my father wouldn’t send me to school. in the past parents wouldn’t send us to school. . . . our parents would say: “to send letters to men, that is why i will send you?” my siblings have not gone to school either, but the boys studied by themselves. my father never allowed me to study . . . i could not sign papers in my community’s assemblies. . . . now i’m learning how to write, so i can sign, so i will not be afraid anymore . . . i will not falter anymore or hide behind other people. now, i can sign at the assemblies, for i have learned. . . . come to school, women! i’m learning, and we all will learn, so that we are not left behind. i want my children to know that this is their right, my right, the right of everybody to go to school. if they want to learn, they won’t feel ashamed anymore for not knowing it. they will write whenever they need, without asking anyone for help as i did in the past. . . . and my children know it as well. i want all of them to complete school. so, i will remain as the only one who was illiterate.” (retrieved from http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/asi-ya-no-tendremiedo/) increasing knowledge and self-confidence interviewees indicated that they increased their interest in knowledge as they realized their right to education. in turn, the experience enhanced their sense of autonomy and selfconfidence in social relationships, for example, within the family context. maría marina, an 84-year-old mexican woman, exemplifies this theme: i came back to study in order to move forward and learn, ‘cause i couldn’t do so when i was a child. my parents didn’t send me to school. now, i am given the option to go on with my studies. . . . the major difficulty i faced was to reconcile studying with being a housewife—and my husband didn’t like it. but i wanted to study. . . . i recommend that we continue our studies even after we http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/asi-ya-no-tendre-miedo/ http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/asi-ya-no-tendre-miedo/ hirano, magalhães, croso, giannecchini, and munhoz current issues in comparative education 103 become adults. it is a very important thing to do . . . especially if you didn’t have the chance to do so when you were young. (retrieved from http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/maria-marinavolvi-a-estudiar-para-seguir-adelante/) realizing rights of citizenship and increasing the feeling of belonging to society here responses referred not just to having access to written culture but also to the possibility of being able to exercise one’s citizenship rights and increase one’s participation in democracy. interviewees also mentioned their desire to learn new things and participate in everyday life decisions and/or perform everyday tasks in equal conditions with other people, without feeling inferior. for instance, julia aparicio de sánchez, a 53-year-old field worker and housewife from el cóndor, bolivia, explained: now i’m 53 years old, but i feel strong, this is why i continue to work. i’m from the countryside and i am the mother of 12 children. before learning how to read and write i was like a blind person. i would see signs and papers everywhere in the city, but i did not know what they were all about. i could not sign my own name. . . . but i had the chance to learn how to read and write, and math, and thanks to that i can now decide where to go when i’m in the city, and i can read the letters sent by my children, and also attend other qualification workshops. i demand [public authorities] the implementation of projects to improve my community. now i can count money faster whenever i sell or shop [for] something. i don’t have to press my fingerprint anymore; i can sign my name now. i can control my home expenses better. i can enter any place with more confidence and without asking so many questions, because i can read. now i can find out where offices and shops are. i also see life with different eyes, as if a blindfold was taken off my face. . . . finally, i say that i want to go on and tell other women to qualify themselves as well. they must learn, and so they can claim for their rights too. (retrieved from http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/asi-podremosreclamar-nuestros-derechos/) being able to work and recovering one’s dignity in this theme interviewees emphasized the relation between education and work opportunities. being able to find a job, with better labor conditions, meant that they and their families could regain dignity. for example, marivaldo rodrigues de souza, a 43-year-old janitor living in são paulo, brazil, reported: i had a hard life. i was not raised by my parents. i’ve always worked for others, in the fields. i’m from the state of bahia. i came to são paulo two years ago. because i’ve never gone to school, i was hired by a third-party cleaning company, but the salary is not good, and then i decided to quit and go to school. . . . i started studying so i could receive some training to work at least as doorkeeper, so i can provide my family with a better life. i have a very good teacher. a teacher who knows how to educate; she can explain the subject. . . . in bahia, i would not have the chance to study, because the school was in the city, which was far away, and there was no public transport. then i took all this time to go to school. now, when i got here, i found this opportunity. . . . i think that whoever quits school should return, because school is everything in life. (retrieved from http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/maria-marina-volvi-a-estudiar-para-seguir-adelante/ http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/maria-marina-volvi-a-estudiar-para-seguir-adelante/ http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/asi-podremos-reclamar-nuestros-derechos/ http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/asi-podremos-reclamar-nuestros-derechos/ education community dialogue towards building a policy agenda for adult education current issues in comparative education 104 http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/marivaldo-a-escolae-tudo-para-mim/) we identified three themes (accessibility, relevance, and discrimination) that arose in interviewees’ responses to our second guiding question: what obstacles did you find in your way to receive education? we present excerpts from some of the epja students’ testimonies given during the interviews that illustrate these themes. accessibility jessica carolina morales, a 23-year-old student from colombia, began by highlighting obstacles related to accessibility. she mentioned as barriers the distance required to reach school combined with the lack of transportation, as well as the fees that are charged: i like to study very much. and i believe it is good for me, so i will be someone in life. i want to continue with my studies, i want to go to school to become a teacher and help children. . . . one difficulty is that my feet hurt; it is difficult to walk. my knees hurt as well [and it was aggravated because i had to walk long distances to go to school]. . . . another complicated issue is money. they charged us fees for the painting of the classroom and even to enter the lab. . . . i would recommend that they give opportunity to people like me, so that we can go to school without paying such an expensive price, ‘cause some people are sick and also don’t have money. (retrieved from http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/jessica-no-habiacomida-en-la-escuela/) relevance some/many/all of the students interviewed pointed to the fact that academic content was not relevant to their daily reality and some/many/all mentioned the cultural dimension of language as a barrier, or at least a factor, discouraging participation in some epja programs. for instance, language was mentioned as a barrier by ana bertha rojas salvatierra, an indigenous woman from peru. i’m the oldest of 7 siblings, and my native language is quechua. i was admitted to school at the age of 9. i had to walk about one hour and a half from my community to school. . . . i’d study from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and i was one of a few women who attended school. most of the other students were men, and they would mock me. . . . from 1 st to 6 th grade of primary school, the only thing i learned was: “tito up the donkey.” they wouldn’t teach us math, and so i couldn’t add or take away or even read. . . . another difficulty was my native language. i could not understand advanced spanish classes. (retrieved from http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/alicia-las-mujeresson-discriminadas-especialmente-las-mujeres-andinas/) discrimination in the majority of interviews students mentioned discrimination—especially gender discrimination—as a huge obstacle (see previous quotes by julia, balvina, and maría marina). cristina barreto choque, secretary of bolivia women’s confederation, also mentioned gender discrimination as undermining women’s right to education; it is worth noting the value of the interviewee’s mention of her country’s constitution and how her comments reinforce and reflect that focus of several human rights instruments: http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/marivaldo-a-escola-e-tudo-para-mim/ http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/marivaldo-a-escola-e-tudo-para-mim/ http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/jessica-no-habia-comida-en-la-escuela/ http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/jessica-no-habia-comida-en-la-escuela/ http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/alicia-las-mujeres-son-discriminadas-especialmente-las-mujeres-andinas/ http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/alicia-las-mujeres-son-discriminadas-especialmente-las-mujeres-andinas/ hirano, magalhães, croso, giannecchini, and munhoz current issues in comparative education 105 in terms of education, women have big responsibilities. . . . we still see, in the bolivian education system, that our country is far behind schedule in which regards [sic] women. we’re fighting the fight of our ancestors. in the past, here in our communities, for instance, the role of women was to serve as housewives, taking care of their husbands, and feeding the cattle. only men had the right to education. today, in our country, in particular in the fields, there are women and young girls using computers. that’s why we demand education for all. . . . i believe that first of all we must have self-confidence as women, and acknowledge our rights. in the past, they said men had rights, not women, but today we realize that this is not true. they both have their rights. we have the right to education and everything else provided by the federal constitution. (retrieved from http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/cristina-nuestropais-esta-muy-retrasado-para-las-mujeres/) conclusion based on the above-quoted and all the other testimonies, clade has created a set of recommendations related to education policies and practices, and has used various fora and channels to communicate these recommendations to government officials and other stakeholders. in summary, epja students demand that states:  treat education as a right, reinforcing its connection with other human rights;  provide free education, i.e., without cost to those participating;  turn lifelong education into a reality;  approve and implement policies that treat epja as a priority;  adopt measures towards the end of discrimination in education, particularly with respect to gender, age, and indigenous groups;  take into account linguistic diversity in the design and implementation of education policies; and  organize school times to facilitate the attendance of students who also work. “amplifying voices” is a recent initiative that clade intends to make permanent. from clade’s perspective, the initiative validates our central premise regarding the importance of dialogue in the process of the “conscientization” (freire, 1980, p. 26) of political-social actors—in the strengthening of democracies and in exercising human rights. this initiative fosters actors’ reflections on the concrete impacts of education on their lives, entailing and/or facilitating political action as a main purpose. “amplifying voices” brought about examples of consciousness-raising processes involving the affirmation of rights, the recognition of individuals as rights-bearers, and the self-awareness of the epja students as legitimate political actors. in the context of new decentralized and horizontal political practices (díaz, n.d.) those of us involved in clade recognize the importance of human agency in promoting change. by encouraging people to voice their experiences and recommendations for changes in policies and practice, the “amplifying voices” initiative seeks to increase self-awareness about individual rights, as well as to connect people so that their aspirations can be pursued at the group, community, national, and international levels. in that sense, the experience of “amplifying voices” may lead to social transformations—including moves toward fuller realization of education and other human rights and progress toward achieving more just and http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/cristina-nuestro-pais-esta-muy-retrasado-para-las-mujeres/ http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/2011/cristina-nuestro-pais-esta-muy-retrasado-para-las-mujeres/ education community dialogue towards building a policy agenda for adult education current issues in comparative education 106 egalitarian societies (fraser, 2007) in latin america and the caribbean. notes [1]. some existing programs aimed at promoting students’ voices on the web would not contemplate either a latin america and caribbean regional approach or an epja approach. [2]. a similar exhibition was set up during the viii assembly of the international council on adult education, held from june 14-18, 2011, in mälmo, sweden. for further information, see http://www.icae2.org/. [3]. interviews were organized within the following context: (a) interviewees were selected based on recommendations from members of civil society organizations that work directly with epja (mostly members of clade), identified during field visits by clade staff to schools or epja centres, or self-selected after spontaneous access to the “amplifying voices” website; (b) interviews were conducted face-to-face by clade staff or representatives of civil society organizations that work directly with epja (most were members of clade), or interviews were self-initiated and uploaded by visitors to the website—either way, interviewees followed instructions that included a script of questions (see http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/participe/); (c) the interviews are part of a continuous process, so they have been conducted at different times; and (d) the analysis and transcription of the interview data has been done by clade staff. this article was written collaboratively; the authors work in the executive coordination office of the latin american campaign for the right to education (clade). tatiana lotierzo hirano e-mail: tatiana@campanaderechoeducacion.org giovanna modé magalhães e-mail: giovanna@campanaderechoeducacion.org camilla croso e-mail: camcroso@gmail.com laura giannecchini e-mail: laura@campanaderechoeducacion.org fabíola munhoz e-mail: fabiola@campanaderechoeducacion.org references clade. (2010). letter of principles. retrieved from www.campanaderechoeducacion.org fraser, n. (2007). reconhecimento sem ética? lua nova, 70. doi:10.1590/s010264452007000100006 freire, p. (1980). conscientização: teoria e prática da libertação: uma introdução ao pensamento de paulo freire (3rd ed.). são paulo: centauro. díaz, a. v. p. (n.d.). la democracía en américa latina y el futuro de la utopía: interview with boaventura de sousa santos [online forum article]. retrieved from http://www.boaventuradesousasantos.pt/documentos/la_democracia_en_america_latina.pdf tomasevski, k. (2005). el asalto a la educación. revista española de educación comparada, 11, 417-419. http://www.icae2.org/ http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/vocesepja/participe/ mailto:tatiana@campanaderechoeducacion.org mailto:giovanna@campanaderechoeducacion.org mailto:camcroso@gmail.com mailto:laura@campanaderechoeducacion.org mailto:fabiola@campanaderechoeducacion.org http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/ http://www.boaventuradesousasantos.pt/documentos/la_democracia_en_america_latina.pdf hirano, magalhães, croso, giannecchini, and munhoz current issues in comparative education 107 united nations children’s fund. (2013, june 19). adult literacy rate in latin america and the caribbean (2011). retrieved from http://data.un.org/data.aspx?d=sowc&f=inid%3a74 http://data.un.org/data.aspx?d=sowc&f=inid%3a74 © 2012 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(1): 41-51. a broader definition of fragile states: the communities and schools of brazil’s favelas rolf straubhaar university of california, los angeles though the existing literature on the favelas (or shantytowns) of brazil thoroughly documents the chaotic and violent nature of life within them, few connections have been made between the literature on favelas, fragility and small states, particularly with regard to the fragile state of educational institutions in favelas. this article summarizes the primary findings of prominent favela studies across the social sciences alongside the literature on fragility, drawing out a summative definition of fragility that easily applies to the context of education in brazilian favelas. primarily, this article argues that not only do the slums of brazil qualify for classification as fragile small states, but such a classification by prominent multilaterals would open these areas to donor funding for educational programming that could greatly mitigate their fragility and advance educational equity, as occurs in other postconflict and fragile settings around the world. introduction the social, political and economic dynamics of the favelas, or illegal urban shantytowns that have materialized in the hills around rio de janeiro and other urban centers throughout brazil, have long provided a fertile basis for academic research and analysis across disciplines. political and historical analysis (gay, 1994; penglase, 2009) has explored the political rivalry between drug cartels, local politicians and grassroots neighborhood associations for control of the hearts and minds of favela residents. ethnographic work (goldstein, 2003; jones de almeida, 2003; leeds, 1996; pardue, 2004; soares, 2000) has extensively documented the day-to-day life of favela residents, as well as the particular forms of language, music and culture which have developed therein – both as responses to and as coping mechanisms for the economic and social inequalities experienced by brazil’s urban poor. however, despite the chaotic and violent nature of favela life, few connections have been made between the literature on favelas, fragility and small states. in this article, i summarize the literature on fragility, drawing out a summative definition of fragility as a weakness or lack of capacity in local institutions (mosselson, wheaton, & frisoli, 2009; vallings & torres, 2005) that – i argue – easily applies to the context of brazilian favelas, as well as similar low-income slums across the globe. while not currently classified as independent regions in a formal sense, favelas are often ruled by local political actors (whether legal or extralegal) that exercise de facto sovereignty which i argue, according to baldacchino (2012), qualify brazilian slums for classification as fragile small or micro-states. to support this classification, i then summarize the primary findings of prominent favela studies across the social sciences, highlighting those findings which indicate the precarious and fragile educational, political, and social institutions in favelas. i argue that such a classification by prominent multilaterals would open favelas to donor funding that could greatly mitigate their fragility (especially with regard to education), as occurs in other postconflict and fragile settings around the world. i further argue that education – particularly educational programming that promotes community-level political participation – is a key type of donor support that would ease fragility in this context. to do so, i draw upon extensive literature that documents brazilian popular participation efforts, especially those based in freirean 42 current issues in comparative education straubhaar educational models, and their mitigation of fragility in low-income areas of brazil. in sum, i use the literature on fragility and small states, favela life, and popular education in brazil to argue that the classification of favelas as fragile micro-states by multilaterals could lead to donor attention that, if focused properly on educational programs promoting popular participation, could greatly improve the precarious political and economic status of brazil’s urban poor. fragility: a review of the literature though “fragility” is a standard term in the development literature, applied primarily to states that are recovering from some form of conflict or natural disaster, mosselson et al. (2009) note that there is no standard definition of “fragility” or “fragile states” (p. 1). however, common threads arise when working definitions used by institutions and scholars are compared. at its most basic, fragility is an inability to provide basic services, whether due to a lack of political will or a lack of institutional capacity (mosselson et al., 2009, p. 2; see also rose & greeley, 2006, p. 5-7). using this definition, brazilian favelas definitely count as a fragile setting, due to the lack of state-provided security as well as the low quality of most existent state services, notably education. however, localized settings like favelas do not meet most organizational definitions of fragility, as such definitions are currently very state-centric. indeed, until recently the term “fragility” has been used less often than “fragile states” (mosselson et al., 2009, p. 4). mosselson et al. (2009) explain why, stating that it is a common commitment by donors and organizations to “[work] alongside governments” towards “state-building and governance priorities” (p. 2) that leads them to focus on fragility at the state level. in other words, the reasoning for a state-level focus seems to be two-fold: first, state-building is where donors and organizations have the most experience and expertise, due to their historical commitment to such. second, there is the issue of receptivity on the part of the recipient state. states are usually not eager to be labeled as ‘fragile.’ as such, states that are not wholly fragile – but rather experience pockets of fragility – are often less willing to accept this label, especially since the funding that such labeling makes possible does not always reliably accompany it, making the decision something of a political gamble (brown, 2006). due to this phenomenon, mosselson et al. (2009) note that many donors are moving towards the concept of fragility rather than fragile states, a definition that allows donors and organizations to “move beyond the emphasis on governments” (p. 4). a term like fragility can be applied on the regional or local level as well as the state, and as such can be more widely applicable and useful. the united kingdom’s department for international development, or dfid (2005), has reflected this general shift with their use of the more general term “difficult environments.” such open, dynamic terms allow more general application, especially pertinent to settings which are experiencing strong growth at the state level while maintaining pockets of extreme inequality and fragility, like brazil. building on the argument that current global conditions require some “creative political economy” that moves beyond state-centric models (baldacchino & milne, 2008), baldacchino (2012) provides a framework within which favelas and other sub-national areas can be seen as small states unto themselves, able to exercise some degree of autonomy and sovereignty. according to baldacchino (2012), the globalized and postcolonial international relationships of the 20th and early 21st centuries extend beyond traditional national boundaries to include subnational areas that do not claim independent national sovereignty in the traditional sense. while traditionally “you either are sovereign or you are not” has been the standard for statehood, “this rule of thumb is increasingly found wanting in the 21st century” (baldacchino, 2012, p. 239). as baldacchino current issues in comparative education 43 a broader definition of fragile states (2012) further explains, what is evident is that subnational units can target specific functions and powers (of sovereignty), which they then seek to secure...although always dependent on context, all the functions and powers typically associated with sovereignty have been up for negotiation. (p. 245) within a brazilian favela context, there are a number of local political actors that have historically negotiated a certain degree of de facto sovereignty, as will be explored more fully in the next section. as semi-autonomous micro-states exercising degrees of de facto sovereignty, favelas become defensibly classifiable as fragile even using a more traditional state-centric model of fragility. vallings and torres (2005) provide a fragility framework that is particularly applicable and useful in a favela micro-state context. to vallings and torres (2005), the primary driver of fragility is weak political institutions and a lack of political participation. that is, “in areas where [state-level political institutions] are continuously changing, or in a state of transition...there is only a weak system of institutional coherence, so that individual parts of that system fall open to abuse by powerful groups or interests” (vallings & torres, 2005, p. 9). this lack of institutional coherence is what creates fragility. as exemplified by the literature on favelas explored in the next section, brazilian favelas are a clear example of such institutional instability. through a review of the extensive social science literature on life in favelas, the following section will illustrate how the continuous power struggle between the police and drug cartels described by penglase (2009) as “ordered disorder” leads to the “abuse by powerful groups or interests” described by vallings and torres (2005, p. 9). similarly, the variously agitated and banal environment in favela schools that will be described by guareschi (1998) clearly displays that brazilian education can epitomize vallings and torres’ (2005) definition of a “weak institution.” life in brazilian favelas the favelas of brazil are plagued by a constant state of conflict and tension that penglase (2009) described as a sort of “ordered disorder” or purposeful “(in)security” (p. 47) provided alternately by the state police, local drug traffickers, and local community leaders. extensive literature on favela life (arias, 2004; gay, 1994; leeds, 1996; leeds & leeds, 1977; zaluar, 1998) addresses this “(in)security,” much of it from a partially historical perspective. these works will be discussed first, followed by works that focus on current conditions – particularly the state of education – in brazil’s slums. leeds (1996) provides an introductory history of how favelas developed as a form of affordable low-income housing, in response to the growing need for cheap labor in rio de janeiro. officially illegal but tolerated by the state due to the labor they provided, favelas were seen as acceptable so long as they remained invisible. this invisible status granted by the state laid the groundwork for favelas to develop into what leeds (1996) calls the most “visible and tangible form of the violence used by the state” against brazil’s urban poor (p. 50). several other authors, notably gay (1994) and zaluar (1998), build upon leeds (1996) by focusing on the role of neighborhood associations, or associações de morro (ams), in the formal establishment and development of brazilian slums. in the language of small state jurisdictions explored earlier 44 current issues in comparative education straubhaar by baldacchino (2012), ams are one of the primary actors that have endowed favelas with a sense of relative autonomy and sovereignty. since favelas first began to grow in the hills around rio de janeiro, ams typically arose organically as small groups of neighborhood leaders would organize themselves to petition local government for legal title to their newly seized land. this role as broker between favela communities and local politicians granted am leaders a great deal of political strength (leeds & leeds, 1977). however, as basic infrastructural needs for utilities, roads, and schools were eventually met, the importance of ams began to wane (gay, 1994; zaluar, 1998). over time, ams were replaced in their role as political brokers by drug cartels that increasingly developed patron-client relationships with local politicians and police (arias, 2004). ams were not completely replaced and remained important community figures – however, their survival often meant their inclusion in or association with the drug trade (gay, 1994). it is this gradual growth in drug activity within favelas, and the accompanying violence and instability, which has brought favela life to its current fragile state. there are many excellent qualitative favela studies which document the fragility of slum life due to the violent relationship between drug cartels and police, in which both sides fight for the hearts and minds of favela residents. holloway (1993), in a qualitative study of rio de janeiro’s police force, describes the role rio police see for themselves as providers of order for the greater population of rio, justifying their violent containment and repression of drug activity in favelas as necessary for the greater good. garotinho and his co-authors (1998) provide an analysis of how this has reinforced what they call “criminal legitimacy”: as police violence became pervasive enough to seem arbitrary, local residents turned to drug traffickers as de facto community leaders. several other authors use qualitative data gathered in various favelas to document the same pattern. goldstein (2003), in a larger ethnographic work on race and sexuality in a particular favela, notes that local drug gangs provide “a parallel or alternative rule of law” (p. 225) that settles local concerns due to a lack of resident faith in the police. soares (2000), in an excellent portuguese-language favela ethnography, emphasizes the perception of favela residents that drug traffickers, while despotic, provide order that strongly contrasts with seemingly arbitrary police violence. leeds (1996), in her ethnography on the cocaine trade in one favela, also highlights the perception by favela dwellers “that the formal justice system does not work for them [and] has led a portion of the population to accept an alternative justice system” provided by drug cartels (p. 62). perlman (2006), in a synthesis of ethnographic data collected over a 40 year period in a single favela, notes that the marginalization of the urban poor has only increased over that time frame due to increasing drug-related violence and a lack of opportunities for democratic participation. particularly, several studies focus on the unstable and inequitable nature of education in urban favelas. in her qualitative study of adolescent students in a favela school, guareschi (1998) notes the degree to which her participants internalize (while still attempting to resist) messages of underachievement, marginalization and deviance received in school settings. brazilian urban adolescents are marginalized by formal educational structures, a situation which has prompted the growth of alternative educational projects and community schools based around popular cultural forms such as hip-hop (pardue, 2004) and traditional afro-brazilian music and dance (jones de almeida, 2003). looking at brazilian education comparatively with educational systems in other latin american countries, vegas and petrow (2008) point out that, although democratically governed since 1985, current issues in comparative education 45 a broader definition of fragile states brazil has struggled to transition to a just society. for the last 60 years, expanded opportunities in education have been a significant factor in social mobility. however, much of this expanded opportunity sprang from privatized channels denied to marginalized groups, so educational inequality persists among racial minorities and low-income brazilians, particularly in urban favelas. consequently in brazil, as in much of latin america, income inequality correlates positively with educational inequality (vegas & petrow, 2008). several prominent articles provide compelling theoretical frames in which the dynamic of violence, patronage and educational inequality found in brazilian favelas can be understood. kerstenetsky and santos (2009) – economists using a capabilities approach, or a development framework that focuses on what individual actors in a given setting are able to do – try to characterize favela life as poor due to a lack of freedom that results from insecurity and violence. this argument arose in response to several brazilian economists that have argued that favela residents cannot be truly considered “poor” in an absolute sense when their average salaries are compared globally (see silva, 2005; valadares, 2005). kerstenetsky and santos (2009) make the point that favelas are “freedom-poor” due to their instability and lack of access to quality public services (particularly education), even if average incomes have reached a level that could be considered above poverty. rodrigues (2006) attempts to explain the roots of brazilian urban violence, inequality and insecurity by tying such to a perceived lack of civil democracy. basing his claims in survey data gathered in several favelas where various strategies have been used to increase stability, rodrigues (2006) notes that attempts to build the legitimacy of public-level institutions (such as the neighborhood police and local elected officials) have had positive effects on perceptions of security, while efforts to build social bonds at the private level had no such perceived effect. while rodrigues’ (2006) findings are interesting, they are limited due to their specific temporal and spatial context, especially given the fraught relations with police noted by most favela researchers. as the last of the reviewed theoretical pieces, penglase (2009) coins the term “(in)stability” to refer to the ability of drug traders to maintain political and social control through alternately inflicting local violence and providing local protection. in this sense, this author addresses the ambiguity of drug cartel control with a level of nuance that is lacking in other works. penglase (2009) notes that sovereignty is determined just as much by “the ability to institute and suspend ‘normality’” (p. 47) as the ability to enact or enforce law. by deliberately creating instability and disorder, and interrupting the normal functioning of schools and other public institutions, drug gangs normalize such behavior and by so doing “naturalize their power” (penglase, 2009, p. 51). with this theoretical construct of “(in)stability,” penglase (2009) provides a compelling explanatory framework for how drug cartels can maintain power through the reinforcement of fragility. clearly, given the broader definition of fragility and micro-states described earlier (baldacchino, 2012; mosselson et al., 2009), the picture of brazilian favelas and their schools captured by penglase (2009) and others reveals these contexts to be fragile environments that act as semi-autonomous small states. identification as “fragile” micro-states could help open brazilian favela communities to an immense amount of donor wealth, at least with regards to global education funds like the fast track initiative (sperling, 2007), that could help to end “the [continual] marginalization of the [brazilian] urban poor” (perlman, 2006, p. 154) witnessed by countless researchers over the last century. the following section will review the literature on education and fragility, specifically in a brazilian context, so as to build the argument for investment in education as a means to mitigate the fragility experienced by brazil’s urban poor. 46 current issues in comparative education straubhaar where to go from here – education and fragility mosselson et al. (2009) have clearly noted the potential relationships between education and fragility – that is, education can either be a mitigating or exacerbating force (p. 6; see also bush & salterelli, 2000). within a brazilian context, a number of educational initiatives have been found to help reduce instability and fragility by promoting democratic educational institutions and political participation in schools and their surrounding communities. this section reviews several examples of these initiatives found in the literature. one of the main results of increased gang violence and fear in favelas is a reduction in people’s willingness and ability to use the social networks and social capital available to them (perlman, 2006) in community organizations (which, as arias [2004] has previously noted, were quite common during the initial settling of rio’s favelas). this stigmatization of community organizing and subsequent lack of political participation has been one of the main marginalizing trends in favela life. strengthening local institutions (including schools) and increasing community participation could mitigate the instability and fragility experienced in urban brazilian slums. several efforts at increasing local community participation have experienced a great deal of success in mitigating fragility in urban brazilian contexts. one such effort, participatory community budgeting, has been explored at length (see abers, 1996, 2000; avritzer, 2010). several southern brazilian cities – most prominently porto alegre – have begun to allow local communities to publicly plan their own local spending budget, and the results have been well-documented. living conditions for the poor in these communities have drastically improved (avritzer, 2010), and perhaps more importantly (given the prominence of patron-client relationships between favelas and local authorities [arias, 2004]), participatory budgeting has substantially lowered clientilism. that is, in a study of several communities with participatory budgeting, clientilistic neighborhood associations have largely lost access to public goods during their first years of participatory budgeting, and have reacted by changing social practices to become more transparent and democratic (abers, 2000). this same participatory approach to local governance has also been used in and through brazilian schools to mitigate fragility, especially by movements and schools that have adopted the pedagogical model of paulo freire (1970). perhaps the most visible example of this is the movimento sem terra, brazil’s nationwide landless peoples’ movement, which organizes community-run schools in all of its settlements. these schools are governed by community-level councils, which are responsible for school administration, curriculum selection, and day-to-day maintenance and governance of schools (caldart, 1997; mst, 1999). several researchers credit this democratic system as being one of the principal sources of the movement’s organizational stability and strength (martins, 2006; mccowan, 2003). such a system could easily be applied in brazilian favela community schools, as strong local governance systems such as ams are already in place (perlman, 1976; resende de carvalho et al., 1998). donors and other international actors could sponsor the creation of local democratic governance systems within existent community networks such as ams and schools, building capacity for locally run democratic governance systems. democratically organized community schools are already a reality in many parts of brazil, though documentation is perhaps strongest for the “citizen schools” of porto alegre (see gandin & apple, 2004). in these schools, students and their parents take an active part in organizational planning, and as a result the exclusion that often typifies urban brazilian schools is replaced by a sustainable, locally-controlled institution that teaches students to think critically and work towards the betterment of their quality of life. current issues in comparative education 47 a broader definition of fragile states arias (2004) calls for the expansion of these types of democratic systems as a potential solution to favela instability, asserting that through sponsorship of local democratic schooling initiatives, international actors can provide favela communities with the means to develop innovative solutions to community problems and petition for necessary changes in state policy. due to their outsider status, such organizations have the legitimacy to help identify and circumvent corrupt local actors, supporting nascent organizations until they have gained local credibility. using data from several favelas where such programs have been implemented by international agencies, arias (2004) describes how internationally-sponsored local democratic institutions have led to local police reform (p. 26) and increased safety. for instance, in urban salvador in northeast brazil one internationally-financed community school (most prominently funded by unicef) holds regular community meetings to plan community projects and address common concerns. out of these meetings have come organized neighborhood watches, grant applications for vocational and other educational courses for neighborhood youth, and many other opportunities to which, without these meetings, this community would not have had access (g. dos santos, personal communication, june 15, 2005). recognition of favelas as areas of fragility would allow for further examples such as this by opening favelas up to further investment from educational fragility-minded donors and multilateral organizations. discussion while this article has made the argument that brazilian favelas could be made less fragile through international funding of educational programming, several questions remain: should international organizations or the brazilian state be held responsible for such work? if favelas were to be classified as small states using baldacchino’s (2012) criteria, who at the favela level would be the sovereignty-exercising actors with whom multilateral investors should interact? this section will explore these questions. first, regarding governmental responsibility for brazilian favelas, international third-party intervention is hardly a new concept given the long-standing role of the international development industry in promoting such interventions, whether through multilateral funding organizations, non-profits or other non-governmental actors (boli & thomas, 1997). in areas in which governments fail to fulfill public needs, such intervention is common (rahman, 2006), and the brazilian government has arguably failed to fulfill its mandate to provide quality public education in low-income favela settings (vegas & petrow, 2008). while the state and local police have become increasingly present in the favelas around rio de janeiro through recent pacification efforts (baroni, 2011; veloso, 2010), this sudden governmental concern has not extended to the improvement of basic services, like education. as a result, international organizations could have a significant impact on those social sectors which have been neglected by state and national governments. local cartels, neighborhood associations (ams) and non-profits are all actors that could solicit and maintain economically supportive relationships with international entities independent of the brazilian government. this type of relationship could be problematic if cartels are the local agents soliciting support on behalf of their communities, due to the extralegal nature of cartel activities and the ambivalent support they receive from their surrounding neighborhoods (garotinho et al., 1998). while there is abundant evidence of local governments in sub-national areas exercising sovereignty in making decisions for their communities (baldacchino, 2012), these local governments have local legal authority which cartels have only been able to assert in a de facto manner. further research would be necessary to determine whether, in any given particular 48 current issues in comparative education straubhaar favela context, cartels would be the local authorities most fit to solicit external support, as opposed to local neighborhood associations (ams) or non-profits. conclusion through a review of the relevant literature, it is evident that brazilian favelas are sites of extreme instability, violence, insecurity, and educational inequity. additionally, brazilian favelas easily qualify as fragile if, as baldacchino (2012) suggests, the definition is extended beyond the state level. such an application of the term “fragile” could prove helpful by opening poor favela communities to greater donor investment in local schools and other community organizations. as illustrated in the examples above, such investment would prove especially helpful if used to promote stronger democratic institutions in schools and neighborhood associations at the local community level. such initiatives have been shown to successfully mitigate favela-level fragility, and an increase in similar programming and funding could reduce the educational and social insecurity experienced by favela residents on a daily basis. such intervention by international organizations in sub-national areas is philosophically defensible given the complex and nuanced potential definitions of contemporary statehood, within which areas like favelas can be considered comparable to other small states or states-within-states (baldacchino, 2012). rolf straubhaar is an anthropologist of education whose research focuses on the global flow of peoples and cultural influences between educational systems, primarily looking at the u.s. and lusophone countries (especially brazil and mozambique). prior to entering the academy, he taught in adult literacy settings (in the u.s., brazil and mozambique), and through that experience developed his continuing interest in the theory and pedagogical methods of paulo freire. he has also taught in elementary school settings for several years in various parts of the u.s. email: straubhaar@ ucla.edu. references abers, r. n. 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(march 2009). education and fragility: a synthesis of the literature. journal of education for international development, 4(1), 1-17. mst (1999). como fazemos a escola de educação fundamental (caderno de educação no. 9). veranópolis, brazil: iterra. nicolai, s., & triplehorn, c. (2003). the role of education in protecting children in conflict. london, uk: overseas development institute. pardue, d. (2004). “writing in the margins”: brazilian hip-hop as an educational project. anthropology & education quarterly, 35(4), 411-432. penglase, b. (2009). states of insecurity: everyday emergencies, public secrets, and drug trafficker power in a brazilian favela. political and legal anthropology review, 32(1), 47-63. perlman, j. (1976). the myth of marginality: urban poverty and politics in rio de janeiro. berkeley, ca: campus press. perlman, j. 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(2006). education in fragile states: capturing lessons and identifying good practice. dac fragile states group, service delivery workstream, sub-team for education services. silva, m. l. p. (2005). favelas cariocas, 1930–1964. rio de janeiro, brazil: contraponto. soares, l. e. (2000). meu casaco de general. rio de janeiro, brazil: companhia das letras. a broader definition of fragile states current issues in comparative education 51 sperling, g. (2007). how to unlock financing for fragile states and move toward a more unified global architecture for education financing: eight preliminary recommendations. bonn, germany: fast track initiative fragile state task team. triplehorn, c. (2001). education: care and protection of children in emergencies a field guide. westport, ct: save the children. valadares, l. (2005). a invenção da favela: do mito de origem a favela. rio de janeiro, brazil: getulio vargas editora. vallings, c. & torres m. m. (2005). drivers of fragility: what makes states fragile? london, uk: dfid, pride working paper no. 7. vegas, e. & petrow, j. (2008). raising student learning in latin america: the challenge for the 21st century. washington, dc: world bank. veloso, l. (2010). governing heterogeneity in the context of “compulsory closeness:” the “pacification” of favelas. in clapson, m., & hutchison, r. (eds.), subrbanization in global society: research in urban sociology, volume 10 (pp. 253-272). bingley, uk: emerald group publishing. zaluar, a. (1998). crime, medo e política. in a. zaluar & m. alvito, um século de favela (pp. 209232). rio de janeiro, brazil. editora fundação getúlio vargas. © 2012 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(1): 26-40. invited article learning from small states for post-2015 educational and international development michael crossley university of bristol terra sprague university of bristol drawing upon recent work for the commonwealth secretariat and our ongoing comparative research, this article focuses upon the nature, impact and implications of contemporary development challenges for education in small states. it is argued that the post-jomtien era has been dominated by international goals and targets that have focussed predominantly upon basic education, an area of strength for many small states. during this era, many small states found themselves ahead of other nations in terms of access to basic education. they were, therefore, extending the boundaries and parameters of many international educational agendas, pressing ahead and often challenging the focus of international development trajectories. in this article we argue that, because of this, small states have much innovative and pioneering experience to share with those who are now considering the possible nature and direction of post-2015 global education agendas. this includes a rationale for the strengthening of educational research capacity within small states, and an acknowledgement of the fact that small states have much to share with each other, and to contribute to wider development discourse and educational policy deliberations worldwide. introduction this article draws upon research recently completed for the commonwealth secretariat designed to identify educational policy priorities that are currently emerging within small states across, and beyond, the commonwealth (crossley, bray, & packer, 2011). in doing so, it draws upon consultations with ministers of education and senior officials from small states at the 17th conference of commonwealth education ministers (ccem), held in kuala lumpur, malaysia in june 2009 (crossley, bray, & packer, 2009) and participation at the 18th ccem held in mauritius during august 2012 (commonwealth secretariat, 2012b). this is combined with original and ongoing theoretical research, statistical material derived from a range of international databases, interviews and discussions with a wide range of personnel working within small states and related international development agencies, research being carried out by doctoral scholars from small states working with the authors, and contributions to a special issue of comparative education (mayo, 2008), and to the 2009 unesco-iiep policy forum and related activities that led to the publication of the book tertiary education in small states planning in the context of globalisation (martin & bray, 2011). extensive research and consultancy work carried out in the small states of the caribbean and the south pacific – in collaboration with local research teams – underpins much of the analysis; and it is to this long-term collective experience, and our research partners, that we owe much gratitude. the opening sections of the article revisit familiar literature on the nature of small states, and the origins and evolution of a distinctive body of work on education in such contexts. this is followed by an overview of the impact of the international education for all (efa) agenda, and educationrelated millennium development goals (mdgs), upon educational policy and practice in small states. the main body of the article focuses on the nature, impact and implications of contemporary development challenges upon education in small states around the world. in doing so, attention current issues in comparative education 27 learning from small states for post-2015 educational and international development is given to what the global community may learn from the experience of small sates for the post-2015 era of international development, particularly in the areas of the quality of teaching and learning, boys’ education and flexible/distance learning, and wider issues relating to the politics and future trajectories for international development cooperation, and the importance of contextual sensitivity in educational policy research, development and implementation. throughout the article, the analysis is grounded in theoretical and epistemological traditions and perspectives derived from socio-cultural and post-colonial approaches to comparative and international research in education, in particular the traditions inspired by the work of sir michael sadler (see higginson, 1979) and isaac kandel (1933), combined with more recent theoretical work by authors such as loomba (1998), tuhiwai-smith (1999), and tikly (2001). this intellectual position is articulated at greater length in an earlier article for cice (crossley, 2002) in the book comparative and international research in education: globalisation, context and difference (crossley & watson, 2003), and in a special issue of the journal comparative education on the theme of postcolonialism (crossley & tikly, 2004). however, it is pertinent here to note how this draws attention to the importance of local voice and context sensitivity in both educational research and international development (crossley, 2010). conceptualizing small states as discussed elsewhere in the current volume, conceptualisations and definitions of small states have varied widely over time and continue to be debated. population size remains the favoured indicator in measuring state smallness. the commonwealth, for example, which has long pioneered support for education in small states, recognises that 32 of its member countries fall into its broad definition of nations with less than 1.5 million people, in addition to six larger commonwealth states that share similar characteristics: botswana, the gambia, jamaica, lesotho, namibia and papua new guinea. our own work with the commonwealth aligns with this conceptualisation, but also recognises an increasingly accepted threshold of five million within some small states studies, and points out that: of the 80 sovereign countries with populations below five million, 32 (40%) are full members of the commonwealth (table 1). twenty-three are island states, 15 of which are multi-island countries. when 1.5 million people are used as the benchmark, 25 fully independent commonwealth countries comprise 53 per cent of the total of 47 small states globally. (crossley et al., 2011, p. 8) it remains important to point out that while many small states share similar characteristics, there is also great diversity between them, particularly concerning income and levels of development, as defined by the human development index (hdi) and the united nations development programme (undp) (see crossley et al., 2011, for further discussion). in more recent conceptual work on small states, the classification of small island developing states (sids) has emerged. while there is not yet any formally agreed-upon definition of sids, unesco does maintain a list of 52 such states, which were officially recognised as a formalised group at a 1992 un conference on environment and development. neither is this sub-group of small states homogeneous. many of them do, however, face similar challenges related to sustainable development, including remoteness, susceptibility to natural disaster, and external shock vulnerability. this newer and more specific categorisation is particularly relevant to work on education for sustainable development (esd), as briefly discussed in the section on contemporary challenges, below. before addressing this further, it is helpful to first consider the influence of the post-jomtien era on the development of education in small states. 28 current issues in comparative education crossley and sprague table 1. small states by region and population size region population < 1.5 million population, 1.5 – 5 million africa cape verde; equatorial guinea; gabon; são tomé & príncipe; swaziland botswana; central african republic; congo (republic of); eritrea; the gambia; guinea bissau; lesotho; liberia; namibia americas french guiana (frord); suriname costa rica; panama; uruguay arab states bahrain; djibouti ; qatar lebanon; mauritania; oman; united arab emirates; west bank and gaza atlantic bermuda (brot); falkland islands (brot); faroe islands (densg); greenland (densg); iceland; st helena (brot); st pierre & miquelon (frtc) asia bhutan; brunei darussalam; macao-china (sar); timor leste georgia; mongolia, singapore caribbean anguilla (brot); antigua & barbuda; aruba (nethfa) the bahamas; barbados; belize; british virgin islands (brot); cayman islands (brot); dominica; grenada; guadeloupe (frord); guyana; martinique (frord); montserrat (brot); netherlands antilles (nethfa); st barthelemy (froc); st kitts & nevis; st lucia; st martin (froc); st vincent & the grenadines; trinidad & tobago; turks & caicos (brot); us virgin islands (ust) jamaica; puerto rico (sgut) europe andorra; cyprus; estonia; gibraltar (brot); guernsey (ukcd); isle of man (ukcd); jersey (ukcd); liechtenstein; luxembourg; malta; monaco; montenegro; san marino; the vatican albania; armenia; bosnia & herzogovina; croatia; ireland; latvia; lithuania; macedonia fyr; moldova; norway; slovenia indian ocean christmas island (aust); cocos islands (aust); comoros; mayotte (froc); maldives; mauritius; réunion (frord); seychelles pacific american samoa (ust); cook islands (sgnz); federated states of micronesia; fiji islands; french polynesia; guam (sgut); kiribati; marshall islands; nauru; new caledonia (frord); niue (sgnz); norfolk island (aust); northern marianas (sgcus); palau; samoa; solomon islands; tokelau (nzsat); tonga; tuvalu; vanuatu; wallis & futuna (froc) new zealand notes: countries in bold are members of the united nations. countries in italics are members of the commonwealth. data refer to 2008. abbreviations: aust – australian territory administered from canberra; brot – british overseas territory; densg – self-governing overseas administrative division of denmark; froc – french overseas collectivity; frord – french overseas regions and departments; nethfa – part of the kingdom of the netherlands with full autonomy in internal affairs; nzsat – new zealand administering territory; sar – special administrative region of the people’s republic of china; sgcus – commonwealth in political union with usa; sgnz – self governing in association with new zealand; sgut self-governing unincorporated territory of the usa; ukcd – united kingdom crown dependency; ust – unincorporated territory administered by usa office of insular affairs. education in small states in the post-jomtien era in the immediate post-jomtien era, the potential significance of the small states framework, for education and for international development more generally, became increasingly clear in our own work. the jomtien declaration (unesco, 1990) and related initiatives did much to co-ordinate and focus the work of international education agencies, national governments, ngos and other stakeholders from the early 1990s onwards. while this can be seen to have had many beneficial effects, coherent global attention to the efa agenda prioritised investment and international support for basic education, as translated further in practice, to primary schooling. but, in the current issues in comparative education 29 learning from small states for post-2015 educational and international development context of many small nation states, primary schooling was, at that time, not their own, or only, key educational priority. belize, a central american small state, provides an example of this tension. the belize primary education development project (bpedp) was the most prominent educational initiative undertaken in the country throughout the 1990s. this national project was supported by a combination of government, british and world bank development funds with a notable degree of success (van der eyken, goulden, & crossley, 1995). within belize, however, tensions were reflected by the fact that international financial and technical support was also being sought – with less success – for secondary and tertiary level educational development. indeed, for many local stakeholders, the development of these post-basic education sectors was a greater priority at that point in time. primary education sector development was already well advanced, and national education planning priorities had moved on to issues within other education sectors. belize thus felt out of step with the global priorities of the day, or, like many other small states who had also done well in terms of internationally-agreed primary education enrolment targets, it was pressing ahead and pioneering other agendas to better meet its own felt needs. contextual differences lie at the heart of this dilemma, for even in the 1990s many small states had already achieved considerable success in providing widespread access to primary education, partly because of the advantages of small scale that made universal provision more easily achievable. this can be seen in the contemporary enrolment data, presented in table 2, for primary education in small states. the 2010 global monitoring report (unesco, 2009) also indicates that: 18 of 24 commonwealth countries with populations under five million for which data were available have reached an 80 percent primary net enrolment rate (ner) or better, with 11 of these having reached 90 per cent. (cited in crossley et al., 2011, p. 26) following jomtien, many small states were thus pressing against the prevailing currents, and looking for initiatives designed to improve the relevance and quality of basic education (thaman, 1993), to reach out to marginalised groups through non formal projects (crossley, sukwianomb, & weeks, 1987), and to make the most of their scarce human resources through the expansion of the secondary sector and the local provision of tertiary education and related professional opportunities (crocombe & crocombe, 1994). in many ways, small states were thus pressing at the boundaries of increasingly firm parameters that were integral to the internationally ‘agreed’ development agendas of the 1990s. by coming together, and sharing educational experience under the small states’ banner, it can be argued that the distinctive needs and priorities of small states could receive more nuanced and contextually sensitive attention. the emergence of a distinctive literature also generated increased opportunities for local ‘voice’, critique and leadership to emerge. following a highly influential pan-commonwealth meeting on education in small states that was held in mauritius during 1985 (commonwealth secretariat, 1985), and bacchus and brock’s (1987) seminal publication the challenge of scale: educational development in the small states of the commonwealth, the commonwealth secretariat played a lead role in supporting regional workshops, consultancies and publications focused directly upon small state priorities in education. these activities ran throughout the 1990s and included initiatives relating to the quality of education, teacher education, post-secondary 30 current issues in comparative education crossley and sprague table 2. education data for select small states ger in pre-primary education % (2007 or latest year) ner in primary education % (2007 or latest year) gender parity in secondary education gpi (f/m): gross enrolment (2007) adult literacy % 15+ latest year (2002-2007) total public expenditure on education % gnp (2007) total aid to education constant us$m (2007) below 100,000 tuvalu 106 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. 3 nauru 79 72 1.19 n.a. n.a. 1 st kitts & nevis 117 96 0.91 n.a 10.9 7 dominica n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. 5.5 3 antigua & barbuda 102 74 0.96 99 n.a. seychelles 125 n.a. 1.13 92 4.9 1 kiribati 113 n.a. 1.14 n.a. n.a. 2 100,000 250,000 tonga 113 96 1.04 99 4.9 3 grenada 81 76 0.99 n.a. n.a. 4 st vincent & the grenadines 102 91 1.24 n.a. 7.5 17 st lucia 94 87 1.13 n.a. 6.9 3 samoa 95 n.a. 1.13 99 n.a. 4 vanuatu 108 87 n.a. n.a. n.a. 9 250,000 1million barbados 105 97 1.03 n.a. 6.7 maldives 111 96 1.07 97 8.3 8 belize 123 97 1.07 n.a. 5.8 1 the bahamas 103 89 1.09 n.a. n.a. brunei darussalam 106 93 1.04 95 n.a. malta 100 91 1.00 92 4.9 solomon islands 101 62 0.84 n.a. n.a. 44 guyana 112 n.a. 0.93 n.a. 6.5 8 cyprus 102 99 1.02 98 7.3 1 1.5 million swaziland 113 87 0.89 84 7.9 5 mauritius 101 95 0.99 87 3.9 47 trinidad & tobago 100 94 1.07 99 n.a. 1 current issues in comparative education 31 learning from small states for post-2015 educational and international development colleges/tertiary education, and comparative perspectives on examination systems in small states. the achievement and limitations of this work were reviewed in 1999 (crossley & holmes, 1999) where it is argued that, despite a need to challenge an overemphasis on perceived vulnerabilities and problems, there was much to be gained from collaboration in education between small states and from “increased efforts to promote…more substantial partnerships with non-commonwealth agencies concerned with small states” (1999, p. 64). the politics of international development cooperation, nevertheless, inevitably continued to impact upon national education policy trajectories in ways that generated tensions between the international agendas that shaped the nature of development assistance, and the local needs that inspired educational priorities within small states. the post-jomtien era was, therefore, a difficult time for many small states to engage whole-heartedly with what were increasingly becoming accepted as international development agendas, goals and targets. maintaining international engagement was crucial to secure ongoing development assistance and support, but the terms of engagement with many international agencies often failed to relate as closely as local stakeholders would have wished to local small states needs. contemporary challenges and achievements while many of the educational and wider developmental challenges faced by small states in the post-jomtien era continue today, it is important to recognise how, in recent decades, writers from small states have actively challenged the preoccupation of external researchers and the international community with what they perceive as small states’ problems, limitations and vulnerabilities (baldacchino & bray, 2001). to some extent, this led some critics to challenge the very concept of ‘small states,’ seeing it as a negative or belittling term. this can certainly be so, depending upon the nature and origins of the analyses being undertaken – but this need not always be the case, and, on the contrary, there are many compelling advantages for small states to come together under this collective banner. nevertheless, it is for these reasons that in this article we have deliberately chosen to focus upon the positive experience of educational development in small states, upon what others could learn from this experience, and upon the implications of this for post-2015 educational and international development. having said this, given these aspirations, it is first necessary to identify the very significant global challenges currently facing all nations and development agencies as they look beyond 2015. firstly, many ‘donor’ countries can be seen to be cutting their development aid, including aid for education, in the face of the current global economic crisis. at this level, the challenge is to find above 1.5 million the gambia 83 (2008) 67 (2008) 0.96 (2008) n.a 2.1 6 botswana 107 84 1.05 83 8.8 3 lesotho 114 72 1.27 82 11.00 18 namibia 109 87 1.17 88 n.a. 14 jamaica 91 86 1.05 86 7.0 11 papua new guinea 55 n.a. n.a. 58 n.a. 40 source: unesco (2009). notes: ger = gross enrolment rate; ner = net enrolment rate; gpi = gender parity index; gnp = gross national product 32 current issues in comparative education crossley and sprague ways of maintaining global interest and investments in education when economic and politically oriented priorities are increasingly gaining prominence. to cite the former assistant directorgeneral for education at unesco: investing in people is no longer considered as overriding as it was. the human development paradigm that characterised the late 1990s and was reflected in the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) goals of 1996 (and that formed the basis for the mdgs) is no longer dominant. instead, there is intense attention and focus in the broad international community on jobs and growth on the one hand, and on sustainable development on the other, especially climate change. such foci, whether correct or not, clearly also require significant attention to education (education is essential to acquire employment skills; education is a prerequisite for climate change mitigation). yet this attention is simply not there. this is not especially a matter of declining interest by rich countries, though there is some of that. rather, other issues receive more global attention by both developing and high-income countries. neither the recent g8 meeting in chicago nor the recent g20 meeting in mexico paid attention to education; yet it is only a few years since education was an important g8 topic, notably at the st petersburg summit in 2006. (burnett, 2012, pp. 25-26) such trends, moreover, can be seen to be influencing agencies that work closely with small states – most notably the commonwealth itself. thus, the most pressing and politically sensitive debates faced by ministers of education at the 2012 ccem, pertinently held in the small state of mauritius, focussed upon (1) the need for ‘robust advocacy’ to ensure that commonwealth education priorities remain central to post-2015 international development planning, and (2) the need to ensure that ongoing strategic planning for the commonwealth recognised the importance of maintaining funding, staffing and support for the education section and function within the secretariat – in the face of proposed cuts and reorganisation (see the 18th ccem mauritius communiqué, commonwealth secretariat, 2012b; williams & urwick, 2012). the significance of these contemporary trends and developments for the future of education in small states within and beyond the commonwealth cannot be overstated. ministers from small states certainly came together at the mauritius ccem in recognition of the potential of the commonwealth to support their collective interests in educational development – and to resist the perceived marginalisation of education in both the commonwealth secretariat and post-2015 development planning. as the mauritius communiqué testifies, the ccem also called for greater flexibility in the framing of future international development goals and targets, recognising the diversity of needs and priorities held by member states. returning to the distinctive challenges faced by small states, the mauritius communiqué also prioritised the quality of teaching and learning, teacher education and mobility, school leadership and education for sustainable development – all of which emerge strongly in our own research as key priorities for future attention. moreover: ministers reiterated that education for sustainable development (esd) was not only about climate change but also about other environmental, social, economic and political factors, and it was an issue requiring global action and not only by small states. (18th ccem mauritius communiqué, point 15) current issues in comparative education 33 learning from small states for post-2015 educational and international development such challenges are clearly multi-sectoral, but education is widely recognised as having an important role to play. the impact of global factors upon changing educational priorities is similarly reflected in our own research. in the period between the publication of the 1999 review of commonwealth work on education in small states and the completion of our recent research, much has changed. most significantly, our 2011 publication argues that contemporary priorities emerging within small states: …are especially concerned with how small states can respond to major external shocks and challenges within the environmental, economic, cultural and political domains. (crossley et al., 2011, p. xviii) in the light of this, much attention is now being given to ways in which education can help to combat the potentially devastating impact of climate change and associated rises in sea level. this draws specific attention to the contemporary significance of the sids categorisation and the pertinence of international research on education for sustainable development, and of the lead small states can make and are making in this respect (crossley & sprague, 2011; furivai, 2009; koya, nabobo-baba, & teadero, 2010; nabobo-baba, koya, & teadero, 2007). education, for example, is being used in the pacific to sensitise communities to the dangers of a rise in sea level, and of ways in which children can help to prepare for environmental emergencies. ways of learning about economically sustainable development strategies by drawing from pacific cultures and indigenous knowledge are also being integrated into school curricula and teaching materials. while the detailed findings of our recent research can be read elsewhere (crossley et al., 2011), it is also pertinent to reiterate here that, consistent with our earlier argument, many small states, “are relatively advanced in their progress towards basic education global goals and targets” (2011, p. xiii). most have already achieved almost universal access to basic education and may have either achieved or are close to achieving gender parity in primary and secondary schooling. the distinctive advantages of small scale have done much to make this possible, and to reinforce the commitment of many small states to ‘extending the boundaries’ of international development targets and goals. as we have already argued, they were among the first to move their attention, and that of the international development community, beyond simple access to basic education, and into the arenas of educational quality, retention, equity and inclusion. within small states there is, therefore, much successful experience from which others can learn. it is to this that we now turn in dealing with, for example, the factors influencing pupil retention in marginalised communities, as the case study extract relating to botswana illustrates below. case study box 1: factors influencing school retention in botswana a 2008 study in the isolated ngamiland north west district in botswana contributes to the research on basic school retention. it argues that factors leading to the poor retention of rural ethnic minority children include policy decisions that fail to recognise the impact of language and identity differences; in-school factors such as infrastructure, the language of instruction, and corporal punishment; and outof-school factors including community poverty, cultural traditions, illiteracy, school-entry age, and early pregnancy (pansiri, 2008). a second example drawn from our recent research draws upon the distinctive experience of many small states in relation to gender, and insights into the educational problems encountered by boys. source: crossley et al., (2011), p. 28 34 current issues in comparative education crossley and sprague case study box 2: the gender challenge in jamaica jamaica has been the focus of much research on boys’ educational participation, drop-out and achievement (ccyd, 2010; jha & kelleher, 2006). indicators of both enrolment and achievement favour girls, particularly at the secondary and tertiary levels (jha & kelleher, 2006). the ministry of education, youth and culture (moeyc), along with jamaican sociologists (see bailey 2003; chevannes 2002; evans 1999; beckles 1996), have identified this gender inequality as based on academic under-participation, leading to poorer performance. research has identified boys’ survival rates from enrolment to the end of secondary schooling as almost 50% lower than girls. according to caricom’s commission on youth development (2010), there is a much higher percentage of boys dropping out of the school system than girls, with ‘drop-out’ youths (ages 15-24) – mainly boys making up 30% of the total youth population (goj, 2009). of this youth population, 26.2% of males (only 7.9% for females) are considered illiterate and 25% of those who have dropped out of secondary schooling have only a grade 9 or less of education (goj, 2009). studies have identified a number of underlying social themes feeding into the problem, including a historical hegemony of black caribbean masculinity; a culture of male marginalisation linked to curriculum and student-teacher interactions; absenteeism leading to underperformance; boys’ participation in crime and violence linked to socio-economic background; and perceptions of self, connected to gendered values of education. linking with our work on tertiary education in small states in collaboration with unesco/iiep, we also emphasise that challenges relating to the development of tertiary education continue to command increased attention within small states. much has also been achieved in recent decades, and in ways that consistently questioned the trajectory of international agendas--and helped to pioneer the extension of boundaries once again. demand for the increased tertiary provision was also generated by the expansion of secondary education in small states, and our findings now reveal a complex architecture of tertiary education that includes a combination of post-secondary institutions, multipurpose community colleges, local universities, regional universities and large numbers of international collaborations, cross-border providers and distance learning initiatives (chandra, 2011; louisy & crossley, 2011; tewarie, 2011). box 3 reproduced below also points to the application of new technologies and the emergent potential of the virtual university for the small states of the commonwealth. case study box 3: the virtual university for small states of the commonwealth the establishment and growth of the vussc as a global network for higher education is based on principles of working together for the common good with few external resources. the structure complements the regional education networks (such as the caribbean knowledge and learning network) through which countries cooperate to develop their human resources within a traditional political framework with support from international donor/lending agencies. facilitated by the commonwealth of learning (col), the vussc rests on the work of individuals in small universities and colleges around the world who share their knowledge and learning materials about common issues such as teacher professional development, fisheries, construction, and disaster recovery. the internet is an essential tool (west & daniel, 2009). this innovative network illustrates what can be gained from collaboration between tertiary organisations in small states – in terms of course sharing, collective development and teaching, source: crossley et al., (2011), p. 36 source: crossley et al., (2011), p. 47 current issues in comparative education 35 learning from small states for post-2015 educational and international development cost-effectiveness, the benefits of scale and research potential – at the same time as it demonstrates the benefits to be gained from the small states concept and terminology, and joint endeavour. for those interested in learning more about the development of tertiary education in small states, martin and bray’s (2011) collection of papers is a timely, helpful resource. we now wish to conclude this section by highlighting the fact that by extending the boundaries of dominant interpretations of international development targets and goals, many small states have pioneered innovative developments in education, across all sectors, from which others – in small states and beyond – have much to learn. learning from small states for the post-2015 era the year 2015 has long been set as a key benchmark for educational development in the postjomtien era. the series of unesco global monitoring reports (for reports, see unesco, 2011) has repeatedly marked the significance of this, and as the deadline approaches, minds are now increasingly focussing upon what lies beyond (barrett, 2012; burnett, 2012), including international consultation processes and conferences to discuss post-2015 development priorities and the role that education may have (ukfiet, 2012; world we want, 2012). our own research on education in small states reveals how much experience in these contexts has already moved ahead and, anticipating a new era, has extended boundaries – often generating innovative educational and development experience from which others can learn with a view to the future. by way of example, it is argued that the pioneering experience and achievements of small states in dealing with issues relating to the quality and cultural relevance of education has much to offer not only those in other small states, but also the wider international community. this is perhaps especially pertinent with regard to growing international concern with the progress of boys in schooling. here, the experience and research base of caribbean small states certainly has much to offer. similarly, as new technologies are increasingly harnessed to support the expansion of higher education worldwide, the extensive and long-term experience of the small states of the south pacific has much to contribute to the international literature and policy deliberations relating to distance and flexible learning (chandra, koroivulaono, & hazelman, 2011). at the broadest conceptual level, however, it is argued that the international community can learn much from the small states literature about the importance of contextual differences in educational policy research, development and implementation. the question of scale – the “challenge of scale” as seen by bacchus and brock (1987) – helps greatly to highlight how one size does not fit all, and how what might be ‘best practice’ in one context may not be appropriate elsewhere – even between small states. indeed, from this perspective, the wisdom of the ‘best practice’ discourse is severely challenged in principle. research on education in small states, perhaps more clearly than any other related work, helps to demonstrate how and why contextual factors deserve much greater attention by all engaged in international development co-operation. this also shows how small states themselves differ, how context sensitive international collaboration can be helpful, and why the strengthening of locally grounded research capacity within small states (and elsewhere) should be a future priority for development in the post-2015 era of international development. the latter theme emerges most strongly from our long term work, and we argue here that this deserves greater attention today and in the post-2015 era. international and cross-regional collaboration that is supportive of this can do much to strengthen the impact of small state voice and influence in the international arena (tuhiwai-smith, 1999); it can facilitate learning from and between small states in the spirit of south-south collaboration (chisholm & steiner-khamsi, 36 current issues in comparative education crossley and sprague 2009); and it can play a strategic role in challenging global tendencies towards the uncritical international transfer of educational policy, practice and development modalities – while contributing innovative and pioneering experience from which others can learn as they move beyond the parameters of the jomtien era. as researchers in the field of comparative education have long pointed out we can learn much from each other, and from elsewhere, but in doing so we should look for insight and inspiration, and not seek universal blueprints and simplistic knowledge or policy transfer (crossley & watson, 2009, 2011). while the politics of international development will continue to shape policy priorities, increased context sensitivity and mutual respect and understanding (sen 2007) is vital if sustainable economic, human and social development is to be more successful in practice than it has in the past. we therefore conclude with the words of dame pearlette louisy, the governor general of the small state of st lucia in the caribbean who argues that: …while [small states] must continue to seek external assistance to implement their development strategies, they know best what their own needs are and what their priorities should be. they have much to contribute to international discourse and to policy deliberations worldwide. (louisy, 2011, p. xv) michael crossley is professor of comparative and international education, director of the research centre for international and comparative studies at the graduate school of education and director of the education in small states research group (www.smallstates.net), university of bristol, uk. he is a former editor of comparative education and former chair and vice chair of the british association for international and comparative education (baice) and an elected academician of the uk academy for the social sciences (acss). he has published widely in the field of comparative education and on education and development in small states and is the author (with keith watson) of comparative and international research in education: globalisation, context and difference (london & new york, routledge, 2003). email: m.crossley@bristol.ac.uk terra sprague is a research fellow at the research centre for international and comparative studies at the university of bristol graduate school of education, uk. she has worked as an educational consultant and has professional experience in teacher training and special education in the small state of armenia. her research focuses on the impact of standardised examination systems upon cultural traditions of small states. terra is convenor of the 12th ukfiet international conference on education and development on the theme of education and development post-2015: reflecting, reviewing, re-visioning (www.ukfiet.org/conference). email: terra.sprague@bristol.ac.uk. references bacchus, m. k., & brock, c. 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(eds.). (2012). education co-operation: jewel in the commonwealth crown. a 2012 update. london, uk: commonwealth consortium for education. world we want (2012). the world we want 2015: international consultation process. retrieved from http://www.worldwewant2015.org. 2_e. bruce current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 21, issue 1 © 2019, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 21(1), 20-34. proactive, reactive, sustainable? analyzing south africa’s policy and strategic framework on hiv and aids for higher education elizabeth r. bruce introduction this analysis examines south africa’s policy and strategic framework on hiv and aids for higher education. according to the foreword by the minister of higher education and training, it is addressed towards “all” at higher education institutions, including students, university management, and other role players, for implementation and as a “guide” for institutions to develop their own policies (p. 2). analysis of this policy is important, not only because it is to influence policy-making at individual institutions. this version, in alignment with the national strategic plan on hiv, stis and tb 2012-2016, drew from 2008’s policy framework on hiv and aids for higher education as well as research findings (higher education hiv/aids programme [heaids], 2012). it is expected future versions will be arrived at similarly. as such, it is imperative to examine what is, and is not, a part of the policy to subsequently improve the next version so as to further combat hiv. in 2011, the republic of south africa and the south african national aids council (sanac) released the national strategic plan on hiv, stis and tb 2012-2016, giving national sectors strategies to reduce and end effects of hiv and tuberculosis (tb) that occur through infection, transmission, discrimination, and death (republic of south africa & south african national aids council [sanac], 2011). still in 2016, according to unaids (n.d.), south africa had approximately 270,000 new hiv infections and approximately 110,000 aids-related deaths. of those infected, individuals between 15 and 24 have been especially vulnerable to exposure and transmission (republic of south africa & sanac, 2011) with females of this age group experiencing infection rates four times that of men (shisana et al., 2014). this 15to 24-year-old age group aligns with many served by higher education. this sector faces challenges and inequalities which reflect the history and present situation of south africa overall: a legacy of colonialism and apartheid with ongoing inequalities, not limited to race, gender, socioeconomic situations, and geography (department of education, 1997; universities south africa, 2015). adding to higher education’s challenges, risky behaviors like multiple sex partners, transactional sex, and alcohol and drug use by those at its institutions create an environment conducive to hiv exposure (heaids, 2010). this makes higher education an important ally in the fight against hiv and its policies important to consider. published through cooperation among higher education south africa (hesa), the heaids secretariat, universities, and south africa’s department of higher education and training (dhet), the policy and strategic framework on hiv and aids for higher education dedicates itself to action against hiv and aids, citing reasons for the sector’s importance proactive, reactive, sustainable? current issues in comparative education 21 combatting hiv. among these are its role in the workforce development pipeline (heaids, 2012). the preamble describes higher education as a main driver of economic development, with its students representing “the future skills and knowledge base of the economy, academics, and service and administrative staff” (heaids, 2012, p. 10). with these contributions framing the need for response to challenges arising from the hiv epidemic, this analysis of the policy and strategic framework on hiv and aids for higher education is guided by the statement of intent’s wording to “respond” and “mitigate” hiv impacts (heaids, 2012, p. 9). research questions guiding the analysis ask: 1. does this policy offer guidance on the hiv epidemic that is proactive and reactive so that higher education can help drive economic development for south africa? 2. is the guidance sustainable to help drive economic development for south africa? proactive, reactive, and/or sustainable guidance, by definition, directly ties to success. proactive guidance serves to mitigate and stop the spread and effects of hiv. this could include disease research and programmes targeting risky behaviors, for example. reactive guidance responds to disease infection. examples could include policies for support groups and hiv-infected higher education employees, among others. sustainable guidance is that which can be maintained long-term. as detailed later, to consider sustainability, this analysis examines the policy according to the two categories, “infrastructure capacity-building” and “sustainable innovation confirmation,” drawn from work by johnson, hays, center, and daley (2004). together, these three criteria have implications for economic development as they relate to response and mitigation of hiv, which affects millions of south africans, their families, and communities directly and indirectly. areas impacting hiv and impacted by it are described in the next section. literature review examining the way hiv impacts and is impacted by society, healthcare, and workforce development offers context that helps inform what is needed to effectively combat the disease for this sector and for south africa’s economic development broadly-speaking. considering issues related to hiv infection as they intersect with the higher education sector offers more specific insights. in addition to detailing this context and these specifics, connections made in these three areas in the policy and strategic framework on hiv and aids for higher education itself are outlined. society. the hiv epidemic has unfolded against the unique backdrop of south african history. though democracy and broader support for human rights were adopted in 1994, a legacy of inequality remains across south african society (coovadia, jewkes, barron, sanders, & mcintyre, 2009). for the higher education setting, inequalities arising from race, financial situations, educational access, health, and opportunity emerge (department of higher education and training, 2013). bruce current issues in comparative education 22 hiv brings additional issues to light. stigma related to hiv remains an issue (human sciences research council, 2015), leading to discrimination within families and by community members, job loss, loss of land holdings, school expulsion, health treatment denial, and violence (joint united nations programme on hiv/aids, 2007). despite recent gains, sanac notes, particularly, the extreme challenge to progress because violence towards women and sexual minorities has been so prevalent (human sciences research council, 2015). this violence towards women, as well as risk-taking behaviors by men related to sex, stems from patriarchal norms and views of masculinity leading men to exercise power over women (coovadia et al., 2009). in the midst of such violence, women face difficulties taking control during sexual encounters, putting them at risk for hiv (maman, campbell, sweat, & gielen, 2000). the higher education environment itself tends to place students at further risk for hiv infection. students are often apart from their families for the first time (unesco, 2014). this independence is often accompanied by increased exposure to alcohol and drugs, fuelling risk-taking (unesco, 2014). academic pressures in some cases lead students to exchange sex with higher education staff for grades, and financial stress can lead students to pursue work in the sex trade (unesco, 2014). on the positive side, higher education is well-positioned to influence students who will lead in the public and private sector for the future (heaids, 2010). healthcare. healthcare is critical to reacting to the effects of hiv, and higher education serves as a provider of such services for both students and employees (heaids, 2010). these services focus on physical treatment, as well as psychological and social ones (heaids, 2010). besides reacting to the disease, universities also serve proactively, conducting research contributing to patient treatment and disease eradication and linking individuals with hiv research interests so as to strengthen collaboration across institutions. workforce development. just as hiv is detrimental to economic development overall, workforce knowledge and development achieved through higher education can be devastated by hiv. deaths of employees and students decrease the present and future workforce, knowledge base, experience pool, and returns on investment (united nations department of economic and social affairs, 2004; unesco, 2014). productivity and quality of work also suffer with compromised health of employees or their family members (united nations department of economic and social affairs, 2004). society, healthcare, and workforce development in the policy. the policy and strategic framework on hiv and aids for higher education explicitly presents connections among hiv; society, healthcare, and workforce development as they relate to higher education; and subsequent economic development of south africa. first, the “strong social and structural underpinnings” of the disease are referenced in connection to development and poverty reduction struggles (heaids, 2012, p. 10). the higher education sector as a pipeline to the labor market is specifically highlighted in overcoming these struggles, with the sector referred to as “one of the fundamental and critical levers for overall development” (heaids, 2012, p. 11). second, this policy points to the unique positioning proactive, reactive, sustainable? current issues in comparative education 23 of the sector to address hiv impacts as necessary for its involvement. higher education action is framed as imperative because its environment is uniquely conducive to hiv transmission, with health declines, absenteeism, and high stress encountered by students, educators, and support staff threatening the sector’s ability to fulfill its mission of teaching and learning (heaids, 2012). more optimistically, its unique situation for grooming “agents of change” in society at large and its mandate to “generat[e] new technologies, practices, and understanding through research” are also stressed (heaids, 2012, p. 12). the attitudes, skills and knowledge pertaining to hiv gained during time at universities have protective possibilities for those with access, and these individuals contribute to economic activities. these attributes also have the potential to serve as foundational building blocks for longterm broad economic development. the economic imperative of hiv policy for the higher education sector is ultimately framed as fulfilling its role in developing “cherished” human resources fundamental to economic development (heaids, 2012, p. 12). conceptual framework the attention to health in relation to economic development, including through higher education, is laid out in the literature. higher education is a site of formation and application of human capital resources, enhancements, and innovations (see, for example, reviews of literature on economic growth summarized in hanushek and woessmann [2010]). in his work on human capital, t. w. schultz (1961, 1980) focused on issues affecting individual abilities to gain and, ultimately, utilize human capital, as through economic participation, with particular attention to influences of health. building from this, mushkins (1962) explained how effects of health-related programming are two-fold: increasing the size of the workforce as well as improving quality of labor outputs. hamoudi and sachs (1999) presented five means by which health impacts economics: costs of treatment and loss of productivity at work, ongoing effects of illness and disease, demographics, impacts on social behaviors and commerce, and the “vicious cycle” of poor health (pp. 7-8). the attention to health in relation to human capital accumulation leads to consideration of prevention and the sustainability of “prevention innovations,” particularly in the arena of health, to target promotion of helpful practices and reduction of unhelpful ones longterm. johnson et al.’s (2004) work on sustaining these innovations, approaches which may be proactive and/or reactive, led them to develop a sustainability planning model. johnson et al. (2004) found a strategy’s sustainability to be connected to two factors, “infrastructure capacity-building” and “sustainable innovation confirmation” (p. 138). the former focuses on resources in the context of the innovation, including people’s abilities, knowledge, and relationships, as well as physical and institutional features, like financing, technology, and administrative guidance (johnson et al., 2004). the latter focuses on the innovation itself and its continued usefulness to stakeholder needs and their connections to it and each other before, during, and after implementation (johnson et al., 2004). sustainable innovation confirmation, according to johnson et al. (2004), includes communications and evaluation. influenced by schultz, mushkin, and hamoudi and sach’s work factoring health into human capital formation, these two categories bruce current issues in comparative education 24 outlined from the prevention literature provide guidance for examining the policy and strategic framework on hiv and aids for higher education to determine whether it proactively and reactively responds to the disease in a sustainable way. higher education has been working to address hiv impacts for many years. critiques published just before the policy’s release provided specifics on gaps and ways in which future investment for hiv could be most beneficial. these critiques, shown in figure 1 alongside issues related to hiv infection and the higher education population, are explicitly cited as reasons for revision in remarks by the chairperson of the hesa-heaids group (heaids, 2012, p. 5). most are self-explanatory and can be categorized based on their relationship to society, healthcare, or workforce development. one critique, recommending “critical intellectual engagement,” was contributed by mary crewe, the director of the centre for the study of aids at the university of pretoria with ten years’ experience in integrative hiv/aids programming (unesco, 2014, p. 79). her recommendation pertained to the need for higher education to extend its approach beyond only treatment and prevention. she advocated extending approaches to raise student awareness of how “poverty, race, globalization, and class” spread hiv and the addition of programming to encourage students to grapple with issues around sexuality and tolerance (unesco, 2014, p. 79). paralleling recommendations to broaden awareness of the roles played by poverty, race, globalization, and class, literature and media reports on the south african higher education sector overall indicate systemic gaps related to these. these gaps are relevant not only to discussions for what higher education should offer in terms of health and hiv but also to whether these offerings, should they be introduced as a result of the policy, are even accessible. for example, university fees are often quite high in south africa, meaning many individuals are excluded entirely or, if they do attend, they are often burdened with debt (department of higher education and training, 2013; falkof, 2016). this burden is obviously felt most greatly by those in poorer households. the highest levels of poverty are found in female-headed households and households headed by black south africans (the world bank, 2018). large families and households that are rural also are likely to face impoverished circumstances long-term (the world bank, 2018). the country’s loan program can add to this burden, covering amounts per student that are too little to cover fees (council on higher education, 2016; falkof, 2016; “how much students owe,” 2015). if students are able to afford attendance, different experiences are frequently offered according to the campus on which they arrive. some of these differences have been linked to socio-economic contexts of the communities where they are located (capacity4dev.eu, 2017) and the leadership in place at that particular campus (tau, 2016; tshehle, 2016). once in the classroom, statistics indicate differences in successful completion of coursework. for example, black african students are shown to have an average course success rate of 74% in comparison to an 84% success rate for white students (universities south africa, 2015). proactive, reactive, sustainable? current issues in comparative education 25 also, many black students, faculty, and staff feel alienated and little sense of belonging at their universities (universities south africa, 2015). this is connected to south africa’s history of a segregated higher education system (universities south africa, 2015); an ongoing “institutional culture” unwilling to embrace diversity, including through hiring more diverse staffs and addressing sexism, racism, and discrimination head-on (universities south africa, 2015, p. 14); and pressures to be more financially efficient to the detriment of being fair (luckett & mzobe, 2016). outsourcing staff positions, many of which are filled by blacks and women, as part of efforts to improve efficiency and competitiveness has increased race and class divisions among workers and feelings of marginalization among those employed at universities (luckett & mzobe, 2016). because these systemic issues impact who will be reached by the policy, they are listed among the critiques presented in figure 1. this figure offers a framework for analysis of results presented in the next section. figure 1. overlaps between hiv and higher education: a framework for analysis. areas impacting and impacted by hiv infection issues related to hiv infection and the higher education population critiquesa society • stigma and discrimination • violence towards women/ sexual minorities • patriarchal norms • unique to higher education: • young age group • alcohol and drugs frequently encountered • risk of exchanging sex for grades • involvement in sex trade • leadership potential • better promotion of post-exposure prophylaxis following rape • increased prevention involvement by those hiv-positive • increased focus on female students, older students, those in same-sex relationships, and staff with disabilities • address of systemic gaps stemming from race, gender, geography, and socioeconomic situations healthcare • disease breakthroughs • mental health treatment • social support • more education on mother-to-child transmission possibility • more widespread condom availability on campus • reconsideration of voluntary counselling and testing offerings based on need • strengthened sexually transmitted infection education and treatment bruce current issues in comparative education 26 • institutionally-embedded peer education programs workforce development • decreased size of workforce and potential workforce • productivity and quality of workforce • workforce healthcare costs/death benefits • revised focus on staff, who show highest hiv prevalence • differentiated innovations for staff/students • decreased complacency in low-prevalence institutions • address of systemic gaps stemming from race, gender, geography, and socioeconomic situations a drawn from capacity4dev.eu (2017), council on higher education (2016), department of higher education and training (2013), falkof (2016), heaids (2010), “how much students owe” (2015), luckett and mzobe (2016), tshehle (2016), and universities south africa (2015). results of the policy analysis reflecting guidance by the south african constitution and the national strategic plan on hiv, stis and tb 2012-2016, the policy and strategic framework on hiv and aids for higher education directs actions of the sector, organizing them according to three strategic objectives, listed as follows: 1. to ensure the comprehensive and appropriate use of the higher education mandate of teaching and learning; research, innovation and knowledge generation; and community engagement to effectively respond to the epidemic drivers of the pandemic. 2. to promote the health and well-being of the higher education community at individual, group and institutional levels though strengthening capacity, systems and structures responding to the epidemic. 3. to create an enabling environment to ensure a comprehensive and effective response to hiv and aids within the higher education sector, free of stigma and discrimination. (p. 22) “critical components” related to each of these objectives are presented. in the sections that follow, policy related to these components is overviewed, presented in relation to issues surrounding hiv and the higher education population and the critiques just presented (see figure 1) as appropriate. measures advocated are categorized as proactive, reactive, and/or both, to move towards answering the first research question. the policy’s proactive, reactive, sustainable? current issues in comparative education 27 sections entitled “roles and responsibilities” and “section 3: monitoring and evaluation framework” are similarly examined. finally, evidence as to whether the policy is sustainable based on attention to infrastructure capacity-building and sustainable innovation confirmation is presented to begin addressing the second research question. proactive, reactive, both? objective 1. in relation to its component 1, graduates are framed as future “leaders in society” (p. 24), not just in general but specifically, in facing challenges of hiv personally and professionally. higher education is framed as uniquely positioned through its role in generating and sharing research and evidence to not only improve progress in this area for the sector but also for communities and the nation as a whole, positioning it to respond both proactively and reactively. with component 2 a range of proactive and reactive innovations are presented, and many align with recommendations of earlier critiques, including attention for mother to child transmission, condom availability, counselling and testing, and general health promotion. for component 3, “peer educators and youth ambassadors,” as well as teachers, are designated as valuable to communicating with students, addressing another critique (p. 26). social and behavioral factors affecting hiv transmission and treatment are among the “combination” (p. 24) of interventions higher education is to offer. aligning with critiques advocating differentiation among audiences for innovations, there are calls for programming that “customize[s] interventions for different groups” (p. 26), though these are left vague for the most part. older, working adults, frequently enrolled at open distance learning (odl) universities, are specifically mentioned. women regardless of whether they are infected or not are also specifically targeted by objective 1. “gender norms and gender-based violence, masculinity issues, transactional sex, [and] issues of sexual consent” (p. 26) are listed as issues for attention by the sector, connecting them to their effects on women. more broadly, unprotected sex, alcohol, and substance abuse are to be addressed, as directed in components 3 and 4. objective 2. components for this objective are both proactive and reactive in their focus on promoting health and well-being through corporate approaches at institutions. programs are to be proactive in their protection and maintenance of health as well as reactive to support those already infected by the disease. staff is given great attention in the components for this objective, addressing criticism they have previously been ignored despite the high hiv prevalence exhibited by this group. reflecting research found in the hiv literature, component 1 calls for reactive approaches addressing not just physical but “cognitive, behavioural, spiritual, and psychosocial aspects of wellness” (p. 27) as well. component 2 focuses on “recommended minimum components” of workplace policy to react to the disease (p. 28), while advocating contextualization. additionally, institutions are directed to develop specific responses based on particular “impacts of hiv infection and illness” they experience, “programmatic gap areas” that exist, and observed needs for “attitudinal and behaviour changes” (p. 28). though not directly identifying complacent low-prevalence institutions, this component could certainly speak to this criticism. needs of individuals living with hiv/aids-related illnesses in a “non-discriminatory way” are also put forth for address in components 1 and 2. bruce current issues in comparative education 28 objective 3. components of this objective emphasize stigma and discrimination free responses to hiv under a human rights approach. when reacting to the disease, past critiques pointed to the lack of inclusion and involvement by those already hiv-positive, and policy under this objective continues to speak to this group specifically calling for their “greater involvement” (p. 30). component 2 also calls for training related to hiv that addresses discrimination including for those with disabilities, a group notably ignored according to critics. communication regarding awareness and activities undertaken are the focus of component 3. proactively, component 4 acknowledges the leadership potential of the higher education sector to actively communicate, engage, and partner with others as well as to obtain appropriate levels of funding (see component 5). notably in objective 3, this leadership position is noted to span from executive to student levels, as well as to trade unions and staff associations. also proactively, monitoring and evaluation are introduced here to indicate what this might look like and how findings might be used. roles and responsibilities. this section is less about outlining proactive or reactive approaches and more about who carries out the approaches connected to the objectives and monitoring and evaluation, which is described in the next section. the department of higher education and training (dhet) and higher education south africa (hesa) are designated as the primary drivers of this policy, positioned to offer resource identification, mobilization, and support in line with policy prescriptions. support is also to be provided through the national department of health, supplemented by provincial, district, and municipal health departments. roles for institutions themselves, including contextualization, implementation, evaluation, and responsiveness to stakeholders, are delineated. section 3: monitoring and evaluation framework. building from objective 3, this section and the logic model included indicate the policy’s heavy emphasis on monitoring and evaluation to react to what happens and have information to (potentially) shape future responses. the monitoring and evaluation process employed is expected to supply indicators, drive evidence-based decision-making, and promote information exchange. such monitoring and evaluation build in opportunities to continually reflect on and discern whether proactive and/or reactive approaches are working. the logic model is constructed according to the three objectives guiding the policy. for example, objective 1 begins with two goals: “reduced hiv infections” and “reduced vulnerability of higher education students and staff to hiv and aids” (p. 34). for the most part, each is broken down into one or more results statements with sector and institution-level indicators specified. analyzing alignment between the policy text and logic model reveals close matches between objectives and evidence gathering in some areas, with gaps in others. for example, entries for objective 1 address two of the four components outlined in the policy text. noticeably absent are indicators related to combatting alcohol and substance abuse (component 3) and the communication of such strategies (component 4). overall, the proactive, reactive, sustainable? current issues in comparative education 29 logic model for this objective does not include indicators disaggregating data by key groups like women and first-year students. as a result, more detailed information, like data on gender-based violence, is not called to be collected. in contrast, objective 2 is more comprehensively addressed by indicators in the logic model. for addressing objective 3, while aligning with all components, the logic model lacks details to reflect the specificity of the policy text itself in terms of particular stakeholders. instead they are often referred to broadly as “strategic leadership” or “all participants” (p. 38). this is surprising since involvement of trade unions and staff bodies was called for by critics, is easily measurable, and simultaneously addresses greater involvement of staff historically struggling with high disease prevalence, another concern raised by critics. stigma and discrimination for objective 3 is set to be quantified using measurement tools provided by the people living with hiv stigma index. sustainable? as explained in the conceptual framework, in order to consider sustainability, johnson et al. (2004) have found attention needs to be paid to “infrastructure capacity-building” and “sustainable innovation confirmation.” to review, infrastructure capacity-building is related to contextual factors, including human, physical, and institutional resources. turning to sustainable innovation confirmation, the focus is on stakeholders and their relationships to each other and the policy itself. consequently, to answer research question 2, the policy must be revisited with these in mind. infrastructure capacity-building. for objective 1, peer educators and youth ambassadors are advocated to augment hiv education. to build up administrative safeguards, minimal workplace guidelines are a part of objective 2. two of the objectives also direct that needs of individuals already hiv-infected be addressed, important for improving life expectancy and the quality of their life and work. training on hiv as it relates to discrimination, including for those with disabilities, and leadership which spans from the executive level to the student level is highlighted in accordance with objective 3. throughout the document, contextualization by institutions themselves is stressed which could enable them to develop additional capacity-building and institutional resources to target hiv according to university and even their individual campus needs. sustainable innovation confirmation. multiple stakeholder needs are addressed and monitored within objective 1 of this document: mother to child transmission, condom availability, counselling, testing, peer education and promotion of health as is communication “to encourage positive behaviours and to promote and sustain change” (p. 26). communication across communities and stakeholders is to be undertaken according to objective 3. several student and staff stakeholder groups (older, working adults and women in objective 1; those already infected in objective 3) are directly addressed with disabled individuals addressed more indirectly. presumably support from the national department of health and health departments locally will ensure ongoing match to health needs of those in the higher education sector. evaluation, part of the sustainable innovation confirmation category ascertained by johnson et al. (2014), is bruce current issues in comparative education 30 a large part of this policy’s recommendations, found in objective 3 and in a section entirely dedicated to monitoring and evaluation. conclusions looking closely at these results and comparing them to the issues and critiques presented in figure 1, the policy and strategic framework on hiv and aids for higher education does offer proactive and reactive approaches to combatting hiv. many of these align with issues specific to individuals served by and serving higher education institutions and critiques directly related to hiv exposure, transmission, and prevention. advocating that monitoring and evaluation be employed has potential to enhance success where there is close alignment between objectives and evidence gathered; however, this is not consistently the case across the logic model presented. consequently, in answer to research question 1, higher education is likely in an improved position to impact economic development. first, this improved positioning stems from investments in students, who can carry what they learn into society at large as they graduate. with this policy, this knowledge is set to include messages related to gender norms and issues of sexual consent, especially important for women, who statistics indicate are especially prone to contracting hiv. messages are also set to address stigma and discrimination, a crucial issue for hiv-infected individuals. as students carry what they are exposed to during university forth to their own families, communities, and workplaces, others are exposed to their knowledge and these approaches. this multiplies benefits so that many are better informed to prevent and deal with hiv and its effects, thereby enhancing human capital stores that can contribute to economic development. similarly, benefits can be gleaned by entities outside higher education as they learn from the sector’s experiences trying out approaches and seeing what works. this allows others to adopt evidence-based approaches themselves, which can also enhance economic development. additionally, attention to staff needs regarding hiv and implementing workplace policies around the disease help maintain and maximize the higher education workforce with its knowledge and wealth of experience. staff contribute not only to students but to society at large through their research and expertise. healthier staff are more productive and contribute better quality work, further benefitting the south african economy. certainty of the policy’s potential to make a difference economically comes into greater question, however, when considering research question 2 regarding sustainability. drawing from the prevention literature and looking at infrastructure capacity-building and sustainable innovation confirmation, both categories are addressed to an extent; however, the burden is placed primarily on the institutions and individuals there. while dhet and hesa are named in “roles and responsibilities” for the national level, a lack of specifics on their involvement includes absence of ways they might address systemic gaps seen across higher education, stemming from race, gender, geography, and socioeconomic situations. while government decisions and market forces impact the higher education sector (universities south africa, 2015), the higher education system itself has the capability to lead on issues, especially related to teaching, learning, staffing, proactive, reactive, sustainable? current issues in comparative education 31 and student needs, that can have ripple effects on factors related to hiv exposure, transmission, and prevention. thus, there is incomplete address of infrastructure capacity-building and sustainable innovation confirmation. for example, on its website, the national student financial aid scheme, responsible for providing financial aid to poor and working-class students, lists dhet as among its stakeholders (http://www.nsfas.org.za). this means there is potential for this entity to move to affect change in terms of financing for students. such actions would take away one obstacle to entering university, thereby increasing the number of students, and particularly the number of less well-off students, exposed to what is laid out in the policy. such actions could also prevent students already in attendance from entering the sex trade as a way to pay for their education. measures to affect resource availability so that all campuses start at the same level, and then can contextualize to enhance what they offer, needs to be prioritized by higher education sectoral leadership. teaching, learning, and staffing are clear mandates over which the sector has influence to help disadvantaged students to succeed and to decrease outsourcing of workers, so both groups might remain in a position to benefit from the policy’s strategies. specific steps in these areas for dhet and hesa are not included nor defined in the way that, for example, data gathering is across the logic model. implications the results stemming from this policy then are likely to continue as follows: peer educators, called for in the policy to supplement other instruction on hiv, will not represent a variety of backgrounds because large numbers of students remain unable to enroll in university education that is out of reach financially or are forced to drop out because they are ill-equipped for success. the time spent serving as a youth ambassador, called for in the policy, is time that cannot be spent working to pay for school or studying, making such roles luxuries for many and, again, leading to a group lacking in diversity. contextualization of hiv programming on campuses will remain inadequate because of ongoing, glaring “underfunding in infrastructure, staff and student services” (universities south africa, 2015, p. 19) for those universities that were historically black or those campuses, formerly part of historically black universities, made part of a different university in restructuring. gender issues will continue to be overlooked without more women in place to ensure they remain on the agenda. many staff members, often the most in need of services for hiv, will remain unreached because of outsourcing, preventing them from benefitting from the policy. and, finally, an education, itself highly preventive to hiv (department of basic education, 2010; heaids, 2012), will continue to be inaccessible and difficult for many. economic development cannot be maximized until systemic, not just individual and institutional, issues related to hiv are made a part of higher education policy in south africa. elizabeth r. bruce holds a master of education degree from lehigh university in pennsylvania. her consulting work draws from her experience in the field of comparative and international education and has included research for various projects. her personal research centers on hiv/aids policies in education and health research partnerships. bruce current issues in comparative education 32 references capacity4dev.edu. 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(2014). charting the course of education and hiv. paris, france: author. retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002261/226125e.pdf united nations department of economic and social affairs. (2004). the impact of aids: executive summary. new york city, ny: united nations. universities south africa. (2015). annexure 5: reflections on higher education transformation. pretoria, south africa: department of higher education and training. retrieved from http://www.justice.gov.za/commissions/feeshet/docs/2015-hesummit annexure05.pdf the world bank. (2018). overcoming poverty and inequality in south africa: an assessment of drivers, restraints, and opportunities. washington, dc: author. retrieved from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/pdf/12452 1-rev-ouo-south-africa-poverty-and-inequality-assessment-report-2018 final-web.pdf © 2008 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 10(1/2): 10-15. donor logic in the era of gates, buffett, and soros gita steiner-khamsi teachers college, columbia university ten years ago, when i was invited to comment on the inspiring article “too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations” (edwards & hulme, 1996), i was perhaps too preoccupied with criticizing how and why international ngos transplant their educational programs from one continent to another with little input from local organizations and experts. readers of current issues in comparative education commented on how harsh i had been with ngos. however, had the topic of the special issue been, “are development banks overrated? or “are un organizations overrated?”, i would have come to the same conclusions. there is an organizational logic to transferring the same kind of programs to every corner of the world. ngos are not alone in transferring prepackage programs or reforms. all international organizations do so for all kinds of good and bad reasons, such as, for example, saving on design costs, generating institutional name recognition, obtaining approval from their own boards, as well as for better monitoring and controlling of their staff in distant field offices. dissecting donor logic today, i would propose to also analyze the institutional rationale behind grants or loans, and examine how donor logic differs for the various agencies. alesina and dollar’s study on who gives aid to whom and why (alesina & dollar, 2000) revived this line of research. six years later, dollar and levin (2006) investigated a related question: who deserves aid from the perspective of donors? in the 2000 study, alesina and dollar present a multivariate analysis of donor strategy, which considers trade openness, democracy, civil liberties, colonial status, direct foreign investment, initial income, and population of the target countries. their analyses are not restricted to u.s. government loans and grants, but rather include all rich countries that provide official development assistance (oda). they find that former colonial empires (in particular, portugal, united kingdom, france, australia, and belgium) spend more than half of their external aid on their former colonies. from 1970 to 1994, portugal channeled 97 percent of its aid to its former colonies. in comparison, the united kingdom allocated 78 percent, france 57 percent, australia 56 percent, and belgium 54 percent of their external funding to former colonies. another variable, being a “u.n. friend”, also proved important for donors’ selection of target countries. the variable measures whether the target country has voted in line with the donor at u.n. conferences. in the past decade, for example, japan directed funds to poor countries in return for a vote on admitting japan as additional member of the u.n. security council. the authors (alesina & dollar, 2000, p. 40) also calculate the likelihood of a country receiving aid if relevant variables, such as initial income of the country or population size, are held constant. their findings illustrate the high funding priority of the united states for its allies in the middle east. all other factors kept constant, egypt received 481 percent more aid, and the value for israel is so high that it is basically off the scale. in general, the two features that are—despite political rhetoric suggesting the contrary— least important for receiving aid are “being relatively open” (towards international trade) and “being relatively democratic”. the close tie between foreign policy and bilateral aid, a truism in the field of international relations theory, is well substantiated with statistical evidence put forward by alesina and dollar (2000). but what is the donor logic for the others: the multilaterals (the development banks and the un organizations) and the non-governmental organizations? it is important to credit efforts in current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 11 gita steiner-khamsi international and comparative education for this line of research. there is an established research tradition within our field, started by brian holmes (1981), to dissect, what i call, “donor logic.” written during the era of the cold war in 1981, holmes found that, regardless of circumstances, british and american experts almost always favored the introduction of a decentralized system of educational administrators, whereas soviet and german democratic republic experts always recommended the introduction of polytechnical education in countries they advised. in my own study on educational import in mongolia, i made a first attempt to dissect the various “logics” of donors that were operating in the country (steiner-khamsi & stolpe, 2006). that attempt was followed by a second one, in which iveta silova and i analyzed the ngo logic, in particular, the soros foundation network in the caucasus, central asia, and mongolia (silova & steiner-khamsi, 2008). the first study on educational reform in mongolia reveals that each and every international organization with offices in ulaanbaatar has its own country assistance strategy (steiner-khamsi & stolpe, 2006). what they fund reflects, more often than not, organizational logic rather than local needs. whereas the donor logic of the asian development bank and the world bank is finance-driven, the logic of bilateral aid agencies is self-serving in a different way. the bilateral agencies of the german and danish governments—gesellschaft für technische zusammenarbeit (gtz) and danish international development assistance (danida)—selectively export “best practices” from their own educational systems that are supposedly missing or underrepresented in mongolia. for example, german consultants have felt compelled—not only in mongolia but also in many other countries—to contribute to vocational education. meanwhile, danish experts focus on small schools and students with special needs. once the americans got involved under the auspices of the millennium development fund, their specialists emphasized english language and ict reform in mongolia. the decision of what to support in the mongolian educational sector is driven more by what the lender has to offer than by what the borrower actually needs. there has been a gentleman’s agreement among development banks in mongolia that has softened over the past three years. until 2004, the world bank took the lead, with the support of undp and many other donors, in poverty alleviation and other social sector programs. meanwhile, it stayed away from educational reform, because the asian development bank was recognized as the “lead donor” in the educational sector. asian donors, particularly the japanese international cooperation agency (jica) and the korea international cooperation agency (koica), are infrastructure and resource oriented (“hardtype” aid), but have not yet become involved in “soft-type” aid, such as the reform of content or methods in education. both have shipped technical equipment for radio, tv, and videoconferencing studios, as well as computers (some of which are second-hand) to educational institutions. in contrast to the donor logic of multilaterals and bilaterals, which constitutes a well-explored research terrain of international relations as well as of international and comparative education, it is worthwhile to note that there are fewer studies on philanthropies and aid. the studies by robert arnove (1980) and ellen lagemann (1989) are classics in this field. arguably, more recent studies on ngos subsume philanthropies (e.g., sutton & arnove, 2004; silova & steiner-khamsi, 2008), but some of the authors fail to distinguish between philanthropies, typically established by individual businessmen, and not-for-profit organizations such as, for example, save the children, world vision, or academy of educational development. 12 fall 2007 / spring 2008 donor logic in the era of gates, buffett, and soros the new donors the edited volume how ngos react (silova & steiner-khamsi, 2008) can be seen as a first contribution to fill this gap. it examines not only the ngo logic in general, but specifically the logic of the soros foundation network in the caucasus, central asia, and mongolia. written by former and current educational experts of the soros philanthropy, the authors investigate “the post-socialist reform package” at the country-level, highlighting the common features such as decentralization, privatization, vouchers, and liberalization of the textbook publishing market. they look at the global reforms and their variations as they were transferred to armenia, azerbaijan, georgia, kazakhstan, kyrgyzstan, mongolia, tajikistan, turkmenistan, and uzbekistan over the past decade. one of the key findings of the book relates to a key feature of the “new philanthropies” as reflected in the soros foundation network: organizations with a limited lifespan pursue an entirely different sustainability strategy than organizations that were established to outlive the founder. similar to the bill and melinda gates foundation, george soros’ foundation insists that it will cease to exist in a few years. of course, whether the closure will really occur remains to be seen. nevertheless, the belief in the usefulness of funding projects only for a short term has huge repercussions on the daily work as well as on the interactions with governments, donors, and other non-governmental organizations in the respective countries. the open society institute, in particular, places a great emphasis on carefully planning, from the onset, “spin-off” and exit strategies for every major new program that it launches. the book how ngos react is ideally suited to examine the repercussions for sustainability strategies as it focuses on a region (caucasus, central asia, and mongolia) that at the time was considered a latecomer to the soros foundation network, compared to central, eastern, and southeast europe. by the time these national foundations started operating (especially in mongolia and tajikistan), other offices in europe had already gradually spun off their educational programs to newly founded national non-governmental organizations or had completely closed down.[1] sustainability strategies are closely tied to the logic of the donor in every institution. philanthropies that are set up with a limited time-span tend to scale up their impact differently. the educational programs of the open society institute, for example, prioritize institutionalization over any other sustainability strategy. this is how it works: a national foundation incubates an innovative practice in an area that is neglected by the government in the hope that the complementary project will, as soon as possible, become incorporated in state institutions and inscribed in educational policy. in practice this means that the national foundation initiates, designs, and monitors a project that, upon successful completion of the pilot stage, is to be implemented on a large scale. preferably, it will be funded by the government or, if this is not possible, by other donors. naturally, tensions do emerge with other international organizations, especially larger ones that also attempt to exert influence on national policy-making. how donor logic impacts the cooperation of donor organizations with governments as well as with other international organizations is a topic that deserves much more scrutiny. cosmopolites of aid another feature of the philanthropies is that they are not accountable to anybody or anything other than to their self-nominated board. they do not have to report to governments or multilaterals, and they do not need to, but of course can, comply with international agreements such as education for all (efa) or the millennium development goals (mdg). one might argue that philanthropies are the last glimmer of hope for aid, given that governments closely tie their loans and grants to foreign policy goals, multilaterals make their assistance contingent on specific conditions (i.e. structural adjustment, poverty alleviation, and/or good governance), and international agreements such as efa and mdg are biased in their exclusive focus on primary current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 13 gita steiner-khamsi school. not being part of the “cartel of good intentions” (easterly, 2002) can be beneficial for individuals and institutions that receive funding from philanthropies, which have the potential to fill the void left behind in international and bilateral agreements. the last few years has seen an unprecedented growth and diversification of funding sources for international projects. at the end of 2006, the bill and melinda gates foundation had endowment assets for charitable activities in the amount of $33 billion (gates foundation, 2006). set up from the income of two men only—bill gates and warren buffett—the foundation plans to disburse $3.2 billion a year by 2009. this amount equals one-third of the $9.8 billion that the us government with a population of over 300 million taxpayers thought it could afford for usaid in fiscal year 2006. the volume of aid provided by the newly emerging philanthropies, such as the gates foundation, is—with the exception of the official development assistance (oda) of the united states, japan, united kingdom, france, germany, and sweden—greater than the oda of any other rich government that provides loans and grants (oecd, 2007). it also exceeds by a multiple the donations of earlier philanthropists, ranging from the rockefeller foundation (endowment of $3.4 billion) established in 1913, to the open society institute, established by george soros in 1979 with an average annual giving of $400 million. arguably, the magnitude of endowments of newly established philanthropies reflects the widening gap between the rich and the poor, whereby the rich have become exponentially rich. the influence of individuals or businessmen on aid priorities, entirely detached from governments’ foreign policy priorities, are not only manifested in philanthropies. it has become fashionable for stars and other public figures to donate money to people they consider to be “the neediest”, especially if the media covers their donations with much glamour and fanfare (see vanity fair, 2007). the willingness to donate has also trickled down to the individual consumer. arguably, the glamorization of aid goes hand in hand with the commercialization of aid. (product) red, licensed to american express, apple, converse, emporio armani, gap, hallmark, and motorola, is another example of the for-profit world getting involved in charity. by the end of 2007, however, the dollar amount spent on publicity for red still outnumbered the donations made for the “global fund to fight aids, tuberculosis and malaria and to raise public awareness about hiv/aids in africa” (global fund, 2007). these are but a few examples to illustrate the emergence as well as successes and shortcomings of a new class of donors. a few of these new donors do follow the script of development targets established by the millennium development goals. but these rule-abiding donors constitute a minority. the un millennium villages project, managed by the earth institute at columbia university and directed by professor jeffrey sachs, is such an exception in that it does commit itself to the mdgs. it constitutes a public-private partnership and includes sponsors such as undp, philanthropies (e.g., most recently, george soros’ pledge of $50 million), and celebrities like bono, madonna, brad pitt, and angelina jolie. strikingly, these new types of donations are almost exclusively channeled into health and to a smaller extent into education projects in africa. finally, although perhaps a unique feature of u.s. foreign policy only, we are also witnessing a militarization of aid, where humanitarian aid and economic development in conflict zones is carried out by the military.[2] these new donors see themselves—of course, with the exception of the military—as cosmopolites representing global capital and a global community rather than their governments. different from the conventional bilateral and multilateral donors, they do not have to make compromises to appease their voters, constituents, shareholders, or an elected general assembly. they are run14 fall 2007 / spring 2008 donor logic in the era of gates, buffett, and soros away donors. the flipside of not reporting to the cartel of good intensions is that they give as they please with little regard for the heated debates in development work. some of the cosmopolites’ giving is not only ineffective but also harmful for development. but since they are operating in an accountability vacuum, they are exempt from professional and academic scrutiny. this is not the case for governments and their bilateral and multilateral agencies, who are in a position of having to continuously re-invent themselves and are pressed to reflect on their mistakes of the past. a review of academic journals in international and comparative education, but also of journals that pay great attention to ngo research (for example, world development), shows that the new donors have not yet become an object of professional interest and academic curiosity. ten years after the inaugural issue of cice, we are exposed to a completely changed aid environment, especially with regards to non-governmental organization, not-for-profit organizations, and philanthropies. aid has bifurcated in two directions: rule-abiding and rule-enforcing multilaterals (most visible in the efa-fast track initiative), and unruly and yet very generous private funders. notes [1]. a side-comment is necessary here: in retrospect, the national foundations in the caucasus, central asia, and mongolia were not latecomers, but somewhere in the middle-field given that the open society institute has gone global, and now operates in africa, the caribbean and latin america, and southeast asia. [2]. two funds of us overseas loans and grants, in particular, reflect the blurred line between military and humanitarian assistance: the economic support fund ($3.8 billion in 2006) managed by usaid and the state department, and the department of defense security assistance fund ($4.7 billion in 2006). the greenbook u.s. overseas loans and grants provides a more detailed description of how these funds are used (u.s. government, 2006). references alesina, a., & dollar, d. (2000). who gives foreign aid to whom and why? journal of economic growth, 5(1), 33-63. arnove, r. f. (ed.). (1980). philanthropy and cultural imperialism: the foundations at home and abroad. boston, ma: g. k. hall. bill and melinda gates foundation (2006). annual report. retrieved from http://www. gatesfoundation.org/nr/public/media/annualreports/annualreport06. dollar, d., & levin, v. (2006). the increasing selectivity of foreign aid, 1984-2003. world development, 34(12), 2034-2046. edwards, m., & d. hulme. (1998). too close for comfort? the impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations. current issues in comparative education 1(1), 6-28. available at http://www.tc.edu/cice. easterly, w. (2002). the cartel of good intension. foreign policy 131, 40-49. global fund (2007). (product) red. investing in our future. the global fund to fight aids, tuberculosis and malaria. retrieved from http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/partners/private/red. current issues in comparative education, vol. 10 (1/2) 15 gita steiner-khamsi holmes, b. (1981). comparative education: some considerations of method. london: george allen and unwin. lagemann, e. c. (1989). the politics of knowledge: the carnegie corporation, philanthropy, and public policy. middletown, ct: wesleyan university press. oecd (2007). 2007 development co-operation report. paris: oecd, dac. steiner-khamsi, g., & stolpe, i. (2006). educational import in mongolia: local encounters with global forces. new york: palgrave macmillan. silova, i., & steiner-khamsi, g., (eds.). (2008). how ngos react: globalization and education reform in the caucasus, central asia and mongolia. bloomfield, ct: kumarian. sutton, m., & arnove, r, f., eds. (2004). civil society or shadow state? state/ngo relations in education. greenwich, ct: information age publisher. u.s. government (2006). u.s. overseas loans and grants: obligations and loan authorizations july 1, 1945-september 30, 2006. retrieved from http://quesdb.usaid.gov/gbk/about.html. vanity fair (2007, july). africa. a special issue. new york: condé nast. volume 12(2) / spring 2010 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice education and economic crises editorial introduction 3 education and economic crises andrew k. shiotani articles 5 the effect of an economic crisis on educational outcomes: an economic framework and review of the evidence m. najeeb shafiq 14 monitoring the effects of the global crisis on education provision gwang-chol chang 21 the global economic crisis: setbacks to the educational agenda for the minority in sub-saharan africa moses shiasha ingubu 31 under the same blue sky? inequity in migrant children’s education in china guangyu tan special section: responses to volume 12, issue 1 41 cosmopolitanism and our descriptions of ethics and ontology:a response to dale snauwaert’s “the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism” david t. hansen 45 response to noah sobe’s “rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education” andria wisler book review 50 p. agarwal, indian higher education: envisioning the future reviewed by radhika iyengar 53 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 2 (spring 2010) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden executive editor andrew shiotani senior editors ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, michael schapira, michelle reddy editors sarah flatto, cara furman, brian veprek, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, joseph hirsch, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, cara furman, anne gaspers, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira, brian veprek style editors matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar, michael schapira, brian veprek web editor andrew shiotani associate web editors ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the 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in any issue of cice. © 2010 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 12(2): 14-20 monitoring the effects of the global crisis on education provision gwang-chol chang education sector, unesco this paper summarizes the experience and findings from the monitoring work carried out by unesco throughout 2009 to examine and assess the possible effects of the global financial and economic crisis on education provision in its member states. the findings showed that although it was too early to ascertain the full extent of the impact of the financial and economic crisis on education, there was no obvious indication that education budgets were being cut more than any other sectoral budgets in many countries. however, there were reports that the crisis was having a severe impact in some countries and communities. it is feared that the aftershocks of the financial crisis will be lasting in social sectors, including education, particularly for the most vulnerable. this requires continuous monitoring on the part of unesco to fulfill its “watching” and warning functions and to encourage member states to persevere in their efforts for educational development, keeping in mind that education is one of the most viable channels for economic recovery and sustainable development. the world was in serious economic and financial turmoil through 2007-2009. in 2007 and into 2008, a compounded mixture of crises unfolded and hit the world: many countries suffered from dramatic increases in world food prices and high fuel prices through the first half of 2008. the global financial crisis, originating in advanced economies, intensified during the course of the second half of 2008 and severely hit world economies throughout 2009. according to imf projections, there was negative global growth, with a 1.1 percent contraction of the global gross domestic product (gdp) in 2009, before expectedly rebounding to around 3 percent in 2010 (imf 2009). compounded by the multiple effects of the global financial crisis, the world entered into an economic recession in 2009, leading to changes in several transmission channels, such as low demand for exports, and declining flows of remittances, private capital, and development aid (unesco 2009b). depending on the size and structure of their economies, developing countries were variously affected: some countries posted a drastic downturn mainly because of the reduction in remittances or tourism revenue. in others, low domestic and international demand led to a sharp decline in earnings from manufacturing, construction and/or commodity exports. as the international labor organization’s september 2009 statistics indicate, large numbers of workers employed in the formal sector, especially manufacturing, commerce and construction, lost their jobs, while others experience cuts in working hours, wages and health or pension benefits. regarding aid, especially official development assistance (oda), critical for economic growth and achieving the millennium development goals (mdgs) in most low-income countries, the potential loss amounted to billions of dollars because of the crisis (unesco 2009a). the future prospect of external aid for developing countries is gloomy, as the economic downturn has deepened the fiscal constraints in those developed, “donor” countries. governments responded to surmount the crisis by taking various measures. despite severe fiscal constraints caused by declining revenues, they deployed stimulus packages to restore aggregate demand and growth (unesco, 2009a). counter-cyclical measures taken by advanced and emerging economies are considered instrumental for an economic recovery that is unfolding current issues in comparative education 15 monitoring the effects of global crisis on education provision earlier than initially anticipated. however, many governments are now faced with an increased deficit. declining revenues often led them to revise their budgets downwards throughout 2009, including in social sectors. exit strategies from the stimulus packages are being contemplated in some countries, to reduce budget deficits aggravated during the financial crisis period. governments’ efforts to reduce the deficits potentially detract from education budgets. monitoring the effects of the crisis on education unesco has monitored the impact of the global financial and economic crisis on the provision of education in its member states. the findings from the monitoring aim to inform policy dialogue at the international level during meetings of the unesco governing bodies, as well as efa-related international gatherings, on the potential risk of the negative effects of the crisis for achieving the education for all (efa) goals by 2015 (unesco 2009a). at the country level, findings are shared with governments to promote social protection measures to educate vulnerable populations, and to further tailor unesco interventions to country needs. in 2009 unesco conducted a series of assessment exercises to monitor how the crisis is affecting various aspects of education provision in its member states. first, it conducted a quick survey in fifty countries in march 2009, to understand the effects of the crisis on government budgets for education (unesco, 2009a). in a second stage, a series of case studies were conducted in august 2009 to carry out a more in-depth analysis of the impact of the crisis on budgets and education services in selected twelve countries (unesco, 2009b). a most recent monitoring work was a local-level survey, conducted in november 2009 in the democratic republic of congo and mongolia to examine the effects of the crisis on schools and households, especially the poor and other vulnerable families, and how they were coping with budget cuts and the drop in revenue. below are a few findings from three exercises of unesco’s monitoring work in regard to the effects of the global crisis on education. impact of the crisis: findings from a “quick survey” in march 2009 a “quick survey” was launched by the unesco education sector (through the section of education policy analysis and strategies) in march 2009 to collect data and information about the patterns of government finances in relation to education sector during the crisis. both the data collected and the analysis undertaken considered the ongoing debate among the international community about the impact of the current crisis on the millennium development goals. in doing so, unesco intended to fulfil its “watching” function, alerting governing bodies and partners about potentially adverse effects of financial and economic shocks on education, and contributing to triggering policy debate and identifying appropriate responses. unesco was conscious of limitations in collecting education finance data through questionnaires mailed to its field offices. the limitations include incomplete or imprecise data from evolving situations, difficulties inherent to translating the current local debate about education into quantitative evidence and absence of coordination among local actors. despite the questioning of the data raised through the quick survey, a few findings and lessons emerged from the march survey about the impact of the crisis:  many countries increased budget deficits at the expense of budgetary orthodoxy, often by means of stimulus programmes, providing a more favourable background for the 16 current issues in comparative education g. chang preservation of education budgets than during past crises.  however, low-income countries were unable to afford additional public deficits and should, therefore, receive preferential access to increased oda.  there are serious doubts about the willingness of the international community to fulfull its commitments towards increased oda, especially among bilateral donors. education budgets were affected by the global crisis to a varying degree. in a few countries, education budgets for 2009 declined compared to 2008. in other countries, although education budgets appeared to be resilient, the increase in 2009 was weak and marginal in comparison with the steady increases recorded in previous years (unesco 2009a). in most low-income countries where school enrolments are rapidly rising, the negative or marginal growth of education expenditure implies reduction of per-pupil unit costs, cuts in school running costs, and further deterioration of educational quality (unesco 2009a). on a positive note, however, there were no clear signs in march 2009 that education budgets were being cut more than other sectors in most countries. the proportion of education in government finance kept constant or even increased in many countries surveyed and across all regions. stimulus packages, including increased social transfers in the education sector, were announced in not only developed countries, but also in many middle-income countries. however, lowincome economies lacked the necessary fiscal capacity to afford or increase social programmes, unless supported by the international community (unesco 2009a). impact of the crisis: evidence from 12 country case studies in september 2009 in order to complement the findings of the above quick survey, the unesco education sector decided to conduct a few country case studies with detailed interrogation of what is happening and being discussed at country level. the case studies considered the following limitations (i) the evolving nature of the current crisis, (ii) the general nature of the questions asked; (iii) questionnaires needing updates and/or review concerning accuracy and evidence. this research was carried out in august 2009 for twelve countries, with support from local experts. these countries were selected based on two main criteria: (i) representative geographical distribution according to unesco’s regional groupings; (ii) the likelihood of the severity of the effects of the crisis. therefore three countries were selected for sub-saharan africa (ethiopia, ghana and sudan), three countries for asia (mongolia, pakistan and thailand), two countries for the middle east and north africa region (egypt and tunisia), one eurasian country, (armenia), one european country (moldova) and two latin american countries (argentina and mexico.) the overriding conclusion was that the impact of the global crisis was more visible in a few countries. all participating countries experienced an economic slowdown in 2009. analyses confirmed the findings of the earlier survey conducted by unesco: while government revenues declined and budgets were cut in 2008 and 2009, education budgets were relatively resilient in a number of countries, though the increase has been less than in previous years. the countries that adopted stimulus packages most likely substantially increased capital expenditures on education. two categories of country situations were distinguishable, whether (a) the government has protected the budget for education expenditure, or (b) budgets for education were cut, even after borrowing from abroad. where budgets were cut, teachers’ wages were in general more resilient than other budget items. similarly, primary education tended to be better protected than post-primary levels, since teacher salaries constitute a predominant share in primary education current issues in comparative education 17 monitoring the effects of global crisis on education provision budgets. technical/vocational and higher education were more likely to be subject to budget cuts, partly because they usually consume more non-salary current and capital spending, and investment might have been delayed during the crisis. there were four categories of government responses that were distinguishable, though often interlinked, among the twelve countries: (i) “counter-cyclical” measures: such measures were mainly found in middle-income countries having manageable fiscal capacity, which allowed them to increase expenditure, even by borrowing or drawing on accumulated reserves; evident in egypt, thailand and, to a limited extent, armenia. (ii) targeted social protection: some countries implemented or reinforced targeting programmes that aimed to protect the most vulnerable during crisis; examples include argentina, ghana, mexico, mongolia and thailand. (iii) reformoriented measures: aimed to seize the opportunity of the crisis to improve cost-efficiency, relevance and governance (egypt and moldova). (iv) budget cuts: evenly distributed across all education subsectors in some countries. in a few countries, including in ethiopia and tunisia, the crisis did not lead to specific policy measures. the country case studies suggest that most governments were able to protect their education budgets in 2009, illustrated by the share of education expenditure in government finance maintained or even increased in most countries. however, signs of serious decline in government budgets for education in 2010 exist, amid decreased revenue and subsequent decline in government budgets in most countries. government budgets discussed or projected in case study countries during the august 2009 survey reflect downsizing trends. though agencies and countries projected economic rebounded in late 2009, exit strategies from stimulus packages were promoted to reduce budget deficits resulting from the crisis. this ,potentially jeopardizes social sector budgets, including education. country case studies indicated that vulnerable households faced difficulties in meeting school costs; children were moved to cheaper schools or public institutions that provided food or material support (unesco 2009b). there were instances of increased absenteeism, school dropouts and child labour. in some countries, educational quality and equity in public schools are jeopardized and demand for education decreased due to a decline in household income and an increase in family contributions to absorb rising indirect and direct schooling costs (unesco 2009b). impact of the crisis: local accounts from a community-level survey in two countries in order to obtain more evidence about how the global crisis affected financial flows to schools, student attendance, teaching and learning, the ability of households to support their children’s education, and other education-related issues, a community-level survey was conducted in november 2009 in the democratic republic of the congo (drc) and mongolia. these two countries are reportedly among those most affected by the crisis. the findings from the local surveys indicated that the global crisis was seriously affecting education provision, especially at the expense of vulnerable populations. in mongolia, school operational budgets decreased, student absenteeism and drop-out rates increased, requests for poor households to pay for school-related costs increased and more schools began triple shifts (unesco 2010a). the decline in government revenue led to cuts in educational spending, especially in operational expenses. most schools passed on increased costs to families, while the income of families, especially among vulnerable groups, decreased during the crisis. requests for increased parental contribution exacerbated the tension that existed before the crisis, 18 current issues in comparative education g. chang between schools and parents, and also between teachers and students. student absenteeism increased due to the inability of households to afford extra costs and a need to supplement family income by means of child labor (unesco 2010a). school-level budgets were reduced, leading to cuts in book and teaching manual costs, operational costs for instruction, administration and maintenance costs, and salary costs. in order to fill the gap, parents were asked to increase contribution to school maintenance and other school running costs, and teachers had to buy instructional materials out of pocket (equivalent to approximately ten percent of monthly salary). the number of teachers who live on salary loans from banks increased significantly (unesco 2010a). teachers’ motivation and performance were negatively impacted by their increased financial burden. the survey also indicated that household expenses for children’s education increased dramatically. particular increases were recorded in stationery, textbook, uniform, meal, transportation, and student tuition. households used several measures to overcome financial burdens related to education expenses during the crisis, including bank loans and reducing household consumption (unesco 2010a). in the democratic republic of congo, where most (around 70%) of schools are already private and public schools depend on student fees (even for teacher salaries), the decrease in household income directly impacted school operations (unesco 2010b). at the start of the school year 2009/2010, schools allowed a waiver of fee payments, yet many families feared that their children would soon be expelled if fees were not paid until the end of the first quarter (unesco 2010b). a number of households sold family assets or reduced spending on basic goods to supplement school fees. some poor families had to make a choice and decide which children were entitled to schooling. in most cases, younger children attending kindergarten were withdrawn as parents were not able to continue paying the fees. at primary and secondary school level, overage children, that is those who are above the normal school age often due to their late entry to school, appeared to be the first targets to withdraw as parents preferred to engage these children in income-earning activities. conclusion the monitoring exercises conducted in 2009 by unesco showed that the status and prospects of the financial and economic crisis were still evolving. in major advanced economies, which were responsible for the emergence of the financial crisis, signs of recovery were being recorded and growth for 2009 was slightly better than initially anticipated. yet the crisis has deeply affected the job market and the situation of the poor has deteriorated. among developing countries, middleincome economies have been affected more severely than low-income countries, because of their relative openness to the global financial market and economy. regarding the effects of the crisis on educational services and outcomes, it was too early to grasp the full picture as sufficient data from school censuses and household surveys were not yet available, additionally, there were difficulties anticipating the aftershocks in the social sectors. however, the findings from monitoring the crisis provided a few insights into the possible and increasing adverse effects of the crisis on education. in 2009, unesco conducted three studies to monitor the effects of the crisis on education. at the time of the first quick survey in march 2009, the conclusion was that there was no obvious evidence that the crisis was affecting national education budgets in most countries. however, the in-depth case studies conducted a few months later showed that the effects of the crisis on education started to unfold in a few countries. country case studies examining mongolia and pakistan indicated that vulnerable households were facing difficulties in meeting school costs. there were a growing number of accounts of increased current issues in comparative education 19 monitoring the effects of global crisis on education provision absenteeism, school dropouts and child labour. the local survey conducted in november 2009 in the drc and mongolia was the third study, which provided more insight on the severe effects the crisis exerted on education provision, especially at the expense of vulnerable populations. in sum, countries have taken measures and steps to protect education budgets in 2009. when budgets were reduced, there was no evidence that education budgets were cut more than those of other sectors. however, it is feared that the aftershocks of the financial crisis will be profound in social sectors, particularly for the most vulnerable people. this compels unesco to continue monitoring the effects of the economic crisis on education in member states and to encourage member states to persevere in their efforts, keeping in mind that education is one of the most viable channels for economic recovery and sustainable development. in 2010, unesco is planning to conduct a few more school-level surveys, based on small sampling of schools in ten countries. these school surveys will provide more evidence on the effects of the global economic crisis on education provision in vulnerable countries, on governments’ responses to cope with the effects of the crisis and on the implications of the crisis and governments’ measures for the achievement of the efa goals. developing countries are affected by a financial and economic crisis for which they are not responsible. so far, despite the budgetary constraints caused by the financial crisis, most governments have deployed commendable efforts to protect education budgets. one of the key messages from unesco’s monitoring work is that as developing countries are trying hard to protect education budgets, they should not be thwarted in their achievement of the efa goals by lack of resources (unesco, 2000). references european commission. (2009). impact of the global crisis on neighbouring countries of the eu. european economy. occasional paper n° 48. imf. (2009). world economic outlook database, april and october 2009. washington, dc. oecd (2009a). oecd strategic response to the financial and economic crisis. oecd. (2009b). dac report on aid predictability: survey on donors’ forward spending plans 2009-2011. (june 2009). unesco. (2000). dakar framework for action education for all: meeting our collective commitments (text adopted by the world education forum dakar, senegal, 26-28 april 2000). unesco. (2009a). the impact of the financial and economic crisis on the education sector. no. 1. the impact of the crisis on public expenditure on education: findings from the unesco quick survey (ed/eps/2009/pi/1): a working document for unesco staff. unesco. (2009b). the impact of the crisis on public expenditure on education. no. 2. the impact of the global crisis on public education expenditure: evidence from 12 country case studies (ed/eps/2009/pi/2): a working document for unesco staff. unesco. (2010a). community survey: impact of crisis on education. a case study of mongolia. conducted and prepared by khishigbayar b. munhjargal d., naranchimeg j. for unesco 20 current issues in comparative education g. chang (draft january 2010). unesco. (2010b). l’impact de la crise sur la scolarisation en république démocratique du congo (rdc). conducted and prepared by robert v. youdi for unesco. (draft march 2010). the world bank. (2009). global development finance 2009: charting a global recovery, washington d.c. copyright © 2010 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 2, spring 2017 © 2017, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(2), 111-139. study abroad during college: comparison between china and the united states jing li teachers college, columbia university fei guo institute of education, tsinghua university you you graduate school of education, peking university study abroad can be a life-changing experience, but evidence of its effectiveness is mixed. we examine the experience of studying abroad at colleges in the us and china, which are the largest receiving and sending countries of international students respectively. using data from two comparable national surveys that follow the same design, we estimate causal effects by matching students who studied abroad during college to those who did not, based on their propensity to study abroad. first, we survey student profiles to better understand who studied abroad. we found that parental education and urbanity makes difference in participation. second, we examine the impact of study abroad on student academic achievement, using multivariate regression and propensity score matching. finally, we exploit the matched samples to examine impact heterogeneity by student background. we find a positive, statistically significant but small impact on student academic achievement in both countries, with a higher impact for american students. introduction the united states, a traditional receiving country of international students, has started to send more students abroad. one out of ten students now have overseas learning experience during college. in some colleges and universities, spending a semester or an academic year overseas has already become an integral part of college life (iie, 2016). li, guo, and you current issues in comparative education 112 given the growing proportion of undergraduate students with overseas learning experience, study abroad has become a significant part of the us higher education system that cannot be ignored by education researchers and policy makers. a key question for study abroad stakeholders is: what is the value-added of study abroad to college education? china, a country that has traditionally sent students abroad, has started to involve more college students in study abroad programs that are sponsored by or affiliated with chinese institutions, instead of letting chinese students completely leave their chinese institutions and enroll in a program at a foreign country as an international student. the most recent chinese college student survey (ccss) shows that 6% of college students studied abroad before graduation and approximately 35% of students are planning to do so. given the rapid increase of students studying abroad in higher education and the growing consensus that studying abroad provides some of the richest and most powerful forms of experiential learning for our students (burn, 1991; hamir, 2011; kuh, 1995; kuh et al., 2008; laubscher, 1994; mckeown, 2009; tarrant et al., 2014; li, 2016), policymakers and the general public have become increasingly interested in the potential impact of study abroad across disciplines. extant literature on chinese students studying abroad mostly focus on students who leave china completely to pursue an overseas degree and potentially cause brain drain. very few prior-studies examine the behavior of chinese college students studying abroad in non-degree programs. as a comparison, the main stream of american college students studying abroad is in non-degree programs. thus, results from the us may provide a good reference. hence, the goal of this research is therefore to quantify the value of studying abroad during college using descriptive analysis and quasi-experimental methods such as propensity score matching with a good outcome measure (e.g., academic achievement) that is available in both the us and china. in this research, we choose gpa as a proxy for academic achievement. the data used in this research comes from the national survey of student engagement (nsse) in the us and the csss in china, both collected in 2014. after investigating student profile and estimating the impact of studying abroad on college students’ academic development in the us, and china separately, this research also conducts a comparison by examining the similarities and differences study abroad during college current issues in comparative education 113 113 between the two countries. this research is designed to address the following research questions: 1) in the u.s, who studied abroad during college and what are the impacts of study abroad on undergraduate students’ academic achievement? 2) in china, who studied abroad during college and what are the impacts of study abroad on undergraduate students’ academic achievement? 3) what are the similarities and differences between the us and china, in terms of study abroad student profile and the impact of this experience on students’ academic achievement? the remainder of this paper is organized as follows: section two reviews existing literature on the impact of studying abroad on student academic achievement; section three describes the data source; section four introduces the empirical strategies and sample; section five presents the results based on ordinary least square regression and propensity score matching, by using studying abroad as an indicator; and section six concludes the paper with a summary of findings, limitations, and further analysis. literature review regarding the value of study abroad, a large body of study abroad research focused on intercultural understanding and reported a positive impact of study abroad on student global engagement, cross-cultural adaptability and cultural sensibility (carlson, 1990; carlson, 1998; paige et al., 2002; chieffo, 2004; kauffmann et al., 1992; kitsantas, 2004; williams, 2005; anderson et al, 2006; black & duhon, 2006; lewin, 2010; li, 2016). more recent studies looked into the relationship between study abroad and labor market outcomes such as employment and starting salary. findings from these studies are consistent: study abroad has positive impact on student career path, earnings and employment (paige, 2009; palifka, 2009; salisbury, 2009; li, 2016). trooboff (2008)’s results also shed light of the mechanism because employers value study abroad in hiring recent college and university graduates. however, the findings on academic achievement are mixed. a number of studies have evaluated the effects of study abroad experience on student academic development. overall, evidence from li, guo, and you current issues in comparative education 114 these studies was mixed, depending on the data, outcome measure, program type, and methodology. however, there are more studies reporting positive effects. on the positive side, many studies (allen, 2009; barron, 2003; diao, &freed, 2011;, engle, 2012; foster, 2001; freed, 1995; freed, 1998; freed, segalowitz, & dewey, 2004; jimenez-jimenez, 2010; and segalowitz et al., 2004) reported students gained foreign language proficiency from their studies overseas. engle and engle (2004), kinginger and farrell (2004), allen (2009), and diao and freed (2011) found positive evidence in french grammar and vocabulary of students by using a pre-/post-test comparison. similar evidence was found in other language programs such as for spanish (jimenezjimenez, 2010; segalowitz et al., 2004), chinese (foster, 2001), and hebrew (donitsaschmidt & vadish, 2005). regarding concerns that studying abroad may delay timely college completion, xu et al., (2013) found beneficial effects of study abroad programs on undergraduate degree completion. o’rear et al., (2014) also confirmed that studying abroad can increase the likelihood of college graduation. li (2016) found that study abroad during college has positive impact on student gpa. on the negative side, wilkinson (1998) interviewed four students and challenged the idea that study abroad facilitates student language acquisition; savicki et al., (2012) reported no evidence that studying abroad improves student language acquisition from the two programs to austria and spain; mendelson’s (2004) assessment did not find positive evidence of student academic achievement either. it is important to bear in mind, however, that despite the results, sample sizes of these studies are commonly small and only one study identify a control group (jimenezjimenez, 2010) and its selection criteria remains questionable. even though small group studies may provide deep understanding of a behavior where large datasets can fail, jimenez-jimenez chose a group of six native speakers from spanish-speaking countries as a control group to study abroad students who learned spanish as a second language, which was not the best comparison for many reasons. the two undergraduate degree completion studies, xu et al., (2013) and o’rear et al., (2014), addressed the sample size problem by using data from one college (old dominion university) and from one state (georgia), but one college and one state is hardly representative. thus, solid research with national-level data is needed to check the external validity of these studies in order to obtain an accurate estimate of the real effect of study abroad on a student’s academic achievement. study abroad during college current issues in comparative education 115 115 even when national-level datasets are available, a comparative study might still not be feasible, unless the data from different countries are collected with the same (or similar enough) survey design and outcomes are measured in the same way. by the same token, even though studies reporting positive effects seem to be more in number than other studies, heterogeneous effects by sending countries (i.e., the impact of study abroad on american students are substantially different from that on chinese students) remain unknown. there is far too little understanding of the theory and practice of this type of learning in the context of comparative and international education. data source this study uses two comparable national surveys in the us and china to estimate and compare the impact of study abroad programs on student academic achievement. the american dataset used is from the national survey of student engagement (nsse) 2014 conducted by indiana university.1 the chinese dataset we used is the restricted use data from the chinese college student survey (ccss), which is the largest national survey on college students in china. specifically, we used the questionnaire for undergraduate students in four-year institutions, which was developed from the nsse questionnaire through the collaboration between indiana university and tsinghua university. based on our knowledge, the ccss is the only national survey in china that contains information about study abroad during college. more importantly, because the questionnaire is developed from nsse, the ccss has many similarities with the nsse. given the substantial similarities 2 between these two surveys, this pair of datasets provides a unique opportunity to conduct a comparative study that perfectly fits this research’s purpose. 1 to the best of our knowledge, the nsse, the student experience in the research university survey (seru), and the college senior survey (css) are the only three us national college experience surveys that contain information on study abroad. these surveys focus on how students evaluate their experience at the higher education institutions they attend, and each survey has its own pros and cons. we chose the nsse over seru and css because the nsse is larger and the most spread-out sample than the other two. for example, the nsse 2014 contains data on 29,836 senior students from 622 us colleges and universities vs. 23,523 senior students from 95 us institutions in the css 2014. another example from seru is that the survey excludes non-research colleges and universities, such as liberal arts colleges, which are the majority institutions with respect to both undergraduate enrollment and study abroad. therefore, the nsse is the most desirable dataset for this research. 2 like nsse, the ccss examines student engagement at college with a particular focus on higher impact activities such as study abroad. and because the ccss employs nsse’s survey design, ccss’s instruments, measurements and the coding structure are very similar to nsse as well. for instance, both ccss and nsse ask students how many hours per week they spend to prepare their classes and specify that “preparing for class” include studying, reading, writing, doing homework or lab work, analyzing data, rehearsing, and other academic activities. li, guo, and you current issues in comparative education 116 methodology quantitative identification of the causal effect of study abroad is difficult because of data constraints and problems such as endogeneity (i.e. participation in study abroad programs is determined by variables which also determine the dependent variable). this research uses a multivariate regression model and a propensity score matching (psm) strategy to address the endogeneity problem. baseline model the baseline model to estimate the effect of studying abroad on student academic achievement is specified as following:   332211 xxxzy (1) this model builds upon the standard education production function. where y refers to academic achievement, z is a dummy variable indicating whether or not the student studied abroad during college, and x is the vector of confounding covariates, and  is the error term that follows a normal distribution. more specifically, we use the self-reported grade point average (gpa) to measure academic achievement. in the nsse 2014 survey, students were asked to report the most grades received on courses. we convert grades to gpa on a scale of 1-4 based on the guideline of the college board,3 and then rescale the gpa into 1-100 scale to make it comparable with the chinese data. the ccss asked for the average course grade in “last semester” (1100 scale). as the gpa measures are not directly comparable across countries, we estimate the models separately for the us and the chinese samples, and compare the effect size of the estimates.4 with regards to the covariates, we include variables that are correlated to academic performance as suggested by the literature (freed, 2014; salisbury, 2009). specifically, 𝑋1 stands for student characteristics and college experience, including age, gender, ethnicity, academic major, enrollment status (us only), whether live on campus (us only), and hours per week spent on course-related work, 𝑋2 are the family covariates including parents’ education level, whether live in urban area (china only), and whether the student is the only child in his/her family (china only), 𝑋3are institutional characteristics including the type, size, and location of the institution. the variables are constructed with self-reported information in the 3 http://www.collegeboard.com/html/academictracker-howtoconvert.html 4 gpa may not be comparable across universities. a conventional way to address this problem is to include institution fixed-effect in the model. however, when institution fixed-effects were included, some individual and family variables were omitted because of collinearity. thus we decided to control for available institutional characteristics that may result in differences in grading. http://www.collegeboard.com/html/academictracker-howtoconvert.html study abroad during college current issues in comparative education 117 117 nsse 2014 and ccss 2014. tables a1 and a2 (see appendix) report the measurement and descriptive statistics of the variables used for the us and the chinese samples, respectively. propensity score matching in order for the ordinary least square (ols) estimate of the coefficient on study-abroad program to be the true causal effect, participation in study abroad programs must be exogenous to student academic performance. but we are concerned about the selection bias that could arise because students are not randomly assigned to such programs, but self-selected. it could be argued that students from affluent families are more likely to go abroad as they can obtain extra financial support from parents, which is implied by the descriptive analysis. affluent families are also more likely to afford extra educational services that assist students with their coursework such as data/software licenses, private tutoring, and professional editing. consequently, the between-group difference in academic achievement may not be caused by study abroad experience, but because the studyabroad group is ultimately different from the non-study-abroad group. in other words, these two groups are not comparable at all. if that is the case, estimates from the ols regression will be biased. in order to identify the true treatment effect, this study endeavors to address the endogeneity problem with propensity score matching (psm). propensity score theory states that rather than controlling for all the variables, it is sufficient to control for just the propensity score, which is just a one-number summary of the covariates. )|1pr()( xzxe  (2) where z is the treatment variable (participating study abroad in this research) and x is a vector of pre-treatment covariates. in practice, this means using the matched groups to estimate each mean. the primary advantage of propensity score matching over ordinary least square is that propensity score matching does not have to specify the multi-dimensional relationship between x and the outcome. this way, propensity score matching also reduces bias caused by possible multicollinearity among covariates. in this study, the estimand is average treatment effect on the treated (att). in terms of estimation strategy, probit regression is used to estimate this effect li, guo, and you current issues in comparative education 118 size.5 the results reported in this paper are from use of the nearest neighbor method without replacement.6 analytic sample the american data used is a 20% random sample from the nsse 2014, which was collected by indiana university and shared with teachers college, columbia university.7 it contains 5,361 students from 71 universities and college. institutions’ participation in the nsse survey is voluntary, and each institution uses different sampling strategies to select students. the response rate varies across institutions with an average of 31% in 2014. although the nsse sample cannot be considered as a strictly representative sample of the us undergraduate students without a random sampling scheme, its demographic composition is overall similar to the us bachelor’s-granting institutions and students, with a little over-representative of public colleges and universities and master’s colleges and universities under the carnegie basic classification. the chinese sample from the ccss 2014 survey contains 55,529 students from 38 fouryear universities and colleges in china.8 similar to nsse, the participation in the ccss survey is voluntary. but in each participating institution, the student sample is selected with a stratified random sampling strategy. the overall response rate of the 2014 survey is 67%. the sample is a little over-representative of project “985” and project “211” universities (i.e. the two elite university projects in china) and universities specialized in science and engineering. in order to make the samples representative for both countries, institutional and individual sampling weights provided by the nsse team and the ccss teams are applied in all analyses. empirical results descriptive analysis overall, studying abroad during college is more common in the us than in china. the american representative sample used in this research includes more than 5,500 students who were attending college in 2014. among them, approximately 14% of students have study abroad experience. the chinese data from 5 probit regression is a conventional way to estimate models with binary dependent variable. the error term is assumed to follow the standard normal distribution. probit models are most often estimated with the standard maximum likelihood procedure. 6 the nearest neighborhood matching is one of the methods to construct comparable control group for the treatment group. it chooses the control unit that is closest to the treated unit on a given distance measure based on the propensity score. the matching is done one at a time for each individual in the treatment group. once a match is selected, it will not be replaced back to the untreated pool. 7 according to nsse’s data sharing policy, only a random sample up to 20% of the full sample is available. 8 we were able to have access to the full sample of ccss 2014. study abroad during college current issues in comparative education 119 119 over 55,500 college students in the same year shows a 6% participating rate in study abroad, less than half of the american participating rate. figure 1. disciplinary distribution of study abroad population, by field of study the composition of study abroad population is also different. female students are underrepresented (43% in the study abroad sample vs. 47% in the full sample) in china and overrepresented in the us (75% female in the study abroad sample vs. 65% female in the full sample). figure 1 breaks down the study abroad populations by their field of study. engineering program accounts for 47% of the chinese study abroad population but only 7% in the u.s.9 with regard to the differences in study abroad behavior by sub groups, table 1 presents the percentage of students that studied abroad in each groups, which can be interpreted as how likely a student from that group will study abroad. in general, female students are more likely to study abroad in the us but less likely in china. in both countries, students in arts & humanities, social sciences, and business majors are more likely to study abroad than other majors. in contrast, the percentage of health students studied abroad is dramatically low. 9 this could be explained by sampling difference. the chinese sample is over-representative of engineering students. according to the national statistics of 2014, engineering students accounted for 33% of the total enrollment of four-year undergraduate students. the percentage in ccss 2014 is 46.6% after weights are applied. this is because the sample contains a higher percentage of engineering concentrated universities and colleges. li, guo, and you current issues in comparative education 120 table 1. percentage of students studied abroad us china number of students % of students studied abroad number of students % of students studied abroad total 5,631 13.9 55,529 6.1 gender male 1,968 10.3 28,592 6.6 female 3,663 15.9 26,937 5.7 major arts & humanities 615 21.8 6,263 7.8 natural sciences 906 13.1 5,877 5.7 social sciences 1,642 16.3 4,304 7.1 business 850 13.1 7,750 7.0 health 792 8.5 3,163 2.3 engineering 452 11.9 27,041 6.0 all other 374 16.7 1,131 4.1 enrollment size small 1,802 15.1 9,904 5.9 medium 1,236 14.6 28,937 6.6 large 2,453 13.3 16,688 5.5 parental education high school 1,067 8.8 36,444 4.6 college 2,773 12.7 15,878 8.3 graduate school 1,791 18.9 1,878 14.8 parental education turns out to be a strong indicator of students’ study abroad behavior. as indicated in figure 2, both in the us and china, students with highly educated parents are more likely to study abroad compared to other students. the uschina gap is quite small among students with parents with a graduate school education. one possible explanation could be that highly educated parents are more likely to have a high income to pay for their children’s study abroad programs. another possibility could be that highly educated parents have international exposure themselves. compared to less educated parents, these parents tend to be more openminded and willing to support their children studying abroad. having an urban background is another strong determinant to studying abroad behavior. in particular, the participating rate of chinese students from rural areas is remarkably low. again, family’s socio-economic status determines students’ decisions about studying abroad. study abroad during college current issues in comparative education 121 121 figure 2. percentage of students studying abroad by parental education multivariate regression the baseline ordinary least square regression model based on equation (1) is established to investigate the average effect of study abroad. we ran three sets of regressions on each dataset and report the results in table 2. models 1 and 4 include student demographic characteristics; models 2 and 5 include student and family variables; model 3 and 6 are the full specification by adding institutional control variables. the estimations across these three models consistently report a statistically positive impact of study abroad on student academic achievement, in both the us and china settings. results indicate about a roughly three point increase10 in gpa on a scale of 1100 for american students and one-point increase11 for chinese students. results also suggest the following: 1) in both the us and china, female students outperform male students; compared to students in arts and humanities, students in other majors tend to have a lower gpa; majority students (white american students and han chinese students) outperformed minority students; 2) in terms of family background, parental education is not associated with student gpa in the us but a strong predictor of chinese students’ academic achievement. in china, the father’s education turns out to be positively associated with student gpa while no such evidence is found in the relationship between mother’s education and student academic outcomes, after controlling for institutional characteristics; and 3) students from american private institutions or chinese elite colleges and universities (e.g., chinese project 985 and 10 effect size is 0.22 standard deviation for american students 11 effect size is 0.10 standard deviation for chinese students 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% high school college graduate school percentage of students studied abroad by parental education u.s. china li, guo, and you current issues in comparative education 122 project 211 higher education institutions that receive exclusive funding from the central government) outperformed students of other institution types. table 2. ols regression results us china variable model 1 model 2 model 3 variable model 4 model 5 model 6 abroad 3.02*** 2.84*** 2.77*** abroad 0.96*** 0.91*** 0.97*** (0.44) (0.46) (0.46) (0.21) (0.21) (0.20) hours 0.22*** 0.21*** 0.21*** hours 0.17*** 0.17*** 0.14*** (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) age 0.18*** 0.21*** 0.20*** age -0.04*** -0.04*** -0.03*** (0.02) (0.03) (0.03) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) male -1.17*** -1.22*** -1.20*** male -3.16*** -3.15*** -3.29*** (0.38) (0.39) (0.39) (0.11) (0.11) (0.10) white 2.48*** 2.53*** 2.59*** minority -1.20*** -1.26*** -1.97*** (0.54) (0.55) (0.56) (0.17) (0.17) (0.17) black -5.40*** -5.07*** -5.12*** party 4.69*** 4.66*** 4.33*** (0.89) (0.90) (0.91) (0.15) (0.15) (0.15) hispanic -1.17 -0.47 -0.70 m_social -0.55 -0.59 -0.77 (0.80) (0.83) (0.85) (0.23) (0.23) (0.22) asian 1.79* 2.06** 1.82* m_natural -1.49*** -1.53*** -1.99*** (0.94) (0.93) (0.95) (0.21) (0.21) (0.21) m_social -1.80*** -1.62*** -1.51*** m_business -1.30*** -1.34*** -1.11*** (0.57) (0.57) (0.57) (0.20) (0.20) (0.19) m_natural -2.31*** -2.31*** -2.18*** m_health -1.95*** -2.03*** -2.20*** (0.65) (0.66) (0.66) (0.25) (0.25) (0.27) m_business -2.67*** -2.59*** -2.64*** m_engineer -1.48*** -1.52*** -1.56*** (0.66) (0.66) (0.66) (0.17) (0.17) (0.17) m_health -2.91*** -2.69*** -2.73*** m_other -2.02*** -2.06*** -2.43*** (0.68) (0.69) (0.69) (0.37) (0.37) (0.37) m_engineer -5.49*** -5.58*** -5.34*** onlychild -0.36*** -0.33*** (0.86) (0.86) (0.88) (0.11) (0.11) m_other -4.43*** -4.20*** -4.26*** urban -0.46*** -0.64*** (0.88) (0.88) (0.88) (0.11) (0.11) full-time -0.03 -0.03 father college+ 0.81*** 0.37** (0.66) (0.66) (0.18) (0.17) transfer 0.39 0.36 mother college+ 0.45** 0.21 (0.49) (0.49) (0.20) (0.20) dorm 0.45 0.38 medium -0.59*** (0.41) (0.42) (0.17) first -1.77*** -1.75*** large -1.61*** (0.52) (0.52) (0.19) pedu_cl 0.75 0.80 inst_985 5.43*** (0.59) (0.59) (0.19) study abroad during college current issues in comparative education 123 123 pedu_gs 0.69 0.73 inst_211 2.07*** (0.74) (0.74) (0.17) private 1.50*** inst_univ 0.57*** (0.56) (0.15) medium 0.87 munici -1.05*** (0.55) (0.12) large 0.96 (0.64) r_neweng 1.01 (0.70) _cons 79.51*** 78.58*** 77.40*** _cons 79.13*** 79.53*** 79.73*** (0.92) (1.50) (1.59) (0.31) (0.32) (0.34) n 5,477 5,387 5,387 n 36,736 36,736 36,736 r-squared 0.08 0.08 0.08 r-squared 0.08 0.09 0.12 note: a) coefficients are reported; b) robust standard errors are in parentheses; c) reference group for race, major, region, and enrollment size are other race (us data) or minority (china data), arts and humanities majors, and small enrollment size (american institutions with under 2,500 enrollment or chinese institutions with under 20,000 enrollment); and d) * p<0.1; ** p<0.05; *** p<0.01. propensity score matching to address selection bias, we employ a propensity score matching approach. we first compute propensity scores for each student, then find a match for each study-abroad student from the non-study-abroad group based upon their propensity score, run a weighted regression on the matched sample, and estimate the average effect on the treated (att). because propensity score matching is only appropriate when certain assumptions hold, such as common support and balance, we check the common support in figure 3. figure 3. propensity score matching – common support, by country specifically, we plot the distribution of propensity scores with the study-abroad group in the top histogram and the non-study-abroad in the bottom histogram. the li, guo, and you current issues in comparative education 124 horizontal axis indicates propensity scores and the length of each bar on the vertical axis indicates the fraction of sample falling into a corresponding interval of propensity score. as we can see from figure 3, the overlap of the propensity score is pronounced, especially in the lower half. only a few observations are off support at the high end of the propensity score. the critical task for propensity score matching is to find a balanced model. this study uses a rule of thumb to define “good balance”: 1) for continuous variables, the difference in means is less than or equal to .05; treatment group (study abroad students) standard deviations and the ratio of standard deviations are between .91 and 1.1; and 2) for binary/indicator variables, the difference in percentage across groups is less than or equal to .025. table a3 (see appendix) summarized the balance check for each of the variables. overall this model satisfies the balance criteria except the variable age, not perfectly but as well as we can achieve. regression results from propensity score matching are reported in table 3, along with heterogeneous effects. heterogeneous effects and robustness check for heterogeneous effects, we seek to determine how individual characteristics interact with the study abroad experience in terms of academic achievement. hence, we examine how the impact of study abroad varies depending on individual characteristics, such as gender, race, and major. these potential differences are tested by adding a series of interaction terms to the final regression model (model 3) on the matched sample. the interaction is generated as the product of two dummy variables. study abroad is coded as a dummy, as are student characteristics. for example, the abroadxmale variable is the interaction of study abroad and gender, which is computed by the study abroad variable (1=studied abroad; 0=did not study abroad) multiplied by the gender variable (1=male; 0=female). the coefficient of abroadxmale indicates the gender difference in the impact of studying abroad on student academic achievement. table 3 summarizes the regression results for each of the above characteristics by adding one interaction at a time, along with the original results from propensity score matching without interactions. study abroad during college current issues in comparative education 125 125 table 3. propensity score matching results and heterogenous effects us china variable psm male white natural science variable psm male han natural science abroadrxmale 2.61* abroadxmale 0.45 (1.60) (0.77) abroadrxwh~e 0.84 abroadxhan 0.67 (1.61) (1.16) abroadrxm_natural -0.19 abroadxm_natural -0.19 (0.81) (0.78) abroadr 2.86*** 2.18*** 2.24*** 2.95*** abroad 0.75* 0.50 0.13 0.86 (0.74) (0.89) (1.35) (0.83) (0.39) (0.55) (1.09) (0.59) hours 0.22*** 0.22*** 0.22*** 0.22*** hours 0.11*** 0.11*** 0.11*** 0.11*** (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.02) (0.02) 0.02 0.02 age 0.13 0.13 0.13 0.13 age 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 (0.09) (0.09) (0.09) (0.09) (0.05) (0.05) (0.05) (0.05) male -0.89 -2.18 -0.89 -0.89 male -2.94*** -3.16*** -2.94*** -2.94*** (0.81) (1.34) (0.81) (0.81) (0.40) (0.58) (0.40) (0.40) white 0.48 0.46 0.05 0.48 han 1.98*** 1.97*** 1.62*** 1.99*** (1.14) (1.14) (1.56) (1.13) (0.61) (0.61) (0.75) (0.61) black -11.06*** -11.03*** -11.03*** -11.07*** party 3.52 3.53 3.53 3.52 (2.15) (2.16) (2.15) (2.15) (0.50) (0.50) (0.50) (0.50) hispanic -1.35 -1.18 -1.36 -1.34 m_social -1.03 -1.04 -1.03 -1.03 (1.62) (1.63) (1.62) (1.62) (0.81) (0.81) (0.81) (0.81) asian -4.73*** -4.86*** -4.74*** -4.74*** m_natural -1.77** -1.77** -1.77** -1.67* (1.91) (1.92) (1.91) (1.92) (0.84) (0.84) (0.84) (0.99) m_social -1.92* -1.90* -1.91* -1.92* m_business -1.52** -1.53** -1.52** -1.52** (1.05) (1.05) (1.04) (1.04) (0.75) (0.75) (0.75) (0.75) m_natural -1.82 -1.76 -1.82 -1.22* m_health -1.68 -1.68 -1.67 -1.68 li, guo, and you current issues in comparative education 126 (1.22) (1.22) (1.22) (2.90) (1.34) (1.33) (1.33) (1.34) m_business -3.12*** -3.10*** -3.11*** -3.11*** m_engineer -1.01 -1.01 -1.01 -0.91 (1.15) (1.15) (1.15) (1.15) (0.64) (0.64) (0.64) (0.81) m_health -3.22** -3.21** -3.24** -3.21** m_other -4.37*** -4.37*** -4.38*** -4.36*** (1.46) (1.45) (1.47) (1.46) (1.78) (1.78) (1.78) (1.78) m_engineer -5.63*** -5.54*** -5.62*** -5.05*** onlychild -0.28 -0.28 -0.29 -0.28 (1.71) (1.71) (1.71) (3.09) (0.47) (0.47) (0.47) (0.47) m_other -2.90 -2.68 -2.88 -2.89 urban -0.99 -0.98 -0.99 -1.00 (1.89) (1.90) (1.89) (1.89) (0.49) (0.49) (0.49) (0.49) ft 1.60 1.67 1.64 1.61 fabaplus 0.08 0.08 0.08 0.08 (1.34) (1.34) (1.34) (1.34) (0.56) (0.56) (0.56) (0.56) trans -0.67 -0.69 -0.68 -0.67 mobaplus 0.28 0.28 0.29 0.29 (1.12) (1.12) (1.12) (1.13) (0.63) (0.63) (0.63) (0.63) dorm -0.43 -0.44 -0.43 -0.43 large -2.25*** -2.25*** -2.25*** -2.25*** (0.85) （0.86） (0.85) (0.85) (0.80) (0.80) (0.80) (0.80) first -0.19 -0.16 -0.16 -0.20 medium -0.75 -0.76 -0.75 -0.75 (1.14) (1.14) (1.14) (1.14) (0.62) (0.62) (0.62) (0.62) pedu_cl 2.35* 2.39* 2.37* 2.36* inst_985 5.79*** 5.79*** 5.79*** 5.79*** (1.37) (1.37) (1.37) (1.37) (0.68) (0.68) (0.68) (0.68) pedu_gs 2.06 2.13 2.08 2.06 inst_211 1.97*** 1.97*** 1.97*** 1.97*** (1.66) (1.67) (1.66) (1.66) (0.64) (0.64) (0.64) (0.64) pri 2.31** 2.28** 2.31** 2.31** inst_univ 0.28 0.28 0.28 0.28 (1.07) (1.07) (1.07) (1.07) (0.58) (0.58) (0.58) (0.58) medium 1.54 1.55 1.54 1.54 munici -1.58*** -1.58*** -1.58*** -1.58*** (1.08) (1.08) (1.08) (1.08) (0.49) (0.49) (0.49) (0.49) large 4.39*** 4.35*** 4.38*** 4.39*** (1.33) (1.33) (1.32) (1.33) r_neweng 1.53 1.49 1.50 1.53 (1.44) (1.46) (1.44) (1.45) study abroad during college current issues in comparative education 127 127 _cons 76.04*** 76.34*** 76.32*** 75.95*** _cons 80.38*** 80.50*** 80.37*** 80.33*** (3.62) (3.64) (3.70) (3.62) (1.43) (1.48) (1.43) (1.47) n 1,280 1,280 1,280 1,280 n 3,568 3,568 3,568 3,568 r-squared 0.11 0.11 0.11 0.11 r-squared 0.09 0.09 0.09 0.09 note: a) coefficients are reported; b) robust standard errors are in parentheses; c) reference group for race, major, region, and enrollment size are other race (us data) or minority (china data), arts and humanities majors, and small enrollment size (american institutions with under 2,500 enrollment or chinese institutions with under 20,000 enrollment); and d) * p<0.1; ** p<0.05; *** p<0.01. table 4. corrected standard errors with bootstrap (us) sample size: 5,453 variable replication observed bias std. err [95 % conf. interval] _bs_1 1,000 2.60 -0.07 0.87 0.88 4.32 (n) 0.80 4.33 (p) 0.94 4.51 (bc) note: n=normal; p=percentile; bc=bias-corrected table 5. corrected standard errors with bootstrap (china) sample size: 38,634 variable replication observed bias std. err [95 % conf. interval] _bs_1 1,000 1.13 -0.04 0.42 0.31 1.94 (n) 0.34 1.98 (p) 0.43 2.13 (bc) note: n=normal; p=percentile; bc=bias-corrected li, guo, and you current issues in comparative education 128 three main observations emerge from table 3. first, the coefficient of studying abroad in the us sample is consistently significant across models, which indicates that study abroad experience has a robust positive impact on student academic achievement across gender, race, and major. second, the coefficient of studying abroad turns out to be insignificant after adding gender. this suggests that for chinese students, the impact of study abroad on student academic achievement is not as robust as for american students. third, the gender interaction term is significant in the us sample. this means that being male increases the impact of study abroad on student academic achievement. in other words, male american students benefit more from study abroad than female american students. there are no such gender differences among chinese students participating in study abroad. we use bootstrap to simulate the matching procedure 1,000 times to get the distribution of the average treatment on the treated (att)12. as reported in table 4 and table 5, on average, for students who studied abroad, having that experience increased gpa by 2.60 points for american students and 1.13 points for chinese students. these simulation results are consistent with the finding from the baseline regression, propensity score matching, and heterogeneous effects. overall, on average, study abroad experience at college seems to have a larger and more consistent impact on american student academic achievement than on chinese students. conclusions and discussion overall, we find significant positive impact of study abroad on student academic achievement in both countries, with higher impact for american students. results from the nsse data reveal a positive impact of study abroad on students’ academic achievement during college. on average, study abroad experiences improve students’ gpa by 3 points (on a scale of 1 to 100). for comparison, china’s study abroad group is more evenly distributed across gender and the field of study. however, descriptive analysis reveals that students from rural areas are less likely to study abroad. propensity score matching results indicate a slight (one point) positive impact on students’ academic achievement in china. these results are consistent with freed (2004) and ingraham, & peterson (2004)’s findings that study abroad during college has a positive impact on gpa and facilitate students’ intellectual growth. this increase in gpa may translate into benefits for the labor market, as research also shows that 12 bootstrap is a resampling method to get robust estimates on parameters through estimation of sampling variability. we resample the original sample for 1,000 times and conduct propensity score matching on each redrawn sample to estimate the distribution of average treatment on treated (att) effect. study abroad during college current issues in comparative education 129 129 students with high gpa have an advantage in the job market because of human capital and signaling effects (jones, & jackson, 1990). regarding studying abroad student profiles, the majority of american students who study abroad are still comprised of the traditional study-abroad student body: white female in arts and humanities or social science programs at a private institution. the gender and major differences in chinese students are smaller than american students. importantly, parental education turns out to be the strongest predictor of students’ study abroad behavior. students with highly educated parents are more likely to study abroad compared to other students. the us-china gap is quite small among students with graduate-school-educated parents. urbanicity is a strong indicator as well. in particular, chinese students from large cities (such as direct-controlled municipality) are much more likely to join study abroad programs than students from other places. these finding confirms goldstein, & kim (2006) and salisbury, et al., (2009)’s arguments that social economic status (ses) matters for american students and proves that the same for chinese students. thus, aids to students from low ses families are solely needed to improve education equality both in the us and china. from a policy perspective, engaging college students in non-degree study abroad programs without completely leaving their chinese institution will alleviate concerns about potential brain drain (bhagwati, & hamada, 1974; mountford, 1997; beine, docquier, & rapoport, 2001; beine, docquier, & rapoport, 2008; mountford, & rapoport, 2011). this research contributes to the extant literature in several ways: a) it presents the comparison and contrast between two countries (instead of within one country); b) it employs quasi-experimental methods to estimate the effect size of study abroad experience on students (adding onto descriptive & correlation analysis); and c) it utilizes data from two national surveys that follow almost identical survey designs, which is rare in the field. yet, we need to be cautious that our findings are subject to social and economic differences between the us and china. nonetheless, there are a few limitations of this study. first, the study abroad measure is an indicator that only captures whether or not students studied abroad, but does not differentiate by duration, subject, and organization of the study abroad program students attended. dwyer (2004) and carlson, & widaman (1990) found long-term effects and mckeown (2009) reported the first-time effect. hence, further comparative studies can exploit the variation of study abroad programs and evaluate effects of li, guo, and you current issues in comparative education 130 various program design (e.g., duration, location, and curriculum) on student outcomes. li (2016) conducted research on american students but there is no such study on chinese students. second, this research focuses only on academic achievement. as lewin (2010) pointed out that students benefit from study abroad through three ways: language study, courses in the student’s major that offers new perspectives and knowledge acquisition. future research can measure non-academic outcomes such as global mindset and labor market outcomes. since 2013, nsse incorporated a module of global perspectives to measure student cross-cultural awareness and attitude (li, 2016). a new comparative study will be feasible if ccss includes global perspectives module in the chinese survey. finally, in order to truly understand the mechanism of how study abroad during college affects student outcome, we need to be able to track students (both study abroad alumni and their peers) during and after their college life. qualitative research (i.e., interviews, focus group) will also provide deep understandings that large survey fails to capture. study abroad during college current issues in comparative education 131 131 authors’ acknowledgement: the authors of this research thank the center on chinese education at teachers college, columbia university, national survey on student engagement (nsse) at indiana university, college student study survey (csss) team at tsinghua university for their data and support. about the authors: jing li is a research associate of economics and education at teachers college, columbia university, where she received her master’s and phd degrees, as well as rigorous training on both quantitative and qualitative research methods. her dissertation is a quantitative research in which she employed economic theory and quasi-experimental methods to evaluate the impact of studying abroad experience on student outcomes. her primary areas of study are labor economics, higher education policy and comparative & international education, with a focus on cross-cultural intervention, financial aid, racial differential and programmatic barriers to college success and career development in the global economy. fei guo is a post-doctoral research fellow at the institute of education in tsinghua university, beijing, china. she holds an ma and a phd in economics and education from teachers college, columbia university. she received a ba in international economics from shanghai jiao tong university in china. fei guo conducts research to explore factors influencing college students’ academic achievement, cognitive and non-cognitive development, and labor market performance. her research interests include student learning and development in higher education, economic returns to higher education, and educational equality and equity in china. you you is a researcher at institute of economics of education (iee)/graduate school of education (gse), peking university. she received her phd in economics and education from teachers college, columbia university in the city of new york. her research interests include teachers labor market, college graduates employment and entrepreneurship, and education finance and she has expertise in the use of quantitative methods to evaluate the effects of educational policies and programs. she publishes widely and her research has won her several external research funds from national and provincial governmental agencies (e.g., national natural science foundation of china). contact: jing li at jing.li@tc.columbia.edu, fei guo at feiguo0121@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn, and you you at yyou@pku.edu.cn li, guo, and you current issues in comparative education 132 references anderson, p., lawton, l., 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(2013). the impact of study abroad on academic success: an analysis of first-time students entering old dominion university, virginia, 2000-2004. frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of study abroad, 13. study abroad during college current issues in comparative education 137 137 appendix table a1. summary of variables (us dataset) variable observation mean standard deviation (% for dummy variables) description gpa100 5,613 85.67 13.44 gpa on a scale of 1 to 100 to be comparable with chinese data abroadr 5,567 0.14 0.35 indicator of having studied abroad during college hours 5,586 15.02 8.75 hours per week spent on course-related work age 5,590 23.09 7.82 age at 2014 male 5,631 0.35 0.48 male white 5,631 0.66 0.47 race: caucasian black 5,631 0.08 0.27 race: african american hispanic 5,631 0.07 0.25 race: hispanic asian 5,631 0.05 0.22 race: asian m_social 5,631 0.29 0.45 major: social sciences m_natural 5,631 0.16 0.37 major: natural sciences m_business 5,631 0.15 0.36 major: business m_health 5,631 0.14 0.35 major: health m_engineer 5,631 0.08 0.27 major: engineering m_other 5,631 0.07 0.25 major: other major but not education ft 5,587 0.89 0.31 full-time student trans 5,605 0.26 0.44 transferred student dorm 5,605 0.40 0.49 live on campus first 5,609 0.39 0.49 first-generation attending college pedu_cl 5,631 0.49 0.50 parental education: college pedu_gs 5,631 0.32 0.47 parental education: graduate schools pri 5,631 0.42 0.49 institution control: private medium 5,631 0.22 0.41 institution size: medium large 5,631 0.44 0.50 institution size: large r_neweng 5,631 0.05 0.23 institution location: new england area li, guo, and you current issues in comparative education 138 table a2. summary of variables (china dataset) variable observation mean standard deviation (% for dummy variables) description gpa 38,634 76.68 9.65 gpa on a scale of 1 to 100 abroad 55,529 0.06 0.24 indicator of having studied abroad during college hours 52,590 15.82 7.72 hours per week spent on course-related work age 55,529 22.61 7.97 age at 2014 male 55,529 0.51 0.50 male minority 55,529 0.08 0.27 race: minority (not han people) party 55,529 0.11 0.31 communist party member m_social 55,529 0.08 0.27 major: social sciences m_natural 55,529 0.11 0.31 major: natural sciences m_business 55,529 0.14 0.35 major: business m_health 55,529 0.06 0.23 major: health m_engineer 55,529 0.49 0.50 major: engineering m_other 55,529 0.02 0.14 major: other major but not education onlychild 55,529 0.53 0.50 only child in the family urban 55,529 0.50 0.50 live in urban area fabaplus 55,529 0.15 0.36 father's education: ba and above mobaplus 55,529 0.11 0.31 mother's education: ba and above large 55,529 0.30 0.46 institution size: large medium 55,529 0.52 0.50 institution size: medium inst_985 55,529 0.15 0.36 institution type: 985 project (extremely selective) inst_211 55,529 0.17 0.38 institution type: 211 project (very selective) inst_univ 55,529 0.47 0.50 institution type: regular university (average selective) munici 55,529 0.35 0.48 institution location: municipalities study abroad during college current issues in comparative education 139 139 table a3. propensity score matching – balance check (us & china) us china variable sample std diff sd ratio % diff variable sample std diff sd ratio % diff age unmatched -0.436 0.44 age unmatched 0.201 1.44 matched -0.005 0.62 matched -0.007 0.98 male unmatched -0.251 0.91 male unmatched 0.078 1.00 matched -0.042 0.98 -0.018 matched 0.008 1.00 0.004 white unmatched 0.206 0.92 minority unmatched -0.026 0.96 matched -0.021 1.01 -0.009 matched 0.019 1.03 0.005 black unmatched -0.147 0.79 party unmatched 0.112 1.14 matched 0.049 1.13 0.010 matched -0.022 0.98 -0.008 hispanic unmatched -0.145 0.78 m_social unmatched 0.045 1.07 matched -0.006 0.99 -0.001 matched 0.019 1.03 0.006 asian unmatched -0.014 0.97 m_natural unmatched -0.03 0.96 matched -0.018 0.97 -0.004 matched 0.007 1.01 0.003 m_social unmatched 0.121 1.05 m_business unmatched 0.060 1.06 matched -0.022 0.99 -0.010 matched -0.010 0.99 -0.004 m_natural unmatched -0.042 0.96 m_health unmatched -0.257 0.62 matched -0.004 1.00 -0.001 matched 0.018 1.07 0.003 m_business unmatched -0.027 0.97 m_engineer unmatched -0.028 1.00 matched -0.004 1.00 -0.001 matched -0.012 1.00 -0.006 m_health unmatched -0.214 0.80 m_other unmatched -0.063 0.81 matched -0.042 0.94 -0.011 matched -0.018 0.93 -0.002 m_engineer unmatched -0.060 0.91 onlychild unmatched 0.307 0.95 matched -0.005 0.99 -0.001 matched -0.006 1.00 -0.002 m_other unmatched -0.168 0.75 urban unmatched 0.238 0.98 matched -0.028 0.94 -0.005 matched -0.009 1.00 -0.005 ft unmatched 0.062 0.92 fabaplus unmatched 0.251 1.24 matched -0.018 1.03 -0.005 matched 0.024 1.01 0.011 trans unmatched -0.376 0.79 mobaplus unmatched 0.269 1.36 matched 0.000 1.00 0.000 matched 0.027 1.02 0.011 dorm unmatched -0.212 0.94 large unmatched -0.079 0.96 matched -0.021 0.99 -0.010 matched -0.005 1.00 -0.002 first unmatched -0.318 0.90 medium unmatched 0.086 0.99 matched 0.003 1.00 0.001 matched 0.012 1.00 0.006 pedu_cl unmatched -0.103 1.00 inst_985 unmatched 0.023 1.02 matched -0.011 1.00 -0.005 matched 0.022 1.02 0.009 pedu_gs unmatched 0.274 1.08 inst_211 unmatched -0.009 0.99 matched 0.013 1.00 0.007 matched -0.014 0.99 -0.006 pri unmatched 0.196 1.02 inst_univ unmatched -0.091 0.99 matched -0.003 1 -0.001 matched 0.003 1 0.002 medium unmatched 0.045 1.03 munici unmatched 0.124 1.03 matched 0.053 1.04 0.023 matched 0.007 1.00 0.004 large unmatched -0.060 0.99 matched -0.048 0.99 -0.024 r_neweng unmatched -0.050 0.91 matched 0.032 1.08 0.006 © 2003 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 92 may 12, 2003 whose language is it anyway? historical fetishism and the construction of expertise in bolivian language planning aurolyn luykx school of education research, university of miami, florida introduction in recent years, increased scholarly attention has focused on language ideologies, examining the connections between language use and broader political questions of diversity, governability, and socialization/acculturation (gonzález & melis, 2000; jaffe, 1999; schieffelin, woolard, & kroskrity, 1998, among others). this theoretically oriented, critical scholarship contrasts with more pragmatic, policy-oriented research[1], which is typically based on likert-scale assessments of the target population's "attitudes" about the use of particular languages in different social contexts, or the association of particular speech varieties with qualities such as refinement or backwardness. while the latter type of research is often used to gauge the feasibility of proposed language policies (e.g., zúñiga, sánchez, & zacharías, 2000), critical analyses of language ideologies are less easily translated into concrete policy recommendations, since they often have social implications that go beyond language planning per se. furthermore, policy-oriented research rarely examines the language ideologies of planners and policymakers themselves, perhaps because such analysis would call into question governmental actors' underlying agendas with regard to minority populations. nevertheless, sociolinguists and language planners alike are increasingly aware of the importance of language ideologies to the success or failure of language planning initiatives. it is in this context that i wish to examine some of the ideologies driving recent language policies in the andes, with an eye to those policies' likelihood of success, and to what sort of future sociolinguistic scenario such success would imply. in response to popular demands from ethnic minorities and a growing global awareness of language loss, numerous nations are currently supporting efforts to strengthen and preserve minority languages. in south america, these efforts have focused mainly on developing writing systems for indigenous languages and promoting their use within formal education. in bolivia, where more than half the population speaks an indigenous language, bilingual education and the associated standardization of indigenous languages are among the most visible and controversial elements of the recent nationwide educational reform. corpus planning[2] for quechua, aymara, and guaraní, bolivia's most widely-spoken indigenous languages, has provoked considerable debate among indigenous speakers, even as state agencies strive to bring debate to a close and move ahead with the promotion of the newly standardized varieties, via the incorporation and training of key educational actors.[3] language ideology plays an important role in shaping language policy, and policy in turn shapes the social and institutional conditions that encourage certain kinds of language use and discourage others. the nearly exclusive focus on school-based literacy as the site of language planning suggests that the underlying, perhaps unconscious aim is to expand bolivia's indigenous languages into the standard set of western academic genres, rather than to encourage the persistence and development of culturally distinct, whose language is it anyway? historical fetishism and the construction of expertise in bolivian language planning current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 93 indigenous discourse practices. in this sense, current language policies are reminiscent of missionary efforts to translate the bible into a multitude of languages, while replacing local indigenous cosmologies with a standardized christianity (arnold & yapita, 2000). despite their ideological appeals to historical virtue, the policies being implemented in the name of indigenous language "revitalization" promote patterns of use that are not only unprecedented, but modeled on the dominant language. if "orthographic choice is really about 'imagining' the past and the future of a community" (shieffelin & doucet, 1998: p. 285), the future imagined in bolivia would seem to be one in which indigenous languages are used in ways that are more and more like spanish. below, i analyze the language ideologies of andean language planners, and the preliminary effects of those ideologies how they "transform the material reality they comment on" (shieffelin & doucet, 1998:p. 11) focusing specifically on the ideological criteria guiding corpus planning decisions associated with linguistic standardization.[4] given that these language ideologies and their corresponding policies are not limited to bolivia, the analysis has implications for other latin american countries (and languages) as well. historical fetishism in corpus planning one often reads of governments or language planners "choosing" a standard variety, as if it were simply a question of selecting one variety from the set of existing dialects. in contrast, the standard variety of bolivian quechua was not so much selected as created.[5] etymological or historical criteria have dominated this process, inasmuch as the standard is largely based on the reconstructed pronunciations of centuries past. as a result, standard quechua differs more from contemporary bolivian dialects than most of these do from each other.[6] correspondingly, standardization efforts have provoked concern among some quechua speakers for the future survival of regional dialects. furthermore, etymological orthographies, which bear the traces of the language's historical evolution, frequently give rise to spellings that do not reflect contemporary speech and thus are frequently confusing for new readers. recent quechua corpus planning debates center mainly on lexicon (discussed below) and on spellings of certain frequently-used words and suffixes. in most cases, the standardized orthography is based upon archaic forms, or on conservative regional pronunciations that may be unfamiliar to most speakers. the example below highlights the continuative (present progressive) verb suffix. contemporary (non-standard) oral varieties of bolivian quechua display the following variants: "s/he is working" /llank'asan/ /llank'ašan/ /llank'asqan/ /llank'ajan/ the standardized spelling, "llamk'achkan," reflects an earlier form of the suffix, still used in some areas but not generally recognized by most speakers. (the switch from /m/ to /n/ reflects another historical sound shift.) not only do most quechua speakers, including many schoolteachers, have no idea why the suffix should be written this way, aurolyn luykx 94 may 12, 2003 it is often unclear to them that replacement of /-s-/ (or /-š-/) by /-chk-/ in the standard is restricted to this suffix. thus, for example, some end up writing /khuska/ ("half") as "khuchka," which does not occur in any dialect. spelling in aymara is even more complicated, since a pervasive feature in aymara speech is vocal elision, or vowel dropping. aymara is an agglutinative language in which multiple suffixes may combine to create words that are quite long and semantically complex. most suffixes end in a vowel, and in some cases the final vowel is dropped when another suffix is added (this often leads to clusters of three or four consonants in a row, which non-aymara speakers are hard-pressed to pronounce). some pairs of suffixes that are semantically distinct sound alike, except for the fact that one suppresses the preceding vowel, whereas the other does not.[7] additionally, noun roots always end in a vowel, which is dropped when the noun is the direct object of a verb. the new aymara standard retains in writing many of the vowels that are dropped in speech, the logic being that the written code should show words and suffixes in their "complete" form. but the result is that important grammatical markers are anulled in the written code. standardized quechua, if pronounced as written, just sounds strange; standardized aymara, pronounced as written, produces speech that is ungrammatical or ambiguous (see yapita, 1994). to complicate things further, not all the dropped vowels are retained in the written standard, but only those which are "predictably" dropped (such as the final vowel of object nouns). while this would seem to put rather a heavy analytical burden on the reader, language planners claim that native speakers' "unconscious grammatical knowledge" will tell them which vowels should be pronounced and which are silent. nevertheless, there are already reports of aymara schoolchildren reading standardized aymara "as written," pronouncing all the vowels, and consequently having trouble understanding what they are reading. i have heard government functionaries defend this policy as analogous to the custom of writing standard spanish as "he venido," even when many speakers say [e veniw]. however, the non-standard spanish pronunciation has no semantic of grammatical implications and is easily understood by speakers, so the analogy is misleading at best. evidently, many of those charged with training others in the use of the new standards themselves lack the linguistic training necessary to decipher the logic of the language planners, and are thus ill-equipped to resolve trainees' uncertainties. in practice, many trainees eventually put aside their confusion and agree to accept the standardized forms on the trainers' authority. but this is an unenviable position for trainees who are expected to subsequently promote use of the standard among schoolteachers and indigenous communities, and will likely face similar questions as trainers themselves. certainly, speakers of many other languages (such as english) readily accept nonintuitive spellings with little idea as to how they arose; but the bolivian case underscores the difficulty of gaining popular acceptance for new orthographies, as opposed to those with decades (if not centuries) of widespread use behind them. in addition to difficult orthography, unfamiliar words are another obstacle to popular acceptance of the new standard varieties. in standardized quechua and aymara, spanish borrowings are purged when possible, and those not easily expunged are rephonologized (for example, ministiryu for the spanish "ministerio"). lexical "gaps" whose language is it anyway? historical fetishism and the construction of expertise in bolivian language planning current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 95 (such as school-related and scientific terminology) are filled by archaic terms recovered from conservative dialects or historical documents, metaphorical extension of existing words (like the standardized quechua ñawiri ["to look at"] for "read", or p'anqa ["leaf"] for "book"), or neologisms based on combinations of existing words (e.g., qillqana pirqa ["writing wall"] for "blackboard"). language planners maintain that such novel usages, like unfamiliar spellings, can be understood in context; that is, semantic clues in the text will allow readers to interpret the unfamiliar bits. this is a common strategy used by both beginning and advanced readers the world over. but what is that "context" made up of, but other linguistic forms? if familiar words do not greatly outnumber unfamiliar ones, there are not enough contextual clues to assure comprehension, and reading quickly becomes a difficult guessing game, instead of the fluid apprehension of meaning it should be. furthermore, the problem is not limited to children, or to those acquiring literacy for the first time; some bolivian schoolteachers say that the standardized school texts are at times so puzzling that they skip over parts of lessons because they cannot understand the instructions (siles, 2001: pp. 78, 95-97). the official response to such difficulties is that "the norm must be taught and learned"; spelling in most world languages is not consistent or intuitive, and schooling always involves the learning of unfamiliar terminology (though usually it is at least familiar to the teacher). recent approaches to literacy emphasize more global, gestalt processes of word recognition, and bolivian language planners refer to these approaches when claiming that spelling and pronunciation need not always coincide. but there are historical factors working against this argument; for decades, bolivian schoolteachers have taught reading via atomistic methods based on drills of individual letters and syllables, and this practice has not disappeared despite the new "reform" pedagogy. given this entrenched tradition of literacy instruction, and the limited awareness of the standardization process among the general population, most schoolteachers are unprepared to explain to children why the (written) word "juk" should be pronounced /uj/, or why "ruwachkan" should be read as /ruwašan/. certainly, people can learn to read a non-phonemic orthography, as millions of englishand french-speaking children can attest but, unlike their first world counterparts, quechua and aymara children seldom grow up surrounded by written texts, or even by adults literate in their native language. given these (and many other) social obstacles to indigenous language literacy, it would seem ill-advised to make the new orthographies more complicated than necessary. with all of these difficulties, one might wonder why historical criteria were prioritized in the standardization process. it is not just a question of choosing spellings based on etymology rather than on contemporary speech; instead, the entire research base informing the standardization process for quechua and aymara emphasizes the historical details of phonological shifts and dialectal divergences, rather than contemporary patterns of language use in indigenous communities, let alone language attitudes and ideologies in those communities. this emphasis on scholarly concerns, in the place of more broadly sociolinguistic ones, may account for much of indigenous speakers' resistance to standardization as currently proposed. the way that language planners talk about the newly-standardized varieties reveal that antiquity itself is seen as a virtue, and ancient forms as superior to recent ones. archaic aurolyn luykx 96 may 12, 2003 words are spoken of glowingly, while spanish borrowings are referred to as "the enemy." i heard one language planner mention, during a training event, that "some of these [quechua] forms are derivative, but others have the virtue of being very old."[8] he then referred to other forms that are "widely used" ("tienen una amplia difusión"), but did not characterize this as a virtue. the same scholar complained, during this event, that people without knowledge of historical linguistics standardize badly, writing things just as they're pronounced.[9] on another occasion, he mentioned that some years ago there was consideration of eliminating the aspirated and glottalized consonants from written quechua, since these are not "properly" quechua, having entered the language (over five hundred years ago) due to extensive contact with aymara. this notion was abandoned, i imagine because glottalization and aspiration are so crucial to all contemporary bolivian quechua dialects that eliminating them in writing would make the written standard all but unintelligible. it is hard to imagine how such a proposal could arise in the first place, if not from this fetishism of archaic forms and the notion of proto-quechua as the one "true" quechua. the irony is that there is such enormous effort to salvage archaic forms at the level of words and suffixes, and virtually no official concern for preserving traditional language forms above the phrase level (aside from school exercises involving "native legends" and recipes as material for literacy work). orthography, identity, and "expertise" as is clear from the vehemence of orthography debates, contested orthographies are also sites of contested identity (schieffelin & doucet, 1998, p. 287). orthographic debates are not only about how to represent the language graphically, but also the status of vernacular speech as language, and as a marker of collective identity (schieffelin & doucet, 1998: pp. 300-301). speakers' concern for the survival of regional dialects in the face of standardization is, on a deeper level, a concern for the survival of regional identities. underneath language planners' implicit question of "what is the 'ideal' or 'most authentic' form of the quechua language?" lies the question: "who is the 'ideal' or 'most authentic' quechua speaker?" the answer suggested by recent policies seems to be, on the one hand, the pre-columbian incas, who supposedly spoke a "purer" quechua than any spoken today, uninfluenced by spanish (though, in reality, greatly influenced by other andean languages). projecting the question into the future, the "ideal quechua speaker" becomes the formally schooled quechua speaker, who speaks and writes a variety that is "more quechua" than the speech of peasants and the urban popular classes, with their varying degrees of spanish influence. as bolivian language planners are fond of repeating, "the norm must be learned"; the state-legitimated criteria of "correctness" are therefore accessible only through the school. bourdieu (1975) has argued that, via the "legitimate language" elaborated by writers and grammarians, ... the dominant classes establish a distance between themselves and [other] speakers. thus, the language functions not only to communicate but also to set boundaries between the elite and the masses… one of the main characteristics of the legitimate language, "correctness," is a privilege of the dominant classes.[10] the situation examined here is more complicated, since it concerns official standards of correctness within subordinated languages. since the establishment of a standard whose language is it anyway? historical fetishism and the construction of expertise in bolivian language planning current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 97 automatically defines other varieties as non-standard, these varieties (and their speakers) become doubly stigmatized, first in relation to spanish and then in relation to the standard variety of their own language. it is notable that those elaborating the standards are all highly-educated bilinguals who use mostly spanish in their daily lives. one result of this is that the new indigenous-language curriculum materials, despite the avoidance of spanish loanwords and the striving for morphological purity, display significant grammatical and semantic influence from spanish, reflecting the class background of their creators (marcia mandepora, personal communication [for the guaraní case]; for aymara, see arnold & yapita, 2000; yapita, 1994). speakers' access to the standard is largely determined by social class, inasmuch as mastery of the standard is generally acquired only through formal schooling ("the norm must be learned"), and its specific logic is comprehensible only to those with specialized academic training. as we have seen, scholarly reconstructions of archaic dialects, rather than the vernacular quechua and aymara spoken mostly by peasants, were taken as the models for "correct" usage. within official parlance, "indigenous language experts" are those with specialized academic training, not indigenous speakers recognized within their communities for their extensive cultural or linguistic knowledge (many of whom do not have a fluid command of spanish).[11] the guaraní case is particularly interesting in this regard. the bolivian guaraní enjoy a degree of political organization never achieved by the more numerous and dispersed aymara and quechua speakers. during earlier experiences with bilingual education, guaraní elders played a key role in validating educational materials. care was also taken to include representatives of the three major dialects (ava, simba and isoseño) in corpus planning decisions. due largely to the high degree of community participation, these programs were quite successful and today are considered among the major achievements of the asamblea del pueblo guaraní (assembly of the guaraní people). this situation changed drastically with the incorporation of bilingual education into the state-run reform. corpus planning decisions and educational materials are now made in the capital, la paz, rather than in guaraní territory, and community elders have been marginalized from the process in favor of bilingual, university-educated "experts" for whom guaraní is often a second language. the simba dialect predominate within this group of experts, and so the materials produced have a decidedly "simba" flavor in terms of lexicon, but with grammatical and semantic features displaying spanish influence (marcia mandepora, personal communication). for the guaraní, current standardization initiatives have thus shifted the locus of decision-making, as well as the cultural logic underlying language use, out of guaraní organizational structures and into the domain of the spanish-speaking urban bureaucracy. new hierarchies for old of course, linguistic stratification can and does arise in the absence of explicit or purposeful language planning; indeed, it appears to be an inevitable accompaniment to social stratification. nevertheless, such de facto stratification differs substantially from official initiatives to institutionalize a particular linguistic hierarchy, via the imposition of a standard whose logic is impenetrable to most speakers. aggressively promoting academic notions of linguistic value within indigenous speech communities cannot help aurolyn luykx 98 may 12, 2003 but provoke changes in the status relationships among different language varieties, and among their respective speakers. not that change in itself is necessarily bad; indeed, indigenous demands for an end to earlier, repressive language policies arose from a well-founded desire to transform existing social and linguistic arrangements. but when linguistic hierarchies are purposefully readjusted in the service of social goals, a certain vigilance with regard to the relation between stated aims and actual results is in order. having lived in bolivia for several years and frequently heard the idea expressed that "quechua [or aymara, or guaraní] is a language [or 'dialect'] with no real grammar," i fear that the next refrain in bolivia's popular language ideology may be: "quechua has a grammar now that the government gave it one, but the peasants still speak it all wrong." while the creation of new prestige hierarchies within indigenous languages may not have been policymakers' original intention, there has been too little questioning as to whether this consequence of standardization is outweighed by its benefits many of which are themselves open to question (luykx, in press). we should also avoid the sort of simplistic reasoning that assumes that indigenous speakers who oppose standardization, or the use of their languages in formal education, are motivated by a desire to assimilate their children into the dominant language as soon as possible. clearly, there are many other concerns that might give rise to such opposition (aikman, 1999; arnold & yapita, 2000; zúñiga et al., 2000). linguistic and educational planners should be sensitive to the fact that popular objections to language policies may be more widespread and more varied than they realize. when faced with resistance from the target population, they should not assume that their job is simply to convince that population of the proposed policies' benefits, or to forge ahead if the population remains unconvinced. corpus planning is enmeshed in "frameworks of value" (schieffelin & doucet, 1998: p. 285), from the decision to standardize at all to more minute details. choices that are etymologically sound may be sociolinguistically misguided. language planners therefore must take into account not only what is "correct" according to academic criteria, but also what it socially and culturally acceptable to the speech community in question. speakers who have long struggled against a linguistic hierarchy that marginalizes them are unlikely to embrace a new hierarchy in which they are similarly disadvantaged even if those outside the speech community perceive the proposed change as a vast improvement over the previous state of affairs. conclusions the last few decades have made abundantly clear that language planning is not an exact science; language policies have effects both on language ideologies and language use, but not always the desired effects. policies aimed at eradicating vernacular speech varieties have often provoked their resurgence, while policies meant to strengthen subordinated languages may in fact contribute to their decline (luykx, 1999). given the experimental nature of the field, it behooves language planners to: 1) tread lightly when the future of other people's languages is at stake; 2) seek constant feedback as to a given policy's results "on the ground"; and 3) use that information to analyze whether policies are fulfilling their goals and how they might be adjusted. research on the language ideologies of both indigenous speech communities and language planners/policymakers should be part of this process. if the language ideologies of these whose language is it anyway? historical fetishism and the construction of expertise in bolivian language planning current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 99 two sectors conflict with each other, and the discrepancies are not addressed, the success of language planning initiatives is likely to be greatly diminished. collins (1998) has warned against "an academic concern with systematic regularity [that] leads to a neglect of linguistic practice, its historical situation, and its sociocultural implications" (p. 262). the contradictory discourse of bolivian language planning, which fetishizes language itself as the object of political struggle rather than the social and cultural dislocation that leads to language loss, and extols indigenous languages' structural elegance and illustrious past while denigrating contemporary speakers' own language practices and beliefs, suggests that current language policy may "minoritize"[12] indigenous speech communities even as it seeks to empower them. as kathryn woolard (1998) has observed: movements to save minority languages ironically are often structured (…) around the same received notions of language that have led to their oppression and/or suppression… [m]inority language activists often find themselves imposing standards, elevating literate forms and uses, and negatively sanctioning variability in order to demonstrate the reality, validity and integrity of their languages. (p. 17) in bolivia's new linguistic order, native indigenous language speakers are no longer considered the experts on how their language should be used, or on what constitutes beautiful, powerful, or correct speech. instead, indigenous criteria of linguistic value are subordinated to those of university-trained experts and government functionaries. this rankles not only with many indigenous speakers, but also with those of us whose linguistic training included the axiom of native speaker judgement as the definitive criterion of grammaticality and meaning. a more critical consideration of the language ideologies of all participants in bolivia's language planning process could do much to improve its chances of success, and bring it closer in line with the democratic and pluralistic ideals from which it arose. notes 1 by "policy-oriented," i mean survey-type studies that are primarily descriptive and intended to gauge either the feasibility or the effectiveness of particular language policies. the contrasting tradition of critical scholarship often takes language policy as its object of analysis, but does not generally engage the policy-making apparatus directly or make specific policy recommendations. authors within this tradition tend to operate independently of state language policy bureaucracies, whereas policy-oriented research is often undertaken directly at the behest of government agencies. 2 corpus planning refers to that branch of language planning dealing with the form of the language itself, e.g., the development of writing conventions or technical vocabulary. the other main branches of language planning are status planning, dealing with the domains of use of the language, and acquisition planning, dealing with the transmission of the language to new speakers. aurolyn luykx 100 may 12, 2003 3 the following analysis is based on: 1) my observations of training events for various groups of educators (rural schoolteachers, teacher trainers, etc.); 2) informal conversations with participants in these events, including my own students (indigenous educators from various andean countries and language groups); and 3) research carried out by some of those same students in rural schools where these policies are being implemented. the observations and conversations reported here occurred between 1999 and 2001. i gratefully acknowledge the support of the spencer foundation/national academy of education for this research. 4 for reasons of space and scope, this paper focuses primarily on quechua and aymara. quechua, as the most widely spoken indigenous language in the hemisphere, has received the greatest amount of attention by contemporary sociolinguists (fauchois, 1988; godenzzi [ed.], 1992; haboud, 1998; hornberger & colonel-molina, in press; king, 2001), but many of the planning decisions concerning quechua are similar to those made for aymara and guaraní. for a detailed analysis of bolivian guaraní language, education, and cultural politics, see gustafson (2001). 5 correspondingly, king (1999) observes that what is implemented under the name of "language maintenance" is often in reality "language transformation." 6 this is less true in peru, where regional varieties differ much more widely than in bolivia. genetically speaking, bolivian quechua dialects are grouped together with cuzco quechua as part of the "southern peruvian" branch, (see cerrón-palomino, 1987). the aymara case is somewhat different, since the la paz dialect is already dominant, by virtue of sheer numbers and its high salience in bolivia's capital city (see briggs, 1993). here, the concern is that other regional varieties will be subsumed by the "hegemonic grafolect" (yapita, 1994) of la paz aymara, now that this has not only a demographic majority but the weight of officialdom behind it. 7 this is a necessary oversimplification; for details on vocal elision in aymara, see hardman, vásquez, & yapita (1988, pp. 21-22, 67-77). 8 "algunas de estas formas son desviantes, mientras otras tienen la virtud de ser muy arcaicas." 9 most of these assertions came from just a few individuals, but they are individuals with considerable influence over how andean language policies are made and implemented; several of the comments described above were collected during a training seminar for 25 indigenous educators charged with teaching their respective standard varieties to 6000 schoolteachers. in a small country like bolivia, the actions of a few wellplaced individuals can have significant effects at the national level. 10 1975. le fétichisme de la langue. actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 4, 2-32. cited in schieffelin and doucet (1998, p. 308). 11 correspondingly, one member of bolivia's language planning establishment, when asked about aymara children's difficulty with reading standardized texts, consistently whose language is it anyway? historical fetishism and the construction of expertise in bolivian language planning current issues in comparative education, vol.5 (2) 101 argues that "anyone who can't read them easily must not speak aymara" (an assertion that would seem to contradict the accompanying claim that the norm must be learned). 12 after king & haboud (in press). references aikman, s. (1999). intercultural education and literacy: an ethnographic study of indigenous knowledge and learning in the peruvian amazon. philadelphia: john benjamins. arnold, d., & yapita, j.(2000). el rincón de las cabezas: luchas textuales, educación y tierras en los andes. la paz: umsa/ilca. briggs, l.t. (1993). el idioma aymara: variantes sociales y regionales. la paz: ilca. cerrón-palomino, r. (1987). lingüística quechua. cusco: centro de estudios rurales andinos "bartolomé de las casas. collins, j. (1998). our ideologies and theirs. in b. schieffelin, k. woolard, and p. kroskrity (eds.), language ideologies: practice and theory (pp. 256-270). new york: oxford university press. fauchois, a. (1988). el quichua serrano frente a la comunicación moderna. quito: abyayala. godenzzi, j.c. (ed.). (1992). el quechua en debate: ideología, normalización y enseñanza. cusco: centro de esudios regionales andinos "bartolomé de las casas." gonzález, r.d., & melis, i. (eds.). (2000). language ideologies: critical perspectives on the english only movement. mahwah, n.j. lawrence erlbaum. gustafson, b.d. (2001). native languages and hybrid states: a political ethnography of guarani engagement with bilingual education reform in bolivia, 1989-1999. unpublished ph.d. thesis, dept. of anthropology, harvard university, cambridge, ma. haboud, m. (1998). quichua y castellano en los andes ecuatorianos: los efectos de un contacto prolongado. quito: abya-yala. hardman, m., vásquez, j. & yapita, j.d. (1988). aymara: compendio de estructura fonológica y gramatical. la paz: ilca/the aymara foundation. hornberger, n., & colonel-molina, s. (in press). quechua language shift, maintenance and revitalization in the andes: the case for language planning. international journal of the sociology of language. jaffe, a.m. (1999). ideologies in action: language politics in corsica. new york: mouton de gruyter. aurolyn luykx 102 may 12, 2003 king, k.a. (1999). inspecting the unexpected: language status and corpus shifts as aspects of quichua language revitalization in saraguro, ecuador. language problems and language planning 23(2), 109-32. king, k.a. (2001). language revitalization processes and prospects: quichua in the ecuadorian andes. clevedon: multilingual matters. king, k.a., & haboud, m. (in press). language planning and policy in ecuador. current issues in language planning. luykx, a. (1999). the historical contradictions of language maintenance: bilingual education and the decline of indigenous languages. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american anthropological association, chicago, nov. 17-21. luykx, a. (in press). the future of quechua and the quechua of the future: language ideologies and language planning in bolivia. international journal of the sociology of language. schieffelin, b.b., & doucet, r.c. (1998). the "real" haitian creole: ideology, metalinguistics, and orthographic choice. in b. schieffelin, k. woolard, & p. kroskrity (eds.), language ideologies: practice and theory (pp. 285-316). new york: oxford university press. schieffelin, b.b., woolard, k.a., & kroskrity, p.v. (eds.). (1998). language ideologies: practice and theory. new york: oxford university press. siles v., o. (2001). uso de los módulos quechuas en las unidades educativas de pie de gallo y candelaria (colomi cochabamba). unpublished ma thesis, programa de formación en educación intercultural bilingüe para los paises andinos (proeib andes), universidad mayor de san simón, cochabamba, bolivia. woolard, k. (1998). introduction: language ideology as a field of inquiry. in b. schieffelin, k. woolard, & p. kroskrity (eds.), language ideologies: practice and theory (pp. 285-316). new york: oxford university press. yapita, j. (1994). hacia una educación bilingüe en bolivia: un repaso actual. revista unitas, 13-14, 49-59. zúñiga, m., sánchez, l., & zacharías, d. (2000). demanda y necesidad de educación bilingüe: lenguas indígenas y castellano en el sur andino. lima: ministerio de educación/gtz. microsoft word 16_2_gita_steiner-khamsi.doc ©  2014,  current  issues  in  comparative  education,  teachers  college,  columbia  university.  all  rights   reserved.  current  issues  in  comparative  education  16  (2),  34-­‐‑42.   comparison and context: the interdisciplinary approach to the comparative study of education gita steiner-khamsi teachers college, columbia university the symposium on rethinking culture, context, and comparison in education and development brought together several groups of noted scholars. of those, i would like to focus on two: those that utilize a disciplinary lens versus those that apply an interdisciplinary, or rather multidisciplinary approach to the comparative inquiry of education [1]. a very brief sketch of institutional history may be in order here, given that the department of international and transcultural studies sponsored the symposium in spring 2013. for several decades and until 1997, the program in international and comparative education at teachers college, columbia university, was situated in a department titled “philosophy and the social sciences” alongside all foundation studies or disciplines of education: anthropology and education, economics and education, history and education, philosophy and education, politics and education, religion and education, and sociology and education. students were able to study comparative education in combination with one of the seven disciplines in the department. an eighth program was in that department labeled “international educational development” (nowadays subsumed under the name international and comparative education) that drew from methods and theories of inquiry from several disciplines. by definition, the program in international educational development (ied) is, to this day, interdisciplinary. at some universities, the international and comparative programs were associated with area studies and offered a concentration in a geographic region. similarly to developments at other universities in the united states, starting in the 1960s the program in international educational development attracted a much larger number of students than the discipline-based programs. the number of graduate programs, the size of professional associations, the reach of academic journals but also jobs associated with the field of international and comparative education expanded rapidly over the last twenty years. due to a series of reorganizations at the college level, the department of international and transcultural studies now hosts two reputable programs: the large interdisciplinary program of international educational development and a smaller program in anthropology and education. as such, the ied program closely collaborates with faculty and students that are spread out throughout the college and the wider campus at columbia university. said this, the stark contrast between anthropology and comparative education, which anthropologist herve varenne suggested during the closing panel of the symposium, rests in my opinion on a false dichotomy. the debate should be, in my opinion, between disciplinary versus interdisciplinary approaches to the comparative study of education. i argue that the method of comparison relies on an interdisciplinary approach in order to understand and generalize findings on similarities and differences between educational practices, beliefs, and systems. as i will argue throughout this essay, sample size (n) matters a great deal in this debate. from n=1 to n=3: joseph tobin’s contribution to the comparative project it used to be common in anthropology to carry out studies in multiple cultures. joseph tobin refers in his contribution to the work of margaret mead, ruth benedict, as well as his own mentor robert a. levine who advanced the “comparative project” in anthropology. what a comparative inquiry requires is indeed thinking “simultaneously about space and time” (tobin, gita steiner-khamsi current issues in comparative education 35 in this issue) as opposed to the more common ethnographic method of examining a culture across sites, levels, and time. over the course of my academic career, the work of clifford geertz has been influential to the extent that his conception of ethnography as local history has led to the merging of several departments of history and anthropology. thus rather than using a sample size of one (n=1), tobin expands his sample to three (n=3) in order to carry out a comparison. his video-cued ethnographies of three cultures (or, as i will explain later, of three nations) represent a landmark anthropological study in which he examined preschool education across not only across time (1983 and 2003) but also across space (usa, japan, china) and groups of actors/informants within the various spaces (tobin, hsueh, & karasawa, 2009). unsurprisingly, his study won great acclaim in the comparative education research community as it represented contextual comparison at its best (see special issue of comparative education review). there are two distinct methodological features that make his work ingenious and different from other ethnographies of schooling. tobin and his colleagues engaged in cross-cultural comparison without anthropological shame and at the same time masterfully tackled the problem of spatial determinism that is endemic to ethnographies. first, in all the three countries the same issues or critical incidents—previously identified as key issues in preschools—were video-recorded to ensure comparability: classroom routines, separation, fighting, misbehavior, mixed-aged play, and intimacy between teachers and children. by presenting them as cues to stimulate a response, the informants were “forced” to take a stance on these key issues. arguably, comparative studies tend to rely to a great extent on forced-response data. very much to everyone’s dismay, this creates a validity problem: the universe of possible responses is drastically reduced for the sake of comparability. this is not the case in tobin’s methodological masterpiece because the material is used to open up rather than to narrow down interpretation. the forced-response feature of the study enables a contextual comparison and, combined with the self-reported accounts of the informants (“what would you do in this situation?”), considerably increases the validity of this comparative study. thereby researcher bias is minimized, yet made transparent and thoroughly reflected throughout the ethnography. second, a compelling feature of the sequel is the selection of an additional preschool in each country that teachers in that country identified as being innovative. thus, the second ethnography of 2009 comprised not only video-cues from the same three preschools that were filmed twenty years earlier but also from three new ones that teachers consider, to use jürgen schriewer’s terminology, as “reference” preschools: preschools that practitioners in a given context regard as exemplars of “best practices” and worth emulating. even though the answer to this question heavily depends on who is asking—an american researcher, a trained practitioner, a buddhist monk, a concerned mother, an international donor, etc.—the question of what practitioners consider a good school is very important in order to understand pedagogical belief systems. nevertheless, as pointed out by isabell diehm during the discussion at the symposium, joseph tobin does not resolve, but in fact exacerbates, the “attribution problem” that anthropologists so forcefully and rightfully criticize: they first dismiss the nation as the unit of analysis because every nation is literally “multi-cultural” but then need to resort to “nation” as a social category to describe the differences between the three contexts observed in preschools of china, japan, and the united states. this is problematic because, due to the disciplinary bias, a context or a case is interpreted as culture, and culture is equated with nation. thus, the practice of mimamoru (translated as “teaching by watching and waiting”), a low-intervention approach that tobin and his associates observe in preschools in japan, becomes in his interpretation a japanese educational practice. similarly, qiecuo (translated as “learning from each other by exchanging ideas”) is a practice that tobin observes not among students but also among teachers in the comparison and context: the interdisciplinary approach to the comparative study of education 36 current issues in comparative education three observed preschools in china. in an attempt to show that culture trumps official curriculum, tobin interprets qiecuo as an expression of the broader value of “self-perfection,” a value that vanished from the official grammar of (pre-) schooling in china and yet endured into the present. with reference to jerome bruner’s concept of “folk pedagogy,” he identifies this practice as a contemporary “chinese early childhood educational practice” [italics inserted by author] that is taken for granted in china and was preserved despite generations of pedagogical paradigm shifts (see tobin, in this issue). despite the sophisticated methodological approach of the video-cued ethnography, it is the ethnographer joseph tobin and his associates, who interpret what they observe in a narrow disciplinary manner. because of their disciplinary affiliation with cultural anthropology, they interpret what they observe in terms of cultural differences. phrased differently, if they were sociologists, they would possibly interpret the same findings in terms of social stratification and structure. naturally, each discipline imposes a specific lens on the object of study in an attempt to refine and advance disciplinary ways of knowing (see kuhn, 1962). the blind spot of cultural anthropology is the attribution fallacy. it is pronounced when ethnographers engage in cross-national comparison of two or more cases that are situated in different countries. they tend to interpret the differences in terms of national differences and inadvertently end up using a political category (nation-state) to explain cultural differences between their cases. from a comparative methodology perspective, they tend to contrast rather than compare their cases, and favor the design of most different systems with different outcomes over alternative designs of comparisons. the attribution problem becomes visible when adjectives such as “typical japanese,” “typical chinese,” “typical american,” or other stereotypes are tried. this attribution trap possibly accounts for the reason why cross-national studies in cultural anthropology have become sparse. for more than twenty years, multicultural education studies have experienced a fascinating debate over the attribution fallacy. the debate is better known in europe than in north america. frank-olaf radtke, one of the keynote speakers of the symposium, has convincingly shown how the “studies on countries of immigration” were used as a “scientific stamp of approval” for stereotyping german minorities that had immigrated from turkey or other emigration countries. the celebration of cultural diversity in schools went hand in hand with studying the “culture” of the other and led more often than not to an “orientalization” (edward said) of ethnic minorities. ethnic germans, swiss, or austrians, for that matter, were turned into cultural objects of study distracting from larger structural inequalities, institutional discrimination and racism that the system of education had been reproducing [2]. from n=155 to n=1: antoni verger’s contribution to understanding the local reception of global education policy antoni verger’s study of global education policy is a stellar exemplar of studies in comparative education that examine why some traveling concepts or reforms (e.g., concept of public-private partnership in education, managerialism and teacher accountability reform, etc.) resonate in a given context or in a given case. figuratively speaking, he reduces the sample size of 155 to one. according to the un classification, there exist 155 countries that, based on their gdp per capita, are considered “least-developed countries” or developing countries. thus, he is leaving the global level (n=155) to study the local (n=1), in particular, the reception and translation of global education policy in the local context. this methodological approach is not uncommon for those among us who study traveling reforms. precisely because every transfer and implementation process is selective, the question becomes: why are only some aspects of a global education policy borrowed and how are they locally implemented or reframed? gita steiner-khamsi current issues in comparative education 37 in the early days of globalization research, there used to be a large group of social and educational researchers who were mesmerized by the question of whether educational systems in different parts of the world would eventually converge to one international model of education. what the question captured at the time was a phenomenon that later became known as policy borrowing/lending, global education policy, or traveling reforms, that is, reform packages that policy makers for a variety of reasons and only selectively adopt. needless to state, the camp remains divided between those that believe in the salutary effects of globalization and others who highlight the rising inequality between countries, as well as within countries, as a result of the unidirectional flow of finance, ideas, technology, power and standards. the investigation of “best practices” or “international standards” and the scrutiny of international agencies that bring them to life, administer them, finance them, and use them coercively as programmatic conditionality have become fascinating topics of comparative inquiry. as with all emerging research areas, scholars very soon position themselves with regard to the phenomenon that they study. for those among us who keep issues of power, inequity and world-systems in mind when studying new phenomena,, “standards” benefit the big and powerful, that is, those that have the technology and capacity to implement them. in recent years, a group of us in international and comparative education, showed how the global education industry benefitted from international standards in education. like public health, education was, until recently, regarded as an activity geared towards enabling the growth of the individual, and for this reason unsuited to standardization or any other kind of cookie cutter approach. as a result, commercial interest in education was limited to areas like “hardware” (i.e., textbooks, computers, infrastructure, etc.) where there was the possiblity of making a profit. clearly, this has radically changed over the past decade: the fundamental shift from inputs to measurable outcomes and standards has been good (for) business. this shift has benefited the education industry. similar to textbook publishing, one of the most lucrative branches of the education industry tends to focus on selling tests which generates, year by year, a constant flow of customers who must pass them to succeed. as a result, international standards, 21st century skills, and other supranational notions of curricular content have become the pillars of big business. given the corporate logic of capital growth, we will most likely see a rapid expansion of tests, not only at critical entry, transition, and exit stages of the education system, but eventually for each subject, and possibly for each grade, in school. from a business perspective, standards-based education is lucrative because it generates an economy of scale. more specifically, it kills two birds with one stone: first, it enables companies to sell a product (student tests) in large quantity. second, tests are a “smart business product” because they make it necessary to revise the software of education, that is, all the other items— curriulum, teacher education, textbooks—which precede the act of taking the test. each of these elements must be reformed so as to prepare the students to pass. as with other value chains, once one link is changed, all the others must be replaced as well. this is the phenomenon we observe in outcomes-oriented reform and the move towards international standards, broadly defined. what we may see in ten, twenty, or thirty years from now are education systems that have adopted, side by side, global reforms from pearson, ib, bridge, cambridge education, and other business packages in one and the same country. in the twentieth century, minorities challenged the nation-state for political reasons. in the twenty-first century, global business is the greatest contender. scholars of critical theory rightfully pointed out that in education, horizontal integration meant in effect assimilation and vertical integration was used to justify the gate-keeping function of education along class, race, ethnicity, and gender lines. over the past ten years or so, pisa in particular became a global monitoring tool for enforcing the implementation of international standards as defined by a small and exclusive group of oecd experts. as a result, national governments are nowadays comparison and context: the interdisciplinary approach to the comparative study of education 38 current issues in comparative education held accountable for the learning outcomes of students in their country. precisely at a moment in history when neoliberals declared the ultimate defeat of government and the inevitable rise of markets as regulators of educational quality, pisa appeared. strikingly, pisa has helped governments to reassert themselves as drivers of reforms and guarantors of quality. among other measures, providing equitable education to all segments of the student population is considered an important feature of effective school systems. some global education policies are transferred to developing countries as part of a programmatic conditionality attached to a loan or a grant provided by an international donor (world bank, usaid, etc.) or an international organization (soros foundation network, save the children, etc.). other global education policies are sold to national or local governments more often than not at a very high price with the argument of spill-over to other nonpaticipating schools. regardless from where global education policies emanate, the attention of our group of comparative education researchers is on the local policy actors: why do policy makers buy into, or in the case of public-private partnership in education and the global education industry, literally buy global education policy (verger, 2011; verger, novelli, & kosar altinyelken, 2012)? an answer to these kinds of questions may only be given after a detailed analysis of the context. thus, this group of researchers starts out with observing global trends in education in many countries (large n) but then moves from a huge n (for example, n=155) to a one-country study (n=1). in other words, cultural anthropology is not the only discipline that believes in the importance of understanding culture, context, or systems nor is ethnography the only method of inquiry to understanding a community, a causal web of relations, or a bounded system. world culture versus local culture theories several scholars in comparative education have astutely described the various paradigms within globalization studies in education. oren pizmony-levy (2012), for example, distinguishes between social researchers that direct their attention to “world culture” and others that explore “local culture” in order to understand globalization in education: one body of research, which i refer to as world culture, argues that education systems are becoming similar due to a top-down process whereby new ideas and models regarding the responsibilities of the nation-state are developed in world society and later adopted by individual nation-states (meyer et al. 1997). a second body of research, local culture, focuses on local conditions that translate and appropriate global ideas into local realities (anderson-levitt, 2003; schriewer & martinez, 2004: steiner-khamsi, 2004). this latter line of inquiry criticizes the former for being narrowly focused on globalization as an outcome rather than a multifaceted and complex process” (p. 602). pizmony-levy’s noteworthy intellectual project is to demonstrate the complementarities of these two bodies of globalization studies using the example of environmental education curricula. he asserts that global convergence and local divergence of one and the same reform (in this case, environmental education) are processes that are not mutually exclusive. i agree with pizmony-levy and would like to add that the differences between the two camps are primarily a reflection of different units of analysis; with one group focusing on global trends, macro-analysis, or world culture and the other on contextual differences or local culture. as repeatedly shown, the neo-institutionalist focus on global trends is endemic to the type of sociological inquiry pursued by john meyer, francisco ramirez, david baker and their associates. in effect, it is a disciplinary artifact rather than a fundamental difference in how the process of globalization is explained. for neo-institutional sociologists local variations do indeed exist but are considered irrelevant (expression of “loose coupling”) and simply not gita steiner-khamsi current issues in comparative education 39 worthy of further exploration. ultimately, for neo-institutionalist theory loose coupling is the explanation (latin: explanans) rather than the issue that begs for an explanation (explanandum). in contrast, cultural anthropologists but also system theorists are keen and able to further our understanding of how globalization plays out, or rather is framed, understood, and used at the local level. in comparative education, for us, an analysis of the global/local nexus requires that loose coupling is not only acknowledged but also analyzed in great detail and interpreted. how a global education policy is translated at system or local level, tells us a great deal about the culture of the system and the local policy context. clearly, one may very well be committed to understanding “local culture” from an interdisciplinary perspective, that is, without having to subscribe to the methods and paradigms of cultural anthropology. in fact, it is important to acknowledge that educational systems are also bounded systems. they are meaning-producing organisms that reproduce themselves with a particular organizational logic, mode of regulation, and cultural practices that are constantly challenged by other (sub-) systems within a society as well as by the generalized other in the form of “world society.” local policy actors tend to resort to world society and globalization at times of heightened or protracted policy conflict. in other words, from a system’s perspective, global governance is a quasi-external force that is locally induced to generate “additional meaning” (german: zusatzsinn) in situations when there is a need for a quasi-external source of authority that could help forge new coalitions. the strong belief in local agency and the commitment to uncovering the power dynamic in a given policy context is diametrically opposed to interpretive frameworks that view global governance as an external force that reigns (or rather “rains”) over helpless national and local governments. the same sense of active local agency is involved in katja brógger’s analysis of higher education reform in denmark. she brilliantly applies derrida’s term “hauntology” (2014) to explain why practices and beliefs from the past endure into the present and have shaped the reception of the bologna process in danish higher education. in her intellectual endeavor to understand globalization at an organizational level, she demands that we critically challenge “globalisation’s status as a hegemonic macro-narrative, which often leads to atemporal and ahistorical analyses” and immerse ourselves into alternatives to macro-analysis (brógger, 2014, p. 3). in line with these two comparative education researchers, pizmony-levy and brógger, and many others, i have made an appeal to bring culture, context, and system back into the study of globalization. by definition, globalization transcends space and time, and from a philosophy of science perspective, we should refrain from using an interpretive framework that merely replicates the very same processes—deterritorialization and dehistoricization—it intends to explain. the macro-analyses of world culture theory tend to focus on many countries and on long time periods. as brógger has convincingly argued, macro analyses tend to deterritorialize and dehistoricize the process of globalization. in an attempt to avoid circular reasoning, it is therefore important to explore and understand the context and timing of global policy borrowing in as much detail as possible. the case study lends itself for doing so. contextual comparison from an interdisciplinary perspective different from ethnography that is closely associated with the discipline of cultural anthropology, a case study is oblivious to disciplinary boundaries. comparative social researchers, from charles tilly to todd landman, refer to the case study as a method of inquiry that operates with many variables and a small sample size, or in the single case study, a sample size of one. the objective of the case study is to understand the causal web and power relations within a bounded system. needless to reiterate, it is essential to examine the varied actors, sites, and levels of interaction precisely because power is distributed unequally within a system. comparison and context: the interdisciplinary approach to the comparative study of education 40 current issues in comparative education the academic question of whether single case studies qualify as comparative becomes moot when considered against the backdrop of studies that pursue contextual comparison (see little, 2000). case studies are a sine qua non of contextual comparison. it is indispensable to carry out case studies to explain similarities and differences between various units of analysis, whether they are cases, countries, contexts, or systems. furthermore, a case study must produce a “thick” description” (clifford geertz) and is, by definition, both horizontal and vertical. as mentioned above, it draws on many variables and rests on a sample size of one. therefore, i find the term “vertical case study” to some extent misleading because it suggests that it is possible to produce a case study that is flat or non-vertical (see vavrus and bartlett, 2009). nevertheless, it may be useful as a reminder that the most important feature of case studies is their depth, and ability to explain the causal web of actors that interact in a bounded system. whereas the greatest strength of the case study methodology is its explanatory power for a given context, its greatest weakness is its inability to generalize across contexts. for this reason, case study methodology is considered only one of many forms of comparative inquiry. the advantages and disadvantages of case-oriented versus variable-oriented comparative research, as well as between large-n (many countries) versus small-n (few countries) comparison, are accurately presented in todd landman’s textbook on comparative methodology (landman, 2003). landman systematically discusses the key characteristics of comparative studies that draw on single cases, comparison of a few countries, and comparison of many countries. landman presents a figure that illustrates the depth versus breadth dilemma. figure 1 shows how every increase in sample size results in a greater level of abstraction. figure 1. methods of comparison source: landman (2003, p. 25) in my own writing, i used the example of teacher shortage to demonstrate the complementary nature of these three methods of comparison (steiner-khamsi, 2014). the example of teacher shortage demonstrates that the level of abstraction, reflected in global indicators, creates not only a validity problem, but also an interpretation challenge. for example, the global indicator of teacher shortage that draws on a comparison of many countries may suggest a virtually nonexisting shortage rate of 0.2 percent in a given country. however, the low rate conceals the fact one$$ few$$[<20]$ many$[>20]$ scope&of&countries&& le ve l&o f& ab st ra ct io n& single$country$$ study$ comparing$few$ countries$$ comparing$many$ countries$ $$$$$$$high$ $$$ middle$ low$ gita steiner-khamsi current issues in comparative education 41 that schools in that country must rely on teachers who work double shifts, take on additional hours, or engage in other local practices that help the system to cope with massive teacher shortage. the high level of abstraction found in large-n studies leads to generalizations, as well as speculations or false interpretations. in a second step, i therefore compared a few countries or a few systems and found a divide in teacher salary systems: in some parts of the world, including in the post-soviet region, teachers are paid by the number of hours they are teaching (russian: stavka system) whereas in other parts of the world, including in north america and europe, they are paid based on their weekly workload of 35 to 40 hours per week. these two world-systems of teacher salary structure have their own idiosyncrasies or “logic” that explain in great part other policies and practices in the education system including the hiring, promotion, management, and education of teachers. in a third step, finally, we produced case studies using the same comparative framework but allowed for the individual case “to talk back,” that is, were keen on identifying aspects that only applied to particular cases, but not others [3]. as remarked earlier in the context of tobin’s outstanding contribution, ethnographies but also single case studies suffer from the inverse problem: the attribution problem. should the findings be attributed to this particular context under study or do they also apply to other contexts? as a result, practices may be falsely attributed to “culture” (or, as mentioned above, to nation) rather than to general processes, beliefs and practices that also exist elsewhere. ideally, contextual comparison draws on all three types of comparison. to reiterate the example of the teacher policy studies mentioned above, the insufficiencies of the teacher shortage indicator are found in other global indicators that, by virtue of having to focus on the smallest common denominator across a wide spectrum of countries, gloss over contextual differences. it should be taken for granted that the level of abstraction and, by implication, the magnitude of imprecision and extent of de-contextualization, increases with every additional case, context, country or system added onto a comparative study. in fact, the level of abstraction may increase to the extent that the global indicator becomes devoid of any context-specific or country-specific meaning. it becomes literally meaningless. field versus discipline i began this essay by dismissing the dichotomy between anthropology and comparative education as a false juxtaposition and by proposing instead a reflection on the disciplinary versus the multidisciplinary approach to the comparative study of education. i find it essential that comparative education researchers draw on theories and methods that best explain a phenomenon regardless of disciplinary boundaries. by definition, theoretical paradigms and methods are associated with specific disciplines such as, for example, anthropology, economics, sociology, or political science. academic fields, such as international and comparative education, borrow methods and theories from such disciplines. as researchers in international and comparative education we rely on interpretive frameworks and methods of inquiry that, in their original context, were associated with specific disciplines. an multidisciplinary approach is not to be confounded with an approach that suspends or transcends disciplines. a transdisciplinary approach would result in a conceptual vacuum, a theory-free endeavor, or normative research with little explanatory power. it is therefore in the best interest of analytical researchers in fields of education, such as in international and comparative education, to have strong foundation studies or disciplines in education that shape our ways of knowing but also seeing things. comparison and context: the interdisciplinary approach to the comparative study of education 42 current issues in comparative education notes [1] i use the terms multidisciplinary (involves several disciplines) or interdisciplinary (entails exchange between several disciplines) on purpose synonymously in this essay. i see them as opposites to the term “transdisciplinary” (without or beyond a discipline). [2] in the 1990s, i was part of a group of scholars, along with frank-olaf radtke, isabell diehm and others who advocated for a rights-based approach in multicultural education (diehm & radtke, 1999). it was an approach that at the time was called anti-racist education and was at opposite ends to intercultural education that we found to be too apolitical, culturalist and insensitive to social injustices and inequalities (steiner-khamsi, 1990). [3] the unicef studies on teacher shortage and recruitment into teaching (ten until now) reflect this triple usage of comparative inquiry. the unicef six-country study, teachers: a regional study on recruitment, development and salaries of teachers in the ceecis region, is especially recommended for a review because the studies were produced in mixed research teams, half of them consisting of local experts and the other graduate students at teachers college, columbia university (unicef ceecis, 2011). gita steiner-khamsi is department chair and professor of international and comparative education at teachers college, columbia university. email: gs174@columbia.edu. references brógger, k. (2014). the ghosts of higher education reform: on the organizational processes surrounding policy borrowing. globalisation, societies and education, (ahead-of print), 1-22. diehm, i., radtke, f.-o. (1999). migration und erziehung [migration and education]. stuttgart: kohlhammer. landman, t. (2003). issues and methods in comparative politics. new york: routledge. little, a. (2000). development studies and comparative education: context, content, comparison and contributors. comparative education, 36 (3), 279-296. pizmony-levy, o. (2011). bridging the global and local in understanding curricula scripts: the case of environmental education. comparative education review, 55 (4), 600633. steiner-khamsi, g. (1990). community languages and anti-racist education: the open battlefield. educational studies, 16/1,33-47. steiner-khamsi, g., & stolpe, i. (2006). educational import. mongolian encounters with global forces in mongolia. new york: palgrave. tobin, j., hsueh, y., karasawa, m. (2009). preschool in three cultures revisited: china, japan, and the united states. chicago: university of chicago press. unicef ceecis. (2011). teachers: a regional study on recruitment, development and salaries of teachers in the ceecis region. geneva: unicef ceecis regional office. vavrus, f. k. and bartlett, l. (eds.) (2009). critical approaches to comparative education. new york: palgrave macmillan. verger, a. (2011). framing and selling global education policy: the promotion of public private partnerships for education in low-income contexts. journal of education policy, 2011. verger, a., novelli, m., kosar altinyelken, h. (eds.) (2012). global education policy and international development. new agendas, issues and policies. london: bloomsbury. volume 13(1) / fall 2010 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice special symposium issue aid, development, and education editorial introduction 3 introduction to the special symposium issue andrew k. shiotani featured article 7 aid, development, and education steven j. klees responses 29 the ignorant donor: a radical reimagination of international aid, development, and education william c. brehm and iveta silova 37 improving aid effectiveness or transforming the global capitalist system mark ginsburg 44 the aid debate: beyond the liberal/conservative divide sangeeta kamat 51 paradoxes and prospects: moving beyond the study of foreign aid karen mundy reply 56 towards a progressive view of aid, development, and education steven j. klees current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 13, issue 1 (fall 2010) special symposium issue editors: andrew k. shiotani, ryan hathaway, and michelle hollett editorial board managing editor matthew hayden executive editor andrew k. shiotani senior editors ryan hathaway, ruaridh macleod, sarah flatto editors toni cela, anne gaspers, molly hamm, michelle hollett, rachel hatch, jason mellon, carina omoeva, muntasir sattar, angye rincon-castillo web editor andrew k. shiotani international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2010 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, 13(1), 7-28. special symposium issue aid, development, and education steven j. klees1 university of maryland our world faces pervasive poverty and inequality: • the world’s rich-poor gap has more than doubled since the 1960s; • 1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25/day; • hunger affects 963 million people worldwide; • nearly 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water; • one in three children in developing countries suffers from malnutrition; • about 75 million children who should be in primary school are not; and • every year, nearly 10 million children under the age of 5 die from preventable causes. (bread for the world, 2009; unesco, 2009; dichter, 2003, p. 1) hundreds of billions of dollars in international aid have been given or loaned to developing countries though bilateral and multilateral mechanisms, at least, ostensibly, in order to do something about these and other problems. has such aid helped? debates around this question have been ongoing for decades, perhaps intensifying in recent years. this should not be a surprise. it is far from straightforward to even determine how to investigate the question. at first glance, a researcher might want to look before and after to observe how well indicators, such as of poverty and economic growth, improved over a specific time period, and link that to changes in aid, controlling for other factors that might affect poverty and economic growth. while some research along these lines exists, this approach is generally a nonstarter, especially on a global level, but also even for specific countries. the question is just too complicated to be well-specified – for many reasons. for instance, there is a myriad of interactive factors that affect poverty and economic growth besides aid. moreover, international aid serves many purposes other than these, such as supporting the foreign policy of rich countries, building nations, democratization, or fighting terrorism. given that a supposedly ‘scientific’ approach cannot answer the question of the impact of aid, it is not surprising that the debates about it rely heavily on anecdotal and idiosyncratic evidence marshaled from particular ideological perspectives. periodic studies and international meetings have reviewed aid and development linkages and made recommendations for improvement. for example, the world bank-sponsored pearson commission in 1970 argued that “external resources, by adding to the resources available to a developing country, has had a positive impact upon development” and merited “large and sustained expansion” (asante, 1985, p. 249). subsequent studies like the brandt commission reports in 1980 and 1983 reinforced these conclusions. in recent years, international meetings – monterrey in 2002, rome in 2003, marrakech in 2004, and paris in 2005 – led to agreements on aid and development. the g-8 meeting in scotland in 2005, with impetus from celebrity donors and entrepreneurial philanthropists, promised a doubling of aid to african nations. and perhaps most importantly, the paris declaration in 2005 lays out an international agenda to improve foreign aid 8 current issues in comparative education s. klees by making it more transparent, accountable, aligned, harmonized, and effective.2 despite the fact that most of these official views of aid end up arguing that more is necessary, foreign aid has long had its critics from all sides of the political spectrum. for example, from the right, peter bauer, an early neoliberal economist writing before the term “neoliberal” was even coined, published in 1972 a book called dissent on development that summarized the critique he had been making for many years. he argued that rather than helping, “foreign aid…is likely to obstruct” development (p. 95) by creating dependency, distorting priorities, fostering corruption, and exacerbating market imperfections. his recommendation was to mostly eliminate foreign aid. this has also been a long-term political position of the neoconservative movement in the united states, as exemplified by the media commentator and former presidential candidate, patrick buchanan (1998). a strong critique of foreign aid has come from some on the left as well. for example, in his classic article on dependency, frank (1967) argues that foreign aid is a form of neocolonialism. samir amin (1980), in his book, delinking: towards a polycentric world, argues the need for developing countries to delink from world trade and aid systems in order to focus on internal needs. amin does not argue that trade and aid should be eliminated, just reduced. it is not my purpose to do a historical analysis of the state of aid and development. i do wish to give a sense of current debates on the topic and then conclude by offering some of my own views. in my review of the literature on aid and development, five recent books stood out as repeatedly discussed and referenced. i therefore examine briefly each of these works, trying to provide a sense of each author’s argument in his or her own words. the first three books mostly offer neoliberal perspectives, while the last two come from more liberal and progressive perspectives. i follow this examination with a discussion of their views and conclude with my own views on aid and development, including implications for education.3 this paper spends more time on aid and development issues than on education, in part, because i found i could not sensibly discuss education issues without first examining the debates about aid and development and their broader implications. current debates thomas dichter thomas dichter’s 2003 book is entitled despite good intentions: why development assistance to the third world has failed. as you might suspect, dichter is a big fan of peter bauer, the early neoliberal economist i mentioned above. dichter is an anthropologist who spent much of his life in the development business – as a peace corps volunteer and country director, a foundation officer, a think tank staff member, and a consultant for such agencies as undp, usaid, and the world bank. while he recognizes that different political perspectives may want to use some of his arguments, he sees himself as taking a “pragmatic” stance (p. xi). the book is unusual in that for each analytical chapter, there is a parallel chapter that is actually a short story based on the daily lives of development workers. dichter’s (2003) main argument is that aid has become a business whose main stake is its own survival – [which] begins to explain why there has been so little apparent learning or fundamental change in how things are done, despite all the evidence of failure, all the studies… current issues in comparative education 9 aid, development, and education and the many expensive evaluations and retrospective looks at this half century of work, the majority of which show depressing if not always negative results. (p. 4) for dichter, development is “staggeringly complex” (p. 191). he elaborates: development is not a set of obstinate problems the way cancer is but a historical process that cannot really be engineered or controlled. in short, development is not a “challenge,” something we can deliberately “attack” the way finding a cure for cancer can be. certainly, an industry set up to engineer change through a series of shortand medium-term direct interventions (“projects” and “programs”) is, to put it mildly, a gross mismatch of means and ends. (p. 9) he goes on: development professionals continue to hedge the question of whether development assistance is about doing things. increasingly, we know that the real keys to development are neither tangible nor involve much “doing.” they are about institutions, attitudes, laws, and human resources…. [rather than engineering] we could instead undertake more subtle and indirect interventions, stimulating, encouraging, and cajoling. (p. 185, p. 191) dichter, like most of the other critics discussed below, does not deny that there are aid and development success stories: for example, more access to primary education has resulted in more people with basic literacy and under the world health organization a decade-long effort to wipe out smallpox succeeded. in the 1990s for the first time we see a decline in the fertility rate of the developing countries owing to a lowering of infant mortality and a decrease in death rates. (p. 2) but for dichter these are the exceptions. his concluding chapter is entitled “the case for a radical reduction in development assistance.” he elaborates: does this mean that we say, “well, then, let’s leave well enough alone, let them (the poor of developing nations) be. let the forces of the international marketplace bring on development. let globalization reign”...yes, it might mean that. (p. 10) but dichter insists his conclusion is not “gloomy” (p. 10). his sources for hope are the potential for telecommunications, the migration of the poor towards better opportunities, and the overall workings of the market and the private sector in the interests of development. while acknowledging the continued need for humanitarian assistance, he nevertheless concludes: “it is time for us to entertain the serious possibility that development assistance is not necessary for development” (p. 293). william easterly the title of william easterly’s 2006 book is the white man’s burden: why the west’s efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good. as you might suspect, easterly is also a big fan of bauer. easterly is also well-known as a critic of economic orthodoxy who was pushed out of the bank because of his dissenting, more liberal, opinions. but in this book, easterly the critic of 10 current issues in comparative education s. klees economic orthodoxy is less evident than easterly the believer in market solutions. he offers a strong critique of international aid as a tragedy in which the west spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get twelve-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. the west spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get four-dollar bed nets to poor families....the west spent $2.3 trillion and amartech [an ethiopian girl] is still carrying firewood and not going to school. (p. 4) he also sees the failure as rooted in the inherent problems with planning and social engineering: let’s call the advocates of the traditional approach [to foreign aid] the planners while we call the agents for change in …[my] alternative approach the searchers. the short answer on why dying poor children don’t get twelve-cent medicines, while healthy rich people do get harry potter [delivered around the world overnight], is that twelve-cent medicines are supplied by planners while harry potter is supplied by searchers. this is not to say that everything should be turned over to the free market that produced and distributed harry potter. the poorest people in the world have no money to motivate market searchers to meet their desperate need. however, the mentality of searchers in markets is a guide to a constructive approach to foreign aid. (p. 5) while easterly exhibits a liberal’s sensitivity to issues of equity, it is integrated in an extremely neoliberal faith in the working of markets and a corresponding belief in the problematic nature of government, as exemplified in the quotes above and in the title of the fifth chapter, “the rich have markets, the poor have bureaucrats.” in the end, easterly recommends a much reduced role and scope for foreign aid. he suggests that aid be oriented towards programs that seek to have a direct and concrete impact on the poor, and away from broad goals like development and broad policies like structural adjustment policies (saps) and poverty reduction strategy plans (prsps). he concludes with principles for on-theground assistance: ...if you want to aid the poor, then: 1. have aid agents individually accountable for individual, feasible areas for action that help poor people lift themselves up. 2. let those agents search for what works, based on past experience in their area. 3. experiment, based on the results of the search. (p. 382) easterly provides additional principles that focus on the need for evaluation results to govern rewards and penalties, tying these incentives to aid agent actions. dambisa moyo dambisa moyo’s (2009) recent and hotly debated book is entitled dead aid: why aid is not working and how there is a better way for africa (for some debate, see king, 2009b). moyo is a young zambian economist, educated at harvard and oxford universities, who has spent two years current issues in comparative education 11 aid, development, and education working at the world bank and eight at goldman sachs. she is another peter bauer fan; in fact, the book is dedicated to him, and her dismal argument echoes his: [h]as more than us $1 trillion in development assistance over the last several decades made african people better off? no. in fact, across the globe the recipients of this aid are worse off; much worse off. aid has helped make the poor poorer, and growth slower. yet aid remains a centerpiece of today’s development policy and one of the biggest ideas of our time. the notion that aid can alleviate systemic poverty, and has done so, is a myth. millions in africa are poorer today because of aid; misery and poverty have not ended but increased. aid has been, and continues to be, an unmitigated political, economic, and humanitarian disaster for most parts of the developing world…. [countries get]… trapped in a vicious circle of corruption, market distortion, and further poverty – and thus the ‘need’ for more aid. (moyo, 2009, p. xix) moyo does make clear that she is talking about official development assistance (oda) only, not humanitarian aid. her argument that aid is not just “innocuous” but actually “malignant” (p. 47) rests on attributing to aid a host of ills: most especially, fostering corruption, but also diminishing social capital, increasing conflict, decreasing savings and investments, increasing inflation, hurting exports, and increasing bottlenecks. the result is a culture of “aid-dependency” or “addiction” (pp. 66, 75) that is fostered by what we might call an international aid complex employing half a million people. this complex generates “pressure to lend” (p. 54) and “engenders laziness on the part of african policymakers…in remedying africa’s critical woes” (p. 66). contrary to many researchers’ calls for more democracy as part of a solution to these problems, moyo argues: the uncomfortable truth is that far from being a prerequisite for economic growth, democracy can hamper development as democratic regimes find it difficult to push through economically beneficial legislation….in a perfect world, what poor countries at the lowest rungs of economic development need is not a multi-party democracy, but in fact a decisive benevolent dictator to push through the reforms required to get the economy moving…. (p. 42) the evidence moyo uses to support her arguments are almost wholly anecdotal and correlational, and the rationale is that of a neoliberal economist convinced of the necessity of market solutions.4 as moyo says: it should come as no surprise that the dead aid prescriptions are market-based, since no economic ideology other than one rooted in the movement of capital and competition has succeeded in getting the greatest numbers of people out of poverty in the fastest time” (p. 145). moyo concludes by calling for a complete phase-out of oda over a 5 to 10 year period. a number of market-based prescriptions are offered as ways to replace, in a more productive manner, the capital that would be lost: borrowing on international capital markets; attracting more foreign direct investment (china’s activities in this sphere are praised); promoting trade; expanding microloans; facilitating remittances; incentivizing savings; and employing conditional cash transfers. 12 current issues in comparative education s. klees moyo, in the end, asks, “what would happen?” if her recommendations were put into effect: would many more millions in africa die from poverty and hunger? probably not…isn’t it more likely that in a world freed of aid, economic life for the majority of africans might actually improve, that corruption would fall, entrepreneurs would rise and africa’s growth engine would start chugging? this is the most probable outcome…. (pp. 144-145). roger riddell roger riddell’s 2007 book, does foreign aid really work?, has no subtitle, thus intentionally depriving us of the “sound-bite” (p. xvii) summary present in the other books. riddell is an economist and development specialist who is currently international director for christian aid, a major u.k. relief and development agency. riddell has worked in the development industry for three decades, half of which was spent at britain’s overseas development institute. he is the author of previous studies on foreign aid. this book differs from the others in a number of ways. first, in addition to a focus on oda, it also looks closely at humanitarian and emergency aid and at aid provided by ngos. second, it considers providing aid within a human rights framework. third, it offers the most detailed review of foreign aid and of studies of its impact. the degree to which aid is tied to political and commercial interests is emphasized. for example, of the roughly $100 billion in oda in 2005, fully 40% went for technical assistance (p. 202) and 60% was tied to spending in the donor country (p. 358). riddell points out how much aid follows donor country political interests, as exemplified by the amount of aid devoted by the u.s. to iraq, afghanistan, and pakistan. he spends time examining the washington consensus and loan conditionalities, and offers a trenchant critique of the concept of “country ownership” in practice: predominantly for the imf and…world bank, ownership is understood as the process whereby recipient countries come round to accepting…the respective financial institution’s programmes, policies, and approaches to development, growth, and poverty reduction. (pp. 240-241) after an exhaustive review of empirical studies, riddell concludes with a much more balanced view than the other books examined here: does aid really work? earlier parts of this book have reviewed the best available evidence to conclude that large amounts of development and emergency aid have saved lives, both directly and indirectly. they have led to tangible benefits for millions of poor people, and made some positive wider contributions to poorcountry economies and societies. some aid interventions, however, have been failures, and large amounts of development aid have not had a significant, longterm, systemic, or sustainable impact. emergency aid has succeeded in saving many lives, but lives have been lost because of a shortage of funds. the failure to coordinate the humanitarian response effectively has meant that much aid has been wasted, while large numbers of those caught up in emergencies and disaster remain inadequately protected. (p. 355) an earlier passage focused on oda makes the author’s position clearer, reinforcing the point i current issues in comparative education 13 aid, development, and education raised at the beginning of this article: but has most official development aid worked, or failed? the honest answer is that we still don’t know – not for lack of trying, but due to the inherent difficulties of tracing its contribution. after more than five decades of aid-giving, the bulk of the most reliable and accessible information on impact relates to discrete projects, supplemented in the last decade by some assessments of the contribution made by individual donors in particular countries. cross-country studies seeking to find the answer to the question “does aid work?’ do not provide a reliable guide on the overall and explicit contribution of aid to development and poverty reduction. they never will. (p. 254) towards the end of the book, riddell summarizes the five fundamental problems he sees with the current system of aid: 1. aid is still not provided in sufficient overall quantities to meet the different needs of poor countries…. 2. the aid which is provided is not allocated in any systematic, rational, or efficient way to those who need it most…. 3. the aggregate amounts of aid provided to recipient countries are volatile and unpredictable…. 4. development aid relationships are still dominated by recipients having to interact with scores, and, at the extreme, hundreds of different official donors and donor agencies… [and] many thousands of individual projects and programmes…. 5. while donors regularly articulate the centrality of recipient ownership and partnership between donors and recipients as critical for aid to have a positive impact, in practice, the overall aid relationship remains extremely lopsided with donors remaining almost wholly in control. (pp. 386-7) in his two concluding chapters, riddell boldly proposes an overhaul of the entire aid architecture. this new structure would take a lot of the current politics out of aid distribution, using a “human rights approach to development…which gives prominence to the involvement and participation of recipients in decisions about how aid should be used….” (p. 390). for official development assistance, a new international aid office and fund would be financed by compulsory contributions from rich countries and allocated by need with transparent criteria operationalized by a technical staff in each country. in the case of severely inadequate or corrupt governments, alternative distribution mechanisms would be used. for humanitarian aid, current improvements in coordination and central funding would be extended. and for ngos, codes of conduct and other efforts would make their work more transparent and productive. david ellerman david ellerman’s 2005 book, helping people help themselves: from the world bank to an alternative philosophy of development assistance, also critiques the ‘big push’ social engineering side of foreign aid and offers in its stead a model based on incrementalism and self-help. ellerman is an exworld bank staffer who, before retiring from the agency, was an advisor to joseph stiglitz and other world bank chief economists. ellerman was an internal bank critic and now has become an external one. much of the book draws on his experiences with the bank, mostly as examples of what not to do. 14 current issues in comparative education s. klees ellerman (2005, p. xvii) highlights the general lack of debate within the bank and describes the “usual bank procedure of trying to give…the answers” buttressed by an intimidating barrage of one-side arguments and biased statistics.” with respect to the bank’s attempt to be a “knowledge bank,” he argues that it “should take a cue from universities and other scientific institutions and not have ‘official views’ on complex questions of knowledge.” in an earlier paper (klees, 2002), i argued that the bank wasn’t really a knowledge bank but a monopoly opinion bank (a.k.a., the mob!). ellerman seems to agree: one might think that all the economists in positions of power in the bank would recall their catechisms about the problem of monopoly. but it would seem that they are more attracted to the notion of “global” than they are repelled by the notion of “monopoly.” all the rhetoric about a global agency having a global role to gather global knowledge to solve global problems seems to be so much globaloney to justify the monopolistic worldwide role of the world bank. (p. 242) ellerman reveals how the “thought police” in the bank and the imf restrict debate and promote a party line (p. xix, 153). he also warns how the ubiquitous call for “country ownership” of its policies and programs can be perverted, “turning the government into a marionette that will believe and do what it is told as long as the aid or loan is forthcoming” (p. 136). however, the problems ellerman (2005, p. 2) sees go far beyond the bank: “the development of whole societies must surely be one of the most complex tasks facing humanity.” he says: after a half century on the path of official development assistance, we find ourselves lost….development will not yield to social engineering no matter how much aid is provided. a fundamentally different philosophy of development assistance is needed… (p. 241) that fundamentally different philosophy for ellerman means rethinking the relations between ‘helpers’ and ‘doers.’ helping or assistance is a relationship between those offering assistance in some form, the helper or helpers, and those receiving the assistance, the doer or doers. the helpers could be individuals, ngos, or official bilateral or multilateral development agencies and the doers could be individuals, organizations, or various levels of government in the developing countries. (p. 4) ellerman’s (pp. 253-61) different philosophy is summed up in five “do” and “don’t” principles:5 first do: starting from where the doers are… second do: seeing through the doers’ eyes… first don’t: don’t try to impose change on doers… second don’t: don’t give help as benevolence… third do: respect autonomy of doers the book closes with the following remark: helpers cannot and should not try “to do development.” helpers can at best use indirect, enabling, and autonomy-respecting methods to bring doers to the current issues in comparative education 15 aid, development, and education threshold. the doers have to do the rest on their own in order to make it their own. the doers acquire development only as the fruits of their own labor. (p. 252) discussion so, what are we to make of all this? clearly, all the authors offer some dismal analyses and depressing conclusions. of course, this is not surprising given the current state of global poverty and inequality. one would have hoped that 60 years of international aid would have led to clear improvement. however, the best that anyone can say is that the situation could have been a lot worse than it is now had there been no aid. and only riddell makes this argument explicitly. however, these books do differ from one another. i find it useful to divide the world of political economy into three broad paradigms: neoliberal, liberal, and progressive. neoliberalism, which predominates today, focuses on market solutions, criticizing the efficiency and equity of government interventions. a liberal perspective offers greater recognition of the inefficiencies and inequities of markets and puts more faith in government. finally, a progressive perspective, focuses on the reproductive nature of both the market and the state under current world system structures like capitalism, patriarchy, and racism, and puts greater reliance on transformation from below through more participatory forms of democracy and collective action. it should be noted that these paradigms are more continuous and overlapping than mutually exclusive. the predominant argument in these books – in particular, those by dichter, moyo and, to a large extent, easterly – is neoliberal. aid is seen as having been almost a complete waste at best, if not an unmitigated disaster, while the solution lies in minimizing government and maximizing free markets and trade. this is not surprising either, given that for the last three decades a neoliberal view has dominated in much of the world. as moyo (2009, p. 67) points out, in the liberal era of the 1960s and 1970s (when government intervention enjoyed much greater legitimacy), peter bauer was a “lone dissenting voice,” while his views now have wider support. but, it is very interesting to note that, in practice, this support is rather ambiguous. while dichter, moyo, easterly, and other neoliberal commentators on the problems of aid have received a lot of attention, it is well to remember that neoliberals have generally been in charge for the last three decades during the biggest build-up in international aid the world has ever seen. neoliberals have been in charge while the millennium development goals (mdgs) – perhaps the most sweeping call for aid and social engineering in history – were instituted.6 at least on the surface, this implies that many neoliberals have maintained some belief in the efficacy of aid – or perhaps it is a result of neoliberal guilt given the worsening of poverty and inequality caused by their policies. or perhaps there is something else operating here. as a progressive political economist, critical of both neoliberals and liberals, i see the neocolonial dimensions of aid in the world system, as frank (1967) pointed out. from this perspective, international aid and the mdgs are a form of what weiler (1984) called compensatory legitimation; more colloquially, i see it as a form of “good cop, bad cop.” international crises, shaky and poorly-performing economies, increasing poverty and inequality, widespread conflicts, and the equivalent of structural adjustment policies everywhere, all call into question the legitimacy of the neoliberal social order – this is the bad cop. to compensate for this, actors in the world system of neoliberal globalization must introduce polices such as aid and the mdgs that are aimed at ameliorating some problematic conditions and thus restoring system legitimacy – this is the good cop. this argument does not question the good intentions of the proponents of these policies, but it does question their effects.7 put simply, the existence of these policies may be sufficient for 16 current issues in comparative education s. klees compensatory legitimation; whether they are effective seems to be less important. all of the books i reviewed were written before the current economic crisis. this crisis changes things in that it calls into more serious question the entire neoliberal regime and poses a global challenge to its legitimacy.8 for the first time in three decades, whether neoliberalism will survive is not clear. if it does, however, it will probably not be a time for policymakers to heed the calls of people like dichter, moyo, and easterly, as even greater compensatory legitimation will be needed. the world system must look like something is being done to improve the situation even if it is not. i do not mean to argue that all policies are the result of systemic forces that reproduce and legitimate the unequal word order. i am a firm believer that neoliberal policies are continually challenged by individuals, organizations, social movements, and left-of-center governments. the existence of aid and the mdgs represents real gains for the world’s disenfranchised, as does, for example, the more participatory processes called for in prsps. however, in this neoliberal era, these policies unfortunately bear little fruit. it is interesting to note that one could make the argument that aid was more successful in the liberal era of the 1960s and 1970s than it has been in the neoliberal era that followed. even moyo (2009, p. 5) admits that africa was doing much better in the 1970s than today, and it was “awash” with aid then. a big difference is that the 1980s introduced neoliberal structural adjustment programs (saps) throughout africa, cutting government and liberalizing trade. even many neoliberal economists admitted these policies had harmful, if not devastating, consequences. yet current-day mechanisms such as the poverty reduction strategy process (prsp) and the poverty reduction and growth facility (prgf) continue to produce results that look very similar to those produced by the bankrupt saps. riddell and ellerman proceed from a predominantly liberal perspective, although both have some progressive elements. riddell is very critical of aid and its ties to commercial and political interests, but he recognizes that much aid has had a positive impact. his conclusion for increasing aid and restructuring aid architecture offers some progressive alternatives worth considering. ellerman also critiques the structure of aid and the ability of bilateral and multilateral aid agencies like the world bank to socially engineer a better world. his solution, to rely more on respecting the autonomous efforts of the “doers,” especially at the grassroots level, fits with a more progressive perspective. my reading of additional literature related to aid and development indicates to me that these five books are representative of the debate. a neoliberal perspective predominates. liberal views are reasonably represented, especially if you include works that are indirectly about aid and development (e.g., collier, 2007; sachs, 2005). scarcer are works from a progressive perspective. in an excellent paper from this point of view, samoff (2009) comes to quite different conclusions than the authors above: the aid system “is in fact working very well. its essential role is not to achieve publicly stated objectives but rather to maintain a global political economy of inequality” (p. 24). i agree with samoff. but, as i am sure he would agree, this is not a call for despair. it is a call for transformation. i believe, as do many who share a progressive perspective, that that transformation will have to come from widespread collective action. part of that action is thinking about and discussing what such transformation might entail. in what follows, i offer my own perspectives on certain key steps that need to be taken with regard to aid, development, and education.9 current issues in comparative education 17 aid, development, and education implications for aid, development, and education much more money is needed. in today’s world, it has become fashionable to say ‘don’t throw money at social problems,’ ‘money is not the main issue,’ and ‘better management and stronger accountability is what is needed to fix the problem.’ this mentality has been an excuse for inaction. of course more money is needed, much more. total oda per capita comes to about $10. what kind of development do we think we can buy for $10 per head per year?10 rich countries spend less than 1% of their gdp on oda. they are unwilling to even come close to the 0.7% of gdp goal that they set for themselves.11 in this unfair and vastly unequal world, what kind of development do we think we can buy for less than a measly 1% of gdp?12 in 2008, oda to all of africa was about $35 billion, less than the u.s. bailout of the auto industry; stephen lewis calls this amount of aid “picayune and marginal” (aurea foundation, 2009). it is worth noting that the marshall plan for reconstruction after wwii spent as much on europe as the rich countries do on total oda for all developing countries now (moyo, 2009, p. 12). on a per capita basis, the marshall plan received about 8 times as much money as oda receives now. and for europe the development problem was much easier than that faced by developing countries today: europe was already industrialized with an educated workforce; it only needed to rebuild the physical infrastructure damaged in the war. developing countries need a much more intense effort than the marshall plan. the point is that we haven’t been throwing money at our social problems; instead we’ve been miserly. in a similar vein, king (2009b, pp. 8-9) points out the huge amount of aid – perhaps more than what has gone to all of africa – that went to transform one country, south korea, and the great amount of resources that germany is putting into the development of the former east germany. attempts to cost what it would take to achieve the mdgs have produced estimates of at least an additional $120 to $190 billion a year, and that may well be an underestimation (un millennium project, 2006; moyo, 2009, p.45). it needs to be remembered and highlighted that whether you as an individual are in need of these resources is simply an accident of birth. in today’s world, shouldn’t we work towards making the accident of where you are born an illegitimate basis for determining your well-being? for a long time, i have thought of doing a study in the u.s. of the vast differences in the investment we make in the children of the rich versus the children of the poor. this would involve looking at family, school, and social investments – everything from prenatal care to home environments to college. while quantifying all of that would be difficult, my guess is the results would be astounding, showing differences of 500 or 1,000 to 1. imagine how much greater would be the disparity between the investment in a rich child in the u.s. and a poor child in africa – perhaps as much as 10,000 to 1. whatever the numbers, these huge differences should be seen as completely illegitimate and immoral. much more aid is needed. education, like other social sectors, has been a victim of the neoliberal onslaught that has argued that schools generally do not need more money but need to spend it more wisely (klees, 2008a). what nonsense! of course, spending wisely is important, but more money is desperately needed. we have 75 million children of primary school age out of school (unesco, 2009). they need teachers, classrooms, and learning materials. universal primary education and other efa goals are estimated to require an additional $16 billion per year (unesco, 2010). the fast track initiative (fti) has only been supplying about $300 million per year. moreover, we have many more millions of students receiving a very low quality primary education who need more and better educated teachers, improved facilities, and better learning materials. this does not include 18 current issues in comparative education s. klees the huge secondary school coverage deficit. furthermore, the problem is not limited to developing countries. in the u.s., for example, there is a huge achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children, and that is a direct result of the huge investment gap that starts at birth, as i discussed earlier.13 disburse some of that money directly to the poor. just as she is putting the finishing touches on her argument to eliminate all aid, moyo (2009) somewhat surprisingly suggests the idea of giving aid by direct cash transfers to the poor: instead of writing out a single us$250 million cheque to a country’s government, why not distribute the money equally among its population,,,[incorporating] notions of accountability and repayment….it is worth pointing out that there has been some notable success with a concept known as ‘conditional cash transfers’; these are cash payments…made to give the poor an incentive to perform tasks that could help them escape poverty (for example, good school attendance, working a certain number of hours, improving test scores, seeing a doctor). the idea of conditional cash transfers has met with much success in developing countries such as brazil, mexico, nicaragua, and peru… studies show the schemes have been instrumental in decreasing malnutrition, increasing school attendance, and decreasing child labour….[w]hy has this type of programme not been rolled out aggressively across africa? (pp. 150-151) conditional cash transfers are now touted by the bank and other agencies, but they are not rolled out because donors are not willing to put up the money to do so. riddell also concludes with a couple of pages arguing for cash transfers. he, like i, would question moyo’s argument that all money should be distributed this way and that it need be repaid (these are not microloans). riddell (2007) contends: for many years, humanitarian agencies have handed out goods free to those in need during emergencies, especially food. more recently, both humanitarian and other aid agencies have given food aid in return for work and, more recently, cash for work. however, very little aid has been provided for those in need simply as ‘free cash’ enabling people to spend it as they think fit. though increasingly wishing to make a tangible difference to very poor people, donors have shied away from providing cash for extreme poverty. historically a reluctance to give cash directly to poor people has often been based on the belief that they will spend it… [unwisely]…and on the linked paternalistic, and condescending, view that poor people do not know how best to use it. these beliefs sit uncomfortably alongside the increasingly mainstream view that beneficiary choice and participation are fundamental to the aid relationship. (p. 407) riddell goes on to review the evidence for the effectiveness of cash transfers and argues the case is “compelling” (p. 407). in the 1970s, there was a much discussed development strategy called “equity before growth,” which argued that the traditional approach that relied on growth before eventually achieving greater equity was ineffective, and had it backwards: global redistribution was needed first to direct growth in different ways and especially towards the needs of the disadvantaged. neoliberals came to power before this strategy had gained much traction, but it remains a much more sensible approach to development. resources redistributed to the poor can current issues in comparative education 19 aid, development, and education help re-direct the economy towards their needs and, when combined with job creation efforts, can help set up a self-sustaining system.14 some of the research mentioned above praising conditional cash transfers is in education. there are smalland large-scale programs in developing countries (e.g., brazil and mexico) that pay poor children to go to school, conditional on attendance and passing. given the persistence of user fees and the very large opportunity costs of child labor faced by poor parents, offering scholarships such as these on a very large scale will be the only way to achieve upe. the costs of doing so are not included in the upe cost estimates above, raising the amount of money needed considerably if the mdgs and efa goals are to be taken seriously. real and strong participation should be the fundamental basis for governance. moyo (2009) comments on the “rise of glamour aid” in which actors, rock stars, and the like become very visible proponents of aid: scarcely does one see africa’s (elected) officials or those african policymakers charged with the development portfolio offer an opinion on what should be done, or what might actually work to save the continent….this very important responsibility has, for all intents and purposes, and to the bewilderment and chagrin of many an african, been left to musicians who reside outside africa. (pp. 26-27) while i see some value to “glamour aid,” moyo’s point is well-taken. who or what directs and should direct the aid system? there is much talk of “country ownership.” the bilateral and multilateral aid agencies all claim that the country is in charge and that they only have an advisory role. but that is simply not true, as riddell’s earlier quote makes clear. the aid agencies have overwhelming power in the aid relationship, specifically through the conditionalities they require and generally through the power to withhold and direct aid. this power is even greater under the currently fashionable swaps (sector wide approaches) through which the gang of donors effectively makes country policy. for aid to be effective, we must curtail the power of aid agencies and move beyond country ownership to rely on widespread participation. participation in aid processes by the disadvantaged themselves and their advocates in civil society has long been discussed. instrumental, idiosyncratic, and sporadic uses of participation have been common. but it is rare that participation takes on real and strong roles in governance.15 the rhetoric is often lofty, but the reality is weak (edwards jr. & klees, forthcoming). for example, the formulation of poverty reduction strategy papers (psrps) that are supposed to guide all world bank and imf aid to a country in principle require extensive participation by civil society. in practice, consultation replaces participation, and the consultation is hurried and superficial, with civil society having hardly any say in the final product. as mentioned earlier, the final result are policies that bear strong similarities to the draconian and unsuccessful saps. this call for serious participation in the governance of public policies and programs is a call for reform in rich countries as much as for reform in poor countries and global interrelationships.16 representative democracy has had many positive features, but it has led to a system that is strongly reproductive, protecting the interests of the advantaged at the expense of the disadvantaged. under labels of ‘participatory,’ ‘deliberative,’ and ‘strong democracy,’ there have been many calls for reform in line with what i am calling for here (crocker, 2009; barber, 2003).17 20 current issues in comparative education s. klees neoliberalism strongly promotes privatization, including in the education sector. calls for voucher schemes and subsidizing and strengthening private schooling have been ubiquitous. neoliberals consider relying on the market as a form of participation. what nonsense! there was an economics textbook entitled participation without politics that was a typical microeconomic examination of a supposed free market system (brittan, 1979). there is no participation without politics; participation is inherently political. as in all development endeavors, education needs much deeper and more widespread forms of participation. at their best, they connect with a broad approach to critical pedagogy governing the administration, content, and process of education, such as with the citizen school movement in brazil (fischman & gandin, 2007; gandin & apple, 2002). replace the world bank and the imf. the bank and the fund are completely ideological institutions. even insiders point to the internal “thought police” who reinforce orthodoxy and suppress dissent. for the last three decades, that ideology has been neoliberalism. neoliberalism has been a total failure in terms of development and has resulted in the most incredible concentration of wealth the world has ever seen. it was a failure before the current economic crisis, and now that failure is even more apparent. liberal and progressive economists have had hardly any voice in the bank or the fund since the 1970s.18 neither have non-economists, civil society, or developing countries. the result has been three decades of bad, one-sided advice. clearly the bank and the fund have functions that need to be fulfilled, in particular, giving grants and loans for development and for economic crises. but we need an entirely new architecture for doing so, perhaps partly along the lines riddell has suggested. given the fundamental debates among economists, one school of economic thought should not dominate as it does now. moreover, given that economic issues shade into all sorts of other social issues, economists should not be in charge. in keeping with my previous point, governance should be participatory, with developing countries and civil society having a considerable say. the global fund for aids, tuberculosis, and malaria, even though it is housed within the bank, offers one example of an attempt to develop a more participatory and consensus-based process. ideally, much of oda would be channeled through a new aid architecture, reducing considerably the multiplicity of demands on developing countries from bilateral and multilateral aid agencies. riddell (2007, p. 360) points out: “each year, over 35,000 separate official aid transactions take place and, on average, each aid recipient has to deal with more than 25 different official donors” (also see knack & rahman, 2008). working in developing countries, one is simply amazed by the proliferation of aid-funded projects, the contradictions between them, and the incredible demands they put on local agencies in implementation and monitoring.19 i believe future historians will shake their collective head in wonder that the world today allowed a bank to be the global leader in developing and enforcing educational policy. what nonsense! we need to get rid of the bank and the fund. the fund is perhaps the biggest obstacle to education for all (efa) in the world today as its narrow inflation targets lead it to require developing countries to cut their teaching force as a way of scaling back government (rowden, 2010; marphatia, moussie, ainger, & archer, 2007; archer, 2006). the bank’s fast track initiative has been useful in getting some money to some countries to help with efa costs, but far too little money has been allocated, the process has been cumbersome and slow and subject to endless bank regulation, and the bank has imposed arbitrary educational benchmarks on who should qualify for funds (benavot, et al. 2010; klees, winthrop, & adams, 2010; cambridge education, mokoro ltd., & current issues in comparative education 21 aid, development, and education oxford policy management, 2009). there has been a call to replace fti with a global fund for education (even endorsed at one point by president obama) (oxfam, 2010; sperling, 2009). it is high time. the bank’s ideological role as global education cop must end. there are global development priorities that might be agreed upon. this paper is mostly about the aid process. arguing for a much more participatory process does not mean development becomes chaotic or strictly locally-determined. there may well be some global priorities that could be agreed upon. my suggestions for some of these are as follows: • impact the poor: clearly, we want to do a much better job of having aid reach its intended beneficiaries. • emphasize gender: the inequalities and discrimination faced by girls and women are unjust and have been a major barrier to development. • go to scale: we have had thousands of very effective pilot projects at a local level, often run by ngos; we need to implement many of them on a large scale. • consider the environment: we are facing a global ecological crisis, and aid requires an integral examination of its impact on the environment. • pay attention to issues of peace and conflict: over 40 countries are in a state of conflict or post-conflict, and we live in a world where aggression is ubiquitous (fischer, n.d.). • use a human rights framework: we have many united nations agreements about human rights, but aid agencies generally ignore them. all of the development priorities above are as relevant to education as they are to broader development strategies. of fundamental importance is to base education policy on the right to education. unesco and unicef have already moved in this direction, but the bank and the fund resist. in part, that is because such a change would wreak havoc with an instrumental human capital framework where education is only valued for its impact on earnings and economic growth, not seen as an end in itself. also specific to education, i would add, that there is a need to bring a critical pedagogy framework to all education, one that starts where learners are, examines the history and nature of their place in the world system, and considers strategies for transformation (mclaren & kincheloe, 2007). more of the same research is not needed. most studies end with a call for further research. doing research has been another major excuse for inaction. unfortunately, most research offers little guidance about what to do. while all five books indicate the need for more research, a number of them, and other related works, recognize how little research has to offer. ellerman (2005, p. 18) talks of “helpers… supplying biased information, partisan econometrics, and one-sided arguments.” riddell (2003, p. 174) argues that, given the “complexities of development…it would seem to be over-ambitious to believe it possible to quantify precisely the relationship between aid and growth, aid and development, aid and poverty reduction.” hoebink (2009, p. 35) points out that regression analyses in development research “are highly contested.” in a more recent work, easterly (2008) argues: the literature [on aid and growth] suffers from such unrestricted specifications and endless iteration among these specifications that virtually any result on aid and growth is possible and indeed all possible results have already been presented in the literature: aid effects are conditional on good policies, they are not conditional on good policies; aid has a positive effect on growth, aid has no effect on growth; 22 current issues in comparative education s. klees aid has a linear effect on growth, aid has a quadratic effect on growth; only certain types of aid matters, all types of aid are equivalent.[20] growth regressions in general have been criticized on the grounds of data mining and specification searching... [the result is that]…the regression wars on foreign aid and growth show no sign of ending anytime soon. (p. 18) the complete indeterminacy of this kind of quantitative research is not confined to the literature about aid and development. as i have argued elsewhere (klees, 2008b), for quantitative research methods to yield reliable cause-effect information requires fulfilling impossible conditions. regression analysis, the most frequently used methodology, requires three conditions: all independent variables that affect the dependent variable are in the equation, all variables are measured correctly, and the correct functional form is specified. in practice, these conditions are never fulfilled and can never be fulfilled. regression analysis studies thus become a battleground over model specification which forms the basis for an endless debate over results in, for example, literatures on economic growth, student achievement, welfare policies, head start, class size, vouchers for schools or housing, and many others. it is currently fashionable to call for an alternative to regression analysis – randomized experiments (duflo & kremer, 2008). in theory, well-controlled experiments are supposed to make it easy to make cause-effect inferences. in practice, real world experiments, outside the laboratory, are never well controlled. therefore, randomization buys you little, and control groups always differ from experimental groups. researchers acknowledge this and try to make compensatory statistical adjustments, but they are always ad hoc and easily contestable. basically, real world experiments revert right back to the need for proper regression analysis specification to untangle cause-effect relationships, as evidenced in many of the same literatures mentioned above. this is a major conundrum.21 we do need research and evaluation to help figure out what works, yet research and evaluation results are always contested and contestable. my only answer is to return to the centrality of participation.22 participatory research and evaluation – with participation by beneficiaries and other stakeholders as well as by analysts who depart from different frameworks – may not yield clear answers, but it can put our debates on the table. drawing on quantitative, qualitative, and critical research and evaluation methodologies (mertens, 2004; denzin & lincoln, 2000), the resulting information and arguments should become part of participatory decisionmaking processes. when truth becomes a problematic goal, the legitimacy of political processes becomes paramount.23 educational research and evaluation are as biased, indeterminate, and contested as any other. again, i do not mean this as a call to halt all research. i do mean that most of the above recommendations do not depend on further research. i also mean that when research is needed, the principal form of research that makes sense is participatory research. in closing, moyo’s concluding thought about whether millions more would die if aid were to be stopped should be central to the consideration of the choices we face. the indicators that i began this paper with are horrendous. right now millions are dying and dying needlessly; millions more are barely surviving at the margins. relatively few resources are needed to change this. the market mechanism does not work for billions of people and aid is insufficient and misdirected. transformation is possible. we can turn this around and make the 21st century the first one that is just and humane. current issues in comparative education 23 aid, development, and education endnotes 1. an earlier version of this paper was given as the keynote address at the northeast regional comparative and international education society conference held october 8-9, 2009, at lehigh university, bethlehem, pa. i am the harold r.w. benjamin professor of international and comparative education and director of the international education policy program at the university of maryland. i would like to thank susanne clawson, mark ginsburg, and nelly stromquist for comments on a draft of this paper. 2. many in the development community seem to be enamored of the paris declaration, but it is both distant from reality and perhaps not even desirable: aid is very far from transparent; accountability and effectiveness are too often narrowly conceived and oriented towards the donor; and aid aligned and harmonized gives donors ever more power. the paris declaration also falls far short of what is needed to make aid work, as i discuss in the conclusion. 3. aid is a hot topic in education as well as in the development literature. see benavot, archer, moseley, mundy, phiri, steer, and wiking (2010) and king (2009a). 4. in a critique of moyo’s reliance on the correlation between aid and difficult development situations, watkins (2009, p. 20) calls it “guilt by association: there’s an awful lot of aid sloshing around in countries that are doing badly. using the same logic you could argue that fire engines are best avoided because you tend to find them clustered around burning buildings.” 5. ellerman supports these principles with references to the work of thinkers across diverse fields including hirschman, schumacher, alinsky, freire, dewey, mcgregor, rogers, and kierkegaard. 6. one could argue that the mdgs and efa came about as the result of liberal politics despite neoliberalism being predominant (chan, 2006). 7. see also samoff (2009, p. 4): “it is important to note here that a critical approach to foreign aid does not require a conspiracy theory. at issue are not the intentions or attitudes or good will of aid agency staff.” 8. that is recognized by liberals (stiglitz, 2009) as well as progressives. 9. i do not pretend that all progressives will agree on all points. for example, although i believe the need for more spending by the north on education and development in the south is essential, some progressive perspectives, such as delinking, might disagree (amin, 1985). relatedly, with more money comes more threats to sovereignty (samoff, 2009). 10. of course, since that money is targeted, it will be more per head. on the other hand, only 40% of aid is targeted to the poorest countries (riddell, 2007, p. 358) and corruption will lessen how much reaches those in need. and the fact that much aid is tied, perhaps 60%, to technical assistance and purchases from donor countries, means a big chunk of that $10 may not be very useful. 11. the 0.7% of gdp goal was originally set in 1970 and reaffirmed at the monterrey summit in 2002. only five countries have met it: denmark, luxembourg, netherlands, norway and sweden. in reality the share of high-income countries gdp going to oda actually fell from 0.51% in 1960 to 0.23% in 2002 (un millennium project, 2006). 12. the huge amount of resources that the u.s. and the world are spending to combat the current economic crisis belies the explanation that more resources cannot be found, as does u.s. spending on the wars in afghanistan and iraq. 13. a recent study by uc berkeley professor emmanuel saez points to a “staggering, unprecedented disparity” in u.s. income, an “all-time high” in inequality. the top 10% income earners received almost 50% of total income, the highest concentration since 1917 (huffington post, 2009). and, of course, inequality in wealth is much, much higher. 14. microloans could be one part of this system, but they are no miracle cure, as has been touted. 24 current issues in comparative education s. klees even if money could be found for their expansion, loans are no basis for transformation. many people who are poor will not borrow, and small scale entrepreneurship is not going to achieve an equitable and sustainable development. 15. waisbord (2008) offers a good analysis of three barriers to strong participation: the bureaucratic nature of aid agencies; their technical, expert-dominated model; and their pretense to be apolitical. 16. ellerman’s call for encouraging self-help and respecting autonomy is, in part, a call for greater participation. 17. from a similar perspective, there have also been calls to replace the authoritarianism of the private sector with a more participatory, democratic workplace (e.g., hahnel, 2005; alperowitz, 2004). 18. liberal or progressive economists in these institutions who have been vocal have been marginalized or fired. it is not only the fund and the bank that have been shaped strongly by neoliberal economists but universities, think tanks, bilateral aid agencies, and governments as well. it is interesting to note that even in the liberal obama administration, despite the serious current economic crisis, critical voices get excluded. paul krugman and joseph stiglitz, both nobel prize-winning economists, have not been part of white house efforts because “an entire economics perspective…a progressive-economist wing” has been excluded from policymaking (krugman, 2009). 19. contrary to expectations, donor coordination and harmonization through swaps do not seem to have reduced the demands on aid recipients (riddell, 2007). 20. the neoliberal conventional wisdom is that aid’s effectiveness depends on a country following neoliberal policies that encourage free trade and foreign investment but, as above, that conventional wisdom is based on ideology, not evidence (in addition to easterly, see riddell, 2007; radelet, 2006) 21. the ubiquitous call for “evidence-based decision-making” or “outcomes-based aid,” while understandable in the abstract, in practice becomes a fetish, another way of privileging the research of those with power, dismissing challenges, and avoiding taking needed actions. 22. a discussion of more qualitative approaches to research is beyond the scope of this paper. while qualitative research has its problems, i certainly see it as an improvement over the dominant quantitative approaches. nonetheless, for me the bottom line is that since all research reflects the perspectives of the researcher, all research needs to be broadened by making participation central. 23. there has been a call for “smarter aid,” but this assumes that research and evaluation methods can tell you which are the best aid policies and programs. unfortunately that is simply not possible, as decades of experience should have made clear. references alperovitz, g. 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(2006). the white man’s burden: why the west’s efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good. new york: penguin press. easterly, w. (2008). introduction: can’t take it anymore? in w. easterly (ed.), reinventing foreign aid (pp. 1-44). cambridge, ma: mit press. 26 current issues in comparative education s. klees edwards jr., d. b. & klees, s. (forthcoming). participation in development and education governance. in a. verger, m. novelli, & h. kosar-altinyelken (eds.), the global governance of education in low-income countries: new agendas, issues and programmes. new york: continuum. ellerman, d. (2005). helping people help themselves: from the world bank to an alternative philosophy of development assistance. ann arbor: university of michigan press. fischer, m. (n.d.). recovering from violent conflict: rengeneration and re-integration as elements of peacebuilding. retrieved from http://www.berghof-handbook.net. fischman, g., & gandin, l. 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(2009, june). a safari towards aid effectiveness? a critical look at the paris declaration and the accra agenda for action as part of the new aid reform architecture. norrag news, 42. retrieved from http://www.norrag.org/issues/42/en/a-safari-towards-aid-effectiveness.html. king, k. (2009, june) moyo on aid effectiveness and china in africa, norrag news 42(special issue), 7-13. retrieved from http://www.norrag.org/issues/42/en/a-safari-towards-aid-effectiveness. html. klees, s. (2008a). a quarter century of neoliberal thinking in education: misleading analyses and failed policies. globalisation, societies and education, 6(4), 311-348. klees, s. (2008b). reflections on theory, method, and practice in comparative and international education. comparative education review, 52(3), 301-328. klees, s. (2002). world bank education policy: new rhetoric, old ideology. international journal of educational development, 22, 451-474. klees, s., winthrop, r., & adams, a. (2010). many paths to universal primary education: time to replace the indicative framework with a real country-driven approach. (brookings institution policy briefs, global views no. 13). washington dc: center for universal education. current issues in comparative education 27 aid, development, and education knack, s., & rahman, a. (2008). donor fragmentation. in w. easterly (ed.), reinventing foreign aid (p. 333-348). cambridge, ma: mit press. marphatia, a., moussie, r., ainger, a., & archer, d. (2007). confronting the contradictions: the imf, wage bill caps, and the case for teachers. london: actionaid. mclaren, p., & kincheloe, j. (eds.) (2007). critical pedagogy: where are we now? new york: peter lang. mertens, d. (2004). research methods in education and psychology: integrating diversity with quantitative and qualitative approaches (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. moyo, d. (2009). dead aid: why aid is not working and how there is a better way for africa. new york: farrar, straus, and giroux. oxfam international. (2010). rescuing education for all: how reform of the fast track initiative should lead to a global fund for education. washington, dc: oxfam international. radelet, s. (2006). a primer on foreign aid. (working paper number 92). washington, dc: center for global development. riddell, r. (2007). does foreign aid really work? new york: oxford university press. rowden, r. (2010) the deadly ideas of neoliberalism: how the imf has undermined public health and the fight against aids. london: zed sachs, j. (2005). the end of poverty: economic possibilities for our time. new york: penguin. samoff, j. (2009). the fast track to planned dependence: education aid to africa. paper presented at the international political science association xxi world congress, santiago, chile, 12-16 july. sperling g. (2009). a global education fund: towards a true global compact on universal education. washington, dc: center for universal education. stiglitz, j. (2009, july). wall street’s toxic message. vanity fair. unesco. (2010). education for all global monitoring report 2010: reaching the marginalized. paris: unesco. unesco. (2009). education for all global monitoring report 2009: overcoming inequality. paris: unesco. un millennium project. (2006). cost and benefits of the mdgs. retrieved from http://www. unmillenniumproject.org/reports/costs_benefits2.htm. waisbord, s. (2008, november 1). are international aid and community participation inevitably at odds? the communication initiative network. retrieved from http://www.comminit.com/en/ print. 28 current issues in comparative education s. klees watkins, k. (2009, june). missing the point with moyo. norrag news, 42, 19-22. retrieved from http://www.norrag.org/issues/article/1196/en/missing-the-point-with-moyo.html. © 2010 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved microsoft word government versus teachers.docx © 2015, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 17(1), 27–35. government versus teachers: the challenges of educational progress in oaxaca, mexico alison victoria shepherd university of leeds this paper considers education in the mexican state of oaxaca and the effects that an active teachers' union has had upon not only the education of the primary and secondary schools that the teachers represent, but also on higher educational policy in the state. the difference between rhetoric and reality is explored in terms of the union as a social movement, as well as the messy political environment in which it must operate. through the presentation of a case study of a public higher education initiative, it is argued that the government's response to the teachers' union has included a “ripple effect” throughout educational planning in order to suppress further activism. it is concluded that the prolonged stand-off between the union and the government is counterproductive to educational progress and has turned the general public's favor against the union, in contrast to support for other movements demanding change from the government. introduction mexico has a turbulent history of repression and resistance, from the famed 1910 revolution against the spanish-dominated dictatorship producing robin hood type figures such as emiliano zapata, to the 1999 indigenous zapatista uprising in chiapas, named after the aforementioned hero of the previous rebellion (katzenberger, 2001). in the neighboring region of oaxaca, teachers had been organizing and demanding change from their government. for over twenty years they have continued to struggle for improvements in infrastructure, materials, working conditions and pay. however, a growing resentment has accumulated amongst students and their families as days camping outside of government offices means increasingly lost learning time being absent from school. similarly, public opinion has soured against the teachers’ union as protests often include actions to disturb public life, such as blocking main streets and plazas, occupying government buildings, and slowing down administrative duties. with so many years engaged in dispute with the government, so much disruption and relatively little accomplished, it is arguably time to readdress tactics and redress lost time for oaxacan teachers’ unions, who appear to be the stakeholders worst affected by the situation. the paper is divided into three sections. the first section is an overview of the state of oaxaca in terms of demographics, diversity, and historical marginalization. secondly, the beliefs and actions of the teachers' union are described, along with successes and weaknesses of their activism. finally, a case study of oaxaca's “development universities” is presented, analyzing how it has been affected both positively and negatively by the on-going movement for educational development in oaxaca. the case study relies upon personal experience and primary data as the author worked at one such university from february 2012 to july 2013 and conducted a questionnaire with the university students. qualitative data was also gathered from interviews conducted with a secondary school teacher heavily involved in union activism, a university senior manager, and a university counselor. the state of oaxaca shepherd 28 current issues in comparative education classified as a “first world country” due to its economic development, mexico still suffers from the highest child poverty rates in the oecd (huerta & goglio, 2013). oaxaca ranks the second poorest state among the 31 states of mexico, despite possessing a wealth of biodiversity and benefitting from tourism; it is particularly significant that oaxaca is home to 33% of the country’s indigenous population. of 3.5 million inhabitants, over a third speak one of the 90 dialects within fourteen indigenous languages. seventy-six percent of oaxacans live in extreme poverty (compared to the national average of 42%); 22% are illiterate and only 42% complete high school; with indigenous people suffering the most socioeconomic marginalization. oaxaca has a human development index (hdi) similar to africa’s average at 0.7164 (ofi, n.d.). as a result of these conditions, around one million oaxacans have migrated elsewhere, with 90% in the us (ofi, n.d.; sawyer, 2010). the 1999 north american free trade agreement (nafta) meant that many goods, including mexican staples of corn and beans, entered mexico’s internal market, leading to a collapse in agriculture and a subsequent exodus of oaxacans to low-paying jobs in the us (renique, 2006). as a result, after tourism, remittances comprise the second-largest source of income for the state (renique, 2006). various issues are summarized by the rector of oaxaca’s relatively new “development universities” discussed later in the paper, for example, oaxaca’s low socioeconomic progress is further complicated by a series of geographical and cultural factors, such as a very mountainous terrain, which makes communication difficult and has resulted in the isolation of communities, the enormous cultural diversity, the multiethnic character of the population with 16 major ethnic groups, and a multitude of languages and their diverse variants or dialects. (vasquez, 2010, p. 145) furthermore, young people search for work in other areas of mexico or in other countries leading to a “human decapitalization in local communities which lose the leadership and dynamism of younger populations” (vasquez, 2010, p. 146). thus, oaxaca’s issues are multidimensional resulting in low living standards and a lack of opportunities leading to ‘brain drain’ which further exacerbates the state’s problems. in the beginning of the twentieth century, the mexican government was preoccupied with combating illiteracy, viewing it as an impediment to development and progress (quijano & traffano, 2013, p. 38). the government pushed to create schools in rural areas – often asking impoverished town councils to provide the resources due to lack of state resources – filling them with untrained teachers. in 1928, only 6% of these teachers had attended higher education (quijano & traffano, 2013). spanish was promoted in an attempt to provide a universal language of communication, as happened across latin america (tomasevski, 2003), and the ratio of monolingual to bilingual citizens rose from 1:1 in 1930 to 1:2 in 1940 and 1:3 by 1970 (quijano & traffano, 2013, p. 38). however, bringing mass “hispanicized” education to rural areas led to a parallel process of loss of indigenous culture and language (quijano & traffano, 2013, p. 38). the problems described by teachers in one region of oaxaca during the 1970s included illiteracy, poverty, indifference from authorities and parents, “irresponsible teachers” who abandoned their teaching duties, learning difficulties for students who spoke an indigenous language, the problem of getting children to school who lived in isolated hamlets, lack of teaching materials, lack of medical attention, and malnutrition (quijano & traffano, 2013, p. 30). an interview with a secondary school teacher from this region in 2013 revealed many persistent problems such as the lack of teaching materials, lack of nutritious food (or enough food at all), government versus teachers current issues in comparative education 29 economic poverty, and indifference from the government; illustrating that many problems are not being resolved in these rural areas today. the oecd claims nearly all mexican children aged 4-14 are in school, and completion in uppersecondary and higher education (he) is “being worked on”, though the organization admits that “quality improvements have not kept pace with the expansion of coverage” (toledo & ramos, 2013, p. 120). this illustrates that school attendance does not assure educational quality. furthermore, in rural oaxaca, the oaxaca fund initiative states that educational opportunities post-primary range from “inadequate to non-existent, with an increasing number of dropouts after 11”, and 90% of indigenous teachers do not have appropriate qualifications. some areas’ secondary schools are what the government coined “telesecondaries”; using classes recorded in the city and broadcast to isolated schools in order to ensure a minimum teaching standard. this initiative was started in the 1970s as an innovative way to address some of the issues of education quality. with regard to expanding he coverage in mexico, compared with the national average of twenty-six percent, only five percent of the oaxaca’s indigenous population reach middle or higher education, nevertheless, oaxaca has a perhaps surprising ratio of fifteen women to one man in he (ofi, n.d.). the un’s economic commission for latin american and the caribbean (eclac, 2013) found that despite indigenous women continuing to face gaps in access to he and employment in latin america, great progress has been made since 2000 (collyns, 2013). furthermore, upper-secondary level (sixth form college) is not free, creating a barrier to many oaxacan students wishing to progress to he. ensuring that education is established in isolated, rural areas is an issue in many developing countries; from physically building schools, to ensuring a minimum quality within schools in terms of trained teachers, acceptable teacher to student ratios, sufficient teaching and learning materials, relevant curriculum, and so on. as pointed out by tomasevski (2003), in all levels of education: “problems are inversely related to proximity to the national capital – the more distant children are, the less likely problems are to be addressed.” (p. 24) oaxacan teacher activism in response to the grave situation of education in oaxaca, oaxaca’s teachers decided to demand change. strikes began over twenty years ago with teachers asking for better salaries and working conditions, as well as free lunches, books, and uniforms for students (renique, 2006). the protests reached a crescendo in 2006 when a teachers’ encampment in the state capital’s center suffered a violent attack by the police, provoking public anger and a demand for the resignation of the governor due to corruption and violence. during his two-year rule thirty-six political assassinations as well as numerous arrests and “disappearances” created an atmosphere of discontent (renique, 2006). close to one million people participated in the protests. in response, the government created a website with the information of union leaders, politicians, and academics accused of ‘subversion’ against the government (renique, 2006). however, eight years later corruption and repression continues, as does the substandard level of education in rural oaxaca. the teachers’ union strikes are therefore maintained. a secondary school teacher explains the process: we hand in a petition to the state government each year outlining the necessities of our schools: ‘do you know, mr. governor, we need blackboards, we need uniforms for the children, we need books, office materials.’ and we give them a month to respond. in this month, the only thing the government gives us are small things, some crumbs that don’t cover what we’re asking for. so the union says that if they don’t respond, they’ll gather all the teachers, and when they are ignored again, that’s what they do to define the mobilization and the strike. shepherd 30 current issues in comparative education so, education stops in oaxaca and we begin to demand through mediums of protest. for example, by blocking roads, taking over governmental offices, taking control of the historic center; many things to aggravate society, to aggravate the government so that they respond to our petition. why? because this money coming from unesco from the federal government to the state government is most of the time given to something else, not education. the strike can last five days, ten days, fifteen days, a month, two months, three months, depending on the solution that the government wants to give. in 2006 teachers didn’t work for six months! six months, until we dragged out what we asked for and we went back to the classrooms. (interview, may 2013) this disruption affects not only people in the city center, but also the rural students who are missing classes. from the author’s questionnaire, it was revealed that, out of thirty self-selecting students, suspension of classes was common in primary schools for fourteen students; sixteen at secondary school level; and six in sixth form colleges, with the amount of time ranging from two to three days, to two to three months, the average being around one month per year. in contrast, students who had at some point attended a school in puebla (a neighboring state) reported no days of school missed at all. although some parents and teachers support the union’s methods, others are exasperated with the loss of school days. an incident in 2013 in a normally-peaceful community near where the author was living in oaxaca illustrates the frustration felt by some: parents fed up with teachers’ strikes reportedly seized some of the teachers and forcefully paraded them around the town square to make an example of them. students were also concerned about how the strikes adversely affect learning. one university student with a young child in primary school expressed frustration: the problem of education in oaxaca is the teachers that make students go without classes when they go on protest. they don’t like working and prefer to block the streets, the bad part is that despite this, teachers carry on receiving their pay and curiously they are the best paid in mexico (capitals in original) which is unjust, but they still plan dates to protest. these teachers that i’m referring to are mainly from primary and secondary, though i believe that it can happen at universities, with the exception of suneo (the system of universities discussed in this article). however, another student felt that the government was culpable: over time education has changed, now it’s difficult to get work unless you have a high level of education. oaxaca state’s education is one of the lowest in the country – the principle problem is the government, they don’t help but demand regardless. another student considered the teachers’ motives, but lamented the outcomes: i believe that the teachers will never change with their strikes, and those that end up affected are the students. they should give classes and find representatives to go to the strikes, instead all of them. nevertheless, it’s good that they think of us, but i think they should also think about those of us who want to study and continue studying. public opinion of the strikes is divided, being seen as either a movement for social justice, or a result of posturing, laziness or greed. this might represent a failure on the union’s part to effectively communicate its aims to the public, or alternatively exasperation with continued activism that is doing more harm than good in their eyes, as oaxacan students continue to score badly on standardized tests (krupnick, 2013), and classroom resources are still lacking in many areas (solorio, 2013). government versus teachers current issues in comparative education 31 despite some students complaining about the missed days, with some blaming the government, others the teachers, and some simply lamenting the boredom of staying at home looking after the farmland, a greater number of students complained about the lack of qualified teachers and the unfair way in which some teachers get their jobs “gifted” to them if they have family members who were teachers: education in oaxaca from primary to sixth form is very problematic as many teachers don’t have degrees, they just get the position from being children or family of teachers. these comments highlight that there are internal teacher training and professional development issues on which the teacher’s union should be focusing on in addition to the macro political and economic issues. a further salient issue with the inner functioning of the union is that teachers are rewarded for active participation: for example, a high number of days attending strikes may increase the likelihood that a teacher moves out of rural areas to eventually teach in a city (interview, june 2013). this reward system encourages extrinsic rather than intrinsic motivation for activism, which is surely damaging to the movement if teachers are not invested emotionally and intellectually. suneo “development universities”, oaxaca this section analyzes the government’s attempts to improve he coverage in rural oaxaca through providing scholarships at universities established in isolated areas. the author spent time at one such university and witnessed how the high standards aimed for were hindered by deficient pre-he education. it is also discernable from planning and management decisions that unrest in the oaxacan teachers’ union, combined with student protest elsewhere in the country, has led to reactionary policies that restrict teacher and student voice as well as involvement in bringing about change within the education system and, indeed, the wider political situation. the system of state universities of oaxaca (suneo) began in 1990 with the technical university of the mixteca (utm) in an attempt to create “first quality universities that are public and at the service of the least privileged mexicans in one of the most marginalized states of mexico”: high quality teaching and research promoting culture and development (vasquez, 2010, p. 142). the success of utm – which now serves around 3,000 students– led to the establishment of fourteen other campuses in the eight regions of oaxaca, which also provides bookstores and sometimes even clinics that serve the towns (suneo, n.d.). all universities offer full or partial scholarships, including food and board for students with the lowest incomes, with more than ninety percent of students receiving some kind of scholarship (suneo, n.d.). the rationale behind state-funded he places is so that “no student lacks the opportunity to study because of economic reasons” (utm, n.d., para. 2). suneo also state that their universities exist to “prevent the loss of human capital in the most deprived regions, which because of the lack of educational opportunities, watch the younger generations leave...” (vasquez, 2010, p. 151). in a similar tone, the philosophy for striving towards the highest standards of teaching and research quality is to: “contribute, in a globalized world, to the competitiveness of the economy of oaxaca and mexico” (vasquez, 2010, p. 151). from a human development outlook, the promotion and preservation of indigenous cultures, as well as national and universal culture is important for these institutions because “one cannot reduce the role of the university to a human resource factory for businesses” (vasquez, 2010, p. 134). the rector sees the universities as “a motor to generate an area of development” (vasquez, 2010, p. 84), with universities offering subjects in pertinent fields lacking development in each region such as marine studies by the coast, medicinal properties of plants in the bio-diverse shepherd 32 current issues in comparative education interior, and it across the state. this is a positive step for mexico’s development since the world bank (2013) reports that too many students graduate in fields not useful to the country. in oaxaca, “of the miniscule number of oaxacans who gain a university degree”, 1/5 become primary teachers due to the assurance of employment (krupnick, 2013, para, 9). the oecd reported that in latin america, “particular efforts are needed...to make tertiary education more relevant and accessible to more students” (toledo & ramos, 2013, p. 122), and this is what suneo is trying to accomplish. despite these commendable goals, there are aspects of the university system that are affected by substandard primary and secondary education, exacerbated by numerous days missed from school per year due to teachers’ strikes. furthermore, there are various policies that appear to be a reaction to prevent activism on campus. suneo universities’ physical layout is designed so that enough physical exercise is gained through “controlled travelling” moving from building to building (vasquez, 2010, p. 74). despite good intention, some areas of oaxaca can reach up to forty-five degrees celsius (approximately 110 degrees fahrenheit) and thus disrupt or make very uncomfortable travel to some universities. moreover, there is a lack of staff rooms, common rooms, and outdoor seating, reportedly stemming from a desire to prevent the development of latin america’s historicallycommon “critical universities” – institutions that are highly political and challenge unrepresentative governments (vasquez, 2010). suneo’s rector believes that a university “should commit itself to change, to social progress, and to justice. at the same time, it must avoid the other extreme of turning into a university of activists, of replacing its academic role with political militancy” (vasquez, 2010, p. 47). this worry derives from mexico’s history of not only teacher strikes but also student strikes (rhoads & mina, 2001; krupnick, 2013). while some view the politicization of higher educational institutions (heis) positively as a way to hold governments to account, it appears that others do not agree, instead wishing to suppress critical voices. due to the universities being situated outside of urban areas, suneo offers a competitive salary to attract professionals to teach, and to stay teaching, in rural parts of the state. suneo takes pride in its “strict work regime” demonstrated by a five year full-time schedule for university students and digital fingerprint check-in for professors to ensure that teachers work the hours they are paid for. there also exists a “prefect system” in which both teachers and students are tracked by employees who walk the campus to check that everyone is where they should be and are told to move along if seen talking for too long, either by the prefects or through cameras placed around the universities. in at least one of suneo’s universities, there are problems with its student population in terms of high dropout rates (zempoalteca et al., 2010; lopez, 2012), with a definition of a dropout as “a student who leaves school for any reason, except death, before completing school…” (us government definition cited in al-hroub, 2013, p. 2), leading the university to have a higher staff to student ratio, something not economically sustainable, despite providing employment in the area. every year, around 50 to 80 new students enter the university; however, while teaching there, the author attended two graduations with a total of 14 and nine students, respectively. zempoalteca et al. (2010) estimate at least a twenty percent dropout rate, per semester, at one such university. currently there are around 150 students comprising the whole student population despite the rector himself writing that a student population under 500 is economically unsound (vasquez, 2010). these figures illustrate the severity of the retention problem. in an interview a suneo university counselor expressed their opinion, explaining that dropout in first year is mainly due to the heavy workload, as well as lack of extra-curricular activities government versus teachers current issues in comparative education 33 (see also al-hroub, 2013). in years two to five, the counselor stated that reasons are usually either academic – students struggle with the gap between the academic requirements of secondary education and university or economic, as scholarships depend on students’ grade average and the full-time schedule interferes with students’ ability to find part-time subsistence work. these assertions are supported by zempoalteca et al.’s 2010 study into dropout rates at the same university. academic problems can be linked back to deficient basic education, and the heavy workload and lack of student clubs to a desire to have a high level of control over students in order to deter activism. there also exists a contradiction between the government offering free schooling at primary and lower-secondary school, scholarships at university, but providing no financial assistance at upper-secondary level, contributing to low enrolment figures. a secondary school teacher heavily involved in the teacher’s union describes: in the community where i work, normally for every 10 students in secondary, only about one or two enter sixth form, that’s all. the other eight go back to work in the countryside to look after their animals, or they go to the city to look for work, or to the us. they just don’t have enough money to go to sixth form... [and] they don’t see the usefulness [of the curriculum] for the reality in which they live. many students say: “why should i care about algebra if i don’t have the money to carry on studying? i’m only going to finish secondary and then go to look after my animals in the countryside.” (interview, may 2013) sawyer (2010) argues that only families receiving remittances can afford to send children to sixth form. in accordance, szekely (2009) agrees that high dropout rates in mexico are due to financial problems and a lack of relevance (in toledo & ramos, 2013). this planning disparity is a major obstacle in ensuring that low-income youths can access he; thus, as recommended by the world bank (2013), the state must offer “funds to support low-income students from primary school through to university” as well as a modernized curricula for the twenty-first century (krupnick, 2013, para. 23). in 2012, mexico set 2022 as a deadline for attaining compulsory universal coverage in upper-secondary education (toledo & ramos, 2013). success in this area in oaxaca would encourage students to continue to he, increasing enrolment rates. the problem remains, however, of offering high quality he in an area served by sub-standard primary and secondary education (krupnick, 2013). thus the quality of primary and secondary must be addressed simultaneously in order to give students the chance of making the most of their education, according to their human rights. conclusion the mexican government’s approach to improving he coverage in rural oaxaca provides quality institutions in areas without previous access to universities, offering free places to those that cannot afford it and could not have attended university otherwise. this is an approach that should be commended and replicated. however, if oaxaca does not remedy the inadequate state of its rural primary and secondary school education, its investment in he in the most isolated areas will be an expensive enterprise that benefits very few. the desperate need to improve oaxaca’s education is tangled in a “catch 22” situation: poor education fuels a rightfully angry teachers’ union that abandons classes to participate in prolonged protest strikes in a twenty-year long stand-off with the government, which have limited results. mere “crumbs” are offered to appease the union until next time. another university student participating in the questionnaire offered an analysis: negatives: there are still labor strikes by the union, they don’t tell us why, mainly by primary school teachers. then they don’t recover the missed classes and the student’s learning deteriorates and they fall behind in the knowledge that they should have. shepherd 34 current issues in comparative education positives: fortunately, they keep giving free books as well as uniforms and stationary. suggestions: make a new educational model where they push the student to learn more and where, if there is a strike, they make up the lost classes, also informing us about their motives. dialogue between teachers, parents, and students may thus be one way to ease tensions between teachers and the public, so that students and their families are aware of striking teachers’ motives if they are trying to push for educational benefits for the students, for example. current approaches to demanding change from the government that exclude student voice and are sometimes detrimental to students’ education must be replaced with an inclusive discussion about what is still needed and how to address desired changes. both the government and the teacher’s union need to change their tactics towards getting what they want in order to encourage educational development in oaxaca, as currently both are inadvertently hurting the young people whose interests they claim to represent. alison victoria shepherd is currently education college trainer, voluntary service overseas (vso), myanmar. email: allyvictoria.shepherd@yahoo.com. references al-hroub, a. (2013). perspectives of school dropouts' dilemma in palestinian refugee camps in lebanon: an ethnographic study. international journal of educational development. 33. lopez, c. (2012) suneo: universidades ricas con alta deserción. noticias. 29 august. retrieved november 6, 2013, from http://www.noticiasnet.mx/portal/oaxaca/general/educativas/114006-suneouniversidades-ricas-alta-desercion government of mexico (2012). pacto por mexico. retrieved june 2, 2013, from www.presidencia.gob.mx huerta, m.c. & goglio, a. (2013). combating poverty and inequality. in getting it right: strategic agenda for reforms in mexico. oecd development centre working paper no.319. katzenberger, e. (2001). first world, ha, ha, ha! city lights publisher: ny. krupnik, m. (2013). mexico faces some primary problems. new york times. march 28. retrieved september 12, 2013, from http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/mexico-facessome-primary-problems/2002747.fullarticle muñoz, h. (2013). latin america: the paradox of economic growth hand-in-hand with civic insecurity. november 12. undp. retrieved september 12, 2013, from http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ourperspective/ourperspectivearticles/201 3/11/12/am-rica-latina-la-paradoja-del-crecimiento-econ-mico-con-inseguridadciudadana.html national geographic (1996). emerging mexico: a special issue. august. 190(2): washington d.c. oaxaca fund initiative (online). retrieved november 6, 2013, from http://oaxaca.icfxchange.org/aboutoaxaca.php pezzini, m. (2013). the rationale for higher educational investment in latin america. august. oecd development centre working paper no.319. government versus teachers current issues in comparative education 35 quijano, j.l. & traffano, d. (2013). cañada: imagenes de una identidad. oaxaca. renique, g. (2006). oaxaca teachers’ strike sparks democracy movement. north american congress on latin america. 30 august. rhoads, r. & mina, l. (2001). the student strike at the national autonomous university of mexico: a political analysis. comparative education review. 45 (3). university of chicago. pp.334-353 sawyer, a. (2010). in mexico, mother's education and remittances matter in school outcomes. march. harvard school of education. retrieved november 6, 2013, from http://www.migrationinformation.org/feateachers’ unionre/display.cfm?id=775 sen, a. (1999). development as freedom. oxford university press: oxford solorio, p.n. (2013). in pictures: mexico’s poor rural schools. bbc news (online). retrieved november 27, 2013, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-picteachers’ unionres-24615329 suneo (online). sistema de universidades estatales de oaxaca. retrieved january 2, 2013, from http://www.suneo.mx/ toledo, d. & ramos, g.i. (2013). the challenges for the education system. getting it right: strategic agenda for reforms in mexico. oecd unicef (online). educación méxico. retrieved january 3, 2013, from http://www.unicef.org/mexico/spanish/educacion.html utm (online). universidad tecnológica de la mixteca. retrieved january 3, 2013, from http://www.utm.mx/ vasquez, m.s. (2009). a new model of university: universities for development. universidad tecnológica de la mixteca: oaxaca. world bank (online). (2013). mexico: in oaxaca, few graduate in the professions that are most needed. 14 february. retrieved november 6, 2013, from http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feateachers’ unionre/2013/02/14/mexico-oaxacauniversity-degrees-job-demands yang, l. &mccall, b. (2013). world education finance policies and higher education access: a statistical analysis of world development indicators for 86 countries. international journal of educational development. zempoalteca, a., hernandez, z. & pinacho, a. (2011). deserción escolar a nivel superior: caso unca. 13 foro estatal de investigación e innovación: oaxaca. pp. 265-8 volume 12(1) / fall 2009 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education guest editorial introduction 3 cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education andria wisler articles 6 rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education noah w. sobe 14 the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism: education for a shared humanity dale snauwaert 23 lonely business or mutual concern: the role of comparative education in the cosmopolitan citizenship debates anatoli rapoport 33 cosmopolitanism in civic education: exploring cross-national trends, 1970-2008 patricia bromley 45 study abroad and development of global citizen identity and cosmopolitan ideals in undergraduates karen hendershot and jill sperandio 56 educating the world: teachers and their work as defined by the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) helen harper and judith dunkerly 66 world-systems analysis in comparative education: an alternative to cosmopolitanism tom g. griffiths and lisa knezevic 76 smashing cosmopolitanism: the neo-liberal destruction of cosmopolitan education in eastcentral europe robert j. imre and zsuzsa millei essay 86 the evolution of a cosmopolitan identity: transforming culture shannan spisak 92 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 1 (2009) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden guest executive editor andria wisler visiting assistant professor, georgetown university, program of justice and peace executive editors cambria russell, andrew shiotani senior editors kathleen keenan, ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, cambria russell, michael schapira editors sarah flatto, michelle reddy, briana ronan, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors holly brewster, richard cheng, henan cheng, cara furman, anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, ghazala mehmood, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, carina omoeva, amritpal sandhu, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira style editors ruaridh macleod, ghazala mehmood, elizabeth morphis, amritpal sandhu web editor andrew shiotani associate web editors ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, ingrid gogolin, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2009 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 12(1): 86-91. essay the evolution of a cosmopolitan identity: transforming culture shannan spisak institute of international education this essay examines the evolution of cosmopolitanism in relation to the individual and the broader scope of society. cosmopolitanism seeks to affect changes in cultural norms through the cultivation of self-awareness, identity, empowerment, and agency. coupled with education, these powerful tools contribute to shaping a global society. examining identity through the lens of gender roles and patriotism, it becomes evident that identity can be fluid, and cosmopolitan values can be universally applied. cosmopolitanism transforms individual identity that, by extension, has the potential to transform the cultures and societies in which individuals participate. a core value of cosmopolitanism is that all humans have equal worth. the recognition of equality of the other begins through one’s development of self-awareness and acknowledgement of self-worth. from here, humans can influence and shape not only their personal identities but also, in extension, the identities of their cultures and societies. after all, from where do beliefs, traditions, and values originate if not from human nature, imagination, and construction? according to david hansen (2008), “social change and, in particular, social improvement are inconceivable without individual response, imagination, and action” (p. 21). in agreement with hansen’s assessment, this essay illustrates how a combination of self-awareness, education, empowerment, and agency provides a framework for the evolution of identity and social change. cosmopolitanism indicates “a way of being in the world, a way of constructing an identity for oneself that is different from, and arguably opposed to, the idea of belonging to or devotion to or immersion in a particular culture.” (waldron, 2000, p. 1). a cosmopolitan sensibility reflects an emotional or spiritual process of evolution. viewed as transformational practice, cosmopolitanism appreciates identity and culture as fluid concepts. such fluidity creates power to transform the relationship between the self and other and leads to the potential to affect change within the broader scope of society. self-awareness proves a challenge to cultivate but is a primary component in the evolution of an inclusive perspective. it is linked to self-identity, and together these concepts illustrate the process of becoming or being cosmopolitan. an assumption made about self-identity is that it is a static label or defined description of an individual. jason hill (2000) raises concerns about the idea of a fixed identity: the contemporary self is to a large extent mired within racial and ethnic paradigms that define it exclusively in such terms. that is, the self is predicated on several assumptions…. included among them is the assumption that racial and ethnic concepts of self are stable, objective, and closed. such views are also predicated on further assumption: that this sort of self is static and nonevolving. (p. 6) current issues in comparative education 87 essay: the evolution of a cosmopolitan identity dale snauwaert (2004) further illustrates hill’s concerns by explaining that the most prominent beliefs tied to self-identity are religious and political, and that identity can become so dependent upon these belief systems that a challenge to that system is experienced as a threat to one’s own identity. these apprehensions can be countered, however, by constructing self-identity as a fluid, dynamic process of discovery. the understanding that an identity evolves over time provides a sense of flexibility and freedom to “become” – to become more cosmopolitan, compassionate, more sensitive, a better person, and so forth. as hansen (2008) reminds us, “improvement in any domain of the human cannot emerge without individual initiative” (p. 22). the cultivation of awareness and initiative essentially represents the development of an identity. hill (2000) is uneasy with an individual’s blind acceptance and promotion of pre-existing behaviors and attitudes coupled with a lack of critical questioning of consequences, which he defines as “paradigms of static identity” – whether ethnic, racial, religious, cultural, geographical, gendered or otherwise (p. 6). defining one’s self, as well as a group or culture by pre-existent standards, creates the idea that one’s identity is static and, by extension, that the identity of the group or groups with which one associates self-identity are static as well. this can be problematic for many reasons, two of which are: 1) humans identify with or belong to more than one categorical group; 2) defining people and groups with fixed identities or characteristics encourages an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality. implicit in a fixed definition is inequality and a judgment between the ‘we’ and the ‘they.’ this dichotomy is a main consideration addressed in hill’s (2000) explanation that “cosmopolitanism is the attempt to get rid of a world in which others are truly noncitizens” (p. 8). as the separation between self (or self-identified group) and other (or other-identified group) contradicts a universal approach to humanity, it can lead to the continued perpetuation of stereotypes or discrimination against others because ‘it has always been done that way’; because traditions have dictated such behavior; or because it is the only way a system can function. labeling others as enemies and opposing or excluding them can create conflict that is identitybased, “where people hate others who belong to groups different than theirs” and others are perceived as ‘the enemy’ (harris, 2004, p. 11). such a distinction provides justification for viewing others as unequal or for treating them with less dignity. because humans identify with more than one group or subgroup, it is troublesome to structure one’s (or another’s) identity based on only one or a small number of pre-existing identities. for example, a muslim woman living in france belongs to multiple groups and might be defined in relation to her gender, religion, or nationality. some characteristics of these categories may actually be in conflict with each other. therefore, as individuals, humans begin to define themselves through a combination of traits adopted (or consciously chosen) from their related groups and sub-groups that reflect attitudes and personalities. this blending creates individuals who shape themselves with pre-existing identities adapted to suit their own uniqueness, and consequently have the potential to reshape the meanings of these categories. if a communal or familial expectation requires that a woman act or react in a certain manner, and a woman of that culture does not follow the norm, she remains a woman. by continuing to represent herself as a woman of that culture without conforming to the pressure on her, she re-defines how a woman of her culture exists and essentially who a woman of that culture can be. she has the power to contribute through the image she embodies, as perceived from within her own group as well as from outside. again, hill (2000) urges readers to “remember [that] we remake the world by individually remaking the images of our own selves” (p. 6). through self-awareness, self-worth, and self-confidence, humans have the power to influence those with whom they come into contact, encouraging them to re-examine and question their understanding of what or whom they represent. this approach can be fostered in any individual in any group or subgroup, and is 88 current issues in comparative education s. spisak one of the most valuable factors in transforming a culture of acceptance into a culture of change. humans choose to actively participate in culture by attempting to transform elements with which they are uncomfortable or passively accept the environment that has been structured for them. culture cannot exist in a vacuum. human participation is required to perpetuate the culture and the functioning of a human society; culture exists because of individual participation. as the cosmopolitan evolves, she becomes responsible for shaping the culture in which she belongs or with which she identifies. sankar muthu (2003) reminds us through his examination of kant’s writing that we “live in social and cultural worlds of our own making and remaking” (p. 135). this “remaking” is essential to the evolution of a cosmopolitan perspective and is the motivation behind the possibility of creating fluid cultural identities. as a cosmopolitan develops her sense of awareness, and ultimately how her self participates in culture, religion, patriotism, democracy, she cultivates a sense of agency. gerard delanty (2006) is confident in “the belief that human agency can radically transform the present in the image of an imagined future” (p. 38). he continues, “the micro dimension of cosmopolitanism concerns individual agency and social identities, that is aspects of cosmopolitanism reflected in internal societal change” (p. 42). this sense of agency represents the root of cosmopolitan progress and the key to the transformation of self and cultural identity into fluid concepts. change of self as well as change of culture is achieved through fulfilling a sense of empowerment. nanette page and cheryl czuba (1999) suggest that: …empowerment is a multi-dimensional social process that helps people gain control over their own lives. it is a process that fosters power (that is, the capacity to implement) in people, for use in their own lives, their communities, and in their society, by acting on issues that they define as important…empowerment also occurs at various levels, such as individual, group, and community (p. 3). monisha bajaj (2005) identifies the term agency as a combination of hope plus action, or the “belief in one’s present or future ability to improve social mobility and transform elements of one’s society” (p. 3). incorporating the process of empowerment with her interpretation of agency advocates the idea that through the cultivation of a sense of hope, one develops a feeling of empowerment, which in turn leads to action. the consolidation of hope, empowerment, and action allows agency the ability to compound, presenting opportunities to transform or re-make cultural norms. this process of transformation, sparked by empowerment and influenced by agency, has been occurring throughout human development, especially in relation to civil rights and social justice. in many cases, empowerment – especially in the political realm – is considered civic responsibility or participatory democracy, and is in certain forms already integrated within education systems and social dynamics. however, education does not often comprehensively promote self-awareness as the initiation to constructing a global consciousness. nor does it draw on the connections among self-awareness, cosmopolitanism, and social behavior. this lack of a key motivation inhibits individuals from grasping the value of universal human worth. using cosmopolitanism to specifically create the connection between self and other is a way to provide a consciousness that may be overlooked by focusing on each issue singularly. in this case, “other” can refer to gender, ethnic, racial, or political groups, or other living organisms – plants, animals, or the planet itself. cosmopolitanism draws meaning from the individual and other decisions and actions outward into all of the dimensions that those decisions and actions affect, and prevents current issues in comparative education 89 essay: the evolution of a cosmopolitan identity feelings of isolation or helplessness that arise with situations oppressive to others. education is a key component in promoting the transformation and evolution of individuals and culture. the notion of cosmopolitanism “as a mode of learning about …culture and intercultural relations” explored by fazal rizvi (2008) presents a strong case for the necessity to shift from “the current focus of educational policies and practices that remain largely locally defined” to those that engage the global (p. 21-29). rizvi’s perspective, which stems from increasing global connectivity, outlines an approach for cosmopolitan learning that examines “how cultures are transformed by [globalization], and how our social imagination plays a central role in these transformational processes” (p. 31). through rizvi’s work, it is evident that self-examination and reflexive understanding can be introduced through international education. he further determines that “instead of learning about cultures in an abstract manner, cosmopolitan learning involves pedagogic tasks that help students explore the criss-crossing of transnational circuits of communication” (p. 30). with a focus on cosmopolitan learning, the opportunity to transform culture expands as global interconnectivity increases. critics of cosmopolitanism fear that it competes with frames of reference that already exist, such as religion, patriotism, nationality, gender roles, or ethnicity; or that it promotes the homogenization of culture by reducing or removing unique traditional aspects of individuals and groups in favor of a shared universal ethos. these criticisms carry no weight when one uses cosmopolitanism as a medium through which to view already fixed notions of identity. it is possible that such preestablished frameworks can exist within the evolutionary scope of cosmopolitanism rather than in opposition to it. with the ability to essentially reshape the world in which they live, humans can therefore be expected to shift the pre-existing limitations in already established mind-sets to reflect a cosmopolitan sensibility through them instead of outside of them. an individual who has developed her sense of self-identity and recognizes an injustice being done or perpetuated in her environment can exercise her sense of empowerment to affect change. the agency that she develops as she takes action to influence such change can start with the remaking of her own reaction to the injustice. if she consistently and fearlessly continues to maintain her own reaction (which can be inconsistent with her cultural identity or the social majority), she will force others to become aware of her alternative perspective. as she encounters increasing numbers in her community, she will provide an example of transformed behavior for them to follow. whether a fellow citizen chooses to adopt her example of change or continues to exhibit the standard reaction is at his discretion. if fellow community members, too, are familiar with a cosmopolitan perspective, an introduction to a new approach or different view will cause them to re-evaluate their own attitude and reactions. the following examples will show that individuals affecting other individuals to induce a large scale societal change of acceptable practices can be effective across religious, political, and gender paradigms. gender roles in the united states have been traditionally defined with the female as homemaker and the male as financial provider. the systems and institutions in a capitalistic society have been developed to support and perpetuate this dynamic. however, it is becoming more socially acceptable for these roles (identities) to shift and transform. more women provide financial stability for their families while increasing numbers of men fill roles of homemaker and child caregiver. in response, the institutions functioning within this shifting dynamic are gradually remaking their cultures to respond and adapt to the demands that individuals have created. it has taken generations of women and men who hold personal beliefs that gender roles are not fixed or 90 current issues in comparative education s. spisak static to initiate this change. they have shaped their self-identities in response to internal values, generated empowerment within themselves and others, and used individual agency to collectively influence change over a component of culture that had been accepted as fixed. individual agency compounded as more individuals opened their minds to alternative possibilities in the family structure, and consequently gained enough momentum to begin a transformation of common culture. not every american holds the view that gender roles can be fluidly defined; however, enough individuals and communities do to reflect the use of a cosmopolitan sensibility towards pre-existing notions of identity rather than in conflict with them. the example of patriotism illustrates the possibility of cosmopolitanism embracing a concept that is often viewed as conflicting with it. citizens of any country can take a commonly held belief that the identity of a patriot lies in her ability to remain loyal to her country despite the cost, and to put her and her fellow citizens’ interests ahead of those of the foreigner. or, those same citizens can use a less exclusive definition of patriotism, and change the identity of what a patriot represents. individuals who believe an alternate description can be used to identify the patriot can remake their own identities to reflect this understanding. the revised conceptualization can transform the identity of a patriot into an individual who is loyal to her fellow citizens and their collective interests, while engaging concern for others and the way those others will be treated as a result of that loyalty. through the development of self-identity and self-awareness one may reach a sense of empowerment and deeper engagement with one’s culture. cultivating a sense of agency to influence the shaping and remaking of culture may be the most valuable and promising aspect of cosmopolitanism. it can be positioned as an umbrella containing already-existing frameworks that are often thought to be in conflict, thereby removing barriers to its evolution. the overall hope for cosmopolitanism is not a universal homogeneous culture, but rather space for multiple individuals, communities, cultures, and societies to exist harmoniously. its fundamentally transformative nature can be used to initiate a shift from a culture of accepting culture, to a culture of changing culture. using individual agency to change culture and its mainstream beliefs and practices can result in a world positively shaped by humans in the best interest of all humanity. the practice of cosmopolitanism encourages individuals to protect and nurture their environment as well as to cultivate spiritual and intellectual growth. references bajaj, m. (2005). conceptualizing agency amidst crisis: a case study of youth responses to human values education in zambia. unpublished doctoral dissertation, teachers college, columbia university (new york, usa). delanty, g. (2006). the cosmopolitan imagination: critical cosmopolitanism and social theory. british journal of sociology, 57(1), 25-47. hansen, d. (2008). the purposes of teacher education. in handbook of research on teacher education: enduring issues in changing contexts (pp.1-30). hillsdale, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. harris, i. (2004). peace education theory. journal of peace education, 1(1), 5-20. hill, j. d. (2000). becoming a cosmopolitan: what it means to be a human being in the new millennium. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. current issues in comparative education 91 essay: the evolution of a cosmopolitan identity muthu, s. (2003). humanity and culture in kant’s politics. in enlightenment against empire (ch. 4, pp.122-171). princeton, nj: princeton university press. page, n. & czuba, c. (1999). empowerment: what is it? journal of extension, 37(5), 1-6. retrieved july 27, 2007 from www.joe.org/joe/1999october/comm1.html. rizvi, f. (2008). epistemic virtues and cosmopolitan learning. the australian educational researcher, 35(1), 17-35. snauwaert, d.t. (2004). being peace, integral ethics, and peace education in a global society. paper presented at ipra/pec conference on july 7. sopron, hungary. waldron, j. (2000). what is cosmopolitan? journal of political philosophy, 8(2), 227-244. copyright © 2009 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 26, issue 1, winter 2024 the development of intercultural competence for teachers of english as a foreign language through an instructional design project yu-chieh wu university of hawaii at manoa most teaching pedagogies in english as a foreign language (efl) classes prioritize linguistic skills development over exploring how cultural factors shape language interpretation. to address the gap, this study developed and evaluated an instructional design project using the attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction (arcs) motivational design model combined with critical pedagogy through computer-mediated communication (cmc) tools. the purpose of this research is to enhance efl teachers’ intercultural competence. multimedia resources were used to capture participants’ attention, and news articles were selected to connect to their lived experiences. online forums were used to build their confidence, and intercultural activities provided satisfaction through practical engagement. critical literacy pedagogy guided the design of questions to encourage efl teachers to explore assumptions, challenge perspectives, and critically analyze language. data from 16 efl teachers’ questionnaires, online comments, and interviews indicated that task attractiveness and the online environment motivated efl teachers to develop critical literacy skills. future studies could explore additional strategies for integrating intercultural competence into efl teaching and examine how cultural dynamics within groups influence online communication. keywords: english as a foreign language, computer-mediated communication, arcs motivational design model introduction in recent years, the english as a foreign language (efl) classroom has become an important place for developing intercultural competence due to its possibility to allow students to explore diverse identities and cultures. however, traditional language acquisition approaches focus on linguistic competence, such as reading, speaking, listening, and writing skills, which cannot capture the complexity of sociocultural perspectives of language learning (ohta, 2000). to bridge this gap, o’dowd (2013) suggests that “online cultural exchanges” can be a great model to emphasize linguistic and intercultural competence. consequently, many training programs for efl teachers have adopted computer-mediated communication (cmc) to foster international dialogue and overcome the challenges of limited access to target cultures. to support teachers’ engagement in these training programs, the attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction (arcs) model developed by keller (1987) is popular in both educational research and practice, and there is a growing interest in applying this model in technology-enhanced learning environments (ma & lee, 2021). the arcs model’s © 2024, wu. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 26(1), 56-75. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en the development of intercultural competence for teachers of english as a foreign language through an instructional design project current issues in comparative education 57 emphasis on maintaining attention and relevance, boosting confidence, and fostering satisfaction plays a crucial role in sustaining efl teachers’ active participation. however, fostering intercultural competence requires more than motivation. deeper engagement with content that challenges perspectives and promotes critical thinking is necessary. to achieve this, critical literacy pedagogy was incorporated to facilitate authentic communication within the online module. critical literacy pedagogy, rooted in the educational philosophy of paulo freire (1970), has evolved to become an integral component of efl instruction. introduced in the 1990s as an innovative approach, critical literacy pedagogy has gained significant attention from scholars who advocate for incorporating social and political contexts into language curricula (pennycook, 2001). this approach prompts efl teachers to move beyond simple information exchange and progress more along the lines of thinking, “why do we want to communicate?” this method encourages participants to think critically about language choices and their implications, promoting awareness beyond literal meanings. recognizing the gap in traditional efl teaching pedagogies, which predominantly focus on linguistic skills without adequately addressing the influence of cultures on language interpretation, this study develops and evaluates an online professional development module aimed at integrating language learning and intercultural competence through cmc tools. the two research questions that guide this research are: 1. how do the online modules influence participants’ motivation? 2. how do the online modules influence participants’ intercultural competence? this study seeks to address these questions by examining the effectiveness of an online professional development module in enhancing efl teachers’ motivation and intercultural competence. instructional design project to begin, i developed an online professional development module on the free website builder wix. the module incorporates diverse voices and narratives, guided by critical questions designed to prompt reflection and deeper engagement. by presenting varied perspectives, the module provided efl teachers with opportunities to broaden their understanding of intercultural competence, fostering a more nuanced comprehension of language in both personal and societal narratives. by analyzing the participants’ experience in the module, this study seeks to expand knowledge of integrated language learning and intercultural competence, to demonstrate how efl modules can be effectively implemented using cmc tools. the arcs model was developed and validated more than 30 years ago in both face-toface and online environments, and the online module was developed with an eye to the components of arcs. the module captured efl teachers’ attention using multimedia materials, including international news articles, social movement photos, and short clips. to ensure relevance, lesson content featured stories sourced from newspapers, making it more applicable to efl teachers’ experiences. by sharing collective knowledge on the wu current issues in comparative education 58 public forum, participants are expected to build confidence in integrating intercultural topics into efl classes and to find satisfaction in interacting with peers from different countries. images that can convey the project’s key ideas were selected. for instance, mcarthur’s universal corrective map of the world (1979) illustrated how visual representations and textual information construct our perspectives. each lesson in the module opens with an introduction, leads participants through an exploration of materials, and closes with an expansion of lessons learned. different purposes and objectives were broken down for participants to achieve (figure 1). the objectives of the lessons on intercultural competence for efl teachers are as follows: • lesson 1-language to ideology: determine how languages influence ideologies • lesson 2-ideology to implicit bias: determine how ideologies influence implicit bias • lesson 3-implicit bias to identities: determine how implicit bias influence identity • lesson 4-perspectives: recognize how cultures influence language interpretation to the same information each lesson is structured in three phases: introduction, exploration, and expansion. in the introductory phase, visual images and tutorials get participants’ attention. in this phase, the key learning goals are to (1) recognize how language is influenced in dominant and non-dominant cultures and (2) identify how language and identity are constructed. in the exploration session, theoretical concepts are delivered through academic readings. the learning goals in the exploration phase are to (1) identify the impact of explicit and implicit bias and (2) determine how implicit bias is formed through reading. the expansion session provides a real-life news event for participants to apply concepts from the lesson. in this phase, the goals are to (1) explore the idea that languages sometimes encode meanings that can be difficult to access in other languages from a news article and (2) evaluate how cultural values guide people to form different communication norms. this online module aims to explore how questions grounded in critical literacy pedagogy can facilitate meaningful online communication among efl teachers. this approach enables efl teachers to adopt an active role in the reader-author relationship, fostering deeper understanding from a critical perspective that questions, examines, and disputes the power relations between readers and authors (mclaughlin & devoogd, 2004). for example, the first lesson introduced the word “oriental,” followed by a tutorial about why this word had a negative connotation and was removed from the federal law. in the exploration session, participants explored the difference between “exotic” and “asian” through images. another lesson involved an academic reading on implicit bias and how language reflects one’s mind. during the expansion session, participants analyzed the usage of the term “immigrant” after reading two authentic news articles, one from taiwan and the other from germany, which was followed by online discussions. throughout these lessons, analyzing and interpreting the textual and visual content presented in this module is viewed as a process of interaction not only between the reader, the author, and the information but also between the reader and society. this approach allows for a more engaging method of fostering cultural understanding and communication. the development of intercultural competence for teachers of english as a foreign language through an instructional design project current issues in comparative education 59 figure 1. content map literature review intercultural competence is widely recognized as an individual’s capacity to operate effectively in diverse cultural contexts (chen & starosta, 1998). hammer et al. (2015) describe it as the capability to think and act in ways appropriate to different cultures. jia (1997) suggests that intercultural competence is sensitivity and tolerance to cultural differences, dealing with cultural differences flexibly, constructing awareness and competence of the target culture, and helping participants communicate appropriately in an intercultural setting. intercultural competence is paramount for english as a foreign language (efl) teachers, as it involves understanding, respecting, and effectively communicating with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. this intercultural competence enables efl teachers to create inclusive learning environments that acknowledge and celebrate cultural differences, thereby offering an alternative model in language education (fang & baker, 2018) and enriching the educational experience for students. previous materials for efl teachers’ education tend to focus on cultural knowledge such as literature, artwork, customs, history, or taboo. disregarding their unique cultural differences, these stereotypical and generalized cultural facts may lead to the prejudgment and categorization of individuals, resulting in misunderstandings and potential conflicts as it overlooks the complexities and nuances of individual cultural identities (cojocaru, 2023). therefore, instructional designers should incorporate authentic situations into lessons and encourage efl teachers to explore intangible cultural aspect wu current issues in comparative education 60 such as attitudes, assumptions, beliefs, perceptions, norms, and values in their efl classes (chlopek, 2008). effective implementation of intercultural competence for efl teachers can be accomplished using computer-mediated communication (cmc) tools to foster online intercultural communication and intercultural communicative competence (bennacer, 2019). this increased engagement through cmc tools is attributed to the shift in participants’ roles from passive recipients to active topic contributors, negotiators, and information providers (yandell, 2013). to sustain such engagement, one critical component is motivation, which drives participants to fully and effectively engage in intercultural exchange. motivation itself comprises both internal factors as well as external factors. gardner and lambert (1972) identify two key motivation types in foreign language learning. integrative motivation is driven by the aspiration to become a member of society, and instrumental motivation is motivated by practical goals such as securing a desirable job and gaining social recognition. lalleman (1996) criticizes this binary classification of motivation, arguing that it oversimplifies the concept. madrid (2021) further refines the definition, describing motivation as a series of processes that stimulate, direct, and maintain behavior. it is a dynamic, cyclical, and process-oriented model of motivation, which takes into account three motivational phases (preactional, actional and postactional). warschauer (1996) highlights several motivational factors associated with using cmc tools, including the ability to communicate with speakers of diverse mother tongues, feeling empowered and less threatened interacting with others, and making students feel more control over their learning. meunier (1998) extends this analysis by examining motivation in online chat sessions, considering elements such as anxiety, risk-taking, reaction to teaching styles, and motivation. this research aims to identify factors that motivate efl teachers to engage in authentic online communication and explore evidence that demonstrates the development of intercultural competence. understanding motivation’s multifaceted role in intercultural exchange and language learning is key to developing effective teaching and engagement strategies. by leveraging insights into how motivation operates within different educational and communication contexts, educators can better design activities and interactions that sustain long-term involvement. among current motivational models, keller’s (1984) attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction (arcs) model offers a comprehensive framework for understanding motivation by encouraging active participation and meaningful learning. it has been frequently used in web-based, online, and blended learning (aşıksoy & özdamlı, 2016; mirzaei et al., 2024) and emerged as a mainstream method in the post-pandemic era. fang et al. (2023) reviewed garzón et al.’s (2020) classification of pedagogical strategies within the context of the arcs model, identifying five types of pedagogies: (1) collaborative learning, (2) inquiry-based learning, (3) situated learning, (4) project-based learning, and (5) multimedia learning. the review indicated that the majority of the studies (77%) implemented multimedia learning to facilitate student learning. for example, lin and wang (2023) explored the impact of integrating the arcs model into a flipped classroom for efl learners’ writing. the experimental group used a hybrid and face-to-face approach, while the control group implemented face-to-face instruction. results showed that the arcs-flipped group performed better in writing and reported higher motivation. the development of intercultural competence for teachers of english as a foreign language through an instructional design project current issues in comparative education 61 learners appreciated the flexibility, learner-centeredness, interactivity, and collaboration of the flipped model, which enhanced their engagement and writing performance. based on the previous review, this self-designed module incorporates multimedia learning to enhance motivation. while fostering motivation through cmc tools enhances engagement, achieving intercultural competence requires strong media literacy to critically evaluate and engage with content in a meaningful way. in the digital era, participants may struggle to identify credible information and thoughtfully engage with diverse perspectives. zuckerman (2014) introduces the concept of “participatory civics,” a framework where individuals use participatory media to engage in civic activities. his research highlights that individuals often prefer engaging with like-minded online groups, which can limit exposure to differing opinions and reduce acceptance of alternative viewpoints. this presents challenges for fostering meaningful civic engagement in a diverse and competitive online landscape. to address these issues, this study’s online module is designed not only to impart structured knowledge but also to help efl teachers perceive the dynamic nature of reality across different cultural contexts. through cultural comparisons, efl teachers can potentially become more aware of the cultural components embedded in language and imagery, thereby enhancing their intercultural competence through critical literacy pedagogy. originating from critical social theory, critical literacy pedagogy encourages students to engage with texts in an active and reflective manner, fostering a deeper understanding of power dynamics, inequality, and social justice issues present in human interactions. critical literacy pedagogy has recently been considered an inclusive educational approach (sullivan, 2017) and has gained increasing attention. critical literacy involves reading and understanding content as well as analyzing, critiquing, and responding to it in a way that considers multiple viewpoints and cultural nuances. such an approach might reduce anxiety by reinforcing the social dimension of learning (selinger, 1998). researchers have further supported critical literacy pedagogy, advocating for its integration as a tool to promote social justice in language education (riasati & mollaei, 2012). the main difference between critical literacy pedagogy and other dominant pedagogies lies in their conceptualization of language, knowledge, module, and content. mainstream pedagogies often regard language as a direct reflection of reality and view knowledge as universal. the module content is typically determined by the author’s authority this often results in presenting information in binary terms: such as right or wrong, fact or opinion, neutral or biased. on the other hand, critical literacy pedagogy argues that language shapes the lenses through which reality is understood. if the perception of language changes, the concepts of identity, culture, and communication also change. this approach views knowledge as inherently incomplete since each person makes sense of the world through their different cultural backgrounds and experiences. the content of this study’s module aims to help efl teachers explore the underlying assumptions and implications of the text. in table 1, andreotti (2009) presents general differences in question types between traditional and critical literacy pedagogies in efl classes, emphasizing the need for more critical and reflective approaches. wu current issues in comparative education 62 table 1. question types traditional pedagogies critical literacy pedagogies does the text represent the truth? is it fact or opinion? is it biased or neutral? is it well-written/clear? who is the author, and what level of authority/legitimacy does he or she represent? what does the author say? how are words interpreted differently? what are the assumptions behind the statements? where are they from? what/whose understandings do they present? how was this understanding constructed? who decides what is real in this context? in whose name and for whose benefit? note. adapted from andreotti, v. (2009). global education in the 21st century': two different perspectives on the post-of postmodernism. international journal of development education and global learning, 2(2), 5-22. gustine (2018) conducts a mixed-methods study involving a survey and follow-up focus group discussions to examine english teachers’ understanding of critical literacy pedagogy. the study sample includes 21 english teachers from a teacher education university. the quantitative data from the questionnaires provide an overview of the teachers’ knowledge of critical literacy as an approach to english language teaching, and the qualitative insights from the focus group discussion reveal that experienced teachers lack sufficient knowledge of critical literacy as a methodological approach. overall, the research shows that incorporating critical literacy pedagogy into their classrooms can enhance their students’ engagement with texts and foster critical thinking skills. asanti and syamdianita (2017) examine how extensive reading is a supplementary activity that can enhance students’ critical literacy in an efl context. the guidance through critical pedagogy motivates students to engage with texts, question assumptions critically, relate content to global issues, and develop a nuanced understanding of human perspectives and textual intentions. intercultural competence is vital for efl teachers to foster inclusive learning environments. while motivation through the arcs model supports engagement, strong media literacy is needed for critical content analysis. to explore how these concepts can be effectively implemented for efl teachers, the following methods section outlines the design and approach used to integrate the arcs model and media literacy strategies into the instructional framework. methods recruitment and participants the goal of this research is to evaluate the impact of the self-designed professional development online module on participants’ intercultural competence and motivation. this research targeted a specific group: efl teachers at secondary schools. efl teachers were recruited via recruitment email and confirmation email with a consent form and an the development of intercultural competence for teachers of english as a foreign language through an instructional design project current issues in comparative education 63 in-person invitation. the recruitment process for this study was carried out using convenience sampling, an approach selected for its efficiency in achieving the required sample size. this method facilitated a relatively quick and straightforward process of gathering participants. i had access to several academic listservs through my affiliation with the university of hawaii (uh), where these academic listservs serve as vital platforms for connecting scholars, students, and educators across disciplines. emails were sent to potential participants, and all the teachers who agreed to participate in the study did so willingly, ensuring an ethically sound approach to recruitment. the inclusion criteria (table 2) were centered on the professional status of the participants, specifically selecting efl teachers. this criterion was crucial to ensure that the participants had a direct and practical understanding of the challenges and nuances of teaching efl. table 2. efl teachers’ inclusion criteria cognitive physiological • has basic computer literacy skills • has little to no knowledge about incorporating the english language with intercultural competence • has moderate comprehension of the english language • has knowledge and/or experience completing online surveys • is over the age of 18 years old • can be any gender • is physically and mentally able to use computers affective social • mentally prepared to participate in professional development • open to possibilities to innovate english classes • able to engage and communicate with the researcher • can test an online module individually the selection was based on criterion sampling, as per dornyei (2007), focusing on participant teachers who met predetermined criteria relevant to our study. these efl teachers were over 18, and the cognitive, physiological, affective, and social domains were used to screen the target population's characteristics. sixteen voluntary efl teachers (14 females and 2 males), mostly aged 25-30, were recruited from the second language studies department at the university of hawaii at manoa. these participants came from six different countries: taiwan (4), japan (3), china (2), korea (1), vietnam (1), and the usa (5). two do not have teaching experience, nine have 1-5 years of teaching experience, three have 6-10 years of teaching experience, and two have more than 10 years of teaching experience. two participants joined one-on-one sessions with me, while the other fourteen tested the online lessons individually. procedures wu current issues in comparative education 64 the participants were contacted via recruitment email. after they replied to the email, the researcher sent the confirmation letter to arrange a mutually agreed time to meet on the uhm campus. the link to the website, the consent form, and the purpose of the research were also included in the confirmation letter. when the researcher met with the participants, they opened the website link using their personal computers. each participant was guided to click on the pre-lesson questionnaire to fill out their data. the consent form attached to the pre-lesson questionnaire informed participants about the steps, the intent of the study, and potential risks. once the participants hit the “next” button, it implied that they understood and agreed to participate in the research. the personal data were used specifically to determine the impact of this online module and for educational purposes only, and it will be kept private. after participants completed the questionnaire, they spent around 45 minutes finishing the three lessons and interacting with other international participants online. at the end of the lesson, retrospective survey questions were used to examine participants’ motivation in achieving intercultural competence. the researcher also interviewed participants for any feedback regarding online lessons. data collection data collection was conducted both in person and remotely, accommodating the varying circumstances and locations of the participant teachers. this approach was crucial in ensuring a broad and inclusive collection of data. this research was designed to delve deeply into the teachers’ experiences and perceptions regarding the online professional development module and their intercultural competence. evaluation instruments it is important to unpack the complexities of motivation because the course design and learning environment should all be considered. this research utilized quantitative and qualitative measurements to examine which factors increase or decrease motivation. a pre-lesson questionnaire with eight questions and a retrospective survey with 20 questions developed through google forms were used to evaluate the impact of this online module on motivation. the retrospective assessment tool was used to decrease the “response-shift bias” in pre-post surveys and effectively eliminate incomplete data sets that usually occur in pre-post tests (pratt, mcguigan, & katzev, 2000). the study employed a preand post-test design; however, the instruments used in these stages differed significantly. the pre-test comprised a concise questionnaire, whereas the posttest utilized a more extensive survey. this discrepancy raises concerns about the comparability of the data collected, particularly regarding the measurement of arcs factors. this research collected information from one-on-one interviews, online comments, and open-ended questions. data access was restricted to the researcher, and all qualitative responses were anonymized by removing any identifying details to ensure individual responses could not be traced back to participants. this approach safeguarded participant privacy while allowing analysis of demographic trends in teaching practices. results most participants understood that the english language could incorporate intercultural issues (4.9/5). however, when it comes to inviting students to join social events, efl the development of intercultural competence for teachers of english as a foreign language through an instructional design project current issues in comparative education 65 teachers scored the lowest (3.4/5). to understanding this result, it is useful to reference nõmm’s three components in achieving intercultural competence: cognitive, affective, and operational (2012). cognitive components focus on cultural differences and their impact on intercultural interaction. affective components are empathy and the ability to see the world from different perspectives and overcome stereotypical reactions to another culture. operational components are the ability to help solve the failure in intercultural communications. like mainstream teaching pedagogies, the result showed that participants focused more on the cognitive domain (i.e., english can incorporate intercultural issues. i incorporate intercultural issues into english classes), while skill and affective domains were focused less upon (i.e., i taught students how cultures influence opinions. i invited students to participate in social events. i encourage students to comment on the news.) motivation in incorporating intercultural issues in efl classes this research explores to what extent this online module influences participants' motivation to become interculturally competent. in the overall module design, most participants thought this module was presented in an interesting manner (4.6/5) however, when asked if they felt prepared to incorporate intercultural issues into their english classes, the score was relatively lower (4/5). this may result from the fact that this online module was designed for professional development rather than a teaching resource website. much of the existing motivation research focuses on teachers’ roles and responsibilities in stimulating students’ motivation. in contrast, this self-paced professional development module is designed to empower teachers to incorporate intercultural issues in efl classes. this study utilized the arcs model to determine whether participants increased their attention to intercultural issues, relate these issues to their lives, be confident in promoting intercultural issues, and feel satisfied during the process. the result showed notable improvements in all arcs model domains from preto post-assessment. the attention domain demonstrated the most significant increase, rising from a pre-score of 4.1 to a postscore of 4.7, representing a 14.6% increase. the relevance domain showed substantial improvement, moving from a pre-score of 3.8 to 4.4, marking a 15.8% increase. in the confidence domain, scores increased from 3.75 to 4.6, a 22.7% increase, indicating that participants felt more assured in discussing language and identity after engaging with the module. the satisfaction domain, while scoring the lowest, still increased from 3.7 to 4.2, showing a 13.5% increase. these findings illustrate overall growth in participants’ motivation and readiness to engage with intercultural content after completing the module. these post-test results illustrate how participants’ engagement with the module translated into tangible improvements across all domains. the high score in the attention domain (4.7/5) was evident in their active participation and thoughtful comments during online discussions, showcasing an increased focus on intercultural issues. for instance, participants used nuanced language and demonstrated awareness in their responses, reflecting their attention to detail and understanding of complex cultural topics. the wu current issues in comparative education 66 strong relevance score (4.4/5) was supported by participants’ ability to connect the module’s content to their personal experiences. this was exemplified by responses regarding “asian food.” one participant mentioned that “asian food” in the united states often refers to chinese cuisine, whereas in england, it usually means indian food. the confidence score (4.6/5) suggested that participants felt more empowered to discuss intercultural topics. this newfound confidence could be seen in their willingness to contribute diverse viewpoints and initiate conversations on language and identity, indicating that the module effectively bolstered their confidence in navigating intercultural dialogue. the satisfaction domain, which scored the lowest (4.2/5), reflects that as a motivational component, it often deepens over time with continued practice and reflection. in the qualitative analysis, data were clustered into recurring patterns. task attractiveness and the online environment emerged as important themes in the feedback. this research initially focuses on comments related to the overall attractiveness of the task, as attractive tasks are known to enhance intrinsic motivation. one participant indicated that the module was well-designed and expressed favorable attitudes toward learning other topics such as language and gender equality. another participant shared that the module encouraged deeper reflection on often-overlooked issues and expressed interest in adapting content from the website for personal use. besides module design, participants offered suggestions specifically on the instructions provided within the module that can support a more effective learning experience: i think it would be good to start with a very simple, factual definition first-one with no inherent positive or negative biases--and then elicit opinions or imagery from the students to identify any biases or preconceived notions they may have. participants not only commented on the overall website design but also actively engaged in thinking about how to make these ideas applicable in the efl classroom. secondly, the online environment is crucial in discussing sensitive intercultural issues and investigating the roles of confidence and anxiety in this online setting. macintyre et al. (1998) determine that confidence or a perceived lack of confidence can influence willingness to communicate. for example, one participant mentioned that the anonymity of online comments allows them to conceal their identity, thereby increasing their confidence when discussing sensitive issues. on the other hand, another participant mentioned that the lack of identifiable context made it difficult to fully understand others’ perspectives. this data shows that participants were concerned about the safety and trustworthiness of this online group, contributing to a certain level of anxiety in interacting with others. interestingly, one participant stated that as an efl teacher, they feel obligated to think the right way, deterring them from exchanging their genuine viewpoints. the participant shared, “i am not sure whether people will judge me the way i think. as an efl teacher, i feel that i need to be the model of my students and convey the right concepts.” this anxiety may have been exacerbated by the absence of an online the development of intercultural competence for teachers of english as a foreign language through an instructional design project current issues in comparative education 67 team-building activity prior to the module. to address these concerns, future research could incorporate critical literacy pedagogy that encourages learners to share their constructed knowledge with peers. enhanced learning of deep culture this online module utilized two international news articles and images about immigrants from taiwan and germany as authentic teaching materials. international news draws on stories from diverse and global sources, which can lead learners to identify deep-rooted social aspects and social struggles that they may not be aware of (frank, 2013). visual and textual materials with different political or cultural perspectives can be a rich source to promote interculturalism. to arouse participants’ attention to assumptions and implications, critical literacy pedagogy was used in designing questions. the guiding questions focus on discovering where the assumption comes from instead of a fixed statement. for example, the instructional design asked questions like “how is the word immigrant interpreted differently in different countries’ contexts?” rather than “does the text represent the truth?” and “what are the assumptions behind the use of the word immigrant?” instead of “is this statement a fact or opinion?” the questions interestingly illicit participants’ multiple perspectives: in the taiwanese news article, the word immigrant was neutral and portrayed as the correct technical term. however, in the german news article, ozil felt immigrant was othering and it threatened his identity as a german. ... i don't see these two interpretations as very different. in both cases, people labeled as immigrants are viewed as perpetual foreigners… it isn't necessary to label them as immigrants every time we refer to them. bartlett (2005) describes this type of critical dialogue as a “pedagogical process” where participants actively engage in learning through discussion and debate of sociopolitical realities. this highlights how an online forum can expose participants to diverse perspectives through international dialogue. another participant compared cultural differences,“calling someone an immigrant might be disrespectful, but i always remember feeling distinctly bothered when i learned the color black in spanish, was the word "negro” for a comprehensive education on the word, it is not complete without the proper context.” in this example, “negro” in spanish refers to dark color rather than a negative connotation. this illustrated how a particular worldview was constructed by language and history. these insights modify “the interactional habits that enact authoritarian relations,” (shor, 2012) and make critical literacy possible. this online intercultural setting allowed participating efl teachers to communicate with others whose first language, culture, and ethnicity were different from their own, and it enhanced their intercultural competence. still, language learning may include both word and contextual levels, and it can be challenging to design materials to capture the complexity of deep culture. two participants mentioned, wu current issues in comparative education 68 although it is important to use politically correct language in efl classes, what's more important is the language user's intention. that is, it would probably be fine if sometimes politically incorrect language is used without the intention to degrade others. ...i would tell students that "african american" is correct and "black" is also correct. different people want to be called different things. also, it is okay for some people to use a word and not for others because context matters. some words are just simply outdated, like "stewardess" instead of flight attendant... besides using interactive dialogic approaches to engage participants online, future research might consider creating flexible tasks and tools for knowledge sharing. as it is not realistic for an instructional designer to develop materials that can cover different cultural components, it is important to give participants more control in contributing their own cultural knowledge to this module. raised attention to language choices according to dörnyei (2001), one self-motivational strategy is metacognitive control. this refers to conscious techniques used by the learner to monitor their own learning. this module designed several tasks for participants to reflect upon the topic of language and identity to motivate them to pay greater attention to language choices. for example, japanese, especially older people regard the term "immigrant" in a negative way. they view immigrants as outsiders coming into japan, but this is just personal observation. i think in the same way as you did. when i studied history, i learned that i am an immigrant, and taiwan is an immigrant society. although i am quite aware that no picture will be able to depict the immigrants, the education and advertisements in taiwan might shape my image of an immigrant. human relations are built around language, and efl class is about using english that enables relations with others who are different from us. therefore, efl classes should provide opportunities to reflect on the language we use and its effect on others. the conversations above provide evidence that participants have become more aware of their linguistic choices. for example, one participant from japan pointed out that he can’t speak for all japanese people to avoid overgeneralization. another participant mentioned that her viewpoints may be shaped by advertisements in the media. these participants reflected on their feelings and tried to establish fair relationships by choosing proper language. the attitude people have when they interact with each other also serves as evidence of learning about deep culture. raised attention to teaching intercultural issues the development of intercultural competence for teachers of english as a foreign language through an instructional design project current issues in comparative education 69 efl teachers also became more mindful of intercultural issues in efl classes. after the module, participants admitted to not paying attention to these intercultural issues enough in efl classes. three speakers stated that helping students become more aware of other cultures is important: it's important to teach the most commonly used politically correct words, but even more so to teach the reasons behind why certain words are used or not used--particularly when a word is acceptable to some groups but politically incorrect when used by others. normally i've seen efl teachers often just explain the meaning of the word, but don't go further into the contexts (good and bad) where the words are used. it is necessary to teach students politically correct words for the purpose of broadening their knowledge. however, it is necessary to inform students about the possible confusion and the unintended consequences that these words might bring in a real conversation. the data indicates that efl teachers have become more mindful of incorporating intercultural issues in their classes. the attention serves as a safeguard against potential negative attitudes students may encounter when they are exposed to a new set of norms and helps them appreciate cultural differences. discussion and implications this instructional design project aimed to motivate efl teachers to cultivate intercultural competence through an online module, so content and concepts related to values, attitudes, and actions are provided. by integrating the arcs motivational design model into an online professional development module, the study provides a unique approach to cultivating efl teachers’ intercultural competence. korkmaz and korkmaz (2013) suggest that decontextualized practices cannot effectively achieve language acquisition. creating context helps take learners’ attention to the lesson. therefore, teachers can incorporate lessons from these online modules to perceive language holistically, advocating for meaningful contexts that enrich language practice. in answering the first research question, the results show that two factors impacted participants’ motivation for this online module: task attractiveness and the online environment. using authentic materials enabled efl teachers to relate intercultural issues to efl classes. multi-dimensional resources such as textual, audial, and visual information were used to fit the needs of learners in the digital era. after taking this module, the result of the arcs model showed that this module drew participants’ attention, related their experiences, and improved their confidence and satisfaction in incorporating english language and intercultural issues, thereby fostering a deeper understanding of cultural dynamics in language learning. as for the online environment, the online module maximizes participants’ opportunities for intercultural learning by wu current issues in comparative education 70 using cmc tools to overcome distance and construct social environments. foreign language learners have limited opportunities to interact with people from the target culture (jin, 2015), so cmc tools can facilitate a shift in focus from formal traditional classrooms to long-distance, informal, and intercultural collaboration. these studies collectively highlight how cmc tools and online modules can maximize opportunities for intercultural learning in english language acquisition, facilitating the development of intercultural competence. with the possibility of constructing knowledge online, this interactive instructional design may decrease participants’ anxiety about online tools and contribute to their intercultural competence. the second research question, which focuses on participants’ intercultural competence, is crucial to understanding how different values can shape english language interpretation. to explore this, this research used critical literacy pedagogy to design guiding questions for discussion. critical literacy pedagogy is closely connected to intercultural learning, as both approaches emphasize engaging with and questioning diverse perspectives. although it is regarded as an inclusive educational method for understanding media sources meaningfully, critical pedagogy is often under-practiced in efl settings (gustine, 2018). in this research, participants compare other’s viewpoints to their own culture’s viewpoint. rather than focusing on the surface definition of the words “orient,” “exotic,” and “immigrant,” critical literacy pedagogy encourages participants to explore underlying assumptions, implications, and socio-cultural contexts of language use. for example, “how do different usages of the word immigrant affect me?” or “where do i see evidence of this intercultural issue in my community?” unlike traditional efl teaching methods primarily focusing on enhancing linguistic skills, this study explores the intersection of culture, politics, and language interpretation. through critical dialogue, participants could capture the non-tangible intercultural components and examine themselves from multiple perspectives. integrating critical literacy pedagogy into efl instruction not only improves linguistic competence but also promotes intercultural competence. it encourages learners to critically analyze and question language, viewing it as a tool for conveying cultural and social meanings. this research paper contributes to the existing literature on critical literacy pedagogy in efl classes on intercultural competence. this research can prepare teachers to talk about intercultural issues in their english classes and make language input more relevant to learners through contextualization. moreover, it is important for teachers to refine their pedagogies and practices to meet the academic and social needs of a culturally diverse student population. this refinement process involves a deep understanding of the cultural dynamics within the classroom (brown-jeffy & cooper, 2011). newton (2016) introduces intercultural communicative language teaching as a culturally responsive, socially sensitive pedagogy oriented towards making the most of linguistic and cultural diversity in the efl classroom. this research encourages teachers to reflect on languages and cultures to effectively address interculturality in their teaching practices. this approach emphasizes the role between languages and cultures, thereby enhancing students’ comprehension of cultural similarities and differences. it requires a reflective approach that shifts the emphasis away from transmitting cultural facts and towards the development of intercultural competence for teachers of english as a foreign language through an instructional design project current issues in comparative education 71 exploring how culture is embedded and expressed in communication. limitations one limitation of this research is the recruitment and sampling strategy employed. while it is efficient to gather participants using convenience sampling, it may not provide a comprehensive representation of the broader efl teacher population. this approach could potentially limit the generalizability of the findings to other contexts or populations. furthermore, the participant demographic, primarily consisting of teachers from a specific academic institution with varying teaching experience, introduces another layer of constraint. their experiences and perceptions might not fully encapsulate the diverse challenges and opportunities efl teachers face in integrating intercultural competence into their teaching practices. additionally, the reliance on self-reported measures for evaluating changes in motivation and intercultural competence might introduce biases, as participants’ responses could be influenced by their perceptions of social desirability or their interpretation of the questions. lastly, while the instructional design project aimed to enhance intercultural competence and motivation through carefully curated content and activities, the short duration of the intervention and the online mode of delivery may not fully mimic the complexities and dynamics of real-world classroom interactions, potentially influencing the depth of the intercultural learning experience. the field continues to explore new ways to effectively integrate intercultural competence into efl teaching, such as using literary texts in virtual spaces (sharma et al., 2023), which has implications for understanding how online interactions influence students’ cultural perceptions and identities. conclusion this study contributes to the growing body of literature on the integration of critical literacy pedagogy in efl classrooms to enhance intercultural competence. by developing an online module that blends the arcs motivational design model with cmc tools, this research demonstrates that the module effectively increased efl teachers’ attention, relevance, and confidence, and provided a basis for satisfaction in addressing intercultural issues in their teaching. through guided questions and reflective tasks, teachers were prompted to consider underlying assumptions and cultural nuances, encouraging them to view language as more than just a set of linguistic skills but as an embodiment of cultural and social perspectives. feedback from efl teachers via questionnaires, online comments, and interviews indicated that task attractiveness and the online setting were key motivators for critical literacy development. it also highlights the use of multimedia elements to capture participants’ attention and the importance of fostering motivation for intercultural competence among efl teachers. despite the positive outcomes of this research, this research acknowledges its limitations in fully capturing the motivational spectrum and suggests further investigation into how cultural dynamics within groups might shape online intercultural communication. this project offers preliminary results to help efl teachers from different countries examine the assumptions and beliefs in the english language that are often hidden. this module is expected to raise participants’ attention to their language choice and illuminate the intercultural issues that are present in learning the english language. by doing so, it can wu current issues in comparative education 72 be a good start to make the world a more inclusive place. yu-chieh wu is an educator who roams across class and academia with a special interest in global citizenship education. she is an east-west center graduate degree fellow pursuing a ph.d. in global and international education at the university of hawaii at manoa. references alatis j. e., straehle c. a., gallenberger b., ronkin m. 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(2014). “new media, new civics?” policy & internet 6 (2), 151-168. © 2013 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(2): 35-52. promoting change within the constraints of conflict: case study of sadaka reut in israel karen ross[1] indiana university, usa this article explores the approach to transformative education utilized by sadaka reut, a binational civil society organization in israel that works with jewish and palestinian youth. i examine three central tools sadaka reut uses to achieve its goal of educating youth for social change: using personal experiences as the basis for discussion; emphasizing personal-structural links; and implementing uninational activities within a binational framework. i argue that though the organization’s approach holds potential for appealing to a broad audience and for fostering transformation amongst participants, the strength of dominant discourses in israeli society places significant constraints on sadaka reut’s work and limits possibilities for widespread success. the work of sadaka reut on a january evening in 2011, i joined sadaka reut’s bat yam[2] group for its weekly meeting and a discussion of self-portraits taken by the group’s members—jewish young women in the 9 th through 11 th grades from lower-middle class families of moroccan descent. inana,[3] one of the group members, described two pictures taken outside her military training school, explaining that they depicted students at rest following a mandatory end-of-the-day formation. michal, the group’s facilitator, a 23-year-old jewish woman, asked inana and the rest of the group about these photographs: “what does this picture tell us about you and about your school environment? what is the ratio of boys and girls in the school? why do you think are there fewer girls than boys studying at a military school?”[4] over the next hour, the group discussed this and related issues. from the question about the boygirl ratio emerged several comments about contexts characterized by significant gender imbalance, and who is advantaged and disadvantaged by such situations. when sivan, another participant, mentioned that women face a difficult choice about careers in israel’s military, saying, “you can’t be a mom” in that context, michal suggested, “[these choices] are structurally constrained. in other words, personal desires are influenced by external factors, and not only internal ones: what we decide, or what we want, is structured by our society and our environment.” michal emphasized the personal-structural connection repeatedly throughout the discussion, asking how power relations in israeli society influence personal choices. as the session drew to a close, another participant, gavrielle, said, “you can’t generalize. society defines who is a man or a woman—but it doesn’t mean that he or she will be exactly the way society says they should be.” michal responded. “that’s exactly how i think we should summarize today’s discussion—thinking about the roles that society sets for us, and yet, how each of us as individuals fit (or don’t fit) into those roles.” promoting change within the constraints of conflict 36 current issues in comparative education i share this vignette as a starting point to highlight the work of the israeli civil society organization, sadaka reut. the vignette embodies sadaka reut’s programmatic approach, implemented with the overarching goals of helping youth develop critical awareness of structural issues in israeli society and fostering engagement in activities aimed at challenging policies that create advantages for some groups while systemically discriminating against others. sadaka reut’s approach has allowed it to survive within an environment characterized by conflict-laden relations between jews and palestinians,[5] and unequal opportunities for israeli minorities. moreover, this approach has enabled sadaka reut to permeate the formal education system while maintaining a critical ideology challenging messages disseminated in israeli schools. yet, i argue that even as it has adopted approaches designed to mitigate constraining factors and facilitated significant change among its participants, dominant societal discourses limit sadaka reut’s potential for contributing broadly to social change in israel and thus its success as an educational initiative. background and context inter-group conflicts have characterized israel since its founding in 1948. prime among these conflicts is antagonism between jewish and palestinian citizens, related to but distinct from israel’s conflict with palestinians in the occupied west bank and gaza strip. while the latter conflict is primarily over territorial sovereignty, the jewish-palestinian conflict within israel is a reflection of the status of palestinian citizens as a “trapped minority” (rabinowitz, 2001) and as a group subject to overt and implicit discrimination at all levels and in multiple sectors (al-haj, 1995; human rights watch, 2001). israel’s founding documents serve as a basis for the tensions between jewish and palestinian citizens. the state is defined as both jewish and democratic, according to its declaration of independence (ministry of foreign affairs, 1948), a dual definition raising fundamental questions about the nature of israel’s democracy and the potential for jewish and palestinian citizens to enjoy equality within the polity. palestinians exist “in a circle peripheral to the core” of israeli society (shafir & peled, 1998, p. 254), sharing the individual rights of liberal citizenship without the benefits of citizenship as an ethno-national collective (ghanem, 2000). moreover, the dominant ethno-national discourse in israel—disseminated in the media, in the education system, and via other societal institutions—privileges beliefs that emphasize jewish victimization and promote israel’s historical and contemporary claim to land (bar-tal, halperin, & oren, 2011). simultaneously, dominant discourse also de-legitimizes the palestinian historical narrative, for example by preventing discussion or instruction about events important to the palestinian nation within jewish and palestinian schools (abu-saad, 2008; golan-agnon, 2006).[6] as a result of both explicit and implicit discrimination, tensions simmer constantly under the surface of jewish-palestinian relations. since israel’s establishment, palestinian citizens have reacted to these tensions in different ways, including, since the 1970s, coordinated protests against the government. while these protests declined in the 1990s, disappointment and frustration grew at the end of the decade after promises of increased support to palestinian localities failed to materialize (yiftachel, 1999). in september 2000, frustrations among palestinians in the west bank and gaza strip led to an uprising that became known as the alross current issues in comparative education 37 aqsa intifada. within the state of israel, antagonism between palestinian and jewish citizens exploded soon after the outbreak of the al-aqsa intifada, when 12 palestinian citizens and 1 jew were killed following protests held in solidarity with palestinians in the west bank and gaza strip. the october 2000 events were a warning signal to jewish citizens about the degree of alienation felt by their palestinian counterparts (or, 2004). yet, more than a decade later, the situation in israel has not improved—indeed, there are indications that israeli society has become more polarized. for example, recent protests decrying relationships between jewish and palestinian citizens indicate the degree to which jewish israelis view their palestinian counterparts with suspicion (hadad, 2011; levinson, 2011). furthermore, numerous instances of anti-palestinian vandalism, graffiti, and physical violence instigated by jews (e.g., boker, 2013; kubovich, 2013; lidman, 2013) have further damaged inter-group relationships. within this context of segregation and animosity, any initiative bringing jewish and palestinian citizens together or emphasizing education for jewish-palestinian partnership is viewed as “political,” regardless of its objectives (e.g., bar-tal, 2011). although the predominant conflict within israeli society is between jews and palestinians, other minority groups suffer from systemic discrimination, as well. within the jewish community, the disadvantaging of the mizrahi[7] community in relation to ashkenazi[8] jews has been well documented (shohat, 1999), as has the discrimination faced by ethiopian immigrants (beneliezer, 2004). in recent years israel has seen an influx of non-jewish immigrants and asylum seekers from parts of africa and asia; these groups, too, suffer from institutional discrimination and widespread racism in israeli society (bartram, 2011; willen, 2010). conceptual issues and related research against this background of tension and conflict, inter-group encounter programs are one approach to improving relationships between groups in israeli society. such programs, focusing primarily on the jewish-palestinian rift, have been implemented in israel since the 1950s, with the overarching objectives of promoting mutual respect and awareness of multiple narratives (abu-nimer, 1999). studies of inter-group encounter programs in conflict contexts—most but not all of which focus on israel-palestine—fall into two primary categories. first, a number of studies examine cognitive and affective change among participants. for example, using questionnaires completed prior to and following participation in an encounter program, maoz (2003) examined changes in attitude toward palestinians among jews with different political affiliations. research using a similar approach has also examined: gender differences in the outcomes of encounter program participation (yablon, 2009); ethnic differences among georgian and abkhaz youth in encounter program effects (ohanyan & lewis, 2005); and long-term change in empathy toward the “other” among tamil and sinhalese sri lankan youth (malhotra & liyanage, 2005). a second line of scholarship focuses on the encounter process itself. for instance, several studies examine the nature of interaction between participants in a jewish-palestinian encounter program and the way that participants’ language use in the encounter is reflective of their views related to promoting change within the constraints of conflict 38 current issues in comparative education the conflict (e.g., steinberg & bar-on, 2002; maoz et al., 2002; bekerman, 2009). other research has examined perceptions of dialogue facilitators regarding the encounter process (bekerman, maoz, & sheftel, 2006; maoz, bekerman, & sheftel, 2007). taken as a whole, scholarship points to different perspectives regarding whether, how, and under what conditions encounter programs are successful in promoting change (bar-tal, 2004; maoz, 2011; salomon, 2006, 2009). yet, with few exceptions, literature on encounters between conflict groups measures change among individual participants using a model that treats the encounter itself as a black box, mostly ignoring how programmatic choices—for example, whether greater emphasis is placed on structured activities or informal opportunities for cross-national conversation—might influence individual-level outcomes. moreover, much of the research in this field fails to take into account the broader socio-political context in which encounters are implemented and how this environment shapes possible outcomes, both at the individual level and with respect to transformation on a larger, societal scale. bekerman and zembylas (2012), however, argue that attempts to “build peace” within a nation-state must take into account the nation-state’s influence in what happens in these endeavors.[9] in contrast, scholarship providing guidance on how to educate for social change (e.g., anyon, 2009), including in contexts characterized by long-standing inter-group conflict (jansen, 2009), says little about the outcomes of the approaches suggested. definitions of success, in other words, do not take context into account. i use sadaka reut’s work as a case study to address these gaps in the literature and to raise a central question about what it means to educate for social change in the israeli context. specifically, i ask whether and how approaches such as those utilized by sadaka reut can facilitate transformation among individual participants. i then contextualize these approaches within israel’s socio-political environment, examining how the intersection between organization and environment limits the potential for larger-scale change. sadaka reut: goals, structure, staff, and programs established in 1983, sadaka reut is one of israel’s veteran organizations bringing together jewish and palestinian youth. the organization is guided by an overarching mission of educating and empowering “jewish and palestinian israeli youth and university students to pursue social and political change through binational partnership” (http://en.reutsadaka.org/?page_id=627, accessed july 5, 2013). two principles lie at the heart of sadaka reut’s work: educating youth for social engagement, out of the belief that “a single person has the ability to impact change in important issues” (sadaka reut’s facilitation manual, 2000, p. 5); and providing a model of joint jewish-palestinian partnership, based on the assumption that “only real and honest partnership between the two nations can bring about significant social change for a different future” (sadaka reut’s ma’arachim facilitation manual, 2005, p. 1). above all, sadaka reut emphasizes partnership as a tool for confronting and overcoming systemic inequalities in israeli society. sadaka reut implements a range of programs targeting individuals from late junior high through adulthood. at sadaka reut’s core is its original, flagship program, building a culture of peace (bcp)—the program referenced in the opening vignette. bcp is made up of local groups from http://en.reutsadaka.org/?page_id=627 ross current issues in comparative education 39 around the country (usually including 10-20 participants each) that meet weekly over the course of at least one, but often two or even three academic years. in its first year, each bcp group is uninational (made up of jews or palestinians), but joins other bcp groups monthly for binational (joint jewish-palestinian) activities and periodically for weekend seminars. bcp groups in their 2 nd or 3 rd year often expand to become regionally based, binational groups. participants also take part in an annual 3-day summer camp focused on engaging in activism around a specific political issue. bcp’s overarching mission of bringing jewish and palestinian youth together in a way that encourages constructive partnership, critical awareness, and skill-building has remained the same throughout sadaka reut’s history. however, the program’s approach has shifted over time. for instance, in the years following the outbreak of the al-aqsa intifada, sadaka reut staff came to the conclusion that, as the palestinian co-director told me, “the real work of consciousness raising happens in uninational meetings.” in comparison, she explained, binational meetings, if not preceded by extensive uninational work, almost always reinforce dominant power dynamics in israeli society. this is why bcp groups are initially formed uninationally, rather than, as was the case for many years, in binational format. in addition, bcp’s original emphasis on fostering inter-personal ties between jews and palestinians has been replaced by an emphasis on addressing power dynamics between groups in israeli society and empowering participants with respect to both their personal and collective identity claims. finally, in the last ten years, sadaka reut has placed a greater priority on recruiting bcp participants from marginalized population groups within the jewish population, such as ethiopians and mizrahi youth. bcp follows a flexible curriculum in which each group, over the course of the year, develops an action agenda based on an issue they deem important to their community (e.g., housing demolitions, inter-group relations, social services). regardless of the focus, a similar overarching structure characterizes each group. for example, the year begins with activities aimed at establishing relationships among group members before shifting into discussions related to personal and collective identity, democratic principles and equal rights, and the jewishpalestinian conflict.[10] these discussions, as i explain below, focus on the individual experiences of participants and are molded to fit the overarching topic of each group’s focus. all facilitators are provided with a curricular manual that describes the organization’s mission, vision, and pedagogical rationale, in addition to providing information on the general structure bcp groups should adhere to throughout the year and examples of different activities that facilitators can draw upon in their work. each year the bcp program reaches 200-300 youth by opening approximately 20 groups (10 jewish and 10 palestinian)—over 5,000 youth have participated since sadaka reut was established in 1983. participants are recruited through another sadaka reut program called ma’arachim (literally, “lesson plans”), which brings facilitators into both jewish and palestinian classrooms to implement workshops about issues ranging from racism to gender to the israeli/palestinian conflict.[11] ma’arachim coordinators try to market the program to schools in the areas where bcp groups meet; however, many workshops are implemented at the invitation of individual teachers or principals who wish to take advantage of sadaka reut’s expertise in and interactive approach to addressing social issues. the specific content of ma’arachim workshops is decided upon jointly by sadaka reut staff and teachers, with input from students regarding promoting change within the constraints of conflict 40 current issues in comparative education which social issues are most relevant to their lives. these workshops range from single, two-hour sessions to weekly meetings that take place over the course of several weeks. my discussion in this paper focuses primarily on bcp and ma’arachim. each of sadaka reut’s programs is jointly administered by palestinian and jewish cocoordinators, just as a jew and a palestinian co-direct the organization overall. coordinators oversee sadaka reut facilitators; each uninational bcp group is led by a facilitator with the same ethno-national background as the group’s participants, and ma’arachim facilitators are likewise of the same ethno-national background as students in the classrooms where they implement workshops. when bcp groups meet binationally, they are always led by a pair of co-facilitators, one jewish and one palestinian. these facilitators, the immediate contact for bcp and ma’arachim participants, are university students or young professionals in their earlyto mid20s, many of whom are former bcp participants. methodology the analysis in this article is based upon data collected between august 2010 and april 2011. during this period, i conducted approximately 100 hours of observation of sadaka reut activities, including staff trainings and meetings, weekly meetings of one jewish bcp group,[12] monthly regional activities, and one weekend retreat bringing together all jewish and palestinian bcp participants. i also conducted interviews with 20 former and current sadaka reut staff and board members, and collected and analyzed educational materials (including facilitation manuals and staff training guides) developed and used over the past three decades. my analysis also draws upon life history interviews conducted with 43 sadaka reut alumni— individuals who participated in bcp and/or in community in action, sadaka reut’s one-year intensive leadership program for high school graduates, in the years between 1983 and 2009. i utilized a mix of quota and snowball sampling to recruit participants, interviewing approximately equal numbers of jews/palestinians and males/females, as well as approximately equal numbers of participants from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. interviews began with a request for participants to “tell me about your life,” with additional questions emerging naturally during the conversation. topics addressed in most interviews included: experiences as participants in the organization’s programs, family background, beliefs and activities related to social change, education, and professional experiences. i conducted additional interviews with several participants and one focus group interview with sadaka reut staff members during a follow-up visit to israel in april-may 2012. achieving the vision: programmatic approaches in implementing the bcp and ma’arachim programs, sadaka reut emphasizes a number of approaches that guide facilitators in their engagement with youth, as well as reinforce the organization’s core principles of educating youth for social awareness and engagement and embodying a model of joint jewish-palestinian partnership. these approaches are also used to try to make sadaka reut’s work more palatable with stakeholders in israel’s current socio-political environment. they include: using participants’ experiences as the starting point for discussion; ross current issues in comparative education 41 fostering awareness of the connection between personal choices and structural constraints; and engaging in uninational activity within a framework emphasizing binational partnership. working from the personal outwards sadaka reut places a priority on utilizing participants’ interests and experiences as the core material upon which discussions are based. for instance, weekly bcp meetings often begin with the facilitator framing the discussion generally around some topic and then eliciting commentary about participants’ experiences related to this topic, or using comments made at the start of a session to generate broader discussion. this approach can be seen in the opening vignette, with inana’s comments on her photographs and school experiences leading into a discussion about the military and structural opportunities in israeli society. the approach is also reflected in a meeting i observed of this same group earlier in the 20102011 academic year, during which michal, the group facilitator, had participants read two short stories on the topic of group identity, and then asked them how these stories related to issues in their own lives. one participant, danya, commented that the inter-group relations in the stories reminded her of feeling uncomfortable while walking around a nearby park, because of the groups of arsim[13] congregating there at night. michal pushed danya and other group members to explain how they defined arsim and what made them a group. as the evening continued, the discussion remained focused on specific groups with which the bcp participants interacted. yet, over ensuing months, conversations about group identity and stereotypes expanded beyond danya and other group members’ direct experiences toward more abstract issues, such as the symbolic importance of identity in conflict. eventually, this group also discussed the importance of thinking about these issues as a way of understanding and changing social realities—an important discussion in the weeks preceding sadaka reut’s summer camp, an annual event during which bcp participants collectively engage in confronting social justice issues. sadaka reut’s approach of starting with participants’ experiences holds true for ma’arachim as well as bcp. as a jewish ma’arachim coordinator explained to me, “[our fundamental principle] is to address, first of all, what the students see in their own reality: what sorts of groups exist, what kinds of relationships exist between those groups.” she continued, explaining why this approach is so important to sadaka reut’s work: we start from the assumption that in order to try to create change in others one needs to understand oneself, what is important to oneself, to what one connects— you need to help individuals create a connection between themselves and their community. you can’t come in and impose something upon them. so [the ma’arachim program] is very focused on providing a space for [youth], for their worldviews, and also for their racism . . . and that, in many ways, is our power, both pedagogically and ideologically. that is, in order for someone to understand the world in a critical manner, and understand the other, and identify with the other, one needs to understand one’s place, one needs to learn and act within the reality in which one lives. as the quote above suggests, sadaka reut’s emphasis on utilizing participants’ experiences as the basis for discussions is ideologically rooted. as an organization committed to empowering promoting change within the constraints of conflict 42 current issues in comparative education youth to pursue societal change, it uses participants’ personal experiences as a starting point for creating connections to systemic issues. this emphasis also means that an individual’s first experience with the organization—often via a ma’arachim workshop implemented in his/her classroom—is one that connects sadaka reut to him/her personally. in theory at least, this provides sadaka reut with a broader basis for recruiting participants into bcp. emphasizing the personal-structural link sadaka reut’s emphasis on using personal experiences as the basis for discussions is related to its focus on linking those experiences to systemic issues within israeli society. in the opening vignette, this comes across in michal connecting the scenes in inana’s photographs to genderbased societal constraints. other sadaka reut activities i observed also focused on making participants aware of connections between individual opportunities and broader power dynamics. for instance, during an activity implemented at a bcp-wide seminar, facilitators distributed postit notes to participants, each of which had written on it a different “identity” (e.g., an ashkenazi male, a young bedouin woman,[14] an older ethiopian immigrant). the facilitators read out statements about situations that might arise in israeli society, such as studying at the university or buying a home, and asked participants to physically step forward if they felt this situation might apply to the “character” whose identity they had been given. in the discussion following this activity, facilitators guided participants’ comments about individuals toward examining how these situations might apply to groups as a whole. raniah, a palestinian participant who was asked to take on the identity of a mizrahi male, said that she thought if he tried hard, a mizrahi male could obtain a university degree. iris, a jewish participant, disagreed. rahim, one of the facilitators, encouraged this discussion, gently reminding group participants about systemic disadvantages faced by mizrahi citizens that might make obtaining a higher education difficult. during my conversations with sadaka reut staff and former participants, many discussed the importance of being able to critically reflect on structural constraints as a first step in developing strategies to work against them. comments by sadaka reut alumni attest to the organization’s success in helping foster this awareness. for example, efrat, a jewish woman who participated in sadaka reut activities during the late 1980s, explained to me: “everywhere i am, i read the reality in a critical manner . . . and that’s something that i learned from sadaka reut. it’s like a pair of glasses that became my eyes—they’re not glasses any more. i can’t take them off. it became the way i see the world.” likewise, anna, a jewish woman who ended her participation in sadaka reut activities only a few months before we spoke, told me that she had joined the organization as a social outlet, with no awareness of socio-political issues. commenting on what she learned in the sadaka reut program, anna said, i mean, if we’re talking about “divide and conquer,” then sadaka took away the divisions. as soon as i saw that there exists [in israel] another reality aside from the hegemonic reality, i understood that there are so many things that are happening here—i started to see them . . . i started to see what is oppressed and ross current issues in comparative education 43 what is empowered, and how that happens. and i started to examine myself within that. anna’s comments, like those of efrat, illustrate her ability to perceive systemic issues in israeli society, and also link that perception to participation in sadaka reut activities. anna’s comments are also a particularly salient example of her ability to understand the link between personal and structural issues. uninational activity within a binational framework finally, the opening vignette highlights who is missing from the discussion as well as who is present: palestinian youth participants. the vignette thus illustrates a third principle upon which sadaka reut bases much of its work with ma’arachim and bcp participants, discussed in detail above: uninational activity. the premise underlying uninational activities centers on challenging dominant socialization processes in israel’s segregated schools and other institutions. specifically, according to sadaka reut’s facilitation manual, uninational activities are conducted in order to address: differences in how palestinian and jewish youth are socialized with respect to their identities: the strengthening of a unified collective jewish identity among jews, in contrast with the demolition of a palestinian collective identity through a breaking of the connection between the past and present. this necessitates uninational work in order to strengthen palestinian collective identity and question the presentation of jewish identity. in other words, sadaka reut conducts separate activities for jewish and palestinian participants so that when they do meet binationally, in regional/national activities or as a continuing binational group, they can interact on a more equal basis, and so that they are capable of understanding the way external power dynamics can disrupt group processes meant to be built on a foundation of equality. what is the significance of uninational work within an organization explicitly committed to binational partnership? first, it is important to reiterate that binational meetings among sadaka reut participants do occur in the form of regional and national events, where jewish and palestinian bcp participants mingle informally and activities are designed explicitly to mix different groups. more importantly, however, sadaka reut models binationalism at an organizational level. in the words of one palestinian staff member: “we want [our work] to happen in a binational framework . . . because we believe that the real change, the deep change that can happen in this region, is a change in both of the nations together.” she continued: even if we don’t have a dialogue process between the two sides in the conflict, we achieve our objective of being binational. because our thinking is unified, our work as an organization occurs in partnership, and also our youth, the longer they are here with us, are able to find partners on the other side and to understand what partnership means. promoting change within the constraints of conflict 44 current issues in comparative education that is, in addition to working to help participants develop a strong ethno-national identity, sadaka reut models an overarching identity as a binational organization. ultimately, the concept of partnership serves as the bedrock of sadaka reut’s work, and within the organization there is unanimous agreement about the importance of utilizing jewishpalestinian partnership as a vehicle for challenging existing inequalities within israeli society. i observed one meeting that was open to all sadaka reut staff, participants, and alumni, where the agenda entailed discussing binationalism as an organizational ideology. during this meeting, it was evident that disagreement exists within sadaka reut about what binational partnership should look like.[15] however, every individual expressed a belief in the importance of joint jewish-palestinian endeavors, in particular initiatives using partnership as a framework for working to end systemic injustices, rather than focusing on jewish-palestinian encounters as an end unto themselves. haggai, a jewish sadaka reut alumnus, told me, “i think that . . . the most radical thing that one can do in this country is to bring together jews and arabs. because all of the strength, all of the effort of the hegemony and of the authorities is directed at separation.” indeed, he and another 10 of the 43 sadaka reut alumni i interviewed suggested that this belief that jewish-palestinian partnership is an important vehicle for social change was facilitated by sadaka-reut participation, and by the organization’s modeling of an alternative to the normal routine of everyday (segregated) israeli life. troubling the vision: constraints and limitations shifts over time in sadaka reut’s programmatic approach have prioritized the three elements discussed above, enabling the organization to better achieve its overarching goal of educating youth for social transformation within the framework of binational partnership. these shifts also form the basis of sadaka reut’s attempts to broaden its appeal to a wider variety of youth and establish relationships with the formal education system. yet, sadaka reut’s work takes place within a context that legitimates exactly those structural inequalities and the continuing violence that the organization seeks to transform—and this reality serves as a significant constraint. for instance, a number of individuals characterize sadaka reut’s approach as political, even radical. in and of itself, such a categorization is not necessarily problematic. in fact, among palestinians i heard praise for the organization’s approach and even, from a few alumni, complaints that sadaka reut’s work is not radical enough. however, within israel’s socio-political reality, sadaka reut’s “radical” attempt to embody and promote jewishpalestinian partnership and equality has led some jews to characterize the organization as promoting a palestinian agenda. for example, during my informal conversations with individuals in israel whose work focuses on implementing jewish-palestinian encounters, several expressed surprise that i chose to use sadaka reut as a case study for research on binational endeavors. a government employee who works with many organizations bringing together jews and palestinians told me explicitly that sadaka reut is not so much a binational organization as a palestinian one. likewise, a former staff member at another organization implementing joint activities for jewish and palestinian youth told me that sadaka reut is “branded as a palestinian movement.” in other words, for ross current issues in comparative education 45 them, the organization’s approach of challenging systemic inequalities equates to political activism to benefit palestinians.[16] such a perception among a portion of jews with whom i spoke illustrates the difficulty sadaka reut faces in its efforts. the organization does work to empower palestinians and bring the palestinian narrative into israeli discourse, out of a conviction that doing so is critical for achieving a just future for both jews and palestinians. yet within israel’s current socio-political reality, attempts to promote equality by embodying it are perceived as antithetical to dominant societal narratives, thus resulting in accusations of promoting a palestinian agenda. ultimately, it appears that the organization’s image diminishes its ability to reach out equally to both jews and palestinians—more specifically, to jews whose views fall into the mainstream. such a perception can also hamper sadaka reut’s relationship with schools in the jewish sector.[17] most individuals affiliated with the organization stated that difficulties working within schools are rare, precisely because of the elements of sadaka reut’s approach that emphasize individuals’ experiences rather than placing the jewish-palestinian conflict front and center. indeed, a former jewish ma’arachim coordinator explained that this approach evolved, in part, “so that schools wouldn’t kick us out after the first meeting, on the one hand, and on the other hand, so we could do deep work, so we could bring up the issues we wanted to address.” even so, sadaka reut has experienced problems working in jewish schools. another former staff member, a palestinian who oversaw the ma’arachim program during its inception, told me: i think it’s become more difficult to enter schools, to enter formal institutions. there is a lot more suspicion. [school officials ask]: “who are these people? what are their political perspectives?” one of our coordinators was yelled at in a school because somebody there saw that we had an activity against the [2009 gaza war]. so she was yelled at, “you present yourselves as a dialogue organization, and then you speak out against the military!” this comment captures the dual set of suspicions sadaka reut faces within the jewish community: first, as an organization challenging the segregation typical of israeli society by bringing together jews and palestinians; and second, due to its pro-peace perspective, which is a marginalized perspective within the jewish israeli community (hermann, 2006). taken together, these suspicions can hamper sadaka reut’s ability to enter jewish schools and therefore potentially limit its ability to recruit youth to bcp. the perception of sadaka reut as an organization promoting a palestinian agenda also illustrates the degree to which sadaka reut’s discourse differs from the dominant jewish israeli narrative. potential difficulty in entering schools is therefore only the top of the iceberg. it is critical for sadaka reut to overcome this discursive gap in order to successfully recruit individuals to its programs, and the challenges it faces in doing so are not insignificant. for instance, despite emphasizing a focus on photography in order to attract participants, only four individuals in the bat yam group i observed committed to attending all the weekly meetings. although the size of this group was somewhat atypical, sadaka reut’s jewish bcp groups are generally made up of 10 or fewer participants, suggesting that it is difficult to recruit jewish participants. promoting change within the constraints of conflict 46 current issues in comparative education a salient question to ask, given the challenges faced by sadaka reut, is whether we might view the organization as successful in its attempts to promote social change in the israeli context. at an individual level, i believe the answer is yes: of the 43 alumni i interviewed, nearly two-thirds are actively engaged with civil society initiatives aimed at changing israeli society by promoting equality for all israelis. among others, alumni endeavors include: establishing a women’s leadership program in a rural palestinian village; organizing the founding of a joint jewishpalestinian kindergarten in haifa; and establishing a community center for low-income jewish and palestinian youth in jaffa. moreover, many alumni attribute the motivation for their activism to their participation in sadaka reut. for example, dafna, a jewish alumna who is active in several organizations focusing on the rights of refugees in israel, spoke about sadaka reut’s role in helping her develop a belief that, “what you do has an influence, even if it influences in a small way—that is something that is definitely a fire under my feet.” likewise, bayan, a palestinian woman who participated in the bcp program during 2006-2009, said that as a result of her involvement in the program, “i thought that i can change things. they give you the feeling of, you want to change things, change them.” additionally, the narratives of all alumni i interviewed explicitly critiqued institutional policies that enable ethno-national discrimination. here, too, individuals credit sadaka reut for providing them with the awareness that facilitated development of a critical perspective. for instance, anna, who as stated above joined sadaka reut with no political background, told me: my awareness grew exponentially, in a way i couldn’t possibly have imagined, and my knowledge expanded so much during the three years [during which i was a participant in building a culture of peace] . . . because i was in an environment that constantly addressed questions and topics that [other forums in] israeli society don’t address. anna emphasized that her awareness resulted from being pushed constantly by organization facilitators to ask questions about the reality around her. this illustrates how sadaka reut helped participants develop the ability to understand and critique structural dynamics and constraints in israeli society. critical awareness cannot be equated with action, of course. yet, views promoting ethno-national equality in israel contrast significantly with the dominant perspective among jewish israelis (hermann et al., 2011), suggesting the role sadaka reut can play in facilitating the transformation of consciousness that is a necessary precursor to activism (mcadam, 1982). even among those alumni who were ideologically aligned with sadaka reut prior to joining, most came to the organization with significantly less socio-political awareness than they acquired through bcp participation. indeed, more than one-third of my interviewees said they had limited awareness of socio-political issues prior to joining sadaka reut, and most of those with some prior political awareness explained that they obtained much more nuanced perspectives through bcp. in other words, even for those who were drawn to the organization because it meshed with their own ideological stance, sadaka reut enabled a much deeper level of awareness than they previously held. still, while sadaka reut has successfully developed a cadre of critical, active alumni, it reaches ross current issues in comparative education 47 only a few hundred individuals annually. in the words of akil, a palestinian alumnus, “[what sadaka reut does] is very important, but unfortunately it isn’t going anywhere because it works at a very, very small level.” likewise, efrat reflected: “where i think that [sadaka reut] has failed is in the fact that the change is relatively small. we have access to 200 [or] 300 youth in the best-case scenario, and we create change with them. and it’s possible to make that change larger.” thus, even as sadaka reut’s programmatic approach has shifted to emphasize personal connections to systemic issues, and in ways that enable the organization to work in formal education settings, sadaka reut faces significant challenges in finding participants. this challenge can be attributed to a number of factors, among them seems to be the difficulty of reaching out to mainstream youth when mainstream society is shifting further to the right. so how can we characterize sadaka reut’s potential to educate for social transformation? a close analysis of the organization’s work highlights the tension it faces between its mission and its environment. on the one hand, as my interviewees suggest, sadaka reut’s model has been successful in contributing to individual change and motivating participation in social change endeavors. on the other hand, israel’s socio-political context places severe constraints on and challenges for sadaka reut—particularly in terms of its ability to recruit greater numbers of participants. thus, this analysis points to the necessity of re-examining what it means for programs aimed at social transformation to be “successful,” particularly within areas of ongoing conflict. as discussed above, much of the scholarship on such programs asks whether they enable shifts in the knowledge, attitudes or behaviors of individual participants. by this measure, sadaka reut is successful. however, this question ignores the socio-political conditions that can facilitate or constrain programmatic work—conditions that, for sadaka reut, can make promoting large-scale social change seem like a futile task. for us to truly assess the contribution of both formal and, in sadaka reut’s case, non-formal education to social change, we must investigate more than the relationship between intervention and individual outcome. we need to pay greater attention to the ways societal forces shape educational endeavors. doing so can help us, as scholars and practitioners alike, reflect on the work that has already been done, and more effectively imagine possibilities for moving the project of progressive social change forward. notes: [1]. this article was written with significant input from the co-directors of sadaka reut. [2]. bat yam is an israeli city south of tel aviv. [3]. all names utilized in this article are pseudonyms. [4]. all quotations in this manuscript were translated from hebrew by the author. [5]. i refer to israeli citizens of palestinian descent as palestinians because during my fieldwork, it was the term most individuals utilized to define themselves. the official government designation for this group is “israeli arab,” or just “arab.” [6]. with the exception of a handful of schools where jewish and palestinian citizens study together, the education system in israel is segregated, and the curriculum utilized differs promoting change within the constraints of conflict 48 current issues in comparative education among the four streams of education: secular jewish, religious jewish, ultra-orthodox jewish, and arab. [7]. mizrahi, or from edot hamizrah (literally: “communities of the east”) is a term referring to jews of north african and middle eastern descent, as well those whose families immigrated from the caucasus. [8]. ashkenazi is a term utilized to categorize jews who are of central and european descent. [9]. bekerman and zembylas (2012) focus on peace education as it is implemented within the context of formal education, that is, schools bringing together students from different sides of conflict (jews/palestinians and greek cypriots/turkish cypriots). however, peace education as a whole includes both formal education and non-formal endeavors such as the encounter programs implemented by sadaka reut. [10]. at a facilitator training i attended in the summer of 2010, one of the sessions focused explicitly on developing yearly curricula for each group within this flexible structure. [11]. ma’arachim groups are by nature uninational because of israel’s segregated education system. [12]. i did not observe a palestinian group for several reasons. first, my arabic skills were not advanced enough for me to understand much of what would have been said in these meetings. second, i felt that as a non-palestinian, my presence could shift the dynamic of the group in a potentially negative manner. [13]. arsim, plural for ars, is a pejorative slang term in hebrew used to refer to a stereotype of low-class young men. [14]. the bedouins in israel are a semi-nomadic group indigenous to the negev desert in the south of the country. [15]. one salient difference expressed in the discussion was about the significance of binational partnership for jews and for palestinians, and how these differ. several jewish participants in this discussion, for example, suggested that the space for binationalism in jewish society is so constrained that when jewish participants end their affiliation with sadaka reut, their options are “basically to leave the country or to return to the mainstream.” while several palestinians commented that the openness within palestinian society towards binational endeavors is also limited, they agreed that constraints within jewish society are much greater. other differences of opinion during this discussion related to whether binational partnership should be a tool or a goal, and whether sadaka reut as an organization is using binationalism or developing binationalism among its participants. [16]. similar perceptions can be found among individuals affiliated with sadaka reut, as well. for instance, one alumna told me, “sadaka reut tries to balance out what happens on the street, but if the street is super on the side of the jews, sadaka is super on palestinian side.” [17]. i was told repeatedly, by numerous staff members, that sadaka reut has had no difficulties entering palestinian schools, for two reasons: first, ma’arachim workshops present one of the few opportunities available in these schools to address, either directly or indirectly, issues connected to the palestinian narrative. second, palestinian youth on the whole have fewer opportunities to engage in extra-curricular activities than their jewish counterparts, which makes sadaka reut’s presence in schools as a recruiting tool for bcp a welcome one. ross current issues in comparative education 49 karen ross, ph.d., currently teaches in the global and international education program at drexel university. she received her ph.d. in education policy studies and in inquiry methodology at indiana university. her work and research focus on conceptual and methodological issues at the nexus of education, peace building, dialogue, and social activism in israel. e-mail: ross26@indiana.edu references ------. 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(2009). critical pedagogy is not enough: social justice education, political participation, and the politicization of students. in m. w. apple, w. au, & l. a. gandin (eds.), the routledge international handbook of critical education (pp. 389-395). new york: routledge. bar-tal, d. (2004). nature, rationale, and effectiveness of education for coexistence. journal of social issues, 60(2), 253-271. bar-tal, d. (2011, february). my hope is that teachers will have enough courage to encourage values in the spirit of peace education. hedhachinuch (hebrew), 32-37. bar-tal, d., & halperin, e. (2011). socio-psychological barriers to conflict resolution. in d. bar-tal (ed.), intergroup conflicts and their resolution: a social psychological perspective. (pp. 217-40). new york: psychology press. bar-tal, d., sharvit, k., halperin, e., & zafran, a. (2012). ethos of conflict: the concept and its measurement. peace and conflict: journal of peace psychology, 18(3), 40-61. bartram, d. (2011). migration, ethnonationalist destinations and social divisions: non-jewish immigrants in israel. ethnopolitics, 10(2), 235-252. mailto:ross26@indiana.edu promoting change within the constraints of conflict 50 current issues in comparative education bekerman, z. (2009). identity work in palestinian-jewish intergroup encounters: a cultural rhetorical analysis. journal of multicultural discourses, 4(2), 205-219. bekerman, z., maoz, i., & sheftel, m. (2006). how do we educate for peace? a study of narratives of jewish and palestinian peace activists. peace and conflict studies, 13(2), 22-44. bekerman, z., & zembylas, m. (2012). teaching contested narratives: identity, memory and reconciliation in peace education and beyond. cambridge: cambridge university press. ben-eliezer, u. (2004). becoming a black jew: cultural racism and anti-racism in contemporary israel. social identities, 10(2), 245-266. boker, m. (2013, february 19). israel arrests beitar jerusalem fans suspected of torching soccer club’s office. ha’aretz. retrieved from http://www.haaretz.com ghanem, a. (2000). the palestinian minority in israel: the “challenge” of the jewish state and its implications. third world quarterly, 21(1), 87-104. golan-agnon, d. (2006). separate but not equal: discrimination against palestinian arab students in israel. american behavioral scientist, 49(8), 1075-1084. hadad, s. (2011, january 2). ashkelon rally targets arabs who “seduce girls.” ynet news. retrieved from http://www.ynetnews.com hermann, t. (2006). civil society and ngos building peace in israel. in e. kaufman, w. salem, & j. verhoeven (eds.), bridging the divide: peacebuilding in the israeli-palestinian conflict (pp. 39-58). boulder, co: lynne rienner publishers. hermann, t., atmor, n., haber, k. heller, e., walter, d., ventura, r., & lebel, y. (2011). the israeli democracy index, 2011. (k. gold & z. ofer, trans.). jerusalem: the israel democracy institute. human rights watch (2001). second class: discrimination against palestinian arab children in israel's schools. new york: human rights watch. jansen, j. d. (2009). knowledge in the blood: confronting race and the apartheid past. stanford, ca: stanford university press. kubovich, y. (2013, march 4). israel police arrest jewish youths suspected of beating arab in tel aviv. ha’aretz. retrieved from http://www.haaretz.com levinson, c. (2011, january 18). demonstrating again in bat yam: “arabs are a natural disaster.” ha’aretz [hebrew]. retrieved from www.haaretz.co.il lidman, m. (2013, march 3). police struggle to arrest price tag vandals. the jerusalem post. retrieved from http://www.jpost.com http://www.haaretz.com/ http://www.ynetnews.com/ http://www.haaretz.com/ http://www.ha'aretz.co.i/ http://www.jpost.com/ ross current issues in comparative education 51 malhotra, d., & liyanage, s. (2005). long-term effects of peace workshops in protracted conflicts. journal of conflict resolution, 49(6), 908-924. maoz, i. (2003). peace-building with the hawks: attitude change of jewish-israeli hawks and doves following dialogue encounters with palestinians. international journal of intercultural relations, 27(6), 701-714. maoz, i., steinberg, s., bar-on, d., & fakhereldeen, m. (2002). the dialogue between the “self” and the “other”: a process analysis of palestinian-jewish encounters in israel. human relations, 55(8), 931-962. maoz, i., bekerman, z., & sheftel, m. g. (2007). can talking to each other really make a difference? perspectives on the reconciliation-aimed dialogues in the conflict between israelijews and palestinians. in j. kuriansky (ed.), beyond bullets and bombs: grassroots peacebuilding between israelis and palestinians (pp. 37-47). westport ct: praeger publishers. mcadam, d. (1982). political process and development of the black insurgency, 1930-1970. chicago, il: university of chicago press. ministry of foreign affairs. (1948). the declaration of the establishment of the state of israel, may 14, 1948. retrieved from www.mfa.gov.il ohanyan, a., & lewis, j. (2005). politics of peace building: critical evaluation of interethnic contact and peace education in a georgian-abkhaz peace camp, 1998-2002. peace & change, 30(1), 57-84. or, t. (2004). a year to the state investigative commission on the october 2000 events. tel aviv: tel aviv university. rabinowitz, d. (2001). the palestinian citizens of israel, the concept of trapped minority and the discourse of transnationalism in anthropology. ethnic and racial studies, 24(1), 64-85. salomon, g. (2006). does peace education really make a difference? peace and conflict: journal of peace psychology, 12(1), 37-48. shafir, g., & peled, y. (1998). the dynamics of citizenship in israel and the israeli-palestinian peace process.” in g. shafir, (ed.), the citizenship debates (pp. 251-262). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. shohat, e. (1999). the invention of the mizrahim. journal of palestine studies, 29(1), 5-20. steinberg, s., & bar-on, d. (2002). an analysis of the group process in encounters between jews and palestinians using a typology for discourse classification. international journal of intercultural relations, 26(2), 199-214. http://www.mfa.gov.il/ promoting change within the constraints of conflict 52 current issues in comparative education willen, s. s. (2010). darfur through a shoah lens: sudanese asylum seekers, unruly biopolitical dramas, and the politics of humanitarian compassion in israel. in b. j. good, m. m. fischer, s. s. willen, & m. d. good (eds.), a reader in medical anthropology: theoretical trajectories, emergent realities. (pp. 505-21). hoboken, new jersey: wiley-blackwell. yablon, y. b. (2009). gender differences in peace education programmes. gender and education, 21(6), 689-701. yiftachel, o. (1999). between nation and state: “fractured" regionalism among palestinianarabs in israel. political geography, 18(3), 285-307. © 2013 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(2): 15-34. theatre-arts pedagogy for social justice: case study of the area youth foundation in jamaica anne hickling-hudson queensland university of technology, australia in this paper i describe and analyse the socio-educational significance of a theatre arts approach to learning for young adults in jamaica, implemented by the area youth foundation (ayf). briefly outlining the genesis and development of the ayf, i provide snapshots of the experiences and destinations of some of its young participants. the paper discusses ayf workshops to show how the pedagogy was shaped by the expressive arts and based on the critical praxis approach systematized by paulo freire in adult education and augusto boal in theatre. based on interviews with ayf’s leader and some of the learners, i discuss how the foundation’s motto, “youth empowerment through the arts,” is played out in workshops and creative productions that are simultaneously learner-driven and teacher-guided, with the powerful impact of inspiring politically thoughtful creativity and skills in youths from less-privileged communities. this paper is a case study of a theatre-arts approach to learning for young adults in jamaica, implemented by the area youth foundation (ayf), a non-profit, non-government organisation. the essay is based on qualitative methods that describe and reflect on the socio-educational significance of the pedagogy and learning practised in ayf. following a case study approach proposed by robert yin (1984), i study the phenomenon within its real-life context, when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are fluid, using multiple sources of evidence. i first set the jamaican context that frames the work and development of the ayf. the content of the case is drawn from information that i obtained from ayf participants—students and the executive director/leader—through semi-structured interviews, conversations, and observation of their workshops and rehearsals. themes that arose from the transcribed material are described and analysed. i relate this to my theoretical understandings of literacies (hickling-hudson, 2007) and freirean pedagogy (hickling-hudson, 1988), and i apply these to explore the significance of the work of ayf. stating my background, in the tradition of qualitative research, i start by indicating that i was introduced to the ayf by sheila lowe graham, a jamaican friend and colleague who established ayf and leads the implementation of its work. over several visits to jamaica between 2000 and 2012, i was excited to see more of the work of the group, for it seemed to be establishing the kind of alternative approach to education that i knew was desperately needed. my interest in this field stems from my caribbean origins, upbringing, and experience as an educator working in the 1970s and 1980s in the less-privileged schools, teachers colleges, and adult education programs in jamaica and grenada (see evans, 2009; hickling-hudson, 1995). my commitment gradually became one of developing a postcolonial approach to curriculum theatre-arts pedagogy for social justice 16 current issues in comparative education design and pedagogy (hickling-hudson, 2011), postcolonial in the sense of celebrating the culture and interests of my students and challenging the legacies of colonial oppression.[1] context: a socio-political framework for understanding the ayf the effects of economic and educational underdevelopment are clearly visible in jamaica, a society that has been wrestling with complex decolonisation and development issues since gaining independence from britain in 1962. on one level, the society of 2.7 million people seems to put forward a successful face of thriving modern sector enterprises and a prosperous standard of living for affluent groups. but below that surface, the majority is affected by a downward spiral of educational and economic ineffectiveness that contributes to a 20.1% illiteracy rate (jamaican foundation for lifelong learning, 2008), a high unemployment rate of 14.2% in 2012 (statistical institute of jamaica, 2013), a high poverty rate, and a high rate of crime (united nations, 2007). hostile rivalry between supporters of jamaica’s two political parties (a legacy of the british “westminster” system) has turned the poorer inner city areas of kingston, the capital, into dangerous places for their inhabitants. party supporters and drug “dons” on both sides obtain guns, mainly from the usa, which are often used against the rival party or gang. the murder rate averages 60 per 100,000 inhabitants—the highest in the caribbean and the third highest in the world (caribbean journal, 2012). many of the murders occur in the “garrison” communities of inner-city kingston, so named because of the political rivalries that force the divided residents to barricade themselves against perceived enemies on the other side. the movement of decolonisation in caribbean societies, as in many developing regions, has been characterised by contradictions: on the one hand, the struggles of the people to address the injustices of the deeply stratified society inherited from british colonialism, and on the other hand, continuation of the privilege, elitism, exploitation, and deprivation that are features of these injustices. much of the crime and violence in jamaican society stems from these deep divisions. the socio-educational status quo also reveals divisions and associated contradictions. excellent schooling is available in jamaica and most of the caribbean. it is the kind of schooling that is world-class in content and prepares students to excel in difficult academic examinations and move into higher education and high-status employment. but it is only accessible to a minority, as shown by figures describing examination performance in the caribbean’s high-status school leaving examination, the caribbean secondary examination certificate (csec). a small percentage of school-leavers earn “passing” grades in five or more subjects, qualifying them to pursue university studies and professional careers. most students fail to attain five passes, and even worse, the majority of the 15-19 age cohort does not even sit for the examination.[2] the destinations of the latter group of young people include unemployment (37.0% among the 15-24 age group in january 2013, according to the statistical institute of jamaica), subsistence living, or technical and vocational training and middle to low-level jobs. the low educational levels and high unemployment rate among a large minority of young people limits their socio-economic chances, and in the words of a un report: “makes female youth vulnerable to sexual exploitation and adolescent pregnancy and puts male youth in an extremely vulnerable position, which might lead to participation in criminal gangs” (unfpa, 2011). hickling-hudson current issues in comparative education 17 ayf participants, ranging in age from 16-25, are the victims of the inadequate and inappropriate educational provision in marginalised schools that is imposed on most young jamaicans who come from impoverished urban and agricultural communities (evans, 2001; hickling-hudson, 2004). some who join area youth are non-literate or have low levels of literacy or a sub-standard education. many dropped out of school, and others left without completing examinations that offer entry into jobs or further education. they are unemployed or semi-employed at minimum wage. they come from an environment of economic precariousness, political division, physical danger, and frequent trouble with the police (see levy, 2009). some youth also have to deal with other types of trauma, such as hunger and physical and sexual abuse.[3] one of the ayf participants whom i interviewed recounts traumatic events in her school environments: i went to x primary, then y primary [naming two inner-city schools]. it was pure violence. we used to hear shots, and i vividly remember when i saw a woman lying in the road dying, with the blood running from her . . . we were afraid, as girls, of being pulled into a dark building. mummy had to take me aside and counsel me what to do in case . . . then i got to go to z technical high school. there was a lot of violence. the school needed a back wall—it led into (naming the city streets) and men would come in freely. i remember a schoolboy dying there, at school. it seemed to me that that came from an ongoing problem. there was a little fat boy and they would take away his lunch money every day and he would have no lunch. i’m sure he didn’t mean to stab them, but he did and the guy died, and he’s now in prison. if you saw anything you couldn’t tell, for they would call you an informer. i remember another person being chopped and the blood spraying—i cried and cried. framing and designing the study it is against this background that i discuss in this article the value of the educational approach of the ayf. drawing on a socio-political theory of literacies that i put forward in earlier work to analyse the quality of adult education (hickling-hudson, 1995, 2013), i observe that the pedagogical approach of the ayf sets out to develop in its young participants the types of “literacies” in which they have been short-changed by the substandard schooling they receive in jamaica. the ayf develops these literacies by utilising a unique style of pedagogy,[4] some aspects of which draw on the dialogic learning approach popularized by paulo freire (1972). i argue that “literacies” may be understood as sets of competencies, text-based knowledges, and interactional behaviours that are the foundation of one’s level of social influence. the quality of an education system may be determined by how well or how poorly it develops these literacies, categorised as:  humanist literacy: the interpersonal and intrapersonal skills and knowledge of self and other in relationships in different contexts;  epistemic literacy: knowledge of content and discourse in academic disciplines;  technical literacy: the technical skills and knowledge of working procedurally; and  public literacy: competence in contributing to the public sphere and deploying public structures for the social good. theatre-arts pedagogy for social justice 18 current issues in comparative education on visits to jamaica in 2000 and 2004, i received permission from the ayf project leader to study aspects of the project and had the opportunity to visit ayf headquarters. i was introduced to group members working on costumes, scripts, sets, and other theatre activities, and over a few days, four males and six females agreed to talk with me about their experiences in the project and more generally. these were “opportunity interviews,” conversations with ayf members who happened to be at the site when i visited and had the time and inclination to talk with me. i used a mixture of tape recordings, for those who were comfortable being recorded, and notes. i asked my interviewees how they came to join area youth, what they liked doing in the group, and how it had influenced their lives. i also visited some of the ayf workshops and rehearsals for a drama production to observe the teaching and learning process between the young people and their facilitators. in the years that followed, i went when i could to ayf workshops and performances, and continued talking with project leader and director sheila lowe graham about the work of the group. this article, therefore, is in the genre of a reflective case study, examining the case of an educational program in social context, and reflecting on its significance in terms of pedagogy and social justice. development of a theatre arts program for inner-city jamaican youth the ayf theatre arts education program, which began in 1997, throws into sharp profile the economic, political, and educational context of jamaica. first, it reveals that lives of the young participants embody not only the injustices of jamaican society, which relegate many people to acute economic and educational disadvantage, but also its warring politics. second, the very high level of education of the founders and implementers of the program contrasts with the disadvantaged circumstances of the young participants. sheila lowe graham, founder and leader of the ayf, did her first degree in english, french, and spanish literatures at the university of the west indies in jamaica, and holds a master of arts in drama from catholic university of america, washington d.c., u.s.a. she worked as a senior specialist in the department of cultural affairs and then as caribbean coordinator in the executive secretariat for education, science and culture at the organization of american states, headquartered in washington d.c. ayf co-founders winston “bello” bell and owen “blacka” ellis are both theatre arts graduates of the cultural training centre, now called the edna manley college of the visual and performing arts, in kingston, jamaica. “bello and blacka” were, at the time, a popular comedy duo. the occasional teachers and guest speakers recruited for ayf workshops are also highly qualified. the facilitators of learning in the ayf are in a social segment of the society that positions them to exert influence in creating, implementing, and sustaining social initiatives like this program. although instructors receive an honorarium when there is a funded project, the nature of the work is mainly voluntary. graham has been able to sustain her voluntary work managing the ayf over nearly two decades. understanding her roles as founder, executive director, hickling-hudson current issues in comparative education 19 facilitator, and project leader is central to understanding the ayf and its strengths and limitations as an example of socio-educational change. graham’s commitment to drama and its possibilities for improving education in jamaica led to the establishment of the youth group, which evolved out of a specific theatre project (see graham, 2007). as the managing director of “the company limited,” an innovative amateur theatre group, graham and fellow dramatists aimed to produce nigerian nobel laureate wole soyinka’s play “the beatification of area boy.” this play, in which young people are led into criminality by a charismatic leader in lagos, nigeria, echoed the situation in kingston. the theatre that was selected for the production was a 200 year-old victorian playhouse situated in a once-elegant section of kingston that had degenerated into an urban ghetto embroiled in turf wars. the theme of the play led the producers to see the possibilities of engaging the at-risk young people in surrounding areas in an experiment with using drama-in-education methods to challenge the situation of political conflict between neighbouring garrison communities in inner-city kingston. she explained: “our overall goal was to give youth in rival zones of the city an opportunity to work together—to create understanding across chasms of misunderstanding that were literally deadly: cross the street and you could be dead” (2004 interview with graham). in the months leading up to the production, graham and her colleagues recruited 100 teenagers and young adults to participate in the adventure of theatre education. they worked with graham and her team to learn to collaborate in creating performance pieces out of their life experiences and their hopes for the future. these pieces became the material with which the leaders created a revue they called “border connection,” which was performed for soyinka in lieu of a traditional audition. this musical revue became so popular that it was requested and performed for several years in communities around jamaica, attracting large audiences. the theme of “border connection” addressed the violence and social decay of neglected communities, asking, in the first half: “how we come to this?” the second half of the revue projected positive solutions: “yes, there is better way.” of the 70 who performed in the “border connection” audition, 30 stayed on to work in “beatification.” the playwright himself spent several weeks in jamaica to direct the play (see soyinka, 2006). an important achievement was for the leaders to collaborate with jamaica’s leading vocational training institution, heart/nta,[5] in making the production a special training project for the entertainment industry. in that context trainees were assigned to various departments of the production. twelve were selected by soyinka to act in the play. others were apprenticed to the experts who were contracted to work on the production. they learned skills as lighting and sound technicians, as well as skills in stage management, set and costume design and construction, and craft service. of that first cohort, many continued into careers in those areas (2012 interview with graham). the play ran for many weeks, enjoying box-office success. another popular revue they wrote and produced was the reggae musical, “link up,” which was so successful that the group was invited and funded to perform it in the uk and other theatre-arts pedagogy for social justice 20 current issues in comparative education european countries. after the first year, the “area boy” project was developed into a registered foundation to facilitate fundraising and financial management, and was renamed the area youth foundation (ayf). attracting sufficient funds to run the organization was difficult, and at one point demise seemed likely. area youth members were determined that the project would continue. the group produced a newsletter, worked out strategies for its future development, and asked the facilitators to continue to provide pedagogical and organisational support. this worked, and the foundation is still in operation today. the diversity of the audiences that attended ayf performances illustrates the range of people the group reached. the production of wole soyinka’s play was marketed to the ticketpurchasing, arts-loving, theatre-going people from middle and upper income groups who were attracted by the expectation of an excellent production of work by a nobel laureate. however, when the group performed in disadvantaged urban (and a few rural) communities, the audiences were mostly the people who lived there. some performances were sponsored by different types of organizations. for example, a large public relations agency sponsored the staging of a special christmas celebration performance in kingston for their clients, who were some of the biggest private sector firms in jamaica. the group was also commissioned to perform for the prestigious annual “norman washington manley award for excellence” celebrating one of jamaica’s national heroes. this was attended by persons from the highest levels of government and the private sector. for ten successive years the group performed at impresario and philanthropist chris blackwell’s oscar night party at strawberry hill, an exclusive hotel in jamaica’s blue mountains. the organisers of the event ran a lottery as to the oscar winners, and proceeds were donated to ayf. on one occasion, the human rights organization “jamaicans for justice,” campaigning for state forces to be charged for killing a mentally ill youth, invited the group to perform on a street corner. this performance was attended by civil society activists, the media, and community residents. on another occasion, the group performed for hrh prince charles when he visited kingston in 2001.[6] in spite of its sterling work with up to 3,000 young people over 16 years,[7] ayf’s existence has always been precarious and dependent on fundraising. in the absence of government funding, ayf’s director has to devote much time to applying for grants from funding agencies, and carrying out other types of fundraising necessary to sustain the not-for-profit program. over the years, the ayf has received sponsorship from various organisations to help it continue. some of the funds went towards paying school fees for those youth who wanted to go back to high school to take exams they had not been able to take while in school. the grant agencies from which funds are sought may or may not decide to give temporary support to the project. the uncertainty of this financial situation is the most difficult problem ayf has to tackle (see yard edge blog, 2008). in the organisational structure of the ayf, the facilitator-teacher team shares responsibilities. graham leads and organises the work of the foundation and secures funding. the work of teaching drama skills, producing shows, and rehearsing with the actors is shared by graham and others, including at various times winston bell and owen ellis, previously mentioned colleagues who are skilled musicians and dramatists. recently, an alumnus of the ayf, james bell, took the role of general and financial manager. facilitator-teachers, some of whom are ayf alumni, work as workshop animators and participate in the creation and delivery of outreach activities. hickling-hudson current issues in comparative education 21 the foundation’s motto, “youth empowerment through the arts,” is demonstrated by the ayf’s activities. the bedrock of all of the arts-based work in the ayf is the pedagogical process that helps the young people develop their life skills and their “literacies”—an issue i will develop further. in summary, however, it can be observed that the young people’s learning involves a variety of social, educational, and artistic activities: writing songs and creating music videos; producing musical theatre performances both in jamaica and overseas; working on film sets such as with the u.s. film third world cop; making video productions of local docudramas and documentaries; producing a set of “photo-novella” booklets about issues that deeply concern them (hiv/aids, unemployment, and drug and child abuse); sharing their newly-learned skills to assist development in other inner-city communities; training in entrepreneurship and life skills; and providing technical assistance and advice to members who wish to start their own businesses. learning journeys in ayf: “it’s a home to us” the ayf project has had a deep personal impact on the young participants. from interviewing them, i learned that many see the project as an important source of stability, confidence, and growth. participants referred to ayf as a “second home,” and “the best thing i’ve ever done.” some talked about the new skills and knowledge they had acquired through the ayf. others spoke of how ayf enabled them to go on for higher education, and others highlighted how ayf encouraged them to be non-violent. during interviews, graham informed me of the events and careers in which some of the young participants were involved after they completed their sojourn with ayf. as she explained, most participants had grown up in inner-city kingston communities they call “war zones,” referring to conflicts that originated between the two major political parties in jamaica but are more likely to be between rival criminal gangs. most participants went to government schools (new secondary schools, comprehensive schools, and the “senior primary” grades of all-age schools), which constituted the lower strata of schools in the jamaican school system. some of the ayf participants i interviewed had happy memories, but their overall assessment of schooling was negative. some said that they had wasted much of their time there, learning little. others mentioned that their parents could not afford to keep them at school to complete the school-leaving exams. some felt that they had been short-changed by the poor quality of the education they received. some explained that their learning suffered because of frequent changes of school as their families were repeatedly forced to flee when community violence flared up. while some had taken school-leaving exams, they had attained few passes. others had low levels of formal literacy. most of them had no prospects or hopes of employment, and were just hanging around the inner-city streets with little to do. here is how two of the participants, kenny and mike, described their background and experience in ayf, focusing on the technical knowledge and skills they learned (names have been changed to protect privacy). theatre-arts pedagogy for social justice 22 current issues in comparative education kenny: i went and learn a trade--woodwork at a furniture company. i learnt a good amount, but i never stayed there, because of a fight in the men’s room. . . . me find out sey me have a talent in music—dj, to make songs and shows. i had a singing talent from i was about 12. my cousin had a component set, and every night we would experiment with it . . . i saw area youth on tv but i never knew which part it was. they advertised a meeting and i went. i have a deep voice and i sing in the bass line. i’ve been in the group for three years, since it started. i learn a lot from the movie project. i saw what the camera assistant needed, and they put me to help. i had to deliver to them what they wanted. mike: i left school before i graduated, and went to learn a trade. i did cabinetmaking, with kenny. . . . then we saw the “area boy” program advertised. i went to audition and sang for them. i’ve been with the group from the start. after the play, we got a chance to see how a movie is created. we worked on the set with third world cop. this group, area youth, has given us a lot of skills in theatre. i’m still not a big-big actor but i can handle myself—there’s always a lot of things to do. that’s why we don’t want to leave this group—it’s a home to us. this excerpt from janet highlights a learning journey that valued the opportunities provided in ayf seminars for personal and inter-personal reflection, growth, and conflict resolution. her increased self-esteem set the foundation for her to take her love of drama further. janet: i was at home doing nothing and just used to sit on the street side with my friends. then bello [winston bell], sheila and blacka [owen ellis], they were in the park. and they announce that if you want to join area youth, you just have to sign a form. and i sign and bring it in, and i got chosen to be in the group. we did a lot of exercises at the ward theatre. we learn how to trust and things like that. we really learn a lot. i was so aggressive. i was so ignorant: if anybody said anything to me. i was, like, ready to jump at them . . . they (ayf tutors) teach me a lot of things, like self-esteem. i believe in myself now, that you can be anything you want to be, but don’t let anybody come in your way, and don’t let a negative vibe come in your way. they taught us how to live together, show respect, love one another. they learn us how to resolve conflict, not just jump at people. you get to know that you can resolve conflict in different kinds of ways, without fighting and quarrelling. it really do a lot for me. from primary school i love drama, and this gives me the opportunity now to go further, to do something with it . . . i love this group a lot. it’s three years now i’ve been here. in the quote below, nadine emphasizes how being a member of ayf gave her a direction in life based on the theatre skills she was learning, plus information about the possibilities of further education. she also comments on the powerful and calming social effect of the ayf for other people. nadine: how i got into area youth—i saw the ads on tv and decided to try out the audition. and it’s the best thing i’ve ever done. it gives my life a direction. i hickling-hudson current issues in comparative education 23 wanted to go to a college, but didn’t know how or what to do. but working with blacka [owen ellis], who teaches at the college, opened my eyes to those possibilities. i’m doing makeup in our film factory. one day, i want to be a production assistant. area youth has a powerful social effect. sometimes we do workshops in our communities, and people have told us that it helped them see things about violence and encouraged them to stop it. i try to be calm and nonviolent now, although as a child i was violent: i would buck you and crab you up, scrape you with my nails. but my mother prayed about it, and i grew out of that behaviour. marlene’s reminiscences feature the role of the ayf in helping her uncover her hidden talents, as well as a deeper self-confidence that made her realise she didn’t have to “settle for a desk job.” she stresses the social learning that had been important for her and others, describing how the ayf members gradually came to trust each other and passed on techniques that helped their neighbourhood communities change their hostile behaviour and strive to achieve their yearning for peace. marlene: i graduated from secondary school and i wanted to be a secretary, but when i became part of this group i discovered i had more in me. i discovered i could write, sing, dance. i write beautiful poetry. being in the group showed me that i didn’t have to settle for a desk job. mr. bell, sheila graham,[8] and mr. ellis helped me to develop skills and confidence. i’ve even been writing film scripts. how i joined them (ayf) was i heard they were recruiting. when i went, there was a long line—hundreds. but i got in. when we started the exercises we found that all of us in the different communities had one thing in common—we wanted peace between the communities, we wanted to bridge the gaps. there were community rivalries and that caused segregation and “don-ship.” we wanted to try and eradicate those borders. now people from matthews lane, south side, and tel aviv are like a family, but before we wouldn’t talk to each other. we couldn’t socialise, because we were called “informers” and could be killed. in area youth we come up with dramas based on incidents in the community. people remember the dramas and it helps them change their behaviour. if a brother falls down, don’t laugh at him—pick him up. our group has changed the social behaviour of some of the communities. even the baddest man want peace—he want a night’s rest that he can sleep without a weapon in his hand. most ayf members who complete the program have been able to achieve employment that would not have been possible without their ayf learning journeys. the ayf encouraged and assisted many of its members to complete their schooling. some participants went on to tertiary education and now have successful careers in jamaica. omaall, for example, earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the university of the west indies, and is now a teacher, performance poet, recording artist, and film maker. fogo, who owns his own business, is a lighting designer and does lighting for shows and special events. claudine is an airline agent in montego bay. a few members achieved notable success overseas. andre graduated from columbus state university, georgia. craig has his own band, “in transit,” based in orlando, florida. ricardo (also known as billy) graduated from the university of wolverhampton (uk) in 2012, and is still theatre-arts pedagogy for social justice 24 current issues in comparative education broadcasting as “d.j. chill” from the midlands. he now works as a team leader in the prince's trust team programme at birmingham metropolitan college. marlon is an actor who played in london’s west end in the musical, “the harder they come.” jessica, after playing nala in the european production of “the lion king,” went on to act in another production in germany. ricky has his own production company, writes his own plays, and is an actor in london. the participation of another ayf member called marlon in the program motivated him to take a path that led from non-literacy, to catch-up schooling and vocational qualifications. according to his posting on facebook: marlon “seek” smith, august 2012 ok face book friends time to let you all into my world: • i learned to read in 2001. since then i have graduated from loyalist college, which is one of the best colleges in ontario, canada. in 2010 i went and got my high school equivalency diploma, following up in 2011 with a certificate in the skill trade of construction renovation techniques. • i was one of the luckiest people to have been a part of the area youth foundation family. because the love that i felt was like no other, i will always refer to those people as my area youth foundation family. • i think of myself as a boy trying to understand what a man is. my area youth foundation family has helped me to stand on the road to that path. however, even the ayf experience does not prevent some participants from suffering from problems of violence and upheavals in jamaican society. sheila graham knows of five ayf members, ranging in age from 13 to 18, who have been shot and killed, and she says the lives of other young participants are being distorted by violence. for example, jimmy has been unable to continue attending school, despite his desire to do so. at the age of 13, he became so motivated by the ayf project that he applied to go back to school and started attending a technical high school. he had to drop out because it is too unsafe to cross “enemy territory” to get to school. tony is on bail after having been framed on a charge of illegal possession of a firearm. his case has been postponed several times because the police, having no evidence against him, fail to show up at court each time the case is called. peter has been is in jail since 2008, pending a hearing, because a woman told the police that he murdered her son. she knows he didn’t, but according to her: “somebody has to pay.” he was recently released after being held for years without charge. pedagogy and learning in the area youth foundation ayf program pedagogy is built on a combination of insights from selected educators (see endnote 4). from my observation, aspects of the program particularly resonate with the learnercentred approach of freirean pedagogy, and with the interactive drama approach of augusto boal. paulo freire views knowledge as a process of critical praxis, made and remade after reflection. he practiced his deeply held belief that knowledge must be dialogically created from interaction between learners and teachers. in this counterpoint to a colonial model of education, the teacher’s style is dialogue with the learners rather than an authoritarian “banking” of information. learners, guided by teachers, jointly investigate and analyse themes of significance hickling-hudson current issues in comparative education 25 to their lives (see hickling-hudson, 1988). the learning and knowledge created through this “pedagogy of the oppressed” (freire, 1972) is political in the sense that it identifies and challenges unjust and oppressive structures and patterns that characterize class-stratified societies. the brazilian dramatist, augusto boal, utilized drama as a vehicle for freire’s dialogical and political approach. he developed a technique of ‘theatre of the oppressed’ (boal, 1993) in which actors, during the course of the play, invited audiences to engage directly with them in representing or finding solutions to the problems being acted out on stage. this, in turn, influenced the technique of process-drama now utilized by many drama educators. the dialogical pedagogy, application of knowledge, and socio-political consciousness-raising of these approaches are evident in the work of the ayf teachers, who, in using them, also develop the “multiple intelligences” (see gardner, 2000) and the “literacies” of their students. the ayf teaching team helps the young people articulate their own experiences and turn these into creative works. in the process, the youths encounter many aspects of education that they have missed. in spite of the non-formal setting of the ayf, there is a carefully structured curriculum, taught by the ayf leader and at least two additional tutors. working through the curriculum takes approximately nine months. however, some members stay on indefinitely as ayf associates, who help when needed as facilitators or assistants in artistic productions. the ayf curriculum includes these phases: 1. introductory and closing activities: the young people, in small groups, talk about the best and worst things that have happened in their lives, and share their vision for themselves and their future. this enhances a sense of sharing and trust. the life skills that need to be acquired if they are to achieve their vision become the basis for workshops. each session ends with a relaxed winding down of activity and further dialogical reflection on what was learned. 2. developmental activities: the tutors select topics that relate to the particular problem that has come out of the initial group discussion. in workshops, topics such as the following are explored in some depth: a) interpersonal communication; b) coping with conflict; c) uses and abuses of power; d) gender relations, parenting, and family life; e) healthy lifestyles; f) taking a stand on social issues; and g) the world of work. 3. artistic activities: song writing, theatre productions, creating music videos and photonovellas, and working on film sets are some of the artistic activities that emerge from the process. workshop guest speakers raise topics such as sexuality, family life, group relations, psychology, and the development of jamaica and its social structure and tensions. guest speakers may include prominent people such as newspaper editors and university lecturers, or leaders from the community who share the challenges faced by the young people and have learned to overcome these challenges, sometimes bringing about change that ameliorates these problems. the speakers relate to the group in an entertaining way, through anecdotes that illustrate social issues theatre-arts pedagogy for social justice 26 current issues in comparative education and invite discussion. these structured sessions exploring social issues help the youth to develop a wider knowledge framework. ayf’s leader expresses the teaching/learning significance of the process in this way: the discussions with the participants give us the basis for teaching and working with them. we now know who they are, what they are thinking, what is important to them. everything flows from that. our building blocks are who they are and what they already know. everything they create comes out of this—they write a poem, create a dance, or a song, or do a small skit. then we can further develop the storyline from that material. it can even become a musical stage show that develops as we rehearse it. the group talks about the story expressed in the skit, poem or song they created. who is the hero? the protagonist and antagonist? what are some of the ways in which it could end? we, the facilitators, become directors who will make it work as a work of art. we might say: “that piece doesn’t work there, let’s try it somewhere else.” (2012 interview with graham) an important feature of the pedagogical process is the development of the humanist literacies of the young ayf members. they learn to interact with each other in a positive way instead of in an aggressive way. observing that many of the youth started the ayf program full of aggression, graham felt that this stemmed from a subliminal anger at how the society marginalizes them and their communities. inequality of income, education, and social standing combine to intensify a sense of grievance. the facilitators aim to get the youth to work out alternatives to aggression. “we ask them to remind themselves constantly that a ‘diss’[9] is not a crime! it doesn’t have to lead to a fight! they have this cosmic inferiority complex . . . anger is constantly breaking out—everything is a cuss-cuss!” (2004 interview with graham). the work of developing self-knowledge and self-understanding has the goal, of “having access to your own emotions, knowing yourself” (2012 interview with graham). when the group staged a musical theatre production titled “family,” it emerged from workshop sessions in which they explored the intimate side of what happens at home. this opened social sores, such as abuse and lack of love and care. some of the group members had, as children, been given away by their mothers (absent fathers being the norm[10]) to someone else to raise them because their mothers couldn’t handle them or couldn’t afford them. this left the youth with deep trauma. “if you are not worthy of love from your mother, who’s going to love you? this reinforces the feeling of the lack of regard, lack of respect from the society” (2004 interview with graham). the teaching team sometimes had to get the family court to intervene in cases where young women in the group had been sexually abused by males in their family or community. with these kinds of difficult family circumstances, getting the young people to think about who they are, to achieve positive knowledge of themselves, “is a constant struggle, a lot of what we do” (2004 interview with graham). part of this process is education to improve gender relations. it is notable that the ratio of young men to young women in the ayf is usually 60/40 or more. graham thinks that young men are especially eager to become ayf members for many reasons. it appears that the practical nature of the program attracts them, that they are less willing than young women to go into other more traditional types of educational programs, and that they tend to be bolder than many young women when it comes to experimenting with unfamiliar hickling-hudson current issues in comparative education 27 forms of creative expression (2012 interview with graham). given the crisis of disproportionate male underachievement in education in jamaica,[11] it is important to explore why learning through the ayf is so attractive to young males. the technical literacies developed in ayf workshops and performances are the basis of knowledge that will help the young participants to envisage and pursue careers. for example, through the all in pictures photo-novella or comic-book project, ayf members created a series of illustrated booklets in comic-book style about issues that deeply concerned them, including hiv awareness, crime and violence, unemployment, and drug and child abuse. to prepare the young people, the teaching team taught them skills of constructing and writing stories—learning about plot, protagonist, antagonist, problem, resolution, and conclusion. the groups enacted dramatic improvisations on topics they selected; these became the basis of the booklets. then they designed costumes and sets, acted out and photographed each scene for the booklets, selected the most suitable photos out of the hundreds they had taken, up-linked the photos into a computer graphics program, wrote “conversation bubbles” in jamaican creole and narration in standard english, edited the booklets for final production, published and marketed them. thus, the production of the photo-novella series involved an intense teaching/learning process that was both theoretical and practical. it developed the group’s understandings of socio-political issues, creative writing, and drama, as well as skills in digital photography, computers, editing and publishing printed material, and marketing. the work of area youth members in creating musical theatre, film, and text develops not only their technical/artistic skills, but also their overall educational levels and the epistemic literacies relating particularly to jamaica’s cultural industries. having to learn a script is enormous motivation for systematic reading, and this leads to reading improvement. those who are involved in writing scripts for the group improve even more. the young people might find themselves acting, casting, preparing costumes, assisting the director or the producer, preparing the location, doing makeup, graphics, sound, camera operations, or electrical work. these activities prepare area youth members to work in the entertainment industry, which is booming. as ayf’s leader observes, “they are learning rare skills which are in demand” (graham, 2007). another way the ayf teaching team helps to develop the epistemic literacies of the young people is by organising help with formal schooling for any group members who asks. tutors work with those who ask for help with reading and mathematics. with low levels of functional literacy, most of the youth do not have the skills to pass exams in the jamaican educational system. ayf’s leader explained that they are good at oral expression in jamaican creole, but find it difficult or impossible to write exam answers in standard english (2012 interview with graham). therefore, extra help is essential for them. although the overall pass rates in schoolleaving exams are low, some group members have attended the edna manley college for the visual and performing arts, completing a three-year teaching diploma in drama-in-education, and some have graduated from universities in jamaica and abroad. additionally, the area youth project gives some participants opportunities to develop leadership skills by encouraging alumni to work alongside project teachers as peer facilitators in workshops and community development projects. theatre-arts pedagogy for social justice 28 current issues in comparative education it is also important to note how the ayf teaching team helps to develop the young people’s public literacies, in the sense of their competence in contributing to the public sphere and deploying public structures for social good. this is vividly evident in the healing of political divisions between ayf members, and their use of drama, music, and art for social advancement in their local communities. an example of how ayf has contributed to peace-building in troubled communities was its organisation of peace boat, an unprecedented community sports and cultural celebration that brought hostile communities together after violent local elections in 2003 (see graham, 2007). this is work with a socio-political impact. the ayf is reaching out to communities and helping to heal political divisions. the group decides to go to communities where they could have the most impact, or they simply go to communities that have invited them. they offer workshops using the group methods they have learned—talking about problems in the community and developing skits and songs. ayf members initiated collective mural creations in some of these communities, inviting residents to consider how they would like their community to be visually portrayed. the workshops start with doodles and informal sketches of participants’ ideas. a visual artist later compiles these into a picture suitable for a mural, and transfers the drawing to the mural on a large, public wall. community members then paint the mural, filling in the colours. the mountain view community in kingston presents a striking example of the positive impact of peace work by ayf members collaborating with other state and civil society organizations. former gang leaders of fighting factions came together and created a united community council. they all received mediation training and still collaborate to defuse tensions whenever there is a flare up. a location under the control of one area leader has been renamed the “eastern peace centre” and is the site of a basic school, homework centre, youth club, football team, and recording studio.[12] the young man who operates the centre was the protégé of the area leader and himself a gang member. he began to change course by supporting ayf’s efforts and then becoming an ayf member. he is now a unicef youth xchanger and has travelled for unicef to ethiopia, the uk, and the usa. he has received scholarships to international community leadership training programmes, and his goal is to study one day for a phd in anthropology (2012 interview with graham). conclusion: the socio-educational significance of the area youth project in this article i discussed how the area youth foundation’s motto, “youth empowerment through the arts,” is played out in workshops and creative productions that are simultaneously learner-driven and teacher-guided. these productions and workshops have powerful impact, developing the humanist, epistemic, technical, and public literacies of the participants in the sense of their improved knowledge and competencies in a wide range of discourses and skills. the poignant stories narrated by my interviewees illustrate their growing social understanding, increased conflict-resolution skills and technical competencies, and efforts to improve their communities—to summarise, their experience of absorbing the “literacies” embedded in the ayf program. the ayf has made a difference in jamaican society by addressing a gap in the education system. it has worked successfully with several thousand young adults whose socioeducational needs were not being met, and it has served to carve out a respected and admired social niche for participating young people. this contrasts with the marginalisation these youth hickling-hudson current issues in comparative education 29 suffered while growing up in divided and troubled inner-city communities. the theme “transforming lives” (yard edge blog, 2008) relates aptly to the lives of most ayf members. for young adults who have been disadvantaged by substandard schooling, the powerful learning experiences provided by the ayf help them to have a chance of becoming successful and effective, not only in their careers and social relationships, but also in their ability to challenge and change entrenched public injustices, as suggested by their success in reducing antagonism and violence among different community groups. ayf educational experiences are not intended to substitute for schooling. the project director pointed out that the work of ayf should be a complement to formal education, not a “remedial teacher” (2004 interview with graham). however, if the approach were to be used as a component of formal education, it could help change jamaica’s dysfunctional system. the unique arts-based approach of the ayf could be applied to changing the narrow confines and abstractness of traditional curricula in schools and adult education programs. as mark figueroa (2010) observes: “in the caribbean, our students are required to be far too passive; they are trained to be risk averse and are forced to engage in endless rote learning in a school system that is oriented more towards passing exams than learning and developing life skills. such characteristics are in conflict with male gender socialisation and an education reform that would benefit boys as well as girls.” the cultural relevance and economic effects of creative and applied learning are of vital importance in an environment of high unemployment. television programs and movies in jamaica are overwhelmingly imported, especially from the usa. these and other homogenised products of globalisation are increasingly displacing local media content (see gordon, 2009). the ayf’s success in training young people to create, develop, and implement artistic media and theatre products drawing on local roots is of cultural importance in this regard. the development of interpersonal skills and community interaction through ayf programs is particularly important in locations where community cohesion has been broken down. this interpersonal approach would almost certainly improve formal school curricula. building on student knowledge would be a contrast to the neo-colonial tradition of valuing a single type of academic knowledge as supreme. the lesson is for education to focus far more than it has in the past on giving learners opportunities to develop the self-knowledge and interpersonal intelligence embodied in humanist literacy, to reflect on their life-worlds, and to connect with their communities. voluntary associations such as the ayf are helping jamaica to achieve its goals of providing educational services to adults who have been poorly served by the formal education system. pointing out that some 70% of the jamaican labour pool has no certification, jamaica’s minister of education, hon. ronald thwaites, estimated that some 150,000 to 200,000 adults could benefit from new measures that the government aimed to put in place to expand access to adult learning--measures that included increased adult basic education through e-learning and a new high school equivalency program (robinson, 2012). with such an urgent need to expand adult education, the ministry of education should support and encourage voluntary programs such as the ayf. such a step would eliminate the precarious process of winning competitive grants for discrete projects that the ayf depends on to survive. a move by the government to recognise and support the teaching of multiple “literacies” would also address the challenge faced by the theatre-arts pedagogy for social justice 30 current issues in comparative education ayf of depending on the goodwill of highly skilled volunteers. it could be of social and educational value for the jamaican government to assist the continuation—and expansion—of this and other non-formal learning institutions that have demonstrated social worth and educational excellence over a sustained period. notes: [1]. as a caribbean educator, i had the powerful experience of working with paulo freire for two weeks as one of the facilitators in a teacher education workshop in 1980 in grenada (see hickling-hudson, 1988). this became a watershed in my educational development (see evans, 2009, pp. 219-220). another watershed was my deeper exploration of the interaction between literacies, pedagogies, and social stratification and how this relates to adult education (hickling-hudson, 1995, 2013). since 1987, while continuing my work in teacher education in australia, i frequently revisit the caribbean to keep in touch with educational developments there (see hickling-hudson, 2004, 2006). [2]. the privileged apex of the school system in jamaica and most commonwealth caribbean countries consists of private, fee-paying preparatory schools (kindergarten to grade 6), and independent fee-paying high schools which are “grant-aided” by the government (grades 7 to 13). the majority of primary and secondary schools, entirely government–funded, are at lower levels of the educational hierarchy in terms of resources, teacher qualifications, and students’ socio-economic background, social status, and academic performance (see evans, 2001, pp. 1-15, for an overview of schools and schooling in jamaica). jamaica’s high schools, taken as a whole, fail to provide adequate education for the majority of students. examination results in the school-leaving caribbean secondary examination certificate (csec) were particularly low in 2012. in the core subjects, 46.2% passed english and only 31.7% passed mathematics (see jamaica gleaner editorial, august 2012). in the cohort of 50,000 students enrolled in grade 11 in 2012, some 20,000 did not sit the csec exams. of those entered, only about 17% passed five subjects including english and mathematics (henry, 2012). [3]. dr. patric rutherford (2010) refers to a study revealing that 15.5% of the students who attend schools in the inner-city communities of kingston suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from their experience of violence and abuse. dr. yvonnie bailey-davidson (2011) points out: “the most recent data from the national council on drug abuse show that 23% of (jamaican) teenagers aged 13-15 years are having suicidal ideation and 22% have attempted suicide. depression, anxiety, substance abuse, sexual abuse and domestic violence can predispose teenagers to have suicidal thoughts.” [4]. “ayf’s unique methodology harnesses the artistic disciplines of theatre and drama, music and dance as educational, social, cultural development tools to stimulate personal development and behaviour change, impart useful skills which enhance opportunities for employment and advance the imaginative talents of poor and excluded people in the creation of democratic and inclusive societies. it applies elements of the theories and practicum of harvard’s howard gardner, u. chicago’s mihaly csikszentmihalyi, anthropologist oscar lewis, paulo freire and augusto boal of brazil, britain’s dorothy heathcote, jamaica’s dennis scott and honor ford-smith and those developed in over twenty years of collaboration of ayf’s founders sheila graham, winston bell and owen ellis” (written correspondence from sheila lowe graham, 2012). see also https://www.facebook.com/pages/area-youth-foundation/114840015241111 https://www.facebook.com/pages/area-youth-foundation/114840015241111 hickling-hudson current issues in comparative education 31 [5]. heart trust/nta is the acronym for the human employment and resource training trust and national training agency. a member of the international labour organization, it organizes vocational and technical training and certification, and sets standards for the tvet system in jamaica (see http://www.worldskillsjamaica.org/index.php/item/1-heart-nta). [6]. information about the audiences is based on written information supplied in 2013 by sheila lowe graham. as well as directing local performances, she was in charge of taking the young people abroad to respond to overseas invitations to perform, and provided the following information about the european audiences: “in london, ‘link up’ was staged in brent, one of the boroughs with the highest percentage of immigrants from the caribbean, africa and asia. the audiences were a mixture of white english people and ‘new english’ descendants of the immigrant population. the group also performed at theatre royal, stratford. in huddersfield, west yorkshire, the group performed at the prestigious lawrence batley theatre. word of mouth from the london audiences sold out the two performances there. in italy, excerpts from ‘link up’ were performed at the annual international reggae festival, rototom sunsplash, to audiences of reggae-loving europeans. this was followed by performances at a festival village in rome and then at limone sul garda, a tourist resort town in the italian alps. on another visit to the uk, ayf members performed in several disadvantaged urban communities in a london festival called summer in the city, and in liverpool in an international youth festival called global euphoria, which was part of the cultural programme for the commonwealth games—the opening of which was attended by her majesty the queen.” [7]. the ayf director estimates that some 3,000 young jamaicans have been learners in area youth foundation workshops. however, records are not specific as to which participants were engaged long term or short term. many thousands more have participated in outreach activities that take place in the communities (e.g., the peace boat). [8]. ayf’s director is variously addressed as sheila, miss, miss g, auntie, and mummy (the latter two are normal usage in popular jamaican culture). very few call her “mrs. graham.” [9]. jamaican vernacular that means “disrespect.” [10]. according to the 2011 census, 80% of children in jamaica are born out of wedlock, and many of these do not have their father’s name on their birth certificates. many relationships take the form of multiple sequential partnerships over the prime child-bearing and childrearing years, with arguably adverse effects to family stability (see henry, 2013). [11]. of jamaicans aged 15–24, 26.2% males and 7.9% females are illiterate (unfpa, 2011). females outperform males in examinations to enter high school, in school leaving exams, and at university (see figueroa, 2004). observations made by barry chevannes (1999) concerning the roots of problems in male identity in jamaica remain relevant. [12]. this news extract suggests the benefits gained from the work to heal divisions and promote peace: gunshots every night, burned-down businesses and corpses up to a half-dozen a day used to define the neighborhood of mountain view on the eastern hillsides of kingston, jamaica’s capital. but not anymore. now, the nights are filled with barefoot soccer matches under streetlights or block parties that bring together former rivals from local gangs. no one has been murdered in mountain view for three years. “the dark cloud is moving away,” said keith nugent, 76, a tailor in the neighborhood who counsels former criminals. “young people here are beginning to gravitate to a sense of life, and http://www.worldskillsjamaica.org/index.php/item/1-heart-nta theatre-arts pedagogy for social justice 32 current issues in comparative education function.” (urban news hour, 2013, retrieved from http://urbannewshour.com/news/the-murder-rate-is-down-40-in-jamaica/) anne hickling-hudson has taught cultural and policy studies in education for over 20 years at queensland university of technology, australia. born and raised in the caribbean, she trains teachers to challenge inequity and strive for ethical development in education. a rockefeller fellow, her research is widely published in the realms of cross-cultural, comparative and international education, and she is co-editor of a book series and online journal about postcolonial studies in education. she is recognised for her national and global leadership role in academic associations of education, especially as past president of the world council of comparative and international education societies (wcces), and as past president of the british association of international and comparative education (baice). e-mail: a.hudson@qut.edu.au references ------. (2012, august 18). assessing csec exam results. jamaica gleaner (editorial). retrieved from http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120818/cleisure/cleisure1.html caribbean journal staff. (2012, february 8). jamaica’s murder rate falls to seven year low, but still caribbean’s highest. caribbean journal. retrieved from http://www.caribjournal.com/2012/02/08/jamaicas-murder-rate-falls-to-seven-year-low-but-stillcaribbeans-highest/ bailey-davidson, y. (2011, april 16). let’s talk life: sleepless nights. jamaica gleaner. retrieved from http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20110416/life/life2.html boal, a. (1993). theater of the oppressed. new york: theatre communications group. chevannes, b. (1999). what we sow and what we reap. problems in the cultivation of male identity in jamaica. grace kennedy foundation lecture, isbn 976-8041-12-9. evans, h. (2001). inside jamaican schools. kingston, jamaica: university of the west indies press. evans, h. 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12(1) / fall 2009 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education guest editorial introduction 3 cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education andria wisler articles 6 rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education noah w. sobe 14 the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism: education for a shared humanity dale snauwaert 23 lonely business or mutual concern: the role of comparative education in the cosmopolitan citizenship debates anatoli rapoport 33 cosmopolitanism in civic education: exploring cross-national trends, 1970-2008 patricia bromley 45 study abroad and development of global citizen identity and cosmopolitan ideals in undergraduates karen hendershot and jill sperandio 56 educating the world: teachers and their work as defined by the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) helen harper and judith dunkerly 66 world-systems analysis in comparative education: an alternative to cosmopolitanism tom g. griffiths and lisa knezevic 76 smashing cosmopolitanism: the neo-liberal destruction of cosmopolitan education in eastcentral europe robert j. imre and zsuzsa millei essay 86 the evolution of a cosmopolitan identity: transforming culture shannan spisak 92 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 1 (2009) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden guest executive editor andria wisler visiting assistant professor, georgetown university, program of justice and peace executive editors cambria russell, andrew shiotani senior editors kathleen keenan, ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, cambria russell, michael schapira editors sarah flatto, michelle reddy, briana ronan, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors holly brewster, richard cheng, henan cheng, cara furman, anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, ghazala mehmood, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, carina omoeva, amritpal sandhu, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira style editors ruaridh macleod, ghazala mehmood, elizabeth morphis, amritpal sandhu web editor andrew shiotani associate web editors ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, ingrid gogolin, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2009 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 12(1): 45-55. study abroad and development of global citizen identity and cosmopolitan ideals in undergraduates karen hendershot lehigh university jill sperandio lehigh university this paper reports selected results from a broader study which focused on determining students’ perceptions of the development of their global citizen identity within the context of an undergraduate global citizenship program, and what students believed were aspects of the program that contributed to this growth. findings suggest that experiences with other cultures and places gained through program-organized study abroad were perceived as being the most important element in developing students’ global citizen identities and practice of cosmopolitan ideals. today’s increasing focus on the phenomenon of globalization has revived discussion about individual and societal responsibilities. scholars and academics, including those in higher education in the united states, are re-examining the philosophical origins of social constructs that appear to be grounded in principles deriving from those of the ancient greek stoics, especially those which contributed to early notions of cosmopolitanism. they are exploring how these concepts relate to contemporary life. these discussions are exemplified in nussbaum’s 1996 work, for love of country: debating the limits of patriotism, and contrast political citizenship, in which the citizen has a distinct, bounded, legal affiliation with a geographical state or locality (dower, 2003), with the move toward a universal moral order (fujikane, 2003; benhabib, 2006). cosmopolitanism as it is received today is a concept which has several meanings. nussbaum (1996) wrote “... we should make all human beings part of our community of dialogue and concern, base our political deliberations on that interlocking commonality, and give the circle that defines our humanity special attention and respect (p.9).” extending that conception, appiah (2006) stressed that while we should seek to come to an understanding that we share a common humanity, we must also recognize the legitimacy of differences – both among people and among different cultures. others (benhabib, 2006) go so far as to envision a world order, or even a global or super-national government based upon cosmopolitan norms. against this backdrop, educational leaders must consider that 21st century students have to prepare to live and work in an increasingly complex world. an educated person may need to develop the knowledge base, skills, and attitudes required to function in and contribute to a global society. schools, colleges, and universities in the united states are developing specialized curricula designed to educate for global citizenship.1 therefore, it is appropriate at this time in history to reconsider the meaning of cosmopolitanism ideals and their relationship to the practice of global citizenship. nussbaum (1996) writes that in a cosmopolitan education students would be taught that they are citizens of the world, which they share with other human beings. what, then, is a global citizen? 46 current issues in comparative education k. hendersot and j. sperandio data gathered directly from students in this study suggest they perceive a global citizen to be the following: one who engages in activism; is open minded and accepting of other cultures in a respectful, tolerant and non-judgmental fashion; pursues knowledge and seeks understanding; feels part of the human community; and possesses a sense of awareness, which includes not only self-awareness, but also awareness of the interconnections between local and global issues and of the impact of one’s actions on the world. these findings derived from a doctoral dissertation which examined undergraduate students’ perceptions of their global citizen identity development within the context of the global citizenship program (gcp) at lehigh university in bethlehem, pennsylvania. a further central tenet of the program follows from this: the exact means by which students come to construct their individual definition of the term is thought to influence how they will continue to live and practice their role as a global citizen throughout their lives. case context the original study focused on four cohorts of students in the gcp. cohort 1 students entered lehigh university in the fall of 2004 and graduated in may 2008. cohorts 2-4 entered in subsequent academic years. the gcp curriculum was conceived as a ‘backpack’ addition to students’ regular programs to provide them with intellectual flexibility regardless of what college or major they were enrolled in at lehigh. an underlying assumption of the program is that through a specialized curriculum students will experience a transformational process and ‘become’ global citizens. among the mandatory components of the program were included the following three: academic coursework, study abroad, and experiential/co-curricular learning. the award of the global citizenship program certificate itself requires completion of 23 to 27 credits of academic work. first, gcp students must take several special courses during an intensive freshman year experience, including the globalization and cultures course, in the fall, and a practicum that prepares students for the freshman year intersession trip to another country. in spring of freshman year, all gcp students enroll in the global literature course, which seeks to explore the literary traditions of the country in which they had their intersession experience. during senior year, students must complete a three or four credit-hour capstone course and project. the academic component also includes fulfilling the gcp course requirements with what were called global citizenship (gc) courses. these courses are similar to so-called ‘general requirement’ courses but have been modified by faculty to include issues relative to global citizenship. faculty interested in having their courses cross-listed as gc courses are required to participate in a training seminar, which is offered annually. second, two study-abroad experiences must be completed in the four-year program, including a mandatory faculty-led, structured intersession trip during the winter break of the first year. the second study abroad experience must be at least five weeks long and take place in a non-english speaking country. third, the experiential component mandates a minimum of two co-curricular activities per semester. amongst other options, students can elect to live in global citizen house, an on-campus residence option with the mission of perpetuating the values of the global citizenship program. they may also participate in the global citizenship student committee. current issues in comparative education 47 study abroad and development of global citizen identity theoretical framework the gcp’s mission is based upon the premise that young adult learners enrolled in the program will be transformed in their thinking about their relationship to the world and that the curriculum and pedagogy of the program will contribute to the development of a global citizen identity. the work of mezirow, et al. (2000) on transformation theory provided the theoretical lens through which to examine both formal and informal program elements that may have contributed to students’ perceptions of their growth as global citizens. transformation theory holds that adult learners undergo a process of constructivist learning in which they experience deep shifts in their mental models, thereby coming to change perspective, become authors of their own knowledge, and increase personal agency. daloz (2000) specifically outlines four key conditions that must be present in transformative learning for social responsibility: the presence of the other, reflective discourse, a mentoring community, and opportunities for committed action which contribute to the common good. methodology the sample a critical case study approach was used in this exploratory research as well as a mixed-method case study design. data sources in the original study included a survey of students in cohorts 1-4, a document analysis of the gcp admissions essays for cohorts 1-4, in-depth selfreflective interviews with cohort 1 students, and a focus group interview with cohort 2 subjects. of twenty-one students in cohort 1 fifteen agreed to participate in a one-on-one in-depth interview with the researcher. sixty-five of ninety-five students (70%) in cohorts 1 through 4 responded to the survey. survey and interviews the survey consisted of 18 likert-type questions derived from the literature concerning the process of transformative learning for social responsibility with regard to students’ experiences in the gcp, and three open-ended questions. the results reported in this paper are derived from answers to the following open-ended question: “give your definition of global citizen.” interview questioning was intended to elicit students’ perceptions of their global citizenship identity development as well as the indicators and/or factors that played an important role in that development, both within the program and outside of it. responses to three selected, interrelated questions serve as the basis for data reported in this paper: ‘what element of the program has been the most important in helping you to develop your identity as a global citizen?’ ‘what is the most important experience you have had at lehigh?’ and ‘what has been the most important experience you had in the global citizenship program?’ also included are interview reports of students’ reflections on their global citizen identity development. the commentary included in the sections on findings consists of both verbatim and paraphrased transcriptions of student reflections. pseudonyms were used to protect confidentiality content analysis procedures the analysis of data in this qualitative research varied from method to method, and in the case of open-ended survey questions involved initial reading, sorting, and categorizing to allow salient themes to emerge. phrases, terms, and descriptions based on the actual language of the subjects were used when possible. an external auditor was employed to provide a cross-check. with regard to interviews, a guide was used which facilitated the grouping of different students’ answers to common questions based on salient, emerging themes, and allowed for a cross48 current issues in comparative education k. hendersot and j. sperandio individual analysis of varying perspectives on key issues. in most cases, a simple ‘vote’ count of answers to the questions sufficed. responses were reviewed, sorted into categories, and a simple count of the answers was made. these were then converted to percentages. quotations that were most illustrative of each category were chosen and used to give voice to the participant (maxwell, 2005; cresswell, 2003; patton, 2002). findings: defining global citizen cohort 1 cohort 2 cohort 3 cohort 4 (n=19) (n=22) (n=7) (n=17) attribute % rank % rank % rank % rank activism 18% 1 17% 1 9% 4 21% 2 open minded/accepting 15% 2 12% 2 39% 1 29% 1 knowledge/understanding 15% 2 17% 1 9% 4 7% 6 part of human community 14% 3 17% 1 17% 2 10% 5 flexibility/adaptability 13% 4 awareness 10% 5 11% 3 13% 3 17% 3 interest/curiosity 6% 6 responsibility 5% 7 9% 4 misc. 5% 7 2% 7 comfortable in world 13% 3 14% 4 engagement 8% 5 self-reflective 6% 6 skills 3% 7 note: dashes (-) indicate that no attribute emerged in that cohort. table 1. attributes of a global citizen by cohort table 1 presents the findings, in percentages, of each attribute of a global citizen and its rank in terms of frequency of mention by cohort. discussion of the results follows the table. activism ranked as one of the top two attributes of a global citizen for all cohorts with the exception of cohort 3, where it ranked fourth. all cohorts seemed to identify a core of five qualities that were important to them, although the rank order of their importance varied somewhat among cohorts: engages in activism; is open minded and accepting; pursues knowledge and seeks understanding; feels part of the human community; and is aware. a few members of each cohort mentioned responsibility; however, the frequency was much lower than that of the core qualities. finally, five other qualities seemed to be cohort-specific: interest/curiosity, comfortable in world, engagement, self-reflective, and possessing concrete skills. findings: program effects on global citizen identity development students reported that the most significant effect on their global citizen identity development came from experiences with other cultures and places gained through gcp-organized travel. 54% of interviewees identified gcp organized travel experiences as having been the most important in helping to develop their identity as a global citizen. sixty-seven percent identified some aspect of the gcp, or combination of program elements, as being their most important experience overall at lehigh, and nine interviewees (60%) said the most important experience that they had in the gcp was the intersession trip abroad. selected excerpts from student interviews and commentary are discussed in the following section. intersession trip the intersession trip was a requirement for all students in the program, the costs of which were current issues in comparative education 49 study abroad and development of global citizen identity subsidized by the university. students spent approximately two weeks during the semester break (december-january) traveling as a group with faculty members to an international location. they engaged in a structured schedule of experiences and activities. they prepared for the trip by attending a series of lectures and a practicum that focused on their country of destination, and served as an intensive orientation into the destination’s culture and what they would encounter during the trip. in 2004, cohort 1 students were split into two groups for the trip. one group traveled to chile and the other to hong kong. for a number of students, this intersession trip was the first time they had either traveled abroad or traveled abroad without parents. students shared their perspectives regarding their experiences. according to mark, the intersession trip to chile “…still comes up five years later when talking with people that went on the trip or in other people’s stories about that.” he indicated that students who experienced the chile trip together continue to recount and share stories based on their collective memories. peter reported that the students in the hong kong group developed into a cohesive unit, and grew to love and respect each other. during our discussion, peter and i agreed that as a result of the trip, students had formed what could be described as a learning community: a closely knit group of students and faculty who shared with, and learned from each other. for mike, the chile trip provided an opportunity to get out of the classroom and university and connect with another culture in ways beyond those experienced by tourists. he mentioned going out to farm fields and talking with union laborers and survivors of a torture camp. the experience helped him realize that “they’re people. they’re human beings…not like they are a museum exhibit.” individual study abroad or international internships for others, the individual study abroad component was most meaningful. trish talked about her experience studying in milan, italy. she said, “they weren’t so welcoming to american students and people didn’t speak english…so there is a point that i didn’t really want to stay, and i wanted to come home and i was reflecting on everything that i had learned in global citizenship about how i had to be more open-minded to different cultures and such, and i really had to step outside of my box. . . . once i got through it, it changed me a lot.” janet talked about her study abroad trip to ecuador that focused on microfinance. she came home with a new perspective on the potential effects of that type of economic development work after seeing how people would secure a microfinance loan to buy a television when they didn’t even have electricity. “i [originally] thought microfinance was the most incredible thing that would bring people out of poverty, but really it could bring more people into poverty…that just kind of changed my whole perception of what development is and does it really work.” engagement with ‘the other’ students in cohort 1 also discussed the opportunities they had for constructive encounters or engagement with those who are very different. such encounters included experience of critical incidents and challenging or defining moments (referred to colloquially as ‘ah-ha moments’) on campus or during study abroad that may have moved them to a higher level of global citizen identity. a number of students told in-depth stories about their experiences. marcie, who majored in architecture, began her academic career at lehigh without seeing any connections between her chosen field and global issues such as sustainability of the environment and stewardship of the planet. however, her experiences abroad changed her perspective. she said, 50 current issues in comparative education k. hendersot and j. sperandio …at the beginning of college i remember being in one of my studios and really not accepting or…not seeing sustainable design or green architecture…as something i would be interested in. it really wasn’t ‘til going through these courses and seeing first hand architecture here and abroad, that this is something that not only was i interested in but was something that has an impact on local communities and also protects the global community. she described these courses and study abroad experiences as enlightening moments that changed her career focus to include becoming “…involved in architecture that promotes better interior environments as well as protecting the natural world, which i think has ties to global citizenship.” beth had a dangerous encounter with fire during her study abroad that made a lasting impression on her. she and several friends were visiting portugal for a week and were riding on the metro at night. beth described how a man entered the car with a flame thrower and started screaming, and everyone ran to the front of the car, …and i was sitting next to some woman and she was trying to talk to me and tell me it was ok and to calm down, and i couldn’t speak portuguese…but she started holding my hand and i guess it was just one of those things where i realized that we were communicating even though we weren’t really communicating. that incident had a significant impact on beth and helped her realize that one needn’t always speak the same language to feel a human connection with others. several other students specifically recounted defining moments with others that transcended language barriers. valerie was in south africa, traveling with friends along the coast during easter break. they caught a ride on the back of a truck with some local women from a xhosa village. all i could say was, ‘hi, how are you?’ and a few things that i’ve since completely forgotten, but i just remember it was one of the coolest things ever. they were so excited that i even tried, that i had any idea about their language, and i remember that was one of the focal moments of the whole trip, having that brief interaction. jen remembered attending her creole teacher’s church while she was doing research with a professor in the turks and caicos islands during a summer study abroad. i actually went to his church one weekend…and that whole experience was very different for me, ‘cause it was all in dominican spanish and i didn’t understand a word of it…they sat a lady next to us who knew english and spanish and so she was translating the whole thing. what did she learn from that encounter? you know, generally people really just want to help you…and i just saw it time and time again, and i loved it…you know having that realization that people, even cross language barriers, or cultural barriers, it still exists…that urge, the want to help other people and the good in human nature. current issues in comparative education 51 study abroad and development of global citizen identity student reflections on global citizen identity awareness awareness is important, according to marcie. she explained, what you need to approach as yourself, if you’re trying to become a global citizen, is first gaining an awareness of what it is to be a global citizen, and one of the things that we learned about gaining an awareness is just how you as an individual interact in your own culture and how your actions, or the actions of a business you work for, affects people in a different country and what kind of moral or personal responsibility you have as a citizen of the united states and also a citizen of the world. that’s one change that i’d say has occurred [in me] in the past few years. allen stated, “i’m just aware of global issues…dealing with the environment, dealing with war, dealing with politics, things like that and i am more active in seeking out information than i was before.” another student, mark, indicated that you can go out in the world and get lots of stamps in your passport, but that doesn’t necessarily make you a global citizen. he added that one does not always need to travel or speak a different language, “…but i think it’s more about being engaged and kind of thinking about global issues and being respectful and sensitive of other peoples’ cultures.” jim remarked, “sure i have 100% grown as a person, grown to understand different cultures and how different people live…it’s really opened my eyes and just made me a really curious person, someone who loves to ask questions and learn about different things.” activism engaging in activism was perceived to be an important attribute of a global citizen by the time cohort 1 students reached graduation. the concept of activism itself depended on the individual’s interpretation and included both idealistic and pragmatic approaches to engagement. an idealist might define activism as taking action to help a community from an altruistic rather than egotist personal stance. a pragmatist might consider activism as taking the initiative to learn about others in order to enhance one’s own personal insights or career possibilities. prior to entering lehigh beth defined the main facets of a global citizen as the ability to appreciate diversity, being open, and realizing that others have different points of view. she added, however, “i think another huge thing is the ability to act and not only acknowledge that there are other cultures and other people and ways that they think is different, but to actually do something…” when asked what led her to see the aspect of global citizenship in which you must translate your ideas and ideals into some kind of action, she responded that in the program students talked about how “…to really be a global citizen you have to interact with the world and that without acting you can’t interact with the world.” the program led her to realize that while it is good to be open and accepting of others, one will never have an effect on the world unless one opts to “… actually do something.” alexis felt that as much as she had learned about other cultures through the program, she kept coming back to what she had written in her essay about the importance of taking action. it stands out that i kept saying [in my admissions essay] that you take action, and i still feel like that’s the main point of being a global citizen…taking the action to become a better person within society. not a better [italics added] person, but just a more active person. 52 current issues in comparative education k. hendersot and j. sperandio janet noted she had originally believed a key element of global citizenship was being aware of the global world. she went on to say, however, that what she learned through the program helped her to be an activist in her own community. i think what i’ve learned about the world around me has impacted my ability in the classroom, dealing with students from various different backgrounds, many of them who are first year americans, first generation american citizens. so i do feel that my experiences abroad and in the gcp have broadened my perspective and my knowledge about the world, which has allowed me to really give back to the community here….i mentioned in the last sentence of my paper [admissions’ essay] that making it a part of your everyday life, and still knowing about what’s going on maybe in places very far, but really bringing it locally into our country. mark reflected on how his four years in the program led him to the following conclusion: …you can’t really go and understand other places if you don’t understand where you come from, and you can’t be actively engaged in another place if you’re not engaged where you actually are at the time.…like i love to travel and love to go abroad and things, but i also now really love just to get very engaged in where i live and explore my locality and that. i’ve met a lot of great things and great culture here in my backyard even if i live in rural america or something. in other words, for mark, one needn’t “go out into the world to be a global citizen. more important was being active no matter where one happened to be located. others embraced a more pragmatic view of activism. mike, for example, was a business major, and early on had identified the importance of globalization and the movement of business overseas. he believed the program would be worthwhile in developing his career. “by going through the program i’m more aware of global issues, aware of interconnectivity,” he stated. he said the intersession trip to chile during freshman year had an impact on him. the trip “… definitely made me view things in a much larger perspective…and definitely made me go out and do things and not just think about them.” after graduating he spent two months traveling around southeast asia, and volunteered in an orphanage in cambodia. “these opportunities don’t happen unless you are willing to take that step out the door.” discussion interviews with cohort 1 members indicated that study abroad experiences, in particular interactions and reactions they had directly with those from other cultures, had the greatest effect on their global citizen identity development. daloz (2000) specifies the importance of encounters or engagements with others who are very different through experiencing critical incidents, defining moments (light, 2001), or, as i called them in interviews, “ah-ha” moments. in daloz’s (2000) model, these constructive encounters with difference and/or diversity help break down the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ barriers and move us to a sense of trust and community with ‘the other.’ these experiences resonate and align with ideas expressed by daloz et al. (1996) of “…experiences which take the individual from the home and out into the world and back again” (p.38). in their interviews students reported that becoming aware of different perspectives, ideas, and ways of responding to issues was the key to developing an understanding of global citizenship. during their four years students developed a nuanced understanding of both unawareness and current issues in comparative education 53 study abroad and development of global citizen identity awareness with regard to a variety of issues. they learned how important interacting with ‘the other’ is to the development of self-awareness. further, through their development of this awareness of self and others, students came to recognize the importance of activism in promoting change or developing broader perspectives about issues, and to see activism as one of the responsibilities of being a global citizen. appiah (1996) has described cosmopolitanism as being a sentiment more than an ideology… “an adventure and an ideal” (appiah, 2006, p. xx). however, for students in this study the practice of global citizenship appears to be the means through which to realize and bring to fruition those cosmopolitan ideals. conclusion globalization has moved the world community toward the recognition and practice of universal moral imperatives and reconsideration of the meaning of cosmopolitanism and the practice of global citizenship in today’s world. colleges and universities have created specialized programs to help develop students who can succeed in a 21st century knowledge economy. the data in this study contribute to an understanding of how this challenge can be met. this study has many implications for all undergraduate education programs attempting to address broad issues of moral and civic development and education, and also to those programs simply hoping to change student attitudes and identity in relation to some kind of global perspective. findings in this study may form the nucleus of a future research agenda to inform the current national discussion centered on the importance of intercultural experiences in developing globally minded and competent students, in particular through study abroad. this discussion is exemplified in the senator paul simon study abroad foundation act of 2009, which was approved by the united states house of representatives in june of that year. the long-term goal of this initiative is that within ten years one million american college students will study abroad in any given year. currently only one percent of american students study abroad. given these disappointing statistics, the foundation seeks to implement the following: increase participation in quality study abroad programs, increase numbers of underrepresented populations of american students in study abroad programs, expand study abroad locations to more diverse locations in developing countries, and make study abroad “…a cornerstone of today’s higher education” (nafsa website, 2009). the implication is that through study abroad american students will develop the cosmopolitan ideals, skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary to become effective global citizens. moral and civic education has been a part of the public school fabric of the united states since 1845, when horace mann encouraged the implementation of state-funded education (parker, 1998). colby et al. (2003) asserted at the time that the moral and civic are inseparable, and such education in colleges and universities will become increasingly important as we move deeply into the 21st century. how does this philosophy compare with educational practices in colleges and universities throughout the world? future researchers may want to consider this question. in his recent study, schattle (2009) identified five ways individuals move toward becoming global citizens: through experiences during the childhood years, immigration experiences, political and social activism, professional opportunities, and educational programs. he said, “…traveling abroad to participate in educational programs has served a pivotal step in the lives of many selfdescribed global citizens” (p.15). indeed, students in my current study identified constructive engagement with those who are different, particularly during study abroad experiences, as being a key program element in driving forward the development of their self-ascribed global citizen 54 current issues in comparative education k. hendersot and j. sperandio identity. their voices fill an important gap in our knowledge of how best to develop initiatives that promote the cultivation of cosmopolitan ideals which, if translated to practice, become the defining element of global citizenship. endnotes 1. for example, grudzinski-hall’s (2007) study of 25 institutions of higher education in the united states which offer global citizenship programs provides a close look at this trend and the challenges of implementing programs to educate for global citizenship at the undergraduate level. her sample included the following: lehigh university; drake university; drury university; university of michigan; university of rhode island, international engineering program; virginia commonwealth university; university of wisconsin-madison; ohio university; franklin pierce college; binghamton university; boston college; bradley university; university of north carolina at chapel hill; rutgers university; duke university; elizabethtown college; haverford college; john carroll university; macalester college; mount holyoke college; pacific lutheran university; rochester institute of technology; tufts university; university of missouri-columbia; and the university of washington. references appiah, k. a. (1996). cosmopolitan patriots. in m.c. nussbaum, for love of country: debating the limits of patriotism, j. cohen, ed. (pp. 21-29) boston, ma: beacon press. appiah, k.a. (2006). cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers. new york, ny: w.w. norton & company, inc. benhabib, s. (2006). another cosmopolitaism. new york, ny: oxford university press, inc. colby, a., ehrlich, t., beaumont, e., & stephens, j. (2003). educating citizens: preparing america’s undergraduates for lives of moral and civic responsibility: san francisco: jossey-bass. creswell, j. w. (2003). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. daloz, l.p. (2000). transformative learning for the common good. in j. mezirow & associates (eds.), learning as transformation: critical perspectives on a theory in progress (pp. 103-123). san francisco: jossey-bass. daloz, l.p., keen, c., keen, j. & parks, s.d. (1996). common fire: leading lives of commitment in a complex world. boston: beacon press. dower, n. (2003). an introduction to global citizenship. edinburgh: edinburgh university press ltd. fujikane, h. (2003). approaches to global education in the united states, the united kingdom and japan. international review of education, 49(1/2), 133-152. grudzinski-hall, m. (2007). how do college and university undergraduate level global citizenship programs advance the development and experiences of global competencies? unpublished doctoral dissertation, drexel university, pennsylvania. (umi 3261868) current issues in comparative education 55 study abroad and development of global citizen identity light, r. j. (2001). making the most of college: students speak their minds. cambridge: harvard university press. maxwell, j.a. (2005). qualitative research design: an interactive approach. (2nd ed.) thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. mezirow, j. & associates (2000). learning as transformation: critical perspectives on a theory in progress. san francisco: jossey-bass. nussbaum, m.c. (1996). for love of country: debating the limits of patriotism, j. cohen (ed.) boston, ma: beacon press. nafsa, public policy, senator paul simon study abroad foundation act of 2009. n.d. retrieved september 22, 2009 from http://www.nafsa.org/public_policy.sec/commission_on_the_ abraham/#congress. parker, w. c. (1998). national case studies of education. in j.j. cogan & r. derricott (eds.), citizenship for the 21st century: an international perspective on education (pp. 21-76). london: kogan page limited. patton, m.q. (2002). qualitative research and evaluation method. (3rd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. schattle, h. (2008). the practice of global citizenship. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. copyright © 2009 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved. 180 current issues in comparative education for living in community with others. by extending their notion of community, and encouraging a citizenship education that encourages international respect and understanding, mccowan and gomez take a step forward in the path to peace through education on an international scale. – reviewed by beth wright, loyola university chicago education in small states: global imperatives, regional initiatives and local dilemmas, edited by peter mayo. new york, ny: routledge, taylor and francis group, 2010. 168 pp. isbn-13: 9780415560399 sixteen scholars contributed to nine chapters in peter mayo’s edited book that drew on articles that comparative education published as a special issue in 2008 (volume 44, issue 2). the chapters covered issues that range from basic education, adult education, and entrepreneurship training, to the impact of globalization on educational restructuring, career guidance, advancement of educational research, and funding of higher education in specific small state regions. in spite of a seeming lack of coherence the papers weave in and out of five main research strands: politics and policy making; economic development and labour market characteristics; education and human resource development; administration and sociocultural issues. one of the major strengths of the book is its diversity in terms of not only the range of issues but also the representation of work done on small states – a not easily defined concept – in the southern pacific, caribbean, african, european, and mediterranean regions. some of the claims authors make about the notion of small scale are very specific while others are more tentative, taking into consideration other variables and the presence of similar challenges in regions and communities that might not be categorized as ‘small or smaller’. the authors agree that the question of size is indeed a very critical issue for jurisdictions that grapple with creating educational systems that allow them to better prepare students at all levels of the educational system to participate in a global economy. while some authors seem to focus on the seemingly negative aspects of size, others look to the positive and the advantages of being ‘small,’ or attempt to strike a balance. of great importance to this book is the contribution of the late kazim bacchus, a leading scholar in international, comparative and development education. bacchus’ scholarly work over the years positions him to adequately provide a historical background and introduction to the many issues raised in other chapters of the book. of great significance is his reference, though some scholars might argue somewhat uncritical, to the work of the commonwealth secretariat, world bank, and other organizations and the role they played in identifying the educational challenges facing small states, and supporting their integration into the competitive global economy of the 21st century. it is important to note that as crossley suggested one of the priorities of small states should be the strengthening of their capacity to do research and evaluation. the lack of funds to do this kind of work is a major limitation in terms of small states’ ability to participate in global initiatives, make public the achievements of small states, and challenge the hegemonic discourse of many of the research paradigms used to study local contexts. given the focus of the text, bacchus’ discussion on the varying definitions of ‘small state’ is most critical and relevant to an understanding of its influence on what these various so-called entities find they can and cannot do as they attempt to participate in global imperatives and regional initiatives. the economic, sociocultural, and political issues, their relationships to size, and the current issues in comparative education 181 kinds of possibilities for small states, are the crux of this and many of the chapters in this book. bacchus and many other authors bring to the fore challenges relating to the structure of the educational systems of small states, including the teaching strategies used in the preparation of ‘students’ to participate in a competitive global economy and meet the needs of the communities. an important aspect of most of the chapters is the focus on historical and social contexts and culture of the regions and the challenges faced primarily because of the dependence on aid from external sources. indeed, they point to the influence of aid agendas on small states’ ability or inability to achieve their communities’ individual goals and objectives. these discussions highlight the issue of power relationships, disparity, and the negative effects on the educational projects that are aimed at ‘development’. generally, the authors critique the lack of focus on indigenous ways of knowing and doing of the local cultural contexts and its contribution to the ongoing inability to allow for authenticity in terms of planning and implementing educational programs and training to meet the needs of a global and knowledge-based economy. baldacchino makes an interesting turn in his discussion on the role of education in the development of entrepreneurship in what he chooses to term smaller european jurisdictions. he uses his study to make a case for entrepreneurship on the ground instead of allocating money, effort and resources to educational programs. he hits the nail on the head in arguing that governments should spend more time and resources fostering an environment for the emergence of entrepreneurs than focusing on internal training and development. creating the environment will lead to the emergence of the entrepreneurial class whether they come from an internal or external source. the “right” training environment needs to be in place as well. i am uncertain if i agree with the idea that it has to be entrepreneurial training. are we talking about a formal transfer of knowledge, the teaching of behaviors, an informal mentoring programme, or all of the above? i found the definition of the “training” absent, so any critique will be tentative at best. however, baldacchino makes a strong case for an alternative to what he considers a pessimistic scenario in which education is proposed as the panacea for all the challenges smaller states face. sultana’s chapter provides what i found to be a careful assessment of the research that has been done on issues surrounding education in small states. indeed, his adoption of a more cautious approach (given the exploratory nature of the empirical data and the difficulty of establishing causation in social sciences research) is one that i highly recommend to researchers. all too often scholars and educators at the graduate level are not able to find texts that speak to a diversity of regions and allow for a more international focus. the chapters of this edited book note that the question of size brings with it a series of challenges: educating the populations at various levels of the educational systems, human resource development, sustainability, the use of learning technologies, and the role of donor countries in the development of small states. all of these topics are well served in this text, which offers a contribution to curricular discussions with a focus on international comparative education. even more significant is that the discussions on education/training are not limited to any particular level but range from classroom to post secondary, higher, and continuing education. scholars and graduate students who use this text can benefit greatly from the presentations of the various historical contexts from the perspectives of a range of scholars and their relationships to the jurisdictions’ ability or inability to compete and cope with the global demands. – reviewed by janice b. fournillier, georgia state university volume 12(1) / fall 2009 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education guest editorial introduction 3 cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education andria wisler articles 6 rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education noah w. sobe 14 the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism: education for a shared humanity dale snauwaert 23 lonely business or mutual concern: the role of comparative education in the cosmopolitan citizenship debates anatoli rapoport 33 cosmopolitanism in civic education: exploring cross-national trends, 1970-2008 patricia bromley 45 study abroad and development of global citizen identity and cosmopolitan ideals in undergraduates karen hendershot and jill sperandio 56 educating the world: teachers and their work as defined by the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) helen harper and judith dunkerly 66 world-systems analysis in comparative education: an alternative to cosmopolitanism tom g. griffiths and lisa knezevic 76 smashing cosmopolitanism: the neo-liberal destruction of cosmopolitan education in eastcentral europe robert j. imre and zsuzsa millei essay 86 the evolution of a cosmopolitan identity: transforming culture shannan spisak 92 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 1 (2009) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden guest executive editor andria wisler visiting assistant professor, georgetown university, program of justice and peace executive editors cambria russell, andrew shiotani senior editors kathleen keenan, ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, cambria russell, michael schapira editors sarah flatto, michelle reddy, briana ronan, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors holly brewster, richard cheng, henan cheng, cara furman, anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, ghazala mehmood, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, carina omoeva, amritpal sandhu, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira style editors ruaridh macleod, ghazala mehmood, elizabeth morphis, amritpal sandhu web editor andrew shiotani associate web editors ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, ingrid gogolin, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2009 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 12(1): 3-5. guest editorial introduction cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education andria wisler georgetown university when plans began for this issue of cice, we acknowledged cosmopolitanism’s historic recognition of abstract questions of responsibility as well as the practical, lived conflicts that supersede sovereign boundaries, including climate change and war. recent events, such as the international response to the national catastrophe in haiti, or the global reaction to the president’s barack obama’s election, depict the dominant worldview of individual nation states composing the international system as well as the permeable nature of crisis and celebration across borders. the editors were also impressed with the potential attributed to cosmopolitanism to offer a novel, though ancient, lens through which to view and contemplate educational challenges shared across contours of national domain and ‘other’ identity constructs, including the protection of human rights and promotion of school access. yet, despite the generally accepted eclipse of the global and local, questions linger on the differences between cosmopolitanism and globalization and how the former can either perpetuate already entrenched dichotomies of difference or embolden a genuine moral commitment to humanity. thus, the call for papers for this issue solicited submissions that focused on the impacts of cosmopolitanism’s growing popularity in comparative educational thought, discourse, and practice, and that critically examined the potential contributions and limitations of various forms and applications of cosmopolitanism in education. papers were invited to analyze such diverse topics as: cosmopolitanism’s relationship with theories of multiculturalism and world culture, and research in cross-national borrowing and lending of educational policies; the ethical and practical implications of cosmopolitanism across myriad cultural contexts, from classrooms to governing bodies of schooling; cosmopolitanism as a method of inquiry or methodological blueprint; and the roles of cosmopolitanism in research on timely, heated subjects in comparative education, such as development aid administered by supra-national organizations. the resulting collection of papers in this issue of cice begins to recognize and understand cosmopolitanism beyond its all too familiar, preconceived definition stemming from classical western thought, in order to offer, analyze, and critically explore its dissenting, non-western, and potentially transformative possibilities. the papers make a contribution towards this objective by asking necessary questions on cosmopolitanism and education, including: what does it mean to teach about cosmopolitanism, as well in advancement of cosmopolitanism? how does internal self-transformation lead to the development of capacities that respond to the value and dignity of all human beings? what is the role of knowledge in this inter-connected world for creating a more just and democratic world-system? how do teachers contend with the tensions of living out their daily identities, at the intersection of the local and global? how can cosmopolitanism inform study abroad programming and textbook development? can cosmopolitanism act as an existential “mirror” and offer a re-reading of socialism and cold war realities? this collection of papers engages a range of issues from a variety of geopolitical contexts and epistemological standpoints and, in concert, encourages a reassessment of the assumptions that command the current discourse on cosmopolitanism. the papers attend to moral, economic, 4 current issues in comparative education editorial introduction global, national, and thick versions and visions of cosmopolitanism; in sum effect, this issue authenticates the presence and practice of a multiplicity of cosmopolitanisms, a starting point from which educationalists, philosophers of education, and practitioners can dialogue on their implications for comparative and international education. the editors are thankful to dale snauwaert and noah sobe, both scholars with significant contributions to the dialogue on education and cosmopolitanism, for accepting invitations to submit articles for this issue. in the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism: education for a shared humanity, snauwaert offers a thoughtful philosophical landscape for the entirety of the issue and explicates the differences between realism and cosmopolitanism, noting the latter’s requirement for moral agents to engage in processes of self-transformation that can then define the core of a cosmopolitan education. sobe, in his article rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education, offers a compelling argument for study of the dangers and promises of “cosmopolitanisms” by comparative education researchers, specifically in the re-imagination of their methodological and conceptual tools. we encourage our readers to revisit the cice website in coming weeks as noted philosopher of education, david hansen of teachers college, columbia university, offers a response to snauwaert and i comment on sobe’s article. through her article cosmopolitanism in civic education: exploring cross-national trends, 1970-2008, patricia bromley presents sound research grounded in longitudinal, cross-national data that illustrates an expansion in cosmopolitan themes in civic education textbooks worldwide, but in turn reveals the accompanying spectrum of disparate views regarding what a more universal, diverse notion of citizenship implies for global relations. following, anatoli rapoport narrows our purview to the united states. in his article, lonely business or mutual concern: the role of comparative education in the cosmopolitan citizenship debates, rapoport acutely examines three major challenges to global citizenship education in the u.s. and situates the role of comparative and international education research, which he defines as “intrinsically cosmopolitan,” in the advancement of a global discourse in national citizenship education. next, karen hedershot and jill sperandio, in their article, study abroad and development of global citizen identity and cosmopolitan ideals in undergraduates, highlight a growing trend in higher education towards specialized global citizenship programs grounded in study abroad components that purport transformative outcomes for their participants. the credible findings from their study offer consideration for the development of initiatives that nurture cosmopolitan sensibilities in college students. the article, educating the world: teachers and their work as defined by the united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization (unesco) by helen harper and judith dunkerly, turns our attention to teachers. it presents an engaging analysis of unesco’s key policy documents that illustrates a noteworthy shift in the identity of the 21st teacher, from a strictly national to a global educational contributor. the authors observe that the participation of the “cosmopolitan teacher” has implications for a myriad of international concerns within unesco’s jurisdiction, such as human rights and sustainable development. robert j. imre and zsuzsa millei provide persuasive insight into the particular cosmopolitanism that existed in post-world war ii socialist hungary until the end of the cold war in their article smashing cosmopolitanism: the neo-liberal destruction of cosmopolitan education in eastcentral europe. although they note its limitations in this specific historical political context, the authors expose how a prospering cosmopolitanism in hungary (apparent, for example, in its education system) was defenseless to western economic and political forces, which in turn current issues in comparative education 5 editorial introduction has led to a misreading of cold war history by comparative education theorists. from this case, we move to the spatial consideration of knowledge in the article world-systems analysis in comparative education: an alternative to cosmopolitanism. authors tom g. griffiths and lisa knezevic bring cosmopolitanism in dialogue with the work dedicated to a world culture of education and immanuel wallerstein’s world-systems approach, in order to argue for the latter’s necessary historical and political dimension that can recalibrate comparative education research to focus on the contributions of knowledge for a more just, democratic world-system. and finally, in the essay the evolution of a cosmopolitan identity: transforming culture, shannan spisak brings this issue of cice to a close, as it began, with a sensitively written philosophical text. spisak presents a compelling case for the natural fluidity of identity that can be transformed by cosmopolitanism, unveiling the collective agency of individuals to transform whole cultures and societies. copyright © 2009 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved. microsoft word 16_1_grace_pai.doc © 2014, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 16 (1), 62-73. particularizing universal education in postcolonial sierra leone grace pai new york university this paper presents a vertical case study of the history of universalizing education in postcolonial sierra leone from the early 1950s to 1990 to highlight how there has never been a universal conception of universal education. in order to unite a nation behind a universal ideal of schooling, education needed to be adapted to different subpopulations, as the bunumbu project did for rural sierra leoneans in the 1970s to 1980s. while the idea of “localizing” education was sound, early program success was undermined by a lack of clarity behind terms like “rural” or “community.” this was exacerbated by a change in the scope of the project beyond its original objectives. only by well defining the specific constituents of a target group and fulfilling their precise needs can myriad small-scale programs ultimately aggregate to meet the diverse demands and desires of society writ large. many contemporary reports and articles wrongfully attribute the birth of the notion of “education for all” to the jomtien world conference in 1990 (world bank, 2007; nishimuko, 2007), when in fact, free, compulsory education was argued for as early as 1948 in the united nations universal declaration of human rights (united nations, 1949). through a historical analysis of education in sierra leone from the years leading up to independence in 1961 to the years prior to the civil war in 1991, this paper rectifies that temporal inaccuracy, and revisits past efforts so as to better inform current debates and policies on universal education. specifically, this study examines the following questions: who wanted universal education, for what purposes and to what effects? why was universal education not achieved after decades of pursuing such a goal? government documents, organizational reports, newspaper articles, dissertations, journal articles, and oral interviews will be used to “portray the complex interplay of different social forces” (arnove, 2003, p. 13) that underlie the concept of universalizing education. the article begins with a description of education in sierra leone in the 1960s and 1970s as illustrated by policies and reports created by international agencies and the ministry of education. this history from “above” is then paired with a history from “below” by shifting the focus to a rural education program called the bunumbu project. in this fashion, a micro project is placed in the context of the macro influences of “development” to form a vertical case study of one country’s efforts to expand education after independence (vavrus & bartlett, 2006). the main argument of this paper is that a concept of mass schooling founded on equality increasingly needed to entail a discriminatory method of local adaptation to reach universality. in the case of postcolonial sierra leone, it was rural communities to which education policies had to adapt. however, words like “rural” and “local” were often assumed to have one absolute meaning, even though their usage refers to entirely different localities and target populations that are actually relative in nature. hence, the goal of attaining universal education should not only be reframed as a myriad of “localized” “community” projects, but to maximize effectiveness, such attempts must also be specific in defining precisely which “local” actors in what “rural” areas are to be the intended targets of a given project. grace pai current issues in comparative education 63 education in sierra leone (1960s – 1970s) in 1958, three years before the country gained the status of being an independent nation-state, the first major white paper on education in sierra leone was published, declaring, “the ultimate goal must, of course, be the establishment of fee-free universal compulsory education” (sierra leone government, 1958, p. 1). at that early stage, the long-term aim was not “merely to produce literates but to enable pupils to make a beginning in obtaining the necessary mental equipment to enjoy a fuller, happier life and thereby to make a greater contribution to the welfare and development of the community as a whole” (sierra leone government, 1958, p. 12). in the short run, goals were made to double the number of children in school, concomitant with remedying the disparity between educational facilities in the colony (where it was estimated that 80% of children had access to schooling) and the protectorate hinterland (where only 6% had access). besides laying the groundwork for the same themes of equity and access that persist to the present-day, education bureaucrats also foresaw the potential discord that a universal primary system could create if it was not linked with post-graduation opportunities. the government thus proposed to supplant junior secondary schools with three-year secondary modern schools that would offer a “general education closely related to the interests and environment of the pupils and with a wide range covering the literary as well as the practical aspects of life” (sierra leone government, 1958, p. 12). these proposals reflected a desire to balance the philosophy of the phelps stokes commission of the 1920s – which advocated a utilitarian, agriculturallybiased education for the african masses akin to “negro education” in the southern united states (berman, 1971) – with an increasing resistance against the approach on the grounds that it was an inferior type of education rooted in denigrating manual labor (foster, 1965; zimmerman, 2008). by diversifying secondary education beyond just the academic and technical tracks, it was hoped that all children would “receive the type of education best suited to their abilities and aptitudes” (sierra leone government, 1958, p. 12). the 1960s during the wave of decolonization in africa in the 1960s, the rise of human capital theory and the principle of education as a universal human right merged to influence newly independent countries to institute mass education policies for social and economic development (chabbott & ramirez, 2000). despite the widespread consensus that schools should be a core component in “manpower planning” the growth of national economies (psacharopoulos, 1991), there were also those who were wary of the potentially negative effects of such a rapid expansion of education. these uncertainties surfaced in 1961 at the “conference of african states on the development of education in africa” held in addis ababa. the goal of achieving universal primary education within two decades was formally established at the meeting, but anxiety about an overproduction of educated people in excess of what “development” could accommodate also lay at the heart of conference discussions: the real problem is that any good primary school will widen children’s horizons beyond what can be satisfied by the economy of three-acres-and-a-hoe. the school leaver expects a higher standard of living than his farmer father, a better house, pure water and easy access to medical and other public services. he is willing to drive a tractor or a lathe, but can hardly be expected to respect the back-breaking energies with meagre output yields, which are forced upon his father through lack of modern equipment (...) so, when the primary schools turn out large numbers who are expected to accommodate themselves to a three-acres-and-a-hoe civilization, what can be expected but frustration and exasperation? (unesco, 1961, p. 6-11) to mitigate a potential mismatch between education output and labor market demand, conference attendees argued that agricultural productivity and rural employment must be increased. this would “diminish the number of school leavers who flock to the towns and cities for employment,” but are left “suspended between two worlds” when there are insufficient jobs particularizing universal education in postcolonial sierra leone 64 current issues in comparative education to meet the labor supply. “adapting educational programmes to rural conditions” was consequently highlighted as the means to stimulate such rural development. (unesco, 1961, p. 6). three years later, global discourse percolated to sierra leone, as themes similar to those discussed at the international conference became instituted in the national development programme in education for sierra leone 1964-1970. in addition to recommending a postponement of the deadline for universal education to 1990 instead of 1980, the programme recommended the establishment of farm schools offering two years of practical training, since “anything less usually proves to be ineffective; anything more surely leads the farmer’s son to seek urban, or at least salaried employment” (sleight, 1964, p. 30). in part to stem the rural to urban migration, justifications for education expansion subsequently evolved from fostering national development to fostering rural and “local” development. accordingly, a new national trial syllabus, that was to be “more relevant to local and national needs,” was issued in 1969 (hawes, 1976, p. 11). class 3 students, for instance, were to learn about the “local community as part of a larger unit” (hawes, 1976, p. 32). in this way, education would no longer be, as the then director-general of unesco put it, “isolated as a whole from life and society … cut off from the rest of human activity” (maheu, 1970, p. 2). the 1970s by the 1970s, as western academics grew critical of whether universal education was in reality a sensible aim, the elevated optimism of the previous decade became increasingly muted. abernethy (1969) questioned whether mass education was an unaffordable welfare; coleman (1965) argued that an overly aggressive imposition of equality would scatter the resources and weaken the capacity of a political system; foster (1965) demonstrated how the disparity between a rising number of school-leavers in ghana and the low rate of economic expansion led to mass unemployment among the educated. furthermore, while the 1960s emphasized the development of secondary and postsecondary education to meet the shortage of skilled manpower, the modern industrial sector began to stagnate in the 1970s. the worldwide economic recession and shortage of crude oil had rippling effects across the country and continent that contributed to a contraction of the diamond-mining sector and declining per capita income (government of sierra leone, 1981). the unevenness of development was also raised in the national development plan 1974/5 − 1978/9. there were “marked disparities in the levels of economic social and politicaladministrative development between freetown and its environs…on the one hand and the rest of the country…on the other” (hawes, 1976, p. 2). school enrollment was “higher in the towns than in the countryside and highest in the western area” near freetown, as was the quality of school conditions (hawes, 1976, p. 3). after a decade of “development”, the long-standing gap between the former protectorate and the colony was growing wider instead of narrower. to address these disparities, as well as the slow increase in enrollment rates (see figure 1), president siaka stevens called for the sierra leone education review – a comprehensive survey of the education system that brought together staff at the university of sierra leone, government administrators, and international consultants for a series of meetings in 1973. the review, which was seen to be “locally inspired [and] locally directed” (hawes, 1976, p. 6), scaled the overly ambitious goal of universal education down to the more achievable target of having 78% of seven year olds enter primary schools by 1990 (university of sierra leone, 1976). additionally, the report highlighted five themes, two of which were relevance “to our actual life and work” and self-reliance to become “planners and implementers of our own future” (university of sierra leone, 1976, p. 2). grace pai current issues in comparative education 65 figure 1. national school enrollment rates in sierra leone source: authors’ representation based on world bank microdata (world bank, 2013). gaps indicate years of missing data. the strategy to achieve these twin goals hinged on the idea of instituting a national network of “community education centers” (cecs) that would serve 58,000 youths aged 12-17 and 78,000 adults. [1] primary schools would then merge with cecs to bring “schooling and traditional life into a co-operative, mutually beneficial relationship” (university of sierra leone, 1976, p. 9). this grand vision was first piloted in the rurality of bunumbu, a chiefdom of less than 1,000 people located about 268 kilometers east of freetown in the eastern district of kailahun (see figure 2). [2] source: http://www.globalmidwives.org the bunumbu project (1974 – late 1980s) in 1974, the government of sierra leone called upon the united nations special fund and unesco to assist in implementing the bunumbu project – a program designed to make schools more relevant and central to rural communities. specifically, the project translated the national development plan of accelerating primary school expansion into the following strategic objectives: figure 2. map of kailahun particularizing universal education in postcolonial sierra leone 66 current issues in comparative education i) development of a new primary curriculum with a rural bias; ii) expansion of existing functions of the teacher training colleges … and iii) development of a country-wide network of community educational centres providing both formal and non-formal education and training for young people and adults in the rural areas. (unesco, 1983, p. 2) to achieve the larger goal of rural development, the bunumbu project attempted to redesign curricula and integrate schools into the “community.” in this way, the pilot program brought to life the values of relevance and self-reliance that would reduce educational inequalities and obviate the need for urban migration. however, as argued in the following section, the absence of a clear definition of program targets, compounded by project goals growing more grandiose, later undermined the project’s initial success. project rationale and implementation one might wonder why bunumbu was selected as the project site in the first place. although bunumbu was exceptional in that the methodist missionary had introduced western education to the region as early as 1924 (eastern polytechnic administration, 2013), it became the center of national and international attention through the vision and determination of one man in particular. in 1971, francis b. s. ngegba became the first african principal of bunumbu teachers college after a series of british headmasters had led the school for almost fifty years during the colonial period. ngegba did not originate from the immediate area but was an alumnus of the college. despite the rhetorical emphasis on the “community” orientation of the bunumbu project, the project seemed to mostly originate from principal ngegba’s individual ideas and efforts. earl welker, a former geography lecturer and later acting principal who first arrived at the college in 1971 months before ngegba’s arrival, recalled the first time he learned of the project (personal communication, april 5, 2013): [ngegba] called me into his office one day and said, ‘can you bring me a map of this area and locate twenty primary schools within a twenty mile radius of bunumbu? i looked at him and said: “yeah, i think i can but just give me a few minutes.” so, i went back to my geography lab…took a compass, went back to his office, sat down, and we located twenty primary schools that already existed. those twenty schools became the pilot schools… this was the first inkling i had of anything called the bunumbu project. i didn’t know what we were doing, why he was doing it, and what he was doing it for. he didn’t tell me. within months, there was a team of un people who came and asked questions (...) then we all realized that there was something that was in the works about a project for bunumbu, we didn’t know what. and slowly the idea was filtered down. what was lauded as a community-based project was really the brainchild of one man; and what was meant to be a “community” rural development project was neither initiated, nor afterwards implemented, by the “community” of bunumbu. instead, it was the combination of a politically adept and ambitious principal not from the local area, unesco “experts” sent in from as far as nepal and haiti, international volunteers from canadian university service overseas (cuso) and the u.s. peace corps, and sierra leonean teacher candidates from elsewhere in the country, who together became the key executors of the roughly ten-year project (see figure 3). nevertheless, ngegba deserved credit for recognizing the importance of engaging different players from the “community” to implement the project. since schools were to be “the hub around which integrated rural development activities radiate[d],” multi-disciplinary teams were formed with primary school teachers at its core serving as the “animateur, leader, coordinator and stabilizer” (unesco, 1977, p. 5). these teams brought members from each “local community” (unesco, 1977, p. 7) together to form self-help groups that contributed building materials and assistance in renovating the selected pilot schools. ngegba also appreciated the need to involve village elders and the paramount chief of bunumbu: “the conversion of the grace pai current issues in comparative education 67 chiefs and local elders to rural development needs, could lead to total community involvement” (unesco, 1977, p. 8). source: john wolfer on top of training teachers to teach new curricular units, a year-long in-service training was conducted “to sensitize the head teachers [of the pilot schools] to the needs of the rural environment in which their schools are located” (unesco, 1977, p. 18). workshops on nutrition, blacksmithing and weaving were offered as non-formal education programs. bunumbu teachers and students even made periodic visits to family farms to discuss new ideas about farming. ngegba’s vision was therefore for the bunumbu project to “to break the age old tradition of the school being an instrument of alienation” (unesco, 1977, p. 18). it was only through such alternative educational structures that schools could “introduce new knowledge and skills to the rural peoples” (unesco, 1977, p. 4) and “becom[e] a functional part of the community” (unesco, 1977, p. 23). this seemingly banal notion of integrating the school into the community could not have been more germane to the later success of the project. whether or not ngegba was aware of it, the relationship between schools and “locals” was still a very tenuous one. even after twenty years of independence, many “locals” regarded western schools with a dose of skepticism because of its foreign nature and its uncertain value. moreover, the history of slavery and colonialism had still not completely faded from popular memory. braima molwai, a sierra leonean who now lives in durham, north carolina but grew up in bunumbu as the only one out of eight siblings to attend school, recalls his early experiences at bunumbu primary school in the years prior to the beginning of the bunumbu project (personal communication, april 1, 2013): i was taught by two english women who only spoke english. they didn’t even care to learn mende. they just told me things like, “don’t sit on this.’ ‘stop talking.’ (…) western education came in with their churches and all their establishments, and also to teach us about the bible. but they didn’t care to speak our language (…) and so that communication if you’re talking about western education was just one-sided. for subsistence farmers like the molwais, changing the curricular content and role of a school signified a significant shift in making the communication and transmission of western education “two-sided.” this marked a vast improvement from the colonial era when most education in africa sought either to instill christian virtues, or to create local bureaucrats who could contract with the british colonial system (sifuna & sawamura, 2010; peterson, 2004; sumner, 1963). project outcomes by the mid 1980s, the bunumbu project had become a nationally and internationally acclaimed program. markers of success included: the building of twenty pilot schools with the aid of figure 3. independence day at bunumbu teachers college (1971/72) particularizing universal education in postcolonial sierra leone 68 current issues in comparative education catholic relief services; a 65% increase in primary enrollment at the pilot schools; an increase from a 68% to 78% pass rate on the national common entrance examination; and the creation of over 300 new curricular units that integrated education with the “local” environment of bunumbu (banya, 1989). teachers, for example, were trained to blend national exam standards into units on creating maps of sierra leone and bunumbu, recording rainfall and examining nearby water sources, and constructing poultry farms and vegetable gardens (bunumbu teachers college, 1981). as one headmaster said in an interview: “ ‘the bunumbu materials have definitely helped improve our common entrance results…more of my pupils are now going to various secondary schools all over the country’ (headmaster) ngolahun methodist” (banya, 1986, p. 183). braima, who also taught for a year at one of the pilot schools, further explains the impact the new curricula had on students (personal communication, april 23, 2013): when they made it into that, what we can swallow, it was much easier for these people. you were not going to teach, you know, what you teach in cambridge to the children. adapting it to what was already going on, the agricultural part, was what made the program work…you have most of the students coming from villages, and you’re going to tell them about atoms…and this chemistry and all this stuff? no! no, i’m not going to read about snow. hell no…but to read about our own elders who wrote poems that we can relate to…that worked. what was striking about the bunumbu project was its ability to adopt a deweyan approach of integrating schools into the society by reaching out to those who had previously expressed no interest in education (dewey, 1899). by successfully making education more “relevant,” the project engaged more families in both the formal and non-formal programs that were offered at the school. perhaps because of the initial praise it received, the project grew in scope and grandiosity, and soon became magnified and mythologized both in development discourse and in the minds of an increasing number of bunumbu residents. the mantra became that “bunumbu is no longer a project – it is now a spirit” (unesco, 1983). this aggrandizement, however, later undermined the project’s early success. although initial project objectives centered on making education more relevant by restructuring the teacher’s certificate program, expectations grew to encompass all aspects of rural development. according to one village elder: “‘we gave our land and labor freely to the project, with the understanding that we will get some amenities, such as pipe-born water, better roads and dispensary facilities. we are still waiting for the promises to come through’ (elder 503)” (unesco, 1983, p. 121). the conflation of education and development led to disenchantment and frustration, which was then aggravated by the departure of expatriates and decreased visits from the ministry of education and unesco as the project neared its termination date. community development councils began to hold fewer meetings, and participation in community work projects decreased. furthermore, not all members of the community approved of the changes to the curricula. some parents objected to the notion of their children perpetuating their own agricultural livelihood: “ ‘i want them [my children] to be better than me in terms of employment, to become doctors, engineers, and top civil servants’ (parent 702)” (banya, 1986, p. 97). not surprisingly, these parents saw western education as a means towards social ascension: “ ‘if my children are to look after me during my old age, they should be successful in acquiring the white man’s knowledge, so that they can have key positions in many fields’ (parent 703)” (banya, 1986, p. 97). some families may therefore have wanted an academically oriented grammar education rather than the “rurally biased” curricula that was the product of the bunumbu project. this sentiment of the state not being able to change the preferences of the people from an academic to vocational orientation echoes the findings of foster in ghana twenty years earlier. grace pai current issues in comparative education 69 the contradiction of both positive and negative feedback shows the importance of precisely clarifying the target population. for farming families like braima’s who had little interest in obtaining western education, the bunumbu project was a huge step forward in adapting the curriculum to meet their way of life and traditional customs – just as ngegba envisioned when he wished to uproot the belief of schools being a source of alienation. but for families of merchants and professionals whose parents may have gone to school themselves, braima explains that the bunumbu project may have been seen as a step back in their goal of having the next generation break out of an agricultural existence (personal communication, april 23, 2013). what comes to light is the inherent diversity within a “local community.” one goal of cecs was to bring together people from across the chiefdom of bunumbu – which was divided into the manowa junction, the old town, and the “road.” however “community” members could have referred to anyone from paramount chiefs, to skilled craftsmen, to subsistence farmers, to the syrian and lebanese business owners that comprised a sizable portion of the bunumbu population. ultimately, discerning the effects of the bunumbu project depends on which “local” one asks. it could not be assumed that just because bunumbu was “rural,” that the entire chiefdom was just one “community” of “locals.” discussion this paper began by asking the questions of who wanted universal education and for what purpose. the analysis highlighted the multiplicity of actors – from the international to the national to the local – along with the multiplicity of intentions. for instance, many international expatriates and volunteers supported mass schooling because it was seen as “a fundamental ingredient for the nation’s social and economic development” (sierra leone ministry of education, 1977, p. 1). national bureaucrats reasoned that expanding education would bring about geographic equity while balancing migration patterns. some “local” families in the “community” of bunumbu sought education to build social cachet in a modern world that was rapidly subsuming traditional ways of life. most important though were the children and families who had little interest in education – a group who often gets lost in debates about western modernization and universal schooling. when one becomes so focused on the end goal of education for all, one risks forgetting what the experience means to those who are not as quick to comply. these overlooked constituents, some of whom the bunumbu project successfully managed to engage, attest to grubb and lazerson’s (2004) warning of an “overblown” faith in the “gospel” of education in that a homogenous approach to education is not a uniform good, either in the past or present. partly due to these complex and often conflicting desires and intentions, the quest for universal education failed even after three decades of independence. while the bunumbu project was a step forward in changing education to make schools more accessible to some, the indiscriminate use of certain words served as a setback. specifically, relative terms like “local,” “community” and ”rural” were used as absolute expressions, when in fact the true meaning of these words hinged on who was saying it in regards to whom. for instance, who really is a “local”? to foreign expatriates, “local” might have meant a sierra leonean bureaucrat working at the ministry of education. to an official based in freetown, “local” might have meant anyone living in a “rural” “community” like bunumbu. [3] to an educated professional living in the “community” of bunumbu, “rural” might have meant the traditional farming families who had never attended school. the impulse to aggregate a country as one people is perhaps what led foster to his finding that an academic education was preferable to a vocational one. surely his observation rang (and still rings) true, but only to the extent of the subpopulation he was describing; his work may therefore be eliding large subsamples of the population. similarly, carnoy and samoff’s affirmation that “given a choice between popular education and formal, traditional bureaucratic schools, the public appears to opt for the latter,” is a misleading one (1990, p. 89). who, in this particularizing universal education in postcolonial sierra leone 70 current issues in comparative education case, is the “public”? without explicitly defining such expressions in specific terms, one runs the risk of falsely generalizing the experience and preferences of a small group as the aggregate – thereby completely distorting the representation of an entire country, or even continent. beyond semantics, recognizing diverse intentions and meanings of a simple word like “rural”, “local”, “community” or “public” has great implications, particularly for decentralization schemes that have gained in popularity in the last few decades. development solutions often advocate engaging “local searchers” (easterly, 2006) or increasing “localism” through empowerment (carothers, 1999) – as if the “local” is one concretely bound, homogeneous unit. even james scott’s (1998) often-cited work oversimplifies the “local” as much as it does the state; scott criticizes bureaucratic rationality for displacing “local” knowledge, or what he calls metis. however, simply venerating the “local” does not sufficiently show the heterogeneity of practices, actors, and needs in any particular locality. anderson-levitt’s (2003) call for balancing world culture theory (meyer et al., 1997) with local variability, likewise does not clarify exactly how “local” is defined. within the work of those who argue that global discourse converges more than local action (schriewer, 2000; steiner khamsi, 2002; burde, 2004), it is also often unclear precisely who the “local actors” are in a “local community.” without careful specification, these terms, which are intended to be more specific in identifying micro-level targets, end up conjuring the same generalities as macro, national-level rhetoric. conclusion overall, a central theme in universalizing education in post-independence sierra leone was thus: to increase development and school enrollment in the hinterland so as to close the urbanrural gap, the state progressed in making education more relevant to “local” conditions. as argued by james ferguson, there is no substitute to “answering specific, localized, tactical questions” (ferguson, 1994, p. 181). that said, how one defines “local” is something that should be questioned. a question like “was the project a success?” should also be appended by “for whom?”, before being followed by an analysis that is “based not on the generic or local, macro or micro … but on the changing relationships between them” (ball, 2005, p. 76). a final contradiction that may have arisen had the bunumbu project not been interrupted by the civil war is the competing way in which the project simultaneously attempted to “localize” the content of education while “developing” rural regions. for example, a new curriculum with a “rural bias” was to be created alongside the goal of transforming “rural areas to develop into towns that feed the villages with services like transportation, water supply, power, health care…” (“the bunumbu experience”, 1977, p. viv). on the one hand, the project sought to make education “relevant” to the current “traditional” conditions of rural areas, but on the other hand, the project sought to use education to launch bunumbu towards a hypothetical “developed” state. hence, while the latter objective demanded a step forward towards future modernity, the former objective demanded a step back towards past systems and traditions. the vying forces of planning for the future while adapting to the present resulted in a development gridlock, where pockets of “progress” may have been achieved, but much less predictably and systematically than what was envisioned for the country. in sum, this case study reveals that while “localizing” education is a positive step in achieving universal schooling, failing to explicitly define popularly used terms like “local” and “community” can undermine program success. once identified, the state must also take a dialectic approach to alternate between fulfilling the particular needs of individual subgroups through well-specified projects, and connecting these projects to bridge social schisms such as the rural-urban divide. as clifford geertz would be inclined to agree: the path towards the general is through the particular (1973), as the initial success of the bunumbu project well exemplified. rather than expanding and overextending the success of one project though, the later struggles faced by the project show that states might be better off modifying and grace pai current issues in comparative education 71 replicating small-scale efforts, in tandem with building the “bridging social capital” that then unites the distinct particulars (putnam, 2000). [4] ultimately, the path towards universalizing schooling should begin with particularizing and diversifying education to meet the needs of well-defined subpopulations, followed by a balancing act of connecting the pluralistic pieces. notes [1] this represented about 5% of the total population of 2.8 million people (hawes, 1976). [2] this region was coincidentally where the revolutionary united front soldiers later first entered the country from liberia (richards, 1996). [3] among sierra leoneans, the term “bush” was used more often than “rural.” as explained by earl welker: “when i arrived in freetown and told people i was going to teach in bunumbu, the almost universal comment was: ‘oh you are headed for the real bush’ – meaning i was not only not going to be in freetown … but i was going to a village. in addition to geographical meaning, it also had cultural meaning. ‘bush’ meant not sophisticated, not fashionable, not upto-date, not cognizant of what was really going on in” (personal communication, april 5, 2013). [4] the bunumbu project was never replicated elsewhere due to the start of the civil war in 1991. grace pai is a phd candidate in international education in the steinhardt school of education at new york university. email: ghp202@nyu.edu. references abernethy, d. (1969). the political dilemma of popular education: an african case. stanford: stanford university press. anderson-levitt, k.m. 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(2008). innocents abroad: american teachers in the american century. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. volume 12(1) / fall 2009 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education guest editorial introduction 3 cosmopolitanism, education and comparative education andria wisler articles 6 rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education noah w. sobe 14 the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism: education for a shared humanity dale snauwaert 23 lonely business or mutual concern: the role of comparative education in the cosmopolitan citizenship debates anatoli rapoport 33 cosmopolitanism in civic education: exploring cross-national trends, 1970-2008 patricia bromley 45 study abroad and development of global citizen identity and cosmopolitan ideals in undergraduates karen hendershot and jill sperandio 56 educating the world: teachers and their work as defined by the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) helen harper and judith dunkerly 66 world-systems analysis in comparative education: an alternative to cosmopolitanism tom g. griffiths and lisa knezevic 76 smashing cosmopolitanism: the neo-liberal destruction of cosmopolitan education in eastcentral europe robert j. imre and zsuzsa millei essay 86 the evolution of a cosmopolitan identity: transforming culture shannan spisak 92 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 1 (2009) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden guest executive editor andria wisler visiting assistant professor, georgetown university, program of justice and peace executive editors cambria russell, andrew shiotani senior editors kathleen keenan, ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, cambria russell, michael schapira editors sarah flatto, michelle reddy, briana ronan, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors holly brewster, richard cheng, henan cheng, cara furman, anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, ghazala mehmood, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, carina omoeva, amritpal sandhu, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira style editors ruaridh macleod, ghazala mehmood, elizabeth morphis, amritpal sandhu web editor andrew shiotani associate web editors ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, ingrid gogolin, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2009 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 12(1): 66-75. world-systems analysis in comparative education: an alternative to cosmopolitanism tom g. griffiths university of newcastle lisa knezevic university of newcastle this paper begins by connecting cosmopolitanism to notions of universal and particular knowledge in contemporary conditions. drawing on the work of immanuel wallerstein, we then outline a world-systems approach to knowledge. this approach focuses on the capacity of epistemological structures to either reinforce existing inequalities or produce more egalitarian ways of being. this work centres on links between constructions of universal knowledge and the ways in which their articulation has historically underpinned the inequalities of our current world-system. through a brief review of work in comparative education elaborating a world culture of education, we argue that like cosmopolitanism, this approach inadequately engages with the historical and political angle of a world-systems approach. we conclude by arguing for world-systems comparative research that maintains a focus on the role of knowledge in the world-system, and how such knowledge may contribute to a more just, equal and democratic world-system. the extent to which the field of comparative education can be described as cosmopolitan depends on how we understand the concept of cosmopolitanism. a superficial definition of cosmopolitanism simply invokes the inclusion, in some form, of people or groups ‘other’ than ourselves. this can be extended to a concern with global ideas and values that transcend the political boundaries of sovereign nation-states. in this paper, we begin by considering cosmopolitanism epistemologically, exploring its relationship with universal and particular knowledge in contemporary conditions. we then use the world-systems approach developed by immanuel wallerstein to account for the structure of knowledge across two dominant epistemologies, focusing on its potential to reinforce inequalities or underpin more egalitarian ways of being on a global scale. this work examines the ways in which articulations of universal knowledge historically have supported the inherent inequalities of the existing world-system. through a brief review of comparative work elaborating a world culture of education, we suggest that like cosmopolitanism, this approach inadequately engages with the historical and political perspective that a world-systems approach provides. instead, we argue for comparative research that focuses on the role of knowledge in the world-system and its potential contribution, within comparative education, to a more just, equal and democratic world-system. cosmopolitanism: the persistence of objective universal knowledge cosmopolitan thinking, from greek stoicism through to kant and other enlightenment cosmopolitans, informs contemporary moral and political positions that connect the individual to an abstracted humanity through a system of universal values (vaughan-williams, 2007). while cosmopolitanism moves social analysis beyond national boundaries and the simplistic dualism of national/international, recent cosmopolitan discourse seeks to develop an understanding that acknowledges both philosophical and realist cosmopolitan thinking (beck & sznaider, 2006). the distinction here is between cosmopolitan philosophy, involving the self-reflexive, intentional ideals, perspectives and actions of those with social agency, and actual cosmopolitanism in contemporary conditions, or “really-existing cosmopolitanization” (beck & sznaider, 2006, current issues in comparative education 67 world-systems analysis in comparative education p. 8). the distinction between philosophical-normative cosmopolitanism and really-existing cosmopolitanism is made to counter claims that cosmopolitanism is simply the continuation of an idealised, elite, social agenda. these claims do this via a realist analytic-empiricism that brings to the fore an ostensibly value-free perspective on contemporary social change, but in a way that presupposes normative (and therefore political) philosophical cosmopolitan specification (beck & sznaider, 2006, p.13). what results is the articulation of an explicitly scientific epistemology within cosmopolitanism that can account for social change without referring to cosmopolitanism in the philosophical or normative sense, but in fact implicitly retains this distinction between empirical-realist and philosophical-normative understandings. with respect to the role of the nation-state, beck and sznaider (2006) argue that an empiricalanalytical approach that goes beyond, but does not discount, nationalism, is central to the conceptualisation of realist cosmopolitanism. to this end they advocate the replacement of “methodological nationalism” as the dominant lens for understanding the social world, with “methodological cosmopolitanism” (beck & sznaider, p. 3). for grande (2006), transcending the nation-state in some way is the critical threshold of any cosmopolitanism viewed through a political science lens. this involves for example the shifting boundaries and differences between nation-states’ area of political action that reach beyond territorially-defined limits. this is a dual process in which nation-states’ sovereignty is simultaneously “transcended and protected” (grande, 2006, p. 96, emphasis in original) within cosmopolitan political spaces. moreover, grande highlights how de-nationalising forces produce re-nationalising political responses, as one of the many tensions at work within the cosmopolitan moment. part of the connection between comparative education and cosmopolitanism lies in the latter’s concern with values and morality, and hence the social and socialising purposes of education systems. any attempt to elaborate a universal set of moral values through such an approach almost inevitably results in a minimalist specification of values that could claim global consensus. appeals for global consensus on other more substantive grounds (e.g., intellectual, political, social or economic), which might be seen as diminishing individuals’ agency, raise suspicions. in certain quarters cosmopolitanism has invoked fears of a ‘world government’ imposing homogeneity on a global scale (see held, mcgrew, goldblatt & perraton, 1999). contemporary cosmopolitanism’s recognition of the ongoing sovereignty of nation-states presupposes that the subjectivity of a vast number of peoples, within and between sovereign nation-states, can build a set of values that have objective and universal status. pogge (2009) argues that this sort of morality frequently becomes institutionalised in various ways, commonly in religious organisations but also in other forms. the idea of moral universalism advanced by cosmopolitanism can be read as a particularist ideology of european hegemonic powers, akin to ‘european universalism’, which according to wallerstein (2006) has supported the world-system through centuries of modernization. a wallersteinean approach views the application of european social values beyond european boundaries as having worked to legitimate invasion, colonisation, and forms of intervention as benevolent acts of saving non-europeans from themselves. even societies that were widely recognized for their social sophistication were deemed incapable of progress without the european universalism of modernity. european values have become increasingly removed from theological knowledge, and more concerned with humanistic principles. more recently, empiricism emerged as the basis for universalism. this scientific universalism, the most recent manifestation of european universalism, asserts objectivity across all phenomena and time (wallerstein, 2006). such claims of universalism, or assertions of universal truths, function as meta-narratives that encapsulate the 68 current issues in comparative education t. griffiths and l. knezevic ideology of those groups with power in the world-system, and so are simultaneously particularist in the sense that they exclusively represent the ruling social strata (see wallerstein, 2001b). the ‘value-neutrality’ of scientific universalism implies that objective phenomena can be extracted from local and cultural contexts through methods of observation and quantification. with european universalism having moved over time from the premise of social values to asocial scientism, a question arises as to how any proclaimed universal morality of contemporary cosmopolitan thinking relates to that of scientific (and therefore european) universalism. given the dominance of scientific universalism (wallerstein, 2004), it is difficult to see how a cosmopolitan position could be articulated or take hold without being skewed towards an unproblematic and paradoxically value-free or value-neutral form of knowledge. in the section that follows, we elaborate wallerstein’s world-systems theorising which engages directly with these types of questions. in particular, world-systems analyses of the historical development and function of knowledge and epistemology within the capitalist world-economy, require a focus on the political dimensions of cosmopolitanism, within comparative educational research. more critically, however, we draw attention to some important distinctions within the wallersteinean project of understanding knowledge and its potential contribution to a more democratic and egalitarian world-system. universal knowledge and the modern world-system wallerstein’s world-systems analysis is centred on the historical analysis of capitalism as a world-system and its transition towards an alternative, but uncertain, future (e.g. wallerstein, 1999). a critical part of this work explores the relationship between dominant epistemologies and the historical expansion and operation of the capitalist world-economy. the historical and politically activist critique of capitalism that is characteristic of world-systems analysis thus involves an elaborated account of the development of the two epistemologies associated with science (nomothetic) and philosophy or humanities (idiographic) (e.g. wallerstein, 2004, 2006). wallerstein (2006) emphasises how the social sciences were split between these two epistemologies, translating into differential status of particular subject disciplines within the social sciences. the role of knowledge and epistemology in this account is made clear, for example, in the following: among the specificities of the capitalist world-economy was the development of an original epistemology, which it then used as a key element in maintaining its capacity to operate … it is the modern world-system that reified the binary distinctions, and notably the one between universalism (which it claimed that the dominant elements incarnated) and particularism (with it attributed to all those who were being dominated). (wallerstein, 2006, p. 48). for wallerstein then, an argument for the opening, rethinking or “unthinking” of the social sciences (wallerstein, 1996, 1999, 2001), as a crucial step in the construction of “historical social sciences” (wallerstein, 2001a), is a political imperative. the imperative rests in the argument that existing structures of knowledge have supported the hierarchical inequalities of the world-system within and between nation-states, through the establishment of universal norms which have justified inequalities tied to race, sex, nationality, and other dimensions (balibar & wallerstein, 1988). in education, this is particularly concerned with how the dominant nomothetic epistemology has given legitimacy to flawed notions of meritocracy (see the section ‘a world-systems approach to comparative education’ below, p. 5). current issues in comparative education 69 world-systems analysis in comparative education one of the distinctive characteristics of world-systems critique is the call for a reconstructed, unified epistemology – or “unidisciplinarity” over “multidisciplinarity” (wallerstein, 1999, p. 196). this is underpinned by historical work on the development of the dominant epistemologies and their role in the world-system, and the rejection of the ensuing “false debates” around the “antinomies between universalism and particularism … [that are] … totally unresolvable in the form that they have been classically posed” (wallerstein, 2004a, p. 147). wallerstein (2004) describes this unified epistemology as incorporating both universalist long-term and particularist short-term analyses in a “constant dialectical exchange, which allows us to find new syntheses that are then of course instantly called into question” (wallerstein, 2006, p. 49). this approach rejects relativist conceptualisations of knowledge, but without also rejecting the philosophical possibility of universal claims to knowledge that are not simply the universalisation of alternative particularist knowledge. indeed, the approach calls for new, albeit tentative and transient, universals, a unified epistemology in which we “universalise our particulars and particularise our universals simultaneously” (wallerstein, 2006, p. 49). wallerstein’s world-systems analysis is based on the thesis that the capitalist world-system is in a period of crisis and transition toward an uncertain but alternative form (e.g. wallerstein, 1991; 1995; 1999). a part of this argument is the idea that the dominant and universal ideology of the world-system, liberalism, has irrevocably lost legitimacy. this universal ideology, shared by all modern nation-states, included utopian visions of inevitable and endless progress, with lives of material abundance and leisure to be realised just over the horizon. this process was to be directed by rational policy makers in government, whether they arrived in power via electoral politics or revolution, and supported by scientific and technological advances. according to wallerstein (1998), the failure of the majority of nation-states to deliver such promises has undermined support for the modern nation-state as “an essential pillar of the modern world-system” (p. 32). in this way, the universal and nomothetic knowledge of liberalism – progress and economic development for all nation-states via the application of common strategies – worked to legitimise inequalities within and between states. this was achieved precisely via the universal and scientific character of liberalism, such that all failings could be attributed to the failure of those in power to correctly apply the required measures, rather than the capacity of the system as a whole to deliver such utopian promises universally. in the context of the systemic crisis and transition of the current system, linked to the loss of legitimacy of nation-states, comes the imperative to generate new universals that can contribute positively to the creation of an alternative worldsystem that is more just, equal and democratic. a world culture of education as cosmopolitan liberal idealism in the broad field of comparative and international education, some of the characteristics of both cosmopolitanism and world-systems analysis coalesce in specific research trajectories. walker and serrano (2006), for example, counterpose cosmopolitanism with historical approaches in social policy that have sought to assimilate social and cultural diversity into the dominant culture. for them, cosmopolitanism moves beyond multiculturalism by radically advocating the “valuing all cultures equally” (p. 60), and so encouraging minority groups to “view their differences as assets” and “use their differences to advance themselves” (p. 63). in this sense, cosmopolitanism is clearly positioned as an advance on assimilationist approaches that are frequently coupled with politically conservative calls for ‘tolerance’ that have become widespread in contemporary contexts (see for example ang, 2001). walker and serrano (2006) go on to argue that teaching and promoting such a cosmopolitanism has the potential therefore to reinforce, rather than dissolve, particularist identities without 70 current issues in comparative education t. griffiths and l. knezevic resorting to chauvinistic nationalisms. this connects with appadurai’s ideas of hybridised and fluid identities in an era of globalisation, in which individuals are linked to multiple groups in multiple locations or spaces, including virtual spaces (see for example marginson & mollis, 2001, p. 496). in this sense, comparative work might examine how educational systems contribute to these multiple identities formed by students, and the ways in which students identify themselves within these, and with any over-arching global or world-system level identity. an alternative and well-established line of comparative and international research, associated with the neo-institutionalist school of researchers at stanford university (see baker & le tendre, 2005, pp. 6-12), sets out the case for a world culture of education as a way of accounting for the worldwide development and convergence of national and local educational phenomena. jones (2007), for example, recently referred to the “global architecture of education” (p. 325), whereby ideas about educational structures, policies, and practices are diffused, adopted, transferred to nation-states across the world. baker and letendre (2005) similarly stress that the concept of a world culture is inherently and unavoidably dynamic, bound up in the concept of schooling as a global institution across multiple contexts, such that while local, regional and national factors will shape its manifestation, “the basic image of a school – what it is and what it should do – is commonly defined in the same way globally” (p. 9). this sort of dialectical interchange between the local and global is also common to diverse work examining the ‘transfer’ of educational policy across national and local boundaries, even if this literature shows substantive differences in its interpretation of this dynamic and its operation (compare for example anderson-levitt, 2003 with arnove and torres, 2003). a distinguishing feature of the neo-institutionalist approach is the identification of key points of convergence of mass education systems over time, signalling a move toward universal standardisation in the organisation of schooling, curriculum design and content, teaching, learning and assessment (for some examples see boli, ramirez, & meyer, 1985; j. w. meyer, boli, thomas, & ramirez, 1997). this is characterised by the shift to the world-level to account for the spread of “homogenous mass education [systems]” (boli, et al., 1985, p. 151) across national boundaries, despite vastly different socioeconomic and political contexts. the world culture of mass schooling is accomplished, in part, through nation-states’ participation in international agencies and non-governmental organisations. for example, in considering the general process and aspects of modern state formation within the world-system, meyer et al. (1997) note that basic “functional justifications of schooling are rarely questioned,” regardless of evidence contradicting them (p. 149). a world culture perspective thus presents the spread of mass school education as a part of the global spread and institutionalisation of world cultural models of modern state forms and state institutions. these models in turn include a core role for schooling in creating members or citizens of the modern state. like the cosmopolitan approach to globalisation, this work does not discount the nation-state entirely. rather, it acknowledges the ongoing interplay between global conceptions of education, including global policy prescriptions, and their adoption at the national and local level. the object of analysis is, however, centred on global trends and global convergence. one illustrative line of research has systematically documented global trends in the form and content of national curricula (benavot & braslavsky, 2006; j. w. meyer, kamens, benavot, cha, & wong, 1992), and elaborated the mechanisms by which such common curriculum frameworks have been promoted and adopted across the world (e.g. valverde, 2004). building on this earlier work, meyer (2006) has set out some major trends in what might be tentatively called a world curriculum. this curriculum empowers individuals while providing them with increasingly decentralised choices, current issues in comparative education 71 world-systems analysis in comparative education prepares citizens for an imagined ‘supra-national society,’ and constructs the nation-state as a good citizen in world society (pp. 265-70). meyer’s (2006) liberal idealist argument can be read as a version of contemporary cosmopolitanism by positing a linear progression in the development of curriculum towards the preparation of citizens for an imagined global society. such an approach gives inadequate credence to the persistent hierarchical inequalities within and between nation-states that are a structural feature of the contemporary world-system, and the political and economic work required to overcome these. this type of cosmopolitanism depoliticises, in important respects, what we argue is and ought to be a political endeavour within comparative educational research. we make this claim mindful of the klees’ (2008) recent address to the us-based comparative and international education society, which emphasised the inescapable connections between comparative work and “the central dilemma of our time (what to do about poverty, inequality, and development) and for our field (what is education’s role in all this?)” (p. 303). a world-systems approach to comparative education almost thirty years ago, arnove (1980) elaborated a call for world-systems analysis in comparative and international education, highlighting the increased level of sophistication such an approach provides in understanding and explaining educational expansion and reform globally. the response to this call has been limited, perhaps due in part to the presence and weight of neoinstitutionalist discourse across the field of comparative education (see arnove, 2009). wallerstein’s world-systems theorising offers substantial insight through an understanding of the historical development of a single, capitalist world-economy, and the associated requirement to maximise the accumulation of capital and maintain hierarchical inequalities within and between states and societies to support this process. moreover, the political edge that such a perspective brings, both as critique of global educational policy trends, and as investigation of alternative policies and practices to support more egalitarian outcomes, make it an important area of research in comparative education. a comparative educational research agenda that contextualises educational phenomena within the world-system and its structural inequalities, implicates the very structures of knowledge that have enabled such inequalities to exist. it is the dominant status given to particular forms of scientific knowledge across the curriculum of school and university systems, linked to their nomothetic epistemology, which has helped to propel the capitalist world-system and defend positions of power. moreover, the dominance of the nomothetic epistemology, scientific universalism, has legitimised a flawed conception of meritocracy that in turn supports educational systems and credentials being used to perpetuate social and economic inequalities. thus the structures of knowledge are critically linked to the development of the capitalist world-economy, having become thoroughly institutionalised and deeply embedded in the functioning of education. as expressed by wallerstein (2006): the search for the good was now excluded from the realm of superior knowledge, which meant that there was no ground on which to criticize the logic of these inferences, since one was thereby being anti-intellectual. the structural social constraints that prevented people from entering the higher realms of the meritocracy were basically eliminated from the analysis or allowed to enter it only on the terms of accepting the assumptions of the two cultures in the investigation. (p. 78) 72 current issues in comparative education t. griffiths and l. knezevic in other words, the historical dominance of ‘scientific universalism’, constructed as being somehow ‘outside culture’, has functioned to exclude challenges to the differential status given to particular knowledge within educational institutions and society. moreover, the concept of meritocracy itself is positioned as beyond critique, given its claims to scientific validity using objective measures of criteria to determine differential outcomes. scientific universalism thus gives legitimacy to a flawed meritocracy by excluding from consideration the particularist and idiographic knowledge that works against its effective operation for particular groups in society. together, scientific universalism and meritocracy justify inequalities within and between nation-states, according to the failure of states and individuals to acquire the knowledge, skills and dispositions ostensibly available to all. with scientific universalism claiming ideological neutrality as the only source of universal truth, it has “shielded the powerful from a moral critique by devaluing the plausibility and objectivity of moral critiques” (wallerstein, 2006, p. 79). a world-systems approach offers an historical theory of knowledge that aligns with, but also goes beyond, long-standing sociological critiques of curriculum content that highlight the particularist nature of dominant high status curricular knowledge, and the consequent sectional or power relations behind official curricula. moore and young (2001) cite the limitations of postmodern critiques of curriculum in particular, arguing that this approach “precludes the possibility of an alternative theory of knowledge” (p. 451). as noted above, wallerstein’s rejection of relativism makes the same point, but in a way that calls for a new epistemology that is “both nomothetic and idiographic, or rather it can be neither” (wallerstein, 2004a, p. 148). as a theory of knowledge, a world-systems approach locates the tension between constructivist and realist conceptualisations of knowledge that young (2008) has recently documented as another manifestation of the historical division of knowledge into nomothetic and idiographic epistemologies, adding to wallerstein’s call for an unified epistemology. world-systems analysis, as a knowledge movement rejecting these epistemological antinomies (wallerstein, 2004b), seeks better tools for understanding social reality. this is not a call to replace one particular (or universal) knowledge for another, but rather the construction of a “multiplicity of universalisms that would resemble a network of universal universalisms” (wallerstein, 2006, p. 84). conclusion the political dimension is clear in wallerstein’s large body of work, with its consistent focus on the long period of transition of the current world-system, and the heightened potential agency in this transition to influence its trajectory toward a more equal, democratic and just, alternative world-system. this approach to world-systems analysis positions “the evolution of the structures of knowledge [as] simply a part of – and an important part of – the evolution of the modern world-system … [in which] … the structures of knowledge have entered a period of anarchy and bifurcation” (wallerstein, 2006, p. 70). wallerstein (2006) gives the example of cultural studies as having developed as a rejection of the western, white and male perspectives that were elevated to universal status within the idiographic humanities. this illustrates the unsettling of the epistemological divide, which plays a critical part in the evolution of the whole world-system. like this development in the structures of knowledge, cosmopolitanism can be seen as another, more recent symptom of the world-system in structural crisis. cosmopolitanism may contribute towards the rethinking of knowledge in ways that traverse both the global and the local, by integrating generalisability with what is deeply individual, the external with the internal, science with humanism. a world-systems approach, however, demands this and more. the point of better understanding social reality that world-systems analysis seeks to provide is always to use this knowledge to shape its evolution. this is an understanding of the current issues in comparative education 73 world-systems analysis in comparative education historical development and operation of the world-system as the primary unit of analysis, and intervention in its transition as an historical system toward an undetermined alternative. the structure of knowledge is central to this process, with the capacity to support a political project that addresses the central dilemma of our time, building a more egalitarian, just and democratic world-system. such a project demands the we operate at three levels, “as an analyst, in search of truth; as a moral person, in search of the good and the beautiful; and as a political person, seeking to unify the true with the good and the beautiful” (wallerstein, 2006, p. 80). the task for comparative researchers is to combine this better understanding with our potential agency to influence the shape of education systems in the future world-system. these systems are in the business of knowledge creation and citizen formation, and so will play a critical role in this historical transition. references anderson-levitt, k. 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(2006). unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences: a research agenda. british journal of sociology, 57(1), 1-23. benavot, a., & braslavsky, c. (eds.). (2006). school knowledge in comparative and historical perspective: changing curricula in primary and secondary education. hong kong: comparative education research centre. boli, j., ramirez, f., & meyer, j. (1985). explaining the origins of mass education. comparative education review, 29(2), 145-167. grande, e. (2006). cosmopolitan political science. british journal of sociology, 57(1), 87-111. held, d., mcgrew, a., goldblatt, d., & perraton, j. (1999). global transformations. cambridge: polity press. 74 current issues in comparative education t. griffiths and l. knezevic jones, p. w. (2007). education and world order. comparative education, 43(3), 325-337. klees, s. j. (2008). presidential address: reflections on theory, method, and practice in comparative and international education. comparative education review, 52(3), 301-328. marginson, s., & mollis, m. (2001). “the door opens and the tiger leaps”: theories and reflexivities of comparative education for a global millennium. comparative education review, 45(4), 581-615. meyer, j. (2006). world models, national curricula, and the centrality of the individual. in a. benavot & c. braslavsky (eds.), school knowledge in comparative and historical perspective: changing curricula in primary and secondary education (pp. 259-271). hong kong: springer. meyer, j. w., boli, j., thomas, g. m., & ramirez, f. o. (1997). world society and the nation state. american journal of sociology, 103(1)(july), 144-181. meyer, j. w., kamens, d. h., benavot , a., cha, y-k., & wong, s-y. (1992). school knowledge for the masses: world models and national primary curricular categories in the twentieth century (vol. 19). washington d.c and london: the falmer press. moore, r., & young, m. (2001). knowledge and the curriculum in the sociology of education: towards a reconceptualisation. british journal of sociology of education, 22(4), 445-461. pogge, t. w. (2009). cosmopolitanism and sovereignty. ethics, 103(1), 48-75. vaughan-williams, n. (2007). beyond a cosmopolitan ideal: the politics of singularity. international politics, 44, 107-124. walker, j. p., & serrano, a. m. (2006). formulating a cosmopolitan approach to immigration and social policy: lessons from american (north and south) indigenous and immigrant groups. current issues in comparative education, 9(1), 60-68. wallerstein, i. (1991). geopolitics and geoculture: essays on the changing world-system. cambridge: cambridge university press. wallerstein, i. (1995). after liberalism. new york: the new press. wallerstein, i. (1996). open the social sciences: report of the gulbenkian commission on the restructuring of the social sciences. stanford, ca: stanford university press. wallerstein, i. (1998). utopistics: or, historical choices of the twenty-first century. new york: the new press. wallerstein, i. (1999). the end of the world as we know it: social science for the twenty-first century. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. wallerstein, i. (2001a). unthinking social science: the limits of nineteenth-century paradigms. philadelphia: temple university press. wallerstein, i. (2001b). global culture(s) salvation, menace, or myth? retrieved 19 august, 2002, current issues in comparative education 75 world-systems analysis in comparative education from http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwgloculttw.htm. wallerstein, i. (2004a). the uncertainties of knowledge. philadelphia: temple university press. wallerstein, i. (2004b). world-systems analysis. in g. modelski (ed.), world system history. oxford: eolss publishers. wallerstein, i. (2006). european universalism: the rhetoric of power. new york: the new press. young, m. (2008). from constructivism to realism in the sociology of the curriculum. review of research in education, 32, 1-28. copyright © 2009 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved. © 2013 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(2): 53-62. promoting civic engagement in schools in non-democratic settings: transforming the approach and practices of iranian educators maryam abolfazli maryam alemi eurasia foundation,[1] usa eurasia foundation, usa established in 2011, the online school of civic education (the online school) is intended to give iranian teachers and educators the opportunity to reflect, experiment, and create classroom experiences aimed at teaching their students how to think, rather than what to think. the online school was developed to provide teachers and educators inside iran with an alternative to existing topdown, ideological, and teacher-centered civic education in iran. the online school’s approach is to encourage teachers and, by extension, their students to think independently and analytically about their surroundings through activities and reflection. we argue that it is possible to provide teachers with experiential training in democratic civic education despite and within the context of the existing civic education paradigm in iran, which defines citizenship in terms of devotion to religious ideology. we argue that, through this model, not only can teachers gain meaningful insight into the practice of democratic citizenship, but they also can enact changes in their classroom behavior and lessons that pass such understandings on to their students. this article has been written to examine the experiences of an online school dedicated to educating teachers of students ages 11-15 in iran. the online school for civic education[2] (the online school) was established in 2011 to provide an alternative approach to promoting civic education through an innovative and interactive curriculum. in this article we will argue that it is possible to provide teachers with experiential training in democratic civic education despite and within the context of the existing civic education paradigm in iran, which defines citizenship in terms of religious ideology. we argue that, through this model, not only can teachers gain meaningful insight into the practice of democratic citizenship, but they also can enact changes in their classroom behavior and implement lessons that transfer such understandings to their students. societal context in iran established as an islamic republic in 1979,[3] the current iranian system of government is complex, including both democratic and authoritarian components; iran is the world’s only theocracy (chehabi, 2001). its government is characterized by a dual system of publicly elected officials and appointed religious experts, including the supreme leader. ultimate power lies with the supreme leader, as he is the final arbiter on matters and disputes among the various branches of government, has the power to remove the president, and has the final say on interpreting constitutional rights. promoting civic engagement in schools in non-democratic settings 54 current issues in comparative education beyond shia islam, the iranian government recognizes only the religions of sunni islam, zoroastrianism, judaism, and christianity. the baha’i faith of is not recognized[4] and the 1% of the population who practice this faith are discriminated against by the government. members of minority faiths in iran, including sunnis, are regularly denied rights to government jobs and access to resources. the constitution of iran is openly non-democratic and gives citizens limited rights as long as they are in line with religious doctrine (chehabi & keshavarzian, 2012). despite the fact that freedom of expression is granted in the constitution, the conservative-controlled judiciary has convicted and jailed most outspoken journalists, bloggers, and students, and continues to do so. currently, iran is second (after turkey) on the list of countries that have imprisoned the most journalists (committee to protect journalists, 2012). still, iranians have shown resilience in their ability to carve out spaces for creativity, individuality, and sociality that run counter to the ideologies promulgated by the iranian government. iranian private life is characterized by broad expression, freedom, and social behavior behind closed doors. this manifests in a variety of ways, for example, the proliferation of a critical art community, underground parties, and resistance music in the form of hip hop, folk, and rock music. more subversively, various young people have begun to delay marriage and participate in years of dating and non-monogamous relationships before, if ever, choosing to marry (tait, 2008). civic engagement and religion as the measure of good citizenship citizenship in iran is defined within its religious context. the good citizen in iran is a religious person (vajargah, 2012). government and non-governmental materials that discuss good behavior and proper citizenship often quote popular religious leaders and imams to provide legitimacy for their claims. for instance, a brochure encouraging neighbors to be cognizant of their noise levels quotes a religious leader who declares that treating neighbors with respect is a duty to god. this message is propagated through media, public meetings such as friday prayers, and, of course, iran’s education system. the main website for the municipality of tehran has a section on citizenship which states that “islam has transparent and direct commands to govern the social interaction of humans not only in regards to moral perfection but also for how to build an ideal society” (tehran municipality, 2013). it is important to note that patriotism and religious duty are intertwined in iran. one muslim adage says, “love of one’s homeland is love of god.” in iran, love of god, country, and government are inextricably linked, making separation of church and state incongruent with the main aims of the government. iran’s education system and its dominant paradigm the primary motive of iran’s education system is to create loyal and obedient citizens. the primary school textbooks in social sciences and history reveal the state’s intent to introduce islamic ideals and behaviors to youth. as one textbook introduction explains: the purpose of this book and teaching is not to memorize and answer things correctly . . . the aim is to develop from the children of today men and women who are worthy, committed, constructive, goodwill [sic], kind, highly chivalrous, abolfazli and alemi current issues in comparative education 55 and god-loving. [with these qualities] and with a heart full of faith, they will stand up to spread the life-giving ideology of islam and the islamic revolution, help to prosper the great islamic country, rush to help the oppressed and struggle against the arrogant and help to move the helpless and the weak of the world. (shorish, 1988, p. 60) in iran, becoming a good citizen means learning to be a devout servant of god. among the important concepts in islamic citizenship is the concept of adab, cleansing oneself of corrupted thoughts through discipline, a concept that is promoted through textbooks, families, and communities. other important concepts are: a) tarbiyah, learning through direct instruction; b) talim, learning through indirect ways, including media; and c) marafah, learning through prayer and communication with god. one review of early childhood education textbooks (shorish, 1988 p. 61) highlights that the development of the islamic person occurs not only through these various ways of learning but also through obedience to the teacher. the student is required to be grateful and appreciative that the teacher provides instruction about how to be good and respectful, in addition to how to read and write. this promotion of obedience to teacher, text, and religion is reiterated throughout students’ education in iran. as stated by the ministry of education, “the major problem which this country has had is with those people that do not believe anything” (shorish, 1988, p. 64). to achieve these goals, the ministry of education recruits and prepares teachers who adhere to the official rules and ideology. to become a teacher, an applicant must confirm the following: 1) his/her belief in the officially recognized religions; 2) agreement and compliance with the rules of islam; 3) intention to recognize and abide by the authority of the supreme leader; 4) lack of history with political parties; and 5) being a moral person. in the interviews, ministry of education staff question potential teachers about their thoughts, beliefs, ideology, and political affiliations rather than their skills and knowledge in the subject areas. the main goal is to create and sustain a cohort of teachers dedicated to the iranian constitution and islamic authority. in addition to requiring teachers to be devout, the ministry of education also seeks to prepare teachers mainly in relation to theory. prospective teachers who finish high school enter a twoyear program in the ministry-run teacher training center which qualifies them to teach in primary and middle schools (kindergarten through 8 th grade). the main topics of this training focus on principles and methods of teaching, history of education, psychology of education, and religious education. without any experiential or skills training, teachers begin working in classrooms immediately after graduation. therefore, the concept of civic education in iran, with its preference for obedience and discipline over critical exploration, is in contrast to democratic civic education. any civic behavior or initiative must be carried out within this rigid framework of reasoning. civic activism or engagement cannot occur under any other premise, such as democracy, self-realization, or community building, that might run counter to loyalty to the regime and the prescribed notions of religious duty. social capital or community-building that does not occur in the name of propagation of religious duty or promotion of the state is seen as disruptive and counter to the dominant official paradigm. promoting civic engagement in schools in non-democratic settings 56 current issues in comparative education alternative approach: the online school for civic education the online school for civic education was established in 2011 by a group of iranians working at an international development foundation in the united states in response to the need for an alternative approach to civic education in iran. the online school is in the persian language and web-based. it allows any teacher of students aged 11-15 across iran to apply to participate in its three online courses: “critical thinking,” “rule of law,” and “citizenship.” each sixto eightweek course is offered twice a year. so far, each course has been offered a total of six times. courses are offered at no charge to the participants. these online courses offered by the online school are designed to mirror the same pedagogy that teachers are encouraged to apply in their own classrooms. the online school’s approach is to give teachers an opportunity to reflect on and practice democratic concepts of citizenship and civic engagement through dialogue and participation in a series of online forum discussions, chat sessions, and other online activities in the persian language. in contrast to the official definition of civic engagement in iran, which emphasizes religious duty and obedience to religious/government leaders, the online school aims to promote civic engagement defined as individual activities in formal or informal settings that build a sense of connection and commitment to society (diller, 2001). to build this understanding of civic engagement, the online school focuses on providing a space for teachers in iran to communicate their personal perspectives on citizenship and civic engagement concepts. through this approach, civic engagement is not defined by duty or obedience, but rather collaboration and cooperation of citizens to influence their environment. the forum discussions within each course are facilitated to promote robust communication, mutual understanding, and small-group work among the teachers. teachers are then encouraged to practice similar democratic forms of engagement in their classrooms, for example, promoting self-governance and decision-making among their students rather than exercising control over their behavior. to participate in a course, teachers must complete an online application form in persian that includes questions about the type of school—private, public or community-based—they teach in, the subject matters they teach in classrooms, the age group of students they work with, and their teaching and personal experience with the subject matter of courses offered by the online school. they are also required to indicate how the course will help them address issues in their classrooms. usually 60 to 70 applicants from across the country apply for each course. these applicants teach a variety of subjects from social sciences to sciences and arts. for each course, the top 30 to 35 applicants are selected by a committee that includes the course facilitator, the school program officer, and the course expert. criteria for selection include a demonstrated interest in the topic areas, evidence that the applicant takes an active role in his/her teaching, and a commitment to teaching new concepts. teachers participating in the courses are from all the provinces throughout iran, bringing ethnic, religious, and social diversity and interaction to the online platform. in each course, the online school is committed to including religious minorities, such as sunnis and baha'is, and teachers from rural and underserved areas. more than 50% of teachers who participate in the courses are from provinces other than tehran (the capital); these include gilan and mazandaran in the north, and sistan and baluchistan in the south. this vast geographic span is notable because ethnicities abolfazli and alemi current issues in comparative education 57 and religions in iran tend to be geographically concentrated (for instance, the majority of sunnis live in the south, while kurds and other ethnic minorities, such as the azeris, live in the north). course participants are also from public, private, and community-based schools that work with labor and immigrant children. diversity along different dimensions helps to foster discussions in the online forums and provides an opportunity for teachers to learn more about other communities as well as school settings in different parts of the country. it also creates a network of teachers who continue collaborating and interacting after they complete the course. to make the courses accessible for low-speed internet users, the resources and content are all text-based. once logged in, the participant can download the course materials to review offline. the online school approach the online school’s approach is defined by a three-step process: 1) teacher awareness; 2) adaptation to context; and 3) classroom implementation. these steps are described briefly below: 1. teacher awareness. the first step is providing curriculum on civic education subjects, such as stereotyping, diversity, tolerance, equality and fairness, conflict resolution, and citizen rights and responsibilities, with a new subject introduced every two weeks. the curriculum consists of introductory definitions of the terms and concepts. it does not aim to describe the subject matter in detail but rather to spur discussion in the forums and chat sessions. in the related forums teachers are asked to discuss the current topics using their own personal experience. for example, during the introductory week about stereotyping, teachers are asked to write about a situation in which they have been discriminated against, socially or culturally, and to express their feelings and thoughts about why this occurred. sharing these experiences helps create a shift from personal narratives to multivocality, where all voices are included in one platform. once the narratives are shared, the course facilitator guides the discussion towards problem analysis and reasoning. this is designed to help teachers generalize from their own perspective and draw conclusions. an essential way for teachers to learn about each other’s perspectives, the forums provide opportunities for robust dialogue among the course participants. 2. adaptation to the context. the second step happens the following week when strategies, games, and methods relevant to the subject matter are introduced for application in the teachers’ classrooms. the focus of forum discussions for this step is the appropriateness and relevance of the game or method in the classroom and in various iranian contexts. at this stage, teachers are encouraged to redesign the games and activities to make them implementable based on their own classroom settings, and to report on their suggested changes and opinions in the forum discussions. 3. classroom implementation. the third step begins once teachers implement the new activities in their classrooms. during this phase, teachers report in detail on the activities they implemented in their classrooms, while also sharing their analysis and evaluation of that effort. at times, teachers also share short videos, sound clips or scripts of students’ reactions and/or responses with the other course participants. small group collaboration to promote collaborative learning and engagement, teachers are required to form small groups to develop lesson plans, implement them separately in their classrooms, and report on them in the forum discussions. after the introductory week for each course, when teachers get to know each other through a series of online ice-breaking games, they form groups of three to four people. promoting civic engagement in schools in non-democratic settings 58 current issues in comparative education teachers from different ethnic, geographic, or cultural backgrounds are encouraged to partner with one another to bring in different perspectives on social, cultural, and educational issues. for example, in one of the rounds of the citizenship course, a shia teacher asked a baha’i course participant to join one group. the shia teacher explained: “i have never had any encounter with baha’is in my own country. i did not even know that baha’is have their own schools in iran. as a citizen, i want to learn more about the lives and perspectives of other citizens of my country and this online course is the only chance i have to expose myself to learn more.” many teachers also mentioned that these small groups motivate them to introduce creativity and innovation in their way of teaching. for instance, arezou, a math teacher in tehran, attended one of zahra’s classrooms to learn more about her methods of teaching math. in several forums, she reported that she applied these methods in her own classroom. vignettes: case studies of critical praxis this section presents three vignettes from the online school. the occurrences portrayed took place in different courses offered throughout the year 2011-2012, and serve to show the changes that may result from the online school’s approach toward teacher development. information for the vignettes has been gathered from forum discussions and simultaneous chat sessions. the stories are notable primarily because of the political and social context of iran within which they occur. they are also notable given the significant limitations of providing guidance and instruction online. the vignettes follow different teachers in different contexts and courses to provide a variety of viewpoints and perspectives. these vignettes were chosen because they demonstrate the teachers’ lack of familiarity with civic engagement concepts, utilizing the definition described earlier in this paper of civic engagement as collaborative activities that build a commitment to society. the vignettes also demonstrate the depth of exchange between teachers about new topics, the shifts that occur in the teacher-student relationship, and the changes that teachers make in their classroom activities. my dream country. the following example was chosen to highlight the lack of teacher-student interaction prior to engagement with the online school and the change the teacher implemented in her classroom, using one of the learned activities as the basis for increased interaction. in this example, genuine engagement occurs between teacher and students that helps the teacher understand her students’ lives and allows her to encourage her students’ self-expression. in the first week of the citizenship course, course participants are required to describe an ideal country that they would create if they could. teachers reflected on the question in the online forum and then began to employ the activity in their classrooms. the following is an account of the implementation in one classroom in tehran. fatemeh is a math teacher for 11-year-old girls in a public school in northern tehran, a more affluent part of the city. in her self-reflective forum of the week, she wrote: i was amazed to read all different points of view of my fellow colleagues about their dream country. i could read between the lines about who they are and what they suffer from. i was interested to implement this activity with my students to read and learn about their imagination. in the last 15 minutes of the class, i gave each one of my students a paper and asked them to write about their dream abolfazli and alemi current issues in comparative education 59 country. i was shocked how little i knew about my students though i’ve spent almost five hours a day with them. i also observed that these kids reflect on the social issues of their society in their writings, issues that are not directly related to them, but are out there around them and they can sense [them]. through this activity i learned that one of my students’ fathers is a political prisoner. my student wrote: “in my dream country nobody would be in jail because of his political views. i wish to live in a country [where] there is no political prisoner nor are any prisoners without a family to visit him and support him. i’d like to live in a country where everyone is free to speak up!” another student wrote: “i wish to live in a country [where] there are no street children, no poor children and no sanctions. in my dream world children don’t need to work to support their families. when i asked my parents why some people are poor, they said because they are not educated. but i think this is not a right answer. with social discrimination everywhere, poor people should not be blamed for being uneducated and poor. fatemeh reported that she plans to introduce the activity on the first day of school from now on so that she can learn about her students’ concerns and beliefs and address their questions throughout the semester. in a simultaneous chat session organized as part of the online school platform/experience, another teacher said that now she feels more responsible for her students. she wrote: i’ve been a teacher for more than 22 years. in the past two weeks [of engaging in this course] i came to the conclusion that being a teacher is beyond teaching; it’s about the ability to make connections with your students, to understand each individual’s needs and have rapport with them, not as your students but as individuals with different personalities, needs, and passion to learn. hurricane sandy. this second example focuses on a teacher raising the awareness of her students about their role in their surroundings and with their peers. one part of the citizenship course focuses on various community-service learning models for making change and engaging in society. one of the forum discussions on this matter was on community activism during hurricane sandy in the u.s. inspired by this forum discussion, negar, a history teacher for girls aged 10 to 12, decided to show her class some photos of community engagement after the hurricane that were published in newspapers in the united states. she reported: there were six students of 10 years old in my class yesterday. i used a laptop to show my students pictures of the community engagement after the sandy storm, such as some neighbors distributing food and drinks in the streets, some providing electricity, etc. i showed the pictures on my laptop instead of the projector intentionally. for each picture, i asked the students to describe what they see and what the people in the picture are doing. i asked them if they have ever experienced working together for a good cause and how they felt about it. in the promoting civic engagement in schools in non-democratic settings 60 current issues in comparative education beginning, the students were struggling and pushing each other so that they could better see the photos. some of them were unable to see because there was not enough room for the whole class to clearly see the monitor. gradually, as we opened the discussion about cooperation and collaboration of communities and individuals to overcome the hurricane damage, i noticed that students who were in front tried to open a space for those in the back and let them in the circle around the monitor. in the end of this 40-minute activity, i asked my students to reflect about today’s experience. three of them said that in the beginning they only thought about their individual selves and how they could get access to the photos, but by the end, they felt that they should contribute to this activity by providing space for those who were in the back and could not see the photos. this is an example of how the teacher learned from the exchanges and discussions with fellow teachers in the online school forums and then created an activity to raise awareness in the classroom. by using photos, discussion, and physical space, the teacher was able to raise student awareness. rather than having the focus on the teacher or the curriculum, the dynamic interaction as a result of the physical space and presentation of the discussion allowed students to experience citizen engagement rather than simply reading or memorizing it. rule-makers. in the final example, a teacher decided to remove herself from a process to give students an opportunity to go beyond simple awareness and instead increase their sense of responsibility, taking ownership of their surroundings, and creating change around them. in the beginning of each course, the online school provides teacher participants with activities and games to help teachers engage their students with the concept of rule of law and collaborate in designing their class rules for the semester. sara, a literature teacher for elementary and high school students, decided to implement an activity based on what she observed in her students. she reported: we had an exhibition in our school and had to create something for it. i combined my high school and elementary classes and asked them to collaborate to come up with their plans for the exhibition. i noticed that the high school group ignored the elementary students. at first i tried to facilitate the interaction to give each group a time to speak up, but then i realized i’ve been the center of the discussion. i decided to step aside. i told both groups that i would leave the class for 15 minutes, and that they would have to come up with the plan and let me know once i came in. if they didn’t succeed, i told them, then we wouldn’t be able to take a part in the exhibition. after 15 minutes when i came in, there was a white sheet of paper on the wall with each [student’s] responsibilities. they told me that they tried to use the method from the first day of class when we came up with the class rules for the semester. i realized that i should not underestimate my students’ ability to collaborate with each other. what i can do is help them understand the tools they can use to work together and empower them to believe that they can. this method of teachers getting out of the way is a novel approach to education in iran. because the education system is teacher-centered and focused on memorization of concepts, students abolfazli and alemi current issues in comparative education 61 rarely have opportunities to interact with peers and thereby experience concepts of citizenship and leadership. allowing students to determine the rules of engagement changes the level of responsibility. in a country where rules and policies are determined at the highest levels by political/religious leaders and then disseminated in a top-down approach, this methodology reverses citizens’ roles from rule-followers or rule-breakers to becoming rule-makers. conclusion within the context of iran, simply engaging teachers and students in dialogue about their lives, their challenges, and their roles as citizens is a substantial divergence from status quo and a positive step towards countering the norms that block democratic development. the results from the online school for civic education demonstrate that it is possible to change classroom activities that can move a society, even a non-democratic society, toward building a citizenship that is critical, engaged, and independent. through self-awareness, risk-taking, and small-scale activities, participants in the online school’s courses are increasing their commitment and actions to change the values, practices, and thinking of future generations of iranians across the country. the online school brings into account multi-vocality and diverse points of view which, in turn, foster awareness, collaboration, and engagement among teachers in iran to redefine the meaning of citizenship and civic education in their classrooms. notes: [1]. this article does not represent the views of eurasia foundation. [2]. for privacy purposes, the name of the school is not mentioned in this article; it is referred to as “the online school for civic education.” [3]. the 1979 iranian revolution, which overthrew the pahlavi dynasty (known for its authoritarian and secular agenda), gave birth to the islamic republic with ayatollah ruhollah khomeini as the supreme leader. [4]. according to the iranian government, the baha’i belief system is heretical to islam, particularly because of the baha’i belief in prophets that came after mohammad. maryam abolfazli is an international development professional with over ten years of experience designing and implementing development projects in the middle east. as mena director at the eurasia foundation, she designs and advises on online education and online social media programs for social entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs, teachers, lawyers, and youth leaders in the middle east. prior to joining the eurasia foundation, ms. abolfazli researched aid infrastructure in africa at the world bank and served as the assistant to the minister of irrigation, water resources and environment in afghanistan. e-mail: maryama@eurasia.org maryam alemi is a senior program officer at the eurasia foundation. she develops and runs an online civic and critical education program for teachers and educators in the middle east. a native speaker of persian and fluent in english, she previously worked as an educator and consultant for ngos in iran. e-mail: malemi@eurasia.org promoting civic engagement in schools in non-democratic settings 62 current issues in comparative education references chehabi, h. e. 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universities. in august 2009, venezuela's national assembly approved and implemented the controversial organic education law. sixteen months later, the assembly approved the similarly polarizing law of university education. days after this bill was passed by the legislature, however, hugo chávez refused to sign it. this paper explains that the government was able to implement the organic law but not the university education law because of changes in the universities’ organizational strength and the wider political opportunity structure. the connections brokered between oppositional groups were diffuse but weak in 2009 but more homogenous and robust in 2010. the stronger opposition, combined with a reduction in the government’s political power after 2009, made the higher education law politically unviable and all but forced chávez to rescind it. in august 2009, the national assembly of venezuela passed a new organic education law that, in addition to changing other elements of the national education system, reformed the internal electoral structure of the country’s five autonomous universities [1]. the law was viewed by many members of those universities as a violation of university autonomy, but was enacted by president hugo chávez despite their protestations. shortly thereafter, in december 2010, the government introduced a new university education law that was intended to assist with the "construction of a socialist society" (art. 2.2). unlike the organic law, however, the university education law was not implemented. although it was approved by the national assembly, president hugo chávez declined to sign it and instead sent it back to the legislature, where it effectively died. this was an unexpected turn of events, for the government did not face any formal institutional constraints that prevented it from implementing the law. why did the government decline to pass the university education law when it enacted the organic education law just sixteen months earlier? in what follows, i approach both reform initiatives as examples of contentious politics or episodic, collective interactions between government and the public based on competing claims (tarrow, 1994; tilly & tarrow, 2007). i focus on two key dimensions of these contentious interactions. first, i examine how existing connective structures within the university system facilitated organizational brokerage, i.e. the establishment or enhancement of new connections between groups. when brokerage occurs, groups making claims against the state are expected to be more effective in their coordinated collective response (gorski, 2003; tarrow, 1998; tilly & tarrow, 2007). however, the efficacy of brokerage also depends on factors external to the organizational features of the opposition. accordingly, i also examine the role of political opportunity structures, the specific characteristics of the political arena that condition how likely people are to participate in collective action, including changes in the ruling elite and shifts in the balance of national political power (tarrow, 1994 p. 85). based on evidence collected during fieldwork in caracas in 2012, i find that the different outcomes in 2009 and 2010 are due to variation in the organizational strength of both the universities and the state. in 2009 the autonomous universities engaged in extensive brokerage with each other and with non-university social sectors, leading to heterogeneous and diffusely storm 18 current issues in comparative education organized opposition that could not match the state's organizational cohesion and political power. the state was therefore able to enact the organic law despite opposition from the university community and other social sectors. conversely, in 2010, limited brokerage with nonuniversity actors meant that the opposition was more homogenous, more organizationally entwined, and therefore more capable of challenging the government. crucially, during this contentious episode the universities were also able to capitalize upon the chávez government’s declining power in the national political arena. the interaction of these factors produced a victory for the government in 2009 but significantly raised the potential costs of enacting the university education law in 2010. political transformation and university reform in context hugo chávez was elected president of venezuela in 1998 following two decades of social, political, and economic turmoil. a major currency devaluation in 1983 and steadily declining international oil prices led to a protracted economic crisis for this oil-dependent nation, while the stabilization measures intended to rectify the situation resulted in a massive urban uprising in 1989 (bejarano, 2011; kornblith, 2006). the political fallout was enormous, culminating in the collapse of the two-party system that had governed venezuela since democratization in 1958 (buxton, 2005; ellner, 2008). when hugo chávez was elected president in december 1998, he and supporters of the bolivarian [2] movement he led sought to “refound the state” by promulgating a new constitution and undertaking sweeping institutional reforms in the name of participatory democracy and redistributive economic justice (wilpert, 2007). in 2006, after winning a second term in office, chávez began to speak of “twenty-first century socialism” and accelerated the process of transformation by increasing state intervention in economic matters and reorganizing the institutional political landscape (lópez maya, 2011). the dismantling of the capitalist, liberal democratic political and economic model led to deep polarization within and outside venezuela, with some heralding the reforms as necessary and progressive (gott, 2000; harnecker, 2010; raby, 2006; wilpert, 2007) and others condemning them as autocratic and unsustainable (brewer-carías, 2010; corrales & penfold, 2007; corrales & penfold, 2011; roberts, 2003). higher education reform figured prominently in the bolivarian transformation process, partly because of the importance afforded to it by state elites and partly because of the resistance the reforms engendered. tensions between the state and the country’s five formally autonomous universities are longstanding. throughout the twentieth century, including after democratization in 1958, university autonomy was repeatedly violated by the state, and many within the university sector therefore remain suspicious of state power as a matter of principle. it was very symbolically important then that when chávez came to power he codified university autonomy as an integral element of governance in the new constitution. initially, higher education reform efforts bypassed the autonomous universities and avoided the issue of university autonomy entirely, focusing instead on the creation of new experimental universities and higher education programs meant to increase access to post-secondary education. for example, between 1999 and 2012, the venezuelan state created 22 new universities, doubling the size of the public university system. however, when the state turned to overhauling the existing (and significantly outdated) legislative framework governing higher education, it had no choice but to engage the autonomous institutions. the 2009 organic education law was the first such attempt. the 2009 organic education law the 2009 organic education law replaced an existing law from 1980, which set out the basic rules for the administration of the entire education system from basic through higher education. the autonomous universities’ opposition to the bill generally focused on two interrelated substantive objections. first, the law changed the definition of “university community” (and therefore the composition of the university electorate) from one that consisted of professors, brokerage, political opportunity, and protest current issues in comparative education 19 students, and alumni to one that also included administrative personnel and workers. the enfranchisement of these non-academic groups gave them the right to participate in decisionmaking processes regarding academic affairs, which rankled many authorities and professors. second, the organic law emphasized equal political representation for each of these constituencies, in effect requiring the universities to amend their organizational and administrative regulations to achieve voting parity in compliance with the national law. the right to vote in university elections, previously adjudicated by the autonomous universities as they saw fit, was therefore transformed from an academic right to a political right enforceable by the state. many within those universities perceived both of these provisions as direct threats to the principle and exercise of university autonomy. initial resistance against the organic law began as soon as a draft was released to the public in july 2009. university authorities, professors and students from the autonomous universities immediately made use of existing connective structures to mobilize internally, demonstrating how “institutions are particularly economical ‘host’ settings” (tarrow, 1998, p. 22) for collective action. university councils were the most important organizational structures linking constituencies within each university. as the highest governing body in these institutions, each council provided a regular forum for interaction among rectors, vice-rectors, deans, and representatives from the professoriate, student body, alumni community, and ministry of university education. immediately upon the publication of the draft organic law the councils at all five autonomous universities held urgent meetings to consider its implications. rectors at the central university and the university of the andes called the bodies into permanent session, enabling them to call additional meetings at short notice, while the council at the university of zulia condemned the bill in a public letter to various government officials and organizations (universidad de zulia, 2009). as the most authoritative, visible, and representative governing bodies of the universities, the councils' swift rejection of the law positioned the institutions as nearly uniformly against the initiative. this intra-organizational structure facilitated interaction between the various members (authorities, professors, students, and alumni) in each venezuelan university and effectively turned each institution into a site of focused (if not unanimous) resistance to the organic law. if the university councils were the most significant connective structures within specific institutions, the national universities council (cnu), the formally autonomous coordinating body upon which every venezuelan rector sits, could have reasonably been expected to have an analogous role in linking different universities to each other. however, the cnu, was essentially dormant. this was unsurprising given that the minister of university education presided over the organization. instead, the oppositional rectors organized through the venezuelan association of university rectors (averu), a voluntary association composed of largely anti-government rectors from autonomous, experimental, and private universities. although this brokerage was important because it marked the first time the organization was used for explicitly political purposes, averu was somewhat slow to mobilize and the majority of its activities happened after the president signed the bill into law rather than in the crucial period before he did so (universidad de los andes, 2009). the participation of rectors from the experimental and private universities was an example of brokerage that had parallels with other segments of the university system. the university teachers’ federation of venezuela (fapuv), representing 40,000 of the country’s professors, were already wrestling with the government over the establishment of national salary standards, and the organic law was but another grievance held by an already mobilized sector. the student response, however, was comparatively weak. branches of the federation of student centres (fcu) organized protests at campuses across the country leading up to the law’s implementation but internal organizational deficits prevented the student movement from gaining much traction. many of the prominent student leaders that led the first anti-government storm 20 current issues in comparative education student protests in 2007, a number of whom came from private universities without fcu branches [3], had since graduated, leaving a leadership and organizational vacuum (brading, 2013, p. 131). an additional mitigating factor was that many students at the autonomous universities stood to directly and immediately benefit from the law's provision regarding voting parity, which would give them far greater power relative to professors. students at the private and experimental universities, on the other hand, were not particularly concerned with the issue of parity either way, for the majority of them attended institutions where authorities were still chosen by the ministry of university education (experimental universities) or by parochial governing boards (private universities). this cleavage within the student movement detracted from its ability to mobilize forcefully and effectively. the politicization of existing organizations that linked various segments of the university community sent a clear sign to the government that a large segment of the higher education sector did not support the organic education law. this signal was made all the more clear when further connections were established with other, non-university actors. in addition to the participation of a variety of groups that challenged the legislation’s impact on primary, secondary, and private education, the private media and opposition parties also inserted themselves into the protests. media organizations expressed reservations about how parts of the law would affect freedom of speech and expression, and formed a formal alliance between a media group and the professors’ association at the central university (contreras, 2009). representatives from federal opposition parties, as well as state and municipal politicians, also joined universities in protest. even though the opposition parties had very little leverage in the national assembly during this episode of contention [4], individual candidates spoke out against the bill in general terms. members of podemos, a party identified with chávez until 2007, repeatedly criticized the government, and the president of un nuevo tiempo, omar marboza, explicitly offered the support of the opposition to the protestors. the presence of parties was not to politicize the protests in a partisan fashion, stated marboza, but to “give the encouragement and support that is in our power to express our rejection for everything that is happening in venezuela” (informe21, 2009). despite the broad university opposition to the bill, and the fact that the participation of the private media and federal parties made it a national issue, the organic education law was officially implemented on august 15, 2009. while brokerage helped organize resistance to the initiative, the resulting coordinated action was evidently not enough for the government to reconsider the legislation in whole or in part. as the new academic year began public protest slowly petered out and university authorities retreated in search of institutional solutions such as constitutional court challenges that ultimately went unanswered by the state. after ten years in power, the chávez administration had finally changed the basic legal structure of the educational system. the 2010 university education law after its victory, the venezuelan government was emboldened to pursue further educational reform. this time it sought to replace the outdated 1970 universities law. the new bill, proposed in late december 2010, restated the primacy of university autonomy (as defined in the 2009 organic law) but made extensive systemic changes that undermined the principle, at least as previously legally demarcated. for example, various articles recast professors as “academic workers,” eliminated deans from university administrative structures, replaced university councils with councils of university transformation, and eliminated the national university council in favor of a national council of university transformation. the goal, as stated clearly in the law, was to transform universities into “socialist models of production” in service of “constructing a socialist society” (articles 4.12 and 3.2). brokerage, political opportunity, and protest current issues in comparative education 21 as was the case with the organic law, protests began as soon as a draft of the bill began to circulate in civil society. unlike the previous episode, however, where at least a full month passed between when a draft became available to the public and when it was actually approved, an unauthorized draft of the university education law leaked to civil society two weeks before the final version was read in the legislature. amid protests, the official version was introduced in the national assembly on december 21, 2010, and approved upon its second reading at 2:50 a.m. on december 23. despite the legislature's approval of the bill, explosive protests continued, carrying on throughout christmas eve, christmas day, new year’s eve, and new year’s day, gaining rather than losing momentum. this time the president took heed: on january 4, 2011, the first day of the new legislative term, chávez announced on television that he would not sign the law. the university-based opposition, it seemed, had triumphed. two factors endogenous to the oppositional mobilizations help explain why the outcome in 2010-11 was different than in 2009. first, the linkages between university actors had already been brokered in the 2009 episode. the reactivation of connections that were previously established or mobilized for political ends in response to the organic education law allowed the university opposition to sustain highly visible protests over the holiday break. inside the universities, university councils again formally connected students, professors, and authorities. in contrast to the organic law, however, there was considerably more interaction between various groups outside of the formal confines of the councils. at the central university, this was due in part to a filial tie: the president of the student union, diego scharifker, was the son of benjamin scharifker, the rector at simón bolívar experimental university, one of the experimental universities active in both episodes of contention. the senior scharifker had been an outspoken critic of the government for some time, and while he and his son did not work closely together during this period in 2010-11, the kinship link increased his son’s ability to connect with the central university’s top authorities. for example, diego scharifker recalled very frequent meetings between the president of the faculty association, student organizers, and the four university authorities (scharifker, 2012). these were not university council meetings, but informal encounters to coordinate further protest actions outside the normal boundaries of university governance. the ties established between the autonomous, experimental and private universities in 2009 also contributed to more extensive interuniversity brokerage in 2010. the national universities council remained on the sidelines once more, but averu was far more active. the outspoken rector of the central university, cecilia garcía arocha, became the new president of averu and used the platform to promise immediate direct action against the law (universidad de los andes, 2010). students, too, participated more. whereas student councils organized protests within their respective universities in 2009, in 2010-11 the fcu functioned like a viable, integrated federation rather than a loosely organized group of discrete campus-based student groups. fcu presidents at the autonomous universities in zulia, mérida (los andes), and carabobo were the same as in 2009, while prominent student activists in more informal leadership positions also reappeared to challenge the state. no longer were students active only within their own institutions; they coalesced into a full-fledged, cross-university student movement with skilled leadership and common purpose. two events that occurred shortly after the legislature passed the university education law illustrate just how successful intraand inter-university brokerage was. on december 24, 2010, josé virtuoso, the jesuit rector of the andrés bello catholic university, led a christmas eve mass “in defense of university autonomy” in the chapel of the central university wherein he promised that venezuelans would “defend the university with our lives” (el universal, 2010a). a week later, several hundred people from various venezuelan universities gathered at the rector’s plaza at the central university to restate their commitment to university autonomy by ringing in the new year with a “hug of peace” (el universal, 2010b). both of these events storm 22 current issues in comparative education illustrate how the boundaries between constituencies within and across universities blurred, leading to the comprehensive unification of opponents within the university sector. authorities, professors and students stood shoulder-to-shoulder defending the traditional principle of university autonomy against what they viewed as an encroaching state. the second change in the organization of the opposition was that the protests against the university education law were almost entirely contained within the university sector. whereas political parties and the private media were very active in 2009, these forces largely remained on the sidelines in 2010-11. this meant that the challenges to the law were unencumbered by the interests of other groups, and protest remained highly focused. although some nongovernmental organizations concerned with education spoke out against the law, media organizations and political parties were bystanders rather than participants. the private media provided extensive coverage of the protests before and after the national assembly approved the law but it did not revive or form new connections with organizations in the university sector. the same held true for political parties. diego scharifker, an active member of un nuevo tiempo since 2008, noted that “at this protest there were just members of the university. there was very little contact with parties, with the [opposition coalition]. it was just us getting organized and protesting every day.” he continued: in 2009 there was more of a relationship with political parties, and even though that’s not bad, [it meant] there were different interests. […] there were universities, middle schools, high schools etc., but there was a lot more political discussion inside. so that’s why you see some politicians involved much more with it than members of the university of the student movement, while 2010 was purely of the universities. really there was no involvement, apart from two or three members of the national assembly like ismael garcía. apart from them there was very little involvement [from politicians]. (scharifker, 2012) there are several plausible reasons for the reduced participation of non-university groups. first, unlike the organic education law, the university education law did not contain provisions that directly affected the media, and therefore it did not have an immediate interest in actively protesting. second, the organic law affected the entire system of public education, which garnered the attention from organizations representing and affiliated with elementary, middle and secondary school education. in contrast, the university education law impacted only the university sector, a narrower but more historically powerful and politicized constituency. the third factor was timing. although critics of the organic law condemned it on the grounds that it was introduced and approved without sufficient discussion, the university education law was introduced and approved in an even shorter time frame. as noted above, most interested parties only heard about the higher education law approximately a week before it was introduced to the legislature, whereas a draft the of organic law had been circulating in civil society for at least six weeks prior to being approved in the assembly. the element of surprise sparked a sense of urgency with the universities, but it did not leave enough time for other organizations to mobilize to nearly the same extent as they had previously. when chávez vetoed the law on january 4, 2011, he was responding to intense, undiluted opposition from a university sector that showed no intention of backing down. the role of political opportunity chávez’s decision not to sign the university education law was largely a result of the fact that the social networks and institutional connections between and among oppositional universities matured between august 2009 and january 2011. the increasing strength of connections within and between universities, coupled with the lack of participation by the private media and parties in the latter episode, helps to explain why the opposition was more effective. however, the brokerage that these connective structures enabled may have been of little consequence in the absence of an expansion in the political opportunity structure available to opponents. brokerage, political opportunity, and protest current issues in comparative education 23 changes in the domestic political environment, namely a reduction in the government’s balance of power in the legislature and reduced bureaucratic cohesion in the ministry of university education, gave the opposition more leverage and pressured the government to discard the law or else risk the escalation and diffusion of protest. the chávez administration was in a fairly secure position when the organic law was brought to the legislature in 2009. the president was reelected in 2006 with almost 63% of the popular vote, and the government party, the fifth republic movement, held a supermajority following the opposition’s boycott of the 2005 poll (ellner, 2008, p. 121). the opposition university and otherwise therefore had very little institutional recourse to challenge the education law. additionally, two men with significant experience in the education system commanded the educational ministries. minister of higher education luis acuña and minister of education hector navarro had previous experience in governance positions within the autonomous universities and the state's educational bureaucracy before becoming ministers. navarro, who one interview subject described as “very loved” by chávez, was particularly close to the president and committed to the greater project of higher education reform. when the organic law was drafted, introduced, and enacted, the bolivarian government therefore had considerable political latitude and a reservoir of bureaucratic expertise and ideological commitment. by the time the university education law was introduced, in december 2010, the political opportunity structure had changed in favour of the opposition. elections for the national assembly in september 2010 cost the united socialist party of venezuela the supermajority it was handed by the abstaining opposition in 2005, although it retained a simple majority. not only did the opposition coalition, the democratic unity roundtable, gain 59 seats, but several people who held leadership positions in the first anti-government student mobilizations in 2007 were also elected as legislators. the participation of new deputies with backgrounds in the student movement raised the likelihood that the university education law would be vocally challenged in the new legislative term and that the conflict could snowball into a bigger protest movement. a moderate expansion of political opportunity in the national polity thus translated into significant expansion for the specific constituencies related to student and university politics. beyond changes in the electoral realm, divisions within the state bureaucracy further enhanced the opportunity for the university opposition to challenge the government. in february 2010, minister acuña left his post, followed by minister navarro three months later. both men were replaced by far less experienced ministers. acuña was replaced by edgardo ramírez, a professor of international studies at the central university and director of the office of international cooperation at the ministry of higher education, while a journalist, jennifer gil laya, assumed navarro's position. the reasons for the cabinet changes are unclear, as acuña and navarro continued to hold important positions in the bolivarian government. however, it is reasonable to infer that their transitions to new roles may have been related to their misgivings about the university education law. according to several sources either directly involved in protesting the bill or who had close connections to the chávez government, acuña and navarro (among others, including rectors of several experimental universities) were rumored to have informed chávez in a private letter that they had significant reservations about the bill and cautioned him not to proceed with it. these sources allege that the exministers expressed concern about difficulties likely to occur when implementing a number of key changes, claims that were corroborated by the televised references chávez made to members of the government who warned him that the law was “inapplicable” and needed to be redrafted by the national assembly. storm 24 current issues in comparative education these divisions within the educational bureaucracy and the new balance of power within the national assembly were, of course, not the doing of the autonomous universities. however, both changes altered the dimensions of the political opportunity structure available to these aggrieved institutions. the weaker state bureaucracy and the stronger political opposition provided significant incentive for the autonomous universities to press forward with their claims against the state, even over the holiday period. with this new window of opportunity, the strength of the university sector posed that much more of a threat to the long-term viability of the university education law. conclusion: venezuelan higher education legislation reconsidered the organic education law of 2009 and the university education law of 2010 were but two manifestations of an ambitious attempt to change venezuela’s university system into an engine of socialist transformation. comparison of the two episodes of contention illustrates how subtle shifts in organizational alliances can produce significantly different outcomes. initial efforts at brokerage in 2009 had limited impact that year but contributed to the rapid activation of social networks when the higher education law was introduced in 2010. in the latter case, however, grievances were expressed almost exclusively by the university sector. whereas in 2009 the university sector was accompanied by a wide range of groups seeking to prevent the implementation of a bill that would restructure the basic principles of venezuelan education, including political parties and media organizations, in 2010 collaborative resistance was highly focused and limited only to the university sector. the strength of intraand inter-university linkages resulted in a form of “organizational entwining” (gorski, 2003, pp. 167-168) that allowed the opposition forces to sustain a united front against the state during the critical period after the law was approved by the legislature but before it was signed by the president. however, contrary to expectation, the relative absence of extra-university forces in 2010 assisted the oppositional forces by allowing them to maintain a razor-sharp focus on university autonomy, not broader issues like free speech or partisan politics. these factors, combined with the expansion of political opportunity during the contestation around the university education law, enhanced the ability of the oppositional universities to do what they could not in 2009. when president chávez died in march 2013, this legislative phase of higher education reform remained decidedly incomplete. notes [1] venezuela has two types of public universities, autonomous and experimental. in this context, the primary distinguishing characteristic is that in autonomous universities professors and students elect the governing authorities, while the ministry of university education chooses the authorities at experimental universities. [2] the bolivarian revolution, the political movement led by hugo chávez, takes its name from simón bolívar, one of the military leaders responsible for leading venezuela and other spanish colonies to independence in the 19th century. [3] the venezuelan student movement, a major political force in the 20th century that has traditionally opposed state power, did not mobilize during the chávez presidency until the government decided not to renew the terrestrial broadcast licence of radio caracas televisión internacional, a major private media organization, in may 2007. students further mobilized en masse in advance of the december 2007 constitutional referendum, helping to hand the government its first electoral defeat since chávez was elected in 1999. [4] five major opposition parties withdrew from the 2005 legislative campaign only days before venezuelans went to the polls, effectively handing chávez's party, the fifth republic movement (later transformed into the united socialist party of venezuela) a two-thirds majority in the national assembly. brokerage, political opportunity, and protest current issues in comparative education 25 elliot storm is a phd candidate in the department of political science at the university of toronto. email: e.storm@utoronto.ca. references bejarano, a. m. (2011). precarious democracies: understanding regime stability and change in colombia and venezuela. notre dame: university of notre dame. brading, r. (2013). populism in venezuela. new york: routledge. brewer-carías, a. r. (2010). dismantling democracy in venezuela: the chávez authoritarian experiment. new york: cambridge university press. buxton, j. 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(2007). changing venezuela by taking power: the history and policies of the chávez government. london: verso. current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 2, spring 2017 © 2017, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(2), 84-110. a comparative study of pre-service education for preschool teachers in china and the united states xin gong school of education, central china normal university pengcheng wang school of education, central china normal university this study provides a comparative analysis of the pre-service education system for preschool educators in china and the united states. based on collected data and materials (literature, policy documents, and statistical data), we compare two areas of pre-service training: (1) the formal system; (2) the informal system. in the formal system, most of the chinese preschool teachers are trained in secondary education school but and the system is shifting towards higher reliance on associate degree programs in higher education, whereas the majority of american preschool teachers receive pre-service education in bachelor’s degree and associate degree programs. us has relied more on the formal system to cultivate preschool teachers, while china has to rely on some informal pre-service training to candidates without early childhood background, especially for places with preschool teacher shortages. trends for possible reforms in the two countries and lessons for elevating preschool teacher preparation are discussed. introduction early childhood education (ece) has garnered more attention in the past few decades. to ensure children receive real benefits of early childhood education, the need for improving the quality of preschool teachers becomes a central policy topic in both the us and china. the us has a longer history of formal early childhood education than china; the first us preschool (at that time, called “kindergarten”) opened in 1856 in wisconsin, whereas china’s first preschool opened in 1903, in hubei province. although us scholars see the need to improve the quality of the american ece teacher education system (kagan, kaurez, & tarrant, 2008; whitebook & austin, 2015), china can still learn from their best practices and lessons learned. by comparing the two countries, the purpose of the present study is to give practitioners and researchers context into the conditions that had pre-service education for preschool teachers current issues in comparative education 85 85 undermined the quality of china’s preschool teacher education and also provide experience from china’s recent reforms. a number of studies have compared preschool education practices in china and the us (che, hayashi, & tobin, 2007), and compared teacher preparation and qualification (ingersoll, 2007). the present study will be the first english study to compare the two systems for early childhood education with a focus on teacher preparation. it is important to know the differences in teacher preparation system in order to understand the differences in the two countries’ pedagogical methods for young children. some researchers have discovered that preschool education in china and the us have differences in teaching methods or concepts and cultivates different types of students (tobin et al., 1991). generally speaking, teachers in the us emphasize student autonomy while chinese teachers pay more attention to skill development (wang, elicker, mcmullen, & mao, 2006). we show how differences in preschool pedagogy is accounted for by systemic differences in preschool teacher preparation. what distinguishes teacher preparation in china from the us? what can the two countries learn from their experiences in teacher education? this study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the contemporary pre-service teacher education system for preschool teachers in china, and how it differs or relates to the system in the united states. for the purpose of this study, pre-service teacher education is defined as any type of teacher education or training that happens before a person works as a preschool teacher. it can be also defined as teacher preparation or professional development activities before becoming a preschool teacher. in gomez et al. (2015), pre-service training refers to the range of activities in which individuals engage prior to entering the workforce. as such, training and education are used interchangeably in this study. before we proceed, it is necessary to briefly introduce the backgrounds and terminologies of early childhood education in the two countries. in the united states, early childhood education is the widest concept that covers ages zero to eight, with a marked differentiation between preschool education (for three and four year olds) and kindergarten education (grade k in the k-12 education system). for china and many east asian countries, however, the first year of school is grade one rather than grade k, with preschools serving children aged three to six (i.e., age three, four and five). chinese scholars often use “kindergarten” to refer to the preschool education institutions serving this population when translating their work into the english language, which is the same as the term “kindergarten” in the american context. in this analysis, comparisons will be gong and wang current issues in comparative education 86 restricted to only include children between the ages of three to six years. we observe that both countries are relying heavily on the private market for the provision of early childhood education for three and four-year olds, however, the us has performed better in publicizing its education for five year old children. the next section briefly introduces prior studies, followed by a research method section. section four gives an overall description of the pre-service teacher education systems in the two countries. section five analyzes the similarities and differences in the formal part of the two pre-service teacher education systems. section six compares the informal part. the final section summarizes the findings and the reflections. literature review although many studies have discussed the development of early childhood education in china or in the us, comparison of their distinct traditions in preschool teacher preparation is relatively scarce. after careful searching, we found that existing studies are mainly focused on primary school teacher preparation, especially in china. there are not many studies involving comparisons of preschool teachers in the us and china, with limited numbers (e.g., jiang, yan, & xu, 2012; wang, 2014; zhao, 1996). moreover, most of these comparisons have been published in chinese instead of communicating effective suggestions for a broader base of researchers. this literature review provides useful information for our study. in the us, preschool teachers have mainly graduated from comprehensive universities; many training institutions hosted by early childhood education association and private organizations also take the responsibility of teacher preparation (zhao, 1996; wang, 2008). in china, preschool teacher preparation has traditionally taken place in normal universities or teacher colleges (jiang et al., 2012). some researchers have compared different program objectives and find they are quite different in the us (e.g., indiana state university) as compared to in china (e.g. east china normal university); the objectives are more professional oriented and structured in the us, as compared to china’s more ad hoc approach (wang, 2014). the main contribution of this study is a comprehensive review of the institutional preparation of preschool teacher between the two countries in the two main aspects of the formal and informal system for the first time for comparative education researchers. a policy relevant contribution is to provide policy recommendations for the us in aspects that were previously rarely discussed, such as the unity of certification processes across states, and the use of one certifying institution governed by the department of education. pre-service education for preschool teachers current issues in comparative education 87 87 methodology this study is a comparative study that compares both the formal and informal systems of preschool teacher preparation in the us and china. for the comparison in the formal system, several sub-national cases are selected for each country. for the comparison in the informal system, comparison takes place at the national level. a combination of four research methods is used for the comparison, including literature research, historical research, comparative research, and case study. literature and historical research. we searched relevant literature using several keyword variations, including preschool teacher preparation, preschool teacher education, preparation of ece, teachers in the us and china, using both english and chinese sources. to depict the backgrounds of preschool education in each country, we also searched for studies related to the process of preschool education development. comparative analysis. according to beredy’s (1964) framework for comparative research, there are four stages to a comparative analysis: during the first stage, we described the two systems based on relevant information and statistical data from websites, yearbooks, official reports. in the second stage, we organized the literature and contextualized the research in historical, political, social and economic perspective. at the third stage, we juxtapose the information and arrived at our terms for comparison. we defined preschool teacher in each country, preschool teacher preparation in the formal education system and preparation in informal education sector. in the final stage, we summarize the similarities and differences between the two systems, and make recommendations for each country. case study analysis. for the part on the us, three states were sampled to reflect diversity in geographical location and education development in the country. the three states are: new york, california, and nebraska. for the comparison of the elements for degree programs, we select at least two institutes in each state: one offering associate degrees (aa), one offering bachelor’s degree (ba). for example, hudson valley community college and suny fredonia were selected for new york. in china, we studied eight teacher preparation institutions at four levels (upper secondary, associate degree [aa], bachelor’s, master’s) across three geographical locations (east, central and west). at the upper secondary level, we selected baiyun xingzhi senior vocational school and zhangzhou city vocational college; at the aa level, we select shaanxi xueqian normal university, shenyang normal university, southwestern university, henan institute of science and technology, central china normal university and east china normal university as samples. we obtain detailed information about these schools from two sources: (1) policy documents and school plans available through each institutions’ gong and wang current issues in comparative education 88 websites, phone interviews, and school administrators, along with interviews with program directors at the henan institute of science and technology; and (2) information based on the published chinese journal articles that described the course structure and school plans if the school had already been studied, such as zhangzhou city vocational college and shenyang normal university . we use several sources in our data collection, including prior studies, policy documents, and statistical yearbooks. the analytical method includes statistical analysis, comparison, induction and deduction methods. the analytical framework for this study is divided into two parts. as mentioned earlier, we compared the teacher preparation system between the two countries by its formal and informal systems. we discuss the percentages of teachers in each system, educational background of the teaching workforce, the use of online early childhood education programs, in teacher certification, selected standards in early childhood programs, and courses and practicum by degree level. regarding the informal system, we defined the concept of teacher preparation in the informal system, and outlined the share in each country. overall description of the two systems in both the us and china, a system for pre-service teacher education exists according to career pathways. a person who goes to the preschool teaching workforce can either: (1) have no training or education in early childhood education; (2) have some informal training, but not a certificate, a permit or a credential; (3) have a certificate or a permit but not having a formal degree in early childhood education (including those with a degree in other irrelevant majors); (4) have a degree in early childhood education or a relevant major. structure of formal teacher preparation institutes. in the united states (see figure 1), the formal system contains various degree programs (associate degree, bachelor’s degree and above) in the higher education stage. some early childhood education programs can certify teachers, but not all do. those who enter the workforce with a child development associate (cda), state license or other permits but without a college degree can be viewed as partially in the formal system. the national association for the education of young children (naeyc) and local school bureaus may also certify teachers. moreover, those who get limited training or no training related to early childhood education could be defined in the informal teacher preparation system. sometimes, a teacher may go through both a degree program and certification process. in china, the formal system also includes four degree programs in the higher education stage, which refers to associate degree, pre-service education for preschool teachers current issues in comparative education 89 89 bachelor’s degree and above. all graduates regardless of their major should take the teacher certification exam hosted by the ministry of education. figure 1. the formal and informal education systems in china and the us note: drafted according to information on formal education system and informal education system in the two countries; length of text box for degree education indicates the share of that education level among all preschool teachers in each country. preschool teachers from the informal system. the percentage of preschool and kindergarten teachers with only informal pre-service education is about 25% in the us, whereas such percentage is about 40% in china. for the us, 25% is an estimate based on data in 2010 from the ecls-b dataset for center-based care and education settings, considering the all kindergarten teachers in the us with a bachelor’s degree and higher.1 for china, according to statistics in 2012, 53.3% of the lead teachers have early childhood education background.2 this figure does not include part-time teachers and daike teachers. notably, daike teacher is a concept with chinese characteristics, referring to teachers 1 in the us, kindergarten teachers face the same options for specialization as any elementary school teacher. they can receive additional training to teach music, art, or physical education. they can also choose to earn a master’s degree in special education to increase salary potential. 2 http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s8493/201412/181623.html gong and wang current issues in comparative education 90 without a headcount in the public system (and thus informal), often not specialized trained. figure 1 incorporates such information, along with the above description of the formal system. table 1. distribution of education levels of china’s preschool teachers, circa 2015 graduates m.a. ba aa hs below hs all china 5225 377392 1117219 529036 51445 preschool leaders 2405 62786 127293 40048 3637 full-time teachers 2820 314606 989926 488988 47808 (%) (0.15%) (17.06%) (53.68%) (26.52%) (2.59%) urban area 4243 220828 544294 195493 12679 preschool leaders 1977 32731 47490 10192 774 full-time teachers 2266 188097 496804 185301 11905 rural-urban fringe zones 269 20639 85751 44847 3459 preschool leaders 148 4370 9181 2547 190 full-time teachers 121 16269 76570 42300 3269 county and town area 767 119869 399065 200470 20261 preschool leaders 340 20109 45774 14073 1113 full-time teachers 427 99760 353291 186397 19148 rural area 215 36695 173860 133073 18505 preschool leaders 88 9946 34029 15783 1750 full-time teachers 127 26749 139831 117290 16755 source: education statistics from moe china’s website, based on authors’ calculations educational backgrounds of the teaching workforce. consistent with the pre-service preparation systems, existing educational backgrounds of the teaching workforce in the two countries also differ substantially. common to the two countries, educational backgrounds vary widely among the early childhood workforce, from bachelor’s degrees or higher to only limited formal schooling. however, the distributions are different. according to the early childhood workforce index 2016 report on the teaching staff in center based preschool settings of the united states (for year 2015), only 19% didn’t have any college education, which means 81% have at least some college (whitebook, mclean, & austin, 2016).3 in another study, it was estimated that 28% to 73% of the preschool teachers having at least a bachelor’s degree (maroto & brandon, 2012). all kindergarten teachers have a ba, as it is a minimum requirement. those working with infants and 3 source: number and characteristics of early care and education (ece) teachers and caregivers: initial findings from the national survey of early care and education (nsece) from the national survey of early care and education. data were collected in the first half of 2012, include all instructional staff and do not differentiate by roles, for example, lead teacher, teacher, assistant teacher or aide. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/resource/number-and-characteristics-of-early-care-and-education-ece-teachers-and http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/resource/number-and-characteristics-of-early-care-and-education-ece-teachers-and http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/resource/number-and-characteristics-of-early-care-and-education-ece-teachers-and http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/resource/number-and-characteristics-of-early-care-and-education-ece-teachers-and pre-service education for preschool teachers current issues in comparative education 91 91 toddlers have lower educational attainment. this percentage is higher than the number reported in 2015 by the ministry of education in china and is shown in table 1, about half of the preschool teachers are associate degree (aa) graduates. compared to earlier years, the number of ba graduates has increased and the number of high school graduates and lesser has decreased. in 2000, the majority of the teachers only had a high school education, and this situation changed in 2007 when 46% of the teachers earned an aa degree (yuan, 2010). the levels for chinese preschool teachers vary more widely than their american counterparts. comparing the formal pre-service education systems structure of the formal teacher preparation system in the united states. having once relied on vocational high schools to train its teachers, pre-service training in the us now goes through colleges, and organizations that offer the child development associate (cda) and national board for professional teaching standards (nbpts) credentials for training ece teachers (gomez, kagan & fox, 2015). gomez et al. (2015) described it as a market-driven, mixed-delivery sector. there are more than 1000 teacher-training institutions (npc, 2006; whitebook & austin, 2015). the teacher preparation system is tiered consisting mainly of ba programs alongside some aa and master’s degree (ma) programs. the aa programs are offered by community colleges, whereas ba and ma’s in related fields (e.g., human development, family studies, child development) are granted by four-year comprehensive universities or colleges offering ba and m.a. programs (npc, 2006). in comparison, teachers colleges are much fewer. bank street college is famous for cultivating early childhood educators. community colleges often provide one to two year programs and have students transfer to a four-year college to finish a bachelor’s degree. graduates can work at early childhood education centers with a certificate. standards are important in the united states. national association for the education of young children (naeyc) published its new guidelines for ece professional preparation and stated learning objectives for each degree level (naeyc, 2009). we selected three states (new york, california and nebraska) to illustrate the landscape for early childhood education degree programs in the regions of mid-atlantic, midwest, and west coast. the early childhood higher education report described the us landscape for degree programs in early childhood education in seven states (whitebook & austin, 2015). in new york, for the years of 2014-15, there were twenty-seven public community colleges, thirty-nine private and twenty-six public colleges offering an ece major. among them, there are about forty-four associate degree programs, fifty-eight bachelor’s degree programs, 136 master’s degree programs, and four doctoral degree programs. in california, there are 103 public community colleges, twenty-two private and gong and wang current issues in comparative education 92 twenty public colleges offering the early childhood degree. in the public community colleges, for the 2013-14 academic year, there are about 190 associate degree programs. 60% of these colleges offered two or more degree programs, and 20% provided three to five programs. in the private and public four-year colleges, there are fifty bachelor’s degree programs, twenty-nine master’s degree programs, and one doctoral degree program. in the 2014-15 academic year, three of nebraska’s eight public community colleges offered more than one associate degree program, and six of the twelve public and private colleges and universities offered more than one bachelor’s degree. notably, bachelor’s degree programs also offered various endorsements. states vary in the relative portion of programs in each degree level (california has more aa programs as compared to ba programs), but for the whole country, we can still conclude that the ba programs are the backbone. it is also interesting to relate the structure of these degree programs with the state economic and education development levels, as well as the qualification or standards for qualification that the state has set for the early childhood teaching workforce. according to the early childhood workforce index 2016 (pp. 63-64) and the national institute for early education research (nieer) state of yearbook 2016, new york has been evaluated as “edging forward” when it set a ba threshold for all pre-k teachers, whereas california has not. this is consistent with the fact that ny has more m.a. and ba programs than california (the latter has more aa programs). scholars in china have observed that there are no teacher training institutions at the secondary education level in the united states at this time (zhao, 1996; wang, 2008). in the 1940s, many teacher schools in the us were closed; and public teacher schools were upgraded to teacher colleges or merged into universities (wang, 2009). compared to the us system, which consistently relies on aa, ba programs to meet its need for well-trained preschool teachers, china recently experienced a shift in the structure of its teacher preparation. twenty years ago, high schools were the main institutions for training preschool teachers; teacher colleges or universities trained teacher educators to teach at these schools. for a long time, the qualification for preschool teachers in china was a high school graduation. since the 1990s, however, aa and ba programs at the post-secondary education level have gradually increased their share. some ma graduates also work as a preschool teacher (guo, 2013; liu & wu, 2014). according to the most recent data from the network of science & education evaluation in china (2015), 266 colleges or universities have established a “preschool education” programs.4 some of the colleges or 4 source: http://www.nseac.com/html/261/676355.html pre-service education for preschool teachers current issues in comparative education 93 93 universities are teacher colleges or universities, i.e., normal colleges or universities according to china’s english translation; some are specialized preschool (i.e., xueqian) colleges. online early childhood education programs. with the rise of mass open online courses came the online early childhood education programs.5 ashworth college of nebraska provides online early childhood programs for candidates who want to work in a preschool program, after-school program or day care centers or special education classes and so forth. graduation from this program allows potential teachers to apply 120 hours of professional development towards their requirements for a cda credential. 6 this model helps accommodate teachers’ part-time study. in addition, hudson valley community college in new york has part of their courses available online. in contrast, there are no online pre-service programs for preschool teachers in china, however, most in-service training are offered through online education services for chinese preschool teachers. qualifications. in the united states although entry requirements differ across states, the minimum requirement is at least having a cda, and in many cases, it is a bachelor’s degree. the map of standards is upgrading over the years.7 head start mandated that more than half of all head start center-based preschool teachers had a ba or higher in early childhood education, or in a related field with experience by 2013. for state prekindergarten programs, according to the national institute for early education research (nieer) 2014-2015 state of preschool yearbook, more than half of the states have adopted the ba as a threshold for a lead teacher, and some specifically required a ba in ece. however, some states only implemented a ba threshold for teachers in public-school settings and require an associate degree (aa) or cda credential for teachers in private school settings. the state of rhode island extended the ba requirement to all teachers. many states have their own state license. certification is called birth-grade 2 in new york, and nebraska offers a birth-through-age-eight certification.8 the teacher preparation system in china has changed substantially since the 2015 reform in teacher certification. before the reform, early childhood education graduates from normal universities (i.e., universities that originally prepared teachers) and teacher schools could become certified by submitting materials, with exemption from the 5 source: http://www.early-childhood-education-degrees.com/top-online-early-childhood-education-degreeprograms/ 6 source: https://www.ashworthcollege.edu/bachelors-degrees/early-childhood-education-degree-online/ 7 two states require that teachers complete a vocational childcare program (lemoine & azer 2006). 8 this certification is required only for teachers working in public pre-kindergarten to third grade classrooms. gong and wang current issues in comparative education 94 qualification test. only non-ece major students or candidates from other occupations had to take the test. in 2015, after the pilot use of the new policy in some provinces (e.g., hubei, zhejiang, and guangxi), all college graduates in china, irrespective of his or her major, have to take the test. along with tests for elementary school teachers, and middle school teachers, the test for preschool teachers is organized once a year, with three components: comprehensive competence, care and education skills, and interview. the certificate must be renewed with review every five years, following what similar procedures in the us. the aim of the reform is to encourage teacher education colleges and universities to improve the quality of teacher preparation quality, and to attract more individuals to join the early childhood teaching workforce. overall, as is also shown in figure 1, china has just experienced the substitution of “schools and colleges,” and approaching its aa threshold, whereas the us is experiencing the substitution of “aa and ba” in some states, and approaching a ba threshold. although the chinese government is upgrading teacher qualification requirements along with actual educational and training level, the preschool teaching workforce upgrading needs more time given the cyclical nature of teacher preparation. arrangements in the teacher preparation institutions. at each level of the two countries’ teacher preparation institutions, we compare candidate selection criteria, lent cultivating goals, credits and courses, and practicum, as shown in table 2. the detailed data for the earlier mentioned eight institutions sampled from west, middle and east china are listed in table a1 of the appendix. at the ba level in higher education, a major similarity of the programs in the two countries lies in length and basic course structure, as well as graduate placements. fouryear length is the standard. course structure includes core courses and electives, in addition to a practicum in an actual preschool. the differences lie mainly in the criteria for student admissions and goals of the program, and practicum. the us’s ba programs for preschools teachers are often hosted in liberal arts colleges and universities, whereas chinese ba programs often reside in normal universities or specialized preschool (xueqian) normal universities. same as the system in higher education, selection for the us ece bachelor’s degree programs is two-fold: high school graduates apply into the program and college or university of his or her interest, and the college or university decides whether to accept them, based on multiple standards (high school gpa, act/sat scores, personal statements, interviews, and so forth). students’ personal interest in early childhood pre-service education for preschool teachers current issues in comparative education 95 95 education is also considered for enrollment. for many schools, entry gpa requirement is a minimum average of b-. for example, the early childhood program in indiana university asks for an average high school gpa over 2.5, and the applicants should finish courses like oral expression, writing, science, and child development. in china’s normal universities, students are selected only by individual test scores on the national college entrance exam. for instance, the early childhood program in central china normal university has an entry score of about 552 (total score 750); no other standards are applied. table 2. comparison of the ba and aa programs in china and us china us ba aa ba aa study years four years three years or five years four years two years selection standards the college entrance exam lower than ba naeyc’s standards lower than ba teaching courses focus on theory courses, moral education and political belief course more of skill courses more of general education courses broad understanding of the psychological, emotional, intellectual and developmental needs of children practicum usually 108 hours to eight weeks to a semester almost a semester the share is high the share is less placements after graduation preschool teachers or administrators preschool teachers and assistant teachers assistant teachers, caregivers educators, administrators and researchers day care and nursery school teachers, teaching assistants and so on note. content in this table was summarized by the authors according to website program information and the existing studies mentioned in the paper goals for teachers stated differently for each country’s ba programs. ba programs in the us often rely on the naeyc’s standards for professionals (naeyc, 2009) as a performance reference, emphasizing multiple roles of an early childhood education professional (assistant teachers, caregivers, educators, administrators and researchers). in nebraska, a recent job title description for wayne state college’s graduates lists the following job titles they can assume: “preschool teacher or director, daycare provider or director, after school program director, camp director, child development specialist, family service worker, and pediatric specialist.” conversely, ba graduates from chinese colleges or universities (e.g., east china normal university, central china normal gong and wang current issues in comparative education 96 university, shaanxi xueqian normal college) often work as teachers or administrators in kindergartens (preschools) and nursery schools. there is no unified course standard in for ba programs of different universities. in suny fredonia, the curriculum for the bachelor of science in education (bsed) degree involves courses, for the major, fulfillment of the college’s core curriculum, and electives. at wayne state college in nebraska, students can choose to take “principles of food preparation” or “principles of baking”. at the california state university of sacramento, the early childhood education program consists of the core child development courses and fourteen to fifteen units of electives, choosing from developmental theory, systematic observation and assessment, and preschool curriculum development. in china, like in the us, both general education in the liberal arts and sciences and early childhood education core courses are required; both academics and teaching skills are viewed as important. however, the share of general education courses (often one-third) is higher in the us ba programs, with more diverse content. in china, moral education and politics course takes up a significant portion. in the core course component, apart from early childhood pedagogy, child development and other related courses, china lacks courses like 0-3 [year-old] education and community education. singing, dancing, and piano skills courses are overemphasized in china, whereas the us programs focus more on artistic appreciation. a recent innovation in china is to add mental health education course in the training program (pilot programs are ongoing at beijing normal university). a practicum is part of most preschool teacher training programs. two dimensions of the professional assessment system in the us include field observations to become acquainted with a preschool setting and a teaching practicum that is designed to give students supervised practical application of specialized methodologies, both of which must be evaluated by a cooperating teacher in that grade level or subject area, and a university supervisor (see the new york city department of education student teacher handbook). placement must be state board of education approved college/university education program, which must have a contract with the partnering school district. practicum leads directly to teacher certification after 150 hours (new york state education department office of teacher initiatives). in china, the concept of practicum in most of normal universities is similar to the us, but field experiences are often regarded as apprentice teaching. figure 2. requirements of field-based experience by degree program pre-service education for preschool teachers current issues in comparative education 97 97 source: replicated from figure 2 in whitebook and austin (2015). in many us ba programs, practicum in the real teaching environment is required or encouraged with opportunities offered (whitebook & austin, 2015; putman et al., 2016). for example, as shown in figure 2, 87% of the ba programs in california offer student teaching experience and the share is 100% in nebraska. compared to practicum, student teaching is less required.9 in nebraska, which confers an early childhood certification at the bachelor’s degree level, almost all baccalaureate programs required students to complete both a student teaching experience and at least one practicum. field-based experience often starts in the second semester, including observation, research, reflections, and teaching practices in the third year and fourth years. at the university of nebraska, which requires credit hours for observed learning, training in the lab and research practice account for 876 hours (about twenty-one weeks), which are conducted before student teaching practicum (about 600 hours). among them, 324 hours are for interaction with zero to two-year olds; 198 hours are for interactions with two to five year olds. this is above the average for us ba programs in early childhood education (ece), with practicum making up at least one-third of coursework. wayne state college also has a separate preschool lab for three, four and five year olds. in china, practicum are regular components of a ba programs, but right now, the share of program time is not high. the length ranges from 108 hours to eight weeks (about two months), to a full semester (about four months). 9 student teaching is required for students who are not yet certified to teach. this is different from a practicum. the latter required when a student already holds certification to teach, yet wants a certificate extension to teach another area of specialization. they are both college-supervised field-based experiences. gong and wang current issues in comparative education 98 at the associate level, both the us and china’s early childhood programs emphasize more on student teaching skills than general education, but china can learn more from the long history of associate degree programs in the us. one example is hudson valley community college’s early childhood program, which is accredited by naeyc. the program states that applicants should be aware that “early childhood education requires enthusiastic performance and sensitivity toward the diverse needs of children.” the goal is to “prepare graduates for work in an early childhood education setting or for transfer to a four-year program.” as an associate degree program, it requires a broad understanding of the psychological, emotional, intellectual and developmental needs of children. job placements for graduates include: day care and nursery school teachers, who interact with young children and manage the staff and resources of childcare facilities; teaching assistants and substitute teachers in public and private schools and preschools, who work as members of a childcare or educational team; staff employees in hospital pediatric wards or in developmental facilities that provide specialized child care. hudson valley community college students’ field experience takes place in a school or childcare agency each term in urban, rural and suburban settings with high risk and special needs children. a total of 300 hours of student teaching field experiences is the goal for hudson valley. in california, fewer programs at the associate degree level required student teaching, but most did require the completion of at least one practicum. in china, aa graduates from specialized teachers colleges or vocational colleges with ece programs often work as assistant teachers in kindergartens preschools and other early childhood institutions. aa programs like the preschool education program in zhangzhou city vocational college requires 960 hours of practice time (hu, 2013). at the ma level, in china, ma programs in first-tier teachers college like beijing normal university and east china normal university are more researchand leadership-focused. graduates work as teachers in a college or university’s preschool education program, kindergarten leaders, researchers, or teachers in the cities’ best kindergartens, etc. for example, in east china normal university’s program booklet, the placements are described as “college teachers, magazine editors, kindergarten (preschool) administrators, and researchers…” this is similar to bank street college, vanderbilt university and teachers college, columbia university’s ma program in early childhood education programs, as well as the ma programs at california state university at long beach. at the secondary education level, graduates from vocational and technical high schools in china can take administrative jobs and care or education jobs in nursery schools, kindergartens (preschools), early childhood education centers, and senior household pre-service education for preschool teachers current issues in comparative education 99 99 management industry (e.g., with job placement rates as high as 98% for baiyun xingzhi vocational and technical school in guangzhou city) (see tang, 2014). reflections. in the era of change and innovation, both countries’ formal teacher education institutions need to update courses to reflect new knowledge about children’s development and learning, and to develop multidisciplinary expertise for future preschool teachers. china’s early childhood teacher preparation programs can increase opportunities for field-based learning experiences and provide better courses, especially when policy encourages this shift. one possible adjustment for china is to combine early childhood education and early childhood special education in the ba programs, as done so at new york university in the us. another potential reform area for china’s aa programs is to specify the technical standard for teacher preparation programs regarding what practical skills are desirable and to add online course options, modeling that of hudson valley community college. furthermore, each program should build their own strength from their specialty in teacher preparation, and not to use the same standards across associate, bachelor’s and master’s programs. both countries should align programmatic missions with naeyc’s six core standards for early childhood teachers, including promoting child’s learning and development, able to connect family and community, capable of observing and evaluating child development, and so forth. (see table a2 in the appendix). comparing the informal pre-service education systems as stated earlier, informal education or informal teacher preparation is related to “nonspecialized” study, for whom students have “no early childhood education background,” and lack a certificate, or their jobs are part-time in informal settings. in this article, it refers to education activities outside of the formal education system. it includes teacher induction program, pre-service training, short-term training, online learning, teachers’ curriculum seminar, and other types of informal or irregular education. first, in both countries, there are still many preschool teachers whose background training is not in early childhood education. they joined the early childhood teaching workforce without specialized training in ece. as pointed out by tout, zaslow and berry (2006), many teachers only have lower levels of education combined with workshops held outside of educational settings. yet as the standards go up, the us has done a better job in cultivating teachers in the formal system than in the informal system: it equips teachers with more professionalized knowledge and skills before entering the profession. based on the ecls-b dataset for 2010, 57.13% of the center-attending children’s teachers reported having a degree majored in ece or a related field; more than 75.5% of the ba gong and wang current issues in comparative education 100 teachers (including those above ba) have a degree majored in ece, but this college major may be associated with a prior associate degree. also, among those teachers with some college or above, 63% reported having majored in ece, and the percentage is higher among those with ba or above (85.76%); and 80% of those with ece majors have currently achieved a degree level of at least a ba (gong, 2015). 10 in china, the proportion of preschool teachers with a bachelor’s degree in poor, rural areas is 15.9% for rural poor areas in shandong province (li, 2014), and the status is worse in earlier years (xie, 2007). to meet teacher needs in the two three years plan of preschool education (2011-2013 and 2014-2016), many primary school teachers are transferred to teach in preschools. the training they receive include one-day to one-week long classes on preschool education theory and skills, and some group activities in the recent years. in rural and remote areas, ngos are helping local residents build preschool classrooms. they either use volunteer teachers who participate in the ‘china development research foundation’ model or train villagers as teachers, who are at least graduates of junior high schools, according to the ‘human people to people china’ model. in shanghai’s qingpu district, preschool teacher applicants without an early childhood education background are required to have two certificates, one interview, and six skills proficiency before they can be hired. in terms of certification, both countries face the need to increase the certificate holding rate, with a greater need in china’s rural areas. according to us data in kagan et al. (2008), 57% of teachers in pre-kindergarten programs were certified by their states, and 23% have the child development associate (cda) credential. some states did worse on that measure, but certification rates have gone up in recent years (gong, 2015). in china, 43.9% of preschool teachers held a teaching certificate in 2007, 56.1% the full time teachers were not certified. such an issue is more serious in the middle and western regions (china’s preschool education development strategy research group, 2010). in some rural areas, the ratio is even lower, ranging from 1% to 18.2% (li, 2014). third, daike teachers or substitute teachers are specific to china, where they compose a significant portion of preschool teachers in rural areas with the share of such type of informal kindergarten teachers as high as 67% in haian county, jiangsu province (wang, 2014). conclusions and discussion 10 this is also confirmed in a study regarding california: according to the study for licensed centers, no degree, no college ece credits, about 0.4% for teachers and 12.1% for assistant teachers. pre-service education for preschool teachers current issues in comparative education 101 101 the 21st century has witnessed a rapid growth of early childhood education programs around the world. teacher preparation affects teacher quality and defines the core quality of a preschool program. this study compares the pre-service teacher education systems in china and the united states, based on various types of data and materials including literature, policy documents, and statistical data. the comparison mainly focused on children of three to six-years of age. scholars in both countries have used terms like “incomplete” or “unsystematic” to describe their teacher preparation systems, but comparatively, the us has done better in improving the level of teacher education for preschool teachers. similarities. on the one hand, the relative low quality of preschool education in both countries can be reflected in the education background of their teachers, for whom the training is concentrated around a degree program: ba, or aa and below. the government should focus more on improving teachers’ professional knowledge and skills, especially for those whose formal academic training is not in early childhood education, and provide more opportunities for teachers to develop practical skills through in-service training and online learning. on the other hand, inequality across different geographical areas (e.g., provinces and counties; rural and urban; east, middle and west) continues to exist, which may be related to economic development levels. for example, the average education level of preschool teachers’ education in rural china is an aa, compared to a ba in urban china. this is expected to cause large disparity in the quality of preschool education. in the us, teachers’ education level varies across states: for example, in 2015, 29.61% of the early childhood care and education teaching workforce has a bachelor’s degree in wyoming state; but only 11.70% in south dakota state, based on data from acs (gong, 2015). differences. first, most of us preschool teachers have ece background (a degree or credits related to ece from colleges or universities), while only a little more than half of the chinese preschool teachers do. in the current workforce, and over a long period, the average education level of us preschool teachers in center-based settings is higher than that of the chinese preschool teaching workforce. a typical degree for a us preschool teacher is a ba, whereas the typical degree for a chinese preschool teacher is an aa (from what used to be a vocational high school diploma about ten years ago). this may lead to differences in the effect of a bachelor’s degree on children’s development outcomes in the two countries and how educators and parents define a good preschool teacher. at the college level, student selection criteria, course content and practicum arrangements differ in the two countries. ultimately, the us have relied more on a formal system than the informal system to train preschool teachers, whereas in some areas of china (especially for places with great preschool teacher shortages), preschools still rely heavily on informal gong and wang current issues in comparative education 102 pre-service training (e.g., short teacher induction programs) for candidates who previously did not work worked have not been in the early childhood education sector or a related profession. policy suggestions for both countries. first, the chinese system can improve student field experiences, provide standards for evaluating the quality of student teaching, consider expanding training to non-ece candidates via online education, and establish a preschool law that ensures the rights and benefits of preschool teachers. both countries can encourage teacher preparation programs to offer a preschool endorsement and ask relevant programs to provide relevant coursework and high-quality student teaching experiences. while alternative pathways can be used, the quality of training before the service should be monitored and ensured, and it should be consistent with in-service training. in this perspective, establishing a cohesive accreditation system is important. second, the us system can be simplified to make state-specific certificates applicable to all states, and a space to access and create centralized information on alternative pathways available to teach preschool, with the goals to achieve an integrated birth-through-ageeight certification pipeline, and improve program content. as previously mentioned, china has a unified educational system that is rooted in the country’s characteristics, with plans to train its teacher to meet the needs of national development. for example, the government unifies teacher certification standards across the 32 provincial regions, and the ministry of education has exclusive rights to issue educational planning in order to promote quality of teacher preparation. the us may consider unifying standards of preschool teacher preparation and standards for certification. third, both countries need to build relevant systems to elevate the quality of preschool teacher preparation system. such relevant systems may include: (1) formal preschool programs should update their framework to improve faculty development; and (2) address the importance of economic incentive in attracting high quality teachers into the preschool education workforce, given that the current compensation for preschool teachers in both countries is relatively low in each country (us department of education, 2016; he, 2015), a system for ensuring sufficient compensation is commensurate with the professional work of preschool teachers in the new century should be established, for both public and private preschools. finally, it is worthy to consider of the dynamic nature of the two education systems. this paper mainly provides a snapshot or at most a brief introduction of the evolving process of preschool teacher preparation at the college level and the findings should be interpreted with this in mind. pre-service education for preschool teachers current issues in comparative education 103 103 authors’ acknowledgement: authors are grateful to the support of the starting research fund of central china normal university, and the youth research fund of humanity and social science provided by ministry of education, china (16yjczh022). special thanks go to our colleagues in the school of education in central china normal university and zhenyi li. about the authors: xin gong is an associate professor in central china normal university. her research interest lies in the economic analysis of issues in basic education, with a particular focus on early childhood education in china. she is working on two projects: (1) an in-depth survey research on the composition and retention of preschool teachers in poor rural counties of hubei province; (2) effect evaluation of the first u.s.-type children’s museum in china. dr. gong got her ph.d. in economics and education from teachers college, columbia university in 2015. before that, she earned b.a. and m.a. in economics from peking university. pengcheng wang is currently a graduate student in central china normal university. his research interest lies in the economic analysis of issues in basic education. he earned b.a. in elementary education from hunan first normal university in 2014. contact: xin gong at gongxin0207@163.com, and pengcheng wang at 605242107@qq.com gong and wang current issues in comparative education 104 references austin, l. j. e., whitebook, m., kipnis, f., sakai, l., amanta, f., & abbasi, f. 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(1996). the comparison of preschool teacher preparation in current china and united states. global education prospects (quanqiu jiaoyu zhanwang), 6, 60-62. gong and wang current issues in comparative education 108 appendix table a1. the content of the ece programs in china, by degree levels and institute levels level region institution degree level credit length (years) core courses internship (practicum) regular universities/colle ges east east china normal university ma, phd thirty three child learning, children's play, preschool curriculum, the history of education thoughts ba 156 four education theory, psychology of preschoolers, preschool curriculum, play, preschool science education, preschool arts education, etc. 108 hours shenyang normal university ba 165 four child development, preschool education, curriculum and teaching, music and singing for preschoolers, the basics of drawing, etc. middle central china normal university ma, phd thirtyeight at least two degree courses+ electives one-month for academic degree; two months for professional degree ba 130 four preschool education, developmental psychology, preschool health, evaluation and observation of preschoolers, activity design, play, etc. eight weeks henan institute of science and technology ba － four anatomy and physiology, education, psychology, preschool education, piano playing skills, dancing, arts, play, etc. western ma. three pre-service education for preschool teachers current issues in comparative education 109 109 southwestern university ba four anatomy and physiology, education, psychology, preschool education, preschool administration, piano playing skills, dancing, arts, play, etc. shaanxi xueqian normal college ba four anatomy and physiology, education, psychology, preschool education, preschool administration, piano playing skills, dancing, arts, history of education, etc. aa (junior college degree) three vocational colleges east zhangzhou city vocational college aa 130 three music theory, sight singing, ear training ； piano and extemporaneous accompaniment; dance; preschool arts; montessori education method; puppet show; sensory integration training, etc. 960 hours secondary vocational and technical school east baiyun xingzhi senior vocational school secondary vocational school diploma 183.5 three computer application, music, art designing, piano, dance, child health, education, psychology, preschool administration, , teacher oral language and activity design a semester note: the content in this table was summarized by the authors according to: (1) website program information; and (2) the existing studies, including tang (2014), hu (2013), and cao (2015). gong and wang current issues in comparative education 110 table a2. naeyc’s six core standards for early childhood preparation programs core standards for students in the program key elements 1 promoting child development and learning • knowing and understanding young children’s characteristics and needs • knowing and understanding the multiple influences on development and learning • using developmental knowledge to create healthy, respectful, supportive, and challenging learning environments 2 building family and community relationships • knowing about and understanding diverse family and community characteristics • supporting and engaging families and communities through respectful, reciprocal relationships • involving families and communities in their children’s development and learning 3 observing, documenting, and assessing to support young children and families • understanding the goals, benefits, and uses of assessment • knowing about and using observation, documentation, and other appropriate assessment tools and approaches • understanding and practicing responsible assessment to promote positive outcomes for each child • knowing about assessment partnerships with families and with professional colleagues 4 using developmentally effective approaches to connect with children and families • understanding positive relationships and supportive interactions as the foundation of their work with children • knowing and understanding effective strategies and tools for early education • using a broad repertoire of developmentally appropriate teaching/learning approaches • reflecting on their own practice to promote positive outcomes for each child 5 using content knowledge to build meaningful curriculum • understanding content knowledge and resources in academic disciplines • knowing and using the central concepts, inquiry tools, and structures of content areas or academic disciplines • using their own knowledge, appropriate early learning standards, and other resources to design, implement, and evaluate meaningful, challenging curricula for each child 6 being a professional • identifying and involving oneself with the early childhood field • knowing about and upholding ethical standards and other professional guidelines • engaging in continuous, collaborative learning to inform practice • integrating knowledgeable, reflective, and critical perspectives on early education • engaging in informed advocacy for children and the profession source: naeyc (2009). microsoft word 16_2_herve_varenne.docx ©  2014,  current  issues  in  comparative  education,  teachers  college,  columbia  university.  all  rights   reserved.  current  issues  in  comparative  education  16  (2),  43-­‐‑47.   comments on tobin’s contribution to comparative research in anthropology and in education hervé varenne teachers  college,  columbia  university       tobin’s work has been groundbreaking. famously, he and his team put together a sophisticated comparative study of three ways of doing pre-school—in japan, china, and the united states (1989). as such, this study has precedents in anthropology. what is unique in tobin’s work is that he got people from one place to comment on what they saw people from “other” places do, including what these others said about them. this is not only a study about cultural difference but, more significantly, a study about what might be called “meta-culture” or “meta-ideology,” culture about culture, ideology about ideology. anthropologists have wondered about this but have rarely, if ever, published research that is powerful evidence for the reality that people, even non-anthropologists, can produce culture about culture. tobin shows that human beings can confront, systematically and deliberately, the grounding of what they do, apparently mindlessly. much has been written about people acting as if their way was the “natural” way, as if it were a matter of fact that things ought to be done this way rather than another way. there may be many who say such things to interviewers. but tobin tells us again about something that many anthropologists and other comparativists keep forgetting. “culture,” this most powerful of concept, is not about people becoming blind to the source of their imagination or practices, it is also about the deliberate production of something that responds to an uncertainty (“how are we to teach our young children?”). but all answers are soon challenged. whether through internal struggles or through its interaction with other people (because of travel, migration, war, etc.) conditions change and new questions keep arising (“should we amend how we teach our young children given what we see elsewhere?”). new productive work is needed, including the work of attempting to maintain what one has been doing. and so history gets made. i have talked about this process as one of “difficult collective deliberations’ (2007), but, in that paper, i was focusing on the uncertainties faced by one set of people, under political controls that make them significant to each others, as they attempt to figure out, often antagonistically, what these controls are and what to do next about them (varenne & koyama, 2011). what tobin has done is show us what can happen when people from different polities, who must work in their daily lives under different kinds of constraints, find themselves having to deliberate about the responses other polities give to similar issues. if a child hits another child in a pre-school, what should their teacher do? if the teacher has not intervened, is this a problem that those in authority (principals, etc.) should be concerned with? tobin kept asking such questions, and the people kept answering. now, this concern with meta-ideology is not exactly new in cultural anthropology, though it has rarely been phrased in this manner. ruth benedict (1932) expanded the still developing boasian paradigm by wondering how it could be that neighboring peoples could have quite different rites of passage even when they knew very well what their neighbors did: “when a loved one dies, how should one display one’s grief?” “should we do anything different if we find out that our neighbors grieve differently?” in principle, this is a version of the questions that concern many in the fields of comparative education, for example in gita steiner-khamsi’s hervé varenne 44                current  issues  in  comparative  education   work on the processes of policy borrowing (2000, 2012). this is also a version of what claude lévi-strauss meant when he wrote about bricolage and refused to analyze myths solely in terms of their local contexts (1966 [1962]). it is a version of the concern with hybridity that is itself a recasting of the earlier boasian concerns with diffusion and its limits. it is related to what inspires jill koyama to write, building on clifford geertz and bruno latour, about “educational policy as (deep) play” (koyama & varenne, 2012). tobin, to the extent that he works in this tradition, is not really concerned with “japan,” “china,” or “america,” as distinct cultures with properties that can then be projected unto individuals making some human beings “japanese,” others “chinese,” and still others “americans.” he is concerned in the processes that lead people to produce what they can be seen actually to produce, in their day to day practices, even when they are fully aware that they could be doing something else. tobin does write of “japanese,” “chinese,” “american” teachers. but his attention is on pre-schools and the differences between the “japanese,” “chinese,” “american” version of these schools. he keeps warning us that kamatsudani, dongfeng, st. timothy’s, are not “typical” but that they are “in japan,” “in china,” “in the united states,” as they appear at the turn of the 21st century. comparative research continues to reveal enduring differences, including differences in the manners of the changes that can also be noticed, here or there, now or then. but the best versions raise fundamental questions about the production of these differences. tobin’s work, i believe, is another attempt to reconstitute classical cultural anthropology that this is deeply aware of the dangers in earlier phrasings. it makes a difference whether one writes about “the japanese,” “japanese pre-schools,” “pre-schools and teachers in japan in 2000.” the differences in phrasing are subtle but essential for an understanding of the evolution and impact of the ongoing production of any cultural arbitrary. they are essential in the proper interpretation of the evidence that comparative work in anthropology and related fields has accumulated. as boas (1887, 1938 [1911]) first began arguing systematically “like causes” (for example the need to take care of young children in ways that go beyond the incidental education they may receive in families or with peers) do not lead to “like consequences” (schools with specific pedagogies and curricula). even when one takes into account other major matters, like the size of the population, its internal differentiation into classes or occupational groups, its access to various kinds of technology (from irrigation canals to high speed internet), functional needs can be met in any number of ways with further consequences on the historical evolution of institutions and practices. the boasians pursued this, culminating with benedict’s epoch-making patterns of culture (1934) that tobin’s preschool in three cultures (1989) directly echoes—as well as it also echoes another epoch-making study: shirley brice heath’s ways with words (1983). all are towering examples of the power of the comparative method in anthropology. so, given all the evidence that in “advanced” “industrialized” “capitalistic” or “neo-liberal” polities, pre-school education can be practiced in significantly different ways, what conclusions should we draw? that is, what are the implications that similar practices might be ignored here and sanctioned there? if we say that some practices are “japanese,” while others are “american,” what, exactly, are we implying? are we still saying that the practices are different “because some teachers are “japanese” while others are “americans”? or are we now saying something else? in summary are the observed differences a matter of: comments on tobin’s contribution to comparative research in anthropology and in education current  issues  in  comparative  education   45   • different enculturation whether through early experiences or through later learning in teacher education programs? • different historical processes within a nation-state and its policies that have produced now inescapable prescribed routines? • ongoing bricolage with both the probably differentiated personalities of the people in the school, as well as with administrative or other political imperatives? in other words, are we to talk about: • individuals and their culturally shaped identities or habitus (bourdieu, 1977 [1972])? should we search for ways to write about “japanese teachers” and the impact of their internalized ways on their practices? • panoptic and hegemonic institutions shaped by a long historical evolution (foucault 1978 [1975])? should we search for ways to write about “japanese schools” and the impact of their organization on the lives of all involved? • moments of intense work by people struggling with everything that is put at their disposal or stand in their way (garfinkel, 2002)? should we search for ways to write about teachers or schools “in japan” “in the late 20th century”? as tobin writes here, the trick for anthropologists is to write about their observations without conjuring an image of “a” culture as a timeless object. the boasians, of course, were well aware of that what they were observing was a product of long histories. boas insisted that archaeology be one of the “four fields” that made of anthropology one of the first “multi-disciplinary” social sciences. some of the critics of boasian anthropology accused it of “historicism.” in a similar vein, the french traditions associated with saussure and lévi-strauss spring out of historical studies of the ongoing transformation of all languages and other forms of symbolic imagination. but anthropologists, mostly, were not very careful in their formulations. as i argue elsewhere (1984), even the post-geertzian anthropologists who started the critique of the tendency of anthropology to forget history, wrote about the so-and-so as if “they” (the balinese, sherpas, american poor people in their sub-cultures) had essentially stable properties through some epoch. tobin, to his credit, went back to the sites of his initial ethnographies (tobin, 2011). he reports, comparatively, on what happened to two sites and can now write, as few if any anthropologists have ever done, on the differences in the historical evolution of both sites. at kamatsudani fighting children are still left alone to sort things out for themselves under the detached eye of young teachers. in china, what is striking are the changes. thus we can now compare and contrast two histories and are led to wonder about the deliberations (controversies, negotiations, shifting of resources) that produce an appearance of stability in one place and an appearance of change in another. japan might comfort those who imagine culture as the reproductive effect of deeply embedded early enculturation. china stands against this, particularly if we added to tobin’s evidence all the other evidence, from other sources (tsang 2000), that shows that china may have had more school policy changes in the 20th century than any other major polity. but china also stands as a challenge to an interpretation of japan as “conservative,” or “traditional.” it is not only that japan changed much over the past 150 years, but that even periods of stability must be approached as periods of a particular type of ongoing work to produce and preserve one form of cultural arbitrary in a context of both internal and external challenges to the status quo. in his inimitable way, bourdieu once wrote: hervé varenne 46                current  issues  in  comparative  education   1.1.1. insofar as it is a symbolic power which, by definition, is never reducible to the imposition of force, pedagogical authority can produce its own specifically symbolic effect only to the extent that it is exerted within a relation of pedagogic communication. 1.1.2 insofar as it is symbolic violence, pedagogical authority can produce its own specifically symbolic effect only when provided with the social conditions for imposition and inculcation, i.e. the power relations that are not implied in a formal definition of communication. (bourdieu and passeron 1977 [1970], p. 7) what i think bourdieu is saying is that a teacher, whether or not she intervenes when two children fight, always relies on a specific, rather than general, form of symbolic representation that shapes her ways of relating to the people who may be concerned about the children fighting (the children themselves, the administration, the parents). in other ways she does it within a cultural arbitrary because she cannot rely on a simple “imposition of force” (or rational functionalism for that matter). so, we are back where boas and others first took us systematically: we cannot understand human action apart from a robust theory of culture as a matter of arbitrary associations between objects and tasks, as well as the manner of the sanctioning of particular practices in terms of these arbitrary associations. cultures, in their peculiarities, arise and evolve in history. at any joint they may be modeled but, in the practices of all involved, either in a classroom, a principal's office, or a ministry, the sanctions that attempt to maintain a set of associations require ongoing, deliberate and deliberative work that, at times, will involve metalinguistic, meta-pragmatic, and meta-ideological matters. and so will other attempts to imagine alternatives to their institutionalization and shifts in what is to be sanctioned. the evidence for all this is overwhelming and we can only get blind to it if we drop comparative perspectives whether within any version of the present and across history. the comparative perspective, in anthropology and the fields concerned with the comparison of education, schooling, and other formal practices, must be the foundation of all theories of human action, including pedagogical and political action. what "must be done" here or there cannot be determined through calls to universalistic rationalism and functionalism. it can always be done different, and, soon, it will.     hervé  varenne  is  a  professor  of  education  and  program  coordinator  for  the  programs  in  anthropology   at  teachers  college,  columbia  university.  email:  hhv1@columbia.edu.     references   benedict, r. (1932) configurations of culture in north america. american anthropologist, 34, 127. benedict, r. (1934). patterns of culture. boston, ma: houghton mifflin. boas, f. (1887). the occurrence of similar inventions in areas widely apart science 9 (224), 486487. boas, f. (1938). the mind of primitive man. new york, ny: the free press. (original work published 1911). bourdieu, p. (1977). outline of a theory of practice. new york, ny: cambridge university press (original work published 1972). bourdieu, p., & passeron, j. c. (1977). reproduction in education, society and culture. beverly hills, ca: sage. (original work published 1970). comments on tobin’s contribution to comparative research in anthropology and in education current  issues  in  comparative  education   47   foucault, m. (1978). discipline and punishment. (a. sheridan, trans.) new york, ny: penguin books. (original work published 1975). garfinkel, h. (2002). ethnomethodology’s program: working out durkheim’s aphorism. lanham, md: rowan & littlefield. heath, s. b. (1983). ways with words: language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. new york, ny: cambridge university press. lévi-strauss, c. (1966). the savage mind. chicago, il: university of chicago press (original work published 1962). steiner-khamsi, g. (2000). transferring education, displacing reforms. in schriewer, j. (ed.), discourse formation in comparative education. (pp. 155-187). frankfurt/m & new york : lang publishers. steiner-khamsi, g. & waldow, f. (eds.) (2012). policy borrowing and lending. world yearbook of education 2012. london and new york: routledge. tobin, j., wu, d.y.h., & davidson, d. h. (1989). preschool in three cultures: japan, china, and the united states. new haven, ct: yale university press . tobin, j., hsueh, y., & karasawa, m. (2011). preschool in three cultures revisited: china, japan, and the united states. chicago, il: university of chicago press. tsang, m. (2000). education and national development in china since 1949: oscillating policies and enduring dilemma. china review, 579-618. varenne, h. (1984). collective representations in american anthropological conversations about culture: culture and the individual. current anthropology, 25, 281-300. varenne, h. (2007). difficult collective deliberations: anthropological notes towards a theory of education. teachers college record, 109(7), 1559-1587. varenne, h., & koyama, j. (2011). education, cultural production, and figuring out what to do next. in b. levinson & m. pollock (eds.), companion to the anthropology of education. (pp. 50-64). malden, ma: wiley-blackwell.     microsoft word 16_2_lesley_bartlett.doc ©  2014,  current  issues  in  comparative  education,  teachers  college,  columbia  university.  all   rights  reserved.  current  issues  in  comparative  education  16  (2),  30-­‐‑33.   vertical case studies and the challenges of culture, context and comparison lesley bartlett university of wisconsin-madison the teachers college symposium invited scholars to rethink culture, context, and comparison in educational research. in his response to these questions (this volume), joe tobin promoted comparative ethnographies to understand how social, cultural, and political processes play out across multiple locations and time periods. he urged careful empirical studies of how and why globally circulating ideas are made manifest in local practices. specifically, tobin recommended diachronic, video-cued multivocal ethnographic methods. in such an approach, video excerpts function as interviewing cues, prompting educators to reflect on what is shared and what is variable in educational practices that differ by time or location, as well as how cultural beliefs and practices were shaped by economic and political forces. thus, tobin and his colleagues invite participants themselves to explain the impact of culture on their own practices, and they fruitfully mine the basic human impulse for comparison in order to elicit contrasts in practices. antoni verger’s response (this volume) focused more on policy making. he considered the epistemological and methodological implications of the deterritorialization of education policy processes, particularly how multiple scales interact during the policy adoption stage. he suggested that scholars should examine more carefully the role that ideas play in policy decisions and policy outcomes, and he asked “what types of ideas might be most influential in these types of processes, how and in what contextual circumstances.” in this brief intervention, i offer a distinct but compatible reaction to the challenges of considering culture, context and comparison in educational research. i draw upon work i have done over more than a decade with frances vavrus, developing what we have called the “vertical case study” approach. in this piece, i first describe the “axes” of the vertical case study. i then explain how the approach addresses the dilemmas of culture, context, scale, and comparison in ways that complement the approaches recommended by tobin and verger. the axes of the vertical case study the vcs approach unfolds along three “axes”—the vertical, the horizontal, and the transversal. first, this approach insists on simultaneous attention to and across micro-, meso-, and macrolevels, or spatial scales, which constitute the verticality of comparison. too often qualitative work reifies social, political, and economic processes as “forces” or “systems” with explanatory power. there has been a tendency to take the macro for granted and focus exclusively on a single-site locality rather than carefully exploring how changes in national and international institutions, discourses, and policies are influencing social practice at the school level. in contrast, i aver that attention to the ways global processes are shaped by and in turn influence social action in various locales is essential. “the local” cannot be divorced from national and transnational forces but neither can it be conceptualized as determined by these forces. in addition, the vcs approach recognizes that space itself is socially produced (massey, 2005), and every “level” is an instance of the “local.” in other words, the world bank or one country’s ministry of education are also “local” contexts, with their own complex social, cultural, and material relations. however, as shown in work by de sousa santos and colleagues (2007; see also vavrus & bartlett, 2012), the world bank’s “local” often becomes globalized and loses any vertical case studies and the challenges of culture, context and comparison   current issues in comparative education 31 sense of the cultural or historical specificity of norms and values. as kathryn anderson-levitt (2012) explains, most anthropologists define culture as the making of meaning, with an emphasis on the process itself as contested. it follows that world culture is locally produced in social interaction, and that meanings are then reconstructed in the global/local nexus. power matters, particularly the hidden power to make resources for meaning making widely available, and to make them attractive and scientifically persuasive. how actors succeed in claiming particular ideas as global and how the locals strategically respond are questions where anthropologists can contribute to understanding the global/local nexus and the exercise of power within the world polity (p. 441). discussions of “world culture” too often fail to consider the role of social interactions and power in the processes of establishing and maintaining such norms across locations. relations of power elevate certain local views of the world to the level of the global. an analysis that compares these multiple “locals” and problematizes the uptake of certain discourses, processes, and policies and the enrollment in networks is critical to the vcs approach. for example, as described in teaching in tension (2013), i had the privilege of working with a group of talented scholars from tanzania and the united states to examine how learner-centered pedagogy is promoted by influential organizations, how it was adopted unevenly by the tanzanian government, and then how it was implemented in six tanzanian secondary schools. in chapter 1, vavrus, bartlett, and salema map the promotion and expansion of learner-centered pedagogical approaches across africa in the wake of the 1990 educational for all conference and the 2000 adoption of the dakar framework for action. the chapter documents the historical succession of educational policies and discusses how structural adjustment, political shifts, and significant levels of world bank funding for primary and secondary-level educational reforms paved the way for the adoption of lcp. in chapter 6, bartlett and vavrus detail how the national assessment system contradicts learner-centered approaches, thus stymying pedagogical changes at the local level. further, in chapter 9, webb describes how the national tanzanian language policy poses specific challenges to student engagement and lcp. second, the horizontal dimension of the vcs approach emphasizes the importance of comparing how similar policies unfold in distinct locations that are socially produced and “simultaneously and complexly connected” (tsing, 2005, p. 6). the horizontal element takes two primary forms. first, scholars might trace people, policies, or practices across sites. for example, in chapter 3 of teaching in tension, bermeo, kaunda, and ngarina consider how teachers’ previous experiences in pre-service teacher education, continuous professional development, and informal teacher learning affect whether and how teachers implemented learner-centered education. alternately, the “horizontal” element may prompt a series of comparative case studies of how a similar phenomenon manifests across different locations. this type of horizontal comparison juxtaposes cases that follow the same logic to address topics of common concern. for example, in teaching in tension, the researchers decided to compare the implementation of learner-centered pedagogy across six secondary schools in the arusha and moshi regions. in chapter 4, bartlett and mogusu consider how the tanzanian teachers who participated in a pedagogy workshop understood learner-centered pedagogy, what they identified as its benefits, and how they implemented it when they returned to their schools. in chapter 5, vavrus and salema consider the material constraints on implementing lcp. in chapters 7 and 8, thomas and rugambwa examine how teachers understood and addressed, pedagogically, concerns regarding inclusion and gender, and how the specific school environments supported or constrained pedagogical moves. third, the vcs emphasizes the importance of transversal comparison, that is, of historically situating the processes or sets of relations under consideration and tracing the creative appropriation of educational policies and practices across time and space. the transversal lesley bartlett   32                current  issues  in  comparative  education   element reminds us to study across and through levels to explore how globalizing processes intersect and interconnect people and policies that come into focus at different scales. the vcs approach expands the locations of research while showing how actors are related through specific historical contingencies that connect disparate social sites and social actors. in this way, transversal analysis enables one to show how “places are traversed by unequal relations of power and struggles to contest these relations” (mahon & keil, 2009, p. 4). in teaching in tension, the transversal axis involves tracking policies, like education for all, and pedagogies, such as lcp, as they become enrolled in different networks and come to act on and through others, such as national or regional education officials, teachers, students, and parents. this transversal analysis bears in mind that levels or scales are social fields that are historically produced rather than static planes to which ‘the local’ or ‘the global’ are consigned. vertical case studies: culture, context, scale, and comparison the vertical case study model is consistent with and complementary to the approaches recommended by tobin and verger for addressing dilemmas of culture, context, scale, and comparison. the comparative ethnography promoted by tobin is exemplified by the horizontal axis, whereby scholars consider how social, cultural, and political processes play out across multiple locations. the recommendation for diachronic comparison is inherent in the transversal axis, which traces the evolution and appropriation of educational policies and practices across time. tobin’s diachronic, video-cued multivocal ethnographic methods offer ideal techniques to meet these two goals; they might be complemented by other elements in the vcs toolkit, including surveys and participant observation. to tobin’s comparative ethnographic approach, the vcs adds a reminder of the importance of studying ‘vertically,’ across levels, to consider how decisions in international organizations, diverse national bodies (such as curriculum, assessment, and language policy bureaus of the ministry of education), regional education authorities, and local schools mutually constitute and influence one another. this vertical axis, therefore, heeds verger’s call to consider how multiple scales interact during the policy adoption stage, and how ideas (such as learner-centered pedagogy) become influential. in doing so, the approach endeavors to escape the “global/local” dualism that has marked so much work in the field, even as it seeks to raise new questions about how policies and pedagogies developed locally in globally influential institutions get appropriated and remade across sites. further, by insisting on a horizontal axis, the vcs approach reminds scholars to consider, empirically, how ideas may be differentially influential, depending upon cultural, social, political, and material conditions. finally, by drawing on the anthropology of policy, which examines the on-going processes of policy appropriation (e.g. hamann & rosen, 2011), the vcs approach questions the stage-wise approach to policy and instead considers policy as practice. it considers how global policy studies could be supplemented and strengthened by even greater attention to the ways that policy is appropriated and practiced as it ‘flows’ transnationally and travels transversally. in sum, the vertical, horizontal, and transversal axes represent one methodological approach that rejects older notions of culture as geographically-bound and responds to processual, practice-based notions of culture. the approach recasts considerations of context to engage multiple scales simultaneously, while foregrounding the empirical benefits of systematic comparison in educational research. in this way, vertical case studies offer a fruitful avenue for reconceptualizing the dilemmas of culture, context and comparison in the field of international and comparative education. lesley bartlett is an associate professor at the university of wisconsin-madison. she previously served as an associate professor in the anthropology and international and comparative education programs at teachers college, columbia university. email: lbartlett2@wisc.edu. vertical case studies and the challenges of culture, context and comparison   current issues in comparative education 33 references anderson-levitt, k. (2012). complicating the concept of culture, comparative education 48(4), 441-45. haman, e., & rosen, l. (2011). what makes the anthropology of educational policy implementation “anthropological”? in bradley a. u. levinson and mica pollock (eds.), a companion to the anthropology of education (pp. 461-477), first edition. chichester: wiley-blackwell. mahon, r., & keil, r. (2009). leviathan undone?: towards a political economy of scale. vancouver: ubc press. massey, d. (2005). for space. thousand oaks: sage publications. de sousa santos, b., nunes, j. a., & meneses, m. p.. (2007). introduction: opening up the canon of knowledge and recognition of difference. in b. de sousa santos (ed.), another knowledge is possible: beyond northern epistemologies. tsing, a. (2005). friction: an ethnography of global connection. princeton, nj: princeton university press. vavrus, f., & bartlett, l. (2013). teaching in tension: international pedagogies, national policies, and teachers’ practices in tanzania. rotterdam: sense publishers. vavrus, f., & bartlett, l. (2012). comparative pedagogies and epistemological diversity: social and materials contexts of teaching in tanzania. comparative education review, 56(4), 634-658. volume 14(1) / fall 2011 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice evaluation, assessment, and testing featured article 3 how much is learning measurement worth? daniel a. wagner, andrew babson, and katie m. murray 24 assessing student engagement in china heidi ross, yuhao cen, and zejun zhou 38 on the right track: measuring early childhood development program quality internationally maria cristina limlingan book review 48 m. hadjiyanni, contesting the past, constructing the future: a comparative study of the cyprus conflict in secondary history education reviewed by demetrios spyridakis current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 14, issue 1 (fall 2011) issue editors: ruaridh j. macleod, sarah flatto editorial board managing editor ruaridh macleod executive editors andrew k. shiotani, matthew hayden asst. managing ed. sarah flatto senior editors henan chang, michelle hollett, briana ronan, muntasir sattar editors anne gaspers, molly hamm, rachel hatch, ryan hathaway, toni cela web editor andrew k. shiotani, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus, andria wisler copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www.tc.edu/cice/ main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. volume 14(1) / fall 2011 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice evaluation, assessment, and testing featured article 3 how much is learning measurement worth? daniel a. wagner, andrew babson, and katie m. murray 24 assessing student engagement in china heidi ross, yuhao cen, and zejun zhou 38 on the right track: measuring early childhood development program quality internationally maria cristina limlingan book review 48 m. hadjiyanni, contesting the past, constructing the future: a comparative study of the cyprus conflict in secondary history education reviewed by demetrios spyridakis current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 14, issue 1 (fall 2011) issue editors: ruaridh j. macleod, sarah flatto editorial board managing editor ruaridh macleod executive editors andrew k. shiotani, matthew hayden asst. managing ed. sarah flatto senior editors henan chang, michelle hollett, briana ronan, muntasir sattar editors anne gaspers, molly hamm, rachel hatch, ryan hathaway, toni cela web editor andrew k. shiotani, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus, andria wisler copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www.tc.edu/cice/ main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2011 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 14: 3-23 how much is learning measurement worth? assessment costs in low-income countries daniel a. wagner1 international literacy institute, university of pennsylvania andrew babson international literacy institute, university of pennsylvania katie m. murphy international literacy institute, university of pennsylvania timely and credible data on student learning has become a global issue in the ongoing effort to improve educational outcomes. with the potential to serve as a powerful diagnostic tool to gauge the overall health and well-being of an educational system, educational assessments have received increasing attention among specialists and the media. though the stakes are high, relatively little is known about the cost-benefit ratio of various assessments compared to other educational expenditures. this paper presents an overview of four major types of assessments—national, regional, international and hybrid—and the costs that each has incurred within 13 distinct contexts, especially in low-income countries. the findings highlight broad variation in the total cost of assessment and the cost-per-learner. this underscores the importance of implementation strategies that appropriately consider scale, timeliness, and cost-efficiency as critical considerations for any assessment. hroughout the global arena, government agencies, international organizations, donors and private sector partners increasingly emphasize the need for timely and credible data on student learning that may inform the design of effective mechanisms to improve educational outcomes. considerable attention at these multiple levels, compounded by a heightened publicity in the media, has prompted a dramatic and global growth in the use of learning assessments (kamens & mcneely, 2010). at the same time, the reality of restricted educational budgets demands affordable and costeffective options for assessments. indeed, with the growth of large scale educational assessments (lseas) throughout the world, there has been a concomitant increase in attention to the fiscal burden of assessments in low-income countries (lics). these costs have often been borne by external funders such as bilateral or donor agencies, resulting in the common perception that this burden of investments in knowledge is rather minimal when compared to the large amounts spent on education itself (lockheed & hanushek, 1988; porter & gamoran, 2002). t d. wagner, r. babson, and k. murphy 4 current issues in comparative education the perception that lseas are relatively low-cost has been supported by a limited number of studies showing that assessment costs represent a very small proportion of national education budgets.2 yet these studies do not appear to account for the increasingly limited amount of discretionary funds for such activities that may be available to ministers of education in lowincome countries, with or without external support. hence, for more than a decade, other critical perspectives have emerged that challenge the assertion that lseas are a relatively small-scale investment.3 the actual costs of lseas and other assessments are needed in order to determine cost-benefit analyses within low-income countries. a successful international assessment requires highlevel skills in design, planning and management—skills that are in short supply globally— especially in lics.4 ministries of education throughout the world are now confronting difficult decisions in regard to assessments. first, they must decide whether to participate in lseas, understanding the costs and complexity of large-scale assessments. second, they must determine how to choose tests that are appropriate for students, languages and educational systems5 given the wide variety of assessments available today. ensuring that policymakers and key stakeholders have accurate information on the actual costs of assessments is a critical step in identifying appropriate tools to inform and influence initiatives aimed at improving educational outcomes. this paper presents an overview of four major types of assessments: national, regional, international and hybrid, and the costs that each of these types of assessments have incurred during implementation in various contexts. the findings highlight a broad variation in the total cost of assessment and the total cost-perlearner within each of the four types of assessments. types of educational assessments large-scale educational assessments (lseas) have increasingly been used by national and international agencies beginning in the 1980s. previously, only a small number of crossnational large-scale assessments had been conducted, mostly by the iea (international association for the evaluation of educational achievement).6 technological and methodological advances in assessment, combined with the political pressure to improve educational systems, have spurred this trend, including in lics (kelleghan & greaney, 2001). the 1990 jomtien conference demanded more accountability and systemic evaluation of education in lics. further, in 2000, the unesco dakar framework for action called for the achievement of “measurable” learning outcomes, and that such progress should be “monitored systematically” (unesco, 2000, p. 21). lseas have increasingly become a key tool for meeting these demands. despite this momentum, the increasing complexity and expense of lseas have led to questions about the utility of conducting lseas in low-income countries. although a number of agencies have carried out lseas in the oecd (organization for economic co-operation and development) countries, it was not until the 1990s that the capacity to participate in lseas (international and regional) became more available to lics. the complexity of stakeholder how much is learning measurement worth? current issues in comparative education 5 interests, as well as resource constraints, has limited growth of lseas in lics. however, various donor agencies, such as the world bank, have become increasingly important funders of lseas, making it more affordable and more likely for such assessments to be utilized even when national budgets are constrained.7 with a focus on learning assessments in low-income countries, the present discussion centers on four main types of assessments: national, regional, international and hybrid. each of these is described below. national assessments national assessments (sometimes called national or public examinations) evaluate all students in a national educational system. nearly all countries engage in some type of national assessment in order to ascertain whether desired and planned educational goals are achieved. the results can be used to modify curricula, train teachers, reorganize school access, or refashion numerous other aspects of a national educational system. the results also can be used for accountability purposes, to make resource allocation decisions, and to heighten public awareness of education issues. regional assessments regional assessments provide an opportunity to measure student learning across a group of countries, typically defined by a geographic region or by a shared national language. they have grown in popularity over the last 20 years, and as part of an effort to extend the use of lseas into developing countries, regional and international organizations have collaborated to create three major regional assessments: the latin american laboratory for assessment of quality in education (llece), the southern and eastern african consortium for the monitoring of education quality (sacmeq), and program for the analysis of educational systems of the confemen (francophone africa) countries (pasec). international assessments international assessments are designed to measure learning in multiple countries. their aims include: (a) cross-national comparisons that target a variety of educational policy issues; (b) provision of ‘league tables’ that rank-order achievement scores by nation or region or other variables; and (c) within-country analyses that are then compared to how other countries operate at a sub-national level. these studies are undertaken by various international organizations and agencies, including: the iea that conducts the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls), and the oecd that is responsible for the program for international student achievement (pisa) studies. each of these international assessments is now in use in dozens of countries, and is expanding well beyond the oecd country user base that formed the early core group of participation. hybrid assessments in recent years, a new approach to assessment has sought to focus more directly on the needs of lic assessment contexts. initially, this approach was conceptualized under the acronym d. wagner, r. babson, and k. murphy 6 current issues in comparative education “smaller, quicker, cheaper” (sqc) methods of literacy assessment (ili/unesco, 1998; wagner, 2003). the idea was to see whether lsea methodologies could be reshaped into hybrid8 methods that are just big enough, faster at capturing, analyzing and disseminating data, and cheaper in terms of personnel and cost outlays (wagner, 2010, 2011). the early grade reading assessment, or egra, (research triangle institute, 2009) contains a number of the above features, and is probably the best-known current example of a hybrid assessment in reading. the egra was initially designed with three main assessment goals: early reading (grades 1-3), local contexts (rather than comparability across contexts), and local linguistic and orthographic variation. cost-benefit analyses in educational assessment in the early 1990s, a limited number of studies examined the costs and benefits of lseas (ilon, 1992, 1996; koeffler, 1991; loxley, 1992; lockheed, 2008). the results supported the value of lseas for two main reasons: the fairly low overt costs (i.e., costs that are explicitly budgeted and accounted for) in relation to the overall education budget (peyser & costrell, 2004; hoxby, 2002), and the high potential benefits of lseas to yield actionable results (braun & kanjee, 2006; hanushek & woesmann, 2005). nonetheless, as pointed out by lockheed (2008, p. 9), “national learning assessments in developing or transition countries rarely employ complex measurement instruments because such countries rarely have the requisite domestic capacity or can afford to purchase expertise from abroad.” this point is echoed by greaney and kelleghan, (2008) and wolff (2007), and further linked to potential wastage or failure down the road if sufficient investments are not made up front (wolff, 2008). thus, while the assessment field itself—whether in highor low-income countries—seems largely convinced of the importance of lseas, the total costs of assessments are becoming more clearly recognized as a serious obstacle for lics. for example, braun and kanjee (2006) assert that, in countries with developing educational systems, “scarce resources are better devoted to assessments directed at improving learning and teaching, where the returns on investments are likely to be higher.”9 research shows that the average costs of an lsea appear small relative to national educational budgets (less than 1% generally per national budget, and as low as 0.3%). however, such low percentages may not reflect the percentage of the available discretionary budget (coombs & hallak, 1987, p. 50). calculating the costs in order to make a cost-based decision about assessment choice, it is important to bear in mind both overt and hidden costs that come into play in any assessment (cf. greaney & kellaghan, 2008). overt costs are those that are typically planned for in advance and that are included in the accounting mechanisms of the agency (or agencies) in charge of the lsea. these would include staff costs of test management (such as test design and application) and training, as well as travel, supplies and equipment. how much is learning measurement worth? current issues in comparative education 7 they can also vary by location, including: within-country costs (e.g., roll out and management of the assessment process within country); in-kind costs (e.g., non-cash contributions such as ministry staff, specialists, headmasters, and teachers); and international costs (e.g., international agency overheads, international experts, and travel). hidden costs are those that may escape the attention of authorities that put together fiscal plans for assessments. they include the following items. • indirect (or overhead) costs. these costs are absorbed by the agencies themselves in implementing the program. while often accounted for in wealthier countries, these costs sometimes escape the attention of ministries and other agencies in lics. obvious examples would include the cost of using infrastructure (e.g., buildings, networks, computer maintenance, and so forth). less obvious, but significant, costs may be associated with seconded staff in the ministry and field workers who may be school inspectors or teachers. • opportunity costs. these costs are relative to what different strategy may have taken place in lieu of the particular choice that is made. for example, by not doing an assessment in a particular year, the ministry might have more resources to do the assessment in a subsequent year. or, choice of one type of assessment may preclude opting for an additional or different choice.10 however, the cost of not participating in an assessment—that is, foregoing the potential benefits (in terms of staff development, potential results, etc.) of participation in an assessment—must also be considered as another type of opportunity cost. cost categories and comparisons: selected assessments the cost categories in assessments from the previous discussion may be seen in summary form in appendix a. for purposes of comparison, a number of well-known assessment agencies were contacted for current information on expenditures (some in estimated form). the studies covered are listed in appendix b. data collected from each of the selected studies at a national level are represented in table 1, which indicates the variability of known assessment costs, by assessment and national context across 13 recent assessments. table 2 provides a summary of average percentages of total expenditures across the six main cost categories.11 as shown in table 1, it is possible to make a number of observations. first, the student populations ranged from a modest 3,770 in egra-liberia, to about 300,000 in simce (chile). 12 second, it may be seen that the total (listed) overt costs of undertaking the assessment range from a low of about $122,000 in pisa (uruguay) to a high of $2.8 million in simce (chile). third, by considering these first two parameters, it is possible to calculate the ‘cost-per-learner’ (cpl) assessed, a useful way of looking at costs irrespective of size of the total enterprise. results indicate that cost-per-learner ranges from about $8 in the uruguay national assessment to about $51 in the sacmeq iii study in swaziland to about $171 in pisa in chile. the average for this sample of studies is about $42 per learner assessed. in addition (see table 2), certain costs figured more prominently than others, such as test application (50%) and d. wagner, r. babson, and k. murphy 8 current issues in comparative education institutional costs (23%), while processing and analysis (13%) and test preparation (11%) were substantially lower.13 the average cpl data show that, at the field level, these are not dramatically different when compared across types of tests. some assessments are clearly more expensive, but it is interesting to note that the larger national and international studies confer economies of scale that reduce per-unit assessment costs. at present, the smaller egra studies are not less expensive at the field level. further, some countries may have significantly more resources (financial, intellectual, infrastructural, etc.) in their evaluation departments upon which to draw. this will likely affect a number of cost variables, such as in-house versus external consulting fees and travel expenses. it must be understood that hybrid assessments are still in a research phase (with inherent costs of trial and error), such that their costs may be expected to drop substantially with the establishment of economies of scale. in addition, specific in-country needs and requirements (e.g., logistics in difficult terrain) may also play a major role in determining which types of assessment are chosen, and thus how much is ultimately spent on assessment. of course, much depends on whether cost estimates are correct and whether hidden costs are fully included. not all teams collect and store cost data and, even if they do so, these data may not be complete or sufficiently detailed for comparative analyses. inaccuracies and discrepancies are often the result of underfunding (lockheed, 2008, p. 16). thus, these data should be considered a preliminary view of cost comparisons, and more needs to be done with full and reliable auditing in place. cost parameters with low-income countries in mind in low-income countries, educational decision makers will find themselves with more choices than available resources. the cost-benefit picture remains insufficient. simply not enough reliable data have been collected on assessment costs for the variety of assessments currently in use. moreover, the current scientific, technological and political dynamism in educational improvement strongly suggests that models of assessment will change in relation to testing advancements and increasing demand. the necessity for both clear testing choices and actionable indicators is likely to increase. recent assessment innovations (e.g., egra) suggest momentum toward models of assessment that both emphasize a needs-centered and ‘just enough’ approach to testing (wagner, 2003). this means that innovations may help to grow the scale of test application, shrink upfront overt costs such as translation and test preparation, and reduce turnaround time. this way, government bodies can possess actionable data sooner and thus with less staff and overhead. three key parameters summarize the cost issues of assessments that will need to be considered, especially in the context of resource-constrained lics. how much is learning measurement worth? current issues in comparative education 9 scale ministries of education in lics will need to consider which assessments would yield targeted and responsive educational data about a specific population (e.g., rural girls, ethno-linguistic groups), a group of schools, or concerning a particular subject at a particular grade level. lseas typically cannot respond flexibly to such requests due to the significant up-front preparation and pre-assessment exercises that constrain near-term changes, and lock in comparability parameters. further, most lseas are not designed to provide classroom-level indicators but rather systemic indicators (volante, 2006). by contrast, limited sample household-based surveys or egra style hybrid assessments can save money because they can reduce the number of individuals to be assessed in order to answer a more specific set of policy questions, and can be deployed and adjusted more frequently. still, recent sampling innovations in lseas (such as pirls) suggest that such studies not only provide multi-level data, but also that the economies of scale can enable larger samples at marginal additional cost.14 in other words, lower cost (in cpl) is a relative term. timeliness two types of timeliness are crucial to the possible benefits of assessments. first, there is the timeliness of the testing cycle from planning, rollout, and data collection to analysis and dissemination (and subsequent policy debates). second, timeliness can also refer to the ‘right time’ of information availability and use. for example, if timely information about a group of schools is ready in advance of major school finance decisions, then those data can show realtime sensitivity. or, a population of students may need assistance to reach grade-level competence in reading, and data may confirm, disconfirm, and/or guide the decision-making process. in addition, there is a need to consider the merits of early intervention in the learning trajectory of students, much as the arguments have been made in the medical field for early detection systems.15 in sum, credible assessment data needs to be gathered as quickly as possible in order to effectively shape policymaking, yet it also needs to be available for application to decision-making at the right time. if ‘time is money’ (as the adage goes), then moving toward timeliness can also help to reduce overall costs of assessment and intervention. cost efficiency as mentioned above, some assessments are relatively expensive in terms of up-front cost outlays, with requirements of expensive professional staff and consultants, and trained field enumerators. these and other costs can be seen in terms of either total costs or the cpl. either way, budgetary limits on discretionary funds in lics will require careful scrutiny as assessment choices are made. given the paucity of credible data on costs in lics today, it is difficult to derive an evidence-based decision pathway for multiple contexts. there is a clear need to more precisely determine which expenditures are likely to reveal particular policy outcomes. for example, will increasing expenditures for the training of enumerators yield better inter-rater reliability? or, as in a recent effort in india, can volunteers become low-cost, reliable and sustainable enumerators with relatively little training at all (banerji, 2006)? more research is needed to better clarify the cost merits of different assessments. d. wagner, r. babson, and k. murphy 10 current issues in comparative education conclusions costs are an inherent part of any social intervention. the assessment of learning and its policy consequences constitute a clear case in point. the key issue here is not that assessments are “expensive” or not. rather, the issue is what a ministry (or funding agency) will receive in return for its investments. gathering data on the comparative costs of assessments is dificult. there are, however, some reference points now available that can be considered. perhaps most important is the trade-off between time and money. take, for example, a minister of education who may have up to five years to decide upon and implement policy. in this case, regional or international lseas such as sacmeq or pasec may provide some solid answers on key issues, and offer a sense of cross-national comparison. given the current economies of scale in countries that repeat international assessments, the actual cpl of such lseas is not much different from that of the egra and hybrid assessments that have much smaller sample sizes. on the other hand, if a minister has a shorter window of policymaking opportunity (such as the typical two to three-year mandate in office), and if the priority is helping programs, schools and regional districts attain their near-term learning achievement goals, even a small-scale sample-based assessment like egra looks much less expensive. while the cpl in egra appears similar to the larger international assessments at present, the future costs will likely drop as egra tools become more familiar, enumerator training improves,and technological advancements reduce the amount of time and human resources required to analyze and disseminate assessment data. finally, there are opportunity costs to consider. lseas are typically not administered until children reach grade 4 (or later), when children may be far behind in reading development; this can impose very high costs in remediation that early assessment could prevent. “catching up” is expensive, difficult, and may lead to school failure—the most important cost that policy makers seek to avoid. in sum, evaluating and learning from assessments is fundamental to credible change in educational systems across nations. but learning assessments entail costs that need to be evaluated and compared. gone are the days when ministerial agencies can assign free seconded staff to the field, or when outside donor agencies will fully fund large scale assessments. we are in a time of fiscal constraints. learning about education has to be balanced against what is learned, for what purposes, and at what cost. the evaluation of assessment costs is an issue that will need considerably greater attention in the field of international education. how much is learning measurement worth? current issues in comparative education 11 table 1 table one: detailed costs for national, regional, international and egra assessments. a source: wolff, 2007, p. 6 (for 2004 simce test). wolff (2007) used local currencies for his figures on pisa uruguay 2003 and all the national assessments above (namely simce 2004, honduras 2004 and uruguay 2003). in order to facilitate comparisons across assessments in this table, we converted wolff’s figures to the average annual market rate for usd. further, in his analysis of simce 2004, wolff used simce 2002 figures, in chilean pesos (at the rate of 677.4916667 chilean peso to 1 usd). bsource: wolff, 2007, p. 13; 2004 17.68 honduran lempira to 1 usd c source: wolff, 2007, p. 11; 2003 28.24279 uruguayan peso to 1 usd d source: pasec 2010 technical report (personal communication, p. varly, may 2009). converted from euros to usd, 2009 annual rate. e source: personal communication, a. mrutu, august 2009. f source: personal communication, j. shabalala, august 2009. g source: personal communication, e. lagos, september and october 2009. h source: personal communication, m. a. diaz, september 2009. d. wagner, r. babson, and k. murphy 12 current issues in comparative education i source: personal communication, z. castillo, september 2009. j source: personal communication, l. molina, september 2009. k source: wolff, 2007, p. 14; 28.24279 uruguayan peso to 1 usd (2003) l source: personal communication, a. gove, august 2009. m estimate, based on sacmeq ii sample of 2854 n estimate, based on email of e. lagos, october 2009 how much is learning measurement worth? current issues in comparative education 13 table 2. cost category avera ge lowest highest test preparation 11% 3% (pisa chile, 2009) 20% (uruguay, national assessment, 2003) test application 50% 24% (pisa uruguay, 2003) 80% (sacmeq iii, swaziland) processing and analysis 13% 1% (sacmeq iii, swaziland) 25% (uruguay, national assessment, 2003) dissemination 6% 1% (uruguay national assessment, 2003) 17% (pasec, 2010) institutional costs 23% 7% (pasec 2010) 49% (uruguay, national assessment, 2003) test fees 16% 5% (pisa chile, 2009) 35% (pisa uruguay, 2003) other 3% 1% (pisa peru, 2009) 7% (pisa chile, 2009) note. above calculations based on data from 13 assessments (see table 1 for costs included in each category and for each assessment). table two: costs by category, as percentage of total assessment expenditures d. wagner, r. babson, and k. murphy 14 current issues in comparative education appendix a cost categories of the assessments used in selected studies. (adapted from wolff (2007)). 1. a. creation and editing of test items test preparation b. pilot testing c. training 2. a. test design and editing test application b. test printing c. printing of other materials d. distribution to examiners e. field testing f. control and supervision 3. a. coding and digital input processing and analysis b. marking open-ended questions c. additional analysis 4. a. report to each school dissemination b. report production and distribution c. public relations retainer 5. a. personnelin project budget institutional costs b. personnelcontributed (e.g., consultants) c. infrastructurein project budget (physical space for personnel) d. infrastructurecontributed e. equipmentin project budget (e.g., computers and related testing equipment) f. equipmentcontributed g. other (e.g., telecommunications, electricity and office supplies) h. test fees 6. cost breakdown how much is learning measurement worth? current issues in comparative education 15 a. cost of testing per student b. cost of educating a student (at test-specific grade level) c. cost of testing as % of total budget for one grade d. cost of testing as % of total secondary education budget d. wagner, r. babson, and k. murphy 16 current issues in comparative education appendix b cost studies of selected national, regional and cross-national assessments • national assessments o simce/llece 2004 : o uruguay national assessment 2002 o honduras national assessment 2002 • regional assessments o sacmeq ii :  swaziland 2006  tanzania 2006  zambia 2006 o pasec 2010 • international assessments o pisa :  pisa chile 2009  pisa mexico 2009  pisa panama 2009  pisa peru 2000  pisa peru 2009  pisa uruguay 2003 o pirls • hybrid assessments o egra :  liberia 2008  nicaragua 2008 how much is learning measurement worth? current issues in comparative education 17 references banerji, r. & wadhwa, w. 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(2008). costs and financial implications for implementing national student assessments: lessons for south africa. unpublished presentation, november 1. © 2011 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 14: 3-23 1 authors’ addresses: daniel a. wagner, international literacy institute, university of pennsylvania, wagner@literacy.upenn.edu; andrew babson, university of michigan, ababson@umich.edu; and katie maeve murphy, university of pennsylvania, kmaeve@gmail.com. mailing address: dan wagner, professor of education, graduate school of education, university of pennsylvania, 3700 walnut street, philadelphia, pa 19104-6216. parts of this paper are drawn from a larger manuscript dealing with learning assessments in developing countries (wagner, 2011). 2 see hoxby (2002) for a review. also see wolff (2008), p. 14, who states that, “testing in latin america, as well as the usa, is not a significant financial burden -constituting 0.3 percent or lower of the total budget of the level of study tested.” 3 see, for example, johnson (1999, p. 70): [t]he cost of active participation [in iea studies] is high, too high for many developing countries to bear. where developing countries have been able to finance their participation, one might wonder whether the expense of that involvement could possibly be fully justified, given what has been learned, and given alternative uses for the funds consumed. how useful is it for thailand, south africa and colombia to find themselves at or near the bottom of the international rank order in science, while korea and japan appear at the top and european countries are scattered throughout?” also, see postlethwaite, 2004 (p. 17), who stated that the total burden of assessment “varies between an annual international expenditure of 200,000 us dollars for sacmeq through about 3.6 million us dollars for pisa to about 7 million us dollars for iea. this is without counting what the countries themselves have to pay for their own staff members working on the projects and the cost of data collections.” 4 see lockheed, 2008, p. 10, on lics. topol et al. (2010) provide a recent review of the us efforts the costs of more complex assessments in the us, where it is claimed, in part, that improved technology can reduce costs of increased r&d. but since lics are, for the time being, hampered by technological constraints, the increased costs of r&d will likley end up as further bottom line expenditures. 5 as braun and kanjee (2006) note, “in educational systems that lack basic resources, decisions to fund national assessments are extremely difficult to make” (p. 24). 6 international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea). see chromy, 2002, p. 84 for a listing of major studies; also lockheed, 2008, p. 6. 7 according to a survey of national policy makers (gilmore, 2005, p. 45), world bank funding has been a key determinant of decision-making in lsea adoption for lowand middle-income countries. 8 “hybrid” refers to drawing together discrete elements of various lseas, national curricular assessments and tests that were initially designed as cognitive assessments of reading and other basic skills. see wagner (2011) for an in-depth review. 9 see also: siniscalco, 2006; ravela et al., 2008; wolff, 1998. 10 for example, such a choice occurred in south africa when it was decided not to participate in the timss, citing the overall cost in time and resources (greaney & kelleghan, 2008, p.75). also on south africa, see braun and kanjee (2006, p. 19). 11 these data were acquired as part of a jointly sponsored project by the fast track initiative and unesco-iiep (wagner, 2011); and we thank the various agencies and their representatives for providing these data, some of which are estimates, as indicated in table 3. percentages are rounded to nearest whole number. 12 sample sizes of international assessments compiled across countries can yield much larger population totals, and numbers of participation countries continue to increase. for example, pisa (2006) had more than 400,000 students participating from 57 countries. mailto:wagner@literacy.upenn.edu� how much is learning measurement worth? current issues in comparative education 21 13 it should be noted that not all the data were complete for each category, or reflective of full actual costs. for example, the only available pasec data were those projected costs for the 2010 assessments; only three sources provided test fees data; and several sources provided no data for the processing and analysis or dissemination categories. further, noting the ranges above, some categories demonstrated more variability than others. for example, processing and analysis includes average expenditures from .02% to 24.8%, while apart from three assessments (honduras national assessment 2004, pasec 2010 and pisa uruguay 2003), dissemination expenditures had a mean of 5.9%. in addition, analysis would also need to account for the hidden costs or even unspecified costs discussed above – for example, costs in the other category for pisa chile 2009 was over 7%. 14 wolff (2008, p. 19) states: “…[l]arge samples can be expanded to censal testing at a low marginal cost, since the fixed costs of developing items and pilot testing can be amortized over a larger population.” 15preventive medicine highlights the need for good and timely information. timely information can make the difference between life and death or the spread of an epidemic or its curtailment. proactive measures cost less and help avert the worst. preventive medicine is encouraged not only to avert illness, but also to reduce costs of diagnosing and treating that illness (szucs, 1997). similar arguments can be made in the education arena. for instance, absenteeism and drop-out are well-known problems in lics, incurring huge financial and social costs. two measures have been highly successful against these difficulties: decreased grade repetition (ndaruhutse, 2008) and increased bilingual education (grin, 2005; heugh, 2006). assessments can assist in both detecting and “diagnosing” schooling difficulties earlier – from the cognitive to the socio-behavioral – thus heading off costly student problems such as dropout. in other words, even if sqc-style diagnostic tools cannot easily determine the ‘best’ remediation plan of action (which may be varied and complex), the early-detection aspect will nearly inevitably be cost-effective in the long run. copyright © 2011 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved 14 pdf of 9th try wagner_indiv 14 pdf of 9th try wagner_final-2 volume 14(1) / fall 2011 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice evaluation, assessment, and testing featured article 3 how much is learning measurement worth? daniel a. wagner, andrew babson, and katie m. murray 24 assessing student engagement in china heidi ross, yuhao cen, and zejun zhou 38 on the right track: measuring early childhood development program quality internationally maria cristina limlingan book review 48 m. hadjiyanni, contesting the past, constructing the future: a comparative study of the cyprus conflict in secondary history education reviewed by demetrios spyridakis current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 14, issue 1 (fall 2011) issue editors: ruaridh j. macleod, sarah flatto editorial board managing editor ruaridh macleod executive editors andrew k. shiotani, matthew hayden asst. managing ed. sarah flatto senior editors henan chang, michelle hollett, briana ronan, muntasir sattar editors anne gaspers, molly hamm, rachel hatch, ryan hathaway, toni cela web editor andrew k. shiotani, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus, andria wisler copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www.tc.edu/cice/ main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2011 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 14: 38-47 on the right track: measuring early childhood development program quality internationally maria cristina limlingan tufts university two of the main obstacles for drawing educational comparisons consist in determining what are considered ‘high quality’ initiatives, and finding a common tool that can adapt to differences in both structure and content, as well as to the cultural and demographic characteristics of the population it wishes to serve. this paper focuses on addressing such obstacles by inquiring whether an instrument such as the early childhood environment rating scale (ecers) can be used to compare the early childhood development initiatives in countries like chile and bangladesh. using pena’s (2007) model that considers linguistic, functional, cultural and metric equivalence, we examine the implementation of the ecers in these two settings, and identify the factors of significance in the instrument’s successful adaption to a different context. omparisons between early childhood development (ecd) programs offer many potential benefits but are often difficult to execute. two of the main challenges when drawing comparisons are (1) determining which ecd programs are considered high quality initiatives; and (2) finding a common tool that can adapt to differences in the structure and content of educational systems, as well as the cultural and demographic characteristics of the population it wishes to serve. ensuring the quality of the program is the primary challenge for the reason that much of the success of an ecd program depends on the quality and approach (magnuson, ruhm and wadofogel, 2007; myers, 2004). previous ecd interventions that have produced positive outcomes for children have been designated ‘high quality’ programs, but little has been written to describe exactly what high quality means. quality is often relegated to indicators such as teacher-student ratio, teacher education level and teacher experience (in terms of years). these structural factors are often used as indicators of quality because data are obtained easily and studies show that there is a relationship between these factors and childhood outcomes (peisner-feinberg & burchinal, 2001). however, though these structural factors are undeniably useful, they are unable to provide a comprehensive picture of other elements of importance within early childhood settings. process elements such as teacher-student interaction, learning opportunities and the kinds of activities available are important to look at because these provide a better picture of what is happening, and allow agents to see which areas require increased focus in a child’s immediate environment, the very setting which is the most influential and meaningful for the child. the second challenge is to make comparisons on ecd programs in different cultural contexts. cross cultural methods enable researchers to test, modify and extend current theories of child development by providing insight into factors in child development that can either be universal or local (pena, 2007). applying cross cultural methods allows agents from different regions to gather comparative data in order that it serve as a reference point for the examination of their c on the right track current issues in comparative education 39 respective education systems. comparisons are also a good way to summarize data that can be easily understood, and it can be used to construct a more persuasive argument during the decision-making process. the availability of information about different early childhood practices has been steadily increasing, however the kind of data collected is usually a mere consolidation of structural elements present in a country’s ecd initiative, with little information about how the relative levels of ecd process quality elements compare (tietze, bairrao, leal & rossbach, 1998). this paper focuses on addressing these obstacles of determining ecd quality in the international context by inquiring if an instrument such as the early childhood environment rating scale (ecers) can be used to compare the ecd initiatives in countries like chile and bangladesh. it will then examine the implementation of the ecers in these two settings to determine what was considered when the instrument was adapted to a different context. ecers and considerations for application even if educational, socio-economic and cultural differences exist in various regions, certain elements have been recognized as necessary for a child’s positive development because of their recurring presence within successful interventions and the literature on the subject. these elements include safe and healthful care, developmentally appropriate stimulation, positive interaction with adults, encouragement of individual emotional growth and the promotion of positive relationships with other children (tietze et al., 1998). the ecers covers many of these elements through its seven subscales in the following areas: personal care routines of children, furnishing and display for children, language-reasoning experiences, fine and gross motor activities, creative activities, social development and adult needs. scores are obtained using a 7point scale, ranging from inadequate (1) to excellent (7), with each item providing a description of the salient features which need to be observed (harms, clifford & cryer, 1998). scoring is based on a 2-3 hour classroom observation, and includes a teacher’s interview conducted after the observation process. researchers and practitioners are also encouraged to undergo intensive training to ensure reliability. the ecers is part of a series of assessments that cover infanttoddler settings (infant toddler environment rating scale or iters), day care (family day care environment rating scale or fdcers) and school age children (school age children environment rating scale or sacers). what is unique about the ecers is its attempt to measure the quality of classroom features enabling the occurrence of pre-identified key processes, whilst simultaneously assessing the processes themselves in the current ecd environment (villalon et al., 2002). during the creation of the ecers, harms, clifford and cryer (1980) debated whether to include interpersonal relationships in the scale. the authors relate, however, that they found it impossible to ignore interpersonal behavior and deal adequately with the environment at the same time. the inclusion of items that deal with children’s interactions allows teachers and researchers to adopt a more comprehensive means of assessing ecd settings. as a result of its extensive usage across different countries, changes were made on the ecers. the adjustments were based on information from a content analysis of the relationship of m. limlingan 40 current issues in comparative education ecers to other global quality instruments, an examination of early childhood program documents, data from studies using the ecers in preschool and child care settings, and feedback from ecers users (harm, clifford and cryer, 1998). the result was the early childhood environment rating scale revised edition (ecers-r). this version retained basic similarities to the ecers to ensure continuity, but eliminated some questions to avoid redundancy, provided more detailed descriptions and added items such as health and safety practices, television and computer use and a greater use of interaction questions (harms, clifford and cryer, 1998). in the united states, results from the ecers and ecers –r have been used extensively in research that has examined associations between preschool quality and child development, and dozens of investigations have demonstrated an association between higher scores on ecers observations and a child’s developmental outcomes (peisner-feinberg & burchinal, 1997; peisnerfeinberg et al., 2001). results from the ecers and ecers – r have also been used to monitor the quality of program(s) and provide guidance for improving quality, and there is ample evidence suggesting that an assortment of program investments, technical assistance, and professional development efforts can be used to improve such scores (bryant et al., 1994, howes, phillips and whitebook, 1992). aside from being used in various capacities in the united states, the ecers has also been used in other countries where it has been adapted to measure program improvement efforts. early childhood may exhibit similar elements as being necessary for successful development, but the outcomes in children’s development vary and relate in different ways to the many different measures of quality in the ecers (sylva et al., 2006). the difficulty in using instruments created in another country is that the standard measures of quality are based on expertise relevant to one region that may not be appropriate for another context. this poses a significant problem if researchers are unable to ensure that the instrument being used retains its relevance and ability to measure in a fair manner. pena (2007) offers four important features for establishing a study’s validity that need to be considered when conducting research across different cultural groups. the first and most commonly known measure, according to pena (2007), is linguistic equivalence. this refers to translating both instructions and the instrument, and checking to make sure that the words are appropriate for the context in which they are used. functional equivalence is concerned with ensuring that the instructions and instruments will elicit the same target behavior. cultural equivalence looks at how respondents will interpret a given direction or test item, and determines if there are possible underlying cultural interpretations that may affect the way an individual responds to the instrument and instruction. finally, metric equivalence deals with addressing the change in the level of difficulty that might occur (pena, 2007). in order to see the effectiveness of the ecers and the ecers-r in the international context, we examine the implementation of the instrument in chile and bangladesh and look at how the measures were able to address the issues of linguistic, functional, cultural and metric equivalence. chile and bangladesh were selected based on their use of the ecers-r and the on the right track current issues in comparative education 41 availability of information on how these two countries were able to adapt the instrument to meet their needs. chile early childhood education has been present in chile for a long time and increasing its utilization has been one of the priorities of the government (herrera, mathiesen, merino & recart, 2005). one reason for the uneven coverage may be the fact that even if children from birth to age six can attend ecd programs, attendance is not compulsory (herrera et al., 2005). currently, one out of four children from low income families attend ecd programs, compared to one out of two medium or high income children (herrera et al., 2005). in order to address these issues, the government hoped to first evaluate the existing quality of public preschools by examining how well they met the needs of children and their families. to carry these goals out, villalon et al. (2002) conducted a study that compared the different types of preschool (private non subsidized, private subsidized, city council preschool, national program, and those sponsored by non-governmental organizations) that were offered in terms of quality. using a spanish version of the ecers, villalon et al. (2002) dropped the cultural awareness item which assessed the provision of materials and activities related to diverse context because of its low mean. ratings were also obtained from 33 experienced pre-school teachers using a questionnaire that asked them to rate quality criterion on a three point scale. in the resulting data, both the provision of special needs item and the naps item scored very low on the scale. according to villalon et al., (2002), the reason for the low score may relate to the fact that it is not common practice to have naps within a half day curriculum or to integrate children with disabilities in mainstream early childhood programs. items such as sand and water, space to be alone, furnishings for relaxation and comfort were rated as relatively important by experts, compared to the remaining 33 items that were rated as very important. prior to data collection, preschool teachers were trained on the use of the scale until they reached an agreement of 95%. data collection was done in the middle of the school year in june and july, meaning that classes were settled within a daily routine. villalon et al. (2002) found that the average ecers scores fell into the minimal quality category for the seven subscales with scores that ranged from a low of 3.09 for social development and a high of 4.58 for personal care. significant differences were found among the two regions (that is, metropolitan and rural areas) in which the study was conducted. despite differences among six different types of preschool, personal care routines and fine and gross motor skill areas had the highest average score across the board, while creativity and social development had the lowest scores. bangladesh early childhood education programs have grown in popularity with governments in developing countries as a way to prepare the children from high-risk families for school (myers, 1992). aboud (2006) confirms that this is the case in bangladesh, where the early home environment alone is unable to adequately prepare children for school due to the prevalence of m. limlingan 42 current issues in comparative education factors such as high malnutrition and low parental education. while it is common for mothers to stay at home, they perceive their role as protecting their child from illness and injury rather than encouraging play and conversation (aboud, 2006). children have little exposure to books, media and other educational toys. the purpose of the study by aboud (2006) was to assess the curriculum typically used in bangladesh with the objective of developing, through use of different activities, skills related to the process of learning, positive learning attitude and individual learning styles. since the study was conducted in a rural setting, a modified version of the ecers for the south india context called the tamil nadu or tecers (isley, 2001) was used, together with the ecers-r. contextual adaptations were made with the ecers-r in order to define terms quantitatively. for example, ‚enough blocks‛ meant 20 blocks allotted per child, and ‚some books‛ meant 10 books. the physical settings used in the tecers subscale are relevant to a rural setting that has to deal with various indoor and outdoor hazards such as availability of water at toilet and open defecation or urinating. since the ecd program was a half day program, items concerning meals and naps were excluded. nine items received the lowest score because there were no televisions, videos, soft toys or cozy areas, and little attempt to protect privacy. two new subscales were included to address requests arising from parents in the population, and these related to literacy and math activities such as attending to environmental print, emphasizing sounds in words, writing letters and numbers, and counting and matching objects (aboud, 2006). twelve research assistants with university degrees were trained for 5 days to conduct testing, and the ecers-r measures were practiced at nearby schools. data were collected from october to mid-november, the end of the bangladeshi school year. aboud’s (2006) study indicates that the results of ecers-r ranged from 1.8-3.7 on a 7-point scale, while the converted scores from tecers ranged from 5.2-5.9 on a 7-point scale. the highest ratings were from the areas of mathematics and literacy, with the lowest scores relating to the areas of activities and program structure, largely due to the scarcity of available fine motor materials. comparison between chile and bangladesh in spite of their different contexts, the chile and bangladesh studies were able to adapt the ecers and ecers-r effectively to suit their needs. the primary goal for linguistic equivalence is to make certain that the words and linguistic meaning used in the instruments and instructions are the same for both versions (grisay, 2003; sireci & berberoglu, 2000). for chile, the english edition of the ecers-r was used together with a spanish translation, spanish being the language more widely spoken in the country. simply translating instruments, however, may be insufficient to guard against potential biases and validity threats, and it is important, therefore, to scrutinize the instructions and the choice of words used. in the case of the chile project, it might have been beneficial to have an expert teacher review the spanish version of the ecers before the other teachers were asked to review the tool. in this way, the expert teacher could check the content for differences in word usage between the spanish used in spain and that used in a latin american country such as chile, differences which may on the right track current issues in comparative education 43 significantly alter the meaning of the items. future researchers might also want to consider utilizing the method of back-translation to protect against biases in language. this process consists of a translator who first translates the instrument or instructions from the source language to the target language, then involves another translator who independently translates the target version back to the source language (pena, 2007). once both translations are complete, the two versions are compared to identify differences and resolve them. together with the translation/back-translation, decentering may occur wherein the instrument with translated items may have shifted away from the wording of the source instrument to represent the concept in a manner familiar within the target language. the content resulting from the dual process of back translation and decentering would represent the final version of a tool that is functionally equivalent and linguistically different, yet wherein both versions elicit linguistically similar responses. functional equivalence was accounted for by training those who would be using the ecers to score items consistently. this process was done in bangladesh, where the researcher and a local bangladeshi research colleague conducted a five day training course with research assistants who had university degrees. ensuring the reliability of the research assistants also included having the trainers accompany them during their initial classroom observations and at least one other time during the 6-week data collection. it was noted in the chile example that the preschool teachers who conducted the classroom observations had previously been trained to use the ecers, and had reached an agreement of at least 95%. metric equivalence is a crucial factor, especially when making comparisons between different instruments. in the bangladesh study, the researchers decided on using the tecers because the rural setting of the study made the items on the tecers more relevant, especially the items relating to the physical environment and personal care and hygiene. however, after using the tecers in 6 classrooms, the researchers realized that due to the way the tecers instrument was constructed – with items having a restricted scoring range from 0 – 2 – there was insufficient variability to perform correlations with the ecers-r. thus when the tecers was converted to the ecers-r rating, the preschool classrooms achieved a ‘high quality’ designation – that is, exhibiting scores between 5 to 6 on a 7 point scale – which did not seem to correspond to what the researchers had actually observed. because the tecers was not metrically equivalent to the ecers-r the use of the tecers in the study was discontinued. even if items meet the criteria for linguistic, functional and metric equivalence, researchers must also be careful, when considering cultural equivalence, to look and see if items may have salience for different groups due to the distinct cultural and historical ways in which concepts are interpreted by respondents. in the case of the study in chile, the researchers decided to present a questionnaire with the ecers items to 33 experienced preschool graduate teachers including those from universities, the ministry of education, directors of preschool centers and preschool practitioners for them to review. the result of this consultation was that certain items such as nap time, children with special needs and use of books and videos were either taken out or modified beforehand, in accordance with the teacher’s input, so that the scale would give each m. limlingan 44 current issues in comparative education preschool a fair chance with the scores for the ratings. it was interesting to note that the scoring of items as being only relatively important amongst the chilean experts was consistent with the low scores these items obtained in many of the observed chilean preschool centers, with around 50-78% scoring a 1 in the 7-point scale. when looking at the results, it is also necessary to understand the cultural context and the outcomes that are important to each specific country. with regard to chile, similarities found in the ecers profiles of the different types of preschool assessed demonstrate the influence of shared educational values and orientation in chile’s early childhood education system. despite significant differences in quality level, some areas were either consistently higher or lower across the entire range of institutions involved, regardless of whether they were private nonsubsidized, private subsidized, city council preschool, national program, and non-government organization-sponsored preschool centers. from a practical perspective, what can be taken from the chile study is the fact that even if there is variation in quality within the type of program, good quality classrooms were identified for each type and this could serve as a model or reference point for raising standards at the classroom level. the challenge then would be decreasing variability within the type of programs and trying to achieve a higher standard. the bangladesh project added scales to the ecers-r such as literacy, math and interpersonal interaction to reflect the importance parents and educators attached to these academic indicators. the fact that the schools scored lower on scales relating to activities and program structure was largely due to the small variety of challenging materials, and the lack of teacher assistance with individual child progress via hands-on activities and scaffolding. the low results were also consistent with the cultural emphasis on memorization of math phrases and stories rather than on reasoning and vocabulary, a tendency which appears to attenuate the effect of both interest and comprehension amongst the children (aboud, 2006). although teachers may be more comfortable teaching by demonstration, these may not be the best methods for enabling children to learn math and language. from these results, certain recommendations were adopted to increase the amount of stimulation children received through materials, activities and instruction (moore, akhter, and aboud, 2008). in a follow up study by moore, akhter & aboud (2008), curriculum changes in this half day program gave more prominence to language and literacy. targeted measures, such as daily story reading – with several new stories introduced each week instead of each month – and teaching instructors how to read and talk about stories in an engaging manner (rather than simply requiring memorization) were introduced. the format of the learning was also changed so that it emphasized working in small groups or pairs rather than continuously in small groups. the results of such changes were an increase in ecers-r scores in activities and program structure subscales from 3.5 to a score of 4.7 and 6.5 respectively. the increase in scores was also associated with some observable gains in child outcomes (moore, akhter and aboud, 2008). what is even more promising was that the cost to make these changes was estimated at $1.50 per child, per year (moore, akhter and aboud, 2008). in this way, bangladesh was able to pinpoint and act upon specific areas requiring improvement within their curriculum. on the right track current issues in comparative education 45 conclusion comparative international research represents an attempt to understand local problems from a global perspective in a world becoming more interconnected and interdependent at all levels (villalon, suzuki, hererra & mathiesen, 2002). a common instrument is a good way of enriching our knowledge of what is important in different countries. providing a list of quality measures helps us both to see a more comprehensive picture as well as to make informed decisions about what is important, and what should be modified, added or taken out. for example, mainstreaming special education was not emphasized in chile, but the government may want to examine this in the future to see if it may be appropriate to their national setting. the rural areas of bangladesh lacked technology such as television and computers, and this may be an area that they would like to consider developing when planning later on. having instruments like the ecers that measure the quality of early childhood development can serve as a foundation for other countries, especially those that do not have existing measures in place. as demonstrated in chile and bangladesh, it is possible to use an instrument such as the ecers to measure ecd quality internationally. it is important to remember that quality for ecd initiatives must be contextualized in ways that are relevant to the values of a group, and those who plan to use such instruments must be able to take into account linguistic, functional, cultural and metric equivalence. for chile, the ecers enabled them to identify areas that were of local and national importance and to compare quality across program types. as a result of this, they may look at ecd programs that are better performing for each type and find ways to improve the quality of their programs. in bangladesh, they examined a commonly used curriculum in the rural areas. additional scales were used to adapt to the rural surroundings and the needs of the parents and educators. in the end, they were able to pinpoint the areas that scored the lowest and to make the subsequent decision to work on them to improve child outcomes within a follow-up study. as the world becomes smaller, it will become more important to find the most effective ways to organize and share information. cross cultural comparisons using a common instrument, so long as it is composed and utilized in the right way, provides a good method to facilitate discussions which allow us to learn from one another. it is only by doing so that we can hope to avoid making the same mistakes as in the past, and to build a better future for our children. references aboud, f. e. (2006). evaluation of an early childhood preschool program in rural bangladesh. early childhood research quarterly, 21(1), 46-60. moore, a.c, akhter, s., aboud, f.e (2008). evaluating an improved quality preschool program in rural bangladesh. international journal of educational development, 28, 118–131. m. limlingan 46 current issues in comparative education bryant, d., burchinal, m., lau, l.b and sparling, j.j (1994) family and classroom correlates of head start children’s developmental outcomes. early childhood research quarterly, 9, 289-309. early childhood environment rating scale (ecers) website (2007). accessed from http://www.fpg.unc.edu/~ecers/ on october 30, 2007 grisay, a. (2003). translation procedures in oecd/pisa 2000 international assessment. language testing, 20, 225–240. harms, t., clifford, r.m.and cryer d. (1980). early childhood environment rating scale. new york: teachers college press. harms, t., clifford, r. m., & cryer, d. (1998). early childhood environment rating scale. revised edition. new york: teachers college press. herrera, m. o., mathiesen, m. e., merino, j. m., & recart, i. (2005). learning contexts for young children in chile: process quality assessment in preschool centres. international journal of early years education, 13(1), 13-27. howes, c., phillips, d., & whitebook, m. (1992). thresholds of quality: implications for the social development of children in center-based child care. child development, 63, 449-460. isely, e. (2001). tamil nadu early childhood rating scale. chennai, india: m.s. swaminathan research foundation myers, r. g., & 20 consultative group on early childhood care and development(1992). the twelve who survive : strengthening programmes of early childhood development in the third world. high/scope press. myers, r.g (2004) . in search for quality programmes of early childhood care and education. background paper for education for all, global monitoring report 2005. paris: unesco. www.unesco.org/education/gmr_download/references_2005.pdf; retrieved december 13, 2007 magnuson, k., a., ruhm, c., & waldfogel, j. (2007). does prekindergarten improve school preparation and performance? economics of education review, 26(1), 33-51. peisner-feinberg, e., burchinal, m. (1997). concurrent relations between child care quality and child outcomes: the study of cost, quality, and outcomes in child care centers. merrill palmer quarterly, 43 , 451-477. on the right track current issues in comparative education 47 peisner-feinberg, e. s., burchinal, m. r., clifford, r. m., culkin, m. l., howes, c., kagan, s. l., et al. (2001). the relation of preschool child-care quality to children's cognitive and social developmental trajectories through second grade. child development, 72(5), 1534 1553. pena, e. d. (2007). lost in translation: methodological considerations in cross-cultural research. child development, 78(4), 1255-1264. sireci, s. g., & berberoglu, g. (2000). using bilingual respondents to evaluate translated adapted items. applied measurement in education, 13, 229 – 248. sylva, k., siraj-blatchford, i., taggart, b., sammons, p., melhuish, e., elliot, k., & totsika, v., (2006). capturing quality in early childhood through environmental rating scales. early childhood research quarterly, 21, 76-92. tietze, w., bairrao, j., leal, t. b., & rossbach, h. (1998). assessing quality characteristics of centerbased early childhood environments in germany and portugal: a cross-national study. european journal of psychology of education, 13(2), 283-298. villalon, m., suzuki, e., herrera, m. o., & mathiesen, m. e. (2002). quality of chilean earlychildhood education from an international perspective. international journal of early years education, 10(1), 49-59. copyright © 2011 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved 14 pdf of 9th try limlingan_final microsoft word human rights education.docx © 2015 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 17(1), 36-58. human rights education and the international baccalaureate diploma programme nica froman teachers college, columbia university in 2003, the international baccalaureate diploma programme (ibdp)—a program implemented in thousands of schools globally— introduced a human rights course (makivirta, 2003). this curriculum is the first of its kind to hold potential widespread influence on human rights education in the formal education sector. in this study, i analyze the curriculum’s efficacy in achieving the goals of human rights education. i examine the ibdp’s human rights revised syllabus (2008) for the three components of article 2.2 of the united nation’s universal declaration on human rights education and training (united nations general assembly, 2011): “education about human rights,” “education through human rights,” and “education for human rights.” i hypothesize that the course sufficiently covers human rights content but lacks pedagogical practices grounded in human rights principles and does not orient students towards advocacy. the results of the curricular analysis confirm my hypothesis, indicating that the ibdp’s course falls short in promoting education through and for human rights. introduction social movements seek to transform society through carrying out or resisting social change. just as the civil rights movement sought a more equal society, the human rights education (hre) movement aims to establish a global society prioritizing and upholding human rights. specifically, human rights education in the formal education system seeks to prompt social change through creating a cultural climate paving “the way for a world that respects human rights through an awareness of and commitment to the normative goals laid out in the universal declaration and other key documents” (tibbitts, 2002, p. 163). the educationalist approach to hre further aims to legitimize the human rights framework and attract students to human rights in an effort to gain mass support for the human rights movement, thereby placing pressure on authorities to uphold human rights standards. since the start of the human rights education movement in 1993 (suárez, 2007), educational initiatives have been largely limited to the non-formal education sector. this changed in 2003, when the international baccalaureate diploma programme (ibpd)—a globally oriented, academically rigorous program implemented at thousands of public and private schools around the world (ibo, 2014c; van oord, 2007)—introduced a school-based human rights course as a part of their curricular database. the international baccalaureate diploma programme currently serves “1,335 schools in some 120 countries… making the diploma programme the leading international pre-university curriculum” (van oord, 2007, p. 376). they therefore demonstrate the highest potential for disseminating human rights education internationally throughout the formal education sector. human  rights  education   current issues in comparative education 37 the ibdp’s human rights course is technically a school-based syllabus (makivirta, 2003). in other words, the ibo does not require a school to offer this course as a part of their mainstream curriculum requirements, however schools can elect to do so. currently, a relatively small percentage of ib schools utilize this curriculum as most ibdp high schools are transitioning to a new, required course titled “global politics” that will encompass human rights from 2015 (ibo, 2014b). as this course is the first of its kind to potentially hold such widespread influence, i will analyze the ib curriculum to measure its efficacy in achieving the goals of human rights education in schools: (1) to empower students to uphold their rights and the rights of others, (2) to create a culture based on human rights, and (3) to foster support for the human rights movement (tibbitts, 2002). according to article 2.2 of the united nation’s universal declaration on human rights education and training, a human rights course must be comprised of education about human rights (content), education through human rights (pedagogical practices reflecting human rights values), and education for human rights (orientation towards human rights advocacy) (united nations general assembly, 2011). current literature on human rights education provides explicit and specific details on the classroom implementation of these three components of article 2.2. however, there appears to be no existing research on whether the international baccalaureate diploma programme’s human rights course contains these essential characteristics. in this study, i evaluate the ibdp’s human rights course through the lens of the three-fold approach to human rights education as expressed by article 2.2 of the united nations universal declaration on human rights education and training (united nations general assembly, 2011). i hypothesize that the international baccalaureate’s human rights curriculum will encompass education about human rights, but the curricular framework will lack education through human rights and education for human rights. i anticipate that the curriculum will be content-focused but will neither orient students towards action nor reflect human rights principles in its pedagogical approach. in this article, i first describe the united nation’s contemporary definition of human rights education. next, i outline the theoretical framework that serves as the foundation for this curriculum analysis and offer an in-depth description of each of the three components of article 2.2 of the united nation’s universal declaration on human rights education and training (united nations general assembly, 2011). subsequently, i illustrate my methodology for this study as well as the results of the analysis. finally, i offer an interpretation of the results and recommendations for the post-2015 ib human rights agenda. theoretical framework for the purpose of this study, i utilize the united nation’s definition of human rights education because their approach is most widely used and accepted by human rights education practitioners and scholars. article 2.2 of the united nation’s universal declaration on human rights education and training states that effective human rights education should be comprised of three interconnected components: education about human rights, education through human rights, and education for human rights (united nations general assembly, 2011). education about human rights is the transmission of knowledge regarding human rights history, principles, values, structures, and monitoring mechanisms. while education about human rights is primarily focused on the tangible content of human rights, education froman 38 current issues in comparative education through human rights characterizes the pedagogical methods that should be used in a hre classroom. according to the united nations general assembly (2011), facilitators should teach human rights education in such a way that honors the rights and protects the dignity of the learners. the united nations general assembly (2011) further expects human rights educators to demonstrate pedagogical practices in the classroom that are grounded in human rights principles. the final component— education for human rights— asserts that human rights education should empower the learner to know and protect their own rights as well as the rights of others. effective human rights education reaches far beyond teaching about the content of human rights issues, as it aims to orient students towards taking action (united nations general assembly, 2011). to practically apply these principles to this document analysis, i turn to various scholars of human rights education who have interpreted article 2.2 of the un resolution. their interpretations offer detailed and practical examples of what education about human rights, education through human rights, and education for human rights should look like in the classroom as topics, teaching methods, and activities. education about human rights education about human rights encompasses dimensions of knowledge related to human rights that the learner should be aware of and understand (osce/odihr, 2012). human rights-related content however should include more than information about human rights documents such as the universal declaration of human rights (flowers, 2003). according to the organization for security and co-operation in europe office for democratic institutions and human rights (osce/odihr) handbook for secondary school systems (2012), a human rights course should encompass the history and philosophy of human rights and discuss human rights as a values framework in relation to other ethical or religious moral frameworks. students should learn about children’s rights, international human rights standards and structures, the universal declaration of human rights, and human rights conventions. teachers should address state obligations to uphold human rights and monitoring mechanisms along with the universality of human rights versus cultural relativism (osce/odihr, 2012). beyond conveying knowledge on the structure and formation of the human rights movement, students should learn about historical and current prevalent human rights topics such as human rights and humanitarian law, the root causes of human rights violations, as well as “critical human rights challenges in our communities and our societies” (osce/odihr, 2012, p. 25). along with learning about relevant human rights topics, learners should also know how to report a human rights violation locally and what steps they can take to counter a violation, thereby setting up a precursor to taking action (p. 25). these comprehensive content guidelines reflect education about human rights as expressed by the universal declaration on human rights education and training. education through human rights education through human rights is grounded in the concept that teaching methods demonstrated in a human rights classroom are expected to be consistent with human rights values as expressed by the united nation’s charter and the universal declaration of human rights (flowers, 2003; tibbitts & fernekes, 2011; osce/odihr, 2012; osler & starkey, 2010). human  rights  education   current issues in comparative education 39 learner-centered techniques are preferable methods to engage students in human rights education (osler & starkey, 2010). more specifically, effective hre is experiential, activitycentered, participatory, dialectical, analytical, healing, strategic thinking-oriented, goal and action-oriented, and problem-posing in such a way that students challenge their prior assumptions (tibbitts & fernekes, 2011). in classrooms upholding human rights principles, students and teachers alike have a right to dignity, or a right to avoid abusive teacher-student relationships (osce/odihr, 2012; osler & starkey, 2010). teachers should not use coercive teaching methods based on intimidation but rather should enact democratic teaching practices in a human rights classroom, such as allowing for student voice in determining class topics and activities. overall, class activities should be based on debate, choice, and creativity (tibbitts & fernekes, 2011; osler & starkey, 2010). other fundamental characteristics of education through human rights include intercultural dialogue, valuing diversity and equality, and opposition to discrimination (osce/odihr, 2012). the curriculum should be age-appropriate and take into account diverse learner needs and backgrounds (osce/odihr, 2012). human rights education should be accessible to all, especially to those who are particularly vulnerable to human rights abuses such as students with disabilities, marginalized groups, or individuals from less-privileged socio-economic backgrounds. finally, practitioners should adapt the curriculum to the learners’ needs and should regularly update the curriculum to ensure relevance (osce/odihr, 2012). a curriculum that meets these criteria will produce a human rights course reflective of the values and principles of the human rights movement. education for human rights the third dimension of hre as expressed by article 2.2 of the universal declaration on human rights education and training-education for human rights— aims to empower students to uphold their own rights and to protect the rights of others (united nations general assembly, 2011). effective human rights education should lead to action (flowers 2003, tibbitts & fernekes, 2011, osce/odihr, 2012). the educationalist approach to hre in particular emphasizes values and practices that produce social transformation (tibbitts, 2002). oriented towards action, “human rights education is intended to be one that provides skills, knowledge, and motivation to individuals to transform their own lives and realities so that they are more consistent with human rights norms and values” (tibbitts, fernekes, 2011, p. 93). by engaging students’ moral imagination, educational programs aim to foster a sense of moral duty within students to uphold human rights locally and globally (flowers, 2003). curricular practices related to education for human rights may include identifying and applying strategies to counter discrimination in the local community, highlighting the benefits of upholding human rights for the individual and the community, or creating a human rights advocacy club (osce/odihr, 2012). students may also develop or defend proposals for changing policies or laws concerning human rights, apply human rights principles to school conflicts, or carry out advocacy projects in the local community (osce/odihr, 2012). the curricular guidelines above correspond with the universal declaration on human rights education and training’s assertion that hre is expected to provide the learner with knowledge and skills to counter violations (united nations general assembly, 2011). following these froman 40 current issues in comparative education guidelines promotes the development of attitudes that empower the learner to contribute to the international human rights movement. methodology article 2.2 of the united nation’s universal declaration on human rights education and training (united nations general assembly, 2011) serves as a critical framework for this document analysis of the international baccalaureate diploma programme’s human rights school-based syllabus. drawing primarily from the osce/odihr’s (2012) comprehensive guidelines on human rights competencies and aims, osler and starkey’s (2010) description of human rights pedagogy, and tibbitts and ferneke’s (2011) connection between human rights education and values formation, i created a list of eight to ten indicators for each component of article 2.2. next, i described how those indicators would appear in a curriculum (tables 3-5). based on this indicator system, i examined whether each indicator is present throughout the curriculum (including the assignments and recommended activities). this analysis allows for the determination of a score for each section that represents the degree to which the international baccalaureate’s revised human rights course (2008) upholds education about, through, and for human rights. for the first component of article 2.2— education about human rights (united nations general assembly, 2011)— i created a comprehensive list of topics to be covered in a course on human rights by drawing directly from the topics outlined in the competency portion of the osce/odihr handbook (2012) under “knowledge and understanding.” i determined the indicators for education about human rights include explicit coverage of several topics. for example, some of the topics are the universal declaration for human rights, universality versus cultural relativism, root causes of human rights violations, and procedures of how to report a human rights violation. next, i composed a set of indicators to determine whether the course adeptly demonstrates pedagogical practices congruent with human rights principles, that is to say, education through human rights (united nations general assembly, 2011). i combined tibbitts and ferneke’s (2011) description of effective human rights pedagogy with osler and starkey’s (2010) principles for human rights teaching methods and determined that several approaches should be used in the human rights classroom to protect the dignity of learners and uphold human rights principles. for instance, classroom activities should be participatory, social and debatebased. educators should use democratic and non-coercive teaching methods, and should offer opportunities for creativity. finally, the curriculum should be accessible to diverse learners, adaptable, and age-appropriate. to measure how well the curriculum conveys education through human rights, i describe how the indicators may manifest within the curriculum. student-centered activities such as an inquiry-based discussion indicate participatory assignments. a listed class activity or indirect reference to a structured in-class debate could signal the intended presence of debate in the curriculum. the presence of key questions throughout the curriculum along with opportunities for students to work in small groups signifies whether discussion is central to course. similarly, instructions within the document or references to opportunities for student collaboration or teambuilding activities may indicate social activities. also, activities that allow for students to make choices in selecting topics, projects, and activities reflect democratic teaching methods. human  rights  education   current issues in comparative education 41 finally, mention of activities such as art, music, performance, dance, computer design, or creative writing indicate opportunities for creativity in the classroom. the final indicators of education through human rights in this document analysis include whether the educator uses non-coercive teaching methods and whether the curriculum is accessible to a diversity of learners, adaptable to learner needs and interests, and is age appropriate. non-coercive teaching methods and accessibility to a diversity of learners are integral components of human rights education, but i was not able to suitably measure these indicators through this document alone. measuring these indicators would require classroom observation of how a teacher differentiates the lessons to appeal to a diversity of learning styles and levels. in contrast, adaptability of the curriculum can be measured throughout the document. for example, a space or time allocated for lessons based on student choice outside of the prescribed scheduled topics indicates adaptability. last, a gentle approach to violence and overly complicated political issues throughout the curriculum can signify age-appropriateness. the final category—measuring education for human rights (united nations general assembly, 2011)— consists of activities that orient students towards action. i largely drew these indicators from the “skills” competency guidelines in the osce/odihr handbook (2012) and from tibbitts and fernekes’ (2011) description of action and value-based human rights education. using these two sources as guidelines, i distinguished that the several specific activities prepare and motivate students to take action for human rights. recommended activities for effective human rights education include organizing or joining a campaign, discussing human rights through a moral or ethical perspective, identifying and/or implementing strategies for defending human rights, engaging in intercultural dialogue, forming a human rights network, developing or defending human rights strategies, evaluating the credibility of sources, and promoting social cohesion and empathy. table 1. indicators for human rights education and training education about human rights education through human rights education for human rights history of human rights participatory activities or assignments organize or join an advocacy campaign philosophy of human rights debate discuss human rights through moral or ethical perspectives international human rights structures discussions identify and/or implement strategies to defend human rights the udhr and un conventions social activities intercultural dialogue state obligations to upholding human rights democratic teaching methods network for human rights advocacy universality v. cultural relativism non-coercive teaching methods develop or defend human rights policies froman 42 current issues in comparative education to measure the first indicator—organizing or joining a campaign— i searched for mention of class projects that prompt students to create a human rights campaign. indicators of a moral or ethical discussion of human rights include discussion questions that ask students to debate the “justifiability” or “morality” of an act or idea. along with searching for such questions, i scanned the document for key words including “principles,” “norms,” “values,” “justified,” and “moral choice.” to measure whether learners identify and implement strategies to defend human rights throughout the course, i searched for unit topics or assignments that prompt students to analyze and enact effective advocacy strategies for local issues such as countering school bullying. next, i measured whether the course offers students the chance to engage in intercultural dialogue. teachers can incorporate this element by bringing in intercultural guest speakers, facilitating social activities between diverse groups of students, creating intercultural pen-pal activities, or initiating video calls with students in different countries. to measure the extent to which teachers are facilitating networking, i examined the document to see if the curriculum prompts the facilitator to connect students to human rights organizations (beyond just providing them with a list of organizations). i measured whether the course encourages students to develop and defend human rights strategies by looking for required class activities that prompt students to identify a human rights issue and develop a policy on how it could be resolved. indicators of whether the course teaches students how to evaluate the credibility of a text may include discussion questions or class activities that reveal the subjectivity of media sources. i measured the final indicator of education for human rights— the promotion of social cohesion and empathy—by checking for the presence of team-building activities such as icebreakers, discussions about identity, or activities concerning personal histories. analysis, findings and discussion i present the results of the analysis in table 2. the final scores for each category reflect how well the curriculum incorporates the fundamental characteristics of human rights education and training as described by article 2.2 of the universal declaration on human rights education and training (united nations general assembly, 2011). it is crucial to note that i weighed each indicator within the three categories equally, as every factor included in the study is an integral component of an effective human rights course. the first category that i measured— education about human rights— required an analysis of the academic content conveyed throughout the course. the curriculum contained eight of the challenges to the human rights movement opportunities for creativity evaluate credibility of information sources current local and global human rights issues accessibility to a diversity of learners promote social cohesion and empathy root causes of human rights violations adaptability of the curriculum procedures on reporting human rights violations in one’s own environment age appropriateness human  rights  education   current issues in comparative education 43 ten indicators resulting in an overall score of eighty percent. the two indicators that the curriculum lacked were explicit instruction regarding procedures for reporting human rights violations in one’s own environment and the root causes of human rights violations. unsurprisingly, the two indicators that the curriculum left out were those geared towards understanding how to take action to uphold human rights as well as the knowledge necessary to prevent future human rights violations. while these two unmet indicators tend to orient students towards action, the remaining eight indicators that the curriculum adequately addresses focus on content-based, indisputable facts such as human rights history, structures, and movements. next, i analyzed how many of the indicators the curriculum fulfills in regards to education through human rights. the nature of a document analysis however, limits an analysis of this category. as education through human rights is related to the pedagogical methods demonstrated in a human rights classroom (united nations general assembly, 2011), a comprehensive analysis of particular components of article 2.2 would require classroom observations. to calculate a final score for this category i subtracted these two immeasurable indicators from the total, leaving eight measurable indicators. of the eight measurable indicators for education through human rights, the international baccalaureate’s revised human rights curriculum (2008) contained three, resulting in a final score of thirty-seven percent. the curriculum proved to be age-appropriate and also showed evidence of required structured in-class debates. democratic teaching methods and discussion each received a half a point because they showed a relatively weak presence throughout the curriculum. the final category— education for human rights— was measured by a total of eight indicators. the curriculum encompasses one and a half of the eight indicators resulting in a final score of nineteen percent. the following indicators had a weak presence in the curriculum but a presence nonetheless: “discuss human rights through a moral and ethical perspective” and “identify and/or implement strategies to defend human rights.” of the thirteen key questions posed throughout the curriculum, only two of them used language that would engage students in a discussion of human rights through a moral or ethical lens. i granted a half point for the “identify and/or implement strategies to defend human rights” indicator because the curriculum only devoted a short section on examining the strategies of current human rights movements. the curriculum does not direct teachers to identify strategies for the local context nor does it encourage students to implement strategies at a local or global level. with the exception of a slight presence shown by these two indicators, all other indicators of education for human rights were virtually absent. the curriculum as a whole contains twelve and a half out of twenty-six potential, measurable indicators, resulting in an overall score of forty-eight percent. it is more telling however, to examine the scores of the individual categories rather than the score of the complete curriculum. education about human right’s high score skews the final score of the entire curriculum, consequently misrepresenting the other two categories. it is therefore more effective to evaluate this curriculum by examining each category separately. as predicted, the international baccalaureate’s human rights curriculum (2008) is heavily oriented towards content. although the course proves to be an excellent source of education about human rights, the curriculum failed to adeptly produce education through human rights or education for human rights. according to the universal declaration on human froman 44 current issues in comparative education table 2. ibdp human rights curriculum analysis results category number of indicators present number of potential indicators overall score education about human rights 8 10 80% education through human rights 3 8 37% education for human rights 1.5 8 19% entire curriculum 12.5 26 48% rights education and training (united nations general assembly, 2011), this curriculum lacks two of the necessary components for an effective human rights course. without building empathy or fostering activism through pedagogical principles congruent with human rights, students may walk away from the class without any drive to uphold human rights in their local or global community. a high school curriculum can easily fall into this lecture-based, content-heavy style of human rights education (tibbitts, 2002). the international baccalaureate organization may very well have designed this course so that it fulfills the program’s rigorous academic standards, leaving little to no time for the socio-emotional or advocacy aspects of hre. alternatively, the lack of action-oriented curriculum may be an intentional move by the international baccalaureate organization. often criticized as a westernizing-force rather than a truly international program (van oord, 2007), the international baccalaureate organization may have purposefully left out action-oriented curriculum so as not to appear as a missionary arm of the united nations. if accused of propagating the united nation’s mission by cultural relativists, the international baccalaureate organization could endanger their reputation as an international program. international baccalaureate sponsored publications and schools programs, however point to the international baccalaureate organization’s support for the united nations. for instance, the ib world—the official magazine of the international baccalaureate organization-mentions the united nation’s decade for human rights as a reason for schools to start their own human rights courses (makivirta, 2003). additionally, the international baccalaureate organization’s website (2014) advertises model united nations—an after school club in which high school students represent different countries and debate prevalent global issues – as a popular schoolsponsored activity in schools offering the diploma programme. fear of appearing to be training grounds for the united nations then may be an insufficient explanation of why the ibo developed a human rights course that lacks student activism. human  rights  education   current issues in comparative education 45 whether the ibo’s rationale for omitting education through human rights and education for human rights from their curriculum is related to their political image, time constraints, or academic demands is debatable. regardless, when examined under the lens of the united nation’s declaration on human rights education and training (united nations general assembly, 2011), the ib diploma programme’s human rights course falls short in fostering support for the human rights movement and empowering students to take action. without instruction based on human rights principles, students do not personally experience human rights in the classroom, hampering their ability to advocate for human rights. similarly, teaching about human rights topics without explicit instruction on how to counter human rights violations may leave students feeling apathetic towards the immense inhumanities occurring throughout the world. clearly, to achieve the aims of human rights education, the international baccalaureate organization would need to adjust their program to include education for human rights and education through human rights, so that the course may empower high school students to move past apathy and towards action. the post-2015 human rights ib agenda from september 2015, the international baccalaureate will introduce a new mainstream course into the diploma programme (ibo, 2014b). the new course, titled “global politics,” will replace the current human rights course and will be comprised of four central components including (1) power, sovereignty, and international relations, (2) human rights, (3) development, and (4) peace and conflict (ibo, 2014b). removing a course fully devoted to human rights and incorporating the topic into another course may seem like a move in the wrong direction, however this transition creates a variety of opportunities for the proliferation of effective human rights education. the previous human rights course was a school-based syllabus, reaching only a percentage of the thousands of schools offering the diploma programme (ib, 2008; makivirta, 2003). as a mainstream course, all ibdp high schools will be required to offer the global politics course and resultantly, human rights education will reach more students. in addition, adopting the global politics course may open up various opportunities to integrate human rights into the school culture. the ibo could easily turn human rights into a transversal subject through the ibdp’s two year long community service requirement (cas) and a foundational course titled “theory of knowledge” (tok) (ibo, 2014a). although global politics teachers might not require students to do their cas work with a human rights agency, teachers could orient students towards action by connecting them to human rights related organizations. throughout the ibpd’s epistemology course (tok), students could discuss the cultural relativist critique of the human rights movement and also engage in intercultural communication. evaluating the credibility of sources and discerning the inherent subjectivity in media reports— another indicator of education for human rights (osce/odihr, 2012)— could also lend themselves well to the theory of knowledge course. students may primarily receive education about human rights in the global politics course however cas and tok could both serve as sites for education for human rights. although education for human rights can be enhanced through expanding human rights to other components of the diploma programme, improving education through human rights may require additional training for teachers. before the implementation of the global politics course in 2015 (ibo, 2014b), all teachers expected to lead the course should engage in a froman 46 current issues in comparative education conference or professional development session centered on teaching human rights. providing teachers with a toolbox of activities and practices before starting the course will enhance their ability to demonstrate pedagogical practices that reflect human rights values. opportunities for enhancing human rights education in the international bacclaurete diploma programme are plentiful. the recommendations listed above are plausible and easily applicable to the ibdp, which already has a strong orientation towards concepts connected to human rights education such as global citizenship and peace studies (ibo, 2014d; gazda-grace, 2002). conclusion in this study, i found that the international baccalaureate diploma programme’s human rights school-based syllabus (2008) does not fulfill the criteria for human rights education as outlined by article 2.2 of the universal declaration on human rights education and training (united nations general assembly, 2011). although the curriculum sufficiently covered human rights content, the course fell short in producing pedagogical practices grounded in human rights principles and failed to orient students towards action. the prevalence of the diploma programme worldwide and the inclusion of human rights into the required global politics course from 2015 grants the ibo a momentous opportunity to produce the first mandatory, wide-reaching program on human rights in the formal education sector. currently, however, human rights education in the international baccalaureate diploma progamme has been a missed opportunity. before the implementation of the global politics course in 2015 (ibo, 2014b), the international baccalaureate organization should review their approach to human rights education. starting from scratch, the ibo has the opportunity to train teachers during professional development sessions in practices reflecting human rights values. if time limits classroom instruction beyond basic human rights related content in the new consolidated course, the ibo can transform human rights into a transversal subject. lending well to ibdp requirements such as cas and tok (ibo, 2014a), human rights activism can be inspired throughout the school day. through heightening the practice of education about human rights, education through human rights, and education for human rights in their curricula, the international baccalaureate organization could transform the way thousands of students around the world understand, support, and engage in human rights. nica froman recently graduated from teachers college, columbia university with an m.a. in international educational development. email: njf2114@tc.columbia.edu. references gazda-grace, p. (2002). psst… have you heard about the international baccalaureate program?. the clearing house, 76(2), 84-87. international baccalaureate. (2008). revised version of human rights syllabus. [program of studies]. [cardiff], uk: international baccalaureate curriculum and assessment centre international baccalaureate organization. (2014a). diploma programme curriculum framework. retrieved from http://www.ibo.org/diploma/curriculum/ human  rights  education   current issues in comparative education 47 international baccalaureate organization. (2014b). global politics. retrieved from http://www.ibo.org/diploma/curriculum/group3/globalpolitics.cfm international baccalaureate organization. (2014c). ib world school statistics. retrieved from http://www.ibo.org/facts/schoolstats/progcombinationsbyregion.cfm international baccalaureate organization. (2014d). mission and strategy. retrieved from http://www.ibo.org/mission/ makivirta, j. (2003). enthusiastic response to ib human rights course. ib world, 34. retrieved from http://www.ibo.org/ibworld/documents/feb03.pdf. osce/odihr. (2012). guidelines for human rights education for secondary school systems (warsaw: organization for security and cooperation in europe) (39 pp). osler, a., starkey, h. (2010). teachers and human rights education. trentham books ltd. westview house 734 london road, oakhill, stoke-on-trent, staffordshire, st4 5np, uk. suárez, d. (2007). education professionals and the construction of human rights education. comparative education review, 51(1), 48-70. tibbitts, f. (2002). understanding what we do: emerging models for human rights education. international review of education, 48(3-4), 159-171. tibbitts, f., & fernekes, w. r. (2011). human rights education. teaching and studying social issues: major programs and approaches, 87-118. united nations general assembly resolution 66/137. united nations declaration on human rights education and training, un doc a/res/66/137 (19 december 2011), available from http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n11/467/04/pdf/n1146704.pdf?open element van oord, l. (2007). to westernize the nations? an analysis of the international baccalaureate's philosophy of education. cambridge journal of education,37(3), 375-390. froman 48 current issues in comparative education appendix table 3. indicators for education about human rights in ibdp human rights course indicator indicator description/criteria y/n explanation reflection history of human rights topic included in course content y section 2 of topic 1 covers the history y of human rights including the magna carta, bill of rights, revolutions, slavery, the holocaust, colonialism, and the atomic bomb. this section provides a comprehensive and diverse overview of human rights abuses throughout history, showing students how human rights was an issue hundreds of years before the movement began. philosophy of human rights topic included in course content y section 1 of topic 1, “the idea of human rights” introduces the philosophical foundations of human rights through comparing moral rights v. legal rights, negative rights v. positive rights, and the three generations of human rights. this section also includes a critique of universal human rights under the lenses of kant, mill, hobbes, locke, and rousseau. this topic begins the entire course on human rights. while it is foundational, i wonder if certain students may be disinterested in studying these philosophical interpretations without first understanding the relevance of human rights in their own lives. human  rights  education   current issues in comparative education 49 indicator indicator description/criteria y/n explanation reflection international human rights structures topic included in course content y topic 2, “human rights protection systems” covers the structure of the un, the icj, the icc, regional courts, and nonjudicial enforcement. this section provides a comprehensive overview of the major actors in human rights internationally. it would be appropriate to add a section on local, grassroots human rights movements to show students how they can get involved. the udhr and un conventions topic included in course content y “the practice of human rights” section covers key treaties including the udhr, the international covenants on civil and political rights, the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, and other major un treaties on genocide, children’s rights, torture, racial discrimination, and sexual discrimination. the curriculum invites critical thinking as it asks students to consider “has the un really been effective in promoting human rights? state obligations to upholding human rights topic included in course content y included under “the practice of human rights,” this unit introduces the relationship between state actors and nonstate actors in the international political economy from the human rights perspective. engaging students’ moral imaginations, this section asks students to consider whether humanitarian intervention in justified when a state fails to uphold its obligations. froman 50 current issues in comparative education indicator indicator description/criteria y/n explanation reflection universality v. cultural relativism topic included in course content y the curriculum offers a section called “culture and human rights” which touches on cultural relativism and non-western conceptions of human rights. this section engages students in a debate around the question “are human rights universal?” this is the fourth unit, but the first opportunity for students to offer opinions. challenges to the human rights movement topic included in course content y this topic is predominately included in the section on cultural relativism. this section prompts students to consider multiple lenses, such as sharia law and african perspectives on the universality of human rights. while these are challenges, many other challenges exist concerning efficacy of un human rights structures and failure of states to comply to international human rights standards. current local and global human rights issues topic included in course content y this is the third and final topic of the curriculum is “contemporary human rights issues.” this section gives students the opportunities to study minorities, the environment, economics, conflicts, political systems, and religious systems. the way the curriculum is structured is such that students choose one area to study on their own. although allowing for democratic choice in what they study is an approach congruent with teaching through human rights, this is problematic because it fails to ensure all students will learn about a diversity of global and local issues. it limits exposure to different topics as well. human  rights  education   current issues in comparative education 51 indicator indicator description/criteria y/n explanation reflection root causes of human rights violations topic included in course content n this topic is not explicitly covered in the curriculum. students may have the opportunity to delve into this topic in their individual projects on contemporary human rights issues however it should be an ongoing theme throughout the curriculum. procedures on reporting human rights violations in one’s own environment topic included in course content n this topic is not explicitly covered in the curriculum. this topic could be covered along side human rights monitoring. as local human rights organizations are not included in this curriculum it is not surprising that the procedures for reporting violations locally are also left out. table 4. indicators of education through human rights in ibdp human rights course indicator indicator description/criteria y/n explanation reflection participatory activities or assignments student-centered activities with high student-involvement (i.e. inquiry based discussions rather than lectures for student to copy down) n the majority of the units are focused around transmitting content from the teachers to the students, only engaging the students at the end of the lesson with one or two key questions. participatory activities could be useful in building social cohesion and empathy in the classroom. froman 52 current issues in comparative education indicator indicator description/criteria y/n explanation reflection debate structured in-class debates on prevalent human rights topics y one option for an internal assessment project is to write a detailed report of a debate held in class. this signifies that debates must be a held periodically throughout the course. incorporating debate into the human rights classroom is a great approach as it simultaneously engages education for and education through human rights. discussions incorporation of key questions to be utilized for socraticstyle small group or class-wide dialoguebased seminars y/n key questions are included at the end of most units. in total, thirteen key questions are asked throughout the course. although questions are included, discussion does not seem to be a widely integrated into the course as it could be. the heavy amount of history, philosophy and law that the curriculum requires may put pressure on the teacher to rely on lecture-style teaching. human  rights  education   current issues in comparative education 53 indicator indicator description/criteria y/n explanation reflection social activities activities where students have the opportunity to work in groups and collaborate with their peers, such as small or large group work activities n beyond debates and discussions, there are no indications of collaboration or group activities. heavily focused on content, this curriculum does not offer much opportunity for collaborative activities. an advocacy project or art campaign could engage students in a social activity. democratic teaching methods students have the opportunity to exercise choice in determining activities, assignments, or the focus of study y/n a major portion of students’ grades for this course is the “internal assessment” project. in this project, students may choose from one of two possible project options and must select a contemporary human rights topic to study from the list provided by the curriculum. beyond the assigned projects and choosing their topic for the last portion of the course there is no indication of democratic teaching methods. through the first two thirds of the class, students must complete the prescribed assignments and topics. non-coercive teaching methods teachers do not employ coercive teaching methods such as threatening students with grades, intimidating or humiliating students not measurable through this document n/a n/a froman 54 current issues in comparative education indicator indicator description/criteria y/n explanation reflection opportunities for creativity activities where art, music, performance, dance, computer design, or creative writing are permitted and encouraged n all course requirements are written researchbased essays or debates. incorporating art into the human rights classroom is essential as engaging the creative imagination is the first step towards envisioning a brighter future. accessibility to a diversity of learners approaching topics with sensitivity so as not to discourage or offend students who may have trauma regarding this topic, discussing the suffering others to encourage empathy not measurable through this document n/a i would need to observe how tactfully the teacher approaches each topic in the classroom to properly measure this factor. i would also need to observe whether the teacher differentiates the lesson to adapt to learner needs. adaptability of the curriculum flexibility within the curriculum to change the course of discussion if students wish to focus on a different topic. indicated by a designated space in the curriculum left for students to choose what that class will discuss as a whole n the curriculum is tightly packed does not appear to leave room for flexibility. the last portion is left available for students to choose their own topic for individualized projects, but there does not appear to be any flexibility or student choice in regards to wholeclass instruction. this could be due to the ib’s high academic standards. the curriculum is clearly packed full of content, leaving little wiggle room for student choice or adaptation. human  rights  education   current issues in comparative education 55 indicator indicator description/criteria y/n explanation reflection age appropriateness as this curriculum is geared for high school, topics and activities must be on level for ages fourteen through nineteen. overly lurid descriptions of human rights violations or highly complex descriptions of human rights theorists would not be age-appropriate. y the curriculum is age-appropriate in that it does not present human rights violations in an overly lurid manner. the curriculum does delve into some complex topics regarding human rights philosophies however, the curriculum covers such a broad range of topics that it does not appear to delve into any particular topic too deeply. although i can recognize the logic behind starting a human rights course with human rights philosophy, i question how effective this approach is at a high school level. rather than starting the course with some sort of “hook” to draw students in, i fear that starting with this topic may disengage certain students. froman 56 current issues in comparative education table 5. indicators of education for human rights in ibdp human rights course indicator indicator description /criteria y/n explanation reflection organize or join an advocacy campaign students decide on a topic to campaign for and develop advocacy strategies n this element is not present in the curriculum facilitating a student-led human rights campaign is a huge time commitment. instead of incorporating this directly into the class, teachers could encourage or offer extra support to students to do this as an after school club or for their cas requirement. discuss human rights through moral or ethical perspectives discussion questions asking students to debate the justifiability or morality of an act or idea; discussions on concept of human dignity. key words: principles, norms, standards, values, justified, dignity, and moral choice y in the section on human rights and international relations students consider the question “can humanitarian intervention be justified?” also, the section on culture and human rights asks students to discuss “are human rights universal?” of the 13 key questions asked throughout this curriculum only two of them engage the student’s moral imagination. the rest of the questions are evaluative or oriented towards a content-based critical debate. human  rights  education   current issues in comparative education 57 indicator indicator description /criteria y/n explanation reflection identify and/or implement strategies to defend human rights analyze and implement effective advocacy strategies for local or global human rights issues i.e. countering school bullying y/n an overview of strategies are included in the section on human rights protection systems and may be included in the subtopic “campaigning for a better world,” which briefly overviews several recent campaigns such as the campaign for women’s rights, and the end for apartheid. the curriculum does not include a section addressing how to develop or implement strategies at a local level. throughout these sections students can observe strategies utilized for these global campaigns however they are not prompted to try to apply them to their local context. this approach lacks practical application and may not necessarily lead students to advocacy. intercultural dialogue curricular components that include dialogue with multiple voices i.e. bringing in intercultural guest speakers, social activities between diverse student groups, intercultural pen-pal activities, or skype calls with school overseas n this element is not present in the curriculum. more opportunities for this might exist if the curriculum put a greater emphasis on current local and global human rights topics. froman 58 current issues in comparative education indicator indicator description /criteria y/n explanation reflection network for human rights advocacy connect students to human rights organizations or start a student club for human rights n this element is not present in the curriculum. teachers could encourage students to fulfill their cas requirements through working with a human rights agency, as a transversal element. develop or defend human rights policies identify a human rights problem and develop a policy on how it can be resolved n this element is not present in the curriculum. this would be a practical and engaging classroom activity that could be a prerequisite to advocacy. evaluate credibility of information sources discuss the subjectivity of media sources and regularly evaluate the credibility of documents through analyzing the source and comparing the document to other sources n this element is not present in the curriculum. evaluating the credibility of information sources is a critical thinking exercise that would serve students beyond the classroom. this could be incorporated in the cultural relativism section by comparing media sources reporting on human rights issues. promote social cohesion and empathy team-building activities, identitybased discussions n this element is not present in the curriculum. this curriculum does little to personalize human rights. human rights focused team building exercises help build social cohesion by developing a sense of shared humanity. microsoft word 16_2_joseph_tobin.docx © 2014 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 16(2): 6-13. comparative, diachronic, ethnographic research on education joseph tobin university of georgia locating educational practices in space and time most qualitative studies in international education take place in a single site in a single nation. when studies are of more than one country, they most often use more quantitative than qualitative approaches. there was a time when studies conducted in multiple cultures were more common in anthropology. margaret mead (1935; 1960) and ruth benedict (1934) did comparative studies of two or more cultures. beatrice and john whiting conducted the most systematic of comparative cross-cultural studies of child rearing in their six cultures (1975) study. one of the six ethnographies that served as the foundation of that study was conducted by robert a. levine (1966), who was my doctoral mentor. i have attempted to carry this comparative project forward, and to do so in a way that systematically deals with variation within, as well as among cultures, while also taking into account how cultures stay the same and change over time. in time and the other (1983), johannes fabian criticizes ethnography, as a discipline, for its failure to locate cultures in time. he argues that ethnographers see cultures (other than our own) as existing outside of history, in a timeless ethnographic present (e.g. “the japanese believe. . . .”). the epistemological and methodological challenge is to add a sense of time to our comparative ethnographies. as anthropologists, we tend to be much better at thinking crossculturally than cross-generationally, better at thinking about differences of place than of time. the trick is to think simultaneously about space and time, in a sort of ethnographic version of physics’ unified field theory. over the past twenty years or so comparative education meetings and journals have been sites for intense debate about the merits of world system theories that emphasize the inexorable homogenization of educational practices across the globe versus theories that suggest the potential for local settings (whether defined as nations, regions, communities, schools, or even teachers in individual classrooms) to resist the power of the global. i posit that this should be primarily not a conceptual or ideological battle, but instead an empirical question: clearly global forces are powerful and they unmistakably impact local educational practices. but it is equally clear that globally circulating ideas are sometimes or even often resisted, and even when adapted in local settings, always undergo modification. i view the interplay of the global and local as an ongoing engagement and negotiation, with different outcomes in different settings at different times. i see our job as educational anthropologists and comparative educators as getting smarter at designing studies that, rather than setting out to support one side or the other of the world system/local resistance debate, instead help us understand how and why globally circulating ideas sometimes carry the day, while at other times local concerns and local cultural practices come out on top. to understand the interplay of globally circulating ideas and pressures on local communities, we need careful empirical studies. a video-cued ethnographic method to comparative education for the past thirty years in my studies of preschools in japan, china, the us and other countries, the approach i have employed is a method i call “video cued multivocal ethnography,” but which is better known as the “preschool in three cultures method.” the core idea of this method is that videos function in these studies not as data but as interviewing cues. this joseph tobin current issues in comparative education 7 method has several steps. we videotape a day in a preschool in each country. we then edit the eight or more hours of video down to make a 20-minute video, which we then use as an interviewing cue for a widening circle of informants. we begin by showing the video to the teacher in whose classroom we filmed, asking her to comment on the typicality of the events in the video and to explain the thinking behind the practices captured in the video. we then use the video as a cue for interviews with her fellow teachers and director, then with staff at preschools in at least four other sites in the country, and then to educators at preschools in the other countries in the study. the first preschool in three cultures study (tobin, wu, & davidson, 1989) emphasized differences in chinese, japanese, and us approaches to early childhood education, and argued for the importance of thinking about the role of what we call “implicit cultural beliefs and practices.” but this is not to say that the original study saw the preschools of each country as homogeneous or only reflective of cultural factors. our video-cued method, in which we showed a video shot in a single preschool in a single city to 300 or more educators at five or more sites across each country allowed us to show which practices are largely shared, which are variable within each country, and the areas of agreement and disagreement within each nation’s educational discourse (tobin, 1992). our method also allowed us to think about the impact of globalization and other social, economic, and political forces on local settings by asking our informants to tell us about the pressures and influences they are experiencing in their daily practice. in the first study, key themes included how in the 1980s, preschool practice in china was being impacted by the single child family policy, in japan by a falling birth rate, and in the us by political, academic, and ideological battles over whether young children are more helped or harmed by being enrolled in preschools as opposed to being cared for at home. while “implicit cultural beliefs and practices” was the construct that was foregrounded in the study, cultural beliefs and practices were shown to be interacting with forces of globalization, demographic shifts, economic change, and political pressures. in the second study, conducted twenty years later, we more explicitly explored the power of globalization and other social, economic, and political forces on preschools by adding a diachronic dimension. the central question of the new study was how and why approaches to early childhood education stay the same and change over the course of a generation. the new study compared three countries’ approaches to early childhood education across two points in time: 1983 and 2003. to facilitate a diachronic analysis, we added some new steps to our videocued interviewing method. we showed directors and teachers in each country the video shot in their preschool twenty years earlier and asked them to reflect on what had changed, what had stayed the same, and why. we also shot new videos in each of these preschools, and repeated the steps of the video-cued interviewing we had done for the first study. we videotaped in a second focal preschool in each country. these second preschools were selected as examples of a new direction in each country’s early childhood education. asking viewers in sites across each country to comment on the videos shot in these progressive schools worked to introduce more explicit discussion about where educators see their systems of early childhood education going, and how they feel about these changes. if i had to summarize the key findings of the new book in a single sentence, i would say that between the mid-1980s and the first decade of the new millennia, early childhood education in china changed a lot and japanese preschools stayed much the same. but this does not mean that china was more interesting than japan during this period. our focus on understanding change in systems of early childhood education should not blind us to the importance of also understanding and appreciating the complexity of continuity. understanding why a day at komatsudani day care center in kyoto looks much the same in 2005 as it did twenty years comparative, diachronic, ethnographic research on education 8 current issues in comparative education earlier is as compelling a question as understanding why daguan preschool in kunming china changed. maintaining continuity in a program of early childhood education from one era to the next requires as much effort and creativity as it does to change. if we think of change as being caused by external forces, like the movement of a small boat in a rushing stream, we can argue that it takes more energy to stay in place than to move with the flow. absence of change over time in a preschool can reflect the inertia, stubbornness, or even laziness of the staff. but it can also reflect the courage of teachers and directors to stand up to political pressures to distort their practice in reaction to each educational fad and demand from grandstanding politicians. our job as educational anthropologists and comparative educators is to account as much for continuity as for change, as much for local variations as worldwide similarities. in the sections that follow i provide examples of the kind of change of preschool beliefs and practices we found in china and the kind of continuity we found in japan, and why. china returning in 2003 to daguan kindergarten in kunming, the preschool we had videotaped in 1983 we found the school housed in a brand new six-story building, with high tech equipment, an indoor gym, dance studio, and music room. we also were told by the directors that they had recently radically revised their curriculum and pedagogy, based on the government’s 2001 guidelines for kindergartens, which called for more emphasis on children’s creativity and selfinitiative, and for less teacher-led, didactic instruction. the directors at kunming told us that while they endorsed the idea of this paradigm shift, it was proving challenging to implement, especially for their older teachers, who had been trained in a very different approach. in our second chinese focal school, sinan road kindergarten in shanghai, we found the paradigm shift much further along. educators in shanghai played a role in developing the 2001 kindergarten guidelines and sinan road is one of the preschools that is widely recognized as pioneering the implementation of the new child-centered, constructivist approach. the chinese educators we interviewed consistently provided the same explanation for the logic behind this paradigm shift: the chinese economy is in the process of radical change. for china to successfully compete in global capitalism schools there is a need for a new generation of creative citizens. to produce these new creative citizens who can lead the new economy, there needs to be a new curriculum, starting with the preschool curriculum, a curriculum that supports the development of creative thinkers and entrepreneurship. early on in our study, we intended to tell a linear story about chinese early childhood education in the new millennia: preschools in shanghai, beijing, and nanjing had already largely completed a shift from teacher-directed to child-initiated activities. in provincial capital cities, such as kunming, the shift was in process, but implementation was more difficult, due to less access to expert training in the new paradigm. directors of preschools in rural areas were aware of the new guidelines and in general supportive of the new direction, but frustrated by a lack of access to training opportunities that would allow them to better understand and implement the new approach. over the four years we conducted research for the new study in china, we gradually came to see that we would need to tell a less linear, more complicated story. in our video of a day at sinan road kindergarten we see many examples of the kinds of child-centered, constructivist activities that would be considered progressive and even cutting edge at the best preschools in europe and north america. but we also see examples of activities that are hybrid, combining recently embraced ideas from the west with traditional chinese approaches. this is most clear in a segment from our sinan road kindergarten video we call “the storytelling king.” in the sinan road video we see the whole class gathered on the rug and one boy, ziyu, standing in front of them to tell a story. ziyu announces that his story is called, “goodong,” an joseph tobin current issues in comparative education 9 onomatopoedic sound made by something heavy that drops in the pond. here’s the gist of ziyu’s story: “in a forest lived many animals. one day an owl heard a strange noise in the pond, that scared him. he went to tell others. those who went to check thought that there was a monster in the pond. in the end, a lion went to the pond to check only to find that a ripe papaya falling from the tree to make the noise. everyone was relieved. ziyu finished his story, said “thank you,” and took a seat on the floor with his classmates. ms. wang, one of the two teachers, asked the children what they had heard in the story. some children said that there was an owl and the teacher asked what the owl was doing before it heard the noise. this exchange went on for a few turns before ms. wang asked the group whether ziyu could be named story king. some said “yes” and some said “no.” the children then voted. ziyu was invited to count the votes. he won the honor by a majority, with 18 of 24 children voting “yes.” he then wrote his name on the red story king poster. then ms. wang said, “some children didn’t raise their hands. shall we listen to their arguments? children commented: “that story was like one we heard before.” “he was not loud enough.” “he did not say things clearly sometimes.” ms. wang teacher turned to ziyu and asked if he agreed. he thanked his classmates for their comments and selected a story-teller for the next day. teacher cheng explained how the story king activity get started: in the beginning, children just wanted to listen to a story that the teacher would tell. later, a couple of children who were interested in telling stories asked if they could come to the front to tell a story. we encouraged them to give it a try. soon, many children began to prepare their own stories and asked for their turns. straightforward criticism has long been a common feature of chinese daily life, not only in the first thirty years of the people’s republic, when the cultural revolution and other social movements required people to be self-critical as well as critical of others, but also in the prerevolutionary periods, when confucianism encouraged criticism as a means towards cultivating learning and promoting social values. as a familiar component of chinese everyday life in families, neighborhoods, schools, business dealings and social life, criticizing others does not carry as harsh a feel in china as it does in the us, japan, and many other cultures. constructive feedback from both experts and peers can be found in chinese education not just in the early childhood classroom, but also in the preparation and ongoing professional development of teachers, in reciprocal critique and discussion sessions called qiecuo (learning from each other by exchanging ideas). in both activities we find a belief not just in the value of constructively giving and humbly accepting critical feedback but also in the value of oral performance, “virtuosity,” and of learning as a process of “self-perfection.” both the critical feedback and the pursuit of virtuosity seen in this activity are examples of what we are calling culturally implicit practices and of what jerome bruner (1990; 1996) calls “folk pedagogy,” in that although these practices are not encouraged or even mentioned in the new curriculum guidelines, they are common features of contemporary chinese early childhood educational practice that survive from one social upheaval and pedagogical paradigm shift to the next and which chinese teachers feel no need to explain, justify, or reflect on until they are prompted to do by outsiders. we see in the storytelling king activity an example of the emergence in china of a hybrid pedagogy that combines chinese and western pedagogical notions. the story telling king activity combines progressive beliefs in child-initiated curricula, a deweyian notion of the democratic classroom, self-expression, and an emphasis on creativity with chinese traditions of verbal performance and virtuosity (paine, 1990), of learning as a process of “self-perfection” (li, 2003), and a belief that is both traditional and chinese socialist in the pedagogical value of constructive criticism. comparative, diachronic, ethnographic research on education 10 current issues in comparative education this notion of cultural hybridity complicates the linear story we told in the previous section of china moving inexorably as a nation down a path from more didactic, teacher-directed, knowledge transmission pedagogy towards constructivist, child-initiated and child-directed pedagogy. a final round of interviews that the preschool in three cultures research team conducted in 2007 with chinese early childhood educators suggests that the aggressive push toward progressivism and child-centeredness that characterized chinese early childhood education from about 1990 to 2006 has begun to be counterbalanced by an acknowledgment of the value of traditional chinese pedagogical practices, including the value of direct instruction and the mastery of skills. the period of intense borrowing is being replaced by a period of consolidation and hybridization of foreign and domestic educational ideas (schreiwer, 2000; steiner-khamsi, 2000). continuity in japan our research suggests that whereas china during the last twenty years has been viewing early childhood education as an agent of change, japan has been more concerned with how early childhood education can be a source of continuity, that is, with maintaining core cultural values in an era of economic difficulty and perceived social decline. during the 1990s, between the periods of our first and second study, japan experienced a series of changes: the birth rate, already low, became even lower; the economic bubble burst, and the economy that had been robust in the early 1980s was in decline; young people continued to move from rural areas to urban neighborhoods, where families raised their young children without close contact with relatives, friends, or neighbors. many social critics lamented the loss of traditional values, as japan’s postmodern condition and consumption-oriented ethos had produced an increasingly anomic, alienated society. in our interviews with japanese educators in the early years of the new millennium, we heard a familiar, sad refrain: japan is in decline, socially and culturally as well as economically. young parents no longer know how to raise their children. teachers have lost their way. neighborhoods are no longer sites of support and resilience. in the face of such challenges, japanese see the role of preschools as not to change, but instead to more than ever be sites of cultural preservation, where contemporary children can acquire traditional japanese values and habits. in response to the perception that the rest of society is changing too fast, japanese preschools are viewed as sites of social and cultural continuity. we found evidence of this continuity in the lack of change we found in preschool practices and in japanese early childhood educators’ beliefs. the teddy bear fight at komatsudani a prime example of this continuity in beliefs and practices can be seen in teachers’ approaches to dealing with fighting children in our first and second study. in preschool in three cultures revisited, there is a scene in which three girls pull and tug on a teddy bear until they fall into a struggling heap on the floor. during this struggle, the only visible and audible reaction of the classroom teacher, morita-sensei, is to call out from across the room: “kora kora,” (which in english means something like “hey there!”). joseph tobin current issues in comparative education 11 figure 1. three girls pull the bear source: tobin et al., 2009 figure 2. girls fighting source: tobin et al., 2009 figure 3. morita-sensei walks by source: tobin et al., 2009 when asked about this scene, morita-sensei explained that this is typical of her approach of watching children and letting them know that they are being watched, but avoiding otherwise intervening. morita-sensei explained that she called out “kora, kora” at the moment when she became concerned that the children were fighting too close to the sharp corner of the piano bench. her intent was to cue the children to be careful without intervening in a stronger way, which would have risked ending their interaction. to describe this strategy of supporting children’s social-emotional development by holding back, and watching without intervening, morita-sensei used the term mimamoru. mi literally means “to watch” and mamoru means “to guard.” together, when used in the context of preschool, the words describe a japanese pedagogical strategy we translate as “teaching by watching and waiting.” in the original (1989) preschool in three cultures study, fukui-sensei, gave a similar explanation for a fight videotaped in her classroom: when there’s a fight among children, i watch and wait and try to decide if they are really attempting to hurt each other, or if it is just rough play. it’s sometimes hard to tell. if it looks like it’s getting to be too rough or that it might get out of control, i tell them to be less rough, but i don’t tell them to stop (p. 133). comparative, diachronic, ethnographic research on education 12 current issues in comparative education the preschool in three cultures method involves showing the videotape made at one preschool to teachers and directors at five more sites around the country and getting their reactions. most informants said the morita’s approach in the teddy bear fights was familiar. some teachers said they would have intervened more aggressively then did morita-sensei, but no one found her approach surprising and everyone was able to infer the thinking behind her practice (in contrast to the surprised, bewildered and critical reactions of most chinese and american educators). further evidence that mimamoru is a pedagogical practice that is widely culturally shared is that is has been documented not just in both preschool in three cultures studies, but also by other scholars who have studied japanese preschools in single settings, including catherine lewis (1984; 1995); merry white (1987); joy hendry (1989); eyal ben-ari (1996); and daniel walsh (2002; 2003). the fact that both the practice and logic of low-intervention has been documented by scholars working in such diverse settings (hoikuen as well as yochien; private as well as public; in various regions of the country) suggests the workings of a process of meaning making that transcends the local. finding the practice across such diverse settings would be easy to explain if it were discussed in japanese teacher education textbooks, found in the national kindergarten guidelines, or was a practice that is circulating globally. in the absence of such explicit pressures, i suggest that a cultural explanation is most logical. conclusion the story telling king activity is an example not of the power of the global to homogenize or of the local to resist change, but of both at once. in chinese early childhood education, a new hybrid form of progressivism is emerging, that combines dewey, vygotsky, the project approach, and reggio with confucianism, chinese socialist principles, and chinese educational traditions that give importance to memory, performance, mastery, content knowledge, and critique. professor zhu jiaxiong of east china normal university suggested to us that the globalization of education in china works like a pendulum, swinging back and forth between periods of looking outwards and inwards. but unlike a pendulum, there is no final, fixed, pre-determined resting place. instead, the pivot point of the pendulum is constantly shifting, as new hybrid forms of education emerge, mixing once external with internal elements, producing a new center. the teddy bear fight at komatsudani is an example of how japanese early childhood educators in the face of what they perceive as disturbing forms of social change, see the primary function of preschools as providing young children with opportunities to experience a kind of social complexity they lack in their contemporary lives in one-child families living in alienating urban environments. parents, teachers, directors, and child development we interviewed expressed a sense of pessimism and even despair about the overall condition of japanese society, citing problems including the fact that young people are not getting married and having children, that high housing costs are forcing young families to live in distant suburbs, leaving inner city neighborhoods aging and inner city preschools struggling to survive, and that parenting skills have dramatically deteriorated among the young generation of parents who themselves were raised by preoccupied, overly westernized parents who lost touch with japanese cultural traditions. in the face of these challenges, preschools are oases of traditional cultural values. methodological approaches that combine cross-national with diachronic analyses make it possible to locate educational approaches in time as well as space. our analyses shows that political, economic, and social change can lead to a paradigm shift in preschool pedagogy, in one country, in one time period (in this case, china, between 1982 and 2002), while during the same time period, in another country (japan), which was experiencing its own economic and social upheavals, preschool pedagogy changed very little. the implications of this story is that we comparative educators and educational anthropologists need to avoid a one-size-fits all conceptual orientation on the impacts that that external (e.g. globalization) and internal forces joseph tobin current issues in comparative education 13 have on educational systems, and instead do careful empirical studies of how political, economic, and other forms of social change contribute to both continuity and change in educational practices. joseph tobin is the elizabeth garrard hall professor of early childhood education at the university of georgia. email: joetobin@uga.edu. references ben-ari, e. (1996). body projects in japanese childcare: culture, organization and emotions in a preschool. london, uk: routledge. benedict, r. (1934). patterns of culture. ma: houghton mifflin. bruner, j. (1990). acts of meaning. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. bruner, j. (1996). the culture of education. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. fabian, j. (1983). time and the other. new york, ny: columbia university press. hendry, j. (1989). becoming japanese: the world of the preschool. honolulu, hi: university of hawaii press. levine, r.a. (1966). nyansongo: a gusii community in kenya. newyork: john wiley and sons. lewis, c. (1984). cooperation and control in japanese nursery schools. comparative education review, 28(1). 69-84. lewis, c. (1995). educating hearts and minds. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. li, j. (2003). the core of confucian learning. american psychologist, 58, 146-147. mead, m. (1935). sex and temperament: in three primitive societies. harpercollins. mead, m. (1960). four families. national film board of canada. new york: mcgraw-hill. paine, l. (1990). the teacher as virtuoso: a chinese model for teaching. teachers college record, 92 (1), 49-81. schreiwer, j. (ed.) (2000). discourse formation in comparative education. new york, ny: peter. lang steiner-khamsi, g. (2000). transferring education, displacing reforms. in j. schriewer (ed.), discourse formation in comparative education (pp.155-187). new york, ny: peter. lang. tobin, j. (1992). a dialogical approach to the problem of field�site typicality. city & society, 6(1), 46-57. tobin, j., hsueh, y., & karasawa, m. (2009). preschool in three cultures revisited: china, japan, and the united states. chicago: university of chicago press. tobin, j., wu, d. & davidson, d. (1989). preschool in three cultures: japan, china and the united states. new haven, ct: yale university press. walsh, d. (2002). the development of self in japanese preschools: negotiating space. in l. bresler & a. ardichvili (eds.), research in international education: experience, theory, and practice (pp. 213-246). new york: peter lang. walsh, d. (2003). dimensions of japanese early schooling: review of susan holloway’s contested childhoods: diversity and change in japanese preschools. contemporary psychology. 48 (5), 690-692. white, m. (1987). the japanese educational challenge. new york, ny: free press. whiting, b. b., & whiting, j. w. (1975). children of six cultures: a psycho-cultural analysis. harvard university press. current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 1, fall 2016 © 2016, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(1), 92-108. leaders in education program: the singapore model for developing effective principal-ship capability prashant jayapragas ministry of education, singapore in this era of constant change, principals need to be able to handle high levels of complexity in its governance and policy implementation. planning ahead is not sufficient; being able to interpret and plan the future into strategic responses is a huge focus in educational development today. the leaders in education program (lep) is a 6-month full-time program, which aims to prepare highly capable vice principals and ministry officers in singapore for principal-ship. this paper examines the value proposition and critical components of the lep, and through a comparative analysis, it critically reflects on the challenges associated with this model. while the lep has gained worldwide admiration for heightening participant’s awareness of the interactive nature of the “roles” and “minds” of school leadership, this model is found to be “especially selective,” attracting just 5% of the intended population. in order for a larger pool of school leaders to benefit, this paper recommends the ‘borrowing’ of mentoring and networked learning structures to level up distributed and lateral leadership within and across schools. this should gradually develop a culture of leaders growing leaders as a way to ensure scalability and sustainability of leadership talent. introduction many countries struggle to transform their educational systems to adequately prepare their students with the knowledge, skills and disposition to thrive today. school leaders are thus more than just good managers; they are leaders of schools as “learning organizations” (darling hammond, wei & andree, 2010). they need to be educational visionaries, instructional leaders, supervisors of policy mandates and initiatives and even community builders (devita, 2010). they are also expected to promote inclusive school cultures (riehl, 2000). the civic community at large is increasingly aware that effective school leadership is central to large-scale education reforms and improved educational outcomes (leithwood & jantzi, 2005). many of these leadership attributes are positively related to student achievement, learning and attitudes (cotton, 2003). this was also reported by the wallace foundation in 2011, which highlighted the empirical link between school leadership and improved student achievement. the singapore model for developing effective principal-ship capability current issues in comparative education 93 notably, leadership effects on student learning occur largely because leadership strengthens teachers' engagement in the professional community, which in turn, promotes the use of instructional practices that are associated with student achievement (wahlstrom, louis, leithwood & anderson, 2010). the extent to which a principal is aware of how a school functions and is able to address existing and potential problems is critical to student outcomes (waters, marzano, & mcnulty, 2003). in view of this, effective leadership means more than knowing what to do—it is about knowing when, how, and why a certain course of action is taken. in the last 15 years, there have been numerous shifts in education policies in singapore. principals are expected to be role models in providing a student-centric values-driven education, where developing 21st-century competencies and providing multiple pathways of success to every child is seen as a fundamental tenet of schooling (teo, 1998; tharman, 2006). in view of this, principals must be able to determine what a specific policy means to the school, their students and the community at large. in addition, reform efforts should also focus on changing the cultures of the classroom and the schools so as to improve the quality of education (fullan, 2007). former education minister teo chee hean said that principals must be pro-active enough to want to “cook their own food instead of waiting for the central kitchen to serve up a complete meal” (teo, 1999). this new educational agenda demands a new type of school leader; one who is confident in dealing with a dynamic and complex context. it is thus essential to equip principals with the right set of skills to be adaptive, flexible and reflective leaders. drawing on the current literature about the leaders in education program (lep) in singapore, this paper will examine the lep’s value-proposition and through a comparative analysis of normative, empirical and critical literature in hong kong, shanghai, finland and the united states, i will explore whether elements of the lep can be further expanded to frame effective leadership preparation models within and beyond singapore. leaders in education program in march 2001, the lep was launched at the national institute of education (nie), singapore. the lep is a six-month milestone executive program for specially selected vice principals and ministry officers (about 30 40 in a cohort) in singapore to prepare them for school leadership. this executive model has similarities to what one would experience in an mba program. there are varied opportunities for industry leaders to provide interactive sessions in leadership and strategic management to guide decision-making and organizational reform (jensen & clark, 2013). this program also adopts a structured and system-wide incorporation of mentoring (hean, 2009). prashant jayapragas current issues in comparative education 94 at its core, the lep aims to develop principal-ship capability that is values-based, purposeful, and forward-looking, anchored on both strong people leadership and instructional leadership (ng, 2007). these officers have a track record of good potential and performance appraisal and have successfully passed a series of situational tests and selection interviews conducted by the ministry of education (moe). the selected participants are fully sponsored by the moe to engage in the lep full-time and they receive a salary during this stint (ng, 2008). such is the commitment by the moe to develop outstanding principals. this is similar to the finnish educational system, where school leaders are fully sponsored with support for induction, mentoring, peer-support and continuing professional education (hargreaves, halasz, pont, 2008). 5r5m framework the lep was conceptualized using evidence-based research to inform how principals should be developed for leadership roles (cohen, raudenbush & ball, 2003). the program emphasizes a continuous action–reflection loop and brings to the participants’ awareness of the interactive nature of the “roles” and “minds” of school leadership (nie, 2007). essentially, the way a leader thinks (their ‘minds’) will influence their actions (associated with their ‘roles’); hence it is important for principals to reflect on their actions in the various ‘roles’ to refine their ‘minds.’ sergiovanni’s (2009) five forces of leadership (with associated leadership roles, namely educational, technical, human, symbolic, and cultural) and gardner’s (2007) five minds for the future (i.e. ethical, respectful, creating, synthesizing, and disciplined) are integrated into an innovative 5r5m (five roles and five minds) framework of school leadership development. the 5r5m framework combines the multifaceted nature of principals’ roles with the mindsets needed to perform the roles, contextualized to suit singapore’s school leadership context. innovation and empowerment for the past 15 years, a key theme of the lep, like many exemplary leadership development programs from san diego to the mississippi delta, has been on innovation and the creation of new knowledge (darling-hammond, lapointe, meyerson & cohen, 2007; nie, 2007). today, this ability to create and transfer knowledge into novel contexts is viewed as imperative to a nation’s comparative advantage and is a major focus in international development (read, fernandez-hermosilla, anderson, mundy, 2015). the act of knowledge creation stimulates the participants’ thinking through a series of challenging learning experiences (jensen & clark, 2013). these include case studies, dialogues with senior education ministry officials, and an overseas study trip (ng, 2013). the study trip allows participants to gain first-hand knowledge on education initiatives by renowned institutes in countries such as finland, germany, canada, hong kong and the united states. the program also encourages leaders to be more selfreflective of their practice. participants use journals and the creative action project (cap) to reflect on their beliefs, values and purposes about instructional leadership and the singapore model for developing effective principal-ship capability current issues in comparative education 95 management, triggered by the diverse learning experiences encountered in the lep (ng, 2008). the exposure offered by the lep serves to raise participants’ leadership skills to new levels and empowers them to lead their schools in impactful ways upon the completion of the program. creative action project every lep participant is attached to a local school in singapore, where they are mentored by an experienced principal (walker & hallinger, 2015). mentoring is deeply embedded within many high-performing education systems in east asia, such as hong kong and shanghai (jansen & clark, 2013). under the guidance of a principal-mentor, the cap is a major undertaking by the lep participant in the attachment school. using the principles of ‘futuring’ and design thinking, participants explore and work with teachers and school leaders in the attachment school on a valueadding innovation that can transform the school system in 10-15 years’ time (nie, 2007). an innovation is not necessarily something new in education, but it should be something new to the school, with the potential of being scalable and sustainable. many of these projects are exciting initiatives that lead to significant improvements in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. darling hammond et al (2007) assert that one of the most important levers for learning is the close integration of coursework and fieldwork. in alignment with the literature on adult learning, the lep exposes participants to concrete elements of real-world practice. these in turn increase a school leader’s ability to analyze and systematically plan strategies for action (kolb & boyatzis, 1999). it is through this process that the lep participants learn to handle the complexities embedded in the conceptualization and implementation of the cap. theory of action the theory of action behind the lep is to produce principals with the capability to transform schools to be professional learning communities that nurture innovative students and teachers (hargreaves, halasz & pont, 2007), one that is driven by knowledge and learning. this espoused theory is premised on the fact that high quality school leadership training, such as the lep, grooms promising educators to lead schools to new realms of educational excellence, which should in turn improve teaching and learning, student growth and student achievement (ng, 2013; stewart, 2012; darlinghammond et al 2007). it is also a means to cultivate and strengthen a culture of learning among the teaching force (harvey & holland, 2011); a culture of leaders growing leaders, leaders growing teachers, and in the process, inspire and nurture a pipeline of school leaders (e.g. middle-managers, teacher-leaders etc.) who are accomplished in their profession and able to lead fellow educators. for the most part, this theory of action seems reasonable. dilworth (1996) noted that many leadership programs produce individuals who are technologically literate and able to deal with intricate problem-solving models, but are rather distanced from the human prashant jayapragas current issues in comparative education 96 dimensions. however in the case of the lep, it anchors itself firmly in the human dimensions through its social constructivism philosophy. the social orientations of constructivism, commonly linked to vygotsky (1978), emphasize the cultural and social context in which learning takes place. for example, in the interaction among the lep participants, knowledge is created, rather than acquired. participants also have to reflect on why they say the things they say, do the things they do and assume the things they assume. this challenges them to justify and defend their views. as learners learn best with and from one another, the participants are also engaged in learning in a way that they are expected to role-model and lead their staff, students and parents (ng, 2008). second, there is this inherent assumption that by judiciously selecting promising officers for the program, the moe develops principals who will better manage instructional and organizational change. this shall be critically examined later, but it is worthwhile to note that singapore uses a "select then train model" rather than a "train then select" one. this is because singapore is confident that she has the best possible leaders for her schools. next, there is also a wide range of inputs sought in the selection process (stewart, 2012). last, the key in singapore is not just the nature of the training, but the holistic approach to identifying, developing and retaining talent. young teachers are continually assessed for leadership potential and given opportunities to demonstrate and learn. those who exhibit a good track record and have shown potential are groomed into middle-management and then with accompanying experience and training, into vice principal roles, often while still in their late thirties (stewart, 2012). it is a structured system to develop human capital. in this respect, the selection of participants into the lep is a holistic and rigorous one. policy instruments the lep combines a good mix of policy instruments, which are both strong and salient, at the core of its framework. the policy acts as a mandate for the following reasons. first, the lep is something that all specially selected vice principals are expected to undertake, and second, instructional and organizational change would not occur with the frequency or consistency if principals did not receive sufficient professional development (jensen & clark, 2013). the program is also largely seen as a capacitybuilding mechanism, which aims to produce highly-able principals who will act as a catalyst for change and innovation. mcdowell and elmore (1987) report that capacity building policy mechanisms have immediate costs but long-term benefits. in this case, resources are invested to ensure a well-trained teaching faculty at the nie, a curriculum that is constantly reviewed to reflect educational changes and principal-mentors who are a good fit to provide sustained support. the benefit is the enhanced skills set of a carefully selected group who will be able to contribute significantly to school improvement in the future. the most beneficial inducement attached to the policy is the sponsorship of the course fee per participant and the fact each participant will receive a salary and as well as the singapore model for developing effective principal-ship capability current issues in comparative education 97 remunerations during the full-time training. the heavy investment on human capital indicates that the participants’ contributions are greatly valued. the inducement is also seen as a form of career progression and talent development. the strategic steps taken to strengthen school leadership in singapore are similar as those taken by effective educational systems in finland and the united states; however a key difference is that singapore places a strong emphasis on critical self-reflection and building change in organizations through sustained mentoring. policy support the lep is a sustained training program used to develop principal-ship capability by identifying the kind of leaders that is needed first, and then providing the individuals with the required skills and knowledge. and since the moe has been tracking the performance and development of its officers, it is in a suitable position to recommend developmental needs of the lep participants. the nie augments these needs with additional inputs based on what will give singapore school leaders an edge in leadership (ng, 2013). a similar model is also evident in hong kong. the education bureau very carefully selects and collaborates with its facilitators on a customized training program that is aligned with the educational reform efforts (jensen & clark, 2013). in this way, the university–government partnership ensures that the training addresses critical practice areas that are critical for learning and also more enduring theoretical areas. the american institutes for research (2010) assert that school leadership is most productive when situated within a supportive centralized leadership that sets the vision and expectations, but at the same time is also willing to step back and allow the principal with the autonomy to make forward-looking school-based decisions. it must be noted that some degree of decentralization is critical. the lep is not intended to be prescriptive, but rather empowers leaders with the flexibility on how they will go on to lead school improvement efforts. this allows moe principals to engage policy in terms that suit their values, interests and knowledge, while ensuring that their actions are aligned with the broader goals of education (cohen, moffitt, & goldin, 2007), thereby bridging the gap between policy and practice. effects of the lep the lep has had promising results. ng (2008) gathered feedback from 48 participants via an open-ended questionnaire, which was followed through with a number of informal interviews. he reported that 88% of the participants benefited from the open sharing and responsiveness of their mentors to their learning needs. participants also felt more confident in using their mentoring experience to develop their middle-managers and teachers. the principal-mentors embraced the opportunity for self-reflection and intellectual sparring. the four main themes that emerged from the participants’ learning are as follows: prashant jayapragas current issues in comparative education 98 i) learning to conduct futuring, ii) learning to contextualize, iii) learning to be adaptable and flexible, and iv) learning to collaborate in a self-organizing paradigm. futuring: better understanding of the ground sentiments the cap provided an opportunity for the lep participants to handle complexities that reflect the challenges of school leadership in a real-life context. some notable value-adding innovations, among many others include alternative assessments, massive open online courses (moocs), and socio-emotional learning in academic instruction (nie, 2015). through the process of doing the project, the participants experienced first-hand the challenges of leading people without rank and facilitating changes without position. participants also learned that it is necessary for leaders to contextualize theories to the local situations and role-model behavior as this helps in garnering teacher buy-in (ng, 2013; jensen & clark, 2013). this was a valuable learning experience as principals usually implement policies based on what is essential (rost, 1991; robinson, 2007). the process also undergirds the importance of establishing support from the ground in order to create meaningful school change. contextualizing best practices into the local context the overseas study visits were seen as an effective way to learn from other countries’ experiences, expand their network connections, and challenge participants' thinking on how good practices can be adapted to fit their school context. for example, a team that went to alberta noted how disconnected youths were encouraged to continue studying to complete high school with the slogan “you are not broken finish school your way." the team that went to finland saw how the education ministry pushes for more and better use of ict in schools through the development of educational games (ng, 2008). it is widely agreed that the lep engages participants in educative processes that draw on their life experiences and inner wisdom to better equip them to make more informed decisions about school improvement. recognized for developing leadership talent worldwide since the lep’s inception in 2001, the program has won widespread admiration from educators in many parts of the world. over the years, a number of senior educators from brunei have also joined singaporeans for this training (nie, 2007). in addition, every year, many educators and government officials from overseas are invited to visit and discuss the program's approach in preparing principals (nie, 2014). notably, the leaders in education program international (lepi), which was launched in 2005 builds on the highly successful lep. this program exposes school principals and education officers across the world to the current thinking in educational leadership and provides them the opportunity to spend time in singapore schools to experience first-hand how success or innovation is achieved the singapore model for developing effective principal-ship capability current issues in comparative education 99 (nie, 2015). this is testimony to the positive effects of the lep and how this model has the potential to be expanded to benefit a larger group (gurr, drysdale & mulford, 2006). challenges to date, it is unclear if the financial resources in running the lep is making a lasting impact on student learning, curricular innovations and teacher-development. if so, how sustainable is the program and to what extent does it offer a high return on investment? given the rise of accountability systems in education today, these are pertinent questions that should be answered (slavin, 2002). balance between instructional and organizational leadership results of hierarchical linear models, which are aligned with the aims of the lep, indicate that principals perceive they have high influence in instructional and supervisory activities when the teachers in their schools actively participate in decision-making (printy, 2010). this finding suggests the benefits of mutuality in school leadership. however, singaporean principals are hesitant to engage teachers in school change decisions (walker & hallinger, 2015). in a qualitative study of principals who were once part of a lep cohort, ng (2008) reports that principals spent less than 10% of their time on functions traditionally defined as instruction (such as classroom observations and professional development for teachers), making it a challenge to continuously spearhead curricular innovation (marzano, waters, & mcnulty, 2005). this view was similarly corroborated in the report leadership matters by the national association of secondary school principals (2013). researchers revealed that many principals had multiple, often conflicting priorities, which included responding to the needs of stakeholders and superiors. in finland, for example, all principals have to teach for a minimum of 2 hours per week (hargreaves et al, 2007) and this is in addition to them leading school change and serving the wider community. in tennessee, about 50% of a teacher's evaluation is based on principal observations (darling-hammond et al, 2007). while these requirements are well intentioned, advocates of this approach fail to adequately recognize the demands on the contemporary principal. balance between imagination and pragmatism ‘futuring’ is a major component in the cap undertaken by participants in their attachment school. according to albrecht (1994, p. 42), ‘futuring’ is "about riding shock waves, monitoring critical indicators and exploiting trends." many lep graduates gave feedback that since they would eventually be taking up leadership positions in their attachment schools, they would not get to implement all the ideas in their plans, which assumed the development of a school from scratch (ng, 2008). another critical challenge is finding the right calibration between imagination and pragmatism. by freeing participants from the shackles of reality, it sparks creativity but they find less application in their immediate circumstances. this is particularly true for principals who are deployed to assume leadership roles in low-performing or failing schools. it is a challenge to prioritize innovation when resources and talent are limited. in prashant jayapragas current issues in comparative education 100 such contexts, a behavioral change process will prioritize school improvement over innovation. in shanghai, for example, the ‘empowered management program’ is a significant policy aimed at reducing “between schools” inequality. principals in high-performing schools share ideas, information and resources to help school leaders in low-performing schools (jensen & clark, 2013), thereby building effective practices across both schools. this improvement strategy emphasizes leadership development and changing behaviors related to teaching, learning and equity. as effective school improvement will involve a behavioral and a cultural change process, it is rarely, if ever, achieved across a system in the short-term. this requires clear consistent implementation over several years. as a consequence, a contemporary challenge of leadership, in systemic terms, is not merely to distribute leadership, but also to articulate its intent to the stakeholders. ideally, each principal should be able to address the needs of and relationships between short term and long term improvement during their stint in a school (dodd & favaro, 2007), and must also consider how leadership effects will last beyond them and after they leave so that their benefits are spread from one leader to the next (hargreaves et al, 2007). this will encourage leaders to think hard and critically about how reflective leadership and deliberate collaboration can bring about benefits beyond the school. reflection being able to identify talent has been a cornerstone of how singapore develops its leaders across all public service sectors (darling-hammond et al, 2010). in retrospect, i notice a concerted emphasis on leveling the playing field for all students through the purposeful deployment of educators. for example, a new human resource policy strongly encourages the deployment of high-performing principals to high-needs schools so as to have direct impact on curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. there are two inherent beliefs here. first, organizational needs are seen as being more important than the fit between the principal and the school. while this does not come as a surprise, it is possible that a participant’s attachment school could be a level that he/she had never been in before. an example would be a principal who has been in a secondary school throughout his teaching career and is now deployed as a principal in a primary school. while there is value in challenging principals to handle complexity, being tasked to adapt to an entirely different system is a tall order. this begs the question, how can we expect principals to be instructional leaders if they are not familiar with the content and curriculum? this may potentially result in school leaders feeling less confident and overwhelmed about their role. second, there is the belief that a principal who succeeded in one school is able to do the same in another. while this caveat does not always hold, it does support the narrative the singapore model for developing effective principal-ship capability current issues in comparative education 101 that effective school leaders with a successful track record are better able to lead and manage change for a better tomorrow. however is this narrative compelling enough? the broader view of celebrating principal-ship should be about recognizing that every school—and every student—deserves an effective principal. although the lep utilizes selection criteria that are transparent, the program comes across as being highly elitist. every year, the cohort takes in at most 40 participants out of over 1000 eligible officers. this comes up to about 4-5% of the population, which makes the program “especiallyselective.” there is also the impending elitist overtone to the lep structure, just like the ‘teach for america’ model; a belief that the best and the brightest can make a positive difference to education (wasserman, 2011). if talents and financial resources are selectively distributed, it inevitably sends a message that the roles and voices of certain individuals are more valuably perceived. in what ways can we then leverage the merits of the lep such that all principals also benefit? to answer this critical question, we must first accept that every school deserves a capable principal. in finland, almost all novice principals possess the national qualification for principal-ship. for existing principals, though, there is not a strong tradition of good leadership training because principals are typically promoted through their schools to develop their own roles and their skills on the job (hargreaves et al, 2007). however, with decreasing enrolment and school closures, finland realizes that leadership cannot always be learnt on the job. this is a very similar challenge that singapore faces today. in view of a falling cohort size, 22 secondary schools will merge in the next 2 years (lim & ng, 2016). this would translate to lesser principals and hence the need to provide opportunities to deepen principal-ship capability. on the contrary, hong kong strengthened principals’ capacity and confidence by having all principals including aspiring, newly appointed and serving principals undergo a new leadership program when the reform policies were implemented. serving principals were given structured programs that individually identified, planned, and facilitated professional development. aspiring principals had to complete a ‘certification for principal-ship’ process that included a needs analysis, as well as a ‘preparation for principal-ship’ course (jensen & clark, 2013). both programs focus on the implementation of the reform agenda and leading behavioral change in schools. in view of this existing unevenness, there is an impetus for singapore to formalize a structure to develop principals’ capacity holistically. but given the lep’s financial efficiency issues, it is not cost-effective to have all potential principals undergo this program. however, policy makers could build on best practices within the lep to create a stronger and more holistic system of leadership preparation that is scalable and sustainable. prashant jayapragas current issues in comparative education 102 one way is to encourage deep, reflective mentoring, which seeks to promote a culture of leaders developing leaders. this framework is well-documented in many educational systems around the world (darling-hammond et al, 2010). for example, many experienced teachers mentor beginning teachers to ease them into the profession (martin, 2008). mentoring for professional development is grounded in the belief that the role of the teacher is not a lonely effort and having the ability to relate to peers concerning personal and professional concerns is a way to reduce that sense of isolation (fluckiger, mcglamery & edick, 2006). by extending this argument to every potential principal and should the autonomy to work with teachers through professional learning communities be given, this may promote a more reflective leadership practice on a systemic level. another possible model is to explore the possibility of lep graduates mentoring fellow principals within their district. this will enable school leaders to engage in personal inquiry and deepen conversations about school improvement, promote an environment that support leaders to learn from, learn with and learn on behalf of other colleagues, and ensure total system alignment between leading change and transforming schools through empowerment and team building. last, spearheading curricular innovation that is purposeful and transformative is not a one-person effort; it is a collaborative effort. it requires that principals take on the role as a ‘system’ leader (hargreaves et al, 2007). currently the way singapore principals function does not sufficiently engage school leaders in lateral, networked leadership (barber & mourshed, 2009). however, in finland, the decentralized system supports school leaders to engage readily with other leaders, parents and the wider community (harris & townsend, 2007). this form of leadership across schools is strongly associated with improved teaching and learning. in view that more special education students are expected to be integrated into the singapore mainstream curriculum (lim, 2016), school leaders and their teachers will inevitably be faced with unfamiliar pedagogical, behavioral and psychological challenges. forming cooperative professional partnerships with fellow leaders and stakeholders is strongly seen as a way to align school and municipalities to share resources, best practices and even think systematically about promoting a uniform vision about schooling. if the lep provides meaningful opportunities for aspiring principals to lead such efforts, the skills and experience will better prepare principals for the uncertainty ahead. conclusion highly effective schools are often characterized by high leadership stability. unlike many countries, principal development is a high priority in singapore's education policy agendas. the lep is a strong reflection of the goals at the ground level. the key underlying andragogical principle of the lep is knowledge construction, sharing and application within a social constructivist paradigm. this principle is also aligned with modern the singapore model for developing effective principal-ship capability current issues in comparative education 103 complexity theories, which argue that knowledge emerges from rich dynamic human interactions. in fact, this ability to create and transfer knowledge and, in turn implement creative yet feasible solutions is seen as imperative to a nation’s comparative advantage. moreover, as the lep pushes aspiring principals to reflect on their educational and personal philosophy, it also facilitates the internalization of values, and promotes selfawareness as well as personal mastery among the participants. this is a major focus in international development today. however, this model of leadership development is “especially selective” as a principal’s role is recognized as being both pivotal and critical. the benefits include developing principals who are able to critically examine future trends in education, look beyond the immediate vision of the school, and develop foresight to move education into the future. it also challenges school leaders to contextualize theories to the local context for productive action. while there are gems within the lep that can be expanded beyond our education system, other educational settings should not be too quick to emulate a country like singapore that serves approximately just 500,000 students. in fact, countries like finland have a much more homogenous racial and socioeconomic diversity than us (jackson & hasak, 2014). what works in one context may not work in another; however, if used with a clear purpose, the lep can serve as a useful framework for principal-ship development. this also opens up the possibility of having experienced principals and even lep graduates to mentor aspiring school leaders into the “roles” and “minds” of principal-ship. in singapore, this will be achieved by developing clear plans and effective processes for leadership succession. positive improvement depends on planned succession, leaving a legacy, mentoring new leaders and creating great leadership density and capacity from which future high level leaders will evolve within a common vision of institutional and societal progress. author’s note: the opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author, and not necessarily the views of the moe, singapore. about the author: prashant jayaprags is a curriculum officer at the ministry of education, singapore. he started his teaching career at raffles institution, an independent all-boy school before pursuing his m.a. degree in education at columbia university, teachers college. contact: 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(2003). balanced leadership: what 30 years of research tells us about the effect of leadership on student achievement. aurora, co: mid-continent research for education and learning. microsoft word 16_1_francine_menashy.docx © 2014, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 16 (1), 13-25. theorizing privatization in education: comparing conceptual frameworks and the value of the capability approach francine menashy university of massachusetts boston the past decade has witnessed a notable shift in the international education policy environment, characterized by a rapid growth in private educational provision. in the context of a divisive debate on the role of the non-state sector in primary and secondary education, this paper grapples with the theoretical underpinnings of both advocacy and critique of educational privatization, paying particular attention to a rise in low-fee private schools and public-private partnerships. it is argued that three of the most commonly adopted conceptual frameworks – the neoclassical, social primary goods and rights-based approaches – each have notable shortcomings when applied to an analysis of privatization. in light of this, the overarching aim of this paper is to offer the human capability approach and to argue that it is the strongest and most appropriate framework for understanding and analyzing the complex and multi-faceted issue of private sector engagement in education. introduction the past decade has witnessed a notable shift in the education policy environment, characterized by a rapid growth in private educational provision. in the global south in particular, two forms of privatization have risen dramatically: low-fee private schools that cater to low-income families, and public-private partnerships wherein governments are financing non-state school operators via vouchers or charters. supporters promote private provision as a reform policy to increase access, competition and thereby quality, along with relieving public sector costs (fielden and larocque, 2008; patrinos et al, 2009). on the other hand, critics have drawn attention to equity-related impacts of privatization on marginalized students, as well as the potential weakening of public school systems (plank, 2005; robertson et al, 2012; härmä, 2011). in the context of this debate, in this paper i grapple with the theoretical underpinnings of both advocacy and critique of educational privatization. i suggest that policies concerning the issue of privatization are theoretically situated in very particular conceptual approaches or frameworks. most notable is the single most predominant framework employed to support privatization in education, which is rooted in neoclassical economics and also commonly termed neoliberal. a wealth of literature from within the field of comparative and international education (cie) has argued against the neoclassical framework, critiquing it as not adequately capturing the equity implications of associated policies, and as unethical by subjugating the end goal of equity to efficiency. critics have demanded the adoption of an approach that can result in more socially just and equitable systems of education (klees, 2008; 2012; harvey, 2005; olssen, et al, 2004; saad-filho and johnson, 2005). however, i argue that the most commonly adopted alternative frameworks for social policy – namely the social primary goods and rights-based approaches – despite offering significant responses to neoclassicism, still have notable shortcomings. in light of this, the overarching aim of this paper is to offer the human capability approach and to argue that it is the strongest and most appropriate framework for an analysis of the complex and multi-faceted issue of private francine menashy 14 current issues in comparative education sector engagement in education, able to rigorously counter the dominance of the neoclassical approach. this paper structurally borrows in part from robeyns (2006), who similarly applies conceptual approaches (or “models”) to education, but pays particular attention to issues concerning gender. in this article, i first provide a brief descriptive account of recent trends in privatization in education, focusing on the rise of public-private partnerships and low-fee private schools. this is followed by descriptions of the neoclassical, rights-based, social primary goods, and human capability approaches, and their applications to privatization policies. comparisons are then drawn between the human capability approach and each of the other frameworks. by exposing contrasts with the capability framework, attention is drawn to the shortcomings of the other approaches. given that privatization policies often rest on the value of parental choice, throughout the paper particular attention is paid to different conceptions of the notion of choice and to what degree individual choice ought to be given primacy in social policy. the context of private sector engagement in education private actors are increasingly involved in various forms of k-12 school provision, financing, and policy-making. one of the most notable features of this shift is the rise in private school operators (oecd, 2010). two forms of private sector engagement showing significant growth are public-private partnerships (ppps) and low-fee private schools (lfps). although privatization happens in a multitude of other ways (including corporate and philanthropic activities, religious education, shadow schooling, etc), i focus on ppps and lfps in this paper due to their recent prominence in academic research (belfield and levin, 2005; robertson et al., 2012; srivastava and walford, 2007) and in the policies of international organizations (ifc, 2010; unicef and adb, 2011; world bank, 2011; world bank and imf, 2011). “ppps” denotes a very broad category that covers any joining of the public and private sectors in education (draxler, 2012). this paper focuses on ppps in educational provision, including such mechanisms as voucher schemes, where parents receive a government-issued credit to pay for private school tuition, or fully publicly financed but privately administered schools, such as charter schools. such ppp policies are argued to respond to low government capacity to deliver quality education by enabling a shift in the state’s function from a provider of schooling to that of a financier and regulator of private operators (fielden and laroque, 2008; patrinos et al., 2009; roberston et al., 2012). similarly, over the past decade, there has been a rise in the establishment of low-fee private schools in the global south. such schools, which can be operated by either individuals or a larger entrepreneurial group, are fully-private (as in both privately financed and provided), and charge what is considered to be nominal fee to parents. while some low-fee schools are not-forprofit, the majority are for-profit establishments targeting low-income families (rose, 2009; srivastava and walford, 2007; tooley and dixon, 2006). supporters of lfps argue that low-fee schools respond to the very low quality of public schools and can meet the demands of parents, including those living below poverty levels (see dixon, 2013; tooley, 2004; 2005; tooley and dixon, 2006). in the next section, i describe and map four theoretical frameworks onto an analysis of such forms of privatization as ppps and lfps. the neoclassical approach scholars from a variety of disciplines, including cie, have argued that for the past three decades public policies in the global south have been overwhelmingly underpinned by a paradigm informed by neoclassical economic assumptions. grounded in liberal principles of theorizing privatization in education current issues in comparative education 15 individualism and freedom of choice, neoclassical economics assumes the primacy of freemarket mechanisms such as competition in order to achieve optimal efficiency, quality and accountability within services. by critiquing government capacity whilst cautioning against state-run monopolies, a neoclassical approach proposes a decrease in the state’s role in services (arndt, 1989; alkire and deneulin, 2010a; harvey, 2005; olssen, et al, 2004). reducing the role of the state in educational financing and provision, spurring competition in order to increase accountability, efficiency and quality, and increasing the choices of individual parents are all justifications rooted in neoclassicism, which informs policies supporting, for instance, public-private partnerships and low-fee private schools (chan, 2007; ladd, 2003; menashy, 2013; olssen, 1996; olssen et al., 2004; plank and sykes, 2003). for example, in terms of lfps, supporters argue that it is significant when “parents send their children to private unaided schools when there are free government alternatives” and that the “main advantage” private schools have over government schools is accountability (tooley, 2004, p. 5). similarly, ppps are advocated because “the private sector can compete for students with the public sector. in turn, the public sector has an incentive to react to this competition by increasing the quality of the education that it provides” and “it [a ppp] can increase efficiency and choice” (patrinos et al., 2009, p. 4). as mentioned, a neoclassical framework has been widely critiqued as narrow and minimizing the equity implications of its prescriptions, including educational privatization (fine and rose, 2001; tomasevski, 2003; klees, 2008). such critiques will be examined in more detail later in this paper when the neoclassical and capability frameworks are compared. the rights-based approach a rights-based approach to education has a number of interrelated dimensions: the right of access to education, which includes free access to basic education; the right to quality education; the right to respect within education; accessible higher education; available education for those who have not completed schooling, amongst others (grey, 2012; jonsson, 2003; manion and menashy, 2013; robeyns, 2006; unicef, 2008; unesco and unicef, 2007). tomasevski restates these dimensions in the “4 as” of the right to education: available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable (2001; 2006). education as a right has moreover been enshrined in a number of human rights treaties (un, 1948; 1966; 1989). evaluating privately provided education under a rights-based approach is complex. many proponents of education as a right consider the chief “duty bearer” of education – even over and above parents, guardians and teachers – to be the state (tomasevski, 2003; unicef, 2008). under a rights-based framework, governments are the optimal provider and financier of education. therefore, significant inclusion of the private sector contrasts “the corresponding government responsibility” (tomasevski, 2003, p. 69), and when education is characterized as a right, “it is clearly the responsibility of the state” (archer, 2006, p. 7). private participation can therefore be deemed problematic and/or arguably contradicts a rights-based approach (manion and menashy, 2013; menashy, 2013). however, according to international law, it is permissible for any private actor to establish and run a school. although the state must still monitor and regulate such schools to ensure standards and rights within education are met (grey, 2012; icescr, 1966). in light of this, private providers, including lfps, are permitted to exist, so long as government deems so. francine menashy 16 current issues in comparative education as well, under the 1948 universal declaration of human rights, parents ought to have the freedom to choose their child’s school (un, 1948, article 26iii). scholars have pointed to how this sub-article in the declaration points to the support of a system inclusive of private providers, including both ppps and lfps, where choice is more readily available than in a homogeneous public system (willmore, 2004). as a result of such diverse interpretations of rights doctrines, there are some critiques associated the rights-based approach in relation to the specific issue of privatization that will be explained more fully below. the social primary goods approach another common framework for social policy is derived from john rawls’ theories concerning justice and social primary goods, rooted in philosophical liberalism. according to rawls, social primary goods consist of those things all humans desire, irrespective of whatever else they desire. such goods might be distributed or ensured by private or public institutions and reflect “what would be essential to serving our developmental and our agency interests as free and equal citizens” (brighouse and unterhalter, 2010, p.194). social primary goods are deemed integral to human freedom and liberty, and rawls gives primacy to “extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others” (rawls, 1971). for rawls, moreover, a just society requires a just distribution of social primary goods, where such distribution cannot harm the least-advantaged members (2001). rawls’ theories have widely underpinned social welfare policies, including those involving educational provision and financing. social primary goods are essentially resources, and so are means to the ends of liberty, freedom and equality. the focus is on the attainment and possession of these resources, and not on their use, nor on the characteristics of those who use them. included amongst these social primary goods are such liberal ideals as basic freedom of thought, movement, income, self-respect, and others that act as essential resources (rawls, 1971; robeyns and brighouse, 2010; sen, 1992). a key tenet of liberal philosophy hinges on the value of choice, and the primacy of liberty and individualism embedded in liberal theories – including those of rawls – would dictate that choice is of a paramount concern. in terms of educational privatization, the core of many supporters’ arguments centers upon the value of school choice. under a social primary goods approach to education, it is arguable that equality of choice is a key element, so long as some sort of education is provided – irrespective of differences of outcomes. one can extrapolate from an application of rawls’ theory that private sector participation is unproblematic so long as there is equality of freedom to choose a school and therefore access to education. it can be argued, therefore, that under a rawlsian framework, educational choice – which underpins many privatization policies including ppps and lfps – ought to be supported. later in this paper i provide a comparison between the applications of the social primary goods and capability approaches to educational privatization, highlighting some major contrasts. the human capability approach a capability approach is explicitly normative and provides a framework for the analysis of policies based on implications for individuals’ capabilities – what a person is able to do, who a person is able to be (robeyns, 2005; 2011; sen, 1992; 1999; 2005). a framework for capability does not focus on a person’s happiness or income level. it evaluates whether or not an individual can achieve certain “functionings” that are enabled through capabilities. capabilities are therefore opportunities, and functionings are what such opportunities allow a human being to concretely do. as an example, being literate is a functioning. the opportunity to be taught how to read is a capability. being healthy is a functioning, whereas having access to health services is a capability. through emphasizing our opportunities – which can also be conceived theorizing privatization in education current issues in comparative education 17 of as freedoms – the capability approach broadly “covers all dimensions of human well-being” (robeyns, 2005, p.96). a capability approach to development concentrates on removing obstacles to achieving those functionings an individual believes to be valuable, and so the concepts of capability, opportunity, freedom and agency are closely related. resources, therefore, are not as important as an individual’s capability to convert these resources into functionings (drèze and sen, 1995; sen, 1993; walker, 2004). the capability framework has been applied by scholars to education and educational policy in a number of areas, including gender equity, curriculum, disabilities and higher education (nussbaum, 2000; unterhalter, 2007; robeyns, 2006; manion, 2010; terzi, 2008; walker, 2006). amartya sen, who spearheaded the notion of human capability, has briefly examined educational provision (he discusses the characteristics of “basic educational opportunities,” arguing schooling to have a “public-good component” [1999, p. 128-129]); however, the capability approach has not been mapped onto the particular public policy debate of privatization in education. i argue that the framework would add significant value to the analysis of the divisive policy prescriptions associated with private schooling. when applied to evaluate a policy, the capability approach focuses on the functionings that can be achieved. therefore, a question posed when analyzing educational privatization policies through a capability lens would center on whether such policies impact an individual’s ability to achieve functionings, and this evaluation may be dependent on context. for instance, are the abilities of some students hindered by privatization; are they less able to learn, to read, to become educated well enough to in turn achieve more functionings such as getting a job, earning an income, independence? it is crucial as well to think broadly – how does private provision impact all students, in all schools? as explained above, private sector engagement in education takes on a variety of forms that, when evaluated, must be contextualized. an arguable strength of the capability approach is that contextualization is necessary before analysis. when applying the capability approach to the particular context of policies that permit and/or promote lfps, attention must be paid to school fees. fees by their nature, regardless of how low, enact a barrier for some students. inequitable access is therefore inevitable. for those lacking the resources to access these schools, their abilities to achieve the capability of being educated in an lfp, and in turn certain functionings, are inhibited. for instance, studies from india have shown that with the rise in low-fee private schools, government schools have become the “option of last resort for the poorest and most marginalized” (härmä, 2011, p. 156; härmä and rose, 2012). as an example, a recent study of lfps in india concluded that private schooling “is unlikely to be the best means of providing education for all children in the longer term in ways that respect equity principles” (woodhead et al, 2013, p. 73). a variety of studies from africa echo these findings (barrera-osorio, 2007; härmä and adefisayo, 2011; rose, 2009). even very low-fee private schools create an additional tier of education that exacerbates already inequitable education systems. if the goal is to allow all students the capability to attain a quality education, leading to a large set of functionings that will enormously improve their well-being, in many contexts, the low fees may act as an obstacle. ppps can be characterized quite differently than lfps, as schools are publicly financed despite private provision. as mentioned, ppps are widely advocated based on the appeal and value of choice. in ppp programs, such as those involving vouchers or stipends, an environment is created where schools compete for students, and it is argued by proponents that because parents will choose the better school, this competition will lead to increased quality. however, francine menashy 18 current issues in comparative education when assessed under a capability framework, choice in education is only valuable if it can contribute to the expansion of a person’s desired functionings. this is dependent on what sen terms conversion factors (1992). conversion factors are essentially “the degree in which a person can transform a resource into a functioning” (robeyns, 2011). such resources can include goods or services, such as an educational choice program. social conversion factors are socially constituted and are dependent on the society in which an individual resides, including “public policies, social norms, practices that unfairly discriminate, societal hierarchies, or power relations related to class, gender, race, or caste” (robeyns, 2011). i argue that, depending on the context, social conversion factors impact the ways in which school choice programs, as resources, can be converted into access to a higher quality education for an individual. choice, particularly when it is operationalized, for example in a voucher program, is a resource that can enable students to gain a number of functionings via a high quality education. if a student (and family) has a high social conversion factor, it is likely that this student can capitalize on choice policies. high social conversion factors in this context can result from social capital or membership to a dominant group, which allows easier navigation of the system and increases access to schools with either official or unofficial admission screenings. on the other hand, if one has low conversion factors, for instance the family knows fewer people in the community, does not speak the dominant language, lives in a rural setting, or belongs to a marginalized population, the ability to convert a choice program into access to a high-quality private school is lower. therefore, in the context of school choice, those with lower social conversion factors are less likely to attain the same functionings as those with high social conversion factors, which in turn means that one group of students remains at a disadvantage. privatization may enable choice, but this choice is unequally distributed, favoring students with higher conversion factors, and as argued by alkire and deneulin: “a test of inequality is whether people’s capability sets are equal or unequal” (2010b, p.31). if in many cases students cannot convert “choice” into capabilities, and inequality is only perpetuated, then it is arguable under the capability framework that choice should not be the focus of public policies in education. the capability approach would stress that policies focus on the “ends” we hope to achieve, and that is quality education for all, not some. the avenue towards this end cannot be through choice programs, because of differences between conversion factors. i argue that a capability approach would likely dictate that policies in education ought to give primacy to the improvement of public systems, where the resources provided can be converted by all students (while not assuredly to the same degree) in a more equitable way than in the context of a privatized, marketized system. however, importantly, any policy developed under the capability framework would be dependent on context. the human capability approach in comparison capability versus the neoclassical approach as discussed, policies based on a neoclassical model support private sector engagement in part because of the elements of choice and competition. such policies, however, focus on the means, and often engender outcomes, or ends, that are inequitable. while it is possible that low-fee private schools open doors to some poorer or marginalized students, it is unlikely that the poorest of the poor can gain access. as mentioned earlier, lfps create an additional tier of schooling that puts the most marginalized students at a further disadvantage. for-profit schools that are both financed and administered privately can then be critiqued as exclusive and inequitable (brighouse, 2004). under a capability framework, a marketized system that focuses on individual choice and competition as a means to economic prosperity and development emphasize the wrong elements of education policy, where primacy should be given not to the theorizing privatization in education current issues in comparative education 19 means, but the ends – equitable capabilities and thereby functionings that result from a given policy. privatization of education is moreover part of a bigger neoclassically-driven project to enhance economic growth through the development of human capital. as unterhalter puts it: “…what is important for human capital theorists is to understand the economy as a system that will support growth… the human development and capability approach place the quality of human life – and not economic growth – at the centre of its concerns” (2010, p.213). an educational system that is marketized and allows for choice and privatization may contribute to economic growth whilst conceiving of students as key contributors to human capital. but the students within this system, particularly those with lower conversion factors, can still be capability deprived (alkire and deneulin, 2010a). neoclassical approaches to education policy emphasize not the end result of human capability, equality and well-being, but instead focus on the means towards economic growth and in particular efficient human capital development. privatization policies often exemplify this focus. capability versus the rights-based approach sen does not advocate that a definitive list of capabilities be developed, partly because of a “difficulty in seeing how the exact lists and weights would be chosen without appropriate specification of the context of their use” (2005, p.157). sen’s resistance to listing capabilities due to problems of contextualization is partially responsive to problematic features of the human rights framework. critiques have been made concerning the human rights claim to universality (brown 1999; donnelly 2003; freeman 2002; sen 2005). because human rights are essentially universalizing principles, critics have questioned the implications of asserting a list of decontextualized overarching values for all people. the capability approach does not fall prey to this critique, for the capabilities which individuals ought to be afforded are dependent upon the functionings he or she desires to achieve, not on some pre-designed set of rights. for instance, under a rights-based approach, those who interpret education as a government responsibility – and not that of the private sector – arguably do so universally. universalized ideals around educational provision moreover tend to consider private actors as a single group. but the private sector is characterized by a multitude of providers, including for-profit, nonprofit or religious schools, to name but a few. the right-based approach, as a universalizing legal doctrine, therefore is potentially too rigid a framework to apply to policies around privatization. a capability approach offers a framework for analysis of educational policies that allows contextualization before prescriptions are presented. somewhat paradoxically, along with the rigidity of rights-based approaches, scholars have drawn attention to the vagueness of human rights, and some of the contradictions and criticisms rights declarations engender. as sen states: “despite the tremendous appeal of the idea of human rights, it is also seen by many as being intellectually frail – lacking in foundation and perhaps even in coherence and cogency. the remarkable co-existence of stirring appeal and deep conceptual skepticism” (2005, p.151). sen proposes that the capability approach embraces much of the aspirational tone of human rights (“the concepts of human rights and human capabilities have something of a common motivation” 2005, p.152), but they differ because capability theory does not suffer from the same ambiguities and potential inconsistencies. for instance, as described above, the rights-based framework prescribes two very different legal obligations concerning private engagement in education. some interpret the 1948 declaration of human rights to support public education, and forcefully critique private schools (see tomasevski, 2003; 2006), while others interpret the declaration to advocate strongly for school francine menashy 20 current issues in comparative education choice and private providers. as willmore states: “the universal declaration of human rights also guarantees parents the ‘right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children’ [article 26iii]. this right is violated in virtually every country on earth…” (willmore, 2004, p.18). therefore, the rights-based framework can be adopted to either support or reject privatization policies. this ambiguity unfortunately indicates that a rights-based approach has limited applicability to the evaluation of educational privatization policies. by allowing for contextualization and avoiding some of the contradictory legalistic language embedded in rights declarations, the capability approach does not suffer from the critiques levied against a rights-based approach. capability versus the social primary goods approach as described, the social primary goods approach focuses upon means, or resources. included amongst these social primary goods is the general concept of individual freedom and liberal notions of individual choice. from this, freedom of choice – as a resource with which one might attain an education – can be argued to be amongst the social primary goods. rawls’ theory could therefore be easily adopted to advocate for private sector engagement, for private providers increase the scope and variety of school choices. from the capability perspective, however, a rawlsian-informed framework has some drawbacks. for instance, sen argues that a person’s resources do not indicate whether or not he or she is able to capitalize on these resources and translate them into functionings, due to differences in conversion factors (sen, 1997; 1999). equality therefore cannot be adequately evaluated through the social primary goods approach. as sen explains: “to judge equality… in the space of primary goods amounts to giving priority to the means of freedom over any assessment of the extents of freedom, and this can be a drawback in many contexts. the practical importance of the divergence can be very great indeed in dealing with inequalities related to gender, location, and class, and also to general variations in inherited characteristics” (1992, p.89). he furthermore states: “the capability perspective allows us to take into account the parametric variability in the relation between the means, on the one hand, and the actual opportunities, on the other” (sen, 2005, p.153), showing the superiority of the capability approach over and above the social primary goods framework. for example, a voucher can be defined as a means, a resource with which a parent can choose and pay private school tuition with public funds. but simply evaluating this single resource is not adequate for understanding whether or not this voucher can contribute to the student’s well-being. for instance, studies have shown that voucher systems can create enormous inequities within education systems, where parents with more social capital – higher conversion factors – can more readily navigate such systems and manage to gain access to better quality schools for their children (carnoy and mcewan, 2003; lara et al., 2009; molnar, 2001). it can be argued that a social primary goods approach would give primacy to choice, and therefore ppps. a capability approach, however, differs by emphasizing the equity implications of such programs. choice, moreover, is a concept that should not be confused with agency, or opportunity. in a variety of policies advocating private provision, individual choice is presented as a good in itself. the capability framework, however, “recognizes that the goal is not to expand the number of choices – it is to expand the quality of human life” (alkire and deneulin, 2010b, p.34). the capability approach furthermore evaluates equality based on people’s capability sets (alkire and deneulin, 2010b; sen, 1980; 1992; 1999; 2005). if human well-being were to be assessed based on a person’s choices, then all must have equality of choice. however, in the theorizing privatization in education current issues in comparative education 21 case of, for instance, low-fee private schools, only those families with means to pay the fees are able to enjoy this choice. it is of course plausible that freedom of choice in education might not be readily defined as a social primary good, but as shown, this conceptualization is certainly plausible and therefore up for debate. the ambiguity would then be problematic in attempting to apply this framework, indicating another shortcoming of a social primary goods approach to assessing privatization. conclusion the rise in private provision of education, in such forms as ppps and lfps, has engendered a concurrent rise in criticisms. such critiques oftentimes concentrate on the dominant neoclassical theoretical underpinnings to education policies which support privatization, calling for a more socially just framework. i propose, however, that the alternative approaches that are most commonly employed to counter the neoclassical framework are each limited and inadequate. in light of this argument, in this paper i have endeavored to demonstrate that the human capability approach ought to be embraced and adopted more readily when examining issues and policies concerning educational privatization. a capability framework allows for greater contextualization and avoids major ambiguities that characterize the rights-based approach. as well, unlike the social primary goods approach, under a capability framing the notion of choice within education is less important than the outcomes that education policies engender. i argue that the capability approach offers a more refined critique of the neoclassical framework than other theories commonly invoked by scholars and policy-makers within cie, one that can be contextually applied and lead towards greater equity. as a new development agenda is determined within the post-2015 context, it is imperative to be cognizant of the new and significant rise in private educational providers throughout the global south. moreover, international education policies – including those either advocating or disputing increased privatization – are inevitably informed by theoretical frameworks which, as i have argued, can have critical implications for equity. a better understanding of such frameworks, including both their strengths and shortcomings, 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(2007). global values and gender equality in education: needs, rights and capabilities. in s. fennell and m. arnot (eds) gender education and equality in a global context: conceptual frameworks and policy perspectives. new york: routledge, 19-33 unterhalter, e. (2010). education. in s. deneulin (ed) an introduction to the human development and capability approach. london: international development research centre. pp. 207227 walker, m. (2004). human capabilities, education and 'doing the public good': towards a capabilitytheorizing privatization in education current issues in comparative education 25 based theory of social justice in education. in aare 2004 conference papers. retrieved march 20, 2013 from http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/153079114?versionid=166831201. walker, m. (2006). towards a capability-based theory of social justice for education policymaking. journal of education policy. 21(2), 163-185. willmore, l. (2004). basic education as a human right. institute of economic affairs. december. 17-21. woodhead, m., m. frost and z. james (2013). does growth in private schooling contribute to education for all? evidence from a longitudinal, two cohort study in andhra pradesh, india. international journal of educational development. 33, 65-73. world bank (2011). education sector strategy 2020. washington dc: world bank. world bank and imf (2009). global monitoring report 2009: a development emergency. washington dc: world bank. current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 1, fall 2016 © 2016, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(1), 43-53. “i want to help girls like me”: an exploration of the educational aspirations of teenage girls in kolkata slums rebecca ipe university of oxford this qualitative study used participatory visual research in order to develop an understanding of the educational experiences of urban poor adolescent girls in kolkata and to elicit their capabilities. the sample comprised urban poor girls who were undergoing formal education at a religious, philanthropic primary school in kolkata. findings from the drawings and interviews reveal the girls’ ambitions to be future providers and breadwinners for their families, roles socially accepted as the preserve of men in india’s male-dominated society. ultimately, longitudinal research on these ‘first-generation’ girls may shed more insight into understanding educational pathways of girls from urban slums and provide more comprehensive understandings of social mobility. introduction educated girls are still a rarity amongst the urban poor populations where deprivation and inequality are starkly evident and education is a luxury in the struggle for survival (un-habitat, 2003, ernst et al., 2013). this paper defines the urban poor as those living in informal settlements (also known as slums). slums or informal settlements are characterised by makeshift housing erected on municipal land, a lack of basic services such as piped water and electricity, and grinding poverty. informal settlements are an inescapable feature of major urban cities in low and middle income (lmic) countries, and are expected to increase in population in the next few decades: “it is projected that in the next 30 years, the global number of slum dwellers will increase to about 2 billion” (un habitat, 2003, p. xxvi). the word ‘slum’ carries negative connotations which falls short of the complexities of the neighbourhoods described. from a critical reading of the texts generated on the subject of slums two attitudes emerge: righteous horror, evoked by un reports which mercilessly detail the worst conditions of slums or the romantic “flower in the filth” phenomenon which popular media such as slumdog millionaire (boyle, 2009) or born into brothels (boo, 2012) typify. certain uses and arrangements of words and actions that we may call cultural may be especially strategic sites for the production of consensus (appadurai, 2004). this paper, therefore, takes a deliberate stance in using the rebecca ipe current issues in comparative education 44 phrase ‘urban poor’ and relying on ‘informal settlements’ to describe these neighbourhoods. despite the ubiquity of informal settlements, there are gaps in the academic literature concerning education provision and equitable outcomes for urban poor children (lewis, 2008). many out-of-school children live in informal settlements, which are often bypassed in national surveys, indicating that the number of out-of-school children may be higher than estimated (carr-hill, 2012). in india, informal settlements are further divided into ‘notified’ (officially recognised) and ‘non-notified slums’. ‘notified slums’ may typically have better quality housing and municipal services while ‘non-notified slums’ are considered illegal and in constant danger of eviction. studies conducted in informal settlements paint an almost uniform picture of hardship and deprivation (subbaraman, 2014; ernst et al., 2013; marx et al., 2014). moreover, ‘notified slums’ often battle similar adverse living conditions as ‘non-notified slums’ (auerbach, 2013). ethnographic and empirical research has revealed families can live in informal settlements for decades (thorbek, 1994; tsujita, 2013). this not only disrupts the assumption that their residency is temporary, but it also indicates bleak prospects for upward social mobility. research shows that the urban poor desire their residencies in the informal settlement to be temporary and perceive that education for their children is the only way to avoid a life of permanent poverty (cameron, 2010; tsujita, 2013). however, the demands of poverty and various inescapable elements associated with urban poverty, such as violence and economic instability (abuya et al., 2012; ohba, 2013), pose major barriers to accessing and completing education. ethnographic work in south asian informal settlements shows that they are often governed by traditional, patriarchal norms of culture, which bind women to their homes through notions of honour and respectability (thorbek, 1994). urban poor women must adhere to these cultural norms while navigating an everchanging social landscape, where the effects of globalisation offer opportunities to imbibe new ideas and find potential employment. susanne thorbek’s years of ethnographic research in a sri lankan informal settlement revealed how notions of honour constrained women to the point where communal strife was rife and women rarely had opportunities to band together to work out solutions to community issues. according to gail kelly, “in traditional societies early marriage is a major impediment to expansion of schooling among girls, especially at upper-primary or secondary years.” (kelly, p. 19). yet, research amongst poor communities in india suggests that girls’ access to education is growing, thanks to government incentives such as conditional cash transfers and a social revolution that has risen in tandem with the rise of a well-educated middle class and information technology workforce. however, recent research points out that girls’ education remains a complex issue amongst poor communities who battle with the tension of keeping the girls home to serve the family’s needs versus sending them to school for returns that may never materialise. jeffery et al.’s (2005) anthropological work in a rural village in india “i want to help girls like me” current issues in comparative education 45 revealed that girls were encouraged to pursue primary education, as that was seen to raise their “value” in the marriage market. tsujita’s (2013) survey of informal settlements in delhi noted that many young women were either homemaking or working in factories; few of them possessed anything more than primary education. yet, if the proliferation of low-fee paying schools in informal settlements is anything to go by, parents are willing to invest what little they have in perceived quality education for their children (tooley & dixon, 2007). studies repeatedly document the urban poor as perceiving education as the pathway out of poverty. as lancy lobo (1995) observes in her survey of informal settlements in india, “almost the entire workforce living in the city slums depend mainly on a variety of lower category, less paid and footloose jobs” (p. 32). with these menial, often peripatetic jobs being the main form of employment among urban low-income families, education is seen by parents as a way of breaking into the competitive whitecollar workforce that promises better wages and more economic stability. this study aims to probe the educational experiences of adolescent girls living in informal settlements in kolkata, india. so far, there is a distinct lack of research on this subject. studies on urban poor girls’ experience of education tendto focus on violence and the risks associated with schooling or on low-fee private schools (kabiru, 2013; oduro et al., 2013). previous exposure to and experience in urban poor indian communities had shown me that girls lack power in their communities and are often regarded as liabilities thanks to the exigencies of dowry, which although officially outlawed by the indian government, is still widely practised today. i was especially interested in the ‘deviants,’ girls who defied this popular stereotype and who managed to obtain higher education despite great adversity. this study’s definition of positive deviance stems from studies by nutritionists zeitlin et al. (1994) who labeled deviants as those with low ses who demonstrated outcomes that exceeded expectations. my research was motivated by wondering whether slum girls who were currently being educated possessed a greater sense of their capabilities and how they identified these capabilities. a capability is “a person’s ability to do valuable acts or reach valuable states of being; (it) represents the alternative combinations of things a person is able to do or be” (sen, 1993, p.30). the capability approach as described by amartya sen eschews utilitarian approaches to educational development and “sets out to be sensitive to human diversity; complex social relations, a sense of reciprocity between people; appreciation that people can reflect reasonably on what they value for themselves and others; and a concern to equalize, not opportunities or outcomes, but rather capabilities” (walker & unterhalter, 2007, p.3). most women in informal settlements are shrouded with the language of oppression and shame, and have a narrow span of activities and roles that are prescribed to them by the dominant patriarchal culture under which they operate. the capability approach, with its emphasis on existing abilities rather than future economic attainment, thus provided an ideal theoretical backdrop for this study rebecca ipe current issues in comparative education 46 the urban poor of kolkata kolkata contains close to 300,000 informal settlements, home to 1,409,721 of the city’s population (chaudhuri, 2015; kundu, 2003). according to information from the 2011 national census, this is about a third of the city’s urban population. hinduism is the predominant religion at around 70 % of the population, with islam following it at 20%. other religions such as christianity (0.88%) and jainism (0.47%) figure at less than 1%. the cycle of poverty trapping urban poor kolkatans has raised media interest (niyogi, 2012,) as a quarter of its population lives below the poverty line. many of the urban poor do not possess identification cards because of their ‘unauthorised’ residence, thereby lacking voting power and the ability to attract government attention. through volunteer networks in canada, i had located a religious, philanthropic school in kolkata that catered exclusively for children in poor areas. this school is run by a christian organisation funded by donors in high-income countries such as canada and sweden. due to time constraints arising out of my master’s degree, i finally chose this school after emailing several schools in india, as this school was willing to let me do research in the timeframe i had requested. all research sessions were conducted in an empty classroom the headmistress had allotted me, with an interpreter present at all sessions. this was in keeping with the school’s ethics requirements. the school is a religious philanthropic school, which has been running in the area for two decades, and prides itself on its trustworthiness. while the headmistress is an indian christian and the school is run on funds raised through churches in the west, the teaching and administration staff reflects india’s religious diversity and the interpreter/teacher was a hindu. apart from mandatory chapel services in the morning before classes, the school does not contain extensive religious instruction such as a madrasa. while christians make up less than 1% of kolkata’s population, the city has a long history of christian charities working amongst the urban poor, most notably in the legacy of mother teresa. participatory visual research to elicit capabilities as a canadian-indian, i was conscious that i held power thanks to my education and my residence in a high-income country. however, in my experiences in volunteering with indian girls from poor urban communities, i knew that they could be full of surprises, unwilling to fit in the “third world woman” stereotype beloved by international development organisations (dogra, 2011). to elicit these capabilities, i opted to use participatory visual research among adolescent girls from urban slum areas. participatory research has had a history of being used in poor, rural communities (chambers, 1997) and has revealed important facets of the lived experiences of hard-to-reach, itinerant populations such as street children, and homeless populations in post-conflict contexts (mizen & ofusi-kusi, 2010; packard, 2008; lykes, 2010). notably, participatory visual research has come to the fore with its perceived accessibility and participant-driven “i want to help girls like me” current issues in comparative education 47 aspects of the process. proponents of participatory visual research argue that it provides participants with a space to share their opinions and worldviews, especially those whose opinions are not usually solicited by their communities or the wider society (coronel & pascual, 2013). “participatory and collaborative research can have the potential to alter the larger institutional environment within which a newly realized “voice” can emerge. further, the participants can use their “voice” to engage in critical discussions and help challenge dominant and hegemonic discourses, even if only in certain contexts and at certain times” (shah, 2015, p.71). apologists for visual research contend that such methods possess the power to “unlock” the door to the data secreted in participant minds and that researchers can “dig” more deeply into the unconscious activities of the brain’ (gauntlett, 2007, p. 185). whether visual research methods do possess such quasi-magical powers is debatable: buckhingham (2009) accuses such exaltations of visual methods as “naïve empiricism.” gallo (2001) cautions against the seduction of transformation: the lived experiences of marginalised populations as expressed through visual image may well only serve as emotional triggers rather than steps towards policy change. more and more education researchers, however, are turning to participatory visual research in hopes of gleaning data that can shine insight into children’s experiences, especially their lived experiences of school and the educational landscape, in hopes of improving upon education policy (allan, 2012; groundwater-smith et al., 2014). participatory visual research holds special promise for finding how the micro level (i.e. schoolchildren, teachers, principals) is affected by the macro level (education policy and processes of social change such as globalisation). my use of visual research methods is not an attempt to probe the recesses of my participants’ brains to mine “hidden” deposits of data. rather, my research methodology is informed by an “understanding of images as tools with which communicative work is done” (rose, 2014, p. 27). the visual data that my participants would give me were to function as windows into their experiences and lenses that magnified the issues they perceived important and wanted to explain to me. fieldwork and data collection i conducted fieldwork for two weeks in a school located in the chinatown area of kolkata. the neighbourhood contains diverse informal settlements and the school has been present for more than two decades. i had located the school as one that was focused exclusively on serving low-income children from the area. the headmistress of the school functioned as a ‘gatekeeper’ to my research participants and we had been in email correspondence prior to my visit. i opted for convenience sampling, as i had limited time and resources at rebecca ipe current issues in comparative education 48 my disposal. the headmistress indicated the girls whom she thought would fit my study and from there we narrowed the group down to five. two of the girls were thirteen and three were fifteen. i had decided to use the draw-and-write method, which has been used by several researchers in mostly developed country settings (sewell, 2011; einarsdottir et al., 2009; elden, 2012). nossiter and biberman (1990) argue that drawings “focus a person’s response” as well as inducing “respondent harmony and parsimony” (p. 15). i intended to ask the girls a series of questions and they would draw out their responses. we would then go through these drawings in a group interview session. these interviews would be semi-structured and would revolve around the drawings, stimulating active discussion and participation rather than the question-answer-question of a more structured interview. these interviews, using the drawings as a springboard, were meant to elucidate the thoughts and opinions of the girls. i hoped that this method would encourage the girls to lead the conversation to topics they deemed important so that “the marriage of visual methods and ethnography seems natural” (denzin & lincoln, 1994, p. 410). while group interviews may produce peer-influenced responses, they were deemed the safest option to cooperate with ethical requirements. also, an interpreter who was also a teacher was present. i prepared certain exercises in order to at once amplify and triangulate the drawings. i used three main art exercises: i) i asked them to draw their present community on a piece of paper. after they had done this, i then asked them to draw their imagined/ dream community. ii) i showed them the picture of the two hands (fig.1.1) where they have to draw their life in the past and their life as they would like to live them in the future. iii) i put out a set of dixit™ cards2 and asked them to choose a card which best represented their imagined future. dixit is a board game containing cards that have fantastic and whimsical images on them. players must choose appropriate phrases or sentences that match their card’s image as close as possible. the appeal of these cards lies in their connotative possibilities: an image on a card can represent different things/narratives to different people. these exercises were conducted over the period of fieldwork as it takes time to draw and the girls would often have to leave for class without finishing their drawings. after they had completed the first exercise and talked about their drawings, we would move on the next exercise they would not feel burdened by spending time away from their classes. in addition, the headmistress selected girls who had struck her as ‘bright’, which might distort the resulting data as these are girls whom their teachers believe to possess a high level of capability. hindi and bengali are the primary languages spoken in kolkata and the teacher who acted as a translator was fluent in both as well as english. as an american“i want to help girls like me” current issues in comparative education 49 born indian, my first language is english and my mother tongue is only spoken in south india. i have a working knowledge of hindi and can carry on everyday conversations. however, i decided an interpreter would be invaluable as she could ensure nothing would be lost in the interviews. in addition, i cannot speak bengali. the teacher translated each question of mine for the girls as i asked them. during the interviews, the girls chose to speak to me in english and subsided into hindi or bengali only when they struggled in finding the appropriate words. they appeared proud of their knowledge of english and wanted to practice their language learning with me. certain words they used such as ‘peon’ or ‘steamer’ speak of the colonial heritage of the english language in india, as these are words i have never heard in conversations in the english-speaking countries i have lived in. the presence of the interpreter may also have contributed to a possible bias, as the teacher was a respected figure and the girls may have felt constrained by her presence. on the other hand, this particular teacher informed me that she was often an impromptu counselor for the girls as they went to her with their troubles and her interest in their educational trajectories had motivated her to act as interpreter. a list of questions that i used is attached to the appendix of the article. the questions were used to both gather vital statistics and function as narrative springboards. i also tailored questions to the flow of the conversation. for example, if a girl mentioned that she wanted to be a headmistress, i asked her why she chose this career and what she intended to do with it. if a girl said she liked a particular aspect of her community (which she had included in her drawing) i asked her to elaborate, which often led to a further discussion. analysis, findings, and discussion as the headmistress would not allow me to record the interviews, i had to write everything that was said to me in a notebook. i then transferred these notes to a laptop computer immediately after the interviews and used them in my analysis. in addition to writing down the dialogues, i also noted observations of the girls as they were drawing, observations of the school and its programs and interviewed the headmistress and staff to understand more about the history and social processes of the school. i participated in school activities and lived in the school (which had guest accommodation) for the duration of my stay. the names of the girls have been anonymised to ensure privacy. spatial inequality occupies the high moral ground when discussing the sociopolitical aspects of urban slums (ernst et al.,2013) as part of my ethical stance, i deliberately avoided all mention of the word “slum.” the word “community” was therefore deliberately chosen as a fairly neutral term to refer to the physical space where the girls lived. rebecca ipe current issues in comparative education 50 views of slum communities from the inside while the girls were aware of the financial needs of their communities, their descriptions of their communities were balanced, neither overwhelmingly positive, nor negative. i argue that this finding is important in the field of educational research, as children’s conceptualisations of space often run counter to expectations generated by quantitative descriptions of childhood poverty. lomax’s (2012) participatory visual research amongst children in an estate in the united kingdom depicted the children’s views of their neighbourhood through photographs they had taken. they chose to focus on green spaces and friendships, demonstrating an awareness of the stigma attached to council estates, and taking photographs that reflected the positive aspects they felt went unacknowledged by popular media. as lomax (2012) notes, “visual creative methods make visible children’s perspectives in ways which disrupt adult-centric discourses offering an important corrective to media, policy and academia about children’s lives” (116). mirroring the children in lomax’s study, the girls emphasized the green spaces in their drawings as the “oases” in their communities. sonali (fig. 1.1) described the park (with the “pond” beside it) as the main area of play for the children in her neighbourhood. she explained that she and her friends loved fishing in the lake, especially during the holidays. sonali’s drawing is done in mostly brown pencil, but she uses green and blue to depict the natural spaces and shrubs in her neighborhood, which indicates that these are important to her. a similar phenomenon occurs in sneha’s drawing, which is mostly monochromatic but makes use of green to represent grass. for priyanka, natural areas turned out to be segregated: she talked of a field near her home which she could not play in because, “the boys play football there so i cannot go.” conversely, there was a “huge rock” in her community where the women and children would gather in the evenings to talk and spend time with one another. priyanka said that this was her favourite part of her community and that she liked playing with the other children while the mothers and other women talked. fig.1.1 the left hand represents the ‘past’ while the right depicts the imagined ‘future.’ “i want to help girls like me” current issues in comparative education 51 fig 1.2 sonali’s drawing of her present community. note the green and blue to represent the ‘natural’ areas of her community. based on her explanation, physical spaces were measured off into socially acceptable places to inhabit. as a girl, she felt that she was thus barred from entering a space occupied by boys, while she was allowed to be in a place marked out by women’s gathering together and women’s conversation. such spatial segregation may point to the reasons why women have little power in their communities. narrowly prescribed spaces and roles can essentially lead to a community fractured by gender hierarchy where men occupy spaces of power and decision-making and women are relegated to areas marked “safe” (i.e. without the presence of men) and anodyne. a green space was an area to play and enjoy being a child but it was not without boundaries demarcated on lines on gender. this emphasis on the importance of green spaces arose in their “dream communities.” each girl spoke of the desire to have a garden or a park near them and sneha, who had declared that there was nothing she liked about her present community, became quite enthusiastic when describing her dream community and said she would like her own garden with swings and a seesaw and lots of greenery. for each of the girls, green spaces represented not only the freedom of just being children but were also important for their sense of aesthetic. green beautiful spaces were all described by the children as necessary for their well-being and each of them spoke of there being “proper” green spaces (unlike the makeshift green spaces which arguably are not intended as oases of calm in the city) in their imagined futures. these desires for areas of play and renewal echo nussbaum’s list of functionings, especially in terms of play, imagination and the senses (nussbaum, 2006, p. 76-78). the water tap: deprivation and conflict the water tap is almost a ubiquitous feature of an indian informal settlement. each of the girls drew the water tap or “pump” in their rebecca ipe current issues in comparative education 52 drawings as an important salient feature of their community. however, they voiced their displeasure with the tap, noting that waiting in line for water (which usually came on for two hours in the morning) was not healthy to community life. sonali said that there was often a lot of fighting for water and that conflict was sometimes sparked by people cutting in line. while the water pump was an important feature in the girls’ lives, they also perceived it as problematic and crippling to not only their daily functioning, but also to the welfare of the community. the concept of ‘all facilities” (explored in-depth later) included the girls’ dream of twenty-four-hour access to water in their future homes, a water supply that would not have to be shared with neighbours. indeed, sonali adamantly expressed a wish for no neighbours, citing perennial conflicts as a motivator for this wish. fig. 1.3 the arrow points to the ‘water tap’, a ubiquitous and contentious feature of urban slums. visions of the future: the imagined communities of the girls rather than focusing on their future community, the desire for “my own house” was strongly expressed by all the girls. social mobility was encapsulated in the dream for a house of one’s own: a departure from slum living where residents encroached illegally on municipal land. sonali explained that she intended her family to come and live with her in her house. this intention was echoed by the other girls, who all expressed a desire to have their natal families live with them in the house. in a country where cultural conventions place the man as the figurehead and breadwinner of the family, i was surprised by how the girls had conceived of themselves as being the future providers of their families. each girl aimed for jobs that can only be achieved through further education: engineer, doctor, air hostess, school principal, pastor. “i want to help girls like me” current issues in comparative education 53 when discussing the concept of ‘all facilities’ (repeated several times during our conversations) they explained that there should be good shops and medical facilities wherever they lived. sneha commented, “there should be a proper doctor helping all members.” incidentally, sneha fell off the bed and fractured her elbow mid-way during the research and when i questioned her, she told me that she had not seen a doctor because there was no doctor in her community. she had instead gone to the chemist’s shop where they had fitted her out with a cast. a lack of medical facilities for these girls was thus seen as a handicap that should be righted and given that they could not change their area at present, they were determined to move into an area where proper facilities existed. fig 1.4 the drawings of the girls’ imagined community demonstrate a desire for space and the ability to own a home large enough to house all their family members. travel and mobility as indicators of independence the girls spoke of travel and exploration as opportunities to develop and display their agency. when sneha was discussing her drawing, she pointed to the ship she had drawn and said she wanted to go on a “steamer” ship. “steamer” is the word she used and to her it represented exciting new lands and possibilities of adventure. she also added that when she was grown up, she wanted a motorbike which she could ride about in the evenings. in india, motorbikes have long been the preserve of men, with women being told that motorbikes are not feminine. indeed, the names of popular motorbikes such as “bullet” suggest a hard-nosed conceptualisation of masculinity that sits at odds with the standards of femininity that women are expected to conform to. poor women in india tend to have extremely restricted mobility: a free-moving woman is seen as a “loose” woman (chakraborty, 2010). that the girls expressed such desires suggests that they wanted to move past social norms put such restrictions on women and occupy spaces and places traditionally deemed for men. rebecca ipe current issues in comparative education 54 their selected vocations were regarded as instrumental to this bending of gender restrictions. sonali selected the job of a headmistress and talked at length of how such a position would enable her to be both independent and able to make a difference to poor girls like her. in the interviews sonali appeared strongly intrinsically motivated. she explained that girls in her native state of orissa were often married off from the ages of 13 (she was 13 at the time of the study) and she intended to show them that alternate futures were possible. she spoke at length of the importance of education and told me that she wanted to have her own personal library in her dream home. for sonali, education would not only help her achieve her goals but would also be the catalyst for other girls “like me” to achieve their goals. sonali presented her future self as mentor and motivator for those girls; her own experience of hardship would make her ideally placed to understand and help girls in similar situations. fig. 1.5 sonali’s vision of her future. she liked the snow as it represented exotic locales and travel and presented an image of how she wanted to be an independent and motivating role model for girls like herself. likewise, aishwarya exhibited strong ideas about communal responsibility. the card she selected (image below) was how she pictured herself as “a light in this world.” she wanted to show people the light of jesus in the world. aishwarya’s goal of becoming a pastor was also unusual, given that in the indian christian tradition, men are predominantly pastors. aishwarya’s past was streaked with tragedy: her father had fallen from the second storey of a building and had suffered brain damage. as he was recovering, her grandmother had died, which prompted her to start attending church. the church grew extremely “i want to help girls like me” current issues in comparative education 55 meaningful for her as she processed these events and she told me that she wanted to minister to other poor children like herself. fig. 1.6 aishwarya’s depiction of herself as an agent of change. such strong personal motivations and drive has rarely been elicited by researchers working with marginalised children, especially girls from urban slums. indeed, research on girls and children from marginalised communities tends to document low or compromised aspirations (tafere, 2010; pasquier-doumer et al, 2013). the headmistress and translator/teacher expressed surprise at the girls’ aspirations, informing me privately that they had no idea that the girls possessed such high aspirations. this may represent a deviation from the literature thus far, although the girls’ relative youth may protect them from the realities of poverty that tend to compromise high aspirations down the line. current research has noticed a shift in educational aspirations in girls in poor circumstances, although scholars such as patricia ames (2013) argue that these aspirations are not formed individually but are “intertwined with intergenerational agreements, family projects, and shared understandings of the changes needed to improve the life of young women”. time and resource constraints prevented me from interviewing the girls’ families to understand their role in their daughters’ aspirations but each of the girls provided details of their families’ support, whether it was through paying for private tuitions (which the school staff were ideologically opposed to, claiming that private tutors were exploiting these poor families) or through verbal encouragement. breadwinners and agents of change each girl expressed a strong bond with family members (three out of five girls mentioned their grandparents as especially beloved) and rebecca ipe current issues in comparative education 56 positioned themselves as responsible for their family’s futures. this taking on of the role of the “breadwinner” is a surprising finding, especially when none of the girls mentioned marriage as a possibility. given that the girl’s family has to pay a dowry to the groom’s (a custom still widely practiced despite governmental bans), if a girl marries an adequately well-off man, she will be seen to have married wisely as her husband’s family might be able to help out her own should trouble arise. kabeer’s (2003) work indicates that parents use education as a method of driving up their daughter’s social capital in order to make her a more eligible “catch” rather than as an investment into her career or intellectual progress. the surprisingly high aspirations expressed by the girls can be taken as a positive sign for future development in informal settlements. rather than conforming to stereotyped expectations of children from these areas, each of the girls situated themselves as agents of change in the lives of their families and future role models for girls such as themselves. their reasoned and detailed explanations suggested a high level of capability. to what extent their education was responsible for developing their capabilities is hard to decipher and not the focus of this study. however, each girl saw education as instrumental in achieving their aspirations, especially for girls such as sonali who was motivated to provide education to underprivileged girls as a way of offering alternatives to restricted futures. conclusion and recommendations this study has functioned as an exploration rather than a sustained probe into the capabilities of girls in indian slums. participatory visual research was found to be the ideal research instrument for this study as it minimised potential harm and focused on the experiences of the girls themselves. the girls stated that they had liked the novelty of research process and had enjoyed talking about their educational ambitions. the headmistress (and later the regional director for the charity in canada) expressed their desire for the girls’ ambitions to be realised and indicated they wanted the school to continue to the upper secondary level as well as plant more schools in india for hard-toreach children. the findings indicate that contrary to research conducted amongst underprivileged children, these girls expressed high motivations and positioned themselves as future agents of change, desiring to occupy previously male-dominated spaces and to challenge patriarchal norms in their society. as they were all the first generation in their families to complete primary schooling, it would be interesting to conduct further research on ‘firstgeneration’ children to tease out factors contributing to their resilience. a longitudinal study on these girls holds much promise for educational researchers tasked with finding solutions to urban poverty. “i want to help girls like me” current issues in comparative education 57 thus far participatory visual research has mostly been conducted in education settings as ‘one-off’ sessions. repeated participatory visual research amongst the same research participants over the years as they navigate the national educational system can provide a “visual chronology” of their experiences and capabilities. it may also provide richer data on the experiences of first-generation children as they seek to achieve their aspirations. fig.1.7: anushka’s imagined future: “wherever i am, i want there to be lots of food.” policy makers must be prepared to tackle issues such as poverty, hunger and the struggle for survival in order to ensure equitable educational access and outcomes for girls from urban slums. rebecca ipe current issues in comparative education 58 acknowledgements: the author wishes to thank julia park and kelsey inouye for their feedback and critical commentary on earlier drafts of 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(2007). amartya sen’s capability approach and social justice in education. book, basingstoke: basingstoke : palgrave macmillan. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2006.08.002 http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2012.08.001 © 2005 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 130 april 21, 2005 essay sowing the seeds: moving curriculum and school culture towards education for sustainable development richard capozzi 2005 marks the beginning of the un decade for education for sustainable development (esd), but awareness of this event is practically nonexistent in the new york city public high school where i teach english. a concerted effort to teach for--or even about-sustainability in mathematics, science, business and humanities classes is more remote still. the reasons are as various as they are predictable: "poverty, ignorance, disease and violence"--the real "axis of evil" (henderson & ikeda, 2004, p. 84)--and high-stakes testing thrown in for good measure. in this essay, i will discuss two key issues specific to education that may help us deal more effectively with the obstacles keeping esd from being better known and universally embraced in the schools: 1) curriculum; and 2) school culture. the important points to retain are that esd will require a fully integrated approach to curriculum development; that small schools are by virtue of their scale better suited to do esd; and that ideally the physical infrastructure should reflect the values and technologies which make esd possible. my hope is to interest a number of like-minded individuals in joining an evolving team of educators, as we design together a model small school founded on the principles of esd. since curriculum is not value-neutral, our values should be transparent: "peace, equity, and justice [are] necessary for a sustainable society" (mckeown, n.d.). however, in the words of nobel peace laureate jimmy carter, "war may sometimes be a necessary evil. but no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. we will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children" (carter, 2002, p. 35). in my quest to expedite our transformation from a culture of war to a culture of peace, i turn ironically to texts about war. nel noddings has famously made the case for using texts about war as pre-texts for teaching about and for peace, and she repeated them on august 13, 2003, during a panel discussion held at columbia university 's alfred j. lerner hall to mark the opening of the "building a culture of peace for the children of the world" exhibition. nobel peace laureate betty williams (1977) and danny hall, cochair of the sgi-usa's victory over violence initiative, were her co-panelists. on that occasion, she used the example of the iliad, a war epic, to teach for peace. another example from literature that comes to mind is shakespeare's coriolanus, a play that i would like to discuss in some detail in order to parallel problems we face in educating for sustainability. is coriolanus, one of the last great tragedies, written in 1608, a "sustainable" play? hardly. yet the issues that shakespeare has raised in coriolanus are a core problematic of our time as well, for as hazel henderson observes, "you can't have a holistic view without being a whole person" (2004, p. 53). in coriolanus, pride prevents the patrician anti-hero from baring his heart before the famine-afflicted plebeians and exchanging his war wounds for their accolades; their ignorance, which deprives the people of a clean conscience, drives their would-be leader out of rome. such is their mutual contempt sowing the seeds: moving curriculum and school culture towards education for sustainable development current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 131 that it clogs the arteries of communication, and coriolanus's betrayal by rome fuels his desire for vengeance, as well as the ambitions of his arch-nemesis, aufidius, leader of the antiates, with whom he later teams up in a last ditch effort to avenge himself. even his own mother, who for vainglory corrupted her son's unyielding nature in an attempt to make him consul, is willing to sacrifice him on the abstract altar of the state. in the end, coriolanus, an exile, persuaded by his mother during a moment of high pathos to spare rome and reconcile antium, is undone by aufidius' jealous hatred, who immediately regrets his action, but again it is too little, too late. i ask, then, might it be possible to fit coriolanus into a curriculum designed to teach for sustainable development? esd, as defined by unesco, is not limited to environmental awareness raising or even peace education, but describes the educational processes by which we all become human by its insistence on an other-oriented disposition and social justice issues. moreover, social justice and environmental protection are not seen as divorced from economic growth (unesco, 2004). coriolanus is a play about famine caused by hoarding and high grain prices, a situation which leads to internal strife, which in turn leads to more warfare. it is a cycle worth contextualizing--ancient rome, the reign of james i, the founding of the united states --and perhaps even deconstructing. fear of the other, and the subsequent demonization of the other, weakens the will to dialogue and compromises our respect for life and the environment. buddhist philosopher, peace activist and poet, daisaku ikeda, notes, "the cold brutality and folly that imagines that the misery of others can be the basis for our own happiness" and "the inability to recognize the reality of interconnection" is "fundamental darkness" or ignorance (2004, p. 10). "this attitude," he continues, "is sadly reflected in patterns of resource consumption that are undermining the very life-systems of the planet on which we live" (2004, p. 10), a concept succinctly expressed by coriolanus' friend and advisor, menenius, in the "parable of the belly," a sort of trickle-down economic model. coriolanus, then, is a play that addresses the nexus between human development and social justice and economic growth. here is a public man whose hatred for his enemy and contempt for his own people function as "objective correlatives" (eliot, 1920, p. 7) for his private resentment of his mother and his self-loathing. coriolanus is consumed by his inability to reconcile the two "contrary" poles of his world, and so his personal shortcomings are displaced onto the public sphere. in the classroom, what if scenarios would take a humanities seminar even further by proposing alternatives--livable, sustainable alternatives--a new way forward. to quote the earth charter: "as never before in history, common destiny beckons us to seek a new beginning. […]. this requires a change of mind and heart" (2000). what if coriolanus had had a change of heart? what if he had found the strength to lead, and so become whole? what might have he accomplished if he had followed the example set by india 's legendary king ashoka, who did experience a change of heart: aggrieved by the folly of his earlier murderous military campaigns, [he] changed his ways and concentrated on policies for the public good. modern market economics […] concentrate on efficiency and rationality and overlook important factors like social justice and human happiness. humanity still lacks a satisfactory solution to the problem of how to create a sustainable society. (henderson & ikeda, 2004, p. 166) richard capozzi 132 april 21, 2005 moreover, this type of analysis should not be limited to english or social studies; rather we need to expand its applications to science, business, economics, mediation, sex education, technology, and mathematics as well. with regard to mathematics and technology, for example, g.d. chakerian and kurt kreith (1999) offer a course of study which "links together the use of technology (excel, stella) and modern mathematical techniques to explore the interaction of algebra (at the pre-calculus level) with computer and graphing calculator technology" (chakerian and kreith, 1999, p. 1). their course, iterative algebra and dynamic modeling, is comparable to current math b in new york city, and can be used to analyze, for instance, economic growth and its limits at the high school level. in our hypothetical small model school, mathematics-technology and english-social studies teachers could conceivably work together to design curriculum in the manner outlined above. esd concepts must be fully integrated into the curriculum in and across all disciplines. efforts to promote curriculum in a coherent and integrated fashion have already paid off. the cloud institute for sustainability education (cise, formerly known as the sustainability education center, a spinoff of the american forum for global education) has developed many curriculum modules, units, projects, and courses that respond "to the growing need for educational materials and professional development focused on sustainability" (cloud, p. 1). one such module, called "the paper trail: connecting economic and natural systems," is a four-week introductory mini-course for use by teachers and students of economics, environment, ecology, biology, social studies, and management and business. through an investigation of where our paper comes from and where it goes, students are introduced to the elements of ecological economics. jamie p. cloud, project director and president of cise, has described the rationale behind this module: "the paper trail," as it is referred to throughout the unit, was chosen for two reasons. first, paper is a commodity that students and teachers deal with daily: it is a product that they have some control over in their individual lives as well as possibly in the school and community where they live. second, paper is linked to renewable resources and relates clearly to larger systems. we chose "the paper trail" in order to link systems thinking to the concept of sustainability so fundamental to ecological economics. the paper trail illustrates the many ways that "separate" systems or cycles interact. systems thinking provides the conceptual base for ecological economics because it takes two traditionally separate disciplines and uses both to analyze the questions raised. the systems tools we introduce – concept mapping, life cycle analysis, feedback loops, and full cost accounting – can be wonderful fun to play with in a variety of contexts. based on systems thinking, ecological economics is by its nature interdisciplinary. (cloud, the paper trail, p. 7) cise projects also include "business and entrepreneurship education for sustainability (bees)," developed for the nyc department of education; and "inventing the future: leadership and participation for the 21 st century (if)," which fulfills the requirements for the participation in government course needed for graduation from high school in new york state. these projects have the added advantage of incorporating sustainability education within the general framework of existing courses of study, sowing the seeds: moving curriculum and school culture towards education for sustainable development current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 133 although cise's focus is not always high school. cise also prepares materials for grades 6-8 ("from global hunger to sustainable food systems--challenges and choices"); adults (stumbling toward sustainability); and educators (professional development for if). other curriculum models exist as well, and it would be worthwhile to visit the good work that has already been done. needless to say, peace education, education for planetary or global citizenship, and esd are all intertwined because of the value they place on the human capacity to empathize with others. consequently, esd should teach us to transcend our attachment to the lesser self. " workable peace, a curriculum project of the consensus building institute (cbi)" is being successfully used to integrate conflict resolution into the high school curriculum (smith & fairman, 2005). "facing history and ourselves" focuses attention on "the holocaust as an extended case study" so as to illustrate the escalation of general intergroup conflict from "the historical origins of stereotyping" through "socially discriminatory behavior" to "state-sanctioned violence, and ultimately genocide" (smith & fairman, 2005, p. 43). the earth charter, too, which enunciates four "fundamental principles for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21 st century" (carlsson-paige & lantieri, 2005, p. 111) has been thought of as "a prototype world constitution for a global communal body" (henderson & ikeda, 2005 p. 130). its four main principles are, 1) respect and care for the community of life; 2) ecological integrity; 3) social and economic justice; and 4) democracy, nonviolence, and peace. esd draws from each of these curricular models, and therein finds the breath it needs to promote change at the local and global levels. stand-alone approaches provide needed enrichment, but the integration of these models into pre-existing courses offers greater flexibility to teachers and students. curriculum may drive instruction, but equally important is the proposition that school culture supports curriculum. the office of new schools, a bureau of the nyc department of education, is slated to open about two hundred small, new schools thanks in large measure to the bill and melinda gates foundation and the michael and susan dell foundation. in order for the ideals of peace, global citizenship, and sustainability to resonate with students, faculty, and administration, the school culture must support and reflect those ideals. those ideals in turn must be experienced and lived, not just read about as topics for study removed from the realities of daily life. i repeat my challenge, then, to interest a number of like-minded individuals in joining an evolving team of educators to design together a model small school founded on principles of esd. this school will foster: an egalitarian culture that respects difference; the integration of technology and design, business, and core academic disciplines; a sense of community and place; values that contribute to building a culture of peace; respect for life and the environment. "community", writes nancy mohr (2000), "by definition, asks us to think about others, not just ourselves, cooperating more, competing less, and caring--about what happens to one another and in the world as well" (p. 153). envisioning such a school is certainly only the first step. buy in will happen over time, gradually, as the community begins to experience victory after victory--as alan dichter, the local instructional superintendent (lis) for region 9 remarked during a small learning communities (slc) meeting (personal communication, march 14, 2005). team leaders are charged with the task of uniting richard capozzi 134 april 21, 2005 administrators, faculty, parents, students, community-based partners, researchers, and sponsors, all of whom share a belief in the possibility of constructing a vision of the future that is at once utopian and pragmatic. but small schools, as nancy mohr (2000) reminds us, are not miniature large schools; they require an entirely different mindset and patterns of behavior. if a qualitative difference exists between large and small schools, it is to be found, i believe, in the social interactions of its members. in advancing this proposal, i take my cues from japanese educator and pioneer of social ecology, tsunesaburo makiguchi, active at the beginning of the last century. in his attempt to classify human behavior as a function of two variables--participation in social exchange and self-actualization-makiguchi distinguished three modes of living as divisions of labor: 1. antisocial interaction--blind living as a parasite or puppet with no self-awareness. 2. pseudosocial interaction--obscure living as independent individual with partial self-awareness. 3. true social interaction--enlightened living as leader or contributor with total self-awareness. (makiguchi, 1989, p. 47) in my application of makiguchi's classification, i hold that large schools tend to favor pseudosocia l types of interaction by virtue of their larger-than-human scale: human interactions oscillate between bureaucracy and hysteria; consequently, people tend to lose their good common sense and ethical principles. small schools, on the other hand, tend to favor the ideal of "true social interaction" because all members are on an equal footing and share a common responsibility for the success of the venture. small school culture encourages its members to live contributively "by extending one's efforts to others, with awareness of a greater self and public self-definition" (makiguchi, 1989, p. 45). a contributive, other-oriented life-style with an eye toward an awe-inspired appreciation of the totality of nature defines the type of leadership necessary to implement esd, and, at the same time, describes the kind of training it can offer young people, teachers, staff, and administrators. the success of a school in great measure hinges on the character development of all of its stakeholders, as makiguchi once pointed out (norton, 1989, p. 207); small schools provide better opportunities for that character development to occur. furthermore, supporting both culture and curriculum must be a viable school infrastructure that establishes the venture in the community and calls attention to it. the most obvious, and perhaps the most important, is the physical plant itself. how sustainable is the architectural design of our building? ideally, our building should reflect the values and technologies that make our school so well-suited for educating youth for life in the 21 st century. sustainable design is not a new idea. the us green building council (usgbc) promotes "buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable and healthy places to live and work" (usgbc, 2005, who we are section, p. 1). locally, institutions of higher learning have engaged in community restoration projects. one such project was carried out by pratt institute's center for community and environmental development, which offered technical assistance to the cypress hills sowing the seeds: moving curriculum and school culture towards education for sustainable development current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 135 community school by converting an industrial warehouse into a high-quality school and community facility. "not only does this project illustrate how community-based organizations can be involved in producing desperately needed facilities to support small, innovative schools, it also demonstrates the use of 'green' building techniques in an educational setting" (picced, cypress hills community school, p. 3). the use of green building technology in constructing the physical plant of the model small school we are designing would benefit our students immeasurably. thus housed in our hypothetical green school building, seniors will take advantage of the opportunities for sustainable business by running a virtual enterprise (ve). models of sustainable businesses abound through which students can learn about the triple bottom line --economic, social, and environmental. one such model might be a green cuisine sustainable restaurant and catering establishment. "ecolodges"--the brainchild of the environmental business finance program (ebfp) and the international ecotourism society (ties)--are another (international finance corporation, 2005). take-back programs, pioneered by hewlett-packard (computer hardware) and ray anderson's interface, inc. (textiles) are also excellent models, as is paper recycling. the ve's partnering organization(s) would be asked to provide our students with consultants to help them run the enterprise, and paid internships; a mentoring program would also be worked out through the department of education's office of strategic partnerships. meanwhile, our school's kitchen would prepare meals using locally grown organic produce that the students and staff would eat communally. service learning initiatives for students would further play a role in helping them build character and establish a sense of community. my purpose here was not to entertain a nuts and bolts discussion of the school day, but to sketch how various concepts elucidated by esd could be integrated at all the levels of our model small school. the result is a community of people--of differing ages, interests and talents--who are excited to be there and know why they are learning. with a good team, anything is possible. references carlsson-paige, nancy & lantieri, linda. (2005). a changing vision of education. in nel noddings (ed.). educating citizens for global awareness. new york and london: teachers college press. carter, jimmy. (2002). the norwegian nobel institute. nobel lecture. retrieved april 23, 2003, from http://www.nobel.no/eng_lect_2002b.html. chakerian, g.d. and kreith, kurt. (1999). iterative algebra and dynamic modeling: a curriculum for the third millennium. new york: springer verlag. publisher's prospectus. retrieved april 18, 2005, from http://www.springeronline.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,4-40109-22-16017430,00.html. richard capozzi 136 april 21, 2005 cloud, jaime p. (n.d.). sustainability education center. retrieved march 5, 2005, from http://www.sustainabilityed.org/about.htm. cloud, jaime p. (n.d.). sustainability education center. the paper trail: connecting economic and natural systems. retrieved march 1, 2005, from http://www.sustainabilityed.org/paper%20trail_week%201.pdf. the earth charter. (2000). san jose, costa rica: the earth charter international secretariat. retrieved from http://www.earthcharter.org. eliot, thomas stearns. (1996). the sacred wood. london: methune. online ed. bartleby.com. retrieved april 2, 2005, from www.bartleby.com/200/. (original work published in 1920). henderson, hazel and ikeda, daisaku. (2004). planetary citizenship. english edition. santa monica, california: middle way press. ikeda, daisaku. (november 22, 2004). education for sustainable development. special to the japan times. the japan times online. retrieved november 25, 2004, from http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?eo20041122a2.htm. international finance corporation–ebfp ecolodge studies. (2005). international finance corporation. retrieved april 18, 2005, from http://ifcln1.ifc.org/ifcext/enviro.nsf/content/ebfp_ecolodge. makiguchi, tsunesaburo. (1989). education for creative living: ideas and proposals of tsunesaburo makiguchi. (a. birnbaum, trans.; dayle m. bethel, ed.). ames, iowa: iowa state university press. (original work published 1930). makiguchi, tsunesaburo. (2002). a geography of human life. english edition. trans. katsusuke hori et al. san francisco, california: caddo gap press. (original work published in 1903). mckeown, rosalyn. (n.d.) education for sustainable development toolkit. reorienting education. retrieved march 17, 2005, from http://www.esdtoolkit.org/discussion/reorient.htm. mohr, nancy. (2000). small schools are not miniature large schools: potential pitfalls and implications for leadership. in william ayers, michael klonsky, gabrielle lyon (eds.). a simple justice: the challenge of small schools. new york and london: teachers college press. norton, david l. (1989). afterword: a philosophical appraisal. in education for creative living: ideas and proposals of tsunesaburo makiguchi. (a. birnbaum, trans.; dayle m. bethel, ed.). ames, iowa: iowa state university press. (original work published 1930). sowing the seeds: moving curriculum and school culture towards education for sustainable development current issues in comparative education, vol. 7(2) 137 picced: cypress hills community school. (n.d.). retrieved march 19, 2005, from http://www.picced.org/arch-cypress.php smith, stacie nicole & fairman, david. (2005). the integration of conflict resolution into the high school curriculum: the example of workable peace. in nel noddings (ed.). educating citizens for global awareness. new york and london: teachers college press. unesco, (october 2004). united nations decade of education for sustainable development 2005-2014, draft international implementation scheme. usgbc – us green building council. (2005). meet the usgbc. retrieved april 18, 2005, from http://www.usgbc.org/displaypage.aspx?categoryid=1 © 2012 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(1): 114-131. overcoming smallness through education development: a comparative analysis of jamaica and singapore richard o. welsh university of southern california between 1960 and 2010, singapore’s real gross domestic product (gdp) per capita skyrocketed from $4,383 to $55,862, while jamaica’s barely increased from $6,417 to $8,539. it is plausible that differing rates of gdp growth are associated with differences in the development of education systems but causally the linkage is not well understood. using a comparative analysis of education in jamaica and singapore, this paper explores the critical factors in education development in small states. this article argues that education development can substantively help small states overcome many of the limitations of their smallness that are exacerbated in an increasingly global economy. three significant factors that shaped the education development of jamaica and singapore are identified. first, the timing of reforms is important, not just the content of educational reforms. second, having a vocational strategy is key. third, a balanced, forward-looking education development strategy that closely ties education, economic and national development is crucial. introduction since the 1980s, the educational problems facing small states have garnered the special attention of many agencies such as the commonwealth secretariat and world bank (bacchus, 2008; bray & packer, 1993; crossley, bray, & packer, 2011). financial, cultural and political globalization have exacerbated the vulnerabilities and fragilities of these small states in the twenty-first century, making the success of small states largely dependent on the quality of their human resources (bacchus, 2008; mayo, 2010). despite the heightened interest, many of the publications on small states fail to capture the contribution that education can make to the development of small states in light of increasing globalization (bacchus, 2008). diverging economic growth rates among small states compel researchers and policymakers to re-conceptualize the limitations of ‘smallness’ and the role of education development strategies in overcoming constraints facing small nation states in an increasingly global economy. several studies have focused on the relationship between economic growth rates and the quality of education (aghion, caroli, & garcia-penalosa, 1999; barro, 1991; hanushek, 2008; hanushek & woessmann, 2007; sen, 1999) but there are relatively few comparisons between these metrics and national strategies for education development especially among developing countries. consider two cases. in 1960, jamaica had a higher real gross domestic product (gdp) per capita than singapore. over the next 50 years, singapore’s real gdp per capita grew exponentially compared to jamaica’s anemic economic performance. during this period, singapore’s gdp skyrocketed from $4,383 to $55,862, while jamaica’s barely increased from $6,417 to $8,539 (heston, summers & aten., 2012). figure 1 shows the real gdp per capita (at purchasing power parity 2005 constant prices) for jamaica and singapore between 1960 and 2010. how do two countries with similar starting points in 1960 have such divergent economic development outcomes over the next half-century? this article is an exploratory study based on secondary sources including analysis of cross national data from the world bank and penn world tables to detect patterns in education and economic metrics, document analysis of policy briefs from the ministries of education and a review of previous literature on education development current issues in comparative education 115 overcoming smallness through education development in both countries. the central research question guiding this study is: what are the critical factors that shape education development in small states? although this paper posits that quality education is a core component of economic and national development, economic growth is a complex endeavor and the relationship described is based on consistent covariance rather than implied causality. education development is defined by changes in access, equity, efficiency and quality. this definition is operationalized by outcome measures including literacy rates and average years of school attainment as well as inputs such as public spending on education. there is a conscious focus on factors not directly related to teacher quality and recruitment since a growing body of research has confirmed the importance of teacher quality in student achievement and education development strategies (barber & mourshed, 2007; coleman, 1966; murnane, 1991; rivkin, hanushek, & cain, 2005). though population size is the standard defining characteristic, small states can also be defined by location, geo-political positioning and economic capacity (bacchus, 2008; bray & packer, 1993; world bank, 2000). this article uses a population size of below five million (commonwealth secretariat, 2009; crossley et al., 2011) and islands with a geographical mass of less than 12,000 square kilometers to define countries as small states. both jamaica and singapore meet these criteria. ! 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(source: heston et al., 2012; penn world tables, 7.1) figure 1. real gdp per capita, at ppp 2005 constant price, jamaica and singapore: 19602010. 116 current issues in comparative education welsh this article offers three plausible grounded hypotheses for the critical factors that shaped the education development of jamaica and singapore. the factors posited are not proven conclusions but claims requiring further empirical support and analysis. first, the timing of educational reforms (the when) and not just their content (the what) is important. it is plausible that the varying education policies of each country in the immediate post-independence era (1960-1980) have had lasting effects. second, having a vocational strategy is key. singapore’s extensive efforts in vocational education signaled that the political leadership was thinking consciously about linking education and labor markets. third, a balanced, forward-looking education development strategy that closely ties education, economic and national development is crucial. in what follows, the varying contexts of the two countries are outlined. next, a brief selective history of education development in jamaica and singapore from 1960 through to 2010 is provided. the three aforementioned hypotheses in the development of education systems in small states are discussed using the experiences of jamaica and singapore. similar starting points, contrasting contexts jamaica and singapore provide a comparison between countries with compelling similarities and differences. both nations are islands, members of the commonwealth and former british colonies that started their development journey in the 1960s. however, both countries had vastly different roles within the british empire that shaped their post-independence policy directions and path to economic growth. indeed, the education development of small states cannot be separated from the impact of social, cultural and geo-political factors (crossley & holmes, 1999). thus, in comparing jamaica and singapore, a few points of context are important as they may partly explain the disparities in economic growth as well as contextualize the education policies pursued by each country. jamaica and singapore gained independence in 1962 and 1965 respectively, but with different colonial legacies. in contrast to the assimilation process that complemented colonization in the americas, singaporeans in the colonial era could freely practice their own religions and speak their own language (boon & gopinathan, 2006). jamaica was under british colonial rule longer than singapore and both countries had different economic drivers. it is difficult to assess how the infrastructure in each country differed in 1960 because of limited primary and secondary data, however, it is plausible that colonial experiences play a role in post-independence education strategies. table 1 summarizes the basic economic, political and social features of jamaica and singapore from 1960 to 2010. jamaica and singapore had different histories of colonialism by virtue of the different roles each colony played in the british empire. jamaica provided raw materials and markets for the british empire while singapore was mainly a regional trade node. jamaica was a plantation society with slavery and a predominantly black population. as was typical of countries in the anglophone caribbean, education in jamaica was restricted to the planter class and a tiered system of educational opportunities persisted into the post-independence period (evans, 2001; jules, 2010). in contrast, singapore was a diverse state composed of chinese, tamil and malay ethnic groups with no slavery. both countries inherited the westminster parliamentary system but over the next 50 years, jamaica maintained a two-party democracy compared to singapore’s de facto one party democracy. between 1960 and 2010, jamaica had 11 parliamentary elections with eight different prime ministers and the government has changed several times between the two major political parties. on the contrary, singapore has had three prime ministers and the same party has been current issues in comparative education 117 overcoming smallness through education development jamaica singapore political land area british colonial rule from achieved independence parliamentary system leadership approx. 11,000 square kilomaters 1655 to 1962 august 1962 bicameral parliament is legislative branch of government in parliamentary democracy 8 different prime ministers in competitive multiparty elections approx. 700 square kilometers 1819 to 1965 august 1965 unicameral parliament is the legislative branch of the government in parliamentary republic 3 different prime ministers; people’s action party has won every election with majorities economic per capita gdp (1960) per capita gdp (2010) natural resources main economic activities $6,417 $8,539 bauxite and alumina tourism, bauxite export, agriculture (sugar, banana, coffee), remittances in 1960, economy consisted mainly of agriculture, bauxite, tourism in 1980, bauxite influence on economy wanes; tourism, agriculture, manufacturing and remittances begins to wax. in 2010, the economy was heavily dependent on services (60% of gdp), remittances (15%), and tourism (15%) $4,383 $55,862 none manufacturing, services, hi-tech industries, trade. in 1960, mainly trade-based economy; in 1980, economy diversified to manufacturing, financial services oil refinery. in 2010, a highly developed marketbased economy with manufacturing, services and high-technology driven industries, highest trade to gdp ratio in the world with more than 7000 multinational corporations. education ministry of ed. role adult literary public expenditure on education (% of gdp) oversees formulation and implementation of all policy adult literacy rate (1999) – 80% adult literacy rate (2009) – 86% 5.5% oversees formulation and implementation of all policy adult literacy rate (1980) – 83% adult literacy rate (2009) – 95% 3.5% cultural population (1960) population (2010) 1.6 million 2.8 million majority of population is of african descent: 95% black jamaican patois is national dialect and most spoken on the island but english is the official language emigration is heavy and consistent to us, uk and canada 1.6 million 4.7 million approximately 3 million people are locally born signaling an influx of foreigners and large number of immigrants. majority of population is composed of three ethnic groups: chinese (74 %), indian (13%) and malay (9%) there are four official languages: english, malay, tamil and chinese table 1. political, economic, education and cultural features of jamaica and singapore: 1960-2010 sources: aldcroft, 2000; cia factbook, 2012; heston et al., 2012 (penn world tables, 7.1); world bank (2011). 118 current issues in comparative education welsh in government over the last 50 years. given that social and political instability are central factors that may curtail the development of small states (wint, 2002), education development strategies in singapore were undoubtedly influenced by the stability of the political leadership of singapore’s first prime minister lee kuan yew, who remained in power for nearly three decades. since 1972, freedom in the world, a comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties, has consistently rated jamaica as ‘free’ while singapore is rated as ‘partly free’; jamaica, unlike singapore, is classified as an electoral democracy (freedom in the world, 2012). in many instances, the agenda of education in small states is significantly influenced by paradigms advanced by multilateral organizations instead of endogenous development imperatives (jules, 2006). thus, geo-political positioning and the impact of international financial institutions, regional groups and other special interests on education development strategies may also vary between the two countries. singapore started the development process in the 1960s in a fragile geo-political environment that prompted rapid industrialization with an abundance of unskilled, low cost labor (ashton, green, sung, & james, 2002). historically, the caribbean community (caricom), a regional organization of caribbean states formed in the 1970s, has played a limited role in the education policy of individual countries (jules, 2010). since education for all (efa), an international initiative launched in 1990 with significant inputs from caribbean countries, there has been a greater effort towards synchronization of education policy in the caribbean with mixed results (miller, 2000). although singapore’s economic growth has been attributed to the work ethic and culture of singaporeans (yew, 2000), it is difficult to compare the role cultural differences played in the education development of both countries. similarly, the coordination between different agencies within the government, the promotion of greater collaboration between education and other state ministries, and variations in management and administrative skills pose challenges in comparing the two countries. population flows and the levels of foreign direct investment substantively vary between the two countries and may point to critical differences regarding the available talent pool for education administration between the two island nations. while jamaica has suffered from severe brain drain, singapore has high people flows and a substantial amount of singapore’s population is foreigners. the net inflow of human resources in singapore compared to the outflows in jamaica may be indicative of the differences in the link between education development and job availability in each country. though primary and secondary school enrollment is near universal in the two islands, singapore’s education system has markedly outperformed jamaica’s since both countries gained independence in the 1960s. as of 2009, singapore had the higher literacy rate of the two countries with 95% compared to jamaica’s 86% (world bank, 2011). in jamaica, females have higher literacy rates than males while the opposite is true in singapore. in terms of educational attainment and achievement, singapore has a better gender balance than jamaica. a comparison of public spending on education as a percent of gdp in the latter half of the twentieth century indicates that singapore spends relatively less than jamaica (roughly 3.5% vs. 5.5%). this disparity in expenditure suggests that how funds are used is perhaps more important than the scarcity of funds that small states often face. moreover, the comparative experience of the two countries implies that there are significant factors beyond increased funding that are necessary for substantial improvement in education outcomes. expanding access to primary and secondary education: 1960-1980 the period of 1960 to 1980 was a transformative, post-independence era in jamaica and singapore. current issues in comparative education 119 overcoming smallness through education development upon independence, singapore inherited a fragmented system with english and non-ministry of education (moe) funded vernacular schools and the main policy challenge was to unify the system and integrate the various ethnic groups through education (boon & gopinathan, 2006). since 1953 every public primary school in jamaica has had its own independent school board, which hires and fires teachers and this has also been the case of secondary schools from the latter part of the 19th century (miller, 1999). in the 1950s, access to secondary education in jamaica was very limited but a major expansion of secondary schools beginning in the 1960s resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of secondary schools (miller, 1990). tables 2a and 2b summarizes the main policy events in the education development of jamaica and singapore from 1960 to 2010. upon their independence, expanding access to education was a major imperative in both countries (jules, 2010; law, 2008). however, the countries diverged in deciding which level of schooling to prioritize and how to balance competing goals in the development of education systems. both countries adopted the goal of universal primary education (boon & gopinathan, 2006, miller, 1997). yet the education development strategies pursued by each country illuminate differences in promoting primary education and the impact of post-independence policies on the overall development of education systems in developing countries. jamaica focused on further access to secondary and post-secondary education to meet the expanding demand for skilled labor as evidenced by the rapid growth in enrolment in higher education until the mid-1980s (nkrumah-young, huisman, & powell, 2010). in contrast, singapore emphasized the quality of primary schooling as well as technical and vocational education while expanding secondary schooling (ashton et al., 2002; law, 2008). singapore employed a sequential strategy to education development by focusing on primary education then moving up to higher levels as the skills demanded by the economy changed (aldcroft, 2000). indeed, in its initial years of independence, the singaporean government allotted the majority of its annual budget to primary education followed by secondary education and higher education (boon & gopinathan, 2006). this paper posits that this key strategic difference in the 1960s partly explains the disparity in education development and economic growth between the two countries over the post-independence period. a significant differentiating factor in the immediate post-independence period is how each country chose to resolve the language ‘problem’. the language of instruction is a potentially contentious issue in an education system as it is deeply intertwined with feelings about personal and national identity (mourshed, chijioke, & barber, 2010). in singapore, the learning of a second language was made compulsory in all primary schools in 1960 and this policy was extended to secondary schools in 1966 (boon & gopinathan, 2006). the government viewed the bilingualism as a critical component of the education system for achieving social cohesion and economic prosperity in a largely plural society (boon & gopinathan, 2006). conversely, jamaica continues to grapple with the dual language issue as english is the language of the classroom but patois is the language of homes, especially in lower-income families (bryan, 2004). the role of patois in the jamaican classroom remains contentious and unresolved. jamaica changes in the lending policy of the world bank enabled jamaica to obtain loans for the extension of educational facilities placing great emphasis and importance on the expansion of secondary and post-secondary education. between 1966 and 1980, 50 new secondary schools were built and a canadian loan scheme at the same time sponsored the building of 40 primary schools (whyte, 1983). notwithstanding, there have been continued variations in access to the different types 120 current issues in comparative education welsh of secondary schools for different social classes (evans, 2001). for instance, the ‘all-age’ school serves as a primary and secondary school as it offers instruction from grades 1 to 9. ‘all-age’ schools were established after slavery was abolished to prepare the children of ex-slaves for the labor market as laborers in a highly stratified society (turner, 1987). in the post-independence period, ‘all-age’ schools were attended mainly by children of the lowest earning quintiles of the jamaican population (evans, 2001). in the early 1970s, the michael manley led government adopted educational reforms aligned with its overarching goal of putting jamaica on the path towards democratic socialism. consequently, there was a flurry of initiatives in education as the moe was radically reorganized and modernized. in 1973, ‘education thrust’ was instituted as a comprehensive program intended to address all levels of education, with improved access to all levels of education from primary to adult education. this reform resulted in the first mass literacy campaign in the anglophone caribbean and an increased focus on adult literacy with the formation of the jamaica movement for the advancement of literacy in 1972 (jules, 2010). the shift system was implemented as a supposedly temporary measure to increase the number of places in high schools. in addition to establishing a vocational unit, the moe also formed a research unit which has conducted several studies since the mid-1970s (miller, 1997). in the 1960s, jamaica’s education development strategies were seemingly subjected to significant influence from multilateral agencies. while it may be true that primary education has a higher economic value at lower levels of development (psacharopoulos, 1985; psacharopoulos & patrinos, 2002), special interest groups may push for investment in higher levels of education. this also implies that the state will be more likely to foster economic growth by initially investing in lower levels of schooling then shifting government spending and expanding access to higher levels of schooling as the country becomes more developed. in the 1970s, there was still significant investment in higher levels of schooling as from 1973-1976 the budget for tertiary education increased more steadily than for primary and secondary education, though it was acknowledged that the greatest needs were at the lower levels of education (nkrumah-young et al., 2010). singapore during the 1960s, singapore focused on access and increasing enrollment; primary and secondary schools were built at a rate of one per month between 1959 and 1968 (mourshed et al., 2010). during this time, singapore emphasized an intimate and deep link between education and economic development. a five-year plan (1961-1965) initiated a focus on primary education that was sustained throughout the 1970s. singapore pursued the standardization of subject syllabi and educational structures across the various language streams, and the institution of common terminal examinations (tan, 1998). by the late 1960s, singapore had a high level of access and literacy rates at the primary level (aldcroft, 2000). singapore had very little vocational and technical education (vte) prior to independence (law, 2008) but it grew significantly from the late 1960s to early 1970s as emphasis in the school system begun to shift from general academic education to vte (kam & gopinathan, 1999). vte refers to training designed to enhance an individual’s general proficiency, especially in relation to occupation rather than a profession. in 1964, the government established secondary vocational schools (boon & gopinathan, 2006). a need to expand vte arose from the increasing pace of industrialization and by 1972, there were nine vocational institutes in singapore and the number of graduates had increased to over 4,000 from only 324 in 1968 (law, 2008). current issues in comparative education 121 overcoming smallness through education development balancing quantity, quality and equity: 1980-2010 by 1980, both countries had achieved high levels of enrollment at the primary level and continued expanding secondary education (boon & gopinathan, 2006; miller, 1997). however, dissatisfaction with inequitable access in secondary and post-secondary education, low educational quality, and lackluster achievement outcomes was common across the two small states (miller, 1997; mourshed et al., 2010). the new millennium gave rise to the knowledge economy and found nations focusing on reorienting their education systems towards the global economy (rizvi & lingard, 2010). the rise of service industries as the main global economic activity placed greater significance on an educated workforce with critical thinking and adaptive skills. both countries differed in managing the tradeoff between quantity and quality as well as reorienting their education development strategies to take advantage of globalization. balancing quantity and quality in educational outcomes posed a constant challenge for jamaica and singapore, and the response to this challenge can be posited as a key differentiating factor in the education development of the two countries. over time, the equity and quality of educational opportunities became the major concern in both countries as opposed to access to education. indeed, research has shown that educational achievement, as measured by the percentage of eligible students receiving a secondary education, is not a significant predictor of economic performance in small states but that the nature and quality of education that students receive are far more important (wint, 2002). it is reasonable that after resolving access issues at the primary and secondary levels, the next natural (and perhaps overlapping) cycle of educational reforms is to address the quality of education. singapore may have reached this cycle of reform before jamaica as by the 1980s singapore was only a few years from stellar results in the trends in international mathematics and science study. competition-driven reforms have prompted many governments to pursue decentralization (carnoy, 1999) and as each government has transformed its education system to prepare students for a knowledge-based economy, the dynamics between centralization and decentralization has shifted. both countries retain fairly centralized control over central elements such as curriculum (ashton et al., 2002; kam & gopinathan, 1999; miller, 1997) yet each government seems to strike a different autonomy balance – by allowing autonomy on the one hand and limiting it on the other – that has critically shaped the development of the country’s education system. it can be argued that decentralization in singapore has strengthened central control over the strategic agenda while achieving tactical efficiency (tan & ng, 2007). compared to jamaica, it appears that singapore had explicit measures and incentives to promote and induce competition among schools to improve the quality of education that proved to be a successful education development strategy. singapore the main challenges that the singapore education system faced as highlighted by the 1978 goh report included: low rate of progression from the primary to secondary level (almost 30% of students did not progress); low literacy achievement; and poor and uneven quality of instructional materials (mourshed et al., 2010). the goh report introduced streaming but the government attempts to incorporate vte into the curriculum had to be revised because of the low status attached to vocational education (ashton et al., 2002). in 1979, when the economy was restructured toward high technology, more capital intensive industries such as petrochemicals and biotechnology, the vte policy responded (law, 2008). in the late1980s, singapore initiated moves to give schools (initially extended to the top eight academic schools) greater autonomy as the system had grown overly centralized (tan & ng, 2007).there were also efforts to improve the 122 current issues in comparative education welsh quality of vocational education resulting in significant changes in the image and public perception (law, 2008). reforms were introduced in 1990 to extend the minimum period of education to 10 years and the institute of technical education (ite) was established as part of efforts to upgrade technical education (ashton et al., 2002). since the late 1990s, the singaporean government has introduced measures to decentralize the education system as the state transitions to a supervisory steering model from a direct interventionist control model (tan & ng, 2007). singapore has a regulated and not a free market as the government dictates the terms under which schools compete, and parents have a wide range of quality educational choices for their children (tan, 1998). in the 1990s, the emphasis of singapore’s education system began to shift from mastery of content to acquisition of critical thinking and learning skills (kam & gopinathan, 1999). since the 2000s, singapore has positioned itself as an education hub to attract foreign students and internationally renowned universities as the service sector of the economy grows (law, 2008; law, 2010). from the late 1980s to mid-2000s, the gap between the percent of chinese, india and malay primary school students that are eligible for secondary school has substantially narrowed (mourshed et al., 2010). jamaica in contrast, the late 1970s to late 1980s was a stagnant period in education reform in jamaica and cutbacks adversely affected confidence in the system between the major stakeholders as expenditures on education declined and student-teacher ratios increased (miller, 1992). in 1982, the human employment and resource training (heart) trust was created and has played a pivotal role in the provision of vte in jamaica. heart trust was reorganized into the national training agency in 1994 centralizing and planning the analysis of vte. there has also been progress in vte in the 1990s, especially in certification. jamaica’s vte program has impacted many and serves as a model for caricom countries (lewis, 2008). yet, in 2003, approximately 80% of employed and unemployed workers and 74% of first time job seekers in jamaica had no vocational, technical or professional training (blank & mcardle, 2003). by the 1980s, jamaica offered some type of secondary schooling to 50% of the 12-17 age cohort (miller, 1992). in the 1990s, improving the quality of primary education was a national imperative (miller, 1997). prior to 1994, there was no common curriculum for secondary education and the reform of secondary education program launched in 1993 introduced a national curriculum for grades 7-9 (unesco-ibe, 2010). jamaica made substantial improvements in data reporting and analysis, and extended the role of student assessments beyond selection mechanisms (miller, 2000). in 1999, the national assessment program (nap) was launched with grade 4 and grade 6 achievement tests to all primary school students as part of a shift in the testing policy. social promotion was discontinued and standards for promotion at the primary level were introduced, stipulating that a student should not advance above grade four without the requisite functional literacy (miller, 2000). in recent decades, there has been a notable regional and international influence on jamaica’s national educational reform strategy. the island participated in the efa international initiative, and educational reform efforts were dominated by the inter-american development bank (idb) projects at the primary level and world bank projects at the secondary level (miller, 2000). in spite of the reforms undertaken, quality remains a major challenge. in 2003, 30% of primary school leavers in jamaica were illiterate and only about 20% of secondary school graduates had the qualifications for employment or entry into a postsecondary program (davies et al., 2004). current issues in comparative education 123 overcoming smallness through education development the timing of reforms the comparative experience of jamaica and singapore suggests that timing (the when) is important, not just the content (the what) of educational reforms. education systems are constantly reforming though the nature and extent of reforms differ among countries (cuban, 1999). singapore is a good example of how a system shifts in emphasis as it evolves. singapore’s stages of education development can be broadly classified as “survival-driven” (1959-78), “efficiency-driven” (1979 96), and “ability-driven” (1997-present) (mourshed et al., 2010). jamaica initially adopted a more project driven approach to education development in the 1990s but gradually shifted to a more comprehensive strategic approach to education development by 2000 (miller, 2000). it can be argued that singapore enacted more comprehensive reforms in the post-independence period compared to jamaica’s mostly project-driven approach to education development. singapore undertook a series of four comprehensive education reform cycles (in 1961, 1979, 1991 and 1997) compared to jamaica’s two (in 1973 and 1999). although it is difficult to be definitive about the impact of the timing of reforms given the multitude of confounding factors, it is reasonable that the timing of reforms was a major contributor to the progress in education development in both countries. the notion that not only did singapore undertake more comprehensive reforms rather than a project-driven approach but the timing of these reforms roughly every 20 years as opposed to jamaica’s approximate 30 year cycle may be an explanatory variable of the disparities in education development and subsequent economic development. furthermore, it appears that educational reforms that accompany and complement economic reforms may be crucial. for instance, in singapore in 1979 and 1991, comprehensive economic plans were followed by major educational reforms (law, 2008). differences in education development strategies between both countries in the immediate independence era were pivotal. it seems that there was an important policy window in both countries between 1960 and 1980. the period was defined by a confluence of factors including social demand, political will and economic means that made bold educational strategies and policies feasible. in the 1960s, when jamaica had a seemingly weak appetite for embracing educational reforms with major projects sponsored by multilateral agencies, singapore was remaking its education system with policy moves addressing bilingualism and curricular choices. in southeast asia, earlier investment in primary and secondary education had substantial effects on economic growth in the early 1980s (birdsall & sabot, 1995); and high literacy rates and enrollment at the primary level of the 1960s is positively related with economic growth rates in the 1970s and 1980s (aldcroft, 2000; barro, 1991). it is plausible that singapore is reaping the benefits of the strategies for education development implemented in the early independence period while jamaica is paying the costs. many of the education development strategies jamaica began to pursue in the 1970s such as an increased focus on the quality of primary schooling and vocational education were employed by singapore nearly a decade earlier in the 1960s. this article argues that singapore’s head start played a critical role in developing human resources to take advantage of the transition to the knowledge-based economy and economic globalization. though it is difficult to associate education policies and the changes in per capita gdp growth rates this paper posits that there may be a lagged link. early differences and changes in education development during the 19601980 period may be associated with economic growth from 1980-2010, with the late 1960s and early 1970s being key turning points. the underlying logic is that the instrumental education development strategies singapore pursued between 1960 and 1980 prepared its economy to capitalize on changes in the global economy between 1980 and 2010. 124 current issues in comparative education welsh jamaica 1962 1963 1966 1973 1975 1980 1982 1983 1991 1992 1993 1994 1999 2003 2004 2006 2007 2008 the 70/30 scholarship system is implemented to provide access to secondary schools for the poor and working class the independence plan proposed expanding teacher training facilities and reformed the selection process for admission to secondary schools the new deal in education policy focused on expanding access to secondary and post-secondary education and resulted in the creation of “junior secondary schools” education thrustfree education for all policy made compulsory primary and secondary schooling free, focused on the quality of primary schooling and led to significant reorganization of the ministry of education (moe) the technical and vocational education unit in the moe was established the education act established four formal levels of the system and redefined the roles and responsibilities of the moe the human employment and resource training (heart) trust was created heart trust launched traineeship program; 7 heart academies are opened between 1984 and 1988 the introduction of six regional offices in the moe with responsibility for supervising schools and schools’ personnel; national training agency (nta) was created to co-ordinate and evaluate all activities within vocational and technical education (vte) cost sharing scheme at the secondary level was introduced reform of secondary education (rose) was launched as part of the moe’s 15 year program to reform secondary education. the program introduced a common core curriculum for grades 7-9 nationwide; national council on education (nce) was established to provide leadership in stimulating, advising and promoting consensus in the development of educational policies heart trust was reorganized into the nta; national council for technical vocational education and training (nctvet) was launched with responsibility for certification issues in vte the grade six achievement test (gsat) replaced the common entrance exam (instituted in 1958) as the criteria for selection and placement in secondary schools; the national assessment program was launched with 4 tests in primary schools rose ii project is launched as a follow up to the rose i (1993-2000) with a strong focus on literacy and numeracy and improving the cognitive skills of secondary school students jamaica: a transformed school system, a report by the rae davis-led task force reported significant deficiencies in education system and led to the formation of the education transformation team (ett) jamaica movement for the advancement of literacy (jamal) was transformed into the jamaican foundation for lifelong learning with responsibility for providing non-formal adult continuing education cost-sharing program was abandoned the national education inspectorate (nei) is established to evaluate and report on the standards and quality of education at the primary and secondary levels table 2a. key events in the education development of jamaica: 1960-2010 sources: blank & mcardle (2003); boon & gopinathan (2006); kam & gopinathan (1999); law (2008); miller (1997); ministry of education, jamaica (1999a, 199b); mourshed et al., (2010) current issues in comparative education 125 singapore 1962 the 70/30 scholarship system is implemented to provide access to secondary schools for the poor and working class 1966 1968 1973 1978 1979 1980 1981 1983 1987 1990 1991 1992 1994 1997 1998 2005 bilingualism was mandated by the government; all students were required to study english as well as a second language at the primary and secondary levels the technical education department was established in the ministry of education (moe) the first industrial training board (itb) was created to centralize and coordinate industrial training the goh-led report on the ministry of education found the bilingualism policy ineffective and proposed streaming students based on academic ability at the primary and secondary levels. streaming was introduced shortly thereafter the vocational and industrial training board (vitb) was established through a merger of the itb and the adult education board the curriculum development institute of singapore was formed to produce teaching materials for schools. it was eventually closed in 1996 the schools council was established and involved principals in the decision making process in the moe. it is viewed as the initial step towards greater autonomy at the school level government mandated that starting in 1987, english would be the language of instruction in all subjects towards excellence in schools, a report by a groups of principals who visited the united states and united kingdom leads to the creation of independent schools in 1988 new apprentice system, patterned after germany’s dual system of apprenticeship, was introduced the moe adopted a policy of a minimum of 10 years of general education for all students; edusave scheme launched to provide grants for educational expenses institute of technical education (ite) (formerly vitb) was established as a post-secondary educational institution to create additional opportunities in post-secondary vte; the open university degree program formed to help working adults obtain degress autonomous schools were created thinking schools, learning nation policy was launched with a focus on student ability; school clusters were established to increase collaboration at the local level with a pilot program involving 59 schools teach less, learn more initiative is launched to give schools and teachers freedom to customize the curriculum overcoming smallness through education development table 2b. key events in the education development of singapore: 1960-2010 126 current issues in comparative education welsh the importance of vocational and technical education in small states the role of vte is another crucial differentiating factor in the education development of the two islands. the level and nature of investment in vte varied significantly between both countries. it can be argued that one of the primary challenges both countries faced in vte policy was combating the low status of vte as an educational pathway for less academically inclined students. before reforms in 1991 that mandated 10 years of general academic education, earlier policy in singapore streamed students on the basis of insufficient education (aldcroft, 2000; kam & gopinathan, 1999). in the commonwealth caribbean, the vte is often positioned and offered as an alternative education avenue for low academic performers (lewis, 2008). a key difference in the vte policy between the two countries is the emphasis placed on access to and quality of post-secondary vte. in contrast to singapore that has expanded and improved post-secondary vte, jamaica has limited access to post-secondary vte (morris, 2008). vte is a crucial element in singapore’s economic-education modernization. the singaporean government has invested heavily in vte and vte has evolved in tandem with a changing economic landscape (law, 2008). technical education focused on engineering to meet the needs of industrialization and the government actively sought to increase the prestige of vte (tan, 1998). institutional mechanisms emerged that linked the output of education to the skill demands of the present and future economy (ashton et al., 2002). in essence, singapore’s vte policy enhanced the ability of production to anticipate and effectively respond to market changes. the government overcame parents’ resistance by improving the prestige of vte, facilitated the gradual upgrading of skills of the labor force to the demands of emerging high-value added industries, and contained the increasing demand for academic rather than vocational education (ashton et al., 2002; law, 2010). although a technical college was established in jamaica in 1958 and the island had six technical high schools by 1978 (miller, 1999), there seems to have been less emphasis placed on vte in jamaica’s education development relative to singapore’s. in jamaica, it can be argued that vte was viewed as a relatively low priority and not pursued with as much vigor and innovation, especially immediately after independence in 1962. starting in the 1970s, there was a shift in the vte policy and an increased focus on vocational education as evidenced by the establishment of a network of non-formal vocational training centers. following a massive reorganization of the moe, the technical and vocational unit was established in 1975, nearly a decade after singapore established the technical education department in 1968 in its moe. the differences in approaches to vte between jamaica and singapore may be partly attributed to vastly different historical contexts and how policymakers view the link between changing labor market demands and education development. the types of jobs available due to resource differences may also be accountable for the differences in vte policy. the two countries have different labor market structures and singapore aimed to continue its trading advantage as an entrepot with a small labor force, thus its vte policy had to deliver progressively higher level skills to a limited range of industries (ashton et al., 2002). conversely, the world bank discouraged and de-prioritized investment in vte in the caribbean on the basis of low returns (lewis, 2008). also notable is the fact that singapore retained and expanded polytechnics from the earlier british model while other countries phased out these career-oriented schools (law, 2008). linking education development and economic development in small states although vte is an essential component of aligning economic and education development, a balanced, forward-looking education development strategy that closely ties education, economic current issues in comparative education 127 overcoming smallness through education development and national development must be considered a necessary factor for small states overcoming the constraints of smallness. effectively linking education development to economic development goes beyond an effective vte policy into forging a national identity and purpose which places education at the core of the wealth of the nation. it is a pronounced emphasis on the central role and importance of education to national identity building, social cohesion and economic prosperity. in this regard, it seems that singapore did a relatively better job than jamaica at linking increasing human capital to national and economic development in formulating and implementing educational policies. given its limited natural resources, one of singapore’s highest priorities since independence has been education and human capital development (law, 2008). in singapore, education policy was used to foster national identity before ceding strategic importance to economic priorities in later decades (aldcroft, 2010). it is plausible that the lack of natural resources compared to jamaica was advantageous to singapore’s education development. singapore’s experience lends credence to emergent evidence of a negative association between education development and natural resources and supports the notion that natural resources prevent economic development in developing countries (collier, 2007). the lack of natural resources compelled singapore to develop the habits and culture of increasing people’s skills. a team from the organization for economic co-operation and development found a significant negative relationship between the money countries received from natural resources and the knowledge and skills of their high school students (freidman, 2012). in addition to extra emphasis on human capital, this paper contends that singapore’s lack of natural resources reduced its susceptibility to global shocks as the country was not dependent on the fluctuating prices of commodities on the global market. the differences in education development between jamaica and singapore support the notion that societies with natural resource endowments for various reasons encounter greater problems in student achievement outcomes. singapore placed greater emphasis on manpower and human capital as a significant resource that resulted in a strong link between education and economic development. singapore constantly invented education pathways, expanded curricular options and catered to different learning experiences while considering the labor market and productivity growth. an early emphasis on human capital led to a better educated workforce and enabled singapore to capitalize on the rise of service industries in an increasingly globalized economy. conclusion this paper identifies the timing of reforms, the centrality of vte and a strong bond between education development and economic development strategies as salient factors in the development of education systems in small states. singapore oriented education policies to changing economic needs while addressing current challenges. in contrast, jamaica made education relevant to the current economic needs without a parallel focus on aligning education development with the diversification of the economy. singapore also had an earlier emphasis on both the access to and quality of education compared to jamaica. this paper contends that these differences in education development strategies partly contribute to the disparity in educational outcomes and levels of gdp per capita between the two small states in the post-independence period. richard o. welsh is a doctoral student at university of southern california, rossier school of education. his research focuses on educational governance, teacher quality and international comparative education. email: richarow@usc.edu. 128 current issues in comparative education welsh references aghion, p., caroli, e., & garcia-penalosa, c. 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(2000). small states: meeting challenges in the global economy. report of the commonwealth secretariat/world bank joint task force on small states. retrieved from http:// web.worldbank.org/. yew, l (2001). from third world to first: the singapore story: 1965-2000. new york, ny: harper collins. volume 13(1) / fall 2010 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice special symposium issue aid, development, and education editorial introduction 3 introduction to the special symposium issue andrew k. shiotani featured article 7 aid, development, and education steven j. klees responses 29 the ignorant donor: a radical reimagination of international aid, development, and education william c. brehm and iveta silova 37 improving aid effectiveness or transforming the global capitalist system mark ginsburg 44 the aid debate: beyond the liberal/conservative divide sangeeta kamat 51 paradoxes and prospects: moving beyond the study of foreign aid karen mundy reply 56 towards a progressive view of aid, development, and education steven j. klees current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 13, issue 1 (fall 2010) special symposium issue editors: andrew k. shiotani, ryan hathaway, and michelle hollett editorial board managing editor matthew hayden executive editor andrew k. shiotani senior editors ryan hathaway, ruaridh macleod, sarah flatto editors toni cela, anne gaspers, molly hamm, michelle hollett, rachel hatch, jason mellon, carina omoeva, muntasir sattar, angye rincon-castillo web editor andrew k. shiotani international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2010 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, 13(1), 3-6. editorial introduction special symposium issue on aid, development, and education andrew k. shiotani teachers college, columbia university the editors of current issues in comparative education are extraordinarily pleased to present this special symposium issue organized around a seminal contribution by steven j. klees, the harold r.w. benjamin professor of international and comparative education at the university of maryland, former president of the comparative and international education society, and a contributor to previous issues of this journal. in the focal article for this issue, “aid, development, and education,” klees conducts a close reading of recent entries into the burgeoning debate over international aid and development, and then proceeds to set out an articulate and passionate defense of a ‘progressive perspective’ that, he argues, stands in stark opposition to prevailing neoliberal and liberal views. klees’ essay is followed by four responses – by william c. brehm and iveta silova, mark ginsburg, sangeeta kamat, and karen mundy – that are met in turn with a reply by klees that aims at giving further elaboration to the progressive perspective. klees’ essay comes at a time when the field of international aid and development has become a site of roiling contention. of course, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers have long debated among themselves whether international aid has done much to improve the living conditions and life chances of the world’s billions of poor. efforts to improve “aid effectiveness,” while given fresh impetus over the last decade through the paris declaration on aid effectiveness and the accra agenda for action, are hardly new.1 what makes the contemporary period remarkable, however, is the degree of attention and influence that critiques of the aid industry – such as those found in william easterly’s the white man’s burden (2006) and especially dambisa moyo’s dead aid (2008) – have managed to gain among audiences beyond the aid community itself. these critiques have emerged, moreover, just as the field itself has started to witness potentially significant transformation, with high-level initiatives such as the u.n. millennium development goals unfolding alongside the emergence of a variety of new actors, ranging from celebrities and internet-fueled philanthropies to rising economic powers such as china and brazil. what these developments suggest is that we are today confronted with a singular opportunity – and an increasingly urgent moral and political obligation – to re-examine the very premises of international aid and its implications for development. as klees’ essay makes clear, re-examination requires us to go beyond the familiar debates over the machinery of aid delivery – or, to switch to a more frequented metaphor, with the specifics of ‘aid architecture’ – to question the fundamental ideological orientations that inform how we interpret past and current global realities, generate diagnoses and prescriptions, and connect these to our projections and hopes for the future. klees begins his article by reminding us of the horrific scale of the human costs that poverty and inequality continue to exact on the world’s poor and vulnerable. addressing these problems requires not only that we do ‘more’ (although more certainly needs to be done), but that we also clarify and adopt a progressive standpoint that makes issues of global justice and equality central to its approach to contemporary development. however, as klees acknowledges, a progressive voice remains relatively muted in contemporary debates. he argues in his review of five notable recent books on aid and development – the discussions by easterly and moyo, already mentioned above, as well as thomas dichter’s despite good intentions (2003), 4 current issues in comparative education editorial introduction david ellerman’s helping people help themselves (2005), and roger riddell’s does foreign aid really work? (2007) – that ‘mainstream’ perspectives adhere to either neoliberal prescriptions or propose liberal meliorations that fail to do justice, in both a moral and intellectual sense, to the demands and requirements of genuine, progressive development. while klees allows that neoliberal and liberal critiques of current aid practices occasionally hit real targets, they are based on a shared blindness to the fact that contemporary international development was founded and predicated, to a considerable extent, on both neoliberal and liberal premises. indeed, klees argues that development initiatives, including the millennium development goals – which is easily the largest coordinated organizational effort there has been in international development – are most profitably understood as situated within a dialectic of “compensatory legitimation.” in this reading, the ‘real’ purpose of aid is not to facilitate genuine improvement in the conditions of the world’s poor, but to offer a fig leaf of remedial compensation for the deep and myriad injustices perpetuated by an enduring but fundamentally unjust global capitalist order. only a progressive approach, he suggests, works toward using aid to transform that order rather than to smooth out its internal contradictions. what counts as genuine progressivism? in the responses that follow klees’ essay, we find extensive areas of agreement and sympathy for the idea of a progressive perspective and approach to international aid, development, and education. however, the different authors challenge klees on several points, and question whether or not he has offered us an adequately progressive understanding of progressivism, so to speak, or has a suitably specified conception of how institutional transformation is possible. for instance, both mark ginsburg and sangeeta kamat, in their respective responses, challenge klees to pursue more deeply what a radical and not merely progressive transformation of global capitalism and other global institutions would entail, if the aims of justice and equality are to be realized in meaningful fashion. arguments over labels such as ‘progressive’ and ‘radical’ may seem like semantic quibbles, but these responses raise important questions about the kinds of theoretical lens and conceptual frameworks that are needed to identify potential sources of (and obstacles to) deep social transformation. does a progressivism that attempts to differentiate itself from its liberal and neoliberal opponents mark a genuine advance if it cannot identify plausible institutional alternatives? both ginsburg and kamat argue that klees, despite his fidelity to a progressive orientation, has not accomplished a genuine break from standard liberal efforts to ‘improve’ aid and meliorate the conditions of the world’s poor. in reply, klees suggests that both ginsburg and kamat overstate the differences between his position and theirs. the argument he articulates here is not a fully developed proposal but instead a promissory note for additional theoretical – and political – work that, once undertaken, should make the commonalities between his views and those of ginsburg and kamat much more apparent. somewhat sharper differences become evident in respect of karen mundy’s response to klees. mundy, like ginsburg and kamat, argues that much more needs to be done to specify institutional alternatives to the current international aid system. however, mundy states, klees’ progressive perspective fails to give an adequate account of an apparent paradox: how can development assistance be a part of a system of global inequality and injustice and at the same time be a part of a progressive solution to that system? moreover, there is much that is taking place in the development world today that has not been adequately captured by familiar ideological orientations and political economy arguments. new private and state actors (ranging from the gates foundation to celebrity donors and rapidly-developing countries like china) have entered the scene; none seem particularly beholden to ‘old ways’ of carrying out business or conducting aid debates. in view of these ongoing changes in the contemporary aid environment, klees’ current issues in comparative education 5 editorial introduction proposals for transforming the existing aid architecture – such as calling for the dismantling of the bretton woods institutions (i.e., the international monetary fund and the world bank) – may seem rhetorically satisfying, but upon inspection is less than convincing. klees disagrees, stating that mundy underestimates the potential of a progressive approach, and that the changing membership of the development field cannot count as an adequate argument against its basic claims or orientation. implications for education? as klees acknowledges, much of the focus of his discussion is on the first two of the three terms in the title to his article – that is, on aid and development rather than education. but the implications for education should be clear. with the institutionalization of global compacts such as education for all and the millennium development goals, education has come to occupy a central place in the contemporary international aid system. billions of dollars now pour each year into funding an array of international, national, and non-governmental organizations working to design, implement, research, and evaluate programs directed at promoting education. but however rhetorically committed the international aid community has been to ideals of education’s intrinsic worth, a notable consequence of these initiatives has been to sanction new forms of global governance – or to use the foucauldian term, governmentality – implemented through time-bound targets, indicators, and benchmarks that place developing countries under onerous burdens and perhaps unsustainable standards and expectations. under current assessment frameworks and development targets, as michael clemens (2004) pointed out in a trenchant analysis, the historically unprecedented rates of progress many countries have actually achieved in expanding educational access have, nevertheless, been criticized as insufficient or as signs of ‘failure’ by development experts applying global rather than nationallyor contextually-driven standards and criteria.2 in light of these observations, william c. brehm and iveta silova’s “radical reimagination” of aid relationships provides a stimulating point from which to view klees’ argument. in their essay, brehm and silova use jacques rancière’s famous discussion of joseph jacotot, the ‘ignorant schoolmaster’ who sought to reorient educational and pedagogical practices around a principle of presumed equality, rather than hierarchy, of intelligence and capability between teacher and student. following jacotot’s (and rancière’s) lead, brehm and silova suggest that all of the ideological orientations klees identifies – the progressive perspective included – attempt to create new architectures on the basis of old foundations. they suggest that current practices in aid and development rest on an implicit sense that the developed world is authorized to dictate to developing countries the kinds of educational objectives and goals they should be pursuing. a more satisfactory approach, perhaps, would be to adopt the stance of an “ignorant donor,” one less willing to instrumentalize education as a means toward economic or other ends, in favor of a system that recognizes genuine equality among all peoples to develop their intrinsic educational potential and values. in response, klees questions whether or not brehm and silova are misinterpreting the progressive position, which would in fact find these novel ideas congenial. conclusion taken together, these essays offer but a single contribution to the multitude of intellectual, practical, and political debates that must be addressed if we – as students, educators, and citizens – wish to persist in our commitment to a more equitable and humane world. certainly, the future of international aid, development, and education is difficult to predict with any great sense of assurance. however, the editors of cice are thankful to steven klees and his respondents for helping to make the challenges, demands and possibilities in front of us much clearer. 6 current issues in comparative education editorial introduction acknowledgments i wish to offer special thanks to cice editors ryan hathaway and michelle hollett for their invaluable assistance in putting this issue together. i also thank cice managing editor matthew hayden for his continued support and encouragement during the editorial process, as well as steve klees for his contribution to this issue and for his long-standing support of this journal. endnotes 1. as development economist owen barder (2009) reminds us, the pearson commission’s 1969 report, partners in development, came to many of the same recommendations – such as untying aid and improving coordination among aid donors and recipients – that can be found in current prescriptions and objectives incorporated into the ‘aid effectiveness’ agendas of the paris declaration and the accra agenda for action (oecd, 2011). 2. similarly, easterly (2009) makes this point with respect to the mdgs and africa, pointing out that indicators and metrics used to assess progress toward the mdgs place the most disadvantaged countries, mainly in africa, under disproportionately burdensome expectations that cause even historically significant progress to be interpreted as indications of “failure.” references barder, o. (2009). beyond planning: markets and networks for better aid. (working paper 185). washington, dc: center for global development. clemens, m. (2004). the long walk to school: international education goals in historical perspective. washington, dc: center for global development. commission on international development. (1969). partners in development. new york: praeger. easterly, w. (2006). the white man’s burden: why the west’s efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good. new york: penguin press. dichter, t. (2003). despite good intentions: why development assistance to the third world has failed. amherst & boston: university of massachusetts press. easterly, w. (2009). how the millennium development goals are unfair to africa. world development, 37(1), 26-35. ellerman, d. (2005). helping people help themselves: from the world bank to an alternative philosophy of development assistance. ann arbor: university of michigan press. moyo, d. (2009). dead aid: why aid is not working and how there is a better way for africa. new york: farrar, straus, and giroux. oecd. (2011). paris declaration on aid effectiveness and accra agenda for action. retrieved from http:// www.oecd.org/document/18/0,3343,en_2649_3236398_35401554_1_1_1_1,00.html. riddell, r. (2007). does foreign aid really work? new york: oxford university press. © 2010 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved 3_j. monk current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 21, issue 1, 2019 © 2019, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 21(1), 35-53. justifications and impacts of low-fee private schools in kenya and uganda: understanding policy evolutionary mechanisms through public discourse of bridge international academies jeremy monk teachers college, columbia university low-fee private schools (lfps) have grown considerably in the developing world as public free primary education has been unable to cater to the poorest children. bridge international academies (bia), one of the largest chains of lfps, has positioned itself as a solution to issues of access and quality of primary education. using newspaper articles from kenya and uganda, this paper examines public discourse of bia through the lens of cultural political economy, or how public discourse can influence variation, selection and retention regarding lfps. after exploring scholarship to understand the justifications and impacts of lfps, this paper finds that justifications are present in public discourse while impacts are not. therefore, public discourse has given voice and promoted the need for improvements, with lfps as an option, but that discourse (and scholarship) has yet to emphasize lfps as a real solution, due to inconclusive evidence and ongoing battles with governments. the privatization of education has become a growing global phenomenon, with a sharp increase in private actors entering education markets over the past two decades. the education sector is gaining large investments from private organizations, providing opportunities for immense profits on a global scale (komljenovic & robertson, 2017; verger, lubienski & steiner-khamsi, 2016). while the global education industry is headquartered in the global north, the untapped and growing education markets of the developing world have led to greater investments in education in the global south (robertson, mundy, verger & menashy, 2012). the world bank’s policy advocacy for education privatization since the early 2000s has created an environment in which governments, aid agencies and the private sector see education privatization in the developing world as sound economic and education policy and a good investment. the world bank’s philosophical lead has led to an unprecedented growth in education privatization in sub-saharan africa and south asia, leading to more, and larger, investments from a range of actors (mundy & menashy, 2014). one area of education privatization which has received greater attention recently are lowfee private schools (lfps). the purpose of this paper is to examine how one of the largest and most controversial chains of lfps in east africa is represented in public discourse and how their representations in media may help or hinder policy evolutionary mechanisms concerning education privatization. this paper differs from research exploring legal, educational achievement and human rights issues concerning lfps and is instead grounded in the public discourse of these schools, or how these schools are represented and perceived in an important communication medium. justifications and impacts of low-fee private schools in kenya and uganda current issues in comparative education 36 lfps are understood as schools owned by individuals, groups or companies which offer their services to children for a small fee, either paid directly by parents or by a third party, for the purpose of making a profit (srivastava, 2013; phillipson, 2008). the fee differs depending on the country and the provider but is vaguely calculated as the price-point deemed affordable for those living in poverty (riep & machachek, 2016; verger, 2012). the realization that the quality of public primary education was subpar and that not all children had access to public schools, even following the push for universal primary education, has led to a rapid increase in private school enrolment (alcott & rose, 2016; rose, 2009; tooley & dixon, 2005). this paper specifically examines one chain of lfps in kenya and uganda, two countries where private education has increased drastically since the emergence of free primary education (fpe) policies. the amount of lfps has risen dramatically in kenya since the introduction fpe in 2003 and account for a majority of the private education institutions in the country (nishimura & yamano, 2013). a similar trend has happened in uganda, where enrolment in private schools increased following fpe in 1997 (kisira, 2008; saphina, 2017). the two neighbouring east african countries are therefore relevant case studies concerning the growth, justification and impact of the lfps movement. although there are more lfps in kenya, from the available evidence, debates surrounding their legality and morality have taken centre-stage in both countries. while a comparative study of the two countries would be useful for further research, i choose not to focus on comparison but rather on public discourse in the region as lfps are still a recent phenomenon and because of their precarious legal statuses in both countries. this paper will use recent academic literature to understand the justifications for lfps and the impact of these schools on the education system. following the literature review, i will examine public discourse of bridge international academies (bia), the largest chain of lfps in the world, and in east africa, using one prominent newspaper from each country. i conceptualize public discourse as accessible and broad mediums of information and culture which help people understand the world around them. i will analyze public discourse concerning bia through the lens of cultural political economy (cpe) by examining bia in discourse through the evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection and retention. cpe is a useful theory for analyzing how the mobilization of ideas and new strategies, and actors’ perceptions of these ideas and strategies, leads to political positions and consensus, and eventually new policies. (jessop, 2010; verger, 2016). using this framework, i explore bia's justifications and impacts, to understand how private education actors enter, grow and stabilize in low-income countries. i look at mechanisms of variation, selection and retention of bia through public discourse to understand whether other actors, namely parents, teachers and citizens, are linked to policymakers’ vision of the role of private actors. in the cpe context, variation refers to the development of new practices when dominant ones must be revisited due to challenges or dissatisfaction. selection concerns identification of policy solutions deemed most suitable after examining existing problems. lastly, retention represents the final step in which policymakers enact reforms after understanding the problems and exploring solutions. these three stages provide a more critical analysis of policy adoption and the roles of strategic actors, and public information, in pushing for reforms linked with privatization (verger, 2016; verger, fontdevila & zancajo, 2017). monk current issues in comparative education 37 for this paper, i ask the following research questions: a) how is bia portrayed in the kenyan and ugandan news media? b) how does public discourse about bia represent justifications and impacts of the lfps movement? c) how does public discourse concerning bia explain variation, selection and retention ideas? in answering these questions, this paper attempts to demonstrate the role of public discourse in creating an environment for private education actors to capitalize on problems related to access and quality in education and to insert themselves as viable and long-term policy solutions. bridge international academies bia was founded by jay kimmelman, his wife shannon may and phil frei in 2007. together, they created a business plan for mass schooling in developing countries based on the "academy-in-a-box" model. this model is based on standardized methods, curricula and teaching methods which can be scaled and copied across various contexts while keeping costs low. the entire bia supply-chain, from finding places to construct schools to lessons plans, is controlled and streamlined primarily by bia employees in the united states. teachers and academy managers, the sole on-the-ground administrative employees, use computers and/or smartphones to access lessons and scripts prepared by central academic teams (riep & machacek, 2016). using and tapping into market-making devices such as marketing campaigns and standardization, bia has attempted to create new education markets where their schools can flourish (riep, 2017; srivastava, 2016). the first bia opened in 2009 in a slum in nairobi. by 2016, bia owned and operated over 520 schools throughout kenya (420), uganda (63), liberia (50), nigeria (4) and india (3) (riep & machacek, 2016). since the company's inception, they have received large amounts of philanthropic funding from prominent global players, including the clinton global initiative, bill gates and mark zuckerberg and national governments through their aid agencies, including usaid and dfid (riep, 2017). lfps in kenya and uganda: justifications and impacts scholarship concerning the rise of lfps in east africa over the past decade has focused primarily on its relation to fpe and the increase in demand for public primary schools. in recent years, academia has focused on urban slums, because the largest growth in lfps have occurred in these areas (tooley, dixon & stanfield, 2008). this section examines the rise of lfps by examining recent literature on the justifications for their existence and their impacts on student achievement and school quality. articles selected for the literature review focused primarily on measuring the successes and failures of lfps in the region using varied methodologies and criteria for impacts on education outcomes. this attempt to provide a verdict on whether lfps are helping or hindering education is closely related to how bia is portrayed and whether the chain’s entrance and impact in east africa demonstrates its influence on policy. justifications the need for schools in urban slums a primary justification for the growth of lfps in both kenya and uganda is the lack of public schools to accommodate all children, especially in urban slums. in both countries, justifications and impacts of low-fee private schools in kenya and uganda current issues in comparative education 38 the impact of fpe policies had immediate consequences for access to education in urban areas. although the elimination of school fees led to rapid national increases in enrolment (lewin, 2009), it also put great pressure on the public system to expand at an impossible rate. (nishimura & ogawa, 2015; saphina, 2017). the immediate impact of fpe on access to education was not as present in urban slums, where building schools and hiring administrators and teachers became a difficult task for governments. in kenya, tooley, dixon and stanfield (2008) explored the rise of lfps in the kibera slum of nairobi by interviewing school owners and managers. first, they claim, after finding nearly 80 lfps in nairobi and compiling self-reported data on each school, that the positive impact of fpe in slums was overstated, and that students enrolled in private schools pre-2003 simply transferred to public schools, meaning that there was little to no net gain in enrolment. second, based on these findings, they argue that new lfps have grown significantly in slums to meet the needs of the poorest who were left behind. they conclude that there are serious inadequacies concerning school access through state-run education for kenya's poorest and that lfps are trying to fill this gap. oketch, mutisya, ngware, ezeh and epari (2010) explored how students transferred and chose schools in urban kenya and the competitiveness of entering public schools vs private schools. examining data from the 2007 education research program, they find that more children in urban slums were involuntarily excluded from entering public schools than initially expected. oketch, mutisya, ngware and ezeh (2010) focused on understanding discrepancies between supply and demand of public schools. using an excess demand framework, they find that the announcement of fpe created an increased interest in education, especially amongst the poorest kenyans. however, limited education funding and poor planning has led to an excess demand for education. in uganda, there is less research on lfps and the reasons for their existence and growth. according to kisira (2008), the private sector has aided in providing increased access to primary education in areas where the ugandan government has not succeeded. in short, the private sector has had the potential to meet the continuous education access gap. harma’s (2017) analysis demonstrates how the ugandan government has had very little success in providing appropriate schooling, creating an environment for private schools to flourish and to take more than 80 percent of the market. overall, the case in uganda is similar to that of kenya: the demand for education, especially in urban slums, has been much higher than the public supply, creating an opportunity for lfps to run schools for the excess demand. perception of education quality in addition to filling the quantity gap left by the inadequacies of public schools, the other main justification for lfps growth is that they will provide a better quality of education (riep, 2017). most often, education quality is measured through academic achievement, yet there are other quality indicators that researchers and parents use to examine education quality. integral to the growth of lfps in kenya and uganda, and throughout the developing world, are parents' perception that public education is of a low quality. monk current issues in comparative education 39 recent literature on the connection between education quality and growth of lfps in kenya has explored parents' dissatisfaction with the quality of public schools. heyneman and stern (2014) examined lfps to understand what has driven their increased demand. their study included interviews with parents to understand their thoughts on formal schooling. parents believed there were shortcomings in public schools and wanted other affordable options. to corroborate their opinion, parents cited poor national assessment results, overcrowding in classrooms, teacher absenteeism and unengaged teachers. other studies have found very similar results concerning parents' perception of public education quality. nishimura and yakamano (2013) use a survey of 718 households in rural kenya to understand what influences parents to send their children to private schools (school choice) and why they change from public to private schools (school transfer). it is important to note that this study does not look exclusively at lfps. the authors find that pupil-teacher ratio and class size in public schools are two of the strongest determinants of why parents choose private schools. tooley, dixon and stanfield (2008) present their findings on parents in slums' perception of quality differences between private and public schools following focus group discussions with parents from four lfps in nairobi. their findings demonstrate unanimous beliefs that lfps provide greater quality education than public schools. similar to the findings of nishimura and yakamano (2013), smaller class sizes and lower pupil-teacher ratios, quality indicators which are easy to observe, were a main reason for parents to perceive education quality to be better in private schools. in uganda, a similar phenomenon has occurred. according to kisira (2008), interviews with parents from across the country highlighted the negative perceptions of public schooling after the massive increase of students post-1997. in addition, the decreasing perception of quality, understood as overcrowding and inadequate resources for students, created the higher demand from parents for better quality schools outside of the public sector. harma (2017) also echoed the perception that lfps are better than public schools. an interview with a representative from kampala's private school association found that although public schools may have more qualified teachers, parents have become more result-oriented, and lfps prioritize improving student achievement. although the studies mentioned above do not all look exclusively at lfps, this section has demonstrated that, from available data, parents do believe that public education is subpar. impacts increasing access, but not for the poorest calculating the number of private schools accurately, and finding what percentage constitutes lfps, is difficult in kenya due to registration issues. most lfps are not registered with the government because only schools that own their land can register with the government (heyneman & stern, 2014). therefore, most scholars who attempt to examine whether lfps are closing the access gap acknowledge that there are limitations. using data from 2002, tooley et al. (2008) identified 76 private primary schools for the poor just in kibera. nishimura and yakamano (2013) use 2008 data from the central bureau of statistics to demonstrate the rising number of private schools, which increased from 1,441 to 5,857 between 2002 and 2005. justifications and impacts of low-fee private schools in kenya and uganda current issues in comparative education 40 oketch, mutisya, ngware and ezeh's (2010) study explored the growth of lfps in relation to where poor students chose to attend. their research finds that more than 40 percent of the poorest students in urban slums, who had trouble accessing public schools, attended a lfps. in addition, they find that a higher proportion of children living in slums are attending private schools, not public schools. stern and heyneman (2013) find in their case study of 23 mostly unregistered lfps that they target poor students. additionally, lfps often provide some sort of subsidy or scholarship (61% of students in their sample received aide) which allows them to attend the school. stern and heyneman (2013) conclude that lfps are meeting a demand for schools, but their ability to attract the poorest students is inconclusive. while it is difficult to measure the impact of lfps, recent scholarship has proven that lfps are filling a gap. however, their ability to aide the poorest of the poor through low-cost schooling has largely been inconclusive (see day ashley et al., 2014). in uganda, lfps ability to increase access for the poorest children has been more difficult to observe, mainly because of the large market share they control in urban areas. harma's (2017) findings show that there are approximately 2,282 private schools of all levels in and around kampala serving upwards of half a million students, which accounts for 84 percent of all school enrolments. while most children attend a private school, the private sectors’ ability to provide education to the poorest of the poor is not as well documented. for instance, proprietors of lfps were asked which two main socioeconomic groups attend their school. while the majority reported they serve the poor, less than 20 percent stated they serve the poorest. (harma, 2017). this is consistent with most scholarship, which shows that their impact on aiding the poorest of the poor is relatively weak (day ashley, 2014). offering a higher "quality" of education a main selling point for lfps is that they provide a better quality of education, primarily in terms of academic achievement. for research purposes, kenya and uganda are good case studies because there is data on academic achievement from national assessments (kcpe in kenya and ple in uganda), the southern and eastern africa consortium for monitoring education quality (sacmeq) and uwezo's citizen-led assessment. recent literature on achievement in lfps compared to public schools has been hotly debated. while some scholarship presents findings that lfps increase achievement for most students, others demonstrate much smaller gains or no difference. tooley's (2005) study, using a random stratified sample of schools, tested 3,000 students in kibera in both lfps and public schools in english, kiswahili and mathematics, through an assessment developed by the author. after controlling for background variables, tooley found that students in lfps did score significantly higher (tooley, 2005). in a more recent study, dixon, tooley and schagen (2013) once again conducted their own examination of private and public school students in kibera. using multi-level modelling, they found that students in lfps scored higher in mathematics and kiswahili, but not in english. while much of tooley's work demonstrates that lfps have higher achievement, there has been monk current issues in comparative education 41 a lot of criticism from fellow academics pertaining to tooley's methodology, testing instruments and analysis (see watkins, 2004; day ashley, 2014). other studies have explored quality differences in kenya. bold, kimenyi, mwabu and sandefur (2013) use kcpe results to examine the differences in scores between private and public schools. they find that between 2000 and 2005, private schools performed on average 20 percent better than public schools in raw score and conclude that there is an exam performance premium of one standard deviation. it must be noted that their analysis did not differentiate lfps from regular private schools. bold et al. (2013) have also been criticized, namely for using kcpe scores that are over a decade old and because most students do not reach standard 8, the year students take the kcpe exam. a study of 12 lfps in kibera by ohba (2013) also explores kcpe results and transition rates to secondary school. ohba (2013) finds that eight lfps had lower kcpe scores than the two government schools selected for comparison, and that graduates of public primary schools were more likely to enter secondary schools. examining kenya, uganda and tanzania, alcott and rose (2016) study whether lfps increase learning outcomes for children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. this is the most recent study examining student achievement in lfps, which uses household data and assessment results from uwezo's 2013 assessment to conduct a regression analysis examining the impact of attending private school on whether a child developed literacy and numeracy skills. they find that private schooling is positively related to increased basic learning outcomes in general for all children in kenya and uganda, but that private schooling is unlikely to decrease the already large gap in learning outcomes between rich and poor. therefore, it is difficult to assess if lfps are providing better quality education to students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, or if their student population would perform better regardless of the school they attend. while public perception of education quality is often linked to pupil-teacher ratios, there is much less empirical research on the topic. in their study, stern and heyneman (2013) find that in their sample of private schools in urban slums, pupil-teacher ratio was 15:1, compared to 80:1 in the government school. this evidence corroborates tooley and dixon’s (2005) findings, in which lfps in kibera had a ratio of 21:1 while public schools’ pupil-teacher ratio reached 60:1. ohba’s (2013) study also finds that ten of the 12 lfps had lower pupil-teacher ratios than the two public schools. while there is some evidence of lower pupil-teacher ratios in lfps in urban slums, there is no research on whether the same phenomenon is present outside of slums. in uganda, there was no mention of pupilteacher ratios of lfps in the literature. however, a ugandan national planning authority (2015) report reveals that pupil-teacher ratio in public schools was 54:1 in 2014, while the ratio was 32:1 in private schools. there is no mention of whether this ratio is similar or different for lfps. methodology to examine how bia, the largest chain of lfps in east africa, is portrayed in the news media, i constructed an original dataset of articles published online between january 2016 and march 2018. the dataset is limited to articles in this date range because the first bia justifications and impacts of low-fee private schools in kenya and uganda current issues in comparative education 42 opened in uganda in february 2015 and due to a lack of media coverage prior to january 2016. i searched for articles in the most read english-language newspaper in kenya, the daily nation, and uganda, new vision (nyabuga & booker, 2013; bbc, n.d.). while the daily nation is a privately-owned newspaper, new vision is a government-owned newspaper. to find relevant articles, i used the search option on both newspapers' websites to input following terms: "bridge international academy", "bridge schools", "low-fee private school" and "low-cost private school." in total, there were 31 articles in the dataset. nearly three-fifths (58%) of the articles were in the daily nation, while the remaining two-fifths (42%) were found in new vision. following the collection of articles, i developed a detailed codebook, as well as a questionnaire for background variables and speech acts. speech acts are the voices of specific actors in each article and are therefore given authority and a platform in public discourse. there are conscious choices made relating to who receives the power to speak and present arguments in news media. speech acts are thus critical for examining who is given agency and whose ideas are put at the forefront of public discourse. the methodology and codebook i employed is a hybrid of media analysis tools used to examine contentious issues in education and growing global education movements. i use pizmony-levy's (2016) methodology for examining speech acts of articles pertaining to contentious education issues, as well as steiner-khamsi's (2003) typology for political reactions of international large-scale assessments to explore whether the media scandalizes, glorifies, or is indifferent towards bia. the dataset also included certain background variables, including year and month, location of article in the newspaper, author affiliation and information about bia. i analyze the media, and those given voice in the media, to understand the dominant conversations and debates occurring in the public sphere, and thus how ideas concerning bia are contextualized and how the public makes sense of bia’s actions. according to luhmann (2000), media does not only represent shared social realities, but it can produce and influence the public's notion of reality. the presentation, speakers and tone of the media may influence how the public interprets its social reality (see weaver, 2007). analyzing the media can help in understanding patterns or interpretation among a given population. in addition, discourse is powerful as it privileges certain ideas and can constrain or develop knowledge (bacchi, 2000). this is also important concerning policy making as it puts to the forefront certain ideas, facts and truths. the dataset and methodology are limited in two ways. first, the small sample of newspapers means that certain perceptions and voices may be hindered. this is more relevant to uganda, as new vision is a government-owned newspaper. second, since my dataset only includes articles found online, is it difficult to tell whether all of these articles were also published in print editions (ngoge, 2014). results descriptive patterns monk current issues in comparative education 43 i began by examining the descriptive statistics of the dataset. the number of articles referring to bia, regardless of newspaper, was highest in 2016, with 16 articles. interestingly, 13 of the articles in the dataset were published between november 2016 and january 2017, three months in which there were conflicts between bia and governments. in terms of the perception of the articles, eight included positive impression of bia, 11 were negative, seven articles attempted to present both sides, and five articles were neutral. the reactions towards bia by newspaper were drastically different, with new vision's perception much more negative than the daily vision, as can be observed in figure 1. regarding speech acts, bia and government officials received similar amounts of speech acts, 14 and 13, respectively. again, speech acts differed significantly between newspapers, with bia receiving much less speech acts in new vision, which can be seen in figure 2. lastly, concerning specific information provided about bia in the articles, 20 articles included how many bia schools and/or students were present in the given country, eight articles named bia funders, seven articles stated that bia were low-fee and five articles mentioned that bia was u.s.-based. figure 1: article tone, daily nation and new vision figure 2: speech acts, daily nation and new vision positive 33% negative 17% both 28% neutral 22% daily nation (kenya) (n=18) positive 15% negative 62% both 15% neutral 8% new vision (uganda) (n=13) 11 5 1 1 6 3 3 8 0 2 1 1 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 b ia g ov er nm en t te ac he rs pa re nt s u ni on s o th er s b ia g ov er nm en t te ac he rs pa re nt s u ni on s o th er s daily nation new vision n um be r o f a rti cl es speech acts, by newspaper justifications and impacts of low-fee private schools in kenya and uganda current issues in comparative education 44 public discourse and justifications the justifications for lfps, namely that they provide school access to children who otherwise may not have the opportunity and that they are perceived as better schools, are quite present in the discourse. regarding the cpe framework, dissatisfaction with the status quo allows for new actors and ideas to enter discourse and ultimately battle for policy relevance. these justifications are highlighted primarily from bia speech acts as well as testimonies from parents. in addition, reporting about the number of bia schools and students was combined with information on the number of out-of-school children and the negative impacts of closing these schools. access. the notion that bia entered kenya and uganda to fill the demand gap for access to primary schools was a main theme. there were 12 articles (kenya 9; uganda 3) which mentioned that bia was justified in their endeavours because of their ability to increase access to schools where there was a lack of public schools. in terms of speech acts, bia and parents were most often quoted concerning the lack of access in public schools. for instance, shannon may stated that bia schools "were helping poor children who could not access education due to congestion in public schools" (id 5), a short introduction to bia in an article about technology said that the company "manages over 400 schools in kenya for low-income areas in slums where access to school is limited" (id 19), and a forum on education in nairobi led the reporter to state that "urban informal settlement demand for schooling has outstripped supply for lack of public schools in those areas" (id 15). the discourse promotes the idea that there are not enough government schools in the region. public discourse does acknowledge that there is an undersupply of schools for the poorest in the two countries, and bia positions itself as an opportunity for students to begin or continue their schooling. there are instances in which attempts to close bia are linked to students being unable to find other schools to attend. an editorial by an unnamed author stated that closing bia schools will leave students without any alternatives (id 11), and a teacher (a former bia employee) wrote that the consequences of governments shutting down bia schools will impact poor students, who were only able to attend school due to bia (id 22). from these perspectives, the attempt to shut down bia schools due to compliance and legal problems are not questioned, only how shutdowns will negatively impact students. overall, public discourse does deal with the inadequacies of the public system, and bia is presented mainly as a provider of education in area which is in desperate need of education providers. perceptions of quality. the negative perception of public education quality is a main justification for the growth of lfps. regarding public discourse, there are some mentions of how bia's quality of education is perceived to be better while demeaning the quality of public schools. although there are few of these speech acts, one from a teacher and four from parents, they provide important insights on public perceptions of quality. additionally, there are five instances in which reporters stated that parents backed bia due to their good schools. in uganda, a parent responded to bia reopening in september 2016 after a forced government shutdown, by stating that bridge "offers children a good monk current issues in comparative education 45 education" (id 29). in november 2016, when the ugandan government did order the closure of all bia schools, three parents were asked their opinion by new vision. all three parents were in favour of keeping bia open and stated that bia was offering quality education, with one parent saying that bia schools "are far better than some government schools" (id 32). four other articles mentioned that parents were protesting, or planning to protest, the attempted closure of bia in both kenya and uganda. however, outside of parents’ perception, only one article clearly stated that bia offers education in areas where "quality is largely compromised" (id 19). perceptions of the low of quality of public schools, and bia's ability to provide better education is highlighted in discourse, especially by users. however, concrete reasons for this better perception, including class size, teacher quality and achievement, are not mentioned. public discourse and impacts in general, discourse through the media seems to emulate the ambiguity of bia's impact by largely not engaging with it. therefore, while bia does highlight the inadequacies of the current education landscape in the two countries, no proof is provided as to why its model should be integrated into policy. in addition, main actors, including bia, the government, unions and parents, do not make many claims about the impact of the lfps in kenya and uganda. access. bia's impact on increasing access to education, especially for the poorest children, is seldom stated in the media. although articles contend that there are not enough public schools, there are no mentions of bia reducing the number of marginalized or out-ofschool children. bia speech acts do not include any mentions that the schools have helped in closing the gap between demand and supply through education. however, 20 articles (kenya 13; uganda 7) provide information on how many schools bia operates and/or how many students are enrolled. while this provides an idea of the size and expansion of bia in recent years, it does not explain whether students are from low socioeconomic status. therefore, public discourse does seem to follow the literature closely: while lfps have grown and increased enrolment, there is a lack of evidence as to who attends these schools and whether bia has significantly curbed the number of out-of-school children. quality. in terms of discussing bia's impact on quality of education, public discourse barely focuses on bia's ability to provide a better education than the public system. instead, there is a much larger focus on top performers and scholarship opportunities. in abstract terms, bia attempts to present itself as superior. for instance, bia speech acts include loose terms such as "bridge is delivering learning gains" (id 21) and that bridge's education is "world-class" (id 13). however, bia distances itself from high quality education at times, stating that "our schools are not the worst in uganda" (id 32) and that bia provides "a decent education" (id 13). in simple terms, bia speech acts attempt to prove that bia provides high quality, or at least good, education, but there is little discussion of the real impact on quality indicators. there was only one article from december 2016 which mentioned higher student achievement of bia schools compared to public schools. the article highlighted the elevated kcpe results of "six candidates with a pass mark of over 400 marks while another 700 candidates scores above 300 marks to steer the group of schools in an unprecedented performance” (id 16). bia's head of justifications and impacts of low-fee private schools in kenya and uganda current issues in comparative education 46 communication stated in the article that "this performance has vindicated bridge academies of cheating, poor quality education" (id 16). the media in kenya also highlights bia's ability to help a small number of top performers by providing scholarships to schools in the united states. four articles in the daily nation mention students receiving scholarships from bia and their partners. these stories examined how bia helps to provide full scholarships to "prestigious secondary schools" (id 6). the idea that scholarships will help provide quality education to students is also highlighted by bia staff, who stated that "bridge academies will continue to support kenyan children in attaining the highest levels of education by seeking scholarship opportunities" (id 6) and that bia had "secured sh80 million to ensure their top graduates join top secondary schools" (id 13). although the discourse on scholarships does not demonstrate an ability to increase quality for all students, it does show that bia produces a handful of top students, and that bia can provide them with greater education opportunities, often outside of kenya, than public schools. government, unions and the legality of bia while out of the scope of justifications and impacts, but important to understanding the evolutionary policy mechanism of retention, is it critical to examine public discourse related to the legality, and perceived legality, of bia. i find that governments and teacher unions in both kenya and uganda attempt to discredit bia by putting to the forefront of discourse their subpar standards. in the dataset, a total of 17 articles (kenya 5; uganda 12) explored the substandard practices of bia. additionally, six articles (kenya 1; uganda 5) stated that bia’s practices are not legal. lastly, 16 articles (kenya 7; uganda 9) mentioned that bia schools were closed due to their inability to conform to government standards. for instance, articles included statements such as “bridge schools were ordered closed in august this year for failing to teach the approved syllabus and for employing untrained teachers” (id 1), that they operated in “conditions … [which are] hazardous and the teachers who are employed in the schools are not qualified” (id 13) and that their “non-conformity to national curriculum, use of unqualified teachers … and poor infrastructure were putting the lives of the learners in danger” (id 20). the focus on standards and their negative impact on students is evident in the discourse and is the main argument of governments and unions. yet, when exploring how these subpar and non-conforming education standards effect students, there is almost no mention of access or quality. discussion public discourse concerning justifications for bia and bia's impact in the education sector are mixed. my findings demonstrate that the two main justifications for the growth of lfps, the greater demand for education than the public system can supply and the negative perception of the quality of public schools, are present in the discourse. however, the media's interaction with the impacts of lfps is similar to the literature: there is no information, in this case study of bia, on lfps ability to increase access for the poorest, and greater quality is spoken about primarily in abstract terms. overall, i find that the media does create space for the public to contemplate the downfalls of the public system monk current issues in comparative education 47 and to promulgate the role of lfps like bia, and other private alternatives, as possible solutions. however, i also find that the discourse does not demonstrate that lfps positive impacts on access and quality are so apparent that it is an obvious solution to current education woes. by exploring the justifications and impacts of lfps, and more specifically bia, i find an interesting and useful study to employ cpe and the evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection and retention in terms of privatization policies (or in this case actors, trends and policies). regarding validation, the discourse demonstrates that the romanticism of free primary education supported by the government must be revisited since there have been adverse effects. lfps like bia are presented, through their own speech acts, and from parents and diverse advocates for accessible quality education, as a viable solution to the education struggles in kenya and uganda. while literature dictates that it is private corporations who advocate for services of lfps (srivastava, 2010), discourse demonstrates that other actors have also contributed. therefore, i find that public discourse, particularly in kenya but also in uganda, allows for serious debate concerning variation, and the possible role actors like bia can play to mitigate, and ultimately fix, lack of access to education. the selection of the most suitable solutions to access and quality issues in east africa in public discourse is much more nuanced. as demonstrated, the impacts of lfps are not highlighted, and most actors, including those from opposite sides of the spectrum, have been careful not to conclude the success or failures of bia specifically. according to verger (2016), reform advocates try to frame their solution in scientific and evidencebased ways. in public discourse, there is very little evidence-based information about the successes or failures of bia, which is different from how lfps enter education markets (riep, 2017). it is also important to note that discourse and public opinion are also variables which can mediate selection of particular policies. the more informed the public is about reforms, and their ability to tolerate and support aspects of these policies, the more they can influence selection (boyd, 2007). therefore, i find that discourse has not supported the idea that lfps are the answer to issues surrounding access and quality, but that in more abstract terms lfps are shown as an alternative which does not hinder progress. i hypothesize that the lack of concrete statements on the impact of bia stems from the fact that bia may not be entirely confident in their results, or do not have measurable proof of their self-proclaimed successes, while governments and unions may have believed that bia would fail and that parents would not enrol their children in schools with easily identifiable infrastructure and curriculum problems. as the final step towards policy reform, policymakers must choose one solution to institutionalize into the regulatory framework. retention is therefore controlled by decision-makers. regarding public discourse, it is evident that the government, as well as teacher unions, do not agree that solutions like bia are appropriate, namely because they do not conform to legal standards. it is worth mentioning that in public discourse there are very few mentions of lfps impeding access or creating an environment of lower education quality, which seems to be the two main justifications for their existence. although verger (2016) argues that other key stakeholders may position themselves justifications and impacts of low-fee private schools in kenya and uganda current issues in comparative education 48 following the implementation of a policy, since lfps have entered the market without full consent from governments, their voices have been integral in reaching the retention phase. the contention between bia and the government and teacher unions, including using the courts and forbidding some independent researchers from examining bia, has meant that retention seems out of grasp. in uganda, which has developed a legal environment in which public-private partnerships are common (srivastava, 2016), bia's entrance into the market has created a rift between the lfps chain and the public sector. therefore, i argue that moving towards retention, in which lfps like bia are legally allowed to run schools, will not be possible unless lfps either follow government standards (which may increase fees and make them unaffordable), or prove that they can effectively improve education and energize the public to fight on their behalf. in sum, by examining the justifications and impacts of bia in public discourse through the lens of cpe and the policy process of variation, selection and retention, i find that discourse creates a space for exploring variation and new solutions to the access and quality gaps which have not been filled by the governments in both kenya and uganda. however, discourse does not show that lfps results are influential or unimpressive enough to either describe it as a real solution or to brush it aside. in addition, the kenyan and ugandan governments' attempt to invalidate bia, not through exploring its effects on access and quality, but by making it illegitimate, makes it impossible to consider it as a retainable solution. jeremy monk is a 2018 graduate from the master’s program in international education development at teachers college, columbia university. he is currently an analyst in the learning assessment programs unit at the council of ministers of education, canada (cmec). monk current issues in comparative education 49 references alcott, b., & rose, p. 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(2004). private education and “education for all”: or how not to construct an evidence-based argument: a reply to tooley. economic affairs, 24(4), 8-11. weaver, d. h. (2007). thoughts on agenda setting, framing and priming. journal of communication, 57, 142-147. monk current issues in comparative education 53 appendix newspaper articles – id list id newspaper article title month year id 1 daily nation 400 schools likely to be shut over standards dec 2016 id 2 daily nation bridge international awards scholarships to 5 mombasa siblings jan 2017 id 3 daily nation british ngos, unions to stage anti-bridge academies demo may 2017 id 4 daily nation changing method to boost learning jul 2017 id 5 daily nation close bridge schools, sossion tells ministry jun 2016 id 6 daily nation four bridge pupils win sh72m scholarship to study in the us jan 2017 id 7 daily nation governor backs bridge academies despite court order mar 2017 id 8 daily nation kenyan pupils land prestigious us study scholarship jan 2016 id 9 n/a n/a n/a n/a id 10 daily nation knut to oppose ministry’s plan to discontinue holiday studies mar 2017 id 11 daily nation look further at report on private schools dec 2016 id 12 daily nation low-cost bridge schools hire 300 tsc-registered teachers sep 2016 id 13 daily nation ministry rolls out fresh rules to promote quality education jan 2016 id 14 daily nation sossion stopped from defaming bridge academies mar 2017 id 15 daily nation row erupts between ministry and bridge schools jul 2017 id 16 daily nation slum school shines as it tops kcpe results dec 2016 id 17 daily nation sossion denies defaming international school jun 2017 id 18 daily nation sossion under fire from parents over remarks dec 2016 id 19 daily nation technology key in improving education, says mp jun 2017 id 20 new vision bridge academies asked to reimburse learners’ school fees nov 2016 id 21 new vision stop funding bridge schools: teachers petition wb apr 2017 id 22 new vision rethink position to close bridge schools dec 2016 id 23 new vision rdcs ordered to close unlicensed schools feb 2018 id 24 new vision promote dialogue, muyingo tells institutions nov 2016 id 25 new vision more bridge international academy branches closed nov 2016 id 26 new vision government to crackdown on unlicensed schools jan 2018 id 27 new vision government stop expansion of bridge international schools may 2016 id 28 new vision enforcement of the standard operating procedures for private schools and school charges in uganda feb 2018 id 29 new vision bridge schools re-open amid uncertainty, controversy sep 2016 id 30 new vision bridge schools’ parents, pupils storm parliament nov 2016 id 31 new vision bridge schools not authorized to operate, says ministry feb 2018 id 32 new vision bridge schools close, over 1000 pupils affected nov 2016 188 current issues in comparative education of caricom have been able to “[devise] ingenious ways to survive globalization” (p. 49). other works cited carney, s. (2009). negotiating policy in an age of globalization: exploring educational “poliyscapes” in denmark, nepal, and china. comparative education review, 53(1), 63-88. steiner-khamsi, g. & stolpe, i. (2006). educational import in mongolia: local encounters with global forces. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. – reviewed by landis g. fryer, loyola university chicago tertiary education in small states: planning in the context of globalization, edited by michaela martin and mark bray. paris, france: international institute for educational planning. & unesco, 2011. isbn-13: 978-9280313581. this book provides a comprehensive introduction to tertiary education in small states encountering the effects of globalization. the book is organized into four sections. the first outlines concepts and goals related to research of small states. the second section provides a series of studies of the ways small states have initiated and reformed tertiary education at regional and national levels. all of the case studies in the second section illustrate ways that small states have developed and conducted their work in tertiary education in the global context, noting challenges and successes of specific, contextual strategies. the third section examines how a select set of small states have designed effective policies related to technology, funding, and quality assurance issues. the fourth section draws conclusions based on the research discussed throughout the text. a key point that is made early on in the work is that small states are not just “scaled down versions of larger ones” (p. 25). this enables us to rethink our understanding of the challenges that small states face, but it also asks us to consider the lessons we can learn from the strategies and development processes that small states undergo. with this in mind, the authors offer the rationale for considering tertiary education as the book’s focus, noting unesco’s international institute for educational planning‘s (iiep) concern with the unique features and of small states. the iiep began a specific project on tertiary education in small states because they see a strong link between tertiary education and efforts by small states to build human capital and expand resources. the main challenge that had been identified then by iiep was funding for tertiary education in small states. an important outcome of the iiep project was the policy forum in 2009 and unesco’s conference on higher education in 2009, which enabled representatives from an array of small states to discuss institutional strategies and supports. this edited collection contributes to previous research agendas of iiep and unesco. the authors spend some time defining key terms in order to place conceptual boundaries around tertiary education in order to distinguish it from higher education. drawing on henchy (1990), they argue that tertiary education is a level of advanced learning, beyond secondary, that adults seek at institutions such as universities, colleges, institutes, or advanced schools that are distinct from the structure of primary and secondary education. in addition, tertiary education includes full-time and part-time programs that are both part of universities and other professional trainings. current issues in comparative education 189 thus, in contrast to higher education, tertiary is defined as not just limited to a connection with a university. next the authors argue that one ought to employ quantifiable indicators when defining ”small state.” for example, they consider population size and other indicators of smallness such as geographic area and size of economy. in doing this they follow a tendency in the literature on small states that use population size as a defining marker of smallness. a final comment on definitions relate to globalization. the authors take a broad definition of globalization that emphasizes a “shrinking world,” “interconnectedness,” “integration,” “consciousness about the global condition” (p. 30). this characterization of globalization suggests they see small states as both the receivers of globalization without much attention to the processes or agents of globalization. the three chapters in the first section focus on the conceptual literature on small states, the expansion of tertiary education and its implications, and the necessity to strengthen educational research capacity. first, in bray’s chapter, readers will find emphases that commonly recur throughout the scholarship on small states: economic challenges such as narrow resource base, lack of economies of scale, relative openness, infrastructural costs, remoteness, natural disasters, and international capital markets. bray considers more than just economic challenges to include the changing perceptions of the role of interconnections between national, regional, and international institutions. second, martin makes two contributions as he points to the increased social demand for tertiary education and as he emphasizes the impact of a globalized economy offering new demands for advanced skills. third, crossley argues the need to strengthen educational research capacity in light of globalization and the rise of the knowledge economy. the priorities of a research agenda are connected to the effects of globalization; effects such as an “increased pace of social and technological change, knowledge and knowledge-generation” (p. 102) are seen as necessary for national economic competitiveness. in section two, case studies involving the development and challenges of tertiary education are offered. the universities of the west indies, fiji, saint lucia, malta, oman and armenia are discussed. in these chapters, it is clear that the tension between regionalism and nationalism persists. in addition, it is clear that the call for regional cooperation and integration in conjunction with national development will be a feature of developing tertiary education across various small states, specifically the pacific island countries. the chapters in section three provide insight into growth and improvement of distance education in small island developing states (sids), and offers policy lessons for building and funding sustainable tertiary education systems. these essays acknowledge that small states’ governments need to assess the value-added for supporting tertiary education. once again, the chapters in this third section stress the importance for regional cooperation as a key strategy for developing and funding tertiary education. additionally, this section argues there is a need for improved quality assurance frameworks in order to enhance coordination and international partnerships. two relevant critiques emerge after reading this book. first, oftentimes, the scholarship in this book falls back on taken for granted assumptions and definitions of globalization as if it were an inevitable, economic process, but in the conclusion we become aware of the fact that regional movements and coordination are more likely agents or carriers of globalization. the authors situate the tertiary education phenomena in the context of regional movements and regional communities. while each of the case studies in the second and third sections of the book highlight local dilemmas and challenges in the face of globalization, they merely mention the presence of 190 current issues in comparative education regional coordination and its persistent tension with national agendas. perhaps, then, researchers have a responsibility to move past grand narratives of globalization by focusing more intently on the historical, political and socio-cultural dynamics underlying regionalization and its local impact. a second critique is that greater connection across the use of these cases would guide researchers toward understanding the rationale for tertiary education. while martin and bray conclude by demonstrating similarities, differences and variation across small states’ strategies in addressing the challenges of tertiary education, more effort to provide specific, concrete strategies that can be tested could be a useful pathway for researchers to pursue. with that said, select essays such as martin’s (2011) outline a clear quality assurance framework. but, testing these frameworks and developing research to evaluate the strategies, and specifically the quality assurance frameworks, are still needed. as an attempt to advance academic thinking about smallness, this work falls short from offering a new theoretical contribution. nevertheless, this book will be useful for introductory graduate courses in comparative education, international education researchers. in addition, policy-makers and program evaluators working on projects related to small states, tertiary education, or within international organizations may find these chapters of interest. other works cited bacchus, m. k. (2008). the education challenges facing small nation states in the increasingly completive global economy of the twenty-first century. comparative education, 44(2), 127-145. commonwealth secretariat (2009). small states: economic review and basic statistics, volume 13. london, uk: the commonwealth secretariat. – reviewed by sophia rodriguez, loyola university chicago © 2012 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(1): 145-156. inclusive education in bhutan: a small state with alternative priorities matthew j. schuelka royal thimphu college bhutan is a ‘small state’ according to the world bank, and therefore categorized as fragile and vulnerable to local and global challenges. however, since the 1960s, when the country first engaged in ‘modernization’ development and global politics, bhutan has been anything but fragile and helpless. the royal government’s focus on sustainable development, cultural heritage, and gross national happiness as a template for all social policies has empowered bhutan to become a leader in the alternative development of small states. this article explores bhutanese development in one specific area: inclusive education. as bhutan has shifted its educational policy from elite monasticism to secular ‘education for all’, issues of educating a heterogenous student population led to the development of inclusive education policies. this article examines how equity-based educational policies provide an alternative to economic-based policy prescriptions of the world bank for small states. introduction nestled amongst the towering peaks of the himalayas, the country of bhutan navigates itself in the twenty-first century in a cautious and calculated manner. in many ways, the difficult topography of bhutan has kept it isolated from global movements both positive and negative. bhutan was never colonized by europe, engaging only with its immediate neighbors of nepal, sikkim, india, tibet, and later britain. today, bhutan has become a country in the global network and tasked with re-negotiating its identity and place in both regional and international imaginations. a specific recent development in bhutan has been its education system, having only begun in earnest since the 1960s (namgyel, 2011). as secular, government-initiated schooling came to prominence and eclipsed elite buddhist monastic education since the 1960s, issues and dilemmas were raised in bhutan – amongst other things – as to how a mass education system can benefit an inclusive society. in this paper, i argue that the manner in which bhutanese educational policies addresses this concern indicates a complex engagement with the limitations and possibilities of being a “small state” according the world bank (2012) in that the world bank frames education in small states in terms of human capital development. i also argue that bhutanese educational policy and goals defies the characterization of small states as fragile and vulnerable (mayo, 2010), and ultimately presents an alternative to economically-driven development policies for small states (world bank & commonwealth secretariat, 2000). education has been expressed as a human right through united nations agenda-setting such as the jomtien ‘education for all’ conference (un inter-agency commission, 1990), the dakar world education forum (unesco, 2000), and the millennium development goals (un, 2000). while reactions and effectiveness of conceptualizing education as a right for every child has been mixed (lewin, 2005; world bank, 2006), most nations have been engaged in building their educational capacity. the reasons for engaging in educational development range from economic externality and human capital arguments (becker, 1994; heyneman, 2000), to arguments of education to promote democratic civic engagement and social justice (gutmann, 1987; nussbaum, 2011). regardless of how education is currently framed, discursively it is viewed as a vital element in nation-state development. education has been argued as one of the key ingredients to national 146 current issues in comparative education schuelka growth, from the united states (friedman & mandelbaum, 2011) to the smallest of states (bacchus, 2008; world bank, 2012). if education is to be assumed as a human right and a catalyst for national development – whether or not this is empirically true – policy problems include issues of access, cost, and quality. one policy solution that attempts to address all three of these concerns is inclusive education. while many definitions and conceptualizations of inclusive education are in play around the world, the unesco (1994) definition provides the broadest definition: [s]chools should accommodate all children regardless of their physical, intellectual, social, emotional, linguistic or other conditions. this should include disabled and gifted children, street and working children, children from remote or nomadic populations, children from linguistic, ethnic or cultural minorities and children from other disadvantaged or marginalised areas or groups. (p. 3) while inclusive education was – and still is – a primarily rights-based policy approach, some research has argued that it is both cost-effective (metts, 2004) and increases overall educational quality (ainscow, booth & dyson, 2006). i argue that the development of and interest in inclusive education as a policy solution in bhutan presents a complex reality for the conception and characterization of small states as defined by the world bank (2012). first, i explore the assumptions and definitions made of small states and how bhutan problematizes these assumptions. second, i detail the vast changes that have occurred to the bhutanese education system in the past fifty years. the policies that guide these changes indicate a unique bhutanese conceptualization of education. third, i explain how inclusive education has been formed as a policy and highlights alternative priorities within education policy in bhutan. this article is focused at the level of policy discourse, which limits our understanding of what policies actually do and how they are interpreted, but as rizvi & lingard (2010) suggest, policies are value statements “designed to steer actions and behaviour, to guide institutions and professionals in a certain direction” (p. 8). in this paper, it is the values of educational policies that are most important in understanding bhutan relative to small state characterization. the primary methodology used in this article is one of policy document analysis: policy documents from the ministry of education, 5-year plans from the royal government, and white-papers disseminated by governmental organizations. this was also followed by a review of scholarship on the bhutanese education system. this resource gathering took place both outside of bhutan, as well as within the country as part of a larger ethnographic project on bhutanese schools. this article only presents the discursive elements of policy and scholarship written on bhutan for an international audience (steiner-khamsi & stolpe, 2010; jules, 2008) and the reality on the ground is much more complex. this is a limitation for this study, and also a case for a richer “vertical case study” (vavrus & bartlett, 2009) to follow up this research. small states, complex realities the definition of a small state generally focuses primarily on population size. bacchus (2008) identifies several definitions that place small state populations anywhere from under 1.5 million to under 5 million people. these population numbers do not seem to be based on any sort of current issues in comparative education 147 inclusive education in bhutan justified measurement. both the world bank (2012) and the commonwealth secretariat (crossley, bray, & packer, 2011) use the under 1.5 million population figure as their definition, but the world bank (2012) also notes that the term ‘small states’ is applied to a diversity of countries of different levels of development. bhutan has a population estimated around 708,000 people (government of bhutan, 2012) which certainly places it squarely into all population definitions of a small state. while population serves as the main criteria in defining a small state, and despite the world bank/commonwealth secretariat’s (2000) inclusivity of diverse economic conditions, the characterization of small states is that they are ‘developing’ countries with small economies (bacchus, 2008; see also world bank, 2000). this characterization exists despite the fact that per capita gnp among small states ranges from $180 (guinea-bissau) to over $14,000 (the bahamas) (world bank, 2012). bhutan has an estimated per capita gnp of $590 (world bank, 2012) but, as i will argue below, this indicator is not the measurement that bhutan uses to gauge its overall success as a country. despite major steps in global engagement and modernization, the royal government of bhutan has been quite cautious and calculated in its external affairs (galay, 2004). tourists are allowed into bhutan only through government-sanctioned tour companies and most international nongovernmental organizations are not allowed to enter the country. there are also heavy restrictions on foreign investment in bhutan (national council of bhutan, 2010). while bhutan has accepted immigrant labor from nepal and india in the past, recently the government has revised these policies (magistad, 2011). these policies, among others, represent the larger theme in bhutanese governance of striving to maintain itself in the twenty-first century. bhutan in the 21st century is filled with the paradoxes, contradictions, and complexities of an enmeshed global world. in many ways, bhutan has embraced its ‘small state’ image both for itself and in the world at large. for much of its history, bhutan has been in isolation, only getting pulled out of it from time to time by tibetan invaders or british-india land disputes (crossette, 1996). while bhutan desires development and modernization, it also rigidly clings to its ‘traditional culture’ and perspective. the driglam namzha policy, for example, enforces a national cultural dress code, architectural design uniformity, and public social codes of conduct (national library, 1999). this effort can be considered either a protection against outside cultural influences or, as phuntsho (2004) argues, an “invention of tradition” (p. 575). there is much complexity in having a policy such as driglam namzha, in that it created much friction with the nepali minority in southern bhutan and raised questions about exactly whose culture was being upheld. all focus on economic development in bhutan is filtered through its gross national happiness (gnh) policies. gnh is a rejection of the standard international development indicators of economic consumption and production, such as gross national product, and instead pays deference to the nine alternative domains: “psychological wellbeing, health, education, time use, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards” (the centre for bhutan studies, 2012, gnh: concept section, para. 1). these domains represent the holistic vision of the royal government to modernize bhutan without sacrificing core buddhist-cultural beliefs, referred to as bhutan’s “middle way” (walcott, 2009). the ethical guidance of the gnh on policies has led to a significant limitation on un-sustainable industrial growth (zurick, 2006). it remains to be seen how bhutan’s ‘middle way’ fits into the world bank’s vision of economic development. certainly, it can be observed that bhutan is not embracing the traditional ‘stages of 148 current issues in comparative education schuelka development’ that are all too often taken as fact by the world bank and others (see sachs, 2005). i argue that bhutan has even recently become more emboldened to challenge the meanings of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress.’ in an interview with the united nations news agency, prime minister of bhutan, jigme y. thinley, advocated: [measuring development through gdp] is flawed and it has many deficiencies. it is flawed in that it promotes limitless growth in a world that is finite. it has deficiencies in the sense that it does not measure or account for so many things that are important to the well-being of a human individual – which ultimately is the purpose of development. (“interview with prime minister of bhutan,” 2012, para. 9) subsistence agricultural economies – such as the case in bhutan – are problematic to western conceptions of what a ‘developed’ and ‘modern’ nation looks like (see escobar, 1995) but, regardless, bhutan is embracing a hybrid model of sustainability, tradition, and modernity. i argue that this is a far cry from the characterization of a small state as fragile and vulnerable (mayo, 2010). bhutan is not afraid to reject economic suggestions and aid from international agencies, as it did in 1980s when the world bank wanted to fund a dam in southern bhutan that would have flooded a major conservation area (worden, 1991). this, of course, is not to say that bhutan rejects taking international development money – far from it – but bhutan is not simply a ‘taker’ of policies from international organizations, as is the frequent characterization of small states (bacchus, 2008). one policy area where bhutan is especially building its capacity is education, which i will turn to in the next section. education in bhutan: from the monastery to the modern school prior to 1959, education in bhutan was primarily a buddhist monastic system that taught only a select few. this monastic school system avoided the dilemma of teaching a diverse group of learners because the selection criteria for attending these schools eliminated such youth whom struggled with literacy, numeracy, and otherwise academic learning by rote. education – primarily literacy and numeracy – was also available to aristocratic youth through the hiring of private masters that primarily came from tibet (phuntsho, 2000). within bhutan pre-1959, understanding written language was not considered an important skill to acquire and had little impact upon the everyday lives of its citizens (dorji, 2008). it was more important to know how to grow food, make materials for living, and have good relations in one’s community. these are skills that are acquired through practice and cultural transmission that do not require the institutionalization of schooling. beginning with modernization efforts in the 1960s, public education for the general bhutanese population began in earnest and has risen precipitously ever since. as phuntsho (2000) argues, “it may not be an exaggeration to claim that of all the changes and developments that the kingdom of bhutan saw in the last half of the twentieth century the ones in education are the most evident, momentous and far-reaching” (p. 97). the third druk gyalpo [dragon king], jigme dorji wangchuck, initiated modernization efforts during this time believing that bhutan needed to position itself effectively in a modern global society (dorji, 2008). this can be viewed as a preventative measure to make sure that bhutan became a global citizen on its own terms rather than be overcome by india or china, which were becoming emboldened during that period (pradhan, 2012). in the first five-year plan in 1961, education is featured prominently in current issues in comparative education 149 inclusive education in bhutan bhutan’s development agenda and the royal government began to sponsor public community schools (dorji, 2003). major changes occurred in the conceptualization of education with the introduction of ‘modern’ education. for instance, while monastic education emphasizes personal enlightenment and life-long reflection, modern education is seen as emphasizing the acquirement of skills to be used externally, that is, to be used after school is completed (phuntsho, 2000). during its early development, the education system was almost entirely imported from india, including curricular materials and the teachers themselves (chhoeda, 2007). in the 1980s, the royal government took tangible steps away from the indian system by localizing the curriculum, localizing the teaching force away from indian expatriates, investing in new bhutanese-based curricular materials, localizing school certificate examinations which were previously held in new delhi, and embracing activity-based/inquiry-based pedagogy away from a more strict british-indian model of lecture and memorization (chhoeda, 2007). these educational reforms began with the new approach to primary education (nape) in 1985 and expanded in the 1990s through support from the asian development bank (bray, 1996). bhutan has borrowed educational policies from india but also, increasingly, from internationalized sources. bhutan is a signatory to major un initiatives such as the ‘education for all’ (efa) conference in jomtien and the 2006 convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. there is also, at present, a strong desire for an educated citizenry and democracy in direct correlation with bhutan’s commitments to initiatives such as efa and the un millennium development goals (ninnes, maxwell, rabten & karchung, 2007). several international organizations – such as the us-based bhutan foundation, jica [japanese international cooperation agency], danida [danish international development agency], and un agencies such as unicef [united nations international children’s fund] and undp [united nations development program] – have a presence in developing bhutan’s educational institutions. for example, the bhutan foundation and unicef are engaged in significant consultation on the new special education policy that is set to be released in 2013 (j. dorji, personal communication, september 19, 2012). education is free and compulsory for bhutanese youth from ages 6-16 and its commitment to educational equity allowed bhutan to reach gender parity in its schools very early in its development (ministry of education, 2010). while it is invested in meeting the commitments proposed in un human rights initiatives, bhutan is also committed to modernize and develop in its own unique way. beginning in the 1990s, the concept of gnh became central to bhutan’s education strategy, as the government commits to “maximize the happiness of all bhutanese and to enable them to achieve their full and innate potential as human beings” (royal government of bhutan, 1999, p. 12). denman and namgyel (2008) argue that the bhutanese system eschews standardization, privatization, and competition. all educational policies must receive the approval of the gross national happiness commission before they are allowed to be enacted. making modern education curriculum better fit the culture and values of bhutan provided an education system that was more relevant and more acceptable to the everyday lives of the bhutanese citizenry. chhoeda (2007) suggests that localization and community participation in bhutanese curriculum “provided flexibility for bhutanese educators to introduce new bhutanese content and value systems in the education program” (p. 58). while, as cited earlier, the educational system in bhutan faces many similar challenges to other educational systems around the world (ministry of education, 2004), the outcomes expected for students at the end of primary school reflect a balance between the academic expectations of a ‘modern’ country with a uniquely bhutanese cultural twist. namgyel (2011, p. 62) suggests that the 1980s became a period 150 current issues in comparative education schuelka of ‘bhutanization’ of its education system. during this time, subjects like environmental studies became core aspects of the curriculum and the royal government of bhutan debated the negative aspects of ‘western education.’ today, among other curricular goals, the bhutanese education system promotes the following (as cited in chhoeda, 2007, p. 60): • a deep sense of respect and pride in being bhutanese, and in being citizens who are loyal, dedicated, productive, contented, and happy with a high standard of moral ethics and discipline • a greater understanding and appreciation for the predominantly agriculturally-based rural lifestyle and a developed sense of resourcefulness and dignity of labor these goals, in particular, highlight an education system not merely focused on the acquisition of skills that benefit the bhutanese economy. bhutan has seemingly managed to integrate the academic demands of a modern education with the socio-cultural traditions of its citizenry, although there are still tensions between the traditional monastic educational system and the modern educational system (denman & namgyel, 2008; phuntsho, 2000). inclusive education policy in bhutan one of the primary challenges for a modern education system is contending with human difference. whereas the monastic educational system in bhutan had only to pick those youth who naturally inclined towards literary activities and spiritual practice – while the majority of the population engaged in agricultural activities without the need for literacy – the modern educational system brings heterogenous community youth together in one classroom with one teacher with the expected outcome that they all learn together. dorji (2008) argues that “for the [bhutanese] teacher...the secular system was more difficult as he or she had to deal with a number of pupils with varied learning abilities and problems” (p. 22). as has been the case in the development of other educational systems, committing to compulsory education for all summons the dilemma of how to educate youth with differing abilities effectively and efficiently with limited resources (schuelka & johnstone, 2012). bhutan has begun to address these concerns through its increasing attention towards special education and inclusive education. within the past ten years, the royal government of bhutan and the ministry of education have become more interested in how to best educate youth with disabilities in schools. in the ninth five-year plan (royal government of bhutan, 2002), a special education unit was established within the ministry of education to specifically address the needs of both staff and students involved in the education of youth with disabilities. the royal government (2002) estimates that 3.5% of bhutanese youth have a disability, however the criteria for determining a disability diagnosis remain unclear. while the exact number of youth with disabilities participating in education is unknown historically, it has become a top priority for the royal government (2002; 2009) and the ministry of education (2004; 2010). the royal government (2009) has claimed that 10-12% of children do not attend school because either they have a disability or live in extremely remote areas of bhutan. partly, the priority of getting all school-age children into school is an internal motivation, but bhutan’s engagement with international initiatives such as efa and its commitments to various un conventions can also be conscious or unconscious motivators. the bhutanese department of education, within the ministry of health and education (2003), spells out its vision on education for students with disabilities in education sector strategy: realizing vision 2020. their vision is as follows: current issues in comparative education 151 inclusive education in bhutan all children with disabilities and with special needs – including those with physical, mental and other types of impairment – will be able to access and benefit from education. this will include full access to the curriculum, participation in extra-curricular activities and access to cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activities ... children with disabilities and those with special needs will, to the greatest extent possible, be able to attend a local school where they will receive quality education alongside their non-disabled peers. (p. 36) inclusive education continues to resonate within bhutanese policy documents such as the royal government’s tenth five-year plan (2009) and the policies of the ministry of education (2010). while there are still large gaps between idealized inclusive policies and the material, curricular, and personnel capacity to commit them to praxis, dorji (2003) suggests that bhutanese culture is already comprised of the values necessary for an inclusive approach to education. both dorji (2003) and namgyel (2011) label this as “wholesome education.” at least going back to 2001, the kuensel national newspaper has been covering issues and challenges related to persons with disabilities in bhutan. editorials (see the government needs to do more, 2009) call for the increased capacity of schools to properly educate youth with disabilities. the priorities of the royal government concerning equity in education, along with the media’s portrayal of the policy problem of educational and societal exclusion of persons with disabilities, present inclusive education as a natural policy solution. the institutionalization of inclusive education policy into the educational structure of bhutan represents a concerted effort in building an inclusive bhutanese society. this is a far cry from the gdp-related educational priorities of the world bank (2012). as alluded to by both dorji (2003) and namgyel (2011), as well as lokamitra (2004), education in bhutan is deeply connected to its buddhist culture and is expressed in both conscious and unconscious ways. the belief in the inter-connectedness of all beings naturally lends itself to forming and expressing policies that support inclusiveness. while the belief in karma can be problematic in the conceptualization of disabilities (schuelka, 2012), bhutanese gnh-influenced policies are supportive of persons with disabilities through a buddhist lens. i think it goes without saying that the world bank does not view the world through a buddhist perspective, nor do i think it will embrace buddhist development practices anytime soon. conclusion: building inclusive education policy in small states as shown above, bhutan is empowered to enact educational policies that envision a better society – not just in bhutan but for the world at-large (“interview with prime minister of bhutan,” 2012). while the world bank (2000; 2012) is primarily concerned with small state economic development and issues of markets and incomes, bhutan is choosing its own path. galay (2004) writes, “[t]here can be no universal theory which can explain the behavior of small states with different culture, politics, domestic institutions and perceptions of security” (p. 106). it would be most appropriate, given the case of bhutan, to identify that small states may not be prioritizing capitalistic economic growth as the prima facie of ‘development’; that, perhaps, there are other dimensions to education and society that can be prioritized. crossley, bray, and packer (2011) make the argument that small states have been engaging in making their education systems more inclusive and expansive. many states lack the infrastructure and capacity to fully realize these goals, and resort to focusing on an educational system that is designed to foster economic skills for economic development – leaving education for marginalized youth populations in the hands of ngos, special schools, 152 current issues in comparative education schuelka or not at all (schuelka & johnstone, 2012). given that the entire education system in bhutan is only fifty years old, bhutan has made significant progress in shaping a comprehensive public education system that is unique and not solely based upon adopting out-of-context pre-packaged international education policies. an alternative reading of bhutanese education policy in regards to inclusive education could be that the presence of these progressive and international-friendly policies are just another form of ‘global speak’ in which the words are mere representations of what donors and international policy experts want to hear. in defining “global speak,” steiner-khamsi and stolpe (2006) suggest, “[t]here is always and everywhere a huge gap between policy talk and policy action” (p. 185). while this may certainly be the case in bhutan – given education policy is often analyzed by international audiences and not by those tasked with carrying it out locally (jules, 2008; steinerkhamsi & stolpe, 2006) – the entirety of its development philosophy cannot be overlooked. of course there will always be gaps and ‘loose coupling’ between any policy and its practice, and i argue that persistently pointing this out is no longer helpful research. steiner-khamsi (2010) describes the ability of policy-makers to address international donors in one ‘language’ and then to address local constituencies in another as “policy bilingualism.” jules (2008) takes this analysis one step further and suggests regional policy language as another aspect of “policy trilingualism.” these description do not entirely work in bhutan as there is little reliance on external donation, but there may be some analogy to bhutan gaining international political capital by being for its alternative development strategy. regionally, bhutan is quite unique and set apart from its neighbors in saarc [south asian association for regional cooperation] in its history, politics, education strategy, and its development philosophy. in the case of the new special education policy in bhutan that is to be released in 2013, the policy has not only been reviewed by international experts but also is reviewed internally by gross national happiness experts. while unicef is involved in inclusive education and child-friendly schools in bhutan, they are not dangling money in front of the ministry of education and incentivizing the policy to become ‘multilingual,’ nor is there any of form of international aid bribery that has been so criticized in the past in other regions. in my opinion, the presence of such policies in bhutan are a natural off-shoot of its desire for national development balanced with a focus on inclusive societies and a commitment to the spiritual, material, and psychological well-being of its citizens. it is an over-simplification to say that bhutan is not interested at all in its economic growth because, indeed, it is quite concerned with its economy. however, the royal government is equally concerned with the well-being of its people and through its gnh policies, the well-being and happiness of bhutanese citizens becomes the primary overall concern. the bhutanese are very proud that they are considered an outlier of development and economically-biased policies, as evidenced by the recent interview at the united nations by bhutanese prime minister jigmi y. thinley in which he said: bhutan has never really sought fame or popularity. and in fact, gnh is something that we did not seek to promote, but the knowledge that people do know about gnh and associate this idea with bhutan gives me a sense of hope in the future of mankind. it means that people are aware that there is such a thing as an alternative way living life, an alternative way to living life in such a way that life as we live it can be meaningful and can become sustainable. (“interview with prime minister of bhutan,” 2012) current issues in comparative education 153 inclusive education in bhutan a focus on economic capacity development in small states misses the fuller picture of society and culture within those small states. while it is true that inclusive education is expensive and uses more resources (metts, 2004), there are many intangible rewards and creative solutions to limited resources in education (schuelka & johnstone, 2012). bhutan, like many small states, recognizes that education is not solely an economic enterprise. how bhutan challenges the world bank (2000, 2012) ‘small state’ status is that it is not looking for development by western definitions of the term. bhutan is crafting its own ‘modernity’ and hardly fits neatly into either world bank conceptualizations or expectations for small states. the world bank (2000) calls for small states to be exposed to global markets, have large export markets, feature diversified economies, and access to capital (see also world bank, 2000). to bhutan, these things are unacceptable either because they are unsustainable, un-buddhist, or unrealistic to the realities of its geography and position. to the royal government of bhutan (2011) , gnh is a much more sustainable and locally-relevant philosophy of development and one of the primary ways in which this is expressed is through its education priorities. matthew j. schuelka is a lecturer in the social sciences department at royal thimphu college in bhutan. he is also conducting a year-long vertical case study on inclusive education policy and practice in bhutan for his dissertation in fulfillment of a phd in comparative and international development education from the university of minnesota. matthew also holds graduate degrees from the university of vermont and stanford university. references ainscow, m., booth, t., & dyson, a. 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(2006). gross national happiness and environmental status in bhutan. geographical review, 96(4), 657-681. © 2013 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(2): 63-83. teacher education for social change: transforming a content methods course block scott ritchie kennesaw state university, usa neporcha cone kennesaw state university, usa sohyun an kennesaw state university, usa patricia bullock kennesaw state university, usa this article analyzes data from a qualitative practitioner-research case study in which four university faculty members attempted to disrupt the hegemonic domestication of candidates enrolled in an undergraduate teacher education program. during the semester prior to their student teaching, 16 candidates at a large public university in the southeastern u.s. enrolled in four content methods courses. taught by the authors of this article, the curriculum of these courses emphasized social justice dimensions of teaching rather than just focusing on skills and strategies. drawing from the multiple data sources, the authors highlight the possibilities and limitations of teacher education for social change and argue that greater resources are needed for teacher education to effect true social change. “the field of teacher education has not taken seriously its role to prepare teachers as activists and advocates of social justice.” (irvine, 2004) if p-12 public schools are to serve more than a domesticating function or paternalistic view toward students that reproduces status quo inequities (freire, 1985, 1998), teacher educators in university settings must disrupt the hegemonic domestication of candidates enrolled in teacher education programs. that is, teacher educators must heed irvine’s (2004) call to prepare teacher education candidates (hereafter referred to simply as “candidates”) to be activists and social justice advocates. this qualitative practitioner-research case study examines how four university faculty members attempted to “flip” the classroom during the candidates’ methods block (one semester in which a single cohort of candidates takes all content methods courses together). as instructors of these courses, the authors sought to place equity and justice at the center of the curriculum rather than in the margins. the context for this study was a large state university in the southeastern united states. the institution, located in a suburb of a large city, has one of the state’s highest numbers of teacher education graduates. the focus of this article is the elementary teacher education program, which is housed in the college of education. the community surrounding the campus is largely conservative, socially and politically. in the 1960s and 1970s, this community experienced a population boom, due to white flight from the nearby black-majority city. around this time, fearing increased crime, local government officials voted against legislation that would connect a passenger rail system to the city and since then teacher education for social change 64 current issues in comparative education have actively resisted all rail projects. later, the local school district, pressured by parents and community members who were upset that science textbooks contained information about evolution without also discussing creationism, placed stickers in every high school biology textbook stating that “evolution is a theory, not a fact,” an action later ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge. the local county sheriff’s office became the first one in the state authorized by the department of homeland security to participate in ice's 287(g) program, which has been used to identify more than 180,000 “illegal immigrants” for deportation nationwide since 2006. as of late september 2010, the program had been used to identify 14,692 undocumented immigrants in the state, prompting three other counties to sign agreements with ice. this brief description of the community in which we work is to make clear that our context is not an idyllic bastion of progressivism. we struggle with the same kinds of discourses of heteronormativity[1] and “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (hooks, 2009, p. 15) that our candidates bring as educators. in what follows, we situate our study within social justice teacher education, outline the methodology we used in conducting the study, share our results, and conclude with implications for teacher education focused on social justice. we make the argument that a concerted effort to make cross-course connections is a necessary step toward developing elementary teachers committed to progressive social change. we also argue that teacher education programs must go even further in creating institutional structures that put social justice at the center, rather than in the margins, of the entire teacher education program. a framework of social justice teacher education the term “social justice,” when applied to teacher education, has been appropriated in so many ways that the term has become diluted, often synonymous with offering a multicultural education course or placing candidates in schools with students of color (mcdonald & zeichner, 2009). while different educators and scholars take up different positions on social justice education, such as redistributing resources, developing student agency, or recognizing and affirming all social groups, especially those that have been marginalized, and ensuring their success (cochransmith & lytle, 2009; zeichner, 2009), we argue, following bell (2007), that each perspective is necessary for education that is socially just: social justice is both a process and a goal. the goal of social justice is full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs. social justice includes a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure. . . . [s]ocial justice involves social actors who have a sense of their own agency as well as a sense of social responsibility toward and with others, their society, and the broader world in which we live. . . . [t]he goal of social justice education is to enable people to develop the critical analytical tools necessary to understand oppression and their own socialization within oppressive systems, and to develop a sense of agency and capacity to interrupt and change oppressive patterns and behaviors in themselves and in their institutions and communities of which they are a part. (pp. 3-4) ritchie, cone, an, and bullock current issues in comparative education 65 in addition to understanding social justice education as important for all members and groups in a society, we also appreciate the importance of the local-global relationship and how local issues are situated in a global sociopolitical and economic context. for teachers interested in social justice education, these connections are crucial for understanding systemic forms of oppression. geertz (1983) argued this point when he said that attempts to get at local knowledge involve “a continuous dialectical tacking between the most local of local detail and the most global of global structure in such a way as to bring both into view simultaneously” (p. 69). we want our students to immerse themselves in local school and community contexts and to connect their learning to broader systems of power, privilege, and oppression. freire (2004; freire & macedo, 1987) argued that before we teach students to read the word (literacy or content matter), we must teach them to read the world (their socio-historical-political context): “it is impossible to access meaning simply through reading words. one must first read the world within which these words exist . . . any type of education that is coherently progressive has to discuss not only the text but life itself” (freire, 1997, pp. 304, 320). knowing their students allows social justice educators to find ways to contextualize learning based on students’ interests, helping students find and seek out relevance and meaning. while teaching content matter and closing achievement gaps are important, the social justice teacher must go further and “not only teach his or her discipline well, but he or she must also challenge the learner to critically think through the social, political, and historic reality within which he or she is a presence” (freire, 2004, p. 19). by fostering the development of students’ critical analysis of society, social justice (teacher) education “challenges us to recognize, engage, and critique (so as to transform) any existing undemocratic social practices and institutional structures that produce and sustain inequalities and oppressive social identities and relations” (leistyna & woodrum, 1996, p. 2). the point is not simply to engage in a sociopolitical critique of the world; doing so is only a step toward transforming injustice. as freire and macedo (1987) argued, "reading the word is not preceded merely by reading the world, but by a certain form of writing or rewriting it, that is, of transforming it by means of conscious, practical work" (p. 35). we draw on this theoretical lens as well as an asset-based and funds-of-knowledge view of students and their families (moll, amanti, neff, & gonzalez, 1992). in doing so, we promote education that is responsive and relevant to the experiences students bring to school (ladson-billings, 1995; villegas & lucas, 2002) and yet helps shift discourses from meritocracy to hegemony and systems of oppression and domination (cochran-smith, 2003; sensoy & diangelo, 2012). thus, we perceive social justice education (sje) and social justice teacher education (sjte) as complex endeavors that are not reducible simply to a method or methods. what we can learn from existing sjte programs at least in recent decades, many initial teacher education programs have attempted to improve the preparation of teachers for classrooms with students from diverse backgrounds, but such approaches have merely been “additive” (banks & banks, 1995) rather than transformative. there are, however, examples of more concerted efforts to place social justice and equity more at the core of teacher preparation. this section highlights several such examples. teacher education for social change 66 current issues in comparative education first, studies have examined the role of sjte among various constituencies, including: a single assignment (hyland & heuschkel, 2010; lynn & smith-maddox, 2007; mccrary, 2010), a small group of candidates in a single course (hoffman-kipp, 2003), a single group of candidates in a professional development school ([pds]; farnsworth, 2010), all candidates in a single course (clark, 2010; frederick, cave, & perencevich, 2010; mills & ballantyne, 2010), individual sjte professors’ courses (sleeter, torres, & laughlin, 2004), multiple instructors’ teaching and reflecting on different sections of the same course (athanases & larrabee, 2003; schmidt, chang, silva, lockhart, & anagnostopoulos, 2012), or a combination of participants (katsarou, picower, & stovall, 2010). such studies are useful in identifying and describing context-based promises and obstacles from which other faculty members committed to sjte may learn. other studies were conducted at the programmatic, rather than course, level. morva mcdonald (2005; 2008) conducted a comparative case-study of two social justice-based elementary teacher education programs: the teachers for tomorrow’s schools program at mills college and the teacher education intern program at san jose state university. she found that, while there were differences, the two programs demonstrated a commitment to sjte in their mission statements, course syllabi, accreditation reports, and student handbooks. teaching practices and assignments were grouped into four categories: attending to individual students, attending to students identified by specific educational needs, attending to students identified by their affiliations with an oppressed group, and attending to the sociopolitical conditions of schooling. what was striking was that most assignments emphasized justice as attending to the needs of individual students. while there were assignments in each of the other three categories, mcdonald found that attending to the sociopolitical conditions of schooling had very few assignments and that, unlike assignments in the other areas, they did not connect to candidates’ field experiences. despite these two programs’ having an explicit emphasis on sjte, their curriculum and pedagogy emphasized what gorski (2009) categorized as conservative and liberal approaches rather than critical. ucla’s center x teacher education program (tep) serves as an example of a systematic, wellplanned, and collaborative sjte program involving over 20 faculty and over 350 students as of 2003 (cooper, 2006). with a mission to “level the playing field” for low-income students of color in los angeles schools (montaño, et al., 2008, p. 1), faculty divided themselves into four committees to plan and develop the program: student development, curriculum, faculty development, and community. faculty then used collaborative inquiry to develop cases that addressed their programmatic concerns. tep committee members, as well as outside university researchers, used a range of data collection measures to document and analyze the ongoing collaborative inquiry process. they conducted faculty professional development geared toward facilitating difficult conversations about race, class, and social justice topics in the classroom; investigated ways to help candidates from a range of backgrounds and experience levels become critical and committed social justice educators; revamped a community project required of all candidates so it would be more aligned to state curriculum as well as emphasizing candidates’ use of asset over deficit perspectives; and brainstormed ways to engage with the k-12 school community around equity issues. while difficulties arose during the three-day faculty development retreat and following sessions, it was the first time the faculty had come together as a group to inquire into increasing their own knowledge of diversity and social justice so they ritchie, cone, an, and bullock current issues in comparative education 67 could facilitate difficult discussions with their candidates on similar issues (montaño et al., 2008). there are certainly other examples of teacher education faculty, collaborations among faculty, and entire programs based on sjte (e.g., evergreen state, see mcdonald & zeichner, 2009), and we don’t mean to exclude any others or to pretend this is an exhaustive list. however, looking at the nature of existing approaches can inform others interested in a more radical transformation of teacher education for social change and critical praxis. in spite of this great body of work, however, as zeichner (2009) argued, such efforts do little to effect the systemic, structural changes required to produce social justice educators capable of transforming their classrooms and communities toward greater justice: “most of this work on social justice teacher education in the u.s. thus far seems to focus on the actions of individual teacher educators in their college and university classrooms and has not included . . . proposals for structural changes in teaching as an occupation and teacher education.” (p. 148). similarly, mcdonald and zeichner (2009), citing darling-hammond (2006), asserted that “[r]ecent research has indicated that the impact of teacher education programs on prospective teachers is much more powerful when there is a unified vision of teaching and learning than when attention to a goal exists only in some program components (p. 605). this study is significant as it offers an example of the possibilities that arise from a collaboratively-planned programmatic change toward sjte, especially considering the geographical and sociopolitical context of the program is in a suburban community located within the deep south of the u.s. while this study marks our first effort toward such a program, we hope it will offer other social justice teacher educators some useful insights in designing similar programs. methodology context in the elementary teacher education program where this study took place, candidates take 45 credit hours of general education courses and 81 hours in their major field of study (in this case, elementary and early childhood education). in their senior year, one semester before student teaching, candidates are required to complete an elementary “methods block,” in which they must successfully complete four content methods courses (language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies), in conjunction with a weekly field experience. teacher education candidates take the methods block as a cohort (maximum of 25 students), two methods courses one day during the week and two courses on another day. in this large teacher education program, there are approximately 10 methods block cohorts in the fall semester and five cohorts in the spring semester. it is important to note that candidates are with their methods instructors, face-to-face, for 10 weeks of the 15-week semester. during the last five weeks of the semester, candidates are fully immersed in their “diverse” field placements (i.e., working with students from diverse racial backgrounds, ethnic backgrounds, language backgrounds, and/or socioeconomic backgrounds). we are four out of more than 15 elementary methods block instructors, and we represent the four core content areas. at the start of the project, two of us were in our second year of a tenure-track teacher education for social change 68 current issues in comparative education position, one was in the third year of a tenure-track position, and one was in the sixth year. we are a diverse faculty: heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, white, black, and asian, american citizens and internationals, novices and veterans of social justice teaching. before we even began to conceptualize this new program, we discovered as colleagues that we were each exploring some aspect of social justice pedagogy within our specializations and independently grappling with integrating social justice into our teaching. we found it troubling that social justice is far from being at the core of the teacher education program. while diversity is institutionalized as an important mission, more is required than simply including a course or two on multicultural issues. two foundational courses in our teacher education program, “education of exceptional students” and “exploring sociocultural perspectives on diversity in educational contexts,” directly address multicultural issues and disability, whereas in other courses, instructors are free to choose whether or not to make social justice a core foundation of the courses. this is clear when candidates arrive in our courses during their senior-year methods block, often confessing that they learned about diversity in only two courses during their entire program of study. a dominant belief shared by candidates and instructors in this program is that the methods block courses, in particular, are to be about technical “methods,” “strategies,” or “tools,” rather than interconnected to larger multicultural and sociopolitical issues. we find it problematic that undergraduates who choose to be education majors may complete an entire four-year degree program with few, if any, courses that challenge meritocracy and interrogate power and privilege. as freire (2004) argued, “radical pedagogy must never make concessions to the trickeries of neoliberal ‘pragmatism,’ which reduces the educational practice to the technicalscientific education of learners, training rather than educating” (p. 19; emphasis in the original). our goal in this collective endeavor was to challenge the dominant training paradigm of our teacher education program by facilitating the development of candidates capable of enacting education for liberation rather than mere training. in the fall of 2011, we developed a special themed methods block, the “social justice cohort,” and advertised our newly developed option to upcoming seniors using flyers and direct classroom engagement. the response rate was low, partly because the time slots and field placement locations offered were ill-suited for some candidates. while not officially named and recognized as a themed methods block cohort with a social justice focus, the teaching philosophies of the methods instructors within this cohort were underpinned by their ideas of teaching for social change (i.e., social justice). the intended curriculum was made explicit because it would impact the types of conversations and learning that began and developed in each of our classroom spaces. scott taught language arts methods through the vehicle of critical literacies, deconstructing a range of print and multimedia texts to interrogate how they position the reader, whose perspective is included and whose is left out, and whose interests are served by such a perspective. neporcha taught science methods in which candidates were challenged to reflect upon the marginalization of diverse student groups in science education, past and recent science achievement gaps (locally, nationally, and globally), and strategies for making science meaningful (and authentic) for all students. sohyun taught social studies methods in which candidates read, critiqued, discussed, debated, reflected on, and co-constructed core concepts and ideas of democratic citizenship education including democracy, good citizen, patriotism, immigration, globalization, race, and global citizenship. patti taught mathematics methods through a lens of equity, power, and privilege, engaging students not only in ways to address the ritchie, cone, an, and bullock current issues in comparative education 69 national council of teachers of mathematics standards, but also to examine how math is connected to the sociocultural experiences of the learner. we each chose a range of texts for our courses, some more theoretical and research-based and others that were practitioner-oriented. while in math and science it proved a little more challenging to find good social justice texts, there were numerous options for literacy and social studies. we used rethinking schools’ publications, materials from the zinn education project (http://zinnedproject.org), nancy schiedewind and ellen davidson’s (2006) open minds to equality, and resources addressing privilege such as peggy mcintosh’s (2008) work and the “privilege walk” exercise (see http://www.whatsrace.org/images/privwalk-long.pdf). we invited guest speakers to discuss issues in schools, such as hidden disabilities, lgbtq issues, and teaching immigrant students. we invited candidates to read lots of vignettes and personal accounts of teachers’ experiences implementing social justice teaching practices. we involved candidates as much as we could in daily class activities, group projects, and the like so that they could co-construct their own knowledge from a collaborative inquiry perspective. most of all, we actively sought to identify our candidates’ assets and resources so we could build from there. gender issues and body image issues proved to be a gateway from candidates’ worlds to other and more global forms of oppression seen from a systemic (rather than individualistic) perspective. to maintain community, during the 10-week methods block, we (instructors and candidates) held numerous informal and formal dialogues to share ideas, challenges, struggles, and successes, and reflect on our experiences. participants research participants were all members of this cohort of 16 undergraduate teacher education candidates. at the beginning of the semester, candidates were given an anonymous questionnaire in which we asked them to report demographic characteristics, such as: gender identity, age, racial/ethnic group, sexual identity, socioeconomic status, physical/mental ability, and the type of community in which they grew up (rural, urban, etc.). the majority of the candidates self identified as female (n=16), heterosexual (n=16), european-american/white (n=13), between 22 and 33 years of age (n=12), with no previous teaching experience (n=16). there were three candidates who self-identified as ethnic minorities (one african american/black, one asian/pacific islander, and one combination african american/black and asian/pacific islander). although we did not define each of the three social classes, two candidates selfidentified as working class; thirteen candidates self-identified as middle class, and one candidate self-identified as upper class. research question and data this practitioner-research qualitative case study (cochran-smith & lytle, 2009; merriam, 1998; yin, 2009) addressed the research question: in what ways, if any, did this collaborativelyplanned methods block influence candidates’ knowledge, beliefs, and practice regarding teaching for social justice? we collected two primary data sources: candidates’ weekly reading responses posted in online discussion boards and one whole-class 60-minute semi-structured focus group interview conducted at the end of the methods block but before candidates started their five weeks of full-time field experience. we used the following questions to guide the focus group interview: (1) what is social justice? (2) what experiences in this methods block influenced your future teaching? in what ways? (3) what does social justice look like and sound like in schools? teacher education for social change 70 current issues in comparative education (4) what would be different if you had gone through a social justice curriculum? (5) what if your class were all white and affluent? secondary data sources included candidate lesson plans, unit plans, and in-class discussions. within their lesson plans and unit plans, participants were asked to make culturally relevant connections (i.e., to explain why this particular lesson was important and relevant to the elementary students in their field placements) and to describe strategies they would use in order to meet the academic needs of at least three different groups of students. in-class discussions required candidates to confront their dominant ideologies and become advocates for change. weekly reading responses challenged participants’ beliefs and perspectives as teachers and citizens; weekly reading responses also allowed participants to make connections between readings, their personal experiences, other university courses, and their experiences in the field placement classroom. data were analyzed individually by the four authors and then collectively through a shared folder on google drive. this was accomplished by first reading and re-reading data and by listening to the interview recording several times in an effort to become close to the data in an “intimate way” (marshall & rossman, 1999, p. 152). we had our graduate research assistant[2] transcribe the focus group interview, and we compared the transcript to the recording to make corrections and adjustments. as we each coded the data set, we individually recorded a rationale for our classifications and prepared a research memo in which we developed broad coding categories based on emerging patterns from the data. then, we shared our analyses. together we refined and merged our coding categories, from which we coded data further. from our collective analysis, we identified three themes that were grounded in the data: 1) developing candidate agency; 2) social justice as a mirror and a window; and 3) the values and limitations of social justice cross-course learning/integration. trustworthiness (guba & lincoln, 1989) of the study was strengthened by analyzing multiple written and verbal data sources, engaging in ongoing critical discussions during the study, and triangulating data across sources to support emerging agreements in interpreting the data. results our one-semester approach to teaching all four methods courses from a social justice perspective gave us insights into the possibilities and limitations of such an approach. here, we discuss the three themes we identified through our analysis of the data. from opening eyes to taking action: developing agency as social justice educators one of the overarching themes across all of our data is the agency candidates developed in the process of becoming social justice educators. in previous semesters in our individual courses, we noted some shifts in candidates’ feelings of self-efficacy and commitment to equity and justice. however, in this particular cohort our candidates showed much deeper and comprehensive agentic shifts than those before them. while it is important to note that not all candidates had the same “aha” moments or made the same break-throughs, there were three ways in which these candidates showed more profound, agentic identities: taking new perspectives, negotiating the realities of today’s schools, and becoming agents for social change. ritchie, cone, an, and bullock current issues in comparative education 71 taking new perspectives. despite already having taken two courses addressing diversity, as well as having taken courses that were “infused” with multicultural education (our institution’s prior approach, an additive model), these teacher candidates indicated overwhelmingly that the social justice emphasis of their four methods courses gave them a new perspective on the world. for instance, they communicated this in their reflective discussion posts: “i have . . . a whole new lens through which i see the world. now that my eyes have been opened, i cannot go back to the old ways of thinking or say that i am not aware.” “so now it has turned my whole thought on my pedagogy and curriculum upside down.” some candidates expressed anger or frustration at not being taught to think critically at an earlier age, for example, saying that it is “a shame that it took me to this level of college” to encounter critical pedagogies. candidates showed growth in their understanding of injustice as well. although some were initially resistant to the idea of privilege (e.g., “the ‘white privileges’ stated in this article do not apply to all white people”), candidates eventually recognized their complicity in maintaining oppression. as another student indicated: “i am frustrated there are so many privileges in my life i have grown up believing are just ‘normal,’ therefore making them acceptable. as an educator i must constantly be aware of the messages i send my students.” others named specific ways in which their eyes were opened to injustices, saying things like: “before a few weeks ago, i assumed that racial discrimination was primarily a thing of the past and something that i would not be confronted with on a regular basis.” “when i first came into the class, i felt like i was aware of injustices in society. i had no idea just how prevalent injustices have always been and continue to be today.” some made broad statements, such as the following, indicating a shift overall: “i feel that with almost all of us, now every aspect of my life i am relating back to social justice.” negotiating the realities of today’s schools. initially our candidates expressed much fear about how education for social justice might fit within some of the realities of today’s elementary classrooms. many candidates feared “losing their job or offending parents” by teaching controversial material that might not be considered age-appropriate in p-5 classrooms. for some candidates, this fear showed up indirectly. for example: “my first thought was that these are second and third graders. our [curriculum standards] for civil rights are found in fifth grade.” or “i wondered if the children at the younger age are developmentally ready to process and articulate the emotional and independent thinking that would be required.” however, later in the semester, some of the candidates who expressed earlier reluctance shifted their position, as illustrated by the following quote from a candidate’s discussion post: at first i questioned what was appropriate for elementary-age children. i now believe that kids know more than we think. something that caught my attention was the sentence [in one of the assigned readings], “better to talk about premarital sex or homosexuality than be faced with a sixth grader who is pregnant or has committed suicide.” the reason it hit home is because these are issues my children are dealing with. they have friends who are pregnant or have had pregnancy scares. they have friends that are homosexual, and even one that has tried to commit suicide because of it. we can’t pretend that these issues don’t exist; to do so would not be fair to our children. teacher education for social change 72 current issues in comparative education another concern was the mandated curriculum in schools, such as textbooks, standards, and high-stakes tests. however, candidates came to a new understanding that what matters most is teaching children, not a one-size-fits-all pedagogical approach: “i have learned it is important to teach kids to think critically about everything. to just meet the standards is not enough as a teacher.” “[i don’t want to] take the easy way out with my students. i need to go beyond our state standards and to teach global issues that force our students to think and act as global citizens.” candidates even turned their critical lens toward our college’s teacher education program, which emphasizes “best” practices. for instance, one candidate commented in a discussion post: “even the research-based best practices come from a limited perspective. i know that when i get to know the students, i will have to try to understand their perspective and hopefully respond in the best way for them . . . [rather than] pegging them as a type of student that needs this or that particular method of teaching.” what resonated most with candidates was the use of real teachers’ stories demonstrating ways to address the many barriers or bottlenecks (gorski et al., 2013) to critical teaching in public schools. for example, candidates stated: “i gained a lot of resources from the articles because in reading the experiences that the teachers had been through i was able to see what i can do if instances like that appear in my classroom.” “i was actually really grateful that i had all those articles to read. it wasn't that i had to read them. i was grateful that i had them to read.” becoming agents for social change. as with most social justice teacher educators, we encountered concerns from our candidates. for instance, several candidates remarked in their discussion boards about how they perceived social justice education to require more work, including being student-centered, as one candidate’s post suggests: “after reading the article on equality, i believe educators have their work cut out for them. we not only must teach the content areas effectively, but now we have to focus on creating a safe, equitable environment for all students.” others shared concerns about the “age-appropriateness” of teaching equity and justice issues to elementary students, such as this candidate in her reading response: “i wondered if the children at the younger age are developmentally ready to process and articulate the emotional and independent thinking that would be required [of sje].” additionally, candidates expressed reluctance to address difficult topics as new teachers, such as this candidate’s discussion post: “it seems like teachers are often concerned about losing their job or offending the parents . . . [w]e are sometimes afraid to open that can of worms. it seems that society teaches us not to ruffle any feathers and to play it safe.” however, as the semester continued, candidates articulated burgeoning awareness that they have an ethical duty to act, even if it makes one feel uncomfortable:  “i thought i was doing enough by being tolerant and accepting of those different than myself. now, i see that tolerance does not move this society forward. i need to be active in creating an equitable world for others.”  “i need to step outside my comfort zone to teach complex issues present in our society so that i can help create a generation of thinkers and doers that will make the world a better place for us all.”  “[b]y not intervening we let the dominant voice and ideas of what is “normal” get louder and louder.” ritchie, cone, an, and bullock current issues in comparative education 73 catalytic validity is one form of trustworthiness of data (anderson, herr, & nihlen, 2007). several candidates started using course concepts and experiences as a catalyst for action. they started envisioning themselves as social justice educators looking for jobs in six months. they dialogued online about which of the local elementary schools would be best suited for social justice work, noting particular schools where there was greater autonomy for teachers to design their own lessons and less micro-managing from the school administration. for instance, one candidate shared with the other cohort members in the online discussion board: “at [name of school] teachers are only required to state their essential questions and method of assessment along with a short description (like "spelling workbook" or "magnets") in the online calendar they plan things in.” she went on to say that because of the school administration’s lack of micro-managing, “it seems like it would be simple to incorporate social justice in a school that operates in this way.” additionally, some candidates could not wait until they were employed as teachers to take action. one candidate, in her weekly reading reflection, wrote: “i am going to share this article with my collaborating teacher this week and ask her if she thinks we can incorporate a lesson similar to the one barbara (michalove, 1999) did with her class.” one candidate went so far as to change her wedding plans as a result of her new perspective. she and her fiancé were hoping to have their honeymoon at a resort in the caribbean, but after perusing one company’s website, she noticed that it was “geared to white heterosexual couples.” she also observed that the only people of color in the marketing materials were employees of the resorts, not patrons. her newly formed critical media literacy led her to change her wedding plans: she made the decision “to not stay at a sandals resort; we do not want to promote the stereotypes the company is promoting.” since this was our first time collectively offering a cross-course focus on social justice, our main emphasis was on social justice pedagogies inside the classroom. we did not anticipate that candidates would also take their critical perspectives out into the community, but we were pleased that they did. many authors (e.g. ginsburg & linday, 1995; ritchie, 2012; zeichner, 2009) have made the argument that social justice education requires that teachers work collectively with others—both in school and in the community—to effect social change. social justice educators offer students both a mirror and a window as candidates developed their own sense of agency for social change during the semester, they also began identifying pedagogical practices for social justice that were most meaningful to them. they saw their role as social justice educators as both a mirror, building curriculum around their particular students each year, and a window, not just reflecting the perspectives and experiences of the kids in the room but also bringing in other voices and perspectives, so students could become change agents for the common good. social justice education as a mirror. candidates offered various conceptions of putting children at the center of the curriculum, including culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy, making use of students’ virtual school bags, funds of knowledge, children’s assets, and the personal resources students bring to their learning. as candidates wrote in their online discussion posts: “my eyes have been opened continuously throughout this semester to the importance of utilizing the students' knowledge in your classroom.” “every student brings life experiences into the teacher education for social change 74 current issues in comparative education classroom, good and bad. these experiences are all the students have to make connections with, so teachers need to work to encourage those connections.” although the dominant educational discourse maintains that teachers should teach what is in curriculum standards, and if children’s prior experiences play a role, it is simply to make the formal curriculum more digestible (cf. paris, 2012), these candidates see that ignoring children’s realities negates opportunities for learning. to illustrate, one candidate stated in her written reflection on the readings: “whether we choose to talk about it or gloss over it as if these social issues do not exist, it does not change the fact that they are still there in the children's minds constantly.” another candidate made a similar point in a reflection on one of the teachers’ stories that was assigned in one of the courses: “i liked that immediately the student teacher, dana, questioned his instruction's relevance to the lives of his students. if he just taught to the standard, then he knew that his students would not connect with the material, and they would not grow as individuals.” social justice education as a window. “being a teacher is an opportunity to open new doors for kids and teach them things that they may not hear about at home,” one candidate expressed as she considered the conservative climate surrounding our university. the idea of including multiple perspectives, particularly those that may challenge dominant hegemonic narratives about the world, was challenging at first for our candidates. while one candidate in particular seemed to hold fast to the idea that children in an all-white, affluent school do not need multiple perspectives, the rest of the cohort did see the need for children to see a variety of points of view. for example, one candidate observed in her discussion post: “we should look at multiple perspectives of different groups that are not normally represented in school curricula. we should not only talk about racism but the other ‘isms.’ we need to see perspectives from all social groups.” a different candidates made a similar point in discussing what she learned from the teachers whose stories we explored in one of the courses: “i liked that she kept questioning herself about the books, ‘whose story is this? whose voice is heard? whose voice isn't heard?’” another candidate commented similarly concerning a teacher in an assigned video (espinosa, 2005) whose latina/o students did not connect their own oppression with the oppression of other people of color: mrs. espinosa explained that students have a hard time connecting individual stories to the struggle of an entire group. . . . i liked that she was constantly having the students explore and explain how one story was similar to all of the others, so that they could make this connection. as candidates developed new, more agentic identities, they started to see the necessity of a sociopolitical analysis of issues, driven by multiple perspectives. in several of their lesson plans, candidates listed specific activities to address this. one group of candidates wrote a unit plan in which they would “give the students an opportunity to use systems thinking and analyze the bigger picture surrounding the issue of ‘body image.’” the value and limitations of integration of courses around equity and justice from the midpoint of the semester onwards, we noticed candidates referring to readings, discussions, activities, or insights they had in one of their other methods courses and making connection across the four courses. however, while there were gains, our data also show ritchie, cone, an, and bullock current issues in comparative education 75 limitations and areas for improvement both in our work in the classroom and in structuring a comprehensive program devoted to teacher education for social justice. value of integration around social justice. candidates frequently referred to their learning in the other methods courses. some of these comments referred to the new critical perspective they, themselves gained. for example, one candidate noted in her reading response: “i think it is interesting that our [methods] classes are intertwined regarding critical stance and diversity.” another candidate remarked how in the four courses, “i am questioning many of my beliefs. i am shocked that i’ve never given much thought to the different wars. i’ve always supported what the government has decided. i believe this now to be an ignorant form of patriotism.” still another candidate mentioned how the classes supported each other: “one of the main points that i am learning from this experience is that what we learn in one class can certainly be applied to another.” a fourth candidate made reference in her discussion post to pedagogical strategies she was learning: all of our [methods] classes are exposing us to the idea of multiple perspectives. in math, we are asking children to solve problems in multiple ways, exploring other ways of thinking about the problem, rather than just one method. in science, we’ve learned that students should keep their science notebooks in whatever way makes sense to them, through bulleted points, illustrations of experiments, in their own language, and any way as long as there is evidence of understanding. in social studies, we are learning about how history books are penned from usually one dominant perspective, and other perspectives need to be brought in through primary sources. in reading, we see how literature is a vehicle for voicing other perspectives on any number of social issues. like this candidate, many synthesized their learning across courses in their own way. however, they also relied on each other to help see connections. for instance, one candidate’s online query to classmates resulted in the following response in the discussion board: you question how to add social justice into math. i think it goes back to when we discussed talking about economic and social issues. (this category of issues included: prisons, racial profiling, death penalty, immigration, poverty, hunger, welfare, minimum/living wage, sweatshops, housing, gentrification, homeownership, war, defense budgets, military recruiting, public health: aids, asthma, health insurance, diabetes, smoking. also discussed were educational issues, such as access, funding, testing, achievement gaps, and environmental issues, such as, pollution and, water resources.) there will be students in our classrooms that are dealing with these issues. by incorporating these issues into math problems we are opening all our students up to the realization that these are real issues. although these candidates did not have much prior experience with social justice pedagogies, they had four faculty members, critical texts with lots of teachers’ stories, and each other as a support network (see ritchie, 2012). they also recognized the need for support and mentoring in their early years as teachers, and some candidates already made plans to join a teacher inquiry teacher education for social change 76 current issues in comparative education group around critical literacy the following year. as opportunities for local political action become available, we [faculty] are sharing these with the candidates. while these candidates’ experience was not part of a comprehensive teacher education program with an exclusive emphasis on social justice, these four courses provided momentary disruption in the dominant paradigm and yielded promising results. limitations of integration around social justice. notwithstanding the promises and possibilities we observed, our data suggest that candidates needed more time to develop into social justice educators. they require more time to develop confidence in disrupting normative educational practices in schools and the policies made outside the classroom that undergird them. even though certain candidates demonstrated they are ready to hit the ground running, overall what we heard from them is that they need more: professional development, time to get used to the mandated curriculum, and support once they start teaching. candidates shared comments like the following:  “this just reveals that i still have a lot more work to do as a critical thinker.”  “i personally am still not 100% confident to teach all i feel is necessary, but this chapter (lewison, leland, & harste, 2008) has definitely begun to give me confidence and strive to research more ways of implementing multiple perspectives into my classroom one day.”  “i definitely want to go to as many workshops as i can. i want my students to take social action and to stand up for something that is important to them.” while they made significant shifts in their ideas and commitments, some candidates still had a hard time differentiating their lesson plans for all students or coming up with topics that included a sociopolitical analysis from a structural or systemic perspective. implications we identified several important implications for social justice teacher education. first, teacher candidates need opportunities to form a community so they may engage in real dialogue about difficult issues, not just about content matter or instructional strategies. we found that our cohort model, in which candidates take all classes together for a semester, worked well in creating a safe space for dialogue to occur. we engaged candidates in community-building activities at the beginning of the semester, believing that with a strong support network they could take more risks as the semester progressed. teacher educators for social justice need to create venues for cross-candidate dialogue to occur, as well as dialogue with other social justice educators and those involved in political movements and other forms of activism. second, teacher education for social justice requires real examples of p-12 teachers’ classroom practice. candidates appreciated and learned the most from stories of critical teachers’ practices and the challenges they faced while implementing critical pedagogies. if we are to foster agency and help candidates see themselves as critical actors disrupting the status quo, we must give them tools and powerful examples of practice to help them visualize this new identity as a social justice educator. rethinking schools (www.rethinkingschools.org), the zinn education project (www.zinnedproject.org), teaching tolerance (www.tolerance.org), radical teacher (http://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/radicalteacher/index), and edited books offer ritchie, cone, an, and bullock current issues in comparative education 77 real examples of social justice education in action. there are, however, substantially fewer examples of classroom teachers in the fields of math and science education. we need to use our authorial privilege to proliferate additional teachers’ stories in these content areas. third, our data revealed that, for the majority of candidates, this was the first time they were challenged to think critically and question the legitimacy of the official canon. yet, this was the result of a concerted effort by four progressive faculty members who collaborated to make it happen. teacher educators have a moral imperative to ensure that every teacher candidate has the same opportunity. institutional support is needed to accomplish this goal. our work would have had a greater impact if we and other instructors had more structured time to collaborate, especially at institutions like ours where there is an onerous teaching load in addition to advising, research, and service responsibilities. our efforts could have been far more cohesive if we had more collective preparatory time to scope out experiences for our candidates in the local community, such as riding public transportation, interviewing local community members, and connecting to teacher activist groups. course releases, a reduction in other responsibilities, graduate student assistance, and a general recognition of the urgency of this work would make more collaboration possible. in turn, this would have enabled us to develop meaningful learning experiences that candidates need to effect change in their classrooms and schools as well as local, national and international communities. we four faculty members happened to have a background in and commitment to diversity and social justice. yet we, and our colleagues, need further professional development in social justice pedagogy. we believe that such professional development should have a multifaceted approach that includes on-campus workshops, conferences, and structured opportunities for faculty to observe each other’s teaching. tenure and promotion committees and processes need to value social justice work and understand that professors’ course evaluations may not be as strong when putting social justice at the center. teacher educators need material resources, such as contentspecific books, magazines, videos, and other pedagogical tools. funding for field trips into the local community would help strengthen the connection between what happens in schools and what is happening in the world outside the classroom. furthermore, institutional support needs to go toward matching candidates with collaborating teachers who themselves practice social justice teaching. candidates’ field placements may fail to support or may even negate the social justice concepts and practices being taught in teacher education. we need to match candidates with teachers who enact social justice education, even if it means increasing the candidate-to-teacher ratio. we also need better professional development for collaborating teachers so they—and increasing numbers of their colleagues—understand the social justice lens our candidates are bringing to their classrooms. additionally, candidates need supervisors who understand what to look for when making observations during their methods courses-related field experiences, not to mention student teaching assignments. many social justice scholars have developed and are developing assessments geared toward social justice. supervisors need additional or different capacity development, and observational rubrics may need to be changed. furthermore, resources are needed to support new teachers: better induction processes, strong mentor teachers, and resources for university-school partnerships such as teacher study groups and ongoing professional development, as well as practitioner research collaborations. and, of course, these resources would ideally have a social justice focus. teacher education for social change 78 current issues in comparative education notes [1]. heteronormativity is a construct that privileges heterosexuality and subjugates homosexuality. [2]. we would like to thank dudgrick bevins for his work in organizing and coding data for this project. scott ritchie is an educator, researcher, and social justice activist who received his ph.d. from the university of georgia in 2010 under the direction of jobeth allen. a former community organizer, diversity trainer, and elementary school teacher, scott currently serves as assistant professor of language and literacy education and affiliated faculty of gender & women’s studies at kennesaw state university in ga. his work focuses on intersections between activist literacies, social justice teacher education, and gender & sexuality studies. in 2001, scott was recognized as a cnn hero for engaging his 3 rd graders in a social justice project to protect an affordable housing community where many of his students lived. scott’s publications have appeared in the journal of teacher education, journal of language and literacy education, and teachers college record. e-mail: sritchie@kennesaw.edu neporcha cone is an assistant professor of science education at kennesaw state university. she received her ph.d in curriculum and instruction, with an emphasis on multicultural science education, from the university of south florida. her work focuses on teaching science for social justice, equitable science teaching practices, and pre-service teacher education. neporcha's publications have appeared in journals such as the journal of science teacher education, school science and mathematics, and the international journal of science education. her most recent work examines the intersection of critical pedagogy and problembased science learning. e-mail: ncone@kennesaw.edu sohyun an is a teacher educator and curriculum researcher in the field of social studies education. former high school social studies teacher and currently social studies teacher educator at kennesaw state university, sohyun believes in the power and importance of critical civic literacy for a more just humane thriving world. sohyun received her b.s. and m.s. degrees in social studies education from seoul national university in south korea, and ph.d. degree in curriculum and instruction from the university of wisconsin-madison. sohyun’s teaching and research center on social justice oriented civic education and critical global citizenship education. she has worked with immigrant youth and immigrant community and researched the struggles in schooling and civic participation in their adopted new country. sohyun’s works have appeared in journals such as journal of curriculum studies, the social studies, journal of international social studies, and books such as educating about social issues in the 20th and 21st centuries (totten & j. pedersen, in press), south korea’s education exodus (abelmann et al., in press), and transforming education: global perspectives, experiences and implications (devillar & jiang, in press). e-mail: san2@kennesaw.edu patricia (patti) bullock is an associate professor of mathematics education and the special assistant to the bagwell college of education dean for diversity at kennesaw state university. her teaching responsibilities include undergraduate and graduate courses in diversity/global mailto:sritchie@kennesaw.edu mailto:ncone@kennesaw.edu mailto:san2@kennesaw.edu ritchie, cone, an, and bullock current issues in comparative education 79 issues and in prek-5 mathematics. her research focuses on teacher education and social justice, lgbtq issues in teacher education, and teacher educators' diversity dispositions. e-mail: pbulloc2@kennesaw.edu references adams, m., bell, l., & griffin, p. 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(2009). teacher education and the struggle for social justice. new york: routledge. current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 26, issue 1, winter 2024 decolonial language education and identity realization in africa mariya hassan ontario institute for studies in education (oise), university of toronto this paper explores the relationship between language education and identity realization and the consequences of choosing either an indigenous or a colonial language education approach. the focus is on the african postcolonial context; however, the arguments are also substantiated by examples from other parts of the world. i argue for a decolonialmultilingual approach to language education, where our conceptualizations of language must be decolonized (freed from colonial rhetoric) so that language use can be explored for its utility. the paper juxtaposes two lines of arguments: the first is an insistence on a return to indigenous language education as a form of decolonial resistance and warnings against intellectual control through colonial language education. the second line of argument explores the possibilities of compartmentalizing and interrogating language use as an alternative decolonial-multilingual reality, thereby redefining an individual’s relationship with language and its influence on identity realization. as the paper highlights the extent to which language and identity are correlated, i conclude by stressing the need to decolonize language if identity realization is to be decolonized. introduction this paper provides an analytical overview of how language education influences identity realization1 by focusing on the african postcolonial context. the paper begins by setting an understanding of decolonization in relation to postcoloniality. this is followed by juxtaposing conceptions of identity with how identity is continuously shaped by language (education) as a dominant power structure. next, the paper delves into the colonial roots of current medium of instruction (moi) policies and how those subsequently shape identity realization. issues raised by decolonial resistance to foreign or colonial language education are then discussed as a way of decolonizing identity. finally, considering the complexities in establishing language education policies, a decolonial-multilingual reality is posited as a viable solution to the debate between colonial and indigenous language education, with gaps in the discussed literature highlighted. this paper contributes to comparative education research by arguing that language must be decolonized as a way of decolonizing language education and consequently decolonizing identity realization. for the purposes of this paper, decolonial approaches are understood as: 1 the term is understood as constant negotiations of an identity that neither ceases to transform nor to be influenced by macrocosms such as economy and society. the term is more fully contemplated in the following section. © 2024, hassan. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 26(1), 98-107. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en decolonial language education and identity realization in africa current issues in comparative education 99 the opening and the freedom from the thinking and the forms of living (economies-other, political theories-other), the cleansing of the coloniality of being and of knowledge; the de-linking from the spell of the rhetoric of modernity, from its imperial imaginary articulated in the rhetoric of democracy. (mignolo, 2011, p. 48) decoloniality can then be understood as a freedom from being through coloniality — where colonial rhetoric and logic no longer define nor grant permission for the existence and execution of relationships. postcoloniality, as a prior and concurrent function of decoloniality (and again for the purposes of this paper) is the awareness of the past and continued effects of colonialism. the dynamic between those two theories is replicated in the fluidity of thinking about language education, (post) colonial identity, and decolonizing language while realizing that the decolonial is the necessary progression of the postcolonial. the existence of one does not conflict with the other: the awareness of coloniality needs to be present to strive to be free from it – to achieve decolonization. decolonization does not mean forgetting colonization ever happened (ceasing awareness of the past). it is the freedom from its effects. identity is not singular the relationship between languages used and taught in educational systems and identity ‘formation’ is similarly complex (although not as straightforward) and is wrapped up in de/post/neo-colonization efforts. government and educational policies have an overpowering role in how identities – and by extension – societies are formed. as leeman (2015) states, “identities are not fixed within the individual but instead are shaped and constrained by the macroand micro-level sociohistorical contexts, including societal ideologies, power relations, and institutional policies” (p. 102). leeman’s views on identity are congruent with bourdieu’s views on language, where language is “an instrument of power and action” and “a form of domination” (schubert, 2014, p.179). therefore, dominant power structures utilize and shape identity and language in varying socio-historical, educational, and political contexts to create particular realities beyond one’s own capacity for self-determination. individuals themselves shift between multiple, changing identities; therefore, the conceptualization of identity as being formed is in itself questionable, as ‘formation’ denotes a process of becoming, of solidification. it ignores what can be inherent to identity, the idea that identity can be predetermined, and that it is in continuous reformation and negotiation with itself. identity, like language, is neither stagnant nor fixed; it is highly malleable and in a process of constant change. that is why i prefer to use the term identity realization (as opposed to identity formation, for example)— to highlight the constant transformability of identity rather than viewing identity as having a fixed and decided nature. if we adopt bonny norton’s (1997) theory of identity as “the desire for recognition, the desire for affiliation, and the desire for security and safety” (p. 410), we can begin to understand how and why language choices are made in relation to shifting identities, and how individuals desire their identity to be perceived. this is especially the case when discussing language education in postcolonial contexts. for theorists such as gandolfo (2009) and wa thiong’o (1998), language denotes either indigenous or colonial affiliation, hassan current issues in comparative education 100 and the potential that a language has for security and safety is therefore assessed in light of colonial history and violence. lanza and svendsen (2007), gandolfo (2009), and mooney and evans (2018) highlight how language became particularly significant to identity realization when the latter was threatened by political and social factors. clotsfigueras and masella (2013), in researching the effects of the 1983 educational reform in spain where both spanish and catalan became the languages taught in schools in catalonia (as opposed to formerly only spanish), showcase how the introduction of bilingual education had extensive effects on political participation. their work thus exemplifies the political consequences of linguistic self-determination through educational reform and highlights its potential beyond the individual. language is thus far greater than a mere system of communication, it is an instrument in the broader orchestration of self and society. language education and the african (post) colonial identity the choice of language used as a medium of instruction (moi) or taught as a subject in the postcolonial educational context is controversial, particularly as it relates to identity realization. language education, especially in this context, serves a purpose: either to affiliate the citizen with their indigenous roots and reclaim cultural and traditional knowledges or to provide education in a colonial/ ‘global’ language such as english or french with the promise of better global access and opportunity in the future. some theorists such as mazrui (1992; 1997) and lunga (2004) argue against such a dichotomous approach to language education and propose a decolonial-multilingual reality as the bestsuited option for the future of africa. in this latter scenario, identity is not overtly shaped by language education; rather individual agency and self-determination serve to compartmentalize the function of each language in one’s repertoire. the individual can then choose how language and language education shape their identity; from a decolonial point of view, the individual then reclaims linguistic agency. in contradiction to this argument, jahan and hamid (2022) provide a comparative case study in bangladesh where the medium of instruction (english/bangla) strongly influences how others perceive someone’s identity and social status. for example, students in bangla-medium schools saw those in english-medium schools as “weaker, having less sexual prowess and vigor” (p. 60) due to their removal from (arduous and adventurous) rural bangladeshi life by virtue of their wealth. the english-medium students considered their opponents incapable of affording high-quality mobile phones, an extension of their perceived lower social status. hence, while an individual can have agency in the extent to which a language determines their identity, that language is part of wider political, social, and economic ideologies. as a speaker of that language, an individual often symbolizes and can be a proponent of those macro ideologies. in a similar vein, ladousa and davis (2022) elaborate on how the moi in educational settings in south asia not only defines the classroom space but “extends into social and institutional life” (p.1): people quite regularly describe themselves and others by the medium through which their education is being, or was, offered. … for example, a decolonial language education and identity realization in africa current issues in comparative education 101 student might say, “i’m in an english-medium school, not a tamil-medium one.” through the rubric of medium, institutions and people are viewed as different from, or even the opposite of, one another. … discussions of medium explicitly grapple with and offer critical stances toward the historically constructed, ever-changing ways in which languages, through their various connections to institutions, exhibit inequality. (pp.1-2) this understanding of how language education can contribute to inequality and social injustice is not new, considering the history of colonial language education in (former) colonies. jahan and hamid (2022) explain that english education during colonial rule was “an embodiment of class, power, privilege, and mobility” (p. 46) and therefore, used as a means of social, economic, and political stratification. to ensure the effectiveness of this approach to language education, “the colonized [were socialized] to believe in the cultural and intellectual superiority of the colonizers through efforts to denigrate their own abilities and their cultures” (bacchus, 2006, p. 261). wa thiong’o (1998) describes how indigenous kenyan languages were “associated with negative qualities of backwardness, underdevelopment, humiliation, and punishment” (p.103), so that kenyans who were educated in the colonial system experienced ‘colonial alienation,’ “a deliberate disassociation of the language of conceptualization, of thinking, of formal education, of mental development, from the language of daily interaction in the home and in the community” (p.103). colonial alienation can then be understood as a force suppressing indigenous or inherited identity realization. here, bourdieu’s view of language as “an instrument of power and action” and “a form of domination” (schubert, 2014, p.179) is exemplified: the regulation and selectivity2 of language education during colonization was, therefore, a regulation of the identity of those who were colonized and their relationship with the local environment. to strip indigenous people of their language and to vilify or denigrate indigenous culture is to tarnish the desire to affiliate with it, as well as to tamper with that language or culture’s potential for security and safety (according to norton’s (1997) theory of identity discussed above). thus, the call for a return to indigenous language learning by writers such as wa thiong’o is resistance to colonial suppression of identity realization through language. however, the attitude of vilifying local or indigenous language education has persisted in many postcolonial countries, especially as political power after independence shifted into the hands of the elite who were educated in colonial languages (bacchus, 2006; gandolfo, 2009; jahan and hamid, 2022). as such, theorists such as ezeanya-esiobu (2019), gandolfo (2009), and wa thiong’o (1998) advocate for the necessary resurgence of african indigenous language and knowledge education as a way of decolonizing african identity and reconfiguring the power that comes with language education. the aforementioned authors further stress that african indigenous language and knowledge education extends beyond the individual by affirming connections to one’s history and environment and strengthening communal ties. ezeanya-esiobu (2019) also claims that the rampage on indigenous languages and knowledges during colonization led not only 2 see bacchus (2006), lunga (2004), sharkey (2008) and seri-hersch (2017) hassan current issues in comparative education 102 to the postcolonial identity crisis and inferiority complex (also discussed by fanon (1963)), but that it is a main cause for the current ‘underdevelopment’ in the region. only when the african postcolonial identity is healed through a return to indigenous language learning – therein regaining access to inherited identity and inherited knowledge resources – will those communities be able to realize endogenous development3 and contribute something “specifically african” (gandolfo, 2009, p. 333) to the world. problematics of foreign or colonial language education for mazrui (1992; 1997), the danger for the postcolonial african in being educated only in a colonial or western language is not only the divorce from indigenous roots. the assimilation of aspects of western culture as well as intellectual control by european languages further determine the african’s realization of their identity: the process of acquiring a european language in africa has tended to be overwhelmingly through a formal system of western-style education. it is because of this that the concept of an african marxist who is not also westernized is for the time-being a socio-linguistic impossibility. (mazrui, 1992, pp. 100-101) for mazrui, the method of language acquisition, through a “system of western-style education”, has as much impact on one’s identity realization as the acquisition of the language. therefore, schooling – similar to ladousa’s and davis’ (2022) and jahan’s and hamid’s (2022) claims mentioned earlier in this paper – not only influences one’s own identity realization but influences how one interacts in society and is perceived by other members of society. consequently, the expansion of foreign-language education and a western style of education can create tension and inequality in a society where language education systems are not standardized. mazrui (1997) further shares sentiments that foreign language education policies promote agendas of intellectual control: when intellectual self-determination can only be realized in a foreign language because of western-style schooling, a genuine educational and intellectual revolution must necessarily include widespread use of african languages as moi. mazrui’s explanation of the compounded effects of language education – schooling, the language itself, and intellectual self-determination – showcases the extent of language education’s effects on the individual and society. this is why language education can be argued to be at the center of decolonization efforts: by freeing thinking and intellect from its colonial ties, one’s identity realization can ultimately be decolonized. in line with mazrui’s (1997) stance, gandolfo (2009) explains: “what are presented as languages of development and modernity actually act to legitimize western interests and processes of globalization at the expense of these communities” (p. 332). this sentiment echoes strongly with ezeanya-esiobu’s and wa thiong’o’s earlier viewpoints: the use of 3 the term ‘development’ on its own is problematic and raises many (neocolonial) connotations. the use of the term endogenous development here is purposeful. it is defined as “development coming from within communities” (ndoye, 1997, p. 83). decolonial language education and identity realization in africa current issues in comparative education 103 african languages as the medium of instruction is a critical tool for the overall endogenous development and intellectual freedom of the region. by no means, then, is the medium of instruction limited solely to a classroom nor individual identity realization— the ideological potential of language education and its social, economic, and political consequences can serve to advance neocolonialism and decolonial forms of resistance. a decolonial-multilingual reality the above discussion has explored some tensions surrounding colonial language education in africa. however, there can exist a more nuanced, fluid, decolonial, multilingual reality where language education’s influence on identity realization is controlled by the individual. mazrui (1992) also expands on his earlier statements cautioning against westernization by arguing for a more balanced stance toward language education: for africa to attempt a strategy of withdrawal or total disengagement [from foreign languages/cultures] would be a counsel not only of despair but also of dangerous futility. modernity is here to stay; the task is to decolonize it. world culture is evolving fast, the task is to save it from excessive eurocentrism. (p. 109) the key point that i would like to emphasize in mazrui’s statement is that modernity in all its forms is part of africa’s postcolonial reality and that disengaging from it puts africans in more jeopardy than strategically engaging with it. where wa thiong’o warns against colonial alienation, the danger, in this case, is being alienated from modernity. to decolonize african identities means to decolonize language education policies and approaches, such that learning specific languages does not impose a sense of either superiority or inferiority, that it is possible to learn to speak english or french for its mere utility. the problematics of colonial languages persist; however, why and how they are learned and used should be subject to constant negotiation rather than rejecting them completely. the goal then is to decolonize language in general as much as it is to decolonize processes of identity realization through language education reform. spernes (2012) exemplifies this possibility and mazrui’s (1992) latter statement through a case study in kenya, where schoolchildren are exposed to multiple languages: they speak their native nandi at home and in the wider community, while english and swahili are used and taught at school. through observations, focus groups, and interviews, spernes (2012) investigates whether the prohibition of nandi at school influences students’ identity realization. spernes’s findings are that students were acutely aware of the distinct functions of each of the three languages and were successful in compartmentalizing each. they referred to nandi as “their mother tongue,” “the heart language,” “language used for storytelling,” and “the language they mastered best.” the students’ attitude towards language learning reflected and reinforced local educational policies. spernes’s (2012) findings suggest that students were aware of the importance of belonging to a global world (through english) and the importance of being able to connect with kenyans from other tribes (through swahili). spernes (2012) therefore argues that students have “multiple linguistic identities” (p. 202). how then does wa thiong’o’s hassan current issues in comparative education 104 viewpoint of colonial alienation configure in this context? according to spernes, the students seemed confident in their distinction between the purposes of all three languages and there were no obvious negative consequences to not using or teaching nandi at school. this is a realization of a balanced approach to language education, which does not culminate in overt westernization of the african student’s identity nor in their alienation from their mother tongue and culture. it is important to note, though, that spernes’s case study was limited to a snapshot in time of the students’ (and their society’s) development, and it is unclear how their socioeconomic status (the students interviewed lived in a rural area) affected their views on language, if at all. the long-term and widespread impact of such language education policies is also unclear; however, the necessity of such an approach is compounded by the fact that english and swahili are kenya’s official languages. it would also be interesting to explore how those students’ intellectualism has developed over the years – have they been able to decolonize intellectual selfdetermination by being multilingual? in contrast, osseo-asare (2021) provides evidence that in ghana, the prohibition of local languages at school resulted in high drop-out rates because students experienced a disassociation between their local environment, languages used in education, and their own identity realization. this supports gandolfo’s (2009) argument that access to education becomes limited for students who are forced to learn through instructional media other than the languages used at home and in their community. the issue then is not whether colonial or non-mother tongue languages such as english should be the moi, as much as to what extent students are proficient in the moi. insisting on the use of foreign languages and consequently causing students to become alienated from their indigenous languages and cultures and unable to understand school lessons is a clear impediment to educational, social, and individual progress. however, if students are able to realize a proficient, functional multilingual reality (similar to spernes’s (2012) case in kenya), which does not impede their educational or social development, then there may indeed be substantial benefits to having non-mother tongue languages used in education as either moi or taught as subjects. furthermore, lunga (2004) raises the concept of hybridity to affirm a decolonial and multilingual reality where one language “interrupts” and “interrogates” another (p. 316). in this case, languages do not merely exist in one’s repertoire side-by-side; instead, they constantly negotiate and redefine the other’s existence, similar to the process of identity realization. lunga calls for “a form of critical hybridity” (2004, p. 295) where postcolonial africans constantly redefine their relationship with colonial and indigenous languages, i.e., they move freely between those languages, creating multiple, fluid, non-contradictory identities. thus, the schoolchildren mentioned in spernes’s case study would ideally grow to continually negotiate their usage of languages and form a critical awareness of how the languages impact their identity. this also aligns with mazrui’s cautions against “excessive eurocentrism”, while heeding gandolfo, ezeanya-esiobu and wa thiong’o’s concerns regarding the inheritance of indigenous language, culture, and identity. lunga thus provides a succinct solution to language education in the postcolonial african context: decolonial language education and identity realization in africa current issues in comparative education 105 the postcolonial challenge is therefore neither how to recover pure languages and cultures from the past nor how to erase the trace of cultural and linguistic colonialism; rather it involves the ability to live within and against contradictions created by colonialism. (p. 325) lunga’s (2004) statement reiterates the thoughts on decolonization and postcoloniality made in the introduction of this paper: “the ability to live within and against contradictions created by colonialism” is the awareness of the continued effects of past coloniality, i.e., postcolonialism. simultaneously being able to live within and against its contradictions is the decolonial stance towards its effects. it is the freedom from its effects. conclusion the research discussed in this paper addresses the ever-changing, complex relationship between identity realization and language education, especially in the african postcolonial context where language has long been used as a tool for domination and subordination. a possible conclusion to this problem of language as a source of power and to this paperis not continuing to empower and subvert certain languages, but rather to strip languages completely of power in how we view them. the individual then emphasizes a language’s utility instead of the ideological power it holds within a society so as to decolonize language. multilingualism can then indicate multiple, shifting identities rather than multiplied power inherited from different languages. by decolonizing language and language education, the individual decolonizes their identity realization and relationship with language. future language education and identity research must therefore be conscious of the following: (a) the extent to which identity realization can be immune from language education; (b) the need for longitudinal research on how multilingualism affects shifts in identity realization over time; and (c) that theories and policies of language education extend beyond individual identity realization, with strong potential to decolonize societies and influence endogenous regional development. mariya hassan is a doctoral candidate at the ontario institute for studies in education at the university of toronto, canada. her research focuses on the effects of language education policies within the african context, with a special focus on sudan. mariya can be reached at mariya.hassan@utoronto.ca. references bacchus, m. k. (2006). the impact of globalization on curriculum development in postcolonial societies. in y. kanu (ed.), curriculum as cultural practice: postcolonial imaginations (pp. 260–279). university of toronto press. clots-figueras, i., & masella, p. (2013). education, language and identity. the economic journal (london), 123(570), f332–f357. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12051 ezeanya-esiobu, c. (2019). indigenous knowledge and education in africa (1st ed. 2019.). springer singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6635-2 mailto:mariya.hassan@utoronto.ca https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12051 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6635-2 hassan current issues in comparative education 106 fanon, f. (1963). the wretched of the earth. presence africaine. gandolfo, a.j. (2009). education-medium and african linguistic rights in the context of globalisation. globalisation, societies and education, 7(3), 321–336. jahan, i., & hamid, m. o. (2022). medium discourses and the construction of self and other in social media in postcolonial bangladesh. in c. ladousa & c. p. davis (eds.), language, education, and identity: medium in south asia (pp. 44–70). routledge. https://books.scholarsportal.info/uri/ebooks/ebooks7/taylorandfrancis7/2022 07-12/4/9781003146278 ladousa, c., & davis, c. p. (2022). language, education, and identity: medium in south asia (c. ladousa & c. p. davis, eds.). routledge. lanza, e., & svendsen, b.a. (2007). tell me who your friends are and i might be able to tell you what language(s) you speak: social network analysis, multilingualism, and identity. international journal of bilingualism, 11(3), 275–300. leeman, j. (2015). heritage language education and identity in the united states. annual review of applied linguistics, 35, 100–119. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0267190514000245 lunga, v.b. (2004). mapping african postcoloniality: linguistic and cultural spaces of hybridity. perspectives on global development and technology, 3(4), 291–326. mazrui, a. a. (1992). towards diagnosing and treating cultural dependency: the case of the african university. international journal of educational development, 12(2), 95– 111. https://doi.org/10.1016/0738-0593(92)90032-h mazrui, a. a. (1997). the world bank, the language question, and the future of african education. race & class. a journal for black and third world liberation, 38(3), 35-49. mignolo, w. d. (2011). epistemic disobedience and the decolonial option: a manifesto. transmodernity: journal of peripheral cultural production of the luso-hispanic world, 1(2), 45-66. https://doi.org/10.5070/t412011807 mooney, a., & evans, b. (2018). language, society and power: an introduction, 5th edition. taylor & francis group. isbn: 9780415786249 ndoye, m. (1997). globalisation, endogenous development, and education in africa. prospects, 27 (1), 79–84. norton, b. (1997). language, identity, and the ownership of english. tesol quarterly, 31(3), 409–429. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587831 https://books.scholarsportal.info/uri/ebooks/ebooks7/taylorandfrancis7/2022 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0267190514000245 https://doi.org/10.1016/0738-0593(92)90032-h https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/lib/utoronto/detail.action?docid=5569070 https://doi.org/10.2307/3587831 decolonial language education and identity realization in africa current issues in comparative education 107 osseo-asare, p. (2021). the impacts of language and literacy policy on teaching practices in ghana: postcolonial perspectives on early literacy and instruction. taylor and francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367854164 schubert, d., j. (2014). suffering/symbolic violence (chapter 11). in m. grenfell, pierre bourdieu. key concepts. routledge, p.179-194. https://doiorg.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.4324/9781315729923 seri-hersch, i. (2017). education in colonial sudan, 1900–1957. oxford research encyclopaedia of african history. 10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.12. halshs01514910 sharkey, h. j. (2008). arab identity and ideology in sudan: the politics of language, ethnicity, and race. african affairs, 107(426), 21–43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27666997 spernes, k. (2012). “i use my mother tongue at home and with friends not in school!” multilingualism and identity in rural kenya. language, culture, and curriculum, 25(2), 189–203. https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2012.683531 wa thiong’o, n. (1998). decolonising the mind. diogenes (english ed.), 46(184), 101–104. https://doi.org/10.1177/039219219804618409 https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.4324/9781315729923 https://doi-org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.4324/9781315729923 http://www.jstor.org/stable/27666997 https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2012.683531 volume 12(2) / spring 2010 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice education and economic crises editorial introduction 3 education and economic crises andrew k. shiotani articles 5 the effect of an economic crisis on educational outcomes: an economic framework and review of the evidence m. najeeb shafiq 14 monitoring the effects of the global crisis on education provision gwang-chol chang 21 the global economic crisis: setbacks to the educational agenda for the minority in sub-saharan africa moses shiasha ingubu 31 under the same blue sky? inequity in migrant children’s education in china guangyu tan special section: responses to volume 12, issue 1 41 cosmopolitanism and our descriptions of ethics and ontology:a response to dale snauwaert’s “the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism” david t. hansen 45 response to noah sobe’s “rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education” andria wisler book review 50 p. agarwal, indian higher education: envisioning the future reviewed by radhika iyengar 53 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 2 (spring 2010) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden executive editor andrew shiotani senior editors ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, michael schapira, michelle reddy editors sarah flatto, cara furman, brian veprek, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, joseph hirsch, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, cara furman, anne gaspers, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira, brian veprek style editors matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar, michael schapira, brian veprek web editor andrew shiotani associate web editors ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2010 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 12(2): 50-52 book reviews agarwal, p. (2009). indian higher education: envisioning the future. new delhi: sage publications. 488 pp. isbn 978-81-7829-941-9 (hb) — reviewed by radhika iyengar, teachers college, columbia university indian higher education: envisioning the future goes beyond explaining the traditional human capital theory which links education and skills to labor market outcomes. in addition to looking at the increase in enrollment in higher education across indian states, the book investigates issues of equity and equality. equity as it is better understood is the provision of equal opportunity and concerns with fairness in resource mobilization and allocation. pawan agarwal focuses on vertical equity issues in particular which relates to understanding how different treatment is provided to people with different characteristics so that the basic minimum threshold level can reached by all. he looks at urban-rural disparities, inter-state variations, and gender differences against the backdrop of the national policy of providing quotas or reserving admission seats for the marginalized castes in the indian higher education institutions. at the same time, he investigates the more mainstream demand and supply factors that have shaped higher education in india. the book presents trends and discussions on multiple dimensions such privatization and regulatory mechanisms, financing and management as well as labor market links and their relation to the rest of the world. in his forward note for this book, phillip altbach mentions that despite being such a big player in global higher education enrollments, no major research center for higher education, which limits our understanding of the “push” and “pull” factors that drive these trends. he notes that higher education as a subject is not taught in the indian higher education system, unlike in china’s higher education system, which has an extensive network of higher education training and research institutions. therefore, the book fills this existing gap by providing insights on higher education and its relation to the globalized world. there were over 160,000 indian students studying abroad in 2005-06 with nearly half of them in the united states (agarwal p.13). countries such as the united kingdom, australia, new zealand, canada and ireland have also opened their higher education sector to the indian students, and the author mentions that in the main destination countries from 1999-2000 to 2005-06, the number of indian students has more than tripled. additionally, non-english speaking countries like germany, france and holland have started educational courses in english to attract indian students. although scholars of comparative studies are cognizant of this wave, very few systematic studies have been done to understand economics of the indian higher education and its global implications. this book brings to light the magnitude and urgent need to understand the reciprocities and the complexities of the indian higher education system vis-à-vis the rest of the world. india is one of the four fast growing developing countries commonly known as the bric economies. it is said to have the highest annual numbers of graduating engineers and doctors, yet it concurrently hosts the world’s largest population of adult illiterates. agarwal explains this dichotomy by highlighting the role of the higher education in the development of the domestic and international workforce. chapter 5 links the transition from higher education to the labor market in explaining skill shortages. furthermore, he explains the coexistence of skill shortages alongside with rising graduate unemployment and underemployment. this is linked to the exponential rise in the private higher education sector that promises a “job guarantee” for recent graduates. current issues in comparative education 51 book review in comparative education studies, depending on the context and the level (higher education, primary education etc) the definition of what is considered “private” changes. the author’s careful articulation of public and private institutions based on ownership and financing abilities provides a framework to better understand the terminologies that are usually misunderstood in the comparative education field, like “public” versus “government” and “private” versus “nongovernment”. this section also includes the increasing spread of foreign education providers in india and their modes of delivery which ranges from having branch campuses, franchised programs, validated programs, distance or open learning etc. with the number of small, private higher education institutions mushrooming in india, the next logical step is to look at the quality of higher education and the regulation of the sector. pawan agarwal explains the need to build new accountability systems using advancements in information and technology, for with the rise of the private institutions, “simply leaving the demand and supply factors to the market will not necessarily deliver outcomes for higher education that represent the best use of resources or that are just and socially optimal” (agarwal p. 306). this section also provides a detailed regulatory framework based on the recommendations of the university grants commission, the apex national regulatory institution for higher education in india. the author includes a historical narrative of indian constitutional acts and the indian supreme court rulings that required establishment of regulatory bodies and defined their roles. agarwal agrees that due to inadequacies in the legislative framework for private institutions, regulatory bodies more often adopted an ad hoc approach and acted as “controllers” rather than “facilitators”. but this did not prevent the private players from becoming an integral part of the indian higher education system. the author manages to clear the myth that the policy and the regulatory framework have prevented private participation in higher education. it is evident that the recent economic crises also adversely impacted the global higher education industry. the u.s. council of graduate schools, basing its findings on a country-wide survey, reported that enrolment of first-time graduate students from india registered a massive 16-per cent decline in 2008-09 because of the financial meltdown. therefore, given the current scenario, how much of a keynesian approach should governments have towards high education? can governments afford to fund higher education, especially in the developing world? economists like psacharopoulos estimated that across countries, the private returns on education are greater for primary education as compared to those for higher education. therefore, the question still remains whether it is advisable for governments to invest in higher education. although agarwal does not incorporate these theoretical dimensions of education finance, he gets to the applied side by explaining the role of multiple stakeholders in the funding mechanisms and sustainability of indian higher education system. he indicates that student loans are a fast expanding area in the indian banking sector. however, agarwal mentions that majority of the students who avail themselves of the loans are in professional degree programs (e.g. engineering, management etc.) and that the loans granted appear to be biased towards males. since banks require security and charge a high risk premium, only few students can take advantage of such services. student aid is another self-funding opportunity that is granted based either on merit or is targeted towards the marginalized. the author narrates that such scholarships are only a small amount and disbursement leakages prove to be a major hindrance in the system. the author is able to successfully highlight education financing issues, however, a comparative analysis with other countries may have helped to understand both the problems and the potentials solutions. the book is helpful for scholars, practitioners and policy makers to comprehensively understand the current issues and trends of the indian higher education systems. however, the arguments 52 current issues in comparative education book review of the book could be strengthened by the following. first, the author attempts to answer the question: is the indian higher education reaching out to the marginal population? besides presenting figures of the expanding numbers of higher education institutions and student enrollment, including relevant theoretical aspects would be helpful to augment the argument. for instance, explaining how some of the policy measures of the government of india intend to put into practice rawls second principle of justice, which aims at providing the greatest benefit to the least advantaged. this utilitarian concept improves the community’s social welfare and is the underlying principle of the reservation policy that is discussed in the book. in other words, it would be helpful to highlight the theoretical aspects of the trends and policy decisions that the book describes. second, in a similar vein, the author notes that in relative terms, public spending on higher education is not low (estimated at 1% of gdp) considering that india is a developing country; however, in absolute terms it is far less than is necessary cover the existing needs. it would be helpful to link this resources-versus-needs dilemma to the classic debate in economics of resource allocation efficiency which is concerned with obtaining maximum performance of the educational system given the available resources. lastly, the author makes the argument that indian higher education has a world presence, especially in a globalized context. therefore, i believe that in understanding problems of the indian higher education system, we would gain a great deal more by comparing and understanding similar issues in other countries. one of the main strengths of the book is that it situates the indian higher education in the context of “vertical” and “horizontal” linkages both domestically and across the globe. in other words, we get a sense of the demand and supply factors that have shaped higher education from multiple perspectives such as from the socio-economic standpoint, the political aspects, demographic advantages, historical trends as well as from the governance policy formation and implementation aspects. the analysis could also have been strengthened by not only looking at mainstream courses like engineering and technology, architecture, pharmacy, business administration etc, but also incorporating recently established courses on gandhian studies, human rights and peace education. nevertheless, the book gives a chance to the readers to understand why the indian higher education is often referred to as “a sick child” or a “quiet crisis” (p. xxiv). in today’s globalized world, the book showcases the indian higher education system, subtly making us aware of its gigantic presence and its power to influence education systems elsewhere. the book highlights the need to learn about the reciprocal relationships between educational structures around the world using a comparative lens. copyright © 2010 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved microsoft word 16_1_noah_sobe_jamie_kowalczyk.docx © 2014 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 16(1): 6-12. exploding the cube: revisioning “context” in the field of comparative education noah w. sobe loyola university chicago jamie a. kowalczyk loyola university chicago this article problematizes some of the ways that the issue of “context” has been treated in comparative education scholarship. we critique the cube approach recommended by bray and thomas (1995) as well as the common recirculations of sadler’s (1900) garden metaphor. borrowing a set of analytic concepts from bruno latour (2004), we suggest that too often in the field of comparative education the issue of context is treated as a “matter of fact” when instead context should be revisioned as a “matter of concern” and one of the central research concerns in our field. we propose the concept of ‘big c’ context to link ‘little c’ contexts to power/knowledge concerns and the historical discourses that govern what it is possible to think and do. despite notable recent efforts to focus research attention on the importance of taking “context” into account (cowen, 2006; crossley, 2009; vavrus & bartlett, 2009), the field of comparative education still remains hobbled by unsophisticated and inadequately theorized notions of context. this article explores the ways that establishing the context of an education policy, practice, institution, or system is caught up in the mobilization of norms, power relations, regulative principles, technologies, and strategies. ascriptions of context can operate as externally imposed categories that enclose, disable, and deny access to resources, opportunities, agency, and subject positions. in like measure, inscriptions of context can sometimes be enabling, increase access to resources and opportunities, and generally privilege particular cultural groups or particular social settings (sobe & kowalczyk, 2012). the ethical, social, cultural and political significance of context thus demands that researchers pay careful attention to ways they use the concept of context in their research. in this piece, we problematize some of the ways that the issue of context has been treated in comparative education scholarship. in particular, we critique the “cube” approach recommended by bray and thomas (1995) as well as the feckless and regrettably common recirculations of sadler’s (1900) garden metaphor. rather than thinking of “contextualization” or “establishing the context” as activity that takes place at the front-end as part of a preliminary “setting the stage” for a research project, we propose—returning to the word’s etymological meaning of “inter-weaving”—that the problem of context be something that demands the researcher’s attention across the entirety of a research endeavor. borrowing a set of analytic concepts from bruno latour (2004), we suggest that too often in the field of comparative education the issue of context is treated as a “matter of fact” when instead context should be revisioned as a “matter of concern” and one of the central research topics in our field. as part of revisioning context as a matter of concern we discuss big ‘c’ context as a set of historical discourses (gee, 1990) that interweave actors and objects and govern what it is possible to think and do. by little ‘c’ context we refer to the set of named elements that are seen as comprising a given setting. individual instances of context become intelligible because of context with a “big c”—which is always much more than environment. noah w. sobe jamie a. kowalczyk current issues in comparative education 7 as noted above, honing in on the issue of context is warranted because of the significance that context plays in power/knowledge relations. inasmuch as we can think of the field of comparative and international education as a mode of governance (nóvoa & yariv-mashal, 2003) it is also extremely important to think about the way that, in educational research, the comparative project sometimes seems to be caught between two radically different alternatives (see the discussion in sobe & kowalczyk, 2012). on the one hand, there is a certain tendency to universalize teaching, learning, and schooling and to assume that research findings from other places can smoothly be brought to bear on educational problems in any site. in this schema, the comparative method almost reduces to a science of ceteris paribus, i.e. a quest to “hold all other things equal,” and figure out how to control for and mitigate “contextual” factors. at an opposite extreme, are post-positivist claims about the “impossibility” of comparison due to the situational specificity of any educational interaction. from this second perspective the science of comparison more often than not is seen to be a modernist artifact that relies on enlightenment notions of rationality and principally serves to discipline and govern individuals and societies. according to this binary, the field of comparative education either represents a salvational path to best-practices or is a dangerous neo-colonial imposition that imposes a disempowering, externally ordering logic. in our view, this austere scenario can be entirely avoided, and this dualism collapsed, if we revision the ways that comparative education researchers approach the issue of context. context problems michael sadler’s early-twentieth century writings on educational transfer and borrowing offer an object lesson in the ways that reasoning about context is implicated in power/knowledge relations. when referring to the importance of local conditions and recognizing complexity, it remains an unfortunate commonplace for comparative education scholars to recycle sadler’s injunction that education reformers not: …wander at pleasure among the educational systems of the world, like a child strolling through a garden, and pick off a flower … and then expect that if we stick what we have gathered into the soil at home, we shall have a living plant. (sadler, 1964, p. 310) what is missed in the ad nauseam reiterations of this statement are its fundamental linkages with european colonialism on two levels. the first of these relates to the colonial science of “acclimatization,” a late-nineteenth century zoological, biological and medical field concerned with studying the ways that flora and fauna could be transported around the globe in the interests of optimizing animal husbandry and agricultural production. as michael osborne's work (1994, 2000) shows, along with ethnography, the sciences of acclimatization were pivotal appendages of colonial and imperial projects, concerned, as they were, with how organisms could be successfully moved from one climate to another. adaptation became an object of scientific study as part of the economic reorganization and administrative measures of the european colonial project. and in sadler’s formulation we see a historical instance of acclimatization reasoning being applied to the social world with tremendous consequence for determining who was and who wasn’t suited for various educational initiatives (sobe & ortegón, 2009; sobe, 2013)—with the schooling of indigenous and ethnic/racial minority populations being one of the most egregious historical examples of different methods and different standards being applied to particular “kinds” of people based on outsiders’ perceptions of worth, aptitude and potential. a second level on which sadler’s quote uncomfortably reinscribes a colonial logic relates to the tradition in academic knowledge production of viewing physical and social space as fundamentally interlinked. at issue here are the ways that the “texture” of space is modeled in relation to governance, control, and coordination. as foucault (1971) has pointed out, when space is conceptualized as possessing thickness and depth, one often encounters a division exploding the cube 8 current issues in comparative education where human experiences are separated from supposed underlying laws and principles. as sobe & fischer (2009) have noted, …when space is conceptualized not as a smooth plane but as non-regular, with varying, uneven depths, principles of differentiation ensue. for example, some areas emerge as sites suited for liberal, democratic participatory politics; others emerge as more appropriately governed through force, authority and the inculcation of habit. (p. 361) sadler’s organicist argument about “native soil” is enmeshed in a colonialist logic of governance that makes it a highly inadequate model for addressing the issue of context in conducting comparative education research today. a more recent schema for approaching context in comparative education scholarship comes from mark bray and r. murray thomas (1995) who have proposed a three dimensional cube for thinking about the location or site of any comparative education study. one axis is geographical and proposes that research might focus on world regions, countries, provinces, districts, as well as the “locational” levels of schools, classrooms and individuals. a second axis identifies potential demographic factors such as ethnicity, age, religion, and gender as potential cross-cutting focal points for a comparative study. the third axis proposes a set of substantive issues that might be studied in reference to the previous two—anything from curriculum and teaching methods to school financing, political change, and labor markets. a comparative education study thus might focus on one or more “sub-cubes” within this larger threedimensional cube. in this manner, one might design a comparative study that looks at girls’ science education in two countries; or, for example, a study could look at the financing of schools attended by different religious groups in different regions of the same country. in recent work, bray, adamson & mason (2007) have usefully reflected on limitations to the cube, particularly, for example, on the ways that the various filters could be reframed. the geographic filter could be expanded to allow a focus on countries affected by a particular colonial experience (manzon, 2007) or on countries/regions with religious commonalities. bray and his colleagues have even proposed that multiple cubes could be arrayed along a temporal axis to afford comparisons across time. while they do recognize significant limitations, including the definitional “slipperiness” (2007, p. 370) that emerges when the units of comparison delineated in the cube are actually deployed by researchers, they nonetheless note, “good comparative education researchers will necessarily consider factors along each of the axes [of the cube] before they isolate the variables pertinent to their hypotheses” (bray, adamson & mason, 2007, p. 371). we offer a two-fold critique of this methodological prescription and what it puts forward as strategies comparative education scholars should use to account for context. first, we question the deployment of pre-existing context categories. second we question, as indicated previously, whether it is adequate to do the work of isolating contextual factors and categories as a preliminary stage-setting component of the research process. as regards the first critique, bray, adamson and mason (2007) acknowledge that there are different social science paradigms and that scholars interact with and interpret their data differently. while they note that “researchers using a more hermeneutic or inductive approach would probably prefer the sub-categories to emerge from their data” (p. 369-70), we would frame this issue less as one of methodological preference and more worthy of research concern because of the ways that ascriptions and inscriptions of context are implicated in power/knowledge relations. one of the best illustrations of the way that context can be prefigured as a category of analysis lies in its subdivision into various dimensions as in the commonplace usage of concepts like noah w. sobe jamie a. kowalczyk current issues in comparative education 9 “political context”, “economic context”, “social context”, “cultural context”, etc. to discuss context in these terms is to create knowledge about characteristics over which rule can be exercised (rose, 1999). this phenomenon is clearly illustrated by the “newly discovered island” heuristic employed by neoinstitutional sociologists of education (meyer et al., 1997) to explain the ways that institutionalized world models define and de/legitimate local agendas. they predict that if a previously uncontacted island were discovered its inhabitants would be pressured to begin organizing themselves according to world models that have their origin in the north america and europe but have since been spread widely around the globe. the island would be conceptualized as “a society” with “an economy” and “a government”. meyer et al. note that: …a few standardized data tables would be sufficient to empower policy proposals. similarly, any sociologist comes equipped with the capability to propose measures, analyses, diagnoses, and policy prescriptions for the correction of gender inequalities on the island. on a broad range of economic and social indicators, the island would be categorized and compared with other nation states, in the same way that every newly independent geopolitical entity has been processed in the past several decades. (meyer et al., 1997, p. 150) in short, standardized categories would be applied and the hypothetical island’s historical, political, economic, and social “context” would enter a surprisingly standardizing machine of academic knowledge production. to splice out context into different dimensions in this manner is to construct domains of action and surfaces of intervention. our central objection to requiring the specification of context be done before the research actually begins is that this move relegates context to the background role of simply stabilizing a research object. this approach, which might be called the context-as-container paradigm, fails to account for the relationality of contexts and objects (problems to be studied), and it can lead researchers to make rather dubious causal inferences. in the next section, as we present alternatives to approaching context using a set of pre-existing analytic categories, we will also examine the relationality of objects and contexts and how they come to be intelligible and conjoined, and to what effect(s). no less than an explosion of the cube and a reassembly of the pieces is necessary. revisioning context it seems intuitive or common sense to say that the daily practices of schooling around the globe take place within some context. questions about the salience of educational contexts cut deeply across debates in the field on the global-local nexus. the material and discursive configuration of what is indexed by the concept of context cannot be taken-for-granted nor treated as uncontestable. and, as we hope to have shown in the previous section, context is also heavily—and irrevocably—linked to power/knowledge concerns. the contingent historical quality of the categories used to conduct comparison and to putatively separate objects from contexts are themselves one of the things that requires attention. this is an undertaking that british philosopher ian hacking captures in the idea of locating “ideas in their matrices” (1999, p. 10) and it is this task that we direct attention to with the idea of ‘big c’ context. hacking describes this kind of analytic process as involving the paradox of examining how something has been constructed by others and simultaneously recognizing that the researcher’s own lenses and activities also construct, shape, pattern, and govern what is under examination. much comparative education research, as we have reviewed above, treats context as any number of neatly bound cubes to be arranged at the outset of a project. as convenient as this foundation-building might be, it fails to account for the mutable and entangled demarcations that distinguish context and object from one another. we borrow from a series of distinctions exploding the cube 10 current issues in comparative education latour (2004) makes between matters of fact and matters of concern in sociological research. latour conceptualizes matters of fact as “risk free objects” with “clear boundaries” and predictive value, while matters of concern are a risky, “tangled” business (latour, 2004, p. 2223) that engages the unexpected and the emerging. too often context has been treated as a matter of fact and invoked as a unity that is always already-there, waiting to be observed and described via stable categories. approaching context as a matter of concern draws attention to the practice of identifying categories and analytic topics (spatial, temporal, institutional, discursive, theoretical) that intersect, overlap, and change over time. these categories, artifacts of epistemological structures, will inevitably be embroiled in power relations (foucault, 1971 & 1980) as they produce the rules and standards that govern social practices, creating at once spaces for action, while marginalizing or rendering invisible others. coming to grips with this should be an essential part of the research process. one step towards this end and towards exploding neatly packaged matter-of-fact cubes is to think of contexts as a confluence of practices and objects coming together and never permanently stabilizing. with other contemporary scholars, particularly a set of scholars working in the field of anthropology (marcus & saka 2006; ong & collier, 2005; deleuze & guattari, 1987), we draw on the concept of the “assemblage” to conceptualize this. aihwa ong (2006) tackles the challenge of doing an “ethnography of mutating spaces” by suggesting that we alter what we think of as “spaces”; instead, we might study “assemblages as sites where the dynamic play of strategies resolve challenges by constantly situating and resituating populations in particular scales of regulation” (p. 118). the assemblage then signifies a kind of non-place/non-structured structure that gives conceptual form to the confluence of practices and objects. in saskia sassen’s (2008) description, assemblage is theorized as “a contingent ensemble of practices and things that can be differentiated (that is, they are not collections of similar practices and things) and that can be aligned along the axes of territoriality and deterritorialization” (p. 76). the concept of the assemblage has been seen to capture the “heterogenous within the ephemeral” while preserving: …some concept of the structural so embedded in the enterprise of social science research. indeed, the term itself in its material referent invests easily in the image of structure, but is nonetheless elusive. the time-space in which assemblage is imagined is inherently unstable and infused with movement and change. assemblage thus seems structural, an object with the materiality and stability of the classic metaphors of structure, but the intent in its aesthetic uses is precisely to undermine such ideas of structure. (marcus & saka 2006, p. 102) the researcher who takes context to be a matter of concern, then, is not interested in the traditional “object of study” contained within a context, but is interested in the relationality between objects and contexts: how they come to be intelligible and conjoined, and to what effect(s). in other words, the researcher is interested in the cohesion between objects and contexts, and in the epistemological structures that make it possible to see the objects as objects (problems to be studied) and contexts as an assemblage of multiple, at times paradoxical, things and practices that come together in particular places at particular times. in shifting to “contextualization” as the work of studying assemblages, the researcher is able to attend to “emergence, heterogeneity, the decentred and the ephemeral in social life and social interactions that are nonetheless ordered and coordinated” (sobe, 2013, p. 101). asking what is being “assembled together” in what i am examining is a question the researcher asks across the entirety of a research endeavor. taking a cue from anthropologist roy dilley (1999) we find it useful to return to the etymological roots of the word context as they help us see past the noah w. sobe jamie a. kowalczyk current issues in comparative education 11 accrued meanings of “background” and “place” and “dimension” that have been added over time. the latin verb texere means “to weave” and con signifies “with.” consequently, contexere is “to weave together” or “to interweave.” the notion of interweaving allows us to focus on contexts as assemblages of multiple discourses, practices, techniques, objects, and propositions that come together in particular places at particular times. whereas matters of fact depend on the invisibility and taken-for-grantedness of their production, shifting to matters of concern means putting these processes of production under the microscope—and realizing that the researcher herself plays a role and is not a distant, detached observer (sobe & kowalczyk, 2012). in closing, we will note that despite our insistence above that objects and contexts are conjoined and entangled within specific assemblages and on the entanglement of the researcher, we do recognize the importance of probing the distinction between an activity, entity, actor and its environment (to use the term in a general manner). as noted above, it seems intuitive that educational undertakings take place within the context of some context. in part, this intuition is addressed by revisioning context as assemblage. in another part, it also needs to be addressed by carefully studying the organizing principles and referentiality of social systems and the extent to which they define their own boundaries and represent themselves as operating in a particular environment (luhmann, 1995). the production of a “background” or “container” that is enabling and/or disabling needs itself to become a topic of research; we need to interrogate the ways that schools and various educational apparatuses construct the contexts in which they operate. the field of comparative education is a mature and important area of academic inquiry with a promising future. in this article, we have proposed a revisioned theory of context that takes power/knowledge as both its starting and ending point. the act of contextualization is essential in the field of comparative education, and it means treating contexts as matters of concern while focusing our research attention on the educational assemblages that compose and govern our present and future worlds. noah sobe is associate professor and graduate program director of both cultural and educational policy studies and international higher education. he is also the director of the center for comparative education at loyola university chicago. email: nsobe@luc.edu. jamie kowalczyk is an instructor in the school of education at loyola university chicago. email: jkowalczyk1@luc.edu. references bray, m. & thomas, r. m. (1995). levels of comparison in educational studies: different insights from different literatures and the value of multilevel analyses. harvard education review, 65(3), 472-490. bray, m., adamson, b., & mason, m. (2007). comparative education research approaches and methods. hong kong, china: comparative education research centre, the university of hong kong. cowen, r. (2006). acting comparatively upon the educational world: puzzles and possibilities. oxford review of education, 32(5), 561-573. crossley, m. (2009). rethinking context in comparative education. r. cowen & a. kazamias (eds.), international handbook of comparative education (pp. 1173-1187). new york, ny: springer. deleuze, g. & guattari, f. (1987). a thousand plateaus:[?] capitalism and schizophrenia. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. dilley, r. (1999). the problem of context. new york, ny: berghahn books. exploding the cube 12 current issues in comparative education foucault, m. (1971). the order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences. new york, ny: pantheon books. foucault, m. (1980). truth and power. power/knowledge: selected interviews & other writings, 1972-1977 (pp. 109-133). new york, ny: pantheon books. gee, j. (1990). social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses. critical perspectives on literacy and education. london, uk: falmer press. hacking, i. (1999). the social construction of what? cambridge, ma: harvard university press. latour, b. (2004). the politics of nature: [?] how to bring the sciences into democracy. (c. porter, trans.). cambridge, ma.: harvard university press. luhmann, n. (1995). social systems. stanford, ca: stanford university press. marcus, g. e. & saka, e. (2006). assemblage. theory, culture & society, 23 (2-3), 101-106. meyer, j., boli, j., thomas g., & ramirez, f. (1997). world society and the nation state. the american journal of sociology, 103 (1), 144-181. nóvoa, a. n., & yariv-mashal, t. (2003). comparative research in education: a mode of governance or a historical journey?. comparative education, 39(4), 423-438. ong, a. (2006). neoliberalism as exception: mutations in citizenship and sovereignty. durham, nc: duke university press. ong, a. & collier, s. j. (2005). global assemblages: [?] technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems. malden, ma: blackwell pub. osborne, m. (1994). nature, the exotic, and the science of french colonialism, science, technology, and society. bloomington, in: indiana university press, 1994. osborne, m. (2000). , 2000,135-151. rose, n. (1999). powers of freedom: reframing political thought. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. sadler, m. (1964). in g. bereday "documents: sir michael sadler's "study of foreign systems of education"," comparative education review (1964): 310. sassen, s. (2008). neither global nor national: novel assemblages of territory, authority and rights. ethics & global politics, 1 (1-2), 61-79. sobe, n. (2013). entanglement and transnationalism in the history of american education. in t. s. popkewitz (ed.), rethinking the history of education: transnational perspectives on its questions, methods and knowledge(pp. ). new york, ny: palgrave. sobe, n. & fischer, m. (2009). mobility, migration and minorities in education. in r. cowen & a. kazamias (eds.), international handbook of comparative education (pp. 359-371). new york, ny: springer. sobe, n. & kowalczyk, j. (2012). the problem of context in comparative education research. ecps journal, 6, 55-74. < www.ledonline.it/ecps-journal/allegati/ecps-20126_sobe.pdf > sobe, n. & ortegón, n. (2009). scopic systems, pipes, models and transfers in the global circulation of educational knowledge and practices. in t. popkewitz & f. rizvi (eds.), globalization and the study of education (p. 49-66) new york, ny: nsse/teachers college press. vavrus, f. & bartlett, l. (2009). critical approaches to comparative education: vertical case studies from africa, europe, the middle east, and the americas. new york, ny: palgrave. microsoft word 16_2_antoni_verger.docx ©  2014,  current  issues  in  comparative  education,  teachers  college,  columbia  university.  all  rights   reserved.  current  issues  in  comparative  education  16  (2),  14-­‐‑29.   why do policy-makers adopt global education policies? toward a research framework on the varying role of ideas in education reform          antoni  verger   universitat autònoma de barcelona introduction globalization is profoundly altering the education policy landscape. it introduces new problems in education agendas, compresses time and space in policy processes, and revitalizes the role of a range of supra-national players in educational reform. this deterritorialization of the education policy process has important theoretical and epistemological implications. among others, it is forcing comparative education scholars to pay more attention to the politics and dynamics involved in the policy adoption stage. policy adoption is a moment that has acquired a great deal of strategic significance in current education reforms. indeed, in the contemporary global governance scenario, education policy processes cannot be analyzed by simply looking at the conventional sequence of agenda setting, policy design, implementation, and evaluation stages; nor by looking at these different moments simply from a national optique. due to transnational influences of a very different nature, education reforms are more and more often externally initiated, and multiple scales interact in the dynamics through which these reforms are negotiated, formulated, implemented, and even evaluated. focusing on policy adoption implies paying closer attention to, and producing more empirical research on, the processes, reasons and circumstances that explain how and why policy-makers (or other education stakeholders) select, embrace, and/or borrow global education policies, and aim to implement them in their educational realities. looking at the adoption stage has the potential to introduce new perspectives in the study of global education policy (gep), as well as to disentangle several aspects of the global policy debate that, in comparative education, have been often captured by the convergence-divergence dilemma. to contribute to building this research strand, i suggest looking more in depth at the role that ideas play in policy decisions and related policy outcomes in a global governance scenario. it is noteworthy that policy analysis – not only in the education field tends to neglect an explicit reflection on the role of ideas in processes of policy and/or institutional change. to a great extent, this happens due to the difficulty in defining and categorizing ideas, as well as in distinguishing them from other social phenomena (kjaer & pedersen, 2001). despite these challenges, i argue that a more explicit conceptualization and theorization on the role of ideas will contribute to providing a better account of the nature, processes, and outcomes of gep. finally, i also argue that to understand why external policy ideas are selected and retained in particular places, we need to look more closely at contextual contingencies of a different nature, especially at those of a political and institutional nature. ‘context’ is one of those concepts often used and abused in comparative education. it carries strong semiotic connotations and its meaning is often taken for granted. to address this frequent absence, in this article, i will explore how a range of key contextual variables can be operationalized in gep research. why do policy-makers adopt global education policies?   current  issues  in  comparative  education   15   i develop these arguments in three main sections. in the first, i review the different traditions in education and globalization studies, and justify the necessity of looking more explicitly and systematically at the policy adoption stage. in the second section, i review how different theoretical approaches in social sciences can contribute to analyze the role of ideas in gep change, and in policy adoption in particular. in the third section, i systematize a range of contextual dimensions that are more decisive in processes of education policy adoption. if in the previous section i was reflecting on what types of ideas are most influential in gep processes, and how, in this one i will be reflecting on the particular institutions and contextual circumstances that favor or inhibit the influence of certain global ideas in particular territories. to illustrate the different theoretical premises presented in the article, i apply them to a particular area of education reform: the spread of education privatization, since this is one of the most extensively promoted reform approaches in global education agendas in recent decades. different traditions in global education policy: beyond the convergence-divergence debate in comparative education, the study of globalization and education policy is strongly influenced by macro theoretical approaches, two of the most noteworthy being the ‘world society’ theory and the ‘globally structured educational agenda’ (gsea). the first argues that the ‘education institution’, as we know it, has spread around the world as part of the diffusion of a culturally embedded model of the modern nation-state. according to this theory, a range of common education policies (but also health, fiscal policies, etc.) have been adopted around the planet as the result of both the international dissemination of the values of western modernity as well as the legitimation pressures that governments receive – especially in postcolonial settings to demonstrate to the international community that they are building a ‘modern state’ (meyer et al., 1997). for its part, the gsea sees the world capitalist economy as the driving force of globalisation and as the main causal source of the profound transformations manifested in the education arena today (dale, 2000). this approach stresses that most significant educational changes we witness today should be understood as being embedded within interdependent local, national and global political economy complexes. international financial organizations are key agents in this multi-scalar scenario due to their agenda setting capacities; among other things, they define what the main problems are that member-states should address if they want to successfully integrate into an increasingly globalized and competitive knowledge-economy. despite their important differences, both approaches identify worldwide convergence trends in education policy: world society does so by emphasizing institutional isomorphism (i.e. the common form that education systems are acquiring globally), and the gsea, by focusing on the constitution of a global education agenda. however, the comparative education field is also fertile in the production of more micro case studies that rather highlight the divergence that prevails in gep processes. these accounts admit that similar education reforms are spreading globally, but the way in which they translate into local policy practices is rather conflicting, and even contradictory. overall, they consider that global policy ideas are constantly and actively reinterpreted and modified by a range of political actors that operate at a range of scales – including the national and the local according to their own symbolic frames and institutional settings. here, we find from anthropological studies that focus on the cultural and identity factors involved in global education policy interpretation (anderson-levitt, 2003; phillips & stambach, 2008) to historical and sociological institutionalist studies, which focus on the role of path-dependent institutional traditions, antoni  verger   16                current  issues  in  comparative  education   systems of norms, and national regulatory frameworks in the re-contextualization and adaptation of global education policies. (dobbins, 2011; maurer, 2012; takayama, 2012). the macro and the micro approaches sketched above reach apparently contrasting conclusions, to a great extent, due to the fact that they focus on different stages of the education policy process: policy diffusion and agenda setting, on the one hand, and policy enactment and concrete educational practices on the other. as i argue next, focusing on the policy adoption stage – which, in a global governance scenario, intermediates and mediates more and more determinantly between agenda setting and concrete policy developmentscan contribute to have a more complex view of the convergence-divergence debate and, in general, a more comprehensive understanding of gep processes. the policy adoption focus scholars that focus on policy adoption are less concerned with how global policies get transformed once they have penetrated the local arena, than with why they penetrate the local arena in the first place. to them, understanding policy adoption (i.e. the processes, reasons and circumstances that explain how and why policy-makers select and embrace geps) is key to account for the changes of scale and the new political interactions that are emerging in more deterritorialized policy processes. nevertheless, despite the increasing relevance of policy adoption to understand the nature and outcomes of gep processes, this is a policy moment still understudied. in comparative education, the ‘policy borrowing and lending’ literature (see key contributions in steiner-khamsi, 2004, 2012b) or the ‘mechanisms of globalization effects’ (see dale, 1999) are some of the few frameworks that explicitly aim at understanding the variety of forces and rationales involved in processes of education policy adoption in a global setting. these frameworks reflect on the political, and economic drivers involved in the adoption of geps, as well as on the governance technologies that explain the so-called policy transfer, including standardization, externalization, or governance by numbers. they also show that international organizations play an increasingly active role in policy adoption processes, not only by influencing their member-countries’ decisions, but also the policies adopted by other international organizations (cf. grek, 2012; mundy & menashy, 2012). it is well documented that many countries – especially developing countries adopt global policies and programs because they are externally imposed on them via aid conditionality or binding international agreements. however, more and more often, policy-makers adopt global policies in an apparently voluntary way (dale, 2005). when this happens, dynamics of persuasion, discursive selectivity, and generation of meaning become more central as factors of policy change. this trend forces us to refine the analytical tools we use in globalization and education studies and, more specifically, pushes us to have a more systematic and theoretical understanding of the role that ideas can play in the study of the nature, dynamics and outcomes of geps. as i hope to demonstrate in the following section, taking the role of ideas more seriously in our models of analysis can contribute to shedding light on this particular area of inquiry. theorizing the role of ideas in global education policy: the case of privatization reforms human interpretation and ideas are variables that always frame political outcomes and policy decisions at all levels. thus, research questions on the role of ideas should not be framed in terms of whether ideas matter or not, as the fact that they matter should be taken for granted. rather, more relevant questions to be addressed are: what kinds of ideas matter more in specific why do policy-makers adopt global education policies?   current  issues  in  comparative  education   17   periods of policy change? how, when and under what circumstances do ideas matter more? and, are ideas autonomous sources of power? different theoretical approaches deal differently with these questions. in this section, i explore how approaches such as institutionalism, rationalism, and constructivism do so, and, in particular, how different scholars in comparative education engage with related premises when analyzing the relationship between globalization and education policy. i specifically reflect on how comparativists have applied these premises to a particular area of education reform: education privatization. main approaches 1) scholars coming from historical and sociological institutionalism, and related traditions, focus on the impact of ideas once they become institutionalized at a range of scales. to them, ideas exert influence as elements that are embedded in a broad range of institutions, such as international regimes, systems of values and norms, and policy paradigms (cf. march & olsen, 2005; hall, 1993). they look at ideas as embedded in broader and usually stable ideational structures that condition (and even restrict) the capacity of local policy agents in decisionmaking processes. these types of ideas frame policy-makers behaviors and preferences, and generate shared assumptions among them about how the world works, the nature of problems, and the main policy instruments that are available to them to face these problems (campbell, 2004). in comparative education, such a ‘structuralist’ understanding of the role of ideas influences a very broad range of scholars and theories, starting with world culture theory which, as sketched above, attributes world convergence in education to the successful expansion of western normative frameworks, including values such as human rights, individualism, and democracy. other scholars use concepts like ‘education ideology’ (see schriewer, 2004), ‘policy scape’ (see carney, 2009) or ‘political imaginaries’ (see robertson, 2005) to refer to transnationally shared ideational frameworks that shape the way policy-makers perceive educational problems and take decisions about educational reform, including the particular policy instruments they are more likely to select and/or reject. others advocate the necessity to have an even broader understanding of ideational structures, including worldviews, religions, and civilizational projects when it comes to understanding how cultural legacies mediate the effects of globalization in education (schwinn, 2012; robertson & dale, 2013). how does this perspective apply, in particular, to studies on education privatization? generally speaking, it leads us to focus on how the emergence of certain ‘ideational frameworks’ (including policy paradigms, political ideologies, public sentiments and so on) is conducive to the adoption of privatization measures. in developing countries, the prevailing developmental paradigm, the so-called post-washington consensus, is especially conducive to privatization measures, as it encourages governments to explore non-bureaucratic ways of coordinating economic and social activities and to create an environment that favors the private sector acquiring a more dynamic role in economic and societal issues (van waeyenberge, 2006). within this paradigm, managerial proposals that involve the state partnering with the private sector and rethinking the role of the state in the provision of public goods are considered sound. at the same time, it is remarkable that, in recent decades, the structuration of a range of principled beliefs concerning what is the legitimate role of the state in education has contributed to advance privatization policies both in the north and in the south. in many parts of the world, strong public sentiments against the state operating as a direct provider of services antoni  verger   18                current  issues  in  comparative  education   have been forged, to the point that many consider the welfare state to be facing a crisis of legitimacy, even in northern european countries (wiborg, 2012). this shift in public opinion and values is very significant when it comes to understanding the global spread of privatization and related managerial solutions; as kalimullah et al. (2012) state, “bureaucracy now has few supporters anywhere. any solution offering a reduction in bureaucracy is likely to be popular” (p.19). in general, the fact that neoliberalism and related policy discourses have become hegemonic, and form a sort of commonsensical global framework, contributes to the belief in many countries of the world of the inherent superiority of the private sector, or the goodness of performance-based incentives and choice shaping the parameters of education reforms (carney, 2009; taylor et al., 2000). 2) for rationalist scholars, ideas exert influence as lenses that focus on the ‘best option’ for policy-makers to maximize their interests, or as coalitional glue to facilitate the cohesion of particular groups. from this perspective, ideas appear to have a lower profile as causal factors of policy change. their main role is to “alleviate coordination problems arising from the absence of unique equilibrium solutions” (goldstein & keohane, 1993, p. 17). according to this approach, actors that participate in policy interactions at different scales are goal-oriented and engage in strategic interactions to maximize their utilities on the basis of given preferences (risse, 2000). in terms of policy adoption, rationalism would expect local policy-makers to select certain global policies because such policies work or have worked well elsewhere. thus, policymakers would be construed as well-informed rational actors that choose internationally tested policy solutions to improve the outcomes of their education systems. in comparative education, rational choice or methodological individualism are far from being dominant approaches. we find an example in an author like george pscharopoulos (1990), whose starting point is that education policy-makers in developing countries are rational actors who try “to deliver the best with given resources” and are “concerned with the equitable distribution of benefits associated with educational expansion and provision” (p. 371). similar conceptions are implicit in the logic of intervention of many international organizations and aid agencies when engaging with local constituencies in policy exchanges. these organizations seem to assume that, by systematizing worldwide evidence and/or doing impact evaluations of a range of interventions, they will demonstrate to national policy-makers what policies ‘work’ and, accordingly, the latter will opt for adopting and implementing them (cf. schuller & burns, 2007; bruns et al., 2010). according to rationalism, national policy-makers would embrace privatization policies once it has been demonstrated that these policies can contribute to improving students’ academic performance and/or the efficiency of education systems. 3) constructivist approaches ascribe more of a leading role to ideas as independent factors in policy change. a core assumption in constructivism is that actors' interests and preferences are social constructions and not objectively given (haas, 2004; hay, 2002). these scholars are interested in analyzing ideas functioning as road maps for policy making. in the situations where policy change happens, ideas act more clearly as explanatory variables defining actors’ preferences “by stipulating causal patterns or by providing compelling ethical or moral motivations for action” (goldstein & keohane, 1993, p. 16). to many constructivists, ideas are more than simple instruments of human action; they have constitutive power and intrinsic force (blyth, 2004). to constructivists, ideas are seen as causal factors that influence policy decisions by shaping the perceptions of decision makers, providing why do policy-makers adopt global education policies?   current  issues  in  comparative  education   19   them with rationales for action or filtering interpretations of the external world (kjaer & pedersen, 2001). their research focuses on the role of persuasive arguments, deliberation and communicative action as independent causes of social behavior and political change (risse, 2004). they do not deny that ideas can work as embedded in institutions, but are more interested in the processes by which ideas that were initially held by a minority become widely adopted and institutionalized (hasenclever et al., 1996). in comparative and international education studies, some scholars are focusing on the dynamics of promotion of, and persuasion regarding, global policy ideas (grek et al., 2009; ball, 2012; resnik, 2012; olmedo, 2013). many of them focus on how a range of international organizations, knowledge brokers, and policy entrepreneurs try to convince governments of what are the key problems that they need to address and the most effective policy solutions (steiner-khamsi, 2012a). researchers in this specific area observe that global policy ideas do not necessarily become influential because of their inherent quality and rigor, but because of the promotional and framing strategies of the experts backing them (verger, 2012). in fact, many policy entrepreneurs predispose policy-makers to consider their proposals by making them look like they are scientifically supported, or aligned with ‘international good practices’ and ‘international standards’ (edwards jr., 2013). the transnationalization of the education privatization agenda is a good example of how the lack of conclusive evidence regarding the effectiveness of a policy does not prevent it from continuing to be disseminated around the world (luke, 2003). the promoters of privatization are aware of the criticism and resistance that their ideas may generate in many places. consequently, to make their preferences more normatively acceptable to a wider audience, they tend to avoid using the ‘privatization’ label and resort to more appealing concepts such as public-private partnerships, school choice, innovative forms of provision, or school autonomy (robertson et al., 2012). one of the reasons these alternative concepts are more appealing is that they are vague enough so that different policy actors can read almost anything into them. in fact, it has been documented that concepts like public-private partnerships or school autonomy can work as “accommodationist mechanisms” (cf. linder, 1999) in the sense that a range of different political ideologies may provide them with meaning and feel at ease with the frame in question (verger, 2012; verger and curran, 2014). another asset in the hands of privatization entrepreneurs and advocates is that market metaphors are inherently persuasive because most policy-makers have positive experiences with ‘the market’ as a space for the distribution of goods and services in their daily lives. however, they tend to misinform about the numerous failures that the mechanical transposition of market rules to the delivery of public goods such as education generates. overall, privatization advocates often resort to the repetition and the misrepresentation of evidence when it comes to selling their preferences (ball, 2007). as has been argued by lubiensky (2008) in relation to the us context, one of their most common tactics to create momentum around privatization reform is to produce a sort of ‘echochamber effect’ around a small, usually lowquality and unrepresentative sample of studies. focusing on the role of ideas does not mean neglecting that the influence of policy ideas is contingent on the institutional setting in which they are produced and delivered. to most constructivists, the symbolic and economic capitals of the organizations backing new policy ideas impact significantly on the social perception and credibility of these ideas. it is noteworthy that the most successful policy entrepreneurs are usually based in international organizations, such as the world bank or the oecd, that are located at the interstices of a range antoni  verger   20                current  issues  in  comparative  education   of influential policy networks. these organizations provide them with sufficient resources to package and disseminate their ideas effectively as well as the channels to directly access key policy-makers in their member-states (campbell, 2004). to conclude, constructivists assume, counter to the rationalist assumption, that policy-makers do not have perfect information when making their policy choices and that, in fact, their knowledge on education policy matters is likely to be impressionistic and incomplete (hay, 2001). in general, according to them, global policies are not widely adopted because they are the best (or even a good) choice, but because they are perceived as such by key decision-makers. even though this is a valid point to understand the selection of certain policy options by policymakers, in the next section i will argue that other elements and contingencies need to also be addressed to understand policy adoption in its complexity. placing policy ideas in context despite the constructivist effort to place ideas at the center of analytical models, there is the risk of isolating them from material factors and extra-semiotic forces. according to jessop (2010), the role of ideas and, more broadly speaking, semiotic analysis should be seen as a heuristic device to reduce complexity in the study of reality, or as an entry point to understand reality, but not as an end in itself. in addition, the constructivist emphasis on conceiving ideas as causal factors runs the risk of modeling ideas as independent variables of policy change in a too linear and positivistic way. overall, a more dialectical understanding of the relationship between ideas, institutional change, and strategically selective contexts would be more appropriate. campbell (2004) has done a remarkable job when it comes to advancing a more relational approach on this terrain. his work theorizes on how different types of ideas, such as policy paradigms, programs, frames, and public sentiments, which interpellate to very different domains of reality (the micro and the macro, the normative and the policy-oriented), interact in processes of institutional change. paraphrasing him, new policy proposals will be more likely to penetrate education systems if entrepreneurs can present them in a way that appears to translate well into the prevailing national or regional regulatory framework and policy paradigm, and into the normative sentiments of decision-makers and key stakeholders. as i show in this section, to analyze policy adoption and, specifically, to understand why external policy ideas are selected and retained in particular places, we need to look more closely at contextual variables of a different nature, with a focus on those of a political and institutional nature. as mentioned above, ‘context’ is one of those concepts often used and abused in comparative education. it carries strong semiotic connotations and its meaning is often taken for granted; consequently, in much research it is rarely defined and systematized. the strategicrelational approach (cf. jessop, 2001; hay, 2001) is helpful to think about what we specifically mean by context and, more importantly, how we operationalize it in research on gep. the strategic-relational approach forces us to think of ‘context’ as a conjunction of semiotic and non-semiotic strategically inscribed selectivities (of a political, institutional, and economic nature) that may privilege or discriminate against certain ideas (and the carriers of these ideas) over others (hay, 2001). strategic selectivities need to be differentiated from broader social structures, such as the prevailing form of the capitalist system, the accumulation regime, or the related policy paradigm (dale, 2005). strategic selectivities are variables that are more contingent and contextually inscribed in nature and that, among other properties, mediate strategically in the reception of new or external policy ideas. in the following lines i present those among them that, according to recent literature, seem to intercede in a more decisive way in processes of why do policy-makers adopt global education policies?   current  issues  in  comparative  education   21   education privatization reform. they are: government ideology, administrative and regulatory viability, political institutions, domestic political contention, and periods of crises. 1) government ideology. policy-makers are more inclined to adopt policy solutions that fit within the ideology of the government for which they work or that they represent. according to taylor et al. (2000), political ideology is one of the main reasons why nations do not deliver equally in the gep field. these authors show that, for instance, governmental ideologies represent a key filter when it comes to adopting oecd recommendations on educational policy. in the case of the privatization agenda, this would mean that market-liberal, or liberaldemocratic governments would be a priori more inclined to adopt pro-privatization measures such as promoting school choice, contracting-out, etc., than social-democratic ones. however, in some cases, this premise needs to be more nuanced since, as i develop below, the left vs. right cleavage is losing weight as an explanans of privatization reforms. despite the modern education privatization agenda, with its emphasis on competitive financing, partnerships with the private sector and choice, being initiated by the so-called ‘new right’ in the 1980s, many social democratic governments are advancing privatization measures alike today. understanding the evolution of social-democratic thinking is key to explaining this apparent ideological dissolution. in recent years, many social-democratic governments, especially in europe, have moved closer to pro-market ideas because they genuinely believe that, by adopting them, they can contribute to improve public education, public health, or the state pension system (wiborg, 2012). social-democratic parties are concerned with the legitimacy crisis of the welfare state and the increasing social dissatisfaction with the bureaucratization of public services – in fact, some of their more prominent international leaders even reproduce publicly the generalized belief that “the pubic sector is bad at management” (see declarations of gordon brown in ball, 2007, p. 4). for them, market reforms are seen as an opportunity to transform, but also to protect the universal welfare state in the face of its public legitimacy crisis. by doing so, social-democrats expect to keep on using the welfare state as their most valuable political and institutional weapon in electoral disputes (klitgaard, 2007). 2) administrative and regulatory viability. peter hall (1993) conceived ‘administrative viability’ as a key aspect in his analysis of the reception of keynesianism in different country settings. this variable implies that new policy ideas are most likely to be taken up by policymakers if they perceive these ideas as technically workable and fitting within their budgetary, administrative and time-horizon constraints and capacities (kingdon, 2002). beyond technical capacities, regulatory obstacles, of both a legislative and a normative nature, are also in the calculus of policy-makers when considering borrowing external models. precisely for this reason, according to maroy (2012), belgium and france behave very differently when it comes to incorporating the quasi-market model into their education systems, despite both countries receiving similar pressures to engage in such a transnational model. in belgium, quasi-markets are advancing much faster due to the fact that freedom of choice is inscribed in the country's constitution and is strongly valued by families. in france, in contrast, there are numerous rules that restrict freedom of choice, and many families value the republican school as a cultural melting pot, even above their right to choose a school. on occasion, policy-makers will be more receptive to external policies if they are consistent with previous (positive) experiences in their countries. in india, for instance, the ppps idea – which is being promoted by a very active transnational advocacy coalition – has smoothly penetrated antoni  verger   22                current  issues  in  comparative  education   into the national education debate as the country has twenty years of experience with partnerships in non-education sectors such as infrastructure, water and solid waste management. thus, for indian educational policy-makers, if ppps have been technically viable in other sectors, they would have a great potential to work in education (verger & vanderkaaij, 2012). 3) political institutions. the rules of the game and the prevailing political institutions can work in very different – and contradictory ways when it comes to advancing or resisting the adoption of geps. in some countries, like denmark or the netherlands, the political party realm is so fragmented that governments usually need to be formed by multiple party coalitions. these coalitions can be so ideologically diverse that it may be difficult for them to agree on drastic measures, as education privatization can be. thus, these political systems are more conducive to institutional stability than those where governmental politics are led by a two-party system (kjaer & pedersen, 2001). similarly, some governments in some countries are more effective at advancing ambitious education reforms than others as a consequence of the institutional rules for decision-making and, specifically, the role and presence of veto points in political processes. for instance, from an ideological perspective, the u.s. would seem more inclined to adopt a national voucher system than a welfare-equalitarian country like sweden. however, the chain of decisions required in american politics has such a length and complexity that, in the u.s., voucher proposals have been several times interrupted at the federal level in the last decades. in contrast, sweden’s political system, in which the executive and legislative branches of government are mutually dependent and that does not offer many veto opportunities to interest groups, has been able to advance an ambitious voucher reform in a short time (klitgaard, 2008). for their part, countries that have witnessed a high level of education decentralization are more conducive to privatization trends. quite often, local governments, especially in developing countries, lack the capacity to deliver education in an effective way, which leads to middle class families exiting the public sector and enrolling their children in private schools. furthermore, as shown by theresa adriao et al. (2009) in the case of brazil, local governments tend to have insufficient technical capacities to manage education systems in all their complexity, and many of them end up buying ‘reform packages’ and education consulting services from private consultancy firms. they, thus, become more vulnerable to, for instance, the marketing strategies of so-called “school improvement corporations”, such as america’s choice, which promise to their potential clients “we have the results you are looking for: improved student achievement, higher test scores, increased graduation rates, fewer discipline problems, and more effective leadership and teaching” (ball, 2012, p. 96). 4) contentious politics and legitimation. governments may engage in gep processes as a way to attract political capital and neutralize internal opposition to education reform. this is the case of countries that adopt international institutions’ recommendations as a way to gain leverage in education reform debates at the domestic level, and to advance certain changes that would otherwise be contested by oppositional groups (martens et al., 2009). on occasion, governments strategically focus on the adoption of those specific external recommendations that are closest to their particular preferences; to them, the supposed neutrality of global policies can contribute to legitimate their own political agenda (steiner-khamsi, 2012b) [1]. it is also quite common that governments recur to external actors as a tiebreaker in moments of great uncertainty or polarization in education debates at the country level. according to steinerkhamsi (2012b), when education reform processes get trapped in highly politicized public why do policy-makers adopt global education policies?   current  issues  in  comparative  education   23   debates, domestic actors may invoke an external source of authority to unblock the situation. this external source (whether it is an international organization, and ingo, or a consultancy firm) may achieve this objective by working as a coalition-builder and/or as the provider of a third-best solution. in bosnia-herzegovina, for instance, the government adopted a school-based management (sbm) reform by invoking international standards, although the main driver of the reform was, in fact, internal legitimation. according to komatsu (2013), the sbm reform allowed the bosniaherzegovina government to present itself as a reformer in tune with european standards, thereby responding to the citizens’ aspirations for european integration, at the same time that it portrayed itself in front of the public as a government that, through sbm ideas, aims to depoliticize education in a post-conflict situation. nevertheless, it was also the case that the government ended up implementing sbm only very superficially and without losing its direct control over schools (komatsu, 2013). it should be noticed that not only governments engage in global policy talk to legitimate their particular interests. domestic private interests can also be very effective when it comes to the mobilization of external ideas to generate education reform pressure. for instance, a country like thailand with strong societal support for public education ended up importing a voucher system in early-childhood education as a consequence of the collective action of private kindergarten owners. kindergarten owners in this country invested a significant amount of resources in sponsoring the vouchers idea as a business survival strategy. nonetheless, they convinced local political elites of the convenience of adopting this education-financing model by framing it as an “internationally fashionable policy” with potential positive equity implications (ho, 2006, p. 67). of course, the pressure of non-state actors can go in the opposite direction and lobby against new international privatization trends. in argentina, although for reasons of a very different nature, both the teachers unions and the main association of private universities campaigned against the liberalization of education in the context of the world trade organization's services negotiations. as a consequence of this, the minister of education vetoed the possibility of argentina opening their education sector to international commercial providers in the framework of these trade negotiations (verger, 2009). 5) crisis. crises are moments of policy variation in many domains. it has been acknowledged that there are more possibilities for new ideas to act as roadmaps in periods of crisis and uncertainty (richardson, 2005). policy-makers perceive importing new policies from elsewhere as more necessary when the problems in the education system are critical, or perceived as critical. warming signs in this realm include a high level of internal dissatisfaction with the education system on the part of families, teachers, etc.; the collapse or inadequacy of educational provision; negative results in international evaluations such as pisa; and so on (phillips & ochs, 2003). international and domestic policy entrepreneurs tend to use crises – or critical situations more broadly speaking as political opportunities for education policy change. several scholars have recently paid attention to how the confusion generated by ‘natural disasters’ in both haiti and new orleans have leveled the terrain for neoliberal education reformers to advance privatization and school choice reforms (atasay & delavan, 2012; buras, 2013). to give another example, in developing contexts, the fact that many countries are still far from reaching the ‘education for all’ (efa) goals due to the insufficient resources available is used by antoni  verger   24                current  issues  in  comparative  education   privatization advocates to introduce a sort of urgency reform pressure to convince governments and donors that they need to bring the private sector into education delivery, and see it as a key ally to achieve efa (srivastava, 2010). from the point of view of policy adoption, it may look like “context” restricts the range of possible options available to policy-makers operating at a range of scales (regional, national and local) over a particular time horizon (hay, 2001). however, what many of the contextual dimensions identified here have in common is that they reveal policy-makers to be active producers of meaning and key active agents in the gep sequence. to some extent, their policy choices are related to the complementary (symbolic, political and material) gains and clout that certain global policies come with, and to the way these policies fit within their technical capacities, policy preferences and political interests. to conclude: taking ideas (more) seriously the conceptual and theoretical framework sketched in this article invites us to look at the constitutive and causal role of ideas in processes of education policy change and policy adoption in a more systematic way. it provides us with the necessary elements to explore what types of ideas, in what way and under what circumstances, can contribute to initiate processes of education policy reform in a global governance scenario. among other potentialities, paying closer attention to the multiple roles of ideas in gep processes and, specifically, to their application in dynamics of policy adoption can contribute to unraveling the macro vs. the micro, convergence vs. divergence, local vs. global and related dichotomies that so often stretch the globalization debate in comparative education (cf. chisholm, 2012; robertson, 2012). i have also argued that focusing on ideas does not necessarily mean embracing an ‘idealist’ ontology or a naïf version of constructivism, which would understand that specific types of ideas – such as arguments and deliberation can be isolated as causal factors in processes of policy and institutional change. in this respect, i have argued that ideas are not only agencysensitive or micro-level factors in essence; they also need to be understood as constitutive of broader structures and institutions (in the form of, for instance, policy paradigms) with causal powers over actors’ preferences and decisions. in other words, ideas can operate as both structure and agency, action and condition. furthermore, i have suggested using ideas as an entry point to the analysis of reality, but not as something that is commensurable with reality. ideas, rather, need to be conceived as part of ‘causal configurations’ (cf. pawson & tilley, 1997) that interact in an analytically distinguishable – although ontologically embedded way with strategic actions, social events and contextual selectivities in bringing about policy change. i have illustrated the application of this framework by looking at the global spread of education privatization policies. i have shown that, globally speaking, the currently prevailing policy and development paradigm is conducive to the adoption of privatization measures of a different nature. this trend is reinforced by the rhetoric and framing strategies that a range of influential private education entrepreneurs and advocates display to make their policy options more acceptable to a broader audience. furthermore, i have given examples of the contextually inscribed selectivities that contribute to select and retain, but also to reject, different elements of the transnational privatization agenda in particular places. nevertheless, it is important to note that the global privatization agenda is not only about promoting the adoption of specific policies and practices; it is broader in scope and, in fact, politically more ambitious than that. its main aim is to promote a drastic and paradigmatic why do policy-makers adopt global education policies?   current  issues  in  comparative  education   25   change both in the goals of education systems (putting global competitiveness, and economic efficiency at the center of state priorities in education) and in the expected role of the state in education (from a provider state to an evaluative state). inevitably, once such a paradigmatic change becomes more broadly institutionalized, more policy-makers worldwide will be more receptive to the adoption of particular privatization measures, especially to those that fit better within the new goals and globally accepted forms of education provision. despite the theoretical and epistemological focus of the framework presented in this article, its application has important methodological implications. taking ideas more seriously implies having to pay more attention to the carriers of these ideas, and tracking the policy networks they constitute (cf. ball, 2012; vavrus & bartlett, 2009). it also implies having a better understanding of how policy entrepreneurs introduce new policy ideas in global education agendas, and frame and disseminate them across different fields, organizations, and regions (cf. grek et al., 2009; verger, 2012). it also requires us to have in-depth knowledge of the particular contexts in which these ideas are being adopted, as a way to capture how multiple contextual contingencies operate in a strategically selective way by favoring certain actors, ideas, and discourses over others (cf. hay, 2002). finally, methodologically speaking, it is worth mentioning that comparative education is potentially well-suited to analyzing the impact of global education policy ideas, as comparative analysis is one of the most appropriate strategies for understanding why, to what degree, and under which particular circumstances the same transnational idea is more influential in some particular settings than in others. acknowledgements i am very grateful to brent edwards, mar griera, and camilla addey for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this paper, and to the organizers of the international symposium rethinking culture, context, and comparison in education and development (teachers college, april 4-5, 2013) for their positive feedback and for encouraging me to put these ideas on paper. notes [1] see how this premise applies in the way several european governments have approached the bologna process in huisman et al. 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(2013). neo-liberalism and universal state education: the cases of denmark, norway and sweden 1980-2011. comparative education. 49(4), 407-423. 5_law current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 21, issue 1 © 2019, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 21(1), 69-92. evaluating students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of online intercultural learning experience via a spoc lisa law hong kong baptist university muhammad hafiz hong kong baptist university theresa kwong hong kong baptist university eva wong hong kong baptist university introduction “internationalization” has become a priority for many higher education institutions across the globe to raise the intercultural competence of their graduates. the major aim is for university graduates to become global citizens possessing essential attributes like a global mindset, intercultural competence, social responsibility and the ability to work in multicultural teams (soria & troisi, 2013). intercultural competence refers to intercultural awareness, intercultural sensitivity and intercultural behaviour (chen & starosta, 1996; root & ngampornchai, 2012). it is broadly defined as having the knowledge about several dimensions of global and international cultures; appreciation of cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity; understanding of the complexity of issues in a global context; and comfort in working with people from other cultures (soria & troisi, 2013). despite the good intention by universities in developing students’ intercultural sensitivity, awareness and maturity through overseas exchange programs (braskamp et al., 2009) with their overseas partners, not all students can have the opportunity to partake in such programs due to factors like costs, possible delay in graduation, concerns to being in an unfamiliar environment, possible discriminations, etc. (dessoff, 2006; shaftel et al., 2007). notwithstanding, with advances in telecommunication technologies, many institutions are deploying various online learning platforms for curriculum designers to create opportunities for international contact and intercultural exchange for their students with less physical and time constraints. thus, students’ learning contents can be enriched with the integration of intercultural dimensions which contribute to actualizing the concept of internationalizing the curriculum (leask, 2013). an increasing demand to develop small private online courses (spocs) and the emergence of new technologies which allow students to interact with their invited overseas counterparts without leaving their respective hometowns, have given to the concept of ‘internationalization at home’ (iah) (landorf, doscher, & hardrick, 2018). iah allows curriculum designers to incorporate the international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculums for students to experience within domestic learning environments (beelen & jones, 2015). law, hafiz, kwong, & wong current issues in comparative education 70 in order to provide students with the opportunity to learn with their overseas counterparts without leaving their homes, collaborative online learning could be a way forward. two asian partner universities located in hong kong and singapore, with the same institutional strategic goal of “internationalization” had worked together to enrich a diverse group of (n=93) research postgraduate students (referred as ‘teaching assistants’ [tas] in this paper) by organizing a joint venture on collaborative online learning during the first semester of the 2018-2019 academic year. participating tas in this study had different levels of prior online learning experience. a 3-week online course was developed by a team from the teaching and learning office of a leading liberal arts university in hong kong (u1), using a proprietary e-learning platform. out of the 93 tas, 11 tas from a leading technological university in singapore (u2) enrolled in this online course. the purpose of the 3-week online course was to provide tas with the key teaching and learning concepts and related pedagogies for teaching undergraduates at university. these concepts were similar to the curriculum contents of the ta training courses offered by u1 and u2 respectively. the online learning platform provided a variety of learning features such as the use of videos, quizzes, graded tests, articles and online asynchronous discussion forums for participants from different parts of the world to interact with each other. the design of the online learning contents, participants’ cultural context, and previous experience in e-learning could influence student perceptions on online learning and likewise affect interaction with overseas counterparts. it was therefore important to study students’ perceptions of their online learning experience to identify factors that might influence online collaborative learning. the design of the online course contents and activities had also taken into the consideration of providing students with the constructive learning environment to support and motivate their learning. it was suggested by wilson (1996, p.5) that a constructive learning environment was a place where students may work together and support each other with a given variety of tools and information resources to achieve the learning goals by undertaking different teaching and learning activities. it has also noted that constructive learning environments should provide a supportive and motivating environment for students to solve problems, interact with others, and assess their learning (brandon, 2004). the aim of the study was to evaluate students’ perceptions on their online intercultural learning experience under a 3-phase strategic framework for implementation. we would like to address how do the intercultural online learning activities facilitate internationalization at home? using a mixed method approach, both quantitative data in the form of online feedback survey, and qualitative data in the form of focus group discussion and an open-ended question set in the online feedback survey, were analyzed. a mixed method is adapted since it allows the identification of trends and new themes related to the area of interest (creswell & clark, 2011). data collected and analyzed from this study could be used for future research to include universities from other parts of the world. evaluating students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of online intercultural learning experience via a spoc current issues in comparative education 71 literature review internationalization in higher education “internationalization” has become an important topic in the higher education nowadays. in order to nurture students’ intercultural competence to work with others from different cultural backgrounds, there is a growing demand for universities to produce graduates who can provide solutions for problems in a globalized society (hunter et al., 2006). universities, recognizing this need, have begun adopting intercultural skills as elements of desired graduate attributes, as well as internationalizing their curriculums (jones & killick, 2013; leask, 2013). intercultural competence is broadly defined as: knowledge about several dimensions of global and international cultures; appreciation of cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity; understanding of the complexities of issues in a global context; and comfort in working with people from other cultures (soria & troisi, 2013). it has been suggested that the possession of culturally specific knowledge enables one to be competent and effective in a globalized society (lovvorn & chen, 2011). to aid students in the development of intercultural competence and create a multicultural environment, various programs and changes have been introduced, in formal way such as internationalizing the curriculum (leask, 2013) and informal ways in the form of cocurricular activities such as overseas exchange programs (root & ngampornchai, 2012). research has shown that studying abroad facilitated the development of intercultural sensitivity, awareness and maturity (braskamp et al., 2009). however, factors like cost, possible delay in graduation, concerns to being in an unfamiliar environment and possible discriminations were some of the barriers identified to studying abroad or taking part in an exchange program (dessoff, 2006; shaftel et al., 2007). these studies although mostly carried out in western communities, they highlighted the need to identify new ways of facilitating internationalization in universities. internationalization at home (iah) with the adoption of the ‘internationalization at home’ (iah) approach, students did not need to travel overseas to develop their intercultural competence. iah is defined as a focused incorporation of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum for all students within domestic learning environments (beelen & jones, 2015). students were able to experience interacting with international students without having to leave their home countries and could be achieved in either formal or informal learning environment. research has shown that interaction between local and international students within informal programs could improve their perceived intercultural competence (jon, 2013). to examine the applicability of iah at the university level, this study highlighted the significance of iah in promoting intercultural competence. there were numerous benefits of iah. these include creating ample opportunities for students to interact with one another. communicating or building friendship with international course-mates positively influenced students’ perceived international or intercultural competence (soria & troisi, 2013). soria and troisi (2013) also posited that the experience and exposure gained by participating in cultural events and interacting with international students increased their cultural awareness which in turn enhanced students’ perceived competence. these studies highlighted the potential of using iah to develop students’ intercultural competence locally. law, hafiz, kwong, & wong current issues in comparative education 72 technology and iah communication seems to be a crucial factor towards in developing intercultural competence. as discussed earlier, students benefit from the interaction with international students. with the advancement of technology, communication may take place offline/online in a virtual platform. this gives rise to the possibility of adapting online learning platform such as spocs to promote the intercultural learning experience. obonyo and wu (2008) introduced a web-based forum to postgraduate students as a platform that allowed them to discuss research topic with their counterparts from overseas institutions and found that at the end of the course, there was an increase in the number of local students that were interested to engage in projects involving crosscultural elements. the study also found that the web-based platform was useful in allowing students to discuss, exchange ideas and collaborate with overseas counterparts (obonyo & wu, 2008). regarding the development of social skills, larsen et al., (2011) examined whether an online course developed for ‘community work’ could facilitate a group of 50 students with various nationalities, studying either bachelor or postgraduate programs of ‘social work’, to achieve new skills as future social workers. data collected from the “mixed methods approach” found that participants acquired relevant social skills as a result of their online learning and discussion with students from other nationalities. these findings seem to suggest that there is potential to use online discussion platforms to facilitate iah. harnessing the potential and effectiveness of technology to promote iah, the adoption of spoc indirectly promotes internationalization with invited overseas partners. among the available online learning features as described above, the asynchronous discussion is considered to be the most effective online learning feature to motivate/engage students’ online interaction with others (bernard and lundgren-carol, 2001) as they have more time to reflect for thoughtful online discussion (de wever et al., 2007). background of the study with the intention of providing the best student experience and in line with one of their institutional strategic foci of “internationalization”, u1 has taken an initiative to develop spocs since spring 2017. it is anticipated that online learning via spoc platform offers opportunities for students to develop their self-directed and self-regulatory learning abilities, digital literacies and life-long learning skills. online learning can also provide students with the platform to cultivate a better world view and intercultural awareness through interacting with their peers from diverse cultural backgrounds. spoc can be used to support blended learning and flipped-classroom learning. apart from online learning features as described above, the adoption of the online e-learning development platform has also provided a place on building a social or community-supported learning environment which is conducive to engaging students in online learning and knowledge building. more importantly, it offers opportunities for fostering cross-institutional collaboration in terms of sharing course contents and/or developing joint spocs. this kind of cross-institutional collaboration can help broaden students’ intercultural learning experiences as well as benchmark the teaching curricula with those offered by invited international partners. a 3-phase strategic framework of implementing spoc with the different levels of involving overseas counterparts was developed and explained below. evaluating students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of online intercultural learning experience via a spoc current issues in comparative education 73 phases of implementing spoc with the different levels of interacting with overseas counterparts to cultivate intercultural learning experience as a pioneer of developing the first ever spoc in u1, a course team of 5 teaching staff from a teaching & learning unit decided to take phases of implementing a 3-week spoc with the involvement of their invited overseas counterparts. the team first developed a 3phase framework to guide themselves in implementing the pre-designed spoc to facilitate the cultivation of students’ intercultural learning over 3 consecutive semesters. this study focused on the data collected from the semester 1 of ay2018/19 (i.e. third time running of the spoc in phase iii) where overseas partners (teachers and students) were invited for the evaluation purpose. the approaches/actions taken by the course team in each phase of the framework to accomplish the goal of collaborative online learning with overseas counterparts (teachers and students) were explained below. phase i: development of a 3-week spoc with invited overseas guest speakers but no overseas students’ involvement. the course team re-designed an original 7-week face-toface traditional classroom-based teaching course into a 6-week spoc-flipped classroom team teaching for tas on how to teach university students. the aim of the course was to prepare tas with diverse backgrounds to take up assignment(s) in teaching undergraduate students at university. it provided an introduction to the basic theoretical knowledge and practical skills required to begin teaching at university. the 3-week spoc incorporated key concepts of the curriculum like introduction and effective teaching, outcomes-based teaching and learning and assessment. different learning features provided by the online e-learning development platform were incorporated into the spoc to engage students with different online activities. the layout of the spoc designed and adopted in semester 1 of ay2017/18 for the first run was shown in figure 1. figure 1 shows the learning topics designed for the 3-week online course with a variety of learning activities like videos, articles, quizzes, graded tests, polls and discussions to engage student participation online. the online learning activity of ‘discussion’ used as a means to encourage students to interact with their overseas counterparts by sharing their views on the teaching topics. figure 1. 3-week spoc designed for 1st run in semester 1 of ay2017 law, hafiz, kwong, & wong current issues in comparative education 74 all participating tas were instructed to spend about 2 hours per week of the 3-week online self-paced learning and to complete all the online activities before each class. a flow-chart designed by the course team to guide students’ online self-paced learning is shown in figure 2. tas’ online participation was assessed against a given set of participation (online) rubric with a weighting of 15% as an incentive. tas were encouraged to exchange their views through the online discussions. spoc-flipped classroom approach was adopted by the teaching team and different in-class activities were designed to reinforce tas’ online learning concepts with teachers’ timely feedback. figure 2. flow-chart of guiding students’ online self-paced learning phase ii: modification of learning contents of the 3-week spoc with invited potential overseas partner from u2 as overseas guest speaker but no overseas students’ involvement. as part of the learning process for the course team of u1 after the first run of spoc, the team modified the learning contents of spoc by (i) increasing the number of discussion topics for better enhancing online interaction, (ii) explaining clearly the expectations of what was required regarding students’ active online participation in this spoc-flipped classroom approach at the beginning of the course and (iii) increasing teachers’ online participation to facilitate online discussion forums in the form of a community as follow-up actions after feedbacks received from the cfq of phase i. in parallel to the follow-up actions described above, preparation for inviting potential overseas partner(s) together with their students to join the 3-week spoc scheduled in phase iii was also carried out in phase ii. the course team of u1 has taken an initiative to evaluating students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of online intercultural learning experience via a spoc current issues in comparative education 75 contact an equivalent functional unit from u2 with comparable expertise and ambit to study the possible collaboration opportunity. it was noted that both u1 & u2 have the common strategic focus of “internationalization” and similar teaching curriculum for their ta training courses, the two units then agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding (mou) at the beginning of semester 1 of ay2017/18 for joint collaboration of teaching and learning activities, including a 5-day staff exchange program offered by each institution and other student learning activities to ensure both parties could receive the mutual benefits from the collaboration. the purpose of the 5-day exchange programs offered by the respective universities was for the nominated representatives to study the respective roles and responsibilities of the two units and the teaching practices for their ta courses, as well as to see the best way(s) of planning the partnership of teaching and learning related activities. each nominated representative was invited to deliver a guest lecture to the respective tas during his/her visits. the representative from u2 delivered a topic of “team-based learning” to tas of u1 in semester 2 of ay2017/18 to have a feel on their learning atmosphere of the spoc-flipped classroom approach and it was wellreceived by tas of u1. the respective person-in-charge of the teaching and learning units of u1 and u2 agreed to invite their respective participating tas to join the 3-week spoc scheduled in semester 1 of ay2018/19 since the course contents of spoc were common to their ta training courses. this online joint venture provided participating tas from u1 and u2 the opportunity to interact with each other and keep each other company in an online intercultural learning community. phase iii: invited overseas counterparts to participate the 3-week spoc for intercultural learning experience. in semester 1 of ay2018/19, the 3-week spoc was a compulsory course for all enrolled tas from u1 whereas it was an elective course for u2 tas. there were 82 tas enrolled with the spoc from u1 and 11 tas enrolled from u2 with a total number of 93 (n=93) involved in this study. with the learning contents of the spoc being improved to increase more online discussion opportunities for participants (tas and teachers from u1 & u2), more online dialogues and interactions had been observed. the gradual involvement of overseas counterparts over the 3 consecutive semesters allowed the course team to develop their confidence in adopting relevant online teaching pedagogies to facilitate students’ intercultural learning experiences. a 3-phase strategic framework of implementing spoc with the gradual involvement of overseas counterparts to cultivate online intercultural learning experiences are summarized and shown in figure 3. law, hafiz, kwong, & wong current issues in comparative education 76 figure 3. a 3-phase strategic framework of implementing spoc with involvement of overseas counterparts to cultivate intercultural learning experience. methods a total number of 93 (n=93) participating tas with different cultural backgrounds from u1 & u2 were enrolled for this 3-week spoc held in semester 1 of ay2018/19. data collection to better understand the perceptions of participating tas on whether the design of an online course could facilitate their intercultural learning or not, both quantitative and qualitative methods, namely online survey and focus group interview were adopted respectively in this study for data collection. quantitative data was collected through the completion of an online feedback surveys. the online survey (see appendix i) sent to all 93 participants immediately after the completion of the 3rd week of spoc while their memories of learning with the online course were still fresh. the online survey consisted of eight quantitative questions with an open question to further solicit respondents’ views that might not be covered in the eight questions. students were required to indicate the degree of agreement or disagreement on a 5-point likert scale to each of the statement (1strongly disagree, 2 disagree, 3 neutral, 4 – agree, 5 – strongly agree. the mean score for each statement was calculated by computing the average scores of students’ responses. the survey was anonymous. the valid response rate for the quantitative survey was 49.5% (46 out of 93) and only 35% (33 out of 93) respondents responded to the open-ended question. the data was tabulated and examined using microsoft excel, 2010. evaluating students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of online intercultural learning experience via a spoc current issues in comparative education 77 qualitative data was collected through focus group interview. a follow-up structured focus group interview with eight questions (see appendix ii) was conducted after the completion of the 6-week training course towards the end of the semester 1 of ay2018/19. the purpose of the focus interview was to gather more in-depth perception of participating tas as part of the qualitative analysis. tas were invited to participate in the focus group. five participating tas with different cultural backgrounds were invited on the voluntary basis for an hour face-to-face focus group interview held in the campus of u1. at the beginning of the focus group interview, participants were asked if they had any past experience of online learning and if they had the opportunity to learn with overseas students from a foreign institution. two out of 5 participating tas had past online learning experience. the focus group interview was audio recorded and the scripts were transcribed. responses were tallied and coded. the codes were examined and redundant codes were regrouped into the positive and negative themes. this process was repeated until all the categories were exclusive and exhaustive and no new ones were uncovered. questions used in both the online survey and focus group interview were designed to evaluate respondents’ perceptions of their online learning experience and to find out ways for improvement on this kind of online course design for nurturing better intercultural learning experience in the future. the results analyzed from the quantitative method (i.e. online survey) could be further validated by the findings obtained from the qualitative method (i.e. focus group interview) as a kind of backup evidence. findings from the online survey could be used as prompts to interviewees during the focus group interview to further unveil any online learning related issues that the designated questions might not cover. with the advantage of using the learning analytic tools provided by the online e-learning development platform, the average number of comments posted per student per spoc via the online discussion forum over the three consecutive semesters in this study was presented in figure 11. figures shown in figure 11 acted as an indicator of answering the research question of this study, that is participating tas enjoyed their online learning via the discussions with their overseas counterparts (intercultural learning) with the involvement of teachers giving feedback on the online discussion. it was really interesting to observe that with the increasing number of online discussions over the course of three semesters, together with the involvement of both teachers and overseas students in semester 1 of ay2018/19 (i.e. phase iii of the 3-phase strategic framework shown in figure 3 with the enrollment of both local and overseas tas), participating tas become more active in online discussions as reflected from the highest average number of comments posted per student per spoc of that semester. this kind of active participation of online discussion has facilitated participating tas’ intercultural learning and skills through the exchange of views and ideas on the subject matters. results both the quantitative and qualitative data collected from the online survey and focus group interview respectively did support participants’ intercultural competence by law, hafiz, kwong, & wong current issues in comparative education 78 interacting with their overseas counterparts through online asynchronous discussions. suggestions were also given to further improve the online course design. quantitative analysis quantitative data drawn from the online feedback survey were analyzed and summarized in table 1. more than 50% of the tas agreed with the perceived benefits and were satisfied with the use of e-learning platform as a tool to facilitate internationalization. only question 3, which was intended to measure tas’ perceived competitiveness with tas from other institution, recorded an agreement level of less than 50%. table 2 summarized the most occurrence statements raised by the respondents with positive, negative comments together with suggestions for online learning improvement. table 1. summary of online survey for questions # 1 to 8 (n=46) no. question mean score agree neutral disagree 1. i enjoy the online course which allows me to communicate with my overseas counterparts without limitations of time and space. 3.48 56% (26) 22% (10) 22% (10) 2. the asynchronous online discussions help me appreciate the subject topics better with the different cultural perspectives; i.e. increasing cross-cultural awareness. 3.50 59% (27) 19% (9) 22% (10) 3. i feel a sense of competition with my overseas counterparts especially in online activities like quizzes, or graded tests; i.e. challenging. 3.34 44% (20) 42% (19) 15% (7) 4. i become more conscious of my inputs to the online activities like discussion forums, graded tests, quizzes etc. with the presence of my overseas counterparts; i.e. a sense of selfawareness. 3.54 59% (27) 24% (11) 17% (8) 5. the interactive online exchange of thoughts/ideas has enhanced my critical thinking skills and allowed me to give reflection of my own learning experience. 3.67 63% (29) 22% (10) 15% (7) evaluating students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of online intercultural learning experience via a spoc current issues in comparative education 79 6. the active online participation of my course teachers and coursemates (both local and overseas) motivate/develop my self-directed learning of the online course. 3.76 68% (31) 17% (8) 15% (7) 7. my participation of the online learning activities has helped me in learning new knowledge of becoming a future teacher. 3.59 65% (29) 22% (10) 13% (6) 8. online learning with good design of interactive activities is sufficient to facilitate learning with my overseas counterparts, even without face-to-face meetings. 3.43 52% (24) 24% (11) 24% (11) data collected from the open-ended question (question # 9) of the online survey asking respondents (n=33) to suggest ways of facilitating participants’ interaction with their overseas counterparts on online learning. some of the positive comments received for this kind of online learning platform including, enjoyed the online course, good for discussions and asking questions. some of the negative comments received including too timely, the discussion was in one direction and could not interact with overseas counterparts. eight respondents felt that areas for improvement were firstly having a faceto-face discussion to encourage more interaction and two respondents suggested that questions related to cultural differences should be introduced as topic for discussion. these areas of improvement were also identified by the respondents of the focus group discussion and highlighted in red under the column of “suggestions for improvement” in table 2. table 2. summary of online survey question # 9 as an open-ended question i.e. based on your online learning experience, please give suggestion(s) on how to better facilitate your interaction with your overseas counterparts with the aim of improving learning for all students involved. (n=33) positive comments negative comments suggestions for improvement make me clear about the goal/ what i have learnt x2 please continue to inspire more students cancel this part x2 more instant information maybe better x2 i don’t like online learning hope to add some f2f/vc discussions x8 please introduce some questions that is crosscultural awareness x2 law, hafiz, kwong, & wong current issues in comparative education 80 good for asking questions good for discussions the vark assessment was useful the knowledge was explained in a very simple but illustrative manner enjoy the online course too timely (too much time) the discussion is in one direction the online course content is hugely overlap with u2 syllabus the lecturers' voice recording is a bit monotonous and rigid can’t interact with overseas counterparts in the platform more tutorials add more interesting materials can upload picture qualitative analysis appealing factors from the 3-week spoc. three participants with no prior online learning experience with overseas counterparts were asked to share about the activities that they found to be appealing from the 3-week spoc. all three participants shared that the platform enabled the idea sharing and perspective with each other. they were able to ‘share their experiences, learning before, opinions’, their ideas and simultaneously read about the ideas of other participants from other institution. the other two aspects that the participants identified were the ability to interact with other participants and sharing of personal experience. the students shared that they ‘can see how we interact …’ and read ‘the comment based on real experience’. figure 4 showed the frequency of the appealing factors identified. 0 1 2 3 4 sharing of ideas and perspective able to interact with students from different cultural background sharing of personal experience fr eq ue nc y key themes identified figure 4. frequency of identified appealing factors of the 3week spoc with overseas counterparts evaluating students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of online intercultural learning experience via a spoc current issues in comparative education 81 differences identified between respondents’ current and previous online learning experiences. as two participants had prior experience with online learning, the authors wanted to examine if there is any connection between the current online learning experience and their past online learning experience. the participants were asked to highlight their perceived differences between the current online learning experience and past online learning experience. respondents shared that in the past, participation were not compulsory leading to inactive participation from the students and minimal interaction with the teachers. however, in the current course, participation was compulsory, and the course teachers were also actively involved in online activities like online discussions. they perceived these two factors led to a ‘more’ active participation in the online discussion. size of class and the variety of activities that were available on the online platform were the other differences that were identified by the focus group participants. figure 5 showed the percentages of identified differences of respondents’ current spoc and previous online learning experiences. enjoyable things identified of the online learning experience with overseas counterparts. tas were asked to share the enjoyable things that they experience as a result of interacting with their overseas counterparts. all the respondents agreed that exposure to ideas from other respondents were the most enjoyable feature. one respondent commented that he or she ‘go through their comments and go through their replies because we can get more exposure from their views on these teaching methods’. they were also able to observe similarities and differences of ideas between the two groups of tas. other key themes that were identified in figure 6 including openness to share, ability to remain anonymous (in terms of nationality) and non-judgmental. 0 1 2 nature of class (compulsory or volunteer) variety of activities active participation of students instructors participation class size (small vs large) fr eq ue nc y key themes identified figure 5. differences identified between respondents’ current and previous online learning experiences law, hafiz, kwong, & wong current issues in comparative education 82 perceived benefits. the third question was intended to examine respondents’ perceived benefit(s) on the subject matter after interacting with tas from other institutions. increased cultural awareness, increased motivation to participate in the online discussion and sharing of knowledge were identified as the perceived benefits as shown in figure 7. they shared that they ‘are getting this kind of knowledge from the different country, different culture, into this platform,’. they were also more motivated to share because ‘the discussion online i’ll have much more time to organize my language and i can think for much longer time’. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 exposure to ideas from other students openness to share non-judgemental nationality remain anonymous fr eq ue nc y key themes identified figure 6. most enjoyable things identified of online learning experience with overseas counterparts 0 1 2 3 sharing of knowledge increased cultural awareness (relating to teaching and learning) increased motivation to participate in online discussion fr eq ue nc y key themes identified figure 7. identified benefits of participating online learning activities with overseas counterparts evaluating students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of online intercultural learning experience via a spoc current issues in comparative education 83 ways of improvement for the 3-week spoc. when it comes to improving the current 3week spoc, a number of recommendations were suggested. the recommendations include the introduction of face-to-face interaction, select topic(s) and ask relevant cultural related questions to elicit cultural differences on the subject matter, use group work to foster more collaborative learning, use other platform that allows students to interact with each other more and to use or share learning materials of partnering institutions. figure 8 showed the percentage of the suggested recommendations. challenges to intercultural learning via an online learning platform. there were however challenges to online intercultural learning. the tas cited unable to see non-verbal communication, lengthy text or comments, lack of opportunity to interact with other students and the one-dimensional nature of the platform as the challenges towards achieving cross-cultural learning in a e-learning platform. the platform was viewed as one dimensional because ‘we say comment, we give our own comments, but in most cases, we don’t reply other people’s comments’ and ‘we only receive information is based on text’. the distribution of these challenges can be found in figure 9. 0 1 2 3 include elements of face to face interaction topic selection type of questions use other platform to encourage more interaction between students group work use / share materials from other institutions fr eq ue nc y key themes identified figure 8. suggested improvements for the current 3-week spoc learning law, hafiz, kwong, & wong current issues in comparative education 84 suggestions / tips for an effective online learning with overseas counterparts. respondents were asked to share any advice or tips that might be useful for future students who might embark on a similar online course. more than half of them suggested that future students should be encouraged to participate actively online provide comments to fellow students’ posts. in doing so, it could increase their interaction with the online counterparts. other suggestions for an effective online learning could be providing opportunity for online collaborative work, staying motivated throughout the online course or otherwise users would be easily demotivated if being inactive. one respondent requested for an increase in the credit unit. refer to figure 10 for the distribution. 0 1 2 3 unable to see nonverbal communication such as facial expression, interaction limit to text text / comments too long or wordy, no time to read lack of opportunity to interact with other students one dimensional nature of the platform fr eq ue nc y key themes identified figure 9. challenges in achieving intercultural learning via an online learning platform evaluating students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of online intercultural learning experience via a spoc current issues in comparative education 85 rate of participating online discussions over 3 consecutive semesters. data gathered from the learning analytic tools of the online e-learning development platform indicated that there was an increase of 39.3% in the average number of comments posted per enrolled student between the first run and the third run of the 3-week spoc over the 3 consecutive semesters as shown in figure 11. figure 11 showed that the highest average score of 10.35 over the 3 consecutive semesters was observed in semester 1 of ay2018/19 where the online learning experience involved the participation of overseas counterparts (i.e. tas & teachers) from u2 together with active participation of tas and teachers from u1 for the first time. figure 11. average number of comments posted per enrolled student per spoc over 3 consecutive semesters discussion/conclusions the 3-phase strategic framework for “implementing spoc with involvement of overseas counterparts to cultivate intercultural learning experience” as illustrated in figure 3 was purposely designed by the course team of u1 to guide themselves in developing a spoc with involvement of overseas counterparts in different phases to cultivate an online intercultural learning experience for 93 participating tas. 46 out of 93 participating tas responded to the online survey. the indicator of using “average number of comments posted per enrolled student per spoc” as shown in figure 11 over the three consecutive semesters in this study was to measure participating tas’ intercultural competence through their active participation in the online discussion. the overall quantitative results collected from the online survey indicated that (i) overall 50% of participating tas agreed the perceived benefits and satisfied with the use of online learning activities to facilitate internationalization without leaving home; (ii) over 60% of participating tas agreed that the online learning activities facilitated their sharing of ideas and perspective with overseas counterparts as discussed in both the ‘method’ & ‘results’ sections. this kind of active participation of online discussion has facilitated participating tas’ intercultural law, hafiz, kwong, & wong current issues in comparative education 86 learning and skills through the exchange of views and ideas on the subject matters; (iii) less than 50% (44%) of participating tas, however, perceived competitiveness with tas from other institutions on the online learning activities. these findings also echoed with the most frequently cited suggestion by respondents from the open-ended question #9 in the online survey as summarized in table 2. respondents had made positive, negative comments about their online learning experience together with their suggestions on how to further improve the design of the online course in order to facilitate intercultural learning. the overall qualitative results collected from the focus group interview indicated that the appealing factors of the 3-week spoc with overseas counterparts were (i) able to share ideas and perspectives (obonyo and wu (2008); (ii) able to interact with students from different cultural backgrounds; (iii) to share personal experience (larsen et al., 2011), as illustrated in figure 4; (iv) the compulsory online participation with teachers’ active involvement in discussion forums facilitated active online participation as illustrated in figure 5; (v) the most enjoyable elements of participating in online learning were the exposure to ideas from other overseas respondents, openness to share and remain anonymous (in terms of nationality), as well as exchanging non-judgmental comments, as presented in figure 6; (vi) the perceived benefits of this type of online learning were increased respondents’ cultural awareness by interacting with their overseas counterparts in the online discussion forums to share and exchange their subject related knowledge as illustrated in figure 7. this study also revealed that among the many online learning features provided by the proprietary e-learning platform like discussion forum, quiz, graded test, video, article etc., asynchronous discussion was considered the most effective feature to engage students in online interaction (bernard and lundgren-carol, 2001) as students have more time to reflect for thoughtful discussion (de wever et al., 2007). with the involvement of overseas partners (both teachers and students) in semester 1 of ay2018/19 on the online learning activities, participating tas seemed to have higher engagement as reflected from the highest average number of comments posted per enrolled student of 10.35 (see figure 11) among the three consecutive semesters observed in this study. the higher participation could be due to the content of the discussions. tas highlighted that they were able to share and learn from each other’s personal sharing. they also wanted to know if there were any differences observed between them and their overseas counterpart as suggested in the results. despite the many advantages and benefits discovered from this study for cultivating students’ online intercultural learning experience with their overseas counterparts, respondents did identify some challenges of achieving intercultural learning via an online learning platform. these include the inability to see counterparts’ non-verbal communication like facial expression, no time to read wordy messages, no reply(ies) to other’s comments and one-dimensional nature of the online platform. respondents had therefore expressed different ways of improving the online intercultural learning, which were similar to both the quantitative and qualitative findings of creswell & clark (2011), as outlined below: evaluating students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of online intercultural learning experience via a spoc current issues in comparative education 87 • firstly, introduction of face-to-face interaction in addition to online discussion may further enhance students’ online collaborative learning; • secondly, provision of different online discussion topics for students to choose, and contextualizing discussions by drawing on diverse student backgrounds and perspectives of a topic; • thirdly, provision of collaborative group discussions on authentic contentand task-oriented topics for all students enrolled in the course; • fourthly, development of feelings of social presence in online discussion forums as students in distance learning may more likely experience isolation and alienation from the institution because of their physical separation from the institution and from other students as suggested by garrison (2001). garrison et al (2001) further pointed out that the role of teachers’ online participation in discussion forums is to unite and create a strong sense of community within the online course for contentand concept-oriented discussions. the presence of teachers in the virtual classroom was to facilitate effective student-student discussions and interactions and to attend to any special issues that may have arisen from culturally diverse students. in summary, a good spoc design with relevant online learning features in particular, asynchronous discussions could effectively cultivate students’ online intercultural learning (bernard and lundgren-carol, 2001). this study had provided evidence on how the adoption of an online learning platform together with an appropriate strategic framework and pedagogical approaches could benefit students’ intercultural learning without leaving their respective hometowns i.e. internationalization at home. views expressed by respondents could be used for future reference for designing better online courses for the inclusion of intercultural dimensions and interactions. although there was no obvious difference found in the findings of this study between u1 and u2, the data collected could be used as a pilot for future study. further studies could be carried out to include other overseas partners not only restricted to the asian regions but also other parts of the world to see if any other factors could be incorporated into the design of an online course to cultivate a better intercultural learning experience without students leaving their homes. this study has provided useful information with evidence to those universities that would like to develop their students’ intercultural competence without leaving homes through the development of online courses. acknowledgement our sincere gratitude to dr. isaac chan, mr. kendall yan and mr. andy chan for their dedicated and professional support of developing the 3-week spoc to make this study possible. glossary of terms cfq – course feedback questionnaire spoc – small private online course iah – internationalization at home mou – memorandum of understanding ta – teaching assistant law, hafiz, kwong, & wong current issues in comparative education 88 lisa law lisa’s main responsibilities at the centre include: providing training/advice to academic staff to facilitate their teaching like outcomes-based approach, e-tools application etc. in addition to her teaching role to teach research postgraduate students on the basic teaching skills. her research interests include application of e-learning, blended learning and internationalization. muhammad hafiz hafiz was a project officer at the centre. he was tasked with supporting the centre’s effort in teaching and learning. his research interest includes innovative teaching and learning, learning and motivation and psychology of learning. theresa kwong theresa’s major responsibilities at the centre include: providing expertise to academic faculty regarding pedagogical issues, teaching research postgraduate students basic teaching skills and applications of outcomes-based approach, taking charge of the evidence collection of student learning. her research interests include academic integrity, technology enhanced learning, faculty professional development, outcomes assessment. eva wong with education and student learning being central to her work, her major responsibilities include the professional development of academic staff, assisting the implementation of the outcome-based approach to teaching and learning and supporting the university’s e-learning endeavors, with the main focus on enhancing student learning via a holistic approach. evaluating students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of online intercultural learning experience via a spoc current issues in comparative education 89 references beelen, j., & jones, e. (2015). redefining internationalization at home. in a. curaj, l. matei, r. pricopie, j. salmi, & p. scott (eds.), the european higher education area: between critical reflections and future policies (pp. 59-72). cham: springer international publishing. bernard, r. m., & lundgren-cayrol, k. (2001). computer conferencing: an environment for collaborative project-based learning in distance education. research and evaluation in education, 72(2-3), 241-261. brandon, b. (2004). applying instructional systems processes to constructivist learning environments. the elearning guild, june 29, 1-7. braskamp, l. a., braskamp, d. c., & merrill, k. (2009). assessing progress in global learning and development of students with education abroad experiences. frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of study abroad, 18, 101-118. chen, g. m., & starosta, w. j. (1996). intercultural communication competence: a synthesis. annals of the international communication association, 19(1), 353-383. creswell, j. w., & clark, v. l. p. (2011). designing and conducting mixed methods research. los angeles, ca: sage publications. de wever, b., van keer, h., schellens, t., & valcke, m. (2007). applying multilevel modelling on content analysis data: methodological issues in the study of the impact of role assignment in asynchronous discussion groups. learning and instruction, 17, 436-447. dessoff, a. (2006). who's not going abroad? international educator, 15(2), 20-27. garrison, d. r., anderson, t., & archer, w. (2001). critical thinking, cognitive presence, and computer conferencing in distance education. american journal of distance education, 15(1), 7-23. hunter, b., white, g. p., & godbey, g. c. (2006). what does it mean to be globally competent? journal of studies in international education, 10(3), 267-285. jon, j. e. (2013). realizing internationalization at home in korean higher education:promoting domestic students’ interaction with international students and intercultural competence. journal of studies in international education, 17(4), 455-470. jones, e., & killick, d. (2013). graduate attributes and the internationalized curriculum: embedding a global outlook in disciplinary learning outcomes. journal of studies in international education, 17(2), 165-182. law, hafiz, kwong, & wong current issues in comparative education 90 landorf, h., doscher, s., & hardrick, j. (2018). making global learning universal: promoting inclusion ans success for all students. london: stylus publications. larsen, a. k., visser-rotgans, r., & hole, g. o. (2011). teaching and learning community work online: can e-learning promote competences for future practice? journal of technology in human services, 29(1), 13-32. leask, b. (2013). internationalizing the curriculum in the disciplines-imagining new possibilities. journal of studies in international education, 17(2), 103-118. lovvorn, a. s., & chen, j. s. (2011). developing a global mindset: the relationship between an international assignment and cultural intelligence. international journal of business and social science, 2(9), 275-283. obonyo, e., & wu, w. (2008). using web-based knowledge forums to internationalize construction education. journal of information technology in construction (itcon), 13(15), 212-223. root, e., & ngampornchai, a. (2012). “i came back as a new human being”: student descriptions of intercultural competence acquired through education abroad experiences. journal of studies in international education, 17(5), 513-532. shaftel, j., shaftel, t., & ahluwalia, r. (2007). international educational experience and intercultural competence. international journal of business & economics, 6(1), 25-34. soria, k. m., & troisi, j. (2013). internationalization at home alternatives to study abroad: implications for students’ development of global, international, and intercultural competencies. journal of studies in international education, 18(3), 261-280. wilson, b. g. (1996). constructivist learning environments: case studies in instructional design. englewood cliffs, nj: educational technology publication. evaluating students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of online intercultural learning experience via a spoc current issues in comparative education 91 appendix i law, hafiz, kwong, & wong current issues in comparative education 92 appendix ii current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 2, spring 2017 © 2017, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(2), 8-32. can higher household education expenditure improve the national college entrance exam performance? empirical evidence from jinan, china yu zhang institute of education, tsinghua university xuehan zhou institute of education, tsinghua university the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of household education expenditure on national college entrance exam (ncee) performance in china. using a comprehensive dataset with a sample size of 5840 students collected in jinan, china, this study found that the average effect of household education expenditure on ncee performance is not significant, but it may have a significant and positive effect on those with higher test scores. there is a significantly positive effect on chinese scores for students at the 0.75th quantile and on english scores for those at the 0.5th quantile. introduction among all types of educational inputs available for research, educational expenditure is one of the most important (zhou & zhang (authors, 2015)). it plays an important role in the accumulation of human capital and the economic growth of one country (kaganovich & zilcha, 1999; shi, 2006). evaluating the effects of educational expenditure on student achievement is, therefore, a crucial issue for both researchers and stakeholders in education systems. although public expenditure has been extensively researched in the context of debates on school effectiveness and government accountability (tsang 1994; tsang and ding 2005), very limited data for household education expenditure has been provided, primarily due to data constraints. a better understanding of household education expenditure is very important, for it would play an important role in family, school and policy decisions towards resource allocation in china. for one thing, it can help to improve educational quality. household education expenditures are private resources that augment public resources to education. it can be used as interventions to household education expenditure and student achievement current issues in comparative education 9 enhance education quality. furthermore, household education expenditure can also help to address the educational inequality issues. disparities in household education expenditure among social groups may exacerbate educational inequalities among social groups. it may help policymakers to design policies to mitigate educational inequality if there is a good understanding of variation in household investment to education (tsang & kidchanapanish, 1992; shi, 2006). household educational expenditure, or monetary spending, contributed by families for their children’s education, constitutes an important part of total education expenditures (li & tsang, 2003; tsang, 2002). according to national statistics in china, the scale of household educational expenditure was 8959.05 billion rmb (1298.41 billion us$) in 2013, accounting for 29.5% of total education spending (public education expenditure totaled 21405.67 billion rmb, or 3102.27 billion us$) (figure 1). figure 1. the scale of household and public education expenditure. source: yearbook of china education statistics (2013) household educational expenditure constitutes a significant proportion of household spending. in urban families, household educational expenditure accounted for 35.1% of total household expenditure, and it accounted for 30.1% of total family income in 2013.1 in addition, household educational expenditure is strongly correlated with household income and wealth; high household income often predicts high household education 1 statistic report on national education expenditure in 2013, published by the ministry of education, national statistics bureau, and the ministry of public finance. 29.50% 70.50% household educational expenditure public education expenditure zhang and zhou current issues in comparative education 10 expenditure (west, 1995; foko, tiyab & husson, 2012; zhou & zhang (authors, 2015)). with the increasing attention on improving student achievement, a growing number of parents spend more on education with the hope that it will help their children get better grades and scores relatively than their peers on exams. examining the effectiveness of household education expenditure would help families make optimal decisions towards investment on education. one of the most serious difficulties in china’s development of economy and society is the dualistic structure system of urban and rural. getting access to higher education is the best way for the students from poor or rural families flow from lower class to higher class in society (zhou, 2001; xu & yi, 2014). therefore, exam-oriented education (the fairest competition mechanism so far in china) is powerful for narrowing the urban-rural gap, and rich-poor gap. in china, senior high school is not only the first stage of noncompulsory education but also the most crucial stage connecting basic education to higher education. if household education expenditure can significantly improve student achievement as far as the national college entrance exam (ncee), and, therefore, college admission probability, it may enhance the role of the education system in stratifying social classes ensuring social equity, and maintaining social stability of chinese society. thus, it is crucial to evaluate the influence of household educational expenditure on student achievement using solid empirical evidence. among the first ones to investigate the impact of household education expenditure on student ncee performance in china, this study sheds light on household education investment and also on education policy reforms. the findings are helpful for parents to decide how much they will invest education expenditure on their children. according to the different effects across groups, policy makers can decide how much they will invest public education expenditure on students with different backgrounds, which could help to mitigate educational inequality. literature review although many prior studies have examined the determinants of household educational expenditure (e.g., tsang & kidchanapanish, 1992; tansel, 2002; glick & sahn, 2000; brown & park, 2002; lokshin & sawada, 1999; zhou & zhang (authors, 2015)), relatively few studies have attempted to evaluate the effect of household educational expenditure on student academic achievement. none of them have focused specifically on china. tansel (2002) used an ordered probit model and a well-designed dataset that covered 26256 families in turkey to find household education expenditure has a positive correlation with school enrolment at primary, middle, and high school levels. this was not a causal household education expenditure and student achievement current issues in comparative education 11 inference, however, and the study did not use test scores as an education outcome. using ordinary least square (ols) regression and data from the national education longitudinal survey (nels), israel, beaulieu & hartless (2001) found a positive effect of household education expenditure on math test scores, reading scores, and staying in school. however, the sample used only included 8th-grade students, and may not apply to students at all levels. on the contrary, liu & xie (2015) use the 2010 china family panel studies (cfps) data and ols regression, and find that family education expenses have no effect on students’ verbal ability in china. using data from more than 2000 families in five areas in china, liang (2012) found household education investment, especially the outof-school investment, has a significant positive impact on the changes in student test scores. however, this study used the 2010 fall semester test scores as the post-test scores and 2010 spring semester test scores as the pre-test scores. the tests are not standardized which cannot reflect student academic performance. the time between the two tests was short and the results might be biased. the existing results are mixed, and only two studies are in china. this study aims to identify the effects of household educational expenditure on ncee achievement using individual-level data in china. the significance of this study lies in four aspects. first, this study is among the first to evaluate the achievement effect of household education expenditure on ncee performance in china, and this study is the first to report detailed information of household education expenditure in china. second, this study employed the ncee score as a measure of student achievement, i.e. the outcome variable. high school entrance exam (hsee) as prior test scores are also included. ncee and hsee are the most representative exams in china, and it can truly reflect student academic achievement. third, this study took subject difference into consideration. fourth, this study estimated the heterogeneous effects of household education expenditure among female and male students, urban and rural students, and students with different academic achievement levels. according to theories and previous study, household education expenditure is determined by student academic achievement (tansel, 2002; israel, beaulieu & hartless, 2001), such as high school entrance exam (hsee) scores for high school students, annual family income, academic track, gender, urban-rural status, and socioeconomic status (ses) (tsang & kidchanapanish, 1992; zhou & zhang (authors, 2015)), some of which might also affect student ncee scores (zhang, 2013). if this kind of mutual determinants of ncee score and household educational spending were omitted in the education production function regression, the estimated coefficient for household educational zhang and zhou current issues in comparative education 12 spending would be biased. therefore, this study collected data on all the major factors, and they are all controlled in the regression. the above section discussed the motivation behind this research and reviewed literature on the achievement effect of household education expenditure. the remainder of the paper is organized as follows: section 2 discusses methodology, section 3 describes the data collection and descriptive statistics related to this study, section 4 reports the empirical results, and section 5 provides a brief summary and conclusions. methodology model setup the empirical model and data collection are based on education production function. an education production function is a mathematical relation showing the maximum education outputs that can be produced with the given educational resources under a given education technology (cohn & geske, 1990). according to the education production function, the formation of academic achievement as the educational output will be affected by the personal and school inputs. as a kind of educational input, household education expenditure is regarded as the key variable affecting educational output here; several other variables are controlled in the regression. the regression model used in this study can be expressed as follows: 𝑁𝐶𝐸𝐸 = α + β · ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑒ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑑 𝑒𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 + δ · 𝑋 + ε where ncee refers to a student’s comprehensive ncee score, which includes chinese, english, and mathematics scores. in shandong province, there are five subjects in ncee: all students must take chinese, english, math, and comprehensive capability exams and the tests for science track and humanity track students are different. science track students must take comprehensive science tests (physics, chemistry, and biology), and humanity track students must take comprehensive humanities tests (politics, history, and geography). household education spending is the key variable of interest in this study. monthly household education expenditure data was obtained through a multiple-choice questionnaire used in the survey (to be explained later), with spending level choices including fifteen categories.2 we converted this categorical variable into a continuous 2 i.e. below 200 rmb, 201-500 rmb, 501-800 rmb, 801-1000 rmb, 1001-1500 rmb, 1501-2000 rmb, 2001-3000 rmb, 3001-5000 rmb, 5001-7000 rmb, 7001-9000 rmb, 9001-11000 rmb, 11001-13000 rmb, 13001-15000 rmb, 15001-20000 rmb, and above 20000 rmb. household education expenditure and student achievement current issues in comparative education 13 variable, and the upper limit of each level was used as the real value of self-reported expenditure. in fact, the empirical results are consistent using the lower limit value, median value, or the upper limit of each category as the real value (see appendix table a4). x is a vector of control variables including annual family income, gender, urban-rural status, socioeconomic status (ses), academic track, corresponding high school entrance exam (hsee) score, and high school admission line (which measures the general school quality). table 1 details how each control variable was measured. ε is the error term. table 1: measurement of control variables. variables variable types measurement or comments annual family income continuous variable converted from categorical variable using the upper limit of each option as the real value. female dummy variable female=1 if the student is female; =0 if male rural dummy variable rural=1 if the student comes from a rural family; =0 if from an urban family. ses continuous variable index constructed through principal component analysis using four variables: father and mother’s respective education level, and father and mother’s respective occupation (which relates to social status). science track dummy variable science track =1 if the student is in science track; =0 if humanity track. hsee admission line discrete variable hsee score of admission line for high schools. hsee continuous variable standardized scores with mean of zero and standard deviation of one. according to zhou & zhang (authors, 2015), the factors that can influence household education spending include annual family income, gender, urban-rural status, ses, and hsee score. all these factors were controlled carefully, resulting in estimated effects of household education spending that are demonstrably unbiased. measurement of household education expenditures in empirical social science studies, exact measurement of the variables of interest is often difficult to secure and can consequently cause bias in the regression. special focus was placed on this concern to ensure accurate results; information for household income or household education expenditure collected through survey methods may not be precise due to respondents’ zhang and zhou current issues in comparative education 14 difficulty in recalling exact figures, for example. the potential bias generated by measurement error can be interpreted by the following equations: yt = α + βxt ∗ + εt xt = xt ∗ + ηt where x* denotes the true but unobserved value, which can be called a latent variable. x is observed value of x*. ε and η are model errors and measurement errors respectively, and measurement error η is assumed to be independent from the true value x*. if y is simply regressed on x, the coefficient of the slope is as follows: �̂� = ∑ (𝑥𝑡 − �̅�)(𝑦𝑡 − �̅�)𝑛 𝑡=1 ∑ (𝑥𝑡 − �̅�)2𝑛 𝑡=1 �̂� → 𝐶𝑜𝑣[𝑥𝑡 , 𝑦𝑡] 𝑉𝑎𝑟[𝑥𝑡] = 𝛽𝜎𝑥∗ 2 𝜎𝑥∗ 2 + 𝜎𝜂 2 = 𝛽 1 + 𝜎𝜂 2/𝜎𝑥∗ 2 where �̂� is smaller than the true value of 𝛽, and it biases toward zero. that is to say, the regression coefficient is diluted by the measurement error. we did take this potential bias into account. endogeneity and omitted variable bias (ovb) in any statistical model, endogeneity is a problem that occurs when the independent variable is correlated with the error term in a regression. omitted variables are one of the common sources of endogeneity. if an independent variable is correlated with the key variable of interest and is omitted in the regression (i.e., left in the residual term,) the key variable of interest will be correlated with the residual and the ols estimation will be biased. this problem is called “omitted variable bias” (ovb). in this study, the potential for ovb was avoided by including the most likely major control variables in the regression according to theories and previous research. according to zhou & zhang (2015), the factors that can influence household education spending include annual family income, gender, urban-rural status, ses, and hsee score. all these factors were controlled carefully to prevent ovb, resulting in estimated effects of household education spending that are demonstrably unbiased. household education expenditure and student achievement current issues in comparative education 15 data collection and descriptive statistics data collection the data used in this study was collected from jinan, the capital of shandong province in china. a non-proportional, stratified cluster sampling strategy was utilized. twenty-five senior high schools were randomly selected out of 34 public regular high schools from 9 districts in jinan, including 15 urban schools, 8 county schools, and two rural schools. within each high school, 3-5 classes in grade 12 were randomly chosen and all students in the selected classes were sampled. the sample size in this study was 5840 students in total. there was a large proportion of missing data in the financial variables, around 44%. it is common because financial data is difficult to recall. it is assumed that the data is missing at random. table 2 reports the disparities of ncee scores and hsee scores between students in the missing subsample and non-missing subsample. the missing subsample is the subsample containing a large proportion of missing data in the financial variables. the differences of these scores between the two subsamples are not significant. therefore, it is reasonable to rely on this data. table 2. descriptive statistics for missing and non-missing subsamples variables missing subsample non-missing subsample ncee total score 468.71 472.28 ncee chinese score 98.64 98.86 ncee math score 94.84 94.01 ncee english score 92.00 92.56 hsee total score 552.23 551.43 hsee chinese score 88.47 87.90 hsee math score 104.47 104.17 hsee english score 101.90 101.14 note: *p<0.05, ** p<0.01. in order to make full use of all the data gathered and improve its statistical power, the multiple imputation (mi) method was applied. mi is a flexible, simulation-based statistical technique for handling missing data which consists of three steps:3 3 stata multiple-imputation reference manual. release 13. http://www.stata.com/manuals13/mi.pdf. table a1 shows the procedure of multiple imputation. http://www.stata.com/manuals13/mi.pdf zhang and zhou current issues in comparative education 16 (1) introduce random variation into the imputation process, and generate several data sets, each with slightly different imputed values. (2) perform an analysis on each of the data sets. (3) combine the results into a single set of parameter estimates, standard errors, and test statistics. descriptive statistics table 3 shows the mean values of education spending on various items. self-reported education spending is the spending reported by parents, and it is an average expenditure for each year across grade 10-12. calculated education spending is the spending calculated by the authors according to detailed expenditure items, including school choice fee (1 year), tuition fee, boarding fee, private tutoring expenditure, computer purchases, and other education-related expenditures. spending on school related items includes a school choice fee, a tuition fee, and a boarding fee. the “school choice fee” is paid by parents who choose to enroll their child in high-performing schools if the child’s hsee score is a few points lower than that school’s hsee admission line. the school choice fee is a one-time donation that covers the child’s entire high school education, so one-third of the school choice fee is considered annual household spending.4 the mean of self-reported education spending is 6875 rmb (996.38 us$), while calculated education spending has a mean of 5817 (843.04 us$). due to the potential omitted items in the calculated education expenditure, this study took self-reported education spending as an independent variable (private tutoring fee, computer purchases, and other education-related expenditures are the average expenditures for each year across grade 10-12.). 4 this policy was supervised by the local education authority, but was abolished from 2015. household education expenditure and student achievement current issues in comparative education 17 table 3. mean values of various education expenditures. variables mean self-reported education spending 6875.19 (996.40 us$) calculated education spending 5817.05 (843.05 us$) spending on school-related items tuition fee 1485.75 (215.33 us$) boarding fee 298.00 (43.19 us$) school choice fee (3 years) 2931.00 (424.78 us$) expenditure on academic-oriented private tutoring 630.81 (91.42 us$) expenditure on art/music/sport tutoring 222.92 (32.31 us$) computer purchases 1529.85 (221.72 us$) other education-related expenditures 687.06 (99.57 us$) note: units in rmb. according to zhou & zhang (authors, 2015), family income, socioeconomic status, high school entrance exam score, and gender are the main influencing factors of household education expenditure. annual family income has a positive effect on household education expenditure, but the impact of household income on school-related spending is not significant. this is mainly due to little variation in tuition or boarding fees. ses has a significant positive impact on household education expenditure, and the higher a student’s hsee scores, the lower their household’s education expenditure. the household education expenditure of female students is significantly higher than that of male students, and the household education burden on rural students is higher than that on urban students; therefore, we selected these variables as covariates. table 4. covariates on ncee achievement. variables observations mean std. dev. min max annual family income 4470 47428.38 (6873.68 us$) 39729.47 6000 240000 female 5839 .53 .50 0 1 rural 5839 .49 .50 0 1 science track 5722 .57 .50 0 1 zhang and zhou current issues in comparative education 18 the covariates in the analyses include yearly household income, hsee score, gender composition, percentage of rural students, ses, academic track (science or humanities), and high school admission line. as table 4 shows, average annual family income is 47428 rmb (6873.62 us$). the proportion of female students is 53.3%, 48.6% of the students come from rural families, and 57.2% of the students are on the science track. ses and hsee scores are standardized, with a mean of zero and standard deviation of one. in china, the hukou registration system divides the student population by residence into “rural” and “urban” categories. students who come from rural families have lower education expenditure and lower education quality than their urban counterparts. rural students can attend urban high schools if they show high academic performance. table 5 compares the mean of household education expenditures on various items for both urban and rural students. there is not much difference between the two categories as far as tuition and boarding fees. concerning school choice fee, urban students spend about two times as much as rural students. the total expenditure on private tutoring for urban students is 2489.384 rmb (360.780 us$) on average, while the private tutoring expenditure for rural students is only 319.034 rmb (46.237 us$). computer purchases and other education-related expenditures for urban students are much greater than those for rural students. table 5. household education expenditures on various items. main components of household education expenditure mean rural students urban students tuition 1364.55 (197.76 us$) 1645.33 (238.45 us$) school choice fee 2406.09 (348.71 us$) 4140.86 (600.12 us$) boarding 315.44 (45.72 us$) 261.22 (37.86 us$) expenditure on academic-oriented private tutoring 160.76 (23.30 us$) 1635.25 (236.99 us$) expenditure on art/music/sport private tutoring 158.27 (22.94 us$) 854.13 (123.79 us$) computer purchases 903.21 (130.90 us$) 2126.41 (308.18 us$) other education-related expenditures 538.81 (78.09 us$) 1145.71 (166.04 us$) note: units in rmb. figure 2 compares the total ncee scores of urban and rural students. in the top 50%, the total proportion of rural students is higher than urban students. this result is consistent household education expenditure and student achievement current issues in comparative education 19 with the fact that only outstanding rural students are accepted by high schools, currently at only a 10% proportion of the total high school student population. technically, 80% of urban students can be accepted to urban high schools, but between 2007 and 2010 the proportion reached as high as 90% (figure 3). figure 2. ncee distribution of urban and rural students. figure 3. urban-rural disparities in high school acceptance rate. source: yearbooks of china education statistics (2000-2013) empirical results this section discusses the effects of household education expenditure on student ncee achievement by subject. table 6 lists the effects of household education expenditure on 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 150-250 251-350 351-450 451-550 551-650 651-750 n u m b e r o f s tu d e n ts total ncee score rural urban 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 1 9 9 6 1 9 9 7 1 9 9 8 1 9 9 9 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 2 0 0 2 2 0 0 3 2 0 0 4 2 0 0 5 2 0 0 6 2 0 0 7 2 0 0 8 2 0 0 9 2 0 1 0 2 0 1 1 2 0 1 2 p ro p o rt io n o f s tu d e n ts year urban rural zhang and zhou current issues in comparative education 20 ncee achievement for urban and rural students, female and male students according to the total score, chinese score, math score, and english score. there is no effect of household education expenditure on ncee score for the whole sample or subsamples. for robustness check, table a2 shows the effect of calculated household education expenditure in the appendix. the results reported in table a2 are consistent with those in table 6. table 6. effects of household education expenditure on ncee achievement. sample total score chinese math english all 0.018 (0.015) 0.003 (0.021) 0.010 (0.017) 0.021 (0.019) female 0.002 (0.015) -0.015 (0.025) -0.004 (0.021) 0.018 (0.023) male 0.033 (0.020) 0.020 (0.025) 0.023 (0.023) 0.025 (0.019) urban 0.014 (0.023) 0.008 (0.027) -0.021 (0.026) 0.011 (0.026) rural 0.012 (0.019) -0.007 (0.030) 0.036 (0.021) 0.025 (0.025) note: standard errors in parentheses. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01. this study also examines the effect of specific types of expenditure, i.e. spending on school-related items, private tutoring fees, and computer purchases on student ncee performance. table 7 reports the effects of each specific household education expenditure on student ncee achievement. for school-related expenditure, it has no impact on student total score, but it has a significantly negative impact on student chinese, math and english achievement respectively. with regard to academic-oriented private tutoring expenditure, it has no effect on student total score, chinese score or english score, while it has a significantly negative effect on math score. art/music/sports tutoring expenditure and computer purchases have no impact on student ncee achievement according to the total score, chinese score, math score, or english score. household education expenditure and student achievement current issues in comparative education 21 table 7. achievement effects of specific household education expenditure. specific expenditures total (1) chinese (2) math (3) english (4) spending on school-related items -0.034 (0.042) -0.090 (0.055) -0.083 (0.049) -0.086* (0.034) expenditure on academic-oriented private tutoring -0.042 (0.024) -0.058 (0.032) -0.031* (0.019) -0.026 (0.014) expenditure on art/music/sport tutoring -0.042 (0.021) -0.048 (0.026) -0.039 (0.023) -0.058* (0.017) computer purchases -0.019 (0.023) -0.016 (0.028) -0.029 (0.031) -0.009 (0.025) note: standard errors in parentheses. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01. the model found that the average effect of household education expenditure on ncee performance is not significant. however, the reasons for the results are not clear. to get more detailed information, we also used quantile regression to more closely examine the heterogeneous effect of household expenditure on students with different levels of academic achievement. quantile regression aims at estimating either the median or other quantiles of the dependent variable. relative to the ordinary least squares regression, the quantile regression estimates are more robust (koenker & bassett, 1978). column (1) of table 8 shows the effect of household education expenditure on total ncee score, and columns (2), (3), and (4) show the results for chinese, math, and english, respectively. regarding total ncee score, household education expenditure has a significantly positive effect on the students whose ncee total score is at 0.9th quantile, while there is no effect on those whose scores are at the 0.75th, 0.5th, 0.25th, or 0.1st quantiles. for chinese scores, household education expenditure has a significant and positive effect on students whose scores are at the 0.75th quantile. there is no effect of household education expenditure on math scores at any quantile. in terms of english scores, there is a significantly positive correlation at the 0.5th quantile of the distribution. for the robustness check, the results reported in table a3 shows there is no effect of calculated household education expenditure on the students with different levels of academic achievement. zhang and zhou current issues in comparative education 22 table 8: achievement effects of household education expenditure, by quantile. quantile total score (1) chinese (2) math (3) english (4) 0.9 0.040** (0.014) 0.023 (0.023) 0.024 (0.017) 0.006 (0.011) 0.75 0.016 (0.014) 0.044* (0.020) 0.009 (0.019) 0.004 (0.015) 0.5 -0.004 (0.014) -0.000 (0.021) 0.004 (0.015) 0.040** (0.015) 0.25 -0.013 (0.013) 0.014 (0.025) -0.006 (0.019) 0.015 (0.017) 0.1 0.014 (0.019) 0.017 (0.026) -0.004 (0.026) 0.038 (0.020) note: standard errors in parentheses. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01. figure 4 presents the heterogeneous effects of household education expenditure on ncee score by subject. the solid lines represent the estimated coefficient of household education expenditure, and the gray areas are 95% confidence intervals. there is no significant effect at any quantile for math score, but a significantly positive effect on chinese scores for students at the 0.75th quantile and on english scores for those at the 0.5th quantile. there is a significant and positive effect on total ncee score for higher-achieving students. table 9 reports the effects of all the control variables. annual family income has no effect on total ncee score or scores in any of the three subjects. hsee score is, however, a significant and positive determinant of the ncee score across all subjects. there is no gender disparity in total ncee score, chinese score, or math score, but a gap favoring girls in english score. rural students perform better than urban students on the ncee across all subjects. ses has a positive effect on total ncee score as well as math and english, but no effect on chinese score. because ncee tests are different for science and humanity track students, ncee achievements between these two groups differ significantly. household education expenditure and student achievement current issues in comparative education 23 figure 4. heterogeneous effects of household education expenditure on ncee scores total score chinese math english table 9. estimated coefficients of control variables. total score chinese math english annual family income -0.019 (0.016) -0.029 (0.022) -0.028 (0.022) -0.011 (0.018) hsee 0.687** (0.045) 0.460** (0.035) 0.590** (0.044) 0.600** (0.046) female -0.010 (0.026) 0.068 (0.033) 0.001 (0.033) 0.012** (0.022) rural 0.205** (0.056) 0.227** (0.045) 0.238** (0.055) 0.014* (0.054) ses 0.014 (0.011) 0.004 (0.014) 0.016 (0.013) 0.037** (0.010) science track -0.340** (0.052) 0.049 (0.044) -0.321** (0.049) 0.118* (0.045) zhang and zhou current issues in comparative education 24 hsee admission line 0.246** (0.047) 0.030** (0.062) 0.265** (0.064) 0.280** (0.049) n 4335 4343 4343 4343 f 103.72 85.14 101.74 153.52 prob>f 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 note: standard errors in parentheses. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01. in summary, the average achievement effect of household education expenditure is not significant overall but may have some positive effect on high achievers. more specifically, household education expenditure may be effective for students whose chinese scores are at the 0.75th quantile and for those with english scores at the 0.5th quantile. conclusions and discussion generally speaking, the average effect of household education expenditure on student ncee achievement is not significant. this result is consistent with liu & xie (2015)’s finding on verbal test. there are several plausible reasons for this observation. household education expenditure includes tuition fee, boarding fee, school choice fee, private tutoring spending, and other expenditures; among these, tuition fee is a cost that every student’s family must pay except for those well below the poverty line. the range of tuition cost was 1100-2000 rmb (159.42-289.86 us$) for one year in 2013 in shandong province.5 there is not much difference in student boarding fees, either. therefore, neither variable contributes significantly to variations in ncee performance. school choice fee is another portion of household education expenditure. the empirical results show that school-related expenditures have no impact on student total scores. however, it has a significantly negative impact on student chinese, math and english scores. since there are not much variation in the tuition fee and boarding fee, the negative effect may all come from school choice fee. according to chen, ding, and ye (2014), zhang, chen & wang (2014) and zhang, liu & li (2015), high-performing schools may not effectively improve test scores for students who are already high performing through physical inputs, teacher effect, or peer effect. therefore, those who have high scores but are just below the admission line for high-performing schools pay school choice fee to enroll, but may not benefit from this investment. the “key & non-key school system” has resulted in a severe competition in terms of school choice in china. thus causing parents to pay a large number of household expenditures for their children to get into key schools 5 see yearbook of china education statistics (2013). household education expenditure and student achievement current issues in comparative education 25 (zhang, 2013; zhang, chen & wang, 2014). since school choice cannot improve student academic performance, parents should invest less money on school choice. governments should also make efforts to forbid school choice and to achieve educational equity and quality by reducing the achievement gap between high performing schools and low performing schools. private tutoring fees are also included in total household education expenditure. according to zhang (2013), the average effect of private tutoring on ncee score is not significant; therefore, this portion of household expenditure is also not significant. furthermore, the effect of computer purchases is also not significant. in summary, because the majority of the individual portions of household spending on education are not effective, it is reasonable to assume that the average effect of total household spending is not significant. it may be effective on certain subgroups, however, according to the quantile regression results. this study is among the first to evaluate the achievement effect of household education expenditure on ncee performance in china. besides estimating the average effect of household education expenditure on student academic performance for the whole sample, urban subsample and rural subsample, female subsample and male subsample, this study also examined the heterogeneous effect of household expenditure on students with different levels of academic achievement. according to the different effect across groups, families could make better decisions on the educational investment according to the empirical results. there are several limitations of this study. first, this study only estimates the effect on grade 12 student performance in jinan, china, which may undermine the external validity of the results. in order to improve the external validity of the results, it is necessary to collect data from different regions in china or worldwide and at different educational levels. secondly, the exact measurement of the variables is often difficult to obtain and consequently causes bias in the regression. the information of students collected through survey might not be accurate because of the difficulty in recalling memory and so on. finally, although the potential for endogeneity was avoided by including most possible major control variables in the regression, better identification strategies should be employed in the future. zhang and zhou current issues in comparative education 26 authors’ acknowledgement: this study is supported by the research initiation funding for chinese scholars coming back from overseas, granted by the ministry of education (jiao yu bu liu xue gui guo ren yuan ke yan qi dong ji jin). the project is titled “the effectiveness and equity of household educational input.” about the authors: yu zhang is an associate professor of economics and education at the institute of education, tsinghua university. her area of research includes education policy/reform evaluation, education equity, school choice and enrollment, as well as education innovation. dr. zhang received her doctoral degree from teachers college, columbia university. xuehan zhou is a graduate student at the institute of education, tsinghua university with a specialization in economics and education. she is interested in evaluating policies, interventions and programs that are effective in increasing academic performance. contact: yu zhang at zhangyu2011@tsinghua.edu.cn, and xuehan zhou at xhzh14@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn household education expenditure and student achievement current issues in comparative education 27 references brown, p. h., & park, a. 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(1995). regional economic variation and basic education in rural china. mcnamara fellowships program report (washington dc, economic development institute, the world bank). xu, j.w., & y, x.r. (2014). can the increase in public expenditure on education alleviate the second-generation phenomenon? an analysis of intergenerational income mobility based on chns. journal of finance and economics, 40(11), 17-28. zhang, y. (2013). does private tutoring improve students’ national college entrance exam performance? —a case study from jinan, china. economics of education review, 32, 1-28. zhang, y., chen, d. s., & wang, w. (2014). the heterogeneous effects of ability grouping on national college entrance exam performance–evidence from a large city in china. international journal of educational development, 39, 80-91. household education expenditure and student achievement current issues in comparative education 29 zhang, y., liu, j.j., & li, m.l. (2015) the effect of private tutoring during primary education on the academic development in middle school. research in education development, 1(4), 31-37. zhou, x.h., & zhang, y. (2015). household education cost and analysis on its influence factor at senior high school stage. tsinghua journal of education, 36(5), 110-117. zhou, z.y. (2001). education, social stratification and social mobility. journal of beijing normal university (social sciences), 1(5), 85-91. zhang and zhou current issues in comparative education 30 appendix table a1. the procedure of multiple imputation variables observation proportion of data missing filled-in total self-reported education spending 4479 23.30% 1361 5840 calculated education spending 3305 43.41% 2535 5840 spending on school-related items 4514 22.71% 1326 5840 tuition fee 4843 17.07% 997 5840 boarding fee 4521 22.59% 1319 5840 expenditure on academic-oriented private tutoring 5256 10.00% 584 5840 expenditure on art/music/sport tutoring 5163 11.59% 677 5840 school choice fee (3 years) 5055 13.44% 785 5840 computer purchases 5212 10.75% 628 5840 other education-related expenditures 4360 25.34% 1480 5840 note: observations + filled-in observations = total. household education expenditure and student achievement current issues in comparative education 31 table a2. effects of calculated household education expenditure on ncee sample total score chinese math english all -0.021 (0.011) -0.024 (0.013) -0.023 (0.012) -0.021 (0.011) female -0.013 (0.013) -0.018 (0.015) -0.007 (0.015) -0.011 (0.012) male -0.033 (0.018) -0.031 (0.017) -0.043 (0.024) -0.034 (0.028) urban -0.030 (0.019) -0.032 (0.019) -0.032 (0.017) -0.025 (0.013) rural -0.015 (0.013) -0.015 (0.012) -0.015 (0.013) -0.017 (0.011) note: standard errors in parentheses. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01. table a3. effects of calculated household education expenditure by quantile quantile total score chinese math english 0.9 0.009 (0.010) -0.008 (0.015) -0.014 (0.010) -0.014 (0.008) 0.75 0.014 (0.009) -0.020 (0.012) -0.017 (0.010) -0.015 (0.010) 0.5 -0.026 (0.015) -0.022 (0.013) -0.017 (0.010) 0.023 (0.014) 0.25 -0.032 (0.017) -0.031 (0.018) -0.032 (0.017) -0.026 (0.012) 0.1 -0.022 (0.013) -0.034 (0.018) -0.037 (0.019) -0.023 (0.016) note: standard errors in parentheses. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01. zhang and zhou current issues in comparative education 32 table a4. effects of household education expenditure on ncee achievement. total score chinese math english sample upper limit lower limit median upper limit lower limit median upper limit lower limit median upper limit lower limit median selfreported education spending all 0.018 (0.015) 0.019 (0.015) 0.016 (0.014) 0.003 (0.021) 0.004 (0.022) 0.003 (0.020) 0.010 (0.017) 0012 (0.017) 0.010 (0.016) 0.021 (0.019) 0.022 (0.019) 0.019 (0.018) female 0.002 (0.015) 0.004 (0.015) 0.001 (0.014) -0.015 (0.025) -0.014 (0.025) -0.016 (0.023) -0.004 (0.021) -0.002 (0.021) -0.005 (0.020) 0.018 (0.023) 0.021 (0.023) 0.015 (0.022) male 0.033 (0.020) 0.035 (0.020) 0.031 (0.018) 0.020 (0.025) 0.021 (0.025) 0.020 (0.023) 0.023 (0.023) 0.025 (0.023) 0.023 (0.022) 0.025 (0.019) 0.026 (0.019) 0.024 (0.018) urban 0.014 (0.023) 0.014 (0.019) 0.012 (0.021) 0.008 (0.027) -0.009 (0.030) 0.009 (0.025) -0.021 (0.026) 0.039 (0.021) -0.019 (0.024) 0.011 (0.026) 0.026 (0.025) 0.010 (0.024) rural 0.012 (0.019) 0.014 (0.019) 0.011 (0.018) -0.007 (0.030) -0.009 (0.030) -0.008 (0.028) 0.036 (0.021) 0.039 (0.020) 0.034 (0.020) 0.025 (0.025) 0.026 (0.025) 0.022 (0.024) note: standard errors in parentheses. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01. microsoft word 16_1_mai_ngo.doc © 2014, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 16 (1), 49-61.   canadian youth volunteering abroad: rethinking issues of power and privilege mai ngo university of toronto this paper discusses the role of institutions in the ethical engagement of canadian youth volunteers abroad. in recent years, researchers and practitioners in the international field have questioned the ethics of volunteering as part of development, with scrutiny on who actually benefits from volunteering initiatives. since the 1960s, over 65,000 young canadians have participated in volunteer abroad programs (tiessen, 2008), and criticism has increased towards youth volunteers going overseas to fulfill their aspirations to “change the world”. this study considered how complex social relations and institutional structures in international development have shaped the issues of power and privilege of the young person’s experience in volunteering. the research used institutional ethnography (ie) as a method of inquiry, and mapped out the social relations between the experiences of seven former youth volunteers and field staff, and their organizations. westheimer and kahne’s active citizenship and dei’s anti-racism theories were proposed as frameworks to examine the presence of equity in youth volunteer programs. the individual and the institution since the 1960s, over 65,000 young canadians have participated in volunteer abroad programs; this number continues to expand each year as young people travel to developing countries for a variety of reasons that range from self-discovery and adventure to the desire to make a difference (tiessen, 2008). as the number of young volunteers going abroad grows, so does their impact on the communities that they visit. international development critics have resurfaced terms such as ‘western imperialism’ in the debate concerning volunteering overseas. the question ‘is volunteering another form of colonization?’ permeates voluntourism or ‘backpactivism’. the research on international voluntary service (ivs) indicates that volunteers contribute to issues of power and privilege in international volunteering. the nebulous meanings of power and privilege can be put into context using peggy mcintosh’s work white privilege: unpacking the invisible knapsack (1988). her essay serves as an entry point into power and privilege while acknowledging that the definition of these two words are evolving and complex. mcintosh describes a political system that works “systematically to empower certain groups” (1988, p. 5), and privilege can be seen as dominance in a system due to one’s race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, class, physical or mental ability, and so on. volunteers can exert power on the community in forms that include economic, racial, heterosexual, gender and political privilege (lewis, 2006). yet there has been less focus on canadian youth volunteers who make a conscious effort to counter the harmful actions that youth volunteers have the reputation for bringing with them. the comparison between these experiences leaves a gap in the depiction of international volunteering as either positive or negative. the focus on the institutional structures of volunteerism has been neglected, while the onus has been put on the individual. as long as individuals have the desire to go overseas, and governments are investing in youth as global citizens for social and economic capital, the solution of eradicating youth volunteerism overseas remains unrealistic. mai ngo   50                current  issues  in  comparative  education   this paper considers the network of relations and institutional structures in ivs so that practitioners and organizations can rethink and restructure issues of power and privilege by focusing on institutional pedagogy rather than framing problems abroad solely as a result of individual power; it also uses institutional ethnography to explore the challenges faced by canadian youth volunteers trying to engage as “global citizens” in international development and cross-cultural exchanges, and examines seven case studies to highlight the relation between a youth volunteers’ challenges and their relation to the institutional structures in the international voluntary services sector. the research also commits to a vision of sustainable and equitable community partnerships. a brief history of canadian volunteer sending organizations at the end of world war ii, the united nations (un) officially came into existence as the first internationally governed organization that aimed to promote international cooperation and peace. in the post-war era, the late 1950s and 1960s, as volunteering became recognized as a form of international development (lewis, 2006), canadian ngos in canada flourished and began to send adult volunteers overseas. the message to promote peace spread, and the movement influenced people such as dr. james robinson, an american preacher, to start international ngos such canadian crossroads international (cci). in the early 1960s, organizations such as cci, cuso-vso and world university service of canada (wusc) spread the new volunteer movement to canadian universities (cuso-vso, 2009), and going overseas in order to obtain crosscultural understanding gained momentum as canadian politics became synonymous with the term “international peacekeeper”. the government of canada established cida in 1968 in conjunction with canada’s increasing role in geopolitics. one of their tasks was to administer canada’s official development assistance (oda) program. today, cida also has a focus on canadian youth to “be more active global citizens” and to “make a difference in canada and abroad” (cida, 2009); cida currently funds two of the largest canadian organizations that send youth abroad. in the 1970s, as the diversity of the canadian population grew from immigration, multiculturalism became a popular focus for the canadian government. pierre elliott trudeau established the multiculturalism policy in 1971, which became highly criticized by anti-racism activists for its originations in a bilingual framework that excluded pluralism (mccaskell, 2005). by the 1980s, canadian activists were advocating for change in how students learned about multiculturalism. they wanted a shift from an educational approach that recognized diversity as a melting pot to an anti-racism approach that analyzed the institutional powers and their effects on race, class and gender. this pedagogy would later become influential in the canadian debates that currently surround international youth volunteering and the political use of global citizenship. significantly, the 1971 policy also set the stage for an increase in funding to programs that encouraged citizen participation and cross-cultural exchange. organizations that focused on youth volunteers originated in 1971 when jacques hebert, a close friend of trudeau, founded canada world youth (cwy). another youth-sending organization had its birth in the 1970s, when former canadian and australian participants, who had taken part in the initiated royal british program operation drake in 1978, founded youth challenge international (yci). today, there are more than 20 canadian organizations sending youth abroad, such as uniterra, engineers without borders, global youth action network, students for development program, ymca and free the canadian youth volunteering abroad   current issues in comparative education 51 children that promote volunteering abroad as a way to develop global citizenship. a method of inquiry: institutional ethnography institutional ethnography (ie) starts from the standpoint of everyday experiences. the institutional ethnographer “works from the social in people’s experience to discover its presence and organization in their lives and to explicate or map that organization beyond the local to the everyday” (smith, 2005, p. 11). the analysis also begins with social experience and returns to it to explain how the experience came into being (campbell, 2006). ie draws upon people’s experience as data to help anchor the research in the actualities of people’s lives and connect it more to the real world (campbell, 2006). this paper will therefore start from the standpoint of the author’s story as an entry point into exploring issues of power and privilege in international volunteering. aspects of ie were used as a method of inquiry to understand how canadian youth volunteers engage as active, global citizens and attempt to address issues of power and privilege in their international volunteering work. in the classical sense, ie has always been a radical sociology because it gets to the roots of matters (carroll, 2006). it is a social justice based, activist-oriented research method. george smith describes ie as a reflexive materialist approach that “provides a ground work for grassroots political action ... and begins from the standpoint of those outside ruling regimes ... [and] its analysis is directed at empirically determining how such [politico-administrative] regimes work” (smith, 2006, p. 48). ie is inspired by marx’s method of unmasking capitalism through action and reflection and the “fundamental assumption ... that reality is an internally related whole” (carroll, 2006, p. 235); in order to change the world one must understand it first. ie specifically uses a social analysis that requires an ontological shift that the social is the ground for analysis (smith, 2005). ie is also shaped from positivism and feminist movements that give it the “potential for marriage of scholarly research and political motivation” (campbell & gregor, 2002, p. 14). ie takes the standpoint of those on the outside of the ruling regimes (campbell & gregor, 2002); in other words, the people it is doing research for, as it should “help to form a subject’s political consciousness related to equitable decision making” (campbell & gregor, 2002, p. 128). ie can be used as a method to uncover the ruling relations in international volunteering. author’s standpoint the author’s standpoint is that of a person of color, female, middle-class, able-bodied perspective. as smith (2005) states, standpoint should be viewed “not [as] a given and finalized form of knowledge but as a ground in experience from which discoveries are to be made” (p. 8). standpoint can locate the lens that guides someone in an institutional order (smith, 2005). overall, the author’s personal experience as a first generation vietnamese-canadian shapes her into a researcher politically committed to encouraging more equitable partnerships and interactions between volunteers and the locals in developing countries. the author’s ability to have a political stance on volunteerism is a way of grounding herself and ensuring her responsibility to her research (smith, 2005). as a woman of color, the author recognizes the effects of power and privilege acutely because she is both implicated in the process of exercising it, and in the process where it is exercised upon her. the problematic: establishing an anchor the problematic is served as a point of entry that leads to exploring how the lives and experiences of canadian youth volunteers are put together and relate to each other through power relations (devault, 2008). the nature of this research followed ie’s openended process of discovery (smith, 2005), and discovered the complexity of social mai ngo   52                current  issues  in  comparative  education   relations that interplay in a volunteer’s experience, which include government funding, international relations, volunteer services and agencies, and south-north partnerships among others. the problematic began in the everyday experiences of young canadian volunteers who go overseas on short and long-term development projects organized by secular not-for-profit organizations. in 2007, a youth organization hosted a popular one-day youth-run conference that used the terms ‘global’ or ‘active citizen’ frequently to entice individuals or groups to contribute to their international projects. the youth organization promoted “international development” to thousands of canadian students, and while it had celebrities and multimillion dollar corporations as their spokespeople and sponsors, it never actually engaged volunteers in a complex dialogue of what it meant to be a citizen of the world. this organization also had a program for young canadians to fundraise and go on two-month-long trips to build schools in africa. a former participant of the program, who had spent two months in kenya building a school, shared that she spent most of her time with the large group of volunteers and left with unanswered questions as to how the school would be sustained or followed up once the volunteers left (ngo, personal communication, 2007). international volunteering placements have the capacity to instill generosity and giving in the individual. however, if youth-sending organizations do not address issues of power and privilege such as classism, racism, and sexism, then volunteers who come with good intentions of charity are simply repeating cycles of imperialism and colonialism on local communities. the disjuncture: a set of larger relations dorothy smith brought up how people in the same situation can experience different realities, otherwise known as disjuncture, which can often be part of the problematic (campbell & gregor, 2002). an intern who went on a long-term, 6-month placement in bangladesh shared that she no longer felt comfortable with international community development, as she believed effective community development depended on a sense of familiarity with the people, their language and their surroundings (ngo, personal communication, 2007). she wondered how she would feel if foreigners came into her community without knowing the language or history, and began to implement recommendations and changes. her reality on international development did not mimic the missionary complex. her perspective on building local capacity for sustainable development was more critical than some of the youth who had participated in the short-term volunteering projects; her awareness around issues of power and privilege were more critical and developed. initially, it seemed that short and long-term volunteer placements developed different levels of critical analysis among youth volunteers. however, the analysis from the case studies shows a more complex explanation, as there is a larger set of relations that influence their experiences. smith (2005) explained that disjuncture occurs between “the artificial realities of institutions and the actualities that people live” (p. 187). in other words, disjunctures serve as crucial points of entry to examine how institutional processes are at play in people’s everyday experiences. smith continues to write that disjuncture can be explored through regulatory frames, as they are imposed onto people’s actualities. regulatory frames can include theories, policies, laws, and plans that guide institutional power (smith, 2005). regulatory frames the participants in this study were subject to regulatory frames, and the wide varieties of conceptualizations, theories, policies, laws, plans, and so on ... indeed, “they control and are specified as the categories and concepts that come into play at the front line of canadian youth volunteering abroad   current issues in comparative education 53 building institutional realities” (smith, 2005, p. 191). the organizations’ promotional materials are examples of regulatory frames, or coordinating texts that affected the participants. most of the participants relied on researching their organization through word-of-mouth or the website. research methodology seven individuals from the canadian youth volunteering sector participated in semistructured interviews conducted from march to june 2010. using ie, i analyzed ruling relations between individuals and institutions on two levels: the first level of information provided local accounts of experiences, and the second set of data pertained to explaining these experiences in a broader setting (campbell & gregor, 2002). the individuals were a point of investigation of the institutional process, rather than a sample of a population of canadian youth volunteers sent abroad. the interviewees included a mix of individuals who had never volunteered or been overseas before, as well as individuals who had experience in development projects or working internationally as interns. the ie approach allowed an assessment of a participant’s knowledge and the presence of power and privilege in their volunteer placement, while simultaneously examining where and how institutional processes influenced their outlook on the experience. international development or cross-cultural exchange? volunteering has been seen as a form of international development work since the united nations emerged as an organization post-world war ii (lewis, 2006). however, ivs in europe can be located back to the changing role of church and state and the activities of charitable societies; notably, ivs was a part of missionary service during the colonial period (lewis, 2006). the term “development” appeared only after world war ii and since then has taken on several meanings that remain debated today (lewis, 2006). part of international development means building capacity for vulnerable populations. for eade (2007), building capacity means enabling the marginalized to represent and defend themselves. eade (2007) argues, however, that ngos are about retaining their own power and that capacity building has become a buzzword in the development field, claiming that the words ‘building capacity’ are now used for a “neoliberal ... kind of economic and political agenda” (2007, p. 632). while partnership refers to building opportunity between local organizations and communities, encouraging codevelopment is often more difficult because of the multiple actors in the international arena that include governments and funders. as a result, partnerships can sometimes be based on one-way transfers and have only one-way accountability (eade, 2007), as ngos struggle to stay afloat and become more knowledgeable about business-rights than human-rights. positively, international volunteering can promote international understanding, solidarity, and global responsibility and can promote “an arena of development activity ... because it potentially humanizes what is often left as a technical or managerial process” (lewis, 2006, p. 3). moreover, volunteers can potentially “bridge the gap between the professionalized world of development experts and organizations and the ‘non-specialized publics’ who engage with the ideas and practices of development” (lewis, 2006, p. 3). however, in conjunction with the complexity and debate that surrounds the term development, international volunteering as a definition also varies and becomes privy to the same scrutiny as the term development. as more stakeholders become involved in the international volunteering business, ivs veers away from its “good samaritan” intentions, and becomes more politicized and imbued with expectations from the private and public sectors. the united states mai ngo   54                current  issues  in  comparative  education   currently uses the term international service or international development education, while the united kingdom uses international voluntary services (ivs). volunteering has changed drastically over the last few decades. volunteers were once mostly fresh out of school; today volunteering also attracts highly professionalized, older volunteers (vso, 2009) in short-term and long-term volunteer placements. as volunteerism becomes a more recognized institution (simpson, 2004), a new form of voluntourism programs (vtp) has emerged that combines volunteering with tourism (lewis, 2006, raymond & hall, 2008; simpson, 2004). voluntourism is figuratively the fast-food version of more traditional long-term volunteering. the rise of voluntourism aimed at young volunteers means organizations engage in a selection process with lowered required criteria as they try to reach a higher number of volunteers; this can also imply the recruitment of more inexperienced and ignorant participants. experience as data: the social analysis this sub-section uses the interview data from five canadian youth volunteers in their international volunteering experiences and highlights the tensions between volunteers and their projects. the increase of youth volunteer-sending organizations and voluntourism means more competition for youth and volunteers who ineffectively contribute to development projects, as young people do not have the skills, knowledge or experience necessary to work internationally (lewis, 2006). for example, youth challenge international’s programs approach to development involves youth volunteering in the livelihood, leadership, health, and environment sectors. the age requirement for volunteers would be 18 years and older and they are not expected to have prior international or work experience. youth volunteers have been arguably seen as individually gaining, as opposed to contributing to the collective. for example, one of the volunteers interviewed for this study explained how her former group members participated in a volunteer program for personal purposes: i think it was the second group i went there with, there was less of people assuming they were on vacation ... people sign up and, oh it’s a vacation and whatever project people want to do is secondary, to just being there and experiencing ghana ... (ngo, personal communication, 2010. even if youth had a positive experience, there are questions about whether the structure of a volunteer project allows effective results for the host community. one experienced volunteer shared her realizations about the design of her ‘development’ project being more like a volunteer experience than a work experience: i was going to say that i think in terms of the organization, um granted the workshops were held very close to one another, they were sort of back-to-back and there wasn’t enough time to go back to them and debrief, and figure them out ... i mean the biggest problem was that the program was ill conceived on a number of different levels that made it difficult ... i think the partner’s engagement was predominantly for financial benefit ... there was no needs assessment at all ... (ngo, personal communication, 2010) there were also challenges on executing a development project in a country where the volunteers had no prior knowledge or very little experience: i think trying to teach students about their own ... elements of their own country canadian youth volunteering abroad   current issues in comparative education 55 – when i had only been there for a week and a half. that was a huge challenge. um, that challenge of, i don’t know if this would be a philosophical challenge – sort of, acknowledging that the work we were doing was meaningful in the present sense. we’re giving the students an experience they will benefit from – at least i hope they did – but concerns about the sustainability of the project. that made it a challenge to find meaning in what we were doing because why weren’t we working with teachers or helping to build capacity ... i also think that coming to terms that being in ghana for a month, you do what you can and it’s just the way the project is. you have to come to terms with that and i think that was a challenge. (ngo, personal communication, 2010). moreover, even if the organization had the intention to prepare the volunteer for international development, budget and time constraints did not allow for the individual to gain adequate knowledge. this appears in the participants’ responses on how they were prepared for their international placements: i was sent a lot of friggin’ material from the organization. to be honest a lot of the information i did not go through and i know that like, we were supposed to go through it but at least for me i was working a full time job ... but it was a lot of stuff to go through ... i mean we were sent this cross-cultural learning module thing that you completed and got stamped on this electronic passport ... i think there was sort of an online community that was set up that i didn’t use because it was another thing that i had to go online and check. (ngo, personal communication, 2010) in general, volunteers shared that benefits of the program revolved around individual growth, as well as cross-cultural exchange. those who did mention their development projects were critical about the gains for local people. as youth volunteer-sending organizations increasingly move towards a development framework, while still working in a youth volunteering model, researchers and practitioners must assess which practices could be the most effective in contributing to the overseas and community partners, while being conscious of the growing competition for projects and funding for canadian youth volunteer-sending organizations. the pedagogical approach used by both organizations was influenced by a multicultural, rather than an anti-racism education. multicultural education approaches represent racism issues in a way that are non-threatening to dominant canadian groups (mccaskell, 2005), and focus on appreciating differences without critical analysis on institutional systems. to volunteer or not to volunteer the origins of international volunteering in canada highlight the peace spreading intentions of canadians who wish to offer their services overseas to less privileged countries, or to promote cross-cultural exchange that strengthens understanding in a diverse multicultural canadian society. however little is known about the actual impacts of volunteering on canadians and the communities who host volunteers, as research struggles to catch up with the rapid expansion of diverse programs and organizations (grusky, 2000; lewis, 2006; lough, mcbride, & sherraden, 2009; raymond & hall, 2008). this section will allow the reader to contextualize the youth volunteers and field staff’s experiences with the institutional relations that pervade international volunteering. consistent with existing literature, grusky (2000), lewis (2006), lewis and niesenbaum mai ngo   56                current  issues  in  comparative  education   (2005), lough et al. (2009), and raymond and hall (2008) have found the overall outcomes for volunteers have the potential to contain many teachable moments, and have benefits that include language enhancement, transformative learning, building contacts between individuals and communities, developing cross-cultural understanding and working across difference. other pro arguments for volunteering overseas include travel opportunities, being able to reduce conflict and ‘reconciliation tourism’, which gives an opportunity to former colonizing country participants to rectify damage (raymond & hall, 2008). a survey conducted by lough, et al. (2009) with 680 randomly selected alumni from two volunteer sending organizations with different ivs models found that, even though the organizations had different goals, the outcomes for volunteers were similar. outcomes for volunteers included a positive effect on the volunteers’ cross-cultural understanding and career direction, and the volunteers’ belief that they had brought a good impact on the host organization and communities (lough et al., 2009). seventy-five percent of the study’s respondents “claimed that their crosscultural encounter was a transformational experience” (lough et al., 2009, p. 33). although there is research that provides an optimistic view of voluntourism programs (vtps), more specifically that these programs assist in developing cross-cultural understanding, vtps can lead to misunderstandings and reinforcement of stereotypes. research indicates that cross-cultural understanding is not always a natural consequence of vtps, but needs to be a purposeful pedagogy (raymond & hall, 2008). for example, though some volunteers in lough et al.’s (2009) research reported on language as a barrier, cultural misunderstandings and power differences between volunteers and local staff, most of the volunteers surveyed believed their services were desired and that their presence did not cause problems in the communities. the goal of international service learning is an important component of programs (grusky 2000; raymond & hall, 2008), as it sets the backdrop for the organizational pedagogy and the practices used to recruit volunteers. without an appropriate goal to reduce power and privilege, inequities remain very pronounced (lewis, 2006). international development education programs can easily “become small theatres that recreate historic cultural misunderstandings and simplistic stereotypes” (grusky, 2000, p. 858), or “privilege the needs and desires of the server over the served, and act as a powerful and influential framing mechanism for the social construction of ideas about development, poverty and the ‘third world’” (lewis, 2006, p. 8), as well as exacerbate already existing north – south economic disparities. simpson argues that gap year, a period taken by the student between high school and post-secondary education, produces one face of public development and reproduces notions of other and third world, as well as “perpetuates a simplistic ideal of development” (simpson, 2004, p. 682). she continues to determine that the gap year reinforces the ‘mythology’ of development, and encourages travel that enhances individual and not collective advancement. within the context of volunteerism, colonialism can manifest itself in different ways. the partnership between north and south organizations can reproduce systems of dependence through funding and structural expertise, and this can trickle down to the work of the volunteers. for example, canadian volunteers will assume that they will be able to contribute to a community without knowing the language or culture because the recruitment process has painted them as the experts going to “help”. in addition, since volunteers have to fundraise to become a volunteer, there is a sense of entitlement that accompanies volunteers when they arrive to their host country. at times, in short-term projects, there is no needs assessment done by volunteers, as they only have a limited time to meet deliverables, or groups may duplicate each other’s work if there is no canadian youth volunteering abroad   current issues in comparative education 57 knowledge or proper orientation on the history of the organization in the area where volunteers work. the incongruity around the positives and negatives around international volunteering leads to open questions around the impact on host communities and practices of organizations. there are currently less research findings available on outcomes for organizations and host communities, sustainable development and equitable partnerships (grusky, 2000; lough et al., 2009). according to grusky (2004), the potential of ivs is precisely at this juncture “where experience meets study, critical analysis, and reflection” (p. 861). the transformational impacts on a young person due to these programs cannot be denied, and their desire to serve and change society should not be dismissed. if organizations could harness a volunteer’s discomfort and help “bring them to a clearer understanding of the fundamental necessity for profound social change” (grusky, 2004, p. 866), then ivs could be a powerful tool for cross-cultural understanding and reduction in north-south disparities. overall, organizations have been found to rely heavily on chance to produce citizens who can critically assess institutional structures (grusky, 2000), and therefore organizations lack a commitment to integrating anti-racist methods into their development work. assessing program structure academia and media recognize that “certain types of vtps may represent a form of neo colonialism or imperialism, in which volunteer tourists inadvertently reinforce the power inequalities between developed and developing countries” (raymond & hall, 2008, p. 531). since one of the issues for conflict in ivs includes multiple and conflicting goals of the actors involved (e.g., sponsors and community partners) (grusky, 2000), research could focus more on the best practices that accommodate the competing factors involved in volunteer sending organizations, aid recipients and host communities. as agencies set roles for successful partnerships between host communities (roberts, 2004), a social-justice pedagogy becomes important to consider for organizations since they play a role in facilitating preparation and analysis for volunteers prior, during and post program (raymond & hall, 2008). research conducted by raymond and hall (2008) sought to look at the roles organizations play in developing international understanding through vtps. volunteersending organizations should: be conscious of the skill sets of their volunteers and the type of work volunteers would be doing; include local people in developing programs; create opportunities for volunteers and community members to interact; and have volunteers work alongside locals. organizations could also be more deliberate in the contact with “the other,” as it should not be assumed that interaction means development of cross-cultural understanding; in some cases, interaction without proper analysis could reinforce volunteers’ stereotypes as they could mistake their experience as authority. organizational pedagogy is not a simple task; criticisms include the organizations’ “proximity to wider political and policy processes” (lewis, 2006, p. 7). specifically, an organization seldom remains free from political influences because they receive funding from government donors. they have also been criticized for their reliance on the production of othering to appeal to young volunteers (simpson 2004). language as coordinating kate simpson (2004), a researcher on the impacts of international volunteering, believes that by avoiding the language of “development,” many organizations may be trying to avoid the questioning of such an agenda. however, whether the language of development is used or not, the agenda is there, thinly disguised in notions of “disadvantaged communities” (p. 684). without using the term development, mai ngo   58                current  issues  in  comparative  education   organizations are able to attract a variety of young people to their programs. this also has negative effects on the host communities when volunteers perpetuate power and privilege dynamics or are ill prepared to engage in a project. simpson (2004) writes that the notion of the ‘third world’ is highly important. indeed, the very legitimacy of such programs is rooted in a concept of a ‘third world’, where there is ‘need’, and where european young people have the ability, and right, to meet this need. (p. 682) whereas there is no actual language pertaining to development, the discourse is there; organizations speak of making a difference, doing something worthwhile or contributing to the future of others (simpson 2004). this use of (or absence of) language indicates the presence of complex ruling relations in the international volunteering field. parallel to the equity issues of power and privilege that pervade international development, the concept of poverty becomes marketable and something adventurous for the volunteers to encounter. poverty is ‘out there’ and there is emphasis on the differences instead of the commonalities between developed and developing countries (simpson 2004). change is seen as based outside of local communities (volunteers are the change). in other words, the volunteers are perceived as the only agents of development and the community becomes excluded as active participants. organizations have the multi-purpose objectives of championing the needs of the communities as well as the usefulness of volunteers (simpson 2004). the contributions of unskilled volunteers remains debatable when there are levels of skills required for the usefulness of international service. how organizations present their message portray their approach to development, which remains rooted in colonialism when only the volunteer benefits and gains status, authority and social/professional standing (lewis 2006). proposing theoretical frameworks: justice oriented and anti-racist citizens canadian institutions including schools, not-for-profit organizations, and government bodies have borrowed the idiom “active citizen” into their institutional languages. active citizenship focuses on the “individual and collective capacity to influence change” (schugurensky, 2003, p.78). schugurensky proposes that citizenship education should move from passive to active citizenship in order to revitalize democratic, public life (2003, 2006). however, active citizenship and participation is susceptible to being influenced by a normative, predominantly white, middle-class stance, and active citizen is loosely used without definition. active citizens are still defined by the hegemonic majority, and participation continues to be controlled by the middle class. as new social movements in canada that include women’s movements, gay rights movements, and indigenous movements diverge from the normalized version of citizen (pashby, 2008), there is an increasing need to critically analyze programs which promote “active, global citizenship”. westheimer and kahne’s framework on citizenship has the potential to address the complex interplay of power relations that puts into question what kind of citizen is being promoted in organizations that send canadian youth volunteers abroad. westheimer and kahne (2003) believe that citizenship produced by education can fall into three (though not mutually exclusive) categories: personally responsible, participatory, and justice-oriented. the personally responsible citizen focuses on good, moral character and works to improve social problems and society. the participatory citizen encompasses the personally responsible citizen, but also actively participates in leadership positions within established systems and community structures. the justiceoriented citizen critically assesses social, political, and economic structures to see beyond surface causes. the ideal citizen for promoting effective democracies and active citizenship according to schugurensky’s definition would be the justice-oriented citizen, canadian youth volunteering abroad   current issues in comparative education 59 as they can “critically assess social, political, and economic structures and consider collective strategies for change that challenge injustice and, when possible, address root causes of problems” (westheimer & kahne, 2003, p. 54). westheimer and kahne’s (2004) active citizenship framework describes three types of citizens, with a focus on the kind of citizen who advances democratic societies and analyzes social injustices. dei’s (1996) anti-racism practice and theory complements the justice-oriented citizens by providing a lens that active citizens can use to critically assess institutional injustices. the antiracist framework reveals embedded racism, classism, homophobia, and sexism (dei, 2009). if justice-oriented citizens believe that patterns of injustice occur in a society, and healthy democracies entail the full participation of active citizens to question and change established structures, anti-racism praxis is a tool that can be used by justice-oriented citizens to deconstruct institutional systems and ensure action against the patterns of injustice that reoccur in society. theory around racism and education exploded in the 1980s as a response to multicultural education (mccaskell, 2005). multicultural education skips over racism issues in a way that could be digested in a non-threatening way to dominant canadian groups (mccaskell, 2005), whereas anti-racist education, conceptualizes the issue of racism not as a human failing, a misunderstanding, or a lack of awareness, but as a problem of ideology, of a worldview that categorizes people on the basis of ‘race’ and justifies and reinforces power imbalances between groups. (mccaskell, 2005, p. 74) antiracist education emerged as a new critical lens for viewing and questioning traditional methods of academia (dei, 2009). in conjunction with ie, an antiracist framework sees institutional structures as vehicles for dominating values, principles, and traditions localized in everyday experience, and treats texts as a “complex narrative that relates how researcher and subject are socially and politically located, situated and positioned” (dei, 2009, p. 249) as opposed to mirroring what is real. dei (2009) defines anti-racism as an action-oriented strategy to implement institutional change. it treats differences as socially constructed; this is compatible with ie since the method of inquiry and its way to perceive and deconstruct institutional relations. moreover, if active citizenship theory is the framework for citizen action, then antiracism is the framework to design strategic action. anti-racist framework is “an interrogation of both structural barriers to, and social practices for, systemic change” (dei, 2009, p.254); it acknowledges the reality of racism, questions the marginalization of groups and challenges “valid knowledge”, as well as societal institutions. according to dei (2009), anti-racism also has an academic and political agenda “to problematize and deal with how schools function to reproduce white (patriarchal) dominance” (p. 250). this aspect is particularly useful because it could be used to analyze organizations that send canadian youth abroad, we all as how power and privilege might be reproduced in community development through their organizational structure. this paper’s commitment to equitable community partnerships also aligns with anti-racism’s political agenda of social transformation and challenge of the status quo through political activism (dei, 2009). re-imagining the global citizen: a process towards transformation lewis (2006) asked the question: “can international volunteering produce ‘win-win’ outcomes in which both the sender and the receiver can benefit, and if so, in what measure?” (p. 9). because stopping overseas volunteering is not a realistic solution, it may be more useful to ask how to work and improve organizational practices. the traditional volunteering model has become imbued with complications that pervade international development, as volunteer organizations are under greater pressure to mai ngo   60                current  issues  in  comparative  education   produce development results in their programs. organizational practices, therefore, are crucial to the ability of ivs to carry out effective partnership and community-based results that benefit the people. the term ‘global citizen’ has also become a buzzword and privileged objective within citizenship education discourses (robins et al., 2008). the inclusion within citizenship becomes complicated when those excluded of its definition begin to struggle against traditional norms. the win-win situation can only occur when transformation takes into account the needs of the individual, and ultimately the needs of the local community those volunteers serve. old ways of educating people on power and privilege can dangerously reinforce “the other” as a victim. if programs adopt an understanding of anti-oppression into their educational approach, there needs to be sensitivity around the delivery and divulgence of how people are educated on power and privilege. one recommendation for practitioners would be to examine power as non-linear, multi-faceted, and involving multiple actors. at present, the onus is placed directly on the individual to recognize their own privilege, while systems of colonization and oppression are left out. canadian youth volunteers have a lot to offer and can strengthen their own education to ensure they are engaging in ethical volunteering before embarking on their adventures. young people can help to promote equitable partnerships. while we learn to live with others in a cross-cultural context, there remains a need to build cross-cultural peace within canada. as researchers, practitioners, organizations, and young volunteers embark on the process to improve international voluntary services, we remember there is no set formula, and “the only big answer is that there is no big answer” (easterly, 2006, p. 382). the goal for ethical volunteering can only be reached if we maintain our vision for equitable partnerships, so that the local people hold the baton to their own emancipation. mai ngo is from the ontario institute of studies in education at the university of toronto. email: mai.n.ngo@gmail.com. references campbell, m. 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(2003). what kind of citizen? political choices and educational goals. encounters on education, 4, 47–64. microsoft word 5 paper final round 3.docx © 2015, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 18(1), 55-67. identifying research priorities for school improvement in the developing world1 robyn read magdalena fernandez-hermosilla stephen anderson karen mundy the ontario institute for studies in education university of toronto this paper discusses a research agenda setting project conducted for an international non-governmental organization which aims to help create a regionally relevant, high-quality knowledge base on key education issues of policy and practice. specifically, we illustrate how our team adapted the child health and nutrition research initiative (chrni) methodology for research priority setting to identify areas for future education research. the paper focuses on the methods used and lessons learned from adapting these methods for education research, as opposed to the results of the exercise itself. while the traditional chnri model is not directly applicable to education research, an adapted version of this methodology provides an evidence-based approach to support the decision making process of research funders. the chnri method does not provide definite answers on what research should be funded; rather it provides a solid platform to support informed discussion on ways research can be prioritized. introduction the field of international development is founded upon the idea that highly specialized knowledge and technical skills have the potential to solve some of the most critical challenges facing our world (easterly, 2013). in the twenty-first century, as the global paradigm has shifted away from a global economy based on material resources and other forms of physical capital, to a global economy based on knowledge as the new source of wealth (stiglitz, 1999), the concept of evidence-based development or knowledge-based aid, has gained emphasis. today, the ability to produce and use knowledge is seen as critical to a nation’s comparative advantage (government of canada, 2001), and is a major focus in international development (world bank, 2009). as a result, there is a growing demand for empirically based evidence and specialized technical advice to help developing countries and aid agencies to assess the impact of development activities. research is valuable to both policy makers and practitioners in many fields. in education, empirical evidence plays a vital role in improving the quality of schooling 1 the chnri exercise discussed in this article was undertaken through the partnership for advancing human development in africa and asia, an initiative of aga khan foundation canada with financial support provided by global affairs canada identifying research priorities for school improvement in the developing world current issues in comparative education 55 across the globe. it has the potential to improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of educational policy and practice by providing attested information to enhance the quality and cost-effectiveness of policies (levin, 2010; livingstone, 2005). in the case of international education development, limited resources combined with an increased culture of accountability has created a demand for evidence-based decision making at all levels. however, despite increasing calls for evidence-based development, there are many gaps in our empirical understanding of education development around the world. as a result, development organizations are orienting themselves towards supporting knowledge generation in order to fill these gaps (piotrosky, 2014). the shift from funding programs to funding research to promote development can be difficult. organizations struggle with how to generate a systematic and transparent processes for creating research agendas that identify not only what research is necessary, but also what research would have the most impact on the ground? how can organizations ensure that voices from the developing world are represented, and how do stakeholders ensure that the research funded is both methodologically sound and practically relevant? this paper discusses a research agenda setting project conducted for an international non-governmental organization which aims to help create a regionally relevant, high-quality knowledge base on key education issues of policy and practice. this knowledge base should, then, stimulate debate, shape policy, contribute to project learning and improve the effectiveness of education programs in a specific region of the developing world. specifically, we illustrate how our team adapted the child health and nutrition research initiative (chrni) methodology for research priority setting to identify priority areas for future education research. rather than focusing on the results of the exercise itself, this paper discusses the chnri method and the concepts learned from adapting this method for education research. the child health and nutrition research initiative (chrni) research priority setting method in 2005, the chnri, a project of the global forum for health research, identified the need for a, “practical and systematic tool that could assist priority setting in health research investments” (rudan, 2012, p. 237). over the next two years, a panel of experts (including researchers, program makers from low and middle income countries, and representatives of international organizations) funded by the world bank, worked over a series of 12 consecutive meetings to develop a methodology appropriate for setting research priorities that was both scientifically rigorous and replicable (ibid). the resulting chnri research priority setting exercise is a systematic and transparent approach to research agenda setting which involves working with an array of experts in a certain field of research. in its original model, the chnri method limited the definition of research strictly to activities which resulted in the generation of new knowledge, but over the years this definition was expanded to include knowledge mobilization activities as well (tomlinson, et al., 2007). the chnri exercise is a flexible method which can be used to prioritize research investments on a local, national, regional or global scale (rudan, et al., 2008). this exercise can be implemented by a small group of individuals responsible for representing the vision and interest of read, fernandez-hermosilla, anderson, & mundy current issues in comparative education 56 organizations which invest in research. thus, this methodology is appropriate for organizations making sizable investments in research such as large ingo’s, multilateral organizations, national governments, and other research funding organizations (ibid). while the actual steps may differ depending on the context, the chnri framework identifies five key components for setting research priorities which guide each iteration of this method. these include (see tomlinson, et al. 2007; 2009): 1. gathering technical experts and defining the context (i.e. geographic scale, time period, and target population); 2. systematically listing research options by domain of research; 3. scoring all listed research options by a pre-determined set of criteria; 4. addressing stakeholders values (this could include weighting certain criteria in order to account for a particular item which is highly valued by the funding agency); and 5. program budgeting and, marginal analysis and advocacy. a key component of the chnri exercise is developing criteria for rating and prioritizing the list of research options produced. while these can be adapted to suit the needs and interests of the funding organization, chnri’s standard criteria include the following five dimensions (from rudan, 2012, p. 238): 1. the likelihood that the proposed research question is answerable; 2. the likelihood that the proposed research would result in an effective health intervention; 3. the likelihood that this resulting intervention would actually be deliverable, affordable and sustainable; 4. the maximum potential that the intervention would reduce the disease burden; and 5. the likelihood that this intervention would reduce inequality. these criteria not only help to identify research priorities, but also help investors identify the potential benefits and risks of an array of research options (wanzy, et al., 2013). while the sponsor of this project chose not to, the funding agency can choose to weight one or more of the criteria in the analysis stage in order to address their specific values and interests (tomlinson, et al., 2008). analysis of the chnri survey responses includes computing the research priority score (rps), average combined rating for all respondents across criteria for each research question. the average expert agreement score (aea) is also computed which shows the degree of agreement and variability across experts on the ratings for each question. the rps is based on a possible score of 100 points. the closer to 100, the higher the score and priority given to that question across all respondents while a score closer to 1.00 in the aea suggest greater consensus. both scores are used to generate a ranking of research priorities based on the level of agreement among experts. overall rps is calculated as the mean of score for each criteria per each question: [(criteria 1 score)+(criteria 2 score)+(criteria 3 score)+(criteria 4 score)]/ 4 identifying research priorities for school improvement in the developing world current issues in comparative education 57 aea is calculated for each research question following dean and colleagues (2013) guidelines. they suggest calculating aea as the “average proportion of scorers that gave the most common answer while scoring that question” (p.5), according to the formula: 1 4 × n(𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑒) n(𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒𝑟𝑠) ! !!! note: where q is 1 of the 4 criteria questions that experts used to evaluate competing research questions the chnri exercise relies on the collective opinions of a group of experts, as opposed to one expert opinion. the highly structured format of the chnri methodology and independent scoring ensures that no single individual is able to dominate the process, which limits the possibility of personal bias distorting the outcome (tomlinson, et al., 2007). instead, the process identifies the points of greatest agreement, and as such, the chnri method is viewed as, “a widely applicable tool for consensus development in any area of research” (rudin, 2011, p. 239). while the results of a chnri exercise do not determine where resources for research will be directed, the findings provide useful information that reflects and synthesizes the views of a broad range of knowledgeable experts in a designated field. applying the chnri method to international education development research originally used to identify research priorities related to child health and nutrition, the chnri method has been adapted to support research agenda setting for an array of health related issues such as global mental health research (tomlinson, et al., 2009), reducing maternal and child mortality in low and middle income countries (dean, et al., 2013), childhood diarrhoeal disease (wanzy, et al., 2013), and determining research priorities on the issue of family planning (campbell, higginbotham, & polonsky, 2014). however, we found no evidence that this methodology has been applied outside of the health sector. to our knowledge, this paper deals with the first time this process has been used to identify and prioritize research needs in the education sector. the chnri exercise has been traditionally used for specific interventions in the context of health research and is a model which cannot be entirely transferred to education. thus, we had to adapt the chnri model to suit the needs of the sponsor organization. in turn, as detailed in the paragraphs below, the revised model is more appropriate for the complex and multi-dimensional nature of education research in the developing world. the need for a chnri in education in response to education for all and millennium development goals, many national governments and non-governmental actors in developing countries gave primacy to policies and interventions designed to increase access to primary education to all children. however, the experiences of our sponsor organization suggest that read, fernandez-hermosilla, anderson, & mundy current issues in comparative education 58 improvements in access do not necessarily produce improvement in quality. tangible improvements in quality contribute to better enrollment and retention, and strengthening the quality of education in schools requires a comprehensive whole school approach to school improvement that addresses these dimensions in a coordinated and coherent way. the success of school improvement inputs, such as teacher and head teacher training, should not be limited to evidence of participation satisfaction and implementation of new programs and practices. any measurement of success must take into account evidence of student outcomes. another key lesson is that the sustainability of school improvement structures and processes, and scaling up beyond the schools and education personnel initially targeted do not just happen. sustainable education development requires strategic partnerships with local education system authorities and institutions, while at the same time working within, influencing and leveraging national education policy and resource realities. many of these issues and lessons learned by our sponsor organization are aligned with findings from international and north american research on school improvement (hargreaves and shirley 2012). however, international research on school improvement increasingly emphasizes the collection of data and employment of experimental research and intervention designs to enable more targeted solutions to specific programs. in order to address this issue, the sponsor organization planned to invest in regionally relevant, high-quality research on key education issues of policy and practice which could contribute to improving the effectiveness of education programs in a specific region of the developing world. the sponsor organization had previously participated in a chnri exercise to support their work in the health sector, and recognized the potential this methodology has for research priority setting in other sectors. our team at the ontario institute for studies in education (oise) was brought on to support this project. the oise team used the following approach to gathering and synthesizing information about gaps and opportunities for research priorities in support of the sponsor organization’s objectives. this section is structured according to the five key components of the chnri method. here we highlight some of the key ways we adapted this methodology to address the needs of our sponsor and the context of education research in the developing world. on this note, in the traditional chnri model ‘addressing stakeholder needs’ is listed as step four out of five. however, in our model we collaborated with the sponsor organization throughout the duration of the project to ensure that the project was addressing their needs. therefore, in this paper we have included stakeholder needs under each of the other aspects of the chnri model as opposed to listing it under a separate heading. gathering technical experts and defining the context in order to define the context of this project, our team at oise completed a review of the sponsor organization’s internal documents related to school improvement and to education in the specific region of focus for this project. during this phase, we identified six broad areas commonly addressed in the funding agencies school improvement identifying research priorities for school improvement in the developing world current issues in comparative education 59 initiatives in the developing world. this included: a) teaching and learning, b) teacher development (preand in-service), c) school management and leadership, d) parent and community involvement; e) system-level factors, i.e., policies, human and resource capacity; and f) early childhood development and education. these six themes combined with the sponsor organizations focus on a specific geographical region of the developing world defined the context of this chnri exercise and were therefore used to frame the context for the rest of the project. in consultation with the project sponsor, our team also identified 84 education experts knowledgeable about the region and subject, internal and external to the sponsor, including a mix of local and non-local experts, and both academic and professionals who were later invited to participate in the project. in order to ensure our frame met our sponsor organization’s needs, we hosted a full day meeting with a group of stakeholders from the sponsor organization as well as a select group of education experts early on in the process. based on a discussion paper provided by the principal investigators, we discussed the six broad themes identified above, as well as the types of research questions and methodologies which had the potential to have a catalytic impact in the field. insights gleaned from this discussion were taken into consideration during the development of our list of research options outlined below. systematically listing research options by domain of research in a traditional chnri, the small group managing the project would be responsible for creating the initial list of research options. however, for our project, we utilized the approach of dean, et al. (2013), who included two iterations of the chnri in their exercise. based on this adaptation, we developed a short open-ended survey to solicit input about primary/pre-primary education research needs and priorities for a group of countries within a particular region of the world. all 84 education experts were invited to respond to this survey either online or by telephone. in total, we received 22 responses (26%). this initial survey data was then combined with sponsor organization document summary data to generate a comprehensive list of 267 potential research options. in the health sector, it is common for chnri participants to rank hundreds of research options in a chnri exercise (e.g. wanzy, et al., (2013) ranked 466 research options); we, however, did not feel that education experts would participate in our chnri if it required them to rank the 267 research options that we identified through phase one of this project. therefore, for the second phase, we clustered and reduced the list of research options into 89 research questions categorized under key themes. scoring all listed research options by a pre-determined set of criteria based on a review of prior chnri reports and in consultation with the funding agency we developed a set of four criteria which were used for evaluating the research questions. these included: read, fernandez-hermosilla, anderson, & mundy current issues in comparative education 60 1. system impact: research on this question will be catalytic / instrumental in improving system-level policies and interventions that support teaching and learning across diverse contexts in the developing world. 2. school impact: research on this question can lead to substantial improvements in school level practices that support children’s learning and development across diverse contexts in the developing world. 3. student impact: research on this question is likely to lead to substantial improvements in boys’ and girls’ learning and development outcomes in diverse contexts in the developing world 4. research feasibility: research on this question is methodologically feasible in developing world contexts. the ranking of the 86 research questions was completed through an online survey. in this second survey, questions were presented by major thematic area (e.g., teacher development, school management and leadership). respondents could opt out of sections if they did not have sufficient knowledge to respond. thus, the number of respondents varies for different thematic areas because some surveys were only “partially” completed (the respondent completed at least one full section, but not all sections). the second survey was sent to 115 regional education experts including the original 84. 37 responses were received including 27 complete and 10 partial surveys. examples of the questions and results are presented in tables 1 and 2. identifying research priorities for school improvement in the developing world current issues in comparative education 61 table 1. example of overall research questions and results theme proposed research questions (n) system school student feasibility rps aea tl what pedagogical and classroom management strategies are effective in improving the quality of learning in large primary school classes? 27 0.85 0.98 0.95 0.95 93.17 0.80 ecd& g what types of ecd programs have the strongest impact on student learning over time? 17 0.94 0.85 0.94 0.88 90.44 0.79 sm&l what capacities/skills do primary school head teachers need to effectively perform leadership and administrative roles in different contexts? 17 0.88 0.92 0.89 0.92 90.33 0.84 td what are the positive and negative factors affecting teacher attendance and absenteeism? how can these be best addressed? 32 0.88 0.92 0.89 0.92 90.23 0.78 ecd& g what kinds of training and credentials for early childhood program personnel best support effective pre-primary teaching? 15 0.93 0.88 0.84 0.94 89.74 0.77 read, fernandez-hermosilla, anderson, & mundy current issues in comparative education 62 table 2. example of research questions and results in a thematic domain teaching and learning n rps (%) what pedagogical and classroom management strategies are effective in improving the quality of learning in large primary school classes? 27 93.17 what practices are most effective for student transitions from local to national languages and/or english as languages of instruction? 26 89.47 what kinds of innovative non-traditional approaches to teaching and learning are happening in east african schools and classrooms and with what results? 27 89.45 what kinds of supports are needed by primary teachers to implement multilingual education effectively? 25 88.92 how are school systems and schools interpreting and responding to the demands for 21st century learning skills in both policy and practice? what impact is this having on learning outcomes? 26 88.46 the survey invited the respondents to identify their organizational affiliation and position. the characteristics of the 37 respondents to the second chnri survey were as follows: # respondents: n = 37/101 • complete = 27 • partials (answered at least one section) = 10 geography (location of employment, not ethnic affiliation) • from the specific region of the developing world we focused on in this project (three countries represented) = 62% (23/37) • from the developed world (australia, france, switzerland, canada, usa, uk) = 38% (14/37) role (n = 35, 2 missing personal data) • academic = 48% (17/35) • non-academic = 52% (18/35) analysis of the chnri survey responses included computing the research priority score and the average expert agreement score (aea) which shows the degree of agreement and variability across experts on the ratings for each question. while it is possible to weigh certain criteria based on the funding agencies, values, and focus (tomlinson, et al., 2008), the agency which funded this project did not request any weighting. identifying research priorities for school improvement in the developing world current issues in comparative education 63 results of the chnri were presented by listing research questions both by overall ranking based on rps score, as well as by thematic domain area where research questions were listed by their overall rps rank under each theme. rapid reviews of the literature in addition to the chnri exercise, our team completed a series of rapid reviews to synthesize research-based knowledge, issues and knowledge gaps identified in the literature. these reviews covered research literature internationally and regionally in five domains2 (teaching and learning, teacher development, school management and leadership, parent and community and early childhood development and education). the rapid reviews utilized a strategic search method to identify key resources such as existing systematic reviews, literature reviews, reports and other gray literature from well-known and reliable sources on school improvement in general as well as in the contexts of developing countries and the specific region related to this project. to this end our team identified search terms for and recorded more than 765 individual searches (465 in google and 362 in google scholar). we combed through and collected links to potential sources from approximately 4,135 pages of google and google scholar search results. completing the initial search, we identified 1) key sub-themes; 2) prominent authors and organizations; and 3) created a list of documents to be considered for the rapid review. we summarized key resources making note of significant findings, the evidence-base supporting these findings, and any knowledge gaps identified in the literature. the final documents included in the series of rapid reviews focused primarily on knowledge from extensive systematic reviews of the literature related to the sub-themes of this series, supplemented by recent empirical studies of particular relevance to our focus region and 10 other developing country contexts. the findings of this series of rapid reviews were reported alongside the results of the chnri exercise, and contributed to reinforce the overall findings in the prioritization exercise. program budgeting and, marginal analysis and advocacy the results of the chrni process were provided in a detailed report to the project sponsor. this report helped to inform the sponsor organization in setting priorities for research and was then used as the basis for a call for research proposals. the oise team was not involved in the actual selection of research projects that were ultimately funded. reflections from the chnri exercise as mentioned, we are not presenting the results of our chnri exercise in this paper. instead, the following section highlights what we learned about applying the chnri methodology to education research in the context of the developing world. as with any research, there are limitations to consider that arise from the methodologies employed. it is important to remember that the chnri exercise results in a ranking of 2 rapid reviews are available at the cidec website: http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/cidec/research/sesea_research_consultancy.html read, fernandez-hermosilla, anderson, & mundy current issues in comparative education 64 research topics based on the combined ratings of the experts surveyed using a set of criteria for judging the merits of those questions. the evaluation criteria used to rate the research questions on the survey were selected in consultation with the project sponsor. they are not the only criteria that could have been used, and perhaps the results may have varied had different or more criteria been employed. some chnri studies use up to seven criteria, which we judged excessive for this survey. greater response to the second survey (n= 37/115) may have provided more data; however, the current response rate of n=37 exceeds the acceptable levels for robust survey research. more importantly, reports on use of the chnri process in the health sector suggest that once 25-30 responses have been received, the rankings of research priorities do not substantially change as the “exercise reaches saturation” (dean at al., 2013, p.5). our respondents came from a diverse group of academics and professionals working in international agencies, having expertise in education in the region of focus. however, few responses were received from the regional government education authorities we contacted. furthermore, while a number of respondents (n=10) opted out from rating the questions of certain thematic sections, we feel confident that for the lower response sections the experts who chose to respond had sufficient knowledge in that particular thematic domain. however, in future chnri surveys, we would suggest targeted recruiting of experts in specific domains. one of the interesting findings from the chrni exercise was that the initial open-ended survey yielded a wide range of potential topics/questions for research but little consensus on those areas across the 22 experts who responded to that initial survey/interview. only one or two experts explicitly named most topics. it was not possible to identify relative priorities amongst the different questions overall or within each major thematic area from this initial consultation. that fact confirmed the need to engage in a second stage in the research agenda setting process to enable prioritization of possible research questions. after completion of the analysis of the second survey we found the final rankings are relative; numerical differences between the questions are not great. the chnri procedure does not result in judgments of “significant differences” between items in statistical terms. nonetheless, it does produce and reflect a sense of relative priorities drawing upon the knowledge of a broad range of experts in the field of inquiry. while the rapid reviews of the research in specific domains were used to supplement and triangulate the survey findings, the reviews proved especially useful in confirming the importance of the potential research priorities, and in highlighting potential research topics that were not captured in the survey process. conclusions while the traditional chnri model is not directly applicable to education research, an adapted version of this methodology provides an evidence-based tool to help research identifying research priorities for school improvement in the developing world current issues in comparative education 65 funders make tough choices as to what research should be prioritized. a research priority setting exercise of this nature is not able to provide definite answers on what research should be funded, but it does provide an excellent starting point for an informed discussion on what research should be prioritized. in addition to providing a detailed methodology for consensus building and priority setting, we found several other key benefits to the chnri method. as described earlier, our project involved participants from both the global north and the global south. this allowed us to incorporate the opinions and ideas of our colleagues in the global south in the research priority setting process, colleagues whose voices are not well represented in the literature. the creators of the chnri method believe that this priority setting exercise has the potential for broad application in the developing world (rudan, 2012). our experience with the chnri model supports this belief. not only is this a systematic and transparent process for determining a research agenda, but it could also be applied to consensus development and priority setting in other areas of education investment as well. to this end, we believe that the chnri model has great potential for education decision makers in the developing world who may not have access to, or don’t feel their perspectives are accurately or appropriately represented in the global knowledge base. the chnri method allows for decision makers in the global south to identify their own education experts, and provides a structured process that could support decision makers in the global south to set their own research agenda and in turn define their own priorities for development. in addition, this systematic approach for setting a research agenda provides the opportunity to bring academics, policy makers and practitioner experts, together who otherwise would not connect to each other, or would generally not share conversations to build consensus on a field of study. the education field may benefit from a greater number of interactions among experts which occur more regularly in other fields. to sum, an adapted version of the chnri method provides a practical, systematic and transparent approach to prioritizing education research investments on a local, national, regional or global scale. we hope that this paper provided useful information that can be built upon to 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(2009). education for the knowledge economy. retrieved 2010, from world bank: http://web.worldbank.org/wbsite/external/topics/exteducation/ 0,,contentmdk:20161496~menupk:540092~pagepk:148956~pipk:216618~thesite pk:282386,00.html. 12. the ages of globalization: geography, technology, and institutions a critical pedagogy and decolonial analysis.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 27, issue 1, special issue 2025 book review of the ages of globalization: geography, technology, and institutions1 jun kajee united nations sustainable development solutions network introduction economist jeffrey d. sachs in the ages of globalization: geography, technology, and institutions (2020) challenges conventional narratives of development, presenting a historically informed account that interrogates the interactions between geography, technology, and institutions. unlike traditional approaches that often privilege western perspectives (held et al., 1999; steger, 2013; rizvi & lingard, 2010), sachs (2020) draws diverse lessons from seven eras of human history. this approach invites critical examination of how globalization has shaped and continues to shape education. objectives this review engages with sachs’ (2020) work through the lenses of critical pedagogy (freire, 1970; tewell, 2015) and decolonial critiques (mignolo, 2009; tamale, 2020), examining how his historical appraisal of globalization can inform more equitable and contextually responsive approaches to comparative education. by challenging the universal narratives frequently embedded in globalization discourse (connell, 2007), this analysis highlights the potential for reimagining educational practices that recognize diverse knowledge systems and ways of understanding the world. scholars have advocated for increased cultural and contextual sensitivity in educational research to enhance its contributions to theory, policy, and practice (crossley & watson, 2003). this review contributes to comparative education by demonstrating how historical frameworks can guide cross-cultural educational approaches. in doing so, it builds on arnove's (2007) dialectical analysis of global and local forces shaping education systems and spring’s (2008) examination of the globalization of education. outline of the book sachs (2020) divides human history into seven ages of globalization characterized by interactions between geography (physical constraints and opportunities), technology (tools and innovations), and institutions (social organizations and governance structures). this tripartite framework offers a valuable vantage point for comparative education, as one can examine how different educational systems are shaped by these factors and how educational collaborations can address pressing global issues. 1 sachs, j. d. (2020). the ages of globalization: geography, technology, and institutions. columbia university press. © 2025, kajee. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 27(1), 227-232. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en book review departures from traditional frameworks in comparative education sachs’ (2020) historical approach offers a distinct departure from world culture theory and dependency theory in comparative education. world culture theory explains the cultural impacts of global convergence through a neo-institutionalist lens, emphasizing the rationalization of change driven by isomorphism (silova & brehm, 2020). the book’s framework embraces complexity by examining the interplay of geography, technology, and institutions across seven historical ages, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of how local contexts influence and adapt to global forces. similarly, sachs (2020) diverges from dependency theory, which focuses on exploitative relationships between wealthy core nations and impoverished periphery nations, often portraying periphery nations as victims with limited agency (ghosh, 2019). while dependency theory emphasizes economic exploitation, sachs (2020) highlights the challenges and opportunities globalization presents for different regions. by acknowledging local agency and adaptability, sachs (2020) avoids framing periphery nations solely as passive recipients of external forces, offering a more optimistic view of how diverse societies have shaped—and been shaped by—globalization over time. chronological sequence of globalization sachs (2020) outlines seven distinct stages of globalization: the paleolithic age (marked by human migration across continents), neolithic age (agricultural revolution), equestrian age (horse domestication enabling mobility), classical age (emergence of major civilizations), ocean age (maritime exploration), industrial age (mechanization), and digital age (information technology revolution), each defined by significant technological and institutional changes that have shaped human societies over time. this historical analysis is essential for understanding the implications of globalization on education, particularly as sachs (2020) demonstrates how knowledge transmission systems evolved (for example, from oral traditions in the paleolithic age to formal educational institutions in the classical age). his framework highlights the need for contemporary educational systems to adapt to the challenges and opportunities of an interconnected world, fostering innovation in teaching and learning practices. critical pedagogy: foundations for analyzing globalization in education paulo freire's (1970) concept of conscientization provides a powerful lens for examining sachs’ work on globalization. freire's (1970) critique of the ‘banking’ model of education and his advocacy for ‘problem-posing education’ question how knowledge about globalization is internalized. by applying freire’s ideas to sachs' historical analysis, we can uncover hidden power dynamics behind the universality of globalization processes. sachs’ (2020) work might be used to foster critical awareness and empower students to engage more actively with global issues. eamon tewell’s (2015) work on critical information literacy offers a complementary framework for analyzing sachs’ presentation of globalization. tewell's emphasis on questioning widely held assumptions about information and its political nature is 228 current issues in comparative education kajee particularly relevant when examining historical narratives of global development. by applying tewell's insights, we can scrutinize how sachs (2020) contextualizes information about globalization within broader social and political structures. decolonial critiques: deconstructing colonial knowledge production walter mignolo’s (2009) concept of global coloniality provides a useful framework for analyzing sachs’ (2020) historical narrative of globalization. mignolo's emphasis on the ‘decolonial option’ and the call to delinking from empire-centric historical narratives challenges us to interrogate global development. by applying mignolo's insights, we can examine how the book challenges colonial power structures in its depiction of economic and knowledge systems across different times. sylvia tamale's (2020) call for combining decolonial approaches with afro-feminist analysis offers a complementary perspective for evaluating sachs’ work. tamale's emphasis on understanding how colonization, globalization, and neoliberalism have operated as mechanisms of othering and exploitation provides a lens through which to examine sachs’ (2020) portrayal of african and other non-western contexts. this perspective enables us to consider how the book might be reinterpreted to encourage critical dialogue and foster a more inclusive understanding of globalization. contextual variations in globalization's impact one of the central themes in sachs' work is the recognition that globalization is not a uniform process; rather, it manifests differently across various contexts, as illustrated in chapter 6 by his discussion of how the ocean age brought prosperity to european imperial powers while simultaneously resulting in colonization and exploitation for many societies in africa, asia, and the americas. this insight aligns with critical pedagogy's emphasis on contextual awareness and the importance of local knowledge in educational practices (giroux, 2011), as education should be rooted in the lived experiences of learners rather than imposing standardized approaches across different contexts. by acknowledging that educational approaches must be tailored to fit the unique cultural and social dynamics of different communities, sachs (2020) offers a foundation for more participatory and inclusive educational practices. decolonizing globalization narratives in education in chapter 3, sachs highlights the equestrian age's impact on nomadic societies, demonstrating how technological advancements in horse domestication led to increased mobility and cultural exchange, as well as the displacement of indigenous populations. this example illustrates how sachs' work resonates with decolonial thought by challenging the simplistic narratives of progress that may overlook non-western perspectives (robinson, 2002). by advocating for a broader understanding of globalization that includes diverse voices and experiences, sachs opens up possibilities for rethinking how education can engage with global issues in ways that are equitable and just. in this context, partnerships emerge as vital mechanisms for fostering current issues in comparative education 229 book review collaboration and knowledge exchange. sachs’ insights encourage educational leaders to consider how collaborations could be structured to empower marginalized communities and promote social justice within the framework of globalization. critical pedagogy and the role of education from his historical analysis of knowledge transmission across different ages, the book suggests that education must play a foundational role in equipping individuals with the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate complex global issues, particularly in the digital age. this aligns with the principles of critical pedagogy, which advocate for education that empowers students to critically engage with their social realities and become active participants in shaping their communities (parjanadze, 2009). the book highlights the responsibility that educational institutions have in fostering a sense of global citizenship among students. by integrating themes of sustainability, social justice, and cultural awareness into curricula, educators can help students understand their roles within a global context. sachs’ emphasis on the interconnectedness of global challenges serves as a call for educational practices that promote critical thinking and collaborative problem-solving. while sachs does not critique educational models, his analysis of how institutional structures throughout history have perpetuated power imbalances suggests implications for traditional education systems that reinforce hierarchies and inequalities, lending support for educational approaches that challenge such norms and encouraging students to question dominant narratives. this perspective is relevant in the context of educational partnerships, which can serve as platforms for innovative pedagogical practices that prioritize equity and inclusivity. sachs’ work thus provides a compelling rationale for reimagining educational collaborations as spaces for transformative learning that address academic goals and contribute to broader societal change. implications for educational practice the ages of globalization can inform educational practices in several key ways. in curriculum design, the seven-age model provides a structure for developing interdisciplinary curricula that connect local historical patterns to global issues. for instance, educators could create units that trace the evolution of local trade practices from early history to their place in modern global supply chains, highlighting continuities and changes. this approach grounds learning in local realities while fostering an understanding of global interconnectedness. sachs’ emphasis on how geographical and cultural contexts shaped societal development throughout the seven ages of globalization aligns with and enhances critical pedagogy principles, advocating for educational approaches that are responsive to the unique cultural and social dynamics of communities while situating them within a global context. 230 current issues in comparative education kajee sachs’ emphasis on the interplay between geography, technology, and institutions encourages innovative teaching methods. utilizing geographic information system (gis) technology to analyze how local geographical features have influenced historical development and continue to shape current international diplomatic and trade relations, educators can incorporate similar tools to enhance students' understanding of global interconnections elaborated upon in the book. building on this interdisciplinary approach, educators could design project-based learning experiences that require students to analyze global issues through multiple lenses, such as examining how climate change impacts ecosystems, economies, and policy negotiations, thereby cultivating systems thinking skills essential for addressing contemporary challenges. although sachs does not explicitly discuss educational practices or partnerships, his analysis of how institutions evolve and collaborate to address complex challenges underscores the potential importance of school-university partnerships in advancing education for sustainable development (esd). by bringing together researchers, students, educators, and community members, these collaborations can serve as effective mechanisms for integrating global perspectives into local educational contexts. for example, universities could collaborate with local schools to develop project-based learning experiences that require students to analyze local issues within sachs' global historical framework, such as examining how their community's dominant industries fit into broader patterns of global resource distribution and consumption. the implications of sachs' historical analysis for educational equity highlight the importance of fostering balanced power dynamics within school-university collaborations, particularly in comparative education contexts where institutions from different regions and with varying resource levels interact. by prioritizing inclusivity and social justice in their initiatives, these partnerships can help address systemic inequalities that often persist in educational settings. this requires a commitment to ongoing dialogue and collaboration among all partners to ensure that diverse perspectives are represented and valued in decision-making processes. these applications of sachs' work demonstrate how it can inform the content and methods of education, moving beyond broad generalizations to specific, actionable approaches that are locally grounded and globally relevant. limitations while sachs acknowledges diverse global perspectives, there could be a more in-depth exploration of non-western epistemologies and their contributions to global development. an example of this is the concept of ubuntu, an african philosophy that emphasizes interconnectedness and collective well-being, which could offer valuable insights into alternative models of globalization and education (terblanche & waghid, 2023). ubuntu's principles align with sachs' emphasis on interconnected systems and the need for collective action to address global challenges, informing more holistic approaches to sustainable development. incorporating ubuntu and other philosophies, current issues in comparative education 231 book review the book could benefit from a more diverse understanding of global interdependencies and the role of education in fostering an equitable and just future for humanity. conclusion the ages of globalization compels educators and policymakers to fundamentally reassess their approaches to teaching and learning by considering how the historical interplay of geography, technology, and institutions continues to shape educational possibilities and constraints in different global contexts. as we confront unprecedented challenges such as climate change, migration, and conflict, sachs’ insights underscore the important role education must play in fostering a more equitable and resilient society. this book serves not only to catalog the trajectory of global development but also provides a robust toolkit for those dedicated to cultivating impactful educational collaborations that can effectively address the complex challenges of our time. sachs’ work invites comparative education researchers to reimagine education as a powerful catalyst for equity and sustainability by analyzing how different educational systems worldwide can address shared challenges while respecting diverse cultural contexts. it challenges us to envision educational systems that respond to current crises and anticipate those that may arise in the future. in this context, the book provokes comparative education scholars to consider: how can we encourage innovative cross-cultural educational collaborations that embrace diverse epistemological perspectives to empower future generations to contribute to sustainable solutions for a more just and resilient world? jun kajee is a lecturer at southern utah university and a global schools advocate at the sustainable development solutions network under the auspices of the united nations. he holds research positions at the korea institute for maritime strategy, the indo-pacific studies center, and the sealight maritime transparency initiative at stanford university’s gordian knot center for national security innovation. his research has received funding from the european commission and the united states bureau of educational and cultural affairs. jun is the director of ocean college, a microschool based in miami that fosters environmental conservation by engaging young hearts and minds with the awe and wonder of the ocean (https://www.oceancollege.org/) references arnove, r. f. (2007). reframing comparative education: the dialectic of the global and the local. in r. f. arnove & c. a. torres (eds.), comparative education: the dialectic of the global and the local (3rd ed., pp. 1-20). rowman & littlefield. 232 current issues in comparative education kajee connell, r. w. (2007). globalization: the emerging challenge to sociology. in sociology (pp. 1-19). routledge. crossley, m., & watson, k. (2003). comparative and international research in education: globalisation, context and difference. routledge. freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed. penguin random house. ghosh, b. n. (2019). dependency theory revisited. routledge. giroux, h. a. (2011). on critical pedagogy. continuum. held, d., mcgrew, a., goldblatt, d., & perraton, j. (1999). global transformations: politics, economics, and culture. stanford university press. mignolo, w. d. (2009). the idea of latin america. blackwell publishing. mission4point7. (8 august, 2024). announcing ages of globalization, a new way to learn about—and for—the world. mission4point7. https://www.mission4point7.org/news/announcing-ages-of-globalization parjanadze, n. (2009). globalisation theories and their effect on education. ibsu scientific journal, 3(2), 77-88. rizvi, f., & lingard, b. (2010). globalizing education policy. routledge. robinson, w. i. (2002). globalization and the sociology of development: critique and proposals. third world quarterly, 23(6), 1047-71. sachs, j. d. (2020). the ages of globalization: geography, technology, and institutions. columbia university press. silova, i., & brehm, w. c. (2015). from myths to models: the (re) production of world culture in comparative education. globalisation, societies and education, 13(1), 8-33. spring, j. (2008). globalization of education: an introduction. routledge. steger, m. (2013). globalization: a very short introduction. oxford university press. tamale, s. (2020). decolonization and afro-feminism. african books collective. terblanche, j., & waghid, y. (2023). glo-ubuntu as an extension of global citizenship education: cultivating the notion of an african university. south african journal of higher education, 37(2), 272-82. tewell, e. (2015). critical pedagogy and information literacy: a review of the literature. communications in information literacy, 9(1), 62-77. current issues in comparative education 233 https://www.mission4point7.org/news/announcing-ages-of-globalization 6. ai human rights literacy.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 26, issue 2, special issue 2024 ai human rights literacy saah agyemang-badu university of connecticut felisa tibbitts department of law, economics and governance, utrecht university, utrecht, the netherlands and visiting professor, nelson mandela university sage phillips university of connecticut the treatment of artificial intelligence (ai) in the field of education has so far been typically characterized by (a) information about how ai can assist educators in carrying out their work, and (b) concerns about the misuse of ai by learners, for example, concerning plagiarism. the links between ai and ethics within the field of education are much more complex. beyond the concerns about the organization of teaching and learning with the rise of ai—and the associated rights to privacy and safety—there are legitimate needs for instructors and learners to understand how ai affects their daily lives. what are the wider ethical considerations for using ai, particularly from the perspective of human rights norms? this paper critically analyzes some of the human rights at stake regarding the use of ai and its implications for the organization and content of formal education (k-12 and higher education). the human rights perspective on ai’s dynamic and changing field—ai human rights literacy—is critical to convey to instructors and learners as they navigate these new technological developments. this paper overviews human rights relevant to everyday encounters with ai in education. it proposes an ai human rights curriculum to help both learners and educators become critically aware of these human rights implications. keywords: ai, human rights, human rights education, ai literacy. introduction the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (ai) technology presents some of the most profound opportunities and challenges for humanity in the 21st century. ai systems are being integrated across nearly every domain of society, from healthcare and transportation to finance, media, and education. while advocates are enthusiastic about ai’s potential to enhance efficiency, automation, and data-driven policy decision-making, a rising chorus of voices has begun to sound the alarm about the risks of ai posing threats to human rights (zuboff, 2019), and the endurance of democratic values such as non-discrimination and equality (noble, 2018). ai is not neutral; it operates within frameworks shaped by the biases and inequalities embedded in the data it processes and the systems it supports (noble, 2018; eubanks, 2018). these dynamics © 2024, agyemang-badu et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 26(2), 94-111. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en agyemang-badu et al. make it important to consider ai’s impact on human rights worldwide. this is particularly relevant in the educational sector given how education has emerged as a high-stakes arena for upholding human rights. human rights, broadly defined, are the fundamental rights inherent to all individuals, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status. these rights are codified in international legal frameworks such as the universal declaration of human rights (udhr) (1948) and the convention on the rights of the child (crc) (1989). within these frameworks, the right to education (article 26 of the udhr) is considered a cornerstone for the development of individuals and communities. human rights education (hre) is a field of practice specifically focused on fostering knowledge, skills, and values to promote dignity, equality, justice, and democratic engagement (tibbitts, 2002). as ai becomes increasingly integrated into educational systems, human rights can offer a critical lens for assessing the opportunities and risks of using ai in education. hre can provide a guiding framework to prepare educators and learners to maximize ai’s benefits while addressing its risks (united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization [unesco], 2021). two areas of focus have typically characterized the treatment of ai in education: (a) information about how ai can assist educators in carrying out their work, and (b) concerns about learners’ misuse of ai, for example, concerning plagiarism. the links between ai and ethics within the field of education are much more complex. in addition to concerns about the organization of teaching and learning, and the associated rights to privacy and safety, there are legitimate needs for instructors and learners to understand how ai affects their daily lives inside and outside educational settings. in this paper, we examine the intersection of ai and hre, addressing two interrelated questions: what human rights are at stake with ai integration in education? and in what ways can hre support educators and learners to engage critically with ai? we argue that addressing these challenges is a moral imperative for educators and policymakers, ensuring that the transformative potential of ai benefits all learners equally. we undertook a literature review to identify key debates about ai and human rights implications within the field of education. this literature review involved research using the online database ebsco, open-access scholarship, and grey literature on google scholar. based on these results, we explore key human rights at stake when using ai in formal education: privacy, equity, and the right to education. following this literature review, we propose key ai human rights literacy aims for educators and learners that can be contextualized to a wide range of educational settings. the explicit link between ai and hre in our paper advances aims to foreground the moral obligations when using ai in learning environments. the final section of this article proposes an ai human rights literacy curriculum designed to equip educators and learners with tools to navigate these challenges. current issues in comparative education 95 ai human rights literacy definitions of ai ai scientist john mccarthy coined and defined the term ‘artificial intelligence’ in 1956 as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines” (mccarthy et al., 1955). this definition encapsulates the dual aspects of ai: the scientific pursuit of understanding intelligence and the engineering challenge of creating machines that exhibit such intelligence. ai can be categorized into different types based on the capabilities and functionalities exhibited by systems. the earliest approaches in the 1950s and 1960s focused on general ai attempting to demonstrate human cognition but faced challenges scaling to handle complex real-world tasks. this evolved into specialized narrow ai typically focused on excelling at a single application area like translating languages (hernández-orallo & dowe, 2010). narrow ai powers many modern technologies by automatically extracting insights from patterns in data using machine learning without explicitly programmed rules. meanwhile, advanced systems are beginning to incorporate different narrow ai capabilities like computer vision, speech recognition, and natural language processing in an integrated manner, demonstrating some properties of general intelligence across multiple domains. narrow ai or weak ai focuses on performing specific tasks, like recognizing your voice when you chat with siri. this type of ai has a limited context, meaning it doesn’t have a broader understanding or awareness. currently, narrow ai is the most advanced form of ai we have.  artificial general intelligence (agi), sometimes called strong ai, refers to ai that can perform any intellectual task that a human can. it can understand, learn, adapt, and apply knowledge in a broad range of tasks, much like a human being. current systems still rely heavily on training data rather than conceptual knowledge and remain brittle outside fixed contexts. however, innovative approaches keep expanding the boundaries of how algorithms can efficiently learn complex functions, plan using internal models, communicate via language, and transfer expertise between related tasks – bringing science closer to realizing artificial general intelligence (goertzel & pennachin, 2007). theories about agi posit that future systems will self-improve and design ever smarter generations of ai potentially leading to superintelligence surpassing humans across all cognitive faculties. this is superintelligent ai, which goes beyond agi and is, theoretically, smarter than humans in all aspects (bostrom, 2014). the ai revolution has likely only begun scratching the surface of ai's transformative impact. more sophisticated systems integrating multiple ai capabilities like computer vision, speech recognition and natural language processing in general ai architecture could one day match or exceed human-level intelligence across diverse domains. despite skepticism around the possibility of self-improving superintelligent ai or technological singularity, the accelerating pace of ai breakthroughs hints at paradigm shifts in short order (marcus & davis, 2020). the integration of ai into education often focuses on narrow ai technologies, such as personalized learning systems or automated grading tools. these systems have the potential to improve educational access and 96 current issues in comparative education agyemang-badu et al. outcomes by offering tailored learning experiences and real-time feedback. however, this increased reliance on ai raises fundamental questions about ethics and governance in education. the educational sector must grapple with how to leverage ai’s capabilities while safeguarding learners’ rights and ensuring equitable outcomes. human rights at stake with ai human rights frameworks, such as the udhr, establish education as a universal right, emphasizing principles of equitable access, privacy, and dignity. the integration of ai into education presents significant opportunities to advance these rights but simultaneously raises profound ethical concerns. this section examines three critical rights that are at stake in the age of ai, with a specific focus on implications for education settings: the right to privacy; freedom from bias, discrimination and right to equality; and the right to education. berendt et al. (2020) underscore the need to highlight essential human rights as a starting point for implementing ai in educational systems. these rights-related concerns are critical for evaluating the use of ai in education and serve as a foundation for designing curriculum content to foster ai human rights literacy. the final section of this paper will expand on this potential curriculum, offering insights into how ai can be approached through a human rights lens, empowering students to understand and navigate its implications. the right to privacy the integration of ai into education offers the promise of enhanced learning personalization and operational efficiency. however, it also raises significant concerns about the fundamental human right to privacy. machine learning systems routinely collect vast quantities of data, including students' academic performance, behavioral analytics, and sensitive personal or biometric information. while often justified as necessary for improving educational outcomes, this data collection poses critical risks to students' autonomy and dignity, particularly given the opacity of these technologies (park & humphry, 2019). without robust safeguards and democratic oversight, these practices can lead to significant privacy violations, undermining trust in educational institutions. these ai systems collect and analyze user data through diverse methods such as online activities, purchases, location tracking, and surveillance technologies. within educational contexts, learning management systems (lms) and adaptive learning platforms use similar methods to optimize learning pathways, gathering granular details about student interactions (mayer-schönberger & cukier, 2014). while these tools enhance personalization, the lack of transparency regarding how data is used or who has access to it raises ethical concerns. students, parents, and educators are often unaware of the extent to which these systems collect, store, and utilize data, which limits their ability to make informed decisions about participation. studies underscore the limited awareness students have of data privacy risks. for example, research by selwyn (2019) current issues in comparative education 97 ai human rights literacy found that over 70% of students using ai-based learning platforms were unaware of the extent of data collected about them. this lack of awareness undermines their ability to give informed consent and leaves them more susceptible to exploitation by opaque systems. one of the most concerning aspects of ai in education is its potential to exacerbate existing power imbalances. students in marginalized communities are particularly vulnerable to privacy violations. many of these students lack the digital literacy or institutional support needed to understand their data rights, leaving them disproportionately exposed to potential misuse (slade & prinsloo, 2013). schools serving under-resourced populations often rely on free or low-cost ai tools with inadequate privacy protections or unclear data ownership policies. this dynamic perpetuates systemic inequities, disproportionately exposing vulnerable communities to exploitation. children, as a demographic, are uniquely at risk. their limited capacity for informed decision-making about privacy and data sharing makes them particularly vulnerable. the normalization of data collection in educational settings erodes their expectation of privacy from an early age. scholars like zuboff (2019) caution against the unchecked expansion of surveillance systems, which shift societal norms toward control and monitoring rather than empowerment. in education, this shift not only jeopardizes individual rights but also undermines the trust necessary for effective learning environments. the lack of regulatory clarity further compounds these issues. while frameworks like the european union's general data protection regulation (gdpr) establish principles for data consent, minimization, and transparency, many of these systems in education fail to adhere to these standards consistently. human rights advocates argue that the rapid pace of technological change necessitates updated regulations emphasizing both data protection and user empowerment (european council, 2023). current practices, which often prioritize optimization over transparency, fall short of these ideals. to address these challenges, educational institutions and policymakers must ensure that privacy is a core principle in the design and implementation of these ai systems. data collection should be minimized and strictly limited to what is necessary for educational purposes. anonymization techniques must be rigorously applied to ensure data cannot be traced back to individual students (unesco, 2021). systems must operate with full transparency, explaining how data is collected, stored, and used. students and their families should have the right to opt out of invasive practices without forfeiting access to educational benefits. these measures are crucial for fostering trust and ensuring ai in education empowers learners rather than exploiting them. safeguarding the right to privacy in educational ai demands a paradigm shift prioritizing student empowerment over technological efficiency. this shift requires 98 current issues in comparative education agyemang-badu et al. rigorous oversight, robust regulatory frameworks, and an ethical commitment from all stakeholders to uphold the dignity and autonomy of students. without such measures, the promise of ai in education risks being overshadowed by its potential to normalize surveillance, undermining the very rights it should protect. freedom from bias and discrimination and the right to equality the integration of ai into educational systems raises critical ethical and practical concerns regarding bias, discrimination, and systemic inequality. ai, often perceived as neutral and objective, operates within frameworks shaped by historical data and algorithmic design, frequently amplifying pre-existing societal inequities. this section explores the structural roots of bias in ai, its manifestations within educational contexts, and its broader implications for the right to equality as enshrined in international human rights frameworks. bias in ai systems stems from their dependence on historical data and algorithmic processes, both of which often reflect entrenched social inequities. data used to train ai systems frequently encode biases present in society, leading to discriminatory outcomes. for instance, hiring algorithms trained on data from male-dominated industries have consistently favored male candidates, perpetuating gender disparities (dastin, 2018). in educational contexts, similar biases emerge in automated grading systems and predictive analytics, which disproportionately penalize students whose cultural or learning styles deviate from majority norms. a particularly concerning example of bias in ai is its racial dimension. facial recognition technologies deployed in schools, for instance, have been shown to misidentify individuals with darker skin tones at significantly higher rates than those with lighter skin tones (buolamwini & gebru, 2018). this misidentification not only undermines the reliability of such technologies but also exposes students of color to heightened surveillance and punitive measures, mirroring broader societal patterns of over-policing and systemic marginalization. algorithmic discrimination is further evident in predictive analytics, which often relies on socio-economic markers associated with lower academic performance without accounting for structural inequities. tools designed to identify "at-risk" students can inadvertently reinforce stereotypes and limit opportunities for marginalized populations. eubanks (2018) highlights how such systems, while intended to support interventions, often perpetuate cycles of disadvantage by lowering expectations for certain student groups. this underscores the pressing need to integrate ethical training and bias mitigation strategies into ai development and deployment. the principle of equality, as articulated in article 1 of the udhr, asserts that "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." however, the deployment of ai in education risks undermining this cornerstone of human rights by entrenching systemic inequities. the reliance on historical data within ai systems often results in the current issues in comparative education 99 ai human rights literacy replication and amplification of social biases, particularly in areas such as student placement, scholarship allocation, and grading systems. these biases have profound implications for the educational experiences of marginalized communities. automated grading systems, for example, tend to prioritize surface-level correctness, often penalizing the creativity and critical thinking skills exhibited by students from diverse cultural or linguistic backgrounds (benjamin, 2019). similarly, predictive analytics used to monitor student performance often classify students from underprivileged backgrounds in ways that reinforce negative stereotypes, ultimately limiting their opportunities for growth and advancement. this cycle of bias not only perpetuates existing inequalities but also fundamentally undermines the goal of equitable education. the digital divide constitutes a significant barrier to the equitable deployment of ai in education. access to ai-driven tools is predicated on reliable internet connectivity, technological infrastructure, and digital literacy, resources that are unevenly distributed across socio-economic lines. rural and underfunded schools often lack the means to adopt advanced ai technologies, leaving their students at a significant disadvantage compared to their peers in wealthier institutions. a study by the world economic forum (2020) found that students in low-income households were twice as likely to lack basic digital literacy skills compared to those from higher-income households. this disparity exacerbates educational inequities, limiting the ability of underserved communities to benefit from the transformative potential of ai. the intersection of ai and equality is particularly concerning for students with disabilities or those from minority linguistic and cultural groups. ai systems, such as speech recognition tools, frequently perform poorly with diverse speech patterns or accents, alienating students whose needs are not represented in the training data (noble, 2018). similarly, adaptive learning platforms often operate on assumptions about ‘typical’ learning trajectories, further marginalizing students and requiring alternative approaches to education. tackling bias and promoting equality in educational ai systems requires deliberate, multifaceted interventions. the development of ai systems must prioritize the use of diverse and representative datasets that capture the experiences of all learners, particularly those from historically marginalized groups. scholars such as buolamwini and gebru (2018) advocate for inclusive data collection practices as a foundational step toward equitable ai design. regular audits and fairness assessments are critical to identifying and mitigating biases before they result in harm. these processes should be integrated throughout the lifecycle of ai systems to ensure accountability and transparency. participatory policymaking is equally essential, involving educators, students, and community stakeholders in decisions about ai deployment to ensure that the voices of those most affected are centered. investments in digital infrastructure and literacy programs must be prioritized to bridge the digital divide. policymakers and educational institutions should provide 100 current issues in comparative education agyemang-badu et al. underfunded schools with the resources necessary to adopt ai technologies while equipping students with the skills to navigate these tools responsibly. finally, transparency mechanisms must be embedded in ai systems to explain decision-making processes and establish avenues for redress in cases of unfair outcomes. ethical training programs for technologists and educators can further ensure that the deployment of ai aligns with principles of equity and human dignity. right to education the right to education is recognized as a fundamental human right essential for empowering and developing individuals and societies. this right emphasizes not only access but also the quality and inclusivity of education, aiming to foster the full development of human potential and promote social equality unesco (2021). the introduction of ai into educational systems presents both opportunities to enhance this right and significant challenges that could undermine it if left unaddressed. ai technologies have demonstrated considerable potential to enhance education. personalized learning platforms, for example, adapt content and pacing to individual students’ needs, enabling more tailored and effective educational experiences. intelligent tutoring systems can provide real-time feedback, helping students overcome specific challenges and facilitating more efficient learning processes (luckin et al., 2016; kulik & fletcher, 2016). such innovations hold promise to address some of the longstanding gaps in education, particularly for students requiring additional support. however, these advancements are unevenly distributed, often exacerbating existing disparities and raising critical questions about the universal realization of the right to education. over-reliance on ai in education can narrow the scope of learning to metrics that are easily quantifiable, potentially sidelining broader educational goals such as critical thinking, creativity, and social-emotional development. automated grading systems, for instance, often prioritize surface-level correctness over more nuanced skills like problem-solving or collaborative reasoning (luckin et al., 2016). this emphasis risks reducing education to a transactional process, undermining its role as a transformative force that nurtures holistic personal and intellectual growth. the integration of ai also presents risks to teacher roles and autonomy. while ai can serve as a valuable supplementary tool, excessive reliance on it may erode the essential human elements of education (selwyn, 2019). teachers play a critical role in mentoring, fostering empathy, and cultivating relationships that contribute to students’ emotional and social well-being. ai, no matter how advanced, cannot replicate these human interactions. instead, they must be designed to support educators, amplifying their capacity to address diverse learning needs without replacing their unique contributions. the right to education is fundamentally tied to the principle of inclusivity. ai systems often fail to adequately accommodate the needs of students with disabilities, those from linguistic minorities, or those with non-standard learning trajectories (kleinberg et al., current issues in comparative education 101 ai human rights literacy 2020). for example, many adaptive learning platforms rely on language models that do not account for regional dialects or non-native speakers, alienating students who may already face barriers to learning. inclusive design, informed by diverse user inputs, is therefore essential. to align ai-driven education with the right to education, deliberate policies and practices are required. policymakers must prioritize investments in digital infrastructure to bridge the technological divide, ensuring that all students—regardless of their socioeconomic background—have access to the tools necessary for effective learning. equally important is the need for teacher training programs that equip educators with the skills to integrate ai into their teaching while preserving the human-centered values of education. ai should be viewed as a complement to, rather than a replacement for traditional educational practices (heffernan & heffernan, 2014). governance frameworks must place equity and inclusivity at the center of ai adoption in education. this includes regular audits of ai systems to identify and address biases, participatory policymaking that involves marginalized communities in decision-making, and clear accountability mechanisms to ensure that these systems align with the broader goals of education (unesco, 2022). without such measures, the promise of ai in education will remain unrealized for many, leaving the right to education as an unfulfilled aspiration rather than a lived reality. human rights education and critical engagement with ai after acknowledging some key human rights at stake with the use of artificial intelligence in education, we now turn our focus on how educators and learners can critically engage with ai through hre. children, youth, and adults all need to have their human rights protected as ai becomes integrated into education systems. in this section, we first examine what educators and administrators need to know about ai from a human rights perspective in terms of the use of ai in schools and educational systems. second, we explore what learners need to know about ai from a human rights perspective in terms of their functioning in wider society. we then overview the implications for curriculum development and training of teachers and administrators. what do administrators and educators need to know about ai use in the classroom from a human rights perspective? to ensure that education is protected, upheld, and promoted through a human rights lens when incorporating ai into school curricula and culture, educators and administrators must be vigilant about potential human rights violations. earlier in this paper we mentioned ways that teachers are using ai in the classroom. administrators are also using ai in their roles, such as in educational monitoring, where ai replaces the manual inputting and generation of information and data. administrators may also 102 current issues in comparative education agyemang-badu et al. interact with ai to predict funding needed in their schools. however, school leaders must not lose sight of the risks that come with these new technologies. scholars are concerned that the biggest winners of ai in education are technology companies who collect data from ai educational initiatives (berendt et al, 2020). administrators require critical training to understand the essential ways that ai can be used in the classroom and school, and how to mitigate any threats to children’s human rights. administrators should support educators in their classrooms through education and training on the responsible use of ai technologies, as well as access to the ai technologies themselves. educators need to understand the ai applications and software they are using and be critically aware of the strengths and weaknesses of ai in learning, to be “empowered – not overpowered – by technology” (holmes et al., 2022, p. 11). many areas within ai need to be researched and addressed concerning k-12 education, such as machine learning integration, teaching assistant systems, as well as computational processes. however, the main human rights concerns are privacy, data protection, and collection surrounding ai to ensure that there is an effort to address human rights at stake with ai in the classroom. one of the key worries about educators using ai is the use of predictive systems. here, the generation of data used to monitor student performance and generate tasks to benefit their learning on behalf of the teacher is effective insofar as the data being used has not been produced with an influence of biases (berendt et. al, 2020). with the increased reliance on machine learning to generate predictive data, the direct monitoring of student progress by the teacher in the classroom is greatly reduced, with potentially less oversight by the teacher on predictive data that has been influenced by bias. another potential negative side effect is that teachers will have less personal interaction with students. educators must be aware of ai technologies such as natural language processing (nlp) that can produce “auto-journalism” (miao et. al, 2021, p. 9) and can prove to be a risk to their critical thinking development. we have seen nlp perform with chatgpt, producing paragraphs or whole essays that students attempt to use as a final project. there is another layer we must analyze with not only nlp’s potential to complete a student’s task(s) but also the chance that with such a resource, students may inevitably hinder their ability to critically think and develop solutions to problems on their own without any awareness of their doing so. what do learners need to know about ai’s presence and be responsible users of ai from a human rights perspective? returning to the risks at stake with the right to education, learners need to be made aware of how ai collects their data for algorithm and academic purposes and how it can affect their learning. students should know that their right to privacy is at stake if ai tools are collecting their data. berendt et. al (2020) discuss “the ability to opt-out” of data current issues in comparative education 103 ai human rights literacy collection and state that students who are facing obligatory participation may face “a reduction of fundamental human rights, including the right to exercise autonomy and to make choices” (p. 5). however, opting out may influence the overall quality of a data set, through the underrepresentation of learners coming from groups who have opted out. one way forward lies in the hands of policymakers to ensure this can happen through students taking action to protect their rights, as noted by unesco, “facilitate the participation of student representatives in countrywide initiatives that promote new competencies in the curriculum” (miao et. al, 2021, p. 34). learners should be able to choose when and where their data and records of achievement are utilized, but those with less privilege might have less access to support on how to make these decisions in ways that help them in the future (berendt et al, 2020). as ai continues to permeate educational environments, formulating and implementing proactive policies that uphold principles of diversity, interpretability, and universal inclusion is imperative to prevent the inadvertent instrumentalization of inequality. human rights frameworks emphasizing participation, transparency, and non-discrimination should serve as guiding principles to ensure that educational ai empowers diverse learners equitably (unesco, 2022). overview of ai and human rights literacy curriculum the human rights perspective on the dynamic and changing field of ai, ai human rights literacy, is critical to convey to both educators and learners as they navigate these new technological developments in their everyday lives. unesco’s ai and education: guidance for policymakers reports “future learning and training systems must equip all people with core ai competencies, including understanding of how ai collects and can manipulate data, and skills to ensure safety and protection of personal data” (miao et. al, 2021, p.1). arguably, before students are allowed to utilize ai tools in the classroom, they must be made aware of this phenomenon and understand that if granted access to ai alongside learning, it cannot be trusted one hundred percent. that is, ai is generated through data input, and users would be remiss to assume that that data is completely trustworthy and accurate. ai has much to offer the next generation of learners, however, the responsibility to identify the risks does not fall solely on policymakers. educators and students must engage in dialogue about the consequences of fully entrusting ai technologies before assuming that they can solely rely on them. empirical evidence underscores the importance of integrating ai ethics into education. a study by unesco (2021) found that students who participated in ai ethics workshops demonstrated a 25% increase in their ability to identify biases in algorithmic outputs and improved digital literacy by 30%. similarly, programs at stanford university focusing on ethical ai use have shown that students who engage with real-world case studies are better equipped to critically analyze the societal implications 104 current issues in comparative education agyemang-badu et al. of ai technologies (li, 2018). these findings highlight the potential of such curricula to empower learners and mitigate risks associated with ai integration. the ai, human rights, and education module of six lessons is a collaborative effort between human rights education associates (hrea) and pedagog.ai.1 this curriculum assumes that learners and educators need to know both the basis of ai as well as human rights. although this curriculum is not able to address all of the human rights and ai topics presented in this article, it offers a gateway into understanding the human rights at stake and what are the areas requiring not only vigilance but good governance. this module will be open access as of january 2025 on both websites. below is an overview of the lesson themes, which are eligible to be used by human rights education organizations as well as educational institutions and schools interested in addressing basic ai literacy through the lens of human rights. these lessons will ideally all be taught, and sequentially. however, educators might opt to use a fewer number of lessons, according to their interests and opportunities to implement. lesson 1: the basics of ai and ethical frameworks in this lesson, learners will explore the basic definitions of artificial intelligence and examples of how ai is already being used by governments, schools, corporations, and other institutions in ways that are impacting lives around the world. learners will then dive into the ethical and human rights implications of ai use through short scenarios and small group discussions. learners will be able to: ● define artificial intelligence and name common ai technologies  ● identify the benefits and harms of various uses of ai technology ● identify frameworks that human society uses to codify ideas of right and wrong including religion, ethics, and human rights ● apply these frameworks to a specific ai use case. lesson 2: critical analysis of ai and human rights in this lesson, learners will learn about international human rights standards and how these apply to the area of generative ai. learners will then work in small groups to investigate various examples of ai use and discuss both positive and negative human rights implications. learners will be able to: ● describe the origins and key features of human rights ● critically analyze examples of ai use from a human rights perspective. 1 hrea is an international non-governmental organization that supports human rights education; the training of human rights defenders and professional groups; and the development of educational materials and programming. (see hrea.org) pedagog.ai is a platform that empowers educators with ai-driven tools and resources to create engaging lesson plans, assignments, assessments, and more. the curriculum was developed by felisa tibbitts, nina bamberg and jay pier. current issues in comparative education 105 ai human rights literacy lesson 3: ai governance from a human rights perspective in this lesson, learners explore the various actors responsible for writing principles and policies related to ai. learners will understand the current ai policy landscape and will explore a key resource in ai governance to discern how such documents are developed to deduce the major themes and human rights considerations relating to ai. learners will be able to: ● explain the nature and purposes of ai governance documents ● identify institutional actors with a responsibility to create ai governance and defend the special role of international organizations ● define ai governance and describe potential mechanisms, such as principles, policies, and laws ● analyze common themes found within ai governance documents from a human rights perspective. lesson 4: impacts of ai on the right to education – opportunities and risks this lesson begins with a discussion on the right to education, as it relates to access and quality. learners then work in small groups to discuss the ways that ai-supported personalized & adaptive learning might enhance or impede the right to education.  the class concludes with a general discussion of ways that any negative consequences of this, and other ai, technologies might be minimized. learners will be able to: ● understand the fundamental principles of the right to education and its importance ● identify the potential opportunities that ai can provide in enhancing educational access, personalized learning, and teaching effectiveness ● recognize that unequal access to ai technology exacerbates educational inequalities ● analyze the risks and ethical concerns associated with the use of ai in education, such as privacy, bias, and the digital divide ● identify recommendations for leveraging the benefits of ai while mitigating its risks in the educational context. lesson 5: ai and human rights literacy building in this lesson, learners will be introduced to the ways that biases and factual inaccuracies can be present in outputs from ai tools like chatbots. learners will work in small groups to analyze key differences between ai-generated and human-written text. learners will be able to: ● articulate how ai chatbot tools can produce human-like writing  ● compare and contrast human-written and ai-generated texts  ● discuss the qualities of a reliable source  ● discuss the potential impacts of ai tools that can produce human-like writing on society. 106 current issues in comparative education agyemang-badu et al. lesson 6: researching ai and human rights in public services this lesson prepares learners to do a research project in which they choose an ai tool being used in a public sector (e.g., healthcare, the justice system) and research how it might be used to promote hr, how it might have hr challenges, and how to promote responsible use. these results are presented in a physical poster or an online digital environment. learners will be able to: ● identify and research the functions of one or more ai tools/technologies in use in a public sector setting ● critically assess the outcomes of the use of these ai tools and technologies from the perspective of human rights ● propose strategies for reducing or removing negative human rights impacts of the use of these ai technologies in a public sector setting ● communicate these findings in a poster for public viewing. conclusion as the integration of artificial intelligence into education continues to accelerate, the imperative for comprehensive governance frameworks that uphold fundamental human rights has never been more urgent. the analysis presented in this paper has underscored the profound risks ai poses to core principles like equality, privacy, freedom of expression, and democratic participation within learning environments if deployed without rigorous safeguards. conversely, this technology also holds immense promise to enhance access, personalization, and efficiency in education, provided it is harnessed in service of empowering students rather than optimizing for narrow metrics. ultimately, establishing a balanced, rights-respecting approach to ai in schools will require collaborative policymaking that centers the voices of diverse stakeholders from technical experts and educators to marginalized community members directly impacted. robust transparency, accountability, and redress mechanisms must be enshrined to ensure algorithmic decision-making is fair, contestable, and aligned with human dignity. moreover, comprehensive digital and ai literacy programs empowering both students and teachers are crucial to cultivating their agency and critical thinking in an increasingly automated world. as ai's disruptive power continues to reshape fundamental structures of teaching and learning, the moral imperative to place human rights at the center of this technological revolution has never been clearer. by proactively defining ethical frameworks and inclusive governance models, policymakers and stakeholders can help ensure ai becomes a great equalizer empowering the next generation, rather than an instrument of oppression and control. the stakes are high, but the opportunity to create a more just, enlightened future through technology-enabled education remains within our grasp. current issues in comparative education 107 ai human rights literacy saah agyemang-badu is a researcher specializing in human rights and culturally responsive education frameworks. her academic focus bridges global human rights principles and local cultural epistemologies, advancing equitable education systems. she holds advanced degrees in public administration and human rights and has extensive experience in international and cross-cultural educational initiatives. felisa tibbitts is unesco chair in human rights and higher education and chair in human rights education at the human rights centre of utrecht university (netherlands). she is also a visiting professor at nelson mandela university (south africa). felisa is the co-founder and director of human rights education associates (www.hrea.org). sage phillips is a proud penobscot nation citizen. her main focus is indigenous education rights as human rights, specifically equitable solutions for indigenous youth seeking access to higher education institutions, primarily land-grant institutions.  references angwin, j., larson, j., mattu, s., & kirchner, l.  (2016, may 23). machine bias. propublica. www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sente ncing akyuz, y. 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(2019). the age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power (1st ed.). publicaffairs books. current issues in comparative education 111 http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2018 https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2020 © 2012 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(1): 100-113. small state, large world, global university? comparing ascendant national universities in luxembourg and qatar justin j.w. powell wissenschaftszentrum berlin für sozialforschung (wzb) comparing the small states of luxembourg and qatar, i analyze their ascendant national universities to find out the extent to which these higher education institutions reflect global norms relating to research universities – or the traditions of their host countries. which characteristics of “worldclass” universities exist in the université du luxembourg and qatar university, embedded in two unusual small states that are hyper-diverse culturally and extremely wealthy? despite significant cultural differences, both luxembourg and qatar have compensated perceived vulnerabilities of small states as they invest in national skill formation and the production of knowledge. although tensions remain regarding the languages of instruction, the international recruitment of scholars and students, and sustainability, these universities are growing in prominence regionally and globally. introduction science, based on intellectual dialogue, conferences, and publications in the lingua franca of the day, is a thoroughly worldwide activity. research universities offer spaces for multilingual, multicultural learning and for scientific discovery. increasingly, national progress relies on successfully institutionalizing universities that promise to generate the “knowledge society” and the respective economy (ramirez & meyer, in press). today, all countries invest in higher education, often in a national university. because the world has many more small than large nations, examining university institutionalization in such countries can help us gauge global scientific capacity-building. at the same time, the “global financial crisis” since 2008 has shown the importance of sustainability – and its limits (calhoun, 2011). the costs of tertiary education have risen by 15% across the developed world since 2000 (oecd, 2011). some of the most prestigious and well-endowed higher education institutions, both private and public, have had to radically reduce their teaching and research investments. can the dramatic expansion in student services and expenditures of tertiary education institutions in the anglophone world that have long led the global league tables be sustained – or be successfully emulated elsewhere? given massive current financial dilemmas in uk and us higher education (see head, 2011), striving states and institutional entrepreneurs farther down in the rankings have a tremendous opportunity to attract the best and brightest. however, this must largely be financed through considerable state investments, which were also crucial in the initial growth and world renown of leading european and american universities. creating new institutions from the ground up may involve high costs and myriad challenges, especially for small states due to limited highly-qualified human resources and lack of economies of scale (crossley, bray & packer, 2011; martin & bray, 2012). numerous successful universities in regions around the world, such as the national university of singapore (www.nus.edu.sg), have provided considerable returns from national investments in education and science (salmi, 2009). newly-established universities may capitalize on the freedom to bypass old paradigms and utilize new technologies. two nascent national universities with ambitious agendas – the université du luxembourg and qatar university – are embedded in very small but exceptionally wealthy states in which each small state, large world, global university? current issues in comparative education 101 university emulates global goals simultaneously with serving local needs, such as labor market demand. comparing recent institutionalization processes there provides insights into how small states compensate being on the perceived periphery of a scientific world characterized by stark and increasingly global rivalry. these attempts to produce an internationally-competitive higher education institution emphasize key features of what it means to be a “small state,” and helps to explore the transformation of barriers into advantages. the comparison of luxembourg and qatar emphasizes similarities and differences in the strategies developed and investments made in attempts to join the elite ranks of world-class universities. from the beginning, universities have been standard-bearers of the nation-states in which they are located, often serving to train elites – from civil servants and business leaders to clergy and intellectuals. yet they have also reached beyond such boundaries, be they political, linguistic, or disciplinary, oriented as they are to universal goals such as truth-seeking and cross-cultural understanding. higher education, more than ever due to massive educational expansion in societies worldwide (schofer & meyer, 2005), is often viewed as the most assured pathway to elevated social status for individuals and to economic growth for societies, as those with tertiary education qualifications often enjoy higher salaries and lower unemployment rates than other groups.[1] higher education, while exhibiting durable national differences (and sometimes nationalistic tendencies, seen in the training of diplomats and development of science-based armaments), has become increasingly international in orientation over recent decades. to analyze the contemporary internationalization of higher education in small states, this contribution uses available research literature to compare two relatively recently founded national universities, striving for international reputation, that belong to states among the smallest but wealthiest globally: luxembourg in europe and qatar in the middle east. reflecting the theme of the special issue, i proceed by discussing ‘smallness/ and briefly portray these two small states that host ascendant research universities. i then discuss major trends in the internationalization of tertiary education. delving into the two case studies, i compare these universities in their respective contexts, asking if and how ‘smallness’ is reflected in each national university. what goals and functions does each national university have? finally, which characteristics do these newly-founded universities – striving to be ‘world-class’ – exhibit? theoretical approach theorizing smallness, an often-overlooked characteristic in the research literature on statehood (but see katzenstein, 1985), demands attention to definitions, theoretical goals, and empirical measures. small states have particular advantages and disadvantages (see, e.g., bray & packer, 1993), yet many ascribed characteristics do not hold empirically, also when confronted with the two cases under investigation here. indeed, as bacchus (2008) emphasizes, regardless of their size, small states “can improve their development prospects by skillful planning” (p. 127). here, i discuss three layers in which national universities in small states develop and attempt to realize their global ambitions: small state context, transnational trends in education, and the research university locally and globally. i examine two nascent educational organizations in small states of different world regions, being constructed within contrasting institutional environments, and utilizing very different resource-bases to grow. these universities are similar in their ambition to become part of global dialogue (and to compare favorably with hundreds of other research universities), to be regional leaders, and to address local and national needs. yet they have chosen particular emphases and selected different strategies to reach these goals. 102 current issues in comparative education powell ‘small’ states? many characteristics come to mind when ‘small’ states are considered. often, these seem to be vulnerable and peripheral, due to both the lack of large populations and little land, due to their geo-political location, or due to limited economic capacity (bacchus, 2008; bray & packer, 1993). yet, as is evident in the cases of luxembourg and qatar, even very small states may exert influence via elite networks, supranational coordination, and business acumen far beyond their population size or land area. for example, these countries host powerful media companies, al jazeera (www. aljazeera.com) in qatar and radio-television-luxembourg (www.rtl.com) that wield considerable regional influence by shaping political consciousness. furthermore, successful small states may convert perceived disadvantages, such as the lack of considerable domestic consumer markets, into factors of strength, such as highly successful trading relationships with other countries near and far. import/export flows and labor migrations are also necessary because these countries are not self-reliant or self-sustaining; this is also true in academic markets. due to the reliance on other countries’ universities to train their citizens, both their labor forces and their education systems reflect a high degree of internationalization, especially at tertiary level. the two countries chosen for in-depth comparative analysis are atypical in many ways, as they compensate well for their modest physical and population size. both have chosen to invest in founding and expanding their own national university to respond to changing global norms and economic conditions. most importantly, luxembourg and qatar now attempt to convert their current economic success into long-term affluence via education and science. as a correlate of heavy in-migration and cultural diversity, multilingualism is a further hallmark of life in these small states, although languages are also often highly stratified in their usage and prestige. internally, less functional differentiation and tight social ties can ease decision-making and bundle resources across boundaries that in other contexts would be challenging. for example, cosmopolitan life and elite communication in both countries is centered in a single dominant city. other strategies to compensate for their lack of military force are advanced diplomacy (as seen in regional integration attempts, such as the benelux or the gulf cooperation council) or political neutrality, which led to luxembourg to host several european union institutions, such as the european court of justice. perhaps decisively, these small states have amassed vast wealth from their strategic dominance in key industrial sectors. they have done so whether through discovery and extraction of national resource holdings, like qatar’s traditional pearl trade or its current oil and natural gas reserves, or in highly profitable global industries, such as luxembourg’s traditional steel foundries, now largely replaced by supranational governance and banking. thus, while small in terms of population and area, these states are large in resources and influence. indeed, the countries chosen for this comparison are listed first and second by the international monetary fund (2011) in terms of gpd per capita: qatar at intl$102,891 and luxembourg at intl$84,829. both countries have fashioned high-tech campuses for their universities. university city, in the capital of doha, qatar, hosts a number of prominent foreign universities’ branch campuses; qatar university’s own campus is also ultramodern. the université du luxembourg, while still housed in several regal structures, will soon move into a completely refurbished former steel factory site (campus belval), alongside the border to france. this cité des sciences initially budgeted at €600 million and comprising 20 new buildings, has begun to accommodate research institutes, banks and retail stores, and r&d companies. making up for lacking private endowments, these small states are investing heavily in top-quality foundations for education and science. thus, these countries provide good cases to examine what remains of smallness when this current issues in comparative education 103 small state, large world, global university? concept is separated from the challenge of finding sufficient financial resources to establish the material and human infrastructures that are necessary but not sufficient to create a university competitive with top institutions worldwide. in both countries, elites have marshaled support for these universities because they recognize the importance of education and science for the future development of their countries, which depends, more than ever, on transnational economic, political, and cultural networks. before analyzing the relationship of each organization to its state, its region, and the rest of the world, the changing conditions for higher education and science – whether attempted in europe or the middle east – must be addressed. to what extent are these universities orienting themselves to global norms and higher education trends, such as massification, mobility, and internet-based teaching and learning – or rather focusing on national priorities? what challenges exist for these universities aiming to become world-class? large world: transnationalization of higher education and science the ongoing trans-nationalization of higher education and science tests traditional nation-based analyses of institutional change in education. yet even cross-national analyses often discount longstanding differences in the foundational principles undergirding these complex systems. in response, neo-institutional analyses of higher education have explored the diffusion of worldwide ideas and norms relating to higher education (drori, meyer, ramirez, & schofer, 2003; schofer & meyer, 2005). such work has uncovered the ideologies, values, and assumptions that guide educators and policymakers as they continuously attempt to optimize their institutions and organizations based on comparisons with other countries. continued growth in the numbers of youth and adults attending all types of higher education institutions is a key element behind both growing scientific capacity and the role of the university in knowledge production. for example, about half a million students, or just 1% of the youth age-cohort, were enrolled in higher education worldwide in 1900; a century later approximately 100 million youth were enrolled, representing 20% of the college-aged cohort (schofer & meyer, 2005). this phenomenal growth forms a critical base for the recruiting and training of the world’s future scientists and scholars (altbach, 2005). it also supports the growth of scientific literacy and educational attainment that affects occupations, businesses, and indeed all dimensions of society (baker, forthcoming). while the motivations for pursuing internationalization are myriad, most suit small states extremely well, because of the aforementioned structural and cultural conditions often present. the rationale and vision shared by many governments of how to build capacity for science is easily grasped: infrastructure for research lies at the heart of the knowledge triangle – “the beneficial combination of research activity, specialised education/training and innovation that advances our knowledge” (ec, 2010a, p. 3). in terms of teaching today, internationally-oriented universities aim to prepare students for employment as well as for global citizenship, especially in states that rely to a large extent on foreign workers and the export of goods and services. in terms of research, governments hope universities will strengthen institutional capacity and broaden networks, to contribute to knowledge production on key issues, to enhance prestige and visibility, and to generate revenue (salmi, 2009). the global research university to what extent are the young universities in luxembourg and qatar on the path to becoming global research universities? are they or will they likely become globally competitive? to address such questions, the characteristics of world-class universities synthesized by levin, jeong and ou (2006) are helpful (see also salmi, 2009). the priorities most-often considered are excellence in research 104 current issues in comparative education powell (top-quality faculty); academic freedom; self-governance; and adequate facilities and funding. further crucial factors include diversity; internationalization (foreign students, scholars, and faculty); democratic leadership; and a talented student body. also vital to ensure competitiveness are informational infrastructure (ict, library); high quality teaching; connection with society and serving community needs; and within-institution collaboration. these dimensions are compared as each “world-class” research university measures itself against several hundred other wellresourced and performance-oriented organizations worldwide. universities compete in a growing number of rankings, for example, times higher education, shanghai-jiao tong or webometrics, among others. unmistakably, direct comparison and competition as well as regional coordination (as in the bologna process in europe) are key factors that have intensified institutional change and seem to facilitate isomorphism in higher education (powell, forthcoming). both the universities in luxembourg and qatar are oriented toward global standards, at least according to their mission statements and annual reports, and seek to become “elite” universities. yet the target is shifting, as the best of the best, also known as “super research universities” (sru), have undergone striking recent development (mohrman et al., 2008). this model emphasizes certain qualities a handful of western universities have pioneered – extraordinary research capacity, science and technology parks, and preeminent faculty clusters. the principles upon which the sru has developed emphasize particular qualities of universities in producing scientific knowledge: their missions are explicitly global; they are research intensive, contributing to the expanding “scientification” of all types of societal challenges (drori et al., 2003); they focus on knowledge and economic integration and form public-private partnerships, given that universitybased knowledge production is believed to enhance both social and economic progress. on the cutting edge, srus proclaim that they are at the forefront and should define global norms, whether related to graduate/professional training or research production and patent development. growing budgets dedicated to these twin tasks and their prominence intensify the university’s role as a major leader in scientific knowledge production. such universities engage in capacitybuilding via advanced training programs, by establishing cutting-edge research centers, and through interdisciplinary research units. even if only very few of the thousands of universities actually achieve membership in this “world-class” group, the model they provide is significant for all stakeholders, regardless of sru sustainability; the principle of knowledge generation builds upon the conception of the sru as vital both to worldwide economic competitiveness and national social development (geiger & sá, 2008). the emphasis clearly differs by university, with some world-class universities remaining very much an “ivory tower” and others embracing strong roles in improving living conditions in their countries (ramirez, 2006). depending on region and especially languages spoken and scientific traditions practiced therein, universities appeal to scientists, who more often than not publish their cutting-edge research in english and train their most ambitious students in multiple languages to facilitate career advancement. i now turn to the case studies to analyze the extent to which the ascendant national universities of two exceptional small states reflect these broader global trends in higher education. to do so, i briefly portray the country and the university and then place the university into regional and global contexts. université du luxembourg the country the grand duchy of luxembourg, nestled between belgium, france, and germany, covers 998 square miles in the heart of western europe. today, the city of luxembourg, a banking center, is current issues in comparative education 105 small state, large world, global university? the seat of multiple european union institutions. though ruled by a grand duke as a constitutional monarchy, luxembourg is a representative democracy (see pauly, 2011). the country prides itself on active membership in myriad regional and supranational associations of economic, political, and military integration, including benelux, the oecd, the eu, nato, and the un. luxembourg has a population of around a half million people, of which three-fifths are natives. reflecting its varied heritage of romance and germanic europe, the country is trilingual, with lëtzebuergesch, german, and french the official languages. with a large immigrant population, mainly from other european countries, luxembourg is predominantly roman catholic. daily, many tens of thousands of workers commute from surrounding countries, bringing their native language (mainly french and german) and cultural sensibilities with them. more than half the workforce consists of cross-border workers. luxembourg benefits from a diversification of industrial sectors (from financial services and iron and steel production to information technology and telecommunications) and low unemployment rates. building on its strong financial industry and the eu institutions, luxembourg has the second highest per capita gdp worldwide (imf, 2011). the university the université du luxembourg (ul), building upon the legacies of several postsecondary training institutes, was founded in 2003 as a private, government-dependent institution (établissement public) directed by a seven-member council, the conseil de gouvernance. most funding is provided by the state. from the very beginning, luxembourg has relied heavily on student mobility and tertiary education provided in neighboring countries to supply qualified personnel, especially teachers, judges, and physicians; this has generated cultural hybridity (rohstock, 2010, p. 44). although the university’s antecedents can be traced back to the early 1800s, when the national school system was first established, it was not until 1974 that the centre universitaire du luxembourg, hosting several humanities and social science departments, was opened alongside teacher training institutes and an institut supérieur de technologie (ist), which offered technological courses of study (rohstock, 2010). as its three founding principles, the contemporary university’s leaders chose multilingualism, interdisciplinarity, and internationalization. these foci accentuate the strategy developed to capitalize on luxembourg’s history as a trading crossroads, its contemporary situation of linguistic and cultural diversity, as well as to compensate being a new university in a very small state through strategic investments in promising research areas. the mission statement emphasizes that as “a small-sized institution with an international reach, [it] aims at excellence in research and education. in a reduced number of research fields identified by its successive strategic plans, its ambition is to be among the world’s top universities. ul intends to be innovative, centered on research, primarily interested in the quality of the structure it offers to its students, its teachers and its researchers and attentive to the needs of the society around it” (university of luxembourg, 2005). with nearly 100 nationalities represented among the 5,700 students (2010/11), around half of whom are not natives, the university is extraordinarily diverse. likewise, the 189 faculty members represent 20 nationalities. if the country has three official languages, the university replaces the local language with the current international scientific lingua franca: english. regardless of nationality, each student pays tuition of just €200 per semester. thus, the state ensures that its national university can attract students from around the world. aiming to develop strengths based on both international trends and local/regional needs, the university has three faculties, all decidedly multidisciplinary: (1) science, technology, & communication; (2) law, economics, & finance; and (3) humanities, arts, & education. further, two major interdisciplinary research centers aim to advance the cutting-edge internationally, 106 current issues in comparative education powell namely the ‘interdisciplinary centre for security, reliability and trust’ focusing on information systems, and the ‘luxembourg centre for systems biomedicine’ (the latter with €140m of funds over five years). the university’s total budget for 2008 was €71.3 million, with external funding of 14% (€13m), but both have grown in recent years. by identifying in advance the most promising research areas that also reflect luxembourg’s economic and geographic contexts, the university concentrates its resources. a major state investment has established a new campus, in the southern city of esch-sur-alzette. belval, located on the brownfield site of luxembourg’s formerly dominant steel industry, is set to unify the faculties in state-of-the-art facilities rising next to historically-preserved blast furnaces. symbolizing issues of sustainability in educational, ecological, and financial terms, this campus requires considerable, long-term commitments on the part of government. for luxembourg, recycling a former industrial site as the incubator for its future economic strength represents its approach. the university’s strategic plans call for an ecologically-sustainable campus. this may be realized if faculty, students, and staff live and work there and use the on-campus rail station; however, luxembourg has among the highest automobile densities per capita in the world. the university actively participates in international networks on sustainable campus development; in fact, the ‘sustainable campus charter’ of the international sustainable campus network (iscn) and the global university leaders forum (gulf) was prepared there. regarding financial sustainability, the current fiscal difficulties in europe pose a threat to the livelihood not only of the university, but of the country and the region. simultaneously, the university promises desired economic diversification. in terms of recent and planned reforms, the role of the ministry of culture, higher education and science has shifted from administration to a more strategic one of defining the overall framework and main goals of the university. in future, the university is to counteract social selectivity and “attract more young people from underprivileged ses backgrounds into higher education” (ec, 2010b, p. 13). this goal, shared by many expanding tertiary education systems throughout the world is, however, counteracted by differentiation that often diverts students from lower-class backgrounds into less prestigious tiers (shavit, arum, & gamoran, 2007). yet in small countries with only one university, the crucial distinction is whether to study at home – or to go abroad, and today all ba students are expected to do so for a semester. the university aims to achieve excellence in research by recruiting top faculty members. although the funds provided by the national government are considerable (top-ranked in europe), organizational autonomy is very low (www.university-autonomy.eu). in a hyper-diverse society, internationalization has been present from the start. a key challenge is to attract a talented undergraduate student body, since the tradition in luxembourg was to study abroad. while the small classes, low tuition fees, and high quality of the campus and faculty should attract students, questions of sustainability will rise. especially given the research focus on information technology, professional informational infrastructure is good, but the library holdings remain quite limited. the transfer of knowledge and meeting community needs is an area requiring investment, as is within-institution collaboration among the campuses, currently spread across the country. the university in global context not even a decade after it opened its doors, the university is ranked 867th globally (webometrics, 2012). the government mainly evaluates the university by performance indicators for highimpact research. its research output is measured in publications in peer-reviewed journals and the journals’ impact index; the numbers of citations, patents/licenses; published dissertations; current issues in comparative education 107 small state, large world, global university? and participation in european research funding programs, such as the european union fp7 and the european research council (ec, 2010b). in terms of teaching, only the indicators of teacher/student ratio and overall modules organized are counted (ec, 2010b). in its quest for reputation, the most important scientific currency, the university places considerable emphasis on international agreements. funded by the eu, the network of universities of the “greater region” connects universities in countries that share borders (www.uni-gr.eu). in terms of bilateral cooperation worldwide, the university has agreements with organizations in more than twenty countries. in sum, luxembourg has invested both considerable capital and strategic planning in the establishment of its national university, aiming to compete on a global scale by concentrating its resources, both intellectual and financial, and by building on the country’s strengths and priorities. alliances with other universities in the region and internationally underscore its international outlook. qatar university the country the state of qatar, occupying a 4,416 sq. mile peninsula surrounded by the persian gulf, shares a border with saudi arabia to the south. formerly a british protectorate, qatar gained its independence in 1971. an absolute monarchy, it has been ruled by the al-thani family since the mid-1800s (see fromherz, 2012). it is a member of the gulf cooperation council (gcc) and the arab league. although this small gulf state has a rapidly growing population (currently around 1.7 million), only about 15% (roughly 250,000) are ethnic qataris. a traditionally muslim country, today qatari society is characterized by multiple cultures. its native arabic society and the bulk of its population and labor force, migrants mainly from asia (especially india and nepal), are highly stratified, with the latter facing exploitation (human rights watch, 2012). despite the nearly-complete reliance on the work of migrants, a government priority is “qatarization” of the private sector and professional jobs currently held mainly by expatriates (rubin, 2012). considerable social and economic investments are needed to implement qatar’s ambitious national development program – the qatar national vision 2030 (qatar, n.d.), especially because of the lack of an “indigenous knowledge economy” and only several decades of educational expansion (donn & al manthri, 2010). financed by enormous resources derived from its oil and natural gas reserves, qatar has the world’s highest per capita gdp in the world (imf 2011). the university qatar university (qu) was first established in 1973 as a college of education. more recently, the 2,500-acre campus “education city,” funded by the qatar foundation, hosts diverse education and research organizations, attracting western universities to establish international branch campuses (ibcs) (lane & kinser, 2011). as of 2012, the following universities operate there, bringing expertise in targeted fields: carnegie-mellon (computer science), georgetown (foreign affairs), hec paris (business), northwestern (journalism), texas a&m (engineering), university college london (museum studies), virginia commonwealth (design), and weill-cornell (medicine). these institutions draw the elite of qatari students who seek “the gold standard” in tertiary education (lewin, 2008). in part to enhance qatar university’s competitiveness given the exclusive offerings of the mostly american university branch campuses, since 2003 the university has enjoyed considerable government funding as part of the country’s major development program. this significant reform has transformed and expanded the university, which aims to achieve the vision that qatar university “be a model national university that offers high quality, learning-centered education to its students” (moini et al., 2009, p. 75). 108 current issues in comparative education powell governed by the supreme education council (sec), the university was originally controlled by a state administration with little autonomy due to considerable ministerial oversight and control. today, the emir continues to be the “supreme head” of the university, with president prof. sheikha al-misnad, herself an alumna (1977), responsible for the curricular and organizational transformation of qatar university into a leading university in the arab world. the ibcs of education city, as well as further institutions not housed there, bring their own principles, personnel, and “student cultures” (wood, 2012), even as they contribute their homegrown reputations to qatar. by contrast, qu clearly reflects national priorities and is set to facilitate their attainment. if the vision is to serve national needs, the mission statement emphasizes that qatar university is “the national institution of higher education in qatar. it provides high quality undergraduate and graduate programs that prepare competent graduates, destined to shape the future of qatar. the university community…contribute[s] actively to the needs and aspirations of society” (moini et al., 2009, p. 75). furthermore, qu seeks to “promote the cultural and scientific development of the qatari society while preserving its arabic characteristics and maintaining its islamic cultural heritage...the university shall provide the country with specialists, technicians, and experts in various fields, and equip citizens with knowledge and advanced research methodologies” (moini et al., 2009, p. 75). while crucial to remember that education in qatar has only been formalized beginning in the 1950s, with the state replacing within-family instruction, this development is being cemented with tremendous investments – us$4bn was spent on education and science in 2008 alone (fromherz, 2012, p. 152). “qatar has set the bar high with its goal of becoming a knowledge-producing economy at record speed. but the country holds some strong cards: a clear vision, highly committed leadership, and abundant resources to devote to the cause” (rubin, 2012, p. 4). while qu has long been considered among the better universities in the middle east, the recent reforms have counteracted what many viewed as deteriorating performance (moini et al., 2009). the university, emphasizing undergraduate teaching in particular, had 8,706 students in 2009/10, with 38% being qatari nationals and three-quarters women. students of qatari origin study tuition-free. students are taught by a large group of 653 faculty (all ranks), with non-qataris (70%) on one-year contracts and tenure held by qatari faculty members (30%) (qu, 2010); thus the teaching staff is highly stratified by origin. qu’s structure reflects language divisions, consisting of colleges in education (arabic); humanities and social sciences (arabic); science (english); sharia, law, and islamic studies (arabic); engineering (english); and business and economics (english). given its department of computing and engineering, solid ict infrastructure is provided. addressing the needs of its community has been a hallmark of an institution located in a society experiencing massive demographic and economic change. in terms of resources, qatar has chosen to use its wealth to rapidly develop a high-quality education system – and to fund scientific research with 2.8% of gdp. in 2009/10, the research funding for qu amounted to us$60m (qu, 2010). the university sets out to improve its teaching and research by recruiting researchers globally. generous funding from the national government (and through qatar foundation, especially for education city) provides excellent facilities. yet, both academic freedom and self-governance remain partial; the university is not led democratically. recognizing the discordance with global academic norms, reform initiatives aim to strengthen these dimensions to which most world-class universities conform. as in luxembourg, the internationalization of all status groups is the rule due to the extraordinarily diverse population of the country, although there are inequalities; for example, only qataris can study at qu freecurrent issues in comparative education 109 small state, large world, global university? of-charge. attracting a talented undergraduate student body is difficult because traditionally the brightest students have gone abroad for their studies. the large majority of female students at qu results from their higher probability of seeking tertiary educational opportunities close-to-home. gender is a major cleavage that leads to pervasive and persistent social inequalities. in qu’s gender-segregated libraries, the holdings are growing. questions of sustainability are particularly trenchant here. in a desert biome on a peninsula surrounded by the persian gulf, qatar’s capital city doha boasts many of the world’s tallest skyscrapers; the construction industry thus far has not embraced sustainable design and green architecture. the country has tremendous fossil fuel resources. its inhabitants have by far the highest carbon dioxide emissions per person in the world, exacerbated by freely-provided utilities and the highest water usage per capita worldwide – although qatar must use intensive desalination to ensure that precious water supply. exemplifying recent developments of such issues, the qatar sustainability assessment system (qsas) provides a toolkit to evaluate sustainability in built environments; this requires far more attention in future. long-planned initiatives (e.g., the qatar national vision 2030) are balanced by recent reforms. in country and university, arabic and english are the two key languages, although this duality is contentious. in early 2012, the sec decision to switch some disciplines from english to arabic instruction was accompanied by controversy that reflects fears among some groups that younger qataris are neglecting their heritage and arabic language skills in favor of the necessity of english for global communication and knowledge transfer (harron, 2012). the debate about the language of instruction emphasizes the continuous challenge of serving different groups and aiming to place graduates in labor markets at home and abroad. the university in global context in the webometrics (2012) ranking, qatar university placed 1,824th in the world and 21st in the arab world. in annual reports, while research is underscored, concrete performance indicators seem less important than those of teaching: presenting successful accreditation of courses of study; listing new programs, events, and projects; and monitoring awards, partnerships, and university innovations (qu, 2010; 2011). qu has chosen to focus on preparing qualified graduates for qatar’s dramatically expanding labor market, as do the western universities’ branch campuses. as in luxembourg, it remains to be seen when these considerable investments in education and science will provide qu with a reputation as a world-class university. in sum, qatar has chosen a two-pronged strategy: to entice western universities to bring their know-how and reputations and to establish and grow its own national higher education institution. in the past few decades, qatari education, economy, and society have experienced transformative growth. the fit between the diverse international branch campuses of education city and the local initiatives to strengthen qatar university and the goals of the family-led state will require further adjustment. similar to the luxembourg case, significant economic prosperity provides leaders with a vision of myriad opportunities to construct some of the newest and most impressive university campuses anywhere. yet issues of linguistic plurality, environmental and financial sustainability, and organizational autonomy remain challenging – and international scientific collaborations and reputations must be established over the long-term. conclusions in this paper, i compared the kind of “small state” that luxembourg and qatar represent. unlike many other small states, these two countries are unusually international, ethnically diverse, and 110 current issues in comparative education powell prosperous. almost completely dependent on international trading relationships and global markets for capital and labor, both countries have experienced extraordinary recent growth. over the past decade, luxembourg and qatar have further intensified their investments in education and science. the reactions of the institutional actors in each country to perceived vulnerabilities of small population, small size, or peripheral geo-political location show that luxembourg and qatar can compensate these features with economic prowess and media influence – and by taking the lead in regional governance, whether the european union or the gulf cooperation council. the two ascendant national universities reflect their host countries, whether in the disciplines and research areas chosen or languages spoken; yet their ambitions are not limited to their national contexts. indeed, governments of luxembourg and qatar seem to have found promising mechanisms to compete globally, such as significant investment in selected, high-potential, and often multidisciplinary research fields; the building of cutting-edge campus facilities; and establishment of a range of undergraduate and graduate programs to train local elites and others interested in these universities’ dynamic organizational contexts. of course, many characteristics of the strongest universities took decades to develop, but both of these young organizations have many of the necessary but insufficient conditions to achieve that “world-class” status. tensions remain regarding national demands for language representation in curricula and university operations. recruitment of international scholars and students to these lesser-known universities takes considerable effort, as do international and regional partnerships of differing depth and significance. due to direct state involvement, organizational autonomy is lacking. finally, the periods required to convert material resources into human capital or scientific advancement and reputation are much longer than the government-directed investment plans suggest. arguably, competition in tertiary education and scientific activity will continue to increase worldwide, especially due to the massive expansion of education and science systems in east asia, such as in china, south korea, taiwan, and elsewhere. while both luxembourg and qatar have shown their dedication to fund ambitious experiments in capacity-building via university institutionalization, questions surrounding sustainability simultaneously arise, with the university of luxembourg explicitly debating these issues. whatever the future holds, these young universities are now the official national standard-bearers. these cases, along with other small societies like the nordic countries and singapore, suggest that not the size of a host country, but rather a prescient vision and concentrated resources are the crucial factors to enable cuttingedge science and higher education today. the examples provided by these strong small states raise doubts about the often-posited association between small population or geographic area and poverty and geo-political marginality. despite their historical, social and political differences and the similarities of being extraordinarily economically successful in recent times, leaders in both luxembourg and qatar have accepted the principle that the future belongs to education and science, though they have not granted their universities full autonomy. elites in these countries believe that to be successful, they must have a research university that adequately meets national needs – and can compete internationally. justin j.w. powell has been research fellow of the max planck institute for human development, the london school of economics and political science (lse), and, since 2007, of the wissenschaftszentrum berlin für sozialforschung (wzb). his research focuses on historical and cross-national comparisons of education systems. he has taught education and sociology at the universities of göttingen and hannover and the current issues in comparative education 111 small state, large world, global university? free university berlin. recent publications include barriers to inclusion: special education in the united states and germany (paradigm publishers, 2011) and, with john g. richardson, comparing special education: origins to contemporary paradoxes (stanford university press, 2011), which received the 2012 outstanding book award from the american education research association (division b). endnotes 1. the net long-term economic advantage of having a tertiary degree instead of an upper secondary degree is more than us$175000 for a man and just over us$110000 for a woman; oecd average (oecd, 2011: indicator a9). references altbach, p. g. 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(2012). qatar: a modern history. washington, dc: georgetown university press. geiger, r., & sá, c. (2008). tapping the riches of science: american universities and the promise of economic growth. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. harron, a. (2012, january 29). elation, worries on the campus. the peninsula qatar. retrieved from www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/qatar/181277. head, s. (2011, january 13). the grim threat to british universities. new york review of books. retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/grim-threat-britishuniversities. human rights watch (2012). qatar: migrant construction workers face abuse. retrieved from www.hrw.org/news/2012/06/12/. international monetary fund (imf) (2011). world economic outlook database. retrieved from www.imf.org/external/ns/cs.aspx?id=28. katzenstein, p. (1985). small states in world markets. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. lane, j. & kinser, k. (eds.). (2011). multi-national colleges and universities: leading, governing, and managing international branch campuses. new directions for higher education (vol. 155). san francisco: jossey-bass. levin, h. m., jeong, d. w., & ou, d. (2006). what is a world class university? retrieved from www.tc.columbia.edu/centers/coce/pdf_files/c12.pdf. lewin, t. (2008, february 11). in oil-rich mideast, shades of the ivy league. the new york times. retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/education/11global.html. martin, m., & bray, m. (eds.). (2011). tertiary education in small states: planning in the context of globalization. paris, france: iiep/unesco. mayo, p. (ed.). (2010). education in small states. london, uk: routledge. mohrman, k., ma, w., & baker, d. p. (2008). the research university in transition: the emerging global model. higher education policy, 21(1), 5-27. moini, j. s., bikson, t. k., neu, c. r., desisto, l., al hamadi, m., & al thani, j. (2009). the reform of qatar university. doha: rand-qatar policy institute. oecd (2011). education at a glance 2011: oecd indicators. paris, france: oecd. pauly, m. (2011). geschichte luxemburgs. munich, germany: c.h. beck. current issues in comparative education 113 small state, large world, global university? powell, j.j.w. (forthcoming). atlantic transfer: models in higher education and vocational training in europe and the united states. oxford, uk: oxford university press. qatar. (n.d.). qatar national vision 2030. doha: general secretariat for development planning. qatar university. (2010). qatar university 2009-2010. doha, qatar: qu. qatar university. (2011). qatar university 2010-2011. doha, qatar: qu. ramirez, f. o. (2006). growing commonalities and persistent differences in higher education. in h. d. meyer & b. rowan (eds.), the new institutionalism in education (pp. 123-142). albany, ny: suny press. ramirez, f. o., & meyer, j. w. (2013, in press). universalizing the university in a world society. in j. c. shin & b. m. kehm (eds.), institutionalization of world class universities in global competition. heidelberg, germany: springer. rohstock, a. (2010). wider die gleichmacherei! luxemburgs langer weg zur universität 18482003. forum für politik, gesellschaft und kultur in luxemburg, 301, 43-46. rubin, a. (2012, july 31). higher education reform in the arab world: the model of qatar. in middle east institute. retrieved from http://www.mei.edu/content/higher-education-reformarab-world-model-qatar. salmi, j. (2009). the challenge of establishing world-class universities. washington, dc: the world bank. schofer, e., & meyer, j. w. (2005). the worldwide expansion of higher education in the twentieth century. american sociological review, 70(6), 898-920. shavit, y., arum, r., & gamoran, a. (eds.). (2007). stratification in higher education. stanford, ca: stanford university press. university of luxembourg. (2009). a strategic action plan on sustainable development of the university of luxembourg, 2010-2013. luxembourg. university of luxembourg. (2005). mission statement. retrieved from http://uni.lu/universite/ presentation/mission. webometrics. (2012). webometrics ranking of world universities. retrieved from http://www. webometrics.info. wood, c. h. (2011). institutional ethos: replicating the student experience. new directions for higher education, 155, 29–40. microsoft word 16_1_beth_wright.docx   © 2014, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 16 (1), 26-36. breaking tradition: taking stock of research on global school choice beth wright loyola university chicago school choice policies, as neoliberal reforms, have often been analyzed using the very discourse embedded in neoliberal mentalities. by reviewing the way scholars have conceptualized school choice as a transnational phenomenon, this paper evaluates the extent to which scholarship has attempted to, or succeeded in, overcoming traditional, neoliberal analyses of school choice. first, the paper attempts to define and problematize neoliberalism and market-based reforms. then, it describes the various ways in which scholars have conceptualized school choice policies as global. finally, the paper uses robertson and dale’s (2008) key assumptions to evaluate the extent to which research on global school choice has broken free from traditional modes of research. by interrogating traditional modes of scholarly inquiry, it becomes possible for scholars in comparative and international education to approach better understandings of the way complex global policies play out. introduction school choice policies, with roots in neoliberal mentalities, have gained an increasingly prominent voice among policymakers and educational researchers in recent years. not only are market-based policies gaining popularity, but the ideas and language behind such policies have permeated educational discourse. however, diverse actors across different local contexts interpret and experience neoliberal polices in specific and variegated ways. even though the policies themselves grow out of a coherent set of neoliberal ideas, they play out in a complex way across the globe. according to apple (1999), neoliberal dominance in policy creation across the globe has been critiqued within the academy, but those critiques often utilize the very categories created by neoliberal ideology (p. 16). in the time since apple’s assertion, some scholars in comparative and international education (stambach, 2003; carney, 2009) have sought alternative ways of conceptualizing school choice as a global reform. it is important to seek new methods and concepts that facilitate an understanding of this neoliberal reform outside the confines of neoliberal language and traditional social-scientific constructs. doing so would allow for a more complex understanding of the ways in which school choice policies play out and influence various actors across global spaces. this paper seeks to evaluate the extent to which current literature in the field of comparative education has fulfilled apple’s (1999) call to analyze a neoliberal policy, school choice, using new methods and categories that reflect the complex nature of globalization. school choice policies, as neoliberal reforms, have often been analyzed using the very discourse embedded in neoliberal mentalities. by reviewing the way scholars have conceptualized school choice as a transnational phenomenon, this paper evaluates the extent to which scholarship has attempted to, or succeeded in, overcoming traditional, neoliberal analyses of school choice.first, the paper attempts to define and problematize neoliberalism and market-based reforms. then, it describes the various ways in which scholars have conceptualized school choice policies as breaking tradition current issues in comparative education 27   global. finally, the paper uses robertson and dale’s (2008) key assumptions to evaluate the extent to which research on global school choice has broken free from traditional modes of research. neoliberalism and its discontents school choice policies, as market-based reforms, can be characterized as neoliberal reforms. however, neoliberalism has itself become a “rascal concept—promiscuously pervasive, yet inconsistently defined, empirically imprecise and frequently contested” (brenner, peck, & theodore, 2009, p. 184). beginning with the abstract ideological proposals of friedrich von hayek and milton friedman, neoliberalism would initially be enacted under augusto pinochet, margaret thatcher, and ronald reagan. reacting against keynesian economic policies, neoliberals created state policies that would guarantee a smoothly functioning, preeminent market (england & ward, 2007; brenner et al., 2009; dean, 2010). even though many see neoliberalism as an economic mentality, it must also be seen as a mentality of governance (rose, 1999; dean, 2010). hindess (2004) argues that the crux of neoliberalism “lies in the attempt to introduce not only market and quasi-market arrangements but also empowerment, self-government and responsibility into areas of social life which had hitherto been organized in other ways” (p. 35). for instance, introducing individual choice into the realm of public education promotes individual responsibility and self-government by forcing actors to choose. implementing neoliberal reforms creates a system that governs indirectly. rather than government-dictated control of citizens, which hayek warned against, neoliberalism governs through “the calculative choice of formally free actors” (collier & ong, 2005). in this way, rose (1996) and others (see peters, 2005; dean, 2010; suspitsyna, 2010) argue in the tradition of foucault that power and control exist in mechanisms like choice. under market systems that empower individuals, self-government and individual entrepreneurship become increasingly important. individual decisions are dictated not simply through “free choice,” but are mediated by the range of choices available, the way in which information about choices is presented, and prevailing notions of what constitutes a “good” choice. while neoliberal policies provide actors with the freedom to choose, individuals have no choice but to choose, and to regulate their actions in accordance with available and desirable choices. more concretely, bartlett, frederick, gulbrandsen, and murillo (2002) argue that neoliberal reforms in education pose problems specifically because they are rooted in economic ideas. using market ideology to structure public schooling is necessarily based on costs and benefits as understood in economic terms. neoliberal discourse around schooling not only surrounds policies like school choice, but also narrows the range of education’s goals. in order to survive in the educational market, individuals, schools, and policies must rely on measurable statistics. educational goals that that are not readily quantified often get left behind. theorists have also noted that neoliberalism is “oft-invoked but ill-defined” (mudge, 2008), perhaps because conceptualizing neoliberalism as a monolithic governmental state or a global hegemonic force cannot encompass its complexity. rather than thinking of it as static, england and ward (2007), as well as brenner, peck, and theodore (2009), have focused on neoliberalization. as a process, neoliberalization is variegated, unfinished, and contingent. it is a slippery concept to theorize, let alone study empirically. school choice, as a neoliberal policy, embodies these conceptual challenges. beth wright 28 current issues in comparative education   conceptualizing transnational school choice several scholars in the field of comparative and international education have studied school choice as a global phenomenon, given the policy’s increasing popularity transnationally. scholars conceptualize globalization in varying and diverse ways, so it is unsurprising that they also present varying interpretations of school choice policies. however, across conceptual and methodological differences, scholars of school choice have collectively issued a warning against placing too much faith in market-based reforms by painting a nuanced picture of the way school choice policies work. a symptom of economic globalization when describing school choice policies, many scholars focus on neoliberalism and, more specifically, on economic globalization. the connection between school choice and global capitalism runs across the literature. astiz, wiseman, and baker (2002) refer to economic globalization as the “intensification of a global market operating across and among a system of national labor markets through international competition” (p. 67). this definition provides a fairly concrete description of economic globalization, describing global capitalism as increased international connection through economic transactions. davies and guppy (1997) similarly argue that economic globalization has caused the global marketplace to shape educational reform (p. 438). carney (2009) takes this concept further, first describing the predominant role market capitalism has played in comparative education literature, and then arguing that “economic values and systems” have changed the way people and states relate to one another (p. 64). it has further changed the “very understandings that we have of what it means to be educated” (carney, 2009, p. 64). education is framed as necessary for accessing global markets and the key to alleviating economic hardship (davies & guppy, 1997; stambach, 2003). it is also often blamed for economic decline (davies & guppy, 1997). in this way, scholars conceptualize school choice as part of economic globalization, but also problematize global capitalism (apple, 1999; mclaren, 1999). within economic globalization, school choice is both a result of marketbased educational goals and a vehicle for promoting economic values through education. as neoliberal policies like school choice persist and grow, people will increasingly think about education in the context of the economy. more specifically, james et al. (2010) describe the way that neoliberal policies like school choice assume that markets allocate resources effectively and efficiently. because educational markets deal with schooling, they inherently commodify education (james et al., 2010, p. 629). school choice policies create competition between schools, and assume that individuals select schools using rational cost-benefit analyses. through these assumptions, and accompanying practices, they encourage people to behave as consumers when they choose a school. according to forsey, davies, and walford (2008), such processes encourage a “consumerist ethic that is difficult to resist” (p. 9). the idea of choice “reflects and evokes deep desires for autonomy, control and self-expression” (forsey et al., 2008, p. 10). however, choice’s promise masks the way choice is confined by its commodification. consumers of education begin to think of schooling as a product to be valued for its economic worth, and regulate their decisions accordingly. at the same time, james et al. (2010) and forsey et al. (2008) also argue that neoliberalism assumes an understanding of human decision-making that is limited and problematic. according to forsey et al. (2008), viewing people as motivated solely by “maximizing economic benefits” is a deeply flawed and inadequate way to understand human behavior (p. 12). this provides some insight into the complex and contradictory nature of neoliberal reforms. even as school choice policies encourage “consumers” to value education for its economic worth, the breaking tradition current issues in comparative education 29   policies fail to recognize that humans rarely make purely economic decisions. under such conditions, it would seem that non-economic educational priorities are not eliminated, but become increasingly invisible. an indicator of institutional globalization? comparativists studying school choice also test the transnational spread of school choice policies against world polity theory. astiz (2002) defines institutional globalization as “convergence toward a uniform model of polity and rationalization… [which] tends to create isomorphic polities, reinforcing uniform patterns among organizational structures in these sectors” (p. 67). this idea fits with neoinstitutionalist understandings of globalization, which highlight similarities across national policies. indeed, the way that school choice has been adopted across the globe can be seen as evidence supporting notions of educational policy convergence (forsey, davies, & walford, 2008). according to gulson and fataar (2011), “neoliberalism has become the dominant characterization and form of education, in which international, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations are important policy players” (p. 269). while some scholars (e.g., st. clair & belzer, 2007) see institutionalism as an adequate framework for understanding neoliberal reforms as a global phenomenon, most view the institutional perspective as, at best, partially useful. even as scholars see educational policies converging, they see this characterization as insufficient for understanding the way school choice works. for instance, davies and guppy (1997) describe institutional globalization as inherently tied to the bureaucratic form of the modern nation-state (p. 440). from this perspective, bureaucrats and educational professionals would be important actors, creating policies that make a given nation-state’s educational system appear legitimate. however, momentum for school choice initiatives has come from local, grassroots actors as well as powerful neoconservative advocates (davies & guppy, 1997). this results in what davies and guppy (1997) call “squeezing power from the middle” (p. 459, emphasis in original). through choice policies advocated both at the grassroots and the policy level, they argue, “power is being wrested from educational professionals, teacher unions, and ministry officials” and is being “redistributed upward to more senior state officials and downward to local groups” (p. 459, emphasis in original). as such neoinstitutional descriptions of neoliberal educational policies insufficiently describes the power dynamics in transnational market-based reforms. a reproducer of inequality in seeking to look beyond the policy level of analysis, comparative and international education scholars have looked to the ways in which neoliberal policies affect the populations where they are implemented. the literature comes to consensus around the idea that neoliberal reforms like school choice reproduce “a social system that exacerbates social inequality” (forsey et al., 2008, p. 9; see also apple, 1999). even though choice policies often claim to provide increased access to quality education for the poor, that promise has failed to materialize. indeed, market-based reforms have shown to disproportionately benefit economically privileged classes (ball, 1993; james et al., 2010; sung, 2011). however, these benefits occur in less obvious ways under neoliberal policies. according to james et al. (2010), middleand upper-class families bring social and cultural capital to the realm of educational choice, placing them in an advantaged position for choosing the “best” schools. privileged families have the cultural knowledge and connections to effectively navigate the system in order to select high performing schools. however, james et al. (2010) also find that white middle-class families in britain benefit more than poor and working beth wright 30 current issues in comparative education   class families, regardless of which schools they choose (i.e., choose schools that do not align with norms of what constitutes a “good” school). even when privileged children do not attend the “best” schools, they succeed more often than their less privileged peers (james et al., 2010, p. 637). by focusing on singular measures of school quality, choice mechanisms distract from the fact that—regardless of which school they attend—children from different economic backgrounds achieve at different levels. however, by placing such instances in the context of neoliberal school choice, the embedded nature of inequality is masked by individual choice. moreover, gulson & fataar (2011) argue that school choice, as an aspect of neoliberal globalization, must be seen in terms of unequal allocation of power. this unequal power distribution must also be understood with regard to colonial histories. in south africa, for example, “while choice has been posited as a possible way for black parents to obtain a better education for their children, it has also reinforced historically white privilege in post-apartheid south africa” (gulson & fataar, 2011, p. 274). even though school choice policies can be seen as tools for the poor and working classes to access quality education, scholars agree that it actually reproduces existing inequality in various forms. the most problematic aspect of the way neoliberal policies reproduce inequality, however, is the way they justify that inequality. according to gulson and fataar (2011), achievement is directly associated with aspirations. as they argue, “responsibility for not achieving high academic results, and for not raising the educational standards of the entire system, lies with families and students who have low or no aspirations” (p. 279). in this way, neoliberal policies and their accompanying discourse encourage placing responsibility for inequality upon the individual. people begin to understand low achievement as correlated not with disadvantage or with poverty, but with low aspirations. the logic of neoliberal reform, therefore, masks inequality and needs to be resisted, whether through measured reforms or more revolutionary transformations (apple, 1999; mclaren, 1999). the inequality resulting from school choice policies brings another contradiction to bear. choice policies have been promoted as populist, grass-roots reform efforts, often led by parent groups (davies & guppy, 1997). such movements claim that choice policies are responsive to community needs, empowering teachers and parents (astiz et al., 2002). yet davies and guppy (1997) argue that teachers actually lose power under choice policies, and others show that empowered parents generally come from the middleand upper-classes (ball, 1993; james et al., 2010; sung, 2011). according to ball (1993), middle-class parents felt their social positions were threatened by “the increasing social democratic de-differentiation of schools, the cultural reform of the curriculum… and the diversion of resources to those with greatest learning needs and difficulties” (p. 16). in this way, ball (1993) argues that middle class parents fear losing positions of comfort, particularly in the context of progressive reforms intended to equalize educational opportunity. by advocating for choice policies, middle class parents (whether unwittingly or intentionally) support policies that secure their own positions while preventing others from accessing the same privileges. this position, coupled with the neoliberal logic of aspiration (gulson & fataar, 2011) allows middle class families “the supreme privilege of not seeing themselves as privileged” (bourdieu & passeron, as cited in ball, 1993). a locally global phenomenon the extent to which school choice policies have been adopted transnationally is mediated by the way local contexts shape and adapt neoliberal policies (astiz, 2002). even as policies look breaking tradition current issues in comparative education 31   increasingly similar across nation-states, those policies become “globalized messages projected across educational spaces and translated in ways that resonate in particular contexts” (carney, 2009, p. 69). in this way, neoliberal policies are not only “borrowed” across policy contexts, but are re-created and modified to fit local needs. as school choice policies operate transnationally, then, they play out in ways that reflect both local specificity and global universality. borrowed and adapted while scholars recognize that school choice policies have, to some extent, been borrowed across policy contexts, they also emphasize the ways in which localities interpret and modify policies to fit historical understandings and cultural needs. according to stambach’s (2003) study of missionary-supported choice policies in tanzania, the idea of choice had “been layered onto historically and culturally non-western understandings of transaction and personhood and imbued with alternative registers of meaning” (p. 155). in this way, stambach (2003) shows that “choices are not the same everywhere” (p. 157)forsey et al. (2008) similarly argue that neoliberal constructs must be understood by focusing on the way school choice policies “assume a wide variety of incarnations” across different nation-states (p. 22). universal and specific further, scholars propose that globalization can be understood by looking at the way local actors adapt neoliberal policies to fit specific contexts. school choice policies can bridge the local and global because they engage language flexible enough to incorporate diverse interests (forsey et al., 2008). even though neoliberal choice policies naturally fit with conservative economic thinkers, the policies have attracted religious, ethnic, and linguistic minorities who co-opt school choice vocabularies to fit their specific interests (forsey et al., 2008, p. 22; see also stambach, 2003). in this way, school choice can be understood as serving local needs through the language of neoliberal policies. however, school choice policies are often applied as if they have “no geographic and historic specificities” (gulson & fataar, 2011, p. 270). while neoliberal reforms are transnational in nature and take on a global mystique, it is imperative to consider them through the lens of locality and specificity. it is also important to recognize, as stambach (2003) highlights, the fact that those with a certain amount of transnational power—like the american missionaries who promoted choice policies in tanzania—are not simply purveyors of universal ideas while tanzanian actors represent the local. as she states, the tanzanian parents “are not any more ‘particularistic’ in their cultural views than the missionaries are ‘universalistic.’ that is, even though the missionaries’ views are more likely to be taken up in the institutionalized forms of schooling, both missionaries and tanzanians have localized visions of universal forms of schooling” (stambach, 2003, p. 158). the american missionaries brought specific localized visions of school choice policies, while tanzanian parent had different ways of understanding school choice from their specific local context. even as choice policies represent transnational neoliberal policies, they must be reconstituted and interpreted by local actors in unique contexts. from another angle, however, “choice in theory, should make schooling more responsive to regional concerns… yet paradoxically these measures also strengthen various universalist creeds and give central administrative bodies some added authority” (davies & guppy, 1997, p. 456). just as hegemonic, universalizing notions of neoliberal reforms appear to spread across the globe, local contexts interpret and reconstruct meaning around those policies. in many instances, they use such dominant policy discourses to further their own interests. at the same time that they use school choice to promote specific local interests, they encourage the spread of neoliberal discourse. beth wright 32 current issues in comparative education   a ubiquitous discourse not only have neoliberal policies themselves been borrowed and adapted across nation-states, but neoliberal discourses have undergone the same processes. according to sung (2011), in korea, “loanwords” have been borrowed from english-language rhetoric, creating local policy reforms. in this way, loanwords (particularly those transferred from a developed country) carry symbolic power over policy creation, while also allowing the receiving language to adapt the loanwords to create new meaning (sung, 2011). this works particularly well for neoliberal constructs like choice because its loose framework allows people to incorporate their own priorities within market-based language (forsey, 2008). however, the ways in which local actors make sense of those meanings are simultaneously shaped by a discourse that permeates across contexts. even as local actors ascribe meaning to neoliberal discourse, people conceive of education within the framework of those ideals. according to apple (1999), educational issues have increasingly been framed in terms of a neoliberal agenda. as the discourse of markets, choice, and economic competitiveness frame policies, conversations, and thoughts about education, the logic of neoliberalism gains a “common-sense” quality. it becomes natural to think about education in terms of its economic utility, or to associate positive notions of liberty and autonomy with conceptions of individual choice. however, it is important to interrogate neoliberal “common-sense” ideology to reveal its “hidden effects” (apple, 1999, p. 8). a technology for global governance similarly hidden are neoliberalism’s methods for governance. according to carney (2009), rather than governing through direct state control, neoliberalism implements “invisible or embedded processes of power” (p. 65). in this way, neoliberal governmentality uses notions of autonomy, personal responsibility, and choice to govern through flat, dispersed loci of control (gulson & fataar, 2011). choice, then, can be seen as a technology that uses decentralization to implement new forms of control (carney, 2009). most concretely, the choices available to people under neoliberal policies have often been more limited than opportunities available before choice policies were implemented. not only are people presented with a limited range of choices, but they also have “no choice but to choose” under such policies (forsey et al., 2008). in this way, people are disciplined to think in accordance with market principles and to discipline their choices to fit expectations. evaluating school choice scholarship the literature on globalization and school choice from the field of comparative and international education provides a complex and nuanced understanding of the way choice policies work across transnational contexts. however, it is also important to evaluate scholarship for its methodology. the scholars referenced above have shown that neoliberal reforms like school choice policies must be interrogated for their negative implications. however, neoliberal constructs are not simply manifested at the policy level and, as such, cannot simply be eliminated by advocating for policy changes. neoliberal reforms present a much slipperier problem. neoliberal discourse and governance influence the way people think about education, its role in their lives, and its role in various contexts across the globe. for this reason, it is necessary to re-think the way scholars research neoliberal policies. breaking tradition current issues in comparative education 33   a possibility for interrogating the way scholars evaluate school choice policies can be found in the work of robertson and dale (2008). in order to move beyond traditional modes of contemporary transnational research, they propose four key assumptions that must be overcome. recognizing and breaking free of these assumptions is necessary in order to understand global phenomena outside the confines of outmoded methodological categories and static spaces. using these assumptions, “methodological nationalism,” “methodological statism,” “methodological educationism,” and “spatial fetishism,” (robertson & dale, 2008) this section analyzes transnational school choice research to ascertain whether the existing literature has succeeded in moving past static categories to interrogate school choice reforms. methodological nationalism according to robertson and dale (2008), educational research has traditionally focused on the nation-state as its unit of analysis. yet that habit has restricted the possibilities for how scholars do comparative research. as educational policies become transnational, it is necessary to explore them without seeing the nation-state as a fixed entity, and the only available unit of analysis. many comparative and international education scholars studying school choice policies use nation-states as their primary units of analysis (james et al., 2010; sung, 2011; davies & guppy, 1997). however, they do so while describing the ways in which policy discourse and practice has permeated national boundaries. stambach (2003) uses tanzania as her study’s context, but her ethnography focuses on the interactions between tanzanian families and american missionaries. the ethnography takes place within the tanzanian policy context, but also focuses on powerful transnational actors. stambach (2003) accounts for differences between the families she studies and the national-level policymakers, even though they are both tanzanian. acknowledging the unique backgrounds of various actors, she moves beyond simply focusing on the nation-state to understand the issue with local interest. in this way, it is important for scholars to move past the local-global binary to analyze connections and flows across borders and across units of analysis. carney (2009) intentionally attempts to analyze school choice by “working across different levels of the education systems” in the three countries he studies (p. 63). in doing so, he follows appadurai (1996; 2000) by creating a policyscape as his unit of analysis. that policyscape, he argues, crosses national boundaries but embodies neoliberal ideologies. he explores transnational relations by exploring practices in both government policy and grassroots organizations. interestingly, he chooses three countries in which to construct a policyscape. even as he seeks to break free from traditional units of analysis, he uses nation-states to construct his policyscape. while his exercise was useful in pushing the field to think about the way it analyzes policy, it did not entirely move past a focus on the nation-state. his ideas are helpful for understanding the ways in which neoliberal policies can exist across spaces. by looking at both carney (2009) and stambach (2003), comparativists move closer to understanding how written school choice policies and enacted school choice practices play out in both universal and specific ways across contexts. methodological statism methodological statism assumes that each nation-state is organized and managed in the same way. under this assumption, the state is represented “as a universal form rather than a particular representation that has been universalized” (robertson & dale, 2008, p. 23). further, robertson and dale (2008) encourage researchers to interrogate the state as a locus of power. beth wright 34 current issues in comparative education   they suggest studying educational governance by looking at the way different actors coordinate activity to construct and deliver education (robertson & dale, 2008, p. 24). scholars of school choice have begun to interrogate methodological statism in some of the ways they conceive of global governmentality. forsey et al. (2008), carney (2009), and gulson and fataar (2011) describe the ways in which neoliberalism governs in new ways, outside the realm of state control. in this respect, research on school choice has particularly lent itself to overcoming methodological statism. a prime example of power located outside the realm of traditional state organization, neoliberal governmentality must continue to serve as a lens through which scholars understand school choice reforms. however, scholars have not necessarily interrogated the extent to which different nation-states operate with different organization and administration. st. clair and belzer (2007) explore educational systems according to their relative centralization or decentralization. however, more research questioning the way choice policies play out among governments with varying structures is necessary in order to better understand school choice as a transnational policy phenomenon. particularly with regard to neoliberal policies and implementation, studies of school choice in nation-states that proclaim keynesian or socialist economic policies (e.g., finland), as compared to firmly neoliberal countries (e.g., the united states). methodological educationism assumptions behind methodological educationism see education as something “fixed, abstract and absolute” (robertson & dale, 2008, p. 25). the norms and assumptions behind what education should be and do are not questioned. according to robertson and dale (2008), “it also usefully disguises the role of education in capitalist systems, as a tool for social stratification” (p. 25). they propose that researchers question assumed educational practice, politics, and outcomes. as shown above, many scholars of school choice have highlighted the extent to which neoliberal education reforms have reproduced inequitable social structures (ball, 1993; davies & guppy, 1997; astiz et al., 2002; forsey, 2008; james et al., 2010; gulson & fataar, 2011; sung, 2011). particularly, scholars have focused on the role school choice policies play in global capitalism, suggesting that neoliberal reforms should be seen as culpable for sustaining unjust economic structures (davies & guppy, 1997; astiz, et al., 2002; carney, 2009). neoliberalism in general has been interrogated across various disciplines as a hegemonic force to be resisted. however, it is also important for comparativists to consider the boundaries of education with relation to other sectors, as well as public and community outcomes of education. under neoliberal policies, it is particularly important to question the extent to which choice promotes schooling’s commodification. spatial fetishism robertson and dale (2008) emphasize the importance of questioning the influence of space on educational phenomena. spatial fetishism involves viewing space as “timeless and static” rather than historical and in flux (brenner, cited in robertson & dale, 2008, p. 28). they further challenge researchers to move beyond simply describing issues as “global.” rather, a deeper exploration of context, at multiple levels, must be explored. the research reviewed in this paper has described transnational school choice as global, and has sought to explicate the implications of school choice as a global phenomenon. in this way, they do not treat “the global” as a static and self-evident concept, but rather as one that must be breaking tradition current issues in comparative education 35   explored and questioned. however, fewer researchers have specifically sought to explore a multi-layered context that is situated in dynamic time and space. robertson and dale (2008) suggest moving beyond the local-global binary to describe a phenomena across multiple scales. carney (2009) and stambach (2003), in particular, analyze school choice policies with specific regard to spatial locality. they both orient their studies to specific times and places, but also acknowledge the multiple levels on which their subjects interact. given the way neoliberalization has been theorized as multiple, contingent, and on-going, empirical studies must avoid designing studies that position school choice policies and practices as monolithic or static. even as school choice is enacted, shifts, and responds to critique, researchers must interrogate its nuances and processes, even as they unfold. conclusions as a greater number of nations across the globe have adopted choice policies, scholars have increasingly described the policies as part of a global school reform model. scholars who seek to understand school choice as a global phenomenon have conceptualized globalization in varying, but complementary ways. scholars have critiqued school choice as a neoliberal construct, which has reproduced existing forms of inequality though its seemingly inescapable discourse and governmentality. as part of these critiques, some scholars have ventured toward new methods of researching and analyzing school choice policies. scholars should follow the lead of scholars like stambach and carney in order to not only forge new methods of scholarly investigation, but also to problematize existing neoliberal constructs. by seeking to break down traditional categories and modes of analysis, they have begun to open opportunities to imagine alternative modes of education and governance. beth wright is a doctoral candidate in cultural and educational policy studies. email: bwright3@luc.edu. references appadurai, a. (1996). modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. appadurai, a. (2000). grassroots globalization and the research imagination. public culture, 12 (1), 1–19. apple, m. (1999). rhetorical reforms: markets, standards and inequality. current issues in comparative education, 1(2). astiz, m., wiseman, a., & baker, d. (2002). slouching towards decentralization: consequences of globalization for curricular control in national education systems. comparative education review, 46(1), 66-88. ball, s. (1993). education markets, choice and social class: the market as a class strategy in the uk and the usa. british journal of sociology of education, 14(1), 3-19. bartlett, l., frederick, m., gulbrandsen, t., & murillo, e. (2002). marketization of education: public schools for private ends. anthropology & education quarterly, 33(1), 5-29. brenner, n., peck, j., & theodore, n. (2009). variegated neoliberalization: geographies, modalities, pathways. global networks, 10(2), 182-222. carney, s. (2009). negotiating policy in an age of globalization: exploring educational “policyscapes” in denmark, nepal, and china. comparative education review, 53(1), 63-88. collier, s., & ong, a. (2005). global assemblages, anthropological problems. in aihwa ong and stephen collier (eds.). global assemblages: technology, politics and ethics as anthropological problems. malden, ma: blackwell. beth wright 36 current issues in comparative education   davies, s., & guppy, n. (1997). globalization and educational reforms in anglo-american democracies. comparative education review, 41(4), 435-459. dean, m. (2010). governmentality: power and rule in modern society (2nd ed.). london, uk: sage. england, k., & ward, k. (2007). neoliberalization: states, networks, peoples. oxford, uk: blackwell publishing ltd. forsey, m., davies, s., & walford, g. (2008). the globalisation of school choice? oxford, uk: symposium books. friedman, m. (1955). the role of government in education. in robert a. solo (ed.) economics and the public interest. binghamton, ny: vail-ballou press. gulson, k., & fataar, a. (2011). neoliberal governmentality, schooling and the city: conceptual and empirical notes on and from the global south. discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 32(2), 269-283. hindess, b. (2004). liberalism—what’s in a name? in larner and walters (eds.). global governmentality: governing international spaces. new york: routledge. james, d., reay, d., crozier, g., beedell, p., hollingworth, s., jamieson, f., & williams, k. (2010). neoliberal policy and the meaning of counterintuitive middle-class school choices. current sociology, 58(4), 623-641. mclaren, p. (1999). contesting capital: critical pedagogy and globalism-a response to michael apple. current issues in comparative education, 1(2). mudge, s. (2008). what is neo-liberalism? socio-economic review, 6(4), 703-731. peet, r., & hartwick, e. (2009). theories of development: contentions, arguments, alternatives (2nd ed). new york, ny: the guildford press. robertson, s., & dale, r. (2008). researching education in a globalising era: beyond methodological nationalism, methodological statism, methodological educationism and spatial fetishism. in j. resnik (ed.), the production of educational knowledge in the global era, 19-32. sense publishers. rose, n. (1996). governing ‘advanced’ liberal democracies. in nikolas rose, andrew barry, and thomas osborne (eds.) foucault and political reason: liberalism, neo-liberalism, and rationalities of government. london: ucl press. rose, n. (1999). powers of freedom: reframing political thought. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. stambach, a. (2003). world-cultural and anthropological interpretations of ‘choice programming’ in tanzania. in local meanings, global schooling: anthropology and world culture theory, kathryn anderson-levit (ed.). new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. st clair, r. ,& belzer, a. (2007). in the market for ideas: how reforms in the political economy of educational research in the us and uk promote market managerialism. comparative education, 43(4), 471-488. sung, y. (2011). cultivating borrowed futures: the politics of neoliberal loanwords in south korean cross-national policy borrowing. comparative education, 47(4), 523-538. microsoft word final intro round 2.docx © 2015, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 18(1), 3-5. editorial introduction: innovative methods in the field ryan m. allen teachers college, columbia university “therefore, if we propose to study foreign systems of education, we must not keep our eyes on the brick and mortar institutions, nor on the teachers and pupils only, but we must also go outside into the streets and into the homes of the people, and try to find out what is the intangible, impalpable, spiritual force which, in the case of any successful system of education, is in reality upholding the school system and accounting for its practical efficiency.” -sir michael sadler, 1900. in the first year of the twentieth century, over 115 years ago, sir michael sadler, an early father of comparative education studies, proposed this radical idea for the study of foreign education systems (bereday, 1964). he wanted to look beyond the institution of schooling and into a holistic approach to understanding what society as a whole produced. of course, today, for the field of comparative and international education (cie) the examination of education beyond schooling is not necessarily a new innovation and has been fully embraced. yet, over a century ago, when our field was in its infancy, this kind of examination was new and innovated, as innovative as any advanced statistical modeling method gaining popularity today. even back in 1964, george bereday shared this piece from sadler, recognizing how influential and innovated this suggested approach had become for the entire field. bereday, like sadler, too moved the field through new methods of understanding our subject of education. this issue of current issues in comparative education (cice) has attempted to build upon the indomitable spirit of past titans of comparative and international education (cie) through this theme of innovated methods in the field. since the founding and through its maturation, scholars in the field of cie have embraced multiple methodologies, deriving from the field’s rich connection to other academic disciplines. this diverse range of methodologies—encompassing techniques from qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods—has strengthened the relevance and richness of cie scholarship. there are numerous examples of innovative methods that have pushed the field to new heights. for instance, the vertical case study method has given scholars in the field a holistic approach through a multidimensional lens. advanced statistical techniques, such as hierarchical linear models (hlm) and item response theory (irt), have improved analysis of international large-scale assessments. most recently, we have seen the usage of social network analysis to map the interaction between actors in education. from sadler, to bereday, to the current innovators of the field, this issue recognizes these new methods in cie. the cice team hopes that the pieces and scholars in this issue will build upon our rich history of innovation by adding to our promising future as educational comparativists. each of these entries does this in their own way, but with allen current issues in comparative education 2 two clear distinct themes: three of the articles show these new methods through explorations of datasets and data sources, while the three others provide new innovation through connections to other disciplines that have been adapted to cie. researchers in cie have for years now utilized large-scale datasets to gain a greater understanding of systems around the world. ali ünlü and michael schurig continue that tradition with cutting edge analysis of timss and pirls data in “computational typologies of multidimensional end-of-primary-school performance profiles from an educational perspective of large-scale timss and pirls surveys”. yet, scholars have also continued to expanded important data sources for educational research. in “analyzing public discourse: using media content analysis to understand the policy process”, nancy green saraisky utilizes a content analysis of american media outlets to illustrate the importance of media in understanding national and international trends for educational policy research, importantly adding a public communication angle to the cie foundation. further, in thinking about data sources and the public voice, erik jon byker and aditi banerjee provide a detailed exploration of india’s annual status of education report (aser), which is a massive community-led educational assessment project, in “evidence for action: translating field research into a large scale assessment”. the conceptual framework for aser illustrates how everyday citizens can be equipped with data-driven evidence that cie is so commonly citing and looking for in research and practice. as witnessed throughout our history, comparativists have shown how other disciplines or fields can have a great impact onto our research. in “identifying research priorities for school improvement in the developing world”, robyn read, magdalena fernandezhermosilla, stephen anderson, and karen mundy illustrate how the child health and nutrition research initiative (chrni) methodology can be used to identify areas for future educational research. the chrni method originated in the health research field, but the scholars show how its adaptation can provide cie researchers and practitioners alike a new tool in priority setting for the field. in another piece, david j. woo builds upon past educational technology studies that have utilized ecological modeling and brings this perspective to cie in “advancing ecological models to compare scale in multi-level educational change”. specifically, woo uses multi-level and multi-scale analyses of technology integration efforts of two private international schools’ information and communications technology (ict) campaigns. the visualizations of metaphorical school ecologies produced in this research are especially crucial for expanding the field through use of these kinds of graphical representations. finally, the issue closes with a kind of introspection of the researcher as an actor of research. in “investigator bias and theory-ladenness in cross-cultural research: insights from wittgenstein”, charlene tan uses the philosopher ludwig wittgenstein’s exposition of belief systems to explore investigator bias in cross-cultural research. while the philosophy discipline is not often used in cie, tan’s piece offers comparativists a connection to this literature through challenges in conceptual theory-ladenness of observations in our own field. editorial introduction current issues in comparative education 3 through this issue, we hope to push the field forward by presenting innovative studies in comparative and international education. comparativists, by nature, have and always will be discovering new methods of inquiry. the diverse research collection found here will add a slight addition to the already strong foundation within cie. we know that our scholars and peers will continue pushing, exploring, and innovating. ryan m allen is a doctoral fellow in international and comparative education at teachers college, columbia university, and the managing editor of current issues in comparative education. email: rma2138@tc.columbia.edu; for cice business please contact cice@tc.columbia.edu. reference: bereday, g. z. (1964). sir michael sadler's" study of foreign systems of education". comparative education review, 307-314. current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 1, fall 2016 © 2016, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(1), 76-91. international scholarship graduates influencing social and economic development at home: the role of alumni networks in georgia and moldova anne c. campbell middlebury institute of international studies at monterey many students from lowand middle-income countries seek scholarship support to pursue higher education overseas. often scholarship programs mandate that recipients “give back” to their home countries following their studies so scholars “apply” their experiences to aid their countries of origin. in this comparative qualitative study, 40 georgian and moldovan scholarship alumni who studied in the united states were asked how alumni networks assist their ability to influence social and economic change in their home countries. the comparative findings point to the value of alumni networks in terms of graduates backing each other’s activism projects and feeling part of a community of like-minded individuals who seek change. where these networks were not present, alumni desired a supportive association to assist in their attempts to influence reform. findings suggest the development of alumni networks facilitate individual scholarship participants’ efforts to “give back” to their countries of origin. introduction a common goal of higher education is to prepare students for their future: to acquire appropriate knowledge, skills, and abilities for the marketplace; to earn an adequate salary; and to positively contribute to one’s community and society. for students from lowand middle-income countries who pursue higher education in high-income countries 1 , the home country context in which they pursue these goals may be significantly different from the environment in which they studied. in their countries of origin, students may have access to fewer financial resources and face associated challenges, such as low-quality infrastructure, more public health concerns, and higher rates of corruption. due to financial constraints in lowand middle-income countries, the soaring costs of tuition, and the financial demands of daily living in high-income countries, many students who pursue degrees abroad are sponsored by a third party (institute of international education, 2016). donor support can come from many sources: domestic and foreign country governments, home and host universities, private foundations, international the role of alumni networks in georgia and moldova current issues in comparative education 77 organizations, businesses, and individual philanthropy. despite the specific funder, a majority of scholarship sponsors mandate that sponsored students “give back” in a way that aids the home country. for example, the mastercard foundation scholars program notes: the intention of scholars to “give back” to their communities and countries is integral to achieving the goals of the program. scholars’ commitment to make a difference in the lives of others is nurtured and encouraged in a variety of ways such as volunteerism, service learning, entrepreneurial skill development and more. (2015, p. 4) how “giving back” is defined ranges broadly across scholarship programs, from contractual employment to goodwill between countries. despite this variety, scholarship programs are widely viewed as tools for national development, evidenced by their recent inclusion as one of the education targets in the united nation’s sustainability goals: “by 2020, to substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing states and african countries, for enrolment in higher education” (united nations, 2016). the assumption is that quality higher education is an opportunity to be afforded to all talented young people, even if it means crossing national borders and obtaining financial support from third parties to reach this goal. the model that undergirds most scholarships—that talented students will be educated in quality universities in high-income countries and then return home to apply their knowledge and skills for the advancement of their home country—raises questions about program impact and efficacy. scholars have long debated issues related to “brain drain” (see beine, docquier, and rapoport, 2008; di maria & lazarova, 2012), the “global knowledge economy” (gürüz, 2011), and push and pull factors of internationally mobile students (odhiambo, 2013; polovina, 2011) to suggest international higher education has the potential of aiding a country’s national development, yet also may contribute to pulling the most qualified graduates from their countries to better economic opportunities abroad. however, these studies mostly focus on an unspecified group of internationally mobile students, not scholarship graduates expected to “give back.” an additional challenge to understanding how scholarship program alumni contribute to social and economic development in their home countries is a focus on individual alumni trajectories instead of accomplishments made by a group (see examples in kalisman, 2015 and volkman, dassin, & zurbuchen, 2009). by profiling individual scholars, almost no attention is given to the alumni networks that may help, or hinder, the individual’s accomplishments. previous studies indicate this is an oversight, as alumni networks around the world are helpful to university graduates to 1) find employment (chiavacci, anne c. campbell current issues in comparative education 78 2005) and 2) engage in volunteerism and charitable giving (farrow & yaun, 2011). however, these studies focus on graduates in high-income countries, likely with better remuneration packages and more extensive alumni networks. moreover, these networks are usually a collection of graduates from a single university, which is not typically the case with scholarship networks. therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine the role of alumni networks in helping or hindering international scholarship graduates to “give back” to their lowand middleincome countries of origin. by exploring the characteristics of alumni networks, this research may aid scholarship graduates and program sponsors and administrators in the goal of advancing social and economic development in the graduates’ home countries. specifically, the questions addressed are: i) how do alumni networks aid in sponsored students’ activities in “giving back” to their countries of origin following their scholarship, if at all? ii) what national contextual characteristics influence the success of alumni networks? to answer these questions, a qualitative study was conducted to compare the experiences and perceptions of scholarship recipients from the republics of georgia and moldova. forty graduates were asked about their activities related to “giving back” to their home countries, including the role of alumni networks. comparing the sets of scholarship graduates from georgia and moldova is suitable due to two main factors. first, the two countries have similar geopolitical profiles: both countries declared independence from the soviet union in 1991 and have struggled with the transition from communism to democracy; both countries have a history of citizen uprisings to demand the soviet-style government be replaced with pro-market liberalized governments; and both have “frozen” conflicts within their borders, with separatist populations seeking independence (central intelligence agency, 2016a & 2016b). second, georgia and moldova have each utilized a strategy of national human capital development via higher education abroad, “a particularly beneficial” strategy for the former states of the soviet union (perna, orosz, jumakulov, kishkentayeva, & ashirbekov, 2015, p. 174). moreover, the same or similar scholarship programs have been offered in both countries, such as the edmund s. muskie graduates fellowship program (sponsored in part by the u.s. government) and the civil servant scholarships (sponsored in part by the open society foundations). conceptual and methodological frameworks the conceptual framework undergirding most international higher education scholarships is closely linked to human capital theory. succinctly put, human capital theory states that the money invested in an individual’s education has a positive economic the role of alumni networks in georgia and moldova current issues in comparative education 79 return for the individual (becker, 1975; schultz, 1963; smith, 1952) and improved social and economic outcomes for their community (mcmahon, 1999, 2009). in the case of sponsored international higher education, this theory suggests that the financial investment made in the form of tertiary education will build a selected student’s capabilities and this student will then improve the economic and social conditions in their local community, anticipated to be in their country of origin. the methodological framework for this study was informed by schutz’s (1967) theory of social phenomenology, which states that qualitative research serves to understand the subjective experience of individuals in their daily lives and allows individuals to create judgments about these experiences. using semi-structured interviews, the researcher attempted to get a broad picture of scholarship graduates’ experiences by asking them to reflect on: 1) their contributions to social and economic change in their home countries following program participation, and 2) the contributions of their scholarship peers. taking the analysis one step further, these qualitative data were aggregated by country— one of georgian alumni and one of moldovan alumni—for comparative purposes. sampling procedure and data collection in accordance with social phenomenology, scholarship students were interviewed to ascertain their understanding of how they, and their scholarship peers, “give back” to their country of origin. to narrow the pool of interview candidates, selection criteria were set: eligible participants had to have participated in a scholarship program to study in the united states, at the master’s level, between the years 1996 and 2014. interviewees were recruited via scholarship program listservs, social media, public presentations, and word of mouth. ultimately, 26 georgian and 25 moldovan graduates responded, and 20 from each country were selected for diversity among demographic characteristic2. the selection of these 20 interviewees was primarily to gather a broad range of perspectives and experiences (e.g., to avoid an overrepresentation of a specific program) in line with achieving maximum variation in the sample (miles & huberman, 1994). women were the majority of interviewees (15 georgian and 11 moldovan) 3 , and participants’ sponsors included the u.s. government, the governments of georgia and moldova, host universities, private foundations, and individual philanthropists. as no comprehensive list of graduates of sponsored study exists, it is difficult to estimate the degree to which the interviewees represent the total population. interviews were semi-structured and utilized responsive interviewing (rubin & rubin, 2012), allowing the researcher to gather interpretations and explore certain experiences or details in depth. interviews lasted from 30 to 90 minutes, with 23 conducted in person and 17 conducted via phone or skype. transcripts were coded using a hybrid approach of anne c. campbell current issues in comparative education 80 inductive and deductive coding and theme development (fereday & muir-cochrane, 2006) with maxqda12 software. following each country’s set of 20 interviews, the dominant themes were identified; later the two cases were compared in line with ragin’s caseoriented approach, which asserts that analytically comparing cases produces insight into “categories of empirical phenomenon” (2013, p. 35), the goal of this study. findings graduates of u.s. scholarships tended to view alumni networks as useful tools to organize and drive social and economic change in their home countries. calling other graduates “very interesting and successful people” and “ideological comrades,” interviewees noted that their scholarship peers provided support for their activities through advice, encouragement, and volunteering; collaborated directly on team projects; and organized to address larger social problems. by connecting with other alumni across years of participation, professions, and levels of experience, interviewees noted that the networks were—or could be—instrumental in the country’s socioeconomic development. in georgia and moldova, alumni networks included both formal, registered organizations and informal collaborations. membership was organized in various ways (e.g., participants in a single scholarship program or alumni who have been sponsored by the u.s. government) and the group’s founders differed (e.g., scholarship sponsor or alumni leaders). a few had been incorporated as independent non-profit organizations. the structure and frequency of meeting was quite different, although main communication was conducted electronically. next, each country’s case is explored below. georgian alumni networks georgian scholarship graduates considered themselves part of the “critical mass” of western-educated individuals who have led georgia’s development, and they highly valued their connection to other alumni. almost all georgian alumni (17 of 20) mentioned they had existing formal or informal ties with other alumni, and there appeared to be no difference between those who lived in georgia or abroad. many regularly spoke with those who were in their same scholarship cohort, while others had made connections among those who participated in different programs and or at different intervals. moreover, this familiarity led to trust, both professional and personal, among georgians with u.s. degrees. as one example, an alumna talks about her relationships with 12 other alumni who were in the same scholarship cohort, “so, it was very easy for me and for us to keep together as a group, and we still keep in touch, almost 20 years later.” she said she trusts others in her program because, “i know what [they] went through, sort of, because i went through the same. so, i’m sort of assured of your quality.” another alumnus echoes this point, saying a scholarship is, “like a business card. you know, if i know someone [had a scholarship], it’s much easier for me to approach this person the role of alumni networks in georgia and moldova current issues in comparative education 81 because there are, definitely, the shared values.” eleven other alumni reiterated these beliefs that one can assume scholarship alumni have certain values or principles and that these individuals can be trusted. the alumni interviewed for this study mentioned two formal alumni networks most often: 1) the u.s. government exchange program alumni association of georgia (epag)4, and 2) the georgian association of social workers (gasw). in addition to these formally registered groups, alumni mentioned informal groups organized around their specific scholarship programs, individual interests, or host universities. membership in these associations not only helped alumni to meet peers but also to make connections for future employment or volunteer projects. this was especially true for those alumni based in the capital city of tbilisi, where alumni noted that other scholarship graduates were a vital part of their professional networks. several interviewees admitted to turning to graduate networks to advertise job postings; likewise, alumni provided stories about finding employment from other alumni, even those they had not met in person. five alumni noted that they prefer to hire other scholarship grantees, and one alumnus highlighted that western education was a prerequisite for starting work at his law firm. to provide insight into the mechanics of an alumni group serving as a professional network, an example from one alumnus is especially illustrative. this alumnus recounted a time when she recruited consultants to introduce a new policy approach to the ministry for which she was working. she explained, “the minister created a [new] department, but we couldn’t find a head of department. and also we were looking for local trainers or temporary consultants for very specific [type of] analysis work.” she chose to engage an alumni listserv managed by the international research and exchanges board (irex) office in georgia, “so, i went to irex to ask for professionals, maybe for graduate students, who were doing research, who wanted to contribute.” having these networks allowed graduates to find those with special skills, as well as to further enhance and hone specific ideas. in addition, georgian scholarship recipients noted that other alumni were a significant part of their personal network. those with scholarships in the u.s. tended to socialize with and know the personal details of other alumni. as one example, an alumnus talked about how a group of alumni decided to gather for a christmas celebration, inviting those not just of their own scholarship program, but others who had attended the same university on other scholarships. she said, “i just met with most of the people a week ago, in fact, and we just discussed…our roles in helping developing this country.” she added that those living in tbilisi had decided that together they would organize a club and try to apply for grants related to education reform. anne c. campbell current issues in comparative education 82 these acts of self-organizing into groups, using those groups to form teams committed to a certain project, and applying for project funding was fairly commonplace among georgian graduates. graduates also noted that working within the parameters of a formalized alumni organization—one registered with the government, had a leadership and communication structure, operated under bylaws, and had fiscal infrastructure— hastened project development and facilitated partnership with other organizations. graduates also mentioned their involvement in projects that included efforts to start new degree programs at universities, to offer services for children with disabilities, to raise awareness about domestic violence, and to clean up the environment. in one particularly successful case (according to multiple interviewees), the gasw was founded by a group of social work graduates primarily from columbia university and washington university in st. louis and sponsored by the open society foundations. as is true with the gasw, which advocates for “the rights, recognition and importance of social workers in georgia and the clients they serve” and led the establishment of social work degree programs at two georgian universities (georgian association of social workers, 2015), scholarship recipients saw their peers as action-oriented, trustworthy, and able to execute programs that led to social and economic change in georgia. moreover, it appeared that alumni thought of themselves, in part, as a member of a larger group, using terms such as “critical mass” and “a community that once was selected as the people who could get degrees from the best universities in the world and then come back and help develop areas in which we would work.” while graduates admitted that not all projects have been successful, they noted that with the help of other alumni, they were able to boost their individual contributions to social and economic development. these networks symbolized not only social support for alumni, but they also represented a group of trusted partners and future collaborators with a shared enthusiasm for social and economic change in georgia. moldovan alumni networks when compared to their peers in georgia, moldovan interviewees very rarely mentioned alumni networks as a vehicle to spur social and economic development at home. of the 20 moldovan interviewees, only two—both u.s. government alumni—mentioned alumni activities as central to the way they “give back” to moldova, and in both of those instances, they were asked to volunteer by the embassy. three alumni mentioned the international networks of their host universities, but they only mentioned these in vague terms—mostly related to knowledge of their existence and to receiving fundraising requests—not in terms of active engagement. instead, moldovan alumni spoke more often about their individual accomplishments or those done in cooperation with professional colleagues. when moldovan interviewees spoke about alumni networks, they mostly mentioned activities that are organized and maintained by the u.s. embassy in moldova or the u.s. the role of alumni networks in georgia and moldova current issues in comparative education 83 department of state. the u.s. embassy maintains an alumni resource center that provides reference materials and leads activities for graduates of u.s. government educational exchange programs, ranging from academic degree programs to short-term and professional visits. each year these alumni are invited to an alumni congress, where selected alumni are awarded for outstanding alumni contributions to moldova. despite the effort put into these alumni events by the u.s. government and several alumni leaders, interviewees referred to the alumni network as loose and not vibrant. one alumnus who had a leadership position described it this way, struggling with her apparent ambivalence, “so, it’s a pretty close community. not close. it’s, um, a big community of alumni and we work together on a lot of events. so, it’s kind of easy to keep in touch with them.” continuing, she said she keeps in touch with other alumni, “not because i choose to but because i kind of have to,” suggesting with some reluctance, “you never know who you might collaborate with because, as i said, it’s a small country, it’s a small city, so we do get to meet all these alumni.” the interviewee’s tone, matched by other alumni who participated in this study, was that alumni networking was something that happened by default rather than through active planning and willful engagement. moreover, this uncertain attitude to scholarship graduate networks seems to be one that developed over time. seven alumni noted specifically that they were eager to be involved in an alumni community, but with time their interest has waned. as an example, one alumnus living in chisinau said: i’m not as good as keeping with alumni here in moldova. i went to a few events at some point, but i didn’t find that this was a great place to meet [others] because they kind of mixed everyone [and] didn’t have a muskie-specific group. so, i never used that again. (interviewee, november 5, 2014) another alumnus said she was asked several times to provide free trainings to students or alumni or to participate on scholarship selection panels. however, other than these invited events, she had not been engaged. three others indicated that their involvement with the alumni community dwindled when the muskie program ended with the final cohort selected in 2012. one said this was an extreme disappointment because he applied to muskie specifically because “the americans seem to take care more of the whole process [of networking]” and he was seeking to connect with other alumni upon his graduation. several other alumni noted that despite the work of the u.s. government’s alumni resource center, the alumni networks could be improved to attend to the needs of their members. as one alumnus stated, there is still much to do “to make sure that alumni have anne c. campbell current issues in comparative education 84 opportunities to develop and grow in moldova when they come back.” of the current structure, one alumnus summarized her position, saying: i do want this association to work for the alumni that return, but i also want to promote this idea that we also need to help them facilitate their activities in the country. because, first of all, a lot of alumni are leaving the country—even the master’s programs. how many can you see [here in moldova]? there are some, but not too many. the majority have [sic] left in the first three years… and that’s only about muskies, but if you look at other programs, it’s the same thing. and there are some alumni that work somewhere in the region, and maybe they would want to do something, but they don’t have that support. we’re not offering that, and at this point. (interviewee, october 29, 2014) moreover, five alumni mentioned they would like to see more profiles of western educated alumni who have returned, stayed in moldova, and excelled through outstanding contributions. alumni claimed that historically it has been difficult to stay interested in contributing to moldovan society when alumni perceive that so many peers are going abroad—even those who had leadership roles in the alumni community5. one alumnus who currently lives abroad said that overseas you see examples of honest, hard work leading to success, “and you don’t have so many cases in moldova.” on the whole, alumni who live abroad reported little engagement in moldovan alumni networks. one alumnus who lives in the united states said, “so at some point [while living in moldova], i got disconnected from the association or the community, and especially when i moved the u.s., the disconnect became even bigger.” after stating that he follows the alumni association activities on facebook, he said, “i’m not that connected. [...] i’m just more of a passive observer.” in another interesting example, one alumnus who lived in moscow after her scholarship talked about her role with the alumni of u.s. government programs—however as an active member of the russian muskie club, not the moldovan. although alumni indicated they had not been so active in alumni organizations, those who live in moldova emphasized their desire for a vibrant network. some thought it was too difficult to mobilize alumni when so many were overseas, while others were more optimistic, believing that alumni can unite to significantly improve moldova’s socioeconomic situation. one alumnus noted that alumni should be asked to be involved. she explained, “if you have a couple of persons that are stubborn and they still want to make a difference, then ‘yes! we can go!’ but some may be modest, like ‘ok, you don’t ask me what can i do.’” the role of alumni networks in georgia and moldova current issues in comparative education 85 one possible improvement to the alumni network in moldova, as suggested by alumni, is to shift the leadership from the u.s. government at the top to an alumni-led effort. of the current structure, one alumnus said: there is an alumni program, but it’s all funded by the u.s. embassy, it’s maintained by the u.s. embassy, where all the alumni are welcome. we have alumni meeting. we have alumni congress. but this not done by the [moldovan] government. this is not done by moldovan society. it keeps maintaining [sic] by u.s. embassy. they still do the part of the job that i prefer moldova would do for us. it’s like u.s. is paying for us, u.s. is hosting us, and when we come back, u.s. is still trying to integrate us back. (interviewee, january 8, 2015) however, the u.s. government’s role in alumni networks may not necessarily be because it hesitated to relinquish its leadership; alumni rarely offered to take a more significant role in the alumni network themselves. on the whole, moldovan alumni seem rather uninspired and nonchalant about current networks, yet recognized that they could be powerful forces in spurring social and economic reform. of the alumni of her scholarship program, one alumnus said, “it’s a network unused.” strikingly, very few interviewees mentioned a desire to start a new or rekindle an existing alumni initiative in the future. discussion: comparing the cases when comparing the cases of georgia and moldova, graduates from both countries see other scholarship recipients as possible collaborators and are interested in learning more about others’ expertise, experiences, and skills. interviewees also reported that strong and vital networks aid individual graduates in “giving back” and contributing to national social and economic development in their home countries. however, the ways that these alumni networks are organized and function are very different between the two countries. in the case of georgia, multiple networks provided the frame and support for ambitious and creative alumni to propose projects, find collaborators, and apply for funding for progressive projects. in moldova, the networks were loose or nonexistent—and to some graduates, ineffective. moldovan scholarship graduates wished for stronger ties with other scholarship alumni as a way to promote social and economic change. therefore, returning to the first question of this study, alumni networks—where they exist—appear to assist sponsored students in “giving back” to their home countries. with these findings in mind, why would georgian alumni develop and participate in networks at a greater rate than moldova alumni? this is especially curious given that the anne c. campbell current issues in comparative education 86 u.s. government and other funders presumably offer similar support and resources for alumni networks and projects in both countries. this query is in line with the second research question of this study: what national contextual characteristics influence the success of these alumni networks? two contributing factors provide some clues. first, alumni interviewed for this study estimated that 80-90% of georgian alumni return to live and work in their home country, compared to 40-50% of moldovan alumni. (no exact figures of the current residence of sponsored students with u.s. degrees are available.) more alumni in the country leads to more people contributing to networks, thereby developing more ideas, building stronger projects, and having a larger network of trusted peers with whom to share information and work. in addition, with greater membership in alumni groups, more individuals can share the difficult work of fighting against social norms to introduce new policies, practices, and activities that contribute to social and economic change in society. the second factor that could influence the difference between alumni networks in georgia and moldova is the transition towards a more open and progressive society that happened earlier in georgia. with the rose revolution in 2003 and new leadership by mikheil saakashvili (a scholarship recipient himself), two important messages were conveyed: 1) it is time for reform in georgia, using instructive examples from the u.s. and europe (saakashvili, 2006), and 2) western education—especially american education—is exemplary preparation for leadership and public service. taken together, graduates looked to others with similar experience abroad and asked these peers to help with various initiatives, and graduates were incentivized to affiliate with these prestigious groups to advance their connections and reputations. in many ways, formal and informal alumni associations served as a clearinghouse for ideas, from which socialand economicthemed projects emerged. in moldova, on the other hand, similar change was more piecemeal and less extensive following the twitter revolution of 2009 (european forum for democracy and solidarity, 2016). in this slowly-changing context, many alumni described a society impervious to change, and one that did not place the same value on their u.s. degrees. consequently, alumni perceived their home country as one unwelcome to their ideas or proposed projects. in turn, this resulted in alumni not asking others to support their work, and when they looked for partners, they felt disheartened by the large number of alumni residing abroad. in summary, motivated individuals hoping to change their societies—like those selected for competitive international scholarship programs—tend to seek the support and partnership of other scholarship alumni to advance and enact their ideas. this desire to collaborate with other graduates is not particularly in line with many scholarship the role of alumni networks in georgia and moldova current issues in comparative education 87 programs’—and, on a larger scale, human capital’s—theory of change which states that a student will individually benefit and then independently contribute to change at home. to the contrary, this research indicates that individuals seek a community of like-minded individuals to facilitate individual or group actions to enact social or economic change in their countries of origin. where alumni networks are not as active—as in the case of moldova—alumni note that the lack of networking or community with other alumni is a barrier to their own meeting of the scholarship aims. conclusion and recommendations in conclusion, it would be logical to assume that when the same or similar scholarship programs are offered in multiple countries that the purpose of alumni networks, their structure, and their level of activity would be correspondingly alike. however, despite similar motivations for starting and facilitating alumni networks in multiple countries, there were striking contrasts between the networks in georgia and moldova at the time of this research. first, the number and vitality of the alumni networks differ. second, alumni viewed the efficacy of these networks differently, such as how they utilized the networks to make connections and friends, seek partners or volunteers for projects, or find employment. for georgians, alumni networks embodied a “critical mass” that was leading change in the country, with alumni organizations serving as activity hubs. for moldovans, interviewees described the alumni network as a diffuse and “underused resource,” with moldovan alumni reporting that they wondered if alumni networks were weakened due to so many peers living abroad. this research calls attention to the potential of networks to better achieve individual’s goals in “giving back” as well as the scholarship’s overall aim to spur economic and social development in lowand middle-income countries. to reach program goals, scholarship funders and administrators—and program graduates themselves—can prioritize alumni programming to advance initiatives that promote networking, support collaborative projects, and foster leadership of alumni organizations. while the idea of organizing and funding alumni networks and projects is not new, this research sheds light on ways to improve existing initiatives. for example, instead of funders or governments designing and leading initiatives, alumni leaders should direct meetings, events, and projects to create a greater possibility that the network will respond to the perceived concerns of the graduates themselves. offering a stipend to alumni leaders could be a worthwhile strategy to incentivize graduates to take these important positions. moreover, funders and administrators can also weigh collective accomplishments on par with individual ones in their program materials, selection criteria, alumni funding, and program evaluation. furthermore, alumni networks should bring greater attention to alumni accomplishments and role models—at least in post-soviet countries that are undergoing political transition. anne c. campbell current issues in comparative education 88 this specific task is important for three reasons identified in this research. first, by profiling specific individual and group accomplishments, new graduates can see models of success in the transitioning post-soviet context and perhaps follow a similar path or seek these more experienced alumni for advice. second, showcasing alumni profiles enhance graduates’ ability to connect with each other and develop a better sense of potential collaborators and teams, further strengthening the network. finally, models of successful alumni who returned to—and excelled in—the country sets a standard of what can be accomplished by graduates, promoting counterexamples to pervasive themes of life overseas equalling success. as was determined by this research, a more active and connected network indicates a greater chance of alumni being involved in social and economic change in their home countries, therefore creating an increased likelihood of overall program effectiveness. additional research can further understanding of what qualities and attributes make scholarship alumni networks successful in other countries and how to best transform a network that is struggling. acknowledgements: this article summarizes a portion of findings from the author’s doctoral dissertation, completed at the university of minnesota. the author would like to acknowledge her advisor, dr. david w. chapman, and dissertation committee—drs. frances vavrus, christopher johnstone, and carol carrier—for their advice and guidance during this study. thanks also go to the center for international education in georgia, the educational advising center in moldova, and those who agreed to participate in and support this study. funding for data collection was supported by a fellowship from irex with funds provided by the united states department of state through the title viii program; neither of these organizations is responsible for the views expressed herein. finally, the author would like to acknowledge dr. elisabeth lefebvre and john schaidler for their important feedback on drafts of this article. about the author: anne c. campbell, ph.d., is an assistant professor in the international education management master’s program at the middlebury institute of international studies in monterey, california. her research interests lie at the intersection of international higher education and national social and economic development in lowand middle-income countries. contact: anne c. campbell at accampbell@miis.edu references becker, g. s. 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(2016). country and lending groups [data set]. retrieved from http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-classifications/country-and-lendinggroups 1 definitions of low-, middle-, and high-income countries are the same as the world bank’s definition of lower-, middle-, and high-income economies (world bank, 2016). 2 demographic characteristics included sex, scholarship program sponsor, year began scholarship, and country of residency at time of interview. 3 for many international higher education student mobility programs offered in eastern europe, females are the majority of participants, with the exception of predominantly muslim countries (sherman & campbell, 2005). 4 the muskie scholarship program formerly had its own specific alumni organization for muskie alumni, but it was morphed into epag in 2013-2014. 5 although several individuals noted that this has recently changed with the examples of maia sandu and stela mocan, two individuals with u.s. education who had leadership roles in the moldovan government. in november 2016, maia sandu ran for the moldovan presidency. http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/education/ http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-classifications/country-and-lending-groups http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-classifications/country-and-lending-groups © 2012 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(1): 52-63. how to make the small indigenous cultures bloom? special traits of sámi education in finland pigga keskitalo sámi university college, norway satu uusiautti university of lapland, finland kaarina määttä university of lapland, finland this article discusses smallness from the point of view of the sámi, an indigenous people of the arctic, and describes today’s sámi education in finland, the factors that have affected its formation and the challenges in strengthening it. the purpose of the article is to provide ideas to develop sámi education and encourage discovering methods that emanate from indigenous peoples’ own cultural premises. this article is based on our previous studies and data that we further analyzed into theoretical tools. here, we discuss what it would mean to the sámi to have a sovereign educational system. the challenges are viewed especially from the point of view of the sámi being a small assemblage that inhabits four countries. in the language garden analogy, ofelia garcía (2011) uses powerful words to portray language planning and refers to “sustainable languaging”: language planning must maintain a futureorientation, becoming dynamically situated in social context. language diversity makes for a richer, more interesting, and more colorful world. small (indigenous) languages need careful language planning and protection to preserve linguistic diversity in the world. sometimes radical action may be taken to make small cultures and languages bloom (garcia, 2011). in this article, we present a small indigenous population as adding cultural and linguistic diversity and address issues associated with smallness as experienced by those indigenous populations when it comes to education. we will present the challenging historical-cultural background of the sámi followed by a description of the present educational situation of the sámi people. then, we discuss the importance of finding ways to implement the sámi culture in education. finally, we argue that the sámi should be seen as a small assemblage that would benefit from having (educational) sovereignty and language revitalization. we will discuss what it means for a small indigenous population to be considered a ‘small assemblage’– and how this viewpoint could contribute to the discussion of challenges that indigenous peoples face. this article is based on our previous studies on sámi education in norway and finland (see keskitalo 2010; keskitalo & määttä, 2011, 2012; keskitalo, määttä, & uusiautti, 2011a, 2011b, 2012) that is now expanded through the theoretical analysis on the sámi as a small assemblage. in this study, we ground our analysis on the data from finland. the first study in finland was carried out in 2005–2008: it was a school ethnography in elementary instruction at five schools in finland including the analysis of the finnish core curriculum for comprehensive education and interviews among ten teachers. the objective was to understand and present the state of sámi education in finland. our latest study was conducted among teachers from the schools and daycare centers of the sámi domicile area, local school authorities and representatives of the finnish and norwegian sámi parliaments and higher education (n=64, including people from all of these groups) who participated in the sámi pedagogy conference in 2011 and were asked to share their experiences of sámi education. in this article, we will view the sámi’s position as a small jurisdiction by focusing on sámi education, as education can be seen as the means of strengthening a small assemblage’s autonomy. godfrey baldacchino (2006) suggests that “autonomies” should be recognized as viable politico-economic units in their own right. he also uses the concept of “nations without states” (p. 854) to refer current issues in comparative education 53 how to make the small indigenous cultures bloom a small assemblage under the governance of a modern nation-state. furthermore, researchers suggest that in the future, the recognition of small jurisdictions is likely to be a rule instead of an exception as small jurisdictions are emerging (baldacchino, 2006; see also anckar, 2003). this viewpoint provides the starting point of viewing an indigenous people as an example of a small assemblage. however, the case is not that simple. for example, anckar (2003) claims that cultural diversities and strong regional traditions create pressures for decentralization and a dispersal of power. anckar (2003) refers to federalism as an institutional response to societal divisions and diversities, but simultaneously points out that the extent to which small assemblages enjoy sovereignty can vary significantly. in this article, the special focus is on the sámi as an indigenous people. the sámi are a historically and culturally distinct community, a small assemblage (cf. anckar, 2003) but a scattered one. namely, there are approximately 70,000–100,000 sámi – depending on country-based criteria – of whom about 40,000–60,000 live in norway, about 15,000–20,000 in sweden, about 2,000 in russia, and about 10,000 in finland. when it comes to educational issues, small populations encounter specific challenges, threats and opportunities (mayo, 2008). bacchus (2008) argues that small assemblages experience problems achieving economies of scale in the provision of educational services: other concerns related to the internal features of their educational systems such as the challenges that they faced in developing culturally relevant curriculum materials, conducting examinations on a cost-effective basis, and providing appropriate higher educational opportunities to meet their limited demands for personnel with such education. (p. 127) in fact, providing all students with equal educational opportunities and removing obstacles to learning, especially among the least successful students, have been the leading principles in finnish educational policy since the 20th century but there are still issues to be reconsidered and improved, for example, concerning education for national minorities (määttä & uusiautti, 2012). education would be an effective way to remedy the situation and should be seen as a counterforce against the colonization of the mind and heart. implementing uncolonized pedagogy, a pedagogy that does not carry the dominating culture as given, but requires taking various cultural logics seriously (mohanty, 1994). yet, developing sámi education is challenging: on the one hand it is affected by outer factors, like the pressure to assimilate, and on the other hand it is affected by inner factors such as the specific features of sámi education. these factors reveal the difference between the majority and minority culture and their logics within an educational system. in uncolonized pedagogy, the sámi culture is taken in the center to develop sámi education successfully. the historical-cultural background the sámi belong to the finno-ugric people, whose first settlements arrived in europe and northern eurasia about 40,000 years ago. as a group, the sámi are genetically different from other europeans (pimenoff, 2008). permanent settlements in the north were created about 10,000 years ago. the sámi have certain western characteristics and are partly descended from people who moved along the west coast of europe during and after the ice age. the sámi region was at its widest from the start of common era until the 11th century, when it included all of modernday finland (carpelan, 2000). historically, the sámi have been divided by livelihood and region into reindeer herders, fishermen, and forest sámi (halinen, 2011). the traditional sámi lifestyle, dominated by hunting, fishing and trading, was preserved until the late middle ages, when the modern structures of the nordic countries were established (hansen & olsen, 2004). the present state borders that divide sámi regions were defined between the middle of the 18th century and 54 current issues in comparative education keskitalo, uusiautti, and määttä the second world war. due to the western settlement in the nordic countries, the sámi became a minority in most of their traditional areas. the regions in which the sámi live, sápmi, expand from central-norway and central-sweden through the northern parts of finland to russia’s kola peninsula. the sámi´s current situation involves moving from their official regions. for example, in finland, the majority of the under10-year-old sámi-speaking pupils (75%) live outside the sámi domicile area in other parts of finland (aikio-puoskari, 2009). this fact poses new kinds of demands on teaching, services, and information distribution both in the sámi language and about the sámi people. furthermore, the finnish legislation on sámi education supports education only within the sámi domicile area (the sámi parliament, 2008). the sámi culture is diverse, with nine different languages spoken, each classified as endangered (magga & skutnabb-kangas, 2001). the sámi languages differ from each other to the extent that speakers of one language do not necessarily understand speakers of another (carpelan et al., 2004). however, the sámi have attempted to maintain a unified culture by creating a national flag, celebrating sámi people’s day, and instituting the sámi parliament. across norway, sweden and finland, the parliament serves as the authoritative advisory agency in issues regarding the sámi people, but has no legal or executive power. the purpose of the sámi parliament is to take care of the sámi language, culture and issues regarding the sámi’s position as an indigenous people. assimilation pressures and the history of colonization affect the sámi’s efforts to become uniform. according to valkonen (2009), the goal of decolonizing practices means that the sámi would be recognized as people that have the right to self-government. a salient purpose of decolonization is to disengage from colonialist practices and reach and implement self-determination in indigenous peoples’ regions (smith, 1999). according to the international labour organization (ilo) (1989), indigenous peoples are peoples in independent countries who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonisation or the establishment of present state boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions. (article 1, section 1b) the sámi are recognized as an indigenous people in the constitution of finland. the sámi as an indigenous people are allowed to develop their language and culture. however, finland has not ratified the aforementioned ilo convention. furthermore, according to the united nation’s declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples (2008), indigenous people have the right to autonomy and therefore to educational self-determination, for example the right to establish their own schooling institutions, the sámi’s education has been neglected or implemented along the finnish mainstream guidelines (keskitalo, määttä, & uusiautti, 2012). by viewing the sámi as a small jurisdiction, the possibility of implementing a sámi curriculum becomes more likely. the church was introduced to the sámi early, first in the 12th century and more powerfully again in the 17th century. the christian church played a major role in western oppression and assimilation pressures targeted at the sámi. the confrontation between the western and sámi cultures was problematic (kylli, 2005). the second world war had ruinous effects to the sámi education and language. the war’s legacy left the sámi without education in any language for several years, which negatively affected their literacy rates and ability to transfer their language current issues in comparative education 55 how to make the small indigenous cultures bloom to future generations (anaya, 2011). another powerful era of assimilation began around the 1950s and continued to the 1970s. in each country where the sámi resided, the sámi populations were subjected – through education and other means – to pressures of assimilation. the sámi were forced to give up their native language and start using the dominant language, change their values and lifestyle. the finnish culture and language dominated schools, and children were taught only the finnish language and cultural tradition. the history of assimilation affects the sámi to some extent even today, in both practice (e.g., limited chances to use and study the sámi language) and in lack of appreciation for the sámi culture. thus, many sámi’s contact with traditional livelihoods disappeared because of school and boarding house arrangements. eventually, some sámi children grew away from their own culture, language and costume tradition (rasmus, 2008). a distinct awakening of the sámi identity did not take place forcefully until the 1960s. the awakening of the sámi’s consciousness and the political activity was an important counter-reaction to nationalism (kontio, 1999). in the 1970s, finnish educational authorities started taking the sámi’s opinions into account for the first time since the missionary era (aikio-puoskari, 2001). the sámi school culture is molded according to the premises brought from outside the sámi culture. the sámi school culture is molded according to the premises brought from outside the sámi culture—that is the influence of colonization. the counter process of colonization is decolonization, which is closely connected to the concept of self-determination (kuokkanen, 2009). these concepts are worth considering when aiming at realizing the sámi’s rights to educational self-determination as a small assemblage. when discussing educational self-determination as a small assemblage, we talk about – instead of economic values and affectivity – cultural values and cultural capital. however, indigenous peoples’ education is closely connected with the concepts of power and democracy and the questions of human rights because the way their education is implemented depends of the status as a people given to them within the nation state they inhabit (king & schiermann, 2004). educational self-determination is limited: at the moment, the sámi do not have much influence on the finnish national educational policy. the implementation of sámi education in addition to the outer factors, historical-cultural background of sámi education, more attention must be given to the actions inside classrooms and schools in order to practically develop sámi education. in this paper, we discuss the inner factors, the practices in the classrooms, because our studies have focused on them while the outer factors make the framework where the inner factors can be developed. the quality of teaching depends on how well pedagogy is grounded in the sámi culture. therefore, it is important to (1) develop the curriculum, (2) strengthen the position of the sámi language, (3) create culturally-sensitive local teaching arrangements, and (4) diversify the wide-ranging co-operation of parents, teachers, school authorities and sámi communities (keskitalo, määttä, & uusiautti, 2011b). similarly, the cultural features of traditional sámi upbringing must be given an important position in schools (see balto, 1997). the sámi curriculum must be the foundation of educational development within a small jurisdiction like the sami (e.g., bacchus, 2008; crossley, bray, & packer, 2009; levin, 1998). composing a functional sámi curriculum requires information about its multiple dimensions. in functional indigenous education, the curriculum combines indigenous peoples’ culture, knowledge, and language with the best parts of western educational tradition and research (e.g., reform pedagogy and other pedagogical innovations and the latest research findings about teaching and learning and indigenous people,) has to be developed through active co-operation with the indigenous 56 current issues in comparative education keskitalo, uusiautti, and määttä community. a good example of the efforts of combining indigenous and western knowledge is a project where the purpose is to develop and implement traditional sámi upbringing at school (see balto, 2008; jannok-nutti, 2012). respect and appreciation of one’s own and others’ cultures should be an essential and crosssectional feature of the curriculum. the most important goal is to increase understanding, tolerance, and solidarity between various groups. in addition, the diversity and cultural value of the learning materials, such as textbooks, must reflect cultural diversity. yet, it has been shown that, in addition to the quality of teacher preparation and instructional time, “the availability of textbooks and reading materials are all empirically related to higher achievement levels” (fuller & clarke, 1994, p. 134). small languages must endeavor to gain new speakers in order to mend the history of assimilation. this kind of language revitalization can also help the sámi, who have lost part of sámi cultural and linguistic characteristics because of assimilation. using the sámi language in various situations can help sámi children learn to appreciate the sámi culture and language, thus developing and advancing the continuity of the sámi culture and identity. sámi children must also learn about indigenous knowledge, which is local and unique to each culture. it has been the basis for agriculture, food preparation, health care, education, conservation and the wide range of other activities that sustain societies in many parts of the world. indigenous people have a traditional knowledge of how to live sustainably. whereas, formal mainstream education systems have disrupted the practical aspects of indigenous knowledge and ways of learning, replacing them with abstract knowledge and academic ways of learning (unesco, 2010). language and the right to use it is the most essential part of cultural heritage distinguishing minority groups from each other (garcía, 2011; ghai, 2003). likewise, the sámi language is an endangered but salient part of the sámi identity. it is therefore important to include the sámi language not only as a school subject, but also as a language of instruction. because of the variation in pupils’ sámi language proficiency levels, teaching it can be challenging in addition to the fact that there are not many sámi pupils per school class. some pupils speak the sámi language fluently and can read already when starting school. the challenge in teaching is to cater to those pupils whose sámi language knowledge is weak. one way of teaching and revitalizing the sámi language is using various language immersion methods to strengthen children’s language proficiency before they go to school (see keskitalo, määttä, & uusiautti, 2012). language immersion is a model for learning a second language in its natural environment, learning from meaningful experiences in co-operation with the surrounding community (buss & laurén, 1997). it is important to engage the whole sámi society – students, parents, and teachers – in language revitalization. moreover, language revitalization must engage sámi elders, master craftsmen, artists, authors, and other bearers of the language and culture to cooperatively strengthen the sámi language. even if indigenous languages and multicultural programs were widely used in teaching, many problems could occur. not only is there a lack of culturally sensitive learning material in the indigenous language, but there is also a lack of bilingual or sámi-speaking teachers. furthermore, due to their previous experiences, sámi pupils’ parents may be afraid that their children will not learn the dominant language well enough if they learn in sámi. therefore, value work is crucial: people in the field, educators and other stakeholders, need information about language revitalization. even today, not all sámi people appreciate the sámi language and culture or find them valuable. changing that attitude is essential for fully implementing a sámi curriculum. current issues in comparative education 57 how to make the small indigenous cultures bloom implementing the sámi conception of time, place and knowledge in the curriculum in any society there is a dominant worldview held by most members (hart, 2010), including a shared conception of time, place, and knowledge. the learning environment of a sámi school should lean on the sámi conception of place, time and knowledge (keskitalo, 2010; see also keskitalo, määttä, & uusiautti, 2011b). the sámi see time as sun-centered and bound to nature (helander & kailo, 1999). a sámi pedagogy can put the sámi conception of time in the center in planning and implementation of learning. teaching could be arranged flexibly and in a pupiloriented manner by giving up the standard 45 minute class schedule. likewise, the sámi’s eight seasons could be utilized so that school work is adjusted to seasonal duties of the community. by taking this perspective as a part of educational arrangements, pupils will learn to respect and become aware of the rhythm with the local sámi culture. this would be a natural way of making the school function as a part of the surrounding community and nature (rasmus, 2004). sticking to the linear scheduling typical in the dominant culture may constrict sámi pupils’ cyclic time conception, which is bound to seasons and season-related duties. for example, the starting point of sámi reindeer herding is to function according to sustainable development and flexibility (helander & kailo, 1999). the sámi conception of space is not bound to square feet but is symbolically circular because the traditional dwelling places, goahti and teepees, have been roundish and closely connected to nature. that should also be the approach at school: to perceive learning environments extending outside the school building. when it comes to teaching arrangements, the sámi conception of space requires understanding the school within its wider environment. instead of staying inside the classroom, pupils should also learn outside, in the surrounding society and nature. certainly, the challenge of indigenous pedagogy is how to pay attention to the connection with nature in school subjects and study modules (kuokkanen, 2009). however, these approaches support the sámi pupils’ identity encouraging them to make choices that are bound to their sámi identity. the central element of the sámi fund of knowledge is that knowledge itself does not have a goal but is valued for its utility. people participate directly in producing and distributing information. cabins, lean-to shelters, practical real-life working situations, and camp-fires function as scientific seminars, where the sámi people discuss knowledge and share information based on their mutual conception of knowledge. epistemological truth is revealed through narratives, discussions, negotiations, and by evaluating actions and recalling memories and experiences. knowledge is also tested in various concrete situations in life and work (helander & kailo, 1999). when applied in the school context, it means that authorities do not possess knowledge, but it is held in common and results from negotiations. defining teaching arrangements that follow sámi pedagogy hindmarsh (1996) suggests that “the concepts and tools of analysis should be shifted from a focus on smallness as the key organizing concept to that of the maintenance of cultural authenticity, self-determination and identity, chieftainship and sovereignty.” certainly, respecting and maintaining traditions while adapting and developing traditional knowledge are vital features for modernizing sámi culture. the curriculum and teaching arrangements can affect these because they are founded on the wider goals and value base set for education (mayo, 2008). table 1 presents the special characteristics of sámi pedagogy. the outer change of administrative structures does not solely guarantee learning nor will the reconstruction of education alone change work in the classroom. administrators and educators, and everyone who has something to do with education including, for example pupils and 58 current issues in comparative education keskitalo, uusiautti, and määttä parents, must adopt new kind of thinking and new methods before the action can change permanently. developing the inclusive multicultural sámi school for all in the sámi domicile area is a comprehensive process that concerns the entire school body and requires cooperation between families, community and society. a comprehensive school development forms the basis of teachers’ work and motivation to commit to the change. in addition, the implementation of indigenous curriculum challenges teacher education and supplementary education. it is crucial that teachers exhibit the necessary information, skills, attitudes, motivation and ability to work as a teacher in the rapidly changing world. increasingly, teachers are expected to bring the best out in pupils regardless of their cultural background (see e.g., uusiautti & määttä, forthcoming). in addition to general pedagogical skills, good teaching calls for special cognizance of indigenous people’s language and culture. teacher education plays key roles in the development and implementation of sámi education. fallona (2000) suggests that rather than giving teachers “a bag of tricks,” teacher-education programs should encourage future teachers to understand teaching from a wider perspective. university-based teacher-education programs should explicitly instruct pre-service teachers in the cultural knowledge necessary for teaching diverse learners (sumara & luce-kapler, 1996). indeed, the development of sámi pedagogy hinges upon skillful teachers. many sámi teachers act as pioneers in renewing sámi education, but they should be systematically supported in teaching components sámi pedagogy ordinary teaching the pupil’s role active, autonomous, flexible passive, responsive the teacher’s role advising, guiding, trusting dominating, distributing information the curriculum local, appreciates and strengthens sámi culture national educational goals cultural-sensitive, based on co-operation with the indigenous community national conception of time cyclic, flexible linear conception of place connected with nature, wider than the classroom classroom-bound conception of knowledge holistic, constructivist idea of learning subject and time allocation divided according to textbooks and lessons interaction communality and co-operation formal, controlled by teacher table 1. teaching arrangements based on sámi pedagogy versus ordinary teaching current issues in comparative education 59 how to make the small indigenous cultures bloom finland (määttä, keskitalo, & uusiautti, 2012). on the other hand, since the number of sámispeaking pupils is low: the smallness can be considered a reason for regarding the sámi language as unimportant. however, the language garden analogy presented in the beginning of the article suggests seeing smallness otherwise, that languages are connected to the well-being and diversity of the world. conclusion in this article, we contemplated the sámi education and its meaning for the sámi people as a small assemblage. smallness can be considered a strength when it comes to educational issues. in small jurisdictions, single institutions can have a much greater impact in small systems than would be the case in large systems (crossley, bray, & packer, 2009). therefore, sámi education should be developed by drawing from its own special characteristics, such as the sámi conception of time, place, and knowledge (keskitalo 2010; keskitalo & määttä, 2011, 2012). the purpose of education in indigenous contexts should aim at pupils’ “wholistic success” (richard, 2012). in other words, their development as whole human beings includes their identity. in order to better meet the northern indigenous people’s cultural needs, the sámi should further develop the sámi pedagogy. sámi curriculum should acknowledge the sámi’s historical-cultural burdens while strengthening the unique features of sámi culture. the salient question is how to make good use of the sámi cultural heritage and philosophy to find models for realizing sámi education and to conceptualize pedagogy that would strengthen the sámi culture and identity. smallness is, however, a challenge, too: the reality is that there are not many sámi-speaking pupils. on the one hand, smallness can be seen resulting from asymmetric power relations. children need support to guarantee their success at school and in life overall (armstrong, kimmerer & vergun, 2007). furthermore, since the “territories and populations are divided into two or more sections, they may in fact have to manage severe physical diversity problems that are related to distance and remoteness” (anckar, 2003, p. 110) because the sámi do not live within the sámi domicile area but also other parts of the countries inhabited by the sámi. this truly challenges the realization of education but for example internet can function as a tool for institutions in small jurisdictions as “people can have the same access through this medium as households and institutions in large states” (crossley, bray, & packer, 2009, p. 732). in order to further implement sámi pedagogy, it is essential to develop an education paradigm that aligns with the needs of the sámi community. transforming the sámi community’s own culture and tradition, its values, stories, expectations, norms, roles, ceremonies, and rituals into school knowledge would improve multiculturalism and the inclusion of sámi culture in schools where sámi curriculum would be utilized. here, we need to look further than just inside the borders of one modern nation state, for example finland. the sámi live in the area of four countries, and the sámi domicile area expands beyond state borders. understanding this special feature challenges the prevailing administrative and educational systems. levin (1998) calls for educational practices that must be locally and contextually specific. indeed, we would like to emphasize that the sámi when regarded as a small assemblage that is scattered in the wide area across scandinavia need to have educational sovereignty to adjust the sámi curriculum in various practices. language and cultural revitalization and pedagogies that further it through indigenous people’s educational self-determination could foster the bloom of the small. 60 current issues in comparative education keskitalo, uusiautti, and määttä pigga keskitalo, ph.d., is an associate professor at the sámi university college, norway. her doctoral thesis studied cultural-sensitivity of the sámi school. she has published numerous articles and books about the cultural and linguistic special traits of sámi education. her next book sámi education (authored with k. määttä and s. uusiautti) will be published in 2013 by peter lang publishing. email: pigga.keskitalo@gmail.com. satu uusiautti, ph.d., works as a specialist at the university of lapland, finland. her personal research interests are in positive psychology, human strengths and happiness, success, and well-being at school and in life overall. her latest book (edited with k. määttä) early education and care in finland was published in 2012 by routledge. email: satu@uusiautti.fi. kaarina määttä, ph.d., is professor of educational psychology at the faculty of education, university of lapland and deputy vice-chancellor, university of lapland. her latest personal research interests have focused on love, attachment, and social relationships during the course of life; early education; guidance on and processes of doctoral theses; and on positive psychology and human strengths. her next book, many faces of love (authored with s. uusiautti), will be published in early 2013 by sense publishers. email: kaarina.maatta@ulapland.fi. references aikio-puoskari, u. 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(2009). poliittinen saamelaisuus [political sáminess]. tampere, finland: vastapaino. volume 13(1) / fall 2010 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice special symposium issue aid, development, and education editorial introduction 3 introduction to the special symposium issue andrew k. shiotani featured article 7 aid, development, and education steven j. klees responses 29 the ignorant donor: a radical reimagination of international aid, development, and education william c. brehm and iveta silova 37 improving aid effectiveness or transforming the global capitalist system mark ginsburg 44 the aid debate: beyond the liberal/conservative divide sangeeta kamat 51 paradoxes and prospects: moving beyond the study of foreign aid karen mundy reply 56 towards a progressive view of aid, development, and education steven j. klees current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 13, issue 1 (fall 2010) special symposium issue editors: andrew k. shiotani, ryan hathaway, and michelle hollett editorial board managing editor matthew hayden executive editor andrew k. shiotani senior editors ryan hathaway, ruaridh macleod, sarah flatto editors toni cela, anne gaspers, molly hamm, michelle hollett, rachel hatch, jason mellon, carina omoeva, muntasir sattar, angye rincon-castillo web editor andrew k. shiotani international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www. tc.edu/cice/main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2010 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, 13(1), 29-36. responses the ignorant donor: a radical reimagination of international aid, development, and education william c. brehm1 this life cambodia iveta silova1 lehigh university the logic behind international aid to development has typically centered on economics. notwithstanding the variation in focus – from macroeconomic monetary and trade policies, to economic wealth programs aimed at creating jobs, to supplyand demand-side reforms – the central discourse on international aid has been dominated by a political economist’s viewpoint. steven klees’ article, “aid, development, and education” continues to use an economic perspective by challenging some of the neoliberal economic assumptions made within the development industry since the 1970s.2 he offers a refreshing progressive alternative to the dominant neoliberal agenda and its institutions. his initial question – has such aid helped? – has a clear answer in all of the literature he reviews: no, aid has not been as effective as it could have been. but his call for a “new architecture” of international development derives from “old” foundations, reinforcing the established pillars of the economic development continuum – neoliberal, liberal, and progressive. will a progressive development architecture produce a different outcome than that of (neo)liberalism without rebuilding the philosophical foundations of international aid? is a reimagination of international aid along radically new philosophical lines possible? if so, what would it look like? as the development industry is becoming increasingly institutionalized as a science, business, and fashion – after all, anyone (from western academics to starbucks customers to celebrities) can now become development “experts” – we would like to challenge the very foundation on which the contemporary development architecture rests. turning to an 18th-century french teacher named joseph jacotot, who attempted (albeit unsuccessfully) to reconceptualize education as an “intellectual emancipation” by implicating teacher expertise in perpetuating inequality, we ponder the possibility of a radical reimagination of international aid along similar lines. instead of reinforcing the edifice of western development expertise (seeking better “best practices,” identifying more efficient development methods, or mobilizing additional resources for international aid), perhaps what we really need is an “ignorant donor” – a donor who enters the development scene without the baggage of international aid politics and the concerns of economic progress; who assumes an equality of intelligence in all stakeholders; and who sees empowerment, participation, and education as the ends in the process of international (and national) aid. on expertise and ignorance in international development at the end of the 18th century during the prehistory of mass schooling, jacotot discovered a style of teaching based on emancipation called panecastic.3 in the ignorant schoolmaster, rancière (1991) recounts the story of jacotot, who came to the realization that explication stultifies education by curtailing the independent learning students are able to accomplish on their own. knowing no flemish, jacotot realized that he could successfully teach flemish students who did not know any 30 current issues in comparative education w. c. brehm and i. silova french through the use of a translated book: to prevent stultification there must be something between the master and the student. the same thing which links them must separate them. jacotot posited the book as that in-between thing. the book is that material thing, foreign to both the master and the student, where they can verify what the student has seen, what he has told about it, what he thinks of what he has told. (rancière, 2004, p. 7) purposefully unaware of teaching methods and pedagogy, an ignorant schoolmaster could “teach” anything to anybody by encouraging students to see, to tell, and to verify: “[the teacher] had only given [the students] the order to pass through a forest whose openings and clearings he himself had not discovered. necessity had constrained him to leave his intelligence entirely out of the picture” (rancière, 1991, p. 9). instead of worshipping an intellectual hierarchy institutionalized in mass schooling, jacotot proposed a method of intellectual emancipation based on the principle that all humans have equal intelligence, can instruct themselves, and everything is in everything.4 universal teaching shattered the “pedagogical myth” claiming that “there is an inferior intelligence and a superior one” where the “superior intelligence knows things by reason, proceeds by method, from the simple to the complex, from the part to the whole” (rancière, 1991, p. 7). viewing education as the act of emancipation, jacotot believed the equality of intelligence was the only starting point for any educational experience. the power of education was therefore not in his ability to control the distance between student and teacher’s knowledge but rather in a teacher’s ignorance of his own intelligence during the very act of teaching. while the lessons of jacotot received a brief flurry of attention at the end of the 18th century, they quickly fell into oblivion as education became institutionalized in the form of modern mass schooling (ross, 1991). mass schooling became the antithesis of jacotot’s revolutionary ideas as today’s educational rhetoric attests with its relentless insistence on standards (for “best practice”), achievement (of minimum intelligence), and accountability (for procedural equality, among other things). built around the 19th century myth of “progress,” educational institutions have forcefully displaced the notion of equality of intelligence while maintaining “old intellectual hierarchies” (rancière, 1991, p. 109) through the division of the world into the knowing and the ignorant, the enlightened and the uninformed, the developed and the developing. these “partitions of the sensible” are “allegories of inequality” (rancière, 2004, p. 6) whereby mass schooling reinscribes an endless dependency of learners on “expert” knowledge and perpetuates the gap between the knowledgeable and the unintelligent. the presupposition of the inequality of intelligence has penetrated not only modern mass schooling but also international development efforts. notwithstanding the different approaches (whether neoliberal, liberal, or progressive), the development industry continues to place people, organizations, and countries with power at a (perceived) higher intellectual position than those on the receiving end. more importantly, the mechanisms of power institutionalizing the inequality of intelligence in international development are becoming increasingly refined, polished, and normalized. as escobar (1998) explains, “the forms of power that have appeared act not so much by repression as by normalization; not by ignorance but by controlled knowledge; not by humanitarian concern but by the bureaucratization of social action” (p. 92). in this context, equality will never be possible: “never will the student catch up with the master, nor the people with its enlightened elite; but the hope of getting there makes them advance along the good road…” (rancière, 1991, p. 120). in the context of international development, never will the “developing” nations catch up with the “developed,” the rest with the west. it is this current issues in comparative education 31 the ignorant donor foundational assumption of today’s international development framework – the presupposition of the inequality of intelligence – that needs to be dismantled before making any attempt at building “a new architecture” of international development and aid. new architecture, old foundation the development continuum outlined by klees provides useful insights into the differences and similarities between the dominant paradigms of international aid. on one end of the continuum, development experts see market solutions as more effective than government interventions, as in dichter, easterly, and moyo’s neoliberal reconceptualizations of aid. in the middle are liberal (with progressive tendencies) experts like ellerman, riddell, and sachs who call for increasing the scope and improving the effectiveness of aid delivery to those in need; who recognize the complexity and lopsidedness of donor-donee relationships; and who advocate for a human rights approach to aid. on the other end of the continuum, klees proposes a broadly defined approach focused primarily on “equity before growth” – the 1970s idea proposing a global redistribution of wealth towards the needs of the disadvantaged. equity before growth, combined with an increase in total official development assistance (comparable in size to the marshall plan) and the elimination of the world bank and the international monetary fund, are klees’ broad outlines for a new paradigm. based on a “participatory process” of agreed upon priorities (e.g., impact the poor, emphasize gender, go to scale, and consider the environment), klees’ progressive paradigm of international development would not require more research but more action to “make the 21st century the first one that is just and humane.” klees’ argument for a progressive paradigm of development assistance appears to reflect radical ideas;. after all, the very notion of redistributing wealth would make most conservatives in the us cringe. citing joel samoff (2009), klees (2010) agrees that the aid system “is in fact working very well. its essential role is not to achieve publicly stated objectives but rather to maintain a global political economy of inequality” (p. 16). inequality is a result of neoliberal ideas – not progressive ideas – the logic goes. but how would inequality not be present in a progressive paradigm? klees does not – and probably cannot – provide an answer, but rather points out the liberal-progressive’s emphasis on a human rights framework and the need for a critical pedagogy perspective in education reform. while the contributions of critical pedagogy are undeniable (most importantly, it enriched education policy and practice by introducing such powerful concepts as ideology, hidden curriculum, and official knowledge), it has not solved the problem of inequality. similar to conservative efforts of education reform, critical pedagogy continues to see inequality as “a taken-for-granted, even obvious state of affairs to be confronted by the right mixtures of policies and praxis” (friedrich, jaastad & popkewitz, 2010, p. 573).5 ironically, it is this belief in the human ability to manage inequality that creates such stark similarities between the neoliberal, liberal, and progressive paradigms. what remains unchallenged (and what closely connects the neoliberal, liberal, and progressive paradigms) is the foundational belief in “progress,” an unrelenting assumption that international development is linear, based on rationality, and progressing towards a “better” world for all. klees himself confirms these similarities: “these paradigms are more continuous and overlapping than mutually exclusive” (p. 10). indeed, neoliberals, liberals, and progressives may disagree on what is the “right” way or method towards a better future, but all agree about the overall vision. for example, some argue for a radical reduction or complete elimination of international aid (see dichter, easterly, moyo), while others insist on a radical expansion of aid (see klees, riddell). some may prescribe supply-side reforms (more schools, teachers, and materials), while others focus on the demand-side reforms (more conditional cash transfers, vouchers, and stipends). yet, they all 32 current issues in comparative education w. c. brehm and i. silova speak from the shared conceptual foundation of western modernity. with academic degrees in economics or development studies, these are world-renowned experts who have studied and worked in the development industry. they therefore “know” the remedies – almost a perverse form of human alchemy – necessary for societies to progress towards the archetypal developed world. they can even measure (although may disagree over methodology) where countries are on this linear path too. to disrupt the linearity of modernity’s development paradigms and to demystify their “charismatic power of attraction” (peet & hartwick, 2009, p. 1), it is important to carefully examine some of the shared assumptions made by international “experts” across the development continuum described by klees. for the purpose of this short response, we will focus on two assumptions that seem to most forcefully entrench inequality in contemporary development discourse and practice. these are (1) the logic of rescue that guides most development efforts and (2) the focus on education, empowerment, and participation as the means (not the ends) of international development initiatives aimed at achieving equality. combined, these underlying assumptions not only maintain the gap between those in power and those in need, but also postpone equality indefinitely. the logic of rescue the logic of rescue is perhaps the most striking manifestation of the gap between the knowledgeable and the unintelligent, the presupposition made by jacotot’s “stultifying master”: “the master presupposes that what the student learns is that same thing as what he teaches him” (rancière, 2004, p. 7). the teacher holds knowledge students have yet to learn, and only at the correct time will the stultifying master explicate this knowledge to the unintelligent. this knowledge is transmitted homogeneously, without variation. but as students progress by learning the master’s knowledge, it becomes apparent that the student will never know everything the master does. the master controls knowledge and has the power to distribute it at will. international aid acts in a similar fashion. the gap between those who are “helping” and those who are “helped” is no different than the stultifying master and his students: helpers (development experts, development agencies, developed countries, and ordinary citizens) presuppose that (1) help is actually needed; (2) their approach is correct for the situation; (3) the people receiving help cannot help themselves; and (4) their help (if followed directly) will result in a better outcome. inherent within this logic of rescue are clear spatial demarcations and distances between “good” knowledge, “bad” knowledge, and “no” knowledge. helpers control the “good” knowledge and see it as their responsibility to pass it on to the perceived unintelligent. although the division between those giving and receiving help is clear, development agencies nevertheless speak of their efforts as working towards equality. the logic of rescue is thus employed to close the gap between the knowledgeable and the unintelligent in hopes of achieving universal equality. yet, the very suppression of this gap creates a false sense of equality (rancière’s notion of “the good road”), and only perpetuates the foundational assumption of inequality of intelligence. klees’ notion of “compensatory legitimation” by “good cops” who come up with solutions to inequality and “bad cops” who question the legitimacy of the world order is another way of making the same point. education for all (efa) and the millennium development goals (mdgs), for example, are ways of including everyone in the utopia of equality. it is thought that the distance between the knowledgeable and the unintelligent is suppressed within this paradigm. by using notions similar to popkewitz’s (2008) abjection, it becomes clear that speaking of inclusion by referencing only those who are excluded reinforces the inequality that the various international (and national) campaigns for equality try to remedy. in other words, the very attempt to suppress current issues in comparative education 33 the ignorant donor the distance between the knowledgeable and the unintelligent in the name of equality perpetuates inequality. with the logic of rescue penetrating all layers of society (including development agencies, governments, and now ordinary citizens), the notion of “help” has become increasingly individualized. everyone is expected to “help” in one way or another – we must buy product (red)™, we must donate to haiti via cell phone, we must make the world “a better place.” from altruistic help to obligated help to chic help – helping has taken on multiple forms, becoming attractive to an increasingly large audience of potential helpers. in a way, such massification of “help” has opened new opportunities for anyone (irrespective of geographic location, socioeconomic background, or political orientation) to become involved in the act of “helping,” thus strengthening the gap between the “helpers” and those in need through a collective action of rescue. as (red)™ proclaims, “buy (red)™, save lives. it is as simple as that.” in other words, anyone can now “help” save a person’s life while shopping at gap or buying a starbucks coffee. we are also assured that small acts of “help” are valued. we are not expected to save the whole world (at least not right away); we can begin by saving “one child at a time,” “one heart at a time,” “one school at a time,” or “one village at a time” – all by buying one coffee at a time. by spinning the act of help as manageable and international aid as “young, chic, and possible” (richey & ponte, 2008, p. 711), such an unprecedented massification of “help” further cements the concept of inequality – the very gap between those who know and those who do not – as the foundational assumption of the existing development policies and practices. the means/ends of development the contemporary development paradigm sees education, participation, and empowerment as means to an end, be it the elimination of poverty, the growth of an economy, or the attainment of peace. from this perspective, education becomes a tool that, if used correctly, should lead to some desired (and predetermined) outcome – education for peace (see unicef, 1999), education for democracy (see the us congress, 2001), education to end poverty (see mdg goal 2), or education to fight terrorism (see mortenson & relin, 2008). this conceptualization is problematic for two reasons. first, it reduces the role of education to a very technical process, which can be easily controlled and managed for “better” outcomes. it assumes that equality could be achieved given the right combination of education policies and practices. as rancière (1999) warns, however, this logic can only lead to one outcome: “the integral pedagogization of society – the general infantilization of the individuals that make it up” (p. 133). by extension, the failure to achieve equality is blamed on the very act (and system) of education itself. education therefore becomes a scapegoat when the ultimate end – achieving equality – is not met. second, and more importantly, the development paradigm views equality as a goal, an end to “development.” within this conceptualization it becomes clear that the foundational assumption of the contemporary development paradigm does not center on equality at all. equality, rather, is something we all must work towards, must achieve through the right combination of policies and practices. with a philosophical starting point of inequality (which is shared by neoliberal, liberal, and progressive development paradigms alike), it is not surprising that inequality continues to persist. in other words, setting equality as a goal denies people the ability to assume an equality of intelligence and practice equality on a daily basis. ultimately, what is done in the name of equality results in the reproduction of social dependencies and intellectual hierarchies (biesta, 34 current issues in comparative education w. c. brehm and i. silova 2010, p. 57). as rancière (2004) explains: equality is not a goal that governments and societies could succeed in reaching. to pose equality as a goal is to hand it over to the pedagogues of progress, who widen endlessly the distance they promise that they will abolish. equality is a presupposition, an initial axiom – or it is nothing. (p. 223) by narrowly viewing education as a means to achieve other goals, we thus fail to perceive it as a value by itself. but what if “participation,” “education,” and “empowerment” became the ends of the development process? and what if equality were viewed as the starting point (not the finish line) of any educational reform? what an individual will do with education and freedom is completely up to her. with these ends, a new starting point emerges similar to jocotot’s: the belief in the equality of intelligence in all people. yet nowhere in the contemporary development policy circles is the notion of equality of intelligence recognized, supported, or recommended, let alone funded. what matters, therefore, “is not that we are committed to equality, democracy, and emancipation, but how we are committed to these concepts and how we express and articulate this commitment” (biesta, 2010, p. 57). equality, in other words, is practiced – not achieved. conclusion the three dominant development paradigms (neoliberal, liberal, and progressive) outlined by klees support the foundational assumption of one group of people knowing more than another. this assumption of inequality is no different than what jacotot saw burgeoning in mass schooling in the 18th century: the very attempts for equality in education were – and continue to be – rooted in profound ideologies of inequality. instead of building “a new architecture” on the old foundation of western modernity, perhaps it is time to search for new philosophical starting points to help us think about international development, aid, and education. it is not our job in this conclusion to create a new foundation, but rather to begin pondering the possibility of placing an equality of intelligence as the central assumption within international development. by escaping the logic of rescue and flipping the means and the ends of development, we can begin to imagine new ways of conceptualizing aid. a paradigm based on the concept of equality of intelligence allows us to reimagine the very notion of equality. as jacotot realized in his 18th-century classroom, “equality is not given, nor is it claimed; it is practiced, it is verified” (rancière, 1991, p. 137). the three dominant development paradigms see international development practitioners (governments, ngos, international organizations, and, increasingly, ordinary citizens) giving equality – the very epitome of inequality because of the power relations inherent in the idea of “giving.” the notion of “handing out education” to “one child at a time” becomes anachronism in this new paradigm. to work towards equality, the stultifying donors of the present will have to learn to be ignorant. the ignorant donor will ignore the gap between the presupposed intelligence of the poor and that of the rich and let the poor and vulnerable “pass through a forest whose openings and clearings he himself had not discovered,” for the ignorant donor is not poor or vulnerable. the method of passing through this forest and what is actually learned in the process of passing will not be of concern to the ignorant donor either. why fear that development may become a “chaotic, strictly locally determined phenomenon” (klees, 2010, p. 21)? why not respect the decisions made locally and reposition responsibility for re-envisioning one’s future? what if the end is simply creating the circumstances for a “child in need” to pass, no matter what happens afterwards? assuming an equality of intelligence as a starting point of international development would thus require current issues in comparative education 35 the ignorant donor the donor of yore to relinquish control of the development industry’s stultifying logic and instead practice equality, embracing the unpredictable, uncertain, and diverse outcomes inevitable in the process. acknowledgements we would like to thank hugh mclean for introducing us to the ignorant schoolmaster. our conversations about the implications of trading short-term success for long-term inequality have helped us see and articulate new philosophical possibilities in development, aid, and education. endnotes 1. both authors organized the cies northeast regional conference held at lehigh university in october 2009 where steven klees first delivered the paper under examination in this special issue of cice. 2. we will limit our response to klees’ timeline, development aid since the late 1970s, or more broadly defined as the ronald reagan-margaret thatcher era; however, the points made within this paper can extend to the earlier period of post-world war ii reconstruction. 3. panecastic stems from the french word panécastique, meaning “everything in each.” 4. panecasticism, or universal teaching, moved towards the empowerment of people through their ability to take knowledge and practice equality – not receive them by philosopher-kings who explicated in front of classrooms. the central question for universal teaching was “what do you think about it?” students therefore were given the opportunity to see, compare, reflect, imitate, try, and correct – by themselves. 5. for a more elaborate critique of the relationship between equality/inequality and critical pedagogy, see friedrich, jaastad, and popkewitz (2010) and biesta (2010). references biesta, g. (2010). a new logic of emancipation: the methodology of jacques rancière. educational theory, 60(1), 39-59. escobar, a. (1998). the making and unmaking of the third world through development. in m. rahnema & v. bawtree (eds.), the post-development reader (pp. 85-93). london and new jersey: zed books. friedrich, d., jaastad, b., & popkewitz, t. s. (2010). democratic education: an (im)possibility that yet remains to come. educational philosophy and theory, 42(5-6), 571-587. mortenson, g., & relin, d.o. (2008). three cups of tea: one man’s mission to promote peace one school at a time. st. louis: san val. peet, r., & hartwick, e. (2009). theories of development: contentions, arguments, alternatives. new york: guilford press. popkewitz, t. s. (2008). cosmopolitanism and the age of school reform: science, education, and making society by making the child. new york: routledge. rancière, j. (2004). the politics of aesthetics. london: continuum. 36 current issues in comparative education w. c. brehm and i. silova rancière, j. (1991). the ignorant schoolmaster: five lessons in intellectual emancipation. stanford, ca: stanford university press. ross, k. (1991). translator’s introduction. in j. rancière, the ignorant schoolmaster: five lessons in intellectual emancipation (pp. vii-xxiii). stanford, ca: stanford university press. unicef .(1999). peace education in unicef [working paper]. new york: unicef. retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/education/files/peaceeducation.pdf. united states congress. (2001, february 28). education for democracy act. washington, dc: the unites states congress. © 2010 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 1, fall 2016 © 2016, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(1), 6-25. global vision, local reality: transforming pre-primary teacher training in tanzania bethany wilinski michigan state university cuong huy nguyen michigan state university jessica m. landgraf michigan state university global attention to early childhood education (ece) has led to an increased focus on ece teacher training as a critical component of providing young children with access to high-quality ece programs. in this paper, we ask how tanzanian stakeholders at different levels of implementation experienced and responded to efforts to build capacity in pre-primary education (ppe) through the introduction of a new ppe diploma program. we examine how national and local stakeholders’ responses to the policy were mediated by perceptions of early years teaching, economic realities, and the availability of human and material resources for ppe teacher training. we employ weaver-hightower’s (2008) ecological approach to policy analysis to make sense of how these environments and structures intersected with the enactment of the ppe diploma program. drawing on data from the first year of a longitudinal study that employs qualitative methodology to understand the experiences of ppe diploma students, we demonstrate how perceptions about ppe teaching, economic realities and the availability of human and material resources facilitate and constrain program implementation in ways that have implications for its success. introduction early childhood education (ece) has featured prominently in global and national development agendas in recent years as result of evidence that investment in young children leads to multiplier benefits for individuals and societies (hayden & lee, 2009; neuman & devercelli, 2012; neuman, josephson, & chua, 2015; soudée, 2009; thomas & thomas, 2009). benefits of participation in ece programs range from improved educational achievement and attainment to increased workforce productivity (barnett & masse, 2007; gormley & phillips, 2005; heckman, 2011; rolnick & grunewald, 2003; schweinhart et al., 2005; shaeffer, 2015). now, for the first time, the global development agenda has included an explicit focus on young children (the consultative group on transforming pre-primary teacher training in tanzania current issues in comparative education 7 early childhood care and development, 2016). target 4.2 of sustainable development goal 4 states, “by 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education” (united nations, 2015, p. 21). tanzania, the focal country for this study, has been the site of considerable investment in ece reform over the past decade (the world bank, 2012). most recently, the tanzanian government has articulated a vision for making one year of pre-primary education compulsory and for expanding ppe access (the world bank, 2016; united republic of tanzania, 2014). as part of this effort, the tanzanian government has introduced a new diploma training program for ppe teachers, with a goal of building capacity and addressing the current shortage of qualified ppe teachers (the world bank, 2012). as a site of ongoing investment in ece and in which the government has demonstrated political will for ece reform, tanzania is an ideal context to understand how an initiative that has been set on a global stage intersects with local realities. in this paper, we ask: as a global vision for ece reform is enacted locally, how do stakeholders at different levels of implementation make sense of and respond to these efforts? how do environments and structures that intersect with the diploma program mediate its enactment and stakeholders’ experiences with the program? although there is growing demand for ppe and evidence that ppe participation in tanzania is on the rise (unicef, 2016), achieving national ece goals requires a sustained effort to “recruit, retain, and support qualified personnel” (neuman et al., 2015, p. 7). as such, there is a critical need to identify the factors that facilitate and constrain ppe teacher recruitment, training, and retention. in this paper we demonstrate how efforts to build capacity in the tanzanian ppe workforce have great potential to attract candidates and reframe perceptions of early years teaching. at the same time, these efforts may be undermined by the social, cultural, and material realities of ppe teacher training. understanding the local implications of ppe reform efforts in tanzania is of particular importance because tanzania has been identified as a focal country for the world bank’s new early learning partnership (the world bank, 2016). as such, tanzania will see considerable investment in its ece sector in coming years. results from this study provide important contextual information that can inform this new effort to build stronger ece systems in tanzania. in the sections that follow, we situate this analysis of ppe teacher training within the growing movement to reform ece teacher training and then describe the specific context of ece in tanzania. we then describe how we use weaver-hightower’s (2008) policy ecologies as a methodological tool and theoretical framework to make sense of what happened when a global vision for ece reform came into contact with local realities. in the findings section, we demonstrate how perceptions of ece teaching, economic realities, and the availability of human and material resources shaped how students and policymakers made sense of and experienced the new ppe diploma program. we argue bethany wilinski, cuong huy nguyen, and jessica m. landgraf current issues in comparative education 8 that a deep understanding of the complex ways policy initiatives intersect with local realities is needed if goals of transforming the ece workforce are to be achieved. background: a global focus on ece teacher training advocacy for improved ece quality and access has come with growing attention to teachers and the quality of their preand in-service education (shaeffer, 2015). the 2015 education for all global monitoring report focused specifically on the ece workforce as a critical component of ece quality: the quality of childcare for very young children remains a serious issue. the knowledge, skills, status, and pay for early childhood teachers must be addressed…it is agreed that ecce professionals are more effective in supporting children’s development if they have at least some specialized education and training (unesco, 2015, pp. 45, 55). similarly, a recent report from the international labour organization pointed to the need to focus on improving the quality of ece teacher preparation in order to ensure ece program quality: “high-quality ece provision is dependent on adequate investments in initial ece personnel education and training that ensure preparation for all ece personnel comparable to that of primary school teachers with equivalent professional status and responsibilities” (international labour organization, 2014, p. 10). calls to improve ece teacher training respond to the reality that many ece teachers receive very little training, if any, and the fact that education requirements for ece teachers in many places are relatively low compared to primary and secondary school teachers (shaeffer, 2015). the situation in tanzania reflects this trend. in 2013, only 40% of pre-primary teachers were trained to national standards, whereas almost 100% of primary school teachers had received adequate training. in addition to this, the qualification requirements for ppe teaching were lower than primary school teaching (neuman et al., 2015). in light of growing recognition that that ece teaching requires specialized knowledge and training, many national reform efforts, including tanzania’s, include a requirement that ece professionals participate in a formal training program leading to a higher credential than previously required (international labour organization, 2012; shaeffer, 2015). while there is evidence that teacher preparation matters for program quality (behrman, fernald, & engle, 2014; engle et al., 2011; rao et al., 2012) and a growing body of evidence that ece teachers’ practice and professional experiences ultimately affect learning and other outcomes associated with ece participation (mtahabwa, 2009; neuman et al., 2015; oecd, 2012; shaeffer, 2015), much less is known about how reforms that aim to build capacity in the ece teaching force intersect with local realities and perceptions of ece teaching. an understanding of how transforming pre-primary teacher training in tanzania current issues in comparative education 9 policy intersects with local realities is particularly important because, as neuman and devercelli (2012) point out: national ecd policies are often comprehensive and ambitious documents. while the content may be informed by community-level consultations, technical support and awareness activities may be needed to translate policy into action on the ground and to ensure relevance to local realities (p. 32). this analysis of tanzania’s ppe diploma program demonstrates that the implementation of an ambitious policy requires not only technical support but also a deep understanding of the environments and structures it insects with as it is implemented. this study contributes to an identified need for “information…on [ece] teachers, including their training and professional development, classroom practices, and working conditions in lowand middle-income countries” (neuman et al., 2015, p. 12). existing empirical evidence on ece reform in developing countries focuses primarily on how training, professional development, status, and working conditions contribute to program quality. this study moves beyond a focus on program quality to investigate the conditions that facilitate and constrain a national goal to build capacity in the ppe teaching workforce. as such, it contributes to an understanding of what is needed to recruit and retain ppe teachers (neuman et al., 2015). in the next section, we provide an overview of the tanzanian ece context and the new ppe diploma program. the tanzanian context ece was first included in tanzania’s national education policy in 1995, when the education and training policy (etp) required that a ppe classroom be established in every primary school in the country (ministry of education and culture, 1995). this mandate led to the expansion of ppe throughout the country. currently, about 34% of age-eligible children attend ppe, though large disparities between urban and rural areas exist (unicef, 2016). because the 1995 etp included a mandate but not funding for ppe, classes were financed in large part by family contributions. in addition to a lack of funding and a formal mechanism for regulation and oversight, the government did not systematically assign teachers to ppe classes. as a result, some ppe classes were taught by veteran primary school teachers who had received a 10-day ece training course and others were staffed by paraprofessionals with limited or no formal ece training. this situation is likely to change under the 2014 etp, which makes one year of ppe compulsory and establishes a formal mechanism for the funding and oversight of ppe (united republic of tanzania, 2014). making ppe compulsory requires what the minister of education and vocational training in 2013 described as “a massive employment exercise” (“tanzania: qualified pre-primary teachers urged to submit applications,” 2013). a key initiative in this “massive employment exercise” is the new ppe diploma program, designed to provide specialized training to future ppe teachers. the first cohort of ppe bethany wilinski, cuong huy nguyen, and jessica m. landgraf current issues in comparative education 10 students began this three year course of study at six teacher training colleges (ttcs) around the country in october 2014. the new ppe diploma program, which replaces the former two-year certificate program, is the context for this study. importantly, the government’s goal to train a large number of ppe teachers (approximately 16,000, according to a government official) intersects with an economic climate characterized by relatively high rates of unemployment. according to tanzania’s national bureau of statistics the unemployment rate on the mainland in 2015 for persons age 15 and up was 10.3% (national bureau of statistics, 2016). within this overall rate, considerable variation exists, with rates as high as 21.5% in the nation’s largest city, dar es salaam. unemployment in other urban areas is 9.9% and 8.4% in rural parts of the country (national bureau of statistics, 2016). a different report put the unemployment rate for 15-24 year olds at 13.4% (katebalirwe, 2014). a 2014 report provided insight into the relationship between education level and unemployment, noting: “in general unemployment is relatively high the less educated a person is. for instance, unemployment rate for secondary graduates stands at 11% compared to 3.7% for the university degree holders” (economic and social research foundation, 2015, p. 63). a recent study of higher education and joblessness in tanzania also pointed to the reality that unemployment in tanzania may not be explained solely by a lack of jobs. instead, ndyali (2016) noted: “the higher youth unemployment rate in the country does not always mean the absence of jobs but the ability of youth to acquire the available jobs” (p. 117). ndyali referred to studies indicating a mismatch between what students learn in school and the demands of the labor market. in light of the current employment situation in tanzania, ppe is a promising reform that holds the promise of creating new public sector jobs. as such, tanzanian youth may see ppe teaching as an attractive option, even though “teaching in tanzania is largely perceived as employment of last resort,” (bennell & mukyanuzi, 2005, p. 14). this tension between perceptions of teaching and the reality that the ppe diploma created a new pathway to secure employment in a context of high unemployment is one of the themes explored in this paper. policy ecologies this study is framed by weaver-hightower’s (2008) ecological approach to policy analysis. policy ecologies is an analytic tool and theoretical framework focused on uncovering the complexity of policymaking and implementation. it is a way to “theorize and account for the many interconnections that create, sustain, hold off, or destroy policy formation and implementation” (weaver-hightower, 2008, p. 154). policy ecologies is a mechanism for understanding why policies are taken up in particular ways and how actors, relationships, environments and structures, and processes shape policymaking and implementation. a policy ecology, according to weaver-hightower (2008) is comprised of “every contextual factor and person contributing to or influenced by a policy in any capacity, both before and after its creation and implementation” (p. 155). this framework assumes that policy transforming pre-primary teacher training in tanzania current issues in comparative education 11 is political and calls for a situated understanding of policy creation and enactment. policies are created and implemented in particular social, political, cultural, and historical contexts comprised of actors, relationships, environments and structures, and processes. the task of the policy analyst is to examine the complexity of this situation: “[policy ecology] encourages analysts to look more deeply into policy processes, beyond the ‘big players’ in the foreground. it also encourages a broader look at the effects of policy and policy processes because it suggests that the ripples of a single policy or process can be felt widely” (weaver-hightower, 2008, p. 157) in this paper, we focus on the environments and structures that comprise the context in which tanzania’s ppe diploma program is implemented. specifically, we examine how perceptions about ppe teaching, economic realities, and the availability of human and material resources intersected with the implementation of the new ppe diploma program, and how this shaped the ways global ideas about ece teacher training were taken up locally. methodology findings discussed in this paper come from the first year of a longitudinal qualitative study that examines tanzanian pre-service pre-primary teachers’ (ppe diploma students) experiences over five years, from 2015 to 2020. the study follows the first cohort of tanzanian ppe diploma students through the diploma program and into their first postgraduation teaching placements. we focus on ppe diploma students’ experiences as situated within a broader social, cultural, and political context that informs the ways the ppe diploma is taken up and experienced locally. as such, we employ vertical case study methodology (bartlett & vavrus, 2014; vavrus & bartlett, 2009). vertical case study is characterized by a “concomitant commitment to micro-level understanding and to macrolevel analysis” (vavrus & bartlett, 2006, p. 96). in this study we pair data from nationallevel interviews and documents with an analysis of on-the-ground realities in three ttcs where the ppe diploma program is being implemented. for this paper, we draw on data from the first year of fieldwork, conducted from june to august 2015 by the first author. fieldwork consisted of individual interviews, focus group discussions, and questionnaires. interviews were conducted with national policymakers (4 total) and ngo representatives (4 total), and focus group discussions were conducted with tutors and ppe diploma students in three government ttcs, which we call rehema, tumaini, and amani. a total of 12 tutors and 45 diploma students in their first year of the program participated in focus group discussions. of students who participated, 62% were male and 38% were female. a questionnaire was also administered to all first year ppe diploma students in all three ttcs (250 respondents total). interviews with policymakers, ngo officials, and tutors were conducted in english, while focus groups with diploma students were conducted in swahili with assistance from a local translator. all interviews bethany wilinski, cuong huy nguyen, and jessica m. landgraf current issues in comparative education 12 were audio-recorded, transcribed, and translated into english by a native swahili speaker. table 1 provides an overview of data sources analyzed in this paper. table 1. data sources activity no. of participants interviews – national policymakers 4 interviews – ngo officials 4 focus group discussions – tutors 12 focus group discussions – ppe diploma students 45 questionnaires 250 all three authors contributed to data analysis. we worked collaboratively, using the qualitative data analysis software maxqda to facilitate analysis. the research team engaged in several cycles of coding, beginning with open coding, where we read transcripts and developed an initial set of inductive codes (saldana, 2016). we then looked for patterns in the data and condensed our initial codes into codes that captured larger themes related to students’ and tutors’ experiences. during this second cycle, we developed analytic memos to begin drawing out assertions about the data (emerson, fretz, & shaw, 2011). finally, we applied weaver-hightower’s (2008) ecological metaphor to the data by developing a set of a priori codes derived from the policy ecologies approach. we used these to recode the data, with a particular focus on codes related to environments and structures because our initial analysis pointed to the critical ways context mediated policy enactment and students’ experiences with the policy. in the sections that follow, we describe how perceptions of early years teaching, economic realities, and the availability of human and material resources shaped how stakeholders made sense of and experienced the ppe diploma program. findings tanzania’s ppe diploma program was developed in response to a nationwide lack of trained ppe teachers. when the 2014 etp made a year of ppe compulsory, the government recognized that it would also need to ensure that existing and newlydeveloped ppe classes were staffed by qualified teachers. as a policy solution, the ppe diploma program was relatively straightforward—more teachers would be trained and deployed to ppe classrooms across the country, ensuring access to high-quality ppe for all tanzanian children. yet, even in the first year that the ppe diploma was enacted, it became clear that response to the program would be far more complex. in this section we describe how the ppe diploma program intersected with particular environments and structures in tanzania (weaver-hightower, 2008), and how this shaped stakeholders’ experiences with and responses to the initiative. transforming pre-primary teacher training in tanzania current issues in comparative education 13 perceptions of early years teaching although part of the goal of the ppe diploma was to increase the number of trained ppe teachers, the ppe diploma program also signaled a broader stance that teaching ece required specialized training. this directly contradicted public perception that ece teaching was something anyone could do. ngo official steven tatu explained: the challenge we have [is that many places lack] qualified teachers. and in most cases teachers who are teaching pre-primary are what we call paraprofessional. they are not trained at all. and yet someone is just appointed from the community, whether standard seven or form four dropout. just appointed to go to teach. so the challenge is they lack some skills to teach. similarly, neema victor, an ece specialist at the tanzania institute of education (tie), stated: i think pre-primary teachers in tanzania, the number are very few. they are very few…we don’t have enough teachers for these schools. and most of those teachers are not qualified to be teachers. as we said before, they just take [a primary school teacher]. so they teach the child in preschool as they are teaching in primary school because most of them don’t know about children’s development, stages of development, how they can support them. so, we are still working on that. we are still behind on that. the notion that ppe teachers needed formal training specific to early childhood contexts was a response to the commonly-held assumption that anyone could teach ppe, because teaching ppe simply involved playing with children. in addition to this, officials of tie articulated a recognition that ppe teaching was different even from primary school teaching. the previous model of taking primary school teachers, providing them with a short training course, and putting them in ppe classrooms was no longer viable. providing ppe teachers with specialized training would also serve another purpose: raising the status of teaching young children. evance mwita, an official from the national council for technical education (nacte), the body that oversaw the ppe diploma program, explained: [t]he reason [for creating the pre-primary teacher training curriculum] is that there have been teacher training schools, especially for early childhood education, that take…form four failures. they say “okay, you have failed to get any other course. can’t you even study this early childhood education?” thinking that providing early childhood education requires a person who is not knowledgeable. so we want to change that kind of thinking. bethany wilinski, cuong huy nguyen, and jessica m. landgraf current issues in comparative education 14 mwita and others expressed a need to raise awareness about ece, so that the public would come to recognize it as a profession that required training and expertise. we explore how public perceptions of ece teaching intersected with diploma students’ motivation and rationale for joining the diploma program later in this section. the reality that most current ppe teachers lacked the proper qualifications was what led some students to join the ppe diploma program. they envisioned themselves as the first cohort of ppe teachers who would be properly trained for the work. victor mbuguni, a student at tumaini ttc, explained: the big thing that led me to take this ppe diploma is lack of teachers who have this kind of education…it’s a challenge because we don’t have well trained ppe teachers. so i thought it was important for me to join, that way i can teach these kids because i will have the knowledge to know a child from birth to when they are starting school. other students expressed a similar understanding of the current state of ppe teaching. for example, frida mwiteni said, “in tanzania we don’t have ppe teachers. the teachers who are teaching now don’t have qualifications to be [ppe] teachers.” for these students, the ppe diploma presented an opportunity to change this situation—they would play a critical role in ensuring that young children were taught by qualified ppe teachers. these ideas about teacher qualifications were linked to students’ belief that ppe would play an important role in transforming tanzania’s education system. they described ppe as an important foundation that would lead to improved learning, which required a capable and trained teaching force. rehema ttc student neema john explained: the main purpose is to strengthen that foundation so that the child will grow as they were raised. if you taught him well, even if they go to university they will be able to express themselves. if they have a bad foundation, even if you go to university, they will say what kind of university student is this? they cannot express themselves or solve problems. so if you build that good foundation, later on a child will be able to help himself and the environment that is surrounding him. while the ppe diploma was evidence of a national commitment to ensuring that ppe teachers would receive specialized training, and while policymakers and diploma students alike saw the need for a specialized course of training, the notion of ppe teaching as a profession ran counter to widespread public perceptions of early years teaching. because of this, diploma students faced the challenge of justifying their decision to become a ppe teacher to their families and communities. transforming pre-primary teacher training in tanzania current issues in comparative education 15 participants at the national and local level described a general perception among tanzanians that people only went into teaching because they were otherwise unsuccessful—they had not done well in school and thus had no other option but to become a teacher. this perception of teaching was reinforced by the fact that the requirements for entry into teacher training college were lower than other more respected professions. ttc tutor audax tibu explained, “the teaching profession is considered to be a low rank profession…teaching is for people who maybe haven’t performed well in the examinations.” if teachers in general were afforded little respect, the situation was even worse for ece teachers, for several reasons. first, as tibu explained, there was a societal perception that teaching ece was not a skilled profession: talking of playing with children. now a person who has gone to school playing with children. see? it’s the mentality. that’s very negative. see? so, they think that teaching young children is so easy. to the extent that it doesn’t need the person who has to go through a diploma program. that’s the mentality. the perspective that teaching young children did not require formal training was reinforced by the reality that most ppe teachers did not possess formal training. diploma students spoke of these teachers as “grandmas” from the community—women who would come to sit with the young children. the low status of ppe teaching was exacerbated by the fact that the tanzanian government did not regulate pre-primary classes or provide funding for ppe classrooms or ppe teacher salaries. ppe teachers were poorly paid in comparison to primary school teachers, and participants noted that ppe classes were under-resourced, exemplified by the fact that they were often conducted under a tree instead of in a classroom. due to this lack of funding and regulation of ppe, even primary school principals often failed to see the value of ppe. steven tatu relayed an example from a meeting with primary school principals, in which they explained that they did not feel a sense of responsibility for ppe classes located at their schools. tatu explained that the principals said: “because we are not answerable even to the district level for pre-primary…even if [the district team] comes to visit, they don’t [look at] pre-primary. if we say that we have pre-primary, they say ‘okay, but let us go to other classes’.” although this situation is likely to change now that the government has promised to pay ppe teachers’ salaries and the 2014 etp delegates oversight of ppe classes to district education officers, this example illustrates the low status of ppe teaching, even within the education system. the low status of ppe teaching was felt acutely in the ttcs when it came to recruiting students to the ppe diploma program. ttc tutors described negative perceptions about bethany wilinski, cuong huy nguyen, and jessica m. landgraf current issues in comparative education 16 ppe teaching as a barrier to reaching enrollment goals in the ppe diploma program. jenson lawrence, a tutor at amani ttc, explained that the school had seen a significant decline in enrollment from the first to the second cohort of diploma students. he explained that students in the ppe program may feel inferior to primary level diploma students: i think there is a bad perception or negative perception of this course. most of the students are not willing to take this course of early childhood education because they think that they are inferior to take this course were others are taking the primary diplomas. indeed, many diploma students described the low status of ppe teaching as a barrier to their participation in the diploma program. some had stories of families and communities actively discouraging them from pursuing the ppe diploma: [t]he truth is, [my parents] advised me not to go [study ppe] because of the negativity in the community about early childhood education. it’s not respected in the community. so when i got this opportunity to come here, people said “do not go there. you are not going to be respected. we will not respect you anymore and your ability, too, will go down because of that course you are going to take.” (khalid athuman) while khalid’s example was very specific, others described negative perceptions of ppe teaching in more general terms: the challenge facing me from the society i come from is that people underestimate the value of pre-primary education and think of it negatively. (aloyce david) my dad thinks that the one who is going to teacher training college is the one who has nowhere to go, they have failed everywhere, that’s their last option. (upendo nkya) at times i sort of regret being here because of the lack of respect pre-primary teachers get as a part of the society. (francis boniface) ppe diploma students like these three received mixed messages about the value of ppe and the importance of ppe teaching. on the one hand, their families or communities might discourage them from pursuing the diploma—we even heard of students who told their communities they were studying to teach primary school, in order to avoid having to admit to studying ppe. at the same time, ttc tutors actively worked to convince students of the importance of ece and the value of the ppe diploma. this awareness-raising transforming pre-primary teacher training in tanzania current issues in comparative education 17 campaign appeared to be working—many diploma students explained that they envisioned a role for themselves in educating their communities about the importance of ece. economic realities although ppe teaching was a career path that required constant justification, it remained an attractive one for many. the promise of secure employment after graduation drew students that initially had no interest in teaching young children to the program. ngo official steven tatu explained: [others] do want to be pre-primary teachers. and this is because [teachers are] among the professionals which are directly employed by the government. so those students who feel that there is a challenge of employment, they’re just showing up because they’re sure after that they would be directly employed by the government. because [in other professions], if you graduate, you have to find a job by yourself. and it can take you even maybe five years without employment [before you find a job]. the ppe diploma, though perhaps not the first choice for many students, was considered a good option because it held the prospect of secure public sector employment. diploma student samuel morice explained: my parents advised that i come study ppe. they encouraged me that the best part about it is that there is certainty of getting employed and that i would still get a chance to do a degree and masters later on. another student, hilda jerome, said she came to rehema to study ppe because “that’s what’s in the market right now.” although she had not planned to study ppe, she was aware of the new demand for ppe teachers created under the mandate for compulsory ppe. ttc tutor audax tibu explained the situation in this way: you have completed your form four but you have nowhere to go. what do you do? you have to go for what is available for you…some [students here] don’t feel like [being ppe teachers]. but because they’re being forced by the situation, they apply…because of the chances that they can get. some students asserted that the promise of employment outweighed their concern over the low status of ppe teaching. amani ttc student kelvin frank said: “my parents really encouraged me although they knew this education level is really low. but, they were sure i would get employed after completing college.” students heard this trope not only from their families, but from the tutors and principals at the ttcs, who spoke of “counseling” bethany wilinski, cuong huy nguyen, and jessica m. landgraf current issues in comparative education 18 and motivating students to stick with the ppe diploma. amani ttc tutor ephraim rugambwa provided this example: something which…motivated [the students]…was a speech given by the principal of this college, where he…assured them that employment would be available after graduating this course. for many diploma students, teaching ppe was not a first career choice, but it was one that could lead to secure employment. this provided significant incentive in a landscape of high youth unemployment (katebalirwe, 2014). human and material resources student experiences in the ppe diploma program were also mediated by the availability of human and material resources to support the program. stakeholders at the national and local level were concerned that many instructors teaching in the ppe diploma program did not possess formal training in ece. for example, of 34 tutors at rehema ttc, only four had a bachelor’s degree in ece. tutors at all three ttcs expressed their desire for training in ece, but said they were unaware of any impending government efforts to do so. amani ttc tutor joyce samuel explained: the government has forgotten to prepare the tutors who are going to teach the teachers of pre-primary education. for example, here at our college you have only the one whose professionalism [sic] is about pre-primary education, but you have been told to teach teachers who are going to teach pre-primary education. [we have had] no seminars, no in-service training. government officials were aware of this situation. in fact, when asked what to look for at the ttcs, an official told the first author to pay attention to how many tutors were trained in ece. although there were no immediate plans to address the issue, it could be argued that the government was taking the long view—today’s ppe diploma students would go on to higher levels of education and eventually become the next generation of ece leaders in tanzania. joseph makela, the head of early learning tie, described such a vision: we need also to think about our own context and our own reality, and see how we can imagine things, how we can combine things, and whatever. we’re using a lot of international theories; of course, i am not saying that they are bad, but i think we need to do research and to see how we can develop things from our own context. by creating a pathway to higher education, the ppe diploma could contribute to the realization of this vision, and to the production of new knowledge and practices specific to the tanzanian context. transforming pre-primary teacher training in tanzania current issues in comparative education 19 teaching and learning in the ppe diploma program was also affected by a lack of material resources. tutors explained that their libraries lacked books about ece and said they struggled to find materials to support their teaching: i think the challenge we have is that our library does not have the books which relate to this course…and another challenge is that we haven’t any internet access, therefore we use our phones [to try to find materials]…[that is a] big challenge for us…we are trying to search materials from any corner…we are given syllabus, but no material. this is a big challenge. (ephraim rugambwa, tutor) tutors at all three ttcs spoke of this reality—that they had been given a copy of the ppe diploma syllabus, but little else to support their work training new ppe teachers. they also described the need for model classrooms in ttcs—spaces where diploma students could practice teaching in a setting that mirrored a ppe classroom—and supplies that could be used by diploma students to make their own teaching materials. although the government had devoted resources to developing the ppe diploma program, there remained a significant need for human and material resources to ensure its success. implications the tanzanian government has a vision for the future of early childhood education in the country. the steps it has taken to achieve its ece goals includes the development of the ppe diploma program, which addresses the fact that many current ppe teachers do not possess specialized ece training. when the ppe diploma was introduced, however, it came into contact with environments and structures that mediated its implementation and the ways stakeholders made sense of and experienced the program (weaver-hightower, 2008). we have demonstrated in this paper that political will to train ppe teachers exists, and that the promise of stable employment makes ppe teaching an attractive option for many young tanzanians. at the same time, political will has not yet translated into an infusion of resources for ttcs, and negative perceptions of ece professionals pose a challenge to recruiting and retaining ppe diploma students. the inherent tension of the ppe diploma program raises questions about how it will affect the ece landscape in tanzania. because the ppe diploma is being positioned as a pathway to secure employment, it has attracted many students. yet, given the negative perceptions of ppe teaching that exist in tanzania, we question whether this reform effort will be sustained. if ppe teachers are continually faced with the need to defend their career choice, will they persist in the diploma program and in their work as classroom teachers? or, will they ultimately be discouraged from ppe teaching as a result of societal perceptions? these questions can only be answered once the first cohort of ppe diploma students graduates and enters the teaching force. it will be critical to trace ppe diploma graduates’ bethany wilinski, cuong huy nguyen, and jessica m. landgraf current issues in comparative education 20 post-graduation career paths in order to determine whether the ppe diploma program achieves the goal of providing ppe classrooms with trained teachers. this study also points to a contradiction between realities on the ground and the introduction of the ppe diploma. in many places, the work of ppe teaching is currently being done, though not by teachers with a diploma in ppe. the way policymakers and students made sense of the ppe diploma program and the need for qualified ppe teachers did not address an obvious question: what would become of the teachers and paraprofessionals currently doing the work of ppe teaching when this new cohort of trained ppe teachers was deployed? the government’s ppe reform efforts focused primarily on training new ppe teachers and not on building capacity within the current ppe teaching force. some capacity-building efforts were being undertaken by ngos, but absent from our discussions about the ppe diploma was any recognition of what would happen to current ppe teachers if they were replaced by ppe diploma graduates. in future research it will be important to explore the effects of the ppe diploma program for the existing ppe teaching force. the material realities of ttcs and the education system, writ large, also pose a challenge to the success of the ppe diploma program. diploma students are being told by ttc tutors that ppe is a viable and respected career choice. at the same time, students are receiving implicit messages about the value ascribed to ppe by the government—many of their instructors lack formal ece training and ttcs lack books and other resources that would facilitate their preparation for ppe teaching. such challenges will not disappear as students enter the teaching force. ppe teaching is marked by: large class sizes, limited books and teaching aids, lack of classroom space, and classrooms that are not conducive to teaching young children (mligo, 2016; mtahabwa, 2009). will this new cadre of teachers, armed with knowledge of child development and an enthusiasm to lay a strong foundation in young children, persist in the face of this reality? what is promising is that, in spite of all of these constraints and limitations, diploma students at all three ttcs appeared committed to the diploma program and voiced their belief in the importance of ece. whether they were students who arrived at college committed to working with young children, or among those who had been convinced of the value of ece and ppe teaching by their tutors and principals, students spoke of the importance of ppe as the foundation of future learning and the need for increased respect for ece professionals. even among those who were initially skeptical of ppe teaching, or for whom teaching ppe was a career of last resort, we sensed enthusiasm for being part of this reform effort. as awareness of issues related to the ece workforce heightens, and as ece teacher training receives increased attention in the push to achieve global ece goals, an transforming pre-primary teacher training in tanzania current issues in comparative education 21 understanding of the complex ways policies intersect with local realities is paramount. this example of tanzania’s ppe diploma program points to the critical role existing structures and environments play in determining how a policy will be received and implemented in a given context. this study also raises several important questions for future research, including: what is the reality of ppe teaching in tanzania? do ppe diploma graduates actually teach ppe classes? what causes teachers to stay or leave the ppe teaching profession? these are among the questions we plan to address in future years of the study, and which must be addressed in order to develop ece teacher training reform that acknowledges and responds to local realities. authors’ notes: this research was conducted by the first author, who has over a decade of experience living and working in tanzania and speaks swahili with advanced proficiency. all names of people and places are pseudonyms. this project was supported by michigan state university college of education tanzania partnership program funding. about the authors: bethany wilinski is an assistant professor in the department of teacher education at michigan state university and the coordinator of education sector activities for msu’s tanzania partnership program. dr. wilinski is a former teacher who taught primary school in northwest tanzania for two years and has been involved in teacher professional development and curriculum development in tanzania for nearly a decade. dr. wilinski’s international and domestic work is focused on how teachers, families, and children experience early childhood education policy. cuong nguyen is a phd candidate in the department of teacher education at michigan state university. he is interested in philosophy of education, comparative education, and second language education. cuong has presented at aera, cies, bergamo conference, asian studies development program conference, and engaging with vietnam conference. jessica landgraf, a former infant/toddler and preschool teacher, is an educational policy phd student at michigan state university. internationally, she is focused on early childhood education policy development and implementation in the context of developing countries. domestically, jessica is interested in the politics of early childhood education policy enactment. contact: bethany wilinski at bethanyw@msu.edu, cuong huy nguyen at nguye308@msu.edu, and jessica m. landgraf at landgr16@msu.edu mailto:bethanyw@msu.edu mailto:nguye308@msu.edu bethany wilinski, cuong huy nguyen, and jessica m. landgraf current issues in comparative education 22 references barnett, w. s., & masse, l. n. 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(2008). an ecology metaphor for educational policy analysis: a call to complexity. educational researcher, 37(3), 153–167. http://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x08318050 http://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x08318050 microsoft word 8 paper final round 8.docx © 2015, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 18(1), 6-25. computational typologies of multidimensional end-of-primary-school performance profiles from an educational perspective of large-scale timss and pirls surveys ali ünlü1 technical university of munich (tum) centre for international student assessment (zib) tum school of education michael schurig ifs, tu dortmund university recently, performance profiles in reading, mathematics and science were created using the data collectively available in the trends in international mathematics and science study (timss) and the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2011. in addition, a classification of children to the end of their primary school years was conducted in accordance with these performance types. to create performance profiles and classifications, multidimensional item response theory and latent profile analysis were used. the focus in this study is on the comparison and usability of clustering methods in their application in large-scale assessments. in a first step, the cluster solutions of classic approaches such as kmeans, fuzzy c-means and hierarchical procedures are compared to one another and assessed in terms of their proximity to the reference typology of latent profile analysis. in the second step, the results of the model-supported latent profile analysis are compared directly with the findings of the classic model-free cluster analyses by means of appropriate measured values. the result is a high consistency in the classification of invariant ranked profiles. in the last step, the calculated “quantitative” cluster solutions are compared to the “qualitative” typology of the pupils derived from the content-based benchmarking of the competency levels in mathematics using the timss guidelines. it is evident that, as a cluster solution, the benchmarking breakdown of the sample in the five competency levels does not show a high goodness of fit with the available data. introduction: timss and pirls studies every five years, fourth grade students from around the world are compared on their performance in reading comprehension through the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls; e.g., bos, tarelli, bremerich-vos, & schwippert, 2012a). another international test that evaluates student academic performance is the trends in international mathematics and science study (timss; e.g., bos, wendt, köller, & selter, 2012b), which assesses fourth and eighth grade students on their performance in mathematics and science on a four-year cycle. the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea) is responsible for conducting both studies (www.iea.nl). data collection for both studies coincided for the first time in 2011, making it possible to connect the two studies. thus, the focused subject areas of reading, mathematics and science could be mutually investigated while considering their interactions. as was the 1 corresponding author. prof. dr. ali ünlü (ali.uenlue@tum.de), technical university of munich (tum), arcisstr. 21, 80333 munich, germany. computational typologies of multidimensional end-of-primary-school performance profiles from an educational perspective of large-scale timss and pirls surveys current issues in comparative education 7 case in 37 other countries and regions, a common random sample of pupils for both pirls and timss was surveyed in germany (martin & mullis, 2013). this special data set opens up new possibilities for analysis and allows for an overarching view of pupils’ performances at the end of the fourth grade in reading, mathematics and science (e.g., bos et al., 2012c). from a methodical viewpoint, these data have particular demands in terms of the appropriate handling of the multidimensional structure (foy & o’dywer, 2013). multidimensional procedures have thus been increasingly used in recent years to address the demands of modeling such complex data. they can provide more realistic explanations for observed data and include, in particular, the use of multidimensional item response theory (irt) models, which allows for the determination of measurement error controlled correlations between latent dimensions. for the specifics of multidimensional irt, see reckase (2009) or van der linden and hambleton (1997). in this study, a general multidimensional irt model was used to analyze the timss and pirls data. in both timss and pirls, performances are depicted along a scale that has a mean value of 500 and a standard deviation of 100. from the international comparative perspective, however, the interpretation of inter-individual differences in the dimensions primarily occurs via the achievement of international benchmarks. in other words, the achievement of qualitatively set criteria is defined separately for each dimension (martin & mullis, 2013). in timss and pirls, the benchmarks divide the performance scales into five performance ranges with a width of 75 points. in germany, reporting specifically refers to the ranges between the benchmarks, called competency levels. test values below 400 points correspond to competency level i; values between 400 and 475 points represent competency level ii; the range of values between 476 and 550 points is competency level iii; competency level iv covers the range of values between 551 and 625 points; and values above 625 points comprise competency level v (wendt, tarelli, bos, frey, & vennemann, 2012, p. 62f.). in order to allow for a contentual interpretation of the competency levels achieved by pupils, the problems or exercises assigned to an individual level are constructed in such a way that a student possessing that level of competence can typically solve these problems. as an example, the qualitative criteria for the achievement of the third competency level (high international benchmark) for pirls 2011 are listed in table 1. in addition to figure 1, we can report that 1.5% of the pupils achieved competency level v in all three areas and 0.6% of the pupils achieved competency level i in all areas. 10.5% of pupils achieved competency levels iv-v in three domains, excluding the performances with three domains all at either competency level iv or v. 11.4% achieved competency level iv in three domains. 32.5% achieved competency levels iii-v in three domains. 13.1% achieved competency level iii in three domains. 19.2% performed at competency levels i-iii in three domains. the remaining 11.2% are distributed across smaller intermediate stages. 55.9% of the pupils were able to achieve at least competency level iii and a higher level in one domain. only 2.9% showed “savantism” or “learning disabilities” in one domain. these were operationalized by pupils who were indexed at one competency level of i or ii in two domains and a competency level of iv or v in one domain, or at one competency level of iv or v in two domains and one competency level of i or ii in one domain. ünlü & schurig current issues in comparative education 8 table 1: pirls 2011 high international benchmark of reading achievement source: iea’s progress in international reading literacy study – pirls 2011 in germany, the achievement of competency levels across the domains was distributed as shown in figure 1. figure 1: distribution of competency levels achieved by pupils source: bos et al., 2012a, p. 231 computational typologies of multidimensional end-of-primary-school performance profiles from an educational perspective of large-scale timss and pirls surveys current issues in comparative education 9 as mentioned earlier, since data collection for timss and pirls coincided for the first time in 2011, a joint study of all dimensions is possible and allows for the interpretation of interactions. however, a consolidation has to first occur in the scale. it also makes sense to scrutinize the classification that is used in the benchmarks. classification within the multidimensionality – motivation the reliable determination of a valid performance typology is essential. on the one hand, benchmarks and competency levels offer an improvement of the interpretation ability of the irt scale results; on the other hand, they are the actual parameters for communication purposes, such as for educational policy (e.g., bos et al., 2009). in international reports, countries are measured and compared using the respective percent shares of pupils in the individual competency levels. an example of this can be found in the well-known programme for international student assessment (pisa) study conducted by the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd, 2010). the formation of “intrinsically homogeneous” and “amongst themselves heterogeneous” competency groups contributes to the interpretation and significance of irt estimated numerical values. this is especially true if the categorizing performance types are described in accordance with background characteristics, which are relevant and theoretically important from an educational science perspective. these background characteristics include factors such as cultural and socioeconomic characteristics, migration background and family language, learning disabilities or physical frailties, or subject-related attitudes and self-concepts. in the context of multidimensionality, however, the approach in terms of benchmarks and competency levels used to date presents a problem. this is because incorporating the complex data structure and taking into consideration the high interdependence of the observed constructs in the classification are possible only in a limited manner. in previous works, the multidimensional irt scaled performance values are solely included in studies if multidimensional modeling is considered at all. this is to be differentiated from the actual objective of this paper. we aim to develop and examine multivariate data-analytical procedures for the “automated” joint discretization of all competency dimensions while considering their interdependences. to date, the discretization of the dimensions in large-scale assessments is conducted through the qualitative setting of so-called “cut-off points” separately for each individual dimension. a way in which to bypass this problem is the derivation of latent profiles that are calculated across all the jointly scaled content areas, where the latency rests in the class affiliation and is thus discrete. an example of this can be found in bos et al. (2012c) who used the timss/pirls 2011 data set for germany containing 3,928 pupils for the consolidation of multidimensionality and classification process. performance test values and performance profiles across the competency areas were regarded using latent profile analysis. in line with bos et al. (2012c), we carried out calculations based on the estimated performance results using the latent gold software (vermunt & magidson, 2005). solutions with 1 to 20 profiles were compared using information criteria and log likelihood comparison tests via bootstrapping. a 7-profile solution proved to be the best. there were distinct performance clusters in a strict invariant parallel structure (figure 2). this structure corresponds to an invariant arrangement or ranking of the performance types across the three dimensions (cf. croon, 1990). for the present study ünlü & schurig current issues in comparative education 10 the results were reconstructed with congruent outcomes. figure 2: parallel plot of the latent profile analysis of performance values of pupils in germany note: in order to rule out confusion with the international scale, a national scale with a mean value of 300 and a standard deviation of 100 was used for the analysis. the performance types can be described as shown in table 2. in addition, the performance profiles can be clearly distinguished by the distribution of background characteristics between the profiles (for specifics, see bos et al., 2012c). computational typologies of multidimensional end-of-primary-school performance profiles from an educational perspective of large-scale timss and pirls surveys current issues in comparative education 11 table 2: description of the performance profiles research questions and the contents of this study the latent profile analysis is based on model assumptions, and the estimation of its parameters under these assumptions is based on maximum likelihood methodology. in this sense, latent profile analysis, as a model-based, inference-theoretical approach (probabilistic formulation), can be compared with the classic cluster analysis as a “model-free”, computational approach (descriptive distance calculation). in order to conduct a computational cluster analysis on a data set, a variety of standards have to be defined (e.g., with regard to the algorithm used and the similarity or dissimilarity metric) that are not possible or necessary in the flexible manner under the maximum likelihood approach. the question arises whether alternative computational clustering methods, without such additional model assumptions and estimation procedures, can be conducted. that is, one may ask if comparable results can be achieved and if similar profiles can be derived with more “simple” methods, when classification occurs in the measurement error controlled, estimated performance values (not raw data). this gives rise to the following research questions that we would like to examine in this study: q1. how do empirically derived, multidimensional latent classifications look in comparison to classically derived clusters? q2. how do empirically derived classifications across all dimensions, whether latent or computational, look in comparison to the groups obtained from the international benchmarking? more specifically, in this study we would like to test if, and to what degree, profiles can be derived more simply on the basis of the model-free classic clustering methods (kmeans, fuzzy c-means and hierarchical cluster analysis). for this purpose, a national, multidimensional irt scale is performed, profiles are constructed using latent profile analysis, and the results of the classic clustering methods are compared to the results of the latent profile analysis based on measures of quality and agreement. in doing so, the cluster number is set to the number of the latent profiles (reference typology) in one case and freely estimated in the other. the exemplary comparison to one individual content area occurs as well to the benchmarking typology in the domain of mathematics. we expect that computational clustering methods, as compared with qualitative classification of pupil performances based on predefined competency levels, will lead to ünlü & schurig current issues in comparative education 12 more homogeneous groups. this paper will conclude with a discussion of future research directions, as well as a recommendation for using computational analyses as classic methodologies to complement the model-based approach. clustering methods we review some basic concepts of cluster formation, which is the derivation of groups with similar properties (e.g., ester & sander, 2000; everitt, 2011). for a data set with n objects in c groups, the number of the grouping possibilities, i.e., the number of the c-element partitions of the n-element set is a stirling number of the second kind: thus, where n = 20 and c = 3, there are over 550 million possible combinations. the identification of the contentually significant clusters is important. a large number of heuristic methods have been developed for this purpose. in principle, all cluster analytical methods are algorithms to sort individual empirical observations. the selection of the appropriate cluster solution is conducted by way of intuition and theoretical considerations based on preliminary results, as well as the statistical comparison thereof. all methods attempt to create homogeneous groups that are heterogeneous to one another, whereby the similarity or dissimilarity distance measures used assume great significance. if the distances, or reciprocally the similarities, are combined in pairs, a distance matrix d = (dmn) or a similarity matrix s = (smn) is obtained. there are no uniform results for the “correct” selection of the distance measure (everitt, 2011). when cases are clustered, a distance measure that takes into account the measurement level of the data can be used as a basis, such as the euclidean distance in the case of metric data. classic cluster analytical methods are computational and exploratory. freedom in the selection of the computational components provides flexibility (comparable to the rotation freedom/problem of factor analysis models). due to the high degree of interpretive freedom, however, general skepticism toward the uncovered structure is appropriate as well. this should be viewed with caution. the applied methods will be presented briefly in the following sections; specifics can be found in the respective accompanying references. possible evaluation criteria are explained as they are used in the course of this study. latent profile analysis the method that was used to obtain the performance profiles is latent profile analysis (lpa), e.g., see gibson (1966) or lazarsfeld and henry (1968). the local stochastic independence is presupposed. it is assumed that the answers of the objects of a given class, in this case the pupils in one class or profile, are random. if the latent class was introduced as a control variable, systematic variations between the answers would disappear. each class continues to be characterized by their specific conditional answer probabilities. the formal structure, discretized here for simplification (sum instead of integral), is shown as follows: computational typologies of multidimensional end-of-primary-school performance profiles from an educational perspective of large-scale timss and pirls surveys current issues in comparative education 13 whereby !c describes the relative class size of a class c from 1 to c, and p(xi = xi|c) stands for the conditional probability of a (continuous) realization xi = xi in a variable i from 1 to i in the (discrete) class c. the lpa model parameters are estimated from the data using the maximum likelihood method. the estimation can be carried out via expectation-maximization or em (e.g., bacher, pöge, & wenzig, 2010, p. 360; see also dempster, laird, & rubin, 1977). the cluster number in lpa is selected using statistics for model quality (e.g., information criteria). bootstrapping methods are also recommended for significance testing (bacher et al., 2010, p. 365). in our application, the irt scaled performance test values (“plausible values”, see below in section multidimensional scale) in the domains of reading, mathematics and science correspond to the variables (i = 3), and the classes are represented by the uncovered performance profiles (c = 7). the corresponding solution of the specific lpa calculations can be found in figure 2 or table 2. hierarchical cluster analysis the family of hierarchical clustering methods (e.g., everitt, 2011; kaufman & rousseeuw, 1990) consists of various agglomerative (“bottom up”) or divisive (“top down”) algorithms. for exemplification we use a popular agglomerative method (ward’s algorithm; see the following paragraph). other agglomerative or divisive methods are conceivable if necessary. the clusters are constructed around cluster centers based on the mean values of the cluster objects. in a first step, each object forms its own cluster. in each subsequent step, a cluster pair for which a given distance criterion (see the following paragraph) is minimal is sought and merged. additionally, the value of the cluster center is recalculated for the newly formed cluster. these steps are repeated until all clusters have merged into one. the cluster number is not specified; but rather the possible solutions, portrayable as the structural order of a dendrogram, are tested against one another. thus, a deterministic allocation of the objects is given on every possible sectional plane of the dendrogram. ward’s (1963) algorithm was used in our study. this method consolidates those clusters whose resulting clusters minimize the growth of the sum of the average errors within the clusters. the squared euclidean distance is the basis for the dissimilarity calculation. in general, the method generates relatively homogeneous clusters, but it is sensitive with regard to outliers (see everitt, 2011). k-means one of the most common clustering methods is the k-means analysis (forgy, 1965; macqueen, 1967). it is based on the euclidean distance. the algorithms of this method allocate objects to the arithmetic means, medians or medoids as the cluster centers (kaufman & rousseeuw, 1990). the goal is to subdivide the objects into clusters in such a way that the sum of the squared deviations from the cluster centers is minimal. the sum of squares within the clusters can be interpreted as a type of “error scatter”. the method essentially differentiates four iterative steps: random allocation of the objects into a predefined number of clusters; recalculation of the cluster centers; reallocation of the objects via minimal squared euclidean distance; test to see if the ünlü & schurig current issues in comparative education 14 minimization of the sum of squares of the scatter changes with the allocation. if this is not the case, or a stop criterion is reached, the algorithm terminates itself. the cluster number is determined in corresponding indices based on selected threshold values via comparisons of repeated applications of the method with a variety of numbers of clusters, each with multiple start values. fuzzy methods the fuzzy cluster analysis has a “blurred” nature. it describes the uncertainty that an object g belongs to a class c, and thus it distinguishes itself from the previously presented “deterministic” methods (see bacher et al., 2010; everitt, 2011). in essence this method can be understood as a generalization of k-means. the c-means algorithm for continuous data was used for the fuzzy analysis (bezdek, 1981, 1983). one criterion based on the weighted sum of the distance squares is used for data vectors xi of n objects in c clusters: whereby mt is the center of cluster t, and the weights (degrees of belonging) uit add up to 1 for all i = 1, …, n. in addition, d(xi, mt) is the euclidean distance between data point and cluster center, and v is referred to as the “fuzzification”, in other words the “fadedness”. the degrees uit of the group membership are unknown and must be determined using the data. the cluster number can be selected via a comparison of the number of iterative steps to convergence (e.g., convergence under minimal iteration). methodical approach in the first step of the sequential approach, a three-dimensional scale is taken as a basis for the common timss and pirls 2011 sample data. classifications based on the threedimensional scale for this sample, by means of latent profile analysis and the international benchmarking method, are used as comparison values or reference typologies in the second step. every other partitioning could equally well be used as a reference typology if it seems useful. examples are typologies that are derived from substantive theories or those that are based purely on (other) statistical methods. the elaborations presented can then be applied by analogy. in the present study, latent profile analysis and the international benchmarking method are used as our reference typologies. in the second step in the sequential processing, the population estimators are classified using hierarchical cluster analysis (hca), k-means, and fuzzy methods. first, a comparison is conducted with cluster numbers fixed in accordance with the result of the lpa. then, a comparison is made with specific optimal cluster numbers. finally, a comparison is made of the optimal solutions to the performance levels defined in the international benchmarking in the domain mathematics. data set the entire sample for germany comprises 4,229 pupils in 197 primary schools. the joint test of pirls and timss was administered to the sample for a duration of two consecutive days. in the first day, approximately 50% of the sample took timss while computational typologies of multidimensional end-of-primary-school performance profiles from an educational perspective of large-scale timss and pirls surveys current issues in comparative education 15 the other half took pirls. the two groups switched tests on the second day (wendt et al., 2012). the sample size of complete cases includes 3,928 pupils and 197 schools. each student in the sample was administered tests to measure performance in all three competency areas: reading comprehension (pirls), mathematics and science (timss). multidimensional scale to allow a competency domain accounting for the full range of performance test values in the first step of the sequential approach, the survey data were jointly scaled in a multidimensional irt model. the mixed-coefficients multinomial logit model of adams et al. (1997) was used with the conquest software (wu et al., 2007). this model is a generalization of the rasch model (fischer & molenaar, 1995; rasch, 1960). a national background model that includes information from the pupil and parent questionnaires, as well as from the school questionnaires and the parameters to the cognitive abilities was incorporated using latent regressions. population describing person parameters (“plausible values”, pv) were calculated in this manner (see mislevy, 1991; cf. also von davier, gonzalez, & mislevy, 2009). a three-dimensional model based on the three primary competency domains was used, even though an eight-dimensional model based on the sub-domains would be conceivable (see bos et al., 2012c). both models are preferable to a one-dimensional model. the reading, mathematics, and science competency domains represent the three dimensions of the preferred irt model. as shown in table 3, there are strong correlations between the areas. table 3: latent correlations for the three-dimensional domain-related mixedcoefficients multinomial logit model results the calculations were primarily conducted in the open-source software r (r core team, 2014, www.r-project.org). the hierarchical and k-means cluster analyses were calculated with the r package cluster (maechler et al., 2014), the fuzzy cluster analyses with the r package e1071 (meyer et al., 2014) and the cluster statistics with the r packages fpc (hennig, 2014) and mclust (fraley et al., 2014). in general, it can be noted that no clusters with sizes n < 100 were observed. in every analysis, larger clusters basically form in the center of the performance continuum, with smaller clusters forming on the edges. to allow a comparison, the mode for the fuzzy soft clustering was formed from the degrees of class allocation for hard coding. lpa reference typology and fixed cluster number in order to conduct a comparison of the cluster solutions based on different evaluation criteria, the results and the specified indices are plotted in figure 3. ünlü & schurig current issues in comparative education 16 figure 3: absolute quality criteria (top panel) and relative measures of agreement (bottom panel) for cluster solutions with a fixed number of clusters k = 7 compared to the latent profile analysis as reference note: since the reference typology of the latent profile analysis is assumed, only the absolute quality criteria pearson gamma and average silhouette width are useful and plotted here for the latent profile analysis. the classification error indicates the relative number of misclassifications out of a fourfold table, where the reference typology of the latent profile analysis is assumed. generally, smaller values in this measure are interpreted as a better match to the reference solution. here, the classifications organized according to the latent profile analysis fall between 56.9% (k-means method) and 75.8% (hierarchical cluster analysis). the rand index (rand, 1971) is a measure of the similarity of two cluster solutions or partitions (everitt, 2011; kaufman & rousseeuw, 1990). it measures the share of the similar allocations. the adjusted rand index of hubert and arabie (1985) is aligned for accidentally correct allocations under a null hypothesis. this adjusted index is the normalized difference of the rand index and its expected value under the null hypothesis of a generalized hypergeometrical distribution for the confusion matrix / contingency table, which is defined for two cluster solutions cli and clj as: the recommended threshold values are 0.22 for a good solution and -0.14 for an accidental correlation. generally, higher values of this index represent better similarity of partition pairs. all cluster solutions in our analyses lie clearly above the threshold value, computational typologies of multidimensional end-of-primary-school performance profiles from an educational perspective of large-scale timss and pirls surveys current issues in comparative education 17 and therefore the similarities are to be labeled as “good”. rand* for the k-means cluster analysis lies at 0.40, the hierarchical cluster analysis at 0.54 and the fuzzy cluster analysis at 0.54. though they all can be considered as good solutions conditional to the latent profile analysis, the hierarchical and the fuzzy cluster analysis emerge as particularly good solutions (as was the case previously in the classification error). as an information theoretic measure of similarity between two cluster solutions or partitions, meilǎ’s (2007) variation of information criterion measures the quantity of lost and obtained information during the change of a cluster solution cli into a different clj. formally it is represented as follows: whereby h(cl.) is the respective entropy associated with the clustering and h(cli, clj) is the joined or common entropy of the two cluster solutions. it can be written as the sum of the two conditional entropies h(cli|clj) (information loss about cluster solution i during the change) and h(clj|cli) (information gain about cluster solution j during the change) and can be interpreted as the information quantity that differentiates the two cluster solutions from one another. at cli = clj, and only then, the measure takes the value 0. also, vi is a metric. thus, higher values generally indicate that two cluster solutions differ more strongly in their information content. the highest value here is achieved with k-means (vi = 1.40), while the hierarchical cluster analysis (vi = 1.09) and the fuzzy method (vi = 1.14) take on lower, that is more advantageous, values. this is in agreement with the findings that we obtained before in the other two criteria as well. in summary, the following ranking among the three clustering methods, which is consistent across all three criteria, can be recorded. when the cluster numbers are fixed, with lpa as the reference typology, hca delivers the best match to the lpa solution. hca is followed closely by the next best match of the fuzzy method, while the k-means method shows significantly poorer agreement with lpa. these parameters are relative measures of agreement in the sense that they compare the agreement between two given classifications or partitions of an object set without falling back on the data. in contrast, it is also possible to consider measures of absolute quality that quantify the “match” or “quality” in the data for a given classification of an object set. the pearson gamma (halkidi et al., 2001) is one such measure. for a cluster solution, it describes the correlation between the paired dissimilarities or distances and a binary 0/1 vector (0 for the same cluster and 1 for a different cluster) for object pairs, which is interpreted in the same way as the bravais-pearson correlation coefficient. this measure emphasizes the approximation of the dissimilarity structure by a clustering in the sense that observations in different clusters have a high correlation with greater dissimilarity or distance values. as a measure of quality, it quantifies the separation of the clusters of a solution and is generally interpreted as “the greater the value, the better”. all values take on characteristics between 0.42 and 0.48, whereby k-means and fuzzy take on comparable values, as do hca and lpa. the average silhouette width is a further measure of quality (rousseeuw, 1987), and based on dissimilarity measures across all clusters of a solution, it describes on average the tightness of the connection between formed groups. this measure emphasizes the separation of clusters with their neighboring clusters. smaller values of this index are ünlü & schurig current issues in comparative education 18 generally interpreted as poorer quality. according to kaufman and rousseeuw (1990), a value less than 0.25, as a suggested ad-hoc rule of thumb, is considered to be a “weak split”. under this criterion, the k-means solution (0.27) and the solution of the latent profile analysis (0.26) are of better quality, in which all values lie close to one another above the 0.25 heuristic threshold. however, the solutions of the fuzzy method and hca are considered “weak splits” as they yield similar values below the suggested threshold value. in summary, it can be noted that only lpa consistently takes on the greater values across the two quality criteria. all three computational methods each fall below the quality values of lpa in at least one of the two criteria. lpa reference typology and free cluster number in the second step, optimized cluster numbers for the different methods were determined. the comparisons were then repeated. the optimal cluster numbers and the criterion used to select the cluster number are shown in table 4. table 4: optimal cluster numbers the variance ratio (vr) criterion, also referred to as the caliński-harabasz index (caliński & harabasz, 1974), is calculated like the f statistic. formally this is described as follows: ssb is the total variation between the c clusters and ssw is the variation within the clusters, for a sample size of n clustered objects. the comparisons of the free cluster solutions and the classification from the lpa are shown in figure 4, with the courses of their profile lines in the top panel and the measures of agreement in the bottom panel (the corresponding absolute measures of quality in the data will be summarized later in figure 5). the k-means method again yields a higher error rate of 43.1%, while the hierarchical and fuzzy cluster solutions are pegged as better solutions with error rates of 30.5% and 31.4%, respectively. for each solution, an adjusted rand index that lies significantly above the threshold value for a classification is a good cluster solution in the lpa reference model. the hierarchical cluster solution (0.48) and the fuzzy cluster solution (0.56) have the most favorable values. the variation of information for the k-means solution (1.40) is less computational typologies of multidimensional end-of-primary-school performance profiles from an educational perspective of large-scale timss and pirls surveys current issues in comparative education 19 favorable than the variation of information for the hierarchical solution (1.21) and the fuzzy solution (1.11). figure 4: parallel plots of the different optimal cluster solutions of performance values of pupils in germany (top panel) and measures of agreement (bottom panel) of these cluster solutions with freely determined number of clusters compared to the latent profile analysis based on the three measures of agreement, it can be noted that compared with the lpa reference typology, the allocations in the free fuzzy analysis are only minimally changing with just one more cluster. the hca, in comparison, is getting slightly worse with one less cluster. in a free estimation of the clusters, the k-means method yields the previously 7 fixed clusters, which according to the lpa specification is optimal. in comparison with the hierarchical and fuzzy analyses, however, the k-means method comes off worse in terms of the measures of agreement. all in all, the optimal cluster numbers of the three model-free methods are around 7. given these findings, fuzzy emerges as the best solution, followed by hca and the kmeans method. the ranking of these methods is reflected in the courses of the profile lines in the top panel of figure 4. evidently, the invariant ranking of the clusters, which yields a parallel structure, is maintained almost completely for each of the methods. as shown, the kmeans method with the worst match to the reference typology exhibits crisscrossing. it is also worth noting that plotted aggregated mean value profiles provide no differentiated information on the variation within a cluster. variation bands, for example, could be computed, or the individual cases could be plotted and observed separately by means of interactive graphics. these and other strategies for “diagnostic post-analysis” of competing cluster solutions in the presented comparative education context are to be examined in further research. ünlü & schurig current issues in comparative education 20 benchmarking reference typology a comparison of the cluster solutions obtained in section lpa reference typology and free cluster number with the classification resulting from the benchmarking specification within the domain mathematics is presented here. the competency level allocations for mathematics from the timss study are used to represent the presumed reference typology (see section introduction: timss and pirls studies and figure 1). the corresponding results are shown in figure 5. figure 5: quality criteria (top panel) and measures of agreement (bottom panel) for cluster solutions with freely determined number of clusters (including lpa) compared to the benchmarking performance levels within the domain mathematics as the reference typology note: only the absolute quality criteria are useful and plotted here for the typology of the mathematics performance levels. the measures were calculated for lpa, hca, k-means and fuzzy based on the specified groupings of the pupils by using all three domains and the corresponding estimated test values. for the reference typology, the computations were based on the qualitative level groups, separately specified in the domain mathematics. in the latter case, the determined mathematics performance value was used as the only characteristic variable. the absolute measures of quality (“standardized” with values in [-1, 1]) were calculated accordingly in all three domains either at the same time for the candidate methods or only in the domain mathematics for the benchmarking reference. the relative measures of agreement compare the respective partitions that are all based on the same object set, i.e., the same sample of pupils. the results are revealing. the first striking finding is that the benchmarking partitioning of the student sample into the five timss competency levels, according to the reference typology defined above, does not have high quality as a cluster solution in absolute terms (top panel of figure 5). the measures of quality, pearson gamma and average silhouette width take on very small values. from a computational data-analytical computational typologies of multidimensional end-of-primary-school performance profiles from an educational perspective of large-scale timss and pirls surveys current issues in comparative education 21 perspective, the clusters specified by the benchmarking within the domain mathematics exhibit a small amount of separation to one another. in terms of the pearson gamma, this means either that quite a few pupils with comparable mathematics performances in the test are categorized in different competency levels (first situation) or that pupils with different mathematical abilities are classified into the same level (second situation). as can be seen on the average silhouette width criterion, neighboring competency groups in the first situation are also not being separated sufficiently well. quite a few cases come to lie in the boundary regions between two levels. with respect to the distribution of the pupils’ performance test values, larger gaps between the “congested areas” within individual levels will appear in the second situation. in both cases, from a substantive perspective, further research should examine if it would be possible to realize differentiated partitions or contentual interpretations of the competency levels. in comparison, the two quality measures take on noticeably high values for all statistical methods. for distance-based methods and lpa, the pearson gamma lies between 0.40 and 0.47, with the highest value of 0.46 associated with the lpa solution. thus, the lpa stands out, even if only relatively (weak split), in the average silhouette width as well. the fact that the timss benchmarking solution cannot be clearly retrieved in the data is obvious from the computed comparison or agreement values, which are consistently worse (bottom panel of figure 5). the benchmarking partitioning of the pupil sample and the partitions derived from data analysis differ markedly. in comparison to the other methods, lpa stands out again with regard to its distance to the benchmarking specification. the quality of the classification specified by the lpa is the best developed across both quality measures and – presumably for this reason – it deviates the most in its agreement with the benchmark solution with regard to relative comparative criteria. in light of these findings, it can be noted that the quality of the benchmarking clustering can and should be improved by accompanying statistical considerations, such as the additional optimization of the cluster criteria. further research is necessary – for example, based on specific restricted latent class models and other large-scale assessment studies and data – to make reliable assertions or create valid benchmarking specifications. this can be important from an educational policy perspective. discussion and summary the subject of the present study is the testing of different cluster methods for the identification and acquisition of discrete performance profiles in large-scale school performance comparison studies, illustrated here by using the large-scale assessment studies of timss and pirls 2011. the probabilistic model-based latent profile analysis, the distance-based computational k-means, hierarchical and fuzzy c-means cluster analyses were used on performance test values determined through plausible value generation within the framework of a three-dimensional irt scale. the solutions obtained via the model-free computational methods were compared to the results of the latent profile analysis. in addition, the pupils grouped via the competency levels in mathematics using the official timss benchmarking were compared with the groupings suggested by the cluster methods. the classic k-means, hierarchical and fuzzy cluster analyses, based on the measurement error controlled performance data, yielded results comparable to the model-supported latent profile analysis. with the appropriate framework parameters, the fuzzy cluster and the hierarchical cluster analyses have yielded the best results compared with the ünlü & schurig current issues in comparative education 22 latent profile analysis (reference typology) across the board of a number of comparison indices. since there are no model assumptions or complex estimation routines, the classic cluster methods appear to be practicable, easy access alternatives for the handling of complex large-scale assessment data. the presented comparison of the cluster methods is not only useful from a methodical perspective; but it is also important from a substantive, practical point of view. the results of the comparison of the quantitative cluster methods to the qualitative benchmarking specification of the large-scale assessment study have shown that the data-analytical methods lead to significantly more homogeneous groupings that exhibit better quality in the data. conclusion we conclude with observations on possible future research directions in this field. of course, the data analysis demonstrated here can be applied to other studies as well, for example pisa. different large-scale assessment studies often survey similar competencies and traditionally are compared based on the latent correlations among their continuous performance dimensions. as a supplement to this common approach, the comparison between different large-scale assessment studies using their respective cluster partitions of the pupil sample would be interesting. we suspect this study will make it possible to comparatively investigate different large-scale assessments in terms of their similarities and differences in a more sophisticated, substantially expanded way. indeed, more than three dimensions, such as the sub-facets of the respective primary domains, can be clustered as well. we expect that higher dimensional solutions will yield more in-depth insights. this is because the primary dimensions of reading, mathematics and science could be assessed at a more granular level, for example based on the content-related sub-domains of their comprehension processes (pirls) and cognitive requirements (timss). as in our study, analytical models that use more than three dimensions can be expanded with continuing or comparative cluster analyses. as is evident from the average silhouette width, which is low throughout, the specific cluster number is hard to determine. this can be ascribed particularly to the structure of the data. in other words, the highly developed test methods allow a “tight knit” multidimensional normality. the calculated criteria for the cluster numbers often lie in tight proximity. thus, a low number of clusters appear to be empirically plausible for the timss/pirls 2011 data. depending on the focus of the research, if it is theoretically well-founded, an increase of the cluster number can be appropriate. for this reason, it will be of great interest in the future to examine how much further the granularity of the clusters can be refined to identify small sub-groups or extreme groups such as “savants” or “learning disabled” in a targeted or empirically appropriate manner. the examination of such relatively rare cases could possibly piggy-back on statistical error analyses in model-supported reference typologies, and thus also allow differentiated assertions about misallocations in the partitioning. in conclusion, we would like to note that these methods as “data analysis” have their weaknesses. therefore, it is important to regard and understand the different methodical approaches, be they computational or model-based, as perspectives that complement one another. although the model-based approach is the centerpiece, its utility and importance can easily be expanded with accompanying and supplementary computational analyses, as shown in the current study. corresponding author: prof. dr. ali ünlü, ali.uenlue@tum.de. computational typologies of multidimensional end-of-primary-school performance profiles from an educational perspective of large-scale timss and pirls surveys current issues in comparative education 23 acknowledgments – dr. ünlü wishes to sincerely thank the editor-in-chief ryan allen for his work on this paper. dr. ünlü is also deeply indebted to edward choi and phoebe doan for thoroughly reviewing the paper. their critical and valuable comments, suggestions, and corrections have improved the work greatly. references adams, r. j., wilson, m. r., &. wang, w. l. 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(2007). acer conquest 2.0. generalised item response modelling software. camberwell: australian council for educational research. 1_ z. donghui current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 21, issue 1, 2019 © 2019, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 21(1), 3-19. under the equity discourse: divergent school practices for rural migrant children in chinese urban schools donghui zhang school of education, renmin university of china yun luo school of education, renmin university of china this paper examines how chinese urban schools respond to the unprecedentedly large number of rural migrant children under the emerging discourse of educational equity. drawing upon longitudinal field research in two beijing public schools, this study finds two contrasting school practices with regards to the migrant children, one emphasizing tailored education (“differentiation”) and the other acting school-wide upon the same curriculum and pedagogy (“mainstreaming”). while the two schools both claim to serve the best interest of their migrant intakes and promote educational equity, they have not been able to meet the migrant students’ true educational needs. student-oriented, inclusive education is advocated as an alternative concept of equity for chinese schools at the end of the paper. introduction with china’s rapid modernization and urbanization in the past three decades, a group of “rural migrant children” have emerged in chinese cities. these rural migrant children largely come from villages to join their parents who work as manual labor in big cities along china’s east coast. according to the latest census data, the total estimated number of chinese migrant children (aged 0-17) had reached 35.81 million, 80% of which (28.77 million) were of rural origin (all-china women’s federation report, 2013). for a long time, these migrant children were not entitled to public social welfare programs in the host cities due to their official household registration (hukou in chinese) as rural, out-of-statei residents. disadvantaged in socioeconomic status and academic performance, the majority of them were excluded from the urban school system and could only resort to low-quality makeshift schools (dagong zidi xuexiao) established by migrant workers or parents in city outskirts (han, 2004). the growing visibility of rural migrant children and their lack of equal educational opportunities prompted the chinese government to issue an important policy in 2001, popularly known as the “two mainlies” (liangweizhu) policy, which stipulated that education of migrant children are the main responsibilities of host cities and of public schools. under this policy, migrant children who satisfy eligibility conditions ii are legally ensured to access urban schools up to grade 9 and enjoy “equal treatment” as the local children (ministry of education, 2010). the “two mainlies” policy reflects the determination of the chinese central government in promoting educational equity and advancing social justice. in spite of the increasing complexity and stringency of the school enrollment paperwork required by individual cities (such as beijing, shanghai, etc.) and schools (such as elite schools) in recent years, migrant students have constituted about 30% of the total student population in urban public schools (grades 1-9) nationally (ministry under the equity discourse current issues in comparative education 4 of education, 2017). moreover, as more and more urban middle-class students manage to get into “good” public schools, weak schools with less favorable reputation in chinese cities tend to have a predominant proportion of migrant students, some as high as 80% (luo，zhong & tsang, 2015). with such an unprecedentedly large number of students from rural family backgrounds, those urban schools sitting at the lower end of the school hierarchy face an unfamiliar student body. how do these urban schools respond? in what ways do they perceive the migrant children as different from local children? to what extent do they differentiate them and accommodate to their special needs in the school curriculum and daily activities? this paper seeks to investigate the divergent school practices towards the migrant children in urban china and what impact these practices may have on this disadvantaged group. in the following sections, i will first draw upon international scholarship on educational equity and equal treatment as the conceptual framework within which the schooling of chinese migrant children will be discussed. data for the study comes from prolonged ethnographic fieldwork in two beijing public schools. the findings for the study hope to contribute to a better understanding of migrant children’s experiences in the chinese urban school settings and call for a reconsideration of equity in actual school practice for disadvantaged students. equity in theory and school practice the concepts of equity and equal opportunity of education have a long tradition as key terms in sociology of education and educational policymaking (nash, 2004; coleman, 1966). a review of the literature indicates that educational equity consists of two basic dimensions. the first is fairness, referring to a uniform standard that applies to everyone in a certain education system. the second is inclusion, implying that one’s ascriptive traits such as race, gender, class or family background, etc. should not interfere with their potential for academic success. school finance scholars tend to use the terms “horizontal equity” and “vertical equity” to distinguish between the two (berne & stiefel, 1999). while horizontal equity embraces uniform distribution of resources and opportunities regardless of people’s different initial status or capabilities to use these resources, vertical equity recognizes that some are at a greater disadvantage than others and aims to compensate for these people’s initial misfortunes so that everyone is capable of attaining the same level of access to goods and resources. in succinct terms, horizontal equity emphasizes “equal treatment of equals”, whereas vertical equity entails “different treatment to different people” (berne & stiefel, 1999). the chinese ancient educator confucius was famous for two aphorisms that bore similar meanings: instruction knows no class distinction (youjiaowulei 有 教 无 类 ); teach students in accordance with their aptitude (yincaishijiao因材施教) (sun & du, 2008). however, debates on the meaning and provisions of equity have endured since the 1960s, given scarce resources and unequal starting chances in any given society (jencks, 1988; rawls, 1971; wilson, 1991). hemelsoet (2012), quoting dubet (2005), distinguished three dominant conceptions of equality that are relevant to education: meritocratic, distributive, and social equality. each of these forms of equality refers to a different underlying idea of what is (most) “just” for all, i.e., a particular theory of justice and a notion of what is “good”. meritocratic equality of opportunities offers zhang & luo current issues in comparative education 5 equal starting chances for all and allows individuals to compete with their talents and capacities. within this view, “the only inequalities that can be tolerated are those that result from merit” (hemelsoet, 2012, p. 525). the introduction of compulsory education, free primary education, open access to higher education and many other initiatives, certainly induce more chances for participation among pupils from different ethnic groups and social classes. the distributive equality deals with the difference principle which states that inequalities can be just as long as they are to the benefit of the least well off (rawls, 1971). a well-known example is the politics of affirmative action achieved through favorable recruitment of applicants from sociopolitically disadvantaged groups. social equality of opportunities emphasizes equal outcomes rather than equal starting chances and focuses on what schools should warrant for all. here equal opportunities are weighted on the basis of what the weakest can achieve. a broad common curriculum, or “minimum in common” (hemelsoet, 2012, p. 525), is advocated on its behalf. although equity in the abstract sense has been accepted as one of the most desirable principles by educators and policymakers worldwide, it is nonetheless difficult to enact it in school practice and there is no “one-size-fits-all” model to achieve equity for all students. with an increasing number of students from diverse backgrounds, today’s schools are facing tremendous challenges in their attempt to provide equal educational opportunity for all. segregation had been one of the common practices in the past to deal with students of different color on the pretext of “separate but equal”. with the 1954 brown vs. board act, the us supreme court ruled that separate schools were not equal given the huge disparity in funding and resources between white schools and black schools (clotfelter, 2004). however, desegregation itself could not guarantee equity as the 1974 lau vs. nichols demonstrated. immigrant and language minority students’ needs were highlighted when the us supreme court ruled that just providing the students with the same textbooks, desks and teachers, the so-called mainstreaming or “equal treatment” was not sufficient to ensure equal educational opportunity (mcpherson, 2000). vertical equity of “different treatment to different people” was called for. another school practice that has become controversial due to equity concerns is tracking (oakes, 2005). due to students’ differences in natural intelligence and abilities, tracking and its various modifications have been among the predominant organizing practices of modern schools in many countries, a widely accepted practice that seemed to satisfy the “vertical equity” principle to treat gifted students differently from average/slow students. unfortunately, tracking is inclined to create internal segregation and ethnocentric social darwinism. according to oakes (2005), the disproportionate placement of poor and minority students into low tracks does not reflect their actual learning abilities. moreover, students initially placed in low-track classes are often taught in watered-down curriculum and lack the motivation to study, eventually leading to stigmatization and school failure. for these reasons, while some educators and policymakers continued to support tracking as appropriate, other scholars denounced it as a contributor to inequality in the school system (oakes, 2005). as a response to the above criticisms, inclusive education was advocated by western education scholars and practitioners in recent years (huang, 2004; stainback & stainback, 1996; porter & smith, 2011). it was first put forward by unesco in 1994 on under the equity discourse current issues in comparative education 6 the world conference on special needs education: access and quality in spain (unesco, 1994). in a narrow sense, inclusive education refers to the placement of students with disabilities in regular classrooms or schools. however, as used by unesco (2005), it may incorporate any marginalized groups, such as religious, racial, ethnic, and linguistic minorities, immigrants, girls, the poor, students with disabilities, hiv/aids patients, remote populations and more, in the attempt to provide equal educational opportunity for all. moreover, the concept of inclusion differs from previously held notions of integration or mainstreaming. while the latter two imply that learners with special educational needs should try to catch up and assimilate into the mainstream, inclusion places premium on their social, civil and educational rights to participate in the regular school system along with others (unesco, 2005). proponents argue that inclusive education is good for all students because it builds a caring community where everyone's experiences and abilities are valued (huang, 2004). equity entails multidimensional considerations and complex solutions in school practice. however, it has not been a prominent social value in chinese schools until the beginning of the 21st century, although there have always been moralities and practices of “helping the weak” (fuzhu ruoxiao扶助弱小). on the one hand, china’s confucian traditions emphasize a hierarchical social order based on meritocracy. on the other hand, the early attempts of socialist china under the leadership of mao zedong (1949-1976) to achieve radical equalitarianism failed, leading to the pursuit of efficiency and excellence during the reform and opening-up era since 1978. it was not until the hu-wen administration (2002-2012) and their “people-oriented” (yirenweiben 以人为本) concept that equity became a dominant discourse in chinese education and society. the western notions of equity, as mentioned above, were imported and have been largely adopted by chinese education scholars and policymakers, along with certain indigenous values such as harmony, fairness, impartialness etc. (liu, 2002; wang, 2006). yet in terms of school practice, there has not been a consensus about what educational equity involves. it is the local school contexts, school leaders’ philosophy as well as the school agendas and strategies that together shape school practitioners’ interpretations of equity. this article explored how equity was viewed and acted upon in two beijing schools with a large proportion of migrant students. in the following sections, i use two terms: differentiation and assimilation, in the discussion of school practices and educational equity. differentiation corresponds to the idea of vertical equity and in this study refers specifically to the school’s attempts to differentiate migrant students in teaching and learning based on their “migrant” status. assimilation is presumed on horizontal equity and refers to the school practice of incorporating all students, regardless of their family background or academic preparation, into mainstream (urban) school activities and providing them with an undifferentiated curriculum and pedagogy. rural migrant children and their schooling in chinese cities the emergence of migrant children in chinese urban cities has drawn increasing attention from scholars across different disciplines, both domestic and outside china. the initial scholarly interest focused on discussions of the hukou system in china and the institutional constraints that deprived migrant children of legal access to urban zhang & luo current issues in comparative education 7 public schools (li, 2004; chen, 2005). with the establishment of the “two mainlies” policy in 2001 and its enforcement in the following years, more migrant children were able to enroll in public schools in urban areas. however, school access continued to be a serious concern due to the local unwillingness to implement the policy, especially in light of the recent population control pressures in big metropolitan cities like beijing and shanghai (yang, 2017). in addition to school access, increasing studies sought to examine migrant children’s schooling experiences and psycho-social adaptations in urban schools (luo, 2011; wang & gao, 2010; shi, 2017; lu & zhou, 2013). unanimously, these studies revealed the educational difficulties migrant children faced in public schools as well as the social and cultural barriers that prevented them from successfully integrating into the urban society. due to the disconnect between the rural and urban school systems, including different quality of instruction, textbooks, learning styles and tests, the majority of migrant children possessed insufficient academic foundations and lag behind their urban peers in school performance (lin et al., 2009; liu, holmes & albright, 2015). at the same time, migrant children with rural origin and low test scores tended to be stigmatized in urban schools and experience loneliness, anxiety and a sense of inferiority (kwong, 2011; mu & jia, 2016). in general, these studies attributed the many challenges faced by migrant children to the lack of financial capital and cultural capital in the migrant families and to the inequitable rural-urban divide in the chinese society, without paying due attention to the impact of microlevel schooling processes. in recent years, school type has been found to be an important contributor to migrant children’s school failure and social reproduction. scholars conducted in-depth ethnographies within migrant private schools or engaged in comparative studies between students in these schools and in public schools (ming, 2014; li, 2015; xiong, 2015). these studies highlighted the chaos, tensions and the “counter-school culture” prevalent in migrant schools facing legitimacy issues and with no government support, yet few ventured to examine the divergent school practices and their underlying rationales with regards to the education of migrant children within public schools. this study aims to fill in the gap and explore, with an in-depth comparative lens of two public schools in beijing, (1) how different public schools in urban china try to accommodate their intake of migrant children and (2) what are the societal, political and cultural factors leading to divergent school practices towards this disadvantaged group of students? research sites and methods the study was part of a longitudinal research project (from 2011 till now) on the schooling experiences of migrant children in beijing public schools, sponsored by the chinese ministry of education. beijing, the capital of china and the hub of business enterprises in north china, was one of the top three destination cities attracting the rural migrants, the other two being shanghai and guangzhou. more than 8 million migrants resided in beijing in 2015, making up 37.9% of the total population (21.7 million) in beijing (zhao & wei, 2017). in the past decade, the number of beijing local children has decreased as a result of the one-child policy. at the same time, the number of school-age migrant children (grades 1-9) increased dramatically, from 227 thousand in 2004 to 473 thousand in 2015 (zhao & wei, 2017), constituting more than one-third under the equity discourse current issues in comparative education 8 of the total student population during the compulsory education period (grade 1-9). in the project, the research team, consisting of two university professors (co-principal investigators) and three graduate students, visited many public schools in beijing and had talks with a number of principals, teachers, migrant children and parents. having obtained a general picture of migrant children’s schooling in beijing, the research team selected two public schools to do classroom observations and qualitative interviews. the selection of the two schools, lotus school and safety school (pseudonyms), was purposeful for the sake of comparison. they were both primary schools offering grades 1-6 with a large migrant student population and therefore regarded as “weak” schools, yet they embraced different goals, visions and strategies in terms of school development and teaching practice with regards to the migrant children. lotus school was situated in the sijiqing township in the outskirts of haidian district, beijing. sijiqing township used to be a rural area with the majority of its residents farmers. as part of beijing’s overall urban planning, sijiqing underwent a series of infrastructure construction in the 1990s. most of its residents moved to newly built buildings, while the former villages became home to migrant workers and their families due to the low living expenses. lotus school started to enroll migrant children since 1996. the school principal thus described their student recruitment in 2010: “our district education commission allocated 160 students to our school. only 50 came. that was no good. we were asked to open 4 classes, but with so few students, whom shall our teachers teach? in the end, we enrolled 110 migrant students and got the number up to 160” (lotus principal 4-26-2011). with the flowing out of local children and the influx of migrant children, about 80% of the student population at lotus school at the time of our study was migrant children coming from 20 provinces and regions all over the country, with the rest being children of the local farmers. because of the diverse origins of the students, the school principal nicknamed lotus school as “little china”. safety school was located in an old alley at dongcheng district in the center city of beijing, surrounded by dilapidated buildings, noisy streets and crowded peddlers. as the school teachers informed us, the school was small with limited room for development. furthermore, the school leaders hadn’t been able to grasp the opportunity to make it grow in the school restructuring reforms. therefore, safety school had only about 300 students, 92% of whom were children of the peddlers, cleaners, restaurant workers and attendants who migrated “from all the different parts of china except tibet and xinjiang” (safety principal 9-17-2011) and settled down in the neighborhood. the small number of local children in the school came from workingclass families residing nearby. as many of the migrant children were born in beijing and grew up in the neighborhood, they did not look different from the local children except in terms of hukou. the research team visited the two schools by turn, usually with one professor and one or two graduate students going to one school at a time. as co-principal investigators, we visited the two schools from march 2011 to october 2012, on an every-two-week basis. during the site visits, we usually spent the whole day in the school, doing zhang & luo current issues in comparative education 9 classroom observations in the mornings and interviewing the school principals, selected teachers and students in the afternoons. we observed all the classrooms in grade 6, the final year of primary school in china, across the two schools. during the classroom observations, we paid special attention to teachers’ teaching styles and students’ in-class participation in order to identify any learning difficulties and how teachers helped them overcome these difficulties. during recess, we would talk casually with the teachers and students, when they were not engaged, to triangulate with what we observed. each of us wrote our own observation fieldnotes. at the same time, weiii conducted formal, in-depth interviews with the principal and three head teachers from each school to get more information about the school curriculum, teaching methods and development strategies etc. we also tried to elicit their attitudes towards the migrant children and their opinions on the rationales behind the school practices. with the help of head teachers, we formally interviewed 4 migrant students and 2 parents from each school to learn about their migration history, children’s difficulties in the urban school and expectations for the future etc. the interviews were open-ended in a conversation style, typically lasting from one hour to one hour and a half. the interview data were recorded and later transcribed by the three graduate students. data for the study came from the collectively produced interview transcripts and my own observation fieldnotes. please refer to table 1 for the list of the interviewees. table 1: the list of interviewees school name gender school name gender lotus school principal li m safety school principal meng f teacher li f teacher qin f teacher luo f teacher chen f teacher zhu f teacher pang f parent ma f parent wang m parent wang f parent xu f student ma f student wang f under the equity discourse current issues in comparative education 10 student liu m student xu m student han f student zhang f student gao m student zhao m throughout the field visits, we wrote memos and discussed preliminary findings with the research team to facilitate subsequent data collection and analysis. we applied a “constant comparing and contrasting” method rooted in grounded theory (glaser & strauss, 1967; maxwell, 1996) for thematic analysis of the data. similar school routines, events, and activities across the two schools were grouped together under one category, while contrasting beliefs, practices and attitudes were highlighted at the same time to permit the drawing of possible conclusions about the differences between the two schools. the tentative conclusions were then triangulated, checked and supported with more evidence from the ongoing participant observations and informal talks. discussion the two schools in the study both advocated “equity” and put migrant students in the same classrooms as local students. however, they preached opposite principles of equity, adopted contrasting educational strategies and created vastly different learning environments for the migrant students. their conceptions of equity were best illustrated by their divergent attitudes towards “differences”. lotus school: targeted education for migrant students throughout the fieldwork, the school leaders at lotus school proudly emphasized their differences from other schools in beijing: “because most of our students are migrant children, we should adjust our school curriculum according to their special characteristics and provide a different kind of education” (lotus principal 4-26-2012). the “special characteristics” of the migrant students, according to the school principal and teachers, included high mobility, weak knowledge foundations, and a strong sense of inferiority attached to their non-local status and disadvantaged family backgrounds. although local beijing students constituted about 20% of its student population, lotus school seemed to position itself as a predominantly “migrant children’s school” and paid particular attention to their special needs. first of all, lotus school made good use of decoration of its physical environment to make the migrant children feel at home. a huge poster stood on the top of the school building, with a well-known chinese statement on behalf of migrant children in comparison with urban children: “you compete with me for what your parents have today, but i will compete with you for who i am tomorrow (ni he wo lai bi fu mu, wo he ni lai bi mingtian.” on the display board in front of the school building, pictures and calligraphies of the chinese government officials and celebrities who had visited the school and showed care for the migrant children, as well as pictures of migrant children’s life and study in the school, were posted. in addition, lotus school adopted zhang & luo current issues in comparative education 11 “happiness away from depression, confidence away from diffidence” as its motto and had a school song written entitled, “i am responsible, i am able and i am happy”, both in the attempt to instill such positive dispositions that were perceived to be lacking among the migrant children. similarly inspiring words and slogans targeted towards migrant children could be found throughout the campus, from the school walls to each classroom wall. together, such a configuration of words and pictures aimed to help the migrant students stay strong and persistent in hard work, but at the same time they conveyed a clear message about the non-local identity of the students, exposing and reiterating their inferior social status. secondly, lotus school deliberately adjusted its curriculum and teaching methods to meet migrant students’ needs. although the migrant students were taught from the same textbooks as local students, the teachers at lotus school commonly expressed their difficulty in teaching the former and reported needing to put more time and efforts into it, compared with teaching the local children. “we have to start from the very basics so the low-achievers and newcomers do not get frustrated. we have to see to it that they do not lag behind and we encourage them to learn” (lotus school teacher li 3-14-2012). while other public schools in beijing were undergoing curriculum reforms in the name of “quality education” and experimenting with innovative teaching methods, lotus school resorted to traditional teacher-dominated lectures for the most part since the advanced teaching methods often required more student input, as well as parent input. “we do our best to make them grasp the fundamentals in textbooks. the children cannot understand if you expand knowledge beyond the textbooks. besides, the parents have no time to help or cannot help at all.” (lotus teacher luo 4-6-2012) in designing school-based curricula and extracurricular activities, lotus school also tended to take migrant students’ limited family resources into consideration and offered courses that did not require too much material input on the family’s part, such as paper-cutting, knitting, calligraphy and recitations, etc. in this way, the curriculum at lotus school was made more relevant and practical for migrant students to be active participants. thirdly, moral and character education occupied an important place at lotus school to boost migrant students’ confidence and encourage them to work hard. a typical example was the school-wide annual project of “becoming a new beijinger”, in which students expressed their intentions to become a “new beijinger" through forming good study habits and personal hygiene, learning to be polite, and assimilating into urban lifestyles and values, etc. when teachers motivated the students to learn, they explicitly alluded to their migrant status. “you must study hard and strive to go to college in the future. only that way will you stay in the city. otherwise, you have to go back” (lotus school class observation 6-12-2012). while lotus school claimed to serve the “special needs” of its migrant students, it paid far more attention to developing migrant children’s confidence and happiness through extracurricular activities and moral scolding rather than through improving their academic performance. for example, it didn’t provide supplementary tutoring to the migrant children who had difficulty to catch up. nor did it offer additional help or orientation programs for the newcomers who had just transferred to the school from rural schools. instead, the teachers taught a watered-down curriculum in class and demonstrated low academic expectations towards the migrant children in general. one teacher openly expressed her attitudes, under the equity discourse current issues in comparative education 12 “our school can’t expect them too much…so long as the students understand the basic content materials in the textbooks, that would be more than enough! you can’t expect to undertake complex tasks” (lotus school teacher zhu 3-6–2012). therefore, lotus school’s approach towards differentiating the migrant children was not one based on the assumption that migrant children were different but capable learners, but rather on the assumption that they have deficits in learning due to their rural origin and migrant status. such differentiation with its remedial nature, seemingly in line with “vertical equity”, nonetheless diverted from the ideal of “distributive justice” as advocated by rawls (1971), which aims to redistribute opportunities through different treatment in order to benefit the least well-off. because of its positioning as “a school for migrant children”, lotus school attracted great attention in the neighborhood and was deemed successful by the upper-level educational administrators. donations and visits from public celebrities to the school were frequent. the migrant students at lotus school were often invited to participate in various art contests and perform in festivals or on tv programs. obviously, lotus school had successfully publicized the disadvantages of migrant children and made use of the school image to procure more opportunities and resources for the development of the school. however, the publicity lotus school won was not always conducive to the benefits of migrant students. many students expressed strong dislike and even disinclination to participate in the performances and rehearsals. “we have to rehearse again and again! the afternoon classes are all ruined!” (student ma, 5-11-2012) “it is like a show, you know. whenever visitors come, we repeat the same thing. it’s all fake” (student han, 5-11-2012). moreover, the slogans and performances, though intended to be inspiring, worked as clear labels and solidified stereotypes to remind the migrant students of their disadvantaged social status. frequent and explicit references to their migrant status in daily routines and on tv only intensified this awareness. in the fieldwork, i found the migrant children at lotus school frequently used the derogatory “waidiren” (meaning non-locals) label on themselves, which implied second-class citizenship and restricted future schooling opportunities in the city. while being asked which middle school to go to, the migrant children usually pointed to s school nearby as their option. “many students in my class would go there. almost everybody going there is a waidiren. other schools would have looked down upon us waidiren” (lotus school student liu 3-6–2012). when a small number of migrant students went to apply for better middle schools with the help of their parents, to our surprise, they were teased and jeered at rather than envied by their classmates. to many migrant students, these efforts were in vain. “even if these students could be admitted, they must feel no good there. for one thing, they will fall behind in schoolwork; for another, students going to these schools are all rich kids. they will be looked down upon if they go there” (lotus school student gao 4-6–2012). clearly, these migrant students, in trying to shame the few “attempters”, had self-selected into the lower track of urban schools and were even diffident to apply for “good” schools. as one parent observed: “everything at lotus is good except for test scores” (parent ma, 5-12-2012). obviously, the differentiation model that lotus school adopted is similar to the practice of tracking that has long been criticized for stigmatizing students and producing school failures. zhang & luo current issues in comparative education 13 safety school: saying no to differential treatment apparently, safety school leaders and teachers held different views with regards to what was best education for the migrant students and adopted school practices accordingly. although they were also clearly aware of the “special characteristics” of the migrant students, they chose to downplay these purposefully and sought to assimilate them in the urban school system. the most prominent words that recurred in our interviews and fieldnotes at safety school were “equal treatment” and “assimilation”. unlike lotus school, the campus of safety school did not use value-laden slogans or pictures to highlight the disadvantages of the migrant students or demarcate them as a special group in need of help. while lotus school deliberately created a school image as one that served predominantly migrant children to win publicity, safety school seemed to position itself as a regular public school. nowhere could one see anything related to migrant students, even though they made up the majority of the student population. the decorations on the walls and corridors of the school building were mostly chinese paintings and ancient lyrics. compared with lotus school, safety school was small, quiet and inconspicuous. in terms of educational goals and school curriculum, safety school did not create special programs or classes for migrant children. like the other public schools in beijing, the teaching activities at safety school centered around nationally designated textbooks. according to the principal at safety school, “we run our school wholly under the guidance of beijing municipal education commission. our school fulfills every teaching requirement and our facilities are all up to standard. all the courses required by the commission are offered in our school” (safety principal 9-17-2012). student assessments and graduation standards at safety school were also in accordance with those required by beijing municipal education commission, even though the migrant students had a low starting point. in the interviews, safety school teachers justified the strict requirements for student outcomes out of concern for their future schooling options. “whether they will enroll in beijing middle schools or return home, they will take part in examinations and competitions to enter middle school. so the same requirements apply everywhere: academic performance and school behavior” (safety school teacher qin 9-4-2012). at the same time, they expressed the necessity of equal treatment so as not to damage the self-esteem of the migrant children. “the migrant students don’t like being treated differently. if you consider their special needs, they would believe that you are treating them as outsiders. some people believe that differential treatment takes their special needs into consideration, but the migrant parents may take it as a discrimination against their children” (safety school teacher pang 9-27-2012). in moral education, safety school used china’s past and present and the history of beijing as educational resources to inculcate patriotism and character building, with little reference to the status of the migrant students themselves. students’ interest in optional classes and extracurricular activities were certainly taken into consideration in designing curriculum for the following year, but in terms of individual aptitude or preference rather than due to group inclination. in daily routines and student under the equity discourse current issues in comparative education 14 discipline, the teachers at safety school deliberately avoided mentioning the non-local status of their students. “it’s the same to everybody, no special treatment. depending on the children’s talents, they do what they can do. we won’t distinguish who are migrant children and who are not” (safety school teacher qin 9-4–2012). thus, unlike lotus school that tailored their educational programs towards the migrant children, safety school practiced mainstreaming and acted upon undifferentiated equal treatment. in doing so, it did not advertise itself as a school serving predominantly migrant children, but insisted upon high standards and a rigorous school curriculum as a survival strategy to attract more students, either local or non-local. in fact, safety school seemed to want to be acknowledged as a “regular” public school in beijing, as these are often assumed to be of higher quality than schools serving migrant children. “we can’t deteriorate into a migrant children’s school. test scores mean everything. if you don’t perform well, the school cannot survive. many weak schools in beijing have been closed or taken over these years” (safety principal, 9-17-2012). indeed, the migrant students at safety school were pushed to learn and achieve academic improvement, less burdened by the “colorful” extracurricular activities. at the same time, the practice of mainstreaming helped them avoid constant identity exposure in comparison with their counterparts at lotus school. the non-local label was inconspicuous. “they were not that much different from us. we play together. we don’t even know who are from outside beijing” (informal talk at safety school 3-22-2013). to a certain extent, the migrant students at safety school had a normalized and “pure” school life focused on study. on the other hand, however, in acting upon the principle of “no differential treatment”, safety school neglected the special educational needs of migrant children as a disadvantaged group. many migrant children had difficulty catching up in academic study with weak academic foundations from their previous rural schools. a large number of migrant children at safety school lagged behind and were regarded as “backward” students. “english is the most difficult subject to me. i transferred to safety school in the second grade. village schools didn’t offer english class until the third grade. i had never learned english, but my classmates had learned for two or more years” (safety school student wang 10-11-2012). under the disguise of equal treatment and fair competition, safety school did not make any efforts in terms of remedial or compensatory curriculum to help migrant students learn. instead, it attributed the behavior and study of migrant children to their lack of effort or hard work. the “swim or sink” philosophy of mainstreaming without taking initial disadvantages into consideration placed the migrant students in a marginalized position at safety school and exacerbated their feelings of being neglected and not belonging in urban schools. at first sight, the mainstreaming model adopted by safety school reminds us of confucius’ teaching that instruction knows no class distinction, as well as the ideal of “horizontal equity” and “meritocratic equality” that subjects everyone to a uniform standard. a closer examination based on in-depth fieldwork nonetheless indicates that the rationale behind such a model lies in the eagerness of safety school to get rid of the reputation as a weak school. through the mainstreaming/assimilation strategy, zhang & luo current issues in comparative education 15 safety school hopes to survive in the urban school system increasingly driven by test score competition and efficiency. yet in doing so, it neglects the unequal footing and unbalanced power relations embedded in china’s hukou-based political economy that disadvantaged migrant students are situated in. conclusion while providing equal educational opportunity for disadvantaged children is a global concern, actual practice varies from school to school and depends on the specific school context as well as its available resources and educational philosophy upheld by its leaders. the two case schools in the study adopted quite different ways of educating migrant students and both seemed to be justified by their respective conceptions of educational equity. while lotus school highlighted the “special needs” of the migrant students in the hope to attract public attention, safety school acted upon “no differential treatment” in its efforts to survive in the competitive urban school system. however, this study demonstrated that both differentiation (vertical equity) and assimilation (horizontal equity) have positive and negative impacts on the migrant students. the two case schools in the study were deliberately selected for the purpose of comparison and couldn’t represent all schools serving migrant students in beijing, let alone throughout china. however, in our longitudinal study, we found many chinese urban schools act upon a preconceived or misconceived discourse of equity, either intentionally or unintentionally. while claiming to serve the best interests of the migrant students, their conceptions of equity and school practices seem to be shaped more by the sociopolitical circumstances they are situated in and the needs of school development than by the true educational needs of migrant students. with the increasing influx of rural migrant children in the cities, it is time for the chinese urban schools to truly care about them, learn about their hardships and maladjustments in the rural-urban transition, and place a premium on their social, civil and educational rights above everything else. instead of resorting to superficial confidence-building activities and watered-down curriculum or totally ignoring their disadvantaged circumstances in the mainstreaming classes, urban schools should develop a “studentoriented” conception of equity and reconsider what “equal treatment” in school practice implies for migrant children. future research on school equity in the chinese context, both theoretical and empirical, can throw lights in this regard. while absolute equity is hard to achieve in any given society, a more complex, fluid and dynamic conceptualization of equity, i.e., inclusion, has been put forward as an alternative discourse to simplistic or mechanic views of equity. inclusion is also compatible with china’s socialist ideals as well as its vision of building a harmonious society. however, given its long-rooted hukou regime and rural-urban dualistic social structure, china has a long way to go before institutional barriers confronting migrant children can be removed. without the macro-level structural reforms, public schools cannot be expected to adhere to the theory and practice of inclusive education in the truest sense. acknowledgements: this study was funded by the research grant “identity formation of chinese migrant children in urban cities” sponsored by the humanities and social sciences division of the ministry of education in china under the equity discourse current issues in comparative education 16 (project no. 09yjc880100). writing of the article was supported by the fundamental research funds for the central universities, and the research funds of renmin university of china (project no. 10xnb016). donghui zhang received her ph.d. from graduate school of education, university of pennsylvania and is now a professor at school of education, renmin university of china. her research interests include comparative education, education, culture and society. she is doing research about minority students and migrant students in beijing schools. yun luo received her ph.d. from the chinese university of hong kong and is now an associate professor at school of education, renmin university of china. her research areas are in sociology of education and qualitative research methods. notes [1] in china, the out-of-state concept is more complicated. it applies to those residing in the same province but outside the particular city/district. the household registration (hukou) includes two components: one denotes rural/urban status; the other specifies one’s locale of jurisdiction from the provincial level down to the street/neighborhood. [2] the eligibility conditions vary from city to city, but the basic requirements include: parents’ employment proof in the host cities, their temporary residence in the neighborhood, social security record, single-child certificate, and the proof of no caregivers in their place of origin etc. [3] the co-principal investigators took the lead in the interviews, while the graduate student(s) were assistants, asking questions occasionally. zhang & luo current issues in comparative education 17 references all-china women’s federation report. (2013). research report on rural migrant children and left-behind children (liushouertonghechengxiangliudongertongyanjiubaogao). china education daily (zhongguojiaoyubao), may 11, 2013 berne, r. & stiefel l. (1999). concepts of school finance equity: 1970 to the present. in equity and adequacy in education finance: issues and perspectives, h. f. ladd, r. chalk & j. s. hansen (eds.). washington, dc: the national academies press. chen, y. 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(2010). social integration between the migrant peasants’ children and urban citizens (liudong ertong yu chengshi shehui ronghe). beijing: social sciences academic press. wilson, j. (1991). education and equality: some conceptual issues. oxford review of education, 17 (2), 223-230. xiong, y. (2015). the broken ladder: why education provides no upward mobility for migrant children in china. the china quarterly, 221, pp 161-184. yang, d. (2017). the development and policy changes of migrant children’s education in china. in yang, d. (ed.), annual report on education for china’s migrant children 2016 (zhongguo liudong ertong jiaoyu fazhan baogao 2016). beijing: social sciences academic press (shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe). zhao, h. & wei, j. (2017). the status of migrant children’s education in beijing during compulsory education period (beijing yiwu jiaoyu jieduan liudong ertong jiaoyu xianzhuang). in yang, d. (ed.), annual report on education for china’s migrant children 2016 (zhongguo liudong ertong jiaoyu fazhan baogao 2016) (pp. 105-120). beijing: social sciences academic press (shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe). current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 20, issue 2, special issue 2018 © 2018, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 20(2), 24-39. virtual professional learning network: exploring an educational twitter chat as professional development edmund s. adjapong seton hall university christopher emdin teachers college, columbia university ian levy manhattan college “ayo! a lot of these twitter chats on education and #hiphoped go harder than my school’s professional development.” hiphoped educational twitter chat participant introduction considering the advancement of digital technology over the past decade, and its impact on social media platforms such as twitter, facebook, and instagram, the utility of social media among individuals from all over the world has increased exponentially, and these platforms have become integral to creating and maintaining wide-reaching virtual communities. with an electronic device as small and easily accessible as a cellphone, individuals can share information in the form of text, photos, videos, and live streaming instantaneously with their social networks. over the past few years, these virtual communities have grown to include professional educational learning networks. in traditional educational settings such as schools, teachers are required to attend mandated professional development sessions that have a goal of “engaging teachers in practical tasks and providing opportunities to observe, assess and reflect on the new practices” (darling-hammond & mclaughlin, 1995). studies suggest that effective professional development for educators should “concentrate on instruction and student outcomes in teachers' specific schools; provide opportunities for collegial inquiry, help, and feedback; and connect teachers to external expertise while also respecting teachers' discretion and creativity” (newmann, king & youngs, 2000). while we recognize the necessity and importance of effective professional development for teachers, research suggests that professional development for teachers historically has been woefully inadequate for meeting its intended goals and teachers’ specific professional learning needs (borko, 2004). sykes (1996) identified conventional professional development as “the most serious and unsolved problem in policy and practice in american education today” due to the fact that most professional development do not cater to teachers’ https://twitter.com/search?q=%23hiphoped https://twitter.com/search?q=%23hiphoped virtual professional learning network current issues in comparative education 25 individual needs (p. 465). the reality is school districts and the federal government invest millions of dollars each year in support of professional development that is fragmented, that does not take into account how teachers learn, and that does not cater to the individual professional needs of teachers (ball & cohen, 1999; borko, 2004). in response, we suggest an approach to professional development that considers the challenges with the existing approaches while providing a mechanism for connecting teachers around beliefs, ideologies, and philosophies that directly impact their practice. over the past two decades, a considerable amount of literature has emerged on the “best practices” in professional development and teacher learning, but little research has been conducted on the effects of professional development on improving teacher, and in turn, student outcomes (garet et al. 2001; guskey & yoon, 2009). further, when discussing the professional learning of teachers, it is essential to recognize that it is a complex process that involves both cognitive and emotional participation of teachers. as avalos (2011) demonstrates, professional learning for educators requires the capacity and willingness to examine where they stand in terms of convictions and beliefs and the perusal and enactment of appropriate alternatives for improvement or change. when we discuss the challenges of conventional professional development for educators, we recognize that the culture and experiences of educators strongly influence the attitudes, values, and behaviors that they bring to the profession (gay, 2002; putnam, & borko, 2000). in understanding that teachers come from various cultural backgrounds and experiences, we argue that professional development should also cater to the specific interests, needs, cultural and experiential backgrounds of educators. as outlined by borko (2004), conventional professional development is composed of four key elements (see figure 1) that includes the professional development program, the teachers (who are the learners), the facilitator (who guides teachers as they construct new knowledge and practices), and the context in which professional development occurs. the relationship between these four key elements are essential in understanding the effectiveness of professional development, though most of the literature on professional development focuses solely on the relationship between teachers (as learners) and professional development programs. little research has been conducted that interrogates the relationship between the context, conventional professional development programs and the effects of alternative forms of professional development on teachers (as learners) (garet et al. 2001). adjapong, emdin, and levy current issues in comparative education 26 figure 1: elements of a professional development system (borko, 2004). the field of education is ever changing as a result of new policy and new research-based approaches to teaching and learning. these constant shifts in the field often force schools and school districts to constantly update their professional learning goals for teachers (elmore, 2004). due to constant shifts in the field and the varying needs of teachers, not every form of professional development is relevant to all teachers. therefore, there is a need to study and identify alternative approaches to professional development to supplement conventional professional learning that teachers receive, with the goal of meeting their varying needs of teachers and, in turn, the educational needs of their student populations. in this paper, we explore educators’ use of technology to supplement traditional professional development that they may receive in their schools or institutions. many educators in the 21st century use various forms of technology as part of their daily teaching practices and as part of their personal lives. in this paper, we set to explore the impact of a weekly education-focused twitter chat on educators’ professional learning. we also set to identify a weekly educational twitter chat as a virtual professional learning network (vpln). we identify a vpln as a uniquely personalized space where participants can engage in dialogue with a network of individuals from around the world via social media platforms such as twitter (and other social media platforms) to support one another's continuous professional learning. garrison (2007) describes an online pln as a synchronous or asynchronous online platform for individuals to collaboratively engage in critical thinking and discussions around specific issues (trinkle, 2009). vplns consist of global learning networks that enable participants to share diverse, global perspectives on teaching strategies and educational issues. in this article, we identify a twitter chat that focuses on educational topics as a vpln because through the use of technology (the medium of twitter) educators from across the globe are able to selfselect, interact and engage, and participate with the virtual professional network to support their professional learning. considering the shortcomings of traditional virtual professional learning network current issues in comparative education 27 professional development, through educators’ participation in vplns they are provided opportunities to meet their specific professional learning needs (krutka, carpenter & trust, 2017). we argue that vplns provide educators with the opportunity to use social media platforms as a tool to interact with colleagues and experts who share similar interest and concerns while transcending spatial boundaries using an electronic device as simple as a cell phone (gee, 2004). further, weekly educational twitter chats normally occur during the same scheduled time each week allowing educators to plan in advance to participate, given their busy schedules or even plan to participate in multiple vpln’s that cater to their multiple specific needs (conner, pope & galloway, 2009). through virtual interactions with colleagues and experts, educators can access and share a variety of tools, including skills, habits, resources, ideas, and information that will support their daily practice (krutka, carpenter & trust, 2016). despite research that suggests that educators working collaboratively represents best practice; the reality is that teachers in many schools work in isolation because of differing views and beliefs (dufour, 2004). the literature on technology professional development for teachers demonstrates there is still a lack of understanding of effective practice with respect to the impact of professional learning anchored in technology has on teaching and learning (lawless & pellegrino, 2007). vplns provide educators who may find themselves working in isolation at their schools an opportunity to network, collaborate and engage with a community of like-minded individuals who can support in enhancing their professional learning. in her book, teaching to transgress bell hooks (1994) shares that engaging in a professional dialog “is one of the simplest ways we can begin as teachers, scholars, and critical thinkers to cross boundaries that may or may not be erected by race, gender, class, professional standing, and a host of other differences” (p. 130). vplns allow educators to cross geographical boundaries by engaging in a global network that includes participants who have varying beliefs, perspectives and experiences as it relates to education. vplns provide educators with the opportunity to engage in professional dialogue with participants who have similar interests, but varying cultures and lived experiences due to varying geographic locations, with the goal of “crossing social boundaries” and developing an understanding of social issues and their impact on different groups of people. through engaging in a vpln that brings together participants of varying cultures and lived experiences, teachers are afforded opportunities to develop their cultural competence merely through their professional interactions with one another. with 84 percent of teachers identifying as white and the culturally diverse student population rapidly rising, a vast majority of teachers in the united states teach students who come from a culture other than their own (feistritzer, griffin & linnajarvi, 2011). vplns can support teachers in the development of their cultural competency and overtime, arm adjapong, emdin, and levy current issues in comparative education 28 teachers with the skills needed to successfully engage students who come from a different culture (seeleman, suurmond & stronks, 2009). in this paper, we argue a specific vpln that focuses on issues at the intersection of hiphop and education provides a safe and critical space for educators to develop cultural competencies around discussions of hip-hop, a culture that was birthed in the bronx, ny by people of color who have been pushed to the margins of society. we argue that exposure to the beliefs and perspectives of others can lead to the development of cultural competencies. conceptual framework in this article, we employ a very distinct aspect of the third space postcolonial framework with the goal of dismantling and reimagining the established traditional conventions as it relates to professional development in educational spaces (bhabha, 1994). in many ways, we argue that vplns can act as a third space, as bhabha (1994) articulates, and can provide a virtual network via social media platforms for educators to be critical of traditional school systems, structures, and practices including conventional professional development. more specifically, we explore the concept of the third space as a framework for making sense of the possible ways in which educators can inform their educational practice and reimagine professional learning that is catered to their individual needs (bhabha, 1994; gutiérrez, baquedano-lópez, tejeda, et al., 1999). in this article, we argue that vplns, such as educational twitter chats, can serve as a third space which bhaba (1994) describes as an “in-between space ... that disrupts the politics of polarity and allows for the possibility of resistance towards nationalistic and ethnocentric ideas and discourse” (p. 2). bhabha argues that hybrid spaces blur the limitations of existing boundaries and allow for the interrogation of the complexities of culture and identity (bhabha, 1994). in essence, vpln can act as a third space to deconstruct the traditional structures of schooling, such as conventional professional development, which are known not to be tailored to the specific individual needs of all educators (sykes, 1996). we identify the first space as a physical space where educators engage in instructional practice within their traditional classrooms and the second space as the conventional professional development program that educators receive at their institutions (see figure 2). virtual professional learning network current issues in comparative education 29 figure 2. visual representation of the relationships between first, second and third spaces as it relates to conventional professional development vplns. within the first space of the traditional classroom where educators engage in daily practice with their students, we argue that educators recognize limitations in their practice or seek opportunities to enhance their current instructional practice. this leads educators to the second space, conventional professional development. within the second space of conventional professional development, educators may not find their professional learning needs met (borko, 2004), which may lead educators to the third space. we articulate the third space as a vpln that caters specifically to teachers’ professional learning needs and provides opportunities for educators to engage in discussions, share and receive information/resources that support in enhancing teacher practice. further, engaging in a vpln as a third space, as bhabha (1994) articulates, provides opportunities for educators to disrupt the politics of conventional professional development by inviting colleagues and peers to various vplns that cater to their specific professional learning needs and support in enhancing educational practice. methods #hiphoped educational twitter chat as a virtual professional learning network in this paper, we highlight and interrogate the impact that a specific vpln (educational twitter chat) has on educators who self-identify as participants of the vpln. the #hiphoped educational twitter chat is a seven-year-old vpln that meets during a scheduled time for one hour a week when participants engage in conversations and share information/resources around curated topics of hip-hop and education. each week the #hiphoped educational twitter chat is promoted to participants of the vpln and the greater twitter community with a visual flyer (see figure 3) that captures the weeks’ topic. adjapong, emdin, and levy current issues in comparative education 30 figure 3. example of visual flyer used to promote the #hiphoped vpln most educational twitter chats follow a format where there is an expert who moderates the discussion and poses pre-prepared questions aligned with the topic of discussion for participants to answer. we believe that this structure of a vpln limits the interactions of the participants to mainly answer posed questions, as opposed to sharing their attitudes, beliefs, experiences, tools/resources/information with the larger network. the #hiphoped educational twitter chat does not have a moderator and does not follow a specific structure that forces participants to solely respond to questions. rather, #hiphoped educational twitter chat provides a space where participants engage in conversations, share and receive information/resources around the topic of the chat. the #hiphoped educational twitter chat functions as a virtual cypher [1] because it is structured like a hip-hop cypher where each participant's voice and perspective are equally valued. because the #hiphoped educational twitter chat focuses on issues around hip-hop and education the structure of the educational twitter chat is aligned to hip-hop culture and sensibilities. the #hiphoped educational twitter chat is similar to a gathering of mcs – where the energy generated by one individual is then picked up by another with a goal of keeping the energy going. the #hiphoped educational twitter is a vpln for educators, but welcomes all stakeholders of education includes students, parents, academics, professionals, practitioners and hip-hop artists to participate in the weekly chats. the creators of the #hiphoped educational twitter chat intentionally strive to create a space where academic credentials are not necessary to be a part of the learning network. therefore, a participant’s value to the network is based solely on their participation. participants virtual professional learning network current issues in comparative education 31 participants of this study self-identified as active participants of the #hiphoped educational twitter chat. further, the participants in our study represent a diverse group of individuals who are all stakeholders of education including, k-12 teachers, k-12 administrators, parents, graduate students, professors, school counselors, and journalists. it’s important to highlight that not all of the 31 participants of this study are professionals in education, but have an interest in education, more specifically the intersection of hiphop and education. through participating in #hiphoped educational chat, teachers who historically work within their schools in isolation are provided with opportunities to share professional knowledge via social media platforms to support their professional learning beyond conventional professional development (dufour, 2004). data collection a total of 31 participants of the #hiphoped vpln completed an anonymous questionnaire, which was the primary data source for this study. the questionnaire was composed of likert response and short response questions. the questionnaire was shared during a #hiphoped educational twitter chat and educators were encouraged to participate in completing the anonymous questionnaire. data analysis qualitative coding techniques, including member checking and coding for recurring themes were used to analyze the data generated from this study (guba & lincoln 1989; creswell, 2013). the data from the short response items from the questionnaire were entered into a word document for word-by-word and initial coding for categories. then, the data that was selected for to be categorized was entered into nvivo to organize and then combined into reoccurring themes using nodes. the three main themes that emerged from data analysis are (1) sense of belonging within professional learning network; (2) impact on educational practice; and (3) development of cultural competence. results and findings table 1. n and percentages (in parentheses) of participant responses for likert items from questionnaire. item strongly agree (%) agree (%) no opinion (%) disagree (%) strongly disagree (%) 1) i have created professional relationships with other #hiphoped chat participants 9 (29) 11 (35.5) 6 (19.4) 5 (16.1) 0 (0) adjapong, emdin, and levy current issues in comparative education 32 2) participating in weekly #hiphoped chats provides a form of professional development that i do not receive at my school 19 (61.3) 8 (25.8) 3 (9.7) 1 (3.2) 0 (0) 3) participating in weekly #hiphoped chats has encouraged me to be a more engaging educator in my classroom/education profession 14 (45.2) 15 (48.8) 1 (3.2) 1 (3.2) 0 (0) 4) the weekly #hiphoped chat provided a space for me to reflect on ways to become a more engaging educator 16 (51.6) 12 (38.7) 1 (3.2) 2 (6.5) 0 (0) 5) the weekly #hiphoped chat provided a space for me to engage in discussions about education with like minded educators who have an interest in hip hop culture 20 (64.5) 10 (32.3) 1 (3.2) 0 (0) 0 (0) 6) the weekly #hiphoped chat provides a space for me to discuss challenging topics that impact the lives of urban youth (hip hop generation), which i would not otherwise have an opportunity to do so 6 (19.4) 18 (58.1) 4 (12.9) 3 (9.7) 0 (0) the findings of this study are organized by recurring themes that emerged during the data analysis process. to elaborate on recurring themes, we provide exemplary moments from the participants’ open responses to short answer survey items, suggestive of their experiences as participants of the #hiphoped educational twitter chat. participants responded to two open-ended survey items: (1) explain why you participate in the weekly virtual professional learning network current issues in comparative education 33 hiphoped chats, and (2) would you recommend your peers, colleagues and fellow educators to participate in the weekly #hiphoped chats? please explain why. the process of coding responses for each item lead to the emergence of recurring themes. three emerging themes are reported consisting of responses from both open-ended and likert scale items include (1) a sense of belonging within the vpln; (2) an acknowledged impact on educational practices; and (3) a development of cultural competence. a sense of belonging within virtual professional learning network through engaging in the #hiphoped educational twitter chat, consists of hundreds of participants who are all exchanging knowledge, participants were able to develop a sense of community within the larger network. various statements from participants spoke to their involvement in the chat that highlighted their sense of belonging to an intimate community within the larger vpln. hagerty et al. (1992) defines sense of belonging “as the experience of personal involvement in a system or environment so that persons feel themselves to be an integral part of that system or environment” (p. 172). in reference to the #hiphoped educational chat, one participant suggested, “the community within #hiphoped is vast and the knowledge pool is world-class. as the community continues to grow the benefits and knowledge will follow.” this individual describes a community within the #hiphoped vpln and found value in participating in the weekly #hiphoped educational chats. further, they suggest that the network continues to grow, subsequently allowing for a consistent increase in “world-class” knowledge that in turn will support their professional learning. participants of the #hiphoped vpln recognize that there are benefits, which include an exchange of resources and knowledge, associated with belonging to a growing network of individuals who share similar interests. it also appears that the #hiphoped educational twitter chat functions as a space where participants can cultivate intimate bonds with others, as highlighted by the following quote, “i believe i hit a pinnacle where i can say i'm a part of the family. whether i take part in the chat, or i miss it, i'll still read the tweets over at a later time.” this statement showcases that participants feel a sense of belonging when engaging in the #hiphoped educational chat; where they see themselves as an integral part of the vpln that parallels a connection that one may have with family. because participants have a sense of belonging to the #hiphoped educational chat, they are inclined to read the tweets/comments at a later time even if they miss the live chat because they as if it is their obligation as part of the intimate community. further, the resources, and voices, within the vpln are valued to the degree that participants do not want to miss out on the knowledge shared. additionally, 64.5% of participants agree with the statement, “i have created professional relationships with other #hiphoped chat participants” demonstrating a sense of belonging to the vpln as positive professional relationships can form from weekly participation (table 1). adjapong, emdin, and levy current issues in comparative education 34 these statements by #hiphoped chat participants support the prior claims that vplns can provide educators with the opportunity to use social media platforms as a mechanism to collaborate with like-minded colleagues from the comfort of their own home (gee, 2004). comments from members of the #hiphoped educational twitter chat additionally showcase that not only is the educational chat accessible from anywhere in the world, but resources and tools discussed on the chat are archived and can be accessed at a later date in the event a chat was missed. this adds justification for use of this innovative vpln as a form of professional development that can fit into participants busy schedules, because it can be accessed on the go, from home, or at a later date (conner, pope & galloway, 2009). when participants were asked if they would invite others to the #hiphoped vpln, one member responded, “yes, i would [invite others to the #hiphoped vpln] because it is a forum that will allow one to learn and grow as an educator and help break people out of their comfort zone and help them better prepare their students for the world that awaits them!” here we find that the vpln operates as an online space where educators can push their colleagues to innovate their own practices. the value members extract from the space appears to encourage them to expose others to the same transformative educational practice. this explanation supports the use of the vpln as a third space where educators have opportunities to challenge the politics of conventional professional development by inviting colleagues and peers to various vplns that support in enhancing their professional learning (bhabha, 1994). vpln’s impact on instructional practice through engaging in the #hiphoped educational twitter chat, participants suggest that their instructional practice was impacted, specifically by the tools, resources, information and skills that were obtained through participating in the weekly chat. as per the data reported from the questionnaire, 94% of participants agree with the statement, “participating in weekly hiphoped chats has encouraged me to be a more engaging educator in my classroom/education profession” (table 1). an overwhelming percentage of participants of this study believe that participating in the #hiphoped educational chat impacted their practice by specifically encouraging them to be more engaging educators, possibly by gaining tools that supported the teaching to the specific needs of their students. for example, one participant suggested, “i use hip-hop as learning tool and the weekly chats always help me to check myself, check my sources, and innovate from lesson plan to lesson plan.” in this response, the participant discusses how engaging in the #hiphoped educational twitter chat directly impacts their daily instructional virtual professional learning network current issues in comparative education 35 practice. this shows that participants are able to use the information/resources gained from the weekly educational twitter chat to influence their teaching. when the participant states, the weekly chats always help me to check myself, check my sources, this suggests that participants use the vpln as a mechanism to reflect on improving their daily practice to ensure that they are utilizing hip-hop in their educational space effectively and in an authentic fashion. in an additional response, a participant stated, “i use it mostly to reflect, whether on current or past teaching opportunities. it's a good archive to tap to see what others are thinking and what they like, what they follow.” here it is suggested that #hiphoped educational chat participants reflect on their instructional practice and have opportunities to learn from like-minded educators of a vpln who can positively influence one another's practice as 90.3% of participants agree that the weekly #hiphoped chat provided a space for them to reflect on ways to become a more engaging educator (table 1). responses also indicated that the chat “provides a fresh perspective, great classroom ideas & peer support,” and is “a resource and a way of becoming familiar with some of the ideas around hip-hop education.” one of the proposed outcomes of an educational twitter chat as a vpln, is that as educators utilize technology to interact with colleagues and experts in their field, they are exposed to a variety of tools, skills, habits, resources, and ideas that ultimately will support in transforming their educational practice (krutka, carpenter & trust, 2016). a final exemplary response under this theme was that the vpln “helped me to talk explicitly about social issues in class in a way that is meaningful to students.” this educator suggests that through participating in the #hiphoped education chat, they were offered support in how to effectively address social justice issues in the classroom in a way that was meaningful to students. as a result of participation in the #hiphoped twitter chat, participants felt more comfortable engaging in direct, and explicit, conversations around social justice concerns. therefore, beyond the provision of tangible tools to use in classroom spaces, educators also reported gathering competence in addressing social justice concerns from the #hiphoped twitter chat. development of cultural competence the development of participants’ cultural competence was also one of the emergent themes from qualitative data analysis, detailing participants’ ability to become more aware of hip-hop culture. we argue that with a better understanding of hip-hop culture participants, will better understand how to teach and engage young people who identify as a part of the hip-hop generation. for example, one participant stated that attending the weekly #hiphoped educational twitter chat enabled them to, “become more literate in a culture that is not one [that they] grew up with.” statistics show that an overwhelming majority of teachers in the united states identify as white while the student population across the country becoming increasingly culturally diverse. many scholars argue that it adjapong, emdin, and levy current issues in comparative education 36 is the teacher's responsibility to position themselves in a space where they can learn and immerse themselves in the cultures of their students (adjapong & emdin, 2015; adjapong, 2017). the results of this study show that through participating in the #hiphoped educational twitter chat, outsiders of hip-hop culture are provided opportunities to begin to develop their cultural competence as it relates to hip-hop culture. similarly, another participant shared, “the #hiphoped chat specifically has enabled me to connect with those students who relate to and/or enjoy hip-hop.” a third participant suggested that “the weekly chats allow me to engage/relate hip-hop culture to social and educational areas that i didn't think was possible.” overall, we notice that through engaging in the weekly #hiphoped educational twitter chat led to participants developing their cultural competence around hip-hop culture, which could ultimately led to teachers developing better relationships with students and knowledge of a culture that may be different than theirs (adjapong, 2017). these illuminated pathways to connect with their students in ways that they “didn’t think was possible.” as previously posited, the hiphoped twitter chat focuses on issues at the intersection of hip-hop and education and provides a safe and critical space for educators to develop cultural competencies while engaging in discussions and sharing resources / information that relates to hip-hop and education. salient findings in this emergent theme suggest that through participation in this vpln, educators felt able to engage youth who identified with cultures other than their own. conclusion we identify the #hiphoped educational twitter chat as a vpln in the form of supplemental professional development that caters to the specific needs of a group of educators and community members. we do not believe that vplns replace conventional professional development because conventional professional development is aligned to individual school goals. we argue that vplns can supplement and add to the specific professional learning needs of educators. by identifying the #hiphoped educational twitter chat as a vpln, we are highlighting the importance of a global network where participants from around the world can share not only resources / information, but also their cultural perspectives based on their construction of knowledge of the world. future, teachers who are a part of the vpln have the opportunity to connect to a more intimate community within the vpln and develop meaningful professional relationships which will encourage collaboration and further professional learning. specifically, through engaging in the #hiphoped vpln, participants were able to increase their cultural competence as it relates to hip-hop culture, which in turn will have a positive effect on instructional practice, how educators perceive students’ culture virtual professional learning network current issues in comparative education 37 allowing for positive and meaningful relationships between students and educators. while we highlight the impact of the #hiphoped educational twitter chat as a vpln, and the importance of vplns writ large, we acknowledge that more research must be conducted to elicit the effectiveness of vplns on teacher practice and attitudes as it relates to conventional professional development. limitations this study was conducted using a small sample size of the #hiphoped virtual professional learning network (vpln), which represents a microcosm of the community. in future studies, we wish to increase the number of participants and focus on the process of professional learning through the vpln. we also recognize that twitter itself may pose a limitation as a virtual space, as participants may not gain enough professional support during the virtual weekly hour-long chats and they are not likely engage with their vpln peers physically within schools. similar to professional learning in traditional schools, there often is an incentive for teachers to engage in professional learning. therefore, teachers must be highly motivated to effectively engage in any vpln. edmund s. adjapong is assistant professor of educational studies at seton hall university. christopher emdin is associate professor of science education at teachers college, columbia university. ian levy is assistant professor, graduate counseling, leadership & education at manhattan 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(2000). what do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teacher learning?. educational researcher, 29(1), 4-15. http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/pb13_culturalcompetence08.pdf microsoft word editorial introduction.docx © 2015 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 17(1), 3-4. editorial introduction analyzing social movement actions and outcomes sandra sirota teachers college, columbia university as demonstrated by the diverse articles in this issue of current issues in comparative education (cice), education-related social movements can be found in almost every aspect of education. in addition to movements advocating for equity and justice in and across schools, schools themselves are becoming places where the tactics of social movements are also learned—e.g. human rights courses and service-learning projects create opportunities for political engagement and advocacy among students. the articles in this issue explore the roles of various actors in social movements as well as how activism and advocacy are learned (or not) in schools. they explore issues that challenge the influence government may have on autonomous educational institutions, advocate for more inclusive practices such as dual language, promote equity in education for students globally, critique a human rights education course in the context of the larger human rights movement, and analyze the changing role of students in political activism. in “dual language as a social movement: putting languages on a level playing field,” regina cortina, carmina makar, and mary faith mount-cors explore the dual language social movement in the united states. focusing on the latino population in new york city, they demonstrate that the movement goes beyond simply advocating for dual language as a practice. they highlight community involvement and a willingness of schools to continually adapt strategies to make improvements to dual language classrooms in order for schools to be successful in providing equitable access to instruction and education. in “brokerage, political opportunity, and protest in venezuelan higher education reform,” eric storm analyzes the activism of venezuela’s autonomous universities in opposing two laws introduced by the government that would strip them of some of their authority. storm explores the possible reasons for the different outcomes of the resistance to implementation of the laws; the organic education law was enacted, but the university education law was not. this was due, in part, to stronger opposition to the university education law. alison victoria shepherd discusses the social movement led by teachers’ unions in oaxaca, mexico in “government versus teachers: the challenges of educational progress in oaxaca, mexico”. she calls attention to the negative effects of the movement’s tactics, such as teacher strikes, on the educational needs of the students. while she highlights the students’ grievances regarding their missed days of schooling, she emphasizes that the government’s attempts to suppress activism by the teachers are not the appropriate response. nica froman analyzes a human rights course in a high school in new york city, as part of the larger human rights movement. in “human rights education and the international baccalaureate diploma programme,” she suggests that while the course does contain some essential elements of human rights education, it does not sufficiently promote education through and for human rights. gianna maita’s article focuses on student activism at the universidad centroamericana in nicaragua. in “student engagement in social justice at the universidad centroamericana,” maita finds that the students, at present, are much less politically active in comparison to their sandra sirota 4 current issues in comparative education   predecessors during the sandinista revolution. while still civically engaged, this engagement comes in new forms such as service learning and community-based research. in “does watching help? in search of the theory of change for education monitoring,” david post examines the broad education social movement of education for all (efa), specifically seeking to understand whether monitoring of efa’s goals impacts the success of states in meeting these goals. he presents the monitoring of human rights treaties as an example, discussing whether the constructivist tactics of “persuasion and capacity building” or the neoliberal approaches of “sanctions and incentives” have been influential in encouraging states to fulfill obligations of human rights treaties, and of efa, highlighting the link between the two. this issue calls our attention to the multiplicity of inequities in education in diverse contexts as well as the variety of methods of political engagement and advocacy for social change. the actors—students, teachers, university administrators, and education advocates—are all working for justice and equity in education, and, at times, learning about justice and equity through education. sandra sirota is a doctoral fellow in international and comparative education at teachers college, columbia university, and the managing editor of current issues in comparative education. email: sls2218@tc.columbia.edu; for cice business please contact cice@tc.columbia.edu. © 2013 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(2): 108-123. chilean student movements: sustained struggle to transform a market-oriented educational system cristián bellei cristian cabalin university of chile university of chile during the last decade, chilean society was shaken by sharply critical and powerful student movements: secondary students led the 2006 “penguin revolution” and university students led the 2011 “chilean winter.” this article describes and analyzes these student movements to illustrate how students can be highly relevant political actors in the educational debate. first, we explain the main features of the chilean educational system, including its extreme degree of marketization, which provided the institutional context of the movements. next, we analyze the key components and characteristics of the 2006 and 2011 student movements to describe basic features of the two movements and identify common elements of these movements, especially from an education policy perspective. we mainly focus on the link between students’ demands and discourses and the market-oriented institutions that prevail in chilean education. finally, we identify students’ impact on educational debates in chile and examine general implications for policy-making processes in the educational arena. introduction: youth apathy to activism one of the most important changes in the chilean political system in recent decades was the establishment of automatic registration and voluntary voting in 2012. a political objective of this project was to increase youth participation in elections, which has been low since democracy was restored in 1990. indeed, the lack of political participation in elections among youth was explained during the 1990s as an expression of general apathetic behavior. these young people were considered “the ‘whatever’ generation” (la generación “no estoy ni ahí”) due to their supposed apolitical attitudes and limited motivation to be involved in public affairs (muñoz tamayo, 2011; moulián, 2002). despite this distance from electoral and partisan politics, there is evidence that chilean youth have profound criticisms of society (duarte quapper, 2000) and a high level of interest in public and social problems, especially those related to inequity and arbitrary discrimination issues (schulz et al., 2010). this characterization of apathy among youth may have contributed to the deliberate process of de-politicization and demobilization that started during the first democratic administration after augusto pinochet’s dictatorship (de la maza, 2010). in fact, since 1990, citizen mobilizations had scarcely accompanied the democratization process in chile. this situation began changing in 2006, with youth, specifically students, playing a crucial role as protagonists of massive demonstrations. although students represent only a part of youth movements, social movements related to education have historically had a powerful impact on political and socio-cultural structures (gill & defronzo, 2009). bellei and cabalin current issues in comparative education 109 education has been the major field where chilean youth expressed their malaise. during the last decade and especially over the past seven years, chilean society has been shaken by two sharply critical and powerful student movements. students’ demands, which have been echoed in civil society and the political field, have questioned some of the chilean educational system’s structural elements. since chilean education improved some basic indicators of coverage and outcomes during the last decade, one might wonder why student protests have been so intensive and sustained during the same period. we analyze this issue, linking students’ demands with the institutional features of the educational system, which was restructured by a comprehensive neoliberal reform in 1980. in the first of the students’ movements, in 2006, secondary students were in the streets for more than two months with massive marches and protests (domedel & peña y lillo, 2008). this was called the “penguin revolution” because of the black and white uniforms worn by high school students. they struggled against the neoliberal character of the chilean educational system, attracted strong political attention and paved the path for the next big movement led by university students beginning in 2011. the new york times called this second movement the “chilean winter” because it occurred around the same time as the “arab spring” revolutions against some regimes in the middle east (barrionuevo, 2011). for seven months during 2011, university and secondary students shook the country with a movement that democratic administrations had not seen for more than 20 years. strong popular support, charismatic leaders, and a powerful critique of educational inequalities were some of the characteristics of this movement. in this article, we describe and analyze these student movements in order to illustrate how students can be highly relevant political actors in educational debates. first, we explain the main features of the chilean educational system, including its extreme degree of marketization, which provided the institutional context of the movements. next, we analyze the key components and characteristics of the 2006 and 2011 student movements: we describe basic features of the two movements separately and then identify key common elements of these movements, especially from an education policy perspective. thus, we mainly focus on the link between students’ demands and discourses and the market-oriented institutions that prevail in chilean education. finally, in order to evaluate the efficacy of the students’ movements in the educational policy arena, we identify their impact on chilean educational debates and examine some general implications for policy-making processes. since the students’ movement is an ongoing process, we emphasize the provisional character of this last section. the context: chile’s market-oriented educational system chilean education in general—and specifically secondary education—has frequently been presented and is seen by many as an exemplary case within the latin american context. this image, which certainly has deep historical roots, has rested in the past decades on diverse aspects emphasized by international organizations and policy makers. in this way, chile has occupied an important role in debates on educational policies and comparative analysis, since it initiated institutional reforms in the 1980s. these reforms included administrative decentralization, funding per capita, public support to private schools, the implementation of universal academic achievement tests, and evaluation systems and monetary incentives for teachers. since the midchilean student movements 110 current issues in comparative education 1990s chile has also been very active in implementing innovative, large-scale policies on educational improvement, including the introduction of computer technology, increased school hours, curricular reform, and diverse forms of teacher education (oecd, 2004; cox, 2003). moreover, during the last two decades, both secondary and post-secondary education levels have rapidly increased their coverage, and 15-year-old chilean students significantly improved their performance on reading skills tests between 2000 and 2009 (oecd, 2011). thus, at first glance, one may wonder why chilean students protested so vigorously. in our opinion, the key to understanding what triggered student protests is to observe the way in which chilean education has been organized as a market-oriented educational system, and the consequences of that institutional arrangement. although there is no single version of what constitutes organizing the educational system as a market, reviewing the academic and educational policy literature we can identify three key elements: school choice, competition among schools, and privatization of education (friedman, 1955; chubb & moe, 1990; howell & peterson, 2006). from a market-framed perspective, schools should compete for families’ preferences and families should have the freedom to choose a school for their children. ideally, families should be aware of the “quality” of the different options and use such information when making their choices, in this way rewarding the best schools and forcing the worst ones to either improve or leave the market. finally, schools need to be able to distinguish their offerings and accommodate families’ preferences; in order to do that, schools should enjoy high flexibility (i.e., few government regulations) in the dimensions of curriculum and management. market proponents encourage the expansion of private schools precisely because they expect private schools will be able to react more productively to market pressures, thereby improving both quality and efficiency in education. market proponents also think public schools should be radically restructured to be competitive, giving school administrators the freedom to manage schools in a business-like manner. in the educational policy arena, market-oriented reformers also promote vouchers as the public funding mechanism of schools. in their view, parents should be free to use the vouchers in the schools where they prefer to educate their children; by operating in this way, educational vouchers simultaneously promote parental choice, competition among schools, and privatization of school (for reviews of empirical evidence of these proposals see ladd, 2003; levin & belfield, 2006; witte, 2009). although these ideas have been intensively discussed by educational experts and policy makers around the world for many years, they have been implemented only in highly restricted ways in a few countries. from a comparative perspective, chile is one of the countries where market-oriented reforms in education were implemented more drastically. in chile, since the early 1980s, the driving force for the expansion of k-12 and post-secondary education was left to supply and demand dynamics in a market-oriented fashion: minimum requirements were set for the creation of new institutions and for receiving public funding; public and private institutions had to compete for families’ preferences; and a universal voucher system (a state subsidy paid according to the student’s monthly attendance) was established for funding private and public schools on equal terms. also, in order to produce local market competition, public school administration was transferred from the national ministry of education to local municipalities. since then, from the ministry of education’s perspective, there has thus been no difference between a public and a private subsidized school. bellei and cabalin current issues in comparative education 111 although some relevant changes were introduced during the post-dictatorship period, the structural elements of the marketized system have been deepened, rather than modified. for instance, in 1993, a family fee-charging mechanism was designed, creating what is called “shared funding,” a co-payment system that allowed (and encouraged) private schools and secondary public schools to charge a tuition fee without losing access to the state subsidy. as a consequence, secondary education in chile is compulsory but not free of charge, and subsidized private primary schools also charge tuition fees to families. additionally, vouchers continue to be the fundamental mechanism for financing schools; the amount has steadily increased. in 2008 an additional voucher was created to target the poorest 30% of students, making them more attractive for private sector institutions. both the co-payment system and the additional voucher for the poorest students were seen by chilean policy makers as policy instruments to enhance market dynamics within the educational field. as mentioned, a key criterion that oriented chilean educational policies and regulations throughout this period was the establishment of “equal treatment” by the state of both for-profit and not-for-profit academic institutions. this meant that private schools had access to the same public resources, including funds for supplies, equipment, and infrastructure development (bellei, gonzález, & valenzuela, 2010). market-oriented reforms in chilean primary and secondary education have been evaluated in terms of their effects on both equity and quality. although the literature on this issue is abundant and highly complex, in general the conclusions are not positive for market proponents (valenzuela, bellei, & de los ríos, 2013; bellei, 2009; hsieh & urquiola, 2003; carnoy & mcewan, 2000; gauri, 1998). the evidence shows that market-oriented reforms have increased educational inequities, in terms of social and academic segregation; social inequality of academic achievement; and school discriminatory practices (oecd, 2004). additionally, no significant gains in the overall educational quality have been associated with market-oriented reforms in education. market dynamics have also prevailed over the expansion of post-secondary education in chile since 1980, but more so during the last decade when coverage at this level really exploded (meller, 2010; brunner, 2009; ginsburg, espinoza, popa, & terano, 2003). “traditional” universities, which existed before the neoliberal reform of 1980, have had to operate under selffunding logic, which includes charging students increasingly higher tuition fees. students whose families cannot afford the cost of this higher education have access to loans that are highly subsidized by the state. on the other hand, the growth of post-secondary enrollment mainly occurred through the creation and expansion of private institutions. these institutions do not participate in the public admission system—based on academic records and admission tests— and charge students or their families the entire cost of the education provided. since the mid2000s a system of state-guaranteed loans has been administered by private banks with high interest rates for students who attend these private institutions. this regulatory and policy framework has slowly evolved into a higher education market, greatly differentiated by types of institutions and highly stratified in relation to price, quality, and the social composition of the student body (meller, 2010; brunner & uribe, 2006). chilean student movements 112 current issues in comparative education as we will discuss, the 2006 and 2011 student movements contended with this market-ruled educational system; students demanded a more active role of the state in education, especially to guarantee an acceptable standard of quality and reduce inequities. nevertheless, it is important to note that the market-oriented educational policies described above were only part of an extensive neoliberal reform implemented by pinochet´s dictatorship during the 1980s, in which privatization policies were seen as instruments to reduce state power and eliminate welfare state institutions (cavieres, 2011; moulián, 2002). in this sense, students’ push against neoliberal educational policies has crystallized the main criticism leveled against the broader neoliberal social and economic policies in chile: high degrees of inequality between a privileged minority and the majority of the population (sehnbruch & donoso, 2011; orellana, 2012). in fact, according to world bank 2013 indicators, chile has one of the most unequal income distributions in the world (see http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/si.pov.gini). the 2006 secondary students’ movement in may 2006, thousands of students aged 15 to 18 were in the streets. they generated the “penguin revolution,” in which education became both a political and public issue (domedel & peña y lillo, 2008). this movement—which soon received the support of university students and teachers’ union organizations—was the most significant set of demonstrations in chile since the return of democracy in 1990. in the first stages of this movement, the demands were for providing free transportation passes for students and eliminating the fees associated with the university admission exam. however, the student struggle subsequently shifted to focus on the poor quality and high inequality of chilean education in terms of attainment, quality, resources, and opportunities. in the political arena, the students’ target was the constitutional law of education (loce), the legal foundation of the educational system enacted by the pinochet regime in 1990. the market-oriented institutions in chilean education exist within a very complex legal framework that includes loce, the chilean constitution (also imposed by pinochet’s regime), the voucher law, and several other specialized regulations. loce, in particular, reduced the state to a subsidiary role and promoted privatization in education. loce was strongly opposed even during the dictatorship; university students and professors had been unsuccessfully calling for its repeal since the return to democracy. more generally, although their discourse evolved over time and became manifest with diverse emphases, the students’ critique consisted of four key elements: 1) the demand for free education, 2) the defense of public education, 3) the rejection of for-profit educational providers, and 4) the elimination of schools’ discriminatory practices. as a whole, the ideals of this chilean student movement represented a rejection of the rule of market dynamics in education. first, students demanded free education, which implied a rejection of the co-payment system at the school level. indeed, the fact that chilean government-funded public and private schools are allowed to charge tuition fees to families has been a highly controversial issue, since compulsory education is formally “free” in chile. international organizations, such as unicef and unesco, have also expressed doubts about the consistency of these practices with international treaties on the matter. moreover, at the level of higher education, chile is the country with the highest private spending and fees in relative values among all of the oecd member states (oecd, 2011). thus, chilean families—not the state—have paid for the accelerated expansion http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/si.pov.gini bellei and cabalin current issues in comparative education 113 of post-secondary education in recent years. the high private cost of post-secondary education was a key concern shared by both high school and university students. second, students advocated for public education. in fact, since the establishment of the marketoriented system in the early 1980s, public education at the secondary level had declined from 75% to less than 40% of national enrollment between 1980 and 2012. similar declines have occurred at the primary level. these declines in the proportion of public education mark a reversion to the situation at the beginning of the republic in the mid-nineteenth century. importantly, the reduction in public education provision is not attributed to the superior quality of private education: evidence shows that, under equal conditions, student achievement is similar for public and voucher private schools (bellei, 2009). students’ advocacy for strengthening public education implied a demand for increased state responsibility over public education, including the creation of a funding system that gives priority to public institutions and the end of municipalized primary and secondary school administration. third, students rejected for-profit private providers of education, especially when their profits were obtained from public funds. in chile, since the creation of the voucher system, the fastest growing sector in primary and secondary education has been that of for-profit institutions, which receive state subsidies on equal terms with not-for-profit private institutions and public institutions (elacqua, 2009). even some private universities that are required to formally constitute themselves as non-profit institutions have engaged in business strategies that circumvent the spirit of the legislation (mönckeberg, 2007), which further discredited profitmaking in education in the public opinion. the pursuit of profit in education has been defended by neoliberal sectors as the engine that invigorates growth and leads innovation. in contrast, students saw it as the source of many undesirable practices in education, including discrimination against students from low-income families and students with low academic abilities, low quality education services, and the uncontrolled growth of low-cost undergraduate programs with low employability outcomes. finally, students pushed for the elimination of discriminatory practices by schools and the reduction of social segregation in education. chilean schools apply arbitrary mechanisms for selecting students, both in the admission process and throughout students’ academic trajectories. primary and secondary schools select students based on past performance, prediction of future performance, student’s behavior, family income, and other family characteristics. these selective mechanisms are especially prevalent in private institutions, including schools that receive state funding (contreras, sepúlveda, & bustos, 2010; bellei, 2009). many of these practices have long been denounced by international organizations and human rights advocates as detrimental to students’ right to education. nevertheless, chilean political and judicial institutions have defended the notion of “free enterprise” in the educational market, giving educational providers freedom to set their own rules to admit and expel students, arguing that the mere existence of public schools was enough to guarantee the right to education (casas, correa, & wilhelm, 2001; casas & correa, 2002; bellei & pérez, 2000). these selection methods, especially those that discriminate based on family income, help explain the very high levels of socioeconomic segregation in chilean schools (valenzuela, bellei, & de los ríos, 2013), which place chile’s educational system as one of the most socioeconomically segregated of all countries participating in pisa (oecd 2010). chilean student movements 114 current issues in comparative education traditionally, chilean student protests and movements had been of two kinds. the first kind of protest was clearly motivated by political issues, a sort of student-level “reflection” of the political process carried out by adults. in such cases, the basic codes were those of the activist who is either against the government or defends it, and whose “program” was framed in the context of social transformation and ideological struggle. the other kind of student protests involved different, concrete demands and direct claims, and thus expressed a clear interest group perspective. in these cases, the list of demands emphasized benefits that the students, as stakeholders, hoped to get from authorities. the movement led by secondary students in 2006 certainly had clear aspects of both traditions: it articulated a solid ideology on educational issues and it brought a significant list of concrete demands to the negotiating table. importantly, beyond these two aspects, the movement generated strong and widespread support and sympathy from the majority of chile’s citizens, according to public opinion surveys. in our view, this happened for two reasons. first, the student movement managed to formulate a demand for equal opportunity in education around the idea of the right to quality education. second, they identified specific foundations of the marketoriented framework of chilean education that had to be dismantled to accomplish that goal. in other words, for these 21 st century citizens, access to the school system was not enough. to them, equitable access to quality educational content and processes was the essential criterion to apply when evaluating whether or not the right to education has been guaranteed. the 2011 higher education students’ movement on 28 april 2011, 8,000 university students marched in different cities across chile. the following month, a second march doubled that size. these two protests were only the beginning of what would become one of chile’s major historical student movements, producing an array of demonstrations that had enormous citizen support. this movement lasted for seven months, during which university students, united by the chilean student confederation (confederación de estudiantes de chile, confech), organized 36 weekly massive marches (some involving around 100,000 people in santiago), took over their universities, held assemblies, and changed the public agenda in education. camila vallejo, president of the student federation of the university of chile (fech), and giorgio jackson, president of the student federation of catholic university (feuc), were two of the most charismatic leaders of the movement. with the help of leaders of regional universities, they transformed the protests into a national movement that attracted international attention. soon, students from non-traditional private universities and secondary students joined and actively participated in the demonstrations (cabalin, 2012; salinas & fraser, 2012). initially, students demanded more resources for public education and free access to universities for poor and middle-class students. subsequently, however, they called for free post-secondary education for all, arguing that the state must guarantee the right to education from early childhood to higher education in equal conditions for all social classes. president sebastián piñera’s administration rejected the demand for free education. however, in an attempt to placate the protesters, the government created new university scholarships to support students from the lowest socioeconomic quintiles. this did not appease protesters, because their main concern was bellei and cabalin current issues in comparative education 115 the high cost of tuition and other fees associated with loans held by the majority of students. in chile, families finance 73% of higher education costs, a figure that greatly exceeds the 16% average for oecd countries (oecd, 2011). funding their education was a major issue for students because tuition and fees at chilean universities were some of the most expensive among oecd countries, in relative terms (oecd, 2011). the university system reforms in the 1980s created the conditions for the proliferation of new private universities in the following years, many of them of very low quality. in addition, according to available indirect evidence, despite being legally defined as non-profit organizations some of these universities yield substantial financial returns for their owners, thanks to legal subterfuge. students criticized the for-profit spirit in the higher education system. moreover, their discourse reflected notions of social justice in education, by rejecting the subsidiary role of the state in education, promoting universal non-discriminatory access to free education, and requesting progressive tax reform to publicly fund education (vallejo, 2012; jackson, 2013; figueroa, 2013). to accomplish their goals, students organized a comprehensive political strategy, extending their collaborative networks and involving additional stakeholders, such as the teachers’ union, workers’ unions of various labor sectors, and several civil society organizations. student organizations and some of the leaders of the movement published brief policy documents and disseminated information extensively through traditional and new media. through these actions they contributed to the re-politicization of public discussion about issues related to education and social equality. the political strategy of the movement allowed for the integration of different social demands in a national movement for education (lustig, mizala, & silva, 2012). after months of public demonstrations, students became more than protesters in the streets: they became political actors with a clear agenda of transformation and a coherent discourse about justice in education (cabalin, 2012). consequently, leaders of the students’ movement were recognized by policy makers as relevant players in the educational policy debate. for example, the minister of education negotiated directly with these leaders to create a first set of policies to answer their demands; then, the chilean congress invited them to discuss the 2012 national budget law. ideologically, the university students’ movement criticized the neoliberal system of education, as the “penguin revolution” had done five years before (orellana, 2012). summarizing, students asked for structural changes, such as a stronger state role in regulating and controlling educational institutions, a new system of public funding for education, reinforcement of the public universities, and the effective exclusion of for-profit organizations as educational providers at all levels. all these issues became part of the educational policy debate in chile, and both the government and the parliament have discussed different proposals to tackle them. characteristics of the chilean student movements: a new generation of activists it is possible to say that chilean students are part of a new generation of political actors in education. from a sociological perspective, chile is experiencing a transition from a passive generation to an active one. karl mannheim (1952) argued that traumatic experiences play a key chilean student movements 116 current issues in comparative education role in the production of a generational consciousness. for chilean adults and policy makers, pinochet’s dictatorship was that kind of traumatic episode. consequently, they incorporated the political compromises needed to end the indisputable reality of the military regime. nevertheless, students who marched in 2006 and 2011 (most of whom were born in the era of new democracy) were not part of that story: they felt free to question the limits defined by the previous generation. edmunds and turner (2005) offer a valuable explanation to understand the shift from a passive generation to an active one. for them, this change occurs when a generation is “able to exploit resources (political/educational/economic) to innovate in cultural, intellectual or political spheres” (p. 562). they conclude that a new generation is created when young people combine these resources and innovations with political opportunities and strategic leadership. looking at the student movements from this perspective, chile is experiencing the birth of a new generation. in order to deepen this idea, we identified four features that characterize the recent chilean students’ movements: 1) persistence; 2) combining short-term and more structural, long-term demands; 3) innovative forms of organization and communication; and 4) multiple mechanisms of coordination. the first element that stands out regarding the movements has been its persistence. in effect, the first series of massive protests took place in 2001 and was known as the “mochilazo” (demonstration with backpacks). the “mochilazo” was articulated around a demand for better conditions and pricing of public transportation, and also a greater presence of the state in terms of administering fares. a high level of support among students in santiago got the government to consent to their demands after a complex negotiation process. the “mochilazo” not only broke the public silence of students in a post-dictatorship context, it also showed the emergence of new forms of student organization. this involved a combination of the traditional student council (strengthened by the organizational and participation policies of the mid-1990s) with less structured but strongly coordinated and highly motivating student assemblies. the “mochilazo” experience also made clear that government institutions did not know how to process these demands, and that the traditional form of political negotiation was not effective in this new scenario. some of these key features of the “mochilazo” were direct antecedents of the 2006 and 2011 students’ movements, which continued with less intensity during the years 2012 and 2013. student organizations involved in those processes have been accumulating knowledge and refining their political action in the field for a decade. a second feature of the student movements has been the ability to articulate not only short-term demands (e.g., transportation, quality of the school’s equipment and infrastructure), but also a set of demands that aim to transform structural aspects of the education system. for instance, the students challenged the regulatory legacy of the constitutional law of education—which was enacted on the very last day of the pinochet government in 1990. the students also protested against privatization, tuition charges, and discriminatory practices in the selection of students. the “penguin revolution” of 2006 made clear that the student movement’s discourse of protest and critique was becoming increasingly stronger and more systemic, going well beyond a simple list of student benefits. bellei and cabalin current issues in comparative education 117 a third element characterizing the student movements has been innovation in the ways students have organized and expressed themselves. because of chilean young people’s general mistrust of traditional forms of political delegation and representation, students tried alternative ways of political organization. to be clear, political militancy and traditional forms of student organization have not disappeared, but they have been complemented, and in many cases exceeded, by new forms of participation, representation, and decision-making processes among students. for instance, in organizational terms, students used diverse assemblies and coordination agents with more horizontal and less mediated methodologies to deliberate and make decisions. when these organizations communicate to influence public opinion, student leaders act more like assembly “spokesmen” than an authority representing an organization. in both 2006 and 2011, student organizations also implemented sophisticated mass-media communication strategies, guided by leaders with outstanding and refined communication skills. finally, the coordination process has also changed, mainly through the intensive use of new communication technologies and instant messaging. these allow students to summon a group quickly, widely, and cheaply, and also to spread their ideas and protest outcomes through the mass media. indeed, the media has not replaced but rather complemented the creation of various face-to-face initiatives, which gather representatives based on geographic (e.g., santiago areas) or institutional (e.g., vocational secondary schools) criteria. forms of public demonstration have also been diverse. this is particularly noticeable when looking at the 2011 student movement, during which students employed numerous forms of pressure towards authorities and also adopted a different range of strategies to spread their message to the general public. strategies included traditional marches, strikes, and occupations, but also new forms of public demonstration, such as massive dances, carnivals, street debates, and videos and performances in public places. conclusion: chilean students as educational policy stakeholders the student movement is an ongoing process and some demands are still being subjected to political debate, but there has already been a tremendous impact on chilean educational policy (bellei, contreras, & valenzuela, 2008; bellei, contreras, & valenzuela, 2010). the fact that a student movement strongly affected both the policy debate and policy decisions represents a significant change for chilean society, and is of major interest from a comparative perspective on educational policy. in fact, after the secondary student protests in 2006 all changes seemed possible. president michelle bachelet created an advisory presidential council for quality in education to debate and propose policy guidelines for improving both quality and equity in education. after six months of deliberations, the advisory council presented a report that encompassed a wide variety of recommendations, including strengthening the right to access quality education free of charge; holding the state responsible for guaranteeing quality education; establishing quality assurance institutions in education; reforming the institutional system of public school administration; and significantly modifying the current funding system (consejo asesor presidencial, 2006). chilean student movements 118 current issues in comparative education president bachelet embraced some of the advisory council’s recommendations and proposed a “new architecture of chilean education.” she sent to parliament an ambitious set of legal reforms, which included: a new general law of education that replaced the previously mentioned constitutional law of education; the creation of a superintendence in education to control the legal aspects of the system; the creation of an agency for quality in education; changes in the structure of educational cycles; and the reform of the administration of the public schools. each of these reforms, except the last, was approved. in our view, the combination of a sense of emergency and social pressure from the student movement, with the consensus view generated by the advisory council, gave policy makers a new perspective, opened unexpected political opportunities, and resulted in a policy agenda focused on institutional transformation of the chilean educational system. the 2011 student movement’s impact on higher education has also been considerable. president piñera and his ministers of education disagreed with some of the most emblematic demands of the students, including free education, giving priority to public education, and ending public funding to for-profit providers. however, the administration implemented a new system of public funding that increased the proportion of students with higher education scholarships and significantly reduced student loan interest rates. the administration also passed a tax reform to fund new educational policies and proposed a major change in the accreditation system of postsecondary educational institutions, which is currently being discussed by the chilean parliament. further, the chilean parliament created special commissions to investigate some private universities regarding potentially illegal for-profit activities (see commission report, 2011; mönckeberg, 2007). finally, the educational policy issues raised by the student movement have been intensively debated in the current presidential campaign in chile. in general terms, students framed their struggle within the “politics of meanings” in education. thus, from an educational policy perspective, the student movements challenged public understanding of the education system because the students rejected the notion of the problemsolving approach supported by traditional policy makers. certainly, students participated in defining educational problems, but students also participated in the discussion of policy implications. as political actors in the educational arena, students tried to be part of the contexts of influence, text production, and practice (bowe, ball, & gold, 1992). these aspects of student participation extended the notion of the policy cycle beyond the diagnostic-designimplementation-evaluation cycle that characterizes the bureaucratic structure and technocratic process of educational policy creation (reimers & mcginn, 1997). the student movements not only highlighted “new problems,” but also new interpretations of those problems. such interpretations implied the need for systemic changes in education, which were outside the framework of reference for chilean policy makers. from this perspective, the consequences of the student movements are also evident beyond the educational field. the debate about education in chile has been linked to larger social concerns, such as chile’s unequal economic model and the country’s lack of participatory institutional structures. thus, as social movement, students can be considered “agents actively engaged in the production and maintenance of meaning for constituents, antagonists, and bystanders” (benford & snow, 2000, p. 163). bellei and cabalin current issues in comparative education 119 during the last decades, the design and evaluation of public policies in health, poverty, and education increasingly became technical activities mainly engaged in by professional experts. consequently, students—like social program “beneficiaries”—have traditionally been excluded from the processes of engaging educational policies. the chilean student movements showed the limits of this notion. increasingly, policy makers, especially in matters like education, need to consider social and cultural aspects to design and evaluate policies; introducing participatory processes into the policy cycle seems to be the most appropriate way to accomplish this (rizvi & lingard, 2010; reimers & mcginn, 1997). the shift toward increased participation of local actors in the educational policy process goes in the opposite direction of the documented growing relevance of international organizations in the educational policy field. in fact, educational policies have become enmeshed with the new dynamics of globalization, where the main concern is to increase economic competitiveness. within this context, supranational organizations—such as the world bank and other regional banks, international monetary fund, unesco, and oecd—have created a network of interactions with public authorities, policymaking agencies, and transnational corporations that highly influence national educational policies (ball & youdell, 2007). this has been the case for chilean higher education in the last decades (ginsburg, espinoza, popa, & terano, 2003). nevertheless, since public policies can also express a collective will to solve social problems, the 2006 and 2011 student movements reminded chilean policy makers that—despite a globalized policy field—they are still socially and locally accountable. cristián bellei is an associate researcher with the center for advanced research in education and assistant professor in the sociology department, both at the university of chile. his main research areas are educational policy, school effectiveness, and school improvement; he has published extensively about quality and equity in chilean education. e-mail: cbellei@ciae.uchile.cl cristian cabalin is assistant professor of the communication and image institute at the universidad de chile. he is a ph.d. candidate in educational policy studies / global studies at the university of illinois at urbana-champaign. he holds a master’s degree in anthropology and development and a bachelor’s degree in communication. his research interests include cultural studies in education, education policy, media, and journalism. e-mail: ccabalin@uchile.cl cabalinq@illinois.edu references ball, s. j., & 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(2007). hidden privatisation in public education. london: education international. barrionuevo, a. (2011, august 5). with kiss-ins and dances, young chileans push for reform. the new york times, p. 4. mailto:cbellei@ciae.uchile.cl mailto:ccabalin@uchile.cl mailto:cabalinq@illinois.edu chilean student movements 120 current issues in comparative education bellei, c. (2009). the private-public school controversy: the case of chile. in p. peterson & r. chakrabarti (eds.), school choice international (pp. 165-192). cambridge, ma: mit press. bellei, c., gonzález, p., & valenzuela, j. p. (2010). fortalecer la educación pública, un desafío de interés nacional. in c. bellei, j. p. valenzuela, & d. contreras (eds.), ecos de la revolución pingüina. santiago: u. de chile-unicef. bellei, c., valenzuela, j. p., & de los ríos, d. 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(2000). framing processes and social movements. annual review of sociology, 26, 611-639. bowe, r., ball, s., & gold, a. (1992). reforming education and changing schools. case studies in policy sociology. london: routledge. brunner, j. (2009). educación superior en chile. instituciones, mercados, y políticas gubernamentales (1967-2007). santiago: ediciones universidad diego portales. brunner, j., &. uribe, d. (2006). mercados universitarios: el nuevo escenario de la educación superior en chile. santiago: ediciones universidad diego portales. cabalin, c. (2012). neoliberal education and student movements in chile: inequalities and malaise, policy futures in education, 10(2), 219-228. carnoy, m., & mcewan, p. (2000). the effectiveness and efficiency of private schools in chile’s voucher system. educational evaluation and policy analysis, 22(3), 213-239. casas, l., & correa, j. (2002). conductas discriminatorias, abusivas e infundadas en contra de estudiantes en la selección y marginación en los establecimientos de educación básica y media: diagnóstico y caracterización del problema. revista de derechos del niño, 1, 173-223. bellei and cabalin current issues in comparative education 121 casas, l., correa, j., & wilhelm (2001). descripción y análisis jurídico acerca del derecho a la educación y la discriminación. cuadernos de análisis jurídico, 12, 157-230. castillo, j., & cabezas, g. (2010). caracterización de jóvenes primera generación en educación superior: nuevas trayectorias hacia la equidad educativa. calidad en la educación, 32, 43-76. cavieres, e. a. (2011). the class and culture-based exclusion of the chilean neoliberal educational reform. educational studies, 47(2), 111-132. contreras, d., sepúlveda, p., & bustos, s. 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(2000). ¿juventud o juventudes? acerca de cómo mirar y remirar a las juventudes en nuestro continente. última década, 13, 59-77. edmunds, j., & turner, b. s. (2005). global generations: social change in the twentieth century. the british journal of sociology, 56(4), 559-577. elacqua, g. (2009). for-profit schooling and the politics of education reform in chile: when ideology trumps evidence. documento de trabajo n°5, centro de políticas comparadas de educación. santiago: universidad diego portales. figueroa, f. (2013). llegamos para quedarnos. crónicas de la revuelta estudiantil. santiago: lom ediciones. friedman, m. (1955). the role of government in education. economics and the public interest, 2(2), 85-107. chilean student movements 122 current issues in comparative education gauri, v. (1998). school choice in chile. two decades of educational reform. pittsburgh: university of pittsburgh press. gill, j., & defronzo, j. (2009). a comparative framework for the analysis of international student movements. social movement studies, 8(3), 203-224. ginsburg, m., espinoza, o., popa, s., & terano, m. (2003). privatisation, domestic marketisation and international commercialisation of higher education: vulnerabilities and opportunities for chile and romania within the framework of wto/gats. globalisation, societies and education, 1(3), 413-445. howell, w., & peterson, p. (2006). the education gap: vouchers and urban schools (rev. ed.). washington, dc: brookings institution press. hsieh, c. t., & urquiola, m. (2003). when schools compete, how do they compete? an assesment of chile’s nationwide school voucher program. nber working paper series. jackson, g. (2013). el país que soñamos. santiago: debate. ladd, h. (2003). introduction. in d. plank & g. sykes (eds.), choosing choice: school choice in international perspective. new york: teachers college press, columbia university. levin, h., & belfield, c. r. (2006). the marketplace in education. in l. brown, dillabough, & halsey (eds.), education, globalization & social change (pp. 620-641). london: oxford university press. lustig, n., mizala, a., & silva, e. (2012). ¡basta ya! chilean students say “enough.” in j. byrne & r. wells (eds.), the occupy handbook. new york: back bay books. mannheim, k. (1952). the problem of generation. in k. mannheim, essays in the sociology of knowledge (pp. 286-322). new york: oxford university press. meller, p. (2010). carreras universitarias: rentabilidad, selectividad, discriminación. santiago: centro de investigación avanzada en educación y uqbar editores. mönckeberg, m. o. (2007). el negocio de las universidades en chile. santiago de chile: debate. moulián, t. (2002). chile actual: anatomía de un mito. santiago: lom ediciones. muñoz tamayo, v. (2011). juventud y política en chile: hacia un enfoque generacional. última década, (35), 113-141. oecd. (2004). revisión de políticas nacionales de educación. chile: oecd. oecd. (2010). pisa 2009 results: overcoming social background. equity in learning opportunities and outcomes. paris: oecd. bellei and cabalin current issues in comparative education 123 oecd. (2011). education at a glance 2011. paris: oecd. orellana, v. (2012). sobre el malestar social con la educación y la energía del movimiento social: el primer paso del siglo xxi. in varios autores, es la educación, estúpido. santiago: editorial planeta. reimers, f., & mcginn, n. (1997). informed dialogue: using research to shape education policy around the world. westport, ct: praegers publishers. rizvi, f., & lingard, b. (2010). globalizating education policy. new york: routledge. salinas, d., & fraser, p. (2012). educational opportunity and contentious politics: the 2011 chilean student movement. berkeley review of education, 3(1). retrieved from http://escholarship.org/uc/item/60g9j416 schulz, w., ainley, j., fraillon, j., kerr, d., & losito, b. (2010). iccs 2009 international report: civic knowledge, attitudes, and engagement among lower-secondary students in 38 countries. amsterdam: iea. sehnbruch, k., & donoso, s. (2011). chilean winter of discontent: are protests here to stay? open democracy. retrieved from http://www.opendemocracy.net/kirsten-sehnbruch-sofiadonoso/chilean-winter-of-discontent-are-protests-here-to-stay simons, s., olssen, m., & peters, m. a. (eds.). (2009). re-reading education policies. a handbook studying the policy agenda of the 21st century. boston: sense publishers. velenzuela, j. p., bellei, c., & de los ríos, d. (2013). socioeconomic school segregation in a market-oriented educational system: the case of chile. journal of education policy. doi:10.1080/02680939.2013.806995 vallejo, c. (2012). podemos cambiar el mundo. santiago: ocean sur. witte, j. f. (2009). vouchers. in g. sykes, b. schneider, & d. plank (eds.), handbook of education policy research (pp. 491-501). washington, dc: aera. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/60g9j416 http://www.opendemocracy.net/kirsten-sehnbruch-sofia-donoso/chilean-winter-of-discontent-are-protests-here-to-stay http://www.opendemocracy.net/kirsten-sehnbruch-sofia-donoso/chilean-winter-of-discontent-are-protests-here-to-stay current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 26, issue 1, winter 2024 book review: shadow education in the middle east: private supplementary tutoring and its policy implications kin cheung adrian yan the education university of hong kong shadow education in the middle east: private supplementary tutoring and its policy implications by mark bray and anas hajar explores the extent and nature of private supplementary tutoring in twelve arabic-speaking countries. six are high-income members of the gulf cooperation council (gcc) countries: bahrain, kuwait, oman, qatar, saudi arabia, and the united arab emirates; the other six are lower income: iraq, jordan, lebanon, palestine, syria, and yemen. private supplementary tutoring is often referred to as “shadow education” because it mimics the structure of formal schooling. this book is a welcome addition to the existing literature on shadow education that has predominantly focused on post-soviet states (silova et al., 2006), the mediterranean (bray et al., 2013), east asia (zhang and yamato, 2018), south asia (joshi, 2021), and africa (bray, 2021). researchers, policymakers, and educational practitioners interested in the field of private supplementary tutoring will find this book useful in further understanding the development of shadow education as a global phenomenon. this book comprises seven chapters. it commences with a brief chapter 1 that sets the framework and outlines the remaining sections. chapter 2 defines the scope of the study and presents global perspectives on shadow education. these perspectives cover the major providers and modes of private supplementary tutoring, the geographical and cultural variations that emerged in the second half of the 20th century, and the benefits and detriments of private tutoring. what emerges from the literature, as the authors argue, is that private tutoring may help slow learners catch up with academic studies and further motivate high achievers to perform well in national examinations. nevertheless, private tutoring may maintain and exacerbate social inequalities because upperand middle-class families can afford better-quality tutoring than working-class families. moreover, ethical issues tend to arise when active teachers are one of the major providers of private tutoring. some schoolteachers may be tempted to neglect their regular classes to meet the demand for private tutoring. chapter 3 directs readers’ attention to the middle east. despite some commonalities in the 12 countries, such as having islam as the dominant religion and arabic as a core subject, the authors argue that there are significant social, economic, and political diversities within the region. these diversities manifest themselves along the lines of political systems, demographic features, and social stability, which profoundly shape the overall role of the state in education as well as the scale of private tutoring. for instance, private tutoring was frowned upon in saudi arabia, however, its government allowed public schools to provide remunerated supplementary services for students seeking remedial support. for dubai, owing to its high percentage (91 percent) of non-national © 2024, yan. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 26(1), 108-111. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en book review: shadow education in the middle east: private supplementary tutoring and its policy implications current issues in comparative education 109 residents, the government has historically played a minimal role in the provision of public schooling and adopted a laissez-faire approach to private tutoring. meanwhile, for countries like syria and yemen, protracted internal conflicts have weakened their governments’ ability to provide public schooling. with many teachers leaving their posts, private tutoring has emerged as the major alternative to mainstream schooling. these manifestations of private tutoring in arabic-speaking countries suggest very distinct contexts under which mainstream schooling and private tutoring are operating compared to those in other parts of the world. chapter 4 presents the scale and nature of shadow education in the 12 countries. bray and hajar argue that the scale of shadow education in the middle east has expanded considerably in recent decades. notwithstanding variations across the national education systems in the region, the modes of delivering private tutoring and drivers of its supply and demand have exhibited similar patterns in other parts of the world. these patterns include an overwhelming majority of primary and secondary school students receiving tutoring, greater demands in mathematics, science, and english language, and larger concentrations of private tutoring services in urban over rural areas. in chapter 5, the authors raise concerns about the expanding scale of shadow education in the middle east. the negative impact of shadow education is most noticeable in the backwash effect on schooling, as bray and hajar (2023) argue, “private tutoring is not simply a neutral shadow; rather, it has a backwash on the system that it imitates. private tutoring may subtract as well as supplement” (p. 57). this effect may foster students’ dependency on tutoring to pass matriculation examinations and, on a societal level, damage the mandate of fee-free education and reduce the social value of meritocracy. moreover, owing to its commercial nature, private tutoring raises ethical issues among serving teachers who are also involved in the business of shadow education. in the worst case, one-to-one private tutoring may bring risks of sexual misdemeanors. chapter 6 states the policy implications for regulating private tutoring. these include regulating the provision of private tutoring by active teachers and the operation of tutorial centers. on top of that, the authors emphasize the need to include all stakeholders, such as branches of government, schools, teachers’ unions, parents, and media, in reducing the necessity of private tutoring. in chapter 7, the authors conclude that shadow education in the middle east largely resembles the trends exemplified in the global picture in terms of its scale and nature. the authors suggest that shadow education is likely to be an enduring phenomenon because it pertains to social competition; one possible way to regulate the phenomenon is through the collaboration between state and non-state actors. this book represents one of the very few attempts to systematically investigate the development of shadow education in the middle east. it contributes to the existing literature on private supplementary tutoring by furthering the agenda of strengthening the collaboration between state and non-state actors. this agenda pertains to the 2021/22 edition of the global education monitoring (gem) report (united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) (2021) that highlights private supplementary tutoring as a typical educational phenomenon that cannot be tackled by yan current issues in comparative education 110 governments alone and thus proposes the inclusion of other non-state actors in achieving the fourth of united nations’ sustainable development goals (sdg4). in this regard, shadow education in the middle east carries the same spirit by shedding light on the complexity of the phenomenon and proposing a more collaborative approach to regulating private tutoring. the rigor of this book is limited by the fragmentary data presented. as noted by the authors in chapter 4, there is a lack of comparable data among the 12 selected countries. for instance, the enrolment rate data of private tutoring in the 2010s were largely drawn from the 2015 and 2019 trends in international mathematics and science study (timss) whereas those before the 2010s were mostly based on individual national studies from the 1990s to early 2010s that varied in terms of sample sizes, stages of schooling, gender, and school subjects. this was because data on this topic was not collected before the 2015 timss. this methodological note is telling because it testifies to the under-researched nature of shadow education in this region vis-à-vis the existing literature in other parts of the world, such as nordic countries, asia, and africa. while the authors have drawn on other sources to substantiate their analyses, such as questionnaire results obtained through unesco’s regional centre for education planning (rcep) and relevant media commentaries, elaboration on the treatment of such fragmentary data to increase its rigor and comparability across the selected nations would strengthen the book. moreover, some aspects associated with shadow education are not adequately addressed. these include the increasing prevalence of internet tutoring after the outbreak of the corona virus disease in 2019 (covid-19) and the role of islamic culture in shaping gender norms in education. further research on shadow education in this region needs to address these aspects to generate a more nuanced picture of the provision and reception of private tutoring. kin cheung adrian yan is a post-doctoral fellow at the education university of hong kong. he obtained his phd in 2023 at the institute of education, university college london’s faculty of education and society. his research interests include comparative education, citizenship education, sociology of education, and career and life development. references bray, m. (2021). shadow education in africa: private supplementary tutoring and its policy implications. comparative education research centre, the university of hong kong. bray, m., mazawi, a. e., and sultana, r. g. (eds.) (2013). private tutoring across the mediterranean: power dynamics, and implications for learning and equity. sense. joshi, p. (2021). private schooling and tutoring at scale in south asia. in p. m. sarangapani and p. rekha (eds.), handbook of education systems in south asia (pp. 1127-1146). springer. silova, i., budiene, v., and bray, m. (eds.) (2006). education in a hidden marketplace: monitoring of private tutoring. open society institute. book review: shadow education in the middle east: private supplementary tutoring and its policy implications current issues in comparative education 111 united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco). (2021). global education monitoring report: non-state actors in education: who chooses? who loses? unesco. zhang, w., and yamato, y. (2018). shadow education in east asia: entrenched but evolving private supplementary tutoring. in k.j. kennedy and j. c-k. lee (eds.), routledge international handbook of schools and schooling in asia (pp. 323-332). routledge. © 2016, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(1), 3-5. a vibrant field, an evolving journal: editorial introduction for fall 2016 open theme issue ji liu teachers college, columbia university the field of comparative and international education has undergone significant shifts in its methods and subjects of comparison in the last century. in its formative years, early comparative research took the form of historical and cultural inquiry, which were deeply rooted in the understanding of local contexts. later in the post-wwii era, shaped by societal need to generalize practical theories for development, comparative analysis became focused on cross-national and scientific comparisons of variables across societal contexts. more recently in the late 20th century, motivated by the incompleteness of universal metanarratives, comparativists began reflecting and became engaged in critiquing and mapping how socially accepted ideas and standards are manufactured and transmitted by various actors. these phenomena reflect the additive, open, and energetic host-nature of comparative research. over the past 19 years, current issues in comparative education (cice) has diligently supported this progress by providing a welcoming space for timely and critical discussions concerning specific ideas as well as theoretical reflections on the development trajectory in the field of comparative and international education. in this process, members of cice have produced over 30 issues covering a variety of important topics in the growing field of comparative and international education. one way to assess the scope of cice’s impact is to examine the different topics we have discussed. each of cice’s past publications have helped expand our knowledge on a special issue or in a specific topic area. this is evident from cice’s very first are ngos overrated? issue to the most recent innovative methods in comparative and international education issue. another approach to understand how cice’s published work contributes to the larger field is to look at the number of citations of articles published on cice. for instance, according to google scholar, brian street’s (2003) what’s ‘new’ in new literacy studies? critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice from volume 5, issue 2, has been cited more than 1,200 times, being our most cited article to date. at cice, we pride on our scholarly contributions to the academic community. beginning with this issue, cice will provide more space for timely discussions on an array of topics by producing a series of open theme issues. these open issues welcome articles on any subject in the field of comparative and international education or in the liu current issues in comparative education 4 related disciplines (e.g. anthropology, history, philosophy, political science, sociology, and economics). with this first open theme issue, we hope to establish a precedent whereby each year cice produces one issue with an open theme in the fall and another special theme issue in the spring. the editorial board hopes hope that this new strategy will allow the journal to remain a staple of timely research, and at the same time, also allow quality and depth of research to remain a leader in our field. for our first open theme issue, we received a record number of manuscript submissions. we find this broad interest as both a conviction to the high quality of cice’s contents and as kind support for our new open theme strategy. in the remainder of this issue, cice presents seven research projects that our reviewers and editors recommended. these studies, as we intend in all our future open theme issues, cover a broad spectrum of topics and offer a wide range of perspectives. using a case of pre-primary teacher training in tanzania, bethany wilinski, cuong huy nguyen, and jessica landgraf highlights the salience of culture and context in program implementation and evaluation. wilinski et al.’s study is connected to the larger global discussion on preparing qualified teaching professionals and offers important insights for early childhood policy making in developing regions. tim monreal illustrates how international baccalaureate (ib) creates a unique space for international education in public schools. monreal’s research not only presents an interesting examination of ib’s proliferation in the u.s., but also articulate a novel perspective in analyzing the use and framing of space in schools. rebecca ipe uses participatory methods to map the educational experiences of girls from low-income households in urban india and uncovers the often overlooked student perspective of education attainment. by providing an insightful account of first-generation formal schooling attendees, ipe’s study also contributes to the broader literature on the relationship between schooling and social mobility. jin choi and thomas sojer offers a fresh discussion on aesthetic education in their research article. juxtaposing eastern and western philosophical, cultural and historical roots, choi and sojer explore aesthetics as a complementary approach to formal education. anne campbell investigates the alumni networks of u.s.-sponsored academic returnees in georgia and moldova. campbell’s findings suggest that alumni networks in these contexts function can often positively influence communities and act as catalysts for social activism. this open issue also includes two studies submitted by current education policy practitioners. prashant jayapragas outlines the successful experiences of singapore’s leaders in education program (lep), an intensive school leadership bridging program. from a policy and practitioner perspective, jayapragas reviews critical features of lep in the context of leadership development and offers recommendations moving forward. yoko mochizuki presents a timely discussion on education for sustainable development editorial introduction current issues in comparative education 5 (esd) and global citizenship education (gced). specifically, mochizuki argues that the marriage between these two concepts might weaken the transformative potentials that they each possess individually. finally, each issue of cice cannot be made possible without the collective efforts of our reviewers, editors, authors, and most importantly, our readers. with the publishing of our first open theme issue and launch of our new journal strategy, we will continue to take pride on being a respected source for timely and cutting-edge scholarly debates in comparative and international education. it is certain that we will continue pushing forward the boundaries of our field and engaging broader academic and practitioner communities. ji liu is a ph.d. doctoral fellow in international comparative education and economics at teachers college, columbia university, and editor-in-chief for current issues in comparative education. email: jl4103@tc.columbia.edu; for cice business please contact cice@tc.columbia.edu. volume 12(2) / spring 2010 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice education and economic crises editorial introduction 3 education and economic crises andrew k. shiotani articles 5 the effect of an economic crisis on educational outcomes: an economic framework and review of the evidence m. najeeb shafiq 14 monitoring the effects of the global crisis on education provision gwang-chol chang 21 the global economic crisis: setbacks to the educational agenda for the minority in sub-saharan africa moses shiasha ingubu 31 under the same blue sky? inequity in migrant children’s education in china guangyu tan special section: responses to volume 12, issue 1 41 cosmopolitanism and our descriptions of ethics and ontology:a response to dale snauwaert’s “the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism” david t. hansen 45 response to noah sobe’s “rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education” andria wisler book review 50 p. agarwal, indian higher education: envisioning the future reviewed by radhika iyengar 53 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 2 (spring 2010) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden executive editor andrew shiotani senior editors ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, michael schapira, michelle reddy editors sarah flatto, cara furman, brian veprek, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, joseph hirsch, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, cara furman, anne gaspers, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira, brian veprek style editors matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar, michael schapira, brian veprek web editor andrew shiotani associate web editors ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway 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issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 12(2): 31-40 under the same blue sky? inequity in migrant children’s education in china guangyu tan canisius college it is estimated that more than 10% of china’s population has left their villages and hometowns as millions of farmers have descended upon cities and urban centers in response to a huge demand for labor since the economic reform launched in the late 1970s (li, 2006). approximately 19.8 million children are believed to have accompanied their parents in this mass internal migration, with the result that many lack adequate access to health care, education, and other basic services (chan, 2009). this article discusses migrant children’s schooling experiences in china in the context of massive migration from rural areas to the cities and trends toward reverse migration induced by the recent global economic crisis. it further explores the responses from the migrant communities to their children’s educational needs in the face of financial cutbacks and economic insecurity. since the economic reforms initiated in the late 1970s, china has undergone rapid modernization, industrialization, and urbanization. as urbanization expanded, so did the discrepancy between urban and rural incomes and living standards (china labour bulletin [clb], 2009). in 2009, the annual per capita income of urban households was 12,973 yuan1 compared with only 4,307 yuan in rural households (national bureau of statistics of china, 2009). considering the fact that rural residents have no social security or welfare benefits, the urban-rural income gap in real terms was probably six-fold (zhu, 2006). living conditions in the rural areas are austere and poor. as recently as late 2006, more than half of rural households did not have tap water, 87% did not have flush toilets, and 60% were still using wood-burning stoves (chan, 2009). as a result of the discrepancy in income and living conditions between urban and rural areas, millions of farmers have left their homes and migrated to the cities in search of work and a better life. large-scale internal migration has thus become one of the most prominent by-products of the socioeconomic development of china. according to the national bureau of statistics (nbs) of china (2009), there are 225.42 million migrant workers in china—more than the populations of the united kingdom, france, and australia combined (hamey, 2008). when deciding to move in search of a better life, migrant workers either leave their children behind in the countryside or take them to the city. an estimated 58 million children have been left behind, and another 19 million children have accompanied their migrant parents to the cities (chan, 2009). together, children of migrant workers account for about one quarter of all children in china (chan, 2009). it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the plight of both groups of children—the leftbehind children and the migrant children. therefore, the objective of this review is to describe and critically analyze the schooling experiences of migrant children in the context of massive migration from rural areas to the cities and the reverse migration caused by the recent global economic crisis. furthermore, based on an analysis of media accounts, this article explores the responses from the migrant communities to their children’s educational needs in the face of financial cutbacks and economic insecurity. the inequity in migrant children’s education in china is an issue of social justice, and, therefore, the purpose of this article is to raise awareness of the issue, calling educators to pay special attention to the needs of migrant children and their families. 32 current issues in comparative education g. tan social context of migration before the implementation of china’s economic reform initiated in the late 1970s, internal migration was strictly prohibited by the central government. the government instituted a permanent and rigorous system of household registration or hu kou in 1955 to control migration (han, 2004). each chinese citizen was assigned to a rural or urban household based on his or her mother’s residence. local governments were responsible for providing the residents whose hu kou were registered in its jurisdiction with welfare and social services, including education, housing, and health care (clb, 2009). residents were not allowed to work or live outside the administrative boundaries of their hu kou without permission of the authorities. the household system became so rigid in the 1970s that any violation of the system could lead to imprisonment (young, 2002). china’s household registration system evolved out of unique historical conditions, and in its historical context, the system maintained social stability, balancing urban-rural development, controlling the population, and adjusting the distribution of social resources (han, 2004, p. 30). however, since the 1980s the increasing market-oriented structure of the economy has generated a need for cheap labor in the cities. the central government loosened its internal migration control regulations, and by 1989, there were about 30 million migrant workers in china. in 1993, the number doubled, and by 2009, the migrant population had increased to over 200 million (clb, 2009; nbs, 2009). unesco and the chinese academy of social sciences estimated that migrant workers have contributed 16% of gross domestic product (gdp) growth over the past two decades (hamey, 2008). because of their great contributions to china’s economic development, the migrant workers are known as china’s “factories without smoke” (hamey, 2008). although migrant workers can move “freely” from city to city, the hu kou system continues to have a restrictive effect on their social status, employment opportunity, children’s education, social welfare, and living conditions. without an urban hu kou, migrant workers have no access to urban social services, and are subject to daily exploitation and institutional discrimination. being on the lowest rung of the social ladder, migrant workers are usually given labor-intensive and low-skill jobs (clb, 2009). according to hamey (2008), migrant workers account for 68% of employees in the manufacturing sector, 70% in construction, and 80% of coal miners. migrant workers are required to work long hours (11 hours per day on average, and 26 days per month); however, they are paid only half as much as urban residents. according to the china labor bulletin, in 2004 the average monthly income for migrant workers was 780 yuan, just over half the national urban average of 1,350 yuan (clb, 2009). it is common that migrant workers do not get paid on time, and in some cases they are owed seven months or more in unpaid wages (state council, 2006). migrant workers have faced a myriad of issues, including harsh working conditions, low wages, congested living conditions, and lack of access to social services. nevertheless, the most pressing issue for migrant parents is their children’s education (clb, 2009). many migrant parents move to the cities in search of a better life for their children. however, due to their low family income and the restrictive hu kou system, migrant children are marginalized and deprived of equal access to education, social and medical welfare, and the right to participate in urban life. migrant children: the city’s “invisible population” when premier wen jiabao visited a school for migrant children in beijing in 2003, he wrote, “under the same blue sky, grow up and progress together” (ren & zhang, 2006). however, living under the same blue sky, migrant children do not have the same rights as urban children. despite being long-term residents in the city, migrant children without an urban hu kuo are marginalized and treated as “outsiders” or second-class citizens. although the compulsory education law of current issues in comparative education 33 under the same blue sky the people’s republic of china mandates a free compulsory nine-year education for all children regardless of sex, nationality, or race, it delegates the responsibilities for compulsory education to local authorities (china education and research network, 2005). furthermore, central government funding for education is based on the number of school age children with local hu kuo. therefore, urban governments are only responsible for the education of children with an urban hu kuo, and they have no obligations to educate migrant children. in fact, prior to the mid-1990s, migrant children were not allowed to enroll in state-run schools in the city (rural education action project [reap], 2009). as the governments of the host cities do not have a responsibility to provide social welfare and services to migrants and their children, migrant children’s basic rights to health care, education, and socialization are denied, leading to a higher rate of emotional, behavioral, and psychological problems (chan, 2009). ignored, migrant children have become the city’s “invisible population.” as migration became more and more an inescapable fact of china’s economic life, the central government began to recognize the important contributions of migrant workers in boosting economic development and increasing productivity. the regulations on household systems gradually loosened. the most important policy shift came on march 2, 1998, when the ministry of education and the public security bureau issued the “provisional measures for the schooling of migrant children and youths.”2 this regulation opened the door for migrant children to attend schools in their place of domicile, stating, “municipalities should allow migrant children aged between 6 and 14 to study full time in the state-run and private schools with the status of temporary students” (clb, 2009, p. 72). despite these policy changes, there are still many obstacles that impede the achievement of equity in migrant children’s education in china today. first, there are many rules set up by the urban governments that make it difficult to establish and prove local domicile. migrant parents are required to submit numerous documents, such as a temporary residence permit, a work permit, proof of residence (e.g. property deed or a rental agreement), household registration certificate from the place of origin, and vaccination certificates (reap, 2009). many migrant families are unable to obtain all of the required documentation because of the complicated procedure and high cost of the process (clb, 2009). moreover, even when some migrant families manage to prove their local domicile, they still have to pay exorbitant fees for their children to go to a state-run school. the city of beijing serves as a pertinent example. in 2008, in addition to the 500 yuan per semester in miscellaneous fees, migrant parents had to pay an average registration fee of 1,226 yuan (people’s daily online, 2008), a 500 to 1,000 yuan temporary schooling fee, a 2,000 yuan education compensation payment, a one-off 1,000 yuan school selection fee, and a 1,000 to 30,000 yuan sponsorship fee or so-called donation (clb, 2009; human rights in china [hric], 2002; reap, 2009). therefore, education in a staterun school is out of reach for many migrant families, considering the average monthly income of a migrant worker is 966 yuan (“chinese migrant workers earn,” 2006). finally, in addition to financial constraints, migrant children also face institutional discrimination in the state school system. eckholm (1999) suggested, “one of the biggest obstacles of educational progress may be a less tangible one, resulting from the pervasive ostracism and ridicule of poor, rural migrants in the big city” (p. 2). social and economic segregation have created and reinforced the stereotypes among urban and migrant children. there is a dividing line between “us” and “them” among the two groups of children. according to a study on migrant children in beijing, 34 current issues in comparative education g. tan 40% of the migrant children did not have local friends, and 33.7% did not want to make friends with urban children because urban children were believed to be arrogant, snobbish, spoiled, and wasteful (lei, 2004). migrant children often complain about being mocked and bullied by local peers in urban public schools (lei, 2004). migrant students are also perceived as academically inferior, and usually shunned by teachers and school administrators. a higher percentage of migrant children than non-migrant children feel that the teachers do not understand them nor care about them and are not satisfied with the teacher-student relationship (clb, 2009). in schools, migrant children cannot afford to participate in extracurricular activities or to join social organizations. nor can they be nominated for an “outstanding student award” (clb, 2009, p. 42). although the compulsory education law of the people’s republic of china mandates a free, nine-year education for all children, migrant children do not have equal access to a high quality public education. education is not free but incurs significant financial costs that are beyond the reach of many migrant families. even when migrant children are enrolled in public schools, they are subject to institutional discrimination. because of the barriers that migrant families have faced, many parents turn to private schools set up by migrants as an alternative for their children’s education. migrant schools: a renewed sense of hope in the process of migration, the social networks and social relationships that were in place in the migrants’ villages of origin are ripped apart. migrant communities are trying to rebuild such social networks and renew the sense of hope among the children through migrant schools. unlike public state-run schools, where students are predominantly from the same city, migrant schools bring together children from all over the country (han, 2004). there is no institutional discrimination based on the household system in the migrant schools. migrant schools provide a place where migrant children feel they belong. when asked about their relationship with other students both in a migrant school and in a public school, 62% of migrant children reported that they like to play with their peers in the migrant schools, whereas 53% dislike beijing children because the latter bully and look down on them (han, 2004). furthermore, the migrant schools are set up as a collective response by the community to the inability of the current educational system to adapt to the rapid social reconfigurations and changes in society. these schools have played a supplementary and self-help function in the present educational system (han, 2004). migrant schools were first started in the early to mid1990s as self-help and “solve-it-yourself” endeavors. the first migrant school in beijing was set up in 1993, and it was the only private school for migrant children at the time. however, migrant schools developed rapidly after 1998 due to the enactment of provisional measures for the schooling of migrant children and youths. by 2001, there were about 200 to 300 migrant schools in beijing attended by about 30,000 children; in shanghai, there were 250 migrant schools with a total of 41,274 students (hric, 2002). the emergence and expansion of migrant schools has basically filled the gap in compulsory education for migrant children. in 1997, a survey conducted by the beijing municipal office for migrant affairs indicated the drop-out rate among migrant children in beijing was 13.9%. by 2004, based on a survey among 3,864 migrant children and 2,157 migrant families in beijing, han (2004) suggested that the nonattendance rate among migrant children had dropped to 2.8%. however, many of the migrant schools are still plagued by high mobility of students, high rates of teacher turnover, less qualified teachers, poor school conditions, and substandard curriculum. migrant workers are constantly moving from place to place in search of jobs, and their children current issues in comparative education 35 under the same blue sky have no choice but to transfer from school to school. most migrant schools do not have databases of student registration and records, making it difficult to track students’ displacement (han, 2004). in addition to high student mobility, migrant schools face the problem of recruiting and retaining qualified teachers. the teacher turnover rate is high due to low wages and heavy teaching loads. for example, according to a 2002 survey of 59 migrant schools in shanghai, ding (2004) reported that 78.3% of the teachers made a monthly income of 700 yuan or less. the average monthly income for local office workers, however, was 2,815 yuan in 2004 (city of shanghai, 2005). many teachers use migrant schools as a stepping stone. once they find a better job, they quit teaching, leaving the migrant children behind. for those teachers who choose to stay, they may not have the necessary teaching experience or qualifications. among those surveyed, 66% had a senior high school or a secondary normal school education, and 7% had only a middle school education. only 30% had a two-year college or higher education (ding, 2004). moreover, the operating conditions in migrant schools vary greatly because these schools are set up with private funds and rely mainly on student tuition as revenue. many migrant schools have not been approved and thus not inspected by the local educational department. without official approval and inspection, these schools are operating illegally, and subject to closure. some better operated migrant schools lease empty public school buildings, whereas others have classes in civilian homes, dilapidated warehouses, or primitive jerrybuilt houses (ding, 2004; han, 2004). classrooms are overcrowded with as many as 93 students (ding, 2004). lighting, heating, and ventilation are poor; some schools lack fire exits, drinking water, sanitary facilities, health clinics, and playgrounds. among the 55 surveyed migrant schools in beijing, 11 do not have bathrooms, so students have to use public toilets outside the schools (han, 2004). because most migrant schools do not have playgrounds, physical education classes are held either on the street or on the margins of farmland. migrant children are found to play on vegetable patches, trash piles, or narrow alleys and lanes. such operating conditions and lack of facilities seriously impact the physical, psychological, and academic development of migrant children (han, 2004). the inequity of migrant children’s education is further exacerbated by the substandard curriculum in migrant schools. due to a lack of funding, qualified teachers, and facilities, many migrant schools can only offer basic chinese language and math classes, whereas urban students in public schools have an opportunity to learn english, computer skills, music, arts, social studies, science, and so forth. the discrepancies in curriculum and teaching materials result in difficulties for migrant children with adjusting when they transfer to different schools (han, 2004). because the current public educational system is incapable of meeting the needs of schooling of migrant children in china, private schools set up by migrants have developed and expanded to fill the gap. however, due to their lack of funding, qualified teachers, facilities, and standardized curriculum, migrant schools are not the silver bullet to resolve the problem of compulsory education for migrant children. most migrant parents consider such schools as “merely temporary venues for education, providing their children with a basic knowledge of mathematics, reading and writing” (han, 2004, p. 44). moreover, even this hope of a temporary education has been shattered by the recent global financial turmoil. the global economic crisis and a trend of reverse migration the recent global financial and economic crisis has had a significant, negative impact on the chinese economy. in 2008, china’s fourth-quarter gross domestic product (gdp) growth reached a seven-year low of 6.8%, dragging the 2008 gdp growth rate down from 13% in 2007 to 9% 36 current issues in comparative education g. tan (huang, 2009). exports in november 2008 were down 2.2% year-on-year in the first monthly decline since june 2001; meanwhile, low-end commodity exports such as garment enterprises are seeing an export decline as much as 60% compared to 2007 (“china’s rmb,” 2009). the global recession is shuttering factories, halting construction projects, and even closing multinational companies, pushing millions out of their jobs or into salary cuts or freezes. china’s official unemployment rate hit a 30-year high of 9% in 2008 (tschang, 2009). fast growing unemployment has ignited resentment from urban citizens toward migrant workers, who are being blamed for taking city jobs (li, b., 2005). urban residents abusing or mocking migrant workers in public is not uncommon (li, y., 2003). migrant workers are not welcomed or even forbidden to be present in many public places or to use public services. for example, in the city of qingdao, some citizens suggested having separate seats for migrant workers on buses, and in beijing, some public toilets collected fines if migrant workers were found using them (cai, 2002; yang, 2002). under pressure from local constituents and residents, urban governments have passed legislation and regulations to discourage employment of migrant workers. for instance, the shanghai bureau of labor and social security issued the regulation on categorized usage and employment of labor from outside shanghai by local employers, which divides jobs into three categories: outside labor allowed; limited usage of outside labor; and outside labor forbidden (li, b., 2005, p.60). similarly, beijing issued regulations that were guided by the principle of “urban first, rural second; beijingers first, outsiders second” (jiang, 2002). such regulations effectively prevent migrant workers from entering the desirable sections of the urban labor market (chen & qiao, 2002). in the sector of heavy labor, including manufacturing, construction, and mining, migrant workers suffered the worst from layoffs due to the global economic downturn. as of february 2009, it is estimated that over 20 million migrant workers have lost their jobs (macartney, 2009; tschang, 2009). urban employees are typically eligible for social insurance and protections covering pensions, unemployment, health, work injuries, and maternity leave. however, migrant workers are excluded from the social welfare system. government policy, social exclusion, and the global economic crisis have put migrant workers in a vulnerable, powerless and voiceless position (li, b., 2005), which makes it harder for migrant workers and their children to gain a permanent foothold in the city. thus, many have had no choice but to return to their rural hometown, leading to a trend of reverse migration. according to macartney (2009), 15.3% or about one in seven migrants have returned to their places of origins. migrant children are facing many challenges as they move back to their rural area of origin (clb, 2009). first, many migrant children, who were born and raised in the city, must adjust to a new lifestyle and living conditions when they return to rural areas. as long-term city dwellers, migrant children have become used to the conveniences that city life offers, such as electricity, tap water, and flush toilets. in rural areas, however, these conveniences may not exist. moreover, although the central government requires the rural schools to admit returned migrant children unconditionally, these schools are often unable to provide the resources needed to comply with this mandate. even when migrant students are accepted in the local rural schools, they have difficulties in their studies due to the discrepancies in curriculum, textbooks, and teaching methods. these challenges put migrant children at higher risk for low school performance, high dropout rate, and serious psychological problems, such as depression, anxiety, and lower selfesteem (chan, 2009). in response to the global financial turmoil and to put the tumbling economy back on track, in november of 2008 the chinese central government announced a massive stimulus package of current issues in comparative education 37 under the same blue sky 4 trillion yuan3 (us $586 billion; “china’s rmb,” 2009). however, no expenditure on migrant children’s education was specified in the stimulus package. migrant children fall through the cracks once again, and they remain the “invisible” population in china’s society. conclusion the right to education is a basic human right. as human rights in china (2002) stated, “education is recognized as a human right in itself and an indispensable means of realizing other human rights” (p. 32). however, this basic human right of migrant children in china has been constantly denied due to the rigid hu kuo system. the global economic turmoil further strained government funding and provided a seemingly legitimate excuse for local government to shrug off their responsibility to educate migrant children. even if their parents manage to send them to local public schools, migrant children still face institutional discrimination that diminishes their life quality and hinders their chances of success. in response to the acute problem of limited access to urban public education, migrant communities set up schools in which migrant children have a sense of belonging and learn basic reading, writing, and mathematics. but these migrant schools are plagued with their own problems and can only temporarily relieve the problem of migrant children’s education. to ensure that education is available and accessible to all requires all levels of government to be involved in changing the policies and allocating more funding. as chan (2009) suggested, what is needed is a wide-ranging and systemic reform to the hu kou and social welfare system. . . . the ultimate solution is to reduce the disparity between urban and rural areas in terms of socio-economic development and welfare provisions, and to eventually abolish the hu kou system (p. 66). to make education available to all children, including migrant children, the central government should first develop a comprehensive policy to give migrant children access to formal, staterun education at the place where they are currently residing regardless of their place of hu kou registration. in the meantime, human rights advocates recommend all levels of government take strong and enforceable measures to end the institutional discrimination, exclusion, and injustices suffered by migrant children. for example, they call for the discriminatory fees levied only on migrant families to be immediately abolished (hric, 2002, p. 39). integration rather than segregation is encouraged to promote better understanding and communication between locals and migrants. some grassroots integration initiatives have been promoted by international, nongovernmental organizations (ngos) and research institutions, including unicef, rural women and migrant workers’ home, compassion for migrant children (cmc), and beijing academy of social sciences. but this article argues that governments should take the major responsibility for welfare provision and the social and economic integration of migrants and their children. moreover, it suggests that central and local governments allocate substantially increased resources for the education of migrant children. it is estimated that a total of 1.8 million migrant children between the ages of 6 and 14 do not receive any formal education in today’s china (hric, 2002). if the pressing issue of migrant children’s education is not resolved, a new wave of low-skilled workers will appear in the near future. as han (2004) suggested, “these people will have lived on the margins of the cities since childhood and will grow up as ‘second-class citizens,’ discriminated against and rejected, and as such will constitute a new and serious latent danger in society” (p. 53). social issues such as growing urban unemployment, mounting tension over the treatment of migrant workers and their 38 current issues in comparative education g. tan children, poverty, and inequality have become more acute in the global economic crisis. without top-down social reforms that target the inequality and vulnerability of this disadvantaged group, economic recovery and sustained economic growth will unavoidably suffer, leading to high risk of social instability and crises (li, b., 2005). acknowledgements correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to guangyu tan, department of adolescence education, canisius college, 2001 main street, buffalo, ny, 14208. e-mail: tang@ canisius.edu. the author is grateful to dr. tricia niesz for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. endnotes 1. the current exchange rate is one us dollar equals 6.8 yuan. the annual per capital income of urban households of 12,973 yuan is equivalent to 1,908 dollars; whereas the rural household income of 4,307 yuan is equivalent to 633 dollars. 2. provisional measures for the schooling of migrant children and young people was passed on march 2, 1998. the key points include: municipalities should allow migrant children aged between 6 and 14 to study in full-time state-run and privately run schools with the status of temporary students; and the main responsibility for education should remain in the outflowing areas (clb, 2009, p. 72). 3. the stimulus package includes 10 major steps over the next two years. it provides for rmb280 billion to be spent on housing projects for low-income urban residents; rmb370 billion on improvement of people’s livelihood and infrastructure in rural areas; rmb40 billion on medical care, culture and education causes; rmb350 billion on ecological investment; and rmb1 trillion on disaster relief and reconstruction. in terms of spending on education, the stimulus package will accelerate the development of the cultural and education sectors, and constructing junior high schools in rural western and central areas (retrieved from http:// www.mwe.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/publications.nldetail/object_id/d528fcbb-3b1a4c71-bc8f-ce5dacc20504.cfm). references cai, z. 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(2009, february 4). a tough new year for china’s migrant workers. business week. retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2009/gb2009024_357998. htm yang, h. (2002). the reality of the living status of rural workers in the cities. retrieved from http://www.ccrs.org.cn/big/dsnmgsczkx.htm. young, j. (2002). hu kou reform targets rural-urban divide. the china business review, 32. zhu, q. (2006). a comprehensive target system evaluation of harmonious development in an economic society. in tuo xin, lu xueyi, and li peilin (eds.), 2007: an analysis and forecast of trends in chinese society (pp. 321-339). beijing, prc: china social sciences press. 17_1_top_pages .pdf © 2015 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 17(1), 72-86. does watching help? in search of the theory of change for education monitoring1 david post efa global monitoring report and penn state university in 2015 education for all (efa), concludes its 25-year cycle, and the global monitoring report (gmr) publishes its final assessment of triumph and defeat in reaching the six efa goals. before the united nations adopts new sustainable development goals, it is essential to consider the underlying theories of monitoring. this essay address two basic questions and then reviews the theoretical basis of the “soft power” of monitoring. it first asks: was there progress toward efa goals since jomtien? yes, as seen from evidence presented in the gmr. do policy reforms, state-action, and global governance promote this progress? the evidence is less clear. after touching on these questions, the essay discusses how monitoring effects change from the perspective of either neo-realism or constructivism. both theories offer insights about monitoring, but constructivism provides a clearer view. the implications for capacity building are then discussed. in 2015 education for all (efa), the world’s most sustained social movement in education, concludes its 25-year cycle, and the global monitoring report (gmr) publishes its final assessment of triumph and defeat in reaching the six efa goals. now international efforts are focused on defining new sustainable development goals, including education as just one of 17 comprehensive goals. but now is also the time to stand back and ask hard questions. the twin assumptions behind declared goals are, first, that progress is possible and, second, there is some purpose to measuring, comparing, and publicizing progress. the first assumption seems safe, provided governments and international organizations are serious about the goals they endorse. defending the second assumption, after a critical review, is the aim of this essay. before the united nations (un) adopts a new monitoring framework based on new targets that will replace those of the millennium development goals (mdgs) and the efa movement, and before the un authorizes a new accounting of progress, it is important to ascertain the effect of monitoring. doing so would require an empirical effort beyond the scope of this essay. as a first step, however, it is essential to consider the underlying theories of monitoring. the hope of periodic reports from unicef, undp, ilo, who, or the world bank is that assessments of change can promote the very changes they try to monitor. it is only a “hope” because these organizations have no enforcement apparatus to hold nations or multilateral organizations to account for neglecting declarations or national ratifications of treaties. soft power works because of the accepted legitimacy of the apparatus for assessing and reporting on adherence to shared norms. what were the shared norms or treaties monitored by the gmr? in reality, there were no efa treaties, and so the monitoring of educational progress differs from reports mandated by international law. for example, the convention on the rights of the child required periodic reporting on possible violations. also, when thinking about public health, there is near universal agreement about the need to eliminate disease, reduce infant mortality, and promote longevity. who’s campaign of health for all during the 1980s was not controversial, and so could achieve progress without a treaty or legal sanctions. by contrast, efa never generated the unanimity that is reflected in public health goals, and neither could it coerce nations into compliance since there are no “violations”. what efa did generate was does watching help? current issues in comparative education !73 something few movements have sustained over such a long period: an independent, researchbased progress report. however, even before addressing this article’s main questions about how watching and reporting on efa may advance the very change it documents, there are two issues that should at least be considered. first, was there indeed progress needing to be explained? and, second, does any agency at all cause such change, or are policies and declarations themselves the endogenous effects of deeper demographic or economic change? was there progress toward efa goals since jomtien? it is a question well worth the volumes of research it provoked. much of the research has been funded, synthesized and published by the gmr, whose findings are widely available in un languages since 2002 (the first monitoring report of 2001 was administered by unesco, authored by new york times columnist edward fiske, and directed by abhimanyu singh, who is discussed further below). the 1990 targets formulated in jomtien, thailand were deliberately imprecise, and efa targets became only slightly more precise ten years later at the world education forum in dakar, senegal. however, it has been possible to document substantial movement toward the six efa goals, as well as in finance. figure 1. growth in continuation rates from primary to lower school, 1990 – 2012. source: unesco institute for statistics. notes: for 1990, 1999, and 2012, the bars indicate the numbers of students in seventh grade as a percentage of children who had studied in sixth grade the previous year. countries are ordered by the relative size of increase since 2000, compared to increase during the 1990s. for details see the 2015 global monitoring report. close reading of the gmr’s research (including some that i contributed over the last year) shows there were countries that continued and countries that even accelerated their progress since the inception of efa, notwithstanding that none of the efa goals have yet been fully post current issues in comparative education!74 attained worldwide. two examples illustrate the extent and difference in national-level change: the first regarding youth access to schooling, and the second indicating equitable progress in adult literacy. the efa movement never created a post-primary school target, but the transition rate by primary students to the lower secondary level is a good indicator of the availability of basic education. figure 1 illustrates the transition rates in 1990 for a range of countries where there was still room for progress. most countries shown in figure 1 universalized primary schooling since 1990, and so they might have been expected to decrease their transition rates as the primary denominator expanded. nonetheless, all the countries we considered in the 2015 gmr showed visible and positive change. so far, so good: there is a phenomenon to be explained! figure 1 also shows the timing of when change occurred. in countries on the left side of figure 1, most change happened during the 1990s. countries on the right side clearly accelerated their provision of lower secondary school in more recent years, after the dakar framework for action, and after progress began to be tracked and publicized by the gmr. in at least one case the efa itself played a direct role. senegal – host to the world education forum in 2000 – used the dakar framework for action in its rationale for extending free and compulsory education in 2004, and efa also helped reconcile proponents of state-administered and religious schooling (villalón and bodian, 2012). figure 2. growth of gender parity in literacy rates, 1990 2015 source: unesco institute for statistics. note: countries are ordered by the relative size of increased gender parity since 2000, compared to increase during the 1990s. literacy rates are self-reported by household members in a national census or household survey; they are not based on direct assessments of literacy. for details see the 2015 global monitoring report. does watching help? current issues in comparative education !75 a different indicator of progress is for equitable adult literacy. the dakar framework for action declared not just that countries should improve literacy, but that special attention should be given to women’s literacy because most illiterates were women (at least according to records of national censuses that were then being used to measure literacy as a binary variable). the 2015 gmr reveals that only a handful of the countries with low levels of literacy increased their rates to reach the ambitious targets set in dakar. yet women’s literacy rates are increasing faster than men’s rates, and so rates of women’s literacy are moving toward substantial parity with men’s literacy rates. figure 2 shows literacy parity around 1990, around 1999, and the parity statistic estimated for 2015 by the unesco institute for statistics (uis). as in figure 1, the trends for women’s parity are presented in countries where there was information at these three time points and where parity was originally low. there was obvious change and, again, this is good news, mainly for the women living in these countries, but also for education researchers, because there is something to be researched and explained. the left side of figure 2 shows the countries that made greatest progress during the 1990s. the right side shows the countries where increased parity occurred mainly since dakar (and since countries’ progress began to be monitored). do policy reforms, state-action, and global governance promote this progress? a big assumption lies beneath the specific questions about how monitoring might advance education. for, underlying the specifics, there is a premise that should be clearly stated because it, too, has been questioned and problematized: planned actions by states and their lobbyists – so goes this assumption drive educational expansion and improvement. while it seems reasonable, the question has been debated over generations of comparative education research (it is a debate avoided, interestingly, by practitioners and advocacy organizations). at issue is whether any policies at all expand educational opportunities. alternatively, education could grow exponentially as a function of urbanization, population, or economic growth, just as paved roads and electric power spread worldwide, even without a global movement of “electricity for all.” this question of causation concerned the classic social theorists. dialectical materialism viewed education merely as the by-product of economic structures profiting the ruling class. “the class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production,” marx famously wrote in the german ideology. max weber shared with marx a view of education as an epiphenomenon, as a side-show. weber saw schooling as an outgrowth of the new bureaucratic authority’s need for “expertise” and, hence, the need to train experts (collins 1979). emile durkheim saw the division of labor as fundamental to education and he saw school curricula as functioning to prepare workers in a diverse economy. the legacy of these classic views assigned education only a supporting role in a script starring other leading actors. but that script came under a new, bold direction when human capital and modernization theorists began to steer un actions during the 1960s. together they took for granted that education can be a force for change and that education was not merely an economic by-product and it did not play merely a supporting role. education advocates became important protagonists. this protagonism reached its height during the 1960-1970 un “development decade,” when member states and the un secretary general were urged by the un general assembly (1961) to promote education in order to promote economic development. the secretary general was requested to take “measures to accelerate the elimination of illiteracy, hunger, and disease.” the general assembly also called for new measures “for further promoting education in general and vocational and technical training in the developing countries.” these and other measures post current issues in comparative education!76 (including land reform) were to lead to the 5% annual growth rate target of the development decade resolution. the optimistic assumptions by manpower planners, human capital theorists, and modernization theorists were problematized in the 1970s. material prosperity did not materialize everywhere. also, by then it became clear that education was expanding rapidly, often without any planning at all but as a consequence of increased social demand from the public. there were known historical cases – japan following the meiji restoration, according to ronald dore (1976) where state action preceded educational growth. but there were many other cases where legislation to universalize free schooling (as in the 1944 education act for england and wales) followed a period of expansion, and came after most children already were attending school. the act was less the driver than the manifestation of broad social change and political movement. in the field of comparative education, this argument found new expression though contributions by john meyer and his students. meyer (1971) published his first analysis in the comparative education review showing that the expansion of education was autonomous from particular policies or intentions. a more sweeping finding, published later with his collaborators was that “education has expanded everywhere as a function of the available population to be educated and of the level of education existing in 1950. education everywhere expanded independent of the constraints and stimuli that economic, political, and social structures provided in previous times” (meyer et al. 1977, p. 255). one possibility is that there was an emerging global consensus by publics and governments about the value of schooling. this notion led eventually to a theory of a “world culture” with shared values about the equal individual worth of potential citizens (boli and thomas, 1999). that interpretation has never been fully accepted by critics, who are skeptical of the rise of universal values about education and who see profound cultural and political differences worldwide. critics also note that, if we zoom in to the national level, state actions and local politics clearly can shape the construction of education (fuller and rubinson 1992; andersonlevitt 2003; carney et al. 2012). and yet, general exponential growth is undeniable if we zoom out to view evidence over long historical periods. in all regions, and with only a few exceptions, education has expanded – for girls, for minorities, and for the poor regardless of differences in particular government policies. this expansion underscores a need for some humility when assessing the impact of efa or its monitoring. the pattern of long-term exponential growth is especially challenging for researchers who wish to interpret acceleration at any particular moment as an effect of historical events (perhaps a “jomtien effect” or a “dakar effect”). if education is indeed expanding exponentially, then asking whether change accelerated after any particular year will usually lead to an affirmative finding. that is, after accounting for ceiling effects,2 it usually appears that progress quickened in the years following any presumptive event, whether it is the fall of the berlin wall, the terrorist attacks of 2001, or the world forums in jomtien and dakar. as seen in figures 1 and 2, some countries made greater progress during the 1990s in terms of secondary school transition rates or women’s parity in literacy. some countries made more progress after 2000, but all countries made progress relative to their situations around 1990. clues for a theory of change so, there has been demonstrated progress toward efa goals, and there has been regular public accounting about this change. if watching helps promote progress, then how might that work? one possibility is that the apparent causality is reversed: only countries already subscribing to efa goals and already able to improve education would agree to join a movement where they must share information about themselves. in this sense, treaty conventions or informal does watching help? current issues in comparative education !77 declarations like the efa merely affirm the coincidence of existing values among the parties to an agreement. however, this possibility cannot explain change when virtually every country joins in a world declaration (as with efa) or ratifies a treaty convention almost universally (as with the convention on the rights of the child (crc)). there is more research on change due to human rights accords than about education declarations. in the 1990s, rights theorists began to understand that treaties and declarations did not merely reflect interests of their signatories, but also socialized them through changing the discourse and the framing of problems. one way this could happen is by redefining what issues are considered “problems.” as burstein (1991, p. 346) wrote about the united states, policy domains, as social constructions, are created through interactions among organizations. this means that policies can be changed partly by problem recognition and agenda setting, and this is likely not only inside countries but also on a global scale. outside the u.s., global norms and expectations for countries (whether concerning human rights, the environment, copyright protection, or education) are expressed through treaty conventions within the united nations legal system. in at least some cases, there is evidence that they can help protect rights of citizens in signatory countries (for a review, see haferburton 2012). boyle and kim (2009) showed that a nation’s ratification of child and human rights treaties indirectly affected children’s well-being by empowering civil society organizations. byun et al. (2014) further showed that the timing of ratification of a child labor treaty was related to the degree of the disadvantage suffered by working children in their academic proficiency. one example of how international agreements affect education can be seen from mexico’s ratification of the crc. indirectly, the crc changed the politics of education and child labor advocacy by recognizing children’s activities outside of schools as problematic. the convention imposed a mandatory requirement of reporting to the committee on the rights of the child. this reporting then fueled the advocacy by several agents, as well as the mexican government (post and sakurai, 2001). there was a competition among child advocates over the terms of debate and the ideals to be invoked for defending children. the competitive relationships between political coalitions, ngos, and the mexican state created a public bidding to promote children’s rights and welfare. competition over the terms of debate and evidence took place before international governing authorities, including unicef and the international labour organization (see figure 3). the process led to much greater publicity of child labor as a problem as ngos and political opposition groups proposed solutions to address child labor. these solutions involved more inclusive and more relevant schools. there is nothing unique about mexico’s competitive mobilization by different actors who, each for their own reasons, problematized child labor and sought improved education. based on their analysis of human rights campaigns, rise and sikkink (1999) found that socialization processes start when actors adapt their behavior in accordance with the norm for initially instrumental reasons. governments want to remain in power, while domestic ngos seek the most effective means to rally the opposition. the more they ‘talk the talk,’ however, the more they entangle themselves in a moral discourse which they cannot escape in the long run. (p. 16) in recent years, political scientists have shown that a human rights regime – once acceded to by governments – begins a spiral of activity leading to public awareness and demands. the puzzle remains of why any country would cede its domestic sovereignty. as simmons (2009) asked: “why should a sovereign government explicitly agree to subject its domestic rights practices to the standards and, increasingly, the scrutiny of the rest of the world?” (p. 59). post current issues in comparative education!78 figure 3. international agencies and domestic political actors in mexico in 1990s source: post and sakurai (2001) perhaps one answer is that such “agreements” are illusory. political scientists in a neo-realist tradition argue that states never voluntarily concede sovereignty over domestic affairs, and suppose that any change brought about from international pressure must result from incentives, the threat of force (enforcement), or coercion. risse and his colleagues (2013) have usefully summarized the mechanisms, modes, and underlying logic of change that has been theorized in the human rights literature (see table 1). table 1. possible effects of human rights regimes mechanisms modes of social interaction underlying logic of action coercion use of force, legal enforcement hierarchical authority incentives sanctions, rewards logic of consequences persuasion arguing, naming/shaming, discursive power logic of arguing and/or logic of appropriateness capacitybuilding institution-building, education, training creating the preconditions for logics of consequences or appropriateness source: risse, ropp, and sikkink, 2013, p. 16 neo-realists thus focus on the coercion and incentives for nation-states under an international legal order or alliance of power. by contrast, constructivists emphasize the persuasive and capacity-building potential of global agreements. capacity-building is crucial for weak states i.l.o. to promote social development through the protection of workers’ welfare, conventions 138 and 182 seek to remove children from dangerous occupations. ilo borrows human rights arguments from crc and unicef. mexican government education is a social right for the mexican people (prior to 1993) and a human right for individual mexican children (after constitutional reform). government advocates that enforcement and interpretation of ilo treaties and the crc are the responsibility of sovereign nations. unicef justice demands that childhood be free of exploitation, and that the best interest of the child override other economic concerns. borrows social development arguments from ilo and world bank. legitimizes child advocacy groups through crc. mexican advocates for children: ednica, comexani, etc. mexican labor organizations and teacher unions opposition political parties does watching help? current issues in comparative education !79 with limited abilities to implement agreements, even when their leaders intend to do so at the time of joining a movement such as efa. which of these interpretations makes best sense of the function of monitoring and publicizing of information about progress in education? neo-realism as a first answer to this question, it seems that neo-realist perspectives on power can elucidate some elements of the efa movement. countries may not have entered voluntarily into the declaration but, instead, could have been pushed by non-state actors (chabbott, 1998; chabbott, 2003; mundy & murphy, 2001). countries may also have been incentivized by the promise of greater financial assistance from donors. in either case, a neo-realist interpretation could help to explain the importance of monitoring and the publication of information. access to information plays a key role in enforcement of legal treaties. information about educational inequality can give national interest groups the tools to mount a successful legal challenge to governments.3 another type of enforcement could be through economic disincentives for ignoring an apparent global consensus. during the 1980s, as economic recession created dependency on international donors and lenders, aid began to be conditional on countries adjusting their spending and prioritizing certain education reforms (samoff 1994; klees et al., 2012). what might appear, on the surface, as an expression of a “world culture” in support of education has been interpreted as sometimes the result of domination (carney et al. 2012). closely related to the coercive power of disincentives was the promise of incentives to ensure progress, a feature also sensible from a neo-realist perspective. the dakar framework for action famously affirmed that “no countries seriously committed to education for all will be thwarted in their achievement of this goal by a lack of resources,” and it promised new international assistance for countries that commit to reaching the ambitious efa goals. monitoring progress was suggestively linked – though never explicitly – to financial support from international partners. although finance is not the focus of this essay, something ought to be said about the success of the envisioned feedback loop between monitoring and financial support. the story is brief, unfortunately. economists at the beginning of the efa movement had tried to estimate the costs and international aid needed to universalize primary school (haddad 1990; colclough and lewin, 1993). but, even before the creation of the global monitoring report, no evidence could be found of any substantial effect of efa on increased donations during the 1990s (bennell and furlong, 1998). the summative 2015 gmr assessment of finance shows that donor responses to the dakar framework were anemic at best. the efa coordination architecture did not match country efforts with international support to achieve goals. could there be a feed-back loop specifically from monitoring to donor activity? gaps in financing are reported regularly by the gmr. but there appears to be no impact of this information or about country progress on the availability of additional funding. donors and governments responded more to national mobilization than to global assessments of progress. it is unlikely that monitoring promoted education for all by its linkage to funding, and thus the neo-realist interpretation of information-gathering and dissemination appears doubtful. constructivism a constructivist perspective probably offers an even stronger argument and explanation for monitoring than does neo-realism. except in the most extreme and exceptional cases, human rights treaties (and, possibly, non-binding declarations like efa) effect policy change through persuasion and capacity building, not the sanctions and incentives hypothesized by neorealism. global movements like efa work by publicizing information, which can affect ideas and strategic calculations of publics. that international human rights regimes diffuse information is an assumption of research on how such regimes effect improvement. in the words of hafer-burton (2012), “for regimes to socialize or persuade people into upholding human rights, they must convey some new information that changes people’s beliefs about the value and appropriateness of their actions.…” (p. 283). post current issues in comparative education!80 the regulatory influence of published indicators is not mainly exercised directly by the organization promulgating the information. as davis et al. (2012) have shown, in many cases “indicators have regulatory effects primarily because they have been embraced as guides to appropriate conduct by actors within the state shaping national governmental decisions on national governance” (p. 16). the prestige that accompanies positive evaluations can incentivize countries to seek to upgrade their world status by responding to domestic as well as international pressures (world bank, 2015, p. 44). one inspiration for information gathering and publicity in children’s rights, world health, labor conditions, or corruption comes from reports by civil society organizations. these include, for example, anti-slavery international (founded 1839) and amnesty international (1961), both of which directly opposed governments’ violations of human rights. however, there was another more immediate inspiration for monitoring efa goals. as a social movement, the efa comprised governments which publically albeit informally agreed to goals for their own national progress. efa monitoring thus does not openly oppose governments but, instead, publicizes their progress toward or retrogression from their own declared goals. in this sense, monitoring in education owes a debt to helsinki watch, which was established to monitor the soviet union’s compliance to the helsinki accords.4 after helsinki watch was established in 1978, there were other watches created for the americas (1981), asia (1988), africa (1989) and the middle east (1990). the independent watch groups were eventually merged to create the present day human rights watch (neier, 2012). the reports of these watch groups serve as a template for the monitoring of education progress. the success of helsinki watch and its offspring, at the end of the cold war, helped to inspire the efa movement to adopt a human rights approach while downplaying the early development decade expectations and agenda. one consequence was that research into the benefits of education appeared less urgent than it had been during the development decade. a renewed focus on sustainable development after 2015 may re-energize investigation of the social and economic consequences of different forms of education for youth and adults. it may also connect education monitoring with other “watches” that have continued to take a developmentalist view of social progress, including the ngo-led social watch and the undp’s own human development report, both of which followed less in the human rights tradition of helsinki watch than in the tradition of the world bank’s world development report, which began in 1978. details on the early development reports are found in yusuf et al. (2009). rights reports effect change by speaking directly to citizens, not governments, since governments already possess information about their own rights violations (or their failure to make educational progress). simmons (2009) argues that: nobody cares more about human rights than the citizens potentially empowered by [rights] treaties. no external – or even transnational – actor has as much incentive to hold a government to its commitments as do important groups of its own citizens. citizens mobilize strategically. but these strategic calculations are influenced by what they value (or come to value) as well as the probability of succeeding in realizing these values. an international treaty regime has the potential to influence both the ideational and strategic components of mobilization’s expected value. (p. 154) from a constructivist theoretical interpretation, information works because states are not the only or even the main agents of educational change. ngos and transnational social movements – of which the efa is a prime exemplar – are equally as important even though they lack financial resources or coercive power. the un has legitimated the gmr’s delivery of information because the un has “generative powers” (barnett and finnemore, 2009). it is able does watching help? current issues in comparative education !81 “to constitute or construct new actors in world politics, create new interests for actors, and define shared international tasks.” monitoring progress or a lack of progress helps to define while focusing attention on these shared tasks. however, as hafer-burton (2012) concedes, “we know surprisingly little about what information international human rights regimes actually convey and to which audiences, or how it affects individual decision making on human rights” (p. 283). the experience of efa can help us to address the larger question raised by hafer-burton of how information effects change. in the case of efa, new non-state actors have used concessions to human rights declarations to influence domestic politics. in what is still the most important single study of the jomtien forum, colette chabbott (1998; cf. chabbott, 2003) showed that “international development professionals… used the declaration of universal human rights and other existing declarations as a basis for drafting a declaration and plan of actions couched in terms of human rights so often repeated that no nation-state could resist the invitation to accept by acclamation” (p. 9). chabbott’s analysis of the role played by development professional at jomtien was amplified in a study by mundy and murphy (2001) of advocacy at the dakar world education forum. the umbrella organization of the global campaign for education pushed the framers of the efa movement to accept free (not just affordable) education as a central goal. how might governments alter their support of education as a consequence of a watch by national or international agencies that then publicize these countries’ records? on the positive side, political parties, civil society organizations, and ngos can use information publicized by a legitimated, non-partisan, international source as a tool to lobby for change. however, there also could be negative consequences of negative publicity. twenty-five years ago, when information was far less available about progress and failures (e.g. about reaching universal primary coverage or gender equity), government leaders were more willing to join the club by supporting social movements, responding to peer pressure and exhortations to do the right thing. signing a declaration, or even a treaty convention, was costless for repressive or negligent governments when there was no way to verify compliance. today, by contrast, could successful monitoring lead to reluctance by some governments to embrace universal, common targets, including universal targets in education? a current debate within the united nations system is over the universality versus nationally-specific targets that ought to be included in sustainable development goals (including targets advocated by unesco). some governments appear more hesitant than in 1990 to embrace universal goals that later become mandates for “naming and shaming.” this shows the power of information gathering and the near instantaneous publication of information in the internet age. ministries realize today more than in 2000, and certainly more than in 1990, what it means to be “monitored.” one of the participants in dakar forum was cream wright, who subsequently became chief of education at unicef. in a recent commentary, wright (2014) urged greater ownership of the efa movement by countries. “it is time for countries to own efa. countries should not have to embrace … goals and targets that are unrealistic…. a country should adopt goals that are within its reach and for which it can exercise full agency.” capacity building? the need for local ownership of a global movement underscores the fourth theoretical channel whereby risse et al. (2013) hypothesize that rights regimes effect change: through building a capacity for nations to monitor themselves. in fact this was an implicit aim of the efa movement. in jomtien, countries pledged that “each country, in determining its own intermediate goals and targets… will, in the process, establish a time table to harmonize and schedule specific activities….” jomtien envisioned a shared responsibility whereby post current issues in comparative education!82 “governments, organizations and development agencies [will] evaluate achievements and undertake comprehensive policy review at regional and global levels.” this was made no more precise in the dakar framework for action (dfa) which, although it referred often to “monitoring,” never specified exactly the entities to do this at different levels. nor did the dfa spell out the consequences of failure to provide information for monitoring, nor offer incentives for cooperation in monitoring. to the contrary, the dfa stated that “the heart of efa activity lies at the country level. national efa forums will be strengthened or established to support the achievement of efa. all relevant ministries and national civil society organizations will be systematically represented in these forums” (paragraph 17). the dfa also affirmed (paragraph 18) that: systematic involvement of, and co-ordination with, all relevant civil society and other regional and subregional organizations are essential. these regional and subregional efa forums will be linked organically with, and be accountable to, national efa forums. their functions will be: co-ordination with all relevant networks; setting and monitoring regional/subregional targets; advocacy; policy dialogue; the promotion of partnerships and technical co-operation; the sharing of best practices and lessons learned; monitoring and reporting for accountability; and promoting resource mobilization. national and regional ownership of efa and coordination by stakeholders was important to abhimanyu singh, who helped plan the world education forum in dakar after serving as the national efa coordinator for india. he not only chaired the global drafting committee of the dakar framework for action, but he also was the director of the first post-dakar monitoring report. in that 2001 unesco report, efa activity at the national level, through partnerships with civil society organizations (csos), was considered of paramount importance (p. 11). the report also identified the establishment of national efa forums and their quality as a major indicator of progress, finding with concern that 48 out of the 66 countries responding to a survey had no capacity for data collection or monitoring (p. 24). singh (2014) has recently looked back with disappointment on the failure to develop national capacities for monitoring, commenting that “the expectation that the gmr would stimulate preparation of annual monitoring reports to assess efa progress within countries and regions has not yet materialized.” to build a capacity to achieve change may be unrealistic for a report that is not even translated fully into all un languages. connecting with publics and building national capabilities remains an opportunity for future monitoring. electronic dissemination of messages (at least in english) can help with this. according to an independent external review of the gmr in 2014 by unesco, there was an average of more than 13,000 facebook page visits every week to the gmr page, and a total of 125,000 unique views of its online blog columns. perhaps because of language barriers, this circulation (as with the printed reports) is better among readers based in ngos, academic institutions, governments, and development agencies. a survey of 384 users of the gmr reported it provided far less information for public opinion generally, beyond education professionals. from a constructivist theoretical perspective, there do seem to be further opportunities to promote capacity by greater engagement beyond the existing ngos and csos and development organizations. however, to begin to promote this would require decentr alizing the means to analyze information. the gmr has recently begun to do this with an interface for household survey data sets, though still only in english. aside from technical and language-related barriers to capacity-building, there is another theoretical obstacle that should be considered in order to advance further. as the efa movement became more like a hierarchical organization – both globally and within countries – it achieved greater efficiency. but grass-roots participation – essential for a national-level does watching help? current issues in comparative education !83 interest in monitoring – may be left behind, especially in countries such as ghana where there are relatively few users of english in everyday life even though the main efa coalition used english in its relations with international partners. a survey of education stakeholders in ghana found the ghana national education campaign coalition (gnecc), while visible internationally and in the global partnership for education, was “woefully unnoticed” outside the capital. strutt and kepe (2010) found that the efa movement had effectively delegated policy goals formulated at the global level to a cso without deep roots in local communities. echoing the comments by cream wright, their critique urged greater ownership of the international agenda. however, they also observed provocatively that “there has been no willingness on the part of donors, international organizations, and ingos to relinquish, or at least share, their decision-making power. as such, the greatest potential of what development processes could harness, local participation and ownership, has been sacrificed….” (p. 274). conclusion: shaman or meteorologist? only recently did anyone attempt to watch education in hopes of improving it in the countries being watched. but many readers of cice know that international comparisons began after the french enlightenment. the first systematic catalogue of education policies, processes, and results grew from the faith that learning would liberate humanity from ignorance, poverty, and despotism. m.a. jullien catalogued the educational practices of swiss cantons (counties) by collecting responses from detailed questionnaires to school administrators. jullien’s purpose was not to change education elsewhere but to discern general principles that could be used to improve schools in france. following jullien, victor cousins brought his observations of prussia to france, again with the idea of improving french policies. americans like horace mann and mann butler toured europe to bring new ideas to their state systems of education (in massachusetts and kentucky). they would have been puzzled by the notion that their research should be used to effect change in the schools in prussia or switzerland. the language we now use to research and disseminate knowledge about the education for all movement differs from the project of recent comparative education research. to “monitor” health cross-nationally, or to monitor the world’s economic growth, poverty, inequality, or monitor the world’s progress toward shared education goals, means more than merely to “follow,” to “observe,” or to “track” change over time.5 rather, the intention and connotation in english is to audit nation states and civil societies, to judge them, and to hold them to account, using an analogy with fiscal accounting. one early working title for the 2015 global monitoring report was “what have we achieved?”(emphasis added). fortunately, this was soon dropped. people with the job of monitoring trends have no divine power to change which way the wind blows. then again, watching is not without effect. if successful, it highlights some ideas (while obscuring others) and changes the way that ordinary people talk about education. in this essay, i have tried only to address the basic theoretical questions about the processes wherein research and reporting by monitors – be they linked to efa or to other goals – could effect change at the national level. hopefully, after further reflection, we will generate empirical questions that can be investigated in the coming years. we still know little about when and why monitoring reports enter the political discourse and become used in legislation. where are they taken up by national institutions, by teacher organizations, by religious leaders? how do ngos use the monitoring reports produced by the gmr and by other agencies? these questions can be addressed through documentary sources and careful case studies of policy change, supplemented by interviews. after 25 years of efa, and after 14 years of tracking global change, it is time to track the tracking and to assess its agenda-setting and capacitybuilding impact. post current issues in comparative education!84 notes: [1] the opinions expressed in this essay are those of the author, but are not necessarily the views of unesco or the efa global monitoring report. i am grateful for useful suggestions by the cice editors and from mark ginsburg, nihan blanchy koseleci, sobhi tawil, stephen carney, asma zubairi, colette chabbott, paula razquín, yoko mochizuki, and riho sakurai. [2] a “ceiling effect” refers to the slowing growth of any demographic change as the population nears 100% saturation. it is more difficult and takes longer to cut illiteracy rates by half if a country starts at a 95% literacy rate than if its starting point is a 50% rate of literacy. [3] for example, readers of cice will be interested to know that a 2005 collaboration by researchers (many of them then students at columbia teachers college, loyola of chicago, and penn state) submitted an amicus curiae legal brief to the inter-american human rights court to support the case of two girls in the dominican republic who were of haitian origin and who had been denied a right to education (yean & bosico v. dominican republic, case no. 12.189). in the short term, the lawsuit led to a ruling by the inter-american court of human rights requiring the dominican government to reform public policy to address historic discrimination in its birth registration and education systems. however, in the longer term since 2005 there have been political and legal reverses for this progress, and citizenship is still in limbo for many haitian-dominican children. even legally binding agreements to abide by international law do not necessarily change state actions. [4] the helsinki accords were part of the 1975 conference on security and cooperation (held in helsinki) in 1975 between the united states, canada, the soviet union and european countries. these accords permitted independent monitoring of rights in the signatory states. [5] the terms for “monitor” in spanishand french-versions of the gm – seguir and suivre – are closer to those non-judgmental meanings. david post is senior policy analyst, unesco, and professor of education at penn state university. email: post@psu.edu. references anderson-levitt, k. (ed). (2003). local meanings, global schooling: anthropology and world culture theory. new york: palgrave macmillan. barnett, m. & finnemore, m. (2009). political approaches. in s. daws and t. weiss the oxford handbook on the united nations. oxford university press. oxford. bennell, p. & and furlong, d. (1998). has jomtien made any difference? trends in donor funding for education and basic education since the late 1980s. world development, 26,45-59. boli, j. & thomas, g. (eds.). (1999). constructing world culture. stanford, ca: stanford university press. boyle, e. & minzee, k. (2009). international human rights law, global economic reforms, and child survival and development rights outcomes. law & society review, 43, 455-90. burstein, p. (1991). policy domains: organization, culture, and policy. annual review of sociology, 17,327-350. does watching help? current issues in comparative education !85 byun, s., henck, a., & post, d. (2014). cross-national variations in student employment and academic performance: the roles of national context and international law. comparative education review, 55, 621-652. carney, s., rappleye, j., & silova, i. (2012). between faith and science: world culture theory and comparative education. comparative education review, 56,366-393 chabbott, c. (1998). constructing educational consensus: international development professionals and the world conference on education for all. international journal of educational development, 18,207–218. chabbott, c. (2003). constructing education for development: international organizations and education for all. new york: psychology press. collins, r. (1979). the credential society: an historical sociology of education and stratification, new york: academic press. colclough, c., & lewin, k. (1993). educating all the children: strategies and priorities for primary schooling in the south. oxford: clarendon press. davis, k., fisher, a, kingsbury, b., & merry, s. (2012). governance by indicators: global power through quantification and rankings. new york: oxford university press dore, r. (1976). the diploma disease: education, qualification and development. berkeley: university of california press, 1976. education for change, ltd. (2014). external evaluation of the education for all global monitoring report. retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/multimedia/hq/ed/gmr/pdf/external_e valuation_gmr_final.pdf fuller, b. & rubinson, r. (eds). (1992). the political construction of education: the state, school expansion, and economic change. new york: praeger. haddad, w. d. (1990). education for all. prospects, 20(4), 525-536. hafner-burton, e., & tsutsui, k. (2005). human rights in a globalizing world: the paradox of empty promises. american journal of sociology 110 (5), 1373-1411. hafner-burton, e. (2012). international regimes for human rights. annual review of political science, 15, 265 -286 klees, s., samoff, j. & stromquist, n. (eds.) (2012). world bank and education: critiques and alternatives. rotterdam: sense. meyer, j., ramirez, f., rubinson, r, & boli-bennett, j. (1977). the world educational revolution, 1950-1970. sociology of education, 50,242-58. meyer, j. (1971). economic and political effects on national educational enrollment patterns. comparative education review, 15, 28-43. post current issues in comparative education!86 mundy, k. & murphy, l. (2001). transnational advocacy, global civil society? emerging evidence from the field of education. comparative education review 45, 85-126. neier, a. (2012). the international human rights movement: a history. princeton univ. press. post, d. & sakurai, r. (2001). recognizing a problem: the impact of global politics on child labor advocacy in mexico. international journal of educational policy, research, and practice, 3,120-155. risse, t., & sikkink, k. (1999). the socialization of international human rights norms into domestic practices. pps. 1-38 in t.risse, s.ropp, and k.sikkink, (eds.) the power of human rights: international norms and domestic change. new york: cambridge univ. press. risse, t., ropp, s., & sikkink, k. (2013). the persistent power of human rights: from commitment to compliance. new york: cambridge university press. samoff, j. (ed.). (1994). coping with crisis: austerity, adjustment, and human resources. new york and london: cassell. singh, a. (2014). the dakar process: substance over politics. [weblog comment]. retrieved from https://efareport.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/the-dakar-process-substance-over-politics/ simmons, b. (2009). mobilizing for human rights: international law in domestic politics. new york: cambridge university press. strutt, c. & kepe. t. (2010). implementing education for all—whose agenda, whose change? the case study of the ghana national education campaign coalition. international journal of educational development, 30,369–376 wright, c. (2014). engaging with efa: where have all the lessons gone? [weblog comment]. retrieved from https://efareport.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/engaging-with-efa-wherehave-all-the-lessons-gone/ un general assembly. (1961) resolution 1710 (xvi) “un development decade: a program for international economic cooperation.” retrieved from http://www.unpan.org/portals/0/60yrhistory/documents/ga%20resolution/ga%20r es%201710%28xvi%29.1961.pdf unesco. (2001). monitoring report on education for all. paris: unesco. villalón, l. & bodian, m. (2012). religion, demande sociale, et réformes éducatives au sénégal. gainsville, usa, center for african studies, university of florida. (working paper in series on africa power and politics.) world bank. (2015). world development report: mind, society, and behavior. washington, d.c.: world bank. yusuf, s., deaton, a., dervis, k., easterly, w., ito, t., & stiglitz, j. (2009). development economics through the decades: a critical look at 30 years of the world development report. washington, dc: world bank. retrieved from https://ope nknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/2586 1. editorial introduction.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 26, issue 2, special issue 2025 editorial introduction climate change, migration, and conflict: lessons in education sara pan-algarra teachers college, columbia university the special issue on climate change, migration, and conflict: lessons in education commemorates the 10th anniversary of the paris agreement. in 2015, 196 parties to the united nations climate change conference adopted a treaty to hold the increase in global average temperature below 2°c above pre-industrial levels, and limit the rise to 1.5°c. given the relevance of this international agreement and the vital role education plays in fostering knowledge about the effects of climate change, we invited potential contributors to reflect on what has been undertaken in education and what could be done differently to protect mother earth. we raised manifold questions, including: what is the relationship between education and climate change? what are the direct and indirect links between internal or international conflicts with environmental damage, and how do these intersections relate to education? to what extent do migration policies and projects in education account for the impacts of climate change on the lives of internally displaced persons, refugees, and migrants? what perspectives do indigenous epistemologies bring to education, considering climate change, migration, and conflict at policy, curriculum, and pedagogy levels? how is environmental justice interconnected with educational justice? upon a thorough review, the editorial board curated 12 publications from authors in comparative and international education (cie) and other fields that examine these areas of inquiry in different contexts and from a wide range of theoretical perspectives. this special issue was an opportunity to explore intersections between conflict and climate change with an emphasis on education, as well as a chance to dive deeper into educational research about how climate change can interrelate with migration. the manuscripts discuss lessons in education concerning climate change, migration, and conflict at various scales (personal, local, regional, and global). while some explore the historical progress in international agreements on climate change that are relevant to education policy and practice, other authors analyze primary data about the experiences of teachers vis-à-vis climate change education. we organized the special issue into 3 sections: articles, essays, and book reviews. the first part includes 6 research articles applying quantitative and qualitative data to address questions on the intersection between education and climate change. some make direct references to climate displacement and conflict. oren pizmony-levy and sarah alice wagner recognize the urgency to address the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. they argue that climate change education promotes climate action and © 2025, pan-algarra. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 26(2), 4-7. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en pan-algarra that teachers are central to the development and implementation of climate change education. through a partnership between teachers college, columbia university, and the new york city public schools, the research studies teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and practices on climate change and education in new york city, offering policy recommendations based on first-hand data. key findings include high concern and negative emotions about climate change. pizmony-levy and wagner (2025) identify that the school time devoted to climate change education has increased, but teachers continue to perceive the topic as one relevant to the stem curriculum. muhammad arif, aneta ismail, and yao jia li examine teacher resilience, coping strategies, and education continuity across primary schools after the 2022 balochistan floods in pakistan. analyzing data from semi-structured interviews and focus groups (n=15), arif and colleagues (2025) discuss how teachers changed their teaching methodologies, managed their emotions, faced psychological barriers, and used community resources to overcome the impacts of the floods in their classrooms and beyond. the study is critical for post-disaster recovery in pakistan, as it sheds light on the different challenges rural and urban educators confront, and the importance of fostering emotional regulation tools and social support networks for teachers. tien pham focuses on the impacts of climate change and climate displacement on children’s education. considering a human rights-based approach (hrba) framework and work in education in emergencies, pham (2025) combines literature and policy about the barriers climate-displaced students confront to access and remain in education. a section is devoted to gendered vulnerabilities, exploring literature on the effects of climate change and displacement on girls’ education. lauren madden analyzes interviews and classroom observations with 50 teachers in new jersey (nj), as nj was the first state in the united states (u.s.) to implement learning standards that support climate change education k-12 across all subject areas during the 2022-2023 academic year. madden (2025) finds that the principal mode of professional learning about climate change among teachers was self-directed. some attended specific workshops or webinars. many educators did not receive formal training beyond the introduction of climate change standards. the study calls for comprehensive and official professional development incorporating best practices about how and what to teach about climate change in nj k-12 classrooms. sarah marie kistner and maha shoaib exemplify how a collaborative autoethnography on the intersection of environmental crises, individual experiences, and education between two teachers in pakistan and the u.s. can offer relevant insights on the intimate effects of disasters in the lives and work of teachers. upon narrating their experiences with two distinct disasters, kistner and shoaib (2025) advocate for climate-just education, considering trauma-informed pedagogies and climate-responsive curricula. they discuss how the butterfly hug technique, emotional freedom technique (eft), and yoga nidra can support teachers and students to cultivate emotional resilience after current issues in comparative education 5 editorial introduction a disaster. the last article in this section by tianshu chen and debojyoti das is a qualitative case study about the impact of the 1.5 max initiative on climate change education across secondary schools in malawi, applying an education for sustainable development framework and decolonial theory. since indigenous knowledges are disregarded in malawi’s curricula, chen and das (2025) call for the integration of indigenous knowledges in local schools when educating students about climate change and environmental sustainability. the second section includes 4 essays discussing topics ranging from decolonial educational ecologies in cie, the just transition, to a critical analysis of the united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization (unesco) education for sustainable development 2030 framework. benjamin d. scherrer and tavis d. jules explore methods to study the intersections between climate change and education. scherrer and jules (2025) reconsider “educational approaches that do not rely on endless economic growth, extraction, and accumulation through dispossession” (p. 153). they question discourses about climate solutions, shedding light on the absence of black and indigenous knowledge systems and cosmologies in the united nations sustainable development goals. applying a decolonial educational ecology framework, both scholars highlight the importance of “creating alternative pathways toward more sustainable, just futures” (scherrer & jules, 2025, p. 153). the second essay by catherine wong overviews the trajectory of international agreements on climate change, climate displacement, and conflict to discuss limited climate financing in countries confronting environmental challenges the most. wong’s analysis shows that without investments in capacity development and education, the implementation of climate agreements will not be sustainable or effective. radhika iyengar, syed nitas iftekhar, matthew witenstein, and karen chand write about how the concept of ecopedagogy and grassroots work relate to climate justice and are essential for a just transition (jt). jt refers to approaches to guarantee integration of all members of society, and their livelihoods in sustainable development. the last essay in the special issue by srinitya duvvuri proposes a critical analysis of the unesco education for sustainable development 2030 framework (esd 2030). esd 2030 is a roadmap for countries to incorporate education for sustainable development across schools, universities, and other professional learning sectors. the third part of the special issue comprises two book reviews; one by debojyoti das, who explores anthropologist peter sutoris' book on educating for the anthropocene: schooling and activism in the face of slow violence (2022). jun kajee presents a book review about the ages of globalization: geography, technology, and institutions (2020) by economist jeffrey d. sachs. the reviewers emphasize how these books can aid educators and students in understanding the links between globalization and climate change. *** 6 current issues in comparative education pan-algarra i take the opportunity in this editorial introduction to highlight cice’s achievements during the 2024-2025 academic year. in terms of publications, we successfully published two special issues, one dedicated to human rights in comparative and international education. regarding our digital presence, a key development was the launch of our new website available in spanish, portuguese, and english. cice completed its application for the directory of open access journals (doaj), and we transferred cice: the podcast to a columbia university library podcast. our podcast is featured on spotify and apple, and our social media engagement was substantially enhanced across facebook, instagram, and x. none of these accomplishments would have been possible without the voluntary contributions of 21 graduate students from teachers college, columbia university. i hope that cice will continue to publish work that challenges and advances, in exciting ways, difficult and important conversations in cie. cice is a vital platform for rigorous critical inquiry and collaborative exchanges for scholars and practitioners worldwide to reflect on the past, present, and future of education. serving as the editor-in-chief this year has been an honor, and i extend my best wishes to the incoming leadership team. acknowledgments i would like to thank professor regina cortina at teachers college, columbia university, cice’s student-led executive board, cice’s international advisory board, the authors in this special issue, esther m. jackson and kathryn pope at the columbia university libraries, as well as everyone else who contributed to cice this academic year. sara pan-algarra is a doctoral candidate in comparative and international education at teachers college, columbia university. pan-algarra is the editor-in-chief of cice (2024-2025). contact information for cice-related matters, questions about upcoming publications, submission guidelines, and opportunities to be featured in our podcast, please contact cice@tc.columbia.edu. current issues in comparative education 7 https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/cice/issue/view/1044/321 https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/cice/issue/view/1044/321 https://cice.podcasts.library.columbia.edu/ https://open.spotify.com/show/2i663rhqwmnmhs5xrdxxad https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cice-podcast/id1625127306 https://www.facebook.com/cicejournal https://www.instagram.com/cice_tc/ https://x.com/tc_cice https://www.tc.columbia.edu/cice/editorial-board/executive-editorial-board-2024-2025/ https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/cice/about/editorialteam https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/cice/about/editorialteam mailto:cice@tc.columbia.edu © 2011 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 14(1): 24-37 assessing student engagement in china: responding to local and global discourse on raising educational quality heidi ross indiana university yuhao cen indiana university zejun zhou indiana university china’s heated education policy climate in 2010 indicated an increasing national concern for improving educational quality and educational quality assessment. despite glowing portraits of chinese education painted by international observers, the chinese public has expressed consistent dissatisfaction with educational quality. the inter-related research projects described in this article were launched with a desire to deepen comparative discussion of educational quality and to respond to china’s drive to improve and assess educational quality across all levels of schooling. this paper will introduce how educational quality is framed in key policy reform documents shaping chinese education over the next decade. this will provide the backdrop for findings from two research projects that represent an effort to re-focus quality and quality assessment debates on high school and college students and their educational experiences. derived and adapted from over a decade of robust research on student engagement in the u.s., the research projects include surveys on student engagement, a key factor in effective educational practice largely missing from chinese quality assessment frameworks and toolkits. ot long before shanghai’s pisa results caught the world’s attention in 2010, chinese educational authorities launched plans to support the country's goal to ‚build a moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2020‛ 1 (hu, 2007). shortly after, china experienced a year of educational media attention and policy-making frenzy. a key document, titled outline of china’s national plan for medium and long-term education reform and development 2010-2020 (hereafter the blueprint) debuted in july 2010 after three years of planning, multiple revisions, expert and public involvement. the blueprint outlines goals for all stages and aspects of education over the next decade. in january 2011, the state council, the ‚cabinet‛ of the central government of the people’s republic of china, issued a follow-up action plan for the blueprint (hereafter the action plan) detailing key implementation projects.2 these two documents have received unprecedented public scrutiny and provide the context for our examination of how chinese policy makers and educators are re-conceptualizing educational quality. serious public concern for quality assessment features prominently in new policies in response to a suffocating environment of test score-equivalent-quality and outcomen h. ross, y. cen, and z. zhou current issues in comparative education 25 centered assessments. as a result of reforms characterized by rapid educational expansion, devolution of funding, diversification of institutional missions, and the quest for world class schools, a nationwide debate has centered on how to define, measure, and achieve educational effectiveness and innovation. despite glowing portraits of chinese education painted by international observers, ministry of education (moe) officers, school administrators, and researchers have expressed consistent dissatisfaction with existing mechanisms. these are primarily standardized tests, research activity, and infrastructure measures for assessing the quality of student, faculty, and institutional outcomes. the inter-related research projects described in this article were launched with a desire to deepen comparative discussion of educational quality and to respond to china’s drive to improve and assess educational quality across all levels of schooling. the research projects’ use of student engagement surveys represents an effort to re-focus on the educational experiences of students in relation to education quality and new quality assessments. the phrase ‚student engagement‛ denotes the amount of time and effort students put into their studies and other educational activities in high school and college, and what they think of these experiences (fredricks, blumenfeld, & paris, 2004; kuh, 2003). derived and adapted from robust research on student engagement at indiana university, the national survey of student engagement-china (nsse-c) and the high school survey of student engagement-china (hssse-c) were designed to measure student engagement at undergraduate and high school levels respectively, a key factor in effective educational practice largely missing from chinese quality assessment frameworks. the two are distinct in their emphasis and methodology, but together provide insight on how debates about quality are largely consistent across secondary and post-secondary schooling. the surveys represent the first evaluation instruments to be used in china that focus on the concept of student engagement. a key feature of this project is the simultaneous development of surveys for both high school and college students. tracking the development of student engagement across the secondary and post-secondary years is crucial to understanding educational quality in the chinese context. high-stakes tests (and students’ ability to pay) determine college matriculation and also shape college experiences. a focus on student engagement allows researchers to explore factors that have impact on college access and success. it also allows policy makers and practitioners to address and act upon these factors. hssse-c data allow us to probe whether students’ activities in high schools are consistent with the normative performance demands reported by college students in nsse-c. complementing the high-stakes performance tests that characterize the chinese secondary school experience, hssse-c also allows us to begin to identify specific educational processes that are linked to outcomes that chinese standardized and entrance examination tests measure. in this article, we first analyze education quality improvement and quality assessment discourse in the new policies and their mandates for chinese high schools and colleges. we then trace the trajectories of the nssc-c and hssse-c projects and research findings in relation to quality improvement and assessment. our discussion of the nsse-c data draws on research already published in china, while our analysis of hssse-c data draws on its first 2007 pilot study in assessing student engagement in china 26 current issues in comparative education shanghai. we conclude by summarizing the significance of our student-centered approach, survey instruments, and specific conclusions for china’s new reform era. an analysis of chinese national policy on zhiliang assessment and evaluation for high schools & higher education akin to their counterparts in the u.s. and worldwide, chinese policy documents are frequently scrutinized to evaluate changing policy climates. examination of tifa, the chinese expression for ‚how policies are framed and formulated,‛ provides a useful starting point for comprehending what education policies intend and how their implementation is envisioned. our brief examination of the blueprint and corresponding action plan highlights two salient themes: systematic improvement of educational quality and innovation in education quality assessment/evaluation. this analysis serves as a backdrop for our introduction of the two student engagement projects, the hssse-c at the high school level and the nsse-c at the undergraduate level. the blueprint’s preamble summarizes china’s major educational challenges, namely that, ‚teaching contents and methods are relatively outdated, schoolwork burdens on primary and middle school students are too heavy, the promotion of quality education is arrested, our students are weak in their adaptability to society, and innovative, practical and versatile professionals are in acute shortage‛ (blueprint, 2010). quality improvement emerges as a catchphrase for resolving these perceived weaknesses,3 as evidenced by two of the blueprint’s five guiding principles, ‚reform and innovation‛ and ‚improving quality of education‛ (blueprint, 2010). one crucial innovation in the principle of ‚reform and innovation‛ is education quality assessment/evaluation reform. the proposed reform mandates for high schools that ‚a scientific teaching quality evaluation system shall be in place, and academic proficiency tests and comprehensive evaluation of student quality should be instituted throughout senior middle school education‛ (blueprint, 2010). for higher education, the blueprint advocates ‚a project to ensure undergraduate teaching quality and to transform college education shall be undertaken comprehensively. supervision over teaching shall be tightened up, and teaching quality guaranteed institutionally. college teaching evaluation shall be improved‛ (blueprint, 2010). of particular relevance to student-focused institutional reforms, the blueprint reiterates the significance of quality assessment/evaluation as a complex process demanding diverse assessment approaches that involve multiple stake holders: we will improve the evaluation of teaching. we will set up scientific and diverse benchmarks for such evaluation, according to teaching goals and concepts on talents or professionals. teaching quality shall be evaluated with the participation of government, schools, parents and communities. we will keep records of students and improve the assessment of comprehensive quality. diverse evaluation approaches that help promote student development shall be explored to encourage students to be optimistic and independent and become useful persons [emphasis added by authors] (blueprint, 2010). h. ross, y. cen, and z. zhou current issues in comparative education 27 in addition, the blueprint highlights quality assessment/evaluation of education processes in key reform experiments. for higher education this involves improving undergraduate education quality and teaching quality; for high schools ‚an educational quality monitoring and evaluating system shall be perfected and the findings of the evaluation should be publicized at regular intervals‛ (blueprint, 2010). the action plan adopts similar priorities. one of its ten special reform experiments is establishing an education quality monitoring and assessment mechanism for elementary, middle and high schools. as for higher education, the action plan aims to improve quality and implement an innovation-oriented academic evaluation system. despite the fact that the blueprint and action plan aim to diversify assessments and broaden participation, student voice and experience are largely missing and educational outcomes are prioritized over processes. as noted in the extended quotation above, students are mentioned merely in passing and only with regard to increasing participation in assessment/evaluation. the national survey on student engagement (nsse-china): focusing reform on improving undergraduate learning at the postsecondary level, quality improvement in ‘talent training’ (rencai peiyang), or teaching and learning, stands out in the blueprint: establish the central status of talent training in higher educational institutions. cultivate specialized talents and innovative talents that are persistent, ethical, knowledgeable and competent. increase input in teaching and learning. prioritize teaching in faculty evaluation<enhance the quality assurance system in teaching and learning. improve assessment of teaching and learning in higher education. (blueprint, 2010) here, assessment of teaching and learning in higher education primarily refers to the 2002-2008 national undergraduate teaching and learning evaluation (quanguo benke jiaoxue gongzuo shuiping pinggu, abbr. pinggu), a state-initiated and sponsored evaluation program. in addition to government effort in assessing quality, a number of centers and institutes publish annual university ranking reports. these rankings, regarded as assessments of institutional quality, have drawn enormous attention from the public as well as scholars and policy makers. distinct from these efforts of quality assessment, the nsse-c student engagement survey provides an alternative approach to addressing and assessing quality in higher education by adopting a student-centered perspective. it was modeled after the national survey of student engagement (nsse), which obtains information on an annual basis from north american fouryear colleges and universities about student participation in programs that are provided for their learning and personal development or engagement. administered by the center for postsecondary research at indiana university since 2000, nsse has attracted more than 1,400 four-year institutions in the united states and in canada to participate in the annual survey (nsse, 2010). the nsse instrument offers item-level data and summary institutional performance scores based on five benchmarks of student engagement (nsse, 2000) compared with peer institutions. these benchmarks include the level of academic challenge, active and assessing student engagement in china 28 current issues in comparative education collaborative learning, student-faculty interaction, enriching educational experiences, and supportive campus environment. as institutions are using nsse as an assessment tool, they also seek to convert results from the engagement surveys into actions that improve student experiences and educational effectiveness. each benchmark represents a domain area that is conveyable and actionable on campuses. chinese policy makers and educational researchers explicitly sought international models of higher education as they debated the structures and processes that lead to world class educational quality. heidi ross wondered whether an appropriately contextualized survey such as the nsse might provide a useful springboard for promoting cross-national dialogue on educational quality for three key reasons. first, student engagement surveys gather student responses about their college experiences and data about educational processes instead of inputs for teaching and learning. these inputs include infrastructure, expenditures on undergraduate education, teaching materials, and faculty numbers holding advanced degrees, which are prioritized in existing assessment systems. second, the student engagement survey elicits student voices by inviting students to share, deliberate on and learn from their perspectives on the quality of education received in colleges and universities. in contrast, existing assessment systems of national evaluations or rankings entail minimum participation of college students, the very participants who are described as the center of higher education. last but not least, results from the student engagement survey identify practices in higher education that are actionable for institutional diagnosis and improvement. the student engagement survey not only serves as an assessment tool for accreditation and accountability, but also provides institutions with information they can use to enhance educational quality. initiated by ross in collaboration with tsinghua university in china, nsse-c has developed into an influential project in china. based on nsse, the nsse-c instrument was translated into the chinese language and adapted to the chinese context4 by a team of doctoral students and a visiting professor from tsinghua university in the fall of 2007. the instrument was pre-tested in china with pilot surveys in six institutions in beijing in the winter of 2007, and further tested with cognitive interviews in five institutions of various types and in different regions in china, during the summer of 2008. the first full survey administration in 2009 was joined by 27 voluntarily participating institutions throughout china. in april 2009, the nsse-c research team held a national workshop at tsinghua university on project goals and survey administration. participating institutional researchers gathered at tsinghua university again in december 2009 to discuss experiences in analyzing, reporting and utilizing the survey data. two key questions structured discussions: (1) was the goal of assessment for improvement being adequately addressed by participating institutions? and (2) were the survey data merely an addition to respective institutional data banks, or utilized by institutional researchers to inform policies and practices? one institutional case we introduce here suggests that the nsse-c project has begun to enrich teaching and learning quality assessment discussions and practices. h. ross, y. cen, and z. zhou current issues in comparative education 29 based on the nsse-c 2009 data collected from undergraduate students at tsinghua university, dr. yan luo and her colleagues published a report on undergraduate education quality. the report triggered a series of initiatives. three examples of such activities were university-wide discussion and policy drafting in student-faculty interaction, professional development for undergraduate teachers, and directed attention to student learning as an alternative view of quality education. institutional pressures to assess and improve undergraduate education quality came from both global competition for talent and domestic demand for accountability. in the past few years, overseas universities and especially those in hong kong have begun to lure high school graduates away from the best universities in mainland china with either fellowship provision or reputation in quality teacher and learning. as an elite member of china’s project 985 5 – comprised of institutions that aim to become world-class universities – tsinghua university secured a fiscal allocation of 1.8 billion rmb yuan for this project alone. evidence for quality undergraduate teaching and learning is seen as crucial to demonstrating accountability. by comparing itself with high ranking institutions in the united states on the measures of undergraduate college experiences and effective educational practices, tsinghua was responding to external and internal pressures for quality assessment. in this context, nssec was perceived as an appropriate and timely cross-cultural assessment tool that took undergraduate education seriously. beyond quality assessment, nsse-c data also provided direct evidence to support policy and practice reforms at tsinghua, leading to quality improvement in undergraduate teaching and learning. data and policy recommendations shared here include the benchmark of student-faculty interaction. researchers found that tsinghua undergraduates reported much less studentfaculty interaction compared with their peers in the united states. item by item comparison (figure 1) was used to demonstrate that tsinghua undergraduates scored significantly lower than their u.s. peers in talking with faculty about career plans and in receiving faculty feedback on academic performance. of the survey respondents, 27.1 percent reported that they had never received prompt feedback from faculty on their academic performance, and 44.3 percent never had a discussion regarding career plans with any faculty member or advisor. comparative figures from the u.s. nsse 2009 survey were about 7 percent and 20 percent respectively. assessing student engagement in china 30 current issues in comparative education figure 1 comparing tsinghua undergraduate and u.s. peer student-faculty interaction data source: tsinghua data from luo et al. (2010); u.s. data from nsse (2009a, 2009b) *grand mean of the item scale: 4=‛very often‛, 3=‛often‛, 2=‛sometimes‛, 1=‛never‛. **carnegie classification: research universities with very high research activities these findings provided a solid foundation for policy recommendation on improving the student-faculty relationship at tsinghua university through promoting undergraduate research with faculty and changing faculty office hour policies. beyond spurring reform at the institutional level, tsinghua’s published results have also been widely read and commented upon by academic and non-academic readers, and have subsequently influenced how universities and the wider public might come to perceive the quality of higher education as student-centered and student-valued. like tsinghua university, other institutions that participated in nsse-c are faced with fierce competition for students and strong pressure for accountability. china’s transition from elite to mass higher education in the last decade has transformed the college landscape. it is now characterized by a more diverse student population, an increasingly explicit stratified hierarchy of higher education institutions, and a common perception that education is a private investment rather than a public good. the number of students studying in china’s tertiary sector today is greater than that of the u.s., as nearly 25 percent of the age cohort is paying its way through an increasingly expensive system of public, private, and hybrid institutions in h. ross, y. cen, and z. zhou current issues in comparative education 31 order to compete in the labor force. this generation of students and their parents experience more choices and more risks. they are asking tough questions of college administrators and teachers, demanding affordable and marketable education that is both relevant and individually-tailored. competing for students, faculty, funding, and prestige, college administrators seek alternative measures to assess whether their programs address the needs and desires of their clients. nsse-c provided such a measure. looking back, nsse-c and related institutional actions prefigured the blueprint’s call to “enhance the quality assurance system in teaching and learning and improve assessment of teaching and learning in higher education‛ (blueprint, 2010). this call is not new rhetoric being imposed from the top echelons. universities craving educationally sound methods to stay competitive as chinese higher education has become increasingly entangled in the dense web of global higher education have been motivated to effectively assess and improve undergraduate education with a student-centered approach, or ‚the central status of talent training‛ (blueprint, 2010). the high school survey of student engagement china (hssse-china): refocusing reform on student voice in educational experience chinese high schools are keenly aware of how they are inextricably linked to yet distinct from colleges, and this dual focus is captured in our conclusions regarding the findings of the hsssec. shanghai students’ performance on pisa 2009 took the world by surprise, although it should not have (oecd, 2010). individuals such as robert compton and president obama called it ‚our generation’s sputnik moment‛ (dillon, 2010). sensational news headlines affirmed china’s image as an educational superpower that educated students through a carefully articulated curriculum with high expectations and high incentives for success. student experiences and educational processes need to be assessed to interpret shanghai’s ‚stunning‛ scores and the significance they hold in relation to students. yet, as noted above, assessing educational quality as defined by the blueprint and the action plan generally leaves out student experiences; students are arguably considered objects of education reform rather than masters of their own education. how education and learning is perceived by students themselves (not to mention their teachers) remains largely unknown and empirically underexamined, and studies of student engagement can begin to fill in some of the missing pieces. debuted in 2004, the u.s.-based high school survey of student engagement (hssse) administered by the center for evaluation and education policy (ceep) at indiana university is the largest of its kind in the united states. since 2006, more than 350,000 students in over 40 states have taken the survey (yazzie-mintz, 2010). hssse investigates the attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs of students about their work, their school learning environment, and their interaction with the school community. the survey is structured in three dimensions (compared with nsse’s five benchmarks), including engagement of the mind, the heart, and engagement in the life of the school.6 the survey examines a set of relations that shape student experience in high schools, namely, relations ‚between the student and school community, the student and assessing student engagement in china 32 current issues in comparative education school adults, the student and peers, the student and instruction, and the student and curriculum.‛ distinctive in its student-centered and process-focused approach, hssse, like nsse, was created to complement if not counter student achievement outcomes assessed through test scores, graduation rates, and adequate yearly progress. since september 2007, hssse researchers have collaborated with their chinese counterparts to create hssse-c, addressing quality assessment concerns of chinese high schools that are similar to those outlined by their u.s. counterparts. the hssse-c project involves a collaboration of researchers and graduate research assistants at ceep and east china normal university. in 2007 the translation and cultural adaption of the survey was completed, and the first pilot study was conducted in a shanghai high school with 119 participants. in 2008 the survey was revised by both parties and a second pilot study was completed in 16 high schools, located in 15 provinces and municipalities across china, involving approximately 8,000 participants. like nsse-c, hssse-c has been adapted to retain a reliable student engagement-focused core while being culturally sensitive to the chinese context. the first pilot indicated that most chinese high school students understood the instrument well and accurately responded to questions. we have also found potential ambiguities and inapplicable items. the revision pertains to twenty-seven changes designed to allow for a more precise and relevant report of student lives.7 hssse-c’s validity is manifested by the fact that its findings highly resonate with the existing literature on chinese high school student life. quality education initiatives/failures in chinese high schools and hssse’s potential literature on chinese high school education abounds, but lacks depth and nuance. with some astute exceptions (oecd, 2010) most of it critically examines high stakes testing, namely the national college entrance examinations (ncee), and its ensuing consequences for student learning. the culture of high school is portrayed in most accounts as conscribed by a severe exam-centered ethos that generates two often cited criticisms, namely: psychological pressure and rote learning. in 2009, only 24.2 percent of high school graduates entered higher education institutions in china. achieving a high ncee score and matriculating to a good college or university are considered an essential route to social mobility in china. coupled with china’s one-child family policy, college degree inflation since the tremendous expansion of higher education in the late 1990s8 has exacerbated the competition among high school students seeking admission into prestigious chinese universities. twelve hours of schoolwork a day is commonplace for high school students, not to mention extra weekend tutorials arranged by parents. most students do not express a strong intrinsic motivation for learning. many are under tremendous pressure, and most pressure centers on test anxiety and fear of failure, and sleep deprivation is reported as a widespread problem (liu, uchiyama, okawa, & kurita, 2000). many chinese researchers make the point that failure to bring the ncee in alignment with both national reform policy and inquiry-based pedagogical and curricular reforms will severely hamper educational effectiveness and innovation. h. ross, y. cen, and z. zhou current issues in comparative education 33 to counter these phenomena, the moe and other agencies have repeatedly called for suzhi 9 education since the 1990s, aiming at transforming examination-centered education into quality education (state council & chinese communist party central committee, 1999; state education commission, 1997). suzhi education emphasizes fostering an innovative spirit and practical ability by, for instance, reforming curricula to encourage a holistic approach to education (dello-iacovo, 2009). the effectiveness of the new mandate generally has remained at a low level (zhao, 2007). it is in this reformative atmosphere that hssse-c has been developed to add student voices to china’s secondary education assessment toolkit. preliminary findings: disengaged minds and hearts data from hssse-c’s pilot survey administered in shanghai in 2007 underscores challenges to quality teaching and learning reported in the existing literature on chinese high schools. in open-ended responses, participating students questioned the meaning of high schools. they expressed frustration with rote learning, dull instruction, and anxiety about the anticipated fierce competition of the college entrance examination. in response to the question ‚why do you go to school?‛10 out of thirteen respondents, only one student stated, ‚it is fun.‛ five students reasoned that they go to school because it is a necessary means of social mobility. four students said that ‚it is my parents’ wish.‛ when asked about whether they were bored in classes, and why, fifteen participants responded.11 they listed reasons closely connected with a high school ethos centered on college examination preparation. four participants described boring lessons; four participants described lack of sleep; three participants described low interest in study; one complained about too much homework. only two students indicated personal difficulties. typical complaints include, ‚the class is too quiet,‛ ‚not much response between teachers and students,‛ and ‚i have much homework to do at night. it’s very late whenever i finish it.‛ in the last open-ended question, in which participants were asked to provide additional comments, one respondent presented a disheartening portrayal of high school as, ‚counterproductive to our well-being as teenagers. we are given almost no free time, not to mention enough time to rest. what we study is useless. we study for college entrance exams only, nothing else. my life as a high school student is disinteresting, what i do is to repeat this dull life every day.” this quotation and similar responses, attest to the daunting challenges with which chinese educators, policy makers, students and parents have been wrestling. these students expressed neither optimism nor appreciation for a school environment in which, from their perspective, independent learning barely thrives. using student engagement as a window on the experience of students studying in one of china’s most cosmopolitan, well-funded, educationally adaptive and intensely competitive environments raises important questions about the purpose and value of high school. as zhang minxuan, head of shanghai pisa testified, shanghai’s pisa performance needs to be interpreted with confidence in the direction of shanghai’s educational reform, reflexivity in the realization of issues, gaps, new ideas and methods in educational practices in light of worldwide trends in student assessment particularly the issue of study overload. assessing student engagement in china 34 current issues in comparative education conclusion in response to the demands for quality education and global competitiveness, another wave of educational reform is rising in china. this wave is global in its visibility and centers on education quality assessment and improvement as indicated in the blueprint and the action plan. the intent of the policy is quite clear in that more expansive and rigorous assessments involving various actors in education have been initiated. in addition, international assessments, such as pisa at the high school level and university rankings at the higher education level, have been sought out and applied in china. these existing assessment practices are outcome and/or reputation-driven and have overlooked the student experience and educational processes. the research projects summarized here shine a spotlight on student experience and direct attention in institutionally actionable ways to the subjects of education and educational processes. student engagement as one focus of quality assessment respects students as masters of their own education and injects their experiences into the dialogue of educational effectiveness reform policy. successful adaptation of an american assessment tool to address key issues in educational development and reform in china illustrates that student-centered and process-driven assessment can cross boundaries and mutually inform highly diverse institutions and cultures. on the other hand, adaptation shows that china is actively responding to global trends in defining and redefining educational quality. chinese reformers and educators consider examcentered education as the key impediment to creating ‚innovative, practical and versatile professionals‛ (blueprint, 2010). tracking the development of student engagement across the secondary and post-secondary years will be crucial to understanding and assessing chinese educational quality and the reforms designed to achieve it. to date, nsse-c has drawn significant attention from policy makers, scholars, and student services personnel at both national and institutional levels, and has catalyzed a broader definition of educational quality and through changing quality assessment methods. although hssse-c data from diverse cities and regions of china await final analysis, together with nsse-c the survey tool enriches china’s education quality assessment protocols. it provides the means for appreciating, documenting, and enhancing students’ educative experiences to inform an educational system perceived to be both constrained by outmoded convention, whilst simultaneously ahead of its international competitors in several measures of significance. h. ross, y. cen, and z. zhou current issues in comparative education 35 references dello-iacovo, b. 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(2000). prevalence and correlates of selfreported sleep problems among chinese adolescents. sleep: journal of sleep research & sleep medicine, 23(1), 27-34. luo, y., shi, j., & tu, d. (2010). annual report of tsinghua undergraduate education survey 2009: comparing with u.s. top research universities. tsinghua journal of education, 30(5), 1-13. ministry of education, china. (2010). outline of china’s national plan for medium and longterm education reform and development (2010-2020) (english version translated by australian education international). retrieved from http://www.aei.gov.au/news/newsarchive/2010/documents/china_education_reform_pdf.pdf national survey of student engagement. (2000). national benchmarks of effective educational practice. bloomington, in: indiana university center for postsecondary research. national survey of student engagement. (2009a). nsse 2009 grand means means and standard deviations by carnegie classification: first-year students. bloomington, in: indiana university center for postsecondary research. national survey of student engagement. (2009b). nsse 2009 grand means means and standard deviations by carnegie classification: senior students. bloomington, in: indiana university center for postsecondary research. national survey of student engagement. (2010). major differences: examining student engagement by field of study—annual results 2010. bloomington, in: indiana university center for postsecondary research. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/education/07education.html http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2007-10/24/content_6938568_3.htm http://www.aei.gov.au/news/newsarchive/2010/documents/china_education_reform_pdf.pdf http://nsse.iub.edu/pdf/nsse%202000%20national%20report.pdf http://nsse.iub.edu/pdf/nsse%202000%20national%20report.pdf assessing student engagement in china 36 current issues in comparative education oecd. (2010). shanghai and hong kong: two distinct examples of education reform in china. in organisation for economic co-operation and development (ed.), strong performers and successful reformers in education: lessons from pisa for the united states (pp. 83–115). retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/45/46581016.pdf state council, & chinese communist party central committee. (1999). the chinese communist party central committees and state council's decision on further promoting educational reform and suzhi education. retrieved april 11, 2011, from http://www.edu.cn/20051123/3162313.shtml state education commission. (1997). on promoting suzhi education in primary and secondary education. retrieved april 11, 2011, from http://www.edu.cn/20051018/3156152.shtml yazzie-mintz, e. (2010). charting the path from engagement to achievement: a report on the 2009 high school survey of student engagement. retrieved from http://www.indiana.edu/~ceep/hssse/images/hssse_2010_report.pdf zhao, y. (2007). china and the whole child. educational leadership, 64(8), 4. copyright © 2011 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved 1 this 2020 goal was put forward in 2007 at the 17th congress of the chinese communist party. 2 the action plan’s official title is notice of the state council on the experimental sites for the national educational reform. 3 china’s blueprint references ‚education quality‛ fifty-one times, twenty-eight of which relate to strengthening education quality. assessment/evaluation is mentioned thirty-nine times, among which ten references are pertinent to education quality assessment/evaluation. the action plan mentions education quality improvement six times among seventeen quality-relevant references. 4 adaptations fall into four categories: language-driven adaptation (e.g. the word ‚presentation‛ was paraphrased as ‚oral report‛ as there was not exact counterpart of the word in the chinese language), adaptation to ensure local coverage of a concept (e.g. ‚student-faculty interaction‛ was substituted with ‚student-teacher interaction‛, as the concept of teacher is broader than faculty and more relevant in the context of chinese higher education), adaptation to ensure questions are understood as intended (e.g. multiple versions of phrasing were tested in the field to make sure that survey respondents’ understanding was consistent with what was intended by us researchers), and social, system-driven adaptation (e.g. the item asking about spiritual practices was removed as they were minimum at chinese colleges and universities). http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/34/45/46581016.pdf http://www.edu.cn/20051123/3162313.shtml http://www.edu.cn/20051018/3156152.shtml http://www.indiana.edu/~ceep/hssse/images/hssse_2010_report.pdf h. ross, y. cen, and z. zhou current issues in comparative education 37 5 institutions in project 985 are most prestigious universities in china. the project was launched by the ministry of education soon after the then-president jiang zemin’s speech in may 1998 that called for a number of world-class universities. the project was named after the year (98) and the month (5) of jiang’s speech. project 985 has over 40 institutions altogether, and the announced fund for these 985 institutions in total was approximately 30 billion rmb yuan. 6 it should be noted that initially, the hssse derived from the nsse in 2004. since 2005, it has been administered and developed by the ceep. 7 for example, examination scores in china largely determine college matriculation, thus the item to evaluate whether student parents converse about college application strategies in the hssse is irrelevant should chinese students score below designated lines. another example is questions of minimal relevance such as work for pay and ap classes in the hssse. work for pay under sixteen is illegal in china. ap classes are rarely offered in chinese high schools. 8 since the expansion, gross enrollment rate to higher education roared, but more competition comes if one wishes to enter prestigious universities. 9 scholarship lacks consensus on the definition and translation of the ‘suzhi’ education. common translation is quality education, quality-orientated education and diathesis education 10 119 students took the survey, but only 13 responded to this open-ended question. 11 15 students answered this open-ended question among 119 survey takers. current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 2, spring 2017 © 2017, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(2), 3-7. an introduction of the special issue on the economics of education in china mun c. tsang teachers college, columbia university ji liu teachers college, columbia university the history of teachers college’s involvement with china and chinese education dates back to its early founding years in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. over the past century, many tc faculty and students have been engaged in shaping education policy and research in modern china. john dewey and paul monroe led a long-held tradition of faculty interest in teaching and conducting research about china. samuel sung young (m.a., 1905’) and kuo ping wen (ph.d., 1914’), the first master’s and doctoral tc graduates from china, set examples for later generations to advance the modern chinese education system (see zhou, 2001; allen and liu, 2016). at the turn of the 21st century, tc established the center on chinese education, which has become an active hub for hosting academic dialogues on education issues in china and an important advocate for educational exchange between the united states and china. given this unique institutional history and broader scholarly interest on china and chinese education, current issues in comparative education is delighted to collaborate with the center on chinese education to publish this special-themed issue. with this opportunity, the cice editorial board hopes to honor and celebrate the historically strong connection between tc and china, and also introduce timely economics of education research to the larger comparative and international education research community. this special issue of current issues in comparative education marks the first occasion in this journal’s 20-year history that we present a collection of new research that focuses on timely education topics in china and employs an economics of education perspective. economics of education is an interdisciplinary field of study that is concerned with the economic dimensions of education and with using economic theories and methods in the study of education problems and policies. the early development of economics of education in china can be traced to a major shift in perspectives about the role of education in national development in the post-1978 reform and opening-up period. tsang and liu current issues in comparative education 4 education is not only seen to have a key role in shaping ideology and as an arena of political contestation; it is also a key input to economic production. spending on education is not only consumption but also an investment with economic returns such as increased productivity and higher output. in the early 1980s, chinese scholars began exploring the economic role of education in national development under socialist principles. at the same time, they were also eager to understand western perspectives in economics of education, such as human capital theory, education signaling, and labor-market segmentation. as china moved into the development of a socialist market economy with chinese characteristics in a global context since the 1990s, economics of education has matured as a recognized field of study in china. the intellectual and analytical gaps between the west and china in this field have also narrowed considerably. today, economics of education in china is a vibrant field of study with many competent scholars, high-quality academic programs and research centers, and well established professional organizations and journals. along with increasing funding and the development of an infrastructure in support of research in general, research in economics of education is a significant contributor to informed analysis and policymaking in education in china. the seven authors/first co-authors of the seven articles in this special issue are all doctoral graduates of the economics and education program at teachers college columbia university and they are all from china. this program is not only endowed with faculty with both u.s. and international expertise in various areas of economics of education, it is also affiliated with several research centers that provide intellectual and financial support to students, such as the center on chinese education, the center for benefit-cost studies in education, the national center for the study of privatization in education, and the community college research center. the program is one of the largest degree programs in teachers college in terms of chinese-students enrollment. the majority of students in this program are international students and chinese students constitute the largest geographical group among international students. the study of economics of chinese education at teachers college is strengthened by the strong interest of the faculty in china, the support of the affiliated research centers, the academic relationship between teachers college and universities in china, and the historical relationship between teachers college and modern chinese education. most of the chinese doctoral graduates of the program have returned to work in china after graduation and are mostly engaged in teaching and research in the university. they are active members of the scholarly community of economics of education in china; they are also bridges between u.s. and chinese education. editorial introduction current issues in comparative education 5 the seven studies provide a good representation of the variety and characteristics of the research on economics of chinese education undertaken by the chinese graduates of the economics and education program at teachers college. they are predominately quantitative empirical studies guided by some theoretical framework in economics of education. they cover research on different levels of education in china, including early childhood education, basic education, and higher education. they encompass analyses in different areas within the field of economics of education, such as the economic benefits of education, education costs and financing, education production process, education and labor-market, and economic factors in educational decision-making. data used in the analyses come from two main sources: data collected from a single city or region by the researchers themselves, and data for secondary analysis from periodic national surveys. the following is a brief summary of each of the seven studies. following an education production function framework, yu zhang and xuehan zhou explore the influence of household educational expenditure on student achievement on the national college entrance examination. the authors take advantage of the detailed consumption information collected from a household survey administered in shandong province, and find evidence for heterogeneous effects of household education spending across the achievement distribution. while household educational expenditure, on average, does not seem to have a statistically significant impact on student scores on the national college entrance examination, quantile regression results show household education spending can have positive, significant impacts at the high end of the ability distribution. the authors interpret this finding in the context of school fees and private tutoring, and argue that such spending are often inefficient inputs in education production. haogen yao presents an impact evaluation of a 1-month-long intensive socio-emotional support intervention program, “lighthouse,” that was implemented in rural guangdong province, to boost lower secondary students’ post-compulsory education decisions (pced). using an original survey, yao utilizes propensity score matching to assess the treatment effect on program participants. the results indicate that although there are many potential channels through which socio-emotional support may affect pced, the main effect of “lighthouse” occurs through elevating participant educational aspirations. the author also discusses findings from interviewing program implementers, participants and their family, and patterns from analyzing participant program records. given the broader policy context of promoting entrepreneurship education, you you, feifei zhu, and xiaohao ding seek to understand institutional factors influencing tsang and liu current issues in comparative education 6 entrepreneurship development in chinese universities. the authors use data from a nationwide institutional survey on directors of career services at various colleges and universities, and find that while college students in china demonstrate a high level of interest in entrepreneurship, actual participation rates are low. in addition, directors of career services at highly-selective universities are more likely to report favorably on institutional policies and practices that provide guidance and support for entrepreneurship. xin gong and pengcheng wang review how preservice teachers are trained in different contexts by comparing pre-primary teacher education systems in china and the united states. the authors discuss the within-country teacher qualification variations in terms of entry and certification requirements, and identify examples of different program features that are common across contexts. throughout the study, the authors juxtapose the teacher preparation system in china and the united states. findings indicate that while each system has its unique challenges, they offer useful policy insights, such as the emphasis of practicum in the early childhood teacher education programs in the united states and the unified teacher certification standards in china. connecting to the global student mobility literature, jing li, fei guo, and you you utilize data from two national surveys, the chinese college student survey (ccss) in china and the national survey of student engagement (nsse) in the united states, and employ propensity score matching to identify the underlying relationship between individual’s decision to study abroad and college academic performance. the authors first compare access to study abroad programs, and find that in the united states, ethnicity, gender, and program discipline are more influential determinants of study abroad participation. whereas in china, the participation rates differ between students from urban and rural areas. finally, propensity score matching results suggest that studying abroad positively impacts academic performance in both the american and chinese samples. fei guo investigates the incidence of engagement in part-time work during academic terms (term-time working) among college students in china. guo’s study utilizes data from the 2011 wave of college students labor market (cslm) survey. results indicate that term-time working is prevalent among chinese college students; while they are relatively short in duration, many term-time working are intense in terms of workload, and participation is mainly determined by soft-skills, financial need, and number of peers who work. editorial introduction current issues in comparative education 7 situated in the debate on rapid tertiary education development, li yu estimates the impact of college quality on early labor market outcomes in china and discusses the implications of social stratification through tertiary education. yu’s study utilizes propensity score matching based on data from the 2011 wave of college students labor market (cslm) survey, and finds that students who attend highly-selective institutions (such as “985 project” and “211 project” universities) are more likely to experience smoother transition to the labor market, such as finding employment immediately after degree completion and entering the public sector. finally, this special issue of cice cannot be made possible without the dedication of our reviewers, editors, and contributing authors. we hope this special issue on economics of education in china will not only contribute to the long-held tradition of tc’s engagement with chinese education, but also create a productive space for comparative education researchers to discuss emerging topics related to the economics of education about the special issue co-editors mun c. tsang has been professor of economics and education at teachers college, columbia university since 1998, the founding director of the center on chinese education since 2000, and changjiang professor of economics of education at peking university since 2006. ji liu is a phd candidate and doctoral fellow in international comparative education and economics at teachers college, columbia university, and chief editor for current issues in comparative education. contact: mun c. tsang at mct27@tc.columbia.edu, ji liu at jl4103@tc.columbia.edu; for cice business please contact cice@tc.columbia.edu. references zhou, h. (2001). a college and a country -teachers college, columbia university and modern chinese education. new york: center on chinese education, teachers college. link: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/coce/about-us/feature-article-teachers-college-andchinese-education/ allen, r. & liu, j., (2016). kuo ping wen: scholar, statesman, and reformer. san francisco: long river press. mailto:mct27@tc.columbia.edu mailto:jl4103@tc.columbia.edu mailto:cice@tc.columbia.edu http://www.tc.columbia.edu/coce/about-us/feature-article-teachers-college-and-chinese-education/ http://www.tc.columbia.edu/coce/about-us/feature-article-teachers-college-and-chinese-education/ current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 26, issue 1, winter 2024 similar foci, different lenses: literacy education beliefs and practices of chinese and u.s. teachers yang hu hunter college of the city university of new york beifei dong east china normal university the differences in literacy education practices between china and the united states are often attributed to their different educational, sociocultural, and historical contexts. however, this sweeping view offers little to help literacy educators in both countries understand the beliefs behind literacy instructional practices and how different or similar these beliefs are. this study examines key characteristics of how chinese (n=40) and u.s. (n=44) literacy teachers (pre-k-8th grade) articulate their beliefs about literacy education, delineating their differences and similarities. an inductive content analysis of teachers’ self-reported written narratives about their beliefs and practices in literacy education, along with double coding, reveal that the teachers’ espoused disciplinary beliefs focus on similar themes for the most part. however, their lenses were markedly different, tinted by both the substance and style of their literacy instruction contexts, as well as their cultural epistemological foundations. inconsistencies between teachers’ beliefs and practices manifested differently in the two groups, but they reflected similar sources. understanding these varying and nuanced beliefs in cross-cultural contexts can inform teacher education and education reform and counter the insularity of educational research. keywords: cross-cultural study, teacher beliefs and practices, literacy teacher education, comparative education, international comparison, united states, china “i love the idea of differentiated literacy instruction. but i don’t think it is realistic for my class of 54 kids. i can see how it could be done in the u.s. with 20 or 25 kids in a classroom.” “i think differentiated instruction has more to do with the cultural value of individualism in the u.s. when they value the individual, they would make it possible to differentiate, including having small class sizes.” “but differentiated instruction has been in the chinese educational thought for more than two thousand years. our confucius believed that teaching should be tailored to students’ intelligence. but to date we haven’t gone very far with it at all.” these comments from chinese literacy teachers attending the first author’s talk on u.s. literacy education raise profound questions about the complex interplay between © 2024, hu & dong. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 26(1), 27-53. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en hu & dong current issues in comparative education teachers' beliefs, cultural contexts, and educational practices. they highlight a critical gap in our understanding of how teachers across different cultures conceptualize and implement literacy instruction, particularly in the face of varying systemic constraints and cultural values. the important role of teachers' beliefs in shaping their instructional practices has long been recognized in teacher education (fives & buehl, 2012; pajares, 1992). however, much of this research focuses on teachers from single cultural contexts, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of how these beliefs and practices might vary across different cultural and educational systems (hoy et al., 2006). the last two decades have seen an increase in research studies comparing teacher education in china and the u.s., including examinations of teachers' beliefs and practices in mathematics (correa et al., 2008), early childhood (wang et al., 2008), english language (clark-gareca & gui, 2019), and preservice teacher education (richardson, 2003). these studies have provided valuable insights into cross-cultural similarities and differences in various educational settings. however, a notable gap remains: the comparison of beliefs and practices among literacy teachers across these two cultural contexts. by situating our investigation in a global context, we seek to contribute to the growing body of literature on cross-cultural teacher education (darling-hammond & lieberman, 2012) and to counter the insularity often found in educational research (tierney & kan, 2016). our study's findings have the potential to inform researchers, educators, and policymakers about the complex interplay between cultural contexts, teacher beliefs, and instructional practices in literacy education. given the lack of comparative studies of u.s. and chinese teachers’ beliefs in literacy education, the research reported in this article will begin the conversation in this area by investigating and comparing how a group of chinese and u.s. teachers describe their literacy education beliefs and practices. specifically, we seek to answer the following research questions: 1. how do teachers in china and the u.s. articulate their beliefs about literacy education? 2. in what ways are teachers' espoused beliefs and practices similar or different? in the following sections, we will begin with a brief comparison of educational contexts in the two countries. we will then review relevant studies and explain our study’s theoretical framing, methodology, and analysis procedures. following this, our findings and discussion will illuminate important insights gleaned from this study. literacy and literacy education in china and the united states the chinese national curriculum standards for literacy (ncsl) define literacy as “the most important tool for communication… a significant component of human culture” (ministry of education, 2022, p.1). while the chinese definition of literacy emphasizes what literacy is, the u.s. definition highlights what literacy does. according to the international literacy association, “literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, compute, and communicate using visual, audible, and digital materials across disciplines and in any context” (2017). understanding the differing definitions of similar foci, different lenses: literacy education beliefs and practice of chinese and u.s. teachers current issues in comparative education literacy is crucial for accurately interpreting and contextualizing the beliefs and practices of teachers from both countries in a comparative study. china’s education system is highly centralized, characterized by teacher-centered instruction, structured learning environments, and whole-class-level teaching (simnacher-pate et al., 2011). china has been using national curriculum standards for literacy since 1902. schools in china are required to use textbooks approved by the ministry of education. the u.s. educational system is decentralized. not all 50 states have adopted the common core state standards (ccss) since they were released in 2010. while ncsl covers grades 1-9, which is compulsory education in china, ccss is for k12. both sets of standards recognize the communicative function of literacy and the developmental nature of literacy learning. ncsl (2022) is unique in four distinct ways: (1) ideological dispositions are emphasized, such as patriotism, moral values, and cultural aesthetics. (2) literacy is seen as an embodiment of cultural heritage and a conduit for learning cultural values. (3) quantifiable learning outcomes are included in each developmental stage aims. for example, in grades 3-4, students are expected to recognize 2,500 characters, write 1,600 of them, recite 50 of the best literary essays/poems, and write 16 compositions annually. (4) there is an emphasis on skills training, memorization, and recitation. differences in literacy curriculum standards reflect the economic infrastructure and society of each country. quantifiable learning outcomes, emphasis on memorization and knowledge accumulation in ncls serve china’s manufacturing economy which requires skilled workers and literate farmers (hu, 2004). in the u.s., ccss befits the information/service-based economy, setting standards to educate a workforce that can process, comprehend, analyze, evaluate, and present information. these words illustrate an emphasis on cultivating analytical and critical thinking abilities to express opinions, in keeping with the u.s. democratic tradition that has long claimed to value freedom of speech (hu, 2004). among other differences, chinese elementary school teachers are subject area specialists. the literacy teachers only teach literacy to several classes in one grade during a school day. whereas the u.s. elementary school teachers are generalists, teaching all subjects to one group of students. literature review in the past 20 years, cross-cultural studies comparing teacher beliefs and practices in china and the u.s. have concentrated on math education (an et al., 2004; correa et al., 2008; perry et al., 2006), early childhood education (mcmullen et al., 2005; wang et al., 2008), pre-service teachers (he et al., 2011; lin et al., 2012; richardson, 1996, 2003), and efl education (clark-gareca & gui, 2019). when comparing chinese and u.s. math teacher beliefs, studies have uncovered that teachers’ beliefs are embedded in their cultural contexts and are developed over time (correa et al., 2008; perry et al., 2006). early childhood educators from both china and u.s. share similar beliefs on integrated childinitiated learning, but chinese teachers are “more likely to endorse teacher-structured, practice-oriented instructional approaches,” while their u.s. counterparts tend to favor hu & dong current issues in comparative education “less formal, less structured, child-initiated learning approaches” (wang et al., 2008, p. 247). when comparing pre-service teachers’ beliefs, more chinese teachers endorse a unified curriculum, standardized testing, and a focus on content delivery as the main goals of instruction. in contrast, u.s. teachers are more critical of the increasing requirements for standardized testing and are concerned about the pressure it puts on their instruction and on students (he et al., 2011). to date, little research has been conducted comparing chinese and u.s. literacy teachers’ beliefs and practices in literacy education. however, we can draw on studies about literacy education beliefs in each country. in the u.s., the literature for literacy education widely acknowledges that literacy teachers’ beliefs of literacy instruction influenced their classroom practices (bingham & hall-kenyon, 2013; cash et al., 2015; richardson et al., 1991). for example, bingham and hall-kenyon (2013), in surveying 581 teachers, reveal that the teachers’ beliefs about code-based literacy skills influenced how they implemented literacy curriculum. in another survey study of 262 pre-school teachers, cash et al. (2015) find that these teachers’ beliefs in literacy education predicted their students’ learning outcomes in vocabulary skills and print knowledge. in addition, literature reviews and case studies show that encouraging teachers to articulate and examine their beliefs leads to professional growth and more deliberate decision-making in instruction (basturkman, 2012; farrell & ives, 2015). these findings underscore the importance of examining teacher beliefs in literacy education across different cultural contexts, as the demonstrated impact of beliefs in classroom practices and student outcomes in the u.s. raises intriguing questions about how teacher beliefs may similarly influence literacy education in china and how these beliefs and their effects might compare between the two countries. in the chinese context, articles of teacher beliefs have emerged since the turn of the millennium in response to the new curriculum reform launched by the ministry of education. the reform aimed at moving away from traditional “exam-oriented education” toward “quality-oriented education” (ministry of education, 2001, p.1). among the analytical and argumentative essays, tan (2015) and tan & chua (2015) argue that chinese teachers’ beliefs on the nature of teaching and learning have deep cultural and epistemological roots in the confucian pedagogic culture, leading teachers to pedagogical preferences such as transmission teaching, teacherand textbook-centered approaches, and a focus on content mastery. in addition, literature reviews show that inconsistencies are common between teachers’ self-reported progressive beliefs and their use of traditional practices (hu, 2002; liu & feng, 2005). aligned with this finding is li et al.’s qualitative study (2011) of 10 classrooms and 20 teachers, where they find significant gaps between teachers’ progressive beliefs and their use of traditional practices. similarly, sang et al (2009), after surveying 820 primary school teachers, find that there is a range of beliefs along the constructivist-traditional continuum, and economic and geographic factors impact teachers’ beliefs. in addition, a survey study of 582 teachers by dai et al (2011), finds that the teachers believe that the most obvious constraint for studentcentered learning is the pressure imposed by high-stakes tests for entrance into college. tan’s literature review study (2016) echoes this finding. similar foci, different lenses: literacy education beliefs and practice of chinese and u.s. teachers current issues in comparative education theoretical framework we interpret teachers’ self-reported beliefs and practices through the lens of established concepts about teacher beliefs and teacher knowledge. according to pajares (1992), beliefs and knowledge are seen as inseparable, even though some researchers view beliefs as reflections of attitudes, values, and ideologies, whereas knowledge is viewed as a teacher’s factual understanding of the subject matter (meijer et al., 2001). we agree with pajares’ view and believe that both beliefs and knowledge are important in allowing us to account for teachers’ explicit value statements about literacy education as well as descriptions of literacy practices that may reflect their beliefs indirectly. teacher beliefs studies of teacher beliefs in the last 30 years have invariably drawn from three substantial sources: kagan (1992), pajares (1992), and fang (1996). kagan’s work regards teachers’ beliefs and knowledge as interchangeable from a cognitive perspective and critical to education because teacher belief “lies at the very heart of teaching” (kagan, 1992, p. 85). kagan’s view is important to our study as we examined and compared teacher beliefs to determine similarities and differences central to literacy instruction. fang’s comprehensive review of research on the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices reveals that while some studies supported the notion that teachers’ theoretical beliefs influence their teaching (de ford, 1985; richardson et al., 1991), others point out inconsistencies between teachers’ espoused beliefs and their classroom practices, often because of contextual variables, such as curriculum mandates (bennet et al., 1984; desforges & cockburn, 1987). these studies on belief-practice (in)consistencies provided a framework for our analysis, which revealed similar gaps between teachers' professional beliefs and their described classroom practices. pajares’ work offers one of the most comprehensive reviews on teacher beliefs (1992). drawing on the work of prominent scholars (e.g., bandura, 1986; clark, 1988; dewey, 1933; nespor, 1987; rokeach, 1968), pajares defines beliefs as “an individual’s judgment of the truth or falsity of a proposition” (p.316). he examines key studies in teacher beliefs and the meaning they give to beliefs as “the best indicators of the decisions individuals make throughout their lives” (1992, p. 307). for example, nespor’s study (1987) concludes that beliefs are far more influential than knowledge in determining how teachers organize tasks and problem-solve and are stronger predictors of behavior. in short, pajares’ review suggests that teachers’ beliefs influence their classroom instruction and decision-making because beliefs act as filters through which teachers interpret new information and experiences (1992). this has implications for our study because even when participants didn’t explicitly state their beliefs about literacy education, the examples of their literacy instruction were indicative of their beliefs. studies on teacher beliefs not only highlight (in)consistencies in teacher beliefs and practices but also address sociocultural and political factors that influence teacher beliefs and practices rather than viewing them as individual and personal. the culture of a school, curriculum requirements, and policy mandates also influence teachers’ beliefs and practices (davis et al., 1993). in addition, the dominant values at the time of teachers’ induction into teaching, teaching experience, and self-efficacy all influence teacher beliefs hu & dong current issues in comparative education (fullan & hargreaves, 1994). different sources of influence on beliefs helped us speculate that differences are a function of the sociocultural and/or political influence in the two countries. no matter how the teachers described their beliefs, they did so in their sociocultural contexts which both gave rise to and influenced the beliefs. therefore, in our analysis, we systematically identified and interpreted how sociocultural and political contexts might influence teachers’ beliefs about literacy education in china and the u.s., providing a robust foundation for our comparative findings. teacher knowledge in our study, when participants were asked to explicitly state their beliefs about teaching literacy, their responses encompassed pedagogical content knowledge. for this reason, we drew on the work of shulman (1986, 1987) and grossman (1990) and their conception of pedagogical content knowledge (pck). shulman (1986) introduces the concept of pck as a type of teacher’s knowledge that is specific to teaching a particular subject matter. later, shulman expands his vision of teachers’ knowledge base to include: pck, knowledge of content, general pedagogy, curriculum, learners, educational contexts, and philosophical/historical aims of education (1987). he posits that pck “represents the blending of content and pedagogy into an understanding of how particular topics, problems, and issues are organized, represented and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of learners, and presented for instruction” (1987, p.8). since then, pck has been built upon both as a theoretical concept and by empirical research. grossman (1990) expands pck to include knowledge and beliefs for teaching a particular subject and knowledge of students’ understanding of a subject matter, and of curricular and instructional strategies. the concepts of pck provide a framework for understanding how teachers’ subject-specific knowledge, pedagogical skills, and beliefs intersect in literacy instruction, allowing us to explore nuanced differences in how literacy education is conceptualized and implemented across the two distinct educational systems. today, shulman’s conception of pck has been widely accepted as a crucial knowledge base for teachers, and it has been extensively cited and used, particularly in mathematics and science education (ball et al., 2008; evens et al., 2015; magnussom et al., 1999). despite minor variations, all pck models contain these important components: instruction, student, curriculum, and assessment knowledge within a subject matter (kind, 2009). the definition of pck has also evolved over time. the most recent comes from leading scholars in science education, regarding pck as the knowledge of, the rationale behind, the planning for, and the act of teaching a subject matter using specific methods for specific students to promote student learning (carlson et al., 2015). the development and expansion of pck show that it is not a static construct. reviews of international studies using pck as a construct have agreed on the subject-specific nature of pck (gess-newsome, 2015; kind, 2009). as such, pck reflects common professional practice in specific subjects while simultaneously capturing diversity in teaching approaches arising from individual teachers’ beliefs, personal experiences, and constraints of social and cultural contexts (dapaepe et al., 2013; hashweh, 2013). for similar foci, different lenses: literacy education beliefs and practice of chinese and u.s. teachers current issues in comparative education example, studies using pck as a construct to compare u.s. and chinese math teachers’ beliefs not only illustrate teachers’ collective wisdom but also reflect variations in pck for different cultural and epistemological contexts (an et al., 2004; correa et al., 2008). although our study did not focus specifically on pck, and despite the lack of literacyspecific pck models, shulman’s pck framework and its later variations informed our coding and data analysis. the limited and preliminary research base of pck in literacy education also warrants additional in-depth studies of pck in literacy education in the future. methods this qualitative study uses open-ended survey questions to elicit teachers' narrative statements about their literacy education beliefs and practices. we employed content analysis to qualitatively examine and compare self-reported beliefs and practices about literacy education. the study focuses on two groups of literacy teachers: one from a graduate program in the u.s. and another from china, where the authors teach and work, respectively. participants our participants consisted of 44 u.s. teachers (usts) and 40 chinese teachers (cts). they were selected through convenience sampling since they studied in our respective graduate programs. at the time of data collection, most participants were in their mid20s and enrolled in their respective graduate literacy programs for 1-2 years. this sampling approach, while practical, may introduce potential limitations to our study. the teachers in our graduate programs may not be representative of the broader teacher population in each country, as they likely have higher levels of motivation for professional development and may be exposed to specific pedagogical philosophies. the 44 usts were three cohorts of in-service teachers, studying towards a master’s degree and a state professional certification in childhood literacy education. most of them were females (98%). besides one participant who hadn’t begun teaching, and two with 13 years of teaching at pre-k levels, the majority had been teaching for 1-3 years as generalists in urban public elementary schools. their graduate program is housed in a large urban public university. they were admitted having met the following admission criteria: initial state teacher certification, undergraduate gpa of 3.0 or better, passing scores on the inperson interviews and the written test administered by the graduate program. the cts were from one cohort of 40 teachers enrolled in a graduate program in literacy education, at a large urban university in southeast china. 95% of this group were females. half of them were within the first two years of college graduation and therefore had little teaching experience. the other half had teaching experience ranging from 1-10 years as literacy specialists in grades 1-8. the university is considered highly selective in china, attracting students nationwide. the students were admitted after passing the national master’s program unified admission examination, in-person interviews, and a written examination administered by their teacher education college. hu & dong current issues in comparative education author and researcher positionality the authors are literacy teacher educators in the graduate programs that our participants were enrolled in respectively. since both authors are native speakers of chinese and fluent in english as a second language, no outside translations of the data were needed. even though we were trained in different countries as researchers and literacy teacher educators, our paradigms as researchers are similar. we believe that teacher beliefs and knowledge are multidimensional and subject-specific. data sources data consisted of participants’ written narratives in response to the following prompts: write a 2–3-page narrative of your philosophy of literacy education addressing these key questions: 1. what is your belief about literacy education? 2. how do you enact your belief about literacy education in your classroom practice? the 44 usts’ narratives were part of their program portfolio, which was an ungraded exit requirement. the narratives were written during the final semester of their two-year graduate studies. for the 40 cts, their narratives were ungraded course assignments written after one year of graduate studies in a two-year program. data analysis we used inductive content analysis (elo & kyngäs, 2008) for data analysis. our process involved four phases of analysis, often including several iterative processes, to allow codes, categories, and themes to emerge from the data without preconceived notions. during phase 1: initial coding, after several readings to become familiar with our datasets, we entered the narratives into a spreadsheet. we each independently coded our own teachers’ narratives. approaching the data with an open mind, we coded the datasets at the conceptual level to let the categories emerge organically. we used a constant comparative process, continually comparing data against data to ensure fit within the emerging categories (corbin & strauss, 2008). we then swapped and analyzed each other’s dataset using the same inductive process. by the end of this phase, we came up with 45-50 initial codes for cts dataset and 109-145 for usts dataset under 18-19 emerging categories for cts and 14-16 for usts. (table 1). during the initial coding, we noted a pattern in the language used by cts and usts to describe their beliefs about literacy education: teachers from each cultural context tended to use specific terms that were prevalent in their educational discourse. for example, cts frequently used the term “situational teaching,” and usts talked about using “interactive activities.” we recognized that while these terms might have conceptual overlap (e.g., situational teaching likely involves interactive elements), they represented distinct cultural-linguistic expression of pedagogical beliefs. therefore, to preserve the cultural nuances in our data, we decided to maintain separate codes and categories for these culturally specific terms even when they appeared to have similarly underlying concepts. this would allow us to explore how similar concepts might be articulated differently in different cultural-educational contexts. similar foci, different lenses: literacy education beliefs and practice of chinese and u.s. teachers current issues in comparative education table 1 double coding results of data analysis phase 1 and 2 data analysis researchers number of initial codes number of emerging categories cts (n=40) usts (n=44) cts (n=40) usts (n=44) cts (n=40) usts (n=44) phase 1: initial coding researcher 1 50 109 18 14 researcher 2 45 145 19 16 number of primary belief codes number of consolidated categories number of examples phase 2: re-coding researcher 1 41 47 11 8 55 86 researcher 2 42 50 11 10 51 91 in phase 2: recoding and consolidating, we began by comparing our initial independent coding and categorization of the datasets. a notable observation was that our initial codes for ust dataset more than doubled those of cts. we attributed this to differences in writing styles: most cts’ narratives followed a clear structure (brief statement of belief, supporting theories/standards, classroom examples), while some usts’ belief statements were more general (for example, “literacy is fundamental”), often followed by numerous tangentially related examples, resulting in more initial codes. to address these issues, we unified the coding rules as follows: 1. adding prefixes to codes to distinguish primary beliefs and examples of literacy instruction: “pb” for primary beliefs and “eg” for examples. the prefixes also helped to clarify that most of the participants had one primary belief, and ct4, ct19, ust12, ust25 and ust42 each stated two primary beliefs. 2. retaining most of the emerging categories, consolidating and renaming a few to best represent the data. for example, in the ct dataset, there was a category called “literacy assessment.” upon close examination of ct40’s narrative, which was the only one in this category, we realized that even though ct40 used the words “classroom assessment,” she was substantiating that teachers should provide positive feedback to encourage student talk instead of judging if the answers were right or wrong. we agreed to eliminate “literacy assessment” category and added her primary belief to the category “use positive teacher feedback to motivate students.” we then re-coded both datasets to apply the new coding rules, verifying coding congruence throughout. this re-coding led to 41-42 primary codes for cts and 47-50 for usts, grouped under 11 categories for cts and 8-10 categories for usts. each dataset was coded at least twice and verified once by each researcher to increase trustworthiness. during this phase, we also tabulated examples of literacy instruction the participants had provided to support their beliefs in literacy education (table 1). hu & dong current issues in comparative education during phase 3: theme emergence, we first independently analyzed each dataset, writing each primary belief code on a post-it note. next, we grouped similar primary beliefs from each dataset into categories based on their conceptual similarities. for example, “read beyond textbooks” and “include media literacy in literacy curriculum” were grouped together because they both answer the question “what should be taught?” we then examined these groups to identify overarching themes and noted that most of them were aligned with the pck framework along the lines of “how literacy should be taught” (pedagogical knowledge), “what should be taught” (content knowledge), and “who are the students” (knowledge of the learner). we noted that most categories related to literacy pedagogy, such as “connect literacy instruction with reality” and “use interactive activities.” other categories emphasized the learners, such as “literacy instruction must be student-centered” and “focus on students, trust and respect their agency.” the remaining categories relate to the literacy curriculum or more abstract conceptual literacy understanding. following our independent sorting, we shared our sorting results and discussed beliefs that could fit under more than one theme. for example, “differentiated instruction” and “use positive teacher feedback to engage students” could go either with literacy pedagogy or about students. eventually, we agreed to put them under the theme of literacy pedagogy because the participants’ primary emphasis was on teaching, and the intended target of teaching was students. when we encountered beliefs that didn’t fit into existing themes, we discussed whether to create a new theme or to broaden the definition of an existing theme. for example, belief statements such as “literacy is foundational” and “literacy is a tool for communication” do not fit under the theme of pedagogy or students. we created a new theme encompassing these beliefs called “conceptual literacy understanding.” in phase 4, we looked across the datasets to investigate differences and similarities in how the two groups of teachers articulated their literacy beliefs and which examples each group used to illustrate their beliefs. we each wrote memos to capture our own insights and interpretations and then compared them. findings from a constructivist perspective, we conceptualized teachers’ beliefs about literacy education as philosophical, cognitive, and pedagogical views about literacy teaching and learning, including but not limited to answers to such questions: what is literacy and its functions? what are optimal literacy curriculum, instructional approaches, and conditions for student learning literacy? our findings are organized by the themes we identified in each group of teachers’ beliefs about literacy education (table 2): literacy pedagogy, students, and literacy curriculum for cts and literacy pedagogy, students, and conceptual literacy understanding for usts. while the first two themes, accounting for over 80% of each group, are similar across the two sample groups, the last two themes, literacy curriculum and conceptual literacy understanding similar foci, different lenses: literacy education beliefs and practice of chinese and u.s. teachers current issues in comparative education are unique to each group. these themes are all central to the original and expanded pck frameworks (carlson et al., 2015; grossman, 1990; shulman, 1987). table 2 themes/categories in literacy education beliefs of chinese and u.s. teachers themes categories primary beliefs total cts n=40 usts n=44 literacy pedagogy focused use interactive activities 0 9 9 connect literacy instruction to reality 6 5 11 teach literacy as tool for communication/expression 6 0 6 situational teaching 5 0 5 use print-rich, literature-rich classroom environments 0 4 4 differentiated instruction 0 4 4 teach literacy as aesthetics and culture 3 0 3 use positive teacher feedback to motivate students 3 0 3 build highly effective lesson structure 2 0 2 student focused student-centered instruction 11 0 11 literacy gives students opportunities in life 0 9 9 literacy gives students voices and power for social justice 0 8 8 literacy curriculum focused include media literacy 2 0 2 read beyond textbooks 2 0 2 using texts with similar themes/topics 1 0 1 teaching reading and writing separately 1 0 1 conceptual literacy understanding literacy is foundational 0 4 4 literacy is a tool for communication/expression 0 4 4 theme 1. literacy pedagogy beliefs we conceptualized literacy pedagogy beliefs as those focusing on instructional approaches and practices for facilitating literacy teaching and learning, similar to shulman’s pck (1987). as shown in table 2, the beliefs of 25 (60%) cts and 22 (47%) usts focused on this theme. within this theme, about two-thirds of each sample group shared similar instructional preferences for delivering literacy content to students – albeit through different lenses – while the pedagogical foci for the remaining one-third of each group uniquely reflected the different cultural and educational contexts of participants. chinese teachers’ literacy pedagogy beliefs of the 25 cts who upheld literacy pedagogy beliefs, 17 emphasized decreasing the distance between the text and students’ life experiences and teaching literacy as a tool for hu & dong current issues in comparative education communication and expression. we categorized these beliefs as connecting literacy instruction to reality, teaching literacy as a tool for communication/expression, and situational teaching. the significance of these beliefs seems to illustrate the challenge of teaching classic texts and their unfamiliar contexts, which account for an increasingly significant portion of literacy readers as children move up grade levels. those who believed in connecting literacy instruction to reality provided examples such as encouraging students to write for real-world audiences and purposes, role-play, debate, and oral rehearsal before writing. several cts provided examples of teaching traditional chinese classics, such as using multimedia to facilitate students’ visualization of poetry or stories that take place in unfamiliar settings, necessitated by limited illustrations in the required chinese literacy textbooks. six cts beliefs focused on the importance of teaching literacy as a tool for communication/expression, emphasizing student expression and using literacy as a vehicle for communication and knowing the world. the examples in this category ranged widely from encouraging small group discussion, visualizing, writing for real world audiences and purposes, to focusing on answering text-based questions to improve test scores. given the predominant emphasis on testing in chinese education, we were surprised to find only three participants in this category mentioned testing (out of four total cts across all categories), in the context of helping students use models to answer text-based questions correctly to improve test scores. situational teaching was another way to bridge the unfamiliar texts and students’ realities. half the examples in this category used role-play, and the other half used multimedia to recreate a situation from the text. ct21 described situational teaching as “creating a context that allows students to visualize and experience the situation/setting of the text to deepen students’ comprehension and understanding.” ct35, after illustrating how she used pictures and music to help students feel the emotion of classic poems, wrote, “…creating a beautiful, enjoyable context allows students to immediately place themselves in the scenery so that the poem can bring them an aesthetic experience.” these teachers’ emphasis on creating immersive contexts reflects their belief that comprehension of texts requires students to form personal, experiential connections with texts rather than encountering them as distant artifacts. the remaining eight cts’ beliefs were unique to the cts, whose primary beliefs were teaching literacy as aesthetics and culture, using positive teacher feedback to motivate students, and building highly effective lesson structures. we believe that these beliefs reflected chinese cultural and contextual influences. for example, the articulation of teaching literacy as aesthetics and culture echoed the chinese ncs, which emphasizes literacy as an embodiment of culture and the cultivation of aesthetic taste and emotion through reading literature. three cts articulated this belief and provided examples such as reciting classic texts with expression, studying authors’ lives, and incorporating chinese calligraphy, which requires practice and appreciation of calligraphy as an art form. ct9 wrote, “the humanity aspect of literacy stems from its function in passing down the chinese language, characters and culture.” ct18 stated, “to help students appreciate the aesthetics of the similar foci, different lenses: literacy education beliefs and practice of chinese and u.s. teachers current issues in comparative education text, teachers should guide the students to feel, understand, appreciate, critique and create in order to mold their temperament, train their character, so that they form their noble aesthetic taste.” the tendency to focus on aesthetics and culture reflects the chinese classic tradition of literature studies, which accounts for 30% of the texts in 6th grade literacy readers and regards aesthetic appreciation as the highest form of learning. all three cts who believed in using positive teacher feedback to motivate students described applying this strategy to help students answer questions confidently. granted, it is a common approach for teachers to provide positive feedback to motivate students. but in the chinese context, it is challenging, particularly for novice teachers, to teach in quiet classrooms where the predominant learning mode is non-verbal, and students don’t speak unless being called upon (wang & chang, 2013). in addition, with the predominant mode of whole-class instruction, when students do speak up, they must do so in front of 45-55 fellow students (gu, 2006; tan, 2015). given this backdrop, it is evident how the cultural context influenced cts’ belief of providing positive feedback in order to motivate students to speak up without fear of being judged in front of their peers. ct30 wrote, “if the student didn’t provide the correct answer, instead of judging whether the answer is right or wrong, i provide positive feedback that leads the student to self-assess to protect her confidence.” finally, as lesson study is common practice in chinese schools, two cts’ beliefs focused on building a highly effective lesson structure, though each had a different emphasis. ct36 focused on planning lessons to allow time for student cooperative learning; and ct32 advocated for modules in lesson planning, with each module focusing on one essential question instead of the more question-answer recitation style throughout a lesson. given the large class sizes in china, we were interested to see if cts mention small group activities. we found two cts who used examples of small group work to support their literacy pedagogy beliefs (a third one was found in theme 2). in the chinese classroom, where whole-class teaching was the norm, these three cases stood out. these cts described forming small groups in literacy class by asking students in alternating rows to turn around to face students behind them. this seemed to be the most convenient way to form small groups in chinese classrooms, which are usually packed with wall-to-wall rows of desks to accommodate the average class size of 45-55 students (hu, 2004; pratt, 1992). however, these two cases of small group work took place peripherally – putting students in small groups before or after the lesson to preview the text or answer questions. only one ct (whose belief was categorized in theme 2) discussed integrating small group work in the lesson and intentionally coaching students to work collaboratively in small groups, reflecting a deeper understanding of the central role of students in small group work. u.s. teachers’ literacy pedagogy focused beliefs while 25 (60%) cts’ beliefs were literacy pedagogy-focused, 22 (47%) usts’ beliefs illustrated this theme, and more than half of them believed in using interactive activities and connecting literacy instruction to reality. to substantiate these beliefs, they named twice as many varieties of classroom social interactive activities for literacy instruction when hu & dong current issues in comparative education compared with the cts’ example. these include cooperative learning, guided reading, book clubs/literature circles, buddy reading, role play, turn-and-talk, and peer editing— all reflecting the influence of common u.s. literacy practices. ust7 wrote, “an integral part of my teaching….is to set up cooperative learning groups so that my students can participate in the process of finding answers instead of waiting for their teacher to tell them the right answers.” in addition, the usts emphasized more ways to connect literacy instruction to students’ lives, such as student ownership and choices in books/writing topics; writing for real-world audiences and purposes; making text-to-self connections; using field trips and the arts to make learning authentic; applying culturally relevant practices; and integrating curriculum that allows students to see themselves and their communities represented in the literature. in the words of ust18, “…the ideal setting for teaching literacy includes their [students’] culture, home life, family, and neighborhood. including these factors in my curriculum and classroom allows me to best connect with my students and they also make my students feel safe and comfortable.” examples like this reflected the multicultural and multiethnic nature of usts’ urban school populations. the remaining two categories in usts’ literacy pedagogy beliefs were unique to them. these beliefs, using print-rich, literature-rich environments, and differentiated instruction, reflected the realities of the u.s. classrooms as well as an emphasis on individual students instead of treating them as a uniform collective. the inclusion of print and literature in the learning environment reflected the multipronged approaches in literacy instruction beyond reading from textbooks. this learning environment stood in contrast to the typical chinese classroom setting, where large class sizes and space constraints often prevent the inclusion of libraries and activity centers, leading to an environment more conducive to teacherand textbook-centered instruction. usts illustrated how they labeled the objects in the room and used word walls, learning centers, and class libraries as integral parts of literacy education. they also taught children to recognize and use different genres, lent books to children to take home, and used culturally relevant books, among other examples. ust19 wrote, “within the learning centers in my classroom, i intentionally create low-risk learning opportunities that scaffold students’ learning and offer them choices and a variety of ways to interact among themselves to construct knowledge, and to promote self-confidence and ownership.” it was interesting to note that in all, while 15 usts included differentiated instruction to illustrate their beliefs in literacy education, only four usts specifically chose differentiated instruction as their primary belief. ust44 explained her choice this way, “i am keenly aware that children enter my classroom with different learning needs and therefore, my literacy instruction must be differentiated appropriately for them to meet their needs. one-size-fits-all instruction won’t work.” usts offered many examples to illustrate how they provided differentiated instruction, including: assessments to inform instruction, guided reading groups, reading/writing conferences, differentiated learning tasks, scaffolded instruction, and progress monitoring. the focus on creating a literacyrich environment and offering differentiated instruction highlights a fundamental difference in approach between u.s. and chinese classrooms, reflecting distinct educational philosophies and practical constraints. similar foci, different lenses: literacy education beliefs and practice of chinese and u.s. teachers current issues in comparative education theme 2. student-focused beliefs participants whose literacy education beliefs focused on student-centered instruction are grouped in this theme, which accounts for 11 (26%) cts’ and 17 (36%) usts’ beliefs. however, their lenses couldn’t be more different: while most cts advocated for allowing students to play an active role in literacy learning inside the classroom, the usts focused on ways literacy impacted students’ lives beyond schools. chinese teachers’ student-focused beliefs against the predominant mode of teacherand textbook-centered instruction in chinese schools (gu, 2006; tan, 2015), 11 (26%) cts’ student-focused beliefs stood out. it was interesting to note the uniformity of their stances: almost all placed student learning at the center of their beliefs, emphasizing various approaches that would center students’ needs and voices in literacy classrooms. their examples included: respecting students’ agency and interests; listening to students’ feedback on the lessons; trusting students’ initiatives; encouraging student ownership in writing; reaching out to connect with students; helping students answer questions correctly and speak up with confidence; and emphasizing students’ character education. four cts provided anecdotes of winning the trust of one of their students who struggled with learning or behavior. ct16 wrote, “literacy education should move beyond simply focusing on passing on knowledge and skills. instead, the humanistic value of literacy demands that we focus on students, trust and respect their agency, and motivate them to participate actively in learning.” among the 11 cts’, we found four who provided critiques of rote learning and teaching to the test, believing that these practices deprive students of their active role in learning. this sentiment is reflected in ct29’s remark, “teachers need to stop overshadowing the central role of students and spoon-feeding instruction. teachers should consider, from students’ perspective, how to motivate students and foster their initiative.” seven cts in this category specifically mentioned western educational psychologists and educators such as jean piaget, carl rogers, and john dewey, and constructivist principles, to support their student-centered beliefs. however, their views of the western constructivist theories seemed to remain largely conceptual, as their examples spotlighted the students rather than the teacher or textbooks, yet none of them provided any specific examples of what constructivist practice looked like in the classroom or in literacy practices. even though three cts acknowledged that students are different in learning, none provided specific ways to assess or teach students with different learning needs. the absence of concrete examples in their responses suggests that while these cts embraced the conceptual framework of student-centered learning, they were unable to envision its practical implementation within their familiar educational environment. this gap between theory and practice is further exacerbated by the lack of specific strategies for differentiation despite acknowledging individual differences among students. u.s. teachers’ student-focused beliefs unlike the cts’ student-focused beliefs that shifted the focus from teachers and textbooks to students, usts’ student-focused beliefs were expressed using a wider lens that captured the potential impact of effective literacy instruction on students’ lives beyond the classroom. our data analysis suggested two different ways the usts expressed their hu & dong current issues in comparative education student-centered beliefs. of 11 (36%) usts with student-focused beliefs, a little over half emphasized that literacy gives students opportunities in life. to achieve this goal, usts described using effective literacy instruction that included relatable and culturally relevant literature and pedagogy; engaging students in interactive activities to make connections between literacy and students’ lives; differentiated instruction and progress monitoring; including families as partners and students’ cultures in the classroom; giving students choices in learning; and motivating and engaging students. their emphasis on the students was highlighted in ust28’s narrative: literacy instruction can’t be effective if we only focus on the curriculum. we must teach the person, and the person must be seen as part of their community because their identity not only encompasses who they are, but also their parents and culture. when we teach the whole learner, we can help facilitate authentic learning experiences that will allow the learner to make connections, infer, reason, and think critically about the world around them. they would have a better chance to succeed in life. the remaining usts with student-focused beliefs maintained that literacy gives students voices and power for social justice. they felt that literacy instruction should empower students, encourage critical thinking, connect to students’ lives, cultures, and identities, use culturally relevant books and approaches, and encourage students to play an active role in learning. several teachers illustrated this belief in their examples. ust43 wrote that “literacy is a vehicle for students to discover and develop their own voices, agency, and autonomy.” ust26 shared that “my role as a teacher should be more than just a conveyor of information but a facilitator of critical thinking processes.” finally, ust32 felt that “…[teachers should] help students develop ownership of their reading and writing through authentic learning so that they think critically about the inequities around them and contribute to building a just world.” the views expressed here emphasized student empowerment and critical thinking, suggesting that these usts viewed literacy not just as a set of skills to be mastered but as a tool for personal and societal transformation. their perspectives have important implications for curriculum design, instruction, and broader goals of education in a diverse and rapidly changing society. theme 3. curriculum-focused and conceptual literacy understanding beliefs the third theme of teachers’ literacy beliefs was unique to each sample group. 6 (14%) cts focused on literacy curriculum while 8 (17%) usts emphasized conceptual literacy understanding. chinese teachers’ literacy curriculum beliefs cts’ curriculum-focused beliefs all emphasized what should be taught in literacy. they were expressed in four ways: include media literacy, because it helps to “train students’ to process information” and “present learning outcome”; read beyond textbooks (e.g., “[students should] read whole books instead of texts in a textbook” and “[i have] established a book corner in the classroom so that students can bring books from home and swap books with other students”); use texts with similar themes and topics (e.g., “connect new text with past texts by theme or author so that prior knowledge can help deepen similar foci, different lenses: literacy education beliefs and practice of chinese and u.s. teachers current issues in comparative education learning”); and teach reading and writing separately “to allow writing as a curriculum in school instead of assigning writing as homework”(ct8). these curriculum-focused beliefs reflected a broadened view of literacy curriculum that extends beyond traditional textbook-based learning. these cts seemed to think out of the box and consider literacy as a complex set of skills that the textbook itself and traditional reading-centered approaches could not offer. u.s. teachers’ focus on conceptual literacy understanding for the 8 (17%) usts whose beliefs are categorized here, their beliefs were skewed towards what literacy is rather than literacy education. their narratives seemed to begin by asserting an understanding of what literacy is, such as “literacy is foundational,” followed by many examples that were loosely connected to their beliefs. these beliefs fall into two categories: literacy is foundational, and literacy is a tool for communication/expression. three out of the four usts who believed that literacy is foundational seemed to view literacy as a set of foundational skills rather than as a social practice. ust9 shared that “literacy offers students foundational skills, such as comprehension and vocabulary. it’s essential for building a solid foundation to learn all other subjects.” similarly, ust24 articulated that “in order for students to be successful with learning in school, they need to have strong literacy and language skills.” usts provided classroom examples such as differentiated instruction, using assessment for progress monitoring, using a balanced literacy curriculum, explicitly modeling, guided reading, and using culturally relevant books. while these usts recognized the importance of literacy for overall academic success, their focus on foundational skills suggested a somewhat narrower view of literacy compared to those who saw it as a social practice or tool for empowerment. interestingly, despite this skills-oriented belief, their reported classroom practices include elements of more contemporary approaches, such as differentiated instruction and culturally relevant materials. this discrepancy between stated beliefs and described practices highlights the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of teachers' beliefs about literacy education, as well as the potential influence of teacher education programs and current educational trends on their instructional choices. the remaining three usts emphasized that literacy is a tool for communication/expression. unlike the cts, who believed in teaching literacy as a tool for communication and expression, the usts stressed the inherent communicative function of literacy itself, with no mention of its implications for literacy pedagogies. their statements seemed to be marooned in abstraction, such as, “literacy helps humans to communicate with others,” (ust6) and “literacy is what enables humans to interact and function in the world” (ust42). they provided these examples to illustrate their beliefs: use interactive activities and differentiated instruction, including arts and technology in instruction; write for realworld audiences/purposes; and consider students’ interests and choices. while the usts' beliefs about literacy's role appear somewhat abstract, their examples suggest a more nuanced understanding of how this concept might translate into classroom practice. there seems to be a disconnect between their theoretical understanding and its explicit connection to pedagogical strategies. this disconnect might be attributed to the usts' hu & dong current issues in comparative education developing teacher identities and evolving understanding of how to bridge theory and practice in literacy instruction. this points to a potential area for growth in teacher education programs, suggesting a need for more explicit guidance in translating broad literacy concepts into concrete, purposeful instructional strategies that fully embody the communicative nature of literacy. discussion this study was designed to understand literacy education beliefs espoused by the 40 chinese and 44 u.s. literacy teachers who were chosen through convenient sampling. existing cross-cultural comparative studies of chinese and u.s. teachers’ beliefs focus on teacher efficacy or subject areas such as math or science education (e.g., ball et al 2008; gess-newsome, 2015), and very little has been done to compare literacy education beliefs. we believe that our cross-cultural comparison provides a nuanced understanding of teachers’ literacy education beliefs within their sociocultural contexts. first, by identifying the ways in which teachers espoused beliefs and practices are similar or different across cultures, this study can help bridge gaps between theory and practice, especially in china's efforts to study western educational theories and adapt western curriculum models. in addition, our findings illuminate how sociocultural contexts shape teachers' beliefs and practices in literacy education. this can guide the adaptation of educational theories and practices to fit local contexts, ensuring that reforms in both countries are meaningfully integrated rather than superficially adopted. finally, in comparing literacy education beliefs across cultures, our study provides u.s. educators with a better understanding of the literacy education background of their students from china. this can inform the development of targeted support strategies for chinese students in u.s. schools. the most interesting comparison is that while the literacy education beliefs of the two sample groups focused on similar themes such as literacy pedagogy and students, the lenses with which they viewed these themes were very much tinted by each country’s social, cultural, and educational traditions. for example, the literacy practices that cts provided to illustrate their beliefs tended to revolve around the most salient literacy practices specific to the chinese classrooms, such as making classic texts relevant to students and encouraging students to speak up in class. similarly, usts’ beliefs reflected dominant values and practices in us literacy education, such as meeting students’ individual needs, differentiated instruction, using printand literature-rich classroom environments, and promoting student interaction. for those teachers whose beliefs focused on students, the cts emphasized turning students into more active learners in the classroom, whereas the usts focused on ways literacy education could impact students’ lives beyond schools, such as creating more opportunities to center students’ voices and power for social justice. each group seemed to focus on what they consider to be the most pressing issues in literacy education: moving towards student-centered pedagogies for cts and addressing student diversity and social issues for usts. we also noted how few usts (18%) referred to ccss, compared to 58% of cts in the sample who referenced the chinese ncsl. however, only three cts’ beliefs directly echoed the standards that view literacy education as a conduit for the transmission of similar foci, different lenses: literacy education beliefs and practice of chinese and u.s. teachers current issues in comparative education culture and a path to cultivating students’ aesthetic appreciation and emotion. we believe that the differences in how the teachers from our samples related to standardized expectations have to do with how the standards are implemented in the two different sociocultural contexts. china’s national curriculum standards tend to be more centralized and prescriptive, while u.s. standards allow for more local and state-level interpretation and adaptation (ding & chen, 2017). in addition, in a country where confucian traditions emphasize respect for authority and standardized knowledge (luo & qiao, 2021), cts generally adhere more strictly to national standards, whereas usts have more flexibility in implementation. we also speculated that in the u.s. educational culture that values individualism and diverse learning experiences, teachers are more likely to prioritize their own beliefs and their students’ needs rather than strict referencing external standards. a third significant comparison is that the narratives of both groups contained inconsistencies between participants’ espoused beliefs and self-reported classroom practices. this echoes previous studies’ (fang, 1996; li et al., 2011; perry et al., 2006) findings about (in)consistency between teachers’ beliefs and practices and how these (in)consistencies stem from contextual factors. however, our qualitative data analysis revealed valuable and nuanced insights: the inconsistencies between teachers’ beliefs and practices manifested in opposite ways with the two sample groups. 80% of our cts’ expressed theoretical underpinnings included western cognitive and constructivist theories. however, their views of these theories remained largely conceptual, evidenced by a lack of what constructivist literacy practice looked like in the classroom. for example, of the four teachers who provided examples of using small group activities, only one appeared to focus on empowering the learner to use the small group discussion for discovery learning. the rest reported using small groups for task-oriented purposes, and they took place peripherally. even when some cts expressed student-centered beliefs, they still illustrated such beliefs with examples that aimed at raising students’ test scores, such as using formulas for students to answer test questions. in addition, some cts recognized students’ individual differences in learning even though the predominant view of students was still collectivist. despite this, no ct substantiated their views with classroom practices that address these individual differences. hence, ct’s self-reported practices seemed to show that contextual factors, such as national unified and mandated curriculum and testing, and large class sizes outweigh their training and exposure to cognitive and constructivist theories in their graduate courses. this finding is meaningful to chinese teacher educators and teacher education programs as it highlights several critical areas for consideration. first, it underscores the need to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application in literacy instruction. second, it emphasizes the importance of adapting western educational theories to fit the unique challenges of the chinese educational system. third, the findings could inform curriculum reform efforts, highlighting the need for greater flexibility in national curricula and assessment methods for more constructivist and individualized approaches to literacy instruction. in contrast, usts’ inconsistencies between beliefs and practices manifested in opposite ways. usts provided more than twice as many examples of student-centered interactive hu & dong current issues in comparative education activities to illustrate their beliefs as the cts did. however, only half as many of them cited theorists as the cts did. despite this, their expressed pedagogical content knowledge seemed to illustrate a strong tendency for constructivist and student-centered practices that they themselves had experienced in their own schooling. the usts in our study, growing up in a culture that values individualism, entered elementary schools in the late 1990s, after the dominant theories of teaching and learning had shifted from transmission perspectives to more cognitive, constructivist perspectives (schon, 1987). we considered the history of their schooling: during their k-12 years, they experienced constructivist approaches themselves, in multifunctional classrooms and heterogeneous student groupings. by the time they entered teacher education programs in the 2010s, teacher education in the us had undergone a reform in recognition of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that are important for teacher education in the 21st century. for example, the new framework for understanding teaching/learning included knowledge of learners and their development in social contexts, of subject matter and curriculum goals, and of teaching in light of the content and learners (darling-hammond & bransford, 2005). this led us to believe that the usts’ literacy education beliefs and practices reflected their own schooling and the new knowledge framework in their teacher education programs. once again, this shows that teachers’ beliefs were impacted more by contextual factors and personal experiences than their training and exposure to educational theories in their teacher education programs. richardson’s research (1996, 2003) also finds that the most impactful source of teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning came from their personal experiences with their k-12 schooling and instruction. finally, it was noteworthy to discover that, against a backdrop of uniform, teacherand textbook-centered pedagogy that is historically, culturally, and educationally rooted (gu, 2006; tan, 2015), 25% of the cts in our study demonstrated a critical stance towards the dominant trend of test-driven and spoon-feeding style of instruction. these cts expressed discontent with the futile call for student-centered learning, since they were still forced to teach mandated textbooks in an educational system that is heavily driven by testing, echoing previous studies of chinese teachers’ beliefs about high-stakes testing (dai et al., 2011; tan, 2016). some were concerned that attention on test scores deprives students of opportunities to appreciate the beauty of language and literature. however, they provided little evidence of how to teach against these trends in literacy education. limitations and future directions one limitation of our study stems from the single data source of self-reported teacher beliefs and practices. future studies of teacher beliefs and practices should include multiple data sources from classroom observations, interviews, and focus group discussions to better gauge teacher beliefs and how they relate to classroom practices. for example, we could interview teachers in our graduate programs and conduct classroom observations to further compare and ascertain how teachers’ beliefs relate to their practices, and to what extent sociocultural factors influence their beliefs. similar foci, different lenses: literacy education beliefs and practice of chinese and u.s. teachers current issues in comparative education another limitation is that the participants’ teaching experiences and phases in the graduate programs vary, making it difficult to pinpoint how these factors impact their beliefs. in addition, it is important to recognize the limitations of the small convenience sample in our study to avoid generalizing about the beliefs of the broader populations of teachers in china and the u.s. however, the themes and categories our study revealed about beliefs in literacy education can inform the future development of questionnaires or surveys to test larger samples of teachers from both countries. conclusion our study adds literacy teachers’ beliefs and practices to the growing body of crosscultural studies comparing teacher beliefs in china and the u.s., allowing us to speculate ways to address teachers’ belief-practice gaps. since teacher beliefs often guide their professional learning and teaching practices, it is important to address teacher beliefs in literacy education programs and school-based professional learning opportunities. for example, for chinese teacher education programs, it is important to include both conceptual and practical knowledge to address the belief-practice gap. for u.s. teacher education programs, it’s important to encourage teachers to examine and make less tacit their existing beliefs and connect them to new knowledge in graduate programs, as well as their practices. we hope this line of inquiry will start a conversation in cross-culture comparison of literacy instruction and teacher education, as well as lead to more future comparative studies of literacy education. yang hu is an associate professor of literacy education at hunter college school of education, the city university of new york. her principal research interests include literacy teacher learning and development in urban schools, arts-based inquiries in literacy teachers’ professional learning, and cross-cultural studies in teacher education. beifei dong is a professor of 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(2013). cultural characteristics developed through chinese literacy instruction. us-china foreign language, 6, 433-446. 6_meyer current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 21, issue 1 © 2019, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 21(1), 93-103. pre-service teachers in finland: comparative education through short-term faculty-led study abroad joshua meyer montana state university ann dutton ewbank montana state university ann ellsworth montana state university study abroad is a popular enrichment of the u.s. postsecondary academic experience with short-term programs providing a cost-effective opportunity to enhance student international travel experiences. in this review, we critically examine a u.s. program we led to finland with the goal of identifying the pedagogical features from that program that maximize and optimize student learning. we provided thirteen undergraduate and graduate students in a department of education at a mid-sized, public, land-grant university an opportunity to participate in a short-term, faculty-led study abroad program to learn about finland’s public, k-12 educational system. program learning outcomes included comparing the country’s top-ranked educational system with u.s. public k-12 education in order to enhance students’ future teaching practices. the purpose of this essay is to deconstruct the pedagogical features from that program to identify what worked well and what could have been improved upon with the goal of providing a critically examined model for consideration and thereby enhance comparative educational practice for faculty-led study abroad programs. keywords: study abroad, pre-service teachers, experiential education, finland introduction study abroad is an increasingly popular supplement to a university academic experience. according to the institute for international education’s (2018) open doors report, 285,322 u.s. students studied abroad during the 2015/2016 academic year, representing a fourfold increase from the early 1990’s. lewis and niesenbaum (2005) identify the primary benefit of study abroad to be “learning about people from different cultures” (p. b20). they further show the following benefits associated with studying abroad: a) students tend to take more classes outside their major upon return, b) students exhibit a greater propensity to travel abroad again, c) students show increased interest in interdisciplinary studies, and d) students demonstrate influenced perception of the costs and benefits of globalization. in short, study abroad provides a unique opportunity for comparative education. the purpose of this essay is to conceptually deconstruct a faculty-led shortterm study abroad program to finland designed to provide its student-teachers with an opportunity for cross-cultural comparative education. meyer, ewbank, & ellsworth current issues in comparative education 94 study abroad formats study abroad programs have been differentiated by length and purpose. the institute for international education (2018) groups study abroad programs by length of duration into: a) short-term (eight weeks or less), b) mid-length (one semester), and c) long-term (academic year). sachau, brasher, and fee (2010) distinguish study abroad programs according to purpose including: academic semester/year abroad, service-learning programs, and short-term programs. mid-length and long-term programs typically involve students living abroad, independently at a university campus while completing a course of study designed to supplement interests and coursework at their home institution. service-learning programs tend to be short duration and provide an opportunity for volunteer work abroad by “linking the work students do in the classroom to real-world problems and world needs” (sachau et al., 2010, p. 656), and thereby supplementing students’ academic experiences at the home institution, often satisfying fieldwork or internship degree requirements. short-term programs have gained widespread appeal in recent years accounting for an estimated 63% of u.s. students who study abroad (institute for international education, 2018). prior to the era of short-term programs, study abroad was limited to individuals who could afford the long-term costs associated with attending university overseas. today’s students tend to be debt averse (avery & turner, 2012) and are often worried about financing higher education. short-term programs are typically less than eight weeks in duration and therefore less likely to interfere with students’ academic trajectories or college-supplementing jobs (chieffo & griffiths, 2009) making them more affordable study abroad options (lewis & niesenbaum, 2005; nguyen 2017). additionally, shortterm programs allow participants to visit a considerable number of locations in a short period of time, maximizing cost/time efficiency (sachau et al., 2010). despite growing interest, as highlighted by chieffo and griffiths (2009), some question the academic legitimacy of short-term programs. there is a tacit belief that study abroad provides an invaluable learning opportunity to experience foreign cultures, but key learnings have been difficult to assess. long, akande, purdy, and nakano (2010) identify an important dilemma for faculty in “how to keep a short trip academic while making sure students were engaged and benefitting from experiential learning” (p. 90). this pedagogical challenge compounds the difficulty in elucidating learning outcomes associated with short-term programs and stresses the importance of deliberate design and implementation to achieve academic outcomes and maximize student learning. long et al. (2010) suggest a central aspect to the problem of establishing academic relevance is rooted in effectively assessing student learning, which has long been a challenge with study abroad experiences. in general, personal reflection captured through journals and formal written assignments tends to be the primary means of assessment, though williams (2009) also proposes using student evaluations and a photo contest as a means of reflection to emphasize the cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions of learning from an intercultural experience. because short-term programs are frequently conducted by university faculty based on their specific areas of expertise, short-term program faculty have developed a variety of comparative education through short-term faculty-led study abroad current issues in comparative education 95 pedagogical strategies and assessments of student learning, but there is not consensus on established best practices to serve as a model for short-term study abroad programs. as teacher educators with expertise in pedagogy and assessment, we wished to apply our expertise to a short-term program we led to finland with the goal of evaluating our program design in order determine key learnings as well as identify areas for improvement. literacies and libraries in context: finland during the spring 2018 semester, we led a short-term study abroad program to investigate finland’s k-12 public education system. we selected finland due to its internationally recognized, exemplary educational system, lauded by educational researchers for both student outcomes and innovative teaching practices, as well as our interest in studying a nordic model of education that focuses on social democracy (oftedal telhaug, asbjørn mediås, & aasen, 2006). our student-participants were interested in learning more about finland’s top-ranked educational system (ripley, 2013) and comparing those practices with montana’s, as a way of gleaning key learnings related to ongoing and future professional practice. conceptualizing the course eighteen months prior to the program, we began preparations, which included: selecting finland as an exemplary educational model, identifying a third-party provider for our incountry experience, negotiating and gaining permission to co-teach with our department head, and submitting a proposal and budget. upon approval, we designed the eight-week online course to prepare students for the nine-day in-country experience. we made a concerted effort in marketing the program by targeting faculty, advisors, student organizations, fraternities and sororities as well as advertising to students via electronic communications and personally reaching out to former students. we visited classrooms and conducted information sessions. additionally, we nominated prospective students for university financial assistance and we were able to secure over $11,000 in travel support for five students. in total, the class consisted of thirteen students (ten undergraduate and three graduate) half of which had no previous travel experience outside the united states. none of the students or faculty had previously travelled to finland. course organization the overall pedagogical experience consisted of a required eight-week, three-credit online course occurring prior to a nine-day study-abroad trip to finland over spring break. given the available opportunities based on university registration protocol, the graded academic portion of the course was completed prior to and independently of travel abroad. thus, travel abroad to finland was not part of academic coursework requirements. the course was designed to provide a comparative study of the finnish education system, focusing on literacy and libraries. the learning outcomes allowed student participants to: • identify aspects of finnish culture, including that of the indigenous sami people; meyer, ewbank, & ellsworth current issues in comparative education 96 • compare and contrast the finnish compulsory education system with the u.s. public education system; • describe the history of the pisa assessment and its implications for educators; • describe finland’s approach to second language learning; • describe and critique the finnish school and public library systems; and • participate in a nine-day experience in finland, synthesizing what was learned in the class prior to departure (not academically evaluated). we used finnish lessons 2.0 (sahlberg, 2015) and supplemental readings to learn about finland. the graded assignments included a presentation about finland, online discussions, a summary paper, and a study abroad plan. all course assignments were completed during the first eight weeks of the semester. because the course ended prior to travel abroad, students were able to fully engage in intercultural activities while in finland without feeling pressured to split their time between participating in activities and fulfilling course requirements. while in finland, we toured helsinki, visited three schools in the tampere area, participated in facilitated discussions led by the finnish council for creative education, and engaged in cultural activities. pockets of free time enabled students to explore the country independent of faculty. this format, we believe, enhanced the perceived economic benefit of the program by providing students with a grounded academic approach and a scaffolded in-country experience while also affording students opportunities to explore the country according to their individual interests. course assignments the eight-week course used brightspace by d2l as an online learning platform and consisted of the following assignments: narrated online presentation about pre-assigned categories related finnish governance, weekly asynchronous online discussions, a traditional academic paper synthesizing key learnings comparing the finnish and u.s. educational systems, and personalized plan for making the most of the in-country experience. evaluation of the assignments the finland presentation enabled students to research and present important information in a structured and easily accessible manner to other class members (e.g., table 1, appendix). the narrated online presentations resulted in concise, informative, and durable topic-area overviews accessible throughout the course. matched to weekly readings, the asynchronous online weekly discussions provided a mechanism to ensure students completed the reading assignments as well as enable students to critically engage in online discussions. given the diverse composition of students’ academic experiences, the content of posts varied by length and depth. some students used the online discussions to express areas of curiosity or of concern related to international travel, such as fear about inadvertently violating cultural norms. other students critically compared differences in finnish and u.s. approaches to education. for example, one student wrote: comparative education through short-term faculty-led study abroad current issues in comparative education 97 …you raise an interesting point that has simultaneously troubled and intrigued me… sahlberg (2015) mentioned the usefulness finns have found with multiple intelligence theory (mit). although mit was an extremely popular educational theory for many years in the u.s., the idea has not been empirically validated (cf. kirschner, sweller & clark, 2006), causing it to be considered invalid. what is occurring to cause an educational concept like mit to be embraced by a nation doing extremely well, and simultaneously to be disregarded by the nation that pioneered it based on the lack of empirical evidence? in this manner, the asynchronous online format supported the academic diversity of undergraduate and graduate students alike. the summary paper provided a mechanism to synthesize key learnings as well as to express areas of confusion or concern. because the format requirements allowed students to describe their experience in the first person, faculty could pinpoint the relevant aspects of each student’s pre-trip curricular experience. one student remarked: the finnish educational system is indeed a paradox. in many ways, i am still trying to wrap my mind around what i have learned...part of the reason i am struggling to synthesize my learnings is because it doesn’t feel like the story is complete. sahlberg (2015) provides a focused depiction of finland’s educational history and yet, he concludes with a discussion of the current problems. this created a sense of incompleteness for me because, inevitably, there is more to come… a noteworthy aspect about this student’s paper lies in the unanswered questions about finland precisely because the student had not yet visited the country. because the course ended prior to the in-country experience, we wrestled with requiring a summary paper. pedagogy aside, the summary paper provided a formal means of making connections between previously disparate ideas. although this format did not allow students to synthesize the course learning outcomes and in-country experience, it did provide students with a structured means for summarizing the key learnings from the online class and subsequently prepared them for travel abroad. the study abroad plan provided a mechanism for students to reflect upon their preparation for finland and conclude the academic portion of the course pre-departure. students with little international travel experience tended to use it pragmatically (e.g., packing checklist, international flight requirements, and navigating transportation incountry) whereas students with international travel experience used it as a means of structuring their intellectual thoughts to maximize their learning while in country. in-country experience the in-country experience began with a guided walking tour of helsinki to acclimate participants to finland’s social, cultural, and political history. next, the group travelled via train to tampere to visit three public schools specializing in international education, meyer, ewbank, & ellsworth current issues in comparative education 98 montessori (1917) approaches, and nature-based learning (cf. o’brien, 2009). after completing school visits in the mornings, the finnish council for creative education held debrief sessions at the university of tampere to process site visits by comparing and constating u.s. and finnish educational practices. returning to helsinki, we enjoyed a variety of activities showcasing unique features of finnish culture including: sampling traditional foods, visiting the finnish national library, touring the historic fortress on suomelinna island, and experiencing a smoke sauna. discussion the combination of the online class coupled with the in-country experience provided a focused, educative, and cost-effective way for students to study abroad. pairing online coursework during the first eight weeks of semester with the in-country travel during spring break mitigated interference with student academic trajectories. the course served as mechanism to prepare students for a journey abroad and focus their attention on pedagogical interests. moreover, the flexibility of the course curriculum enabled students to research finland in preparation their in-country experience. student costs averaged $5000, which included tuition, international air fare, and program fees (e.g., lodging, in-country transportation, activities, and some meals). most students qualified for and received some form of financial aid. while the program was expensive, it provided a high cost-benefit opportunity for students to earn academic credit while participating in a highly structured and unique academic experience, subsequently providing students with the sense that their financial investment was worth the expense. the course assignments were intentionally designed to provide students with a forum to discuss their own travel (in)experience as well as a structured opportunity to learn about the country. the finland presentations enabled participants to gain a common understanding of the major aspects of the country and explore areas of curiosity in a format that allowed participants to revisit those topic areas throughout the semester. the online discussion enabled students to engage in formal academic discourse structured around a specific theme according to a fixed schedule, but with enough flexibility to accommodate complex personal schedules. the structure of the discussion topics, paired with the required readings, focused students’ attention on relevant parts of the finnish educational system and assisted students in maintaining focus on the course learning outcomes. finally, the summary paper invited students to reflect upon their learnings from the class and the study abroad plans spurred students to mentally prepare for departure. the format enabled all students to learn from one another and build a sense of community prior to travel. the university academic term calendar required that the eight-week course be completed (i.e., grades were submitted) prior to departure, thus limiting opportunities to formally assess students’ in-country learning. study abroad programs have a problematic history with failing to adequately assess student learning (long et al., 2010) by requiring conformity to the academic term calendar that can prevent assessment of learning outcomes afforded by the in-country experience. given that reflection is widely regarded as the paramount mechanism for students to synthesize experiential learning (dewey, comparative education through short-term faculty-led study abroad current issues in comparative education 99 1916; kolb, 1984; williams, 2009), formal, required reflective activities would have strengthened this experience. although the course was well-aligned with the actual program abroad, the fact that students were not academically required to reflect upon their actual experience abroad was a pedagogical limitation. however, through internal mini-grant funding, we were able to provide several optional opportunities for reflection upon return. these included structuring time to create reflection photo-journals where students came together, shared pictures, dialogued about and debriefed their experience. additionally, we held a social event where students shared their experiences with the college dean, the associate provost for international programs, and a columnist from a local paper. additionally, several students voluntarily created a video depicting highlights from their experience. two students who were awarded funding for their independent research shared their findings at the university’s annual undergraduate research symposium. the success of this finnish study-abroad program can also be measured by student feedback as well as through voluntary student attendance of post-program gatherings; student comments were overwhelmingly positive and their attendance at optional post-program gatherings was over 60%. improvements to future programs overall, this program was successful, for it provided a unique, enriching opportunity for students interested in international, comparative education. an essential question that emerged as a result of this experience is how to include the in-country experience as part of the formal course, rather than after final grades are given. determining ways of matching coursework with the in-country experience is important for assessing student learning outcomes. although the available options for scheduling the course led to the decision about the course’s conclusion prior to travel abroad, more flexibility within the academic term calendar would promote a richer educational experience for the students by prioritizing opportunities for students to reflect upon their experience abroad and link their learnings to important features of their academic coursework, aligning more closely with an established model of experiential learning (kolb, 1984). given that personal reflection is frequently used to assess student learning in addition to writing a substantive reflective post-experience paper, the program could be strengthened by formally building those pieces into the graded course. lastly, exploring other timeframes for running the class and traveling abroad (e.g., winter holiday, may, august) may provide the infrastructure that better supports student learning. anecdotally, our colleagues have indicated that program participants frequently connect back to their experience while studying additional aspects of the u.s. public education system. we know that several participants are incorporating their learning into their student teaching experiences. while we were pleased with the outcome of our program, we recognize that improvements can be made, which have the potential to provide even richer learning opportunities for students to synthesize this experience with their teaching meyer, ewbank, & ellsworth current issues in comparative education 100 practice. we are excited by the potential to incentivize colleagues to explore international learning experiences through future affordable and robust short-term, faculty-led study abroad programs. and it is our hope that this article adds to the ongoing conversation about comparative education by providing an example of a cost-effective way for educators to experience another unique and exemplary educational model. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank the montana state university college of education, health, and human development for mini-grants that supported post-experience student activities and the writing of this article, and hayley smith, our in-country host. joshua meyer is a phd candidate in education, curriculum and instruction at montana state university-bozeman. his research interests include: experiential education; nature-based learning; mind, brain, and 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(2009). the reflective model of intercultural competency: a multidimensional, qualitative approach to study abroad assessment. frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of study abroad, 18, 289-306. comparative education through short-term faculty-led study abroad current issues in comparative education 103 appendix table 1. example information table created for the finland presentation people and society: comparing finland and montana finland montana population 5,518,371 (2017) 1,050,493 (2016) area 130,666 mi2 147,040 mi2 ethnic composition finn (93.4%) swede (5.6%) russian (.5%) estonian (.3%) romani (gypsy; .1%) sami (indigenous; .1%) white (86.5%) american indian (6.6%) hispanic (3.6%) biracial (2.7%) african american (.6%) official language(s) finnish & swedish english age structure <14 (16.4%) 15-24 (11.4%) 25-64 (51.7%) >65 (21.1%) <18 (21.8%) 18-65 (60.5%) >65 (17.7%) sex 50.7% female 49.7% female education completed upper secondary (88%) high school graduate (92.9%) bachelor’s degree + (29.9%) education spending per student (usd) $12,545 $11,028 pisa scores (2015) *scores for u.s. math: 511 (rank 13) reading: 526 (rank 4) science: 531 (rank 5) math: 470 (rank 40)* reading: 497 (rank 24)* science: 496 (rank 25)* median per capita income (usd) $29,374 (oecd) $27,309 population grow rate .36% ~.8% poverty rate 5.3% 13.3% life expectancy 82 years ~79 years health insurance universal for citizens 9.8% uninsured current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 1, fall 2016 © 2016, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(1), 109-124. educating for transforming our world: revisiting international debates surrounding education for sustainable development yoko mochizuki unesco mahatma gandhi institute of education for peace and sustainable development in 2015, the un general assembly adopted a resolution titled “transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development” and a set of 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs). the notion of “transformative education” is being mainstreamed in the work of unesco within the new framework of the sdgs, which officially succeeded the millennium development goals (mdgs) and education for all (efa). this article briefly outlines the shifting international discourses surrounding education for sustainable development (esd), now enshrined in sdg target 4.7. the meanings of esd have shifted in relation to other education movements, including environmental education, efa, and more recently, global citizenship education (gced). by reviewing how esd and gced—as currently defined and promoted by unesco—approach climate change and the question of securing a sustainable future for humanity, the article delineates how the recent marriage of esd and gced in one target of the sdgs is weakening, rather than reinforcing, their transformative potentials. it concludes by pointing out the limitations of global policy initiatives for education and proposing ways forward to ensure that education contributes to shaping a more sustainable world. introduction addressing business leaders at the world economic forum four months after the collapse of lehman brothers, the united nations (un) secretary-general ban ki-moon (2009) remarked: “we can choose short-sighted unilateralism and business as usual. or we can grasp global cooperation and partnership on a scale never before seen.” the idea that we are at the crossroads and must choose between the “business as usual” or the alternatively better way of doing development, has been repeated in many un reports and speeches since the financial crisis (see, for example, un secretary-general’s high-level panel on global sustainability, 2012; un task team on the post-2015 un development agenda, 2012). in the frenzy over the “post-2015” development agenda, as the 2015 target year of the millennium development goals (mdgs) and education for all (efa) approached, policymakers, politicians, scholars, educators and community activists alike pursued yoko mochizuki current issues in comparative education 110 agendas for change. “business as usual” has become something to be overcome to mitigate climate change, avert a financial breakdown, or to achieve education for all1. the year 2015 saw the adoption of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and an accompanying set of sustainable development goals (sdgs) (un, 2015) as well as the signing of the paris agreement, which was self-congratulated as a “historic agreement to combat climate change and unleash actions and investment towards a low carbon, resilient and sustainable future” (unfccc, 2015). against this backdrop, the notion of “transformative education” is being used more often, not only in terms of delivering the “unfinished business” or “broken promise” of efa but also of promoting the kind of values-based and action-oriented education that aims at changing attitudes, values, and behaviours. in the roadmap for implementing the global action programme on education for sustainable development, unesco (2014) characterizes education for sustainable development (esd) as “holistic and transformational education,” which “achieves its purpose by transforming society” (p.12). in its guidance document on global citizenship education, unesco (2015b) writes: “global citizenship education aims to be transformative, building the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that learners need to be able to contribute to a more inclusive, just and peaceful world” (p.15). among 17 goals and 169 targets, the target 4.7 of the sdgs speaks to the international recognition of the importance of values-based, transformative education: by 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development. (un, 2015, p.17) but is it time to celebrate that transformative education finally found its way into mainstream development thinking? this article warns against the current celebratory mood to “roll up [our] sleeves and start implementing” esd (jickling & wals, 2008, p.6), as though we knew exactly what needs to be done to educate for transforming our world. first, this article briefly outlines the shifting international discourses surrounding esd, now enshrined in sdg target 4.7. it then delineates how the recent marriage of esd and global citizenship education in one target of the sdgs is weakening, rather than reinforcing, their transformative potentials. the article concludes by pointing out the limitations of global policy initiatives for transformative education and proposing ways forward to ensure that education contributes to shaping a more sustainable world. revisiting international debates surrounding education for sustainable development current issues in comparative education 111 ee/esd and esd/efa debates as a global initiative backed up by un general assembly resolution 57/254, esd is rather unique in that there has been a continuous debate over its origins, definitions, scope, and goals2. the beginning of the un decade of esd (desd, 2005-2014) was dominated by the environmental education (ee) stakeholders and the ee/esd debate (mckeown & hopkins 2003; 2007). as gonzález-gaudiano (2005) observed at the beginning of the desd, "one de facto problem that the implementation of the [desd] faces is that apparently only we environmental educators have become involved in debating its pros and cons" (p.244). this was a natural development given that the world conservation union’s commission on education and communication (iucn-cec) was leading the international discussion on esd before the launch of the desd, and much effort was dedicated to discussing the relative meanings of ee and esd (see fien & tilbury, 2002; hesselink, kempen & wals, 2000). at the outset, esd was often positioned—both by unesco and international experts who acted as advocates for (d)esd—as an overarching label for existing ‘adjectival educations’ including ee, development education, peace education, human rights education and so on. for example, bhandari and abe (2003) characterized esd as holding “the prominence of more coherent, far-reaching and integrated responses than other adjectival educations” (p.15). the well-intentioned positioning of esd as something more “advanced“ than ee has at times contributed to fuelling environmental educators’ resistance to esd, especially in latin america, where “ee builds on environmental movements which struggled for democratic freedom under military dictatorship, simultaneously questioning environmental degradation and social inequalities” (trajber & mochizuki, 2015, p.46). adding to the ee/esd debate, unesco’s effort to align esd with the forerunning global initiatives of efa and the un literacy decade (2003-2012) further complicated the purpose of esd. although there were explicit efforts on the part of unesco’s esd section to link esd and efa conceptually (see, for example, unesco 2005a; 2008a), esd has been considered largely irrelevant to countries that are struggling to achieve universal access to basic education. in the efa global monitoring reports (gmr) published during the desd (2005-2014), there was not a single mention of esd in most reports (unesco 2007; 2008b; 2010; 2011; 2012; 2014). at the beginning of the desd, the 2006 gmr focusing on literacy made a reference to the desd in “box 4.11 windows of opportunities through unesco-led initiatives” (unesco, 2005b, p.131), and the 2007 gmr mentioned “education for sustainable development” once in the context of the role of unesco in global efa coordination (unesco, 2006, p.100). this extremely limited and perfunctory mentioning of esd in the most authoritative reports on efa clearly speaks to the low visibility and priority of esd in unesco’s work until very recently. yoko mochizuki current issues in comparative education 112 whilst the esd section of unesco, as the lead agency of the desd, struggled to enhance the visibility of esd in the field of international educational development, esd has often been discredited as diluting the transformative purpose of education for sustainability due to its association with narrowly-defined development. reflecting on the desd, for example, huckle and wals (2015) have concluded that it was “business as usual in the end”. jickling and wals (2008) have mournfully viewed esd as “a product and carrier of globalizing force” (p.18). among criticisms levelled against esd over the desd, the harshest ones characterized esd as being complicit with predatory neo-liberalism. for example, carlos alberto torres (2009) has identified unesco as a key agency promoting “neo-liberal globalization” (p.15). for selby and kagawa (2011), esd is ‘striking a faustian bargain’, to exert influence over educational directions at the expense of transformative goals. in an effort to enhance the profile of esd, in the second half of the desd, unesco launched a programme on climate change education for sustainable development as its flagship esd initiative (see mochizuki & bryan, 2015; unesco, 2015c). the programme aimed at developing concrete esd interventions in developing countries that are vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change, in particular, small island developing states (commonly referred to as “sids” in un documents) and african countries, with a focus on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction (drr). this, in turn, contributed to better alignment between efa and esd, but the programme largely fell short of addressing the transformative aspect of esd as it aimed at developing capacities of vulnerable populations and countries to adapt to climate change threats rather than tackling its root causes. in addition to climate change, biodiversity and drr were included in the strategy for the second half of the desd (unesco 2009) as key action themes of esd, thereby emphasising esd as a means of implementation for sustainable development. this trend of highlighting the instrumental role of esd in addressing sustainable development is continuing after the adoption of sdgs in 2015, and unesco is currently developing a guidance framework for achieving sdgs through esd. esd and global citizenship education during the latter half of the desd, unesco’s focus on climate change, biodiversity, and drr as strategic entry points to esd somewhat served to raise the profile of esd in the global policy platforms. in the meanwhile, a new emphasis on global citizenship education (gced) was introduced by the un secretary general’s global education first initiative (gefi) launched in 2012. this initiative put forward three priorities: (i) put every child in school; (ii) improve the quality of learning; and (iii) foster global citizenship. whereas the first two pillars echoed the efa movement and the education goal of the mdgs, the third pillar of preparing global citizens made a clear departure from the mdg tenets of reducing poverty, improving health, and securing livelihoods. with the international community’s agreement to launch a process to develop a set of sdgs at the revisiting international debates surrounding education for sustainable development current issues in comparative education 113 2012 un conference on sustainable development or rio+20, the final years of the desd saw reinvigorated debates on the need for educational transformation to meet the challenges of the 21st century. in the post-2015 development agenda discussions, an international aspiration to go beyond the mdg education goal’s narrow focus on access to education (see, for example, global compact for learning, 2011), coupled with various critiques of esd over the course of the desd as discussed earlier in this article, prepared a fertile ground for welcoming gced as a new transformative education agenda. for example, in their article dismissing the desd as “business as usual”, huckle and wals (2015) have coined a term ‘global education for sustainability citizenship (gesc)’ to refer to the kind of education needed to support transformation towards sustainability and welcomed unesco’s new emphasis on gced by noting that it “may lead to gesc being a stronger profile within unesco’s advocacy and promotion of esd” (p.502). much like the way esd was conceptualized as “a new vision of education” (fien 2004, pp.80-89) at the beginning of the desd, gced has been conceptualized as a “new narrative about education”3 (torres, 2015, p. 11). given that the introduction of gced to the international education policy circles was not until the autumn of 2012, its mainstreaming into the sdgs was rather quick and smooth. in the education 2030 framework for action adopted in incheon, korea, unesco (2015d) interprets the aforementioned sdg target 4.7 as being dedicated to esd and gced as overarching labels. this recent marriage of esd and gced under one target in the sdg framework seems to be reinforcing esd as education that addresses human-nature relationships and gced as education that addresses inter-human relationships. ideally, both esd and gces should ask fundamental questions about transforming how we relate to each other and to ecosystems that support our lives and livelihoods, leading to a more integrated approach to education for peace and sustainable development. unesco’s current promotion of esd and gced as two mutually reinforcing yet distinctive and parallel movements is having a digressive effect of recreating a demarcation between justice and human rights issues and sustainability issues. the current gced advocacy by unesco is positing global citizens as heroic activists who fight prejudice and human rights violations, like the 2014 nobel peace prize laureate malala yousafzai4. i see two problems in highlighting the most extreme cases of human rights violations and malala’s action as illustrative of the kind of action to be encouraged by gced. first, it reinforces gced as a straightforward—and quite dramatic—fight against prejudice, discrimination, human rights violation and violence. this may encourage learners, especially in the developed countries, to see problems to be solved as existing in a distant locality apart from their daily life. it also runs a risk of promoting global citizenship as some heroic action. second, precisely because there is no question yoko mochizuki current issues in comparative education 114 about the horrendous and evil nature of what these “global citizens” are fighting against, it leaves the ethical dilemmas, contradictions and uncertainties in ‘sustainable development’ largely unaddressed. this point will be further discussed in the next section. simply put, gced is presented as efforts to address undesirable dispositions and negative emotions such as intolerance, hatred, and xenophobia, while esd is presented as efforts to tackle environmental sustainability challenges. furthermore, to accelerate this trend, unesco is increasingly promoting gced in association with efforts to prevent violent extremism, in light of a recent rise in concerted international efforts to mitigate the terrorist threat5. at the beginning of the implementation of the sdgs, the divide between esd as a mere extension of narrowly defined ee—the perception unesco worked so hard to overcome over the desd—and gced as addressing direct and immediate threats to human dignity seems to be compromising the transformative potentials of both esd and gced. the next section further explores the implications of unesco’s gced advocacy in light of how it approaches climate change. what divides us and what connects us: the limits of the gced advocacy? the anticipated state of emergency is no longer national but cosmopolitan. the belief that the risks facing humanity can be averted by political action taken on behalf of endangered humanity becomes an unprecedented resource for consensus and legitimation, nationally and internationally. … if anyone or anything at all, it is the perceived risks facing humanity, which can be neither denied nor externalized, that are capable of awakening the energies, consensus, the legitimation necessary for creating a global community of fate, one that will demolish the walls of nation-states borders and egotisms – at least for a global moment in time and beyond democracy. (beck, 2008, section 2, para. 1-2) instead of viewing climate change as a fatalistic path to an apocalyptic future for humankind, ulrich beck (2008, section 2, para. 12) has seen climate change as providing a “moment of hope, of unbelievable opportunities—a cosmopolitan moment”. beck has argued that climate change opens up the opportunity to overcome the bounds of national politics and paralysis. this idea that ecological threats allow the humanity to unite is nothing new. when concerted un effort for the environment was initiated with the 1972 un conference on the human environment held in stockholm, the then un secretarygeneral u thant hoped, according to the account by mische and ribeiro (1998), that “the threat of planetary pollution would unify member states in a way that a quarter century of un peace and economic efforts had not”, overcoming “the divisiveness between member states that often blocked effective un action” (p.323). revisiting international debates surrounding education for sustainable development current issues in comparative education 115 although the adoption of sdgs and the signing of the paris agreement seem to be signalling a much anticipated advent of a “cosmopolitan moment,” it may still be a long way for a ‘global community of fate’ to emerge 6 . whereas there is certainly more awareness about existential threats to humanity posed by climate change, unesco’s guidance document global citizenship education: topics and learning objectives cites climate change as one of many themes that can be addressed by gced if so wished along with topics like “animal cruelty, bullying, discrimination, racism, violence” (unesco 2015b, p.43). while these are important topics in their own rights, unesco’s gced guidance material’s treatment of climate change reduces it to an optional, add-on environmental topic, instead of treating it as a cross-cutting issue essential for understanding and improving global governance systems and structures, challenging social and environmental injustice, and demonstrating ethical and social responsibility—all of which are important goals of gced. although “taking climate justice perspective” is recognized as a key principle of climate change education in the context of esd (mochizuki & bryan, 2015, pp.14-15), the gced guidance cites “human rights violations, hunger, poverty, gender-based discrimination, recruitment of child soldiers” as “[r]eal life examples of global injustice”, failing to recognize climate change as a social justice issue (unesco, 2015b, p.39). i find unesco’s (2015b) diagnosis about what divides us (e.g., extremism, sexism, racism, homophobia), along with its assumptions about what connects us (e.g., respect, tolerance and understanding, solidarity, ict) in its gced advocacy somewhat limiting to qualify as a “new narrative about education”. to put the current gced advocacy in the historical context, in 1971, invited by unesco to deliver the inaugural lecture of the international year for action to combat racism, claude lévi-strauss shocked the audience by arguing that the fight against racism had proved ineffective because the initial diagnosis, which was at the heart of unesco’s programme, was flawed: racism was not a result of “false ideas” about race but was used to camouflage tensions that resulted from “demographic saturation of our planet” (stoczkowski, 2008, p.6). echoing this frustration expressed by lévi-strauss, i argue that transformative education today must rise above the conventional—and often ineffectual—approach of combating “false ideas and attitudes.” one of the difficulties of climate change education lies in that climate change is not a consequence of intentionally malicious acts such as violence, discrimination, bullying, harassment, and other forms of abuse. tackling climate change is about “build[ing] a movement against yourself” (mckibben, 2012, n.p), questioning and changing “the behaviours and practices that contribute to climate-related harm, such as driving a car, travelling abroad, watching television, using a computer” which are “considered ‘normal’ and are taken for granted by many of those who live in consumer capitalist societies” (mochizuki & bryan 2015, p.11). unesco’s current characterization of gced reinforces it primarily as education to prevent intentional, direct, and immediate threats to human yoko mochizuki current issues in comparative education 116 dignity. gced conceptualized as such is essentially an extension of what unesco has promoted since its inception over 70 years ago to build “defences of peace” in people’s mind. while it is not difficult to understand the ludicrousness of the idea of living humanely as an active member of the nazis, it is still difficult to understand the hypocrisy and absurdity of the idea of living responsibly and ethically as a citizen of a carbon-intensive society. to take a radical example to illustrate my point, when scientists writing on global citizenship ask a provocative question “can people everywhere (especially in resourcegobbling rich countries) understand that having more than one child is highly immoral?” (ehrlich & ehrlich, 2015, p.19), very few esd and gced advocates would respond by affirming that esd and gced aim to empower learners to act responsibly and ethically by having only one child or even no child at all. in many cultures having children is perceived as an indispensable part of having good and appropriate lifestyles. whereas demanding—or even encouraging—this level of self-restraint in major life choices may shock many believers in transformative education as an ill-conceived solution to the global ills, others may consider it a reasonable solution on a planetary scale in the face of an existential threat to humanity. if educating for transforming our world is not only about educating to prevent intentional, direct, and immediate threats to human dignity but also about educating to avert unintended, indirect, and long-term threats to humanity, what should transformative education look like? imagining transformative esd and gced a basic question—perhaps the basic question—is what general approach should be taken to greatly accelerate the needed mass transition toward global citizenship? perhaps the best approach would be the technique pioneered by mahatma gandhi (and employed by martin luther king and nelson mandela) that gandhi christened ‘satyagraha’—non-violent persistent opposition to an evil system. since the current growth-manic, neoliberal system is heading society directly toward a dissolution that could result in the deaths of billions, it seems reasonable to consider it an evil system. (ehrlich & ehrlich, 2015, p. 20) like fighting slavery, colonialism, apartheid, and more recently, violent extremism, can we fight neoliberalism? the critics of esd have cautioned against “de-radicalization” of esd and envisioned transformative esd to be challenging neoliberalism, providing deep insights into the structural causes of unsustainable development, critically analysing global capitalism and associated forms of global governance, and linking unsustainable consumption and production to the structures and processes that shape consumer capitalism, which are linked to the causes of environmental and social injustice (see, for example, huckle & wals, 2015). revisiting international debates surrounding education for sustainable development current issues in comparative education 117 one way of fighting neoliberalism is building a movement against ourselves, by choosing “voluntary simplicity” or a way of life that rejects high-consumption lifestyles based on the recognition that they are unethical in our world of increasing human need (see, for example, alexander, 2009). another way is to take collective actions to fight the “growthmanic, neoliberal system”. what is conspicuously absent from the current esd and gced advocacy is a call for direct action against what ehrlich and ehrlich see as “the evil system” (2015, p.20). there seem to be at least two reasons for this absence. the first reason is ideological. gced has gained traction in the post-2015 agenda partly because gced has deep resonances not only with the founding philosophy of unesco but also with efforts by various stakeholders to nurture globally aware and globally competent citizenry and workforce for the 21st century. many multinationals have renamed their corporate social responsibility sections as “global citizenship program” (e.g., samsung) or “corporate citizenship” program (e.g., accenture). unesco’s gced and esd advocacy stops at mentioning corporate social responsibility and emphasising the importance of fostering partnerships with the private sector. multinationals are seen as potential donors and promoters of esd and gced, not the enemy to be targeted by them. given the overlaps between the kinds of competences required to compete in globalized markets and to qualify as “global citizens”, esd and gced can be easily diluted to become their “feel good” and “soft,” as opposed to “radical,” versions (andreotti, 2006) and co-opted by the very enemy they are trying to fight against. the second reason is practical. there is real difficulty in answering the question “what does direct action on the financial system look like,” which preoccupied the ‘occupy wall street’ movement (appel, 2014, p. 603,620). drawing parallels between ridicule and cynicisms directed at participants in occupy wall street (“but don’t you like your iphone? twitter seems to be working pretty well for you.”) and those directed at abolitionists (“but you wear cotton clothing; you put sugar in your tea.”), hannah first name appel points out that people cannot imagine “the possibility of producing useful commodities or technological innovation without predatory finance, ” just like “commodities central to nineteenth-century life—cotton, sugar—were unimaginable without enslavement” (2014, p.602). in other words, students of elite universities calling for rejecting a lucrative career in the financial services sector—a phenomenon observed in conjunction with occupy wall street (roose, 2011)—offers only a very partial solution to combating neoliberalism. we need more than a small number of enlightened individuals accepting a lower income in pursuit of non-materialistic sources of satisfaction and meaning in life. eventually, transformative esd should enable massive-scale lifestyle changes and drastic adjustments in our perceptions of good and appropriate living while respecting cultural diversity. yoko mochizuki current issues in comparative education 118 perhaps, equally and even more importantly, transformative esd should enable people to start imagining the real possibility of producing and consuming valuable commodities and technological innovations without committing ecological and social injustice. how can we start imagining such possibility? here what esd and gced have emphasised in common takes a renewed significance. first and foremost, both esd and gced are context dependent and need to be addressed in all types, forms, and settings of learning at all levels. it requires some serious unlearning and relearning on the part of decision makers in all sectors and expert in all disciplines, including academics, business leaders, un officials and educators, to start imagining and exploring the possibility of transforming our world. in the context of monitoring progress towards achieving sdgs, however, esd and gced are narrowly defined as education that takes place in formal education. the global indicator of sdg target 4.7 is “extent to which (i) global citizenship education and (ii) education for sustainable development, including gender equality and human rights, are mainstreamed at all levels in: (a) national education policies, (b) curricula, (c) teacher education and (d) student assessment” (unesco institute of statistics, 2016). while this provides an unprecedented opportunity to integrate esd and gced into school education, it leaves the transformative possibilities of inter-sectoral and multi-stakeholder learning for sustainability largely untapped. second, both esd and gced aim to foster critical thinking, understanding of the interconnectedness of global challenges and a sense of responsibility emanating from such awareness, deep respect for and appreciation of bio-cultural diversity, and collaborative and innovative problem-solving abilities. although it goes beyond the scope of this essay to spell out what pedagogy is needed to foster these competencies, it is useful to identify different dimensions of esd/gced as a general guidance to design transformative learning interventions. huckle and wals (2015) have identified four dimensions of what they call “global education for sustainability citizenship”: (i) scale (understanding of ”global society and the ways in which personal and collective decisions have impacts on distant human and non-human others”); (ii) ethical (recognition of “sustainability as a normative notion” which encompasses “respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice and a culture of peace”); (iii) relational (understanding of the socially constructed nature of notions and discourses of sustainability, citizenship and globalization); and (iv) political (exploration of “structural causes” of social and environmental injustice and “reformist and radical solutions” dimensions (pp.494-495). the current advocacy surrounding sdg target 4.7 emphasises scale and ethical dimensions, but not necessarily relational and political dimensions. to make a departure from moralistic and didactic approaches and to empower learners to imagine alternative revisiting international debates surrounding education for sustainable development current issues in comparative education 119 futures, it is imperative to address relational and political dimensions, which resonate with the notion of “transgressive learning” or learning that is disruptive of hegemonic norms (lotz-sisitka et al., 2015). conclusion—promises and challenges of sdg target 4.7 talking of changing attitudes, values, behaviours and action-oriented learning, it is not easy to achieve new understanding for reflexive intervention, which leads to a more peaceful and sustainable world. there are risks in having high hopes in advancing policydriven education initiatives like esd and gced on a worldwide scale to become a proactive force in steering humanity towards a more enlightened, if not homogenized, perspective on what constitutes good and appropriate lifestyles and living. promoting global initiatives always runs a risk of masking enormous differences in human resources and ignoring diversity of human desires. one permanent question is who decides desired change and how desired change can be produced. it is also critical to keep in mind that many people today are not in a position to defend their legitimate interests, let alone their inalienable human rights. this article discussed the ramifications of colluding esd and gced under sdg target 4.7, which is considerably lacking in the current global advocacy on transformative education for sustainability. it goes far beyond the scope of this essay to delineate what genuinely transformative learning looks like, as there are neither shortcuts in transformative learning nor recipes or strategies that can ensure that transformative learning occurs. esd and gced are at best vaccination against capture by ideology and narrow interests. they do not guarantee immunisation against capture by extremism, exclusionary populism, or plutocracy taking the world by storm today. immunization against such capture can happen only when each learner can understand the root causes of the global illness and liberate oneself from being trapped in the system that perpetuates the “business as usual.” as long as the sdg target 4.7 can stimulate dialogue and reflection on what transformative education should look like, it continues to serve its purpose. to fulfil the transformative potentials of esd and gced, there is a need to carefully design a global monitoring framework for target 4.7. the monitoring framework should contribute to reorienting education systems around the world towards peace and sustainable development, rather than encouraging the superficial inclusion of esd and gced related themes in the already overburdened curricula. acknowledgements: the author is responsible for the choice and representation of the facts contained in this article and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of unesco or unesco-mgiep and do not commit the organization. yoko mochizuki current issues in comparative education 120 about the author: yoko mochizuki is head of rethinking curriculum programme at unesco mahatma gandhi institute of education for peace and sustainable development (mgiep) in new delhi, india since 2015. prior to joining mgiep, she was programme specialist at the education for sustainable development section at unesco headquarters in paris. contact: yoko mochizuki at y.mochizuki@unesco.org references alexander, s. 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(2015a). new report shows why ‘business as usual’ won’t lead to universal primary or secondary education. retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/gefi/stories-events/recent-stories/2015/newreport-shows-why-business-as-usual-wont-lead-to-universal-primary-orsecondary-education/ unesco. (2015b). global citizenship education: topics and learning objectives. paris: unesco. unesco. (2015c). not just hot air: putting climate change education into practice. paris: unesco. unesco. (2015d). education 2030 incheon declaration and framework for action: towards inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all (ed2015/education2030/1). paris: unesco. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/gefi/stories-events/recent-stories/2015/new-report-shows-why-business-as-usual-wont-lead-to-universal-primary-or-secondary-education/ http://www.unesco.org/new/en/gefi/stories-events/recent-stories/2015/new-report-shows-why-business-as-usual-wont-lead-to-universal-primary-or-secondary-education/ http://www.unesco.org/new/en/gefi/stories-events/recent-stories/2015/new-report-shows-why-business-as-usual-wont-lead-to-universal-primary-or-secondary-education/ http://www.unesco.org/new/en/gefi/stories-events/recent-stories/2015/new-report-shows-why-business-as-usual-wont-lead-to-universal-primary-or-secondary-education/ yoko mochizuki current issues in comparative education 124 unesco. (2015e). final report: second unesco forum on global citizenship education: building peaceful and sustainable societies, unesco paris, 28-30 january 2015. paris: unesco. unesco institute for statistics and unicef. (2015). fixing the broken promise of education for all: findings from the global initiative on out-of-school children. montreal: uis. retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.15220/978-92-9189-161-0-en unfccc (un framework convention on climate change) (2015, december 15). historic paris agreement on climate change: 195 nations set path to keep temperature rise well below 2 degrees celsius. un climate change newsroom, retrieved from http://newsroom.unfccc.int/unfcccnewsroom/finale-cop21/ 1 for example, unesco interpreted the findings of the report fixing the broken promise of education for all (unesco institute for statistics and unicef, 2015) as showing “why ‘business as usual’ won’t lead to universal primary or secondary education” (unesco, 2015a). 2 this is partly due to the contested notion of “sustainable development” itself, but it lies beyond the scope of this article. in this article, “sustainable development” and “sustainability” are used interchangeably. 3 carlos albert torres supports gced as a unesco chair in global learning and global citizenship. see http://ampersand.gseis.ucla.edu/carlos-alberto-torres-appointed-inaugural-unesco-chair-in-global-learningand-global-citizenship/ 4 malala was often invoked as a model global citizen in various interventions made at the unesco forums on gced in bangkok, thailand (december 2013) and paris, france (january 2015). every two years unesco organizes a global forum on gced bringing together key educational stakeholders to review trends and good practices in the field. the third forum is planned in march 2017 in ottawa, canada. 5 unesco convened the international conference on the prevention of violent extremism in september 2016 in new delhi, india, further to the adoption of unesco 197 ex/decision 46 (october 2015) on “unesco’s role in preventing violent extremism through education” and in line with the un secretary-general’s plan of action to prevent violent extremism (a/70/674, december 2015). 6 over the past 40 years, the hope that a common global enemy of ecological threats would unite countries has been repeatedly defeated. in the lead up to stockholm+20 or the un conference on environment and development (rio summit) in 1992, an initial goal to produce an earth charter to complement the un charter was defeated in the preparatory meetings. twenty years later, at rio+20 in 2012, the proposal by the european union to upgrade the united nations environment programme (unep) into a specialised agency, a world environment organization, was also defeated. http://dx.doi.org/10.15220/978-92-9189-161-0-en http://newsroom.unfccc.int/unfccc-newsroom/finale-cop21/ http://newsroom.unfccc.int/unfccc-newsroom/finale-cop21/ http://ampersand.gseis.ucla.edu/carlos-alberto-torres-appointed-inaugural-unesco-chair-in-global-learning-and-global-citizenship/ http://ampersand.gseis.ucla.edu/carlos-alberto-torres-appointed-inaugural-unesco-chair-in-global-learning-and-global-citizenship/ current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 26, issue 1, winter 2024 in conversation: mother tongue education and civic engagement amongst ga youth kella narki merlain-moffatt teachers college, columbia university the role of language in education policies and the importance of civic engagement are well documented. what is less clear is how they converse with one another to inform how to develop active citizens who are empowered in their mother tongues. building on a conceptual framework of civic engagement and linguistic injustice, this article asks: after the implementation of the 1971–1994 and 2004 medium of instruction education policies in ghana, what language did ga youth learn in, in practice? what are the intersections between ga youths’ relationship to language and civic engagement participation? together, these questions inform understanding of youth educational experiences, ga people’s perception of the vitality of their language, and their responsibility to the community. in interviewing 22 ga people in ghana during the summer of 2022, i find that despite policy encouraging mother tongue instruction, most participants learned in english during primary school. additionally, contrary to the notion that there is a disinterest in civic engagement amongst ghanaian youth, findings show ga youth find part of their civic responsibility to lie in passing on the ga language to preserve their culture, land, identity, and the future of their community. keywords: language in education policy, ga youth, civic responsibility, language injustice, social mobility introduction as the longest-lasting contemporary democracy that has avoided major violent conflict in west africa, ghana provides an interesting case for understanding youth civic engagement. on the eve of ghana’s independence, the first prime minister, dr. kwame nkrumah, stated, “ghana will be a pacesetter for all to know that the blackman is capable of managing his own affairs.” following independence in 1957, dr. nkrumah was committed to utilizing the education system to “instill a sense of loyalty to ghana” (harber, 1989, p.154). however, post-colonial thinkers argue that in reshaping the education system, there needed to be a “decolonization of the [ghanaian] mind” to support nation-building (dei, 2005). a consequence of not following this advice is seen through the rejection of local languages as the medium of instruction (moi) in lower primary schools (arnot et al., 2018). as a multilingual nation-state, ghana has seen a constant fluctuation in the language of instruction policy from 1952-2004. the ghana ministry of education (moe) released a report in 2002 that emphasized the importance of cultivating “attitudes of good citizenship and patriotism and […] the nation’s cultural heritage by promoting national languages” as a national education objective (government of ghana, 2002, p.15). in practice, there has been a disconnect. © 2024, merlain-moffatt. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 26(1), 76-97. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en in conversation: mother tongue education and civic engagement amongst ga youth current issues in comparative education 77 in 1971 and 2004, the government developed moi policies that encouraged students to learn in their local language. however, english is used more widely across the education system (adika, 2012), with roughly 80% of the country being literate in english (world bank, 2020). still, there is concern that many people lack the english proficiency needed for meaningful participation in national discussions (anyidoho, 2018). in the context of education, piller (2020) notes that where language barriers exist, they are an injustice. if extended to the context of civic engagement, a lack of english proficiency may serve as a barrier, too. while studies discuss potential barriers to ghanaian civic engagement, such as young people not being regarded as having enough life experience to contribute politically (adu-gyamfi, 2014) and ghanaians having a lack of trust in and willingness to confront the government (asante, 2020; sam et al., 2019), they neglect to consider the role that language may play. a critical component to understanding civic participation lies in understanding the role of culture and by extension—language. when a high linguistic proficiency in both a home and school language is not acquired, minority youths can miss out on economic opportunities (piller, 2016). while ghana’s capital city, accra, is the center of economic growth (accra metropolitan assembly, 2020), poverty is still prevalent, and the region’s highest poverty rates are in predominately ga communities (sewidan, 2015). children who attend school in a different language face the challenge of learning in a new language while also trying to acquire the language. for minority language children, this challenge may be exacerbated by living in a low-income family and can result in school dropout (ball, 2010). given that linguistic marginalization is both a cause and consequence of political and socio-economic marginalization (stroud, 2002), using one’s home language in schools can effectively increase social mobility for minorities facing social and economic disadvantages (ball, 2010). when students can learn in their home language, they are better able to grasp the curriculum and, in turn, utilize their linguistic diversity to stimulate economic growth in the future (arcand & grin, 2013). since there are fewer opportunities for poor youth to participate civically and increase their civic knowledge (atkins & hart, 2003), it is critical for the language of instruction (loi) to be the learners’ home language. this can allow students to effectively use school as an avenue for social mobility (bunch, 1990) and remove barriers to equal community participation (piller, 2016). current research analyzes civic engagement and language in education policy in silos. yet, there exists a research gap in understanding the intersections between youth civic engagement and language in education policy. this study seeks to investigate the role, if any, that language plays in the civic responsibility of ga youth. two research questions guide this work: (1) after the implementation of the 1971–1994 and 2004 medium of instruction education policies, what language did ga youth learn in, in practice? (2) what are the intersections between ga youths’ relationship to language and civic engagement participation? following the country context, i present an overview of ghanaian civic engagement and the language of instruction. building on a conceptual framework of civic engagement and linguistic injustice, i explore youth educational experiences, ga people’s perception of the vitality of their language, and their responsibility to the community. contrary to the notion that there is a disinterest in civic engagement amongst ghanaian merlain-moffatt current issues in comparative education 78 youth (abudu & fuseini, 2014), findings show that the ga youth interviewed find part of their civic responsibility lies in passing on the ga language. country context ghanaian language in education policy presently, there are 73 living indigenous languages in ghana (eberhard et al., 2022) and the government produces educational materials for 11 main languages: akuapem twi, asante twi, dagaare, dagbani, dangme, ewe, fante, ga, gonja, kasem, and nzema. from 1971-1974, for the first three years of primary school, the moi was to be the students’ mother tongue (abbreviated as l1). schools had the option to choose which ghanaian language was used based on the linguistic composition of the class starting in 1972 (klu & ansre, 2018). in 1974, the policy was modified, and students were given the opportunity to learn in one of nine indigenous government-sponsored languages for the first three years of schooling (ansah, 2014). the options were akan (fante and twi), nzema, ga, ga-adangbe, ewe, gonja, kasem, dagbani, and dagaare. where possible, these languages would serve as the moi until the sixth grade (owu-ewie, 2006). with this policy, even if the linguistic composition of the class favored one language, they could be taught in another if their l1 was not one of the nine government-sponsored languages or if they lacked materials and teacher capacity. between 1974 and 2002, no substantial modifications were made to the policy. however, in 2002, the government moved to an english-only policy. the change was motivated by the feeling that some rural schools had taken advantage of the previous policy, with teachers choosing not to use english as the moi throughout primary education, resulting in english literacy levels being deemed unsatisfactory (ansah, 2014). once again, in 2004, the policy was changed to state, “where teachers and learning materials are available and linguistic composition of classes is fairly uniform, the children’s first language must be utilized as the dominant medium of instruction in kindergarten and lower primary” (ministry of education, ghana, 2004, pp. 27–28). in addition, the policy advocated for ghanaian languages to become subjects of study from fourth grade onwards, leaving english as the moi. while materials have been created to support this policy in 11 ghanaian languages for the literacy and language class, teachers bear the responsibility of translating the textbooks of all other subjects into the local language of the learners for course instruction (usaid, 2020). with a lack of adequate materials, the implementation of the l1 policy is relatively low (adika, 2012). accra and the ga ethnic group since accra functions as the country’s political hub, this article centers on the indigenes of accra whose land serves as the seat of government. ga people, whose name, language, and land bear the same name, are an ethnolinguistic minority group asserting accra to be their ancestral land. as a participant noted, ga communities are divided by socioeconomic status, social desires, beliefs, etc. and therefore, i use the terms “ga people,” “ga youth,” and “ga community” not to generalize but to facilitate description. as the greater accra region (gar) is socially recognized as ga territory, it is important to note that land is “of basic importance in the identity, integrity, solidarity and culture of in conversation: mother tongue education and civic engagement amongst ga youth current issues in comparative education 79 any group of african life” (quarcoopome, 1992, p. 40). overtime, the ga people participated in the urbanization process of the capital willingly and unwillingly (quarcoopome, 1992). oral tradition relays that labadi, a ga township, donated part of its territory when the colonial administration wished to build a university. the land called “nilee gɔŋ” can be broken down into two parts: nilee meaning “knowledge” and gɔŋ meaning “hill.” the gift of this “hill of knowledge” would later become the university of ghana—the country’s premier university. despite being a minority group, the ga people have led efforts to rename streets and districts in ga. given their political and academic contributions to the capital, the case of the gas provides valuable insight into the intersections of language, education, identity, and civic engagement. understanding the nuances between these topics may shed light on more effective practices that may be undertaken in and outside the classroom to create active citizens who are empowered in their mother tongues. civic learning, language and injustice the ghanaian youth population stands at 34%, its highest yet, which has created a unique opportunity for civic engagement (ulti-leaf foundation, 2020) since youth are integral members of communities and tend to lead activism (circle, n.d.). however, scholars assert there is low interest in and a growing ineptitude towards civic engagement in ghana (abudu & fuseini, 2014). this does not mean young people are disinterested in politics (sam et al., 2019). rather, this lack of motivation signals that stakeholders must implement barrier-free systems that encourage the civic interests of youth (adu-gyamfi, 2014). prior to the colonial era, ghanaian families emphasized teaching children their civic responsibilities informally (boadu, 2015), but this changed with the introduction of formal education by colonists and a shift towards formal pedagogy (boadu, 2016). ghana created its formal schooling system to cultivate citizens with the knowledge and critical thinking skills essential to building the nation (mhlauli, 2012). therefore, to achieve this goal, pupils must gain the skills needed to be active citizens. in line with traditional african thought, an active citizen is defined as one who considers how their priorities simultaneously promote the community’s vitality (avoseh, 2001). what is civic engagement and civic education? civic engagement is a process by which citizens participate in creating better conditions for themselves to help the future of their respective communities (adler & goggin, 2005). in an african context, traditional african ways of life and civic engagement lend themselves to be collectivist rather than individualistic (kwenin, 2020; patel & wilson, 2004). according to boadu (2016), three elements make african indigenous citizenship unique. he asserts that (1) familial relationships, political ties, and ethnicity were all interrelated, (2) prior to the colonial era, the responsibility of a “citizen” was to the family and larger community, and (3) families took part in teaching children about their civic responsibilities. however, scholars believe that the arbitrary division of nation-states at the 1884 berlin conference destroyed aspects of african citizenship (busia, 1967; thomson, 2000). this presented challenges as the rites to prepare citizens varied by ethnic merlain-moffatt current issues in comparative education 80 groups, which led to the adaptation of national citizenship education via formal education introduced by colonists (boadu, 2015). scholars assert that civic education—defined as, “the type of education or instructions which equip the learner with relevant knowledge, right attitudes, and requisite skills to enable [them] to perform [their] role as a credible member of society” (adams et al., 2013, p. 19)—informs a sense of identity and place in society (kwenin, 2020). therefore, it must be contextual and take place in and outside of the formal schooling environment for students to deeply understand their role and responsibilities to their society (adjei & dei, 2008; quaynor, 2015). literature suggests that there are positive correlations between civic education and levels of civic engagement. galston (2004) notes that people with a greater understanding of civic issues are more likely to participate in civic life, and adu-gyamfi (2014) finds that if youth are not interested in current issues, their civic participation is unlikely. the ability to grasp and apply concepts is heavily impacted by current teaching practices that deny pupils the opportunity to critically engage with material outside of the classroom by utilizing community resources (ayaaba et al., 2014). when pupils are not given the space to deeply understand civic education, civic knowledge and skills are not acquired and they cannot support social change activities (owusu-agyeman & fouriemalherbe, 2019). still, one element civic education scholars have not considered in depth is the role of the l1 in teaching and learning. language of instruction and social mobility in the words of ngugi wa thiong'o, “if you know all the languages of the world and you don’t know your mother tongue or the language of your culture, that is enslavement” (miringu kiarie, 2020). in 1998, the moe stated that all citizens were to be equipped with “the fundamental knowledge and skills that will enable them to become full stakeholders in and beneficiaries of development” (tuwor, 2005, p. 21). as civic education serves to develop skills learners need to perform their roles in society, it is important to teach in a language that people understand deeply for civic education to be most effective. many of the loi policies from 1952-2004 utilize an early-exit transitional model that encourages ga to be taught for only the first few years of primary schooling, followed by english instruction. this model sees language as a problem (ruíz, 1984), devalues ga in favor of english, and furthers the notion that ghanaian languages are not welcomed in the classroom (adjetey-nii owoo, 2022). however, to address issues of equity within a country, it is best to implement an additive policy that encourages multilingual education based on the l1’s utilization as the moi (benson, 2019). neglecting to do so further denies educational access to students from poor backgrounds (opoku-amankwa et al., 2015) and contributes to the mismatch between the loi and the language(s) spoken at home, which is known to be a cause of school dropouts, repetition, and failure (benson, 2014; heugh, 2011; walter & benson, 2012). schooling in ghana is characterized as a “form of internal colonialism” (agyemangmensah, 1998, p. 34). this internal colonialism can be seen in the 2002 moe report which used western agendas and encouraged civic rights and virtues to be promoted through the education system (ministry of education, 2002). since ghanaian schooling and civic education have been implemented through a western lens, in part because of the in conversation: mother tongue education and civic engagement amongst ga youth current issues in comparative education 81 country’s colonial subjugation, they must be reimagined and contextualized, so that all citizens may benefit. while there are studies focused on ghanaian youth civic engagement/education, they do not directly focus on the role of language. however, this lens is important because local languages give students the opportunity to learn information more deeply as opposed to learning passively and remaining confused (opoku-amankwa et al., 2015). given the number of languages in ghana, the country offers a unique and informative case study to better understand the role of language in civic interests. it is recommended that learners be taught global citizenship education in their formative early childhood years (unesco, 2013) and if the goal is for learners to understand the material and be civically engaged, it should be done in a meaningful way that is comprehendible for learners. therefore, to be truly inclusive of all citizens, schooling and global citizenship education must be done in the l1 of learners. since it is critical that stakeholders implement systems that accurately measure the civic interests of all youth without barriers (adu-gyamfi, 2014), scholars must consider language’s role in youth civic identity development and the potential barrier that a moi may pose to civic engagement. civic engagement, civic nationalism, and language policy given the existing research gap, a deeper understanding of how language policy impacts civic participation is needed. while there are minimal studies that explore this intersection, an ethnographic study in tanzania found that language in education policy was a challenge to civic engagement because language policy promoted the use of english as the moi in schooling, even though tanzanians have more comfortability with and command of swahili (thomas, 2020). in nation-building, language planning must be taken into consideration for a civic state. with regards to civic nationhood which is defined as a “political identity built around shared citizenship in a liberal-democratic state” (stilz, 2009), stilz proposes her least cost model to language policy which calls for promoting “citizens’ fundamental interests in economic opportunity and political participation by imposing rationalization policies at the least cost to individuals invested in other languages” (p. 272) with the aim of better reflecting the interests of more citizens. stilz further explains that this can be approached procedurally through voting to enable minority citizens to voice whether they wish to invest in the public good of their language. this system of language policy pushes for the state or regional polity to make language decisions that directly impact economic opportunity and democratic participation while allowing decisions on minority languages to be made at the local level. however, it is clarified that for this to be successful, local decisions cannot be allowed to undermine the policies mandated at the federal level and that “local minorities not be dominated by oppressive local majorities” (pp. 278–288). this is critical in several african countries where multilingualism in dominant local languages tends to crowd out non-dominant local languages and limit access to education and political power (heugh et al., 2016). amongst the ga people, this phenomenon appears to be taking root. such situations highlight broader issues of linguistic injustice that may be at play when examining the specific case of gas. merlain-moffatt current issues in comparative education 82 linguistic injustice the ga people make up 7.1% of the population (ghana statistical service, 2021), and as a non-dominant ethnolinguistic group, they believe “their language is dying” (anyidoho & dakubu, 2008, p.154) because of accra’s cosmopolitan nature. in ghana, 80% of ghanaians speak twi as a lingua franca. the “language death” that some ga people believe to be occurring may be a byproduct of linguistic injustice in and out of the classroom. asymmetric bilingualism is where members of one linguistic group (a) learn the language of another (b) without reciprocation (van parijs, 2002). when this occurs, the cost of learning is borne by one group (a) even though both groups (a and b) receive great benefits. in situations like these where free riding is evident, defined as two people (a and b) receiving the benefit of the work of one person (a), linguistic injustice occurs. through the lens of this framework and with the understanding that linguistic justice serves as a “form of intercommunity cooperative justice” (van parijs, 2002), this study examines how language gives way to identity development, group formation, and understanding of self. researcher positionality as a u.s.-born ga who unfortunately does not speak ga, i view myself as an insideroutsider of the ga community. as an outsider, i feared that my inability to speak ga was a disservice to this work. yet, as an insider, my hope is that this work uplifts a group that is often not centered in academia. that is not to say that there must be recognition from the academy to be valid but is to say that research has the potential to propel us forward— even in ways unexpected. unlike participants, i did not attend school in ghana, and i speak english with an american accent. despite my ghanaian-haitian-american upbringing, there are dynamics of privilege at play for me to advocate for mother tongue education when i was raised fluently in a colonial tongue. still, i argue to let the ga language stay and live on. nyɛhaani wɔha ga ywiemɔ lɛ ahishi! methods this study uses a qualitative approach to gain an understanding of the intersections between language, educational experiences, identity, and civic engagement in a ga context. since my family is ga and i studied abroad at the university of ghana, i connected with my network to find participants. i conducted 22 semi-structured interviews with ga people ages 22-58 in ghana. eighteen interviewees were between the ages of 18-35 since this is the official categorization of youth in ghana.1 all collaborators attended lower primary school in accra between 1970-2002 and 2004-onwards. while all participants spoke ga and english, 21 interviews were conducted in english, and one was conducted in ga with a volunteer interpreter2 who verbally translated the consent form and questions to the participant. age and gender diversity were considered in the sample. snowball sampling was used with an initial convenience sampling method as collaborators who identified as ga were chosen by the researcher and each of those 1 the four collaborators above 35 provided context to understand if there were differences in policy and practice between generations. 2 as recommended by gawlewicz (2019), the interpreter was engaged as a key informant and interviewed on aspects of their life and opinions on the research topic to make them visible and accountable in the translation process. in conversation: mother tongue education and civic engagement amongst ga youth current issues in comparative education 83 participants was encouraged to recommend someone to interview. interviews lasted between 25 minutes to two hours and participants were given the option to participate in person or via zoom. after transcribing the audio recordings, i reached out to participants if i needed clarification on something they stated. i conducted inductive, open coding and wrote memos for each interview based on my initial impressions. i then relied on axial coding followed by selective coding, resulting in a codebook. inductive codes like “actual ga person” and “typical ga” fell under the category of “community others” to denote when an interviewee expressed a difference between gas. coding was followed up with intercoder and intracoder consistency testing by colleagues to gauge the accuracy and consistency of the codebook and promote researcher reflexivity (joffe & yardley, 2003). the high coder reliability, demonstrated by the agreement between coders on the same data, confirmed that the codebook was applied consistently and accurately. with this consistency, i used the codebook to classify and interpret the patterns in the data, which led to the identification and organization of the key themes and findings. given that ga names serve as addresses, pseudonyms are used for all participants. limitations there are several limitations to the study. first, interviews were conducted primarily in english. as education levels divide the ga community, the necessary perspectives of youth who learned in ga as their moi and/or youth who might have been disadvantaged by a “no vernacular” policy in their school were not captured. second, the sampling method may have contributed to the lack of socioeconomic diversity among participants. amongst low-, middle-, and high-income neighborhoods in accra, most gas populate low-income indigenous ga neighborhoods (owusu & agyei-mensah, 2011). while questions regarding socioeconomic status were not asked explicitly, participants selfidentified primarily as middle-income and were interviewed almost exclusively in english. since social and economic mobility can be closely tied to the language that one uses to connect with their community, recruiting a more reflective range of the society’s socio-economic diversity could have generated greater insights. third, while some people knew i was ga because of the name i was introduced to them with, others did not. this could have skewed the ways in which people felt they were and were not able to relate to me and answer the interview questions. if you don’t have your land, you don’t have your heritage collaborators interviewed demonstrated that there is a connection between language and civic engagement. despite policy, most participants did not learn in ga, but rather english. additionally, they found the ga language, culture, and identity to be in an unstable state. they credit this to the asymmetric bilingualism they experience and the loss of heritage via land. still, participants note that while they may be a minority group, they find great importance in community, giving back, and supporting ga people. for a few participants, their ideas of civic activities are directly related to the promotion of the ga people and language. nonetheless, they speak of the roadblocks to civic engagement and their desires for change in the country. merlain-moffatt current issues in comparative education 84 the status of language in policy and practice of the 22 participants interviewed, three started lower primary school (grade 1) between 1969–1971, 17 started between 1985–2002, and two started in 2004 or later. whether they attended private or public institutions, 21 participants confirmed that the moi was english, and ga was taught as a subject, if offered at their school. therefore, despite policy, in practice, 95% (21) of them did not use their l1, or any ghanaian indigenous language, as the moi during their first three years of schooling. overall, 68.2% (15) of respondents noted that they could be physically punished for speaking ga, publicly humiliated in the school compound, and/or told not to “speak vernacular” which is the term used for indigenous languages in academic settings. for adoley and edith, who grew up in a predominantly ga town called osu and began lower primary school between 1969 and 1971, they were not permitted to speak ga in class even though everyone in their class spoke ga. if they did, they would have been told to speak english by the teacher. adoley said that discipline could look like having to sweep the corridor or classroom or standing and raising one’s hands. these punishments carried on three decades later as ashitey, a dancer who began school in 2000, noted that one could receive lashes for speaking ga in class. in tetteh’s classroom in big ada, 80% of his classmates were ga, and ga was used to explain concepts when it was clear that students were not understanding the lesson in english. he noted that this caused confusion because if one was to speak in ga outside of ga subject class, they would be caned. yet, with a resistant spirit, participants noted that while punishment was possible, they did not shy away from speaking. some were cautious but still spoke in class with other ga speakers. even though adoley expressed that initially, she did not like that she had to speak english in class because it “wasn’t [her] language,” she developed an appreciation for english. she noted that “it was good” because people need to learn to speak more than one language. sowah, an undergraduate student, described learning in english as an initiation in which teachers wanted “to initiate the english language into us to be like a part of us.” he described this process as “good” because it enabled him to be fluent in the language. though some participants held differing sentiments on the effectiveness of utilizing english as the moi, they had similar understandings of why teachers taught in english. ashitey spoke to the impact of english in the classroom: so i think the teachers believed the better you're able to understand and communicate in english, the better your understanding will be for the various subjects that are being taught. so, their own idea was to push everyone to understand the language, […] it was a bit reflexive because those who really understood the language then were doing better in class than those who had a challenge understanding—not necessarily understanding english, but basically grasping everything that was being taught—were not doing so well according to the grading system. so that was a reason. so, the idea was to push everyone to speak english. understand it. get your tenses right. all of that. in conversation: mother tongue education and civic engagement amongst ga youth current issues in comparative education 85 the hierarchy of language in the classroom privileges those who are able to speak english. this promotes a power imbalance and pushes teachers to prioritize students who perform well in english over those who do not (opoku-amankwa, 2009). while teachers were not interviewed to gain their perspective, collaborators expressed that they would have appreciated learning in ga. nii, a bank employee in his early 30s, shared his disappointment in his inability to explain monetary policy in layperson’s terms in ga. i asked him if he wished he would have been able to learn core subjects in ga to which he responded: yes, why not! i think it’d be a good thing.… my language is my identity and so i should be able to understand it to the level that i can explain even the most complicated things in that language…. imagine if we can understand things in our native languages. i’d definitely subscribe to that. while some participants expressed that they recognized that some of their peers struggled in the classroom because of the language barrier, they also expressed that if they could do it again, they would choose to learn in ga. ga proficiency and vitality since accra is a multilingual city, i asked participants to rank their level of proficiency in all the languages they speak on a scale of one to four. one meant that they find themselves searching for words to hold a conversation, two meant that they can hold conversation and understand when others speak, three meant that they can read, write, and speak the languages, and four meant that they can talk about what they are learning or have learned in school or life. of the 22 participants, 21 provided a ranking for their level of proficiency in the languages they speak. nine participants gave english the highest ranking of four and only six gave ga the same ranking. while 21 of the interviews took place in english, eight of the participants did not include english as a language that they speak and neglected to give it a ranking. this could be attributed to the tendency for individuals to undervalue their language skills (fisher et al., 2018). on average, participants ranked their proficiency in english a 3.75 and ga a 3.15 out of 4, respectively. this demonstrates that even though participants see ga to be their l1, their proficiency in the language lags behind english. major, a traditional leader from the ga township jamestown, did not provide a ranking but noted he is “very fluent” in ga. when asked if he reads, writes, and speaks ga well he said, “you know the ga language when you are not used to it, when you are not doing it all the time, it becomes a problem but well, i can read […] to a certain level.” additionally, a participant who gave their ga a rating of two also emphasized that they speak 100% fluently. this is important to note since many participants who gave themselves a ranking of three in ga also noted that they did not know how to say words like “mango” and “tomatoes” in ga. akweley, an entrepreneur in her 20s, noted that when her father passed away she was unable to understand part of the funeral rites because “the ga sounded funny in [her] ear” leading her to ask her older sibling for merlain-moffatt current issues in comparative education 86 translation even though ga is their home language. still yet, at least four participants noted that they can express themselves better in ga than in english. while research shows that ga is a stable, institutional, mid-sized language (eberhard et al., 2022), there lies a disconnect with the sentiments of gas. in addition to expressing that ga is “fading away” and “disappearing,” a participant expressed that “we are losing our identity.” one person stated that ga is “dying” which is consistent with anyidoho and dakubu’s (2008) overview on the relationship between language and identity, which highlighted the perception that the ga language is dying. four participants noted that schools are no longer teaching ga thus barring students from learning the language in a formal setting. since there is a perceived decline in the teaching of ga in schools, there is a concern that there will be a new generation who does not speak the ga language well. and considering that 81.81% (18) of participants stated that the ability to speak ga is a central part of being a member of the ga community, the language plays a vital community role. due to these reasons, there are advocates for ga to be taught in accra schools and some participants are pushing for the vitality of the ga language through their civic efforts. asymmetric bilingualism and land responsibility while 81.81% (18) of participants agreed that ga people are united in the country, many participants found great concern with the minority status of ga people, and the ga language. roughly 72.7% (16) of participants expressed concern over the loss of language and land specifically. as addo, a participant who grew up in a historical house a few steps away from osu castle, said, “if you don’t have your land, you don’t have your heritage.” his statement echoes that of anthropologist herskovits (1962) who observed that, “some of the most widespread patterns of aboriginal culture in sub-saharan africa, […] are found in the complex of beliefs and behavior involving the relationships between man and the land that nourishes him” (p.143). major noted that the ga language is “dicey” in accra. he stated one main issue is that other people pretend not to speak and/or understand ga. to him, the ga people are the custodians of the land. as such, major sees that they have a responsibility to promote the ga language. in particular, he shed light on the impact of accra’s cosmopolitan nature on ga. from 2010-2021 the ghanaian population of the gar increased by 39.08% (ghana statistical service 2010, 2021). while other ethnic groups saw an increase of at least 33% over the decade, ga-dangme people had the second lowest growth of 24.6%. major asserted that there were more foreigners in accra than ga people, emphasizing the need for gas to take a stand and endorse the ga language. otherwise, “their [asantes and northerners] language will take over ours.” in the gar, 43.7% of the population is literate in asante twi and 29.3% in ga (ghana statistical service, 2021). given that 80% of ghanaians country-wide speak twi as a lingua franca, major’s fear is not uncommon. rather, it demonstrates how ga people experience asymmetric bilingualism, where they learn the language of another group (i.e., asante twi) without reciprocation from the latter group (van parijs, 2002). nii explained this further when discussing interacting with street hawkers who come to accra from other regions for economic opportunities. he noted that ga is fading away as people refuse to speak ga and start conversations in twi in conversation: mother tongue education and civic engagement amongst ga youth current issues in comparative education 87 rather than ga. when asked why this is the case, nii elaborated that he believes ga people “don’t mind too much.” he further explained twi’s “free riding” (van parijs, 2002) nature, in the sense that ga speakers and twi speakers can communicate because ga speakers make an effort to speak twi, though he feels the reverse does not happen enough. akweley expressed that while she does not feel a responsibility to speak ga with others, she finds it mandatory to speak the language as a ga and it saddens her that others initiate conversations in twi or english. as a student at the university of ghana, she found herself surrounded by asante friends, none of whom spoke ga. when she made a friend who spoke ga and joined her friend group, she recalled that her friends would become upset and “feel threatened” by the fact that they could not understand what was being said in ga between the two of them. this is not surprising as akans were found to be the ethnic group least likely to tolerate diversity while gas were found to be the ethnic group most likely to tolerate diversity at the university of ghana (biney et al., 2021). despite the asymmetric bilingualism that participants face, they expressed a sense of ownership over the land. some expressed deep pride in the seat of government being on their land while also recognizing that parts of accra being designated for government use and people selling their land to non-gas, has contributed to a sentiment that accra is not economically owned by the ga people. this sentiment has pushed participants to care about the vitality of ga culture, heritage, and language. amongst participants, 68.2% (15) believe they have a responsibility to pass on the ga language. for some, this looks like speaking the language with their kids. to participants, this is a matter of civic engagement. it is how they create a better condition to preserve themselves—their language, culture, identity—and the future of their community. promoting community engagement civic engagement acted out all participants deemed it important to give back to community, whether they spoke about community in an abstract way or related it directly to their family and friends— which aligns with indigenous african citizenship (boadu, 2016). some participants shared that they have given back to the community by creating non-formal education programs that primarily serve vulnerable, socioeconomically disadvantaged, and/or out-of-school children—many of whom are ga or ga speakers. when asked about civic initiatives to improve the ga language’s vitality, participants shared numerous opportunities. moreover, they expressed a desire to engage civically in their language on a larger scale. adoley mentioned that she had recently heard discussions about opening a ga library and stated she would do what she could to support the library. edith noted that her personal contribution is in raising kids in the church. for the past 30 years, she has served as a children’s service teacher. she instills “good morals” in the children in the hopes that they turn out to be “good people in their communities.” perhaps, subconsciously, she seems to adhere to a traditional african sense of social obligation and responsibility to teach youth the values and responsibilities of active participation (busia, 1967). she teaches the children in ga 90% of the time and teaches in english 10% of the time since all the children who attend cannot speak ga. nii shared his prior involvement with a nongovernmental organization striving to make education more accessible to children in merlain-moffatt current issues in comparative education 88 coastal ga communities. major and mirabelle noted that they would use television and radio to spread knowledge about the ga community and language. it is critical to note that the civic activities put forth by participants are altruistic in nature. this builds upon the notion that if a young person is not motivated by civic initiatives, they are less likely to participate civically (adu-gyamfi, 2014). therefore, it is imperative that stakeholders implement systems that can accurately measure the civic interests of all youth without barriers (adu-gyamfi, 2014). roadblocks to engagement when addressing the roadblocks to civic engagement, the external efficacy of ga youth must be considered. participants were asked if they felt their opinions mattered to elected officials, and 63.63% (14) either expressed that they were unsure or emphatically responded, “hell no!” at least four slightly chuckled when asked. only 36.36% (8) stated “yes.” amongst them, one served as a traditional leader, another as a local political party chairman, one had received multiple encouragements to run for office, and one actively participates in their political party. when asked, “if you could change one thing, what would it be?” participants listed 12 different social and political matters. of the 22 participants, 36.36% (8) noted that they would change the mindsets and accountability of elected officials, 22.72% (5) would focus on education, and 13.63% (3) chose the mindset of citizens. table 1 social and political change aspirations desired change number of participants mindsets and accountability of officials 8 education 5 mindset of citizens 3 loss of ga identity 1 awareness and training on ghanaian identity 1 economic mobility 1 ga widows’ rights 1 country of birth 1 political elitism 1 public sanitation and air pollution 1 value of material over people 1 taxes on menstrual products 1 not sure 1 asante (2020) notes that ghanaians have an “attached-detachment” to the state whereby they tend to discuss national issues informally and shy away from bringing issues to state officials. these responses are critical to understanding people’s confidence in the government and their willingness to participate. as demonstrated by the initiatives participants wish to be involved in and their aspiration to give back, it is evident that youth are not disinterested in civic engagement, rather they require the opportunity to fully participate as desired. in conversation: mother tongue education and civic engagement amongst ga youth current issues in comparative education 89 while the basics of civic participation can start in the classroom, kotei, a secondary school teacher, noted that the current educational practices limit students. he expressed his desire to make educational institutions more practical rather than theoretical. he confirmed that the education system focuses on memorization and regurgitation and does not develop nor polish the skills students need to identify and solve societal problems. nii shared a similar sentiment and stated that the current ghanaian classroom does not provide students with the skills to “compete on any level in the world.” he urged the government to: make people feel needed, wanted, for the skills you’ve given them, but here’s the situation where our own leaders do not even trust our own medical institutions, so they’ll fall ill and travel comfortably on the taxpayers. when are we going to do something to help ourselves? and i really think it comes from the mindset. the education. we should stop teaching the kids the wrong things. it is not okay. in response to this critique, when asked to elaborate on what he believes students should learn, he advocated for a refinement in current teaching practices so that ghanaians can meet international standards. similarly, when it comes to civic education specifically, scholars assert that the content delivered ought to utilize a student-centered approach to encourage meaningful engagement and critical thinking (bajaj, 2011; tibbitts, 2008). while students may have the ability to recall, identify, and summarize material—which aligns with the definition of “knowledge and understanding” metric given by the ministry of education, science and sports’ 2007 teaching syllabus for primary level citizenship education (adams et al., 2013)—this pedagogy hinders learners from becoming active problem solvers for their communities because they are not encouraged to have conversations in and out of ghanaian classrooms around civic engagement (ayaaba et al., 2014). without change and opportunities to understand citizenship education well, pupils cannot support social change activities (owusu-agyeman & fourie-malherbe, 2019). like scholars who suggest a reintegration of “informal” civic education curricula, where teachers, principals, policymakers, and parents strengthen the civic disposition of children (odusanya & oni, 2019), ashitey asserted that while the first point of contact for civic training should be at home, most of it must take place in school since learners spend much of their time there. discussion & conclusion nkrumah wanted the world to know that the “blackman is capable of managing his own affairs,” but how is this possible when the black person, the ghanaian, the ga is not using their language in school to advance in society? previous research has explored ghanaian language policy and civic engagement in silos. this research contributes empirical evidence on how ga youth believe their language, culture, and heritage are dying because of migration and asymmetric bilingualism. due to this, part of their civic responsibility lies in passing on the ga language and engaging in civic activities that enhance the survival of the language. merlain-moffatt current issues in comparative education 90 as government administrations have created policies that give weight to local languages, it is a disservice for schools to not teach in a language that encourages literacy, societal participation, and breaks social barriers. schooling serves as an avenue to raise new generations in conformity with modern forms of citizenship that are compatible with a globalizing economy (boadu, 2015). unfortunately, in a ghanaian context, this is one of the reasons the hegemony of english is oftentimes supported, and there is a false discourse of “educational disutility” of ghanaian languages (adjetey-nii owoo, 2022). the labeling of indigenous languages as “vernacular” and the punitive measures taken to ensure that students do not speak their native tongues in the classroom, begs one to consider the impacts on the development of a sense of self and on community participation. to echo vieira (2019), english within itself is not valuable. rather, the language’s importance continues to be reinforced because of the very institutions that promote it. this is not to argue that english lacks great economic power. rather, the belief and promotion that english is the only way to attain social and economic mobility negates the very intention behind what ghana was meant to be. giving students a foundation in their l1 allows them to undergo a liberatory experience. language is intrinsically tied to the way one sees themselves, understands their community, and moves through the world. participants like nii, who see their language as their identity, wish to be active citizens. his desire to explain financial policy in ga shows he wishes to promote and serve his community. several participants wished they had the opportunity to learn in ga as their moi. if, as suggested by stilz (2009), a critical mass of people were given the opportunity to vote on such a matter and demonstrated a willingness to bear the cost of maintaining their language as a public good, it could create new opportunities for economic advancement and development. moreover, it could remove english proficiency as a barrier to democratic participation (anyidoho, 2018) and further promote youth’s civic engagement. while participants found their community to be their friends and families, which aligns with traditional african views of citizenship (boadu, 2016), they expressed the challenges that exist in gaining the skills to be civically engaged. ghanaians’ “attached-detachment” style of civic engagement is seen through most of the participants’ belief that their opinion does not matter to elected officials. their wish to change the mindsets and accountability of elected officials demonstrates that the lack of trust that citizens have in the government is a barrier to civic engagement. since ghanaian schooling faces a reputation of being “internal colonialism,” it must be revamped to give all citizens a chance at social mobility and civic participation. in turn, this will give them the skills needed to be active citizens. in understanding that, in theory, the holders of languages, and in this case, guardians of the land, have ultimate authority over what they wish to happen to an aspect of their culture, the practical implications for the lack of use of ga and how it impacts youth engagement must be considered and examined. in the future, it is recommended to conduct interviews in ga to ensure that important voices are not excluded. there must be an acknowledgment that the sentiments of the ga people have merit, especially when considered against the backdrop of the 2010 and 2021 census data. the realization of language death in the academy often comes far too late. in in conversation: mother tongue education and civic engagement amongst ga youth current issues in comparative education 91 the case of the ga language, perhaps there is an opportunity to ensure that the sentiments of the people, lived realities, and educational experiences align in a manner that promotes and maintains their linguistic heritage. to enact effective change, students must have the opportunity to learn in their l1. to reach the intended goals of citizenship education, civic engagement must be barrier-free. where possible, schools must revisit and reimagine how indigenous ways of thinking and doing may inform movement forward. if this is neglected, then the status quo remains unchanged, and the routes that could provide education and knowledge in new ways are left untraversed. when it comes to the field of comparative and international education, civic engagement and mother tongue education must be brought into conversation together as they inform one another. how can one deeply understand concepts of civic education when they are not permitted to the site of schooling as their full self—inclusive of their language, which participants find to be deeply intertwined with their identity? if there is truly a desire for the black person to be capable of managing their own affairs, it must be done in a contextual manner that sees the value in utilizing the mother tongue in policy and, more importantly, practice. acknowledgements: thank you to the george clement bond center for african education in supporting my travel to ghana. many thanks to dr. s. garnett russell and dr. carol benson for your guidance and support. to all 22 collaborators, thank you for your patience and willingness to speak to me. this work is possible because of you. i pray you find deep value in your contributions. with the utmost gratitude to you all and the most high, oyiwaladɔŋŋ. kella merlain-moffatt completed her master’s in international educational development at teachers college, columbia university. her research interests include language of instruction policy and practice, decolonial dimensions of education, and the boundaries of identity and their consequences. she can be reached at kellanarki@gmail.com. references abudu, a. m., & fuseini, m. n. 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(2020). literacy rate, adult total (% of people ages 15 and above) – ghana. the world bank. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/se.adt.litr.zs?locations=gh https://en.unesco.org/news/youth-voiced-out-stepped-and-took-actions-sustainable-development-through-civic-care-project https://en.unesco.org/news/youth-voiced-out-stepped-and-took-actions-sustainable-development-through-civic-care-project https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000224115 https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pa00x9jt.pdf https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594x02001001003 current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 2, spring 2017 © 2017, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(2), 140-165. the incidence and influencing factors of college student term-time working in china fei guo institute of education, tsinghua university as the labor market pressure for college graduates keeps rising in the past decade, working while attending college becomes increasingly popular among undergraduate students in china. with a nationally representative dataset of 6,977 students from 49 institutions, this study examines the incidence and influencing factors on undergraduate student term-time working in four-year universities and colleges in china. overall, the paper finds that: 1) 63% of undergraduate students work for about 23 hours per week in academic semesters for an average of 5.7 months in college; 2) student term-time working pattern (i.e. participation, length, and intensity) differs across forms of work, and varies by types of institution; 3) students’ non-academic ability, financial constraint, and institutional environment jointly influence the participation and intensity of termtime working. the findings provide implications to policies regarding financial and developmental support to undergraduate students. introduction after 18 years of rapid expansion, the chinese higher education system has become the largest in the world, with more than 41.4 million students in over 2,800 institutions in the year of 2015.1 along with the enrollment expansion is the changing environment faced by college students. before the reform of higher education in 1999, the cost of attending college was kept low through government subsidies, and college graduates were like “hotcakes” on the job market. as the expansion went on, a significant number of students from low-income families entered college. at the same time, tuition and fees charged by higher education institution (heis) increased significantly (bai, 2006; yu, 2010). though the chinese ministry of education (moe) carried out new financial aid policies aiming at providing sufficient financial support to all low-income college students, the forms of financial aid had changed from mostly grants and scholarships to a combination of grants, scholarships, work-study compensations, and subsidized student loans (yu, 2010). as the number of college graduates started to increase since 2003, the job market competition kept leveling up. according to a bi-annual national survey, the first employment rate of 1 source: http://www.moe.edu.cn/s78/a03/moe_560/jytjsj_2015/2015_qg/201610/t20161011_284371.html incidence and influencing factors of college student term-time working current issues in comparative education 141 141 bachelor degree holders decreased from 75.7% in the year of 2003 to 68.7% in the year of 2011(yue, 2012).2 under these circumstances, more and more undergraduate students actively seek work opportunities while enrolled in college. though there are no official statistics from the moe, this trend is documented by empirical studies in various regions in china. the percentage of students who worked during college has increased from about 20-30% in surveys conducted in 1999 (e.g., li, 2000; jun li & ma, 1999) to about 60-80% in recent datasets (e.g. du, 2015; ren, guo, & pan, 2013; b. zhao & qiao, 2014). in addition, the china college student survey (ccss) 2016, a national-wide survey of 38 four-year colleges and universities, shows 64% of students have working experience during academic terms. working while enrolled in college has become a prevalent activity among chinese undergraduate students. this raises an increasingly hot debate on the influence of student working. the proponents suggest that working provides students with both monetary compensations and opportunities to gain practical and social experience (e.g. g. li, zhao, & huang, 2007; tang & wang, 2007; wang, 2000, etc.). but the opponents argue working during academic terms reduces the time for studying, but provides little meaningful practical training because most of the jobs are low-skilled and labor-intensive ones (chu, yang, & ma, 2010; jiaheng li, 2007; l. li et al., 2011; qian, 2011; wang & li, 2008; zhao & hao, 2010; zhu, li, & xu, 2009). though there is, so far, no consensus on whether term-time working is beneficial to students, it is suggested that at least off-campus intensive work (i.e., more than 20 hours per week) during term time is harmful to student academic performance (furr, elling, & furr, 2000; lundberg, 2004; umbach, padgett, & pascarella, 2010; wu & zhong, 2012). for heis to form up relevant policies regarding student working, it is necessary to understand the current situation and identify influencing factors of student term-time working. specifically, this study examines two questions: 1. what is the incidence and characteristics of undergraduate student termtime working in four-year heis in china? 2. what are the factors influencing undergraduate students’ term-time working decisions? the first question is answered with a descriptive analysis of a nationally representative dataset. the second is answered by multiple regression analysis based on a comprehensive conceptual framework. the analysis is limited to four-year universities and colleges because three-year (vocational) colleges in china place a higher emphasis on 2 the first employment rate refers to the percentage of college graduates who are offered a job or admitted to graduate schools by june 30th. guo current issues in comparative education 142 practical training, and student experience may be systematically different from that in four-year heis. the study provides an opportunity to understand students’ college experience and financial need from a non-academic angle. the findings of this study will help heis better support college student development. it will also provide policy makers with evidence for the reform of higher education tuition and financial aid policies. the key term, “term-time working” is defined as taking paid jobs during academic semesters. there are three general forms of paid jobs taken by students during term time in china. the first is on-campus work-study jobs provided by institutions. this is part of the financial aid system to support low-income students. therefore, there is an income requirement to be eligible for work-study positions. the positions are usually labor intensive, such as librarians, student assistants, and so forth. the wages vary by positions and institutions but usually are just above the minimum wage standard. the second form is part-time jobs offered by employers outside one’s institution. these jobs are usually temporary and uncontracted positions. most jobs are labor-intensive, such as sales man, waiters/waitresses, and so forth; a few are knowledge-intensive, such as private tutors, designers, language interpreters, and so forth. job locations and wages vary by the nature of jobs. there is usually no institutional requirement or restriction on taking part-time jobs. students have the freedom to decide whether and how much to work. the third form of work occurs as internships. to differentiate from the second form, internships in this study refer to formally contracted positions related to students’ academic majors and career development. most heis require students to take internships before graduation. some even have agreements with employers to arrange internships for students. but most institution-arranged internships are unpaid and take place during the summer breaks or in the last semester of college. therefore, they are not included in this study. what is included is paid internships obtained through personal channels. most of these jobs are off-campus and require the full-time attendance of several work days. as summarized in table 1, the three forms of term-time work have different features with regards to the job nature, location, eligibility requirement, flexibility of schedule, and wage level. students who take any of the three forms of jobs during term time are referred to as “term-time working students”. in the rest of the paper, i first review previous studies in china, then present a theoretical framework on determinants of student term-time working decision, discuss the method and data, describe the results, and finally conclude with a discussion on the findings. incidence and influencing factors of college student term-time working current issues in comparative education 143 143 table 1. characteristics of different forms of term-time work work-study jobs part-time jobs internships formal/informal formal usually informal usually formal type of job labor-intensive varies, but mostly laborintensive mostly knowledge intensive location on-campus mostly off-campus mostly off-campus eligibility low-income students no no schedule no full-time attendance requirement; flexible schedule. varies; but usually no full-time attendance requirement; flexible schedule. usually require fulltime attendance of several working days wage level relatively low varies varies literature review previous empirical studies provide some evidence on the situation of in-college working in china based on institutional student surveys. they summarize the characteristics of jobs, attitudes and motives of working students, and students’ perceptions on gains and losses from working. with regards to the influencing factors of student term-time working, only a few studies have conducted examinations with regression analysis. using data on marketing majored students in an hei, jing, lv, and sun (2010) find that parental attitudes towards part-time working and whether taking student leadership positions in college were positively correlated with the part-time working decision. zhao & qiao (2014) use a dataset of 6 heis in jiangsu province and find that students’ gender, grade, family income, financial aid, and origins were all significantly correlated with their part-time working decisions. other studies summarize the reasons and motives for students to work. they find that the primary two reasons are to gain social and work experience and to earn monetary compensation (cheng & wang, 2010; chu et al., 2010; deng, zhang, yang, pang, & xiao, 2004; du, 2015; jing, wu, & zhao, 2005; jiaheng li, 2007; li, 2011; li & ni, 2006; ma, 2012; qian, 2011; wang, 2010; yuan, ren, & ouyang, 2009; zhang & wu, 2008; zhao & hao, 2010; zhu et al., 2009). other incentives for part-time work include to spend spare time, to make friends, and to follow what other students do (chu et al., 2010; jing et al., 2005; li et al., 2011; ma, 2012; wang, 2010; zhang & wu, 2008). these findings imply that students’ financial need, eagerness to improve labor market competitiveness, time constraints, and peers’ influence may be additional factors influencing decisions for termtime working. there are some knowledge gaps in the current chinese literature. first, most previous studies are descriptive summaries of survey questions. the two studies using regression analysis only examine the influence of a few factors. there is still a need to examine the influencing factors based on a comprehensive theoretical framework. second, previous studies are based on data collected from a single or a limited number of institutions. few studies use regional data (t. li, 2011; b. zhao & qiao, 2014). national data has not been used. it is necessary to learn about the situation of college student term-time working guo current issues in comparative education 144 nationally. third, few studies have explicitly distinguished between working during term time and during summer and winter breaks. under different time constraints in the academic semester and on breaks, students’ incentives to work, gain working experience, and benefits from working may all be different. there are two recent studies focusing on jobs taking in academic semesters, but only concentrated on part-time jobs (du, 2015; b. zhao & qiao, 2014). this paper attempts to fill the knowledge gaps with quantitate analysis on a nationally representative dataset. theoretical framework students’ decision on whether and how much to work in academic terms is in the nature of the allocation of time for studying and working. the decision process can be modeled with the human capital theory which describes individuals’ time allocation between schooling and work. the classical model (becker, 1993; mincer, 1974) divides individuals’ lifetime into two periods: a period of full-time schooling and a period of full-time work in the labor market. people decide the length of the first period to maximize their lifetime income. scott-clayton (2012) suggests two circumstances in which people may choose to work part-time in a schooling period. the first is when there is a credit constraint and individuals cannot borrow enough to pay for college. working during term time is the only way for them to continue schooling. the second is when students expect valuable human capital gains from term-time working. assuming a diminishing rate of return to time spent on a specific activity (i.e., study/work), students would benefit from allocating time on more than one activity. combining the two circumstances, scott-clayton (2012) proposes an empirical model to describe students’ time allocation decision: w1(a) + β rw ∂𝑔(ℎ𝑤; 𝑎,𝑄𝑤) ∂ℎ𝑤 = β rs ∂𝑓(ℎ𝑠; 𝑎,𝑄𝑠) ∂ℎ𝑠 (1) where functions g() and f() are the production functions of workand school-related human capital. the accumulated human capital from a specific activity is determined by the amount of time spent on that activity (ℎ𝑠 and ℎ𝑤), individual’s innate ability (a), and the quality of that activity (𝑄𝑠and 𝑄𝑤). rw and rs represent the rates of return to workand school-related human capital in the labor market. β represents the market and personal discount rate. the left-hand side of equation (1) represents the marginal benefit of one additional hour on working. it equals to the current income return to that additional hour (i.e., w1(a)) plus the present value of future income returns to work-related human capital gained from that additional hour (i.e., β* rw * ∂𝑔(ℎ𝑤; 𝑎,𝑄𝑤) ∂ℎ𝑤 ). the right-hand side of the equation represents the marginal benefit of one additional hour on studying, which is the present value of future income returns to school-related human capital gained from that hour. assuming that ∂𝑔 ∂ℎ𝑤 and ∂𝑓 ∂ℎ𝑠 are decreasing and that rw is not equal to rs, rational students would stop spending more hours on term-time working when the marginal incidence and influencing factors of college student term-time working current issues in comparative education 145 145 benefit of spending an addition hour on working equals to the marginal benefit of spending that hour on studying. this equation suggests four categories of factors that may influence students’ term-time working decisions. the first is related to students’ financial constraint while attending college. the income from term-time working represented by w1(a) can be considered as the monetary opportunity cost for students to spend an additional hour on studying. assuming zero present value of future income returns to term-time working, a student will not work if the opportunity cost is affordable; or in other words, if he/she is not under a financial constraint while attending college. students’ financial constraint is determined by the cost and expenses of attending college (i.e., tuition and fees, basic living expenses, and other consumptions to maintain a certain lifestyle, etc.) and the amount of available funding from sources other than personal work income (i.e., personal savings, family/parents support, grants/scholarships, loans, etc.). from this vein, students’ termtime working decision would be influenced by institutional characteristics that determine the direct cost of attending college and the amount of financial aid, and by family background that influence the amount of parental support and expected consumption level. the second category is related to students’ inclination to work. as shown in equation 1, students may spend more time on working if they perceive more gaining from term-time jobs than school courses. the production functions g() and f() suggest that students’ attitudes towards study and work, innate ability, education quality provided by institution, and the quality of work experience may all influence students’ term-time working decision. the third category is the local labor market condition that determines work opportunities available to college students during term time. the amount, types, and wage level of jobs influence both the income from term-time working (i.e., w1(a)) and the potential human capital gains. in summary, from the lens of human capital theory, college students’ term-time working decision may be influenced by personal ability and attitude, family background, institutional characteristics, and jobs available during term time. this model is supported by previous empirical studies in the u.s. (desjardins, mccall, ott, & kim, 2010; kalenkoski & pabilonia, 2008; titus, 2010) as well as studies in china summarized in the last section. methodology data and sample the data used in this paper is from the college student labor market survey (cslm) conducted by tsinghua university in the year of 2011.3 the cslm is an 3 the cslm survey is also called “follow-up survey of college graduates in china”. guo current issues in comparative education 146 annual survey on undergraduate students who are graduating in the year of the survey. it collects information on individual characteristics, family background, pre-college experience, college activities, and financial situation during college, working experiences during college, and placement after graduation. the questionnaires are distributed in late may and june, about one month before the commencement in most chinese universities. in 2011, the tsinghua survey team constructed a national representative sample with a multi-stage random sampling strategy. first, the team randomly sampled heis by geographic region (municipalities (i.e., beijing, shanghai, and tianjin), northeast area, east area, central area, and west area) and by institution type (project 985 and project 211 heis (the elite heis), public non-elite four-year heis, vocational (three-year) colleges, and independent (private) colleges).4 second, in each hei, about 200 to 400 students in the graduating class were randomly drawn based on their student id. in all, 8,179 students in 50 institutions participated in the 2011 survey. the average responding rate was about 74%. as this study focused on students in four-year heis, the only vocational college with 180 students was dropped. furthermore, the sample was restricted to students in cohort 2007 (i.e., students entered college in 2007) to eliminate cohort-level differences. the final analytic sample contained 6, 977 students in 49 institutions. among the institutions, 13 were from the three municipalities, 5 from the northeastern region, 8 from the eastern region, 11 from the central region, and 12 from the western region. with regards to institution types, there were 8 universities in the project 985, another 16 universities in the project 211, 23 non-elite public heis, and 2 independent colleges. the tsinghua survey team purposefully over-sampled the elite universities. but they provided sampling weights based on the sampling scheme to ensure national representativeness of the data. empirical models based on the theoretical framework, i constructed the following empirical models to examine factors influencing student term-time working participation and intensity: pr (wi =1) = α0 + α1 fini + α2 indi + α3 edui + α4 jobi + α5 xi + εi model (1) houri = β0 + β1 fini + β2 indi + β3 edui + β4 jobi + β5 xi + εi model (2) 4 the project 985 and project 211 were launched by the chinese minister of education in late 1990s to promote the building of world-class universities in china. the project 211 consisted of 112 universities, 39 of which were selected to the project 985. all of these universities were research universities awarding bachelor and above level of degrees. they received additional financial support from the central government. though the two projects were terminated by moe in 2016, the 112 universities are still considered to be the elite universities in china, and those in the project 985 are considered to be the best. for more information, please refer to http://www.chinaeducenter.com/en/cedu/ceduproject211.php. independent colleges are financed and operated by the private sector but affiliated to a public university. they only offer associate and bachelor degrees. the tuition charged by independent colleges is higher than the public institutions. incidence and influencing factors of college student term-time working current issues in comparative education 147 147 the dependent variable in model (1), wi , indicates whether the student participated in term-time working (i.e., the participation). the dependent variable in model (2), houri , is the number of hours spent on working per week (i.e., the intensity). fini, indi, edui, and jobi represent financial constraint, individual attitude and ability, education quality, and term-time labor market conditions respectively. xi is the demographic covariates including gender, age, ethnicity, and academic major. the key explanatory variables are the four categories of influencing factors suggested by the theoretical framework. they are measured with available information in the cslm survey. table 2 presents the measures/indices of the factors, along with the descriptive statistics. to be noted, there is no direct measure of labor market conditions during term time in the cslm data. the models use the regions of institution, location of campus, and the percentage of low-ses students in the institution as indirect measures of job availability. in addition, the popularity of term-time working in the institution (i.e., the percentage of term-time working students) 5 is included as an index of the overall institutional environment to working students. model 1 is estimated with probit regression6 on the entire analytic sample, and model 2 with ordinal least square (ols) regression on the sample of working students. in addition, observations with a value above the 97.5 percentile of intensity are excluded when estimating model (2) to eliminate the influence of outliers. sampling weights are applied in all regressions to maintain national representativeness. standard errors are clustered at institutional level to adjust for the nested data structure. missing values in explanatory variables are treated with the dummy flag method. as a check of multi-collinearity between explanatory variables, i first examine the pearson’s correlation coefficients between explanatory variables (not presented in paper because of page limitation). overall, most of the correlation coefficients are below .3. but the correlations between the amount and type of financial aid and between whether from rural area and ses score are relatively high (r = .685 and -.619 respectively). i then examine the variation inflation factor (vif) after regressions. the vifs of all individual variables, including the pairs of variables with relatively high correlations, are below 5. the overall vifs of the models are below 2. in sum, the analysis suggests that the multi-collinearity between explanatory variables is not severe. the cslm data is cross-sectional but not longitudinal, meaning, the regression coefficients only represent the associations between the factors and student term-time working, but not the causal impacts of the factors. 5 to rule out the possibility of reverse causation, the percentage of term-time working students is calculated based on the larger sample, i.e. the sample with students in both cohort 2007 and other cohorts (sample size=8,179). 6 probit regression is a way to estimate models with binary dependent variable using the standard maximum likelihood procedure. the error term is assumed to follow the standard normal distribution. guo current issues in comparative education 148 table 2. descriptive statistics of explanatory variables factor measure / index m (sd) missing rate (%) category 1: financial constraint financial burden ratio of tuition to household income 0.23 (0.23) 18.26 funding total financial aid (in rmb) 2266.73 (2409.46) 3.55 family fund (in rmb) 9412.62 (5826.81) 18.55 source of funding had merit aid (yes=1) (%) 34.13 0 had need aid (yes=1) (%) 21.09 0 had loan (yes=1) (%) 27.92 2.85 family background single child (yes=1) (%) 36.38 1.10 rural (yes=1) (%) 43.15 0.32 ses score (constructed) -0.15 (0.97) 22.33 category 2: individual ability and attitude academic ability ncee score (rescaled to 1~100) 70.41 (7.88) 12.05 non-academic ability student leader in high school (yes=1) (%) 41.62 0 attitude on work ever worked in high school (yes=1) (%) 3.05 0 attitude on studying attitude towards major (%) 2.67 (0.80) 2.52 category 3: education quality hei type (%) project 985 heis 6.65 0 project 211 heis a 12.28 public non-elite heis 69.72 independent colleges 11.44 hei concentration comprehensive heis (%) 22.18 0 engineering-concentrated heis (%) 43.34 0 heis in other concentrations (%) 34.48 category 4: term-time labor market conditions hei environment % of term-time working students 0.59 (0.15) 0 % of low-income students 0.24 (0.11) 0 hei location (%) municipalities 14.48 0 east 41.70 central/west 44.82 campus location (%) urban 66.66 0 suburban 33.34 covariates: demographic background age age 22.99 (1.00) 2.11 gender female=1 (%) 47.27 0.46 race minority=1 (%) 5.25 0.95 major stem majors (%) 54.61 0.21 economic & business major (%) 16.94 other majors (%) 28.24 note: sample size=6,977; sampling weights applied. institutions in both the “985” & “211” projects are not included in this category. incidence and influencing factors of college student term-time working current issues in comparative education 149 149 empirical results incidence and pattern of term-time working the nationally representative cslm 2011 data shows that 62.7% of undergraduate students in china’s four-year colleges and universities have term-time working experience. as presented in table 3, by the time of graduation, they on average have accumulated a total of 5.7-month work experience during academic semesters. this is about one month longer than a regular academic semester in china. when students participate in term-time working, they, on average, work for about 22.7 hours per week, which can be considered a heavy workload according to the u.s. studies. with regards to the forms of work, the participating rate in work-study jobs, part-time jobs, and internships is 19.98%, 35.05%, and 36.73% respectively. in addition, about 28.60% of working students have taken two forms of work, and about 9% have taken all three forms. the participating pattern varies across work forms. as shown in table 3, students taking work-study jobs work for a relatively longer period (5.6 months) but less intensively (13.0 hours per week). those taking internships work more intensively (31.8 hours per week) but for a shorter period (3.0 months). the data also reveals a trend of change in work forms as students go into senior grades. about 76% of work-study jobs and 65% of part-time jobs are taken in the first two years, and about 79% of internships are taken in the last two years. as internships are more demanding and major-relevant than work-study and part-time jobs, such a trend implies a shift from low-skilled to highskilled jobs as students enter their final years in college. the incidence and pattern of term-time working varies across the types of heis. as shown in table 3, the overall participating rate is lower in elite universities than in public nonelite universities, and it is lowest in independent colleges. yet the overall average length and intensity do not differ much across types. specifically, elite universities have a higher participating rate in work-study jobs than non-elite universities (23% vs. 19%). students in elite universities work for a longer time (about 7 months vs. less than 5 months) but slightly less intensively (about 10-13 hours per week vs. 13.5-14 hours per week) than those in non-elite universities when taking work-study jobs. public non-elite heis have the highest participating rate in part-time jobs and internships (about 40% vs. less than 34% in others for both), as well as the highest length and intensity of part-time jobs (4.7 months vs. fewer than 4 months in others; 18 hours per week vs. no more than 17 hours per week in others). independent colleges have the lowest participating rate in part-time jobs and internships (14.8% and 26.0% respectively). yet comparing to those taking the same form of work in other institutions, students in independent colleges work for the longest time when taking internships (3.2 months), and work most intensively when having work-study jobs (14 hours per week). guo current issues in comparative education 150 table 3. undergraduate students’ term-time working participation in china overall work-study part-time job internships whole sample incidence (%) 62.74 19.98 35.05 36.73 length (m/sd) 5.67 (5.91) 5.57 (6.01) 4.45 (5.36) 2.95 (2.66) intensity (m/sd) 22.71 (15.53) 13.01 (12.23) 17.71 (14.82) 31.80 (15.65) project 985 heis incidence (%) 60.29 23.39 33.12 29.52 length (m/sd) 5.73 (6.42) 7.07 (7.37) 3.94 (5.85) 2.34 (2.25) intensity (m/sd) 20.6 (15.09) 12.85 (12.98) 16.74 (14.77) 31.15 (14.65) project 211 heis incidence (%) 59.99 24.35 32.41 30.39 length (m/sd) 6.19 (6.76) 7.35 (7.66) 3.90 (4.89) 3.07 (3.06) intensity (m/sd) 20.36 (15.41) 10.29 (11.08) 15.69 (14.48) 31.54 (15.25) public non-elite heis incidence (%) 65.99 19.02 39.02 40.29 length (m/sd) 5.71 (5.85) 5.20 (5.55) 4.66 (5.51) 2.94 (2.60) intensity (m/sd) 23.46 (15.50) 13.48 (12.66) 18.14 (14.95) 32.36 (15.47) independent colleges incidence (%) 47.31 19.16 14.8 25.98 length (m/sd) 4.57 (4.52) 4.23 (3.94) 2.94 (2.46) 3.24 (2.95) intensity (m/sd) 21.10 (15.84) 14.04 (10.00) 17.09 (13.46) 26.53 (18.12) incidence by hei concentration (%) comprehensive 62.5 19.91 34.61 36.03 engineering 52.55 15.47 27.76 28.07 other concentration 75.71 25.69 44.49 48.07 incidence by region (%) municipality 62.06 14.99 29.59 41.85 east 71.49 22.22 40.6 37.33 central & west 71.69 19.52 47.02 34.49 incidence by campus location (%) urban area 64.04 21.52 37.59 36.43 suburban 60.14 16.9 29.98 37.32 note: sample size=6,977; sampling weights applied. the incidence of term-time working also varies by institution’s disciplinary concentrations and locations.7 engineering institutions have a lower participating rate than comprehensive universities in all three forms of work, while institutions with other concentrations have more. with regards to location, institutions in municipalities have the lowest overall participating rate, but the highest internship participating rate. institutions in urban areas have a higher participating rate in work-study and part-time jobs than institutions in suburban areas. 7 there is no clear difference across institution concentrations and locations with regards to the length and intensity. therefore, the descriptive statistics are not reported in this section for page limitation. incidence and influencing factors of college student term-time working current issues in comparative education 151 151 to examine factors influencing students’ participation and intensity of different forms of term-time working, model 1 and model 2 are estimated on overall term-time working, work-study jobs, part-time jobs, and internships respectively.8 results are presented in table 4. financial constraint. as shown in columns (1) to (4) in the table, students’ term-time working participation is strongly correlated with the financial constraint measures. first, holding other things constant, the financial burden of attending college measured by the ratio of tuition to household income is statistically significantly and positively associated with the likelihood to participate in term-time working. but the significant association is only found for work-study jobs. second, having need-based aid is statistically significantly associated with a higher likelihood to take work-study jobs. having loans is positively associated with a higher likelihood to participate in all three forms of work. third, students from rural area and low-ses families are statistically more likely than other students to take work-study jobs. students with siblings participate significantly more in part-time jobs and internships. the other variables, including the amount of family funding, the amount of financial aid, and having merit aid have no significant associations with the participation in any form of term-time working. the financial constraint measures, however, have limited influence on the intensity of term-time working. as shown in columns (6) and (8), the intensity of work-study jobs and internships is not correlated with any of the measures. the intensity of part-time jobs is positively associated to having need-based aid, but negatively associated to family ses score and being from rural area. individual characteristics. the results show that students’ academic ability measured by standardized ncee score is significantly, negatively associated with overall probability and intensity of term-time working, but their non-academic ability (measured by being a student leader in senior high school) is positively associated with participation in all three forms of work, though association with work intensity is not statistically significant. students’ attitude toward working shows no significant correlation with the participation and intensity of working in college. but their attitude towards their academic major is found to be significantly associated with the participation in part-time jobs (negative) and the length of work-study jobs (positive). the results also show that female, older, and han students are more likely to take part-time jobs during term time. female students are also more likely to take internships and work more intensively than males. students in stem majors are overall less likely to work, but they work more intensively in internships. students in economics and business majors also work more intensively in internships. 8 a caveat is that, when examining the participation in different forms of term-time work, i do not intent to model the choice between the forms for three reasons: 1) students may take more than one form of work, and about 36% of students in the cslm 2011 sample did so; 2) the choices do not satisfy the independence of irrelevant alternatives (iia) assumption; 3) not all students are exposed to the same set of choices (for instance, work-study positions is only available to eligible students). the assumptions of multinomial analysis are therefore not satisfied. guo current issues in comparative education 152 table 4. regression estimates on influencing factors of term-time working. participation intensity (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) overall work-study part-time internship overall work-study part-time internship m.e. (s.e.) m.e. (s.e.) m.e. (s.e.) m.e. (s.e.) b (s.e.) b (s.e.) b (s.e.) b (s.e.) financial constraint tuition as % of income 0.10* 0.12* 0.0063 -0.044 -1.11 -0.28 -2.09 2.21 (0.041) (0.056) (0.047) (0.050) (1.16) (1.12) (2.54) (2.49) total family funding (log) 0.0052 -0.0098 -0.0091 -0.0064 0.79 0.18 1.22 0.16 (0.018) (0.017) (0.017) (0.013) (0.83) (0.58) (0.90) (0.71) total financial aid (log) 0.012*** 0.0067 0.0094 0.012 -0.13 -0.37 -0.39 0.041 (0.0029) (0.0047) (0.0053) (0.0091) (0.16) (0.30) (0.24) (0.25) has merit aid 0.0074 0.028 0.0080 -0.019 -0.084 1.00 0.25 0.43 (0.018) (0.016) (0.021) (0.034) (1.10) (1.28) (0.96) (2.37) has need aid 0.014 0.075** 0.021 -0.028 0.23 1.67 3.98** 1.04 (0.035) (0.029) (0.030) (0.057) (0.85) (1.30) (1.18) (0.89) has loan 0.085*** 0.086*** 0.092*** 0.049* -2.21* -0.76 -1.73 -1.68 (0.019) (0.014) (0.021) (0.024) (0.88) (0.52) (1.17) (1.04) rural 0.065** 0.043* 0.041 -0.0024 -1.06 -0.18 -2.07* 1.06 (0.024) (0.020) (0.030) (0.039) (0.64) (1.21) (1.00) (0.71) ses score 0.0016 -0.030** -0.030 0.016 0.23 0.21 -1.36* -0.53 (0.016) (0.0094) (0.016) (0.015) (0.37) (0.55) (0.59) (0.63) single child -0.088*** -0.0037 -0.082*** -0.075** -0.24 1.38 -1.52 1.14 (0.017) (0.016) (0.024) (0.023) (0.85) (1.75) (1.36) (1.34) individual ability and attitude ncee score (std.) -0.039*** -0.0016 -0.016 -0.050*** -0.86* -0.31 -0.63 0.31 (0.011) (0.011) (0.010) (0.014) (0.35) (0.37) (0.56) (0.45) hs student leader 0.032* 0.063*** 0.030* 0.034** -0.60 -0.33 0.12 -0.68 (0.016) (0.015) (0.013) (0.013) (0.67) (0.68) (0.95) (0.93) worked in hs -0.054 -0.024 -0.031 -0.043 -0.99 -0.70 2.22 -3.04 (0.049) (0.033) (0.056) (0.042) (1.67) (2.41) (2.55) (3.30) incidence and influencing factors of college student term-time working current issues in comparative education 153 153 attitude on major -0.018 0.0029 -0.026** -0.011 -0.14 1.33** -0.85 -0.40 (0.0097) (0.0065) (0.0094) (0.014) (0.34) (0.46) (0.43) (0.46) institutional characteristics inst. type (ref.: public non-elite heis) project 985 -0.043* 0.059 -0.066* -0.075** -2.21* -2.10 -2.24* -0.92 (0.021) (0.050) (0.030) (0.027) (0.86) (1.31) (1.09) (1.60) project 211 0.0052 0.13*** 0.0096 -0.060* -4.15*** -3.44** -4.80*** -1.66 (0.019) (0.032) (0.023) (0.029) (0.93) (1.03) (0.98) (1.26) independent college -0.033 0.043 -0.21*** 0.012 0.30 2.00 2.41** -5.20** (0.034) (0.071) (0.039) (0.075) (1.37) (1.50) (0.85) (1.62) inst. concentration (ref.: heis in other concentration) comprehensive hei -0.0049 0.0018 0.049 -0.018 0.63 1.63 1.62* -0.029 (0.023) (0.032) (0.026) (0.039) (0.72) (1.05) (0.71) (1.14) hei in engineering -0.048* -0.011 0.020 -0.072 -0.61 -0.74 0.62 0.16 (0.024) (0.029) (0.027) (0.041) (0.97) (1.29) (0.88) (1.28) % of term-time working students 0.0066*** 0.0035*** 0.0062*** 0.0041*** 0.0075 0.035 -0.019 0.14** -0.00057 (0.00094) (0.0011) (0.029) (0.045) (0.025) (0.045) % of low-ses students -0.0023 -0.0034*** -0.0066** 0.00079 0.18*** 0.0011 0.18*** -0.055 (0.0012) (0.0010) (0.0024) (0.0017) (0.041) (0.032) (0.028) (0.045) inst. location (ref.: heis in east region) heis in municipalities -0.0058 -0.083** -0.058 0.100* 5.87*** 1.88 6.27*** 1.41 (0.026) (0.026) (0.044) (0.050) (1.03) (1.28) (0.93) (1.56) heis in central/west -0.061*** -0.073** 0.018 -0.022 1.43 2.77** 1.61* 2.28* (0.015) (0.023) (0.023) (0.036) (0.73) (0.85) (0.63) (0.95) suburban campus vs. urban -0.026 -0.032 -0.098*** 0.052 2.66*** 0.47 2.38*** 1.01 (0.015) (0.019) (0.027) (0.028) (0.72) (0.99) (0.62) (1.14) covariates age 0.013* 0.010 0.042* -0.0038 -0.50 0.19 -0.71 0.36 (0.0066) (0.0070) (0.018) (0.011) (0.56) (0.63) (0.54) (0.84) female 0.086*** -0.0057 0.11*** 0.039* 0.52 -0.35 0.82 2.20* (0.016) (0.027) (0.018) (0.018) (0.64) (0.96) (0.86) (0.88) guo current issues in comparative education 154 minority -0.077** -0.030 -0.091** -0.051 0.63 3.09 1.29 -0.14 (0.026) (0.024) (0.031) (0.034) (1.81) (1.78) (1.60) (2.73) stem major -0.060* 0.0082 -0.046 -0.085 -0.63 -0.99 -1.29 4.53* (0.030) (0.024) (0.026) (0.050) (0.85) (1.16) (0.83) (1.69) econ & business major -0.032 0.030 -0.054 0.031 3.51** -0.12 1.41 6.73*** (0.036) (0.027) (0.038) (0.046) (1.12) (1.54) (1.33) (1.71) no. of obs. 6262 6251 6251 6251 3693 1185 1893 1889 f 129.6 138.2 110.1 116.8 r-squared a 0.17 0.12 0.13 0.079 0.085 0.11 0.085 0.080 note: 1) m.e. stands for marginal effects of probit models; 2) sampling weights applied and standard errors clustered at institution level; 3) robust errors are in parentheses; 4) missing dummies included in all regressions; 5) * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001. a. pseudo r-squared for probit regressions. incidence and influencing factors of college student term-time working current issues in comparative education 155 155 institutional characteristics. as shown by the descriptive results in previous section, the incidence and pattern of term-time working varies across institution types. the regressions reveal that, after controlling for students’ financial constraint and personal factors, institutional characteristics still have strong associations with students’ term-time working behavior. first, institution type is significantly associated with the likelihood and intensity of individual students to work during term time. comparing with public non-elite heis, attending elite universities is in general associated with a lower likelihood to take parttime jobs and internships, but a higher likelihood to take work-study jobs. it is also associated with fewer hours spent on working per week in general. second, institution location still matters. comparing to the east region, attending heis in municipalities is significantly associated with a higher probability of taking term-time internship, more intensive participation in part-time jobs, but a lower probability to take work-study jobs. attending heis in the central and west region is also associated with a lower probability of taking work-study jobs. but students in these institutions work significantly more intensively than those in the east region in all three forms of term-time jobs. in addition, studying in suburban campuses is associated with a significantly lower probability of taking part-time jobs. but when having the jobs, students in suburban campuses work more intensively than those in urban campuses. third, the regressions reveal institutional environments are significantly associated with term-time working participation. the prevalence of term-time working is positively associated with individuals’ likelihood of participation in all three forms of term-time working. specifically, the marginal effect is largest in the model for part-time jobs, indicating that students’ participating in part-time jobs is more likely to be influenced by peers than their participating in work-study and internships. as for the percentage of lowincome students on campus, it is surprising to find that the percentage is negatively associated with individual students’ participation in work-study and part-time jobs. assumedly, heis with more low-income students should have a higher percentage of working students. a possible explanation is that the competition for such jobs might be more severe in heis with higher percentages of low-income students, and therefore it is more difficult for students to obtain jobs. overall, the regression analyses reveal students’ participating in term-time working are significantly associated with individual financial constraints, personal abilities, and institutional characteristics. however, the intensity of work is hardly associated with individual level factors, and varies mainly by institution characteristics. conclusions and discussion using a nationally representative dataset collected through the cslm 2011 survey, this study finds that about 62.7% of students in four-year universities and colleges in china guo current issues in comparative education 156 have working experiences during academic semesters. students participate in term-time working for less than half a year, on average, throughout college, but work intensively when having a job (23 hours per week on average). comparing to the literature on college students working in china, students in this study work more intensively during term time. previous studies found that students worked for less than 10 hours per week (bao, tao, jiang, wang, & qi, 2010; chen, zhang, ye, & sun, 2005; qian, 2011) . a possible reason for this difference might be that, previous studies did not specifically distinguish students’ grade in college, while the cslm sample contained only those in the graduating class. as students in the first two years in college have relatively heavier course load than those in the third and fourth year, they may not be able to spend too much time to work. previous studies did reveal a trend of increasing intensity as students getting into senior years (chen et al., 2005; jun li & ma, 1999; l. zhang, 2009; b. zhao & qiao, 2014; r. zhao & hao, 2010; zhou & chen, 2010). a similar trend is found in this study as well. the average number of hours spent on working per week is 14, 16.7, 20.6, and 24.8, respectively, in the first through fourth year in college. however, even in early years in college, students in this sample still spend more time per week on working than those in previous studies. with regards to the forms of term-time working, the data shows that internships and parttime jobs are more popular than work-study jobs. this may be partly due to the fact that work-study positions are only available to low-income students. in addition, about onethird of working students in the cslm sample take more than one form of work. this confirms the finding of jing, lv, and sun (2010) that many working students have multiple working experiences. the data also indicates a trend of a shift from work-study and parttime jobs to internships as students go into senior grades. this is consistent with chu et.al (2010) which finds that students in the junior and senior years are more likely to take highskilled and major-relevant jobs than those in lower grades. as for the participating pattern, the findings suggest that work-study jobs last longer than part-time jobs and internships, while internships are more intensive than the other two forms of work. this partly explains the trend of increasing work intensity through grades. the multiple regression analyses finds that only three variables have consistently shown significant coefficients in all participation models: that is, having loans for college, being student leaders in high school, and institutional prevalence of term-time working. this suggests that heavy financial burden, non-academic ability, and peer effects are the three major factors influencing students’ decision on whether to work during term time. this finding is consistent with the theoretical hypotheses and previous studies. however, for incidence and influencing factors of college student term-time working current issues in comparative education 157 157 those who are involved in term-time working, the work intensity is hardly influenced by individual characteristics, especially for the intensity of work-study jobs and internships. work-study jobs and internships are formal positions provided by institutions (i.e., heis and companies) rather than individuals. therefore, students have relatively less bargaining power in determining the work intensity. furthermore, the findings on individual level factors suggest that it is the internally perceived financial pressure rather than the real shortage of funding that incentivizes students to work during term time. evidence comes from three aspects. first, taking loans for college, as well as being eligible for need-based financial aid and work-study positions, indicates a lack of funding from personal sources. however, there is no direct evidence on the negative association between participation in term-time working and the total amount of family funding and financial aid. secondly, the likelihood to participate in parttime jobs and internships is higher for students with siblings than for the “single child”, but the likelihood of taking work-study jobs is not. having siblings does not necessarily mean insufficient funding from parents in absolute amount—it does not make students more eligible for work-study positions. but it does imply less-than-full parental support, and therefore increases students’ willingness to work for money on their own. thirdly, it is found that females and students of older ages are more likely to participate in part-time work than their counterparts, but not more likely to take work-study jobs. this could be explained from the same vein that females and older students may perceive less funding from parents, or they are not willing to rely on parents for college. another possible explanation is that these students may have higher consumption levels. yet the pressure to maintain a self-chosen consumption level is also internally-imposed (scott-clayton, 2012). as for institutional factors, the descriptive and regression analyses find that institution type, location, and environment are significantly associated with students’ term-time working behaviors, even after controlling for individual level factors. but the association differs across forms of jobs. to interpret the findings, we need to take into account the nature of jobs, institutional characteristics, and student motives of working. as described in earlier sections, work-study jobs and most part-time jobs are similar in nature: they both are low-skilled and labor-intensive. the primary reason for students to take such jobs is to earn monetary compensations. yet work-study positions are provided by institutions. elite universities, with adequate funding from central and provincial governments, usually have well-designed work-study programs to support students’ need of working. by contrast, public non-elite heis, which have less funding but a higher percentage of low-ses students, may not be able to provide sufficient work-study opportunities to guo current issues in comparative education 158 students in need. in this case, students who cannot obtain jobs on campus have to turn to off-campus part-time jobs for alternatives. the participation in internships is another story. students take internships in preparation for future work. as suggested by the theoretical framework, students in non-elite universities may perceive lower educational quality, and therefore participated more in internships. yet an alternative explanation is that students’ participation in internship is influenced by their graduation plan. in the cslm sample, about 40% of students in project 985 heis and 33% in project 211 heis do not plan to enter the labor market after college, whereas nearly 80% of students in non-elite universities plan to work directly. it is reasonable that students in elite universities participate less in internships than those in non-elite universities. however, the graduation plan and internship participation are endogenous decisions: students’ internship experience may alter their graduation plan. this cross-sectional dataset does not allow for a test on which this explanation is more plausible. this paper contributes to the current literature in two ways: first, it provides a nationlevel record on the incidence and status of term-time working in chinese universities and colleges. second, it examines the influencing factors of students’ term-time working participation and intensity based on a comprehensive conceptual framework. the representativeness of the dataset makes the findings generalizable to most four-year heis in china. in addition, there are several limitations in this study. first, the cslm is a retrospective cross-sectional survey. besides the above-mentioned inability to make causal inference on the regression coefficients, the data collection method also raises a potential problem of measurement error in variables regarding pre-college experience and experience in the early years in college. secondly, the measure of some factors, such as student ability, attitude, and education quality, might be inadequate with the current data. there is also a lack of information on some other important factors suggested by the theoretical framework, such as job and labor market characteristics during term time. the r-squared of the regression models are relatively small, suggesting that important factors influencing college students term-time working behaviors are omitted. future studies could use longitudinal data in combination with multiple data sources to better model students’ decision process. qualitative studies may also be helpful in finding the other driving factors of student term-time working. in summary, this study finds that students’ term-time working behavior is jointly influenced by individual factors including perceived financial constraint and nonacademic ability, and institutional environment including peer effects, institution quality, incidence and influencing factors of college student term-time working current issues in comparative education 159 159 and job availability. from policy perspective, the findings suggest that heis need take more responsibility to provide support and guidance to working students. though the impact of term-time working on college outcomes is still under debate, many studies using quasi-experimental designs find significant negative impacts of term-time working hours on gpa (dadgar, 2012; desimone, 2008; kalenkoski & pabilonia, 2008; stinebrickner & stinebrickner, 2003; wenz & yu, 2010). intensive off-campus working is found to be especially detrimental (furr et al., 2000; lundberg, 2004; umbach et al., 2010; wu & zhong, 2012). from this point, heis should improve and expand the institutional work-study program to retain students on campus. they should also offer students with guidance on how to balance study and work, how to choose high-quality jobs, and what to expect from term-time working. with regards to financial aid policies, it shows that taking loans distracts students from studying. previous studies also find that loans negatively influence students’ academic achievement (huang, yang, & li, 2016). from this vein, heis should give more attention and academic support to student loan-takers. in addition, not only heis but also the whole higher education system needs to consider providing more scholarship, grants, and subsidies to students rather than loans. guo current issues in comparative education 160 author’s note: this paper is revised based on author’s phd dissertation submitted to columbia university in 2014. author’s acknowledgements: the author of this research thanks the center on chinese education at teachers college, columbia university, and the china college student survey (ccss) research team at tsinghua university (beijing, china) for their data and support. she also owes a debt of gratitude to mun c. tsang, judith scott-clayton, the participants in the workshop in economics and education, the participants in the advanced seminar in chinese education, and the editor and reviewers of cice for their constructive comments and suggestions to this study. about the author: fei guo is a post-doctoral research fellow at the institute of education in tsinghua university, beijing, china. she holds an ma and a phd in economics and education from teachers college, columbia university. she received a ba in international economics from shanghai jiao tong university in china. she conducts research to explore factors influencing college students’ academic achievement, cognitive and non-cognitive development, and labor market performance. her research interests include student learning and development in higher education, economic returns to higher education, and educational equality and equity in china. contact: fei guo at feiguo0121@tsinghua.edu.cn incidence 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(2009). investigation and analysis of part-time work in college students (in chinese). new west, (2), 112–113. © 2013 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(2): 3-14. educating all to struggle for social change and transformation: introduction to case studies of critical praxis special guest editors dierdre williams mark ginsburg open society foundations fhi 360 article 26 of the 1948 universal declaration of human rights specifies that “everyone has the right to education” (united nations, 1948).[1] a commitment to the universal right to education mobilized various actors in 1990 to issue the world declaration on education for all (efa), which states that “every person . . . shall be able to benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet their basic learning needs . . . required by human beings to . . . to live and work in dignity . . . [and] to improve the quality of their lives” (inter-agency commission, 1990, article i). the universal right to education also motivated a similar set of actors in 2000 to develop the dakar framework for action, education for all: meeting our collective commitments, which re-states a global commitment “to the achievement of education for all (efa) goals and targets for every citizen and for every society” (unesco, 2000, p. 8). however, recent reports monitoring progress toward achieving education for all by 2015 offer sober assessments. unesco (2012, p. 4) indicates that “on current trends, the goal of universal primary education (upe) will be missed by a large margin. . . . between 2008 and 2010, progress stalled altogether.” uis (2013, pp. 1, 3) reports that “new data show that the world is unlikely . . . to get every child in school by 2015. . . . [moreover], there has been little progress in reducing the rate at which children leave school before reaching the last grade of primary education.” additionally, although the dakar framework for action affirms that “no countries seriously committed to education for all will be thwarted in their achievement of this goal by lack of resources” (unesco, 2000, p. 9), there is dispiriting evidence that the international community has not lived up to this responsibility. this is despite the fact that many lowand middle-income countries have increasingly demonstrated their commitment to education for all. according to the efa global monitoring report (unesco, 2012): among low and middle income countries with comparable data, 63% have increased the share of national income spent on education in the past decade. coupled with economic growth and greater government capacity to raise revenue, this led to significant increases in total educational expenditure. (p. 42) just as a final push is needed to reach the education for all goals by 2015 . . . there are worrying signs that donor contributions may be slowing down. more money alone will not ensure that the efa goals are reached, but less money will certainly be harmful.[2] (p. 142) global discussions about efa goals for 2015 and, more so, global deliberations regarding post2015 education goals have moved beyond access to concerns about improving the quality of education for those who gain access (see unesco, 2004). both the 1990 and 2000 efa educating all to struggle for social change and transformation 4 current issues in comparative education declarations gave attention to issues of educational quality,[3] though in recent years quality often has been defined narrowly in terms of performance on basic literacy and numeracy tests. as education international (2012, pp. 4-5) points out: much attention in current post-2015 discussions is focused on a narrow view of learning: mainly testing in reading and mathematics. this is a mistake. . . . evidence shows that other capabilities that foster innovation and build character are also crucial education outcomes, including: creativity, curiosity, civicmindedness, solidarity, self-discipline, self-confidence, compassion, empathy, courage, self-awareness, resilience, leadership, humility, peace, and more. that is, unless the post-2015 discussion includes a broader conception of educational quality, schools will be “emaciated spaces” (jamil, 2013), where children and youth mainly engage in rote learning and memorization of content that is decontextualized from the realities of their lives. of course, there have been calls for broader views of education quality. for instance, leon tikly and angeline barrett (2011) argue that quality education should be grounded in three dimensions from a social justice perspective. first, they contend that quality education must provide learners with access to quality inputs that facilitate the development of capabilities that they and their communities have reason to value. second, quality education must ensure that the outcomes of education are meaningful and relevant for learners and their communities and consistent with national priorities as well as a changing global context. and third, quality education must prepare learners to meaningfully participate and have a voice, not just in the classroom but also in decisions at the local, national, and global levels. defining education quality in this way moves us in the direction of engaging in a form of critical praxis, that is, combining theory and practical action designed to promote social change or transformation. one of the central questions for educators concerned with critical praxis is “education for what purpose?” this philosophical, political, and practical question gains expression in sub-fields within the field of education, including multicultural education (banks, 2004; banks & banks, 2006; mclaren, 1997; sleeter, 1996), citizenship education (biesta, 2011; kennedy, 1997; sehr, 1997), education for social justice (anyon, 2009; ayers, quinn & stovall, 2009), critical education (apple & beane, 2007; apple, au, & gandin, 2009), critical pedagogy (giroux & mclaren, 1989; kirylo, 2013; weiler & mitchell, 1992), and human rights education (bajaj, 2011). taken in their richest forms, these sub-fields seek to break the tradition of schooling that reproduces inequities inherent in wider society. whether one adopts a human rights, multicultural, feminist, post-colonial, ecological, or socialist stance, it is clear that the world we live in requires change, even transformation (e.g., see apple, 2013; guajardo et al., 2008; kreisberg, 1992).[4] for instance, mark ginsburg, steve moseley, and mary joy pigozzi (2010, pp. 2-3) argue from a human rights perspective: currently, we are not living in a world where all people can realize the full range of human rights—including the right to education . . . to contribute to building a world in which such rights are realized,[5] educational system policies and williams and ginsburg current issues in comparative education 5 structures in all countries need to be transformed, while at the same time the content and processes of education have to be altered so they more effectively contribute to economic, political, and social/cultural transformation of local, national and global communities. (see also bernstein tarrow, 1987; spring, 2000) another example is provided by the words of bell hooks (1994, pp. 11-12): my pedagogical practices have emerged from the mutually illuminating interplay of anticolonial, critical, and feminist pedagogies. . . . [i]t has made it possible for me to imagine and enact pedagogical practices that . . . interrogat[e] biases in curricula that reinscribe systems of domination (such as racism and sexism) while simultaneously providing new ways to teach diverse groups of students. . . . the classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy. . . . i celebrate teaching that enables transgressions—a movement against and beyond boundaries . . . that makes education the practice of freedom. and paulo freire (1970/2000, p. 51) draws on socialist and liberation theology perspectives to articulate an approach labeled pedagogy of the oppressed: reality which becomes oppressive results in the contradistinction of men as oppressors and oppressed. the latter’s task . . . is to struggle for their liberation together with those who show true solidarity . . . this can be done only by means of the praxis: reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it. . . . to achieve this goal, the oppressed must confront reality critically, simultaneously objectifying and acting upon that reality. we should remember, however, previous generations also posited that education can and should be used as a vehicle for social transformation. for example, in his provocatively titled volume, dare the schools build a new social order, george counts (1932, p. 3) comments: we are convinced that education is the one unfailing remedy for every ill to which [we are] subject, whether it be . . . war, poverty . . . injustice . . . [or] race hatred. . . . we even speak glibly and often about the general reconstruction of society through the school. we cling to this faith in spite of the fact that the very period in which our troubles have multiplied so rapidly has witnessed an unprecedented expansion of organized education. a year later, in his book, the mis-education of the negro, carter woodson (1933, p. 145) poses—and then answers—the question about whether teachers can “revolutionize the social order”: “but can we expect teachers to revolutionize the social order for the good of the community? indeed we must expect this very thing. the education system of a country is worthless unless it accomplishes this task” (see also apple, 2013, p. 42). when engaging in critical praxis to foster social change and transformation, educators need to move beyond the classroom (ginsburg, 1995). for example, nicholas fox (2012, p. 15) suggests that classroom activities are not enough: educating all to struggle for social change and transformation 6 current issues in comparative education as much as we talk politics with our students, read political novels, and highlight the activism of the past, the walls of the classroom present a problem for radical teachers. our meetings host passionate discussions where students begin to tackle assumptions, dismantle ideas of privilege, even critique capitalism. but when class ends, what happens to the political fervor? where does that revolutionary spark go? does it spread out into the streets? or does it end up at the bottom of backpacks, forgotten like last week’s homework? similarly, jean anyon (2009, p. 392) advises colleagues who are engaged in social justice education not to limit their—and their students’—actions to the context of the school: [a]lthough critical educators do well to share with students information about systemic causes of subordination, that is not enough to get students involved in the struggle for social justice. . . . by giving students direct experience with social justice work, we can educate them to appreciate and value those forms of democratic process that are aimed specifically at creating a more equitable society—public contention toward progressive social change. at the same time, though, many scholars have concluded that education institutions often play the opposite role; that is, they contribute to economic, political, and social/cultural reproduction of existing human relations, nationally (see bourdieu & passeron, 1977; morrow & torres, 1995) and internationally (brown & laudner, 1997; altbach & kelly, 1978). some researchers have identified cases in which students or teachers resist these reproductive processes (ginsburg, 1995; giroux, 1983). nevertheless, education seems more often to be a reproductive force— providing unequal access to learning opportunities, preserving structures that limit at least some groups from realizing their human rights, and transmitting ideologies that legitimate structures or discourage people from trying to transform them (tomasevski, 2006). the point is that education is not neutral, as richard schaul (1970/2000, p. 34) so nicely articulates in his introduction to paulo freire’s volume, pedagogy of the oppressed: there is no such thing as a neutral educational process. education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes "the practice of freedom," the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. recognizing that the content, processes, and outcomes of education are not neutral, we have decided to focus this special issue of current issues in comparative education (cice) on “education for social change and transformation.” we have sought to include in this volume case studies that illuminate a range of initiatives in various educational programs and institutions and in a variety of contexts. giving attention to these case studies is important because critical educators often toil in isolation or with support from only a few colleagues, striving for change—one lesson, one williams and ginsburg current issues in comparative education 7 student, one classroom, one school, or one community at a time. they refuse to accept the idea that the “is-ness” of our present condition makes us incapable of striving for the eternal “oughtness” that confronts us (king, jr., 2001). educators laboring to promote change and transformation through education represent possibilities for wider systemic change at the national, regional, and global levels, working from the bottom up. these case studies illuminate different conceptions of how education can be used to promote progressive social change—and, indeed, signal different notions of what progressive social change means. each of the case studies also illustrates some degree of success in achieving program goals, while simultaneously identifying the challenges faced by those involved. their stories encourage us to remember that critical praxis is both absolutely essential and profoundly difficult. in her article, “theatre-arts pedagogy for social justice,” anne hickling-hudson analyzes the socio-educational significance of a theatre arts approach to learning for young adults from lessprivileged communities in jamaica. she discusses how the pedagogy employed by the area youth foundation (ayf) in its workshops, rehearsals, and performances is a form of critical praxis, informed by paulo freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed and augusto boal’s theatre of the oppressed. based on interviews with ayf’s leader and some of the participants, anne describes how violence and oppressive conditions become the focus of their critical analysis and their artistic expression. the workshops provide space for sharing and analyzing their personal stories, which subsequently inform the content of plays and other public performances. she documents the powerful impact that the ayf experience has in developing the participants’ humanist, epistemic, technical, and public literacies. many of the youth acquire knowledge and skills that are not available through the formal education system in jamaica and that open up career opportunities. equally important, they also gain deeper understandings of their social context, learn strategies for reducing inter-group antagonism and violence, and develop commitments to challenge injustices in their society. in her article, “promoting change within the constraints of conflict,” karen ross explores the approach to transformative education utilized by sadaka reut, a binational civil society organization in israel that works with jewish and palestinian youth. she draws on interviews and observations focused mainly on activities organized for jewish israeli youth, prior to their involvement in joint activities with their palestinian israeli peers. she describes how the program seeks to educate youth for social change by using their personal experiences as the basis for initiating discussion and then guiding participants to see broader cultural and structural features of society in which these personal experiences are embedded. she presents qualitative evidence that the youth develop more complex and critical views of their lived experiences, though it is less clear to what extent they develop the commitment and capability to pursue cultural and structural changes that seem warranted given their emergent critiques of society. karen also calls attention to the dilemma faced by sadaka reut. in order to attract participation from a broad group of jewish israelis, the staff—jewish as well as palestinian israelis—have felt the need to organize many of the activities separately for jewish and palestinian israeli youth and to create a public image of the organization as not focused solely on the jewish-palestinian conflict or on binational partnership as a strategy for change. educating all to struggle for social change and transformation 8 current issues in comparative education in their article, “promoting civic engagement in schools in non-democratic settings,” maryam abolfazli and maryam alemi analyze the online school of civic education. this initiative, funded by the u.s. government and organized by an ngo based in the united states, seeks to encourage teachers in iran to exchange ideas toward changing their classroom practices to encourage students’ active learning, reflection, and critical thinking on topics in civic education. the authors state that iranian authorities define citizenship as devotion to religious ideology and obedience to political/religious elites. the article indicates that the participants in the online school courses are diverse in terms of their ethnic/religious identities, their geographic locations, and the subjects they teach. we learn that pedagogical strategies encouraged by the project organizers or shared by on-line participants are implemented with varying degrees of success. it appears that teachers participating in the course are enthusiastic about the strategies they learn, and they report that many of their students appreciate the different way of being involved in the classroom. given the nature of the case study presented, however, it is not clear in what ways the iranian students’ experience in the particular class affect what they try to do in other classes they have, let alone whether the experience leads them to act differently in their families and communities. in their article, “teacher education for social change,” scott ritchie, neporcha cone, sohyun an, and patricia bullock present findings from a qualitative practitioner-research case study undertaken at a large public university in the southeastern united states. the authors report on their efforts as faculty members teaching four content methods courses (language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies) to a cohort of 16 primary school teacher education students in the semester prior to their student teaching. they designed the class sessions, readings, and field experiences of these courses to emphasize social justice dimensions of teaching rather than just focusing on skills and strategies. drawing on focus group interviews, class discussions, and students’ written reflections on readings and field assignments, the authors indicate that students from a politically conservative community came to recognize the racial and social class inequities in american society and the role that teaching and schooling can play to reinforce or reduce these inequities. the participating students also began to consider what actions they could take—as teachers—to improve things, at least for their own students. the authors, however, acknowledge that while their collaboration with the four courses likely increased the impact of their teachings (compared to prior, more isolated efforts), there was a need for a more comprehensive approach in the college and in the schools where field experiences occur. this would reinforce students’ commitment and capacity to pursue social change in their classrooms and perhaps within the community, at least locally. in their article, focused on “re-framing, re-imagining, and re-tooling curricula from the grassroots,” isaura b. pulido, gabriel alejandro cortez, ann aviles de bradley, anton miglietta, and david stovall explore the work of the chicago grassroots curriculum taskforce (cgct). this group, based in the city of chicago in the united states, produces curricula that more adeptly capture the cultural, economic, and political realities of students who attend the city’s public schools. as members of the cgct, the coauthors examine the collaborative processes involving parents, teachers, students, community members/activists, and educational researchers to produce cgtc’s first unit, “urban renewal or urban removal.” a series of meetings and workshops involving more than 155 people resulted in a unit curriculum map (content outline, essential questions, key projects, and learning activities). subsequently, 22 williams and ginsburg current issues in comparative education 9 classroom educators, 20 artists, 18 displaced residents, 15 college students, 12 high school students, five housing activists, and four university faculty contributed poems, stories, and visuals for the unit. the article also explores how faculty members and students in the college of education at northeastern illinois university became involved in the cgct. for example, courses in the teacher education and administrator education program made use of and extended the content of the “urban renewal and urban removal” unit. the article does not document how the experiences may have changed participants’ perspectives, let alone how they may have become involved in collective action aimed at changing the conditions of life in inner city chicago. however, it does provide evidence that people can be mobilized to discuss and reflect critically on aspects of their context in ways that likely not only increased their insights but also challenged at least some of their assumptions about why things are the way they are. in their article, “education community dialogue towards building a policy agenda for adult education,” tatiana lotierzo hirano, giovanna modé magalhães, camilla croso, laura giannecchini, and fabíola munhoz share the experience of the “amplifying voices” initiative. this initiative, which is organized by the latin american campaign for the right to education, conducts interviews with students involved in adult education programs in a range of countries in latin america and the caribbean. their stories, their concerns, and their program and policy advice are then uploaded to a website, as well as presented to policy makers and other stakeholders at various public events. the article presents excerpts from rich narratives elicited via interviews. it is clear that those whose voices have been recorded and broadcast value education very deeply and also have cogent recommendations for how adult education could be improved for them and for others who did not benefit fully from schooling as children. less clear for readers is how their voices are heard by decision makers and how the structured reflection on their personal experience encourages those interviewed to become more active in individual or collective struggles to improve the education system and the political and economic institutions that affect their lives. in their article, “chilean student movements,” cristián bellei and cristian cabalin examine two recent mobilizations initiated by students in chile that challenged the neoliberal education policies of that country. they discuss the 2006 “penguin revolution,” led by secondary school students, and the issues and events of the 2011 “chilean winter,” led by university students. in both cases the students (and, later, other societal actors) protested the extreme degree of privatization and marketization of the chilean educational system. in this article we learn little about how and why students came to critique these aspects of the education system which survived—and indeed were strengthened—after the end of the pinochet dictatorship. however, bellei and cabalin inform us about how the activist students used a variety of strategies and media to educate and mobilize others to join marches, rallies, and other forms of political action. we also come to see how governing elites were forced to act, although such actions did not fully respond to the demands of the protesters. the article helps us understand how students can be highly relevant political actors in educational as well as broader social policy debates. often academic spaces fail to make room for voices of practitioners or activists. so, it is significant that this special issue of an open access journal presents a collection of voices of academics, practitioners, and activists. the voices highlighted through these case studies are significant in two main senses. first, they underscore a conception of education as a holistic educating all to struggle for social change and transformation 10 current issues in comparative education endeavor that engages both the learning institution as well as the community in which it is embedded. the successes as well as the challenges inherent in these initiatives highlight the need for coalition and consensus building within learning institutions as well as between those who are involved in these institutions and others who live and work in the surrounding communities. second, the inclusion of this range of actors recognizes the importance of allowing voices to speak that are ordinarily unheard, excluded, or silenced in debates about schooling—for instance, about how best to educate all, not just some, in our societies. by broadcasting the voices of those directly engaged in the struggle to improve conditions, we make important strides towards breaking down barriers that separate people, we connect the disparate threads of endeavors aimed at a common purpose, and we illuminate possibilities for larger-scale change that is informed from the bottom up. by capturing the rich complexity of these “small stories,” we answer the call by apple et al. (2007) to serve as critical educators by challenging what counts as “research” through acting as “secretaries” to those groups of people or social movements who are engaged in challenging structural inequalities. notes: [1]. as spring (2000) and tomasevski (2006) detail, the idea that education is a human right has been reaffirmed subsequently in other international declarations, covenants, and conventions, including: the unesco convention against discrimination in education (1960), the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (1966), the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (1981), the convention on the rights of the child (1989). [2]. additionally, the report indicates that the private sector is not making a significant contribution: “private organizations contribute to efa in several ways, but . . . their support is equivalent to 5% of what was spent by official donors on education in 2010—and of that only a small share is spent on efa priorities” (unesco, 2012, p. 169; see also van fleet, 2011). [3]. for instance, article iii: universalizing access and promoting equity of the jomtien world declaration on education for all states: “basic education should be provided to all children, youth and adults. to this end, basic education services of quality should be expanded and consistent measures must be taken to reduce disparities” (inter-agency commission, 1990). and point seven of the dakar framework for action identifies as a commitment “ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality” (unesco, 2000). [4]. however, patti lather (2001, p. 192) encourages critical educators to avoid assuming that existing conceptualizations provide a definite portrait of the nature of the transformed society: “as an arena of practice, critical pedagogy might serve a transvaluation of praxis if it can find a way to participate in the struggle of these forces as we move toward an experience of the promise that is unforseeable from the perspective of our present conceptual frameworks.” similarly, guajardo et al. (2008, p. 16) suggest that “we must be patient with people, respect them, and meet them where they are,” as myles horton (adams & horton, 1975) professed. we see this change as a long, sustained effort where the work must focus on both microand macro-levels . . . we work for local change, but a change that is couched in broader social, cultural, and economic contexts.” williams and ginsburg current issues in comparative education 11 [5]. human rights can be grouped in the following categories (see also marshall, 1964): economic/welfare rights, political/civil rights, and social/cultural rights (see ginsburg et al., 2010, p. 2). dierdre williams is a program officer in the education support program, open society foundations. she is responsible for critical thinking and education quality initiatives. she holds a ph.d. in international education policy from the university of maryland at college park. e-mail: dierdre.williams@opensocietyfoundations.org mark ginsburg is a senior technical advisor for research, evaluation, and teacher education in the global learning group at fhi 360 (formerly the academy for educational development) and visiting scholar in the international education program at the university of maryland. until recently he was a coeditor of the comparative education review (2003-2013) and served as president of the comparative and international education society (1990-1991). he has published extensively on topics of teachers/teacher education, globalization, education and social reproduction/transformation, policy/institutional reform, and policy/practice-oriented research and evaluation. e-mail: mginsburg@fhi360.org references adams, f., & horton, m. 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(1933/2010). the mis-education of the negro. las vegas: createspace. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2013/02/learning%20metrics/lmtfrpt1towardunivrsllearning.pdf http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2013/02/learning%20metrics/lmtfrpt1towardunivrsllearning.pdf http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/files/rc/reports/2011/04_corporate_philanthropy_fleet/04_corporate_philanthropy_fleet.pdf http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/files/rc/reports/2011/04_corporate_philanthropy_fleet/04_corporate_philanthropy_fleet.pdf © 2012 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(1): 64-82. explaining whole system reform in small states: the case of the trinidad and tobago secondary education modernization program jerome de lisle the university of the west indies this paper analyzes drivers and impediments to secondary school reform in trinidad and tobago during the period from 1999 to 2009. international assessment data suggested limited progress on improving system quality and equity. several policy levers and barriers have been defined in current system reform theory. however, explanations for the failure or success of education reforms in commonwealth small states must also consider theory related to their unique contexts, namely smallness and colonial history. in this study, whole system reform theory is bridged with contextualized small state and postcolonial theories to analyze themes derived from a qualitative analysis of experiences in a major reform project for the secondary school sector. the identified barriers to change were ambiguity, coherence, and stringency and the contextualized drivers were leadership, support, and participation. small state and postcolonial theory had added explanatory value, providing more precise insights into the specific impediments to change within these contexts. the context of education reform in small states in the recent past, education reform in countries of the global south has been mostly externally directed by funding agencies such as the world bank and inter-american development bank (idb). in such instances, uncritical transfer of best practice from donor countries may have impeded efforts at change (ibrahim, 2010). increasingly, however, the relationship between donors and recipients is dependent also upon the strength of the recipient country’s economy (johnson, 2006; perry & tor, 2008). thus, less vulnerable countries have been able to develop collaborative partnerships with funding agencies in which indigenous sources of knowledge and local goals are used to plan and direct change (tan, 2010). the issues of successful educational reform, use of indigenous knowledge in implementation, and uncritical education transfer are especially relevant to the small island nation developing states (sids) of the anglophone caribbean (louisy, 2004). improving education systems as a component of social development is a critical developmental goal for sids, given the need to build economic resilience to help cope with the vicissitudes of globalization (briguglio, cordina, farrugia, & vella, 2009). traditionally, the sids of the anglophone caribbean have invested heavily in education (crossley, bray, & packer, 2011). however, the comparative lack of success in achieving sustainable reform points to the need for theory to better explain education change in these contexts (louisy, 2004; hickling-hudson, 2006). considering the social, economic, and political context of small island nation states is especially critical when considering education change and development. the sids categorization captures two notable contextual features of the anglophone caribbean: smallness and islandness. the feature of “islandness” may enhance the impact of contextual features associated with smallness such as vulnerability to economic shocks and natural disasters (encontre, 1999). for sids, place vulnerability relates to economic, geographic, and socio-political factors (briguglio, 1995; turvey, 2007). explaining whole system reform in small states current issues in comparative education 65 this paper analyzes the idb funded reform of secondary education within trinidad and tobago, one of the high income nation states in the anglophone caribbean. the focus in particular is on identifying facilitators and barriers to whole system reform. in developing a theory of change, the paper attempts to bridge current system reform theory developed in a western context with contextualized theories of change that apply directly to the features associated with sids (crossley, 2008b). the contextualized theories used in this paper are small state theory which highlights social and economic features of small island states and postcolonial administrative theory, which explores the historical and political context. interview and document data gathered from the implementing agencies for the reform project are used to capture and document the experience of change. themes are then inductively generated from the text data. the explanatory framework bridging system reform and contextualized theories is then used to interrogate these themes. the trajectory of reforming secondary education in trinidad and tobago as shown in table 1, since independence, trinidad and tobago has undergone three distinct periods of education reform and is currently within a fourth. the first reform was a 15 year education plan, extending from 1968 to 1983. the 15 year plan focused upon system expansion at both the primary and secondary level, with a proposal for universal secondary education up to age 14 (alleyne, 1995). the second reform was focused upon improving the quality of basic education, with funding concentrated on the primary education sector. the third reform, the secondary education modernization program (semp), was designed to improve the quality of secondary education (idb, 1999). the current reform, which began in 2009, is the system-oriented seamless education project, focused, in part, upon the expansion of early childhood care and education, but also on further qualitative improvement in the primary and secondary sectors (idb, 2006). table 1. phases of educational reform in trinidad and tobago name of program time period primary purpose funder size of funding (in usd) 15 year education plan 1968-1983 expansion world bank 38.7 million* fourth basic education plan 1996-2003 quality world bank 51.1 million secondary education modernization plan 1999-2009 quality & relevance idb 105 million seamless education reform 2009-2019 quality & efficiency idb 55 million *three loans improving secondary education, the target of semp, is critical to the developmental pathway of small developing states because it is linked directly to key skills and competencies required in the workforce (atchoarena, da graca, & marquez, 2008). however, reforming secondary education has proved to be a challenge both for countries of the south and the north (di gropello, 2006; supovitz & weinbaum, 2008). in latin america and the caribbean, wolff and castro (2000) identified six key targets related to equity, quality and relevance in the idb reform strategy for secondary education. in trinidad and tobago, modernization of the sector in semp involved both an expansion of opportunity and qualitative improvement designed to link outcomes to expanded and diverse opportunities in tertiary education, including high level skills training in the technical-vocational sector. 66 current issues in comparative education de lisle london (1991) has hypothesized that in the trinidad and tobago education system, several models of high school are in operation at the same time. four distinct school models were instituted in the different periods of reform. the traditional schools, built prior to 1950, are mostly denominational and closely follow the british grammar school model, with an intake of high performing students from the eleven plus examination. the second model is the government secondary school built between the 1950s and 1970s during the period of nationalism. this model offers mostly academic programs, but student intake mean scores are lower than the grammar school. the third model is the new sector comprehensive schools (academic and technical vocational) built between the 1970s and 1990s with funding from the world bank. this school usually receives students with the widest ability range, but student intake mean scores are lower than either the grammar or government secondary schools. the most recent model is the idb funded semp high school built in the 1990s. these include both government and denominationally managed institutions. holsinger and cowell (2000) highlighted the difficulty of repositioning secondary education within postcolonial societies such as trinidad and tobago where the colonial version of the secondary grammar school remains the model most strongly desired by stakeholders. as a reform project, the semp consisted of four interrelated elements: (1) quality improvement in curriculum, teaching-learning, and assessment, (2) equity enhancement, including physical de-shifting and upgrading of schools, (3) institutional strengthening and increased efficiency, and (4) studies for improved sector performance measures (idb, 1999). these elements were also reflected in the organization of the coordinating unit, with project managers for each designated area. the quality improvement strand included several sub-projects in curriculum development, professional development, and teaching-learning strategies. the equity strand involved building and de-shifting[1] schools to facilitate a more equitable and unified model of secondary schooling. institutional strengthening dealt with capacity and management issues and included the decentralization component. studies of improved sector performance were designed to provide information on what works, presenting a platform for further development. in the past, the funding agency’s change strategy primarily involved institutional enhancement, but for the semp reform, added policy levers were leadership development and improved teaching and learning. judging the effectiveness of the semp the semp program included a monitoring framework that focused on inputs rather than outcomes, such as improved student learning (legall, 2005). vegas and petrow (2008) argued, however, that improving student learning remains the most critical challenge for reform in the region at this time, especially in light of the comparatively poor performance of several countries on international assessments. it might be useful, then, to compare the performance of students on large-scale assessments in the secondary sector before and after this quality focused reform. the trinidad and tobago secondary school population has participated in two international assessments, the 1991 international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea) study and the 2009 programme for international student assessment (pisa). the scores are not directly comparable because different assessment frameworks were used; however, judgments on relative performance can be used in a broad judgment of improvement. in 1991, 14 year old students were tested in reading in 31 countries in the second iea survey. the mean age of the trinidad population was 14.4 years and the mean score was 479 for a ranking of twenty-fifth. in this early assessment of literacy skills in the secondary school, trinidad and tobago was the highest scoring country in the south above thailand (477), philippines (430), venezuela (417), nigeria (401), zimbabwe (372) and botswana (330). notably, all of these countries scored below the international mean of 500 scale points. in the 2009 pisa, 65 oecd current issues in comparative education 67 explaining whole system reform in small states and partner countries were tested. pisa measures achievement at age 15. trinidad and tobago’s mean score in the 2009 pisa was 416 and the country was ranked 53. this score was significantly lower than that of bulgaria, colombia, and thailand but higher than colombia and brazil. thus, despite achieving universal secondary education in 2001 and instituting the semp reform in 1999, trinidad’s rank position on pisa reading remained more or less the same. explaining whole system reform sector reform projects like the semp are examples of large scale system reform in which policymakers are attempting to change several schools at the same time (earl, watson, & katz, 2003; fullan, 2009). taylor’s (2006) analysis suggested that there are multiple reform outcomes outside the narrow dichotomy of success or failure. for example, change can be temporary or transient, and not sustained over time. in 2006, the semp reform was reprofiled and extended to 2009. interestingly, the reprofiling analysis suggested that much of the change to that point had been nominal, with mechanisms and structures for sustainability notably absent (fernandez, 2006). the superficial nature of the change is also documented by joseph (2010), who spent six years as a project manager in the coordinating unit. change and change theory associated with successful whole system reform have evolved differently in the north and the south. the anatomy of a large scale reform project in the north might consists of (1) government directed policy, (2) an agency involved in the reform process, (3) specific drivers of the change process, and (4) a change strategy that identifies specific implementation barriers. however, in the south, there is often much less direct government control and choice of strategy, especially if the project is externally funded. in reality, the change strategy might be borrowed, distorted or non-existent. moreover, the lack of indigenous knowledge data or dialogue with stakeholders on the reform agenda might mean that the context of implementation is never fully captured by the plan or change strategy (louisy, 2004). a current explanation for system reform failure in western contexts relates to the use of wrong drivers. fullan (2011) identified four right and four wrong drivers. a right driver is a lead policy or strategy with a high chance of achieving the result whereas a wrong driver is a deliberate lead policy or strategy that has little chance of achieving the result. right drivers identified were capacity building, teamwork, attention to pedagogy, and a systemic coherent vision for change. for fullan, wrong drivers were accountability, individual and teacher leadership quality, investing in technology ahead of improved pedagogy, and installing fragmented policies. these strategies, when employed, redirect and even retard the change process and have little chance of succeeding. fullan’s theory is consistent with case studies of successful education change in high performing systems (mourshed, chijioke, & barber, 2010). fullan’s (2011) description of right and wrong drivers is congruent with his earlier work on the seven big ideas for system reform in education (fullan, 2010). these seven big ideas are (1) all children can learn, (2) a small number of key ideas, (3) resolute leadership/stay on message, (4) collective capacity, (5) strategies with precision, (6) intelligent accountability, and (7) all means all. the first three principles along with the fifth are aligned to developing a systemic and coherent vision for change. apart from policy drivers promoting successful change; an effective whole system reform strategy must also identify specific barriers to change (hall & hord, 2010). although these ideas on system change were generated from school districts and national systems in the north, they might also be applicable to other contexts, including small island nation states. however, education change in the south is often influenced strongly by the political, social, economic and historical context and this must be considered in constructing change theory 68 current issues in comparative education de lisle (hirosato & kitamura, 2009; london, 1993; navarro, carnoy, & de moura castro, 1998). the value of contextualized theory context is often critical to change and implementation (luke, 2011). it seems logical that context should matter, but the question is, to what extent does it factor in explaining system reform? jansen (2009) observed that the history and context of the diversified communities in post-apartheid south africa strongly influenced the process of system change. he argued that in such contexts, change was frequently challenging and contextualized; imbued with politics and emotion. it might be that examining contextualized theories of change will allow a more illuminating exploration of local barriers and point to particular levers that might forestall implementation failure. contextualized theory makes use of indigenous knowledge and identifies specific constructs related to the context in focus. these theories may add value to our understanding whole system reform in the south and can be successfully combined with current theory used to explain system change in the north. two examples of such contextualized understandings of change are found in postcolonial and small state theories. these theories are especially applicable to the context of trinidad and tobago as a small island state with a british colonial legacy. postcolonial theory accommodates the political and historical context and small state theory captures important social and economic issues. postcolonial theory is especially useful when studying change because it interrogates the institutional environment, identifying structures and processes that have emerged and persisted from the colonial era (bray, 1992; hickling-hudson, 2006). focusing specifically upon the postcolonial public service within caribbean space, jones (1975) and jones and mills (1976) used an explicit postcolonial frame to develop institutional change theory. they identified valueassumptions, attitudes and practices passed on from the colonial era that persisted. these continue to act as barriers to innovation and change in the postcolonial civil service (jones et al., 1997). de lisle (2009) applied this framework to governance, leadership, and reform in the education sector of trinidad and tobago. the constructs in postcolonial administrative theory are consistent with the work on administration in small states, as found in the work of murray (1981), baker (1992), bray (1991), bray and packer (1993), and schahczenski (1990). small state theory is also especially useful in explaining system reform because it accommodates smallness as one of the unique features of several commonwealth countries (crossley, bray, & packer, 2011). the term “small state” has been applied to nationstates with populations below 1.5 million. the core of the argument is that small nation states are not just smaller versions of larger states, but are unique entities with processes that are sometimes different from those found in larger metropolitan countries (bray & packer, 1993; crossley, bray, & packer, 2009). in the caribbean and elsewhere, small state theory has been successfully used to explain the economic and ecological vulnerability of small island states and the functioning of education systems (bacchus, 2008; bacchus & brock, 1987; baldacchino & farrugia, 2002). some theorists have argued that being small might be an advantage especially when it comes to processes involved in educational change. for example, in small states, one person might theoretically be able to have significant influence (crossley, bray, & packer, 2009). in theory, it might also be easier to manage system change within small states. however, several features characteristic of developing small states may also present serious barriers to change. bacchus (2008), for example, identified the following: (1) uneven development and variation, (2) economic stringency, (3) resource capacity, (4) communal relationships, and (5) cultural diversity. current issues in comparative education 69 explaining whole system reform in small states these features have important implications for system reform in small states like trinidad and tobago, especially in the area of funding and resources. uneven development and variation mean that schools in urban areas usually have better resources and qualified staff so that system improvement must be differentiated. economic stringency means that many developing states are subject to uncritical transfer of education policies and goals as a result of external funding (crossley, 2008a). resource capacity will severely limit the pace of even externally funded reform because of shortages in skilled personnel. communal relationships add a social and political dimension to implementation as will the demand of multiculturalism. both features present a human face to the change process, with communal relationships or emotional attachments proving to be especially strong barriers to change (evans, 1996; jansen, 2009). table 2 (see next page) presents an analysis of the major features of the two contextualized theories used in this study. this analysis is focused upon institutional or organizational processes most influenced and on likely implementation barriers. the analysis also aligns each feature to fullan’s (2010) big ideas on whole system reform. as shown, many of the features identified in both postcolonial administrative and small state theory relate to collective capacity, identified by fullan (2010) as an important driver for successful whole system reform. the “capacity” part of this term includes technical, financial and material resources as well as the ability of leaders and institutions to catalyze change (smithers, 2011). the “collective” aspect implies the development of teamwork and complementary partnerships by actors involved in the process of change (prahdan, 2010). in the context of small states, collective capacity will be influenced not only by material and personnel scarcity, but also by the nature of the relationships, communication flow, and approaches to leadership. thus, baldacchino (2001) described how even service functions might become highly personalized and intertwined within a single individual, thereby limiting the professional quality of the service. likewise, boyce (1991) described the lack of flow of information between personnel within the ministry of education in barbados and noted that “highly personalized atmosphere may sometimes create problems” (p. 122). these human resource issues become critical barriers to change when they prevent the development of collective capacity. for postcolonial administrative theory, apart from the nature of leadership, the organizational processes most impacted upon are role ambiguity, collaboration, communication, and training. these processes can also become critical barriers to change in system reform because they can hinder the development of collective and internal motivation. in small states, poor communication from system leaders and ambiguity in assigned roles for whole system reform will inhibit severely the willingness of participants to “buy-in” because the vision of change is likely to be distorted. likewise, the lack of attention to training and the absence of collaboration will work together to further limit the development of collective capacity. methods and analysis this qualitative case study made use data gathered from individual and focus group interviews, as well as the substantial documentation associated with the program. the interview and document data were obtained from the different units involved in implementing the semp in trinidad and tobago. these were the secondary education modernization program coordinating unit (sempcu), various departments of the ministry of education (moe), selected units in the public service such as the human resource division, and representatives of the funding agency. in all, eleven interviews were conducted. ten individual interviews were conducted with sempcu project managers and moe directors and a single focus group with the local representatives of the 70 current issues in comparative education de lisle fe at ur e b eh av io r o r p ro ce ss es in st itu tio na l p ro ce ss po ss ib le im pl em en ta tio n ba rr ie r bi g id ea s (f ul la n, 2 01 0) postcolonial administrative theory 1) c on so lid at e po w er ra th er th an d el eg at e an d co lla bo ra te o pa rt ic ip at or y le ad er sh ip o te ac he r e m po w er m en t o c ol la bo ra tiv e cu ltu re s st ro ng re si st an ce to de ve lo pi ng c ol la bo ra tio n an d co lla bo ra tiv e st ru ct ur es c ol le ct iv e ca pa ci ty 2) pr iv at iz e an d co nf us e po lic y an d ad m in is tr at io n is su es o pu rp os in g & v is io ni ng la ck o f c le ar o ve ra ll vi si on a nd d ire ct io n a sm al l n um be r o f k ey p rio rit ie s 3) o bs cu re a nd d el ib er at el y m ak e v ag ue p ol ic ym ak in g o c om m un ic at io n o ro le a m bi gu ity la ck o f i nv ol ve m en t i n de ci si on m ak in g at th e lo w er le ve l/ p oo r c om m un ic at io n of v is io n an d po lic y ag en da s c ol le ct iv e ca pa ci ty 4) a pp ly m ul tip le st an da rd s i n ke y ad m in is tr at iv e pr oc es se s o ro le c on fli ct o fa irn es s u nc le ar ro le s a nd p ro ce ss es la ck o f t ru st st ra te gi es w ith p re ci si on 5) a ut ho rit ar ia n, pa te rn al is tic a nd co ns er va tiv e le ad er sh ip o le ad er sh ip o po w er le ss ne ss in ad eq ua te le ad er sh ip o f c ha ng e re so lu te le ad er sh ip / st ay o n m es sa ge 6) u se o f m yt h to c on tr ol su bo rd in at es o c om m un ic at io n o ro le a m bi gu ity fr eq ue nt m is co m m un ic at io n la ck o f t ru st re so lu te le ad er sh ip / st ay o n m es sa ge 7) g en er al is t i de ol og y re su lti ng in th e be lie f th at sp ec ia liz at io n an d tr ai ni ng is u ni m po rt an t o tr ai ni ng sy st em s li m ite d su pp or t f or tr ai ni ng or c ap ac ity b ui ld in g du rin g im pl em en ta tio n/ po or re so ur ce m an ag em en t o ve ra ll an d at si te s c ol le ct iv e ca pa ci ty small state theory 8) u ne ve n de ve lo pm en t & v ar ia tio n o la ck o f s ta nd ar di za tio n in p ra ct ic e & ex pe ct at io ns m ul tip le ta rg et s r eq ui re d/ n ee d fo r c om pe ns at or y sc ho ol sy st em s in te lli ge nt a cc ou nt ab ili ty st ra te gi es w ith p re ci si on 9) ec on om ic st rin ge nc y o m at er ia l s ca rc ity la ck o f f un di ng fo r k ey e ve nt s c ol le ct iv e ca pa ci ty 10 ) re so ur ce c ap ac ity o pe rs on ne l s ca rc ity an d lim ite d tr ai ni ng li m ite d ca pa ci ty c ol le ct iv e ca pa ci ty 11 ) c om m un al re la tio ns hi ps o ro le c on fli ct & am bi gu ity u nc le ar e xp ec ta tio ns / n eg at iv e po lit ic al a nd so ci al in flu en ce s c ol le ct iv e ca pa ci ty 12 ) c ul tu ra l d iv er si ty o ro le c on fli ct n eg at iv e po lit ic al a nd so ci al in flu en ce s c ol le ct iv e ca pa ci ty a ll ch ild re n ca n le ar n ta bl e 2. a na ly zin g d riv er s a nd im pe di m en ts to w ho le s ys te m r ef or m u sin g po stc ol on ia l & s m al l s ta te c on te xt ua liz ed t he or y current issues in comparative education 71 explaining whole system reform in small states funding agency, the inter american bank (idb). several documents associated with the program were also analyzed following the themes identified in the interviews. these included the various consultants’ reports generated at the planning and implementation phases as well as monitoring reports and internal empirical studies (andrews, keller, & wideen, 1998; fernandez, 2006; gift, 2005; harris, 2002; legall, 2005). in generating codes and themes, three options were available to the researcher: (a) generate codes and themes from the data, (b) use a priori themes from whole system reform theory, and (c) use a hybrid approach, combining induction with a priori themes (bernard & ryan, 2009). in this study, the data analysis procedure chosen was inductive, with themes derived directly from the interview and document text. this ensured that the voices and meanings of change for the participants were prioritized and governed the development of the themes. in post analysis, these inductively generated themes were then compared and linked to the concepts identified in system reform and the contextualized theories. data from all interviews were first transcribed. this text was then coded separately by two members of the research team. the separately generated codes were then reviewed by the entire team and a tentative combined codebook was constructed. the codebook was then re-applied to the text of the transcribed interviews and collated documents, including consultant reports and implementation manuals. further revision and application of the codebook was attempted before finalizing the new themes. the main analytic strategies used in the process were constant comparative and content analyses. constant comparative analysis was used to identify latent themes and content analysis of codes was used to provide a judgment on the frequency of each theme (leech & onwuegbuzie, 2008). each theme and sub-theme were attached to participant responses and displayed in tabular format, following miles and huberman (1994). these tables were used to generate tables 3 and 4 in this paper. findings barriers to change for the semp, barriers to change were often more important than drivers of change, consistent with the fact that many innovations had failed to take root. the barriers identified were grouped under three broad themes derived inductively: (1) ambiguity, (2) failure to connect, and (3) resource constraints. these themes were linked to each other, with failure to connect and resource constraints linked to ambiguity, the most frequently mentioned theme. table 3 provides a listing of each main theme with illustrative or sample statements. ambiguity: its influence and consequences this most frequently mentioned sub-theme captured the vagueness of the reform goals for both stakeholders and staff. under the four major components of the program, several projects were run independently. often, however, there was a lack of clarity in plans and intentions within the initial consultant reports and a failure to contextualize plans. further, the overall change strategy to be employed was not readily evident in any of the initial planning documents reviewed. this may have resulted in the multiple and different understandings of the program’s overall goals by stakeholders on the ground. this lack of clarity was evident even among senior personnel in the implementation and coordinating agencies. commonly, therefore, even after the initial design, some innovations had to be further fleshed out during implementation [see table 3 sample comments for ambiguity]. although such refinement might be considered a normal part of the project cycle, the concern here was for changing conceptualizations and intentions of the projects. 72 current issues in comparative education de lisle table 3. themes, sample statements, and sources for barriers theme sample statements source ambiguity [projects] . . . which should be winding up, but they haven’t delivered [yet]. a lot of what should have been delivered in most of the projects, which i see, the issue has been that the idea is sometimes not fully conceived. and therefore when it goes out to the supplier, they are now finding out things which ideally should have been seen before. so you end up now going through a cycle of refining before you actually get to implement each [project]. so a lot of the projects have had a number of cycles of refining. sempcu project manager when we look at what the mobile labs, there are significant concerns. the whole idea of technology education is to get the children involved and yet the mobile lab is constructed as a demonstration facility. so again the point is even when you look at what it is you have now, there are some concerns about how well it was thought out, given all of [what we see]. when we look now at the process involved, we had an original tender, which went out a few years ago and a number of people were looked at and eventually they decided on one particular supplier. and what happened after they decided on that supplier was that the concept was again changed in one of a number of iterations [from] what they originally thought they needed. sempcu project manager failure to connect people, ideas, and institutions many changes have been introduced in the ministry of education. the structure has changed and the leadership is committed to bring about a significant change in the organizational culture. but these initiatives are still in process, in the minds of some[,] they are not seen as a whole but rather as disconnected initiatives that could lead to the creation of many new units that could be overlapping or even outright duplications. reprofiling report fernandez, 2006, p. 5 when [an innovation] is developed, it is transferred to the ministry and [then] it’s out of our hands. we take the [innovation] from [its] embryonic stage, develop it, [but] once it’s complete, [we] move on. that’s what we did with ncse 1 and that’s what we did with the text book rental program. that’s what happened with the [new] form one to three curricula. [and] now we are paying for the finalized documents, and we are printing them; but again we are not the owners; so we are waiting on them. sempcu project manager resource constrained environment i think because we didn’t have enough project managers on the ground paying attention to the individual projects. we had one man, and this is the sense of what i got, and it’s difficult to look after all these little things when you know you also have to focus on the big picture. sempcu project manager we must have the human resource to deal with [implementing and sustaining the innovation]. we must get the human resource. i [just] do not see us coping if we don’t have the human resource because we have just been spreading ourselves extremely thin, [and] we will be compromising the quality. director, ministry of education unit current issues in comparative education 73 a failure to connect people, ideas and institutions the second significant theme for barriers to change was the lack of connection between people, ideas and institutions. perhaps the foremost way in which this was evident was in the lack of harmony between the coordinating arm (sempcu) and the implementing units (various arms of the ministry of education) with roles and functions often unclear in the complex process of implementation. the conflict between these two major agencies was further exacerbated by the tendency of both to renegotiate roles or to narrowly define their scope of work. thus, from the perspective of sempcu, its role was solely to “develop” the innovation and “hand it over” to the appropriate divisional unit in the moe [see table 3, first sample comment for failure to connect]. the bar for success, then, had been lowered and the scope of “coordination” redefined to simply handing over projects rather than supporting and coordinating implementation (idb, 1999). the conflict between the moe and sempcu over roles resulted in many core implementation functions being neglected. the lack of connection between individuals was apparent in the uneasy peer to peer and hierarchical relationships, sometimes with adverse consequences for project completion. frequently, there was a lack of collaboration and teamwork across and within the agencies, making implementation especially difficult. for example, the implementation of some projects such as the new curriculum and assessment systems (the national certificate of secondary education) cut across several divisional units of the moe, but cohesion between the units during implementation was not always apparent [see table 3, second sample comment for failure to connect]. the failure to connect people and structures was reinforced by a lack of connection between projects. the lack of connection between the different projects was also evident in the way project managers demonstrated leadership. this proved to be a major concern for the funding agency and highlighted the local lack of capacity in leadership and management. distorted implementation due to resource constrained environments. implementation efficiency was strongly affected by shortages in the quantity and quality of human and physical resources. the reform agenda of semp was exceedingly complex with more than 50 on-going sub-projects under way in any of the four major divisions at the same time. this problem was further compounded by several changes in personnel of the coordinating unit over the life of the project [see table 3, sample comments for resource constrained environment]. shortages in human resources might be considered a paradox, given the fact that the semp was designed to build capacity within the implementing units in the ministry of education. in several cases, however, projects were initiated and even completed without the requisite training or provision of new staff. this was true for the division of educational research and evaluation (dere) who were responsible for the implementation of the assessment component of the ncse. resource constraints also resulted from uncoordinated and inefficient planning. indeed, the failure to set up an in-house monitoring and evaluation system was a good case study of how constraints might be artificially created through lack of planning and strategic leadership. although an initial monitoring and evaluation program was supposed to be set up at the start of the project, posts were never filled despite more than 200 applications. even with the extension to 2009, a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system had still not been installed and consequently there was little hard data on changes in student outcomes. poor planning and lack of collaboration interacted to enhance the effect of resource constraints environments. this was evident with the establishment of a professional development unit. although the unit had been set up for more than two years, its vision, mission, and goals had not been established and consequently the unit remained poorly staffed. explaining whole system reform in small states 74 current issues in comparative education de lisle establishing contextual drivers in terms of drivers of change, four themes emerged. there were very few projects implemented with high fidelity and intensity, so that drivers were identified by analyzing the most critical barriers to change. from this perspective, the most notable drivers were (1) leadership, (2) planning and support, (3) involvement and commitment, (4) collaboration and communication. table 4 provides a listing of the main themes with illustrative or sample statements. table 4. themes, sample statements, and sources for contextualized drivers theme example source strategic leadership [interviewee 3] it has to come back to one point and that is the [holders of] office have to take responsibility for making sure that there is coordination throughout the ministry [of education] [interviewee 1] that’s a key point as well because the coordinating unit [sempcu] is [now] implementing the program for the ministry of education meaning [that communication must come] from the minister and the permanent secretary who are ultimately the overarching people guiding the program local representatives of funding agency planning and support [there was] extensive training throughout the three or four years. . . . the response we got from the principals was that they wanted some kind of a little more hand holding because a lot of them still [see this as] kind of a new requirement. so even though they’ve had the training from the rdau, they [still] wanted somebody to probably come and sit down and just hand hold until they get the couple of few plans, you know, organized. and then you have the . . . consultants coming on board for the next month that look at [giving] principals and the heads and the deans more hand holding more support in developing their school plan. project manager, sempcu stakeholder involvement part of the whole [problem] must be getting [the] concerns [those implementing the projects] and addressing [these] concerns because if you [are] not doing that you are not going to get the project to go anywhere. project manager collaboration and communication well that’s been my biggest problem. if i am [manager of the function] for the ministry of education, i would like to think that everything that sempcu does must pass through me because if it doesn’t, then we are a parallel organization operating. in any event whatever training sempcu is designing, developing, implementing or executing is training for my staff so it properly resides here and sempcu is in my view simply an executing agency. what has happened for the longest while is that sempcu operated independently of the ministry of education . . . so much so that people were on training and we didn’t even know they were on training, and worse than that, [we had no influence in their selection]. director, public service unit current issues in comparative education 75 explaining whole system reform in small states dynamic and strategic leadership strategic leadership at all levels was required to surmount the many tensions and lack of trust resulting from ambiguity over purposes and goals. the critical issue was the need for a clear and coherent vision to direct and guide change. this kind of leadership would provide clarity and commitment to a small number of goals. however, project managers at the coordinating unit were often unsure of who should promote the big picture. one project manager believed that it should be the permanent secretary or the director of the planning unit, but the permanent secretary was not an education leader and the planning unit had not been directly involved in many of the reform projects. although personnel from the funding agency attributed reform failure primarily to a lack of collective capacity and believed that a phased approach could have helped the system better achieve its goals, the quality of educational leadership among ministry personnel was also seen as important [see table 4, sample comments for strategic leadership]. strategic system leadership was especially absent at the top level of the moe, with leaders, in the face of a lack of commitment by participants, often resorting to bureaucratic and restrictive management styles in an attempt to achieve symbolic rather than real successes. although the sempcu had narrowly defined its own function as one of coordination, strategic leadership was also required from the top management of this agency to deliver on the reforms. improved planning and support the high degree of ambiguity and lack of experience with successful change in the system made the provision of support necessary. the expressed need for support is best illustrated in the case of school based management and system decentralization [see table 4, sample comments for planning and support]. the ministry of education had actually set up a specific unit to manage this process called the restructuring and decentralization unit (rdau). however, the rdau also delivered piecemeal reforms. indeed, school-based management had been almost disconnected from the overall decentralization thrust. it was clear that the training delivered was insufficient. most stakeholders wanted additional and continued support. this issue highlighted the tendency of the implementing agencies to neglect providing sustained support for projects, a critical factor given the general lack of strategic leadership. increased stakeholder involvement an emerging theme in the interviews was the reluctance by practitioners to accept and commit to the semp innovations. this was evident in the dramatic changes associated with installing technology education and the consequent need for changes in structure, training and teacher roles, and positions. leaders in the implementation units had very different strategies for dealing with stakeholder resistance, but few were appropriate, given the traditional autonomy of teachers and the lack of supervisory capacity in the ministry of education. the leadership style during implementation appeared grounded in the colonial, restricting participation and decision-making by stakeholders. however, much of the resistance on the ground came from the lack of clarity associated with the innovations and the large number of disconnected projects [see table 4, sample comment for involvement]. it was this ambiguity coupled with the newness of the innovations which led participants to demand continued support. however, enhancing participation and involvement was rarely considered by either sempcu or the moe’s divisional units, further exacerbating the situation. collaboration and communication although the units in the moe were responsible for different projects, several projects crossed 76 current issues in comparative education de lisle departmental boundaries. thus successful project implementation required a great deal of collaboration between units. examples of such projects include the semp curriculum and the ncse examination. the ministry of education had considered using cross-functional teams in its strategic plan, but this was never implemented. in reality, consolidating power ran counter to collaborative leadership. this meant that the divisional units sometimes competed for functions as in the case of the professional development unit in sempcu, the teacher education and teacher professional performance unit (tetppu), and the human resource unit. the case of the training function illustrated the dynamics of the conflict between agencies and units over roles. three units had shared responsibility for training: human resources (hr), the newly formed tetppu, and the institutional strengthening component in sempcu. hr’s function ran across several ministries, but the director complained bitterly about other units’ lack of cooperation [see table 4, sample comment on collaboration and communication]. the hr director’s language during the interview suggested that this conflict went much deeper than a simple lack of communication. informal discussions with administrative staff of the different units suggested great discomfort over the shared function. indeed, one of the project managers in sempcu believed that hr did not have the capacity to manage all aspects of training and that its role in the organization was badly defined. the director of tetppu was adamant that tetppu should have an overarching role. discussion and implications this study focused upon whole system reform within the small island state of trinidad and tobago and explored the utility theories for explaining reform failure or success. crossley (2008b) has proposed a bridging thesis, which promotes use of research and ideas from the north and south. this study attempts such bridging by utilizing whole system reform, small state, and postcolonial administrative theories applicable to explain education change in trinidad and tobago. although the whole system reform framework put forward by fullan (2010, 2011) proved useful in explaining some aspects of education change in this small island state, contextualized theory had stronger explanatory power when describing the barriers faced. for example, small state theory correctly predicted the strong negative impact of communal relationships and resource constrained environments, whereas postcolonial administrative theory identified strong barriers to change resulting from weaknesses in leadership, vision, and communication. these contextual features must be considered when developing change strategy for reform projects in small states (crossley, 2012). in terms of barriers to change, ambiguity, lack of connection, and the resource constrained environment were the most salient factors. the lack of resources and absence of connection were explained by small state theory, whereas postcolonial administrative theory predicted the ambiguity and lack of connection. four important contextual drivers were identified: (1) participation, (2) communication and collaboration, (3) improved planning, and (4) strategic leadership and visioning. the links between each contextualized driver and barrier are illustrated in figure 1. as shown, the lack of strategic leadership, planning and support limited the extent of visioning and this appeared to contribute directly to the high levels of ambiguity. there was also a direct link from planning and support to resource constraint. participation and increased collaboration fuelled greater connectedness, which in turn impacted resource constraints and ambiguity. increased participation resulted in greater participant commitment to the reform agenda. the relationships between the variables highlighted here are congruent with other analyses of semp implementation processes (joseph, 2010). current issues in comparative education 77 explaining whole system reform in small states the identified contextual drivers were consistent with fullan’s (2010, 2011) analysis of the drivers of whole system reform. increasing participation at lower levels parallels the use of internal motivation as an effective driver of change. the identification of collaboration and communication as drivers in this context was congruent with fullan’s (2010) identification of collective capacity and strategies with precision as big ideas in successful whole system reform. collaboration and communication were also consistent with fullan’s (2011) focus on systemic rather than fragmented change. improved planning also is the key to avoiding a fragmented approach. strategic leadership is likely to have a direct impact on visioning, an important mediator variable captured in fullan’s (2010) focus on resolute leadership and staying on the message. ! ! "#$%&'(!)!*+,%+-.'(! /-%0-,12'3 4'1'5$ 6&7'.8'+# 9:%$$'$.!)!*8335,+ 9%,+'('3%+'5$!'$!;-<5,& =5::%75,%+'5$!)! =5&&8$'(%+'5$ =5&&'+&-$+>! ?5+'@%+'5$ =5$$-(+-0$-11 ;-158,(-a! =5$1+,%'$-0! b$@',5$&-$ key policy drivers barriers to change figure 1. the relationship between contextualized drivers and barriers to change in the study of the trinidad and tobago semp. 78 current issues in comparative education de lisle this study offered rare insights into the bowels of the administrative structure for leading and managing whole system reform in an externally funded project on a small island state. externally mandated and funded education change in these contexts often run the risk of failure because they fail to capture essential elements of the context. it could be that a high income sid such as trinidad and tobago might gain an advantage by directing and managing education reform without the direct involvement of an external funding agency. one benefit of this approach would be the opportunity to contextualize both goals and change strategy. however, substantial collective capacity in planning and managing change must be developed locally to support such an approach. whether or not external assistance is sought, however, small states engaged in education reform must develop explicit and precise strategies to guide education change. in this regard, current system reform theories are useful, but are much more effective when supplemented by contextualized theories. these theories provide a clearer focus on change processes within the unique political, historical and social context of postcolonial small states. jerome de lisle is senior lecturer in educational administration at the school of education, university of the west indies, st. augustine. he earned his ph.d. in education from the same university in 1994. his main research areas are in system improvement, educational evaluation and educational assessment. email: jerome.delisle@sta.uwi.edu. references alleyne, h. mcd. 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(2000). secondary education in latin america and the caribbean: the challenge of growth and reform. washington, dc: inter-american development bank. 10. does one future matter more than the ‘other(ed)’? a critique of the unesco education for sustainable development 2030 framework.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 27, issue 1, special issue 2025 does one future matter more than the ‘other(ed)’? a brief critical analysis of the unesco education for sustainable development 2030 framework srinitya duvvuri new york university the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization’s (unesco) education for sustainable development roadmap (esd 2030) is a policy document that reiterates the urgency of the climate crisis and affirms the central role of education in ensuring the survival of the planet. building on nearly two decades of international policy on education for sustainable development, esd 2030 highlights priority areas and recommendations for integrating education for sustainable development at all levels of society. despite its urgent call to action, there is little to no attention paid to systemic issues such as capitalism and racism and their role in accelerating the climate crisis. this essay critically analyzes the esd 2030 framework and makes a case for reckoning with past and present systemic injustice to combat the climate crisis effectively. it examines how modernity has functioned as a justification for colonial conquests and exploitation, and the role of racism in perpetuating the dehumanization that makes such activities possible. while esd 2030 implicitly attempts to integrate empathy and relationality in its approach to sustainability education, this essay draws from black critical theorists to argue why relationality should confront racism and racialized violence for it to have an enduring impact in education. the essay spotlights ways in which environmental education is taking a more critical and race-inclusive approach while honoring the principles that esd 2030 proposes. keywords: unesco, education for sustainable development, climate justice, critical theory. introducing education for sustainable development (esd) 2030 and the racism gap the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) rolled out a 73-page framework outlining the road ahead for education for sustainable development (esd) in 2020. it was built on the work of the global action programme on esd (gap) from 2015-2019 and the un decade of esd from 2003-2014. opening with a powerful call to action that urges everyone to “learn to live differently” (unesco, 2020, p. 6), this framework (‘esd 2030’) expands on the gap priority action areas—advancing policy, transforming learning environments, building capacities of educators and trainers, empowering and mobilizing youth, and accelerating sustainable solutions at a local level. it offers critical reflections and recommendations for implementation. esd 2030 recognizes that environmental education, though typically associated with scientific knowledge of the environment, should evolve beyond a © 2025, duvvuri. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 27(1), 216-222. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en does one future matter more than the ‘other(ed)’? a critique of the unesco education for sustainable development 2030 framework scientific focus for it to be transformative. it calls for a disruption of “the ‘usual’ way of thinking, behaving or living” (unesco, 2020, p. 18), and emphasizes education as a means of empowering lifelong learners with the skills to build a more just society. this echoes what environmental justice movements around the world have been taking on in local, national, and global contexts. examples include movements against the disproportionate hazardous dumping in african-american communities in the united states (u.s.) (holifield, 2001), indigenous movements against major eco-conservation organisations to protect their land rights (survival international et al., 2021), and protests against forced displacement of nearly 7 million people due to illegal mining projects in eastern congo (amnesty international, 2022). these movements have in common the recognition of the threat that exploitative systems pose to livelihoods.esd 2030’s call to action is weakened by its reluctance to name explicitly the systemic injustices it wishes to address. while the framework identifies “the complex mix of social and economic issues” (p. 6), “a gendered facet of vulnerability [to climate change]” (p. 20), “unbalanced economic growth” and “extreme poverty” (p. 57) as some of the critical considerations it must make in delivering education for sustainable development, it fails to hold accountable the underlying systems and institutions fuelling these conditions. the framework is devoid of any mentions of racism and colonialism. this is part of a history of international negotiations evading explicit recognition of racism and colonialism as significant structures affecting humanity. the creation of the un and the universal declaration of human rights saw little to no reckoning with race and colonialism for a few reasons (acharya, 2022). the creation of the un was a response focused on the events of the second world war (acharya, 2022). several key drafters were colonialists or complicit in colonialism themselves (acharya, 2022). the nations that would have been most concerned with colonialism were either not represented in the conferences at all or were represented by the colonial powers ruling them at the time (acharya, 2022). while it would be remiss not to acknowledge significant strides in anti-racism at the un, such as the durban declaration from the 2001 world conference against racism and the human rights council’s special rapporteurs on racism, the backlash and boycotts it continues to face from former colonial powers is indicative of the work that needs to be done (achiume & macdougall, 2023). i argue that failing to acknowledge systems of dehumanisation and exploitation in addressing the climate crisis is not only disingenuous but dangerous. esd 2030 leaves no room for doubt that the climate crisis we face is a “battle for our lives” (unesco, 2020, p. 8). the climate crisis is not only a story of emissions and forest cover—these issues are at least partly rooted in historical and ongoing patterns of violence and exploitation (intergovernmental panel on climate change [ipcc], 2023). discussions of the climate crisis without reflecting upon capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and colonialism will inevitably fall short. if education is to be a means of driving change, then this framework should reckon with systemic injustices. 217 current issues in comparative education duvvuri why do systems matter in the climate crisis? a 2024 survey of the ipcc reveals that 86 percent of the 211 scientists estimated a rise in global temperatures of over 2°c above pre-industrial levels by 2100 (wynes et al., 2024). 58 percent of respondents estimated a 50-50 chance of temperatures exceeding a 3°c rise by 2100 (wynes et al., 2024). the surveyed scientists identified several factors contributing to the failure of the 1.5°c paris agreement target: lack of political will, governmental short-sightedness, corporate interests, and capitalism (carrington, 2024). the ipcc sixth assessment report (2023) identifies differences in humans’ vulnerability to climate change as “driven by patterns of intersecting socioeconomic development, unsustainable ocean and land use, inequity, marginalization, historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism, and governance” (p. 51). this calls for a closer examination of the underlying ideologies of modern-day systems and their connection to the climate crisis. modernity and rationality, market exchange, and empiricism rest upon the notion that humans are not only distinct from nature but superior to it (the human-nature binary) (milstein & castro-sotomayor, 2020). the origins of this concept can be traced back to thinkers like descartes and kant, who posited that all knowledge of the universe existed because the human mind created units of knowledge, and our relationship with nature was an extension of that (lejano, 2005). what often gets left out of the historical narrative of modernity is the role of colonialism in giving it prevalence (alimonda, 2019). the idea of modernity was deployed to undermine complex biocultural relations that indigenous people had with their land and impose a eurocentric binary model of human-nature relations (mansilla-quiñones et al., 2023). this was carried out under the guise of bringing ‘progress’ and ‘development’ to so-called savage and uncivilized lands. the distinction between ‘civilized’ and ‘uncivilized’ served a particular purpose in the maintenance of colonies. karl marx coined the term ‘primitive accumulation’ to characterise resource extraction under capitalism as a brutal, violent process that the flourishing of capitalist societies relies on. the existence of ‘democratic’, ‘civilized’ nations is sustained by the unregulated extraction of resources from “savage spaces and zones” (hage, 2017, p. 61). the ‘progress’ narrative was and continues to be instrumental in legitimizing this exploitation in ideological and material ways, allowing intellectual experts and politicians alike to interpret and impose their versions of reality in the name of ushering in the future (shanin, 1997). to suggest that the civilized/uncivilized distinction was grounded solely in economic reasons presents an incomplete picture. pulido (2017) illustrates how capitalism has relied on the appropriation of and denial of access to indigenous land and the racialization of labour through slavery. these are the two main ways in which racism functions as a “structuring logic of capitalism” (pulido, 2017, p. 526). race-making is a process of othering (omi & winant, 2014). othering is a process of disregarding and denuding the humanity of a people (klein, 2016), which makes it easier to justify the relentless exploitation of land and labour in the name of development. the magnitude of current issues in comparative education 218 does one future matter more than the ‘other(ed)’? a critique of the unesco education for sustainable development 2030 framework these historical and contemporary structures cannot possibly be undone through education alone, but it does not mean it is not worth attempting. to quote freire (1970), “the dehumanization resulting from an unjust order is not a cause for despair but for hope” (p. 91). the first logical step to countering dehumanization is through a framework of education that centers empathy and justice. can relationality in education help us? lejano (2023) defines relationality as “the degree to which individuals understand their being, thought, and action as integrated with that of others and, so, make decisions and take action in ways responding to these relationships” (p. 109). relationality posits itself as an alternative to rationality. where rationality explains human behaviour in terms of maximising individual satisfaction, relationality makes the argument that human behaviour is also motivated by our relationships and care for each other. esd 2030 aims to foster this spirit, going by its emphasis on “competencies related to empathy, solidarity and action-taking” (unesco, 2020, p. 14), cultivating “core values and attitudes for sustainability” and “empathy and compassion for people and the planet” (unesco, 2020, p. 17). it seeks to build on “human rights and principles such as participation, non-discrimination, and accountability” (unesco, 2020, p. 58). despite its reluctance to name racism, its allusions to inclusion and democratic processes imply that it intends to address the possibility of change through a relational approach. one should question the effectiveness of such an approach in a framework that continually sidesteps and omits the question of race. black critical thinkers remain skeptical of this universalising call for action and unity that hinges on forgetting the violence in race-making, the othering of black people, and black suffering. karera (2019) proposes a ‘non-relational’ approach to the anthropocene and climate crisis ethics—one that investigates the enduring conditions of colonialism, slavery, and racial capitalism, rather than scrambling to find a prescriptive universal solution. non-relational does not negate that humans should care for each other; rather, the ethics of care must grapple with the racialized violence and suffering of our systems if we truly want to protect all life on this planet. what would this look like in education? stapleton (2019), influenced by the work of black feminist theorists like patricia hill collins, calls for the application of standpoint theory, which suggests that all knowledge is socially situated, in the practice of environmental education. this includes interrogating how different audiences define common concepts like ‘environment’, recognising the positionality of educators and learners within unjust systems, and expanding the ideas and thinkers we consider influential to centre knowledge from marginalised communities (stapleton, 2019). recognizing that environmental education focuses on climate science and individual action without recognition of social structures, schindel and colleagues (2023) advocate for a climate-justice-oriented approach that allows learners to engage with climate 219 current issues in comparative education duvvuri justice issues in their communities and for educators to draw connections between local and global issues in the process. they recommend involving learners in local resilience and ecological restoration projects for learners to develop firsthand knowledge of the impact of the climate crisis on their communities and the populations it impacts the most. these are examples of justice-oriented, learner-centric pedagogies that not only make esd 2030’s pedagogies possible but also integrate racial and climate justice in practical, realistic ways. esd 2030’s idea of progress should move past its imperial legacy and begin with the most marginalized. it should live up to its call to action and allow educators and learners to question what terms like environment, education, and sustainable development mean, and produce knowledge that reflects their experiences. it should center indigenous voices not only in perspective-sharing, but also in leadership and education. if education is to be liberatory, then humans have every right to call for an attentive, not prescriptive education. an education that accurately reflects the world is an education that will transform it, just as esd 2030 aims to be. srinitya duvvuri has a master’s degree in sociology of education from new york university. she is currently interning at one to world global classroom, a program that engages k-12 students in new york city with various cultures and global issues. her research interests lie in interrogating the interactions between race, economy, climate, and education at global and national levels. references acharya, a. 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(2024, may 8). world’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5°c target. the guardian. https://web.archive.org/web/20241105001307/https://amp.theguardian.com/e nvironment/article/2024/may/08/world-scientists-climate-failure-survey-globa l-temperature freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed. continuum. ghassan, h. (2017). is racism an environmental threat? polity. holifield, r. (2001). defining environmental justice and environmental racism. urban geography, 22(1), 78-90. https://doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.22.1.78 international panel of climate change (ipcc). (2023). climate change 2023 synthesis report. ipcc. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/ipcc_ar6_syr_lon gerreport.pdf karera, a. (2019). blackness and the pitfalls of anthropocene ethics. critical philosophy of race, 7(1), 32-56. https://doi.org/10.5325/critphilrace.7.1.0032 klein, n. 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(2023). racializing the climate justice movement in education. current issues in comparative education, 25(2). 100-7. https://doi.org/10.52214/cice.v25i2.10474 shanin, t. (1997). the idea of progress. in m. rahnema, & v. bawtree (eds.), the 221 current issues in comparative education duvvuri post-development reader (pp. 65-71). zed books. stapleton, s. r. (2019). toward critical environmental education: a standpoint analysis of race in the american environmental context. environmental education research, 26(2), 155-70. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1648768 survival international, longo, f., & dawson, a. (2023). decolonize conservation: global voices for indigenous self-determination, land, and a world in common. common notions. united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization (unesco). (2020). education for sustainable development 2030: a roadmap. unesco. https://doi.org/10.54675/yfre1448 wynes, s., davis, s. j., dickau, m., ly, s., maibach, e., rogelj, j., zickfeld, k., & matthews, h. d. (2024). perceptions of carbon dioxide emission reductions and future warming among climate experts. communications earth & environment, 5(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01661-8 current issues in comparative education 222 volume 12(2) / spring 2010 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice education and economic crises editorial introduction 3 education and economic crises andrew k. shiotani articles 5 the effect of an economic crisis on educational outcomes: an economic framework and review of the evidence m. najeeb shafiq 14 monitoring the effects of the global crisis on education provision gwang-chol chang 21 the global economic crisis: setbacks to the educational agenda for the minority in sub-saharan africa moses shiasha ingubu, jonah nyaga kindiki, kyalo benjamin wambua 31 under the same blue sky? inequity in migrant children’s education in china guangyu tan special section: responses to volume 12, issue 1 41 cosmopolitanism and our descriptions of ethics and ontology: a response to dale snauwaert’s “the ethics and ontology of cosmopolitanism” david t. hansen 45 response to noah sobe’s “rethinking ‘cosmopolitanism’ as an analytic for the comparative study of globalization and education” andria wisler book review 50 p. agarwal, indian higher education: envisioning the future reviewed by radhika iyengar 53 about the contributors current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 12, issue 2 (spring 2010) editorial board managing editor matthew hayden executive editor andrew shiotani senior editors ruaridh macleod, antonia mandry, michael schapira, michelle reddy editors sarah flatto, cara furman, brian veprek, gretchen wietmarschen associate editors anne gaspers, ryan hathaway, joseph hirsch, jason mellen, elizabeth morphis, muntasir sattar copy editor sarah flatto, cara furman, anne gaspers, matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, michael schapira, brian veprek style editors matthew hayden, ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar, michael schapira, brian veprek web editor andrew shiotani associate web editors ruaridh macleod, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of 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columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 12(2): 21-30 the global economic crisis: setbacks to the educational agenda for the minority in sub-saharan africa moses shiasha ingubu jonah nyaga kindiki kyalo benjamin wambua moi university this paper captures the impact of the global economic crisis on educational programs serving minority groups in developing countries. it has been established that the most vulnerable groupings include nomadic and pastoralist communities, slum dwellers, children in war zones, and women. various educational interventions such as mobile schooling, dual shift learning, scholarships, and distance learning have been utilized to mitigate the aggravations these groups experience in an effort to catch up on education. however, this paper predicts that these programs will encounter economic obstacles thereby countering the key efforts of ensuring education for all by 2015 in developing countries. finally, the paper proposes policy interventions to help in shielding the vulnerable groups from the harms that the economic crisis will visit on the education sector. whereas all educational efforts and energies are combined to meet the split demands of education for all (efa) by 2015 and millennium development goals (mdgs) in general, a new dimension of the imminent frustration of these efforts is quickly taking shape: the global economic crisis. it has been estimated that on the global front, the effects of the economic crisis have used up funds in the excess of $14.5 trillion, translated as 33 percent of the worth of the world’s companies (pittman & ivry, 2009). yet this is only in the developed world. the global crisis has typically been approached from a narrowly economic view, leaving educators and policy analysts the task of ascertaining the enormity of the effects of the crisis on the educational programs both in developed and the developing countries. of particular interest to educators is the magnitude of the crisis on educational programs serving minority or disenfranchised groups in sub-saharan africa. challenges to educational inclusiveness the challenge of school feeding programs in an effort to attain efa goals, governments, in collaboration with donor funding agencies (especially wfp), set up programs to cater for the provision of a midday meal at school. pupils commonly refer to these as school feeding programs, such as those arranged by undugu society for pupils from nairobi slums in kenya (ouma, 2004) and by wfp in schools located in deprived regions (nzomo et al., 2001). studies show that school feeding programs have remarkable positive effects on both access and retention of learners, especially in arid and semi-arid lands (asal) and for nomadic families (caillods et al., 2009; kazianga et al., 2009; lewis and lockheed, 2008; giffard-lindsay, k, 2008; world bank, 2008b). given that households in such regions are already disenfranchised economically, the ability of such families to sustain themselves is almost nonexistent; thus there is over reliance on donor agencies, non governmental organizations (ngos) and the government for rations to realize the efforts of school feeding (nzomo et al., 2001). yet these agencies and the government in particular rely heavily on funds from the wealthy nations both in the form of taxes from citizens and donations from philanthropists. 22 current issues in comparative education m. s. ingubu, j. n. kindiki, k. b. wambua with the aftershocks of the economic crisis still raw, it is apparent that funds to be channelled to asals and nomadic regions to sustain the feeding programs will be limited due to cuts in funds from both government agencies and private companies. consequently, less funding will have the dual effect of locking out and driving away millions of children from school. worse still, following closely on the ravaging trail of the global economic crisis is the food crisis and drought that have left many nomadic families facing malnutrition and poverty. this will cause increased unemployment and poverty, less food security, poor quality of nutrition and a rise in illnesses among the school-going ages (shah, 2009). the harsh choice, aimed at mitigating the harsh realities occasioned by the economic crisis, will be to withdraw children from school to supplement their parents in searching for their own food and forage for the already dwindling livestock. the effects on efa goals and mdgs are dire. with reduced access to school and with low levels of retention, asal regions and nomadic families are apt to experience even more poverty, more human rights abuses, and other forms of alienation (jimenez & patrinos, 2008). shift learning dilemma slums in africa and other parts of the world form a residence that is characteristic of the poor in society. families in these informal settlements are unlikely to receive the required levels of education due to both their poverty and the unavailability of such infrastructure as schools (ouma, 2004) and if schools are available, poverty itself is a deterrent factor (lewis, 2008; world bank 2008b). the implication is that many children from the slums do not enroll in schools and if they enroll at all, their completion rates are very low (oyugi, et al., 2008; ouma, 2004). to boost enrollments and participation rates, system wide strategies such as double shift school system come into play. the rationale is that in slum areas such as nairobi’s kibera, the umjondolo of durban and the baladi of cairo, parents could still use young children as labour (ouma, 2004; unhsp, 2003). therefore, the child could still catch up on lessons in the afternoon shift if he or she missed the morning shift. lewin (2008) and bray (2008) also argue that double shift not only rapidly expands access but also improves on retention of learners since there is an increase in supply of school places. moreover, this is an equity-focussed strategy that is viable among pastoralist areas (giffard-lindsay, 2008). but the dual shift system has been found to be unstable and unviable. in tanzania, for example, double shifting is a particular issue because it is concentrated among the youngest pupils. they are most at risk of premature dropout and repetition, and may also experience the least-qualified teachers at a time when their learning needs, and their capacity to learn, are probably greatest (world bank, 2008c). there are economic costs such as extra services of tutors and the need for parents to get childminders to look after their children when not at school (bray, 2008). the global economic crisis will be felt heavily by the poor in society, and these are the slum dwellers and street families. according to shah (2009), already large percentages of households in sub-saharan africa are poor, and the large number of people will face malnutrition and its associated illnesses. education will suffer as households channel limited funds to medical expenses and scarce food. since the shift system of learning seems to offer parents a way to keep their children working, there is a likelihood of children being overburdened with work. this will have an effect on their attention span as they settle for the afternoon class. bray (2008) argues that many of the children who attend the morning shift seem more cognitively ahead of those who attend the afternoon session. therefore, if children will be at work in the mornings and in class in the afternoons, the current issues in comparative education 23 the global economic crisis implication is that their performance in class is likely to assume a declining trend due to reduced attention span. the most catastrophic effect, however, is that of children dropping out altogether in order to fend for the family, as is the trend in slums. a major effect of the economic crisis on double shift learning is observed in school infrastructure. limited funding towards this school programme has the implication that there is a breakdown of physical infrastructure such as limited water and poor hospital facilities, thereby seriously affecting school-going children. these situations create a strong likelihood for low participation, absenteeism and dropout altogether (unesco, 2008). double shift schools also require increased expenditure on facilities such as furniture. this is due to the wear and tear resulting from overuse of the same facilities by two sets of students in a single day. this eventually translates into high maintenance costs (bray, 2008). such costs are transferred back to the parents, who can rarely afford them since there are other pressing economic pressures such as food provision and housing. such commodities are hard to come by in such informal settlements and at a time of an economic downturn. consequently, learners must make do with dilapidated infrastructure that will have a lasting effect on their overall performance, since school facilities and resources are designed and enabled to support continuous change and development of approaches to learning (unesco, 2002). guns to pens: redeeming child soldiers children in conflict zones, street children and prisoners form a cadre of a unique disenfranchised group in that their education was either cut short or they never began at all. their return to formal education is most difficult given adverse effects of their new environments. the rehabilitation of these groups is necessary so that they can catch up on education. the dilemma is that most do not fit in the regular curricula of their states, occasioning such governments to come up with programs such as non-formal education (nfe). it has been found that nfe has the effect of improving the skills of many enterprising young people (caillods, et al., 2009); and thereby provides a means for the youth to earn a livelihood, and to escape the shackles of poverty. in most cases the providers of these programs are ngos and religious organizations, which rely purely on the donations made by their affiliates in the developed world (hoppers, 2008). these are affiliates who in turn depend on taxes and philanthropic donations from well-wishers, and are facing the harsh reality that their supporters cannot as generously donate due to the effects of the global economic crisis. research has shown that children exposed to war and genocide experienced a drop in educational achievement of almost one-half year of completed schooling, and are 15 percentage points less likely to complete third or fourth grade (akresh & walque, 2008). prudently therefore, sustained effort is needed to reinforce educational institutions and offer a «second chance» to those youth most affected by the conflict. in uganda for example, save the children fund-norway has since 1995 funded the abek (alternative basic education for karamoja) programme in response to the unique socio-economic dynamics of the karamoja (hoppers, 2008). similarly, unicef and wfp are involved in reforming child soldiers in the northern part of kitgum and lira and their target is 6-18 year olds. the rationale is that such young people have the strength to constructively use their energy in building and improving their own livelihoods and in peace building in conformity with the requirements of the agenda 8 of the mdgs. a sticking point in the effort to integrate these youth comes in the form of sudden withdrawal of aid agencies due to budgetary restructuring occasioned by the harsh economic downturn. consequently, such “periphery” educational programs such as nfe face the risk of being neglected or grossly underfunded. when such youth integration programs as nfe eventually 24 current issues in comparative education m. s. ingubu, j. n. kindiki, k. b. wambua collapse, youth are very likely to return to violence as a means of survival (hoppers, 2008). the chain effect is that even those children who had successfully been fished from the war fronts and the streets will feel the urge to go back to their original and perilous lifestyles. educational goals such as efa will therefore suffer on top of escalating cases of poverty and diseases. solutions to educational inclusiveness participation through loans and bursaries studies done by the world bank in ghana, thailand and the philippines show that student loans have significant effects on access and equity. these issues can be adequately addressed through education loan schemes and expansion of regional quotas in regional universities (world bank, 2002). in zambia and malawi, studies show that close to 70% of students are entitled to bursary schemes, which are supposed to cover 75% of tuition fees for most beneficiaries, and up to 100% for vulnerable groups (such as double orphans). bursary programs are also favoured to improve retention of girls in the schools (sutherland-addy, 2008; world bank, 2006). even though these educational programs are designed to uplift the educational participation of the disenfranchised in society, it is apparent that the programs are bound to suffer the economic costs associated with the global economic crisis. in an effort to increase the participation of children from slums, orphans, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities (pwds), governments have echoed the call of many researchers that bursaries and loan schemes for such groups are necessary. it is also evident that (university) loan schemes targeting poor bright children are an equitable mechanism of enabling learners to access quality education. it should be noted that the source of funding for such schemes is mostly the tax payer of the respective government (oyugi, et al., 2008). the economic crisis has however brought in a new dilemma for governments around the world, and especially the sub-saharan africa region. the social sector of many governments including the us is bound to suffer deficits due to low revenues resulting from low taxes from all subsectors. further, it should be noted that in many sub-saharan african states, bursary schemes and loans have always seemed to favour the well-to do and not the poor orphans and other disenfranchised groups (caillods et al., 2009; helms, 2008; lewin, 2008). with less allocations therefore, it is likely that many poor families will be locked out of attaining quality education. it is also bound to affect participation of those with nomadic lifestyles; many of the poor will have to drop out of school and equity may be compromised. it is especially bound to reverse the gains made on improving the participation of women. despite the argument that loan schemes had a “negative dowry” effect, it has been confirmed that in fact loans are more of a stimulus rather than a deterrent (woodhall, 2007). it is put more succinctly by varghese (2009) when he says: many universities with investments in foreign banks have already lost their investments. student support systems, scholarships and student loans will be severely affected. some of the largest providers of student loans have lost heavily during the crisis, and some of them have filed for bankruptcy protection. (p. 5) further still, it is argued that “reduced household income levels may not be able to support the full cost of studies abroad” (p. 24). moreover, major concerns are already evident in regard to the ministries’ of education bursary schemes that are beleaguered with inadequate finances to provide for all eligible needy students (oosterbeek, & patrinos, 2008; njeru & orodho, 2003). therefore, economic crisis will complicate the whole issue of how governments will be able to raise sufficient taxes to use in the social sector. also, foundations and charities that assist in funding educational programs are not entirely cushioned from the harsh effects of the global economic crisis. their current issues in comparative education 25 the global economic crisis infrastructural needs, including how to procure extra funds from diminishing contributors, will suffer. access: women and distance education the appearance of a variety of new institutions alongside the traditional universities—short duration technical institutes and community colleges, polytechnics, distance education centres, and open universities—has created new opportunities to meet the growing social demand for education. of special interest to many educational planners is the role of distance education in bridging the gender gap in educational attainment. studies show that distance education and open universities hold out the promise of increasing coverage and facilitating access especially of women to tertiary education (mason, 2006; world bank, 2002). mason’s argument is that “online courses cater to the lifelong learning market and can be useful for some minority learners” (p. 56) such as career women. distance learning has made higher education significantly more accessible, particularly in rural africa, but lack of infrastructure and the cost to individuals and institutions to acquire new technology may limit progress (altbach, et al., 2009). distance education may be non-elite, usually job-oriented and has the capability of providing new avenues of access, targeting non-traditional student populations such as working women and responding to emerging needs for workforce development and family commitment. the upside, both quantitatively and qualitatively, may be impressive (bjarnason et al., 2009). the upside is that a large pool of competent human capital is formed, and when this capital is constituted of a percentage of women, then the efforts at employment gender parity would be real. according to the international labour organization (ilo), of the three billion people employed around the world in 2008, 1.2 billion were women (40.4%) and in 2009, the global unemployment rate for women could reach 7.4%, compared to 7.0% for men (ilo, 2009). one way to reverse this is to improve the skills and competencies of women to increase their marketability. a solution therefore presents itself through distance education since it has been found to favour such disenfranchised groups such as women, child soldiers and slum dwellers as altbach, et al. (2009) notes: much of the appeal of distance education is attributed to its ability to accommodate the needs of a wide variety of learners especially employed women and other women who are attempting to balance family and school commitments and even the incarcerated (p. 133). by example, the african virtual university (avu) project in east and central africa has taken a paradigm shift by developing an open and e-learning model with the aim of exposing students and their lecturers to rigorous scholarship and groundbreaking research. more specifically in somalia, the programme has the capability of empowering women and enhancing their human capital (makokha, 2009). avu is therefore seen as a pillar in institutional development able to insulate women who have previously suffered marginalization in the hands of extremism. and to garner the full benefits of that distance education programs, specific infrastructural endeavors such as extensive use of icts have been undertaken. mason (2006), for instance, states that to “improve quality, increase access, reduce costs ict has been seen as the way out of the dilemma caused by the demand to reduce costs and increase access and student numbers” (p. 56). however, setbacks to the distance education achievements are possible especially considering that there is a high likelihood of a freeze on educational programs (varghese, 2009). there is also the imminent risk of the “digital divide” gap widening even further given that funding for digital programs is bound to decline in the poorer states thus putting them at a disadvantage 26 current issues in comparative education m. s. ingubu, j. n. kindiki, k. b. wambua (unesco, 2009a), and damaging the gains made in e-learning. consequently the quality of distance learning stands on the brink of failure. altbach, et al. (2009) equally affirm that «freezes» on hiring, construction of new facilities, improving information technology, and purchasing books and journals are likely developments. . . (p. xx) that will upset distance education efforts of achieving equity and quality in education. policy interventions what are the possible policy interventions to cushion the vulnerable from the fallouts of the economic crisis? even though there is dialogue about the ability of education to survive an economic downturn (bjarnason et al, 2009), solutions to how developing countries (where most of the disenfranchised groups exist) can cushion these groupings, while maintaining equity and quality concerns, should be envisaged. a number of governments in sub-saharan africa, including kenya and namibia, resorted to increased borrowing to sustain their budgets and in turn maintain a substantial allocation to education (unesco, 2009b). the allocation to education should be upped to comfortably cover development expenditure in terms of improvement of infrastructure and other operational costs involving meal services and health equipment. given that efforts to realize efa by 2015 have generated huge enrolments in developing countries thereby occasioning a squeeze on the teaching force, governments have two options to improve quality: one, utilize teachers on contract terms; and two, reengineer and enforce the dual shift system. a special stimulus package should be reserved for these interventions. the option of economic stimulus packages is significant in reinvigorating the economic systems affected by the economic downturn. stimulus packages in underperforming economies can be used to amplify both the economic and the social sectors of the developing countries in a manner likely to reinforce economic infrastructure and more especially, the agricultural economies to improve food security and medium-level job creation. on the social sector front, an intensification of the development budgets for the education and health sectors is able to guarantee basic education improvement to support the huge number of hungry school children. if well instituted in the marginalized regions, the dynamics of equity will widen access to all school age children irrespective of region and gender. moreover, development budgets in education are definite mechanisms for lifting off the educational spending burden of most poor households, thereby allowing room for improved access to education among the poor. alternatively, the availability of stimulus packages in the health sector is a significant procedure of ensuring standard health to all. with enhanced health infrastructure through construction of health facilities and provisional medical equipment and drugs, chances are that many of the communicable and infectious ailments that distress the poor and school age pupils would be stemmed easily. the quality of life is bound to pick up as household expenditures on health diminish and savings made could easily be transferred to pressing demands such as provision of quality food. secondly, for tertiary and higher education, college-university linkages can be an option with benefits accruing in maximal utilization of faculty and infrastructure. moreover, part-time faculty would be a more workable settlement in the occasion of a freeze on recruitment. for tougher options, there may be need to merge some programs and freeze non-essential ones altogether. other mechanisms of adjustments have been suggested by the world bank (2009) whereby institutions will engage in “outsourcing non-academic services...income generation and diversification” (p. 89) as methods of going beyond financial survivalism. finances from these strategies could be utilized in beefing up distance learning and partial bursary allocation through scholarship and grants to students and research faculty. current issues in comparative education 27 the global economic crisis the third hands-on policy intervention strategy is the structure and administration of the prevailing tax systems. fiscal measures are required to boost revenues from taxes while at the same time mitigate economic damage to small and medium enterprises. local tax mechanisms enable luxury and upper class consumptions to attract sufficient duty, while tax cuts are administered on imports, household incomes and monetary proceeds come from diaspora populations. such inequitable fiscal measures, most probably, would revitalize the meager earnings of middle class and low class laborers who happen to house considerable constituents of the disenfranchised. finally, long-term strategies are needed by sub-saharan economies and institutions as ways of warding off future unpreparedness especially in terms of human resources development and in technological investments. the world bank (2009) argues that massive responsibilities are required for nurturing human resource development in sub-saharan africa and for “ensuring that investments in tertiary education make a strategic and durable contribution to the growth and competitiveness of africa’s economies” (p.5). quite in line with poverty reduction strategy papers (prsps), countries such as burkina faso and burundi have objectives to promote rural development and food security and enhance national capacities in information and communication technologies. this has broad human resource development implications in the form of investing in agricultural researchers, topographers, electrical engineers and telecommunications experts. in the same vein, sufficient investment is required in robust monitoring and quality assurance mechanisms plus staff with administrative and management capabilities required to play leadership/management roles at all levels. conclusion the challenges posed by the global economic crisis demonstrate the fragility of educational agenda for the marginalized in sub-saharan africa. vulnerable groups have previously not enjoyed the full benefits of education programs due to socio-economic restrictions. this article has attempted to specify that educational dilemmas facing vulnerable groups can grow worse when the situations are linked to the global economic crisis. exclusivities that threaten educational achievement among minorities need not broaden the existing knowledge disparities. refugees, children in war zones, women from ethnic minorities and children in pastoral and nomadic communities face the risk of being excluded from the benefits that come with educational expansion. this is why, by all means, we cannot understate the role played by interventions such as distance education, loans and bursaries. these interventions mitigate the harsh realities of educational exclusivities in sub-saharan africa. from a much wider perspective, comparative standards linked to global economic crisis can be established between sub-saharan africa and similar developing nations in latin america and asia. baseline studies in these regions (mostly at risk of significantly missing out on efa goals due to the global economic crisis) have the opportunity of informing policy and legislation on educational issues of the marginalized. finally, and in connection to this research, ideas on disenfranchised groups should be reconstructed to invent new identities regarding the value of education to such groups. references akresh, r., & walque, d. 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(2009). accelerating catch-up: tertiary education for growth in sub-saharan africa. washington dc: world bank. copyright © 2010 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved 3. migration, climate, and education: proposing human rights-based education for internally displaced learners in lowerand middle-income countries.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 27, issue 1, special issue 2025 migration, climate, and education: proposing human rights-based education for internally displaced learners in lowerand middle-income countries tien pham ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto the growing impacts of climate change are forcing families in lowand middle-income countries to migrate to urban areas, resulting in widespread internal displacement. despite the significant disruptions this causes to children’s education, its educational consequences remain underexplored in climate change research. this study addresses the gap by adopting a human rights-based approach (hrba) to education and integrating insights from the education in emergencies framework while examining the impact of climate-induced displacement on education. through a literature review of academic and policy documents, the research examines educational vulnerabilities of internally climate-displaced learners, including restricted access to schooling, declines in academic performance, and difficulties adapting to new learning environments. the challenges are pronounced for girls, reinforcing pre-existing gender disparities in education. based on the findings, the study proposes targeted policy interventions, including climate-responsive education frameworks and economic protection measures for affected households. keywords: climate change, displacement, education in emergencies, educational policies, global south, human rights-based education, international and comparative education. introduction the detrimental effects of climate change and natural disasters have forced approximately 21 million global displacements annually since 2008, leaving their homelands and migrating to larger urban centers in search of livelihoods (bellizzi et al., 2023). these individuals, referred to as internally displaced persons (idps), are involuntarily uprooted from their homes due to the impacts of conflicts or climate crises (internal displacement monitoring center [idmc], 2019). the situation is severe in lowerand middle-income countries (lmics), characterized by limited financial resources, weaker infrastructure, and reduced access to social services compared to high-income nations (idmc, 2019). lmics experience heightened vulnerability to climate change effects, as they struggle to adapt to or recover from disasters (anderson, 2023). a deficiency in adaptive capacity exacerbates existing socio-economic challenges and leaves communities increasingly exposed to the long-term impacts of climate change, including extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and agricultural disruptions. these environmental challenges undermine the ability of displaced populations to rebuild their lives and establish sustainable livelihoods in new locations, creating a cycle of vulnerability that is difficult to break without targeted interventions and support systems (anderson, 2023; kousky, 2016). © 2025, pham. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 27(1), 69-87. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en migration, climate, and education: proposing human rights-based education for internally displaced learners in lowerand middle-income countries children and young individuals, including displaced students, are at risk of losing more than just their homes and shelters; they face the potential loss of access to education, training, and opportunities that are pivotal to shaping their future (chand et al., 2023). while numerous studies have underscored the impact of climate change on displaced families and children, affecting their health, safety, employment, finances, and emotional well-being, the united nations children’s fund (unicef) (2019) confirmed that educational needs have been overlooked in climate change dialogues, and the inclusion of education systems in these discussions has been peripheral. there is a research gap in comprehending education-related facets for children and youth within climate-displaced households, leaving their challenges in accessing quality education, academic performance, and inclusiveness unexplored (international committee of the red cross [icrc], 2018; idmc, 2019; kousky, 2016; nordstrom & cotton, 2020; unicef, 2019; united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization [unesco], 2020; vaughter et al., 2023). my study seeks to bridge this research gap by exploring the question: how does climate change affect internally displaced learners in lmics? my goal is to investigate the effects of climate on the education of k-12 displaced learners before and after they leave their homelands to assess the repercussions at the ends of their journey and to gain a comprehensive understanding of the educational disruptions and adaptations these learners undergo. this research ventures into an underexplored realm by bridging the gap concerning educational challenges faced by climate-displaced learners. it also yields valuable insights to inform evidence-based policies aligned with sustainable development goal 4 (quality education), which aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030. these policies can guide the efforts of policymakers, educational institutions, and development organizations as they tailor interventions to address the unique challenges these learners encounter in lmics. this paper begins by establishing a conceptual framework, followed by an in-depth analysis of the distinct repercussions of climate change on the education of displaced learners in their original and relocated settings. this comparative exploration aims to shed light on the additional challenges that arise as displaced learners navigate transitions to new environments. a dedicated section examines gender inequities in the educational experiences of male and female displaced learners, along with the structural and cultural factors contributing to these disparities. this is followed by a discussion section that synthesizes key insights from the analysis to explore broader implications for policy and practice. it will present a set of recommendations to mitigate the impacts of climate change on the education of displaced students. the conclusion succinctly summarizes the key findings. conceptual framework the identification of an appropriate theoretical or conceptual framework for this topic presents several challenges. first, the impact of climate change on the education of displaced learners is a relatively new and continually evolving field. consequently, it is difficult to identify well-established theoretical frameworks that 70 current issues in comparative education pham comprehensively address all of the intricacies of this issue. climate change is a protracted process that does not always unfold rapidly, comprised only of sudden events. climate change occurs over extended periods, leaving subtle and enduring effects in its wake. its impact on education may manifest over years or even decades (kagawa, 2005). current research and frameworks on climate change primarily concentrate on immediate or direct coping strategies, with little exploration of the indirect or chronic effects of climate change. this can pose challenges for studies that aim to understand the holistic impact of climate change on education. in this context, for a comprehensive understanding of the research topic, this study employs a blended approach. it adopts an integrated theoretical framework that combines the human rights-based approach (hrba) to education with insights from education in emergencies (eie) research. this integration addresses the complex challenges of studying the impact of climate change on the education of displaced learners, given the field’s evolving nature and the varied temporal dimensions of climate-related disruptions. the hrba to education, derived from the principles of the universal declaration of human rights 1948, which asserts the right to education for everyone (unesco, 2020), highlights the need for a comprehensive approach to education. according to unicef and unesco (2007), hrba encompasses three interlinked and interdependent dimensions, emphasizing that the realization of human rights to education hinges on addressing all three components. firstly, it upholds the right to education access as the cornerstone of equal opportunity, ensuring that education is available, accessible, and inclusive for all children, fostering regular attendance and reducing dropout rates. secondly, the framework champions the right to quality education, enabling learners to unlock their full potential, seize employment opportunities, and cultivate essential life skills. this requires an education that is relevant and offers a comprehensive curriculum that empowers learners by nurturing life skills, learning capacities, self-esteem, and self-confidence. thirdly, it advocates an environment within the learning space that upholds respect and dignity. this means delivering education in a manner consistent with human rights, affording every child equal respect, opportunities for meaningful participation, and ensuring a climate free from discrimination (unicef & unesco, 2007). hrba guides my analysis, focusing on the principles of equity, non-discrimination, and the promotion of human rights, providing a comprehensive understanding of challenges and opportunities faced by displaced learners in their educational journeys. the hrba framework is valuable for examining systemic issues such as educational exclusion, quality deficits, and gender inequality, which intensify during crises (tuparevska, 2022). this approach is widely used in research on displaced learners affected by conflict and violence, underscoring that while education is a fundamental human right and a critical need during displacement, it is deprioritized in favor of resettlement and safety concerns (unicef & unesco, 2007). however, this framework primarily focuses on immediate and direct interventions, such as restoring education for children in emergencies or addressing legal barriers to formal education in host countries (tomaševski, 2004). current issues in comparative education 71 migration, climate, and education: proposing human rights-based education for internally displaced learners in lowerand middle-income countries eie research complements the hrba framework by providing crucial insights into both acute and chronic emergency contexts. one notable advantage of referencing works in this field is their clarification of the term ‘emergency’ in natural crises and environmental contexts, and their insights into how such situations impact educational outcomes (burde et al., 2016). accordingly, eie research encompasses not only immediate emergency cases, such as wars, conflicts, floods, and earthquakes, but also accounts for silent or chronic emergencies, such as persistent poverty and complex emergencies, which involve a combination of immediate and chronic impacts (chand et al., 2023; kagawa, 2005). the integration of hrba and eie approaches creates a robust analytical framework that captures the immediate and long-term impacts of climate change on displaced learners’ education. this combined framework enables examination of: ● direct impacts from sudden climate events on educational access and quality. ● indirect effects through household disruptions, including economic hardship and displacement. ● long-term consequences for educational environments and learning opportunities. ● systemic challenges in ensuring educational rights during immediate and chronic emergencies. methodology the study centered on a literature review to examine how climate-induced displacement affects learners' access to and quality of education, along with the effects on the learners’ educational environments. to ensure breadth and depth in data collection, i deliberately expanded my search beyond traditional academic databases to include grey literature from policy papers, reports from international organizations, governmental publications, and media articles. i employed a dual-method approach to literature identification: the snowball method, wherein i traced reference lists from key documents to discover additional relevant sources; and direct database searches through google scholar and other databases such as web of science and scopus. to mitigate potential biases inherent in the snowball method and ensure comprehensive coverage, i systematically varied search terms and used diverse keyword combinations such as ‘displacement,’ ‘internal displacement,’ ‘migration,’ ’education,’ ‘climate change impacts,’ ‘natural disasters,’ and ‘displaced students.’ the search process concluded when searches yielded mostly redundant information, indicating saturation. from an initial pool of over 100 documents, i refined the selection to 73 based on three inclusion criteria: topic relevance, prioritizing studies that integrated multiple aspects of the research focus (migration, displacement, education, and climate change) while eliminating redundancy; geographic relevance, emphasizing lowand 72 current issues in comparative education pham middle-income countries; and language accessibility, restricting the review to english-language publications. for the analysis, i identified recurring themes, evaluated methodological approaches, assessed theoretical frameworks, and critically examined research findings to synthesize the current state of knowledge on the educational impact of climate change on internally displaced populations. i considered the immediate and long-term effectswere considered across each dimension, offering a nuanced understanding of the challenges displaced learners face. findings the impacts of climate change are complex and multifaceted, influencing education through various channels such as displacement, resource scarcity, and health consequences (unesco, 2020). these effects encompass direct and indirect impacts and simultaneously extend into various societal domains beyond education. it is crucial to acknowledge that disasters unfold at different paces; rapid-onset disasters occur almost instantly, while slow-onset disasters can be predicted in advance and unfold over months or even years. rapid-onset disasters primarily cause immediate physical impacts, whereas slow-onset disasters generate crises through economic and social repercussions (randall, 2018). although types of disasters force people to relocate for survival, each case has different effects on the education of their children. sudden disasters typically lead to involuntary movements, with little to no time to make preparations for their children’s education. those affected by slow-onset disasters may have more time to prepare psychologically, procedurally, and financially for the transition in their children’s education (unesco, 2020). this complexity poses a challenge in adequately addressing all dimensions of the issue. the findings reveal that climate change restricts access to education and undermines its quality for displaced learners. learning environments in new locations may lack cultural diversity and inclusivity, creating additional barriers to their educational experiences and performance. these difficulties are exacerbated for girls, who face heightened challenges due to persistent gender inequalities. educational barriers and academic struggles in learners’ homelands climate change affects learners’ educational access and performance through immediate disruptions and long-term challenges. this impact manifests through 3 key mechanisms: direct physical barriers, socioeconomic pressures, and environmental conditions affecting learning capacity. physical access disruptions create the most immediate barriers to education. when rapid-onset disasters such as tropical cyclones or floods strike, they destroy school buildings or transform them into emergency shelters, causing learners to face temporary or sometimes permanent interruption to their schooling (mooney & french, 2005; randell, 2019). these disruptions extend beyond school buildings to include damaged transport infrastructure, creating additional obstacles that compromise educational access (anderson, 2019; kousky, 2016; sims, 2021). current issues in comparative education 73 migration, climate, and education: proposing human rights-based education for internally displaced learners in lowerand middle-income countries slow-onset disasters such as droughts or salinization cause climate-related economic pressure, creating significant barriers to education, particularly for agricultural households affected by these events with reduced income and food security (icrc, 2018; idmc, 2019). many families find themselves unable to pay school fees, leading children to withdraw from school to contribute to household income. examples of this can be drawn from ongoing climate disasters in iraq, cambodia, china, and sub-saharan countries, as a few examples (icrc, 2018; idmc, 2019; unicef uk, 2017; weng et al., 2020). some families are forced to migrate in search of better opportunities, disrupting their children’s education (anderson, 2019; chuang et al., 2018; kousky, 2016). during severe droughts, girls miss school to collect water or face early marriage as families cope with financial pressures resulting from the droughts (randell, 2019). in extreme cases, families must choose between providing food or education for their children (mooney & french, 2005). research reveals complex relationships between climate conditions and educational outcomes that can develop for years. higher-than-usual temperatures in southeast asia correlate with fewer years of schooling (randell, 2019), and studies show that each 1°f increase in school-year temperature reduces learning by one percent, with a greater impact on low-income and minority learners (goodman et al., 2018). increased rainfall during agricultural seasons and cooler temperatures in early childhood positively correlate with educational achievements in later years of a learner’s life (maccini & yang, 2009; randell & gray, 2016). numerous studies have indicated that weather phenomena tend to correlate with school attendance. randell (2019) found that in southeast asia, a region historically characterized by hot and humid conditions, experiencing temperatures hotter than usual is associated with fewer years of schooling compared to other regions. mottaleb et al. (2015) (as cited in parkhurst, 2022) indicated that the need to rebuild farms after cyclonic disasters in bangladesh leads parents to pull boys out of school to assist with reconstruction. studies have revealed that increased rainfall during the main agricultural season, along with cooler springs and summers during early childhood, are positively correlated with completing more grades of schooling (maccini & yang, 2009; randell & gray, 2016). these findings are somewhat consistent with other studies that have shown school attendance rates in certain countries rising during extreme periods of natural disasters, with girls exhibiting more consistent attendance than boys (shah & steinberg, 2017; nordstrom & cotton, 2020). one notable hypothesis is that during such extreme circumstances, household farming activities are disrupted, freeing children from agricultural responsibilities and allowing them additional time to attend school (nordstrom & cotton, 2020). despite the mixed findings regarding attendance rates, there is consistently compelling evidence suggesting that academic performance is not necessarily improved during disasters (anderson, 2019). increased time spent in school does not always equate to enhanced learning outcomes (anderson, 2019; weng et al., 2009). economic hardship and malnutrition impair cognitive function, while psychological trauma from natural disasters affects learning capacity (randell, 2019; sims, 2021). learners in drought-affected areas consistently score approximately 4 percentage 74 current issues in comparative education pham points lower than their peers in unaffected regions (nordstrom & cotton, 2020). the impact of these challenges is evident in academic performance measurements. the long-term developmental impacts of climate-related challenges during early childhood can have lasting effects on educational outcomes. research demonstrates that early-life flooding increases vulnerability to waterborne diseases, while low birth weight and childhood undernutrition correlate with poorer cognitive development (kousky, 2016; weng et al., 2020). early effects can shape a child’s education, creating disparities that may persist well into their academic future (victora et al., 2008). these interconnected challenges highlight the complex relationship between climate change and education, demonstrating how environmental disruptions create immediate and long-lasting barriers to learning and academic achievement. these difficulties are pronounced in learners’ home regions, where the direct effects of climate change are evident. when learners are displaced due to the climate crisis, they encounter additional hurdles in their new environments (including exposure to climate change effects), compounding the barriers to their educational opportunities. additional challenges in new destinations compared to their homelands, displaced learners face additional barriers when seeking education in new environments, ranging from financial difficulties to bureaucratic hurdles, resource constraints, discrimination, and limited access to alternative learning solutions. these challenges, shaped by systemic inadequacies and the broader socio-economic impact of climate change, can significantly hinder their educational access, quality, and overall learning experience. financial barriers are among the most immediate obstacles displaced learners encounter when the education system in the host country involves direct or indirect costs that are difficult to meet. displacement results in loss of livelihood and income, leaving many families struggling to afford school fees, classroom supplies, and other educational expenses. in this context, climate change exacerbates poverty, intensifying the financial burden on displaced families (pachauri et al., 2015). under these circumstances, children and adolescents may prioritize work over schooling, whether due to economic necessity or pressure to send money home to support their families (unicef, 2017). administrative barriers within host countries can make it difficult for displaced learners to enroll in and attend school. in countries like vietnam and china, internal household registration systems (e.g., hukou) create legal and logistical obstacles for students relocating within their own country (garcia, 2021; li & zhang, 2023). although these learners technically retain their right to education, the practical implementation of this right is obstructed by rigid administrative frameworks. while internal displacement may allow learners to continue their education in a familiar linguistic and cultural setting, regional disparities in curricula and educational policies can still pose significant challenges (unesco, 2019). discrimination and social exclusion present additional barriers to displaced learners’ successful integration into their new educational environments. while migration can be a crucial adaptation strategy for improving educational and current issues in comparative education 75 migration, climate, and education: proposing human rights-based education for internally displaced learners in lowerand middle-income countries economic prospects, displaced students frequently encounter racial, religious, and ethnic discrimination in host communities (unicef uk, 2017). cultural and linguistic differences, unfamiliar school environments, and exclusionary practices can result in bullying, diminished self-esteem, and even segregated education (idmc, 2019; mooney & french, 2005). these experiences can discourage parents from enrolling their children in school, negatively impacting educational attainment (şirin & rogers-sirin, 2015). displaced families are underrepresented in school decision-making processes, limiting their ability to advocate for inclusive policies and programs (idmc, 2019). exclusion and discrimination can hinder students’ ability to engage with classroom material, perform academically, and develop a sense of belonging within the school environment (şirin & rogers-sirin, 2015). distance learning and alternative education solutions, introduced as a means to ensure educational continuity, present their own set of challenges. many governments and international organizations have promoted online learning platforms as a solution for displaced learners. however, access to technology and reliable internet connectivity remains a significant barrier, particularly in displacement settings where mobile phones, computers, and digital resources are scarce (unesco, 2020). while online learning content has expanded across multiple countries, these programs are not designed for long-term displacement scenarios (vaughter et al., 2023). issues such as inadequate teacher training, uncertified examinations, and unstable funding undermine the effectiveness of distance education (dryden-peterson, 2011). online education reduces opportunities for social interaction, which is a key factor in helping displaced learners integrate into new environments and build supportive peer networks (joosten & cusatis, 2020). the lower quality and accessibility of these alternative education models risk limiting the academic potential of displaced students and contradict the hrba to education, which advocates for equitable access to quality learning opportunities. while schools and local governments are expected to establish support systems for displaced learners, their lack of preparedness significantly limits their ability to provide effective interventions, particularly in immediate emergency contexts such as floods, earthquakes, typhoons, or hurricanes. anderson (2023) points out that many lmics face severe financial constraints, making it difficult to invest in infrastructure upgrades, teacher training, or curriculum adjustments that could accommodate displaced students more effectively. the lack of effective governance and data management systems complicates efforts to track and support displaced learners. many limcs struggle to collect reliable data on displaced students, making it difficult to assess educational outcomes and identify students in need of support (dryden-peterson, 2017; interagency network for education in emergencies [inee], 2020). without comprehensive tracking mechanisms, interventions remain fragmented and reactive rather than proactive, limiting their long-term effectiveness. the challenges faced by displaced learners in their original homelands and new environments go beyond logistical and administrative barriers – they have profound 76 current issues in comparative education pham effects on students’ well-being, which in turn influences their ability to succeed in school (unicef uk, 2017). without adequate psychosocial support and access to stable learning environments, these compounded challenges can undermine students’ academic engagement and overall development (burke et al., 2018; kousky, 2016). as the following section will explore, the intersection of displacement, well-being, and education underscores the urgent need for holistic interventions that address immediate survival needs and long-term educational resilience. well-being of affected learners research reveals that children and youth are at a heightened risk of experiencing poor health outcomes related to climate change due to their greater dependency on others for survival and well-being, ongoing development of their physiological defense systems, and the longer duration over which they will experience the effects of climate change compared to older generations (augustinavicius et al., 2021). many children affected by climate or natural crises have been documented to experience serious psychological trauma, jeopardizing their schooling and impacting their concentration and performance (idmc, 2019). three years after hurricane katrina in the united states, more than one-third of the children who had been displaced or severely affected by the hurricane were at least one year behind in school, which was double the pre-storm rate. this was attributed to issues related to behavior and negative impacts on attendance, suspension, and expulsion (unicef uk, 2017). related events, such as the loss of a parent (or parents), the loss of home and cherished objects, evacuation from a community, or the disruption of connections to civic institutions like schools and medical services can have detrimental effects on a child’s physical, mental, and social development (burke et al., 2018). moreover, there is evidence indicating that children from low-income families, who are already vulnerable to insufficient social and educational development, are disproportionately affected by disasters compared to adults (abramson et al., 2010; anderson, 2019). boyden and mann (2005), in their research on tamil children who were displaced due to armed conflicts or natural disasters, revealed the children’s impaired social and cognitive functioning, expressed by antisocial behavior and an inability to show affection, besides long-term anxieties and fears. throughout the lifespan, climate change-related stressors have been shown to affect neurodevelopment and mental health. children under the age of 10 born with low birth weights typically exhibit cognitive, iq, and motor scores approximately 5 points lower than those with normal birth weights. this risk of cognitive and motor deficits due to low birth weight persists from early childhood into adolescence (weng et al., 2020). in this way, child development, encompassing physical and neurological development, as well as subsequent educational progress, is significantly influenced by climate change. factors such as food and water scarcity, the spread of infectious diseases, toxic stress and early childhood adversity, poverty, disrupted education, and air pollution all contribute to this impact (anderko et al., 2020; save the children, 2007, 2009). current issues in comparative education 77 migration, climate, and education: proposing human rights-based education for internally displaced learners in lowerand middle-income countries climate change can indirectly affect the learners’ mental health. a study involving 400 children from 10 rural communities in china who were not living with their parents as they migrated for their livelihoods revealed an increase in stress and workload, leading to depression. girls left behind are particularly vulnerable, facing a greater psychological burden due to heavier workloads (unesco, 2019). specifically, the absence of mothers has been shown to have a negative correlation with children’s overall well-being, significantly affecting their educational outcomes. research indicates that filipino children are 15 percent more likely to struggle in school when their mothers migrate abroad (cortés, 2015). psychological challenges intersect with pre-existing social vulnerabilities, creating compounded barriers for specific demographic groups (chuang et al., 2018). girls, in particular, face a distinct set of obstacles when climate displacement disrupts their education, as gender-based inequalities become more pronounced in crises. their unique experiences reveal how climate-induced displacement can exacerbate existing educational disparities and create new challenges that require targeted interventions. girls’ education and climate change impacts girls face heightened educational barriers due to climate-related factors, as climate change amplifies pre-existing gender disparities through entrenched socioeconomic inequalities. these challenges are driven by climate-induced disruptions and reinforced by deep-seated social norms, power imbalances, and discriminatory practices that disproportionately affect girls’ education. the intersection of climate vulnerability and gender inequality exacerbates education exclusion, leading to long-term setbacks in gender equity and economic opportunities (chigwanda, 2016; inee, 2022; kwauk et al., 2019; plan international, 2019). several factors contribute to this pattern, including an increase in household chores and responsibilities, prioritizing the education of male siblings, and difficulties in managing menstrual hygiene (chigwanda, 2016; sims, 2021). rao and colleagues (2019) indicate that “across contexts, agriculture is feminized in terms of women’s labor contribution” (p. 20). a world health organization (who) (2019) report highlights that in 53 out of 73 surveyed countries, over half of households without on-premises water access rely on women to collect water, with 73.5 percent assigning this responsibility to women. low-income women and female-headed households have frequently been identified as among the most vulnerable to climate change, facing specific forms of inequality such as limited access to formal education (rao et al., 2019). during displacement, educational access highlights persistent gender biases that manifest through economic and cultural mechanisms. when migrant families face financial constraints, they systematically prioritize boys’ education across different contexts (unesco, 2019). in south africa, migrant families’ exclusion from local fee exemption programs leads to boys receiving educational priority. chinese migrant parents exhibit similar patterns, investing more resources in their sons’ education through enhanced documentation efforts and a willingness to pay for distant state schools, while their daughters typically attend lower-quality migrant schools 78 current issues in comparative education pham (unesco, 2019). the extent of this bias is quantifiably demonstrated in cambodia, where 75 percent of surveyed households (from a sample of 600) indicated they would withdraw their daughters rather than their sons when facing financial constraints (save the children, 2016; unicef uk, 2017). parental migration creates an additional layer of gender-specific educational barriers through two mechanisms. when parents migrate, older girls assume expanded household responsibilities, a pattern documented across mexico, china, and kyrgyzstan (kwauk & braga, 2017). the educational impact is significant: in chinese migrant households without remittances, girls' high school attendance drops to 20 percent compared to 29.76 percent for boys (hu, 2011). cultural factors compound these challenges, as evidenced in mali, where internally displaced adolescent girls discontinue education due to concerns about male interactions and domestic responsibilities (unesco, 2019). these intersecting economic and cultural barriers not only reflect historic gender norms but actively reinforce them, creating long-term economic disparities through reduced educational access (sims, 2021). once girls discontinue their education, they have a limited timeframe to re-enter school before being compelled to pursue alternative paths, including early marriage or migration for work (polak, 2010). consequently, the impacts of climate change are not gender-neutral; women and men encounter the consequences of exposure to climate change and environmental degradation differently (kwauk et al., 2019; undp, 2016). in certain contexts, climate change and environmental degradation worsen gender inequalities, affecting the capacities of individuals, households, and communities to adapt. discussion the findings underscore the multifaceted barriers that climate-displaced students face in accessing education, with financial instability, administrative challenges, and gender disparities emerging as key concerns. tackling these issues requires a comprehensive strategy that integrates targeted financial assistance, streamlined bureaucratic processes, and gender-responsive policies to ensure educational continuity and equity. financial constraints as a persistent barrier financial instability is a challenge for students affected by climate change, whether they remain in their homeland or relocate. climate-induced displacement disrupts household income, forcing families to deprioritize education in favor of immediate survival (icrc, 2018; unicef uk, 2017; weng et al., 2020). in lmics, where social safety nets are limited, displaced students, particularly those from marginalized communities, face heightened risks of school dropout (anderson, 2023). while economic interventions like scholarships and cash transfers have been proposed to support educational continuity, their implementation is hindered by bureaucratic inefficiencies and inconsistent funding (sims, 2021; unesco, 2019, 2020). current issues in comparative education 79 migration, climate, and education: proposing human rights-based education for internally displaced learners in lowerand middle-income countries to prevent educational disruption, governments and international organizations can explore scalable financial support mechanisms tailored to climate-vulnerable populations. cash transfers, insurance schemes, and school-based financial aid programs should be designed with local implementation challenges in mind, ensuring accessibility and long-term sustainability. beyond direct financial assistance, integrating education funding into broader climate adaptation policies can create more resilient support systems for displaced learners. the need for administrative and support systems beyond financial challenges, displaced students struggle with administrative and institutional barriers that disrupt their education. complex enrollment procedures, documentation requirements, and rigid education policies make it difficult for displaced learners to access schooling in their new locations (mooney & french, 2005; unesco, 2020). simplified registration processes and digital identification systems could significantly ease school entry for displaced students. access to education alone is insufficient if students lack the necessary support services to navigate the academic and psychological challenges of displacement. academic assistance and mental health counseling are crucial in mitigating the long-term impact of forced migration on learning outcomes. to build an effective support system, there is an urgent need for robust data collection and evaluation frameworks to track immediate and long-term educational outcomes of displaced learners. this includes assessing access, academic performance, retention rates, and long-term socioeconomic mobility. without comprehensive data, policies risk being reactive rather than proactive to address the education needs of displaced students. gender-sensitive approaches in climate-affected education girls face compounded vulnerabilities in the context of climate-induced displacement. economic hardship forces families to prioritize boys’ education, while cultural norms and safety concerns increase the risk of early marriage and school dropout for girls (chigwanda, 2016; kwauk et al., 2019). despite growing awareness of gender disparities in education, the impact of climate-related displacement on gender inequality remains under-examined. policies should integrate gender-sensitive strategies to ensure that displaced girls receive targeted financial support, access to safe learning environments, and protection from gender-based barriers to education. this includes community-based interventions to challenge entrenched gender norms and promote equal educational opportunities. without such measures, the intersection of climate change, displacement, and gender inequality will continue to deepen educational disparities. research gaps and contributions despite increasing recognition of the educational challenges posed by climate displacement, several critical gaps remain in the research landscape. first, limited focus on climate-related displacement in eie: while eie is an established field, it has historically centered on conflict-induced displacement, with limited research dedicated to education in the context of climate-related disasters (burde et al., 2016). although natural disasters are acknowledged in emergency education frameworks, 80 current issues in comparative education pham operational research continues to prioritize conflict-driven crises over environmental disruptions (kagawa, 2005). this study contributes to addressing this gap by framing climate-induced displacement as an educational emergency that requires distinct policy and intervention strategies. second, there is a lack of research on long-term educational outcomes. existing studies primarily focus on immediate access to education, neglecting long-term impacts such as academic performance, mental health, and the cumulative effects of climate displacement on learning trajectories. this study underscores the need for research that examines chronic and systemic barriers beyond the initial phase of displacement, particularly regarding educational attainment, long-term economic mobility, and the intergenerational consequences of disrupted schooling. third, there are reactive rather than proactive policy responses. policy solutions for climate-displaced learners have largely been short-term, addressing immediate educational disruptions without accounting for the protracted nature of climate displacement. current education policies fail to integrate with climate adaptation strategies, leaving displaced learners vulnerable to long-term exclusion. this study highlights the need for climate-specific eie frameworks that move beyond temporary relief and ensure sustained educational support for displaced students. conclusion this study underscores the significant challenges that climate-displaced students face in accessing education, with financial instability, administrative barriers, and gender disparities emerging as key obstacles. findings reveal that financial constraints force families to deprioritize education in lmics where social safety nets are limited. bureaucratic hurdles, such as complex enrollment procedures and rigid documentation requirements, disrupt displaced students' educational continuity. without adequate academic and mental health support, the long-term effects of displacement can lead to educational disengagement. the study also highlights the heightened vulnerabilities of displaced girls, who face cultural and economic pressures that increase their risk of early school dropout. to address these challenges, this research advocates for a comprehensive approach that includes scalable financial support mechanisms, streamlined administrative processes, and gender-sensitive policies to ensure equitable access to education. it identifies critical research gaps, including the limited focus on climate-induced displacement within eie, the lack of long-term impact assessments, and the reactive nature of existing policy frameworks. by framing climate displacement as an educational emergency, this study contributes to expanding the discourse on climate change and education, emphasizing the need for proactive, climate-specific education policies that integrate with broader adaptation strategies. ensuring educational continuity for climate-displaced students requires a shift from short-term responses to long-term, systemic solutions that recognize education as a right and a key component of climate resilience. current issues in comparative education 81 migration, climate, and education: proposing human rights-based education for internally displaced learners in lowerand middle-income countries tien pham is a phd candidate at the university of toronto, specializing in educational leadership and policy with a focus on climate change education and displaced learners in lowerand middle-income countries. her research explores the intersection of education, sustainability, and social justice. references abramson, d. m., park, y. s., stehling-ariza, t., & redlener, i. 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(2007). a human rights-based approach to education for all. unicef & unesco. https://www.right-to-education.org/sites/right-to-education.org/files/reso 86 current issues in comparative education https://doi.org/10.1086/690828 https://doi.org/10.19088/k4d.2021.044 https://nyuscholars.nyu.edu/en/publications/the-educational-and-mental-health-needs-of-syrian-refugee-children https://nyuscholars.nyu.edu/en/publications/the-educational-and-mental-health-needs-of-syrian-refugee-children https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cresp.2023.100119 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000135168 https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2022.2035721 https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/womens-empowerment/genderand-climate-change.html https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/womens-empowerment/genderand-climate-change.html https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000366980 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374966 https://www.unicef.org/reports/education-uprooted https://www.right-to-education.org/sites/right-to-education.org/files/resource-attachments/a%20human%20rights-based%20approach%20to%20education%20for%20all_0.pdf pham urce-attachments/a%20human%20rights-based%20approach%20to%20edu cation%20for%20all_0.pdf united nations children’s fund (unicef) uk. 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(2019). safely managed drinking water: thematic report on drinking water 2017. who. https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/325897/9789241565424-eng.pd f?sequence=1 current issues in comparative education 87 https://www.right-to-education.org/sites/right-to-education.org/files/resource-attachments/a%20human%20rights-based%20approach%20to%20education%20for%20all_0.pdf https://www.right-to-education.org/sites/right-to-education.org/files/resource-attachments/a%20human%20rights-based%20approach%20to%20education%20for%20all_0.pdf https://www.unicef.org.uk/publications/no-place-to-call-home/ https://doi.org/10.53326/lnzk2579 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(07)61692-4 https://action-education.org/sea/wp-content/uploads/sites/40/2022/12/climate-change-impact-on-education-in-southeast-asia-1.pdf https://action-education.org/sea/wp-content/uploads/sites/40/2022/12/climate-change-impact-on-education-in-southeast-asia-1.pdf https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/325897/9789241565424-eng.pdf?sequence=1 https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/325897/9789241565424-eng.pdf?sequence=1 © 2013 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(2): 84-95. re-framing, re-imagining, and re-tooling curricula from the grassroots: the chicago grassroots curriculum taskforce isaura b. pulido northeastern illinois university, usa gabriel alejandro cortez northeastern illinois university, usa ann aviles de bradley northeastern illinois university, usa anton miglietta chicago grassroots curriculum taskforce, usa david stovall university of illinois at chicago, usa this article explores the work of the grassroots curriculum taskforce (cgct), a chicago-based collaborative that engages in collective production of curricula that more adeptly capture the cultural, economic, and political realities of chicago public schools’ students. we first examine the collaborative processes cgct undertook with parents, teachers, students, community members/activists, and educational researchers to produce their first unit, urban renewal or urban removal (urur). the second section explores cgct and northeastern illinois university’s college of education’s collaborative effort to partner with practitioners, educators, students, and communities to invest in liberatory grassroots k-12 curriculum while becoming partners in its development. cgct partnerships are firmly grounded in a framework of mutual respect for the knowledge and expertise that parents, students, teachers, and community members bring to bear on k-12 education. the final section highlights challenges encountered when engaging in grassroots efforts. the purpose of this article is to document the work of the chicago grassroots curriculum taskforce (cgct) as we partner with others to revolutionize the traditional educational model of classroom learning. we see developing culturally relevant curricula as critical to our personal and professional lives. in the spirit of community and collectivity, the following narrative is reflective of our combined voices as we choose not to refer to ourselves as individuals within the writing but instead focus on the processes and collaborations of cgct as we engage in the work of developing community and curricula. at the same time, we highlight the work of individuals who have been instrumental to the development and work of cgct. as a community-centered collaborative project, we would not be able to write about this work without acknowledging their contributions. we begin our work with the understanding that schools and curricula have the ability to empower or disempower communities. historically, working-class youth and youth of color have been underserved by the american educational system. at the same time, neoliberal policies arguing for the corporatization of knowledge are increasingly marginalizing these youth. we believe that if we are to counter this trend, we must create curricula with community members pulido, cortez, aviles de bradley, miglietta, and stovall current issues in comparative education 85 that speak to local political, social, and economic conditions, while developing critical academic skills that equip youth to create change. the processes described here are multifaceted and non-linear. several components of our endeavor occurred simultaneously and/or idiosyncratically, though we structure this article into three consecutive sections. the first section contextualizes the need for grassroots curriculum development, as an outgrowth of larger educational reforms in chicago and across the country. this section also identifies how cgct operationalized these frameworks in developing our first curricular unit, urban renewal or urban removal: a history of chicago’s land grabs and the struggle for home and community (urur) (2012). the second section documents the university and community collaborations that have resulted as an outgrowth of cgct efforts. the concluding section explores the challenges inherent in grassroots community collaboration. the chicago context: understanding the need for cgct documented extensively in the works of lipman (2003, 2004, 2011), saltman (2007, 2009), and fine and fabricant (2012), chicago has been a hotbed for neo-liberal educational reforms, which have largely resulted in the further marginalization of low-income, working class communities of color. rooted in the belief that free market economies provide solutions to most social, political, and economic concerns, neoliberal reforms are centered in the rights of the individual and the privatization of public services. because these resources are (falsely) positioned as available to everyone, low-income, working class families of color are often blamed for not accessing these resources. through the renaissance 2010 initiative implemented in 2004, the chicago public schools (cps) targeted up to 70 “chronically underperforming” schools for “transformation” into 100 schools distinguished as charter, contract, or performance schools. this reform was advertised in terms of cps moving to provide “choice” and “options” in the “education marketplace” (www.cps.edu/newschools/pages/ons.aspx). significantly, one of the consequences of this initiative was to lessen the city’s financial commitment to education through the use of partners that could use their contributions to education as tax subsidies (through the federal tax code’s provision for charitable donations). alongside the shift towards neo-liberal educational reforms in chicago and around the country, we have also witnessed a push towards test-based, standards-based, textbook-based curriculum. among other concerns with such efforts, we note how the reforms tend to financially benefit four textbook companies: mcgraw hill, harcourt, pearson, and houghton-mifflin (bracey, 2005 in sleeter, forthcoming). moreover, such curricular reforms “are part of a larger set of policies designed to further empower the most advantaged segments of society,” (sleeter, forthcoming). that is, they reinforce the tradition in textbooks to prioritize eurocentric knowledge and experience, while marginalizing the cultures of communities of color (delgado bernal, 2002; nieto, 2000; yosso, 2005; zinn, 1980), sometimes pathologizing youth of color (espinozaherald, 2003; flores & murillo, 2001; macdonald & monkman, 2005). re-framing, re-imagining, and re-tooling curricula from the grassroots 86 current issues in comparative education the origins of the cgct recognizing the current educational context of chicago and similar urban spaces, cgct is working to reframe traditional models of classroom learning for low-income youth of color by infusing curriculum with content relevant to their lives. as a local clearinghouse and publisher, cgct seeks to bring students, parents, educators, and elders to the table to compile, publish, and advocate for culturally relevant materials in chicago’s schools and universities (grades k-16). in the spirit of long-standing educational struggles, the chicago grassroots curriculum taskforce officially formed in 2009 to address the dismal and historic patterns of irrelevant materials and mis-education (woodson, 1933) in our classrooms. as chicagoans who have had a range of educational experiences, we began to pose to ourselves the following questions:  what is taught in classrooms that supports the knowledge of who we are, where we come from, and where we need to go?  why are we, and most young chicagoans, oblivious to chicago’s histories of people’s struggles for justice?  why is the majority of curriculum eurocentric? how did it get this way?  what can educators and others do to reverse the mis-education of millions more? although formally initiated in 2009, cgct’s roots were planted three years earlier in a graduate level course at chicago state university. the participants in the course, all practicing teachers in alternative schools, agreed with the assessment that chicagoans learn very little about chicago – and almost no history from a critical perspective. as a result, they decided to launch the chicago area curriculum exchange (case) in order to begin developing chicago-focused curricula from the perspectives of historically marginalized peoples. after meeting for about a year, the collective dissipated, but was resurrected when a young man named derrick anderson expressed interest in presenting chicago history from a grassroots perspective at the social justice student expo (a local event held at the university of illinois at chicago). his presentation at the expo helped to motivate others towards meeting regularly. several longtime chicagoans heeded the call, including myrna garcia, nzinga hill, and lindsay smith. this group presented a workshop at the 2009 teachers for social justice curriculum fair in chicago. the presentation was called the battle for relevant curriculum – creating a social justice course on chicago from the grassroots by us! the response by educators and community members was overwhelming. people from across the city quickly joined the effort to produce a series of curricular units. the series was called a people’s chicago: our stories of change and struggle, and a group of six to eight people met regularly to design a prototypical unit of study that resulted in our first curriculum unit, urur (2012). as curriculum development ensued, cgct grew exponentially over the next two years. a resource center/office space opened in the uptown community in the northeast side of chicago. a steering committee was formed. the organization became incorporated as a 501c(3). we also began to ground our work conceptually through scholarly literature on participatory action research (cammarota & fine, 2008) and critical, culturally relevant, liberatory pedagogy (freire, 1970; ladson-billings, 1994; nieto, 2009). scholarly literature utilizing a critical perspective harnessed our efforts towards the transformative pedagogy we believe is needed as working-class pulido, cortez, aviles de bradley, miglietta, and stovall current issues in comparative education 87 communities of color are, for the most part, locked out of decision-making when it comes to the implementation of educational policies and practices (hood & ahmed-ullah, 2011; lipman 2011). moreover, the cgct model incorporates the work of critical pedagogues and cultural relevance theorists (duncan-andrade & morrell, 2008) and puts forth a pragmatic framework to do this work “on the ground.” these understandings enhanced our vision of what curriculum should look like, as well as the academic skills it should develop. we began to develop our own framework, calling it the grassroots curriculum (gc) model, which is reflective of our belief that the process of developing curriculum is just as important as the final product. the gc model illustrates the ways in which students, parents, educators, and community members can and should be involved in curriculum development. this approach is especially important in light of shifting educational reforms that increasingly narrow curriculum and further marginalize knowledge systems along the lines of class and race. developing the urur predating cgct, an independent taskforce came together to draft a unit of study based on extraordinary changes to chicago’s urban landscape due to gentrification and displacement. based on the topic’s current relevance coupled with pronounced student interest and a near total lack of such curricular resources, we chose to move forward. grounded in a democratic process, our group immediately emphasized the need to include numerous voices and narratives. we hosted a series of open meetings to obtain input on desired and needed content and curriculum. in sum, eight taskforce committee meetings were held with the original members and three larger community forums were held with an average of 25 attendees per session. participants, mostly as attendees of prior workshops (teachers for social justice [tsj] curriculum fairs, 2009 and 2010), were notified of meetings through phone-calls, emails, and text messages. these meetings and workshops provided our guiding brainstorm, content outline, essential questions, key projects, learning activities, and key threads for the unit and cgct—all of which were organized into our unit curriculum map (urur, 2012). of the 155+ participants involved in the previously described aspects of the process, there were approximately 50 classroom teachers from chicago public schools and alternative schools, 35 youth and community organizers, 30 parents, 25 community elders, and 20 high school students. adding the original 48 students in dialogue with the two original educators in the chicago state course, there were over 200 participants involved in this phase of developing the original unit. a broad range of individuals and groups also participated in the next phase of work— determining the content, learning activities, visuals, and design of the curriculum and engaging in the editing process. for example, 21 high school students from david steiber’s urban studies class at team englewood high school (cps) got involved. with englewood being ground zero for chicago’s foreclosure, disinvestment, and poverty crises, these students contributed powerful poems and short essays. in addition, cgct distributed a call for contributions (via email, a newsletter, and phone call blasts) to over 2,400 people. the call attracted nearly 100 direct contributors to the books and hip-hop mix cd that together comprise the entire urur set. contributors included approximately 22 classroom educators, 20 artists, 18 displaced residents, re-framing, re-imagining, and re-tooling curricula from the grassroots 88 current issues in comparative education 15 college students (undergraduate and graduate), 12 high school students, five housing activists, and four university faculty. urur represents our vision of an academically rigorous, cross disciplinary, culturally relevant, justice-centered curriculum. it seeks to develop key historical understandings about chicago’s major land disputes. simultaneously, it seeks to locate cps students’ experiences within contemporary processes of gentrification. collaborative efforts: building community and curriculum the cgct has built a network of over 200 volunteers and contributors through our calls for submission, presentations at dozens of local classrooms and educational events, listserv outreach, and book circles (knowledge parties). participation is also garnered through seven active committees, all of which contribute to the publication process. increasing our capacity to coordinate our efforts, two part-time staff members were hired in the fall of 2012. urur is being piloted at two local chicago public high schools and is being used as a university-level curricular tool at five chicago universities. additionally, our dissemination process includes presentations to the chicago teachers union. by casting a broad net, we are working to connect with as many educational stakeholders as possible, posing an alternative to traditional research methods that often privilege research agendas of university professors. in 2012 we were invited to present at a founders table workshop and a plenary session at the national association of multicultural education (name). christine sleeter (forthcoming) and greg michie (2012) have included cgct’s work in their most recent books as models of “empowering,” “democratic,” and “social justice” curricula. grassroots knowledge parties beyond distributing thousands of flyers, hanging posters, meeting with school staff, and tabling at dozens of events, we have been organizing knowledge parties (kps) to enhance distribution and utilization of urur. fourteen kps took place between late february and may of 2013. we have held kps in people’s homes, cafes, community centers, local retail establishments, and even a bar. the sharing of urur with the larger community from a grassroots approach seeks to counter the corporatization and market-driven approach to the dissemination and production of knowledge, fostering access to all community members. at every kp thus far, a participant has signed up to host the next kp. throughout the process we’ve been able to gather 110 names of individuals interested in cgct, simultaneously allowing for further access and exposure of grassroots curriculum to the larger chicago community. activities in university courses while cgct is currently collaborating with several universities across chicago, the relationship with northeastern illinois university (neiu) is the most developed. the collaboration between cgct and neiu began in 2010 when one of us became involved with the inquiry to action group facilitated by cgct through the local organization, teachers for social justice. this opened the opportunity to connect our work to neiu’s college of education. the collaboration aims to bridge theory and practice by prioritizing the development of culturally relevant social justice curricula in neiu’s teacher preparation programs. pulido, cortez, aviles de bradley, miglietta, and stovall current issues in comparative education 89 the mission and vision of cgct aligns with the educational foundations course, edfn 305: historical and philosophical foundations of urban education. by becoming aware of—and perhaps involved in—cgct activities, students come to understand why and how educators should develop local and relevant content from students’ families, cultures, histories, communities, and experiences. the initial iteration of the collaboration began with one visit from a cgct member to edfn 305. during this 3-hour session, cgct members shared with preservice teachers the ways in which their philosophy of education frames their engagement with k-12 students and curriculum development. after this presentation, the education students were asked to engage in critical praxis via a group project in which they designed lesson plans grounded in culturally relevant pedagogy. after the first collaboration, neiu faculty and cgct members identified areas in need of improvement that would serve to better support and facilitate education students’ engagement and success in developing culturally relevant curriculum. an outcome of these discussions was the development of the cgct toolkit (http://grassrootscurriculum.org/index.php/curriculum/curriculum-toolkit), which provides a wide array of resources from which students can develop their own culturally relevant curriculum. similar to the approach used by the cgct, faculty and students in this course collaboratively identify a theme to address via curriculum projects. for example, during one class session, a cgct member asked education students, “what are the issues facing young people today?” students identified a variety of issues, including: violence, poverty, lack of living wage/sustainable jobs, and marginalization. the cgct member then posed the question, “are schools addressing these concerns?” students replied with resounding “no!” this became the point of entry for students enrolled in edfn 305 for the next 15 weeks. the presentation by cgct compliments the foundation and framework for the course readings, assignments, discussions, and activities. the themes students identify in the course are similar to those identified by cgct; these include land, community, and urban geography; education systems, schools, and learning; (im)migration and globalization; labor, industry, and capitalism; the streets, law, and criminalization; healthy living and health crises; government, elections, and policy; culture, media, and community. once a theme is agreed upon, students are oriented to the toolkit and receive guidance on navigating the documents and ways to use the toolkit for their own curriculum development (e.g., unit map template, projects list, local resources list). the instructors for this course (who are also cgct members) work together with other cgct staff to give students feedback on their projects. this practice allows both university faculty and other cgct members to discuss the progress of the students while considering theoretical and practical aspects that should be highlighted or incorporated to further facilitate their development and understanding of culturally relevant pedagogy and practice. students develop websites that highlight their curriculum projects (for samples, see http://www.grassrootscurriculum.org). they are also asked to provide feedback on the utility and accessibility of the cgct toolkit. this http://grassrootscurriculum.org/index.php/curriculum/curriculum-toolkit http://www.grassrootscurriculum.org/ re-framing, re-imagining, and re-tooling curricula from the grassroots 90 current issues in comparative education feedback is then discussed by faculty and other participating cgct members, serving to further inform and shape these curricular materials. although the majority of the students enrolled in edfn 305 are aspiring teachers, one cgct member has also taught the foundations course to students in the school counseling program. students in this program use the toolkit to develop a counseling program or initiative based on student needs, which they identify through research into a particular school and community in chicago. the work with the school counselors has been eye-opening; students noted that they have never been asked to think about the community in the context of their professional work. for cgct, this is reflective of the broader disconnect between schools, communities, and programs in higher education. thus, working with these students has offered another opportunity to think about the importance of dialogue and collaboration across all levels of education. forum for university students collaboration between cgct and neiu’s college of education also led to organizing an annual event, creating grassroots education: a collaborative forum for students. now entering its third year, this event is organized for several audiences, including undergraduate and graduate students at neiu taking courses in the educational foundations program, educational leadership and development program, and the grow your own teachers program (gyo), as well as students interested in neiu’s college of education. together, these courses and programs introduce students to critical readings in education while linking them to contemporary issues facing educators today at the intersections of race, class, and gender. this event is an opportunity to connect aspiring teachers and school counselors with practicing teachers/counselors, community activists/organizations, administrators, scholars, and students across the city of chicago who are currently engaged in anti-oppressive, liberatory (freire, 1970), humanizing, and culturally relevant education. a primary goal of this event is to help students experience firsthand the relevance and practical applications of social justice education by introducing them to the work of the cgct and connecting them with individuals engaged in such work. through this collaborative effort, future and current educators are able to see themselves as change agents and advocates for social justice. broadening the scope of how and where students learn encourages pedagogical practices that embrace all spaces as sites of inquiry and action. lastly, it demands that future and current educators come to value, respect, and honor the knowledge of children/youth, families, and communities. university collaboration: leadership development more recently, cgct and the neiu’s college of education have implemented transformative pedagogy components in the newly state-mandated principal endorsement program for graduate students in the department of educational leadership and development. using gary anderson’s (2009) rationale that “participatory school restructuring cannot transform the educational experiences of marginalized students unless educators’ beliefs and assumptions as well as relations of power in schools and communities are challenged,” (p. 130), these components require students to do class projects that assess particular components in their school institution and local community. this includes using participatory action research methods, identifying current and potential community partnerships, and assessing human resource services. pulido, cortez, aviles de bradley, miglietta, and stovall current issues in comparative education 91 prospective school leaders will learn how to use a culturally relevant curriculum and become familiar with an advocacy-oriented leadership style that enhances authentic relationships with key partners in school curriculum, community relations, and institutional assessment skills. cgct and the neiu college of education will assess the courses at the end of the semester, with the goal of improving the use of transformative pedagogy components. cgct’s culturally relevant curriculum methods are primarily used in three classes required for the principal endorsement graduate program: human relations, educational research design and data analysis, and community relations. the human relations course focuses on team building skills with an understanding of social concerns and stress factors. students also learn about a variety of issues that pertain to race relations, cultural identity and diversity, the corporatization of education, social-economic inequalities, gendered identities, and stress management. all topics are designed to prepare future school leaders with an understanding on how current economic, political, and social conditions have disenfranchised low-income communities of color. the educational research design and data analysis course focuses on a semester-long participatory action research project. students learn how to analyze empirical data and use qualitative methods to design a professional development workshop for their peers. the purpose of the project is to prepare future school leaders to use research methods to strategically address school concerns while designing culturally relevant curricula. the community relations course has students develop a community relations campaign addressing a specific concern identified by community members. for this, students research the history of the surrounding community of the school where they are employed. from this exercise students are required to analyze school partnerships as well as local community organizations and then determine how they can be involved in the development of culturally relevant curricula. the final project has students create a resource guide on how to assess community needs while listing resources available to community members. all transformational pedagogy components in the three principal endorsement graduate program courses are designed to introduce prospective school leaders to the patterns of demographic changes in the city of chicago and its surrounding suburbs. this initiative is thus in line with cgct’s mission and vision to re-tool and re-imagine traditional models of education. constructing bridges and navigating detours as a group comprised mostly of educators and parents, with only a few of us having some organizing and a little publishing experience, we have experienced numerous challenges in building a grassroots curriculum development and publishing organization. here we discuss our two most formidable challenges. as a volunteer-based publisher, cgct faced the challenge of finding skilled people to assist when needed (e.g., graphic designers, web designers, database creators), learning how to navigate the printing world (e.g., pricing, the language of the print industry, obtaining quotes from trusted places), and effectively organizing our pool of volunteers to accomplish the dozens of tasks that arise. it is all being forged by fire, or as myles horton (1990) says, “we make the road by walking.” re-framing, re-imagining, and re-tooling curricula from the grassroots 92 current issues in comparative education another challenge is getting schools to purchase curriculum and use it in classrooms. with each school in chicago having autonomy over its curriculum choices, we need to build relations with schools one by one. teachers are extremely busy—principals are even busier. schools have limited budgets and the chicago public schools budget is being cut continuously. we meet with teachers who reach out to us upon learning about cgct’s work. these meetings usually occur during the teacher’s preparation period, after which they must take time to review the materials, find connections with their courses, discuss our work at the department level, and negotiate with their school leadership to purchase the cgct materials. without adequate but unimposing follow-ups, cgct curriculum can quickly become an afterthought. we are currently engaged in building meaningful curriculum relations with teachers from over 18 schools. teacher interest is high, but budgets and principal approval may pose a challenge. because we lack the resources of a large publishing house (e.g., sales reps, promotions, techsavvy support), we must sacrifice tremendous amounts of time to get into schools and build bridges that support grassroots curriculum. in both cases, a larger staff of highly skilled people would be advantageous, especially when it comes to conducting mass outreach and school-based relationship building in a city as large as chicago. our commitment to inclusive, grassroots curriculum transformation continues to develop and evolve. as a collective, we believe that it is impossible to enact real, sustained change without the efforts and voices of all community members. cgct will continue to facilitate collaborative processes among educators, parents, students, community members, and higher education faculty in order to create, sustain, and expand spaces for the continued development and dissemination of tangible, justice-centered, grassroots products that reflect our commitment to re-frame, reimagine, and re-tool curricula from the grassroots. isaura b. pulido, ph.d., is an assistant professor in the department of educational inquiry and curriculum studies at northeastern illinois university in chicago. e-mail: i-pulido1@neiu.edu gabriel alejandro cortez, ph.d., is assistant professor of educational leadership and development at northeastern illinois university in chicago. e-mail: g-cortez@neiu.edu ann aviles de bradley, ph.d., is an assistant professor in the department of educational inquiry and curriculum studies at northeastern illinois university in chicago. email: a-avilesdebradley1@neiu.edu anton miglietta is director of the chicago grassroots curriculum taskforce in chicago. email: anton@grassrootscurriculum.org david stovall, ph.d., is an associate professor of educational policy studies and africanamerican studies at the university of illinois at chicago. e-mail: dostoval@uic.edu mailto:i-pulido1@neiu.edu mailto:g-cortez@neiu.edu mailto:a-avilesdebradley1@neiu.edu mailto:anton@grassrootscurriculum.org mailto:dostoval@uic.edu pulido, cortez, aviles de bradley, miglietta, and stovall current issues in comparative education 93 references anderson, g. 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(1980). a people’s history of the united states. new york: harper perennial. 7. the peacejam foundation_ an analytical program review through a transformative peace education lens current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 26, issue 2, special issue 2024 the peacejam foundation: an analytical program review through a transformative peace education lens whitney hough teachers college, columbia university this article focuses on the peacejam foundation ambassadors curriculum, analyzing how its content and structure align with a transformative human rights education (thre) approach. a thre approach centers on creating social change and encourages youth to analyze structures and conditions that lead to injustice. it embraces emancipatory learning strategies and promotes social change through both individual actions to address human rights violations, as well as through collective action to work toward wider community development. in this article, the author examines the strengths and limitations of how the curriculum’s content, structure, and context align with a thre approach. the analysis includes takeaways for the wider field about developing quality human rights programming centered on community-engaged praxis, youth participation, transformative agency, and empowerment. keywords: peace education, human rights education, social justice, youth participation, transformative learning. introduction the world continues to face the highest number of violent conflicts since the second world war (united nations, 2023). currently two billion people, or nearly a quarter of the world’s population, live in a country affected by such conflict (united nations, 2023). now, more than ever, it is important to promote the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will help people prevent the occurrence of conflict, resolve conflicts peacefully, or create social conditions conducive to peace, including those that further human rights. education is an essential path to this goal. while multiple definitions of human rights education (hre) exist, the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr) defines hre as “education, training, and information aiming at building a universal culture of human rights through the sharing of knowledge, imparting of skills and molding of attitudes” (tibbitts & fernekes, 2011, p. 1). hre scholar felisa tibbitts (2017) distinguishes the transformative models of hre from two other hre models outlined below, emphasizing their distinct inclusion of critical pedagogy and deep reflection on the societal structures and conditions that lead to injustice (tibbitts, 2017). transformative human rights education (thre) also centers on the goal of creating social change (tibbitts, 2017). hre models that adopt a transformative approach embrace emancipatory learning strategies that include © 2024, hough. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 26(2), 112-125. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en hough education about, through, and for human rights (bajaj, 2017). this article highlights one specific peace and human rights curriculum, the peacejam foundation ambassadors curriculum, analyzing how its content and structure align with a thre approach. the peacejam foundation is a youth development nonprofit organization led by 14 nobel peace prize laureates. peacejam’s stated goals are to “create the next generation of nobel peace laureates,” by fostering youth-led solutions for today’s global issues and by creating opportunities for youth-led action (peacejam, 2019). the curricular approach introduces young people to issues of peace, social justice, and nonviolence, and focuses on three main tenets: inspiration, education, and action (peacejam, 2019). the ambassadors curriculum, which is designed with and for geographically diverse youth ages 14-25, develops core competencies including personal power and purpose; diversity and inclusion; change agency; global citizenship and interconnection; peacebuilding; and compassionate leadership (peacejam, 2021). the curriculum consists of seven learning modules that guide youth through the process of completing an action project based on topics they identify in their communities as important. they then connect those projects to the broader billion acts of peace campaign, an international movement that mobilizes youth to address pressing global issues (billion acts, 2021). upon completion of their projects, youth present them to nobel peace laureates at youth leadership conferences, where they also connect with a wider network of young changemakers (peacejam, 2021). peacejam’s curricular objectives align with thre goals of developing youths’ sense of empowerment and agency at individual, school, and community levels (russell & suarez, 2017). as one peacejam alumna notes: peacejam ignited a flame within me for advocacy and ambassadorship, teaching me to be a global citizen by addressing world issues at a local level. it not only transformed the way i perceive the world, but more importantly, it shifted something within my spirit. peacejam revealed to me that i possessed the passion and power to change my world all along. it shattered the notion that i needed to wait until i grew older to make a difference. i realized that i, too, could be an agent of change. (peacejam, 2021) this quote speaks to the transformative nature of the curriculum in the ways that it helps students to think critically about their environment and inspires their belief that every individual can contribute toward social change, regardless of age. social change in this approach manifests both through individual action to address human rights violations in one’s sphere, as well as through collective action to work toward wider community development (russell & suarez, 2017). this article will analyze the strengths and limitations of how the curriculum’s content, structure, and context align with a thre approach. in doing so, it will present takeaways for the wider field about developing quality human rights programming centered on current issues in comparative education 113 the peacejam foundation: an analytical program review through a transformative peace education lens community-engaged praxis, youth participation, transformative agency, and empowerment. theoretical framework the concept of molding attitudes to build a culture of human rights evokes notions of paulo freire’s conscientization, which describes the process of individuals recognizing and analyzing inequality, oppression, and subordination, and then acting collectively to overcome these harmful structures in society (bajaj, 2017). when viewed through this lens, education becomes about “problem-solving and critical analysis rather than on the mere acquisition of knowledge” (holland & martin, 2017, p. 270). when pairing conscientization with cosmopolitanism, which focuses on global citizenship and belonging, formal and nonformal education results in action, solidarity, and connection (bajaj, 2017). this kind of hre has come to be known as “transformative human rights education” (thre) (bajaj, 2017, p. 8). tibbitts (2017) distinguishes transformative models of human rights education from two other models of hre: values and awareness hre, and accountability hre. the transformative model stands out from the other two in its inclusion of critical pedagogy and deep reflection on the societal structures and conditions that lead to injustice (tibbitts, 2017). thre is also unique in its foremost goal of creating social change (russell & suarez, 2017). social change in the thre approach manifests both through individual action to address human rights violations in one’s sphere, as well as through collective action, or activism, to work toward wider community development. it targets both beliefs and behavior. this empowerment occurs through leadership development, learning about topics relevant to the learner, cultivating agency in the learner, fostering personal transformation, and developing skill sets to organize advocacy and awareness events (russell & suarez, 2017; tibbitts, 2017). another essential element of thre is its connection to “everyday experiences, aspirations, concerns and needs,” relevant to the learner’s context, rather than intangible concepts (coysh, 2014, p. 94). thre practitioners employ various methodological approaches (tibbitts, 2017). while wider approaches in hre include a spectrum of didactic, participatory, empowerment, and transformational approaches, the two that are most intricately connected with thre are the empowerment and transformational approaches (tibbitts, 2017). transformative and emancipatory learning emphasizes personal transformation in individual learners. it is that individual change and cultivation of agency that results in individuals taking personal and collective action to change the structures that lead to human rights violations (coysh, 2014). the transformative model is thus oriented towards approaches that generate both personal and social change. the elements of social change manifested in thre connect to wider peacebuilding concepts related to galtung’s (1964) concept of “positive peace” (galtung, 1964, p. 2). galtung defines “negative peace” as the absence of violence and “positive peace” as the integration of human society (galtung, 1964, p. 114 current issues in comparative education hough 2). the latter addresses indirect and structural violence through its attempts to create the conditions for the absence of violence and the presence of peace. this allows for more sustainable, structural societal change. program description the peacejam foundation is a youth development nonprofit organization led by 14 nobel peace prize laureates. its mission is to create a generation of young leaders committed to positive change in themselves, their communities, and the world through the inspiration of the spirit, skills, and wisdom that nobel peace laureates embody (peacejam, 2021). developed in 1996, peacejam has over 27 years of experience in developing peace and human rights education curricula (peacejam, 2023). more than 1.3 million youth in over 45 countries have taken part in peacejam programming and conferences (peacejam, 2023). the wider set of curricula consists of five main curricula for different ages, including peacejam juniors (ages 5-11); peacejam leaders (ages 11-14); compassion in action (ages 12-14); peacejam ambassadors (ages 14-25); and juvenile justice (youth with enhanced vulnerabilities). the peacejam curricular structure focuses on three main tenets: inspiration, education, and action (peacejam, 2021). the ambassadors curriculum specifically is a learner-centered curriculum for youth ages 14-25, that introduces young people to issues of peace, social justice, and nonviolence, as well as global citizenship and civic engagement (peacejam, 2021). the curriculum consists of seven learning modules that align with peacejam’s main pillars of inspiration, education, and action (peacejam, 2021). these activities guide youth through the process of completing a service-learning project based on a topic they identify in their communities as important to them. they then connect this project to the broader billion acts of peace campaign (billion acts, 2021). the billion acts of peace campaign is an international movement that mobilizes youth to address pressing global issues across ten peace and human rights issue areas: advancing women and children; alleviating extreme poverty; clean water for everyone; conflict resolution; education and community development; ending racism and hate; global health and wellness; human rights for all; non-proliferation and disarmament; and protecting the environment (billion acts, 2021). upon completion of their service-learning projects, youth present their projects to nobel peace laureates and community organizations at youth leadership conferences, where they also connect to a wider network of young changemakers (peacejam, 2021). to date, the global peacejam community has recorded 119,028,664 acts of peace across 171 countries (billion acts, 2023). a few examples to demonstrate the variety of peace acts are included here: current issues in comparative education 115 the peacejam foundation: an analytical program review through a transformative peace education lens table 1 example billion acts of peace projects project title project location project description bridging gaps through cycling aalen, south germany in this project, youth began an initiative at a bike workshop refurbishing, repairing, and selling bicycles at affordable prices. the project particularly targets individuals with a migration background. the project's focus on affordability creates opportunities for low-income individuals to access education, employment, social service centers, and other activities, fostering their integration into the community. this project aims to eliminate economic barriers, making sustainable transportation accessible to a diverse range of people. art changes lives florida, united states in this project, a peacejammer who survived a school shooting co-founded a nonprofit organization to provide teens and young adults with skills to cope and overcome emotional challenges through music, art, and theater. shine msd has impacted the lives of many young people through the free workshops they host online and in-person on artistic expression. youth who attend their workshops and classes learn a range of skills such as songwriting, singing, music production, video editing, photography, acting, dancing, improv, drawing, and many more. technology for good gujarat, india in this project, a 14-year-old produced the idea of a drone-based technology that accurately identifies buried plastic landmines and remotely destroys them. after seeing footage of soldiers being killed in their attempt to disarm landmines, he assembled a team of classmates and university students who successfully designed and built the technology, called eagle a7. this invention led to a memorandum of understanding with the government of gujarat, and collaboration with the indian army and indian para forces. program objectives peacejam’s stated goals are to “create the next generation of nobel peace laureates,” by fostering youth-led solutions for today’s global issues and by creating opportunities for youth-led action (peacejam, 2019). the ambassadors curriculum objectives build toward this wider goal by focusing on the development of core competencies in youth related to empathy and compassion, leadership development, and self-awareness. the six specific peacejam ambassadors core competencies include personal power and purpose; diversity and inclusion; change agency; global citizenship and interconnection; peacebuilding; and compassionate leadership (peacejam, 2021). youth are introduced to these 116 current issues in comparative education hough competencies through seven learning modules, each consisting of interactive lessons and activities. the curricular model is flexible and can be incorporated both into formal learning environments, as well as in non-formal education settings. these curricular objectives align with the transformative hre model’s goals of developing students’ sense of empowerment and agency at individual, community, and school levels; helping students to think critically and reflect on oppression in their environment; and creating social change (russell & suarez, 2017). tibbitts (2017) describes social change as a long-term process involving changes in beliefs and behaviors in both the private and the public domain. this empowerment occurs through leadership development, learning about topics relevant to the learner, cultivating agency in the learner, fostering personal transformation, and developing skill sets to organize advocacy and awareness events (russell & suarez, 2017; tibbitts, 2017). the peacejam competencies address and build toward individual and collective social change in similar ways, as outlined in detail below. to bring life to what the competencies look like beyond the page, one peacejam alumna shares her experience: peacejam has been the catalyst for my personal growth and transformation. it has taught me that the power to effect change lies within each of us, waiting to be discovered and unleashed. my involvement with peacejam has fueled my passion for advocacy, empowered me to be a global citizen, and equipped me with the tools to create tangible social change (billion acts, 2023). this quote highlights just one example of the ways in which the curriculum works toward goals of empowerment and agency in its learners. underlying strategies in engaging learners paulo freire (1970) writes that authentic education is “not carried out by ‘a’ for ‘b’ or by ‘a’ about ‘b’ but rather by ‘a’ with ‘b’” (p. 160). this signifies the importance of working with young people to craft their educational journeys while helping them to develop the skill sets needed to authentically participate in that journey. peacejam’s approach aligns with this vision through its primary strategy of building authentic youth participation in its programming. to authentically participate in society, youth need the space, confidence, and training to do so (davies, 2009; percy-smith & thomas, 2010). peacejam accomplishes this not only by providing venues for youth to make changes at youth conferences and in their billion acts of peace projects but also by helping them build the skill sets to make that change. the curriculum focuses on individual and group interactions, understanding the self and the self concerning others, and critically reflecting on society more broadly. a few example module themes include “communicating for change,” “exploring identity and culture,” “exploring power and privilege,” “exploring peace and violence,” and “inspiring change in your community” (peacejam, 2021). the structure of the activities within each chapter also builds authentic engagement in the curriculum itself. the modules include activities such as debates, current issues in comparative education 117 the peacejam foundation: an analytical program review through a transformative peace education lens brainstorming, and critical reflection to focus conversations on the perspectives of youth (peacejam, 2021). the activities also use a variety of methods for participation, including written, physical, spoken, artistic, and other modes of engagement to be inclusive of all types of learners (peacejam, 2021.) each chapter includes stories from nobel laureates with lessons that they have learned in their journey toward participating in community change. in this sense, youth have access to avenues for making change but are also given the skills to make that change. this aligns with the thre approach of allowing young people to recognize their role in creating change and to practice the process of doing so early and in a safe environment. actively building this space “demonstrates a genuine attempt to honor the right of youth to participate in making decisions that affect their lives” (apple & beane, 2007, as cited in hantzopoulos, 2011, p. 228). youth learn that their voices are important in speaking to the policies and practices that impact them daily and develop belief in their ability and responsibility to make change. socio-political context the peacejam headquarters are located in arvada, colorado, where the organization was founded; however, it currently has eight regional chapters across the united states, as well as chapters in thirteen other countries. these country chapters include ghana, south africa, liberia, belgium, india, greece, monaco, the united kingdom, colombia, guatemala, timor-leste, the czech republic, and uganda (peacejam, 2021). in addition to these locations, the organization partners with many foundations that the nobel laureate board members are connected with across the world. it has peacejam clubs in 41 countries (peacejam, 2021). as such, peacejam operates in a wide variety of socio-political contexts. the organization also adapted to a virtual environment during the covid-19 pandemic, extending its reach further (peacejam, 2019). youth join the organization through classes, clubs, and informal initiatives. in some cases, the curriculum is formally integrated into coursework, in line with education standards. in other cases, youth complete portions of the curriculum while implementing the billion acts of peace projects through extracurricular clubs or youth groups. peacejam works with local staff members in each country chapter, which allows for local contextualization of the curriculum. however, the breadth of geographic implementation of the ambassadors curriculum potentially creates challenges of the set curriculum being less relevant or applicable in some local contexts, a challenge that many organizations face in adapting curriculum globally (holland & martin, 2017). the ambassadors curriculum’s student-centered model does remove some element of concern, as youth develop projects related to their self-identified local topics; however, the potential that the curriculum is western-centric and less relevant in some contexts is still important to consider. 118 current issues in comparative education hough analysis of operations and efficacy several elements of the peacejam ambassadors curriculum approach align with key tenets of thre. this section will explore the content, structure, and context of the curriculum to further highlight how it mirrors a thre model, and where there is space to grow. given the lack of empirical data on this program, the analysis relies heavily on secondary data sources and advisory conversations with program staff and alumni. despite this limitation, consulting the curriculum, program data, program reports, and other secondary data sources provided sufficient information to conduct a focused analysis of the program’s content, structure, and context. content one strategy for educating about, through, and for human rights is to equip learners with the skills they need to actively participate in society. this includes developing the capacity to “describe, articulate, and convey one’s needs; to seek and acquire services; and to manage conflicts and resolve disputes” (bar-tal & rosen, 2009, p. 64). another way of framing this is that thre addresses the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that youth need to effectively engage in the world around them (bajaj, 2017). in line with this thought, many educators emphasize that hre must include goals related to individual and group identity exploration, cognition, emotional awareness, and action orientation (tibbitts, 2002 as cited in zembylas, 2011). bar-tal and rosen (2009) further specifically identify conflict resolution and tolerance as skills that young people need to contribute toward human rights and peacebuilding. per their descriptions, conflict resolution education seeks to promote an understanding of conflict and to assist students in developing abilities to negotiate, mediate, and collaboratively solve problems in conflict contexts (bar-tal & rosen, 2009). tolerance refers to the recognition and acceptance of the right of all individuals and groups to have opinions and to be open-minded in hearing perspectives that are not one’s own (bar-tal & rosen, 2009). training in the skills above is infused throughout the ambassadors curriculum through content that focuses on identity development, intentional listening, intentional speaking, recognition of privilege, and identification of several types of violence, among others. as one concrete example, the curriculum introduces the concept of civil discourse in the first module to help youth navigate how to engage with each other as a peacejam group. civil discourse sets conversation rules that honor each person and their contributions to the conversation (american university, 2021). activities across the seven modules help young people to further practice four types of discourse (brainstorming, discussion, controversy, and consensus) so that they can learn to share ideas, explore topics, voice disagreement, discuss differing perspectives, and make decisions respectfully and productively. bar-tal and rosen (2009) also highlight reflective thinking as a crucial element of thre. reflective thinking facilitates learning and enables a deeper understanding of the relationships and connections between ideas and/or experiences. the ambassadors current issues in comparative education 119 the peacejam foundation: an analytical program review through a transformative peace education lens curriculum integrates critical discussion questions, journal reflection questions, and other critical reflection opportunities throughout each module. 75 percent of peacejam alumni survey respondents indicated that the program positively influenced the organizations and businesses they chose to work for. many of those indicated that they were more inclined to seek out organizations and/or businesses focused on social justice and social change, as well as to consider ethical principles and social responsibility in their workplace choices (peacejam, 2023). this demonstrates an understanding of the connectedness between individuals, (in) action, and challenges/solutions. a significant consideration when a curriculum contains content that may be sensitive, such as content related to identity and violence, is that it is important to effectively prepare facilitators to implement the curriculum in a way that allows youth to engage in these sensitive topics safely (jones, 2006). facilitators need to be able to help learners discover what they already know and to guide them through dialogue and critical thinking in acquiring innovative ideas (holland & martin, 2017). they need to make human rights relevant to the lives of the learners and help them engage deeply in topics that may be contentious. the challenge of preparing educators to teach about sensitive topics, particularly in conflict-affected contexts, has been emphasized by several hre researchers (jones, 2006; zembylas, 2011). this is an area in which the ambassadors curriculum could grow. the curriculum does include a facilitator’s guide that provides strategies for facilitators like rapid reflection techniques and tips for creating inclusive groups. facilitators also need to complete training to gain access to and deliver the ambassadors curriculum. however, more training for the facilitators on engaging youth in challenging conversations is a space that peacejam could expand content-wise. particularly since the organization operates in conflict-affected and post-conflict contexts, more training around conflict sensitivity and dialogue would be beneficial. structure concerning hre, “it is not enough to present people with information and then leave them to act on their own. education has to lead students through the steps to act upon their new knowledge” (holland & martin, 2017, p. 269). peacejam’s interactive, action-oriented model fits into this approach of education leading to social change. the ambassador curriculum shapes each lesson around the implementation of a social action project based on issue areas that young people identify as relevant in their communities. the participants first learn about ten key global human rights issues that nobel peace laureates address, outlined in section ii. students then brainstorm and identify issues that are most prevalent in their local communities, with a community defined as family, school, neighborhood, city, or more broadly. throughout the curriculum, while working with their group to create an action project to address that issue area, youth deeply examine the local issue that they chose. they also explore the root causes of that topic, and its interrelation to wider structural violence like power, privilege, and oppression. in identifying these root causes, youth learn to deeply examine challenges in society, explore the issues from multiple perspectives, and identify what a better outcome could 120 current issues in comparative education hough look like. they are also introduced to various change-making tactics by reading stories about the approaches that the nobel laureates took to make change in their communities. this includes strategies ranging from storytelling to active allyship and coalition building, to campaigning, among others. the examples above align concretely with literature that emphasizes the importance of learning that helps young people understand how human rights are conceptualized and practiced on the ground (coysh, 2014; osler, 2016; tibbitts, 2017). empowerment methodologies focus on cultivating agencies in learners and increasing their capacities to influence their environment through topics of personal relevance to the learner (tibbitts, 2017). these methods also expose participants to new topics or issues that may originally have been unknown but become important to the learner. kepenecki’s (2005) study of human rights education in turkey, as an example, demonstrated the challenges of integrating human rights into the curriculum in that sometimes the language can be too legalistic, lofty, or advanced for learners to understand. the study emphasizes the importance of tailoring hre to the learner and of making it applicable to the learner’s environment. hence, fostering opportunities for learners to concretely study and apply human rights principles to a social change-oriented curriculum is one way of making hre relevant and understandable. through this approach, youth come to believe in themselves and their ability to make a difference. the peacejam 2023 annual report highlighted that 93 percent of youth who participated in peacejam believe that one person can make a difference, 97 percent said they will be peacemakers for the rest of their lives, and 94 percent said peacejam positively influenced their participation in the democratic process (peacejam, 2023). context the ambassadors curriculum is currently facilitated across multiple different contexts, with peacejam chapters operating in 14 countries, and peacejam clubs in an additional 41 countries. this presents benefits and downfalls. on the one hand, the lessons and activities of the curriculum are flexible and can be adapted to formal, non-formal, or informal learning spaces. this allows schools and youth organizations to adapt the curriculum to their needs, policies, schedules, and social climate. the geographic reach also creates a global community of young changemakers, connecting them with ideas, perspectives, and innovations from around the world. however, although flexibility allows for adaptability across contexts, it is important to consider the wider potential implications of adapting a western-developed curriculum to other settings, particularly in sensitive contexts like post-conflict areas. bar-tal and rosen (2009) emphasize that hre cannot be detached from its surroundings. political and societal conditions have an immense effect on education, determining what format would be effective. bajaj (2017) further highlights how hre takes different shapes and approaches in different contexts. for instance, some curricula may focus on global citizenship as an outcome; however, in other contexts, such as in conflict settings, current issues in comparative education 121 the peacejam foundation: an analytical program review through a transformative peace education lens curricula may focus on coexistence and respect for difference. this differentiation is extremely important in ensuring that the curriculum meets the needs and acknowledges the challenges of different learning environments and cultural contexts. to connect this concept with peacejam, currently, the ambassadors curriculum is facilitated in timor-leste, guatemala, south africa, and liberia, along with other post-conflict contexts. while thre may be important in these settings for fostering positive peace, it is also pertinent to consider the dynamics of implementing them in such spaces. as an example, russell and suarez (2017) highlight the potential danger and challenges of implementing education focused on human rights and social change in schools in post-conflict settings. they share examples of educators in south africa who were afraid to teach curricula that focused on social issues, as they feared that focusing on contentious topics would potentially lead to a backlash by authoritarian governments. when education becomes politicized, it can lead to negative consequences for educators and students and potentially put them at risk (russell & suarez, 2017). one element of the ambassadors curriculum that may allow it to function more easily in post-conflict contexts is its heavier focus on indirect rather than direct peace education. bar-tal and rosen (2009) distinguish between direct and indirect peace education, with indirect peace education focusing on general themes relevant to peacemaking, rather than directly referencing, or addressing specific elements of a particular conflict. in indirect education, the content emphasizes themes like empathy, human rights, and conflict resolution skills, and focuses on helping young people develop new skills, beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and values that build peace (bar-tal & rosen, 2009). in this way, the ambassadors curriculum may be beneficial even in conflict contexts. each peacejam chapter and club works with local staff to deliver the curriculum, which may also help contextualize it to the local environment. this aligns with freire’s (1970) emphasis on the relevance of engaging in authentic dialogue with communities in designing education and development approaches. however, it is important to consider whether the main ambassador’s curricular model is relevant in all contexts with just minor adaptation, or if a major structural shift in the delivery approach would be needed in some cases. for example, mendenhall and chopra (2016) underscore the challenge that some hre programs face in adopting strategies that may be viewed as individualistic. these scholars note that whereas many peace education programs might begin with individualized concepts like personal identity or self-esteem, this notion may be considered invalid as it “belongs to those societies that are individualistic” (sommers 2001, p. 181, as cited in mendenhall & chopra, 2016). the ambassador curriculum’s focus on self-reflection, personal communication, and individual leadership styles, along with other individual development pieces may run the risk of not aligning with some cultural contexts. 122 current issues in comparative education hough conclusion the content and structure of the peacejam ambassadors curriculum fall within the model of transformative human rights education through its focus on individual empowerment, agency, and social change. the curriculum is designed to place youth at the center, authentically engaging them in both self-reflection and shaping the world around them. the content and structure are set up in a way that builds toward personal transformation in skills, attitudes, and behaviors, while also developing skill sets and avenues for making individual and collective change. due to the curriculum’s format of having young people identify the local and global issues that matter most to them as the foundation of their social change projects, the model adds relevance for the learner. this also makes the curriculum more adaptable across different global contexts. implementation of the curriculum across contexts by local chapters, educators, and adult facilitators, allows it to be contextualized appropriately. however, the adaptation of the curriculum across contexts is a space that peacejam can continue to develop. it would be beneficial for the organization to further consider what the curriculum might look like in contexts that define human rights differently, in sensitive or conflict-affected environments, and in cultural contexts that place more emphasis on collective versus individual development. peacejam can also build out additional training for facilitators operating in these environments, along with generally more training for facilitators across all contexts on how to engage youth in sensitive conversations. the ambassadors curriculum engages young people in shaping the societies around them. it invites youth into conversations about important local and global issues. it then helps young people build values and tools to address these issues and provides avenues for them to make that change. the tenets articulated in this curricular analysis shed light on other hre practitioners looking to ground their programming in a transformative approach. whitney hough is a doctoral candidate (ph.d.) in the international and comparative education program at teachers college, columbia university. her research examines access to high-quality education in emergencies and teacher agency in conflict-affected contexts. whitney is also a deputy project director at irex, where she manages fulbright k-12 teacher professional development programs. conflict of interest statement note that while the author is familiar with the peacejam foundation, she is not currently affiliated with the organization. current issues in comparative education 123 the peacejam foundation: an analytical program review through a transformative peace education lens references american university. 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it requires a good foundation in the theories of neo-institutionalism, policy formation, and transfer and lesson-drawing in order to understand the complex manner in which the author begins to showcase his findings and draw conclusions. as the book is a discussion of an institution formed by and inclusive of nations with similar histories and populations, jules uses “the neo-institutionalist school of thought (guided by john meyer, francisco ramirez, and others) focused on the ‘increase in the common education principles, policies, and practices among countries with various characteristics’” (p. 40) to show how caricom came to be and its effects on three different levels: how each nation’s policies relate to each other, to those of the regime, and to those on an international level. jules grounds his research within neo-institutionalism, and his data is drawn from in-person interviews and document analysis. the discussion of the findings remains at the discursive level; the book does not focus on how policy intersects with local context or practice. part two, “caribbeanization: regional educational policy-making and national metamorphoses” begins with a history of the evolution of regionalism within the caribbean, starting with colonialism, the west indies federation, and finally the birth of caricom. a detailing of the structure of caricom and several of its divisions, here called “organs,” follows. the policy analysis begins next, as the author details the emergence of the csme, the outcome of years of policy debate, exchange, interpretation, and implementation. as the csme is a reflection of caricom’s economic vision, jules spends less time on it than he does on the efforts that led to the ceps. several sections including, “national education systems,” “education in the region: current issues in comparative education 187 a background,” and “the ‘new’ role of regional policy in education,” offer details on the foundations, purposes and development of education and education systems within the region. this is a strong section, as jules utilizes policy documents such as the treaty of chaguaramas to highlight directly the evolutions from nation-centric educational programs to those that include all member nations under the banner of caricom. in this way, jules highlights his shift from the use of the nation-state as the unit of analysis towards one which centers on the trans-regional regime and its extended role in educational development. additionally, he begins to lay the groundwork for his use of functional cooperation and policy transfer as conceptual frameworks to separate 20th century caricom educational policy into three distinct periods. part three, “dummy transfer or real transfer: the semantics of policy harmonization” is separated into three sub-sections, each relating a distinct policy period within caricom which jules was able to glean from the data analysis. the first period, intensified functional cooperation, describes the policy era between 1990-1996. jules suggests that although caricom “arose out of a general trend in the 1970s: the collaboration of developing countries in the global south to form powerful economic trading blocs” (p. 137), it has gone beyond that function to serve as a receptacle and distributor of a variety of policies throughout the region. the nations primarily used lesson-drawing as a policy tool, relying on each other to set their own policy agendas. endogenous bouleversement describes the policy period between 1996-2002, highlights of which includes the foundations of the csme and the codifying of the characteristics of the “ideal caribbean citizen.” this era is significant because of the turn from nation-specific policies to regional ones used to buttress against the growing pressures of globalization; this upheaval era was “categorized by the lack of national policies and the commencement of a battle at the regional level for a regional policy identity” (p. 170). finally, jules uses the concept of policy trilingualism to explain the period between 2002-2008 and is presented as an effort to extend steiner-khamsi and stolpe’s (2006) work on policy bilingualism. the essential argument is there are not two, but three separate, interrelated conversations occurring simultaneously between actors and their respective audiences: (1) the nation-state and national audience, (2) the trans-regional regime and regional audience, (3) supranational organizations and international audience. here jules adds to the existing literature by suggesting fragile nations can create a trans-national regime, in this case caricom, as a connector, mediator, translator, and shield against “endogenous” and “exogenous” pressures, particularly those arising on the international stage. further, this new actor can take on a life of its own, enabled by those who created it initially. therefore in the conclusion, the author offers a new take on “glocalization”: g-regionalization, whereby transnational regimes will be the new buffer between development and participation in a global market while keeping entire regions and their citizens viable and competitive as well. this book is for scholars and others interested in the formation of cooperative international regimes, policy creation and functionality, and how the small and fragile nations of the caribbean utilize their commonalities to build a regional structure to enhance their position in the globalized worldwide political, social, and economic realities. in addition, it adds to the literature on lessondrawing, policy discourse and education development within the caribbean. finally, the book can be useful to see how caricom tends to inhabit the space between neo-institutionalism and cultural divergence theories in comparative education research. drawing from both neoinstitutionalist literature that emphasizes worldwide trends toward educational convergence, and other literature that showcases the significance of local cultural contexts, jules builds an argument to demonstrate that local forces can meld together to form a more viable, sustainable force against globalization in the form of a trans-regional regime, and then create communicative systems to exchange, cooperate and develop as a region. indeed, as jules writes, the “small states” 188 current issues in comparative education of caricom have been able to “[devise] ingenious ways to survive globalization” (p. 49). other works cited carney, s. (2009). negotiating policy in an age of globalization: exploring educational “poliyscapes” in denmark, nepal, and china. comparative education review, 53(1), 63-88. steiner-khamsi, g. & stolpe, i. (2006). educational import in mongolia: local encounters with global forces. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. – reviewed by landis g. fryer, loyola university chicago tertiary education in small states: planning in the context of globalization, edited by michaela martin and mark bray. paris, france: international institute for educational planning. & unesco, 2011. isbn-13: 978-9280313581. this book provides a comprehensive introduction to tertiary education in small states encountering the effects of globalization. the book is organized into four sections. the first outlines concepts and goals related to research of small states. the second section provides a series of studies of the ways small states have initiated and reformed tertiary education at regional and national levels. all of the case studies in the second section illustrate ways that small states have developed and conducted their work in tertiary education in the global context, noting challenges and successes of specific, contextual strategies. the third section examines how a select set of small states have designed effective policies related to technology, funding, and quality assurance issues. the fourth section draws conclusions based on the research discussed throughout the text. a key point that is made early on in the work is that small states are not just “scaled down versions of larger ones” (p. 25). this enables us to rethink our understanding of the challenges that small states face, but it also asks us to consider the lessons we can learn from the strategies and development processes that small states undergo. with this in mind, the authors offer the rationale for considering tertiary education as the book’s focus, noting unesco’s international institute for educational planning‘s (iiep) concern with the unique features and of small states. the iiep began a specific project on tertiary education in small states because they see a strong link between tertiary education and efforts by small states to build human capital and expand resources. the main challenge that had been identified then by iiep was funding for tertiary education in small states. an important outcome of the iiep project was the policy forum in 2009 and unesco’s conference on higher education in 2009, which enabled representatives from an array of small states to discuss institutional strategies and supports. this edited collection contributes to previous research agendas of iiep and unesco. the authors spend some time defining key terms in order to place conceptual boundaries around tertiary education in order to distinguish it from higher education. drawing on henchy (1990), they argue that tertiary education is a level of advanced learning, beyond secondary, that adults seek at institutions such as universities, colleges, institutes, or advanced schools that are distinct from the structure of primary and secondary education. in addition, tertiary education includes full-time and part-time programs that are both part of universities and other professional trainings. 184 current issues in comparative education ‘fuzziness’ of sovereignty and juridical ambiguities may allow a chance to, as baldacchino writes, “exploit a situation to serve [another] purpose” (p. 27), one beyond just the economic exploitation for which the law of the sea seems intended. perhaps, by better aligning our aquatic imaginaries with the physical spatialities of ocean space, we can begin to envision policies that reduce trash production, prevent ocean pollution and restore the ocean’s health. other works cited cohen, j. (1997). estimates of coastal populations. science, 278, 1211-1212. harvey, d. (1985). the geopolitics of capitalism. in d. gregory & j. urry (eds.), social relations and spatial structures (pp. 128-163). london, uk: methuen. harvey, d. (1991). the condition of postmodernity: an enquiry into the origins of cultural change. oxford, uk: wiley-blackwell. hoshaw. l. (2010, nov. 10). afloat in the ocean, expanding islands of trash. the new york times. steinberg, p. e. (1999). navigating to multiple horizons: toward a geography of ocean-space. the professional geographer, 51(3), 366-375. steinberg, p. e. (2001). the social construction of the ocean. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. – reviewed by katherine g. sammler, the university of arizona enhancing professional practice: a framework for teaching, by charlotte danielson. alexandria, va: association for supervision and curriculum development, 2007. 200 pp. isbn-13: 978-1416605171 education in small states: policies and priorities, by michael crossley, mark bray, & steve packer. london, uk: commonwealth secretariat, 2011. 120 pp. isbn-13: 978-1849290364 the teaching profession has been the subject of perpetual scrutiny for several reasons, but one of the most prevalent criticisms is that educators’ practices are not supported by standards. it is true that most professions have a set of norms regarding conduct for their members. teachers also have sets of standards, but they are usually more relevant to the actual training of instructors or the way in which the curriculum is to be taught. the natural concern for having a benchmark by which professional conduct is evaluated is that school environments can vary so wildly within even a single district that these standards may be rendered irrelevant depending upon the circumstances. with this problem in mind, charlotte danielson does an admirable job of outlining the standard of conduct to which educators should strive to adhere in enhancing professional practice: a framework for teaching. danielson’s aim is elegant in its simplicity: create a framework which supports new teachers while enhancing the abilities of veteran teachers by giving them a common language to communicate current issues in comparative education 185 with one another, providing a basis for self-assessment, while always keeping students’ learning at the forefront. however, its utility falls into question due to a lack of widespread applicability for atypical learning environments, specifically those differing from the united states. the book’s strength lies in its ability to identify important elements present in the teaching profession (the idea that teachers are viewed as professionals is an important keystone of the book). she breaks her framework into four ‘domains’, the first three of which focus on teacher preparedness and student-teacher relations. creating a positive learning environment with clear expectations and being able to demonstrate a mastery of the subject being taught are critical to the success of the framework. danielson posits that if students feel respected and know what is required of them to succeed in class then their learning will ultimately benefit. these are not new or farfetched ideas, but where her framework succeeds is providing both methods that will serve to create such an environment and, more importantly, potential pitfalls that may arise in attempting to implement these ideas. classroom management is a notoriously difficult skill to master for new teachers and, instead of stating her framework as a way things must be done, it serves more as a guiding light by which educators can align themselves with in a way that best fits their teaching style. the fourth ‘domain’ danielson outlines place an emphasis on introspection for the teacher as well as external learning factors. she places great weight on fostering positive, working relationships between new instructors and their veteran counterparts. however, students’ families are also considered an integral part of the learning experience and uses the old adage ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ as the basis for her work in this domain. it is at this point that it intersects with the work of crossley et al. education in small states: policies and practice. their work eloquently presents the tremendous challenges inherent to small states. using sources and interviews from all corners of the world, they seek for the book to be a stimulus for policymakers to take action and create a comprehensive set of goals for small state education systems. their work reads as much as a call to action as it does a plea for help in these regions. throughout the book the reader is taken through the barriers to academic success both students and educators face, and it is in this vein that danielson’s framework falls short in its goal to create a baseline for professional development that is broadly applicable. crossley et al. immediately point out, then consistently reinforce, the idea that frameworks intended for larger states are often not applicable to the small states they examined. furthermore, even across small states there are a great number of contextual factors which preclude a global framework from being truly effectively implemented. it is also important to note that many of the ideas danielson sets forth border on impossible for small states given their limited resources. perhaps the most glaringly apparent dichotomy that exists between danielson’s frameworks and the learning environments discussed by crossley et al. is the heavy emphasis danielson places upon specialization. she sets forth dozens of frameworks for educators based upon specific subject areas or student types. having teachers who are able to devote themselves to a subset of students is not a luxury enjoyed by the small states studied by crossley et al. danielson and crossley et al. both fulfill the intended functions of their books to a limited extent. danielson demonstrates a framework for educators that is both useful and easily applicable for systems with adequate resources, however it is ill-equipped to handle many of the challenges presented by small states. crossley et al. provide an excellent overview for readers about the issues that arise in small state education environments. it serves well as an informative call to action, which ultimately is the purpose of the book. would danielson’s framework be able to 186 current issues in comparative education be read and used in small states? perhaps portions that speak broadly to the intrinsic nature of schooling itself, but it would not be useful as the global framework danielson seeks to create. – reviewed by bradley a. kirshenbaum, loyola university chicago neither world polity nor local or national societies: regionalization in the global south – the caribbean community. frankfurt-am-main: peter lang, 2012. 322 pp. isbn-13: 978-3631601044 in neither world polity nor local or national societies: regionalization in the global south – the caribbean community, tavis jules offers revealing insight on the development of education policy used for and within a purposefully constructed regional space. methodologically, the book is based upon an analysis of policy documents, interviews and other primary sources coded to discover common themes embedded in efforts by policymakers within the caribbean community – aka caricom, a 15-member organization composed of anglophone nations of the caribbean area – to develop a “policyscape” (carney, 2009) which would provide benefits for each member in ways they could not attain on their own. to this end, the book uses education policy to unearth how, through functional cooperation, these countries came together to form a trans-regional regime to help promote global awareness of the fragility and vulnerability of the caribbean region. further, caricom set up the caribbean single market economy (csme), established the tenets of the “ideal caribbean person,” and enabled the construction of the caribbean educational policy space (ceps) to further educational development. the book is divided into three main parts. in part one, “the limits of the world polity inquest,” jules introduces the reader to the theoretical base upon which the book is built, with individual sections given such titles as “the substratum of neo-institutionalism,” “dogmatic isomorphic tendencies,” and “amalgamating lesson-drawing, externalization, and policy transfer.” in general, this opening section is not for the masses; it requires a good foundation in the theories of neo-institutionalism, policy formation, and transfer and lesson-drawing in order to understand the complex manner in which the author begins to showcase his findings and draw conclusions. as the book is a discussion of an institution formed by and inclusive of nations with similar histories and populations, jules uses “the neo-institutionalist school of thought (guided by john meyer, francisco ramirez, and others) focused on the ‘increase in the common education principles, policies, and practices among countries with various characteristics’” (p. 40) to show how caricom came to be and its effects on three different levels: how each nation’s policies relate to each other, to those of the regime, and to those on an international level. jules grounds his research within neo-institutionalism, and his data is drawn from in-person interviews and document analysis. the discussion of the findings remains at the discursive level; the book does not focus on how policy intersects with local context or practice. part two, “caribbeanization: regional educational policy-making and national metamorphoses” begins with a history of the evolution of regionalism within the caribbean, starting with colonialism, the west indies federation, and finally the birth of caricom. a detailing of the structure of caricom and several of its divisions, here called “organs,” follows. the policy analysis begins next, as the author details the emergence of the csme, the outcome of years of policy debate, exchange, interpretation, and implementation. as the csme is a reflection of caricom’s economic vision, jules spends less time on it than he does on the efforts that led to the ceps. several sections including, “national education systems,” “education in the region: © 2012 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(1): 5-13. editorial introduction re-reading the anamorphosis of educational fragility, vulnerability, and strength in small states special guest editor tavis d. jules loyola university chicago the raison d’être of small states research not so long ago, across many disciplines, the study of small states was seen as a futile project since “small states have been rendered synonymous to chronically vulnerable and problematic territories for which aid, assistance and especially favourable deals are legitimate” (baldacchino, 2012, p. 237). yet within the past eighteen months we have seen a popular resurgence of educational research on small states in comparative and international education (cie) with at least two publications in 2011 (education in small states: policies and priorities by michael crossley, mark bray and steve packer, and tertiary education in small states: planning in the context of globalization edited by michaela martin and mark bray) and one in 2010 (education in small states: global imperatives, regional initiatives and local dilemmas edited by peter mayo). before this wave of contemporary comparative analysis, the last comprehensive analysis in cie of educational developments in small states appeared in the special issue in comparative education in 2008, comparative and international perspectives on education in small states guest edited by peter mayo. this special issue of current issues in comparative education shows the raison d’être of small states research is more pertinent now than ever, and challenges doubts over whether small state studies is still noteworthy as a category of analysis (see goetschel, 1998; baehr, 1974; christmas-moller, 1983). the numerous submissions for this special issue corroborate the expanded interest in the topic, which beseeches the question: what is now ‘novel’ about small states that has drawn new attention from researchers? perhaps an answer to this question rests in the economics of small states. another – although not unrelated – answer could be the movement of small states from government to governance, driven by globalization and technology which call for innovation and inventiveness to partake in the knowledge economy. indeed, globalization has changed the way small states are regulated since it creates both homogenization and new localisms as nation states are confined to particular spaces, topographies, and ecologies. therefore, in a post-‘global financial crises’ era, this issue offers re-readings of the policies, performances, and practices of small states, and continues the resurgent discourse about what we can learn from them. for some time now, small states research has been on an ‘empirical cliff,’ where there is emergent curiosity about why these states are successful, but diminishing empirical research about what constitutes success. historically, the overall narrative on education in small states focused on analyzing individual states and searching for comparative patterns. several prior studies have tried to address the educational challenges in small states, falling into two categories: single country studies or geo-strategic/geo-hemispherical studies (such as the commonwealth, countries, the caribbean community [caricom], and the association of southeast asian nations [asean]). within this issue, we have found new conceptualizations of small states that move away from “methodological nationalism” (robertson & dale, 2008) and provide unique 6 current issues in comparative education editorial introduction comparative perspectives on the strengths, vulnerabilities, and fragility that have come to define small states. the authors use existent literature on small political jurisdiction (see baldacchino, 2012; mayo, 2010) to reassess how distinctive small jurisdictions, such as the favelas in brazil, which exist within a large urban metropolis, also face and respond to the same encounters that small states do (see in this issue straubhaar). this new form of social learning forms a jurisdictions perspective that helps us to draw lessons from small states and apply them to big problems. from a public administration viewpoint, small states are seen as having the four defining behavioral characteristics of ‘smallness’: “exaggerated personalism, limited resources, inadequate service delivery and donor dependence” (sutton, 2006, p. 13). further, baldacchino (2012) argues that a “deficit discourse” exists around small states that are premised upon their inability to develop certain institutions and power. despite this, size does matter when it comes to getting things done, as small states present advantages such as strategic flexibility (baldacchino & bertram, 2009) and economies which can outperform larger ones (armstrong, de kervenoael, li, & read, 1998). thus, we should move towards seeing smallness as complimentary and not an exculpation for economic development. on the one hand, small states define themselves as such only when it is advantageous to them and on the other hand international, multilateral, transnational, supranational, trans-regional regimes entities, and institutions identify with this concept of smallness only when such organizations wish to offer advice and expertise as active specialists. however, recipient states and regional regimes gladly accept being labeled small, fragile, and vulnerable to bring donor funding to obscured and obfuscated projects while showing linkages and legitimacy with international mandates and targets. moreover, in some instances we are now seeing greater collaboration between small states across different sectors give rise to a form of “new mutualism” defined by (i) creating a multi-sectoral approach, (ii) setting international targets, and (iii) establishing regional benchmarks (jules, 2012). after all, as various articles in this issue (see in this issue the articles by baldacchino; crossley & sprague) point out smallness has numerous advantages and gives rise to self-autonomous regions within larger states, redefining what it means to be a large state or a jurisdiction in a large state. in numerous small states, education has become a target of the reform agenda as part of broader new public management (npm) and neoliberal restructuring. given the pervasiveness of educational reforms premised upon npm in small states, we could come to the conclusion that the “global speak” (steiner-khamsi & stolpe, 2006) influences national discourses and thus many small states are starting to align national aspirations with global and regional thinking (jules, 2008). yet it remains important to see who continues to challenge and propel simpler conceptions of smallness. in what follows, first i revisit the definitional tenets of what constitutes a small state (those who self-identify as such as well as those in which the arbitrary definition of smallness has been ascribed by the commonwealth secretariat and world bank as well as the united nations small island developing states [sids] project). next, i argue that being seen as small in today’s interconnected society is a survival characteristic within a post-bureaucratic society of vanishing scale, size, and space. finally, i show how various chapters in this special edition make up the new mosaic of the raison d’être of small state research. from an a priori definition to a posteriori conceptualization early scholars battled with defining the characteristics of small states, categorizing them as either having a positive or negative impact upon state centric relations. an a priori definition of small states materialized in the 1960s with the creation of numerous states in the post-colonial era. while there is no widely accepted unified definition of small states (baldacchino, 2012; cowards, 2002), its vocabulary often focuses on population size, ecology, vulnerability to external shocks, current issues in comparative education 7 editorial introduction limited human and natural resources, nature of their economies, cost per capita of services, and dependence on trade. early definitions of small states also distinguished small societies from small territories and called attention to the fact that small societies may exist in large states (benedict, 1967). attention was given also to the political and economic systems of small states; however, scholars soon realized that smallness is relative (martin & bray, 2011). regardless, over time numerous characteristics merged into a core definition meant to encompass the perceived challenges facing small states through “economics of size” (demas, 1965) and to describe state vulnerability and fragility (briguglio, 1995; bune, 1987; holmes, 1976). thus, interchangeable concepts of “small states,” “micro-states,” “small open economies” and “small islands developing states” (armstrong et al., 1998; commonwealth advisory group, 1997; commonwealth consultative group, 1985; commonwealth secretariat & world bank task force, 2000; read, 2004) entered the academic lexicon. in this small state literature a number of themes emerge. first, the definition about what constitutes a small state references population size. kuznets (1960) sets an upper population limit of 10 million for small states; by this gauge, today 134 countries could be considered small. the core definition now sets upper size limits for small states between 1.5 million to 5 million (armstrong et al., 1998; bacchus, 2008; commonwealth secretariat, 2009; world bank, 2012). however by these measurements a few large countries (e.g., botswana, jamaica, lesotho, namibia, papua new guinea, and the gambia) with population sizes above 1.5 million are also categorized as small since they share several of the same characteristics of smallness – including small gdps (bernal, 1998; commonwealth secretariat/world bank task force, 2000; see in this issue crossley & sprague). once population size constraints had been taken into account, attention was turned to understanding what makes smallness unique. the joint commonwealth secretariat/world bank task force (2000) notes that small states share and are shaped by numerous characteristics that impede their development including: vulnerability to external events; natural disasters that create havoc on national incomes; limited capacity in the public and private sectors; and the uncertain and difficult economic transition to a changing world trade regime. further, the report includes specific challenges of remoteness and isolation; openness; susceptibility to natural disasters and environmental change; limited diversification; poverty and limited capacity; and access to external capital. from this perspective, extensive studies have examined specific characteristics that impede the development of small states by focusing on south-south migration (bartlett, 2012), the politics of education in small states (grant, 1993), the effect of indigenous knowledge and values upon the policy process (holmes & crossley, 2004), research capacity (crossley, 2008), financial and human capital limitations (jules, 1994), impact of donor aid on local decisions (jules, 2006; jules, 2010), adult education (jules, 2006), higher education financing (baldacchino & farrugia, 2002; nkrumah-young, huisman, & powell 2008), cooperation and collaboration (jules, 2008; jules 2012), post-socialist transformation (jules, forthcoming; jules, 2011), and the small scale syndrome (baldacchino, 1997). as these research foci show, a posteriori conceptualization should now focus on what it means to empirically study small states rather than what it means to be identified as a small state. this perspective involves looking at the small within the large and thus retuning to benedict’s (1967) sociological characteristics of small states. this implies inquiring into the segmentation that exists within larger states that may embody the necessary elements of smallness and thus qualify for small states research. finally, we are no longer restricted by geographic jurisdiction; emphasis has now moved to political jurisdiction instead (see mayo, 2010; baldacchino, 2012). 8 current issues in comparative education editorial introduction moving towards small state anamorphosis: a paradigmatic shift in perspective anamorphosis suggests that the spectator needs to use a specific vantage point while observing a distorted projection of an image to perceive its true shape. if we apply the concept of anamorphosis to the raison d’être of small state research, not only do we see the research within the research (i.e. the empirical study of smallness), but we might view small state research as a gateway to understanding the challenges that larger states face. we would like to argue that this special issue represents an anamorphic perspective of re-reading the raison d’être of small state research. this perspective illuminates that small states are increasingly relying on networks (regional and subregional), which in turn allow them to constrain their efforts on the best possible solutions to policy challenges. no longer is isolationism premised upon ‘old regionalism’ or ‘closed regionalism’ seen as a creditable policy response, instead we are seeing the rise of ‘new regionalism’ or ‘open regionalism’ centered on open membership, regional and global trade liberalization, trade facilitation, and the inclusion of regional level into the global market (bergsten 1997; girvan 2001; kuwayama 1999). conceptually, several authors here point out, there is now a movement from incremental change towards fundamental change, including measures that act boldly on competition and innovation since everyone wants to be seen as being modern. methodologically, we authors adhere to the call by robertson and dale (2008) to move away from methodological nationalism and begin to see that education is not primarily associated with the working of the nation-states, but is often formed through several collaborative governance structures (dale, 2003; dale & robertson, 2002; jules, 2012). in this edition, godfrey baldacchino and michael crossley and terra sprague were invited to pinpoint the key conceptual issues that small states face. in arguing that academia has paid little attention to small states, baldacchino reviews the cynicism of the analytical category of smallness by looking at its behavioral issues. in problematizing size and scale, he notes that while there is no agreed definition of the ecology of small states, current trends suggest evidence of a “small scale syndrome” based on a “package of behavioural issues” (p. 14). the main point of this article is that in defining small states, we get wedged at the conceptual phases and do not move beyond them. michael crossley and terra sprague draw on their recent research for the commonwealth secretariat to discuss the implication of the post-2015 international targets upon small states. in reviewing the existent literature to date on small states, they note that in a post-2015 era, small states would benefit tremendously from collaboration and use of the banner of smallness to access “nuanced and contextually sensitive attention” (p. 29). they remind us that larger states can learn much from smaller states, particularly in an era defined by the uncritical tendencies of international educational policy and practices transfer. the second part of this special issue pays attention to issues of fragility, and focuses on to the ways in which we have sought to conceptualize it. rolf straubhaar combines the literatures on fragility – a state-centric concept – (mosselson, wheaton, & frisoli, 2009), small states and small jurisdictions to argue that a de facto jurisdiction such as the favelas in brazil should be categorized as fragile small states. he cautions that although localized setting such as favelas, with their own semiautonomous jurisdictions, lack institutional capacity and are not defined as fragile small states in the traditional sense, we should nevertheless combine the literatures of fragility and small states to reconceptualize the ways in which we study and comprehend smallness and favela life. pigga keskitalo, satu uusiautti and kaarina määttä, in looking at sámi education and language, call attention to new distinctive features of small assemblages by showing how such a label can bring about educational transformation. in discussing assimilative language educational policies, they argue that national educational characteristics should acknowledge historical-cultural burdens and draw upon indigenous conceptualization of time, place, and knowledge. they further note current issues in comparative education 9 editorial introduction that given the small nature of the sámi community, a distinctive sámi pedagogy within such a small community would transform as well as improve inclusive education. the third part pays attention to vulnerability, and focuses on the ways international agencies use it to their advantage during policy negotiations. jerome de lisle notes that donor relationships differ in situations and contexts based on the “strength of the recipient country’s economy” (p. 64). in reviewing educational change in trinidad and tobago (tt) de lisle explores its vulnerability, smallness, and islandness by looking at externally funded secondary school reform projects to identify “facilitators and barriers” (p. 65) to change. de lisle compares the impact of large-scale international assessments, such as iea in 1991 and pisa in 2009, which occurred before and after the 1999 secondary reform, and concludes that after the reform was implemented, tt scores on international assessments had no significant changes. in contextualizing “barriers to change” and why system reforms fail, de lisle identifies three factors: ambiguity, failure to connect, and resource constraints. he also identifies four drivers of changes: leadership, planning and support, involvement and commitment and collaboration and communication. using the population benchmark of 10 million defined by kuznets (1960), d. brent edwards jr. makes the case that el salvador is vulnerable and should be defined as small state. he reviews the role international agencies such as usaid have had in education reform, and highlights how institutional power manifests itself during the formal and informal policymaking stages as well as within the final national policy. his main point is that el salvador can be observed as a small state since it lacks institutional capacity, which is a key characteristic of some small states. the fourth part of this special issue provides a comparative perspective on education in various small states. justin j.w. powell looks at the extent to which higher education institutions reflect global norms as they seek to become global players, comparing higher education in the wealthy small countries of luxembourg and qatar. in looking at the role of national universities in building scientific capacity, powell focuses on the influence of global league tables in a climate where numerous challenges exist in developing and strengthening world-class universities. powell concludes by noting that in these hyper-diverse societies, universities “[emulate] global goals simultaneously with serving local needs” (p. 101) since they seek to become internationally competitive institutions focused on national skill formation. richard o. welsh compares the sids of jamaica and singapore beginning in the 1960s. he shares how jamaica’s gdp was more than singapore’s in that era, and by 2010 singapore’s gdp was nearly seven times more than jamaica. in seeking to understand this divergence in economic development and its link to quality education, welsh posits that singapore utilized a “positioning” educational strategy while jamaica had an “adapting” strategy. he shows that the development trajectories of these states differed based on their role within the former british colonial setting as well as their connections with multilateral organizations. valentyna kushnarenko and ludmila cojocari use the postsocialist small state of moldova to chronicle the internationalization of higher education reforms in state universities as demand for education access increased. in drawing upon interviews with university administrators and focusing on how “international collaborative networks” function (p. 134) the authors argue that the internationalization of higher education is seen by administrators as necessary to seek internationalized foreign partnership. further, national collaboration helps shape the “go global” policy that promotes “greater respect for pluralism and multiculturalism” (p. 138) in higher education. the final section presents several case studies that look cultural influences on educational developments in small states. matthew j. schuelka reviews inclusive education in the isolated small state of bhutan as it shifted its educational policy from an elite monastic tradition to a secular 10 current issues in comparative education editorial introduction system. in reviewing the educational changes in bhutan during the last fifty years, schuelka explores the underlying assumptions between the characterization of bhutan as a small state and its educational development to include the “policy problems” of access, cost and quality and set to the tone of “international audiences” (steiner-khamsi & stope, 2006; jules, 2008). finally, lindsay j. burton looks at how the colonial history of the solomon islands, particularly among the kahua people, continues to shape perspective of a community-based early childhood education program. this collaborative ethnography highlights the continued challenges facing small state and local efforts to deal with these challenges. from a local perspective, burton examines the influences of international policy discourse upon the small jurisdictions (local level) and notes that local programs are based on “indigenous efforts...to counter the continuation of colonization” (p. 158). in sum, we hope that the insights provided in this special issues will continue to inform both theory and practice as well as convey ways for policymakers, governments, and international agencies to re-conceptualize policymaking as they seek to undertake to further waves of global reform. in education, reform is engendered through different ways and legitimated by institutions; we suggest that the researchers, students, practitioners and policymakers may want to move towards a global anamorphosis and identify the best vantage point to see the potential benefits of these reforms and their palpability. the raison d’être of small state research is one such anamorphic lens that may offer exemplar experiences to those in search of them. tavis deryck jules (ed.d., teachers college, columbia university) is assistant professor of cultural and educational policy studies and comparative and international education at loyola university chicago. his research focuses on educational policy formation and development – particularly, but not exclusively, within the caribbean. more recently, his research has focused on analyzing the impact of regionalization upon small (and micro) states. his recent book neither world polity nor local or national societies: regionalization in the global south – the caribbean community was published by peter lang in 2012. email: tjules@luc.edu. references armstrong, h., de kervenoael, r. j., li, x., & read, r. (1998). a comparison of the economic performance of different micro-states, and between micro-states and larger countries. world development, 26(4), 639-656. bacchus, m. k. (2008). the education challenges facing small nation states in the increasingly competitive global economy of the twenty-first century. comparative education, 44(2), 127-145. baehr, p. r. (1975). small states: a tool for analysis? world politics, 27(3), 456-466. baldacchino, g. (1997). global tourism and informal labour relations: the small scale syndrome at work. london, uk: mansell. baldacchino, g. (2012). governmentality is all the rage: the strategy games of small jurisdictions. the round table, 101(3), 235-251. baldacchino, g., & bertram, g. (2009). the beak of the finch: insights into the economic development of small economies. the round table, 98(401), 141-160. current issues in comparative education 11 editorial introduction baldacchino, g., & farrugia, c. (2002). educational planning and management in small states: concepts and experiences. london, uk: commonwealth secretariat. bartlett, l. (2012). south-south migration and education: the case of people of haitian descent born in the dominican republic. compare: a journal of comparative and international education, 42(3), 393-414. benedict, b. (1967). sociological aspects of smallness. in b. benedict (ed.), problems of smaller territories (pp. 45-55). london, uk: university of london/athlone press. bergsten, c. f. (1997). open regionalism. world economy, 20(5), 545-565. briguglio, l. (1995). small island developing states and their economic vulnerabilities. world development, 23, 1615-1632. bune, p. (1987). vulnerability. the courier, 4, 85-87. christmas-moller, w. (1983). some thoughts on the scientific applicability of the small state concept: a research history and a discussion. in o. höll & österreichisches institut für internationale politik (eds.), small states in europe and dependence (pp. 35-53). vienna, austria: w. braumüller. commonwealth advisory group. (1997). a future for small states: overcoming vulnerability. london, uk: commonwealth secretariat. commonwealth consultative group. (1985). vulnerability: small states in the global society. london, uk: commonwealth secretariat. commonwealth secretariat. (2009). small states: economic review and basic statistics – volume 13. london, uk: the commonwealth secretariat. commonwealth secretariat & world bank task force. (2000). small states: meeting challenges in the global economy. retrieved from http://siteresources.worldbank.org/projects/resources/ meetingchallengeinglobaleconomyl.pdf. crowards, t. (2002). defining the category of ‘small’ states. journal of international development, 14(2), pp. 143–179. crossley, m. (2008). the advancement of educational research in small states. comparative education, 44(2), 247-254. dale, r. (2003). globalization: a new world for comparative education? in j. schriewer (ed.), discourse formation in comparative education (2nd ed.) (pp. 87-110). new york, ny: peter lang. dale, r. & robertson, s. (2002). the varying effects of regional organizations as subjects of globalization of education. comparative education review, 46(1), 10-36. demas, w. g. (1965). the economics of development in small countries with special reference to the caribbean. montreal, canada: mcgill university press. 12 current issues in comparative education editorial introduction girvan, n. (2001). rally round the west indies: remarks at the launch of the caribbean community. in k. hall (ed.), beyond survival. kingston, jamaica: ian randle publications. goetschel, l. (1998). small states inside and outside the european union: interest and policies. dordrecht, the netherlands: kluwer academic publishers. grant, r. w. (1993). education in small jurisdictions, with reference to the commonwealth caribbean. compare, 23(1), 25-35. holmes, f. (1976). development problems of small countries. in l. v. castle & f. holmes (eds.), co-operation and development in asia pacific region: relations between large and small countries (pp. 4366). tokyo, japan: japan economic research centre. holmes, k., & crossley, m. (2004). whose knowledge, whose values? the contribution of local knowledge to education policy processes: a case study of research development initiatives in the small state of saint lucia. compare, 34(2), 197-214. jules, d. (1994). adult education policy in micro-states: the case of the caribbean. policy studies review, 13(3/4), 415–432. jules, d. (2006). power and educational development: small states and the labors of sisyphus. in m. o. afolayan, d. browne, & d. jules (eds.), current discourse on education in developing nations: essays in honor of b. robert tanachnick and robert koehl (pp. 17–29). new york, ny: nova science publishers. jules, d. (2010). rethinking education for the caribbean: a radical approach. in p. mayo (ed.), education in small states: global imperatives, regional initiatives and local dilemmas. london, uk: routledge. jules, t. d. (2008). re/thinking harmonization in the commonwealth caribbean: audiences, actors, interests, and educational policy formation. (doctoral dissertation). new york, ny: teachers college, columbia university. jules, t. d. (2012). neither world polity nor local or national societies: regionalization in the global south – the caribbean community. berlin, germany: peter lang. jules, t. d. (2011). beyond post-socialist conversions: functional cooperation and trans-regional regimes in the global south. in i. silova (ed.), post-socialism is not dead: (re)reading the global in comparative education. bingley, uk: emerald publishing. jules, t. d. (2012). ‘new mutualism’ in small (and micro) states: the aids generation and aids fatigue in the caribbean educational policy space. in a. w. wiseman & r. n. glover (eds),. the impact of hiv/aids on education worldwide (pp. 259-285). bingley, uk: emerald publishing jules, t. d. (forthcoming). ideological pluralism and revisionism in micro-states: the erection of the caribbean education policy space. globalization, society, and education. kuwayama, m. (1999). open regionalism in asia pacific and latin america: a survey of the literature. new york, ny: united nations, eclac. current issues in comparative education 13 editorial introduction kuznets, s. (1960). economic growth of small nations. in e. a. g. robinson (ed.), economic consequences of the size of nations (pp. 14-32). london, uk: macmillan. martin, m., & bray, m. (eds.). (2012). tertiary education in small states: planning in the context of globalization. paris, france: iiep/unesco. mayo, p. (2010). introduction: comparative and international perspectives on education in small states. in p. mayo (ed.), education in small states: global imperatives, regional initiatives and local dilemmas (pp. 1-4). new york, ny: routledge. mosselson, j., wheaton, w., & frisoli, p. (2009). education and fragility: a synthesis of the literature. journal of education for international development, 4(1), 1-17. nkrumah-young, k. k., huisman, j., & powell, p. (2008). the impact of funding policies on higher education in jamaica. comparative education, 44(2), 215-227. read, r. (2004). the implications of increasing globalization and regionalism for the economic growth of small island states. world development, 32(2), 365-378. robertson, s. l. & dale, r. (2008). researching education in a globalising era: beyond methodological nationalism, methodological statism, methodological educationism and spatial fetishism. in j. resnik (ed.), the production of educational knowledge in the global era (pp. 19-32). rotterdam, the netherlands: sense publications. steiner-khamsi, g. & stolpe, i. (2006). educational import in mongolia: local encounters with global forces. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. sutton, p. (2006). modernizing the state: public sector reform in the commonwealth caribbean. kingston, jamaica: ian randle publishers. world bank. (2012). small states. retrieved from http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/ smallstates. 3. rights deferred, sustainable futures denied indigenousadivasi lessons for interrogating tensions in rights education.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 26, issue 2, special issue 2024 rights deferred, sustainable futures denied: indigenous/adivasi lessons for interrogating tensions in rights education naivedya parakkal university of michigan human rights have been framed as integral to development. yet, despite decades of development programming, human rights violations prevail. this article examines adivasi/indigenous peoples’ encounters with development in attappady, india, especially in relation to their identity and expertise as casteist-colonial india’s indigenous peoples. comparing adivasi interlocutors’ counter-colonial narratives with a thematic analysis of unesco’s recent recommendations on human rights education reveal how interlocutors are noting the disconnect between policy promises of the right to dignity and everyday assaults on adivasi personhood. meanwhile, development programs that prioritize profits over ecological balance continue to jeopardize their right to sustainable futures. these findings emphasize the relevance of redirecting gaze in rights education, from the perceived deficits of global south actors towards those who benefit from sustaining unjust global hierarchies, while legitimizing the rights violations that arise from them. as the often-overlooked experts of relational living in a world rendered precarious by an inherently unsustainable development paradigm, this article’s interlocutors emphasize the significance of centering indigenous/adivasi expertise in imagining systemic shifts in rights education. keywords: coloniality, global south, human rights education, indigenous expertise, unsustainable development. introduction “i know the forest and the forest knows me,” explained murugan,1 an indigenous/adivasi man from the irula tribe in the south indian state of kerala. we were sitting by the banks of the bhavani river, surrounded by the forests and mountains that were an important part of murugan’s childhood. as a boy, murugan could roam the forests freely without being afraid of wild animals because he had “learned that the beings in the forest will do no harm if they know that we respect them.” murugan’s adventures in the forest ended in the mid-2000s when development and conservation projects supported by the kerala state schedule tribes (st) development department introduced restrictions on adivasi peoples’ entry into forest land (suchithra, 2013; thomas, 2018). today, access into murugan’s home hamlet, thanchiyoor, which is one of 192 hamlets in the ‘tribal development block’ of attappady, kerala, is regulated through a police check-post, and indigenous peoples’ entry into the forest is mediated through 1 names of research sites and people are pseudonyms. © 2024, parakkal. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 26(2), 31-56. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en rights deferred, sustainable futures denied: indigenous/adivasi lessons for interrogating tensions in rights education the state’s development and forest departments. for murugan, this means that he and his fellow irular “no longer share the relationship [they] had with the forest and land.” murugan is joining indigenous peoples in india and around the world who assert that various forms of development interventions are severing relations that they have nurtured with sentient beings around them for centuries (corntassel & hardbarger, 2019; quay, 2021; todd, 2016). moreover, burgeoning scholarship demonstrates how development programs in the global south, which neither consult nor substantively engage with indigenous peoples’ knowledge and expertise, are introducing new forms of socio-political and environmental precarities (bodhi & jojo, 2019; huaman, 2019; tuck, 2009). yet, mainstream global education recommendations and their national adaptations continue to frame development as essential for ensuring human rights (unesco, 2023; uvin, 2007). against this background, this article reflects on a key question posed by this special issue—how should human rights education be reconfigured to meet the needs of current and future generations? this inquiry is guided by the following research question: how do people living in a ‘tribal development block’ navigate daily encounters with development, especially in relation to their identity and expertise as adivasi peoples? the goal of this exploration is to interrogate the tensions between policy promises and adivasi peoples’ lived experiences and their implications for human rights education. to do this, i draw on semi-structured narrative interviews (clandinin, 2022; o’toole, 2018) with six adivasi interlocutors whose “counter-colonial narrative” excerpts (ritchie & rau, 2010) illuminate the link between development and rights violation in attappady. as a comparison between these narratives and the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization’s (unesco) recommendation (unesco, 2023) and explainer (unesco, 2024) on education for peace and human rights highlights, policy promises to affirm the right to dignity and the right to sustainable futures remain unfulfilled. with these very policy interventions exacerbating precarities in attappady, the presumed “vulnerable” and “disadvantaged” targets (ministry of human resource development, 2020; unesco, 2017) of these policies are adopting strategies to navigate an inherently unsustainable development paradigm. drawing on the tensions between policy and narratives, this article makes a case for the urgent relevance of centering the intellectual and pedagogical expertise of indigenous/adivasi peoples to transform the interconnected structures of exclusion and colonial violence that have come to define mainstream education, development, and the human rights agenda (patel, 2016; spivak, 2004; sriprakash, et al., 2020). the paper invites those involved in what stein et al. (2022) refer to as “low-intensity” struggles, in which i include myself, to cultivate an openness to learn from “high-intensity learners” to understand what stands in the way of reimagining sustainable development goal 4 (sdg 4) on quality education and human rights education (hre). according to stein et al. (2022), “people in low-intensity struggles have had their sensibilities forged by privilege or aspirations for privilege” 32 current issues in comparative education parakkal (p.280) while benefiting differentially from the injustice wrought by an inherently unsustainable and exclusionary status quo. conversely, those involved in high-intensity struggles “are fighting for their lives as a result of the very system that many of us in low-intensity struggles are fighting to maintain” (stein et al., 2022, p. 280). adivasi interlocutors who are engaged in high-intensity struggles illustrate how mainstream education policy is steeped in the principle of separability (battiste, 2005; silva, 2016), which normalizes the separation of the world’s peoples through manufactured categories based on caste, race, and species. they also demonstrate how educators and policymakers involved in low-intensity work are “cognitively and affectively” ill-equipped to imagine educational alternatives outside the dominant worldview (andreotti, 2016, p. 105). by centering indigenous/adivasi peoples and their insights, this article contributes to growing voices in the field of comparative and international education that are calling for multi-scalar, pluriversal, and geo-epistemically diverse reimaginations of education (manion et al., 2019; nguyen, 2010; sultana, 2019). additionally, the tensions between mainstream hre policy and adivasi peoples experience presented in this article respond to critical policy scholarship advocating for a redirection of gaze in education, development, and human rights—from the manufactured deficits of actors in the global south to the denials and interconnected structures of colonial violence that global north2 actors perpetuate through education (becker, 2021; patel, 2016; simmonds, 2022; tuck & gaztambide-fernández, 2013). research context and background: indigenous peoples in casteist-colonial india adivasi, indigenous peoples of india, scheduled tribes (st),3 and tribals are just a few of many names and categories attributed to one of the earliest inhabitants of the south asian subcontinent (bodhi & ziipao, 2019; da costa & da costa, 2019). adivasis, translatable in many indian languages as ‘adi-first, vasis-inhabitants,’ are not categorized as indigenous peoples by the indian state and therefore do not come under the jurisprudence of the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, adopted by the united nations general assembly in 2007. however, in a historical exploration of indigeneity in south asia, adivasi scholar and poet virginius xaxa (1999) asserts that over 750 tribe groups that live across the country are indeed the 3 in this article, i use the abbreviation st (scheduled tribe) to refer to young indigenous interlocutors because they have stated it to be their preference. indigenous elders in attappady generally use the term ‘adivasi’, the english term ‘tribe’, and/or the name of their tribe group. 2 my use of this terminology is informed by decolonial scholarship and the assertion that global north and south are not geographical descriptors, but a relational, onto-epistemic orientation (dados & connell, 2012; kamal & courtheyn, 2024). global north actors are largely oriented towards and benefit from the dominant but destructive, modern-colonial status-quo, irrespective of their physical location in the world (byrd, 2014; spivak, 2004). current issues in comparative education 33 rights deferred, sustainable futures denied: indigenous/adivasi lessons for interrogating tensions in rights education indigenous peoples of india, even if the state continues to draw on colonial anthology to classify people as st. home to members of three tribe groups—the irula, the muduga, and the kurumba, attappady is designated as a “tribal development block” primarily due to a concentrated population of adivasi communities in the region. this means that the everyday lives of st peoples, including education, health care, housing, and access to public services, are mediated through a state and state-supported development apparatus (escobar, 2012; ferguson, 1994; kjosavik & shanmugaratnam, 2004). this apparatus operates under the conviction that the “path to st development lies in the transition from low-income jobs to high income occupations […] sustainable means of livelihood, and industrial production" (kerala state planning board, 2021, p. 270). adivasi peoples are noting the colonial continuities embedded in the development apparatus that shape their everyday experiences. preetha, one of the interlocutors in this article, articulates this significant aspect of the research context when she states, “whatever the british used to do, the way they used to see indians, that is how these [development] officers and malayalees look at sts now.” guiding concepts: coloniality, education, and the human rights-in-development regime linking sdg 4 and hre through the “human rights-in-development” regime this paper regards global education agendas like sdg 4 and hre as part of a “human rights-in-development” regime, which has redefined human rights as a sub-category within global development goals (donnelly, 1999; sano, 2000; uvin, 2007). as uvin (2007) argues, the incorporation of human rights into development is relatively recent and can be traced back to the 1970s and debates on the ‘right to development’ in the new international economic order (pp. 597-598). education is designated a central role in the human rights-in-development regime as a tool that can provide the skills to achieve development goals and ensure universal rights (kendall, 2008; moghli, 2020; zembylas, 2020), and to facilitate the incremental inclusion of ‘developing’ nations into the ‘developed’ world (ferguson, 2005). for instance, in target 4.7 of sdg 4, knowledge of human rights is listed as one of many skills that learners must acquire to ensure sustainable development (unesco, 2016). unesco’s (2023) most recent recommendation for ensuring peace, human rights, and sustainable development, which is a revision to the 1974 recommendation for education relating to human rights and fundamental freedom, asserts that the revision was done with a view of “firmly embedding the role of education in fostering human rights… and sustainable development” (p. 1). even though this article’s findings focus on interlocutors’ encounters with development and how they navigate rights violations, the policy connections between education and the human rights-in-development regime make interlocutors’ pedagogical insights crucial for reimaging hre. 34 current issues in comparative education parakkal multiple logics and practices of coloniality this research is informed by scholarship that insists education, development, and human rights are ensconced in the logic and practices of coloniality (pashby & sund, 2020; shahjahan, 2013; takayama et al., 2017). decolonial scholars use the term coloniality to refer to the hierarchies and patterns of power (grosfoguel, 2007; quijano, 2007) that continue to “define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production” (maldonado-torres, 2017, p. 97) in the modern world. coloniality, therefore, is the “darker side” or shadow of modernity (mignolo, 2011), and as an analytical category it highlights the “spatiality (expansionist control of land), onto-epistemic racism (elimination and subjugation of difference), and the geopolitics of knowledge production (andreotti, 2016, p. 103), that constitute the “colonial-modern” (mignolo, 2011) world we live in. south asian scholars have extended this framing of coloniality by challenging the tendency within strands of decolonial scholarship to “begin, end, and orient all conversations about colonialism, nationalism, and imperialism to europe and the west” (da costa & da costa, 2019, p. 58). such an orientation is relevant in this research context since the indian state and dominant caste/class indians have long regarded adivasi/indigenous dispossession as an inevitable aspect of national development (bodhi & jojo, 2019; xaxa, 1999). this research begins with the assumption that the interlocutors in this article have already stated—we live in still-colonial conditions characterized by multiple, co-existing articulations of colonialism generated via “development projects, conservation-led displacement, and various uneven forms of migrations that foster ongoing settlement on indigenous land” (da costa & da costa, 2019, p. 54). i employ the term “counter-colonial” (ritchie & rau, 2010) to refer to scholarship and perspectives that interrogate the workings of multiple colonialities in education and development. i view counter-colonial theorizing as including postcolonial, decolonial, indigenous, and southern perspectives and aiming towards a “proactive dialogical openness to ‘counter-ing’ colonized thinking with alternative narratives reflective of hope, regeneration, and transformational shifts” (ritchie & rau, 2010, p. 362). ‘otherwise’ possibilities in education this article builds on scholarly explorations for ‘otherwise’ possibilities in education to make a case for centering the intellectual and pedagogical expertise of indigenous/adivasi peoples in reconfiguring education outside the logic of coloniality (nakata et al., 2012; ritchie, 2013; smith et al., 2019). ‘otherwise’ possibilities, as crawley (2016) asserts, “announces the fact of infinite alternatives to what is… as a means to disrupt the current configurations of power and inequity” (p. 3). it also underscores that ongoing rights violations and inequity are not simply the consequences of development gone wrong. rather, exclusion and violence constitute development and current issues in comparative education 35 rights deferred, sustainable futures denied: indigenous/adivasi lessons for interrogating tensions in rights education are what divides the world into ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ (ferguson, 2005; stein et al., 2022). methodological framework: comparing narrative interviews and policy my professional and personal experiences while living in attappady for two years (2014–2015 and 2021–2022), and over a decade-long engagement with st youth and activists in india have informed the development of this article. specifically, i draw on interview data that was generated during a comparative case study (bartlett & vavrus, 2017) of inclusive education that i conducted in thanchiyoor from september 2021 to july 2022 as part of my dissertation research. six interlocutors: brief profiles the interlocutors of my dissertation included 40 irula and muduga tribe members between the ages of 17 and approximately 70 years old, engaged in formal education and employment, political activism, daily wage labor, and storytelling. in this article, i draw on the insights of five irula tribe youth and one irula elder living in thanchiyoor, since they make explicit connections between development, rights, and alternate possibilities for education. bhuvi and jinu, who were interviewed together, are currently pursuing post-secondary education in palakkad town, an hour-long bus ride from thanchiyoor. murugan is a storyteller and farmer who discontinued formal education after tenth grade and has been dabbling in daily wage and contract work in and around attappady for over a decade. soumya has a diploma in teacher education and recently received a permanent position as an elementary teacher in a government school near thanchiyoor. preetha is a student in a master’s program in sociology and an activist holding leadership positions in multiple youth and st advocacy groups. nenjan moopan is the head of thanchiyoor hamlet. he withdrew from political activism in his late 40s after what he described as “having had enough” and is now pursuing intermittent daily wage work. relevant data generation methods the data i present in this article is drawn from larger dissertation research in which i combined multiple ethnographic methods4 with thematic policy analysis. this article draws on five audio-recorded, transcribed, and translated semi-structured interviews. 4 i lived near thanchiyoor hamlet for a year, and hamlet elders invited me to participate in everyday activities, which included helping with the community kitchen, teaching conversational english, and accompanying hamlet women to their work site. a few of the hamlet’s youth who are members of a prominent, left-wing youth organization graciously included me in their meetings and activities. eight of these youth and i co-founded the youth researchers of attappady collective (yrac) and we employed ypar methods (bellino, 2023; cammarota & fine, 2008) to make sense of the persistent exclusion that st youth experience in educational spaces and everyday life. the participant observation conducted over a period of eight months was documented through field notes and memos. data generation methods also included group discussions and life-story interviews (atkinson, 1998). 36 current issues in comparative education parakkal interviews were conducted between january and june 2022 and lasted between one and a half and two hours. daily field notes and analytical memos (maxwell, 2013) informed the interview guides, which were tailored specifically for each participant. semi-structured interviews were followed up with unstructured, member-checking interviews, documented through jottings and reflective memos (emerson et al., 2011), and appended to the interview transcript. i employed a narrative analysis lens (clandinin, 2022; hickson, 2016; o’toole, 2018) to conduct and analyze interviews, which means that i paid attention to how interlocutors tell and employ stories to interpret their experiences. during data analysis conducted using the qualitative analysis software, nvivo, i employed initial and focused coding (charmaz, 2006) to generate “storied themes” (hunt et al., 2006) related to the research questions. a key limitation of my data selection is that i draw from interviews that were conducted based on interview guides that addressed my dissertation research questions, which centered on inclusive education within the sdg 4 agenda, rather than on rights education. therefore, this article draws on a smaller number of interlocutors who made explicit connections between rights and development in their interviews. additionally, as i discuss next, policy selection was limited to recent global documents, which have not yet been adopted by india’s human rights commission. comparing policy and narratives: rationale and analysis the core assumption of sdg 4 policies is that providing skills will eventually lead to universal development and human rights (mason et al., 2019; wulff, 2020). however, the world is more formally educated than it has ever been, and yet actors involved in high-intensity struggles continue to experience persistent rights violations under populist and techno-bureaucratic regimes (benavot & smith, 2020; wulff, 2021). to make sense of this conundrum, it is not sufficient to study the definitions and dividing practices (ball, 1998) of policy texts. rather, it is crucial to understand the constructions and experiences of development as “embodied in the social, cultural, and ideological underpinnings of the local context” (nguyen, 2010, p. 353). to compare the tensions between policy and narratives, i purposefully selected two policy documents published recently by unesco: (1) a recommendation on education for peace and human rights, international understanding, cooperation, fundamental freedoms, global citizenship, and sustainable development, which was adopted by united nations members in november 2023, and will be referred to from hereon as the recommendation; and (2) recommendation on education for peace, human rights, and sustainable development: an explainer (unesco, 2024), which outlines the practical implications of the recommendation for educational stakeholders, and will be referred to from hereon as the explainer. policy selection was purposeful and based on two criteria. one, as i described in a previous section, these documents affirm the link between education and human rights-in-development. two, india’s national education policy is guided by the targets current issues in comparative education 37 rights deferred, sustainable futures denied: indigenous/adivasi lessons for interrogating tensions in rights education and indicators of the sdg agenda and draws directly from united nations policy recommendations (ministry of human resource development, 2020, p. 3; ministry of education, 2022, p. 12). this means that the new recommendation is likely to be adapted into national and state policy implementations that this article’s interlocutors may encounter. the policy documents were thematically analyzed (braun & clarke, 2006), and to examine the tensions between policy and experience, i compared the policy themes with st interlocutors’ storied themes. the comparison was guided by the following questions: (1) how are education, development, human rights, and the relation between the concepts framed? (2) what goals and actions are assigned to education in relation to human rights and sdg 4? researcher positionality and negotiating access i am a dominant caste, lighter-skinned, middle-class person with what adivasi interlocutors will refer to as “high-level” education. even though i was born and raised in kerala, my early engagements with st peoples in attappady (2012–2015) were shaped by a mode of solidarity critiqued by indigenous peoples around the world—the impulse to ‘help’ (cook, 2008; grande, 2019; tuhiwai smith, 2012). this means that my work was driven by an uncritical belief in the transformative power of education in fulfilling the promises of tribal development and empowerment. over the years, adivasi co-workers, teachers, and collaborators have taught me to shift from what tuck (2009) refers to as a “damage-centered” orientation, which highlights the imaginary deficits and real pain of indigenous while obscuring colonial violence and the global north’s complicity. it is this shift in orientation, rather than official permission letters from state departments or my prior experiences in attappady, that facilitated my access and ability to build trust and reciprocal relationships in thanchiyoor hamlet. this is implied by sradha chechi, who is a hamlet member and one of my research mentors, when she told me that people in the hamlet would engage with me if i were able to demonstrate that i wasn’t interested in “surveys” or their “difficulties” (fieldnotes 2021, december 2). findings: right to dignity deferred, sustainable futures denied the right to dignity: policy assumptions versus lived experiences the right to dignity has been central to policy conceptions of human rights. for example, article 1 of the universal declaration of human rights (united nations, 1948) asserts that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (p. 2). this assertion is revised and affirmed in unesco’s (2023) recommendation, which defines transformative education as teaching and learning that “recognizes and valorizes the dignity and diversity of learners” (p. 5). amidst reports of an alarming rise in cases of human rights abuse in india following the ascent of the right-wing bharatiya janata party (human rights watch, 2024), it is important to note that the indian state has been violating st peoples’ right to dignity for decades (hembrom, 2022; xaxa, 2016). most relevant to this article are the assaults against st peoples’ dignity and personhood 38 current issues in comparative education parakkal enacted by the state, the news media, and dominant caste indians through the classification of st peoples as “backward sections.” for example, in the annual reports published by india’s ministry of tribal affairs (2020), the criteria for specifying a community as a scheduled tribe include “primitive traits,” “shyness of contact,” and “backwardness” (p. 40). the kerala state planning board (2021) proclaims that the “present status of the tribal community is characterized by social backwardness… and low educational standards” (p. 13). st interlocutors are noting the disjuncture between the promises of the right to inalienable dignity and the realities of life in a casteist-colonial context. for example, bhuvi and jinu explained that they are tired of being categorized as “pinoka vibhaagam” (backward section). in the following narrative, they describe how they are intentionally sidelining the knowledge passed on by their grandparents to get a job and hopefully be respected: jinu: i used to go to the forest with my grandfather and he would show me different types of plants, and how to take honey without angering the bees… but knowing all that will not bring us respect among others… my parents do not allow me to go and play in the forest anymore. i have to sit at home and study all the time. in school we must study all the subjects and become big, big doctors or government officers, only then we will receive respect from society. bhuvi: respect is very important. but everyone calls us backward. if we go out of attappady and say that we are from here, malayalees will ask if we are adivasis and they will mock and laugh at us… but if an adivasi girl gets a high-level position like doctor or indian administrative service officer then maybe she will get respect from society. – jinu and bhuvi, interview transcript, may 2022 in this discussion, bhuvi and jinu are responding to keet's (2012) call to “make visible the complexities of human rights as both a discourse and a material reality” (p. 9). unlike mainstream human rights policy and discourse, which insists on the right to dignity as an “inalienable right,” bhuvi and jinu must choose formal education over intergenerational knowledge to be worthy of respect. this difference between policy and experience may be attributed to a taken-for-granted assumption about the ‘human’ in human rights. rights deferred: unsettling the ‘human’ in human rights unesco’s recommendation (2023) and explainer (2024) mirror prior policy assumptions that human rights are an inherent and universal right that people have simply because they are human (zembylas, 2017a). however, such a conceptualization does not account for how the human in human rights is founded on the assumption that only certain kinds of subjects are intelligible as human while others are constituted as “(non)(sub)(in)human” (khoja-moolji, 2017, p. 380), through racialized, gendered, current issues in comparative education 39 rights deferred, sustainable futures denied: indigenous/adivasi lessons for interrogating tensions in rights education caste-based, and other normalized practices (mignolo, 2009; wilkerson, 2020; wynter, 2003). there is robust literature mapping how universalizing concepts like development, rights, and freedom affirm and affect the colonial division of humanity. for instance, lowe (2015) illuminates how modern promises of universal development and rights are shaped and sustained by an “economy of affirmation and forgetting,” affirming the rights of a privileged few while relegating the majority of others to spaces “that are constituted as backward” (p. 39) and forgetting the violent encounters that have naturalized these divisions. in the context of global development, this economy also upholds a “damage-centered” (tuck, 2009) hierarchical division of humans. that is a majority of the world’s peoples are assumed to be delayed or set back in their path to development because of imaginary deficits and are expected to “catch up (but never can) to the settler/unpained/abled body (or community or people or society or philosophy or knowledge system)” (tuck & yang, 2014, p. 231). the disavowal of this colonial division of humanity is central to mainstream human rights policy commitments (maldonado-torres, 2017; spivak, 2004). therefore, even though the “inherent dignity of the human person…is universal, indivisible, inalienable, and interrelated” (unesco, 2023), bhuvi and jinu are noting that in reality, their right to dignity is inextricably linked to their geo-politic (“backward” attappady) and body-politic (“backward” scheduled tribe) situatedness (maldonado-torres, 2017; mignolo, 2009). moreover, they are keenly aware that their right to dignity is not contingent upon their humanity but on their ability to catch up by getting a prestigious job. this path to acquiring that right to dignity aligns with mainstream global education policy promises of social mobility through education—be educated, get a “high level” job, and “fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question” (jemisin, 2015, p. i). right to sustainable futures: development as rights violation the sdg 4 agenda expresses a concern for future generations and their well-being (unesco, 2016). unesco’s (2023) recommendation is grounded in a rights perspective and is invested in “empowering learners as rights-holders” (p. 7), promoting an “ethic of solidarity” by encouraging “convivial relations, neighborliness and a sense of belonging” and raising awareness about the “interdependence of individuals…societies…natural resources and ecosystems” (p.8). to meet these guidelines, the explainer (unesco, 2024) recommends that all educational activities and programs should be geared towards the achievement of 12 learning outcomes that include “respect for diversity” and “a sense of belonging to a common and diverse humanity and planet earth” (p. 8). the explainer also provides examples of actions for achieving these outcomes, which include “ensuring that textbooks are anti-racist and checked for biases and stereotypes,” “integrating multiple and diverse perspectives into history teaching,” and “using the outdoors as learning spaces to teach about sustainability and climate change” (unesco, 2024, p. 12). even as hre policies emphasize the interconnectedness between individuals and ecosystems, in the next 40 current issues in comparative education parakkal section, murugan, soumya, and nenjan moopan illustrate how ongoing development programs that prioritize profits and exclusion are breaking relations between st peoples and their more-than-human kin. broken relations and precarious living in attappady when i was a boy, i used to accompany my uncles and cousins into the forest… i have always felt that the forest knows me, and i know the forest. like we understand each other. and the animals won’t hurt us if they know that we respect them... all this changed when ahads (attappady hill area development society) started in attappady. they and the forest department limited our entry into the forests. they still justify it saying that they want to protect the forests, but we never harmed the forest. in the late 2000s, ahads started recruiting young st men as forest guards and watchers. their duty was to roam the forest and to report anyone who entered the forest to take firewood or collect honey. and that is how they turned our own people against us… about six years ago, a dfo (district forest officer) passed an order stating that st peoples must not enter the forest with any type of sharp object... many of us protested at the check-post until the order was revoked… but we no longer have the relationship we had with the forest and the land. – murugan, interview transcript, february 2022 murugan’s narrative highlights the role of a specific development project that separated him from the forest that he loves. stories by indigenous peoples in india and around the world are replete with themes that emphasize the importance of maintaining reciprocal and respectful relations with sentient beings with whom humans share space (bodhi & ziipao, 2019; ormond et al., 2020; tynan, 2021). however, relation-breaking and rendering more-than-human beings as property that must be sold, protected, or destroyed for profit is a defining feature of development (battiste, 2013; coulthard, 2014; grande, 2019). therefore, murugan’s quiet sense of loss about being denied entry into the forest is not merely about losing access to the land and its resources. rather, his assertion that he and the forest “understand each other” affirms the experience of indigenous peoples around the world who view the loss of relations as an abnormal severance of a spiritual and ontological bond with the land and the beings around them (corntassel & hardbarger, 2019; quay, 2021; todd, 2016). mainstream conservation-for-development projects have traditionally been aimed at resource and biodiversity protection for future generations and the planet (mitchell, 2020; spash, 2022). however, critical examinations of such projects have revealed numerous instances of indigenous dispossession and habitat loss. (chattopadhyay, 2014; domínguez & luoma, 2020; murdock, 2021). the kerala state planning board, kspb (2010) report on the ahads project that murugan refers to describes it as the most comprehensive development and ecological restoration project implemented in attappady (p. 5). however, news reports from the time add that even though ahads current issues in comparative education 41 rights deferred, sustainable futures denied: indigenous/adivasi lessons for interrogating tensions in rights education restored over 12,000 hectares of land, it was done by planting non-native species of trees. the kspb’s (2010) report confirms these assertions by stating that forest regeneration was achieved by planting “suitable income-fetching tree plantations” (p. 10). the consequences of an ecological conservation project that prioritized the planting and protection of “income-fetching” trees are being experienced by st peoples living in hamlets like thanchiyoor that are close to the forest. soumya, explains how: …we have a lot of elephants and wild boars coming down from the forest into the hamlet. you saw the land just behind my house? my sister and i had a little fruit and vegetable garden there. we grew tomatoes, spinach, some peppers, a couple of plantain palms. and a small pineapple. we were so proud… but just after the big rains a few months ago, an elephant came and took it all. i am grateful that we were all safe because you know that elephants have already killed three people in the past month. still, i was really sad about losing everything that we grew. especially that pineapple. – soumya, interview transcript, april 2022 the precarities described by soumya are becoming frequent in kerala, and in other forest regions of india that were previously under the guardianship of adivasi peoples. for instance, in the year 2023-2024, 98 people were killed by elephants in kerala alone, and at least 25 elephants were electrocuted (the indian express, 2024; kallungal, 2023). even though adivasi households are disproportionately affected by wildlife incursions, i rarely observed electric fences around st farmlands in thanchiyoor—a mechanism that is commonly used to deter wildlife from entering human settlements. when i asked nenjan moopan about the absence of fences, he said: why do you think they started coming down from the forest? the forest department and ahads planted eucalyptus, sandalwood, and some other trees in the forest. elephants like variety. they want grass and bamboo and fruits. there is hardly any grass in the forest now. the sandalwood trees are guarded by the forest police, and elephants hate eucalyptus. so, they have no choice but to come down here for food. and here we have plantains and jackfruits and black plums. they take it and become happy, we become sad. all we can do is bow in obeisance and hope that they don’t take our lives. – nenjan moopan, interview transcript, february 2022 for nenjan moopan, elephants who come to feed in and around the hamlet are not problems to be fixed by installing electric fences or through capture and removal. rather, they are beings whose rights have been violated and whose homes have been dispossessed by a development paradigm that prioritizes economic gain over ecological balance. despite being at the frontline of the consequences of development planning, moopan’s response to the elephants coming into his home is rooted in humility and kinship rather than violence. such a response is akin to what trawlwulwuy scholar 42 current issues in comparative education parakkal lauren tynan (2021) refers to as a “relational reality,” which is not simply an understanding of the world as relational “but [to] feel the world as kin” (p. 600). to feel the world as kin is not a skill that can be learned as part of a rights-based curriculum. rather, it requires embracing relationality as a practice and a responsibility (graham, 1999; kovach, 2021). as moopan explains, this relational reality is a complex one to navigate and requires employing strategies to respect the rights of beings with whom they share the land while simultaneously confronting everyday precarities (bishop & tynan, 2022; jukes, 2023; tynan, 2021) the tensions between unesco’s recommendation and the everyday experiences of people like murugan, soumya, and nenjan moopan are stark. the recommendation’s declarations of respect and interconnectedness and the explainer’s examples of action, like outdoor learning for sustainability, do not prepare current or future learners to navigate the precarities that those in the global south are navigating currently. additionally, the recommendation does not acknowledge that the dominant development paradigm and the worldviews it normalizes are instrumental in perpetuating the most violent human rights crises of our times—climate change. this denial presents a dilemma for reorienting hre. hre in its current form is inextricably linked to a destructive development model that breaks relations between human and more-than-human interlocutors while exacerbating precarities in the global south (andreotti et al., 2015; bryan, 2022; manion et al., 2019). therefore, policy promises about the right to sustainable futures for all are bound to be broken as long as the human rights-in-development paradigm remains unchanged. discussion interrogating separability and unintelligibility in rights education in a scathing critique of the “rhetorical-formulaic” discourse that has come to define the human rights-in-development regime, uvin (2007) asserts that declarations affirming that development is a universal human right are “surely beautifully worded” but is “operationally meaningless” (pp. 598-600). this sentiment remains valid and lives on in unesco’s (2023) explainer, for instance, in the following recommendation for educators: “raise awareness of the increasing interdependence of individuals, communities […] and ecosystems, and cultivate an ethic of shared responsibility for peace, human rights and sustainable development” (unesco, 2023, p. 7). while this guideline may be worded to highlight the importance of an educational agenda that attends to some form of relational responsibility, it does little to acknowledge the kind of rights violations that actors involved in high-intensity struggles like this article’s interlocutors experience daily. vague assertions that hre must “instill an ethic of care, compassion and solidarity” are supported by simplistic calls for current issues in comparative education 43 rights deferred, sustainable futures denied: indigenous/adivasi lessons for interrogating tensions in rights education developing “collaborative skills, adaptive skills, citizenship skills, and respect for diversity” (unesco, 2024, pp. 9-10). this might register as a necessary action for most low-intensity actors since it is compatible with the status quo that we benefit from, albeit differentially. however, as adivasi interlocutors demonstrate, such recommendations do not address ongoing rights violations for those involved in high-intensity struggles. what are the implications of these findings for educators involved in low-intensity struggles? recognizing separability these tensions between policy and experience suggest that the “principle of separability” stands in the way of reconfiguring rights education. in an invitation to imagine a social world in which difference is understood without separability, denise ferreira da silva (2016) argues that the modern-colonial social world is invested in constructions of cultural difference that require separation between human and more-than-human beings, as well as between groups that are considered to possess fixed attributes and identities. battiste (2005) has long asserted that formal education in its current form is “diffusionist” in that it divides the world into two categories—those who invent, progress, and provide, and those who “receive progressive innovation by diffusion” from the former (p. 124). the normalization of separability in sdg 4 and hre (brissett & mitter, 2017; maldonado-torres, 2017) means that global and national policies consistently represent the global south as the vulnerable and disadvantaged ‘beneficiaries’ of human rights-in-development interventions (ministry of human resource development, 2020; unesco, 2017). however, as adivasi interlocutors illuminate, this categorization is intensifying different forms of rights violations. bhuvi and jinu’s everyday right to dignity is deferred through categories (the backward adivasi) imposed by the state and dominant caste indians. ahads separated murugan and the forest through colonial strategies that “remake land as property” (coulthard, 2014). the presumed superiority of the state’s scientific expertise in reforestation justified the decision to replace trees that are native to the region with “income-fetching” species. what, then, is the ‘otherwise’ educational task of reconfiguring hre, especially for actors whose worldviews normalize the separation and categorization of beings? the challenges of intelligibility learning from the insights of the interlocutors in this article and the work of decolonial and post-humanist scholars, i argue that the ‘otherwise’ educational task for actors involved in low-intensity struggles not only involves understanding and relaying information about colonial strategies like the normalization of separability in education policy. rather, it requires intervention at the relational and ontological levels of learners’ framing of rights and their investments in ways of knowing and being that implicate them in rights violation. (amsler, 2019; kerr & andreotti, 2018; zembylas, 2017b). in her 44 current issues in comparative education parakkal vision for an ‘otherwise’ education, preetha emphasizes the significance of this relational shift: i have two important principles that i try to follow. do not hurt anyone intentionally and have respect for everyone and their different circumstances. that is what i have learned through my own ‘life experiences.’ this is an important lesson, but i did not learn it in school or college…there can be competition, no problem, but people must learn to care and respect others. this should be taught in school, especially to ‘upper caste’ people because they don’t know how to think about other peoples’ situations. they only know how to think about their job, their family, their ‘status’…i am not blaming them. that is what society teaches them. – preetha, interview transcript, may 2022 at first glance, preetha’s elegantly articulated call for education that prioritizes dignity aligns with unesco’s (2024) explainer and its emphasis on respect for diversity and self-awareness (p. 10). however, unlike this conception of human rights that is rooted in depoliticized and generalized notions of respect and belonging, preetha’s vision for transforming education addresses what andreotti (2016) refers to as the cognitive and affective “challenges of intelligibility” (pp. 105-106). the greatest challenge, andreotti argues, that educators involved in low-intensity struggles encounter while attempting to imagine educational alternatives is that we are cognitively and affectively ill-equipped to imagine outside the dominant worldview, especially when this worldview is considered “neutral, universal, [and] benevolent” (andreotti, 2016, p. 105). it is this challenge of intelligibility that preetha makes legible when she asserts that “upper caste people” cannot be blamed for only prioritizing “their job, their family, their status” since “society teaches them” to prioritize individual success and well-being over collective care and respect. conclusion: indigenous/adivasi lessons for rights educators as a testament to ghosh’s (2016) assertion that the anthropocene is characterized by a “reversal of the temporal order of [colonial] modernity” (p. 46), st peoples of attappady and their more-than-human kin are part of a majority who are the first to experience the most devastating precarities and violence induced by the current human rights-in-development paradigm. yet, the global education agenda and its national adaptations rarely consult people like bhuvi, jinu, murugan, soumya, preetha, and nenjan moopan, who are navigating development-induced precarities and are experts in sustainable and relational living. this article highlights the expertise of indigenous/adivasi peoples in interrogating the tensions between human rights-in-development policy promises and their lived experiences, while also illuminating the implications of these tensions for rights education, particularly for educators and policymakers involved in low-intensity struggles. current issues in comparative education 45 rights deferred, sustainable futures denied: indigenous/adivasi lessons for interrogating tensions in rights education adivasi interlocutors in this article highlight two key tensions between policy and experience. one, they are noting the disconnect between policy promises of the inalienable right to dignity (unesco, 2023) and the everyday assaults against adivasi personhood, especially through the classification of st peoples as “backward sections” of society. two, interlocutors highlight the tensions between hre policy affirmations of the right to sustainable futures and their experiences of development programs that introduce new forms of precarities. drawing on these findings, i argue that two principles stand in the way of reconfiguring hre in ways that are especially significant for low-intensity actors who are learning to imagine education outside the logic and practices of coloniality. one, the principle of separability normalizes education policy representations of the global south as vulnerable beneficiaries of human rights-in-development interventions, while low-intensity actors in the global north are assumed to possess the expertise to design and implement these interventions. two, actors involved in low-intensity struggles are those who benefit from the unsustainable and destructive development paradigm, which means that strategies and actions for justice that are outside the dominant worldview are often unintelligible to these actors. the task of learning to live in an increasingly uncertain world requires an education that does more than acknowledge the interconnectedness of rights and cultivate depoliticized and decontextualized skills in the hope of ensuring rights for all. rather, it requires an openness to be taught by actors like this article’s interlocutors, who are experts in entangled and relational living. this article contributes to educational imaginings arising out of scholarly collaborations between low and high-intensity actors (bellino & the kakuma youth research group, 2018; nixon et al., 2022; wadhwa, 2021). this means that even though this research does not include the perspectives of “settlers”5 living on alienated adivasi land, these findings open up opportunities for collaborative learning and for further research. notably, it invites inquiry into how the critical expertise and knowledge of global south actors are experienced by learners in the global north, especially when their normalized worldviews and sense of self are unlikely to be upheld. acknowledgments i thank the anonymous reviewers for their generative and generous feedback. i am always grateful to dr. michelle j. bellino, jenny, and andrews parakkal for their encouragement and caring mentorship. this research was supported by the karl c.k. ma endowed scholarship, rackham graduate school, and marsal family 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(pp. 9–20). brill sense. 56 current issues in comparative education https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-021-00293-1 current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 2, spring 2017 © 2017, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(2), 33-63. how socio-emotional support affects post-compulsory education decisions in rural china haogen yao unicef middle east and north africa this study develops a sequential mixed model of delphi-propensity score matching to discuss how an ngo’s socio-emotional support affects the decisions of dropout, work, and two types of upper secondary schooling in rural china. data were collected from 6,298 students in 2012 after a subgroup of them were treated. the analysis shows that socio-emotional support affects education decisions by boosting educational aspiration, though the impact fades gradually if there is no follow-up service. it also confirms that educational aspiration beats more traditional or intuitive factors like wealth and academic performance in the decision process. further data exploration points out that such an impact may result from the students’ attempts at copying the tracks of service providers, who are mostly college or graduate students, once trust has been built. introduction since 2008, both statistics and literature have suggested that traditional policy incentives are lacking momentum in influencing education in rural china. people have started to look at socio-emotional supports, such as the promotion of self-discipline and positive emotions. however, existing literature provides very limited information on the topic. given this context, this study applies a sequential method of delphi-propensity score matching to identify how socio-emotional support conducted by a non-governmental organization affects education decisions in rural china. the study makes three major contributions to the existing literature. it tests a socioemotional intervention, while previous literature about china only tests the impact of socio-emotional status. it also suggests the value of, or at least the required improvement towards, china’s educational grassroots nongovernmental organizations (gngos), which are young and remain confined by regulations. finally, it is a showcase of how to use qualitative-quantitative sequential design to enable an exploratory analysis. yao current issues in comparative education 34 this paper firstly explains the context and the research problem with an introduction of the treatment. it then briefly reviews literature connecting socio-emotional support and rural education decisions in section two, followed by the introduction of methodology and data in sections three and four. section five presents the empirical findings, and section six explores the causal mechanism. the paper concludes with a summary of key findings and corresponding policy implications. context and statement of the problem in 2014, china had 138 million students enrolled in its nine-year compulsory education system, with nearly half living in rural regions.1 most of these students need to make decisions based on four alternatives when approaching the end of their compulsory schooling. these can be called “post-compulsory education decisions” (pceds). they are: a. drop out before compulsory schooling is finished (dropout); b. work right after finishing compulsory education (work); c. further their education in academic high schools (ahs); d. further their education in vocational high schools (vhs). thanks to strong policies that lower the economic burdens of further education, the proportion of children choosing ahs or vhs has grown for many years. figure 1 shows that the pced distribution changed at an accelerated rate from 2006 to 2008 as an increasing percentage of students chose high schools. two major catalysts of this include the 2005 policy of the promotion of vocational education, which subsidizes vhs attendance (china, the state council, 2005), and the 2006 amendment of compulsory education law, which made compulsory education free of tuition and fees (china, the standing committee of the national people's congress, 2006). both policies place emphasis on the rural population. however, the change stagnated and somewhat reversed after 2008, with the percentage of dropouts2 increasing and the percentage of vhs attendance shrinking back. while there is no official statistics about how the rural population contributes to this new trend, it is known that both vhs and dropout prevention policies have targeted the rural group. for ahs, although its share has increased slightly after 2008, absolute enrolment was about 1 all data presented in section 1 are calculated from the educational statistics yearbook of china, 1998-2015. 2 statistically, this group also includes students who entered primary school in the mainland, but transferred outside of the mainland before finishing their nine-year schooling. however, the number of this group is too small to change the trend. socio-emotional support and post-compulsory education decisions current issues in comparative education 35 95% of the 2008 level. in other words, the education system has the capacity of extra ahs supply, but the students are not taking them. if both economic supports and additional provisions lose momentum in affecting rural pced, one possible measure to regain the pre-2008 trend is to look at those less traditional supports targeting socio-emotional factors, such as attitude, self-discipline, selfaffirmation, and educational aspiration. such an idea is not ungrounded as it is hinted in existing surveys. for example, in a 2003 survey covering nine chinese provinces, 53% of rural households selected “school-weary” as the main reason for their children’s dropout, while only 29% selected “tuition and fees” (jiang & dai, 2005). in another example, a 2004 survey held by the china youth & children research center uncovered that “only bad students go there” is one of the top reasons hampering the vhs decision.3 moreover, the fact that middle school students are old enough to make their own decisions implies the importance of a closer look at their inner world. figure 1. post-compulsory education decisions in china (1997-2014). source: china educational statistics yearbooks, 1998-2015. notes: i assume the four alternatives to be the only pceds, although there are other alternatives, such as studying abroad and getting married. vhs enrolment is the sum of new enrolment in specialized secondary, vocational, and skilled workers’ schools. ahs enrolment was obtained directly. the number for work was obtained by subtracting the new enrolment in vhss/ahss from the number of lower-secondary graduates. the number for dropout was calculated by subtracting the new enrolment in elementary schools nine years ago from the present number of lower-secondary graduates. data does not allow for rural-urban disaggregation. 3 source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/edu/2005-11/07/content_3742896.htm yao current issues in comparative education 36 currently, it is the gngos that are taking the lead in socio-emotional intervention, but gngos are still a weak sector in china. many gngos fail to register with the civil affairs bureau due to harsh governmental regulations, and of those registered, the majority have managerial problems, such as unstable personnel and budget deficits (xie, 2004). gngos may have a role in affecting pced, but there has not yet been a rigorous evaluation of this role. accordingly, this study examines how an ngo’s socio-emotional support affects pceds in rural china. more specifically, it evaluates the intervention conducted by the lighthouse project (lighthouse), which is one of the longest surviving rural education gngos in china. it was established in 2001 in guangdong, the southern province with a large rural-urban gap. each year, lighthouse trains and sends college volunteers to six to eight rural schools for a one-month summer camp for current or soon-to-be lower secondary students. each volunteer team is given a standard operation procedure from the organization plus a school-specific brochure written by former volunteers of the same site. the program cost is extremely low as the volunteers live at school for free, and local consumption level is much lower when compared to the cities’. participation in the program is voluntary. schools assist in the publicity right before summer, and in some cases, the volunteers go straight to local communities for recruitment. activities in the lighthouse program include, but are not limited to, the following: informal courses, psychological counselling, household visits, team building, the cultivation of local student organizations, and specific projects such as “model mayor election” and “life auction.” most lighthouse activities aim to change student attitudes towards life, such as making them more confident, ambitious, social, and optimistic (lighthouse, 2009). appendix a gives an example of a typical lighthouse operation. the lighthouse program can be considered as a socio-emotional support that may alter certain kinds of personality or perception, namely the subjective factor. and the subjective factor is a potential pced determinant that remains under-researched. the following section briefly reviews the concepts of and relationships between socio-emotional support, the subjective factor, and pced. literature review a socio-emotional process consists of variations that occur in an individual’s personality, emotions, and relationships with others during his or her lifetime (santrock, 2007). among the social-emotional elements, personality has received more attention in the economics-of-education literature. it is defined as the relatively enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that reflect the tendency to respond in certain ways socio-emotional support and post-compulsory education decisions current issues in comparative education 37 under certain circumstances (roberts, 2009). almlund, duckworth, heckman, & kautz (2011) concluded that conscientiousness (e.g. self-discipline and ambition) best predicts overall attainment and achievement in education, followed by emotional stability (e.g. depression levels and confidence). in the case of rural china, the evidence is less straightforward. some evaluations have been done on the links between personality and education. wang, he, & qiu (1999) found that most personalities affect academic performance, however, these tests were conducted mainly with urban students. in another study, lee and park (2010) found that a father’s migration was linked with externalizing problems such as destructive behavior, impulsivity, aggression, and over-activity, but not with internalizing problems such as anxiety, depression, and withdrawal. since the authors also found a negative correlation between a father’s migration and children’s enrollment, the adjusted personality traits serve as potential mediators. it is also notable that socio-emotional interventions can alter personality traits and can have a lasting effect on education (almlund et al., 2011; yeager & walton, 2011), however; so far no quantitative study has focused on china’s rural students. other than personality, perceptions such as how capable a child is or how rewarding a school degree is might also affect pced. since it is impossible to have a purely rational decision based on an accurate estimate of future return, an education decision relies not only on calculations but also on belief, which can be reinforced by socio-emotional support. in the case of rural china, there have been studies connecting the decision of additional education (hannum & adams, 2007, 2008; hannum & park, 2007; hannum, kong, & zhang, 2009; jiang & dai, 2005; wang, 2005) or the high school track (dong & shen, 1997; fang, 2007; zhang, 2009) with students’, parents’, or teachers’ perceptions of certain pceds’ future benefits. like personality, perception can be very subjective and does not rely on rational calculation of benefit and cost. so far, no discussion has been made in the field of rural education on how perceptions can be altered by socio-emotional support. this study will be the first impact evaluation of a specific intervention. methodology the hypothesis held by this study is that socio-emotional support, i.e. the lighthouse program, can affect pceds through altering subjective factors like personality and perceptions. it is, however, difficult to evaluate lighthouse’s intervention. firstly, its impact(s) are not as explicit as that of material support; neither can it be easily predicted by a neoclassical framework in family economics. secondly, recalling that participation with lighthouse is voluntary, it is hard to tell whether the obtained effect comes from its yao current issues in comparative education 38 support or just from characteristics determining the attendance of that support; i.e., that there is a possibility of selection bias. accordingly, this study employs a sequential mixed model of “delphi-propensity score matching (psm).” the qualitative part of delphi helps figure out what are the possible lighthouse impacts and what can be the determinants of lighthouse participation, and then the quantitative part of psm measures those impacts and confirms if they can affect pced. delphi is an iterative process used to collect and distil the judgments of experts using a series of questionnaires interspersed with feedback (skulmoski, hartman, & krahn, 2007). i gathered a panel of 17 members on the research topic. they lived in 14 cities of three countries (china, the uk, and the usa), with diverse backgrounds regarding career, knowledge structure, and pced preference.4 from july to september 2011, the panel members had been surveyed over email three times. the survey started from opening questions like, “what are the top five contributions of lighthouse intervention?” in the first round, to more structured questions like, “from 1 to 10, please rate the realization of each lighthouse impact raised by other panel members in the previous round.” the delphi process identifies 25 potential impacts, which are displayed in figure 2 with the x-axis for the rating on importance, the y-axis for the level of realization, and the size of bubbles for the divergence of the rating among panel members. personality-related characteristics such as confidence and courage are uniformly believed to be important and well realized in the programs (being small circles in the upper right of the diagram). the delphi process also suggests characteristics of program participants, including academic performance, distance to the schools, attitudes towards/burdens of housework, and so forth. while delphi suggests what may lead to treatment and what could be the impacts, psm measures those suggested impacts by comparing the treated and untreated units that have similar propensities of treatment participation (𝐷𝑖 ). by doing this, the researcher can largely control for selection bias without facing the limitation of matching many observed variables. supposing the conditional independence assumption holds, then: 4 the delphi members were asked to rate their familiarity with the relevant social issues, knowledge by academic field, identity, and pced preference. overall, the panel members tend to identify themselves as ngo activists or rural educators knowing about rural education/pced. socio-emotional support and post-compulsory education decisions current issues in comparative education 39 ( ) [ | ] [ 1| ]i i i i ip x e d x p d x   the application of psm runs as follows: to begin with, run a probit regression using a dummy variable for participation (1 = participation, 0 = otherwise) as a dependent variable, and potential participation determinants as independent variables (𝑋𝑖). for the selection of these determinants, i started with a conservative method — combining both potential pced determinants and participation determinants. a long list of possible pced determinants has been documented in the literature about education decisions in rural china (sun, 2004). this includes basic personal characteristics (gender/age/ethnicity), parental background, number of siblings and birth order, peer/school/community factors, household economic status and credit constraint, subjective factors (e.g. personalities and perceptions towards different pceds), health status, etc. information has been collected through field surveys. i then substituted the value of each variable for each student to the obtained equation. the result is the propensity score measuring an individual’s propensity of participation. the impacts selected for evaluation include categorized indexes of confidence, ambition, courage, curiosity, extraversion, affiliation need, career ambition, and educational aspiration, as displayed in figure 2. there are various ways to use the propensity score, and this study practices the three matchings of nearest neighborhood (nn), kernel, and radius. for the most common nn matching, a student in the control group (non-lighthouse student) is matched to a treated student (lighthouse student) based on the closest propensity score. more specifically, i apply the single nn with replacement, in which a control case can be matched to multiple treated cases as long as it has the nearest propensity score. kernel matching uses the weighted averages of all students in the control group to estimate counterfactual outcomes (heckman, ichimura, & todd, 1998). the weight is calculated by the propensity score distance between a treatment case and all control cases. i use a narrow bandwidth of .03 for epanechnikov kernel matching. smaller bandwidth gives smaller bias but larger variance, and vice versa. finally, radius matching allows a tolerance level in the maximum propensity score distance, the caliper, and matches all the individuals in the control group within that caliper (cochran & rubin, 1973). in this study, i use a caliper of .08. to confirm the hypothesis of how lighthouse’s socio-emotional support affects educational decisions, i also conduct multinomial logit (mnl) using pced as a dependent variable, with the selection of ahs as base-outcome. pced determinants that were suggested by either the delphi survey or the literature serve as the independent yao current issues in comparative education 40 variables. if one finds subjective factors not only influential on pecd but also impacted by the intervention, the hypothesis is proved. figure 2. suggested impacts of the lighthouse program. source: author’s compilation. notes: data is calculated from the delphi ratings made by 10 panel members (out of 17) who considered themselves knowledgeable in lighthouse’s operations. the bounds for the x and y-axes are adjusted to better disperse the bubbles. for both importance and realization, the ratings range from 1 to 10 for “totally disagree” to “totally agree.” bubble diameter indicates the divergence of views, which is calculated as the mean of the coefficients of variation for importance and realization. smaller bubbles means better consensus. it is worth mentioning that, by applying mnl, this study does not treat pced with an “order.” it is debatable to claim that more education must be better for all students, especially when it comes to the comparison between ahs and vhs tracks. ahs is usually one year longer than vhs, and it is easier to be connected to a college education, but it may not be a reasonable option for those needing to work earlier to feed their family or those not interested in academy. recognizing the reality that not all students knew their pced by the time of being surveyed, the students were also given an option of “undecided” in addition to the four options when answering the pced question. socio-emotional support and post-compulsory education decisions current issues in comparative education 41 data collection questionnaire design based on literature and the delphi results, this research produces separate questionnaires for students, teachers, principals, and student households (presumably parents or guardians). there were also questionnaires for the lighthouse volunteers when they were approaching the end of the 2012 summer program. the majority of data collected were pced determinants. gansu survey of children and families (gscf) and zhang’s dissertation on the determinants of national college entrance exam performance in china (zhang, 2011) were the major references for questionnaire design. gscf is the most frequently cited project in rural pced studies (e.g. hannum & adams, 2007; hannum et al., 2009; park & hannum, 2002; etc.).5 and zhang’s study has a data collection process similar to that of this study. since the questionnaires from these two sources do not touch on the topic of schooling tracks, i.e., ahs vs. vhs, i also refer to track-related questionnaires used in existing chinese studies, including fang (2007), zhang (2009), and zhu (2006). the biggest challenge for questionnaire design involves the subjective factors, especially those related to personality. literature has recommended the big five personality traits and duckworth’s grit scale for measurement (muller, 2015), but with the tension between accuracy and answering time, i adopted the questions on the psycho-social state from gscf. they measure the student’s mental health such as confidence, courage, and gregariousness. the similar questionnaire has proven reliability and validity after tests on over 20000 chinese middle school students (wang, li, & he, 1997). it is neither too long nor too short, and much more localized and rural-specific than other available tests. as suggested by the delphi result (figure 2), the lighthouse impacts that are consistently considered important and well realized are mostly socio-emotional, and therefore the change in some subjective factors could be attributed to lighthouse participation. this study covers only eight of the 25 suggested impacts, as some are for the long term, and some are difficult to measure. more importantly, it was necessary to limit the time required to answer, to ensure answer quality. finally, in schools with lighthouse interventions, there was also a questionnaire for volunteers asking about their engagement with, and perceptions of, the program. the questionnaire was designed with suggestions from the delphi panel. 5 for details, please refer to http://china.pop.upenn.edu/ yao current issues in comparative education 42 data the major data collection took place at middle schools in six towns of zhaoqing city and two towns of qingyuan city in september 2012, which is one month after the lighthouse intervention. this area’s gross domestic product per-capita was only onethird of the provincial level (sheng & yan, 2012). the full valid sample size is 6,298 students6 from eight surveyed schools (each town has only one middle school), among which the treated sample size is 678 for lighthouse students from six schools. the school names, which are exactly the same as the town names, are kept anonymous as requested by the local official. in both the full sample (lighthouse and non-lighthouse combined) and the lighthouse sample, more than one third of students chose vhs as pced; similar numbers of children chose work, ahs or undecided; and only 2% chose dropout (the survey were held in school so it did not covered those already dropped out). among the 678 lighthouse students, 211 attended the lighthouse program right before the data collection in summer 2012. since the lighthouse treatment was not randomized, numerous questions were asked to ensure enough variables (see appendix b) could be generated to proxy the randomization. as a result, missing data is inevitable. most variables have a missing data rate smaller than 10%.7 multiple imputations by chained equations are used to deal with missing data. the number of imputations to add is five, a classic number that can guarantee the efficiency of estimates (rubin, 1987).8 multicollinearity is another problem that could result from the large number of variables. for the sample built for this study, paired correlations that barely exceed 0.1, the mean variance inflation factors of 1.68, and the no-intercept condition index of 6.5 all suggest that the collinearity is within an acceptable manner. furthermore, the akaike information criterion (aic) and the bayesian information criterion (bic) have been calculated for all regressions to make sure that the model specifications yield lower aic/bic, or, in other words, do not bear over-fitting. 6 given the length of the student questionnaire, it is quite likely that some students lost their patience and provided random answers, generating systematic missing data that cannot be solved statistically. my solution to this kind of missing data is to insert a question asking how much they lost their patience in about 4/5 of the student questionnaire. if that question was left blank, the student is assumed to be totally impatient, and the whole observation will be removed before the imputation. this operation removes 1693 students (860 boys, 833 girls). by checking the answers given by this group, it co 7 there are three lighthouse-related variables with a 20% missing data rate. they are the level of engagement with other activities such as household chores, farm work, city visits, and summer jobs; the household rating on their support of the child’s participation in summer camp or their respect of the children’s own preference in pced; and student performance. the missing data cases are concentrated in two schools 8 i also tried a larger number of imputations, but little difference was found in the results. an important reason to keep the number small is to maintain conciseness when reporting psm results. socio-emotional support and post-compulsory education decisions current issues in comparative education 43 in addition to the quantitative data set, there are 50 pages of anonymous opinions and debates generated from the delphi process, plus interview records and student diaries obtained from the fields. this document will be used to assist causal interpretation after the psm. empirical results the empirical findings confirm a lighthouse impact on pced, which is concentrated in the boost of educational aspiration, but not in many other subjective factors suggested by delphi results. by-group summary statistics suggests that lighthouse students are different from the general population. more specifically, at a significance level of 0.05, lighthouse participants are more likely to be girls9; have parents that are communist league or party members; live with more siblings; grow in a less-educated community of more access to migrant worker opportunities; be taught by teachers of lower pay; live closer to the school; come from a household of higher income; rank high in terms of educational aspiration, emotional attachment to school and curiosity; be taught by teachers of stronger preference for ahs/vhs when compared to dropout/work; have better health; score higher in exams; know more about vocational training and urban life; have more classmates who were lighthouse participants; and to have household members who support summer camp or respect the students’ own choices.10 all of these comparisons justify the need for applying careful research design to identify the real lighthouse impact. given the enormous amount of variables generated for this study, the detailed descriptive analysis is omitted, but is available upon request. even with the most rigorous specification using all available variables for propensity score calculations, the lighthouse and non-lighthouse students still have a common overlap of propensity scores. it is however a little disappointing that, while the delphi suggests various program impacts, the psm confirms only the boost of educational aspiration. for the rest of the outcome variables, there is no impact on confidence, ambition, or courage even when the propensities are unmatched. there are statistically significant impacts on curiosity, extraversion, affiliation need, and career ambition, but those impacts become statistically insignificant after the matching. it is noticeable that confidence was considered as the number one outcome by delphi. this reveals the risk of being oversubjective when purely relying on qualitative investigation. all t-scores for the average 9 there are 61% of girls in the full sample and 66% of girls in the lighthouse sample. it had been mentioned several times by the delphi panel members that there are more girls during the semester. comparing to boys, girls are less likely to live in cities with their migrant parents. there are even larger share of girls in town during the summer because girls are also less likely to visit their parents in cities during the vacation. 10 the two non-lighthouse schools are excluded from this comparison. yao current issues in comparative education 44 treatment effect on the treated (att) in nn are presented in table 1. in most cases, the tscores for matched comparisons are much smaller, indicating a large selection bias in lighthouse participation. as the only expected outcome that survives the psm, educational aspiration is a categorical variable ranging from 1 = dropout to 5 = graduate school. figure 3 shows more targeting propensity scores calculated from variables correlated to educational aspiration (p < 0.05) and not totally unrelated to participation (p < 0.6), plus school and grade dummies. 11 there is a satisfactory overlap of the treatment propensities between lighthouse and non-lighthouse students. figure 3. overlap of propensity scores, by lighthouse participation. notes: the y-axis is proportional by group – the treated and untreated are not necessarily on the same scale. this is from one of the imputations with an adjusted list of treatment determinants (see appendix b). graphs made from all five imputations are almost identical. ”treated group” refers to those participating in any of the lighthouse programs in the past three years. 11 this follows the rule set by brookhart et al. (2006). this adjusted specification makes a small difference from those based on the more conservative specification including all available variables. socio-emotional support and post-compulsory education decisions current issues in comparative education 45 table 1. nearest neighborhood matching results (t-scores) most recent participation imputation_1 imputation_2 imputation_3 imputation_4 imputation_5 unmatched matched unmatched matched unmatched matched unmatched matched unmatched matched confidence 0.55 -0.05 0.53 -0.24 0.54 0.42 0.56 0.18 0.55 2.3 courage 1.23 0.03 1.2 -0.7 1.2 0.29 1.22 0.18 1.22 0.9 curiosity 2.2 0.46 2.23 0.72 2.22 2.46 2.2 1.14 2.18 0.93 ambition -0.17 -0.16 -0.18 -0.59 -0.15 -0.72 -0.15 -0.26 -0.15 0.45 extraversion 1.83 0.14 1.82 -1.18 1.83 -0.05 1.83 -0.42 1.83 0.7 affiliation need 2 1.88 2.2 1.06 1.97 0.68 1.96 0.89 1.95 1.76 educational aspiration 4.81 3.01 4.81 2.19 4.45 2.56 4.78 1.09 4.7 2.35 expect normal career -2.21 -1.66 -1.4 -0.24 -1.3 -1.01 -1.46 -0.33 -0.57 0 on support _untreated # 4,085 4,200 4,160 4,180 3,992 on support _treated # 205 204 208 208 209 any participation imputation_1 imputation_2 imputation_3 imputation_4 imputation_5 unmatched matched unmatched matched unmatched matched unmatched matched unmatched matched confidence 2.13 1.72 2.09 1.63 2.1 1.15 2.2 1.34 2.14 1.23 courage 0.55 0.48 0.55 1.88 0.57 1.84 0.6 0.72 0.57 1.06 curiosity 2.58 0.56 2.64 0.87 2.61 0.69 2.57 0.29 2.54 0.54 ambition 0.31 -0.29 0.26 1.01 0.33 -0.19 0.29 -0.33 0.32 0.19 extraversion -0.27 0.04 -0.28 1.36 -0.27 0.81 -0.27 -0.07 -0.27 0.82 affiliation need 0.82 0.44 0.88 0.24 0.78 -0.38 0.77 -0.25 0.8 0.25 educational aspiration 5.12 3.02 4.05 2.13 4.14 0.72 3.79 2.98 3.82 1.51 expect normal career -0.43 -0.77 -0.13 -0.83 0.22 0.89 0 -0.41 0.31 -0.41 on support _untreated # 3,743 3,747 3,742 3,742 3,748 on support _treated # 678 678 677 677 678 notes: the calculation is based on the list of t-scores for the average treatment effect on the treated (att). the two non-lighthouse schools are excluded from this comparison. a detailed explanation of the expected outcome variables can be found in appendix b, where affiliation need is shortened as “affiliationneed,” educational aspiration as “stueduaspiration” and expect normal career as “expect norm.” yao current issues in comparative education 46 figure 4 presents the matching results as a scatter graph, in which the y-axis is the effect size and the x-axis is the corresponding t-scores. because five imputations were conducted, for each specification there are five results. the balancing property for psm is not perfectly kept. on average, each imputation has three variables diagnosed as unbalanced, which is a small proportion. these variables are unbalanced in either the first or the last score block, where the treatment sample tends to be too small to secure statistical power. particularly in the last block, the sample sizes range from 13 to 21 in the five imputations. thus, despite an imperfect balance, it is acceptable to process the psm without extra adjustment on specification (stuart, 2010).12 the most important discovery from pooled matching results is the diminishing lighthouse impact. the blue symbols (rhombus, square, and triangle) for the most recent summer 2012 participation are generally closer to the upper right than the orange symbols (cross symbols and circle) for any participation. the mean of blue symbols shows an average att almost double the mean of the orange symbols with a higher t-score. in other words, lighthouse’s short-term impact on educational aspiration is stronger in both magnitude and statistical significance when compared to its longer-term impact. lighthouse does have follow-up services such as one-week revisits, student organization creation, and communication by letter. these seem to be insufficient for sustaining the impact, and it is possible that those follow-ups mainly benefit active students who have maintained a better connection with the volunteers. two types of data exploration are applied to disaggregate the aspiration boost. bybackground analyses show that such an aspiration increase applies mainly to students with higher academic performance with the impact significant for both children of any participation and children with the summer 2012 participation, which is encouraging since it is reasonable for high-performance students to pursue more schooling. the aspiration increase may also be more evident among male students—boost acquired from the most recent participation is marginally significant at the 10% level. finally, by-wealth matching gives a clear message that the increase in educational aspiration does not vary between the poor and the rich. 12 stuart (2010) also suggested mahalanobis matching under a minor imbalance. i have practiced it. for all imputations, both atts and corresponding t scores appear to be much larger with mahalanobis matching. this study proceeds with the more stringent results of nn, kernel, and radius. socio-emotional support and post-compulsory education decisions current issues in comparative education 47 figure 4. propensity score matching results for educational aspiration. notes: there are five data points for different groups because there are five imputations. variables used to estimate the propensity scores for these psms are those correlated to educational aspiration (p < .05) and not totally unrelated to participation (p < .6), plus school and grade dummies. in addition to background analyses, by-site analyses provide possible explanations of why some sites perform better. three typical sites of different lighthouse engagements are selected for comparison. school a had paused their lighthouse program and then restarted it in 2012 (31 most recent participation, 83 any participation out of 805 students surveyed); school b was a first-year lighthouse school, although it also had some transferred former lighthouse students (75 latest, 94 any out of 479); and school c had been a long-time lighthouse school (56 latest, 225 any out of 1,600). it turns out the boost does not apply to the long-engagement school c. the novelty for local people may help in greater program effect since newer lighthouse schools (schools a and b) see a larger aspiration boost. also, according to the volunteer survey, volunteers in school c rate lower in terms of passion, confidence, and acceptance of lighthouse training content when compared to schools a and b. thus, it is possible volunteer quality also explains part of the variance in aspiration boost. though the delphi-psm approach confirms only the aspiration boost as lighthouse impact, the good news is the following mnl suggests educational aspiration as a crucial pced determinant, holding numerous other factors constant. the four panels of figure 5 yao current issues in comparative education 48 report standardized coefficients and the absolute values of t-scores from the mnl. dots in the upper or lower right of each panel stand for pecd determinants that are both influential and statistically significant—educational aspiration apparently beats more traditional or intuitive determinants like wealth and academic performance, especially when it comes to the decisions of dropout or work, where the children holding higher educational aspiration have a relative-risk ratio (rrr) that is less than half of the rrr for children of richer families or better test performance. the results also show children with higher education aspiration are less likely to choose vhs or remain undecided, with standardized effect sizes that are larger than the ones for wealth or performance. in the regression, wealth is categorized from 1 to 4 based on the availability of a cement house,13 computer/internet/car, and motorcycle; performance refers to the quantiles of the student’s test ranking at their school. figure 5. standardized effect size and statistical significance of pced determinants. notes: rrr = relative risk ratio. the labels for other variables and the full table of regression results are omitted but available upon request. the mnl passes the seemingly unrelated estimation (sue)-based hausman test for the independence of irrelevant alternatives (iia) assumption. collinearity is acceptable according to the tests of paired correlations, variance inflation factors, and the no-intercept condition index. 13 a cement house is not a traditional component of the wealth index, but it was highly recommended by one of the delphi panel members who used to live in the surveyed area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/independence_of_irrelevant_alternatives socio-emotional support and post-compulsory education decisions current issues in comparative education 49 connecting the results for psm and mnl, the hypothesis held by this study is confirmed — socio-emotional support (here the lighthouse) does affect pced through altering the subjective factor (here educational aspiration). some may question that the pceds in this study are just what the students wish to do, while in the end it will be their high school entrance exam (hsee) score deciding where they go. i managed to collect hsee scores and final pceds of 140 graduating students in two of the surveyed schools. interestingly, although it is true that children of higher test scores are more likely to register in ahs, there is no real hsee cut-off, as there are many students who scored at the bottom but entered ahs. it is also noticeable that china’s population of lower secondary graduates has declined since 2005,14 which means less competition of post-compulsory opportunities. in other words, pced today is more about the children’s willingness than the restriction of test performance or the availability of opportunities. why socio-emotional support boosts (only) educational aspiration it is true that educational aspiration itself can be altered by many factors, but these are mostly controlled, like the wealth and performance factors or the level of other subjective factors in the mnl (e.g. confidence and curiosity). delphi findings, on-site interviews, and student diaries jointly suggest the model effect to be a source of increasing aspiration, as these volunteers are mostly college or graduate school students. the true causal mechanism could be much more complicated than just a model effect, but it is the one hard to be challenged. based on the opinions collected from the delphi panel, if there is an impact on educational aspiration, then it is mainly attributable to “the power of role models.” when a student develops trust in a volunteer, he or she will subconsciously start to copy the volunteer’s behavior, including the schooling decisions of that volunteer. one panel member provided a more specific theory of direct and indirect effect. directly, once a student participates in lighthouse, they forgo the chance of summer migrant work, receive the opportunity of talking to volunteers about education decisions, and thus have a higher possibility of returning to school after the vacation. indirectly, it is admitted that lighthouse volunteers who finish the training and go to the sites have more optimistic attitudes and social responsibility than their peers, which gives local students a positive picture of college life, making them want to be part of this group in the future. in addition, there have been increasing reports of former lighthouse students applying to be lighthouse volunteers, another form of the model effect. 14 calculated from the educational statistics yearbook of china, 1998-2015. yao current issues in comparative education 50 the delphi responses also touch on educational aspiration from two other angles. firstly, while lighthouse has clear instructions that the volunteers should not impose on the students their perceptions regarding what to do after finishing the compulsory education, the organization opposes dropout in its standard operation procedure, and its follow-up activities includes channels to financially support those at risk of dropout. students are also willing to talk to the volunteers about their decisions. secondly, some panel members have suggested that the lighthouse program may affect a household’s perception of college, but they are not confident about how strong this effect could be. after all, many parents are either busy with farm work or still working in cities during the summer. my research team stayed with and talked to volunteers, teachers, students, and households. we obtained approval for scanning 99 diaries from eight lighthouse students. these messages could be subjective, and the students willing to offer their diaries might have been active students who had a very positive view of lighthouse. nevertheless, interviews and diaries are better than delphi documents in terms of giving detailed examples. we found interesting examples of how the volunteers and students got closer to each other. one case in point is a discussion about jay chou, an iconic pop singer from taiwan. one student said he did not like jay chou, so a volunteer began to tell him stories of how jay chou grew to be a famous singer by overcoming many challenges. that volunteer was the first person from a different generation to talk with the student about such a non-school topic in an inspiring way. there are several records describing the students’ gratitude for home visits, as many of these students live in remote villages. they felt they were being cared for. such examples share one feature: the students and volunteers build strong connections outside the class. since the psm already uncovered that the lighthouse impact is concentrated only on educational aspiration, there must be some negative effects to offset the other anticipated outcomes. one member of my research team was assigned to collect negative views, which can be categorized into four groups. first, some students came to lighthouse just because they wanted to accompany their friends, or because their parents needed someone to “babysit” their children during the summer. while some said they did enjoy the time, some said the participation was just a boring task. second, some students felt isolated by other students. in one activity, the research assistant saw a student crying because the student had been ignored by other students. third, some students thought the program was not intellectual. this is particularly evident for higher-grade students, as they sometimes took courses with younger students on subjects that were too easy for them. and lastly, some students felt they did not get enough attention from the volunteers. not all volunteers are capable of treating every student equally. introverted students socio-emotional support and post-compulsory education decisions current issues in comparative education 51 found it hard to get as much attention as outgoing students, yet these introverted students probably needed more help. the coexistence of positive and negative experiences could be a reason why quantitative results reject many anticipated lighthouse impacts. conclusion and discussion socio-emotional support, or at least the lighthouse program, does affect pced in rural china. the delphi-psm results suggest educational aspiration is the only measurable outcome that is statistically significant, and pced can be altered with boosted aspiration. affiliation need, confidence, curiosity, and extraversion are treatment determinants that could be misrecognized as impacts if matching is not conducted. courage, ambition, and career expectation turn out to be neither treatment effects nor determinants. the aspiration boost can however decrease over time, suggesting that more follow-ups are needed to maintain the impact. such an aspiration boost applies mainly to students with higher academic performance, which is encouraging since it is absolutely right for these students to pursue more schooling. in lighthouse sites that are relatively new, the novelty for local people may help in greater program effect. the passion, confidence, and acceptance of training content by volunteer teams can also be important to program quality. one likely explanation of aspiration boost is that students tried to copy the volunteers’ schooling decisions after trust was built. trust can be easily built through personal interaction that is common in lighthouse-type interventions, but rare in formal schooling. on the other hand, individual cases show a mixed picture of how the students reacted to the program for personal reasons or the capacity of volunteers. this helps explain why only one effect survives the matching. a relevant recommendation of this study is the promotion of lighthouse-like socio-emotional support programs. as a typical rural gngo program that operates at very low cost, an impact on a key pced determinant is sufficient to justify its contribution. this study also implies three possible improvements for lighthouse-like socio-emotional support. to begin with, since increased aspiration affects mainly students with higher academic performance, it is advisable to encourage high-performers’ participation. on the other hand, the matching result also implies that volunteers should pay more attention to low-performance students to ensure equity in outcome. secondly, a more structural procedure for follow-up services should be established. there should be minimum standards for all sites to follow in order to avoid diminishing impact. and thirdly, the volunteers should be encouraged to spend time on informal interactions like home visits yao current issues in comparative education 52 and letter communications, which appear to work well in building the emotional attachment between the students and volunteers. methodologically speaking, this study is a unique showcase of how sequential mixedmethods perform better than pure quantitative or qualitative methods for exploratory analyses. psm is popular in impact evaluation, but it is quantitatively impossible to persuade people what variables to consider for the estimation of propensity or what impacts to measure. delphi resolves these problems. however, recalling the case of nonimpact on confidence, it is the quantitative method’s strength to reveal “counter-intuitive” facts that can hardly be captured by qualitative methods. the sequential combination of delphi and psm complement each other to provide more convincing findings. socio-emotional support and post-compulsory education decisions current issues in comparative education 53 about the author: haogen yao is an education economist at the unicef middle east & north africa office. he supports the out-of-school children initiative, educational monitoring for the syria crisis and other emergencies, and other regional initiatives such as life skills education and insaf (“equity” in arabic). contact: haogen yao at hayao@unicef.org yao current issues in comparative education 54 references almlund, m., duckworth, a., heckman, j., & kautz, t. 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(2011). the determinants of national college entrance exam performance in china: with an analysis of private tutoring. unpublished phd dissertation, columbia university, new york, ny. zhu, r. (2006). studies of rural junior middle school’s education streaming situation from its streaming intention. unpublished master thesis, east china normal university, shanghai, china. socio-emotional support and post-compulsory education decisions current issues in comparative education 57 appendix a1. recruitment/training/evaluation schedule for new volunteers, circa 2012 march  recruitment  application screening april  interviews and admission. usually 1 in 6 ~ 1 in 8 accepted.  introduction of lighthouse (operation, idea, developmental strategy, etc.). may  first round of team building. this is a 3-day intensive session. the volunteers will be together for more than 12 hours per day.  teaching training – education ideas  teaching training – teaching skills and informal instruction  teaching training – trial lecture june  teaching training – student affairs  optional trainings. in 2011, ten courses were provided by former lighthouse volunteers, professional trainers, or other ngo trainers, including: applied drama, social gender, picture book education, creative music, photographing, outdoor living skill, state of rural education, getting-things-done (gtd), connected to community, inquiry learning, and communication. july  volunteer disciplines and first-aid treatment  second round of team building  specific training held by former volunteers from the same lighthouse location july-august  summer camp starts, accompanied with simultaneous monitoring and evaluation by former volunteers and lighthouse staff september  workshops for each volunteer team  summative meeting october  revisit during the national day holiday yao current issues in comparative education 58 table a2. sample of the one-month lighthouse activities in a schoola week one monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday arrival enrollment enrollment team building team building & class assignment week two monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday 8:00-8:10 morning reading(english pronunciation, news broadcast, story share) 8:10-8:50 1 class meeting local productb 1 local product 4 local product 7 local product 10 9:00-9:40 2 team game local product 2 local product 5 local product 8 local product 11 9:40-10:00 class-break exercise 10:00-10:40 3 silent music local product 3 local product 6 local product 9 local product 12 2:00-2:40 4 basic marketing physical experiments optional coursesc sales local products exhibition 2:50-3:30 5 small story, big idea handcraft 3:40-4:20 6 gymnastic gymnastic long-distance household visit during weekend week three monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday 8:00-8:10 morning reading(english pronunciation, news broadcast, story share) 8:10-8:50 1 class meeting funny math english speaking performing life history (three kingdoms) 9:00-9:40 2 drawing story of a boat communication about teamwork 9:40-10:00 class-break exercise 10:00-10:40 3 outdoor drawing fruit life logo design making a mask gender and society 1 2:00-2:40 4 making a water rocket communication optional courses language and expression treasure-hunt 2:50-3:30 5 discovery your community outdoor sketch 3:40-4:20 6 the world of voice class meeting long-distance household visit during weekend week four monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday 8:00-8:10 morning reading(english pronunciation, news broadcast, story share) 8:10-8:50 1 class meeting funny math funny english life auction art festival 9:00-9:40 2 learn to reject bird’s moving 9:40-10:00 class-break exercise 10:00-10:40 3 ads design geography cartoon drawing gender and society 3 2:00-2:40 4 marketing gender and society 2 learn to reject art festival drill 2:50-3:30 5 marketing practice water purifier sales 3:40-4:20 6 class meeting commencement notes: a. the detailed activities vary among lighthouse schools, but the design follows the lighthouse standard operation procedure. b. local product is a series of inquiry learning promoting the students care of local development. c. optional courses include taekwondo, dance, drawing, and singing for this sample. they vary across lighthouse schools depending on volunteers’ skill sets. app:ds:water%20purifier socio-emotional support and post-compulsory education decisions current issues in comparative education 59 table a3. variable construction category variable description used for propensity score calculation pced and treatment pced 1 to 5 for dropout/work/vhs/ahs/undecided treated participated in either the latest or earlier lighthouse program(s); 1/0=yes/no participation participated in the latest lighthouse; 1/0=yes/no gender, age and ethnicity female female student; 1/0=yes/no f_income female from a relatively high income household (log of income belongs to upper half); 1/0=yes/no f_performance female with relatively high performance (test score/ranking belong to upper half in school); 1/0=yes/no √ f_cost female from a household that perceives relatively high cost of further education; 1 to 6 from low to high age older than the mode of age within the grade; 1/0=yes/no minority minority; 1/0=yes/no parental background single_p with single parent; 1/0=yes/no migrant_p with migrant parent; 1/0=yes/no no_p both parents dead or at home for less than 1 month in the past year; 1/0=yes/no medu mother's education level; 1 to 6 for no schooling to some upper secondary education or above fedu father's education level; 1 to 6 for no schooling to some upper secondary education or above √ peasant parents being peasant; 1/0=yes/no politicalc political capital; 1 to 3 for either parent is other/communist league member/communist party member parent_leader father or mother are cadres; 1/0=yes/no parentbadhealth father or mother's health does not allow for normal life or work; 1/0=yes/no number of sibship number of siblings (including the student); 1 to 6 in which 6 means 6 or more siblings √ yao current issues in comparative education 60 siblings and birth order witheldersister has an elder sister; 1/0=yes/no √ eldercohort being the older siblings; 1/0=yes/no peer mignetwork perceive prevailing trend of going out as young migrant worker; 1/0=yes/no √ peerpedu average parental education level in class; 1 to 3 for primary unfinished/primary/lower secondary unfinished teacher tch_origin homeroom teacher's origin; 1 to 4 for local town/other town in county/other place in province/other province √ tch_edu homeroom teacher's level of education; 1/0 for college/non-college tch_admin homeroom teacher holds other administrative position in the school; 1/0=yes/no tch_exp homeroom teacher's experience as fulltime teacher; 1 to 4 for 2 years or less/3 or 4 years/5~10 years/over 10 years tch_mthgain homeroom teacher's monthly income; divided into 6 quantiles tch_paydelayed homeroom teacher experienced pay delayed in the past 6 month; 1/0=yes/no subtch_origin key subject (chinese/math/english) teacher origin; take means and divide into 4 quantiles √ subtch_edu key subject (chinese/math/english) teacher level of education; take means and divide into 4 quantiles subtch_exp sum of key subject teacher's experience as fulltime teacher; take means and divide into 4 quantiles school classsize classsize; divided into 4 quantiles distance traveling time to school; divided into 6 quantiles √ survival school has relatively high retention rate (>66%) √ school dummies dummy variables identifying which school the student was attending (there are eight schools) √ household economic status and credit constraints wealth wealth status; 1 to 4 based on the availability of cement house, computer/internet/car, and motor cycle housesize household size; divided into 4 quantiles income log of household income; divided into 6 quantiles credit_financiali log of available credit from bank or credit cooperative; divided into 6 quantiles socio-emotional support and post-compulsory education decisions current issues in comparative education 61 credit_relative log of available credit from relative; divided into 6 quantiles subjective factors stu_eduaspiration expected highest level of education, 1 to 5 for lower secondary/vocational high/academic high/college/graduate school expect_norm expect agriculture or manufacturing as future career; 1/0=yes/no expect_advanced expect science, technology, or government as future career; 1/0=yes/no percep_schquality perception of school quality; take mean of the ratings to related items and divide into 6 quantiles percep_schaffiliatio n emotional attachment to school; take mean of the ratings to related items and divide into 6 quantiles percep_schvalue perceived value of schooling; take mean of the ratings to related items and divide into 4 quantiles √ percep_scheffort willingness to study; take mean of the ratings to related items and divide into 4 quantiles confidence level of confidence; take mean of the ratings to related items and divide into 6 quantiles courage level of courage; take mean of the ratings to related items and divide into 6 quantiles curiosity level of curiosity; take mean of the ratings to related items and divide into 6 quantiles ambition level of ambition; take mean of the ratings to related items and divide into 6 quantiles familyonstudy level the family cares about their study and pced, perceived by the student; take mean of the ratings to related items and divide into 6 quantiles (end up only category 1 to 5 available) familyonemo level the family cares about their emotional status and respects their opinion, perceived by the student; take mean of the ratings to related items and divide into 6 quantiles tchr_contvsstop homeroom teacher's preference of continuing education over stopping education; take ratio of the ratings and divide into 4 quantiles tchr_genvsvoc homeroom teacher's preference for academic high school over vocational high school; take ratio of the ratings and divide into 4 quantiles health sick suffers disease(s); 1/0=yes/no √ sick_class suffers health issues that directly affect study, namely feeling hungry/dizzy during class and having eyesight problem; 1/0=yes/no √ yao current issues in comparative education 62 perceived cost/ reward of the pced cost_vocvsjunior cost of vhs relative to cost for middle school, perceived by the household; take ratio of the amounts and divide into 6 quantiles cost_genvsvoc cost of ahs relative to cost for vhs, perceived by the household; take ratio of the amounts and divide into 6 quantiles cost_colvsgen cost of college relative to cost for ahs, perceived by the household; take ratio of the amounts and divide into 6 quantiles √ earn_workvsdrop expected relative earnings in 35 if work-after-graduation instead of dropout, perceived by both the household and the student; take ratio of the amounts and divide into 6 quantiles √ earn_vocvswork expected relative earnings in 35 if continue to vhs instead of work, perceived by both the household and the student; take ratio of the amounts and divide into 6 quantiles √ earn_genvsvoc expected relative earnings in 35 if continue to ahs instead of vhs, perceived by both the household and the student; take ratio of the amounts and divide into 6 quantiles √ earn_colvsgen expected relative earnings in 35 if continue to college instead of ahs, perceived by both the household and the student; take ratio of the amounts and divide into 6 quantiles √ academic performance and possible pced determinants knowvoc student and their family's knowledge of vocational education policies; 1 to 4 for no to very much performance academic performance; take mean of both ranking and score and then divide into 4 quantiles within school √ business has family business to inherit; 1/0=yes/no interpersonal situation of interpersonal relationships in school; take mean of the ratings to related items and divide into 6 quantiles √ urbanlife used to stay in nearby cities for over 1 month; 1/0=yes/no √ outreach_voc perceived frequent outreach from vocational schools; 1/0=yes/no outreach_fac perceived frequent outreach from factories; 1/0=yes/no local_negative holds very negative view of local development; 1/0=yes/no socio-emotional support and post-compulsory education decisions current issues in comparative education 63 local_entertain perceived prevalence of entertainment industries (ktv, gambling or illegal lottery, internet bar) in the neighborhood; 1/0=yes/no gambling has been involved with gambling or illegal lottery; 1/0=yes/no schatmos school has relatively good study atmosphere (level of violence, cheating, class discipline); 1/0=yes(> mean value)/no chore time spent on housechore; divided into 4 quantiles √ love was or is in love with someone; 1/0=yes/no. considering the sensitivity of this topic for teenagers, this question was asked with 6 options from strongly disagree to strongly agree, so student can answer “basically agree” if they feel shy about confirming the relationship √ grade dummies dummy variables identifying which grade the student was attending (there are three grades) √ additional variables for treatment outcomes or determinants extraversion level of extraversion; take mean of the ratings to related items and divide into 6 quantiles affiliationneed level of need of affiliation; take mean of the ratings to related items and divide into 6 quantiles atti_chore_farm attitude towards housechore/farm works; 1 to 6 for hate to love √ other_act level of other activities (housechore/farm works/city visit or job), according to the household; take mean of the ratings to related items and divide into 6 quantiles peertreated popularity of lighthouse participation among classmates (lighthouse participants as % to the class); divided into 4 quantiles attoncamp how supportive the household is of participating in summer camp or how much they respect the student’s own preference; take mean of the ratings and divide into 6 quantiles √ notes: detailed questionnaires and data for the graphs are available upon request. the last column informs a final list of variables that are used to estimate the propensity scores after education aspiration was confirmed as the outcome of interest. following the rule set by brookhart et al., 2006, this specification is generated to include variables correlated to educational aspiration (p<0.05) and not totally unrelated to participation (p<0.6), plus school and grade dummies. microsoft word 7 paper final round 4.docx © 2015, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 18(1), 68-82. advancing ecological models to compare scale in multi-level educational change david james woo university of hong kong education systems as units of analysis have been metaphorically likened to ecologies to model change. however, ecological models to date have been ineffective in modelling educational change that is multi-scale and occurs across multiple levels of an education system. thus, this paper advances two innovative, ecological frameworks that improve on previous models. these models are extended to different educational contexts, specifically technology integration efforts in two private international school systems. while both models adequately compare scale of change through interactions between non-locational demographic groups on several geographic/locational levels the models are limited by their simplistic visual renderings and their application to educational contexts within the field of educational technology. introduction comparative education is a field that embraces the exchange of knowledge and learning between multiple fields and disciplines. it is heterogeneous and inclusive in terms of content, membership and purposes and, as a result, the field exemplifies “a multipolarity of centres of scholarship characterising the contemporary world and similar patterns in the different periods of the history of comparative education” (manzon, 2015, p. 93). on these grounds, innovative methods are embraced in the field of comparative education. bray, adamson and mason (2014) recognize, “one of the most important uses of comparative education research is the identification of models that are employed elsewhere and that can be imported for use in other settings” (p. 431). thus, it is desirable for scholars in comparative education to learn from other fields and academic disciplines. the purpose of this paper is to advance two innovative, ecological frameworks that model and compare scale of change within the field of educational technology. the paper begins with a description of two models, one proposed by davis (2008) and the other by law, yuen and lee (2015), that conceptualize change as multi-scale and education systems as complex, multi-level ecologies. next, this paper demonstrates how these models can evolve or be translated for application to the field of educational technology, which is accomplished through a comparison of two information and communications technology-enabled innovations (ict-enabled innovations) in the private international school context. the paper concludes with a discussion of limitations and opportunities for further research in the field of comparative education. multi-scale units of analysis the practice of comparative education begins with the thoughtful identification of units of analysis. the bray and thomas cube (bray & thomas, 1995) is a conceptually robust advancing ecological models to compare scale in multi-level educational change current issues in comparative education 69 comparative education framework that can be used toward that end. this is because it allows for a holistic and comparative understanding of units of analysis along three dimensions: geographic/locational levels, non-locational demographic groups, and aspects of education and society. the geographic/locations dimension of the cube is particularly instructive because it comprises several levels that compose a cohesive, hierarchical, and multi-level social system. in this way, the cube introduces the educationalist not only to multi-dimensional analysis, but also to multi-level analysis. however, while the cube is effective in orienting an educationalist towards an appropriate unit of analysis, it does not necessarily lead the educationalist to draw multi-level comparisons (bray, adamson & mason, 2014). despite this limitation, the bray and thomas cube is “crucial for a balanced and holistic understanding of educational phenomena” (manzon, 2014, p. 126). for example, it can be used to understand the complexity of the hong kong education system, which comprises several categories of schools (e.g. international schools, direct subsidy scheme schools, private independent schools and aided schools) that have their own degree of operational flexibility. at one end the spectrum, international schools are allowed to raise revenue through institutionally set school fees. this is because the government does not financially support them. in contrast, direct subsidy scheme schools, which are partially funded by the government, cannot raise tuition fees above a certain level (woo, 2013). a closer examination of hong kong’s education system reveals that each school is a designed, hierarchical social organization comprised of various structures such as grade levels, classes and content areas. an international school in hong kong can thus be structured in many ways which allow for school self-stratification, with school structures acting as valves for change (woo, 2014). since there are different structural pathways in the education system, the impact of change from, for example, the enforcement of an e-learning policy is felt differently by schools categories, individual schools, and classes. given this picture, the emerging challenge for the educationalist becomes thoughtfully modelling and comparing change using a unit of analysis that is not only multi-level but also multi-scale. here, scale involves a large group of learners and a wide range of stakeholders (law, kampylis & punie, 2015); multi-scale refers to the depth, spread, sustainability, ownership shift and evolution of a change within and across multiple geographic/locational levels (law, yuen & lee, 2015). for example, the enforcement of a new e-learning policy impacts not only an education system’s multiple levels but also the multiple stakeholder groups vested in the chance process, such as teachers, students, and vice-principals, who all hold different structural memberships. a teacher, for instance, belongs to a particular grade level and a student belongs to a particular class. manzon (2014) suggests that the complex interplay between these different stakeholders is what makes multi-level boundaries blurred and permeable. thus, there is a pressing need to develop robust models to delineate the boundaries between structures and different stakeholder groups. woo current issues in comparative education 70 ecological metaphors and models of complexity a metaphor is useful for understanding the complexity of a social phenomenon. this is because it can facilitate an understanding of a complex idea by its most essential elements, which is further helpful for guiding the interpretation of data. in this vein, a biological ecology is an appropriate metaphor for an education system because both are complex, adaptive systems, with inter-related variables in causal relationships that influence system outcomes. additionally, a biological ecology and an educational system can be examined through the lens of complexity and systems theories, which both emerged in the early 20th century from biologists who had operated against a prevailing worldview that the world could be understood completely through analysis of the smallest components and their deducible rules (o’connor, 2008). applying biological ecologies as metaphors to understand educational change is neither new to educational research nor to the comparative education field. since the 1970s, bronfenbrenner (1976) has likened education systems and processes to nested ecological systems and structures. this practice has continued to the present time, where scholars such as bray and kobakhidze (2015) have likened the private supplementary tutoring phenomenon in hong kong to an ecosystem. however, much of the application of biological ecology to education systems to date has been through descriptive metaphor, such as likening computer uses and teachers to species with invasive and keystone qualities, respectively (zhao & frank, 2003). the educational technology field has not only spurred the development of ecological metaphors but also ecological models to understand multi-level, multi-scale change. educationalists have faced the problem of not only introducing ict-enabled innovations, but also sustaining and spreading the uptake, which go beyond the practice of an individual and are more challenging than changing pedagogical practices (law, yuen & fox, 2011). this is because sustainability and scalability of ict-enabled innovations are complex processes that require complex models of scaling that account for multiple levels, starting points, actor contributions and learning pathways, all of which impact the sustainability and scale of an innovation. davis’s (2008) arena of change is one such ecological model that accounts for the multiple levels and actor contributions to sustainability and scale of change through digital technologies. furthermore, the arena is a significant ecological metaphor in the literature because it shifts ecological metaphor modality from text to images. it “aims to provide a ‘satellite view’ of the interconnected and embedded ecosystems that make up schooling globally,” and illustrates “the chaotic and complex changes that are coevolving with changes in the education and technology sectors” (davis, 2015). the arena’s satellite view also identifies macro-ecosystem levels as regional, national and global parameters, all of which environ the school ecosystem and its sub-systems. the school ecosystem features classroom sub-systems and other sub-systems such as school departments. teachers and students populate the classroom sub-systems and other roles – such as principal, department heads and parents – populate the other school subsystems. advancing ecological models to compare scale in multi-level educational change current issues in comparative education 71 davis (2008) originally introduced four categories of forces that influence internet technology (it) across all levels of the ecology: bureaucratic, professional, commercial, and political. he also points out, “ensuring the essential conditions for transfer across multiple classrooms appears most challenging” (davis, 2008, p. 516). a later arena iteration (davis, 2015) includes home and communities as another force influencing technology and education across all levels of the ecology. institutions and organizations associated with these forces populate various ecosystems levels in the arena of change. davis (2008) states that though the model can be “somewhat different across countries...the multilevel ecological hierarchy still applies” (p. 508). for instance, the arena has been used to map influential factors on the design of a university postgraduate course and the influence of that course on wider ecosystems (davis, 2015). figure 1 illustrates the latest iteration of davis’s arena of change. figure 1. arena of change. source: reprinted from the arena of change for edusummit. retrieved from http://davisarena.blogspot.hk/2015/09/the-arena-of-change-edusummit-in-14-15.html. creative commons attribution-sharealike 3.0 unported (cc by-sa 3.0) by niki davis. davis’s arena of change is an appealing, visual map of non-locational demographic groups and geographic/locational levels, and it acknowledges select aspects of education and society as forces acting on these actors and levels. however, it only begins to address the specific alignment of these levels, actors and their focused interactions, woo current issues in comparative education 72 which impact scale. thus, law, yuen and lee (2015) developed a multi-level, multi-scale model of scalability that addresses issues of sustainability and scalability, particularly at each level of the multi-level ecosystem. the model recognizes multiple levels in an education system and facilitates descriptive mapping of within-level and across-level interactions, either within a unique instance of a unit of analysis or across another instance of the unit of analysis. within-level, within unit refers to interactions within a specific ecological level within a unique instance of a unit of analysis. a meeting among teachers of the same grade (i.e., ecological level) and school (i.e., multi-level unit of analysis), for example, is an instance of a within-level, within unit interaction. across-level, within unit refers to interactions across specific ecological levels within a unique instance of a unit of analysis. in this case, a meeting between a principal (i.e., school-level role) and a teacher (i.e., grade-level role) of the same school could be considered an across-level, within unit interaction. while the interactions described thus far occur within one school, across unit interactions involve two or more schools. thus, students from a class in school a collaborating with students from another class in school b could be considered an across unit interaction. an across-level, across unit interaction could be defined as teachers (i.e., grade-level) of school a meeting the principal of school b (i.e., school-level). furthermore, law, yuen and lee’s (2015) model draws attention to outcomes and breakdowns from these interactions at each ecological level. like davis’s arena, this multi-level, multi-scale model has been used to analyze multi-scale change amongst non-locational demographic groups and geographic/locational levels in educational systems comprising various structures (laferriere & breuleux, 2015). however, despite the model’s effectiveness in capturing within-level and across-level interactions, within unit and across unit interactions, and interaction breakdowns and outcomes at each ecological level, it does not provide a striking visual of the ecology and its actors at each ecological level. table 1 is a representation of law, yuen and lee’s (2015) multi-level, multi-scale model of scalability. advancing ecological models to compare scale in multi-level educational change current issues in comparative education 73 table 1. schematic representation of the multilevel multiscale analysis of the architecture for learning within and across different contextual units of the hierarchical nested education system, and their effect on scalability. within level cross level effect on scalability (depth, spread, sustainability, shift & evolution) breakdown level within unit cross unit within unit cross unit for itself for other units international system project district / multischool organization school (leadership) teacher student technology source: law, yuen and lee (2015). research design and analytical method for adapted ecological models this section describes the translation of davis’s (2008) and law, yuen and lee’s (2015) ecological conceptual frameworks into innovative models that can more effectively map multi-level, multi-scale educational change. this section also includes a description of the research context and the coding process by which data were mapped to the ecological models. these adapted ecological models are grounded in a research project featuring two cases of ict-enabled innovation in private international school systems. the unit of analysis is one ict-enabled innovation facilitated by a technologist in one private international school during one school year. in multi-level, multi-scale learning, technologists act as brokers to create teacher learning opportunities and align learning within and across levels in a school system. the technological innovations of ipads and digital storytelling were the most frequently mentioned innovations for the ict facilitator in school a and the head of teaching and learning technologies in school b, respectively. data to be mapped onto these ecological models came from iterative interviews with the selected technologists and their colleagues. data also included notes taken from observations of woo current issues in comparative education 74 technologist interactions and digital artifacts such as blog posts. the scale of educational change through each ict-enabled innovation is evidenced through technologists’ interactions. therefore, data related to technologist interactions for the selected innovation were coded descriptively to identify their structure, which included identifying structural membership for each role at each unique interaction. based on the structural membership of roles at an interaction, each interaction was positioned at a specific level and categorized as either a within-level interaction or an across-level interaction. each unique interaction was further analyzed to identify formality in terms of regularity and compulsion, and whether the interaction was emergent or pre-existing to the innovation. in addition, data for each unique interaction were analysed for any explicit mention of outcomes, including any connections to other unique interactions. finally, they were analyzed for breakdowns, tension or conflict in the interaction. the directionality of each interaction was determined based on the structural membership of participating roles, the outcomes of the interaction and whether the interaction was emergent or pre-existing. tables 2 and 3 (below) are adapted from law, yuen and lee’s (2015) multi-scale, multilevel model of scalability. table 2 is a diagrammatic representation of the scale of educational change portraying an ict facilitator’s interactions with multi-level, multi scale stakeholders to integrate ipads in school a. similarly, table 3 is a diagrammatic representation of the scale of educational change portraying a head of teaching and learning technologies’ interactions to integrate digital storytelling in school b. interactions are plotted in each table. these adapted models feature ecological levels, but focus particularly on within unit interactions, that is interactions within the school. therefore, unlike the original law, yuen and lee (2015) model, these translated models do not have across unit columns for within level and across level interactions. table 3 features an extra-school ecological level because extra-school interactions related to the selected ict-enabled innovation were identified in the data. since the focus of the research is interactions within a school, only one column for outcomes is used in these adapted models. interactions are described using emic labels if available from the data. similarly, the different stakeholder group memberships, if available from the data, are stated in the description of each interaction. advancing ecological models to compare scale in multi-level educational change current issues in comparative education 75 table 2. schematic representation of the multilevel multiscale analysis of an ict facilitator’s interactions to integrate ipads in school a pt interactions within level across level outcome breakdown school-level school head meetings approval for samsung tv and apple tv purchase campus-level school sectionlevel p principal meetings; p parent meetings p religious studies curriculum team meetings ipads and project goals; samsung and apple tv opportunity; meetings with school head; p parent meetings; plans for wholeschool ipad deployment and financing; professional development structure; 21clhk; p ipad policies; curriculum mapping for k, p2, p4 teacher meetings; language support for p religious studies curriculum team p principal has no authority to approve purchases grade-level k, p2, p4 teacher meetings specific ipad app interaction focus for k, p2, p4 lessons; agreements for scarlett to drop in and teach k, p2, p4 lessons disagreement between pt and teacher class-level k, p2, p4 lessons learning artifacts disagreement between pt and teacher individual-level woo current issues in comparative education 76 table 3. schematic representation of the multilevel multiscale analysis of a head of teaching and learning technology’s interactions to integrate digital storytelling in school b pt interactions within level across level outcome breakdown extra-school conference presentations; university course teaching; commercial course digital storytelling practice; arrangement with e s9 biology teacher to team teach school-level afterschool activity ict teacher, ict technician and e p5 teacher drop in; digital storytelling artifacts; commercial course daniel leaves school campus-level school sectionlevel grade-level class-level e s9 biology teacher meeting; e s9 biology lessons pollution curriculum map and artifacts; p ict teacher and e s biology head drop into lessons; commercial course; conference presentations; year-end assembly curriculum unit finishes; no biology teacher workshop on digital storytelling individual-level e p ict teacher meeting; e p5 teacher meeting; technician meeting; e s biology head drop in conference presentations figures 2 and 3 (below) are adapted from davis’s (2008) arena of change model. figure 2 is a diagrammatic representation of the scale of educational change through an ict facilitator’s interactions to integrate ipads in school a. similarly, figure 3 is a diagrammatic representation of the scale of educational change through a head of teaching and learning technologies’ interactions to integrate digital storytelling in advancing ecological models to compare scale in multi-level educational change current issues in comparative education 77 school b. like davis’s original model, these adapted models feature ecological levels, roles and structures, with ecological levels highlighted in black and school roles and other structures highlighted in red. the models feature standardized fonts and colors. they also resemble law, yuen and lee’s (2015) multi-scale, multi-level model of scalability in that they visualize within and across level interactions (see figures 2 and 3). however, the resemblance diverges in their emphasis of plotting various stakeholder groups at various ecological levels over plotting interactions, which is more of an element of davis’s model. figure 3 features an extra-school ecological level because extra-school interactions related to the selected ict-enabled innovation were identified in the data. these adapted models of the arena of change do not feature any political, professional, commercial or bureaucratic forces. this is because categorizing intra-school roles as being either mainly political, professional, commercial or bureaucratic was too subjective and superfluous to the research project. figure 2. diagrammatic arena representation of the multi-level, multi-scale analysis of an ict facilitator’s interactions to integrate ipads in school. creative commons attribution-sharealike 3.0 unported (cc by-sa 3.0) source: david woo. woo current issues in comparative education 78 figure 3. diagrammatic arena representation of the multi-level, multi-scale analysis of a head of teaching and learning technologies interactions to integrate digital storytelling. creative commons attribution-sharealike 3.0 unported (cc by-sa 3.0). source: david woo. figures 2 and 3 feature arrows from the technologist role to other school roles, which represent across-level and within-level interactions. these arrows should be interpreted as follows: arrows by their points convey directionality; thicker arrows convey routine interactions while thinner arrows convey ad hoc interactions; red arrows convey conflict while black arrows do not; dashed arrows are emergent interactions created in the target school year while solid arrows convey pre-existing routines. the translations of law, yuen and lee’s (2015) model and davis’s (2008) model demonstrate different approaches to modelling scale from the same data set. they also emphasize the complex interplay between roles, school levels and qualities of interactions, all of which influence the scale of an ict-enabled innovation. for schools a and b, the result of such complex interplay is different pathways for ict-enabled innovation. in the case of school b, the ict facilitator worked with a larger and more diverse group of stakeholders to scale change. thus, the interactions among the diverse stakeholder group impacted individual and class-levels of the school, or had impact outside the school. also, there was an absence of conflict between the ict facilitator advancing ecological models to compare scale in multi-level educational change current issues in comparative education 79 and the stakeholders of school b. in contrast, the ict facilitator in school a worked with a smaller and less diverse group of stakeholders on mainly three levels: school section, grade level and class level. also, while school b experienced an absence of conflict, school a experienced an abundance of conflict in the ict facilitator’s interactions in school a. although these specific pathways do not guarantee impact for an innovation in classroom practice, the findings suggest interactions at selected levels are correlated with other selected qualities that ultimately impact the influence of innovation on classroom-level practice. this supports law, yuen and lee’s (2015) argument that the value of good practices is not necessarily about the “what” and “how” of innovation, but the strategic alignment and development of learning across levels. discussion and conclusion this paper advanced two innovative, multi-level ecological frameworks that are based on ecological models proposed by davis (2008) and law, yuen and lee (2015). this section offers reflections on changing ecological models by identifying limitations to the models found in this paper, and by suggesting how comparative education researchers and practitioners can continue to advance models of ecology to compare scale of multilevel systems change. visualizations of metaphorical school ecologies are scarce and under-valued in both research and practice. thus, there is a great opportunity and a need to develop new and improve existing ecological models that utilize visualizations to map educational change. this study sought to fill this need by advancing two innovative, multi-level ecological frameworks adapted from davis (2008) and law, yuen and lee (2015). while these models adequately compare scale of change through interactions between nonlocational demographic groups on several geographic/locational levels, they are limited in several ways. at present, these models cannot visualize and compare breakdown of interactions within ecological levels in a system. in addition, while the models can adequately illustrate isolated interactions related specifically to an ict-enabled innovation, they are unable to illustrate and facilitate comparison of secondary interactions that result from previous interactions. in other words, a challenge to the arena of change model is clearly illustrating a sequence of interactions, which is difficult because of the amount of detail required to map sequential interactions. the additional arrows and stakeholder groups would only clutter the visual model and render it unreadable. in brief, these models would be more robust could they convey more information about interactions in a clear manner. furthermore, drawing interaction arrows for arena models using sketchup layout was very difficult and time-intensive. also, learning how to use qcad, which was used to create figures 2 and 3, was equally time-intensive. thus, while these technologies can spur the creation and diffusion of knowledge, the high learning curve associated with computer-assisted drawing software are constraints for educationalists. finally, any visualization will only be as valid as the coding of data for the visualization. to illustrate, a coding challenge arose when classifying eclectic groups of stakeholders such as the types of students that attend the head of teaching and learning woo current issues in comparative education 80 technologies’s extra-curricular activities. after much deliberation, the interactions of these eclectic groups of stakeholders were categorized as school-level interactions; the interactions of individual teachers and eclectic, individual school stakeholders were categorized as individual level interactions. in the end, it was clear that impressive visuals do not mitigate loose constructs. in general, ecological metaphors are too theoretical because they are rarely applied to and grounded through research data. school systems will continue to change just as biological ecologies and societies change over time. in view of this, models are necessary to “guide different trajectories of change observed under different contexts and stimulate further research” (punie, law & kampylis, 2013, p. 8). since these models were developed within the field of educational technology and have advanced understanding of educational change in that field, their exclusivity to that field has limited their application to other educational contexts and units of analysis: the scope of educational technology and ecological research undervalues certain countries, school organizational types and school roles. therefore, just as educational technology researchers have overlooked school-based levels and nonmainstream school systems as areas for scale, they have also overlooked these areas for the application of ecological models in the field of education. the field of comparative education may assemble a greater cross section of researchers from diverse educational contexts and disciplines than the field of educational technology. comparative educationalists from these diverse educational contexts and disciplines have the opportunity not only to advance comparative education and educational technology field but also the ecological models shared between these fields. david woo is a research student at the university of hong kong. email: h0489314@hku.hk. references bray, m., & thomas, r. m. 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(2003). factors affecting technology uses in schools: an ecological perspective. american educational research journal, 40(4), 807-840. doi:10.3102/00028312040004807 current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 26, issue 1, winter 2024 inequities in public scholarship during the pandemic: who made predictions about the future of higher education? kyle long american university in dubai bernhard streitwieser george washington university joy gitter hanover research throughout the covid-19 pandemic, commentators in broadly accessible media have offered a surfeit of predictions about the future of higher education. due to the absence of accountability mechanisms, however, the accuracy of these claims has been heretofore unknown. research shows that op-eds and other forms of public scholarship influence public policy, heightening the significance of predictions. this paper asks who makes predictions about higher education, in what venues they issue them, on what topics they make predictions, and how accurate they are. it answers these questions by drawing from an original data set of 91 distinct predictions issued by 22 unique authors in 31 separate texts across a 19-month time span from march 2020 to october 2021. it finds that predictions most often appeared in op-eds written by senior academic white men in higher education trade journals. more than half of predictions could not be evaluated a year or more after they were first issued. still, predictions with determinable outcomes tended to bear out accurately. enrollment patterns and teaching modalities were the most common topics. women and people of color were significantly under-represented among predictors. the paper concludes with suggestions for improving equity and performance. keywords: covid; academics; women; people of color; representation. introduction scholarship during the covid-19 pandemic yielded a glut of predictions about the future of higher education. in national news outlets, domestic and international trade publications, and blogs, experts and non-experts alike forecasted a wide range of changes in the sector. they prognosticated on how the pandemic would impact enrollment, mobility, and modality as well as financing, technology, and curricula. yet it is unclear which and how many from this dizzying array of predictions were hitting the mark. when communicating with the public, academics experience considerably fewer accountability measures than when they communicate with peers in scholarly journals (posner, 2001). indeed, even evaluation of publicly espoused predictions is rare. when it does occur, the results are superficial, providing only a high-level account of general themes (june & o’leary, 2021), not specific predictions from individual authors. the absence of rigorous evaluation of publicly issued predictions is a problem for three reasons. first, pandemic-inspired predictions have turned out to be wrong in many © 2024, long et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 26(1), 3-28. https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en long, streitwieser & gitter current issues in comparative education 4 domains, from housing to jobs to state budgets (demsas, 2022). we should not expect different results in the higher education sector. second, inaccurate predictions can still influence public policy. while earlier scholars doubted the impact of academic discourse on public opinion and public policy (posner, 2001), more recent research has shown that scholars can indeed move the needle when communicating with the public through opeds (coppock et al., 2018). third, without measurement, there can be no improvement. higher education commentators can better serve the public by reflecting on their predictive performance. our paper identifies and analyzes predictors and their predictions about higher education made during the first year and a half of the covid-19 pandemic in the united states. while journalists, policy analysts, and junior academics, among others, also offer predictions, we find that prediction-making is generally a pursuit of senior academic white men. they typically opine about topics like enrollment trends or technology changes in open-access higher education trade journals such as university world news. their predictions often appear incidentally in op-eds prompted by the latest pandemic-related news concerning higher education. but it is difficult to determine the quality of these predictions. indeed, it was still too early to judge the accuracy of more than half of the predictions made during our data collection period after a year had passed. in instances where we can determine their accuracy, predictions have turned out correct at an astonishingly high rate of 83 percent. our findings contribute to national conversations about public trust in higher education as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion. we discover that non-academic thought leaders make more predictions in mainstream media than academic experts who communicate more regularly in trade publications. consequently, outsiders have greater opportunity to influence the national narrative about higher education at a time when the public is losing confidence in the sector. further, we notice the relative absence of women and people of color from the prediction phenomenon. the dearth of predictions by experts with these perspectives limits the quality of information the public receives. we conclude with suggestions for improving equity and overall performance vis-à-vis publicly espoused predictions. literature review this paper contributes to a relatively small but fast-growing literature about higher education and the covid-19 pandemic. since 2020, many peer-reviewed journals have dedicated special issues to this subject (burkholder & krauskopf, 2021; davenport & holland, 2021; ghosh & demartino, 2022b; green et al., 2020; ho mak & montgomery, 2021; huang et al., 2022; husain, 2021). bozkurt (2022) used data mining to identify three broad themes in covid-19 higher education research: “(1) educational crisis and higher education in the new normal: resilience, adaptability, and sustainability, (2) psychological pressures, social uncertainty, and mental well-being of learners, and (3) the rise of online distance education and blended-hybrid modes” (1). but scholars have used the lens of the global pandemic to explore nearly all aspects of higher education from global knowledge production (ghosh & demartino, 2022a) to online teaching (chan et al., 2021; pokhrel & chhetri, 2021) to student perceptions (choi fung tam, 2022; sharaievska et al., 2022) to well-being and support (slack & priestley, 2022; aquino & scott, 2022) to students’ experiences with racism and discrimination (koo et al., 2023) to financial aid (gurantz & wielga, 2021) and enrollment challenges (prescott, 2021). researchers have also examined the impact of the pandemic on specific types of institutions like historically black colleges and universities (hbcus) (lucas & felton, inequities in public scholarship during the pandemic current issues in comparative education 5 2022) and community colleges (floyd et al., 2022). limited mobility, especially during the early phases of the pandemic, inspired calls to rethink campus internationalization policies (ammigan et al., 2021; whatley & castiello-gutierrez, 2022). indeed, a particularly popular approach in this emergent tradition acknowledges the need to innovate or reimagine higher education in the wake of the pandemic (long, streitwieser, & fisher 2021; mckeown et al., 2021; nakra, 2021; neuwirth et al., 2021). the pandemic has also afforded an opportunity to extend theory. numerous analysts have observed policy responses exacerbating the inequalities engendered by neoliberalism (ahmed, 2022; jayasuriya, 2021; le grange, 2020; pan, 2020) or “disaster capitalism” (vujnovic & foster, 2022). in the united states, the disparate impact of the pandemic on communities of color extends to the implications of university reopening plans on racial equity (harper, 2020). we are also learning more about psycho-social factors. research shows that higher education students are more susceptible to psychosocial problems and experience racism at higher rates than the general public and that the pandemic has exacerbated these issues (akin-odanye et al., 2021; koo et al., 2023). studies show that peer and family support can help mitigate the harmful effects, but that virtual learning environments have typically engendered conditions of isolation, especially for rural and international students (omodan, 2020; wilczewski et al., 2021). methods and sources vary widely, but there are not many surprises. interviews with students, faculty, and staff are common (bergerson & coon, 2022; kee, 2021; knight et al., 2021; oliveira et al., 2021; yu, 2021). these populations also constitute survey samples for research on how the pandemic has impacted teaching and learning (johnson et al., 2020; tsang et al., 2021) or the student experience (aristovnik et al., 2020; aucejo et al., 2020; martin et al., 2021). others leverage large-scale datasets to analyze topics ranging from student enrollment (baer, 2021) to institutional responses (marsicano et al, 2020) to the impact of campus closures on mortality rates (mangrum & niekamp, 2022). reliance on secondary sources is also common, especially for discourse analysis (belluigi et al., 2022; kee-ming sia & abbas adamu, 2021; kele & mzileni, 2021). the preceding review demonstrates that, since 2020, studies examining the impact of covid-19 on various aspects of higher education have highlighted themes such as resilience and adaptability in education, psychological pressures on learners, and the rise of online and blended learning. there is a gap in the literature about public scholarship during the pandemic. despite evidently growing interest in covid-19-inspired higher education research, we are unaware of any studies that have explored academic communication about the sector with the public during the pandemic, let alone attempts to analyze predictors or evaluate predictions about the future of higher education. conceptual framework the purpose of the conceptual framework is to introduce ideas that will assist analysis and discussion of the findings. in this section, we therefore introduce the concepts of professional legitimacy, public intellectuals, thought leaders, experts, forecasting, and foxes/hedgehogs. there are power dynamics inherent in public scholarship. institutionalized features of the academy influence who among its members communicates with lay audiences. writing for the public is an important way to enhance professional legitimacy—a condition that reflects one’s alignment with professional norms (gonzales & terosky, 2016)—especially if the message contains policy implications (sommer & maycroft, 2008). professional legitimacy is how academics obtain and exercise power. for example, a timely op-ed in long, streitwieser & gitter current issues in comparative education 6 the new york times can amplify a congressional hearing, leading to increased coverage of a researcher’s ideas. this shrewd demonstration of the potential for policy influence could appeal to funders, which in turn could bring in more resources to an institution, leading to still greater professional legitimacy for that researcher. yet, studies show that women, people of color, and non-tenure track faculty perceive constraints on their abilities to achieve professional legitimacy that their tenured white male counterparts do not (davis & maldonado, 2015; de welde & stepnick, 2015; lester, 2011; o’meara et al., 2018). for most faculty, professional legitimacy comes primarily from the volume and impact of original research in peer-reviewed publications, and to a lesser extent teaching (gonzales & terosky, 2016). for those belonging to non-dominant identities, other opportunities for professional legitimacy are beyond the pale. works on academic communication with the public and philosophy of science provide helpful concepts to analyze predictions (see table 4 in the appendix for a definition of the key terms used in this paper). texts in these fields assist in understanding who makes predictions and why, whether prediction is possible, and if so, how to do it well. they also show how to evaluate predictions, among other uses. academic communication with the public has traditionally been the purview of public intellectuals. these individuals, the jurist richard posner (2001) tells us in his authoritative study, “address nonspecialist audiences on matters of broad public concern” (35). examples of current public intellectuals include cornel west, jill lepore, and larry summers. the public looks to them to identify and synthesize trends, to link to relevant academic research, and to tell us what will happen next. public intellectuals build trust with their audiences by staking their reputations on their claims (parks & takahashi, 2016). this kind of work has therefore been regarded as a form of public service. but scholars have increasingly observed that the influence of public intellectuals is waning (drezner, 2017; murphy & costa, 2019). according to the political scientist dan drezner (2017), this is happening because the marketplace of ideas has evolved into an industry of ideas. this new public sphere, he contends, is bigger, louder, and more lucrative than ever before. with the advent of the internet, the number of platforms, forums, and outlets eager to broadcast provocative ideas has exploded. and so, today’s thought leader has come to replace the public intellectual of yore. drezner further distinguishes thought leaders from academic experts, yet another group declining in public esteem (nichols, 2017). experts are less effective in the marketplace of ideas, drezner argues, because they tend to focus on why policies will not work. thought leaders, on the other hand, are eager to explain to the public why their idea will work. drezner derisively refers to this latter group as “intellectual evangelists.” today’s thought leaders pursue the same audience as public intellectuals always have, but now they have a much more singular agenda. examples of these new evangelists include figures like adam grant, clayton christensen, and tom friedman. the philosophy of science includes a tradition exploring the possibility of prediction (forster, 2008). on one end of the spectrum is chaos theory, which posits that the world is too random and uncertain to render prediction a viable intellectual pursuit. in other words, a true science of prediction is not possible. on the other end, probability theory contends that we can apply mathematical reasoning to available information to generate a numerical likelihood of something happening. the science of prediction—also known as forecasting—has become a fixture in the physical sciences, especially in fields like meteorology. and even though the weather forecast may inspire us to leave our umbrella at home on the wrong day, predictions of the physical world can reach remarkable levels of accuracy. the same cannot be said for the social world, where the variables are inequities in public scholarship during the pandemic current issues in comparative education 7 exponentially more diffuse, and thus the potential for improvement is significantly more limited (makridakis et al., 2020). even the big data revolution, which has drastically increased the availability and volume of social data, has had a limited impact on forecasting events in our social world with any measure of greater accuracy (hosni & vulpiani, 2017). but that does not mean that forecasting in the social world is impossible or futile either. research shows that some individuals are particularly good at making predictions and can improve their abilities to prognosticate over time (tetlock & gardner, 2015). a groundbreaking study at the dawn of the 21st century demonstrated that the average expert was no better at predicting political outcomes than a dart-throwing chimpanzee (tetlock, 2005). but later works since then have been able to identify that certain nonexperts who use a three-part forecast-measure-revise technique can significantly outpredict experts who may even have access to better information. unfortunately, this rigorous approach is practiced exceedingly rarely. even though prediction is “the stock in trade of the public intellectual” (posner, 2001, 128), consumers of forecasting do not generally demand accuracy (tetlock & gardner, 2015). consequently, there is no sustained interest in measuring the accuracy of predictions. nor do the predictors therefore have any great incentive to revise their forecasts. consumers of their predictions are in turn less able to rely on the validity and veracity of suggested prognostications. in short, if we cannot feel confident in the validity of the predictions made by our so-called intellectuals and experts, then what value can they really hold for us? in the absence of measurement, we still have some expectations for the relative performance of public intellectuals and thought leaders. there are decades of peerreviewed research about making informed predictions (i.e., forecasting) and even a largescale government-funded predictions tournament. scholar phil tetlock and journalist dan gardner (2015) draw from these sources in a bestselling book about predictions. in it they employ a classic metaphor when exploring who is better at predicting the future: foxes or hedgehogs. foxes know many little things, while hedgehogs know one big thing. according to the authors, foxes are much better predictors. but hedgehogs are better storytellers and are more likely to say that something definitely will or will not happen. counterintuitively, tetlock and gardner found that when authors who are hedgehogs predicted outcomes in their area of expertise, their accuracy declined. yet more vexing, there is even an inverse correlation between fame and accuracy: the more famous an expert is, the less accurate he or she became. tetlock evaluated predictions that included confidence intervals and timelines. but predictions issued in the public domain do not often have these characteristics. this is where our study comes in. research questions our project stems from ‘re-imagining higher education worldwide after covid-19,’ a series of three internally funded seminars held in fall 2020 and spring 2021. the seminars provided a platform for higher education experts in different parts of the world to reflect on how the pandemic would impact the future of the sector. getting a taste of the predictions made by our expert participants, and the audience’s reaction to them, laid the seed for our subsequent study and is the subject of this paper. the predictions study that resulted from the initial seminar series includes four broad questions: 1. who makes predictions about higher education to nonspecialists? 2. in what venues do they make these predictions? 3. on what topics do they make predictions? 4. how accurate are predictions about higher education inspired by the pandemic? long, streitwieser & gitter current issues in comparative education 8 methodology constructing the data set: sources and methods to answer these questions, we constructed a data set of all the predictions we could find. construction of original datasets out of news media is an increasingly common practice in education research, especially for frame or discourse analysis (coe & kuttner, 2018; coe et al., 2020; long & o’connell, 2022). this was a multi-stage process. we define a prediction as a statement expressing that an occurrence, phenomenon, or change would or would not happen in the future. when initially collecting predictions, we erred on the side of inclusivity and gathered as many statements that approximated this definition as possible. we used a combination of snowball and purposive sampling to generate an initial corpus of english language texts from the popular press and higher education trade journals that included predictions about the future of higher education intended for nonspecialists, i.e., public consumers of higher education content. because their primary audience is specialists, individuals with extensive knowledge, expertise, and experience in the higher education industry, we excluded peer-reviewed journals. we also excluded podcasts because they generally do not come with transcripts. we conducted google searches for relevant terms such as “covid-19,” “pandemic,” “predictions,” “impact,” “higher education,” etc. we also sought out predictions from specific analysts known to address higher education issues publicly, including philip altbach, anthony carnevale, and scott galloway, among others. after compiling an initial list of texts, we then identified the portions of them that potentially contained testable predictions. approximately one in four texts contained a prediction. in instances where a single text included multiple predictions, we created separate entries for each prediction. this resulted in an initial data set of 115 entries. next, we cleaned the data set by removing entries that did not pass a basic definitional test of a prediction after further scrutiny. we did not require entries to have confidence intervals or timelines or even unambiguous verbiage. instead, we put to each entry a simple question: is this a prediction? a prediction states that some occurrence, phenomenon, or change would or would not happen in the future. claims that did not meet this definition and appeared unverifiable due to a lack of specificity or testable statement were excluded. through this process, we removed 24 entries, more than a fifth of the original data set. discarded claims were unverifiable and often comprised opinions, summaries of trends or popular opinion, advice, statements of fact, or a call to arms, rather than a prediction. commentators often discuss how trends could play out in the future, but ultimately refrain from committing to a single expected outcome. for example, the following claim was removed from the dataset because it fails to specify what will happen in the future: “it is likely that heightened student awareness and organizing, and some bitterness and estrangement, will be ongoing legacies of the pandemic period” (marginson, 2021). next, we categorized the entries in multiple ways. the first step was to identify the content area of the prediction, which we then used to categorize the predictions’ content into codes. we applied one of seven inductive codes to each prediction that allowed us to sort them by shared content. based on the data, we developed the following codes (table 1). inequities in public scholarship during the pandemic current issues in comparative education 9 table 1 content area codes and descriptions with sample predictions content area code code description sample prediction corporate entities predictions that address the role of the private sector and nontraditional higher education providers. “enrollments in google career certificates and microsoft’s global skills initiative, among others, will increase” (dennis, 2021). enrollment predictions pertaining to the future of student demand either in the united states or globally. “the economic recovery between now and 2030 will only increase demand for postsecondary education” (carnevale, 2021). finance predictions that consider changes to higher education institutions’ or systems’ revenues and/or expenditures. “it is likely that there will be a highly restrictive fiscal climate, because of the public debts incurred by the government during the pandemic. the potential for one more autumn shutdown of the country, and the universities, is real” (marginson, 2021). health predictions about the implementation of higher education policies and/or practices to minimize the community impact of covid19. “students, faculty and staff will travel with digital health passports, verifying their covid19 test results” (dennis, 2021). inequality predictions that highlight the widening gap between privileged and underprivileged higher education systems and institutions in the united states or abroad. “because of severe economic downturns as a result of the pandemic, research funding will probably shrink further in lower and middle-income countries, where it is already limited. an exception may be china” (de wit and altbach, 2021). landscape predictions that concern the viability, market position, or governance of a large collection of institutions. “the movement toward economic transparency and accountability is gradually shifting from the degree level toward the program level as well. we will almost surely end up with more transparency and accountability on completion, employment, and earnings for all postsecondary programs” (carnevale, 2021). online/hybrid predictions about the future of digital modalities in higher education. “we doubt that there will be a profound and lasting ‘technological revolution’ in higher education. but the covid-19 crisis will significantly expand the use of distance education” (altbach and de wit, 2020b). we then generated categories for author and source types as well as timelines and verbiage. we determined role categories for prediction authors and applied labels to each individual author and author combinations, borrowing “thought leader” (e.g., scott galloway) and “expert” (e.g., anthony carnevale) from the literature and adding long, streitwieser & gitter current issues in comparative education 10 “journalist” (e.g., jon marcus) and “aspirant” (e.g., scott van pelt). we apply the “thought leader” label to individuals employed in the private sector or who regularly advocate “disruptive innovation” in higher education. in our dataset, “experts” are tenured research faculty or senior leaders of higher education organizations. notably, we observed individuals beyond thought leaders and experts making predictions. we therefore developed two additional categories inductively. the “aspirant” label describes non-tenured or practice-oriented faculty as well as mid-level researchers at educationoriented think tanks or international organizations. we apply the “journalist” label to individuals employed by media organizations. none of the authors in our data set qualify as public intellectuals as defined above. when an expert made a co-authored prediction (i.e., alongside one or more aspirants, experts, and/or journalists), we labeled that category “expert+.” we coded each prediction with y or n to denote if it included a timeline or not. for example, simon marginson provided a timeline in this prediction: “the overall position for international education is that it’s going to take a massive hit. i think that we’re looking at at least a five-year recovery period in terms of the global numbers of people who move between countries for education” (quoted in bothwell, 2020). further, we coded each prediction’s verbiage as “definite” or “indefinite.” predictions in the former category definitively state that something will or will not happen. indefinite predictions state that something will “probably” occur, is “likely” to happen, “could” transpire, or “might” unfold, etc. finally, we evaluated each prediction by assigning it one of four outcomes. first, we determined whether the prediction was bearing out accurately or second, whether it was demonstrably false. for entries in which we could not evaluate the outcome, we noted third, whether this was due to a lack of information (i.e., there was not enough data) or fourth, because the prediction itself included a timeline—implicit or explicit—beyond the evaluation period (i.e., it was too soon to tell). we also used a four-phase system to evaluate the predictions in september 2022 and march 2023. the first phase involved graduate research assistants who helped us to locate evidence that supported or refuted the predictions before assigning one of the four evaluation outcomes noted above. in the second phase, we solicited the pro bono services of a professional higher education research analyst from the private sector who checked the work of the graduate student assistants. finally, in our third and fourth phases, the study’s authors reviewed the overall evaluation results again in september 2022 and march 2023. in september 2022, authors reviewed all predictions in the dataset. at that time, they determined that 49 predictions (over half of the full dataset) were “too early to tell” or there was “not enough data” to conclude its accuracy. six months later, they re-evaluated those same 49 predictions to determine if enough additional time had passed or if there were newer data sources available. this process resulted in updates to evaluations of six predictions: two predictions changed to either “not enough data” or “too early to tell” and four changed to either “bearing out accurately” or “demonstrably false.” findings inequities in public scholarship during the pandemic current issues in comparative education 11 the final data set included entries for 91 predictions. each entry included the prediction, the prediction category, the title of the text, the link to the text, the publication source, the category of the publication source, the publication date, the name(s) of the author(s), the number of authors, the author type, timeline, verbiage, the evaluation, the evaluation evidence, and the link to the evaluation source. the 91 predictions resulted from 31 texts that were published in fairly even intervals across a 19-month time span from march 2020 to october 2021. fifteen texts first appeared in 2020. sixteen texts surfaced in 2021. texts came from 20 unique source publications. nearly two-thirds (64.0 percent) of predictions appeared in trade journals. edsurge (2), inside higher ed (3), the chronicle of higher education (2), times higher education (2), and university world news (7) all had more than one text in the database. more than a third (34.5 percent) of all predictions appeared in university world news. approximately one in five predictions (22.0 percent) appeared in the popular press (e.g., forbes, new york magazine, etc.). blogs (8.8 percent) and ngo reports (5.5 percent) accounted for the remaining predictions. most texts (67.8 percent) and predictions (64.8 percent) were authored by a single individual. more than a quarter of the predictions (26.4 percent) were authored by two individuals. less than a tenth (8.8 percent) of the predictions came from three individuals writing together. no texts—and therefore no predictions—were authored by more than three individuals. the data set included predictions from 22 unique authors. in four of the texts, the individuals who issued predictions did not have a byline but were instead quoted as experts. we treated them as authors because they were authors of the prediction, even if they did not author the article in which the prediction appeared. most predictions were made—at least in part—by experts. they were involved in 73.6 percent of predictions. a plurality of predictions was made by individual experts (38.5 percent). the next most common author type, accounting for 35.2 percent of predictions, came from the expert+ group (i.e., co-authored predictions that included at least one expert). eighty-four percent of expert and expert+ predictions appear in trade journals. only four predictions across these two groups appeared in the popular press. thought leaders made nearly a quarter (24.2 percent) of all predictions. all thought leaders in the data set worked alone. their predictions were over-represented in the popular press. of the 20 predictions in this source type, 14 were issued by just two thought leaders— brandon busteed and scott galloway. michael horn was the only thought leader in our data set to issue predictions in a trade journal—edsurge. the average number of predictions per text was 2.9. there is generally no discernible difference in the number of predictions by the number of authors. however, two different solo-authored texts each included a data set maximum of 11 predictions. less than a quarter (22.7 percent) of the predicting authors were women. only one text had a woman first author—marguerite dennis. predictions pertain to both domestic u.s. higher education and global higher education but skew toward the former. most authors were based in the united states (81.8 percent). long, streitwieser & gitter current issues in comparative education 12 relatively few predictions included a timeline (7.7 percent). definite verbiage (e.g., “will”) was more common in predictions (79.1 percent). however, even when predictions stated that something definitely will happen, they lacked specificity. for example, five predictions stated that a phenomenon “will increase” without qualifying how much. indeed, it is characteristic of this dataset for a prediction to state definitively that a phenomenon will happen but without a timeline and without specifying by how much. authors made predictions on a variety of topics. a plurality (25.3 percent) of predictions pertained to enrollment. of these, nearly three-quarters (73.9 percent) concerned international enrollment. the remainder (26.1 percent) addressed domestic u.s. enrollment. predictions about online/hybrid modalities (24.2 percent) as well as about the broader landscape for higher education (18.7 percent) were also common. figure 1 distribution of predictions by category overall accuracy our analysis found that a plurality (41.8 percent) of the 91 predictions bore out accurately (see figure 2). although, when considering only predictions with determined outcomes (i.e., bearing out accurately or demonstrably false), this figure rises to 82.6 percent. an example of an accurate prediction came from philip altbach and hans de wit. on may 2, 2020, they predicted, “it is likely international students will postpone starting their studies as long as institutions only offer online instruction.” according to later iie data, indeed, international student enrollments in the united states fell by 15 percent in fall 2020 when most universities were primarily online. however, by fall 2021, when they had reopened, enrollments rebounded, increasing by four percent. enrollments of new international students increased by 68 percent. inequities in public scholarship during the pandemic current issues in comparative education 13 only 8.8 percent of predictions turned out to be demonstrably false. an example of an inaccurate prediction came from richard garrett. on january 12, 2021, he said to “expect a fall 2021 enrollment recovery, especially at four-year schools.” according to national student clearinghouse data, however, fall 2021 enrollment declined by 2.7 percent for all students. further, enrollment declined at four-year schools, as well. at public four-year institutions, enrollment dropped by 3.0 percent. at private nonprofit four-year institutions, enrollment fell 1.6 percent. at private for-profit four-year institutions, enrollment tumbled 9.3 percent. more than half of all predictions in our data set could not be fully evaluated, either because it was too early to tell (22.0 percent) or there was not enough data (27.5 percent). an example of the former comes from carnevale et al. (2020). on july 8, 2020, they predicted that “[many colleges will] scale back the support services that many disadvantaged students need.” institutions report data to ipeds, a system that collects data from all institutions of higher education and technical and vocational schools that receive federal student financial aid, on academic and institutional support as well as student service expenditures. however, at the time of evaluation, data for fy 21 were not yet available and it was therefore too early to tell if this prediction was bearing out accurately or was demonstrably false. an example of a prediction that could not be fully evaluated due to a lack of data came from marguerite dennis, who on january 9, 2021, predicted that “an increasing proportion of higher education enrolments will come from company-sponsored, short-term certificate programmes and boot camps.” we were unable to locate a credible data source for companysponsored, short-term study to confirm or deny the accuracy of her prediction. figure 2 distribution of overall prediction outcomes accuracy by author type long, streitwieser & gitter current issues in comparative education 14 there is essentially no impact of author type on accuracy (see table 2). single-author experts were somewhat more likely to be correct than co-authoring experts (i.e., expert+) or thought leaders, but the difference is not significant.1 among the three author categories, co-authoring experts were most likely to make predictions that cannot be evaluated in the shortterm. thought leaders were most likely to make predictions that can be evaluated now. the expert+ group had a minor advantage in avoiding being wrong. table 2 distribution of prediction outcomes by author type author type accurate false too early lacking data expert (n=35) 45.7% 11.4% 20.0% 22.9% expert+ (n=32) 37.5% 3.1% 28.1% 31.3% thought leader (n=22) 45.5% 13.6% 13.6% 27.3% author types vary when considering specificity of language. expert+ predictions were more likely to use indefinite language. nearly two in five (37.5 percent) of their predictions used “might,” “likely,” “probably,” etc. compared to 11.9 percent of the rest. thought leaders were the opposite. there was only one instance of a thought leader using indefinite diction. ten of 19 (52.6 percent) indefinite language predictions bore out accurately. this represents a higher percentage than definite language predictions that bore out accurately (38.9 percent). accuracy by content category table 3 shows the outcomes of the two highest volume categories. predictions about enrollment were more likely to be correct (52.2 percent) than the aggregate of predictions in other categories (38.2 percent), but the difference is not significant.2 thirty percent of enrollment predictions require more time to pass before evaluating their accuracy. this outcome contrasts sharply with the aggregate of all other predictions, only 19.1 percent of which are too early to tell. only one (4.4 percent) of the enrollment predictions fell into the not enough data category, compared to 35.3 percent of other predictions. notably, five of the seven predictions in the entire data set that included timelines concerned enrollment. only 18.2 percent of predictions about online/hybrid developments bore out accurately. the aggregate accuracy rate of predictions in all other categories was 49.3 percent. this category’s comparatively low accuracy rate is due in large part to the fact that nearly three in four of its predictions required data to verify that was not publicly available at the time of writing. still, none of the online/hybrid predictions were demonstrably false either. notably, no predictions about online/hybrid issues included timelines. 1 the kruskal-wallis test is a nonparametric alternative to one-way anova. it is useful for determining the significance of variance for three or more groups with categorical data. this test showed no significant differences among the three author types, h(2, n=89) = 0.9864, p = .61066. 2 chi-square = 1.373, p = .241304. inequities in public scholarship during the pandemic current issues in comparative education 15 table 3 distribution of prediction outcomes in select categories category accurate false too early lacking data enrollment 52.2% 13.0% 30.4% 4.4% online/hybrid 18.2% 0.0% 9.0% 72.7% four prediction categories had accuracy rates of 50 percent or higher: health (67 percent), finance (50 percent), inequality (50 percent), and corporate entities (50 percent). however, these were generally lower volume categories. discussion the covid-19 pandemic—especially prior to the development of vaccines—was a trepidatious one for higher education. it was hard to know if some changes would be fads or take root. this meant there was much to discuss. the ideas industry that had sprung up in the years prior created an infrastructure for those discussions to occur increasingly in public view. but the ideas industry has changed the way specialists communicate with nonspecialists. a feature of many predictions made in the public sphere is that they are not capable of being evaluated for many years or are being made in areas where there is no expectation for measurement. but when they are testable, they are often right. this finding contradicts tetlock’s claims to the contrary. notably, though, our predictors operated under different conditions (e.g., no confidence intervals or timelines). experts in our data set admit uncertainty, primarily through indirect verbiage. they hedge their bets. further, their predictions are rarely the aim of the text, but rather a by-product. still, they operate as a mirror into their level of confidence. our findings also indicate a splintering along fox and hedgehog lines. the general public—to the extent that it hears any predictions about the future of higher education— hears them more from thought leaders than academic experts. that is because, as our findings indicate, the popular press publishes thought leaders; trade journals publish experts. publication venues reflect incentive structures. experts in research professorships earn greater pay and prestige by publishing for other experts in peer-reviewed journals. thought leaders outside academic research roles earn acclaim by disseminating their ideas to broader audiences. crossover is rare and typically only occurs when experts have advanced to the highest levels of their fields. in these instances, traditional academic incentives are no longer as potent and reaching new audiences becomes more appealing. this means that experts do not really communicate to the mainstream public per se. with four out of every five of their predictions appearing in trade journals, experts may not exactly be preaching to the choir, but they are still focusing on the congregation. they are not out evangelizing like the thought leaders. long, streitwieser & gitter current issues in comparative education 16 this is a problem for at least a couple of reasons. first, public opinion data show that the public is losing trust in higher education (fischer, 2022). yet the sector’s interlocutors with the public are seldom experts. second, our data suggest that experts—especially when coauthoring—may be wrong less often than thought leaders. that means the public is at greater risk of getting bad information—and using that information to inform how they vote, and, in turn, what policies will shape the sector in the years ahead. we argue that the academy needs to re-prioritize communication with the public. tenure committees should count it as service and doctoral programs should teach future faculty how to do it well. further, the academy would do well to incentivize participation in the ideas industry by all its members. our study finds that senior academic men over-participate in this activity. an important corollary is the apparent under-representation of women. why are there so few of them in our data set? an initial approach to answering that question must start by observing that the supply of potential women authors is lower than men. according to ipeds, in fall 2020, 48 percent of all faculty in u.s. postsecondary institutions were women. but among tenured faculty, this figure drops to 41 percent. and among those who hold the title of full professor, only 35 percent are women. none of the women authors in our data set have held faculty positions, let alone tenure-track or tenured positions. whereas nearly half of the men in our data set have been full professors. the disparity compounds when you consider that women write op-eds at much lower rates than men. in 2008, the oped project began raising awareness about this issue when it found that 80-90 percent of newspaper op-eds were penned by men. its 2012 byline survey found that two in three op-eds about education had male authors. since then, figures have improved, but women still lag men. a 2016 study found that men authored 81 percent of op-eds on foreign policy in the the new york times, the washington post, the wall street journal, and los angeles times (bayrasli & radin, 2018). in 2019, the new york times started the women’s project to achieve greater gender parity in its letters page. after a year, it had increased the percentage of published letters from women writers, but the percentage of overall submissions remained static. only 25 to 30 percent of all potential letters were written by women (feyer, 2020). in february 2020, the times implored more women to write. then the pandemic arrived. during the height of the pandemic, women bore the brunt of household work, especially managing children’s schedules and activities (barroso, 2021; kasymova et al., 2021). consequently, women academics fell behind on research (davis et al., 2022; pebdani et al., 2022; skinner et al., 2021). if they had less time for research, it should not be surprising that they would have less time for engaging with the public. indeed, women academics tweeted less due to increased parenting responsibilities, which hit junior academics particularly hard (kim & patterson, 2021). but what is somewhat surprising is that women do not appear in our dataset even as quoted experts. this finding suggests that during a critical time when the public and policymakers were looking for insights about the future of higher education, they were not getting them from women. the paucity of their input likely impacted the content of predictions. we did not see predictions about issues in inequities in public scholarship during the pandemic current issues in comparative education 17 higher education that impact women the most (stem enrollments, research support policies like family leave, tenure clock extensions, etc.). we similarly, and disappointingly, observe that none of the authors in our data set appear to be people of color. the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on racial and ethnic minorities, especially black americans (peek et al., 2021). research indicates that the academic careers of minority faculty were more likely to be disrupted than those of their white colleagues (carr et al., 2021; krukowski et al., 2022). the absence of people of color in our data set points to the public’s deprivation of access to valuable perspectives on the future of higher education, particularly during a time when the nation was also grappling with racial injustice. academic leaders should develop support structures to ensure that their voices are heard (njoku & evans, 2022). until then, public scholarship as a path toward professional legitimacy will remain a luxurious pursuit, further entrenching inequality in the professoriate. we also want to recognize another possibility: predictions may not be a desirable intellectual product of potential suppliers beyond senior academic white men. perhaps the prediction, like the public intellectual, is a dying breed, too. it might be that there are other ways of engaging the public better suited for our era. the next generation of academic experts might prefer to spend the time their forebears did on op-eds instead on community engaged research (london et al., 2022; warren et al., 2018). even so, the ideas industry will carry on—with or without academic experts. op-eds and the predictions they contain will continue. we contend that it is in the best interest of the academy to participate. and to do so better with more voices and more accountability. limitations we acknowledge several important limitations to our study. the first is that not enough time has passed for sufficient data to emerge that would help us to evaluate fully the accuracy for half of the predictions we collected. second, the online/hybrid category concerns content that analysts could measure—and may in fact be measuring now—but standard measures have not been developed and research lags. third, we only looked at english language sources. predictions surely occur in non-english sources, but we did not collect or analyze them for this study. fourth, due to google’s search algorithm, we likely missed some media outlets that included predictions. finally, we were unable to measure the relative impact of sources and texts. we do not have data on clicks, views, or readership. consequently, all predictions are treated as having equal impact. conclusion this paper is the first exploration of academic communication about the higher education sector with the public during the pandemic. it establishes benchmarks for predictor attributes and prediction performance. it finds that predictions often appeared in op-eds in higher education trade journals. they tended to be issued by senior academic white men. half of predictions could not be evaluated over a year after they were first issued. although, predictions with determinable outcomes tended to bear out accurately. predictions covered a range of topics, but enrollment patterns and online/hybrid teaching modalities were most common. the results point to a silo-ing of public discourse in which long, streitwieser & gitter current issues in comparative education 18 non-academic thought leaders are the primary prognosticators of higher education futures to the general public through mainstream media. academic experts speak to lay, but informed, audiences through higher education trade journals. women and people of color are significantly under-represented among predictors. if academic experts continue to participate in the ideas industry via prediction, they ought to do so in a way that allows for their claims to be evaluated. predictions should use definite verbiage and include timelines and confidence intervals. issuers should make a smaller number of carefully considered predictions and revisit them to reflect on their accuracy. broader application of tetlock’s forecast-measure-revise technique would be a good starting point. further, predictors could evaluate others’ predictions when making their own to build broader public knowledge. finally, academic leaders should foster more inclusive participation in faculty communication with the public. doing so would have salutary consequences for both intellectual equity and the quality of public information. kyle long (phd, columbia university) is president of the american university in dubai in dubai, united arab emirates. his research focuses on international university campuses and the geopolitics of higher education. bernhard streitwieser (phd, columbia university) is associate professor of international education & international affairs and unesco co-chair in international education for development at the george washington university in washington, dc, usa. his research focuses on international student exchange and study abroad, and access and integration of refugees and at-risk migrants into higher education. joy gitter (edm, harvard university) is a research consultant in the education practice of 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individual who addresses nonspecialist audiences on matters of broad public concern, identifying and synthesizing trends. expert category of predictor referring to tenured research faculty or senior leader of higher education organization. aspirant category of predictor referring to non-tenured or practiceoriented faculty as well as mid-level researchers at educationoriented think tanks or international organizations expert+ category of predictor referring to a group with at least one expert and one or more experts, aspirants, and/or journalists journalist category of predictor referring to an individual employed by a media organization current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 20, issue 2, special issue 2018 © 2018, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 20(2), 40-42. recruiting international students with technology: the changing and the unchanged chia-ming hsueh national cheng kung university introduction internationalization in higher education has become increasingly relevant over the past two decades, not only in traditional areas like north america and europe, but also in emerging regions such as asia and the rest of the world. the expansion of the global higher education mobility is obvious, with over 4.6 million students seeking education outside their home countries and an estimated 13 million cross-border online students in 2015 (oecd, 2017). these statistics suggest the global higher education system needs to pay more attention to international students, especially regarding recruitment. in the past, universities recruited international students by providing face-to-face consults and delivering printed documents and brochures, activities which required much manual effort. in recent times, new technologies have had large impact within the education sector, and the domain of international student recruitment, itself an inherently complex, costly and competitive landscape, has been no exception (becker et al., 2017). further, since the emergence of global rankings and increasing competition, the role of the international office has switched from engaging in academic cooperation and exchanges, to focusing on international student recruitment, services, and advertisements. thus, a strategic, deliberate, and informed recruitment approach, with technological inputs, is likely to help institutions maximize their opportunities in an efficient manner. the changing appearance while traditional marketing strategies remain important, social media marketing is emerging as a large influencer on potential students. for example, although campus visits have long helped students to choose their desired universities, many prospective students no longer see this as an essential part of their university search. according to a recent survey of undergraduate international students, 58 percent said they had no plans to visit a campus before applying and 28 percent said they wouldn’t visit even after being accepted (levitz, 2015). technology, such as virtual reality tours, social media platforms, and a user-friendly, responsive, and multi-language website, play an increasingly important role in the student decision making process. many young people have been shaped by the ubiquity of social media like facebook, youtube, twitter, instagram, and wechat and often choose these as their desired platforms for obtaining school information, allowing recruiting staff to easily reach out to potential students, domestically and internationally. recruiting international students with technology current issues in comparative education 41 in addition to increasing user access, technology can aid higher education institutions in re-appropriating money from inefficient projects to better help students. many institutions are facing similar budget cut challenges and new technologies can help universities increase their recruiting international students while keeping the overall budget down. virtual education fairs, online orientations, and other technology-aided methods can decrease the costs of personnel and travel while expediting the dissemination of information. big data and cloud sharing techniques can contribute to the digitization of recruitment documents and files, making the records trackable, manageable and of benefit to recruiting staff. while many international offices have not yet achieved the ideal blend of technological processes within their everyday methods, with the recruitment of ever more information technology professionals by universities, these processes are likely to change in the near future. internationalization and technology universities which find themselves under pressure from global competition and rankings are increasingly finding the need to address internationalization on their campuses. according to a recent report by the american council of education, the increase of study abroad opportunities for local students and the recruitment of international students have become central to internationalization activities on campuses (helms & brajkovic, 2017). in asia, the field of recruiting international students will loom large in the near future, as some countries, like japan, south korea, and taiwan, are facing severely declining birthrates and similarly decreasing college student enrollment (sharma, 2018). these institutions face stronger pressures to attract students and should focus on international student recruitment in their institutional internationalization strategies. on a whole, increased internationalization and virtual communication with past, current, future students is especially important for universities today and the strategic use of technology can be conducive to improvements in these areas. the development of technology promotes human progress and transforms communication among people. technological applications also change with each passing day and what is popular today may be outdated or irrelevant tomorrow. the education and service sectors cannot escape from the use of technology within their processes and should adapt to take advantage of its usage. we should also realize that recruiting international students is a multi-dimensional task, with a heavy reliance on humanrelated expertise, tailored services, and social skills. these skills, which are essential, can be enhanced by the strategic use of technology. integrating technology into recruiting processes is not a goal in itself, but a means towards increased internationalization, and diverse and authentic means of interaction with potential students. chia-ming hsueh is assistant research professor, institutional research division, office of research and development at national cheng kung university in taiwan. hsueh current issues in comparative education 42 references adams, b. s., cummins, m., davis, a., freeman, a., hall giesinger, c., & ananthanarayanan, v. (2017). nmc horizon report: 2017 higher education edition. austin, texas: the new media consortium. helms, r. m., & brajkovic, l. (2017). mapping internationalization on u.s. campuses: 2017 edition. washington, dc: american council on education. oecd. (2017). education at a glance 2017: oecd indicators. retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/edu/education-at-a-glance-19991487.htm. ruffalo, l. n. (2015). how to engage international undergraduate and graduate students in the admissions process. retrieved from https://www.ruffalonl.com/upload/papers_and_research/2015/2015_internat ional_eexpectations.pdf. rwu. (2018). rank of web of universities: about us. retrieved from www. webometrics.info/en/about_us. sharma, y. (2018, april 6). declining populations point to a sombre future for he. university world news, 500. retrieved from www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20180406110416788 http://www.oecd.org/edu/education-at-a-glance-19991487.htm https://www.ruffalonl.com/upload/papers_and_research/2015/2015_internat%20%09ional_eexpectations.pdf https://www.ruffalonl.com/upload/papers_and_research/2015/2015_internat%20%09ional_eexpectations.pdf http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20180406110416788 current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 20, issue 2, special issue 2018 © 2018, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 20(2), 3-8. enactive processes, critical ontology, and the digitization of education kevin a. henderson teachers college, columbia university this introduction will explore the relevant literature on enactive processes, critical ontology, and faculty agency in relation to the digitization of education [1]. this section begins with a review of the enactive process, its roots in heideggerian philosophical perspectives on reflexive selfexamination, and continues with an analysis of the critical ontological approach and its implications on digitization and pedagogical practice. finally, this section introduces the submissions for this special issue and their unique contribution to the critical discourse surrounding technology and education. enactive processes critical ontology emerges from a perspective towards knowledge construction and meaning-making known as the enactive approach. this perspective asserts that individuals construct knowledge and enact worlds of meaning and identity through engagement with the surrounding environment (kincheloe, 2003; van der schyff, 2016). characteristic of this perspective is the notion that knowledge construction and meaning-making occurs in tandem with one’s surroundings and is a progressive and beneficial process, a process which creates new forms of identity and ways of being human. put another way, the enactive approach sees the process of ‘being human’ as unfolding through engagement with a larger whole, this larger whole itself also unfolding. while similar to constructivist forms of meaning-making, the enactive process is made distinct by its prioritization of the freeform development of human knowledge and meaning-making, and its unwillingness to constraint knowledge construction to fixed developmental stages (van der schyff, et al. 2016). the enactive approach encourages critical reflection on the various sociocultural and political currents that influence the commonly assumed body of knowledge/knowledge base in a given society (van der schyff, et al. 2016). this understood, the enactive perspective is an ontological approach resistant towards instrumentalist and “technological-mechanistic” (van der schyff, et al. 2016, p. 86) perspectives on meaning-making, with a critical eye towards interrogating the sociocultural factors which influence education. henderson current issues in comparative education 4 critical ontology within the context of western education and teacher training, teaching faculty, particularly within higher education, are rarely encouraged to examine the sociopolitical and cultural flows which influence what is considered acceptable teaching practice (kincheloe, 2003, 2011). the rationalist and instrumentalist philosophical influences which determine the structure of meaning-making and knowledge construction are widespread and the development of one's “identity and consciousness” (kincheloe, 2003, p. 47) and self-perception is often minimized (kincheloe, 2011; meyer, 2011). these cartesian/mechanistic perceptions on the role of the teacher as a type of educational delivery robot (kincheloe, 2003), create the conditions necessary for introducing ‘new’ more ‘enhanced’ or ‘efficient means of ‘education delivery’ via the digitization of education. sociotechnical imaginaries which construe teachers as mechanistic and frame the pedagogical process in the language of industry (efficiency, productivity, outcomes, quality assurance, and the like) see nothing of replacing large swathes of the teaching population with ‘intelligent machines’. dominant narratives on the digitization of education seek to transform both pedagogic practice and the teaching space into an environment which prioritizes mechanistic perspectives on teaching and seeks to squeeze every ounce of perceived efficiency out of the teaching day. in the classroom space, new technologies allow for real-time analysis of student performance and engagement (farhan et al., 2017), while enhanced facial recognition software enables educators to be ‘alerted’ if students’ show confusion or distraction (connor, 2018) opening the pathway for the development of intelligent tutor systems (jiang, dykstra, & whitehill, 2018) that can predict student affect (whitehill et al., 2014). at the level of the institution, an increasing number of schools (in the west and in asia) have begun to reshape administrative substructures around digital platforms (i.e. learning management systems, school-wide digital assessment systems, etc.) which have the effect of depersonalizing the educative experience, enable the categorization and analysis of large sets of educational data for seemingly objective decision-making. by examining critically the currents of influence that promote large-scale educational shifts such as these, faculty are better able to develop critical ontologies, and interrogative means of understanding themselves and the impact self-perception has on enabling or undervaluing non-dominant forms of knowledge construction and meaningmaking. not unlike the turn in physics from the classical mechanical understanding of the universe as a precisely winded machine, to a quantum theory understanding, which emphasizes processes of entanglement, interconnectedness, and the impact of the unseen enactive processes, critical ontology, and the digitization of education current issues in comparative education 5 on what is seen (bohm, 1980; 1993), critical ontology highlights the progressive unfolding of understanding, opens insight into the role of the larger social environment in knowledge construction, and reveals the power (agency) of educators to develop adaptive and critical pedagogies to examine privileged ways of understanding and to explore other ways of knowing. when turned towards education, critical ontology allows teachers to act with agency, critically examining the imaginaries which propel digitization along neo-liberal currents and enabling faculty to think of means through which technology integration [itself not inherently destructive] (heidegger, 1982) could lead to ends which improve upon the human condition within the interconnected life system. critical ontology is the type of “ontological education” put forth by heidegger (1982) which encourages an understanding of technology as an unfolding development, advancing alongside humans as free operating agents, co-producing (jasanoff, 2004; 2015) a world in which technological advances (or disruptions) are not blindly accepted as the desired shared imaginary for humanity, but as a part of the means through which humanity develops a more prosperous and beneficial future (van der schyff, et al. 2016). critical ontologies and the digitization of education applied towards the digitization of education, a critical ontology allows faculty to carefully analyze the dominant currents of imaginary futures that guide and influence technological developments. a critical ontology, and the enactive perspective, influence faculty self-perception, imbuing educators with a strong sense of agency and the ability to create learning environments which integrate technological developments only to the extent as such developments encourage new and beneficial ways of being human within the surrounding environment (van der schyff, et al. 2016). at its core, a critical ontological approach encourages teachers to reflect on their presumptions about the surrounding world and the impact that concretized western philosophical structures and instrumentalist perspectives on technology dominant and diminish other ways of knowing. this is important as the modernist philosophical perspective and its emphasis on empiricism, rationality, and materialism, is quite unlike pre-modern modes of understanding which tended to see human life as interconnected with nature (kincheloe, 2003). critical ontology and enactive approaches aid in the creation of pedagogical practices which encourage faculty and likewise student’s, towards viewing meaning-making as a co-productive process with the surrounding environment. with this in mind, kincheloe (2003) puts forth 23 characteristics of a turn henderson current issues in comparative education 6 towards a critical ontology. i have grouped several of these below with relation to those helpful for faculty to consider when critically analyzing digitization in education: external forces: critical sociotechnical imaginary analysis • to understand the importance of socio-historical consciousness concerning the production of self. • to recognize dominant power's complicity in self-production vis-à-vis ideologies, discourses, and linguistics. • to construct a power literacy that alerts individuals to their placement in the web of reality a web refashioned by the increasing influence of power-wielders in electronic hyperreality (kincheloe, 2003, p. 48). internal forces: developing a reflective critical ontology • to move beyond mechanistic metaphors of selfhood • to appreciate the autopoietic (self-producing) aspect of the "self” in order to gain a more sophisticated capacity to reshape our lives. • to see that the self is not pre-formed as it enters the world that it emerges in its relationships to other selves and other things in the world • to realize that the nature of the interactions in which the self engages actually changes the structure of the mind. • to become detectives of difference who search for new ways of being human (kincheloe, 2003, p. 47-48). the literature discussed here offers a good first step towards thinking about technological disruption and the currents of sociotechnical imaginaries which influence pedagogical practice. while the authors here do well in pointing to the importance of looking beyond only western forms of knowing and philosophical understandings, towards nondominant and contextually appropriate ways of knowledge construction and meaning making, the literature seldom engages with faculty perceptions outside that of the western framework. it is at this juncture that we offer this special issue. special issue curation of this issue was attended with care to ensure that submissions commented not only on the laudatory benefits of technology but provided a balanced and critical perspective towards the usage of technology within the larger educational sector. enactive processes, critical ontology, and the digitization of education current issues in comparative education 7 critical, as defined here, is a view of technology as a value-laden tool (feenberg, 1999, p.9). a critical view of technology allows one to see humanity, as alongside technology, coproducing social norms (feenberg, 1991 & 1999, jasanoff, 2015, williamson, 2017). put another way, critical approaches towards technology see the digital future as one within our ability to shape in ways beneficial for humanity (wajcman, 2015). this is different than instrumentalist views on technology which see the application of technology as essentially neutral, and it’s usage as the ideal mechanism for social progress (andrew feenberg (1999). critical approaches tend to view technology as an actor able to shape the social environment (latour, 1992). critical perspectives on technology are important as they often challenge the dominant technological imaginaries in place (for more on imaginaries, see hu within). an example of a critical counter imaginary can be seen in the strategy that informed indonesia’s early pioneers of the internet and their desire to build an internet infrastructure and ultimately an alternate digital imaginary, one that emphasized public participation, learning, and the development of a people-powered internet (barker, 2015). within this issue, mary mendenhall, makala skinner, sophia collas, and sarah french and edmund s. adjapong, christopher emdin, and ian levy, writing about contexts in africa and the united states (respectively), bring special focus to the issue of teacher mentoring and professional development. both explore the development of educators through the use of technology platforms and offer complementary analysis on the benefits of technology as a virtual augmenter of human processes, often as described by the educators themselves. chia-ming hsueh provides commentary on the integration of technology, particularly social media, into university internationalization plans, and remarks on the pressing need to consider options such as these in asia. zi hu concludes this issue with an insightful review of ben williamson’s landmark text on the digitization and datafication of education, offering a good preview of the text and a pathway for those interested in exploring the influence of sociotechnical imaginaries on the digitization of the education sector. kevin a. henderson is a doctoral student at teachers college, columbia university and editorin-chief of current issues in comparative education. his research explores the development of digital policy within higher education systems in india, indonesia, and thailand. notes [1] the term faculty, here and throughout, is used to define higher education academic staff (i.e. professorial) and is not used to describe an academic division or unit within a higher education or tertiary institution. henderson current issues in comparative education 8 references al meajel, t. m., & sharadgah, t. a. (2018). barriers to using the blackboard system in teaching and learning: faculty perceptions. technology, knowledge & learning, 23(2), 351–366. bohm, d., (1980). wholeness and the implicate order. london: routledge. bohm, d. & hiley, b., (1993). the undivided universe: an ontological interpretation of quantum theory. london: routledge. heidegger, m., (1982). the question concerning technology and other essays. new york: harper perennial. kincheloe, j., (2003) critical ontology: visions of selfhood and curriculum. journal of curriculum theorizing, 19(1), spring 2003, kincheloe j.l., (2011). critical ontology. in hayes k., steinberg s.r., tobin k. (eds.) key works in critical pedagogy. bold visions in educational research, vol 32. sensepublishers. jiang, h., dykstra, k. and whitehill, j. "predicting when teachers look at their students in 1-on-1 tutoring sessions," 2018 13th ieee international conference on automatic face & gesture recognition (fg 2018), xi'an, 2018, pp. 593-598. doi: 10.1109/fg.2018.00094. meyer e.j., (2011). critical ontology and teacher agency. in hayes k., steinberg s.r., tobin k. (eds.) key works in critical pedagogy. bold visions in educational research, vol 32. sensepublishers. van der schyff, dylan, andrea schiavio, and david j. elliott. 2016. critical ontology for an enactive music pedagogy. action, criticism, and theory for music education 15 (5): 81–121. doi:10.22176/act15.5.81. whitehill, j., serpell, z., lin, y., foster, a. and movellan, j.r. "the faces of engagement: automatic recognition of student engagement from facial expressions," in ieeetransactions on affective computing, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 86-98, 1 jan.-march 2014. doc 10.1109/taffc.2014.2316163. whitehill, j., bartlett m. and j. movellan, "automatic facial expression recognition for intelligent tutoring systems," 2008 ieee computer society conference on computer vision and pattern recognition workshops, anchorage, ak, 2008, pp. 1-6. enactive processes, critical ontology, and the digitization of education current issues in comparative education 9 doi: 10.1109/cvprw.2008.4563182. microsoft word dual language as a social movement.docx   © 2015, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 17(1), 5–16. dual language as a social movement: putting languages on a level playing field regina cortina teachers college, columbia university carmina makar city college of new york mary faith mount-cors university of north carolina at chapel hill as a social movement, dual language challenges and co-exists alongside traditional english-only classrooms in the us. using manuel pastor’s social movements framework, we demonstrate how dual language provides teaching methods and languages of instruction that allow varying student populations to excel in learning the official curriculum. in this way, dual language addresses inequities in access to education and quality of instruction as addressed in the civil rights movement in the u.s. and international agreements about the rights of children to learn in a language they understand. the u.s. dual language movement seeks to level the playing field for students and is sought by a range of schools, school systems, and states to meet the needs of increasingly diverse learners from a range of language and socioeconomic groups. in this paper, we address the quest of school leaders and parents to achieve successful academic results for latino students through dual language programs. drawing from a qualitative study of seven dual language programs in schools in two school districts, this article aims to explain how educators adapt dual language models to the needs of their changing communities. the schools’ leadership led a process of academic innovations as they reshaped and improved the design of programs to serve their students. all the schools confirmed that they encountered difficulty in maintaining a 50-50 dual language model, but they also reported having to engage in continuous renewal and improvement in order to serve the needs of their communities. the article highlights the crucial role of the community in support of dual language learning and describes the empowerment networks of community actors that take part in education decision-making—which include parents, community education councils, and the schools’ leadership. through this research, we find dual language programs, when combined with the rest of the schools’ programs or when implemented across the school, to be one of the most innovative and effective forms of education programming. as a social movement, dual language challenges and co-exists alongside traditional englishonly classrooms in the united states. dual language provides teaching methods and languages of instruction that allow varying student populations to excel in learning the official curriculum. in this way, dual language addresses inequities in access to education and quality of instruction as addressed in the civil rights movement in the united states and international agreements about the rights of children to learn in a language they understand. the u.s. dual language movement seeks to level the playing field for students and is sought by a range of schools, school systems, and states to meet the needs of increasingly diverse learners from a range of language and socioeconomic groups. manuel pastor’s ten elements of social movements (pastor, 2013; pastor & ortiz, 2009) serve as a useful framework for understanding dual language programs as a social movement. among the ten elements, pastor first discusses three fundamental elements: (1) a vision and frame; (2) an authentic base in key constituencies; and (3) a commitment to the long haul. as described in this paper, dual language movements have a strong practice-based vision and frame and benefit cortina, makar, mount-cors 6          current  issues  in  comparative  education   from vigorous support from parents of children in the programs. next, pastor points to four implementation tools: (4) an underlying and viable economic model; (5) a vision of government and governance; (6) a scaffold of solid research; and (7) a pragmatic policy package. dual language works within the existing classroom instruction model to maximize the time children spend learning with teachers capable of instructing students in the target language in core curriculum. meanwhile, research demonstrates the strength of the dual language model for all subgroups of children in reaching greater levels of academic achievement (thomas & collier, 2010; 2009; 1997). in essence, dual language defines a pragmatic policy package that can be adapted and used in diverse contexts for impressive results with varying populations of students. finally, pastor’s three closing elements of social movements that highlight sustainability and scale are: (8) recognition of the need for scale; (9) a strategy for scaling up; and (10) willingness to network with other movements. dual language has been shown in research studies to be more effective with scale, by having more than one classroom of students moving through a school. this scale within a school provides a teacher network and support system, embeds itself more deeply in the school leader vision, provides greater numbers to guard against the depleting effects of natural attrition in schools, and shores up community and parental support with more advocates for the program. bilingual education movements have been connected to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. in 1974, the u.s. supreme court ruled in lau vs. nichols that california schools without special provisions to educate language minority students were violating the students' civil rights (carrera, 1992). this decision gave impetus to the bilingual education movement. according to the 2010 u.s. census, the number of people aged five and older who spoke a language other than english at home has more than doubled in the last three decades and at a pace four times greater than the nation's population growth. the percentage of non-english language speakers grew by 140 percent while the nation's overall population grew by 34 percent (u.s. census bureau, 2010). multilingual environments are not unique to the united states. in fact, research from the 1960s on bilingual education in canada has been instrumental in shaping dual language models in the united states (cloud, genesee, & hamayan, 2000). however, bilingual education has not only been prominent in western and industrialized countries. international agreements such as the convention on the rights of the child in 1989 have recognized that "the education of the child should be directed to ... the development of respect for the child's parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values" (article 29) and that "a child belonging to an [ethnic, religious, or linguistic minority] should not be denied the right ... to use his or her own language" (article 30). currently, the global development community is grappling more directly with how to teach children in multilingual environments. as student achievement data have uncovered a learning crisis, the global development community has awakened to critical flaws in postcolonial education systems. children, especially in sub-saharan africa and asia, are completing up to four years of school without the ability to read (unesco, 2014). hence, the dual language movement in the united states has echoes in the current mother tongue education debates and policies in developing countries as well. research and advocacy efforts point to the need for systems to accommodate the teaching of early grades in children’s home languages to improve reading and learning outcomes. focusing on the call of an urban metropolitan area in the united states that is experiencing continuous demographic changes, this article seeks to expand our understanding of how dual language programs respond to community needs. of special interest in this inquiry are empowerment networks, a phrase used in this article to refer to the ways in which communities, including parents, community education councils, and the school leadership, mobilize to take part in education decision-making. pastor’s second fundamental element of a social movement discussed previously is an authentic base in key constituencies. dual language builds from the advocacy dual  language  as  a  social  movement   current  issues  in  comparative  education          7   of parents, teachers, and school leaders who experience the educational and social benefits of this approach. this article contributes to the literature on social movements and educational reform by illustrating how the most promising of the strategies to support english learners, the dual language classroom, has taken root in individual schools. this article first describes the study. next, it reviews the academic literature on social dual language programs as social movements. it then portrays the networks of community actors that support the programs in the schools, discussing their four main characteristics as identified in this research: flexibility in enrollment and flexibility in classroom composition; innovation through models of instruction, instructional materials, and teacher recruitment and certification; the role of the community networks; and cultural enrichment. we conclude by discussing dual language programs through pastor’s (2013) tenets on social movements. the study design within the research methodology used for the study, each of the seven schools is a case study. they are all in the upper west side of manhattan, a part of new york city with significant demographic shifts, and within two school districts that operate dual language programs. (to protect the anonymity of the schools, this article does not include information identifying any of them.) as table 1 demonstrates, each program was unique in its design. overall, 100 dual language programs operate in different grades across the five new york city boroughs (new york city department of education, 2015). a strong emphasis on such programs under chancellor carmen farina has resulted in 40 new dual language programs that will open in september 2015 (see table 1). data collected from april to june 2010 address three areas of inquiry: (1) the demographic characteristics of districts and neighborhoods in the upper westside of manhattan, (2) the program model, and (3) the extent of professional development opportunities and teaching resources available for teachers in both languages.1 data analysis is informed by manuel pastor’s (2013) work on the social movements. the use of purposeful sampling in this study provided rich in-depth information and understanding of classroom practices, policies, and negotiations with community actors. qualitative data were drawn from several interview sources. thematic analysis was used across all of the interviews and was structured following the research model of effective dual language instruction as proposed by howard, sugarman, christian, lindholm-leary, & rogers (2007). as they emerged, relevant themes were classified according to the inquiry areas. the content analysis of the interviews gave structure to the findings. the research team interviewed 16 teachers, administrators, dual language coordinators, principals, and assistant principals in the seven schools; directors of the new york city department of education (nycdoe), office of english language learners (ell) and the office of ell compliance; seven parents participating in the community education councils and in events such as the annual new york city special conference for parents of english learners; five parents of students in dual language programs; and two researchers in new york city and california, who expanded our view of dual language programs in the united states. literature on dual language instruction the first element of social movements pastor notes is (1) vision and a frame. seeking academic achievement for all students is the broad vision and frame under which dual language came into being and began to amass its (6) scaffold of solid research. the benefits of dual language education have been documented in the research literature, particularly its impact on biliteracy, academic achievement, and socio-cultural enrichment for all students. cortina, makar, mount-cors 8 current issues in comparative education table 1. dual language programs in seven upper manhattan schools school number of students in dl programs school year 2010/2011 percentage of latino students in school 2010/11 percentage of white students in school 2010/11 grades offered in dual language total school enrollment program as described on school’s website program model as described by school administrators* a 90 53 % 15% k-5 678 the program is not mentioned explicitly on its website. dual language selfcontained model. rollercoaster model (half day in spanish, half day in english). b 150 45% 28% k-3 612 the program is called “dual language gifted and talented program.” dual language side-by-side and self-contained. rollercoaster model. gifted and talented is being phased out. c 60 16% 67% k-5 962 the program is called “dualimmersion language program.” spanish dual immersion. d 138 72% 6% k-2 751 the program is not mentioned explicitly on its website. dual language side-by-side. eclectic model. e 204 98% 1% 6-8 204 the school itself is presented as a dual language middle school. dual language. eclectic model. f 22 35% 1% k-2 198 the program is not mentioned explicitly on its website. dual language selfcontained. rollercoaster model. g 26 49% 23% k-5 482 the program is called “dual language.” dual language self-contained. side-by-side. **spanish/english and french/english. *these descriptions refer to the actual implementation of the model as described by school administrators and observed by researchers in daily classroom practice. **all programs in these schools are in spanish and english. school g has an additional french and english program. source: new york city department of education school accountability reports. information compiled by the author. dual language as a social movement current issues in comparative education 9 academic benefits several large-scale longitudinal studies have demonstrated measurable gains in academic achievement for students participating in dual language programs. one such study, conducted by thomas and collier (2003) confirmed that non-english speaking students enrolled in dual language programs were academically ahead of those in english-only programs, and their dropout rate was lower in those programs when compared with similar students in englishonly programs. another large-scale longitudinal study (howard, christian, & genesee, 2004), commissioned by the center for research on education, diversity and excellence (crede), demonstrated that non-english speaking students in two-way dual language programs scored nearly on par with native english speakers on english oral, reading, and writing measures. a fundamental element of dual language programs is that they are designed to put on a level playing field the status of the languages they use. within schools, for example, spanish and english have the same value within the programs. howard et al. (2003) have reported that if the status of one of the two languages is lower, the program will fail to provide students with the same opportunity for high-level language arts instruction in their native language. thus, having a balanced cultural environment is not only an important purpose of dual language programs, but also a key factor in their success. gándara (1995) explored successful academic results in immigrant students, concluding, “across various immigrant groups, the most academically successful students were those who remained most closely allied with the culture of their parents” (p. 7). gándara’s findings demonstrate that having language and cultures on an equal level promoted by dual language programs not only enhances the self-perception and well-being of students but also supports academic achievement. once again, the scaffold of solid research that supports dual language and its ability to meet the need for a sound, basic education for all learners demonstrates its strength as a social movement. cooperative language learning and cross-cultural competence cooperative learning environments circumvent segregation by encouraging students to develop cross-cultural competence through learning together and from each other. native englishspeaking children and their parents are central to the success of dual language programs. the commitment of the monolingual english-speaking parents to their children’s acquisition of spanish is essential. the sevenand eight-year-old children who can speak and understand spanish are supporting the creation of a community of learners in the schools and gaining cross-cultural understanding. it is important, therefore, that dual language programs develop competence among native english speakers in a second language. this aim, however, must be placed within the context of the “cautionary note” in an article by guadalupe valdés (1997) on dual language education. she writes, “for minority children, the acquisition of english is expected. for mainstream children, the acquisition of a non-english language is enthusiastically applauded. children are not aware of these differences (p. 417)." the analysis of the new york city case study, as discussed below, addresses the “cautionary note” of valdés by reflecting on the multiple ways that this power imbalance is addressed and how conscious principals and teachers are that dual language programs do not become foreign language classes. study findings: language education in new york city changes in student demographics are one of the most urgent matters of concern for researchers of dual language education, according to the dual language consortium (2008). they could be the result of gentrification, which produces an influx of a higher percentage of affluent englishdominant speakers; or they change could be the reverse, resulting in a higher percentage of lower income and spanish-dominant speakers in the student population. demographic shifts are especially relevant since dual language programs are designed to serve their communities and promote linguistic and cultural desegregation. demographic changes have an impact on the way in which programs can be implemented, given that they rely on the presence of two different linguistic groups: spanish and english native cortina, makar, mount-cors 10 current issues in comparative education speakers. even though dual language programs historically emerged in diverse socio-cultural and demographic contexts, the characteristics of student populations today shape their model of instruction and institutional support. the programs have become adaptable structures that change according to the particular environment where they are operating. flexibility enables them to make necessary adjustments in order to be successful with the demographic group they serve. school communities are delineated by different geographic guidelines, such as district, catchment zone, and neighborhood. mapping these borders is relevant to understanding how dual language programs work and identifying the particular challenges that schools face in light of current demographic shifts in the upper west side of manhattan. students who live in a certain school catchment zone are eligible to attend a local school within it. catchment boundaries were randomly established by city government planning councils and have generated multiple challenges for the populations that would like to attend schools outside the catchments area. the general rule is that by living within the catchment zone, families have the right to enroll their child in a specific school within the zone. admission for dual language programs in those schools, however, is often more competitive. dual language programs have been considered effective because they pair groups of students of different socio-cultural and linguistic backgrounds (howard et al., 2004). changes in the composition of the city neighborhoods generate challenges for enrollment and structure of dual language programs in different catchment zones of manhattan. the ethnic composition of the population under age 18 has changed drastically in the two community districts. the most remarkable shift, between 1990 and 2000, occurred in one of the study districts; it is evidenced by a 22 percent decrease in the african american population, a 16 percent decrease in latinos, and 17 percent increase in whites. the second study district shows a different trend: a 96 percent increase in the latino population, accompanied by a decrease in the white population (new york city department of city planning, 2010). these statistics confirm the different experiences reported by administrators in terms of the shortage, or disproportionately large number, of latino students in their schools. specifically, until 2000, the first community had a large number of latino students under age 18. as the number of luxury high-rise buildings increased there, so did rents and the cost of services, resulting in a large number of latinos leaving the neighborhood to move further north. principals and teachers worried about maintaining the preferred model for its pedagogical applications and demonstrated effect on literacy development. these two occurrences—the rise of latino students and overcrowding of the programs in some parts of the district and the loss of latino families and closing of the dual language programs in other neighborhoods—were, far from divergent incidents, a reflection of demographic shifts and their impact on dual language programs. while some of the schools have not been subjected to the problem of maintaining a program balance between the two languages, others were faced with the possibility of closing their programs altogether because they did not have enough latino students. by initiating a dialogue with the nycdoe, school districts in the upper west side of manhattan were working on understanding how to better address demographic shifts. in particular, the community education councils were in dialogue with the nycdoe through their different constituents and they were represented by the multilingual committee in the district. the conflict between the general purpose of dual language programs and the students they are ideally intended to serve is also illustrated by a recent initiative from a group of parents in a community education council in manhattan’s upper west side. the group sought support to open a dual language program in english and mandarin. the number of constituents signing the petition was high, the community was organized, and the arguments provided were convincing; however, the nycdoe was unable to honor their request because no one in that community was chinese or spoke mandarin at home. when interviewed, a representative of this dual language as a social movement current issues in comparative education 11 group expressed concern about the nature of the criteria for opening a dual language program and of the conditions to structure a program based on student composition and neighborhood demographics. these discussions illustrate the possibility of using dual language programs as potential enrichment or foreign language programs, which are increasingly seen as the equivalent of gifted and talented programs, at a time when they are being phased out of many schools. while research shows that latino parents experience difficulty in communicating their expectations to the school system, the case of dual language programs offers a different perspective by showcasing organized initiatives of parents who are vocal about their expectations. an important caveat, however, was reflected in a recently conducted study on dual language programs in california (gándara & hopkins, 2010) in which a clear difference was established between school-driven programs and parent-driven programs: some parent-driven programs were supported by parents who were better educated, better informed, and wealthier than other parents, which resulted in elitist programs. all the school principals interviewed in this study asserted their commitment to support school-driven programs to assure student academic success, to serve and enhance the culture and community within their schools, and to address the power imbalance defined by valdés (1997) for dual language programs, so that such programs do not become merely foreign language programs for the more affluent students. these population shifts within neighborhoods and schools may once again demonstrate the authentic base in key constituencies within dual language as a social movement. navigating and coming through these shifts are what will prove the strength of dual language as a social movement and its commitment to the long haul. rather than remaining separate and arguably at odds, these parents groups will need to forge unified arguments and continue to push forward. community as key constituent the community—defined as the network of actors that take part in educational decisions—is a crucial factor in the operation of the programs. community includes: (a) parents; (b) institutionalized boards, such as committees and community education councils; (c) the schools themselves through their outreach efforts with the city, the doe; and (d) empowerment networks and affiliated organizations. once again, to evidence a commitment to the long haul, dual language will need to move with these alliances and population shifts and continue to strengthen with their support and unified voice. parents dual language programs have a long history of parental and community support. in fact, many of them were created in response to lobbying by the community. in an interview, one of the administrators of the office of english language of the nycdoe shared multiple examples of organized initiatives by an increasing number of groups of parents who were demanding dual language programs in their schools. in addition, all the principals in the schools agreed that these programs were serving the needs of the community, as in the case with a french dual language program that was created to respond to the needs of the children through the efforts a group of organized haitian parents. in the words of the principal in a school with a dual language program, “we already had a spanish-english dual program; we honestly were not thinking about the french at that point. but a group of parents from the community came together, we listened, and the program is up and running since then.” indeed, the level of community involvement captured in the study revealed a culturally and economically diverse group of parents who felt heard and strongly supported by the school. one of the challenges that dual language programs continue to face, however, is that english monolingual middle-class parents tend to pull out their students in third grade for fear of having them miss out on standardized testing. such transfers, persistently described by all the school principals in the study, resulted in an effort to add what one of them called a “comprehensive parental education component” to their dual language programs. cortina, makar, mount-cors 12 current issues in comparative education community councils all seven schools had strong connections between their dual language programs and their communities, which included not only the students’ families, but also the organized and institutionalized neighborhood groups such as the multilingual committees or the community education councils (cecs). languages on a level playing field giving equal attention to teaching both languages was important not only for the success of the program but for student outcomes as well. the identity of dual language programs springs from their cultural component and their status within the schools. either the programs were welcomed and greatly appreciated, or they were perceived as something external, an unfamiliar appendage to the school. in the latter case, their intrinsic value was not necessarily acknowledged and the teachers and students involved were not considered full members of the school community. teachers interviewed for this study emphasized that language parity was an important factor for the students. for example, a spanish teacher highlighted how students’ pride in their own language grew: it is their language [spanish], they speak it, but they become proud of it and that’s very important…they acknowledge that their language is more than ‘go to bed,’ ‘[brush] your teeth’ …if you talk to the students, they will tell you that they are really happy and proud to be in a school called dual language middle school, because they feel we are giving them something that they were losing. table 2. school report cards school grades integration with the rest of the school* score 2009/2010** score 2010/11 a entire school n/a a a b k-5 integrated b b c k-2 integrated b a d k-3 operates somewhat independently—separation of celebrations c c e k-5 operates independently c c f k-2 operates independently c c g k-5 operates independently c f * information reported on interviews. integration means programs that have connection with the rest of the school in their different activities, celebrations, etc. ** source: http://schools.nyc.gov/findaschool/reportsearch.htm?name=p.s.%20163& repname=progressreport source: new york city progress report, academic year 2009/2010 and 2010/2011. it is important to note that schools were using innovative strategies to support and respect nonenglish speaking students’ native language. for instance, a program coordinator said that in the rollercoaster model, they were starting the day with spanish because: spanish will become extinct if we do not give it enough support and respect. this is an english environment, so of course a child that comes from another country is going to dual language as a social movement current issues in comparative education 13 learn english right away, they have it in the backyard, but where is the spanish? where’s the support?...so, you know the brain in the morning is much more awake for a child, so start with the spanish and right after lunch english. every principal in the study acknowledged the benefits of dual language programs for student achievement. their opinion is reflected in the students’ scores. one of the principals remarked that they were “unprecedented gains in language arts, and by march, all but one kindergarten child was on or above grade level in both in both english and spanish language arts.” further, as table 2 shows, the only school to have implemented a dual language model for the entire school is also the only school to have obtained an a on its new york state report card in two consecutive years: 100 percent of the students made ayp (adequate yearly progress) in math, science and language arts. conclusion community networks sustain dual language programs through words and actions. the school principals, teachers, and administrators interviewed for this study are strongly committed to their dual language programs. they lobby, secure resources, and do outreach in their communities as part of their efforts to demonstrate their support of these teaching and learning strategies. organized community networking efforts beyond the schools can be seen in the work that parents and communities are doing through the community education councils and the multiple parental association councils. the community, as represented by these active agents of change, has increasing power to shape educational decisions and influence the way that the nycdoe implements its bilingual education policies. however, attention must be paid to the particular characteristics of parental initiatives in order to guarantee that all parents are provided the same opportunities and the programs do not become elitist enclaves mainly spearheaded by the welleducated, wealthier segments of the population for which dual language programs are “foreign language education,” thus addressing the “cautionary note” in an article by guadalupe valdés mentioned earlier on dual language education. moreover, the fact that the stronger supporters are not only the monolingual english-speaking parents, but also the middle-class spanish speaking parents is crucial to balancing the cultural environment in the schools, the status of languages in the classroom, and the cross-cultural competence of the students. one key conclusion of the study is that an equal number of hours of instruction is not the only way of guaranteeing that each language is uniformly valued. the objective of dual language programs is to emphasize both languages and cultures equally, but this is possible even without using a highly structured instructional model or having an equal distribution of students speaking the two different languages. none of the seven schools had the highly structured programs described in the literature. their principals reported the difficulty in maintaining a 50-50 dual language model, since as a result of demographic shifts some schools have experienced the rise of latino students and overcrowding of the programs in some parts of the district, while the loss of latino families is bringing about the closing of dual language programs in other neighborhoods. some of the schools have not been subjected to the problem of maintaining a program balance between the number of students speaking the two languages, but others were faced with the possibility of closing their programs altogether because they did not have enough latino students. for this reason, school principals lobbied for changes in the enrollment policies that limit latino students to their catchment zone. this research, thus, has demonstrated the value of creating a more nuanced understanding of dual language programs. despite variations in their programs, schools where the dual language model was well integrated were able to foster academic literacy in both languages. but still, dual language can be the most effective language program even if it cannot be fully implemented across the school. interviewees highlighted the importance of integrating dual language programs into the rest of the school in order to share resources and activities and demonstrate the equal value of all languages and cultures. cortina, makar, mount-cors 14 current issues in comparative education in closing, this research in new york city found that the empowerment networks of community actors that take part in education decision making—which include parents, community education councils, the schools’ leadership—have led to a process of academic innovation as they have reshaped and improved the schools’ design to serve their students. once again, manuel pastor’s ten elements of social movements (pastor, 2013) serve as a useful framework for dual language programs. as described in this paper, dual language movements have a strong practice-based vision and frame, benefit from vigorous support from parents of children in the programs. among pastor’s four implementation tools, we focus on two of these: a scaffold of solid research and a pragmatic policy package. dual language works within our existing classroom instruction model to maximize the time children spend learning with teachers capable of instructing students in the target language in the core curriculum. meanwhile, research demonstrates the strength of the dual language model for all sub-groups of children in reaching greater levels of academic achievement (thomas & collier, 2010; 2009; 1997). in essence, dual language defines a pragmatic policy package that can be adapted and used in diverse contexts for impressive results with varying populations of students. finally, pastor (2009) recognizes the need for scale, with a strategy for scaling up and willingness to network with other movements. dual language has been shown in research studies to be more effective with scale, by having more than one classroom of students moving through a school. this scale within a school provides a teacher network and support system, embeds itself more deeply in the school leader vision, provides greater numbers to guard against the depleting effects of natural attrition in schools, and shores up community and parental support with more advocates for the program. as we demonstrated in tying current dual language movements to broader national and international bilingual education movements and to other civil rights movements, dual language has the potential to network across country and culture boundaries to achieve greater scale and strength. census numbers in the united states point to the growing potential to harness learner populations and language-rich communities to scale dual language effectively. notes: [1] this research was supported by a grant to professor regina cortina from the new york latino research and resources network in 2010. regina cortina is professor of international and comparative education at teachers college, columbia university. email: cortina@tc.columbia.edu. carmina makar is assistant professor in the school of education at the city college of new york. email: cmakar@ccny.cuny.edu. mary faith mount-cors is president of edintersect and part-time faculty at the university of north carolina. email: maryfaith@edintersect.com. references carrera, j.w. (1992). immigrant students: their legal right of access to public schools. a guide for advocates and educators. national coalition of advocates for students. boston, ma. cloud, n., genesee, f., & hamayan, e. (2000). dual language instruction: a handbook for enriched education. boston, ma: heinle & heinle. dual language as a social movement current issues in comparative education 15 dual language consortium. (2008). dual language researcher convocation. paper presented at the dual language consortium, november 11-12, santa fe, nm. retrieved from: http://www.dual‑language.org/convocationpr1208.htm gándara, p. (1995). over the ivy walls: the educational mobility of low-income chicanos. albany, ny: state university of new york press. gándara, p., & hopkins, m. (2010). forbidden language: english learners and restrictive language policies. new york, ny: teachers college press. howard, e. r., christian, d., & genesee, f. (2004). the development of bilingualism and biliteracy from grade 3 to 5: a summary of findings from the cal/crede study of two way immersion education. santa cruz, ca: crede. howard, e. r., sugarman, j. & christian, d. (2003). trends in two-way immersion education: a review of the research. report 63. washington, dc: center for applied linguistics. howard, e. r., sugarman, j., christian, d., lindholm-leary, k. j., & rogers, d. (2007). guiding principles for dual language education (2nd ed.). washington, dc: center for applied linguistics. new york city department of city planning. (2010). community district profiles. new york, ny. retrieved from: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/lucds/cdstart.shtml new york city department of education, office of english language learners. (2015). new york city dual language programs. new york, ny: new york city department of education. new york city department of education. (2015). new york city progress report, academic year 2009/2010 and 2010/2011. new york, ny. retrieved from: http://schools.nyc.gov/findaschool/reportsearch.htm?name=p.s.%20163&repname=p rogressreport. pastor, m. (2013, april 21). top 10 elements of social movements. university of southern california annenberg school for communications and journalism. retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1h-gwzwrgs pastor, m. & ortiz, r. (2009, march). making change: how social movements work – and how to support them. university of southern california. retrieved from: http://www.calendow.org/uploadedfiles/publications/policy/general/making%20c hange%20-%20march%202009.pdf thomas, w.p. & collier, v.p. (2010). english learners in north carolina, 2010. a research report provided to the north carolina department of public instruction. retrieved from: http://p1cdn3static.sharpschool.com/userfiles/servers/server_4502383/file/nc_ell_study _yr2_final%20report_jul27_2011.pdf thomas, w.p., & collier, v.p. (2009). english learners in north carolina, 2009. fairfax, va: george mason university. a research report provided to the north carolina department of public instruction. cortina, makar, mount-cors 16 current issues in comparative education thomas, w.p., & collier, v.p. (1997). school effectiveness for language minority students. washington, dc: national clearinghouse for english language acquisition. retrieved from: http://www.eric.ed.gov/pdfs/ed436087.pdf thomas, w. p., & collier, v. p. (2003). a national study of school effectiveness for language minority students’ long-term academic achievement. santa cruz, ca: crede. unesco. (2014). education for all global monitoring report 2013/14. retrieved from: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002256/225660e.pdf united nations. (1989). united nations convention on the rights of the child. adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by general assembly resolution 44/25 of 20 november 1989. retrieved from: http://www.unicef.org.uk/documents/publicationpdfs/uncrc_press200910web.pdf united states census bureau. (2010). u.s. census 2010. http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/american_community_survey_ acs/cb10-cn58.html valdés, g. (1997). dual language immersion programs: a cautionary note concerning the education of language-minority students. harvard educational review, 67 (3), 391-429. 4_m. milovanovitch current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 21, issue 1, special issue 2019 © 2019, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 21(1), 54-68. expectations, distrust and corruption in education: findings on prevention through education improvement mihaylo milovanovitch* center for applied policy and integrity and european training foundation in this article we present results from research on how education environments may influence the propensity of education participants to engage in corrupt practices. we approached this task with the help of a conceptual framework that draws on rational choice and routine activity theory, and on economic models of human behaviour. the framework guided a collection of evidence through desk research, numerous interviews and focus groups on behalf of authorities and civil society in five countries (armenia, kazakhstan, serbia, tunisia, ukraine). our findings suggest that circumstances in education influence problematic conduct in two major ways – by opening opportunities for the abuse of regular processes in education, and by providing education participants with incentives to engage in it. this contribution offers some insights concerning the incentives of education participants to participate in corruption and discusses why research on corruption can be a valuable source of guidance for systemic improvement in education. introduction education matters for the wellbeing of individuals and societies alike, but its significance makes it also vulnerable to corruption – a problem important enough to have been singled out as a reason for the failing of targets in the first decade of the global education for all initiative1 (world education forum, 2000), and also persistent enough to be on the anti-corruption agenda of numerous countries around the world today (transparency international, 2013, p. xix; oecd, 2018). this article discusses selected findings from an ongoing exploration of corrupt practices in education and the systemic circumstances which may provide education participants with reasons to engage in them. the work was initiated under the name of intes (integrity of education systems) in the context of the anti-corruption network for eastern europe and central asia (acn) of the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd) and included the development of a conceptual framework of education integrity, as well as the integrity research presented here.2 following an insight from international anti-corruption practice that sector-specific solutions can be more effective than measures that are imposed from the “outside” (boehm, 2014), the objective was to gather insights into how corruption in education can be addressed from within the sector, through improvements in areas that are within the professional remit of education practitioners and policy makers, such as assessment of student achievement, teacher policies, admission procedures, etc. the scope of “corrupt conduct” in this research includes both practices for which there is criminal liability as well as softer, sector-specific actions, which are harmful, but may not qualify as corrupt by international standards (oecd, 2018). “education” and “education system” refer to all education providers in a country, regardless of their milovanovitch current issues in comparative education 55 ownership or sponsorship (uis/oecd/eurostat, 2002), which are accredited or licensed to grant credentials (certificates, degrees or diplomas) through formal learning and related services. this includes also entities which set the conditions of operation of education providers and monitor their performance, such as line ministries, regional education authorities, education inspectorates, quality assurance/accreditation agencies, testing centers, and similar bodies. the research presented in this paper was carried out in five countries (serbia, tunisia, armenia, ukraine, and kazakhstan) between 2011 and 2018, in which national education authorities and/or civil society organizations volunteered to participate as they were in the process of revisiting education reforms, advocacy campaigns, or national anti-corruption strategies. the work covered school and higher education, as well as pre-school education in ukraine and armenia, and followed the principles of oecd peer reviews, as described in (oecd, 2003): a formal request by national counterparts (authorities or civil society); the presence of review criteria derived from national and international sector commitments; clearly defined review/research procedures; and conclusions which are based on a consensus between the peers members of the respective research teams comprising national and international experts. our research focus was on the connections between actions of education participants which qualify as corrupt, and the systemic conditions in which they have their exposure to the education sector as teachers, students, school and university administrators, or external stakeholders. we inquired whether these conditions (education environments) can be drivers of specific forms of corrupt conduct and if yes, how. our starting assumption was that manifestations of corruption can be unequivocally linked to specific policy problems in the respective education systems (oecd, 2012), the resolution of which is possible through education improvement. our findings suggest that the circumstances in which education takes place can indeed influence propensity for problematic conduct, in two major ways – by opening opportunities for the abuse of regular processes in education such as assessment, admission procedures, recruitment, etc. for corrupt purposes, and by providing education participants with incentives to do that. in this article we offer a selection of insights concerning the incentives of participants in education to participate in corruption. the paper starts with an outline of the conceptual framework and methodology which guided the research, and then presents an overview of findings on how education environments may influence the motivation of education participants to engage in illicit or illegal practices.3 the article concludes with an observation that corruption is not just a problem that calls for punitive responses, but that it also holds critical lessons that can guide systemic improvement. conceptual framework our research was guided by a conceptual framework which connects corrupt conduct, motivation and opportunity as the three variables of a causal model of corruption in education (intes model). the model presumes that each integrity violation is linked to policy-related circumstances which motivate and facilitate the violation (figure 1). milovanovitch current issues in comparative education 56 the aim of the research was to describe the three variables and explain how they are connected: how circumstances in education create incentives (motives) and opportunities for education participants to engage in integrity violations. the violations are practices in education which are intentional, system-wide, involve education participants, and deliver undue benefits (oecd, 2018). figure 1. causal model of corrupt conduct in education sources: based on oecd, 2018 and kovacs cerovic, milovanovitch, & jovanovic, 2018 the intes model draws on several theories. the first is the routine activity theory of cohen and felson (cohen & felson, 1979), according to which all offences are situational, caused by a combination of circumstances rather than by some inherent features of perpetrators. a crime can be committed by anyone who finds himself in such circumstances. more recent research confirms that professional environments too can play a role in motivating problematic conduct by affecting the commitment of individuals to the values and principles of their organizations (doty & kouchaki, 2015). in other words, the integrity of professionals depends not only on their character, but also on their organizational environment. our model draws also on elements of rational choice theory. like the “homo economicus” who is consistent in making choices that are in his best interest (friedman, 1966; gruene-yanoff, 2011), we posit that the “homo educationis” in focus of our research is consistent in going after his best interest as education participant and stakeholder. given a choice, parents would always prefer to send their children to a good school, students would work towards successful transition to university or employment, teachers would opt for fair pay, education authorities would secure enough funding and presentable reform results, etc. that said, the reference to rational choice in our model is not a commitment to delivering an accurate reflection of individual decision-making processes. newer economic theories (i.e. behavioral economics) argue that this is more complex task than suggested by rational choice approaches, and that the outcomes of such processes can be difficult to predict. the reference is rather meant to point out the origin of our research hypothesis: that participants in education are consistent in their choice of priorities, preferences and beliefs, and that they always try to act accordingly. milovanovitch current issues in comparative education 57 in the same vein, we refer to education participants as collective identities (melucci, 1989) and do not consider factors such as individual character traits, predispositions, or personal circumstances, despite the role they may be playing in motivating integrity violations. the collective identities are those of education professionals, students, external stakeholders (e.g. parents, guardians or equivalent, civil society, media), and representatives of national and regional education authorities. finally, to identify which practices in education qualify as integrity violations, the intes model borrows from international anti-corruption practice in defining anticorruption offences, as reflected in major conventions against corruption such as the united national convention against corruption (uncac) (united nations, 2004) and the council of europe criminal law convention on corruption (council of europe, 1999a). these conventions forego an overarching definition of corruption and describe specific forms of corrupt conduct instead, i.e. bribery, illicit payments, obstruction of justice, etc., which all signatories agree are undesirable and must be prevented (council of europe, 1999b). the offences are distinctly different from each other, but they share common features. for instance, they all involve public sector officials, deliver undue personal benefits, are intentional, and states-signatories of the conventions should define them as illicit or illegal. we used these features to set the criteria that helped us determine which practices in education qualify as integrity violations. methodology our inquiry into corruption and its system-wide context was guided by two questions: whether education participants engage in corrupt practices and if yes, how the systemic conditions in which they have (or deliver) their learning experiences may play a role in that. we approached these questions by dividing them in sub-questions and research routines, organized in three interconnected thematic protocols. the focus of the first protocol was on the identification of sector-specific practices in each country, which qualify as acts of corrupt conduct against criteria such as prevalence, intent, involvement of official positions, and presence of undue personal benefits. the focus of the other two protocols was on the education policy environment in which each of these practices typically thrives, and specifically on the ways in which the education policy context may create incentives for corrupt conduct. we split that last query in two sub-questions: what education participants expect from their involvement in an integrity violation, and what prevents education from meeting their expectations in legitimate ways. in each country, the implementation of the protocols took place in three phases. in the first phase in each country we relied on background questionnaires, literature review and on scoping missions for initial discussions with national authorities and stakeholders to consolidate a preliminary selection of integrity violations which the research will cover. on that basis we prepared an inventory of violations and factors in the education environment which may be promoting the proliferation of these violations. the second phase was devoted to analysis of these factors through further desk research and site visits for individual and group interviews with education milovanovitch current issues in comparative education 58 participants, and in some cases (pre-school education in armenia) through focus groups. the purpose was to explore the reasons of participants in education to engage in violations and the ways in which they do it. finally, in the third phase we prepared a draft of a report with our findings, which stakeholders and national authorities in each country complemented with recommendations and validated before it was finalized and published. in the second phase in most4 countries we met between 150 and 200 counterparts, which we selected through purposive sampling. table 1 provides an overview of their number by role in education and country, and table 2 gives a break-down by level of education and, where applicable, by type of institution. in total in all countries, we met approximately 760 education participants. table 1. method of information collection, levels of education covered, and participants in the research by country and role in education levels of education covered (1) method (2) number of education participants by role teachers students civil society parents adminis trators education authorities serbia s, he i, gri 42 82 21 15 18 31 tunisia s, he i, gri 11 6 8 2 0 0 armenia ps, s, he i, gri, fg 52 37 22 30 44 41 ukraine ps, p, se, he i, gri 41 59 21 16 36 32 kazakhstan he i, gri 14 6 11 6 20 36 total ----160 190 83 69 118 140 notes: 1) ps: pre-school education; p: primary education; s: secondary education; he: higher education. 2) i: one-on-one interviews; gri: group interviews; fg: focus groups. table 2. participants in the research by role, institution, level of education, and country education participants by role in education and institution serbia tunisia armenia ukraine kazakhst an teachers school teachers 24 4 37 25 0 university lecturers 18 7 15 16 14 students school students 32 0 12 14 0 students in higher education 50 6 25 45 6 civil society civil society 21 8 22 21 11 parents parents 15 2 30 16 6 school and university administrators school principals 8 0 27 15 0 university leaders and administrators 10 0 17 21 20 education authorities regional education authorities 8 0 18 11 4 national education authorities 10 0 14 7 10 parliamentary committee on education 2 0 0 1 2 monitoring and qa bodies 11 0 9 13 20 total 209 27 226 205 93 milovanovitch current issues in comparative education 59 the sampling was based on judgement by national education authorities and researchers, who were asked to propose a balanced selection of education participants according to criteria which included role in the education system (teachers, administrators, students, parents, education authorities), and key features of the education providers they are associated with, such as quality (well-performing/poor performing), education level (pre-school/school/higher education), type (e.g. general/specialised schools), geographical location (urban/rural, central/regional), and form of ownership (public/private). once into site visits, we also used snowball sampling to complement the initial selection of counterparts, which sometimes became necessary due to the sensitivity of our topic. the individual and group interviews were semi-structured (given, 2008). in the first third to half of the time, they would follow a simple protocol with a set of predefined questions for the purpose of establishing comfort with interviewees by explaining the purpose of research, clarifying the role of interview counterparts in the education system, and inviting them to comment on statements collected from peers in previous interviews. the remainder of the interview would then progress as a normal conversation in which we would probe for in-depth information about actions and contexts based on facts collected in the desk research and prior interviews. at the end of each day, the research team and national experts would hold debriefing meetings to compare the written notes from the interviews, clarify interview statements and agree on possible interpretations, and agree on fact-finding questions to be included in the subsequent interviews. considering the number of participants in each country, this was time consuming, but it allowed us to apply the research protocols in a contextually sensitive way. in some countries (armenia for pre-school education), the evidence collection was complemented by focus groups in which we used a funnel approach (strauss & corbin, 1998) to converse with parents, civil society, teachers and principals. the discussions lasted three hours with each group and started with broader questions on undesirable practices, before moving on to practices which may qualify as integrity violations. this was followed by an in-depth exploration of which integrity violations emerge as more common and how. the focus group discussions were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and translated in english. findings and discussion education deliverables at the center of corrupt conduct the involvement of individuals in corrupt conduct could be explained in a number of ways, which may range from personal traits to human nature in general (“opportunity makes the thief”). as far as education is concerned, the findings of our research confirm that conditions in the sector play a major role as well. most violations we came across were actions which crime prevention theory would call “routine activities” (cohen & felson, 1979) – the final outcomes of processes that are closely related to the environment of perpetrators, a form of highly problematic response to gaps in the routines of that environment. we noted a number of stories like those of students who pay their school teachers for private tutoring because of the low quality of teaching in class (oecd, 2012; milovanovitch, 2014; oecd, 2017a), of parents who had to bribe neighbourhood schools through “donations” in exchange for milovanovitch current issues in comparative education 60 admission, because the schools were overfilled (oecd, 2017a), or of teachers who over-mark students to keep their jobs, in settings marked by arbitrary and nontransparent staffing decisions (osf armenia, 2016). these are not isolated cases, but examples of typical, education system-wide conduct, which took place in circumstances that are similar within and between countries. for instance, in all countries for which we had information, the practice of giving school students better grades than they deserve in exchange for favours, was particularly prevalent in regional contexts, around the end of the school year, and in the last years of secondary schooling. the examples in our selection and numerous other cases that we recorded have one more common trait. they describe illicit ways of obtaining deliverables which education was designed to provide in legitimate manner, without corruption: good or at least fair school grades, education of acceptable quality, access to a good school in the neighborhood, adequate wages and secure employment, etc. those who engaged in corrupt conduct in pursuit of such goals seemed to pursue their legitimate interests as education participants – an observation we made in all countries and for most integrity violations. this doesn’t mean that all partakers in education corruption are driven by a wish to secure education deliverables. some of those who were abusing their professional position in order to provide such deliverables, were interested only in the monetary benefit. yet, their benefit would always depend on whether they can deliver to unmet demand for an education deliverable. in tunisia, for example, where at the time of our inquiry (2013) teachers were earning above the national average for occupations requiring similar qualifications, many teachers were providing paid private tutoring to their own students to earn even more, despite having a conflict of interest (milovanovitch, 2014). the illicit practice was thriving only because the other side of the transaction, the parents of school children, felt that tutoring may provide two deliverables which public education cannot – effective learning in class and a fair chance to progress in school. the range of deliverables which could motivate problematic conduct can be wide. examples may include free schooling, fair access to higher education, good quality knowledge, credible graduation credentials, adequate employment conditions for teachers, transparent budgeting and resource allocations, etc. early on in our research, we therefore summarized them through the lens of past and present global commitments in education, such as the un education for all initiative or the sustainable development goals, in three broad areas of stakeholder demand: equity and access to education; quality of education; sound management, in particular of staff and financial resources (oecd, 2012). based on results from two of the most recently analyzed countries (armenia and ukraine), table 3 illustrates how various violations (column 1) and the expectations for education deliverables that they serve (column 2) fall in these four areas of demand (column 3), as well as who is demanding and supplying the education deliverables (columns 4 and 5). milovanovitch current issues in comparative education 61 table 3. overview of violations, examples of expected education deliverables, and areas of stakeholder demand country integrity violation education deliverable at stake area of demand deliverable demanded by abuse of professional position by 1 2 3 4 5 armenia undue recognition of student achievement, including grading in absentia, as a "favor" to parents employment security for teachers, funding for education infrastructure and content sound management principals, teachers teachers school success and progression equity and access to education parents, students teachers politicisation of education: preferential allocations of public resources to schools with principals who are members of the ruling party funding for education infrastructure and content sound management principals education authorities favoritism: arbitrariness in appointment and promotion of staff employment security for teachers, fair staff policies sound management teaching staff education authorities, principals ukraine illicit access to education: donations and bribes in exchange for enrollment in otherwise overfilled schools access to education equity and access to education parents, students education authorities, principals, teachers misappropriatio n of parental donations to schools good teaching and learning conditions quality of education parents, students principals improper private supplementary tutoring: teachers tutoring their own students effective teaching and learning quality of education parents, students teachers fair pay for teachers sound management teachers teachers sources: osf armenia, 2016; oecd, 2017a; oecd, 2018 table 3 shows a diversity of expectations for education deliverables behind each violation, but also that the education deliverables at stake in each revolved around similar things: education that is accessible, equitable, of good quality, and provided in education environments that are managed properly, particularly with respect to staff and resources. the table also shows that sometimes education deliverables drive the motivation of all sides involved in an integrity violation, including of those who abuse their professional position. in ukraine, private tutoring was a key source of income for school teachers who would have otherwise earned below the subsistence minimum, milovanovitch current issues in comparative education 62 while for parents it was a way to ensure that their children master the curriculum and prepare for graduation tests in subjects of importance. in armenia, teachers were giving grades to students who were absent from school (mostly to attend private tutoring in preparation for university admission) as a favor to parents who were donating for maintenance and teaching materials. the benefit of parents and students in this arrangement was additional time to prepare for the highly competitive university entrance exams. violations in response to distrust and failed expectations if education participants engage in integrity violations to obtain otherwise legitimate education deliverables, we also wanted to understand why they see corrupt instead of integral conduct as the better way to attain these deliverables. we therefore inquired about the circumstances in which an integrity violation appears to be the more promising course of action than respecting the rules. in the examples described in tables 3 and 4 (below), those concerned revealed that they did not believe that education will deliver as required. their education environments were characterized by distrust in the capacity of the sector to address their expectations in legitimate ways and so, they felt compelled to find alternative solutions to secure the education deliverables they need. for some, the distrust and the illicit actions were the result of direct experiences with policy failure and its consequences. it is interesting to note that others who did not experience such failures first-hand, shared the distrust and engaged in integrity violations as well, as a form of pre-emption. in serbia and tunisia, for example, parents believed that payments to school teachers in the form of supplementary tutoring are the best way to ensure student success (oecd, 2012; milovanovitch, 2014), although none of their children was ever failed because of a refusal to take tutoring classes with a school teacher. in ukraine, parental donations were a well-established way to secure a place in a sought-after school or pre-school (oecd, 2017a; milovanovitch & bloem, 2019). most of the parents who believed that admission without such “voluntary” donations is impossible, were in fact never asked for such donations by the principals, but offered them nevertheless. in armenia, where the license of private education providers to operate depends on licensing and inspection processes which are known to be unpredictable and corrupt, principals tend to seek “connections” to the officials in charge and offer them favors of their own accord (milovanovitch & bloem, 2019). what prevents the provision of education deliverables in permissible ways? the last sub-question in our protocol on incentives inquired how an education system can fail expectations to an extent where for a seemingly critical mass of people who participate in education, illicit conduct appears as a justifiable alternative to integrity. in countries where, for example, illicit access to education was a widespread remedy for shortages in admission capacity, we inquired about the reasons for the capacity shortages in the school network. in places where, like in armenia, teachers told us that they inflate student grades to preserve their employment, we asked about their employment conditions and what in those conditions might be fueling their conviction that their jobs are otherwise at risk. in kazakhstan, where we established that the allocation of vacated public scholarships in universities is plagued by irregularities milovanovitch current issues in comparative education 63 and integrity violations (oecd, 2017b), we tried to understand why faculties and their members persistently handle decisions about such allocations in an illicit and nontransparent way. we received numerous answers to such questions. some of them were on macro level and went well beyond the education sector, pointing to the overall economic situation in a country (ukraine, tunisia), the legacy of a recent past (armenia, serbia), or the financial crisis and the decline in the price of natural resources, which affected the purchasing power of households (kazakhstan). another group of responses were on a more intermediate level of aggregation and provided account of broad problems in the education sector, such as low quality of teaching and low status of the teaching profession, decline in student motivation (“bad students”), or low spending on education. finally, the remaining responses (the majority, in fact) directed us towards specific shortcomings in the education environment of our counterparts, where obvious shortcomings in policy and practice were limiting the capacity of education to deliver precisely in the areas affected by stakeholder distrust and integrity violations. for instance, the contextual analysis of intentional grade inflation in armenia and ukraine exposed problems in the professional circumstances of teachers, which seemed to explain some of their readiness to participate in the integrity violation. one of these problems was the persistently low level of public funding for school maintenance, which made public schools financially dependent on parental contributions and gave parents a leverage over school staff. parents used that leverage to pressure teachers into a preferential treatment of students (milovanovitch & lapham, 2018). the precarious employment conditions of teachers were another common problem, which put them in a vulnerable position vis-à-vis principals who could fire them at will (osf armenia, 2016; oecd, 2017b). in some countries (ukraine) teachers engaged in the integrity violation also in the hope of improving their sub-standard income through gifts from grateful parents at the end of the school year (oecd, 2017a). table 4 shows further examples like these. it lists integrity violations (column 1), the policy areas affected by shortcomings which lead to these violations (column 2), and the policy shortcomings themselves (column 3). column 4 presents the outcomes of the contextual analysis through which we linked the shortcomings, deliverables, and violations from the point of view of education participants who engage in them. table 4. examples of contextual analysis: violations, education deliverables, and policy shortcomings country integrity violation policy areas affected by shortcomings shortcomings in these areas contextual analysis: links 1 2 3 4 armenia, ukraine illicit access to preschool education planning of the school and preschool network the network is outdated and there is no operational plans/strategy for expansion of preschool coverage persistent shortage of preschool places forces parents, especially those in full-time employment, to offer favours and "donations" to secure a place in a kindergarten milovanovitch current issues in comparative education 64 serbia, tunisia, ukraine, armenia improper private supplementary tutoring curriculum and study programs; teaching overloaded curriculum and weak control of teaching quality teachers do not have the motivation and time to teach the full curriculum in high-stake subjects. parents distrust the effectiveness of teaching in regular education and resort to private tutoring armenia politicisation of education funding and financial management; staff policies resource allocations to schools are not transparent and accountable principals-members of the ruling party receive more generous allocations, which promotes politicisation of the schooling system kazakhstan undue recognition of student achievement quality assurance: assessment of learning outcomes outdated risk assessment criteria student grades have a disproportionate weight in the external risk assessment of universities, the outcomes of which can be decisive for their license to operate armenia, serbia, ukraine mismanagement (including embezzlement) of parental donations funding and financial management no resource allocations for capital investment and maintenance of school infrastructure; low income for teachers funding shortages for maintenance and infrastructure motivate public providers to request donations, which are mismanaged, including for personal benefit sources: oecd, 2012; milovanovitch, 2014; osf armenia, 2016; oecd, 2017a; oecd, 2017b it is interesting to note how similar shortcomings seem to motivate similar violations in different country contexts. oversized networks of public schools and scarce resources for their maintenance lead to increased financial involvement by parents. public education providers are ill-equipped to manage the parental donations, which facilitates embezzlement. shortage of pre-school places can be traced back to lack of planning and foresight by municipalities and regional authorities regarding the provider network, which in turn creates situations conducive to corrupt transactions in exchange for access, especially in large cities and the capitals. obstacles to effective teaching and learning in class, such as overloaded curriculum and lack of time or else, fuel demand for private tutoring which teachers often provide to their own students from regular education, and so on. conclusion in this article we discussed some of the connections between corrupt practices in education and the conditions in which people partake in them as teachers, students, administrators, and parents. we outlined a conceptual framework and methodology which identifies and describes such practices and then investigates the typical circumstances in which they take place. the results we described drew on findings from research in five countries and illustrated how corrupt actions revolve around education deliverables which are in short supply. we provided examples of how violations can be traced back to shortcomings in education policy and practice, which fuel stakeholder distrust in the ability of education to deliver to expectations in legitimate ways, and motivate various forms of problematic conduct. our findings suggest that corruption in education does not necessarily call for measures that differ from ongoing reform processes in education. corruption problems can be approached and interpreted as specific education policy problems, so milovanovitch current issues in comparative education 65 that corrupt conduct is addressed through improvement in common areas of education policy, not only through stricter rules and better enforcement. if the motivation of education participants to engage in corruption depends on education deliverables, then this motivation could be influenced through education improvement which targets the expectations at stake, for example by broadening access to the type of education and education providers in demand, by improving teacher policies, increasing transparency in resource allocations, and so on. some of the policy areas in focus of our research are sensitive and complex and changing them might be difficult. however, many countries have already embarked on reforms in areas which are difficult and of significance to integrity, such as teacher policies, funding for education, curriculum or assessment. their reform plans are usually regularly updated, which could offer an opportunity for recalibration on the basis of findings from research like ours, as the intes methodology that we used is in the public domain. designing or updating reforms in this way could make them more relevant for stakeholders by ensuring that they address the professional contexts in which expectations and corruption risks emerge. it would also allow countries to advance against corruption in education as part of their ongoing reform agenda in education, which is likely to be more effective than stand-alone anti-corruption plans. if aimed at the right selection of problems, education reforms can therefore become a viable corruption prevention strategy – one that is within the remit of education professionals and involves also those who participate in the integrity violations. mihaylo milovanovitch is senior policy specialist with the european training foundation, italy and senior integrity analyst for the center for applied policy and integrity, bulgaria. his research and publications focus on education policy, corruption prevention, and integrity of education in countries of eastern europe, central asia and northern africa. * the views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the organisations he is affiliated with. the author wishes to thank the expert network at the center for applied policy and integrity and dr. iva kosutic from the institute for social research in zagreb for the valuable advice provided in the process of preparing this contribution. notes [1] the education for all (efa) movement is a global commitment to provide quality basic education for all children, youth and adults. it is led by unesco. [2] for more information about the network see https://www.oecd.org/corruption/acn/aboutthenetwork/. we have provided an extended description of the intes initiative and methodology in (milovanovitch, 2013) and (oecd, 2018). sections of this article draw on these papers, in particular on (oecd, 2018). [3] for simplicity, in this article we may use adjectives such as “illicit”, “illegal”, “problematic” and “corrupt” as well as nouns such as “corruption”, “integrity milovanovitch current issues in comparative education 66 violation”, “transgression” and “illicit/illegal conduct” interchangeably, although in legal terms they may imply different forms of liability for actions (criminal, civil, administrative, or disciplinary). [4] due to time and project constraints, in tunisia and kazakhstan the site visits were shorter and the number of interviews more limited. current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 21, issue 1, special issue 2019 current issues in comparative education 67 references boehm, f. (2014, february). mainstreaming anti-corruption into sectors: practices in u4 partner agencies. u4 brief no. 3, pp. 1-4. retrieved from https://www.u4.no/publications/mainstreaming-anti-corruption-intosectors-practices-in-u4-partner-agencies.pdf cohen, l. e., & felson, m. (1979). social change and crime rate trends: a routine activity approach. american sociological review, 44 (august), 588-608. retrieved april 8, 2018, from http://www.personal.psu.edu/exs44/597bcomm&crime/cohen_felsonroutine-activities.pdf council of europe. (1999a). criminal law convention on corruption. strasbourg: council of europe. council of europe. 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(2016). strengthening integrity and fighting corruption in education: armenia. yerevan: open society foundations (osf) armenia and center for applied policy (cfap) bulgaria. retrieved august 20, 2018, from http://www.osf.am/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/integrityreport_eng_published_16.01.2017.pdf osf armenia. (2016). strengthening integrity and fighting corruption in education: armenia. yerevan: open society foundations (osf) armenia and center for applied policy (cfap) bulgaria. strauss, a. l., & corbin, j. (1998). basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. thousand oaks, ca: sage. transparency international. (2013). global corruption report: educaction. new york: routledge. uis/oecd/eurostat. (2002, april 12). uoe data collection: definitions, explanations, and instructions. retrieved march 2, 2018, from http://www.oecd.org/education/1841883.pdf united nations. (2004). united nations convention against corruption. vienna: united nations office on drugs and crime. world education forum, 2000. education for all: meeting our collective commitments. retrieved march 2, 2018, from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001202/120240e.pdf volume 14(1) / fall 2011 • issn 1523-1615 • http://www.tc.edu/cice evaluation, assessment, and testing featured article 3 how much is learning measurement worth? daniel a. wagner, andrew babson, and katie m. murray 24 assessing student engagement in china heidi ross, yuhao cen, and zejun zhou 38 on the right track: measuring early childhood development program quality internationally maria cristina limlingan book review 48 m. hadjiyanni, contesting the past, constructing the future: a comparative study of the cyprus conflict in secondary history education reviewed by demetrios spyridakis current issues in comparative education 2 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education volume 14, issue 1 (fall 2011) issue editors: ruaridh j. macleod, sarah flatto editorial board managing editor ruaridh macleod executive editors andrew k. shiotani, matthew hayden asst. managing ed. sarah flatto senior editors henan chang, michelle hollett, briana ronan, muntasir sattar editors anne gaspers, molly hamm, rachel hatch, ryan hathaway, toni cela web editor andrew k. shiotani, muntasir sattar international advisory board michael apple, mark bray, michael cross, suzanne grant lewis, noel mcginn, gary natriello, harold noah, gita steiner-khamsi, frances vavrus, andria wisler copyright unless otherwise noted, copyrights for the texts which comprise all issues of current issues in comparative education (cice) are held by the journal. the compilation as a whole is copyright © by current issues in comparative education, all rights reserved. items published by cice may be freely shared among individuals, but they may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the author(s) and advance notification of the cice editorial board. cice holds exclusive rights in respect to electronic publication and dissemination. the journal may not be posted or in anyway mirrored on the world-wide web or any other part of the internet except at the official publication site at teachers college, columbia university. cice reserves the right to amend or change this copyright policy. for the most current version of this copyright policy, please see: http://www.tc.edu/cice/ main/guidelines.html. questions about the journal’s copyright policy should be directed to the editorial board. disclaimer the opinions and ideas expressed in the cice are solely those held by the authors and are not necessarily shared by the editors of the journal. teachers college, columbia university (cu) as a publisher makes no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, for information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice, which are provided on an “as is” basis. teachers college, cu does not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the use of information on its cice web site or in any issue of cice. © 2011 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education, vol. 14(1): 48-51 book review hadjiyanni, m. (2008). contesting the past, constructing the future: a comparative study of the cyprus conflict in secondary history education. saarbrucken: vdm verlag dr. muller aktiengesellschaft & co. kg. 152 pp. isbn 978-3-639-01973-5 − reviewed by demetrios spyridakis, teachers college, columbia university n this pioneering study, marina hadjiyanni carefully analyzes the biases inherent within history textbooks assigned in the secondary schools of cyprus. a small eurasian country situated at the northeastern end of the mediterranean basin, cyprus has become the focus of international attention since the turkish military invasion of the northern portion of the island in 1974. the turkish invasion came in response to the actions of a greek nationalist regime that staged a coup d’etat in cyprus with the ultimate goal of annexing the island to greece. the invasion itself has sparked considerable controversy and poisoned greek-turkish relations ever since. though the united nations, the european court of human rights, and the international community have denounced turkey’s military aggression and refuse to recognize a separate turkishcypriot state in the north, the consequences of the invasion continue to resonate over thirty-five years later. with the 1974 invasion so deeply imbedded in the psyche and historical consciousness of greek and turkish cypriots alike, it is hardly surprising that secondary level history textbooks from both communities present radically different interpretations of the island’s division. after carefully investigating a number of such textbooks, hadjiyanni affirms that the historical narratives of both communities lack objectivity. from the onset, hadjiyanni clearly states two important aims of her study: (1) to corroborate her argument that both greek and turkish cypriot textbooks are biased by using textual evidence, and (2) to provide perspectives on the biases from history teachers and educational researchers who actively propose solutions to this problem. hadjiyanni’s overarching theme is both sensible and well-argued: that greek and turkish cypriot educators should abandon efforts to create a nationalistic barrier, which creates an “us” versus “them” dichotomy between the two communities within cyprus. instead, they should actively work toward historical peacebuilding in which mutual tolerance, reconciliation, and an appreciation for differing perspectives might facilitate the emergence of a united cyprus. given the overwhelming scale of the cypriot problem, hadjiyanni’s suggestion that peace might be facilitated through historiography may at first strike the reader as idealistic and impractical. but few would disagree with the contention that nationalistic tendencies have their roots in historical understanding. it can be argued that this situation provides educators with a significant role in helping i book review current issues in comparative education 49 shape a nation’s identity. after all, as samuel butler noted, “it has been said that though god cannot alter the past, historians can.” the book is organized into six chapters and includes a list of five appendices at the end. the first chapter provides a pithy introduction, stating the study’s research questions and themes. here the reader learns of the novelty of the study, as hadjiyanni correctly asserts that, prior to the appearance of her book, “no specific research was conducted on how the historical period of 1955-1974, which led to the de-facto separation of the island, has been depicted in the secondary school history textbooks on each educational context” (10). in the second chapter, hadjiyanni surveys the literature addressing various academic curricula authored by credible educators who analyze how history can be taught for peacebuilding, as opposed to promoting nationalism. together, these authors provide one common insight: the teaching of history can either exacerbate a terrain of struggle in the classroom or grant a more objective avenue through which students might unite. they suggest this can be achieved by building a spirit of academic collaboration which, in leading students to understand the past experiences of humanity, creates the conditions by which they can help bring about positive social change in the future. in chapters three, four, and five, hadjiyanni analyzes both a turkish-cypriot and greekcypriot textbook produced by the ministry of education for each community. the turkish-cypriot textbook was written for children aged from fourteen through fifteen, and the greek-cypriot book for students aged from seventeen through eighteen years of age (36). hadjiyanni documents examples of bias from both textbooks. the conclusions she draws from her analyses are that both the greek-cypriot and turkish-cypriot textbooks conceal acts of wrongdoing committed by their own side, and that both groups “seem to reinforce nationalistic and intolerant attitudes among greek-cypriot and turkish-cypriot students” (88). after examining the two textbooks individually, hadjiyanni describes the process of interviews she conducted in which she would (a) question the participants about their perspectives on the textbooks, and (b) request suggestions for rectifying the problem of bias in textbooks. conducting interviews of 45-50 minutes each (41), she conversed with the following five participants: a turkish-cypriot history instructor who argued that the turkish textbooks are biased and communicate a “notion of revenge” (90); a turkish researcher, holding a ph.d in history, who was forced to resign from a textbook revision committee which she claimed consisted of “very strict turkish-cypriot nationalists” (92); a greek-cypriot educator trained in philology and history, who contended that the “role of turkish-cypriots during 1955-1964 is completely excluded,” and that “greekcypriot teachers usually avoided integrating this issue in the history classroom” (92); a greek-cypriot researcher and instructor of pre-primary teachers/trainees in history who asserted that greek textbooks provide “chauvinistic representations” (93); and a danish history teacher at a private school in greek southern cyprus, who identified extant book review 50 current issues in comparative education educational propaganda inasmuch as students are “not given the opportunity to question and critically think about historical narratives” (94). the common solution provided by the participants involves the revision of textbooks so that they can “discuss alternative historical perspectives and interpretations” (98). finally, in chapter 6, hadjiyanni summarizes her research findings. notwithstanding the book’s numerous strengths which have been addressed supra, a few glaring weaknesses deserve mention. first, in hadjiyanni’s literature review appearing in chapter two, she includes a brief section titled “the cyprus problem in historical context.” paradoxically, hadjiyanni’s narrative contains no discussion of the significant historical events that transpired prior to the turkish invasion of cyprus in 1974. in fact, her historical discussion begins with the invasion itself. thereafter, she provides commentary on the current disputes that exist over the island, namely that the “turkish cypriot leadership demands the resolution of conflict through the creation of a bi-communal, bi-zonal federation which recognizes political equality” (22), and that the greek-cypriots “demand a unitary, sovereign state with indivisibility of territory and single citizenship, which identifies the turkish cypriots as the minority” (22). given the complexity of the cyprus dispute and the widely divergent positions concerning its origin, the lack of general information is sure to leave unfamiliar readers puzzled. only when analyzing the greek-cypriot and turkish-cypriot textbooks in subsequent chapters does hadjiyanni include some critical historical discussion, though it is scattered throughout the text. there, however, her historical discussions function more as personal commentaries and are often abruptly abandoned for other topics. second, in the historical context section of chapter two, hadjiyanni simplifies her coverage of the annan plan to a discussion of the failure of un general secretary kofi annan to convince the people of cyprus to approve his 2004 proposal, which greekcypriots perceived to be unfair. missing are the key features of the annan plan which the greek-cypriots found objectionable: for example, the failure to demilitarize the island, the lack of guarantees against the unilateral intervention of foreign powers, and the absence of a property recovery system for displaced greek-cypriot refugees. unfortunately, a lack of appropriate historical context pervades the book and significantly detracts from hadjiyanni’s aim to educate readers about the biases found in history textbooks. readers without the proper factual background and objective historical data will find it difficult to identify biases present in history textbooks and, by extension, to evaluate the merits of hadjiyanni’s assessments of those biases. finally, a review of the eighty-six sources consulted by hadjiyanni reveals very few pertaining to the period from 1955 to 1974, a watershed in cypriot history which she repeatedly emphasizes is her primary research focus. since her work deals largely with the subject of history, her citation of only five secondary historical sources discussing the “cyprus problem” appears inadequate. of these five sources, only two are books, one written by volkan (1979) and dealing primarily with psychoanalysis, and the other book review current issues in comparative education 51 authored by the cyprus ministry of education (2003). the cyprus ministry of education, however, mainly comprises specialists in the field of curriculum development, rather than historians. books written by experts in history would have been more appropriate sources to consult. moreover, the other three cited sources are concise essays by papadakis and volkan appearing in a volume edited by calotychos (1998), and a short article by zervakis (2002). also of concern is the absence of citations relating to primary sources. a few contradictions within the text are also problematic. hadjiyanni identifies a turkish-cypriot textbook’s characterization of nikos sampson – the forcibly installed successor to makarios as president – as the murderer of several british and turkish individuals an item of propaganda for the purpose of justifying the subsequent turkish invasion of cyprus in 1974 (45). curiously, however, hadjiyanni then criticizes a greekcypriot textbook for not properly documenting acts of persecution aimed toward the turkish-cypriots, especially by the leadership: “the greek-cypriot narrative does not provide any evidence that indicates the burden of responsibility of the greek-cypriot leadership for causing the sufferings of the turkish-cypriot minority” (82). the reader is left to wonder why hadjiyanni would criticize the turkish-cypriot textbook’s documentation of persecution as propaganda, and then censure the greek-cypriot textbook for failing to document acts of the same persecution. hadjiyanni presents a similar inconsistency undermining her peacebuilding history argument when she reprimands the turkish-cypriot textbook authors for their “characterization of turkishcypriots as the brothers of greek-cypriots” (52). hadjiyanni opposes this characterization since the textbook “establishes the representation of turkey as the peacemaker” (52). hadjiyanni argues that greek-cypriots and turkish-cypriots should live harmoniously in a multicultural world united as one cypriot nation, and “move beyond the homogenous national identity,” (121) yet she skeptically dismisses a fraternal reference made by turkish-cypriots. while hadjiyanni’s work is not without its flaws, the positive aspects far outweigh the negative. hadjiyanni possesses a vast amount of knowledge about the state of affairs of cypriot historical education and offers important insights in her analysis of nationalistic and peace building approaches to the teaching of history. she is sensitive to the challenges of teaching history in a more objective manner, and should be lauded for her efforts. her work demonstrates how historical narratives can be skewed to justify a community’s every action, presenting a significant obstacle in the way of peace. this book will surely appeal to scholars of both history and education. it remains a definitive study of the biases plaguing textbooks which shape the historical consciousness of a generation of cypriots who have inherited one of the last divided capitals in europe. copyright © 2011 current issues in comparative education teachers college, columbia university all rights reserved 14 pdf of 9th try spyridakis_final_edits_ms 1. editorial introduction v.10.9.23.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 25, issue 2, special issue 2023 editorial introduction: comparative & international education in turbulent times tomás esper teachers college, columbia university 25 years have gone by since cice's first edition, in 1998. a quarter of a century later the world has changed more than many would have dear to imagine in the late 1990s. just a year before, meyer et al., (1997) published their seminal piece on “world society and the nation state”, claiming that western values of human rights, scientific rational, and democratic government had prevailed and would produce an inevitable process of global homogeneity. for a long time scholars in comparative and international education have debated about these claims, the process of globalization, and the interactions between national and supra-national forces in education. yet 25 years later, the world faces new and unimagined challenges that have drastically changed our present the future landscape. from one corner, a feracious financial capitalist system continues to advance at the expense of human well-being and our very subsistence on earth. as brilliantly described by mark fisher (2009), the capitalist system has created the illusion that non-alternative is possible. within it, the neoliberal project has prevailed over other ideas or doctrines, infiltrating almost every sphere of human activity. as a result, we have replaced the idea of solidarity at the expense of competition as the natural regulatory force of human interactions. women continue to struggle to obtain equal treatment to men, in the context of worsening conditions for workers around the world at the expense of large corporation’s profit greed. this logic is also transforming education, which has become subsumed to economic productivity, where teachers’ workload has skyrocketed, and their as well as teachers’ mental health also suffer from the external demands of the ‘knowledge economy’. at the same time, school systems continue to struggle in the post-pandemic era and millions of students risk becoming a ‘lost generation’ due to a lack of an appropriate realization of their right to education, artificial intelligence is disrupting the classroom but also the labor market. in this mist, the hope of democracy spreading to every country contrasts with a world in which half of them are governed by authoritarian regimes of various degrees (economist intelligence unit, 2023). not only that, some of the fastest growing economies are examples of the opposite set of values of those projected by ‘world society’: multiple violations of human rights, attacks on minorities –lgbtq+ community, migrants, ethnic groups– (velasco, 2022). among them, women are a key target of far-right movements, attacking earned rights such as abortion and actively opposing fights for equal rights. moreover, forced migration has reached unprecedented numbers due to armed conflicts, authoritarianism, and climate disasters, affecting more than 100 million people around the world. these, among other concerns, have inspired the questions behind this special issue, where we invited authors to think, © 2023, esper. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 25(2), 4-7. https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?vkstxp https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?0zlltj https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?ejol1k https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?kcqirx https://https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en editorial introduction discuss, and engage with these topics by reflecting on what’s the role of comparative and international education in these turbulent times. the first section of the special issue presents four articles that tap into these questions and bring new insights and perspectives to look at them. first, kelsey a. dalrymple addresses the increasingly important issue of socio-emotional learning (sel) in refugee contexts. sel has been highlighted as one of the key focuses by the oecd after the covid-19 pandemic, yet it is ever more relevant in refugee contexts due to the unimaginable challenges faced by students and their families. hence, while sel is increasingly becoming a key area of intervention in refugee contexts, dalrymple examines how actors operating in refugee settlements in east africa understand and make sense of these approaches. in particular, the study looks at the tensions between westernized views of sel portrayed by donors or international organizations vis-a-vis local understandings and needs of students, and what implications this has for sel interventions. from different angles, ruchi saini and patricia grillet address the consequences of the covid-19 pandemic on women and how it disproportionately affected them in multiple ways. undoubtedly, india was one of the hardest affected countries during the covid crisis, which is the setting for saini’s study. the author interrogates how women navigated the increased labor demand produced by the pandemic delving deep into the stories of six indian school teachers. hence, adopting a qualitative methodology, the piece uses an interesting approach providing an emplotted narrative story of teachers’ experiences during the pandemic. tapping on feminist theories, saini analyzes female teachers’ responses in terms of tactical strategies to resist an increasingly adverse working and domestic environment, and, as ‘institutional betrayal’ on behalf of schools by exploiting teachers' precarious working conditions while maximizing their profit. from a different angle, patricia grillet paid attention to how the international community looked at –or overlooked– women and gender disparities during the pandemic. in particular, grillet focused on the early stages of the covid analyzing publications between march 2020 and september 2021, as it signaled the initial focus of international actors, in contrast to later stages where more and more topics were covered. her findings point to shared challenges of women across regions during the pandemic while pointing to the lack of attention to structural gender disparities from the international community in the most critical phase of the pandemic. shizza fatima's article explores the complex colonial heritages of language policies in pakistan and how the use of english, as the settler colonial language, or urdu, one of the many native languages, creates a strong sense of division and segregation in students. the case of pakistan can act as an example of the dozens of countries in which language policies create a divide not only within schools but also beyond it. this historical dilemma is also augmented in the context of growing forced migration, where the language of instruction has become a highly politized matter as it can operate as a backdrop for equal opportunities among learners. however, as the article shows, students are not passive recipients of such heritage, but actively engage in a process of resistance and decolonial praxis. current issues in comparative education 5 esper the second section of the special issue is composed of two essays and a book review that touches on different burning topics for cie scholarship. first, alexandra schindel, monica miles, and kate haq bring to the fore that, when teaching about climate change, it is paramount to include a critical racial perspective in it. using the 2022 buffalo blizard as an example, the authors argue that race is inextricably linked to climate change and that it racial injustices are at the core of those populations enduring the worse consequences of it. later, carol anne spreen discusses the present consequences of predatory capitalism and introduces the idea of a contra-hegemonic third space of learning. in her essay, spreen presents some of the key issues raised by her latest book, together with gary l. anderson, dipti desai, and ana inés heras, where they show how activism, resistance, and collective practices can produce new ways of learning beyond capitalist rationale. finally, whitney hough reviews dr. khalid arar’s book school leadership for refugees’ education: social justice leadership for immigrant, migrants and refugees. in her review, hough highlights the importance of leadership roles in the context of the incredibly challenging conditions of refugee resettlements by breaking down the strengths and areas for further research in arar’s book. *** i would like to take the opportunity in this introduction to celebrate cice’s 25th anniversary by honoring not only the 2022-2023 cohort but also all of the former editors-in-chief, editors, copyeditors and media engagement managers who had worked over the years to make this journal possible. it was and continues to be the work and passion of the student body at teachers college who envision in cice the opportunity to engage, discuss, and learn in our field of comparative and international education. as a student-led journal, cice became a reference in the field of comparative and international education, publishing pieces from novel scholars, as well as more senior ones. as such, cice has and continues to fulfill its mission to act as a platform to give voice to scholars from the most diverse backgrounds, locations, and perspectives by following the most rigorous scientific standards in our editorial work. over these 25 years, cice has dedicated issues to a wide range of topics, always avant-garde on current issues. from exploring the role of ngos in 1998, the recurring issue of the impact of technology in education in 2003 and 2018, the role of social movements in 2015, exploring methodological issues in our field to the more recent issue of covid-19 in 2022. this arbitrary selection of some of the many challenging topics covered by cice since its inception shows nothing but the intellectual curiosity, open-mindedness, and interests of each of cice’s editorial teams. in particular, this special issue was born of a collective decision from cice’s editorial board. in my role as editor-in-chief, i considered myself nothing but a primus-inter-pares. therefore, in line with cice’s spirit of being a collective project led by the students of teachers college, we worked together on deciding our anniversary theme as well as the journal priorities for the year. without the editorial board's tireless work, commitment, and dedication, this journal would not be possible. we have built not only a work team but a community of colleagues who count on each other and collaborate to grow and learn together. 6 current issues in comparative education https://arcus-www.amazon.es/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_1?ie=utf8&field-author=gary+l.+anderson&text=gary+l.+anderson&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=digital-text https://arcus-www.amazon.es/dipti-desai/e/b0024jav6s/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_2 https://arcus-www.amazon.es/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_3?ie=utf8&field-author=ana+in%c3%a9s+heras&text=ana+in%c3%a9s+heras&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=digital-text editorial introduction in this sense, we continue to work to improve our journal, as we are in the process of becoming certified by the directory of open access journals, a new milestone that will continue to attract talented scholars around the world, while also increasing the outreach of our journal. as part of this process, we have digitalized and gathered under the cice website hosted by columbia university libraries all the prior volumes in these last 25-year years. these efforts build on top of prior important steps taken over these years, such as the automatic submission system or the development of a clear communication strategy with the scientific community. to conclude, i’d like to particularly thank professor regina cortina, the international advisory board the external reviewers, the authors, and everyone who contributed to our journal’s growth, consolidation, and expansion over the years. i can do nothing but encourage students to get involved and enjoy this unique and enriching experience, as well as more authors to submit their work to cice to keep the journal moving forward during the next 25 years. tomás esper is a doctoral fellow in the international and comparative education program at teachers college, columbia university, and the editor-in-chief of current issues in comparative education (cice) (2022-2023). email: te2288@tc.columbia.edu. for cice-related matters, please contact cice@tc.columbia.edu references economist intelligence unit. (2023). democracy index 2022. frontline democracy and the battle for ukraine. fisher, m. (2009). capitalist realism: is there no alternative? o books. meyer, j. w., boli, j., thomas, g. m., & ramirez, f. o. (1997). world society and the nation‐state. american journal of sociology, 103(1), 144–181. https://doi.org/10.1086/231174 velasco, k. (2022). opposition avoidance or mutual engagement? the interdependent dynamics between opposing transnational lgbt+ networks. social forces, soac068. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soac068 current issues in comparative education 7 https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?fsnlvj https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?fsnlvj https://doi.org/10.1086/231174 https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soac068 © 2012 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(1): 14-25. invited article meeting the tests of time: small states in the 21st century godfrey baldacchino university of prince edward island the analytic category of ‘small states’ remains problematic in the 21st century. its legitimacy as a rigorous conceptual category continues to be debated; even as small states assume a strident visibility on the world stage because of climate change negotiations. this paper reviews the scepticism that hovers around the small state concept, and invites a largely social constructivist discussion that looks at a syndrome of behavioural issues which are more likely to occur with decreasing polity size. education remains a key policy battleground for small states, as the latter balance human resource needs with the trans-territorial aspirations of their brightest and ablest (and often wealthiest). in spite of spectacular advances in information and communication technologies, the personality of the small state has not essentially changed; and this remains characterised by rootedness and mobility. introduction: does size really matter anyway? ask civil or mechanical engineers about whether size is a significant variable in their work. most are likely to agree: large animals are not merely scaled up versions of smaller ones; large and heavy land-based mammals, for instance, need to distribute their considerable weight on four legs, rather than just two. there is also a whole sub-field of technical inquiry that explores the possibilities proffered by very small size: nanotechnology. ask biologists whether size and scale have a bearing on environmental survivability. most are likely to agree: smaller fauna have a larger surface area with respect to their body mass, and so their bodies lose heat much quicker; this makes them more susceptible to hypothermia. ask physicians whether there are any special concerns with the diagnosis and treatment of small patients. for most, this is a no-brainer. why else would there be a long-standing specialization in paediatrics? when it comes to matters social, economic or political, however, the self-evident nature of the case disappears. there is no general agreement that small states (however defined) have any particular ‘ecology’ of their own (e.g. commonwealth secretariat, 1985, p. 6); even though, as is argued further below, there is considerable evidence that a ‘small scale syndrome’ does exist. purpose this paper is deliberately polemic; it reviews the scepticism and fuzziness that hovers around the small state concept, but also invites a social constructivist discussion that looks at a package of behavioural issues which are more likely to occur with decreasing polity size. in this context, and in spite of the recent revolutionary changes in information and communication technologies, education remains a key policy battleground for small states, as the latter seek to balance local human resource needs with the trans-territorial aspirations of their brightest and ablest (and often wealthiest) citizens. it is only an enlightened few who – occasionally in the course of their work – single out small states as a ‘special case’ for and worth studying. even those who would profess a serious interest in, and current issues in comparative education 15 meeting the tests of time belief in the validity of, that category, must do so while competing with so many other claims to their time, resources and energies. “academia has paid little attention to small states” (the round table, 2012, p. 202). this widespread reticence and incredulity is the result of a confluence of various factors, and a review of the literature suggests that the following four explanations stand out: first, small states are above all states, and this is how they wish to see and project themselves. they have nothing less, or more, than other states in terms of the notional equity imparted by the community of nations. small states (but see the second explanation, below) may be the least likely candidates for welcoming such a typology. there is some resentment, if not revulsion, of the appellation because it smacks of neo-colonialism: here is yet one other way in which the hegemonic powers of the day continue to drum up pseudo-scientific arguments justifying their role as guides, mentors, consultants, advisors, and in whichever other guise to continue to engrain their ‘natural’ superiority. us secretary of state henry kissinger is reported to have quipped thus about the inhabitants of the marshall islands: “there are only 90,000 people out there. who gives a damn?” (vine, 2009, p. 183). in sharp contrast, small states that see themselves as successful present themselves as having done so by virtue of the nimbleness, social corporatism, canny opportunism and policy flexibility that their size provides and permits (katzenstein, 1985). and indeed, today, the freest, wealthiest and happiest residents in the world are, as a rule, small state citizens (hannan, 2007). second, and in sharp contrast to the first explanation above, some small states – particularly the 38 grouped under the united nations sids (small island developing states) umbrella – have tended to brandish their smallness as a bargaining chip, arguing that their size renders them especially vulnerable (to financial, trade, economic and environmental shocks, above all else), in spite of sometimes quite impressive quality of life indicators, and as a result they claim that they are deservedly in need of international assistance and/or special arrangements (charles, jacovides, & mata’afa, 1997; un, 2012). for scholars searching for plausible definitions, what characterizes a small state is “a shortage or lack of certain ‘normal’ attributes of state power, autonomy and international standing” (bailes, 2010, p. 2). what is of particular interest, we are told, is “how the small nation state [sic] can develop and manage...services and opportunities,” given that it is “severely constrained” to do so (packer, 1991, pp. 517-9). this persistent “deficit discourse” (baldacchino, 2012) is probably the best known representation of states as small in vogue on the international stage, taken up since the early 1980s by such international organizations as the commonwealth and the united nations development program (e.g. commonwealth secretariat, 2012a; undp, 2012), and also by the sids themselves: “[t]here are many disadvantages that derive from small size” (sids, 2012). international and regional agencies, banks, critics, politicians and other observers may have noted and acknowledged these arguments; however, they have not generally endorsed or tagged along with this line of reasoning. is being a small state really such a handicap? indeed, some scholars claim the very antithesis of these assertions of vulnerability: small states are only facing “small problems” (easterly & kraay, 2000); their smallness allows for a strategic flexibility that is often not acknowledged (baldacchino & bertram, 2009); their economies often perform better than those of larger states (armstrong et al., 1998, p. 644). third, 20th century social science scholarship has mostly shied away from considerations of scale in relation to statehood. development economics and political science have presented tried and tested theories of economic growth, democracy, administration and good governance that were expected to be copied and adopted by many decolonizing jurisdictions, irrespective of culture, history or size (e.g. huntington, 1968; porter, 1990). if these templates did not work, or did not 16 current issues in comparative education baldacchino work as expected, it was those trying to adopt the models, who were invariably to blame; the plausibility of the model itself was not questioned. there were various attempts to oblige the smallest colonies – particularly in relation to the post-1945 dismantling of the british empire – to gain independence only as part of something larger than themselves: the west indies federation; malaysia-singapore; gilbert and ellice islands; st kitts-nevis-anguilla...but nationalism made short shrift of most of these. nowadays, it is the regionalization initiatives of independent states that somehow seek to achieve economies of scale and unity of voice and purpose while maintaining the autonomy, privileges and powers associated with being small polities. the best – and quite successful – example of this is probably the nine-member organization of eastern caribbean states (oecs, 2012). fourth and lastly, most mainstream geography and social science generally have rushed to embrace the appeals of post-structuralism in the context of a digitized, borderless world (ohmae, 1990): “the digital planet will look and feel like the head of a pin” (negroponte, 1995, p. 6). everything and everyone is now connected, engaged in a global village, where places and spaces are at best social constructions, at worst mere illusions carried over from a now defunct pre-it age. the hubris of post-modernity makes any reference to size, scale and even location appear spurious, irrational and passé. deleuze (2004) argues that space “is imaginary and not actual; mythological and not geographical” (p. 12); the same dismissal would apply to size. this means that, as long as we feel obliged to define our subject, we will remain stuck at the conceptualization phase; endlessly contesting whether there is, first of all, such a thing as a small state; and, if there is, how do we recognize it. moreover, it is not only when one observes small state dynamics – whatever they are – in play, but also when one expects them to pan out, and behaves accordingly, that the small scale syndrome also operates. if people operate in accordance to perceptions, their consequences will be real, irrespective of whether those perceptions were crafted out of impressions, myths or assessments of praxis (thomas, 1966). moreover, purposive individuals, community groups, corporations, and governments behave in terms of the institutional constraints and horizons of possibility within which they operate (brinton & nee, 2002). from such social constructivist and neo-institutionalist lenses, a small state is a state that either believes it is small, and/or else is seen to be one, and is expected to behave accordingly; also because of its historical unfolding and resource availability. “[q]uite convincingly, it can be argued that a state is ‘small’ when it feels and acts small – implying that it could become smaller or less small at different points in its history” (bailes, 2010, p. 2). some interesting international relations episodes – such as the ‘cod wars’ between britain and iceland – have occurred when actions have flown dramatically in the face of such expectations (baldacchino, 2009; ingimundarson, 2003). the paradox is that, while a general refusal to acknowledge any idiosyncrasies associated with smallness (as explained above) persists – there is still “no widely accepted definition of a small state” (crowards, 2002, p. 143) – most of the world’s states tend towards the small. after all, out of 267 jurisdictions (of which 195 countries and 72 subnational territories) listed in the us central intelligence agency’s latest edition of the world factbook (cia, 2012), only 23 have populations of over 50 million; and 160 have populations of less than 10 million (of which 43 have a population of not more than 100,000). lay out jurisdictions in order by population size, from the people’s republic of china to pitcairn, and the median spot would be taken by kyrgyzstan, with a population of just 5.5 million. alternatively, lay out jurisdictions in order by land area, from russia to the vatican city, and the median country size turns out to be occupied by latvia, with current issues in comparative education 17 meeting the tests of time 64,000 square kilometers. clearly, the so-called small state is the typical state size (as it has also been for most of recorded history). in contrast, the large state is the quirk and the anomaly: notice how hard it can be for large states to control diverse nations and other nationalist aspirations within their borders: think china and tibet; india and telengana; indonesia and aceh; irian jaya and timor; russia and chechnya; canada and quebec; and sudan and south sudan. perhaps we should establish ‘large states’ as a field of inquiry and ask ourselves: is a large state a state of the wrong size (e.g. lewis, 1991)? and, meanwhile, why is normalcy too hard to bear and acknowledge? moreover, and as already observed (baehr, 1975, p. 466) and in spite of some quantitative attempts (crowards, 2002), there is, and can be, no sharp dichotomy between ‘small’ and ‘large’ states. the choice of boundary is arbitrary, subjective and purely instrumental. the commonwealth has defined small states as “countries with a population of 1.5 million or less”; but the larger member countries of botswana, lesotho, namibia, trinidad & tobago, jamaica and even papua new guinea (with over 5 million population) are included “because they share many of the same characteristics of small states” (commonwealth secretariat, 2012b). so much for a rigorous upper limit (hindmarsh, 1996). nevertheless, this grouping is even less discretionary than the un’s listing of sids, which includes members that are not small (cuba), are not islands (belize, guinea-bussau, and guyana) and are not developing (singapore). this leads one to think that the listing is perhaps one of convenience, driven by political opportunism. meanwhile, within the 27-member european union (eu) bloc, all members states except the ‘big six’ – france, germany, italy, spain, poland and the united kingdom – are considered small (panke, 2010; thorallsson, 2000); the largest of what are notionally ‘small states’ within the eu would be the netherlands, with a population of almost 17 million. it is worth considering whether the reference to “smaller states” is preferable to “small” in most (though not necessarily all) instances, resurrecting a formerly preferred usage (benedict, 1966; 1967; berreman, 1978; reviewed in baldacchino, 2011a). a small scale syndrome this is not to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. at decreasing levels of size, certain parameters are likely to become more important, more prevalent, more difficult to ignore or resist. smallness – often accompanied by the geographical delineations and remoteness afforded by islandness – is perhaps best seen as a dynamic interplay of three variables: monopoly (meaning that the natural number of most ‘things’ tends towards just one: one hospital, one university, one college, one area specialist, one internet service provider, one ferry service provider – impacting on the workings of the ‘free market’); totality (meaning that the state and its manifestations are ubiquitous and omnipresent, much like the workings of a total institution); and intimacy (meaning that the threshold of privacy is low, familiarity is excessive, information is power, who you are and who you know is important, and where role multiplicity and overlap are rife and unavoidable) (puniani austin, 2002). the signature of a small state is probably best rendered in the excessive personalization of decision making; the poverty of civil society; the power of information about, on and by people; the sheer impossibility of avoiding role conflict. should one not particularly enjoy operating within this “small scale syndrome” (baldacchino, 1997), there is really only one realistic option: pack up and leave. of course, we are aware of the real dangers of essentializing our subject matter. after all, such leitmotifs do not develop exclusively in a small state milieu: similar goings on may prevail in tight ethnic communities, total institutions, urban ghettos or other social enclaves. and yet, other things being equal, such and similar dynamics are perhaps more likely to occur in small state settings. 18 current issues in comparative education baldacchino today: mobility and immobility a closer look at the presumed smallness of states, however, allows us to engage somewhat more critically with the subject at hand. given the vantage point of the present, we can afford ourselves a critique of small state size, in a context of an era of inexorable space-time compression (janelle, 1969, p. 359; harvey, 1990), a creeping globalization of consumer tastes, a rapid dispersion of information and communication technologies: the world is now flat (friedman, 2005). the “end” or “death of geography” concept is beguilingly simple and has become a fashionable narrative in many academic, business and marketing circles (e.g. ohmae, 1990). yet, perhaps this very drive towards sameness and fluidity is fuelling a slate of: place branding initiatives; bordering and security concerns; a renaissance in interest in local cultures and languages; and area studies (including border studies and island studies) in academe (e.g. sidaway, 2012). this is a contradictory time that we are living in: of interconnectivity and porosity, as much as of (state-led) excision and regulation. a poignant example of these dilemmas is presented by the predicament of the state of kiribati, with 100,000 people perched on less than 900 square kilometers of fragmented land area, clearly a small state; but responsible for an immense swathe of pacific ocean as its exclusive economic zone. this is an atoll archipelago with a significant number of its citizens working as ship crews on foreign flagged vessels, or else studying or working in places like auckland, new zealand and sydney, australia. this is a country threatened, certainly by no fault of its own, by global warming (which trumps borders) and concomitant sea level rise: its highest natural point above sea level is less than 3 metres. no amount of broadband, satellite phone access or internet connection speeds can change this. a country that may have to evacuate its total resident population, but is as yet unable to secure an alternative site over which to transfer its sovereign status, should matters come to a head (byravan & rajan, 2010). mobility and immobility. kiribati may be an extreme case; but various observers writing from/about small (and island) jurisdictions – think joël bonnemaison (1994), james clifford (1997) and karen fog olwig (1993) – have been keen to emphasize the rich yet messy co-presence of the values of roots/ trees and routes/boats, of openness and closure (villamil, 1977). the exit option aligned to the small scale syndrome is a powerful reminder of how small states may appear small from a statist or juridical perspective; but can otherwise loom pretty large. polynesian epeli hau’ofa made such a point in a seminal essay: western powers may have carved up his oceania into small polities – samoa, tonga, fiji, french polynesia, kiribati, tuvalu, niue – but the ocean, and their common ancestry, history and languages, unite them as one. not only that, but the polynesian reach has now extended to other settlements, especially in canada, the usa, australia and new zealand (hau’ofa, 1993). indeed, we have known for some time that, the smaller the state, the more likely is it that a considerable part of its population is either outside the country at any point in time, or even permanently resident elsewhere (lowenthal, 1987, pp. 41-43; ward, 1967, p. 95). we need to acknowledge “transnational corporations of kin” (bertram & watters, 1985), households and networks of relatives that straddle political borders, successively or simultaneously, maximizing revenue or career opportunities, and minimizing taxes, by a deliberate resort to “jurisdictional shopping,” made possible by protocols that permit brain/ brawn circulation or rotation (baldacchino, 2006), such as the acceptance of dual citizenship, now in place in almost 100 countries. economically, the smaller the state, the more likely is it that it survives by virtue of its connectivities with other states (and their wealth); in fact, many small states do even better than their larger neighbours given the open nature of their economy and the sheer necessity of ex/importing or perishing (armstrong & read, 2002), providing a contrasting evaluation of what others have decried as “vulnerability” (briguglio, 1995). thus, even a mini-jurisdiction like pitcairn – with a total current resident population of about 50 – can current issues in comparative education 19 meeting the tests of time survive, mainly thanks to its successful claims and overtures to british taxpayers, american stamp collectors and filipino sailors: “the only cash economy of pitcairn is the sale of stamps and the sale of handicrafts to passing ships” (ridgell, 1995, p. 149). in the act of government, all states contemplate bold extra-territorial adventures, but particularly so for increasingly smaller states and territories. in an age where the principles of the treaties of westphalia (1648) that ushered in the modern state are increasingly challenged – think supranational integration, economic trade blocs, customs unions, bilateral trade agreements – the notion of a small state sounds increasingly like an oxymoron. why indeed (and echoing foucault, 1991) should one restrict any analysis to the territory over which a state exercises authority, when that same territory (and its residents) is also subject to competing laws and incentives forthcoming from elsewhere that still impact on the actions of the locals? education, mobility and policy dilemmas education, especially higher education, helps to fuel these trans-territorial connectivities and lifelines of survival, providing portable, transnational skill-sets; and therein lies a key dilemma. in spite of significant attempts to indigenize educational provision the world over, education remains – amongst many other things – a vehicle for outmigration, especially for the smallest states which are most needy of talent. no wonder that significant resources have long been, and continue to be, directed at the provision and management of education in small states: capacity building programs, training workshops, and unpacking the dilemmas of multi-functional administrators (bacchus & brock, 1987; farrugia & attard, 1989; reviewed in mayo, 2010). meanwhile, small state policy makers waver between restricting and facilitating the movement of their brightest and ablest. analysts debate whether a high level of outmigration – especially of highly educated personnel – is, in the longer term, a good or a bad thing. are governments to be chastised and shamed for seeing so many graduates, many completing rigorous professional and vocational degree programs, pack up and leave? if policies privilege and speak to the choice of small state citizens to leave and migrate, should we not also privilege their choice, and right, to stay? nonetheless, trying to keep at home those who want to leave is probably not a good idea. everywhere today, many young people in particular wish to embark on adventures that take them out of their home and country, especially if it is a small state (where living with monopoly, totality and intimacy can elicit behaviour reminiscent of cabin fever and claustrophobia). any policies intended to restrict international movement by the upwardly mobile – mandatory domestic service after graduation is a common consideration – are soon going to run into significant objection and resistance by the well heeled and politically powerful elites; and are not likely to come into force, or stay in force for long, in most democratic polities. the circumstances point to an unravelling of the state-territory nexus, making it increasingly difficult for state regimes to impose their laws (and especially their tax codes), and more so on their more powerful and affluent (and mobile) citizenry; what sheller and urry (2006) call the “kinetic elite” (p. 219). if anything, the very opposite policies may be put in place: long-term emigration leave to tenured public servants; state-assisted passages to emigrants; and international scholarship offers to graduates. today, the key policy objective is not so much keeping human resources at home. nationalist and nation-building rhetoric does not travel far with ambitious (and locally frustrated) college and university graduates. moreover, there are economic benefits in having them leave: they reduce the local labour supply, easing unemployment; they nourish the overseas diaspora, maintaining the flow of significant amount of remittances; they accrue new experiences, contacts and knowledge, which can at some point be tapped by their country of origin (for which they develop some 20 current issues in comparative education baldacchino nostalgia, which helps to maintain a sense of attachment and commitment). in the medium term, they can be enticed to return: if so, they would probably be better and smarter ‘glocal’ citizens than had they stayed, and not gone away at all; although this assertion cannot be proved. these returnees tend to invest in their local community, and set up local business ventures (e.g. baldacchino, 2005). circulatory migration may even help avoid discussions about whether to stay or to leave: you could leave and return, over and over again; there is no need for definitive or dramatic choices about such movements any more. thanks to smartphones, electronic mail, skype, facebook, social media sites, blogging, texting, tweeting and the like, connectivity even when away is so much improved; and so, for example, small state diasporas are today more solidly, intimately and regularly involved in what is going on in their country (e.g. forward home, 2011). it would be fair to say that the current key policy dilemma for small states and territories is precisely the consolidation of this access to the rest of the world, an umbilical cord on which their whole life, economy and society depends. the policy agenda of small states is driven by the need to secure, improve and widen the ability of their products, their services and their people to tap potential foreign markets, investors, workplaces, tourists and clients. this is precisely the main condition that prevents many potential small sovereign states from taking the plunge to political independence and full sovereign status (baldacchino & milne, 2008; baldacchino & hepburn, 2012). back to kiribati: had that archipelago not taken the decision to go independent in 1979, it might today have had the benefits and trans-territorial assurances accruing to such neighbouring jurisdictions as the cooks, niue and tokelau – who have considerable local autonomy and no appetite for independence. indeed, there are much larger populations of cook islanders, niueans and tokelauans in new zealand than there are resident in their own countries. theirs is a ‘best practice’ in the use of regionalism to navigate seamlessly across national frontiers, while still reaping the benefits of the security and national identity that they also provide (baldacchino, 2004). education will continue to serve as the key passport to development for small state citizens. these should continue to thrive – whether at home or abroad – by virtue of the transnational portability of their skill sets, their qualifications, their language proficiencies, and their recognized niches of expertise (remember the trained sailors from kiribati). access to privileged labour markets is likely to be tightened in the years to come; and, in such cases, higher qualifications are bound to emerge as the basic requirements for selection. that the local education system does not address the small scale syndrome is no big deal. the institution’s main objective is opening doors to wider and greener pastures beyond one’s ever-so-limited home turf. i believe this to be the key challenge for small states in the 21st century, just as it has been in the 20th. should educational practice help to foster a deeper and more critical understanding of one’s own socio-economic and political predicament in a small state qua small state, then so be it. such a dash of relevance would be a welcome bonus; but only a bonus. conclusion this paper has acknowledged the limited interest in the small state qua small by those engaged in social science research and policy making; and paradoxically including most scholars from, or working in, small states. the concept is championed by a few obvious regional and international agencies, who do not appear troubled by a lack of definitional rigour. and perhaps, there should not be any such rigour at all: the social, political and economic circumstances that increasingly come into play with decreasing size are understood well enough that one may not really need to ring-fence them in/as a clear-cut category of analysis. a tight theoretical definition that re/ current issues in comparative education 21 meeting the tests of time defines small states continues, unsurprisingly, to prove elusive. moreover, if trends in global academic practices are anything to go by, the signs of any concrete developments in ‘small state studies’ are not promising. there is still no scholarly peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of small states; and there is still no single professorial chair in any university that is dedicated to the study of small states. even universities located in and for small states hesitate championing the concept of the small state within their curricula, perhaps fearful that any departure from internationally sanctioned curricula may dampen their claim to the portability of the certificates that they issue. at best, we have a handful of tertiary education institutes and centres dedicated to the study of small states (martin & bray, 2011; also baldacchino, 2011b), as well as the occasional course, workshop, summer institute, conference (or even special journal issue, as we have here) that resurrects the notion and invites (at least a temporary) critical consideration of its ontological premises. but nothing mainstream yet. and yet, ironically enough, the small scale syndrome is, meanwhile, alive and well. we do have a handy and general understanding – even if rudimentary and possibly still riddled with anecdotes – of a small state conceptual and analytic framework that could help develop a better understanding of why we may want to single out small states as a ‘special case’ meritorious of being studied for their own sake, and on their own terms. our current information and communication technologies may have shifted and tweaked the dynamics and operations of the small state: cell phones exacerbate gossip; personality politics is accompanied by candidate blogs and websites; migrants are a free skype video-audio conversation away. small states – however defined, or even if left undefined – have assumed a new international visibility: note the ongoing diplomatic efforts of aosis with the “1.5 to stay alive” campaign in connection with sea level rise and international climate change negotiations, which are nothing short of commendable (aosis, 2012). like kiribati, small states may take pride in the fact that they continue to passionately argue the limitations and weaknesses resulting from their size (often compounded by insularity, archipelagicity and peripherality) on the global and regional stage. watch this space. godfrey baldacchino (ph.d., warwick) is canada research chair (island studies), university of prince edward island, canada; visiting professor of sociology, university of malta, malta; and visiting professor of islan tourism at the universa di corsica pasquale paoli, france. he is the founding executive editor of island studies journal and vice president of the international small islands studies association. his recent books include island futures (with daniel niles tokyo, japan, springer, 2010); extreme heritage management (new york, berghahn books, 2011); island songs: a global repertoire (lanham md, scarecrow press, 2011); and a taste of islands (with anna baldacchino charlottetown pe, island studies press, 2012). email: gbaldacchino@upei.ca. references aosis. 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(1995). pacific nations and territories: the islands of micronesia, melanesia and polynesia. honolulu, hi: pacific region educational laboratory. sheller, m. & urry, j. (2006). the new mobilities paradigm. environment & planning a, 38(2), 207226. sidaway, j. d. (2012, forthcoming). geography, globalization and the problematic of area studies. annals of the association of american geographers. sids (2012). about sids. sids: a special case. small islands developing states network. retrieved from www.sidsnet.org/about-sids. the round table (2012). editorial: commonwealth, small states and area studies: looking at, through and beyond our significant anniversaries. the round table: commonwealth journal of international affairs, 101(3), 201-203. thomas, w. i. (1966). the relation of research to the social process. in m. janowitz (ed.), w. i. thomas on social organization and social personality (pp. 289-305). chicago, il: university of chicago press. thorallsson, b. (2000). the role of small states in the european union. aldershot, uk: ashgate. united nations (2012). small island developing states. retrieved from http://www.un.org/esa/ sustdev/sids/sidslist.htm. united nations development programme (2012). small islands developing states network – sidsnet. retrieved from http://www.sidsnet.org/category/entities/undp. villamil, j. j. (1977). size and survival: planning in small island systems. microstate studies, 1, 1-7. vine, d. (2009). island of shame: the secret history of the u.s. military base on diego garcia. princeton nj: princeton university press. ward, r. g. (1967). the consequences of smallness in polynesia. in b. benedict (ed.), problems of smaller territories (pp. 81-96). london, uk: athlone press for the institute of commonwealth studies. current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 20, issue 2, special issue 2018 © 2018, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 20(2), 9-23. expanding teacher support through mobile mentoring in kakuma refugee camp: benefits and challenges mary mendenhall teachers college, columbia university makala skinner teachers college, columbia university sophia collas teachers college, columbia university sarah french teachers college, columbia university introduction governmental and non-governmental institutions alike have rallied around technology as a potential solution for addressing the dearth of quality educational opportunities and adequately trained teachers in many regions around the world (burns, 2011; carlson, 2013; dahya, 2016). this is no less true in humanitarian and refugee contexts where technology is being used in myriad ways to connect teachers and learners with educational content and resources. a recent landscape review (dahya, 2016) about the use of information and communication technology (ict) in these contexts stated that technology has the potential to support education for marginalized populations in crisis contexts, and that teacher training and student learning are the primary areas of focus for utilizing technology for education. in many settings, technology is used for the provision of lesson plans and curricula to deliver subject knowledge directly to students, to train or certify teachers, and to connect individuals and build community (dryden-peterson, dahya, and douhaibi, 2017; power, 2012; winthrop and smith, 2012). modes of delivery include computers, laptops, tablets, portable media players, e-readers, personal digital assistants, and mobile phones (burns, 2011; carlson, 2013; winthrop and smith, 2012; dahya, 2016). mobile phones have been singled out as a particularly useful device for communication due to their ubiquity, with the number of people in africa, for example, with access to mobile phones far outstripping those with access to computers (burns, 2011; carlson, 2013; dryden-peterson, dahya, and douhaibi, 2017; unesco, 2012). in addition to the high cell phone penetration in the region, mobile phones offer other advantages as well. they are relatively low-cost and easy to recharge in many contexts, making them more scalable (carlson, 2013; power, 2012). mendenhall, skinner, collas, & french current issues in comparative education 10 one way in which mobile phones are being utilized is for teachers to use phones to connect with one another around educational practices (dahya and dryden-peterson, 2016; pouezevara and khan, 2007; unesco, 2012). in some cases, teachers have spontaneously created facebook and whatsapp groups to discuss teaching challenges (dryden-peterson, dahya, and douhaibi, 2017); in other cases, digital connections have been planned into knowledge-sharing spaces as part of educational initiatives (burns, 2011; pouezevara and khan, 2007). through their phones, teachers have consulted each other, exchanged resources, discussed professional development, brainstormed solutions to challenges they may be facing, and shared experiences (burns, 2011; dryden-peterson, dahya, and douhaibi, 2017; dahya, 2016; pouezevara and khan, 2007). connectivity can also be a conduit to social support for educators who have a peer network through which they can seek support for their roles and responsibilities in challenging circumstances (unesco, 2012). while technology may be a powerful and useful tool, it is not a cure to all that ails education (unesco, 2012; dahya and dryden-peterson, 2016) and it is best utilized when paired with human interaction (carlson, 2013; dahya, 2016). models that coupled technology with some form of in-person component and prioritized appropriate technology training for beneficiaries saw better results than those that did not (carlson, 2013; dahya, 2016; winthrop and smith, 2012). how technology can be used effectively to achieve educational aims and to support teacher professional development may be different across contexts, making it imperative to listen to local stakeholders and seek their guidance in adapting technology and educational content appropriately (carlson, 2013; dryden-peterson, dahya, and douhaibi, 2017; dahya, 2016). while early evidence suggests technology has the potential to help teachers and learners in resource-scarce contexts, there are limitations as well. many of the educational initiatives discussed in the literature were in the pilot or early stages of implementation and had not been implemented long-enough to gather evidence on long-term impact and sustainability (unesco, 2012; dahya, 2016). developing the evidence base may also prove challenging because technology changes so rapidly that what worked well one year may be obsolete the next (burns, 2011; carlson, 2013). in this article, we share findings from a mobile mentoring component of a teacher professional development initiative implemented in kakuma refugee camp in kenya and reflect on the benefits, challenges and lessons learned from the perspectives of the key stakeholders involved, namely the global mentors, mentees (refugee and kenyan teachers), and project management team. the results portray the complicated reality of implementing an ict intervention in a crisis context and tease out some advantages and disadvantages of leveraging mobile technology to support teachers from other project expanding teacher support through mobile mentoring in kakuma refugee camp current issues in comparative education 11 activities. further, the findings reinforce the call for further studies to better understand the ways in which technology can most effectively support learning (for both teachers and students) in these settings. kakuma refugee camp kakuma refugee camp is located in northwest kenya near the border with south sudan. originally established in 1992, the camp is home to 147,966 refugees representing 20 different countries; the largest populations hail from somalia and south sudan, but there are also refugees from burundi, the democratic republic of congo, ethiopia, sudan, and uganda (unhcr 2018). more than half of the total population is below the age of 18. at the primary level, 35.7 percent of children are out-of-school (unhcr 2017). at the secondary level, the out-of-school rate in kakuma is more severe, with 95 percent of youth out of school (unhcr 2017). refugee teachers constitute the majority of the teaching population in kakuma, representing 85 percent of the teacher cadre (unhcr 2017a). despite the large presence of refugee teachers, there are limited training opportunities in the camp. even fewer teachers benefit from on-the-job supervision, mentoring, and certified preservice and inservice professional training. compounding the lack of training are the overwhelming challenges teachers face, including overcrowding, overage learners, multiple languages, limited teaching and learning materials, lack of furniture, and learners’ academic and psychosocial needs, to name just a few (mendenhall, 2017). higher quality and continuous teacher professional development programs are needed in these contexts. teachers for teachers: expanding teacher support through mobile technology in response to the significant gaps in providing robust support to teachers working in displacement contexts, a small team of faculty and graduate students from teachers college, columbia university developed teachers for teachers to provide competencybased, continuous teacher professional development for educators working in refugee and other crisis settings. the teachers for teachers model is comprised of three components: in-person training workshops, peer coaching, and mobile mentoring using whatsapp. the training component utilizes the training pack for primary school teachers in crisis contexts and takes place in the form of workshops that cover four modules: teacher’s role and well-being; child protection, well-being and inclusion; pedagogy; and curriculum and planning. trainings are interactive, practical, and draw on local expertise in the kakuma context. peer coaching takes place after participation in the training workshops and consists of small groups of teachers who are connected with a peer coach—another teacher from their training cohort—who facilitates continuous opportunities for learning through teacher learning circles. peer coaching takes place for several months after the training workshops and establishes a network of peer support to encourage the transfer of newly gained knowledge from the training to teaching practice in the classroom. all mendenhall, skinner, collas, & french current issues in comparative education 12 teachers who have participated in the trainings and ongoing peer coaching are additionally supported through mobile mentoring. with support from safaricom and the safaricom foundation in 2016-17, 130 teachers in kakuma were provided with phones, data and airtime and were connected to a global mentor, who was trained on the teachers for teachers model [1]. the global mentor, an experienced teacher or seasoned educator, provided regular support over whatsapp for six months to a group of 4-5 teachers. mentorship entailed sharing experiences, problem-solving, and offering teaching tips directly connected to the training, which were reinforced by a mobile mentoring curriculum that was developed to complement the training pack. in addition to the smallgroup whatsapp chats, teachers also participated in a whatsapp group with all of the members from their training cohort, which served as a platform for teachers to exchange information and ideas with a larger group of approximately 30 teachers. the global mentors had the same opportunity to post questions to other global mentors (and project team members) as they brainstormed possible strategies and solutions for their mentees. while all components of the teachers for teachers model are necessary for providing continuous support to teachers in crisis contexts, this paper aims to highlight the challenges and benefits of using mobile technology in teacher professional development in crisis contexts. methods this article draws on data collected during the first year of implementation of the teachers for teachers initiative in 2016-2017 and early 2018. we monitored and exported the whatsapp chats for the 130 teachers who participated in the first mentoring groups, along with 33 global mentors, and coded and analyzed the chat exchanges based on key themes related to the teacher professional development model. in april 2017, we conducted two focus groups with 19 teachers to learn about their experiences specifically with mobile mentoring. upon completion of the first year, a select number of teachers (n=33) participated in a monitoring and evaluation tool called most significant change (msc) (davies and dart, 2005). in this reflective storytelling activity, teachers were interviewed about changes they saw in themselves or their teaching and were asked to identify the most important of these changes. the purpose of the msc interviews was to capture teachers’ stories of significant change that may have resulted from participating in teachers for teachers. in early 2018, we conducted additional semi-structured interviews with teachers (n=15) and mentors (n=11) that built on what we learned from earlier data. through these interviews, we further explored teachers’ and mentors’ mobile mentoring experiences and examined common responses across participants. the project management team, which includes the authors, also regularly discussed mobile mentoring in an effort to document the benefits and challenges of implementing these activities from our perspective. for this article, we draw on the aforementioned data sources to identify the key benefits and challenges that mentors, mentees, and the expanding teacher support through mobile mentoring in kakuma refugee camp current issues in comparative education 13 program management team experienced in an effort to provide a critical reflection on the role of mobile technologies in this particular project. perceived benefits of mobile mentoring connecting people and resources inside and outside of the refugee camp teachers reported that mobile mentoring was beneficial for feeling connected to fellow teachers both inside and outside of kakuma refugee camp, creating an extended network of support. global mentors were outside of the camp and could offer support as experienced teachers or education professionals in their home countries. for this reason, some teachers reported that their global mentor was someone they could go to with their problems when they were unable to get help from other teachers in their school. badr (age 24, south sudan) stated: “sometime we [are] stuck on where to answer the question, [my mentor] gives a hint on what to do. and that one has helped us to come up with ideas because sometimes some of the questions looked to be very hard and you are confused. but if someone tells you a small idea on how to tackle that, it becomes easy. your mind open[s] and you are able to answer it.” beyond connecting with a mentor outside of the camp, teachers (mentees) also reported numerous benefits derived from being connected to other teachers within the camp in their mentoring groups. this peer-to-peer connection allowed mentees to share new strategies on classroom management and teaching practices (among other topics), while also building a sense of camaraderie through shared experiences. rashid (south sudan), stated: “[mobile mentoring] also help[s] us, even the teachers within [the camp]; we were able to communicate with one another in case we have challenges, we use mentorship, we mentor to one another.” perhaps even more significantly, teachers reported feeling a sense of pride when they were able to “mentor” their peers and help a colleague overcome a challenge. using mobile mentoring as a tool for professional development was also beneficial because mobile phones with airtime and data allowed teachers to ask about, research and problem-solve their own challenges in the classroom. challenges encountered during the school day could be posted to whatsapp, and if their group was active, teachers were able to get an immediate response. teachers reflected on this process, saying that it allowed them to collect multiple ideas from different participants, providing them with a variety of solutions that could be evaluated through trial and error. one teacher explained, “[i]n mentoring, i was given about six [solutions] from [my global mentor]. she gave me about six ways [to solve the problem]. those six ways that you can apply them – if the other one is not working…you can apply the other one until you [solve the problem]” (jahi, south sudan). another teacher, aminifu (kenya) echoed this sentiment and highlighted the increased efficiency of getting new ideas from various colleagues – global mentors and fellow mentees: “[b]eing a teacher, when you are alone, you need to go and struggle reading for more information...but in mentoring, different people answer different questions, and you get a lot of information...you just post a question, you are answered. you take some points, you put it into practice, and all of it saves time.” mendenhall, skinner, collas, & french current issues in comparative education 14 in addition to the smaller mentoring groups, teachers expressed the benefits of engaging in the larger whatsapp chat that included all of the teachers (approximately 30) from their training cohort. the preference for this larger chat was that at any given time at least a handful of teachers would be online and they could discuss topics or challenges related to their teaching in real time. one teacher, faheem (south sudan), commented that “when we were in the big group we were able to get [a] solution from any question that a person asks in a very short time.” faheem goes on to highlight the challenge of delayed responses in the smaller chats (a point further explored below): “when you are less [in the smaller mentoring chats] it is not easy because maybe some will not turn up on that day or others might be busy. you may not get the answer on the spot.” there may be other reasons that explain this, which would also lead to different experiences in the mentoring groups, including how many participants are in the same time zone, but also how quick-torespond mentors are regardless of where they are in the world. communicating with messages and media over whatsapp also benefited global mentors, some of whom reported feeling more engaged with the mentoring experience when it was happening in real time. they found that this sense of “immediacy” helped strengthen the connection they felt with their mentees, and also helped them understand a context that, for many of them, was very different from their everyday experience. as kelly (usa) explains: “that group, because it’s constant when it’s active, because they could be texting anytime and often are…[you] feel side by side with them and wonder about [how] a certain situation is going. so [i have] this constant awareness of his life and his teaching.” the global mentors’ understanding of kakuma’s unique context was further strengthened through the use of media. in the whatsapp mentoring group chats, global mentors and mentees were able to share photos, audio and videos as a way to enhance their discussions. nearly half of the global mentors reported that the use of media was beneficial in order to better understand the challenges posed to them by their mentees. this was especially true when teachers asked for strategies to help manage overcrowded classrooms (with upwards of 200 students in some instances), with one global mentor (kelly, usa) noting that once she saw a video of a classroom in kakuma, she was better able to understand the extent of the challenge. sharing, testing and improving teaching strategies beyond fostering understanding of the kakuma context for global mentors, sharing media in whatsapp also benefited teachers. global mentors and mentees shared innovative practices through photos or videos, such as a new way to organize a classroom or an outdoor science activity. in total, three teachers reported that such exchanges were helpful because they were provided with something they could more easily replicate, and sometimes they felt more motivated to try a new idea upon seeing it visually. for example, expanding teacher support through mobile mentoring in kakuma refugee camp current issues in comparative education 15 sending photos of classroom seating arrangements allowed teachers to share best practices with their colleagues without the time and cost of traveling to schools across the camp. teachers also shared media related to pressing issues in their schools. for example, multiple teachers reported their perspective on corporal punishment changed when a fellow teacher shared a video of a teacher using corporal punishment (not filmed in kakuma) in their training cohort’s whatsapp chat. one teacher, lam (south sudan), explained how watching this video of a teacher caning a student helped him better empathize with his own students: “…when i saw that [video], it made me curious actually the first day i saw it because to be like that as a teacher, you scare the learners completely. you are killing…their morale of being in school.…so i saw that video, and completely i learned how... i was imagining if i was a learner, i could not relate with that teacher anymore.” in addition to sharing media resources, mentors and mentees discussed a range of topics connected to the teaching competencies presented during the training. analysis of whatsapp conversations revealed that one of the most significant outcomes was not only teachers’ implementation of shared strategies, but the success of these strategies. in fact, nearly half of the teachers stated that they tested potential solutions shared within their whatsapp conversations and found them to be effective in the classroom. the two categories of discussion that garnered the greatest number of text exchanges across the groups were pedagogy and child protection, well-being and inclusion (table 1). the top three topics of discussion across all categories were teacher-student relationships, overcrowded classrooms, and teaching strategies (table 2). table 1: frequency of themes discussed across whatsapp chats themes frequency percent pedagogy 581 37.27% child protection, well-being and inclusion 418 26.81% teacher’s role & well-being 273 17.51% curriculum & planning 181 11.61% other 106 6.80% total 1,559 100.00% source: teachers for teachers internal data mendenhall, skinner, collas, & french current issues in comparative education 16 table 2: most frequent sub-themes across whatsapp chats sub-themes frequency teacher-student relationship 101 overcrowded classrooms 95 teaching strategies 92 assessment 76 classroom management 67 student attendance 61 source: teachers for teachers internal data with access to a smartphone and data, teachers reported using technology beyond the whatsapp chats and media exchanges in ways to improve their own teaching practices. of the 15 teachers interviewed in january 2018, 10 reported using phones to conduct online research on topics such as classroom management or supporting learners with special needs. teachers also reported using their phones as teaching aids in the classroom, to play audio examples of different animal noises or to show learners a diagram during science class. one head teacher said his phone became the school phone, and teachers at his school used it to contact parents during the day. teachers also used phones to contact other teachers when they needed help covering a class in the event of an illness or to contact their learners’ parents to follow up on individual cases. building confidence and motivation through mobile mentoring both teachers and mentors reported beneficial outcomes from their participation in mobile mentoring including improved confidence and motivation in their work. of the 15 teachers interviewed in january 2018, six reported that, because mobile mentoring had provided them with an opportunity to discuss teaching with their peers, they were motivated to do their best to support their learners’ needs and continue pursuing the profession. one teacher recounted how he gradually overcame his fear of talking to parents with the support of his mentor. similarly, mentors reported that they felt motivated to continue incorporating service to others into their personal and professional lives. many mentors felt the experience provided them with a heightened understanding of refugee contexts. some mentors reported experiencing “reverse mentoring” from the teachers they were working with. one mentor, mark (usa), described how, through his mentees, he learned new ways of approaching classroom management, and that he was deeply inspired by his mentees’ passion and perseverance. immediate feedback loops for project management team from the project management perspective, it was beneficial to collect data through whatsapp. project managers posed as silent observers in each mentoring group on whatsapp to expanding teacher support through mobile mentoring in kakuma refugee camp current issues in comparative education 17 periodically assess how the groups were progressing and to be on hand in the event a serious issue was raised (e.g. concern about a child’s well-being). in this role, managers were able to export chat data from whatsapp on a regular basis for analysis. these continuous feedback loops about the challenges that teachers were facing in schools also cycled into the ongoing project design for future teacher training workshops and peer coaching workshops. perceived challenges engaging participants and sustaining mentoring exchanges while mobile mentoring provides many benefits to teacher professional development, several challenges also emerged throughout program. the two most commonly reported challenges cited by teachers and mentors were lags in responsiveness and uneven engagement of participants in mentoring groups. another pressing challenge has been unstable connectivity and access to electricity in the camp, which affected teachers’ ability to consistently participate in their whatsapp chats as their phones would lose power. lags, or sometimes a complete lack, of responses de-motivated global mentors and teachers from participating in mobile mentoring. teachers stated that delayed responses from mentors and fellow mentees was a disadvantage because it could take hours or days before a question was addressed. many teachers and mentors recognized the delay in response time could be attributed to time differences between kenya and where the global mentor was based; however, this delay or lack of responsiveness was still de-motivating, causing one teacher to stop sending messages altogether because of a total lack of response from their mentor. further, due to the lag in response time, it was sometimes difficult to create a strong dialogue between all parties. in an effort to address this challenge of lags in response time, some mentoring groups coordinated a time where all members could be on whatsapp simultaneously. of the teachers we interviewed, two expressed their preference for having these “live chats.” even with scheduled meetings, however, the time difference and varying work schedules for mentors and teachers, often meant that these “live chats” took place at inconvenient times for mentors and/or teachers, leading to less effective conversations. in some cases, not all teachers arrived online for the scheduled whatsapp meeting, and time management of the meetings posed a problem as well. one mentor, michael (kenya), said, “scheduled meetings rarely began on time or ended as scheduled. sometimes i had to remind the mentees through sms or even voice calls. sometimes work-related commitments hindered our discussions, which either began late or were postponed altogether.” lack of responsiveness and low levels of participation affected both mentors and mentees. for the mentees, five teachers mentioned that a delay in response from their fellow teachers prevented their challenges from being solved. abiola (south sudan) commented, “when you ask the question, you find that... not all teachers comment. you pose a question and one mendenhall, skinner, collas, & french current issues in comparative education 18 day later they respond. you find that there is a problem that you want to solve within two days, but if it takes a long time for you to get a faster way to do it, it might be stressing you.” teachers commented that not only did they have to wait a long time for a response, but they also received feedback from fewer people than they hoped. for the mentors, the biggest challenge they perceived was the difficulty in engaging all teachers to actively participate in discussions. despite trying different strategies to engage teachers—including sending private whatsapp messages, sharing photos or doing video introductions—several mentors expressed they had failed getting full and consistent participation from all of their mentees: two mentors commented that mentoring was “sporadic” or “never really took off”. another mentor, erica (usa), described how, despite seeing photos and videos to understand her mentees’ context, she failed to generate a conversation about what was going on in photos of a classroom, and ultimately was unable to gain meaningful insight into teachers’ daily experiences and challenges. while the teachers for teachers team supported mentors through orientations on the program and kakuma context as well as sending tips on how to engage teachers using whatsapp, this support was not always effective and the engagement tips were sometimes futile. through the interviews with mentors, it became clear that mentors had different ideas for how to make mentoring more effective. one mentor felt that their group might have been better had it been split into smaller groups to change the dynamic and personalities between participants. another mentor felt unsure of how to engage with her mentees personally, such as how to ‘get to know each other’ without being too invasive. global mentor, michael (kenya) commented that, “regarding the teachers, two… readily shared their experiences…one had to be prodded with specific questions in order to respond. unfortunately, one of the mentees did not participate in any of the chats, both scheduled and impromptu.” these insights highlight the highly personal nature of mentoring and the many variations it can take to be most effective. further studies are needed to examine other potential explanations, such as issues related to identity (ethnic, gender) and positionality among mentors and mentees and the ways in which these elements might help or hinder online engagement. finally, project team members who served as silent observers in the mentoring groups, observed that not all mentors had the same level of experience or ability to facilitate mentoring groups. given that being a global mentor was a voluntary position, and despite the support and various orientation sessions provided to mentors, the quality of mentoring relationships inevitably depended on the expertise, amount of time and level of investment mentors were able to give the project. expanding teacher support through mobile mentoring in kakuma refugee camp current issues in comparative education 19 barriers to reliable and constant communication connectivity presented another challenge to mobile mentoring. teachers noted that the network was often unreliable, making it difficult to consistently connect and communicate with their mentor. when they were able to access whatsapp, the 3g network functioned slowly, and the 4g network consumed too much data. one global mentor, erica (usa) shared that the network speed sometimes prevented her videos from sending, and another mentor, michael (kenya), said that he himself was often in a region with an unreliable network. when the network was available, one teacher mentioned in a focus group discussion that some teachers were unable to participate because their phones had died. since most people in kakuma do not have electricity in their homes, fee-based charging stations are set up throughout the camp. presently, teachers must travel to these stations and pay to charge their phone batteries, despite ongoing efforts to improve connectivity around the camp. teachers also faced challenges of stolen, lost, or broken phones which disrupted the flow of mentoring while they tried to get back online, either by using a replacement phone and sim from the program, or by using their personal phone or data to stay connected to mentoring. in these cases, however, some teachers were unable to retrieve the contact information of their whatsapp group on their personal device and were not able to reconnect. mentors also cited mentees’ loss of access to their phone, or issues with their sim cards, as common logistical challenges that hampered group exchanges. logistical challenges experienced by the project management team project implementation for mobile mentoring required significant time, capacity and human resources to execute from the perspective of the project management team. implementation logistics included procurement of the hardware, technological capacitybuilding among teachers and mentors, communication between implementing partners and maintenance of whatsapp group connectivity. procuring phones, sim cards and data required coordination between multiple key actors, each governed by their own rules and regulations. communication of and adherence to regulatory standards delayed the hardware’s arrival into kakuma, leading to delays in initiating mentoring activities and creating longer-than-intended gaps between training, coaching and mentoring. once the phones and sim cards arrived in kakuma, they were distributed to teachers, and each month of the mentoring program, safaricom & safaricom foundation uploaded data to each line. the project management team helped to build capacity among teachers and mentors by holding in-person orientations for teachers, and orientations for mentors over webex. the teacher orientation sessions were labor intensive as most teachers needed help downloading whatsapp with limited access to wi-fi, though managers were able to leverage peer support among tech savvy teachers who devised an off-line strategy of sharing whatsapp applications over bluetooth. mendenhall, skinner, collas, & french current issues in comparative education 20 in a stable context, the procurement of hardware and capacity building at the start of a project may be the most challenging logistical steps; in a crisis context, however, maintaining connectivity between teachers and mentors throughout the duration of the program was arguably more time consuming. each time a teacher’s phone was stolen, lost, or broken the project management team followed a cascade of steps to get the teacher back online and re-connected to the whatsapp group. these included communicating to the mentor, teacher, safaricom, and our local partner, requesting that the lost line be canceled and a new line be activated, and coordinating with the teacher and local partner to report any cases of theft to the police and facilitate the delivery of the new phone and sim card. the multiple steps and actors involved to address each lost phone, in addition to unreliable connectivity within the camp, meant that it took one to two weeks to get a teacher back online. these technical and logistical issues would have a significant impact on global mentors’ abilities to engage and sustain participation in mentoring activities, though there may be other reasons related to the perceived quality and added value of the mentoring exchanges to the teachers’ daily lives that we have yet to ascertain. conclusion this study reveals that while mobile technology can positively impact a teacher’s professional development in meaningful ways, it does not function in isolation. factors such as infrastructure and the quality of the partnerships are out of the initiative’s control and contribute to a number of challenges not directly related to a program’s design, yet nevertheless affect its impact and sustainability. this research also shows that the use of mobile technology for teacher professional development in crisis contexts offers intertwined benefits and challenges. for example, while the use of mobile phones was shown to be beneficial because of the immediacy in global mentor and teacher responses, this has also proven to be inconsistent depending on group dynamics or challenges with infrastructure such as a weak network or inconsistent electricity. other examples include the ability to bridge physical and cultural gaps by sharing photos and videos on whatsapp, while at the same time media was sometimes used unproductively or not at all. the use of mobile technology in our study further reveals unintended benefits and consequences. teachers’ use of phones for contacting parents and functioning as teaching aids was not part of the program design but resulted in improved teaching quality and a stronger sense of school community. conversely, the reliance on one partner to provide phones, data and software and to play a key role when phones were lost caused significant delays and interrupted teachers’ participation in mentoring. for many initiatives such as our own, using technology for humanitarian interventions requires a strategic partner whose focus and expertise is in technology and not necessarily humanitarian interventions, though a combination of both would be ideal. furthermore, the dependence on one body can prove to be inefficient programmatically and an ultimately unsustainable solution. this may be true, for example, if the program’s continuation is contingent on renewed funding or board approval, as is often the case when working with a private expanding teacher support through mobile mentoring in kakuma refugee camp current issues in comparative education 21 sector partner. this in particular also reveals that while the literature elevates mobile technology for its ubiquity, many of the challenges project managers experienced were logistical and had to do with the technology itself. while this study has attempted to tease out the challenges and benefits of using mobile technology, our program model is inherently intertwined with in-person training and peer coaching, and thus we are unable to examine the impact of technology on teacher professional development in isolation. in that respect, we first of all echo the importance of using technology in a deliberate combination with in-person interactions, and secondly, we emphasize the need for more extensive evaluations of the use of technology in crisis contexts so that we can continue to better understand the implications and impact for teacher professional development. mary mendenhall is an associate professor of practice and the director of the international and comparative education program at teachers college, columbia university. she leads grantfunded implementation projects and research studies about the policies and practices of refugee education across camp, urban, and resettlement contexts as well as teacher support, collaboration, and professional development in crisis settings. makala skinner is a 2018 graduate from the master’s program in international educational development at teachers college, columbia university. she served as the mobile mentoring coordinator for teachers for teachers. she is currently an international higher education researcher at world education services specializing in education in emergencies, student support services, and student mobility trends. sophia collas is a 2017 graduate from the master’s program in international educational development at teachers college, columbia university. from 2016-2017, she was a research assistant for teachers for teachers. she is currently based in kigali, rwanda, where she works as a global design consultant for educate!, leading the design of teacher trainings, youth leadership and entrepreneurship courses. sarah french is a 2018 graduate from the master’s program in international educational development at teachers college, columbia university. while at teachers college, she was the project assistant for teachers for teachers. she is currently a program officer at world education in boston, ma, supporting projects in myanmar and laos. notes [1] during an initial prototype of the mobile mentoring activities that used teachers’ own phones (i.e. basic, feature and smart), we found that teachers with smartphones and whatsapp access were better able to engage in group mentoring and the horizontal exchange of information with peer teachers in the camp, not only relying on their mendenhall, skinner, collas, & french current issues in comparative education 22 relationship with the global mentor. with this information we secured generous donations from safaricom and the safaricom foundation. references burns, m. 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(2012). towards a new architecture for teacher professional development in south sudan. transforming government: people, process and policy, 6, 368-379. doi:10.1108/17506161211267437. unesco. (2012, january 8). mobile learning for teachers in africa and the middle east: exploring the potential of mobile technologies to support teachers and improve practice. retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002163/216358e.pdf. unhcr. (2018, june 15). unhcr kakuma: population statistics by country of origin, age, sex and age group. retrieved from https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/64364. unhcr. (2017, march). kakuma camps and kalobeyei settlement: education note. winthrop, r., & smith, m. s. (2012). a new face of education: bringing technology into the classroom in the developing world (working paper). retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-new-face-of-education-bringing technology-into-the-classroom-in-the-developing-world/. https://shared.rti.org/content/learning-%09communities-enabled-mobile-technology-case-study-school-based-service-%09secondary https://shared.rti.org/content/learning-%09communities-enabled-mobile-technology-case-study-school-based-service-%09secondary https://shared.rti.org/content/learning-%09communities-enabled-mobile-technology-case-study-school-based-service-%09secondary https://doi.org/10.1108/17506161211267437 http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002163/216358e.pdf https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/64364 https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-new-face-of-education-bringing-%09technology-into-the-classroom-in-the-developing-world/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-new-face-of-education-bringing-%09technology-into-the-classroom-in-the-developing-world/ © 2012 current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university, all rights reserved current issues in comparative education 15(1): 132-144. internationalization of higher education in post-soviet small states: realities and perspectives of moldova valentyna kushnarenko oise, university of toronto ludmila cojocari moldova state university internationalization of higher education has become a priority for many universities in post-soviet small states. focusing on international communication networks, student mobility, or international curriculum development, universities invest human and financial resources to prepare graduates to meet global challenges. globalization and post-soviet independence have promoted emerging patterns of international education strategies and new approaches to managing international activities. this study explores current trends of university internationalization in post-soviet moldova as understood and interpreted by moldova state universities’ administrators. international relations department officials who are responsible for the design and implementation of international education programs discuss their perceptions of post-soviet small state international outreach strategies, smallness and marginalization, and the unique aspects of academic internationalization in moldova. respondents’ diverse internationalization techniques and expectations illustrate the importance of academic dialogue with post-ussr small states and raise possible standards for international collaboration with eastern and southern european universities. higher education and global developments mental programmes do change, but slowly and not according to anyone’s master plan. changes take decades, if not centuries. if the inheritance of the roman empire still separates belgium from the netherlands, two countries in intimate contact for over 2000 years, one should not believe one can change the minds of serbs, russians or albanians within a few years…we better take mental programmes as given facts. (hofstede, 2001, p. 11) irrespective of their economic development and political inclinations, the post-soviet small states are experiencing an increasing demand for access to higher education. this is partly because such states have entered into “an accelerated process of multidimensional global changes encompassing the fields of economy, finance, science and technology, communication, culture, politics and education” (gacel-avila, 2005, p. 123). university graduates in chisinau, riga or vilnius are expected to adequately react to these changes by meeting the demands of globalization. as a result, post-soviet small states universities are “not immune from global-minded preoccupations” (altbach, 2002, p. 27). internationalization of curricula, growing student and faculty mobility, academic exchanges and research joint ventures, play an important part in the current life of local higher academic institutions. western universities offer post-soviet small states universities different opportunities for knowledge exchange and sharing. small states universities in their turn explore opportunities and try to reconsider their internationalization mission, tasks and responsibilities in the context of new academic collaborative priorities. state universities in the republic of moldova are at the centre of global outreach higher education policies. moldova has paid serious attention to the internationalization of higher education as a major tool to supply its educational system with current international curricular and current issues in comparative education 133 internationalization of higher education in post-soviet small states methodological innovations. international outreach creates a foundation for up-to-date research and development in the transitional post-soviet economies and builds regional multi-level collaborations (kushnarenko, 2010). academic institutions in moldova generate knowledge for collaborative academic plans with foreign universities (cojocari & tvircun, 2010; birladeanu, 2008) and become centres of social change (kushnarenko, 2010). a widely intensifying and growing impact of internationalization of higher education on moldovan universities explains the current effort to improve their existing curricula, research networks, internal organizational structures and modes of communication in order to meet the demand for new trans-border activities. state universities in moldova tailor their internationalization policy frameworks according to the requirements of their foreign counterparts’ collaborative program format (abrahamsson, 1993) and re-establish university-government relations in order to better manage financial and human resource pressures. numerous strategies have been suggested for improvement on how to speed up university global outreach (altbach, 2002; marginson & sawir, 2006), increase international student flows (altbach, 2002), and design joint curriculum development activities (kushnarenko, 2010; cojocari, 2008). however, little has been said about what moldovan international education policy leaders think about higher education internationalization, how they define it and understand the university mission in the global academic setting. mundy (2005) recognizes that many nation-states have been unevenly affected by globalization processes and “competition states” (mundy, 2005, p. 47) have arisen as a result of globalization. in the contemporary geopolitical environment “the growing tensions between powerful localising and globalising forces increasingly mean that local issues cannot be understood without reference to the global context” (crossley & holmes, 2001, p. 396). with this in mind we investigate: (1) what post-soviet moldovan academic leaders think about current global academic competition and impact of globalization on educational restructuring (mayo, 2009) of contemporary moldovan university, (2) what impact the perception of smallness can have on the shape of international operations, (3) how post-soviet small states demonstrate their unique way in setting collaborative networks, and (4) whether ex-ussr small state universities experience a dominant influence on policy and international education joint venture operational management from foreign universities. we explore why moldovan international education university policy makers consider international education activities as their current institutional policy priority. we pay particular attention to the definitions used to frame internationalization, methods to evaluate institutional infrastructure, the human and financial capacity to carry out internationalization, and moldova’s potential as a small post-soviet state to participate, compete and collaborate globally. at this stage of the investigation our aim is to indicate the current issues and challenges confronted by moldovan university administration as they attempt to internationalize university functions. moldova and higher education moldovan state universities are teaching and research state universities with the average student body of approximately ten thousand students and one thousand staff members (the national bureau of statistics of moldova, 2011). each university designs its own strategies for internationalization. the universities attract students from all over moldova, as well as the neighbouring post-soviet states. they have also developed numerous international partnerships with higher education institutions in europe, asia, africa, and north america. the moldovan state universities have close relations with universities in romania, estonia, lithuania, and the ukraine, and have developed vibrant academic networks using technology as a major source of 134 current issues in comparative education kushnarenko and cojocari communication. collaboration with international organizations and associations is facilitated and administered mainly by international university-partners and various international organizations, such as the american councils for international education: actr/accels, renaissance foundation, british councils, german academic exchange service (daad), romania-fulbright international educational exchange program (the ministry of education of moldova, 2012). these relationships have provided moldovan universities with opportunities to participate in international academic projects and to distance themselves from soviet legacies. during the soviet era, higher education training and academic research were artificially separated from each other, while so-called basic research was conducted under the auspices of various research institutes of the republic of moldova academy of sciences. moldovan universities were deprived of research funding, precluding their participation in research projects. internationalization of higher education and post-soviet small states internationalization of moldovan higher education attempts to overcome the post-soviet legacy by proposing activities that could and serve as a tool to improve curricula, give an opportunity to participate in joint academic projects and serve as an alternative funding source for research and innovations. in this respect, internationalization efforts follow the unesco world conference on “higher education in the xxi century: vision and action-2000,” which prescribed internationalization of higher education as an integral part of the institutional missions for world universities and academic systems (gacel-avila, 2005). each institution of higher education is called upon to envisage the creation of an appropriate structure and mechanism for promoting and managing internationalization (unesco conference final paper, 2005). many countries, including small post-soviet states, are reconsidering university missions and reorganizing management structures in order to facilitate international collaboration more effectively. various international collaborative networks penetrate the post-soviet ex-autonomous academic systems, none of which have managed to escape this process. small states universities realize that they cannot meet the demands of the globalized world acting alone. however, the strengths of indigenous academic systems, the privileges of autonomy and the necessity “to protect national cultural identity with the growing ability to compete internationally” (fim’yar, 2008, p. 12) remain the core of local university visions and missions (chicus, 2012). certainly, focusing on local identity may contribute to the successful performance of national economies and educational systems in the post-soviet environment, but they may limit their institutional strategies with regard to global outreach. the increasing variations and trends towards international collaboration among institutions of higher education in post-soviet small states and foreign universities have never been more vibrant and kaleidoscopic. small states universities seek to develop a more systematic approach to the marketing and exporting of their educational products and services. the moldova state university and the “ion creanga” state pedagogical university, for instance, consider international collaboration to be an important element of their missions and make considerable efforts to provide their students with international and intercultural skills, responding to the needs of contemporary global labour markets (cojocari, 2011). according to kushnarenko (2010) the majority of post–soviet small states universities are currently looking for strategies for incorporating innovations and research made in collaboration with foreign universities into their own systems. small post-soviet states approach higher education internationalization with different amounts of resources, interest, expertise and openness. moldovan universities, in particular, consider their involvement in international endeavours as a serious step towards their understanding of foreign university academic traditions. the independence from russia, with the increasing transparency of the national borders and the current issues in comparative education 135 internationalization of higher education in post-soviet small states emerging academic and workforce mobility gave moldovan institutions the chance to redesign their internationalization strategies in order to actively participate in global education networks. for instance, close connections and wide institutional collaborations with romanian universities have proposed a range of student/staff exchanges and curriculum development initiatives to improve moldovan university pedagogies, university administration and international program management (cojocari, 2008). collaboration with faculty and instructors from baltic postsoviet small states helped to train emerging moldovan academic leaders to speed up academic innovations in sciences and propose the necessary organizational changes in student services at moldovan state universities (kushnarenko, 2010). methodology there are many ways on how to investigate academic internationalization activities. on one hand, international educators employ various tools to research relationships between international policies in higher education and their actual implementation (kushnarenko, 2002). the dynamics of internationalization and international academic mobility challenge researchers to develop new cross-cultural interview methodology paradigms (cojocari & tvircun, 2010). on the other hand, taking into consideration the evidence from current research on international partnership developments and collaborations (crossley & holmes, 2001), researchers meticulously structure their investigation, using old and tested methods of cross-cultural investigation. in our research we use qualitative research methodology because of its ability to focus a researcher on cross-cultural attitudes to internationalization operational techniques. we notice that qualitative research methods are flexible in adapting researcher-interviewing skills to investigate sensitive cultural social contexts and international partners’ reaction towards challenges of internationalization in action. it was obvious for us that to conduct qualitative research in an intercultural environment was a challenging task. we paid special attention to a role culture plays in the investigation and its influences on sharing knowledge and expertise in cross-cultural contexts. culture is the most complex and changing context, “an intertwined system of values, attitudes, beliefs, and norms that gives meaning and significance to individual and collective identity” (adler, 1998, p. 236). we realized that a cultural component of the internationalization investigation depended on our specific interpretations. we noticed that the researchers’ bias, manipulation of research design and direction, and consideration of himself/herself as a representative of a certain cultural group can have a major influence on the results of the research. we conducted eleven interviews with university international outreach policy makers/administrators of the moldova state university in chisinau, the state university “alecu russo” in balti, and the state university “bogdan petriceicu hasdeu” in cahul who guide international education initiatives. these universities have a reputation of strong commitment to internationalization in order to improve their curricula. our interviewees were chosen by the recommendation from the ministry of education of the republic of moldova and due to their active participation in the ministry’s higher education internationalization policy committee. at their universities they are responsible for the development and implementation of university internationalization plans. the interviews took place in april 2012 in chisinau, moldova. during in-depth, open-ended interviews, the administrators were invited to share their experience with international education innovations. we asked administrators to emphasize how internationalization affects their university mission, identity, educational practices and management. it gave us an opportunity to understand post-soviet small state universities’ capacity to cope with internationalization challenges. we employed qualitative coding to organize information and analyze the meaning of the data collected. the chosen research design is flexible to allow for new themes to emerge from 136 current issues in comparative education kushnarenko and cojocari the investigation. we analyzed the administrators’ answers employing the computer n6 software package, which assisted with coding and categorizing the interviews. we identified cross-case patterns according to the key themes based on our research questions; in the section below we summarize these patterns in narrative form. findings: interpretations of internationalization we now consider the interview data and would like to begin with a definition of higher education internationalization in moldova, as understood and performed by university administrators. we continue with the specification of their key experiences in the field. here, too, we explain the origin of interest in an international collaborative action and define obstacles and highlight necessities for its sustainability. according to the ministry of education of the republic of moldova instructions on international cooperation in higher education (2012), moldova considers values of the national education system as the major engine in implementing plans of internationalization. moldovan universities, according to a university administrator, believe that internationalization of higher education is an important element of strengthening its national academic tradition “because we have enough to be proud of and to share.” comprehension of foreign academic cultures, receptivity to foreign curricula innovations, new technologies, methods, academic services and products happen through sharing local knowledge with international partners. the university leaders tended to express the common concern that their institutions have the major responsibility to educate future “managers of the moldovan economy” through “preparing them for the challenges and opportunities brought by globalization.” internationalization constitutes one of the major components of their academic plans, motivates and guides the local academic agenda. and it is up to them to establish new policies and priorities. the new independent academic and administrative context has prompted a greater demand for international network development meshing with university values. when asked to identify the elements of national culture that promote internationalization, respondents highlighted the following: importance of free mobility of people, high moral standards, top quality teaching and student oriented university environment, and value of cultural exchanges. moldovan universities historically have been promoting indigenous cultural values which encourage a desire for free people movement among countries and continents. moldovan best faculty are the pioneers in new teaching methodologies often designed in collaboration with partners from universities in the neighboring countries. a teaching philosophy of moldovan faculty is a student oriented approach which promotes an innovative course delivery and fosters learning environment which is challenging, interesting and thought provoking. one of the moldovan administrators commenting on current innovations in international curriculum development mentioned the necessity to improve the international program financial support, revise management of faculty international activities and reward internationalization pioneers. clearly the administrators take those initiatives into account by focusing on internationalization. the administrators’ aspirations coincide with the moldovan ministry of education’s recent declarations to act in unison with unesco slogans, highlighting that: “the ministry will continue to give special attention to cooperation with international and regional bodies such as the council of europe, european union, the stability pact for south eastern europe, unesco and cis” (ministry of education of moldova declaration on international cooperation, 2012b). the moldovan international academic developments confirm the determination and desire to prepare global-minded graduates. a well-developed network of seventeen state universities in moldova and the advisory role of the ministry of education created a somewhat unique mechanism for preparing national cadres according to the current economic and social needs of the home country. current issues in comparative education 137 internationalization of higher education in post-soviet small states the internationalization aspirations of former soviet small states are accompanied by a focus on national issues. this assumes a global consciousness paradigm development through “local” internationalization activities, which tips the scales in favour of “internationalization at home/on campus” and “international diploma without leaving the country” initiatives. the focus on the national dimension of internationalization, particularly through its local operational parameters, may lead to creating, as one administrator noticed, “the joint international and development education centres at moldovan major state big cities.” the creation of such academic centres in collaboration with foreign universities was further interpreted as an option for training the moldovan future work force because: “it is cheaper, quicker, safer and will calm the families of our students knowing that their kids are learning from the best international professors at their home country.” however, a growing number of the moldovan political and economic elites are preoccupied with their aspirations for more border openness, travel abroad, international academic activities and opportunities for international exchanges. new international public-private partnerships also encourage young people to travel more extensively internationally. among the recent examples are the moldova state university educational administration initiatives with university of uppsala (sweden), moldovan-romanian academic joint ventures in science and technology and the area studies curriculum development programs with leading european universities. such exchanges and collaboration play an important role in the development of moldovans’ global consciousness, give an opportunity for students to understand other cultures, and for staff to reconsider their existing standard of teaching. the administrators were asked to define internationalization and explain what they understood by the term. an administrator defines internationalization as “a set of academic activities designed to promote convergence in academic and organizational strengths of moldovan universities overseas. it is an important mechanism to share and borrow what we/moldovans consider is necessary to our system...and activities, which promote tolerance to different cultures and pride for our own.” another interviewee added that “international education is a set of offshore and domestic academic initiatives and an opportunity for us to promote our university growth through the connections and comparisons with foreign educational institutions according to the priorities indicated by a moldovan university. it is an opportunity to...[implement] global phenomenon in local conditions.” knowledge of other systems has become for moldovan universities a necessity as problems they encounter require an international approach and joint planning. to achieve this, however, they try to deal with the dilemma of preserving their national values while participating in global networks. institutional collaboration among moldovan universities and foreign university partners constitutes one of the most important conditions for nurturing trust and mutual understanding through indigenous knowledge sharing, respect of and interest in the moldovan academic traditions. while the administrators expressed their concern with economic globalization – which represents a competition for markets, exclusion and marginalization, rising unemployment, ethnic conflicts and environmental challenges – they describe the internationalization of higher education and cultural exchange as positive aspects of globalization, and call internationalization, “globalization with a human face.” however, until recently, the international integration of various moldovan academic institutions has been largely to “test the waters,” according to a university administrator, rather than to actively promote internationalization initiatives. a proactive internationalization group of interviewees actively supports “a more aggressive type of academic negotiations with foreign universities” and promotes “a vibrant approach to existing programs and policies via more brave 138 current issues in comparative education kushnarenko and cojocari and intensive international mobility and participation in offshore research initiatives.” they believe that a “go global” policy will help moldovan graduates to promote the understanding of “interdependence between peoples and societies, to develop student appreciation of other cultures and a greater respect for pluralism and multiculturalism.” in this new environment, moldovans try to reform their way of thinking about collaboration with foreign universities. they change their approach from passive rhetoric about internationalization as a vital intellectual necessity to direct involvement into the process of communication with foreigners. internationalization for moldovan universities is a challenging activity. an administrator mentioned that his university has inadequate infrastructure, financial resources and human capacity to undertake a paradigmatic change to their internationalization policies. the lack of highly qualified human resources, the difficulties in achieving internationalization goals because of lack of network models and insufficient diversification of institutional fabric (martin & bray, 2011) are among major challenges to pursue academic internationalization. moldovan universities recognize that some of the post-soviet small states universities have been marginalized, still experience an “elder brother attitude” and do not perform globally according to their potential because of “the lack of information about their universities, their research and their country as an independent sovereign entity.” an administrator respondent explains that their current difficulties with international outreach are due to the moldovan universities’ periphery position in the western university-dominated academic world. according to the administrators, the geographical position and membership of the small states post-soviet club creates a combination of the following factors • a current perception of western colleagues as nurturing moldovan faculty: “a lot of our exchange and joint research foreign partners still baby-sit us as an emerged post-soviet independent child” • self-perception of moldova as a small state with a great potential for sharing: “we need to stop thinking in the previous categories of a small republic of the union of soviet socialist republics. we have more people than estonia has (1,340,000) or lithuania (3,187,000) or latvia (2,217,000). we can tell the world a lot about our education and our values…we simply do not have enough opportunity to do that.” according to the administrators, moldova’s position as a small state enables it to have a unique contribution to internationalization because their universities are not only recipients, but also agents of internationalization. moldova finds itself the biggest of the post-ussr small states, and associates the internationalization capabilities of its universities with current favourable demographic trends, which increase opportunities for its growing student population. an administrator highlights the emergence of a moldovan university’s ambitious self-task agenda: “we need to pay more attention to our recent and future international research agenda, international program content and organization in terms of its appropriateness to local practices and global competition. our periphery position in this case has an advantage: we enjoy our own right of choice and select what we need or reject relentless pressures to innovate if it carries signs of cultural degradation.” moldova is interested in international consultation, collaboration and new forms and levels of academic partnerships (crossley, bray & packer, 2011), innovative methods and approaches to research and academic practices of delivering higher education. in our discussion a moldovan administrator focused on locality and periphery and made more emphasis on possessing and preserving indigenous knowledge having an ability to use it in worldwide arena. universities, trying to develop their own plans and strategies to internationalize research programs, make hard choices in establishing internationalization priorities: national current issues in comparative education 139 internationalization of higher education in post-soviet small states and international interests should co-exist happily, tending to emphasise local priorities and accumulate knowledge and skills for an effective international dialogue. internationalization is connected with the search for new financial opportunities and sources. during soviet times moldovan universities were bound to the ministry of education for research subsidies to deliver a traditional research financing to their departments. now, as one administrator noticed, there is an “understanding and desire to look outside the moldovan borders and search for possible joint financial opportunities.” the administrators mention that their universities put time and effort to look for support from international funding agencies to financially sustain an environment that attracts creative and globally resourceful faculty to participate in international activities. another factor, as one administrator noticed, is a serious dependency on english as a dominant language in the current international academic discourse as “the majority of our academic research and scientific innovations are published in romanian in the leading moldovan and romanian journals. probably, they are not considered by our western counterparts as those which are worth to translate and to pay attention to.” the dependency on english in international academic relations is one of the effects of globalization on international higher education institutions and is a world-wide phenomenon. the core priorities of moldovan universities have been shifting and among them a serious attention has been paid to study of english as a foreign language. the discipline and research domains of esl curricula have become broader, and the esl extra curricula initiatives have aimed at establishing a campus-wide global orientation. the intensification of english language learning at moldovan universities has contributed to new joint publications in english. the moldovan university administrators’ specific approaches to higher education internationalization management differed from western universities’ approaches on many levels. as one administrator noticed “it differs developmentally in tactics, operational methods, time and resources management, etc., which do not coincide with goals and regulations of the western international education and training management. we have different flexibility and deadline limits, different capacity to consider options and make decisions. we are different in our attitude to foreign aid, purpose of internationalization and its mandate for change.” many administrators, particularly those who exhibited progressive and innovative approaches to international programs, mentioned the managerial structure. the centralized dimension of moldovan university internationalization efforts – in administering, advising, coordinating, implementing and maintaining the university international activities – is evident. at the same time, the most successful programs were initiated by an individual faculty member who designed, promoted and creatively developed a certain program. one of the administrators mentioned a rapidly changing international education initiatives management discourse among moldovan international education project managers. the soviet system produced academic program management staff with particular kinds of knowledge and skills suitable for an authoritative system. given the size and complexity of academic internationalization issues, as well as the time investment and changes in international project management, the current moldovan pragmatic approach to internationalization has been successfully carried out through joint management efforts with foreign universities. a moldovan administrator, who for two years served as a consulting scholar for the university international relations ministry department, addressed the moldovan faculty members’ desire to collaborate with the ministry on internationalization policy and practice issues: “what we 140 current issues in comparative education kushnarenko and cojocari really need is to involve ourselves in on-going discussions of the perspectives of international education with our ministry officials. we are dragging behind western universities and we are out of their radar, the foreigner’s openness to the outside world is amazing. with the moldovan tempo of the commitment to international education we can lose important strategic connections, time, and enthusiasm of our own people.” moldovan state universities are divided between those with “advancement in internationalization” and the “other,” which were not as active in international affairs and do not put internationalization of their institutions on a list of priorities. in order to upgrade curricula, investigate new academic markets, borrow progressive methodological approaches and build new offshore partnerships, moldovan universities lobbied the ministry to upgrade a state policy on internationalization. the administrators noted that “it the curriculum upgrade will bring creativity to think and possibly act outside the box in the generation of strategies, actions and commitment to international outreach, bringingpotential partners together to make a difference in the system and influence the major policy institutions.” according to an administrator, moldovan educators, participating in new international initiatives, “push their universities forward in global outreach” by establishing “strong personal connections with foreign university faculty, trying to use every opportunity to persuade the management of international programs at their institutions to participate.” the majority of international education champions in moldova relate to the most profound current feature of modern campus: the increasing interdependence of academic life. in order to succeed in academia, faculty put their efforts into improving collaboration and the co-production of knowledge. achieving that, an administrator suggests that western universities do not show enough evidence of ...sufficient knowledge of the moldovan academic culture. it seriously weakens international collaboration. foreign universities are polite and intelligent partners, they are good learners and try to be diplomatic in what they say and do. however, the details of their behaviour and specifics of their advising show that they are incapable of grasping the holistic picture of the moldovan academic challenges. they do not know our rules well, or maybe they simply think that our themes are too contrasted to the academic negotiation tones preferred by foreigners. the moldovan academic, cultural and managerial context – drawing from a range of post-soviet traditions – is a complex set of judgments and approaches to which foreigners are exposed. foreign partners’ ignorance of this context is natural, taking into consideration hectic personal and academic schedules. however, it confirms a certain degree of insufficient homework done by international partners. being, as moldovans describe their counterparts, skilled communicators and dynamic problem solvers, foreign faculty do their best in their attempt to establish “the insider’s knowledge” of the current moldovan university developmental peculiarities. partners understand this and, when they get it right, are more than ever determined to improve existing connections and establish new ones. another administrator echoes the previous observation: “the exercises of our internal management show little reciprocity with the united and disciplined managerial ensemble of international partners. our foreign partners prevail in the speed of decision-making resulted in favour of sophisticated management practices of foreigners.” it is a matter of time and commitment for moldovan partners to lead international teams and show an example in shifting international education priorities in the light of global changes. current issues in comparative education 141 internationalization of higher education in post-soviet small states conclusion we have highlighted the major internationalization issues which were indicated by those who design international programs and work on their implementation at state moldovan universities. those universities try to accommodate their systems to the new post-soviet realities and global interdependence. such adaptation requires knowledge, competence, commitment and capacity to respond to the increased challenges of international academic collaboration in higher education. three concluding thoughts from this investigation can be offered. the first relates to the national level, where the majority of moldovan universities experience a lack of a coordinated and coherent national government strategy to enhance internationalization efforts. at the institutional level, universities have seen their internationalization aspirations suffer from insufficient financial and human resources. they have not yet developed the organizational and managerial capacity to negotiate as equals with international university partners. the existing managerial and logistical challenges, alongside the absence of necessary and mobile access to information, however, have not prevented moldovan institutions from responding to proposals for international engagement. at the third individual level moldovans have a cohort of forward thinking university faculty who are ready to initiate and perform collaboration. they see international collaboration as an activity based on the moldovan national values and academic traditions which serve as an engine to exchange information and knowledge. moldovans admit that current academic internationalization activities not only occur in a context of insufficient local management, financial turbulence, national value-orientation and foreign university dominance in policy and managerial strategies, but they often happen because of a foreign partner’s initiative. design and algorithm of external aid projects (coyne & bray, 2006) is often crafted at western universities with minimum involvement of small states counterparts. western universities as collaborative partners of post-soviet small states universities would need to do additional homework in order to consider themselves, according to a moldovan administrator, “as a major initiator and contributor to a successful performance of small states’ academic systems international outreach.” approaching post-soviet universities western institutions may consider a policy of small steps and expect to meet moldovan universities in particular half-way teaching and sharing what moldovan universities have to offer. moldovan administrators think that internationalization content flexibility, tolerance for foreign international project management peculiarities and provision of a variety of international curricula choices will be among the major reasons for moldovan partners to show positive developments and strong commitment to internationalization in the region. we would like to finish with an interesting thought of a moldovan administrator, who challenges the western perception of peripheries and talks about the internationalization dilemma his university currently faces: the word ‘internationalization’ is difficult for me to pronounce. it is a western term and its meaning is still unclear for many here. international education, as i understand it, is supposed to be a moral category, rooted in culture and values. i am raising my voice on behalf of the so-called “peripheries” that are hesitant to participate in activities which go over our university capacity of influence. there is nobody to complain to if your partners do not respond to those invisible signals which only your culture could recognize. it is obvious that internationalization of higher education for many moldovan educators 142 current issues in comparative education kushnarenko and cojocari is not an easy thing to plan or manage, much less accept its results. it is easier to operate in an environment which is safe, close to their heart and culture. moldovan educators mention problems with a vague terminology usage, uncertainty with changing priorities of international higher education, reconceptualization of the role of nation-states, quality concerns and fear of unexpected consequences of international collaboration networks. it shows that serious work on various outreach scenarios is needed for moldovan educators and their international counterparts to succeed in their collaborative aspirations. for western universities there is a growing need “to examine the impact of changing global contexts, to document the changing nature and significance of recent and contemporary education policy priorities, and to advance the case for new and strengthened initiatives for education in small states” (crossley, bray, & packer, 2011 p. 1). this also illustrates the importance of academic dialogue with post-ussr small states, and raises possible standards for international collaboration with eastern and southern european universities. internationalization forms a commitment to improve moldovan universities’ global standing. internationalization is a major focus for moldovan universities, and those who embrace it will benefit the most. western universities express a current vision to prepare not just their own students, but an international academic community to meet the challenges and opportunities of our globalized life. small state universities, though challenged with the growing degradation of their indigenous values, are optimistic about growing opportunities to investigate and further internationalize their systems. valentyna kushnarenko, phd, is pursuing research in international academic relations and cross-border university settings quality assurance. as part of her research she investigates the changing nature of organizational culture and leadership in higher education outreach strategies. in particular, she has been exploring the behavior of postsoviet universities in the establishment of international academic joint ventures and professional networks. dr. kushnarenko received her ba from the kyiv national linguistic university in ukraine, ma from east carolina university, and phd from the university of toronto, canada. ludmila cojocari, phd, is associate professor for the cultural and historical anthropology at the institute of social history “promemoria,” moldova state university. dr. cojocari was awarded her phd degree in history at the academy of sciences of moldova in 1998 and is a graduate in history from the moldova state university in 1993. she investigates the collective memory and identity building projects in the borderland societies. as part of her research, she is exploring the memory and identity politics through the evolution of higher education in the republic of moldova. dr. cojocari has also coordinated the institutional project “democratizing the teaching and learning of history at the free international university of moldova: sharing the partnership experience” within the osi-hesp program (2005-2008). acknowledgments the authors thank professor mark bray of the university of hong kong, hong kong and ms. margaret brennan from university of toronto, canada for their helpful comments in the drafting of this paper. references abrahamsson, b. 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governance of hong kong’s international school and direct subsidy scheme school categories and changes in the broader hong kong society through a neoliberal framework. as hong kong’s economy has grown since the 1997 handover to the people’s republic of china, an increasing number of people have come to hong kong. these people bring increased income, they have fewer children and they bring new expectations and practices for education. the government has responded to differentiated demand by developing the international school and direct subsidy scheme school categories. each has distinctive privatization features to increase interand intra-category competition and choice. greater privatization has raised fears that social mobility for the poor is being stifled and school inequality and malfeasance will grow. it also places new burdens on parents and signals the continued changing relationship between school and society. government policy plays a significant role in mediating how education and society shape one another. in the case of hong kong, little attention has been paid to how the government mediates this tension between society and the education system. yet there is a need to explore this mediation through policy because changes in hong kong’s education system reflect developments in its broader society. i examine the link between the governance of two school categories in hong kong’s education system and changes in the broader hong kong society. i adopt a neoliberal framework for understanding changes to the hong kong socio-economic context and the governance of two hong kong school categories. i examine government policy because "the rise of neoliberalism is seemingly rooted in certain governments' policies” (huang, 2012, p. 40). in the asia-pacific region, education systems in australia and new zealand have received attention in the literature as targets of neoliberal government reform. exploring neoliberalism in the hong kong education system may yield unique insights because “in different socio-cultural contexts, neoliberalism may have different influences on educational practices” (huang, 2012, p. 39). this article expands the understanding of neoliberalism in education and schools at societal, institutional and individual levels. in this article, i first construct an understanding of neoliberalism in education. i then apply a neoliberal framework to a changing hong kong socio-economic context and the governance of two categories of hong kong schools: international schools and direct subsidy scheme (dss) schools. i conclude with implications of these categorical changes on the hong kong education system and society. neoliberalism in education neoliberalism is a generic term that assembles economic, social and philosophy theory. it encompasses state minimalism through deregulation and privatization of social services (lee & lee, 2013). its adherents presuppose individuals and organizations act because of their rational self-interest. while marketplace principles such as competition best promote rational selfdavid woo 38 current issues in comparative education interest in political, economic and social decisions (huang, 2012), state welfare and intervention do not. neoliberalism is a phenomenon with practical origins as a governmental response to the 1970s economic climate in the united kingdom (uk) and in the united states of america (usa). it transcends geographic boundaries, having influenced both northern and southern hemispheres, and western and eastern states. it is a dimension of globalization as it structures local and global relations through economy, comparison and competition. this belief system leads to a form of state governance. a government aims to extend rational economic thought and systemic competitiveness to all areas of life in a market state, or a competition state, and imagined economy. the state divests responsibility for society’s needs and unleashes “the techniques of rationality of business, the commercial, the private, into the public services and operations of the state” (doherty, 2007, p. 273). in other words, the state enables individuals and organizations to care for themselves through privatization, by granting power to compete and freedom of choice. these affordances change traditional understandings of organizations because “important distinctions between state and market, public and private, government and business, left and right are attenuated” (ball, 2007, p.8). and these organizations with greater operational freedom in a more competitive, entrepreneurial environment may produce more entrepreneurial, rationally self-interested people who perpetuate neoliberalism. neoliberalism creates a specific understanding of education in a state. the state facilitates its education system’s transformation into an education services industry. education and all its aspects become a matter of consumer choice and efficient commodification. education, its schools and individuals, become products that “can be bought and sold like anything else” (davies & bansel, 2007, p. 254). therefore, valuation and value creation become paramount at several levels. the education industry must create value for the state economy. schools as businesses must add value to students. self-interested individuals must create value for themselves within this context by making rational economic choices. the market, and not the state, improves the education system because competition rewards excellent, efficient and productive individuals and organizations, and not mediocre individuals and organizations. a particular discourse relating government, society and the individual operationalizes neoliberalism. doherty (2007) has characterize it as consumerist and commercial. in the education discourse, key words include “freedom, choice, standards, excellence, tradition and parents’ rights” (doherty, p. 276). ball (2007) has added that this discourse is framed by “an over-bearing, economic and political context of international competitiveness” (p. 2). ultimately, this discourse perpetuates a belief that neoliberalism is naturally inevitable, morally absolute and desirable (davies & bansel, 2007). as these beliefs become more pervasive, so does the perpetuation of this discourse in society. criticism of neoliberalism in education stems from what neoliberalism excludes. huang (2012) has argued that “neoliberalism wages an incessant war on democracy, public goods, and noncommodified values” (p. 40). this withdrawing of values or virtue from the social good can be troubling because education aspires no longer to values but to measurable value, for instance, performativity through standardized assessments and qualifications. the immeasurable has no place in a neoliberal education. huang (2012) has supported this argument by the changing significance of public examinations, which have a long history in chinese society. the legacy of social prestige from competitive examinations in chinese society is being replaced by a social neoliberalism in two hong kong school categories   current issues in comparative education 39   mobility meaning, because “the national examinations are now a critically selective mechanism in the labour market” (huang, 2012, p. 43). utility has replaced virtue in scholarship not only in china but in many nations where neoliberalism is pervasive. in addition, ball (1990) has argued that neoliberalism is “strongly counterposed to the worth or possibility of equality” (p. 34). song (2013) has implicated this inequality by neoliberalism in arguing that english-language international schools in south korea have become institutions to perpetuate social stratification and the elite class. yet ball (1990) has also provided a response to such criticism by saying that “inequalities are fair because the market is unprincipled, its effects are unintentional, there is no deliberate bias,” and that ultimately the market "produces a natural economic order and the poorer, the losers in the market, will benefit from the progress of the society as a whole" (p. 39, 37). a danger of such response is the construction of an anthropomorphic market by which people can divest themselves of individual responsibility for inequality, bias and principles that impact all. people do not have to be counter-posed to the worth or possibility of equality. neoliberalism in the hong kong socio-economic context neoliberalism has long influenced the hong kong socio-economic context. hong kong’s foundation as an entrepot for the british empire in the 19th and 20th centuries set a precedent for economic competition and free, globalized flows of goods, services and people in the territory. in more recent years an economic boom in the early 1990s drew more foreigners to hong kong. this included chinese, non-chinese and pseudo-foreign people who, originally from hong kong, had secured foreign passports to hedge themselves from the risk emerging from hong kong’s handover to the people's republic of china (prc) (bray & ieong, 1996). hong kong underwent a major political change in 1997 marked by its handover to the prc. it had been a colony of the british empire and has become a special administration region (sar) of the prc. hong kong’s constitutional document has granted the hong kong government a high degree of autonomy from the prc political system. an electoral college selects the head of the hong kong government. hong kong has experienced much political stability since the handover and this has led to further socio-economic change. the number of returnees to hong kong increased and new global migration patterns emerged. for the past decade, people in hong kong have experienced the tension of a steadily growing population and a precipitously declining birth rate. in 2001, the hong kong population was 6.7 million, and by mid-2011, the population of hong kong was approximately 7.1 million people (census and statistics department, 2012). this steady growth, contrasted with the decreasing percentage of population aged 0-14, implies that adult immigration, as a result of rising economic prosperity in hong kong and political reintegration with the prc, is increasing hong kong’s population. in recent years, neoliberalism may be even more pervasive in hong kong society. hong kong has become “virtually an open society, exhibiting various religious beliefs, life styles, languages and political ideologies” (yang, 2012, p. 393). yang (2012) adds that materialism is pervasive in hong kong culture, and per rational-self interest, “people only become interested in things when they can see clearly their benefits from them” (p. 395). furthermore, institutions and individuals are increasingly subjected to marketplace forces by a prevailing neoliberal discourse of meeting market demand. employers have made demands over hong kong’s various industrial sectors, including housing and education. for instance, hong kong companies have expressed dissatisfaction over the quality of hong kong university graduates (yang, 2012). these conditions perpetuate even greater individual and organizational entrepreneurialism, but david woo 40 current issues in comparative education at the cost of social cohesion. following what davies & bansel (2007) and ball (1990) have observed in other socio-cultural contexts, increasingly, individuals and organizations in hong kong may only know how to relate to each other through economics. these socio-economic changes and climate have significant implications for hong kong’s education system. as foreigners and returnees come to hong kong, they bring higher education and income levels, and new expectations and practices for education (yamato & bray, 2002). for example, demand for english-language instruction has increased because children of returnees and new immigrants have come from countries where cantonese, a language commonly spoken in hong kong, is neither a medium of instruction in school nor a primary language at home. people have also recognized that employers not only in hong kong but around the world seek employees with english language proficiency. curriculum change has also been warranted because of the global knowledge economy and because children of returnees and new immigrants could likely not cope with the rigors of the mainstream education system (microsoft partners in learning, 2011). yamato and bray (2002) and yung (2006) have observed that a declining group of school-age children has placed both greater competitive pressure on all hong kong schools and, in the hands of richer parents who have fewer school age children, even more disposable income for education. as hong kong schools traditionally “are remarkably homogeneous and cannot meet the increasingly diversified needs of parents and their children,” and are “highly centralized and controlled,” the government has a role in meeting differentiated demand and expanding choice for education (yung, 2006, p. 96). the government has responded to socio-economic changes by emphasizing diversity in its education policies, creating school places to meet demand, and designating the education sector as an economic growth area for hong kong (education bureau, 2009). it remains optimistic about operationally privatized school categories not only as an indicator of economic growth but as a driver of it. the government forecasts continuing growth of school places in these categories from 2011 to 2016 (hksar government, 2011). its actions suggest that neoliberalism in education is being increasingly normalized. the following sections explore this neoliberal normalization in two school categories. international schools the creation of the international school category illustrates well how the hong kong government extends market rationality, privatization and the competition state to the education system. an international school is “not easily defined and is subject to much academic debate” not least because it is characterized by heterogeneity, differentiation, and accounting for revenues and costs (macdonald, 2007, p. 152). nonetheless, the hong kong government has commodified international schools in the hong kong system by developing a discrete category for them. the hong kong government also admitted the difficulty in categorizing the schools because they are not homogeneous (education department, 1995). the government has developed a degree of cohesiveness for the category by differentiating this category from other school categories by, for example, phasing out international schools from the dss because at one time international schools could join the dss to receive recurring government subsidies. the government has largely privatized operations in international schools and this hastens commodification and competition within the category and for the hong kong education system. international schools are self-financing and receive government assistance only in the form of land grants. they have full discretion to determine their student admission requirements. the government has also decreed that people can distinguish international schools from other types of schools by international schools’ employment of non-local neoliberalism in two hong kong school categories   current issues in comparative education 41   curriculum and their students not sitting for local examinations (education bureau, 2004, p. 3). yamato (2003) and yamato and bray (2006) have identified types of hong kong international schools which market themselves by language of instruction, targeted pupils, structure and governance, school foundation year, curriculum, examinations and higher education prepared for, religious or philosophical orientation, location, market specialization, age range, school year, private expenditure and range of school fees. these types can be often recognized from the names of hong kong’s international schools and are ways by which international schools differentiate themselves in consideration of parents’ needs. the neoliberal governance of the international school category has reflected hong kong’s changing socio-economic climate. it has been perpetuated by the discourse of subjecting education to global market forces to benefit the state economy. the government has given such reasons as china’s accession to the world trade organization (wto), the post-1997 economic recovery and the rapid economic growth in the early 21st century or its supporting and expanding the international school category (education bureau, 2004). this is because all that stimulates an inflow of foreign professionals, expatriates, and temporary hong kong residents in the state for either work or investment (education bureau, 2009). besides, the government has recommended international schools for non-chinese speaking hong kong students and for non-permanent hong kong residents (education bureau, 2010). competition for places in international schools is keen. the government has said this demand from overseas families, coupled with demand from local families, will create an imbalance in demand for and supply of student places in international schools for at least five years (luk, 2013). the hong kong government has problematized student capacity in the category as a shortage. the education secretary, eddie ng hak-kim, predicted that international primary schools would fall short of meeting market demand by at least 4,200 student places in the 20162017 academic year (luk, 2013). the privatization within the category limits how the government can address this shortage. for instance, as the government has privatized control over class sizes, international schools have been unenthusiastic to the government’s plea to increase class size (luk, 2013). similarly, the government has privatized control over student-intake so international schools can largely determine their student body demographics in terms of overseas students and local students. as the government has said that local students fill only 14 percent of international school student places, international schools have catered to non-local students in the main (luk, 2013). the government can no more than plead with international schools to place even greater priority on admitting overseas students (luk, 2013). however, the government has acted as a broker and facilitator in the education system and in that way has addressed this international school student place shortage. it has increased the supply of classes indirectly by granting schools more land, perhaps the scarcest of all material resources in hong kong. it has increased the number of international schools by granting vacant school premises or greenfield sites to international school operators for the building of new schools. for instance, the government recently has increased international school student capacity by 1,700 places by awarding three vacant school premises to international school operators (luk, 2013). furthermore, the government has facilitated increased competition and choice for international schools by expanding the geographic distribution of these international schools, which makes them more geographically accessible to hong kong society. the government hopes this would further globalization and facilitate, “interaction and collaboration david woo 42 current issues in comparative education between teachers and students of international and local schools in the region” (education bureau, 2006, p. 1). the case of the english schools’ foundation recent changes to the english schools foundation (esf), a sub-category of international schools in hong kong, exemplify how the governance of the international school category extends the competition state. founded in 1967 and enduring as the largest and longest running operator of international schools in hong kong, the esf originally followed an english curriculum and was purposed with relieving the government from operating english schools for english-speaking children. the esf was tasked with meeting the educational needs of the entire foreign community at that time because of a lack of development in international education services in hong kong (education bureau, 2004). in return, the esf received recurrent government subsidies in addition to being able to charge school fees. this subvention helped the esf to position its schools as some of the least expensive in the international school category. officially, the only substantive difference between esf schools and other international schools is in the area of funding (education bureau, 2004 p. 2). as the number of hong kong international schools has grown in response to the changing socio-economic context, so has the criticism of the esf by international schools. the schools have complained about the uneven playing field in the category because of the esf’s recurring government subsidies. these schools and their supporters have exerted mounting pressure on the government to place the esf in a more transparent and fair category rather than leave it in the limbo of an international school sub-category. the government acknowledged that the esf schools' unique position in hong kong’s education system was a result of historical legacy and that this unique position was untenable in the long-run as greater public accountability over its subvention was needed (legislative council secretariat, 2011). as a result, the government has drastically reduced the government-subvention advantage that esf schools have enjoyed since 1979. esf recurrent subsidies were frozen in 1999 as an interim measure while the government investigated possibilities for making the esf more self-financing. from 2003 to 2005, the government further reduced subsidies. while the esf management had argued for a restoration of funding, it ultimately agreed to a government plan to eliminate the recurring subsidies over 13 years from 2016 (siu, 2013). the esf management anticipates school fees to increase by 23 percent. dss schools the dss scheme illustrates well how the hong kong government extends market rationality, privatization and the competition state to the education system. the hong kong government created the dss in 1991. as the name suggests, the distinguishing feature of this category of hong kong schools is a direct government subsidy. the dss system in hong kong and school voucher schemes in other states are similar insofar as the government bears a part of the cost of schooling and parents the other. however, the difference in schemes is that in hong kong the voucher or subsidy is given to the schools instead of the parents. dss schools receive a recurrent government subsidy comparable to what a baseline school would receive from the government per student. like with international schools, the government has privatized many dss school operations thereby injecting competition and differentiation into the category. however, dss school operations have been privatized to a lesser degree than international school operations to maintain differentiation between the two categories. dss schools are less self-financing. the government’s recurrent subsidy mechanism influences how a school will charge parents neoliberalism in two hong kong school categories   current issues in comparative education 43   because a school will lose its recurrent subsidy if it charges a school fee above a certain level. in addition, a dss school must set aside money for student financial assistance if it charges between a fee band. with this type of financial constraint, a dss school can move either towards high school fees and a smaller government subsidy or more towards low school fees and a more generous government subsidy. the dss subsidy mechanism was designed to be administered simply and to discourage excessive profiteering (education commission, 1988). the government created the dss scheme with hong kong students in mind (audit commission, 2010). therefore, while international schools and esf schools have full discretion to determine their student admission requirements, dss schools require a degree of government oversight over their student admission requirements, specifically in gearing admission more toward hong kong permanent residents. these constraints ultimately preserve the distinctiveness of the dss category and extend the competition state and commodification pressure not only to schools in the category but also to the education system. the neoliberal governance of the dss category has reflected hong kong’s changing socioeconomic climate. the government has said the category was introduced to directly grow and strengthen an independent, operationally privatized education sector for hong kong's pluralistic society (education commission, 1988). the government has expanded the sector by both creating more schools and envisioning a “full-scale transformation of all government schools into dss in the future” (yung, 2006, p. 96). at present, nine percent of all schools belong to the category and that number is growing. specifically, long-standing and highly-respected schools, or prestigious schools, have joined the scheme in growing numbers. that increase, and that prestigious schools are opting-in, have provoked public controversy which reflects the traditional criticisms of neoliberalism and fears of the neoliberal climate in hong kong. recently, st. stephen’s girls college, one of the most prestigious schools in hong kong, decided to join the dss scheme and soon after st. paul’s secondary school, another prestigious school, decided to join the dss scheme. in keeping with other prestigious hong kong schools that have joined the dss scheme, these schools will charge some of the highest fees for schools in the scheme. chiu and walker (2007) have argued that this is because dss school fees are often based on a school’s reputation, which outstanding academic results influence. yung (2006) has also noted that more resourceful schools, particularly those prestigious schools with long histories and a strong alumni bodies, charge more than other dss schools not least because they have a more expansive funding network. parents and alumni are worried that these schools will exclude people with limited financial means from attending them because these schools no longer offer free education (siu, 2013; st. paul’s secondary, 2013). parents and alumni wonder to what extent privileged classes are pressuring the schools to change school categories. they worry that poorer students may feel shame when finances factor into participation in school-based activities (siu, 2013). these worries and fears reflect the association of neoliberalism with “private education for the rich and public education for the poor” (song, 2013, p. 139). they also assume that an education from a prestigious school is a good, or proper, education and that a prestigious education should not be limited to the rich (siu, 2013). protesters have not explicitly acknowledged how a prestigious education is tied to further ambitions to wealth, social mobility and the imagined possibility of individual entrepreneurial success in a neoliberal economy (davies & barnsel, 2007). david woo 44 current issues in comparative education the government has addressed the controversy with its prevailing neoliberal discourse, reiterating and extolling school diversity and choice, and the amoral, unintentional market bias. the government has maintained that the scheme attracts and benefits schools because it grants greater control over management and finances to member schools (st. paul’s secondary, 2013). furthermore, it has declared that there is neither need to regulate the number of dss schools nor need to call dss schools prestigious (siu, 2013). it has also emphasized that not all schools have been accepted into the scheme, that the percentage of all schools in the scheme remains small and that most dss schools do not charge high tuition fees (siu, 2013). it has reiterated that the government’s recurrent subsidy mechanism inhibits most dss schools from charging high fees, and that the government continues to guarantee free education for all, without a compulsion to pay fees (education commission, 1988). however, more schools charge fees and the number of free schools diminish. while the government has extolled increasing parental choice, presumably within the dss category and between school categories, it has not put to rest any fears about parental choice within the decreasing number of free schools, particularly free, prestigious schools. the neoliberalism in two hong kong school categories the government has developed two distinct school categories in the hong kong education system and primary school student enrolment in these categories is growing year on year while it is eroding in non-international, non-dss education categories (census and statistics department, 2012). each category has a set of operational constraints yet with privatization within each school category, competition and differentiation ultimately exist within and between these school categories. this section first explores the government’s explanation that the dss and international school categories are complementary (education bureau, 2010). it then examines some of the broader societal implications for neoliberalism in two hong kong school categories. the government has privatized school fees in such a way that schools in these categories can compete and differentiate themselves, leading to a wide range of education offerings on the price spectrum. table 1 lists select international and dss schools and their primary school fees to illustrate competition and differentiation within and between these two school categories. in the main, those groups that receive recurrent government subsidies are able to charge less than what other schools charge. the kennedy school, an esf school, is able to charge less than what two other international school competitors charge, and generally dss schools charge less than what international schools charge. in that way, even the dss schools with the highest school fees are more affordable than many international schools, although more prestigious dss schools may charge more than less prestigious dss schools. since international schools do not receive recurrent government subsidies, they must raise revenue through their school fees. table 1 select international and dss primary school 2013/2014 tuition fees school name tuition fee (hk$) school type hong kong international school $155,700 international kellett school $123,500 international german swiss international school $120,900 international neoliberalism in two hong kong school categories   current issues in comparative education 45   kennedy school $66,100 international (esf) diocesan boys’ school $40,000 dss¹ st. paul’s college $30,000 dss¹ po leung kuk camoes tan siu lin primary school $14,800 dss wf joseph lee primary school $12,000 dss ¹recognized, prestigious hong kong schools source: individual school websites table 1 does not dispel arguments about neoliberalism advancing socio-economic inequality. as the hong kong education system can be divided between school categories, those that charge school fees and those that do not, this creates a division between families that can pay school fees and families that cannot. not only that, but since there is a wide range of education offerings along the price spectrum, families are further divided into those that can pay hefty school fees and those that cannot. likewise, schools’ finances vary greatly. ultimately, people and schools with greater financial means have greater educational choice. this can create a clustering inequality whereby students and schools of greater economic social and cultural influence cluster together and students and schools without these privileges are clustered together (chiu & walker 2007). in addition, with the increase in schools that charge fees, parents increasingly shoulder the financial burden for schooling in hong kong society. this reflects a socio-economic context where parents can increasingly shoulder this burden. besides, increasing parents’ financial stake in schools can possibly motivate parents to become more active, demanding school stakeholders. ball (2007) has described this as a second-order privatization whereby neoliberalism changes social relations between schools and parents, and changes parents’ responsibilities and participation in education. this second-order privatization may be warranted because school administrators can more freely use funds to increase marketplace competitiveness. however, as in the case of higher education institutions, this may increase rent-seeking behavior in hong kong schools and these practices may counterpose teacher professionalism. additionally, within the past decade, esf and dss managers have been rebuked for financial malpractice (audit commission, 2004). in light of financial mismanagement and malfeasance by these school administrators, parents may need to demand greater accountability for school operations so that their interests are protected. the government may need to broker this transparency as dss schools have launched recriminations, arguing that the government has not provided clear accounting and financing guidelines (yau, 2010). the government’s commodification of the education marketplace within and between these two hong kong school categories has placed significant, new demands on parents. as standardization between schools break down as the government increasingly privatizes school operations, parents bear the burden of becoming responsible, informed consumers who exercise rational economic thought in selecting schools. this second-order privatization further changes relationships between schools and parents, and changes the meaning of citizenship and responsibility. david woo 46 current issues in comparative education conclusion in this paper i examined recent policy developments in hong kong’s education system by linking changes to two hong kong school categories to changes in the broader hong kong society. hong kong’s socio-cultural context is unique not least because hong kong is an economically prosperous sar. the hong kong government has sought complete integration of hong kong into the global knowledge economy, beginning with the liberalization of its financial markets and continuing with the liberalization of its education system. the government has applied neoliberalism to hong kong education by creating two school categories and increasing the number of schools in them. although there may be fundamental differences between business organizations and schools, the hong kong government has increasingly treated these institutions in similar ways by surrendering education within and between these two school categories to market forces. while neoliberalism in these two school categories increases choice at societal, institutional and individual levels, lee and lee (2013) note that these choices are, ultimately, materially unequal. individual, rationally self-interested choice may be no more than an illusion. neoliberalism in education can exacerbate existing inequality between individuals and between schools, and correlated with employment relations and income distribution, these inequalities can exacerbate labor market inequality and social polarization. by increasingly surrendering hong kong education to market despotism, the government expands institutional discrimination in hong kong society. the hong kong government’s aim for education and the hong kong people’s aim for education may differ greatly. insofar as the hong kong government has created two hong kong school categories and has expanded them indicates the success of its neoliberal education reform. however, the public controversy from the increase in dss schools demonstrates that social discontent against neoliberalism exists in hong kong and may increase. in view of this, shin (2011) notes that “sustainable neo-liberal reform requires a social safety net to reduce social conflicts and political instability due to social discontents and social unrests” (p. 72). on the other hand, i also aim to encourage readers to scrutinize the education system and recognize the contrast in perceived choice versus real choice in a neoliberal society. the social discontent against neoliberalism in hong kong also demonstrates the existing space for the contestation over neoliberalism practices and the education value system. people do not need to divest themselves of individual responsibility for inequality, bias and principles that impact society. they do not have to be counter-posed to the worth or possibility of social equality. david woo is a research student at the university of hong kong. email: 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(2010, november 26). elite schools hit back at audit report findings, south china morning post, p. 1. microsoft word 12 paper final round 3(revised 23 mar)rma.docx © 2015, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 18(1), 83-95. investigator bias and theory-ladenness in cross-cultural research: insights from wittgenstein charlene tan nanyang technological university a relatively under-explored topic in the current literature on and methods for research in the field of comparative and international education is the problem of investigator bias in cross-cultural research. this article discusses the nature of and an approach to address investigator bias in research that originates from the theory-ladenness of observation. theory-ladenness essentially holds that everything one observes or perceives is influenced by and interpreted through one’s existing beliefs, values, assumptions and expectations. this article explains how the philosopher ludwig wittgenstein’s exposition of belief system – what he calls ‘world-picture’ – illuminates our understanding of investigator bias and theory-ladenness by elucidating the organisation, inculcation and revision of beliefs. it is further proposed that comparativists confront the challenge of investigator bias by critically reflecting on their world-picture, the impact of their world-picture on their theoretical commitment and research process, and the evaluation and revision of their theory through the interaction between theory and data. introduction a variety of conceptual tools and methodologies has been adopted by scholars in the field of comparative and international education (cie). to date, there is a strong tradition within the cie field of utilising and integrating diverse disciplines, such as science (e.g., positivism), sociology (e.g. externalisation, loose coupling) and even medicine (e.g. the epidemiological model of global dissemination) (epstein, 2008; steiner-khamsi, 2014). however, relatively less attention has been devoted to philosophy as a source of or inspiration for innovative methods in the cie field. drawing upon philosophical writings, this article examines the problem of investigator bias that originates from the theory-ladenness of observation, and proposes an approach to address this problem in research. besides referring to the literature in the philosophy of science, this essay turns to the works of the philosopher ludwig wittgenstein to elucidate the essential qualities of belief system and its implications for theory-ladenness and investigator bias. the paper begins by highlighting the challenge of investigator bias in research and its connection to theory-ladenness. this is followed by an exposition of wittgenstein’s views on belief system and a suggested approach for researchers to avoid or minimise the effect of investigator bias. the example of research on china will be given as an illustrative case study. investigator bias and theory-ladenness in cross-cultural research a perennial problem faced by researchers, including comparativists, is the effect of investigator bias in research. in simple terms, investigator bias refers to “errors in study design, implementation, or analysis by the investigator” (aparassu & bentley, 2015, p. 51). o’neil and nicklas (2014) point out that conflicts of interest such as “funding sources, selection of study participants, hiring of personnel, purchase of equipment, choice of analyses, and interpretation of the data” may occur when a personal consideration compromises or appears to comprise the integrity of the study in any way tan current issues in comparative education 84 (p. 41). for example, a biased researcher might interpret study results in ways that favor the funding agency (ibid). the focus of this essay is the effect of investigator bias that originates from the theory-ladenness of observation. theory-ladenness affects all researchers and applies to all disciplines. theory-ladenness essentially holds that everything one observes or perceives is influenced by and interpreted through one’s existing beliefs, values, assumptions and expectations. philosophers of science, in particular, norwood hanson (1958), paul feyerabend (1969) and thomas kuhn (1962) contend that our observational evidence, far from being theory-neutral, is shaped by our paradigms and theoretical commitments (bogen, 2014). heidelberger (2003) highlights two forms of theory-ladenness: psychological and conceptual. the former refers to the psychological law that human perception is always guided by prior beliefs and expectations; the latter foregrounds the prior theories held by researchers by asserting that “the meaning of the observational terms involved depends upon the theoretical context in which they occur” (ibid., p. 138). the phenomenon of theory-ladenness affects not just research in natural sciences but also that in the social sciences, including the field of cie (for further discussion on theory-ladenness in natural and social sciences, see hunt, 1994; brewer & lambert, 2001). the japanese comparativist takayama (2011) claims that “any representative work necessarily reflects the researcher’s subjective positionality which privileges given voices and excludes others” (p. 461). comparativists are especially susceptible to investigator bias since they bring with them not only their subjective positionality but also their own cultural worldview and presuppositions that may differ from or even clash with those under study. investigator bias is particularly relevant to research on policy borrowing where “scholars in policy transfer research tend to draw from education systems in the first world to make generalizations on policy borrowing and lending in the rest of the world” (steiner-khamsi, 2006, p. 675; also see carney, rappleye & silova, 2012; wiseman, astiz & baker, 2013). such generalisations may promote ‘crosscultural cloning’ and ‘false universalism’ where the researchers – who themselves were socialized into and/or trained in the education systems in the first world – impose their own paradigms on the subject they are studying in a different cultural context (nguyen et al., 2009). it is important to note that theory-ladenness is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon but instead comes in various degrees. without entering into discussion of the complexities inherent in and overlaps between labels, we may identify two main types of theoryladenness that occupy two ends of a spectrum: a radical/strong version and weak version. the radical or strong version of theory-ladenness claims that all our observations are influenced by and interpreted through our existing worldview to such an extent that it is impossible for us to objectively evaluate the significance of an observation for a theory. this extreme form of theory-ladenness, according to philosophers such as hanson (1958) and kuhn (1962), gives rise to incommensurability in research: the position that we cannot compare experimental results because these results reside in different paradigms that ascribe different and incompatible theory-laden meanings and observation language to the results (franklin et al., 1989). contrasting with the radical/strong version is a weak version of theory-ladenness that holds that our observations, although influenced by and interpreted through our existing paradigm, are open to objective evaluation and revision. focusing on this form of theory-ladenness, freeman and smith (1996) conclude from their empirical research that there is no “complete subordination of observation to the demands of prior theory” since “data can have an evidential impact on the credibility of a theory even when the investigator bias and theory-ladenness in cross-cultural research current issues in comparative education 85 observations in question are influenced by the theory” (p. 326). in other words, our perceptions are jointly influenced by the objective relations in the observational data and our prior theories. it follows that theory-ladenness, at least in its less extreme forms, does not necessarily pose a problem for researchers, since the researcher’s prior theoretical commitments are potentially open to evaluation and revision. theoryladenness is only detrimental to research if it results in investigator bias – where the researcher imposes one’s existing beliefs, values, assumptions and expectations on the research subject, ignores the evidential impact of data (especially evidence that contradicts one’s expectations), and draws conclusions that are aimed at reinforcing one’s ideological preferences. some scholars have suggested reducing the effect of investigator bias through triangulation of research findings (e.g. see van maanen, 1983; miles & huberman, 1994; merriam, 1998; shenton, 2004). but triangulation, although helpful, is insufficient as a researcher may still observe and interpret the data obtained from different sources through theoretical assumptions and biases. in other words, triangulation, in itself, does not address the root cause of investigator bias: the influence of the researcher’s presuppositions, convictions and expectations on one’s research that leads to errors in the inquiry process and outcome. what is needed is a deeper understanding of how investigator bias occurs and how it can be avoided or at least minimized by the researcher. wittgenstein on belief system the writings of wittgenstein are pertinent to our topic as his exposition of belief system contributes to our understanding of the nature of beliefs, belief acquisition, and the relationship between belief system, theory-ladenness and investigator bias. wittgenstein (1889–1951) was an influential twentieth century philosopher whose works have a major impact on the development of modern philosophy. space constraint means that an exploration of wittgenstein’s views, including their diverse interpretations and controversies, will receive less discussion than they deserve (for an in-depth analysis of wittgenstein’s views in the context of philosophy and education, see the collection of essays in smeyers & marshall, 1995). this article shall concentrate on his views taken from the book on certainty (wittgenstein, 1969) where the discussion was situated against a backdrop of a philosophical debate on skepticism. wittgenstein begins by observing that a person’s “convictions do form a system, a structure” (on certainty, # 102, all subsequent citations are taken from this book, unless otherwise stated). by referring to a system or structure, wittgenstein reminds us that beliefs do not exist in isolation but find coherence and support within a web of beliefs. he elaborates, “when we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions” (# 141, 142, italics in the original). he calls this system or structure a ‘world-picture’ or “my picture of the world” (# 94). a world-picture comprises “the substratum of all my enquiring and asserting” (# 162) and “the matter-of-course foundation” of one’s research (# 167). to explain the domination of a world-picture, wittgenstein gives the example of chemist antoine-laurent lavoisier: think of chemical investigations. lavoisier makes experiments with substances in his laboratory and now he concludes that this and that takes place when there is burning. he does not say that it might happen otherwise another time. he has got hold of a definite world-picture – not of course one that he invented: he learned it as a child. i say world-picture tan current issues in comparative education 86 and not hypothesis, because it is the matter-of-course foundation for his research and as such also goes unmentioned. (# 167) it is instructive that wittgenstein distinguishes between a world-picture and a hypothesis. the latter is “something to test by experience” whereas the former is “a rule of testing” (# 98). in other words, a world-picture cannot be empirically tested and is “the inherited background against which i distinguish between true and false [hypotheses]” (# 94). wittgenstein alludes to theory-ladenness when he asserts, “all testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system” (# 105, italics added). a world-picture encompasses the beliefs, values, assumptions and expectations of a researcher that determine one’s observations, perceptions and interpretation of data. in the case of lavoisier, his conclusion that “this and that that takes place when there is burning” is theory-laden in the sense that it is influenced by his prior world-picture concerning chemical compounds. wittgenstein’s concept of world-picture helps us to understand why observational evidence is not theory-neutral but inevitably circumscribed by and interpreted through an existing worldview. the notion of worldpicture also explains why the theory-ladenness of observation is both psychological and conceptual: we are mentally and emotionally inclined to rely on our existing worldpicture for all our observations and perceptions, and our prior theoretical commitment which is grounded in our world-picture determines the meaning of observational terms for our research. another example by wittgenstein demonstrates the pervasiveness of theory-ladenness, this time (ironically) for wittgenstein himself. the example involves an adult telling a child that he has been to the moon. the child believed in the adult and proceeded to tell another adult about it. pointing out the absurdity of the claim made by the first adult, the second adult told the child that what the first adult said was “only a joke, the man hadn't been on the moon; no one has ever been on the moon; the moon is a long way off and it is impossible to climb up there or fly there” (# 106). wittgenstein adds that the child, upon hearing this, would not ordinarily stick to such a belief and would soon be convinced by what the second (or any other) adult told him (ibid.). it is a significant point that this example was written by wittgenstein in 1950-1951 before neil armstrong’s historic mission to the moon on july 20, 1969. hence it is understandable why wittgenstein himself dismissed the claim that some adult had been to the moon. wittgenstein’s own world-picture of the impossibility of human beings setting foot on the moon exemplifies theory-ladenness: it shapes his interpretation and judgement regarding the reasonableness of the before-mentioned claim at the time of his writing. on the question of how beliefs are acquired, wittgenstein likens belief inculcation to learning a game. he posits that propositions describing a world-picture function like “rules of a game” that “can be learned purely practically, without learning any explicit rules” (# 95). he avers that human beings do not learn the practice of making empirical judgments by learning rules; rather, we are taught “judgments and their connection with other judgments” (# 140). wittgenstein’s point is that human beings acquire beliefs spontaneously through social practice rather than rule-learning. put otherwise, we are initiated and socialised into the world-picture of the community that we belong to. the natural and continuous existence of world-picture accounts for the inescapable and permeating impact of theory-ladenness for human beings. the world-picture, with its totality of beliefs, values, assumptions and expectations, becomes our “inherited background” (# 94) for all our convictions and actions. investigator bias and theory-ladenness in cross-cultural research current issues in comparative education 87 wittgenstein’s distinction between two types of beliefs within the world-picture further illuminates the characteristics of theory-ladenness: the child learns to believe a host of things. i.e. it [sic] learns to act according to these beliefs. bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. what stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it. (# 144) the two types of beliefs are beliefs that are liable to shift and those that stand unshakeably fast. wittgenstein uses the analogy of sand and hard rock on the bank of a river to underscore the difference between the two types of beliefs. beliefs that are liable to shift are like the sand that gets washed away or deposited, whereas beliefs that stand unshakeably fast are like the hard rock that is “subject to no alteration or only to an imperceptible one” (# 99). the two types of beliefs are not dichotomous or immutable. wittgenstein states that “there is not a sharp division” between the two types of beliefs and that “the river-bed of thoughts may shift” (# 97). he adds that “fluid propositions” [beliefs that are liable to shift] may be “hardened” while the “hard ones” [beliefs that stand unshakeably fast] may become “fluid” (# 96). the two types of beliefs account for the two versions of theory-ladenness mentioned earlier: radical/strong and weak. a researcher whose theoretical commitment rests primarily upon beliefs that stand unshakeably fast is likely to be vulnerable to the radical/strong version of theory-ladenness, whereas another researcher whose theoretical commitment is premised largely on beliefs that are liable to change is more prone to the weak version of theory-ladenness. in the case of the radical/strong version of theory-ladenness, incommensurability of experimental results may arise if two or more researchers subscribe to competing theories that are both underpinned by beliefs that stand unshakeably fast. in such a situation, the competing theories shape the respective researchers’ perceptions, resulting in mutually incompatible theory-laden meanings and observation language for the same set of data. in contrast, incommensurability of experimental results is less likely to take place if at least one researcher subscribes to the weak version of theory-ladenness; the presence of underlying beliefs that are liable to shift allows the possibility for that researcher’s theory to be questioned and modified. it is important to note that a world-picture is not unchanging and unchangeable. wittgenstein maintains that “what men consider reasonable or unreasonable alters” (# 336) and that “a language-game does change with time” (# 256). a language-game, according to wittgenstein (1953), consists of “language and the actions into which it is woven" that is supported by a world-picture (philosophical investigations, # 7). he expands on the prospect of changing one’s language-game: certain events would put me into a position in which i could not go on with the old language-game any further. in which i was torn away from the sureness of the game. indeed, doesn’t it seem obvious that the possibility of a language-game is conditioned by certain facts? (# 617, italics in the original) commenting on the above quote, bax (2011) points out, “that on certainty explains world pictures as open and dynamic does not only mean that it allows for difference and divergence to occur naturally and accidentally; it also indicates what opportunities there tan current issues in comparative education 88 are for knowingly disengaging oneself, if only temporarily, from the world picture one has inherited” (p. 136). but the possibility of critiquing and changing one’s world-picture does not mean that human beings can do so at will or immediately. neither can one change another person’s world-picture purely through rational means. stressing the inadequacy of using reasons to convince someone to change his worldview, wittgenstein avers that “[a]t the end of reasons comes persuasion” (# 612, italics in the original) – a process akin to conversion where we try “to give him our picture of the world” (# 262). in the process of revising one’s world-picture, “[s]ome practices will stay longer than other ones, and a medley-like mixture of discursive language-games constituting a world-picture is a product of a heterogeneous historical development” (kober, 1996, p. 435). the organic and evolving attribute of world-picture gives rise to multiple world-pictures across subcommunities or sub-cultures within the same locality; they are all united by what wittgenstein calls “family resemblance.” using the example of members of a family, he explains that “family resemblance” refers to “various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criescross in the same way” (philosophical investigations, # 67). a person’s world-picture provides the basis for such a person to make sense of and adjudicate between competing beliefs. theory-ladenness implies that epistemic terms such as knowledge, truth, evidence and rationality are undergirded and framed by one’s worldview or “totality of judgements” (# 140). macmillan (1983) argues, “the picture, then is this: at the beginning there is training and more or less forceful impartation of language and belief; the child is given a nest (oc 225) of convictions which stand fast for him, which make possible the other modes of teaching within which rationality is possible” (p. 369, italics added). strawson (2000) concurs that we cannot help accepting certain beliefs as “defining the areas within which the questions come up of what beliefs we should rationally hold on such-and-such a matter” (pp. 39-40). wittgenstein’s views parallel those of nineteenth century philosopher john henry newman (1890) who asserts that all of us are governed by “antecedent assumptions” that stem from and reside in our tradition (wittgenstein’s world-picture) on whose resources we draw. antecedent assumptions include not only the taken-for-granted theories or systems of thought, but also the accompanying concepts and attitudes, as well as the language in which they are expressed (mitchell, 1997). it should be clarified that wittgenstein’s exposition of belief system, in my view, does not necessarily imply or support epistemic relativism: the view that competing claims cannot be resolved from an objective and universally applicable standpoint since notions of truth or rationality are totally determined by an individual’s belief system (worldpicture). wittgenstein’s point is that one’s observations, interpretations and judgements of reality are not ‘pure’ or immune from one’s world-picture. although one’s worldpicture supplies the background information and presuppositions for that person’s understanding of the world, such an understanding remains open to external evaluation and subsequent revision, to varying degrees and in different ways, based on the interaction between one’s theory and observational data. the interplay of theory and data is amplified in an example given by wittgenstein on a researcher’s investigation of physical objects. wittgenstein notes that the researcher’s knowledge of the dimensions of a bridge depends on both the researcher’s calculation (i.e., observational data) as well as the researcher’s “assumption or a decision” (# 146) (i.e., theory). it is noteworthy that the dimensions of the bridge are not subjective or biased – they exist in the external world and can be independently verified. however, investigator bias and theory-ladenness in cross-cultural research current issues in comparative education 89 the dimensions make sense and are useful only when framed and supported by the investigator’s background knowledge and assumptions of the earth and other physical objects. a meaningful calculation of the dimensions of the bridge, for instance, presupposes that an external world exists and that the measurements of physical objects such as the bridge remain fairly unchanged over time. there is therefore a symbiosis of the subjective and objective, with the theory giving meaning to the data and the data confirming the theory. in the event that one’s prior theory repeatedly fails to support the data, for example, when a researcher’s calculation consistently contradicts that of fellow researchers, the researcher may be compelled to question and revise one’s theoretical commitment and other aspects of one’s world-picture. implications for the problem of investigator bias using the example of china wittgenstein’s concept of world-picture offers us insights into the nature of beliefs in terms of their features, organisation, acquisition and change. a major implication arising from wittgenstein’s work is a need for researchers, especially comparativists to understand their own world-picture as well as the impact of their world-picture on their theoretical framework and presuppositions, analytical tools, research methods and other areas relevant to the research study. such an endeavour requires deep, honest and critical reflection on the part of the researcher where the person “takes a step back from what he has come to take for granted, he precisely suspends the criteria he normally employs in making a choice” (bax, 2011, p. 138). a recommended approach is for researchers – individually and/or collectively – to respond to one or more of the following guiding questions (note that the list of questions is not exhaustive): • which aspects of my (the researcher’s) world-picture (beliefs, values, assumptions, expectations etc.) are relevant to my research topic? • how would i describe my beliefs in my world-picture: which ones are liable to change and which ones stand unshakebly fast? • how does my world-picture (beliefs, values, assumptions, expectations etc.) impinge upon my theoretical commitments for the research study? • how does my world-picture (beliefs, values, assumptions, expectations etc.) impinge upon my observations, perceptions and interpretations of data for the research study? • with respect to my research study, how do i define ‘knowledge’, ‘evidence’, ‘truth’, ‘rationality’ etc.? how universal, objective and defensible are my interpretations of these epistemic terms? • how does my understanding of my world-picture (beliefs, values, assumptions, expectations etc.) help me to be aware of theory-ladenness in my research study? • how would i describe the nature of theory-ladenness in my research study: is it radical/strong, weak or something in between? • how does my understanding of my world-picture (beliefs, values, assumptions, expectations etc.) help me to avoid or minimise the (potential) effects of investigator bias in my research study? • how may my research data interact with, influence and challenge the theory i am using for my research study? • how may any revision to my existing theoretical commitment for this research study impact my world-picture (beliefs, values, assumptions and expectations etc.)? tan current issues in comparative education 90 to illustrate the essence of investigator bias and theory-ladenness as well as an application of the guiding questions to cross-cultural research, the rest of the section turns to research on china as an example. a case in point is the research methodology used by twentieth century american historians to interpret the history of china. cohen (1984) observes that western historians have largely adopted the three dominant paradigms of impact/response, modernization, and imperialism to analyze chinese history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. all three paradigms, cohen maintains, reflect “the political, intellectual, and cultural milieu within which the [american] historian lives and works” and are expectedly “burdened by western-inspired assumptions about how history should go” (p. 5, cited in hall and ames, 1995, p. 121, italics in the original). consequently, these historians’ research approaches “are fundamentally circular in that they end up finding in a vast and complex historical reality precisely what they set out to look for” (ibid.). relating the above example to wittgenstein’s discussion on belief system, the three paradigms are part of the taken-for-granted world-picture held by western historians. far from being objective and universal, these paradigms are the cultural products of socialization, enculturation and scholarship for these historians. the paradigms or theories are laden with the researchers’ beliefs, values, assumptions and expectations, which in turn shape their observations, perceptions and interpretation of data for the research in china. as hall and ames (1995) put it, “distortions traceable to uncritical universalistic assumptions undermine the value of western attempts to tell china’s story” (p. 121). theory-ladenness in the above fashion is also applicable to research on policy borrowing in china. for the past few decades, china has been borrowing educational thought and practices from elsewhere, especially anglophone societies. a salient feature of the current education reform in china is the promotion of student-centered learning (tan, 2013; tan & chua, 2015). such a move reflects an international trend that links studentcentered learning to twenty-first century competencies in an era of globalization (baeten et al., 2010). despite concerted efforts by the chinese authority to change the dominant pedagogy from teacher-centeredness to student-centeredness, research shows that the former, far from being jettisoned, continues to be valued by chinese educators and featured prominently in chinese classrooms (e.g. see biggs, 1998; jin & cortazzi, 1998; gu, 2004; tan, 2015a, 2016a, b). a researcher whose prior cultural worldview and theoretical presuppositions are critical of didacticism (e.g. equates it with rote-memorization and indoctrination) may view the dominant teacher-centred approach in china as outdated and inferior. such a judgment echoes the ideologically biased assumptions held by some western historians about why a phenomenon (in this case, pedagogical reform in china) does or does not go as it should. alluding to theory-ladenness, sinologists hall and ames (1995) posit, perhaps the chinese do think about, select out, and organize the welter of detail that constitutes their cultural superstructure in ways very different from our own. in order to appreciate an alternative set of cultural dynamics, we must try to get our own world view out of the way (p. 122). it should be added that the problem of investigator bias is not confined to western scholars conducting research on china: the same challenge confronts any researcher who is oblivious to or complacent about one’s ideological imposition on cross-cultural research. investigator bias and theory-ladenness in cross-cultural research current issues in comparative education 91 to address the challenge of investigator bias, the guiding questions mentioned earlier may be useful in directing the researcher’s attention to one’s own world-picture, prior theoretical commitments and possible ideological biases. take for instance the guiding question on the relationship between the researcher’s world-picture (beliefs, values, assumptions, expectations etc.) and one’s research study. a historian who studies the historical development of modernisation in china may, upon self-reflection or consultation with a critical friend, identify elements of her world-picture that are relevant to her research study. examples are a linear and progressive view of history and a eurocentric view of modernisation that ties development to liberal ideals and democratic system. applying the guiding question on how the researcher’s world-picture impinges upon one’s theoretical commitments, observations, perceptions and interpretations of data, the historian may realise that her world-picture has contributed to her unquestioning adoption of and allegiance to the paradigms of impact/response, modernization, and imperialism that were used to analyze the history of china. further relating her worldpicture and theoretical commitment to her research process, she may be aware of the real and/or potential effect of investigator bias on her observations, perceptions and interpretation of data, as well as her conclusions and recommendations. an example of investigator bias is an assessment of china’s modernization in terms of the extent to which it accepts and borrows ‘universal’ (read: western) cultural values, political system and social institutions. cognizance of the above would lead the researcher to re-interpret the same set of data, this time using different theoretical lens and presuppositions. a revised interpretation of the evidential data would in turn assist the researcher in reflecting on and modifying, if necessary, her analytical framework and theoretical assumptions on research on china. for example, the researcher may wish to replace/complement her earlier progressive view of history with a cyclical conception of history. she may also re-define ‘modernization’ from alternative cultural standpoints, one such example being a chinese perspective that sees progress not in a linear fashion but as a return to an idealized confucian past. a scholar who adopts a critical reflective approach to cross-cultural research that is similar to the one recommended in this article is jacques gernet. in his book entitled china and the christian impact: a conflict of cultures, he attributes the chinese’s rejection of western thought transmitted by foreign missionaries not to the dominant western world-picture of the lack of ‘rational thinking’ of the chinese, but to a conflict of cultural worldviews (world-pictures). he problematizes the world-picture of his culture as follows: our [western] own philosophical traditions, which we owe so much to ‘the suggestions stemming from certain grammatical functions’, are founded upon categories considered to be universal and are concerned with abstractions and ideas that are stable. chinese thought, in contrast, recognises only functional classifications and oppositions. it is concerned not with ‘yes’ or ‘no’, being or non-being, but with contraries which succeed, combine with and complement one another; not with eternal realities but with potentialities and tendencies, phases of flowering or decline, in the place of the idea of law as an immutable rule, it favours that of a model or schema for development (gernet, 1985, p. 5, cited in tan, 2016, p. 162). tan current issues in comparative education 92 the dialectics of exploring one’s world-picture and its interaction with observational data also applies to research on policy borrowing in china. the self-reflective process involves clarifying and critiquing one’s definitions and presuppositions of borrowed ideas and practices in china, in particular learner-centeredness, school choice and neoliberalism. for instance, a prevailing assumption in the academic and popular discourse is the association of good education with student-centered education and bad education with teacher-centered education (tan, 2015b). avoiding investigator bias entails appreciating varied and competing interpretations and presuppositions of good education, teacher-centered education, transmission approach etc. that are generated by different world-pictures across cultures. an example is a chinese conception of good teaching as ‘teacher-directed and student-engaged’ where the teacher plays a leading role in transmitting knowledge and promoting active learning in students (tan, 2015a, b, 2016a). a fresh perspective and re-interpretation of observational data may guide the researcher to review her theoretical assumptions of and normative judgments on “global signifiers” (nóvoa & yariv-mashal, 2003) such as student-centered education, constructivism, critical thinking and self-directed learning. far from being standardand ideology-free, these terms and the policies that support them are theory-laden and engender potential clashes of world-pictures. cautioning against “the dangers of western ethnocentrism,” peters (1995) urges scholars to “question the way the modern ‘subject of education’ has been grounded in a european universalism and rationalism heavily buttressed by highly individualist assumptions inherited from enlightenment grand narratives” (pp. 203204). to be sure, the argument that global signifiers are not ideologically-neutral is not new and comparativists have stressed the need to understand local histories, contexts and actors. but the approach recommended in this article goes further by prompting the researcher to explore not only the world-picture(s) of the research subjects but crucially and perhaps more importantly, one’s own. conclusion this paper has attempted to offer an innovative approach to research in the cie field by drawing upon philosophical resources. the suggested approach that is developed from wittgenstein’s writings is aligned with a hermeneutic/interpretive perspective that seeks to add to and improve understanding on a given specific phenomenon for study (crossley, 2009). more, of course, needs to be said about issues relating to investigator bias, theory-ladenness and wittgenstein’s world-picture in the context of cie. some topics for future inquiry include exploring various forms of investigator bias in crosscultural research; the different types, expressions and degrees of theory-ladenness in the conceptual tools and methodologies used in the cie field; the similarities and differences between world-pictures across cultures; the potential and limitations of critiquing and changing one’s theory and world-picture. it is hoped that this essay will alert comparativists to the challenges of investigator bias and theory-ladenness, as well as open up a debate on appropriate responses and innovative methods to address these challenges. charlene tan is associate professor at the national institute of education, nanyang technological university. email: 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(1969). on certainty (uber gewissheit) (d. paul & g.e.m. anscombe, trans.). oxford: basil blackwell. 9. ecopedagogy as a lever for climate justice towards a just transition.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 27, issue 1, special issue 2025 ecopedagogy as a lever for climate justice towards a just transition radhika iyengar climate school, columbia university syed nitas iftekhar bard college beijing office for asia-pacific matthew witenstein dept. of teacher education, educational leadership & policy, university of new mexico karen chand sustainable development solutions network, asia headquarters the article explores critical learning pedagogies focusing on ecopedagogy and emphasizing the importance of adopting a freirean approach to learning as a lifelong commitment to promoting civically engaged and responsible climate action. it moves beyond the conventional standardised methods of environmental education taught in formal institutions with structured syllabi and courses. the article highlights ecopedagogy as a learning philosophy integrated through grassroots actions. we discuss selected global issues, threatening biological, social, and environmental marginalization, as case studies to inform the article’s dialogue. we examine the definition and interpretation of ecopedagogy in the context of paulo freire's vision. we conceptualize ecopedagogy as a pathway to achieving a just transition, described as a framework that ensures workers and communities are not left behind as economies shift to sustainable practices. it focuses on fair wages, new job opportunities, and social support for those affected by changes like the move away from fossil fuels. the article proposes a framework that connects ecopedagogy with just transition through humanization and critical consciousness. to inform the non-existence of a uniform vision for what just transition entails (cha & pastor, 2022), we provide practical applications of this framework in policy and practice, offering recommendations for reconstructing education by implementing ecopedagogy in community-based settings to reconstruct policy aligned to just transition. keywords: ecopedagogy, just transition, india, malaysia, united states (u.s.). introduction the earth is witnessing the climate crisis looming large, interwoven with deep-rooted social and environmental injustices across international, national, and subnational levels. the burden of this crisis falls most severely on the poor and marginalized communities (kashwan et al., 2020). the limitations of globalized, standardized, top-down solutions © 2025, iyengar et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 27(1), 197-215. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en become increasingly apparent. addressing the polycrisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and social-environmental injustices requires not only planet-focused technological innovation but also a fundamental transformation in how we learn to understand our place within the wider web of life and humans’ role towards the inhabitants of planet earth. conventional environment teaching and learning paradigms fall short in fostering the critical awareness and collective action required to address the systemic roots of ecological degradation and inequity. this article explores ecopedagogy—a critical educational approach grounded in paulo freire's (1970/2017) principles’ awareness about social injustices and praxis through pedagogy—as a vital lever for achieving climate justice (misiaszek, 2025). we put forth ecopedagogy and explain its relevance to climate justice, specifically towards ‘just transition’. just transition (jt) is a concept popularized by united nations (un) agencies to bring forward a common global vision around decarbonization, green jobs, and net zero. jt emphasizes the need for a just and equitable shift from extractive industries to sustainable “green” ones (stark et al., 2023). a jt, as defined by the un international labor organization (ilo): conceptual framework in which the labor movement captures the complexities of the transition toward a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy, highlighting public policy needs and aiming to maximize benefits and minimize hardships for workers and their communities in this transformation. we argue that for a shift toward sustainable economies to be fair and equitable, jt should include work toward deep shifts in consciousness and civic engagement. it is marginalized communities that are most vulnerable to the environmental crises. when it comes to top-down policy or global agendas, it is the minorities who get left out or unheard. we propose an ecopedagogical framing of jt to prevent the sidelining of those who are marginalized or on the brink of marginalization. ecopedagogy, with its focus on critical reading of the world, humanization, and conscientization, provides the essential ethical and practical grounding for operationalizing a jt. we will first delve deeper into the theoretical underpinnings of ecopedagogy, drawing connections to freirean thought. we will analyze illustrative case studies from the authors’ local contexts—including challenges related to air pollution and waste management in india, deforestation impacts in malaysia, and wildfire crises in the u.s.—to ground the discussion in real-world struggles and potentials. following this analysis, we propose a conceptual framework linking ecopedagogy and jt, concluding with practical recommendations for implementing ecopedagogical approaches in community settings and shaping supportive policy interventions. ecopedagogy for systemic and participatory change ecopedagogy is an educational approach grounded in brazilian pedagogue paulo freire’s popular education and critical pedagogies, which critically examine how 198 current issues in comparative education ecopedagogy as a lever for climate justice towards a just transition humans perceive themselves concerning the earth and nature in this interconnected and relational world (misiaszek, 2022). it incorporates ecological and sustainability concepts into teaching and learning practices, whether in formal, informal, or non-formal spaces. it represents a holistic approach to education that seeks to cultivate ecologically-minded global citizens equipped to address complex socio-environmental challenges with a perspective that is not anthropocentric, but earth-centric, which includes all ecological and social systems (including human systems) (misiaszek, 2022). raising awareness towards issues is an integral dimension, as is developing planetary consciousness that fosters action towards earth-justice (encompassing social, environmental, economic, and other justices). recognizing the interconnectedness of ecological degradation with social, political, and economic injustices, and an ecopedagogical reading of the jt brings us closer to ending such injustices and human dominance over nature. rooted in paulo freire's critical pedagogy (freire, 1970/2017), ecopedagogy is aligned with the un sustainable development goals (sdgs), particularly those addressing quality education (sdg 4) and climate action (sdg 13). ecopedagogy promotes the reading and re-reading of the intersections of social, political, economic, and environmental systems (misiaszek, 2023). ecopedagogy helps unmask justice-oriented sustainable notions of resilience, adaptation, and mitigation often neglected under the underlying power structures and injustices (see baker, 2019; mahdiani & ungar, 2021; rahman et al., 2023). we use an ecopedagogical framing in the context of jt as a tool for deconstructing these narratives and exposing how they can perpetuate the status quo. consider the concept of adaptation to climate change. while formally defined and promoted globally by the un as a critical component of the long-term response to climate change, aimed at adjusting systems and behaviors to protect people, livelihoods, and ecosystems from climate impacts, its practical application may not be universally beneficial. as mahdiani and ungar (2021) suggest, adaptation can have a dark side, potentially reinforcing existing inequalities or even creating new vulnerabilities. in real-world situations, adaptation manifests differently across socioeconomic lines. for affluent segments, adaptation could mean creating safe micro-environments, insulating themselves from climate change impacts, while for those who cannot afford this luxury, adaptation could take a devastating form of forced endurance and increased physical burden. academics must highlight these issues with real-world examples to build collective action towards a true jt. we use examples from our local contexts, uncovering the underlying and inherent issues that come with jt. these are not representative of the global north or south or the planet as a whole; we put forth in academic dialogue the nuances that could be relevant across nations and must be understood to meaningfully bridge toward building planetary consciousness and transition into an earth-justice-oriented society. the case studies link ecopedagogies and the various pathways in which they could be implemented for moving towards jt. current issues in comparative education 199 the case studies related to air pollution and waste in india, the destruction of the forests in malaysia, and the fires in los angeles, u.s., explain the realities people face in various geographies and showcase the potential that ecopedagogies have to reshape environmental education towards action and jt. the case studies have certain underlying commonalities: the marginalization of communities, the loss of/to humans and nature, and that these issues might appear to be specific to a place, but in reality have global implications. lastly, these case studies have hidden connections between economic, social, and environmental spheres. ecopedagogical framing of cases from india, the u.s., and malaysia air pollution in north india: who are the marginalized? the planet and its inhabitants new delhi and the surrounding metropolitan area, home to approximately 55 million people, had the world’s worst air pollution in 2024, according to iqair1, a swiss company that measures air quality (zhuang, 2024). the reading on its index rose to over 1,600 in november 2024. anything above 301 on that index is considered hazardous, potentially leading to severe eye and throat irritation and serious heart and lung conditions (zhuang, 2024). the u.s. environmental protection agency considers anything above 500 to be high. schools were asked to close due to the risk of children falling ill from the air pollutants in delhi. however, daily wage earners in delhi do not have the luxury of shutting down shop and staying indoors. these individuals at the lower end of the economic spectrum are the ones who suffer the most. according to the labor bureau (2024), there are more than 71,000 individuals who are in the informal sector, earning a minimum wage without any benefits. these people are at the most risk of life-threatening environmental exposure due to the jobs they have. there is no respite for these individuals; meanwhile, others with better economic backgrounds, in the same geographic location, are shielded from the poor air quality to some extent with their windows closed and their air purifiers on. in rich neighborhoods in new delhi, it is a common sight to see air conditioners functioning all day, whereas on the streets, we see drivers, daily wage earners, and street vendors who are engulfed in pollution and heat with no respite. the environmental experiences vary with the income level. exposure to pollution is self-selecting, causing more harm to the marginalized. callo-concha and co-authors(2013) presented a conceptual tool that shows how the non-marginalization of humans cannot be achieved by focusing on one aspect alone, such as creating income-generating opportunities or guaranteeing an improvement in living conditions. humans have failed to live with nature. the livelihood of fishermen is 1 the air quality index measures the density of five pollutants in the air: ground-level ozone, particulates, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. it was established by the u.s. environmental protection agency as a way to communicate to americans the state of the air they are breathing each day. there are pollution monitors at more than 1,000 locations across the country. 200 current issues in comparative education https://www.nytimes.com/article/air-quality-index.html https://www.epa.gov/ground-level-ozone-pollution/ground-level-ozone-basics#effects https://www.epa.gov/ground-level-ozone-pollution/ground-level-ozone-basics#effects https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics https://www.epa.gov/co-pollution https://www.epa.gov/no2-pollution https://www.epa.gov/so2-pollution ecopedagogy as a lever for climate justice towards a just transition getting harder due to a lack of fish near the coastal region (pandey, 2025). how humans set boundaries between nature and our economic means requires reflective practices between nature and human beings. adopting an ecopedagogical framing will allow policymakers to commit to civically engaged and responsible climate action. ecopedagogy takes us away from a more standardized (iftekhar & misiaszek, 2019) approach to planetary issues by uncovering inherent systemic issues that are not just related to the environment but are also affected by socio-economic and cultural factors. ecopedagogy promotes learning from real-world cases through dialogue that offers a fruitful opportunity for policymakers and educators to grasp and apply concepts in their organizations and communities. utilizing ecopedagogy to critique and respond to location-specific issues has the potential to open up pathways for a jt in a truthful manner. jt must ensure that the most vulnerable workers and communities are supported while industries shift toward sustainability. moving to jt will lead to a rethinking of economic means for many, thus the process would protect and empower the marginalized. a shift towards sustainability, or including measures that may be green, needs to be critically looked at, as illustrated by the situation. “the dust is like a bedsheet,” declared rohit mishra when describing the soot that comes from the timarpur-okhla waste to energy plant in delhi, india (abi-habib 2024). hazardous levels of toxic substances have been found near the facility, which turns mountains of trash into electricity. timarpur, sukhdev vihar, and khadda colony neighborhoods in delhi have a 200-foot pile of garbage that looms over them. the 20-story garbage pile will collapse on the people of timarpur or catch fire (abi-habib, 2024). the delhi state government has placed a state-of-the-art plant there to burn the garbage to create green energy. the plant has produced many environmental challenges, including ash dumps and soot layers near the homes, as well as smoke and toxic soil. these neighborhoods have arsenic levels 10 times higher than the epa guidelines, which may cause respiratory, vascular, and cardiovascular diseases (abi-habib, 2024). among other elements in the air is manganese, which is 11 times higher than the epa guidelines and can lead to parkinson’s disease. cadmium is 19 times higher than the epa guidelines and can, with prolonged exposure, lead to toxic effects on the skeletal system and other bone diseases. a large part of exercising ecopedagogy is to organize and to fight (through dialogue, advocacy, and action) against local injustices. the residents, who were the most vulnerable to the adverse effects of the sustainability initiative, sued the plant to stop its operations, and the case is still pending in india’s supreme court. the residents have appealed to the un; however, they were told that the case is in the indian government’s jurisdiction. abi-habib (2024) mentioned that it was the buyers' responsibility to create so much waste. such a situation is an example of a green initiative yielding results at the expense of a local community. ecopedagogy is about educating the masses and guiding people towards a fairer and just circular economy, a system to maximize resource current issues in comparative education 201 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/world/asia/india-air-quality-trash.html efficiency and reduce waste. it provides companies and governments with a toolkit to evaluate the effectiveness of initiatives that are meant to bring a positive change. wildfires in the u.s.: re-reading of climate disasters for planet justice wildfires are no longer restricted to california. dry spells occur in many parts of the u.s., threatening places such as new jersey and new york. fires swept through at least 5,000 acres of land for 10 days and impacted towns on the new york-new jersey border (national drought mitigation center, 2025). hundreds of trees burned down, including the animals that lived in them. 41.67% of the u.s. and 49.84% of the lower 48 states were in a drought the week of january 15–21, 2025 (national drought mitigation center, 2025). these dry spells make the conditions for wildfires more vulnerable. the unusual severity of these wildfires can be attributed to several compounding climate-related factors. the region has received below-average rainfall, and warmer winter temperatures have further dried out vegetation, making the landscape more flammable than usual (national drought mitigation center, 2025). strong winds during the winter season accelerated the spread of the flames, making containment efforts especially difficult for fire crews. these conditions reflect a growing vulnerability in the northeast to climate-driven weather extremes. the impact on local communities was significant. thick smoke reduced air quality across several counties, posing health risks, particularly to children, the elderly, and individuals with respiratory conditions. schools in the affected zones were forced to close temporarily, and some major roads were shut down due to poor visibility and fire proximity (associated press, 2025). beyond the immediate threat to human life and property, the fires caused long-term damage to ecosystems, including the destruction of habitats for native species and scorched areas of protected forestland that could take years to recover (mckay & oladipo, 2025). this event highlights a troubling trend: drought-induced wildfires are no longer confined to the western u.s. as climate change accelerates, it causes shifts in regional weather patterns, resulting in increased fire risks in places previously considered low-risk (parshley, 2025). this reality calls for urgent action. state and local governments in the northeast should revise their emergency preparedness and disaster response strategies to account for wildfires. investments in forest management, early warning systems, and public awareness campaigns are essential. a coordinated, multi-state approach to drought monitoring and climate resilience could play a vital role in adapting to this emerging challenge. with ever-increasing drought and wildfires along with unseasonal rains, landslides, and rising temperatures, ecopedagogy gives an earth-focused lens to connect to climate change and not consider these climatic disasters a one-season or one-off incident to ignore (marcius 2024, november 17). a jt needs to build awareness not only from a standpoint of justice towards humans from the consequences of human actions, but from a standpoint of ecojustice, or justice towards the planet, and vice versa. the wildfire crisis along the new york–new jersey border underscores the growing impact of climate change in traditionally temperate 202 current issues in comparative education https://www.thevibes.com/articles/news/103063/orang-asli-claim-overlogging-destroyed-their-mainwater-source ecopedagogy as a lever for climate justice towards a just transition regions and reinforces the need for a jt—one that acknowledges the intersection of social justice and environmental responsibility. a jt must go beyond protecting human livelihoods and include a commitment to ecojustice, which recognises the planet’s intrinsic rights and the need to restore balance between human activity and natural ecosystems. the path forward must involve building awareness and action that reflects justice toward both people and the planet, recognising that the two are inseparable in the pursuit of sustainable development. developing knowledge of planetary justice through an ecopedagogical lens establishes a strong foundation for meaningful dialogue and action toward a jt away from fossil fuel dependence and environmentally harmful practices. in the context of events like the new york–new jersey wildfires, ecopedagogy encourages students to analyze the scientific causes of drought and fire risk as well as to reflect on their roles as ecological citizens. it challenges traditional, anthropocentric narratives of education, fostering a sense of shared responsibility toward the earth, highlighting the moral imperative to care for human communities and natural systems. integrating ecopedagogy into curricula, educators can cultivate awareness, values, and an action-oriented mindset to navigate the complex realities of the climate crisis and contribute meaningfully to a just and sustainable future (misiaszek, 2020; kopnina & cherniak, 2016). orang asli community of malaysia: raising consciousness from communities a total of 1,074 permanent forest reserve areas in peninsular malaysia, equivalent to 38,376 hectares (over 53,700 football fields), were illegally cleared as of december 31, 2023 (abd malik, 2024). however, the destruction of forests in malaysia is not confined to illegal activities. as land is under the sole jurisdiction of each state, states can legally degazette permanent forest reserves for activities such as logging, agriculture, plantations, mining, and property and infrastructure development. the biggest victims are the indigenous people, known as the orang asli. if you compare us with the rich city folk, then, of course, we would seem poor. but we are not starving. we are still able to feed our families, and we are happy with the way we lead our lives here. but deforestation is threatening our survival and way of life. we can’t farm, we can’t fish, and much of the forest land is taken, making it hard to find materials to practice our rituals. how are we supposed to live? (wan razali & mohamed (n.d.). the above excerpt is from the case of gua musang in kelantan, malaysia, which has seen severe land destruction. for the orang asli community, life is linked to ancestral land passed down from generation to generation. living off the land for the orang asli means using land thoughtfully, respectfully, and carefully, with the understanding that it will be passed onto future generations (wan razali & mohamed, n.d.). indiscriminate and unchecked development has displaced these communities and threatened their survival. water sources are contaminated by upstream logging and development current issues in comparative education 203 activities, causing soil and chemicals to flow into the rivers that the orang asli rely on for bathing, fishing, and drinking water. there have been cases of dangerous encounters with displaced wildlife, including tigers and elephants (mcintyre, 2024; zainudin, 2024). flooding is a perennial problem, but with lucrative revenue streams at stake, the government has little incentive to stop the source of the problem. it adopts an adaptation approach (evacuation, rescue, and relief)each time the floods come. for decades, the orang asli have pushed back, offering to help the state with conservation projects that can contribute to the economy sustainably, but to no avail. the federal government is responsible for issues of the environment in the malaysian constitution, including matters of stewardship, conservation, and sustainable use of natural resources. because jurisdiction over land, water, mining, and forests remains with the state, the federal government can only advise the state but cannot force it to stop making decisions based on what is economically lucrative. ecopedagogy guides bottom-up dialogue with and the inclusion of those affected. it thereby brings forth alternative solutions that are socially just and still economically valuable in a new, sustainable economy. measures to improve a community’s ecological consciousness need to be social justice-driven and grounded in the local context. ecopedagogy: bridging the gap to a jt the case studies discussed above provide pathways that lead to the jt mapped out in figure 1. ecopedagogy, as a theory and process, has the potential to bridge gaps on a policy level in pursuit of jt. it does so by examining and questioning, fostering dialogue (inspired by freire’s [1970/2017] concept of communication), and critical and earth-focused assessment (uncovering) of issues to pursue social, economic, political, and environmental justice within the framing of planetary or earth-justice. ecopedagogy is a lever for climate justice, enabling individuals and communities to engage with the interconnectedness of global issues. it empowers learners to reflect on the causes of climate change and environmental degradation. such reflection can enable them to challenge structures of inequality that perpetuate environmental harm and to uncover the hidden interconnections between oppressions to counter them. figure 1 mindmap to show pathways between ecopedagogy and jt 204 current issues in comparative education https://www.thevibes.com/articles/news/103063/orang-asli-claim-overlogging-destroyed-their-mainwater-source https://www.thevibes.com/articles/news/103063/orang-asli-claim-overlogging-destroyed-their-mainwater-source ecopedagogy as a lever for climate justice towards a just transition core components of ecopedagogy (problem posing, equal participation, dialogue, and praxis—that stem from freire’s critical pedagogy) are achievable with: the awareness of the potential of such a framework to guide policy grounded in local contexts; and with both formal and informal educational frameworks encouraging critical thinking, creativity, active participation, and experiential learning to solve problems (kopnina & bedford, 2024). engaging in critical reading, posing problems, and dialogue helps build a comprehensive understanding of various perspectives. these processes then drive action toward solutions and a praxis-oriented approach leading to real outcomes. hence, these processes contribute to developing a consciousness-based approach to addressing climate injustices (misiaszek, 2023). conscientization, freire (1970/2017) discusses, focuses on understanding the root causes of issues, for example, climate change and pollution, rather than merely acknowledging their presence to act against oppressive realities. rahman and others (2023) explained how top-down approaches may be oppressive when it comes to agenda-setting and may include hegemonic power dynamics, which lead to injustices locally (further marginalising certain communities). this arises when non-local actors and organizations centre the planning on the priorities of donors and certain stakeholders, while not involving communities in decision-making. the disparity of participation and unequal or superficial understandings of local and global action pose a threat to planetary justice. jt should promote bottom-up approaches from an earth perspective rooted in humanisation and conscientization of stakeholders, a process of recognising social, political, and economic contradictions. misiaszek (2019) underscores how freirean pedagogies foster an awareness of the underlying causes of environmental destruction and support human actions that promote social and environmental justice as well as planetary sustainability. ecopedagogy as a means to provide constructive system critique is based on deconstructing dominant narratives, creating consciousness over solely creating awareness towards issues, and moving away from a rudimentary, predominantly anthropocentric view of the global agendas. this shift is fundamental in recognising our interdependence with nature, a prerequisite for jt. ecopedagogy emphasises the interconnectedness of all life, and true to the freirean approach (1970/2017), highlights the importance of protecting the most vulnerable. ecopedagogy helps establish critical links between climate change, drought, and increased wildfire risk, highlighting the need to restore ecological integrity and balance, envisioning alternative futures that are both just and sustainable. power imbalances will lead to a failure in the true fulfilment of principles toward achieving jt. ecopedagogy as a lever to climate justice to move to a justice-oriented society, we should understand the notion of development in education for sustainable development (esd). whose development is it? scholars have raised a critical voice that development in esd implicitly assumes a western model current issues in comparative education 205 of progress (misiaszek, 2019a; iftekhar & misiaszek, 2019; kopnina, 2020; jickling & wals, 2008). a narrow approach to development can lead to the marginalization of indigenous knowledge systems and alternative visions of advancement (glavič, 2020). development is often treated as a linear line of growth. esd operates within the framework of sustainable economic growth. this paradigm may be fundamentally at odds with true ecological sustainability, as infinite growth on a finite planet is inherently problematic (nagata, 2017). esd may not sufficiently encourage students to critically question the very notion of development itself, instead accepting it as an uncontested good (nagata, 2017). such models that do not encourage critical dissection of issues and notions of development can be seen as shallow ecologies (kopnina & bedford, 2024). misiaszek (2019a) put forward the argument of d/development with an ecopedagogical lens to question development for whom and towards what. how humans define development is a question on its own. ecopedagogy’s transformative learning through deep reflection on personal and societal values and assumptions can empower individuals to take action for sustainability and social justice. to stop promoting the neo-liberal development ideas linked with esd, the ecopedagogical lens becomes a critical direction for policy. it will help foster open dialogue about transition challenges, promote critical thinking about long-term planetary sustainability, and encourage innovative solutions to transition-related issues. these elements are crucial for building the broad-based support and engagement necessary for successful transition initiatives. by incorporating these approaches guided by ecopedagogy into education, we can better prepare individuals and communities to understand, support, and actively participate in jt processes. such a foundation is essential to create an informed, engaged citizenry to implement and sustain the complex changes required for a just and sustainable future. shaping practices with an ecopedagogical lens we need to have a broader approach to environmental education with a social-emotional connection to nature, a critical eye towards the colonial perpetuating factors, and the language to express and connect with others. table 1 summarizes some key constructs and practices that could guide ecopedagogical discourse in educational settings. a central aspect of the literature on ecopedagogy (hung, 2017) is its ability to cultivate empathy and forge emotional bonds with nature. through vivid descriptions and explorations of human-nature relationships, literary works evoke visceral responses in readers (monem, 2024; muhsyanur, murugesan, & diwakar, 2024). this emotional engagement allows learners to develop an appreciation for the intricate web of life, creating a foundation for environmental stewardship that extends beyond mere factual knowledge (itle-clark & comaskey, 2020). 206 current issues in comparative education ecopedagogy as a lever for climate justice towards a just transition table 1 key constructs and guiding principles shaping practices key constructs guiding practice reflections critical consciousness who is getting left out and why? how can community practices be more inclusive? action-oriented participation how can collective bottom-up ideas formulate collective action for social good? countering post-colonial tendencies how can one learn from the culture and heritage, and preserve eco-practices in the community? emotional bonding with nature collective practices that help us connect with nature at a deeper level. cultivating empathy cultivating empathy for each other and for nature to help preserve and protect the planet. critical thinking collective discussions and dialogue to counteract pollution and other stresses on nature. creative expression using art in the community spaces to express gratitude, nature inspiration. a crucial element of ecopedagogical literature is its capacity to foster critical thinking (hossain, 2024; walter & kluttz, 2021). presenting diverse perspectives and challenging anthropocentric viewpoints, this approach encourages learners to deconstruct dominant narratives and to examine the ideological underpinnings of environmental discourses (muhsyanur et al., 2024). this critical analysis process enables learners to develop a nuanced understanding of environmental issues and to confront their unconscious biases, leading to more informed and thoughtful engagement with ecological challenges. promoting creative expression is the third key aspect of eco-pedagogical literature (abed, 2024). it recognizes the power of artistic and written responses in articulating environmental concerns and envisioning sustainable futures (muhsyanur et al., 2024). by engaging with various literary genres such as poetry, fiction, and personal narratives, learners are empowered to find their voices and to understand others who contribute to the ongoing discourse on environmental issues. this creative dimension enhances the learner’s communication skills and allows them to explore innovative solutions and alternative ecological futures. freire (1994) in pedagogy of hope proposed to overcome lopsided communication in a non-idealistic but ontological manner by acting in the world to transform oppressive conditions. the integration of these 3 aspects, emotional connection with earth and inhabitants, critical thinking towards perpetuating issues, and creative expression to understand the self and others, creates an inclusive approach to environmental education. transcending common classroom boundaries and embracing diverse cultural narratives, ecopedagogy current issues in comparative education 207 helps learners become active changemakers and responsible global citizens (muhsyanur et al., 2024; misiaszek, 2019a). this multifaceted approach enhances environmental literacy and fosters a deeper sense of connection and responsibility towards the natural world, paving the way for more sustainable and environmentally conscious societies. advocating for jt policies grounded in ecopedagogy this article advocates for ecopedagogy as a tool to guide policy and practices to help situate our understanding of the world and the community practices as a power to resist planetary oppressions. using case studies from india and the u.s., iyengar and iyengar (2024) suggest that such spaces exist at the township and city levels; however, citizens are not equipped with the skills to inform policy dialogues in the most informed manner. creating more spaces for dialogues and discussions to co-create knowledge will aid in making the local government representatives more accountable with an informed citizenry (rhonda, 2013). physical spaces in towns are re-conceptualised, prioritising the creation of green, accessible public areas that foster community interaction and promote well-being (all things urban team, 2023). libraries are incorporating outdoor spaces like courtyards and terraces to extend activities beyond the building and connect with the surrounding environment (pierce, 2021). table 2 key constructs and guiding principles shaping policies key constructs guiding policy reflections creating spaces for dialogues cities and towns need to be reimagined to bring people together in spaces to facilitate informal dialogues ecopedagogies in the post-truth era critical pedagogies for social media to prevent further polarisation are required. table 2 demonstrates that the space for dialogue cannot be restricted to physical spaces. cultivating ecopedagogical literacies in the era of post-truth is more important than ever, including on social media. as misiaszek (2019b) states, intensifying post-truthism distorts concepts of development to ignore or falsely justify socio-environmental violence, increase polarization that justifies socio-environmental violence upon them, and ignore or falsify the laws of nature. examples of this are prevalent on multiple social media platforms and mislead the masses all over the world. mainstream narratives that lead us away from jt can be countered with ecopedagogical literacy. conclusion: jt, the ecopedagogy imperative equity and inclusivity, cornerstone principles of jt, are addressed by ecopedagogy by recognizing that environmental issues disproportionately impact marginalized communities. this was elaborated in the example of communities in delhi bearing the 208 current issues in comparative education ecopedagogy as a lever for climate justice towards a just transition brunt of pollution from the waste plant. in the case of the orang asli, indigenous communities are denied their right to ancestral lands and livelihoods. an ecopedagogical framing of jt would prioritize the rights of these groups, involve them in decision-making, and ensure their benefit (direct or indirect) from conservation efforts or development. jt, from an ecopedagogy perspective, brings the focus to equitable solutions, especially community-based solutions tailored by and towards local needs and contexts, ensuring the jt is relevant and appropriate. jt requires that vulnerable members in the ecosphere have a voice in shaping their futures and the futures of the natural world. community empowerment becomes imperative toward prioritizing and voicing the rights of the marginalized. ecopedagogy fosters participatory approaches and demands accountability on the part of stakeholders to ensure that development is not framed by globalisation from above. shallow ecological models do not address or critically examine power structures or injustices; for example, in the case of daily wage earners in delhi severely facing health risks due to air pollution. jt grounded in ecopedagogy would reveal disproportionate injustices to demand pollution control, address health impacts, and provide access to healthcare. other solutions include transitioning away from polluting industries to prioritize the health and well-being of those who suffer the most, including the communities and the earth. to achieve jt, it is important to debunk the myth that human well-being can be divorced from the earth's well-being and to carry this dialogue forward. radhika iyengar radhika iyengar is a research scholar and the director of education at the center for sustainable development, climate school, columbia university. she leads the education for sustainable development initiatives and international education development as a practitioner, researcher, teacher, and manager. she has written numerous books and articles on education for sustainable development. her recent publication investigates community-based environmental factors that foster environmental education. dr iyengar received the prestigious early career award from teachers college, columbia university in 2020. she serves as a board member for numerous environmental ngos. syed nitas iftekhar syed nitas serves as the director of education programs at bard college, beijing office for the asia-pacific region, leading the development and implementation of location-based programs that connect educational theory with extra-curricular experiences for youth. his programs with bard happen across various locations in asia and europe, addressing critical issues such as environmental sustainability, media literacy, and global citizenship. his work incorporates ecopedagogy theory and is characterised by creative learning activities, critical inquiry, action-oriented learning, and dialogue, designed to foster a deep understanding and practical engagement with global challenges. current issues in comparative education 209 matthew witenstein matthew a. witenstein is an associate professor in the department of teacher education, educational leadership and policy at the university of new mexico (unm). he also serves as a senior research fellow, school of educational studies at claremont graduate university. his us work focuses on immigrants in higher education and international educational experiences, while his international/comparative education research focuses on higher education quality, organization, and governance issues. he is co-editor of the palgrave macmillan book series “south asian education policy, research and practice”, associate editor of comparative education review, and co-author of the upcoming bloomsbury publishing textbook comparative and international education: an introduction. he has been an invited speaker at higher education institutions, the ministry, and government agencies throughout south africa, the us, and south asia. karen chand karen is the director of education studies at the sdsn's asia headquarters. she is spearheading efforts under the mission 4.7 initiative to transform k-12 education in the asia pacific by making sustainable development a key feature of national curricula. karen was previously the director of strategy and operations at the jeffrey sachs center on sustainable development at sunway university, malaysia. she formerly led the development and delivery of senior-level public sector executive education programs and research on public sector improvement for malaysia. she began her career as a strategy consultant at pwc. references abed, s. n. 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education (cice), volume 26, issue 2, special issue 2024 rethinking emotional engagement in human rights education through affective justice michalinos zembylas open university of cyprus and nelson mandela university, south africa this conceptual paper suggests the notion of ‘affective justice’ as a means to critically address the problem of sentimentalism within human rights education (hre). originating in sociolegal studies affective justice focuses on how legal frameworks for human rights generate embodied, affective experiences that allow learners to engage deeply with notions of justice. by examining how these affective dimensions shape learners’ understanding of human rights, the paper argues that affective justice offers a valuable framework for countering critiques that emotional engagement with human suffering risks devolving into ‘cheap sentimentality.’ the analysis suggests that affective justice not only enriches hre theory but also fosters meaningful, reflective practices among learners. the paper concludes by outlining future research directions to further explore how affective justice might be applied in educational contexts to deepen critical engagement with human rights and promote ethically grounded responses to global injustice. keywords: sentimentalism, human rights education; affective justice; theory; emotion/affect. introduction sentimentalism in human rights education (hre) refers to the tendency to evoke strong emotions in learners through exposure to stories of suffering or injustice without fostering deeper and more critical engagement (zembylas, 2016). the intention is for learners to develop more empathy, sympathy, and compassion through such exposure. however, while emotional responses can be powerful in the process of learning about human rights, sentimentalism risks oversimplifying complex issues. this may entail reducing learners’ reactions to transient feelings of pity or sympathy that may not translate into meaningful understanding or action. hannah arendt (1994) used the term “cheap sentimentality” to warn against emotional engagement that lacks a foundation in thoughtful and ethical reflection as it can lead to superficial responses rather than a sustained commitment to justice (p. 251). applied to this conceptual paper, the design and implementation of hre can run the risk of falling into the trap of “cheap sentimentality” arendt (1994) discussed. an ongoing challenge for hre scholars and practitioners is the question of how to develop theory and practice that circumvent superficial sentimentalism and guide learners toward a balanced approach combining affective engagement with critical analysis and ethical responsibility. © 2024, zembylas. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 26(2), 77-93. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en rethinking emotional engagement in human rights education through affective justice this conceptual paper introduces the notion of affective justice as a tool to critically address the risks of sentimentalism in hre. originating in sociolegal studies, affective justice emphasizes how legal frameworks for human rights produce embodied, affective experiences that enable deeper engagement with justice (clarke, 2019). kamari maxine clarke (2019) defines affective justice as “people’s embodied engagements with the production of justice through particular structures of power, history, and contingencies” (p. 5). clarke (2019) highlights the need for a balanced approach that combines emotional engagement with awareness of the structural dimensions of justice and power. this paper draws on affective justice to explore how human rights as legal instruments shape affective and embodied experiences, through which learners interpret and enact their understandings of human rights and justice. by examining how emotions influence learners’ perceptions, this paper argues that affective justice provides a robust framework to counter critiques that emotional engagement with human suffering may lead to superficial or “cheap” sentimentality. this paper extends the concept of affective justice and its three interrelated components (clarke, 2019) to articulate how understandings and practices of justice and human rights in the context of hre are affective. these three components—legal technocratic practices, embodied affects, and emotional regimes—come together to provide compelling conceptual tools for exploring the affective mobilization of human rights and justice in hre. the analysis discusses how the concept of affective justice may help scholars and practitioners in hre to pay attention to the complexities of efforts to inspire such feelings in learners while avoiding the pitfalls of sentimentalism in education. the field of hre is situated between two major critiques. on the one hand, the literature has criticized hre for promoting a predominantly juridical approach—one that frames human rights primarily as legal entitlements. this emphasis risks neglecting the affective and embodied aspects of human rights violations globally, potentially leading learners to adopt a detached, rationalist view of human rights (e.g., zembylas & keet, 2018, 2019). on the other hand, critics warn against an uncritical sentimental approach in hre that uses narratives of suffering merely to ‘emotionalize’ human rights learning in superficial ways as it can trivialize complex issues (zembylas, 2016). sentimentalism in hre should not be framed as an either/or choice. a third pathway exists. understanding and learning about human rights occurs through a juridical lens and in relation to the affective and embodied realities of human suffering. the combination of both can enable educators and scholars to grasp the nuanced interplay between human rights as legal frameworks and as lived felt experiences. this is where the concept of affective justice provides a lens that integrates legal understanding with emotional and embodied dimensions of justice. such a framework can create a more holistic and transformative approach to hre. this paper aims to expand the theoretical and analytical toolkit available to hre scholars and practitioners. by theorizing affective 78 current issues in comparative education zembylas justice, this paper seeks to illuminate how human rights can be understood not just as legal instruments, but also as embodied, emotional experiences that shape how learners come to comprehend, challenge, and advocate for human rights and justice. while it draws upon relevant literature in human rights historiography and pedagogy, its central purpose is conceptual—to propose affective justice as a generative lens for reconsidering the intersections of emotion, law, and social change within the domain of hre. this theoretical intervention may spur further applied inquiry into the affective dimensions of hre, both in terms of scholarship and practice. the paper unfolds in four sections. first, it examines emotion’s role in human rights historiography, discussing how anti-emotionalism has influenced the united nations’ (un) approaches to human rights and humanitarian issues. second, it analyzes sentimental education of human rights, addressing critiques of suffering-centered narratives in hre while exploring recent proposals to move beyond these limitations. third, the paper discusses the concept of affective justice and demonstrates how it enriches our understanding of human rights and justice. finally, applying this framework to hre the paper shows how such lens can productively bridge the gap between human rights as legal instruments and as embodied experiences while remaining mindful of the pitfalls of sentimental approaches. emotion in the historiography of human rights the body of scholarship dedicated to exploring histories of emotion has risen since the turn of the 21st century (e.g., plamper, 2015; reddy, 2001; rosenwein, 2005). despite these developments, the intersections between human rights and histories of emotion “have been unusually few” (burke, 2017b, p. 125). roland burke (2017b) examines how: for a subject that necessarily speaks to some of the most primordial concerns and needs of the human person, the study of the postwar human rights project has often been sterilized of passion. […] the disciplinary formations that tended to dominate the scholarship have been impersonal and structural; long catalogues of legal treatises and procedural evolutions, intricate disquisitions of the philosophical basis for particular sets of rights, and highly theorized analyses of the political order implicit in the international human rights system. (p. 125) there have been exceptions, of course, such as the work of lynn hunt (2007), who provides a history of human rights that recognizes the crucial role of empathy (‘sympathy’ in the 18th century) in coming to imagine that all humans are equal. the author’s analysis of the 18th-century novel and its sentimentalism (see also, schuller, 2018) makes the important point that all people are fundamentally similar because of their inner feelings. hunt’s (2007) discussion of torture and cruel punishments is crucial in understanding how the dominant way of thinking rooted in instilling pain in others current issues in comparative education 79 rethinking emotional engagement in human rights education through affective justice fell apart and was replaced by a new understanding that recognized in all people the same sentiments. burke’s (2017a, 2017b, 2020) analysis traces a significant shift in the role of emotion within the historiography of human rights over the past two centuries. the histories of 18th and 19th-century social movements, such as abolitionism, demonstrate that the latter successfully incorporated emotion to mobilize humanitarian and human rights projects. however, the postwar period from 1950 to 1980 reveals an interesting ambivalence. human rights diplomacy at the un during this time exhibited an anti-emotional tendency, perceiving emotionalism as pejorative, particularly within the united states (burke, 2020). in contrast, the history of modern rights movements shows that emotional mobilization is crucial to human rights advocacy (burke, 2017a, 2017b). according to burke (2017b), the postwar human rights movements built upon the empathetic mobilizations of the abolitionist movement that came before. while these later human rights efforts manifested in diverse ways and addressed diverse causes, burke asserts they were ultimately driven by the same deep-rooted, centuries-old impulse—the power of human empathy. revisiting the emotional history of modern human rights movements, then, reminds us that mobilizing emotions is important for the promotion of human rights. for example, keys (2014) shows that human rights in the united states (us) during the 1970s moved to the center of public concern as a response to dramatic events such as the civil rights movement and the vietnam war. human rights mobilization during this time entailed an emotional dimension that reacted to the us’s foreign policy failings (keys, 2014). the emotions of guilt and shame emerging from the vietnam war played a significant role in us political debates between liberals and conservatives, who interpreted these and other emotions (e.g., patriotism) differently. keys’ (2014) attention to emotions and their influence on human rights mobilizations highlights that exploring human rights through the lens of emotion is important in human rights theory and practice. contrary to the vital role of emotion in human rights movements, human rights diplomacy has historically displayed a marked hostility toward emotionalism. in his analysis of un human rights diplomacy from 1950-1980, burke (2017a, 2017b, 2020) identifies a clear “unease about any emotional component to human rights advocacy” (2017b, p. 128)—what he describes as a “structural feature of western diplomacy and rights advocacy” (burke, 2017b, p. 128). the historiography of human rights highlights the importance of emotion in this field of activism and struggle. it also reveals diplomats’ persistent reluctance to openly embrace emotion as a legitimate source of power and influence. specifically, burke (2020) analyzes how a “self-conscious aversion to ‘emotionalism’” (p. 306) has shaped american engagement with human rights and humanitarian issues from the early 1950s onward. this dynamic, burke (2020) argues, relied on an unhelpful binary that denigrated emotion—readily identified in other countries—“as a marker of immaturity and impropriety” (p. 307). 80 current issues in comparative education zembylas in the immediate years after the adoption of the 1948 universal declaration of human rights (udhr), which inspired countless human rights movements in subsequent decades, hope was abundant especially among ‘third world’1 representatives in the un’s commission on human rights (burke, 2017a, 2017b, 2020). in this initial period of the un, “the battle for the soul of human rights was defined by hyper-ambitious developing countries versus quibbling, and allegedly heartless, legalists from the western world” (burke, 2017b, p. 129). for example, third world diplomats were accused of voting based on ‘feelings’ (e.g. concerning south africa’s apartheid regime or the israeli-arab conflict). the us delegations in the decades following the 1950s expressed their skepticism about the ‘emotional’ approach to diplomacy that developing countries adopted (burke, 2017b). the hopeful outlook that had previously characterized the human rights movement underwent a significant shift in the decades following the 1960s and 1970s (burke, 2017a). during this period, according to burke (2017a), a palpable mood of anger and rage dominated the un’s human rights program. this shift occurred as it became increasingly apparent that the world’s major powers, including western nations and the soviet bloc, remained largely oblivious to the cries of vulnerable countries who fought for decolonization and liberation struggles. instead, these powers had adopted a narrowly legalistic, juridically codified view of human rights (burke, 2017b). this brief and certainly incomplete historiography of emotion in human rights movements and diplomacy highlights two important insights into human rights theory and practice. first, while older human rights movements from the eighteenth 18th and 19th centuries were overtly sentimentalist in language to purposely invoke empathy, postwar human rights movements seemed to have become gradually more modest (burke, 2017b). human rights diplomacy, especially that of western powers, was consciously anti-emotional, branding any responses from third world countries as overly sentimentalist (burke, 2017a, 2017b, 2020). the second insight is that regardless of this discrepancy about the role of emotion—i.e., aversion to emotionalism in human rights diplomacy at the states’ level; embrace of emotions in human rights advocacy at the level of social movements—emotions are crucial in understanding and advancing human rights. paying attention to the emotional dimension of human rights, then, is an important aspect of human rights theory and practice. the next section discusses how a sentimental education of human rights can entail risks that should be addressed to overcome the skepticism that exists from bringing into the classroom sentimental narratives about the suffering of humanity. 1 although the term ‘third world’ has since been critiqued and abandoned, this is the term burke uses (following the historical use of the term in the initial period of the un), so i want to be consistent with both history and the literature. current issues in comparative education 81 rethinking emotional engagement in human rights education through affective justice navigating the pitfalls of sentimental human rights education two major concerns have been expressed in recent years in debates about the philosophical and moral foundations of human rights and hre (zembylas & keet, 2018, 2019). on the one hand, a purely juridical foundation of hre may lead learners to an impersonal and rationalist understanding of human rights. on the other hand, an overly sentimental approach that aims to invoke certain emotions (e.g., empathy) about human rights violations and injustices may lead learners to superficial or ‘cheap’ sentimentality. both of these concerns highlight the need to find a balance in the interplay of human rights as both legal instruments and affective embodiments. an either/or approach is unproductive; a binary understanding is unreflective of the complexities entailed in understandings and practices of human rights. over 25 years ago, richard rorty (1998) proposed an approach to the education of human rights that focused on the concept of ‘sentimental education.’ rorty (1998) contended that the emergence and spread of human rights culture owed more to evoking emotional narratives and empathy than to simply increasing moral knowledge. he argued that what is truly needed is cultivating “an increasing ability to see the similarities between ourselves and people very unlike us as outweighing the differences” (rorty, 1998, p. 181). the aim of this sentimental approach to the education of human rights is to foster sympathy and solidarity, which would make individuals less inclined to view those who are different from themselves as somehow less than human (rorty, 1998). other discussions of rorty’s views highlight how sentimental education represents a broader cultural, historical, and political project focused on re-educating people as emotional and moral beings, rather than just as rational actors (barreto, 2011, 2017). previous research argues that rorty makes a significant contribution to discussions surrounding the role of emotions, particularly sympathy and solidarity, in the context of human rights and hre. however, there are two major pitfalls to his proposition (zembylas, 2016). first, the line between ‘sentimental education’ and ‘affective indoctrination’ (zembylas, 2022) is thin. as rorty (1998) himself points out, we achieve better results if we try to “manipulate” (p. 176) people’s feelings by telling them sad and sentimental stories like uncle tom’s cabin2 that stir sympathy for others whose rights are violated. as he writes: “the goal of this sort of manipulation of sentiment is to expand the reference of the terms ‘our kind of people’ and ‘people like us’” (rorty, 1998, p. 176). affective indoctrination—understood as the emotional coercion or manipulation that, arguably, any form of education might use to be effective—is likely to invoke harm in learners, even if it is justified under the premise of good intentions (zembylas, 2022). 2 uncle tom’s cabin (1852) by harriet beecher stowe is an anti-slavery novel that follows the lives of enslaved individuals, particularly uncle tom, a deeply religious and compassionate man who endures cruelty under different owners. through its emotional storytelling, the novel seeks to evoke sympathy and inspire moral outrage against slavery. 82 current issues in comparative education zembylas rorty’s proposition for sentimental education may constitute a form of affective indoctrination in that it entails a conscious ‘manipulation’ of learners’ feelings. the second problem is that rorty’s proposition for sentimental education may unwillingly invoke uncritically and cheap sentimentality in two ways (zembylas, 2016). first, by reducing justice to individuals’ feelings of sympathy and solidarity, there is a risk of backgrounding structural conditions of inequality; and, second, by assuming that promoting sympathy and solidarity will automatically lead to transformative action, there is a risk of instilling pity and what megan boler (1999) calls ‘ passive empathy’. the former way entails the danger of individualizing and psychologizing human rights violations and injustices, leaving it up to the individual to take action rather than encouraging structural changes. the latter limits itself to a superficial sentimentalist reaction in which individuals feel momentarily ‘bad’ for witnessing others’ pain and then move on with their everyday lives. both of these concerns are also raised in berlant’s (1998, 2000) landmark critique of sentimental narratives that injustices and human rights violations cannot be reduced to feeling bad about others’ pain. in response to the question of how to sensitize individuals and societies in contemporary times to respond to global human rights violations, barreto (2017) suggests bringing these two perspectives together: being an individual and collective endeavor, the actualization or strengthening of the human rights culture is to be pursued in a long-term process aimed at advancing the sentimental education of individuals and societies concerning the virtue of sympathy – a “global moral warming” of the political culture of our times. (p. 68) according to barreto (2017), the resources based on which to advance this sensibilization are to be found in a variety of spheres, including religion, philosophy, science, ethics, law, literature, and the arts. the project of advancing the sentimental education of individuals and societies in human rights and hre is based on the idea that sentimental narratives will sensitize individuals and societies, leading them to take transformative action. however, as noted earlier, these assumptions are pragmatically and morally questionable. as woodward (2004) reminds us: the experience of being moved by these sentimental scenes of suffering, whose ostensible purpose is to awaken us to redress injustice, works instead to return us to a private world far removed from the public sphere. hence, in a crippling contradiction […] the result of such empathetic identification is not the impulse to action but rather a “passive” posture. […] the genre of the sentimental narrative itself is morally bankrupt. (p. 71) this critique highlights the risks of narratives of sentimentality such as voyeurism and passivity; these risks evoke superficial feelings of sympathy and pity for sufferers, rather current issues in comparative education 83 rethinking emotional engagement in human rights education through affective justice than transformative actions that make a difference in sufferers’ lives (zembylas, 2016). it is for this reason that in this paper i have argued for a critical-sentimental orientation in hre, namely, an approach that values sentimental education as a point of departure for nurturing the role of emotion in human rights and humanitarian struggles, yet it takes a critical stance towards the fetishization and sentimentalization of narratives of suffering. a critical sentimental education in hre approaches stories of human rights violations and injustices with both criticality and affective engagement, highlighting the importance of criticality towards structures of power and injustice and inspiring affective engagement that addresses human rights violations through specific actions (zembylas, 2016). i have claimed that there are three important dimensions for a critical sentimental education of human rights. first, a critical orientation to sentimental education of human rights does not only recognize the role of emotions and suffering in human rights struggles and injustices but also identifies and addresses the dangers of cheap sentimentality. second, a critical orientation to sentimental education of human rights offers an alternative vision of agency and solidarity for learners, by engaging them in pragmatic everyday actions that lay the seeds for systemic and structural change. third, a critical orientation to sentimental education of human rights creates pedagogical spaces for cultivating self-empowerment, solidarity, and action-oriented empathy with others. these three dimensions provide a conceptual grounding for reframing the sentimental education of human rights in ways that address productively the concerns described earlier. however, this grounding would benefit from other concepts to address the risks of superficial sentimentality in the design, implementation, and delivery of hre. one of these concepts, as suggested next, is affective justice. affective justice and human rights clarke (2019) discusses the notion of affective justice to highlight that the production of justice is entangled with affects and embodied practices that are embedded in structures of power and history. seeing justice through the workings of these affective embodiments demonstrates that justice mobilizations do not gain their power through legalistic processes, but rather through the entanglements between legal and embodied practices (clarke, 2019). for example, legal instruments such as the udhr and subsequent covenants on civic, political, and economic rights make sense through practices that are manifest as both legal processes and embodied practices. seen through this lens, affective justice “reflects the way that people come to understand, challenge, and influence legal orders through the biopolitical instrumentalization of technocratic knowledge as well as through their affective embodiments, interjections, and social actions” (clarke, 2019, p. 5). it may be argued, then, that the notion of affective justice provides a way of conceptualizing how affects are intertwined with justice and human rights as discourses, practices, and legal orders. 84 current issues in comparative education zembylas justice and human rights as discourses, practices, and legal orders cannot be fully grasped without attending to “the various affects that are grounded in the deep-seated histories and inequalities whose dispositions are sometimes already inscribed in people's psychic or emotional worlds” (clarke, 2019, p. 8). the feelings of injustice expressed through anger by black communities in the us constitute a key component of mobilizations against racial oppression and human rights violations. these affective responses are inextricably linked to complex histories of slavery and structural inequalities. to understand human rights mobilizations, it is crucial to examine how the legacies of the past continue to shape people’s embodied and emotional experiences. comprehending justice and human rights within a specific site requires exploring not only the formal application of human rights as legal frameworks but also the complex affective landscapes through which individuals and communities come to ‘feel’ and engage with human rights and justice in their everyday lives. this emphasis on the affective dimensions of understanding and learning about human rights occurs not solely through a juridical lens for hre. by incorporating an analysis of affective justice, hre can move beyond a narrow focus on the legal and institutional aspects of human rights and instead cultivate deeper understandings of how the lived, emotional experiences of rights-holders shape their capacities for critical consciousness, empowerment, and social transformation. by foregrounding the role of emotion, embodied experience, and the effects of history and power, the affective justice lens can enable more contextually grounded and critically informed approaches to teaching and learning about human rights. rather than presenting human rights as abstract legal principles, hre informed by affective justice can cultivate a deeper engagement with how rights are felt, negotiated, and enacted in the lived realities of diverse rights-holders and communities. this, in turn, can encourage learners to engage more meaningfully with human rights as transformative tools for addressing systemic injustices and promoting social change. in the following, i discuss in more detail the components of this framework. the last section of the paper focuses on the contributions of this approach to hre. clarke’s (2019) framework of affective justice consists of three key components: legal technocratic practices, embodied affects, and emotional regimes. analyzing these interrelated elements can help scholars recognize that human rights instruments, such as the udhr, are not neutral tools that inherently create justice. they operate within complex fields shaped by histories, power relations, and structural inequalities. human rights instruments can serve to reproduce the very power structures that have influenced their development and application. however, they also embody spaces where global and local manifestations of human rights can play out in new, potentially more transformative ways. understanding these nuanced complexities is crucial for examining how human rights discourses and practices should be promoted and engaged in different contexts around the world. current issues in comparative education 85 rethinking emotional engagement in human rights education through affective justice legal technocratic practices the first component that underlies clarke’s (2019) framework of affective justice is legal technocratic practices. according to clarke, this component examines how legal codes, instruments, and procedures are formulated and then leveraged to exercise power over bodies and communities. for instance, in the journey leading up to the drafting, negotiation, and ratification of the udhr, as well as subsequent international human rights covenants, the process was imbued with a range of affects and emotions. the diplomatic deliberations, political bargaining, and cultural translations involved in codifying these landmark documents gave rise to feelings of hope, frustration, compromise, and historical significance among the various stakeholders. similarly, the management of human rights violations in different contexts produces classifications of ‘perpetrators’ and ‘victims,’ which are underpinned by affective narratives and visual representations about the suffering of those whose rights have been abused. these legal technocratic practices of categorization and representation can have profound emotional resonances, shaping public sympathies and mobilizations around human rights issues. clarke (2019) argues that these legal technocratic practices often work to displace or background other conceptualizations of human rights. for example, the formal legal language and jurisprudence of human rights can sometimes obscure the deep-seated political, economic, and historical factors driving mass rights violations. comprehending the affective dimensions of these juridical perspectives is therefore vital for grasping the complex realities of human rights in practice. embodied affects the second component of clarke’s (2019) framework is embodied affects—how physical, bodily experiences of emotion become embedded within particular social and cultural conditions. for example, powerful sentiments like anger, pain, and hope are often deeply felt and manifested through the body concerning global and local human rights controversies. when people feel that their rights have been violated and that justice has not been delivered, these embodied affective experiences can produce powerful forms of refusal, resistance, or attempts to redirect the emotional effects into alternative practices and understandings. clarke provides illuminating examples of how such processes of actively refusing, directing, and redirecting the meanings of justice and human rights can shift perceptions of culpability and instill empathy in particular directions. sentimental narratives of human suffering, for instance, may operate as key resources through which embodied affects and understandings about rights and justice are generated, circulated, and transformed. how activists, survivors, and bystanders physically inhabit, express and mobilize these sentimental portrayals of violation and injustice can have profound impacts on how human rights issues are framed, responded to, and ultimately engaged with by diverse audiences. importantly, these embodied affective experiences are always grounded within specific social, cultural, historical, and political contexts. the physical sensations, emotional registers, and expressive practices associated with human rights struggles are never autonomous or universal but are profoundly shaped by the particularities of people’s lived realities, identities, and 86 current issues in comparative education zembylas positionalities. attending to the component of embodied affects, therefore, requires situating human rights within the complex intersections of the body, affect, and the social conditions that structure how rights are felt, articulated, and mobilized. emotional regimes the third component that underlies clarke’s (2019) framework of affective justice is emotional regimes. this component is intimately connected to the other two, as it involves the normative emotions, emotional displays and embodied affects that shape understandings and practices of human rights and justice. the notion of emotional regimes, drawn from reddy (2001), refers to the “set of normative emotions and the official rituals, practices, and emotions that express and inculcate them” (p. 129) within a given social and cultural context. clarke (2019) uses this concept to examine how these emotional regimes shape the affective climates that underpin people's engagement with human rights issues. for example, public campaigns that frame human rights as universal and non-discriminatory instruments serve to reinforce affective, embodied, and discursive meanings of inclusion. as clarke (2019) explains, “appeals to sympathy or empathy mobilize the power to activate citizens, crafting the human rights citizen-consumer as an actor who has choices about what to prefer and how to engage” (p. 19). in this way, particular emotional norms and imaginaries are produced and circulated about human rights. however, people’s actual emotional responses may not always align with the dominant emotional regimes operating within a specific site. individuals and communities may experience, express, and redirect their feelings about human rights and justice in ways that resist or transform the normative emotional landscapes. attending to this third component of emotional regimes is therefore essential for grasping the full complexity of how affects, embodied experiences and legal-political frameworks intersect in the lived realities of human rights. hre and affective justice this last section proposes that the concept of affective justice holds significant conceptual potential to enrich the field of hre. by offering a framework that foregrounds the role of emotion, embodiment, and situated cultural contexts in human rights, affective justice enables scholars and practitioners in hre to address the limitations and pitfalls of sentimentalism in productive ways. the notion of affective justice provides a means of articulating the affective and embodied dimensions of justice and human rights, reorienting understandings, and practices in both critical and emotive terms. this conceptual lens can expand the vocabulary available to hre theorists and educators, turning greater attention to the affective modes through which learners see, engage with, feel, and speak about human rights and their violations. building on this foundation, this section outlines how the framework of affective justice can inspire new affective, moral, and political imaginaries within the field of hre. by emphasizing the centrality of emotion, embodiment, and social context, affective justice current issues in comparative education 87 rethinking emotional engagement in human rights education through affective justice offers a generative pathway for reconceiving the pedagogical approaches, curricular materials, and learning objectives that animate hre theory and practice. an affective justice-informed approach to hre might prioritize cultivating learners’ capacities for empathetic engagement, embodied understanding, and critical self-reflection around the complex, culturally situated realities of human rights struggles. rather than presenting human rights as abstract legal principles, this perspective encourages educators to facilitate deeper explorations of how rights are felt, negotiated, and enacted in the lived experiences of diverse rights-holders and communities. ultimately, the aim is to demonstrate how the conceptual lens of affective justice can enable more holistic, contextualized, and transformative approaches to human rights learning and teaching. by bridging the affective and the juridical, this framework holds the potential to mobilize the emotional, ethical, and political dimensions of human rights in ways that empower learners to become more engaged, empathetic, and effective advocates for justice. the concept of affective justice offers hre scholars a valuable theoretical framework for situating justice and human rights within the realm of embodied affects. this approach foregrounds how the enactment and expression of emotions are fundamentally shaped by historical, social, and political contexts. for example, when learners within a particular setting feel and articulate their affective responses to human rights violations, these embodied practices directly inform what ultimately comes to be understood and accepted as justice and human rights. by introducing a conceptual language that illuminates the inextricable links between affective practices and normative understandings of justice and rights, the affective justice framework enables hre scholars and practitioners to examine these processes in much greater nuance. they can trace how certain situated conceptions of justice and human rights become produced and consolidated through the very emotional expressions they give rise to. to illustrate this, consider a community that has experienced systemic discrimination and abuse of their rights. within this community, feelings of anger, trauma, and a deep sense of injustice may manifest in public protests, grassroots organizing, impassioned calls for accountability, and educational settings. the affective register of these actions—the embodied ways in which rights-holders articulate their suffering and demand redress—directly shapes what ‘justice’ comes to mean and demand in that setting. conversely, the dominant emotional regimes and norms upheld by state institutions or international bodies may work to delegitimize or sideline the affective articulations of marginalized groups, privileging alternative justice imaginaries. by foregrounding these dynamics, the affective justice framework enables hre scholars and practitioners to move beyond simplistic notions of human rights as abstract legal instruments. instead, they can illuminate the contingent, culturally embedded processes through which the very meanings and practices of justice and rights are continually negotiated, contested, and transformed through affective modes of engagement. this, in turn, can inform more contextually grounded, critically-reflective approaches to hre. 88 current issues in comparative education zembylas the second component of clarke’s (2019) affective justice framework—that of embodied affects—offers particularly generative insights for scholars and practitioners in the field of hre. this lens provides guidance to closely examine the entanglements between affects/emotions and the discourses surrounding justice and human rights, as these play out within specific cultural, historical, and political settings (zembylas, 2023). for instance, studying these affective entanglements in a postcolonial context such as australia, canada, and south africa may help hre scholars identify how learners, educators, and their broader communities express embodied emotions about the colonial past, and how these shape their understandings of ongoing injustice and human rights violations. a sentimentalized discourse around the colonial era, characterized by the circulation of emotionally charged narratives and images, can be approached critically through the lens of affective justice. this framework enables an analysis of the contours of affect that not only structure modes of emotional expression, but are themselves conditioned by histories, power relations, and individual/collective responses. by turning attention to how affects and emotions become linked to justice and human rights within educational discourses, practices, and policies hre scholars and practitioners can begin to illuminate the affective and biopolitical dimensions of coloniality. this includes interrogating the risks of continuously reproducing and sustaining sentimental practices that serve to obscure or background structural injustices against marginalized communities (e.g., indigenous populations). this affective justice-informed approach contributes to enriching understandings of how embodied affects about justice and human rights are generated, distributed, reproduced, sustained, and/or transformed through the pedagogical spaces and public discourses of hre. the affective justice-informed approach to hre raises several broader questions that warrant further exploration through research and pedagogical practice. what new moral and political imaginaries might be invoked in educational settings when sentimental narratives about justice and human rights are reoriented in both critical and affective terms? how might this reorientation change how learners and educators come to “see, engage, feel, and speak about both perpetrators and those victimized by violence” (clarke, 2019, p. 39)? delving deeper, what do the specific affects and emotions expressed by learners tell scholars and practitioners in hre about how they respond to structural injustices and human rights violations, both locally and globally? how might unpacking their privilege and complicity shape these affective responses? these lines of inquiry create openings for rich, contextually grounded empirical investigations of affective justice within hre. such investigations have the potential to reveal how embodied affects are expressed, circulated, and negotiated within classroom spaces and beyond, and how they may work to reinforce, challenge, or transform the normative emotional regimes surrounding justice and human rights. hre scholars and practitioners equipped with an affective justice framework can leverage these insights to develop more nuanced, ethically attuned pedagogical approaches that empower learners to grapple with the emotional complexities of rights-based struggles. for example, an current issues in comparative education 89 rethinking emotional engagement in human rights education through affective justice affective justice-informed hre curriculum might guide learners to critically examine their affective investments in dominant human rights narratives, while simultaneously creating opportunities for them to explore alternative, marginalized articulations of justice rooted in the lived experiences of oppressed communities. this could involve engaging with embodied testimonies, artistic expressions, and grassroots activist practices that foreground the felt dimensions of rights violations and social change. by pursuing this line of inquiry, hre can move beyond simplistic notions of human rights as abstract, universal principles, and instead cultivate learning environments where the political, moral, and emotional stakes of rights-based struggles are authentically grappled with. this, in turn, can empower a new generation of human rights advocates who are equipped to navigate the complex, contextual, and affective realities of justice-making. the third component of clarke’s (2019) framework—emotional regimes—provides a valuable lens for analyzing how educational discourses, practices, and policies shape particular emotional climates within classrooms and schools, particularly concerning notions of justice and human rights. emotional regimes dictate the types of feelings deemed acceptable or expected within educational settings, thereby influencing how students perceive and react to social issues. for example, an emotional regime that promotes pity and cheap sentimentalism in schools is likely to portray children in a poor african country as ‘victims to be saved’ by western benevolence and compassion. this framework suggests that by casting justice and human rights in terms of sentimental responses to suffering, such practices may inadvertently promote a sense of pity rather than genuine solidarity. as these responses circulate—through images, words, narratives, and social media—they perpetuate eurocentric perspectives, portraying western actors as compassionate saviors while obscuring the complex histories of colonialism and the ongoing impact of western interventions (clarke, 2019; zembylas, 2023). incorporating the concept of affective justice may allow hre scholars and practitioners to critically engage with these emotional regimes. they can question and challenge how emotional responses are constructed within different cultural, educational, historical, and political contexts and historical eras. this approach encourages a more nuanced understanding of justice and human rights; one that resists oversimplified narratives of pity and instead emphasizes accountability, relational understanding, and an ethical commitment to equity. conclusion incorporating the concept of affective justice can advance theoretical and empirical work in hre highlighting how affective responses to (in)justice and human rights violations manifest in specific educational settings. affective justice can enable hre scholars and practitioners to investigate further how justice and human rights are experienced emotionally in daily life, revealing the connections between juridical perspectives and the embodied, affective dimensions of these concepts. by examining justice and human 90 current issues in comparative education zembylas rights in classrooms through this dual lens, hre practitioners can discern how certain affective mobilizations—such as anger or solidarity—have the potential to inspire transformative action. emotions and responses to human rights violations create a powerful, critical space where human rights mobilization takes shape, both within and beyond the classroom. expanding hre beyond a strictly juridical framework is essential, allowing for a richer, multidimensional understanding of justice and human rights. this shift need not lead to superficial sentimentality; rather, as this paper suggests, concepts like affective justice offer a robust foundation for critically examining how emotions and affects are mobilized concerning justice and human rights. such an approach opens pathways for hre where emotions, legal frameworks, and historical contexts converge to bring justice and human rights into everyday understanding and practice. the intersections of power, history, and embodied affect offer an opportunity to reconceptualize how hre is organized, practiced, and evaluated. embracing these complexities in the classroom and beyond invites hre scholars and practitioners to create spaces where justice and human rights are not only learned but also lived and experienced in meaningful, transformative ways. michalinos zembylas is a professor of educational theory and curriculum studies at the open university of cyprus, an honorary professor at nelson mandela university, south africa, and an adjunct professor at the university of south australia. he holds a commonwealth of learning (col) chair for 2023-2026. he has written extensively on emotion and affect in education, particularly in relation to social justice, decolonization, and politics. references arendt, h. (1994). eichmann in jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil. penguin books. barreto, j. m. (2011). rorty and human rights: contingency, emotions and how to defend human rights telling stories. utrecht law review, 7(2), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.18352/ulr.164 barreto, j. m. (2017). feeling human rights: the emotional art of viola, salgado and botero. in gephart, w. & leko, j. (eds.), law and arts: elective affinities and relationships of tension (pp. 65-90). vittorio klostermann: frankfurt am mein. berlant, l. (1998). poor eliza. american literature, 70(3), 635-668. berlant, l. (2000). the subject of true feeling: pain, privacy, and politics. in s. ahmed, j. kilby, c. lury, m. mcneil &b. skeggs (eds.), transformations: thinking through feminism (pp. 33-47). routledge. current issues in comparative education 91 rethinking emotional engagement in human rights education through affective justice boler, m. (1999). feeling power: emotions and education. routledge. burke, r. (2017a). emotional diplomacy and human rights at the united nations. human rights quarterly, 39, 273-295. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44488990 burke, r. (2017b). flat affect? revisiting emotion in the historiography of human rights. journal of human rights, 16(2), 123-141. https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2015.1103168 burke, r. (2020). ‘real thinking’: american human rights diplomacy and the perils of anti-emotionalism, 1950-1980. diplomacy & statecraft, 31(2), 306-325. https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2020.1760036 clarke, k. m. (2019). affective justice: the international criminal court and the pan-africanist pushback. duke university press. hunt, l. (2007). inventing human rights: a history. w. w. norton. keys, b. (2014) reclaiming american virtue: the human rights revolution of the 1970s. harvard university press. plamper, j. (2015). the history of emotions: an introduction. oxford university press. reddy, w. m. (2001). the navigation of feeling: a framework for the history of emotions. cambridge university press. rorty, r. (1998). human rights, rationality and sentimentality. in r. rorty, truth and progress: philosophical papers, 3 (pp.167-185). cambridge university press. rosenwein, b. h. (2002). worrying about emotions in history. american historical review, 107(3), 821-845. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/107.3.821 schuller, k. (2018). the biopolitics of feeling: race, sex, and science in the nineteenth century. duke university press. woodward, k. (2004). calculating compassion. in l. berlant (ed.), compassion: the culture and politics of an emotion (pp. 59-86). routledge. zembylas, m. (2016). toward a critical-sentimental orientation in human rights education. educational philosophy and theory, 48(11), 1151-1167. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2015.1118612 zembylas, m. (2021). rethinking political socialization in schools: the role of ‘affective indoctrination.’ educational philosophy and theory, 54 (14), 2480-2491. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.2006634 92 current issues in comparative education https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2015.1103168 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2015.1118612#abstract http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2015.1118612#abstract zembylas zembylas, m. (2023). challenging sentimental narratives of ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ in postcolonial settings: thinking with and through affective justice in comparative education. compare: a journal of comparative and international education, 53(7), 1152–1169. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2021.2017766 zembylas, m. & keet, a. (eds.). (2018). critical human rights, citizenship, and democracy education: entanglements and regenerations. bloomsbury. zembylas, m. & keet, a. (2019). critical human rights education: advancing social-justice-oriented educational praxes. springer. current issues in comparative education 93 1. between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 27, issue 1, special issue 2025 between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change oren pizmony-levy teachers college, columbia university sarah alice wagner columbia climate school, columbia university the window in which humans should act to avoid the extreme impacts of anthropogenic climate change is closing. addressing this crisis requires collective action and political will. climate change education (cce) is a global movement and a long-term strategy to empower people to engage in climate action. educators are at the heart of this movement, tasked with appropriating cce frameworks to the reality of their context and classroom. this study uses survey data from a research-practice partnership between teachers college, columbia university, and new york city public schools to explore educators’ beliefs, attitudes, and practices on climate change and education. our findings paint a complex picture. educators show high levels of concern and negative emotions about climate change, confusion, and underestimation of climate change causes and impacts. educators support comprehensive cce in schools and are aligned with international frameworks. while we find growing instructional time dedicated to climate change, the data point to sociological barriers (e.g., perception and labeling of climate change as relevant to the stem curriculum). we discuss the implications of our findings and offer strategies to enhance cce in new york city and beyond. keywords: climate change, sustainability, climate change education, teacher beliefs and attitudes, instructional practices, research-practice partnerships, new york city. introduction scientific consensus views human activity as the primary driver of climate change, particularly through fossil fuel (coal, oil, gas) combustion, land-use change, and unsustainable patterns of production and consumption (intergovernmental panel on climate change [ipcc], 2023). adverse impacts from climate change are widespread and affect numerous natural and human systems, including education.1 comparative research has documented that exposure to high temperatures during the school year is associated with reduced learning rates across diverse national and subnational contexts, contributing to education disparities linked to climate conditions (park et al., 2021). concerns about climate change as a global threat have increased among young people since 2016 (schultz et al., 2025; von davier et al., 2024). students carry these concerns 1 for review of the multiple impacts of climate change on education, see global partnership for education, 2024. © 2025, pizmony-levy & wagner. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 27(1), 8-43. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en pizmony-levy & wagner into the classroom, where teachers feel responsible for addressing them. education and public awareness are seen as a climate solution (united nations [un], 1992). climate change education (cce) is a global movement to expand high-quality teaching about climate change’s causes and consequences to promote meaningful climate action (reid, 2019; un educational, scientific and cultural organization [unesco], 2024). rapid emissions mitigation efforts can slow the process of climate change and reduce the likelihood of continued and intensified adverse impacts (un environment program [unep], 2024b). widespread and equitable implementation of adaptation measures would reduce harm, but the opportunity window to implement changes is short (unep, 2024a). countries can execute these actions if their public is informed and motivated. as part of broader education efforts such as environmental education and education for sustainable development, cce extends beyond transmitting information to empower individuals with attitudes, motivation, and skills to address climate challenges and engage in collective efforts. international frameworks like the un framework convention on climate change (unfccc) and the paris agreement (2015) recognize the significance of this objective. article 6 of the unfccc (1992) emphasizes education and training as tools to foster public participation toward addressing climate change and its effects. article 12 of the paris agreement highlights the role of education, training, and public awareness to enhance and coordinate climate action globally. the unfccc’s action for climate empowerment (ace) framework encompasses work and strategies to this end and envisions successful implementation as creating “a population whose deep-seated appreciation of the climate challenge leads to greater national action and commitment” (unfccc, n.d.). according to the ace framework, developing pedagogies, curricula, and educator training programs is critical to building broad support for climate action and reducing the ongoing harm and disruption of climate change. however, many education systems have adjusted slowly to climate change and the uptake of cce practices (unesco, 2019). as the group charged with implementing cce objectives on the ground, educators should be considered as key advocates for a climate-informed and empowered population. we seek to understand educators’ perspectives and commitment (or buy-in) to cce. we draw on unique data collected through a research-practice partnership between the center for sustainable futures at teachers college, columbia university (tc), and the office of energy and sustainability at new york city public schools (nycps). our data consists of surveys of school-based sustainability coordinators, a group that includes k-12 teachers, administrators, and other staff. we explore how these educators view climate change and cce: how they understand the causes and impacts of climate change, the qualities and purpose of effective cce, and how they translate these concepts into practice. through understanding educators’ beliefs, attitudes, and practices, we investigate the gap between international policy discourse about cce and the local reality as reported by educators. we address four research questions: current issues in comparative education 9 between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change rq 1: what are educators' beliefs and attitudes toward climate change? rq 2: what are educators' beliefs and attitudes toward cce and the role of education in addressing the climate crisis? rq 3: to what extent do educators teach about climate change and engage students with it? how do educators incorporate climate change into their teaching? rq 4: what factors influence educators' decisions to teach (or not) about climate change? we aim to advance our understanding of local educational practices within the broader framework of global cce initiatives in this article. by examining the intricate interplay between educators’ personal beliefs, emotional responses, pedagogical beliefs, and strategies, we explore the complexity of teaching about climate change. our analysis of survey data from new york city public schools (nycps) not only documents evolving trends over time but also exposes the gap between educators’ beliefs and their classroom practices. with this analysis, we seek to bridge the divide between international frameworks and local implementation, offering insights that are vital for policymakers, curriculum developers, and educational leaders striving to integrate meaningful, context-sensitive cce. background we explore scholarship on teachers and climate change. chart 1 illustrates the literature and highlights gaps. growing research has focused on teachers, especially science teachers’ knowledge and attitudes about climate change (orange and dark blue shapes). studies have explored teachers’ understanding of climate science, beliefs about its causes and consequences, and how these factors influence instructional practices. little attention has been paid to the emotional dimensions of climate change and teachers’ attitudes toward cce as a pedagogical endeavor (light blue shapes). due to the increasing urgency of climate action and the complex social and psychological challenges linked to cce, a more holistic approach is needed, considering what teachers know, believe, and how they feel about engaging students with this critical issue.   chart 1 conceptual summary of literature review 10 current issues in comparative education pizmony-levy & wagner teachers’ climate change knowledge and attitudes when engaging in actionand solutions-oriented cce, educators should emphasize the scientific consensus that the earth’s climate is changing due to human activity (ipcc, 2023). however, research shows that many teachers hold misconceptions about climate change, prioritizing natural, rather than anthropogenic causes of climate change in their lessons (branch et al., 2016; plutzer et al., 2016; plutzer et al., 2024). some teachers who personally accept anthropogenic climate change still choose to downplay the scientific consensus in their classrooms (nation & feldman, 2021). teachers report gaps in understanding local impacts, the evidence behind scientific consensus, and climate solutions (sullivan et al., 2014). pre-service training and professional development can equip teachers with accurate climate science and increase their confidence in engaging in cce (axelrod et al., 2020; teed & franco, 2013). teachers who feel knowledgeable about climate change are more likely to teach climate change (seroussi et al., 2019), emphasize anthropogenic causes in their lessons (berkman & plutzer, 2015; branch et al., 2016; plutzer et al., 2016), and perceive fewer barriers to teaching the topic (ennes et al., 2021). these professional development opportunities are in demand among teachers (branch et al., 2016; sullivan et al., 2014). despite the benefits, teachers often encounter time constraints when considering participation in professional development, a challenge that reflects broader patterns in professional development research (ennes et al., 2021; da rocha et al., 2020). some teachers with limited expertise still engage with climate change in their classrooms (mcneal et al., 2016), while others with strong knowledge may hesitate (seroussi et al., 2019), suggesting that knowledge alone does not determine climate change instruction. climate change education practice despite numerous barriers to integrating cce, educators continue to engage students on this topic. earth science teachers are the most likely to incorporate climate change topics into their instruction (wise, 2010), but non-science teachers enhance climate literacy by incorporating interdisciplinary strategies in social studies, language arts (siegner & stapert, 2020), and artistic expression (baker et al., 2013). beyond content knowledge, cce fosters essential skills such as research, critical thinking, civic engagement, and decision-making (ardoin et al., 2017). the literature identifies several best practices, including embedding constructive hope into the curriculum (ojala, 2015), facilitating deliberative discussions, engaging with scientists, addressing misconceptions, and implementing school or community projects (monroe, 2017). effective strategies emphasize collective action (jorgenson et al., 2019), interdisciplinary connections (rousell & cutter-mackenzie-knowles, 2019), and real-world applications through projectand place-based learning. holistic, experiential learning opportunities have been particularly successful in deepening students’ understanding of climate issues (stern et al., 2013), with student-centered approaches yielding the most impactful outcomes (karpudewan et al., 2014; stern et al., 2013). current issues in comparative education 11 between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change new directions for research on teachers, climate change, and education our review of the literature, along with research on public opinion and climate change (e.g., egan & mullin, 2017; leiserowitz, 2007; shwom et al., 2015), reveals critical gaps that this study seeks to address. existing research focuses primarily on science teachers, overlooking the role of educators in other subject areas in facilitating cce, as well as other key adults in schools, such as administrators, paraprofessionals, and support staff. researchers must expand the scope of inquiry to include a broader range of educators to understand how cce can be integrated across the school ecosystem. while research has explored the cognitive and pedagogical dimensions of cce, it has largely overlooked the role of teachers' emotions in shaping their cce practice. emotions and affect certainly influence judgments and behavior related to climate change outside of education (brosch, 2021). when applied to educators, this influence may manifest in multiple ways: teachers who feel a strong personal connection to climate change may be more motivated to integrate it into their teaching, while those experiencing climate anxiety, frustration, or a sense of helplessness may avoid the topic altogether. attending to teachers' emotions is important for their well-being and serves as a model to incorporate discussions of emotions and mental health into their teaching of climate change. by recognizing and addressing the affective dimensions of climate education, we can better equip educators with strategies to navigate their own emotions while fostering students' emotional resilience and engagement with climate issues. third, existing research lacks a comprehensive exploration of teachers’ views on cce as a global education movement. there is limited understanding of what educators believe should be taught (e.g., causes, consequences, and key skills or competencies), what overarching frameworks should guide cce (e.g., green career readiness, empowerment, or systems thinking), and what resources and support teachers need to effectively implement cce in their classrooms. this study aims to address these limitations by broadening the scope of inquiry beyond science educators, examining the emotional dimensions of cce, and investigating how teachers conceptualize climate education within a global framework. by filling these gaps, our research will provide valuable insights for policymakers, school leaders, and educators seeking to advance cce in meaningful and sustainable ways. study setting: new york city (nyc) we focus on the unique context of nyc for three key reasons. first, nyc already experiences the impacts of climate change, primarily through extreme heat, sea level rise, tidal flooding, extreme rainfall, and coastal storm surges, including superstorm sandy in 2012, and low air quality due to fires in canada in 2023 (bilefsky, 2023; new york state, n.d). these climate-related events might increase teachers’ awareness of and motivation to engage with climate change. 12 current issues in comparative education pizmony-levy & wagner diversity and deep-rooted inequalities characterize nyc and the nycps system. nycps serves one of the most racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse student populations in the united states (u.s.), yet economic disparities shape educational experiences. in the 2023/24 school year, three out of four nycps students were classified as economically disadvantaged, with more than a 30-percentage-point gap in economic need across boroughs (nycps, n.d.). these inequalities intersect with climate injustices, as predominantly low-income and minority communities are disproportionately exposed to coastal flooding, high heat vulnerability, and environmental injustices, while also facing greater air and water pollution and exposure to industrial sites (nyc mayor’s office, 2024). the compounded effects of socioeconomic and environmental injustices make nyc a critical case for examining how cce can address the immediate challenges of climate-related disruptions and the broader structural inequalities that shape students' learning environments. nyc is widely regarded as a leader in sustainability and climate action. in 2023, the mayor’s office released planyc: getting sustainability done, outlining initiatives for decarbonization, pollution reduction, and a circular economy while also launching new climate education and training programs for public schools. beyond city-level commitments to cce, nyc has enacted various policy instruments to promote whole-school sustainability efforts, such as the 2009 mandate requiring every public school to appoint a sustainability coordinator (pizmony-levy et al., 2021; verschueren, 2021). while this supportive policy environment creates opportunities for cce, systemic barriers remain. nycps prioritizes student achievement, and its reliance on standardized testing may have a chilling effect on teachers and schools interested in integrating cce (menken & solorza, 2014; pizmony-levy & gan, 2021). research suggests that teachers’ sociopolitical environments shape their approaches to cce: when climate change is perceived as controversial, teachers cite this as a barrier to classroom integration (sullivan et al., 2014). even educators who strongly affirm anthropogenic climate change may hesitate to engage in cce due to fears of political backlash or resistance from stakeholders (nation & feldman, 2021). the political party of the state in which a teacher works is a stronger predictor of cce implementation than their individual political beliefs (khalidi & ramsey, 2021). nyc presents a unique case where political resistance to cce is relatively low compared to other parts of the u.s., making it an important setting for examining barriers beyond political hostility, such as curricular constraints, standardized testing pressures, and institutional capacity. understanding these challenges in a supportive policy climate can provide insights into how to sustain and scale cce efforts in more politically contested environments. data and methods data for this study come from the new york city partnership for sustainability education (npse), a research-practice partnership between the office of energy and current issues in comparative education 13 between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change sustainability at nycps and the center for sustainable futures at tc. the npse collaboratively designs studies and collects data through surveys, interviews, focus groups, observations, and document analysis to understand and enhance the role of schools in advancing nyc’s sustainability goals. the tc team manages a longitudinal dataset on sustainability education in schools, analyzes the data, and supports nycps in interpreting findings to inform policies and programs (for additional information about the partnership, see: pizmony-levy et al., 2021). since the 2019/20 school year, nycps has focused on climate change, responding to growing calls for climate action and education. this shift aligns with global initiatives such as the paris agreement (cop 21 in 2015) and its action for climate empowerment (ace) framework, as well as the momentum generated by the global youth climate movement (e.g., fridays for future and the school strike for climate).2 to support this focus, the partnership introduced questions about climate change into its annual survey program (details below), conducted interviews and focus groups with educators, and developed various professional learning opportunities to enhance cce. we analyzed data collected between 2020 and 2024 through two types of surveys administered to all sustainability coordinators: (a) the sustainability & climate action plan (scap), conducted in the fall (october–november), and (b) the end of year sustainability survey (eyss), conducted in the spring (may–june).3 both instruments are self-administered web-based questionnaires; they cover five key domains: (a) sustainability education (including cce), (b) communication and outreach, (c) health, wellness, and green space, (d) waste and recycling, (e) energy conservation and efficiency. the scap focuses on assessing needs and intentions for action within these domains, while the eyss evaluates activities completed throughout the year. additionally, the surveys include a comprehensive set of background variables (e.g., sex, race/ethnicity, role in school, grade level, subject area, etc.) and attitudes on different issues, providing rich contextual data for analysis. table 1 shows the availability of climate change and cce-related questions by survey type and year. 3 each year, approximately one-quarter of sustainability coordinators are new to their role. possibly, some coordinators have participated in the survey multiple times across different years. 2 in march 2020, the new york city council published a report titled securing our future, outlining strategies the city could adopt to combat climate change. the report focuses on four key areas: resiliency, energy and emissions, a sustainable and circular economy, and a green jobs pipeline. among its recommendations, the report advocates for decarbonizing the student bus network, expanding career and technical education (cte) programs for green jobs, and integrating cce into all schools. it states: “as keepers of this future, students should be provided with a complete and accurate picture of how human activity affects the earth and how the world can mobilize to address the impacts of climate change. in a landscape where attitudes toward science have become more hostile, with fear and doubt being used to sow confusion, it is vital for students to be provided with evidence-based education on climate change.” 14 current issues in comparative education pizmony-levy & wagner table 1 availability of questions by theme, survey type, and year current issues in comparative education 15 variable/theme fall 2019 spring 2020 fall 2020 spring 2021 fall 2021 spring 2022 fall 2022 spring 2023 fall 202 3 spring 2024 items about cc cause of cc: human activity vs. earth’s natural cycle + feeling informed + + + cc concern + + + + + + + + + cc emotions + cc is an important problem in nyc. + impact of cc + items about cce schools should teach cc. + attitudes about cce + what should be included in cce? + + cce resources (needs assessment) + + cc as a topic of interest + + + perception of colleagues’ engagement with cce + attitudes towards the climate action days initiative + + definition of “climate action” + + items about cce practice do you teach about cc? + + + + + if yes, frequency of teaching + + + + examples of teaching + + + if not, why not? + + frequency of talking cc + + + + examples of talking cc + + + between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change note. cc = climate change; cce = climate change education; shaded background (+) indicates items analyzed in this study. the npse developed climate change-related survey questions based on scholarly research, media coverage, and consultations with key stakeholders. for example, we used close-ended questions from preexisting surveys (e.g., npr/ipos, 2019; yale program on climate communication, 2021). we also borrowed ideas for questions from the oecd’s teaching and learning international survey (talis) and the iea’s trends in international mathematics and science study (timss). table 2 presents the sample size and descriptive statistics for the socio-demographic composition of the sample, disaggregated by survey type (scap and eyss) and year. the sample includes school-based sustainability coordinators. the sample size ranges from 1,264 to 1,566 respondents and, on average, represents 77% of all nyc public schools. in terms of grade levels, 44% of the sample is drawn from k–5 schools, 11% from k–8 schools, 15.3% from middle schools (grades 6–8), and 29.7% from high schools (grades 9–12). nearly two-thirds of respondents (65.5%) are women. about half of the sample (47.6%) identifies as white, with a similar representation of black (17.6%) and latinx (16.2%) educators. almost half of the respondents (45.3%) are teachers, while the remainder are assistant principals (27.1%) or hold other school-based roles (27.6%). among the teachers, approximately two-thirds (62.5%) teach science. one-third of the sustainability coordinators volunteered or self-selected for the role, while the rest were appointed by their principal. most of the educators (58.4%) have worked at their current school for eight years or more; 32.8% have been at their school between three and seven years, and 8.9% for less than two years. 16 current issues in comparative education items in the sustainability education domain + + + + items about students and cc students’ engagement in local climate week activities + + + + perception of students’ engagement with cc + awareness of the global youth climate movement + pizmony-levy & wagner table 2 overview of sample characteristics by survey type and year variable/theme fall 2019 spring 2020 fall 2020 spring 2021 fall 2021 spring 2022 fall 2022 spring 2023 fall 2023 spring 2024 sample size 1466 1320 1480 1332 1566 1447 1394 1310 1413 1264 gender (percent) man woman non-binary i do not wish to disclose 28.3 64.3 ~ 7.1 27.5 66.3 ~ 5.6 29.3 65.2 ~ 5.4 28.7 66.1 ~ 5.1 31.5 62.6 ~ 5.7 30.3 64.2 ~ 5.1 28.3 65.5 ~ 6.0 27.8 65.1 ~ 6.9 27.2 68.0 ~ 4.7 26.3 67.8 ~ 5.6 race (percent) american indian or alaska native asian american black latinx native hawaiian white i do not wish to disclose not listed 1.2 4.3 18.0 14.8 ~ 48.6 17.1 1.8 .7 4.3 16.4 14.4 ~ 47.4 17.0 2.5 .9 4.9 18.6 15.0 ~ 47.5 16.5 2.2 .6 4.7 17.5 15.0 ~ 48.4 15.3 2.8 .7 5.0 18.8 15.7 ~ 44.9 15.8 1.9 .9 5.0 18.2 16.3 ~ 47.7 14.7 2.0 1.4 5.4 16.8 17.9 ~ 47.6 15.8 1.9 .8 5.6 18.2 16.4 ~ 47.5 14.1 2.2 .9 5.0 17.5 18.4 ~ 47.7 12.5 2.9 .7 5.5 16.0 18.0 ~ 48.2 13.9 2.4 role in school (percent) teacher assistant principal other 46.9 28.9 24.2 44.2 28.3 27.5 45.5 26.3 28.2 46.1 26.4 27.5 43.1 27.0 29.9 43.8 27.3 28.9 44.4 27.0 28.6 44.4 26.9 28.7 46.5 26.1 27.4 48.0 26.6 25.4 science teachers (percent out of all teachers) 61.9 62.7 65.4 65.5 59.7 59.6 61.4 60.5 64.1 63.9 appointment status: volunteered (percent) 25.8 27.3 29.0 33.5 29.2 29.5 32.0 31.0 31.7 31.9 years working at school (percent) less than 2 years between 3 and 7 years 8 years or more 9.5 32.3 58.2 9.8 31.9 58.3 7.2 37.1 55.7 6.5 36.5 57.0 6.4 37.2 56.4 7.5 34.8 57.7 9.5 31.6 59.0 10.1 29.4 60.5 10.8 28.2 61.0 11.2 28.6 60.2 results educators' beliefs and attitudes toward climate change climate change poses a threat to ecological systems worldwide. international public opinion surveys indicate growing concern. we begin our analysis by exploring educators’ levels of climate concern. as shown in figure 1, in spring 2020, nearly all educators (96.5%) expressed concern about climate change. a majority (73.3%) reported being “very concerned,” while about one-fourth (23.2%) indicated they were “somewhat concerned.” a minority were not concerned about the issue, with 2.5% reporting they were “not very concerned” and 1.0% stating they were “not at all concerned.”4 climate concern among educators remained stable between spring 2020 and spring 2024, with no statistically significant differences observed across the surveys or years. 4 given the timing of the survey, conducted a few months into the covid-19 pandemic, we asked coordinators whether their level of concern had changed due to the pandemic. slightly more than one in ten (11.5%) reported that their views had shifted, with the majority of these respondents indicating they were now more concerned about climate change. current issues in comparative education 17 between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change figure 1 percentage of responses regarding concern about climate change, by level and year emotional responses to climate change extend beyond mere concern, encompassing a range of feelings, which we explore in this analysis. in spring 2022, we asked respondents to share the emotions that come to mind when they think about climate change. a significant majority (79%) provided open-ended responses, which we coded and categorized into seven core emotions using a common emotion wheel.5 the findings reveal that negative emotions overwhelmingly dominate among educators. specifically, "fearful" was reported by 49% of respondents, followed by "sad" (19%) and "angry" (16%). other negative emotions include "bad" (5%) and "disgusted" (3%). in contrast, positive emotions were far less common, with "happy" mentioned by 6% and "surprised" by only 2% of respondents. 5 emotions can be differentiated from related concepts such as feelings, affects, moods, and sentiments (see thoits, 1989, for a review). they encompass four key components: (a) an appraisal of a situational stimulus or context, (b) physiological or bodily responses, (c) the expression—whether inhibited or freely displayed—of gestures, and (d) the application of a cultural label to specific combinations of these elements. the emotions wheel provides a structured and nuanced framework for recognizing and understanding emotions. while panu pihkala (2022) introduced a taxonomy of climate emotions, this study utilizes a more general emotions wheel developed by geoffrey roberts (2015). 18 current issues in comparative education pizmony-levy & wagner figure 2 frequency of core emotions when thinking about climate change6 the causes of climate change are complex. anthropogenic actions (i.e., burning of fossil fuels and deforestation) cause the planet to trap heat by altering natural processes, which are meant to keep the earth’s climate stable (ipcc, 2023). this complexity leaves room for misinformation, and efforts to spread disinformation over the role of fossil fuels in driving climate change further confuse the public. understanding the causes and consequences of climate change is important to motivate climate action. this is important for educators tasked with engaging students with the topic and thus motivating them to demand change and a better planet.  6 fearful (e.g., alarmed, anxious, cautious, concerned, fearful, helpless, insecurity, nervous, panic, pensive, scared, terrified, trepid, uncertainty, worried) sad (e.g., apprehensive, defeated, depressed, despair, devastated, discouraged, disheartened, grief, guilt, heartbroken, hopeless, powerless, sadness, shame, unease, unhappy) angry (e.g., anger, annoyed, doubtful, frustrated, impatient, mad, outrage, rage, upset) happy (e.g., anticipated, calm, curious, determined, empowered, enthusiastic, hopeful, interested, motivated, optimistic, passionate) bad (e.g., apathy, bored, indifferent, numbness, overwhelmed, sorrow, stressed, urgency) disgusted (e.g., disappointed, discomfort, disgusted, disturbed, dreadful, unsettled) surprised (e.g., baffled, confused, cynical, disbelief, surprised, uninformed) current issues in comparative education 19 between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change to assess educators’ knowledge of climate change, we asked them to indicate how informed they feel about climate change. as shown in figure 3, educators’ perceived knowledge of climate change improved between fall 2020 and spring 2024. at the most recent measurement point, one-third of respondents (33.5%) reported feeling “very informed,” while half (51.2%) indicated they felt “somewhat informed.” other respondents fell into the remaining categories, with 4.4% reporting they were “neither informed nor uninformed,” 7.4% “somewhat uninformed,” and 3.4% “very uninformed.”7 figure 3 percentage of responses regarding feeling informed about climate change, by level and year to examine educators’ understanding of the causes of climate change, we asked respondents to evaluate the contribution of “human activity” and “natural patterns in the earth’s environment” to climate change. as shown in figure 4, over three-quarters of 7 in response to the survey question about which topics educators find most interesting for potential training sessions offered by the office of energy and sustainability, 23% of respondents identified "climate change" as their top choice. while this indicates a notable level of interest, it ranked as the fifth most popular topic overall, suggesting that while climate change is a priority for some educators, other topics may have garnered broader appeal. less than half of respondents (40.0%) said they would be interested in attending a training about cce. climate change is ranked fourth after green teams, growing and eating healthy food, and waste reduction & diversion. 20 current issues in comparative education pizmony-levy & wagner educators (78.7%) think human activity contributes “a great deal” to climate change. about one-in-five (18.7%) thought climate change was “somewhat” attributed to human activity. only a small percentage thought human actions were “not too much” or “not at all” a factor in climate change (2.6%). a little over a third (34.2%) of educators thought natural patterns in the earth’s environment play “a great deal” in climate change. over half (50.9%) labeled natural patterns as “somewhat” involved in climate change. about 13.3% of educators thought nature played “not too much” of a role in climate change.   figure 4 percentage of responses for the contribution of human activity and natural patterns of earth’s environment to climate change another way to examine beliefs about the causes of climate change is to assess responses to both questions simultaneously. table 3 presents a cross-tabulation in which each cell contains the percentage of respondents indicating the answers to questions. about half of the educators (45.2%) believe that human activity and natural patterns have an equal contribution to climate change (this group is represented on the diagonal of the table). half of the educators (49.2%) believe that human activity contributes more than natural patterns (this group is represented in the cells below the diagonal of the table). only five percent of the educators (5.5%) believe that natural patterns contribute more than human activity (this group is represented in the cells above the diagonal). a statistical current issues in comparative education 21 between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change test revealed a significant association between educators' beliefs about the contributions of human activity and natural patterns to climate change. this means that their responses to the two questions were related rather than independent. table 3 cross-tabulation of beliefs about the contribution of human activity and natural patterns in the earth’s environment to climate change natural patterns not at all not too much some a great deal human activity not at all .3% .1% .3% .1% not too much .0% .5% 1.0% .3% some .0% .6% 14.4% 3.8% a great deal 1.3% 12.1% 35.2% 30.1% chi2 = 206.76, df = 9, p < .001, relative frequency of each cell we asked educators to evaluate the extent to which climate change will harm different groups. our analysis revealed a significant proportion of missing responses, with participants skipping some questions. to address this, we included the "missing response" category in our analysis. as shown in figure 5, the majority of educators perceive the future harm of climate change as distant, temporally, and spatially. most educators believe that climate change will cause a great deal of harm to non-human entities (plants and animals), people in developing countries, and future generations (82%, 82%, and 70%, respectively). around half of the respondents expect that climate change will cause a great deal of harm to their students and people in the u.s. (48% and 46%, respectively). this figure drops to about one-third when respondents answer about the future harm of climate change to themselves and their school (community and building). we interpret the change in the proportion of missing information as an indication of confidence in answering questions. educators appear more confident answering questions about non-humans and people in developing countries than those related to people in the u.s., respondents themselves, and their schools. 22 current issues in comparative education pizmony-levy & wagner figure 5 percentage of responses for the future harm of climate change on different groups having explored educators' general attitudes toward climate change, we next turned to their perspectives on environmental issues specific to their local context—nyc. when asked to rank ten environmental issues facing the city, educators identified climate change as the third most pressing concern (figure 6). about one-third (34.4%) of educators consider climate change the city's most critical environmental problem. current issues in comparative education 23 between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change figure 6 importance of environmental issues facing nyc (mean) educators' attitudes toward climate change education we have examined educators' beliefs and attitudes toward climate change. now, we explore beliefs about cce. nearly all educators in our sample (98.0%) agree that schools should teach about climate change. however, educators differ in how they prioritize various content areas and approaches to teaching about climate change (see figure 7). 24 current issues in comparative education pizmony-levy & wagner figure 7 percentage of responses indicating the importance of different approaches in climate change education reflecting international discourse on cce (e.g., the unfccc ace framework), the majority of educators recognize the importance of empowering students to take action on climate change (64.8% rated this as "very important" and 33.4% as "quite important"). similarly, most respondents support cce that addresses not only the causes of climate change but also potential solutions and its impact (rated as "very important" by 61.7%, 60.8%, and 59.9%, respectively).8 educators also emphasize the importance of addressing students’ emotional responses to climate change and the uncertainty of the future (56.3% rated this as "very important"). they endorse “hands-on” pedagogies, such as project-based learning and using schools as living laboratories. compared to other content areas and approaches, however, educators are somewhat less enthusiastic about incorporating indigenous knowledge and localized place-based learning into cce. 8 we explored how educators prioritize the teaching of different types of climate change impacts (available upon request). educators are more supportive of cce that addresses the impact of climate change on the environment than on the economy (rated as "very important" by 65.8% and 53.0%, respectively). current issues in comparative education 25 between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change to enhance cce and inform interventions, participants were asked to rate the importance of various resources and indicate their specific needs. a majority (59.5%) identified providing access to instructional materials about climate change as highly important, while 50% emphasized the importance of creating new instructional materials and offering high-quality professional development for teachers. in contrast, 40% considered mapping curricular connections to climate change in all state standards as highly important. similar patterns emerged when educators were asked about resources they would find helpful for teaching climate change (figure 8), with strong interest expressed in the virtual delivery of curricular resources (78%) and professional development sessions (52.6%). figure 8 percentage of responses indicating helpful resources to teach about climate change beyond their views on the curricular aspects of cce, several other factors influence educators' decisions to teach about climate change (see figure 9). for instance, the majority of educators (82%) feel confident answering students’ questions about climate change. about two-thirds report that their school or district encourages them to teach about the topic (69%), and a similar proportion (64%) indicate they have access to the resources needed to address students’ questions. half of the respondents note that students themselves have brought up climate change in the classroom. despite this 26 current issues in comparative education pizmony-levy & wagner support, challenges remain. in fall 2020, approximately one in five educators (18%) expressed concern about potential pushback from parents. on the policy front, most educators (79%) support state laws requiring the teaching of climate change, and a comparable percentage (82%) would feel comfortable if the state mandated such teaching. these findings highlight the opportunities and barriers educators face in integrating climate change into their teaching. figure 9 percentage of responses to questions about climate change education teaching climate change we examine two key cce practices: teaching about climate change and engaging in discussions with students about climate change. a majority of teachers in our sample reported teaching about climate change, with more than 70% indicating this practice across all years (see figure 10). recognizing that teaching about climate change can take various forms, we asked teachers to specify the extent of their instruction. we observe an increase in the proportion of teachers who report dedicating significant instructional time to climate change, such as teaching at least one lesson (1–2 lessons), a module (at least 3–4 lessons), or a special class focused on climate change. in spring 2021, 31% of teachers indicated teaching at least three lessons on climate change; by spring 2024, this figure had risen to 36.7%. current issues in comparative education 27 between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change figure 10 percentage of responses indicating the extent of teaching about climate change analysis of the survey data reveals a clear association between grade level and the amount of instructional time devoted to climate change (chi2=25.37, df=8, p < .01). teachers at the middle and high school levels report dedicating significantly more classroom time to climate change topics than their counterparts in primary schools (respectively, 45.4%, 45.0%, and 28.0% indicate teaching at least three lessons on climate change). this pattern suggests that cce is more frequently integrated into upper-grade curricula, potentially due to subject specialization, perceived student readiness, or alignment with academic standards at those levels. to better understand the barriers to teaching about climate change, we asked teachers to explain why they do not address the topic (see figure 11). the most cited reason was the perception that climate change falls outside of their subject area (55.7% in fall 2020 and 49.7% in spring 2023). other frequently mentioned barriers include limited access to appropriate teaching materials, knowledge gaps, and a lack of preparedness to engage students on the topic. comparing the two time points, we observe a decline in the proportion of teachers citing subject relevancy and access to materials as barriers. however, approximately one in five teachers still report feeling unprepared, which remains a significant barrier for not teaching about climate change. 28 current issues in comparative education pizmony-levy & wagner figure 11 percentage of responses indicating reasons for not teaching about climate change to provide a fuller picture of cce in nycps, we now turn to our qualitative, open-ended response data. in four eyss (2021-2024), we asked teachers to provide examples of how they teach about climate change. these responses help us to identify common practices and the underlying themes that guide teachers’ work around cce (outlined below). science lessons – seamless integration. teachers were most likely to teach about climate change through science lessons, although science teachers reported varying frequency and depth of their climate change lessons. teachers highlighted multiple units where they integrate climate change: alternative energy sources, carbon cycle, human impact on earth’s climate, investigating weather and climate, living environment, plant and animal adaptations, and urban agriculture. high school teachers indicated teaching about climate change and related topics as part of their ap environmental science class. respondents wrote that climate change was “easily incorporated into my science lessons” (spring 2021) and presented the topic as “a natural fit in many of our science lessons” (spring 2023). current issues in comparative education 29 between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change multi-disciplinary approach – a pathway for non-science teachers. fully understanding the climate crisis requires examining historical contexts, cultural influences, social structures, and artistic expressions. educators across disciplines found creative ways to integrate climate change into their teaching. for example, a fashion design instructor explored climate change by demonstrating “how the fashion industry has helped to create the issues we have today, ways we can combat them, and how we can affect change” (spring 2021). a literature teacher incorporated realistic fiction, nonfiction articles, and students’ climate narratives to “facilitate discussion and encourage problem-solving activities to address environmental inequities” (spring 2022). a dance educator highlighted the role of the arts in helping students express their concerns and emotions about climate change: the great kapok tree choreography unit (students choreograph a dance inspired by amazon ecosystem, interdependence) commotion in the ocean unit (students choreograph a dance inspired by ocean ecosystems, the effects of pollution, and solutions to the problem) justice dances (student write poems about injustice and how to solve it and choreograph interpretive dance solos) earth day dances (students write poems about sustainability challenges we face globally and choreograph interpretive solos) (spring 2021). weaving climate change into the curriculum. many teachers took a holistic approach to cce, integrating climate-related topics across multiple subjects rather than confining discussions to isolated lessons. teachers embedded climate change into science, social studies, english language arts (ela), and mathematics by making connections between climate issues and broader themes such as environmental justice, food security, and energy systems. one elementary school teacher wrote: “as a science teacher, i infuse the conversation in just about every topic in science […] but i also include these conversations whenever i can into my social studies, ela, and math lessons” (spring 2021). another teacher shared how they used a lesson about the industrial revolution to teach how “it changed the way humans live on the planet and consume energy” and the implications for climate change. connecting climate change with students’ lives. teachers implemented several key strategies identified by monroe et al. (2017) in their systematic review of effective cce approaches. in particular, teachers emphasized making climate change relevant to students by connecting it to their local environment and personal experiences. many teachers leveraged current events to make climate change tangible: “i use headlines about warming temperatures, rising seas, and stronger storms to help students understand the immediate impacts of climate change” (spring 2021) and “i tie in weather/natural events like how the current wildfires in canada are affecting our air quality” (spring 2023). others localized climate change effects by relating them directly to students’ surroundings: “as we study ecosystems, we also examine our own 30 current issues in comparative education pizmony-levy & wagner community’s ecosystem—specifically, how the lack of green spaces impacts air quality and public health” (spring 2022). engaging students about climate change, beyond the classroom, and by non-teachers. understanding that not all educators in a school teach in a formal capacity (e.g., assistant principals, librarians, parent coordinators), we asked respondents whether they have casual conversations with students about climate change. in general, about two-thirds of educators reported engaging in discussions about climate change with students. similar to trends in teaching about climate change, we observed an increase over time in the proportion of respondents who reported discussing climate change frequently, sometimes, or often. in spring 2022, 55.8% of educators, who are not teachers, indicated they talked about climate change sometimes or often; by spring 2024, this figure had risen to 67.1%. our qualitative, open-ended response data is helpful to illuminate the ways that educators engage with cce beyond the classroom. we asked educators to share examples of when they talked with students about climate change. we found that informal conversations about climate change touch on many of the same topics that curricular cce addresses, such as temperature rise, extreme weather events, and local/global events (e.g., earth day celebration). educators articulated the inevitability of these conversations: this year has been another challenging one. the tracking of temperature change alone and looking at what is currently happening here as well as in other states and countries, and its effects on climate, produce, living circumstances, and environment has been infused into teaching (spring 2021). educators described how conversations about climate change vary across age groups: the conversation with students about global climate change is age-appropriate to the students' cognitive or developmental capacity. older students will challenge and talk more openly depending on their exposure and prior knowledge. [with] younger students, we begin by connecting the kids with nature (spring 2021). we found that these conversations often addressed individual actions that students could take toward mitigating climate change. one educator shared that she brings up climate change “when we do [clothing] drives, i explain the importance [of reducing] waste. when students ask me how come i don't eat meat” (spring 2021). and another educator described engaging in climate change conversation, “when waste is observed or certain behaviors that impact our climate, like littering” (spring 2022). more often than not, these actions dealt with waste management (recycling, reducing food waste). while waste management is one strategy a community can take to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, there are many others (sustainable architecture, renewable energy current issues in comparative education 31 between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change integration, electrification and expansion of public transport, energy efficiency improvements, food procurement choices, etc.) that have received little to no attention. green teams – potential spaces for climate conversation and learning. regardless of whether they are teachers or not, educators in our survey mentioned their “green team” as a space for engaging students with climate change. per nycps materials, a green team is “an independent group or part of student government or other school club (e.g., science club) that is dedicated to improving sustainability through projects, awareness, and actions.” the composition of green teams varies by school. some consist of students, while others include students and adults, such as teachers and community members. educators engaged green teams in in-depth discussions of the link between climate change and other systems. one teacher, for example, wrote: “i shared a lesson with my green team about edible gardening wherein we talked about the amount of greenhouse gas emissions due to an industrialized food system, so having local produce would decrease greenhouse gas emissions” (spring 2022). educators also used green teams to support students in translating knowledge into action: i designed a 3-day lesson on climate change in lieu of the celebration of earth day […] the outcome of the lesson was producing one of the following projects: slogan writing, poster making, write and present a rap song, or write a poem (spring 2021). our findings highlight the diverse ways that educators integrate climate change into their work at school. they adopt creative, interdisciplinary approaches to make climate change relevant and to foster meaningful discussions. from incorporating climate themes into existing subjects to leveraging extracurricular activities like green teams, educators find innovative ways to engage students. these efforts not only enhance climate literacy but also empower students to take action within their communities. discussion and conclusion responses to climate change—whether through mitigation or adaptation—are widely debated among policymakers, the public, and researchers. the education sector is no exception. while there is growing consensus that education must play a central role in long-term climate strategies, debates persist over how best to leverage k-12 schools, colleges, universities, and non-formal organizations. in k-12 education, a key challenge is integrating climate change across subjects and ensuring that all teachers, regardless of their training or discipline, are equipped and motivated to teach it. in contrast to previous studies that primarily focus on science teachers or teachers’ knowledge of climate change, this article shifts attention to the whole educator, examining attitudes, emotions, and perspectives on cce. it also explores how school-based educators, including teachers and other staff, already engage with climate change. using multiple surveys from an ongoing research-practice partnership, we report on four key findings. 32 current issues in comparative education pizmony-levy & wagner our study highlights the complexity of how teachers engage with climate change. the vast majority of educators express concern about climate change, with many reporting emotional responses such as fear, sadness, and anger. educators in our sample exhibit greater concern about climate change than the general u.s. population: 95% of nyc educators are very or somewhat concerned, compared to 65% of americans (leiserowitz et al., 2023). although we have some indication for improvement (see figures 3 and 11), many educators lack confidence in their knowledge of climate change (with about one-third feeling "very informed" about the topic in the most recent data point). educators’ views on the causes of climate change corroborate this sentiment. while the majority of educators endorse the scientific consensus on the role of human activities (e.g., burning fossil fuels) in climate change, a sizable group also endorses an alternative explanation attributing climate change to natural patterns. about half of the educators in the sample give equal importance to these two competing explanations. similar to the general public in the u.s., educators tend to underestimate the extent to which climate change will harm them and their local community (leiserowitz et al., 2023). our study underscores widespread support for comprehensive cce. educators overwhelmingly support teaching climate change in schools. they prioritize empowering students to take action and addressing causes, impacts, and solutions (see figure 7). many value supporting students' emotional responses and uncertainty about the future. however, educators show comparatively less enthusiasm for incorporating indigenous knowledge and localized place-based learning into cce. it is unclear, at this point, why educators present these preferences. similar patterns are found in public opinion studies in the u.s. concerning support for different aspects of cce (e.g., pizmony-levy et al., 2024). educators may be reflecting broader societal attitudes toward diverse ways of knowing, or they may be perceiving and adapting to these sentiments in their teaching practices. educators feel comfortable teaching and answering students’ questions about climate change (see figure 9). our study documents the extent of teaching about climate change and the creative ways teachers teach this topic. compared to other teachers in the u.s., teachers in nyc are almost two-times as likely to say they teach about climate change (40% vs. 77.7%; npr/ipos, 2019). within five years, we observed an increase in the intensity of teaching about climate change in nyc, in that more teachers spend more time teaching about climate change (see figure 10). open-ended responses show that science teachers have curricular anchors and templates for engaging with climate change. these educators can point to specific learning units that already address climate change or could serve as an opportunity for this content. teachers of other subjects shared their practices, detailing how they found ways to connect climate change to their subject. our study points to three barriers shaping educators’ engagement with cce: perceptions, access to resources, and feelings of preparedness. perceptions influence current issues in comparative education 33 between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change whether educators integrate climate change into their teaching, with many teachers excluding the topic because they see it as unrelated to their subject area. school leadership and district support appear limited—only one in five educators strongly agree that their school or district encourages them to discuss climate change in the classroom. this lack of endorsement may reinforce the perception that cce is optional or outside their professional responsibilities. accessing resources presents a challenge. teachers highlighted the importance of having the materials needed to teach about climate change (see figures 9 and 11). four out of five teachers pointed to an online portal for climate curricular resources (e.g., subject to climate or local, district-managed hubs) as a helpful intervention. feelings of preparedness impact engagement with cce. one in five teachers who do not teach about climate change cite a lack of preparedness as a key reason. a large group of educators points to professional development sessions and demonstrations from other educators and organizations as valuable tools for effectively incorporating climate change into their instruction. even when educators recognize the importance of cce and have access to resources, they may still hesitate to address the topic due to a lack of confidence in their knowledge or teaching strategies. these findings provide valuable insights into educators' engagement with cce and raise important questions about how these trends compare to national patterns. comparing our findings to a nationwide survey of teachers (npr/ipos, 2019), we find that teachers in nyc hold more favorable attitudes toward cce than teachers nationwide. nyc teachers are more likely than their peers nationwide to feel encouraged by their school or school district to teach about climate change (69% vs. 37%, strongly and somewhat agree) and to recognize students’ interest in the topic (49% vs. 41%, strongly and somewhat agree). nyc teachers are less likely than their peers nationwide to worry about parental complaints related to climate change instruction (18% vs. 29%). context matters. nyc’s relatively environmentally progressive policies and culture appear to influence how educators engage with cce. interventions should be tailored to local contexts, ensuring that support for cce aligns with regional attitudes and policies. what explains the improvements in teachers’ climate change knowledge and their engagement with cce over time? several factors may contribute to these positive trends. first, increased public discourse and awareness around climate change (leiserowitz et al., 2023; tyson et al., 2023) have likely influenced educators' perceptions and knowledge. as climate change continues to be a prominent issue in media, politics, and public discussions, teachers are exposed to more information, which may contribute to their growing confidence in understanding and teaching the topic. second, local policy and programming may play a role. nycps has introduced cce-focused initiatives in schools, including professional development opportunities (e.g., workshop series, and mid-winter climate institute) and city-wide campaigns (e.g., four climate action days per year starting in the 2023/24 school year). nycps 34 current issues in comparative education pizmony-levy & wagner convened the climate education leadership team (celt), a group of over 30 educators who help design professional learning, develop curriculum resources, and build a citywide network to support the integration of equitable climate education across all subjects and school communities. these efforts may have helped equip educators with the knowledge and tools to integrate climate change into their teaching. as more teachers begin to engage with cce, they share ideas, resources, and best practices with colleagues, fostering a ripple effect that enhances teacher preparedness. third, student activism and interest in climate issues may motivate educators to prioritize climate change in their instruction. with student-led climate movements gaining momentum, educators may feel a greater responsibility to respond to student inquiries and integrate climate-related topics into their teaching. taken together, these factors help explain the positive trends in teachers’ climate knowledge and teaching practices, underscoring the importance of sustained institutional support, professional learning opportunities, and responsive education policies in further advancing cce. our study is a step toward a more comprehensive understanding of educators’ engagement with cce. our study draws on data from a specific context—nyc, a global city within a high-income country—and from educators who are appointed or responsible for advancing sustainability initiatives at their schools. while this provides valuable insights from the majority of the schools in the nyc system, it does not capture the full spectrum of teachers and school staff who may engage with cce in different ways. future research could include data from representative samples of teachers and educators to ensure a broader and more generalizable understanding of cce. research should incorporate more qualitative data, such as interviews, focus groups, and classroom observations, to better understand how teachers make sense of climate change and navigate the broader educational landscape, including policies and practices related to cce. expanding the scope to multiple contexts will also be critical for examining how socio-political and educational environments shape teachers’ engagement with cce. international large-scale assessments such as timss 2023 (von davier et al., 2024) and talis 2024 provide valuable opportunities for cross-national and comparative analyses, enabling a deeper exploration of these dynamics on a global scale. integrating data from diverse contexts and representative samples, future research can offer a more nuanced and comprehensive picture of the challenges and opportunities in advancing cce. this study provides valuable insights into conducting research within the context of a research-practice partnership. through ongoing dialogue and a shared commitment to learning from each other, our partnership evolved from a broad focus on sustainability to a targeted emphasis on cce. we learned a key lesson from this collaboration: how to collect comprehensive data on educators—their emotions, attitudes, and instructional practices—without overwhelming participants with lengthy survey instruments. by working closely with district leaders, we were able to refine our approach (see table 1) and ensure that data collection remained meaningful and manageable. because this current issues in comparative education 35 between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change study was embedded within a research-practice partnership, we were able to translate findings into action quickly. for example, we co-designed a summer institute: integrating climate change in nyc public schools (gardner, 2023). findings from our study directly informed the objectives and content of the institute, in which we sought to: deepen teachers’ understanding of climate change through direct engagement with climate scientists, empower teachers to integrate climate change across diverse subjects by connecting them with curriculum experts from tc and nycps, build a supportive learning community of educators from across the city, fostering sustained collaboration, and co-create innovative teaching materials tailored to nyc’s unique educational context. this experience underscores the power of research-practice partnerships in bridging the gap between research and implementation, ensuring findings are academically significant and practically impactful. cce has evolved as a field over the past decades, shaped by international frameworks such as action for climate empowerment (ace). while these global discourses provide valuable guidance, it is crucial to pay close attention to what happens on the ground—how educators experience, interpret, and implement cce in their daily work. this study contributes to this effort by taking a whole-educator approach, examining not only teachers’ knowledge and instructional practices but also their emotional responses to climate change and attitudes toward cce. by centering educators' perspectives and lived experiences, we gain a richer understanding of both the opportunities and challenges in advancing cce. continued attention to teachers' needs, grounded in local realities and collaborative partnerships, will be essential in shaping effective and sustainable climate education initiatives. oren pizmony-levy is an associate professor of international and comparative education at teachers college, columbia university, and the founding director of the center for sustainable futures. he is also an affiliated faculty member at the columbia climate school. his research explores the intersections of globalization, social movements, and education, with a particular focus on how social contexts influence teachers’ engagement with climate change education. sarah alice wagner is a master’s student in the climate and society program at the columbia climate school. her research examines the intersections of climate impacts, climate action, and education. she is a graduate student assistant in k-12 and continuing education at the climate school, where she contributes to developing education programs for pre-college students, professional learners, and educators seeking to enhance expertise in climate and sustainability. acknowledgement we are deeply grateful to our partners at nycps, meredith mcdermott and thad copeland, for their collaboration and comments on this article. we also thank victoria l. 36 current issues in comparative education pizmony-levy & wagner hamilton for her assistance with data analysis. an early version of this paper was presented at the 2021 georg arnhold international summer conference (virtual). we acknowledge funding from nsf through the learning the earth with artificial intelligence and physics (leap) science and technology center (stc) (award #2019625). references ardoin, n., a. bowers, & wheaton, m. 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(2010). climate change in the classroom: patterns, motivations, and barriers to instruction among colorado science teachers. journal of geoscience education, 58(5), 297-309. 42 current issues in comparative education https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.15.080189.001533 https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/09/what-the-data-says-about-americans-views-of-climate-change/ https://unfccc.int/ https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement https://doi.org/10.59117%20/20.500.11822/46497 https://doi.org/10.59117/20.500.%2011822/46404 https://unfccc.int/topics/education-and-youth/big-picture/ace https://timss2023.org/results/ pizmony-levy & wagner yale program on climate communication (2021). website. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/ current issues in comparative education 43 https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/ between urgency and uncertainty: the challenge of being a human and an educator in the age of climate change 8. climate policies and financing for conflict and displacement-affected contexts – closing the capacity gaps.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 27, issue 1, special issue 2025 climate policies and financing for conflict and displacement-affected contexts: closing the capacity and education gaps catherine wong united nations development programme (undp) new data streams highlight the low levels of access to climate finance by the most climate-vulnerable countries, which struggle with conflict and displacement and call for more effective financing mechanisms. while such measures are urgent, their effectiveness and impact depend on investments in capacity development and education. in exploring recent international policy trends in climate, conflict, and displacement, this article argues for greater attention to endogenous capacities and implementation of science-informed approaches. it highlights the key role academia and the education sector can play in addressing these gaps. in contexts where conflict and displacement are ongoing, and climate and insecurity jeopardize sustainability, this paper argues that strengthened capacities can represent a critical adaptation measure and a no-regrets investment opportunity. keywords: climate change, conflict, displacement, migration, capacity development, education. introduction the tenth anniversary year of the paris agreement takes place in 2025, against the backdrop of the highest levels of conflict1 and displacement2 since the inception of the un and record levels of global warming. with third-generation nationally determined contributions under the paris agreement due in 2025, a new opportunity arises to revisit progress on climate change. going beyond the established and prosaic understanding of poverty and development interlinkages, to the intersections of climate with conflict and insecurity, increasingly recognized as “climate, peace and security” on the one hand, and with migration and displacement on the other. recent developments include a marked recognition of conflict and displacement as relevant to climate change. the 27th conference of the parties (cop27) of the un framework convention on 2 unhcr reported that displacement reached record levels in 2024, at 120 million in may 2024, with 12 years of consecutive increases in displacement witnessed. 1 the institute for economics and peace’s (iep) 2024 global peace index reports that there were 56 ongoing conflicts, the highest number of concurrent conflicts since world war ii, with the second highest annual level of conflict-related deaths in the last 30 years. © 2025, wong. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 27(1), 172-196. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en wong climate change (unfccc) gave attention to the interactions between climate, conflict, and displacement. new streams of data highlight the low levels of access to climate finance by the most climate-vulnerable countries, which struggle with conflict and displacement and call for more effective financing mechanisms (undp, 2021; overseas development institute [odi], 2021; wong, 2023; world bank group, 2024). while such changes are urgent, effectiveness and impact will depend on investments in capacity development in education. in exploring recent trends in climate, conflict, and displacement, this article argues for greater attention to strengthening endogenous capacities, the academia and the education sector can play a key role (juckett et al., 2022) in addressing these gaps. in contexts where conflict and displacement are ongoing, and climate and insecurity jeopardize sustainability, this paper argues that strengthened capacities can represent a critical adaptation measure (cid & lerner, 2023) and a ‘no regrets’ (intergovernmental panel on climate change [ipcc], 1996) investment opportunity in education. literature review conceptualizing capacity development for climate, conflict, and displacement the literature on capacity and capacity development in the case of climate, conflict, and displacement is sparse. definitions vary and have evolved, informed as much by the epistemology of education and research as by development practice. tangential references can be drawn from the climate field. the 1992 un conference on environment and development made the case for capacity building, which strengthens “endogenous capacities in developing countries” (un, 1992). the undp (2002) capacity for development explored the nature of capacity and capacity development, defining capacity as “the ability to perform functions, solve problems and set and achieve objectives” (p. 8). noting the ambiguity in defining capacity development in international climate change negotiations, nautiyal and klinsky (2022) stress that a departure is needed from a narrow short-term project-based focus on techno-managerial aspects to approaches that are transdisciplinary, holistic, and engage diverse groups of stakeholders (see susskind & kim, 2021). in countries affected by ongoing conflict and insecurity, brown and colleagues (2013) found that tackling climate change is understood as a priority. institutions, networks, and inter-institutional linkages focused on learning and knowledge promote adaptive capacity and peacebuilding. higher education establishments are recognized as some of society’s most enduring institutions (dodgson & gann, 2018), including in conflict-affected countries (bukaie et al., 2025; milton, 2020) and as establishments that build the capacity of climate change professionals in developing countries (huq, 2016). displacement-related brain drain is an issue current issues in comparative education 173 climate policies and financing for conflict and displacement-affected contexts: closing the capacity gaps impacting capacities to respond to climate change (buhaug & von uexkell, 2021). greater efforts are needed to overcome the systematic challenges of multi-stakeholder approaches to capacity development (miquelajauregui, 2021). focusing on north-south collaboration and dynamics in academia, ishengoma (2016) emphasizes the role of equitable partnerships in advancing institutional and personal capacity building. reflecting on the impetus for capacity development initiatives, sokona (2021) advocates a perspective of capacity development rooted in local context, partnerships, and networks of research. he stresses self-determination in capacity development, as “the ability to set and pursue your own agenda” (p. 2). juckett and colleagues (2022) discuss the need for “implementation practice capacity building interventions” to fill a vital gap between research and practice. they note a disconnect in the pace at which implementation science evolves, a gap where capacity development initiatives tend to target the research community, instead of practitioners, and that academic institutions and the education sector play an important role in connecting research and practice. drawing from the perspectives of capacity, capacity development, the role of research and academia, and the education sector in addressing climate, conflict, and displacement, this article analyzes the latest developments. it makes use of lusthaus et and others’ (1999) conceptualization of capacity development as four approaches. these are: organizational, which focuses on individual entities; institutional, referring to the norms and values that shape them; systemic, which concerns the inclusivity of actors at all levels; and participatory, underpinned by empowerment and ownership. in assessing progress, it identifies institutional capacity as a key aspect of adaptive capacity (cid & lerner, 2023) in the context of addressing climate, conflict, and displacement. climate, conflict and displacement: the literature and the limitations of capacity hobbes’ (1668) leviathan explains inevitable conflict arising from resource scarcity as a ‘natural’ state and that to avoid it, and civil war, a strong social contract and state are necessary. this sentiment is evident in malthus’s (1798) seminal work, essay on the principle of population, which connects population growth, resource scarcity, and resulting hunger and famine to eventual war and state failure. the intellectually dystopian debate, linking resource scarcity to societal collapse, is continued by neo-malthusians, including in the works of homer-dixon (1994), gleditsch (1998), myers & kent (1995), and mathews (1989). much research has been devoted to discerning the relationship between climate change and the causes of violent conflict and/or insecurity, in an attempt to establish a causal relationship (burke et al., 2015; hsiang et al., 2011; mach et al., 2019; miguel et al., 2004). the mainstream consensus in the literature, however, shows, contrarily, no direct causal relationship between climate change and violent conflict. climate change is recognized as an exacerbating factor, a ‘threat multiplier,’ a term first coined by the center for naval analysis in 2007. more 174 current issues in comparative education wong recent thinking has drawn on ‘risk multiplier’ effects, systemic risk, and/or causal pathways, which can give rise to the prolongation or exacerbation of conflict dynamics. country case studies have aimed to examine interactions between climate and drivers of conflict and insecurity in such climate and security hotspots, as somalia, afghanistan, lake chad, the democratic republic of congo, and yemen. their selection has involved overlaying indices that correlate the high levels of armed conflict and climate hazards. some scholars argue that such methods risk overstating the case and are criticized for the resulting ‘streetlight effect,’ i.e., where data is sought where it is most easily found (hendrix, 2017). alternative avenues of investigation, under the theoretical umbrella of environmental peacebuilding (conca, 2024; conca & dabelko, 2002; ide et al., 2021), aim to uncover cooperation around the environment and climate as the basis for building and sustaining peace. from this, an understanding has emerged among scholars and policymakers of the impact of climate on peace and security, the application of peacebuilding approaches to climate and the environment (abrahams, 2021), and the potential unexpected negative social or environmental etc. impacts or backdraft effects of climate policies (dabelko et al., 2013). the effects of climate change on migration go beyond established patterns (glantz, 1991). scholars stress migration is the combination of multiple factors, of which demographics and political economy are the ‘most salient factors,’ and the environment is the ‘proximate cause’ (suhrke, 1992). migration is, at times, rightly considered to be a form of adaptation (mcleman & smit, 2006; gemenne & blocher, 2017), where mobility enables livelihood diversification (vinke et al., 2020). however, with the resulting increased food insecurity, welfare losses, and labor shortages that accompany migration in some cases, arguments persist as to whether migration is actually “maladaptation” and an effective “climate-induced poverty trap” (jacobson et al., 2018). an abundance of outcomes can thus be evidenced in a myriad of different combinations of place of origin, destination, and host communities. responses to climate impacts are noted as having the potential to drive or exacerbate displacement (kramarz, park & johnson, 2021). in terms of the role of capacity and capacity development, there is little in-depth examination. references are limited to adaptive capacity (brown et al., 2013; chapagain et al., 2025; gupta et al., 2010), particularly at a local level (susskind & kim, 2021), as well as coping capacities, where williams and colleagues (2015) explain it as key to breaking the cycle of climate, insecurity, and migration. black, bennett, thomas et al. (2011) describe the environment both as an incentive for mobility and also a limiting factor on capacity, observing that many may migrate to places with high environmental vulnerability. in their endeavor to examine adaptive capacity in a post-conflict context with the central african republic as a case study, brown and colleagues (2013) highlight that the lack of adaptive capacity was effectively mitigated by leveraging networks and connectivity. in turn, this fostered inter-institutional linkages which helped deliver on current issues in comparative education 175 climate policies and financing for conflict and displacement-affected contexts: closing the capacity gaps the national adaptation programme of action and redd+ (brown et al., 2013). while capacity is an enabling factor for adaptive capacity, only its absence is noted. policy and practice: the challenges and opportunities the un and climate, conflict, and displacement the security council has garnered the attention of scholars and practitioners and has shaped the climate, peace, and security agenda. the council addressed the implications of climate change for international security in a united kingdom-led ministerial open debate in 2007, highlighting unprecedented levels of migration due to flooding, disease and famine as a result of climate change, in addition to greater competition for food, water and energy, and potential impacts on large-scale global economic disruption. a subsequent resolution (63/281) by the un general assembly in 2009 then called attention to the issue and paved the way for the first un secretary-general’s report (2009), climate change and its possible security implications (a/64/350,) which noted the interdependence between human vulnerability and national security. the peacebuilding commission, which serves as an advisory body to the un security council and general assembly, has addressed climate, peace and security in various geographies, including the context of the lake chad basin, the sahel, and the pacific. recent scholarship recognizes the creation of the un climate security mechanism as an ‘institutional home’ (modeer, 2022) for climate, peace and security in the un system. the un inter-agency initiative is recognized for providing dedicated capacities in the form of climate, peace and security advisors to field missions and regional organizations in the global south (un, n.d.b). an external evaluation of its work demonstrated that climate, peace and security advisors have played a key role in supporting the capacities of the un and its partners, including at regional and sub-regional levels, and in collaborating with academia. in terms of responding to requests for support by affected countries, potential constraints are noted due to the limited pool of expertise (brusset, 2022). various un entities now offer training on climate, peace, and security: the un staff system college and un institute for training and research (unitar). the work of the un university, including in collaboration with the secretary-general’s peacebuilding fund, is well-known in the climate, peace and security field. undp’s climate, peace and security experts academy, launched at the 27th conference of the parties (cop27), provides dedicated training to policymakers, climate negotiators, and regional organizational officials from countries and regions affected by conflict and displacement. wider-reaching impacts can be realized through more systematic collaboration with education and academia. 176 current issues in comparative education wong as an effective counterpoint to a state-driven security rubric, the concept of “human security” was popularized through undp’s (1994) human development report, entitled new dimensions of human security, which offered a people-centred security framework, focusing on the aspiration of freedom from fear, want, and indignity. over the years, this theory has been modernized iteratively, including in the 2022 recapitulation, human security in the anthropocene: a new base for action, which revisited this concept following the covid pandemic, to examine interactions between climate change and environmental factors, with human security. the report addresses political unrest, conflict over critical minerals (including rare earth elements) needed for the production of green technologies, and internal displacement. the ipcc’s (2014) fifth assessment report delivered a first-ever dedicated chapter on human security (adger et al., 2014) and the concepts of violent conflict and fragility, tackled in the intergovernmental panel on climate change’s (ipcc) 2022 sixth assessment report. importantly, it reaffirms the consensus that climate is not the direct cause of conflict, but solutions targeting climate-sensitive livelihoods and women’s empowerment can reduce risks posed to peace. other findings are salient to the examination for climate risks for conflict and insecurity, including that maladaptation can occur when addressing one set of risks in isolation, and other risks are then inadvertently exacerbated (ipcc, 2022). formative praxis in addressing climate and mobility praxis in recent years shows advances in assessing climate impacts on human mobility to varying degrees in different frontiers, including policy fora, international law, and data and analytics. however, innovation toward capacity development and relevant education has not kept pace. namely, heightened displacement in the context of climate policy leaves gaps that capacity development and education have yet to fill. as the vision of former un secretary-general kofi annan, and the first major international forum of its kind on the subject, the inaugural global forum on migration and development took place in 2007 and tackled environmental degradation, climate change, and disasters from the onset (gfmd, 2007). successive iterations have included leadership from global south nations (colombia serves as chair for 2024-2025)and addressed climate mobility. key milestones are the negotiation of the global compact on migration (a/res/73/195), adopted by un member states in 2018. though non-legally binding, it broke new ground as the first member state-negotiated agreement of its kind. initiatives like the un secretary-general’s appointment of the high-level panel and office of the special adviser on solutions to internal displacement, a role first created in 2022, encumbered by robert piper up to year-end 2024, have continued to bring attention to the issues. there are similar calls for a special representative of the secretary-general on climate, peace and security. at large, there are insufficient institutional capacities to address the intersections between climate change, conflict, and climate displacement. education is essential to develop such capacities. current issues in comparative education 177 climate policies and financing for conflict and displacement-affected contexts: closing the capacity gaps despite progress in the policy spheres, the legal status and rights of so-called “climate migrants” or “refugees” are hotly debated vis-à-vis those formally recognized as refugees under the rome convention (draper, 2024). the term “environmental refugee”, first coined by the environmental activist and founder of worldwatch institute, lester brown (1976) and essam el-hinnawi (1985), tackled the subject in 1985 for the un environment programme (unep), remains contentious. the term is often considered a misnomer as climate displacement is still primarily an internal phenomenon (as recognized in ipcc, 2022, etc.). however, in 2020, the un high commissioner for refugees updated its guidance, making a broader case for the protection of those facing environmental risks. it has been argued that there are instances where the geneva convention should apply to those displaced by climate, in the case of drought-related famines which have triggered conflict and displacement (unhcr, no date). much effort has been devoted to quantifying the future impacts of climate change on forced migration, displacement, and relocation (see, for example, the government office for science, 2011). describing it as one of the “foremost human crises of our times”, myers’ (2002) estimate of 200 million climate migrants by 2050 drew much attention and has been one of the most frequently cited figures. this includes the stern review (2007) on the economics of climate change, duly noted as one of the most comprehensive assessments of climate impacts at the time, which outlines the costs and benefits, and makes the case for climate investments. projections of future climate displacement impacts vary greatly. the institute for economics & peace (2020) estimated, in its inaugural iteration of ecological threat register, that some 1.2 billion people would be displaced due to ecological disasters by 2050, of which 20% would be “beyond their borders.” the world bank’s (2018) groundswell preparing for internal migration stresses the limitations of in-situ adaptation, in finding that in a pessimistic scenario, more than 200 million people would potentially be internally displaced in six sub-regions by 2050, including central asia, eastern europe, latin america, north africa and south asia. apart from longer-term predictions, annual tracking of displacement has offered striking perspectives. since 1998, the internal displacement monitoring centre (idmc) has compiled data and tracked trends on displacement, by violent conflict and natural disasters. while in 2024, idmc estimated total cumulative internal displacement at 75.9 million, of which 68.3 million were displaced by conflict and 7.7 million by disasters, climate outpaces conflict as the number one driver of new displacements year after year. this was still the case even with ongoing conflict in the drc, gaza, sudan, and ukraine. while it took the ipcc several iterations to address the peace and security implications of climate change (as addressed in the previous section), climate mobility, on the other hand, is acknowledged from the very first iteration. displacement has featured more 178 current issues in comparative education wong prominently and consistently in the assessment reports, but special reports, including ocean and cryosphere in a changing climate and managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation (known as srex). climate hazards, sudden and slow onset, are recognized by the ipcc (2022) as increasingly exacerbating displacement and involuntary migration, as well as vulnerability to climate change across different global regions. the lack of adaptive capacity underpins this. other gaps are highlighted, including: modelling for out-migration in coastal regions, projections of movements related to slow-onset events, as well as a need for more nuanced research. it is stressed that greater adaptive capacity can address involuntary migration and immobility and “the degree of choice under which migration decisions are made” (ipcc, 2022). data and monitoring initiatives are critical to informing policy. readiness to respond to future increased levels of climate and environmental-related displacement depends on investments in capacities and education. the state of ambition in the international climate change negotiations for conflict and displacement-affected populations the treatment of conflict and migration has varied at the cop on climate change, which may speak to a lack of awareness and capacity gaps. while neither is a negotiated outcome, language on conflict has yet to successfully make the final cut in negotiated texts; the latter, on migration, has received far greater attention across different work streams. it was at cop27, in sharm el-sheikh, that the so-called ‘africa cop’ paved the way for key breakthroughs in the climate change negotiations, including agreement for the first time on the operationalization of the loss and damage fund. the egyptian presidency highlighted the concept of ‘sustaining peace’ for the first time in the context of the climate change negotiations through its climate responses for sustaining peace initiative, developed by the cairo international centre for conflict resolution, peacekeeping and peacebuilding with the african union commission and undp. the initiative focused on four pillars: the climate adaptation and peacebuilding nexus, climate-resilient food systems for sustaining peace, durable solutions to the climate-displacement nexus, and accelerating climate finance for sustaining peace (embassy of egypt, 2022). while not a negotiated outcome, climate responses for sustaining peace drew attention from a diverse range of stakeholders. this momentum was continued by the united arab emirates, with the cop28 declaration on climate, relief, recovery and peace, which garnered the support of more than 90 member states and institutional partners, including the un, multilateral development banks, and non-governmental organizations. in cop29, the baku call on climate action for peace, relief and recovery followed suit from cop28, recognizing themes of relief, recovery, and humanitarian need. it highlighted climate mobility as a cross-cutting issue, across three identified pillars of work: food security, water scarcity, and land degradation (unfccc, 2024, current issues in comparative education 179 https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cop29_letter_to_parties_and_observers.pdf climate policies and financing for conflict and displacement-affected contexts: closing the capacity gaps november 6). the increased efforts of un humanitarian actors at cop are also notable. the global refugee forum addressed climate action and finance in a 2022 call for action for increased financing for displacement-affected contexts, and unhcr launched its refugees for climate action network at cop29 to give a platform to those suffering from displacement and climate change at international negotiations (unhcr, 2024). only displacement and migration have been referenced in official negotiations. the new collective quantified goal (unfccc, 2024, november 24) does not refer to conflict or fragility-affected groups; it does reference “migrants” among other vulnerable groups. the first global stocktake (assessing progress toward the paris agreement) references displacement, relocation, and migration in the context of loss and damage. policy and planning are addressed, including planned relocation and the needs of migrants and other vulnerable groups (unfccc, 2024). negotiators had agreed to develop a maximum of 100 indicators for operationalizing the global goal on adaptation (gga), but thousands of suggestions were received. negotiating groups had proposed indicators on conflict and displacement. cop30 is expected to determine the final list. regarding loss and damage, migrants are referenced in the operationalization of new funding arrangements (unfccc, 2023). climate impacts on forced displacement and relocation are addressed by unfccc, in driving and exacerbating climate change vulnerability, and economic and non-economic losses and damages. challenges are noted about adaptive capacity, institutional, and analytical capacities. other obstacles include the lack of definition of displacement under the convention. displacement is still recognized as “the clearest case” of loss and damage, as evidence of the limits of adaptation, and resulting in physical harm (unfccc, 2013). the warsaw international mechanism (wim) for loss and damage in 2013 was launched to strengthen knowledge, dialogue, and coordination, including on finance, technology, and capacity building, and gives credence to climate-related mobility and displacement.3 the santiago network for loss and damage, established at cop25, under wim, to “catalyze the technical assistance” of key stakeholders, emphasizes long-term capacities and the participation of diverse stakeholders (unfccc, 2022). while capacity is considered at different levels, the need to invest in education and capacity development is overlooked. regional approaches to climate, conflict and displacement arguably, the most-affected regions and countries have made the most notable advances in climate change policy. the 2009 african union convention for the protection and assistance of internally displaced persons in africa addresses internal displacement by 3 wim makes references in its second five-year rolling work plan to migration, displacement and relocation and more broadly to building capacity. the unfccc task force on displacement was created at cop21 to support implementation of wim. for more information see annex i, second five-year rolling workplan of the executive committee of the warsaw international mechanism, fccc/sb/2022/2/add.2. 180 current issues in comparative education https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/ncqg_4.pdf https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/ncqg_4.pdf https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/ncqg_4.pdf https://unfccc.int/documents/643381 wong armed conflict, as well as climate and environmental factors, natural disasters, and development projects. the convention sets a precedent as the first and only legally binding agreement of its kind protecting those internally displaced by violence, conflict, natural disasters, and climate change (unhcr, 2022). with regards to connections to peace and/or security, the african union commission has consistently addressed climate interconnections in resolutions of the peace and security council. it launched its common african position on climate, peace and security at cop29. sub-regional efforts culminated in the bamako declaration on climate security in 2022. the pacific island forum secretariat has consistently recognized climate as the greatest threat to regional security, including in its boe declaration on regional security. pacific small island developing states, like fiji (2022), vanuatu (2018), and the solomon islands (2022), are amongst the first globally to develop national guidance documents on climate-related relocation. apart from “reducing the triggers of displacement,” vanuatu’s national policy on climate and natural disaster-induced displacement identifies challenges, including the risk of forced evictions and violent conflict due to relocation, while stressing the need to prepare for different displacement scenarios. in terms of “systems-level interventions,” the need to “invest in capacity-building and training for all stakeholders to promote understanding of the policy and increase sensitivity to displacement issues” is identified as one of four overall strategic areas (government of vanuatu, 2022, page 29). noting that mobility, in all its manifestations, is not an unfamiliar phenomenon to the archipelago, the solomon islands (2022) stresses the application of standard operating procedures, the availability of information, while highlighting such risks as social tensions and preservation of indigenous knowledge. the publication of fiji’s (2022) planned relocation guidelines was quickly followed by standard operating procedures a year later, which covered extensively aspects of procedure, implementation, and financing. recognizing relocation as a traumatic experience, capacity building of communities is stressed in the context of relocation planning and for the effective implementation of the processes outlined. other developments in the region include tuvalu’s groundbreaking agreement with australia, the falepili union, which includes climate change resilience and mobility with dignity, and safeguarding security.4 the treaty opens a “special migration pathway” whereby up to 280 tuvaluans may live, study, or work in australia. as new policy breakthroughs address increasing climate mobility impacts overcoming gaps in capacity is critical to success. capacity development and education should adapt in response. 4 for the full text, see: australia government – department of foreign affairs and trade (no date). tuvalu australia-tuvalu falepili union. https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/tuvalu/australia-tuvalu-falepili-union current issues in comparative education 181 https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/tuvalu/australia-tuvalu-falepili-union climate policies and financing for conflict and displacement-affected contexts: closing the capacity gaps policy recommendations an examination of capacity and capacity development in the realms of climate, conflict, and displacement climate is largely rejected as the primary cause of conflict and displacement in policy and research. however, given the “multiplier” effects (cna, 2007) of climate change on conflict in many geographies around the world, there is a need to consider climate responses as they relate to these social phenomena and vice versa. with increased levels of conflict and global warming, the capacity for climate policymaking needs to reflect the different realities of conflict and displacement-affected contexts. experts acknowledge that migration and displacement will likely increase with climate change, either pre-emptively to avoid harm or post-facto, as a coping strategy, and the need to avoid the adverse outcomes related to ad-hoc resettlements (walelign et al., 2021). addressing capacity gaps at all levels (lusthaus et al., 1999) in climate policymaking is critical to the adaptive capacity of conflict and displacement-affected countries and remains a hurdle to overcome in addressing their access to climate finance. in this regard, the following recommendations are made: to understand the need for differentiated climate capacities in developing countries vis-à-vis conflict and displacement-affected settings. capacity development in the context of climate policies and financing has been consistently tackled over the years, but without addressing conflict and displacement. when the two are addressed, it is often in a siloed manner, i.e., climate-related displacement vis-à-vis that which is conflict-related. capacity development and education play an important role in addressing these gaps. there is a need to consider those who are multiply displaced, i.e., by a combination of climate and conflict. the argument of climate, development, and poverty impacts is well-established. however, a distinction can be drawn between low-income countries and those affected by conflict and/or fragility. an estimated 70% of fragile states are least developed countries (ldcs); some 50% of ldcs are included in the world bank’s harmonized list of fragile situations (undp, 2021; wong, 2023). conflict has been found inter alia by the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) to cut across all income levels, including high-income countries in the middle east and middle-income countries in other regions. greater investments in dedicated climate capacities, climate education, and climate capacity assessments in conflict and displacement-affected countries. in response to increasing climate threats, an analytical paper on “institutional capacities for climate action” developed by oecd (2003), key recommendations: the need for a coherent view of institutional capacity, a minimum level of specific capacities for climate policy, and detailed national capacity assessments. while country specificity is mentioned, there is no specific argument given concerning fragile and conflict-affected countries and territories. however, the authors do assert that “all dimensions of institutional capacity 182 current issues in comparative education wong deserve attention.” as an extension of this argument of minimum levels of capacity for climate policy, the case for greater investments in climate-specific capacities and climate education could be made in the case of contexts affected by conflict and fragility. particularly, as the world bank group and un (2018)’s pathways for peace notes, the prolongation in the duration of conflicts since the 1970s and the findings of recent research by the international institute for strategic studies (2020) establishes the average duration as having increased from 16 years in 1990 to 30 years in 2020, with increased recurrence noted, as opposed to new conflicts. it is recognized by scholars that peacebuilding is a complex and lengthy process, frequently spanning many years (vivekananda et al., 2014) and that the impacts of conflict continue to reverberate long after violence ends (krampe et al., 2021). a greater understanding and investments are needed for effective capacities in climate policy in the contexts affected by violent conflict, as well as post-conflict situations. investing in capacities and climate education in conflict and displacement-affected contexts to help address some of the chronic issues related to their access to climate policy and finance. recent research, including that of undp and the climate security mechanism (2021), addressed for the first time trends in access to climate finance in conflict-affected and fragile contexts and gaps and recommendations to make climate finance work more effectively in contexts affected by conflict and fragility. the metadata analysis of 955 projects (us$14.4 billion) implemented in 146 countries, including 56 fragile states, revealed that conflict and fragility may affect access to and implementation of climate finance. from 2014-2021, it identified that of the top 20 fragile state recipients of vertical fund climate financing, just two were extremely fragile, the drc at 15th, and haiti at 19th. projects supported by the vertical funds in extremely fragile states were far smaller than in fragile or non-fragile states (undp, 2021; wong, 2022). access to financing mechanisms should be strengthened, but may not be effective without the strengthening of endogenous capacities in tandem. investments in capacity and education need to be part of the longer-term solution to close gaps. maximizing opportunities in the climate change negotiations to address climate impacts on displacement and conflict in existing capacity building outcomes. the climate change negotiations did not include gender or adaptation at the outset, but have evolved continuously to encompass both, along with a wider range of issues as they relate to climate. this, after 27 years of loss and damage financing. the 2001 marrakech accords saw the creation of a framework for capacity development and cop21, the paris committee on capacity-building. capacity development features as a key component of the paris agreement (article 9.4), which recognizes that ldcs and small island developing states (sids) have “significant capacity constraints” and are particularly vulnerable to climate change. capacity is highlighted together with finance and technology as one of the means of implementation (moi) of the paris agreement. article current issues in comparative education 183 climate policies and financing for conflict and displacement-affected contexts: closing the capacity gaps 11 of the 2015 paris agreement commits parties to the broad objective of “enhancing the capacity and ability of developing country parties, in particular countries with the least capacity, such as the least developed countries” (unfccc, 2015, page 15). various ndcs already address conflict and displacement (undp, 2020). there are opportunities to strengthen climate outcomes in conflict and displacement-affected countries through existing capacity initiatives. opportunities for academia and the education sector in climate, conflict, and displacement capacity development. in the case of climate and conflict policy and practice, a focus on institutional capacities is still fairly recent, as are capacity development initiatives in multilateral spaces. whereas there are clear gaps in institutional capacity, as evidenced by lower access to climate policy and finance by countries affected by conflict and displacement, and a key role where academia can be better engaged. countries and regions most affected by climate, conflict, and/or displacement arguably show key advantages, and participatory approaches to capacity development remain key to advancing implementation science. in this regard, hugo (2008) attributes the lack of research to challenges of interdisciplinary approaches and argues greater understanding is needed of future trends. in countries suffering from climate, conflict, and displacement, universities and the education sector “as some of the most sustainable institutions in the world” according to huq (2016) can serve as key partners from perspectives of institutional and participatory approaches to capacity building. as policy and practice have moved beyond addressing climate and development interlinkages to climate interlinkages with sustainable development, climate and environmental education arguably need to make similar advances. with their networks rooted in local contexts, they can help fulfil the aspiration of domestically driven capacity development. conclusion this article reviews literature and practice from the climate, peace and security field, comparing and contrasting with that on climate mobility and displacement, to examine how capacity development and education are treated and to offer practical recommendations for policymakers, donors, and climate finance institutions. when considering capacity and capacity development for climate, an argument of difference needs to be made in conflict-affected and post-conflict contexts, as well as those affected by displacement. in the literature on climate, conflict, and displacement connections, the theme of capacity is referenced recurrently. this is often in a static and limited manner, although limited capacity to adapt to climate change, and/or weak coping capacities, are referenced in response to climate shocks and stressors. while the literature stresses capacity development, it does so by focusing primarily on the capacities of vulnerable communities, where investments are most critically needed. however, without 184 current issues in comparative education wong investments in institutional and systemic changes, as well as education in tandem, impacts may often be unsustainable in the face of climate change. while changes in global climate governance and finance are needed, they will not be effective without investments in dedicated investments in capacities. in the climate, peace and security and the climate displacement fields, the subjects of capacity and education are largely neglected. there remains a limited systematic understanding of capacity and institutional capacity development in the climate, peace and security field, and sparse references to education. addressing capacity development needs is a critical adaptation that can serve as a lever to close gaps in access to climate finance. at the level of the un, in practice and the paris agreement, understanding of climate impacts on displacement arguably exceeds that of conflict and insecurity, and there persists a lack of specific attention to the capacity development needs of conflict and displacement-affected contexts. capacity is sorely needed but remains underinvested in developing countries, without taking into account the needs of those affected by displacement and conflict. while the ipcc addresses the two other mois of technology and finance in its sixth assessment report, capacity development is missing, though many, including klinsky and sagar (2024), argue that it is foundational to the other two mois and can explain persistent implementation gaps. in the climate field, the challenges of avoiding the two extremes of determinism and reductionism (hulme, 2011) are manifestly obvious in the parlance of policy spheres. while there is increased intensity in debate on climate as it relates to conflict and displacement, much of the discussion still relates to proof of concept. it is largely driven by investments in data, analytics, and assessments, or the hot topic of finance, without addressing root causes, including capacity needs and climate education shortfalls. catherine wong is undp’s global team leader for climate and security risk and its principal technical advisor on climate, peace and security. she is matrixed to undp’s climate hub and crisis bureau. catherine possesses more than 15 years’ experience working on climate change and the environment at hq and in the field. she serves as undp’s focal point on the climate security mechanism, the un water-led core group on leveraging water for peace, and on the steering committee of the shared waters partnership. she was recognized as one of 25 young leaders by the munich security conference and is an observer of the international military council for climate and security. acknowledgements the author would like to thank cassie flynn, jennifer baumwoll, sara pan algarra, the special issue editors, and the peer reviewers for all their kind feedback on the draft. current issues in comparative education 185 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2023.2195555 climate policies and financing for conflict and displacement-affected contexts: closing the capacity gaps sincere thanks are extended to the government of sweden, undp, and the climate security mechanism and its partners for their support, which made this work possible. references abrahams, d. 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(2018). pathways for peace. world bank group. https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-1162-3 196 current issues in comparative education https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-1162-3 catherine wong 2. teacher resilience in the aftermath of the 2022 balochistan floods: coping strategies and educational continuity in primary schools.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 27, issue 1, special issue 2025 teacher resilience in the aftermath of the 2022 balochistan floods: coping strategies and educational continuity in primary schools muhammad arif faculty of education, southwest university, chongqing, china aneta ismail college of nationalities and history, southwest university, chongqing, china yao jia li faculty of education, southwest university, chongqing, china this study analyzes teacher resilience in light of the 2022 floods in balochistan, pakistan, as teachers were displaced. it explores the challenges primary school teachers faced during this climate-induced displacement, how they coped, and the role of community and institutional support in continuing education. using semi-structured interviews and focus groups (n=15), the study reveals how teachers adapted to teaching methodologies, negotiated emotional and psychological challenges, and utilized community resources to overcome the devastation brought about by floods. the findings show that teachers employed several adaptive strategies: remote teaching, collaborating with colleagues, and enacting personal resilience mechanisms such as emotional regulation and social support networks. the study revealed stark differences in how urban teachers experienced the floods compared to that of rural teachers, including hurdles imposed on teachers in rural areas due to a lack of resources, infrastructure, or both. the results are critical in guiding future educational policies and teacher development programs in disaster-prone areas in pakistan, informing the operational needs of educators during post-disaster recovery, and urging a long-term approach to enhance the resilience of educational systems. keywords: teacher resilience, balochistan floods, climate-induced displacement, coping strategies, educational continuity, adaptive teaching. introduction the catastrophic 2022 floods in pakistan’s balochistan province serve as a reminder of how climate disasters target the world’s most vulnerable, exposing the fragility of marginalized regions and the dire consequences of global inaction (rashid & qixiang, 2025). the floods, exacerbated by torrential monsoon rains, struck 32 out of 34 districts in the province, forcing thousands of students and educators to evacuate (alied et al., 2023). the 2022 floods displaced over 20,000 people, ripped up more than 1,000 km of roads, and devastated the province’s schools, damaging 2,850 institutions and destroying 1,076 (government of balochistan, 2023). © 2025, arif et al. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 27(1), 44-68. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en arif et al. the 2022 floods turned schools into temporary shelters, disrupting education, a cornerstone of community resilience, and complicating the continuity of teaching and learning (manzoor et al., 2023). 577 schools were used as shelters, and 977 classrooms were destroyed. the floods displaced 658,871 students (including 251,840 girls), denying them access to their schools for weeks and exacerbating pre-existing inequities among rural, female, and otherwise vulnerable learners. the education sector of balochistan suffered pkr 12,439.2 million (usd 43.8 million) in losses, underscoring the huge economic and social costs of the disaster (government of balochistan, 2023). teachers' resilience proved significant in ensuring the continuity of education for students. the first responders to educational disruptions were primary school teachers, who experienced unprecedented challenges in delivering instruction while responding immediately to the displacements, losses, and uncertainties resulting from the disaster (noviana et al., 2023). teachers operate in unique environments, and teachers are held responsible for adapting to these rapidly changing and unsafe environments to ensure that there will be learning during and after a disaster (ioana, 2024). the 2022 floods in balochistan highlighted the education sector’s vulnerability to disasters and demonstrated the necessity of teacher resilience in post-disaster situations. to inform future disaster preparedness and educational recovery plans, it is important to understand how teachers coped with the challenges the floods pose and what strategies they used to adapt to the new reality. this research examines the resilience mechanisms that primary school teachers in balochistan employed after the floods, and the socio‐cultural, institutional, and personal factors that shaped those adaptive responses. research problem statement the floods wiped out multiple schools in balochistan, pakistan. schools went underwater and others were demolished (aman et al., 2025). students relocated to emergency shelters, lacking proper educational facilities and resources (government of balochistan, 2023). in the aftermath, teachers held lessons in cramped, improvised tents or community halls and without timely support from education authorities or aid agencies, schooling was disrupted (ismail et al., 2024; krisna et al., 2023). education staff and students experienced psychological trauma, while teachers suffered personal setbacks through home destruction and enduring displacement (jaffar et al., 2023). the floods spotlighted teacher resilience; which is defined as teachers sustaining their work through uncertain times when facing individual and workplace challenges (yuksel & akbel, 2023). there is limited research on how teachers in pakistan, particularly in disaster-prone and under-resourced regions like balochistan, demonstrate resilience in the aftermath of climate-induced displacement. educational practices of teachers during and after disasters need examination to develop better policies for disaster preparedness, teacher training programs, and education recovery strategies. current issues in comparative education 45 teacher resilience in the aftermath of the 2022 balochistan floods: coping strategies and educational continuity in primary schools research questions this study explores the intersection between teacher resilience, climate-induced displacement, and education in the context of the balochistan floods. 1. how do primary school teachers experience and exhibit resilience in post-disaster settings, particularly in light of their personal experiences with displacement? 2. what strategies do primary school teachers use to maintain educational continuity in the aftermath of floods? 3. what role do local communities and governmental or non-governmental support systems play in supporting teacher resilience in disaster-affected areas? these questions provide insight into how teachers maintain their professional commitment to education under crisis conditions and the factors that influence their ability to be resilient in the face of climate-induced displacement. relevance this work contributes to the growing literature on teacher resilience and disaster recovery in education through its focus on climate change and displacement (borazon & chuang, 2023; clarà et al., 2025; fu & zhang, 2024; raghunathan et al., 2022; rashid & qixiang, 2025). this study offers insights into how teachers in balochistan strategically navigate psychosocial and pedagogical challenges during the post-disaster recovery process, highlighting their adaptive capacity in maintaining educational continuity amid displacement and disruption. this study adds to the literature on climate-induced displacement and challenges in displaced communities' access to quality education, calling for policy interventions that support educators during and after a disaster. this study focuses on one disaster in one vulnerable region. its goal is to use the localized understanding of teacher responses to post-crisis realities to address broader dynamics of emergency pedagogy. results can guide the development of disaster resilience programs for teachers, curriculum adaptations, and strategies for future disaster preparedness. this research offers evidence-based recommendations for supporting teachers in regions most impacted by climate displacement and disasters, which can be used to inform educational policy. beyond its regional focus, the study's findings have relevance for international frameworks on educational resilience. literature review this study draws on resilience theory and ecological systems theory to analyze teacher responses during the balochistan floods. while resilience theory provides a foundation for understanding teachers’ emotional and professional adaptation to crisis, ecological systems theory helps situate these responses within a broader network of interacting systems, ranging from personal support networks to institutional structures and national policies. these frameworks offer a more holistic understanding of teacher resilience by 46 current issues in comparative education arif et al. capturing the individual-level coping strategies and the systemic influences that shape educational continuity during climate-induced displacement. resilience theory in education resilience theory examines individual and institutional responses to disruptive events like natural disasters. according to masten (2001), resilience means maintaining functionality while adapting to challenges and recovering after adverse situations. in a review of resilience in health education, mcallister and mckinnon (2009) emphasize the importance of teaching resilience to teachers as a personal capacity and a skill shaped through professional practice. mustak (2022)emphasizes that teachers often act as critical agents of education continuity, relying on personal coping strategies and informal community support when institutional aid is limited. ahmed and colleagues (2022) document how floods have severely impacted children's education and highlight the critical role teachers play in restoring stability and instruction in pakistan. their findings suggest that teachers are central to education delivery and students’ emotional recovery in the wake of displacement. kothiyal and halder’s (2024) study on cyclone-prone odisha demonstrates how educators operate with limited resources, relying on community networks and improvisation to sustain learning. these studies underscore the dual dimensions of teacher resilience—emotional and professional—and offer valuable insight into the experience of teachers in disaster-affected regions like balochistan. through a resilience theory framework in educational settings (gu & day, 2007; mcallister & mckinnon, 2009), we observe methods teachers use to handle professional difficulties and personal hardships to sustain educational activities and preserve their sense of control. the ability of teachers to foster student resilience and sustain education following disasters depends on their emotional health, combined with adaptability in their profession and institutional resources available. ecological systems theory and education bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (1979) offers a framework that demonstrates multiple influencing layers that act together to affect people, including educational professionals, in their social surroundings. multiple interconnected systems impact individuals who consist of immediate environments such as family and classroom (microsystem), the interactions between different microsystems (mesosystem), external environments that affect them indirectly, including policies made by local governments (exosystem), and wider societal and cultural factors (macrosystem). through teacher resilience during post-disaster educational situations, teachers rely on their capabilities and support mechanisms maintained at the community, institutional, and policy dimensions per the ecological systems theory. teacher resilience during adversity develops through interactive contributions from family support networks combined with community involvement and institutional preparedness alongside current issues in comparative education 47 teacher resilience in the aftermath of the 2022 balochistan floods: coping strategies and educational continuity in primary schools government policy implementation (nordgren, 2022). adapting to post-disaster settings, teachers demonstrate individual strength in connection with community recovery processes, along with institutional capabilities and the implementation of national guidelines. ecological systems theory enables the study of how multiple interconnected systems in communities work together to establish educational practices while supporting teacher resilience. educational continuity throughout a crisis depends upon how effectively distinct systems within a community work together. to build successful teacher assistance programs that function in areas facing natural hazards, such as balochistan, we must grasp how interconnected systems affect education systems. previous studies on teachers and climate disasters research into teacher resilience after climate-induced disasters has become vital, particularly for highly disaster-prone areas such as south asia. in india, bangladesh, and the philippines, researchers found significant teacher responses to floods, cyclones, and other climate disruptions (ullah et al., 2025). ullah’s (2025) research establishes community-based support, together with adaptive teaching practices and psychological resilience, as essential components to maintain educational services during crises. in a review of climate change perception in education, ahmed and colleagues (2021) found that teachers and students demonstrate an awareness of the global impacts of climate change and link its causes to human activity. the study notes that prior exposure to disasters can influence teachers' attitudes, preparedness, and adaptive capacity. teachers working in vulnerable areas are key stakeholders in post-disaster education recovery and vital contributors to climate education in their communities. existing literature does not sufficiently address teacher resilience dynamics operating under climate-induced displacement conditions in flood-prone balochistan. several studies examine educational responses in other regions and specific disaster types (ahmed et al., 2022; kothiyal & halder, 2024). other research explores development challenges in balochistan, such as agricultural adaptation (khan et al., 2023) and water governance (yasin et al., 2020). detailed evaluations of teachers working amid climate-induced displacement in chronically affected areas of pakistan remain lacking. the growing severity of natural disasters, largely due to climate change, necessitates an understanding of teacher resilience in maintaining educational services within regions hit by disasters, such as balochistan. research has yet to analyze how community support systems, alongside institutional structures and national policies, help develop teacher resilience in disaster-prone regions and, specifically, how teachers navigate their roles in disaster-affected areas of pakistan, where displacement is recurring and institutional support is limited. this study addresses that gap by examining the lived experiences of primary school teachers in flood-prone balochistan, shedding light on the resilience strategies they adopt in the face of long-term climate disruptions. 48 current issues in comparative education arif et al. theoretical framework resilience theory in educational contexts resilience theory, as postulated by masten (2001), sees resilience as a dynamic process through which individuals or systems maintain or recover functioning in the presence of adversity. it is based on the interaction between the destabilizers, such as risk factors (e.g., displacement and loss of resources), and the protective processes (e.g., social support, self-efficacy, and adaptive coping) that protect against these threats. resilience explains itself among four interrelated capacities. ● resistance: obtaining small initial effects of stressors, ● recovery: restoring previous levels of functioning, ● adaptation: flexibly changing strategies in changing conditions. ● growth: making positive change, to move beyond the pre-crisis baseline (masten, 2001; mcallister & mckinnon, 2009). pedagogical resilience. pedagogical resilience that recognizes how teachers innovate or adapt instructional procedures to maintain learning during disruptions (mansfield et al., 2016). examples are multi-grade lessons upon destruction of classrooms (adaptation) or use of open spaces to ensure student engagement (growth). community resiliency roles. teachers are a part of local support networks or what martinsone and žydžiūnaite (2023) refer to as community resiliency roles. educators broker protective processes by liaising with families, ngos, and community elders to source resources (resistance), restore routines (recovery), and co-construct new learning environments (adaptation/growth). application to balochistan’s 2022 floods teachers’ resistance was observed in their quick establishment of peer support circles; recovery unraveled as they repaired makeshift classrooms; adaptation was a consequence of improvised curricula using local materials; and growth took the form of community-led psychosocial activities going beyond the pre-flood activities. this framework informed our study on how primary school teachers in balochistan utilized individual, pedagogical, and community resources in maintaining the continuation of education amid climate displacement. ecological systems theory and climate-induced displacement bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory (1979) frames individual experiences within five nested environmental layers, each of which shapes how teachers and students navigate climate-driven upheaval. applied to the balochistan floods, this lens reveals multiple points of intervention for sustaining educational continuity. current issues in comparative education 49 teacher resilience in the aftermath of the 2022 balochistan floods: coping strategies and educational continuity in primary schools microsystems. at the most immediate level, displacement ruptured the classroom–home nexus. teachers were uprooted from familiar schools and thrust into camp-style shelters or overcrowded community spaces, while students contended with family loss, food insecurity, and fractured peer networks—factors shown to undermine learning and well-being (wiedermann et al., 2023). mesosystem. connections among home, school, and community were weakened and reformed. parental focus on basic survival needs reduced academic support, yet emergent solidarity, through peer support circles and local elders assisting with makeshift classrooms, helped rebuild essential linkages that buffer against educational discontinuity (mostafizur rahman et al., 2023). exosystem. teachers’ working conditions were shaped by external institutions that they could not influence. delayed or uneven relief from the district education office and slow ngo deployments constrained access to tents, textbooks, and psychosocial services, undermining teachers’ capacity to reopen schools quickly (government of balochistan, 2023). macrosystem. broader cultural and socioeconomic norms like conservative gender roles limiting female teachers’ mobility and the predominance of local dialects dictated who could teach, how classrooms were reassembled, and which instructional materials were relevant. balochistan’s arid climate and agrarian economy entrenched structural vulnerabilities (nandy, 2022). chronosystem. unlike rapid-onset disasters, the monsoon-fueled floods represented a slow-onset crisis, extending displacement and recovery over months. this prolonged disruption compounded trauma, eroded institutional memory, and demanded sustained adaptive strategies rather than short-term fixes. as a result of the balochistan floods, thousands of people were forced from their homes, many of them relocated to temporary camps, while others went to relatives in urban areas (kurosaki, 2024; van der eng, 2024). by mapping the floods onto these ecological layers, the study identifies levers for policy and practice—from reinforcing microsystem supports (targeted psychosocial counseling) to reshaping macrosystem interventions (gender-inclusive disaster planning)—that collectively bolster teacher resilience and educational continuity under climate stress. integration with local context pakistan’s most socioeconomically disadvantaged region, balochistan, is beset with challenges in a politically unstable, underdeveloped, and climate-vulnerable region (karim et al., 2024). because of its arid climate and dependence on agriculture, the region is vulnerable to the effects of climate change (nandy, 2022). these conditions worsened in 2022 when floods displaced communities and damaged infrastructure, homes, and agricultural lands (anwana & owojori, 2023). these challenges are amplified by 50 current issues in comparative education arif et al. climate-induced displacement. many teachers work in temporary shelters with scarce resources and little support. balochistan teachers rely on community-based resilience rooted in local networks to be resilient emotionally and pedagogically to support students and adapt teaching strategies(mostafizur rahman et al., 2023). policy interventions and community solidarity aid teachers’ resilience. the conceptual framework presented in figure 1 draws upon bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory to illustrate how various layers of influence shape teacher resilience during climate-induced emergencies. at the macro level, national education and disaster management policies establish the structural boundaries within which teachers operate, influencing available resources and institutional responses. the mesosystem connects schools with community networks, where collaboration with peers, families, and ngos is crucial in reinforcing emotional and logistical support. the exosystem encompasses broader forces such as government relief programs, healthcare access, and external aid—all of which indirectly impact teachers by shaping the conditions under which they work. the microsystem centers on the immediate classroom environment, where teacher-student relationships and pedagogical strategies are adapted in real time to maintain continuity in learning. these interrelated systems interact with the teacher’s local context (e.g., displacement, resource scarcity) to influence how resilience is enacted personally and professionally. figure 1 a conceptual framework illustrating the interaction between resilience theory and ecological systems theory in shaping teacher resilience during the balochistan flood: an exploration of the multi-layered influences on teacher adaptation and educational continuity current issues in comparative education 51 teacher resilience in the aftermath of the 2022 balochistan floods: coping strategies and educational continuity in primary schools this framework highlights how the theories intersect to show the ways in which balochistan’s teachers adapt their roles and interactions within professional and community networks to meet the daily demands of disaster recovery. socio-political challenges, regional vulnerability to climate change, and the capacity of the existing educational system to respond to displacement are critical factors in determining the nature of resilience strategies teachers adopt. an understanding of these dynamics allows us to analyze how climate-induced displacement and teacher resilience operate within the region as a system and how future disasters can be better managed. key concepts and operational definitions we define key concepts to ensure clarity: teacher resilience. the ability of educators to sustain professional roles, adapt instructional practices, and support students emotionally and academically in the face of personal loss, displacement, and systemic disruption following the balochistan floods. pedagogical resilience. the teacher resilience measure manifests how the instructors creatively change or innovate instructional practices by giving multi‐grade lessons, outdoor teaching, or mobile learning to sustain the attention and learning continuity of students in a crisis (mansfield et al., 2016). adaptive teaching strategies. context-responsive instructional approaches employed by teachers to sustain education during emergencies, including the use of community‐gathered materials, improvised curricula, and remote or blended modalities. climate-induced displacement. forced or voluntary relocation of individuals and communities due to environmental changes directly linked to climate change, such as extreme flooding, that disrupt daily life, infrastructure, and access to education. methodology research design this study employed a qualitative research methodology to understand teacher resilience in primary school teachers after the balochistan floods. qualitative methods are ideal for examining a climate-induced displacement phenomenon as they allow for a nuanced focus on how teachers personally experience and cope using their strategies and resilience mechanisms. these methods allow participants to tell rich stories of adaptation and recovery in their own words. 15 teachers participated in the study—8 through individual semi-structured interviews and 7 through two small focus group discussions (group 1: 4 rural teachers; group 2: 3 rural teachers). while the focus groups were smaller than conventional formats, the design was intentional, accommodating travel limitations and connectivity issues in flood-affected areas. this approach allowed for the collection of rich, in-depth data that illuminated how teachers demonstrated 52 current issues in comparative education arif et al. resilience and how community, institutional, and personal factors shaped responses to the floods. qualitative methods captured socio-cultural dimensions of teacher resilience in the post-disaster context of balochistan, giving a picture of teachers’ challenges and adaptive strategies in balochistan's schooling environment. participants to capture a rich and nuanced understanding of teacher resilience during the floods, the researchers conducted semi-structured interviews (n=8) and focus groups (n=7). the participants were 15 primary school teachers from urban and rural areas of balochistan, the killa saifullah district, which was severely impacted by the floods. teachers were identified in collaboration with the district education office (deo) of killa saifullah and two ngos active in flood relief. the deo provided a list of primary schools affected by the floods. teachers were selected using purposeful sampling to ensure a diverse representation of experiences across geographic, institutional, and demographic lines. participants varied in terms of years of teaching experience (ranging from 1 year to over a decade) and degree of flood exposure, including displacement, school closures, and remote teaching conditions. selection criteria prioritized individuals who worked in schools or communities affected by the floods, allowing for a more focused analysis of how teachers enacted resilience under varying conditions. urban teachers took part in interviews to capture in-depth personal narratives, while rural teachers were convened in focus groups to accommodate travel/connectivity constraints and to leverage their shared community experiences. table 1 includes a summary of participants. table 1 summary of participants' experience, location, flood exposure, and data collection method current issues in comparative education 53 participant code years of experience geographic location exposure to floods data collection method p1 2 urban directly impacted interview p2 12 rural displaced, the school closed focus group p3 5 urban displaced, teaching remotely interview p4 10 rural school impacted, no physical classroom focus group p5 3 urban displaced interview p6 8 rural no displacement focus group p7 7 rural displaced, teaching remotely interview teacher resilience in the aftermath of the 2022 balochistan floods: coping strategies and educational continuity in primary schools data collection the study employed semi-structured interviews and focus groups for data collection. researchers conducted semi-structured interviews on a one-on-one basis that allowed teachers to share their personal stories, how they navigated challenges, and their coping strategies. interviews covered the impact of the floods on teaching, students, infrastructure, teachers' resilience strategies (such as adaptive teaching methods), how the community and institution supported recovery from the disaster, and personal coping mechanisms for dealing with the emotional and psychological stress due to floods. in those cases where face-to-face meetings were not feasible due to geographical or mobility constraints, these interviews were conducted virtually. interviews were recorded and transcribed with the consent of the participants. 15 teachers took part. 8 in individual interviews and 7 across 2 focus group discussions (a group of 4 rural teachers and a group of 3 urban teachers). the focus groups met at safe, neutral locations or online, depending on participants’ availability. sessions were recorded for thematic analysis. recruitment process participants were recruited by contacting schools in balochistan affected by the floods. the researcher approached teachers via phone or email and explained to them in detail the study’s purpose. local educational institutions or ngos working in the region provided recruitment assistance. teachers received no financial incentives. translators 54 current issues in comparative education arif et al. facilitated interviews and focus groups, ensuring that each participant, rural educators speaking local languages or dialects, could engage in the data collection process. data analysis the research team analyzed interview and focus group data using thematic analysis to identify patterns of teacher resilience and coping amidst climate-induced displacement. researchers first familiarized themselves with the data and noted their initial impressions. using open coding, the research team identified adaptive teaching strategies, psychological resilience, community support, and institutional recovery efforts. they labeled key phrases and responses in the transcripts, which uncovered a broad array of emerging concepts. initial codes were organized using axial coding to explore relationships between categories, which helped identify broader thematic patterns. initial codes were clustered into specific themes, which were germane to the teachers’ life occurrences, and mapped onto the conceptual framework for the purpose of illustrating how each model explains teachers’ adaptive behaviors to the floods. ethical considerations ethical approval was obtained from the southwest university research ethics committee. written informed consent was secured from participants via signed consent forms outlining the study’s purpose, procedures, potential risks, and confidentiality. participants were informed of their right to ask questions at any point and to withdraw or skip questions without penalty. data was anonymized, with pseudonyms replacing names to safeguard identities. given the emotional sensitivity of discussing the floods, participants were reminded they could share only what felt comfortable. psychological support resources were made available during and after the study. findings balochistan’s primary school teachers demonstrated resilience when faced with the floods, adopting strategies to sustain educational continuity despite multiple challenges. table 2 shows major themes, sub-themes, and the participant identifiers of those who matched those themes. thematic analysis produced the categories that represent regular patterns of educational personnel adapting to challenges following the floods. table 2 thematic summary table theme sub-theme participant codes teacher resilience strategies emotional support and psychological resilience p1, p6, p8, p9, p11, p13, others (12 total) adaptive teaching methods p3, p5, p7, p9, p11, others (14 total) use of local knowledge and resources p2, p5, p6, p10, others (9 total) current issues in comparative education 55 teacher resilience in the aftermath of the 2022 balochistan floods: coping strategies and educational continuity in primary schools challenges faced by teachers limited resources p4, p6, p7, p8, p9, p11, p13 psychological strain and emotional exhaustion p6, p8, p9, p11, p13, others (11 total) cultural challenges p1, p2 , p7, p9, p14, p15 role of community community solidarity and support p2, p5, p8, p10, p13 government and ngo support p12, p8, p10, p14 differentiating factors in teacher resilience socioeconomic background p13 p8, p10, p12 language barriers p14 p8, p10, p11 community solidarity p5, p6, p10, p11, p15 teacher resilience strategies emotional support and psychological resilience. 12 out of 15 teachers emphasized the importance of emotional support in coping with the psychological toll of the disaster. teachers reported that they sought emotional support from colleagues, other community members, and family. teachers who had nothing in common spoke to other educators in support circles, discussing their experiences in an attempt to take some of the burden and emotional stress off their chests and create a sense of solidarity and collective healing. as noted by one teacher, “talking to my colleagues and knowing we are all going through the same thing made me feel less alone in this feeling” (p1). another teacher emphasized the importance of relationships with colleagues in supporting emotional healing: “in the past, i used to cry in private, but when my colleagues are at my back, it makes me think once more and be strong enough to continue."(p4) adaptive teaching methods. teachers provided examples of how they adapted their teaching methods to accommodate the changing circumstances. when schools were closed temporarily, teachers found creative ways to continue delivering lessons, from using mobile phones for virtual learning to posting online lessons. some turned to outdoor lessons and taught in community spaces when classrooms became useless. according to one teacher, “the classrooms were flooded, so we started teaching outside, under the trees.”another teacher said, "to make the best of the situation, “we used our phones to contact students and share lessons.” another teacher warned, “however, not all had access, but we did what we could do.” (p3) use of local knowledge and resources. 9 teachers mentioned using local materials for teaching when conventional materials were unavailable. they used old textbooks, handmade visual aids, or natural elements, like stones and chalk, for writing. in some cases, community elders helped to create educational content related to local history and culture, which not only helped teachers teach students but also brought the community together. as one teacher mentioned, "we had to make do with whatever resources we could find—old books, chalk, and even stones for writing practice. the community supported us by gathering any available materials.” (p5) 56 current issues in comparative education arif et al. challenges teachers faced the teachers were resilient when faced with a myriad of challenges affecting their ability to offer education in the short or long term. they had limited resources, and recovery was psychologically taxing and culturally biased, making it difficult. limited resources. the floods destroyed or damaged schools, leaving classrooms, learning materials, and basic infrastructure unusable. schools encountered scenarios where the teachers had to deliver lessons without proper textbooks, teaching aids, or sometimes even the most basic supplies such as paper, pens, and chalk. as one teacher said, "we had to teach with no textbooks, and there was barely enough space in the room for the students to sit, but we did the best we could” (p6). another participant added, “the floods brought down everything” (p4). according to p7, “we had no choice but to be creative with the few materials we had left.” these quotes demonstrate the persistent behavior of teachers who made decisions based on resources available amid the crisis. educators depended mainly on neighborhood help and individual decision-making because they received minimal assistance from institutions. teachers' capacity to make adjustments without formal materials defines their situational resilience based on informal relationships rather than organization-driven programs. insufficient availability of necessary resources reveals fundamental structural problems that affect disaster management, particularly in underdeveloped areas such as balochistan, before the floods. psychological strain and emotional exhaustion. many teachers—11 out of 15 participants—reported living through psychological strain from property loss, displacement, and worrying about the safety of their families. beyond the difficulty of continuing to teach in the face of the devastation of their communities and the displacement of their students, the emotional toll of what they’d experienced personally weighed heavily. teachers admitted helplessness in supporting their students, who were traumatized by the floods. a participant explained: given that, at the same time, we worried about our own homes and family, it was hard to focus on teaching. i knew that children needed me; that's why i still went down. ‘the emotional stress was overwhelming,' said another teacher. i had to do it, forcing myself to stay engaged with the students even when i did not have the energy. (p8) cultural challenges. post-disaster, teachers experienced cultural barriers in rural areas where gender roles and local expectations put extra pressure on teachers to function and excel. women teachers reported facing obstacles in offering emotional support to students due to conservative norms that negatively impacted their mobility and interactions with boys. a woman teacher reflected, "as a woman, it was hard to reach out to male students who were also displaced. the cultural norms often hindered the support we could give." (p10) current issues in comparative education 57 teacher resilience in the aftermath of the 2022 balochistan floods: coping strategies and educational continuity in primary schools role of community and policy support teachers successfully maintained their educational activities during flood recovery because of community support, together with policy intervention. local community support and policy guidance played essential roles in teachers maintaining their positions during the educational process. community solidarity and support. several teachers cited the local community as very important to their resilience. participants p2, p5, p8, p10, and p11 mentioned community members stepping in to provide emotional encouragement or material aid regarding their children. the teachers said that the solidarity of the local community balances their resilience. the community came together on many occasions to provide material support through donations of food, clothing, and school supplies. communities helped teachers and students rebuild the makeshift schools in safer areas, and in some locations, local elders and youth filled in to help deliver lessons where teachers could not. “whenever we needed anything, someone was always there to help—to rebuild the classroom or to help the children.” (p11) government and ngo support. teachers emphasized in their responses that while community support was very important to sustaining their resilience, governmental and ngo support are needed to ensure that teachers and education employees in these contexts receive emotional support in addition to material support. local government agencies and ngos provided schools with emergency relief through tents, teaching materials, and psychological resources for teachers. teachers complained that they were not getting enough from the official responses fast enough. "they were a part of it, the ngos helped, but it was too slow," said one teacher.“it did not get to us till many schools were closed for weeks.” (p12) differentiating factors in teacher resilience the study revealed that socio-economic and cultural factors affected teachers’ responses to challenges and strategies for educational continuity as they coped with the floods. socioeconomic background. teachers from higher socio-economic backgrounds in the study described greater resources and more support, personally and professionally, enabling them to recover more quickly. teachers from lower-income families experienced greater financial pressures and had fewer resources with which to adapt. as a teacher reflected, “we were stranded to just get by, 'but teachers from wealthier families could rebuild their homes and schools faster.” (p13) language barriers. in the communities where local languages and dialects are the predominant languages, teachers who could speak these languages had greater interactions with students, and teaching in the aftermath of the floods was not a challenge. teachers who were not fluent in the local dialects had difficulties reaching all students and giving them enough support. a teacher said that: 58 current issues in comparative education arif et al. being able to speak the language of the local people was crucial. i was able to easily understand the children’s needs and be able to help them process their emotions. such naming was much harder for teachers who did not speak the language. (p14) community solidarity. the extent of community solidarity is an important factor that participants described as affecting teacher resilience. in cohesive communities with strong support networks, teachers indicated higher resilience and a stronger collective responsibility. another teacher said, “in our area, we all worked together, so it was not just the teachers who were resilient; it was the whole community.” (p15) this study's findings indicate that the floods demonstrated the resilience of primary school teachers. teachers used several coping strategies, from emotional support and adaptive teaching methods to community-based resources. the challenge of constrained resources, psychological strain, and cultural barriers made teachers poorly suited to continue teaching effectively. it was the role of community support that allowed teachers to maintain educational continuity. teachers’ resilience strategies were shaped by their socioeconomic background and language barriers, along with community solidarity. these contributions provide insights into how trauma, climate-induced displacement, and educational continuity interact to impact teacher and student achievement in disaster-prone regions. this can help inform future disaster recovery and educational policy in places that undergo similar tragedies. discussion this study about teacher resilience after the 2022 balochistan floods yields an understanding of the disruption to teachers due to a disaster. concerning resilience theory and climate-induced displacement, the study finds that teacher resilience is a multifaceted phenomenon including emotional, cognitive, and social dimensions that sustain educational continuity in the face of adversity. existing literature on resilience supports these findings (ghosh & orchiston, 2022; tong, 2021; yusriadi & kaslin, 2025). emotional resilience through community support and coping strategies was vital for teachers to continue their jobs. this is consistent with resilience in education theory, which assumes resilience is not an individualist attribute and that educators can be aided by strong social relationships (carmen et al., 2022). teachers shifted their teaching methods towards adaptations or adaptive teaching methods. they used mobile learning and outdoor classrooms, supporting prior studies about how teachers innovatively use resources available to create alternative educational environments (vidergor, 2021). the study affirms much of the existing literature, adding nuances particular to the case of climate-induced displacement. this study finds that while climate-induced displacement has been well-studied among refugee and migrant populations (boltz et al., 2021), the impact of displacement on local communities, including teachers in a state current issues in comparative education 59 teacher resilience in the aftermath of the 2022 balochistan floods: coping strategies and educational continuity in primary schools of calamity, remains under-researched. in balochistan, teachers not only lost homes and property but also witnessed their entire communities fleeing, deepening their sense of loss and uncertainty. when teachers talk about the emotional burden of post-disaster education, this implies that resilience in post-disaster education goes beyond logistical adaptation and has a lot to do with emotional recovery. the findings show the intersectionality of resilience for teachers whose socioeconomic status, language proficiency, and gender roles impacted their ability to respond to the crisis. this is congruent with recent research in disaster resilience that demonstrates that it is not monolithic but, rather, contextual and dependent on social and cultural factors (hill et al., 2023). teachers who came from wealthier backgrounds or who spoke the local languages had an easier time overcoming distinct challenges, as opposed to others who struggled to keep their professional roles. contextualizing teacher resilience balochistan teachers show resilience comparable to teacher resilience in other disaster-prone areas worldwide, though it depends on whether the climate-induced disaster is a one-time event or slow-onset. the balochistan case deals with climate-induced displacement instead of an isolated one-time event, such as a hurricane or earthquake. unlike rapid-onset disasters, climate-induced displacement, due to slow-onset events (droughts, floods), is a long-term problem for educators, specifically recovery (azadi et al., 2022). rapid-onset climate-induced displacement refers to sudden disasters (e.g., hurricanes, floods) that force people to flee immediately, causing short-term, often temporary movement back or elsewhere (almulhim et al., 2024). slow-onset events (e.g., prolonged droughts, desertification, sea-level rise) gradually erode livelihoods and habitability, ultimately compelling communities to relocate after a longer period of deteriorating conditions. rapid-onset disasters trigger immediate displacement, whereas slow-onset changes lead to more gradual, long-term displacement as stresses accumulate (richards & bradshaw, 2017; rigaud et al., 2018). the mass displacement following hurricane katrina in 2005, which caused over a million gulf coast residents to flee from their homes, has been described as the largest climate-induced displacement event in the united states (u.s.). this illustrates how an extreme weather event exacerbated by climate factors can uproot entire communities (baussan, 2015). after hurricane katrina, it was the teachers in new orleans who showed their resilience through community solidarity and adaptive teaching methods (yarmoham et al., 2025). like the teachers in balochistan, new orleans teachers depended on each other and their communities to rebuild education after schools were obliterated. in contrast with new orleans, extensive displacement of teachers has been a prolonged problem in balochistan, as most of the students, as well as the teachers, were displaced for several years, which made it harder to accommodate education with any stability and permanence. the emotional and psychological strain on teachers was considerable and was more marked in slow-onset disasters than in sudden catastrophes. 60 current issues in comparative education arif et al. teachers’ responses drew on adaptive learning techniques and community engagement (hanne, 2020) in haiti and the philippines, where displacement has been caused by climate change and disasters. distinct linguistic diversity and rooted cultural norms in balochistan formed the basis of the resilience strategies that teachers adopted. local language proficiency and gender norms were felt in the unique ways teachers related to students and communities, as has not been the case in other contexts. while such factors are present in other disaster-affected regions, their manifestation in balochistan shaped distinct resilience strategies that may not be directly comparable to other settings. policy implications the emotional and psychological needs of teachers in disaster-prone areas are relevant to respond to the effects of climate change. educational policymakers should prioritize these needs. teacher resilience should be included within pre-service training and ongoing professional development programs that speak to mental health support, emotional coping strategies, and community involvement. teacher training programs must provide teachers with strategies to help them build their resilience and to help their students during times of crisis. psychological resilience training should be incorporated into teacher education programs to assist educators in managing the emotional impact of disasters while still effectively doing the jobs they are employed to do. as one teacher said, “we were not trained to handle these kinds of situations. to handle the trauma, we need more psychological support” (p10). these results imply that future teacher training should emphasize preparedness for disaster and emotional intelligence. local and national policy support should improve teacher resources during and after disasters. this covers helping teachers access teaching materials, alternative learning platforms, and financial support. governments should collaborate with ngos and local communities to create emotional support networks to ease teachers' workloads. disaster preparedness programs should extend beyond infrastructure. we recommend that policymakers create complete disaster plans discussing provisions for teacher welfare, training in adaptive teaching methods, and emotional recovery. the long-term effectiveness of education in disaster-prone regions would depend on policy commitment to teacher well-being. limitations multiple limitations affect this study’s understanding of teacher resilience during climate-induced displacement. the research sample consisted of 15 educators who worked in urban and rural schools of balochistan, although the participant selection was restricted to one district. these narrow geographical research boundaries might not provide a comprehensive understanding of how teachers experience displacement in different regions of the province or the country. this study does not capture possible current issues in comparative education 61 teacher resilience in the aftermath of the 2022 balochistan floods: coping strategies and educational continuity in primary schools effects of divergent district-level institutional support, infrastructure development, and community involvement because these evaluations are unknown and not quantified. the research findings require cautious interpretation because they only represent an initial stage from which studies across different contexts should build. while the study's qualitative design is strong in capturing individual narratives and personal experiences, it is limited in its ability to generalize the findings. future research using a mixed-methods approach that could provide qualitative insight and quantitative data could provide a larger view of this phenomenon of teacher resilience. this study is limited to the period after the 2022 floods hit. the long-term effects on teachers' professional development and the rebuilding of educational systems were inaccessible. more research is needed to better understand the longitudinal effects of disasters on teacher resilience and education continuity, including how teachers sustain resilient responses over time as they endure successive shocks. conclusion this research explores primary school teachers’ resilience to respond to floods and their experiences of climate-induced displacement. teachers demonstrated resilience through adaptive teaching, emotional support, and community networks. teachers dealt with psychological strain, lack of resources, and interruptions in their personal lives while adapting to mobile classrooms and outdoor education. the challenges teachers faced in implementing technology depended on the teacher’s gender, socioeconomic status, and language proficiency, with wealthier and more connected language teachers facing less barriers. women teachers and teachers from marginalized backgrounds faced the biggest challenges due to cultural taboos and social norms. we propose practical recommendations to improve teacher resilience in similar contexts. importantly, to proactively prepare teachers for the psychological, emotional, and instructional challenges they may face while participating in disaster response and recovery efforts, provide teacher support as part of disaster preparedness, provide emotional and psychological assistance to teachers, offer flexible/playback instructional resources, and financial support. teachers need to be trained in psychological resilience through professional development as well, ideally through workshops and support sessions facilitated by educational psychologists, school counselors, or trained mental health professionals in collaboration with local education authorities or ngos. more research is needed on gender-specific resilience and long-term recovery strategies for teachers in post-disaster settings. exploring opportunities to leverage technology to support teachers’ recovery may afford sustainable education solutions in disaster-prone areas. this study emphasizes the need to provide teachers with resources and emotional support to ensure educational continuity amidst disasters and displacement. 62 current issues in comparative education arif et al. muhammad arif is a phd fellow in educational leadership and management at southwest university, chongqing, china, where his research focuses on teacher leadership, curriculum reforms in rural education, and ai integration in learning environments. he also holds a master’s degree in world history from the same university. his academic interests span educational policy reform, sustainable development, and international diplomacy. as the co-founder of sustainability insight pakistan, he actively promotes sustainable practices aligned with the un sustainable development goals. arif has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications on ai in education, gender and equity issues, and environmental learning. he is also a regular speaker at international conferences on education, technology, and leadership. aneta ismail is a graduate student pursuing an mphil in world history at southwest university, chongqing, china. she holds a bachelor of science in pakistan studies from sardar bahadur khan women's university, quetta. her research interests lie at the intersection of world history, afghan history, refugee narratives, and comparative historical methodology. aneta's academic work focuses on regional stability and geopolitical shifts in south and central asia, particularly following the u.s. withdrawal from afghanistan. she has co-authored peer-reviewed articles on sino-american diplomacy, refugee marginalization, and gendered 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(2025). resilience of rural communities facing global challenges. journal of indonesian scholars for social research, 5(1), 65-72. https://doi.org/10.59065/jissr.v5i1.174 68 current issues in comparative education https://doi.org/10.1007/s10984-021-09396-5 https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11101423 https://doi.org/10.32598/hdq.10.2.562.2 https://doi.org/10.47137/uujes.1302947 https://doi.org/10.59065/jissr.v5i1.174 teacher resilience in the aftermath of the 2022 balochistan floods: coping strategies and educational continuity in primary schools research problem statement research questions relevance resilience theory in education ecological systems theory and education resilience theory in educational contexts integration with local context research design participants data collection recruitment process data analysis ethical considerations teacher resilience strategies challenges teachers faced role of community and policy support differentiating factors in teacher resilience contextualizing teacher resilience limitations 5. bridging worlds, healing scars: a student-teacher journey toward climate-just education .docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 27, issue 1, special issue 2025 bridging worlds, healing scars: a student-teacher journey toward climate-just education sarah marie kistner maha shoaib university of maryland university of maryland our paper is a collaborative autoethnography exploring the intersection of environmental crises, personal experiences, and education through the narratives of two educators, maha shoaib and sarah kistner. reflecting on the 2005 earthquake in pakistan and the 2021 texas freeze, we explore how systemic inequities and inadequate preparedness exacerbate the impacts of disasters on marginalized communities, disproportionately disrupting educational systems. we argue for climate-just education as a restorative and healing approach, addressing inequities at the school, community, and individual levels. climate-just education proposes a holistic framework for trauma-informed and climate-responsive education, emphasizing preparedness, mutual support, and the creation of open spaces for teachers and students to share, heal, and rebuild. at the individual level, practices such as the butterfly hug technique, emotional freedom technique (eft), and yoga nidra are presented as tools for fostering self-healing and mutual healing among students and teachers. concluding with a vision for climate-just education, we advocate for reimagining schools as transformative spaces that empower communities to adapt to and recover from environmental crises while fostering emotional resilience, equity, and sustainability. keywords: climate-just education, trauma-informed teaching, collaborative autoethnography, healing-centered pedagogy, disaster preparedness. introduction “hello? hello? are you safe? where are you? please find shelter fast.” these words became a haunting refrain for both of us—maha shoaib and sarah kistner—during separate moments of environmental crisis. though we lived in different parts of the world—maha in pakistan during the catastrophic earthquakes in 2005 and sarah in the united states during the devastating texas freeze in 2021—these words echoed through our phones, our minds, and eventually, our lives. they marked moments of fear, displacement, and the beginning of a deeper, lifelong commitment to climate justice through education. our paths first crossed in fall 2022 as first-year master’s students in the international education policy program at the university of maryland. though our academic journeys diverged after that semester, we reunited in fall 2024 as first-year phd students enrolled in a course on international higher education. an assignment on autoethnography and applied contemplative inquiry offered a space to reconnect—not just intellectually, but © 2025, kistner & shoaib. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 27(1), 104-123. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en kistner & shoaib emotionally and spiritually. as we revisited the disasters that shaped our lives, we began to uncover a profound bond: a shared trauma and a shared calling. the work and words of bessel van der kolk (2014) resonate deeply with us: “trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body” (p. 21). for both of us, the climate crises we experienced were not isolated incidents—they were deeply embodied traumas that continue to shape our sense of purpose and our approach to education. our experiences compelled us to ask: ● how can educational systems serve as spaces for emotional and psychological healing in the aftermath of disasters? ● what transformations are needed for education to function not just as a site of knowledge, but as a force for climate justice and collective healing? ● how can collaborative autoethnography, as both method and process, support the personal and communal healing of trauma across different global contexts? despite the extensive research on climate education, practice still neglects the embodied realities of trauma, especially how teachers and students experience, remember, and heal from disasters. current literature focuses on curricular innovations, pedagogical strategies, or systemic policy reforms. what is missing, however, are personal, affective, and embodied accounts of how climate trauma is lived and remembered, particularly within educational spaces. the emotional and psychological toll of environmental crises on learners and educators alike remains underexplored, especially through methodologies that center vulnerability and storytelling. there is a notable lack of research that brings together scholars from the global south and global north to reflect on shared yet asymmetrically experienced climate disruptions. our paper addresses these gaps by using collaborative autoethnography (chang et al., 2016) as a method of inquiry and healing. as scholars from different geopolitical, cultural, and ecological contexts, we explore how climate trauma has impacted our personal and professional trajectories, and how education has both failed and supported us in navigating these experiences. our approach offers a comparative lens that interrogates the relational and affective dimensions of climate trauma and justice, allowing us to reflect not only on our own stories but on the broader educational systems we inhabit and seek to transform. by grounding our research in contemplative inquiry, lived experience, and critical reflection, we position this paper at the intersection of climate justice, trauma-informed education, and transnational solidarity. we contribute to reimagining educational spaces current issues in comparative education 105 bridging worlds, healing scars: a student-teacher journey toward climate-just education as places of healing, transformation, and justice, particularly in a time when the climate crisis continues to reshape what it means to live, learn, and be human. education in the wake of disasters the frequency and severity of disasters disrupt education. the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) (2021) underscores such events' growing unpredictability and severity. in the wake of these disasters, marginalized communities—already grappling with systemic inequalities and resource limitations—bear the brunt of the impact. disasters often deepen pre-existing inequities, pushing vulnerable populations into survival mode and frequently displacing education as a priority (world bank group, 2018). this calls for an urgent reimagining of education systems through a climate justice lens—one that is adaptive to environmental shifts and responsive to the emotional, psychological, and social consequences of such crises. climate justice moves beyond the pursuit of environmental sustainability to confront the unequal distribution of climate-related burdens along lines of geography, race, gender, class, and ability (fraser, 1997; schlosberg & collins, 2014). in educational contexts, climate justice emphasizes the need for learners to engage critically not only with scientific knowledge but with the socio-political and ethical dimensions of the climate emergency. as kagawa and selby (2010) argue, education should transcend awareness-raising to interrogate the root causes of climate change, including colonialism, capitalism, and global inequality. education becomes a vehicle for collective action and transformation, anchored in equity, accountability, and historical responsibility (stevenson et al., 2017). in post-disaster contexts, education is sidelined as immediate survival needs take precedence. schools are damaged or destroyed, communities are displaced, and children are forced to abandon learning. this is detrimental in marginalized settings where schools may serve as critical sites of stability and support. as buchmann and hannum (2001) observe, schools offer continuity and structure in the face of chaos. this fragile stability is among the first to erode during environmental crises. the loss of access to education, especially for girls and children in rural or impoverished regions, halts academic progress and exacerbates emotional trauma and social isolation (malala fund, 2021). a climate-just education should extend beyond physical reconstruction to incorporate emotional healing and psychosocial support into recovery efforts. contemporary models of climate education often prioritize western epistemologies and technocratic solutions, marginalizing indigenous, local, and experiential knowledge systems (mcgregor, 2009; whyte, 2017). this perpetuates epistemic injustice and hinders education’s potential to foster transformative and culturally responsive responses to climate disruption. there is growing recognition of the need for pedagogies that acknowledge the existential and emotional dimensions of the climate crisis, particularly for youth and frontline communities (leduc, 2021; ojala, 2016). these approaches 106 current issues in comparative education kistner & shoaib advocate for education that is not only critical but healing, attuned to grief, anxiety, and the complex emotional terrain of climate trauma. trauma-informed and healing-centered pedagogies trauma-informed education has emerged as a powerful approach to supporting students and educators affected by adversity, including those living through war, displacement, and systemic violence (carello & butler, 2015; sporleder & forbes, 2016). trauma-informed pedagogy prioritizes emotional safety, recognizing how traumatic experiences can impact learning, behavior, and social functioning. ginwright (2018) contends that this approach should move beyond simply accommodating trauma toward transforming educational spaces into environments of collective care, resilience, and agency. emerging scholarship on healing-centered pedagogy expands this vision, emphasizing storytelling, identity reclamation, and community-based healing practices (love, 2019). this resonates strongly with climate justice, where trauma is both deeply personal and inherently planetary. the intersection of climate trauma and trauma-informed education remains underexplored, particularly in higher education and within comparative or transnational frameworks. autoethnography and contemplative inquiry as method our study draws on collaborative autoethnography, a qualitative method that integrates personal narrative and cultural analysis to examine lived experiences within broader social and institutional structures (ellis et al., 2011; chang et al., 2016). in contexts of trauma, autoethnography offers a powerful means of validating emotional truths, processing grief, and reclaiming agency through storytelling (douglas & carless, 2013). when practiced collaboratively, it allows researchers to engage in dialogue, mutual witnessing, and relational healing. contemplative inquiry informs our methodological framework by integrating mindfulness, self-awareness, and deep listening into the research process (zajonc, 2013). these practices are epistemological and ethical, enabling researchers to hold uncertainty, metabolize eco-anxiety, and cultivate compassion in the face of environmental loss (fisher, 2021). within climate justice work, such approaches offer critical tools for processing trauma and imagining hopeful futures. bridging the global south and global north despite increasing global concern around climate change, the voices and knowledge systems of communities in the global south remain marginalized in dominant educational and policy discourses. as chakrabarty (2009) and nixon (2011) argue, the global narrative of climate change often overlooks the uneven geographies of risk, trauma, and responsibility. current issues in comparative education 107 bridging worlds, healing scars: a student-teacher journey toward climate-just education we center our positionalities as researchers from pakistan and the united states. through collaborative autoethnography, we explore the intersections of our lived experiences, emotional landscapes, and shared commitments to climate justice. by engaging in transnational dialogues, we seek to illuminate the divergent and convergent experiences of climate trauma and to cultivate solidarities across borders. the healing we envision should address the gaps in educational recovery that typically follow disasters. the emotional toll of environmental crises often remains unaddressed, leaving students and teachers without the support needed to process trauma and reconnect with their educational goals. to create a truly climate-just education system, we argue that it is essential to move beyond a focus on physical recovery and incorporate mental health support into recovery plans. this approach ensures that students and educators possess the emotional resilience necessary to resume their education and rebuild their lives. by integrating restorative practices into disaster recovery, we can cultivate an education system that not only helps students catch up on missed lessons but also provides the emotional tools necessary to heal from the psychological scars of environmental trauma. methodological approach: collaborative autoethnography in educational contexts we share our personal experiences as students and educators who have faced environmental crises, offering insights into disasters’ emotional and educational impacts. engaging in this reflective practice not only deepened our understanding of the power of shared storytelling and became a transformative process of collective healing. this process unfolded in a series of reflective journals, semi-structured interviews, and shared storytelling sessions. we explored the perspectives of two critical stakeholders in education: students and teachers. each of us kept a journal over the semester, documenting our emotions, experiences, and reflections on the educational practices during and after the environmental crises we experienced. we held bi-weekly check-ins to gauge our progress and carve out space to process our feelings with one another. braun and clarke's (2006) thematic analysis framework served as a tool for us to identify prominent patterns from our qualitative narratives collected through reflective journals, interviews, and storytelling sessions. our key findings from the analysis of our data are the following: ● the synthesis revealed that emotional burdens were prevalent in educational spaces, often exacerbated by a lack of adequate support systems. both student and educator emphasized the urgent need for structured support. ● despite the challenges, there was a notable theme of resilience in the face of uncertainty, demonstrating the capacity of individuals to adapt and persevere. ● the necessity for healing emerged as a critical theme, underscoring the importance of integrating emotional and psychological recovery into educational frameworks to foster a climate of well-being and growth. our collaborative autoethnography, grounded in trauma-informed methodology, became an act of shared reflection and collective healing practice, transforming personal 108 current issues in comparative education kistner & shoaib trauma into collective wisdom. as ellis and bochner (2000) suggest, such storytelling fosters deeper connections, turning pain into insight that can lead to transformative change. this practice serves as a healing journey and a call for action toward a climate-just education. discussion and analysis reflecting on our experiences—one as a student and the other as a teacher during an environmental crisis—we discovered that sharing these personal moments became an act of mutual care. it allowed us to uncover emotions we had not realized were still present. re-living these overwhelming events felt less isolating when shared across borders, reminding us that vulnerability can serve as a bridge to connection. we offer a narrative exploration of our experiences with the 2005 earthquake in islamabad and the 2021 great texas freeze in austin. our goal is to demonstrate how collaborative autoethnography can uncover hidden emotional truths, serving as a tool to imagine more compassionate and equitable educational environments. by weaving together our stories, we aim to highlight how environmental crises intersect with issues of access to education, gender, mental health, and belonging. we contribute to the envisioning of a climate-just education system: resilient, inclusive, and responsive to students’ and teachers’ needs. living through environmental crises maha shoaib. i was born and raised in islamabad, pakistan, and lived there before moving to the united states for my master’s degree. i completed my education up to the bachelor’s level in pakistan and then spent two years teaching in a rural, under-resourced community. immersing myself in the daily realities of that setting gave me a micro-level understanding of educational challenges and deepened my desire to pursue global education policy. growing up in a middle-income family, i was often told that education was our only path to a better future. from a young age, i felt the weight of expectations. i wanted to make my family proud. pakistan is a country of breathtaking landscapes and four distinct seasons. as a nation close to the equator, we are experiencing the intensifying effects of climate change. every year, torrential monsoon rains trigger devastating floods across the country. as i sit today with a warm cup of tea in hand, i find myself reflecting on my childhood—the moments when environmental crises shaped not just the world around me, but the course of my life. one of the most defining moments was the 2005 earthquake, an event that shaped my understanding of disaster, resilience, and the urgent need for emotional and systemic support in the aftermath of such catastrophes. islamabad, my hometown, current issues in comparative education 109 bridging worlds, healing scars: a student-teacher journey toward climate-just education is nestled against the majestic margalla hills. more than just the capital city, it is a delicate blend of green spaces, modern architecture, and cultural diversity. i spent my formative years at islamabad convent school in the h-8 sector, a relatively affluent neighborhood. the school symbolized opportunity, with cutting-edge technology, a beautifully designed campus, and a sprawling playground where i spent countless hours with friends. life felt predictable, safe, and full of promise. october 8, 2005, was a saturday like any other. i was asleep, enjoying the rare luxury of a weekend free from school. without warning, the earth began to shake. at first, it felt distant and strange. but within seconds, the tremors intensified. my mother’s urgent voice pierced the air as she yelled for us to run. i stumbled out of bed, heart pounding, and we rushed outside, joining neighbors who were fleeing their homes in panic. the screams, the confusion, the raw fear—it was overwhelming. when the shaking stopped, a heavy silence fell. it was as if the city had gone still, holding its breath in the face of unspeakable loss. the earthquake, measuring 7.6 on the richter scale, devastated large parts of northern pakistan, india, and afghanistan, claiming over 73,000 lives and injuring more than 69,000 people (united nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs [ocha], 2005). though our family was safe, the emotional toll was immense. the news reports painted a grim picture: entire towns destroyed, thousands of children trapped under rubble, and schools reduced to dust. as a child, i struggled to process the scale of the destruction. my heart ached for the families who lost everything. when i began to talk about that experience years later, the emotions i had buried rose to the surface. i recalled how every aftershock felt like a cruel echo of that day—how we braced at the slightest vibration. at school, we practiced evacuation drills regularly, running out at the first sign of tremors. but no one asked how we were coping emotionally. we were taught how to protect our bodies, but not our minds. the fear settled in like a shadow, unacknowledged and unspoken. we carried it silently. after weeks of closure, when school resumed, everything felt different. the air was thick with anxiety. we were told to focus on our lessons, but our thoughts were consumed by worry. what if another earthquake struck while we were in class? what if our families were not safe while we were away? teachers tried their best to maintain normalcy, but they were not equipped to help us process the trauma. some of my classmates never came back—their families had been displaced, or they could no longer afford school fees. for many girls, education was among the first things to be sacrificed when families faced economic hardship. though i was able to continue my education, i could not ignore the inequality around me. in lower-income areas, schools remained closed for months. rebuilding was slow, and the lack of infrastructure left many children waiting for a return to the classroom. the earthquake exposed the deep cracks in our education system. it revealed how 110 current issues in comparative education kistner & shoaib trauma was overlooked, and how crises could easily push the most vulnerable, especially girls, further to the margins. when i shared this with my co-author, i felt i was unlocking memories i had not processed. speaking aloud was cathartic as i understood how these experiences had shaped my journey. my passion for education policy, climate justice, and creating safe, supportive learning environments made sense. schools should be more than spaces of academic instruction. they need to be sanctuaries where students feel seen, supported, and safe. we cannot prevent disasters, but we can ensure that no child feels alone in the aftermath. our shared stories of survival and resilience can inspire systems to be more compassionate. while we may not control the ground beneath us, we can shape the foundations of the world we build above it. sarah kistner. i grew up in a rural pennsylvania township, where the one-mile-wide geographical constraints shaped my worldview. motivated by an inherent curiosity, education emerged as an escape route and a foundation, guiding me toward teaching opportunities domestically and internationally. after completing my bachelor's degree in pennsylvania, my career path took an unexpected turn when my role as an english teacher trainer in colombia was terminated by the covid-19 pandemic, leading to my relocation to austin, texas, as a bilingual kindergarten teacher. while traumatic, this sudden transition deepened my engagement with international education policy. my experiences in colombia and texas profoundly illustrated education's transformative power in shaping communities, families, and societal structures. yet, i could not have anticipated how these experiences would leave enduring psychological imprints that would resurface after in my doctoral program with maha. in my hometown, hidden between a valley of mountains, my family and i have experienced occasional flooding, but nothing to the extent of what i had faced during my time as a teacher in the great texas freeze of 2021. my move to texas was a transformative experience, though not in the ways i had imagined. it reshaped my understanding of environmental challenges and the role education plays in times of crisis. this encounter with environmental instability opened my eyes to the importance of climate-just education. austin is inland and surrounded by rolling hills separated by the colorado river, making it a great place for outdoor activities. as it was my first year as a classroom teacher in the united states, these opportunities to engage with nature helped me get through the tough days. austin has a humid subtropical climate under the köppen climate classification, having long, hot summers and mild winters, with warm spring current issues in comparative education 111 bridging worlds, healing scars: a student-teacher journey toward climate-just education and fall transitional periods (national weather service, n.d.). mild winters would indicate temperatures ranging from 41°f to 62°f (5°c to 17°c). nearly 50 percent of the population identify as white (non-hispanic), while individuals from other racial and ethnic backgrounds—hispanic, asian, black, or african american—made up a smaller share. this disparity becomes more visible in the city’s zoning and gentrification patterns, which push minority communities to the margins. the north and southeast zones of austin are not far from the city center, where one finds a smaller percentage of its residents making ends meet. i lived and taught in the northeast part of austin, alongside my students and their families. in texas, electricity runs through a unique system overseen by ercot, an independent operator whose intrastate grid is disconnected from the two major north american grids. but in february 2021, this model was tested. a polar vortex descended from the north pole starting on february 10, 2021, pushing arctic air into texas and locking the state in record-breaking cold temperatures. texas's infrastructure, unprepared for this level of cold, ice, and snow, had to endure the worst, leading to road closures isolating communities and major accidents piling up across highways. as temperatures plummeted, the electric grid broke down and left almost 10 million people in the dark, including me. the north and southeast parts of austin were without power for almost five days. the storm's after-effects lasted two weeks. the scene felt apocalyptic—neighborhoods fell into a pitch-black silence, grocery shelves emptied quickly, and bursting pipes flooded homes. nearly 300 deaths were reported, though many believe this number underestimates the loss. while the city highlighted the devastating financial toll, which resulted in billions of dollars in damages, the emotional toll was much more severe. texans faced the aftermath largely on their own, with little systemic or educational response to support those who suffered. the great texas freeze left physical and emotional scars, some of which are still apparent to this day. after losing power on that brutal wednesday afternoon, i remember the growing fear i had as i lay my head on my cold pillow in a pitch-black room that night. the next day, we were still without power when the panic set in. school was canceled because the roads were impassable, and the school was still without power. the administration created group chats and urged all teachers to communicate with their students’ families and stay in contact with them for the unforeseen end of this tragedy. the stress was creeping up on me as i felt this pressure to support and absorb the anxieties of the 21 families i supervised, though i did not know where i was going next. on day three of the great texas freeze, the pipes burst in my apartment, flooding our bedrooms and bathrooms and making it no longer habitable. i packed my bags and headed south towards a hotel with a friend. it felt like i had entered a parallel universe. how could it be possible that the families in my school were suffering while others had 112 current issues in comparative education kistner & shoaib access to luxurious lives in a time of crisis and with a complete disregard for the reality of those only fifteen minutes north of them? inequities were clearer than ever. the following monday, it was business as usual, though i was filled with uncertainty. i remember my frustrations with the school district. they were forcing us to require virtual classes on monday because many of my students were without power. it added unnecessary stress and burden to families to try and connect their children to a zoom class or complete the asynchronous assignments. we faced unprecedented challenges, and while i felt the weight of my struggles, i recognized the collective burden we shared. we were learning to adapt and support one another amidst the chaos, reminding ourselves that even in the darkest moments, we could find strength in our community and a commitment to our students' well-being. this experience exemplifies the power of collaborative autoethnography as a healing pedagogy. for four years, my body held on to that fear, anxiety, and guilt. my emotions caught on, and it was time to let them go and process it. sharing and reflecting on this vulnerable and personal experience with maha, i found strength and empowerment in emotional release. connecting across experiences and healing maha shoaib. as my co-author and i opened up about our journeys over the next few days, i was struck by how deeply our emotions mirrored each other’s. despite living on opposite sides of the world and facing different disasters, we both carried the weight of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty—a reminder that these feelings transcend borders. as a student, i had expected my teachers to have the answers and to offer unwavering support. hearing my colleague’s perspective as a teacher during a crisis revealed how unsupported educators often are. she felt overwhelmed by the expectations placed on her to care for her students while having no resources to help them, or herself navigate the emotional toll of the disaster. this conversation was eye-opening for me. it made me realize how much i had assumed, as an 8-year-old, that adults always knew what to do. teachers were trying to navigate the chaos without any clear guidance. our conversations felt profoundly therapeutic. back then, i never talked about how scared i was. i buried my fear, pushing through the pressure to perform well academically. every aftershock heightened my anxiety, and every news report brought a new wave of fear. i remember the images of margalla towers—a massive building in islamabad—collapsing into rubble, with people frantically searching for their loved ones. families gathered in large, open spaces like f-9 park, bringing food, water, and prayer mats, hoping they would be safer outside if the ground shook again. current issues in comparative education 113 bridging worlds, healing scars: a student-teacher journey toward climate-just education at school, my classmates and i would discuss the unfolding news during breaks, processing the fear and grief in fragments. but once the bell rang, we were expected to return to class as if nothing had changed. there were no conversations led by teachers, no counselors, and no check-ins. it was as though the emotional trauma we were experiencing didn’t exist. we were left to carry the burden alone. the situation was worse for children from low-income communities, where resources were scarce, and many schools remained closed for extended periods. talking with my co-author made me realize how crucial it is to create spaces where people can share their stories without fear of judgment. it gave me a sense of closure i did not know i needed. i could revisit that 8-year-old version of myself and feel seen. i now understand how essential it is—whether as students, teachers, or community members—to have systems that address not just the physical impacts of disasters but the emotional ones. mental health support, open conversations, and empathy are universal needs that should be prioritized. i feel fortunate to have shared my story with my colleague, who listened with compassion and understanding. i extend my gratitude to her. this experience was a reminder that no matter where we are in the world, we need support. the simple act of listening to someone’s story can be a powerful first step towards healing. sarah kistner. listening to maha’s experience as a student during the earthquake opened my heart to the pains and suffering of my young students, whom i assume may have been experiencing similar yet different sentiments without the tools, language, or support to do so. i still feel great guilt and shame for not being able to be that support for them. however, i believe that is exactly what this reflective process is teaching me now. for many of my students, school was a way to get two free, warm meals that they may not be able to receive at home. it was a place for students to feel safe. when we were out of school for almost two weeks, students and families lost essential nutrition and an overall sense of safety, as well as social and peer connection time. many of my students’ families had just arrived in the united states from other countries, such as honduras and guatemala. amidst the catastrophe, they were at risk of being even more isolated during the storm without proper support, information, and care. while schools were shut down, students and families no longer had safe spaces to go, lacked resources, and did not have access to pertinent information, such as covid-19 protocols, food distribution, changes in school schedules, or access to local news updates. a young child froze to death as their family did all they could to provide warmth in their home with the few fleece blankets they had. that child, our fellow community member, did not deserve to die. there were no words or statements made about this terrible and senseless loss of life to our school community. we pushed through business as usual to get students to grade level. it is hard to focus on far-fetched state standards when the community around you is grieving. 114 current issues in comparative education kistner & shoaib the great texas freeze hit when students were facing steep levels of stress, anxiety, and depression due to the pandemic. as a teacher, i was instructed to fit a 30-minute social-emotional learning (sel) exercise into my lesson plan daily. the mandatory sel practice became another item on the checklist rather than a holistic practice embedded into my teaching. teaching became forced and rushed to meet standards. i was becoming anxious that i was failing my students. i stayed up late, brought my work home, texted and called parents 24/7, and worked on the weekend to ensure my students were ready for first grade. while we were pushing through the rest of the year, the buildings were not equipped to host us. broken pipes and flooding caused mold to flourish, which led to long-term health effects on young bodies. my school did not need to shut down completely, but students and families were anxious about coming back. we lacked proper ventilation. i extend my gratitude to maha for being part of this healing process. through this experience and new insights, i reached out to my former teachers in austin and shared my story with them. four years later, we took that time to reflect on those events and found new peace. our conversation is a positive step towards a greater healing process for the school and community in austin. reflection and recommendations: our vision for climate-just education our vision for a climate-just education system is rooted in shared experiences from two geographically distinct cities—islamabad, pakistan, and austin, united states. both contexts illustrate how disasters create cascading effects that go beyond immediate physical destruction. these events disrupt education, social stability, and emotional well-being. marginalized communities bear the heaviest burden, highlighting the urgent need for transformative educational practices that can bridge the gap between disaster and healing. while education is vulnerable to disaster-related disruptions, it holds the potential to act as a force for resilience and renewal. we envision an alternative education system—one that moves beyond traditional models and embraces holistic and contemplative approaches to learning. instead of focusing solely on academic recovery in the aftermath of climate disasters, this system prioritizes emotional resilience, community connection, and well-being. inner wisdom and insight are not peripheral but central to education. engaging deeply with their lived experiences, students and teachers alike can cultivate a more meaningful understanding of self, others, and the world around them. education in this framework entails preparation for the uncertainties of climate change and a practice of building strength, adaptability, and emotional intelligence to face life’s challenges with courage and compassion. at a systemic level, climate-just education should confront structural inequities that climate change exacerbates. while some current issues in comparative education 115 bridging worlds, healing scars: a student-teacher journey toward climate-just education education systems are equipped to deliver a climate-informed curriculum that includes science and sel, others are not. to address broader societal implications, schools should adopt a justice-focused approach—one that fosters constructive coping strategies and builds leadership skills to support a more inclusive and resilient future (unesco, 2021). equity is a core principle of climate-just education. ensuring that students, especially those in underserved and climate-vulnerable communities, have access to the resources and curricula that empower them to engage with climate issues meaningfully and confidently. a crucial part of this transformation involves acknowledging and addressing collective and individual traumas. restorative practices—like community-building circles—offer safe and supportive spaces where students and educators can process their emotions, strengthen relationships, and begin to heal. these practices create conditions for learning rooted in empathy, accountability, and trust. school and community-level approaches schools and communities should prioritize emotional and psychological recovery to ensure long-term resilience in the aftermath of environmental disasters and crises. research shows that focusing on emotional healing, rather than rushing into academic recovery, leads to better learning outcomes and personal growth (durlak et al., 2011). schools can play a critical role in this recovery by fostering environments that encourage emotional expression, mutual support, and healing. community-building circles allow students and teachers to share their experiences and rebuild relationships. this helps them process trauma, cultivate empathy, and strengthen social bonds, making schools a place for holistic recovery rather than just academic catch-up. providing counseling services for students, parents, and community members ensures that emotional needs are met, promoting a smoother transition back to normalcy (čitil akyol, 2024). students and teachers experience emotional distress following a crisis. the lack of structured emotional support during these times can exacerbate the challenges faced. schools should address this gap by integrating trauma-informed practices and school-based mental health services. research indicates that trauma-informed approaches can significantly aid in the recovery process, helping students and teachers cope with the psychological impact of a crisis (baweja et al., 2021). providing mindfulness training, counseling services, and safe spaces where individuals can openly express their emotions creates a culture of mutual understanding and support within the school community (o'toole et al., 2019). such an approach ensures that emotional well-being is not an afterthought but a critical part of the recovery process. in post-crisis environments, there is pressure to catch up on lost instructional time, but this can lead to burnout and emotional fatigue. when schools prioritize the mental and emotional health of students and teachers, they can support the rebuilding process, reducing the negative impacts of stress and trauma. this means allocating time for emotional healing, incorporating restorative practices in the classroom, and providing teachers with the necessary resources to address the emotional needs of their students. 116 current issues in comparative education kistner & shoaib without such support, the focus on accelerated academic recovery can hinder the opportunity for genuine learning and growth. disaster preparedness should be integrated into school curricula across all grade levels. as disasters become more frequent due to climate change, students should develop the skills to navigate these challenges. teaching climate resilience not only equips students with survival skills but enhances critical thinking, problem-solving, and adaptability, which are key in responding to future crises (cohen, 2017). schools can help students understand the importance of environmental conservation while simultaneously preparing them for the inevitable impacts of climate change. by embedding climate education into the curriculum, schools foster a generation of proactive individuals who are better equipped to face and address the challenges of the future. counseling services are vital in helping communities process the trauma caused by environmental disasters. these services can support parents, students, and community members in overcoming anxiety and grief, ensuring a smoother transition back to school and a healthier recovery process (čitil akyol, 2024). given that the length of school closures after a natural disaster is often uncertain, accessible and professional counseling services can help families and communities cope with the emotional upheaval. schools, with their established networks and resources, can serve as central hubs for these counseling services, offering critical support during the recovery phase. by addressing both the emotional and academic needs of students and their communities, schools can play a transformative role in healing and building resilience. individual-level strategies for emotional resilience climate-just education empowers students and teachers with the personal tools they need to build emotional resilience in the face of catastrophes. emotional resilience is crucial for coping with the ongoing stresses that come with living through climate disasters, and both students and educators need strategies to navigate these challenges. integrating mindfulness, restorative practices, and self-care techniques into daily routines, individuals can better manage stress, anxiety, and the trauma associated with climate change. these practices are not just beneficial for coping with immediate crises but for fostering long-term emotional well-being (gonzalez et al., 2020). mindfulness practices like meditation, breathing exercises, and self-reflection help individuals remain grounded in the present moment, which is essential when facing overwhelming challenges. incorporating these practices into the school day, students and teachers can build the resilience needed to weather difficult emotional states. restorative practices, like the butterfly hug or emotional freedom technique (eft), offer simple yet powerful tools for regulating emotions and processing trauma. the current issues in comparative education 117 bridging worlds, healing scars: a student-teacher journey toward climate-just education butterfly hug is a grounding technique that promotes emotional safety and helps calm the nervous system, making it particularly useful for individuals who may feel overwhelmed. eft, or tapping, involves using acupressure points to release stress and reframe negative emotions, helping individuals regain emotional balance during times of crisis. these techniques provide immediate relief from emotional distress and can be used by students and teachers to maintain emotional equilibrium (davis & hayes, 2011). yoga and yoga nidra are valuable practices for building emotional resilience. these techniques help individuals relax, release tension, and cultivate a sense of inner peace. yoga encourages physical movement and breathwork, both of which are essential for managing stress and anxiety. yoga nidra, a form of guided meditation, helps individuals reach a state of deep relaxation and emotional healing, allowing them to process difficult emotions and experiences. schools should consider integrating these practices into daily routines to help students and teachers manage the emotional challenges associated with climate change (johnson et al., 2020). creative outlets like art therapy offer ways to express and process emotions nonverbally. art therapy allows students and teachers to explore feelings through visual expression. it is a therapeutic release for emotions that are difficult to articulate. engaging in creative activities can serve as a form of community-building. it encourages collaboration and shared expression within the school. schools should incorporate creative practices into the curriculum, giving students space to reflect on their experiences and express their emotions in a supportive, non-judgmental environment (malchiodi, 2012). conclusion we explored how educational systems can serve as spaces for emotional and psychological healing in the aftermath of disasters. we discussed transformations that could enable education to function not just as a site of knowledge, but as a force for climate justice and collective healing. through collaborative autoethnography, we examined how this process can support personal and communal healing of trauma across different global contexts. by grounding our research in contemplative inquiry, lived experience, and critical reflection, we position this paper at the intersection of climate justice, trauma-informed education, and transnational solidarity. we highlight the importance of including marginalized voices and knowledge systems in dominant educational policy discourses. despite increasing global concern around climate change, these voices remain excluded from climate knowledge production and decision-making. our approach offers a comparative lens that interrogates the relational and affective dimensions of climate trauma and justice, allowing us to reflect on the broader educational systems we inhabit and seek to transform. we reimagine educational spaces as places of healing, transformation, and justice. 118 current issues in comparative education kistner & shoaib looking toward the future, we see the weight that disasters place on the hearts of young people, schools, and communities. despite these challenges, we believe in the power of a climate-just education, one that does not merely endure the harsh impacts of crises but learns and grows from them. our vision, bridging worlds and healing scars, goes beyond preparedness. it is about cultivating resilience, fostering deep emotional connections, and strengthening communities. we envision students who learn to navigate life with courage, empathy, and a sense of purpose. we see teachers and families whose well-being is valued and prioritized, creating a foundation for true collective healing. sarah kistner. sarah kistner is a phd student in the international education policy program at the university of maryland, specializing in peace education. with over seven years of experience in the education sector, she has taught in diverse cultural contexts and contributed to a range of educational programming initiatives. her research interests include alternative development, education in emergencies and conflict, climate change education, and holistic, contemplative approaches to learning. sarah is especially passionate about the transformative role of play in the lives of children affected by conflict and crisis. her work explores how play fosters well-being, builds resilience, and empowers children as active participants in peacebuilding efforts. these passions have also shaped her scholarly contributions, including co-authoring “toward eco-centric, earth-as-school, and love-based curriculum and learning” and “a multidimensional perception of time connecting education to the earth and the universe.” both works reflect her commitment to reimagining education as relational, earth-connected, and rooted in love. maha shoaib. maha shoaib is a ph.d. student in the international education policy program at the university of maryland, focusing on reimagining education through contemplative, ecological, and justice-centered frameworks. she serves as a research consultant at special olympics and a senior fellow at the global campaign for education-us. with several years of experience in pakistan and internationally, maha has worked as a schoolteacher, educational consultant, and project coordinator across the public, private, and non-profit sectors. her work centers on promoting equity, inclusion, and access to quality education, especially for communities affected by conflict and systemic inequality. 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(2013). contemplative pedagogy: a quiet revolution in higher education. new directions for teaching & learning, 134. https://doi.org/10.1002/tl.20057 van der kolk, b. a. (2014). the body keeps the score: brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. viking. zehr, h. (2002). the little book of restorative justice. good books. current issues in comparative education 123 https://www.unesco.org/en/emergencies/education https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000377421 https://reliefweb.int/ https://doi.org/10.1215/00138282-55.1-2.153 https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2018 https://doi.org/10.1002/tl.20057 sarah marie kistner​​​maha shoaib introduction education in the wake of disasters trauma-informed and healing-centered pedagogies autoethnography and contemplative inquiry as method bridging the global south and global north discussion and analysis connecting across experiences and healing school and community-level approaches individual-level strategies for emotional resilience conclusion 11. educating for the anthropocene: schooling and activism in the face of slow violence.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 27, issue 1, special issue 2025 book review of educating for the anthropocene: schooling and activism in the face of slow violence1 debojyoti das university of edinburgh anthropologist peter sutoris’s (2022) educating for the anthropocene: schooling and activism in the face of slow violence overlaps comparative education, environmental anthropology, and international development studies. sutoris (2022) focuses on pedagogies for reimagining ecological futures. his book offers a timely and compelling explanation of how the education system should evolve in response to the global environmental crisis. the book is grounded in solid ethnographic work among two global south communities contextualized as frontlines of the “high anthropocene” (sutoris, 2022, p. 10). the book explains how education can prepare humans for life in an era that transcends apolitical knowledge transmission, calling for education to cultivate empathy, conviviality, and inspire activism as a means for radical environmental action. the book brings into conversation important scholars, including paulo freire (1970) and rob nixon’s book slow violence (2017). at the heart of educating for the anthropocene is the message that education about the environment can be enhanced through radical imaginariescreating political subjects that give agency to young people as activists and changemakers. instead of obsessing about economic growth, education can help young people grasp and confront the crisis through the lens of local society, culture, and politics. sutoris (2022) proposes that activism should be central to education and that activists should be recognized as educators. this shift is critical to imagining a better future. the book advocates for an interdisciplinary curriculum from science to humanities that will empower students to understand environmental issues and act prudently. the book challenges the polarization of environmental education taking place through environmental and sustainability education (ese), focusing on two ethnographic case studies. such analysis shows how education should be refashioned and repoliticized. as sutoris (2022) states, “this book, then, is an ethnographic exploration of schooling and activism in relationship to slow violence in the context of intergenerational legacies of colonialism, racism, and environmental degradation” (p. 10). as an educationist trained in ethnography, sutoris (2022) peeks into the life narratives of children and activists in india and south africa confronted by pollution, toxic waste, legacies of colonialism and racism, big dams, and postcolonial development. using critical pedagogy as a framework, sutoris (2022) advocates for education as a transformative process, an act of dialogue that triggers social change. his engagement with activists and children in pashulok (india) and wentworth (south africa) presents a dialogical exchange with young people who call for social and environmental justice through creative collaborative ethnographic practices like 1 sutoris, p. (2022). educating for the anthropocene: schooling and activism in the face of slow violence. mit press. © 2025, das. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 27(1), 223-225. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en book review filmmaking (visual anthropology) combined with oral interviews. through the case studies and life histories, sutoris (2022) makes a compelling case for bridging schooling and activism in education for the anthropocene. a strength of the book is its use of diverse case studies illustrating the depoliticizing effects of mainstream schooling. stories use powerful images and narratives to describe how the slow violence of dispossessions and displacement caused by the construction of the tehri dam shapes environmental action in the himalayan region vis-a-vis industrial pollution in south africa. the case studies highlight how environmental education in the global south is framed as a tool for awareness-raising and to address social justice, community cohesion, and activism. the book is ethnographically rich with illustrative photographs and vignettes. several education systems in the global north remain heavily focused on neoliberal pedagogic practices, standardized testing in curriculum design, which often hinders the integration of transdisciplinary, activist-driven approaches to learning. a more in-depth analysis of how sutoris’s ideas could inform educational policy and practice in these contexts would strengthen the book’s transregional impact on ese studies. the book offers a clearer path toward implementing his anthropological vision for educating in the age of anthropocene across diverse cultural settings, given the fact that climate change is a global and local phenomenon. sutoris (2022) pays attention to traditional ecological knowledge (tek), documenting efforts to integrate indigenous ecological knowledge into formal education and schools. the book ties ecological education to the broader conversation about decolonizing education, resonating with global south decolonial and post-colonial scholars such as linda tuhiwai smith (2012) and ivan illich (1971), who argue for the inclusion of indigenous perspectives in our pedagogic practice through deschooling mainstream education and through tools of conviviality. exploring these alternative knowledge systems and the power of activism, sutoris (2022) opens up important discussions about the role of education in revitalizing indigenous ecological practices and challenging colonial violence and the hegemony created by the eurocentric industrialization-based growth and high modernist development agenda. the book also brings into conversation the writings of important global south voices such as ashish nandy (2015), who speaks about the decolonization of the mind and its importance in revitalizing education that focuses on important questions of equity, environmental, and intergenerational social justice issues. in its concluding chapter, sutoris (2022) advocates three apparatuses for education in the age of the anthropocene. the radical imagination focuses on the possibility of care and conviviality beyond bureaucratization and depolarization of environmental issues. he advocates for agonistic pluralism wherein the scope for bringing into conversation opposing worldviews is possible. thirdly, he proposes the question of intergenerational dialogue, focusing on ecological and environmental debt that we owe to our future generation and our responsibility toward the care and stewardship of our environment. sutoris (2022) concludes with the observation that “there is a 224 current issues in comparative education das finite earth threatened by humanity's thrust for infinite growthand that is why we need to talk about educating for the anthropocene” (p. 208). equally significant is sutoris’s (2022) emphasis on retraining teachers with a political vision that embodies activism and grassroots action from schools that lends agency to young people and a voice to challenge the depolarization carried out by the state. he envisions educators not simply as knowledge transmitters but as facilitators of critical dialogue and reflection on ecological issues that are environmental, social, and political. schools, he argues, must create spaces where students can engage deeply with the ethical and practical implications of ecological crises. ese should prioritize creativity, sensitivity, and conviviality to prepare educators to navigate the complexities of teaching and learning in the anthropocene. educating for the anthropocene is a well-timed and stimulating book, making a case for the reimagining of education in the face of the global challenges created by human greed and capitalist high modernization. through his advocacy for empathy, care, and conviviality, sutoris (2022) reflects on the role of education in fostering critical pedagogy, interdisciplinary learning, and activism. stories offer a hopeful vision for how education can contribute to addressing the crises of the anthropocene. while the book contributes to the field of environmental anthropology and critical pedagogic studies, its scope is limited to a thick descriptive account and in-depth case study rather than broad generalization for framing education policy. as an advocate of degrowth and alternative environmental activism, sutoris (2022) invites educators, changemakers, and activists to rethink the role of education by focusing on what and how they teach, the book offers a persuasive, ethnographically rich chronicle with activism at the heart of agonistic pluralism capable of confronting the environmental challenges ahead. debojyoti das is an anthropologist and geographer by training with a research focus on the global south and a strong commitment to sustainability education. with over ten years of experience in teaching, research, and academic scholarship in the united kingdom higher education sector, das has worked to embed sustainability principles into both curriculum design and student engagement. das has designed and led summer schools, field trips, and interdisciplinary workshops that integrate critical pedagogy with sustainability themes, encouraging students to explore global and local challenges through multimedia projects and experiential learning. das believes in practice-based, ‘learning-by-doing’ approaches, which have proven effective in deepening students’ understanding of complex environmental, sustainability, and development issues. references freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed. herder and herder. illich, i. (1971). deschooling society. harper & row. current issues in comparative education 225 book review nandy, a. (2015). science, hegemony, and violence: a requiem for modernity. oxford university press. nixon, r. (2011). slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. harvard university press smith, l. t. (2012). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). zed books. sutoris, p. (2022). educating for the anthropocene: schooling and activism in the face of slow violence. mit press. 226 current issues in comparative education current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 2, spring 2017 © 2017, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(2), 166-197. did better colleges bring better jobs? estimating the effects of college quality on initial employment for college graduates in china li yu institute of education, huazhong university of science and technology the unemployment problem of college students in china has drawn much attention from academics and society. using the 2011 college student labor market (cslm) survey data from tsinghua university, this paper estimated the effects of college quality on initial employment, including employment status and employment unit ownership for fresh college graduates. the propensity score matching method was employed to account for the potential endogeneity of elite college attendance. the empirical evidence suggested that students who attended project 985 colleges were more likely to find jobs immediately after college graduation. moreover, students graduated from project 211 universities gained a competitive edge by entering into public working sectors, such as the government or state-owned enterprises (soes), compared with students from non-elite colleges. the results imply the students who graduated from non-elite universities faced labor market segmentation. they not only had obstacles in finding jobs, but also ended up in the secondary labor market. introduction over the past several years, unemployment has become a troubling issue for a considerable number of fresh college graduates and their families in china. although this unemployment dilemma did not solely appear in china, it was more prominent in mainland china and drew much attention from academia and chinese society. several factors combined together may play dominant roles in explaining the sources of severe unemployment problems that lasted for years. first, the chinese central government initiated the higher education expansion policy in 1999. the expansion began as an attempt to alleviate the economic crisis and became the fastest expansion in human history (levin, 2010). the expansion sharply increased the unemployment rate among young did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 167 college1 graduates (s. li, whalley & xing, 2014). meanwhile, the economic downturn and staggered industry development greatly decreased the demand to absorb labor forces, especially those who newly entered the labor force with limited work experience and unguaranteed productivity(bai, 2006). moreover, the unified college course curriculum and low-quality university training that produced graduates with limited capacity gains and skill accumulation during their college education may deteriorate youth unemployment. under these circumstances, finding employment immediately after college graduation has become a big challenge for many students, not to mention those who never predicted fierce initial job market competition and were seriously underprepared. even for those who were lucky enough to locate jobs after college graduation, they may end up with secondary labor market jobs with unsecured future prospects and a low salary. by weighing the costs and benefits of attending college, some senior high school students chose not to take the national college entrance examination (ncee). for those who still wish to pursue higher education domestically, it is crucial for them to choose where to attend a university. therefore, admission into better–quality universities is viewed as the path to ensure college returns for human capital investment. however, there is limited empirical evidence in china that estimates the impact of college quality on initial employment. in addition, it is essential for higher education institutions (heis) to clarify the impact of college quality on fresh graduates’ employment, and to improve institutional effectiveness and efficiency. in addition, obtaining an answer to the research question of whether attending better colleges brought better jobs would be illuminating for higher education policymakers who conduct an evaluation and appraisal of large and costly national college quality enhancement programs, such as project 985 and project 211. project 985 and project 211 involved the chinese government’s initiatives for strengthening and establishing world-class universities. given the widespread recognition that higher education is a major driver of a nation’s economic growth and cultivates the future labor force, higher education quality upgrading has become an important national education strategy. specifically, project 985 was named after its announcement date on may 4, 1998, and designed to build world-leading universities. it fulfilled tasks in five aspects, including mechanism innovation, team building, platform construction, condition support, and international communication. project 211 universities refer to about 100 key chinese universities in the 21st century. the development of project 985 and project 211 universities was the priority of the chinese 1 in this paper, “college” and “university” are used interchangeably. yu current issues in comparative education 168 higher education quality upgrade plan, and additional resources and massive funding from the central government were allocated to these heis. project 985 universities consist of 39 universities selected from the project 211 universities and enjoy even higher appropriation for building world-class universities. although no official university ranking exists in terms of higher education quality, the universities on the project 985 and project 211 lists represent the best in china. essentially, these national projects served as stratification tools to concentrate the nation’s resources—professors, student body, equipment, and facilities, etc. to a few top universities to gain a competitive edge in the global higher education competition. thus, the returns to college quality could be manifested partly by better jobs obtained, and a greater contribution of their students after graduation. meanwhile, we also observed the construction and rise of independent colleges, which were private and non-governmental heis that were considered to be relatively poor-quality heis. considering the enormous public expenditure of supporting project 985 and project 211 universities while substantially fewer investments were made in other regular heis and independent colleges, the relevant evaluations of economic returns to college quality is rare. how does the labor market respond to fresh college graduates of various quality types of universities? this study suggest two testable hypotheses for analyzing the returns to college quality under the circumstances of chinese higher education: the first hypothesis to be tested is that higher quality colleges offer more employment opportunities for their students, and the other is that higher quality colleges bring more jobs in the public sector to their students. literature review current literature relies heavily on human capital theory to explain the impact of college quality on future labor market outcomes. according to this theory, human capital refers to knowledge, skills, attitudes, aptitudes, and other acquired traits that enhance the productive capacity of individuals accumulated through education (becker, 1964;). therefore, education is an important investment of time, expenditure, and foregone earnings for a higher rate of either economic or non-economic return in later periods (becker, 1964; schultz, 1961). education in high-quality colleges will accelerate the speed of knowledge and skill accumulation through various channels, such as positive peer effects, intensive and extensive faculty and student interactions, better study environment, and equipment support, etc. graduates from high-quality colleges with a higher stock of human capital will be rewarded by the labor market with faster and better job offers since they are favored by employers. did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 169 a wealth of literature has documented the positive correlation between college education and future incomes since the late 1960s in the united states. most of the papers have been covered by the summary and comments by pascarella and terenzini (1991) and zhang (2005). however, there are relatively scarce existing research concentrated on education quality to portray the causality between the higher education quality and labor market outcomes. the majority of previous research in the us has focused on the effect of college quality on personal wage, and used multiple identification strategies to circumvent the endogeneity problem. nevertheless, far from getting closer to the convergence on how large the college quality impact was, the recent empirical evidence yielded mixed results (black & smith, 2004; brewer, eide, & ehrenberg, 1999; dale & krueger, 2002, 2011; hoekstra, 2009; long, 2008; thomas, 2000). zhang (2012) further examined the impact of college education on the odds of unemployment during the first 10 years after college graduation and found although college graduates of high-quality private institutions enjoyed the highest earning premium among all quality types of heis, they were also more likely to be unemployed. although the unemployment of college graduates has also been a problem in the us, it has been of paramount concern to the chinese government and society in the era of mass higher education, and it is in some aspects unique to china’s circumstances and requires attention. numerous empirical studies have focused on the unemployment problem of college graduates after the start of the higher education expansion. for example, chen and tan (2004) selected a sample of college students from south central china and regarded employment as an occupational attainment. they concluded college prestige, which was measured by whether the student has graduated from a key university, had no significant impact on either employment status or starting wage. yue, wen, and ding (2004) found the initial employment rate was the highest in public colleges, followed by private independent colleges and private colleges. however, the authors did not detect a higher chance of employment for project 211 university students than for students in regular heis. in contrast, min, ding, wen, and yue (2006) showed the probability of finding a job right after college graduation was higher for graduates from project 211 universities than from other types of universities. the higher the degree, the greater the probability for obtaining employment. using data from multiple years, li and yue (2009) reported the employment rate had dropped since 2005. based on the 2007 national survey, college quality type or prestige was a key factor for job seeking. the probability of employment for project 211 university students was higher than for students from regular heis, whereas three-year college students were more likely to find jobs than four-year college students. yu current issues in comparative education 170 xie and zhao (2009) collected the 2008 employment status, starting salary level, and employment sector data for some college and university graduates in nanjing to quantify the impacts of human capital as well as social capital on employment outcomes. when project 985 college students were used as the reference group, the probability of employment for students from project 211 colleges, regular heis and private colleges were significantly lower as reported in the probit model. the authors split the employment sector into three categories, namely, public sector, state-owned sector, and competitive sector (including foreign and private companies). the results revealed graduates from regular heis were less likely to find jobs in the public sector than their project 985 university counterparts. du and yue (2010) examined the determinants of initial employment status with the 2009 survey and found 61.9% of the whole sample were graduates with bachelor’s degrees. the authors grouped the potential determinants of getting employment into three major categories: student and family background; family economic, culture, and social capital; and students’ academic achievement in college. it turned out that higher employment opportunities went to project 211 university students when other things being equal. likewise, yue and yang (2012) conducted a national scale survey of 30 universities and eight provinces in 2011 and calculated the influence of factors on employment opportunities. the results showed the coefficient on the project 211 college type dummy was positive in the logit model, and it was statistically significant at the 1% level when compared with regular heis as the reference group most recently,yang and yue (2016) explored the initial socioeconomic status of graduates defined by whether the student had a managerial and technology related job position, which included occupations, such as managers and technology staff in government, communist party organizations, and state-owned enterprises. in other words, the authors viewed high positions in these employment units as having high socioeconomic status. in summary, the existing chinese empirical evidence generally suggested college quality played an important role in individual early labor market prospects, however, chinese studies tend to vary in terms of the magnitude of various college quality types. furthermore, the majority of studies that explored the link between college quality and student employment treated college quality as a covariate. most scholars failed to analyze the impact of college quality in a counterfactual framework in which students in different college quality types were similar in all aspects except for college quality. in addition, there were few studies that included a comprehensive set of covariates, which called into question if potential missing variables, such as student ability caused biases. building did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 171 upon previous empirical studies, we used a nationally representative sample of fresh chinese college graduates to examine the role of college quality, which may contribute to students’ labor market outcomes in china, and tried to fill in the gaps identified above. our study also aimed to extend the existing literature by rigorously examining the shortterm effects of college quality on initial employment status and employment unit ownership of fresh college graduates with propensity score matching (psm) with the hope that findings from this study will offer implications for shaping policies to improve the efficiency of college student employment and ensure equal job opportunities. methodology data the survey data used in this studywere collected through the college student labor market (cslm) survey conducted by the institute of education, tsinghua university,china. the cslm survey contains not only basic information, such as student characteristics and family backgrounds, but also rich information about students’ precollege experiences, during-college activities, and post-college placement after graduation. therefore, these survey data enables us to address concerns of the non-random college selection process by including possible confounding factors in our regression analyses. in addition, this survey employed a multi-stage stratified random sample strategy taking into account institutional regions (municipal cities, northeast, east, central and west china)2, quality categories (project 985, project 211, non-key, and independent colleges), and institutional academic specializations (comprehensive, science and engineering, agriculture, finance and economics, etc.). therefore, this sample was a good national representative sample of heis in china in terms of geographic locations and academic concentration, and the overall response rate was about 74%. in order to make inferences about the national population of college graduates in 2011, the sampling weight was calculated according to the stratified sampling arrangement and employed to adjust for the non-representativeness of the surveyed students. the original sample size of submitted student questionnaires was 8176. in order to study the cohort 2007 students, who entered college in 2007 and graduated in 2011, we restricted our sample to cohort 2007 students and excluded observations in other cohorts, three-year vocational colleges, those outside of mainland china, and contract students 2 we divide the sample into several economic regions according to the seventh 5-year plan in 1986. the institution region division is according to the regional belonging of the province or the municipal city where the college campus locates. the municipalities include beijing, tianjin, shanghai. the east region includes hebei, jiangsu, zhejiang, fujian, shandong, guangdong, guangxi and hainan. the northeast region includes liaoning, jilin and heilongjiang. the central region includes shanxi, anhui, jiangxi, henan, hubei and hunan. the west region includes inner mongolia, chongqing, sichuan, guizhou, yunnan, tibet, shannxi, gansu, ningxia, qinghai, and xinjiang. yu current issues in comparative education 172 whose jobs after graduation were assigned rather than obtained by themselves. afterwards, the remaining 6977 observations constituted the final whole sample. according to criteria that related to the college graduates’ plans right after graduation, the whole sample can be split into three subgroups, namely the “intention-to-work” sample, “no-intention-to-work” sample, and the “missing-intention” group. in accordance with labor economics definitions, unemployed status is conditional on one’s intention to find a job. thus, the analysis on employment status was conducted based upon the “intention-to-work” sample. the final sample size was 4,984, accounting for 61% of the original sample. given the moderate missing data percentages for some variables in the “intention-to-work” samples, the dummy variable adjustment approach was employed to treat the missing data. in multiple regression, retaining all available covariates may lead to severe multicollinearity problems and cause over fitting of the model. therefore, some variables derived from the cslm instruments were combined into indexes with the principal component analysis (pca) method, including the socioeconomic status (ses) index and pre-college home environment index. the ses index is commonly applied to measure the student’s family’s social and economic position relative to other students. 3the home environment index describes the study environment at home and parental attention to the child’s study. this first component explains 42% of the total variance; it was constructed from four indicator variables as to whether the student has a private room, a private desk, a private computer, and a high volume of books during the senior middle school period.4 empirical methods we used the term “initial employment status” to refer to whether the student was employed when he or she took the cslm survey conditional upon the student’s work intention after college graduation. to examine the effects of college quality on initial employment status and ownership of the employer, logistic regressions were performed since the dependent variable was binary. for example, the initial employment status was measured by whether the student had successfully obtained at least one job by the time of the survey before college graduation. the dependent took the value of 1 if the student had obtained at least one job; otherwise, it was coded as 0. the logistic regression of the dependent variable on key independent variable and covariates can be specified as follows: logit(p) = logit ( p 1−p ) = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1𝑄 + 𝛽2𝑋1 + ⋯ + 𝛽𝑘𝑋𝑘 + ε (1) 3 the ses index is presented in table a1 in the appendix. 4 the pre-college home environment index is presented in table a2 in the appendix. did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 173 where p denotes the probability of the dependent variable to be 1, and q measures college quality. 𝑋𝑖 is a set of covariates, including student demographics, student ability, family background, college experience, and institutional characteristics, and ε is the error term. 5multiple college quality measures were used in this study to distinguish each college quality type and to achieve estimation results with better precision. chinese universities and colleges were divided into four quality categories, namely, project 985 colleges, project 211 colleges, regular heis, and independent colleges, to be consistent with previous studies. furthermore, project 985 and 211 colleges were furthered defined as elite colleges, while other regular and independent heis were the so-called non-elite colleges. hence, the treatment was defined as whether the student attended an elite college when we treated the college quality variable as dichotomous. we controlled for a rich set of covariates that are of importance for fresh college graduates’ employment. specifically, we included students’ demographics, such as gender, age, and ethnic minority. confounders that represent student ability (student intellectual ability, and non-cognitive leadership skills) were also included. for family characteristics, we controlled for the student’s family’s rural residency status, single child or not, and ses index. a set of college experiences were also taken into consideration, including student’s major, party membership, leadership experience, holding certificates, english proficiency, part-time work experience, earning merit-aid, and having a minor. for institutional characteristics, the institutional region and specialization type were what we cared about most. since we also collected detailed information about students’ pre-college experiences, these variables were used to model the elite college selection and entry process. the typical methodological challenge to draw causal inferences with observational data was that we did not observe the employment outcome if the student attended a college that differs in quality from the one the student actually attended. in this study, the treatment variable of college quality may suffer from an endogeneity problem, which may occur when college quality is correlated with the error term and results in biased estimation results. this problem can arise due to possible omitted variable bias and the nonrandom assignment into colleges of various qualities even after we controlled for the ncee score, which served as the proxy of students’ cognitive ability. if the baseline characteristics for high-quality colleges and low-quality colleges differed, directly comparing students from these two college groups would have been inappropriate. therefore, we adopted the potential outcome approach and resorted to propensity score matching (psm) as the 5 the list of definitions and measures of key variables are included in table a3 in the appendix. yu current issues in comparative education 174 identification strategy to adjust for the potential endogeneity problem. it was also performed as the additional robustness check of our results from logistic regressions. psm has several advantages over traditional regressions and it works when two underlying assumptions are fulfilled: (1) the conditional independence assumption (cia) and (2) the common support assumption. the cia assumption implies that after controlling for confounders, the assignment of units to treatment is “as good as random” (angrist & pischke, 2008), and the common support assumption requires that the probability of receiving treatment is strictly within the unit interval between 0 and 1 so that there is sufficient overlap for adequate matching. once these assumptions were fulfilled, we will be able to construct comparable treatment and control groups to assess the contribution of college quality to students’ initial employment. according to caliendo and kopeinig (2008), six steps were implemented when we conducted the psm: first, this study estimated the propensity scores of elite college attendance with the logistic model. based on the college choice and human capital theory, elite college attendance could be influenced by observed covariates, including student ability, senior high school characteristics, pre-college experiences, home environment, and family background. second, we matched up elite college students (the treatment group) with those in non-elite colleges (the control group) based on their propensity scores using the 1 to 3 nearest neighbor matching algorithm, and we restricted the matched sample in the common support area. third, we checked the overlap or the common support assumption by visual analysis to ensure this assumption was met. fourth, we checked the balance of the covariates and made sure that the treatment and the control groups were indeed comparable. fifth, we obtained the regression-adjusted treatment effects by running regressions on the matched sample in which observations in the treatment and control group were identical in all aspects. finally, we tested for sensitivity by changing matching algorithms to confirm that our psm results were robust to alternative ways of matching. empirical results descriptive statistics table 1 displays the descriptive statistics for all of the variables used in the models for the “intention-to-work” sample. according to table 1, the percentage of students who had at least one offer was 66.2%, while the government or soes employed 26.8%. female students accounted for around 46% of all of the students who had the intention to work after graduation. about 5.4% of graduates were minority students and 46.6% were rural registered-residence students. their average ncee score was 69.8 in the did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 175 rescaled range of 0 to 100. within this sample, 34.8% were an only child in the family. more than half chose science, technology, engineering, and math (stem) majors compared with 13.1% who majored in liberal arts, 8% in social sciences, 17.8% in economics and management and 6.1% in other disciplines. the sample college average score was about 79. the percentage of party members, student union leaders, and technical certificate holders was 27.1%, 20.5% and 45.1% respectively. there were 24.1% of students in the sample who did not pass the college english test level 4(cet4) even when they were about to graduate; in contrast, 46.3% of the students passed cet4, and 29.6% of the students passed college english test level 6 (cet 6). part-time working during the term was quite prevalent for students in our survey (82.2%). the percentages of students who earned scholarships, or had load burden were just under 30%. on average, each student submitted 17 resumes while job hunting. with regard to institutional characteristics, 16% of the students were in elite colleges versus 84% in non-elite colleges after we adjusted the sampling weight. more specifically, 5.1% of the students were in project 985 colleges, 10.8% were in project 211 colleges, 72.8% were in non-key colleges, and 11.2% were in independent colleges. a considerable proportion of the students were in heis and specialized in engineering, followed by 29.7% of the students who were in normal universities, and 21.2% who were attending comprehensive colleges. in addition, our sample covered institutions in five regions. heis in the eastern and central china accommodated over half of the whole sample. impact of college quality on initial employment status in table 2, the dichotomous categorical measure of college quality (elite/non-elite) was used in the estimation equations and the odds ratios from estimating the logit models are reported. student demographic characteristics, family background, student ability, college experience, and institutional characteristics were included as covariates. in model 1, we report a model that does not control for student ability and college experience. student cognitive ability and non-cognitive leadership skill are included in model 2. in model 3, we add a set of college experience covariates. we put more weight on interpreting estimation results in model 3 and 4, because model 3 included comprehensive controls of covariates, and results from psm in column 4 accounted for potential endogenous elite college attendance, and can be used for robustness check. the estimation from logistic regressions provide benchmarks for assessing the matching estimates. also, for all of the models, we controlled for college characteristics other than quality with a series of dummy indicators. yu current issues in comparative education 176 table 1. summary of variables in the "intention-to-work" sample, weighted variable n mean/% s.d. minimum maximum student variables have job offer (yes=1) (%) 4984 0.662 0.473 0 1 employed by government or soes 3460 0.268 0.443 0 1 age 4890 23.016 0.995 20 31 female (yes=1) (%) 4967 0.459 0.498 0 1 minority (yes=1) (%) 4942 0.054 0.227 0 1 rural household (yes=1) (%) 4969 0.466 0.499 0 1 ncee (rescaled to 1~100) 4420 69.824 7.721 24 100 academic track in high school (%) humanity 4930 0.245 0.430 0 1 science & comprehensive 4930 0.693 0.461 0 1 art & athletics 4930 0.062 0.242 0 1 non-cognitive leadership skills (%) 4984 0.398 0.490 0 1 single child (yes=1) (%) 4921 0.348 0.476 0 1 ses index 3888 -0.237 0.942 -2.191 2.799 key senior high school (%) 4926 0.760 0.427 0 1 residential region before college (%) municipality 4858 0.093 0.291 0 1 east 4858 0.308 0.462 0 1 northeast 4858 0.134 0.340 0 1 central 4858 0.248 0.432 0 1 west 4858 0.216 0.412 0 1 home environment in high school 4892 -0.155 1.167 -1.479 2.95 college majors (%) liberal arts 4978 0.131 0.338 0 1 social sciences 4978 0.080 0.271 0 1 stem 4978 0.551 0.497 0 1 economics & management 4978 0.178 0.382 0 1 others 4978 0.061 0.239 0 1 average academic score in college 3859 78.617 6.553 25 100 communist party member (yes=1)(%) 4935 0.271 0.444 0 1 student leader (yes=1) (%) 4984 0.205 0.404 0 1 have technical certificate (yes=1) (%) 4984 0.451 0.498 0 1 college english test proficiency (%) did not pass cet4 & cet6 4848 0.241 0.428 0 1 pass cet4 4848 0.463 0.499 0 1 pass cet6 4848 0.296 0.456 0 1 part-time workexperience (yes=1) (%) 4917 0.822 0.382 0 1 have merit aid (yes=1) (%) 4396 0.308 0.462 0 1 have need-based aid 4984 0.210 0.408 0 1 have loan 4884 0.293 0.445 0 1 have minor (yes=1) (%) 4880 0.064 0.246 0 1 like major 4886 2.633 0.802 1 4 number of resume submitted 3665 16.621 14.502 0 50 did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 177 institution variables elite college (yes=1) (%) 4984 0.160 0.366 0 1 institution quality categories (%) project 985 college 4984 0.051 0.221 0 1 project 211 college 4984 0.108 0.311 0 1 non-key college 4984 0.728 0.445 0 1 independent college 4984 0.112 0.316 0 1 institution specialization (%) comprehensive 4984 0.212 0.408 0 1 engineering 4984 0.441 0.497 0 1 normal 4984 0.297 0.457 0 1 agriculture 4984 0.040 0.196 0 1 finance 4984 0.001 0.035 0 1 political science 4984 0.007 0.081 0 1 minority 4984 0.003 0.053 0 1 institution region (%) municipality 4984 0.133 0.339 0 1 east 4984 0.272 0.445 0 1 northeast 4984 0.150 0.357 0 1 central 4984 0.242 0.428 0 1 west 4984 0.203 0.403 0 1 table 2. impact of college quality (elite vs. non-elite) on initial employment status models (1) logistic (2) logistic (3) logistic (4) psm elite college 1.299 1.060 1.095 1.183 (0.244) (0.176) (0.151) (0.210) age 1.025 1.026 0.995 1.049 (0.038) (0.039) (0.039) (0.087) female 0.892 0.919 0.800* 0.743 (0.121) (0.123) (0.105) (0.182) minority 0.819 0.856 0.844 0.816 (0.177) (0.175) (0.190) (0.281) rural 1.125 1.102 1.038 1.245 (0.273) (0.272) (0.332) (0.255) only child 0.675*** 0.664*** 0.746*** 1.085 (0.061) (0.062) (0.084) (0.216) ses 0.891 0.916 0.925 0.944 (0.068) (0.068) (0.093) (0.115) ncee 1.021*** 1.024** 1.017 (0.008) (0.009) (0.014) humanities track 0.768** 1.003 1.325 (0.093) (0.208) (0.349) arts and athletics track 0.873 1.280 0.953 (0.220) (0.546) (0.379) yu current issues in comparative education 178 non-cognitive leadership skills 1.386*** 1.321** 1.006 (0.158) (0.158) (0.169) major in liberal arts 0.843 0.475 (0.137) (0.224) major in social sciences 0.455*** 0.390** (0.090) (0.151) major in economics and management 0.718 0.644** (0.158) (0.132) major in other disciplines 0.639 1.333 (0.248) (0.429) average academic score 0.975** 1.001 (0.011) (0.021) party member 1.191* 1.038 (0.125) (0.223) student leader 0.984 0.916 (0.107) (0.110) have certificate 1.167 1.095 (0.155) (0.113) pass cet4 1.306 2.661*** (0.226) (0.638) pass cet6 1.285** 1.830*** (0.148) (0.381) part-time work 1.672*** 1.329 (0.246) (0.282) have merit aid 1.097 0.865 (0.143) (0.117) have neebased aid 1.304* 0.898 (0.194) (0.210) have loan 1.292 1.275 (0.252) (0.269) have minor 1.273 2.016** (0.251) (0.681) like major 1.199*** 1.011 (0.070) (0.087) number of submitted resumes 1.007** 1.003 (0.003) (0.004) college discipline concentration y y y y college region y y y y n 4984 4984 4984 3079 pseudo r² 0.059 0.073 0.196 0.254 note: clustered standard errors over colleges are shown in parentheses * p<0.1, ** p<0.05, ***p<0.01 did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 179 the results indicated the odds ratios in all of the models were larger than 1, but they were insignificant at any significance level. it suggested the dichotomous measure of college quality might be too abstract and disguised the discrepancy between colleges of various qualities. hence, we turned to a more concrete quality measure by dividing chinese universities into four college quality categories, namely, project 985 colleges, project 211 colleges, non-key colleges, and independent colleges for more informative analysis. moreover, the estimation results on the elite college dummy from psm were quite similar to those from model 3, suggesting our results were generally robust. alternative matching algorithms, such as kernel matching and radius matching were also performed, and the psm results stayed consistent.6 we also identify a number of covariates in student demographics, student ability, family background, college experience, and institutional characteristics that have significant effects on initial employment right after college graduation as shown in table 2. specifically, female students were less likely to find jobs, although it was only significant at the 10 % significance level. holding other things constant, being the single child in the family produced less chance of finding a job; however, students with higher cognitive ability and non-cognitive leadership ability were more likely to get employed. students who majored in social sciences were at a disadvantage in terms of job seeking. students who had higher english proficiency levels were more likely to find jobs, and part-time working experience was beneficial for job seeking. considering that the sample size was restricted to the common support area when we used psm, the results from the psm and logistic regressions were not consistent on some of the covariates, such as whether the student had a minor, or whether the student liked his/her major, etc., but the inferences on the key independent variable remained consistent. table 3 displays the odds ratios from logistic regressions for students in project 985, project 211 colleges, and students in non-key, and independent colleges. given that the definition of the treatment and control groups can be arbitrary if we had four college quality categories, psm was not performed when we adopt this college quality measure. the odds ratio of graduates from project 985 colleges is about 1.6 in model 3, suggesting that they are 1.6 times more likely to find jobs than those in non-key regular institutions, although it is only significant at the 10% level. we do not detect significant differences between students in project 211, non-key, and independent colleges in terms of employment. in other words, students from project 985 colleges might gain an advantage 6 detailed psm results of alternative matching algorithms are not reported, but are available upon request. yu current issues in comparative education 180 in the early labor market while students from project 211 colleges may not be able to easily find jobs compared with students in non-key colleges. table 3. impact of college quality on initial employment status models (1) logistic (2) logistic (3) logistic project 985 college 1.683* 1.364 1.605* (0.522) (0.392) (0.417) project 211 college 1.089 0.991 0.982 (0.187) (0.157) (0.128) independent college 0.513** 0.590* 0.686 (0.142) (0.174) (0.199) age 1.028 1.028 0.998 (0.040) (0.040) (0.040) female 0.860 0.894 0.785* (0.117) (0.117) (0.099) minority 0.831 0.841 0.835 (0.177) (0.171) (0.186) rural 1.089 1.079 1.019 (0.262) (0.265) (0.329) only child 0.685*** 0.671*** 0.746*** (0.061) (0.062) (0.085) ses 0.892 0.914 0.922 (0.069) (0.068) (0.093) ncee 1.013 1.018* (0.010) (0.011) humanities track 0.784** 1.014 (0.093) (0.209) arts and athletics track 0.798 1.216 (0.212) (0.533) non-cognitive leadership skills 1.375*** 1.308** (0.160) (0.160) major in liberal arts 0.859 (0.148) major in social sciences 0.445*** (0.084) major in economics and management 0.718 (0.158) major in other disciplines 0.633 (0.250) average academic score 0.976** (0.011) party member 1.180 (0.123) did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 181 student leader 0.978 (0.107) have certificate 1.188 (0.160) pass cet4 1.322 (0.226) pass cet6 1.281** (0.145) part-time work 1.650*** (0.233) have merit aid 1.103 (0.146) have need-based aid 1.302* (0.193) have loan 1.286 (0.248) have minor 1.268 (0.260) like major 1.203*** (0.069) number of submitted resumes 1.007** (0.003) college discipline concentration y y y college region y y y n 4984 4984 4984 pseudo r² 0.065 0.076 0.198 note: clustered standard errors over colleges are shown in parentheses * p<0.1, ** p<0.05, ***p<0.01 when compared to previous empirical studies that utilized chinese data, our study not only contained more comprehensive controls of covariates, such as student cognitive or non-cognitive abilities, but also took into account the potential endogeneity of elite college attendance by performing the psm method. in addition, our sample contained all fouryear college students with bachelor’s degrees, and excluded three-year vocational college students, and postgraduate students, while early chinese studies often mixed them all together in their analyses (w. li & yue, 2009; min et al., 2006; yang & yue, 2016; yue et al., 2004; yue & yang, 2012). these might be the reasons why previous studies tended to find statistically significant effects of elite college attendance (du & yue, 2010; yue & yang, 2012) that were not so evident in this study. impact of college quality on employment unit ownership as college enrollment rocketed and the job search competition heated up, many college students were oriented towards seeking government officer/civil servant jobs or positions in state-owned yu current issues in comparative education 182 enterprises (soes). jobs in these public sectors were usually regarded as promising jobs with secured remuneration, stable fringe benefits, high social status and recognition, and less work burden when compared with private sector jobs. table 4 reports the odds ratio of the dichotomous categorical measure of college quality (elite/non-elite) on the ownership of employment units for students who were employed. again, student demographic characteristics, family background, student ability, college experience, and institutional characteristics were included as covariates. the model specifications were the same as we examined the effects of college quality on initial employment status. the results demonstrated the odds ratios in all of the models were larger than 1 but only the odds ratio from psm was significant at the 10% significance level. the magnitude of estimate yielded by matching was slightly higher than those yielded by logistic regressions. this may due to the fact that this psm estimate could be interpreted as the average treatment effect on the treated (att), which refers to the effect of elite college attendance on those who actually attended elite colleges rather than the average treatment effect (ate), which captures the effect of college quality on students in both elite and nonelite colleges. on the whole, the regression estimates from all of the 4 models implied elite college attendance plays a key role in determining employment unit ownership of jobs obtained. in order to figure out which students from the specific college quality categories benefited from their college quality, we ran the regressions again with four concrete college quality categories. several covariates were the determinants of whether the student took job positions in the government or soes. we discovered that female students were less likely to find such jobs while one unit increase in the family socioeconomic index increased the odds of entering such jobs by over 20%. with regard to student ability, cognitive ability may not be correlated with finding public sector jobs, while non-cognitive leadership was highly valued in locating these types of jobs. moreover, liberal arts students were at a disadvantage in finding employment in the government or soes compared to students with stem majors. there were several ways to accumulate human capital in order to enter public job sectors, such as earning certificates, passing college english tests, and spending more effort on major course studies. however, submitting more resumes may not improve the chances of finding these public sector jobs. previous studies that examined the job sector choice of college graduates yielded mixed results (xie & zhao, 2009; yang & yue, 2016). although we found positive effects on locating public sector jobs, our results were contrasted to xie and zhao (2009)’s study, which attributed more chances to project 985 college students. the reason might be that did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 183 most project 985 colleges are research universities that produce a considerable proportion of students who will pursue postgraduate education and thus, they are less likely to take alternative positions as employees in government or soes in comparison to project 211 college students. table 4. impact of college quality on employment unit ownership models (1) logistic (2) logistic (3) logistic (4) psm elite college 1.451*** 1.268 1.265 1.723*** (0.207) (0.205) (0.194) (0.323) age 0.907* 0.917* 0.924 0.842* (0.047) (0.047) (0.052) (0.074) female 0.549*** 0.594*** 0.621*** 0.503*** (0.088) (0.090) (0.096) (0.074) minority 0.980 1.016 1.061 0.854 (0.207) (0.196) (0.204) (0.199) rural 0.867 0.853 0.835 1.303 (0.132) (0.128) (0.105) (0.222) only child 1.004 1.047 1.019 0.938 (0.111) (0.121) (0.116) (0.202) ses 1.181* 1.216** 1.234** 1.225** (0.105) (0.109) (0.109) (0.125) ncee 1.015 1.007 0.981 (0.012) (0.012) (0.017) humanities track 0.679* 0.882 1.526 (0.149) (0.233) (0.534) arts and athletics track 0.380** 0.642 0.203*** (0.180) (0.294) (0.090) non-cognitive leadership skills 1.183* 1.121 1.224 (0.107) (0.117) (0.188) major in liberal arts 0.491** 0.257*** (0.143) (0.084) major in social sciences 1.035 0.613 (0.600) (0.264) major in economics and management 0.867 0.959 (0.174) (0.160) major in other disciplines 0.325*** 1.063 (0.132) (0.293) average academic score 0.991 1.006 (0.011) (0.018) party member 1.234 1.583** (0.179) (0.313) student leader 1.115 0.719 (0.196) (0.149) yu current issues in comparative education 184 have certificate 1.099 1.420* (0.101) (0.255) pass cet4 1.442*** 1.567* (0.194) (0.388) pass cet6 1.333 1.400 (0.243) (0.421) part-time work 0.846 0.703** (0.093) (0.118) have merit aid 1.065 1.005 (0.114) (0.210) have neebased aid 1.221* 0.884 (0.127) (0.241) have loan 1.042 1.264 (0.114) (0.259) have minor 1.127 0.614 (0.225) (0.199) like major 1.272*** 1.078 (0.117) (0.109) number of submitted resumes 0.993*** 0.992 (0.002) (0.005) college discipline concentration y y y y college region y y y y n 3714 3714 3708 2342 pseudo r² 0.105 0.117 0.146 0.160 note: clustered standard errors over colleges are shown in parentheses * p<0.1, ** p<0.05, ***p<0.01 table 5 displays the odds ratios from logistic regressions for students in project 985, project 211 colleges, and students in non-key and independent colleges. the odds ratio of graduates from project 985 colleges was close to 1 in model 3, suggesting that they probably had equal odds as the students in non-key universities in terms of finding jobs in the government or soes. on the contrary, students from project 211 universities were 1.42 times more likely to take government or soe positions than those in non-key universities, and the odds ratio value was significant at the 5% significance level. also, independent college students had less chance to find these types of jobs. did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 185 table 5. impact of college quality on employment ownership models (1) logistic (2) logistic (3) logistic project 985 college 1.066 0.883 0.921 (0.213) (0.219) (0.215) project 211 college 1.556*** 1.446*** 1.419** (0.219) (0.203) (0.199) independent college 0.656* 0.763 0.769 (0.160) (0.218) (0.226) age 0.901* 0.911* 0.920 (0.048) (0.047) (0.052) female 0.534*** 0.583*** 0.609*** (0.090) (0.091) (0.095) minority 0.982 1.011 1.052 (0.206) (0.194) (0.201) rural 0.863 0.852 0.835 (0.131) (0.128) (0.105) only child 1.014 1.056 1.032 (0.114) (0.123) (0.119) ses 1.181* 1.215** 1.236** (0.105) (0.109) (0.109) ncee 1.012 1.004 (0.012) (0.012) humanities track 0.676* 0.878 (0.147) (0.234) arts and athletics track 0.357** 0.612 (0.166) (0.278) non-cognitive leadership skills 1.180* 1.118 (0.105) (0.114) major in liberal arts 0.494** (0.144) major in social sciences 1.038 (0.607) major in economics and management 0.861 (0.172) major in other disciplines 0.320*** (0.133) average academic score 0.990 (0.011) party member 1.227 (0.180) student leader 1.107 (0.195) have certificate 1.101 yu current issues in comparative education 186 (0.103) pass cet4 1.437*** (0.195) pass cet6 1.332 (0.243) part-time work 0.843 (0.092) have merit aid 1.072 (0.114) have need-based aid 1.234** (0.123) have loan 1.033 (0.111) have minor 1.098 (0.221) like major 1.273*** (0.117) number of submitted resumes 0.993*** (0.002) college discipline concentration y y y college region y y y n 3714 3714 3708 pseudo r² 0.107 0.119 0.148 note: clustered standard errors over colleges are shown in parentheses * p<0.1, ** p<0.05, ***p<0.01 conclusions and discussion in this paper, we investigated whether better colleges bring better jobs for their graduates by measuring college quality in two different ways, either as a dichotomous variable or as multiple quality categories with a nationally representative sample. two major conclusions were reached. first, even after we controlled for a comprehensive set of covariates, including student demographics, student ability, family background, student college experiences, and institutional characteristics, the results showed that students who graduated from elite colleges gained advantages in terms of obtaining employment opportunities. more specifically, higher employment probabilities went to students in project 985 colleges instead of students in project 211 colleges; this is consistent with xie and zhao (2009) and supported the notion that elite college students acquired higher human capital stock and capabilities that paid off when they hunted for jobs. second, we also examined whether students from elite colleges were more likely to find public sector jobs in the government or soes. it turned out that students who graduated from elite colleges had a higher probability to find such jobs. according to the psm estimate that was significant at the 10% level, elite college students were 1.72 times more likely to take did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 187 public sector jobs. after splitting the colleges into four quality categories, we found that students who graduated from project 211 colleges were the actual beneficiaries in the early labor market in terms of finding employment positions in the government or soes. we did not observe the same situation for students who graduated from project 985 colleges since the coefficient on the project 985 college dummy was less than 1 and was statistically weak the major findings from our study contribute to existing chinese literature by extending past endeavors to estimate the effects of college quality on early labor market employment outcomes in several ways. first, we examined two dimensions of early labor market employment outcomes, including both initial employment status and work unit ownership. second, we showed a clear pattern of results by emphasizing alternative measurements of college quality, and by contrasting estimation parameters from alternative specifications and identification strategies. our study also offers important policy implications for shaping national as well as institutional policies to enhance college quality and promote the employment of college graduates. as the number of college graduates grew year after year, it became increasingly difficult for students to find jobs in china after many years of higher education expansion. our study using the 2011 data helped to investigate whether college quality mattered even more when the college student labor supply surges in recent years. the short-term college quality effects on college students’ initial employment status in our sample were generally consistent with the findings from many earlier studies. thus, our results indicate that college quality gaps worsen the equity in the early career stages and labor market performance for college attendees. given the fact that the scale of college enrollment after the higher education expansion persists, this equity in terms of employment opportunity may continue to emerge for elite and non-elite college graduates. to some extent, the findings justified chinese students and families’ keen interest in being admitted to elite chinese universities, and it called for the attention of heis to cultivate knowledge and skills that are valued in the labor market, and to improve college campus recruitment services to maintain a higher employment rate. furthermore, our findings show that substantial pre-college background characteristics and experiences exist and influence who goes to elite colleges, and intensify education stratification at the phase of tertiary education. if students from socioeconomically disadvantaged families have difficulties entering elite colleges, they will probably face social stratification and low social mobility when they complete their college education. for example, they may spend more time and money on their job search and tend to move yu current issues in comparative education 188 to the coastal region and large cities where job opportunities are abundant. even for students with identical characteristics, employers may prefer to hire elite college students, which urges the government and society to eliminate college diploma discrimination against institutional quality, and to avoid early labor market segmentation by efficiently matching job positions with qualified college-trained graduates. in addition, it is notable that among all obtained job offers, only 27% of them were located in the government and soes and project 211 students gain more such job positions. our findings reflected that public sector employers implemented job filter and selection to recruit employees with signs of potential high future productivity, which is manifested by college prestige and social perception of college quality. however, we have to keep in mind that it is the private sector that absorbs the majority of fresh college graduates. if entities and companies in the private sector were motivated to recruit more collegeeducated labors and public sector employers were derived of privileges that originate from administrative and monopoly power due to their ownership attribute, the dispersion of college graduates in public and private job sectors would be more even and the economy would be better boosted by numerous private enterprises comprised of more elite college graduates, which answers the call from the national strategy to enhance mass entrepreneurship and innovation in china. despite the key findings and implications suggested above, this study had some important limitations. first, an obvious caveat is data constraint. given the time to conduct the survey, there would be a higher proportion of fresh graduates who did not receive any job offers compared with u.s. studies that typically collect job placement data several months after graduation (black & smith, 2004; brand & halaby, 2006; dale & krueger, 2002, 2011; long, 2008; zhang, 2012). it may bias the estimates when we draw inferences for time-variant outcomes such as initial employment status and employment unit ownership status. in addition, due to the survey timeline, the effective sample size was substantially lower, and the statistical power was compromised. further research is still needed to track the sampled students and check the reliability of the results due to the fact that the returns to college quality may be fully exhibited in the college graduates’ midor late-career. second, the internal and external validity of the research designs are subject to potential threats. although we tried to solve the endogeneity problem with the psm method, it is based on the “selection on observables” assumption, and generated results that were not that different from those discovered from logistic regressions. we should be cautious to interpret the results as causal rather than as a correlation. more research with higher precision and reliability are expected to confirm the causality. did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 189 author’s acknowledgements: the author would like to acknowledge the institute of education, tsinghua university for providing the cslm survey data. the author also thanks for comments and guidance from professor mun tsang at teachers college, columbia university. about the author: li yu is a lecturer in educational economics and administration at the institute of education, huazhong university of science and technology in wuhan, p.r. china. she earned her doctoral degree in economics and education from teachers college, columbia university. her academic interests cover 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(2012). impact of college education on graduates' employment and earnings in u.s. peking university education review. did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 193 appendix table a1. component loadings for socioeconomic status variable variable component 1 annual household income 0.625 area of dwelling -0.120 mother’s years of schooling 0.723 father’s years of schooling 0.729 rural residency -0.739 ordinary commercial residency 0.514 at least one parent is a manager in the household 0.568 at least one parent is a professional in the household 0.541 at least one parent is an ordinary staff in the household 0.307 at least one parent is a farm worker -0.602 at least one parent works in the government 0.414 at least one parent works in the public institutions 0.606 at least one parent works in public service sector 0.582 at least one parent works in service and retail industry 0.168 note: extraction method: principal component analysis; component 1: socioeconomic status (ses) table a2. component loadings for pre-college home environment variable variable component 1 have private room in senior middle school 0.4496 have private desk in senior middle school 0.4832 have private computer in senior middle school 0.5779 have a high volume of book in senior middle school 0.4800 note: principal component analysis; component 1: pre-college home environment index (home) table a3. definitions and measurements of key variables variable name definition measures dependent variable employment status initial employment status: whether student has at least one job offer at the time of the survey dummy:1=employed, 0=unemployed employment unit ownership employment unit ownership: whether student was employed by government or state-owned enterprises (soes) dummy:1=employed by government or state owned enterprises, 0=otherwise key independent variable: college quality elite college quality categories: 985 and project 211 colleges are elite colleges; other regular heis are non-elite colleges dummy: 1=elite college, 0=nonelite project 985 college college in the project 985 dummy:1=project 985 college, 0=otherwise project 211 college college in the project 211 dummy：1=211 colleges, 0=otherwise non-key college public college not in the 985 or project 211 dummy: 1=non-key colleges, 0=otherwise yu current issues in comparative education 194 independent college private college affiliated to public heis dummy: 1=independent colleges, 0=otherwise key covariates student demographics female student’s gender dummy variable: 1=female, 0=male age age at college graduation continuous, calculated from birth year and month minority whether the student is an ethnic minority dummy variable: 1=minority, 0=han student ability intellectual /academic ability student cognitive ability measured by ncee score rescaled to 0-100 continuous academic track academic track in upper secondary school categorical: science, liberal arts, arts and athletics non-cognitive leadership skills whether the student has leadership experiences in upper secondary school dummy:1=class/school leader, 0=otherwise family background rural residency the household’s registered residence location is in urban or rural area dummy variable: 1=rural, 0=urban single child whether a single child in the family dummy: 1=single child, 0=has siblings ses index an index of family socio-economic status constructed from the family background variables continuous pre-college experiences key school student’s high school quality type dummy: 1=key school, 0=nonkey residential region before college student’s residential region before college categorical: municipalities (reference group) , northeast, east, central and west home environment an index calculated from indicators including the number of books at home; have private room/private desk/private computer continuous college experiences major major field of study in college categorical: stem is the reference group party membership whether the student join the communist party of china (cpc) dummy: 1=cpc party member, 0=otherwise student leader whether has leadership experiences in student organizations dummy: 1=student organization leader, 0=otherwise certificate whether have technical certificate dummy:1=have certificate, 0=otherwise english proficiency whether pass the college english test (cet) level 4 & level 6 categorical: do not pass cet4 is the reference group did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 195 part-time working whether have part-time working experiences during college dummy:1=worked in college,0=otherwise have merit aid whether have merit aid scholarships in college dummy:1=have merit aid, 0=otherwise have minor whether have a minor in college dummy: 1=have minor, 0=otherwise institutional characteristics institution region the institutional location region categorical: municipalities (reference group) , northeast, east, central and west institution specialization the institutional specialization type categorical: comprehensive (reference group), engineering table a4. determinants of elite college attendance model (1) logistic age 0.821*** (0.036) female 0.881 (0.081) minority 3.236*** (0.616) rural 1.030 (0.112) residential region in the east 0.815 (0.158) residential region in the northeast 0.988 (0.215) residential region in the central 0.828 (0.170) residential region in the west 3.381*** (0.633) ncee 1.335*** (0.017) humanities track 0.662*** (0.074) arts and athletics track 28.737*** (11.133) non-cognitive leadership skills 1.051 (0.088) only child 1.148 (0.121) ses 1.137** (0.072) key senior high school 1.512*** (0.166) yu current issues in comparative education 196 home environment index 1.021 (0.041) n 4984 pseudo r² 0.319 note: robust standard errors are shown in parentheses * p<0.1, ** p<0.05, ***p<0.01 table a5. balance between elite and non-elite college attendees. variable sample mean sd std diff sd ratio treated control treated control ncee unmatched 75.41 69.67 7.540 7.630 0.760 0.990 matched 75.42 74.98 7.450 7.320 0.0580 1.020 muni unmatched 0.0450 0.187 0.210 0.390 -0.682 0.530 matched 0.0440 0.0390 0.210 0.190 0.0280 1.070 east unmatched 0.260 0.194 0.440 0.400 0.151 1.110 matched 0.260 0.244 0.440 0.430 0.0350 1.020 northeast unmatched 0.0860 0.115 0.280 0.320 -0.102 0.880 matched 0.0870 0.0800 0.280 0.270 0.0240 1.040 central unmatched 0.179 0.281 0.380 0.450 -0.267 0.850 matched 0.179 0.165 0.380 0.370 0.0350 1.030 west unmatched 0.430 0.224 0.500 0.420 0.416 1.190 matched 0.431 0.472 0.500 0.500 -0.0840 0.990 humanities track unmatched 0.185 0.212 0.390 0.410 -0.0690 0.950 matched 0.184 0.211 0.390 0.410 -0.0690 0.950 arts and athletics track unmatched 0.0490 0.0740 0.220 0.260 -0.118 0.820 matched 0.0490 0.0520 0.220 0.220 -0.0130 0.970 science track unmatched 0.756 0.703 0.430 0.460 0.123 0.940 matched 0.756 0.720 0.430 0.450 0.0850 0.960 minority unmatched 0.104 0.0500 0.300 0.220 0.177 1.400 matched 0.103 0.118 0.300 0.320 -0.0490 0.940 key senior high school unmatched 0.831 0.741 0.370 0.440 0.242 0.850 matched 0.832 0.833 0.370 0.370 -0.00200 1 rural unmatched 0.460 0.416 0.500 0.490 0.0870 1.010 matched 0.461 0.420 0.500 0.490 0.0820 1.010 ses unmatched -0.180 -0.176 0.970 0.900 -0.00400 1.070 matched -0.181 -0.116 0.970 0.940 -0.0670 1.030 home environment index unmatched -0.117 -0.0880 1.250 1.220 -0.0230 1.030 matched -0.118 -0.0680 1.250 1.310 -0.0400 0.960 age unmatched 22.95 23.00 1.020 0.970 -0.0550 1.050 matched 22.95 22.93 1.020 1.050 0.0150 0.970 female unmatched 0.374 0.451 0.480 0.500 -0.158 0.970 matched 0.374 0.408 0.480 0.490 -0.0700 0.980 only child unmatched 0.359 0.397 0.480 0.490 -0.0800 0.980 matched 0.359 0.348 0.480 0.480 0.0240 1.010 non-cognitive leadership skills unmatched 0.427 0.417 0.490 0.490 0.0200 1 matched 0.427 0.446 0.490 0.500 -0.0380 1 did better colleges bring better job? current issues in comparative education 197 note: sd refers to standard deviation; std diff. refers to absolute standardized difference in group means; and ratio of rds refers to the ratio of the standard deviations between the treatment and control groups. the balance table demonstrates that the propensity score matching has fulfilled the balance requirement on all covariates. for each covariate, the absolute std diff. was <0.1 with regard to the balance of standard deviations, the ratio of standard deviations between the two groups was <1.1 after matching. since a ratio close to 1 indicates better balance, our results show that the balance is satisfactory. therefore, we believe that we construct a control group for the treated group and the two groups are identical in every aspect after matching. figure a1. distribution of propensity scores before matching figure a2. distribution of propensity scores after matching 0 .5 1 1.5 2 2.5 d e n s it y 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 propensity score treated control kdensity _pscore kdensity _pscore distribution of propensity scores before matching 0 .5 1 1.5 2 d e n s it y 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 propensity score treated control kdensity _pscore kdensity _pscore distribution of propensity scores after matching current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 2, spring 2017 © 2017, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(2), 64-83. college student entrepreneurship in china: results from a national survey of directors of career services in chinese higher education institutions you you graduate school of education, peking university feifei zhu graduate school of education, peking university xiaohao ding graduate school of education, peking university as the number of college graduates increases dramatically in recent years in china, the chinese central government encourages college graduates to partake in entrepreneurial activities. the current study uses data from a nationwide institutional survey of directors of career services of 840 chinese colleges and universities to study the current situation of student entrepreneurship and relevant institutional guidance practices. our results show that, although china’s college graduates have a high level of entrepreneurial intention, the actual entrepreneurship population is low, and the entrepreneurship survival rate is not high. among all colleges and universities, directors of career services in most competitive universities rate higher to the entrepreneurial guidance practices provided in their institutions. our findings suggest that governments and higher education institutions should pay attention to cultivating college students’ entrepreneurial spirit, encouraging opportunity entrepreneurship, as well as providing substantial startup supports based on actual needs. introduction in view of entrepreneurial activities playing an important role in aspects such as creating employment opportunities, increasing productivity and promoting national economic development (audretsch & keilbach, 2003; wong, ho, & autio, 2005), many countries encourage entrepreneurship to alleviate poverty and promote national economic growth (van stel, storey, & thurik, 2006). existing literature has documented the importance of entrepreneurial talent on china’s economic college student entrepreneurship current issues in comparative education 65 development since the 1980s. it is argued that the movement of entrepreneurial talents (e.g., peasant turned entrepreneurs, bureaucrat-turned entrepreneurs, overseasreturning and engineer-turned entrepreneurs) from traditional sectors (government, agriculture) to business activities has enabled china to realize its economic boom (zhang et al., 2010). unlike the fast growth of china’s economy since the 1980s, the overall size of china’s higher education was relatively small before 1999. according to unesco, the 1996 gross college enrollment ratio in china was only 5%. this ratio was lower than that in india (6.3%), whose gdp per capita was less than one-half of china’s, and was much lower than those in thailand (20.7%) and in philippines (28.8%), where the gdp per capita was equivalent to china’s. in 1999, china began the largest and longest continuous expansion in higher education, and its overall college enrollments outnumbered the us (the largest higher education system of the time) in less than ten years. as a result, the number of college graduates has dramatically increased, thus leading to greater employment pressure on college students in the 21st century. the chinese central government has published a number of policies to encourage college students and graduates to actively partake in entrepreneurial activities since the late 1990s, in the hope of rendering entrepreneurship as a new growth point in driving college student employment. along with china’s economic “new normal,” the chinese central government proposed the “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” policy in 2015 to promote china’s entrepreneurial activities toward a climax. as the key to entrepreneurship is innovative talent, chinese central and provincial-level governments expect college students, who are persons of high quality and high ability, to serve as a strong reserve force of entrepreneurial activity. chinese universities also carry out the practices for the entrepreneurship education of college students, provide venture funds and services, and establish startup hubs and incubation bases, so as to encourage and support the self-employment and entrepreneurial activities of college students. with the policy and economic environments favoring entrepreneurship, it is very natural to ask if these environments also bring in sufficient amount of opportunities for college students and graduates to participate in entrepreneurial activities. based on unique data from a national institutional survey of directors of career services in chinese colleges and universities, the present study intends to investigate the general entrepreneurial activity status of chinese college students and higher education institutions’ overall guidance practices of promoting student self-employment. the study also intends to describe the differences in the above situations among regions and colleges. one of our contributions lies in the data we collected. the data employed bears the advantage of objectivity and accuracy from administrative statistics on each institution surveyed, and at the same time, the data enables us to enjoy the selfyou, zhu, and ding current issues in comparative education 66 reported perceptions from close observers. in addition, the extensiveness in terms of the survey’s geographical scope enables our findings to represent the general status of college student entrepreneurship in china. the other contribution of our study lies in the institutional and individual aspects of the entrepreneurial process. different from previous studies, our study integrates college student entrepreneurship indicators at all stages (e.g., interest, intention, actual entrepreneurship, survival) and tries to provide an all-in-one description of college student entrepreneurship in china. literature review the development of college student entrepreneurial activities and the publication of related policies have led to college student entrepreneurship becoming a hot topic of academic discussion. from a dynamic perspective, entrepreneurial process can be viewed as a set of stages that follow one another: idea, the triggering event, implementation, and growth (nassif et al., 2010). in the context of college student entrepreneurship, these stages can be restated as entrepreneurial intention, graduation as the triggering event, actual entrepreneurship after graduation, and survival or failure of entrepreneurial activities, respectively. entrepreneurial intention is considered as the best predictor of actual entrepreneurship. in view of previous research, college student entrepreneurial intention was mostly analyzed from the perspective of individual college students (sun & wei, 2011; xu, mei, & ni, 2015; ye, 2009; zhou, feng, & chen, 2014; xiang & lei, 2014; gao & su, 2013). individual attributes, resources accessed, as well as external (e.g., policy, cultural) environment are examined as common factors influencing college student entrepreneurial intention (xia, luo, & yan, 2012; ye, 2011; chen & sun, 2009; qian & chen, 2011; chen & mao, 2009). we find that a few studies have tried to estimate the percentage of college students who have entrepreneurial intentions in china (tang & yu, 2012; zhang, kang, & ding, 2010; chu & zhang, 2013). it is noted that most of them are for entrepreneurial intention rate in a specific province or city1, and the estimated entrepreneurial intentions among college students range from 25.9% to 70%. however, these local estimates are systematically much larger than global entrepreneurship monitor (gem) estimates of entrepreneurial intentions among 1 according to the survey data from the national college student information consultation and employment guidance center, about 25.9% of college students had strong entrepreneurial intentions, and 53.02% had previously had such entrepreneurial intentions, thus reflecting the general entrepreneurial willingness of college students (chu & chang, 2008). as revealed by the survey of 716 undergraduate students in zhejiang province, 43% of the students chose entrepreneurship, and 37% agreed with and would consider entrepreneurship (tang & yu, 2012). based on the survey of 1060 undergraduate students in 15 universities and higher vocational colleges in wuhan city, it was shown that 65.0% of the college students had considered entrepreneurship (zhang, kang, & ding, 2010). the survey of 448 college students in hebei province indicated that nearly 70% of the students were interested in entrepreneurship with entrepreneurial impulse (chu & zhang, 2013). college student entrepreneurship current issues in comparative education 67 chinese 18-64 populations (19.52% in 2015) and are also contradictory to our intuitions regarding college student entrepreneurship. according to gem data2, entrepreneurial activity in china has rapidly increased, with the average percentage of early-stage entrepreneurial activity (tea) over the past 10 years being about 15%, which is slightly higher than in us (12%). the gem estimate is an overall percentage of entrepreneurship for the entire adult population (18-64 year-olds). if focusing on the group of college graduates in china, the estimate of actual entrepreneurship after graduation is not consistent, ranging from less than 1% to almost 3%, depending on the sample selected and the definitions of key terms (e.g., entrepreneurship, graduate, time point). if we differentiate individuals who participate in tea by motivation, gem defines, those who choose to pursue an opportunity as a basis for their entrepreneurial motivations, as opportunity-driven entrepreneurship, and those, who have no better options for work and start out of necessity, as the necessity-driven entrepreneurship. since opportunity-driven entrepreneurship will bring more employment opportunities for the society, it is considered to have a larger employment effect than necessity entrepreneurship. the motivation index in china estimated by gem, which is the ratio of opportunity-driven to necessity-driven entrepreneurship, increases from 0.8 in 2010 to 1.5 in 2015. in contrast, the corresponding ratios for the same period in the us (1.8 and 6.4, respectively) are much higher, indicating different overall compositions of entrepreneurial populations existing in china and the us.3 it is found that entrepreneurs with college and above level of education are more likely to be in opportunity-driven entrepreneurship (according to gem china report 2007, entrepreneurial, transition and employment effect); however, we haven’t found any specific estimates regarding the percentage of opportunity-driven entrepreneurship among college graduates. at the growth stage of entrepreneurial process, gem does not provide direct indicators for entrepreneurial activities. however, gem’s fear of failure rate, which calculated using the percentage of entrepreneurial population who claims that fear of failure would prevent them from setting up a business, can serve as an indirect measure. china has a rate of 49% in 2016, as opposed to a rate of 33% in the us, and is among one of the economies with the highest fear of failure rate. in terms of the actual survival time of enterprises, the state administration for industry & commerce of china (saic) conducted an analysis of all the domestic enterprises in the country since 2000. saic found 98.4% of chinese enterprises survive their first year, two-thirds 2 source: http://gemconsortium.org/country-profile/51 3 the two economies have a similar percentage of tea. you, zhu, and ding current issues in comparative education 68 survive their fifth year, and 53% survive their eighth year. the peak period of exit is from the third to the seventh year. one survey of 2000 young entrepreneurs in haidian district, beijing, china, shows similar trends (ding & wang, forthcoming). it was found that in the first two years since the foundation of enterprises, the enterprise closing rate was low, at about 5.5%, and the annual closing rate was below 5%. we haven’t found any studies or official statistics regarding survival time of college graduate entrepreneurial activities. as entrepreneurship does not take place in a vacuum, along with the entrepreneurial process, there are many external factors influencing entrepreneurial activities. these factors range from market to government, from culture to infrastructure, as well as from research and development (r&d) to education. in these aspects, gem’s entrepreneurial ecosystem indicators provide valuable implications concerning how easy or difficult it could be to generally start up in a country. according to gem’s policy brief of china, physical infrastructure and market openness are the biggest enablers for entrepreneurship, while availability of financial support and entrepreneurial education serve as the main constraints for entrepreneurship in china. however, it is also noted that gem indicators are aggregated ones that cannot describe potential differences existing within a country. for example, china is a big and diverse country, the same entrepreneurship policy from central government can be implemented differently at provincial and local levels, and entrepreneurship education can vary at college/university level as well. thus, compared with china’s overall entrepreneurship ecosystem, the local system experienced by individual college graduate entrepreneurs generates direct impact on entrepreneurial activities. previous research lacks a systematic and objective investigation regarding the present entrepreneurial activity status of chinese college students and the local entrepreneurship ecosystems due to the insufficiency of comprehensive survey data. it is difficult to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the overall entrepreneurial activity situation of college students throughout the country, and to further compare the entrepreneurial activities for different college types in various localities. methodology institutional survey in 2015, the graduate school of education’s institute of economics of education at peking university undertook a technical assistance project from the asian development bank, titled “policies for promoting employment of college graduates in china”, to carry out an institutional survey of colleges and universities nationwide, regarding their students’ employment and entrepreneurship, as well as their practices of career services. the investigation subjects were the directors of career services of colleges and universities. the survey was conducted using an online real-name method, requiring the directors of career services to college student entrepreneurship current issues in comparative education 69 complete the questionnaire according to the actual statistical data of college and university graduates. one-stage cluster sampling was applied and province is the primary sampling unit (psu). with consideration to geographical regions (east, central and west) and provincial economic development levels, institution density and number of graduates, 14 provinces (municipalities) of 32 provincial administrative units throughout the mainland were chosen to be sampled as the subjects of the investigation. the samples covered 45% of chinese provinces/municipalities and 56% of regular higher education institutions in china, and the number of college graduates from the sample institutions accounted for 56% of the national total. after extracting provinces, the online survey link was sent to the directors of career services of all of the institutions in the selected provinces (1408 in total). there were 1065 copies of returned online survey questionnaires, of which the valid sample size was 881, indicating a 60% valid return rate. we constructed a sampling weight for each observation to make our sample a nationally representative one. the weight compensates for sampling institutions’ unequal probabilities of selection and their non-response. in addition, we conducted a post adjustment of the weight according to number of institutions in four tiers (project 985 universities or 985, project 211 universities or 211, general undergraduate colleges/universities or ug, vocational colleges or voc).4 table 1. characteristics of sample institutions variable categories n % weighted % region eastern 374 42.45% 45.90% central 260 29.51% 33.94% western 247 28.04% 20.16% institution tier & type 985 19 2.16% 1.53% 211 20 2.27% 2.86% undergraduate 396 44.95% 43.36% vocational 446 50.62% 52.25% in addition to the survey having a representative and large sample with comprehensive coverage, the obtained data also had the two following advantages. the first is the college administrative data obtained by this study can be complementary with past student self-reported data to improve the accuracy of the understanding of the present situation of entrepreneurship. the second advantage is 4 project 211 and project 985 are the chinese central government’s endeavors aimed at founding highlevel universities for the 21st century. these projects were initiated in 1990s and universities selected were provided substantial amount of earmarked appropriations to develop into national and world-class universities. therefore, 211 and 985 universities are also considered as the second and the first tier of higher education institutions in china. you, zhu, and ding current issues in comparative education 70 that the directors of career services can understand and grasp the implementation more fully in terms of the practical work in colleges and universities. variables and methods in the questionnaire, the content related to college student entrepreneurship included the basic situation of graduate entrepreneurship and the situation of various university practices to promote the entrepreneurship of college students. in table 2, we summarize the key variables employed in the present study. variables are divided into two general categories, measuring the student entrepreneurship from the perspectives of process and environment, respectively. specifically, college student entrepreneurial intention, actual entrepreneurship after graduation, types of entrepreneurship, as well as the survival of entrepreneurial activities constituted variables in the process perspective. variables in the perspective of entrepreneurial environment referred to the local environment at the institutional level, including curriculum and training,5 services, funds, infrastructure (e.g., hubs and incubators) provided for entrepreneurial activities of college students. both categories included objective and subjective measures. the objective measure was reported by directors of career services according to administrative records, and the subjective measures were the directors’ personal perceptions on corresponding aspects. weighted means are calculated to provide overall estimates for college student entrepreneurship and institutional entrepreneurial environments. in addition, for each variable, we calculated and compared the weighted means of key variables by regions (eastern, central, western) and by institution tiers (985, 211, undergraduate, vocational), respectively. anova analysis and f test are conducted to examine whether differences among groups are statistically significant. 5 currently, college student entrepreneur courses and trainings in most chinese higher education institutions are organized by department of career services. typical courses focus on sharing of hands-on experiences. college student entrepreneurship current issues in comparative education 71 table 2. descriptive statistics of key variables variable min max mean process entrepreneurial intention intention rate (%) 0 78.43 3.95 perceived interest in entrepreneurship 1 4 2.94 actual entrepreneurship actual number of entrepreneurship 0 141 12.2 actual entrepreneurship rate (%) 0 9.69 .48 perceived increase in entrepreneurship 1 4 3.01 entrepreneurship type opportunity entrepreneurship (%) 0 100 71.75 employment difficulty as perceived reason for entrepreneurship (%) 0 100 10.35 survival rate 1-year survival rate (%) 0 100 53.62 perceived high survival rate of student entrepreneurship 1 4 2.14 environment curriculum and training number of entrepreneurial courses 0 45 2.1 services number of services provided 0 5 3.27 venture funds amount per project (10000 yuan rmb) .04 30 3.14 funding shortage as perceived obstacles 1 4 3.14 hubs and incubators number of projects in incubator 0 200 7.97 perceived quality of institutional practices curriculum and training 1 4 3.04 services 1 4 3.07 venture funds 1 4 2.66 hubs and incubators 1 4 2.82 note: weighted means applied. empirical results our survey indicates nearly 70% of directors for career services agree and very strongly agree with the following statement: “current college students are interested in entrepreneurship.” it can be seen in recent years, college students are more interested in entrepreneurship. nevertheless, our study shows that the mean rate of college students who have entrepreneurial intentions is only 3.95%, which is not consistent with previous local studies. one of the reasons for this inconsistency may lie in who is surveyed. directors of career services may only count those who have serious considerations for entrepreneurial activities as having intentions, and thus could serve as a better predictor of actual entrepreneurship than student self-reported intentions, which may be causal. as viewed from regional and institutional tiers, directors of career services at colleges and universities in the central regions have the highest degree of agreement with the statement, “current college students are interested in entrepreneurship”. while the lowest degree of agreement was found in the western regions. this shows that the entrepreneurial enthusiasm of college students in the central and eastern regions is you, zhu, and ding current issues in comparative education 72 greater compared to the western regions. among colleges and universities of different tiers, the degrees of agreement of 985 universities and 211 universities are higher than those of general undergraduate and higher vocational colleges, suggesting that students of competitive universities are more interested in entrepreneurial activities in recent years. but in terms of entrepreneurial intention rates, students from vocational colleges and institutions in western regions have the highest intention rates (5.64% and 4.81%, respectively). opposing patterns between perceived interest and in intention rate exist when the means are disaggregated by region and institutional tier. it is implied the top-down promotion of the idea of “mass entrepreneurship and innovation” may have promoted the awareness of entrepreneurship among college students, however, whether awareness or interest will transfer to serious intention still depends on many other factors, one of which could be the affluence and potential benefits of academic or work opportunities other than entrepreneurship. figure 1. entrepreneurial intentions by region and institutional tier in terms of college student entrepreneurship trends, nearly 80% of the directors agree and very strongly agree with the statement: “there has been a great increase in the number of entrepreneurship students in recent years”. according to the related research and subjective perceptions of directors of career services, college graduates presently exhibit common entrepreneurship intentions, with entrepreneurial enthusiasm rising and self-employment population increasing. however, the survey results show the graduate population with actual entrepreneurship after graduation accounts for only a small proportion of those with entrepreneurial intention. as viewed from the samples of this survey, the college graduate population with actual entrepreneurship is averaged at 12 people, only accounting for 0.48% of actual college student entrepreneurship current issues in comparative education 73 employment and 12.1%6 of the graduates with entrepreneurial intention. in terms of region and college types, the average number of actual entrepreneurship for college graduates in the western region is 14.15, accounting for 0.58% of total number of graduates, which is higher than the central and eastern regions (11.55 and 11.97, 0.47 and 0.45%). the average number of actual entrepreneurship after graduation from 985 universities is 25.52%, which is higher than that of 211 universities (17.87%), the general undergraduate colleges and universities (16.18%), and higher vocational colleges (8.21%). figure 2. actual entrepreneurship by region and institutional tier there is no significant difference in the perceived increase in entrepreneurship among regions and institutional tiers. however, in terms of the number of actual entrepreneurship among institutional tiers, there is a statistically significant difference. there are a greater number of graduate entrepreneurs from highly competitive universities (such as 985 universities) than other colleges and universities. two reasons may account for this phenomenon. on one hand, institutional size of 985 universities is generally larger than that of others. whereas, graduates with entrepreneurial intentions from the 985 universities are more likely to choose actual entrepreneurship. in our sample, the percent of graduate entrepreneurship by those with entrepreneurial intentions from the 985 universities is close to 30%, which is much higher than the sample mean (12.1%). it may imply that 985 universalities provide their graduates with entrepreneurial support with higher quality. opportunity entrepreneurship is defined by the entrepreneurial activities toward finding business opportunities, and necessity entrepreneurship is defined by the 6 calculated by dividing 0.48% by 3.95%. you, zhu, and ding current issues in comparative education 74 forced entrepreneurship under survival pressure (hay, cox, reynolds, autio, & bygrave, 2002). based on china’s data from the global entrepreneurship monitor, in 2006 the proportions of china’s opportunity entrepreneurship and necessity entrepreneurship were 59.2% and 38.7%, respectively (gao j. , 2006). among the sample colleges and universities covered in the survey, the proportions of opportunity entrepreneurship and necessity entrepreneurship were 71.75% and 28.25%, respectively. this shows that the entrepreneurship of current college graduates in china is mainly based on business opportunities, and the percentage of opportunity entrepreneurship in college student populations is higher than that among the general population. the undergraduates who are forced to choose entrepreneurship under employment or survival pressure account for only a small proportion. this is also confirmed by the subjective ranking of “potential reasons of student entrepreneurship” by directors of career services. there are only 10% of directors who chose “employment difficulties” as one of the three main reasons for entrepreneurship, and they believe most college students who choose self-employment mostly do so due to individual reasons, such as personality traits and job preference (43.9%), as well as the consideration of favorable projects (23.4%). figure 3. type of entrepreneurship by region and institutional tier as viewed by the regions and institutional tiers, the difference in terms of percentage of opportunity entrepreneurship is not significant, but it is significant among tiers of institutions. the proportions of opportunity entrepreneurship for the 985 universities and 211 universities are higher, at 87.89% and 86.65%, respectively, while that of general undergraduate colleges and universities is 75.66%, and that of higher vocational colleges is 67.53%. in terms of the perceived reason for entrepreneurship, more graduates in higher institutions in western china and those in vocational colleges may count employment difficulties as one of the reasons for entrepreneurship, while none of the directors of career services in 985 and 211 universities consider college student entrepreneurship current issues in comparative education 75 employment difficulty as a potential reason for their students’ entrepreneurial decisions. one of the most significant characteristics of the present situation of chinese college student entrepreneurship is the low survival rate (20-21%), which is reflected in the current survey data. in the 2013-2014 academic year (one year prior to our survey), the survival rate of graduate entrepreneurship was 53.62%. if compared with findings regarding general entrepreneurial activities, the survival rate of college graduate entrepreneurship was relatively low. figure 4. survival of entrepreneurship by region and institutional tier no significant difference exists in the enterprise survival rate among regions, of which the rates were lower in the eastern (51.17%) region. the one-year survival rate of entrepreneurship enterprises for graduates from the 211 colleges was 64.75%, which was significantly higher than those of the other colleges and universities. however, in terms of the perceptions of the self-employment enterprise survival rate from the directors of career services, the entrepreneurship rates in the western region and general undergraduate and higher vocational colleges are even lower. there are some discrepancies of disaggregated patterns in one-year survival rate and in perceived high survival rate, which is due to the possibility that directors’ degree of agreement of high survival rate may be based on their perceptions of the survival rate over a longer period. the practices of colleges and universities to promote graduate entrepreneurship mainly include the following four aspects. first, entrepreneurship coaching courses and training programs have been set up to cultivate the self-employment awareness of college students and improve entrepreneurial skills. second, venture funds have you, zhu, and ding current issues in comparative education 76 been provided to alleviate the pressure of acquiring venture capital. third, business incubation parks and entrepreneurial bases have been established. fourth, convenient conditions have been created for college student entrepreneurship, to provide consultations or solutions for entrepreneurship policies, give preferential policies to keep roll and credit for self-employed college students, and hold entrepreneurship contests. the questionnaire hopes that the directors of career services will make subjective evaluations on campus practices from four dimensions, i.e. for the institutional emphasis, actual resource support, student attention, and the directors’ satisfaction. the evaluation is designed in the form of a likert four-class scale. the higher the score, the better the work practice will be. for each aspect of practices, we construct a single measure by averaging the scores of its four dimensions. as displayed in table 2, the mean scores of the entrepreneurial curriculum and training (3.04) and entrepreneurship service work (3.07) are higher, while those of venture funds (2.66), and entrepreneurship hubs and incubator bases (2.82) are lower. in terms of some objective measures for the four aspects of institutional practices in promoting college graduate entrepreneurship, on average there are, 2.1 entrepreneurship courses, 3.27 entrepreneurial services are provided per college/university, 7.97 projects incubated, and each entrepreneurial project is funded with about 31.4 thousand yuan rmb (equivalent to $5,000 usd). according to the perceptions of directors of career services, most (78.5%) agree funding shortages are the obstacles for college student entrepreneurship. this confirms previous findings that, currently, funding shortages are the most common problems for college students in china’s various regions to find self-employment (chu & chang, 2008; zhang, kang, & ding, 2010) if comparing the institutional practices that encourage college student entrepreneurship among regions, the practices of institutions in eastern regions are, in general, superior to those in central and western regions. practices in western regions lag behind, particularly in terms of venture funds and hubs and incubators (figure 5, panel a). the comparisons, by institutional tier, display a pattern that is significantly in favor of the 985 universities and is against vocational colleges (figure 5, panel b), particularly in venture funds and hubs and incubators. college student entrepreneurship current issues in comparative education 77 figure 5. perceived quality of institutional practices to promote entrepreneurship panel a | perceived quality of institutional practices, by region panel b | perceived quality of institutional practices, by institutional tier conclusion and discussion based on data from the institutional survey of directors of career services at 881 chinese colleges and universities, conducted under the project of “policies promoting the employment of college graduates in china” performed by the graduate school of education’s institute of economics of education at peking university, this study analyzes the current entrepreneurship status of graduates from china’s colleges and you, zhu, and ding current issues in comparative education 78 universities, and the practices of colleges and universities to promote student entrepreneurship. the main findings achieved are as follows. 1. although china’s college graduates have a high level of entrepreneurial interest, the entrepreneurial intention and actual entrepreneurship population is low, and the entrepreneurship survival rate is not high. 2. the opportunity entrepreneurship and necessity entrepreneurship of college graduates account for 72% and 28% of the total, respectively. the proportions of opportunity entrepreneurship from the 985 universities and 211 universities are higher, as are those of necessity entrepreneurship from general universities and higher vocational colleges. 3. for institutional practices that promote entrepreneurship of college graduates, the 985 and 211 universities provide relatively wider and deeper support, particularly in terms of college student entrepreneurs’ access to financial resource and incubation infrastructure. vocational colleges and institutions in western china are at a disadvantage in these aspects. to help promote entrepreneurship for college students, this study offers the following opinions and suggestions: firstly, ad hoc promotion of immediate entrepreneurship after graduation without sufficient support should be cautious. instead, the cultivation of innovation spirit at colleges should be encouraged. our study shows that, although present chinese college students are more and more interested in entrepreneurial activities, the percentages of those who have serious entrepreneurial intentions and who take actual entrepreneurship, as well as the survival rate of college graduate entrepreneurship, are still low. on the one hand, it reveals the potential opportunity for government and higher education institutions to encourage college students to pursue entrepreneurship. on the other hand, it implies the lack of entrepreneurial support and lack of innovation spirit could be among the reasons for the low rate of successful entrepreneurship of college graduates in china. the comparative advantage of higher education institutions lies in cultivating students’ spirit of innovation and helping them achieve through appropriate channels, including entrepreneurship. the oncampus guidance and support of college student entrepreneurial activities, college student entrepreneurship current issues in comparative education 79 particularly those who could be beneficial to students’ future entrepreneurial success, can be strengthened. secondly, opportunity entrepreneurship should be encouraged, and attention should be given to necessity entrepreneurship. the encouragement of opportunity entrepreneurship can bring more jobs so as to fuel economic growth. at present, opportunity entrepreneurship is the main type of college student entrepreneurship, however, about one-third of college students’ entrepreneurship is necessity entrepreneurship, especially for students in the western region and higher vocational colleges. therefore, graduates who become self-employed due to necessity should focus on finding better employment opportunities, and these students should be provided with employment support from higher education institutions. third, governmental support for college graduate entrepreneurship should be based on actual needs to avoid flashy “face projects”. different types of college graduates have different entrepreneurship statuses and various characteristics of campus practices, thus leading to different development. for example, the western region and general colleges and universities rarely receive funding support, while the eastern region and 985 colleges and universities have strong abilities to absorb market funds to encourage student entrepreneurship. in terms of relevant practices in colleges and universities, entrepreneurship coach training and service works have been carried out successfully. but college students have more urgent demands for funding support and startup hub hardware construction. therefore, institutional practices should follow differentiated rather than a unitary model to promote student entrepreneurship, and pure imitation of the “flagship” model only “looks good”, but would be detrimental to student entrepreneurship in the long run. the government could encourage some top tier colleges and universities to improve the function of startup hubs and incubation bases, and to promote startup hubs to provide help and support for college student entrepreneurial projects. at the same time, the government can help college students in the western region reduce financial lending barriers, broaden the channels of funding sources, and absorb market and social idle funds to participate in startup hubs and incubators. in sum, this study contributes to the current literature by promoting the overall understanding of the current status of college student entrepreneurship in china. it is unique because: 1) our measures of college student entrepreneurship involve all stages of entrepreneurial activities; 2) we combine objective and subjective measures of college student entrepreneurship to provide mutually consistent patterns of college student entrepreneurship in china; and 3) our sample is nationally representative and our inference is generalizable. you, zhu, and ding current issues in comparative education 80 our study has some limitations as well. our study is a descriptive one, in which we delineate the pattern of college student entrepreneurship in china, but do not examine empirically on what the reasons are for lower entrepreneurship among college students and why it differs across regions and institutional tiers. we admit that many factors determining college student entrepreneurship, such as individual student characteristics and exposure to entrepreneur/business education at secondary level, cannot be examined due to a lack of data. further studies can control for the abovementioned factors and examine how governmental policies and institutional practices can affect college student innovation spirit and entrepreneurship. college student entrepreneurship current issues in comparative education 81 about the authors: you you is a researcher at institute of economics of education (iee)/graduate school of education (gse), peking university. she received her phd in economics and education from teachers college, columbia university in the city of new york. her research interests include teachers labor market, college graduates employment and entrepreneurship, and education finance and she has expertise in the use of quantitative methods to evaluate the effects of educational policies and programs. she publishes widely and her research has won her several external research funds from national and provincial governmental agencies (e.g., national natural science foundation of china). feifei zhu is currently a doctoral candidate at graduate school of education (gse), peking university. she visited teachers college, columbia university during the 2015-2016 academic year. her research interests concentrate on college students’ internship, employment and entrepreneurship. ding xiaohao is deputy director of the institute of economics of education, and professor in the graduate school of education at peking university. she received her phd from peking university in higher education. her main research interests include relationship between education and labor market, education economics, and educational finance. contact: you you at yyou@pku.edu.cn, feifei zhu at zhufeifei106@163.com, and xiaohao ding at xhding@pku.edu.cn you, zhu, and ding current issues in comparative education 82 references audretsch, d. b., & keilbach, m. 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(2014). entrepreneurial environment and its influence on college students’ entrepreneurial motivation: a research based on college students in jiangsu, zhejiang and shanghai. research in educational development (in chinese), 17, pp. 33-37. 4. from universal to pluriversal: transforming human rights education policies in colombia .docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 26, issue 2, special issue 2024 from universal to pluriversal: transforming human rights education policies in colombia angela sánchez rojas independent researcher this paper examines colombia’s national plan for human rights education (plan nacional de educación en derechos humanos, planedh) as a case study to discuss how positivistic, eurocentric, and western constructions have influenced a hegemonic understanding of human rights education. while the planedh policy aligns with the united nations human rights education mandates, its implementation remains largely symbolic, with minimal territorial impact and limited community participation. this paper encourages a shift of perspectives applying the pluriversal rights education framework. it discusses the importance of integrating diverse ways of knowing into human rights education dialogues and fostering participatory, community-driven policy design. the analysis offers recommendations to reenvision a more plural implementation of the planedh policy in the colombian education system. keywords: human rights education, pluriversal rights education, policies, colombia. introduction since the adoption of the united nations charter (1945) and the universal declaration of human rights (udhr) (1948), the united nations (un) has worked toward advancing human rights education (hre). hre is seen as a tool to strengthen respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as to foster human development (russell & suárez, 2017). in 1993, the un reaffirmed the significance of hre in promoting mutual understanding and harmonious relations among communities through the vienna declaration and programme of action (vdpa) (1993). this international framework specifically recommended that all member states develop national plans for human rights education (nphre) to integrate hre into national education policies. the un has developed an international approach to hre establishing guidelines and priorities for countries to implement policies at the country level. colombia’s national plan for human rights education (plan nacional de educación en derechos humanos [planedh]) was adopted in 2009 and updated for 2021-2034. it represents an ambitious effort by this conflict-affected country to embed human rights principles and hre international mandates into a national educational policy framework. planedh has remained a legal declarative document that has not been fully executed and implemented across all colombian territories. planedh’s organizational mechanisms have not been established, specifically the national © 2024, sánchez rojas. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 26(2), 57-76. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en from universal to pluriversal: transforming human rights education policies in colombia council and the technical regional committees. this situation impedes an effective policy implementation. despite the relevant influence of civil society in colombia through peace and popular education, there was limited participation by local communities, ethnic and vulnerable communities when enacting and implementing the most recent national hre policy. for the previous planedh version, the international center for human rights education studied more than 150 experiences (velásquez villate, 2020). the planedh was developed following a top-down model approach that prioritizes normative frameworks of international human rights law over co-creation processes of hre policies involving local experiences and community voices. applying the case of colombia, this paper calls for a shift from a standardized, top-down legalistic model toward a participatory, community-driven approach that integrates local practices and decolonial pedagogies. critical hre scholars have highlighted how hre policies often remain tied to legalistic human rights regime approaches, presenting challenges to engaging with its content (zembylas, 2023). mainstream hre frameworks have been mostly developed at the international level by international organizations such as the un and the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco). as a result, there is a dominant universal human rights discourse rooted in western and eurocentric values. while the universalization of hre represents a milestone in human rights globally, it also exposes a ‘one-size-fits-all’ universalism and eurocentric model (zembylas, 2017). other ways of knowing can contribute to mutual understanding, peace, and sustainability, such as indigenous and afro-descent knowledge and cosmovision. these ways of knowing have been omitted and silenced from hre international frameworks (becker, 2021). uncritical adoption of the un global discourse may narrow and manufacture a single hre discourse that validates certain types of knowledge while ignoring others (cultural, indigenous, and civil society knowledge) (coysh, 2014). the analysis of colombia’s national hre policy is highly relevant to the field of comparative and international education for several reasons. it is a country where indigenous and afro-colombian communities have been systematically excluded from dialogue and participation for more than three centuries as a consequence of colonization. most recently, colombia has emerged in the global arena as a leading example in the recognition of ancestral knowledge. the country has made significant steps in establishing decolonial educational programs, such as the pedagogy of mother earth (pedagogía de la madre tierra) at the universidad de antioquia, which integrates indigenous worldviews and ancestral knowledge into a formal education program. two pioneering decolonial universities have been founded: the universidad de saberes ancestrales (udsa), associated with the united nations of the spirit, and the universidad autónoma indígena intercultural (uaiin), a higher education public institution created by and for the indigenous community of cauca. colombia’s ministry of education accredited uaiin in 2020. colombia has actively pursued initiatives to integrate diverse ways of knowing and worldviews into its educational 58 current issues in comparative education sánchez rojas landscape despite persistent structural discrimination. these efforts reflect a growing commitment to decolonizing education and fostering inclusive spaces that honor knowledge systems and cosmovisions of historically marginalized communities. decolonizing hre in colombia entails moving beyond un frameworks’ universalist assumptions and embracing a transformative pluriversal perspective of human rights and education—one that recognizes diverse worldviews and ways of knowing. this approach is critical to amplify voices and perspectives from the global south. this paper invites policymakers and human rights scholars to approach national human rights policies through a transformative paradigm that can contribute to reimagining hre’s role in fostering equity, sustainability, human rights, and peace. the paper presents examples of how these concepts could be integrated into educational policies or practices that can also inspire policy reforms in other countries. to this end, i propose the pluriversal rights education framework (williams & bermeo, 2020), which challenges western-centric dominant ideas of human rights to integrate other ways of knowledge that have been excluded from the construction of the international education field of hre. pluriversal rights education invites scholars and practitioners to re-imagine education and de-center the humans. it entails shifting from anthropocentric human rights to a more expansive, pluriversal model in which both sentient and non-sentient beings and our shared connection with mother earth are recognized. this framework urges moving beyond a singular, universalized western approach to human rights and instead incorporating diverse epistemologies while maintaining openness for future transformation. this paper starts by contextualizing colombia’s educational system and its national laws and policies related to hre, focusing on the historical evolution of the plan nacional de educación en derechos humanos from 2009 to the updated version in 2021. next, i examine the development of hre as a global framework and the un influence in the international institutionalization of hre (hafner-burton & tsutsu, 2005; russell & suárez, 2017). then, i detail the alternative transformative paradigm of pluriversal rights education (williams & bermeo, 2020), outlining its core principles and pedagogical goals, which serve as the foundation for a critical analysis of colombia’s planedh. the fifth section analyzes the national hre plan in colombia, focusing on its main declaratory and legalistic nature, the policy's lack of impact nationally, and the participation of diverse communities, especially those historically marginalized by colonial powers. finally, i propose concrete recommendations to broaden the hre framework in colombia. such expansion can contribute to transformative perspectives in hre. this includes examples for re-indigenizing pedagogies and existing local practices that can inspire policymakers to build national policies that reflect diverse ways of knowing and being. current issues in comparative education 59 from universal to pluriversal: transforming human rights education policies in colombia background: hre in colombia national laws involving hre the colombian constitution embeds international human rights and human rights education. article 67 of the colombian political constitution (1991) positions education as an essential element of human dignity. it mandates that education in colombia should promote citizen awareness of human rights, peace, and democracy (para. 2). besides the constitutional mandate, several laws and national policies are related in one way or another to education for human rights. in 1994, colombia’s legislative body adopted the general law of education (law 115), which defines education as a personal, cultural, and social process of training grounded in the integral conception of the human being, the dignity of its rights, and its duties (article 1, number 16). it establishes respect for human rights, peace, democratic values, and pluralism (article 5) as one of the main aims of education. some dispositions in the 2013 school coexistence law (ley de convivencia escolar, law 1620) state the importance of creating a national system of school coexistence to promote citizenship and the exercise of human rights, as well as to to prevent and mitigate school violence. in 2015, the president of colombia incorporated all the regulations related to education into the unique regulatory decree of the education sector (decreto único reglamentario del sector educación, decree 1075). this decree unified primary and secondary education regulations, covering aspects such as school governance, ethno-education, the national system of school coexistence, hre, and school violence mitigation. national policies for hre following un hre mandates, colombia implemented a national plan of human rights education in 2009, adopting the un hre international policies as its conceptual framework (see ohchr, 2024). the president of colombia, through the vice president and the presidential program for human rights and international humanitarian law (programa presidencial de derechos humanos y derecho internacional humanitario, now the presidential advisory office for human rights and international humanitarian law (consejería presidencial para los derechos humanos y el derecho internacional humanitario) decided to create a strategic framework to integrate hre into the national educational system. the decision was made in cooperation with the ministry of education and with the technical support of the national human rights institution of colombia or ombudsman’s office (defensoría del pueblo). the planedh aims to foster a culture of human rights and democratic values, formulating guidelines and strategies and developing educational programs and materials on human rights through education—as mandated by the un after the decade of human rights education. although the planedh 2009 marked a significant step toward integrating hre across all levels in colombia, its implementation faced several challenges. the policy did not have public funding or the institutional structure to oversee its implementation and evaluation. the absence of an hre operational plan made it difficult to translate the policies into strategies and programs for human rights. twelve years later, colombian policymakers decided to update the planedh 2009 60 current issues in comparative education sánchez rojas through the actualización y fortalecimiento del plan nacional de educación en derechos humanos (planedh, 2021-2034). this updated policy evidenced colombia’s effort to strengthen and renew its commitment to hre and emphasized integrating hre across all educational levels, formal, non-formal, and informal education while addressing diverse social, cultural, and territorial challenges. the updated planedh recognized new national peace and hre challenges after the 2016 peace agreement and the covid-19 pandemic. the planedh 2021-2034 emphasizes the importance of integrating human rights across all education spaces, respect for human rights, peaceful coexistence, and harmony. it considers inclusivity for vulnerable and systematically excluded populations, participation, and dialogue to enhance collaboration among public institutions and civil society for effective hre implementation. it recognizes the challenges and realities of diverse groups and communities in achieving human rights. the current hre policy has five central values articulated in table 1. table 1 describes each value, providing a description and an example of its application. the values show how planedh 2021-2034 invited more inclusive and participatory education practices. table 1 core values of the planedh 2021-2034 planedh value description application universality and indivisibility of human rights recognizes that all human rights apply to humans considering their human dignity. identifies the struggles of diverse groups to secure fundamental guarantees. incorporates a multidimensional view of rights, ensuring inclusivity for all vulnerable and marginalized populations. participation and dialogue fosters active engagement and spaces of dialogue with diverse civil society and public institutions. creates participatory educational forums to cultivate empowerment and mutual respect. critical consciousness develops awareness to understand the challenges and realities of diverse groups and communities in achieving human rights. promotes critical thinking and awareness to challenge structural and systemic injustices. encourages critical thinking to address social inequalities and systemic barriers to rights. encourages the training of citizens mediated by a critical pedagogy that has human rights as an imperative. peace and reconciliation positive response focuses on guiding students in their learning process with an optimistic and proactive approach. promotes positive behavioral change and empowerment in current issues in comparative education 61 from universal to pluriversal: transforming human rights education policies in colombia students while recognizing the efforts for peacebuilding. recognizing the context acknowledges the socioeconomic and cultural dynamics that shape the interactions of individuals within their communities. adapts educational strategies to local realities to ensure relevance and cultural sensitivity. despite the formal commitment to advancing hre in colombia, the national plan continues to be a legal document with limited implementation and tangible outcomes. the policy has not been able to advance or impact actions, strategies, and plans at the national level. since its recent adoption, the national government has not provided budgetary support for this policy. the inter-institutional coordination mechanisms intended to monitor the implementation of the planedh have not been established. methodology this paper employs a conceptual and critical policy analysis approach to examine colombia’s planedh policy (2021-2034), acknowledging that it remains largely a legal document without substantial implementation. the choice of this methodology is grounded in the absence of empirical data on the planedh’s execution and one institutional report from the ombudsman office of colombia (2024). the policy analysis is based on a two-level exploration of the planedh legal and discursive construction. first, this approach allows for a critical examination of the policy’s legal foundations, values, premises, and understandings of human rights. second, this study examines the un hre framework, including soft law documents, legal instruments, and international organization education guidelines, such as the world programmes on hre, to situate the planedh within a global framework. the latter will contribute to analyzing the extent to which the national policy focuses on universalized and western-centric notions of human rights and the international educational framework for human rights. after situating the planedh within this framework and its main values, i examine the national policy through the theoretical lens of pluriversal rights education to evaluate to what extent new paradigms and perspectives can be incorporated into the hre policy, bringing an innovative vision of education. my analysis through the lens of pluriversal rights education seeks to critically explore how integrating pluriversal and decolonial education approaches can contribute to the evolution of colombia’s human rights educational policies. literature review human rights education international framework several empirical studies in education have examined how global human rights discourses, particularly those promoted by international organizations, have influenced the institutionalization of the field of hre internationally. hre has 62 current issues in comparative education sánchez rojas emerged as a global framework that diverse global actors mainstream, in particular intergovernmental organizations (igos) like the un (suárez, 2006; suárez & ramirez, 2007; russell & suárez, 2017). the significant growth in hre can be attributed to the expansion of un initiatives encouraging states to fulfill their international human rights legal obligations. in this context, hre has become an emerging global institution that influences political dynamics and national educational policies (russell & suárez, 2017). the literature on comparative and international education strongly suggests that the adoption of national plans and the spread of hre are highly influenced by a global model promoted by the un, which is disseminated through globalization (robertson, 1994). russell (2015) emphasizes how national education policy increasingly responds to the global environment and international actors. the institutionalization of hre began expanding in the mid-1970s under the influence of the un (suárez & ramirez, 2007). this expansion was accelerated during the 1990s with the program action for human rights, which marked international organizations’ definite involvement in hre through the un and unesco. by adopting various hre instruments and policies, the un reaffirmed that all countries are duty-bound to introduce education for human rights into national policies, plans, and strategies. one year later, the un proclaimed the decade for human rights education (1995-2004), encouraging states to build and strengthen programs and capacities for hre (ga res. 49/184, 1994). in 2005, the un implemented the world programme for human rights education, and countries were encouraged to develop education policies related to human rights in separate phases (ga. res. 59/113, 2004). these international policies were invigorated by adopting the 2011 un declaration on human rights education and training (ga. res. 66/137, 2011). this international instrument determined that hre is a human right and that countries have the primary responsibility to promote hre (article 7.1). it also mandated that all un state parties must develop policies, action plans, and programs to implement hre (article 8). the 2011 international soft law document provides the latest definition of hre by the un. this definition entails educational efforts to prevent human rights violations and empower citizens to build and promote a universal culture of human rights. article 2, paragraph 2, outlines the three dimensions of hre: (a) education about human rights, which includes providing knowledge and understanding of human rights norms and principles, the values that underpin them, and the mechanisms for their protection; (b) education through human rights, which includes learning and teaching in a way that respects the rights of both educators and learners; (c) education for human rights, which includes empowering individuals to enjoy and exercise their rights and to respect and uphold the rights of others. the un sustainable development goal (sdg) 4.7, adopted in 2015, requires nation-states to ensure learners acquire knowledge and skills to promote sustainable development. this includes education for human rights, gender equality, and peace. current issues in comparative education 63 from universal to pluriversal: transforming human rights education policies in colombia these antecedents highlight the major un influence in the evolution of hre at the international and national levels. within this context, several countries in latin america and globally have implemented national human rights action plans in line with the un human rights framework. in some cases, this includes a specific national plan for hre. most latin american countries have implemented and updated diverse national plans: brazil (2003-2018), bolivia with the plan plurinacional de educación en derechos humanos (plurinational plan on human rights education) (2012), mexico (2002), peru (2021), uruguay (2016), colombia (2009, updated in 2021), and paraguay (2012). pluriversal rights education framework international and national hre policies have been created in public institutional spheres by multilateral organizations where, inevitably, some individuals, groups, and communities lack the privilege to have a seat and voice. this has influenced having a universalized discourse on human rights that has excluded other ways of knowing which can also align with human rights goals and values. modern and northern epistemologies have influenced how societies perceive and understand human rights, the idea of humans, and our relationship with other living beings on this planet, invalidating any alternative cosmovision. zembylas (2023) critically assesses how the concepts of ‘human’ and ‘rights’ are deeply rooted in european intellectual traditions. the idea of human rights is mainly based on the western idea of self, which emphasizes the separation between entities, humans, and non-humans, as well as the differentiation between humans and the environment. in response, recent comparative and international education scholars have called for implementing decolonial approaches to hre (zembylas, 2017; becker, 2021; zembylas, 2023). these different approaches offer an opportunity to radically re-imagine or re-indigenize how the field thinks about education, pedagogies, beings, and humans’ interactions and connections with the world. williams and bermeo (2020) propose a decolonial hre and peace education framework that reimagines hre as a pluriversal rights education. rooted in the minds of two educators from the global south, these scholars propose a paradigm for a holistic understanding of hre. it invites to approach hre colonial-modernity structures critically and to question the colonial inheritance from which human rights notions have been constructed (williams & bermeo, 2020). the pluriversal rights education framework, successor to hre and peace education, has four main pedagogical aims or principles: (i) pluriversal sentience, (ii) pluriversal equilibrium, (iii) abolitionism and decoloniality, and (iv) radical hope. the four principles reflect shifts required to change our understanding of humanity, its nature, and its relationship with other beings and nature. it equips learners with knowledge, skills, dispositions, and values to recognize and respect the pluriverse, the rights of all earth beings or sentient entities, and foster peace through planetary equilibrium. pluriversal sentience recognizes all sentient beings’ interconnectedness and interdependence (human and non-human). this principle challenges colonial, 64 current issues in comparative education sánchez rojas anthropocentric worldviews and promotes the de-centering of the human. pluriversal equilibrium recognizes mother earth as a living entity that is in “a permanently dynamic condition of growth, evolution, and complementarity” (williams & bermeo, 2020, p. 14). abolitionism and decoloniality call for a deeper understanding of structures of marginalization and oppression causing social injustices. radical hope refers to the integrative and proactive support to orient the other three principles. it values the future without losing sight of the past and recognizes the resources embedded in each of us. “it sees and treats communities as possibilities and not as things or problems to be solved” (williams & bermeo, 2020, p. 14). together, these four principles offer a transformative way of re-imagining hre. they challenge the dominance of western-centric paradigms and open space for other perspectives that include more ways of knowing to achieve peace, harmony, and well-being. table 2 illustrates the pluriversal right education framework: table 2 pluriversal rights education framework pillar description pluriversal sentience recognizes the interconnectedness and interdependence of all beings, decenters human beings, and questions anthropocentrism. goes beyond the pedagogical principle of mutual vulnerability by recognizing all beings, not just humans (keet et al., 2009; zembylas, 2013). there are sentient and non-sentient beings. pluriversal equilibrium mother earth is seen as a vibrant living system in permanent growth. earth’s equilibrium is a dynamic, ever-changing state of growth and balance. abolitionism and decoloniality the need to recognize the patriarchal and colonial structures and systems as a consequence of our history. it is necessary to decolonize our minds ( williams & bermeo, 2020). it involves unlearning harmful structures that separate us and give priority to one way of thinking or knowing. it is essential to have a critical awareness of the self and have transformative competencies to understand the world’s different thinking systems. radical hope a future-oriented hope that acknowledges the past. actively works toward a better future even if it is beyond our full understanding (lear, 2006). recognizes the potential of human beings and the resources of each community on this planet. current issues in comparative education 65 from universal to pluriversal: transforming human rights education policies in colombia applying the pluriversal rights education pillars requires a profound and significant shift in how we think, feel, and experience the world and ourselves (williams & bermeo, 2020). those who decide to engage in pluralist rights education require paradigmatic shifts in our modes of thinking, feeling, and experiencing. learners should engage in border thinking, which requires navigating the unknown world and understanding different cosmovisions. it requires engaging in the process of conscientization (consciência crítica) (freire, 2018/1970), in which learners actively recognize socio-political and economic structures, but also a spatial conscientization. learners should develop transformational competencies that enable them to read the world’s interrelation and dynamics as well as understand diverse knowledge systems, including indigenous knowledge. recognizing pluriversal knowledge within hre can contribute to pluricultural understanding and honoring multiple ways of being and diverse perspectives of seeing the other, the earth, and the cosmos (hardbarger, 2019). the pluriversal rights education conceptual framework questions the idea that knowledge comes from one unique source. it affirms that knowledge is rooted in lived experiences, diverse cultures, and world conceptions. the goal is to foster skills that enable learners to perceive a more interconnected whole within themselves and other sentient and non-sentient beings. policy discussion this section presents an analysis of the planedh focusing on three main aspects: the influence of the international hre framework on the national policy, the exclusions of alternative ways of knowing despite the policy core values and premises, and the lack of operational and institutional mechanisms to implement the national document. these limitations have hindered the implementation of the planedh at the territorial level and have resulted in limited community participation and involvement. the influence of the international hre framework in the planedh after analyzing the educational framework and discourse of colombia’s planedh 2021-2034, it is evident that planedh is legally grounded upon an un hre framework. colombian policymakers adhered to the mandates expressed in the decennial plan of actions for human rights and article 8 of the un declaration on human rights education and training (2011) for the creation of national plans for hre. the planedh discourse emphasizes the universality, indivisibility, interdependence, and interrelatedness of human rights. consistent with phase 4 of the un world programme for human rights education, it invites the implementation of hre in all instances of education (formal, informal, and non-formal education) and prioritizes the principle of equality and non-discrimination in all actions or strategies. considering discrimination and the unequal colombian context, policymakers from planedh decided that the national policy would have a 10-year duration, stressing the importance of different 66 current issues in comparative education sánchez rojas territorial and ethnic approaches as essential to building a country that respects diversity (planedh, 2021-2034). the core values of the planedh (see table 1) include inclusivity of vulnerable and systematically excluded populations and participation and dialogue among public institutions and civil society to cultivate a diversity-based dialogue. however, in practice, the planedh has been maintained mainly as a declarative national policy that has not evolved beyond a legal document aligned with international human rights standards. this legalistic and declarative universal nature of the national policy has resulted in a single idea of ‘human’ and ‘rights’ that invalidates any alternative cosmovisions or ways of knowing that resonate with human rights. the idea of human rights is based on the western idea of the self, which emphasizes the separation between humans, sentient and non-sentient beings, and between humans and the environment. the latter has led to the separation of other living beings, the planet, and each other, which hinders the development of community feeling, cooperation, and understanding (lehner, 2023). by neglecting these diverse epistemologies, planedh reinforces a framework prioritizing western-centric paradigms and universalized understandings of human rights. this approach overlooks local communities’ unique cultural, historical, and social contexts, limiting the potential for transformative hre that resonates with the lived experiences and systems of knowledge of the colombian population. for instance, indigenous and afro-colombian pedagogies, which often emphasize community-based learning and the interconnectedness of all beings, are notably absent from the planedh framework. the top-down approach excluding other ways of knowing in the planedh the top-down approach to create and implement the planedh has limited local communities’ active participation and engagement in its policy design and implementation. the planedh recognizes the importance of a territorial approach to education by acknowledging the socio-economic and cultural dynamics that shape the interactions of individuals within their communities.but it fails to integrate perspectives and pedagogies from alternative ways of knowing, including those from indigenous and afro-colombian communities. this exclusion perpetuates historical patterns of discrimination and marginalization, silencing knowledge and wisdom that have been suppressed since colonization. there were some instances of civil society participation, such as the virtual meetings held in 2021 while updating the latest planedh. however, the policy does not evidence a meaningful impact on the population at the territorial level or sustained engagement with civil society. lack of planedh operational and institutional bodies the absence of territorial institutions, such as the planedh national council and the technical regional committees initially tasked with translating hre policies into relevant educational strategies and territorial development plans, resulted in a policy that is disconnected from the experiences of education, pedagogies, and current issues in comparative education 67 from universal to pluriversal: transforming human rights education policies in colombia didactics of local communities. this has driven a disconnection of the national policy from human rights realities in the conflict-affected territory. policy recommendations the limitations of the planedh have resulted in a passive role for local and ethnic communities and a lack of territorial impact of the national policy at the territorial level. the diversity and unique cultural and historical context and systems of knowledge have been overlooked, as the national policy assumes the knowledge of hre from one only source, the universal. this assumption limits other possibilities where hre policies are co-created through community-driven processes. this section provides strategies to transform the policy into a dynamic and inclusive framework that genuinely fosters a culture of human rights. through the pluriversal rights education lens, it aims to bring new paradigms and perspectives on human rights that can be incorporated into the hre policy. challenging the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach can provide transformative insights that question universalism and evidence of how other ways of knowing can be included to foster mutual understanding, achieve peace, and enhance a culture of human rights. table 3 presents three key policy recommendations. colombian hre policy can move toward a more inclusive, community-centered policy on human rights education. afterward, i illustrate how the pluriversal rights framework can be integrated into the planedh 2021-2034 core values. table 3 key recommendations and actionable steps limitation recommendations actionable steps legal and universal human rights nature of the national policy incorporate other ways of knowing in hre frameworks and integrate the pluriversal rights education framework, resonating with other ways of knowing in colombia. facilitate dialogues with afro and indigenous local communities to identify culturally relevant educational pedagogies and didactic. include the pluriversal rights framework into the core values of the planedh 2021-2024 (as exposed in table 4 below). top-down approach create spaces of intercultural knowledge with decolonial higher education initiatives. transform the top-down approach design of the partner with institutions such as universidad de antioquia or universidad de saberes ancestrales to incorporate ancestral wisdom into hre policy. when updating the policy, create regional advisory councils composed of indigenous and afro-colombian leaders to ensure the incorporation of their ways of thinking and 68 current issues in comparative education sánchez rojas planedh to a community-driven approach. knowing into the policy. invite excluded groups to participate in the territorial technical bodies of the planedh to create intercultural dialogues among human rights. lack of planedh operational and institutional bodies strengthen territorial institutions to operationalize hre strategies effectively. develop regional implementation plans for operational and technical mechanisms. recommendation 1. spaces of intercultural knowledge with decolonial higher education initiatives initiate a dialogue between ways of knowing that have been historically silenced. a dialogue between eurocentric views and other ways of knowing as ancestral wisdom from our indigenous ancestors or communities can be a path to broadening the scope of curricula and instruments for hre. including other pedagogies of hre that create skills, values, and knowledge can help the non-recurrence of violence and embrace human rights values. in practice, there should be a constant dialogue between colombian hre policymakers with communities, groups excluded, leaders, and practitioners to incorporate new epistemological frameworks for specific communities, educators, and teachers. as expressed by cortina et al. (2019), it is important to listen to each other, as no culture is superior to the other, and nobody knows more than the other. we must converse and strengthen each other. an authentic dialogue of knowledges or an ecology of knowledge can change perspectives in hre. applying boaventura de sousa santos’ (2007) notion of the ecology of knowledge, it is important to create equal opportunities for various kinds of knowledge to coexist to foster a more democratic, diverse, and just society. intercultural translation is essential for articulating diverse forms of knowledge. the concept of intercultural translation can contribute to bridging different knowledge systems and ways of knowing, such as indigenous knowledge that has been excluded because of coloniality. in that sense, pluriversal rights education can be a framework that helps integrate other forms of knowledge into education and invites people to rethink how they interact with the world. from this perspective, human rights values will be seen from a hegemonic western perspective and other ways of knowing, often marginalized or silenced. this is a strategy to heal the production of knowledge rather than destroying it. indigenous and afro-colombian communities have been systematically excluded from dialogue and participation for more than three hundred years in colombia. in this context, it is restorative to start bringing alternative ways of learning and current issues in comparative education 69 from universal to pluriversal: transforming human rights education policies in colombia thinking that can contribute to radical transformations in how human rights are taught in schools. planedh policymakers can start building activities to include other ways of knowing, ancestral wisdom, and community-based education initiatives that exist in the local territory. this can help incarnate intrinsic values of human rights such as dignity, equality, freedom, and diversity and have them be reflected in the national policy. cortina and colleagues (2019) have drawn attention to intercultural programs in higher education, particularly intercultural experiences with diverse ways of knowing (epistemic diversity). colombian hre policymakers can create new possibilities of dialogue and pluriversal pedagogies. policymakers can build a dialogue of multiplicities of knowledge that can contribute to finding more peaceful ways to live and create a culture of human rights. policymakers can engage in a co-creating process with other higher education initiatives in the colombian local context. colombia is a unique case study, as it has several higher education institutions that are developing decolonial methodologies and practices where indigenous knowledge and other ways of knowing have been translated into pedagogies and formal educational spaces. the universidad de saberes ancestrales, universidad autónoma indígena intercultural, and the licenciatura en pedagogía de la madre tierra of the universidad de antioquia in medellín are unique examples of decolonial understandings of education in south america. this approach can help hre policymakers understand how human rights values are taught in these universities. it can aid the process of finding opportunities to establish alliances with these universities and their decolonial pedagogies that can help build programs and curricula celebrating pluriversal ways of knowing and being in the world. inter-institutional alliances between the first public indigenous university in colombia, universidad autónoma indígena intercultural (uaiin), can contribute to encouraging intercultural dialogue between indigenous knowledge of issues related to human rights and western understandings of human rights. the universidad de sabiduría ancestral was founded in 2012 in the sierra nevada of santa marta, colombia. its mission is the following: serve ancestral peoples around the world, through the training of leaders who will guide humanity towards a level of consciousness conducive to awakening universal love, encouraging actions that favor the well-being of all, life in harmony with mother earth, promoting native spirituality and the values of indigenous peoples. (universidad de sabiduría ancestral, n.d.). intercultural conversations can help embrace the principles of the pluriversal sentient and pluriversal equilibrium of the pluriversal rights education framework. universities and policymakers should form intercultural alliances to complement the national hre framework. fostering the presence of diverse educators can contribute to alternative practices in human rights learning experiences. 70 current issues in comparative education sánchez rojas recommendation 2. reconceptualizing the planedh core values with the pluriversal rights education framework the planedh 2021-2034 proposes five central values or pillars that integrate hre practices (see table 4 below). although these values are based on a vision of hre constructed by un global education mandates, i found similarities with the pluriversal rights education framework. as illustrated in table 4, the national hre policy values resonate with the pluriversal rights education framework. table 4 offers conceptual guidance for policymakers to understand the relationship between pluriversal values and the national hre policy. the left column outlines the national policy value. the right column elaborates on the pluriversal rights education principle aligned with the planedh value. table 4 planedh core values integration with principles of pluriversal rights education planedh value pluriversal rights education principle aligned universality and indivisibility of human rights pluriversal sentience: recognizing interconnectedness among all beings. there are sentient and non-sentient beings. pluriversal equilibrium: mother earth is a vibrant living system. participation and dialogue radical hope: work toward active engagement of communities with a future-oriented hope that acknowledges the past but also desires to build a better future. critical consciousness abolitionism and decoloniality: promote critical thinking and awareness to challenge structural and systemic injustices, including patriarchal and colonial structures. peace and reconciliation positive response radical hope: envisioning transformative futures grounded in peace and reconciliation. recognizing the context abolitionism and decoloniality: acknowledge the socioeconomic and cultural dynamics that shape the interactions of individuals within their communities. conclusion the global un model, through international human rights instruments and soft law mandates, has shaped colombia’s national hre policy. consequently, the prevailing hre model in colombia is an hre framework built upon western perspectives, leaving other ways of knowing aside. i situate this paper in a recent decolonial dialogue about the future of hre. i aimed at providing a space to reflect on how diverse knowledge systems can interact in hre. given colombia’s colonial history, my key recommendation for policymakers is to start questioning the universalized and legalistic approach sustaining hre. as becker (2021) pointed out, “globally current issues in comparative education 71 from universal to pluriversal: transforming human rights education policies in colombia there is a need for otherwise knowledge and conceptualizations of being human, and human rights education is crucial to this” (p. 63). my analysis is an invitation to focus on transforming hre to create spaces for more epistemologies. pluriversal rights education emerges as a decolonial approach to expand national education policies, introducing alternative philosophies and pedagogies that can resonate with the colombian context. colombia has promising examples of intercultural knowledge production such as pedagogy of mother earth of the universidad de antioquia, universidad autónoma indígena intercultural (uaiin) and the universidad de sabiduría ancestral. these institutions can be a path for human rights to engage and encourage intercultural conversations about indigenous knowledge on human rights-related issues. educational policies can serve as a tool to reimagine human rights and foster a continuous process of critical self-reflection on human’s interconnectedness with mother earth. in her 2018 presidential address at the comparative and and international education society (cies), comparative and international education scholar regina cortina emphasized the importance of producing knowledge with and from the global south—particularly in contexts where neoliberal logics dominate educational discourse (cortina et al., 2019). my paper contributes to south-driven perspectives on hre. it envisioned generating a policy analysis to reimagine education in alignment “with all of our energy on what is possible, moved by our deepest ethical aspirations for a just and human world” (cortina et al., 2019, p. 468). i hope it does. angela sánchez rojas is an independent researcher, lawyer and educator with 12 years of expertise in human rights, peace, and transitional justice issues at judicial institutions and national institutions such as the constitutional court of colombia, the special jurisdiction for peace, the inter-american court of human rights, and defensoría del pueblo of colombia. for the last five years, she has focused her career on peace education. her recent education research centers on integrating decolonial, holistic and embodied practices into peace, human rights, and transitional justice education. she has a master in public international law from leiden university and a master of education from teachers college, columbia university. references adami, r. 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(2017). re-contextualising human rights education: some decolonial strategies and pedagogical/curricular possibilities. pedagogy, culture & society, 25(4), 487–499. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2017.1281834 zembylas, m. (2020). toward a decolonial ethics in human rights and peace education. international journal of human rights education, 4(1), 1-31. https://repository.usfca.edu/ijhre/vol4/iss1/2 zembylas, m. (2023). decolonial human rights education in the university sector: critical possibilities. in f. tibbits & a. keet (eds.), emancipatory human rights and the university. routledge. 76 current issues in comparative education https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/721270?v=pdf https://www.udea.edu.co/wps/portal/udea/web/inicio/unidades-academicas/educacion/oferta-pregrado/licenciatura-pedagogia-madre-tierra https://www.udea.edu.co/wps/portal/udea/web/inicio/unidades-academicas/educacion/oferta-pregrado/licenciatura-pedagogia-madre-tierra https://repository.usfca.edu/ijhre/vol4/iss1/1 https://repository.usfca.edu/ijhre/vol4/iss1/2 strengthen territorial institutions to operationalize hre strategies effectively. develop regional implementation plans for operational and technical mechanisms. 7. rethinking climate change in education.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 27, issue 1, special issue 2025 rethinking climate change in education: from climate coloniality to decolonial educational ecologies in comparative and international education benjamin d. scherrer state university of new york at oswego tavis d. jules loyola university chicago we present methods to examine the relationships between climate change and education while rethinking educational approaches that do not rely on endless economic growth, extraction, and accumulation through dispossession. at this historical moment, which is focused on transitions toward a greener future, it is essential to consider how the roles of those most affected by climate change are often overlooked in narratives about “climate solutions.” the paper highlights what is absent from and erased within the united nations sustainable development goals and prevalent approaches to climate change education. it does so by focusing on a longer historical arc, as well as black and indigenous knowledge systems and cosmologies, alongside ongoing and historical injustices. utilizing the framework of a decolonial educational ecology, we reimagine climate change in education within interconnected global contexts, emphasizing historically marginalized knowledge systems, confronting power imbalances, and creating alternative pathways toward more sustainable, just futures that transcend universal western epistemic frameworks.  keywords: decolonial education ecology, comparative and international education, climate change education, decolonization, climate coloniality. introduction  scholars, policymakers, and practitioners worldwide have emphasized the importance of k-12 education, higher education, and informal education in responding to climate change in recent decades (united nations [un], 2021). simultaneously, the epistemic foundations of the topic are often ignored. popular models of climate education aim to provide students with an understanding of climate change, covering its causes, effects, and remedial strategies, such as transitions to “green energy” (rousell & cutter-mackenzie-knowles, 2020). this knowledge is assumed to enable students to respond effectively to climate-related challenges while promoting environmental stewardship and sustainable development. in curriculum and policy, climate education focuses on the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying changing atmospheric conditions, empowering students to reduce carbon emissions, and raising awareness of the impacts of intensifying weather patterns (bhattacharya et al., 2020; © 2025, scherrer & jules. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 27(1), 153-171. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en rethinking climate change in education: from climate coloniality to decolonial educational ecologies in comparative and international education stein, 2020; stein et al., 2023). however, we argue that what is missing from how climate education is currently taught is a focus on discussing the longer interconnected historical arc of the past, explaining the erasures of black and indigenous knowledge systems and cosmologies (other ways of living and being in the world), and addressing historical injustices through reparative projects (acabado & kuan, 2021; emeagwali & shizha, 2016; estes 2019; scherrer et al., 2024). we put forth that such a reorientation in the way we teach about climate education allows us to re/center a multiplicity of ‘pluriversal thinking’ (escobar, 2018) through what we call decolonial educational ecologies (discussed below). building on ferdinand (2021), a decolonial educational ecological approach involves more than just incorporating black and indigenous viewpoints. it requires reimagining education to center historically marginalized knowledge systems and cosmologies while confronting existing human and more-than-human power imbalances as humans seek to address the current climate crisis. in the field of comparative and international education (cie), the topic of climate change is commonly addressed through the framework of education for sustainable development (esd). esd is premised upon “development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (gavrila, 2023, p. 47). esd emerged as a global framework following the publication of the brundtland report (un, 1987), which was released after the decade of education for sustainable development (2005-2014). when this occurred, climate education or climate change education became a top priority, highlighted by the un and the un educational, scientific, and cultural organization (unesco), which laid the groundwork for future initiatives during two major global events: agenda 2030 and the un climate conference in paris. in september 2015, the united nations adopted the 2030 agenda, which codified 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs). the three sdgs most pertinent to climate education are: ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all (sdg 7), taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts (sdg 13); and ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all (sdg 4).   we break from the un sdgs’ approach of ‘developing’ and ‘modernizing’ our way out of the climate crisis while asking those living in the global south (global majority) and other locations of disproportionate precarity to become more ‘resilient.’ it is within this context that marginalized and racialized communities and more-than-human beings have borne witness to a climate of colonial change over the last 500 years, resulting in massive shifts in human relations, ecologies, and earth systems (whyte 2018; scherrer et al., 2024). for example, colonialism’s adaptive and assimilative methods showed little interest in developing existing education and knowledge systems and instead reshaped them to reflect the colonizers’ culture and language (jules et al., 2021). such modes of colonial assimilation can arguably be seen influencing ‘western technological fixes,’ reproducing and escalating the relational inequities and forms of accumulation through dispossession. as in the case of lithium mining and the extraction of other rare earth current issues in comparative education 154 scherrer & jules metals, massive amounts of land (and water) are destroyed, fuelling regional (and global) conflicts. such approaches to wicked problems overlook the rest of the world, which resides on the ‘other side’ of global capital flows. continuing to deny such relational shifts perpetuates the problems central to the broader climate crisis.  identifying the limits of the existing system of climate solutionism, it is essential to rethink the climate and nature emergency (cne) in education. rousell and cutter-mackenzie-knowles (2020) draw attention to how it is “widely acknowledged that innovative and effective forms of climate change education are needed for children and young people worldwide who will be forced to grapple with the uncertain effects of climate change brought forth by previous generations” (p. 192). our current educational approaches, which are grounded in western scientific innovations and policy change to anthropogenic challenges, are ahistorical and erase any sense of responsibility. these approaches do not adequately address the underlying issues of the problems at hand. instead, they focus on providing students with scientific information and knowledge awareness, devoid of context (scherrer, 2023). in this historical moment, centered on the transition to a “greener future,” markets continue to push communities in the global south, including their children, into pits and tunnels, destroying landscapes and sources of clean water. at the same time, american corporations and nation-states are reported to have become legally immune to child labor as well as health and safety laws in the areas where these minerals are being extracted (amnesty international, september 11, 2023). meanwhile, forms of climate justice are being integrated into the fold of sustainable development. the events of the 2024 conference of the parties (cop) in baku, within the oil-rich state of azerbaijan, unfolded against a backdrop of corporate energy logos and active oil rigs. this should serve as a warning about the dangers of pursuing universalized development goals that suggest a need for incorporating self-interest. furthermore, in the last three global climate summits, spaces for community advocates, indigenous groups, and social organizations—the seeds of a better future—were replaced by corporate groups seeking to promote their interests within the same framework, albeit toward a more greenwashed future (scherrer and jules, 2023). in light of this, scholars and practitioners in the fields should consider how the erasure of the roles of those most impacted and engaged highlights the work of cie: how can the seeds of otherwise worlds, generated in place and community, be nourished and storied into being, even (and especially) when they do not “belong” in the world as it exists?  we introduce a method of critical engagement with the topic through specific counter-reading practices inspired by said (1994). the following section examines the concept of coloniality concerning climate change and education, highlighting the shifting spatial and temporal boundaries in the process. the paper then addresses decolonial ecologies and how such approaches might disrupt the field’s status quo. the paper engages more specifically with deciphering practices (wynter, 1992), or methods of 155 current issues in comparative education rethinking climate change in education: from climate coloniality to decolonial educational ecologies in comparative and international education thinking critically about specific educational practices and policies. this sets the stage for discussing just educational futures and reimagining climate change education within decolonial educational ecologies. revealing counterpoints (and otherwise worlds): a contrapuntal analytical approach   this paper employs a ‘contrapuntal reading’ (said, 1994) of climate change in education. in culture and imperialism, said (1994) conceptualized contrapuntal reading as a method of analyzing texts by considering the intertwined narratives from both dominant and marginalized perspectives, thereby uncovering the complex and interrelated relationships between them. inspired by the musical concept of ‘counterpoint,’ which refers to the simultaneous interaction of independent melodies, said (1994) applied this idea in literary and cultural analysis to explore the connection between colonialism and cultural formations. such practice offers opportunities for deciphering existing grammars while building different modes of relational and justice-centered knowledge production that refuse the individuated logics of racialized extraction and dispossession (rashid, 2024). contrapuntal readings encourage readers to challenge established narratives. in cie, contrapuntal readings serve as key reference points for analyzing how knowledge is produced, circulated, and legitimized across various national educational contexts. this approach is especially significant when examining the effects of colonial legacies (i.e., coloniality), global power dynamics, and epistemic hierarchies in education. for instance, when analyzing a colonial text, it is crucial to consider not only the colonizer’s perspective but also the voices and viewpoints of those who were colonized or silenced within the text. this method uncovers hidden power dynamics and neglected histories of the oppressed context. in conducting a contrapuntal reading of the climate education discourse, texts, and ecologies, we focus on which voices are amplified and which are marginalized.   in thinking about the processes of finding counterpoints as part of a practice of reinventing approaches to education, we are reminded how the human species is shaped both biologically, through genetic and environmental predeterminants like other living organisms, and a form of hybridity, as a storied being (wynter, 2003; wynter & mckittrick, 2015). this formulation gestures toward the idea that, unlike other species, the rhythms/patterns/narratives that are told and practiced can determine the nature of our being. the narratives (that is, independent yet intertwined counterpoints) selected/deselected over time produce new stories or truths (wynter, 2003). the power of which narratives are selected reinforces different neurological responses or connections that create (and reshape) our renewed understanding of both the historical origins and futures of, in this case, the meaning of climate change in education.  current issues in comparative education 156 scherrer & jules a grammar of climate coloniality   students are not only raising questions about the relevance of their education, but also bringing attention to the fact that education itself is entangled with and dependent on the same unsustainable political-economic system that has led to climate change in the first place. (stein, 2024, p. 1).   the epigraph above speaks to the contradictions, growing consensus, and sobering assessments climate education faces because of ‘climate coloniality’ and the fact that climate change has ontological, onto-epistemological, and axiological dimensions in that “it alerts us to questions of being (who we are and how we relate to the natural world), of knowledge (whose version of events should we trust) and value (what might be a fair distribution of the burdens of change)” (mccowan, 2023, p. 935). colonialism, “often defined as the conquest and subjugation of other people’s land and goods” (jules et al., 2021, p. 49), had two primary objectives in education that were about gaining “mental control” (wa thiong’o, 1986) through: the destruction of culture and consciousness, and ( training an elite class of subordinate servants (jules et al., 2021). anuar and colleagues (2020) remind us that in cie, a growing body of scholarship on “post-colonialism highlights and problematizes modern colonialism as a vehicle of capitalist expansion through the exploitation of the colonies, coupled with an ideological rhetoric of modernity and progress” (p. 110, as cited by bhambra, 2014; sinha &varma, 2017). it is generally understood that in terms of relation in cie, the field primarily relies on ideals, targets, standards, and goals emanating from concepts of growth grounded within an invented place (or concept) that is often referred to as the west (takayama et al., 2017). foundations across the field are predicated on the logic of infinite growth and the disproven assumption that western education develops citizens who will solve today’s problems (scherrer, 2023). this section continues this conversation and reviews how this colonial nature has extended to complicity in modernization, capitalism, and slavery, which are not escaping climate change education efforts.  building on the scholarship of coloniality emerging from decolonial thinkers like aníbal quijano (2000; 2007) and walter mignolo (2011; 2017), which describes the ongoing power structures, inequalities, and epistemologies that arose from european colonialism and continue to shape the modern world, climate coloniality refers to how these historical and persistent colonial frameworks influence the distribution of climate impacts, adaptation strategies, and environmental governance. coloniality is premised on racial domination and hierarchical power structures that were established during colonialism and continue in post-colonial contexts, where the colonial matrix of power persists (mignolo & walsh, 2018; quijano, 2007). whether called ‘climate coloniality,’ ‘green colonialism,’ ‘carbon colonialism,’ or ‘fossil capitalism,’ it arose when eurocentric dominance, neocolonial practices, racial capitalism, unequal consumption, and military power combined to shape the climate effects encountered by racially marginalized groups, rendering them particularly vulnerable and expendable (sultana, 2022). for us, climate coloniality is demonstrated by the unequal ways in which former colonies in the 157 current issues in comparative education rethinking climate change in education: from climate coloniality to decolonial educational ecologies in comparative and international education global south bear the heaviest impacts of climate change, such as rising sea levels, extreme weather, and biodiversity loss, despite contributing the least to greenhouse gas emissions (khan et al., 2022). climate solutions, such as lithium mining for batteries and land grabs for carbon offset initiatives, continue to perpetuate colonial resource extraction patterns. for example, when considering how new battery technologies are central to technological solutions to the current crisis, how does solving the world’s wicked problems downplay the ramifications of the shifts from fossil fuel extraction to mineral extraction? others have argued that the proposed solutions to climate change only perpetuate colonialism since it often involves land grabs, extraction, displacement, and dispossession (ajap, 2024; ferdinand, 2021; sultana, 2022). this is because: climate colonialism forces a re-embodiment and relocation of how, why, and who is at fault/responsible. the climate is failing to change. it is being colonized and forced to alter, modify, and—as catastrophes indicate—it is rebelling and resisting the assault upon it. (martinez, 2014, p. 79). climate coloniality is becoming ubiquitous, and post-colonial countries continue to be pushed aside (and out altogether) in international negotiations and the decisions leading to narratives on climate change (sultana, 2022). climate coloniality serves as a way to highlight what has been called the ‘ anthropo-obscene’ (ernstson & swyngedouw, 2019) by unearthing the technocratic discourse that depoliticizes and coexists with excessive capitalist accumulation.  the challenge of climate change cannot be meaningfully addressed without addressing historical, underlying systemic issues that caused this in the first place. sultana (2022) highlights that meetings such as cop and other climate negotiations are merely ‘global theaters’ of discursive proforma that are premised upon “depoliticized techno-economist utopias that never deliver” and are grounded on the “performance of diversion, delay, co-optation, and performativity without substance is repeated almost annually” (p. 2). the sense of coloniality that still permeates the discussions around climate change creates embodied colonial wounds that are steeped in both material and epistemological colonial and imperial violence and have subsequently been engraved in the bodies and minds of those who are most affected by anthropogenic changes in the global south. educating about climate change should begin by accounting for the spatialization of colonialism’s historical extension into the present. this is because anthropogenic changes bring to the forefront not only the efficacy of historical colonialism but also the ongoing effects of coloniality, which have come to govern the structures of life and are indoctrinated through the processes of capital accumulation, international development, and coloniality. when discussing climate coloniality, the colonial logic of extractivism has persisted through neocolonial and development interventions since world war ii and through the current issues in comparative education 158 scherrer & jules bretton woods institutions. the unequal ecological exchange between the global south and the global north, the ongoing practices of extractive capitalism, and the imperial frameworks of global trade and policymaking all contribute to the persistence of climate coloniality’s multidimensional nature. the legacies of colonial violence and the use of human capital to drive overdevelopment have created environmental harm in the name of modernity. education and its linkage to economic theories, such as the rates of return (psacharopoulos, 1972), have been at the forefront of engendering capitalist extraction. in the post-colonial period, countries in the global south were told that development was linear (citing rostow [1960]'s five stages of development) and that western modernization could be achieved by moving from agrarian to manufacturing to industrial to scientific modernity. what was not made clear was that western modernization would come at a price to be paid later in the form of climate-fueled natural hazards and ecological degradation. the spillover effects and hidden costs of modernization, pollution, toxic waste, disasters, desertification, deforestation, and land erosion were not revealed to southern countries, and the fact that they would suffer more from these knock-on effects than those who caused them. modernization has fallen short of its promises, producing an ideological concoction of global capitalism, economic growth ideologies, and climate disasters that are dependent on degradation, displacement, denomination, dispossession, and extractivism that benefit a few and make vulnerable and disposable millions. development logics focusing on shareholder profit maximization and hierarchies of power relations only highlight the continuity of colonial dispossession.   the rise of what has been called climate apartheid, where the affluent shield themselves from the harshest impacts of climate change, leaving the global poor to endure the consequences, exists at the intersection of race, gender, and class, impacted by ecological harms and toxic environments. this demonstrates how the west is unwilling to take responsibility for its historical actions and that epistemic injustice abounds (tuana, 2019; williams, 2021). climate apartheid results from modernist extractivist capitalism, which is based on the rates of return and unfettered by climate coloniality. if the consequences of these inequalities go unrecognized, they influence how we approach climate education. instead of centering people as part of the solution, climate coloniality thrives on the racialization of the other and has disproportional consequences for the poor, marginalized, and most vulnerable. in the rise of eco-apartheid between the global south and the global north, epistemic violence persists as the status quo due to the western dominance in climate discourse and, in turn, how the topic is constructed in education. this has consequences for national educational systems because we have come to normalize eurocentric knowledge production through “methodological whiteness” (bhambra, 2017) and have attuned the colonial white gaze upon the non-white other in the global south and expounded white saviorism around climate solutions (sultana, 2022). however, all is not lost. education can offer us a path toward “ontological disobedience” (burman, 2017) by disrupting the epistemologically and ontologically deficient (mignolo, 2017) that comes with othering. such displacement 159 current issues in comparative education rethinking climate change in education: from climate coloniality to decolonial educational ecologies in comparative and international education allows us to reconceptualize what it means to be human (wynter, 2003; wynter & mckittrick, 2015). addressing epistemic violence necessitates transcending colonial power structures by embracing epistemological and ontological changes that promote what have been called forms of pluriversality instead (escobar, 2020), and this is where decoloniality comes into play.   transcending the limits of coloniality: decolonial educational ecologies    in advancing an ecological approach to climate coloniality in education through the conceptualization of decolonial educational ecologies, we build on malcolm ferdinand’s concept of decolonial ecology. decolonial ecological frameworks suggest that a break from hegemonic spatial, temporal, and epistemological frames can occur through subversive connections and reconnections within the contextualities of landscapes that offer material and epistemological shifts that extend beyond western anthropocentric frames and social/environmental fractures, including the use of the anthropocene and what it obscures. following existing critiques from black and indigenous perspectives (davis & todd, 2017; j. davis et al., 2019; ferdinand, 2021; nxumalo, 2021; whyte, 2018), we suggest that using the anthropocene as a conceptual tool for addressing climate change in education is a critique that comes up short, erasing and obscuring black and indigenous relations, perspectives, and modes of living that are not in line with hegemonic colonial order. ferdinand (2021) interrogates anthropocene approaches to thinking about climate and singular ecological conceptualizations by asking:   could it really be that the global enterprise, which from the fifteenth to the twentieth century was predicated upon the exploitation of humans and non-humans, including the decimation of millions of indigenous people in the americas, africa, asia, and oceania, the forced transportation of millions of africans, and centuries-long slavery, has no material or philosophical relationship with ecological thinking today? are the ecological crisis and the anthropocene new expressions of the ‘white man’s burden’ to have ‘humanity’ from itself?’ (p. 10)   ferdinand’s (2021) double fracture underscores the rift between environmentalism, rooted in white utopias, and social and colonial struggles. the epistemological conditions of modernity silence those excluded from the world. both land and marginalized human experiences are redefined through colonial logic. spatial relations in the modern world are perpetuated and regenerated through what ferdinand (2021) describes as forms of colonial inhabitation that are ‘off-earth’ concerning the designation of indigenous land as terra nullius, a place devoid of history. in colonial ecologies, place is reimagined through the distorted logic inherent in the (re)ordering of the plantation worldview (scherrer, 2023). the colonial nature of educational structures and their consequences provide lessons similar to how books and texts guide approaches to decolonial education, offering prompts or reminders during the process of rereading and current issues in comparative education 160 scherrer & jules reconstructing worldviews while also reminding ourselves that other ways of being–other worlds–are already present and have always existed.  the double fracture reveals the epistemological conditions of modernity that silence those excluded from the world. both land and the marginalized ‘less civilized’ human experience are redefined through colonial logic. by inhabiting the earth through colonial ecologies, place is reimagined through the twisted logic inherent in the plantation worldview, in which the nature of educational structures mirrors economic frameworks. the aftermaths of such derangements provide lessons similar to how books and texts teach approaches to decolonial education, offering prompts or reminders during the process of rereading and reconstructing worldviews (mckittrick, 2022). a fundamental aspect of a decolonial educational ecology in climate education involves incorporating decolonial, anti-colonial, feminist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist critiques and movements into climate education discussions and practices. this integration aims to address ongoing oppression and marginalization, in addition to the plurality of historical and contemporary movements (many emerging from the global south) that can serve as guides and the foundation for lessons.  education, particularly in the realms of climate education and sustainable development, remains intertwined with and heavily reliant on an unsustainable political-economic system that drives western human-induced destruction. today, climate education is framed as a challenge that can be addressed through the swift adoption of technological innovations, leveraging individuals with new forms of scientific expertise and tech-based knowledge to facilitate our return to a "business as usual, but greener" model (baskin, 2019). present approaches to climate education are rooted in a deficit language that represents the climate crisis as something recent, solvable through access to and application of western knowledge, while coexisting with existing consumption patterns. these mainstream methods highlight the historical harm that has been inflicted and continues to occur, pointing out that these complex injustices and ecological violence tend to disproportionately affect communities that have played the smallest role in the current crisis. when discussing the crisis, existing approaches to climate education do not regard the current anthropogenic situation as a ‘crisis’ in the traditional sense, but rather as the cost of doing business; like any effective business model, climate challenges are seen as solvable through “renewable energy technologies [which] presume unfettered access to metal, minerals, concrete, land, and water, which can lead to political conflict, environmental degradation, and the intensification of land and water grabs” (stein et al., 2023, p. 990). such strategies are commonly perceived as beneficial and are not seen as contributing to coloniality, even though they further marginalize vulnerable groups, displace people, and extract finite, nonrenewable resources.   grounding decolonial education ecology in critical inquiry  to remedy these deficiencies, decolonial educational ecology helps us rethink climate solutionism, which must work in and beyond western onto-epistemological knowledge 161 current issues in comparative education rethinking climate change in education: from climate coloniality to decolonial educational ecologies in comparative and international education frameworks. identifying a concealed contradiction in the current approaches to climate education, the primary focus on ‘green’ solutions remains. referring back to the battery example mentioned earlier, students often overlook the link between extraction, dispossession, and exploitation, which is essential to understanding the rationale behind renewable energy. a decolonial educational ecology is motivated by a profound understanding of the geopolitics of knowledge production, including who gets invited to the conversation, who is cited, which epistemologies are considered, whose ontologies are recognized, as well as who is invited to speak, who is listened to, and who participates in setting agendas. it asks students to recognize and concede that the constitutive of modernity (e.g., colonial/colonizing ecologies), which emerged through european colonization and is grounded in white/male/christian supremacy (grosfoguel 2007; mignolo 2011; quijano 2000), has been engendered through colonial actions (genocide, ecocide, epistemicide, dispossession, subjugation, extraction, exploitation). since modernity/coloniality go hand-in-hand, a decolonial educational ecology does not promote or reproduce white/settler saviorism and advances white/settler colonial futures (stein et al., 2023). for example, what right do western corporations and leaders have in telling the global south how to develop their way out of climate problems when, for example, the entire continent of africa, nearly 20% of the global population, only contributes between 2 to 4% of global greenhouse gases (world meteorological organization, 2023)?  instead, decolonial educational ecologies are based on critical inquiries that encourage students to ask questions, engage with contextualized phenomena, dismantle histories and hierarchies, and reconstruct the fixed, growth-based boundaries accepted as part of western scientific modernity. ecological violence is intergenerational, and the modus operandi of unchecked capitalist accumulation—whether ‘green’ or not—is driven by humans’ demand for cheap land, labor, and resources. a decolonial educational ecology urges us to consider the hidden ecological costs of modernity. attempts to mitigate anthropogenic changes are most often addressed through superficial solutions and quick fixes. indigenous communities have been experiencing the consequences of climate change for some time. as whyte (2018) succinctly stated, “the harms many non-indigenous persons dread most of the climate crisis are ones that indigenous peoples have endured already due to different forms of colonialism: ecosystem collapse, species loss, economic crash, drastic relocation, and cultural disintegration” (pp. 296-297). decolonial educational ecologies highlight the importance of identifying human-induced challenges, questioning the normalization of universal truths, addressing technological impositions, and re-centering eurocentric dualisms, hegemonies, and modernity—elements inherent in colonial ecologies. this approach aims to address these issues through distributive justice, reparations, and restitution (táiwò, 2022).  a decolonial educational ecology is interconnected with the initiative of decolonizing climate education. this is urgently necessary due to the disconnect between what current issues in comparative education 162 scherrer & jules students are prepared for and the specific situated realities they face now and in the future (scherrer, 2022). patel (2015) urges scholars to conceive of “oneself as part of colonial history and present is hard, that a reclamation and refusal of research is unsettling, and learning about research is cultural practice” (p. 85). such cultural practices, including finding oneself in history, are inherently decolonial, challenging hegemonic notions that position scientific and historical knowledge as objective, neutral, and detached from personal or cultural influences (patel, 2015). the concept and practice of decolonizing can be anti-colonial as long as the approach addresses the root cause, which involves confronting the ingrained colonial nature of systemic change. climate change education necessitates specific liberating and renewing decolonial approaches that acknowledge the colonial nature of intertwined social and ecological issues, dismantle them, and move beyond surface-level problems by avoiding what we view as new policies through a singular critical lens. rejecting climate solutionism with the rise of social media highlighting ecological destruction from climate disasters in previously protected areas, such as the extreme fires in los angeles in 2025 and severe weather in the southern united states, students are advocating for stronger “justice-oriented institutional commitments to socio-ecological change” (stein et al., 2023, p. 988). they urge us to avoid ‘climate solutionism,’ which tends to emphasize solutions that focus solely on scientific and technological fixes. moving away from solutions-oriented climate education requires asking educators different questions that target the fundamental aspects of western modernity. growing movements of student activists (e.g., sunrise movement) demand not seeing climate change merely as a ‘problem’ to solve but as something that must be tackled and eradicated, addressing the embedded nature of technological and late-stage capitalist systems that uphold and perpetuate it. we propose that decolonial educational ecologies, which highlight coloniality as the foundational aspect of modernity, offer an alternative approach. to be clear, we are not suggesting decoloniality as a cure-all to resolve the solutions-oriented culture surrounding climate education. decolonizing involves a process of conceptual refinement. some have adopted the term ‘anti-colonial,’ similar to decolonizing in its goal of dismantling colonial structures and embracing black and indigenous ways of knowing, rejecting colonialism by practicing differently, beyond its spatial and temporal frameworks. for instance, it must tackle how the land is contaminated by colonial concepts (i.e., patriarchy, imperialism). approaches aimed at such deconstruction should incorporate indigenous perspectives on land by dismantling these colonial concepts. they argue that ‘quick fixes’ fail to address the root causes, resulting in insufficient outcomes. this, in turn, suggests that the agents delivering these solutions operate with limited perspectives.   ajap (2024) reviews how human-centeredness, epistemic inequity, globalization, neoliberalism, pedagogical incompatibility, and social inequality are inhibitors to 163 current issues in comparative education rethinking climate change in education: from climate coloniality to decolonial educational ecologies in comparative and international education realigning justice-based environmental efforts toward sustainable ecocentric pedagogy and practices in higher education. consequently, stein et al. (2023) remind us that: any climate education is likely to reproduce colonial patterns if it relies on the same intellectual, affective, and relational infrastructures of our current (modern/colonial) system, and if we remain (consciously and unconsciously) invested in the promises this system has offered to those it was designed to benefit. (p. 992). however, this is easier said than done, as faculty have reported significant challenges (educational backgrounds, individual and psychological barriers to change, systemic and institutional barriers to change, and the need for effective strategies, resources, and actions) in attempting to challenge colonial logics within a western university context (bills & klinsky, 2023).   several scholars have called for critical climate education (cce) (stein, 2024; svarstad, 2021; svarstad et al., 2023), as an alternative to mainstream climate education that recognizes the historical wrong of colonialism and the current ecological crisis and the systematic nature of european colonial violence and chattel slaves that emerged in the fifteenth century stem from the same point of origin (whyte, 2020; wynter & mckittrick, 2015). we argue that this is similar to the decolonial educational ecology because cce and the decolonial educational ecology that is put forward above begin from the premise that (i) they recognize that there were other forms of colonialism but single out european colonialism because of its shared brutality, scale, and lasting effects (racialization, extraction, domination, exploitation, and dispossession) that are embedded within capitalism accumulation; (ii) the current political-economic system is organized around anthropocentrism, which is the belief that man and nature are separate; and (iii) the reinforcement of scientific racism that espouses the idea that racialized peoples are subservient to “white” people. although the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) report (2022) acknowledged colonialism as a factor influencing climate change and a recent report from the un special rapporteur suggests that “there can be no meaningful mitigation or resolution of the global ecological crisis without specific action to address systemic racism, in particular, the historic and contemporary racial legacies of colonialism and slavery” (achiume, 2022, p. 2), skepticism around the ecological foundations of climate change abound.  conclusion: deciphering and practicing decolonial epistemic futures the issue with climate education is that it reinforces “the normalization and naturalization of colonial hierarchies and capitalist imperatives have led us to neglect our responsibilities to each other and to ‘nature’/the earth as a living entity (a metabolic system) that we are also part of” (ferdinand, 2021; stein, 2024, p. 4). decolonial educational ecologies grounded in decolonial and indigenous practices, cosmologies, and futurities challenge the consideration of alternatives to the current current issues in comparative education 164 scherrer & jules political-economic static binary, embrace more-than-human elements, and avoid further exacerbating current climate injustices (e.g., under the guise of developing future ‘green’ or ‘resilient’ solutions). decolonial educational ecologies do not aim for universalism but is based upon context and the specificities of local adaptation (e.g., see indigenization in ferdinand, 2021) because they must recognize that while modernity claims to speak in universal truths, it treats economic growth and development as linear and assigns no sense of agency to the current climate crisis. decolonial educational ecologies prioritize human well-being, while at the same time recognizing the relational obligations with more-than-human kin (living and nonliving). decolonial educational ecologies should be aware of not reproducing colonial dynamics and coloniality, and failing to identify the specificities obscured by labeling the situation as the anthropocene. disentangling decolonizing approaches from the historical roots of colonization is critical, as superficial “dismantling” sometimes fails to unlearn the deeply rooted, perpetuated colonial natures in decision-making and the related patterns and rhythms that govern educational landscapes (mbengue, diame, & scherrer, 2024). the concern is that representations of black and/or indigenous people provide forms of “verifiable truth” through negative portrayals of individuals and places.  returning explicitly to our practice of contrapuntal reading (said, 1994), in this article, we offered a series of ‘counterpoints’ interactions that largely remain illegible within dominant discourse. the ‘independent melodies’ within decolonial educational ecologies reveal the connections between modes of colonialism and related cultural formations. in offering something different from existing grammars, while building alternative modes of knowledge production grounded in place, our contrapuntal reading practice challenges you, the reader, to establish narratives and new stories beyond the ‘comforting’ ways of knowing and being within universal western patterns of modernity. new practices and their logics can be uncovered and renewed through rereading and deciphering solutions to take into account multiple forms of social reality. such practices offer opportunities to reconsider different ways of seeing and feeling the world, rupturing existing patterns and rhythms of the dominant social order, ways that can initiate new forms of psychological response reinforced by decolonial ecologies and their ways of knowing and being. mckittrick (2022) suggests that practices of deciphering dominant narrative (e.g. climate policy and education in this case) can be done in the work of exploring and uncovering the ways black and indigenous (and black-indigenous) communities have continuously innovated and creatively practiced new social realities, navigating not only extractive systems of racism but living otherwise, and by envisioning alternative futures. everyday forms of lived black and indigenous praxis expose the limits of white supremacy and western colonization of land and people that continue to be reinscribed within hegemonic traditions of knowledge production (scherrer, 2023). in this way, creative forms of anti-colonial life involve living differently, reinventing and reimagining that world through different stories (alagraa, 2021).  165 current issues in comparative education rethinking climate change in education: from climate coloniality to decolonial educational ecologies in comparative and international education turning to carter’s recent book review of maroon choreography in comparative education review—a book that speculates on the long (im)material, ecological, and aesthetic afterlives of black fugitivity and the practices that might lead us out of social-ecological collapse— “reminded (as if one could forget) that our compulsory education systems are colonially choreographed” (p. 373). the wayward figure of the black/indigenous maroon resisting colonial domination gestures toward historical and future methods for reorienting and repairing the earth, both internally and practically, entangled within the complexities of shifting diasporic and ecological relationalities (ferdinand, 2021). this leads us to ask ourselves: what lessons am i telling and how am i telling them? it is in the process of exploring deeper modes of social and ecological relations that the possibility of decolonial thought (and practice) emerges, where spaces are created for imagining otherwise, rather than the other way around. such a decolonial orientation counters paradigms that assume thinking comes before being. in this counterpoint, a new rhythm emerges; the western episteme should be reexamined, involving a remapping of genealogies. it is within this possibility, towards a different set of lessons, stories, and ecological relations, that other worlds emerge.  benjamin d. scherrer is assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at state university of new york (suny) at oswego. dr. scherrer teaches courses on science and technology, social and environmental justice, and culturally sustaining pedagogies. his scholarship focuses on critical and community-based approaches to addressing social-ecological catastrophe, and flooding and displacement in particular. tavis d. jules is professor of higher education at loyola university chicago; his focus and expertise lie in comparative and international education, specifically on decoloniality, racial capitalism, race/racism, terrorism, regionalism, and dictatorial transition issues. he is the immediate past-president of the caribbean studies association, book and media reviews editor for the comparative education review, an international institute of islamic thought fellow, and a senior fellow at norrag. he has authored, co-authored, and edited over 75 refereed articles and book chapters, three monographs, and seven edited books. he is the co-editor-in-chief (with florin salajan) of comparative education review. references acabado, s. b., & kuan, d. 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(2015). unparalleled catastrophe for our species? in s. wynter (ed.), on being human as practice (pp. 9-89). duke university press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822375852-002 171 current issues in comparative education https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_00497 https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822375852-002 6. evaluation of the impact of the 1.5 max initiative on climate change education (cce) in malawi secondary school: an education for sustainable development (esd) framework approach.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 27, issue 1, special issue 2025 evaluation of the impact of the 1.5 max initiative on climate change education (cce) in malawi secondary schools: an education for sustainable development framework approach tianshu chen university of edinburgh debojyoti das university of edinburgh this qualitative case study evaluates the impact of the 1.5 max initiative on climate change education (cce) in malawian secondary schools through the dual lens of education for sustainable development and decolonial theory. malawi’s curricula prioritize western agricultural models over indigenous knowledge, resulting in fragmented implementation due to teacher training gaps, resource shortages, and a stark divide between students’ climate knowledge and actionable engagement. while the 1.5 max initiative enhances climate awareness and practical skills through interactive methods, its effectiveness is constrained by limited teacher preparedness, curricular misalignment, and systemic resource limitations. the research highlights the importance of integrating indigenous knowledge and adapting content to local contexts for greater relevance and effectiveness. by applying a decolonial lens, this research critiques the dominance of western epistemologies in global educational initiatives and advocates for the co-creation of knowledge that centers local agency and context-specific solutions. while demonstrating the potential of international educational initiatives to complement local curricula, the study underscores the need for sustainable support systems and expanded teacher training. future research should assess the long-term impacts of such interventions and explore strategies for aligning global practices with local needs, while dismantling colonial legacies to foster a more equitable and inclusive educational landscape. keywords: climate change education, education for sustainable development, decolonial framework, malawi, 1.5 max initiative, teaching and learning support. introduction climate change is one of humanity's most pressing challenges, spanning across ecological, economic, political, and social scales (anderson, 2012; gardiner, 2011). these impacts are acute in malawi, a landlocked country in southeastern africa whose vulnerability stems from its heavy reliance on rain-fed agriculture and systemic limitations in adaptive capacity (ziervogel et al., 2014). ranked among the five countries most affected by climate change in east africa (world bank group, 2022), malawi contends with recurrent climate-driven disasters—including floods, © 2025, chen & das. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 27(1), 124-152. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en chen & das droughts, and tropical storms—that destabilize livelihoods, displace communities, and strain an already fragile economy. over 80 percent of the population depends on subsistence agriculture compounding this vulnerability, and leaving food security and household incomes acutely exposed to erratic weather patterns (nangoma, 2007). prolonged droughts devastate maize crops, which are a vital economic and food resource in malawi (world food programme, 2024). deforestation exacerbates climatic challenges, as 95 percent of households depend on wood or charcoal for fuel (world bank, 2022). addressing climate change-induced disruption requires technological and financial solutions as well asstructural, cultural, and behavioral reforms (hoffman, 2010; liverani, 2009). education plays a critical role in fostering these changes (wals & benavot, 2017). the united nations (un)' sustainable development goal (sdg) 13 (climate action) underscores education's importance in mitigating climate change impacts, fostering adaptability, and promoting sustainable development (un, 2015). the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) (2022) highlights that climate change education (cce) can enhance individual and community resilience while driving societal transformation. other research shows that educated populations are better equipped for sustainable behaviors and climate innovations (piao & managi, 2023). cce in malawi the malawian government has prioritized cce since the 1986 african ministerial environment conference, at which time the government integrated it into educational systems (nampota, 2011). recent efforts include the revised climate change learning strategy (malawi government, 2021), aimed at implementing a nationwide comprehensive cce approach. however, gaps remain, such as limited integration of climate change topics across certain grades and subjects including primary, secondary and universities with different stratigies (malawi government, 2004; mataya et al., 2020). international organizations, including the world bank group and the un development program (undp)recognize these gaps and have taken measures to address them through projects like transform and ripple africa, which enhance community resilience and conservation education (ripple africa, 2024; world bank group, 2022). one initiative addressing these gaps is the 1.5 max initiative, launched in 2021 by sustainable partnerships, learning for sustainability scotland, and the british council (1.5 max, n.d.). this international program connects schools in scotland with those in climate-vulnerable countries like malawi and nepal, fostering equitable and inclusive collaboration on addressing climate-related challenges. in malawi, where extreme weather events such as cyclones, floods, and droughts pose recurring challenges, the summit emphasizes the urgent need for climate education and youth-led adaptation. this initiative (see figure 1) combines in-class and online activities. guided by local teachers, students identify local climate challenges and present their solutions online to global teams. these presentations are evaluated and guided by global professors, fostering a rich exchange of knowledge and strategies current issues in comparative education 125 evaluation of the impact of the 1.5 max initiative on climate change education (cce) in malawi secondary school: an education for sustainable development (esd) framework approach (1.5 max, n.d.). after, schools implement community-based projects, empowering students and educators to contribute to local climate resilience and sustainability. figure 1 1.5 max initiative process note. author’s elaboration, based on 1.5 max website (1.5 max, n.d.) having operated since 2021, the 1.5 max initiative provides a valuable opportunity to assess the impact of a climate initiative on cce in malawi and to identify future challenges. building on this context, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of the 1.5 max initiative in enhancing cce in malawi's schools using an education for sustainable development (esd) framework. the study addressed the following questions: how does the 1.5 max initiative affect cce in malawi's secondary schools from educators' and students' perspectives? and w hat are the implications for future cce enhancement in malawi's secondary schools? literature review the notions of climate change education and education for sustainable development provide the foundational framework for this study. cce and esd cce is critical for fostering resilience and societal transformation, yet its implementation faces barriers, including inconsistent teaching objectives, cultural and ideological resistance, outdated pedagogical methods, and community skepticism (kolleck et al., 2017; monroe et al., 2013; nayan et al., 2020). the implementation of cce has yet to meet urgent needs with unclear definitions and inconsistent methods (fernandez et al., 2014; nambiar & sarabhai, 2015). while efforts to define its core skills and competencies exist (mochizuki & bryan, 2015), consensus on effective approaches remains elusive (bushell et al., 2017). to address these challenges, scholars emphasize the need for strategies that prioritize student-centered learning and personally relevant content, ensuring climate education resonates with learners’ lived experiences and motivates actionable engagement (monroe et al., 2019). these principles align closely with the broader goals of esd—a framework rooted in the 1977 tbilisi declaration and refined through initiatives like agenda 21 (un, 1992) 126 current issues in comparative education chen & das and unesco's decade of education for sustainable development (2005–2015). esd integrates environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainability (corney & reid, 2007), aiming to empower individuals and institutions through knowledge, skills, and values (molthan-hill et al., 2019; pauw et al., 2015). it promotes values-based education (dahl, 2012), critical thinking (stevenson, 2007), and cognitive development (sterling, 2011). recent adaptations like esd 2023 stress actionable and localized education for achieving the sustainable development goals (sdgs) (unesco, 2020). esd serves as a strategy to evaluate educational impact of cce, emphasizing tangible outcomes like emission reductions and enhanced sustainable actions (barth & michelsen, 2013; kioupi & voulvoulis, 2019). the united nations emphasizes the need to empower societies through education, training, and collaboration (united nations climate change, 2023). mochizuki and bryan (2015) focus on integrating climate themes into curricula to foster knowledge and behavioral change. this study adopts the latter definition, which highlights emotional well-being as central to behavioral change. by bridging cce’s practical challenges with esd’s systemic approach, these insights provide theoretical grounding for evaluating programs like the 1.5 max initiative and underscore the necessity for integrated, context-sensitive educational strategies to drive meaningful climate action. in this paper, esd functions as an assessment tool to evaluate the 1.5 max initiative within the climate change education for sustainable development (ccesd) framework proposed by mochizuki and bryan (2015). integrate cce within esd esd addresses sustainability across social, economic, and environmental dimensions, while cce specifically targets climate adaptation and mitigation (mochizuki & bryan, 2015). mochizuki and bryan (2015, p. 9) argue that because “cc encompasses environmental, political, social, and economic factors, the holistic framework of esd is an optimal framework to advance cce.” this integration is critical because esd encompasses climate–related knowledge and cultivates critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, and sustainable living behaviors (anderson, 2012; thomas, 2009; unesco, 2011). esd emphasizes the institutional context in which this education occurs, ensuring that educational environments are resilient and proactive in promoting sustainable development (unesco, 2020). by embedding cce into esd, learners may acquire a comprehensive understanding of climate change drivers, impacts, and solutions. desha and hargroves (2011) claim that this approach enhances climate literacy while empowering learners to share adaptation and mitigation strategies within their communities (laurie et al., 2016; schreiner et al., 2005). esd leverages the multiplier effect of education, enabling learners to extend the benefits of their knowledge to their entire families and communities (kioupi & voulvoulis, 2019; oranga et al., 2023). what is more, lozano et al. (2022) show that esd teaching methods improve skills and knowledge related to climate change and trigger positive emotions within students. current issues in comparative education 127 evaluation of the impact of the 1.5 max initiative on climate change education (cce) in malawi secondary school: an education for sustainable development (esd) framework approach empirical studies demonstrate the tangible impacts of integrating cce with esd. pauw and colleagues (2015) present direct evidence of the positive effects of esd, showcasing its capacity to foster students' awareness and behaviors of sustainability. these outcomes are amplified through models like the whole-school approach, which fosters student engagement and institutional sustainability (davis, 2006). however, challenges persist. kopnina (2014) critiques esd’s broad scope for diluting ecological priorities, risking ambiguous interpretations that may overshadow climate urgency. uneven implementation—driven by insufficient teacher training, lagging curriculum updates, and weak policy support—undermines esd’s potential in regions like africa (manteaw, 2012; unesco, 2020; vare & scott, 2007). contextual framework: curricular gaps and student engagement in malawi malawi’s cce curricula reflect a tension between international influence and local realities. while supported by global stakeholders like usaid, educational content remains shaped by colonial legacies that prioritize utilitarian, human-centric narratives, oversimplifying environmental issues and disproportionately assigning responsibility to rural communities over systemic actors (gyamera & burke, 2018; ress et al., 2022). indigenous knowledge—despite its proven efficacy in climate adaptation (attoh et al., 2021), remains underutilized in malawi's cce. the agriculture curriculum promotes large-scale production systems reliant on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which contribute to soil degradation and water pollution. although malawi’s climate change learning strategy (2021) expands cce into formal and informal sectors, implementation is hindered by fragmented curricula, resource shortages, and uneven teacher training (nampota, 2011). these structural gaps correlate with stark disparities in student outcomes. only 43.1% of malawian secondary students demonstrate basic climate literacy, while 66.9% report no participation in mitigation activities like waste management or drought-resistant farming (kutywayo et al., 2022; wadson et al., 2023). these gap mirror trends in neighboring countries (kutywayo et al., 2022) and underscore the limitations of theoretical, classroom-centric approaches (wadson et al., 2023). latent potential exists: 73.4 percent of students express heightened climate concern, and 70.3 percent seek actionable engagement (wadson et al., 2023). successful models like egypt's green schools initiative and new zealand's enviro-schools programme demonstrate how integrating environmental education with practical applications enhances engagement and outcomes (eames & mardon, 2020; okasha et al., 2016). these findings highlight the potential for cce to harness students' awareness and willingness to act. a decolonial lens for evaluating cce: integrating ccesd and mignolo's framework the ccesd framework (see figure 2), developed by mochizuki and bryan (2015), provides a more detailed description of essential competencies. it extends beyond 128 current issues in comparative education chen & das imparting knowledge to developing the capability to transform this knowledge into actionable measures. the framework's emphasis on integrating local and indigenous knowledge into cce adds another layer of relevance, ensuring the education is culturally appropriate and enhances its effectiveness across different geographical and cultural contexts. the framework is structured around 4 pillars of learning outcomes (learning to know, to do, to live, and to be), making it pertinent for evaluating cce interventions, such as the 1.5 max initiative. figure 2 climate change education for sustainable development framework note. author’s elaboration, based on mochizuki and bryan (2015). the ccesd framework offers a practical structure for evaluating competencies and learning outcomes, incorporating the decolonial framework built by mignolo (2007), which provides a critical lens to examine the systemic power dynamics and epistemological biases underlying cce (zavala, 2016). the concepts of coloniality of power, knowledge, and critique of global education initiatives, such as 1.5 max, may inadvertently perpetuate eurocentric narratives while marginalizing indigenous perspectives (seroto, 2018). by combining ccesd’s emphasis on competencies with decolonial critique, this study adopts a dual framework that evaluates the content and context of cce interventions. data and methodology this study employs a multi-case evaluative design to address the complexities of the 1.5 max intervention, enabling diverse data collection methods, including in-depth interviews with teachers and students and systematic policy analysis. the inclusion of multiple cases provides comparative insights and enhances the generalizability of findings within malawi's educational context (patton, 2014). current issues in comparative education 129 evaluation of the impact of the 1.5 max initiative on climate change education (cce) in malawi secondary school: an education for sustainable development (esd) framework approach policy analysis to accurately assess the effectiveness of the 1.5 max initiative in malawi, it is crucial to possess an in-depth understanding of the existing cce within the country. policy documents provide valuable insights into historical and educational contexts. as mason (2017) asserts, documents are “constructed in particular contexts, by particular people, with particular purposes, and with consequences – intended and unintended” (p. 110); rendering them as key resources for providing background information on a research environment (silverman, 2005). to ensure relevance and reliability, a criterion sampling method was used to select documents aligned with scott's (2014) quality criteria. the selected documents had to be officially issued by the malawi government or the malawi institute of education (mie), published within the last decade, and explicitly reference climate education. the following three key documents were analyzed: the malawi institute of education (mie) strategic plan 2020 to 2025: focuses on enhancing curriculum design and evaluation, emphasizing cce-related aspects (mie, 2023), and the syllabus (2013) from the ministry of education of geography: details curriculum content and pedagogical approaches for cce, highlighting expected learning outcomes at various levels. interviews interviews are crucial for understanding individual experiences and the broader contexts in which they occur (seidman, 2006). they facilitate researchers to construct a relatively comprehensive picture of the communities and cultures involved (holstein & gubrium, 1995; powney & watts, 2018). for this research, semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather insights into educators’ and students’ perceptions of the 1.5 max initiative. purposive sampling was used to select four schools, community day secondary schools and private schools, from diverse regions such as blantyre in the south and karonga in the north (see figures 3 and 4). teachers directly involved in the initiative were interviewed, and snowball sampling was used to select participating students (marcus et al., 2017). in total, eight interviews were conducted, each lasting about 40 minutes and covering 10 structured questions based on the ccesd framework. additional probes were used to deepen the dialogue. all interviews were audio-recorded with participants' consent and subsequently transcribed. figure 3 list of participants 130 current issues in comparative education chen & das figure 4 research area in malawi note. author’s elaboration, based on the malawi spatial data portal masdap (2012). data analysis: reflexive thematic analysis i employed reflexive thematic analysis (rta), emphasizing the researcher’s reflective engagement with the data (braun & clarke, 2019, p. 594). this flexible approach incorporates deductive and inductive coding strategies. this analysis adhered to a systematic six-phase approach (barth & michelsen, 2013; braun & clarke, 2021), beginning with familiarization and systematic coding. the ccesd framework guided my deductive coding (mochizuki & bryan, 2015), establishing foundational themes linked to its dimensions (e.g., learning to know) (see figure 5). figure 5 deductive codes current issues in comparative education 131 evaluation of the impact of the 1.5 max initiative on climate change education (cce) in malawi secondary school: an education for sustainable development (esd) framework approach note. the author’s elaboration is based on the ccesd framework. inductive coding allows for the emergence of new themes or refined sub-themes not initially anticipated by the framework (figure 6). subsequent steps include refining these themes to ensure they accurately represent the dataset and compiling a comprehensive report that integrates the findings and discussion. figure 6 inductive codes note. analysis based on deductive codes and interview data. analytical framework the ccesd framework employs the four pillars (as shown in figure 3) defined in the delors (1996) report about the education capacities for the 21st century (mochizuki & bryan, 2015). this study will specifically concentrate on two fundamental aspects: learning to know and learning to do. in the learning to know pillar, learners should acquire an adequate understanding of the origins and consequences of cc, alongside the necessary tools for mitigation and adaptation. in the learning to do pillar, students should acquire interdisciplinary skills, such as emotional intelligence to handle anxiety, adaptability to different contexts and educational settings, understanding of complex system dynamics, and the ability to envisage alternative futures and solutions. results and discussion 132 current issues in comparative education chen & das this section analyzes how the 1.5 max initiative influences cce in malawi through the ccesd framework. based on policy documents and interviews, it explores the initiative's impact on learning outcomes. learning outcomes: learning to know an analysis of the interview data and curriculum syllabus found that students and teachers in malawi possess a superficial understanding of climate change-related knowledge. teachers admitted, “they didn’t have the idea about the mitigation and adaptation before they joined in this activity” (t2). this ambiguity extends to students’ responses, indicating a general but unclear understanding of the terms. when asked about their comprehension of cce, teachers responded: when looking at climate change, we aim to impart knowledge to our students on how to sustain the biodiversity of the earth (t1). i understand that we have climate change (t2). the importance of education is imparting crucial knowledge about climate change (t3). a way of teaching students how they can conceive the problem and how students can be aware of the issues concerning the environment (t4). students were asked about the idea of mitigation and adaptation. they responded: i feel i do have that idea (s2). the main strategies that have come across are planting trees and proper waste management. it involves adopting a mindset to change the future and helps in controlling climate change in our schools (s3). research undertaken by wadson et al. (2023) highlights a similar educational shortfall, pinpointing specific deficiencies in knowledge among senior secondary school students in malawi. similarly, falaye and okwilagwe (2016) found low levels of knowledge about cc mitigation and adaptation in nigerian secondary schools, with students unable to differentiate between these two terms. figure 7 sustainable development element in the syllabus note. the geography syllabus (2013) was disseminated among the educators interviewed for this study. current issues in comparative education 133 evaluation of the impact of the 1.5 max initiative on climate change education (cce) in malawi secondary school: an education for sustainable development (esd) framework approach this finding is crucial because mitigation and adaptation are essential components of cce. despite the secondary education outcomes in the overview of the secondary syllabus, which indicate that students should ‘demonstrate the ability to adapt to climate change and mitigate its impact on the economy and environment’ (social studies syllabus, p. ix), the lack of explicit curriculum requirements has resulted in these vital aspects being overlooked in teaching. the social studies syllabus connects sustainable development with socio-economic and other types of development (figure 7), emphasizing a prioritization of economic growth. this focus reflects aspirations in the global south to achieve development, asserting their right to pursue such progress through education against a backdrop of historical marginalization, colonial exploitation, and ongoing neo-colonial influences in the post-colonial era (singh, 2020; tikly, 2019). however, the emphasis on economic growth in the curriculum reflects the coloniality of knowledge (mignolo, 2007), where western-centric development paradigms dominate, marginalizing indigenous and local knowledge systems. the syllabus frames nature as a resource to be managed for human benefit, reinforcing a eurocentric, anthropocentric worldview. this perspective perpetuates descartes’s dualism, separating humans from nature and prioritizing exploitation over ecological harmony (mazzocchi, 2016). the 1.5 max initiative has offered insights to students. educators noted improvements in students’ understanding of environmental issues, “now they can understand these things, it helps them come up with solutions” (t4). students’ responses to cc questions demonstrated their grasp of the causal relationships in the local climate crisis, such as “when heavy rains come, people living by the lake are greatly affected. floods cause many waterborne diseases” (s2). there is a variation in the depth of understanding across different topics. compared to more complex systemic issues, students find it easier to understand direct impacts. students perceive cc challenges as revolving around tree planting, stating that: we can protect the environment here. it’s just about finding out how to get some tree seeds (s4). in the books, they just mention trees and say we shouldn't burn them (s1). they rely on the trees for their livelihood, so stopping them is challenging (s3). the finding aligned with the unesco (2012) report entitled ‘education sector responses to climate change’, that while cc concepts are present in the majority of curricula, the approach is superficial. the emphasis tends to be on individual actions, which overlooks the broader societal forces driving cc. engagement in the 1.5 max initiative has provided students with knowledge for cc adaptation and disaster risk reduction. this sharply contrasts with the findings of kutywayo et al. (2022, p. 3), who reported that only 38.5 percent of learners in south africa acknowledged that climate events such as heat exposure or droughts had 134 current issues in comparative education chen & das affected their lives. in malawi, after attending the 1.5 max initiative, students could articulate the interplay between human actions and cc, a knowledge advancement aligning with wadson et al.’s (2023a, p. 77) interpretation that “this may be a result of what the learners in malawi are experiencing regarding the effects of cc.” educators have highlighted a disconnect between classroom learning and community action, observing that “most students seem to forget what they learned in school” (t2). this observation aligns with the findings of falaye and okwilagwe (2016), who noted that a deep understanding of cc can influence learners’ attitudes toward it. in response to this challenge, the 1.5 max activities are designed to prompt learners to directly engage with local environmental circumstances and their related hazards, such as flood management and sustainable agriculture methods. this approach encourages students to engage with themes directly relevant to their surroundings, successfully closing the divide between academic understanding and real-world implementation. the initiative’s emphasis on community-based projects fosters locally driven solutions rather than imposing external frameworks (mignolo, 2018; sayre et al., 2017). as a result, students are better prepared to contribute meaningfully to the green economy and to a sustainable future (affolderbach, 2020). learning outcomes: learning to do this research reveals that the 1.5 max initiative has had a significant impact on students’ engagement with environmental actions. students have not only become aware of the environmental issues discussed above but have actively engaged in devising solutions. this engagement has led to noticeable advancements in multiple skill areas, which are elaborated upon in the subsequent discussion. these skills are aligned within the ccesd framework; however, it is evident that certain areas within this framework are underrepresented in some schools. the ccesd framework promotes the cultivation of diverse analytical skills amongst learners, equipping them to explore the multifaceted causes and dimensions of cc and to identify potential actions and consequences for addressing this complex issue (mochizuki & bryan, 2015). interview data (table 1) indicates that malawian students enhanced certain key learning capabilities related to the ccesd framework (mochizuki & bryan, 2015) following their participation in the 1.5 max. participation in the initiative enhanced the students’ communication skills. students expressed increased confidence in their ability to communicate with others and learn from environmental practices. one student revealed, “i am confident in presenting and offering advice to people” (s2). initiatives focused on sustainability can transform students into effective communicators and advocates (wals, 2011). students demonstrated a shift in their ability to undertake individual and collective responsibilities in climate action. participation in the 1.5 max initiative taught them about environmental issues and motivated them to propose their solutions (1.5 max, n.d.). an educator (t4) noted, “we are looking at the bigger picture as the government is adopting other solutions [...] but now with 1.5 max, they can propose current issues in comparative education 135 evaluation of the impact of the 1.5 max initiative on climate change education (cce) in malawi secondary school: an education for sustainable development (esd) framework approach their own.” however, it should not be concluded that this contradicts the findings of wadson et al. (2023), reporting that most learners in malawi did not participate in cc mitigation and adaptation practices. this may be because the students engaged in the 1.5 max initiative still represent a small proportion of the overall student population in schools, as evidenced by current participation: currently, there are 38 students in the group, and the goal is for them to spread the knowledge to all their schoolmates (t3). this year the turnout was very good. i had 20-plus students. everyone was very willing to attend, and everyone was very willing to continue attending such kinds of activities (t4). several challenges have been identified that affect wider student participation and engagement. a major factor frequently mentioned is the lack of available time for teachers, which impacts their ability to support these initiatives. this constraint is directly reflected in teacher feedback: one of them is time, it's because a teacher is too busy to help with this (t1). we need facilitation for specific tasks. sometimes, instead of preparing what i am supposed to teach tomorrow, i end up preparing for the 1.5 max initiative or attending meetings (t2). varying levels of student interest in climate action were observed, with many showing eagerness to join as teachers said: “it is surprising to find out some students lack interest in climate action” (t3). this disparity is compounded by skepticism from communities and students about the motives behind such initiatives. people often think we are trying to benefit personally. it's hard to convince them that we are doing this voluntarily (t3). they expect donations and find it difficult to believe. the main challenge is that my students may not have much interest in researching (t4). this may stem from a disconnect between the curriculum and students’ lived realities, a phenomenon associated with "epistemic disobedience" (mignolo, 2011). by failing to ground climate education in students’ immediate socio-economic and cultural contexts, the system reinforces alienation and skepticism, limiting the transformative potential of such programs (rudiak-gould, 2013). coping with the emotional realities there is growing literature on climate anxiety, reflecting how profoundly the climate crisis impacts students’ lives and emotions (pihkala, 2022; soutar & wand, 2022). emotional education is overlooked by malawian educators. the research found that climate issues have exacerbated students’ economic hardships in malawi, rendering them unable to afford tuition and meet basic needs, thereby intensifying their 136 current issues in comparative education chen & das emotional distress. one teacher stated, “the students’ emotions are affected [...] this week, most students were sent away due to school fees” (t4). another teacher added, “the students are very worried... ‘i came here on an empty stomach.’ so, i cannot concentrate on my lessons” (t3). struggling to meet basic needs like food, increases their emotional burden. these invisible wounds are evident in the teacher's interview: “this affects their lives, but it is the emotions that suffer. sometimes they are not welcoming. just like last time, a student almost cried” (t2). emotional challenges reveal the legacy of colonial systems that have left many global south countries economically dependent and structurally marginalized (ulus, 2014). the continued economic vulnerability, seen here in students' struggles with tuition and basic needs, is a symptom of a "colonial matrix of power" (mignolo, 2023). this matrix perpetuates inequities by prioritizing neoliberal economic models that exacerbate inequalities, leaving students and communities unable to manage the compounded effects of climate change and economic hardships. during visits to schools, the researcher observed how the land that could have been used for cultivating crops to support local food security was allocated for cash crops like tobacco. this prioritization of cash crops over subsistence farming underscores the colonial legacy of economic structures that prioritize global market demands over local needs, entrenching the vulnerabilities of communities (mwanika et al., 2020). by failing to address these systemic disparities, educational frameworks perpetuate a form of "epistemic violence," which disregards the emotional and psychological realities faced by learners in the global south (berry, 2008). educators, however, are not cognizant of the need to address the various emotions learners may experience, resulting in ineffective management of feelings of despair, helplessness, and guilt (phillips, 2009). an educator admitted, “we didn’t take care of the specific feelings, we did not” (t2). a basic awareness of students’ welfare needs is crucial. a teacher expressed concern that, “this is another thing that as a teacher i should be worried about” (t4). however, considering the strong emotional impact on climate-related hazards, disasters, and future changes can have, it is essential to address the emotional well-being of learners (lawrance et al., 2022). implications for the future this section extends analysis of the emerging themes from interviews, including challenges and support needs raised by participants in the final part of the interviews. the narratives from educators and students underscored the urgent need to enhance cce in malawi through teaching and learning support. international level from an international perspective, initiatives such as the 1.5 max provide crucial support for cce in malawi by enriching the curriculum and enhancing student engagement with climate issues. participation in such global projects helps students understand and address local and international climate challenges. however, ongoing follow-up is essential. although the 1.5 max initiative has established current issues in comparative education 137 evaluation of the impact of the 1.5 max initiative on climate change education (cce) in malawi secondary school: an education for sustainable development (esd) framework approach follow-up activities after each summit, teachers still emphasize the importance of continuous engagement. they advocate that: we need to share our progress and achievements at every summit, asking, “what have you done this year? how many activities have you planned?” (t2) the other part should be following up. if we have really started working on our projects (t1). more attention needs to be paid by the organization to ensure that this knowledge reaches a wider audience (t3). educators expressed concerns about the outdated nature of educational content: “the main issue should be to study the reasons for their continuous change. if we stick to one topic, over time it may become irrelevant” (t3). this highlights the need for updated curricula that adapt to evolving knowledge and conditions (nurdin et al., 2017). this disconnect may arise because national curriculum revisions and updates typically occur over long cycles (amanchukwu et al., 2015). this disconnect reflects the legacy of coloniality in knowledge systems. the reliance on rigid, globally standardized curricula risks sidelining local and indigenous knowledge systems that are dynamic and rooted in the lived experiences of malawian communities (ezeanya-esiobu, 2019; shizha, 2010). initiatives like 1.5 max must prioritize integrating local ways of knowing to ensure contextually relevant and equitable education (muchenje, 2017; quigley, 2009). international support through supplementary reading materials and science books can help to bridge knowledge gaps. interviews stress this need: “we don’t have enough books. we don’t have resources like articles about climate change,” and “the resource we need is knowledge, especially in books” (t2). this stresses the critical gap in educational materials available to effectively teach and understand climate change. however, it is equally important that these resources are not solely western-centric but include locally produced materials that reflect the cultural, ecological, and socio-economic realities of malawi (shizha, 2010; quigley, 2009). follow-up activities for international initiatives like 1.5 max could move beyond global dissemination to collaborative knowledge creation. by doing so, the initiative can evolve from a model of knowledge transfer to one of knowledge exchange. national level at the national level, improving teacher training and evaluation mechanisms are key factors for the effective implementation of cce (branch et al., 2016; malawi government, 2012; mavuso et al., 2022; olawumi et al., 2023). according to mavuso et al. (2022), the implementation of teacher capacitation programs has been shown to improve pedagogical practices by equipping teachers with the necessary content and pedagogical knowledge to integrate cce into their lessons. although the policies in 138 current issues in comparative education chen & das malawi recognize these aspects as priorities (malawi government, 2011), there are deficiencies in teacher engagement and evaluation. at present, most teachers report not having participated in any official training. “no, i have never attended any training provided by the national level or any organization” (t1) is a common response from three teachers. this exposes a deficiency in the availability and delivery of professional development programs for educators. this is consistent with the study conducted among four hundred teachers in malawi senior secondary schools by wadson et al. (2023b), which revealed that 93.2% of teachers had never participated in any cce training. many teachers were not adequately prepared to teach cce courses at the senior secondary school level. in my research, only one teacher participated in an online esd training provided by an american organization, and this training opportunity was obtained through private channels rather than official educational authorities. this situation reflects a serious deficiency in teacher training. the reliance on externally developed training resources—such as those from foreign organizations—reinforces global knowledge hierarchies that marginalize local expertise and indigenous knowledge. teacher training should instead be rooted in malawi’s sociocultural and environmental context, enabling educators to draw from local experiences and knowledge systems while engaging with global frameworks (brayboy & maughan, 2009; kretzer, 2021). implementing a standardized teacher evaluation system could help regularly assess and enhance teaching practices. as the teachers expressed, we need specialists to work with us, not just to collaborate, but to provide in-depth knowledge. we hope they can visit our schools more frequently (t3). we need to share our progress and achievements at every summit, asking each other, 'what have you done this year? how many activities have you planned?’ (t2). this highlights the desire for more consistent and expert support in enhancing educational practices. establishing a network of cce educators to share best practices and resources would support this goal (waldron et al., 2020). teachers acknowledged, “the knowledge obtained should be shared with the right people, including other teachers and community members.” this emphasizes the importance of collaborative learning and community involvement in spreading cce. sharing knowledge about cc is crucial for facilitating communication among teachers and strengthening a collective capacity to educate on this topic. community level strengthening community participation and cooperation is essential for promoting inclusive cce methods. whilst the 1.5 max initiative has enhanced students’ understanding of environmental issues and their involvement in seeking solutions, community engagement remains limited due to low awareness and financial current issues in comparative education 139 evaluation of the impact of the 1.5 max initiative on climate change education (cce) in malawi secondary school: an education for sustainable development (esd) framework approach constraints. one interviewee (t2) highlighted education’s role in community impact, stating, “the more we educate these pupils, the more these pupils will take information to their communities, and the more people will know”. this indicates that whilst educational efforts are enriching student knowledge, their transmission to the broader community is insufficient. funding shortages hinder community involvement. as one teacher (t4) mentioned, “they know how to plant trees, and they have the indigenous knowledge, but they don’t have trees. it’s expensive to buy one tree”. this indicates that whilst communities possess skills, financial resources for implementation are lacking (piggott-mckellar et al., 2019). addressing the cc crisis increasingly depends on collaborative learning within communities (ayers & forsyth, 2009; davies, 2012). in interviews, teachers expressed the need for greater community awareness, suggesting that “local involvement is a resource in itself, such as the indigenous knowledge and the natural resources” (t3). this underscores the importance of re-centering local knowledge as an essential epistemic resource. collaborative learning rooted in local practices enriches climate literacy and challenges the dominance of western-centric knowledge systems, making education more inclusive and contextually relevant (anderson, 2012; mbah & ezegwu, 2024). engaging with nature and local communities equips learners with practical climate literacy skills unattainable in conventional classrooms (orr, 1991). activities like community gardening teach ecological skills and foster a sense of purpose and connection, as participants benefit from their efforts (clavin, 2012). establishing strong partnerships between schools and communities is crucial in addressing the emotional and socio-economic challenges that students face (roche & strobach, 2019). while emotional issues are overlooked in classrooms, community activities like planting and harvesting offer engagement, sensory stimulation, and enjoyable learning experiences. such interaction encourages ‘biophilia1’, a love for plants and wildlife (wilson, 1986), fostering sustainable practices. in malawi, where livelihoods are deeply tied to agriculture and natural resources, this connection to nature can promote sustainable agricultural methods and biodiversity conservation. in regions like malawi, which face extreme weather events and high food prices, collaborative projects such as self-sustaining gardens equip students with practical tools to combat food insecurity and adapt to challenging conditions effectively. this approach demonstrates that the health of the environment and the well-being of learners are interconnected (ensor & harvey, 2015). by actively participating in the community, learners can exercise their agency within these various constraints, shaping their future and the environment around them. conclusion this paper has explored the impact of the 1.5 max initiative on cce in malawian secondary schools, addressing key research questions and highlighting implications 1 biophilia refers to “our innate tendency to focus upon life and life-like forms and, in some instances, to affiliate with them emotionally” (wilson, 2003, p.134). 140 current issues in comparative education chen & das for future enhancements. the findings demonstrate that the initiative has positively influenced educators and students by fostering a multidisciplinary approach and interactive teaching methods. educators observed increased student engagement, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills, while students reported a greater understanding of climate issues and expressed a need for more experiential learning opportunities. deeper structural and systemic challenges rooted in historical inequalities continue to shape educational frameworks in malawi. the findings emphasize that the lingering "colonial matrix of power" perpetuates economic and epistemic dependencies, limiting the transformative potential of initiatives like the 1.5 max. the prioritization of neoliberal educational models and global market-driven solutions ignores local needs, cultural contexts, and indigenous knowledge. this epistemic marginalization constrains educators' capacity to localize cce and adapt teaching methods to address global and local climate challenges. to overcome these challenges, this study highlights several critical areas for improvement. integrating indigenous knowledge into the curriculum is not only essential for cultural relevance but also represents a vital step toward decolonizing knowledge systems within cce. embedding community-based projects that empower students to address local climate issues would foster practical, contextually relevant solutions while challenging colonial educational hierarchies. second, teacher training programs must prioritize decolonial pedagogies that equip educators with the skills and confidence to navigate complex climate topics while acknowledging the lived realities of their students. third, strengthening community engagement is vital to creating learning environments that blend local knowledge with global climate action frameworks. such engagement ensures collaborative problem-solving and shared responsibility for climate resilience, rooted in local agency and self-determination. finally, establishing feedback mechanisms to regularly evaluate and refine cce strategies can help align educational objectives with the evolving goals of the esd framework and the principles of decoloniality. this research, as the first to apply the combined ccesd and decolonial frameworks to assess the 1.5 max initiative in malawi, provides a novel methodological approach to evaluating climate-focused educational interventions. by integrating academic knowledge, practical applications, emotional education, and decolonial perspectives, the study underscores the necessity of a multidimensional and transformative strategy to prepare students for the challenges of a changing climate. it highlights the value of integrating hands-on projects, participatory teaching methods, and decolonial frameworks to guide the development of equitable and effective educational policies and practices. future research should build on these insights by prioritizing the evaluation of policy implementation and its impact on educational outcomes. exploring innovative approaches to local and global collaboration, leveraging technology, and fostering public-private partnerships can amplify the reach and impact of cce initiatives. longitudinal studies are critical for understanding the sustained effects of these current issues in comparative education 141 evaluation of the impact of the 1.5 max initiative on climate change education (cce) in malawi secondary school: an education for sustainable development (esd) framework approach strategies, enabling researchers to track behavioral changes and educational outcomes over time. future inquiries should examine how decolonial frameworks can be operationalized within educational policy and practice to dismantle systemic inequities and epistemic dependencies. this study has demonstrated the potential of the 1.5 max initiative to advance cce in malawi while exposing the structural and epistemic barriers that hinder its broader impact. addressing these challenges through decolonial and esd-informed strategies, educators and policymakers can work toward creating an education system that not only equips students with the knowledge and skills to tackle climate challenges but also empowers them to reclaim agency over their futures. this integrated and decolonial approach offers a pathway for malawi and other global south contexts to achieve equitable and sustainable climate education outcomes. tianshu chen recently graduated with a master of science (msc) in comparative education and international development from the university of edinburgh. specializing in educational intervention evaluation, her work applies frameworks such as education for sustainable development (esd) to assess projects like the 1.5 max climate change education program in malawi's secondary schools. debojyoti das is an anthropologist and geographer by training with a research focus on the global south and a strong commitment to sustainability education. with over ten years of experience in teaching, research, and academic scholarship in the united 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(2014). climate change impacts and adaptation in south africa. wiley interdisciplinary reviews: climate change, 5(5), 605-20. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.295 152 current issues in comparative education https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47587-1_13 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099545010272237260/p1772201ced75ce9182e7142761bde013662bca4fe42 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099545010272237260/p1772201ced75ce9182e7142761bde013662bca4fe42 https://www.wfp.org/news/urgent-action-critical-malawi-faces-severe-drought https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_498-1 current issues in comparative education (cice) volume 19, issue 1, fall 2016 © 2016, current issues in comparative education, teachers college, columbia university. all rights reserved. current issues in comparative education 19(1), 26-42. is there ‘space’ for international baccalaureate? a case study exploring space and the adoption of the ib middle year programme timothy monreal university of south carolina henri lefebvre (1991) wrote, “[representational] space is alive: it speaks” (p. 42). this article explores how we might ‘listen’ to space in education by examining the role of space in one school’s decision to adopt the international baccalaureate’s middle years programme. it builds upon recent scholarship that applies spatial analysis to international education. using a case study of one school, data was organized to lefebvre’s (1991) tripartite conception of space. the findings and analysis reveal that spatial factors played a significant role in one school’s rationale for choosing the ib myp. in adopting the program, the school (re)produced a distinctive, exclusive space. the research offers a model to visualize space in education, and it concludes by articulating additional paths for critical spatial research in education. introduction the rapid expansion of the international baccalaureate (ib) verifies that international education is no longer reserved solely for international schools. an international education (tied to the ib) is increasingly common for public and national private schools. the year 2014 saw the international baccalaureate organization (ibo) authorize its 5,000th program reaching 1.3 million students (ibo, 2015a). to counter criticism that united states’ schools dominate the ib (brunnell, 2010), the ib has focused on expanding its international reach. ib agreements within countries like the united arab emirates and saudi arabia (ibo, 2015a) helped push the representation of africa, europe, the middle east and asia-pacific to 39% of all 5,907 programmes offered as of november 2016 (ibo, n.d.-a). hill (2010) predicted by 2020 there will 10,000 schools with ib programs serving 2.5 million students (p. 41). many of the schools that join the ib seek to promote global understanding, global citizenry, and a world-sharing ethos (philips and schweisfurth, 2014). ib’s (2015, n.d.-b) stated mission is “... to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.” in addition to these altruistic aims, schools see the ib as a prestigious brand (resnik, 2012) associated with superior levels of education (paris, 2003). is there ‘space’ for international baccalaureate? current issues in comparative education 27 it can be used as an impetus for curricular reform and improving academic excellence (fox, 1998). one school even cited a desire to increase student diversity and achieve ‘racial balance’ (spahn, 2001). in choosing the ib schools must balance the benefits and sacrifices of making the transition to a more internationally focused education. each school makes decisions based on particular perceptions, feelings, and infrastructures. these factors, taken together as the space of a school, are imperative in understanding why an institution feels compelled (or qualified) to adopt the ib. in this paper, i use a critical spatial framework to explore one school’s choice to adopt an ib middle years program (myp). researchers have called for greater spatial understanding in education (larsen & beech, 2014). as space is socially produced (and reproduced) (lefebvre, 1991), it is crucial to determine its influence on education landscapes. specifically, i sought to answer the following research questions: how does space impact a school’s rationale for adopting the ib? what type of education space does the ib produce (or reproduce)? i begin with a brief history and overview of the ib. i then discuss previous literature about why schools chose the ib. i build the case for using space as a theoretical framework and follow with a description of the case study methodology explaining how i organized the data to lefebvre’s (1991) tripartite conception of space. in doing so, i offer a model to visualize space in education. finally, i present and analyze the data showing that spatial factors played a significant role in one school’s rationale for choosing the ib myp. the conclusion articulates paths for further spatial research in education. the international baccalaureate history of ib the guiding vision of the ib can be traced back to kurt hahn. hahn, a german of jewish origin, theorized that an education with a more global perspective could be a tool for peace squashing the national and racial prejudices that lead to war (spahn, 2001). the international school at geneva serving children of the staff of the league of nations proved to be an early model. marie-thérèse maurette (1948), who worked at the international school and shared hahn’s belief in using an international education to fight against “violent, egotistical nationalism”, urged an emerging unesco to take charge in supporting similar aims. thus, when alex peterson created ib’s initial curriculum design in the 1960s it was not far removed from a prevailing hope in international education and institutions. the ib was officially founded in 1968. peterson became the organization's first deputy general (ibo, 2015b; spahn, 2001). the first ib program offered was the diploma programme (dp) designed solely for secondary education institutions. from the outset, ib moved beyond its visionary and pedagogical foundations, based on international understanding and critical thinking, to timothy monreal current issues in comparative education 28 ensure the dp served practical university enrollment objectives (hill, 2010). tensions between an idealistic international education and a practical, competitive diploma continue to play out today (see brunnell, 2010; fox, 1998; mcgregor, 2009; paris, 2003; resnik 2008, 2009, 2012). in 1994, an official middle years programme (myp) was added for ages 11-16, followed by the primary year programme in 1997, and the career-related programme in 2012 (ibo, 2015b). as this case study sought to understand the rationale for one school’s decision to choose the ib myp, a more detailed explanation of this program is warranted. the myp is a more ‘holistic’ program than the dp because the curriculum is wider, and whole schools participate rather than individual students (brunnell, 2011; stobie, 2007). the myp is flexible enough to fit most national, regional, and local standards, while still providing schools a recognizable, unique curriculum (ibo, n.d.-c). the myp consists of eight subject groups: language acquisition, language and literature, individuals and societies, sciences, mathematics, arts, physical and health education, and design. students also engage in approaches to learning (atl), community service, and a large culminating project (ibo, 2014). on its website, the ibo (n.d.-d) described the myp as encouraging “students to make practical connections between their studies and the real world, preparing them for success in further study and in life.” there are currently 1,149 myp schools in 101 countries (ibo, n.d.-e). why choose the ib? the normative and ideological aims of the ib often take a back seat to traditional academic concerns, especially in the united states. perceptions of academic rigor, high standards, prestige, and excellence are key reasons u.s. schools chose an ib international education (brunnell, 2011; fox, 1998; spahn, 2001). in america and the international baccalaureate in the united states, a study of three schools, spahn (2001) concluded, “a large majority of the schools were attracted to the ib because of its high academic standards but its international aspects were of secondary importance” (p. 113). individual student rationale mirrors that of schools. paris (2003) found students elected to pursue an ib dp because it was a competitive advantage, prestigious, and highly regarded. the ib carries a certain brand and cachet that students and schools are eager to trumpet (resnik, 2012). in a study investigating why schools chose the ib myp, sperandio (2010) found that across diverse schools specific commonalities emerged. schools with similar philosophies and missions chose the ‘pre-ib’ program in order to challenge students academically and socially. schools felt the myp was inline with the high expectations of the school community (sperandio, 2010). furthermore, the nonprescriptive, yet detailed, curriculum framework of ib myp helped schools transition to a more student-centered and inquiry-based pedagogy (sperandio, 2010). at a macro level, many scholars have explained why schools choose an international education and an ib curriculum. mcgregor (2009) argued that there is an inherent tension is there ‘space’ for international baccalaureate? current issues in comparative education 29 between neo-liberal policies and transformative education. the more radical philosophical undercurrents of the ib, personified by kurt hahn, conflict with market forces working to recreate obedient workers. dealing with this tension, international education is consumed by neo-liberal demands. resnik (2012) pointed out that parents see a future market benefit for their child when they receive an international education. an international education helps placement in prestigious universities and builds crucial skills needed in a global economy. a multicultural, global education becomes a valuable tool to reproduce class advantage. former ibo deputy general, jeff beard (2015), spoke to the ‘value’ of an international education: but a trawl of the world’s top employers’ websites, and discussion with higher education recruiters, places new emphasis on capabilities that have become known as ‘21st-century’ skills. these are skills that relate to new ways of working and thinking in our rapidly changing global society. (p. 53) theoretical framework i utilized a critical spatial framework to study one u.s. school’s rationale for choosing the ib myp. i chose a critical spatial framework to better understand space’s impact on key education decisions, in this case, the rationale for adopting an international education represented by the ib. although the process of globalization reveals increasingly complex concepts of space, spatial thinking remains an unharnessed tool in international and comparative education. recently, middleton (2014) pointed to a ‘spatial turn’ in education scholarship. robertson (2010) presented ‘tracking’ and ‘decentralisation’ through a spatial lens. vavrus (2016) showed how the social production of space contributed to educational disparities in tanzania. as this scholarship suggests, a deeper engagement with the concept of space is necessary to move beyond traditional boundaries like local-global, time-space, and place-space (larsen & beech, 2014; robertson, 2010). in many ways, space provides an additional, and deeper extension, of place. space acknowledges that people, ideas, feelings, processes, networks and modes of production exist outside geographical borders (larsen & beech, 2014). while material place immobilizes social relations, globalized space stretches out social relations (robertson, 2010). space may not have visible boundaries, but it is nevertheless lived and experienced. thousands of miles apart refugees from a country feel tied to their culture. across time zones people ‘like’ similar posts through a computer screen. people within the same city join opposing political groups. perhaps space is underrepresented in international and comparative education because it is not understood. lefebvre (1991) seemed to understand this tendency, “is this space an abstract one? yes, but is also ‘real’ in the sense in which concrete abstractions such as commodities and money are real” (p. 27). timothy monreal current issues in comparative education 30 lefebvre (1991) offered a conceptual triad to illustrate how space is socially produced. space is at once perceived, conceived, and lived. perceived spaces are most closely linked to tangible place. lefebvre (1991) referred to perceived space in terms of spatial practice, our consistent interaction with particular locations such as buildings and monuments (p. 33). middleton (2014) described perceived space “as habitual spatial practices walking well-trodden paths to school, switching on computers, reaching for books” (p. 10). the second piece of the triad, conceived space, is also called representations of space. “conceived spaces are abstract, mental (legal or bureaucratic) enclosures...representations of space are the codified visualizations: architectural blueprints of a school building, flowcharts, the boxes on timetable charts” (middleton, 2014, p. 11). related to schools, conceived spaces may include district maps or attendance zones, class schedules, and school handbooks. as vavrus (2016) illuminated, conceived spaces “play an important role in the transformation of amorphous space into a defined place with boundaries making territories of different scales” (p. 140). the final piece of lefebvre’s tripartite theory of space, lived space, is also called representational space. lived spaces embody the underlying emotions, feelings, and symbolism related to social relations (lefebvre, 1991, p. 33). lived spaces may be the least tangible leg of the triad, but the most alive. lived spaces represent the human energy inherent in a space, its emotive energy and stirring dynamism. lived spaces are what make a house, ‘a home’. middleton (2014) said, “we ‘live’ spaces by attributing meaning to them: emotional, spiritual, historical, cultural or genealogical” (p. 11). it is through the lens of lefebvre's triad model of space that i critically examine one school’s rationale for adapting the ib myp. the critical lens is important because space is not passive. space is socially produced and reproduced. lefebvre (1991) noted, “(social) space is a (social) product” (p. 26). lefebvre (1991) was clear that space serves the needs of hegemonic groups. he wrote, “the ‘object’ of interest must be expected to shift from things in space to the actual production of space” (p. 37). might a school, and its unique notion of spatial experiences and relations, catalyze this shift? how might the ib fit into this shift? methodology i adopted a case study methodology because my ‘insider’ position (brayboy & doyle, 2000) as a practitioner-researcher (classroom teacher/doctoral student) allowed for the collection of myriad forms of qualitative data. throughout the course of the research i worked hard to recognize my unique positionality. i strove to balance my commitments to equitable education, social justice, and critical research with respect to the practices of my school and school community. i strove to be honest and transparent with my research. is there ‘space’ for international baccalaureate? current issues in comparative education 31 one way i did this was by conducting member checks with participants to increase trustworthiness and transparency of the data and analysis (glesne, 2015; saldana, 2015). i interviewed four of the five school administrators including the principal, the vice principal (vp) of curriculum and instruction, the vp of student services, and the ib coordinator. the interviews were semi-structured and all administrators were asked similar questions. as administrators carry a heavy burden in implementing the ib and facilitating stakeholder buy-in (spahn, 2001; williams, 2007), i believed their thoughts and opinions would be most crucial. the administrators i spoke to have either been at the school since the beginning of the ib process or were hired specifically to aid implementation. i also used document analysis (merriam, 1998) to interpret data on how the rationale for ib myp was communicated to staff, students, and the community. documents included administrator presentations, parent letters, project kick-off videos, program applications, brochures, student packets, monthly updates from the ib coordinator, and a principal podcast. given my employment as a classroom teacher, i was also influenced by many informal conversations, emails, and comments. the varied forms of data increased triangulation and helped me to understand the space of the school community, and its decision to ‘go ib’. the start of my employment at the school coincided with year three of the ib myp adoption process. although not fully authorized, the ib emerged as a major school focus point from the administration. teachers shared ideas for ib units and explained trips to past and future ib conferences. school learner traits were modified to correspond with the ib learner profile (see ibo, 2013). the ‘language hall’ featured the new learner traits (e.g., inquirers, balanced, communicators, etc.) painted on the wall. on my initial tour of the school given to me by the principal, he pointed out two new globe sculptures on the grounds. in analyzing the data, “i engaged in multiple readings, meditations, and annotations of the data” (misco, 2010, p. 194). i looked for commonalities and salient points. as these commonalities and salient points emerged, i matched them to one of lefebvre’s (1991) three triads of space (perceived, conceived, or lived space) using protocol coding (saldaña, 2015). in order to organize and conceptualize the data, i created a model based on lefebvre’s triad to visualize space and ib. a circle represents each individual triad. within each circle, i list the commonalties found in the data related specifically to the respective triad. the three circles, or triads of space, overlap in certain areas to show the interlocking nature of space. jeffrey middle school – context jeffrey middle school (jms) is a sixth through eighth-grade public middle school located in the midlands region of south carolina, united states. in timothy monreal current issues in comparative education 32 an application for another program, jms described itself as “nestled in the heart of one of the fastest growing suburban towns in the nation.” the rapid growth of the town caused the school to split twice (producing two additional schools) within its 30-year history as a middle school. the two new middle schools are located in close proximity to jeffrey. the school prides itself on a history of outstanding academic achievement. the school has many regional, state, and national distinctions. one of these recognitions is a ‘blue ribbon school’. the aforementioned application stated: our flourishing community values high-quality education. a long history of high educational expectations drives parents, teachers and community members to strive for excellence each day. many of our teachers attended our school and embody the emphasis on giving back to a community that takes pride in collective success. residential property values have benefited from a strong school reputation, and the community is invested both economically and socially in maintaining its esteem. jms supports a broad academic program for its 800 students. students take four core classes: english language arts, science, social studies, and math. students rotate different ‘exploratory’ classes including theater, orchestra, chorus, dance, stem lab, design, physical education, art, service learning, global connections, and other options. each student is required to take a second-language class for all three years. the languages offered are latin, spanish, french, and german; this is also a requirement for the ib myp (ibo, 2014). in addition to a diverse set of classes, there is a full complement of sports programs and after-school clubs. for the purpose of this article, school and administrator names have been changed. analysis, findings, and discussion perceived space the spatial practice of the school community revealed a consistent interaction with buildings and places. similar to vavrus (2016), i found “perceived space marked by certain physical features and reinforced through habitual practices” (p. 146). highly visible alterations to the school influenced by the ib presented jms an opportunity to reclaim and reinvent their physical space. new ib related décor included three globe sculptures, world flags lining the cafeteria, ib learner trait posters, and various foreign language greetings painted on the halls (figure 1). is there ‘space’ for international baccalaureate? current issues in comparative education 33 figure 1 – ib related décor the ib provided an opportunity to change the physical layout of the campus to reflect school and community expectations. through the ib-inspired redesign of physical space, new habitual spatial practices (middleton, 2014) were created to facilitate the broad curriculum. specific physical spaces were devoted to parts of the ‘holistic’ program. for example, walking through campus, a student (or another stakeholder) may pass the ‘language hall’, glance at happenings in the ‘design center’, or hear sounds drifting from music and chorus classes. the vp of student services explained, “we want students to be artists, engineers, potters, and dancers when they leave.” the ib ‘re-branding’ of the school (resnik, 2012) worked in tandem with these curricular and pedagogical shifts. as the principal said in a school video, “an ib school means, basically, when we get that title as an ib school our students do more, bigger, picture stuff than other schools around.” figure 2 – perceived space at jms growing suburban city with new middle schools older school buildings compared to other middle schools in town specific subject areas ('language hall', 'design center', etc) ib related décor (globe structures, world flags, etc.) "thriving" professional, government, retail, and industry venues in town timothy monreal current issues in comparative education 34 “than other schools around” is an important phrase because the growth of the town produced a profound change in the school community’s sense of perceived space. the ib provided a path to bring the campus’ perceived space in line with that of a “flourishing” suburban town with multiple (and competing) schools. three of the four administrators spoke about the two new middle schools in town that serve parts of jeffrey’s old attendance zone. jms’ physical buildings are much older than its counterparts’. it is normal to hear students and teachers wish for the glass enclosures, large common areas, and sports facilities of their cutting-edge ‘rivals’. a glance at the three schools’ websites proved an interesting comparison to this point. the newest middle school in town features a large picture of its school building as the banner image for its home page. jeffrey, on the other hand, featured rotating images of student groups with a link to the ib myp featured prominently in the navigation. ginny, the vp of curriculum and instruction, spoke directly to this competition in her interview, “we [the community] compare itself to the other schools.” the principal reiterated, “another school was recently built and this community wanted to rise up.” the comparison between buildings and competition between schools is accentuated by habitual trips around town, and community activities at the different school sites like sporting events. the adoption of the ib allowed the school to create a unique perceived space, one not solely defined by older school buildings. conceived space organizing salient points to representations of space showed the school’s strong desire to codify nebulous concepts, practices, and pedagogies like inquiry-based and student-centered instruction. “we can’t teach at them anymore. we need to move from memorization to inquiry. the ib helps this process” (interview, vp of student services). all administrators that i interviewed shared a similar sentiment that the ib presented tools for improved pedagogy and instruction. it was clear administrators felt that school education was changing, and the ib offered a path to move forward. in the words of the principal, “the ib gives a blueprint or roadmap for college and career where other schools must figure it out by themselves.” ib was a vehicle to implement desired, or demanded, changes. the ib coordinator stressed, “the ib allows for vast improvement. it is about inquiry and big questions. every child can succeed and benefit from this.” using the ib curriculum to concretize a desired shift in space is inline with larsen and beech’s (2014) definition of conceived space as “more abstract notions in space as used in media, maps, town planning, and so on, which operate in ways to represent and make sense of space” (p. 201). is there ‘space’ for international baccalaureate? current issues in comparative education 35 figure 3 – conceived space at jms the ib brand and materials not only provided key structure, but also a reliable brand to nascent representations of space. to reiterate the ib brand, teachers received new t-shirts with globe logos each year, and globe clip art featured prominently on most school communication. ib lessons, unit plans, and curriculum were seen as key supports to help produce well-rounded, creative students with a global perspective. the ib coordinator spoke highly of the curriculum, “this [ib myp] is credible because it is global, and this successful program says we are on the cutting edge.” communication provided another opening to conceive space. the principal was consistently praised for pro-active communication. in letters, presentations, and even a podcast, the principal expressed the benefits of choosing the ib. he took care to explain all matters of the newly conceived space including block schedules, different classes, new assessments, and “outstanding” pedagogy. from a brochure sent home to all parents about the ib, the principal explained, “students at jms learn the south carolina academic standards in all courses through inquiry-based approaches that help them take the lead in their own learning.” a letter introducing the ib myp summative eighth-grade project provided further opportunity for the principal to explain the positive features of the ib. the letter stated, “many of the kids are already doing amazing work in the community…the project may be built around something the student is already working on, like scouts or a church youth projects.” the summative project injected the conceived space of the school (and the ib curriculum) into the community. the project made abstract notions about the ib curriculum come alive ib unit plans, lessons, and curriculum (student/inquiry centered) ib ‘brand’ and materials ib related communication (letters, administration presentations, brochures) student projects changing school boundaries school applications for prestigious awards timothy monreal current issues in comparative education 36 like the principal’s words above, administrators believed the school to be extraordinary before the ib. communication allowed stakeholders to see that the ib (just like the summative project) was additive. ib adoption helped make the school, the students, and the space “cutting-edge” and “innovative”; words multiple administrators used to describe ib curriculum. with this rationale, the ib myp helped the school (re)produce space. lived space spaces of representation (or lived space), “the space that is lived, felt, and experienced” (larsen & beech, 2015, p. 201), highlighted a shared school and community culture of excellence. “the community has huge expectations for the kids. they have expectations above and beyond standard public school” (interview, ib coordinator). all administrators used similar words to present jms as a space with high community expectations, a marked history of academic achievement, and the ability to take on additional demands. jms’ confidence in choosing the ib myp is clearly rooted in a belief that it has a special, distinctive space. even though the principal spoke the following words, i heard nearly identical statements from all those i interviewed: “the ib is not to repair anything that is broken. our students demonstrate high achievement. we could take on extra elements. other schools may have a hard time.” an attitude of resolute confidence resonated throughout the entire school. the principal continued, “this school and community want to be an exemplar as the state transforms education.” the administration believed the school community was uniquely prepared to accept the challenge of the ib myp. figure 4 – lived space at jms intra-city ‘rivalry’ long history of high expectations and achievement ability to take on extra elements community pride and investment in school desire to be unique and exceptional exemplar trust in school and its leadership is there ‘space’ for international baccalaureate? current issues in comparative education 37 a trusting relationship between school and community is at the center of jms. the community supports the school’s aims financially with pto fundraisers and grants. the community also plays an active role in ib summative eighth grade projects. this provides the school with abundant resources to implement “an incredibly expensive program” (interview, principal). the principal acknowledged the school resources enabled a certain level of access. although the principal believed in international education’s (ib curriculum) ability to build empathy and understanding, he worried about inequalities that emerge if one school community has the means to support programs others do not. during a member check, the principal continued to struggle with this tension. ultimately, he hoped the ib would help the school be more mission driven, rather than elitist. ginny, the vp of curriculum and instruction, shared a hopeful view as well, “kids here need to see outside themselves.” both the school and the community strive to be an exemplar of education eminence. they take pride in their prestigious reputation. once again, the intra-city ‘rivalry’ between middle schools was noted. the principal referenced a “race to the top” as parents expected more from the school program in lieu of a new building. he said parents demanded “equity”. the common perception of ib as a rigorous, high-quality program proved key in gathering support. the ib was a recognizable distinguisher and differentiated jms in positive ways. the vp of student services said, “it [ib myp] gives the school a positive identity.” the adoption of the ib reinforced the notion that jms occupied an exclusive space. the school and community felt that it was deserving of a distinguished brand like the ib. this feeling lay at the heart of the school’s lived space and connected the desire to (re)produce its distinctiveness space through the ib. the notion that an international education program like the ib helps to reinforce an exclusive, privileged school space able to (re)produce idiosyncratic advantages is a line of inquiry that warrants further research. overlapping space it was nearly impossible to categorize all the data into three neat triads. when the three triads came together, areas of interconnectedness developed. it can be argued, as does lefebvre (1991), that space is inherently multi-layered. this proved to be correct in the case study. points of overlap are visualized in figure 5. intra-city comparison between schools produced the most overlap. the lack of a new school building appeared to impact jms’ sense of space, generating feelings of inferiority. perhaps more specifically, jms felt the relative excellence of their exclusive space to be threatened as the age of the school building called into question its role as the exemplar in the community. ib acted as a counterweight to those feelings, helping to create a newly (re)produced space. the school clearly took pride in the prestigious ib brand and its “cutting edge curriculum” (interview, ib coordinator). timothy monreal current issues in comparative education 38 figure 5 – visualizing lefebvrian space: a model as mentioned previously, jms did not adopt the ib myp because something needed to be fixed. instead, the ib was attractive because it added to the strong reputation of the school. in the words of the principal, “the ib application and auditing process reinforces and reflects the high standards of the community.” jms believed it had the spatial infrastructure to be a successful ib school. they had a lived space based on exceptional academics, high expectations, trust, and community support. in the words of the vp for student services, “they had responsible students with support from home, and the expectation of achievement at high levels.” the flexibility of the ib myp was attractive to the administration. they could mold it as they saw fit. the ib coordinator said, “we are still figuring out the ib. we never really wanted to fit into the ib. we want the ib to fit into the things we already do well, and the things we want to do.” in many ways, it appeared that the contemporary and historic is there ‘space’ for international baccalaureate? current issues in comparative education 39 space of jms complemented the ib brand. the ib allowed the school to make changes without the potential negative consequences or concerns that can come from a program or regime shift. the adoption of the ib was used creatively by the school to (re)produce a distinctive and exclusive space. as the diagram shows, the unique space of jms proved to be a ‘perfect fit’ for the ib myp. conclusion schools chose the ib, and the ib myp, for a variety of reasons. agreeing with much research to date (brunnell, 2011; fox 1998; paris, 2003; spahn, 2001; speradino, 2010), a case study of one school’s rationale for adopting an ib myp revealed perceptions of academic rigor, pedagogical innovation, high standards, prestige, and excellence. the school believed that the ib was an appropriate vehicle for improving an already successful school. a critical spatial framework using lefebvre’s triad showed that the produced space of jms provided a crucial impetus and a unique confidence to adopt the ib myp. spatial factors played a significant role, among others, in jms’ rationale for choosing the ib myp. not only did the school perceive itself to have the necessary space to successfully adopt a demanding new program, the adoption of the ib might reproduce current educational advantages. the ib helped the school to maintain an exclusive and privileged space. more research on space and education, in addition to this exploration, is necessary to determine space’s complicity in systems of correspondence and reproduction. there are additional ways to expand the research presented here. extended case studies using a similar methodology can learn from parents, teachers, businesses and other local/global actors. it became clear in analyzing the data that a project explicitly aimed at comparing different schools, program rationales, and spatial factors would be insightful. additionally, there is a need for education research to explore space’s intersection with various forms of oppression including race, gender, class, national origin, sexual orientation, language, and dis/ability (pacheco & velez, 2009). the extent that spaces are ‘raced’ is at the heart of critical race spatial analysis (crsa). velez, solórzano, and pacheco (as quoted in pacheco & velez, 2009) defined crsa as “an explanatory framework and methodological ...that works to examine how structural and institutional factors influence and shape racial dynamics and the power associated with those dynamics over time” (p. 293). although not the aim of this paper, it was apparent that certain administrator statements could be elaborated through a crsa framework. one might ask what is to be inferred when an administrator says something like “this community has high expectations for the kids. they are above and beyond standard public school expectations.” crsa adds an intriguing layer onto lefebvre’s triad model used in this paper and helps lay the groundwork for spatial justice in education. continuing the call for spatial thinking in education, i use lefebvre’s (1991) own words, “ [representational] space is alive: it speaks” (p. 42). i close by asking, “are we listening?” timothy monreal current issues in comparative education 40 acknowledgements: thank you to dr. kara brown for her support in the publication of this article. i also thank the reviewers for the feedback that was crucial to improving the article. about the author: timothy monreal is a ph.d. student in foundations of education at the university of south carolina, columbia. contact: timothy monreal at tmonreal@email.sc.edu references beard, j. & puntis, a. 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(2013). dilemmas and challenges in ib middle years programme (myp) implementation. retrieved from: http://www.ibo.org/contentassets/4ccc99665bc04f3686957ee197c13855/executiv esummary_williams_final.pdf http://www.ibo.org/contentassets/4ccc99665bc04f3686957ee197c13855/executivesummary_williams_final.pdf http://www.ibo.org/contentassets/4ccc99665bc04f3686957ee197c13855/executivesummary_williams_final.pdf 4. new jersey teachers’ professional learning about climate change.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 27, issue 1, special issue 2025 new jersey teachers’ professional learning about climate change lauren madden the college of new jersey during the 2022-23 academic year, new jersey became the first state in the united states to adopt learning standards that support climate change education k-12 across all subject areas, offering an ideal context for exploring the relationship between education and climate change. although new jersey has provided financial funding to support teachers in teaching about climate change, little is known about teachers’ preparedness to implement developmentally appropriate climate change instruction in k-12 settings. this study utilizes interviews from 50 new jersey teachers who participated in a classroom observation study conducted during the 2023-24 academic year to describe their professional learning related to climate change. though professional learning varied considerably across the dataset, most respondents indicated that self-directed learning was their primary mode of professional development about climate change, followed by attendance at workshops or webinars. several participants reported having no access to professional development provided by their school or district on the topic, despite the introduction of standards. when asked about plans for future professional development related to climate change, the majority of interviewees asserted that they had plans, but these varied with their grade bands. the findings suggest that more coherent professional learning opportunities are needed to support teachers in integrating climate change into their teaching. more mechanisms should be implemented to acknowledge teachers’ self-directed learning on climate change. keywords: climate change education, educational policy, professional learning. introduction 2024 was the planet's hottest year on record, exceeding the record from 2023 (vlock & jacobs, 2025). the world is experiencing intensified effects of climate change, including increased floods, extreme weather, wildfires, and changes to ecosystems and biodiversity (national oceanic and atmospheric administration [noaa], 2023). new jersey (nj) residents face magnified climate change effects in comparison to other places in the united states (u.s.) (nj department of environmental protection [njdep], 2020). nj is predicted to have more extended periods of higher temperatures, sea level rise, precipitation, related flooding, and drought events by 2050 due to a changing climate. children are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change (environmental protection agency [epa], 2023). children should be placed at the forefront of climate change solutions. they are at increased risk for asthma and allergies, exposure to pathogens, and displacement from homes due to flooding (epa, 2023). higher heat © 2025, madden. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 27(1), 88-103. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en madden exposure has a negative correlation with students’ academic achievement. the epa notes that “temperature “ increases of 2°c and 4°c of global warming are associated with, on average, 4 percent and 7 percent reductions in academic achievement per child, respectively, relative to average learning gains experienced each school year” (epa, 2023, p. 6). to build a flourishing and resilient future, it is critical to both adapt education to meet the constraints educational systems face due to our changing climate and to educate children about climate change. as woodard and schulz (2024) noted: today’s children will undoubtedly have to learn about and adapt to this global emergency over the course of their lifetimes. climate change education can help them to understand the causes, consequences, and potential solutions. it can also offer a space to reimagine and act toward a more just future. (p. 5) education about climate change is a powerful potential climate solution. education is among the best tools for mitigating climate change through reducing atmospheric carbon emissions (bapna, simpson, & colenbrander, 2024; kwauk & winthrop, 2021). yet, the power of education is rarely leveraged in climate action plans. the united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization (unesco) reports that sustainable development goal 4 on quality education was addressed in only two of 72 transnational climate initiatives covered in their 2024 report, education and climate change: learning to act for people and planet (unesco & mecce, 2024). controversy surrounds efforts to support climate change education in many parts of the world, including the u.s. in some instances, policies prevent teachers from addressing the topic in their classrooms altogether (kamentez, 2023; waldman, 2023). the state of nj has been at the forefront of climate change education over the past several years (madden, 2022). in 2020, nj’s first lady, tammy murphy, announced that the state would be the first in the u.s. to require learning standards to support climate change instruction across grade levels and subject areas (nj office of the governor, 2020). predictive studies suggest that education for climate change has the potential to reduce carbon emissions similarly to many of the top solutions suggested by project drawdown, such as transitioning to electric cars and concentrated solar panels1 (project drawdown, n.d.; kwauk & winthrop, 2021). including learning standards that address climate change directly in k-12 instruction can help to build a scientific knowledge base among all nj citizens, preparing them to develop solutions to this monumental global problem. standards to support climate change learning (nj department of education [doe], 2022) were released in 2022. their implementation began in 2022-23. little is known about teachers’ preparedness to implement climate change content in elementary school. most climate change education studies focus on middle school and later (e.g., bofferdint & kloser, 2015; plutzer & hannah, 2018). the next generation science standards (ngss) make explicit connections to climate change with the global climate change disciplinary 1 concentrated solar, electric vehicles, and education are predicted to reduce carbon emissions on the order of 10-20 gigatons. 89 current issues in comparative education new jersey teachers’ professional learning about climate change core idea (dci), but it is not introduced until middle school (national research council [nrc], 2013). my work studies nj k-12 teachers’ professional development experiences about climate change during the second year of the standards’ implementation. understanding the ways teachers can be supported in teaching about climate change confidently is critical for building a thriving, scientifically literate populace. teachers’ preparedness to implement climate change instruction though nj’s state-level governing structures provide an environment conducive to learning about climate change and require instruction in this area with specific standards, teachers’ preparedness to implement the subject is varied. a survey-based study revealed that many teachers across nj had low confidence in their ability to teach about climate change, and sometimes held misconceptions about the topic (madden et al., 2023). the findings are not unique. will (2023) reported that only 21 percent of u.s. teachers felt very confident in their ability to teach about climate change on a north american association for environmental education (naaee)-sponsored survey, where nearly all respondents agreed that it was important to teach about the topic. other research from the u.s. supports the notion that many teachers enter the profession feeling unprepared to cover climate change in the space of their classrooms, highlighting the critical importance of professional learning on the topic (drewes et al., 2018; kirk, 2017; parnes et al., 2025). studies demonstrate that climate change professional learning can result in increased confidence and content knowledge about the topic, yet exposure to this kind of professional learning is not always ubiquitous (e.g., madden et al., 2023a; drewes et al., 2018). mavuso and colleagues (2022) found that despite nationwide efforts in south africa, nigeria, and kenya to support climate change education, teachers had little guidance on how to do so, indicating a need for professional development. amoakwa and co-authors (2024) found that teachers in ghana requested professional learning to better prepare teachers to include climate change in their instruction. greer and colleagues (2023) reported that fewer than half of the teachers surveyed in the united kingdom reported receiving any professional development on climate change, and of those who did, much of their learning was self-taught. ennes and others (2021) reported on barriers to u.s. teachers’ engagement with professional development related to climate change, finding that a multitude of influences served as barriers, but time and teachers’ confidence in their scientific knowledge about the topic were key factors. conceptual framework bapna and colleagues (2024) put forth the climate-education research framework (cerf, figure 1), which illustrates many of the overlaps between climate change and education within the context of systems thinking. the cerf framework delineates the different categories of education (horizontal) with types of learning about climate change (vertical). all of these different categories overlap and affect change at the systemic level. figure 1 below depicts this framework: current issues in comparative education 90 madden figure 1 the climate-education research framework (bapna et al., 2024)2 the cerf framework asserts that climate change education occurs at all levels through formal schooling, non-formal (or informal) learning settings, and various sectors through professional development. it acknowledges that climate change education encompasses adaptation and mitigation to climate change effects, as well as understanding specific examples of lasting effects of climate change, including loss and damage. i focus on how teachers are prepared at the sector level through professional learning about climate change itself and how to teach it across early childhood, primary, and secondary school settings. the systems-thinking underlying the cerf framework allows for identifying how factors in one component of the framework affect others (e.g., sector-level issues influencing early childhood and school settings). the cerf framework asserts that climate change education can take many forms and address the components of climate change education (adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage). methodology the study takes place within a larger statewide project examining k-12 climate change instruction in nj. it included observations and interviews with teachers in nj to give a snapshot of the status of climate change education approximately one year into the implementation of new learning standards. 50 teachers joined. observations took place in 20 of nj’s 21 counties. teacher participants were spread evenly across grade levels: 17 taught at elementary schools, 16 at middle schools, and 17 at high schools (table 1). table 1 distribution of teacher observations across grade levels grade level participating teachers elementary school: grades k-5, ages ~5-11 n=17 (34%) middle school: grades 6-8, ages ~11-14 n=16 (32%) high school: grades 9-12, ages ~12-18 n=17 (.34%) 2 retrieved from https://media.odi.org/documents/odi-om-cerf-wp-feb24-proof05.pdf 91 current issues in comparative education https://media.odi.org/documents/odi-om-cerf-wp-feb24-proof05.pdf new jersey teachers’ professional learning about climate change participating teachers comprised a voluntary response sample. recruitment took place via email outreach to professional teacher listservs and social media posts on linkedin, instagram, and twitter/x. the participating teachers responded to these calls for participants by completing a survey. participants invited researchers to their classrooms to observe a lesson of his or her choice. a team of four researchers from the college of new jersey observed the teachers, with a researcher visiting a classroom at a time. lesson duration varied by teacher and ranged from approximately 30 minutes to just under two hours, with most observations in the 50-60 minute range. the observer sketched the classroom or learning space and documented what the teacher and students were doing for each of the lesson segments. the observer recorded which instructional strategies and curricular materials were used during the observed lesson. teachers were observed teaching a climate change lesson during the 2023-24 academic year.3 following the observation, the researchers interviewed each participating teacher over zoom to debrief and provide context for the observation. the interviews were transcribed. names and identifying information were removed. during these interviews, teachers described their professional development experiences related to climate change and plans for future professional learning related to climate change. researchers coded the teachers’ responses to these questions using a grounded approach (saldana, 2015). participants around a third of teachers fell into each grade band. while most observed lessons were in science classes, researchers observed various subjects and classroom settings (table 2). table 2 teaching assignments for each of the observed teachers elementary n = 17 middle school n = 16 high school n = 17 total n = 50 elementary general education 12 (71%) 12 (24%) elementary inclusion 2 (12%) 2 (4%) art 1 (6%) 1 (6%) 2 (4%) technology 1 ( 6%) 2 (12%) 3 (6%) science 1 (6%) 8 (50%) 11 (65%) 20 (40%) english language arts 3 (19%) 3 ( 6%) mathematics 1 ( 6%) 1 (2%) 3 since the participants were volunteers and recruited from the author’s professional network, there is potential for bias within the sample. current issues in comparative education 92 madden social studies 1 (6%) 1 (6%) 2 (4%) physical education 1 (6%) 1 (2%) multidisciplinary advisory 1 (6%) 1 (2%) world languagesspanish 2 (12%) 2 (4%) english as a second language 1 (6%) 1 ( 2%) elementary teachers 12 of 17 teachers (71 percent) were classroom generalist teachers in grades ranging from k-5. 2 were teachers in inclusion classrooms (12 percent). the remaining 3 (18 percent) were ‘specials’ teachers (1 art teacher, 1 technology teacher, and 1 science specialist). middle school teachers 8 of the 16 middle school teachers were science teachers. 3 (19 percent) were english-language arts teachers. just a teacher (6 percent) taught each of these subjects: mathematics, art, multidisciplinary advisory, social studies, and physical education. high school teachers of the 17 participating high school teachers, a large majority were science teachers, 11 or 65 percent were science teachers. two, or 12 percent, were spanish teachers, and another two, or 12 percent, were technology teachers. a teacher (or 6 percent) taught these subjects: english as a second language, technology, art, and social studies. research questions my study asks what kinds of professional learning experiences related to climate change are reported by teachers engaging in standards-aligned instruction on climate change? and what are teachers’ plans for future professional learning on climate change? data sources after each classroom observation, the teacher participant engaged in a debriefing interview with the observer within 48 hours of the observation. the interviews lasted approximately 20 minutes and followed a semi-structured protocol. researchers asked the teachers, how did you prepare for teaching about climate change? and do you have any plans for future professional development on climate change? if so, what are they? the interviewers were encouraged to probe for information regarding formal coursework, workshops, schoolor district-provided professional development, and self-directed learning. the interviews took place synchronously over zoom. they were audio recorded and automatically transcribed. each interviewer returned to the transcript to remove identifying information and correct any transcription errors. 93 current issues in comparative education new jersey teachers’ professional learning about climate change data analyses interview transcripts were coded using a grounded approach (saldana, 2015). trends and themes that emerged across responses were identified using constant comparison. these trends and themes were used as organizational categories. sub-trends from within these categories emerged and are described in the findings. most of the themes were in line with the researchers’ expectations, as the interviewees were responding to specific questions about their professional learning. if a teacher mentioned attending a specific workshop, their response was coded in the category of webinars and workshops. the interviewers probed the teachers to identify self-directed type activities that might not always be considered professional development, such as reading or listening to podcasts. if teachers identified these types of tasks, they were coded as self-learning with subcategories for the type of professional learning (e.g, reading, documentaries, etc.). though the focus of this study is on teachers’ preparedness and professional learning about climate change, some teachers shared information throughout their interviews that shed further light on their experiences. participants shared whether they had the support of administrators. others commented on the importance of seeking information from reliable sources for their professional learning, as well as information they shared with the children in their classes. these findings provided context on teachers’ approaches to professional learning about climate change, and are also presented below. findings the large categories in types of professional learning that emerged from the analysis were: self-directed learning, workshops or webinars, and relying on prior knowledge and experiences (table 3). these categories included sub-themes, which i unpack further below. responses that were coded ‘self-directed’ indicated teachers sharing that they sought out resources of many kinds (readings, videos, podcasts, social media feeds, etc.) to supplement their content knowledge, and to possibly share with their students. if a teacher noted a workshop, workshop series, webinar, or webinar series focused on climate change-related content or pedagogical skills and techniques for teaching climate change, it was coded as ‘webinars or workshops.’ if a teacher referred to prior knowledge from earlier coursework at the undergraduate or graduate level, or prior work or life experiences, it was coded ‘prior knowledge.’ note that in many cases, teachers listed one or more examples of types of professional learning they experienced. category totals are higher than 100 percent across all categories and grade bands. table 3 distribution of professional learning experiences cited among observed teachers elementary teachers (n = 17) middle school teachers (n = 16) high school teachers (n = 17) total (n=50) self-directed 13 (76 %) 11 (69%) 13 (76%) 37 (74%) current issues in comparative education 94 madden webinars or workshops 10 (59 %) 9 (56%) 13 (76%) 32 (64%) prior knowledge 8 (47%) 3 (19%) 11 (65%) 22 (44%) self-directed learning nearly three-quarters of the participants (37 out of 50, or 74 percent) reported engaging in self-learning about climate change. the examples given were varied but included readings, documentaries, news programming on television, radio, or podcasts, websites, and social media pages addressing climate change. twenty-three of the participants (6 elementary teachers, 7 middle school teachers, and 10 high school teachers) cited reading books, magazines, or news media sources. one elementary teacher shared, “i like to keep an eye out for any articles that come my way, related to climate change, and share those with the students,” in her interview. another elementary teacher noted, “i am always trying to stay abreast of everything in the news about climate change. that way, in turn, i am knowledgeable so that i can do my job as a teacher, but also turn the information over to other colleagues.” a middle school teacher emphasized sharing readings she did outside of class with her students: i read some articles and brought them to my students. they were about christmas trees, and how we are using trees, and whether natural or artificial is better for the environment. i let the students discover and come to conclusions on their own after reading. a high school teacher noted: i read a lot. i typically have three books in my circulation. i usually have one nonfiction book, one book based on my interests, and then at least one science book, which could be either anatomically themed or environmental science. they all inevitably bring up climate change, even if it's not a climate change book. 4 interviewed elementary school teachers described watching documentaries or other video-based informational sources about climate change as part of their professional development on the topic. a teacher shared, “i learn a lot about climate change from watching documentaries on disney like planet earth.” 3 middle school teachers expressed how they used documentaries or videos for self-directed learning on climate change. in the words of one middle school teacher talking about a video she found: adidas is collecting plastic bottles off of coastlines, taking those plastic bottles, turning them into threads, and then making their shoes out of them, called parlay. they recently made a completely recyclable shoe. so when you are done with that shoe, you ship it back to them, and they recycle it into a new shoe. i learned a lot from that video and shared it with my students. 95 current issues in comparative education new jersey teachers’ professional learning about climate change 7 high school teachers cited videos or documentaries they used as sources for self-directed learning during their interviews. a teacher mentioned the netflix series you are what you eat, which helped him frame some thinking about broader climate solutions. in his words: “teaching kids that it is not just about buying an electric car. it is about what you eat because that is a huge part of climate change, you know, getting away from a meat-based diet, getting more water, and a plant-based diet.” 2 elementary teacher participants explained that they followed various professional organizations and teachers on social media as part of their self-directed learning. for instance, “on my social media platforms, i follow a lot of different teachers and a lot of different entities ranging from nasa to the national wildlife federation to audubon.” no middle school teachers shared about social media feeds from professional organizations, but 4 high school teachers did. a high school teacher mentioned the organization save coastal wildlife’s social media presence and his affiliation with them: i went and did their winter seal survey with them. so it is located in sandy hook. they get harbor seals, sometimes gray seals, very rarely harp seals, but my zoology teacher and i went a couple of winters ago, and then last year we took the kids. 4 elementary school teacher respondents described researching their curricular materials using the nj standards as a guide for better understanding ways to integrate the topic into their teaching. for example: i have been preparing by reading the district’s curriculum guides, available on the district website. anybody can view them but become knowledgeable through the resources and activity guides that they share, and look for places to drop in the climate change context where it makes the most sense. a middle school teacher shared about curricular connections, along with 4 high school teachers. a high school spanish teacher discussed using climate change as an opportunity for bilingual communication: “there are limited handouts and limited signs in spanish. so we are thinking of how being bilingual can enhance bilingual communication and can enhance the global push towards addressing climate change in various and various areas.” workshops or webinars another large group of participants (32 out of 50, or 64 percent) shared that they participated in workshops or webinars related to climate change. 10 were elementary school teachers, 9 were middle school teachers, and 13 were high school teachers. not all interviewees gave specifics about the workshop or webinar providers, but those who did fell into several large categories, including national or international organizations, institutions of higher education, and informal learning centers such as nature centers and museums. only 2 of these respondents described a workshop hosted by their school current issues in comparative education 96 madden or district. this is an indication that teachers did not necessarily have access to professional learning opportunities about climate change provided by their schools, and instead had to seek these out on their own. an elementary teacher made a point to directly address this, “i would say that preparing to teach about climate change for me is made up of 100 percent of things outside of the official pd that my school offers.” several interviewed teachers (5 at the elementary level, 3 at the middle school level, and 8 at the high school level) cited webinars or workshops hosted by national or international organizations such as audubon, the national science teaching association (nsta), climate generation, and subjecttoclimate. for example, an elementary teacher shared, “i participated in the nsta's webinar series where they helped align lessons to climate change content.” another elementary teacher mentioned: i am participating in the subject to climate workshops where they walk you through the science of climate change, the social, emotional learning aspects, and the ways to spark student action. for me, that propelled me to open my eyes and become more aware of opportunities where i could integrate it. a middle school teacher noted, “i went to a formal presentation on environmental economics run by the new jersey council for economics, which included climate change.” a handful of participants mentioned professional development events hosted by institutions of higher education (two elementary teachers, 4 middle school teachers, and 3 high school teachers). for example, a middle school teacher mentioned, “columbia college has this great guy who runs an earth workshop. he takes scientists and brings them together with teachers, mostly high school teachers. i have attended those.” 2 respondents discussed workshops or webinars hosted by informal learning sites, a teacher at the elementary school level, and another at the high school level. prior knowledge and experience twenty-two of the 50 participants (44 percent) shared that they relied on their prior knowledge and experience to prepare for teaching about climate change. these included 8 elementary school teachers, 3 middle school teachers, and 11 high school teachers. these teachers mentioned a variety of different ways in which they built their prior knowledge. for example, several discussed classes that they took as part of their undergraduate or graduate coursework, such as one high school teacher who described: way back when, for my undergrad, i went to the [university], and they had this idea of allowing students to apply to these programs as freshmen, and they were a strand of four classes, and the one that i applied to and was accepted into was all on environmental science. i learned a lot there. others mentioned personal interests or passions about climate change. as one elementary school teacher noted: 97 current issues in comparative education new jersey teachers’ professional learning about climate change i remember being in high school around 1988, and there was a magazine that i subscribed to at the time with a cover story on what was then called global warming. since then, i have been learning about the topic. we’ve been talking about this in a big way for decades. still other interviewees referred to prior careers related to environmental education. a high school teacher shared: “i have spent my entire career in wildlife biology and conservation. now, i am focusing more on how to teach and design the curriculum.” another high school teacher shared, “i received my undergrad degree in wildlife biology at stockton university and a graduate degree from clemson university in environmental science and sustainability. after working in the field for years, i just wanted to come back home and teach.” these teachers drew on prior career experiences to build their knowledge bases for teaching about climate change. other trends discussing professional learning, more trends emerged among teachers. some noted that at the elementary level, english-language arts and mathematics take priority over science and social studies. as a result, climate change can end up on the back burner. of the 50 teachers who invited researchers into their classrooms, the researcher was greeted or acknowledged by an administrator in just six (12 percent) of the observations. using reliable sources for self-directed professional learning and then sharing with students was also important. as an elementary teacher explained: i am spending time just staying one step ahead of the students and trying to figure out exactly what sources are good sources for accurate climate change information. because it is a touchy subject, because you know exactly what and what makes sense for your students [developmentally], and what uses evidence-based and science to make conclusions. i have been using the us epa and nasa websites a lot. information literacy was a critical component of teachers’ planning process when developing climate change lessons. future plans for professional learning the vast majority (37 out of 50) participants discussed plans for future professional learning, and in many cases (23 out of 37, or 62 percent), these teachers had specific ideas about their future professional development, as displayed in table 4 below. table 4 plans for future professional learning among observed teachers elementary teachers (n=17) middle school teachers (n=16) high school teachers (n=17) total (n=50) current issues in comparative education 98 madden intend to attend climate change-related professional development in the future 16 (94 %) 12 (75%) 9 (53%) 37 (74%) specified ideas for future professional learning 11 (64 %) 7 (44%) 5 (29%) 23 (46%) nearly three-quarters of the observed teachers commented that they were planning to continue learning on their own about climate change. many teachers noted that they did plan on attending future professional development, but did not specify in what way they hoped to engage. for example, a high school teacher said, “i do want to continue learning about climate change, because i think this is the most important issue that we have in our time.” similarly, an elementary teacher shared: yes, i do plan to continue to learn about climate change, because i think it is a very important thing. not just for me to know as an individual, but i think as an educator. you know, we hold a pretty empowering torch that can be passed on, and i think if we don't do our best, then it could fall to the wayside. the statements were promising but did not show how or what the teachers hoped to pursue learning about through professional development. yet, other teachers shared specific plans about their future professional learning, which tended to follow the same general themes as their prior professional learning, mentioning things like self-directed learning, workshops and webinars, and formal coursework. a middle school teacher noted, “next year i will probably try to read more about climate change,” while another shared, “i got accepted to attend a professional development workshop at the museum of natural history about starting conversations about keystone species with students.” an elementary school teacher shared that she hoped to learn more about how to integrate climate change into novels: “i do plan on continuing learning about climate change down the road. it. it worked out well to insert climate change and care for the environment into this book, and i would like to learn how to integrate it differently.” the interviewed teachers’ plans for future professional learning differed among grade bands taught. elementary school teachers were nearly unanimous in their interest in pursuing future professional learning (94 percent), and this percentage decreased to 75 percent at the middle school level and 53 percent at the high school level. conclusion from this statewide study, it is clear that even in a state where climate change education is required, professional learning opportunities for teachers are inconsistent. similar to what greer and colleagues (2023) found among united kingdom teachers, many of those who participated in this study (74 percent) engaged in self-directed learning related to climate change. while this type of experience can build science content 99 current issues in comparative education new jersey teachers’ professional learning about climate change knowledge, these self-directed experiences cannot be quantified in a way that attendance at workshops or coursework in higher education can, or done in a way that provides a coherent experience for all teachers within a school, district, or state. there is no way to measure the quality or accuracy of information conveyed in self-selected learning materials. there is little opportunity for this type of self-directed learning to count toward teachers’ professional learning requirements, which could potentially decrease teachers’ motivation for seeking out information on their own. the challenges with self-directed learning experiences are amplified when we consider that very few (just 2, or 4 percent) of the participants in this study were allowed to explore climate change learning opportunities through their schools or districts. the small number of school administrators who acknowledged researchers visiting their classrooms (6, or 12 percent) suggests that school district support for climate change education, or climate change professional development, may not be strong enough to support implementation at schoolwide scales. the observed support from school district administrators was mixed across the dataset. however, the finding that elementary school teachers were much more likely to have plans for future professional development was promising. existing curricula aligned to the ngss introduce climate change at the middle school level, indicating that there is a greater need to support teachers in the elementary grade levels. many of the participating teachers described efforts to ensure they were accessing reputable resources, understanding the best places to integrate climate change into existing curricula, and committing to professional growth. given that they were volunteer participants, it is likely that they already felt confident teaching about climate change. mechanisms should be created to help leverage the experiences of these already confident teachers to provide in-house expertise as schools take on the challenge of adopting the new climate change standards. as this global issue continues to negatively impact our planet, it is critical to develop the skills and knowledge in children to innovate solutions. creating standards around climate change is an excellent first step, but teachers should also have the tools they need to effectively implement this content in a comprehensive and meaningful way. perhaps one strategy for leveraging the collective knowledge of teachers who are already confident about climate change content and the prevalence of teachers engaging in self-directed learning is to implement professional learning communities or reading discussion groups within schools or districts centered on shared experiences. these types of activities could fit within the scope of a teacher’s standard planning periods and would not require additional funding, transportation, or substitute teacher costs. they could also boost morale, as teachers who are already knowledgeable about the topic could serve as in-house experts. another strategy could be including legislation around climate change professional learning, which might include a requirement to expose all teachers to some baseline content knowledge and pedagogical skills, which would support widespread implementation of these standards. current issues in comparative education 100 madden climate change is perhaps humanity’s greatest challenge, and teachers must be prepared to introduce this content effectively. this study provides an inside look at teachers’ current level of preparedness to tackle this topic in a state where teaching about climate change is required. the findings can be used to inform professional learning efforts both in states that require climate change education and those that do not. lauren madden is a professor of elementary science education at the college of new jersey, where she also coordinates programming in environmental sustainability education. her current work focuses directly on climate change education. her book, climate change education across disciplines k-12: new jersey and beyond, released in february 2025, shares advice and 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(2024). teaching climate change to children: literacy pedagogy that cultivates sustainable futures. teachers college press. 103 current issues in comparative education https://www.nj.gov/education/climate/learning/gradeband/ https://www.nj.gov/education/climate/learning/gradeband/ https://dep.nj.gov/wp-content/uploads/climatechange/nj-scientific-report-2020.pdf https://dep.nj.gov/wp-content/uploads/climatechange/nj-scientific-report-2020.pdf https://www.nj.gov/governor/news/news/562020/20200603b.shtml https://drawdown.org/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-science-is-under-attack-in-classrooms/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-science-is-under-attack-in-classrooms/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-science-is-under-attack-in-classrooms/ https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/if-climate-change-education-matters-why-dont-all-teachers-teach-it/2023/03 https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/if-climate-change-education-matters-why-dont-all-teachers-teach-it/2023/03 https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/if-climate-change-education-matters-why-dont-all-teachers-teach-it/2023/03 1. sara pan-algarra editorial introduction.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 26, issue 2, special issue 2024 editorial introduction: human rights in comparative and international education sara pan-algarra teachers college, columbia university introduction the united nations general assembly adopted the universal declaration of human rights on december 10, 1948. human rights are inalienable because they cannot be taken away, interdependent because all rights are interrelated, and indivisible because they are equally important. this declaration recognizes the right to education under article 26, a right that has historically informed the field of comparative and international education (cie). this special issue explores the past, present, and future of human rights in cie. our call for manuscripts posed questions for contributors to push the boundaries about research on human rights in cie. how have different motivations for and conceptualizations of human rights operated at the levels of policy, curriculum, and pedagogy? what is the legacy of human rights in cie and how is this legacy shaping research and education reform today? how can human rights education be reimagined and recreated to meet the needs of current and future generations? from exploring the colombian national plan for human rights education to discussing a curriculum where learners can engage in discussions about artificial intelligence (ai) and human rights literacy, this special issue creatively tackles our initial questions. we curated six publications that invite readers to interrogate the universal nature of human rights and the connections between international human rights law, education policy, and sustainable development. the first section includes four articles focused on the complex and evolving landscape of human rights in education. tebeje molla and sally baker discuss refugees’ right to education in australia. applying an interpretive policy analysis, the authors examine australian education policies for refugees vis-à-vis international agreements the country has signed and ratified. their article highlights to what extent these national policies align with international commitments. the authors shed light on areas where the government has not protected nor fulfilled refugees’ right to education. naivedya parakkal explores the dangers of ignoring indigenous knowledge systems in human rights-based approaches and sustainable development. the author focuses on the adivasi indigenous peoples in attappady, india. contrasting adivasi narratives with a thematic analysis of the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization’s (unesco) recommendations to advance human rights education, the article reveals a disconnect between top-down policies and the daily realities adivasi peoples face. through interviews with adivasi interlocutors, the article stresses the significance of paying close attention to indigenous knowledge systems in human rights education. similarly, angela sánchez rojas applies the colombian national plan for © 2024, pan-algarra. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 26(2), 4-6. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en pan-algarra human rights education as a case study to illustrate how western views have shaped human rights education. her analysis provides policy recommendations for a more holistic approach through the lens of pluriversal rights education. the articles by parakkal and sánchez rojas emphasize the importance of opening up spaces within human rights education to a pluriversal framework in which local communities—especially in the global south—are treated as “possibilities and not as things or problems to be solved” (williams & bermeo, 2020, p. 14). the fourth article in this special issue engages in a theoretical discussion about emotional engagement in human rights education through the notion of affective justice. michalinos zembylas discusses the risks of exposing learners to knowledge about human rights violations without providing adequate tools to critically reflect on what they learn. the second section of the special issue is made of two essays. saah agyemang-badu, felisa tibbitts, and sage phillips write about ai in human rights literacy. the authors shed light on the urgent need for educators and learners to understand the broader ethical implications of ai in their lives. the analysis proposes a series of curricular lessons to raise awareness about such implications. the second essay by whitney hough evaluates the peacejam foundation’s work. hough looks at the peacejam foundation ambassadors curriculum, assessing to what extent the project aligns with the transformative human rights education (thre) framework. thre aims to promote social change among youth and to cultivate awareness about global injustices. the author considers the curriculum's strengths and limitations, concluding that community engagement and youth participation are essential elements in the design and implementation of human rights education. from a wide range of perspectives, these six publications share the spirit of critical thinking, academic creativity, and hopeful reimagination that cice actively seeks to enhance. *** i take the opportunity in this editorial introduction to celebrate that cice’s website is now fully available in portuguese, spanish, and english. we envision a journal where voices and ideas in multiple languages are welcomed and distributed. we invite our community of readers to share our calls with educators, administrators, graduate students, policymakers, and specialists from government, non-governmental organizations, and academia who may want to publish their work in portuguese or spanish. we hope that future editorial boards will consider integrating other languages into the journal. aiming to ensure that cice’s work reaches diverse audiences, this year we will become certified by the directory of open access journals (doaj). this is a key milestone in the process of expanding our journal’s accessibility and outreach initiatives. since its first issue in 1998, cice has been a space for critical thinking, dialogue, and plurality of ideas. cice would not be possible without the contributions of people representing diverse backgrounds. in times of divisiveness and fear of the other, cice stands for respect and dignity. this special issue reiterates our commitment to showcase current issues in comparative education 5 https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/cice https://doaj.org/ editorial introduction analyses that critically engage with the current state of education worldwide through context-specific discussions. the special issue on climate change, migration, and conflict: lessons in education will be published in the summer of 2025 and will follow the same commitment that informed this special issue on human rights in comparative and international education. the two issues for the 2024-2025 academic year exemplify cice’s tradition of creating bridges between the field of cie and other disciplines. cice is dedicated to advancing knowledge and rigorous research on the intersection between education and ongoing global social, legal, environmental, and economic challenges. acknowledgments i would like to thank professor regina cortina at teachers college, columbia university, cice’s student-led executive board and international advisory board, the authors, the columbia university libraries journals team, and everyone else who contributed to the development of this special issue. sara pan-algarra is a doctoral fellow and candidate in the international and comparative education program at teachers college, columbia university. pan-algarra is the editor-in-chief of current issues in comparative education (cice) (2024-2025). email: sara.panalgarra@tc.columbia.edu for cice-related matters, please contact cice@tc.columbia.edu references williams, h. & bermeo, m. j. (2020). a decolonial imperative: pluriversal rights education. international journal of human rights education, 4(1), 1-33. https://repository.usfca.edu/ijhre/vol4/iss1/1 6 current issues in comparative education mailto:sara.panalgarra@tc.columbia.edu mailto:cice@tc.columbia.edu https://repository.usfca.edu/ijhre/vol4/iss1/1 2. refugees and the right to education: reflections on international frameworks and the australian context.docx current issues in comparative education (cice), volume 26, issue 2, special issue 2024 refugees and the right to education: reflections on international frameworks and the australian context tebeje molla deakin university, australia sally baker australian national university, australia the right to education is universally recognized as a fundamental human right, safeguarded by numerous international declarations and conventions, including the universal declaration of human rights (udhr). viewing refugee education through the lens of human rights is rooted in the principle that everyone, regardless of citizenship status, should have equal educational opportunities as an integral aspect of their broader human rights. however, such opportunities are variable. using an interpretive approach to policy analysis, this paper reviews the australian education policy space in the context of international initiatives, exploring national responses juxtaposed with key global arrangements. in shedding light on the alignment—or lack thereof—between national policies and international obligations, this paper contributes valuable insights to the broader debate on the importance of rights-based refugee education. keywords: human rights, refugee education, refugee convention, united nations, universal declaration of human rights, australia. introduction refugee education, viewed through the lens of human rights, underscores the imperative to ensure that individuals forced to flee due to conflict or persecution have equal access to education and training. the right to education extends beyond mere access; it includes attentiveness to the diverse needs of refugee students (united nations high commissioner for refugees [unhcr], 2019). a human rights perspective demands cultural sensitivity, dignity, and respect for linguistic and cultural backgrounds in educational settings (human rights watch, 2018). protection from discrimination and exploitation, coupled with an emphasis on participation, empowerment, and the continuity of education despite displacement, are crucial to upholding human rights in refugee education. over 110 million individuals were forcibly displaced globally in 2023, with an estimated 40 percent being youth (calaycay et al., 2023). while forcibly displaced people in general can face substantial obstacles in their educational journeys (abu-ghaida & silva, 2020; dryden-peterson, 2018; popescu et al., 2022; unhcr, 2023), this paper examines the educational opportunities of refugees (forcibly displaced individuals resettled in third countries on humanitarian visas) in australia. this narrowed approach will enable us to provide a nuanced exploration of their © 2024, molla & baker. cc by 4.0. current issues in comparative education 26(2), 7-30. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en refugees and the right to education: reflections on international frameworks and the australian context distinct challenges and facilitate our context-specific assessment of australia’s adherence to international agreements on refugees and their access to education. countries of resettlement are expected to provide educational opportunities to support refugee integration (united nations, 2016). education can empower refugees to envision futures that transcend present-day challenges, leveraging valuable skills and knowledge. it can serve as a guiding light amidst uncertainty and precarity, representing a crucial pathway toward rebuilding lives (cha, 2020; dryden-peterson & reddick, 2017; dryden-peterson et al., 2017). in other words, “for people who have lost all their other assets, education represents a primary survival strategy” (flukiger stockton, 1996, p. 3). for those who are displaced, education is more than just a fundamental entitlement—it serves as a lifeline, offering stability, hope, and a pathway to rebuilding their futures. however, around 48 percent of refugee children have no access to education (unhcr, 2023a). refugee learners are often overlooked in national data collection efforts, impeding governments' capacity to strategically plan and effectively deliver education services to this demographic (calaycay et al., 2023; borkowski, 2023). addressing the pressing issue of limited access to education for refugees, along with their underrepresentation in national data in australia, warrants analysis of national education policies’ alignment (or misalignment) with international frameworks. education is enshrined in numerous international declarations and conventions as a human right. the 1948 universal declaration of human rights (udhr) affirms education as a fundamental human right. the un has enacted the udhr through various binding conventions and other mechanisms, including the 1951 refugee convention and the 2018 global compact on refugees. these global commitments mean that governments that resettle refugees bear a responsibility to uphold their right to education (goodwin-gill & mcadam, 2021; xi, 2017). as refugees integrate into new societies, host countries must ensure that educational opportunities for resettled refugees are accessible without discrimination. against the backdrop of the global refugee frameworks that outline states' responsibilities, including ensuring access to quality education for refugees, this paper analyses the framing of refugee education in australia’s education policy space. as a signatory to the 1948 udhr, the 1951 refugee convention and its 1967 protocol, and the 2018 global compact on refugees, australia collaborates with the unhcr to evaluate asylum claims and ensure individuals in genuine need of international protection are identified and assisted. the partnership emphasizes a commitment to coordinated and humane responses to the growing displacement crisis, aligning with the principles outlined in these international frameworks (refugee council of australia [rcoa], 2023, 2023a, 2023b). australia voluntarily offers a program of refugee humanitarian settlement support within its commitment to assessing protection needs and offers. this includes equal access to education (pre-school; schooling; and adult english language provision). 8 current issues in comparative education molla & baker drawing on an interpretive policy analysis approach, this paper reviews international frameworks and national contexts, focusing on selected relevant un declarations and conventions and the australian education policy space. the central question guiding this inquiry is: to what extent do australia’s refugee education provisions reflect its global commitments to humanitarian protection? australia is a signatory to international agreements relevant to the rights of refugees including the 1948 udhr, the 1951 refugee convention, and the 2018 global compact on refugees. our analysis illustrates how australia, as a signatory to these international agreements, navigates the tension between its global commitments to protection and the practical realities of incorporating these commitments into domestic education policies. we aim to develop nuanced understandings of how the right to education for refugees is articulated, interpreted, and implemented within a global national policy context. in exploring the alignment—or lack thereof—between national policies and international obligations, the paper contributes valuable insights to broader debates on the importance of rights-based refugee education. we seek to contribute with potential solutions and provide a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics surrounding the implementation of international refugee frameworks within global and national contexts. the paper is organized into three main sections. the first section outlines the methodological approaches and data sources of the study. the second section analyzes purposefully selected un documents and national education policies. the third section problematizes the alignment between the international frameworks and the national refugee education provisions. methodology and data we used an interpretive approach to policy analysis (yanow, 2000, 2014), which eschews the view that policies are objective phenomena; instead, perceptions, values, and beliefs of those involved shape policy design and implementation. the interpretive approach views policies as socially constructed artifacts that are influenced by a myriad of factors. the umbrella review includes political ideologies, cultural norms, historical legacies, and power dynamics (yanow, 2000; wagenaar, 2015). there is no universally agreed-upon set of issues that objectively demand policy attention. policy problems are systematically formulated and negotiated within a particular political space (bacchi, 2009), which entails (sometimes urgently) selecting some issues while neglecting others. nor are social problems static. what was once a critical or global problem might not get policy attention today or in national contexts. policies are usually understood and perceived differently by different actors. these varying mixed interpretations can shape the implementation of specific instruments and strategies on the evaluation of their intended and unintended consequences (bacchi, 2009) policy knowledge is not discovered but generated through interpretation, mediated by social contexts, values, and experiences (yanow, 2000; wagenaar, 2015). interpretive policy analysis is particularly suited to examining refugee educational current issues in comparative education 9 refugees and the right to education: reflections on international frameworks and the australian context policies. it can facilitate an in-depth exploration of the meanings, assumptions, and values embedded in both international frameworks and the australian administration responses. by focusing on the subjective and discursive aspects of policy, interpretive policy analysis enables an analysis that goes beyond the formal content, revealing how various stakeholders construct, understand, and implement refugee education (yanow, 2000; fischer, 2003). this approach is advantageous as it highlights the interplay between global expectations and national interpretations. helping to elucidate how both international obligations and local contexts shape australia’s commitments to refugee education. authors’ positionality in making sense of policies, the interpretivist analyst invariably brings their interests, values, and worldviews to the table. interpretive policy analysis involves grappling with competing narratives and acknowledging the ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity inherent in policy processes. methodological choices and theoretical approaches reflect the importance of analysts' assumptions, priorities, and scholarly socialization. our lenses tacitly guide our gaze and focus our attention on how discourses circulate in particular ways through phrasings, positionings, juxtapositions, and silences. we are both elective and selected migrants to australia. as an individual of african heritage who journeyed to australia as an international student, tebeje's distinctive positionality profoundly influences the research agenda he pursues and the theoretical and methodological approaches he adopts. leveraging his cultural background and social location, he offers a nuanced understanding of african refugee youth’s educational opportunities and adverse challenges. his advocacy efforts have been dedicated to continue improving and reforming refugee educational rights. sally is an adult migrant who works as an english language teacher, inspired to advocate on refugee education attainability, and a scholar. her work has examined how people with lived experience of forced migration are aided and constrained in accessing, participating, and succeeding in obtaining higher education. she is the founder and chair of refugee education australia, a not-for-profit organization that works to create better educational opportunities and outcomes for refugees in australian education systems. we selected policy documents associated with global refugee frameworks and australia's education system to respond to our research question. qualitative data were drawn from three international frameworks—the udhr (1948), the refugee convention (1951), and the global compact on refugees (2018)—and two national (australian) education policies: the alice springs (mparntwe) education declaration (australian government, 2019a) and the australian universities accord report (australian government, 2024). we focus on key documents that hold significant weight in shaping policies related to refugees' right to education. the national policy documents enabled us to contextualize the global frameworks. 10 current issues in comparative education molla & baker table 1 policy documents reviewed for this paper policy document source scope and purpose universal declaration of human rights united nations (1948) adopted by the united nations general assembly (unga) in 1948, the udhr is a foundational international document that outlines the basic rights and freedoms to which all human beings (including refugees) are entitled. it includes rights such as freedom from discrimination, the right to education, and the right to seek asylum from persecution. the udhr serves as a guiding framework for the protection of human rights globally. refugee convention united nations (1951) the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees was initially created in response to the mass displacement in europe following world war ii. the convention was pivotal in defining who qualifies as a refugee, laying the groundwork for international refugee protection. in 1967, the protocol relating to the status of refugees was introduced to broaden the convention’s scope. this protocol removed the geographical and temporal restrictions, allowing the convention to apply to refugees worldwide, regardless of when or where displacement occurred. global compact on refugees united nations (2018) adopted in 2018, the gcr is a framework aimed at enhancing international cooperation in addressing large movements of refugees and improving the support for host countries and communities. it focuses on four key areas: easing pressure on host countries, enhancing refugee self-reliance, expanding access to third-country solutions, and supporting conditions for safe, voluntary return. the gcr is not legally binding but seeks to guide collective action for refugee protection and support. alice springs (mparntwe) education declaration australian government (2019) the alice springs (mparntwe) education declaration outlines australia’s national education goals, emphasizing inclusive and equitable education for all young australians. it highlights the importance of providing targeted support to students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, including refugees. australian universities accord australian government (2024) the australian commonwealth government commissioned the australian universities accord review. the initiative aimed at re-envisioning australia’s higher education system to make it more accessible, equitable, and responsive to socio-economic and theological changes. one of its central goals is to improve pathways to university for underrepresented groups, which includes students from refugee and asylum-seeker backgrounds. current issues in comparative education 11 refugees and the right to education: reflections on international frameworks and the australian context we closely reviewed each policy document, with special attention to refugee education framing within the international frameworks and the national policy statements. we identified and focused on terms central to our research question, including ‘rights,’ ‘education,’ and ‘refugees.’ using these keywords, we conducted an initial sweep to isolate relevant excerpts within each document that directly referenced these terms concerning refugees’ access to education. this process enabled us to gather a concentrated set of data points about how refugee education is framed and supported at international and national policy levels. after isolating these extracts, we undertook a comparative analysis to explore how key themes are framed across different policy scales (molla, 2021). we then identified emerging patterns within the data corpus and developed storylines by collating relevant data extracts under relevant themes. the development of storylines is a pivotal aspect of our interpretive approach. rather than merely presenting fragmented data points, we sought to weave a cohesive narrative by collating relevant data extracts under specific themes. this narrative construction facilitated a clearer communication of our findings and allowed for a more holistic understanding of the policy context. the interpretive lens allowed us to delve beyond surface content to understand the underlying values and assumptions that shaped the policy landscape. by unmasking and interpreting the representation of refugee education within international frameworks and national contexts, policy frame analysis enabled us to shed light on competing interests within the policy field and who remains invisible in the policies. interrogating national refugee education policy provisions concerning human rights and refugee resettlement international agreements is crucial for revealing gaps and inconsistencies that affect refugees’ educational access and rights. we can make sense of policy silences and misalignments across different policy scales using interpretive policy analysis (molla, 2021). we can uncover how global commitments are translated, limited, or redefined within national frameworks. this approach sheds light on how national policies may fall short of international standards, particularly when national equity provisions are vague, contradictory, or selectively applied. by examining these discrepancies, interpretive analysis highlights the spaces where refugee rights are weakened or neglected, often revealing underlying social, political, or economic forces that shape policy priorities. the analysis focuses primarily on students with refugee backgrounds rather than individuals in the asylum process, internally displaced persons (idps), or those who are stateless. this focus is intentional. our research aims to critically examine australia’s response to international frameworks and refugee education initiatives, specifically addressing those granted refugee status under international law. by honing in on this group, we seek to provide insights into how effectively australia aligns with global expectations in its educational provisions for refugees, whose protection and resettlement involve distinct legal and policy commitments compared to other displaced groups. our emphasis on students with refugee backgrounds also reflects the unique educational and social integration challenges this group faces within the australian context. focusing on students with refugee backgrounds allows us to explore how australia’s educational policies and practices support (or 12 current issues in comparative education molla & baker hinder) this group’s long-term integration and development, thereby offering critical insights for policy improvement and alignment with international standards. findings global frameworks when governments sign and ratify un conventions and agreements, they undertake a legal commitment to implement the stipulated provisions within these instruments (betts & collier, 2017; loescher, 2021). this obligation is grounded in good faith, requiring a genuine intent to fulfill the terms outlined in the conventions. the implementation process involves incorporating un principles into national legislation and policies, necessitating the creation or adjustment of laws to align with international expectations (kneebone, 2017). signatory governments are expected to submit periodic reports detailing their progress in implementing these agreements, with these reports subject to review by un committees or monitoring bodies. bearing this in mind, in this section, we review key international frameworks and australia’s education policies relevant to the issue of refugees and their right to education. following the end of the first world war, the united states and its european allies, mainly through the league of nations, formulated the first collective response to the needs and conditions of forcibly displaced people in europe. this intergovernmental response emerged during the interwar period, gaining significant momentum from the latter half of the 1930s onward when forced displacement and resettlement issues became a global concern (betts & collier, 2017; loescher, 2021). the collective inter-war refugee organizations include the high commissioner for refugees in 1921, the high commissioner for refugees from germany in 1933, and the intergovernmental committee on refugees in 1938 (molla, 2024). following the upheavals of the second world war and the ensuing humanitarian crisis in europe, global leaders established pivotal entities such as the united nations organization (1945) and the international organization for refugees (1946). three international frameworks are pertinent to refugee education: the udhr, the refugee convention, and the global compact on refugees. adopted in 1948, the udhr unequivocally affirms education as a fundamental human right (un, 1948/2015). the udhr aims to safeguard fundamental human rights globally, including civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, promoting the dignity and equality of all individuals. as a foundational document proclaiming the inalienable rights and freedoms to which all individuals are entitled, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, or religion, it sets out a common standard of human rights for all people. subsequently, it has served as the basis for international treaties. two articles in the udhr (un, 1948/2015) cover the right to seek refuge and the right to access education: article 14(1): everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. (art. 14.1) current issues in comparative education 13 refugees and the right to education: reflections on international frameworks and the australian context article 26(1): everyone has the right to education. education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. elementary education shall be compulsory. technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. (art. 26.1) article 14 reaffirms the fundamental principle that individuals facing persecution have the right to seek safety and protection beyond the borders of their home country. by protecting the right to seek asylum, the udhr contributes to developing a global framework to foster a world where individuals are not only protected from persecution but are also granted the opportunity to rebuild their lives in an environment that respects and safeguards their human rights. likewise, article 26 is rooted in the principle that everyone, regardless of refugee status, should have equal educational opportunities as an integral aspect of their broader human rights. the intersection of articles 14 and 26 of the udhr holds profound implications for the rights of refugees to education in countries of resettlement. signatories to article 14 are committed to offering refuge from immediate threats and providing the necessary conditions for individuals to rebuild their lives. education emerges as a fundamental component of this process, playing a transformative role in the integration and empowerment of refugees. educational attainment is seen as both a means and marker of refugee integration (ager & strang, 2008; oecd, 2019). in practical terms, the rights articulated in article 26 mean that countries of resettlement should not only permit refugees to access education but also actively work towards eliminating barriers that may hinder their educational opportunities. this includes addressing language barriers, recognizing and validating prior academic achievements, and creating inclusive learning environments to accommodate diverse cultural backgrounds (stevenson & baker, 2024). governments of resettlement countries and countries of first asylum should recognize that education catalyzes social cohesion, economic participation, and overall community development. it equips refugees with the skills and knowledge needed to navigate their new environment, contribute to the host society, and, eventually, become self-reliant individuals. the udhr was operationalized through several subsequent covenants and compacts. in direct response to the extensive displacement witnessed in post-war europe, the un took a significant step in 1951 by adopting the geneva convention relating to the status of refugees, commonly known as the refugee convention (1951). this landmark agreement explicitly urged member states to address the resettlement of displaced individuals on humanitarian grounds. article 1 of the refugee convention provides a comprehensive definition of a refugee as an individual outside their home country, unable or unwilling to return due to a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. the convention also underscores the commitment of member states to providing refugees with access to education on par with the host country's residents, promoting inclusivity and 14 current issues in comparative education molla & baker equality in educational opportunities. article 22 of the refugee convention outlines the rights of refugees to education: the contracting states shall accord to refugees the same treatment as is accorded to nationals with respect to elementary education. […] the contracting states shall accord to refugees treatment as favourable as possible, and, in any event, not less favourable than that accorded to aliens generally in the same circumstances, with respect to education other than elementary education and, in particular, as regards access to studies, the recognition of foreign school certifications, diplomas and degrees, the remission of fees and charges and the award of scholarships. (art. 22) member states that are signatories to the convention are legally bound to provide refugees with the necessary resources and opportunities for successful resettlement and integration. like other legal instruments that came before it (e.g., the convention relating to the international status of refugees of 1933 and the convention of 1938 concerning the status of refugees coming from germany), the 1951 refugee convention was eurocentric in its scope (ferris & donato, 2020). its 1967 protocol removed temporal and geographical restrictions, expanding its applicability (horsch & russell, 2020). the protocol expects member states to go a step further by recognizing new refugee situations and emerging needs in various parts of the world. in the wake of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015, the un general assembly resolution 71/1 adopted the new york declaration for refugees and migrants (2016). the declaration was signed by all 193 member states of the un. section 1 of the declaration stresses movement as an inherent part of human history: since earliest times, humanity has been on the move. some people move in search of new economic opportunities and horizons. others move to escape armed conflict, poverty, food insecurity, persecution, terrorism, or human rights violations and abuses. still others do so in response to the adverse effects of climate change, natural disasters (some of which may be linked to climate change), or other environmental factors. many move, indeed, for a combination of these reasons. (sec. 1) signatory states have collectively agreed to provide quality education for all refugee children and young people and ensure they acquire essential knowledge and skills for successful integration and participation in society (sections 81 and 82). importantly, the new york declaration paved the way for the 2018 global compact on refugees (unga, 2018), which australia, along with 175 other nations, supported. this non-binding international agreement provides a framework for more ‘predictable and equitable burdenand responsibility-sharing’ in responding to unprecedented numbers of refugees. the compact encourages the international community to provide increased support to countries hosting large refugee populations and promotes innovative approaches to education financing. under article 2.1, the global compact on refugees mandates that states and stakeholders current issues in comparative education 15 refugees and the right to education: reflections on international frameworks and the australian context contribute resources and expertise to enhance the responsiveness of national education systems to the needs and conditions of refugees. the compact emphasizes the importance of minimizing the duration refugees spend outside education and providing comprehensive support for addressing specific education needs, overcoming enrollment obstacles, and facilitating the recognition of equivalency in academic, professional, and vocational qualifications. national education policy context: australia as a signatory to the international frameworks discussed above, australia resettles refugees and allocates resources to support integration. measured on a per capita basis, australia has one of the most generous refugee intake programs in the world (mence et al., 2017; parkinson et al., 2023). since the end of the second world war, australia has resettled close to one million refugees, admitting around 13,000 refugees annually. the largest group of 170,000 displaced persons, predominantly from europe, arrived between 1947 and 1954. between 2013 and 2022, the country resettled 13.1 percent (132,180 individuals) of the total 1,008,934 refugees under the un mandate (rcoa, 2023b). in 2023, the annual humanitarian migrant intake increased to 20,000 (rcoa, 2023b). commensurately, over the past 75 years, there has been a notable rise in the percentage of australians born outside the country, surging from 10 percent to approximately 30 percent (australian bureau of statistics [abs], 2022). the refugee resettlement program is thought to have influenced this demographic shift substantially. when considering multiculturalism and refugee resettlement in the australian context, it is important to reflect on its history of colonial-settler violence against first nations australians. when australia’s contemporary multiculturalism is juxtaposed with its historic policing of migrants, the gaps that we address in this article are starkly exposed. two aspects of australia’s history are relevant. firstly, the disenfranchisement of aboriginal and torres strait islander peoples, who have experienced systemic displacement, disempowerment, and abuse, tells us about how australia is built on colonial violence, raising important questions about how refugees are selected and welcomed (baak, 2019; matthews, 2021). a second aspect is the racist white australia policy that ran from 1901 until the 1970s (national museum of australia, 2023), which was enacted to restrict the immigration of ‘undesirable’ non-white migrants. that this policy was only fully dismantled five decades ago reminds us of the discriminatory underpinnings of colonial australia’s approach to migration. at present, there are broad initiatives that support the educational opportunities of refugees. in the latest installment of the national multicultural statement (australian government, 2017), the commonwealth government aimed to extend services and programs that meet the needs of people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds while at the same time ensuring the shared values of mutual respect, equality, and freedom are upheld by all australians. subsequently, in the multicultural access and equity policy guide, the australian government (2018) underscored the importance of ensuring ‘equality of opportunity and equity of outcomes for all australians’ (p. 5). to this end, the policy calls explicitly for 16 current issues in comparative education molla & baker government agencies and departments to be responsive to the unique conditions and needs of multicultural communities, including ‘refugee and humanitarian entrants’ and ‘visibly different migrants’. the policy guide states: we live in a multicultural society and that there is an obligation on australian government departments and agencies to ensure their programmes and services are accessible by all eligible australians, responsive to their needs, and deliver equitable outcomes for them, regardless of their cultural and linguistic backgrounds. (p. 3, emphasis added) although the government’s ‘investing in refugees’ agenda falls short of fully acknowledging the educational disadvantage of humanitarian entrants (see australian government, 2019; shergold et al., 2019), there is a consensus on the need for improving the educational attainment of this group. however, the notion of merit is overlooked in this agreement; if the principles of merit that exist for non-refugee/australian-born students are applied, refugees are left to compete on a deeply uneven terrain that fails to account for educational disruptions and traumatic journeys. schooling in australia australia is a federation, comprising six states and two territories. although school education is primarily the responsibility of states and territories, governments of all levels periodically meet to design and agree on national schooling policies. social justice goals are prominent in such policies. for instance, through the melbourne declaration on educational goals for young australians (mceetya, 2008), commonwealth, state, and territory governments recognized that “students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, those from remote areas, refugees, homeless young people, and students with disabilities often experience educational disadvantage” and agreed to reduce the effect of such sources of disadvantage as “disability, homelessness, refugee status and remoteness” (p. 7). in the latest installment of the national educational framework—the alice springs (mparntwe) education declaration (australian government, 2019)—all governments agreed to provide targeted support for disadvantaged groups, including refugees. one of the key goals of the alice springs (mparntwe) declaration is to ensure that “the australian education system promotes excellence and equity” (p. 5) through inter alia, “supporting all young australians at risk of educational disadvantage” (p. 9). the commonwealth, state, and territory governments agreed that: targeted support can help learners such as those from low socioeconomic backgrounds, those from regional, rural and remote areas, migrants and refugees, learners in out-of-home care, homeless young people, and children with disability to reach their potential. this means tailoring to the needs of individuals across a system that prioritises equity of opportunity and that supports achievement. (p. 17, emphasis added) the commitment to providing equitable opportunities to refugees varies across the education system. in the school sector, the level of support refugees receive varies by current issues in comparative education 17 refugees and the right to education: reflections on international frameworks and the australian context state and territory. this variation results in considerable differences in terms of access, support, and success for refugee students, not just between states and territories but also between schools. as tippett et al. (2023) argue from their national study of refugee education, the policy invisibility for refugee students means that schools’ capacity to support students and protect their rights to quality education are dictated by their access to funding and strongly influenced by “the multiple and complex forms of disadvantage represented within their student cohort” (p. 12). since refugee students are most likely to attend public schools in lower socioeconomic areas, schools face “a difficult dilemma in deciding how to distribute funding; a dilemma which was informed by their moral and ethical obligations to support all children in their care” (tippett et al., 2023, p. 13). sometimes resources intended for refugee students were shared or used to support other students. in the states that host the highest proportion of newly arrived refugees and diaspora communities, there are refugee-specific programs, such as the refugee education support program in victoria (foundation house, 2024). in new south wales, the department of education provides refugee student support (nsw government, 2024). however, such programs and positions are not found in other states or territories; for example, in queensland, refugee students are caught in the unhelpfully broad inclusion policy (creagh et al., 2023), with responsibility for english language support devolved to individual schools with the consequence of limited accountability for the education and language rights of refugee students. this national variation creates inconsistencies in the ways that refugee students are supported, hindering consistent policy responses, such as guidelines, support programs, or teacher professional development. the latter is particularly necessary, given the absence of time and attention given to multicultural education in the crowded curricula of initial teacher education programs (stewart et al., 2019). higher education in australia the higher education sector is primarily a federal concern in australia, meaning that it receives commonwealth funding.1 within this sector, ‘equity’ is the dominant discourse that governs access for underrepresented groups in australia, with the higher education participation and partnerships program (heppp) providing funding to universities to undertake activities and implement strategies that improve access to undergraduate courses for educationally disadvantaged people. in australia, priority has been given to improving the retention and completion rates of ‘equity groups’, who are broadly categorized as people from low socioeconomic backgrounds, indigenous australians, and people from regional, rural, and remote areas. the original ambition of the heppp was to ‘raise aspirations’ for higher education, widen pathways to university education, and enhance the engagement and attainment of equity groups (australian government 2012). in the last 15 years (2010–2024), the federal government has allocated over aud 1.9 billion under heppp (australian government, 2024). other cohorts with intersectional educational disadvantages, such as refugees, are not a focus for the heppp, meaning neither 1 although higher education is the purview of the federal government, the governance of higher education institutions is a state concern in australia. 18 current issues in comparative education molla & baker government nor universities are mandated to focus on this cohort. however, we note how under section 1.50.10 of the heppp guidelines, universities can use heppp funding to tailor their programs to ‘address the specific disadvantage’ within the demographics of the low ses student population (australian government, 2024). however, this, again, creates a level of variability and inconsistency across the national education landscape. refugees have remained invisible in the national higher education equity policies (molla, 2021, 2024). for two decades (1990–2010), universities subsumed refugee background students under the category of ‘non-english speaking background’ (nesb) targets. the categorization overlooked the fact that considerable variations exist within the nesb category in terms of economic status, parental level of education, and cultural assets. in the last ten years, with the government’s abandonment of nesb as an equity group,2 refugees have been mainly identified by universities as belonging to the low socioeconomic status (ses) group, if at all. this framing has a homogenizing effect, overlooking complex non-economic factors of disadvantage that refugees face, and inhibiting institutions from running tailored resource-intensive programs to benefit the group. the exclusion from policy considerations means refugees struggle to get access to and be successful in higher education. for example, african refugee youth, even with institutional equity measures, continue to experience low participation and completion rates in higher education. data from the australian bureau of statistics reveal that, on average, more than 85 percent of young people from the primary countries of origin for african refugees settling in australia lack a university degree and do not engage in higher education within five years of arrival (molla, 2024). this pattern has remained largely unchanged since the mid-1990s. despite access to alternative pathways and adjusted admission requirements, successful completion of a degree remains a formidable challenge for refugee students, therefore destabilizing the ‘merit-based’ requirement of article 26 of the udhr. on a positive note, here are new promising developments. in 2022, the federal government commissioned the australian universities accord panel to review the sector and propose policy ideas. the panel delivered the final report in february 2024. the panel acknowledged the invisibility of refugees in equity policies: “there is evidence to suggest other cohorts, such as care leavers, refugees, and some language groups from non-english speaking backgrounds, experience significantly lower higher education participation and attainment outcomes” (o’kane et al., 2024, section 3.2.2). a key issue that has stymied more support for refugees has long been that universities do not collect relevant data on the enrollment, progression, and completion rates of refugee students. in response to this gap, the universities accord panel recommends that the proposed australian tertiary education commission measures and monitors the outcomes of educationally disadvantaged students by 2 while not an ‘equity group’ of concern in the heppp, the federal government still collects nesb student data, but this does not capture migration journey, visa category or duration in australia, which are key markers of forced migration. current issues in comparative education 19 refugees and the right to education: reflections on international frameworks and the australian context collecting “new types of data such as more granular equity indicators (e.g. students who are care leavers, carers or refugees) and course delivery costs to inform analysis” (o’kane, 2024, p.241). this is a welcome measure. if implemented, this policy change can help track refugee students’ educational trajectories and outcomes in australian higher education. as illustrated in figure 1, access to higher education for refugee students has steadily increased over the past decade. from 2011 to 2019, there was a consistent increase in both the number of refugees commencing he and the total number of refugee students in the sector. this increase aligns with a steady rise in the number of refugees resettled, particularly in the years 2014 through 2019, which saw significant surges in resettlement figures (department of home affairs [doha], 2023; refugee council of australia [rcoa], 2024). however, the covid-19 pandemic had a profound impact on global migration patterns, including the resettlement of refugees. in 2020, while there was still a high number of refugee students commencing higher education, the total number of refugees resettled dropped from 18,750 to 13,750. by 2023, there was a slight recovery in the number of refugees resettled, rising to 20,000. however, the total number of refugee students in higher education continued to reflect the declines in previous years, indicating that despite the increase in resettlement, the long-term impacts of the pandemic and the existing barriers faced by refugee students may still linger. as the number of refugees resettled fluctuates, education systems must adapt to provide adequate resources and support tailored to the unique challenges faced by refugee students. figure 1 refugee resettlement and access to higher education in australia, 2011–2023; based on data from doha (2023), rcoa (2024), and commonwealth department of education website another key development can be found in the department of home affairs, rather than the department of education. a key response for resettlement countries like australia to the unhcr’s 15/30 campaign (to get 15 percent of refugees into higher education by 2030) is the development of complementary education pathways. 20 current issues in comparative education molla & baker complementary pathways are “safe and regulated avenues for persons in need of international protection that provide for a lawful stay in a third country where the international protection needs of the beneficiaries are met” (unhcr, 2023b). education complementary pathways offer a protection-focused pathway to a durable solution through an academic program of study. as of 2022, at least 33 coordinated education pathways are operating in 27 countries, a remarkable increase from the three pathways that were operating in 2019 (mcauliffe & oucho, 2024; evans et al., 2022). australia is not one of these 27 countries, despite calls for them—as a generous resettlement host—to create one. however, given the new labor government’s commitment to extending australia’s humanitarian response through the creation of 10,000 additional complementary pathway places3, the country’s time has come. to this end, the department of home affairs has co-designed a blueprint for a new refugee student settlement pathway (rssp) with the new australian refugee welcome university sponsorship consortium (arwu sc).4 the ambition of rssp is to create a shared opportunity with the australian tertiary education sector to increase resettlement options, with institutions contributing to the costs of settlement and utilizing the goodwill and energy of campus support groups to help students meet settlement outcomes for a year after arrival. that this has happened under the minister for immigration rather than the minister for education tells an interesting story about where responsibilities for refugee education (are seen to) lie. this illuminates the absence of a clear connection between the departments of home affairs and the department of education, except for where there is a clear visa pathway. this hinders rights-based education for new arrivals because, once a person has arrived in australia, responsibility for refugee education is lost in the gaps between these siloed divisions of government. problematizing the national commitment international frameworks recognize the importance of refugee education, urging signatory governments to ensure that refugees have substantive educational opportunities. australia’s national multicultural policies and educational declarations reflect its commitment to multilateral efforts to support refugee resettlement and integration. the operationalization of national commitments is far from perfect. in this section, we illuminate the key limitations of refugee education in australia. sectoral misalignments mean that refugees are explicitly recognized as equity targets in school education but not in the higher education sector. refugees remain invisible in the australian higher education policy space (molla, 2021, 2024). although some universities offer refugee-focused support, without sector-wide equity provision, institutional arrangements remain inconsistent and insufficient for refugees’ needs. consequently, refugee students continue to face structural barriers to entry to and 4 the arwusc is a consortium of 13 public universities with a strong commitment to social inclusion who have come together to co-design a blueprint for the refugee student settlement pathway with the australian government. 3 the australian government made this pledge at the global refugee forum in december 2023. details can be found here. current issues in comparative education 21 https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/australian-government-pledges-at-the-2023-global-refugee-forum/ refugees and the right to education: reflections on international frameworks and the australian context progression within higher education institutions. to use fraser’s (2008) logic of participatory parity, policy invisibility reproduces injustice in three ways. first, in the absence of targeted policy provisions, refugees lack the necessary institutional support to succeed in their studies (maldistribution). second, against the prevalence of negative stereotypes towards refugees in the public sphere, refugee students continue to experience racial bias at the institutional level and are construed in deficit terms (misrecognition). third, the policy invisibility of refugees also implies their limited involvement in equity-related policy debates and decisions (political misrepresentation). the invisibility of refugees in higher education equity policies appears to be a calculated omission. the australian government spends millions of dollars supporting refugee settlement. by focusing on developing ‘foundational’ english language, education (schooling), and employment, there is no targeted support for improving refugees’ participation in tertiary education (australian government, 2019; shergold et al., 2019). in many cases, refugee settlement policies are motivated by local needs for low-skilled workers—the humanitarian policy has an economic intent: refugees fill less-skilled, low-paying jobs at low wages (legrain, 2016). anthropologist aihwa ong (2003) refers to governments’ tendency to educate refugees for positions that would not be taken by local workers as ‘calculated kindness’. however, such stratified educational and occupational expectations signify political short-sightedness. by providing quality education to refugees, society has the opportunity to empower them to become self-sufficient, valuable citizens. for improved outcomes, the economic pathways to refugee integration program (parkinson et al., 2023) and the transition to work services for young refugees who leave school early (australian government, 2019b) need to be complemented by widening access to and targeted support in higher education. the invisibility in policy has long inhibited the imperative (of governments and educational institutions) to collect data on refugee participation in education, which is matched by a lack of international data on this matter. this invisibility is policy violence, interpreted by calaycay et al. (2023) as an act of (deliberate) exclusion, which creates an additional layer of harm and arguably constitutes a violation of article 26 of the udhr. if the education system does not know who our refugee students are educationally (in terms of sector, performance, and potential), and where they want to go, it will be unable to respond. this requires careful and ongoing consultation with refugee communities, families, and individuals to ensure that needs and responses are co-established, specific, targeted, and flexible. this currently does not happen at any level, meaning that disconnections—between different governments (commonwealth, states, and territories), departments (education, home affairs), and sectors (school, vocational, higher education)—are deepened. it is thus heartening to see refugees recognized in the universities accord report. new challenges will emerge, such as how to identify refugees, particularly in the case where people have become australian citizens, and whether people with refugee-like circumstances should be included. more debate is needed, which must extend across the silos within government, departments, and sectors. 22 current issues in comparative education molla & baker the mandate within article 26 of udhr that “higher education [being] equally accessible to all based on merit” is critically endangered by a lack of connectivity and ecological thinking throughout the system. it is not feasible for new arrivals to compete on even ground ‘on merit’ lines without a clear understanding of the inequitable circumstances that many refugees experience, resulting from a plethora of factors (such as trauma, fragmented educational trajectories, learning new language/s, academic literacy acquisition, cultural unfamiliarity, financial precarity). as creagh’s (2014) analysis clearly illustrates, refugee students are disadvantaged in national standardized testing instruments such as naplan; it therefore follows that this is worse with high-stakes exams, such as the high school certificate or english language tests needed for entry to professional programs such as nursing, especially when the impacts of trauma are factored in (morrice et al., 2021). we turn to the wicked problem of skills and qualifications recognition. according to the committee for economic development of australia (barker & tofts-len, 2024), “on average, migrants who have been in australia for two to six years earn more than 10 percent less than australian-born workers” (p. ii) and this gap has in part to do with issues associated with recognition of skills and qualifications. without efficient systems to identify and enhance refugees’ skills, many highly qualified individuals may resort to driving for services like uber instead of pursuing their professions. establishing streamlined mechanisms for skill recognition and upskilling is not only imperative for the successful integration of refugees but is also crucial for maximizing the societal benefits of their diverse talents and experiences. conclusion our primary objective was to understand the alignment between global initiatives and national responses regarding refugee education, using the case of australia. international human rights and refugee frameworks collectively underscore the right of refugees to quality education, highlighting the intrinsic dignity of displaced individuals. these frameworks urge host governments to demonstrate unwavering commitment to affording refugees access to educational opportunities. in particular, host governments have a responsibility to ensure refugees can access education and can rebuild their lives. australia, as a signatory to these international frameworks, is bound by legal commitments to align its education policies with these global expectations. in their comparative analysis of the implementation of international legal frameworks, horsch and russell (2022) emphasized the need to enhance the enforceability of refugees' right to education. our analysis supports their point and suggests promising developments, such as the australian universities accord panel's recognition of refugees as worthy of consideration for future equity policies and the co-creation of a blueprint for the refugee student settlement pathway (rssp). our analysis reveals sectoral inconsistencies within the australian education policy space. while explicitly acknowledged as equity targets in school education, refugees remain invisible in the higher education sector. this misalignment perpetuates structural barriers for refugees, hindering their entry into and progression within current issues in comparative education 23 refugees and the right to education: reflections on international frameworks and the australian context higher education institutions. the absence of a sector-wide equity provision for refugees results in inconsistent institutional arrangements, leaving them without the necessary support for academic success and meaningful employment. we argue that a more comprehensive approach to refugee education is imperative to recognize the multifaceted challenges and unique circumstances that displaced populations face. this should encompass a holistic framework that recognizes and addresses disadvantageous factors, such as language barriers, disrupted educational trajectories, financial hardship, trauma, and cultural adjustment. further, an ongoing commitment to monitoring outcomes, collecting detailed data, and implementing targeted policies will be pivotal in ensuring that refugees receive the support they need to thrive in both school and higher education settings. australia can genuinely fulfill its international commitments to refugee education through concerted, compassionate, and interconnected efforts. our analysis underscores the importance of critically examining how national policies translate international commitments into actionable provisions for refugee education. the disparities identified in the australian context suggest the value of comparative studies with other nations, such as canada, to uncover best practices and common challenges in aligning national policy with global standards. future research should further investigate how different countries operationalize international frameworks and identify the factors that facilitate or impede effective implementation. acknowledgments this work was in part supported by the australian research council (project number: ft220100062). we would like to extend our gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and the special issue editors for their invaluable feedback and constructive suggestions on this paper. dr. tebeje molla is an arc future fellow and senior lecturer in the school of education at deakin university, australia. his research centres on educational disadvantage and policy responses at systemic, sectoral, and institutional levels. his recent work examines the educational experiences and attainment of african-heritage australian youth from refugee backgrounds. he serves as a board member for refugee education australia (http://www.refugee-education.org/)  dr. sally baker is an associate professor, migration and education at the australian national university. sally’s teaching and research interests centre on equity in higher education, particularly the educational access, pathways, and experiences of students with forced migration backgrounds. sally is the founder and chair of refugee education australia (http://www.refugee-education.org/)  24 current issues in comparative education https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.refugee-education.org%2f&data=05%7c02%7ct.mekonnen%40deakin.edu.au%7cf9aec71b5c584d0e02db08dd0f8953ea%7cd02378ec168846d585401c28b5f470f6%7c0%7c0%7c638683804691140020%7cunknown%7ctwfpbgzsb3d8eyjfbxb0eu1hcgkionrydwusilyioiiwljaumdawmcisilaioijxaw4zmiisikfoijoitwfpbcisilduijoyfq%3d%3d%7c0%7c%7c%7c&sdata=uaqlyldktulcuwf0pzug0%2bc9gj26aomdda9kqjdd5tw%3d&reserved=0 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